LOCK OUT WORKERS - Prof Addae

Professor Addae, Former GIMPA Rector

Professor Steven Addae, Former Rector of Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) has asked Government not to bow to the demands of workers threatening to strike to back their demands for better working conditions.

He says “the government must not give in to these demands. It must stay firm and if needs be it must lock out the striking workers.”

Professor Addae was speaking on TV3’s “Hot issues” on a variety of issues covering education, the national economy and governance.

The programme is yet to be broadcast.

He said the belief that the introduction of the Single Spine Salary Structure is about increasing the salaries of workers.

According to Professor Addae, some salaries have been increased by as much as 200 per cent and yet workers are continuing to make more demands for increases in remuneration.

He said the payment of premium is not for all categories of workers.

“it  is a way of providing incentives to direct labour into critical sectors of the national economy.

It is unfortunate that everybody is demanding the payment of premium” he said.

 On the recent increases in utility tariffs Professor Addae said he agreed with the position that corruption and inefficiencies of the utility companies should not be passed on to consumers.

However, he said some increases in tariffs are necessary.

His problem with the utility tariff increases is that it has not been staggered to reduce its impact on the consumer.

On education, he said governments have not taken educational reforms seriously.

He described the change in name form senior Secondary School to Senior High School as useless.

Editorial

COOL HEADS MUST PREVAIL

It is an essential part of good governance that when the populace is agitated, those who govern must take measures to calm the situation with a view to restoring harmony. 

However, if those who govern adopt a belligerent posture  at the least expression of  collective dissatisfaction, they actually create a fertile environment for communal antagonism and strife. This can be dangerous.

What is currently happening in this country with political leaders threatening workers  even to the extent of declaring dissatisfied workers as non-citizens is very dangerous.

We are at a complete loss to understand why some people think that when they are appointed leaders in the community, it means that they own the community or country.

The Ghana Constitution does not give any right to anybody, to ask fellow citizens to leave the country if the citizens are unhappy. They should leave and go where? We would like to say loud and clear to those intolerant and anti-democratic people who find themselves in the corridors of power that the their stake in this country is not more equal to the stake that every other citizen has. Finding yourself near the corridors of political  power does not make you God.

One day, we hear the Deputy Minister of Employment threatening workers in ways that are beyond his remit. Before we recover from the shock, we wake up to hear the President’s security Chief asking people to leave the country if they are unhappy. We are sorry to say that it is the such intemperate language of leaders that agitate people and cause permanent damage to the reputation of those leaders and their governments.

Such people should have themselves to blame if those they mistreat also take entrenched positions. These days, we have been asking ourselves what at all is this country coming to? To those Ministers and appointees who are so intolerant that they cannot stomach legitimate dissent, they should get out of the kitchen before they engulf the whole government with their recklessness.

Hints Of Possible Challenges That May Confront Our Country

Late President Atta Mills

By Peter Kofi Amponsah

Responsible security planning requires adequate preparation for threats that are possible. One of such preparations was the establishment of the Special Forces in the Ghana Armed Forces, and here I think that the Late President and his security advisers must be congratulated for their foresight.

There is however, one issue which requires  urgent attention, and it is the combination of the massive unemployment and the increasing cost of living. This problem is global and not the creation of this government, neither is it peculiar to Ghana, but has the potential of provoking a regime threatening instability, if it is not adequately explained to the population by people who understand it, and who know what they talk about.

If what we are witnessing worldwide is anything to go by, then we can safely say that the current events around the world do not appear to support the emergence into political office in Ghana of Liberal Democrats with free market ideology and crony capitalism pursued by some political traditions in this country. The era now belongs to the fierce and outspoken critics of neo -liberalism. We are now left with no doubt that the path to a new, better and possible world is socialism and not capitalism. To ignore this and act otherwise will amount to an attempt to swim against the tide of history with very serious consequences. As Victor Hugo pointed out, “no army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come”.

Our policy makers must now “think as men of action, and act as men of thought”.

The Latin America region for example, has seen an emergence of left and centre-left presidents voted into office, mainly as a result of budding social movements growing democracy from the grassroots.

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez’s election in 1998 sparked the beginning of the leftward electoral paradigm shift in the hemisphere.

