BETRAYAL: A.K. Deku Speaks on The 1966 Coup

Leuf. Gen. Afrifa, a coupist

Mr. A. K. Deku, one the principal architects of the February 24, 1966 coup against Nkrumah has revealed that a member of the Osagyefo’s entourage in Conakry , Guinea betrayed him.

In an interview on TV3’s “Hot Issues” Mr Deku names the man who was one of the most trusted members of the entourage.

The  interview is to be broadcast at a date to be determine by the production team.

In the 50 minute interview Mr Deku refused to answer several questions citing security reasons.

According to him the principal character in the overthrow of Dr Kwame Nkrumah was a Major Quarshie who worked at the 37 military hospital.

Mr Deku claims that it was major Quarshie who recruited General Emmanuel Kwesi KKotoka and later J.W.K. Harley.

Meetings to prepare for the coup took place at major Quarshie’s residence.

Mr Deku also claims that it was General Kotoka who recruited General Akwasi Amankwa Afrifa.

He insists that the 1966 coup was not an all police cum military affairs.

He says Dr K.A Busia and Sir Edward Akufo-Addo has tremendous influence on the National Liberation Council.

“Indeed Afrifa reported everything that happened at  meeting of the NLC to Busia and AKufo- Addo” he said. 

Editorial

History Absorbs Nkrumah

History has a way of setting issues and vindicating the just.

Last Tuesday one of the architects of the February 24, 1966 coup against Nkrumah finally admitted that Ghana’s first President was “a good man”.

Asked why he joined in the conspiracy against a leader that the himself confesses was “a good man” Mr. A.K. Deku now 94 said he was forced into the plot.

According to him by the time, he became aware of the conspiracy the coup could not be stopped.

Indeed Mr Deku goes on to state that Nkrumah is one of the best leaders Ghana has had since independence.

We salute Mr Deku, who was a member of the National Liberation Council (NCC) and head of intelligence for his courage in speaking the truth even at this late age.

The damage that the 1966 coup has done to Ghana and Africa cannot be repaired but we take consolation in the truth being revealed by the Dr Deku.

Nkrumah indeed will never die. His ideas and ideals will continue to inspire the African revolution.

I can’t understand why my father married 27 wives – Femi Kuti

Fela Kuti

By Vanguard

The 2013 edition of Felabration,a week-long concert which celebrates the life and times of Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo Kuti commences from Monday, October 14 through 20 at the Afrikan Shrine, Ikeja, Lagos. In this interview,  Femi Kuti, the eldest son of Fela went down memory lane, recounting the story of his late father, his music  and ideologies. He also talks about what the fans of Afrobeat music will expect at this year’s Felabration among other issues.

We learnt that Rita Marley will be headlining this year’s Felabration. Why is she not here today?

She sent a message few days ago that she was not feeling fine, and might not make it to the event. However, she will be represented at the festival by the head of  her foundation, Rita Marley Foundation.

What’s the financial implication of organising this festival?

We have no major sponsors at the moment. Fortunately, most of the artistes are performing for free. We have been very lucky that the likes of King Sunny Ade, D’banj, Wizkid, Pasuma, and many others, have been performing for free. This year, they will grace the stage again. But we usually pay a token to the up and coming artistes as a way of supporting them. However, Nigerian Breweries Plc  has promised to come on board next year as a major sponsor of the event. We are hoping that as from next year, Felabration will not be talking about financial difficulties.

What’s new in this  year’s Felabration?

I think what will always be new is the enthusiasm of the crowd. The festival runs from Monday through Sunday. It kicked off last Monday with school debate. Wuri Modern College won the competition  last year. The Felabration usually kicks off with school debate because we are trying to introduce new  things other than music. There will be symposium where the likes of Femi Falana, SAN,  will be in attendance. The  festival will kick off properly next week Tuesday. It will run till Saturday and closes on Sunday.

Is  Bob Marley’s son still going to  make it to the festival?

I think he’s having problem with obtaining visa. He has agreed to come and the contract has been finalized. We are waiting for  him to obtain his visa. If he succeeds, fine. We  are expecting a lot of Afrobeat bands from America, Ghana and other African countries. Our local artistes such as Tuface, Kwam 1, Davido, Wizkid, Eedris and other superstars including myself will be on duty.

Apart from finance, what other challenges are you encountering?

