 |
| Members of the CJA |
Published on April 22
By Ekow Mensah
The committee for Joint Action (CJA) is set to introduce an
innovation in the organization of public fora in the country.
Sources close to the CJA say that on May 7, 2013, it will
organize a new type of forum at the Freedom Centre in Accra.
There will be no principal or key- note speaker at the forum
and the CJA will provide only a moderator.
The theme for the forum will be “The National Situation” and
the speakers will be members of the general public randomly picked by the moderator.
“We want to listen to what the people have to say without
any adulteration and we don’t want to put forth our own views on anything.
“This is a chance for every Ghanaian to step forward and put
their views across” said Duke Tagoe, a member of the organising committee.
It is expected that all leading members of the committee
including Ministers, Deputy Ministers and opposition party members will be at
the Forum.
Those who will be at the forum will include Comrade Kwesi
Adu, Convener, Dr Omane Boamah, Minister of Communications, Hon. Samuel
Okudzeto Ablakwa, Deputy Minister of Education, Madam Ama Benyiwa Doe, Member
of the Council of State, Mr. Ato Ahwoi,
Mr. Kwesi Pratt, Jnr, a member of the CPP and Bernard Monarh, General Secretary
of the Peoples National Convention (PNC).
The forum is scheduled to start from 4.00pm and is expected
to end by 7.30pm.
Organisers say that all Ghanaians irrespective of their
party affiliation or orientation are cordially invited.
EDITORIAL
TIME FOR CHANGE
The time
has most definitely come to change the direction of Ghana’s foreign policy to
reflect the country’s independence status and needs and aspirations of the
people.
Since the overthrow of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah on February
24, 1966, Ghana’s foreign policy has largely been dictated by the interest of
the elite in the capitalist countries.
The exceptions have been the Acheampong government’s Keen
support for the national Liberation movements in Africa and the Rawlings
regime’s flirtations with the socialist countries of Europe and Latin America.
Indeed, national
economic policy has mainly been dictated by World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) which are nothing more than clearing houses for the
capitalist world.
Ghana’s dependence on the West has been based on the false
assumption that the capitalist states are in a position to help us resolve the
many problems confronting our people.
The truth however is
that the relations between Ghana and the West have been an unequal as our
people have been turned into drawers of water and hewers of wood.
The way out of Ghana’s problems is not to lie prostrate
before the predatory forces of capitalism but to exploit her resources for the
benefit of her people.
The point is that the capitalist states are now in very deep
crisis and even if they wish, they could not provide developing countries with
any reliefs.
The time has come for Ghana to change the direction of her
foreign policy.
It is not happening in Europe and North America. The action
is in Asia, South America, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and that is
where we need to turn our attention.
The old game is over.
MORE DRONES IN WEST AFRICA
By Gray
 |
| The Drone |
The worldwide struggle to end the
deployment of drones does not appear to be making much impact in West Africa.
The United States of America has
already decided to station the killing machines in Mali and for delpyment
throughout the region against its opponents.
A report on ocnus.net says that La
Cote d’Ivoire has also asked the United Nations for drones to monitor its
borders with Liberia.
The report quotes Youssoufou Bamba,
Cote d’Ivoire’s Ambassador to the UN as confirming the request.
The full report is published below;
Ivory Coast has asked the United
Nations for drones to monitor its border with Liberia. The country's UN envoy
believes drones are needed to make up for the expected decline in the UN's
personnel presence.
The UN is set to deploy such drones for the first time in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to help monitor its borders with Rwanda and Uganda. Western Ivory Coast has seen deadly raids by supporters of former President Laurent Gbagbo, ousted in 2011's war. The UN peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast, known as UNOCI, is set to reduce its size from about 9,000 military personal by one battalion to 8,837 by 31 July.
Several Liberian army units were deployed to border posts between Ivory Coast and Liberia in 2012 to counter armed gangs. The UN assistant secretary general for peacekeeping operations, Edmond Mulet, said the Ivory Coast government had "made significant progress since February 2012 and especially during these past months... but the recent instability in the west of the country along the border with Liberia shows the fragility of the situation".
Ivory Coast's UN ambassador, Youssoufou Bamba, told the UN Security Council that he thought the current level of security was good, but added that any adjustments to the size of the force would need to be offset "by the deployment of qualitative resources, such as surveillance drones for the border zone between Ivory Coast and Liberia". Mr Bamba's comments echo a recommendation by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
In a report to the Security Council, Mr Ban said drones should be considered for Ivory Coast to "enhance situational awareness and monitoring ability, with a view to strengthening the ability of UNOCI to efficiently and effectively carry out its mandate, including the protection of civilians".
Ivory Coast, which is due south of Mali, is recovering from a decade of political deadlock and civil unrest. The request for the drones is likely to legitimately enhance the country's security not only to the west, but the north as well. Due to the support of Mr. Ban and the UN history securing the country, the request will likely be granted.
The UN is set to deploy such drones for the first time in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to help monitor its borders with Rwanda and Uganda. Western Ivory Coast has seen deadly raids by supporters of former President Laurent Gbagbo, ousted in 2011's war. The UN peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast, known as UNOCI, is set to reduce its size from about 9,000 military personal by one battalion to 8,837 by 31 July.
Several Liberian army units were deployed to border posts between Ivory Coast and Liberia in 2012 to counter armed gangs. The UN assistant secretary general for peacekeeping operations, Edmond Mulet, said the Ivory Coast government had "made significant progress since February 2012 and especially during these past months... but the recent instability in the west of the country along the border with Liberia shows the fragility of the situation".
Ivory Coast's UN ambassador, Youssoufou Bamba, told the UN Security Council that he thought the current level of security was good, but added that any adjustments to the size of the force would need to be offset "by the deployment of qualitative resources, such as surveillance drones for the border zone between Ivory Coast and Liberia". Mr Bamba's comments echo a recommendation by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
In a report to the Security Council, Mr Ban said drones should be considered for Ivory Coast to "enhance situational awareness and monitoring ability, with a view to strengthening the ability of UNOCI to efficiently and effectively carry out its mandate, including the protection of civilians".
Ivory Coast, which is due south of Mali, is recovering from a decade of political deadlock and civil unrest. The request for the drones is likely to legitimately enhance the country's security not only to the west, but the north as well. Due to the support of Mr. Ban and the UN history securing the country, the request will likely be granted.
Source:Ocnus.net 2013
What
does Obasanjo want?
 |
| Former President Obasanjo |
By Chido Onumah
You couldn’t miss the headline.
I am referring to the conclave of gerontocrats that took place earlier in the
week. It centred on former president, Olusegun Obasanjo.
“Anenih
in secret meeting with Obasanjo”, was how The
Guardian headlined the event. If there was any doubt about the
purpose of the meeting, Anthony Anenih, chair of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of
the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and successor to Obasanjo in the very
lucrative post of BoT chairman, dispelled it when he told reporters, “In 2015
we (PDP) will do what we know how to do best”. Of course, we all know what the
PDP knows how to do best. And we have Obasanjo to thank for that.
For
whatever it is worth, Obasanjo is still held in high regard in the PDP family
and he may well continue to direct the affairs of the party as long as he is
alive. “I am here to see my leader (Obasanjo). I am here to pay my respect and
indeed I am here with my colleagues, some members of the Board of Trustees of
our party to discuss some issues that affect the corporate existence of this
country,” Anenih gushed after the meeting. “As you can see, we are all smiling,
don’t you see me smiling? And my leader too is smiling. So, we are quite happy
about the outcome”.
Unfortunately,
the Nigerian crisis is no laughing matter. It would be tragic to leave the
discussion about the corporate existence of Nigeria to the Obasanjos and
Anenihs amongst us.
Chief
(Gen.) Olusegun Matthew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo, GCFR, is an enigma, in and out
of office. I am sure he cherishes that role. Nobody, dead or alive, has had
more impact on the course of post-independence history of the country than the
retired general.
