IGNORANCE OR WICKEDNESS?

The roasted foot

Asks Ekow Mensah

A 70 year old man has had his feet fully roasted in bizarre circumstances.

He lost consciousness a couple of months ago and his two nieces who look  after him decided that the best way of reviving him was to apply naked fire to his feet.

They burnt his feet for awhile but the oldman was still not waking up.

They made more fire and continued to apply it to his feet until it was completely roasted.

At this point, the two young women decided that the old man was dead and could not be helped.

They put him in a car and took him to a hospital where they asked that his dead body should be stored in the mortuary.

The doctors on duty refused. They tested his pulse and found that the old man was very much alive.

He was immediately put on drips and within 30 minutes he gained consciousness.

The names of the oldman and his nieces are being withheld at the instance of the larger family.

A family spokesperson, told “The Insight” that the matter has not been reported to the police because the nieces acted on the basis of ignorance rather than malice.

One of the women involved in roasting the oldman’s feet has four children and is extremely poor.

The oldman’s eldest son told “The Insight” “If I report her to the police, I will have to look after her four children and also find food for her in the cells.
 

“The most important thing for us now is how to find money to look after the oldman. We are all very poor people”.

The man’s roasted feet are now being treated with some strange herbs because the family cannot afford the hospital bill.

Can anybody help this poor old man?

Editorial

AMERICA AND MARKET FIRES

There have been mixed reactions to the announcement made by the President that his administration has invited the United States of America to help in the investigations into market fires in the country.

Opponents of the President and even some of his friends have said that the invitation smacks of the complex of inferiority which has undermined Africa’s development efforts since independence.

They rightly ask, if we need the USA to investigate market fires, then what would we need to investigate a nuclear disaster?

Others who appear to be so blindly loyal to the President say that the market fires are serious and that the Government needs to do anything and everything to get to the bottom of the matter.

For them, the invitation to the Americans is justified as a matter of desperation.

The Insight thinks that more than 50 years after the attainment of national independence, it is embarrassing to be rushing to all manner of countries for solutions to very simple problems.

Early this year, we rushed to Israel when the Melcom disaster occurred only to realise that the expertise for dealing with the problem was available locally.

Indeed, the Israeli squad achieved nothing on their propaganda foray into the country.

We are dismay by the suggestion that the US is invincible when it comes to intelligence and security.

 The point is that the security services in the United States of America have been unable to resolve many very simple criminal cases for many years.

The fixation that everything American works and everything Ghanaian fails is most unfortunate.

20 years of “The Insight”

A Reader’s Insight

Nana Kofi Coomson

I am one person who has followed “The Insight” from its very being and I have kept copies of the newspaper since its very first publication on September 3, 1993.

I recall the very first banner headline “Boakye Djan Is Coming” and the impact it made on the Ghanaian media circuit.

 Here was Boakye Djan who was spokesperson of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the best man at the wedding of Flt,Lt Jerry John Rawlings, his pal who had become his adversary. Boakye Djan had been accused of organsing to overthrow the PNDC and his coming back to Ghana in those days could only be seen as an act of extreme daring.

“The Weekly Insight” as the newspaper was then called was a major hit right from the beginning. We had been told that the publisher of the newspaper printed 16,000 copies of the first issue but it was very difficult to find the copy which I bought and still keep.

For those of us who are loyal readers of the newspaper, it is still extremely difficult to get our copies on a regular basis. As a fact the best time for finding copies on the newsstand is between 6.00am and 8.00am.

It seems to me that the newspaper is in very high demand and I cannot understand why the management is refusing to increase circulation beyond the 4,000 copies it prints today.

 My interest in The Insight has been sustained because I cannot find any other newspaper in Ghana which is clearly left oriented and focuses attention on international news and analysis.

For me “The Insight” is a very clear alternative to the Western media whose purpose is to belittle Africa and generally the third world. The Insight tells our story of struggle and victory.