“Since Chavez’s ascent to power, we have seen presidents elected in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay, which translates into a majority of countries in the region advocating Centre-left and Left-wing political programmers ( while Mexico and Peru missed joining this new Latin American consensus by narrow, if not fraudulent electoral outcomes)”. The situations in Germany and Australia are different.

In the US itself, according to reports “Obama was chosen by the ruling economic elite as a pretty face to keep that common man happy despite the economic mess that his predecessors left behind”.

The big question is, what lesson are we as a country drawing from these to guide our political choice?

The possibility of a social revolution on a global scale as a result of these events taking place in the world was predicted by the then Director of National Intelligence of the US, Dennis Blair, a four star military officer, during his presentation of the unclassified version of the annual threat assessment on behalf of 16 separate US intelligence agencies to the Senate Intelligence Committee in February 2009.

He warned that “the deepening world capitalist crisis posed the paramount threat to US national security and warned that its continuation could trigger a return to the violent extremism of the 1920s and the 1930s”.

He advised that “it is high time to ditch the ideological baggage of the past several years and confront the real and growing threat to capitalist rule posed by the crisis and the resulting radicalization of the masses in country after country”.

He predicted the instability to start in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2010, because of lack of sufficient cash reserves/access to international aid or credit, or other coping mechanism.

Why this has not happened could be attributed to the massive Chinese loans to Africa. 

Clearly underlying his remarks are fears within the massive US intelligence apparatus as well as among more conscious layers of the American ruling elite that a protracted economic crisis accompanied by rising unemployment and reduced social spending, will trigger a global eruption of the class struggle and the threat of social revolution. He stressed that the threat that the crisis will produce revolutionary upheaval is global.

Blair also raised the damage that the crisis has done to the global credibility of American capitalism, declaring that the widely held perception that excesses in US financial markets and inadequate regulation were responsible has increased criticism about free market policies, which may make it difficult to achieve long-term US objectives.

The collapse of Wall Street, he added has increased questioning of US stewardship of the global economy and the international financial structure. The report’s undeniable focus was on the danger that economic turmoil will ignite revolutionary challenge on a world scale.

In the light of what we have said so far, what kind of preparation do we recommend for our country?

The position of Ghana today is very complicated, because of the incredible obedience of the Ghanaian officials to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which has its own plans. The IMF appears to have the Government of Ghana by the throat, and is as a consequence, trying to force the entire population of the country to remain its slaves, and not only that, but also to pay the cost of our own slavery.

It is able to do this through its shameless pursuit of the policy of credit blockade, if certain conditions are not complied with, conditions such as maintaining a ridiculously low level of borrowing it is said to have established for our country, when evidence available clearly and indisputably indicates that rapid economic development requires access to capital, technology, and market. In fact, what this organization is doing now is different from its public claims, and our policy makers need to see this clearly. Its actual function now is to support the dollar hegemony of the United States of America, and not to help any other country get through a temporary debt problem.

Under today’s globalized free capital markets, banks do not invest in a country that does not have the IMF seal of approval. So the role of the IMF is far more than giving some emergency loan. It determines if a country gets any money from any source at all.

During what became known as “Third World Debt Crisis” the impression was created that the countries that were in debt, were guilty of mismanagement. In reality whatever political corruption that may have existed in those countries, the corruption of the IMF system and the petrodollar recycling was far greater, and we are prepared to make this known to the Ghanaian public in another article. Our officials ought to have known by now that one of the crucial pillars of support for today’s dollar system is Washington’s control of the IMF.

The IMF is said to have developed four step-plan for looting a country including the IMF riot stage. People take to the street to protest the Austerity measures that are tied to the IMF loans. Causing foreign capital to flee, government to go bankrupt, and foreign speculators to pick up the pieces.

The riot happened in Indonesia in 1998, Bolivia in 2000 , and Ecuador and Argentina in 2001.

The IMF has now seen the crisis in Europe as an excuse to get its foot in Europe’s door as a lender. During the year 2012  a 77 year old Greek pensioner shot himself in the head outside parliament because, he said he didn’t want to have to start picking through trash in order to feed himself. The IMF issued a statement that it was saddened by the incident, the people of Athens took to streets, yet again, with thousands flocking to the site of  his death and many scuffling with police. According to the report, these types of protest aren’t merely predictable, they are part of the plan.

