SUBRI FOREST FOR SALE: Forestry Commission Reveals More Facts

The Forestry Commission has vehemently protested to Maripoma Enterprises Limited over the conversion of residual gmelina trees on the Subri Forest Reserve into chippings for export.

The Commission says that whiles it finds the production of the chippings laudable; it should have been notified.

If the Commission had been notified, the company would have had to pay for the “residual trees” it is converting into chips.

Maripoma Enterprises Limited has been allocated all the gmelina trees which would be harvested on a 9000 hectare of the Subri Forest Reserve which has been sold to a French Company.

The Company, Plantations Socfinaf Limited intends to plant rubber on the land and it has already cleared more than 1000 hectares.

The letter from the Forestry Commission is published in full below;

Dear Sir,

INTENDED CONVERSION OF RESIDUAL GMELINA JNTO CHIPPINGS BY MESSRS.

MARIPOMA ENTERPRISES LIMITED -SUBRI FOREST RESERVE

It has come to the notice of this office that a chipper is being installed at your Company's Manso off Reserve Gmelina Plantation area.

A preliminary investigation conducted revealed your intensions to convert the residual gmelina at both on and off Reserve into chippings for export.

We wish to commend the management of your company for that high sense of initiative to ensure maximum utilization of the residual gmelina.

You may recall that the initial agreement your Company had with the Forest Commission was that you are taking the utilizable logs and that is what is being measured, billed and evacuated by your Company currently.

''No Interest had been expressed by your company on the residual gmelina

It therefore implied that if you have now found a use for the residual grnelina, you have to revert to Forestry Commission as the regulator to discuss the cost aspect of it.

We shall be grateful if you could officially apply for the residual gmelina stating your intended purpose and if a meeting could be arranged to discuss the modalities in this regard together with the Regional Manger.

We hope you will co-operate with this office in our effort to ensure all modalities are finalized before your company ventures into the chipping operations.

Yours faithfully,

LUCY AMOH NTIM (MRS.)
DISTRICT MANAGER.

I/C: TAKORADI FOREST DISTRICT

Cc: THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
FOREST SERVICES DIVISION
ACCRA

THE REGIONAL MANAGER.
FOREST SERVICES DIVISION
WESTERN REGION
TAKORADI

THE AREA MANAGER
TI DO

TAKORADI

FOREST MANAGER
PSG

DABOASE

 

Editorial

INDEPENDENT VOICE

The debate in the Ghanaian political space has been reduced to nothing more than a propaganda war between the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

As a result of this, it has become very difficult to achieve any measure of clarity on important national issues.

The truth of the matter however, is that both the NDC and the NPP are pursuing the neo-liberal agenda on the orders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In our view, the economic crisis facing Ghana today will continue to deepen for as long as we remain on the path of neo-liberalism.

The way out of the mess is for truly independent voices to emerge at the centre of national life and move the country on to a new path of national self-reliance within the framework of Pan- Africanism.

The NDC versus NPP game must be over and it needs to be replaced with something which is truly Ghanaian and African.

The interests of the Ghanaian people needs to be protected at all cost.

Mine Workers Protest

Ghana Mine Workers at work

By Christian Kpesese

The Retired Mine Workers Foundation (REMWOF), sole managers of the Youth In Mining Module (YIM) of the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Authority (GYEEDA) have protested against  what it described as ``derogatory utterances’’ made by Messrs John Boadu and Hon Titus Glover both members of the New Patriotic Party, NPP about the Foundation on separate media platforms.

 The protest was contained in a letter dated 14/ 11/ 2013, signed by the Executive Director of REMWOF, Mr. Michael Bugri and addressed to the two offenders.

Mr John Boadu onetime Deputy Communications Director of party and currently an aspiring National Organizer of the NPP is said to have alleged that, the Youth In Mining module was a ploy by the government and REMWOF to employ and pay 3,000 illegal miners who were already in business as beneficiaries of GYEEDA for ulterior motives.

Mr John Boadu is also quoted to have said that gold produce by the youth are sold to REMWOF officials to enrich themselves.

Hon Titus Glover, Member of Parliament for Tema East is also accused of propagating falsehood with his infamous categorical statement that, the YIM does not exist at all.

REMWOF faulted to the two gentlemen of embarking upon orchestrated politics of misleading the public against a well funded module capable of providing jobs for over 2 million Ghanaian youth.

The statement challenged the two accusers to produce concrete evidence to substantiate their claims since the GYEEDA report is now public.

As a matter of clarity, the statement stated categorically that, the concept of developing the YIM module dates as far back as 2006 when Hon Leonard Kaba was the National Coordinator of the then National Youth Employment Programme, NYEP (now GYEEDA) and Nana Akomea as Minister for Youth and Employment.

The Youth In Mining module he noted was realized after several research findings and practical interaction with sector players to modernize the mining industry of the country under the leadership of Nana Akomea as minister.

According to the statement, The NDC government after the 2008 elections invited the leadership of REMWOF to revise the YIM business plan which it did with a 48- page Business Management and Strategic Implementation Business Plan paving the way for its official inauguration as the only module with a business plan under GYEEDA.

REMWOF chides and questioned the basis of Mr John Boadu and Hon Titus Glover`s accusations because the GYEEDA Report does not cite the YIM module of any illegality.

The statement urged the two men to get their facts right before proceeding to make remarks that stand to damage the hard won reputation of REMWOF officials.

Your Headache, My Panadol?

By Pius Adesanmi

In my Facebook inbox, in my gmail inbox, you have been relentless in your messages. Some of you have asked me: Prof, what’s going on? Why have your columns for Sahara Reporters and Premium Times gone cold? Why has your Facebook page gone cold? Have you given up on Nigeria? Have you deserted your readers and followers? Some of you have no room for niceties. You don’t feel that you have to be nice and charitable so you ask me point blank: Prof, have you gone quiet because you have been settled? After all, you just returned from a trip to Nigeria…

Let’s answer the last question first. No, I have not been settled. I cannot be settled. My answer has never changed anytime anybody from the establishment has approached me to test the waters of ‘settleability’. You must understand that you cannot do what I do, write the stuff that I write, say the stuff that I say, without being approached carefully by self-appointed folks testing the waters to see if you can be “encouraged” to go easy on whichever Oga you are focusing your laser on. They think they are wise. They speak in parables. But if you are smart, you know what they are driving at: name your price.

