 |
| Tema Port |
The
Government of Ghana is losing hundreds of millions of Ghana Cedis a year in
unpaid custom duties although by all indications, Government is gradually
running out of cash to fund programmes.
One
of the subtle ways in which officials of the Customs, Excise and Preventative
Service (CEPS) allow this to happen is to allow goods to be cleared from the
port on “Permit”.
Normally,
custom duties of CEPS are determined only after there has been an inspection of
goods and a Final Classification and Valuation Report (FCVR), has been issued
by an appointed inspection company.
However, perishable goods such as frozen fish or meat are allowed to be cleared
before the classification and valuation report is issued by “permit’. Before
goods are cleared on such permits, the importer is required to pay duty on the
invoice value of the goods and later when the FCVR is ready, the importer would
be required to pay the difference, if there is any.
On
other occasions, goods are cleared hurriedly before the inspection report when
the importer is able to satisfy CEPS that they need the goods urgently.
What
is happening at our ports is that this “permit” system is seriously being abused.
Between January 2012 and December 2012 alone, more than GHS 230 million worth
of goods were cleared from our ports under permit. However, the companies
involved had not returned to pay for the full custom duty as at June 2013.
Strangely, officials of CEPS have not ensured that there were follow-ups to
recover the outstanding duties from the importers.
What
is worse is that although the importers are supposed to pay the invoiced (CIF)
value of goods cleared under permit, millions of Ghana Cedis worth of dutiable
goods which were cleared under permit was taxed at rates of below 2%. In 2012
alone, more than GHS 88 million worth of goods which were cleared under permit
were taxed at less than 2%.
Apart
from goods such as books or items imported by diplomatic missions and exempted
companies which do not attract any duty, the minimum custom duty is 5% of the
value. In addition to this, there are other taxes such as National Health
Insurance Levy –NHIL (2.5%); ECOWAS Levy (0.5%); EDIF (0.5%); Processing Fee
(1%); Environmental Tax (20%) ; GCNet Charge (0.4%); Destination Inspection Fee
(1%); Withholding Tax IRS (1%), etc.
It
is mind-boggling how CEPS could have deducted tax of less than 2% after adding
all the taxes above. It is believed by insiders with the CEPS that officials
arbitrarily waive taxes in order to have their individual pockets lined by
importers. The lower the official tax collected, the greater the CEPS Officer’s
“goro power”.
Meanwhile
the government is starved of funds for essential development projects.
According
to report prepared by the Commissioner of CEPS, which has been sighted by the
Insight, companies that benefited from this over-generous rates of tax included
Olam (Ghana) Ltd; Schlumberger Seaco Inc; Amank Agriculture & Equip.;
Tullow Ghana Limited; Sinopec International Petroleum Sev; Mobile Zone; Stanbic
Bank Ghana; Goldfields Ghana Ltd; Abosso Goldfields Ltd; Golden Star (Bogoso /
Prestea); Perseus Mining Ghana Ltd; Church Of Jesus Christ; Redinggton Ltd;
Chris Bell Ent; Koby Jones Ent; Fosu Justice; Micfrim Enterprise; Buggies Phone
Repaires & Trading; Caital Phones & Accessories; etc.
Between
January and April 2013, more than GHS 93 million worth of goods making up
(1,170 consignments) was allowed to be cleared under permit. Some of them were
taxed as low as less than 0.9%. No attempts have been made to recover the
outstanding duties.
It
must be said that it is not only private sector companies who get away without
paying taxes.
The University of Ghana, the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation
and the Police Service also clear goods under permit without returning to pay
the substantive duties.
While
the Government is yet to know how much custom duty and related taxes are
outstanding, the government finds itself hemmed in by workers’ demands for
their allowances to be paid.
President Mahama,
Don't Join UPOV 91
 |
| His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama |
By Food Sovereignty Ghana
Food Sovereignty Ghana strongly opposes
the UPOV 91 compliant Plant Breeders' Bill, currently before Ghana's
Parliament! The bill is a danger to the way we farm and to Ghana's rich variety
of seeds. It is a danger to how we develop our own varieties of seeds, and how
we farm in Ghana. It is a give-away to foreign agribusiness corporations, which
is why UPOV 91 has been nicknamed the Monsanto law in some countries.
UPOV 91 is a legal convention, International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) that protects plant breeders when they create new varieties of plants. It does not protect the plants, it protects IPR, Intellectual Property Rights for the breeders. International agribusiness corporations want countries to pass UPOV 91 compliant laws because it means huge profits for those companies.
The UPOV 91 compliant Plant Breeders Bill in Ghana is designed to create and serve the interests of an industrial-style, monoculture-based farming system. It is a corporate farming system that is heavily tilted in favour of the commercial seed industry. In Ghana and Africa that means the foreign seed industry. The bill advantages foreign corporations over Ghanaian farmers presently working their own small farms in Ghana. The bill is an action against the interests of smallholder farmers. The bill is aimed at replacing local seed varieties with uniform commercial varieties that are most likely to be imported. It will increase the dependency of smallholder farmers on commercial seed varieties, possibly excluding all other varieties. Contracts permitted under this bill will force farmers to buy new seeds every year. These purchases will come from a limited range of foreign seeds. The effect will be the erosion of Ghana's crop diversity, we may lose most of the varieties of foods we like and plant, varieties that grow well in Ghana. The limited variety of mostly foreign seeds that we can purchase will make our crops far more vulnerable to threats such as new plagues of insect pests, super weeds, plant diseases, and climate change.
The corporate seed industry seeds, often laboratory created genetically engineered GMOs, must be purchased new each planting season. Under the UPOV 91 Plant Breeders Bill farmers may have to pay royalty fees to the corporations if they save and replant their own seeds. Farmers may also have to pay royalty fees to the foreign corporations if they give or sell seeds to neighbouring farmers or sell them in local markets. Ghanaian farmers have always saved seeds to plant the next season. This is the business of farming. Should this practice be reduced or ended by law? In Colombia, tons of seeds of hard working farmers have been confiscated by their government and destroyed. Is that what we want to happen in Ghana?
UPOV 91 is a legal convention, International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) that protects plant breeders when they create new varieties of plants. It does not protect the plants, it protects IPR, Intellectual Property Rights for the breeders. International agribusiness corporations want countries to pass UPOV 91 compliant laws because it means huge profits for those companies.
The UPOV 91 compliant Plant Breeders Bill in Ghana is designed to create and serve the interests of an industrial-style, monoculture-based farming system. It is a corporate farming system that is heavily tilted in favour of the commercial seed industry. In Ghana and Africa that means the foreign seed industry. The bill advantages foreign corporations over Ghanaian farmers presently working their own small farms in Ghana. The bill is an action against the interests of smallholder farmers. The bill is aimed at replacing local seed varieties with uniform commercial varieties that are most likely to be imported. It will increase the dependency of smallholder farmers on commercial seed varieties, possibly excluding all other varieties. Contracts permitted under this bill will force farmers to buy new seeds every year. These purchases will come from a limited range of foreign seeds. The effect will be the erosion of Ghana's crop diversity, we may lose most of the varieties of foods we like and plant, varieties that grow well in Ghana. The limited variety of mostly foreign seeds that we can purchase will make our crops far more vulnerable to threats such as new plagues of insect pests, super weeds, plant diseases, and climate change.
The corporate seed industry seeds, often laboratory created genetically engineered GMOs, must be purchased new each planting season. Under the UPOV 91 Plant Breeders Bill farmers may have to pay royalty fees to the corporations if they save and replant their own seeds. Farmers may also have to pay royalty fees to the foreign corporations if they give or sell seeds to neighbouring farmers or sell them in local markets. Ghanaian farmers have always saved seeds to plant the next season. This is the business of farming. Should this practice be reduced or ended by law? In Colombia, tons of seeds of hard working farmers have been confiscated by their government and destroyed. Is that what we want to happen in Ghana?
The entire point of genetic
modification, GMOs is to control the seed supply in individual countries and
around the globe through IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights). UPOV Plant
Breeder laws, in compliance with UPOV 91, are the legal tool designed to use
IPR to control the seed supply. UPOV laws grant those IPRs, Intellectual
Property Rights, that grant corporations rights to seeds. There are no GMO
laboratory created crops that are more productive, more resistant to climate
change or pests, than seeds produced by conventional breeding techniques and
generations of local research. GMO pest resistance to insects and weeds comes
entirely from toxic chemicals engineered into the plants or applied in massive
doses to the plants. Industry representatives frequently lie and say GMO crops
are safe and more productive, but in country after country this is shown to be
a lie.
President Mahama supports the current Bill before Ghana's Parliament called the Plant Breeders Bill, or UPOV, which is scheduled for a Second Reading soon. The Bill is designed to make Ghana a "UPOV 91 compliant state". So far both the NDC and the NPP Members of Parliament support the bill.
