THE MAN PROFFESSOR AKOSA

Professor Badu Akosa

Professor Akosa is a Doctor, Pathologist, Academic, Leading Member of CPP, Researcher, Social Commentator and a Functional Engineer.

Professor Akosa was Head of Department of Pathology in the University of Ghana Medical School, President of the Ghana Medical Association and the Commonwealth Medical Association, and President of the Prempeh College Old Students Association.

Professor Akosa, who was the former Director General of Ghana Health Service and a renowned physician, was one of the youngest African Consultants and Clinical Director of Pathology in the United Kingdom before he decided to return to Ghana. During his watch, primary health post was established in every district in Ghana. He is Chairman of the Board of the African Population and Health Research Centre, Nairobi, Kenya, Express Life, Phytica Vita milk foundation and Board Member for Phytica Ghana, Specialist hospital and safety Ghana. He is the Executive Chairman of Ghana Healthcare and Pensions Ltd and Executive Director of Healthy Ghana.

Professor Akosa is a recipient of the second highest award in Ghana, Companion of the Order of the Volta for Public and Medical Services (CV), Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Science and the Ghana Medical Association. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, West African College of Physicians, Ghana College of Physicians and holds an Executive Masters in Governance and Leadership. He is an adjunct Professor of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration and teaches on the Leadership and Governance programme. He is the Chair of the French English Exchange Programme (FEEP) Board. Professor Akosa is the Commissioner of the National Development Planning and President of the Kwame Nkrumah foundation.

Professor Badu Akosa

AKOSA SPEAKS

On CPP Funding J.B. Danqah, Rawlings And More

Below is the full text of an interview granted to Dauda Mohammed Suru of The Insight by Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, former Presidential candidate of the Convention Peoples‘Party (CPP)

Dauda; Sir, you were recently reported to have said; “Ghana stagnated and in so many ways, retrogressed under Former President Jerry John Rawlings”. How did you come to this conclusion?

Prof: Well I did the 47th  J.B. Danquah Memorial Lectures and it was on Ghana’s polarized political terrain and I retraced the political antecedences of the polarizations right from the period under the Colonial government, under the first government and then under our contemporary fourth Republican Constitution.

For me Ghana would have had a very clean break if after two terms as Military Leader of this country, President Rawlings had chosen not to metamorphose himself into a Civilian President of this country because it brought into our fourth Republican Constitution all the ills of the Military governments.

We know what happened in this country during the AFRC including the killings of top Military generals and top Military personnel which was unprecedented in this country. We know what happened under the PNDC era and I say that the legacy is indiscipline. And it is indiscipline that even subverted probably the most disciplined organization which is the Ghana Armed Forces. This was a time when non-Commissioned officers were placed over and above Commissioned officers and if you know the Army, it is so hierarchical. To the extent that non-Commissioned officers played and toiled with the lives of Commissioned officers totally unacceptable and it carried on, indiscipline to the extent that even the banking system was undermined. We would had have a clean break but for this same individual to continue to became the President of this country and brought with it all the ills of the AFRC and the PNDC.

For this country I could only compare him  to the Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew who presided over their country for about  nineteen years or more and transformed their countries from third world to first world. What transformations occurred in this country? Not in our economy, not in pretty much anything other than indiscipline and if you tell me after nineteen years we cannot view that as retrogression then I don’t know what you would say.

Let me say that previously I had said that, we stopped thinking for this country in 1966 after the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah. If you sit down and imagine this:  right from 1951, we went through series of development plans. After independence we had the first Five-Year Development Plan and then in 1963 we launched the Seven-Year Development Plan. That was critical thinking- almost on a daily basis for this country. And you speak to people like K.B. Asante and they will tell you Kwame Nkrumah was a very voracious reader. He would read and give you the young people the opportunity to read the same document and come to discuss with him and it is there that you saw how fertile  that person’s mind was.

Young people who had an idealist behavior! If you are young you are supposed to be an idealist. You are not supposed to compromise yourself. Today young people have all compromised themselves, party affiliations and even become corrupt already. So we are really in a quagmire. And all this I say started because of military interventions to governance in this country.

I think we hero-worship people so much that as soon as you touch somebody, the people who worship him come up against you. But the truth has got to be spoken and the earlier we do that the better for all of us. As far as I am concerned it was nineteen years that really stagnated and retrogressed this country.

Dauda: Dr. Kwame Nkrumah declared that, the African is capable of managing his own affairs. How would you assess the progress that Africans have made, if any, towards that declaration?

Prof: You see one of the things that we cannot see very well is that Africa or African countries as independent countries are an oasis surrounded by very interested colonial masters and so-called development partners. They are here in this country to inch an advantage for themselves in every situation. I have always said the world is a zero-sums game. Those who seek to support you are also interested in how they can use whatever you have to advance themselves.

Sadly we seem to have lost that aspect. An African is capable of managing his own affairs if he can and number one given an opportunity, number two:  with all the necessary support, number three: without the intrigues of the development partners. People sit down and say that you should liberalise your trade so that they can come and be big players on your platform knowing very well that none and nobody in your country can become players on their liberalised platform. What advantage does it give to the African?

