Ghana Police Are In Somalia

IGP Mohammed Alhassan

Last week, the Ghana Police Service denied a report on the website of the Kofi Annan International Training Centre that a group of 90 police officers were undergoing training to be deployed in Somalia.  In the denial the Police Public Relations Officer, Mr Cephas Tetteh, added that there are no plans for Ghanaian security officers to be sent to Somalia for peacekeeping missions and urged the public to disregard the report.

His denial created the impression that there are currently no Ghanaian Police officers in Somalia. We publish below an African Union (AU) news report on the role that Ghana Police are currently playing in Somalia. This is contained on the website of AMISOM, (African Mission in Somalia) (http://amisom-au.org/mission-profile/amisom-police/)

“Last year, Somalia adopted a National Security and Stabilisation Plan which focuses on strategic policy issues relating to security and rule of law, including justice, and encompasses various civilian and military institutions that are vital to national security. It acknowledges the role of AMISOM in facilitating locally owned, comprehensive and broad‐based security sector development.

The AMISOM Police component has the mandate to train, mentor, monitor and advice the Somali Police Force (SPF) with the aim of transforming it into a credible and effective organisation adhering to strict international standards.

The component currently has 363 police officers drawn from police officers drawn from 7 African countries including Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Gambia. These include a Senior Leadership Team, Individual Police Officers and 2 Formed Police Units of 140 officers each. It is headed by the AMISOM Police Comissioner, Dr. Charles Makono.

AMISOM Police provide mentoring and advisory support to the SPF on basic police duties, such as human rights observation, crime prevention strategies, community policing and search procedures. It has conducted training for nearly a third of the SPF’s 5000 officers including running a refresher course for middle level officers, training new recruits as well as running courses in traffic management and criminal investigation techniques.

AMISOM Police has deployed two Formed Police Units in Mogadishu – the first to be deployed by the African Union. The FPUs come from Uganda and Nigeria and play a crucial role in ensuring improved security in the liberated areas through joint patrols with the SPF, assisting in Public Order Management and provision of VIP escorts as well as providing protection to Individual Police Officers to co-locate with the SPF in as many police stations as possible.” Culled from http://amisom-au.org/mission-profile/amisom-police/

Editorial

Someone is Lying

A week ago today, the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Accra announced on their website that ninety Ghanaian police officers were about to complete a training course at the Centre  to strengthen the Peace Support Operations of AMISOM in Somalia. Three days later, the Ghana Police Service came out to deny the report.

Although they accepted that the officers were undergoing training, they claimed that it is a normal training arrangement that happens once every year for Ghana police at the centre.  For what? It is highly strange that the internationally reputed Kofi Annan Centre would engage in rumour-mongering or idle gossip about a national institution entrusted to them to train for something else. How could it have happened that the Training Centre had all the time misunderstood the type of training that they were supposed to provide.  Why would the Ghana Police be training at the Peace-keeping centre?  To deal with the Bawku conflict?

They should stop belittling our intelligence.   Why would the Kofi Annan Centre be concocting such a story and even add that “the training is financed by the German Federal Foreign Office (AA) and implemented with the support of German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ)”? Even if the Kofi Annan Centre were lying, what about the statement of one of the trainees, ASP Bridget Dzakpasu, a Deputy District Commander who said  “the training has provided very useful and practical tools to prepare her for the imminent deployment to Somalia. She is one of the fourteen female participants in the current programme”. Is she also lying?

From the statement on the website of the Centre, they have, since 2009, trained 1,200 police officers for Somalia AND Sudan . Are they lying about this too?

What we can discern from the police denial is that they do not want to alarm the public about their ongoing role in Somalia; in view of the recent Al-Shabab retaliatory attack in Kenya. However, we believe that it is better for the police to be truthful about what they are doing in Somalia so that the public will be on guard against any Al-Shabab attack in Ghana in future.

Civil War Breaks Out Within Al-Shabaab

Al shabab Fighters

By Muhyadin Ahmed Roble

For years the Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab was seen as the most cohesive, united and powerful force in the failed state of Somalia. But it is now disintegrating like a house of cards because of internal divisions and power struggles within its leadership, according to Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad, a history and political science professor at Kenya’s Kenyatta University.

They [the militants] are transforming into warring mini-groups, hunting each other due to their deteriorating ideological differences, and of course [the group is] on the brink of civil war within itself, Abdisamad told IPS in Nairobi.

Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for September’s four-day terror siege on Kenya’s Westgate Shopping Mall that resulted in the death of more than 70 people, and for the Oct. 13 bombing in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Abba, which killed two Somali nationals who were believed to be suspects.

But the militant group, which formally linked with Al-Qaeda in 2012, has been in a leadership and strategy dispute that has divided it into two factions a global jihadists and local nationalists.

Abdisamad sees the militants internal divisions as a golden opportunity for the Somali government to bring less extremist and nationalist-minded elements on board.

Initially, Al-Shabaab came together by default, not by design, he said, adding that if the Somali government did not capitalise on the rift and reach out to the nationalist faction, the global jihadists would win and become stronger.

And then, the future of Somalia will be uncertain, the stability of the region will be in question and no doubt the stability of the whole world will be in question too, Abdisamad said.

He explained that the moment that turned the group’s internal war into an open and public battle was when Al-Shabaab’s two co-founders and top leaders, Ibrahim Haji and Moalim Burhan, were killed by members of the group in June.

Jama, who was better known by his moniker Al-Afghani due to his Al-Qaeda training in Afghanistan, had a five million dollar U.S. bounty on his head.

But Al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Abdiaziz Abu Musab denied a split within the group and had said that Jama and Burhan were intentionally killed in a shoot-out when they rejected an arrest warrant from a Sharia court.

Two foreign jihadists, the American-born Omar Hammami known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, who was on the FBI’s most wanted list with a five million dollar reward for his capture, and Osama al-Britani, a British citizen of Pakistani descent, were also killed by Al-Shabaab last month.

Al-Amriki was perhaps the most well-known Al-Shabaab propagandist because of his English jihadi rap videos. In 2012 he was the first member of the group to reveal its split through a short online video clip in which he said his life was in danger.

He was on the run and survived several assassination attempts by the Amniyat unit, an intelligence division of Al-Shabaab led by Ahmed Abdi Godane, who is also known as Sheikh Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr, and is the group’s supreme leader. Al-Amriki was eventually killed in September.

Abdisamad explained that Godane is a supporter of global jihad who believes that Somalia belongs to all Muslims across the world. Godane’s global jihadist faction has an agenda beyond Somalia and wants to spread Islam from China to Chile, from Cape Town to Canada, Abdisamad said.

Another member of the group who was aligned to the nationalist-minded faction to which Jama belonged, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, escaped from Al-Shabaab’s largest remaining base in Barawe, which is located some 180 km south of Mogadishu.

He surrendered to the Somali government following the murder of Jama and Burhan. According to Abdisamad, Aweys and his faction are considered to be less extremist as their intention is to establish an Islamic state within Somalia borders and not bother neighbouring countries.

The religious nationalism faction is against globalising the conflict in Somalia, indiscriminate assassinations and the killing of clerics, scholars and everyone who seem to have not favoured the militants. For years they campaigned to replace Godane, which they failed [to do], Abdisamad said.

The group’s internal division is believed to have contributed to their loss of strategic towns in southern and central Somalia, including part of the capital, Mogadishu.

The Bakara market in the capital city was their main source of funding as the group used to generate millions of dollars from there through taxation and by extortions from telecommunication companies and the business community at large. Al-Shabaab was ousted from Mogadishu in 2011 by Somali forces and African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops.

Exactly a year later, the group lost its last remaining and greatest revenue source the stronghold of Kismayo, a port city in southern Somalia.

According to a United Nations report, Al-Shabaab used to generate between 35 to 50 million dollars annually from the southern seaports of Kismayo and Marko. Both ports are now under the control of Somali forces and AMISOM troops.

Such a loss of economic sources and internal divisions have led hundreds of Al-Shabaab fighters to defect to the government, Somali journalist, Mohamed Abdi, told IPS. The group, he said, failed to keep paying their fighters regularly as they used to do before the financial constraints emerged.

Abdi said that the financial constraints and the open rift within the group’s leadership have largely demolished the morale, loyalty and capability of the group’s foot soldiers. It has lead to hundreds of them deserting to the government or fleeing the organisation and going into hiding in Somalia or in neighbouring countries.

But Abdisamad Moalim Mohamud, Somalia’s former minister for the interior and national security and a current member of parliament, told IPS that the group remains a threat not only to Somalia, but also to regional and global security.

