WILL GOVERNMENT SPEAK OUT?

By: Ekow Mensah

The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) is such a serious matter that a few ministers must not be allowed to make the decision as to whether to sign it or not.

If the agreement is signed, it would undoubtedly surrender national sovereignty, lead to loss of more than US$300 million, stunt industrial development and generally facilitate the complete domination of the national economy by the European Union.

So far Government has woefully failed to show that Ghana stands to gain by entering into this agreement which some say is clearly bogus and not in the national interest.

All that the Government has said so far is that it has no position on the matter and that it will simply go along with whatever ECOWAS decides.

This is pathetic!

How can any responsible Government enter into such an agreement only because other nations have agreed to sign?

It is imperative that the full facts of this agreement are made public for a vigorous debate to enable all the people of Ghana to participate in the processes leading up to a decision.

Government ought to know that the opposition to the agreement has led to emergence of perhaps the broadest coalition Ghana has seen in recent history.

This coalition includes the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the Christian Council of Ghana, the Third World Network, the Forum for Economic Justice, Economic Students of the University of Ghana, the Socialist Forum of Ghana and the Ghana Chamber of Commerce amongst others.

The broad character of this coalition must send a signal to the Government that the Agreement cannot be popular and therefore if it wants to act in the interest of Ghana then a lot more consultations will be useful.

The Insight is offering its pages to both those for and against the agreement to debate the issues.

We are deeply worried about the silence of Government on such an important issue.

This agreement cannot and must not be signed in silence or secret.

Let the people debate the issues.

Editorial

STATE OF THE ECONOMY

The battle between the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) over the current state of the national economy is a useless one.

It focuses attention on the symptoms of the problem rather than its fundamental causes.

It is about whose era produced the highest Gross Domestic Product, lower inflation and other such indicators.

In our view the true state of the national economy does not lie in these figures. It shows in the real lives of 25 million Ghanaians.

These figures hide the fact that the most important sectors of the Ghanaian economy are not in the hands of the people of Ghana.

They don’t show that a rise in the GDP does not necessarily translate into prosperity for the people of Ghana.

The fundamental problem of the Ghanaian economy is that the country’s resources are not being exploited for the benefit of the people.

These resources are exploited solely to maximize the profits of fat investors in the colonial metropolis.

Ghana needs a major and fundamental restructuring of her economy.

WOES OF A TEACHER

By Christian Kpesese

A Pupil Teacher of the Dadome D/A Primary School located at Mepe of the Volta Region , Mr Francis Ladzagla has suffered the worst humiliation of his life in the hands of the grandmother of a pupil he teaches.

Mr Ladzagla was subjected to severe lashes on the buttocks by Madam Bether Kubey for refusing to obey her instruction to cane the grand-child in her presence.

Narrating the incident to The Insight, Francis said his life has never been the same ever since he suffered that painful lashes.

He has sought for medical and spiritual solutions in order to recover from the  pain the lash has caused him to no avail.

According to him the pain is  beyond medical cure because several tests conducted has proven futile.

He said the elders have appealed to the old woman to reverse any possible curse she might have placed on him.

The facts of the case are that, an old woman, madam Bether Kubey on 13th November, 2013 stormed the Dome D/A Primary School with a cane in hand and pulled out a pupil believed to be her granddauhter from the classroom without permission.

Other pupils in the classroom and neighboring classes followed to witness the ensuing drama as the old woman drags the child away.

The teachers including Francis intervened to control the pupils to return to their classrooms.

The old woman commanded the teacher to lash the child she was dragging away in her presence or face her anger.

when the teacher refused to lash the child, madam Kubey descended on the innocent teacher and whipped him mercilessly with the cane she was wielding on the buttock in the presence of the public.

Francis Ladzagla has since been suffering from severe body pains and a sharp pain on the buttocks where he was lashed despited several medical-care and spiritual interventions.

Madam Kubey was subsequently fined to pay a ram, bottles of schhnapps by the elders of the community for unlawful entry and assault.

 meanwhile, Francis woes were not over yet.

he was again sujected to severalabuses at a prayer Camp he went to seek cure to his predicament.

