DAMNING VERDICT: On Ghana Governmen'ts Energy Ambition

Kweku Botwe, CEO of Volta River Authority

By Ekow Mensah

The verdict of the Chief Executive of the Volta River Authority (VRA) on the capacity of government to realize its objectives in the electricity power sector is more than damming.

The VRA boss writes that “Today, there is a fundamental disconnect between the Ghana Governments’ goals of achieving 5,000 MW by 2015 and the means by which those objectives should be achieved”.

In a review the electricity sector, the VRA said “one can only assume that the Ministry of Energy, Governments’ sector agency, will provide the leadership to connect means to objective. Until that happens, the electricity sector – and the country-will muddle along, down a road that is taking us nowhere in particular”.

 The relevant portion of the review is published below unedited;

The VRA, ECG, and recently established GRIDCo are, at heart, three monopolies that have operated for decades in a space where they faced no competitive pressures to update and upgrade their technology, systems, and operating procedures; no competitive pressures to innovate, train, and acquire new skills; no competitive pressures to seek after and satisfy their end-use customer. Because these companies have been prestigious and highly sought-after places of employment in a country where good jobs for qualified professionals have been hard to find, these companies often provided the first job out of school for the typical senior manager, who now has worked for twenty-five years with only one company. These companies have become ossified in their structures, processes and thinking.

It is vital that the systems and processes get renewed and overhauled, and that new blood and new thinking is brought in to refresh these organizations. This can be done with either new leadership, preferably from outside these companies, or with strategic partners, who bring with them a more performance-oriented, customer-focused culture.

Further, it is hard to make the case that the regulators, in particular PURC, have lived up to their initial mandates. PURC has not been able to deliver cost-reflective tariffs to VRA for twelve of the last fifteen years. They do not appear to be independent of the political process - the very rationale used to set them up as an independent regulator, in the first place. They have also not demonstrated transparency in the administering of the setting of electricity tariffs: fifteen years after the PURC's set-up, the utilities are still asking how their tariffs are precisely set.

The Energy Commission, on the other hand, has been proactive in developing and promulgating Ministry of Energy/Government policy, but has often done so with little consultation with key stakeholders. EC has also struggled to provide clarity and leadership around the controversial provisions in Ll 1937, four years after its passage, in respect of the separation of the hydro and thermal in bilateral contracts. Both agencies, from their respective vantage points, appear more as administrators of the system, rather than enablers of the system.

Despite the Government's laudable objective to increase Ghana's electricity capacity by 2015, the Ministry is providing few of the means by which these objectives will be met; not through supporting cost-reflective tariffs; not through the payment of Government arrears; not through the provision of a coherent plan for VALCO. Government also continues to send mixed messages: on the one hand, it is seeking a deregulated generation sector with a level playing field; on the other, it is seeking donor assistance for the generation sector. This lack of consistency clearly suits its purposes, allowing it not to pay VRA's arrears, and withholding the proper tariff, when they are due.

What the sector most needs, that the Ministry would seem best placed to provide, is the provision of an overarching plan for the entire sector, developed after a comprehensive diagnosis of the challenges facing the entire sector by world recognized industry consultants, dispassionately interrogated, that would require agreed metrics and timelines, to achieve the objectives that the sector has set itself, and forcing the making of hard choices and trade-offs between sector agencies and resources. The Ministry has to effectively "step back", and take a comprehensive view of how best to address the current and future challenges, instead of the current headlong rush to meet today's problems with no discernible road map for the future.

Conclusion

Today, there is a fundamental disconnect between the Ghana Government's goals of achieving 5,000 MW by 2015 and the means by which those objectives should be achieved.

One can only assume that the Ministry of Energy, Government's sector agency, will provide the leadership to connect means to objective. Until and unless that happens, the electricity sector - and the country - will muddle along; down a road that is taking us nowhere in particular.

We should take comfort in the fact that there are many empirical examples of well functioning electricity sectors, of countries where power sector reform has been successfully implemented. An abundant electricity future is well within the country's grasp if we choose to reach out for it. 

Editorial

TROUBLE!

The boss of the Volta River Authority (VRA) is sounding the alarm bell and we should all be deeply worried.

According to him, the ambition of the Government, in the Electricity Sub-sector cannot be realized because of disconnect between “means and objective”.

For now, his Verdict is that Ghana is going “nowhere” as far as the sub-sector is concerned.

Giving the nature of current crisis in Ghana’s energy sector, these statements provide, the people of Ghana with no comforts.

The clearest indication is that the crisis will last for a very very long time.

