EXPOSED! Another Anti- Nkrumah Falsehood

Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah

Prior to the infamous of coup  February, 1966, the dirty tricks department of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States  of America Worked in over drive.

It needed to justify the coup and one way of doing that was to demonise Nkrumah.

No effort was spared in manufacturing negative stories of rights abuse and downright cruelty.

One of such stories was about Obetsebi-Lamptey, father of Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, now chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The story was that Mr Obetsebi Lamptey’s body had been fed to the lions at the Flagstaff House Zoo.

The truth was that grenades had been exploded in Accra causing the death of 30 people and injuring more than 300 others.

Police investigations traced the grenades to Obetsebi- Lamptey who had returned from exile and was hiding at Bawaleshie disguised as a Mallam.

It was Obetsebi- Lamptey who was supplying the grenades and paying those who exploded them.

He was subsequently sentenced to death by a competent and proper constituted court of law.

Editorial

Repeal This Law

Since the list of presidential staffers was made available to parliament there has been a vigorous and sometimes healthy debate about the number of people working at the Presidency.

However another serious dimension of the exercise has been missing in the debate.

Which serious country in the world publishes the names and particulars of all persons who work at the presidency?

This is information that security services around the world spend substantial resources to find.

Why should Ghana publish the details of all those working at the presidency from President to sweeper?

The Insight calls for the immediate repeal of the law which insists on this major security breach.

The law must be repealed immediately.

This is not about transparency.

GHANA-IRAN RELATIONS

A speech By Rashid Pelpo, Representative of The Government of Ghana

Rashid Pelpuo, Minister of State

Your Excellency Mr. Mohammad Soleymani,
Honourable Ministers of State, Hon. Speaker of Parliament

Honourable Members of Parliament,      

Members of the Diplomatic Corps,

Religious and Traditional Leaders, 'Nananom, Niime, Naarne,

Members of the Iranian Community Ghana,
Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great honour to join you this evening in celebrating the Anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. 

I view the presence of honourable Ministers, Members of Parliament and distinguished invitees as a reflection of the healthy state of relations between Ghana and the Islamic Republic of Iran and the commitment of our two peoples to deepen these relations. On this Occasion, permit me to convey through you to your Government, sentiments of friendship, warm congratulations and best wishes on be-half of His Excellency President, John Dramani Mahama and the Government and People of Ghana, 

Your Excellency Ambassador Soleymani,

Indeed as stated in your speech, Iran's policy towards Africa in general, and Ghana in particular has been one of increased cooperation and friendly engagement. This positive level of bilateral cooperation has yielded goodwill, with Iran allocating scholarships and training programs to Ghana, mainly in the areas of health, petroleum and petrochemical engineering.

Ghana automatically became Iran’s strategic African partner after Senegal was no more considered Iran's strongest ally on the continent. The future of Ghana-Iran relations looks very promising since both countries belong to institutions that share common goals and values, notably the United Nations (UN) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). This brings to the fore, the fact that the relations between the two countries have been extended and strengthened to encompass our shared commitments to democracy, good governance, respect for the rule of law, human rights, as well as the economic-empowerment of our nationals all of which are anchored in the adherence to the provisions of our respective constitutions.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

In recent times, Ghana and Iran have witnessed the exchange of high-level visits by government officials and private businessmen, thereby cementing the already cordial relations and fruitful cooperation existing between the two countries. Notable among such visits are the two-day State visit to Ghana by former President Mahrnoud Ahmadinejad in April, 2013, when he was the Chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, an organization that Ghana's founding President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah not only played a pivotal role in establishing but is acknowledged as one of its founding fathers. Also, a high-powered delegation led by the Vice-President, 

H. E. Mr. Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur attended the inauguration of President Hassan Rouhani on 4th August, 2013. The Speaker of Parliament, Hon. Edward Doe Adjaho also paid a three-day goodwill visit to the Islamic Republic from 21 st to 24th October, 2013 at the invitation of his Iranian counterpart, Dr. Ali Larijani. The visit, which was intended to further strengthen the relations between the Parliaments of Iran and Ghana, paved the way for economic cooperation between the two countries as is evidenced by the arrival on l0th December, 2013 of a seven-member Iranian business delegation on a five-day visit to Ghana.

