HOW GHANA LOST MILLIONS : A Report By The Ghana Revenue Authority

A case of tax evasion- was reported to the office by an informant for whom our group was tasked to investigate the circumstances. It involves a company incorporated in Ghana on 24th June, 2009 with registration number CA 60989 called Supa Bets Ghana Ltd. The natures of authorized business of the company are sports betting, (gaming" entertainment facility management and racing among others. Supa Bets imported gaming machines into the country for commercial activities somewhere in July 2011 and requested 'Hail Him Ltd' a clearing agent to facilitate the clearing of the goods at Tema port.

By a Bill of Laden with number GLSUSNB 29100981, dated 20th July, 2011, Game IT solutions, P.O. Box 2472, Randburg Johannesburg, South Africa shipped 1 *40 container said to contain twenty-one (21) pieces of Gaming Machines with a declared weight of 2580 kilograms to Tema. The consignment arrived at Tema Port on 30th July, 20;11 on board Santa Federica, voyage number 5A, with Intermodal Shipping Agency as the local shipping agents. The - goods were consigned to Logistic Direct Ltd to be delivered to Supa Bets Ltd as importers. A commercial invoice number 7123 (vide exhibit 1) printed on 5th July, 201' quoted $ 345,366.64 as the invoice value of the gaming machines.

CLERANCE OF GAMING MACHINES

On the 1 st of August, 2011, the clearing Agent 'Hail Him Ltd' submitted documents to the Sector Commander of Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority requesting to clear the same goods now described as Slot Monitoring Computers on Permit. A new commercial Invoice numbered GAME/SBT/GH 01 (vide exhibit 2) of 20th June, 2011, purportedly coming from GAME LT. Solutions, South Africa Ltd, quoted $ 8,250.00 as the total C&FR value of the consignment. 

INTERVIEWS AND DOCUMENTS COLLECTED

Based on the information gathered, the following personnel were interviewed and relevant documents linked to the case collected.

a) Eric Oppong-Yeboah       - Country Representative of Supa Bets

David Serebour-Boateng   . - MD, Hail Him Ltd, (Clearing Agent)

Samuel Addo-Yobo             - Logistics Direct (Consignee)

Intermodal Shipping Agency - (shipping Agent) Mr. Cyril Laryea, Import
Manager

Mr. Ben KwesiAdufutse     - Examination officer, Ghana Revenue Authority- Customs Division

 g)  Mr. Ben Tutu                 - Accountant Supa Bets Ltd

 Mr. NabaliBawa      - Managing Director, Gateway Services Ltd

Documents collected to facilitate investigations include

Commercial Invoice of manufacturers of Gaming Machines in South Africa

Master manifest of Intermodal Shipping Agency
3 .. House manifest

4., Letter of Indemnity

Internal Delivery Order

Bill of Lading

Custom Entry Form

Duty Payment Receipt

Shipping Line Administration Receipt

            10. Final Valuation and Classification Report (FVCR)

            11.        Company Registration Documents of Supa Bets Ghana Ltd

FINDINGS

A Consignment of Gaming Machines was imported through Tema Port in July 2011 for Sapa Bets Gh Ltd.

The consignment was property imported and all documents arrived intact i.e. Bill of Lading, Parking invoice all long others.

The clearing Agent Akwasi Serebour-Boatenq altered the original  invoice
by mis-describing the items as slot Monitoring Computers instead of Gaming machines manifested by the exporter.

Gaming machines are coded as 9504 and attracts a duty of 20% plus VAT.

Computers are duty free or zero rated and are coded 8471, under international custom rules and regulations called Harmonized System Code  (HS Code).By the action in point 3 the Harmonized Systems Code (HS Code) for the transaction also changed.

By this abuse of nomenclature and misclassification the difference in t8X is stated as:

Supa Bet Gh Ltd and Hail Him Ltd should be jointly charged to pay the difference as in Finding point 4 of $ 212,510.99 and 300% penalties charged on the evaded duties.

Stipa Bet Gh Ltd and Hail Him Ltd should be jointly charged for evading tax and causing financial loss to the state.

Editorial

SALUTE FOR WORKERS

Tomorrow is May Day- the day set aside for Workers’ solidarity and The Insight join progressive and revolutionaries all over the world to salute working people for their contribution to the survival of the human race and the preservation of world civilization.

This observance is taking place at a time when the pursuit of the neo-liberal agenda is wrecking  havoc on the lives of working people and the disadvantaged all over the world.

In Ghana, the forces of reaction are mobilizing in support of the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union.

This agreement will lead to substantial revenue and job losses and worsen the plight of the working people.

The Insight joins all the working people of Ghana and their organizations in saying no the obnoxious EPA.

 We salute the working people of Ghana on May Day.

Is Nowhere Safe in South Sudan?

Ten thousand dead, 1 million displaced, and things are only likely to get worse for the fledgling country.

By Andrew Green

Nyazode Thiyany is desperate to leave South Sudan. As strangers wander by the tent where she is tending to her severely malnourished infant son, Shamis, she calls out to ask them whether they will buy her a bus ticket out of the country. Much better, she adds, if they can do it soon. Once Shamis recovers, she will have to move out of the inpatient clinic that Doctors Without Borders is running on the United Nations base in Juba and return to her small shelter nearby in the midst of the stinking, overcrowded displacement camp.

Thiyany fled to the base on Dec. 16, the day after clashes broke out in her Juba neighborhood. Along with the more than 20,000 people who sought refuge at the base, she spends most of her time standing in lines -- for food, for vaccinations, even for the bathroom. Streams of dirty water flow through the base each time it rains, and they course through the low-lying area where the thousands of tents have been set up, destroying all the clothes and sheets she brought with her.

Thiyany blames the lack of clean water for Shamis's severe diarrhea and the sudden weight loss that led to his hospitalization. "I'm not comfortable since I left my house. The camp is congested. The camp is not OK for him."

Still, Thiyany said she will not leave the base unless it's to board a bus for Ethiopia, Kenya, or Uganda. Not even to move to a nearby camp where higher ground means her shelter won't flood with every rain shower. She said she is not safe outside the U.N. compound.

Her neighborhood on the outskirts of Juba was one of the first battlefields in the fighting that broke out in mid-December and rapidly engulfed most of eastern South Sudan. Despite a cease-fire agreement that was reached in late January, clashes between government forces and troops aligned with former Vice President Riek Machar have continued, forcing hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes and into U.N. bases, churches, and mosques in search of a safe haven.

Then a bloody Easter weekend brought with it the realization that there is no safety anywhere in South Sudan.