Ghana's MPs probably don't know much about the effect of these laws. They have been flattered and courted by the US Embassy, Monsanto, Syngenta etc., the GMO advocates at FARA, the G8 representatives, and more, and told over and over that UPOV 91 will bring investment and profit to Ghana. It will bring investment that will coopt Ghana's farmland and drive rural populations off the land and into the cities. All the profit will go out of Ghana and into the foreign corporations, just as in 19th century colonialism. A very few of Ghana's elite may profit as well, but the country will see loss rather than gain. If foreign corporations control our seed supply they control our food. If they control our food they control our sovereignty. They will control our ability to govern our own food supply, our ability to grow our own food and eat it if, when, and what we want. We will have new colonial masters.
UPOV 91 facilitates the theft of the genetic inheritance of the Ghanaian people which for centuries we have developed freely with seeds grown and traded collectively as part of our farming culture. The UPOV law facilitates biopiracy as it does not provide for mechanisms of prior informed consent and access and benefit sharing. In the absence of these elements, the bill sets up a framework for breeders, most of which are likely to be foreign entities, to use local germplasm, the living DNA of Ghana's seeds, to develop new varieties without credit, attribution, or remuneration to those who painstakingly developed these seeds. The "new variety" becomes exclusive corporate property under the UPOV 91 law.
This is not the end of it. At the regional level, the Africa Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) is in the process of adopting similar, but worse, legislation. The draft legal framework under consideration is not only based on UPOV law, it also creates a centralised regime whereby all decisions concerning protected varieties will be taken at the regional level, superseding national legislation. This is another major attack on Ghanaian sovereignty, and the sovereignty of African nations. Ghana's own laws can be set aside by this foreign external organization. This completely undermines Ghana's sovereignty to regulate seeds according to national needs and interests.
Both the bill and the ARIPO draft legal framework for plant variety protection are against the interests of Ghanaian farmers and consumers.
We are making an urgent appeal to alert all Ghanaians of goodwill, to take note, that in view of these challenges, we humbly propose:
Halt the Plant Breeders Bill currently going for a second reading before our Parliament and stop Ghana from joining UPOV;
We need to engage with everyone, especially the Alliance for Food Sovereignty In Africa, AFSA, on a strategy to deal with the ARIPO PVP harmonised regulations based on UPOV 1991; and
President Mahama supports the current Bill before Ghana's Parliament called the Plant Breeders Bill, or UPOV, which is scheduled for a Second Reading soon. The Bill is designed to make Ghana a "UPOV 91 compliant state". So far both the NDC and the NPP Members of Parliament support the bill.
Ghana's MPs probably don't know much about the effect of these laws. They have been flattered and courted by the US Embassy, Monsanto, Syngenta etc., the GMO advocates at FARA, the G8 representatives, and more, and told over and over that UPOV 91 will bring investment and profit to Ghana. It will bring investment that will coopt Ghana's farmland and drive rural populations off the land and into the cities. All the profit will go out of Ghana and into the foreign corporations, just as in 19th century colonialism. A very few of Ghana's elite may profit as well, but the country will see loss rather than gain. If foreign corporations control our seed supply they control our food. If they control our food they control our sovereignty. They will control our ability to govern our own food supply, our ability to grow our own food and eat it if, when, and what we want. We will have new colonial masters.
UPOV 91 facilitates the theft of the genetic inheritance of the Ghanaian people which for centuries we have developed freely with seeds grown and traded collectively as part of our farming culture. The UPOV law facilitates biopiracy as it does not provide for mechanisms of prior informed consent and access and benefit sharing. In the absence of these elements, the bill sets up a framework for breeders, most of which are likely to be foreign entities, to use local germplasm, the living DNA of Ghana's seeds, to develop new varieties without credit, attribution, or remuneration to those who painstakingly developed these seeds. The "new variety" becomes exclusive corporate property under the UPOV 91 law.
This is not the end of it. At the regional level, the Africa Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) is in the process of adopting similar, but worse, legislation. The draft legal framework under consideration is not only based on UPOV law, it also creates a centralised regime whereby all decisions concerning protected varieties will be taken at the regional level, superseding national legislation. This is another major attack on Ghanaian sovereignty, and the sovereignty of African nations. Ghana's own laws can be set aside by this foreign external organization. This completely undermines Ghana's sovereignty to regulate seeds according to national needs and interests.
Both the bill and the ARIPO draft legal framework for plant variety protection are against the interests of Ghanaian farmers and consumers.
We are making an urgent appeal to alert all Ghanaians of goodwill, to take note, that in view of these challenges, we humbly propose:
Halt the Plant Breeders Bill currently going for a second reading before our Parliament and stop Ghana from joining UPOV;
We need to engage with everyone, especially the Alliance for Food Sovereignty In Africa, AFSA, on a strategy to deal with the ARIPO PVP harmonised regulations based on UPOV 1991; and
We must campaign to block any
attempts to ratify them in our domestic law. Freely using, exchanging and
selling seeds and propagating material is the business of farming,
Farmers should not be required to pay royalties to foreign corporations
to do their normal business and enjoy their agricultural inheritance.
Should Ghanaian farmers face the possibility of having their seeds seized
and destroyed, and suffer lawsuits from giant foreign corporations?
If the UPOV 91 Plant Breeder Bill is passed the Ghanaian diet and health will suffer. Farmers will be forced into debt buying seeds each year and forced out of business. There will be far less variety of foods. The health effects of toxic chemicals, GMO alien proteins, and a far more limited diet will play out over generations.
If the UPOV 91 Plant Breeder Bill is passed the Ghanaian diet and health will suffer. Farmers will be forced into debt buying seeds each year and forced out of business. There will be far less variety of foods. The health effects of toxic chemicals, GMO alien proteins, and a far more limited diet will play out over generations.
Is this what Ghanaians want? Say
NO to UPOV laws! Say no to GMOs! Farmers must be able to freely use, exchange
and sell seeds and grow traditional Ghanaian foods and crops! Contact your
District Council!
Ask them to tell your MP:
No to UPOV 91 !
No to the current Plant Breeders Bill!
No to GMOs!
Ask them to tell your MP:
No to UPOV 91 !
No to the current Plant Breeders Bill!
No to GMOs!
Ghana to Strengthen Parliamentary
Relations with Iran
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| Doe Adjaho, Ghanaian Speaker of Parliament |
By Dauda Mohammed Suru
The Speaker of Parliament Hon.
Doe Ajaho, and his Iranian counterpart Ali Larijani in a meeting in Tehran on
Monday, 21st October, called for the expansion of bilateral ties
between the two countries, especially in parliamentary fields.
During the meeting in Tehran, the Iranian capital, Rt Hon. Edward Doe Ajaho
pointed to Ghana - Iran friendly relations, and noted that the relations so far
have been more at governmental and executive levels. He therefore called for strengthening Ghana –
Iran relations at the parliamentary level as well, arguing that parliaments are
the places where real representatives of the people are present.
The Iranian Parliamentary
speaker, Ali Larijani on his part pointed to the history of Ghana - Iran
bilateral relations, and said, the two countries have shown positive interests
in the area of parliamentary cooperation and that discussing concerning
introduction steps for cooperation between different parliament sections are
underway.
The speaker of parliament says
the two countries’ ties will be more solid and expanded through parliamentary
relations.
Cooperation between Ghana and
Iran is visible in many areas including Education, Health and Agriculture. Iran
has already built a University and a Clinic in Greater Accra, provided about
fifty three (53) Ambulances to the republic of Ghana and currently financing a
project in the Kumbugu community centre worth of over US$500,000.
President John Dramani Mahama and
former Iranian President H.E. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently signed memoranda of
understanding (MoUs) on bilateral cooperation in the areas of education,
agriculture, tourism, youth and sports.
Iran gave ample expression of its
solidarity with Ghana when it sent two separate high-powered delegations to the
funeral of the late President John Evans Atta Mills and also during the
swearing-in ceremony of President Mahama.
Rt Hon. Edward Doe Ajaho arrived
in Tehran as the head of a high-ranking delegation on Monday, October 21st.
Hon. Doe Ajaho is also expected
to meet with Iranian President, Excellency Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister
Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Africa's educational crisis:
Another gap to be bridged
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| Prof. Opoku Agyemang, Ghana Edu. Minister |
By
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
The
impact of the crisis in the Central African Republic has had a devastating
effect upon the country's school children. According to UNICEF, 70% of primary
school children are not attending classes because of insecurity, part of a
wider and shocking picture of education in Africa in a world which spends
nearly 2 trillion USD on weapons every year.
In
eleven out of the country's seventeen provinces, or prefectures, 65 per cent of
schools have been looted, vandalized or wholly or partially destroyed in
fighting. Half of the country's schools are closed and eighty per cent of the
pupils state that they are frightened to turn up for classes - if indeed they
have a teacher, equipment or books.
Coupled
with the non-delivery of the school programme is the risk that more and more
school pupils will drop out of the system, since the quality of the teaching,
as well as access to the schools, is affected and when they arrive there,
accommodation is deficient.
In
December 2012 fighting flared up after several years of unrest when the Séléka
coalition launched attacks against the government forces of President François
Bozizé, who fled when the capital, Bangui, was attacked in March 2014. Attempts
by the Prime Minister, Nicolas Tiangaye, to restore law and order suffered a
setback in August with a new wave of violence.