They have lost more of their foot soldiers and can’t counter Somali and AMISOM forces directly any more. But they are more capable of conducting effective guerrilla-style warfare such as suicide attacks and storming places like Westgate Mall in Nairobi and the U.N. compound in Mogadishu, Mohamud said by phone from Mogadishu.He said that regional intelligence sharing and developing joint monitoring platforms and common anti-terror strategies within regional governments could be used to prevent such a threat. But he disagreed that their internal division had something to do with nationalism.

Their rift has a lot to do with the leadership change of Al-Qaeda than local politics and it is more about pursuing hegemony over the command and control of the group, Mohamud said.

Bulletproof cars that couldn’t protect a minister

Nigeria Minister of Aviation Stella Oduah

By Levi Obijiofor

Never in the history of this country have Nigerian citizens taken so much interest in the activities of the Aviation Ministry and the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA). The public is outraged that the stupendous amount of $1.6 million (approximately N255 million) was spent by the NCAA to acquire two bulletproof cars for use by the Aviation Minister in a country with a high level of poverty. How could the NCAA justify the incredible amount of money it squandered in the purchase of the cars meant for the protection of a minister?

To be clear, public anger is not necessarily about the need for the cars but about the excessively large amount of money involved. No one is saying the minister should not be protected. Every minister of government deserves protection. The protection should not be for the ministers only but should also be extended to their family members, in light of the culture of indiscriminate kidnapping across the country. However, I am not persuaded that such an astounding sum of money should be spent on bulletproof cars for the protection of the minister.

The public has the right to be offended by the ostentatious expenditure by the NCAA, an aviation regulator that has demonstrably failed many times to undertake creditably the tasks assigned to it by legislation. This is the same agency of government that has maintained a disgraceful safety record in the industry. Given the diverse and serious problems that have plagued the NCAA over the past decades, you would expect this prodigal aviation regulator to understand that it could use half the money to acquire much needed equipment to improve the safety of air travellers.

This particular case should not be dismissed as an attempt by an aggrieved whistleblower to settle scores. The scandal has added to the damage already done to Nigeria’s name in the international community, as a country in which corruption by government officials is rife and regrettably permitted. This is perhaps why officials of anti-corruption agencies in overseas countries burst in raucous laughter when they hear that Nigeria is waging a war against corruption. They don’t believe us. They have valid reasons for their scepticism. How do we expect to achieve socioeconomic development when the flames of official and unofficial corruption have been lit and kept alight by government officials?

This case is particularly shocking because the revelations emerged soon after the crash of an Associated Airline plane in Lagos, and two successive emergency incidents involving an IRS Airline plane and a Kabo Air Boeing 747 aircraft. Many people have wondered why, in light of frequent air accidents and safety issues that have dogged the nation’s aviation industry, the NCAA and the Aviation Ministry found it tolerable to commit such a large amount of money to buy two cars for the minister’s security.  Frequent air crashes have spawned so much anger and raised troubling questions about the effectiveness of the NCAA and the Aviation Ministry as overseers of the aviation industry, the supervisors of air travellers’ safety and the administrators of airworthiness of aircraft that fly in our airspace.

Against this background, it was bizarre to hear NCAA boss Fola Akinkuotu say the other day that his organisation was trying to detect the whistleblower who leaked to the media the information about the purchase of the bulletproof cars. Akinkuotu does not seem to appreciate the enormity of the financial irresponsibility committed by his organisation and the intensity of public anger. As far as he is concerned, it will be more rewarding to smoke out the person who exposed the outrageous business deal than to provide reasonable and convincing explanation why the NCAA spent an outrageous amount of money to enhance the Aviation Minister’s security. 

The attempt by Akinkuotu to identify the whistleblower who exposed the inappropriate expenditure by the NCAA shows how deep corruption has been etched in the minds of senior government officials. Should the focus be on the source of the revelations or should the NCAA aim to provide unambiguous and believable reasons why it spent so much money on the two cars? Sound explanation, rather than witch-hunting, is what the public wants from the NCAA and the Aviation Ministry.