Obasanjo
evokes different memories for different people. Academics and students in
tertiary institutions in the late 70s would remember his assault on students,
academics and education in general. Those in secondary schools also have
memories of that era of despotism. In a remarkable show of defiance, Afrobeat
icon, Fela Anikulakpo-Kuti, withdrew his son, Femi, from Baptist Academy in
Lagos State when Obasanjo deployed soldiers to secondary schools.
Like
President Goodluck Jonathan, Obasanjo took charge of the Nigerian state after
the death of his boss. It was in February 1976. The head of state, Gen. Murtala
Ramat Muhammed, had been assassinated. That was when Obasanjo came into our
consciousness. Before then, the much we knew about him was from the conflicting
stories of his exploits during the civil war.
Ever
since, Obasanjo has refused to go away. Through a combination of luck, guile
and opportunism, he has managed to remain a constant figure in our political
evolution. To his admirers, Obasanjo is the “father of modern Nigeria”; the
“Mandela” of Nigeria. After all, like the legendary Nelson Mandela, South
African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and president (1994 to 1999),
he moved from prison to the presidency.
A few
weeks ago, after my article titled “IBB’s two-party solution”, a responder had
noted, “I always take the view that Obj (Obasanjo), IBB and Gowon -- in that
order -- more than any of our ex-rulers had the best opportunities to set our
country on a path to true greatness and all of them failed woefully. It is the
enduring tragedy of our (potentially) great nation that the incumbent may yet
surpass them all in terms of cluelessness and damage inflicted on our country”.
Of
course, this is not hyperbole. In 1979, Obasanjo had the chance to launch the
country on the path of genuine democracy, but he bungled it. Twenty-eight years
later, in 2007, after eight years as civilian president, he had the opportunity
to make amends, but he squandered it in his characteristic devious manner.
If
you do not know Obasanjo, you would probably mistake him for a global expert
sent by the UN to oversee events in Nigeria. Ever since he reluctantly left
power in 2007, he has never missed an opportunity to remind us of how
ungrateful we are as a people for not recognising his trailblazing role as the
father of democracy in Nigeria.
Obasanjo
has warned about revolution. He has talked about unemployment, corruption and
what they portend for the country. “I’m afraid, and you know I am a
General. When a General says he is afraid, that means the danger ahead is real
and potent,” he told the West African regional conference on youth employment
in Senegal, earlier in the year. “Today,
rogues, armed robbers are in the State Houses of Assembly and the National
Assembly,’’
Obasanjo said not too long ago. Of course, he is right; except that he failed
to take his share of the blame for the emergence of these scoundrels who have
taken over our democratic space.
In a
keynote lecture at the Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute
(ARMTI) in Ilorin, Kwara State, Obasanjo again warned, “We are sitting on a keg
of gun-powder in this country due to the problems of unemployment of our
youths. We have almost 150 universities now in the country turning out these
young Nigerians but without job opportunities for them”.
Recently,
Obasanjo blamed poor leadership for the country’s woes. He forgot to add that
apart from his forgettable leadership (1976-1979 and 1999-2007), he carefully
orchestrated the poor leadership we had in 1979 and again in 2007. Fortunately
for him, we have in President Jonathan a ruler who has redefined the meaning of
poor leadership which in a way makes Obasanjo look like a messiah.
That
is Obasanjo’s modus operandi. As one writer noted, “In 1983 when the Shagari
government started to wobble, he came out to play prophet”. It was the same
government he installed four years earlier. When the Babangida regime was at
its wit’s end and its demise looked certain, Obasanjo attacked the regime’s
disastrous economic policy dubbed Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP),
arguing that the policy needed a “human face”.
Obasanjo
understands what democracy entails, but he does not have the moral courage to
be guided by its rule. When Gen. Babangida annulled the June 12, 1993,
presidential election won by Chief Moshood Abiola, Obasanjo told a bewildered
nation that, “Abiola is not the messiah”. Like an addict hankering after a fix,
it was his way of saying he needed the job. It was that ambition that landed
him in Abacha’s prison after he reinvented himself and became a “born-again
democrat”. It’s been twenty years since the annulment; and three disastrous
elections (two supervised by Obasanjo in 2003 and 2007) after, we are still
talking about Obasanjo.
 |
| US President Hussein Obama |
In a
2008 piece titled "Obama's election and the needed change", Obasanjo,
while congratulating then President-elect, Barack Obama, noted, “The feeling of
change that Senator Obama engendered through his campaign for the White House
represents a significant theme of change we have all aspired and fought for in
different areas, regions, cultures and historical times. The desire for change has
never been the question nor has it ever been in question. It is the extent, the
range, the tone, the quantity, the quantum and the sustenance of change that
has always been the question”.
“Rooted
in the achievements of Senator Obama is a far more significant theme for people
aspiring to lead their communities, particularly for young Africans in Africa.
It is the aspirations, the determination, the energy, the strategic thinking,
planning and execution that Senator Obama and his campaign team have brought into
what is being regarded as a movement. Entire generations have been roused and
invited to bring about a change that they and the rest of the world desire”.
It is
a measure of his hypocrisy that Obasanjo has remained the greatest threat to
change in Nigeria. How can young Nigerians aspire to lead their communities
when men who are almost 80 years old like Obasanjo and Anenih have sworn not to
exit the political space? Clearly, in tackling the PDP and Jonathan in 2015, we
must realize that we have to contend with the Obasanjo factor.
With
all due respect, Mr. ex-President, you have earned the right to leave us the
heck alone!
THE CASE OF LYNNE STEWART: AN INTERVIEW WITH RALPH SHOENMAN
 |
| Lynne Stewart, a woman of great courage |
January 18, 2013
MYA SHONE:
This is "Taking Aim" with Ralph Schoenman and Mya
Shone – along with Ralph Poynter – and we are here to provide you with a
further update on the case of Lynne Stewart.
On February 21st there will be a submission to the Supreme
Court, but we have news about Lynne's status as she is in the Federal Medical
Center of the Federal Prison in Carswell, Texas.
This is an extremely important update on Lynne's situation.
We are going to discuss this first and then we are going to examine the legal
submissions to the United States Supreme Court.
Ralph, will you please give us the update on Lynne's health?
RALPH POYNTER
Yes, for months we have been worried about a spot that
showed up on Lynne's lung – on one of her lungs. We did not want to go public
with this until we were sure of what was happening. What is confirmed is that
her breast cancer is spreading. It has spread to the other lung and to parts of
her breast.
We feel that this is a death sentence on Lynne in the
prison.
We fought from the beginning to keep Lynne out of jail, to
make them remove her from a local hospital with the doctor's objection because
we could see the handwriting on the wall.
This was NOT taken up by her lawyers as a legal issue and
Lynne was sent to prison. Now the other shoe has dropped. Her cancer is
spreading. She is in Fort Worth, Texas subject to the regulations of a prison
comprising a barrier between her and health care.
From the greatest center of health care probably in the
world in New York (where Lynne had been scheduled for surgery and treatment
before her bail was revoked arbitrarily) and from New York to prison in Fort
Worth, Texas.
We know the cancer is spreading. As our daughter, Zenobia,
her doctor, stated, "Cancer has to be nipped in the bud." But first
any potential treatment must pass through and surmount the prison regulations
in federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas: not knowing when you will be allowed to
go to a hospital, not knowing who is going to be there for your treatment.
We are working on that: on getting Lynne to the hospital, on
arranging her treatment. Our daughter will be in Fort Worth this weekend with
her family to talk to doctors there about the best way to deal with this.
MYA SHONE
Ralph, you should point out that when Lynne goes to the
hospital, they shackle her.
RALPH POYNTER
Yes, Lynne goes to the hospital as an inmate with the total
shackling of her waist and her feet with a connecting chain impeding her stride
and her balance. Nothing is funny about this but Lynne relates in her
description of what happens when she goes to the hospital. It would be funny if
it were a cartoon, but her life is at stake.