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

Ghana recognizes the fact that Iran is the second largest economy in' the Middle-East and North Africa in terms of GDP and has the largest population after Saudi Arabia and Egypt respectively. Also, Iran ranks second in the world in natural gas reserves and third in oil reserves and is the second largest OPEC oil producer. Ghana therefore looks forward to mutually beneficial economic relations with Iran within the context of the Permanent Joint Commission for Cooperation (PJCC), which remains the driving force behind Ghana-Iran bilateral relations. 

The fourth session of the PJCC held in Accra in August, 2010 saw the signing of four (4) Memoranda of Understanding (MOOs) relating to the construction of Technical and Vocational Schools in Ghana, Implementation of the Digitalization of the Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) Radio and Television Archives and the Lifting of Visas on Diplomatic and Service passports holders. Unfortunately, the implementation of the agreements has been painfully slow. It is therefore hoped that the 5th Session of the Joint Commission, which is scheduled to be held in Tehran in May, this year, would generate the needed momentum to elevate Ghana-Iran relations to new heights.

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

A key component of Ghana's Foreign Policy Agenda has been the enhancement of an outward-looking policy hinged on economic diplomacy. It is also aimed at harnessing appropriate and untied external resources to complement domestic efforts for national growth and prosperity as well as the substantial reduction of poverty.

In this context, the Government and people of Ghana acknowledge with profound appreciation the various forms of support and assistance received from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran has distinguished herself as a reliable development partner of Ghana and has contributed significantly to our social and economic development through the provision of various forms of assistance to diverse sectors of the Ghanaian economy, particularly, in the areas of health, education and energy.

It is my hope that the Iranian business community will take advantage of the prevailing investor-friendly political climate in Ghana and invest, preferably on the basis of public-private partnership, in the Government's priority areas such as Oil and Gas, with emphasis on Hydrocarbon Exploration and Development, Export-Oriented Refinery Projects, Bulk Petroleum Products Pipelines and Storage, Infrastructural Development and Service Provision in the Petroleum Downstream Sector and natural liquefied gas (NLG) Deployment, in the sectors in which it has a wealth of knowledge and experience. Iran could also invest in the modernization, of air and seaports, funding of infrastructural projects, and water resources, among others.

Your Excellency Ambassador Soleymani,

We in Ghana have observed with interest, the recent developments that seem to point to the erasure of the wrong impressions about Iran, and rather affirmed her position as a major player in world affairs. Indeed, contrary to the Western-held view that Iran has been isolated from the international community, she hosted the Non-Aligned Movement Summit in August, 2012 to the admiration of the 129 Member countries. Also, the temporary agreement arrived at between Iran and the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany, on 24lh November, 2014, which has resulted in the suspension of US and EU sanctions on its petrochemicals exports and associated, services, as well as the release of $4.2 billion of Iran's previously frozen crude oil revenue marks an import.ant step in the country's search for a new beginning on the path to peace, prosperity and sustainable development.

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen

May I take this opportunity to commend His Excellency the Ambassador of Iran for his unwavering commitment to deepening relations between our two countries, particularly in the areas of trade, investment and development cooperation. I also wish to assure everyone here that the Government of Ghana will within the context of the "Better Ghana Agenda", continue to provide an enabling environment for the operation of mutually beneficial foreign businesses in the country.

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

May I now have the honour and pleasure to invite everyone here present to raise your glass in a toast to the good health and well-being of the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, His Excellency President Hassan Rouhani, and the Government and people of Iran and to the strong bond of friendship and cooperation that exist 'between the Republic of Ghana and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Long live the Republic of Ghana!
Long live the Islamic Republic of Iran!
Long live Gharia-Iran relations.
Thank you:

FORWARD TO GHANA’S INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE

Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah

By Deschando

Thanks to the master planning of one man - the tireless leader, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s industrial revolution gathers momentum day by day and Ghanaians must start to count their blessings.

