WILL AMPOFO TAKE THE PLUNGE?

Hon. Samuel Ofosu Ampofo

Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, former Minister of Local Government is still vehemently denying any interest in the contest for the National Chairmanship of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

He told Radio Gold that he has not even contemplated joining the contest for the leadership of his party.

“My focus is on helping to build a strong party which would assist President Mahama to achieve the better Ghana agenda” he said.

In spite of this posture, there are reports of intense campaigning by cadres for Mr Ampofo, who they see simply as one of them.

The question on many lips in the NDC is whether Ampofo can plug the courage to take the plunge anytime soon.

All other party loyalists who have been mentioned as potential contestants have also refused to publicly declare their intention.

Incumbent Dr Kwabena Adjei has flatly refused to confirm his interest publicly.

He and his supporters, claim that under his leadership, the NDC has won two general elections.

 This fact is likely to feature prominently in the campaign to re-elect Dr Kwabena Adjei as National Party Chairman.

 Another potential contestant is Mr.  Kofi Portuphy  also described as a darling boy of the cadre core.

He is currently one the National Vice Chairpersons of the party and boss of the National Mobilisation Programme.

Portuphy has been active in the training of polling agents of the party and is seen as a grassroot, mobilizer.

He has also refused to confirm his ambition publicly.

Sources close to the NDC tell The Insight that other names are likely to pop up as candidates for the national chairmanship of the NDC before the end of the month.

Editorial

One Good Move

 The decision by the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) to call striking doctors back to work is most welcome.

At the very least, ordinary Ghanaian citizens can now have access to the limited healthcare available in the country.

 Unfortunately, poor citizens whose medical condition worsened or may even have died as a result of the month long strike cannot have their conditions reserved.  

As for the doctors, they kept all their privileges whiles denying their services to the ordinary people of Ghana and they will go on to collect back pay even for the period during which they were on strike.

 The point has to be made that ordinary people who suffered greatly as a result of the strike had no problems with the doctors.

 It is certainly good that the doctors are back to work but we hope that in future, they will consider the pain and suffering of ordinary Ghanaians when they decide to abandon their duties.

 The doctors may have a legitimate case but should the pursuit of that case lead to the loss of life of innocent citizens?

We salute the doctors for going back to work.

THE PRICE OF WRONG DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT

The hope city project

By Peter Kofi Amponsah

This paper was written in June 2008 in reaction to the claim by the NPP government that it has laid a solid foundation for economic transformation of this country. Then, on Ghanaweb of 8^th December 2010, the former President, Mr J.A Kuffuor was reported to have said that his government was the best since independence.

However, the debate that this article was originally intended to generate has now been attenuated by the recently launched ICT programme by Rlg Communication, known as “Hope City”. This programme appeared to have answered most of the concerns raised in the paper and has therefore gladdened my heart for now. The following is the original paper which was written in June 2008.

It is senseless, indeed absurd, to try to solve scientific problems by a majority vote. Scientific problems can only be solved by scientific methods, this fact is incontestable. The humiliating tragedy of our present position as peddlers of primary raw materials on the world market in exchange for manufactured goods after fifty-one years of independence is totally 

unacceptable, and therefore constitutes a spectacular proof of the futility of attempts to solve scientific problems by a majority vote. However, mistakes can be instructive if they are discovered in time and if their causes are analyzed carefully.

For some time now, governments of Ghana have been operating with a wrong concept of development. This development policy began around 1978 after General Kutu Acheampong was ousted from power, and continued to this day. It involved the opening up of the country for foreign investment in the extractive industries without the corresponding development of the country’s scientific and technological infrastructure that would enable us to transform such resources into finished products for worldwide distribution.

KNOWLEDGE BASED ECONOMY

It remains impossible to become a player in the knowledge based global economy of the twenty-first century with this kind of thoughtless misuse of the country’s natural resources. I am very sorry that I have to use this kind of expression which clearly demonstrates my frustration about the situation in this country of our birth. It is an unfortunate necessity. That seems to be the only way by which the gravity and the inevitable catastrophic consequences which this situation entails can be brought home to our policy makers.

Another area of grave concern is the so-called Information and Communication Technology (ICT) programme. Our present approach to this programme has made us just a market and dumping ground for foreign computer manufacturers.

We should have taken major steps by now in accelerating the development of electronic and microelectronic industries which will provide the real technological base for any ICT programme. At the moment, no government agency is interested in the knowledge of building the computers that are used in the Information and Communication Technology training programme. The development of electronic and micro-electronic industries which are the key to any modern industrial development are not parts of our areas of interest.

A BIG JOKE

What is happening in our country now is a big joke and a complete waste of time. Even, General Kutu Acheampong, whose administration has been accused of economic crimes of various descriptions, recognized the need for a state- of- the- art telecommunication infrastructure, and took the necessary steps to build the Earth Satellite Station some thirty years ago.

DEVELOPMENT OF MICROELECTRONIC INDUSTRY

Not only that, but also a plan was well advanced to transform the  Electronic Division of GIHOC, at Tema, known as Akasanoma, into a full scale Electronic Industry, and to begin a very serious development of Integrated Circuits. The term integrated circuit (IC) implies a union of components which form a structurally integral device, designed to perform  more complex functions than those assigned to  isolated components.

The inseparably associated and electrically interconnected components that make up an IC are called integrated ( circuit) elements. They show certain features which distinguish them from conventional transistors or resistors fabricated as structurally individual elements and interconnected by soldering to form a circuit. 