On Thursday, April 17, civilians armed with rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons stormed the U.N. base in Bor, the capital of Jonglei state, and killed dozens of civilians sheltering there. On Monday, the United Nations released a report accusing rebel forces of conducting ethnically targeted killings of more than 200 people who had sought shelter in a mosque in Bentiu, the capital of Unity state. The murders, coming in the days after rebels took control of Bentiu, were reportedly spurred by messages broadcast on a local FM station.

Toby Lanzer, the U.N.'s top humanitarian official in South Sudan, counted hundreds of bodies still lying on Bentiu's streets during his visit to the town this week. The dead were found in "the market area and around religious institutions," he said in an interview. They were in "places where people thought that they would be safe."

Even as President Salva Kiir and Machar publicly repeat their commitment to peace and reconciliation, Lanzer said the latest incidents "brought home the extent to which South Sudan seems to be sliding into a cycle of extreme violence, extreme bitterness, and a cycle of revenge, which really has to stop. It's not only casting a dark shadow over the present -- it's really calling into question the future."

It's a future that Thiyany and an increasing number of citizens no longer want any part of.

* * *

The fighting in South Sudan that started in mid-December followed a growing split over the past year within the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) party. In July, Kiir sacked his entire cabinet, including Machar, without explanation. The former deputy held his tongue for months, before unloading a torrent of public criticisms against Kiir in early December and then walking out of a meeting with senior SPLM officials on Dec. 14. The next evening, Juba exploded, and within hours the former vice president was leading a ragtag rebellion of disaffected politicians, army officers, and youth warriors in a bid to overthrow Kiir's government -- or to at least take control of the oil fields that fund it. In the early days, homes across Juba were destroyed and shops looted -- activities that have continued as fighting has spread across the country. The political split within the SPLM has also exacerbated ethnic rivalries between Machar's Nuer community and Kiir's Dinka -- the two largest ethnic groups in South Sudan.

There is no official casualty count from the four months of clashes, but observers estimate that more than 10,000 people have been killed.

There is no official casualty count from the four months of clashes, but observers estimate that more than 10,000 people have been killed. More than one million others have been forced from their homes. Control over the capitals of the country's two oil-producing states -- Unity and Upper Nile -- have changed hands multiple times, and both have been leveled in the process. And the United Nations is warning that 7 million people -- more than half the country's population -- may not get enough to eat this year if violence keeps them from planting crops in the coming months.

Reports on the fighting charge that there have also been serious human rights violations. An interim U.N. report released in February found evidence of targeted killings of civilians, gang rapes, and torture in the first weeks of the crisis. And while leaders on both sides have said in interviews that there is no ethnic dimension to the conflict, the Bentiu massacre undermined those claims while marking an escalation in brutality. In his interview, Lanzer described Bentiu as "an episode of violence, I think, never before seen in South Sudan to this extent."

Along with the killings in the mosque, the United Nations reports that civilians were also deliberately tracked down in a Catholic church, at a World Food Program compound, and at Bentiu Hospital. There, "Nuer men, women and children were killed for hiding and declining to join other Nuers who had gone out to cheer the [opposition] forces as they entered the town," according to the April 21 U.N. report on the Bentiu massacre.

In response to the U.N. report, the rebels have refuted the "ridiculous allegations fabricated by enemies of [the] war of resistance for democratic reforms." They blame the killings on government forces and allied fighters from Sudan's Darfur region.

Despite denials of responsibility for the killings from all sides, Simon Monoja Lubang, a sociology professor at the University of Juba, worries that the denials will not be enough to halt revenge attacks in response to the Bentiu massacre. "You know the kind of communities we have: Often the reaction of people to situations of this nature, the other side will also look for an opportunity of revenge killings."

Aid agencies say thousands of Bentiu residents are now streaming into U.N. camps on the town's outskirts. Lanzer said the number of displaced people sheltering at the base has grown from 4,000 a few weeks ago to 25,000 this week -- at a compound that was not built to accommodate anyone but U.N. staff. Medair, a humanitarian group providing emergency services in South Sudan, sent a team to help provide desperately needed drinking water and latrines for the new arrivals. Medair spokesperson Wendy van Amerongen said in an interview that they also found shortages of food, shelters, and medical supplies -- "really the basic needs people have when they leave everything behind."

The U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has put out a call for urgent military reinforcements to shore up protection for the camps. But despite the overstretched peacekeepers and the lack of food and clean water, Lanzer said people are still crowding into the camps because "there is nowhere else for them to go." And even there they might not be safe.

* * *

The April 17 attack on the U.N. compound in Bor, coming in the days after the Bentiu killings, underscored just how deeply the fighting has divided South Sudan and just how tenuous the situation on the ground really is. Following the April 15 rebel takeover of Bentiu, opposition supporters in displacement camps across South Sudan broke out in spontaneous celebrations. The celebrations in Bor upset local youth, who organized themselves and marched to the U.N. compound to deliver a protest letter to officials.

There is a dispute as to who fired the first shot on April 17. Was it U.N. peacekeepers firing warning shots or protesters trying to force their way into the camp? Either way, the situation quickly spun out of control. Nearly 60 people, including two aid workers, were killed before peacekeepers expelled the attackers from the camp.

The next day, government spokesperson Michael Makuei Lueth called a news conference to condemn the incident, while also making clear whom he really held responsible: "Anybody who celebrates successful operations being conducted by the rebels against the government means that person is a rebel and we cannot continue to accommodate rebels inside UNMISS compounds and allow them to celebrate or do whatever they want at any time."

William Koang, a South Sudanese doctor working in Bor, fled to the compound when fighting reached the town in late December. He has been helping provide medical care at the U.N. base in Bor. Currently, he is treating 37 people who were severely injured in the mid-April fighting.

Six days after the attack, on April 23, his read on the situation was that tempers were finally "cooling down, but what remains is fear."

People want to flee the camp, Koang said, but there are rumors that armed youth are patrolling outside the perimeter.

People want to flee the camp, Koang said, but there are rumors that armed youth are patrolling outside the perimeter. In the meantime, the residents are trapped and steeling themselves for another attack.

Even if Kiir and Machar reach a peace agreement, Koang is not convinced that he and other displaced Nuers living in the compound could safely leave. He says Jonglei is permanently fractured and the only solution is for Kiir to split the state, permanently separating Dinka from Nuer. Otherwise, like Thiyany in Juba, he thinks the only other option is to permanently leave South Sudan.

