STOP EPA: A Statement Issued By Economic Network Of Ghana

The Economic Justice Network of Ghana (EJN) welcomes the decision of the 44TH Ordinary Session of ECOWAS Heads of State and Government to postpone final decision on the adoption of the recently concluded Economic Partnership Agreement between West Africa and the European Union for two months pending the resolution of technical problems raised by some member-countries of the community, notably Nigeria.

While noting that the Heads of State accept the agreement in principle (contrary to the demand by many stakeholders across the region, including EJN for rejection of the agreement), and further that there has been no public elaboration as to the exact nature of the technical issues that are slated for further deliberation,  the  EJN believes that the decision by the Heads of State affords all stake-holders in all countries of ECOWAS the opportunity for meaningful dialogue on fundamental issues of economic development of the region and its people that have been raised by the agreement.

We welcome in particular the formation of a four-country technical committee to examine the technical concerns of member-countries, and urge the countries concerned to open the process up for genuine in-put by all ECOWAS stake-holders.

We re-iterate that our position as expressed in the petition to His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Ghana on the eve of the Yamoussoukro meeting to the effect that the ECOWAS-EPA on the table will undermine government revenue, eliminate jobs, destroy local production, jeopardise the industrial prospects of our countries, constrain South-South co-operation, and undermine our sovereign capacity to make policy to enable our development.  And we are willing and ready to support the committee with our skills, capacities and  resources to enable a meaningful conclusion.

For us in Ghana, we are concerned that since the Yamoussoukro decision, different Ministers of Government of Ghana, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, the Minister for Trade and Industry and the Minister of State at the Presidency for Public-Private Sector relations have given contradictory indications as to the intentions of Government with regard to the decision.  Nevertheless we are encouraged by the intention expressed by the Minister of Trade and Industry to conduct a thorough fiscal audit of the EPAs before Ghana’s agreement to adopt it.  

We further urge the Minister and the entire Government to facilitate an open, inclusive and meaningful process of national consultation of all stake-holders in Ghana to enable us contribute their concerns in the discussions.

We welcome the election of His Excellency John Dramani Mahama as President of the Authority of Heads of State and Government and urge him to use the authority of this office to ensure that the opportunities provided by the decision of Heads of State and Government for the re-think of the EPA is fruitfully exercised in support of the genuine development, economic transformation and integration of our region.

ISSUED BY: 

ECONOMIC JUSTICE NETWORK O F GHANA,    9 APRIL, 2014

Editorial

Selling Us Down The Drain

Last week, Mr. Rashid Pelpuo, Minister in charge of Public-Private Partnership declared that Ghana will definitely sign the dreadful Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), because according to him, a refusal to sign it would be too costly since the European countries have tied it to “aid, technical assistance, political relationship and trade”.

What Mr. Pelpuo did not do, is to THINK of how we can generate production within Ghana which will earn us money to wean us off the  so-called “aid and technical assistance and political relationship”.

Our chiefs did the same to us during the time of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They liked the taste of the white man’s gin, brandy and gun powder “so much that they thought that if they did not sell their people into slavery, it would cost them in brandy, gin, whiskey and gunpowder. As a result, they bought more gunpowder and raided villages and towns where they captured our people in exchange for gin and brandy. 

Mr. Pelpuo IS NOT EVEN ABLE TO THINK that the very fact that the Europeans are forcing us into the EPA by tying it to aid means that it is more to their advantage than to us.

One day, after this country has been devastated by EPA, and if people like Rashid Pelpuo are still alive, they should not come and say that they made a mistake. This is because they are taking us into the EPA regime with their eyes wide open. The only reason they are going into it is because it suits the immediate political   interests of the political elite. Just like the slave trade did for many of our chiefs.

If anything at all, has Mr. Rashid Pelpuo read the 2006 Nairobi declaration at the end of the AU Conference of Ministers of Trade? What has changed since then? 