I said “even General Kutu Acheampong”, because there was a time in the history of this country when it was almost treasonable to say anything good about him.  In addition, there was also a stigma attached to people who were said to have either worked with him or have been closely associated with him. People now, with some great reluctance, accept and praise his agricultural programme during the early years of his administration, known as the Operation Feed Yourself programme, but for reasons still to be discovered, the development of high technology which is the most important programme that would have ensured the country’s  economic might and viability, which he was  pursuing under “lock and key” have never been mentioned by anybody anywhere to this day, not even by our  Intelligence Services Chiefs.  Does this  mean that they too did not notice what was going on? Whatever the reason, we must also realize that economic power does not come by itself. It is now contingent upon technological power, and that he who controls technology, also controls economic power.

What I want to put across is that the Operation Feed Yourself programme was just one aspect of a huge and comprehensive programme that was meant to prepare the entire country for automation. Because facts available to us clearly indicated that  automatization of industry was and  is still the call of the day. Experts single out two main trends in machine building – creation of automatic lines, including rotor-based ones, and flexible automated processes ( FAPs). The latter are a response to the growing worldwide tendency to rapidly change the type of production. Serviceable equipment should be readily re-adjustable, in other words the automated process must acquire flexibility. But this aspect of the programme did not register and has still not registered on the radar screen of most of our so-called economic experts.

Acheampong had an unprecedented opportunity to make this country great and prosperous once again. At the same time, the problems he faced were unprecedented in their complexity. The top of these problems was the question of legitimacy, which made it possible for his political opponents led by the elitist organizations such as the Professional Bodies Association and others to try to organize parts of the country’s population against his government. However, when it comes to putting Ghana on the high road of advanced technology after Kwame Nkrumah, it was clearly General Kutu Acheampong. No other leader of this country could come any closer. He was the only leader since 1966 who was prepared to bring Kwame Nkrumah’s industrialization programme to the highest level attained by modern science and technology. 

It was also the period during which Japan caught Europe and America asleep and drove past them in key areas of high technology. The contemptuous attitude of a large section of the intellectual elite in the country towards General Acheampong in particular greatly helped to keep public attention away from what we were doing. Apart from Mr. Kwasi Amoako-Atta, who was clearly visible, those operating on the high technology aspect of the programme were completely hidden from the public. 

Acheampong’s programme, if it were not abandoned after his overthrow in 1978, could have taken Ghana into space on the 50^th anniversary of its independence.

Acheampong’s main aim was to use automation and other branches of high technology to pull the country from poverty onto a high level of economic prosperity before the world would wake up to know what was happening in Ghana.

INDIA

India in 1982, drew up a 10-year plan for the development of its micro-electronic industry, with emphasis on the training of competent personnel and the study and development of large scale integrated circuits. By 1992, that was exactly ten years after the programme started, it become a space power. Today, India is a telecommunication superpower. It has also become a knowledge superpower, which has managed to skip the intermediate step of industrial development that has preceded other nations’ march into the Information Age.

 Large scale integrated circuits are used for developing new generations of computers and are based on crystals artificially grown in definite conditions; physical instruments capable of withstanding the influence of aggressive environments, penetrating radiation, high temperatures and pressures, which include heat-proof single crystals; The rapid development of  laser technology, non-linear optics and other modern lines in science and technology was made possible by the growth of large crystals with remarkable optical properties.

Since microelectronics continues to advance with huge strides, many specialists now recognize that keeping up to date is becoming more and more difficult. To make the best of the integrated circuits, development engineers must possess the latest knowledge and master new techniques of designing with ICs.

Microelectronics as a logical extension of electronics is distinguished for organic unity of its physical, technological, and circuitry aspects. For this reason, it is hardly possible to expect creative development of integrated circuits relying, for example, only on the effort of “classical” engineers concerned with designing individual semiconductor devices but not having the background in micro-circuitry.

Also, the effort of “classical” circuit design engineers alone is not enough for further advancement. An engineer engaged in microelectronics must equally well know the basics of microelectronic physics, technology, and micro-circuitry. Only with this background can he specialize in any branch of microelectronics.

If some three decades ago, we had already built an Earth Satellite Station, and were taking the necessary steps to establish a full scale microelectronic industry, and had continued with this programme, Ghana would certainly have been a different country by now. Here, I am  not even referring to Nkrumah’s period, but Acheampong’s period, because all what I mentioned happened  during Acheampong’s period. 

THE LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT

At that time  we were far ahead in the level of scientific and technological development of some of the countries which are now referred to as the four tiger club of Asia. By 1965, Ghana was more developed scientifically and technologically than some of the countries in the far East which have now attained the status of economic tigers.

According to Professor Peter F. Druker of Claremont Graduate School in the USA, in 1958 when the Korean conflict ended, the Republic of Korea was even more devastated than Japan had been in 1945. The country had no industry at all and almost no trained and educated people. Hong Kong until the 160s was a trading port without industries. Singapore was little more than a British naval base. And Taiwan had little except a few plantation that supplied the country’s colonial masters, the Japanese with high sugars. See Economic impact: Global challenges of the 1990s 1990/ 1 page 74.

Acheampong  regarded the development of high technology as the most important step to ensure the country’s economic might and viability, but managed to make his opponents look elsewhere. The fact that they seriously underrated his intellectual ability made it possible for him to keep his real development aim from the light of day. Because nobody really credited him with such intentions and capabilities. 

The role of electronics in the development of modern science and technology can scarcely be overestimated. Electronics is by right considered a catalyst of scientific and technical progress. A country that imports most of its electronic equipment is in danger of ceasing to be part of modern civilization.

Progress in electronics has also been a big help to cybernetics – the science and technology concerned with the study of control and information flows in artificial and natural systems, and  has  also served  as a basis of high-speed electronic computers.

