CJA, AFAG AND SFG AGREE! And Reject Proposed Utility Tariffs.

A demonstration by the CJA

Rare moments were recording recently when three apparently antagonistic organisations agreed on an important national issue.

The Committee for Joint Action (CJA), Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) and the Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) all said no to the proposed tariff increases for the utility companies.

At a stakeholders meeting on the 2013 tariff review process, the spokespersons of the three organisation questioned the basis of the proposed tariff adjustments.

They claimed that the financial difficulties facing the Volta River Authority (VRA), the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCO) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) were the result of inefficiency and corruption.

They insisted that the three utility companies have not been able to address problems like poor response to complaints, lack of proper maintenance of equipment and transmission lines and wastage.

The three organisation also insisted on value for money as a basis for any future increase in electricity tariff.

 Mr. Abu Ramadam, who spoke for AFAG said the companies had failed to address problems of in efficiency since the last tariff increases.

Mr. Kwasi Adu, Spokesperson of the CJA spoke eloquently about transmission loses and said the benchmark of 21 per cent was too high.

He alleged that the Auditor- General’s report reveals that the ECG spends 60 per cent of its total income on salaries for workers and management staff.

He said only 20 per cent of the ECG’s income is spent on maintenance.

The agreement of the three groups is most significant and should send a clear message to the Government that the people of Ghana are united in their opposition to the proposed tariff increases.

The CJA has already issued a statement condemning the proposed increases.

Editorial

WELL SAID!

Last week-end, President John Dramani Mahama addressed senior citizens at an event to mark Republic Day.

The President directed that public officials who embezzle or misapply state funds should be prosecuted to serve as a deterrent to others.

President Mahama also instructed that a special unit should be established at the office of the Attorney- General to deal with such cases.

 The Insight welcomes the directive of the president to the extent that it will help check rampant corruption in state institutions and free resources for national development.

It is our hope that the anti corruption drive will be taken seriously by all individuals and institutions charged with that responsibility.

We are however deeply worried by the fact that although the 1992 constitution provides for the establishment of a Financial Tribunal to deal with cases of embezzlement and misapplication of funds reported by the Auditor-General, it has not been done.

The Insight calls on Parliament, the Chief Justice and the Executive to act swiftly on the establishment of the Financial Tribunal.

Well said Mr. President but a lot more needs to be done.

FINANCING AFRICA’S INTEGRATION

A Map of Africa

The idea of innovative financing for organizations like the African Union is not new as they have been ongoing since 2001. The actual idea emanated from a summit in Lusaka, Zambia in 2001. In conceiving of the AU, the Heads of State and Government of the AU appreciated the fact that they needed to pursue the idea of a new source and mechanism to finance the AU.
In doing so, they realized that there were limitations to the existing financing mechanism. To this end, they authorized the Commission of the African Union to undertake studies, with the assistance of experts, to identify what one AU press release of December 2010 calls "alternative modalities of funding" the programmes, of the then-OAU.

                                            "

Currently, the African Union funds are predicated on two sources of financing: member states contributions and partner's contributions. It is conceivable that the major constraint associated with these two sources constrain the AU from implementing its integration agenda. At no time has this become as important as now when the effects of the 2008 financial crisis are affecting Africa in different ways. As a consequence, AU policymakers believe it is high time the AU got its act together by implementing the decisions of the Lusaka Summit.

Appeal

The Lusaka Appeal is contained in Decision AHG/Dec.160(XXXVII), which reads as follows: (1 )The Conference authorizes the Secretary-General to: (i)Explore the possibility of mobilizing extra-budgetary contributions from member states, OAU partners and others:
(ii)Undertake studies, with the assistance of experts, to identify alternative modalities of funding the activities and programmes of
the OAU, bearing in mind that the Union cannot operate on the basis of assessed contributions from member states only, and to
make appropriate recommendations thereon." It goes on to list challenges, which include funding that fluctuates and is "paltry", funding sources that are limited and "are not diversified and remain permanently uncertain", the "largely inadequate" and "unstable" funds that are given to the AU, and which are not given "in real-rime".

It finally concludes that "the one and only solution allowing Africa to meet all these challenges lie in Africa making avail- able to the AU and its organs, their own resources that are stable, substantial and more or less permanent; and hence the Lusaka Appeal of July 2001

As one might expect, the implementation of the Lusaka Appeal has been fraught with challenges, which include, for example, country delegations. Most often than not, the experts working on the Appeal are not the same ones from one meeting to another; and the government changes in countries also change with every government, inevitably taking with them vital information that would have been necessary as input for the implementation.

This trend has inevitably derailed the "virtually-permanent achievements" of previous meetings, with each new delegation wanting to make its mark on the proposed instruments.

The encouraging news is that a decision was adopted at the l Sth ordinary sessions of the Assembly of the AU in Kampala, Uganda, in July 2010, and that
decision reflects the firm political will of the Heads of State and Government to finalize the issue. Furthermore, the political will expressed by Heads of State and Government in the Kampala Decision invites experts as well as the ministers, to truly address the issue and make clear, con-
sensual and concrete recommendations very much-needed for innovative financing to make the impact it so needs for African integration.

Contention

On the back of this critical debate is a source of contention mong policy-makers over how the AU sources its funds. In an October 2012 report entitled "A Stream cannot rise above its source: Financing of Africa's Regional Integration", the five-page analysis (written by the Executive Director of the CCP-AU Janah Ncube and Policy Analyst with the Open Society Foundation's AU Advocacy Program Maureen Akena), offered a fairly succinct view of what is happening with the African Union's finances; what are the challenges to the financing, and what models exist that can inform a change.

The July 2012 summit approved the 2013 budget of the AU, which totals USD277 million, with contributions as follows: the AU member states pay 44% of the budget (122.8 million), with donors paying no less than 56% of the budget, or 155.3

million. That said, the total operational cost of USD 117.4 million is covered by the Member states. With respect to the pro- grams budget, member states pay 3%, with the donors footing a whopping 97% of the budget.