The
result is that the entire population of some 4.6 million people is directly or
indirectly affected, and the average schoolchild has lost six months of
schooling. UNICEF states that catch-up classes are cramming 25,000 children for
this year's exams, while school materials have been delivered to a further
20,000 children and efforts are being made to get 105,000 children back to
school as soon as possible.
As
usual, funding requested by the agency has fallen far short of the 32 million
dollars needed - only one third of this has been received, in a world where one
point seven thousand billion USD are spent yearly on selling weapons systems to
kill people.
Wider issue
The
problem in the Central African Republic is part of a wider issue affecting
schoolchildren in some parts of Africa, where of 128 million children of school
age, some 17 million will never go to school, and a further 37 million will
learn next to nothing while there, according to the Africa Learning Barometer,
an instrument set up by Brookings' Center for Universal Education.
Of
28 countries studied in sub-Saharan Africa, 40 per cent or over of school-age children
fail to attain a minimum level of learning by grade 5 in seven of these
countries, the worst examples being Ethiopia, Nigeria and Zambia where
according to the study half of the children do not learn basic skills such as
reading, writing and arithmetic by the time they have finished primary school,
rendering them totally unprepared for the delivery of the rest of the school
curriculum.
The
conclusion reached by the Barometer shows that in sub-Saharan Africa, half of
the total primary school universe (61 million children) will not have the
skills they need to lead integrated and productive lives by the time they end
primary school.
And
again, as usual, the ones most affected are from the poorer, rural areas, where
mechanisms have not been set up to create inclusion programmes and where there
exists a massive cultural and developmental gap, educational and digital
exclusion which renders people unable to compete on equal terms with their
peers in wealthier areas of their own countries or of the world in general.
How
telling it is that the one person trying to address this question on a
continental scale in Africa, Muammar al-Qathafi, was removed by the FUKUS Axis
- France, the UK and US.
The
effects of what amounts to a humanitarian catastrophe will be felt for decades
to come, since social exclusion and marginalization are the likely destination
for tens of millions of children. It beggars belief to state that in 2013 this
is the world we live in, but it is true.
New Solar System Discovered
European
astronomers on Tuesday said they had found a distant star orbited by at least
five planets in the biggest discovery of so-called exoplanets since the first
was logged 15 years ago.
The
star is similar to our sun and its planetary lineup has an intriguing parallel
with own solar system, although no clue has so far been found to suggest it
could be a home from home, they said.
The
star they studied, HD 10180, is located 127 light-years away in the southern
constellation of Hydrus, the male water snake, the European Southern
Observatory (ESO) said in a press release.
The
planets were detected over six years using the world's most powerful
spectograph, an instrument to capture and analyze light signatures, at ESO's
telescope at La Silla, Chile.
The
method consists of observing a star and seeing how the light that reaches Earth
"wobbles" as a result of the gravitational pull of a passing planet.
The
tiny fluctuation in light can then be used as a telltale to calculate the mass
of the transiting planet.
The
five detected planets are big, being the size of Neptune, although they orbit
at a far closer range than our own gas giant, with a "year" ranging
from between six and 600 days.
The
astronomers also found tantalizing evidence that two other candidate planets
are out there.
One
would be a very large planet, the size of our Saturn, orbiting in 2,200 days.
The
other would be 1.4 times the mass of Earth, making it the smallest exoplanet
yet to be discovered. It orbits HD 10180 at a scorchingly close range, taking a
mere 1.18 Earth days to zip around the star.
If
confirmed, that would bring the distant star system to seven planets, compared
with eight in our own solar system.
A
total of 402 stars with planets have been logged since the first was detected
in 1995, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The tally of
exoplanets stands at 472.
None,
though, is even remotely similar to Earth, which is rocky and inhabits the
famous "Goldilocks zone" where the temperature is just right to
enable water, the stuff of life, to exist in liquid form.
ESO
astronomer Christophe Lovis said knowledge was progressing fast.
"We
are now entering a new era in exoplanet research -- the study of complex
planetary systems and not just of individual planets," Lovis said.
"Studies of planetary motions in the new system reveal complex
gravitational interactions between the planets and give us insights into the
long-term evolution of the system."
General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi poised for Egyptian presidency?
 |
| General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi |
By Tumelo Ngwako
A
campaign is reportedly underway to gather 30 million signatures endorsing
General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for the ballot in the next year’s elections. The
General is emerging as a likely front-runner in the presidential elections,
despite not having made any proclamation about running for office.
Since
the coup against the Muslim Brotherhood on 3 July which brought him to power,
al-Sisi has enjoyed positive media coverage and public support. In fact, one
would go as far as saying hardly anyone remembers the name of the interim President,
and none of the politicians or political parties have much of a following. In
an interview with The Washington Post in August, al-Sisi was asked if he would
run for president, and he avoided a direct answer, instead saying, “I am not a
hero. I’m just a person who loves his people and country and felt hurt that the
Egyptians were treated in such a way.”
However,
he appears to be gathering backing among his peers and the political elite.
Former Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq has said he would back the army
chief if he decided to run for president. Shafiq, a former air force commander
who came second in last year’s presidential election, said he would not run if
al-Sisi stood in the next election. This comment may help explain why there are
no declared candidates just months before the election, as other politicians
could be waiting to see whether al-Sisi is going to run before announcing their
own intentions. Former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, who also ran in last
year’s election, declared that it would be a landslide win if Al-Sisi was to
run; citing his decisiveness, amid anarchy and terrorism, as a quality esteemed
by all Egyptians.
Nonetheless,
a greater challenge faces him on the road ahead if he does decide to be the
helm of a nation in divide. The bitterness of Muslim Brotherhood
supporters feel towards General al-Sisi, is all the greater because many of
them thought of him as one of their own. At the time of his appointment as a
head of the military there was, according to Mahmoud Khalifa, a university
lecturer and Brotherhood member, a consensus “that General al-Sisi was a
religious person”. However, today the view is very different as scores people,
most of them Muslim Brotherhood members, have died at his order. It appears
that the qualities that he was once revered for within the Brotherhood have
instantly dissipated amidst the sight and possibility of power. According to
media reports, during his master’s studies – at the United States Army College
in Pennsylvania – he once wrote a paper on Democracy in the Middle East, in
which he argued that “the religious nature” of the region needed to be
reflected in new democratic systems there.
He
contended that “governments tend towards secular rule, disenfranchising large
segments of the population who believe religion should not be excluded from
government. Religious leaders who step beyond their bounds in government
matters are often sent to prison without trial”.
It
therefore, comes as no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood saw him as one from
within their ranks, and that he was in favour with deposed Morsi. However, that
Morsi would suffer a coup at his hand was a total surprise to Brotherhood.
According to reports, el-Al-Sisi went out of his way to tell Morsi that he is a
pious Muslim – a practicing Muslim – and that, in fact, even his political
ideas about elections and about sovereignty are very much in alignment with
that of the Muslim Brotherhood. As a result, he enjoyed great power within the
Morsi administration when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces relinquished
control to the Muslim Brotherhood in June 2012.
In
the wake of the grassroots campaign that started in April by disaffected
revolutionary youth, it appears al-Sisi saw an opportunity to fasten his grip
on power outside of the Brotherhood. By appointing an interim president, and
not taking power himself, al-Sisi might have been carrying out a grand plan
that he had already plotted prior to the grassroots campaign – he would enjoy
popular admiration and ultimately, a call to take up the presidential seat. In
fact, it would come as no surprise if al-Sisi resigned, take off his military
suit, put on his civilian clothes, and nominate himself as a presidential
candidate. However, this might be a watershed moment that further deteriorates
armed confrontation as the Muslim Brotherhood is likely to see this as the
highest form of betrayal from someone who claimed to be a pious Muslim.
Nonetheless,
due to the paradoxical relationship that Egyptian people have with the army,
his chances for victory are abound. Egyptian people resent the privileges that
the army has; they resent that 25 percent of the Egypt economy is being
controlled in a clandestine manner by unelected officials; they resent the
millions of Egyptians who are drafted into the Egyptian army each year, but the
army is the only intact institution in Egypt.
DDT 2.0
We’re just beginning to
understand the wider impacts of neonicotinoids.
By
George Monbiot
It’s
the new DDT: a class of poisons licensed for widespread use before they had
been properly tested, which are now ripping the natural world apart. And it’s
another demonstration of the old truth that those who do not learn from history
are destined to repeat it.
It
is only now, when neonicotinoids are already the world’s most widely deployed
insecticides, that we are beginning to understand how extensive their impacts
are. Just as the manufacturers did for DDT, the corporations which make these
toxins claimed that they were harmless to species other than the pests they targeted.
Just as they did for DDT, they have
threatened people who have raised concerns, published
misleading claims and done all they can to bamboozle the public. And, as if to
ensure that the story sticks to the old script, some governments have
collaborated in this effort. Among the most culpable is the government of the
United Kingdom.