Let me go back. When Kwame Nkrumah said that the African is capable of managing his own affairs, he, having become the Prime Minister and subsequently the first President of this country had used Ghanaians in every infrastructural development.  He created the State Construction Corporation that built Job 600 in 1965. That building was built by Ghanaians and not foreigners. Roads were built by Ghanaians. That is how some people made the money and diversified and became the first level of entrepreneur in this economy. So if you use the Ghanaian and you incentivise the Ghanaian, he would see that he is capable of doing everything and anything for you. But today everything goes to the Whiteman. How do you learn? In life, failure is an index of success. If you don’t fail, you probably will never be successful. So we sit down and think that somehow given our entire infrastructural contract to foreigners we would begin to learn, learn from what? You learn only when you are in charge and history has thought us that if you are second fiddle you learn nothing.

So this is the greatest difficulty we have. Europe and America are pushing Africa so that they can continue to control Africa. At least look at our oil resources on the West coast of Africa is controlled largely by Americans. China is also on the other side breathing heavily on Africa. Yes they will give you money but they will give you money for your resources and at the end of the day, the level of infrastructure since China came on board is been considerable to the whole of Africa but at the price where they are virtually stripping off all the resources. So here we are; financially we are almost bankrupt. We are unable to sit down and say that as Africans we must look onto ourselves.

There is so much we can do in Africa without relying on anybody. Look at the whole housing industry. Kwame Nkrumah built Saltpond ceramics to generate everything such as tiles, sinks and bath that you need clay to do. We have a clay map of Ghana and yet we allowed it to rot. By now we should have almost four ceramics factories in this country doing so much. We have got palm kennel almost an eternal flame we are not using it. A student of mine made a profound statement that politicians are only Ghanaians when they are in opposition and I think now I agree with him. As soon as they come into governance, it is foreigners who are their friends and would pass on all contracts. No wonder a President of this country had friends who could educate their children abroad. Those of us who lived abroad know that the Whiteman abroad does not have money himself. He struggles and yet somebody had friends who could look after his children education abroad. That is corruption and conflict of interest.

Dauda: How do you see the state of Ghana youth today, and how do you think the ideals of Nkrumaism can be made relevant to them?

Prof: It saddens me when I was a young man I was a volunteer. On Sunday you move to site to work the gutters. At the end of the day you get some palm wine to drink and you are happy. In our own communities we formed youth associations to do voluntary work. Today nobody cares. The country doesn’t believe that it should inculcate voluntarism into our people. So the youth are virtually there with no leadership, with no sense of direction. They are aimless. And politicians have manipulated the youth with little drops of money here and there. So you the youth are supposed to be idealist and think nothing but this country. Unfortunately they don’t think about the country. And mind you, they have also been bought by Western propaganda. They are more Americans, British, French and Chinese than Ghanaians. Everything is dead against the Ghanaian youth.

Of course the country Ghana in which they are born, even though enshrined in the constitution in chapter six, the directive principles of state policies. People don’t even read it and people don’t even understand that, that is the rights of the citizenry and the rights of government. So we are there. No Leadership, corrupt, selfish, individualism, arrogant, polarized and a lot of them lack of opportunities as the youth of this country. Today I say, and not because I think I am somebody, but so many Professors Akosa are on the streets of Accra, Takoradi Koforidua, Tamale and everywhere. And they did not get the opportunity that I got and Ghanaians disrespect them and say they have not done anything with their lives. You cannot give people the opportunities as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution and disrespect them.  And we sit down and say they should be able to start their own business, how many of the people who are leaders today started their own businesses? There is an alternative economic model that aspires to full employment. Everybody has skills and useful. Right now how many people pay taxes out of the total population? Less than 10% pay taxes in this country how do you get revenue? At least for the first nine years, Kwame Nkrumah did import-substitution, industrializations. So everything we needed we produced here in Ghana. We made pens, pencils, shoes and pretty much everything. We did meat factory, milk, butter and so on. And leaders are contended and happy seeing the youth walking and selling what on the streets. And they say that, the youth are making a living.

Dauda: There are arguments that the death of Dr. J.B. Danquah UP Presidential Candidate would remain a stain on Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s life and the collective conscience of Ghanaians forever. What is your reaction to this?

Prof: I think that we as an African society we don’t talk ill of the dead but I am an academic and so therefore I can ask questions. I have always asked the questions and don’t get answers to those questions. Was it that Dr. J.B. Danquah was sitting somewhere not doing anything that made the people of Kyebi write letters to Kwame Nkrumah to arrest him?, Was he so innocent?,

Look, there are issues that, in the reality of the situation, we have all got to analyse. Yes, anybody dying in incarceration is abominable and therefore so long as he died in prison will be a slur on the Nkrumah regime. But I will turn it over and ask when does a politician know that my days of active politics have come to an end? You contest for elections in your own community you lose, not to anybody but your brother’s son, you contest again, you lose. At a certain stage you will ask if active politics is your field particularly when you have served in the legislative assembly and so many portfolios, all nominated and not elected. When he was offered as the first Chancellor of the University of Ghana, if he had accepted it, maybe he would increase the level of intellectualism in this country.

