By Kwasi Adu

Member of CJA, Kwesi Pratt Jnr. addresses demonstrators

On 28 December 2011, the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) informed Ghanaians that the price of petroleum products was being increased by between 15% and 30%. The reason given by the NPA was that it was necessary to remove what they called government subsidies on the prevailing international crude oil and petroleum prices, which at the time was US$111 per barrel.

It must be remembered that for a very long time, Ghana has been importing finished petroleum products such as premium petrol, gasoil, kerosene, etc. There is therefore no evidence that the finished product that the Petroleum importers have been bringing to Ghana is from Brent Crude oil. It must also be remembered that there are various grades of oil, such as WTI crude (West Texas Intermediate oil - which is a type of light crude oil), Brent crude etc. There is also an OPEC basket price which is usually US$4.00 less than the Brent Crude per barrel. The WTI price is usually US$2.00 less than Brent crude oil. Brent crude is a combination of crude oil from 15 different oil fields in the North Sea (mostly Western Europe). It is less “light” and “sweet” than WTI, but still excellent for making petrol. There are more than 200 other grades. They include Medanito (Argentinian crude); Girassol (Angolan crude); Dalia (Angola): Ceiba (Equatorial Guinea); Bonny Light (Nigeria); Antan Blend (Nigeria), etc. These are all cheaper than Brent Crude. They cannot say that our petroleum products come from the North Sea. It is therefore disingenuous and fraudulent that the Ghana Government and the NPA always quote the Brent crude prices as the prices at which Ghana buys oil. They should tell us where they buy their oil.

Alex Mould, NPA Boss

Using the price of Brent Crude to determine the prices for petrol that we buy in Ghana is like selling me a TICO car, and then turn round to ask me to pay for it at the price of a Rolls Royce.

The last time that the NPA increased the price of petrol, the Ghana Cedi was GH¢1. 55 to US$1.00. Currently the Cedi is GH¢1.90. This represents a 22.6 % depreciation in the value of the Ghana Cedi. It is the government that manages the Cedi. It is the government that is responsible for the security agencies.

There are cases whereby individuals carry abroad, suitcases full of US Dollars changed at Forex Bureaux in Ghana through our ports. When such persons are identified, the Customs Officer who reports such a case is transferred to some border location as punishment for drawing attention to such frauds. The government looks on while the banks in Ghana engage in speculative money deals, thereby causing a drop in the value of the Cedi. If therefore through the inefficiency of government the Cedi depreciates, why should the ordinary Ghanaians be made to pay for the depreciation of the Cedi without question?

Another question that the Ghana Government should answer is when did the subsidy, which in December 2011, they said they had removed come back? Why did they tell the people the circumstances under which they were subsidizing? Why do they come, 13 months later to tell us as if the subsidy was not removed and that they were all the time there?

The NPA claim on December 2011 that the average price of crude was US$111.00 per barrel was false and a complete fabrication since they were only referring to the price of Bent crude oil. Similarly, their claim that by the end of 2013, the government of Ghana would spend over GH¢ 1 billion in subsidies is also false.

Having lied to the whole nation, all the members of the NPA should be sacked; and the NPA abolished since they have become useless and untrustworthy. Instead of representing the interests of the government and people of Ghana, they are representing the interests of the oil importing companies.

As at the end of day, on 12 February 2013, the price of WTI crude was US$97.57 per barrel. A check on the web (http://oil-price.net/dashboard.php?lang=en) will confirm this.

The fact is that, the Ghana government of 2001-2008 deliberately adopted a policy to run down the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) in order that the country would import finished oil products through their political companies. That policy has continued till today, to the extent that in the last six months, TOR has not processed a teaspoon of crude oil. In spite of their claim to support the private sector, the Government has not shown any interest to support the building of any private sector oil refinery in Ghana. They should tell us why!

With modern technology, it is estimated that out of one barrel of crude oil, we can get 42 gallons of petrol; In addition we can get several additional gallons of Diesel, kerosene, and lighter fuels such as methane, propane, butane, etc.

It will be cheaper to refine crude oil than import the finished product. In addition, we get other bi-products such plastics and bitumen (popularly known as “coal tar”) for the construction and tarring of roads. Currently, “coal tar” is imported from Norway, South Africa, and other overseas places at the expense of our foreign exchange situation. Is it a wonder that the Cedi keeps depreciating? However, our leaders would always want to burden us for their inefficiency and mismanagement of our finances.