As
Professor Dave Goulson shows in his review of
the impacts of these pesticides, we still know almost nothing about
how most lifeforms are affected. But as the evidence has begun to accumulate,
scientists have started discovering impacts across a vast range of wildlife.
Most
people who read this newspaper will be aware by now of the evidence fingering
neonicotinoids as a major cause of the decline of bees and other pollinators.
These pesticides can be applied to the seeds of crops, and they remain in the
plant as it grows, killing the insects which eat it. The quantities required to
destroy insect life are astonishingly small: by volume these poisons are 10,000
times as powerful as DDT. When honeybees are exposed to just 5 nanogrammes of
neonicotinoids, half of them
will die. As bees, hoverflies, butterflies, moths, beetles and other
pollinators feed from the flowers of treated crops, they are, it seems, able to
absorb enough of the pesticide to compromise their survival.
But
only a tiny proportion of the neonicotinoids that farmers use enter the pollen
or nectar of the flower. Studies conducted so far suggest that only between 1.6
and 20% of the pesticide used for dressing seeds is actually absorbed by the
crop: a far lower rate even than when toxins are sprayed onto leaves. Some of
the residue blows off as dust, which is likely to wreak havoc among the
populations of many species of insects in hedgerows and surrounding habitats.
But the great majority – Goulson says “typically more than 90%” – of the
pesticide applied to the seeds enters the soil.
In
other words, the reality is a world apart from the impression created by the
manufacturers, which keep describing the dressing of seeds with pesticides as
“precise” and “targeted”.
Neonicotinoids
are highly persistent chemicals, lasting (according to the few studies
published so far) for up to 19 years in the soil. Because they are persistent,
they are likely to accumulate: with every year of application the soil will
become more toxic.
What
these pesticides do once they are in the soil, no one knows, as sufficient
research has not been conducted. But – deadly to all insects and possibly other
species at tiny concentrations – they are likely to wipe out a high proportion
of the soil fauna. Does this include earthworms? Or the birds and mammals that
eat earthworms? Or for that matter, the birds and mammals that eat insects or
treated seeds? We don’t yet know enough to say.
This
is the story you’ll keep hearing about these pesticides: we have gone into it
blind. Our governments have approved their use without the faintest idea of
what the consequences are likely to be.
You
might have had the impression that neonicotinoids have been banned by the
European Union. They have not. The use of a few of these pesticides has been
suspended for two years, but only for certain purposes. Listening to the
legislators, you could be forgiven for believing that the only animals which
might be affected are honeybees, and the only way in which they can be killed
is through the flowers of plants whose seeds were dressed.
But
neonicotinoids are also sprayed onto the leaves of a wide variety of crop
plants. They are also spread over pastures and parks in granules, in order to
kill insects that live in the soil and eat the roots of the grass. These
applications, and many others, remain legal in the European Union, even though
we don’t know how severe the wider impacts are. We do, however, know enough to
conclude that they are likely to be bad.
Of
course, not all the neonicotinoids entering the soil stay there indefinitely.
You’ll be relieved to hear that some of them are washed out, whereupon … ah
yes, they end up in groundwater or in the rivers. What happens there? Who
knows? Neonicotinoids are not even listed among the substances that must be
monitored under the EU’s water framework directive, so we have no clear picture
of what their concentrations are in the water that we and many other species
use.
But a study
conducted in the Netherlands shows that some of the water
leaving horticultural areas is so heavily contaminated with these pesticides
that it could be used to treat lice. The same study shows that even at much
lower concentrations – no greater than the limits set by the European Union –
the neonicotinoids entering river systems wipe out half the invertebrate
species you would expect to find in the water. That’s another way of saying
erasing much of the foodweb.
I
was prompted to write this article by the horrible news from the River Kennet
in southern England: a highly protected ecosystem that is listed among the few
dozen true chalk streams on earth. Last month someone – farmer or householder,
no one yet knows – flushed another kind of pesticide, chlorpyrifos, down their
sink. The amount was equivalent – in pure form – to two teaspoonsful. It passed
through Marlborough sewage works and wiped out most
of the invertebrates in fifteen miles of the river.
The
news hit me like a bereavement. The best job I ever had was working, during a
summer vacation from university, as temporary waterkeeper on the section of the
Kennet owned by the Sutton estate. The incumbent had died suddenly. It was a
difficult job and, for the most part, I made a mess of it. But I came to know
and love that stretch of river, and to marvel at the astonishing profusion of
life the clear water contained. Up to my chest in it for much of the day, I
immersed myself in the ecology, and spent far more time than I should have done
watching watervoles and kingfishers; giant chub fanning their fins in the shade
of the trees; great spotted trout so loyal to their posts that they had brushed
white the gravel of the river bed beneath their tails; native crayfish;
dragonflies; mayflies; caddis larvae; freshwater shrimps and all the other
teeming creatures of the benthos.
In
the evenings, wanting company and fascinated in equal measure by the protest
and the remarkable people it attracted, I would stop at the peace camp outside
the gates of the Greenham Common nuclear base. I’ve told the strange
story that unfolded during my visits in another post.
Campaigners
seeking to protect the river have described how, after the contamination, the river stank from
the carcases of the decaying insects and shrimps. Without insects and shrimps
to feed on, the fish, birds and amphibians that use the river are likely to
fade away and die.
After
absorbing this news, I remembered the Dutch study, and it struck me that
neonicotinoid pesticides are likely, in many places, to be reducing the life of
the rivers they enter to a similar extent: not once, but for as long as they
are deployed on the surrounding land.
Richard
Benyon, the minister supposed to be in charge of protecting wildlife and
biodiversity, who happens to own
the fishing rights on part of the River Kennet, and to
represent a constituency through which it passes, expressed his
“anger” about the chlorpyrifos poisoning. Should he not also be
expressing his anger at the routine poisoning of rivers by neonicotinoids?
Were
he to do so, he would find himself in serious trouble with his boss. Just as
they are systematically poisoning our ecosystems, neonicotinoids have also
poisoned the policies (admittedly pretty toxic already) of the department
supposed to be regulating them. In April, Damian Carrington, writing in the
Observer, exposed a letter
sent by the minister in charge of the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Owen Paterson, to Syngenta, which
manufactures some of these pesticides. Paterson promised the company that his
efforts to prevent its products from being banned “will continue and intensify
in the coming days”.
And
sure enough, the UK refused to support the temporary bans proposed by the
commission both in
April and last month,
despite the massive petitions and the 80,000 emails on the subject that
Paterson received. When Paterson and Deathra were faced with a choice between
the survival of natural world and the profits of the pesticides companies,
there was not much doubt about how they would jump. Fortunately they failed.
Their
attempt to justify their votes led to one of the most disgraceful episodes in
the sorry record of this government. The government’s new chief scientist, Sir
Mark Walport, championed a
“study” Deathra had commissioned, which purported to show that
neonicotinoids do not kill bees. It was not published in a peer-reviewed
journal, nor could it be, as as any self-respecting scientist, let alone the
government’s chief scientist, should have been able to see in a moment that it
was complete junk. Among many other problems, the controls were hopelessly
contaminated with the pesticide whose impacts the trial was supposed to be
testing. The “study” was later ripped
apart by the European Food Safety Authority.
But
Walport did still worse, making wildly
misleading statements about the science, and using scare tactics and
emotional blackmail to try to prevent the pesticides from being banned, on
behalf of his new masters.
It
is hard to emphasise sufficiently the importance of this moment or the dangers
it contains: the total failure of the government’s primary source of scientific
advice, right at the beginning of his tenure. The chief scientist is not meant
to be a toadying boot-licker, but someone who stands up for the facts and the
principles of science against political pressure. Walport disgraced his post,
betrayed the scientific community and sold the natural world down the river,
apparently to please his employers.
Last
week, as if to remind us of the extent of the capture of this government by the
corporations it is supposed to be regulating, the scientist who led the
worthless trials that Walport and Paterson cited as their excuse left the
government to take up
a new post at … Syngenta. It seems to me that she was, in
effect, working for them already.
So
here we have a department staggering around like a drunkard with a loaded
machine gun, assuring us that it’sh perfectly shafe. The people who should be
defending the natural world have conspired with the manufacturers of
broad-spectrum biocides to permit levels of destruction at which we can only
guess. In doing so they appear to be engineering another silent spring.
Afghanistan: the days of
colonial occupation are numbered
 |
| Taliban Fighters |
By
Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist):
Inter-imperialist contradictions are being forced into the open by heroic forces of patriotic resistance.
Inter-imperialist contradictions are being forced into the open by heroic forces of patriotic resistance.
No
sooner had the polls closed in Afghanistan on 20 August than the leading
representatives of the occupation regime declared this electoral farce a
success. Nato’s Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, praised the Afghan
people’s determination to build democracy, while the leaders of the US,
Britain, Germany and France – the main participants in the imperialist
predatory war against the Afghan people – rushed to pat themselves on the back
for facilitating this alleged exercise in democracy.