She describes how she fell and the guards grabbed her. The guards
were burly, athletic types. When they grabbed her as she fell they injured her.
She had bruise marks for a month.
She thanks the guards for grabbing her because she was
falling flat on her face - emerging from a van with steps trying to maintain balance
with shackles on her legs, waist and hands.
This is the sort of thing with which she is involved and
which she has to endure. All those "regulations." As if she
were going to jump the huge walls and run away while being taken
surrounded by guards
 |
| How Cancer cells spread |
(During and after surgery, Lynne Stewart is shackled.
Throughout her time in the hospital bed, nights included, she is
"recuperating" from major surgery, bearing the pain and discomfort
and attempting to sleep with an ankle and wrist shackled to a bed post.)
MYA SHONE
This is terrible news and it follows on the heels of the
extended operation she had endured earlier for major abdominal problems.
RALPH POYNTER
You know, we tend to forget that each obstacle is like
climbing a mountain. No sooner do we get to the top of that mountain, we are
confronted by another larger mountain to climb.
The doctor said he was "happy" with her surgery,
adding that it was the worst case he had ever seen. So now we have another
mountain to surmount and we are hoping that this mountain does not collapse on
us.
We would all feel better if she were in New York City with
the best that American health care can offer.
MYA SHONE
They noticed a spot on one lung. It has now traveled to the
other lung which, to the doctors, is conclusive evidence that her cancer has
metastasized.
RALPH POYNTER
To the lung and to her back. (pause) Ahhhhh, What can we
say; we know what's happening.
MYA SHONE
Tragic.
RALPH POYNTER
I like to say that New York would provide the best care that
America can offer and she WAS in New York scheduled for surgery in a leading
hospital BEFORE her bail was revoked. THIS is what we had to fight for: to keep
her here to get the medical help she was scheduled to receive AT THAT
TIME. She was not going to "run" anywhere. She was committed to
fight for her and all of our rights.
RALPH SCHOENMAN
The lawyers failed to make that fight. They did not fight to
keep Lynne out of prison when she had a set and scheduled date for surgery in a
leading New York hospital. They did not raise the issue of her health. They did
not challenge the basis for revoking her bail while her case was sub-judice.
They were silent when it mattered.
MYA SHONE
Still in the face of this incredibly tragic news, Lynne is
preparing for the next stage of her defense - namely the presentation of Appeal
papers before the Supreme Court.
Ralph had mentioned to us earlier, when there had been an
Appeal of her case to the Second Circuit, that there was a 300 page submission;
but when you appeal to the Supreme Court you are limited to some 30 pages.
In this concise format, three issues will be presented.
Ralph do you want to set forth the three issues?
RALPH POYNTER
The first issue is her First Amendment right to free speech.
Even though the Second Circuit had said they had considered that, this exercise
of her free speech was the difference they used to bring her back into court in
order to expand her sentence from 28 months to 120 months.
The second issue is the contention that she should have had
a separate trial from other defendants charged with other offenses. When in the
trial over the issues that pertained to her the judge had to say to the jury
over seven hundred times: "This has nothing to do with Lynne Stewart. It
has nothing to do with the truth of the matter. It has only to do with the
state of mind of a third and separate defendant.
Then there is is the fact that the prejudicial presence of
the enlarged picture of Osama Bin Laden on the court room wall all throughout
Lynne's trial was designed to inflame the jury but was considered
"non-threatening" to the jury.
But now we see an issue in a case (of the ACLU) concerning a
Freedom of Information Act demand for the release of film and photos of Osama
Bin Laden. The government that said this was no issue in Lynne's trial refuses
to release any film or photo of Osama Bin Laden because, it claims, this is
"prejudicial" and "inflammatory" if shown to the American
people or to people throughout the world!
But at the time of the trial they said it was a non-issue.
We can show, they maintained, pictures of Osama Bin Laden to the jury and this
is not prejudicial or lacking in legal rationale.
So all of these issues will be presented: First, the idea of
Freedom of Speech. This involves every American and particularly every lawyer
affected by this issue of Freedom of Speech. Second, Severance. When the judge
had to say 750 times "This has nothing to do with Lynne Stewart but is
only introduced for the state of mind of the third defendant. Third, the
prejudicial impact of the picture of Osama Bin Laden - a photo 24 FEET by 8 to
10 FEET present throughout the trial of Lynne. Now the government claims the
release of his photo or footage of him to the public and the world is
inflammatory but not for a jury in Lynne's trial.
These are the issues that we present to the Supreme Court.
RALPH SCHOENMAN
The entire case against Lynne Stewart goes to the heart of
the Bill of Rights and the constitutional protections that were the gain and
the legacy of the first American Revolution.
After all, what are we dealing with here? Lynne Stewart is
in jail, imprisoned because of the fact that she defended a person accused of
something and then was assimilated to the charges against the person she was
defending for the act of defending him.
The destruction of the Bill of Rights is inherent in this
very phenomenon. What is the nature of her "offense" in defending the
Sheikh? She is claimed to have violated something called the "SAMS" –
Special Administrative Measures – that preclude an attorney from making public
the ideas of the defendant and what he has done in the past and what he
represents. This is a form of censorship in itself that goes to the heart of
the First Amendment – the right of a defendant and of his or her attorney to
act in his or her interest.
The Press Release that Lynne gave to Reuters comes under the
same rubric. To issue a Press Release to Reuters that articulates the views of
her client goes to the heart of her First Amendment rights.
Indeed the failure to sever Lynne's case from that of
defendants who were involved in political and cognate activity that had nothing
whatever to do with any action or advocacy of Lynne Stewart compounds
completely the violation of her First Amendment rights by integrating issues
that pertain to other people with the implication that she shared these
opinions - which even, if true, would be her First Amendment right and were
presented to contaminate the trial for the jury.
This incitement of prejudice is present in the invocation of
Osama Bin Laden with respect to the events for which Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman
was charged. The Sheikh was charged for the "Landmarks Plot" and his
innocence with regard to these charges is addressed by the government by
introducing footage of Osama Bin Laden with reference to the events of 9-11 -
events which had never occurred at the time of the so-called Landmarks Plot.
The government further sought to associate Osama Bin Laden
with the blowing up of the World Trade Center in 1993. In fact, the
flooding of the court room with gigantic images of Osama Bin Laden was intended
to associate him and the Sheikh with the World Trade Center demolition in 1993
where 1,000 people were injured and six people killed.
Not only was Osama Bin Laden never associated with the 1993
bombing but, again, the Sheikh, Lynne's client was never charged with this.
Thus, the presentation of the footage of Osama Bin Laden is completely prejudicial
contaminating the entire trial and inciting the fearful prejudice of the jury
with the false representation this 'Lynne Stewart' case is about the events of
September 11th, knowing that the charges against the Sheikh involved neither
the events of 1993 nor of 2001.
This entire trial of Lynne Stewart was contaminated and
infused with basic violation of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights of
Lynne Stewart and, indeed, of the blind Sheikh himself.
Nothing so crystallizes this as the recent development in
which the President of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, demanded that Sheikh Omar Abdel
Rahman should be released and returned to Egypt. After all, from the
perspective of those who waged a forty year fight against the dictatorship of
Hosni Mubarak, the Sheikh is a heroic figure.
His entire concerns were with the struggle in Egypt for the
removal of the dictatorial regime. The release of a Press Statement concerning
the Sheikh's views goes to that question – a First Amendment issue.
Now, when Morsi, the President of Egypt, makes a public
declaration requesting Obama to release the Sheikh, the response of the head of
National Security of the United States was to declare that the Sheikh has the
blood and lives of Americans on his hands by virtue of the explosions at the
World Trade Center in 1993. Yet, the Sheikh was never charged with this and
never stood trial for it!
The entire handling of the case of the Sheikh and by
extension the persecution and prosecution of Lynne Stewart, his courageous
attorney presenting truth to power, constitutes a complete breach of the
panoply of protections inherent in the Bill of Rights.