So we got to sit down and say when innocent peoples’ lives were being hacked at midday in Kumasi on the basis of NLM and UP party, did anybody get up and say no more bloodshed? But all those lives are important you know. Consider all those whose lives were ended because of federalism and because of tribal politics. The only reason why people were dead against Kwame Nkrumah was because he came from Nzima and they say who is this Nzima boy? We were not in the best of times.

I have said and will say it forever, that the role of any government is to maintain the sovereignty of your country. If you are a leader of a government and the country is entrusted to you and you allow it to disintegrate then you are useless. That is why I say as far as PDA is concerned, if Kwame Nkrumah had not brought it, he would have been irresponsible. But the management of PDA was something else. If it was mismanaged, let’s talk about it. Why did Kwame Nkrumah have to bring the PDA? If it saved one life then it was justified. I say Ghanaian academics should not be so parochial in their minds. They should open their minds and ask questions. Was the man sitting down totally innocent when he was arrested? At the end of the day, you look at these things and you may understand why people feel so bad about it but also let us not sit down and think that this was totally an innocent person. I have information that says J.B. Danquah’s wife had gone to Kwame Nkrumah a day before. Kwame Nkrumah had requested his release but Mr. Okoh who was a Principal Secretary in the Kwame Nkrumah office felt that it was late in the day and it will be executed the following day. And that night J.B. Danquah died. When Kwame Nkrumah was informed he wept. People will sit down and say that it was crocodile tears. Kwame Nkrumah established the Ghana Academy of Arts and Science of which I am a member. Why did he invite J.B. Danquah as a founding fellow if he did not respect that man and his intellect? Period!

Let prosperity judge this and let posterity also judge the level of intellectualism that is so poor that we are not prepared to confront the issues probably. Elsewhere they would have dissected this issue and place the blame squarely on who the blame should be on. But are we? We have all taken positions. Intellectuals are NPP, UP forever. They will say what they like and those of us on the other side. That is why we are polarized and I took the opportunity to stand on the J.B. Danquah platform to talk about these polarizations of this our politics. I say Ghanaian intellectuals should get unto the issue and speak the gospel truth and not a propaganda truth.

Dauda: Which ideas would you say have greatly influenced your world outlook?

Prof: It is Kwame Nkrumah’s ideals. He believed in Ghana and Africa and did everything to make Africa a continent of progress. This is a man who talked about African Unity and believed that the only way Africa can have a voice on the world platform is to speak with one voice. He said that we will continue to be hewers of woods and drawers of water as long as Africa does not unite and that we would be cherry picked and destroyed and that we will only pick bread cramps from the tables of Western world. Who else has said that? When Kwame Nkrumah wanted to Africanize the civil service and the army, he promoted senior cadres totally oblivious of tribal affiliations. Those who had earned their places went up. That is the leader I will follow any day not the kind of leaders who went globetrotting looking for money to overthrow their own government. And that is what Busia did. Busia went to Holland he was directed to go to France. De Gaulle was furious about Kwame Nkrumah because he had supported Sekou Toure. When France had stripped Sekou Toure including removing electrical sockets and wires, expecting that Sekou Toure will grovel, Kwame Nkrumah bailed him out. So he De Gaulle was annoyed and sent Jack Forecast who was his Colonial Secretary for Africa affairs. So they used him [Jack Forecast] and supported Olympio so that a Ghanaian dissident like Jake Obetsebi Lamptey would stay there and foment trouble. They supported Felix Houphouet – Boigny in Cote d’ Ivoire. Those were the people who came to rule and they are the progenitors of NPP. As far as I am concerned, their source of inspirations was totally wrong. 

Dauda: Your Party, Convention People’s Party (CPP) cannot be said to have reached its fullest potential. What are some of your general or specific advise towards improving its stature as well as enhancing its image among the Ghanaian electorate?

Prof: My Party has become a dancing ground for NDC and NPP. Sadly, we know what happened in the 2012 elections. They funded our flagbearer; both the NPP and NDC. And yet today he thinks he is the quintessential politician. I don’t believe in politicians who do that, who are not principled and will not stand on a principled position. The CPP has become unfortunately the play grounds of the two major political parties in Ghana. Not until people who are principled, honest and with integrity lead the CPP, we will go nowhere. Those who have the money will use it against others in the Party who are honest and principled. But the fact that the CPP is still alive gives me hope. One day when Ghanaians have struggled to earn a living something might just spring up and they will say enough is enough. These politicians are only Ghanaians when they are in opposition and we have seen that in the whole of the forth Republic. Somehow, by default the CPP might rise up again.

Dauda: You and five others are in court seeking the abrogation of the sale of government 70% percent shares in Ghana telecom to Vodafone. What is new about the case?

Prof: Nothing is new. We saw and read the Sale and Purchase Agreement and realized that it was inimical to the interest of Ghana and that is why we went to court. All the evidence that have come clearly points to the fact that indeed it was inimical. This is why I say that so long as we hero worship people, they know that they can do things with impunity. They [NPP] did not even think about National Security. How can you give your whole telephone system to a foreigner and the President picks his landline to speak to his Chief of Defence Staff, somebody might be recording it. We have been five years in Court. It is now that collected evident has been sent to the Supreme Court for it to appreciate the constitutionality of what we are doing. As far as we concerned, the fact that people can go to Court on an issue like that is good for Ghana. At the end of the day, if we are successful, it will be good for Ghana. If we are unsuccessful, this country will begin to chart a very dangerous course and anybody with impunity can do what they like.

