RUTHFULLY YOURS

The “strongman” has a history of murder, abuse and suppression of any dissent. The international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders identifies him as a “predator” who attacks press freedom, citing the fact that in the last two decades, eight journalists have been killed or have gone missing, 11 have been given long jail terms, and 33 forced to flee Rwanda. However, since he ended the horrific genocide in Rwanda, he is evidence that in post colonial Africa most nations want economic growth and stability more than real democracy….rsk

Rwanda’s strongman leader Paul Kagame won a landslide victory in Friday’s presidential election with almost 99% of the vote, extending his 17-year rule until at least 2024 after a campaign that seemed more like a coronation than a contest.

With 80% of the votes tallied, Mr. Kagame secured some 5.4 million, the National Electoral Commission said Saturday, confirming the president’s widely expected runaway victory.

“We are now certain that even if we get 100% of the votes, nothing will change,” the commission’s executive secretary, Charles Munyaneza, said on national television.

The victory—by a margin that more closely resembles those chalked up in dictatorships than democracies—hands the 59-year-old Mr. Kagame what he has indicated will be his final term in office. But according to Rwanda’s constitution, he is free to seek two further five-year terms, meaning he could retain his position until 2034.

Mr. Kagame delivered a victory speech to cheering supporters at the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front’s headquarters in the capital, Kigali, on Saturday morning. He pledged to “continue transforming Rwanda to guarantee a dignified life for every citizen,” and thanked the Rwandan people “for putting trust in me once again.”

The European Union, which often sends representatives to monitor African elections, had no presence during Friday’s polls, but the East African Community said the vote was free, fair and without irregularities.

Mr. Kagame—a former rebel leader who is now more commonly seen at international business events—is credited with engineering Rwanda’s economic transformation from the ruins of the 1994 genocide to one of the star economic performers on the continent. But critics and rights groups accuse his government of using state power to intimidate, jail and eliminate opponents through assassinations—allegations that the government rejects.

Mr. Kagame’s victory cements his position at the leading edge of a growing trend of self-styled strongman technocrats across the continent. From Ethiopia to Tanzania and Ivory Coast, leaders are increasingly consolidating control to spur radical economic transformation.

“The development strategy is identical to that of the late Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore,” said Efosa Ojomo, a research fellow at the U.S.-based Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, referencing the former prime minister who transformed the tiny Asian economy into a global hub but drew criticism from humanitarian groups. CONTINUE AT SITE

Andrew Warren, an Oxford University employee has been arrested in connection with the killing of a 26-year old man in Chicago.

Police have also arrested Wyndham Lathem, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology a Northwestern University in Chicago and expert in the bubonic plague.

Mr Warren, 56, and Prof Lathem, 42 were sought by police after a hair stylist, Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, 26, was found stabbed to death in an upmarket high-rise flat in Chicago. . Chicago Police said the two men are believed to be in custody in Oakland California. by the US Marshals Service.

News that the men were being held was announced by Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for Chicago police department on Twitter.

A senior treasury assistant at Somerville College, Oxford, Mr Warren left the home he shared with his sister in Faringdon, Oxfordshire on June 24.

He was reported missing to Thames Valley Police by Mr Warren’s sister, Tracey, and his partner, Martin Grant.

It is believed Mr Warren left the UK the day before, travelling to the United States without telling his boyfriend or family.

Authorities haven’t detailed the relationship between Mr Warren and Prof Lathem, who moved to Chicago from the Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Australia’s arrest Saturday of four men suspected of plotting a terrorist attack on a commercial airliner signals more than a resurgent terror threat to airplanes. Because the alleged weapon involved smuggling explosives and poison gasses in a standard kitchen utensil – a meat grinder or mincer – it demonstrates, too, the rapidly increasing sophistication of these plots and the development of new means of attack.

It also exposes what international intelligence agencies, but few others, have known for some time: in a recent ranking of countries where radical Islam is a significant security threat, Australia stands in third place.

This may surprise most people, who think of Australia as a land of laid-back surfers and cuddly koalas, but a different side of Australia has emerged in recent years – one where radical Islam is rising. And it’s not just among immigrant populations; there, as elsewhere, converts also play a large role. The large percentage of Australian Muslims who have joined the Islamic State also has been little noticed. With an estimated 476,000 Muslims among 24.13 million Australians, the country has one of the highest per capita rates of Muslims who have made hijrah, or the journey to the caliphate. The ratio is about on par with France.

