BAD LEADERS AND TITLES

Idi Amin Dada

By Ekow Mensah

Field Marshal Idi Amin had collected them all from all manner of places including the universities. They had given him or he had procured several Doctor of Philosophy degrees. He had even obtained PhD in Science but he could still not satisfy this extraordinary huge ego.

Idi Amin crowned himself, the Conqueror of the British Empire and got some Asians to carry him in a specially built palanquin.

There was also the case of Jean Baptise Bokasa, who crowned himself as the Emperor of the Central African Republic and spent millions of dollars on his coronation.

He had also collected several PhDs from universities both at home and abroad before plunging himself and his country into this useless comic adventure.

The diminutive Hitler made up for what he couldn’t get in size by feeding his oversized ego with all manner of awards plenty enough to fill all of his palace space.

Adolf Hitler

In Ghana, General Afrifa who was sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US to overthrow Nkrumah, accumulated many chieftaincy titles and honourary degrees.

General Kutu Acheampong did not allow anybody to outdo him. He also collected chieftaincy and academic titles in the false belief that they could endear him to his people.

Perhaps Afrifa and Acheampong realised while tied to the stakes at Teshie Military range that no titles can save any leader from the wrath of an angry people.

The point is simply that Ghanaian leaders have always failed to learn the important lessons of history and continue to feed their egos rather than serve the people who elected them.

President Mahama

They are still chasing titles like Nkosuohene, Asafohene and loud university degrees which mean nothing to a hungry and disillusioned population largely denied access to potable water, continuous supply of electricity, education and other social services.

What the people of Ghana like all people all over the world want and need are; food, shelter, clothing, education and good health.

The day our leaders will realise this, will be the day Ghana will start moving forward.

Stop chasing useless titles and focus on dealing with the concrete problems of the masses.

This is the only way of wining and retaining the confidence of the Ghanaian masses.

Editorial

CHRISTMAS

The Christmas fever is all over the place already and in Accra, the traffic jams are getting worse.

One would have thought that at a time when electricity supply is in jeopardy and large sections of the population are complaining of economic hardship, the occasion would not cause so much excitement.

From the way things look now, this Christmas, would not be substantially different from all the others.

The Insight cautions that this Christmas should be celebrated in moderation in the face of the national economic circumstances.

By all means lets celebrate Christmas but it should not be the beginning and end of everything.

Please drive carefully, avoid drunkenness and remember that life continues after December 25.

Africa can fight imperialism with unity

Runaway Former Bourkinabe President Compaore

By Abayomi Azikiwe

A new transitional leader was announced for Burkina Faso on Nov. 17 in the aftermath of a nationwide uprising creating the conditions for the ouster of longtime neo-colonial dictator Blaise Compaore. Military leader Lt. Col. Isaac Zida has been largely rejected by the masses inside the mineral-rich landlocked former French colony.

A previous foreign minister and United Nations representative, Michel Kafando, was appointed interim president until national elections can be held during 2015. Kafando served for thirteen years under the imperialist-backed regime of ousted President Blaise Compaore.

On Oct. 30, millions of Burkinabe people took to the streets, demanding the resignation of Compaore, who was seeking through political manipulation within the parliament to extend his 27-year-old rule. After thousands entered the parliament shutting it down and setting the building on fire, Compaore fled to neighboring Ivory Coast.

The appointment of Kafando may not calm the social unrest inside the country if there are no genuine reforms implemented to alleviate the mass poverty, unemployment and lack of food security. This interim leader was favored by the military, which has been castigated by most Burkinabe people who want a return to what they perceive as democratic civilian rule.

Lamine Konkobo, of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Afrique service, wrote on Nov. 17 that, “Reaction to Mr Kafando's appointment has been lukewarm among the youth who were instrumental in ousting Mr Compaore.”

It was contingents of working class youth wearing t-shirts and carrying placards evoking the revolutionary legacy of Marxist leader Thomas Sankara, who ran Burkina Faso between 1983-87, that led the mass demonstrations against the neo-colonial system supported by France and the United States.