A Crude Oil Refinery

How can anybody, in his or her right frame of mind, sell TICO for the price of a Rolls Royce, add taxes on top of it, and then tell us that he or she is subsidizing us?

It is therefore a deception for government officials to say that they are subsidizing the price of fuel.

We throw a challenge to all those government officials, who ride in government provided petrol or diesel guzzling four-wheel drives at no expense to themselves to have a logbook in those cars and write down the mileage of every official event that they attend in an exercise to account for their consumption of fuel. There should then be an independent reporting authority that will check these and periodically publish them in the newspapers. This should be their contribution to the principle of accountability and transparency.

The NPA Act 2005 (Act 691) enjoins the NPA to, among other things to:

a. investigate on a regular basis the operation of petroleum service providers to ensure conformity with best practice and protocols in the petroleum downstream industry;

b. protect the interests of consumers and petroleum service providers

c. conduct studies relating to the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the downstream industry

d. collect and compile data on international and domestic petroleum production, supply and demand, inventory of petroleum products, and pricing of petroleum products.

e. monitor standards of performance and quality of the provision of petroleum services

f. initiate and conduct investigations into standards of quality of petroleum products offered to the consumer

Is the NPA doing any of these things? No.!!! If they were; then how come they have not been able to suggest what should be done to ensure that kerosene, which they say is for the benefit of the rural areas (where there is no electricity), rather ends up in the cities? What are they sitting there doing?

How come they do not bring to the attention of the government for action the delinquent petroleum market operators who have been discharging petroleum meant for the North in Accra and its environs? In their laziness, they turn round to tell us that targeting of the products to the communities is not working.

How come they are not exposing for prosecution the companies which mix kerosene with gas oil for the public?

FPSO Kwame Nkrumah produces oil for Ghana and foreign partners

Have they thought about the need to establish more kerosene delivery points in the rural areas instead the age-old practice of delivering them to petrol-filling stations which are few and far between in the rural areas?

Since the NPA is supposed to monitor the OMCs and receive monthly reports on the locations of their deliveries, what have they done about petroleum going to the wrong locations?

They want us to pay the market price of petroleum, but they do not want to bother about how the products reach the targeted consumer.

The NPA Act stipulates that any excess that is accrued on one of the additional taxes that we pay on petrol, called the Unified Petroleum Price Fund (UPPF) shall be utilised in the execution of a designated project related to the petroleum downstream industry. Why have we not seen published anywhere, the accounts or records of the Unified Petroleum Price Fund (UPPF) to show which rural targeted project has been embarked upon?

I heard the NPA Chief Executive say the government should be using the revenue used for subsidy on the school feeding programme? Yet the same person turns round and says that the NPA does not involve itself in political policy? What hypocrisy?

They should come out and answer the above questions and stop frightening the population that some they do not increase the price of petrol, the country will collapse. This is the politics of fear and it is disgraceful that the NPA, the Ministry of Finance and the NPA should be sinking so low.

Election 2012 My Experience and Other Issues

The just ended elections has left me with the confidence that in a matter of years to come the Ghanaian would have realized some of the cunning and Machiavellian attitude of some politicians.

Few days to the elections, some of our Northern aspiring members of parliament were moving around most tertiary institutions in the country canvassing for votes. Some were ready to part with a few notes of money so that their electorates could travel home and vote. The point is most of these students are over-exploited and are taken for granted. Why would a politician visit an institute like the University of Ghana or Cape Coast only during an election time and try to impress students by giving them some money to go home and vote? Some of us in the tertiary institutions who sometimes question this behavior and refuse to take the money are often regarded as foolish. Their point is that politicians are the only people in this country who make money the easy way and refusing it does not change anything. I know some students who often go to the ministers to chase them for some school fees and whether they ever meet those ministers or even get the money when they meet them is something I cannot answer. I therefore would advise school Unions like the Northern Students Union to come together and form an educational fund which all well-meaning politicians who have their interest will donate to that and this can go to alleviate the suffering of their members.