In
view of the fact that US President Barack Obama, who has characterised the US
war against Afghanistan as “a war of necessity”, not of choice, is on record
asserting that the August election was the most significant event in
Afghanistan this year, even more important than the build-up of troops and
civilian aid authorised by his administration, it is not surprising that he
hailed the poll as “an important step forward” in the teeth of opposition from
the resistance, and vowed that the US would achieve its goals, so that “our
troops will be able to come home”.
The Financial
Times , one of the most representative organs of British monopoly
capitalism, in its leading article of 22 August, described it as “something of
a miracle that Afghanistan has been able to hold elections, given the
circumstances, ” namely, “a raging insurgency, in which Nato forces have
been unable to regain initiative … a central government that has failed to
provide security, services or jobs, and whose writ barely reaches beyond the
boundaries of Kabul ”. The paper went on to laud the Afghans for having
braved “the rockets and intimidation ” to come out to vote, even if in
sharply reduced numbers as compared to the 2004 election. (‘Afghanistan votes
and hopes for the best’)
Nothing
according to script
The
political, ideological and literary representatives of imperialism spoke too
soon. A month after these farcical elections, while the result is still to be
declared, everything lies in ruins. Nothing has gone according to the prepared
script, which ran as follows: Karzai was expected to win in the first round by
a wide margin, which would trump a low turnout; the US and Nato would claim
‘progress’; and despite the fact that his writ does not run beyond Kabul (if
that far), the corruption engulfing his administration and its singular
inability to provide security, jobs and essential services, and the
increasingly lukewarm support for him in Washington – the blemished Mr Karzai
would stay put in the presidential palace, confirming Pashtun primacy, lending
a veneer of legitimacy to the imperialist occupation, and helping the latter to
restore some sort of stability in the face of fierce resistance by the Afghan
people to the occupation of their country by foreign powers.
In
the light of the unexpectedly strong showing by Abdullah Abdullah, a low
turnout, and the allegations accompanied by clear evidence of electoral fraud
on a mass scale, this script must now be torn up. Within hours of the polls
closing, Karzai and his chief opponent, Abdullah, both anticipated the results
and claimed victory, so undermining Mr Obama’s endeavours to portray the polls
as a success.
The
US administration had been banking upon the elections as an instrument for
reversing the gains of the resistance by attempting to convince Afghans that
100,000-plus imperialist forces were enabling the country to elect an
accountable government. That forlorn hope has been smashed to smithereens
amidst deserted polling stations, deep cynicism among the electorate, and
gigantic fraud practised by the Karzai puppet regime.
Gigantic
electoral fraud
Tribal
leaders from the south of the country, who visited Kabul in the first week of
September to lodge complaints against fraudulent electoral practices, spoke of
tens of thousands of fake votes for Hamid Karzai at polling stations that were
virtually deserted on polling day.
Haji
Kamardin, a tribal leader from the Shomalzai district of southern Zabul
province, stated that as a result of wholesale intimidation, out of a population
of 200,000, a mere 50 people voted, adding that in the whole of Zabul province
no more than 3,000 or 4,000 cast their votes as nobody was allowed to leave
home. (‘Bombs kill top Afghan official’ by Matthew Green, Financial
Times , 3 September 2009)
Haji
Mohammed, a tribal leader from the province of Kandahar, related the offer he
received four days before the elections from the local police chief. If he
ignored a plan for vote rigging in favour of Karzai, the police would pass on
to him empty ballot boxes to stuff in favour of his nephew, who was contesting
for the provincial assembly. On Haji Mohammed turning down the offer, the
security forces collected all the ballot boxes earmarked for 45 polling
stations in the Shorowak and Ragestan districts and packed them with ballot
papers marked in favour of Karzai. There was no election on polling day, all
the ballot boxes having already been stuffed.
“The
chief of Shorowak told me personally that 29,823 votes were cast in favour of
Mr Karzai,” said Haji Mohammed.
Another
tribal leader said, amidst laughter: “The whole population of animals and human
beings in Shorowak cannot add up to 29,000.”
Abdul
Zahir, a landowner from Uruzgan province, told a similar story of vote rigging
and ballot-box stuffing in favour of Karzai, adding that, while no more than 40
people actually voted, 4,700 ballots were officially declared to have been cast
for Karzai and 650 for Abdullah. (Information in the preceding three paragraphs
is drawn from ‘Furious elders report widespread vote-rigging’ by Matthew Green
, Financial Times , 7 September 2009)
The
tribal elders gathered in Kabul accused Ahmed Wali Karzai, the puppet
president’s brother and governor of Kandahar province, of organising vote
rigging to ensure he remained in office, a convenient and comfortable niche
from which to run his business empire, including drug smuggling on a vast
scale. Not for nothing is this scoundrel nicknamed ‘King of the South’.
Such
is the revulsion caused by the corruption, nepotism, intimidation and electoral
fraud practised by the Karzai brothers that vast swathes of even the Pashtun
community, which accounts for 45 percent of the Afghan population, and from
which the Karzai brothers hail, have become disaffected with them to the extent
that they have been willing to support Mr Abdullah, who is half Tajik.
Clear
evidence of massive electoral fraud in the south has pushed Pashtun anger to
such boiling point that Abdul Zahir, the Uruzgan landowner already quoted
above, issued a warning that many thousands of his supporters would reject
results fabricated in Karzai’s favour. He added: “They won’t go on to the
streets to protest. They will go straight to the mountains and start fighting
the government.” (Quoted in ‘Pashtuns lose patience with the court of King
Karzai’ by Matthew Green, Financial Times , 5 September 2009)
Staged
by the occupying powers with the intention of binding the country and
legitimising the occupation by providing it with a façade of a
democratically-elected and accountable administration, these elections have
presented a spectacle of government ministers, district administrators, police
chiefs, electoral officials, drug traffickers, criminal gangsters and some
bought-off tribal leaders all stuffing ballot boxes in a “massive
state-engineered fraud”, to use Mr Abdullah’s words, a fraud designed to ensure
a Karzai victory.
This
obscene spectacle obliged Michael Semple, a former UN political officer to
Afghanistan and deputy EU representative there, to damn those who claim that
the vote was a success as harking back to “a fantasy that is not tenable in the
YouTube age”.
In
view of the widespread knowledge of the mass electoral fraud, he says, “only
those immersed in the fantasy of ‘reasonably free and fair’ could hope that a majority
out of this mess would confer any legitimacy on government”, adding that trying
to press on with a winner elected through fraud will leave the Afghan
government too weak either to defeat the resistance or to negotiate with it.
“Neither the Afghan population nor western electorates are going to tolerate
much more investment in failure.” (Quoted in Financial Times , 3
September 2009)
The
occupation powers find themselves facing an unpalatable situation. Should
Karzai be declared the winner in an election marred by widespread fraud and an
extremely low turnout, especially in the south of the country where the
resistance is at its strongest, the US would be obliged to give its backing to
a government that lacks even the semblance of legitimacy and into the bargain
is packed with warlords and drug barons.
None
of this augurs well for Obama’s hope of conjuring up a plausible administration
so as to wean away popular support from the resistance.
Panacea
turns into a cause of division
Staged
as a panacea for the troubles of the occupation, these elections have ended up
by deepening divisions within the camp of imperialism and its puppets in
Afghanistan.
The
gulf between the Karzai regime and its imperialist masters, between the
presidential palace and the Afghan people, and between the various occupying
powers has widened further, thus making it all the harder to wage war against
the resistance, which is in control of most of the country and is threatening
to close in on Kabul.
In
defiance of western pressure to withhold further results, on 8 September, the
Afghan electoral officials of the so-called Independent Election Commission
made public a new batch of preliminary results giving Karzai 54.1 percent of
the vote from 91 percent of the polling stations, with Dr Abdullah allegedly
receiving 28.3 percent. If these margins hold, Karzai would secure the simple
majority that he needs to avoid a run-off in October against his main rival.
Its
decision to release the results puts the puppet Karzai regime on a collision
course with the US at a time when President Obama is facing a crucial decision
over further troop reinforcements. The electoral commission released the
suspect results a few hours after the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission
had stated that there was “ clear and convincing ” evidence of fraud
in many provinces in the south and ordered a recount in some areas.
US-German
relations under stress
Meanwhile,
relations between US and German imperialism have become further strained
following the incident on 4 September when a Nato aircraft fired on two
hijacked fuel tankers, igniting a firestorm that burned 100 people and dealt a
fatal blow to the recently-announced US policy of avoiding civilian casualties.
This
carnage, on a river bank in the northern Kunduz province, took place close to
the village of Omer Khil, where every family lost a relative. The strike had
been called by Colonel Georg Klein, a German commander, at a critical time when
the eight-year-long imperialist intervention is struggling to contain fierce
resistance in the face of fast-vanishing public support for the Afghan war in
the US and Europe.
The
strike also sparked a furious backlash among Afghans, with even the leading
puppets questioning the use of air power, which has thus far caused so many
Afghan deaths and horrendous devastation.