Akinkuotu said he was concerned that the person who leaked the information to the press committed a crime because the information ought to remain hidden from public knowledge. Again, this is an awful case of shadow-chasing. I have a piece of advice for the embattled director-general of the NCAA. He should avoid public statements that expose his inability to engage in informed arguments. He should hire a very good public relations officer who will interact more effectively with the media and explain to the public mind-boggling decisions taken by the NCAA.

There is no question that Akinkuotu the NCAA boss has handled this scandal badly. He has not achieved his key objective which was to muzzle the press and therefore gag public discussion of the scandal. The more the man speaks, the more he muddles the facts and the more the public wants to know. Akinkuotu should understand that no matter how much he values secrecy in the way the NCAA operates, he has limited rights to secrecy in his capacity as a public official. As a public officer, he has limited privacy too. His fondness for secrecy in the management of the NCAA has now damaged rather than enhanced his image.

Let us be clear here. Inappropriate expenditure by senior government officers says a lot about the existing poor culture of accountability and transparency in our society. Senior public officers who engage in improper financial conduct or who compromise their office should be disciplined.

There are two distinct contradictions in the explanations provided by the Aviation Minister’s special assistant on media and the justification provided by the NCAA boss. While the Aviation Minister’s spokesperson admitted that “some security vehicles were procured for the use of the office of the honourable minister in response to the clear and imminent threat to her personal security and life...”, the NCAA’s Akinkuotu said the bulletproof cars were not only for the Aviation Minister but would also serve other official purposes, such as the safe transportation of foreign VIPs who visit Nigeria.

This scandal poses new challenges to President Goodluck Jonathan and his government. How he handles this national disgrace that has so far shredded the image of the NCAA and the Aviation Ministry will define for us how far Jonathan is prepared to go to confront and discipline corrupt officials in his government. Will he blink and take the attitude that it is nothing new, that other ministers have also spent money for their personal security, welfare and wellbeing? Will Jonathan order swift investigations into this matter to enable him to get a true and complete idea of how $1.6 million was spent on two cars for use by one minister?

In the past, Jonathan had tended to ignore public outcries over clear evidence of corruption by senior government officials.  Now that a major scandal has broken in the Aviation Ministry, everyone is watching to see how the president and his handlers would put a spin on the dishonourable practice or dismiss it as exaggerated reporting by journalists.

Jonathan has the constitutional and moral duty to investigate this issue and to stop the officials involved in the scandal. If he is unwilling to deal decisively with the officials involved, he must discard forthwith all his claims to zero tolerance for corruption. As I mentioned in a previous essay, a corrupt public servant is an embarrassment to the nation and a threat to the ability of other senior public officials to perform their tasks truthfully and objectively.

Corrupt practices by senior public officers tend to rub off negatively on the image of Nigeria, as well as the way the nation perceives public servants. Let us spit this fact out before it goes sour in our mouths: There is something objectionable about a country such as Nigeria in which senior public officers who should serve their country altruistically appear regularly in corruption scandals.

Different people hold different views on what, if any, action should be taken against the Aviation Minister and/or the NCAA boss. The most dominant view is that they should resign. In true democracies in which public officers are accountable to the people, the minister and the NCAA chief would have since stepped down to pave way for official inquiry into the scandal. But these two officials won’t resign because it is not the way we do things here. In our society, public officers don’t resign when they are facing corruption allegations. They wait till they are pushed out of their jobs in a dishonourable manner.

Many questions have been asked about this scandal. And many answers are still awaited. Who authorised payment for the acquisition of the bulletproof cars? Should such a large sum of money have been spent to buy two cars for the protection of a minister in a country in which millions of people are walloped by hunger, malnutrition, disease, and illness? Did any official of government receive illegal payments in the purchase of the cars? This is one case that deserves to be scrutinised by Jonathan. Whether he would do so is another matter.

Iran golden opportunity up for grabs

Iranian President Hassan Rohani

By Amir Dabiri Mehr

Hassan Rouhani’s victory in the eleventh presidential election in June gave domestic and international observers increasing hope that the two sides would reach constructive agreements on the nuclear issue - agreements which would recognize Iran’s lawful end and inalienable right to have nuclear energy technology and would alleviate concerns regarding Tehran’s nuclear activities.

In other words, this expectation was created that the new round of negotiations between Iran and six world powers, unlike eight years ago, would transform from “inconclusive ideological, philosophical discourse” in “an atmosphere of mutual distrust” to “methodical, purposeful and timely diplomacy” in “an atmosphere of mutual respect”. 