Malaysia for example, is a country with a population of about 29 million. It was able to defy and ignored the IMF and the World Bank around 1997, and went ahead to borrow a considerable amount of money to carry out a major industrialization against their advice. Today, it has achieved a trade volume of $100 billion for 2013 with China alone. Ghana on the other hand has been very obedient to the IMF, and is even afraid to borrow sufficient amount of money to carry out the necessary development of critical infrastructure required to support a comprehensive industrial transformation of the country. I will deal with this particular issue in another article.

An analyst has observed that “at the moment the US’s real economy is crumbling and continues to deteriorate, the global downturn has been exacerbated by a crippled domestic financial system. At the heart of this crisis is the internal decay of American capitalism, marked by the dismantling of large section of its manufacturing base, and the decline of its global position”.

A long standing crisis of profitability in industry has led to a separation of wealth accumulation by the financial parasitism. Experts say that there is no genuine solution to this crisis within the frame work of the capitalist market system. This report is no different from the frank assessment by the US intelligence Chief.

The painful fact as we are told is that “the US is now playing suicide poker and calling one last card. It has nothing on the table, but worthless paper dollar of its own printing. The Fed’s massive injection of liquidity into the financial markets does not address the unfolding causes of this downward spiral. The Crisis is not one of liquidity, but of solvency. Decades of rampant speculation and outright fraud based on cheap credit and expansion of the banks financial markets, have produced a vast edifice of paper values that is now collapsing”. Experts say that Europe, China, Japan and Russia are certainly the collective players who can make sure that the unfolding implosion of today’s world power i.e.  the U S A does not drive the planet into a disaster.

A report that appeared in a magazine published by the US Army War College in November 2009 just after the election, indicated that the Pentagon and the US intelligence establishment are preparing for what they see as a historic crisis of the existing order that could require the use of armed force to quell social struggle at home.

The magazine also stated that “A sharp intensification of the unfolding capitalist crisis accompanied by an eruption of class struggle and the threat of social revolution in the US itself could force the Pentagon to call back its expeditionary armies from Iraq and Afghanistan for use  against American workers”.  Admiral Dennis Blair stressed that the threat that the crisis will produce revolutionary upheaval is global.                                                                         This exactly was what Kwame Nkrumah predicted many years ago in his book entitled Neo-colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism. And here I quote:

“Marx had argued that the development of capitalism would produce a crisis within individual capitalist State because within each state the gap between the haves and the haves nots would widen to a point where a conflict was inevitable and that it would be the capitalists who would be defeated. The basis of his argument is not invalidated by the fact that the conflict, which he had predicted as a national one, did not everywhere take place on a national scale but has been transferred instead to the world stage. World capitalism has postponed its crisis but only at the cost of transforming it into an international crisis. The danger is now not civil war within individual States provoked by intolerable conditions within those States, but international war provoked ultimately by the misery of the majority of mankind who grow poorer and poorer.”

“When Africa becomes economically free and politically united, the monopolists will come face to face with their own working class in their own countries, and a new struggle will arise within which the liquidation and collapse of imperialism will be complete”.

This article has become necessary because the lack of sufficient awareness of the complexity of the challenge which time and the new world situation have thrown to our society, in my opinion, is the biggest threat to our national security, and here, I hold our educational system responsible. I will explain this aspect of our problems in another article.

BLOCKADE COSTS CUBA US$1.157 TRILLION.

Cuba President Raul Castro

By Dauda Mohammed Suru

Visiting Cuban Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Mrs. Ana Teresita Gonzalez Fraga has said that the economic sanctions imposed by US authorities has cost the Cuban government about US$1.157 trillion.

She said as part of the sabotage against the Cuban revolution, no country can engage in international trade with Cuba if the product or service in question has 10% of its components imported from United States of America.

Speaking at a public forum organised by Socialist Forum Of Ghana (SFG), Mrs. Fraga stated that there is a growing interest among entrepreneurs and farming communities in United States who want the blockade to be lifted because it is affecting their own interest. Cuba is developing its economic and commercial relations with many countries in the world and even though the United States is very close to Cuba, American citizens are not allowed to trade with Cuba.