The Insight believes that it is not sufficient to identify problems if the identification will not lead to finding solutions.

We recommend very strongly that the Government should take immediate step to get the country’s energy experts together to find a solution quickly to the hydro-headed problems confronting the sector.

SPYING

The British spy agency GCHQ has access to the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories – and shares this data with the NSA, Edward Snowden has revealed to the Guardian in a new leak.

GCHQ’s network of cables is able to process massive quantities of information from both specific targets and completely innocent people, including recording phone calls and reading email messages, it was revealed on Friday. 

"It's not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight," Snowden told the Guardian. "They [GCHQ] are worse than the US." 

The Government Communications Headquarters agency has two different programs, aimed at carrying out this online and telephone monitoring – categorized under ‘Mastering the Internet’ and ‘Global Telecoms Exploitation.’ Both have been conducted in the absence of any public knowledge, reports the Guardian.

“If you remember, even the NSA said that they did not record phone calls, but according to these latest revelations by Edward Snowden, that up to ‘600 million’ telephone events last year were recorded a day by the GCHQ,” said RT’s Tesa Arcilla from London.

“There’s no doubt as to what the objectives of these programs were, having put them in place,” she said, emphasizing the titles. 

The agency is able to store the volumes of data it amasses from fiber-optic cables for up to 30 days in an operation codenamed Tempora. The practice has been going on for around 18 months. 

GCHQ which was handling 600m telephone ‘events’ a day, according to the documents, had tapped into over 200 fiber-optic cables and had the capacity to analyze data from over 46 of them at a time. 

The cables used by GCHQ can carry data at 10 gigabits per second, which in theory, means they could deliver up to 21petabytes of information per day. The program is continuing to develop on a daily basis with the agency aiming to expand to the point it is able to process terabits (thousands of gigabits) of data at once.

“This appears to be dangerously close to, if not exactly, the centralised database of all our internet communications, including some content, that successive Governments have ruled out and Parliament has never legislated for,” said Nick Pickles of UK privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch.

“If GCHQ have been intercepting huge numbers of innocent people’s communications as part of a massive sweeping exercise then I struggle to see how that squares with a process that requires a warrant for each individual intercept. This question must be urgently be addressed in Parliament,” he stated.

By May last year, some 300 GCHQ-assigned analysts and 250 from the NSA had been specially allocated large quantities of data to trawl through as a result of the operations.

The Guardian reports that 850,000 NSA and outside contractors had potential access to the databases. However, the paper does not explain how it came to such an enormous figure

“These revelations reveal the scale of and the scope of cooperation between UK and US intelligence services,” said RT’s Gayane Chichakyan from Washington. “From these revelations we learned how dramatically it has expanded over the years.”

“The document shows the FISA court lets the NSA use data snagged ‘inadvertently.’ They basically give a warrant to target suspects,” she said, recalling Lieutenant General Keith Alexander's quote after a 2008 visit to the Menwith RAF base in England: "Why can't we collect all the signals all the time? Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith," he had said.

The GCHQ project was first trialed in 2008. The intelligence organization has been labeled an ‘intelligence superpower’ on account of its technical capabilities, which by 2010 gave it the strongest access to internet communications out of the ‘Five Eyes’ – an international intelligence sharing  alliance, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US, brought into existence in 1946. 

The mass-surveillance has seen the interception of data from transatlantic cables that also carry data to western Europe through ‘intercept partners’ commercial companies that had entered into private agreements with GCHQ. Many have been paid off for their cooperation.

GCHQ feared that exposure of the names of the companies involved could lead to “high-level political fallout,” and took measures to ensure names were kept secret. Warrants had reportedly been issued to compel the companies to cooperate so that GCHQ could engage in spying through them.

“They have no choice," said a Guardian intelligence source.

Human rights groups have spoken out against the mass data collection: “They are exploiting the fact that the internet is so international in nature," Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, told BBC Radio 4's 'Today' program. "I'm pretty sad in a democracy when all that appears to be holding back the secret state is its physical and technological capability and not its ethics or a tight interpretation and application of the law," she added. 

Snowden previously warned that he would be releasing further information pertaining to mass security operations carried out on the unwary public, stating in a previous  Q & A with the Guardian that the“truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”

Edward Snowden: Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped

Edward Snowden

The threat of imprisonment or murder will not stop the truth from coming out, Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who blew the lid on the massive National Security Agency surveillance program, told the Guardian in a live Q&A.

The 29-year-old former NSA contractor in conjunction with Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian journalist who broke the story on the NSA’s two controversial data-collection programs which targeted Americans and foreign allies alike, took questions online regarding the fallout from the massive intelligence leak. 