I have always told such emissaries that, yes, indeed, I can be purchased. I have a price. If you can pay it, you have me where you want me. My price? I always name it. A good friend of mine who was once a Nigerian High Commissioner in a Western country would relate easily to this if he is reading this piece. I always told him what it would take to go easy on his Ogas. My price is very reasonable. There are 170 million of me. Give ALL 170 million of me water, light, job, infrastructure, security, health. When you have done that, stop stealing from all 170 million of me. That is what it would cost to buy my voice. That is what I always ask for. That’s the only condition for my silence. I just haven’t found anybody in the political establishment willing to pay that price. They always give me the impression that I am asking for the impossible; that my price is too high; that I am not important enough to be bought at the price of, say, stable electricity for all 170 million of me.

Now that you know my price, stop inboxing me on Facebook or emailing me at gmail to ask if I’ve been bought. Whey they eventually pay my price and buy me, you will feel it directly around you in water, light, job, infrastructure, security, health, etc.

So, if I have not been bought, why have I kept away from public life in recent weeks? There is an immediate answer and a remote answer. The immediate answer is simple: I have been extremely busy doing capacity building here at the University of Ghana, Legon. That is what Carnegie Corporation New York sent me here to do. Worrying and writing about issues you refuse to worry about in Nigeria or issues you justify, rationalize, and find unbelievable explanations for – even if they directly affect your life and not mine – isn’t what puts bread on my table. The grind of academe is what puts bread on my table. Besides, I am starting to learn slowly and painfully that there is great joy in my not taking Panadol if the owners of the head in Nigeria, those suffering the direct consequences of the unending imbecilities of their leaders, say they have no headache. I am discovering the joys of despondency on account of the Nigerian tragedy.

Now, to the remote cause of my silence. The presidential election of 2015 has been slated for February 14, 2015. It’s just that there is nothing I have to say to you now that I did not say to you thirteen months to the 2011 elections, thirteen months to the 2007 election, and thirteen months to the 2003 election. Why should I start croaking about that same issue now? There is such a thing as sounding like a broken record. I told you in the build up to all previous presidential elections that it does not make any sense – in fact, it is profoundly insulting, degrading, and dehumanizing – that you finally get to know who the contenders are for the highest office in the land less than six months to a given election.

It is January 25, 2014 today. You still don’t know who is running on the platform of which political party and on what issues. You will be treated to elite catfights and mudfights, and slingfights; elite calibrations and recalibrations; elite decampings and recampings between and among political parties till, say, June 2014. Then they start telling you who is running on which platform. Then 170 million people are left with less than six months to scrutinize and examine those who aspire to lead them for four years. The campaigns and debates are then reduced to superficial sound bites and useless soapbox posturing. They wear party ankara on the soap box, waive party emblems, and work you to a frenzy. No Joe the plumber moments. Lamidi the mechanic will never get to ask nationally televised and unscripted rope line questions about why he still cannot pay his rent in 2014 despite promises made in 2011; Kasali the vulcanizer will never get to ask nationally televised and unscripted rope line questions from the APC candidate about why he cannot afford to send his son to LASU despite having been a law abiding and hardworking citizen of Lagos state his entire life.

When you don’t get to ask these questions in the build up to a presidential election, it is treatment worse than the situation of those herbivorous South African Christians made to eat grass by their pastor. Nigerians shared that deplorable news from South Africa and laughed. I shook my head in disgust. Folks who are being treated with so much contempt by the so-called democracy in their country are laughing at South African Christian herbivores. Is their situation not worse than those chewing grass in South Africa? Are their leaders in Nigeria not making them chew worse than grass?

In the run-up to all previous presidential elections, I screamed myself hoarse. I told you that the political players will never respect you – no matter which party they belong to – unless you demand respect and begin to work on the ground rules for respect. Demand for respect begins by saying no to candidates you did not have enough time to scrutinize. How do you scrutinize a presidential candidate in less than six months? You need time to identify the issues on which a candidate is running. These issues span the political, economic, social, and ethical realms of our national life. You need time for all the strategic stakeholders in our national life – political groups, social, groups, civil society groups and organizations, student groups, just to mention a few – to scrutinize each candidate on the basis of these issues. They need to go round the country on various platforms for scrutiny. How do you do this when politicians and political parties get away with the arrogance and insult of not telling you who is running until the very last minute. Gosh, some candidates even add insult to injury by failing to show up for presidential debates.

This insulting scenario is unfolding again in the build-up to 2015. We know that the election is thirteen months away. No candidates. No issues. No scrutiny. They keep you busy with distraction after distraction; they multiply presidential brigandage and irresponsibility in Rivers state to keep you talking. By the time you shine your eyes, it’s almost 2015 and there little time left to scrutinize anybody or anything. This is the point at which those who should know better - educated members of the public who are active on social media - will jump up and begin to rationalize nonsense. They will find explanations and justifications for anything. They will tell you that the idea of the political process respecting the citizenry by giving them enough time to question candidates and scrutinize the issues they are running on is not compatible with our realities and it is not fair for you to keep insisting on “foreign scenarios”. They will propose “realistic and home-grown scenarios” for accommodating insult and tolerating mediocrity. So, I ask myself, why should I continue to swallow Panadol on account of the headache that these folks claim they don’t have?

The insults pile up from every corner of the political spectrum. You tell the victims that even while we agree that the PDP must be booted out of our lives in 2015 by every means legal, lawful, and non-violent, there is an even greater responsibility not to reward APC with precisely the sort of docile and irresponsible followership that could transform her into a laminated photocopy of PDP in power. You tell them that APC must be saddled with vigilant followership. As Nigeria’s only viable hope for escaping one and a half decades of PDP hell, APC must be helped against her own demons. Then some Nigerians suffering at home write you: “Prof, you have been so critical of APC recently. Even if the thieves in PDP are now migrating en masse to APC, don’t you think it is better for us to try the same set of thieves on a different political platform? Why should we always try them on the same political platform and expect different results?”

You almost suffer a heart attack, reading such an unbelievable message from educated Nigerians. You try to tell them that as followers of the only viable alternative political platform to the hell and rot that is PDP, now is the time for them to make it clear to APC leaders that it is not going to be followership as usual; that vigilance will be the keyword. They tell you that things must work according to our realities. For “our realities”, read grass chewing by the people at the prompting of laughing politicians. So, I ask myself, why should I continue to swallow Panadol on account of the headache that these folks claim they don’t have?