 

Monoja, the sociology professor, thinks it's too soon to give up on South Sudan. The country's communities have a long history of conflict, he acknowledged, but also of reconciliation led by local leaders who are asked to act as peacemakers. The communities "allow them to sit down and talk peace." Once an agreement is reached, "ceremonies are performed and compensation is paid [for the dead] and people go back to their lives."

Still, he acknowledged that peace between the communities will be predicated on an accord between the political leaders who sparked the fighting. There is little evidence that this will happen soon.

Both sides continue to speak the language of resolution: At the launch of a national reconciliation effort in early April, Vice President James Wani Igga announced, "I'm very optimistic that we can agree, we South Sudanese, and we can begin to hug ourselves, embracing one another."

It is the action that is lacking. Peace talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, have been suspended for almost the entire month of April; the cessation-of-hostilities agreement signed in late January molders.

"It is the political leaders who caused this problem," Monoja said. "It is not the local people. It is the political leaders because of the struggle for power. And if they had never done that struggle within the SPLM, I'm sure the struggle would never have erupted like that."

But it did. And the last two weeks have shown that so long as peace is delayed, no one in the country is safe.

Non-agricultural cooperatives: The experiment becomes reality

By Livia Rodríguez Delis

Over the last several months, the number of non-agricultural cooperatives in Cuba has grown. This new mode of production is being expanded as a means of injecting more dynamism and efficiency into the national economy.

Nancy Varela Medina, president of the cooperative, commented,
“Technically we were in a position to take on a large volume of production.
Why not change and be in tune with the Cuban economy?”

There are currently 452 associations of this type operating in the areas of commerce, restaurant services, construction, transportation, food processing and, recently added, energy and accounting.

The first cooperative noted by historians was created in 1884, when 28 English textile workers opened an establishment in Rochdale, to ensure their community access to food. The workers bought large quantities of sugar, flour, salt and butter wholesale, and sold the food to members, at prices lower than those of other retail outlets, via an open membership association characterized by democratic decision-making; no political, racial or religious discrimination; direct sales; distribution of earnings; limited interest on capital; and continuing education.

From this point on, an expansion of the movement became evident, leading to the 1895 formation in Europe of the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA).

Estimates indicate that today at least 750,000 cooperatives exist around the world, with some 800 million members, more than 12% of the planet's population. Data from the ICA show that cooperatives currently offer services to one of every two people internationally and that the 300 most important associations are valued at more than two billion dollars.

Cuba has had experience with this form of workers' association for more than 50 years, beginning with the emergence in 1960 of Credit and Services Cooperatives, after Agricultural Production Cooperatives, followed in 1993 by the Basic Units of Cooperative Agricultural Production - all in the agricultural sector. This internationally recognized contribution, has allowed the country to lead the Latin American Cooperativism Network, an organization which, along with the Federation of Caribbean and Central American Cooperatives and others, promote this mode of production across the continent.

With the expansion of coopertivism to other areas of the economy, Cuba hopes to extend what has been learned over the years into other sectors.

There is no doubt that the cooperative, as an organizational alternative based on self-management, is to play an important role in the updating of Cuba's economic model. This was made evident in the program approved at the Communist Party of Cuba's 6th Congress, which recognizes and promotes cooperativism, along with the socialist state enterprise, given the need to decentralize state management and achieve greater efficiency.

Cooperatives clearly coincide with the country's commitment to social justice, given their basic principles of open, voluntary membership; democratic control and participation; and commitment to the community; in addition to their autonomy and independence which allow for a work climate of mutual support, responsibility, equality, equity and solidarity.

Confecciones Model: A participative Cuban initiative

Since becoming a cooperative, the work environment has been changing at Confecciones Model, previously a state-run garment factory on San Rafael Street, in Havana. About a year ago, workers at the shop, devoted to the fabrication and sales of reasonably priced clothes - principally the traditional Cuban guayabera - foresaw the possibility of becoming independent, separating themselves economically from the state enterprise with which they had been linked. Nancy Varela Medina, president of the cooperative spoke with Granma International, saying, “Technically we were in a position to take on a large volume of production. Why not change and be in tune with the Cuban economy?"

To begin operating as a cooperative, the group had a skilled workforce, good machinery, an adequate space and central location. "We were the first to present a project and it was really well-liked; it wasn't easy, but we did it. We received approval from the Council of Ministers and did the paperwork with the international legal office, the commercial register, and as of October 1, 2013, we began as a cooperative."

Today there are 41 members, including stylists, tailors, seamstresses, cutters and tracers - enough to handle the large orders for uniforms and guayaberas which the cooperative receives.

How has work life changed?

Nancy Varela reports that the changes are palpable. Previously workers received a fixed salary, plus production bonuses; now salaries are based on sales. "Being president of the Confecciones Model Cooperative," she said, "is very different from being the director of the garment shop." The pay regimen now depends on earnings. Workers are paid in accordance with what is earned from sales during the previous month, taking into account their role, and after fulfilling tax obligations; paying the enterprise for use of the building and equipment; and purchasing materials. “As an example, seamstresses specialized in one job (making guayaberas or custom suits) receive a salary which is different from the others, and are paid according to their skill category. It’s hard to find personnel as well trained in tailoring as those who are here, and we have to protect this."

For 80-year-old tailor Alfredo Valdés, beyond good health, the two most important elements of his life are music and sewing. "Music makes people happy and without clothes, you can't look sharp. This is an art. Tailors are engineers," Alfredo said, while carefully cutting a custom suit jacket.

"There are very few tailors in Cuba. Young people should be trained and shown the beauty of a profession which must be recovered."

Despite some personal dissatisfaction, Alfredo feels his life has improved since becoming a member of the cooperative, saying, "Thus far, we're doing well, but the cloth and thread must arrive without fail."

His concern is well founded. According to Nancy Varela, among the problems the new organization has faced is irregular availability of basic supplies and their cost. “We’ve faced some obstacles with supplies,” she explained, “We sign contracts with the Universal Habana entity to buy cloth and thread. We used to do so via an intermediary. The biggest problem we’ve had is with the price. Considering the volumes we handle, we believe the price should be lower than that offered self-employed individuals.”

Marquidia Pérez, who has worked at Confecciones Model for almost 20 years, identified another concern which could affect production. “Clients leave here very satisfied with the quality of our work, thanks, in large part, to the experience of our tailors. But it is worrisome that they are quite elderly and the next generation is meager. Young people must be better trained and shown the value of this work.”

The new structure, she said, has been beneficial, both economically and personally, “But what is most fundamental,” she emphasized, “is that we are more united and help each other a great deal. That is to say, we work together. We know our survival depends on our collective work, on the responsibility we assume, and the decisions we make, to keep our cooperative healthy.”