In such an atmosphere, which is a result of the majority of Iranians voting for the new administration, Iranian diplomatic team sent a group of experts, Iranian diplomats with transparent and logical positions to New York and Geneva to announce the agenda of future talks to the other side - the agenda which must be implemented in a “specific timeframe” and lead to results and “specific achievements”. 

Timeframe is between six months to one year and the expected results are: 

1.Sep-by-step resolution of existing ambiguities and concerns about Iran’s nuclear activities in line with international rules and regulations within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s Safeguards, stripping the West of any pretext and dismissing accusations of the past, which hamper the possibility of mutual cooperation. 

2.Recognizing Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities particularly its right to enrich uranium as well as legal measures to return Iran’s nuclear dossier from the United Nations Security Council to the IAEA Board of Governors in the first stage, and in the next stage, normalizing the outlook on Iran’s nuclear activities like other countries possessing peaceful nuclear technology and exiting it from the IAEA extraordinary meeting. 

3.Halting the oppressive and illegal trend of different sanctions against Iran and in the next stage, lifting these sanctions within a specific timeframe and compensating for the damage incurred as a result of sanctions. 

4.Normalizing the relations of Western countries with Iran in order to define different areas of cooperation in different fields particularly the economic and energy sectors

This form of cooperation has been defined based on the win-win model, given that Western hostilities towards Iran in the past years have been futile, the importance of economic and political situation in the Middle East and the importance of constructive and positive interaction with Iran, a relatively powerful consensus has been formed around Iran. 

As expected, following this month’s Geneva talks, there were destructive and unrealistic reports in media affiliated to the anti-Iran front consisting of Western-Zionist radicals. The main point of these reports is that “Western countries should not allow the Islamic Republic to exit the economic siege and sanctions imposed against the country without paying a heavy price such as the complete halt of its nuclear activities and a lifting of sanctions should be a complicated and time-consuming process which [should take] nearly ten or more years [to be realized and should] appear impossible”. This hostile and arrogant approach by the West, which in Iranian and revolutionary lingo is considered as arrogant nature, maintains that “Iranians are willing to give the West more concessions in order for the Western sanctions to not be increased”.

These illogical statements become more considerable when media affiliated to the arrogant Zionist front quotes anonymous sources and the officials of the six world powers do not reject and confirm the existence of this dangerous scenario with their meaningful silence. Therefore it is necessary to warn the Westerns sides from a realistic position that if such a view exists among the countries negotiating with Iran or the members of the Western negotiating team and is not rejected by decision-makers in these countries, for a number of reasons they will lose the golden opportunity to negotiate with Iran and reach a sustainable and mutual agreement and secondly the irreparable harm resulting from such an approach cannot be undone for at least a decade. 

These reasons are: 

1.The US and its allies in recent years by defying all regulations and exerting their influence in certain international organizations have stopped at nothing in their animosity against Iran including taking measures such as assassination, sanctions and threats. Their ultimate goal has been regime change in Iran, which they have failed to achieve given the mass participation of Iranians in various elections. The principle of democracy in the Islamic Republic is the biggest political resource of the country, which prevents any all-out confrontation with Iran. Naturally, the continuation of this political-security confrontation will yield no results and its effectiveness will dwindle by the day and will draw closer to becoming neutralized because due to its past experiences, the Islamic Republic has achieved high defense capabilities in this regard. Therefore, as the proverb goes, a person in the hole stops digging and Westerners who claim to be using rationality in politics should not repeat their past mistakes. 

2.Iran’s outstanding achievements in defense industries is very visible for the US and its allies and political pundits know that the cliché “all options are on the table against Iran” is merely a superpower gesture by the US and because US and its allies in the eight years of Iraqi imposed war (1980-1988) against Iran supported former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with all their might and at the time Iran’s prowess was not comparable to present. Yet they could not achieve victory over the country. In a number of West’s proxy wars against Iran in Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, Western officials officially and publicly acknowledged that they are incapable of confronting Iran and the Islamic resistance inspired by the Islamic Republic. Therefore, the military option and threats is a big political bluff and indicates no intention to pelt. 

3.Despite sanctions against Iran having created a number of problems in Iran but their effectiveness is becoming void because of solutions such as resistance economy and international relations. The continuation of sanctions will not meet the envisioned outcomes of the West and will only cause more loss of credibility of similar methods in international area. 