That explains my silence in recent weeks…

Cut Off the NSA’s Juice

By Norman Solomon

The National Security Agency depends on huge computers that guzzle electricity in the service of the surveillance state. For the NSA’s top executives, maintaining a vast flow of juice to keep Big Brother nourished is essential — and any interference with that flow is unthinkable.

But interference isn’t unthinkable. And in fact, it may be doable.

Grassroots activists have begun to realize the potential to put the NSA on the defensive in nearly a dozen states where the agency is known to be running surveillance facilities, integral to its worldwide snoop operations.

Organizers have begun to push for action by state legislatures to impede the electric, water and other services that sustain the NSA’s secretive outposts.

Those efforts are farthest along in the state of Washington, where a new bill in the legislature — the Fourth Amendment Protection Act — is a statutory nightmare for the NSA. The agency has a listening post in Yakima, in the south-central part of the state.

The bill throws down a challenge to the NSA, seeking to block all state support for NSA activities violating the Fourth Amendment. For instance, that could mean a cutoff of electricity or water or other state-government services to the NSA site. And the measure also provides for withholding other forms of support, such as research and partnerships with state universities.

Here’s the crux of the bill: “It is the policy of this state to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant that particularly describes the person, place, and thing to be searched or seized.”

If the windup of that long sentence has a familiar ring, it should. The final dozen words are almost identical to key phrases in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In recent days, more than 15,000 people have signed a petition expressing support for the legislation. Launched by RootsAction.org, the petition is addressed to the bill’s two sponsors in the Washington legislature — Republican Rep. David Taylor, whose district includes the NSA facility in Yakima, and Democrat Luis Moscoso from the Seattle area.

Meanwhile, a similar bill with the same title has just been introduced in the Tennessee legislature — taking aim at the NSA’s center based in Oak Ridge, Tenn. That NSA facility is a doozy: with several hundred scientists and computer specialists working to push supercomputers into new realms of mega-surveillance capacities.

A new coalition, OffNow, is sharing information about model legislation. The group also points to known NSA locations in other states including Utah (in Bluffdale), Texas (San Antonio), Georgia (Augusta), Colorado (Aurora), Hawaii (Oahu) and West Virginia (Sugar Grove), along with the NSA’s massive headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland. Grassroots action and legislative measures are also stirring in several of those states.

One of the key organizations in such efforts is the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, where legal fellow Matthew Kellegrew told me that the OffNow coalition “represents the discontent of average people with … business-as-usual failure to rein in out-of-control domestic spying by the NSA and other federal departments like the FBI. It is a direct, unambiguous response to a direct, unambiguous threat to our civil liberties.”

In the process — working to counter the bipartisan surveillance-state leadership coming from the likes of President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, the House Intelligence Committee’s chair Mike Rogers and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s chair Dianne Feinstein — activists urging a halt to state-level support for the NSA include people who disagree on other matters but are determined to undermine the Big Brother hierarchies of both parties.

“By working together to tackle the erosion of the Fourth Amendment presented by bulk data collection,” Kellegrew said, “people from across partisan divides are resurrecting the lost art of collaboration and in the process, rehabilitating the possibility of a functional American political dialogue denied to the people by dysfunction majority partisan hackery.”

From another vantage point, this is an emerging faceoff between reliance on cynical violence and engagement in civic nonviolence.

Serving the warfare state and overall agendas for U.S. global dominance to the benefit of corporate elites, the NSA persists in doing violence to the Constitution’s civil-liberties amendments — chilling the First, smashing the Fourth and end-running the Fifth.

Meanwhile, a nascent constellation of movements is striving to thwart the surveillance state, the shadowy companion of perpetual war.

This is a struggle for power over what kind of future can be created for humanity.

It’s time to stop giving juice to Big Brother.

90 years after death, Lenin’s contributions appreciated

Vladimir Lenin

By John Catalinotto

Lenin is the recognized leader of the political party that directed the working-class’s seizure of state power in Russia in the fall of 1917. For the first time in history, a subject class was placed at the head of society.

Lenin had built the Bolshevik Party, later the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and he was the architect setting up the framework of the new multinational state of many peoples, stretching from Eastern Europe to Siberia, from the Arctic Sea to Central Asia.

Lenin, whose real name was Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, died from a stroke at the age of 53 on Jan. 21, 1924 — 90 years ago. We know that no revolution can be the work of a single individual. Tens of millions of human beings whose life conditions drive them to understand the need to struggle and sacrifice need to participate and cooperate to bring such a revolution about. More than any other single individual, however, Lenin was responsible for the workers’ victory in Russia.

This revolution and the Soviet state aided, inspired and supported the uprisings that liberated many of the oppressed countries from imperialism and workers from exploitation during the 20th century. The USSR, a product of the 1917 revolution, was the greatest nightmare for the imperialist ruling class. For that reason, the bankers, billionaires and their paid propagandists made the Soviet Union a pariah state and hated Lenin more than any other single individual in history. To this day, he remains the number one historical enemy of the rich.

At the same time, Lenin remains a beacon for those who want to struggle.  This is especially true for revolutionaries living in the industrialized and urbanized countries that are part of the imperialist world and where the masses most often live in cities. They want to construct a framework to facilitate a revolution that overthrows capitalism and starts to build a new world where exploitation and inequality are eliminated.

Lenin’s contributions to revolutionary history are rich. Others will undoubtedly make their own additions to the four lessons listed here, which remain essential to carrying out class struggle in the 21st century:

Lenin’s analysis of world imperialism, written during World War I, underlined the inevitability of the drive toward war and conquest growing out of the capitalist system when it had become a worldwide phenomenon.

Lenin’s analysis of the “national question” and how communists should relate to the struggle of peoples and nations for self-determination, including independence, united the communists and the movements for liberation throughout the colonial world.

Lenin’s approach to organizing a working-class party. He outlined this in his 1901 pamphlet, “What Is to Be Done,” and carried it out through the 1917 revolution and beyond. Lenin’s work was specific to the reality of Czarist Russia of that period, but the principles he laid out for creating a party that is an instrument of effective working-class struggle have remained intact since.