Poverty and war condemn capitalism

By Finian Cunningham

Workers in Western countries are now paid so badly that businesses are reportedly finding it profitable to return from China - having relocated to Asia in the first place to exploit cheap labor there.

It is an astounding indictment of how capitalism has created a global race to the bottom of misery for workers - yet the Western corporate news media actively conceal this abomination.

This week a BBC business report sounded almost celebratory about the fact that Britain, the US and other Western countries were now said to be "cost competitive" with China and Brazil. The upshot is that many businesses and companies are now re-setting up in Western countries because of the "competitive" wages of workers, according to the BBC spin.

The competitiveness, said the BBC, stemmed from workers' wages in the West being "held steady" and because they have "become more productive".

This is Orwellian language to obscure the conditions of systematic poverty and exploitation that exist for many workers in Western countries - the scale of which is so appalling that companies are finding Western countries more profitable than other destinations that were formerly thought of as providing cheap labor.

Such companies had previously closed down, or as the Orwellian language called it "downsized", operations in the US, Britain and other Western countries to boost their profits by taking advantage of low wages in China.

But several years with chronic unemployment driving down pay and government policy facilitating wage cuts, workers in the West have now been turned into a cheap labor army. Western governments are also using taxpayer money to give corporate tax breaks to entice them to return - in order to exploit the ordinary worker ever more intensively.

It is estimated that the value in terms of average wages in the US is less than what it was back in the 1960s - a half century ago. This has led to a huge rise in poverty and polarization of wealth into the hands of the tiny social elite. America's top 400 rich individuals own more wealth than half the population of some 155 million people. A quarter of all American workers are officially classed as subsisting below the poverty line. The real figure may be as high as 50 per cent.

In Britain, for example, the average salary for a company executive is now 120 times that of an average worker, according to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. Twenty-five years ago, the difference was 49-fold.

It should be obvious that poverty, social decay and vast inequality are not only systematically linked but that this abominable situation is an indictment of capitalism as a failed economic system.

The astonishing thing is that Western politicians and media live in complete denial of this glaring reality. It is obvious that the capitalism system of private profit for a tiny social minority should be openly condemned and that it is unworkable as a social organizing system, based as it is on massive exploitation of human beings. But when do you ever hear the subject being discussed by public figures in the West? It's like the proverbial elephant, or perhaps we should say dinosaur, in the room being ignored.

What the Western public needs to do is to force this subject into open conversation. Politicians and corporate media need to be treated with contempt for their denial and misinformation about the most pressing reality of our time - the destruction of societies under capitalism.

Just because the political and media elites do not talk about capitalism does not mean that we should also suppress the issue. Otherwise we are conforming to "group think".

People should realize that all existing political parties in Western countries - whether Republican or Democrat, Conservative or so-called Labor - are all, like the mainstream media, apologists for capitalism. They benefit from the system and will never acknowledge it, never mind challenge it. The same criticism applies for much of the labor union establishment, whose leadership are also beneficiaries of the system.

The time has come for a genuine socialism in which the economy is organized and planned through public ownership and where production is driven by human needs, not private profit. Historically, capitalism has become redundant as an organizing social system. Not only redundant, capitalism has degenerated into the nemesis of the world, threatening its very survival.

It is destroying human life through relentless exploitation. The system is irrational, iniquitous and unsustainable.

Moreover, the insatiable lust for private profit is also driving geopolitical rivalry that inevitably manifests itself in war. War is not just good for capitalist business; it also distracts the public focus away from the dinosaur in the room.

There seems little doubt that Washington and its Western allies are agitating for war with Russia not out of any legal principle, but simply to avert attention from the class war that is being waged against workers and the majority of people in their own societies.

Despite the effective official censorship on the matter, the Western public needs to start talking en masse about capitalism and its destruction of societies, the natural environment, and international relations to the point where a nuclear war is being recklessly risked.

Alternative media such as Press TV deserve great credit for its freedom of thought by raising this urgently needed public debate on capitalism and the pressing need for its abolishment. It is also partly why the Western public is abandoning their established media in droves and turning on to alternatives like Press TV.

It is absurd, but deeply revealing, how the Western corporate media refuse to hold any views or discussions about capitalism and its abhorrent impact of poverty and warmongering.

As former German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg once said, we face a stark choice between the present barbarism under capitalism or creating a new democratic, viable world under socialism.

A first step would be for the Western public to begin talking and thinking openly about the destructive irrationality of capitalism.

That is what Western politicians and the rich elite, including their media mouthpieces, are most in fear of. They fear that moment when the vast majority of people will start to shout out "the emperor has no clothes!"

US hypocrisy on terror sponsors

Terrorists in Syria armed by US President Hussein Obama

By Gordon Duff

Kuwait had been a major terror funder for a very long time, operating “under the radar,” as described by a senior Obama Treasury Department official.

However, in 2011, that changed. Using social networks, Kuwaiti charities, ostensibly collecting funds intended for Syrian refugees, stepped well over the line into pure barbarism.

Charities, many not yet on terror lists, began soliciting funds to purchase weapons, finance attacks on Christian villages and, in extreme cases, place bounties on the heads of members of targeted groups.

According to a Brookings Institute study from 2013, wealthy Kuwaitis used charities to recruit terrorists to follow their specific agendas, with as many as 1000 Kuwait-funded groups operating through Syria and Iraq, each under different orders, often fighting each other.

Over 100,000 Kuwaitis around the world took part in this effort with some listing the weapons they purchased on their Facebook pages. Many of these individuals are permanent residents of the US, Canada, Great Britain and other nations where, under any “normal” circumstance, such an act would land them in “Gitmo” or worse, but nothing was done.

One problem, of course, is that weapons designated for the eradication of Christian settlements in Syria would end up financing car bombs in Baghdad.

The United States only began to notice when Kuwaiti interference led to infighting that derailed American efforts to overthrow the Assad government. Only then did the massive influx of terror funding from Kuwait suddenly become an issue.

BACKGROUND
The Obama administration has officially named Kuwait as top funder of terrorists in the world. In a statement by David Cohen, Treasury Undersecretary heading efforts to trace the source of terrorist funds, Kuwait has used a series of charities to wage war, not just on Syria but its neighbor, Iraq as well.

According to Cohen, speaking with the full authority of President Obama:
“Kuwait…is the epicenter of funding for terrorist groups.”

The original document citing Kuwait as Al Qaeda’s largest terror funding source was originally published on the Treasury Department’s website on April 4, 2011 but received no publicity until the Washington Post revived the story today:

“Until recently, tiny, oil-rich Kuwait avoided public scrutiny as attention to terrorist financing focused more sharply on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. But the fact that those countries have made strides in addressing the problem, a senior Treasury official said, has ‘shed more light on the less forward-leaning steps taken in Kuwait.’”