Konkobo went on to assert that, “All this leaves many with the feeling that they have been sold short with Mr Kafando’s appointment. Many youths would have preferred Josephine Ouedraogo. She served in the government of Thomas Sankara, the post-independence leader whose mysterious killing opened the way for Mr Compaore to seize power in 1987.”

Strikes and unrest spreading throughout West Africa region

The workers, farmers and youth of Burkina Faso are by no means alone in their struggle against neo-colonial rule. In Ghana, Niger and Nigeria, strikes and mass demonstrations are occurring on a weekly basis.

In Ghana, tens of thousands of public sector and education workers went on strike during October, demanding higher wages and better conditions of employment. The government of President John Mahama took the unions to court and secured an order forcing the workers back on the job.

Nonetheless, the unions threatened to resume their work stoppage if the government did not meet demands for pay raises and the guaranteeing of pensions. The strike actions also impacted the burgeoning oil producing industry in Ghana, where workers refused to unload barrels of oil until their grievances were adequately addressed.

In an article published by starafrica.com, it says “A request by the Trade Unions Congress (TUC) for the Finance Minister tell the true state of the economy in the 2015 budget speech and the clash between the labor unions and the government in court, are some of the stories making headlines in Ghana on Wednesday (Nov. 12). The Daily Graphic newspaper reported that the TUC has called on the government to introduce policies that will strengthen domestic industries and create employment in both the private and public sectors.”

Niger is one of the world’s largest producers of uranium; yet, the mines are controlled by a French firm, Areva. At the same time, as in Burkina Faso, Niamey is an outpost of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), where Pentagon troops are stationed in these states carrying out aerial surveillance, drone station construction and surveillance in the so-called “war on terrorism” in the region.

On Nov. 13 Mayor Assane Seydou of Niamey fired the entire municipal police force due to their strike and protests over the lack of security and decent wages. The national police arrested twenty striking municipal officers who had been accused of setting up a blockade at the entrance of the city hall on Nov. 10.

In the Federal Republic of Nigeria, designated as having the largest economy on the African continent, labor unrest has accelerated over the last several weeks. In the education, oil and healthcare sectors, there have been strikes and threats to walk off the job due to poor working conditions.

The Joint Health Sector Workers Union of Nigeria (JOHESU) has embarked on an indefinite strike. JOHESU is an umbrella federation of healthcare workers who are demanding that the government of President Goodluck Jonathan honor a previous agreement on wages signed over two years ago.

As a result of the JOHESU strike, codewit.com reported, “Now healthcare services in hospitals are grounded, patients are suffering, the sick cannot obtain care and lives are on the line. Nigerians are suffering, and those without the means to patronize private hospitals or travel abroad are the hardest hit.” (Nov. 16)

Nigeria depends on the revenue generated by oil sales for the bulk of its foreign exchange earnings and consequently the government and petroleum industry are concerned over threats by workers to shut down production. The country is the largest exporter of oil from the continent into the US.

The Nigerian Leadership newspaper reported that, “The two major oil workers union in the country, the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) on Oct. 31 in Abuja threatened to shut down the oil and gas industry in Nigeria if the constant victimization of its leaders is not stopped forthwith. The unions issued the federal government a 14-day ultimatum to address what it described as precarious working conditions in the oil sector and victimization of its members by Total Corp., failure of which will lead to withdrawal of its services.” (Nov. 1)

World capitalist crisis will prompt more industrial unrest

These developments illustrate clearly that despite the substantial increases in foreign direct investment in these West African states as a result of the extraction and export of oil, gold and other natural resources, the workers are not being justly compensated for their labor power. With the decline of oil and other important commodity prices, the impact on mineral-producing states is enormous.

All of these states are subject to the terms of trade and finance controlled by the major imperialist political and economic capitals of the Western world in Washington, New York, London, Paris, Ottawa, Brussels, and others. Until African states take control of their resources collectively in order to establish a system of equal trade, the workers will be subject to declining wages and living standards even though the profits margins of the transnational corporations continue to rise.