Anyone who doubts this should take a major look around Accra, and go to Tema, to Akosombo, to Kade, to Kumasi, to Nsawam etc. and he would be convinced that this country has really entered her industrial era. The wheel of our national economy is turning and turning fast.

Fuel is an essential element in a country’s industrial growth and it is in this connection that the announcement that products from the 8 million pound oil refinery at Tema will be made available for home consumption next month at once becomes very important.

From Ghana herself, Nigeria, Libya and the Middle East, crude oil will flow from giant tankers through the five mighty 18,000 foot pipelines direct into reservoirs of the refinery to be processed.

Soon, Kerosene, liquefied petroleum, gasoline, gases, fuel oil and aviation petrol will be home produced. This will cut down considerably on our importation of refined oil for our industrial machinery.

Our Socialist Government under the able leadership of Osagyefo is committed to providing a higher standard of living, full employment and national security for the people, and the great socialist planning and reconstruction in progress is a pointer to this direction.

Ghanaians are being trained in the technicalities of industrial progress to man the wheels in our factories and industrial establishments to produce the goods we formerly imported, thereby affording the country the opportunity of saving considerably on foreign exchange.

Capitalism is at bay because mankind is aspiring towards one goal which is socialism. Day by day the nations of the world are becoming aware that socialist planning is the only hope of mankind.

To arrest the tempo of this transformation, the tactics adopted by capitalists are to create artificial scarcities of essential commodities that will contribute towards the success of the world`s socialist revolution.

The supply of oil is one of the surest and effective ways in which capitalist countries can bring about a total halt to the economic progress of Socialist nations.

The independent nations of Africa must see the wisdom and foresight in Osagyefo’s insistence that Africa’s economic self-sufficiency lies in their taking away the hands of foreign control in their industrial planning.

Forward to Ghana’s industrial heritage.

By Deschando

(First published in the Evening News of Wednesday, October 9, 1963)

Where Mandela Failed

Nelson Mandela

No one can accuse Nelson Mandela of not having the courage of his convictions. Twenty-seven years in prison for campaigning to replace the repulsive apartheid regime with a non-racial political democracy is sufficient proof that he had. Yet, although this was eventually achieved, it did not improve the economic lot of the vast majority of black South Africans, another of his aims.

At his trial for treason in 1964 along with other leaders of the ANC, Mandela declared that he was a ‘socialist’. This simply meant that he shared the views of other ‘national liberation’ leaders of the time such as Nkrumah and Arafat who were grateful for the support of the state capitalist regime in Russia and admired its economic system. After the collapse of Russian state capitalism Mandela’s ‘socialism’, as that of the ANC, was reduced to a commitment to government intervention to try to improve people’s standard of living, the classic reformist position.

As the first President of post-apartheid South Africa from 1994 to 1999, Mandela tried to implement this but came up against capitalism and its economic laws and vested interests. He found himself the head of a government that had to operate within the confines of capitalism, but no government can make capitalism work in the interest of the majority. He was therefore forced to govern on its terms. Which are that priority has to be given to profit-making and that anything that goes against this, such as taxing profits to pay for social reforms, risks provoking an economic slowdown and yet more unemployment and misery.

Mandela had to let the big mining corporations operate as usual. They too had in fact been opposed to apartheid as it was impeding the normal operation of capitalism in South Africa. They wanted, and got, a non-racial capitalism. Capitalist firms don’t care about the background of their workers, only that they produce profits for them. In South Africa they didn’t like being legally forced to employ an underperforming white worker at higher pay when more competent and cheaper non-whites were available.

It wasn’t just the mining corporations that benefitted from the end of apartheid. So did non-white business and professional people who, as the ‘black bourgeoisie, were integrated into the ruling class and its benefits and privileges. Far be it from us to underestimate the psychological and practical benefits of the abolition of separate facilities for ‘Blanke’ and ‘Nie Blanke’ for those who were its victims, but the fact remains that the end of apartheid has not benefitted the mass of South Africans economically. But that’s because it was replaced by a non-racial capitalism and capitalism in whatever form was never going to work to help them.