These are the stakes in the historic case of Lynne Stewart.
Finally, with respect to the claim that an Administrative
Measure, that has no legal content, is a basis for being confined to ten years
in prison (the Justice Department of Barack Obama demanding thirty years) is a
monstrous anomaly. To violate the SAMS, the "Special Administrative
Measures" is neither a misdemeanor nor a felony. All that the government
is entitled to do on the basis of its own arbitrary criteria for breach of
"SAMS" is do delay access to the client of the attorney in
question – while leaving untested in the courts the constitutionality of
such "SAMS," themselves a gag order imposed on defense lawyers and
their clients that makes a mockery of due process.
What Lynne Stewart and Ramsey Clark were asserting is that
they have a First Amendment right to defend their client, to articulate
publicly the issues involved, to publicize these even as the government uses
the Press as a bully pulpit for its propaganda concerning the defendant.
From the beginning to the end, this is a case about the
rights of every citizen and inhabitant of the United States. It is about the
survival of the Bill of Rights, the fate of a democratic polity in the face of
the rapid construction of the totalitarian state in the United States. Lynne
Stewart is the judas goat of a degenerate state power devouring our history and
our fate.
This is the heart of the case of Lynne Stewart – a fight, an
historic struggle, for the freedom of us all.
RALPH
POYNTER
What we have here since the government decided that they
have the right of selective prosecution is the assertion that none of us has
rights.
The State will decided what laws apply to us and what
protections do not.
Ramsey Clark sat on the witness stand and declared "I
did ten times what Lynne Stewart ever did before she did it in this case, and
nothing happened to me." It was an advice to Lynne Stewart: make a Press
Release.
What are we asking people to do? Well, as we have seen the
very wealthy white-shoe lawyers, who represent corporations, have very
different law with which to deal, in contrast to Lynne Stewart.
They did everything Lynne Stewart did for her client in
their representation of Guantanamo defendants without a word from the Federal
government – which tells you what the Federal government is and who commands
it. It is not "We the People..." It is "They the corporate
oligarchy."
We are asking attorneys to join us in the Cert that we carry
to the Supreme Court, to read the papers of our lawyers who are submitting the
papers and to contribute their own legal expertise.
MYA SHONE
We should like each and every one of you listening to this
TAKING AIM update to send a letter to Lynne.
Write to her: Lynne Stewart # 53504 – 054
Federal Medical Center Carswell
Post Office Box 27137
Fort Worth,
Texas 76127
You can also go to Lynne Stewart.org for more information and to the Lynne Stewart Defense
Committee.
Please keep your letters flowing. It is your letters that
keep up the spirits and courage of our Mother Courage and that send a message
to the prison authorities and their masters that Lynne Stewart is a heroic
figure who embodies the best in ourselves and our history for whom the American
people care deeply and whom we shall never abandon or forget.
This has been TAKING AIM with Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone
– together with Ralph Poynter – with an update on the prosecution and
persecution of Lynne Stewart.
Special and abiding thanks as always to the indefatigable
Russell Dale for his superb edit and transmission – and to Sheila Hamanaka, his
gifted companion, for their tireless effort and commitment.
U.S. Supreme Court Dismisses Lawsuit
Against Shell in Nigeria
The ruling effectively blocks other lawsuits against foreign multinationals for human rights abuse that have occurred overseas from being brought in U.S. courts.
Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (Shell) was brought under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a U.S. law dating back to 1789, originally designed to combat piracy on the high seas - that has been used during the last 30 years as a vehicle to bring international law violations cases to U.S. federal courts.
Lawyers began using ATS as a tool in human rights litigation in 1979, when the family of 17-year-old Joel Filartiga, who was tortured and killed in Paraguay, sued the Paraguayan police chief responsible. Filartiga v. Peña-Irala set a precedent for U.S. federal courts to punish non-U.S. citizens for acts committed outside the U.S. that violate international law or treaties to which the U.S. is a party. Almost 100 cases of international (often state-sanctioned) torture, rape and murder have been brought to U.S. federal courts to date under the ATS.
The new ruling limits the law to U.S citizens and entities.
“Corporations are often present in many countries and it would reach too far to say mere corporate presence suffices,” wrote John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, in the majority opinion. “There is no indication that the ATS was passed to make the United States a uniquely hospitable forum for the enforcement of international norms.”
Stephen Breyer, another of the nine judges, agreed with Roberts in the decision but left the door open for some lawsuits. “I would find jurisdiction under this statute where (1) the alleged tort occurs on American soil, (2) the defendant is an American national, or (3) the defendant’s conduct substantially and adversely affects an important American national interest,” wrote Breyer in a separate legal opinion. “(T)hat includes a distinct interest in preventing the United States from becoming a safe harbor (free of civil as well as criminal liability) for a torturer or other common enemy of mankind.”
Shell – in Breyer’s opinion – did not qualify as a U.S. entity. “The defendants are two foreign corporations. Their shares, like those of many foreign corporations, are traded on the New York Stock Exchange,” Breyer wrote. “Their only presence in the United States consists of an office in New York City (actually owned by a separate but affiliated company) that helps to explain their business to potential investors.”
To date no substantial lawsuits against multinationals for abuses overseas has been won on ATS grounds, although some have settled or plea bargained. In 1996 Doe v. Unocal, a lawsuit filed by ethnic Karen farmers against Unocal (now owned by Chevron) set a new precedent when a U.S. federal court ruled that corporations and their executive officers could be held legally responsible for crimes against humanity. Unocal contracted with the Burmese military dictatorship to provide security for a natural gas pipeline project on the border of Thailand and Burma. The suit accused Unocal of complicity in murder, rape and forcing locals to work for Unocal for free. Shortly before the jury trial was set to begin in 2005, Unocal settled with the plaintiffs by paying an undisclosed sum, marking the first time a corporation settled in any way a case based on the ATS.
Another such case was filed against Chiquita, the global banana producer, by surviving victims of brutal massacres waged by right-wing paramilitary squads in Colombia. The paramilitary, who killed thousands of civilians during Colombia’s dirty war of the 1980s and 1990s, were on Chiquita’s payroll in the 1990s. Now-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder defended Chiquita in the case and won a plea bargain for them of $25 million and five years of probation.
Kellogg, Brown and Root, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, has also been sued under the ATS for allegedly trafficking 13 men from Nepal to Iraq against their will to work on U.S. miliatry bases. The men, 12 of whom were killed, believed they were going to work at hotels in Jordan and elsewhere.
The Obama administration backed Shell last June after abruptly changing sides. In its submission the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to dismiss the suit against Shell. The brief’s authors stated that the ATS was not appropriate for Kiobel or other lawsuits involving foreign corporations accused of collaborating in human rights abuses with a foreign government outside U.S. territory.
U.S. courts “should not create a cause of action that challenges the actions of a foreign sovereign in its own territory, where the [sued party] is a foreign corporation of a third country that allegedly aided and abetted the foreign sovereign’s conduct,” the Justice Department wrote.
Many activists say that the decision will set back human rights causes. “This decision so severely limited a law that has for decades been a beacon of hope for victims of gross human rights violations,” says Elisa Massimino, president of Human Rights First, a New York based NGO. “Abusers may be rejoicing today, but this is a major setback for their victims, who often look to the United States for justice when all else fails. Now what will they do?”
Other lawyers drew a measure of hope from the fact that the Supreme Court decision did not exclude all lawsuits against multinationals overseas in U.S. courts.
"This ruling is not a grant of immunity from liability," write the lawyers of the Center for Constitutional Rights who won the Filártiga case. "(T)hose cases brought against defendants, including corporations, whose actions “touch and concern the territory of the United States…with sufficient force” should remain on notice they can still be held accountable for their abuses outside the U.S. The Court has left many questions open for another day, and we will work to ensure that the basic purpose of the ATS – reflected in the decision – to provide a place for all victims of human rights abuses to seek justice and accountability."