I would like to limit myself to my constituency since I am inured to the conditions there. Navrongo is an educational town that can boast of a university, a community nursing training school, a teacher training college and a host of other secondary and technical institutes. Opposite the Direct Education Office is a fifteen seat library for the whole of the town. Many a people from Navrongo have often written to the powers that be to relocate this facility that is just by the road to a much safer place and extend on the facilities. This structure has been there since the 1970s yet nothing is being done about it. We only see the money during election. During this time students who are political activist often enjoy free flights to campaign in their communities. Local champions are given motor bikes to campaign for them. And the politician who is able to offer much drink and money to the local chiefs is always the favorite. There is yet to be an educational fund in Navrongo that will cater for the needs of students.

Mark Woyongo

I have never witnessed an election so competitive than the one between Hon. Mark Owen Woyongo of the National Democratic Congress and Hon.Joseph Kofi Addah of the New Patriotic Party. What made the political game so spicing was the level of unity between the communities which have now realized that they were taken for granted. In one of the communities, after they had welcomed their political guest, the elder who was also the spoke person put it to them that they were not taking any more liquor from them neither were they taking their tee-shirts.Any reader of this article from Navrongo will attest to the fact that about three days to elections some political groups were seen drilling some bore-holes in some communities and in other communities, rural electrification was taking place. In some areas some would work deep into the night in order to meet the 7^th December dateline. The whole competition was comic and entertaining. Some of the politicians were focusing on monumental development and would not part with a penny to an individual and the others would not hesitate to give out some cash to any group of persons who are ingratiating enough to do what they tell them to.

Kofi Addah

On the 23^rd of January 2013, the Hon. Member elect Mark Owen Woyongo on his thanksgiving tour to Vunania a village in Navrongo was met with drumming and dancing. The atmosphere was charged and the people were filled with great anticipation of hope. The minister a soft spoken man thanked the people and assured them that the promises he made to them will be delivered. The chiefs, elders and the senior citizens of the village took turns to congratulate the minister and reminded him of the promises he made to them. The master of ceremony then asked of the public anyone who has any good will message for the minister to do so in a jiffy. Immediately he finished speaking, the crowd were taken aback to see Anoah jostling his way to the Centre. He did not address the minister through the microphone. As he took the center space, there was a furor. Some people had started to walk away. The skilled orator of a master of ceremony was able to command some level of sanity within the crowd. Anoah was looking confused. He was barefooted and his toe nails were as long as the talons of an eagle. His trousers and shirt were heavily patched as the original material was long gone. His whole garb looked hungry for soap and water.

As a pepper farmer, many wondered what he had to say after the well-meaning and astute members of the community had already spoken. Old lanky Anoah cleared his throat lookedat the direction of the minister and begun, “the year has already begun and you have only four years to do what you have promised to do. I just want you to know that four years is just as short as four days given the promises that you have just made. On this very soil you have made your promises. You were not cajoled or inveigled to make those promise. The souls of these people and the spirits of our land will not forgive you if you turn your back against them. It is not everything that your attention should be drawn to but the very things that you are responsible for. We have a saying that the man who listens to every summon of the town Crier will never plant millet on his field. I have no more to say”. As he finished, the minister was the first person to applaudhim followed by the other executives and then the entire crowd.

EDUCATION

During his campaign tour President Mahama made a whole lot of promises that I sometimes wonder if he can deliver all that in four solid years. As I watch the news every day, I hear the media report of the many places and functions that the he has often attended and I begin to wonder if the president hasn’t gotten a double. If he has not gotten a replica of a man to perform some of his functions for him, then he should cut down his work load and tend well his millet farm which strangely will be harvested in four years’ time.

President John Dramani Mahama

The issue that created so much debate during the campaign period was education. The main opposition party was of the view that should they win the election, Education would be free from the basic level to the second cycle schools. The ruling party was strongly against this. Their point was that the structures and the personnel to facilitate the programme do not exist. Most times the educationist have little take on the matter and the politicians are mostly allowed to dilly dally on the matter. In June 2011 last year Mr. Alfred Ndago a prominent figure in teacher education in this country and principal of Saint Bosco’s training college in Navrongo at a meeting in Sunyani announced on Ghana television that as of 2011, there were about 7000 thousand applicants to the training colleges in the country and only 5000 thousand were admitted.The number of applicants soared to 35000 in 2012.He added that all these applicants had met the admission requirements but only a few could be offered the admission because the structures where not there. I don’t think the story is different in the tertiary institutions. Everything in this country is so polarized that when you talk aboutcertain things from a neutral point that seems to discredit a given political party, you are seen to belong to that other party which you seem to favour. Because of this canker somegood policy analyst will only groan and complain bitterly about the bad policies in this country only at the dead of night in the recesses of their bed rooms.