After
the strike, while the Germans dithered and attempted to deny any civilian
casualties, General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato military chief in
Afghanistan, publicly offered his apology for the civilian deaths, causing
great embarrassment to Germany, which had in 2002 denounced references to
pre-emptive strikes in the US National Security Strategy as undermining
deterrence. Now, in bombing the fuel tankers on 4 September, the Germans were guilty
of precisely that which they had been preaching the US to stop doing. It was
the turn of the Americans this time to lecture the Germans about the perils of
pre-emption.
The
US administration is in a cleft stick. On the one hand, it is trying to portray
the image of a power attempting to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan
people. As such, it is obliged to criticise the German action, even if it is
along the same lines as US actions until only the other day and probably still
continuing. On the other hand, it has to soften those criticisms in an attempt
to keep together the fast-disintegrating imperialist coalition in Afghanistan,
particularly in view of the fact that the Netherlands (1,600 troops) and Canada
are due to draw down or pull out their troops in 2010 and 2011 respectively.
The
air strike in Kunduz has shattered two German myths: first, that bad things
don’t happen to Germans because they are good guys and somehow morally
superior; second, that they are conducting a stabilisation operation, not a
combat mission, in Afghanistan. The incident of 4 September cannot but force
the German military high command to realise that it is waging a predatory war
against the Afghan people, just as the US, Britain and other imperialist powers
are, and that in this war of conquest, its soldiers, by the very position they
occupy in the war, behave no better than troops from other imperialist
countries.
The
Kunduz strike comes at a very inconvenient time for the German government and
the two parties, the CDU and the SPD, that form the grand coalition which has
governed Germany for the last four years, for they face the German electorate
in elections due to be held on 27 September.
The
majority of Germans, including fairly large sections in all parties, are against
the war in Afghanistan. The Left Party is the only parliamentary party to
oppose the Afghan war and support for it has consequently risen by four points
to 14 percent, according to the latest opinion poll by Forsa
for Stern magazine. With its call to bring home the troops
immediately, the Left Party could gather further traction and win more votes,
helped by the revulsion felt by the popular masses following the Kunduz
incident.
Such
an outcome, with the emergence of the Left Party as a major force, could upset
the electoral arithmetic and frustrate Chancellor Angela Merkel’s attempts to
form a CDU-FDP coalition following the elections at the end of this month. In
equal measure, electoral gains on a major scale could oblige the SPD leadership
to revise its previous decision not to ally with the Left Party.
Considering
the gains by the latter in the regional elections in Saarland and Thuringia in
August, such an outcome is by no means far-fetched. In both states, the CDU
suffered double-digit losses, the SPD was weakened, and the Left Party obtained
both its best ever vote (27.4 percent in Thuringia) and its best score in a
west German state (21.3 percent in Saarland).
In
addition, the mandate of the 4,500 German troops in Afghanistan comes up for
renewal in December. Considering the political situation in Germany, such a
renewal is by no means a certainty.
British
cross-party consensus at risk
With
British casualties mounting, public support for the war vanishing, and victory
nowhere in sight, the opposition Conservative Party has used electoral fraud in
Afghanistan as a pretext for breaking the cross-party consensus on the war,
saying that British troops must not pay in blood to allow the Karzai government
to stay in office following a “ corrupt ” election.
Writing
in the Daily Mail of 10 September, William Hague, Shadow Foreign
Secretary, hinted that the Tories might withdraw support for the Afghan war if
the government rubber-stamps a fraudulent election. This is a major departure
from tradition, for bourgeois opposition parties do not generally question
ongoing British military operations.
Mr
Hague stated that the Electoral Complaints Commission had uncovered “clear and
convincing evidence of fraud ” and had on record over 2,000 complaints,
726 of which were recorded in ‘Priority A’ category. He went on to say that the
EU’s monitors had confirmed “ large scale ballot stuffing” at polling
stations, “including hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes accepted at the
tally centre and included among the preliminary official results ”. “Is it
wise,” he asked, “ to declare the results final and the election over if
irregularities took place on such a scale? ”
Pointing
out the failure of the occupying powers to win and retain the support of the
Afghan people, William Hague went on to say: “ We may fatally undermine
our standing in the eyes of the Afghans [too late to worry about that, Mr
Hague, for this standing is already fatally undermined!] if we are seen to
rubber stamp disputed election results which disenfranchise sections of the
population. ” Such a course, he said, was bound to undermine further the
military efforts of the occupation forces, for it carried the danger of
violence from supporters of other candidates.
“It
would be a serious mistake, ” he wrote, “ to think that fraudulent
results on a large scale can simply be accepted. If the next Afghan government
is compromised and built on corrupt electoral practices, there will be little
support for us too. ”
Mr
Hague did not address, nor indeed would we expect him to address, the simple
truth that there is no support for the occupation forces in Afghanistan; that
whoever emerges victorious from this electoral charade, whether it is tainted
by widespread ballot box stuffing and vote rigging or not, would still be a
puppet of the predatory imperialist powers occupying Afghanistan and waging war
against it; that such a regime and its imperialist masters would be totally
alienated from the Afghan people and thus bereft of the latter’s support.
Leaving
all this aside, the question arises: why are the Conservatives making such a
fuss about electoral fraud in a country with whose subjugation by imperialism
they have no disagreement – a subjugation that has disenfranchised the entire
Afghan population, not just sections of it?
The
answer lies in the fact that the Afghan war is increasingly unpopular with the
British people and the Conservatives are attempting to tap into the popular
resentment to secure some electoral advantage by deserting a sinking ship.
The
Tories are just as capable of turning a blind eye to electoral fraud as are the
Labour Party. There was plenty of electoral fraud during the 2004 Afghan
election, but none of the bourgeois parties in Britain uttered a murmur about
it then. The difference between then and now is that presently the war is going
very badly for the imperialist occupying powers.
The
victories of the Afghan resistance and the reverses suffered by the imperialist
forces have caused dissensions within the ruling class. The Conservative first
steps to break the cross-party consensus on the war are a reflection of these
dissensions and disintegration in the camp of the British bourgeoisie, and are,
as such, a most welcome development.
Cracks
in imperialist alliance
To
complicate matters further, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy,
the leaders respectively of Britain, Germany and France – all members of Nato
and contributors of troops in Afghanistan – have issued a call for a UN
conference on Afghanistan to be held this year, to set “new benchmarks and
timelines in order to formulate a joint framework for our transition phase in
Afghanistan”, including handing power, security and policing over to the
Afghans.
The
three leaders agreed to build on the election of 20 August in Afghanistan,
which they perversely claimed had marked “an important step in its democratic
history”. “Now is the right moment, together with the new Afghanistan
leadership, to set out at the end of this year how the transfer of
responsibility will happen,” said Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor.
The
proposal for a UN conference and Mrs Merkel’s remarks have set alarm bells
ringing in Washington, for the US rightly perceives in them a wavering of
commitment to the Afghan war on the part of its Nato allies. Mrs Merkel’s
comments have been widely interpreted by western diplomats as hinting at an
exit strategy far sooner than expected, and, as such, are causing much grief to
the US administration.
Nato
spokesmen are putting on a brave face and denying any split in the alliance.
All the same, a Nato diplomat admitted that opinion polls in Europe and the US
were worryingly moving against the war. “There is no wobble happening yet,”
said the diplomat, “but we can see public opinion polls that are not encouraging
and we need to show people that this investment [in training the Afghan
military] is actually getting somewhere.” (See ‘Nato fear direction of Afghan
debate’ by James Blitz, Matthew Green and Daniel Dombey, Financial
Times , 10 September 2009)
Resistance
winning
Meanwhile,
ignoring the imperialist posturing on the Afghan elections, as well as the
in-fighting within the camp of puppets of the occupation, the Afghan resistance
is carrying on its fight for the liberation of Afghanistan from the imperialist
occupying forces with relentless tenacity.
On
2 September, a suicide bomber killed at least 22 people, including Abdullah
Laghman, the deputy head of intelligence, when he blew himself up in eastern
Afghanistan. At least 40 people were killed the previous week in a car bomb
attack in the city of Kandahar. On 8 September, hours before the Independent
Election Commission released its results, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle
at Kabul’s main airport, killing three people, in the capital’s worst attack
since 20 August.
On
17 September, in yet another blow to Nato’s efforts to subdue Afghanistan, a
suicide car bomber rammed into a Nato convoy, killing six Italian soldiers and
10 civilians, while another 55 were wounded in the blast. The explosion led to
growing calls in Italy for the withdrawal of the 2,800 Italian troops deployed
in Afghanistan.
The
US administration finds itself conducting this “war of necessity” amidst a
massive electoral fraud, a grim assessment by US generals, a stretched army, a
sceptical public and reluctant allies. Besides troops, the imperialist
coalition can only be held together by resilience, mutual trust and loyalty –
all of which are characterised by their near-total absence.
Last
spring, soon after assuming the US presidency, Barack Obama sent 21,000 extra
troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total of US troops deployed to 68,000.
General Stanley McChrystal, who assumed control of US and Nato forces in
Afghanistan in June, believes this number to be insufficient. In the first week
of September, General McChrystal filed a report to the president on the
deteriorating military situation and a request for extra troops.