With the spread of worker unrest throughout several economically significant states in West Africa, the potential for a broader and more politically direct uprising will escalate. These mass demonstrations and strike actions must be consolidated through the formation of a united front of labor organizations and political parties that seek to link the struggles of workers, youth and farmers all across the West Africa region and beyond.

The declining wages and conditions of labor for workers and farmers across the region reveal that the current international division of labor and economic power still favors the ruling classes of the imperialist states. Transnational corporations and banks can only be effectively fought through the united action and organization of the most exploited and oppressed.

Who Owns the Earth? People versus Power

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon

By Lesley Docksey

“Vimes knew how you could own a pub, but he wondered how you could own a trout stream because, if that was your bit, it had already gurgled off downstream while you were watching it, yes?  That meant that somebody else was now fishing in your water, the bastard!  And the bit in front of you now had recently belonged to the bloke upstream; that bloated plutocrat of a fat neighbour now probably considered you some kind of poacher, that other bastard!  And the fish swam everywhere, didn’t they?  How did you know which ones were yours?  Perhaps they were branded – that sounded very countryside to Vimes.”  Terry Pratchett – Snuff

Years ago I travelled in a friend’s car down to Devon to stay on an Exmoor farm.  I was dropped off at the end of the lane to the valley were the farm lay.  After so long cooped up in a small car full of people I walked slowly down the hill, filling my lungs with clean, fresh air.  My senses were being cleansed.  I saw more clearly and sniffed more keenly the scents blowing from the moor.  And I listened.

I stopped and listened again, trying to trace what it was I could hear.  It was all around me, a background whispering, soft creaks and cracks; not quite a conversation but something more.  To my amazement I realised that what I was hearing was the sound of life.  The banks and hedges were full of it; every tiny herb, each blade of grass, every hazel and hawthorn leaf in the hedges reaching towards the afternoon sun, were giving off this faint, busy, joyful sound of life growing.

It was a seminal moment in my life.  I was no longer a human living on but apart from the Earth.  I was, with every other form of life, a part of the Earth and essentially, with no more right to the resources of the Earth than any other being, whatever its form.

So I find it hard to think of rats or aphids, or anything you care to name, as ‘pests’ or vermin.  We talk of ‘plagues’ of locusts simply doing what locusts do, but we never look at the world-wide plague that the human race has become.  And in many ways that plague has been propagated by humanity’s ideas of and desire for ‘ownership’.

So – who owns the Earth, or rather, who owns the soil under our feet?  Silly question.  Of course it is all those rich and powerful men, isn’t it?  Most governments are made up of people who have far too much money.  We are told we live in a democracy, but while the majority of us struggle and worry about the dire state of our finances, I do wonder why so many unthinkingly vote into power mega-millionaires.  Have our wits gone begging that we should believe they can truly represent us, we with our little houses and they with their large estates?  People like Tory MP Richard Benyon, who recently had to withdraw  from an appalling property management scheme, and who owns land devoted to shooting for sport, rich men’s sport, that is.

A few days after Nicola Sturgeon became Scotland’s First Minister, the Scottish Government made moves to reactivate the land reform process which had been stalled for some years.  Land reform in Scotland, a whole nation under the sway of privately owned ‘sporting estates’ would be, as one commentator put it, “bad news for 432 people but good news for 5,254,800 of us.”

That gives some idea of just how unbalanced money’s impact on the Earth and its inhabitants is.  For the rich not only own land – soil, rock, water and minerals – they believe they ‘own’ all the life upon it, on the land, in the air or in the water.  They ‘own’ the trout and the salmon, and ban anyone from taking a little canoe or rowing boat up ‘their’ stretch of the river in case it disturbs ‘their’ fish.  They ‘own’ the grouse and the deer, and feel free to kill any life that gets in the way of their profits or their pleasure.

