NA WA! PHOTO NO LIE

NA WA! PHOTO NO LIE

Editorial

MISCHIEF

It is just pure mischief and it is a continuation of the political propaganda initiated against Professor John Evans Atta Mills.

Since the death of President Mills, some people and institutions have deliberately sought to create doubt about the circumstance of his death and in the process suggest that he was murdered.

Now it is clear to even his most ardent opponents that Professor Mills enjoys the tremendous support and sympathy of people from all walks of life.

An aura of sainthood hangs over Professor Mills after his death and his opponents are worried about the possibility that this good will can very easily be transferred to President John Mahama.

They desperately want to prevent this and the strategy is to subtly suggest that those who are likely to be beneficiaries of the goodwill are those who killed him.

 That way, the political opponents of Professor Mills believe that the goodwill Professor Mills enjoys can be dissipated.

In our view, this is a show of utter disrespect to Professor Mills and the People of Ghana.

This dirty campaign must end now.

KILLED BY POLICE: THE FAMILY’S PETITION TO IGP

Dear Sir,

"PETITION FOR-REDRESS REGARDING DEATH OF MY BROTHER MOHAMMED  AYOROGO AS A RESULT OF ACCIDENT CAUSED BY POLICE VEHICLE NO.GP1247

Mohammed Alhassan IGP

I wish to appeal to the Minister of Interior and the Attorney General to come to my aid to ensure that justice is done in the above case involving my brother, the late Mohammed Ayorogo, aged 24 yrs, who was knocked down and killed by a Police vehicle with registration NO GP 1247 at Abokobi on is" February, 2013 and which the Police are dragging their feet to prosecute the offending Police driver.

The facts of the case are that on the 18th  of February 2013, my late brother who was a dispatch rider of Royal Dutch Pharmacy, a private company in Accra was riding the company's official motor bike with registration number M-I0-GR-9426 from Abokobi towards Accra and at about 3.00pm, the Police vehicle with registration number GP 1247 also driving from the opposite direction i.e. from Accra towards Abokobi, suddenly left their lane and was driving against traffic and knocked down the late Mohammed Ayorogo, and he sustained injuries on the leg and hands. According to eye witnesses, the Police driver now identified as Cpl. Attuah of the Rapid Deployment Force (RDF), Police Headquarters, Accra got down and picked the victim and instead of putting him safely in the police Vehicle, he hired a Taxi Cab and put him in the boot, like a dead animal. 

Witnesses and drivers who were caught up in Traffic vehemently protested against the police action and demanded that they convey him in the police vehicle and send him to the nearest hospital. The Police ignored this suggestion and only removed him from the boot of the taxi and put him at the back seats of the Taxi and ordered the driver to take off while the- Police followed with the Police vehicle. Unfortunately for the Police, an Etv Ghana television crew arrived at the scene and filmed the incident and broadcasted it live from the scene in their news bulletin. (Please Sir, you can call for the excepts from Etv Ghana and watch the horrible incident for your good selves)

Sir, it was friends and some relatives who watched the T.V news bulletin and saw my late brother who informed me of the accident. I rushed to the Police hospital first and contacted the nurses at the OPD and the emergency ward in search of my brother but I was told that no motor accident case or victim had been brought there. I continued to the 37 military hospital and was told the same story. I proceeded to Korle Bu, Ridge and La hospitals but did not see my brother.

 The next day, I went to the Police hospital Mortuary-and to my surprise, I found the lifeless dead-body of my brother lying on the floor with his uniform. My information was that, the Policemen took my brother straight to the mortuary without sending him to the hospital for medical treatment or at least for confirmation of death by the medical Officers and because of that there was no record of him in the hospital. According to the Mortuary Attendant, he protested and asked the Policemen who refused to disclose their identities, to take the victim to the OPD to see a doctor for medical attention, but they shouted on him to take instructions and drove off.

Sir, after the Police had allegedly completed their investigation the body was released to the, family for burial. The Police never showed any concern or sympathy to even assist the family in the burial and funeral rites, up to date the Police have not found it appropriate ,to apprise the family of the action it has taken to ensure that the driver of the vehicle is prosecuted and compensation paid to the family. I have been to the Police Headquarters on several occasions and what some of the Policemen in charge tell me is unprintable.