The president should try and build more structures and also ease the congestion on the campuses. He should try and make education at all level affordable.

AGRICULTURE

Food security is still a problem in this country and larger populations are still subsistence farmers. The Kutu Acheampong regime is greatly remembered for the institutionalization of state farms. The state farm system should be rejuvenated. The vast and virgins lands across the country should be bought and used as state farms whose products could be used to feed our local industries. The government should also encourage every public educational institute to have an agricultural facility. Other factories like the Pwalugu Tomato factory, the meat factory all in the Upper East region should be revamped. Similar facilities across the country should be attended to so that the people within a given region will not always have to cart everything they produce to Accra.

Joseph Aketema

Final Year Student

National Film and Television Institute

aketema@yahoo.com

Documents Expose U.S. Role in Nkrumah Overthrow

By Paul Lee

Declassified National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency documents provide compelling, new evidence of United States government involvement in the 1966 overthrow of Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah.

Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah

The coup d'etat, organized by dissident army officers, toppled the Nkrumah government on Feb. 24, 1966 and was promptly hailed by Western governments, including the U.S.

The documents appear in a collection of diplomatic and intelligence memos, telegrams, and reports on Africa in Foreign Relations of the United States, the government's ongoing official history of American foreign policy.

Prepared by the State Department's Office of the Historian, the latest volumes reflect the overt diplomacy and covert actions of President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration from 1964-68. Though published in November 1999, what they reveal about U.S. complicity in the Ghana coup was only recently noted.

Allegations of American involvement in the putsche arose almost immediately because of the well-known hostility of the U.S. to Nkrumah's socialist orientation and pan-African activism.

Nkrumah, himself, implicated the U.S. in his overthrow, and warned other African nations about what he saw as an emerging pattern.

"An all-out offensive is being waged against the progressive, independent states," he wrote in Dark Days in Ghana, his 1969 account of the Ghana coup. "All that has been needed was a small force of disciplined men to seize the key points of the capital city and to arrest the existing political leadership."

CIA Headquarters at Langley

"It has been one of the tasks of the C.I.A. and other similar organisations," he noted, "to discover these potential quislings and traitors in our midst, and to encourage them, by bribery and the promise of political power, to destroy the constitutional government of their countries."

A Spook's Story

While charges of U.S. involvement are not new, support for them was lacking until 1978, when anecdotal evidence was provided from an unlikely source—a former CIA case officer, John Stockwell, who reported first-hand testimony in his memoir, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story.

"The inside story came to me," Stockwell wrote, "from an egotistical friend, who had been chief of the [CIA] station in Accra [Ghana] at the time." (Stockwell was stationed one country away in the Ivory Coast.)

Subsequent investigations by The New York Times and Covert Action Information Bulletin identified the station chief as Howard T. Banes, who operated undercover as a political officer in the U.S. Embassy.

This is how the ouster of Nkrumah was handled as Stockwell related. The Accra station was encouraged by headquarters to maintain contact with dissidents of the Ghanaian army for the purpose of gathering intelligence on their activities. It was given a generous budget, and maintained intimate contact with the plotters as a coup was hatched. So close was the station's involvement that it was able to coordinate the recovery of some classified Soviet military equipment by the United States as the coup took place.

According to Stockwell, Banes' sense of initiative knew no bounds. The station even proposed to headquarters through back channels that a squad be on hand at the moment of the coup to storm the [Communist] Chinese embassy, kill everyone inside, steal their secret records, and blow up the building to cover the facts.

Though the proposal was quashed, inside the CIA headquarters the Accra station was given full, if unofficial credit for the eventual coup, in which eight Soviet advisors were killed. None of this was adequately reflected in the agency's records, Stockwell wrote.