They think money buys them the right.  Well, it doesn’t.  They have simply assumed that right over centuries of abrogating to themselves too much power and self-importance, to the point where, as George Gunn wrote, “Now those who hoard wealth assume that democracy is their property.”  And they place their cronies (usually with connections to big corporate business) in positions where they have no right to be.  Look at the people who were given important posts in Defra by big-business friend Prime Minister David Cameron, he who promised to lead the greenest government ever:

• Caroline Spelman, Environment Secretary – tried to sell off the nations’ forests to private buyers.  She was also a co- owner of a lobbying firm for the food and biotechnology industry.
• Richard Benyon, Wildlife Minister – tried to implement a policy of “controlling” buzzards to protect game birds – game birds being the targets for rich shotguns.  Cameron’s parents-in-law own a big sporting estate in Scotland.  Well, there’s a surprise!
• Owen Paterson, Spelman’s successor – his brother-in-law is a major climate-change denier.  Paterson promotes GM crops, fracking and of course, the infamous badger culls.
• Liz Truss, Paterson’s successor – after three disasters a nice safe bet, inexperienced and pretty well invisible where the badger cull is concerned.  On the other hand, she wants to repeal the Hunting Act, as does her boss Cameron, who has ridden with the Heythrop Hunt.
• Sir Philip Dilley, appointed to be chairman of the Environment Agency, is connected to the fracking industry.  Cameron is on record as saying “we are going all out for shale gas”.  How will this impact on the forthcoming climate change talks in Lima, shale gas being a fossil fuel that feeds climate change?
• Andrew Sells (an appropriate surname), the recently appointed head of Natural England, has a background in investment banking and house building  – one of those guys who’d like to build on ancient woodlands and SSSIs (Sites of Special Scientific Interest), and who probably thinks you can “offset” ancient woodland by planting new trees elsewhere.

And, if you think this is just about the United Kingdom, think again.  Wherever you look, rich and corporate interests are trashing the Earth in pursuit of profit.  The environment is only there to serve ‘the economy’, whatever that is.  The President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker recently gave  the post of Environment Commissioner to a Maltese politician – Karmenu Vella, who supports the shooting of thousands of migrating birds, something that Chris Packham has vigorously campaigned against.  Vella’s brief is to make the environment, naturally bursting with business opportunities, economy-friendly.

Across the Atlantic, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has had a succession of high-ranking officers connected to Monsanto and Waste Management Inc., two companies the EPA is supposed to regulate.  Its climate change expert defrauded the government by pretending to be a CIA agent.  The current head Gina McCarthy comes via the White House rather than industry, but has a record of lying to, sorry, misleading Congress.

Wherever you go in the world, you’ll find this is how it is run; big business profits while the environment, with all that includes, suffers and dies.  Speaking at an anti-badger cull demonstration in Winchester Chris Packham made the point that he doesn’t care for badgers above other animals. All wildlife is important.  The totality, the ecology, is important.  “But,” he added, “caring is not enough.”

How right he is.  And one of the things the English badger culls have done is to connect many more people to the wildlife that is not just a part of the Earth, but to that particular bit of Earth where they too belong and have their home.  People have become more active.  The Hunt Saboteurs Association  has seen a real surge in membership since the culls began.  People are joining the dots between fighting for one species and fighting to protect all; going up against those humans for whom all aspects of our ecology are there to be obliterated for fun or profit.

Why did I start by telling you about that magic moment in Devon?  Because it was a Mystery.  Life, every single tiny bit of it, is a mystery.  Mystery can provoke awe and sometimes terrify us.  It can inspire us, change our lives and engender the kind of overwhelming love I have for this patch of Earth called Britain. The kind of love that demands I, and you, stand up and get in the way of those who think they ‘own’ what we know is precious and essential to our well-being; well-being that comes from the wholeness of life; life which for us is the Earth, which can only be owned by itself.

For there is one thing that humanity, with all its religions, its power, inventiveness, arrogance and greed, cannot do – it cannot ever own Mystery.  It will always slip through our hands.  All we can do is follow where it leads.

Last week the latest efforts to head off climate change started in Lima, Peru.  The aim of this latest conference (the twentieth, would you believe) is to produce a draft agreement on action, to be finalised in Paris next year.  With time running out it doesn’t look hopeful.  The world is silent.