INTEREST IN HIGH TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

 Acheampong was deeply interested in the development of high technology, but certainly not to the level of Nkrumah. He also wanted to keep the development of that programme from the light of day. At a meeting  in his office at the Ministry of Defence with Dr E. M. Boye and two other electronic engineers, we clearly saw even at that time,  that information technology had already become an indispensable infrastructure to modern industrial countries, and that any nation showing indifference to the study and development of new technology was only relinquishing its right to become a modern industrial power.

Dr Boye was a top class Electronic Engineer and the General Manager of the Electronic Division of GIHOC. He was very much committed to helping to put the country on the electronic map of the world, and for this he paid a heavy price. The conspiracy to keep Ghana away from the high road of advanced technology was still very strong, and with the exit of General Acheampong from power, he no longer had the necessary protection and support for that kind of undertaking. In fact, his capabilities were brought to our attention after he began to have problems with the Board of Akasanoma, a company of which he was the General Manager.

General Acheampong did not order Dr Boye’s reinstatement as the General Manager of Akasanma, because he thought such a move would have exposed him and attracted public attention to the purpose for which he was going to use him as the main pillar for the development of electronic industry in Ghana, when the programme itself was supposed to be kept from the light of day.

While the industrial dispute at Akasanoma continued, two main problems requiring urgent and practical solutions engaged the attention of General Acheampong at that time. The first was the persistent inability of Firestone Company, engaged in vehicles tyres production to satisfy the local market, and the second was how to be self-sufficient in sugar production in Ghana, having already convinced ourselves of our ability to produce enough rice to feed the whole population of the country.

CAPTAIN AKUFFO

This is where I will always remember the late Captain Akuffo, one of the most outstanding nationalists and patriots I ever came across in the Ghana Armed Forces. Captain Akuffo was one of very few people who knew of the real development programme which for certain reasons was not put on paper. The plan involving the development of high technology was not put on paper. He was the Comptroller of Government Houses at the State Protocol Office during the early years of the NRC rule. He was later seconded to the Firestone factory at Bonsaso in the Western Region. 

ACHEAMPONG’S FRUSTRATION

When he heard about General Acheampong’s frustration  on the vehicles tyres supply situation and what he was planning to do about it, he sent for me to visit him at the factory. I spent two days at their guest house during which I had sufficient briefing on the production level, production capacity of the factory itself, and what could be done to meet the whole country’s requirement.

But that was not the end of the story. I was also taken to the factory of the Ghana Rubber Estate to meet the General Manager, who was in-charge  of the place. He was a Hungarian American engineer who could best be described as a walking encyclopeadia on the industrial uses of natural rubber.

 The first thing I learnt from him was that natural rubber is a strategic raw material. It is also a stock for war, and that is why Japan had to capture Malaysia first at the very beginning of the Second World War, and the Russians who do not have the geographical possibility of producing it, were the first to produce artificial crude rubber in 1926, because it is grown only in the tropical rain forest.

The major commercial source of natural rubber latex is the  Para rubber tree. Hevea brasiliensis (Euphorbiaceae). Other plants containing latex include figs ( Ficus elastica ) castilla, euphorbia. Germany attempted to use such sources during the Second World War when it was cut off from rubber supplies. These attempts were later supplanted by the development of synthetic rubber.

After listening to him for two solid hours, I and Captain Akuffo agreed that he would be of immense use to the country in our programme and therefore should be invited to meet the Head of State in Accra. But he told us that his employers would put him on board the next available plane if they ever got to know about this plan.

So, It was decided that he and his family should come down to Accra to spend a weekend at the Firestone Guest House near the Special Branch Headquarters, so that on Monday morning before their departure for the Western Region, he would be picked up to the Ministry of Defence  Office of the Head of State, and that was exactly what we deed. So here he was sort of, smuggled to meet the Head of State, and after one full hour meeting, General Acheampong was so impressed that he requested that the man be brought back another day for further discussion.

 THE SUGAR PRODUCTION

Now on the sugar production, his plan to bring down Cuban technical and agricultural experts to help in modernizing the two sugar factories at Asutuare and Komenda, and to guarantee their raw material supply, as a part of the Operation Feed Your Industries programme, leaked out before it could be implemented. This led to a rumor  to the effect that he was bringing down Cuban soldiers to take over the Police Armored Unit in order to help him perpetuate his rule. I was shocked when I heard this, because to the best of my knowledge of him, he was never the type of person who would use foreign troops for his protection, and that could be one of the reasons why he remained at the Arakan Baracks throughout the period he was in power. It is  not clear whether this was one of the real reasons for his overthrow, and why the Police Armored Unit became a target of the SMC 2, after his overthrow.

TRAINING OF TALENTS

Some few years later, that was in the beginning of the 1980s, it was discovered  that as knowledge was increasingly becoming a key factor in a country’s productivity, competitiveness and economic results, various countries had already begun to vastly boost their investment in their population’s intellectual development, putting the training of new talent high on the agenda as a measure to meet what was then known as a “serious challenge”.

It was at that time that South Korea saw the need to close her computer and the entire electronic industry to foreign investment and began to develop her own home grown  Research and Development.

This shows that there is always a considerable degree of secrecy around the development of any new technology by every country in the world. For example, scientists had been working on the Atomic Bomb for three years by 1945. Almost nobody else, except the president of the United States of America, knew about this work. The secret effort to build a nuclear weapon was called the Manhattan Project. Ghana now needs a Manhattan Project, not for development of nuclear weapon. But for a major scientific and technological breakthrough.

THE GENESIS

With several vehicles assembly plants in the country, and also in consideration of the fact that the Operation Feed Yoursef programme was going to move into its second stage to be known as Operation Feed Your Industries, it became clear that proper industrial development could not take place without metals.