Several issues immediately come to light, citing American duplicity in dealing with very real terror threats that have led to not only massacres and nerve gas attacks in Syria but over 8000 terror bombing deaths in Iraq as well in 2013 alone.

1. Washington has only begun to track real Al Qaeda funding during the last 30 days, almost 13 years after that group reputedly attacked the United States with four hijacked airliners, killing thousands.
2. Fabricated intelligence on Iraq and Al Qaeda, sourced to an Israeli psychological warfare military unit, led to not only the destruction of Iraq but the collapse of the American economy as well.

3. Since 9/11, the US has chosen to ignore Kuwait’s role as the largest financier of world terrorism, instead continually citing both Iran and Pakistan, without ever presenting evidence.

4. While America has waged a virtual “witch hunt” for supposed terrorist funders around the world, kidnapping some, killing others with drones, the primary funders of Al Qaeda were entertained at the White House on numerous occasions.

In a Brookings Institute paper by Elizabeth Dickenson, published in December 2013, Kuwait was cited as the primary source, not just for funding of Al Qaeda but for broad conflicts between Sunni and Shiite and for financing the training of thousands of heavily armed jihadists now operating in Western Europe, North America and around the world.

“Today, there is evidence that Kuwaiti donors have backed rebels who have committed atrocities and who are either directly linked to al Qaeda or cooperate with its affiliated brigades on the ground. Fundraisers posted photos of cars and jewelry that had been sold to support the mujahedeen. They also earmarked specific costs for weapons. For example, advertisements would state that an $800 donation would buy a directed missile or an RPG for the fighters. Several of these new donors—including Herbash, Tabtabae, and Hajjaj al-Ajmi, also travelled to Syria to visit the brigades they helped fund, broadcasting their travels by social media.” (Brookings Institution)

KUWAIT, “THE OTHER SPECIAL COUNTRY”

Since Saddam’s Republican Guard entered Kuwait in 1990, that nation has enjoyed a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Most remember the stories, babies being taken out of incubators, thrown out of windows by Iraqi soldiers. These stories, now known to have been written in Tel Aviv by “the usual suspects,” have long been an embarrassment to the United States.

On January 26, 2011, Texas Congressman Ron Paul went before the House of Representatives with leaked copies of State Department cables received from WikiLeaks. Paul read these astounding documents into the Congressional Record (page H203), documents outlining how the Bush (41) administration had given Saddam the “green light” to attack Kuwait.

America had authorized the invasion of Kuwait, a simply “follow-up” as Saddam saw it, to the decade-long Iraqi imposed war on Iran, a war where Bush family members supplied poison gas to one side and anti-armor and air defense systems to the other. They then used the proceeds to run narcotics into the US, an effort made public by investigative journalist Michael Ruppert, who died recently at 63. The family narcotics business is not just alive and well but has added an Afghan chapter, but that’s another story, an ongoing story at that.

Where Kuwait had become “a means to an end” for Bush family globalist ambitions, prominent Kuwaitis took on the “Teflon” armor of the other Bush family “partners in crime,” the Israelis. Drowning in oil cash, drowning in profits from logistical support of America’s Iraqi debacle, power-mad Kuwaitis became the conduits for funding for nearly all world terrorism, an unaccountable “empty hole” where money could go in dirty and come out “clean.”

Cash from government “slush funds,” drug cartels, the wealthy but criminally insane, and there are so many of those, could safely disappear into Kuwait and show up in Nigeria, funding Boko Harum slaughter, show up in Pakistan funding car bombs by the dozen or even in America, buying political power through newly elected and “morally flexible” Tea Party legislators.

CONCLUSION
It was perfectly OK for Kuwait to fund terrorism when only the right innocent people were dying by the tens of thousands or more. It was even OK for Kuwaiti cash to fund bombings around the world. Only when Kuwaiti internal politics derailed the “cohesion” of Syrian rebels and Al Qaeda jihadists, did the Washington Post, Brookings Institution and Obama White House take notice.

If promises made are promises kept and the money is followed, some very surprising individuals are going to be facing serious unpleasantness. Today we read that something is finally going to be done about terror financing. What will really happen when, as so many of us have known for so very long, that those really responsible are “us?”

Jihadi jurisprudence? Militant interpretations of Islamic rules of war

By Heba Aly

Islamist rebels occupied swathes of northern Mali in 2012

HIGHLIGHTS

Debate exists among Islamists on rules of war

Bin Laden was critical of “irresponsible” jihadis

Prospect for humanitarians to influence behavior?

Military strategy often a bigger factor than religion

DUBAI, 24 April 2014 (IRIN) - In 2012, the Taliban wrote an open letter to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan in response to its accusations that the militant group had killed civilians.

“According to us,” the Taliban wrote, “civilians are those who are in no way involved in fighting. The white-bearded people, women, children and common people who live an ordinary life, it is illegitimate to bring them under attack or kill them. But… the police of Kabul admin, those personnel of the security companies who escort the foreigners’ supply convoys and are practically armed, similarly those key figures of the Kabul admin who support the invasion and make plans against their people, religion and homeland, those people who move forward the surrender process for Americans in the name of peace and those Arbakis [i.e. militias] who plunder the goods, chastity and honour of the people by taking dollar salaries, all these people are civilian according to you. No Afghan can accept that the above mentioned people are civilian… They are directly involved in the protraction of our country’s invasion and legally we do not find any difficulty in their elimination, rather we consider it our obligation.”
It was one poignant example of the debate, which similarly exists in international humanitarian law (IHL), over what constitutes direct participation in hostilities (DPH). And it mirrored some of the arguments that the US appears to embrace: under US law, “material support” to terrorism is a federal crime (though to be targeted for assassination by US forces, suspects must demonstrate a much higher level of “terrorist engagement”).

More importantly, the Taliban letter forms part of what has come to be known as “jihadi jurisprudence” - sometimes sophisticated legal arguments used by jihadist groups to justify violations of IHL, and according to many Muslim scholars, perversions of Islamic law itself.

Jihadi military jurisprudence is increasingly studied by humanitarians as they seek to understand the degree to which there is room for even the most radical armed groups to be influenced in favour of the protection of civilians and aid workers.
Even within jihadist circles, there is a debate about acceptable norms of behaviour in war.