Consequently, I was compelled to petition the Director General MTTU, Police Headquarters on the issue. He told me verbally that according to his inquires, the docket on the accident had been forwarded to the Attorney General's office for directives, that has forced me to write this petition to your Honorable Ministers to ensure that justice is done expeditiously to dispel the notion being bandied around by the Policemen concerned that the docket will remain in the Attorney- General's office for years.

I hope this petition will be given due attention.

0244034257

 The Attorney - General
 Attorney - General Department
 Ministry of justice

 Accra

The Minister of the Interior
Ministry of the interior
Ministries Accra

Cc The Inspector- General Of Police
Ghana Police Headquarters 

AFRICA CRIMINAL COURT

Barack Obama

By Dawuda Mohammed Suru

About Ten years ago, when the doors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) were opened in Hague, the expectations were that, the days of injustice and impunity especially on the part of elected authorities and other influential persons across the world will seize to see the light of the day. Today, the International Criminal Court is supported by many countries in the world with some African countries such as Uganda, Central African Republic, Mali and Democratic Republic of Congo already petitioned the court whilst the United Nation in recent past also referred some leaders of Libya and Sudan for prosecutions by the Court.

Recently, in the light of the visit of His Excellency President Omar Hassan Ahmed Al Basher to Abuja to attend African union(AU) special summit on HIV/AIDS, malaria and Tuberculosis, Ambassador Tinn Intelmann of the Court in a letter protested the visit and urged the authorities in Nigeria to comply with the Rome statute by arresting President Al Basher. The same arguments made whenever President Omar Al Basher visits any state party including Ghana in 2008.The opponents of President Al Bashir are accusing him of perpetrating an immoral act and presiding over a government with determined agenda of wiping out people of black skinned in Darfur.

It appears that, in a very desperate attempt to divert attention of American populations in the run up to the elections in 2004 from the terrible fallouts in Iraq. The government of United States of America hastily claimed and declared the conflict in Darfur as genocidal and strangely enough quickly warned against preoccupying themselves with it. Fortunately, given its apparent political opportunism, many in the International Community including both former Secretary General His Excellency Kofi Annan and former President His Excellency President Olusegun Obasanjo rejected it and called for a disregard of such claims of genocide in Sudan. As if that was not enough, the Special Commission On Darfur created by the Security Council of United Nation and chaired by Mr. Antonio Cassese was unambiguous and emphatic in their report that, both the claim and declarations of genocide occurrence in Darfur were baseless.

Furthermore, there is a very little if any at all racial distinction between the many ethnic groupings in Darfur. Both the so labeled Arabs and African are dark in complexion and the only possible differences are located in the cultural practices of the groups. Undoubtedly, the displacements of many innocent people within the region of Darfur are very disturbing and unacceptable. The Sudanese government under the leadership of President Omar Al Bashir was evidently very open and eager in signing the agreements with International Organization For Migration to oversee the returning of victims to their homes and ever since promoted the visits of many countless aid workers to the region. The arguments of President Al Bashir and the government ability to influence and control the activities of the criminal and bloody gangs are not supported by the evidence in the grounds. Many of the Sudanese government institutions including the Security agencies have been recorded as part of the victims of those criminals groups. Recognizing and accepting the conflict in Darfur as a clash over natural resource and never about an ethnic cleansing agenda is certainly the direction in helping solve the problem.

Many years ago, the founders according to the treaty establishing the Organization of African Unity (OAU) were inspired by a common drive to encourage understanding and cooperation among African nations in a response to the aspirations of Africans for brotherhood, solidarity and greater unity to overcome national and ethnic differences. Today, more than ever before, the developments in which decisions affecting the world are dominated by small countries some of which are not even signatory to institutions such as the International Criminal Court are backwards and no longer tolerable. African countries and other developing states should be given bigger voice at international institutions to take decisions to give international relations democratic character. Considering the structure and mode of operations of the International Criminal Court, very clearly it is targeted at African leaders and interests and therefore does not make sense for some countries within the Continent to maintain, they will comply with the Rome statute by arresting President Omar Al Bashir.