I think the major challenges are finance and security. We would love a situation where we would pay the artistes handsomely and dictate the pace for them. But now, they dictate the pace for us. The artistes  decide when and when not to perform on stage. Felabration bends to everybody’s rules. The next thing is to get the museum working. Apparently, Lagos State government  has purchased the piece of land beside the museum  which we use as car park. But we are still looking for major sponsors that will drive the museum. We have big dreams that we want to put in place.

With this year’s Felabration coming up, would you  say  you have achieved the dream of setting up the festival?

Definitely. We are all Nigerians and we know what it means to run a festival at that level for 13 years. I think we have to be applauded. It’s a feat that hasn’t been achieved in Nigeria. All the great festivals we know in Nigeria are no longer functioning. We have never heard any security challenges in the past 13 years. With the crowd of over 10,000 people attending the festival, I think we have to be commended.  Now, Felabration is observed across the world, especially in major cities of the world. The event my sister, Yeni started has grown big and stronger.

One would have thought that the Fela broadway show would have boosted the festival?

I’m sure you know what it cost  them to  be in Nigeria  then. They are a cast of about 50 people. By the time you talk about their flight tickets, accommodation, and so on, you would know what I mean. I think it was the Lagos State government that sponsored their trip to the country. Eventually, what we are going to be focusing on is discovering new talents and more bands. I will like  a situation where we do not have only hip-hop artistes on stage.

Aside Felabration, what is the family’s stand on Fela’s biopic being produced by an American company recently?

I don’t know about it. There are many things I don’t know about. I know that they have been working on the biopic for the past five years.

Andrew Dosumu, a British Nigerian director was chosen to direct the biopic and Nigerian international actor, Chiwenta Ejiofor is being touted to act Fela in the biopic?

It is the same biopic that we are talking about. This is a biopic that has been in the making for about five years now. I’m sure you know it is not the kind of film that you can produce overnight. They have to capture the burning of the house, the soldiers…If they are going to do a movie of that magnitude, it’s going to be a great movie. It is going to take time. They have been talking about this movie for ages now.

Does the family have any plan to do that?

No. We are only going to give them  the license to do it. We have a legal team that deals with all of these things. My own duty as a member of the estate is to give the approval. I have signed the contract several years ago and I know, it will take another two to three years before this dream will materialize.  I know that the first contract we signed for five years ought to be renewed if they have not completed the production of the film within the time frame.

They started talking about the film when my father died but eventually the contract expired. So, they had to renew a new contract. This is because there is no money in the music business. That’s why the family has been very lenient when discussing with all these people because we all know about piracy. Everybody is downloading Fela’s music, so you have to be very understandable. We have a good legal team  that handles all these stuffs for the family. Of course, we have to protect the integrity of the family Fela and his music.

Looking at it holistically, do you feel comfortable that a Nigerian  who has practically lived abroad all his life is playing the role of Fela?

I’m sure if they do a movie, it will be great. Now, let us look at the broadway show. Critics say that it was too Americanised. They did not want to show Fela’s story from the Nigerian perspective. They wanted the American and the international market to understand the Fela story. See how Fela was misunderstood even when he went to the United States.  It was after his death that people started evaluating his music. What he was doing? He married 27 wives in his lifetime, how dare he? This man was against feminism.? They gave him different kind of names. He was completely misunderstood because he wore pants, he smoked marijuana. He had issues. He had serious issues whether  we liked it or not. At his death, people were celebrating him but in his lifetime, he was broke before he died.

What they did was to tell the Fela story for the average international market to watch and understand it. If  you did watch them, you would notice that the dancers could not dance the Afrobeat music. For you, the man was speaking American English. But you would have every reason to believe that the Fela you know was not being acted but if you look at it from the neutral perspective like you didn’t know Fela, you would understand the story and even weep for him.

The day I watched it, I cried. I cried because I knew where they were coming from and I saw the audience. Probably, they have not heard about Fela, the Americans were saying, it made them want to listen to his music to know more about Africa. It opened their minds to so many issues. Now, they are studying Afrobeat in many of the schools and universities in America, Germany, France, Sweden, Australia, everywhere. There are over 20 American bands playing Afrobeat at the moment.

Over the years and given what is happening in the country today, will you say your father has been vindicated or  misunderstood while he lived?