In 1990 Alan Ereira made a film for the BBC, The Heart of the World: Elder Brother’s Warning.  In it the Kogi people of Columbia, having seen serious signs of climate change in their territory, issued a plea to the rest of us: stop living in our thoughtless, selfish way and wake up to what we were doing to the Earth.  (After so many years of it being available online, in the last week this film has become unavailable due to “copyright issues”.  Had it suddenly been resurrected by climate campaigners, and has been taken off by the powers that be because of the Lima Climate Conference?)

Apart from a procession of New Age eco-tourists flying out to Columbia thinking, wrongly, that the Kogi would welcome them, few took any real notice and they were soon forgotten.  Some years later Alan visited Glastonbury with an updated film.  The Assembly Rooms were full; almost all were young people asking questions about the Kogi’s sex lives.  What?  The Earth is being ruined and they wanted to know how the Kogi people screwed?  I despaired.

I still despair at times, because the indigenous people of Central and South America are showing us the way ahead, if only we’d listen.  Many of their countries have been paupered because of corporate-friendly interventions by the IMF and the World Bank.  The result, to the annoyance of the US, is an increasing number of left-wing, socialist governments.

Indigenous people have died in their hundreds trying to protect rain forests from ranching, illegal logging, and mining, oil and gas companies, the latest death just days before a planned protest at the Lima talks.  How convenient.

In 1994, in the Chiapas region of southern Mexico, the Zapatista revolution took place.  These indigenous people objected to powerful outsiders taking control of their land via the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – ‘free trade’ standing for corporate profit.  They haven’t yet won their battle.  On the other hand the Mexican government has failed to control them.  The Zapatistas govern by consultation.  The decision to take up arms was a collective decision.  They do not elect leaders; they select those who will best voice community views, something the government could not understand, as the film A Place Called Chiapas showed.

The US has tried to extend NAFTA into the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).  There were massive demonstrations.  Over 10 million Brazilians voted to withdraw from the negotiations.  While governments negotiate, the people know that such deals will damage their lives and their beloved Earth.  There are current trade agreements and almost all of them sideline the US and its corporate plans.

The Campesinos have created a worldwide movement of peasant farmers, indigenous peoples and fishermen from small beginnings in Paraguay, where they ‘illegally’ took over land in order to grow their food.  Workers in Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere took over factories closed by absentee owners.

Many ‘peoples movements’ started in the Americas and right now members from across the world are attending the Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change, running parallel to the UN climate talks in Lima, parallel because their voices won’t be heard at the ‘big table’.   Neither will young people be heard even though they will suffer more from climate change than those producing all the hot air.  Other activists were prevented from attending but then, even the UK climate change Minister, Amber Rudd, has been barred from going.

And the talks themselves are almost invisible in the mainstream media.  Apart from the environment-friendly Guardian, only the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times featured articles about it in the first week.  Obviously the ‘economics’ of climate change are more important than the future of the planet.

The LA Times limped in with a story about clashes between rich and poor nations slowing down the talks.  But that was basically it.  The UN News site had several items, it being a UN Conference.  All other news came from activists’ websites.  The message?  People care; power and politics don’t.  They will simply go on making money as long as they are able

To see how determined indigenous people can be in trying to protect their resources and the Earth, one should look at Bolivia.

In 2000 many Bolivians fought against a private water company taking control of their water.  The Water War lasted for four months, at the end of which the company fled and later presented a large bill (compensation for lost profits) which remains unpaid.  This was followed in 2003 by a Gas War, when the Bolivians resisted the corporate interests that wanted their vast natural gas resources.

This conflict rumbled on until 2005, when the millionaire President, known for speaking Spanish with an American accent, resigned.  An indigenous left-wing politician, active in the Water and Gas Wars, was becoming prominent – Evo Morales.  He was elected President and a whole new agenda appeared.  Suddenly people were demanding rights for Mother Earth.