According to the authors, program costs for key institutions, such as the Pan African Parliament(PAP); the Human Rights Commission (ACHPR); the African Court (AfCHPR); NEPAD Planning Commission Agency (NPCA); the Commission on International Law(AUCIL); the Anti-Corruption Board
and the Committee on the Rights and Welfare of Children (ACRWC) are all paid for by external donors! There is no allocation at all from member states towards the latter, which has the mandate to promote and protect the rights of children in Africa. There is no gainsaying "he who pays the piper calls the tune", which is the appropriate sub-heading for the section in the report explaining the dominance of donors in the operationalisation of the AU's work. The
report states "while it is commendable that the operational costs are wholly covered by AU member states, it is quite disturbing that the integration and development agenda for this continent is being paid for by foreign resources."

Inevitably, it can only prompt the question of who really is in control of the AU.
Even if donors, because of the global economic downturn, were able to come up with 42% of what was expected from them in mid-2012, does that substantial sum not lead the AU member states beholden to them

Bottom line is that the AU often has to wait on external funding before being able to respond to conflicts that require peace- keeping missions. Given all that is happening in Mali; Somalia; Eastern DRC and Guinea Bissau, it is very likely most of the funding will from donors. The report could not have put it better when it states "we cannot champion our African solutions when we can't pay for them." While it may seem common-sense for some, it seems not-so-
much for African policymakers who often go, cap-in-hand, to donors and the West to ask for technology transfer and "assistance."

Before we answer that, it is important to first explain who is actually paying the funds at the AU. The truth is both shocking and funny: five countries-paying $16million each-pay 66% of the AU member states contribution. These are South Africa; Nigeria; Libya; Egypt; and Algeria. This inevitably means that the 34% of AU member states contributions are paid by a shocking and whopping 48 African countries.

The report maintains that by mid- 2012, only 11(20%) of the 54 member states had fully-paid their contributions; with 19 countries owing for the current year and 24(44%) having arrears from previous years.

With these execrable statistics, how on Earth do African policymakers expect the African Union to operate? These are fundamental questions that need answering. The regional economic communities seem to offer an answer.

Sources

The original study by the Commission of the African Union proposed no less than eight scenarios of innovative financing sources. These sources are to be structured around: (a) tax on imports; (b)tax on revenue from hydrocarbon exports; (c)tax on insurance premiums; (d)levy on airline tickets; (e) involvement of the private sector through sponsorship and other forms of support; (f) the sale of items and other products carrying the African Union symbol. However, as a consequence of a series of expert meetings and ministerial conferences, the Commission's choice was limited to the following main components or
instruments: (i) levy on imports from the rest of the world; (ii)levy on airline tickets; and (iii)levy on insurance policies.

In order to obtain a greater insight into how these three instruments are used in levying taxes for some of the AU's regional economic communities, we need to turn to the cases of the Economic Community of Central African States(ECCAS); UEMOA/CEMAC; and ECOWAS.

Truth be told, ECOWAS, UEMOA, ECCAS and CEMAC are the only RECs that have been implementing the levy on imports from non-member countries with some degree of success

In ECCAS, the levy is called the "cornmunity contribution for integration (CCI)*. Consumer goods, originating from third countries, imported by member states are subject to the CCL Products that are excluded from the field of taxation are products originating from the Community and imported goods under "suspensive customs regimes".

These amounts collected under the CCI are deposited into an account opened on behalf of ECCAS at the Central Bank of each of the 15 member countries of ECCAS. In addition, a central account for ECCAS is also opened at the Central Bank of the country, which hosts the headquarters - as in the case of the cash account in Libreville, Gabon.

On the plus side, if the CCI is well- implemented and all countries have a surplus in the ECCAS account opened in their central bank, it is the entire region that is strengthened.

According to the AU's "Bulletin on Fridays", these two organizations implement fully the Community levy system.

One of the major reasons for this is because they are both customs unions, which facilitates the implementation of this measure.

The levy rate in UEMOA is 1%. As a consequence, the levy rate in the member countries of UEMOA is 1.5%, broken down as follows: (t) 1 % for UEMOA; (ii)O.S% for ECOWAS countries.

In ECOWAS, as in ECCAS, the community levy is placed on taxable value of goods imported into the Community from third countries and marketed for consumption. The following are exempt from the community levy: (i)aid, grants and non- repayable subsidies for a state, public corporations and state-approved charities; (ii)goods imported from third countries through financing provided by foreign partners, subject to a provision exempting such
products from all tax levies; (iii) good imported by firms under the existing tax system at the date of entry into force of this Protocol; (iv) the goods having been charged the community levy under any previous tax regime.

ECOWAS Community levies are predicated on: (i) CIF (cost insurance freight) value at the port of landing for imports by sea; (ii ) the CIF value of imports by land at the point of entry into the customs territory of the Community; (iii)the customs value at the port of landing (APOD) for imports by air; (iv)the market price list of the respective goods.

Based on the import value of imported goods, the customs requires the importer (who is also from the private sector) to issue two cheques: one in favour of UEMOA(l ss) and the second in favour of ECOWAS(O.S%). The Customs Services in turn deposit the cheques received from importers to the accounts of UEMOA and ECOWAS, which have been opened at the Central Bank of each state.

Finally, in ECOWAS, it is important to know how these funds are used. First, the funds go to the regular budget of the Community and its institutions', such as the West African Monetary Institute and the ECOWAS Regulatory Electricity Authority (ERERA). The funds exclude the budget of the Cooperation, Compensation and Development Fund; (ii)the budget to compensate revenue losses suffered due to trade liberalization; (iii) the financing of development activities; and (iv) any other allocation decided by the Authority or the Council including the capital increase of the ECOWAS Fund.

Tax

Even after all this good news on financing African integration, the story is not quite over - as exemplified by discussions on more levies. In this specific proposal, which is also known as "a citizen tax", the idea is to get this levy to involve "all African citizens" through insurance subscriptions: automobile and real estate. Heath insurance is exempted.

The "solidarity tax" is so-named because most of the tax is supposed to come from G8 and G20, and can be applied to flights leaving Africa and with destinations in Africa; flights departing from Africa with destinations outside Africa, with the Commission of the African Union proposing US$2 for short distances, and US$S for long distances.