Edward Snowden kicked off the session by describing the targeted campaign by the US government to paint him as a traitor, “just as they did with other whistleblowers. The smear campaign, he argues, has destroyed possibility of a fair trial at home. In this regard, his decision to leave the United States was not based on any desire to evade justice, especially since he believes he can “do more good outside of prison.” 

Snowden realized his choice of Hong Kong as a refuge would stir up anti-Chinese hysteria in the US media and be used as a tool to “distract away from the issue of US government misconduct.” He remained emphatic, however, that he had in no way shape or form acted on behalf of Beijing, saying that he “only works with journalists.” 

“Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.” 

He was further dismissive of the perennial, dual-pronged approach from US officials to play the terror card in an effort to shut down discussion regarding their every increasing authority and the traitor angle to dismiss those who advocate government transparency. 

Regarding the former tactic, Snowden argues the fourth estate can verify the veracity of government claims by analyzing how and if the government’s massively expanded powers have resulted in the actual prevention of terror plots.

“Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to achieve that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.”

Snowden further deployed his considerable wit to cast aspersion on members of the US political elite who had led leveled the traitor charge against him.

“It's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, [Democratic Senator Dianne] Feinstein, and [Republican Senator Peter]King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.”

Living a life on the run had previously led Snowden to say that none of the options ahead of him were good, but his ultimate goal would be realized no matter what fate became him. 

"All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped." 

Despite the risks, his message to other potential whistleblowers was unequivocal: "This country is worth dying for." 

"Snowden, who had previously stated that he painstakingly evaluated every document he had disclosed to ensure that it was legitimately in the public interest, reiterated that had not in fact posed a national security threat. 

“I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target," he argued. 

When pressed over whether it was his intention to insinuate that Bradley Manning, the United States soldier currently on trial for passing classified material to WikiLeaks, indiscriminately dumped classified information with the intention of harming people, the former CIA employee defended both the Army Private and the online non-profit.  

“Wikileaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest. The unredacted release of cables was due to the failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase. However, I understand that many media outlets used the argument that 'documents were dumped' to smear Manning, and want to make it clear that it is not a valid assertion here.” 

Snowden said the “draconian” campaigns against Manning, NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou would result in even more anti-corruption and government transparency advocates aspiring to greater acts of boldness.

“Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.”

Despite being deeply disillusioned with the Obama administration, which Snowden claims “closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs,” he believes the president has not yet reached the point of no return.

“He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it.”

With the promise of further revelations, Snowden dispelled any disinformation intended to downplay the scope of US Intelligence surveillance capabilities, describing a murky legal framework with virtually no oversight which gives signals intelligence analysts carte blanche when it comes to the collection of American’s private communications.

“…if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT (signals intelligence) databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.” 

Snowden continues that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court essentially acts as a rubberstamp judicial body which, for all intents and purposes, operates on an ad hoc basis, as “Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant.” 

This so-called “incidental” collection has very real world implications, as the “content of your communications” which has been obtained without a warrant is still accessible to NSA workers for future use.   

When asked to clarify if by content, he means a record that the correspondence took place or the actual content itself, Snowden said the answer is “both.” 

“If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA (FISA Amendments Avy) 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.” 

Snowden argued that for those hoping to bolster their security against invasive government snooping, encryption remains a viable option, though with one major caveat.

“Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.” 

Cry, beloved Gaza!

An Israeli Soldier points his gun at Palestinian children

''The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,'' Dov Weissglass, advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister in 2006.

In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza. Following this, there were democratic elections which Hamas won. Since voting the “wrong way,” the Palestinian people of Gaza have been subjected to a siege by Israel. The Palestinian people of Gaza are blockaded by land, sea and air by the Israeli Defense Force. 

The EU and America have failed to do anything to stop Israel's war against the Palestinians of Gaza. Most notable were the massive military attacks of December-January 2008-9, which killed 1,500 Palestinians and the most recent attack of November 2012, which resulted in nearly 200 deaths. 

The International Red Cross and the United Nations have found the Israeli government's siege of Gaza to be illegal under international law. 

In September 2011, five independent UN rights experts made a report to the UN Human Rights Council, which said that Israel's siege of Gaza amounted to collective punishment of the Palestinian people and was a “flagrant contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law” under the Fourth Geneva Convention. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out the Gaza Strip is the world's largest open air prison. 