4.For different reasons, particularly historical ones, powerful forces in Iran both in society and government are against any form of agreement, negotiations and compromise with the West and the Westerners. Without paying attention to the interests and damage inflicted by such possible agreements, they consider the essence of interaction with the West as unfavorable and resist against it. If today, Westerners see that these forces in society and government have only contented themselves with taking positions in the media due to the conditional and implied support of the highest political and religious authority in Iran - Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei who is the uniting factor of the Iranian nation and government. If for any reason, the Westerners fail to use this special opportunity to gain the trust of Iran, these accumulated forces opposing the policies of the Western governments will prevent any possible agreement with Iran in future. 

5.There are reports that despite Iran and the world powers being engaged in the talks, these countries are independently trying to enter the lucrative investment projects in Iran in the new atmosphere brought about by the election and are competing with one another. Proof of this issue is oil giants trying to return to Iran’s oil and gas sectors and the British wanting to exchange charge d’affaires with Iran. Therefore, any defeat in negotiations will show the incompetence of Western governments in agreeing with one another to achieve a cooperation model with a regional power. 

6.Ultimately, Westerners, particularly the US, must know that the experience of past years particularly after the fall of Saddam regime in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan which was only accomplished due to Iran cooperation and green light shows that no political, economic and cultural project can be implemented in the most important geostrategic and geo- economic region of the world, i.e. Middle East, without Iran’s cooperation and without taking into consideration the interests and security of Iran. The Islamic Republic has used the factors of soft and hard war and popular support to reach such a position. Therefore, if Western countries are incapable for any reasons to achieve an agreement and entente model based on mutual respect, recognizing Iran’s inalienable rights and ending hostile policies such as economic sanctions, the game will end win-lose instead of win-win in favor of Iran. 

In conclusion, the Western parties particularly US and Britain must be advised to take their own interests in mind and use the unique opportunity in the new atmosphere with Iran and not allow pointless past animosities against Iran to continue as the Zionist circles are overtly and covertly dictating options on them. 

US President Hussein Obama

As ye sow, so shall ye reap

By Paul Craig Roberts

The year 2014 could be shaping up as the year that the chickens come home to roost.

Americans, even well-informed ones, don’t know all of the mistakes made by neoconized and corrupted Washington in the past two decades. However, enough is known to see that the US has lost economic and political power, and that the loss is irreversible. 

The economic cost of this lost will be born by what remains of the middle class and the increasingly poverty-stricken lower class. The one percent will have offshore gold holdings and large sums of money in foreign currencies and other foreign assets to see them through. 

In the political arena, the collapse of the Soviet Union presented Washington with the grand opportunity to reallocate the Pentagon budget to other uses. Part of the reduction could have been returned to taxpayers for their own use. Another part could have been used to improve worn out infrastructure. And another part could have been used to repair and improve the social safety net, thus insuring domestic tranquility. A final, but perhaps most important part, could have been used to begin repaying the Treasury IOUs in the Social Security Trust Fund from which Washington has borrowed and spent $2 trillion, leaving non-marketable IOUs in the place of the Social Security payroll tax revenues that Washington raided in order to fund its wars and current operations. 

Instead, influenced by neoconservative warmongers who advocated America using its “sole superpower” status to establish hegemony over the world, Washington let hubris and arrogance run away with it. The consequence was that Washington destroyed its soft power with lies and war crimes, only to find that its military power was insufficient to support its occupation of Iraq, its conquest of Afghanistan, and its financial imperialism. 

Now seen universally as a lawless warmonger and a nuisance, Washington’s soft power has been squandered. With its influence on the wane, Washington has become more of a bully. In response, the rest of the world is isolating Washington. 

The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, recently declared China and Russia to be India’s “most important partners” with whom India shares “common strategic interests.” Prime Minister Singh said: “ India and Russia have always had a convergence of views on global and regional issues, and we value Russia’s perspective on international developments of mutual interest.” 

India joined China in expressing concerns about the Federal Reserve’s practice of printing money in order to cover Washington’s vast red ink. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are taking steps to create their own method of settling trade accounts in order to protect themselves from the looming dollar implosion, China has forcefully called for a “de-Americanized world.” After watching the “superpower” offshore a large part of its GDP to China and then add to the diminished tax base the burden of $6 trillion in wars that brought no booty and served no US interest, China has concluded that American power is spent. The London Telegraph thinks “it is only a matter of time before the renminbi replaces the dollar as the primary currency for trading commodities and resources.” 