Truth be told, ECOWAS member state Senegal has been doing this for a while. In the country, the tax applies only to flights departing from airports in the country.
Collection of the levy is done through LATA for all airlines associated with it. At its monthly payment operations, LATA pays the share due Senegal into a bank account (escrow account) held with the BNP Paribas The bottom line is that even as cheap and conditional loans may have dried up from the Breton Woods Institutions, through the Lome-based ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID), West African countries, can easily obtain funding to finance both its private and public sector initiatives.

the public-sector-focused ECOWAS Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the private-sector-led ECOWAS Regional Investment Bank (ERIB has), EBID remains the financing bank of NEP AD projects in the region. In so many ways, it is the European Investment Bank counterpart in the ECOWAS sub-region, and has been around since the inception of ECOWAS in 1975.

Observers of the sub-region believe EBID has, in many respects, been a trail- blazer in the sub-region in the way it has maintained a consistent brief of fostering greater integration in the sub-region among its member states - especially in the light of the conflicts that mired the sub-region in the early nineties. So focused has it been in facilitating sub-regional integration that in 2004, in conjunction with the African Development Bank, it set up a Conflict Prevention Fund, which is indeed managed by EBID.

Levy

Meanwhile, ECOWAS has recently agreed on the creation of a 1.5 per cent Community Integration Levy which scope and operationalisation would be the subject of further regional reflection as part of the mechanisms to enable the region cope with the challenges of implementation of the new tariff regime.

According to Ecowas, the levy will seek to replace the two existing community levy regimes in the region comprising the ECOWAS Community levy and the counterpart Community Solidarity levy for the UEMOA.

In conclusion, when one reflects on this, can one not really say we need to continue depending on donors, or is it perhaps not time to re-consider that fallacy of needing an "aid-exit" plan to woo investors and so-called FDI? If African policy-makers can get past this mindset - and it is possible for the sub-region to do this, as exemplified by the instrumental role the Ecowas Bank for Investment and Development is playing in the sub-region - then the sky will certainly offer itself as the proverbial limit on seed funding for continuing the narrative of African integration which continues to be written summit after summit.

* Emmanuel Bensah is Communications
Officer, TWN-Africa. 

Top Vatican bank officials resign

The headquarters of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), also known as the Vatican Bank (Right)

The director and deputy director of the Vatican Bank have resigned after a senior Italian priest with close ties to the bank was arrested on suspicion of fraud and corruption.

In a statement issued on Monday, the Vatican announced that the bank's director, Paolo Cipriani, and his deputy, Massimo Tulli, had stepped down.

On Friday, Italian authorities arrested a senior cleric known as Nunzio Scarano after an investigation of the bank, also known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), produced evidence showing it may have been involved in an international fraud scheme. 

Scarano was arrested along with Giovanni Maria Zito, a former Italian intelligence agent, and Giovanni Carinzo, a financial broker. 

Prosecutors say Scarano paid Zito 400,000 euros ($523,000) to transport 20 million euros in cash from Switzerland to Italy onboard Zito’s private jet. 

According to reports, Cipriani and Tulli assisted Scarano and provided him with the required bank approval to transfer the large amounts of cash. 

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said Scarano was suspended from his accounting post at the Vatican central bank’s Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) nearly a month ago “after his superiors learnt about an investigation into his activities.” 

The Italian daily La Repubblica reported that Scarano is also under investigation in the city of Salerno on suspicion of money laundering. 

Only priests, religious, Catholic institutions, employees of the Vatican City State, and diplomats accredited to the Holy See are allowed to have accounts at the IOR, but Italian politicians and organized crime figures allegedly also have accounts at the bank. 

Over the years, the Vatican Bank has been involved in a series of scandals. 

The bank's governor in the 1980s, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, was indicted over his involvement with the collapse of Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano, which was owned in part by the Vatican Bank. 

In the aftermath of the scandal, the chairman of the bank, Roberto Calvi, was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. Calvi was known as God's Banker because of his close ties to the Vatican. The death was initially ruled a suicide but later prosecuted as a murder. 

The activities of the infamous P2 Masonic lodge were brought out of the shadows by the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. Some investigative journalists suspected that some of the plundered funds went to P2 or to its members. 

Propaganda Due, or P2, was a Masonic lodge operating under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Italy from 1945 to 1976. P2 was sometimes referred to as a "state within a state" or a "shadow government." 

Law, Corruption and the Future of Nigeria

By Akin Oyebode

Introduction

May I begin by observing the fact of inevitability of law in the human condition. Making such an assertion before a gathering such as this might amount to preaching before the converted. Yet, the fact cannot be over-stated, especially at a time like this when there are lingering doubts regarding the place and role of law in a situation of anomie, when the jury seems to be out regarding whether or not Nigeria had become a failed or failing state.

Nigeria is currently at a cross-roads when a large majority of our compatriots have almost totally given up on the law as an instrument of social control, means of conflict resolution and regulator of human interaction. At a time like this when there is general disillusionment, mass self-doubt and growing resort to self-help, any profession of determination by government to contain the ogre of corruption is apt to be met with loud yawns of disbelief and hopelessness from a people who now believe that only the Almighty can come to the rescue of the nation.

Yet, we lawyers are something of miracle-workers who believe there should always be a role for the law however seemingly impossible the situation.

It is against this backdrop that it is intended to interrogate the role of law within the miasma of corruption in which the country is currently luxuriating with a view to elaborating a prognostication of what awaits the nation in the immediate future and beyond. Accordingly, it is intended to re-examine the role of law in human affairs generally before assessing Nigeria’s score card as far as corruption is concerned and reach some conclusion regarding the fate of the country except and unless drastic decisions are taken regarding what has been the most virulent threat to the nation’s survival.

The Role of Law as a Regulatory Mechanism

According to Lon Fuller, the law exists, essentially as a facilitator of human interaction. In other words, law is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Whereas law is, in the language of Roscoe Pound, a balancer of conflicting interests and potent instrument of social engineering, many continue to perceive law in the context of maintenance of social control, stability and order without which it is impossible for any society to make progress.

Indeed so critical is law that it is often contemplated as the alter ego of society itself. The motto of some law societies in our universities is derived from the Roman maxim, “Ubi societas, ibi jus,” a fact which is not lost on even laymen who recognize the ubiquity and inevitability of law in the scheme of things.