Upon the instruction of General Acheampong, I invited the following distinguished personalities some of whom are still alive, to a meeting to discuss the possibility of providing the country with iron and steel industry. They were: Dr Kofi Sam, General Manager of Tema Steel Works, Mr H.N. O. Kwao, Mechanical Engineer and Head of Research at the Bank of Ghana. Dr Ivan Addae-Mensah of the University of Ghana, and Dr Owusu Bempah of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission.

THE NEED FOR A CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

We were also to examine the possibility of establishing a chemical industry in the country, to provide the material base for the development of chemical science in Ghana.  Chemistry plays an exceedingly important role in modern life, especially in man’s industrial activities. It is difficult to find a branch of industry not connected with the use of chemistry. To be able to chemically process natural materials, we must know the general laws of transformation of substances, and it is exactly chemistry that gives us this knowledge.

The development of the chemical industry is one of the most important conditions for technical progress. The use of chemical materials makes it possible to increase the quantity of products manufactured and improve their quality.

Our meeting place was the OAU Lounge at the Airport.

The result of this meeting was the invitation and the appointment of Dr R.P.Baffour to develop the Integrated Iron and Steel Industry at Oppon Manse in the Western Region.

 A NATIONAL THINK TANK

The more permanent think tank meeting place was being prepared at the Peduase Lodge, completely outside public view. Dr Boye, the then General Manager of the Electronic Division of GIHOC, was given the responsibility to compile the list of members. According to the directive, the list should also include a few military officers with technical background. I saw Brigadier Mensah-Brown’s name on the list and was later told that he and Dr Boye were both Lecturers at the Engineering Faculty at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. I also saw the name of Professor Phillips of the University of Ghana Medical School, and a few others.

The team was to meet for the whole day on every Saturday, starting from the first Saturday of August 1978. They were to be fed at the place and also to be provided with coupons for fuel, but no money was to be paid to them. This was because almost all the people on the list were already working in the various areas of the Public Service who saw their invitation by the Head of State to be part of a nucleus of a  National Strategic Industrial  Planning Body or a Think Tank as an honour.

POWER SUPPLY TO THE IRON AND STEEL PROJECT.

When it became known that the VRA would not be able to supply the 130MW of power required by the Integrated Iron and Steel Project, General Acheampong immediately called for a systemstic implementation of the entire electrification  programme of Dr Kwame Nkrumah. That programme talked of electrification of the whole country. He said: “ without abundant electric power, large scale industrialization such as we envisaged was impossible”. Electric power supply is a decisive factor in the development of any modern economy. It is one of the principal indices of economic development of a country and reflects the total state of its productive forces. Without power supply it will be impossible to transform the enormous natural resources of the country by modern technology for world wide distribution.

For this reason, it was planned to build five hydroelectric power stations at Akosombo, Bui, Kpong and one each on the Ankobra and the Tano rivers. There was also a future plan to build at least one nuclear power and one thermal power stations.

Under this electrification programme, it was clearly understood that modern economic development programme based on the latest scientific and technological achievements requires very high electric power station reliability, because interruption in power supply not only affects the industries it serves, but also impaires  the efficiency of the station itself.

To solve this problem, these separate stations were to be integrated into power systems to ensure continued supply and reduce the generating capacity reserve per unit. Integration of separate systems represents a higher stage in scientific and technological development in power engineering. Because such integration would ensure rational distribution of loads and the switching of surplus capacity into free channels which makes it possible at any moment to resist the elemental force of electric flooding.

THE JAPANESE’ METHOD OF PRODUCTION

Acheampong was keenly interested in the Japanese method of development, and how that country was running her industries. Information available to us at that time so far indicated that, in 1970 Japan had 6000 electronic computers, Britain had 5000, West Germany had 6500, and the USA had 70,000. But the effectiveness of the way they were employed was not determined solely by their number or quality. Job organization was also very important. Its job organization was based on a clear knowledge of how to unite computers in a system of automation and to concentrate their intellectual  power on the most important front of the economy.

The speed and memory capacity of modern electronic computers have brought qualitative changes in the intellectual work and extended the creative power of man. Computers completely transformed Japanese industry and transport. They now have a universal impact on both production and management.

So that here, Japan made it not through primitive manual labour, but through automation. It employed the latest and the most advanced methods of production. In Japanese manufacturing industry at that time, for example, plant was renovated at a rate of 20% per annum, so that its average age was not high, somewhere around five or six years. Such a forced rejuvenation of the stock of machines according to the  report was naturally not cheap, but production repaid the generosity a hundred fold.

Armed with this information, general Acheampong demanded and  obtained from the Ministry of Industry, the list of the state owned manufacturing industries as well as their upgrading or modernization programme from their respective managements. He had already begun to take the necessary major steps to prepare the country for automation.

DEVELOPMENT OF ALLUMINUM INDUSTRY

We also realized the urgent need to develop the alluminium industry. Apart from the fact that alluminium is the forth best metallic conductor of electricity in the world after silver, copper and gold, it is also a metal of the twenty-first century. Because it has corrosion resistant capability, and it is also lighter. This explains why General Acheampong invited the Russians to carry out the feasibility study for the development of Integrated Alluminium Industry at Nyinahin in the Ashanti Region, and the Kibi Bauxite Project in the Eastern Region.

THE ECONOMISTS IN THIS COUNTRY

The economists and some other social scientists in this country are too quick to condemn development programmes of past governments without subjecting such programmes to proper scientific analysis. They most of the time think that they have the  monopoly of knowledge and thereby exaggerate their understanding of what should constitute proper development programme of this country.

What they need to understand is that science and technology comprise the foundation of modern civilization, and will continue to determine its future, and therefore any economic development programme that does not lay emphasis on the development of science and technology is a complete waste of time. For this reason, I would suggest that parties to an argument should not exceed their level of competence. 