I will answer in the affirmative. He was grossly misunderstood for a purpose because he saw corruption and he knew what corruption was going to do to the country; those involved in corruption wanted to get away with dictatorship and corruption which was what he was against. And because he used his own unconventional way of protesting, it didn’t go down well with the authorities.

Then the authorities controlled the media up to a point until after Daily Times, when other media houses started springing up because we have to remember that it was only government newspapers and TVs  that we had then. So, the story was told from the government’s perspective until The Punch, Vanguard and other magazines were established. Fela’s story could be seen from another point of view.

We have to understand where Fela was coming from in the 60s. Where did the problem start? What was the cause of his problem? And maybe, because he was already a stubborn character, he was going to make matters worse and that was his character and that is the character that people now love.  What kind of man was he, that many people ran away from him, or even compromised him. But  he didn’t have to go through all those beatings? So, I think, he was purposely misunderstood but yes, he has been vindicated.

But you are a different specie?

I would say, I am probably more diplomatic because I have learnt from what I saw of him. First, you have to understand the political climate which we live in. Let us remember who voted for Obasanjo? Except if we want to be dishonest with ourselves, Obasanjo won the first election, clean and clear. What would Fela have done if he was alive and this same Nigerians still went to vote for this same Obasanjo? Didn’t they hear Fela sing about this man?

Then, it is still these same Nigerians that were criticising this man and they know it. Let us look at our incumbent President. He was declared wanted by the EFCC when he was governor of Bayelsa State and you voted for him. That case was pending in court when Yar’ Adua  made him his Vice. Opposition parties should have objected to his selection. But they didn’t. Again, his former boss late Yar ‘ Adua whom he served under  had a seven point agenda. Where is it today? Jonathan promised that if anything happened to him that he would follow his footsteps. Has him followed his footsteps today?

There are many things you have to understand as Fela’s son. Did Nigerians not hear what Fela talked about? Are they not feeling the same pain that Fela felt when he was alive? Nigerians are still voting for the same corrupt politicians.

Are you worried that government has not been able to honour your father after his death?

Not at all. The people will always honour my father and he will always be celebrated worldwide. Even Lagos state has honoured him. Even if the family doesn’t celebrate him, Fela has gone beyond the shores of Nigeria. As we speak, New York, Paris, England, Japan, Australia, New Zealanmd, China, Malaysia, among others still celebrate him.

At over 50, some people say it seems you have become more sexually active?

That is not true, I am no more sexually active. When you see a beautiful woman, when you reach my age and you have responsibility like myself, you  will know what I am talking about. Before now, as a young man, you would want to go after her.   There are many nights I go and sleep alone not because I don’t have girlfriends or want a girlfriend, when I think of the responsibility I have  in my life, I will immediately have a rethink.

The women in my life also have responsibilities. I can tell you that the mothers of  my  children, we stay together, we are very serious. You could say we are husband and wife but I don’t believe in marriage. I just don’t understand why one man will say I pronounce you man and wife, in that case. I pronounce myself man and wife. I am very different from my father but in a lot of ways like him.

Like I couldn’t understand why he married 27 wives. When he married them, he divorced them. I didn’t have a problem with my father’s wives but my mother did.  When the problem started in Kalakuta, for us it was fun. Many things have changed. Of course I am very much sexually active but when I consider the problems my shoki has given me, it dies quicky.

US agents in massive drug and sex cover-up

Hussein Obama and George Bush, birds of the same feathers

The US State Department may have hushed up allegations of misconduct by its employees worldwide that range from soliciting prostitutes to getting narcotics from a drug ring, a report says.

The CBS News uncovered on Monday a memo that showed the department’s security force, the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), tried to cover up sex and drugs charges against agents and diplomats working for the State Department.

The DSS is responsible for protecting nearly 70,000 employees at the State Department and 275 US embassies around the world.

The memo by the State Department inspector general made direct reference to eight specific cases in which inquiries into alleged criminal activities by diplomatic security agents or contractors were "influenced, manipulated, or simply called off" by more senior officials.

The cases included an unnamed US ambassador who repeatedly solicited prostitutes, a security official "engaged in sexual assaults" on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards in Beirut, and the members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's security team who "engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries."

The ambassador involved in the case was called to Washington D. C. to have a meeting with Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy about the issue but was permitted to go back to his regular duties, the report said.

The document also revealed details of an alleged "underground drug ring" close to the US embassy in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, which provided the DSS staffers with drugs.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Monday did not deny any of the allegations in the CBS report, but refused to go into details.