Lenin extended Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ analysis of the capitalist state in his work, “State and Revolution,” which he wrote in August and September of 1917 while forced into hiding. The imperialist states have grown even more weaponized and bureaucratic since that day, as have the capitalist states in Asia, Africa and Latin America. This pamphlet has the happiest of endings, as Lenin noted in explaining why he had to stop writing: “It is more pleasant and useful to go through the ‘experience of the revolution’ than to write about it.”

He not only experienced that revolution but led it. It was the major factor in the history of the 20th century until it was reversed in 1989-1991.

To open the study of Lenin in this 90th year after his death, we’d like to call attention to an article written by late-Workers World Party founder Sam Marcy in 1992, which is available online at tinyurl.com/jw8mm6v. This work, written after the disappearance of the Soviet Union, analyzes the enormous problems that the Bolsheviks faced in the period just after the 1917 Revolution. It is a good way to begin to appreciate the contributions of Lenin.

Ukraine: Foreign Engineered Regime Change Operation

By Rick Rozoff and John Robles

The situation in Ukraine is a fluid one and changing by the hour. Although it had appeared that there was a resolution to the protests that had broken out after the government of Ukraine had made the sovereign decision of sticking with Russia and saying no to closer European Union integration, excessive violence from the western backed opposition has spread like a wave throughout the country.

The so called Ukrainian “opposition” now resembles something more akin to armed insurgents in Syria involved in a coup d’état than opposition protestors.

The situation in Ukraine once again underlines US hypocrisy. The US, which prides itself on protecting its police, supports an “opposition” which is threatening, attacking, kidnapping and setting young police officers on fire. The scene currently playing out in Ukraine has all of the signs of a foreign engineered regime change operation and with the taking of government buildings, has unarguably moved  into a scenario where the continuity of the state is in question.

Voice of Russia regular and NATO expert Rick Rozoff discussed all of these issues and more as the situation threatens to spin out of control.

Robles: Thanks a lot. I was wondering if we can get your views on what is going on in Maidan or Independence Square in Ukraine. It seems like the level of violence is escalating with … looks like no end in sight, I don’t know. What do you think?

Rozoff: No, you are absolutely correct. Ukraine has become, you know, the center of attention I think , globally, right now, the cynosure. People are focused on it with good reason. In a way it’s replaced Syria as the, how would I put it, proxy conflict between the East and West with the West once again on the offensive. That is, in an attempt to do something, nothing short of toppling an elected government of a nation that has close state-to-state relationships with Russia.

And what is happening is fluid, of course, but it is also tense and it is also fraught with not only dangerous but potentially catastrophic consequences if the violence that exists in Kiev in and around Independence Square and now by recent reports spreading into parts of Western Ukraine where the hotbeds of nationalist and even fascistic extremism are…

So I think what you are seeing is well-coordinated series of activities that began in Kiev and may very well spread to the Western part of Ukraine.

Robles: I see. What are your views on who is behind all this, and the reasons for it? Now at first they came up with that there was the EU integration, then they were protesting the government, and then they were calling for early elections, then they were protesting against Russia.

Now one of the objects of the protesters&# 39; actions is something about some students that were beat several weeks ago. It just seems like they are finding any reason whatsoever to keep escalating and continuing their violence.

During the night there were negotiations and the opposition said they had agreed to the conditions set by the government to stop their violent activities, and then they went out and announced this to their supporters. Their supporters weren’t happy about it and they went back on their word, they said: ‘No, we are not going to agree to any cease in our violence’ .

And they are continuing with their violence which, they’re throwing Molotov cocktails at Police. All of the Police and the security forces they are suffering severe burns and the violence against the police is escalating.

And of we look at who the leaders are, it brings a lot of questions to my mind – as who is actually running all of this? I mean they’ve got this ex-boxer, he is promoting all this violence.

Can you give us some comments on him and on the resolution by the Russian State Duma yesterday, if you could, regarding the violence?

Rozoff: Yes, the opposition, and again we have to keep in mind in a fluid situation like this, and what we are looking at is really not only a destabilization but ultimately a regime change technique or scenario. But what we see is the boxer, the heavyweight boxer Vitali Klichko, and two other nationalists emerging as what is a typical color revolution scenario where there is a triumvirate or triad of political leaders.

This was true by the way during the Orange Revolution, so-called, in 2004 and 2005. We had Viktor Yanukovich (Yushchenko) , Yulia Tymoshenko and Alexander Moroz as being the triumvirate, modeled after that in Georgia, incidentally, the preceding year, in 2003.

So, the question is begged of course, about whether the public or nominal leadership is really anything more than figureheads, or are anything more than figureheads, and whether in fact there is not something more substantive behind it both internally and of course externally.

So what we are looking at is a degree of violence against police officers that would not be tolerated in any other European country, I can assure you, certainly not in the West. But being cheered on and supported unequivocally by Western political leaders in the European Union, in the United States, in NATO I might add.

Yesterday Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said, “Violence can never be used for political means.” You know, a lightening bolt should come from the heavens and strike anyone making a statement like that when they’re the head of NATO which has used violence for political means uninterruptedly since 1995 in several countries on three continents.

Robles: Well that’s their only tactic. How could you say that?

Rozoff: But of course. But I mean there is a difference between official use of force by a government to maintain peace in a country – there could be abuses, there could be excessive use of that force, but at least it is legally sanctioned – as opposed to people who are a little bit better than gangsters at times, hitting police officers with hammers or throwing petrol bombs at them.

You don’t see much of it here in the West, but luckily with the Internet we can see a television broadcasts around the world. And we’ve seen the horrifying pictures of the results of the use of so-called Molotov cocktails in Kiev. Seeing your young police officers’ heads and arms are on fire and so forth and you can only imagine the degree of, third-degree I’m sure, of burns that they suffer as a result of gasoline bombs.

But I think rather than focusing on the mechanics of what is going on, which will be debated ad nauseam in the Western press of course, what is important to again come back to you, and you and I have had occasion to talk about this before, John, is the regional and ultimately the global context within which the battle for Ukraine, and I would term it exactly that the battle for Ukraine, is occurring.