Over the years, I have also come to realise that The Insight is at the very centre of the effort to promote the ideals and ideas of Osayefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, first President of the Republic of Ghana. No newspaper in recent times has done more than The Insight in defending the validity of Nkrumah’s actions and thought than my favourite newspaper.

The Insight grew in the allies of Kotobabi Down and finally appears to have settled on Kotoko Avenue in Kokomlemle, Accra. The paper still operates from rented premises and is technically challenged in many ways; I wish I may be in a position in the future to contribute to securing a permanent office for my best newspaper and help deal with its technical challenges.

On the occasion of the 20^th anniversary of The Insight, I feel duty bound to salute all those who helped to transform the dream into reality.

 Nana Kofi Coomson, Publisher of “The Chronicle” deserves special mention because his generosity was extremely important in the establishment of “The Weekly Insight”.

The early writers, Comrade Kpani, Eric Nsarkoh and his brother Yaw Nsarkoh, Ekow Yeboah, Maame Ama Otua Pratt.

We will continue to be loyal readers of The Insight in the hope that management will also continue to focus on the struggles of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America for social justice, peace and democracy.

Abena Nyarko

Kotobabi Down

Accra

The Cult of Power
 

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan

By Okey Ndibe
From all accounts, President Goodluck Jonathan and Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State are staring each other down. For months, the Nigerian press and blogosphere speculated that a feud simmered between the two men. Then Mr. Amaechi brought the whole messy deal out in the open by pointedly accusing the president of being after him.

After close to fifteen years of observing and writing about public affairs in Nigeria, I confess to a certain weariness about the predictable turn of Nigerian politics. It’s frequently about power for the sake of power. It’s seldom about issues or principles. It hardly has anything to do with the vital interests or legitimate aspirations of Nigerians.

In Governor Amaechi’s version of events, it would seem as if the feud with the president was triggered by a vestige of principle. According to the governor, he had incurred presidential wrath for insisting that fuel subsidy fraud be addressed seriously. Mr. Jonathan’s proxies have maintained the fiction that the president isn’t aware that he’s in a do-or-die fight with the Rivers governor.

News accounts insist that there’s a real state of war between both camps. And they suggest that it all has to do with 2015 elections. In other words, with power.

There’s little question now that Mr. Jonathan intends to seek reelection. From the look of things, Mr. Amaechi is far from enthusiastic about the president’s plans. In fact, there are speculations that he’s negotiating to be on a ticket to oppose Mr. Jonathan.

The Jonathan-Amaechi tiff exemplifies Nigerian politicians governing obsession: the relentless pursuit of power for its own sake. Hardly does one witness a commensurate interest in bettering society, in using power to make their immediate spaces more livable.

Neither Jonathan nor Amaechi has spelt out a plan for reforming Nigeria’s educational system, a chute that churns out more and more functional illiterates year after year. Neither man has articulated initiatives to create jobs in large numbers jobs that hundreds of thousands of unemployed graduates sorely need. If either man has a vision for tackling Nigeria’s climate of festering insecurity, or instituting a healthcare system worthy of human beings, or lifting Nigerians from the lowest rungs of global measurements of living standards, he has kept it a secret.

Read any Nigerian newspaper and the pages are dominated by news of one political quarrel or another. One day, the opposition consortium pledges to sweep the ruling PDP away come 2015. Another day, the PDP restates its determination to (mis)rule for another hundred years. Neither group respects Nigerians enough to factor them into the debate. Neither side takes Nigerians seriously enough to even sketch out a manifesto. No, we never get from any party or candidate a vision of where they propose to take us, much less a compass or road map for how to get to the destination.

Ask a Nigerian politician why s/he wants political power and you’re likely to get one of three predictable answers. One: To move the nation forward. Two: God/my pastor/my people asked me to come and serve. Three: To deliver the dividends of democracy. Sadly, nobody ever asks the follow-up question: What exactly does it mean to move the nation forward, to come and serve or to deliver the dividends of democracy ? My suspicion is that the first person who asks would get an incoherent stutter for an answer. Most Nigerian politicians would actually be shocked to learn that there’s more to political power than self-enrichment.