So, in this sense Mandela failed. He did not, however, succumb to the corruption of a Nkrumah or an Arafat (not to mention the present South African president Zuma). But that proves the point. Not even a saint can make capitalism work other than as a profit-making system in which profits have to take priority over people. Reformist governments fail, not because their members are corrupt or sell-outs or incompetent or not determined enough but because they have set themselves the impossible task of trying to make capitalism work in the interests of the majority. As Mandela found out, no doubt to his disappointment

Too much of dirty laundry destroys NSA

Intelligence agencies of the United States were spying on former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, The Guardian wrote with reference to German publications.

The investigation was conducted by German broadcaster NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. It turned out that the National Security Agency had been collecting technical information (metadata) about Schroeder's mobile calls and text messages since 2002. It was also said that the source of information about the espionage on the German official was the secret document that revealed the news about the espionage on Angela Merkel.

Journalists associated the fact of espionage with Germany's stance against the invasion of Iraq.

Schroeder was surprised about the news. He said that he could not even imagine during those years that U.S. special services were spying on him. Besides, the German press reported that the allegations of spying were confirmed by the documented data that had been previously exposed by former NSA agent Edward Snowden.

The news about NSA's espionage on the phone calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other world leaders became a bombshell, and the NSA stopped spying on some of them. In early 2014, Barack Obama banned intelligence agencies from spying on the heads of USA's allies.

Political scientist Grigory Dobromelov provided comments to Pravda.Ru about NSA's spying activities on former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

"Do you think that the news about espionage conducted by the United States may trigger a political crisis in the country?"

"The news about American special services is no longer a surprise. When there is too much of dirty laundry, the machine stops working. That is, when a person or a whole state is compromised on a certain occasion, it causes strong reactions and serious media coverage at first. But when there is too much of this coverage, it stops producing the desired effect.

"Everyone understands that the scale of surveillance is very large. In fact, American intelligence services violate both diplomatic principles and the principles established by international agreements, including a constitutional right to privacy, freedom of correspondence and conversations.

"Most likely, the news will push German security services towards an additional investigation. This is unlikely to cause a serious crisis in the United States. Indeed, Obama's position is not the best right now, his rating is not high at all. In the field of international politics, the United States suffers one defeat after another, despite the fact that the country is slowly recovering from the economic crisis."

Deconstructing al-Qaeda

By Dr Ismail Salami

In an online statement, Pakistan-based al-Qaeda central command has recently said it has no links whatsoever with two of its ruthless groups the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), thereby disowning its spawns of terror in the Middle East.

The Zawahiri letter that became public on Tuesday focused on fitnah (dissention) as the reason for his announcement.

"We declare ourselves innocent of fitnah in (the Levant) between mujahideen and we declare our innocence of the blood that has been shed," the statement reads. "We call upon everyone to fear God... and to realize the catastrophe that happened to the Jihad in Syria and the future of this Muslim nation due to the fitnah that they are in."

It appears that Zawahiri is being jolted into the realities which have shocked the entire world concerning the brutalities perpetrated by the maniac militants in Syria and Iraq.  Yet, there is another side to the story which should be taken into careful account. There is a high possibility that Zawahiri is just assuming an innocent face in order to achieve some degree of respect and reputation in the Muslim world as a judicious leader on the one hand and on the other hand, to exonerate himself from the blame directed at his minions in Syria and Iraq.