At the Edumfa Heavenly Ministry Prayer Camp located at Bonglashie near Miotso in Accra, Francisis was chained as though he was mad.

he was prevailed uopn to lie down all day long and go through fasting every day with the hope of getting solution to the pain he suffered from the lash.

francis was verbally abused when he complained about conditions at the camp.

He was phisically abused when he tried to escape from the so called paradise he went to seek for spirirtual assistance.

The Geopolitics of Energy

By Robert Kaplan

Geopolitics is the battle for space and power played out in a geographical setting. Just as there are military geopolitics, diplomatic geopolitics and economic geopolitics, there is also energy geopolitics. For natural resources and the trade routes that bring those resources to consumers is central to the study of geography. Every international order in early modern and modern history is based on an energy resource. Whereas the Age of Coal and Steam was the backdrop for the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Age of Petroleum has been the backdrop for the American Empire from the end of the 19th to the early 21st centuries. And indeed, just after other countries and America's own elites were consigning the United States to a period of decline, news began to emerge of vast shale gas discoveries in a host of states, especially Texas. The Age of Natural Gas could make the United States the world's leading geopolitical power well into the new century.

Mohan Malik, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, has for years been studying the geopolitics of energy. He has drawn, in conceptual terms, a new world map dominated by a growing consumer market for energy in Asia and a growing market for production in the United States.

"Asia has become 'ground zero' for growth" as far as the consumption of energy is concerned, writes Malik. His research shows that over the next 20 years, 85 percent of the growth in energy consumption will come from the Indo-Pacific region. Already, at least a quarter of the world's liquid hydrocarbons are consumed by China, India, Japan and South Korea. According to the World Energy Outlook, published by the International Energy Agency, China will account for 40 percent of the growing consumption until 2025, after which India will emerge as "the biggest single source of increasing demand," in Malik's words. The rate of energy consumption growth for India will increase to 132 percent; in China and Brazil demand will grow by 71 percent, and in Russia by 21 percent. Malik explains that the increase in demand for gas will overtake that for oil and coal combined. Part of the story here is that the Indo-Pacific region will become increasingly reliant on the Middle East for its oil: By 2030, 80 percent of China's oil will come from the Middle East, and 90 percent in the case of India. (Japan and South Korea remain 100 percent dependent on oil imports.) China's reliance on the Middle East will be buttressed by its concomitant and growing dependence on former Soviet Central Asia for energy.

While the Indo-Pacific region is becoming more energy dependent on the Middle East, in the other hemisphere the United States is emerging as a global energy producing giant in its own right. Malik reports that U.S. shale oil production will more than triple between 2010 and 2020. And were the United States to open up its Atlantic and Pacific coastlines to drilling, he says oil production in the United States and Canada could eventually equal the consumption in both countries. Already, within a decade, shale gas has risen from 2 percent to 37 percent of U.S. natural gas production. The United States has now overtaken Russia as the world's biggest natural gas producer. Some estimates put the United States as overtaking Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by the end of the current decade, though this is unlikely.

Malik observes that this would mark a return to the pre-1973 Yom Kippur War period of American energy dominance. When combined with Canadian oil sands and Brazil's oil lying beneath salt beds, these shifts have the potential to make the Americas into the "new Middle East" of the 21st century, though we need to remember that U.S. oil production may be in decline after 2020.

At the same time, Russia is increasingly shifting its focus of energy exports to East Asia. China is on track to perhaps become Russia's biggest export market for oil before the end of the decade, even as Russian energy firms are now developing a closer relationship with Japan in order to hedge against their growing emphasis on China.

We are thus seeing before our eyes all energy routes leading to the Indo-Pacific region. The Middle East will be exporting more and more hydrocarbons there. Russia is exporting more and more hydrocarbons to the East Asian realm of the area. And North America will soon be looking more and more to the Indo-Pacific region to export its own energy, especially natural gas.

As the Indo-Pacific waters -- that is, the Greater Indian Ocean and the South China Sea -- become the world's energy interstate, maritime tensions are rising in the South China Sea and in the adjacent East China Sea. The territorial tensions over which country owns what geographical feature in those waters is not only being driven by potential energy reserves and fish stocks in the vicinity, but also by the very fact that these sea lanes and choke points are of growing geopolitical importance because of the changing world energy market.