And the individual as well as collective record of Nigeria’s rulers (and one advisedly uses rulers rather than leaders) the record is dismal. More than fifty years after Nigeria attained flag Independence, its rulers president, governors and local government chairmen are still hard put to it to list any significant achievements. Yet, Nigeria with its myriad crises and developmental challenges is tailor-made for great leaders. Again and again, the space called Nigeria yearns for a set of visionary men and women to take up the task of founding a national community within it. Again and again, the call is ignored, the imperative abdicated in favor of self-aggrandized, self-inflated pursuits.

It all brings us back to the Jonathan-Amaechi face-off. I suspect that Mr. Jonathan and Mr. Amaechi are spending many hours in strategy sessions with their cohorts, hammering out maneuvers to out-duel the other. The ultimate victims are the Nigerian people. It is their business that is shunted to the side by their overpaid, under-thinking rulers. Their conditions become bleaker by the day; yet, those in the driver seat have the gear in reverse and on full speed!

If Nigerian rulers devoted some of their waking hours to meditating on ways of making Nigeria a country truly founded on the rule of law; if they thought deeply about raising their country to the level of some of the foreign nations where they, their families and coterie luxuriate; if they gave a thought to the habits of real leaders, not the ways of insatiable slave drivers  then Nigeria would look and feel like an address for dignified human beings.

Instead, Nigerian politicians invest the resources of time, money and mind in power-grasping schemes. To look into their brinksmanship is to discover how bereft of substance it is. No principle is in play except, of course, the dud principle that power is an end in itself.

Are there courageous men and women in Jonathan and Amaechi’s inner circles? If there are, they should remind their respective oga at the top that history casts a harsh eye on those who, handed opportunities to become leaders, choose instead to serve themselves and play savage power games.

Source:Ocnus.net 2013

A State of Confusion

By M.B.O Owolowo

State of Emergency or Emergency in a state? When an emergency isn't really an emergency.

President Jonathan declared a “State of Emergency” in Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states respectively, good! However his declaration doesn't affect the political appointees in the affected states. Some expected a situation where the executive is suspended and the military assumes command in the interim- as it is assumed 'force' is the best strategy to quell the insurgents for good. But the President has chosen an approach which many are keen to see its implementation, due to its perceived duality of powers.

State of Emergency explained:
 "A state of emergency is a governmental declaration which usually suspends a few normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale for suspending rights and freedoms, even if guaranteed under the constitution. Such declarations usually come during a time of natural or man made disaster, during periods of civil unrest, or following a declaration of war or situation of international or internal armed conflict."

To some of the President's critics the “State of Emergency” is a contradiction in terms, they are accused of never seeing anything good in whatever he does. To his supporters however, the declaration is long overdue, as they will defend anything he does- including special pardons and his “I don't give a damn” attitude.

Interestingly this isn't the first time Jonathan would declare a “State of Emergency”, in Yobe and Borno especially.
A State of Emergency was declared on 31 December 2011, in the North-Eastern (Yobe and Borno States) and North-Central (Plateau and Niger State) regions of the country.

Basically, another “State of Emergency” has been declared in the 'States' of Emergency. Evidently nothing was achieved by the previous declaration and we wonder what effect this latest declaration, however special, would have on the affected areas.

I wonder how the “amnesty” initiative fits into this bedlam.
An awkward development occurred while one of the accused Boko Haram members, Kabiru Sokoto appeared in court recently, according to his lawyer “Our client has confided in us that he never met with the Amnesty Committee. Even on the said date of the purported meeting, Kabiru Sokoto was before Justice Ademola Adeniyi.”
With this contradictory revelation, many are beginning to question the dynamics and authenticity of this amnesty programme.

As expected, some prominent figures are questioning the rationale behind this declaration and wonder why Nassarawa and Bayelsa States weren't including on the declaration list- considering a significant number of police officers have been murdered by militia in those states.

Nigeria is probably at its most fragile ebb and whatever decisions the President takes affects lives. To those in the affected regions, the hardship continues. Overtime numerous lives have been lost: the police, the JTF and civilians, they are all Nigerians, so from that perspective, we are killing ourselves.