Dauda: How frustrating is it living in Ghana today?

Prof: Thank God I have got a profession and you have come to meet me in my office. I have got what is said to be a rare profession. They are not a lot of us in this country. They are not a lot probably with the experience I have. I will always have work to do so long as I decide to stay on my Medical platform. But I think about the people who are on the streets of this country and I see a lot of anger written on their faces and yet the leaders will complacently say the country has achieved MDG one, halved poverty and halved hunger, Na lie! I will say it and I don’t care whether it is FAO that has said that. I say all the UN agencies are contriving to put the people of this country in a survival mode. A hungry man is an angry man and people are hungry in this country so I am very worried about it.  Sometimes I feel the President should come on the box himself not his spokespersons because he [President] is the one Ghanaians elected. He should speak to us and bare his soul that he feels our pains. You don’t see it. I don’t think he feels our pains but if he does he should tell us. The President knows what a typical Ghanaian goes through is not a pleasant one.

Dauda: Anything you would like to say to my readers?

Prof: I say that politics is about service and those who aspire to become politicians should think it is about serving the people not lording over them. And People use money and all shenanigans to manipulate the political process so that they can lord over the people of this country. I weep for the life of the ordinary Ghanaian who, food to eat is a problem. And I tell you, it has been a since the onset of the forth Republic. And I say we stopped thinking for this country on the 24th February 1966 when Ghana’s Military and the Ghana Police overthrew Osagyefo who was a democratically elected government.

Now we are paying the price for it. Of course those who are making money let them eat, at the expense of the lives of the Ghanaians. Let them eat it. Those of us who are religious, we believe that there will be a judgment day. And all those who have collected judgment debts will pay the price for it.

Privatization Is A Ramp For Corruption and Insouciance Is a Ramp for War

By Paul Craig Roberts

Libertarian ideology favors privatization. However, in practice privatization is usually very different in result than libertarian ideology postulates. Almost always, privatization becomes a way for well-connected private interests to loot both the public purse and the general welfare.

Most privatizations, such as those that have occurred in France and UK during the neoliberal era, and in Greece today and Ukraine tomorrow, are lootings of public assets by politically-connected private interests.

Another form of privatization is to turn traditional government functions, such as prison operation and many supply functions of the armed services, such as feeding the troops, over to private companies at a large increase in cost to the public. Essentially, the libertarian ideology is used to provide lucrative public contracts to a few favored persons who then reward the politicians. This is called "free enterprise."

The privatization of prisons in the US is an example of the extraordinary cost and injustice of privatization. Privatization of prisons requires ever higher rates of incarceration in order to build profitability. The US, supposedly "a land of liberty" has by far the highest incarceration rates of all countries. The "free" US has not only the highest percentage of its population in prison but also the highest absolute number. "Authoritarian" China with four times the US population has fewer citizens in prison.

This article shows how well prison privatization works for well-connected private interests: It also shows the extraordinary shame, corruption, and discredit that prison privatization has brought to the US.

A few years ago I wrote about the conviction of two judges who were paid by privatized juvenile detention facilities to sentence kids to their facilities.

As Alain of Lille and later Karl Marx said, "Money is all." In America money is all that is important to the political system and to the bulk of the population. Essentially, America has no other values.

Another great libertarian fantasy is Wall Street. In the libertarian mythology Wall Street is the mother of entrepreneurs and of the start-up companies that blossom into industrial, manufacturing, and commercial giants. In actual fact, Wall Street is the mother of enormous corruption. As Nomi Prins shows in All The President's Bankers, it has always been the case.

Recently, there has been a spate of Wall Street whistleblowers. Many are reported by Pam Martens on her site, Wall Street On Parade, http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/04/insiders-tell-all-both-the-stock-market-and-the-sec-are-rigged/

Unlike libertarian ideologues, Prins and Martens are former Wall Street insiders and know what they are talking about.

All US financial markets are rigged for the benefit of a few. We have had the exposure of high frequency trading front-running buy and sell orders. We have had the exposure of the big banks rigging the LIBOR interest rate and the London gold price fix. We have had the exposure of the Federal Reserve rigging via its dependent bullion banks the price of gold in the futures market. We have had the exposure in Congressional hearings of the rigging of metal and commodity prices. The dollar's exchange value is rigged. And so forth. Yet no heads have rolled. Recently a SEC prosecuting attorney, James Kidney, retired. Upon his retirement, he proclaimed that his cases against the criminal big banks have been suppressed by SEC higher ups who have their eyes fixed on big jobs with the banks they are protecting while in government service.

So there you have it. The United States government is so overwhelmingly corrupt that even the financial regulatory agencies have been corrupted by the money of the private capitalists they are supposed to regulate.

America the corrupted. That is what we have become.

Not even Vladimir Putin understands how totally corrupt and insensitive to humanity Washington is.

Putin's response to the Ukraine crisis created by Washington's coup in Kiev is to rely on "Russia's Western partners," the UN, the Obama regime, John Kerry, etc., to work out a reasonable solution to the crisis.

