“NAME UHAS AFTER MILLS’’

Late President John Evans Atta Mills

By Christian Kpesese

The African Youth Command (AYC), a youth advocacy group is urging government to rename the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) after the late Professor John Evans Atta Mills for his pioneering role in the establishment of two new universities in the Brong Ahafo and Volta Regions.

This was contained in a letter signed by the acting Secretary General of the group, Comrade Joseph C.K. Hamilton to the President of the Republic of Ghana and copied to the chairman of the 1st Anniversary Planning Committee, Hon Kofi Totobi Quakyi.

According to the group, late Professor Mills exhibited a high sense of commitment towards the development of education in the country by laying a solid foundation. He initiated major educational reforms aimed at correcting the defects in the education sector.

The distribution of free uniforms to needy children in deprived communities is one of such numerous initiatives by Professor Mills.

The AYC mentioned among others that, the late President believed and showed a lot of commitment in the ability of the youth by his appointment of the youth to strategic positions of government.

The statement observed that President Mills introduced the concept of tolerance of divergent views and opponents in the national politics of the country. He also demystified the high political office by his exemplified virtues of humility, simplicity and honesty.

 He preached and advocated for peace in his public life.

``A nation that does not honour its heroes is not worth dying for’’.

If the above statement is anything to go by, then the group believes strongly that the renaming of UHAS at Ho after late president Mills will be a befitting act to immortalize his memory.

The African Youth Command challenged the youth to emulate the good examples of late Professor Mills and avoid people who lead them into acts of vandalism and lawlessness.

Editorial

HOPELESS?

Some Ghanaian politicians especially from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) appear hell bent on creating the impression that all of a sudden Ghana has become a hopeless case.

Only last Wednesday, the prominent NPP politician, Maxwell Kofi Jumah virtually described all state institutions including the judiciary and parliament as useless.

Mr. Jumah says that all of the state institutions are riddled with corruption.

The Insight does not have any hard evidence to support the claims of Mr Jumah.

Indeed, he can be seen as a crocodile out of the water proclaiming the death of other crocodiles.

Our understanding of the Ghanaian state is that it is neo-colonial in character and therefore it is unable to serve the interest of the masses.

 In our view a fundamental restructuring of the Ghanaian society is imperative if the gap between the haves and the have nots is to be bridged effectively.

This task can be and must be accomplished through the mobilisation of the working class and its allies in a bold confrontation with elitism and privilege.

We are confident that the struggle will continue and that the forces of social change will eventually prevail.

Ghana is not a hopeless case.

Ghana Is Not A Democratic State-Kofi Jumah

Hon. Maxwell Kofi Jumah

By Ekow Mensah.

Mr Maxwell Kofi Jumah, a former New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament has gone wild.

He says that Ghana is not a democratic state and that all its institutions are corrupt and incapable of delivering justice.

 “We should stop pretending that we live in a democratic state and face the reality.

“Parliament is riddled with corruption and what kind of judiciary do we have? Stop pretending, this is not a democracy” he fumed.

He was speaking on the morning show of “Hot Fm” last Wednesday.

Mr Kofi Jumah called for the immediate dismissal of Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan because all the elections he has supervised have been tainted.

“Even the election which brought J.A Kufuor to power was tainted.  Indeed all the elections have been tainted.

“How come that after every election, there are so many complaints?”  He asked.

He described Dr Afari Gyan as “irresponsible and inefficient”.

Mr Jumah also called Dr Afari Gyan “a dictator”.

“He does not allow other commissioners to work or to express their opinions. He decides on everything alone and that is why I say that he is a dictator” he said

Is Kissing a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” a “Terrorist Act”?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush stated in no uncertain terms that  “State sponsors of terrorism” would be considered as “terrorists”. 

“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”.

But there is always an “Exception that the Proves the Rule”  and that is George W. Bush himself.

When George W. Bush respectfully kisses King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, does this mean that Dubya could –by some stretch of the imagination– be considered a “suspected terrorist”, who should never have been elected president of the United States of America?