The Obama regime attempted to attack Syria based on the sort of lies that the Bush regime used to invade Iraq, only to be slapped down by the British Parliament and Russian government. This rebuke was followed by the childishness of the government shutdown and threat of default. Consequently, the Washington morons have lost their monopoly on economic and political leadership. A few days ago the British government announced a historic agreement that permits British investors direct access to China’s markets and allows Chinese banks to expand their operations in Great Britain. 

In Australia, the US dollar will no longer be used as the currency in which to settle the Australian trade accounts with China. Instead of dollars, trade will be settled in the Chinese currency. 

Washington served as cheerleader, as did most economists and libertarians, while US corporations, greedy for short-term profits and executive bonuses, offshored US industry and manufacturing, calling it free trade. The obvious and predicted result is that China’s demand for resources needed to fuel its industrial and manufacturing power now dominates markets. This means that the US dollar is being displaced as world currency. The only market that America dominates is the market for financial fraud. 

When industrial, manufacturing, and tradeable professional service jobs are offshored, they take US GDP and tax base with them. The foreign country gets the benefit of the relocated economic activity. Due to the revenues lost from jobs offshoring, there is a large gap between federal revenues and federal expenditures. As Washington’s irresponsible behavior has raised so many doubts about the dollar’s value and the government’s commitment to stand behind its massive debt, foreign countries with trade surpluses with the US are less and less willing to recycle those surpluses into the purchase of US Treasury debt. 

Today the two largest holders of US Treasury debt are not investors or even foreign central banks. The two largest holders are the Federal Reserve and the Social Security Trust Fund. 

As for those $6 trillion wars, that’s to pay for national defense to protect us from women, children, and village elders in far away countries devoid of air forces and navies, and to provide those recycled taxpayer monies from the military/security complex that find their way into political contributions. 

The Wall Street gangsters sighed for relief over the last minute debt ceiling agreement. This shows how short-term Wall Street’s outlook is. All the October agreement did was to push off the crisis to January and February. The “debt ceiling agreement” did not produce a new debt ceiling that would last beyond February, and it did not resolve the large difference between federal revenues and expenditures. In other words, the can was again kicked down the road. A repeat of the October fiasco won’t play well. 

Obamacare is causing the premiums on private insurance polices to rise substantially, almost doubling in some situations unless people move to the uncertain exchanges, and Obamacare’s raid on Medicare payroll tax revenues has resulted in a cut in Medicare payments to health care providers. The result is a further reduction in consumer discretionary income and a further drop in the economy. 

This in turn means a larger federal budget deficit and the need for the Federal Reserve to purchase more debt. 

Another reason the Federal Reserve is faced with increasing, not tapering, quantitative easing (money printing) is the decline in foreign purchases of US Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. As the instruments pay interest that is less than the rate of inflation, holding Treasury debt makes no sense when the dollar’s value and the potential of default are open questions. 

According to reports, not only are foreign governments, such as China, ceasing to buy US Treasury debt, China has started to sell off its holdings, substituting gold in the place of US Treasury debt. 

This means that the bonds must be purchased by the Fed or interest rates will rise as the increased supply of bonds on the market drives down bond prices. The only way the Fed can purchase a larger supply of bonds is by printing more money, that is, by more quantitative easing. 

With the world moving away from using the dollar to settle international accounts, as the Fed prints more dollars the rate at which foreign holders of dollar assets sell off their holdings will rise. 

To get out of dollars requires that the dollar proceeds from selling Treasuries, US stocks and US real estate be sold in the currency markets. The selling of dollars drives down the exchange value of the US dollar and results in rising US inflation. The Fed can print money with which to purchase Treasury debt, but it cannot print foreign currencies with which to purchase dollars. 

The decline in the dollar’s exchange value and the domestic inflation that results will force the Fed to stop printing. What then covers the gap between revenues and expenditures? The likely answer is private pensions and any other asset that Washington can get its hands on. 

Initially, private pensions will be taxed at a rate to recover the tax-free accumulation in the pensions. The second year a national emergency will be used to confiscate some share of pensions. Those relying on the pensions will find themselves with less income. Consumer spending will decline. The economy will worsen. The deficit will widen. 