Originally established by Washington in Afghanistan during the military occupation of the country by Soviet Union, it was called al-Qaeda, meaning ‘base’. Soon, the group was expanded under the aegis of the CIA and Saudi-funded Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI) in order to oust the Soviet forces from the region and safeguard the interests of the US government. Following a secret long-term agenda, Washington recruited militants from different parts of the region including Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, Yemen and central Asian countries with the ultimate goal of disseminating and instilling an ideology of perversion in the name of Islam in the world. According to Richard Clark, al-Qaeda was created by the CIA in collaboration with Saudi Arabia in order to bankroll Osama bin Laden through the House of Saud, “in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union during the 1980's and Riyadh and Washington together contributed an estimated $3.5 billion to the mujahideen.” Besides, Hillary Clinton made an appalling confession when she said, “We created al-Qaeda.”

This statement came as a shock to the world and was quoted even in American media. However, it was soon removed from the mainstream journals in the US as it was feared to be considered as another stain in the history of US crimes across the world. After all, al-Qaeda was introduced into the region to play as a new actor in the periphery rather than in the center.

In installing al-Qaeda in the region in the first place and envisaging a greater role for the invisible force in the world, Washington basically needed a behind-the-scene player with a determining role in changing or disturbing political and strategic equations in the Middle East as the prime target of imperialism. So, this newly-fledged phenomenon entered the scene and gradually began to beget and parent diverse offspring including Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Taliban, Jabhat al-Nusra, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in Syria. Despite the prevailing belief that the al-Qaeda is a political movement, it should be noted that is strictly an ideological movement financed by the Saudi purists who built their movement on the ruins of their ideological edifices. Extremism was their goal and intellectual perversion was what they utilized in order to sow the seeds of extremism and dry up the roots of true faith. As in a vicious circle, extremism however tends to negate itself and in the long run it is destined to be replaced by political moderation, intellectual awakening and global awareness.

The current implosive rift among the adherents of the al-Qaeda stems from a ravenous rivalry for power in the region. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi AKA Dr. Ibrahim was the leader of what was known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Immediately after the crisis began to simmer in Syria, Al-Baghdadi relocated there and in league with an already-established Takfiri wing known as Jabhat al Nusra, he sought a merger of the former with his group to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. A notorious fanatic militant, the leader of the insurgent faction Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani is responsible for a string of unspeakable mass murders and suicides bombings in Deir ez-Zor, Aleppo, Hama, Drousha and Damascus.

The two al-Qaeda groups seem to vie in manslaughter and inconceivably ruthless acts such as beheading and mutilating. In fact, they have invoked another gory Golgotha in the Arab country without feeling any pangs of conscience. The problem is that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proves to be a more formidable rival for the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra and that the latter does not wish to be a second-rate leader compared to the former in the eyes of the al-Qaeda leader. Further to that, Zawahiri feels threatened by Al-Baghdadi who has frequently disobeyed him. The master and the minion are apparently shifting places and there is a powerful force at work to thwart the realization of this nightmare for Zawahiri.

In the final analysis, the center cannot hold and the Saudi-US lovechild of terrorism is running amuck and falling apart.

WHAT IS HISTORY

UK Prime Minister David Cameron

In February 2013 the National Curriculum Consultation Document was published and capitalist ideologue and Tory Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove made a statement to the House of Commons about the new history syllabus: 'in history there is a clear narrative of British progress with a proper emphasis on heroes and heroines from our past' (Daily Telegraph 7 February).

Earlier at the 2008 and 2010 Tory Party Conferences Gove had complained that 'our children are either taught to put Britain in the dock or they remain in ignorance of our island story, education has been undermined by left wing ideologues, the under-appreciated tragedy of our time has been the sundering of our society from its past and the current approach we have to history denies children the opportunity to hear our island story. This trashing of our past has to stop' (Guardian 30 September 2008, Daily Telegraph 5 October 2010).

When the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government came to power in May 2010, Gove invited historian Niall Ferguson to advise on the development of a new history syllabus for the National Curriculum, 'history as a connected narrative' (Daily Telegraph 30 December 2012). Later in 2010 at the Tory Party Conference Gove announced historian Simon Schama as the new 'History Czar' to ensure pupils learn Britain's 'Island Story', and review the curriculum. Schama responded 'without this renewed sense of our common story, we will be a poorer and weaker Britain' (Guardian 5 October 2010).