In October 2012, Professor Chomsky said, “The siege is a criminal act that has no justification. It should be broken and it should be strongly opposed by the outside world. It’s simply an effort to intimidate the Gazans into self-destruction, to try to get rid of them and destroy the society. There is absolutely no justification for it -- military justifications are claimed but they have no credibility.” 

Israel's blockade of Gaza is denying the Palestinian people access to medical supplies and food. Hospitals face critical shortages, with 40% of all essential medicines at zero stock level. Out of the 1.7 million Palestinians living in Gaza, 54% are food insecure, including 428,000 children. 

Israel's illegal blockade has led to a massive shortage of building materials to repair the homes, hospitals, schools and water/sanitation infrastructure that have been destroyed/damaged by the IDF in the last 5 years. Most of Gaza's water supplies are polluted and unsafe to drink. Meanwhile, there are power cuts every day. 

I spoke to documentary filmmaker and journalist Harry Fear, who is based in Gaza and has reported extensively on the siege of Gaza over the last few years. 

Chomsky has called the Gaza Strip the “world's largest prison.” Would you agree with this description? 

I would largely agree with Chomsky’s description. I’ve found, though, that quite a few of those sympathetic with Palestinians don’t actually know that the Gaza Strip has a border with Egypt, and that Egypt is also largely responsible for the imprisonment (‘security besiegement’) policy. Civilian traffic out of Gaza into Israel is basically a no-no, while leaving into Egypt is diplomatically difficult and unaffordable for most Palestinians. I think the most important aspect of the siege, though, is the economic blockade. 

The Egyptian border with Gaza is closed to almost all economic traffic. Only recently have the Egyptians allowed construction materials to be imported into Gaza. Palestinians want and need economic independence (not aid dependency), and I haven’t met any Palestinians who want to leave Gaza for any reason other than the poor economic opportunities there (prolonged by the deliberately-punishing siege). My on-the-ground experience in Gaza has made me realize that there is a real psychological sense of imprisonment and worldly isolation as a result of the siege, which affects widespread depression and eats away at people’s hope and the future prospects for prosperity. 

‘Free Gaza!’ should remain the mantra, so long as this illegal solitary confinement policy continues. Incidentally, the besiegement policy proves that Israel (and Egypt) is the dominating external powers, and that the Palestinians are not in a symmetrical conflict or battle with Israel, but is the persecuted party. The government in Gaza can’t do anything to lift the siege, only help alleviate it by facilitating the underground smuggling tunnels into Egypt. 

Since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 the IDF has launched two massive military assaults upon Gaza. What effect/impact have these had upon Gazan society? 

Although I wasn’t present during the winter ‘08-’09 assault, I believe the affects of these military operations on Gaza have of course been grave and multidimensional. At a psychological and spiritual level the resolve and will of the Palestinian people has been tested by most cruel and barbaric aggressions, launched by one of the most powerful militaries in the world, resulting in the ‘collateral damage’ massacring of hundreds. With around one in a thousand Palestinians in Gaza wiped of the map during that 22-day assault, every family and street has been touched by terror and tragedy. 

Similarly, during this winter (11/2012), the 8-day operation hit every area of Gaza and once again no civilian was really safe during those bloody days. Without meaning to deliberately romanticize or objectify Palestinians, it’s absolutely important to note the unimaginable resilience (including moral resilience) of Palestinians in the face of such barbarity. Some of my closest friends in Gaza volunteered at hospitals during Operation Cast Lead and had to carry dying and dead children through bombed streets, but you wouldn’t know it or guess it from their political stances. I ask myself: would the British people react in a relatively restrained manner to aggressions of these sorts? I can’t imagine so. 

Interviewing Hamas spokespeople you notice that they often mention their policy desire to perpetuate the steadfastness of their people. That’s a striking policy goal and one that shows that the Palestinian steadfastness is something tangible, remarkable, and fundamental in the conflict with Israel. That steadfastness has been tested. At a physical and political level, massive civilian infrastructural damage and damage to civilian administrative capacity was done during both recent operations. Neither operations have of course been able to stop militant groups from producing home-made rockets, including rockets that can reach 75km away from the Strip. Israel’s operations have tried to prove a terror deterrence to the subjugated Palestinians, but Palestinians resolve hasn’t been broken. 

What impact has the Israeli siege of Gaza had upon the living standards of ordinary Palestinians? 