Paul Hoffman, the lawyer for Esther Kiobel, told USA Today newspaper that the Supreme Court ruling would not affect the cases against KBR for human trafficking to Iraq. And Marco Simons, legal director at Earth Rights International, said the same for cases against Chiquita involving paramilitary death squads in Colombia.
Activists are now more likely to look to other countries to seek justice for abuses by multinationals. “The corporate accountability movement, however, is far too significant to be sidetracked by this one decision, especially now that ATS has inspired many foreign analogues and other legal theories under which corporations can be are are being sued at home for their role in rights violations abroad," Chip Pitts, a law professor who teaches corporate accountability at Stanford university told CorpWatch. "Expect further developments in this arena globally.”
The Enduring Legacy of Bolivia’s Forgotten National Revolution
 |
| Bolivia President Evo Morales |
By Emily Achtenberg
This past April 9, the anniversary
of Bolivia’s National Revolution of 1952 came and went as usual with no
official recognition and scarcely a mention in the domestic press. This
historic event, in which workers and peasants overthrew an entrenched oligarchy
of tin barons and landholders, was the first successful revolution in Latin
America after Mexico, and is viewed by most contemporary scholars as a
transformative moment for Bolivia (and Latin America).[1]
Still, successive Bolivian governments including the leftist government of Evo Morales have relegated the episode to the dustbin of history. A look back at the earlier revolutionary experience helps to explain this seeming paradox and also reveals how the events of 1952 have profound and continuing relevance for the present.
The Revolution of 1952 is closely associated in Bolivia’s popular consciousness with the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR), the political party that led and inherited it.[2] The immediately precipitating factor was the military’s annulment of the presidential elections of 1951, which the MNR candidate had won by a landslide. Armed workers, led by the militant miners union, joined with dissident national police and MNRistas in a three-day urban insurrection, routing the military junta from La Paz. In the rural highlands, peasants aided by miners occupied vast estates and instituted self-help land reform.
Faced with the prospect of a serious popular uprising, the moderate MNR leadership (dubbed reluctant revolutionaries by historians) quickly instituted a series of reforms that, for their time and place, were truly transformative. The army, which had virtually disintegrated, was replaced by peasant and worker militias. The mines owned by Bolivia’s three great tin barons were nationalized under COMIBOL, the new state mining company. The Bolivian Workers Central (COB), a powerful new confederation of organized peasants and workers, effectively functioned as a co-government for the mining sector with veto power over key policies. The COB’s secretary-general was appointed Secretary of Mines.1656 Mural - Museum of the National Revolution. Credit: Ben Achtenberg
A far-reaching agrarian reform program implemented with the help of Mexican advisers dismantled feudal haciendas in the western highlands, abolished the hated system of forced peasant labor, and redistributed expropriated lands to indigenous peasants through their sindicatos and communities. Universal suffrage (without literacy or property requirements) extended the vote to peasants and women, expanding the electorate from 200,000 to more than one million virtually overnight. Education was declared universal and free to all.
But by the mid-1950s, the MNR had called a halt to, and partially reversed, its radical reforms thanks in large part to U.S. counter-revolutionary pressures (which were not unwelcome by the party’s conservative wing). In response to falling tin prices and a deepening economic crisis, the MNR signed a long-term contract obligating the United States to purchase Bolivia’s tin, and accepted massive U.S. aid. By 1960, Bolivia was the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Latin America, at the highest level per capita in the world. One-third of Bolivia’s budget was financed directly by the United States.
In exchange, the MNR agreed to compensate the tin mine owners (whose investors included some U.S. interests) and open up Bolivia’s hydrocarbons sector to U.S. and other foreign petroleum companies. Agrarian reform was limited to the western highlands, leaving the eastern lowlands open for private agribusiness expansion through patronage land grants. 1657 Mural - Museum of the National Revolution. Credit: Ben Achtenberg U.S.-dictated IMF bailout plan imposed an austerity program that balanced the national budget on the backs of Bolivian workers freezing wages, ending price controls and consumer subsidies, and slashing hard-won union benefits.
In addition to redirecting the Revolution’s economic priorities, the United States pressured the MNR which it viewed as a critical bulwark against a communist takeover in Bolivia to abandon its left-wing factions. The COB was marginalized, and the reconstituted military was used to repress the militant mineworkers who had brought the MNR to power. With U.S. encouragement, the MNR solidified its ties to an increasingly complacent peasantry and turned campesinos against their former mineworker allies, an arrangement that later ripened into a formal military/peasant alliance. The MNR’s rightward shift eroded its popular support, paving the way for a U.S.-supported coup in 1964 followed by 18 years of military dictatorship.
In the end, writes political scientist Stephen Zunes, the United States was able to overthrow the revolution without having to overthrow the government. The successful manipulation of economic leverage and dependency to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals in Bolivia short of the covert military tactics employed in Guatemala during the same period established a useful precedent for subsequent interventions by the United States and allied international financial institutions throughout Latin America.
In this final chapter, a transformed MNR during the 1980s and 90s became the party of counter-revolution, making Bolivia a showcase for even more drastic neoliberal structural adjustment policies imposed by the Washington Consensus. Privatization, austerity, and free market economic policies dismantled state enterprises and imposed huge costs on peasants and workers. Mineworkers, in particular, were devastated by the shutdown of COMIBOL and the state mines, resulting in some 20,000 layoffs and the destruction of Bolivia’s combative trade union movement.1659 Mural - Museum of the National Revolution. Credit: Ben Achtenberg
Thanks to this troubled history, the Revolution of 1952 is remembered mostly for its unfulfilled potential and its betrayal by the MNR (a largely irrelevant political party today). As historian Brooke Larson suggests, the official shroud of silence surrounding the memory of 1952 is part of the collateral damage resulting from this process. [3]
Still, the experience of the earlier revolutionary period continues to shape Bolivia’s political trajectory and offers important lessons for today. As historian Sinclair Thomson has noted, the Morales government’s own political program including the reassertion of state sovereignty over natural resources and strategic sectors, and the extension of agrarian reform builds on the MNR’s early popular agenda, with the important addition of decolonization and refounding the plurinational state. The existing dual structure of land holdings, with minifundios in the western highlands and latifundios in the eastern lowlands, is a legacy of the earlier revolutionary period that is a major source of social conflict in Bolivia today.
The critical role of popular insurgencies and the need for alliances among diverse social sectors in achieving political gains is another enduring lesson of 1952. In 2003-5, the convergence of social movements across sectoral, geographic, and urban/rural lines that was instrumental (even more so than in 1952) in bringing a leftist government to power found expression in a "Unity Pact" among Bolivia’s five major popular organizations. Today, divisions between highland and lowland indigenous groups, on the one hand, and campesino-identified sectors especially over the government’s plan to build a highway through the TIPNIS national park—have effectively ruptured the Unity Pact, posing a major challenge to the Morales government and to the future of Bolivia’s revolutionary process.
1660 Peasant and worker militias. Credit: La Razn.Bolivia’s relationship with the United States, of course, is radically different today than it was in the 1950s, thanks to the erosion of U.S. hegemony in the region and the emergence of regional trading blocs and alternative funding partners. After three years of extremely frayed relations, following the countries mutual ouster of ambassadors in 2008, Bolivia and the United States have recently restored diplomatic ties through a framework agreement that emphasizes collaboration and mutual respect for national sovereignty.
Still, since Morales took office, U.S. aid to Bolivia has declined markedly from $137 million in 2005 to less than $20 million proposed for 2014. Funding for economic and social programs has declined from $93 million to just $14 million. As of 2009, the loss of trade preferences that allowed Bolivia to export textiles and other products duty-free to U.S. markets had cost Bolivia an estimated 9,000 jobs, plus $8 million to subsidize U.S. tariffs for domestic manufacturers. One way or another, it seems, the United States continues to exact its price.
For now, official memories of the Revolution of 1952 can be found at the Museum of the National Revolution in the Miraflores district of La Paz somewhat off the beaten track, with irregular hours, but well worth the trip to see the amazing murals depicted here.