Putin's hope for a diplomatic solution is unrealistic. The NATO governments are bought-and-paid-for by Washington. For example, Germany is not a country. Germany is a mere piece of Washington's empire. The German government will do as Washington says.The German government represents Washington's agenda. The European governments to whom Putin is speaking are not listening.

Paul Wolfowitz, the neoconservative who as Deputy Secretary of Defense presided over the orchestration of the false evidence used by the Bush regime to launch Washington's wars in the Middle East, declared the minimization of Russian power as the "first objective" of US foreign and military policy:

"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power."

What Wolfowitz means by "hostile power" is any power independent of Washington's hegemony.

Washington overthrew the elected Ukraine government in order to orchestrate a crisis that would distract Russia from Washington's adventures in Syria and Iran and in order to demonize Russia as an invader rebuilding an empire that is a danger to Europe. Washington will use this demonization in order to break-up growing economic relationships between Russia and Europe. The purpose of sanctions is not to punish Russia, but to break up economic relationships.

Washington's strategy is audacious and brings risk of war. If the West had an independent media, Washington's plan would fail. But instead of a media, the West has a Ministry of Propaganda. The New York Times has even found a replacement for Judith Miller. As you might have forgot or never known, Judith Miller was the New York Times reporter who filled the Times with Bush regime neoconservative lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Instead of examining and exposing the Bush regime's false claims, the New York Times bolstered the regime's case for war by using the newspaper's credibility to advance the neoconservative war agenda.

The new Judith Miller is David M. Herszenhorn, with accomplices Andrew Roth, Noah Sneider, and Andrew Higgins. Herszenhorn dismisses the totality of Russian media accounts of events in Ukraine as "an extraordinary propaganda campaign" designed to hide the fact from the Russian population that the entire Ukraine crisis is the fault of the Russian government: "And so began another day of bluster and hyperbole, of the misinformation, exaggerations, conspiracy theories, overheated rhetoric and, occasionally, outright lies about the political crisis in Ukraine that have emanated from the highest echelons of the Kremlin and reverberated on state-controlled Russian television, hour after hour, day after day, week after week." I have never read a more blatant piece of propaganda than Herszenhorn's. He bases his report on two "authorities," Lilia Shevtsova of the American-funded Carnegie Moscow Center, and Mark Galeotti, a NYU professor.

According to Herszenhorn, the widespread protests in eastern Ukraine are entirely the fault of the protesters who are putting on a show for propaganda purposes. The protests are not a response to words and deeds of the Washington-installed stooge government in Kiev. Herszenhorn dismisses reports of extreme nationalist neo-nazi Russophobia as "sinister claims" and regards the Washington-imposed unelected government in Kiev as legal. However, Herszenhorn regards governments formed as a result of referendums to be illegal unless approved by Washington. If you place your faith in Herszenhorn, you will dismiss all reports such as those below as lies and propaganda:

The Western World is the World of the Matrix protected by the Ministry of Propaganda. Western populations are removed from reality. They live in a world of propaganda and disinformation. The actual situation is far worse than the "Big Brother" reality described by George Orwell in his book, 1984.

The ideology known as neoconservatism, which has controlled US governments since Clinton's second term, has the world set on a path to war and destruction. Instead of raising questions about this path, the Western media hurries the world down the path. Read what medical doctors report will be the result of the neoconservative Obama regime's belief that nuclear war can be won:

The Chinese government has called for "de-americanizing the world." The Russian legislature understands that being part of the dollar payments system is a Russian subsidy to American Imperialism. The Russian legislator, Mikhail Degtyaryov told Izvestia that "The dollar is evil. It is a dirty green paper stained with blood of hundreds of thousands of civilian citizens of Japan, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Korea and Vietnam." http://rt.com/politics/russian-dollar-abandon-parliament-085/

However, Russian industry spokesmen, possibly on Washington's payroll but likely just people without a clue, said that Russia was bound by contracts to the dollar system and that perhaps in 10 or 15 years Russia could take a more intelligent approach. That is assuming that Russia would still be capable of acting in its own interests after suffering 10 or 15 years more of US financial imperialism.


Every country that wishes to have an independent existence without living under Washington's thumb should immediately depart the dollar payment system, which is a form of US control over other countries. That is the only purpose that the dollar system serves.

Many countries are afflicted by economists trained in the US in the neoliberal tradition.
Their US education is a form of brainwashing that ensures that their advice renders
their governments impotent against Washington's imperialism.

Despite the obvious threats that Washington poses, many do not recognize the threats because of Washington's pose as "the greatest democracy." However, scholars looking for this democracy cannot find it in the US. The evidence is that the US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-is-not-a-democracy-it-is-an-oligarchy/5377765

An oligarchy is a country that is run for private interests. These private interests-Wall Street, the military/security complex, oil and natural gas, and agribusiness-seek domination, a goal well served by the neoconservative ideology of US hegemony.

The American Oligarchs win even when they lose. Finally, Washington's notorious torture prison, Abu Ghraib, has been closed.  But not by Washington. The Iraqi city fell last week to "defeated" al-Qaeda.  Remember, we won the war in Iraq.  $3 trillion wasted, but that's not the way the military/security complex sees it.  The war was a great victory for profits. http://news.antiwar.com/2014/04/15/after-al-qaeda-expansion-iraqs-infamous-abu-ghraib-finally-closes/  

How much longer will dumbshit americans fall for the flag-waving deception?
The Republicans used the wars in order to create huge budget deficits and national debt that are now being used to dismantle the social safety net, including Social Security and Medicare. There's talk of privatizing Social Security and Medicare. More profits for Oligarchs in the offering. The gullibility of the American population is really without compare.