Conservative historians

Schama is well known for his 1989 book Citizens; A Chronicle of the French Revolution where he defines the 'Revolution' by the Reign of Terror. Historian Eric Hobsbawm described the book as a political denunciation of the revolution, a continuation of a traditional conservative view of the revolution started by Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, and continued in Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. Gove called Edmund Burke 'the greatest Conservative ever' at the 2008 Tory Conference (Daily Telegraph 30 September 2008).

Niall Ferguson is a conservative historian who cites as influences Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. His 2011 six-part Channel Four TV series Civilization: Is the West History? is a hymn to Western capitalism, global free trade and bourgeois liberalism. Ferguson identifies the 'six killer apps' of competition, science, rule of law, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic as keys to the dominance of western capitalism. Hobsbawm has called Ferguson an excellent historian but a 'nostalgist for Empire'. He is also a historian of financial capitalism having written The House of Rothschild and a biography of a merchant banker High Financier: The Lives and Times of Siegmund Warburg. His magnum opus on finance must be the publication in November 2008 of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World which unfortunately for Ferguson was overtaken by the events of September 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the resulting global financial crisis. In this book Ferguson penned a hymn to global financial capitalism whereas we agree with Marx that 'money is the universal whore, the universal pimp of men and peoples'.

The Department of Education stated that 'our approach to the history curriculum has been supported by some of the country's most eminent historians' (Guardian 13 May). But the new history syllabus was immediately criticised by the President of the Royal Historical Society, the Historical Association, the Higher Education group History UK, and senior members of the British Academy.

The overall aim of the new history syllabus is 'a knowledge of Britain's past, and our place in the world helps us to understand the challenges of our time' with supporting aims to be to 'know and understand the story of these islands; how the British people shaped this nation and how Britain influenced the world'. The syllabus will attempt to cover the Palaeolithic era to the fall of the Berlin Wall in seven years. Even at Key Stage 1, ages 5 to 7 years, children are expected to understand terms such as 'civilisation', 'parliament', 'monarchy', 'democracy', and the 'concept of nation and of a nation's history' (Department for Education: National Curriculum Consultation 7 February).

At Key Stage 2, ages 7 to 11 years children will be taught 'the essential chronology of British history sequentially' from the Stone Age to the 1688 bourgeois 'Glorious Revolution'. This is history as a story, chronology, narrative, dates, events which makes Henry Ford comment 'history is bunk and just one damn thing after another' quite apt. Professor Jackie Eales, President of the Historical Society said 'intellectually, it is exactly what 1066 and All That was designed to lampoon. It is a trawl through history, one damn thing after another, in a very superficial way. It's a very old fashioned curriculum' (Guardian 16 February).

One of the recommendations of the 1999 Macpherson Report was a 'National Curriculum aimed at valuing cultural diversity and preventing racism' but in April 2013 History teacher Katherine Edwards pointed out that 'the new curriculum is very likely to alienate and disengage children and young people, especially those of black and Asian origin. Black and Asian people are excluded completely from the primary history curriculum and, apart from the token inclusions of Equiano and Seacole they only feature as slaves in the secondary curriculum until the arrival of the Windrush generation' (Guardian 19 April). Later in June children's laureate Malorie Blackman added 'if children are not taught about black historical figures along with heroes such as Lord Nelson, they might be turned off school altogether' (Guardian 4 June). In fact Olaudah Equiano, freed African slave who campaigned for abolition of the slave trade and Mary Seacole, Creole nurse in the Crimean War, were only introduced into the National Curriculum in 2007 but it was announced in 2012 they were to be dropped in the new syllabus. This prompted Operation Black Vote to gather 35,000 signatures on a petition to Gove, and American Democrat Reverend Jesse Jackson to write a letter to the Times. Gove conceded and Equiano and Seacole stayed in the new syllabus. But Martin Luther King and the US Civil Rights movement have been dropped from the curriculum.