The answer is negative: Kissing  “State sponsors of terrorism” on the mouth is not defined by the FBI as “suspicious behavior”.

Slaughter In syria

Syrian rebels split a babys head with a machete

By Tony Cartalucci

The corporate interests driving the United States, its resources, and policy, have invoked dead children in the latest and grisliest propaganda campaign yet, directed at the American public to build support for an otherwise unjustified and universally unwanted war with Syria.

The headline of CNN's "First on CNN: Videos show glimpse into evidence for Syria intervention," suggests that by watching the grotesque videos, some sort of evidence exists to justify an assault on Syria. Instead, the videos only show yet again, the crime, and only the crime - a crime which no one, including the Syrian government, denies occurred. What is missing, as has been the case since the US leveled accusations against the Syrian government on August 21, 2013, is any evidence at all as to who actually committed this crime. 

Even upon reading the US' own assessments of the incident reveal there is no evidence. The best the US can say is [emphasis added]: 

The United States Government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013.

Assessing with "high confidence" is not enough to execute a single criminal within the US justice system, yet somehow is enough to justify a military assault on a sovereign nation on the other side of the planet, which poses no threat to the United States, and will inevitably lead to the death of Syrian soldiers and civilians, while assisting sectarian extremists, many of whom openly pledge allegiance to Al Qaeda. At face value, the US has no case against Syria, and no credibility after habitually using equally tenuous evidence as justification for military assaults against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and beyond. 

That CNN is using dead children as "evidence" indicates that the dubious media outlet is attempting to manipulate the American public on the most visceral emotional level possible to sell a war the corporate interests CNN represents desires. 

CNN and other Western outlets, have been caught overtly fabricating stories throughout the subversion of Syria, starting in 2011 when they disingenuously portrayed the flooding of Syria with armed extremists as the "Arab Spring," up to and including featured interviews with "Syria Danny," who was later revealed to be staging gun fire in the background of theatrical (and fabricated) casualty reports given to CNN's Anderson Cooper. 

Exploiting dead children to manipulate the public emotionally enables the US to circumvent not only its absolute lack of evidence, but hopefully the myriad of logical conclusions an otherwise rational, intelligent person might draw. 

Regarding US Claims 

US Claim #1: The Syrian "Regime" Used Chemical Weapons in a Desperate Bid to Save Damascus. 

Reality: The US claims in its assessment that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in a desperate struggle for Damascus: 

The Syrian regime has initiated an effort to rid the Damascus suburbs of opposition forces using the area as a base to stage attacks against regime targets in the capital. The regime has failed to clear dozens of Damascus neighborhoods of opposition elements, including neighborhoods targeted on August 21, despite employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems. We assess that the regime’s frustration with its inability to secure large portions of Damascus may have contributed to its decision to use chemical weapons on August 21.

Yet it appears that mostly women and children were the victims of the attack - apparently killed in the middle of the night while they slept. 

The US and its collaborators expect the world to believe: that the Syrian government risked using chemical weapons in Damascus, under the nose of UN inspectors, to clear out stalwart "opposition" fighters, and only managed to mass murder women and children in the process while giving the West a long-desired justification for military intervention. And despite "employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems" and allegedly also sarin nerve gas, the Ghouta area was still under terrorist control after the attack. 

It should be noted that Ghouta is on the very edge of Damascus, facing open country that stretches to the Al Qaeda infested Syrian-Iraqi border and the extremist hotbed of Al Anbar province in Iraq - implicating another, and the most likely culprit, Al Qaeda. 

US Claim #2: The "Opposition" Lacks the Capabilities to Carry Out Such an Attack. 

Reality: The US, in its assessment states: 

We assess that the scenario in which the opposition executed the attack on August 21 is highly unlikely. The body of information used to make this assessment includes intelligence pertaining to the regime’s preparations for this attack and its means of delivery, multiple streams of intelligence about the attack itself and its effect, our post-attack observations, and the differences between the capabilities of the regime and the opposition.

