News Breakdown: The Wonderful World of Paul Kagame

Okay. So I wanted to resume doing the weekly news breakdowns or the the the two times a week news breakdowns. And I'm thinking about doing these as livestreams. I don't know what you all think. I was thinking about doing these as livestreams so that we could potentially discuss, you know, any articles that you want to talk about or any news stories that you wanna talk about.

And so that potentially, through the interaction, we could sort of start to build a kind of a formula or in a kind of a an approach for training ourselves, on basically how to read the news, how to, read it critically, how to read it with scrutiny, and so on to try to separate the propaganda from the information, to try to separate actual genuine information from narrative and so on. So with that in mind, I opened the CNN website for the first time in I don't know how long, and I went to their world news section, their international news section, which actually was already a bit hard to find because even in their international news section, it's mostly domestic news oddly enough. But I was going to their CNN website not because I ever go to CNN for news, but I want to look at a mainstream outlet, one of the main mainstream outlets that many people do actually go to and somehow feel that they are informed by looking at CNN so that we can see and understand what a large proportion of the population actually thinks is going on in the world. Because if you're if you're getting information from from CNN, then the you know, and you think that it's real news, you think that it's accurate, then that's forming your picture of the world, your understanding of the world.

So I think it's useful for us to understand what people actually think is happening on Earth. So I went to this website. I went to CNN, and, yes, it's it's abysmal. I honestly don't know how anyone can can go to CNN and not feel like their brain is being assaulted. I mean, if the if this is where people actually go to get their new subhanallah, it's a it's a it's a junk food diet and has the same negative deteriorative effects, the the same accompanying health problems for your intellect, for your intelligence, for your understanding.

The same type of negative impact on your intellectual health that junk food has on your physical health. But okay. So I went to the international news section, and the lead story was about the election in Rwanda, the presidential election in Rwanda. Now this in and of itself should tell you something. It's it's it's odd, a little bit odd, I'll say, to to feature this in such a a high profile way when there's so many other things going on in the world.

This was the the lead story that would be on Monday in America in the West, that this would be the lead story, the Rwandan elections. I mean, no one who visits the CNN website in America generally would have any idea why they're being told about the elections in Rwanda. They don't even know where it is most likely. Normally, a story like this would be several pages down, but it was at the top and with a big photograph alongside it. So you you that's where you wanna put put your that's the first point that you wanna sort of put a pin in as to why they did that, why they think that that's important to to cover.

And that to me indicates to one extent or another the extent to which The United States feels that they're losing power and influence in Africa. So they want to emphasize the countries where they still hold some kind of sway. Okay. So I'm gonna just read the article, so bear with me. I'll put a link to the article in the, description so you can see it yourselves.

Here's the article. Rwandans lined up on Monday, to elect their next president with early results putting incumbent Paul Kagame in the lead in a vote widely expected to give him a fourth term in office and extend his near quarter century in charge of the East African country. Okay. Just the opening sentence there. What is it?

Rwandans lined up on Monday to elect their next president. Sounds great. The opening sentence paints a picture of a vibrant democracy, and it it it sort of it sort of takes the edge off of the, shall we say, undemocratic implications of the the second part of that paragraph, the implications of a single ruler being in power for almost two and a half decades. Okay. Then the article continues.

The two men standing against Kagame, Frank Habanessa from the Democratic Green Party and independent candidate Philippe Empai Mana, sorry for the pronunciation, said that they were hoping to make some progress as candidates, but analysts and rights groups said that Kagami's overwhelming victory was all but certain without saying that the election is essentially a plebiscite. Essentially, it's a symbolic election. It's not a genuinely democratic election. They make it sound like the Democratic Green Party and the independent candidate simply failed to inspire, the same kind of support that, Kagame got. They're not they're they're not even entertaining, that Kagami's reelection is a foregone conclusion because the elections are not genuinely democratic.

Now this is this is not how Western media generally reports on autocratic rulers anywhere else in the world unless they're a client. If if if that same if that same story was being reported about anyone else in, say, Venezuela or any in in any country that isn't considered an American client state or a Western client state, this would immediately call into question the legitimacy of the elections. And they wouldn't just, put it as if, well, Kagame is just so darn popular. You know? What to do?

Okay. Continuing. Kagame who got more than 93% of the vote, in the last three elections, won praise from Western and regional leaders at the time for helping end the nineteen ninety four genocide in Rwanda. The US State Department and others have also lauded the development of the economy. Again, it is implausible, shall we say.

It's implausible for a candidate to get over 90 for for a candidate to get over 90% of the vote in any election without that election being regarded as a plebiscite, as a phony election. But here they explain why Kagame actually deserves to be assumed to have this much popular support because they mentioned how the West has celebrated him. You know? They said how he's, helped to unify and and unite Rwanda after the genocide, helped to heal the nation and so on. So he must be wonderful.