As we can see, the emphasis of science and technology aspects have been absent from our development programmes since 1978, and the result of this situation has been the systematic undermining and the destruction of the state’s ability to provide for its citizens, with the consequential proliferation of NGOs in our society, all pretending to be doing what the state has supposedly failed to do for her citizens.

A country that has a comprehensive development programme does not need such number of NGOs. We must here distinguish between civil society organizations, and human rights advocates, which are the real embodiment of National Sovereignty, and NGOs some of which could simply be described as intelligence gathering organizations for foreign governments. 

Any government of Ghana which tries to engage in the development of science and technology has always been a target of subversion by the Western industrialized countries. The examples are Nkrumah and Acheampong. The so-called donor community shape policies in African countries in favour of businesses of their respective home countries. The reason for this is to prevent them from becoming industrialized and thereby developing the capability to compete with them on the world market with manufactured goods. That is why they make every effort to prevent their technological advancement, by discrediting and finally removing from power, African leaders with the propensity for technological advancement.

Incidentally, all the African governments that are praised by the Western countries, are not the governments that are involved in a serious development of high technology. An African government can shout all the revolutionary or communist slogans in the world, but it will still not be considered a threat or be taken seriously, until it begins to take a credible step for the development of high technology.

DR GEORGE AKOSA

During the NDC period, one Dr George Akosa, who was the Minister of Industries, Science and Technology, drew up a comprehensive scientific and technological development programme with the CSIR and the other scientific institutions under his ministry. That was the closest Ghana had been to a restoration to the path of real development since 1978. However, before the implementation of this programme could start, Dr Akosa was removed as the Industry Minister, and that wonderful programme was never mentioned again. Dr Akosa is certainly a huge asset of this country and it is unfortunate that he did not come to our notice during Acheampong’s time. People like him do not lobby for post, and you have to look seriously for them. But this was how another opportunity to make this country great once again was thrown away in a manner that is still very difficult to comprehend. 

A GREAT TRAGEDY

What is happening now is a real tragedy to the superlative degree. It is difficult to comprehend how a country like Ghana, with such a  level of scientific manpower could be reduced to this level of underdevelopment. One of the most visible manifestations of this situation is the number of people with scientific and technical background who had gone back to school to read Law, instead of deepening their understanding of the physical world and participating in the efforts to change it for the benefit of society. It is clearly an indication of something very serious about our country. It also means that the state has abandoned its responsibility to provide the very necessary leadership in this direction.

This is not to say that legal education is not important. In fact, lawyers are needed in every area of society, including the development and implementation of scientific and technological programmes. Here, the law can be used to protect society from incompetent application of new technology. But this must not be done at the expense of the development of technology itself.

INCORPORATION OF SCIENCE IN NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS.

Science has not been incorporated in the national plan system to the degree it should have been, as an inseparable component, without which it is impossible to elaborate and implement the socioeconomic policy in the broadest sense of the word. As a consequence, the social status of science and the prestige of scientific work have rapidly declined for the second time in the history of this country.

The first time this happened was after the overthrow of the CPP government in 1966, when a considerable number of scientific and industrial projects were closed down, the training of scientific personnel suspended, and a number of scholarships of students sent to the Eastern European countries were withdrawn.

This means that as the kind of scientific and technical infrastructure that could have created the high demands for their technical expertise were abandoned, the situation created also led to the devaluation of their importance. This means, we have hastened the country’s decline because we have continued to ignore the need to invest in our future since 1978.

I said in my pamphlet entitled: “Document for Change”, published just before the 2000 elections, and here I quote: “The reason why we cannot pay a living wage is because of the primitive scientific and technical base of our country’s economy. Our scientific and technical development have not kept pace with our tastes because we destroyed the principal pillars of our technological advancement in 1966. We now have twenty-first century tastes, lifestyle and expectation without the corresponding technical capability. It is important to understand this simple mathematical fact.” 

I still stand by this statement, and in my opinion, any politician who thinks otherwise is not serious, and should not be allowed the chance to prolong the agony of our people.

SCIENCE

Science is the most forward outpost of human society, the scout of the future and the most reliable defender of the present. In science, we cannot start from where the developed 

countries began. We can only join them at the point they have reached. This is what I want my beloved countrymen and women to understand. With the proper application of science, it is possible to tackle problems of any degree of complexity.

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, 1711-1765, one of the greatest scientists the world has ever produced, put it this way, and here I quote: “Sciences bring all the affairs of men to the pinnacle of perfection, and once the people have been instructed in sciences their well-being is assured’.

June 2008

Peter Amponsah

Tel: 0302- 232034/ 0244310701.

E-mail: cwsi2008@gmail.com

Development means Education

Children in a classroom

By Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

The answer to the world's problems today lies not in deployment of troops and military hardware, not in strafing civilian structures so that contracts can be handed out among cronies, not in choosing a defenceless victim to destroy to create jobs at home, but rather, in development. And this means education.

And when we speak about education, we are speaking about gender equality because if we wish to describe our societies as progressive and inclusive, which work against marginalization and exclusion, then gender equality has to mean more than one pat-on-the-back, jump-on-the-bandwagon day in a year (International Women's Day, March 8). Only by including women in our societies, from the earliest stage - primary education - can we achieve sustainable development through the empowerment of women and gender equality policies.

However, in today's world, in the year 2013, barriers continue to exist, preventing women from having the same access as men to resources, rights, endowments and opportunities. In most countries, women are less likely than men to participate in the labor market; the percentage of female to male enrolment in primary and secondary education remains unequal. In some regions, the participation rates for males in the labor market exceed women's by over 50 per cent; women are more like to be engaged in vulnerable jobs; worldwide, the participation of women in the labor market, compared to men, is 68%.