Europe, because of its aging population, will probably not grow in relative importance in world energy markets, while the Indo-Pacific region of course will. Though northeast Asia, like Europe, is home to aging populations, that is not the case -- or at least is less the case -- in the Indian Ocean world.

Economic importance often leads over time to cultural and political importance. Thus, the current tension between an economically and demographically stagnant European Union and a troubled, autocratic Russia -- energy rich, but less so in comparative terms going forward -- may actually expose the decline of Greater Europe, while North America and the Indian Ocean world become the new pulsating centers of commerce. At the same time, however, we may see, at least in the short term, an alliance of sorts between Russia and China, undergirded by a growing energy relationship, as these two massive Eurasian states come into conflict and competition with the democratic West.

Power in Eurasia would, therefore, move to more southerly latitudes, while the United States would have its own power reinvigorated by an even closer economic relationship with Canada and Mexico (which is also energy rich). The Europe-centric world of the past millennium may finally be passing as North America and the Greater Indian Ocean take center stage.

Robert D. Kaplan is Chief Geopolitical Analyst at Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence firm, and author of Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific. Reprinted with the permission of Stratfor.

China uses economy to avert cold war

By F. William Engdahl

During his visit to Duisburg, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a master stroke of economic diplomacy that runs directly counter to the Washington neo-conservative faction’s effort to bring a new confrontation between NATO and Russia.

Using the role of Duisburg as the world’s largest inland harbor, an historic transportation hub of Europe and of Germany’s Ruhr steel industry center, he proposed that Germany and China cooperate on building a new “economic Silk Road” linking China and Europe. The implications for economic growth across Eurasia are staggering.

In his remarks, accompanied by German Economics Minister Sigmund Gabriel and local politicians, Xi stressed that Germany and China were the two economic locomotives at either end of that Silk Road and, by cooperating on a shared vision of rail and other infrastructure, could being entire new economic areas into being along the route. The term Silk Road is a conscious Chinese revival of the term used to describe the ancient trade and cultural routes between China and Central and South Asia, Europe and the Middle East that were created during the Han Dynasty, about AD 200 BC.

The Economic Silk Road and a separate Maritime Silk Road were first mentioned in a speech by Xi last November at the 3rd Plenary session of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi’s latest diplomacy promoting the idea confirms it is no pipe dream. It is strategic priority. China needs to find new export markets or preserve existing ones, as well as to narrow development gaps between the well-developed coastal areas like Shanghai and the less-developed inland parts of the country and preserve stability inside China and its neighborhood. Xinjiang province lies along the Silk Road and is also home to a radical current within its Muslim Uyghur population.

What Xi left unsaid but is clear, is that his proposal comes at an extremely critical point when the issue of peace and war by miscalculation hangs in the balance over Washington’s manipulation of events in and around Ukraine. The path of the new infrastructure corridor passes through Russia. There is no economic alternative. Thereby, it serves at the same time to bind the economic futures and prospects for peaceful cooperation between Russia and Germany especially.

Xi made his Duisburg remarks as part of a highest-priority Chinese economic plan. A week before flying to Germany, Xi met Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in Beijing. He asked Saudi Arabia to join in building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, to promote transportation connectivity and cultural exchanges. Two days later, the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan, also a critical land along the proposed economic Silk Road, was in Beijing where he discussed cooperation on the huge project. He indicated his country’s readiness to cooperate as did Afghanistan President Karzai.

The Economic Silk Road is clearly central to China’s economic strategy of developing the western areas of China and creating economic stability among her neighbors to secure stable supplies of raw materials and also open new trade markets. Since taking office March 2013, Xi and his prime minister have paid personal visits to Russia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan—all along the proposed route of the Silk Road project.

Xi said China's proposal of building the Silk Road economic belt, based on the idea of common development and prosperity, aims to better connect the Asian and European markets, will enrich the idea of the Silk Road with a new meaning, and benefit all the people along the belt. China and Germany, at the opposite ends of the belt, are two major economies that serve as the driving engines for economic growth respectively in Asia and Europe, Xi stressed. Currently China and Germany are linked by the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Europe international railway.