We have leaders who would like to sell their people down the drain and at the same time turn round and say they are committed to the welfare of the people. It is more of a commitment to their narrow personal interests than the general public good.

Our Goal For Ghana Remains The Same - CPP

Samia Yaba Nkrumah

“Our goal for ourselves and for our country remains the same says Samia Nkrumah, National Chairperson and Leader of the Convention People’s Party (CPP). – “ Our goal for which we were elected in 2011 remains the same – a reformed CPP, an independent minded CPP confident in our Nkrumaist ideology that can re-activate our agenda for freedom. Our objective is to realize complete social, economic and political and cultural emancipation. In other words, we aim to free ourselves from poverty and dependency and tribal politics, so we can enjoy the freedom to create wealth for Ghanaians and Africans”

She was speaking at the recently ended CPP Conference in Tamale.

“Let there be no mistake, we are here, and in the CPP, to continue the work of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Africa: Re-activating manufacturing plants, planning for our development, putting the Ghanaian at the commanding heights of the economy, delivery of basic needs including quality, compulsory and free education linked to industry, and re-awakening our consciousness to our ability as Africans to manage our own affairs with fairness and compassion to all. This is what the CPP was formed to deliver.” she said

The CPP Leader noted that these are things that remain unfulfilled in our country today, and thus the CPP’s goal and mission for Ghana remains incomplete. 

Hon. Nkrumah went on to say that the CPP needed committed, loyal and dedicated members to return CPP to Government because there was a need to overturn decades of dependency, mismanagement and a visionless approach to development in Ghana.

She thanked the party’s Northern Regional Executives and the Kumbungu Constituency Executives, for their hard work which gained Hon. Moses Yahaya a seat in Parliament for CPP. She added that coming only four months after the general election the win involved tremendous sacrifice of time, effort and financial resources, with the party machinery from National, Regional, Constituency and Polling Stations working at its best.

Hon Nkrumah bemoaned the fact that since the 2012 elections  Ghanaians have not had an easy time, adding that the country is experiencing some of the hardest times since the country’s return to multi-party democracy, with the cost of living excruciatingly high, delivery of basic services painfully poor, no jobs, the utility services experiencing the most dire situation, many people have never known the use of clean potable water supply, electricity  supply so inconsistent as to make those who are lucky to have power very frustrated. 

All have become painfully aware that as a nation we are mismanaging our resources and losing our revenue through greed, selfishness and negligence. She said, adding that this is stalling our development and killing our morale as a people and a nation.

“Destiny beckons for the CPP once again and the party must be ready on the next occasion at the next general elections” she said. 

Hon Nkrumah went on to say further that it is the CPP’s ideology that has guided its stance on the Plant Builders Bill and its anti-GMO campaign, embark on a Positive Education Campaign or to re-connect with the TUC and the Ghana Co-operatives Council. 

The CPP Leader urged all members of her party to understand the issues confronting Ghana and to  make a stand for  Freedom and Justice.

Nii Armah Akomfrah

CPP Director of Communication

How CIA made Dr. Zhivago into weapon

Dr Zhivago

By Paul Craig Roberts

American Cold War propaganda had little, if anything, to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, by dramatizing Soviet mendacity it made the world blind to Washington’s mendacity.

When Soviet authorities refused to publish prominent Soviet writer Boris Pasternak’s masterpiece, Dr. Zhivago, the CIA turned it into a propaganda coup. An Italian journalist and Communist Party member learned of the suppressed manuscript and offered to take the manuscript to the Italian communist publisher in Milan, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who published the book in Italian over Soviet objections in 1957. Feltrinelli believed that Dr. Zhivago was a masterpiece and that the Soviet government was foolish not to take credit for the accomplishment of its greatest writer. Instead, a dogmatic and inflexible Kremlin played into the CIA’s hands. 

The Soviets made such a stink about the book that the controversy raised the book’s profile. According to recently declassified CIA documents, the CIA saw the book as an opportunity to make Soviet citizens wonder why a novel by such a prominent Russian writer was only available abroad. 