Ghana reiterated its position against this injustice when on   26th September 2013, at the 68th UN General Assembly at New York, President John Dramani Mahama called for the lifting of the economic blockade against Cuba, saying that the ongoing sanctions against Cuba is a relic of Cold War period and has no place in the current global politics.

The economic blockade against Cuban was initially imposed by the President John F. Kennedy administration through an executive order in 1960 shortly after the successes of the Cuban revolution under the leadership of Commandante Fidel Castro.

The blockade was formally incorporated in US law in 1996 when the US Congress passed a law (code-named “Helms – Burton Act”), aim at strangulating the Cuban revolution through economic sanctions, international legal penalties and travel restrictions.

Cuba and Ghana are united through history. Bilateral agreements between the two countries have been in the areas of medicine, agriculture, health, education and scientific cooperation.

Cuba has offered more than 1,200 scholarships to Ghanaians over the years to study in various disciplines especially in the educational sector. Majority of the beneficiaries are serving in various capacities across the country, and Ghana continue to receive Cuban Medical workers and doctors who are willing to serve in very remote places in the country.

Mrs. Fraga was in the country to have political consultations and sign diplomatic agreements with the government of Ghana. She thanked the people and government of Ghana for the warm hospitality extended to Cubans over the years.

Confessions of a Fetishist

Karl Marx

Given the context of this essay only a minority of readers will have any misconceptions about the content. It was Karl Marx that first defined what we now know of as ‘Commodity Fetishism’. He meant by this the inherent power that a commodity has over its producer in contrast to any rational relationship between mankind and the products of its labour. This occurs because of the alienated nature of production within capitalism where profit is the goal rather than human need. If a profit is not created then production is considered ‘useless’ and thus the labour involved is likewise considered a waste. The commodity has become the master of labour and production itself. Entering the market of exchange for profit the product is divorced from the labour and the people that created it. It becomes ‘fetishised’ in that it appears independent of the producers and confronts them only as an object of consumerism. The need that this commodity serves can be entirely dependent on the need for social status i.e. jewellery, expensive clothing, electronic gizmos and, the one that this essay will focus on - cars.

The automobile has become a ‘paradigm’ of fetishised commodities. In terms of ‘status symbols’ it would be hard to find a better example; from Minis to Rolls Royces they all represent a statement about the owner. Or, more precisely, a statement that the owner wants to socially broadcast. My friends rarely fail to notice any perceived inconsistency between my lifestyle and my ‘principles’ as a socialist. My love of racing cars is one example. For many seasons I was to be found trackside enjoying my favourite sport - Drag Racing. My love of ‘hot rods’, ‘muscle cars’ and dragsters goes back to the summer of 1973 when, as a teenager, I got my first whiff of nitro methane. Since then I have been addicted to power, speed and, let’s be frank, the glamorous aesthetic of racing cars. What follows will not be a defence, but rather an attempted explanation of a sometimes uncomfortable love affair. It will also explain my hatred of Ferraris.

In contrast to the European tradition in motor racing the American experience was generated by working class, or as they say in the US ‘blue collar’ culture. After the end of World War 2 the returning GIs had to fill the vacuum of a return to civilian life with some form of excitement. Many chose, especially on the west coast, motor racing. Given the relatively cheap price of gasoline and production cars they began to modify the chassis and tune the engines to acquire more speed. Races were held on Bonneville salt flats to test these ‘hot rods’. Clubs were formed and illegal street races (drag races) began to take place all over America. Because of the danger to all involved a group called the National Hot Rod Association started to try and organise these races at unused Air Force bases where the runways were perfect for quarter mile side by side racing.

This hot rodding counter culture was soon noticed by the Detroit car manufactures and in an attempt to cash in on this new youth market they started making ‘muscle cars’. Dodge Barracudas, Ford Mustangs and Chevrolet Camaros were seen on the drag strips every weekend competing for the dollars in the pockets of these new performance consumers. Massive v8 engines were crammed into street legal coupes and saloons and you could drive one of these monsters straight out of the showroom onto the race track with 11 second 100+ mph quarter mile performances. The kids went crazy! Of course it couldn’t last and by the time I was beginning to enjoy the English version of hot-rodding (mid 70s) the hey-day was coming to an end courtesy of rising oil prices.