In 2011 China opened the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Duisburg railway. In 2013 the Chengdu-Lódź Poland direct cargo rail link crossing Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus was launched. The economic benefits of rail links as opposed to sea shipping from China’s coastal ports to Europe or air freight are huge. A complete trip on the Chongqing-Xinjiang-Duisburg connection takes only 16 days, while for the Chengdu-Lódź line, it’s 12 days. China-Europe railway transport is considerably quicker than sea passage that takes about 40–50 days and is much cheaper than air cargo. Moreover, railway transport enables more convenient trans-shipments and enables more rapid transport to the final destination.

Notably, among the Putin advisers singled out by Washington for personal sanctions was the head of the Russian Railways, a vital partner in the new Silk Road project. Washington seems locked into an ideology of economic sabotage, confrontation and wars to maintain their failing global hegemony.

Central Asia stability key

The concept of a New Silk Road Economic Belt was presented during Xi Jinping’s landmark 10-day visit to Central Asia in September 2013. He visited four Central Asian states: Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan (Premier Li Keqiang visited this country as well in his November trip) and Kyrgyzstan. He also took part in the 13th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek and went to Russia to attend the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, where he met Vladimir Putin for the fifth time in the first year in office.

Xi presented a five-point proposal to jointly build the New Silk Road Economic Belt to strengthen relations between China, Central Asia and Europe. They are:

1. strengthen policy communication, to help “switch on a green light” for joint economic cooperation;

2. strengthen road connections to build a great transport corridor from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea, and from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean, then gradually build a network of transport connections between eastern, western and southern Asia;

3. strengthen trade facilitation, with a focus on eliminating trade barriers and taking steps to reduce trade and investment expenses;

4. strengthen monetary cooperation, with special attention to currency settlements that could decrease transaction costs and lessen financial risk while increasing economic competitiveness; (this would see a lesser role for the dollar).

5. strengthen people-to-people relations. Here China has made available to Shanghai Cooperation Council members 30,000 governmental for study in Chinese universities over 10 years and announced that China intends to invite 10,000 teachers and students to come to China as well.

A key driver of economic development among the bitterly poor regions of the Silk Road will be establishment of Special Development Zones by Beijing along the route that will connect to other economic centers in China as well as China’s western and southern neighborhoods. The first has just been created called Lanzhou New Area in China’s Gansu Province. A “New Area” is a comprehensive economic development zone in or close to a big city or metropolitan area. They are established by the State Council with preferential conditions and privileges to boost its development. Currently, there are six New Areas in China, with four of them in coastal provinces. The decision to establish the Lanzhou New Area in northwest China—one of the poorest regions—is a clear signal that Beijing is paying special attention to speeding up development of China’s western regions and to connecting it to other, well-developed parts of China. Lanzhou New Area, in a population center of almost 4 million people, is the first comprehensive zone of this type in northwest China, and the first on the historic Silk Road.

China’s decision now to focus on “going West” also has a major security component.  Beijing needs to secure export markets and diversify its transport network—the main topic raised by Xi during his trip to Central Asia—especially the increasingly unstable sea lanes in Asia’s South and Southeast. China is very vulnerable to disruption of the Malacca Strait, where there has been an increase in pirate attacks, illegal trafficking and unresolved maritime disputes. Almost 85% of imports to China are transported along this route, including 80% of China’s energy imports. Beijing is well aware should Washington ever decide to Target China in a confrontation, blocking the Malacca Strait would be no problem.

Frontline In East-West Struggle

Vladimir Lenin

By Christian Oliver in Rascov

Near an imposing statue of Lenin, a teenage girl in a black leather jacket and sunglasses takes her place in front of a brigade of classmates in Tiraspol, capital of Transnistria. “We are patriots!” she chants as they snap to attention and puff out their chests. “We will defeat our adversaries!” she adds, before leading them off at a brisk march.

Mantras about fighting the enemy are hardly empty rhetoric in a separatist enclave deeply scarred by its 1990-1992 war with Moldova, in which hundreds died. Officially, pro-Russian Transnistria is but a narrow strip of land within Moldova, along the country’s eastern border with Ukraine. In reality, it remains stranded in limbo – an autonomous but unrecognised state, where hammer and sickles are ubiquitous and the feared secret police still called the KGB.

In normal times, Transnistria draws attention for its role as a smuggling centre for arms, frozen food, tobacco, alcohol and, sometimes, people. Now it is under the spotlight for another reason: Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Nato’s top commander has warned that Russian divisions could swoop into Transnistria next – a move that some fear would give Moscow a foothold from which to seize Odessa, on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.