Lagos Airport and Lagos-Ibadan Roads: Shameless Neglect by Shameless Leaders

By Akin Olukiran

Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria President

First impression, they say, counts.  I recall a near-comedic episode over a decade ago when I had to visit a stupendously rich man with some mental health issues in a leafy suburb of London, on a cold winter morning, in company of a Caucasian professional colleague.  Upon arrival at the mansion, seeing the state of the expansive but filthy living room, we both made up our minds not to accept any offer of a drink.  Why?  It’s the first impression we had, with the deplorable and unhygienic state of the living room.  I was shocked when the man invited us to sit with him on the breakfast table in the kitchen and I saw how immaculate the kitchen was.  This was contrary to the ramshackle state of the living room.  Though the kitchen was immaculate, I had already formed an impression that I couldn’t shift.  To my consternation, when the man offered us a cup of tea and I declined, my colleague said yes and went ahead to have a cuppa.  After we left the place, I asked him why he went back on his earlier resolve to decline an offer of a cup of tea.  He responded that as an Englishman, he just could not resist the offer of a cup of tea!  Had the situation been reversed, with the living room looking immaculate and the kitchen as filthy as a pig’s trough, we would have had a drink without knowing state of the rest of the house.  That is the power of “first impression”!

To anyone visiting Nigeria, either for the first time or as a returnee, coming in through the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, the first contact with anything remotely Nigeria is the drive through the Airport Road.  What an unpleasant drive!  Whether going to a five star hotel in Ikoyi or wherever in Lagos metropolis, you have to pass through this eyesore of a road.  As a seasoned traveller, and at the risk of sounding rather conceited, I have the privilege of having visited over twenty different countries spread across Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean and Africa (four in Africa).  I have never seen any country that I can compare its airport road to that of Nigeria.  The road to and from Nigeria’s busiest international airport and the first point of contact with Nigeria’s road infrastructure by any visitor coming to the country, is reflective of the shamelessness of our leaders and their lack of pride in the Nigeria project.

This is more disturbing when one draws a parallel with our homes.  No matter how unpleasant, dirty, poor, or untidy one’s home might be, for most sane people with any iota of self-worth, the sitting room or “parlour” (in the case of Nigerians’ popular room and parlour abodes) which visitors and guests see, is usually tidied up, arranged pristinely and presented nicely to give a good impression.  This is notwithstanding the state of the rest of the house where the bedrooms might be in deplorable, filthy conditions.  This however, is only applicable to those who have pride!  It appears that successive governments in Nigeria have lost all sense of amour-propre and are so shameless that they cannot see the eyesore that this stretch of less than five kilometres of road has become.

Airport roads, in even the poorest of all the countries that I have visited are well tarred, pothole-free, lined with trees and well lit with functional street lights.   The Lagos airport road is anything but all of the above.  This unfortunately, is another symptom of the cantankerous relationship between the federal and state governments in Nigeria.  I understand that the Lagos State government is both keen and willing to carry out the necessary repair works to the road to enable the state to showcase the nation’s crown jewel, but because of the prevailing regressive and seemingly intractable federal law, the state is grossly disempowered to take any action.

On the deplorable state of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, what can one say?  It is diabolical!  It is a scar on the country’s conscience and a curse on our leaders for the countless number of innocent lives that have perished on this short, mere 120km (<75miles) stretch of motorway.  It is incomprehensible that the most strategic arterial route that links the heartbeat of the country – Lagos, with the rest of the country is not just a death-trap in a perpetual state of peril, but most worryingly, it is also home to countless number of sprawling mega-churches and an Islamic centre on a 28 hectare piece of land at Mowe, all vying for bragging rights on how many millions attend their weekly and monthly gatherings.  A short journey that shouldn’t take more than a little over an hour, travelling at an internationally acceptable speed of 70m per hour, ends up taking four to six hours.