You can see where this is going, and there seems to be no way out. Policymakers, economists, and corporation executives are in denial about the adverse effects of offshoring, which they still, despite all the evidence, maintain is good for the economy. So nothing will be done about offshoring. Republicans will blame the budget deficit on welfare and entitlements, and if those are cut consumer spending will decline further, widening the budget deficit. Inflation will rise as incomes fall, and social cohesion will break down. 

Now you know why Homeland Security purchased 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition, enough ammunition to fight the Iraq war for 12 years, has its own para-military force and 2,700 tanks. If you think the “terrorist threat” in America warrants a domestic armed force of this size, you are out of your mind. This force has been assembled to deal with starving and homeless people in the streets of America. 

September employment report: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), September brought 148,000 new jobs, enough to keep up with population growth but not reduce the unemployment rate. Moreover, John Williams (shadowstats.com) says that one-third of these jobs, or 50,000 per month on average, are phantom jobs produced by the birth-death model that during difficult economic times overestimates the number of new jobs from business startups and underestimates job losses from business failures. 

The BLS reports that 22,000 of September’s jobs were new hires by state governments, which seems odd in view of the ongoing state budgetary difficulties. 

In the private sector, wholesale and retail trade produced 36,900 new jobs, which seems odd in light of the absence of growth in real median family income and real retail sales. 

Transportation and warehousing produced 23,400 new jobs, concentrated in transit and ground passenger transportation. This also seems odd unless the price of gasoline and pinched budgets are forcing people onto public transportation. 

Professional and business services accounted for 32,000 jobs of which 63% are temporary help jobs. 

So here you have the job picture that the presstitutes, hyping “the jobs gain,” don’t tell you. The scary part of the September job report is that the usual standby, the category of waitresses and bartenders, which has accounted for a large part of every reported jobs gain since I began reporting the monthly statistics, shows job loss. Seven thousand one hundred waitresses and bartenders lost their jobs in September. If this figure is not a fluke, it is bad news. It signals that fewer Americans can afford to eat and drink out. 

The unemployment rate that is reported is the rate that does not count as unemployed discouraged workers who are unable to find jobs and cease to look. This favored rate, the darling of the regime in power, the presstitutes, and Wall Street, also is not adjusted for the category of “involuntary part-time workers,” those whose hours have been cut back or because they are unable to find a full-time job. Obamacare, as is widely reported, is causing employers to shift their work forces from full time to part time in order to avoid costs associated with Obamacare. The BLS places the number of involuntary part-time workers at 7,900,000. 

The announced 7.2% unemployment rate is a meaningless number. The rate can decline for no other reason than people unable to find jobs drop out of the work force. You are not counted in the work force if you are discouraged about finding a job and no longer look for a job. 

The phenomena of discouraged workers shows up in the measure of the labor force participation rate, which has declined in the 21st century. The opportunities for American labor are so restricted that a rising percentage of the working age population have given up looking for jobs. 

Yet, the Obama regime, the Wall Street gangsters, and the pressitute media tell us how much better the economic situation is becoming as more small businesses close, as memberships decline in golf clubs, as more university graduates return home to live with their parents, who are drawing down their savings to live, as Fed Chairman Bernanke has made it impossible for them to live on interest payments on their savings.

According to the US census bureau, real median household income in 2012 was $51,017, down 9% from $56,080 in 1999, 13 years ago. In contrast, annual compensation in 2012 for US CEOs broke all records. Two CEOs were paid more than $1 billion, and the worst paid among the top ten took home $100 million. When the presstitutes speak of economic recovery, they mean recovery for the one percent. 

America is in the toilet, and the rest of the world knows it. But the neocons who rule in Washington and their Israeli ally are determined that Washington start yet more wars to create lebensraum for Israel.

Early in the 21st century the liberal Democrat Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, and I coauthored an article in the New York Times about the adverse effects on the US economy of jobs offshoring. The article caused a sensation. The Brookings Institution in Washington quickly convened a conference which was covered by C-SPAN. C-SPAN rebroadcast the conference several times. During the conference I said that if jobs offshoring continued, the US would be a third world economy in 20 years. 

Wall Street quickly shut up Senator Schumer, but I am sticking by my forecast. Indeed, I think we are already there.