In a word, inequality. It starts at the beginning (primary education) and carries on right through the active professional period into old age. Women are less likely to receive an education, up to seventy per cent in some regions suffer some form of abuse, they are more likely to be victims of harassment, they are more likely to have dangerous jobs, they are more likely to be victims of human trafficking, they are more likely to be asked at the job interview "you aren't planning on having a family, ARE you?"

The good news is that statistics are improving but there remains far more to be done. A further positive step was taken this week at the Global Consultation on Education in the Post-2015 Development Agenda (March 18, in Dakar, Senegal), which commits itself to two fundamental principles:

Firstly, the right to quality education is a fundamental human right; secondly, education is envisaged as a public asset, therefore the State is the custodian of principles of education, paying attention to gender and social equality. In this way, we may yet achieve the Millennium Development Goals in 2015, under which six principles were drawn up by the initiative Education for All (EFA):

Goal 1
Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.

Goal 2
Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.

Goal 3
Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes.

Goal 4
Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.

Goal 5
Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.

Goal 6
Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

As usual, for every step taken forward, in other areas we slip back and UNESCO itself describes EFA as "an unfinished agenda" with millions of youths remaining illiterate, children out of school, drop-rates and learning difficulties soaring and the ensuing marginalization rates remaining high in many societies.

For the post-2015 agenda, UNESCO defends four basic principles, namely:

1. Concern for peace and sustainable development should be at the centre of efforts to promote inclusive and equitable development beyond 2015. Education for global citizenship is already included in many countries' curricula - but it needs to become a measureable goal.

2. Any post-2015 development framework must be of universal relevance and mobilize all countries, regardless of their -development status, around a common framework of goals aimed at inclusive and sustainable development.

3. The link between education and other development sectors must be strengthened: Education is an enabler for reaching all the Millennium Development Goals, but it is also dependent on progress in other policy areas.

4. A framework for learning in the 21st century must be elaborated that promotes the development of inclusive lifelong learning systems. 

By concentrating on education as a key driver towards sustainable development, insisting that gender equality be a reality and not a distant chimera, will our societies achieve the required levels of development to surpass our tremendous problems. Let us be honest: would so many men be killing each other and destroying infrastructures with weapons if more women were in positions of responsibility?

If not, then why are there only around 20% of women represented in national Parliaments?

Sources: UNO Millennium Development Goals

UNESCO Education for All

World Bank

Crimes

Hussein Obama and his mentor George Bush

 By David Swanson

"Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin."

I do assess with varying degrees of horror (some of the varying degrees rather high even) that a lot of people are going to die. And how dare they die from chemical weapons when they should be dying from hellfire missiles and cluster bombs and napalm and depleted uranium and white phosphorous. We have a responsibility to protect these people from dying of the wrong type of weapon and in too small numbers.

I'm in Dallas protesting the rehabilitation of our last criminal president because of the precedents he set for our current criminal president. So, precedents are on my mind. One precedent for an illegal humanitarian NATO war on Syria is, of course, the illegal humanitarian war on Libya two years ago. And the pair of precedents (Libya and Syria) will put the target of the neocon/neoliberal cooperative war project squarely on Iran.

Syria will suffer, of course. There will be no more an example of a humanitarian war that actually benefitted humanity after Syria than before. The precedent will not be one of having accomplished something, but of having gotten away with something.

For some truly illuminating background on what was done to Libya, and some relevant discussion of what awaits Syria (if we don't prevent it), I recommend Francis Boyle's new book, Destroying Libya and World Order.

Boyle served as a lawyer for the government of Libya repeatedly, over a period of decades, more than once successfully preventing a military assault by the United States and the United Kingdom. Boyle details the aggression toward Libya of the Reagan administration: the lies and false accusations, the sanctions, the provocations, the assassination attempts, the infiltration, the blatant disregard for international law.

Boyle's history brings us up to and through the 2011 assault, and traces its precedents to a very similar war over a decade earlier in Bosnia.

Boyle finds the unconstitutional and illegal assault on Libya a clear impeachable offense for President Obama. And why would we think otherwise? Only because we let Clinton and Bush get away with everything they got away with. It would seem unfair now to impeach Obama for a crime his predecessors committed as well.

But past, as well as current, presidents can be impeached, censured, prosecuted, and/or publicly shamed. Five of them came to Dallas today; there shouldn't be any trouble finding them. And the criminal attack on Libya can be treated as the crime it was. The excuse of protection was used to quite openly pursue the overthrow of a nation's government, bombing large numbers of civilians in the process, while arming brutal thugs and creating predictable blowback in neighboring nations as well.

In contrast, in Bahrain, nonviolent pro-democracy activists are left to their own devices as a U.S.-backed dictatorship jails, tortures, and murders them.

In Syria, the United States has worked against peace and for violence. That violence is not a justification for further and heightened violence. And every member of an intelligence "community" that announces that Syria might possibly have used a chemical weapon should be doing community service for the people of Fallujah and Basra and Baghdad, not prodding the world's only stupor power into another genocide.  

Israeli spies questioned assassinations 

An Israeli spy

Israeli spies questioned assassinations in disguised operations - When Dror Moreh finished filming more than 70 hours of interviews with six former heads of the shadowy Israeli intelligence agency, Shin Bet, the director knew he had "dynamite in his hands."

The result, "The Gatekeepers," a documentary of 97 minutes which just premiered in the UK, is really explosive. The Oscar-nominated film had crowded audiences in Israel, many of which were surprised at what they had seen and heard.