"We take allegations of misconduct seriously and we investigate thoroughly. All cases mentioned in the CBS report were thoroughly investigated or are under investigation," she said.

Nobel Prize part of West’s propaganda fog

By Finian Cunningham

The Nobel Peace Prize should be renamed the Nobel Propaganda Prize, after this year’s ever-so contrived award to the UN-approved chemical weapons team sent to disarm Syria.

Other dubious winners of the “illustrious” prize include the accused war criminal, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who oversaw the genocidal carpet-bombing of Indochina during the 1970s.

More recently, another accused war criminal, US President Barack Obama, is among the honorees of the award despite his ongoing use of assassination and murderous aggression in multiple countries, including Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Yemen and Syria. 

A Norwegian-based committee of seemingly Scandinavian neutrality makes the award every year as it has done for more than a century ever since 1901. The prize was the creation of Alfred Nobel, a major armaments manufacturer. That in itself speaks volumes of the institution’s contradictory nature. 

Last year, the winner of the Nobel Prize was yet another disgrace to morals and commonsense in the form of the European Union. How can a bloc of governments be remotely considered peaceful when it is wiping out basic social welfare for millions of its citizens in the service of criminal banks and elite private wealth? Or when it is lifting a weapons embargo on extremists running amok in Syria? Or colluding in the enforcement of crippling economic sanctions on Iran - based on nuclear calumnies cooked up by Western military intelligence - sanctions that are killing women and children from the lack of basic imported medicines? 

While there have been a few deserving winners of the Nobel Peace Prize down through the years, nevertheless it is best to treat this institution with skepticism, if not derision. The meritorious aspects of the award can serve to give credence to the dubious and deplorable associates. In that way, it is more Propaganda Prize than Peace Prize.

This year’s recipient, the inspection team belonging to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, have only begun their work last week to dismantle stockpiles in Syria. This is part of the arrangement that Russia proposed last month to avert an illegal war of aggression being planned by the Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama. The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad has fully signed up the disarmament process. 

However, it is precocious, to say the least, to award the OPCW with the Nobel prize, just like it was for the Oslo-based committee to give the award to Obama in 2009, only within months of his first election and before he went on to prove himself one of America’s most warmongering presidents since World War II. 

How do we know that the OPCW will be effective in disarming the chemical weapons of the Western-backed mercenary groups fighting to overthrow the Assad government? How do we know that the OPCW will not mischievously misuse its remit and Nobel Laureate status to advance the Western propaganda narrative against the Syrian government? 

The awarding of a peace prize based on no track record conjures suspicion that the institution and its benign connotations are being used to inculcate a reprehensible political agenda.

The same insidious propaganda formula of supposed virtue concealing vice can also be seen in the report this week by the New York-based Human Rights Watch group on massacres carried out by foreign-backed militants in Syria. 

That report accuses up to 20 Al Qaeda-linked groups, including Al Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Shams, of killing scores of civilians in Syria’s western Latakia Province during early August. 

Such apparently damning testimony from a Western human rights organization may seem like a positive development. 

But, as with the Nobel Peace Prize, there is a very real danger that the HRW report is merely acting as a whitewash of Western government crimes. 

For a start, the HRW report claims that it has found the “first evidence of crimes against humanity by opposition forces”. That infers that previous atrocities are attributable to the Syrian government forces. This is simply false. Many reliable sources have found that most, if not all, major massacres in villages and towns across Syria over the past two and half years have been committed by the anti-government mercenary groups. 

Western media and human rights groups, including HRW and Amnesty International, have deliberately or incompetently misattributed those crimes to Syrian government forces, which then serve to bestow a false moral authority on Western governments for their illicit interference in Syria.

For example, both HRW and Britain’s state-run media outlet, the BBC, as well as the US government’s Voice of America, have run reports that Syrian state forces carried out napalm bombings of schools in Raqqa and Aleppo in the north of the country. These reports are based on unverified amateur video released by so-called opposition groups, such as Ahrar al-Sham, which themselves have been involved in carrying out atrocities, as in Latakia Province during August. 

HRW and the Western media continue to blame the chemical weapons incident on 21 August near Damascus on the Syrian government. HRW has openly attacked other credible sources, which have reported that that incident was a heinous fabrication, very possibly perpetrated by Western-backed militants as a calculated provocation. 