Accordingly, it is clear to all and sundry that law is indeed the last bus stop before anarchy and chaos set in. The rule of law is eminently preferable to the rule of man and that of force which heralds the descent of society into the rule of the jungle where Hobbes had reminded us, life was solitary, brutish, nasty and short, with man engaged in a war with other men, operating in a situation where might was right, survival of the fittest prevailed, there was  certainty of law as well as an impartial arbiter.

Accordingly, it was the arbitrariness of man in a state of nature which compelled him to transit to a state of civil society of known and certain laws, administered by impartial judges whose powers were not absolute but regulated and delimited by the social contract. When this situation becomes adumbrated by separation of powers, checks and balances, equality before the law and due process of law, human beings enter the state of civil society and the rule of law.

The beauty of this situation is that it enables social strife to be avoided while conflicts are channeled away from the streets to the peace and serenity of the court-house, where matters are handled by judges sworn to do justice to all manner of men, without fear, affection or ill-will, thereby ensuring satisfaction to litigants and respite as well as catharsis to the rest of society.

The Ogre of Corruption and Nigeria’s Well-being

Nigeria’s score card in relation to corruption is proverbial. We have consistently maintained a leadership position among the world’s most decadent as far as corruption was concerned. For example, of the 176 countries surveyed last year, Transparency International placed Nigeria at 139. In fact, it was not too long ago that a prominent member of this Branch, the inimitable Femi Falana, SAN exclaimed in bewilderment that corruption had become the fundamental objective and directive principle of state policy in this country!

If in the 1960’s, unjust enrichment of 100,000 pounds by a government minister was considered by him “chicken feed,” a decade later when the Scania scandal broke, one of the high profile beneficiaries could express surprise that anyone was worried over the matter, more so, as he had paid tax on his unearned income! By the time of the Siemens, Halliburton, Keith Hughes and other scams, the Nigerian ruling class had completely parted company with any sense of shame by warmly embracing what Ted Heath, the late British Prime Minister once called “the ugly and unacceptable face of capitalism.”

Today, the situation could not be worse. Not only is nothing beyond Nigeria’s plutocrats who don’t bat an eyelid when running away with the questionable and extortionate so-called fuel subsidy, or pension funds that could have alleviated the suffering of those who had invested the better part of their lives serving the nation or ensuring that appointments, promotions and other preferment, more often than not, come except and unless such was accompanied with payment of fat bribes. Indeed things had gotten so sordid that the British prosecutor of one of our country’s most brazen looters of our patrimony could wonder aloud at how it was possible in the country for a common thief to secure the key to the Government House…

It is clearly beyond question that corruption or, indeed, impunity now constitutes a clear and present danger to the survival of this country. To the extent that criminal law is a mirror of the tolerance level of a people, to that extent can the observation be made that corruption appears unstoppable in Nigeria today arising from the complicity and duplicity of the powers-that-be.

 Not only are obviously corrupt individuals flaunting their ill-gotten wealth shamelessly before their less opportune compatriots, they are often rewarded with national awards, chieftaincy titles, honorary degrees, or allowed to occupy front-row pews in churches or celebrated in turbanning ceremonies and frequently requested to chair wedding receptions, they even have the effrontery to pontificate on moral virtues and demand of their incredulous fellow countrymen and women to make necessary sacrifice towards rescuing the nation! We are now faced with the situation, as our people say, of a certified rogues being appointed society’s treasurers!

Nevertheless, a gathering such as this should not feel offended if one was to ask, what has been the response of law to this debilitating and depressing situation? Afterall, lawyers are wont to extol the overarching importance and role of the law in providing answers to critical issues confronting society.

Curbing Corruption: The Success and Failure of the Law

Perhaps, it is necessary to observe that even our colonially-begotten criminal legislation contained provisions deprecating official corruption, apparently in a bid to teach the natives one or two things about propriety. However, it is the post-colonial effort to reduce, if not, in fact, eliminate the cankerworm of corruption that here calls for interrogation.

Our military conquistadores who had brandished all manner of reformist agenda when they came on board did not find it expedient to overhaul the existing generally ineffective and ineffectual legal machinery on corruption, limiting themselves to confiscation by decree of ill-gotten wealth of some politicians or sentencing them to long incarceration through military tribunals. Paradoxically, however, it was an ex-military El Caudillo that thought it fit to engineer the promulgation of ostensibly anti-corruption laws as well as create institutions under the guise of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) Act, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Act, the Money Laundering Prohibition Act.

 All of these laws, coupled with the Code of Conduct provisions of the 1999 Constitution could well have been a fool-proof legal framework for prosecuting the much-trumpeted war against corruption. However, all that came to naught as a result of selective enforcement, double standards, ad hominem application and other lapses that enabled fat camels to pass through the eye of the Nigerian needle.

What is more, the inclusion of new-fangled notions of plea bargaining tagged “compounding” enabled some corrupt personalities to get off with slaps on the wrists to the chagrin and discomfiture of helpless Nigerian on-lookers who were earnestly looking forward to inflicting long terms of imprisonment on those who had frittered away with public resources which could have gone a long way in alleviating their suffering. The sense of catharsis which severe penalties for corruption would have engendered left the masses with discomfiture, ending up by seeking solace in the eternal prayer of the distraught and helpless: “God dey!”

They watched in utter disgust as privileged accused persons hired the most celebrated legal practitioners, who exploited every technicality in the book to either secure injunctions against trial of these selfsame individuals or argued against admissibility of electronically generated evidence or, in the final analysis, won for their clients mere fines or unconscionably disproportionate and symbolic terms of imprisonment, with little or no regard for the signals such cozy treatment of looters of the public treasury was sending to society at large.

In a country where petty thieves are visited upon with the severest punishment, it is quite bewildering that the ruling class can so brazenly display its solidarity with its members who had been found to commit breach of the Eleventh Commandment of bourgeoisdom: “Thou shall not be caught”! And, if all else failed, some of the most notorious members of the nation’s rogues’ gallery could rest assured of having bestowed on them an amnesty or prerogative of mercy, courtesy of even the highest levels of government…

The level of corruption and impropriety among some judicial officers and law-enforcement officers as revealed in recent times is such as to make one wonder if gold rusts, what should be expected of iron. For,  there is now wide suspicion that the figurine of Themis that adorns our court-houses is really a sham as the Lady of Justice herself can actually be “seen” and,persuaded to either peep though her blindfold or even totally remove it and tilt the scales of justice in favour of a litigant, if only the price was right! Indeed so sordid is the state of affairs in Nigeria today that one can only pose the question Juvenal had posed many centuries ago: Quis custodiet ipso custodies?