According to a BBC report, the majority of Australia’s radicals were born in that country. Sixty percent of them are of Lebanese heritage – another distinction from European ISIS members, most of whom appear to come from Northern Africa. And a 2010 report from Monash University’s Global Terrorism Research Centre noted that, unlike other jihadists in the West, radical Muslims in Australia tend to be married (77 percent, as opposed to 38 percent in the UK).

The four men arrested in conjunction with the latest plot all were Lebanese-Australian, according to the Daily Mail. Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat, alleged to be father and son, are believed to be related to a senior ISIS figure; Khaled and Abdul Merhi are said to be related to Ahmed Merhi, who has been in Syria since 2014 and is a popular ISIS recruiter. According to the Australian, while Ahmed Merhi’s mother is Lebanese and a practicing Muslim, his Syrian father Faraj claims to have abandoned religion.

Abdul Merhi was released Monday without charges. According to press reports, despite extensive questioning, officials found no evidence he was involved.

North Korea test-launched on Friday its first ballistic missile potentially capable of hitting America’s East Coast. It thereby proved the failure of 25 years of U.S. nonproliferation policy. A single-minded rogue state can pocket diplomatic concessions and withstand sustained economic sanctions to build deliverable nuclear weapons. It is past time for Washington to bury this ineffective “carrots and sticks” approach.

America’s policy makers, especially those who still support the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, should take careful note. If Tehran’s long collusion with Pyongyang on ballistic missiles is even partly mirrored in the nuclear field, the Iranian threat is nearly as imminent as North Korea’s. Whatever the extent of their collaboration thus far, Iran could undoubtedly use its now-unfrozen assets and cash from oil-investment deals to buy nuclear hardware from North Korea, one of the world’s poorest nations.

One lesson from Pyongyang’s steady nuclear ascent is to avoid making the same mistake with other proliferators, who are carefully studying its successes. Statecraft should mean grasping the implications of incipient threats and resolving them before they become manifest. With North Korea and Iran, the U.S. has effectively done the opposite. Proliferators happily exploit America’s weakness and its short attention span. They exploit negotiations to gain the most precious asset: time to resolve the complex scientific and technological hurdles to making deliverable nuclear weapons.

Now that North Korea possesses them, the U.S. has few realistic options. More talks and sanctions will fail as they have for 25 years. I have argued previously that the only durable diplomatic solution is to persuade China that reunifying the two Koreas is in its national interest as well as America’s, thus ending the nuclear threat by ending the bizarre North Korean regime. Although the negotiations would be arduous and should have commenced years ago, American determination could still yield results.

Absent a successful diplomatic play, what’s left is unpalatable military options. But many say, even while admitting America’s vulnerability to North Korean missiles, that using force to neutralize the threat would be too dangerous. The only option, this argument goes, is to accept a nuclear North Korea and attempt to contain and deter it.

The people saying this are largely the same ones who argued that “carrots and sticks” would prevent Pyongyang from getting nuclear weapons. They are prepared to leave Americans as nuclear hostages of the Kim family dictatorship. This is unacceptable. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has it right. “What’s unimaginable to me,” he said last month at the Aspen Security Forum, “is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver.” So what are the military options, knowing that the U.S. must plan for the worst?

First, Washington could pre-emptively strike at Pyongyang’s known nuclear facilities, ballistic-missile factories and launch sites, and submarine bases. There are innumerable variations, starting at the low end with sabotage, cyberattacks and general disruption. The high end could involve using air- and sea-based power to eliminate the entire program as American analysts understand it.

Second, the U.S. could wait until a missile is poised for launch toward America, and then destroy it. This would provide more time but at the cost of increased risk. Intelligence is never perfect. A North Korean missile could be in flight to a city near you before the military can respond.

A terrorist group chose a burqa-clad cover model and a column for grammar-school-age wannabe-jihadists to kick off the first edition of its English-language ladies’ jihad magazine.
(Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan )

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) launched “Sunnat E Khaula” — the Way of Khaula, a 7th century Islamic female warrior — because they “want to provoke women of Islam to come forward and join the ranks of mujahideen,” according to the magazine’s introduction.

The kids’ column, “Come Let’s Do Jihad with Little Muhajid Omar,” is purportedly the voice of a 6-year-old who vows “when I will grow up I will do jihad like my father, I will fight kuffar” and says he’s currently learning English at his madrassa.

“I everyday do physical exercise so that I can become a good, brave mujahid. I also serve mujahideen in my spare time. My mother cooks meals and I take it to mujahideen in hujra (man’s sitting room). I feel very happy when I look after mujahideen because it makes Allah pleased with me,” Omar writes.