There is strong suspicion, backed up by circumstantial and testimonial evidence, that the children portrayed as poisoned in the opposition-released videos of the 21 August incident in East Ghouta near Damascus were kidnapped by militants during their terror raids on villages in Latakia during the previous weeks. Their deaths were therefore staged for vile propaganda purpose, with which the Western governments, media and human rights industry have subsequently lashed Bashar al-Assad, eventually leading to the appointment of the OPCW inspection team and, bizarrely, their Nobel award.

The latest report by HRW on the massacres in Latakia notes that there are still over 200 people, mainly women and children, missing from those attacks. But HRW does not address the glaring connection to the anonymous child victims filmed in the East Ghouta incident. 

A further insidious propaganda effect of the HRW report into the massacres by militants in Latakia is that it reinforces the illusion that the militants in Syria are divided between the “bad extremists” and the “good moderates”, whom the Western governments support. HRW says that it found no evidence linking the supposedly Western-backed Free Syrian Army to the Latakia atrocities. 

However, this is contradicted by earlier reports that the leader of the FSA, General Salim Idris, and the moderate “darling” of Western governments, was in Latakia during the murderous rampages. Not only was Idris present in Latakia, he was videoed celebrating “the success” of operations. 

On 11 August, the New York Times reported: “The visit by the Free Syrian Army commander, Gen. Salim Idris, appeared intended to show that he and his fighters were also involved in the Latakia seizures [sic] as part of a new front in the civil war.” That report added that Idris crowed about “accomplishments” in a released video. 

The Human Rights Watch group is therefore not a positive contribution to clear the fog of war that the West has been pumping out relentlessly over Syria - far from it. HRW is a deep and insidious part of the problem. In fact, it is whitewashing the very real criminal involvement of Western governments and media in the covert war of aggression against Syria. 

Nobel Peace Prizes and Western human rights groups may sound innocuous. But they are a central part of the Western propaganda machine, as much as MI6, CIA, Mossad, the Pentagon, Whitehall and the panoply of Western news media outlets with august titles, such as BBC and New York Times.  

World economy in disarray, seeks way out

Logo of the World Bank

By Anisa Abd el Fattah

The world is in a state of anxiety as global leaders wait to see just how the US decides what to do about its ongoing economic crisis.

It seems that the international banking cartel, which includes the World Bank and IMF are more than a little nervous that the US will let its October 17 debt ceiling deadline pass without raising the US debt limit, allowing the country to borrow billions of interest burdened dollars to make a payment on the compounding interest on a multi trillion dollar unpayable loan. 

One might think that only a country the size of the US could have such a problem, but the truth is that most of the world is suffering from the same destructive cycle of debt and austerity. That is perhaps what worries the international banks most. 

They fear that if the US decides that default is a solution, other countries in the same situation might make the same decision and that would send the international banking system into a tailspin, much like what happened when borrowers stopped making payments on their subprime mortgages, gutting the value of those loans, thereby bursting the financial bubble international banks had created when they packaged the very high risk mortgage loans and sold them to investors. They had to know, based upon their own lending criteria that the loans would likely never be paid and at some point the flow of money would be interrupted and the house of cards would fall down. 

The same thing is happening again, except instead of high risk subprime mortgages, we are talking about high, compounding interest on government debt. The banks don’t care so much if the principle on the debt never gets paid. They do care if the payments on the interest stops because like with mortgage payments, where the interest is also paid before the principle, the interest is the profit that belongs solely to the banks. When they don’t get that money because of any interruption in the cash flow, they fail. 

So what we might be faced with is a question of who should fail? Should the governments allow their economies to collapse in order to keep the banks from failing? Should the banks give up their profit to save national economies, big and small? 

Or should both realize that the game is over, and make a deal. Just like someone finally looked into the value of those packaged sub-prime mortgage loans and realized they weren't worth a plug nickel, the people of the world have looked at their worthless currencies and their unpayable debt and realized that there is no reason for them to continue to pay. Just like the home owners realized they couldn't keep up with their ever increasing mortgage payments and simply walked away. 

It should be clear by now that the world has reached the point that where people have figured out there simply is no point. The banks refuse to invest in job creation in the West or in countries where they are not treated favorably, or rather where they are not allowed to outright enslave the people as indentured servants or debt slaves. Notice the austerity cuts are always in the social services because when countries eliminate social services, they deny people any option except for survival except to work for low wages, for long hours, without benefits and often in unsafe work environments. 