The
request comes at a time of growing opposition to a war which the public thinks
is unwinnable. More than half of US citizens oppose the war or consider it not
worth fighting. The Afghan resistance has proved far more formidable than
anticipated by Nato, quadrupling the number of successful attacks on Nato
forces in the last two years. With three months to go, 2009 is already the
deadliest year for Nato forces, especially the Americans, since the invasion of
2001. Nearly 190 US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year.
In July alone, 44 US soldiers were killed. Nato’s losses this year stand at
over 300.
Before
long, Obama will discover that his “war of necessity” is as unpopular and as
unwinnable as was Bush’s “war of choice”. If he persists with this predatory
war, he and his government will be just as much reviled as were George W Bush
and his administration.
The
days of colonial occupation have long past. For all its superior resources,
overwhelming technological superiority, and up-to-date killing machines,
imperialism will not prevail, will not be able to cow down the resistance of
the Afghan people.
Refusing
to learn the lessons of history, like all reactionary fools, imperialists are
busy invading and occupying other countries. In the end they will have their
skulls cracked and will doubtless be forced to make humiliating exits in a series
of defeats at the hands of the oppressed peoples in the latter’s life-and-death
struggles for liberation from imperialist war, occupation and exploitation.
Victory
to the resistance!
Another Nobel Peace Prize – Another Farce?
The Nobel Peace Prize brings another surprise – or farce, depending on
your view.
In relatively recent history, there has been Henry Kissinger (1973) architect supreme
of murderous assaults on sovereign nations; the United Nations (2001) whose active
warmongering or passive, silent holocausts (think UN embargoes) make shameful
mockery of the aspirational founding words.
In 2002 it was Jimmy Carter, whose poisonous
“Carter Doctrine” of 1980 included declaring the aim of American control of the
Persian Gulf as a “US vital interest”, justified “by any means necessary.” 2005 saw the Award go to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which promotes nuclear
energy, creating the most lethal pollutants to which the planet and its
population has ever been subjected. The nuclear waste from the industry the
IAEA promotes, is now turned in to “conventional”, but never the less, nuclear
and chemical weapons, by a sleight of hand of astonishing historical
proportions.
Barack Obama (2009) has since declared
himself executioner, by assassination in any form, any time, any place,
anywhere, of anyone deemed by him (not judge or jury) connected to that now
catch all phrase “terrorism” – half a world away.
The
Guantanamo concentration camp to which he unequivocally committed closing (17th
November 2008,“60 Minutes”) asserting:
“I
have said repeatedly that I will close Guantanamo and I will follow through on
that. I have said repeatedly that America does not torture. And I’m gonna make
sure that we don’t torture … those are part and parcel of an effort to … regain
America’s moral stature in the world.” Gulag Guantanamo remains with its
prisoners, pathetic, desperate untried, or those ordered released, languishing
year after year. America’s “moral stature” has plummeted lower than the Nixon
years, Libya lies in ruins, Syria barely survives, with the terrorists’ backers
aided via Washington’s myriad back doors – and in global outposts, US backed or
instigated torture thrives.
2012’s Nobel lauded the
European Union,
which, since its inception, has crippled smaller trading economies, put
barriers, unattainable conditions, or indeed, near extortion on trade with
poorer countries (often former colonies.)
EU
Member States have also enjoined punitive embargoes against the most helpless
of nations and enthusiastically embraced the latest nation target to be reduced
to a pre-industrial age (correction: be freed to embrace democracy and the
delights of rule by imposed despots, or a long, murderous, unaccountable
foreign occupation and asset seizure.) Eminent International Law Expert,
Professor Francis Boyle, called the EU Award: “A sick joke and a demented
fraud.”
This
year’s Peace Prize awarded, on Friday, 11th October, went to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) the Netherlands based
organization, founded only in 1997, unheard of by most, charged with ridding
the world of chemical weapons.
The
Award came ten days after an OPCW team arrived in Syria to eliminate the
country’s chemical weapons stock. A brief visit in August had them scuttling
out, an apparent courage free entity, within days. President Assad had
requested their investigations back in March, after it was claimed terrorist
factions had used chemical weapons – insurgents now believed to be from some
eighty three countries, backed primarily by the US, UK, Quatar and Saudi
Arabia.
The
OPCW’s return, on 1st October, is now touted as a breakthrough with an
intransigent regime who had previously blocked them at every turn – rather than
had the door open for them since March – the team, now billed as brave souls,
working in a war zone – in which the Syrian people and government live – and
die – every day – in a blood-soaked insurgency of that that famed
“international community’s” making.
Is
the annual Nobel justified anyway to an organization which has, in spite of the
nightmare hazards to an entire population, agree to destroying an alleged 1,000
tons of highly dangerous chemicals (if we believe what we are told) in just
months?
In
context, the US still has over three times as much chemical weaponry (estimated
at over 3,100 tons) and has defied the specified April 2012 deadline for their
disposal, on the basis that the dangers are so great that they cannot complete
building the appropriate facilities until 2020 (some reports state 2023.) For
the same reasons of technical and safety obstacles, Russia has a believed five
times the US amount left to destroy.(i) Shameful double standards rule supreme.
Wade
Mathews, who worked on the U.S. chemical stockpile destruction, is uncertain
that Syria can meet the deadline. He states that the U.S. disposal took
billions of dollars, the cooperation of many levels of government – including
the military – and a safe environment, to make sure the destruction was safely
executed. (See i.)
To
the observer, it would seems that the OPCW has taken on a high profile, rushed,
reckless enterprise, under pressure from the US/UN, which could potentially
poison Syria’s people and environment in orders of magnitude beyond the alleged
horrors unleashed by, near certainly, the insurgents.
So
what possible reason for the OCPW Nobel, and why now? Interestingly, OPCW
Director-General, Ahmet Üzümcü, is Turkish, a former Consul in Syria’s Aleppo,
former Ambassador to Israel, a former Permanent Representative of Turkey to
NATO and then to the UN in Geneva.
Apart
from Director General Üzümcü obviously having some remarkably useful inside
tracks, Syria’s neighbour, Turkey is the sole Middle East NATO Member State
(never mind it has no connection to the North Atlantic, being set amid the
Mediterranean, Aegean, Black Sea, Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the
Dardanelles.)
NATO
is certainly not asleep at the wheel when it comes to Syria, as neither are the
European Union, which Turkey – in spite of being “Gateway to the Orient” with
the majority of the country in it – also aspires to be a Member. Britain and
France are, of course EU Members, joined as one with Turkey in meddling in
Syria.
NATO,
has long sought footholds further east. In an enlightening letter quoted over
the years in these columns, but worthy of revisiting, on 26th June 1979,
General Alexander Hague, on his retirement as NATO Supreme Allied Commander in
Europe, wrote to the then Secretary General, Joseph Luns.
The
focus then, of course, was in the context of the Cold War, however the regional
geography and the diplomatic skills of President Putin and Foreign Minister
Lavrov in the Syria crisis make the tactics outlined again starkly relevant,
especially as President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have arguably been
diplomatically eclipsed to near irrelevance.
The
US-EU-NATO aspirations for the Baghdad-Damascus road to lead to Tehran
(diplomatic “break through” or not) should never be under estimated. Neither
indeed, as has been demonstrated since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the
desire to encircle Russia as confirmed by encroachment of US-NATO bases at
astonishing speed and with equal chutzpah.(ii)
The
tactics in the NATO letter are arguably as relevant to aims today as when it
was written, albeit, targets, circumstances, field of play (or planned war)
widened. The penultimate paragraphs read:
“We
should constantly bear in mind the necessity of continuously directing
attention to the … threat and of further activising our collaboration with the
mass media.
“If
argument, persuasion and impacting the media fail, we are left with no
alternative but to jolt the faint hearted in Europe through the creations of
situations, country by country, as deemed necessary, to convince them where
their interests lie.
“The
course of actions which we have in mind may become the only sure way of
securing the interests of the West.”
Back
to the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. Norwegian Fredrik Heffermehl, jurist, writer,
translator, former Vice President of the International Association of Lawyers
Against Nuclear Arms, amongst numerous other prestigious international
appointments, has long been a thorn in the side of the Norway based Nobel
Committee.(iii)
Heffermehl
has argued in his published study: “The Nobel Peace Prize. What Nobel Really
Wanted”, that the Norwegian Parliament had distorted Alfred Nobel’s intention
for the Prize. His researches found numerous academic studies that supported
his thesis. The Norwegian Parliament and the Nobel Committee emphatically did
not. His dissertation, however has been published and expanded in Chinese,
Swedish, Finnish, Russian and in December 2011 was endorsed by Michael Nobel,
of the Nobel Family Association, who supported Heffermehl in his assertion that
on their present course, Norwegian politicians might lose their control of the
Peace Prize.
Norway
is, of course is in the NATO “family.” Interesting is the criteria for the
Nobel Peace Prize nomination. The Nobel website stipulates:
“Deadline
for submission. The Committee bases its assessment on nominations that must be
postmarked no later than 1st February each year … … In recent years, the
Committee has received close to 200 different nominations for different
nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. The number of nominating letters is much
higher, as many are for the same candidates.”