Our leaders have conveniently found an alternative route of travelling by air to their various destinations at our expense and at a cost way beyond the reach of millions of Nigerians who have to endure and brave the hazards that this road poses.  We have become a nation of jokers that collectively, the whole country has become a stage to rival the Apollo in Hammersmith, London, where a plethora of top comedians perform their best stand-up and we are all comedians playing to a virtual international audience looking at us with both disdain and incredulity.  This can only be the view of the international community when, as a concerned Nigerian who ply this route quite frequently, words failed me when I read in one of our national dailies on 7^th June this year that the Ogun State command of the Federal Road Safety Corps sought divine intervention on the high rate of road crashes on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway!  The statement read “The Sector Commander, FRSC, Ogun State, Mr. Christopher Ademoluti, has taken the battle against Road Traffic Crashes in Ogun State, especially on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, to the General Overseer of RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, for his spiritual intervention.”  The statement then added that Pastor Adeboye prayed for the safety of all road users.  This, to me, trivializes the laudable, innovative and practical initiatives which the likes of Dr Kayode Olagunju of FRSC , (a fine officer whose daily road safety tips I tend to follow) are advancing.

This, to say the least, is laughable!  The answer to the problems on this road is in our hands.  God has already given us the wherewithal to make the road safer for road users but we have failed to apply them for the good of all.  The Redeemed Church, with all its wealth and other resources can, and should work collaboratively with other faith organisations that have set up shops along the Expressway to provide an alternative road to and from Lagos to ease the unsustainable congestion on this road.  In other climes where adequate planning procedures are followed and understood, the granting of permission to any of these faith groups to set up their mega churches/mosque along the Expressway would have taken the consequent traffic flow into consideration to demand planning gains.  Part of these gains would have been the provision of an alternative route for worshippers to and from Lagos and other facilities that would be of general public and local community benefit.

I thank God though that as I finish writing this piece, my dear father, Pa Joseph Babalola Idariapo Olukiran left this sinful and badly scarred country to be with the Lord in the wee hours of Saturday 29^th June 2013. He died peacefully in his home at the ripe age of 96.  May his gentle soul and those of thousands of innocent souls who had to face avoidable violent deaths on Nigeria’s deplorable roads, rest in the perfect peace of God, our creator, and to whom we all must return.

Akin Olukiran

Genetic Engineering: The Global Food and Agricultural Crisis

By Colin Todhunter

In 2012, Professsor Seralini of the University of Caen in France led a team that carried out research into the health impacts on rats fed GMOs (genetically modified organisms) (1). The two-year long study concluded that rats fed GMOs experienced serious health problems compared to those fed non GM food. Now comes a new major peer-reviewed study that has appeared in another respected journal. This study throws into question the claim often forwarded by the biotech sector that GMO technology increases production and is beneficial to agriculture.

Researchers at the University of Canterbury in the UK have found that the GM strategy used in North American staple crop production is limiting yields and increasing pesticide use compared to non-GM farming in Western Europe. Led by Professor Jack Heinemann, the study’s findings have been published in the June edition of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability (2). The research analysed data on agricultural productivity in North America and Western Europe over the last 50 years. 

Heinemann states his team found that the combination of non-GM seed and management practices used by Western Europe is increasing corn yields faster than the use of the GM-led package chosen by the US. The research showed rapeseed (canola) yields increasing faster in Europe without GM than in the GM-led package chosen by Canada. What is more, the study finds that it is decreasing chemical herbicide and achieving even larger declines in insecticide use without sacrificing yield gains, while chemical herbicide use in the US has increased with GM seed.

According to Heinemann, Europe has learned to grow more food per hectare and use fewer chemicals in the process. On the other hand, the US choices in biotechnology are causing it to fall behind Europe in productivity and sustainability.

The Heinemann team’s report notes that incentives in North America are leading to a reliance on GM seeds and management practices that are inferior to those being adopted under the incentive systems in Europe. This is also affecting non GM crops. US yield in non-GM wheat is falling further behind Europe, “demonstrating that American choices in biotechnology penalise both GM and non-GM crop types relative to Europe,” according to Professor Heinemann.