The gullibility of the American public will doom the world to extinction.

War Makes the Banks Rich

In other words, virtually all money is actually created as debt. For example, in a hearing held on September 30, 1941 in the House Committee on Banking and Currency, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (Mariner S. Eccles) said:

That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.

And Robert H. Hemphill, Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said:

If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation.

 This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve.

We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon.

 It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.

Debt (from the borrower’s perspective) owed to banks is profit and income from the bank’s perspective.  In other words, banks are in the business of creating more debt … i.e. finding more people who want to borrow larger sums.

Debt is so central to our banking system. Indeed, Federal Reserve chairman Greenspan was so worriedthat the U.S. would pay off it’s debt, that he suggested tax cuts for the wealthy to increase the debt.

What does this have to do with war?

War is the most efficient debt-creation machine.   For starters, wars are very expensive.

For example, Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated in 2008 that the Iraq war could cost America up to $5 trillion dollars. 

And a new study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies says the Iraq war costs could exceed $6 trillion, when interest payments to the banks are taken into account.

This is nothing new … but has been going on for thousands of years. As a Cambridge University Press treatise on ancient Athens notes:

Financing wars is expensive business, and the scope for initiative was regularly extended by borrowing.

So wars have been a huge – and regular – way for banks to create debt for kings and presidents who want to try to expand their empires.

War is also good for banks because a lot of material, equipment, buildings and infrastructure get destroyed in war.    So countries go into massive debt to finance war, and then borrow a ton more to rebuild.

The advent of central banks hasn’t changed this formula.   Specifically, the big banks (“primary dealers”) loan money to the Fed, and charge interest for the loan.

So when a nation like the U.S. gets into a war, the Fed pumps out money for the war effort based upon loans from the primary dealers, who make a killing in interest payments from the Fed.

Medvedev: Russia was kept in a hallway for 17 years, but today, we show our teeth 

Dmitry Medvedev

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday delivered ​​a report to the deputies of the State Duma on the work of the government in 2013. The report from the head of the cabinet lasted for one hour, ten minutes and was interrupted by applause eight times.
In his speech, the Prime Minister spoke about the achievements and challenges in the activities of the government, announced the plans and forecasts for the future. The first part of the speech was devoted to the influence of possible sanctions and restrictions imposed by the U.S. and Europe on the Russian economy. As the prime minister said, the process would not affect the Russians. Medvedev also touched upon topical issues of Russia's domestic policies - labor migration issues and bureaucracy.

During his speech, Medvedev would ask himself questions and give answers to them. "Will our citizens suffer from these notorious sanctions? We will not allow our citizens to become hostages to political games," said the prime minister. According to him, it took the world long to become global and learn to agree on most important international issues and develop common rules of the game.

"Today, some of the basic values ​​of global peace - such as, for example, freedom of movement, are being questioned," complained the head of the government, remembering how the whole world witnessed absurd visa restrictions based on professional or even gender factors.

The prime minister said that it was possible, of course, to continue to exchange "black lists," but it would be an absolute dead end. He recalled that Russian citizens had already experienced restrictions not only in terms of visas: foreign partners disabled some Russian banks from international payment systems. One can still learn lessons from these difficulties, said Medvedev. "For us, this is an additional incentive to create the national payment system, which would little depend on the international situation and operate smoothly across the country," said Medvedev.

The actions of the West will not affect Russia's defense capability, said the head of the Russian government. According to him, Russia, on the contrary, will strengthen the position on the global arms market after the imposition of sanctions. "Can our defense and security suffer? They will not suffer," said the prime minister.
"The defense sector has always been our national pride. In recent years, the defense industry has got up on its feet, and we will not let it suffer as a result of someone's hostile actions," said Medvedev.

"Russia does not depend on imports in manufacturing many kinds of military products. The ability of our country to make quality modern weapons raises no doubts with many foreign counties. Russia ranks second in the world in terms of arms exports, and we intend to strengthen our position on the global arms market," said Medvedev.

"Russia intends to strengthen her position on the market not only by building closer ties with our traditional partners, the largest of which are China and India, but also by establishing new ones - with the countries of Latin America and Africa."

The government will pay attention to industry, which may suffer because of the situation in Ukraine, said Medvedev. He assured that "certain sectors of mechanical engineering, which largely depend on international cooperation with companies in Ukraine, will receive additional support from the government."

Medvedev said that the Russian government was not going to change economic and economic policies. "I consider it wrong to rush from side to side," - said Medvedev. According to him, "artificial constraints on international projects will equally affect all participants of cooperation. "We can handle the situation on our own and we will win eventually," Medvedev assured the MPs. "In our hands, there is a necessary set of tools that allows us to develop steadily, even in harsh conditions," said Medvedev.

Commenting on the results of the work of the government, Dmitry Medvedev drew attention to positive indicators of economic growth, industrial production, lower inflation and unemployment. He pointed out the success of population policies, stressing out that "for the first time in 20 years, the birth rate in the country has grown by 20,500." He also pointed out the modernization of health care and regional systems of education, raising wages for the public sector and the pension reform.