The President is meant to be the Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and is responsible for security of the nation. President Jonathan hasn't really impressed majority of the citizenry on security, we fervently hope he can get a grip on the nations security challenges.
Some may applaud this move as firm and decisive, as some would dismiss it as political rhetoric and strategising towards the next elections. Whatever it is, we want a stop to the wasting of innocent lives and our richly diverse human resources.

As the confusion on the State of Emergency continues, we hope we aren't left more confused than we were about the state of affairs, before the declaration: a State of Confusion!

Labour Movements And The Politics Of Globalisation

Ghana TUC Secretary General Kofi Asamoah and President John Mahama

By Dr Gary K. Busch

One of the most important effects of the current economic retraction of Western markets has been the dramatic consequences of this decline on the national and international labour movements. The reduction of the ability of the labour movements to maintain and improve the economic conditions of working people has been a major factor in the segregation of the economy between plutocratic top managers and the remaining number of workers in full-time employment. 

This gap between their rates of remuneration has widened on a logarithmic basis in the last twenty years. The AFL-CIO’s average CEO-to-worker multiple at big U.S. companies is 357; the average of the top 100 companies is 495.[i] That is, the CEOs of the companies averaged 495 times the income of nonsupervisory workers in their industries.

The poor remain poor but the rich get ever richer. The moderating influence of labour in controlling this excess is constrained by the fundamental change is the nature of wealth in the West, where financial management and banking chicanery has largely replaced giant manufacturing industries as the source of the nation’s wealth; or at least its cash. Organising white collar workers is difficult enough; organising computer screens is even more difficult. 

The spread of globalisation has meant the export of manufacturing jobs to the emerging and frontier markets, leaving management and service jobs as the main concentrations of employment. Many of the largest industrial unions have shrunken to a mere fraction of their post war membership numbers, losing political and economic power with that loss as well as their confidence. The situation within the U.S. economy is dire. There just are not the jobs available and the contributions of the workers to the nation GDP is falling like a stone. [ii]

Wages And Salaries As A Percentage Of GDP

Wages as a percentage of GDP are hovering near an all-time record low. That means that American workers are bringing home a smaller share of the economic pie than ever before.

Average Annual Hours Worked Per Employed Person In The United States

Not only are jobs being lost but for those that are at work the trend is away from good paying full-time jobs towards low paying part-time jobs. The decline in average annual hours worked represents the equivalent of losing millions of jobs

 

 Manufacturing Employment

There are fewer Americans working in manufacturing today than there were in 1950 even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then. The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001. Many of these jobs have been exported to industrial centres in Asia, following the old business tycoon logic Why hire a man for a dollar when you can hire a kid for a dime. The modern rubric adds or when you can hire an unorganised Asian woman for a penny.

While it is tempting to follow that logic with a condemnation of the Asian woman for being willing to work for the penny, that penny supports a chain of dependents between her urban place of employment and the rural countryside which relies on her meagre earnings for survival. She is as much of a casualty of the current economic system as the unemployed steelworkers of Pittsburgh, the Southern garment workers or the white goods manufacturers of the Midwest. Her working conditions are poor, her health and safety a matter of no concern to her employers, and her employment future is limited and likely to be short.

Any solution to the current employment dilemma will have to address her concerns as well as the concerns of the unemployed US workers. 

Equally it will have to be a solution which encompasses the giant employment disaster of the European Union. Eurozone unemployment rose by 95,000 in April. This was the largest increase since January as unemployment had previously moved up by 65,000 in March and 86,000 in February. There had been a jump of 286,000 in January (which may have been affected by particularly poor weather). April's increase of 95,000 took the number of Eurozone unemployed to 19.375 million, easily the highest level since the bloc was formed in January 1999.