Drag racing was held in contempt by the ‘motor racing’ establishment in this country. Hill climbers, sports car racers, rally car drivers and, of course, the holy of holies, Formula One looked down from a great height on the lowly working class hotrodders. But this suited my personality perfectly and only served to reinforce my love of the culture. The fact that a mildly tuned Chevy v8 in a mildly modified Chevelle would out-accelerate any Ferrari or even an F1 car gave me immense satisfaction even before I understood it as part of the cultural ‘class war’ in this country.

So I ‘identified’ with the hotrod culture of late 60s to late 70s America. To me any one who could virtually build his own performance car from the chassis up was superior to a rich man who would simply buy his Maserati or Aston Martin from the dealer without any involvement in its production. This was how I rationalised my love of American muscle cars but, of course, there is more to it than that. I like to think that on some level it was a reaction by American youth against consumerism. They took Detroit’s alienated products and humanised them - made them ‘real’ as products of the labour of their class and then of themselves as non-alienated individuals. The car lost its power as a fetishised commodity and became what it really is - a product of social and individual labour.

Unfortunately, or some would say, inevitably corporate America soon subsumed the culture and turned it in to a meaningless symbol of ‘Americana’. TV shows like ‘American Hotrod’ and ‘Wrecks to Riches’ are examples of the corruption of hotrod culture where a rich ‘customer’ walks into the workshop and orders a hotrod like it’s a steak or a Ferrari. The subsequent struggle of the production staff to meet ‘deadlines’ is an archetype of alienated labour creating a fetishised commodity which is the very antithesis of hotrod culture.

Occasionally I still attend drag races but although the performances are truly staggering (4 second quarter miles with 330mph top-end speeds) all the fastest cars have corporate sponsors and I miss the ’Golden Age’ when a guy could turn up with a dragster built in his shed and still have a chance to win. Recently a reaction against the ’big show’, as corporate drag races are now called,  has spawned something called ‘Nostalgia Racing’ where engines and bodies/chassis are restricted to 1970s technology making it possible for a low budget racer to be competitive. I enjoy these races but, as the name implies, there’s something reactionary and non-progressive about it all. It seems to be part of the retro culture of post-modernism where sport takes its place alongside music and the other arts as part of the bankrupt capitalist culture of the 21st century. When humanity finally gets around to progressing once more (after the revolution) I wonder if they’ll let me fire up my Chevy occasionally at weekends?

To regain respect, US must dump Israel

US President Barack Obama

By Kevin Barrett

The US government has lost the world's respect. When Obama calls on the world to wage war on Syria, the world says “no thank you.” When the US orders its Syrian rebel mercenaries to go to Geneva, the mercenaries refuse.

When the US orders its “good mercenaries” (the Free Syrian Army) to disavow the “bad mercenaries” (the al-Qaeda Takfiris) neither pays any attention. And when it orders the “good mercenaries” to join the so-called Syrian National Coalition, they laugh in America's face.

When mercenaries flout the orders of their paymasters, the paymasters are being disrespected.

Another band of mercenaries that has lost respect for its American paymasters is the Egyptian army. The new Pharaoh of Egypt, General al-Sisi, is ignoring pathetic whimpers about human rights and democracy emanating from Washington, DC. Al-Sisi, who hails from a Moroccan Jewish background and is rumored to be an Israeli agent, continues to butcher peaceful protestors as he establishes a dictatorship whose viciousness and autocracy are far beyond anything Mubarak ever dreamed of.

Al-Sisi's coup was approved in Tel Aviv, not Washington DC. The Israelis assured al-Sisi that they own Washington, DC, so he shouldn't worry about the Americans cutting off the billions of dollars al-Sisi is getting from the US taxpayer. During and since the coup, al-Sisi has been in non-stop contact with his Israeli handlers, who appear to be the real power governing Egypt ... just as they are the real power in Washington, DC.

Might the Israeli occupation of Washington, DC have something to do with America's loss of respect throughout the world?

A disastrous series of wars in the Middle East has bankrupted America. The real cost of these wars is in the trillions of dollars. The American economy is a shambles. The government went into shutdown mode, then emerged on life-support. The whole world is astonished by the pathetic spectacle of the world's supposed sole superpower on the verge of collapse.