He goes on to state that the decrease in annual variation in yield suggests that Europe has a superior combination of seed and crop management technology and is better suited to withstand weather variations. This is important because annual variations cause price speculations that can drive hundreds of millions of people into food poverty.

The report also highlights some grave concerns about the impact of modern agriculture per se in terms of the general move towards depleted genetic diversity and the consequently potential catastrophic risk to staple food crops. Of the nearly 10,000 wheat varieties in use in China in 1949, only 1,000 remained in the 1970s. In the US, 95 percent of the cabbage, 91 percent of the field maize, 94 percent of the pea and 81 percent of the tomato varieties cultivated in the last century have been lost. GMOs and the control of seeds through patents have restricted farmer choice and prevented seed saving. This has exacerbated this problem.

Heinemann concludes that we need a diversity of practices for growing and making food that GM does not support. We also need systems that are useful, not just profit-making biotechnologies, and which provide a resilient supply to feed the world well.

Despite the evidence, governments capitulate

Given the mounting evidence that questions the efficacy and safety of GMOs (3,4,5,6,7), it raises the issue why certain governments are siding with the biotech sector to allow GMOs to be made available on commercial markets. It is simply not the case that country after country is accepting GMOs on the basis of scientific evidence, as scientists-cum-lobbyists for the GM sector often state (8). If scientific evidence were to be determining factor, few if any countries would have sanctioned GMOs.  

Part of the answer lies in the fact that the powerful US biotech sector continues to forward its agenda that GMOs are a frontier technology that will save humanity from famine and hunger. This is despite evidence that most of the world’s hunger is the product of profiteering industrial chemical agriculture and the global structuring of food production and distribution under the banner of ‘free trade’ and ‘structural adjustment’ (9,10), or as many of us know it brow beating and structural dependency.

Yet, the mantra of GM as the saviour of humanity persists courtesy of the GM sector’s puppet politicians and regulatory bodies (11). The US is pushing for lop-sided bilateral trade agreements with other countries not only to generally tie economies into US economic hegemony in an attempt to boost its ailing economy and flagging currency, but more specifically to get nations to ‘accept’ GMOs. Through behind-closed-door deals (12,13) coercion (14) or the hijack of regulatory bodies (15), there has been some success, and many think it could be just a matter of time before other countries, not least India, capitulate to allow GM food crops onto the commercial market.

In fact, regardless of any legal statute, it may be and probably is already happening in India, not least via contamination (16). However, if contamination by means of illegal planting and open field ‘testing’ fails to get GMOs on to the commercial market via the back door, the GM sector is attempting to cover all angles. Immediately after a moratorium on BT Brinjal was announced in 2010, a Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill suddenly emerged. The BRAI Bill could not be passed in 2010 and 2011 because of objections, but it has surfaced again as a 2013 Bill. Environmentalist Vandana Shiva argues that it not so much constitutes a Biotechnology Regulation Act, but a Biotechnology Deregulation Act, designed to dismantle the existing bio-safety regulation and give the green-light to the GM sector to press ahead with its agenda in the country.

By highlighting the GM sector interests behind the proposed legislation, Shiva says that the goal is to give the sector’s corporations immunity by freeing them of courts and democratic control under India’s federal structure. For those who follow such developments in India, it doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to appreciate that the future of Indian agriculture is in the wrong hands. Certain key scientists and top politicians have already been ideologically (or otherwise) ‘bought and paid for’ by proponents of the ‘Green Revolution’ and more recently the GM sector (7).

On a global level, with reports of wheat (17), rice (18) and maize (19) having been widely contaminated with GMOs, there seems to be a conscious ploy to contaminate so much of the world’s crops so that eventually GMOs take over regardless and render the pro/anti GM debate almost academic (20).

It seems that secretive trade deals, the hijack of official bodies designed to ensure the ‘public interest’ and bullying or intimidation are not enough. Contamination strategies are but one more way of achieving through closed and non-transparent methods what could not be possible by transparent and democratic means – simply because hundreds of millions of people do not want GMOs.