Furthermore, April was the 24th successive month that Eurozone unemployment had risen and it brought the cumulative increase to 3.853 million since the number of jobless started rising in May 2011[iii]

The Eurozone unemployment rate rose to a record 12.2% in April. The jobless rate in individual countries during April ranged from a low of 4.9% in Austria to a high of 26.8% in Spain, Portugal saw an unemployment rate of 17.8%, followed by Cyprus (15.6%), Slovakia (14.5%), Ireland (13.5%), Italy (12.0%), France (11.0%), Slovenia (10.2%), Belgium (8.4%), Finland (8.2%), Malta (6.4%), the Netherlands (6.5%), Luxembourg (5.6%), and Germany (5.4%). The latest comparable data show unemployment rates of 27.0% in Greece during February. Youth unemployment is masked by these overall statistics; over 40% in Spain and 62% in Greece.

The obvious question is,  What can be done? There are many things which can be done by organised labour to redress this imbalance and partially restore labour’s ability to protect the interests of its member and advance their interests. The first item on the agenda is the urgent need to remember who is labour’s enemy and to realise that politicians are not labour’s friends. A good starting point is the simple mantra incorporated in 1905 with the founding of the Industrial Workers of the Word. 

In the preamble to the IWW constitution it states: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life” We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. 

The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

The labour movement in the U.S. and Europe has made a crucial mistake which has cost it dearly. The mistake was to trust politicians to do through legislation what the unions could not do through using its own power. The Federal and state governments have been allowed to take over most of the social welfare programs and the labour movement is only marginally involved. 

The rise of rabid anti-union state legislatures is not a new phenomenon, but these were formerly in the Deep South. Now they are in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio where labour used to be mighty. Although the major thrust of this anti-union legislation is directed first against public-sector workers it has applicability and effect on the private sector. The failure of labour to play a major part in this development was because they trusted politicians, usually Democratic politicians, to assist them.

In the current state of U.S. politics the politicians are not labour’s friends. For the most part they are venal, corrupt and morally bankrupt Babbitts representing, not their constituents, but some special interest whose lobbyists have identified them as a potential friend. The issues change for the politicians but their sponsors tend to stay the same. They give lip service to the unions but, except on polling day when they need the bodies, interact with them only at a distance. 

They vote as their sponsors suggest they vote. In the recent election there was a contribution by lobbyists and consultants in excess of US $11 billon, spread around the politicians. Labour cannot match this. They were outbid by the same people whose wages are 465 times the wage of their workers. The Republicans make no pretence of even being interested in social welfare programs. They are happy to block effective government and concentrate on attacking Obama for his race. They no longer have any labour friends.

Throughout its history, labour has found that it can only move forward in achieving social justice by being able to afflict pain on the captains of industry and their minion of helpers. That is, they are able to punish their enemies by costing them money or opportunities. This process is one on which labour should concentrate. While the notion of using collective bargaining and grievances to achieve change is a bit fatuous in today’s climate there are things which can be done. 

In 1975 the Kodak Corporation did not have any unions with which it negotiated in the U.S. It had one local union in Canada and negotiated with various unions in Europe. The Kodak management decided it would break the union in Canada by provoking a strike. The Canadian union was affiliated to the International Chemical Workers (ICF) later the ICEM and today the IndustriAll.

The Canadians needed help. I was an official of the ICF and we decided that we urgently needed to help the Canadians. I learned from the French Kodak plant that all chemicals used in Kodak were not properly labelled with their true names. They all had EK numbers which identified them. The Kodak workers couldn’t tell me what the EK numbers meant. I asked them to write down the EK numbers they used. I then went to Kodak, posing as a buyer of chemicals and they gave me a catalogue. The catalogue listed the chemicals and gave the EK number. I now knew what was being used in the plants.

I made a list of the chemicals used in the plants by Kodak and did some research on these chemicals. I found that there were six carcinogenic chemicals being used, all of which were banned for industrial use in the U.S., Canada and Europe. I then wrote a detailed report on each of the six. I circulated the report on the first chemical to all the European Kodak plants and the plant in Canada with the suggestion that they urgently call in their occupational health authorities to inspect for the use of the substance (beta-napthylamine) as it was subject to special regulations. 