The siege has explicitly destroyed serious economic prospects for Palestinians. Most Palestinians are living in relative poverty, relying on food aid for support. While unemployment is over 50%, most Palestinians are living in refugee camps, awaiting economic freedom to improve their living conditions. Population centers in Gaza constitute some of the most over-crowed and densely-populated residential areas in the world. At the same time there is quite pronounced inequality in the Strip, as the main city (historic Gaza City) is strikingly developed in comparison to other areas of the Strip. What’s clear is that Palestinians have used all means at their disposal to attempt development, by relying mostly on smuggling tunnels with Egypt for imports, proving determination and resourcefulness, as well as Gaza’s economic capacity if it were free.
Medical Aid for Palestinians has criticized the siege of Gaza for the terrible impact upon its health service. How is the siege affecting the medical services available to people in Gaza? 

Of course the health services do their best under the circumstances. Limitations include lack of medicines, basic medical equipments and advanced technology that we take for granted in developed countries. Aid efforts and convoys have delivered some alleviation, but there is too far left to go. 

How has the siege affected the education of children in Gaza? 

The worsened economic situation seems to have driven Palestinians to a stronger determination for academic excellence, rather than having had a demoralizing effect. Although there are thousands too few school places, a lack of basic texts and (some way) poor teaching altogether, there are several universities in Gaza of excellent standards whose students’ determination and skill is incredible.

Following the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the people of Gaza voted the ''wrong way'' by electing Hamas to office. Why do you think Western governments have such a hostile attitude towards Palestinian resistance to Israeli repression? 

Since the media strips away the historical and practical context in which this desperate and weak Palestinian armed resistance is borne, then of course one sees only ‘terrorist crazies’ in Gaza, perpetuating the dangerous common stereotypes. For powerful and dominant Western governments it’s far easier to simply go along with the Israeli terms of reference than confront them in a just and reasoned way. So the Western position is almost identical to the Israeli position. 

Hamas’ armed resistance (in response to Israeli state terrorism) is of course considered as (private) terrorism by American and British governments, who are themselves used to dealing with and labeling resistance efforts in such a way (think of their own adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan). Meanwhile, as ‘we’ are unused to being occupied and resisting occupation, there is automatically an ideological dissimilarity and natural sympathy deficit with the Palestinian position. 

Thousands of Palestinians have been killed and injured by the IDF since 2005. Do you think that ordinary Palestinians have the right to defend themselves against military attack? 

Palestinians have a legal, moral and abrahamic religious rights to self-defense, including explicit and direct armed resistance. However Palestinians do not have the legal right to target Israeli civilians, any more than the Israeli military had the right to kill 61 Palestinian children last winter. Unguided rocket fire from Gaza is legally and morally problematic. The military thinking is that Palestinian retaliatory rocket fire that terrorizes Israeli civilians could be successful in scaring off and preventing Israeli state terrorism, and it has indeed been somewhat successful in ‘rebalancing the terror threat’. However, one has to take a macro perspective: Palestinians in Gaza are contained behind walls, fences and no-go zones, with little opportunities to attack Israeli military units or installations. 

Meanwhile in the West Bank, the opposite is the case, but Palestinians don’t have weapons (only stones) to resist with. If we were (hypothetically) to see widespread Intifada-style mass popular resistance to Israeli occupation, I think that would be monumental in knocking into place the last nail of the coffin of Israeli occupation. The international community is moved by occupation, suffering, and organized resistance, and needs to see it to forcefully externally intervene, use its power and enforce the law. 

Whenever rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel the UK government is quick to condemn such acts as terrorism. The historian Illan Pappe has noted that the far more important issue is Israeli violence against the Gaza Strip. How would you characterize Israeli acts of violence against the Gaza Strip? 

Living through the recent 8-day aggression confirmed my previous analysis that Israel’s violent adventures in Gaza constitute illegal, disproportionate and reckless military engagements, resulting in blatant state terrorism and inevitable massacring. In the last couple of years it’s been the case that Israel’s attacks have largely been targeted (although sometimes the targeting is erroneous). The key to understanding the state violence is to see that Israel is willing to use incredible and ridiculous force, inevitably invoking massive civilian ‘collateral damage’, in order to kill a suspected militant or two. Palestinian blood is cheap. Who cares? The mainstream media certainly doesn’t. 

More and more activists from around the world are taking solidarity action such as the Aid to Gaza convoys or visiting the West Bank to help with the olive harvest. Can you tell us more about your initiative to take media activists to Gaza this summer? 

I’m taking a few dozen media workers and media students to Gaza in July for a solidarity and media-making mission to stimulate improved journalistic coverage on, understanding of and compassion towards Gaza. From 18 countries around the world, the media convoy members will congregate in Cairo and then complete an intense two-week program of immersion and media work in Gaza. The participants were carefully chosen by a team in Gaza, based on their education, skills and experience, as well as their willingness to follow-up the trip with awareness-building work when they return home. I have tried to reinvent the convoy model, moving away from a model of pit-stop visiting of war sites, institutes and then plush hotels, to a model that’s more intense, embedded, realistic and hopefully more socially constructive. 