The Rwandan genocide in which the West collaborated and Kagame himself is implicated in crimes against humanity, but we'll skip that. Most importantly, they mentioned that Kagame has managed the economy in a way that the West thinks is successful. He's managed the economy in a way that the West thinks is successful, which of course we understand means that he's managed the economy in a way that is profitable for the West. Okay. Continuing.

Rwandans are also voting on Monday for members of the lower house of parliament, and provisional results are expected by July blah blah blah. Okay. That's not important. The overall voter turnout was 98%. The overall voter turnout was 98% of the 9,000,000 registered voters.

Chair of the National Electoral Commission said in a statement on the national broadcaster late on Monday evening. Now I'm not aware of any democracy that has a 98% voter turnout. I've never heard of that happening ever. But maybe Rwanda is just a remarkable specimen. It's just remarkable in the robustness of their democratic enthusiasm.

Now continuing of the of 78.94% of the votes counted as of the time of this article, Kagame was ahead with 99.15% of the votes, data from the commission showed. Here again, 99% of the vote is like what Mubarak used to get in Egypt, and no one considered those to be valid elections or or Saddam or what have you. 99% of the vote is is ludicrous. I mean, on the face of it, it's unrealistic. It's not something that would ever happen in a in a genuine multi party democracy without coercion.

But as you see, CNN for CNN, it merits no scrutiny or skepticism. Okay. Campaign groups. Here we go. Campaign groups including Human Rights Watch have accused authorities of cracking down on journalists, the opposition, and civil society groups before the vote.

Kigami has dismissed such accusations and described himself as the stability candidate. Okay. This is a gesture on the part of CNN towards the criticism of Kagame's autocracy, but not directly against him because you you you notice that they they they mentioned that these human rights groups and so on have accused authorities without citing any specific examples or or any any specifics at all about the allegations. What types of crackdowns they have been, what times what types of suppression they've been. They don't mention it.

They just say that these groups said that the authorities who shall who shall remain nameless, they didn't they didn't say, for example, the Kagame regime, They just had authorities. So it could have been local people, you know, rogue actors on their own. This this is why they use vague language. And then they have Kagame, of course, dismissing such, accusations. Again, neither mentioning what the allegations were, nor what the refutation by Kagame against those accusations.

What was his refutation? Or he was he just dismissed it as in, no. It's not true. So nothing is nothing is they're not going into any specifics at all. And then it just reiterates that Kagame could somehow plausibly enjoy a 100 nearly a 100% support in Rwanda because he's the stability candidate.

As he he describes himself as the stability candidate, which was just earlier suggested in this same article by the mention of Western approval for his unifying role in Rwanda after the genocide and his handling of the economy. So they they they they sort of begin by putting the idea in your head that he's the stability candidate, then they have Kagame himself calling himself the stability candidate. And then here we have, continuing with the article, his reelect his reelection could signal a measure of political stability for his corner of a fractured region, but also continued global scrutiny given the accusations of abuses and of supporting rebels in neighboring Democratic Republic For Congo, a charge he has also denied. So immediately, the the after Kagame describes himself as the stability candidate, the article endorses that if he was saying that he is essentially a reliable and secure element in the East Africa, which they are characterizing as a chaotic and unstable region. They do mention that this pillar of stability is also accused of being complicit in making the region unstable, but somehow he he is he is the stability candidate even though there are accusations against him that he is one of the reasons why there is instability in the region.

But rest assured, Kigami also dismissed those allegations. Earlier on Monday at the Rwandexco polling center in the capital Kigali, a man whose name I cannot pronounce said he would vote for the 66 year old incumbent. Quote, we voted smoothly without any crowding, and we are happy. Okay. 90 they said 99% voter turnout.

I'm not sure how there was no crowding. He said, I voted for Paul Kagame because he has achieved a lot for us. He united us. Okay? Reiterating the message.

The this whole article is on message. Let's see. Motorcycle taxi driver. Again, I'm sorry. I cannot pronounce these names.

I'll butcher them, so I'll just skip over them. Motorcycle taxi driver said that the voting process was calm and peaceful, but declined to say who he who he had chosen. I voted for a leader I trust. The one I voted for is a secret in my heart. We will share it when he wins because we all know who that is, and we all know who is going to win because it's a foregone conclusion.

The Electoral Commission barred eight other candidates, including Kagame's most vocal critics, from running, citing a range of reasons including missing and incomplete registration documents. Now normally, if this again, if this was any other country, if this was a government or a leader who was not a a Western client, this would be reported very differently. This would be recorded as undemocratic, as autocratic undermining of free and fair elections. You're banning other candidates. You're banning other parties.