Were the wars that have bankrupted the US fought for Israel - not for any conceivable US interest?

If we ask “who gains” from America's 9/11 wars, the answer is obvious: The real beneficiary is Israel, not the United States.

The US has seen its geo-strategic position eroded around the globe - especially in the Middle East, where it has lost its wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today, all the Americans can do in Iraq is hide in their fortified compound in the Green Zone and wonder why they launched their ill-conceived invasion in the first place. The Iraqi government is too busy fighting Takfiri terrorists, in Syria as well as in Iraq itself, to pay much attention to the advice of American war criminals who seem to be in cahoots with the very Takfiri terrorists they pretend to oppose. And since everyone now knows Bush's tales of Iraqi WMD were lies, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” now appears to have been - at least from the American perspective - worse than pointless.

In Afghanistan, America's situation is calamitous. A re-energized Taliban is poised to take over as soon as the US withdraws. A flood of heroin is pouring from Afghanistan into the US and Europe with the complicity of corrupt US military and intelligence officers. And the whole bogus rationale for the US invasion - an alleged revenge mission against Osama Bin Laden - has been exposed as a “big lie - there's not a word of truth in it” by America's leading investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh.

Syria, too, is in chaos. As always, America is on the losing side - which happens to be the side of al-Qaeda, America's ostensible civilizational enemy.

The whole world is amazed that the US has managed to make such a mess of the Middle East. 

Viewing things charitably, the Americans look like buffoons. Viewing them less charitably, they look like some of the worst war criminals in the history of humanity. The entire top level of the US government appears fit for the scaffold, or maybe an insane asylum.

Among American leaders' many excruciatingly idiotic war crimes, two stand out: The poisoning of Iraq and Afghanistan with depleted uranium, and the mass slaughter of both targets and bystanders in drone attacks.

The drone attacks have little military value. But they do succeed in making enemies. The families of the victims will be finding ways to take revenge on America and Americans for many decades.

And as DU babies with hideous birth defects continue to be born, and children and adults succumb to cancers in increasing numbers, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan will understandably nurse undying hatred for the US for generations ... maybe even centuries.

From an American perspective, being hated by tens of millions of people for decades or centuries cannot be good. But it isn't just the tens of millions of Iraqis and Afghanis who despise and will continue to despise America for its war crimes. It is billions of people all over the world.

When an empire has squandered its legitimacy, the Chinese say it has lost the mandate of heaven. From that point on, its days are numbered - because it can no longer command respect.

Since the Syria and budget debacles, the Chinese have begun openly disrespecting America for the first time since the days of Mao Zedong. After decades of following a “speak softly while building up strength” policy, the Chinese, whose GDP will soon eclipse that of the US, are now assertively calling for a “de-Americanized world.”

What can the US can do to earn back at least some of the respect it formerly enjoyed?

It can admit its mistakes and correct them.

America's biggest mistake was letting Israel take over the US government on September 11th, 2001. (If you are not yet aware that 9/11 was a Zionist coup d'état, read Christopher Bollyn's Solving 9/11 and Stephen Sniegoski's The Transparent Cabal.)

The USA must prosecute the Israeli assets and traitors who orchestrated 9/11 and the 9/11 wars. Those wars were not designed to bring democracy to the Middle East, or oil to America. They were designed to destroy the Middle East on behalf of Greater Israel.

After prosecuting the war criminals who demolished America's economy and reputation, the US must - if it wants to earn back the world's respect - throw apartheid Israel on the proverbial scrapheap of history. By committing the full weight of remaining US military, economic, and diplomatic power to the liberation of Palestine and the termination of the world's last racist settler colony, the US can atone for its war crimes against the people of the Middle East.

Seizing the assets of the Zionist international banking elite, ending the Federal Reserve, and printing honest currency would also win respect and put the US and global economies back on track.

The US will never again dominate the world as a sole superpower; it has lost the mandate of heaven, and nothing will bring it back. But it can still become the first-among-equals in a multi-polar world - and an inspiration to all who value freedom, democracy, and transparency - by prosecuting the war crimes of the past twelve years, and shaking off the Zionist yoke that enabled them.