In 2009 Morales, backed by other nations, addressed the UN General Assembly in a heartfelt speech, pointing out that it is no use discussing the effects of the financial, energy, food or climate change crises, without ever looking at the cause:

“The origin of this crisis is the exaggerated accumulation of capital in far too few hands.  It is the permanent removal of natural resources and the commercialization of Mother Earth…  Mother Earth gives life, water, natural resources, oxygen and everything that supports the well being of our people.  If we talk, work and fight for the well being of our people we first have to guarantee the well being of Mother Earth; otherwise it will be impossible to guarantee the well being of our citizens.  Mother Earth, Planet Earth, will exist without human life, but human life cannot exist without Mother Earth.”

He sought a UN treaty that gave legal rights to Mother Earth.  He asked for three things: that developed countries pay the climate debt they owe; that there should be a Court of Climate Justice; and that nations must declare and expand the rights of Mother Earth’s natural regeneration.  We’re still waiting on all that, but the UN did designate 22 April as International Mother Earth Day.  So that’s okay then.

In April 2010 Bolivia hosted a World Peoples Conference in Cochabamba.  35,000 people came from all over the world.  It produced a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.  This was followed by an international gathering in Ecuador at which the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature was formed.

In 2011 Bolivia passed into law an act protecting the rights of Mother Earth.  It then took a draft treaty to the UN, prompting outrage among all the right-wing corporate interests.  Last year, during a dialogue on harmony with nature , the General Assembly called yet again for real and rapid action that would protect the Earth and the future existence of humanity.

Also last year, a UN meeting on the rights of the indigenous peoples produced a document simply ‘inviting’, ‘requesting’  or ‘encouraging’ governments and corporations to listen to, engage with and recognise the knowledge that indigenous people have to offer.  More hot air and no action.  In June this year Morales hosted a G77 Summit which produced a Declaration titled “For a New World Order for Living Well”.

Unknown to the average person there have many attempts, some successful, to bring our treatment of the Earth within the law.  What Morales and his fellows have done is to keep pushing the Earth’s rights into the debates.  But debates alone will not heal the Earth or guarantee our future.

And all this is looked upon with scorn by our governments and their corporate allies.  Who cares about peoples’ movements or Bolivia?  And Morales himself is the first full-blood indigenous leader, for God’s Sake!  What does he know about running the world?  Come to that, what does man’s world have to do with Mother Earth?

But indigenous people know how the Earth runs.  Slowly we others are realising that we can’t own the Earth, or the water, the air, the forests and plains, or the fish in the sea.  The Earth doesn’t belong to us.  If anything, the reverse is true; we belong to it, a position the developed world spurns at its peril.

Will Lima produce anything other than another fudge?  I doubt it.  Corporate interests still dictate our future and we are deaf to the indigenous voices.  And as Jared Diamond showed inCollapse, civilisations have died out because of trashing their environments.  We are now trashing the whole Earth.

Man’s drive to ‘develop’, his inventions that require yet more resources, his desire to own everything in sight, to put his interests before those of any other life forms – all this has led to an Earth stripped of its flora and fauna, and its mineral riches without which we cannot sustain our current way of life.  Rivers run dry while the seas rise.

We will not kill life on the Earth; life is here and will evolve in strange and wonderful ways.  But we are destroying everything that we have come to know and love.  And while the Earth weeps and begs for our attention the world of men is silent in its selfishness.

Oil Dependency: Nigeria Needs Shock Treatment

Goodluck Jonathan, Nigerian President

By Ejike E. Okpa, African Executive

I have always maintained that the voo-doo accounting and modeling used by Nigeria’s leadership and professionals to prop up the economy is on quicksand. As a single commodity dependent nation with lousy public probity on/for its national resources, Nigeria is bound to experience wide and wild swings anytime the oil price fluctuates.

Going forward, Nigeria is in for a shock of its corporeal life – it will crash but may not burn. It will be wounded and seriously bruised except it reinvents itself and abandons the reckless manner in which it manages its resources. Devaluation is just a beginning of further fall. When a bucket has been leaking at a rate of more than 25%, to keep the bucket full, one has to diligently keep pouring water at the same level or rate of leakage to maintain fullness or at 26%. Nigeria’s leadership has never mastered that simple method of checkmating its finances to plug holes and stabilize its leaks – economy. With the Naira’s devaluation, the economy has lost 8.4%. May the shock continue to reverberate so that the ‘Giant of Africa’ may wake up.