That's undemocratic by definition, and that's how it would have been reported. Opposition candidates were barred from running, but the article provides the rationale that was put forward by the Kagame government, which is that they had incomplete registration documents and and so on, that their paperwork wasn't up to par. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't report the government's reasoning. You should report the government's reasoning, but you should look into that. And you should say something a bit more substantial than this is what the government says as if that's the reason.

We don't have, for example this is this is where you have to look at who who who are they quoting, who are they citing for their information. Here, they're citing the official the government's reasoning that, you know, we don't hear what the what Kagame's most vocal critic critics say as to why they were banned or why they were barred from running. We only have the official explanation by the government, which, again, is not something that they do, for when they're reporting on, states or governments or rulers that are not their clients. They will go into great detail talking only to the opposition candidate who has been barred or who has who feels that he has been unfairly treated or she has been unfairly treated, who has been blacklisted or what have you, they will talk to that candidate. They will talk to representatives and spokespeople of that party, and they will talk there will be interviews with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and so forth.

They will go into all sorts of detail about what those people feel is the reason that they were barred. Here, none of that. They only say the government said this, so that must be the reason. Okay. Continuing.

Democratic Green Party candidate Habenesa whose deputy was found dead and almost beheaded in the run up to the 2010 vote, said that there had been signs of progress. Okay. This sentence is mind blowing. The deputy head of the Green Party was savagely murdered in 2010. No one has ever been convicted of his killing.

14 later, they still don't know who was responsible for this man's murder, but there's been progress. Progress since the very likely political murder and near decapitation of arrival to Kagame. That's a low bar for progress, but CNN, I guess, prefers to look on the bright side. Okay. We toured the entire country and wherever we went this is Habanaza.

Wherever we went, people welcomed us warmly. They gave us gifts and they assured us that they would vote for us, Habanessa said, after voting. Because be because okay. This is like the old joke. There was a there was an old joke in the time of Mubarak that someone they they had an election and someone went to vote, and they voted for the opposition candidate.

And then he he came home and he told his family who he voted for, and they said, oh, you're gonna get in trouble. You're gonna get arrested because you didn't vote for Mubarak. So he went back to the polling station to tell them I I I wanna change my vote. And the officials at the polling station said, don't worry. We already did.

So you can tell him we're gonna vote for you because it doesn't matter. Everyone knows which way the vote is gonna go. Okay. He says, we are confident. We are confident.

Each of us is confident. It's half and half. Independent presidential candidate said, after casting his vote, you know perfectly well what's gonna happen. Okay. The US state department says on its website that Rwanda has made, quote, progress in developing national and local government institutions, economic development, maintaining security, and promoting reconciliation.

It also says that it backs Rwanda's efforts to quote, increase democratic participation and enhance respect for civil and political rights. So they're saying that Rwanda is making an effort to enhance respect for civil and political rights by barring eight candidates from running and by almost chopping the head off of a candidate ten years ago. Again, it's progress. Nobody got their head cut off this this year. Yeah.

I'm not sure how you can increase democratic participation when you allegedly have 99% voter turnout, but okay. So what's the information? The actual information in this article. There was an election. That's information.

That's a real thing. Apparently, three candidates ran. One candidate, the incumbent, got almost 100% of the vote. One of the candidates comes from a party whose deputy was brutally murdered ten years ago or fourteen years ago, and eight other parties were barred from from from even running. That's information.

That's the actual information in here. This is the the thing that happened was that there was an election with almost 99% voter turnout, and almost 99% of that 99% all voted for Kagami. So what's the narrative? The narrative clearly is that Paul Kagami is a popular leader who inspires unparalleled voter turnout and support that he's endorsed by almost a 100% of the entire population of Rwanda, that he's doing all the right things. He's bringing stability.

He's bringing prosperity to Rwanda. And against all the odds, he's doing this. He's, making efforts towards, increasing the, democratic participation, civil respect for civil society and so on, NGOs, and what have you. And he's he's, he's doing all of this in a very fractured region. So, you know, he's a heroic figure.

So what's the what's the agenda of that narrative? Because the the narratives the narrative is plainly a narrative. It's plainly propaganda. It's very obviously propaganda. It's very obviously false.