Confirmation and Revelation

While the newly-released documents, written by a National Security Council staffer and unnamed CIA officers, confirm the essential outlines set forth by Nkrumah and Stockwell, they also provide additional, and chilling, details about what the U.S. government knew about the plot, when, and what it was prepared to do and did do to assist it.

On March 11, 1965, almost a year before the coup, William P. Mahoney, the U.S. ambassador to Ghana, participated in a candid discussion in Washington, D.C., with CIA Director John A. McCone and the deputy chief of the CIA's Africa division, whose name has been withheld.

Significantly, the Africa division was part of the CIA's directorate of plans, or dirty tricks component, through which the government pursued its covert policies.

According to the record of their meeting (Document 251), topic one was the "Coup d'etat Plot, Ghana." While Mahoney was satisfied that popular opinion was running strongly against Nkrumah and the economy of the country was in a precarious state, he was not convinced that the coup d'etat, now being planned by Acting Police Commissioner Harlley and Generals Otu and Ankrah, would necessarily take place.

Nevertheless, he confidently—and accurately, as it turned out—predicted that one way or another Nkrumah would be out within a year. Revealing the depth of embassy knowledge of the plot, Mahoney referred to a recent report which mentioned that the top coup conspirators were scheduled to meet on 10 March at which time they would determine the timing of the coup.

However, he warned, because of a tendency to procrastinate, any specific date they set should be accepted with reservations. In a reversal of what some would assume were the traditional roles of an ambassador and the CIA director, McCone asked Mahoney who would most likely succeed Nkrumah in the event of a coup.

Mahoney again correctly forecast the future: Ambassador Mahoney stated that initially, at least, a military junta would take over.

Making it Happen

But Mahoney was not a prophet. Rather, he represented the commitment of the U.S. government, in coordination with other Western governments, to bring about Nkrumah's downfall.

Emmanuel Kotoka, a traitor

Firstly, Mahoney recommended denying Ghana's forthcoming aid request in the interests of further weakening Nkrumah. He felt that there was little chance that either the Chinese Communists or the Soviets would in adequate measure come to Nkrumah's financial rescue and the British would continue to adopt a hard nose attitude toward providing further assistance to Ghana.

At the same time, it appears that Mahoney encouraged Nkrumah in the mistaken belief that both the U.S. and the U.K. would come to his financial rescue and proposed maintaining current U.S. aid levels and programs because they will endure and be remembered long after Nkrumah goes.

Secondly, Mahoney seems to have assumed the responsibility of increasing the pressure on Nkrumah and exploiting the probable results. This can be seen in his 50-minute meeting with Nkrumah three weeks later.

According to Mahoney's account of their April 2 discussion (Document 252), "at one point Nkrumah, who had been holding face in hands, looked up and I saw he was crying. With difficulty he said I could not understand the ordeal he had been through during last month. Recalling that there had been seven attempts on his life."

Mahoney did not attempt to discourage Nkrumah's fears, nor did he characterize them as unfounded in his report to his superiors.

Akwasi Afifa, a traitor

"While Nkrumah apparently continues to have personal affection for me," he noted, "he seems as convinced as ever that the US is out to get him. From what he said about assassination attempts in March, it appears he still suspects US involvement."

Of course, the U.S. was out to get him. Moreover, Nkrumah was keenly aware of a recent African precedent that made the notion of a U.S.-organized or sanctioned assassination plot plausible—namely, the fate of the Congo and its first prime minister, his friend Patrice Lumumba.

Nkrumah believed that the destabilization of the Congolese government in 1960 and Lumumba's assassination in 1961 were the work of the "Invisible Government of the U.S.," as he wrote in Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, later in 1965.

When Lumumba's murder was announced, Nkrumah told students at the inauguration of an ideological institute that bore his name that this brutal murder should teach them the diabolical depths of degradation to which these twin-monsters of imperialism and colonialism can descend.

In his conclusion, Mahoney observed: "Nkrumah gave me the impression of being a badly frightened man. His emotional resources seem be running out. As pressures increase, we may expect more hysterical outbursts, many directed against US."

It was not necessary to add that he was helping to apply the pressure, nor that any hysterical outbursts by Nkrumah played into the West's projection of him as an unstable dictator, thus justifying his removal.