Revolution: Iran versus Egypt

By M. I. Bhat

Failure of the Egyptian revolution has automatically focused attention on the success of Iranian revolution.

Political analysts have expressed varied opinions with some seeking to even discredit Iranian revolution for its alleged “failure” to produce meaningful (read pro-America) democracy for its people. Obviously the latter is Western narrative that doesn’t have many buyers in rest of the world, in particular the Muslim world.

Iranian revolution succeeded fundamentally for three reasons.

First, Iranians submitted themselves to a single leadership that also happened to be religious seeking guidance from Quran and Sunnah. Top religious leader (Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini then and Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei now) is who political leadership looks for guidance - both in domestic and international affairs -- and derives final legitimacy from, notwithstanding their electoral bona fides. So from the start of street protests, through the revolution and to this day there never was any ambiguity about the supremacy of Islam and Islamic leadership in their governance. That is why Iranians very justifiably prefix their revolution with the word “Islamic.”

Second, they didn’t just remove the dictator; they uprooted the whole edifice of his dictatorship. It spilled some blood in its initial days but that proved helpful in saving many, many more innocent lives and the revolution over the course of time had they let enemies from within thrive.

Finally, and equally crucially, unmindful of consequences they cut themselves off from the United States. Consequences, of course, did follow in the form of Iran’s isolation from the Western world, its money and technology and any help from its stooge institutions like IMF and World Bank, and, on top of all that, the ever tightening economic sanctions regime. Without yielding, however, they continue to resist the United States and its allies with perseverance to this day. But then it helped them shield themselves from American machinations (like repeat of 1953 coup), and letting democracy take roots. Amazingly, despite decades of unprecedented sanctions and vile propaganda, it is the only country in the region where government changes through ballot, that is counted as a regional power with educated (both male and female) population, fairly advanced industrial base and infrastructure capable to defend itself on its own and at the same time sufficiently suited to partner and absorb Western technology and investment on reasonably equal footing -- should the United States change its Zionist-dictated policies toward it.

In comparison, Egyptian revolution failed on all the three counts. Unlike Iranian revolution, it wasn’t ideology-driven. It was a leaderless mass uprising united by hate against their dictator -- Hosni Mubarak - with limited objective to oust him from power. Their revolutionary frenzy seen in Tahrir Square was about the present. In the absence of a charismatic leader, like Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, there was nothing to hold the people under a single banner and guide to a common future. Naturally, once that limited objective was achieved, the masses began segregating according to their political/ideological leanings. Unsurprisingly therefore, even the Islamic parties of different shades went their own ways, jettisoning the concept of Islamic unity in favor of political considerations.

The one party, the Muslim Brotherhood, that could have led the revolution with its relatively wide mass base stood as a reluctant spectator - certainly at its leadership level. They plunged in to the ring only at election time, competing for political power with numerous other religious and secular groups.

And when the MB finally emerged victorious in the elections their behavior was astounding. Even before Mohamed Morsi was sworn as the President, MB delegations were ensconced with the US State Department and Pentagon officials and Zionist think tanks - the very people who were the root cause of their, indeed all of Egyptians’, misery. This left the American sabotage channels flowing in full volume and force. Recall the story of the American NGOs who were supposedly working “to promote democracy and civic and political liberties” in Egypt! That is just a small part the over ground democracy-scented-sewage. I don’t know if Snowden files have disclosed anything so far about the underground, CIA’s stinking-sewage, part. In short, MB (under Mohamed Morsi) repeated the mistakes that National Front (under Mohammad Mosaddegh) committed six decades earlier in Iran - in both cases to the detriment of their people and country.

And equally important, the MB leadership, despite their Islamic credentials, never mustered enough courage to openly go for Islamic governance. Instead, their first act was to announce allegiance to the US-brokered treaty with Israel! Their next high profile act was to help America broker ceasefire between Hamas and Israel and then ask Egyptians (basically MB cadres) to fight in Syria. Just to prove they are on the US bandwagon and earn authenticity from the US administration. Is that what they had labored and suffered for so many decades? They immediately forgot street sentiment against Israel and the US during the revolution.

To be fair, Egypt’s was half revolution that removed the dictator but left his oppressive infrastructure untouched. Army, bureaucracy and their political cronies continued to rule the roost -- syn- and post-revolution.