The CIA arranged for a Russian language edition to be published and distributed to Soviet citizens at the World Fair in Brussels in 1958. The propaganda coup was complete when Pasternak received the Nobel Prize for literature in October 1958.

The use of Pasternak’s novel to undermine Soviet citizens’ belief in their government continued as late as 1961. That year I was a member of the US/USSR student exchange program. We were encouraged to take with us copies of Dr. Zhivago. We were advised that it was unlikely Soviet customs inspectors would know English and be able to recognize book titles. If asked, we were to reply “travel reading.” If the copies were recognized and confiscated, no worry. The copies were too valuable to be destroyed. The custom officials would first read the books themselves and then sell them on the black market, an efficient way to spread the distribution.

What strikes me about the CIA memos is how similar the United States government is today to the Soviet government of 1958. The chief of the CIA’s Soviet Division described in a July 1958 memo why Dr. Zhivago was a threat to the Soviet government. The threat resided in “Pasternak’s humanistic message that every person is entitled to a private life and deserves respect as a human being.”

Tell that to the National Stasi Agency and to Homeland Security and to the detainees in Guantanamo and the CIA’s torture prisons. In the US individual privacy no longer exists. The NSA collects and stores every email, every credit card purchase, every telephone conversation, every Internet search, every use of social media of every citizen. Pasternak had far more privacy than any American has today.... 

Penalties Soviet citizens paid for uttering truths inconvenient for the government were no more severe than the penalties imposed on Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden. 

Today Russian citizens are more free to have private lives than are Americans, and the Russian press is more lively and more critical of government than the American press. As I wrote in one of my columns, when communist East Germany dissolved, the Stasi moved to Washington.

Cell phones linked to impotence?

The condition is known as erectile dysfunction and can affect up to half the male population over forty years of age. Risk factors are known to be diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, hypercholesterolemia and now, cell phones according to a study published in the Central European Journal of Urology.

The study was undertaken by the Medical University of Graz, in Austria and Cairo University, Egypt and was published recently in the Central European Journal of Urology. While the results are preliminary and further investigation needs to be carried out, they suggest a link between the use of cell phones and erectile dysfunction.

The study was based upon two groups of men, one composed by 20 individuals with erectile dysfunction (ED) and the other by ten men without this complaint. All men answered a questionnaire on sexual performance and the use of cell phones. The men in Group A (affected by ED) showed substantially higher use of mobile devices such as the cell phone, Bluetooth or laptops, which emit radio waves (they used the devices or had them switched on for 17.6 hours a day as against 12.5 hours and carried their phones switched on for 4.4 hours, as against 1.8 hours in Group B, with the unaffected men.

The leaders of the study have, however, stated that the sample is too small to provide any firm evidence and that further studies need to be carried out.

Previous studies have pointed towards a possible link between cell phones and mobile devices and sperm death or decreased fertility, hotly denied by the cell phone industry.  The Environmental Heath Trust (EHT) raises awareness on the negative effects of prolonged cell phone use. One of the things it recommends is holding the cell phone as far away from the body as possible and not having one switched on near the bed while sleeping.

Another study prompted the expert committee of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization to classify "cell phone radiation as possibly carcinogenic to humans" in a report issued in May 2011.

While the cell phone industry will deny such allegations, it is clear that there is smoke, if not yet a flame, and further research needs to be carried out, while we may all thank the Environmental Health Trust for protecting our lives, and those of our families. The EHT website quotes the Chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Robert Block, as stating that "Children, however, are not little adults and are disproportionately impacted by all environmental exposures, including cell phone radiation. In fact, according to [the International Agency for Research on Cancer], when used by children, the average RF energy deposition is two times higher in the brain and 10 times higher in the bone marrow of the skull, compared with mobile phone use by adults."

Food for thought.

Konstantin Karpov