Robert Komer briefs McGeorge Bundy

Smoking Gun

On May 27, 1965, Robert W. Komer, a National Security Council staffer, briefed his boss, McGeorge Bundy, President Johnson's special assistant for national security affairs, on the anti-Nkrumah campaign (Document 253).

Komer, who first joined the White House as a member of President Kennedy's NSC staff, had worked as a CIA analyst for 15 years. In 1967, Johnson tapped him to head his hearts-and-minds pacification program in Vietnam.

Komer's report establishes that the effort was not only interagency, sanctioned by the White House and supervised by the State Department and CIA, but also intergovernmental, being supported by America's Western allies.

"FYI," he advised, "we may have a pro-Western coup in Ghana soon. Certain key military and police figures have been planning one for some time, and Ghana's deteriorating economic condition may provide the spark."

"The plotters are keeping us briefed," he noted, "and the State Department thinks we're more on the inside than the British. While we're not directly involved (I'm told), we and other Western countries (including France) have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Nkrumah's pleas for economic aid. All in all, it looks good."

AFRICA MAYWELL PREVAIL

It is apparent that political and economic crises, civil wars and coup de'etats are destabilizing the African continent in these days and how our own leaders are poised to tackle them is the issue.

By Kofi Kakraba

A careful and sober analysis of the global political situation cannot fail to show that the African continent is faced with a dilemma of great proportions.

This is a continent of a definitive diversity of its countries, with varying historical and cultural values, in the midst of immense natural resources and yet generally described as poor.

Yes, for a period spanning more man four decades, there has been a meaningful and significant attempt at finding a convergence and identity so that colour or religion or
language would fuse into one whole.

Thanks largely to the founding father of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, the consciousness of Africa and Africans was ignited in the second half of the 20^th century and has so far been sustained.

It was he who declared on the eve of the country's independence that "the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent".

To the cynics it was hot air. But today the former colonial powers, be they British, French, Portuguese, the Spanish or the Boors are better disposed to pass judgment on what the African leader Kwame Nkrumah said in 1957.

What is befuddling now is the sovereignty African countries have dared to show in their own affairs, in their own interests, viz-a-viz the projection of the African personality.

Again, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah warned that after independence the war to be faced was neo-colonialism.

It would come through the offer of economic assistance and, then military co- country. Let's come to brass stacks. It is very much evident that the West African sub-region has become so vulnerable judging by recent events. So also may be said of Eastern African when Somalia and Sudan are remembered.

In all this, the underlying factors have to be uncovered. To begin with, there is no denying the fact that the competition of the Americans and the Chinese for a space in Africa. Africa is becoming more and more intense with all its ramification and concomitants.

The phenomenon of North African islamisation characterized by unimaginable violence should no longer be taken as passing winds in the localities where they are occurring. They are likely to spread across the continent.

These bloody activities are taking an unnecessary toll on Christian and Muslim populations as well as the citizenry at large and heaven only knows where and when it will end.

Rather sadly, when it comes to the crunch, we are quick to run to the United States of American for help. So in what way should we assess the relevance of the African union (AU) to the African Situation. .

A classic case is the ongoing fracas in Mali. When the chips were down it took the French government to intervene to halt the advance of the rebel forces to reach Bamako.

Now we know that the AU is either supplementing or complementing the French forces in containing the Islamist rebel forces expedition in Mali.

France, the former colonial power of Mali is a key member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of which the US is a veritable member.

The question is: how often will the AU sit down for foreign powers to intervene in purely African affairs before making its position known and act if it thinks fit?

What exactly do we mean when we chant "Africa for Africans?"

The spirits of our founding fathers cry out for true and concrete sovereignty of the continent. Africa must prevail.

Komer's reference to not being told if the U.S. was directly involved in the coup plot is revealing and quite likely a wry nod to his CIA past.

Among the most deeply ingrained aspects of intelligence tradecraft and culture is plausible deniability, the habit of mind and practice designed to insulate the U.S., and particularly the president, from responsibility for particularly sensitive covert operations.

Komer would have known that orders such as the overthrow of Nkrumah would have been communicated in a deliberately vague, opaque, allusive, and indirect fashion, as Thomas Powers noted in The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA.

It would be unreasonable to argue that the U.S. was not directly involved when it created or exacerbated the conditions that favored a coup, and did so for the express purpose of bringing one about.