Press releases were issued in the local newspapers and, when OSHA and the other authorities discovered that the substance was present they closed down the Kodak plants for a week to remove the substance. It generated a very hostile worldwide press. The next week I repeated the system using a different chemical and its EK number. By the end of the third chemical report Kodak caved in and left the Canadians alone and faced a barrage of bad press in the European and Canadian press which lasted for months. The lesson was learned that it caused financial pain so they had to deal with it.

A second universal labour problem is the subcontracting of jobs by major companies to local employers who supply the global corporations. So, instead of making Apple computers itself, Apple subcontracts the making of the sub-assemblies of its products to companies like Foxconn in China. Because a company the size of Apple has the financial clout to squeeze its suppliers to the lowest possible price it reduces the margins for the local suppliers to almost nothing. The only way they can afford to supply at Apple’s price is to squeeze labour costs, extend working hours and to dispense with any health and safety provisions. This is particularly true throughout the electronic and communications industries as well as among the garment workers in countries like Bangladesh. With international support from the Global Unions these labour practices make the companies vulnerable to the national laws which protect workers from exploitation and make a good point of interest for international campaigns against these excesses.

This is the type of interaction which is effective and in which politicians can be avoided. There are many similar cases which took place in Chile, India and Nigeria. The key is that for labour in one country to succeed it needs to engage with labour internationally. This is the particular value of the Global Internationals international confederations of unions worldwide representing workers in the same industrial sector of company. International solidarity is the key to success.

There is a change taking place now in North America which is changing the balance back towards greater levels of employment in the U.S. The shale gas and shale oil industries are booming, offering cheap energy to companies who use gas as a fuel and who can convert this gas in giant ethylene plants. Many European companies are moving their plants from Europe to the U.S. and Canada to take advantage of this opportunity. This will lead to higher investments, more jobs and a reversal of the employment statistics cited earlier. It will then be a very good time to use the additional political clout which will be engendered to assist the workers overseas in improving their working conditions.

The theme should include the message of the IWW preamble, These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Perhaps that can be a way forward.

Endless 'Peace Process' for Palestine

By David Swanson

The United States balances its endless war of terrorism with the institution of an endless "peace process" for Palestine, a process valuable for its peaceyness and interminability.

Josh Ruebner's new book, Shattered Hopes: The Failure of Obama's Middle East Peace Process, could just as easily have been called "Fulfilled Expectations: The Success of Obama's Middle East Peace Process," depending on one's perspective. Its story could be summarized: Obama's performance in this area has been of a piece with his performance in every other. Some people became very hopeful about his rhetoric and then very dejected about his actions.

In this case, among those getting hopeful were Palestinian negotiators. But they didn't just grow depressed and despondent. They felt no obligation to behave like Democratic voters. They swore off the Hopium and went to work on an international approach through the United Nations that has begun to pay off.

Obama began his "peace process" efforts "naively unprepared for the intensity of the pushback from Israel and its supporters in the United States to its demand that Israel freeze settlements," Ruebner writes. But evidence of Obama's mental state is hard to pin down, and I'm not sure of the relevance. Whether Obama began with naive good intentions or the same cynicism that he was, by all accounts, fully immersed in by his second or third year in office, the important point remains the same. As Ruebner explains, Obama employs an all-carrots / no-sticks approach with Israel that is doomed to failure.

In fact, suggesting that the White House cease providing Israel with ever more weaponry and/or cease providing Israel with ever more protection from justice following its crimes is liable to get Ruebner himself denounced as naive, along with the rest of us who think he's right. Obama's fundamental problem is not one of naiveté, but of "seriousness," of upholding the solemn seriousness of willful belief in a respectable but doomed approach. If Obama was surprised that Palestinian negotiators didn't play along with this the way US "journalists" do, that would suggest he had internalized the official point of view. Whether that is naiveté or deep cynicism may be in the eye of the beholder.

Ruebner provides the chronological play-by-play from Obama's first happy shiny moves in office to his familiar flailing about in search of propaganda that would continue to hold up year after year. And Ruebner includes analysis of what activists were up to along the way.