Corruption and the Future of Nigeria

Today, Nigeria is at a cross-roads. Buffeted on all sides by innumerable political crises, socio-economic downturn, terrorism, kidnapping, ethnic conflict, instability, incompetence bordering on leadership failure, fear and collective self-doubt, the portents could not be worse for our dear country. When to all that is added ravaging corruption and loss of shame by those who pose as the nation’s ruling class, it becomes clear that the country has to stem the tide of imminent collapse by overhauling its legal system, especially sanctions prescribed for corruption.

Admittedly severity of sanctions is not as critical as certainty of punishment. Nevertheless, the slip-shod manner we have hitherto handled the poison that corruption represents to our collective well-being suggests that a new way has to be found to contain the ogre. We might need to borrow a leaf from other jurisdictions like China and Singapore in order to put a cap on the high incidence of corruption in this country.

Even if many might be averse to the suggestion of treating corruption with execution by the firing squad, the time is now ripe to consider incarceration for life for those who commit vile and venal crimes of stealing from the public purse. Besides, there is a crying need to send the right signals to the rest of the population and the international community to the effect that we are indeed a self-respecting people, wedded to zero tolerance for corruption, opposed to impunity and dedicated to the promotion of due process and equality before the law.

Pursuant to the necessity of creating a better society, it is high time we jettisoned an ill-digested notion of plea bargaining and exact severe penalty for corruption, an infraction that approximates a crime against humanity, with all consequences arising therefrom. We cannot continue to accept a mockery of our national values through the actions and attitudes of a few vermins who would stop at nothing in appropriating to themselves what constitutes our national patrimony.

If we are truly intent on securing respect for our flag, passport and good name, we must do whatever needs to be done to join the rest of humanity by evincing the will not to condone corruption. Failure to take immediate action along these lines would only result in our being grudgingly tolerated by the rest of the world in spite of our much-vaunted status of “Giant of Africa” with a manifest destiny to lead Africa and the entire black race.

Big Barack is watching you!

Hussein Obama listens to your phone calls

Recent revelations by former CIA employee Edward Snowden have shown a spotlight on how immodest the surveillance encroachments really are. Not only has the US National Security Agency (NSA) amassed a huge array of data from its spying operations around the world, but also it has intercepted telephone and internet communications between citizens within its own borders. 

The NSA telecommunications intercept program known by the acronym PRISM, has sparked mild-mannered expressions of outrage by members of the European Union amid ameliorating statements concerning the member-states relations with the United States. 

One US lawmaker, Representative Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), said that she felt the recent disclosures of NSA spying by Snowden only revealed the “tip of the iceberg.” PRISM is just one of many US espionage operations. 

There is a plethora of other programs encompassing surveillance and the speedy, efficient analyses of the enormous volumes of data collected by all the watchful cameras, communication taps and records searches, virtually all of them classified and beyond the reach of ordinary US citizens. Likewise, the cost to Americans for this extensive espionage encroachment, consisting of the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the Military Intelligence Program (MIP), is also classified but is estimated at over USD80 billion of which only USD48.2 billion is acknowledged by US officials.

Obama acknowledged, “There are a whole range of programs that have been classified because -- when it comes to, for example, fighting terror, our goal is to stop folks from doing us harm.” 

The US Commander in Chief justified the need for utmost secrecy in these programs to keep “the people who are trying to do us harm” from being “able to get around our preventive measures. That's why these things are classified.” 

What Obama did not acknowledge is that the secretive so-called intelligence community (IC) is so vast and interlaced among numerous government agencies and private contractors that its true extent and costs are virtually unknown. 

With the majority of today’s threats shifting from the physical world to cyberspace, the US is investing heavily in cutting-edge computer technologies. Two of the buzzwords heard repeatedly in connection with super-intensive intelligence collecting are “big data” and “cloud computing.” Big data refers to the massive amounts of data obtained from monitoring email and telephone conversations, data mining records, biometric identification and video surveillance cameras, while cloud computing refers to an information processing system consisting of a large number of remote computers linked together on a network as opposed to being on a local server. 

The main US spy organization, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is extremely interested in big data and cloud computing. “Cloud computing has emerged to enable us to deliver capabilities we weren't able to deliver before at a scale and price and agility level we were never able to do before,” explained CIA Chief Information Officer Gus Hunt, and referring to data analysis added, “I have a petascale problem and need a petascale solution.” Petascale refers to computing that takes place on the scale of one quadrillion operations per second. These supercomputers are roughly a thousand times faster than today’s ordinary terascale computers but the push is on to develop exascale machines that would be one thousand times even faster. 

Briefly, here are just a few selections from the alphabet soup of current US high-tech intelligence-focused research programs addressing issues related to so-called “big data:” 

ADAMS (Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales) - Examines anomalies in massive data sets with applications to detection of “insider threats,” involving anomalous behavior by individuals. 

CINDER (Cyber-Insider Threat) - Detects activities and events consistent with cyber espionage in military computer networks.

PROCEED(Programming Computation on Encrypted Data) - Develops methods to process encrypted data without the need for decoding prior to processing. 

VIRAT(Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool) - Methods for effectively processing vast amounts of video data for use by military analysts. 

CI-BER (Cyber-infrastructure for a Billion Electronic Records) - Test-bed for a multi-agency cyber infrastructure for ultra-large databases. 

BIGDATA (Core Techniques and Technologies for Advancing Big Data Science & Engineering) - Program to advance methods of extracting and analyzing information in ultra-large data sets. 

As the US intelligence infrastructure expands exponentially and ominously, Obama has assured Americans that they need not be concerned over the resulting massive intrusion into their lives. Insisting that he is not saying, “Trust me; we’re doing the right thing; we know who the bad guys are,” he points out that the surveillance programs have “congressional oversight and judicial oversight.” However, Obama concedes that if the American people neither trust the chief executive, nor Congress nor the judiciary “to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.” 