Truth and Consequences

As it turned out, the coup did not occur for another nine months. After it did, Komer, now acting special assistant for national security affairs, wrote a congratulatory assessment to the President on March 12, 1966 (Document 260). His assessment of Nkrumah and his successors was telling.

"The coup in Ghana," he crowed, "is another example of a fortuitous windfall. Nkrumah was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African. In reaction to his strongly pro-Communist leanings, the new military regime is almost pathetically pro-Western."

In this, Komer and Nkrumah were in agreement. "Where the more subtle methods of economic pressure and political subversion have failed to achieve the desired result," Nkrumah wrote from exile in Guinea three years later, "there has been resort to violence in order to promote a change of regime and prepare the way for the establishment of a puppet government."

Imagining a Socialist Society (3)

The third, concluding part of our series on the possibilities of socialism.

Socialist society will inherit a number of problems from capitalism. So we must take some account of the prospect and estimates of likely changes in the near future as a result of climate change and a post-peak oil world society.

Inherited problems

On peak oil there seems to be pretty well a consensus now, worldwide, that we have a mounting problem on our hands and a marathon task ahead to sort out the problem. However, the biggest stumbling block is the manner in which the subject is presented to us –again, always in terms of money costs. We already have the technical know-how, and when scientists and technicians and engineers are finally freed from the constraints of the current system of having to make a profit at every step, there really is no doubt that they can come up with even more fantastic inventions than we can currently dream about. The solutions we are being offered are lack-lustre and extremely limited, only taking into account those who can pay. Are we drilling for oil and gas and mining for coal because of the positive benefits they confer? Are we building more and wider roads and increasing air travel for increased ease and convenience for travellers? Are we chopping down forests to plant palm plantations and using other crops for biofuels instead of for food because feeding people is more important than feeding engines? No!

The reason for trying to extract oil from way under the seabed –with all those risks involved to the environment –and from the filthy polluting tar sands is simply that it is profitable. Coal is even more harmful to human health but still profitable. Burning fossil fuels could go on for some little time yet with the various beneficiaries wheeling and dealing about the most profitable ways to prolong the despoliation of the planet and the negative effects to human health. We know we have much better methods already in our hands and hosts of people chomping at the bit to get started in putting these new technologies into practice on a very large scale at the household and industrial level. Many would have chosen to have done it years ago if it weren't for the prohibitive monetary cost. Clean electricity from sun, wind, wave and tides. Geothermal energy. Oil left in the ground or reserved for crucial manufacturing and extracted with care. Buildings constructed to use minimal energy and have minimal impact on the environment.

Similarly with transport. What we need is a system that doesn't require households to have one or more cars because the public transport system is so abysmal and work arrangements chaotically organised –read ‘organised to maximise profit’. Roads and airways are not the most efficient way of moving either people or goods. Presently they are huge polluters and the bane of many people's lives. We could take a holistic approach and could use clean electricity from renewable sources to provide an integrated transport system for people, products and industry. Recycling will be undertaken as a matter of course in every possible area. Materials, being our storehouse for the future, will be valued for their worth to our ongoing wellbeing; they will not be wasted by an obsolescence-mentality but used wisely, aesthetically and carefully in line with our philosophy.

Externalities, the negative aspects of transactions which have to be kept off the balance sheets in case they impact on profit margins –effluent in waterways, emissions dangerous to animal and plant life, the dumping of toxic waste on land and in the sea, any despoliation of our habitat and disregard for the conditions in which people live and work in relation to these externalities –will become an integral part of the planning equation, to be taken account of in full on the balance sheet of the common good.

Food and Farming

Farming methods will be adopted according to health benefits, not wealth benefits, and satisfying genuine hunger, not hunger for profits. For instance, how will the current water inequalities be resolved around the world? Water is vital to life, it's vital to agriculture and manufacturing and it's needed in both urban and rural environments. Right now agriculture is losing the price war for water.

On an international scale we now find countries making deals with other countries to grow the whole or the bulk of their grain crop because the water they save by not growing it domestically is more profitable used elsewhere. For others their own water shortage problems are relieved –never mind if the local populations of the grower nation have to go short or be put off their land and out of their homes for this exchange.