He says of his jihadist father, “At night I asked Baba that why do we do jihad? Baba told me that we do jihad so that there remains no fitna on Allah’s earth, bad people can be removed from earth and we can live peacefully under law of Allah and that is sharia.”

The young writer describes an unrelated “brother” named Osama living with them who had migrated there to wage jihad and was killed in an operation. Omar says he told his parents, to their delight, that “I will inshAllah one day make a big gun by which I will gun down drones and inshAllah one day like brother Osama I will become a martyr.”

“Become strong and fight kuffar [disbelievers] to make this world a peaceful place to live,” the kids’ column concludes, telling youngsters to fight for a day “when all bad people will be finished from earth and everyone will obey only one Allah.”

In the magazine issue, an unidentified wife of a TTP leader does a Q&A in which she defends child marriages as a practice that averts “moral destruction of the society.”

An article showing fully veiled women wielding automatic weapons states that Muslim countries are acting as “puppets” of “America and Jews,” and “humanity is at the verge of destruction.”

Women are advised to “rise up” and “fight against the ones who have taken off clothes from you in the name of fashion and modernism, the followers of dajjal [antichrist] who have turned you into a man, if ‘modernism’ does not work then they use names like ‘culture.'”

Women are further told “it is your duty to fight,” so “if parents are obstructing your way then leave them, if husband’s love is keeping you away from haq [truth] then sacrifice his love and you will receive love of Allah in return.” CONTINUE AT SITE

NAIROBI, Kenya—Less than three months ago, Kenya was coasting to its most uneventful election in years, with commentators predicting a walkover for incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta.

Now, the contest—and the country’s mood—are on a knife-edge. The murder of an election official, a proliferation of fake news and the activities of secretive political technology companies have raised tensions in a country that saw over 1,000 people die and hundreds of thousands displaced in election violence a decade ago.

On Monday, Chris Msando, the senior official in charge of Kenya’s electoral information systems, was found dead, his body strafed with the signs of torture.
Christopher Msando, an information technology official for Kenya’s electoral commission, speaks at a press conference on July 6th, in Nairobi. Photo: Associated Press
Members of civil society groups protest the killing of electoral commission information technology manager Christopher Msando, at a demonstration in downtown Nairobi, August 1. Photo: Ben Curtis/Associated Press

On Tuesday, the opposition called for an investigation while Mr. Kenyatta promised authorities would get to the bottom of the assassination.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.K.’s Scotland Yard offered assistance—but the offer hasn’t been accepted, according to people familiar with the situation. The police declined to comment.

As the Aug. 8 election approaches, few in this East African nation of 48 million believe answers are forthcoming, while many see an ominous warning.

“Whatever the reality is, many believe he was killed because he would have made sure that anti-rigging technology would work,” says Nic Cheeseman, an African democracy expert at Birmingham University. “His murder has struck fear into independently minded electoral officials.”

The top candidates in this year’s presidential contest—Mr. Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga —are the same leaders who faced off in the 2007 election. Polls have now narrowed dramatically, giving Mr. Kenyatta a thin 3% lead with 8% of voters undecided.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta speaks to his supporters at the Jubilee Party campaign rally on August 2nd at Tonanoka Stadium in Mombasa. Photo: Jennifer Huxta for The Wall Street Journal

Both men are pledging to spend on development projects and stamp out corruption, but tribal divisions continue to frame Kenyan politics. Mr. Kenyatta says his leadership transcends tribe, though he is dependent on support from his Kikuyu tribe, the nation’s largest, and its allies; Mr. Odinga says his Luo tribespeople and other friendly smaller tribes have been neglected.

Mr. Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto were accused of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court after the 2007 violence pitted tribes against one another. Those charges were later dropped. CONTINUE AT SITE

Theresa May herself is also not entirely to be trusted in this area. Despite her calls for no tolerance for extremism, she has recently been widely criticized for blocking publication of a major report into foreign funding of extremist Muslim groups.

For years now, radical preachers, terrorist recruiters, and fundamentalists who openly hate this country, its democratic values, and its tolerance for all faiths, have walked British streets, campaigned on university campuses, and converted and radicalised young men and women.

What seems not to be understood about “the religion of peace” is that “peace” comes only after the entire world has been converted to Islam so that a “Dar al-Harb”, the “Abode of War,” will no longer even exist.