One factor which is very significant but didnot receive the attention it certainly warranted was in the middle of last month, the middle of December, now former US Congressman Dennis Kucinich, he had served in the US House of Representatives for eight terms, for 16 years- he is a native of my home state of Ohio, incidentally – wrote a very revealing article stating that the so-called European Union Association Agreement with – initiative rather – with Ukraine was simply NATO’s Trojan Horse in Ukraine. This is precisely how former Congressman Kucinich put it. And what he did indicate and he shows a fairly good degree of familiarity with how all these things are done that Ukraine would first to join NATO and then join the European Union because traditionally that is how it has occurred, with the newer members, with the exception of tiny island nations of Cyprus and Malta.

So that what we are looking at is Ukraine is a geo-strategically pivotal nation; it clearly is that nation that separates what geopoliticians or -strategists would talk about from East to the West. It borders, of course, Poland and other nations that are now considered to be in Central Europe for that matter and Russia to its East which of course is in Eastern Europe and even in Eurasia. I mean, in fact, the greater part of Russia being in Asia itself.

What we are seeing is something almost evocative of formal struggles, and there is a history of Ukraine being pivotal in that sense. Many of your listeners may be acquainted either with the 19th century novel Taras Bulba, by the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol, who is from Ukraine, or the movie adaptation at the end of the last century, more people might know.

It is a fact that Ukraine is a bone of contention between the Westernized Slavic part of Europe, if you will, those with the Latin alphabet and the Roman Catholic religion and those with the Cyrillic alphabet and the Orthodox religion which Ukraine for the most part is. And that we’ve seen similar situations after World War 1, during World War 2.

In World War 1 Germany, in the first instance, tried to wean Ukraine away from Russia; in World War 2 Stepan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators, who are heroes incidentally to the modern nationalists in Ukraine, who under the Yushchenko government rehabilitated members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and others who had collaborated with the Nazi Germany, so we are looking at very extremist elements..

Probably the most visible and prominent of the so-called youth activista are members of the so-called Svoboda or Freedom party, which up until a few years ago had as its logo a variant of the Nazi swastika. So let’s be very clear about what we are dealing with. There are may be any number of innocent youth who want, going out for a dare, much as Orange Revolution in 2004-2005, but behind it there are some very hardcore nationalists, and Russo-phobic extremists, who whether be known to themselves or not are serving the purpose of turning yet another country into a battle zone in a renewed post-Cold War East-West conflict.

Robles: Can you give us your views on the statement by the Crimean parliament and by the Russian Duma yesterday? The Russian Duma is calling for foreign actors, foreign players -we know who we are talking about: the West, the US – to refrain from interfering in Ukraine.

The Crimean parliament, they adopted a statement with a vote of 78-81 deputies in favor of it. The statement reads: ‘The political crisis, the formal pretext for which was a pause in Ukraine’ s European integration has developed into armed resistance and street fights. Hundreds of people have been hurt and, unfortunately, some people have been killed. The price for the power ambitions of a bunch of political saboteurs – Klichko, Yatsenyuk and Tyagnibok- is too high. They have crossed the line by provoking bloodshed using the interests of the people of Ukraine as cover and pretending to act on their own behalf.’

And they finish up by saying:’ The people of Crimea will never engage in illegitimate elections, will never recognize their results. And will not live in Bandera Ukraine.’ – they say. So, can you comment on that and on the Russian resolution, if you would?

Rozoff: First of all I want to commend you, as of I think yesterday or perhaps today, of compiling a list of I think significant statements by the Russian State Duma, the duma or the parliament in Crimea and others and putting them into a very condensed form that has been very useful to me.

A couple of things: the trio of opposition figures is exactly the triumvirate I alluded to earlier with Vitali Klichko playing what could only be described as a sort of Rocky Balboa-meets- Rambo Sylvester Stallone compilation of pseudo-populist, right-wing, dangerous and ultimately violent sort of activity.

The Bandera allusion we’ve talked about earlier; he was a leader during World War 2 of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and fought against the legitimate political authorities in what was then Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, but often times in conjunction with the Third Reich, with the Nazis. So they are using the same language you and I had used.

Now, what we are talking about here in Crimea is of the upmost importance. The US has for several years now been waging, in conjunction with its NATO allies, annual fairly large-scale naval war games called Sea Breeze, and they are conducted in the Crimea dangerously close to where the Russian Black Sea fleet is stationed at Sevastopol. And even though a public outcry led to, or resulted in, a Sea Breeze exercise I think three years ago, perhaps four, being called off, they have been resumed and what has happened over the last two or three years, this is very significant, and I hope your listeners pick up on this, the US as a matter of course has been sending missile cruisers into the Black Sea to go to Crimea, to dock there.

These are what are called the Ticonderoga- class guided missile cruisers, of the sort that are part of the US international missile, so-called missile shield, that is they are to be equipped with Standard Missile-3 interceptor missiles, and these ships are visiting Ukraine on a regular basis.

As the US continues its military takeover of the Black Sea, they’ve already done this with Bulgaria and Rumania, where they’ve acquired eight major military basses in those two countries. Turkey of course is a NATO ally and Ukraine then becomes a very significant factor in the US military takeover of the Black Sea largely through NATO expansion. But what is even I think of more concern, a WikiLeaks document of in the last couple of years revealed that in 2006 the then-head of the US Missile Defense Agency, he’s now retired, General Henry, or Trey, Obering, met with Ukrainian officials, this was during the Yushchenko [administration] , to recruit Ukraine into the European missile shield.

And in the subsequent year, 2007, General Obering, head the Missile Defense Agency, visited to Ukraine during the Yushchenko years, administration years, and met with the defense minister and other key officials in Ukraine in an effort to bring Ukraine into that. If Ukraine were to join, along with Poland, Romania, Turkey and other countries, the beginning stages of the so-called European Phased Adaptive Approach for the interceptor missile system, this would be extremely dangerous. This would be such an open provocation to Russia that I don’t see how Russia could not take some fairly dramatic action in response to it.

So when we talk about the factors that are involved we have to keep several significant ones in mind.

First of all, Ukraine is strategically vital, it is indispensable. In the energy wars that the US and its European Union allies, which is to say NATO allies, have been waging over the past decade to try to curtail Russian exports of natural gas and oil to Europe, ultimately perhaps to cut them off altogether in favor of natural gas and oil projects bringing Caspian Sea energy into Europe via the Caucasus, Azerbaijan and Georgia, but of course from there to Ukraine, from Ukraine into the Western Europe. So Ukraine is significant in that sense.