Since 1970 when the civil war ended, naïve and barely literate Gen. Yakubu Gowon with his army of official bandits announced to the world that Nigeria was/is rich. Nigerians have followed that ‘beer parlor’ chant and chest pounding to their own peril. Nigeria is not a rich nation and has never been one.

By the devaluation of the Naira from N155 to N168, I predict that before the end of the first quarter  of  2015, the Naira’s  exchange rate will be N200 to $1. I just got back from a 3-country trip of UAE-Bahrain-Qatar, as part of a US chamber of commerce delegation. The feeling in that region, even if the oil prices were to fall below $70/bbl, they can handle it. The difference between that region and Nigeria is that they finance their operation and their liquidity per capita is very high. This affords them opportunity to move on and wait for correction.

In the case of Nigeria, with a population of 165 million people, about 4 times the entire GCC regional population, the stress and shock with the falling oil price will be devastating. It is amazing that even with Nigeria’s  Finance Minister Madam Okonjo-Iweala, famed former World Bank top executive and her hand-picked followers and admirers in Nigeria monetary and fiscal echelon, there are no apparent  economic gains.

There is never enough reserve in Nigeria to cushion the oil price swing. With undue reliance and echoed sentiments that Nigeria is rich because it is an oil producing nation, many unduly abandoned other sectors. How can a bunch of clowns in leadership who can barely read and understand financial structures safeguard an economy as fluid as Nigeria? Their dance is about how much money they take home from milking the system.

I keep hoping that the oil price falls below $50/pbbl, so that Nigeria drinks her oil, is forced to look inward to adjust its ways,  and becomes productive. Texas witnessed that in the late 1970s and 80s, and now Texas is US’s most stable and viable economy. In Texas, we do not celebrate oil but use it to oil our way to productivity and prominence - diversified economy.

Given that the US is now net exporter - http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/10/02/victim-of-shale-revolution-nigeria-stops-exporting-oil-to-us/, we love it because our gasoline price is dropping – adding more spending money to our purses. We want it further down. As US no longer buys Nigeria’s crude, I hope they stay away from that and hopefully, Chevron and ExxonMobil will divest their holdings and Shell pulls back. Nigeria needs critical shock treatment so that it may wake up and smell the rotten manner it has been handling its natural resources. Also, when the crude oil flow drops to a trickle, Nigeria’s Delta region will face environmental challenges that in 100 years, they will still be suffering what they have allowed to happen. Nigeria will be the worst hit because of inadequate planning, corruption, over-dependence on importation of refined petroleum products and poor federal system of government, where other federating units depend mainly on the central government for monthly allocation.

If Jonathan makes it in 2015, Madam Okonjo-Iweala and Petroleum Minister Dezani Allison-Madueke, should be  fired. The two have not delivered solutions to make Nigeria’s economy hum nor gain traction. They have instead sold naïve and almost illiterate House and Senate members, including their admirer President Jonathan voo-doo numbers.

The Naira has been losing value becoming a worthless currency, and that flies in the face that 30 years ago, One Million Naira was nearly $2m. Today, the same One Million Naira is worth less than $6,000. Anyone who believes that such loss in value is proof of ‘Nigeria Rising and Biggest Economy in Africa’ may very well believe that Nigeria is the richest country in the world. That too, is allowed.

Source:Ocnus.net 2014

Was Netanyahu behind the synagogue attack?

Obama stirs Netanyahu in the face with suspicion

By Tim King

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was vowing revenge over the deadly attack in an Israeli synagogue that left four rabbis and one Israeli policeofficerdead.

The act is said to have been carried out by two Palestinian cousins. Netanyahu appeared to be harnessing the anger as a political opportunity, calling for Israelis to unify against those who committed this “massacre.”

According to Ma’an News Agency, the two cousins were Ghassan Abu Jamal and his cousin, Uday, of East Jerusalem. 