The Prime Minister paid attention to the success of the Olympics in Sochi, as well as plans for the development of culture.

Responding to questions from MPs about Ukraine's debt for gas, the Prime Minister accused the neighboring country of systematic theft of natural gas. According to Medvedev, Russia in the near future will activate the system of advance payments for gas. "That is, the amount of gas that we will be supplying will be equal to how much Ukraine pays us for gas. In other words, it's gas vs. money," said the prime minister.

According to Medvedev, it "will be a tough, although an absolutely fair decision." "Therefore, our task is to diversify the routes of Russian gas supplies and force others to pay their bills," he added.

"The gas market is arranged in such a way that one delivers the contracted gas based on the take-or-pay principle, where long-term contracts are the main basic foundation for our gas cooperation with Europe. For us, they are valuable because they formulate supply conditions for a long period," said Medvedev, stressing out the profitability factor of such contracts.

The Prime Minister noted that Russia has always had gas problems with Ukraine. "These problems did not arise today, and, unfortunately, almost any Ukrainian leadership, no matter who the president or the prime minister was, continued the same line to misuse the Russian gas. Very often, this is, in fact, straightforward banal theft. They still continue the line not to pay for gas. This line continues today," Medvedev stated.

"The names of Ukrainian leaders have been changing rapidly, but the policy remains the same: "We wait, then pay, negotiate with them, get the Europeans involved, the Americans have come out with the so-called new gas. All this is pure bluff," said the head of the Cabinet, noting that the debt of 2 billion 200 million dollars remains, and the volume of non-payments grows.
As for restrictions on the export of Russian goods, Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia would be defending its rights, in particular, through courts and the World Trade Organization.

"For 17 years, we were actually kept in the hallway, where we argued that we deserved the right to enter the world trading community, that we meet its standards. Now we have a full right to demand other WTO member countries should observe the regulations with respect to Russian goods," said the head of the Russian government. Medvedev was talking about the negotiations about Russia's entry into the WTO that lasted for nearly 20 years and completed in late 2011.

"There is no need to be shy here. If it is reasonable and legal, we can show our teeth. "We will appeal to courts, including the authority to resolve disputes in the WTO," said Medvedev.

In early April, Kiev announced the withdrawal of a number of Russian products from sale. The black list included confectionery, cheese and fish products made in Russia. In response, Russia banned imports of dairy products of six Ukrainian companies. Afterwards, the geography of bans was expanded. On April 7, specialists of the Russian Federal Service on Surveillance for Consumer Rights announced that there was lead found in a batch of chicken sausages imported from the U.S. Russia also banned the deliveries of frozen beef from Australia, as well as  finished meat products from Poland and Lithuania.
Proceeding to internal problems of the country, Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia needed a modern state machine. He offered the MPs to consider a possibility to cut the number of officials by ten percent.

He recalled that some time ago he already made a decision to reduce the number of officials by 20 percent. When serving as president, in 2010, he ordered to reduce the staff of federal, regional and municipal agencies.

The prime minister also spoke about another intense internal Russian problem - the migration policy. Medvedev said that Russia needed a diverse qualitative composition on foreign labor.

The prime minister acknowledged that migration issues often raises anxiety and even condemnation with Russian citizens. According to Medvedev, Russia needs not only highly qualified specialists. "We need innovators, but let's be honest - we need janitors too. No one wants to work as janitors here, like in any other country. The welfare level rose, and no one wants to engage into unskilled labor," he said. At the same time, all foreign workers must be adapted to the Russian society, they should speak Russian and not endorse their habits on locals, Medvedev said.

As for the development of the Crimea, it should in no way be conducted at the expense of other regions, Medvedev stated.

"Of course, the Crimea and Sevastopol mean great joy and new opportunities for the development of our country. But we must not allow a situation where the development of the Crimea will be conducted at the expense of the development of other regions. This would be the worst way to discredit the great decisions that were taken this year," said Medvedev.
He assured that for the development of the Crimea and Sevastopol, additional sources of funding would be found and no region would lose anything.

ZunZuneo: The story is long and continues…

By Iroel Sánchez

The scandal unleashed as a result of Associated Press (AP) revelations regarding the undercover construction of a mobile phone messaging system by the United States, with the goal of overthrowing the Cuban government, continues to develop, despite White House and State Department efforts to contain it. There are, however, details of the U.S. Aid for International Development (USAID) Zunzuneo project which have not been addressed, and questions which have not been raised.

The Nicaraguan daily La Prensa reported that the messaging system’s programmer was a citizen of this country, named Mario Bernheim, who works in the U.S. embassy in Managua. While a Costa Rican newspaper, La Nación, has revealed that the project was launched in 2009 from a secret office in San José, at a distance from the U.S. embassy, despite the fact that USAID has not had an official presence in Costa Rica since 1996. La Nación identified Joseph (Joe) Duke McSpedon, a USAID employee who visited the country on “42 occasions, between 2009 and 2011, arriving on commercial and private flights,” and two other persons, contracted to work on the project by Creative Associates, a Washington consulting firm.