"I thought if we could all [six] speak openly about our experience in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would create a shock wave," Moreh said to the Observer. "I was right - it created a huge storm."

The memories and reflections of former heads weave a narrative of the absorbing activities of Shin Bet in the 46 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

But the biggest blow comes from its findings. "We are making life unbearable," says Carmi Gillon, "We have become cruel," says Avraham Shalom, "You cannot make peace using military means," says Avi Dichter, "We won every battle but lost the war," says Ami Ayalon.

"I was surprised by the degree to which they think that way," said Moreh. "Everyone is saying it's just the occupation. They say it is not easy to reach a solution, but all say it is in the best interest of Israel to try.."

It is the first time that the six men, who directed intelligence operations of Israel in the Palestinian territories for almost 30 years, gave interviews. Much of the power of the film comes from its accumulated testimony," the power of six is ​​greater than the force of one," according to Moreh.

The film begins with recordings, allegedly made on an Israeli military aircraft or drone, a targeted assassination. A Palestinian vehicle is screened before being destroyed in an explosion. The urgent issue, says Yuval Diskin, is "to do it or not to do it. There doing it seems easier, but it is often more difficult."

Later, the film dissects the assassination of Yahya Ayyash, the Hamas bomb-maker known as the Engineer, who has been behind several suicide bombings in the early 1990s, and for remotely detonated explosives hidden in a mobile phone while the militant spoke with his elderly father.

The security chiefs also discuss qualms about approving transactions that may result in the death of family members or innocent bystanders.

Sometimes, says Diskin, "an operation is simple. No one is hurt except the terrorists. Even then, later in life for - in the evening when you're shaving, we all have our moments, even on holidays. You say, 'Okay, I made a decision and X number of people were killed. They were definitely about to launch a major attack and anyone near them was wounded.  It was the as sterile as possible.'  But you still say: 'There is something unnatural about it.' What is unnatural is the power you have ... to take their lives in an instant."

On original recordings and computer-generated sequences, the former spy chief describes methods of control of the Palestinian population, obtaining information, interrogation techniques and Jewish extremism. The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish gunman opposed to the peace process is remembered as a major crisis for the Shin Bet.

Gillon, who was the head of the security service at the time, describes how he managed to accept the failure of the agency to protect the political leader of the country. He offered his resignation after consulting his wife. She was just "trying to keep me alive," he says.

Another crisis, the hijacking of the "Air Bus 030" in 1984, ended with two Palestinian militants beaten to death in the custody of Shin Bet. Shalom, who was in charge at the time, was initially reluctant to discuss the case, saying he did not remember the details of the episode that forced him to resign.

Then, in a cold, detached manner he says: "They were almost dead. So I said: 'Hit them again and get it over with.' I think the guy picked up a stone and hit them in their heads." He admits he was party to "a lynching", but adds: "In the war against terrorism, forget morality."

Asked how he convinced the six to participate in the film, Moreh said he did not tell them in advance what the message would be "because I did not know what it would be. I just said I wanted to tell the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the point of view of people who have experience in making decisions. No one could say they did not know what they are talking about. And I think they understood why the position as chief of the Shin Bet, is important."

There is no narration in the film, only the voices of six men with occasional questions from Moreh. "I came to listen to them, and was very interested in what they had to say. It was very important for me to listen and just navigate these long conversations."

There were many interviews that lasted four to five hours, and most of them took place in the homes - "in their environment, in places where they feel safer, to make them feel at ease and allow them to open up."

They were not naive, says Moreh. "They understand the power of language, because the power of language, they have used it their whole lives."

After the film premiered in Israel, Moreh was accused of editing the material in a selective manner. Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's defense minister, told Army Radio: "What was presented here was really one-sided, and therefore the film is biased. Moreh caught snippets of interviews accusing him of presenting long stretches that served his narrative. "

Moreh, who described his personal political position as center-left, "but more to the center than left," rejected the claim. "One of the most important things was not taking the words of context, not to distort what they had to say about such delicate issues. And since the first screening of the film none of the six have said he distorted what they had to say. For some it was too hard. But the six strongly support the message of the film. "

However, should they have raised their voices earlier, when they were still in a position to influence policy? "They are professionals, have a duty to protect Israel. Politicians are not elected, but appointed officials. As such, they cannot criticize [decisions] policies in a democratic society. Those who are civil servants, when they think they should not do something, they should resign.

That's how they responded when I asked them why they did not say anything at the time like they are saying today."

Since leaving their positions, three of the six entered politics as members of the Israeli parliament. Ami Ayalon represented the Labour Party from 2006 to 2009, Avi Dichter party center-right Kadima 2006-2012. Yaakov Peri was elected in January to represent the centrist party Yesh Atid and is the current Minister of Science and Technology.

Near the end of "The Gatekeepers," Peri talks about recording an attack by Shin Bet on a Palestinian home. He describes operations where suspected militants are torn from their families terrified and in tears in the dead of night.

"Even when knowing the details of what people did, you feel some doubts," he suggests. So "when you leave the service," he adds with hesitation, "it is through the left."

To Diskin, the latest occupant of the office, Moreh quotes the words of the late Israeli intellectual, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, written shortly after the occupation began. "Mastering the Palestinians," said Leibowitz, "effectively transforms Israel into a police state, with all that that implies for education, freedom of thought and expression and democracy."

"I agree with every word," says the former head of the Shin Bet.

Translated from the Portuguese version by:

Lisa Karpova

Caught, Israel orchestrating world war  

Israeli Premiere Benjamin Nyetanyahu

 By Gordon Duff

The Israeli “security publication,” DEBKA, a key part of their “war through deception” campaign against the world, has now made it inexorably clear, Israel is putting into motion their “final solution,” a campaign to pit nation against nation.