Problem: 

Countries have taken on an extreme amount of debt to pay mostly for wars. Wars are not an investment, so they don’t pay a dividend or yield a profit. The loans to pay for the wars are based upon agreements that make the governments owe additional money called interest, which is paid to the banks as a profit for giving the loans. The interest increases by being compounded through a formula that causes it to grow continuously. 

Every payment by the government on the loan, goes to pay the interest, not the principle amount of the loan. That means the loan amount increases, the interest increases, but the principle or the amount actually borrowed never decreases, making the loans unpayable. 

Because the banks did not keep the promises they made when the people allowed the government to give the banks money so they would not fail after the subprime mortgage debacle, there is high unemployment and that means very little tax revenue. As the people lose more and more of their personal wealth, they turn to the government to subsidize their growing costs for food, housing, health care, etc. 

The costs are growing because the bank is also printing money and that increases the amount of money in circulation, making the money less valuable. So the value of the currency is also falling and it takes more dollars to purchase anything for that reason. It is called inflation. So, we have a situation where no money is being earned, not by the government and not by the people. Everyone is existing on debt. That means money is not circulating and growing, it is simply going to pay the banks on the debt.

Many people think that this is simply a problem of too many bills or over spending and not enough money from revenue to pay the bills. Because they see the problem that way, it makes sense to them that the solution to the problem is to drastically cut spending by cutting non-essential services paid for by the government. This cutting off of public services and subsidies is called austerity. 

Because the problem is not simply a matter of too many bills and not enough money, austerity does not help and actually makes the situation worse. Austerity is equivalent to removing vital organs from a patient dying from losing too much blood, claiming they must be removed because they require blood and the amount of blood is too low. 

In fact, austerity actually accelerates the death, or collapse of the economy. It does this by stripping the economy of billions of dollars that produce goods, sustain jobs, finances consumption, which lead to profits, creating incentive for economic activity. Austerity is like taking a bleeding patient and opening up their arteries so they will bleed to death faster. This acceleration in decline also destabilizes societies and can lead to mass social disorder and chaos. 

Solution: 

What would happen to world economies if the international banks began to fall like dominoes? Nothing. By refusing to invest in job creation or infrastructure or energy in the West, they have made themselves irrelevant. Just like the major transnational corporations headquartered in the US, they pay such few taxes that countries don’t really depend upon their tax dollars for revenue anymore. The dwindling middle class carries most of the tax burden and as they fall deeper into poverty due to falling wages, the middle class is paying less tax and it is the loss of their tax dollars that is financially crippling western countries who are suffering from record breaking unemployment. 

That would happen if the dying economies were to suddenly collapse as the result of the debt/austerity cycle? Billions of people would be almost immediately reduced to paupers and governments would be reduced to an office with a fax, a receptionist and a lock for the red phone. There would likely be panic and a complete breakdown of social order.

The banks, rich with interest payments would lose nothing and would simply move on to ply their trade in the cash starved developing world. Problem for the banks is that after watching the fall of the largest economies in the world, the leaders of Africa and Asia are not likely to want anything to do with the international central banking system and so the banks will be all dressed up in ill-gotten gains, but will have no place to go. 

The solution is to be found in a deal between the international banks and the governments. There are three basic and essential components to any deal that has a hope of success for both the banks and the governments in debt. 

1. The compounding interest on the loans owed by the government must be written off by the banks. 

2. The cost to fund the government’s budget deficit without any austerity measures and the national debt must be consolidated. To this consolidated amount we must add another amount, which cannot be greater than 20% of GDP. 

3. This entire amount must be loaned by the banks to the government for a simple flat fee not to exceed 15% of the total amount of the loan. 

Such a deal benefits the bank in many ways. Here are three of the most important ways the banks benefit from the deal. 

1. The banks holding the notes can share the amount of compounding interest to be written off and distribute the write off over several years, significantly reducing their tax liability for those years. 

2. The old debt is paid off completely, which strengthens the financial statements, significantly increasing the amount of cash and removing the old debt from the books. This gives the banks the ability to make new loans to more people and to make more money, rather than continuing to carry an unpayable debt on its books. They can perhaps triple the size of their loan portfolios. 