The "opposition" in Syria is Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda allegedly carried out the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, destroying three (including Building 7) World Trade Center towers in New York City and striking at the very heart of America's trillion dollar military might, the Pentagon itself - killing in a single day nearly 3,000 using nothing more than box-cutters, pepper spray, and 4 commandeered aircraft. 

The US State Department since the very beginning of the violence has acknowledged that the most prominent fighting group operating inside Syria is Al Qaeda, more specifically, the al Nusra front. The US State Department's official press statement titled, "Terrorist Designations of the al-Nusrah Front as an Alias for al-Qa'ida in Iraq," states explicitly that: 

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.

It is also confirmed that many fighters joining al Nusra come from abroad, including from the recently decimated Libya, where a significant arsenal of chemical weapons have fallen into the hands of a sectarian extremist government which is openly funding and arming terrorists in Syria. 

The US and its collaborators expect the world to believe: that despite Al Qaeda having struck at the very heart of US military might, after circumventing a trillion dollar defense system of unprecedented capabilities, it is now somehow incapable of obtaining and using against civilians, chemical weapons - a scenario the US has warned the world of and in fact, used as justification for invading Iraq in 2003. Either we've been lied to about the official explanation regarding 9/11, or we've been lied to about the capabilities of Al Qaeda in Syria - or more likely, both. 

Conclusion 

Clearly, at face value, none of what the US proposes regarding the alleged chemical attacks in Syria is rational. The propaganda rolled out against Syria is poorly retreaded lies from the illegal, abhorrent Iraq invasion and occupation and the more recent NATO atrocities committed against the Libyan people who are still suffering from NATO's "humanitarian intervention" there. 

What does it mean when the combined, multi-trillion dollar defense and intelligence resources of the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others are categorically incapable of providing a single shred of credible evidence to make their case? That evidence does not exist? Or that it does, but simply points the finger unfavorably in another direction? 

Without actual evidence of who committed the crimes showcased on CNN, the first and most important question that must be answered is "cui bono?" - or - to whose benefit? Clearly, the chemical attacks carried out under the nose of UN inspectors, leaving shocking images of dead women and children used to manipulate the public on an emotional level, benefits the special interests driving US, British, European, and Arab policy. These are the same interests who in 2007 openly conspired to initiate a sectarian bloodbath to drown Lebanon, Syria, and Iran - a documented conspiracy being realized in full, beginning in 2011. 

The danger of a Syrian government surviving the insidious machinations of Western special interests and restoring order in a unified Syria is an unacceptable outcome for Washington, London, Paris, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv. The unprecedented impetus behind this unpopular, universally opposed war with Syria reeks of desperation and a corporate-financier axis that has used and abused all of its tricks one too many times. 

Whatever the outcome in Syria may be, these corporate-financier interests have exposed themselves and have long-since resigned their legitimacy. All that they do now, they do in the open, against the will of the world, amidst growing dissent, and against the background of a socio-technological paradigm shift undermining their institutions and international rackets permanently. However vigorously these interests appear to be digging their grave, it is still, ultimately a grave.

Short on graves, China turns to sea burials

By William Wan

In this country of almost 1.4 billion people, life is an unending struggle for resources — money, property, even spouses. And it doesn’t get easier in death.

Prices for graves are skyrocketing, driven by decades of unbridled development and scarce city land. The government’s answer to this conundrum: sea burials.

Officials across China are selling hard the option of a watery grave by offering hefty financial incentives and planting stories in state media — with only marginal success. Many local governments, however, have saved their strongest pitches for this week, timing them to the Qingming Festival, when families nationwide take a day off to sweep their ancestors’ graves.

In the southern metropolis of Guangzhou, officials recently announced a $160 bonus for families that scatter ashes at sea. In Shanghai, officials upped their offer in the past year from $65 to a more persuasive $320. Topping them all, however, are the coastal cities of Shaoxing and Wenzhou, which are offering $800 and $1,290, respectively, for sea burials.