A generation down the line (or much sooner), will we looking at the health and environmental consequences of GMOs in the same way we now regard the impacts of the original ‘Green Revolution’?

“There are very good reasons why we have never introduced a Green Revolution into Africa, namely because there is broad consensus that the Green Revolution in India has been a failure, with Indian farmers in debt, bound to paying high costs for seed and pesticides, committing suicide at much higher rates, and resulting in a depleted water table and a poisoned environment, and by extension, higher rates of cancer.” Paula Crossfield, food policy writer/activist (21).

We don’t have to take Paula Crossfield’s word for it, though. Punjab was the ‘Green Revolution’s’ original poster boy, but is fast becoming transformed from a food bowl to a cancer epicenter and now reels under an agrarian crisis marked by discontent, debt, water shortages, contaminated water, diseased soils and pest infested cops (22,23,24).

In the meantime, big ‘ag’ in collusion with big pharma will continue to control our food and define our healthcare by pushing their highly profitable ‘miracle solutions’ for the health and environmental problems which they conspired to create in the first place. It is all part of the wider corporate-elite agenda to colonise and control every facet of human existence.  

Notes

1) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637

2) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14735903.2013.806408#tabModule

3) http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/new-study-confirms-wheat-autism-link-0

4) http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/it-time-acknowledge-roundup-herbicide-contraceptive

5) http://www.responsibletechnology.org/gmo-dangers

6) http://vidarbhatimes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/maharashtra-reports-btcotton-failure-in.html?m=1

7) ) http://www.globalresearch.ca/india-genetically-modified-seeds-agricultural-productivity-and-political-fraud/5328227

8) http://www.deccanherald.com/content/311963/ban-gm-crops-imperil-indian.html

9) http://www.globalresearch.ca/our-hunger-games/5302603

10) http://cchronicle.com/2010/10/focus-on-hunger-interview-with-vandana-shiva/

11) http://rense.com/general33/fd.htm

12) http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/799/76/

13) http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-eu-free-trade-agreement-a-corporate-stitch-up-by-any-other-name/5339789

14) http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/20/us-retaliation-list-gm-crops-cablegate/

15) http://www.globalresearch.ca/stench-of-eu-corruption-in-monsanto-gmo-whitewash/5316294

16) http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-death-of-rice-in-india/9562

17) http://rt.com/news/monsanto-wheat-japan-exports-026/

18) http://www.gmcontaminationregister.org/index.php?content=nw_detail2

19) http://www.scidev.net/global/gm/news/mexico-confirms-gm-maize-contamination.html

20) http://www.nwrage.org/content/2005-was-very-good-year-biotech-food-industry

21) http://civileats.com/2009/07/10/g8-promises-15-billion-in-agricultural-aid/

22) http://www.deccanherald.com/content/309654/punjab-transformation-food-bowl-cancer.html

23) http://sagarmediainc.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/punjab-indias-grain-bowl-now-reels-under-agrarian/

24) http://www.amazon.com/The-Violence-Green-Revolution-Agriculture/dp/0862329655

LIES IN DEFENCE OF FREEDOM

Barack Hussein Obama, US President

By David Brooks

All of us who use telephones or any internet communications services – that is almost all e-mail, chat, video-chat, internet phone calls or document delivery – have been informed that we are potentially subject to spying on the part of United States intelligence agencies, particularly if our communication is international. We have just been informed that those responsible for the supervision of these programs, in the name of the people, were not fully informed of the extent of this massive system of surveillance. We have just been informed by those who govern that no one needs to worry, that we can be confident they are doing the right thing.

We have just been informed that the rights to privacy and expression, guaranteed in the Constitution and by federal law, must be partially abridged in order to protect us from enemies who hate the liberties and rights we have in this country.

We are only now hearing about all this, and no one knows what else has been going on, because the government must keep the defense of liberty secret, they say. Even the rules that ensure that all this is done in accordance with the law and respecting the rights of citizens – as the Obama administration and legislative leaders of both parties assure us has been the case – are secret.