“It’s an opportunity that that debate exists,” says Ronald Ofteringer, an adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross’s director of operations and an expert in Islamic law. “It is surely not an issue to subscribe to all kinds of different concepts. But… we have to engage with all parties to a given conflict and look for commonalities that help us and allow us to make a difference - even if it is on one issue and not on all issues.”

The new generation of irresponsible jihadis are in the habit of striking in random fashion without consulting anyone.

For Andrew March, associate professor of Islamic law at Yale University, there is a window through which humanitarians can negotiate with jihadist groups.
Concepts like distinction and proportionality - “all these things we take seriously,” he says - “these distinctions are available [within jihadist circles], but they have to be worked into from an Islamic perspective.”
As such, he advises aid workers not to abandon these principles in negotiations with such groups.

“The idea of neutral humanitarians is not inaccessible to them,” he says. “But from their view, it has to go through their conceptions of neutrality… Your neutrality and your non-targetability is something that they determine…They don’t regard themselves as being subject to any arbitrary authority, except their own.”

Jihadist groups and IHL
Some armed groups in the Muslim world speak in IHL discourse and are compliant with its requirements, in some cases, even more than their own governments. Gazan armed groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad even provide their own training on IHL to their combatants.

Others, however, see Islamic law and international law as inherently irreconcilable. Many al-Qaeda insurgents, for example, show contempt for IHL. “The amount of respect we hold for your international law is even less than you show for our defined Islamic Shariah,” said a 2007 al-Qaeda propaganda video which cited “international infidel law”.
In recent years, says James Cockayne, now president of the United Nations University in New York, but formerly a senior associate with the International Peace Institute, armed groups in the Muslim world have shifted from presenting themselves as groups seeking self-determination under international law in the 1950s to 1970s, to “a more revolutionary trend that rejected public international law as an artefact of Western domination.”

But that is not to say that their actions are random or ad hoc. Many groups have devised their own careful Islamic reasoning to support their actions, which are themselves subject to legal debate even within jihadist circles.

Targeting civilians
One of the most important areas of concern for humanitarians is the permissibility of targeting civilians.

“Armed groups that espouse a strict religious agenda… tend to authorize a wider range of lawful targets than IHL,” writes the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in a January 2014 policy brief on armed groups and the protection of civilians. “Groups that call for global jihad often define the targets of their military operations in especially broad terms.”

Jihadist groups offer a variety of justifications for attacks on civilians. Some argue that because non-Muslim armies are killing Muslim civilians, they are reciprocally justified in killing non-Muslim civilians. Others say civilians contribute to the war effort in “deed, word or mind”. Still others say it is sometimes impossible to distinguish civilians from combatants.

Islam’s prohibition against targeting civilians has exceptions - namely necessity. Mohammad Ibn al-Hassan al-Shaybani, the first Muslim jurist to codify Islamic rules of war, wrote in his seminal treatise, for example, that flooding enemy cities was acceptable even if women, children, slaves or Muslim prisoners were inside their gates. Some degree of collateral damage is seen to be acceptable if it helps achieve an imperative goal. In other words, the ends justify the means.

In the autumn 2011 issue of its monthly magazine Inspire, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) argued that if combatants and non-combatants were mixed together and integrated, it was permissible for Muslims to attack, even if civilians are killed, “but this should only be done with the intention of fighting the combatants.”

The case of occupation
Islamic law imposes strict limitations on violence when Muslims initiate hostilities against non-Muslims. However, according to Mohammad Fadel, associate professor of Islamic law at the University of Toronto, Muslims are legally entitled to use all means to repel an invasion of Muslim territory.
Militants resisting foreign military occupation tend to consider all nationals of the occupying power to be a potential target, the Geneva Academy says.

For example, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, a founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, said in a 2001 press interview: “The Geneva Convention protects civilians in occupied territories, not civilians who are in fact occupiers… All of Israel, Tel Aviv included, is occupied Palestine. So we’re not actually targeting civilians - that would go against Islam.”
In 2001, after the US invasion of Afghanistan, Sheikh Hassan Qaid, then head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, issued a fatwa, stating: “By declaring war against the Muslims and occupying their countries, the United States of America has made all of its worldwide interests into legitimate targets for the mujahideen [guerrilla fighters]… Those interests include military, economic, humanitarian, diplomatic, cultural, tourism, or anyone else anywhere around the globe.”

He said women, children, and the elderly should not be specifically targeted, but that there was “no sin in killing them” if they were in the vicinity of those whose killing is permissible. Permissible targets extended to all those who supported the US with oil, intelligence, shared military bases or “moral support” in its “war against the Muslims in Afghanistan.”

In a May 2012 statement, AQAP invited Muslims in Yemen to “target Americans everywhere”.

Targeting fellow Muslims
Extremist militant groups use several lines of reasoning to target Muslim civilians too.
According to March, several maxims of Islamic theology guide such interpretations: First, in Islamic law, acts are judged by their motives. Second, necessity makes the unlawful lawful. Third, individual harm is tolerated to prevent communal harm.
As such, “if it is necessary to fight the non-Muslim, the killing of Muslims becomes permissible,” he says. In this case, a Muslim who is killed accidentally by another Muslim is considered a martyr and can receive compensation. “This reduces the stakes of killing in the first place,” March says.
Extremist groups have also justified the killing of Muslim civilians - especially those of the Shia sect of Islam - on the basis that they are kufar, or disbelievers.

Shia civilians are often targeted in Iraq

In the Salafist view, since Muslims are obliged to participate in defensive jihad, those who instead cooperate with a non-Muslim invading power or collaborate with an enemy against Muslims are considered apostates. Many jihadists argue the punishment for apostasy is death (though this is disputed in mainstream Islamic thought). The Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda in Iraq have justified attacks on civilian bureaucrats - accused of belonging to Western-backed governments - on this basis.

Palestinian-Jordanian Islamist ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi has gone even further, arguing that all governments that do not apply Islamic law, including democratic governments, are infidels and apostates. Like much Salafist doctrine, this interpretation defies the mainstream view. In his book Fiqh al-Jihad (Jurisprudence of War), Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most influential Sunni scholars of modern times, argues that Arab regimes that mock Shariah should be challenged through peaceful means wherever possible.

Limits on militant action
But even those groups with very wide definitions of legitimate targets have their limits.
The winter 2012 issue of AQAP’s Inspire magazine reminded followers that: “one should avoid targeting places of worship for any religion or faith, regardless whether they are Christian, Jewish, or other. One should also avoid harming civilians who are citizens of countries that have no relation with the conflict, even if they are non-Muslim.”