Ukraine is also one of four countries that NATO has announced, four non-NATO countries, that are to join the NATO Response Force, that is the international strike force that NATO has developed. The other three are Georgia, Finland and Sweden. Of course three of those four countries, all except Sweden, have lengthy borders with Russia.

And that Ukraine has been gradually, I think unbeknownst to most people in Ukraine, and certainly outside, has been dragged into the NATO net deeper and deeper and deeper.

Ukraine is, and these are significant facts, so I hope you don’t mind my emphasizing them. Ukrainet became the first, and to date only, non-NATO country to supply a naval vessel to what is now NATO’s permanent surveillance and interdiction naval operation in the Mediterranean Sea – Operation Active Endeavor. Ukraine’s second to that became the first, and to date only, non-NATO country to supply a ship to NATO’s Arabian Sea – Operation Ocean Shield. Ukraine, during the Kuchma government, supplied 2,000 troops to the United States, NATO in Iraq. They have a small contingent of troops serving under NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

Part 1 of an interview with Rick Rozoff, the owner and manager of the Stop NATO website and international mailing list. You can find the rest of this interview on our website at http://voiceofrussia. com

SEED MONOPOLIES, GMOS AND FARMERS SUICIDES IN INDIA 

Response by Dr Vandana Shiva to an article published on 1^st May 2013 in Nature by Natasha Gilbert titled “Case studies: A hard look at GM crops”

The article by Natasha Gilbert begins a section entitled GM cotton has driven farmers to suicide by quoting me:

“During an interview in March, Vandana Shiva, an environmental and feminist activist from India, repeated an alarming statistic: ‘270,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since Monsanto entered the Indian seed market,’ she said. ‘It’s genocide.’”

Yes, I am an ecologist and feminist. But I am also a scientist - a fact that Natasha intentionally avoids mentioning. As a Quantum Physicist, I have been trained to look at the interconnectedness and non-separability of processes, which in a mechanistic and reductionist paradigm, are seen as separate and unrelated.

As a scientist, I have tried to understand what is driving our small farmers to suicide. Two things are evident. One, the suicides begin with the period of globalization which allowed MNC’s  entry into India’s Seed Sector, making seeds a non-renewable ‘input’, to be bought every year.

Secondly, the suicides have further intensified after the introduction of GMO Bt cotton. GMOs are intrinsically linked to Intellectual Property Rights, which in turn are linked to royalty payments. Royalties are extracted from poor farmers through credit and debt. The Monsanto representative, who appeared before India’s Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture, admitted that Monsanto was collecting Rs 700 as royalty for a 450 gm packet of seed costing Rs 1600. The shift to Bt cotton meant a jump of 8000% in the cost of seed. This is at the root of the farmers’ distress in the cotton areas of India.

As a human being, it concerns me deeply that 284,694 small farmers of India, the most resilient and courageous people I have known, have in recent times been driven to the desperation of taking their lives because of  a debt trap created by a corporate  driven economy of greed that profits from selling them costly chemicals and non-renewable seeds. And we must not forget that the agrochemical industry is the biotechnology industry is the global seed industry.

I look at GMOs as a system of corporate control over seed, a system of Intellectual Property, a system of ecological impacts on soil and biodiversity, a system of health impacts on humans and animals, a system of socio-economic impacts on the livelihoods and survival of farmers.

GMOs are not a “thing”, they are a set of relationships, and it is the context created by these relationships that is driving farmers to suicide. GMOs are not a disembodied “technology” as so many pro-GMO commentators try to present. These commentators then proceed to protect this abstract construction of GMOs as disembodied technologies from the evidence of reality. In reality, what exists is a GMO complex, or nexus, that has an impact on real ecosystems and real farmers.

Shutting out evidence from reality is a completely unscientific approach. Reality cannot be cooked up in papers, no matter how prestigious the journals in which these concoctions are published.  Reality is what happens in reality - the reality of farmers’ suicides, reality of the emergence of super-pests and super-weeds, the reality of rising costs of seed as royalties are extracted from poor peasants. These are no abstractions; rather, they are the lived realities of the consequences of GMOs.

In a systems framework, the scientific approach is to identify the interconnections in reality, and identify systems causality and contextual causation. In the cotton areas, farmers’ suicides started in a context of seed monopolies and destruction of alternatives. And that is the context that must be understood. Contexts require the understanding of contextual causality. Systems require an understanding of systems causation.

The figures of farmers’ suicides are not mine. They come from government statistics of the National Bureau of crime records. The latest figure updated up to 2012 is 284,694.  Any human being anywhere should be outraged at this tragedy. And any scientist working for social and ecological responsibility should want to go to the roots of the crisis, not try and cover it up with unscientific analysis and false claims.

As Natasha’s quote makes clear, I link farmers suicides, which are concentrated in the cotton areas, to Monsanto’s entry into the Indian seed market and its establishment of a monopoly in the cotton seed market.  However, Natasha leaves out the role of Monsanto’s monopoly in her article, and reduces the issue to GM cotton. This is not a hard look, but a blinded, blinkered and biased delusion. What Natasha, in her article, brushes off as an ‘oft repeated story of corporate exploitation’ is a story that is deeply grounded in both human and scientific realities. It is, indeed, a genocide.

The Emergence of Farmers’ Suicides

When the role of seed monopolies in cotton as contributing to farmers suicides has to be studied, one must focus on the cotton areas, not on the entire country . All studies that try and disconnect suicides in the cotton areas from Monsanto’s seed monopoly take the aggregate national data, not the figures of the regions and states where cotton cultivation and cultivation of Bt cotton is concentrated. It is equivalent to declaring that a patient suffering from throat cancer is fine by looking at the health of cells in the entire body, instead of focusing on the cancerous cells in the throat.

We have been studying the creation of seed monopolies since 1987, during the period of the Uruguay Round of the GATT, when corporations like Monsanto pushed intellectual property rights over seeds and life forms into trade treaties. This led to the TRIPS agreement of WTO. Monsanto has admitted that it was the “patient, diagnostician, and physician” in defining intellectual property in WTO. In this way, GMOs are the vehicle for introducing patents and IPR in order to collect royalties. With the introduction of Bt. cotton, the price of seed jumped 8000% because of royalties. Every year more $200 million flows from the Indian peasants to Monsanto. This is at the heart of the intensification of farmers suicides in the cotton belt of India.