Because the the fact is that Paul Kagame is widely viewed in Africa as a Western neoliberal puppet who has essentially turned Rwanda into a colony of the IMF, a colony of Western investors. And he has achieved that, and and you can see this, you know, if you sort of read between the lines as we're doing, he's achieved that. He has achieved the colonization of Rwanda to the IMF and to Western investors through severe suppression of democracy, and even the the the the violent elimination of political rivals. He's he's achieved that through purely autocratic means. The fact is that under Kagame, Rwanda has backed the m 23 rebels in the Democratic Republic Of Congo, and that the violence that they have caused has dramatically benefited those very same Western investors and multinationals who have colonized Rwanda, and and for whom Kagame has collaborated with the colonization of Rwanda.

Has allowed them, you know, much cheaper and much easier access to Congo's minerals through illegal mining, artisanal mining, smuggling, and so forth. With the with the with the chaos and the violence, what you you you can look at chaos and violence in the perspective of neoliberalism is utopian level deregulation. Chaos and violence is the ideal suspension of any type of regulation or law or rules that investors and foreign multinationals that they have to abide by, that they have to follow. So all the rules go out the window when it's a when it's a war zone, when it's a conflict zone. So that gives you free, open, Wild West style access to the riches under the earth, giving them access to what are called now conflict minerals conflict minerals or, you know, blood diamonds, blood minerals.

That's what they're that's what they're trading in. That's what powers your iPhone and your electric cars. And in fact, since the resurgence of violence in the DRC with the m 23 rebels backed by Rwanda and the Kagame regime, mineral exports from the DRC have increased between 1520%. That's a lot, and that's that's what's on record. That's not even talking about what goes what's not on the books, the illegal, the smuggling, and so on.

Companies like Tesla, Apple, Intel, HP, Dell, Volkswagen, BMW, all of them have been accused of sourcing blood minerals, conflict minerals, for their manufacturing. The fact is that Kagami has basically run Rwanda according to IMF dictates, structural adjustment reforms, neoliberal macroeconomic recommendations, and so on. He's he's he's hollowing out the public sector and privatizing all state assets, state enterprises, and so forth. He's privatizing them, selling them off to Western foreign national foreign multinationals. I mean, one of his one of his top advisers is a former World Bank official and and BlackRock, the largest asset management firm in the world, has partnered with Rwanda's sovereign wealth fund to manage a a portion of their portfolio, and they, BlackRock, invested something like $50,000,000 to run infrastructure projects in Rwanda.

So they're they're buying that country. So, of course, the the the agenda of the narrative is to obscure all of this, is to obscure the reality that Paul Kagame is a Western colonizer collaborator who has sold his country to BlackRock and to the IMF and to Western private sector power, while also allegedly with evidence supporting the m twenty three rebels to spread violence and chaos and anarchy and atrocities in the DRC for the benefit of those same western private sector powers. But the the the narrative is to obscure the the the reality of Paul Koyame and his regime and and their collaboration with colonization and their undermining of their own sovereignty, their Rwanda's own economic sovereignty, as well as undermining the sovereignty of their neighbors and the stability of their neighbors, we're supposed to see any Western client tyrant as a hero of democracy, as an icon of progress, you know, an icon of of development instability, who's steering his nation in the right direction. So you see how if you're if you're getting your news from CNN, you have no idea what's going on in the world. You really you really have no idea.

They're not gonna tell you all of this, and that's part of what the narrative is about. The narrative is specifically for the purpose of ensuring that you don't get real information, that you only get fake information so that you never understand the world. They're they're they they they take some elements of fact. This is why you have to first you know, when you when you're reading an article, you have to look at you have to first identify what's the actual information in the article. Very often, it will be just a few sentences in the body of of an entire article.

There will maybe be just a few sentences that are actual information, and then you have to identify what's narrative, which is going to be most of the article. And then you have to identify what's the agenda of that narrative, and then try to understand what's the meaning of all of that. So like here, the meaning of all of this to me is that the West is losing power in Africa. And so they have to hype up one of the the few remaining puppet client regimes that they have, which is Rwanda. Because as I say, most of the people who are gonna be going to the CNN website have no idea why they should care about Rwanda.

But Rwanda is a geostrategic country. It's an important country. And as we can see by what is allegedly taking place by Rwanda's backing of the m twenty three rebels, they're having an influence over another country. They're a gateway country for Western companies to access the blood minerals, the conflict minerals in the DRC. So it's a very important country, and it's important for you as as as a reader to think that it's a great and wonderful, upright, virtuous, you know, democratic, progressive, stable country where the leader is overwhelmingly popular.

Even though any other country in the world where a leader got 99% of the vote, it would be immediately laughed at and mocked as a very blatant plebiscite, as a very blatant phony election. But here, they they actually report it with a straight face. So okay. That's gonna be it for today. I'm afraid it's a bit long, but I hope in sha'Allah it's useful.

Let me know if you think that it would be if you support the idea of doing these live for the members, and and insha'Allah we can start to do that.