The Passing of Christopher Black

Another member of my pantheon passes on.

A few hours ago, I was notified that human-rights attorney Christopher Black died two days ago at age 75, of a stroke. Yesterday, I had a momentary panic that Chris was not well, and I don’t dismiss “coincidental” moments such as those. I’ll see Chris on the other side (he is being very pleasantly surprised right now). I have written about Chris a fair amount over the past several years. I was hoping to work with Chris on his bio one day. As with Ed Herman and others in my pantheon, I only traded email with Chris, but I hoped to meet him in the flesh one day. The afterlife will have to do.

In his last email to me, Ed introduced me to Chris and several other members of his circle, such as Sam Husseini, and now that Chris is gone, I’ll write some more about him. I had Chris review my Substack post about him before I published it. While he thought that there was plenty more that could be added, he thought that it might detract from that pithiness, so he had me leave it as is.

Ed did not have a stauncher friend than Chris. When Chris told Ed and David Peterson about what was really happening in Rwanda, and it became the last big writing project of Ed’s life, Chris was amazed at their courage in taking on that subject. Ed and David were used to standing up against the propaganda hurricane, but Chris was still highly impressed that they took up that cause. Chris was outraged over Ed’s libelous Wikipedia biography, and not long after my travails with Wikipedia over Ed’s bio, Wikipedia deleted Chris’s bio. When I notified Chris of it, he observed that it was only weeks after he co-authored a book on Srebrenica. Chris spoke at a conference in Serbia last year, and he informed me that Ed’s work is held in high regard to this day among Serbian and Russian scholars, more so than it is in the USA.

Taking that case in Rwanda, standing up to the American Empire, nearly killed Chris, and it may have shortened his life. His health had been declining for years. A few years ago, I asked Chris if he would take any more cases like that, and he said that he would likely not survive another one. Chris had me read some books and other material, such as his final argument in his Rwandan trial, but we never really got the chance to discuss them in depth, alas. We discussed JFK’s murder, and Chris wondered if Franklin Roosevelt’s death was of natural causes. Chris was well aware of the AIDS scam in Africa, and other topics that we discussed over the years.

I was always struck by Chris’s keen intellect, honesty, and friendliness, not to mention his courage in standing up to the American Empire. There have not been many like Chris. Another great soul has left us, and I’ll miss him.