Surprisingly, most Americans do not seem to have a problem with the “modest encroachment” that the numerous surveillance programs make upon their privacy. One scholar, Simon Chesterman, Dean of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law, suggested that citizens are more than willing to trade off a measure of their civil liberties for assurances of additional security, something he refers to as a “new social contract.” As a result, protests against increased governmental snooping “are doomed because the modern threats that we are facing increasingly require governments to collect information on us. Governments are increasingly able to collect that information on us-that's the technological angle, and we as citizens increasingly accept, or at least tacitly accept, that they will collect that information.” 

Chesterman stressed, “One of the striking things over the past decade in the United States was the relative passivity of many people in the face of very intrusive government powers.” 

For his part, Obama, by suggesting, “that there are some tradeoffs involved” between government intrusion into the lives of US citizens and security, has reversed himself from his previous position when sworn as president for his first term. 

Not merely expressing “healthy skepticism” but out rightly rejecting such a tradeoff in 2009, the new US president, in his address upon taking the oath of office, declared, “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. ... Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake.” Now, in 2013, the above-mentioned ideals have been clearly sacrificed on the altar of national security for the expediency of intelligence gathering by the ever-expanding US surveillance system.

Oddly enough, across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration may finally be putting the brakes on the global reach of US intelligence-gathering capabilities. In recent testimony before the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, stated that the National Intelligence Program (NIP), which spans six cabinet level departments and two independent agencies, faces mandatory budget cuts that “will reduce human technical and counterintelligence operations, resulting in fewer collection opportunities, which increases the risk of strategic surprise.” 

Forebodingly, Clapper predicted, “Our cyber efforts will be impacted. Critical analysis and tools will be cut back. We'll reduce global coverage and may risk missing the early signs of a threat. ...Virtually all of the 39 major systems acquisitions across the intelligence community will be wounded.” 

Emphasizing the need to avoid an intelligence crisis such as the one that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union when the US intelligence community suffered a 23% cutback, Clapper exclaimed, “I do not recall a period in which we've confronted a more diverse array of threats, crises and challenges around the world.” After listing potential threats against US interests coming from within Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Mali, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Russia and Venezuela, the NIP director warned, “In these and other regions of the world, extremists can take advantage of diminished counterterrorism capabilities,” in an obvious appeal to avoid the impending budget axe. 

Clapper even pointed an accusatory finger at Islam, stating that “Islamic actors have been the chief beneficiaries of the political openings, and Islamist parties ... will probably solidify their influence this year.” 

However, contrary to his statement and US espionage policies, Islam warns us not to spy and, in most cases, to avoid suspicion. The Holy Qur’an states, “O you who believe, avoid most suspicion, for surely suspicion in some cases is a sin, and do not spy” (Surat al-Hujurat 49:12). 

In fact, Imam Ali (PBUH) advised against suspicion, saying, “Justify your brother's action in the best way unless you know otherwise; and do not suspect your brother for what he says while you can interpret it as good.” 

Nevertheless, in spite of the sequestration funding reductions, the US continues to spy on people in almost every country around the world, something which former US vice president Dick Cheney defends, insisting that these surveillance operations have “saved lives and keep us free from other attacks.” 

The NSA whistleblower himself, Edward Snowden, stated emphatically, “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. ... I don't want to live in a society that does these sorts of things.” And neither does the author of this article.

How to identify CIA limited hangout op?

The operations of secret intelligence agencies aiming at the manipulation of public opinion generally involve a combination of cynical deception with the pathetic gullibility of the targeted populations.

There is ample reason to believe that the case of Edward Joseph Snowden fits into this pattern. We are likely dealing here with a limited hangout operation, in which carefully selected and falsified documents and other materials are deliberately revealed by an insider who pretends to be a fugitive rebelling against the excesses of some oppressive or dangerous government agency. 

But the revelations turn out to have been prepared with a view to shaping the public consciousness in a way which is advantageous to the intelligence agency involved. At the same time, gullible young people can be duped into supporting a personality cult of the leaker, more commonly referred to as a “whistleblower.” A further variation on the theme can be the attempt of the sponsoring intelligence agency to introduce their chosen conduit, now posing as a defector, into the intelligence apparatus of a targeted foreign government. In this case, the leaker or whistleblower attains the status of a triple agent. 

Any attempt to educate public opinion about the dynamics of limited hangout operations inevitably collides with the residue left in the minds of millions by recent successful examples of this technique. It will be hard for many to understand Snowden, precisely because they will insist on seeing him as the latest courageous example in a line of development which includes Daniel Ellsberg and Julian Assange, both still viewed by large swaths of naïve opinion as authentic challengers of oppressive government. 

This is because the landmark limited hangout operation at the beginning of the current post-Cold War era was that of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers, which laid the groundwork for the CIA’s Watergate attack on the Nixon administration, and more broadly, on the office of the presidency itself. More recently, we have had the case of Assange and Wikileaks. Using these two cases primarily, we can develop a simple typology of the limited hangout operation which can be of significant value to those striving to avoid the role of useful idiots amidst the current cascade of whistleblowers and limited hangout artists. 

In this analysis, we should also recall that limited hangouts have been around for a very long time. In 1620 Fra Paolo Sarpi, the dominant figure of the Venetian intelligence establishment of his time, advised the Venetian senate that the best way to defeat anti-Venetian propaganda was indirectly. He recommended the method of saying something good about a person or institution while pretending to say something bad. An example might be criticizing a bloody dictator for beating his dog - the real dimensions of his crimes are thus totally underplayed. 

Limited hangout artists are instant media darlings 

The most obvious characteristic of the limited hangout operative is that he or she immediately becomes the darling of the controlled corporate media. In the case of Daniel Ellsberg, his doctored set of Pentagon papers were published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and eventually by a consortium totaling seventeen corporate newspapers. These press organs successfully argued the case for publication all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where they prevailed against the Nixon administration. 

Needless to say, surviving critics of the Warren Commission, and more recent veterans of the 9/11 truth movement, and know very well that this is emphatically not the treatment reserved for messengers whose revelations are genuinely unwelcome to the Wall Street centered US ruling class. These latter are more likely to be slandered, vilified and dragged through the mud, or, even more likely, passed over in complete silence and blacked out. In extreme cases, they can be kidnapped, renditioned or liquidated. 