As for the role of women in history there are no women at all mentioned in the Key Stage 2 syllabus except for two Tudor queens. In Key Stage 3, ages 11 to 14 years, Mary Seacole, George Eliot and Annie Besant are grouped under the heading 'The Changing Role of Women'.

China is not included in the curriculum but is only mentioned as a loser to Britain as a result of gunboat diplomacy, although the OECD stated in March 2013: 'from a long-range perspective, China has now overtaken the Euro area and is on course to become the world’s largest economy around 2016, after allowing for price differences' (forbes.com 23 March).

‘Great Man’ Theory

The syllabus focuses on kings, queens, and the lives of great men which is part of the bourgeois 'Great Man Theory of History' which has its origin in Thomas Carlyle's 1840 book On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1840) where he writes that 'the history of the world is but the biography of great men'.

Do 'Great Men' impose themselves on history? Marx wrote in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon: 'Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past'. It appears that Napoleon Bonaparte perceived this truth when he wrote in exile 'I found all the elements ready at hand to found an empire. If I had not come probably someone would have done like me. A man is but a man, but often he can do much; often he is a tinderbox in the midst of inflammable matter, his power is nothing if circumstances and public sentiment do not favour him' (The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection from His Written and Spoken Words edited and translated by J. Christopher Herold. Columbia University Press: New York. 1955).

Peter Mandler, Cambridge professor of Modern Cultural History said of the new syllabus 'we need to know the history of family life, economic development, class formation, not just a list of prime ministers, admirals and treaties. And when the curriculum talks about the rise and fall of Empires it still only means the Roman Empire' (Guardian 16 February 2013).

History from below

The antidote to bourgeois 'Great Men' history is 'History from below' (the term coined by historian George Lefebvre) which is people's history, the history of the working class, everyday history or even micro-history. A good example of 'history from below' is The Crowd in the French Revolution by George Rudé where he points out that 'those who took to the streets were ordinary, sober citizens, not half-crazed animals, not criminals' in contrast to Carlyle, Dickens and Schama.

E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class is a sweeping people's history of the English proletariat but his book Whigs and hunters: The origin of the Black Act is a great example of micro-history. Following the collapse of the 'South Sea bubble' in 1720 there was an economic downturn and groups of poachers appeared in forests in Berkshire and Hampshire stealing deer from the aristocracy. The Whig government responded with an Act in 1723 which introduced the death penalty for over fifty offences. The Act would not be repealed until 1823. The Act can be seen as an example of 'bloody legislation' against the working class. In 1688 there were fifty capital offences on the statute book but by 1800 there were 220 capital offences mainly concerned with the defence of property. Between 1770 and 1830 35,000 death sentences were handed out with 7,000 executed.

At present capitalist ideologists are engaging in a type of 'historical revisionism' in relation to the First World War. In The Great War was a Just War published in History Today in August 2013, Gary Sheffield writes 'Britain’s First World War was a war of national survival, a defensive conflict fought at huge cost against an aggressive enemy bent on achieving hegemony in Europe. If the allies had lost, it would have meant the end of liberal democracy on mainland Europe'.

Prime Minister David Cameron's speech in October 2012 at the Imperial War Museum announced that there would be commemorative events to mark the First World War. These would include the outbreak of war, the naval battle of Jutland, Churchill's disastrous Gallipoli campaign, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Passchendaele, and the Armistice.

The Socialist Standard of November 1914 pointed out that the Sunday Chronicle of 30 August 1914 had identified that it was a capitalist war when they wrote 'the men in the trenches are fighting on behalf of the manufacturer, the mill owner, and the shopkeeper'. In August 1919 the Socialist Standard concluded that 'while competition between capitalist groups for routes, markets, and control of raw materials exists, the cause of war remains'.

In capitalist society the working class are educated to identify their interest with the interests of the capitalist class and identify with the nation state not with our interests as a class. As socialists we believe 'the working classes have no fatherland'.

As well as commemorating the First World War, the capitalist state has also allocated £1 million to restore the battlefield of Waterloo in Belgium ready for the 200th  anniversary in June 2015. There is even talk of commemorating the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt. All this is done to bolster nationalism and ensure that the working class identify with capitalist history.