MB leadership may have grasped the techniques of cultivating the grass roots but they definitely were ill prepared to manage the complexities of revolution. Evidently MB leadership hadn’t studied and analyzed Iranian revolution and what made it a success.

Iranians didn’t worry about bread and butter, let alone their billions US administration froze in the aftermath of the US Embassy seizure and hostage taking by young student revolutionaries in Tehran. Over and above it, America, through Saddam Hussain, soon inflicted upon them an eight year war. But they persevered in their march toward a pre-determined goal. The fruits of the two revolutions are before us: While Iran is on ascendant trajectory, Egypt unfortunately has fallen back into the military and American grip and misery. Indeed the story of Egypt is more or less mimicked by Tunisia and Libya.

Monsanto Now Owns Mercenaries Blackwater
By Natural Revolution

A report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation revealed that the largest mercenary army in the world, Blackwater (now called Xe Service Department of State "security services," that practices state terrorism by giving the government the opportunity to deny it.

Many military and former CIA officers work for Blackwater or related companies created to divert attention from their bad reputation and make more profit selling their nefarious services-ranging from information and intelligence to infiltration, political lobbying and paramilitary training - for other governments, banks and multinational corporations. According to Scahill, business with multinationals, like Monsanto, Chevron, and financial giants such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank, are channeled through two companies owned by Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater: Total Intelligence Solutions and Terrorism Research Center. These officers and directors share Blackwater.

One of them, Cofer Black, known for his brutality as one of the directors of the CIA, was the one who made contact with Monsanto in 2008 as director of Total Intelligence, entering into the contract with the company to spy on and infiltrate organizations of animal rights activists, anti-GM and other dirty activities of the biotech giant.

Contacted by Scahill, the Monsanto executive Kevin Wilson declined to comment, but later confirmed to The Nation that they had hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and 2009, according to Monsanto only to keep track of "public disclosure" of its opponents. He also said that Total Intelligence was a "totally separate entity from Blackwater."

However, Scahill has copies of emails from Cofer Black after the meeting with Wilson for Monsanto, where he explains to other former CIA agents, using their Blackwater e-mails, that the discussion with Wilson was that Total Intelligence had become "Monsanto's intelligence arm," spying on activists and other actions, including "our people to legally integrate these groups." Total Intelligence Monsanto paid $ 127,000 in 2008 and $
105,000 in 2009.

No wonder that a company engaged in the "science of death" as Monsanto, which has been dedicated from the outset to produce toxic poisons spilling from Agent Orange to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), pesticides, hormones and genetically modified seeds, is associated with another company of thugs.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this article in The Nation, the Via Campesina reported the purchase of 500,000 shares of Monsanto, for more than $23 million by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which with this action completed the outing of the mask of "philanthropy." Another association that is not surprising.It is a marriage between the two most brutal monopolies in the history of industrialism: Bill Gates controls more than 90 percent of the market share of proprietary computing and Monsanto about 90 percent of the global transgenic seed market and most global commercial seed.

Machines of War: Blackwater, Monsanto, and Bill Gates

There does not exist in any other industrial sector monopolies so vast, whose very existence is a negation of the vaunted principle of "market competition" of capitalism. Both Gates and Monsanto are very aggressive in defending their ill-gotten monopolies.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really "donating" anything, but instead of paying taxes to the state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions. On the contrary, their "donations" finance projects as destructive as geoengineering or replacement of natural community medicines for high-tech patented medicines in the poorest areas of the world. What a coincidence, former Secretary of Health Julio Frenk and Ernesto Zedillo are advisers of the Foundation.

Like Monsanto, Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide, mainly through the "Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa" (AGRA). It works as a Trojan horse to deprive poor African farmers of their traditional seeds, replacing them with the seeds of their companies first, finally by genetically modified (GM). To this end, the Foundation hired Robert Horsch in 2006, the director of Monsanto. Now Gates, airing major profits, went straight to the source.

Blackwater, Monsanto and Gates are three sides of the same figure: the war machine on the planet and most people who inhabit it, are peasants, indigenous communities, people who want to share information and knowledge or any other who does not want to be in the aegis of profit and the destructiveness of capitalism.