Without even leaving time for the dust to settle, Netanyahu had the homes of these men destroyed, a common practice against Palestinians. 

Causing all who lived there to suddenly become homeless is clear insight into the thinking of Israel’s PM. 

More than a dozen Palestinians were arrested.

The first lesson in attempting to subjugate a race of people, which Adolph Hitler knew well, is to dehumanize them. What Hitler did to the Jews, Israel has been doing to the Palestinian population since initially seizing land in the name of Israel in 1948.

Exactly two Palestinians are being blamed for this deadly event, yet Israel’s leading warhawk wants to target, essentially, the entire Palestinian population. 

Are races of people and governments responsible for the acts of individual people? 

This hardly seems the case. The truth is that no entity has claimed responsibility for the deadly synagogue attack and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas specifically condemned the killings. 

Netanyahu, who is directly responsible for full-scale attacks against Palestinian civilians: the 2008/2009 “Operation Cast Lead” that initially targeted a police academy graduation, then went on to destroy dozens of schools and hospitals, leaving more than 1,400 people dead, and this year’s “Operation Protective Edge,” which saw 2,192 Palestinians killed, among them 1,523 civilians, which included 519 children, 70% of whom were under the age of 12, is blaming both Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, the Islamic movement, and the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu’s words will lead to significant misery for Palestinians who are already subjected to endless checkpoints, constant harassment, and attacks by Israeli military forces. At the same time, the Palestinian Muslims and Christians are not allowed to drive on “Jewish only” roads or live in “Jewish only” settlements. 

It is reported that three of the rabbis killed in the synagogue attack are Israeli-American citizens. This leads to the main point of my article: the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.

Those who are feeling their hate mechanisms kick into gear over this latest attack need to understand that targeting people inside of religious buildings during time of prayer in this part of the world is nothing new, nor is it unique to either particular side. 

The 25 February 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, also known as the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, and the “Hebron massacre,” was a deadly mass murder committed by none other than a US-Israeli citizen named Baruch Goldstein. 

This gun wielding menace left shot 29 worshippers to death, and wounded 125. 

While former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin called Goldstein a “degenerate murderer” and “...a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism,” it is also true that hardcore Israeli settlers in al-Khalil (Hebron) have publicly claimed that the murderer Goldstein is a hero, and his deadly attack against unarmed people is viewed as an act of martyrdom.

The Palestinian people took to the streets in protest and within the first 48 hours, Israeli troops killed 19 of them.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Baruch Goldstein was associated with an anti-Arab hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

After moving to Israel, he was drafted into the Israeli military, where this would-be murderer served as a doctor. 

Offering insight into his possible “insanity,” are press reports at the time that this doctor would not treat an Arab person if they were in need of medical care. 

He even refused to treat Arab soldiers serving in the military. Later, Goldstein became associated with Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was assassinated in 1990.

Goldstein reportedly swore that he would personally avenge the killing of Kahane. 

This likely was the direct motive for the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre.  

In light of that information, it seems hardly possible that Goldstein simply lapsed into a state of insanity.  Instead, he cleverly and deliberately chose to murder a large number of Muslim people in response to the killing of a single Israeli man.

That is, after all, how things work in Occupied Palestine. 

If one Israeli citizen is killed, dozens of Palestinians are targeted.

The terrorist label is one that should be worn boldly by the Israeli regime, yet they maintain that all who do not condone and support the illegal occupation of Palestine are “terrorists.”

Most of the world sharply disagrees with Israel’s hot-tempered warring tactics, yet there will be more outcry by Western media over this event than the murders of any Palestinians. 

They are, thanks to Netanyahu, effectively dehumanized to the populations of the world’s most prosperous nations.

The recent attack against four rabbis and an Israeli police officer is an outrage, but it is too soon to even know exactly what happened, and nearly impossible to gain a clear, unbiased look at the deceased attackers or the event itself, in Western or Israeli press. 

Instead you hear this referred to as “the latest act of violence” and the word “terrorist” is used over and over to further dehumanize these alleged attackers. 

Source:www.presstv.com