The new History Syllabus in the National Curriculum demonstrates the truth of what Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology: 'The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force'.

Steve Clayton

Credit Socialist Standard

Mideast wars show a paradoxical America

By Rami G. Khouri

Every once in a while, in the extraordinary land of the United States where I am spending a few months teaching at university, developments align to simultaneously reveal the enduring wisdom and the profound idiocy in the society.

I experienced such a moment a few days ago when I read two newspaper articles that juxtaposed these two contrasting sides of a complex American society. The level-headedness and strength of the United States were reflected in a public opinion poll that mirrored the sentiments of ordinary men and women across the country, while the indigenous chicanery and criminality that sometimes rear their ugly head were evident in the words of a senior official of the George W. Bush administration.

The poll conducted by USA Today-Pew Research Center showed that a majority of Americans today feel that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did not achieve their goals, which is probably an important reason why the public in recent months has been hesitant to use force in Syria or against Iran. Old-time Republican war-mongers are slow to retire, it seems, for George W. Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary on Jan. 31 that Americans should be proud of what they achieved in Iraq, which he sees as a country that can still become an example of a credible democracy in the Arab world.

It seems more logical and truthful to note that the Anglo-American war that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair unleashed on Iraq was a seminal and enduring cause of many of the security threats and sectarian tensions that plague much of the Middle East today. The expanding domain of Salafist-takfiri militants and terrorists across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and other nearby lands received its single biggest boost when the American-led war wiped away the Iraqi regime and its state security structure – brutal as they were – and allowed Al-Qaeda-linked extremists to set up shop in Iraq and spread from there to other countries.

It is estimated today that tens of thousands of trained and experienced Salafist-takfiri fighters are operating in the West Asia region, to a large extent because Bush-Blair and foolhardy and often-ignorant officials such as Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others went to war on false premises and turned Iraq into a kind of wasteland where terrorists thrived. These reckless officials lied then about why they attacked Iraq, and they continue to lie today.

A majority of Americans did go along with the war on Iraq in 2003, but that was mainly because of a powerful, visceral need to punish someone – anyone, it turned out – because of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the U.S. by Al-Qaeda. Bush and intellectual snake-oil salesmen such as Hadley exploited that public anger that verged on hysteria to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, by claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that were never found, probably because they never existed. Over a decade later, having learned the toll of war and the hollowness of the Bush administration’s claims and lies, the American people have a much more discerning view of those costly adventures.

The USA Today-Pew Research Center poll published a few days ago showed that a 52 percent majority of Americans felt that the U.S. had mostly failed to achieve its goals in Iraq, which is a reversal of the 56 percent majority that had said in November 2011, as the U.S. was leaving that country, that the U.S. had mostly succeeded there.

A nearly identical 52 percent majority of Americans felt that the U.S. had mostly failed to achieve its goals in Afghanistan, where the Taliban today are resurgent and the Afghan government is shaky. The American public in 2003 had felt, by a 3-1 ratio, that the Iraq war was the right decision, but today, by a margin of 50 percent to 38 percent, Americans say it was the wrong decision.

It is frightening that Hadley continues to offer the same old false arguments that Bush used to wage war a decade ago – that war would defeat Al-Qaeda; reduce the threat of terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction; promote democracy, pluralism and economic prosperity; and create lasting American allies. Well, virtually every one of those claims has proven to be false – unfortunately, to be sure, as they are worthy goals. Ordinary Americans are wiser now in rejecting unilateral war as a knee-jerk policy in distant lands where Americans have little knowledge and even less impact beyond the momentary bang of their big guns.

The American people must decide if they will ever hold accountable in a court of law those senior American officials who offered lies, deceit and wasteful war to their traumatized people in 2001-03. It is good to see that the American people have matured and come to their senses, while Bush administration officials continue to peddle their junk ideology and emotional wrecks.

Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR. He can be followed on Twitter @RamiKhouri.