[1] See Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective, Merilee Grindle and Pilar Domingo, eds, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2003.
[2]Â This discussion draws generally on Proclaiming Revolution (op. cit.) and Herbert S. Klein, A Concise History of Bolivia, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
[3] Brooke Larson, Commentaries on the Panel: ‘The Bolivian Revolution Revisited, LASA Congress, October 7-10, 2010, Toronto (unpublished).
Still, successive Bolivian governments including the leftist government of Evo Morales have relegated the episode to the dustbin of history. A look back at the earlier revolutionary experience helps to explain this seeming paradox and also reveals how the events of 1952 have profound and continuing relevance for the present.
The Revolution of 1952 is closely associated in Bolivia’s popular consciousness with the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR), the political party that led and inherited it.[2] The immediately precipitating factor was the military’s annulment of the presidential elections of 1951, which the MNR candidate had won by a landslide. Armed workers, led by the militant miners union, joined with dissident national police and MNRistas in a three-day urban insurrection, routing the military junta from La Paz. In the rural highlands, peasants aided by miners occupied vast estates and instituted self-help land reform.
Faced with the prospect of a serious popular uprising, the moderate MNR leadership (dubbed reluctant revolutionaries by historians) quickly instituted a series of reforms that, for their time and place, were truly transformative. The army, which had virtually disintegrated, was replaced by peasant and worker militias. The mines owned by Bolivia’s three great tin barons were nationalized under COMIBOL, the new state mining company. The Bolivian Workers Central (COB), a powerful new confederation of organized peasants and workers, effectively functioned as a co-government for the mining sector with veto power over key policies. The COB’s secretary-general was appointed Secretary of Mines.1656 Mural - Museum of the National Revolution. Credit: Ben Achtenberg
A far-reaching agrarian reform program implemented with the help of Mexican advisers dismantled feudal haciendas in the western highlands, abolished the hated system of forced peasant labor, and redistributed expropriated lands to indigenous peasants through their sindicatos and communities. Universal suffrage (without literacy or property requirements) extended the vote to peasants and women, expanding the electorate from 200,000 to more than one million virtually overnight. Education was declared universal and free to all.
But by the mid-1950s, the MNR had called a halt to, and partially reversed, its radical reforms thanks in large part to U.S. counter-revolutionary pressures (which were not unwelcome by the party’s conservative wing). In response to falling tin prices and a deepening economic crisis, the MNR signed a long-term contract obligating the United States to purchase Bolivia’s tin, and accepted massive U.S. aid. By 1960, Bolivia was the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Latin America, at the highest level per capita in the world. One-third of Bolivia’s budget was financed directly by the United States.
In exchange, the MNR agreed to compensate the tin mine owners (whose investors included some U.S. interests) and open up Bolivia’s hydrocarbons sector to U.S. and other foreign petroleum companies. Agrarian reform was limited to the western highlands, leaving the eastern lowlands open for private agribusiness expansion through patronage land grants. 1657 Mural - Museum of the National Revolution. Credit: Ben Achtenberg U.S.-dictated IMF bailout plan imposed an austerity program that balanced the national budget on the backs of Bolivian workers freezing wages, ending price controls and consumer subsidies, and slashing hard-won union benefits.
In addition to redirecting the Revolution’s economic priorities, the United States pressured the MNR which it viewed as a critical bulwark against a communist takeover in Bolivia to abandon its left-wing factions. The COB was marginalized, and the reconstituted military was used to repress the militant mineworkers who had brought the MNR to power. With U.S. encouragement, the MNR solidified its ties to an increasingly complacent peasantry and turned campesinos against their former mineworker allies, an arrangement that later ripened into a formal military/peasant alliance. The MNR’s rightward shift eroded its popular support, paving the way for a U.S.-supported coup in 1964 followed by 18 years of military dictatorship.
In the end, writes political scientist Stephen Zunes, the United States was able to overthrow the revolution without having to overthrow the government. The successful manipulation of economic leverage and dependency to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals in Bolivia short of the covert military tactics employed in Guatemala during the same period established a useful precedent for subsequent interventions by the United States and allied international financial institutions throughout Latin America.
In this final chapter, a transformed MNR during the 1980s and 90s became the party of counter-revolution, making Bolivia a showcase for even more drastic neoliberal structural adjustment policies imposed by the Washington Consensus. Privatization, austerity, and free market economic policies dismantled state enterprises and imposed huge costs on peasants and workers. Mineworkers, in particular, were devastated by the shutdown of COMIBOL and the state mines, resulting in some 20,000 layoffs and the destruction of Bolivia’s combative trade union movement.1659 Mural - Museum of the National Revolution. Credit: Ben Achtenberg
Thanks to this troubled history, the Revolution of 1952 is remembered mostly for its unfulfilled potential and its betrayal by the MNR (a largely irrelevant political party today). As historian Brooke Larson suggests, the official shroud of silence surrounding the memory of 1952 is part of the collateral damage resulting from this process. [3]
Still, the experience of the earlier revolutionary period continues to shape Bolivia’s political trajectory and offers important lessons for today. As historian Sinclair Thomson has noted, the Morales government’s own political program including the reassertion of state sovereignty over natural resources and strategic sectors, and the extension of agrarian reform builds on the MNR’s early popular agenda, with the important addition of decolonization and refounding the plurinational state. The existing dual structure of land holdings, with minifundios in the western highlands and latifundios in the eastern lowlands, is a legacy of the earlier revolutionary period that is a major source of social conflict in Bolivia today.
The critical role of popular insurgencies and the need for alliances among diverse social sectors in achieving political gains is another enduring lesson of 1952. In 2003-5, the convergence of social movements across sectoral, geographic, and urban/rural lines that was instrumental (even more so than in 1952) in bringing a leftist government to power found expression in a "Unity Pact" among Bolivia’s five major popular organizations. Today, divisions between highland and lowland indigenous groups, on the one hand, and campesino-identified sectors especially over the government’s plan to build a highway through the TIPNIS national park—have effectively ruptured the Unity Pact, posing a major challenge to the Morales government and to the future of Bolivia’s revolutionary process.
1660 Peasant and worker militias. Credit: La Razn.Bolivia’s relationship with the United States, of course, is radically different today than it was in the 1950s, thanks to the erosion of U.S. hegemony in the region and the emergence of regional trading blocs and alternative funding partners. After three years of extremely frayed relations, following the countries mutual ouster of ambassadors in 2008, Bolivia and the United States have recently restored diplomatic ties through a framework agreement that emphasizes collaboration and mutual respect for national sovereignty.
Still, since Morales took office, U.S. aid to Bolivia has declined markedly from $137 million in 2005 to less than $20 million proposed for 2014. Funding for economic and social programs has declined from $93 million to just $14 million. As of 2009, the loss of trade preferences that allowed Bolivia to export textiles and other products duty-free to U.S. markets had cost Bolivia an estimated 9,000 jobs, plus $8 million to subsidize U.S. tariffs for domestic manufacturers. One way or another, it seems, the United States continues to exact its price.
For now, official memories of the Revolution of 1952 can be found at the Museum of the National Revolution in the Miraflores district of La Paz somewhat off the beaten track, with irregular hours, but well worth the trip to see the amazing murals depicted here.
[1] See Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective, Merilee Grindle and Pilar Domingo, eds, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2003.
[2]Â This discussion draws generally on Proclaiming Revolution (op. cit.) and Herbert S. Klein, A Concise History of Bolivia, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
[3] Brooke Larson, Commentaries on the Panel: ‘The Bolivian Revolution Revisited, LASA Congress, October 7-10, 2010, Toronto (unpublished).
Source:Ocnus.net 2013
How Oil Dealers Used Dead Vessel To Dupe Nigeria of N1.5bn
 |
| A dead vessel |
By Deolu
Shocking details emerged on April
17, 2013 of how four smart Nigerian oil dealers conspired and fleeced the
nation of N1.5 billion in the name of supplying premium motor spirit (petrol)
to the country.