To sweeten the deal, the government often provides transportation, including all-expense-paid boat trips.

The official eagerness is fueled by bureaucratic fears of chaos and anger once the country runs out of graves — a certainty in coming years, according to recent studies.

To cut down on space, cremation already is required by law in cities, but land shortages have increasingly sparked risky investments for even the small graves in which those ashes are usually interred.

The cheapest spots in some of Beijing’s more desirable cemeteries sell for more than $16,000, and Chinese media reports have cited luxury tombs sold for as much as $129,000. With virtually unlimited demand, many come with hefty maintenance fees after an initial 20-year lease and guarantee eviction if they go unpaid.

And the problem will only get worse as China’s elderly population increases. In 2011, 9.6 million people died in China. A government report issued last week predicts the number will reach 20 million annually by 2025.

Most provinces will run out of burial room in the next 10 years, according to the study by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. A few provinces — such as Shanxi, Shandong and Guangdong — have fewer than five years.

Beijing’s leaders recently told state media that they are planning to shrink grave sizes this year — from the current limit of one square meter per person — to stretch their reserves.

Amid these dire straits, local officials began floating the sea burial idea in the past few years. The government-funded version of it — offered by most bigger cities — can resemble a half-day cruise.

On the morning of the burials, dozens of families take a shuttle bus en masse to a dock, ashes in tow. Out at sea, an organizer holds a service, then leads relatives in mixing the remains with flowers. At an appointed spot, the ashes are cast overboard.

Critics worry that tradition and the meaning of ancestor-honoring rites are being tossed out amid the government initiatives.

“Han Chinese have been burying their dead for thousands of years,” noted Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociologist at Renmin University in Beijing. “It’s not wrong to subsidize sea burials. . . but saving land shouldn’t be the deciding factor for how someone chooses to be buried. China’s land belongs to all Chinese. Why shouldn’t they get one square meter to lay down in when they die?”

It’s not the first time the government has tried to regulate its citizens after death. After the communists took control in 1949, millions of graves were plowed over in the following years and remade into farmland. Funerals were considered superstitious vestiges of feudalism, coffins wasted wood and graves wasted farmland.

Cremation — long shunned — was promoted as practical, even patriotic. Even Communist Party leader Mao Zedong had declared his wish to be cremated (in vain it turns out, as successors embalmed his body for permanent display in Tiananmen Square).

Although laws have made cremation almost universal in cities, the government’s sea burial initiatives have not had the same success.

Since Guangzhou announced its $160 subsidy this year, fewer than 20 people have registered. In Shanghai — one of the earliest to employ sea burials, in the 1990s — the practice has barely made a dent. In 2010, sea burials numbered in the low thousands while grave burials totaled 53,311.

Speaking to local media this week, Lu Chunling, the chief of Shanghai’s mortuary service division, tried to strike an optimistic tone. There’s a chance, he said, that if the city is careful with its remaining grave space, it will run out in 15 years rather than in 10.

Zhang Jie contributed to this report.

© The Washington Post Company

Criminal insanity of US regime

Syrian rebels kill with weapons of the US Gov't

They say absolute power corrupts absolutely. That adage applies more than ever to the president of the United States, his administration and the Wall Street flunkeys that sit in Congress.

But the corruption extends beyond the usual meaning of a dysfunctional moral compass to include the incapacity for intelligent reasoning and self-reflection. The political class of most powerful country on earth has been so over-indulged in arrogance and hubris that it is no longer able to realize how ridiculous it appears to the rest of the world. In short, criminal insanity seems to be the condition of US rulers and their puppets, including those in the mass media. 

The American president and his cronies on Capitol Hill preen and talk as if into a charmed mirror that reflects loveliness to the beholder, yet the rest of the world sees ghastly, frightening clowns, loaded up on self-righteousness, delusion, inordinate firepower and a reckless ease for squeezing the trigger. 

Indeed, such is the ridiculous posing by Washington that the US - the world’s number-one terrorist state - seems to have added a new weapon to its arsenal of planet-destroying armaments - one that induces uncontrollable laughter in victims to the point of death from asphyxiation or from a busted gut. 