We have been studying farmers’ suicides on the ground since 1997 when we first witnessed a suicide of a farmer in Warangal, who had shifted from mixed dry land agriculture to hybrid cotton cultivation and gotten into debt for seeds, fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation. We have issued reports entitled ‘Seeds of Suicide’ since 1997, based on field research on the ground, not secondary data analyzed incoherently in distant places.

In 1997, Monsanto started its illegal field trials of Bt. cotton in India. We had to sue them in the Supreme Court of India, and as a result they could not commercialize their Bt cotton until 2002. But the consolidation of the seed industry and the erosion of farmers’ seed sovereignty through creating dependence on purchase of non-renewable seed was already underway.

Farmers’ suicides started in 1995 when globalization enabled seed MNCs like Monsanto to enter the Indian seed market and start establishing seed monopolies. The suicides have increased with the commercial sales of GMO Bt. cotton. Bt. cotton currently accounts for 95% of the cotton seeds commercially sold in India. Famers have adopted Bt. cotton not because it gave higher yields or gave them higher incomes, but because all alternatives have been destroyed.

Destruction of Choice

Farmers are not choosing Bt. cotton. They have no choice left. The systematic wiping out of non Bt. alternatives from the market and the aggressive marketing of Bt. cotton has created a monopoly. It is not profits, but deliberate destruction of alternatives that have pushed farmers into the Bt. cotton trap, and as a consequence, into the suicide trap. Farmers’ varieties are displaced through the very clever strategy termed as “seed replacement”. Public varieties have mysteriously stopped being released. And most Indian companies are locked into licensing arrangements with Monsanto, and can only sell Monsanto’s Bollgard Bt. cotton seeds.

The Standing Committee on Agriculture of the Indian Parliament went to Vidarbha, an area where farmers been deeply affected, to hold public consultations. Here they found the reality to be entirely different from what promoters of Bt cotton had been telling them about increased production, productivity, and prosperity. The report from the committee states, “The last 10 years of Bt cotton also establish the fact that monopolies in the seed sector could be a great concern. In the current scenario, 93% of Bt. cotton has the propriety gene of Monsanto, the American seed giant, which is the world’s largest seed company. This monopoly has also given Monsanto the power to arm twist governments to increase prices of seeds.

Strangely, this lack of choice for the farmers is drummed around as farmers accepting Bt. cotton seeds.” (Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, Indian Parliament, 2012).

Failure to Yield

Yields of cotton have not grown since Bt. cotton was introduced. Cotton yields were higher before Bt cotton than after. Our field surveys reveal frequent failure. There has been a trend of declining yields as corroborated in the paper by Dr. Keshav Kranthi (CICR) reviewing the 10 years of Bt Cotton. “Currently the main issue that worries stakeholders is the stagnation of productivity at an average of 500 kg lint per ha for the past seven years. The gains have been stagnant and unaffected by the increase in area of Bt cotton from 5.6% in 2004 to 85% in 2010. The yield was 463 kg per hectare when the Bt cotton area was 5.6% in 2004 and reached a mere 506 kg per hectare when the area under Bt cotton increased to 9.4 M hectares at 85% of the total 11.1 M hectares.” (Kranthi.K (2011), “10 years of Bt. in India”

http://www.cotton247.com/article/27520/part-ii-10-years-of-bt-in-india

Increase in Pests and Pesticide Use

Secondly, contrary to the claim of the GMO lobby, pests have increased not reduced, and therefore pesticide use has gone up, not come down. Insects which were not cotton pests have become pests. These include aphids and jassids, mealy bug, army bug. The mealy bug was not observed in India before the introduction of Bt. cotton. The increase in no target pests is as high as 300%. In his 2011 report Dr. Kranthi states, “Productivity in north India is likely to decline because of the declining potential of hybrids; the emerging problem of leaf curl virus on the new susceptible Bt-hybrids; a high level of susceptibility to sucking pests (straight varieties were resistant); problems with nutrient deficiencies and physiological disorders; and mealy bugs, whiteflies and miscellaneous insect problems that are likely to increase (Kranthi.K (2011). Part-3: “10 years of Bt. in India”

http://www.cotton247.com/article/27614/part-iii-10-years-of-bt-in-india

Meanwhile, the bollworm, which was supposed to be controlled by the Bt. toxin in Bt. Cotton, has become resistant. This is admitted by Monsanto, which has now introduced the more expensive Bollgard II to replace the Bollgard I.  (Sharma, D (2010). Bt cotton has failed, admits Monsanto. India Today, March 6, 2010 http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/86939/India/Bt+cotton+has+failed+admits)

Bollworm resistance to Bt. resistance monitoring studies done at CICR have demonstrated that bollworm (helicoverpa armigera), the target pest of Bt cotton, has developed tolerance for it. Other studies have also shown bollworm surviving and reproducing in Bt. Cotton, in both single gene and double gene Bt.

(M.T. Ranjith, A. Prabhuraj, & Y.B. Srinivasa. (2010). Survival and reproduction of natural populations of Helicoverpa Armigera on Bt. cotton hybrids in Raichur, India, Current Science, 99, (11) 1602-1606)

Our field studies in Vidarbha show a 13 fold increase in use of pesticides after Bt cotton was introduced. Farmers’ profits have not increased; in fact, the farmers have got into debt, and that is the reason they are committing suicide

Table 1: Increasing Cost of Pesticide in Maharashtra

Year	Maharashtra
	Area under Bt Cotton Million Hectares	Cost of Pesticide (Rs. Crores)
2004-05	0.200	92.10
2005-06	0.607	273.45
2006-07	1.840	847.32
2007-08	2.880	1326.24
2008-09	2.984	1335.34
2009-10	3.315	1483.22
2010-11	3.9	1654.00
2011-12	4.095	1858.00

The increase in pesticide use in Maharashtra is confirmed by the official statistics. The pesticide usage trends in the major cotton-growing states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka are shown above. While Maharashtra shows a significant upward trend from 3198 MT to 4639 MT, the other states show only marginal change, except for the downward trend in Andhra Pradesh. The decline in Andhra Pradesh is because of a major government programme to promote sustainable, non pesticide farming.