The four suspects, Alhaji Saminu Rabiu, Jubril Rowaye, Alminur Resources Limited and Brila Energy, reportedly claimed to have used a vessel that had long been put out of circulation to supply petrol to Nigeria under the scandalous fuel subsidy administration that made the nation to lose close to N2.3trillion in revenue in 2011.
But when the case against the four suspects opened, yesterday, at the Abuja High Court, an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission operative, confronted them with evidence that the so called vessel, which they claimed to have used in supplying the fuel to Nigeria, was not in existence at the time they claimed it was used for transporting fuel to Nigeria.
Tolu Olanubi told the court that the vessel, MT KRITI, had ceased to exist since 2010.
A prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of Alhaji Saminu Rabiu, Jubril Rowaye, Alminnur Resources Limited and Brila Energy Limited who were alleged to be involved in a N1.5billion subsidy scam, Tolu Olanubi on Monday April 15, 2013 told the court that MT KRITI, the vessel allegedly used by the accused persons in shipping Premium Motor Spirit to Nigeria in June 2011 had ceased to exist since April 2010.
Olanubi, who was led in evidence by EFCC counsel, Sylvanus Tahir, told the court that, in the course of the investigation, a relationship was established between the EFCC and Lloyds List Intelligence, an organisation that provides information on vessels, ownership of vessels, movement and location of vessels, to establish that there was no such vessel in the world at the time of the said supply.
She said the EFCC subscribed to the website of Lloyds List Intelligence where it was discovered that MT KRITI, which was purportedly used to ship Premium Motor Spirit on June 14, 2011 had ceased to exist and declared Status: Dead.
She also told the court that the last place of location of the vessel was Gadani Beach in Pakistan. It is not possible for the vessel to have sailed into Nigeria on June 14, 2011 since it was reported dead on April 17, 2010,Olanubi told the court.
She also told the court that the vessel had changed its name from KRITI to AKIT before it ceased to exist and demonstrated to the court with the aid of a projector attached to the Internet how she arrived at the facts.
However, Ajibola Oloyede, counsel to the 2nd and 4th defendants, challenged the admissibility of the document, saying it was generated through a computer.
He alleged that the documents did not meet the procedure of tendering such documents as stated in the Evidence Act. It is not for the witness to say it was printed from the computer, the document printed should have all the information of how it was produced, the defence argued.
The four suspects, Alhaji Saminu Rabiu, Jubril Rowaye, Alminur Resources Limited and Brila Energy, reportedly claimed to have used a vessel that had long been put out of circulation to supply petrol to Nigeria under the scandalous fuel subsidy administration that made the nation to lose close to N2.3trillion in revenue in 2011.
But when the case against the four suspects opened, yesterday, at the Abuja High Court, an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission operative, confronted them with evidence that the so called vessel, which they claimed to have used in supplying the fuel to Nigeria, was not in existence at the time they claimed it was used for transporting fuel to Nigeria.
Tolu Olanubi told the court that the vessel, MT KRITI, had ceased to exist since 2010.
A prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of Alhaji Saminu Rabiu, Jubril Rowaye, Alminnur Resources Limited and Brila Energy Limited who were alleged to be involved in a N1.5billion subsidy scam, Tolu Olanubi on Monday April 15, 2013 told the court that MT KRITI, the vessel allegedly used by the accused persons in shipping Premium Motor Spirit to Nigeria in June 2011 had ceased to exist since April 2010.
Olanubi, who was led in evidence by EFCC counsel, Sylvanus Tahir, told the court that, in the course of the investigation, a relationship was established between the EFCC and Lloyds List Intelligence, an organisation that provides information on vessels, ownership of vessels, movement and location of vessels, to establish that there was no such vessel in the world at the time of the said supply.
She said the EFCC subscribed to the website of Lloyds List Intelligence where it was discovered that MT KRITI, which was purportedly used to ship Premium Motor Spirit on June 14, 2011 had ceased to exist and declared Status: Dead.
She also told the court that the last place of location of the vessel was Gadani Beach in Pakistan. It is not possible for the vessel to have sailed into Nigeria on June 14, 2011 since it was reported dead on April 17, 2010,Olanubi told the court.
She also told the court that the vessel had changed its name from KRITI to AKIT before it ceased to exist and demonstrated to the court with the aid of a projector attached to the Internet how she arrived at the facts.
However, Ajibola Oloyede, counsel to the 2nd and 4th defendants, challenged the admissibility of the document, saying it was generated through a computer.
He alleged that the documents did not meet the procedure of tendering such documents as stated in the Evidence Act. It is not for the witness to say it was printed from the computer, the document printed should have all the information of how it was produced, the defence argued.
However, counsel to EFCC objected, saying the documents were relevant and that
enough foundation was laid in compliance with the Evidence Act. The document
speaks for itself.
The date and time the document was printed is on the face of the documents. As to the issue of certification, the Evidence Act did not prescribe the form or mode of certification. So the way it is certified should suffice, he declared. Justice Adebukola Banjoko upheld the documents.
Banjoko had earlier dismissed an application by the 2nd accused person in which he sought to have his travelling document returned to him on the grounds that he wanted to travel abroad for medical treatment.
The judge noted that though there was a letter purportedly written by a medical practitioner backing the accused that he had a complicated heart problem, there was no sufficient proof that the case could not be treated in Nigeria.
The EFCC had on October 17, 2011 arraigned the quartet for allegedly defrauding the Federal Government of Nigeria by submitting forged document and making false claims from the Petroleum Support Fund, as subsidy payment to Alminnur Resources Limited. They were said to have conspired to obtain the over N1.5 billion from the Federal Government of Nigeria as subsidy for the purported importation of 19,000 MT of PMS.
The date and time the document was printed is on the face of the documents. As to the issue of certification, the Evidence Act did not prescribe the form or mode of certification. So the way it is certified should suffice, he declared. Justice Adebukola Banjoko upheld the documents.
Banjoko had earlier dismissed an application by the 2nd accused person in which he sought to have his travelling document returned to him on the grounds that he wanted to travel abroad for medical treatment.
The judge noted that though there was a letter purportedly written by a medical practitioner backing the accused that he had a complicated heart problem, there was no sufficient proof that the case could not be treated in Nigeria.
The EFCC had on October 17, 2011 arraigned the quartet for allegedly defrauding the Federal Government of Nigeria by submitting forged document and making false claims from the Petroleum Support Fund, as subsidy payment to Alminnur Resources Limited. They were said to have conspired to obtain the over N1.5 billion from the Federal Government of Nigeria as subsidy for the purported importation of 19,000 MT of PMS.
Source:Ocnus.net 2013
The
simple courage of decision: a leftist tribute to Thatcher
 |
| Margaret Thatcher |
What we need today is a Thatcher of the left: a leader who would repeat
Thatcher’s gesture in the opposite direction, transforming the entire field of
presuppositions shared by today’s political elite.
What we need today is a
Thatcher of the left: a leader who would repeat Thatcher’s gesture in the
opposite direction, transforming the entire field of presuppositions shared by
today’s political elite.
In the last pages of his
monumental Second World War, Winston Churchill ponders on the enigma of
a military decision: after the specialists (economic and military analysts,
psychologists, meteorologists) propose their analysis, somebody must assume the
simple and for that very reason most difficult act of transposing this complex
multitude into a simple "Yes" or "No". W we shall attack,
we continue to wait... This gesture, which can never be fully grounded in
reasons, is that of a Master. It is for the experts to present the situation in
its complexity, and it is for the Master to simplify it into a point of
decision.
The Master is needed
especially in situations of deep crisis. The function of a Master is to enact
an authentic division – a division between those who want to drag on within the
old parameters and those who are aware of the necessary change. Such a
division, not the opportunistic compromises, is the only path to true unity.