You can help beat the blockade and get food to malnourished children in Gaza by making a donation to Medical Aid for Palestinians special appeal at: http://www.justgiving.com/MAP-Feed-the-children-of-Gaza-appeal.

US prisons full of innocents

There are probably more innocent men and women in prison in the United States now than there were people in prison here total -- innocent and guilty -- 30 years ago, or than there are total people in prison (proportionately or as an absolute number) in most nations on earth.

I don't mean that people are locked up for actions that shouldn't be considered crimes, although they are. I don't mean that people are policed and indicted and prosecuted by a racist system that makes some people far more likely to end up in prison than other people guilty of the same actions, although that is true, just as it's also true that the justice system works better for the wealthy than for the poor. I am referring rather to men (it's mostly men) who have been wrongly convicted of crimes they simply did not commit. I'm not even counting Guantanamo or Bagram or immigrants' prisons. I'm talking about the prisons just up the road, full of people from just down the road.

I don't know whether wrongful convictions have increased as a percentage of convictions. What has indisputably increased is the number of convictions and the lengths of sentences. The prison population has skyrocketed. It's multiplied severalfold. And it's done so during a political climate that has rewarded legislators, judges, prosecutors, and police for locking people up -- and not for preventing the conviction of innocents. This growth does not correlate in any way with an underlying growth in crime.

At the same time, evidence has emerged of a pattern of wrongful convictions. This emerging evidence is largely the result of prosecutions during the 1980s, primarily for rape but also for murder, before DNA testing had come into its own, but when evidence (including DNA evidence) was sometimes preserved. Other factors have contributed: advances in DNA science that help to convict the guilty as well as to free the innocent, avenues for appeal that were in some ways wider before the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and the heroic work of a relative handful of people.

An examination of the plea bargains and trials that put people behind bars ought to make clear to anyone that many of those convicted are innocent. But DNA exonerations have opened a lot of eyes to that fact. The trouble is that most convicts do not have anything that can be tested for DNA to prove their guilt or innocence. Here are 1,138 documented exonerations out of that tiny fraction of the overall prison population for which there was evidence to test. One study found that 6% of these prisoners are innocent. If you could extrapolate that to the whole population you'd be talking about 136,000 innocent people in US prisons today. In the 1990s, a federal inquiry found that DNA testing, then new, was clearing 25% of primary suspects. You do the math.

Of course you can't simply do the math, because wrongful convictions could be higher or lower for the available sample than for all prisoners. What we can be sure of is that we are talking about a large number of people whose lives (and the lives of their loved ones) have been ruined -- not to mention the lives of additional victims of actual criminals left free.

One way to be fairly sure that the rate of wrongful conviction carries over, at least very roughly, to a variety of criminal prosecutions is to examine how those convictions came about. Brandon Garrett's Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong examines the prosecutions of the first 250 people exonerated by DNA testing. Garrett finds broad systemic problems that could be remedied but largely have not been.

Of the 250, 76% were misidentified by an eyewitness -- most of the witnesses having been led to that act by police and/or prosecutor, some of them badgered and threatened, others merely manipulated. Invalid forensic science expertise contributed to 61% of the convictions, much of it willfully manipulated, some fraction perhaps attributable to well-intentioned but negligent incompetence. Informants, mostly jailhouse informants, and most of them manipulated and bribed by police or prosecutor, helped out in 21% of the trials. In 16% of the cases, the accused supposedly confessed to the crime, but these "confessions" tended to be the result of police intimidation, manipulation, brutality, and simple lying. Garrett fears that similar problems infect the US justice system as a whole.

Garrett focuses on problems in policy and perspective. People who believe all eyewitnesses are correct and truthful can mean well and nonetheless get an important point wrong. People who aren't aware that false confessions exist won't look for them. But people unaware of such things are not typically part of the criminal justice system, where awareness of these problems is built in but steamrolled over. Judges ask whether witnesses were improperly led to misidentify a witness, but care little for the answers they receive. While Garrett begins and ends his book by claiming that pretty much everyone means well, the intervening pages grown under the weight of endless malevolence. In reading the book, I found myself over and over again scribbling "Did this guy mean well?" in the margin.