In fact, Ruebner begins with Obama's campaign promises, which -- upon close inspection -- prove, as with every other issue, to have been much closer to the President's abysmal performance than to the glowing image people recall of his early hope-and-changey self. Obama campaigned placing all blame on Palestinians, supporting al-Quds (Jerusalem) as Israel's undivided capital, backing resolutions and legislation in the Senate imposing sanctions on Palestinians as punishment for having held an open election, and supporting Israel during its wars on Lebanon and Gaza. Obama's speeches and his website made his position clear to those inclined to see it. Boycott campaigns against the Israeli government were, according to him, "bigoted."

As with every other area, on peace in Palestine, Obama's disastrous approach could also have been read clearly from his selection of individuals to run his foreign policy team. During the transition period prior to his inauguration, Obama took positions on many foreign policy matters, but when it came to the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, he declared himself unable to speak prior to becoming president.

Watching the sequence of events play out post-inauguration is painful. Obama urges an end to Israel's expansion of settlements. Netanyahu suggests that Obama, with all due respect, stick his proposals where the sun don't shine. But Netanyahu backs "statehood" (someday, with no rights or power or independence or actual -- you know -- statehood) for Palestinians, but proceeds to rapidly expand settlements, effectively eliminating territory on which to create any state. Obama announces that victory has come and help is on the way!

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave up on freezing settlements and announced that slowing the pace of the expansion would be an "unprecedented" accomplishment -- a claim that was less credible to people who had lived and suffered through many such claims before. As reward for the same lawless abuses as always, Israel received from the Obama administration more weaponry than ever, and a veto of a resolution at the United Nations opposing more Israeli settlements.

Ruebner rightly concludes:

”Obama's failure to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace resulted not only from his unwillingness to go to the mat with the Israel lobby over the issue of fully freezing Israeli settlements, not only from the scattershot, frenetic lurching of his policy initiatives thereafter. Obama also foundered because his approach relied solely on providing Israel with carrots. With the trivial exceptions of denying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu photo-ops at the White House on a few occasions and reportedly forcing him to wait for several hours before a meeting, Obama never brandished the proverbial stick. But these personal insults did nothing to create incentives for Israel to cease openly and brazenly defying US policy objectives."

Hope is so much more popular than reality. But Ruebner is full of hope. He holds it out there in front of us. All that's required is a little actually useful action:

"[I]f the United States were to pull its backing for Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, then Israeli intransigence would melt away in the historical blink of an eye, as it did when President Dwight Eisenhower terminated all US aid programs to Israel after it invaded and occupied the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula in 1956."

How do we get there? Part of the answer, Ruebner persuasively suggests is Boycott-Divestment-and-Sanctions (BDS), a movement that is making great strides, including in changing the public discourse, altering the sorts of things that even US politicians can get away with claiming with a straight face.

Cuba expands public Internet access

President of Cuba Raul Castro

By Amaury E. del Valle
AS of June 4, 2013, public access to internet services will be increased through 118 internet centers nationwide, in accordance with Ministry of Communications Resolution No. 197/2013, published in the Republic of Cuba’s Gaceta Oficial, May 27, 2013.

The Ministry of Communications and the Cuban Telecommunications Company (ETECSA) informed Juventud Rebelde newspaper that this service, currently marketed under the brand name Nauta, can now be requested in any ETECSA commercial outlet which has an internet center.

To this end, 118 internet access centers have been set up around the country, particularly in provincial capitals, and new access areas will be gradually incorporated in other facilities.
Services available include internet browsing and related services, which also include the option of requesting an international nauta.cu email address, at the price established in Resolution No. 182/2013, issued by the Ministry of Finance and Prices, published in the Gaceta Oficial Extraordinaria, May 27, 2013.

The cost for browsing national web pages is 0.60 CUC (Cuban convertible currency, equivalent to $1 U.S.) per hour.

The charge for an international email address and browsing national web pages only is 1.50 CUC per hour.