3. They will not fail due to a major cash flow interruption and will earn a priceless amount of goodwill from the general public, the SEC and the DOJ who might otherwise be compelled to investigate the banks should there be a credit freeze, or the stock market crash, interest rates take a big unexplained jump, or should any other extraordinary economic or financial disruptions take place as a result of a US default on the loan. 

When we look at it this way, it’s very easy to see that a deal between governments and the banks to prevent default and economic collapse is a win/win situation. It also creates a new model for economic recovery that removes austerity from the equation and actually allows cash starved governments to access the cash they need without the burden of compounding interest, to get their economies back on the path of growth by creating real jobs. 

Israel's most dangerous path

Israeli Premiere Benjamin Nyetanyahu

By David Swanson

There are two kinds of countries or societies or places to live. In the first kind, decent, fair, kind, and respectful treatment of every person takes precedent over anyone's preferences for how a culture changes or how much effort is expended trying to slow the change of a culture, or which cultures mix with each other, or which groups intermarry.

In this first type of society - admittedly a nonexistent ideal - people identify with humanity and welcome any member of humanity into their group of associates, their neighborhood, and their family. Desire to keep some corner of the globe inhabited by people with a particular skin color or language isn't just slightly outweighed by diligent observance of individuals' rights. Instead, such sectarian or tribal desire doesn't exist. And its absence leaves room for concern over war, environmental destruction, hunger, poor healthcare, illiteracy, and all sorts of problems not involving the exclusion of some people from a group. 

In the second kind of society, importance is placed on creating or maintaining a population that is exclusively or predominantly of a particular appearance or background, religion or ethnicity. Such a society strays, mildly or moderately or extremely, from democracy, as its demographic project conflicts with people's rights to immigrate, marry, practice or abandon religion, and speak and behave as they choose.

Valuing some types of people over others leads toward anti-democratic positions and leaves a society open to easy manipulation through fear and prejudice, distracting energy away from real problems that might appear harder to solve. In extreme cases, this type of society becomes fascist. Hatred and violence become admirable. Lynchings and apartheid and Jim Crow and mass incarceration and sadistic punishment follow. 

The nation of Israel claims to be both a democracy and a Jewish state. It can't be. Similarly, the United States cannot be a Christian nation or a white nation and a democracy. A poll in Israel in 2012 asked, "Israel is defined as both a Jewish and democratic state. Which is more important to you?" 34% said Jewish, while 22% said democratic, but 42% said that both were equally important. People in that 42% misunderstand the necessity to choose, as they no doubt do choose every day. The same poll asked, "Speakers should be prohibited from harshly criticizing the State of Israel in public ... ," and 20% agreed, while another 29% strongly agreed. Hmmm, is that the democracy or the Jewish state talking? 

Max Blumenthal's new book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, is 400 pages of fascistic horrors, a dystopian vision of where the United States or most any other country could go and where Israel has gone. Of course, Israel uses World War II to justify its outrages, just as the United States uses World War II to justify its military presence in 177 other nations. The United States arms Israel and protects it from legal consequences for crimes. US companies and individuals and universities and churches fund and take part in Israel's brutality. US Congress members listen to Israeli war propaganda as attentively as do Knesset members. So, there are perhaps extra reasons for those of us in the US to pay particular attention to Israel's fascistic tendencies.

And what do these consist of? Well, permanent war, permanent crisis, fear-mongering, racism, legal and popularly imposed segregation and harassment. False beliefs about past and current crimes of the Israeli military are so openly willful that Israel has a contest show on television for amateur propagandists. Crimes by soldiers or civilians go unpunished or lightly punished when the victims are non-Jews. 

These crimes include lynchings, assaults, torture, harassment, humiliation, eviction, home destruction, job discrimination, and constant traumatization. Soldiers always nearby. Drones always buzzing overhead. Artificial sewage called Skunk sprayed through open windows of homes. The star of David painted on homes and businesses destroyed to intimidate non-Jews. Crowds gathered on a hill to watch and cheer for the bombing of Gaza like Washingtonians picnicking in Manassas to watch a civil war slaughter. Israeli soldiers openly describing themselves as fascists. Trials with pre-determined outcomes. Incarceration of masses of people in concentration camps. 

Blumenthal's portrait of Israel is a partial one to be sure, but a terrifying one nonetheless. He contrasts the relentless hatred and abuse he documents with brief moments of imagining something else. At a restaurant in Haifa, writes Blumenthal, "seated at a long table in Fatoush's outdoor garden, listening to a mélange of English, Arabic, and Hebrew amid a crowd of Palestinians, Jews, and internationals, it is sometimes possible to imagine the kind of place Israel could be if it ever managed to shed its settler-colonial armor." 