Do police feeding a false confession to their victim mean well? When they falsely report on that procedure to a court do they mean well? When they use tape recorders but shut them off each time they feed the prisoner new facts, do they mean well? When they hide evidence? When they destroy evidence? When they stack lineups and pressure witnesses to make identifications? When they hypnotize witnesses? When the prosecutor employs junk science and knowingly makes false claims about it? When simple procedures to avoid bias are known but avoided? When expert witnesses lie for a living? When crime labs alter reports to cover-up exculpatory evidence? When police or prosecutors bribe other convicts or codefendants to testify and tell them what to say, but lie about that procedure? When the defense is denied competent counsel or the ability to call witnesses? When the judge effectively acts as part of the prosecution? When jurors pressure and threaten a fellow juror to vote "guilty"?

"It is almost unheard of for prosecutors to be disciplined or sanctioned for misconduct," writes Garrett, who is no doubt also familiar with this saying: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Garrett believes that serious reforms are needed, and points to North Carolina where a commission has been set up to aid in freeing and not convicting the innocent. If you imagine that that's what appeals courts are for, read how they handled these 250 cases. In 23 cases, the victim was tried more than once for the same crime. One in a blue moon the system works and frees an innocent -- just often enough to keep hope floating out there like a lottery ticket in the distance. Even when DNA clears a prisoner, a prosecutor may propose to try him again, and then do nothing for years while he rots in prison waiting. North Carolina has passed legislation reforming procedures for eyewitnesses, requiring the recording of interrogations, enhancing the preservation of evidence and access to DNA testing, etc.

But one of the major reforms needed is clearly a reform of attitude. And that probably will come more quickly if we recognize what current attitudes are. Jurors and judges should be aware of how often many prosecutors and police officers pursue conviction at the expense of the truth. They should not prejudge in that direction any more than in the other, but they should be aware of what they are up against. If, as a society, we valued the freedom of innocents as much as the punishment of the guilty, we would treat judges and prosecutors and defense attorneys and police differently. We would reward protection of the innocent as much as convictions. A "successful" prosecution would be redefined as one that, first, did no harm. The police officer who found an alibi for a suspect would be praised and promoted just like the officer who found evidence of his guilt. A defendant might even someday find it possible to gain representation from an attorney who at least pretended to believe in at least the possibility of his innocence, and who behaved accordingly.

In the meantime, we are generating and compounding tragedies by the thousands. When James O'Donnell was wrongly convicted, he exploded with anger and cursed the judge and jury. Then he composed himself and said, "I am really sorry for my outburst. I tried to be as civil as possible. I would never do a crime like this. And my life is over now as I know it, my wife and kids' life. I don't understand how the jury did this to me. It's really not right, what they did. I was home in bed. I was sleeping. I would never hit a woman. I have a wife. I never hit my kids, ever. I never forced a woman to do anything in my whole life. That's the God's honest truth . . . It's just -- I'm very sorry for my outburst. Don't take my life away, please." 

Truth out on Flight 800 crash

Remains of Flight 800

Seventeen years ago, the American people sat idly by when an airliner was downed in the waters off New York.

In 1996, an airliner, TWA Flight 800, bound from New York to Paris with 230 passengers mysteriously exploded off Long Island. Reliable witnesses said they saw a missile streak up from the ocean and hit the plane, then ascending at 13,000 feet.

Former Press Secretary for President John F. Kennedy, Pierre Salinger, also a former United States senator in his own right, contacted the FBI stating he had documentation that the plane had been shot down by the US Navy.

From that day forward, Salinger was systematically ridiculed and destroyed, almost as though he were one of the lonely voices that stood against the invasion of Iraq or the tragic buffoonery of 9/11 and its aftermath.

Flight 800
Yesterday, it was announced that investigators who had submitted the report debunking Salinger had come forward claiming they had been ordered to falsify their findings.

You see, a film outlining the cover-up is going to be released soon and the same investigators who cited a “fuel explosion” as the cause of the crash now admit they lied.

How many times have we heard this?

They now tell of an “external explosion” as the cause. “External explosions” at 13,000 feet are typically caused by the presence of explosive material which can only reach that height when attached to a missile, typically one with a guidance system intended to help “external explosives” down aircraft.

Confronted with proof of a cover-up conspiracy and the murder of 230 Americans, the government has remained silent.
There is no intent to open an investigation now inexorably proven to have been a criminal conspiracy.

There is no call for prosecutions and arrests. In fact, the press, even to this day, uses the term “conspiracy theory” in references to the revelations from the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigators now coming forward with the truth, telling of the threats they endured and the silence they held for so long.