Table 2: Pesticide usage in Metric Tonnes technical grade

	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10
Andhra Pradesh	1997	1394	1541	1381	1015
Gujarat	2700	2670	2660	2650	2750
Karnataka	1638	1362	1588	1675	1647
Maharashtra	3198	3193	3050	2400	4639
Punjab	5610	5975	6080	5760	5810
Madhya Pradesh	787	957	696	663	645
All India	39773	41515	43630	43860	41822

Source: Directorate of Plant Protection, http://ppqs.gov.in/IpmPesticides.htm

Seeds of Suicide: GMO Bt. cotton has contributed to an increase in farmers’ suicides

The combination of high costs of seed due to royalty collection, failure to increase yields or control pests, Bt. cotton has intensified the agrarian distress faced by farmers in the cotton areas of India.

Maharashtra is the state which today has maximum area under Bt. cotton. In the state there were 1083 farmer suicides in 1995 which increased to 3695 in 2002, more than three times jump; coinciding with the year when Monsanto introduced Bt Cotton. The scenario of Vidarbha, which is the epicenter of Bt. cotton cultivation, and the epicenter of farmers suicides, clearly shows that suicides increased after the introduction of Bt. Cotton. There were only 52 farmer suicides in 2001 but since 2002 suicides increased alarmingly as the area under Bt. cotton increased.

Year	No of Suicides
2001	52
2002	104
2003	148
2004	447
2005	445
2006	1148
2007	1246
2008	1248
2009	916
2010	748
2011	916
2012	927

Graph 1: Farmer suicides over the years in

 Vidarbha, Maharashtra

The figures went down in 2008 after the announcement of the Rs. 169.78 billion debt relief package by the Prime Minister.

“The Illegal War on Libya”

Review of Cynthia McKinney's New Book on US-NATO War Crimes Against Libya

By Dr. Ludwig Watzal

All the wars and attacks, which were started by the U. S. and its so-called allies in the wake of 9/11, have wreaked havoc. You name it, you got it: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and perhaps even Iran. The Islamic Republic is not yet off the hook. There are strong forces in the U. S. and in the Middle East that prefer war to peace at the expense of the U. S. Right now, there is a war going on in Libya against the Western installed puppet government, without notice of the corporate media.

Cynthia McKinney, a former African-American Congresswoman has edited a book, The Illegal War on Libya (Clarity Press, Atlanta 2012), on the illegal war on Libya fought by NATO members with the support of the Arab League and some despotic Arab regimes. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms in the House of Representatives before she was defeated by Denise Majette in the 2002 Democratic primary. McKinney’s loss was attributed to her support of Arab causes and to her suggestion that George W. Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

Those whom the Western powers and their fawning media wish to destroy must first be demonised. This was exactly what happened to Libya’s leader Muammar al Gaddafi. Just before France, Great Britain and the U.S. started the war against Libya, Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi and other Western politicians courted Gaddafi. When the Libyan leader visited Paris in 2007, he struck his tent in front of the guest house of the French government. His bizarre conduct and much more were accepted by Sarkozy in order to promote lucrative business with Libya. A few years later, he rewarded him with and his country with a bombing spree.

As a candidate for the U.S. Presidency, Barack Hussein Obama had nice things to say in December 2007: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” After he became U.S. President, he expanded drone attacks to an unprecedented scale. “As the U.S. fires its drones killing innocent Somalis, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Afghanis, and others around the world, it is my hope that this book will provide a rare prism of truth through which to view NATO’s illegal war in Libya, current and future events, and US foreign relations as a whole,” so McKinney in her introductory remarks.

In her book, Cynthia McKinney has gathered a large number of renowned authors who offer an alternative perspective of the events in Libya. Some authors even risked their life by reporting live during the war. Among them are Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Julien Teil, Stephen Lendman, Christof Lehman, Sara Flounders, Wayne Madsen, Bob Fitrakis, and many others. All of them illuminate the dark machinations of the U.S. in Libya and elsewhere. Their narrative reminds the readers of the overthrow of the Iranian, Guatemalan or Chilean democracy by the U.S. for corporate benefit. The same apparently held true for Libya.

The essays in McKinney’s anthology describe the horrors caused by the Western bombing campaign and the distorted picture of the events painted by mainstream media. Lizzie Phelan refers to a “full blown media war” and to the silence of Western journalists while Libya was “being bombed into extermination.” Although they witnessed these horrors, they found “all manner of justifications for their self and collective delusion.” Their behavior reminded the author of the riddle: “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?” The Western media pundits played down the horrendous crimes against the Libyan people by cartooning Gaddafi as a “mad dog.”

Stephen Lendman designated the crimes committed by NATO against Libya as amounting to “a Nuremberg Level.” He added: “The US-led NATO war on Libya will be remembered as one of history’s greatest crimes, violating the letter and spirit of international law and America’s Constitution.” Whereas the “Third Reich criminals were hanged for their crimes. America’s are still free to commit greater ones.” Lendman invokes General Wesley Clark who was told at the Pentagon a few days after 9/11, that the Bush administration had already decided to attack seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and finishing off with Iran. According to Lendman, the U.S. won’t tolerate democratic rule in Libya, for it needs a puppet regime that would follow the dictates of Washington. Beyond that, the U.S. generously used terror weapons in all its wars. Weapons of mass destruction, including depleted and enriched uranium munitions were widely used in the different Iraq wars, leading to miscarriages and severe deformities by newborn babies.

The anthology also reveals that Gaddafi bore no responsibility for the Lockerbie incident. Although he took the blame and had Libya pay millions of U.S. Dollars to the families of the victims in order to have sanctions lifted against his country, the west thanked him by overthrowing his regime. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya suggests that Libya’s main “crimes” – as seen by the West – were “how (Libya L.W.) distributed and used its wealth, its lack of external debts, and the key role it was attempting to play in continental development and curtailing of external influence in Africa. Tripoli was a spoiler that ef­fectively undermined the interests of the former colonial powers.

Already at the International Security Conference in Munich, 2007, then President of The Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, used the strongest possible language to warn the U.S., saying that “its aggressive expansionism has brought the world closer to a third world war than it has ever been before.” So far, Putin’s diplomacy prevented U.S. aggression against Syria and Iran.

The book contains, inter alia, a scathing speech by Gaddafi, delivered at the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, 2009. A chronology of the NATO-led assault on Libya completes the book.

This book is a must-read. It gives its readers a premonition of things that are yet to come.