The valiant columnist Glenn Greenwald, of the Guardian, has announced that there is much more, that what has been published is just the tip of the iceberg of what former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden has leaked about the massive secret spying program – which Daniel Ellsberg, who made public the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago, described as the most important leak in U.S. history.

The justifications are the same ones we have heard since September 11, 2001, although what is most noteworthy now is that a Democratic President, and a large number of Democratic Congress members who strongly criticized violations of individual privacy when George W. Bush was in office, are now defending these intrusions with the same rhetoric about protecting the country from terrorism.

The legendary journalist I.F. Stone advised all journalists who covered politics, "All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed."
In this instance, when a government’s lies are exposed, not telling the truth is justified as necessary for the defense of freedom, transparency and democracy, faced with the threat of an ever-present enemy. For example, National Intelligence director James Clapper admitted in an evasive answer to a direct question from a Senator who asked if the communications of millions of U.S. citizens had been spied upon. Clapper offered the least deceitful version of the truth he could.

The public is not very surprised by any of this and polls show mixed reactions. Some indicate that the majority are wiling to give up some of their liberties in exchange for public and national security. A Timemagazine poll found that 54% of those questioned believed that Edward Snowden had done the right thing, while 30% thought the opposite. To confuse things, according to the same survey, 53% said he should be prosecuted, while 28% said no – although among those 18 to 34 years of age, the results were 43% against his prosecution, to 41% in favor. There is a statistical tie between those who approve of internal spying programs and those who do not.

What has been the most impacted is the credibility of the ruling class, although little remains of that. In a June 13 Gallup poll, confidence in Congress is down to 10%, ranking the legislative body last on a list of 16 institutions This is the lowest level of confidence Gallup has found for any institution on record, lower than big business (22%), banks (26%), newspapers and television news (23%) and organized labor (20%), among others. Those polled expressed the highest level of confidence in the military, 76%.

The debate unleashed is no doubt healthy, showing the lack of transparency and accountability of an immense, secret, increasingly powerful government.
Ellsberg wrote in the Guardian, June 10, "… to say that there is judicial oversight is nonsense – as is the alleged oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. Not for the first time – as with issues of torture, kidnapping, detention, assassination by drones and death squads – they have shown themselves to be thoroughly co-opted by the agencies they supposedly monitor."

High level officials and veteran intelligence agents have said the same recently. While some commentators have noted the continuity of Bush policies in this area, which were once strongly denounced.

The debate continues in the United States and other countries, as well. European governments and Asian civic and political groups have requested clarification from the U.S. government about the scope and legality of the right it claims to tap and spy on anyone on the planet.

In Mexico and the rest of Latin America, everyone can assume that their private internet communications are subject to secret U.S. surveillance. Does Washington have this right? Does the U.S. have the permission or cooperation of other governments? Are citizens informed?

If this is not enough to provoke a change and remember that it is thedemos, the people, who must keep watch on the government, if it is to be considered a democracy, all that has been revealed will only amount to an Orwellian Blues. 

ANCESTRAL MOONSPLASH

Black Rasta

By Ekow Mensah

The Atmosphere At La Palm Beach Hotel Was Full Of Expectation When Black Rasta In An All White Attire With The Rasta Colours On His Breast.

He also wore a small bag in Rasta colours strapped on is left shoulder.

The rhythms which poured from the African musical instruments sent the message out there clearly.

The time for a new type of reggae which incorporates true African sounds has come and the pioneer is Black Rasta.

Mr. Kwesi Pratt, Jnr. Editor of The Insight launched the new album of 18 tracks.

He said “you may not like what Black Rasta says, but you can’t ignore the fact that at time when many musician are making noise, black Rasta is making the effort to make sense.

He described Black Rasta as an extraordinary musician with a passion for Ghana and Africa.

Dr Henry Danaa, Minister for Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Murtaka Mohammed and John Ginapo all Deputy Minister joined the long list of funs who showed up.

Zap Malet, Daddy Bosco, Kwaw Kesse were some of the big names in musical circles which showed up.

One of the special guests was Grace Asibi, a film producer.