Cass Sunstein present at the creation of Wikileaks 

As for Assange and Wikileaks, the autumn 2010 document dump was farmed out in advance to five of the most prestigious press organs in the world, including the New York Times, the London Guardian, El Pais of Madrid, Der Spiegel of Hamburg, and Le Monde of Paris. This was the Assange media cartel, made up of papers previously specialized in discrediting 9/11 critics and doubters. But even before the document dumps had begun, Wikileaks had received a preemptive endorsement from none other than the notorious totalitarian Cass Sunstein, later an official of the Obama White House, and today married to Samantha Power, the author of the military coup that overthrew Mubarak and currently Obama’s pick for US ambassador to the United Nations. Sunstein is infamous for his thesis that government agencies should conduct covert operations using pseudo-independent agents of influence for the “cognitive infiltration of extremist groups” - meaning of those who reject in the establishment view of history and reality. Sunstein’s article entitled “Brave New WikiWorld” was published in the Washington Post of February 24, 2007, and touted the capabilities of Wikileaks for the destabilization of China. Perhaps the point of Ed Snowden’s presence in Hong Kong is to begin re-targeting these capabilities back towards the original anti-Chinese plan. 

Snowden has already become a media celebrity of the first magnitude. His career was launched by the US left liberal Glenn Greenwald, now writing for the London Guardian, which expresses the viewpoints of the left wing of the British intelligence community. Thus, the current scandal is very much Made in England, and may benefit from inputs from the British GCHQ of Cheltenham, the Siamese twin of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. During the days of his media debut, it was not uncommon to see a controlled press organ like CNN dedicating one third of every broadcast hour of air time to the birth, life, and miracles of Ed Snowden.

Another suspicious and tell-tale endorsement for Snowden comes from the former State Department public diplomacy asset Norman Solomon. Interviewed on RT, Solomon warmly embraced the Snowden Project and assured his viewers that the NSA material dished up by the Hong Kong defector used reliable and authentic. Solomon was notorious ten years ago as a determined enemy of 9/11 truth, acting as a border guard in favor of the Bush administration/neocon theory of terrorism. 

Limited hangouts contain little that is new 

Another important feature of the limited hangout operation if that the revelations often contain nothing new, but rather repackage old wine in new bottles. In the case of Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers, very little was revealed which was not already well known to a reader of Le Monde or the dispatches of Agence France Presse. Only those whose understanding of world affairs had been filtered through the Associated Press, CBS News, the New York Times, and the Washington Post found any of Ellsberg’s material a surprise.

Of course, there was method in Ellsberg’s madness. The Pentagon papers allegedly derived from an internal review of the decision-making processes leading to the Vietnam War, conducted after 1967-68 under the supervision of Morton Halperin and Leslie Gelb. Ellsberg, then a young RAND Corporation analyst and militant warmonger, was associated with this work. Upon examination, we find that the Pentagon papers tend to cover up such CIA crimes as the mass murder mandated under Operation Phoenix, and the massive CIA drug running associated with the proprietary airline Air America. Rather, when atrocities are in question, the US Army generally receives the blame. 

Politicians in general, and President John F. Kennedy in particular, are portrayed in a sinister light - one might say demonized. No insights whatever into the Kennedy assassination are offered. This was a smelly concoction, and it was not altogether excluded that the radicalized elements of the Vietnam era might have carried the day in denouncing the entire package as a rather obvious fabrication. But a clique around Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn loudly intervened to praise the quality of the exposé and to lionize Ellsberg personally as a new culture hero for the Silent Generation. From that moment on, the careers of Chomsky and Zinn soared. Pentagon papers skeptics, like the satirical comedian Mort Sahl, a supporter of the Jim Garrison investigation in New Orleans and a critic of the Warren Commission, faced the marginalization of their careers. 

Notice also that the careers of Morton Halperin and Leslie Gelb positively thrived after they entrusted the Pentagon papers to Ellsberg, who revealed them. Ellsberg was put on trial in 1973, but all charges were dismissed after several months because of prosecutorial misconduct. Assange lived like a lord for many months in the palatial country house of an admirer in the East of England, and is now holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He spent about 10 days in jail in December 2010. 

Assange first won credibility for Wikileaks with some chum in the form of a shocking film showing a massacre perpetrated by US forces in Iraq with the aid of drones. The massacre itself and the number of victims were already well known, so Assange was adding only the graphic emotional impact of witnessing the atrocity firsthand.

Limited hangouts reveal nothing about big issues like JFK, 9/11 

Over the past century, there are certain large-scale covert operations which cast a long historical shadow, determining to some extent the framework in which subsequent events occur. These include the Sarajevo assassinations of 1914, the assassination of Rasputin in late 1916, Mussolini’s 1922 march on Rome, Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, the assassination of French Foreign Minister Barthou in 1934, the assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, in 1963 Kennedy assassination, and 9/11. A common feature of the limited hangout operations is that they offer almost no insights into these landmark events. 

In the Pentagon Papers, the Kennedy assassination is virtually a nonexistent event about which we learn nothing. As already noted, the principal supporters of Ellsberg were figures like Chomsky, whose hostility to JFK and profound disinterest in critiques of the Warren Commission were well-known. As for Assange, he rejects any further clarification of 9/11. In July 2010, Assange told Matthew Bell of the Belfast Telegraph: “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” This is on top of Cass Sunstein’s demand for active covert measures to suppress and disrupt inquiries into operations like 9/11. Snowden’s key backers Glenn Greenwald and Norman Solomon have both compiled impressive records of evasion on 9/11 truth, with Greenwald specializing in the blowback theory. 

The Damascus road conversions of limited hangout figures 

Daniel Ellsberg started his career as a nuclear strategist of the Dr. Strangelove type working for the RAND Corporation. He worked in the Pentagon as an aide to US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. He then went to Vietnam, where he served as a State Department civilian assistant to CIA General Edward Lansdale. In 1967, he was back at RAND to begin the preparation of what would come to be known as the Pentagon papers. Ellsberg has claimed that his Damascus Road conversion from warmonger to peace angel occurred when he heard a speech from a prison-bound draft resister at Haverford College in August 1969. After a mental breakdown, Ellsberg began taking his classified documents to the office of Senator Edward Kennedy and ultimately to the New York Times. Persons who believe this fantastic story may be suffering from terminal gullibility. 