That place is not a Jewish democracy or a white democracy or a European democracy. That place is a democracy, and a democracy is a place where you're happy for your son or daughter to get married because they're in love, not because of the ethnicity of their beloved. 

Without Hitler, US military will collapse 

By David Swanson

Without Hitler, the US military would collapse. 

For 68 years, wars on poor countries have been justified by the pretended discovery of Hitler's reincarnation. Each time it has turned out to be a false alarm. Every post-WWII war looks disastrous or at least dubious in retrospect to most people. And yet, the justification of the next war is always ready to hand, because the real, original Hitler remains alive in our memories, and he just might come back -- who's to say? 

Actually, I think anyone vaguely aware of basic facts about the current world ought to be able to say that Hitler is gone for good.

How do I justify not going to war with Hitler, beyond explaining that Assad isn't Hitler, Gaddafi isn't Hitler, Hussein isn't Hitler, and so on? 

Increasingly, I believe we must start with the fact that we live in a different world. Colonization is gone. Empires of the old model are gone. No powerful nation is plotting that sort of global conquest. In fact, no powerful nation is seriously considering war with other powerful nations. 

During these past 68 years of misidentifying new Hitler after new Hitler, there has in fact been no World War III. We haven't just made it 25 years. We'll hit the 75-year mark during the next US presidency. Nuclear weapons, awareness of the costs, understanding of the lack of benefits, established norms against the seizure of territory, the utter unacceptability of colonialism, and the vast increase in understanding of the power of nonviolent action all work against the waging of wars among the wealthy, armed nations. Instead, we have proxy wars, wars of exploitation, and poor-on-poor warfare. And even those wars fail miserably on their own terms. Occupations collapse. Puppets grow legs and wander off.

When World War II happened, war had never been prosecuted as a crime. The prosecutions that followed the war were the first. The seizure of territory was only beginning to be delegitimized. Colonialism was still understood as the route to riches, power, and prestige. War was imagined as a contest between armies on a battlefield, rather than what World War II transformed it into: the slaughter of civilians in their homes. 

When World War II happened, there were no nukes, no satellites, no drones. There was no (or little) television, no internet, no WikiLeaks. There was no understanding of the tools of nonviolence. History contained no nonviolent overthrows of dictatorships, few examples of creative nonviolent resistance to tyranny, no teams of human shields, no Arab Spring, no Civil Rights movement, no overcoming of Apartheid, no bloodless revolutions in Eastern Europe, no peace studies programs, no expertise in conflict resolution, and no viable alternatives to war -- much less the thousands of tools since devised, tested, and refined. 

When we look back at Thomas Jefferson's slavery, we like to excuse it because he lived in an age in which lots of other people engaged in slavery. He didn't know better, we like to say. He didn't have an easy way out that would be equally profitable with so many side benefits. I think we're a bit generous in this act of forgiving, but I think there's also a grain of truth there. Times do change, and actions are taken in contexts. 

When we look back at Franklin Roosevelt's war-making, perhaps we should remember that it took place in an era when nothing else was imagined by many people. Punishing the entire nation of Germany following World War I was not recognized as the time bomb it was, not by most people. Funding fascism as preferable to the horror of communism was not recognized as the Frankenstein experiment it was, not by most people. Hyping the danger of a Nazi takeover of the world and jumping into a war, and then escalating that war into the very worst thing the world has ever seen, was not viewed as a barbaric choice, was not viewed as a choice at all -- not by many people. 

We live in a different era. When our president claims he simply must send missiles into Syria, we tell him to think harder. We can forgive FDR for war-making as we forgive those who engaged in slavery or dueling or blood feuds or witch hunts. They were products of their times. But we need not go on acting as if it is forever 1945 -- no matter how much that pretense profits certain people.

If we were to recognize that Hitler isn't coming back, and that we could resist him without war if he did, we might suddenly begin demanding the things that other nations have and the US could easily afford: healthcare, education, a secure and adequate income, parental leave, vacation leave, retirement, public transit, sustainable energy, etc. Lockheed and Raytheon and Northrop Grumman would start making solar panels or start departing this world for the pages of history. In other words, we might shut down the other half of the government from the half that's shut down right now.