There is huge wastage of water with some countries' current irrigation methods, poor infrastructure, and old or outdated technology in some industries. There is also a billion dollar business selling bottled water at up to a thousand times the cost of water from the tap with how many thousands of gallons wasted in the process? Crazy! With shrinking aquifers and glaciers, and fertile land sinking below rising sea levels, water is seen only as a vital resource with an ever-increasing price tag. With the profit motive removed from the equation things will be managed very differently.

In the likely future, demographics will probably shift a great deal, but we shall be in a position to totally rethink the use of the global water supply and consider every stage from aquifers, dams, irrigation methods, industrial use and domestic consumption. Water and the infrastructure required will be considered in minute detail as to how best to use, reuse, conserve and generally value it as a basic necessity of all life –one of everyone's fundamental requirements.

Also within agriculture we shall be reassessing the relative values of different methods of producing our food. We shall be free to look at the results of studies knowing that there is no hidden agenda or biased information. It is well known that the United Nations Millennium goal of reducing extreme poverty by half by 2015 is failing miserably. Hunger, illiteracy and disease are still growing year on year. What actually is acceptable poverty or tolerable poverty anyway?Poverty at any level is pretty grim, surely?

When we have the correct, unambiguous facts in front of us decisions can be made unemotionally about land use. Chemical fertiliser or natural manure and traditional methods? Monocrops or mixed farms? Grain for food or fuel? Grain for humans or animals?

What's so important about grain? This depends on how you see the future. It depends on whether you consider it more important to use it for human food, for animal food or for transport fuel. It impacts on how you view population forecasts or global warming warnings and it depends to a certain extent on where you live in the world.

Surely it makes more sense in general to reduce food miles –to re-localise agriculture for everyone's benefit? By doing so huge savings will be made in fuel and energy use. Certainly in the period of social reorganisation whilst we are investing our human energies into appropriate infrastructure we can cut emissions drastically and restore food security and control to local communities, always remembering decisions will be made locally. On the global scale we will move right away from decisions imposed and implemented by world financial authorities and transnational corporations in favour of working for the common good. Respect will automatically be conferred to local knowledge and traditional methods, understanding that the objective will be to satisfy food, fibre, fuel and other needs, not monetary goals.

As to demographics, one proven positive knock-on effect of education for girls, especially, as recorded in places such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and some African countries is that in communities where the girls have the opportunity and encouragement to go to school they then grow up to marry later, have fewer children and the numbers of both maternal and infant deaths decline.

Statistics also show that more stable family conditions, e.g. security of food and income raises people to a different level of security where it isn't seen as linked to a large brood of children. The security of free access in a socialist society will fulfill that role. In these terms it is possible to see that population levels will decline because of mass conscious choice, relieving some of the pressures foreseen as a result of climate change.

Healthcare and Education

Socialism will involve life without healthcare budgets; waiting lists will be made history; there will be no treatment denial; there will be access to healthcare from prenatal to death, with preventive medicine recognised as the core of a healthy society; known cures such as for malaria will be available universally; unencumbered research into cures for diseases like multiple sclerosis will take place; unhampered individual choice and access to contraception, abortion, rehabilitation therapy, respite care and, where appropriate assisted suicide, will be the norm.

Basic schooling would take a huge shift away from the narrow confines of a rigid, test-based curriculum. Endless possibilities would be available from an early age to stimulate children. No financial budget means more 'educators, facilitators, trainers, coaches, mentors' etc. to guide young and old through a much wider educational experience. Learning is better stimulated through a holistic and experiential approach and would be available on demand at all life stages.

In Conclusion

Imagining a socialist society entails the following: we imagine many pluralist, co-operative, non-competitive, non-combative communities around the world, linked by their common goals of creating space for free thought, wider vision, acceptance of the other and tolerance of minority issues. We imagine a balance between 'back to nature' and 'into the future boldly', philosophically embracing both healthy body and healthy, enquiring mind. The process of developing this, the only viable alternative society to the market economy, will come from the local and familiar at community level from all the many diverse regions of the world, as all are recognised and welcomed into the free association as valuable parts of the whole. We imagine societies of individuals having vanquished the oppressive capitalist system at last and having satisfied basic needs, now conscious of their higher human faculties and aware of their role in the environment, focused on being all they can be.