President Barack Obama may have been testing out this new “mass laughter” weapon last weekend when he announced that he was seeking approval from Congress to launch military strikes on Syria. This was after his administration accused the Syrian government of “murdering over 1,000 of its own people” with chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus on 21 August. 

The death of hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children, is certainly no laughing matter. But it is a cruel mockery to their memory that the US president should try to use these deaths as an excuse to escalate his transparent and criminal agenda for regime change in Syria. 

While the Americans huff and puff that they have “high confidence” in their secret allegations against the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, the rest of the world is more convinced that it is the US-backed mercenaries who committed mass murder with chemical weapons supplied by Washington’s ally Saudi Arabia.

So out-of-control is the delusional US president that it took his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to make a telephone call and remind Obama that he is a Nobel Peace Laureate and should act accordingly instead of playing with fire that might engulf the region and the entire globe. 

“I would like to address Obama as a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Before using force in Syria, it would be good to think about future casualties,” Putin said, as if he was addressing an imbecile, which he was. “Russia is urging you to think twice before making a decision on an operation in Syria.” 

Apart from the world’s most reactionary and lawless regimes, Saudi Arabia and Israel, the rest of humanity is also urging the American government to think twice before it murders countless more people in a region already teetering on the brink of conflagration. Even the normally gung-ho British have backed away from such reckless adventurism. 

Obama says that he “only” intends “limited missile strikes” on Syria as a “punitive” measure to deter the future of chemical weapons.

In his address from the White House Rose Garden on Saturday, Obama spoke with words scented with cloying hypocrisy. “What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? We are the United States of America, and we cannot and must not turn a blind eye.” 

This is from the leader of the same terror state that supplied former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with chemicals weapons and the coordinates to gas thousands of Iranians and Kurds during the 1980s; it is the same United States of terror that dropped white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah and others in 2005-2006 during its genocidal war of illegal occupation; it is the same terror state that poisoned Iraq and generations of children with depleted uranium; the same terror state that supplies Israel and other allies such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain with a plethora of toxic chemicals that are then fired into civilian homes every day of the week. 

Nobody in their right mind believes a word that the US rulers are saying about chemical weapons in Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted how the US says it has “super convincing” evidence that the Syrian government is responsible yet the Americans won’t present the supposed intelligence. 

Lavrov also hinted at the lunacy of official American thinking by pointing out the contradiction in Washington’s claims to support the elusive peace conference in Geneva but not before unleashing a blitzkrieg on the country. 

“And after they bomb Syria, they will be ready for convening the conference called Geneva II,” said the Russian diplomat, as if describing a bloodthirsty psychopath, which is actually appropriate. 

The US stands virtually alone in the face of humanity with its self-righteous regard to bomb any one it wants to based on its own outrageous self-serving lies. Even its plaything puppets like UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Canada’s Prime Minster Stephen Harper, the pathetic Arab League and NATO’s Anders Fogh Rasmussen have all distanced themselves from the proposed US military attack on Syria.

“I'm comfortable going forward without the approval of a United Nations Security Council that, so far, has been completely paralyzed and unwilling to hold Assad accountable,” said Obama. 

Comfortable? With committing a war of aggression by launching hundreds of cruise missiles on a sovereign country that has not and does not threaten the US? 

What Obama means by the UN Security Council being paralyzed is that it refuses to bend over backwards to satisfy Washington’s criminal bloodlust and state terror. 

Part of this terrorism is to put a gun to the head of Syria and the rest of the world as the next few days go by waiting for the US Congress to deliberate on whether or not to grant itself the right to bomb another country - premised on its arrogant delusions of grandeur and raving fabrications. 

To this end, Obama said: “Our military has positioned assets in the region. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs [General Martin Dempsey] has informed me that we are prepared to strike whenever we choose. Moreover, the Chairman has indicated to me that our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now. And I'm prepared to give that order.”