Since the Crimean invasion, many Transnistrians worry they may now be on the frontline of a broader east-west clash. One local noted wryly this week that he had noticed plenty of “new faces” among the 1,300 Russian troops based in the enclave. “This should be resolved peacefully,” a schoolteacher pleaded. “We do not want to bring our children into a conflict.”

The tension has revealed that Transnistrians are torn about where their future lies. At a fundamental level, Russia is the guarantor of safety for the 500,000 people here and accounts for 70 per cent of the budget. Moscow ensures that the pensions are higher than in Moldova and that the subsidised gas is just a sixth of the price.

But while emotional attachment to Russia runs deep, most exports – legal and smuggled – head west.

According to Tiraspol’s data, 35 per cent go to Moldova, 16 per cent to Poland and 9 per cent to Italy. Russia takes only 13 per cent of Transnistria’s exports, including steel, electricity and agricultural goods.

Moldovan retail chains such as Andy’s Pizza and Lider, a hardware store, have outlets in Tiraspol.

When Transnistrians fall ill, they rely on Moldovan ambulances. One young man observed 80 per cent of his class went on to study in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital. Most people have Moldovan mobile phones and Transnistrians are also aware that Moldovan passports will offer them visa-free travel to the EU from the end of the month.

“It’s a contradiction,” one technician said. “The mood is to join Russia and if there were a referendum, 90 per cent would back that. But everyone has two passports: Russian and Moldovan.”

Transnistria’s businessmen are also alive to the possibilities of an impending trade accord Moldova has negotiated with the EU – similar to the EU-Ukraine agreement that provoked fury in Moscow and precipitated the current crisis.

The mood is to join Russia and if there were a referendum, 90% would back that. But everyone has two passports: Russian and Moldovan Sheriff, Transnistria’s most prominent company appears eager to widen its horizons. In addition to petrol stations, telecoms and supermarkets, the company has helped build a sturgeon farm in Tiraspol from where it hopes to export caviar worldwide.

“Despite the pressure from the leadership to stay outside the free trade area with the EU, I know that [Transnistrian] business people are very interested,” Iurie Leanca, Moldova’s prime minister, told the Financial Times. “We will be able to build pressure from the bottom-up, from ordinary people on to the so-called leadership.”

The more immediate concern in Transnistria is coping with the reverberations of the current crisis, including a move by neighbouring Ukraine to tighten border controls. A petrol pump attendant in the north said he had run out of propane – used for cooking and running cars – because of the “blockade”. Thick wood smoke hung over villages nearby as people resorted to alternatives.

The Kremlin and Transnistria are both calling for an end to the restrictions and diplomats fear they could become a flashpoint if they bite deeper and food supplies are choked.

Nina Shtanski, Transnistria’s foreign minister, has seized on the crisis to call for unification with Russia, based on a 2006 referendum.

But diplomats say Moscow is rebuffing such calls and does not want to escalate the situation. In fact, Russia is pursuing a diplomatic initiative in which Transnistria would remain squarely in Moldova.

“They just want the Transnistrians to shut up,” said one envoy. Mr Leanca also said he hoped that Russia’s position would come as a dose of “cold water”.

Ultimately, the gravest threat to Transnistria may not be its east-west dilemma so much as its rickety economy. Salaries are low, banks are said to be experiencing difficulties and – as in Moldova – emigration is high. Young men are a rare sight in the villages these days since so many have left.

“If it goes on like this, there will only be 300 people left,” one local quipped.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014. You may share using our article tools.

CIA Torture and the Threat of Dictatorship

By Patrick Martin

Only one conclusion can be drawn from the report published in the Washington Post Tuesday giving grisly details of CIA torture of prisoners and systematic lying by government officials to cover it up: the US ruling elite as a whole is guilty of war crimes for which it must be held accountable.

The Post report, based on leaks from unnamed “US officials,” describes the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the operation of CIA “black sites”—the secret prisons in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, Thailand and other countries where prisoners were held for “interrogation,” i.e., waterboarding, sleep deprivation, beatings, stress positions, induced hypothermia and other forms of torture.