In December 2013, AQAP publicly apologized after one of its fighters killed patients and medics inside a hospital during an AQAP attack on a Yemeni Defence Ministry complex. It said it had specifically instructed its fighters not to enter the hospital or the prayer space during the attack, and offered to pay blood money to the victims.

According to the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, documents captured from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, show that bin Laden disapproved of the attempted attack in 2010 on New York City’s Time Square. Under Islamic law, Muslims are bound to respect promises made and contracts or treaties signed. Bin Laden argued that by taking U.S. citizenship a year earlier, the Pakistani-born attacker had signed a social contract with the State. His action, bin Laden said, “amounts to betrayal and does not fall under permissible lying to [evade] the enemy [during times of war].”

Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban, banned the use of anti-personnel landmines in 1998, denouncing them as “un-Islamic and anti-human”. Armed groups in Afghanistan continue to use them, but the Taliban insists each mine is carefully placed and detonated against “military targets” only. In 2010, Mullah Omar also instructed his fighters “to take every possible precaution to protect the people’s lives and property as well as the public infrastructure.”

Debate within jihadist circles
Extremist interpretations are also subject to much debate, even within jihadist circles.
Analysts say some of these debates are less about what is religiously acceptable and more about what would be strategically viable or politically popular. (Many recruits to extremist groups know precious little about Islam).
Nonetheless, in February 2009, Fadil Harun, an al-Qaeda operative involved in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, published a manuscript on a jihadist website distancing al-Qaeda from “the new generation of irresponsible jihadis” around the world who “are in the habit of striking in random fashion [at unlawful targets] without consulting anyone”.
According to the captured documents, bin Laden himself had similar concerns about the “ideology and operational conduct of regional jihadi groups”.

"Since when did we speak of killing women and children? Since when did we speak of killing the laymen of the Shia?"

In another sign that even al-Qaeda has its limits, Ayman al-Zawahri - allegedly linked to the 1997 massacre of tourists in Egypt and current leader of al-Qaeda - reportedly asked the then head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, during the bloodshed there in 2006, whether it was necessary to behead so many people.

Some groups are re-interpreting the rules of jihad over time, as they seek more credibility from the international community or from their own constituencies.
Whereas the Taliban instructed in its 2006 Code of Conduct that NGOs were “tools of the infidels” and as such legitimate targets, the revised 2010 Code of Conduct did not mention NGOs, taking what appeared to be a more flexible approach.

Overstating Islamic influence
However, it is important not to overstate the influence of the various interpretations of Islamic law on the actions of armed, even Islamist, groups. Many of their justifications for targeting civilians are not, in fact, rooted in Islamic arguments, but rather in strategy or practical necessity. In many cases, the violence simply amounts to terror and asymmetrical warfare.
“We would accept the rules [of IHL] if Israel would use them,” said Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader, in a 2002 interview with Human Rights Watch. “If you ask us to comply, that is not difficult. Islamic teachings support the Geneva Conventions. They are accepted. When it comes to the other party, if they don’t abide, we cannot be obliged to them, except insofar as we can achieve something.”

Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, echoed the sentiment in a 2006 interview with Amnesty International:
“As long as the enemy undertakes its aggression without limits or red lines, we will also respond without limits or red lines… We will be very careful to avoid civilians unless they force us to.”
Usama Hasan, a senior researcher in Islamic studies at the Quilliam Foundation, which tries to counter extremism, says there is yet another limitation to keep in mind. Islamic jurisprudence, or fiqh, has two strands: the rules and norms emerging from the less humane medieval times, and the more humanitarian, modern interpretations.
“It is possible to influence [jihadists] towards the most humanitarian and humane reading of medieval [jurisprudence], but it is important to remember they are operating within that paradigm. So the best way to address it is to force a paradigm shift [towards the modern interpretations]… It’s a very slow process.”

War, Economic Catastrophe and Environmental Degradation

Poverty and Despair in India

An Indian Farmer

By Colin Todhunter

Indian finance minister P.Chidambaram once claimed that his government’s policies were pro growth and pro equity (1). He talked of alleviating poverty in India ‘in our lifetime’ by implementing the type of development policies currently being pursued. The minister envisages 85 percent of India’s population eventually living in well-planned cities with proper access to water, health, electricity, education, etc. Based on today’s population size, which is set to continue to rise, that would mean at least 600 million moving to cities. He stated that urbanisation constitutes ‘natural progress’.

The type of urbanisation being pursued in India is not ‘natural’, however, nor does it represent ‘progress’. It has thus far been largely based on unconstitutional land takeovers, the trampling of democratic rights, increasing and unsustainable resource usage and air and water pollution. But for Chidambaram and other supporters of cronyism, cartels and the manipulation of markets (2,3,4), which all go under the guise of economic ‘neo-liberalism’, such processes increase the amount of money flowing around the economy, which therefore increases the GDP figure and thus represent progress. In this respect, chopping down an ancient forest and selling the timber represents progress, and removing people’s access to traditional lands by handing them to corporations to somehow make cash profits from is also positive.

This warped notion of development has seen the poverty alleviation rate in India remain around the same as it was back in 1991 or even in pre-independence India (0.8 percent) (5), while the ratio between the top and bottom ten percents of the population has doubled during this period. According to the Organisation for Co-operation and Economic Development, this doubling of income inequality has made India one of the worst performers in the category of emerging economies.

This is the type of development being forced through by Indian politicians on behalf of national and international elite interests via the World Bank, WTO, and the G8, etc, and it is based on the idea that shifting people from agriculture to what are a number of already overburdened, filthy, polluted mega-cities to work in factories, clean the floors of a shopping mall or work as a security guard improves the human condition; or, more realistically, to live in slum-like conditions and be unemployed or underemployed, given that hundreds of millions are to be booted from the land to achieve Chidambaram’s 85 percent urbanisation figure.

Urbanisation is being forced through by what Vandana Shiva says is the biggest forced removal of people from their lands in history and involves one of the biggest illegal land grabs since Columbus, according to a 2009 report commissioned by the rural development ministry and chaired by the then minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh.

In the West, urbanisation was not ‘natural’ and involved the unforeseen outcomes of conflicts and struggles between serfs, lords, peasants, landowners, the emerging bourgousie and class of industrialists and the state. The outcomes of these struggles resulted in different routes to modernity and levels of urbanisation.

Similar struggles are now taking place in India. The naxalites and Maoists in India are referred to by the dominant class as left wing extremists who are exploiting the poor. How easy it is cast legitimate protesters together and create an ‘enemy within’. How easy it is to ignore the state-corporate extremism across the world that results in the central state abdicating its responsibilities by submitting to the tenets of the Wall Street-backed ‘structural adjustment’ pro-privatisation policies, free capital flows, massive profits justified on the basis of ‘investment risk’ and unaccountable cartels which aim to maximise profit by beating down labour costs and grabbing resources at the cheapest possible costs. That’s the real nature of extremism. It is the type of extremism that is regarded as anything but by the mainstream media.