In the case of Assange, it is harder to identify such a moment of conversion. Assange spent his childhood in the coils of MK Ultra, a complex of Anglo-American covert operations designed to investigate and implement mind control through the use of psychopharmaca and other means. Assange was a denizen of the Ann Hamilton-Byrne cult, in which little children that were subjected to aversive therapy involving LSD and other heavy-duty drugs. 

Assange spent his formative years as a wandering nomad with his mother incognito because of her involvement in a custody dispute. The deracinated Assange lived in 50 different towns and attended 37 different schools. By the age of 16, the young nihilist was active as a computer hacker using the screen name “Mendax,” meaning quite simply “The Liar.” (Assange’s clone Snowden uses the more marketable codename of “Verax,” the truth teller.) Some of Assange’s first targets were Nortel and US Air Force offices in the Pentagon. Assange’s chief mentor became John Young of Cryptome, who in 2007 denounced Wikileaks as a CIA front. 

Snowden’s story, as widely reported, goes like this: he dropped out of high school and also dropped out of a community college, but reportedly was nevertheless later able to command a salary of between $120,000 and $200,000 per year; he claims this is because he is a computer wizard. He enlisted in the US Army in May 2004, and allegedly hoped to join the special forces and contribute to the fight for freedom in Iraq. He then worked as a low-level security guard for the National Security Agency, and then went on to computer security at the CIA, including a posting under diplomatic cover in Switzerland. He moved on to work as a private contractor for the NSA at a US military base in Japan. His last official job was for the NSA at the Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center in Hawaii. In May 2013, he is alleged to have been granted medical leave from the NSA in Hawaii to get treatment for epilepsy. He fled to Hong Kong, and made his revelations with the help of Greenwald and a documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras. Snowden voted for the nominally anti-war, ultra-austerity “libertarian” presidential candidate Ron Paul, and gave several hundred dollars to Paul’s campaign. 

Snowden, like Ellsberg, thus started off as a warmonger but later became more concerned with the excesses of the Leviathan state. Like Assange, he was psychologically predisposed to the world of computers and cybernetics. The Damascus Road shift from militarist to civil libertarian remains unexplained and highly suspicious. 

Snowden is also remarkable for the precision of his timing. His first revelations, open secrets though they were, came on June 5, precisely today when the rebel fortress of Qusayr was liberated by the Syrian army and Hezbollah. At this point, the British and French governments were screaming at Obama that it was high time to attack Syria. The appearance of Snowden’s somewhat faded material in the London Guardian was the trigger for a firestorm of criticism against the Obama regime by the feckless US left liberals, who were thus unwittingly greasing the skids for a US slide into a general war in the Middle East. More recently, Snowden came forward with allegations that the US and the British had eavesdropped on participants in the meeting of the G-20 nations held in Britain four years ago. This obviously put Obama on the defensive just as Cameron and Hollande were twisting his arm to start the Syrian adventure. By attacking the British GCHQ at Cheltenham, Britain’s equivalent to the NSA, perhaps Snowden was also seeking to obfuscate the obvious British sponsorship of his revelations. 

Stories about Anglo Americans spying on high profile guests are as old as the hills, and have included a British frogman who attempted an underwater investigation of the Soviet cruiser that brought party leader N. S. Khrushchev for a visit in the 1950s. Snowden has also accused the NSA of hacking targets in China -- again, surely no surprise to experienced observers, but guaranteed to increase Sino-American tensions. As time passes, Snowden may emerge as more and more of a provocateur between Washington and Beijing. 

Limited hangouts prepare large covert operations 

Although, as we have seen, limited hangouts rarely illuminate the landmark covert operations which attempt to define an age, limited hangouts themselves do represent the preparation for future covert operations. 

In the case of the Pentagon papers, this and other leaks during the Indo-Pakistani Tilt crisis were cited by Henry Kissinger in his demand that President Richard Nixon take countermeasures to restore the integrity of state secrets. Nixon foolishly authorized the creation of a White House anti-leak operation known as the Plumbers. The intelligence community made sure that the Plumbers operation was staffed by their own provocateurs, people who never were loyal to Nixon but rather took their orders from Langley. Here we find the already infamous CIA agent Howard Hunt, the CIA communications expert James McCord, and the FBI operative G. Gordon Liddy. 

These provocateurs took special pains to get arrested during an otherwise pointless break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the summer of 1972. Nixon could easily have disavowed the Plumbers and thrown this gaggle of agent provocateurs to the wolves, but he instead launched a cover up. Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, equipped with a top secret security clearance from the Office of Naval Intelligence, then began publicizing the story. The rest is history, and the lasting heritage has been a permanent weakening of the office of the presidency and the strengthening of the worst oligarchical tendencies. 

Assange’s Wikileaks document dump triggered numerous destabilizations and coups d’état across the globe. Not one US, British, or Israeli covert operation or politician was seriously damaged by this material. The list of those impacted instead bears a striking resemblance to the CIA enemies’ list: the largest group of targets were Arab leaders slated for immediate ouster in the wave of “Arab Spring.” Here we find Ben Ali of Tunisia, Qaddafi of Libya, Mubarak of Egypt, Saleh of Yemen, and Assad of Syria. The US wanted to replace Maliki with Allawi as prime minister of Iraq, so the former was targeted, as was the increasingly independent Karzai of Afghanistan. Perennial targets of the CIA included Rodriguez Kirchner of Argentina, Berlusconi of Italy, and Putin of Russia. Berlusconi soon fell victim to a coup organized through the European Central Bank, while his friend Putin was able to stave off a feeble attempt at color revolution in early 2012. Mildly satiric jabs at figures like Merkel of Germany and Sarkozy of France were included primarily as camouflage. 

Assange thus had a hand in preparing one of the largest destabilization campaigns mounted by Anglo-American intelligence since 1968, or perhaps even 1848. 

If the Snowden operation can help coerce the vacillating and reluctant Obama to attack Syria, our new autistic hero may claim credit for starting a general war in the Middle East, and perhaps even more. If Snowden can further poison relations between United States and China, the world historical significance of his provocations will be doubly assured. But none of this can occur unless he finds vast legions of eager dupes ready to fall for his act. We hope he won’t.