Since the beginning of March, 17,393 people have been listed as terror suspects. — French Senate report: “Prevention of Radicalism and Regional Authorities”, April 2017.

On May 26, four days after the major terrorist attack on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, British intelligence officials stated that they had identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in the UK, all of them considered potential terrorist attackers. According to The Times,

About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a “residual risk”.

The two terrorists who have struck in Britain this year — Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, and Khalid Masood, the Westminster killer — were in the pool of “former subjects of interest” and no longer subject to any surveillance.

A police officer stands guard near the Manchester Arena on May 23, 2017, following a suicide bombing by an Islamic terrorist who murdered 22 concert-goers. (Photo by Dave Thompson/Getty Images)

The report adds that the two men who beheaded British soldier Lee Rigby in London, in 2013, had been known to the security services, just as Abedi and Masood were, but had been dropped to low priority.

David Anderson, QC, the former reviewer of anti-terrorism laws, noted concerns in his 2015 report about the “speed with which things can change” around suspects and “the difficulties in knowing how best to prioritise limited surveillance resources”. Senior police have also spoken of the difficulty in identifying the triggers that might “reactivate” extremist behaviour.

Others had expressed similar concerns about how the jihadi ideology, based in radical religious belief, is so intensely ingrained that it never leaves individuals and may easily reactivate a desire to commit atrocities.

“2016 was the worst year on record for antisemitic crime [in Britain],” — National Antisemitic Crime Audit, published on July 17, 2017.

“Britain has the political will to fight antisemitism and strong laws with which to do it, but those responsible for tackling the rapidly growing racist targeting of British Jews are failing to enforce the law.” — Gideon Falter, Chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism.

The first “Palestine Expo” — a two-day festival in London, self-described as the “biggest social, cultural and entertainment event on Palestine to ever take place in Europe” — was held over the weekend of July 8, 2017 at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster. The gathering, attended by an estimated 15,000 people, included political panels, workshops and food courts — ostensibly to highlight and honor “Palestine history and heritage.”

Given the identity of its organizers, however, its true impetus — to demonize the Jewish state — was clear from the outset. Sponsored by the Leicester-based Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA), a group that openly supports the Islamist terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, the event aroused the anger of pro-Israel activists and the British government alike.

About a month before the Expo was scheduled to take place, Communities and Local Government Secretary Sajid Javid sent a letter to the FOA — which promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and figures such as Holocaust denier Paul Eisen — expressing his concerns and threatening to call off the event.

FOA founder Ismail Patel replied that Javid had “failed to provide any satisfactory reason as to why they have chosen to cancel an event which seeks to celebrate Palestinian culture and heritage.” He also resorted to a classic anti-Semitic trope, accusing the government of being influenced by the Jewish lobby.

As Javid set the date of June 23 for his final decision on whether the Expo would be canceled, Patel began a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for legal representation to challenge the government in the event of a cancellation. Neither materialized, however, when the controversy was upstaged by the deadly Grenfell Tower fire, which erupted on June 14, the day of the exchange of letters between Javid and Patel.

A week later, Javid gave the green light for the event.

Among the speakers at the Expo was South African Islamic scholar Sheikh Ebrahim Bham, know for having quoted Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels comparing Jews to fleas. Patel defended his decision to host Bham at the event by saying:

“Shaykh Bham clearly uses it to demonstrate how terrible the treatment of the Jews under Nazi persecution was.

“He then goes on to state that similar treatment is now being experienced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation – that of being sub-human.”

Other speakers included openly anti-Israel academics, some Jewish, all with a history of anti-Semitic writings, remarks and social media postings, as well as the highly controversial former UK National Union of Students president Malia Bouattia.Jason Silver, a Jewish resident of London who attended the event “to record what I knew would be a hate fest of antisemitism and more blood libels and incitement to hatred,” sent a letter to the Daily Mail detailing his experience. He also posted the letter on Facebook, along with video footage he recorded during the three hours he was there, before being forced by organizers to leave.

Silver wrote that talks by “key speakers were truly vile, both to Jews and against the UK for the Balfour Declaration,” a reference to the 100-year-old document supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine — for which the Palestinian Authority has threatened to sue Britain.

Silver said that he encountered no problems with participants — most of whom were wearing Muslim garb — until he donned his Jewish skull cap. Within 10 minutes, he wrote, he was told he was not welcome, and must exit the premises. When he asked why he was being ordered to leave — after having been there for a full three hours with no mishap — he was not given a reason.