Internet surfing and access to all services is set at 4.50 CUC per hour.

Clients can only access the Nauta portal for internet surfing, international email or browsing national sites, from specially equipped ETECSA centers.

In order to do this, temporary access accounts can be activated, making direct payment in the net centers or using a 30-day Nauta card which can be purchased in ETECSA sales offices. 

It will also be possible to set up a permanent account contract, with a username, password and fixed international email address, if this is desired.

Once a permanent internet, international email or national browsing account has been activated, users will only be required to pay the minimum amount established for one hour for whichever internet service is required. 

The account can be topped up as often as needed, with a minimum of 2.00 CUC, and its expiry date depends on the amount of credit added.

Instructions for topping up the card are on the back of the Nauta Card or it can be topped up directly in ETECSA offices offering the service.

In the case of the international email service, if users already have another email account, they can access their webmail and opt to redirect messages to the new nauta.cu domain address.

The international nauta.cu email offered by ETECSA has a 50Mb inbox facility and the facility to receive and send messages, including attachments of up to 25 megabytes.
Users can use their own personal portable devices, to save, send attachments, or for working on Internet.

The new netrooms are located in computer Telepoints and ETECSA Multiservice Centers, open Monday through Sunday, 8:30am- 7:30pm, as well as in commercial offices, which will have their own locally-determined opening times.

The extension of this service is in addition to services already provided in 200-plus netrooms in hotels across the country, as well as international and national services offered by Correos de Cuba.

The new rates may be different in hotels for guest users, given that institutions managing these hotels are responsible for deciding airtime tariffs.

Complaints, difficulties or suggestions can be made directly to personnel at the netroom concerned. Users also have the right to notify ETECSA outlets, or to call 118.

Expanding Cuba’s internet services responds to the strategy of further increasing the population's access to new technologies, depending on availability of resources and with an emphasis on their social use.

This expansion has been made possible through a fiber optic cable link between Cuba and Venezuela, which guarantees higher quality and greater stability in Cuba’s international communications, obstructed by the limitations imposed by the United States’ unjust and irrational economic, commercial and technological blockade.

The fiber optic cable, while improving international communications, so far directed primarily via satellite, is not a free service, hence the initial cost in the early stages of the expansion of Internet services.

At the same time, significant investments are still required to upgrade technological equipment and connection facilities for the end user, for which a range of alternatives are being explored.

However, there is a firm intention to continue making these services more available to he population, and this is another step forward in this context.

This strategy is outlined in Work Objective 52 approved by the National Conference of the Communist Party of Cuba, the text of which calls for "Making use of the advantage of information and communication technologies as tools for the development of knowledge, the economy and political and ideological activity; promoting the image of Cuba and its truth, and combating acts of subversion against our country."

The 118 netrooms across the country have been prepared to ensure service quality and to gradually introduce other offers for users.

Similarly, a secure authentication system has been designed for accessing different services of internet browsing, international email or browsing national sites from a permanent user name chosen by clients, who can then browse other services via the portal such as password changes and even balance transfers from one account to another, for example.

Differentiated charges for Internet navigation services, international email and national browsing refer to different needs, and to prioritizing access to the finest sites and content available on Cuban networks.

This expansion of communication services is part of a strategy to make these more accessible to the population, and includes the mass use of cell phones, currently used by 1.7 million Cubans, and outnumbering landlines.

Cuba has been connected to Internet since 1996 and has since enhanced its social use, despite obstacles to its development imposed by the U.S. economic, commercial and technological blockade.

Likewise, connectivity has been prioritized for the scientific, educational, social and business sectors, as well as thousands of doctors, researchers, journalists, intellectuals and artists, among others, in an attempt to make efficient  use of available resources for Cuban society’s economic, social, cultural and educational development.

Measures have also been adopted by the General Customs Office of the Republic, directed at facilitating imports of computer equipment for non-commercial purposes, as well as making provision for sales to the public in convertible currency stores.

Cuba receives wide international recognition for its work in the social  development of information technology, supported by its achievements in education, health, culture and other social spheres.