According to the Costa Rican paper, these individuals were “Noy Villalobos Echeverría, who remained in the country for periods of up to three months, according to immigration records, and his brother Mario Berheim Echeverría, a young programmer who developed the system to send mass messages to Cuba.”

Costa Rican Minister of Communication Carlos Roverssi stated, “An investigation of the case must be undertaken; it is very serious. If this is true, it is a serious affront to Costa Rica. It is an issue for the Foreign Ministry. But of course, an explication must be requested.”

From Spain, eldiario.es reported that the Spanish company Lleida.net, identified by AP as responsible for sending the Zunzuneo SMS, has ties to the right-wing Guardia Civil. The company released a communiqué, making an effort to avoid using the words Cuba or Zunzuneo, saying “If, at any time, one of the users of Lleida.net has committed any type of illegal act, Lleida.net is, as it has always been, at the disposal of competent authorities, to provide necessary information through legally established channels.”

Internet attorney Carlos Sánchez Almeida commented to eldiario.es that Spain’s Data Protection Law (in article 7, appendix 4) prohibits the use of information to create lists based on political affiliation – among Zunzuneo’s activities, according to AP – since this is information which merits special protection. He stated that the messaging system’s actions were in violation of Spanish law, since, “The Zunzuneo team, in an illegal fashion, collected personal information from a list of telephones and sent unsolicited messages via a Spanish platform.” Sánchez Almeida was explicit on his Twitter account, which has some 23,000 followers, saying, “If Cuban citizens’ data has been handled illegally in Spain, the Spanish justice system must intervene.”

In the meantime, AP issued a new dispatch, adding to previous revelations that persons very close to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana were part of the Zunzuneo plan developed by USAID. In the United States, an influential publication, The New Yorker, commented on White House assertions that the project was not an undercover operation, “This kind of bald-faced disingenuousness is risible. Whatever it is labeled, there seems to be little doubt that ZunZuneo functioned as a secret intelligence operation aimed ultimately at subversion.” Politico Magazine entitled an article about the mobile phone social network fiasco ‘Bay of Tweets,’ in a clear reference to the failed 1961 U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion.

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who published National Security Agency (NSA) information leaked by Edward Snowden, described ZunZuneo as “another drop in the bucket” of propaganda on the Internet, and Tracey Eaton published documents on his Along the malecon blog showing how Zunzuneo was financed, to the tune of 1.6 million dollars, by diverting funds destined for Pakistan.

Hilda Arias, director of mobile services for Cuba’s national telephone company Etecsa, spoke with Juventud Rebelde about the issue and has been quoted widely describing the multiple spam attacks on Cuban systems generated from U.S. platforms, run directly by the government. She said, “The so-called CAN SPAM Act, Public Law 108-187 approved by the U.S. Congress in December, 2003, and signed immediately by President George W. Bush himself, clearly prohibits sending commercial, or other kinds of messages, without the explicit permission of the receiver.

“Nevertheless, the promoters of so-called Martinoticias, which also involves other subversive projects in Cuba such as Cubasincensura and Diario de Cuba, appear to believe that when it comes to Cuba, they are above the law.

“Through October, 2013, according to information obtained by Etecsa, including an analysis of the origin of the text messaging, they had sent 219 mass spam messages, for a total of 1,055,746 SMS to Cuban users.”

Juventud Rebelde also addressed a project called Commotion, to which USAID has allotted 4.3 million dollars for the period between September, 2012, and September, 2015, to hire subcontractors to establish clandestine wireless networks in Cuba, re-attempting Zunzuneo via another SMS network named Piramideo, launched by the Transmissions Office and directed toward Cuba in 2013, along with other projects like Hablalosinmiedo and Singularidad.

It is no surprise that spammers who receive funds, for the likes of Diario de Cuba and Martinoticias, are among the few voices raised in support of such illegal U.S. government activities. Diario de Cuba, financed by the U.S. via the National Endowment for Democracy, said in an editorial that Zunzuneo revelations “had caused an unmerited international stir.”

Martí Noticias issued a statement signed by director Carlos García Pérez saying, “Piramideo is one more communication tool, like radio, television, DVDs, flash drives, e-mail and text messages, which Martí media offers its audience.” According to documents published by Tracey Eaton, Piramideo was developed by Washington Software, in Germantown, Maryland, for Martí Radio and TV, at a cost of 3.2 million dollars. In April of 2013, he showed on his blog that the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) had paid this company huge sums:

 - $531,576 to expand proxy Internet

- $500,987 to develop an SMS social network

- $451,796 to circumvent Cuban government efforts to block their electronic messages

- $173,074 to send messages to Cuba via SMS

- $96,028 to program computers

- $84,000 to design and operate a SMS system

- $83,050 to run an unspecified operation related to TI and architecture

- $60,275 to send mass e-mails

- $2,580 to pay for internet gateways

Total: $1,983,366.

Eaton clarified that the documents do not indicate the total number of text messages sent, although one does show that the BBG paid Washington Software $14,474 for 361,873 messages sent in October of 2011.

Martinoticias’ penchant for spam is not limited to SMS or Piramideo. In August of 2012, I, who am not a subscriber, was obliged to denounce a spam attack originating from their Twitter account. (La Pupila Insomne)