Powerful corporations are spearheading the agenda for ‘development’ in India and have been handed the rights to this process via secretive Memorandums of Understanding. The full military backing of the state is on hand to forcibly evict peoples from their land in order to fuel a wholly unsustainable model of development that strips the environment bare and ultimately negatively impacts the climate and ecology.

Moreover, due to the restructuring of agriculture in favour of Western agribusiness, over 250,000 farmers have committed suicide in India since 1997. And yet the corporate-controlled type of agriculture being imposed only leads to bad food, bad soil, bad or no water, bad health and bad or falling yields (9,10,11,12). Unconstitutional land grabs for SEZs, resource extraction, nuclear plants and other projects have additionally forced many others from the land.

With GDP growth slowing and automation replacing human labour the world over in order to decrease labour costs and boost profit, just where are the jobs going to come from to cater for India’s increasing population, never mind hundreds of millions of former agricultural workers?

To push through the type of progress and development Chidambaram wants, it is clear that farmers represent a ‘problem’ to be removed from the land and a problem to be dealt with once removed. Food producers, the genuine wealth producers of a nation, only became a problem when Western agribusiness was given the green light to take power away from farmers and uproot traditional agriculture in India and recast it in its own profiteering, corporate-controlled image. This is who is really setting the ‘development’ agenda. The processes involved constitute the ‘progress’ and ‘natural’ move towards depopulating rural areas that Chidambaram spoke of.

If it can’t be done via mass suicide and making it economically non-viable to continue farming as a result of world trade policies, ‘free’ trade agreements and ‘structurally adjusting’ (plundering) traditional agricultural practices and economies to ultimately ensure petro-chemical farming (and thus oil and the US dollar (13) remains king, let tens of thousands of militia into the tribal areas to displace hundreds of thousands, place 50,000 in camps and carry out rapes and various human rights abuses.

If anyone perceives that this ‘natural progress’ is not based on acquiescing to foreign corporations, they should take a look at the current corporate-driven, undemocratic free trade agreement being hammered out behind closed doors between the EU and India (16,17,18).It all adds up to powerful trans-national corporations trying to by-pass legislation that was implemented to safeguard the public’s rights. Kavaljit Singh of the Madhyam research institute argues that we could see the Indian government being sued by multinational companies for billions of dollars in private arbitration panels outside of Indian courts if national laws, policies, court decisions or other actions are perceived to interfere with their investments; this is already a reality in many parts of the world whereby legislation is shelved due to even the threat of legal action by corporations. Such free trade agreements cement the corporate ability to raid taxpayers’ coffers even further via unaccountable legal tribunals, or to wholly dictate national policies and legislation.

Of course, the links between the Monsanto/Syngenta/Walmart-backed Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture and the US sanctioning and backing of the opening up of India’s nuclear sector to foreign interests (on the back of a cash for votes scandal in parliament (20)) have already shown what the models of ‘development’ being pushed onto people really entails in terms of the erosion of democracy and the powerful corporate interests that really benefit.

Industrial developments built with public money and strategic assets, such as energy sources, ports, airports and seeds and infrastructure support for agriculture are being sold off. And how is this all justified? By the amount of cash sloshing around the formal economy (notwithstanding the massive amounts of money being siphoned off via corrupt deals and hidden from public gaze) and the reference to GDP growth – a single, warped, narrow definition of ‘development’ – a notion of development hijacked by economists and their secular theology which masquerades as economic ‘science’.

Do people really believe India’s future lies in tying itself to a corrupt, moribund system that has so patently failed in the West and can now only sustain itself by plundering other countries via war or ‘free trade’ agreements, which have little if anything to do with free trade? At best, it shows a lack of foresight. At worst, it displays complete subservience to elite interests at home and abroad.

Finally, if anyone perceives the type of ‘development for all’ being sold to the masses is actually possible in the first instance, they should note that ‘developing’ nations account for more than 80 percent of world population, but consume only about a third of the world’s energy. US citizens constitute 5 percent of the world’s population, but consume 24 percent of the world’s energy. On average, one American consumes as much energy as two Japanese, six Mexicans, 13 Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians and 370 Ethiopians.

The Earth is 4.6 billion years old and if you scale this to 46 years then humans have been here for just four hours. The Industrial Revolution began just one minute ago, and in that time, 50% of the Earth’s forests have been destroyed. Forests are just part of the problem. We are using up oil, water and other resources much faster than they can ever be regenerated. We have also poisoned the rivers, destroyed natural habitats, driven some wildlife species to extinction and altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere – among many other things.

Levels of consumption were unsustainable, long before India and other countries began striving to emulate Western levels and high energy use. The current model of development is based on a totally misguided dream; or, to put it another way, a deceitful ideology that attempts to justify and sell a system that is designed to fail the majority of the global population and benefit the relative few.

Capitalism has for a long time succeeded in making most people blind to the chains that bind and which make them immune to the falsehoods that underpin the system. This wasteful, high-energy system is tied to what ultimately constitutes the plundering of peoples and the planet by powerful transnational corporations. And, as we see all around us, the outcome is endless conflicts over fewer and fewer resources. Such conflicts are likely to gather pace as wars are not only fought to grab resources, but are also manufactured in order to destroy states from within by fomenting civil wars and thus destabilize economies and reduce demand for resources. The outcome is also environmental destruction and an elitist agenda being forwarded by rich eugenicists who voice concerns over there being ‘simply too many mouths’: those mouths would only take food from their rich bellies – bellies that long ago became bloated from the fat of the land, lucrative wars and the misery brought about by economic exploitation. The super rich who currently run the world regard most of humanity as a problem to be ‘dealt with’ .

Finally, it is worth considering that the US as a nation and its oligarchs in particular achieved the level of affluence that they did more by way of ‘gansterism’, not by ‘freedom and democracy’ or ‘free market’ economics as that nation’s leaders like to tell the world. That much was admitted by the late Major General Smedley Butler, the US’s most decorated marine: he listed various corporations on whose behalf he fought for during his various military campaigns. Of course, little has changed since Smedley wrote about his experiences in 1935.

Maybe Smedley’s description of this aspect of the US’s route to ‘development’ are what certain Indian politicians really respect, as the strong (and soft) arm of the state works to secure access to the nations resources for powerful corporations.