The result, the planet a smoldering ruin, Israel ruling over the ashes and mass graves, is a foregone conclusion, at least to Netanyahu and his worldwide terrorist network.

DEBKA openly admits plans to move Israeli troops into Syria and Iraq, to “con” Turkey, Jordan and the Arab and Gulf States into a war intended to, not just destroy Iran and Pakistan but China and Russia as well, pitting them against NATO in the fatal Armageddon they and their followers believe will ensure Satan’s dominion over man.

Do people really think like that?

Yes, they actually do, the Zionists, the Neocons, and the Dominionists, a vast worldwide network of financial criminals, corrupt politicians and power-mad tyrants. In America, those now seeking to stage a military coup in the United States, submit to full Israeli control and lead the world into a new “dark age.”

Conspiracy theory? Of course, very much so, but not just a theory but plans long whispered now made clear, plans impossible to misconstrue.

Plans in motion

The plans are clear, an invasion of Syria, splitting the Kurdish region of Iraq off, into an Israeli controlled military bastion for an invasion of Iran. What isn’t being said, however, is that, in order to push the United States back to war after a decade of military and economic disasters, assassinations, false flag terror and a campaign of counterfeit WMD intelligence is planned.

The proposed moves, as outlined below and confirmed through DEBKA, would require the United States to return to “Bush era unilateralism,” moves unlikely if President Obama, Secretaries Kerry and Hagel and JCOS Chief, General Martin Dempsey were still alive, despite wild conspiratorial claims quoted below.

Softening up the Goyim

The American president is a likely assassination target. A new 9/11 style terror attack is a necessity, the groundwork already laid at Sandyhook and the Boston Marathon.

The preparations are already underway, with political and military division in the US being contrived, “sequestration,” threats of gun seizure and a planned economic crash, another “pump and dump.”

The terrorism is underway as seen in Boston, hoax articles outlining an imaginary 20,000 man US force to move into Syria as a “buffer” have been placed in American newspapers.

World conquest and planetary annihilation

In the Middle East, Israel is coordinating with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States along with Turkey, the Mossad supported Communist PKK terrorists in Turkey, key leaders in the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq, Al Qaeda led rebels and Druze militias inside Syria.

Syria and Iraq will be dismembered. Jordan has already fallen to Israel and their Al Qaeda allies, now Israel’s base of operations against not just Syria but Iraq as well.

From there, the move will be Iran, then Afghanistan and the Caspian Basin.

If China and Russia fail to recognize the threat in time and “go nuclear” to block this move against Asia, the planned attack on Pakistan, scheduled for a 2015-2017 time frame will bring about a world war.

Beginning with deception and cover

More stories have been planted, more hoaxes, describing an agreement allowing Israel to build an air base in Turkey to attack Iran. Turkey has failed to issue denials though such an act would label them a rogue state. They are playing a very dangerous game and can well expect the betrayal any “friend” of Israel suffers.
Turkey is fully “onboard,” cutting a deal with the Kurdish PKK, a first step toward joining Israel in a conquest of Northern Iraq. Israel has also promised Turkey an “occupation zone” comprising nearly a third of Syria.

Azerbaijan has long been steeped in Israeli/Turkish plots. They have been promised Iran’s Caspian oil reserves.

They actually put it in writing

Key to this is getting the United States to follow the plans DEBKA clearly outlines for them.

Issue 585, dated April 26, 2013 has laid out their startling plans beginning with a broad move into Syria. Israel has no plans to use its own troops, of course. Since their defeat in Lebanon in 2006, the IDF has been shown as capable of mass punishment and reprisals against unarmed civilians inside Israel and the occupied zones.

DEBKA’s “fairytale” is carefully coordinated with terror cells and death squads in the US, all working under the broad cover of America’s Israeli controlled press:

“On Friday, April 26, a few hours after this issue reaches DEBKA-Net-Weekly subscribers, Jordan's King Abdullah II will be sitting down at the White House with President Barack Obama. When they finish talking, they will shake hands on the exact date in the coming days for the consignment of 20,000 American troops to the Hashemite Kingdom.

Obama has ordered the biggest overt surge of US troops in six years in any Middle East country.

This air base will be home to the incoming American troops. US engineering corps units have been working 24/7 to expand the base, adapt it to its new functions and construct accommodation for the GIs.

Most of the contingents will be airlifted to their new base from US and Europe through Israeli air space, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's exclusive military sources.

Israeli Air Force jets will escort the transports over the eastern Mediterranean until they touch down in Jordan and keep an air umbrella in place over the American force for the duration of its stay.

The heavy equipment - tanks, missiles, self-propelled artillery, armored vehicles and Patriot missile intercept batteries - will be transported by sea to two destinations: Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba and the Israeli port of Haifa.

These arrangements were tied up by Defense Secretary Hagel in his talks this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.

In those conversations, our sources disclose, Israeli leaders offered every assistance, including air and intelligence resources, needed for preserving the Hashemite throne in Jordan, including support for the incoming US force. Netanyahu gave this pledge to King Abdullah on the four occasions that they met in Amman.”

The plans, quoted directly from the highest Israeli and Jordanian sources, could never be realized without an America crippled by powerful terrorist organizations like AIPAC, long above any law.

Current American doctrine prohibits any military action without, not only a UN Security Council resolution but a new National Intelligence Estimate. Previous “NIE’s” had found no evidence of nuclear programs in Iran. Similarly, current Israeli claims of WMD use by Syria were rejected by Washington this week.

Israel’s plans are clear. What is also clear is that many Americans will die to get Israel the war they want, the war that Zionism needs to survive.

What is also clear is that, in order to get that war, more Americans will die and that many have died already.