Let us take an example which surely is not problematic: France in 1940. Even
Jacques Duclos, the second man of the French Communist Party, admitted in a
private conversation that if, at that point in time, free elections were to be
held in France, Marshal Petain would have won with 90 per cent of the vote.
When de Gaulle, in his historic act, refused to acknowledge the capitulation to
Germans and continued to resist, he claimed that it was only he, not the Vichy
regime, who speaks on behalf of the true France (on behalf of true France as
such, not only on behalf of the “majority of the French”!). What he was saying
was deeply true even if it was “democratically” not only without legitimacy,
but clearly opposed to the opinion of the majority of the French people.
Margaret Thatcher, the
lady who was not for turning, was such a Master, sticking to her decision which
was at first perceived as crazy, gradually elevating her singular madness into
an accepted norm. When Thatcher was asked about her greatest achievement, she
promptly answered: “New Labour.” And she was right: her triumph was that even
her political enemies adopted her basic economic policies – the true triumph is
not the victory over the enemy, it occurs when the enemy itself starts to use
your language, so that your ideas form the foundation of the entire field.
So what remains today of
Thatcher’s legacy today? Neoliberal hegemony is clearly falling apart. Thatcher
was perhaps the only true Thatcherite – she clearly believed in her ideas.
Today’s neoliberalism, on the contrary, “only imagines that it believes in itself
and demands that the world should imagine the same thing” (to quote Marx). In
short, today, cynicism is openly on display. Recall the cruel joke from
Lubitch’s To Be Or Not to Be: when asked about the German concentration
camps in the occupied Poland, the responsible Nazi officer “concentration camp
Erhardt” snaps back: “We do the concentrating, and the Poles do the camping.”
Does the same not hold
for the Enron bankruptcy in January 2002 (as well as on all financial meltdowns
that followed), which can be interpreted as a kind of ironic commentary on the
notion of a risk society? Thousands of employees who lost their jobs and
savings were certainly exposed to a risk, but without any true choice - the
risk appeared to them as a blind fate. Those, on the contrary, who effectively
did have an insight into the risks as well as a possibility to intervene into
the situation (the top managers), minimised their risks by cashing in their
stocks and options before the bankruptcy – so it is true that we live in a
society of risky choices, but some (the Wall Street managers) do the choosing,
while others (the common people paying mortgages) do the risking.
One of the weird
consequences of the financial meltdown and the measures taken to counteract it
(enormous sums of money to help banks) was the revival in the work of Ayn Rand,
the closest one can come to the ideologist of the “greed is good” radical
capitalism – the sales of her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged exploded again.
According to some reports, there are already signs that the scenario described
in Atlas Shrugged – the creative capitalists themselves going on strike
– is enacted. John Campbell, a Republican congressman, said: “The achievers are
going on strike. I’m seeing, at a small level, a kind of protest from the
people who create jobs /…/ who are pulling back from their ambitions because
they see how they’ll be punished for them.” The absurdity of this reaction is
that it totally misreads the situation: most of the gigantic sums of bail-out
money is going precisely to the Randian deregulated “titans” who failed in
their “creative” schemes and thereby brought about the meltdown. It is not the
great creative geniuses who are now helping lazy ordinary people, it is the
ordinary taxpayers who are helping the failed “creative geniuses.”
The other aspect of
Thatcher’s legacy targeted by her leftist critics was her “authoritarian” form
of leadership, her lack of the sense for democratic coordination. Here,
however, things are more complex than it may appear. The ongoing popular
protests around Europe converge in a series of demands which, in their very
spontaneity and obviousness, form a kind of “epistemological obstacle” to the
proper confrontation with the ongoing crisis of our political system. These
effectively read as a popularised version of Deleuzian politics: people know
what they want, they are able to discover and formulate this, but only through
their own continuous engagement and activity. So we need active participatory
democracy, not just representative democracy with its electoral ritual which
every four years interrupts the voters’ passivity; we need the
self-organisation of the multitude, not a centralised Leninist Party with the
Leader, et cetera.
It is this myth of
non-representative direct self-organisation which is the last trap, the deepest
illusion that should fall, that is most difficult to renounce. Yes, there are
in every revolutionary process ecstatic moments of group solidarity when
thousands, hundreds of thousands, together occupy a public place, like on
Tahrir square two years ago. Yes, there are moments of intense collective
participation where local communities debate and decide, when people live in a
kind of permanent emergency state, taking things into their own hands, with no
Leader guiding them. But such states don’t last, and “tiredness” is here not a
simple psychological fact, it is a category of social ontology.
The large majority – me
included – wants to be passive and rely on an efficient state apparatus
to guarantee the smooth running of the entire social edifice, so that I can
pursue my work in peace. Walter Lippmann wrote in his Public Opinion
(1922) that the herd of citizens must be governed by “a specialised class whose
interests reach beyond the locality" – this elite class is to act as a
machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the
impossible ideal of the "omni-competent citizen". This is how our
democracies function – with our consent: there is no mystery in what Lippmann
was saying, it is an obvious fact; the mystery is that, knowing it, we play the
game. We act as if we are free and freely deciding, silently not only
accepting but even demanding that an invisible injunction (inscribed
into the very form of our free speech) tells us what to do and think. “People
know what they want” – no, they don’t, and they don’t want to know it. They
need a good elite, which is why a proper politician does not only advocate
people’s interests, it is through him that they discover what they “really
want.”
As to the molecular
self-organising multitude against the hierarchic order sustained by the
reference to a charismatic leader, note the irony of the fact that Venezuela, a
country praised by many for its attempts to develop modes of direct democracy
(local councils, cooperatives, workers running factories), is also a country
whose president was Hugo Chavez, a strong charismatic leader if there ever was
one. It is as if the Freudian rule of transference is at work here: in order
for the individuals to “reach beyond themselves,” to break out of the passivity
of representative politics and engage themselves as direct political agents,
the reference to a leader is necessary, a leader who allows them to pull
themselves out of the swamp like baron Munchhausen, a leader who is “supposed
to know” what they want. It is in this sense that Alain Badiou recently pointed
out how horizontal networking undermines the classic Master, but it
simultaneously breeds new forms of domination which are much stronger than the
classic Master. Badiou’s thesis is that a subject needs a Master to elevate
itself above the “human animal” and to practice fidelity to a Truth-Event:
“The Master is the one
who helps the individual to become subject. That is to say, if one admits that
the subject emerges in the tension between the individual and the universality,
then it is obvious that the individual needs a mediation, and thereby an
authority, in order to progress on this path. One has to renew the position of
the master - it is not true that one can do without it, even and especially in
the perspective of emancipation.”
Badiou is not afraid to
oppose the necessary role of the Master to our “democratic” sensitivity: “This
capital function of leaders is not compatible with the predominant ‘democratic’
ambience, which is why I am engaged in a bitter struggle against this ambience
(after all, one has to begin with ideology).”
We should fearlessly
follow his suggestion: in order to effectively awaken individuals from their
dogmatic “democratic slumber,” from their blind reliance on institutionalised
forms of representative democracy, appeals to direct self-organisation are not
enough: a new figure of the Master is needed. Recall the famous lines from
Arthur Rimbaud’s “A une raison” (“To a Reason”):
“A tap of your finger on
the drum releases all sounds and initiates the new harmony.
A step of yours is the conscription of the new men and their marching orders.
You look away: the new love!
You look back, — the new love!”
A step of yours is the conscription of the new men and their marching orders.
You look away: the new love!
You look back, — the new love!”
There is absolutely nothing
inherently ”Fascist” in these lines – the supreme paradox of the political
dynamics is that a Master is needed to pull individuals out of the quagmire of
their inertia and motivate them towards self-transcending emancipatory struggle
for freedom.
What we need today, in
this situation, is a Thatcher of the left: a leader who would repeat Thatcher’s
gesture in the opposite direction, transforming the entire field of
presuppositions shared by today’s political elite of all main orientations.
No comments:
Post a Comment