Michael Hastings “Boston brakes”
Yesterday, Michael Hastings, a 33-year-old reporter responsible for ending the career of renegade General Stanley McChrystal, died in a mysterious “one car accident.”

Hastings exposed General McChrystal as a “cowboy” military leader, unanswerable to civilian command, oblivious to the rules of war and a general more inclined to worry about keeping the flow of heroin from Afghanistan going than anything else.

General McChrystal along with Vice-President Cheney headed JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), the half-military, half-political group that used death squads and drug cash to fight world terrorism.

JSOC knew no borders. They still don’t. JSOC doesn’t recognize the President as Commander-in-Chief, takes no orders from the secretary of defense or Joint Chiefs of Staff. In fact, many JSOC operatives are employed by civilian contracting firms under the control of political extremists openly opposed to America’s form of government.

Thus, it isn’t hard to understand why President Obama fired General McChrystal. It is equally clear why General McChrystal or his supporters might want Michael Hastings dead.

McChrystal’s friends have the expertise, giving all that is needed, means, motive and opportunity, for an arrest. There won’t even be an investigation.

Boston brakes
Another minor issue, which should be brought up. One of the common methods used by operatives of JSOC to “neutralize” opponents is “Boston brakes.”

The staged “one car accident” is actually taught in classes to members of a number of commands, Special Forces, Navy SEALS, CIA and others. All that is needed is access to a car, someone stupid enough to drive down a lonely road or be out very late at night, and control of accident investigators and a medical examiner.

Not that long ago, an Arizona sheriff who stood his ground against the Mexican drug cartels died in a “Boston brakes” accident. It may very well have been JSOC “operatives” who arranged his death. That man was Larry Deaver.

The “JSOC boys” are mostly “conservatives” and very amenable to “private enterprise.” They are fanatic Zionists, carry bibles wherever they go and account only to “God” who, according to them, seems to love their criminal enterprises.

9/11
In 2009, John Farmer, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, wrote a book, “The Ground Truth.” There, he outlined, not just the pattern of lies and obfuscation that plagued that investigation, but reported that a majority of commissioners wished the report rescinded and had requested a criminal investigation of many of those who were interviewed.

Key Bush officials refused to testify under oath. A review of their statements made to the commission reveals a pattern of almost childish deception and broad complicity in the acts themselves.

What is clear is that Bush officials feared charges of perjury, the real crimes easily discerned through even a cursory reading of the long published pubic record, those being murder and treason.

How do revelations of a government cover-up of the downing of Flight 800 apply? How far do we have to reach to connect the dots?

I picture Senator Salinger, year after year trying to turn evidence over to the FBI, evidence the FBI really never needed in the first place.
After all, who do you think it was who silenced the investigators and handed them the phony story about defective fuel tanks?

They knew Salinger was right, that the US government had shot down one of its own commercial airliners.

One thing is clear; “truth” such as it is, seems to be a war between conspiracy theories with the sanctioned “tale” generally the most hollow and bereft of substance.

Is this why a generation of Americans has been such an easy target for the onset of totalitarianism?

Syria and the G8, a “new sheriff”
This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin, told President Obama in no uncertain terms that the wild conspiracy theories about the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons were not going to go unchallenged.

No G8 communique was issued calling for President Assad to step down. Additionally, both Britain and France backed away from their previous positions, calling for a “no-fly zone” to support rebel insurgents and the arming of forces now increasingly seen as a combination of Jihadists intent on eradicating Syria’s Christian population and terrorists funded by oil, arms and banking interests.

CIA operatives tasked with “vetting” those intended to receive the America “bounty” of weapons and ammunition complain that it is impossible to give any “rebel faction” arms and be certain that they won’t be used against Syrian Christians or for terrorism in Iraq.

Arms to Syria
Last night, Syrian news services announced an agreement with Russia that will supply hundreds of modern TOS1a “thermobaric” rocket launchers and other unspecified advanced weapons.

For years, Russia has participated in sanctions, weapons and otherwise, buying in on the West’s proclivity for broad mythology that always seems to, in the end, support one form of criminal enterprise or another.
Has Putin finally decided that it is time for Russia to assume the mantle of leadership abandoned long ago to those who were going to deliver a “New American Century?”

Mythology versus reality
It was only one airliner, 230 dead, seventeen years ago, one phony investigation, on very big lie. However, since that time, the world has been propelled to the brink of ruin by exactly this kind of lie, the same hubris, the same weakness.

They waited seventeen years to become “whistleblowers.” Are we hearing about it now because they want us to start chasing ghosts instead of the sea of lies before us?