The article provides only a brief extract of the material compiled in the massive committee report, which the CIA has been fighting for more than a year to suppress. On Thursday, the Senate committee is expected to vote to seek the declassification and publication of a 400-page executive summary.

The bulk of the report, which runs to 6,300 pages, is never to be made public, according to both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate panel. The Postarticle describes its text as divided into three volumes, one giving a full chronology of the secret interrogations, a second contrasting what CIA officials said about the program with what they knew was really happening, and a third giving a detailed accounting of nearly all of the roughly 100 prisoners held at “black sites” between 2002 and 2006.

According to a McClatchy News Service follow-up to the Post report, more than half of the 100 prisoners were subjected to some form of torture, and as many as five died during interrogation. These included Gul Rahman, who died of hypothermia after being doused with freezing water and then left in a cold cell with only a scrap of clothing, and Manadal al Jamadi, who died after his head was wrapped in a plastic bag and he was hung on a wall crucifixion-style.

What the report describes is not “excess” or the actions of “rogue” individuals, but a systematic, organized, fully authorized program, endorsed by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The cover-up, in turn, continues to this day, with the active involvement of the Obama administration, implicating top officials up to and including the president. Directly involved is CIA Director John Brennan—a former top aide in the Obama White House and official in the Bush administration.

After initial reports of the torture program began to surface, despite the best efforts of the American media to cover it up, the Bush administration officially declared it over. The prisoners in CIA cells were transferred either to Guantanamo or to the prisons and torture chambers of their countries of origin (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.).

Obama ordered an end to waterboarding and other forms of torture in 2009, while blocking any prosecution of the agents and officials responsible for the torture program. This was part of a shift in tactics against suspected Islamist militants, from detention and interrogation to extermination by drone-fired missile.

All these methods of state brutality and murder are illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions, as well as in violation of the US Constitution and laws prohibiting torture and assassination. These are not blemishes on an otherwise healthy military-intelligence apparatus, but the products of a depraved and deeply criminal American ruling class.

The Washington political establishment consists largely of those who have ordered murder and torture, those who facilitate, enable and cover up for murder and torture, and those who draft legal rationales and media apologias for the first two groups.

Overseeing this entire political apparatus is an intelligence agency that operates outside any legal constraint, a fact revealed by the systematic efforts of the CIA to block the release of the torture report. The agency went so far as to spy on the Senate Intelligence Committee itself, as revealed by committee chair Dianne Feinstein last month. Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Feinstein accused the agency of violating “the separation-of-powers principle embodied in the United State Constitution.” She further accused the CIA of violating “the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.”

Feinstein went on to charge the CIA with attempting to intimidate her committee and override the principle of congressional oversight of the executive branch—implicitly accusing the CIA of attacking the constitutional foundations of the United States.

Feinstein is not a principled opponent of the crimes of the intelligence apparatus. She is among the most adamant defenders of the illegal surveillance of telecommunications and the Internet by the National Security Agency, as exposed by Edward Snowden. She has refused to elaborate on her criticism of the CIA since her Senate speech and collaborates closely with both the intelligence agencies and the Obama White House.

No different are the liberal “critics” of the NSA program within the Democratic Party, such as senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, who sit on the Intelligence Committee.

Both hailed the cosmetic changes to the NSA collection of telephone metadata announced last week by the Obama administration. They are concerned not that these police state methods threaten democratic rights, but that the Snowden exposures are generating a powerful and growing opposition from the American people.

No section of the American ruling elite will lift a finger to defend democratic rights. That is because their own class interests are at stake. The fundamental driving force of the police-state buildup is the colossal growth of social inequality. In the final analysis, a relative handful of multi-millionaires and billionaires can maintain their wealth and privileged position against the masses only through methods of political dictatorship and state repression.

Among the revelations contained in the Senate report is the fact that the CIA repeatedly lied about the results of the torture, falsely claiming that it produced information that prevented terrorist attacks. What then, is the real motivation behind the torture programs? It is the establishment of a system of illegal repression directed at all opposition to the policies of the American ruling class—above all, within the United States itself.

The defense of democratic rights, in the United States and every other country, depends on the political mobilization of the working class, the most powerful social force. This requires the building of a mass political party of the working class, based on a socialist and internationalist program.