So
who, in the year to 1st February 2013 rushed to nominate the near unheard of
OPCW? And is it conceivable there might have been some accommodation with the
date (heaven forbid.)
Well,
unless you are very young, you may never know, there is a while to wait:
“The
names of the nominees and other information about the nominations cannot be
revealed until 50 years later”, states the Nobel website.
It
might be worth noting the rotating Members of the Executive Council for the
OPCW for 2012-2013 include countries which have done more than a little
meddling in the affairs of Syria, including France, the UK and US, Qatar and
Saudi Arabia. Norway is also on the year’s Council.
Britain’s
Foreign Office Minister, Hugh Robertson, sent enthusiastic congratulations to
the OPCW on their Award, adding:
“
The UK is providing an initial contribution £2million to support the work of
the OPCW in Syria and we stand ready to provide further assistance.”(iv)
Robertson
also lauds the OPCW, referring to: “The recent use of chemical weapons by the
regime in Syria …” an entirely unproven and arguably, even libelous allegation.
Speculation,
however, as to how another surprising Nobel Peace Prize came about is vacuous.
In fifty years though, it is worth a bet that honest historians will be shaking
their heads in disbelief.
Another
Nobel, another farce.
Oh,
and should you have missed: Monsanto
and Syngenta,
this same month, won the World Food Prize – dubbed the “Nobel Prize for
Agriculture.”(v)
We
live in very strange times.
Pricing the Priceless
The
market has not solved the problem of power: it has simply given it another
name.
By
George Monbiot
On
this we can agree: the relationship between people and the natural world is
broken. We fail to value the systems that keep us alive. We treat both natural
resources and the biosphere’s capacity to absorb our waste as if they were
worth nothing.
The
obvious answer is to place a financial value on what used to be called nature,
but has now been rebranded natural capital. There are some magnificent examples
of how this could, in principle, spare us from perverse decisions. As The
Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity points out, if you turn a hectare of
mangrove forest into shrimp farms you’ll make $1,220 per year. Leave it
standing, and the benefits are worth ten times that amount.
But
the obvious answer isn’t necessarily the right answer. The issue which
determines whether or not the living planet is protected is not a number with a
dollar sign attached. It’s political will. That’s another way of saying that
it’s about power.
Look
at the European carbon market. Through the Emissions Trading System, it was
supposed to have harnessed the magic of the markets to do what politics had
failed to do: drastically reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. At the time
of writing, the price of carbon is 4.70 euros per tonne. For all the good that
does, it might as well be zero.
Why
is it so low? Because carbon-intensive industries lobbied politicians to raise
the supply of permits until the mechanism became useless. The market has not
solved the problem of power: it has simply given it another name. Whether
governments attempt to address climate change the old way (through regulation)
or through pricing makes not a jot of difference if they won’t stand up to
industrial lobbyists.
In
some respects the Emissions Trading System has made the problem worse, for it
allows politicians and businesses to wash their hands of responsibility for
climate change, arguing that the market will sort it all out. There is not a
new airport or coal mine or power station being built in the European Union
which has not cited the trading scheme as justification. This useless system
has empowered polluting projects which might not otherwise have been approved.
Even
if we didn’t have a number to slap on them, we’ve known for centuries that
mangrove swamps are of great value for coastal protection and as breeding
grounds for fish. But this has not stopped people from bullying and bribing
politicians to let them turn these forests into shrimp farms. If a hectare of
shrimp farms makes $1,200 for a rich and well-connected man, that can count for
far more than the $12,000 it’s worth to downtrodden coastal people. Knowing the
price does not change this relationship: again, it’s about power.
Natural
capital accounting can exacerbate the underlying problem. By pricing and
commodifying the natural world and then taking the obvious next step –
establishing a market in “ecosystem services” – accounting has the unintended
consequence of turning the biosphere into a subsidiary of the economy. Forests,
fish stocks, biodiversity, hydrological cycles become owned, in effect, by the
very interests – corporations, landlords, banks – whose excessive power is most
threatening to them. In some cases the costing of nature looks like a prelude
to privatisation.
Already
the traders and speculators are moving in. In the UK, our Ecosystem Markets
Task Force talks of “harnessing City financial expertise to assess the ways
that these blended revenue streams and securitisations enhance the return on
investment of an environmental bond”. Nature is becoming the plaything of the
financial markets. We know how well that tends to work out.
While
natural capital accounting empowers the moneymen, it disempowers the rest of
us. That’s one of the reasons why governments like it. Who needs all that messy
democratic decision-making, those endless debates about intrinsic value and
beauty and wonder if you’ve already determined that the meaning of life is 42?
And who can gainsay the decision to pulp a forest or blast a coral reef, if the
value of the destruction turns out to be worth several times 42? Once we have
ceded nature to cost-benefit analysis, we can’t complain if we don’t like the
results.
After
more than a quarter of a century of environmental campaigning I’ve come to see
that the only thing that really works is public mobilisation: the electorate
putting so much pressure on governments that they are obliged to take a stand
against powerful interests. It doesn’t matter what weapons governments use to
confront these interests: what counts is their willingness to use them. A
system which undermines public involvement, boosts the power of the financial
markets and reduces love and passion and delight to a column of figures is
unlikely to enhance the protection of the natural world.
www.monbiot.com
London and Washington and
Terrorism
 |
| David Cameron, British Prime Minister |
By
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
The
last few years have been synonymous with the most shocking human rights abuses
perpetrated by forces supported, aided, financed and abetted either directly or
indirectly by the FUKUS Axis - France, UK, US - in Libya and in Syria. The
conclusion can only be that the state Department and the FCO are staffed by the
most callous, cold-blooded and reptilian monsters the world has seen. They are
unfit for office, they are a disgrace to their nations and their very existence
is a reminder that the foreign policy of Washington and London (and now Paris)
is conducted by traitors.
The
most shocking human rights abuses carried out by marauding gangs of thugs in
Libya, aided by NATO aircraft and financed under the table by sycophantic NATO
bedboys in the Gulf, helped illegally by NATO special forces on the ground, in
violation of UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973 (2011), are well documented.
Needless
to say, such an indictment (below) did not even merit the courtesy of a reply
from the ICC at The Hague or from the ECHR, nor, more predictably, from the
UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office or the US State Department. The former was
too busy covering its tracks after being confronted in this column with the
evidence that it was supporting the LIFG, a terrorist group on its own list of
proscribed groups, the latter was preparing Hillary Clinton's "I came, I
saw, he died" statement, the most callous demonstration of sheer evil the
planet has witnessed since the second world war. Apart, perhaps, from the
horrific barbaric acts in the USA's medieval torture and concentration camps
set up across the globe.
After
supporting armed groups which set fire to people in the street in Libya, which
hacked the breasts off women, which raped women and girls, which ethnically
cleansed areas of black people, which impaled boys on iron stakes, which
looted, committed torture, arson, sodomy, murder, let us take a look at what
the State Department and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's darlings and
protégés are doing in Syria.
Two
children executed for proclaiming support for President Assad; the public
beheading of a boy in Deir ez-Zor on August 15. He was publicly executed, his
head sliced off and then paraded around the main square by laughing al-Qaeda
operatives, then they kicked his headless body around the town giggling and
screaming in delight. The masked terrorists responsible for this outrage can be
heard saying "Allahu Akhbar!" (God is great). These are the people
(?) supported by William Hague's FCO and John Kerry's State Department.
Homs,
December 26, 2011, at the beginning of the western-backed terrorist uprising. A
Syrian girl, Amyra, was gang-raped, killed and filmed by jeering jihadis before
her body was desecrated. The perpetrators? The FSA - Free Syrian Army. These
are the people (?) supported by William Hague's FCO and John Kerry's State
Department.
More
recently, two churches targeted in the Damascus countryside, mortars fired at
civilian positions in Damascus, the hotel where the weapons inspectors were
staying was attacked from rebel (terrorist)-held positions, the terrorists have
prevented the inspectors from visiting sites. One wonders why.
And
this very year, just a few weeks ago, while Cameron, Hague, Obama and Kerry
were deriding President Assad and saying he must go and make way for their FSA
darlings, let us see what their minions have done. Look at the main picture. It
shows a little girl, a toddler, crying as she was forced to watch her parents
being murdered in Deir ez-Zor. She is crying, she is screaming, she is
terrified. To the right of this picture, an image I am not allowed to post
because it is too horrific and shocking. It is a photograph of what happened to
her seconds later.
The
end of her suffering (needless to say after a horrific period of torture and
the readers, I guarantee you, cannot even start to imagine the details of
cruelty she had to suffer) was to have her heart ripped out of her chest and
eaten my screaming western-backed jihadis. Allahu Akhbar, David Cameron. Allahu
Akhbar William Hague. Allahu Akhbar John Kerry. Allahu Akhbar Barack Obama.
These are the "people" you support with your taxpayers' money.
And
yet your populations turn a blind eye, pretend nothing is happening, even
support their governments, and do absolutely nothing to bring their governments
to justice for these crimes.
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