 |
| US Soldiers |
By Ekow Mensah
Usually reliable sources have told “The Insight” that the
United States of America (USA) has requested the authorisation of the Ghana
Government to station 550 soldiers in the country to fight Ebola.
The soldiers would allegedly be made up of 500 other ranks
and 50 officers.
It is still not clear if the Government of Ghana would grant
this strange request but sources say the move is consistent with earlier
attempts to establish a US military base in West Africa.
During the Kufuor administration, the United States decided
to find a base for its Africa command now stationed in Europe in West Africa.
At the time only Liberia accepted to play host for the US
Africa Command.
In Ghana, there were protests against the establishment of a
US military base.
Former President Umaru Musa Yaradua of Nigeria said then
that Nigeria was strongly opposed to the establishment of any US military base
in West Africa.
In a report on the US energy requirements up to 2015, Dick
Cheney, former Vice President of the US proposed the establishment of US
military bases in West Africa.
The purpose of the bases was to safeguard US interest in
West African oil.
Editorial
WHAT DOES THE USA WANT?
On the front page of this issue is the story about the
request of the United States of America to station 550 soldiers in Ghana to
ostensibly fight against Ebola.
It seems to us that this is just another excuse for the US
military to extend its operations into Africa.
The Insight has not forgotten the attempt to find space in
West Africa for the Africa Command of the US armed forces currently based in
Europe.
We are also fully aware of the contents of the “Cheney
Report” which recommended US military presence in West Africa to protest US
interest in West African oil.
We urge the Government of Ghana to reject this request
because it is not in the interest of the people of Ghana.
UCC reduces post diploma
programmes duration to two years
 |
| Minister of Education Prof Opoku Agyemang |
The University of Cape
Coast (UCC) has reviewed the duration of some of its post diploma programmes
from three to two years.
This is to motivate more people to pursue further studies
without compromising on quality and content of the programmes.
Professor Domwini D. Kuupole, Vice Chancellor, who disclosed
this on Wednesday, acknowledged the fact that the duration of an academic
programme could be a de-motivating factor to those who have had enough of
academic work.
Hitherto, students with Higher National Diploma had to do
three years to acquire a degree from the College of Distance Education.
He made this known at the 12th matriculation ceremony to
officially admit 16,770 fresh students into the university’s College of
Distance Education (CoDE) for the 2014/2015 academic year.
Out of the total number of students that matriculated,
13,839 are pursuing various programmes in education with the remaining 2,931
pursuing business related programmes while 517 students were admitted for the
post graduate programmes.
On the gender break down, 9,376 are males while 7,394 are
females; a ratio of 55.9: 44.1 which, according to Prof. Kuupole, was
significant because the university was aiming at a gender ratio of 1:1
admissions.
This year’s ceremony was decentralised into zones to reduce
the long journey risks and other inconveniences students from centres across
the country went through in order to attend the ceremony.
Prof. Kuupole announced that CoDe had introduced a
three-year Diploma in Tourism Management and there-year Hospitality Management
aimed at broadening employment opportunities to the numerous youth who desired
to upgrade themselves in the hospitality industry.
He said the university had also reviewed some of its
academic modules for the first semester programmes and it would be uploaded
online for access by students to facilitate learning while the remaining
modules would also be reviewed and uploaded.
He said the university, in collaboration with the Distance
Education Students Association of Ghana (DESAG), had procured 10,000 tablet
computers from Huawei Technologies for distribution to CoDE first year students
to enhance academic work at the college.
Prof. Kuupole urged students to adhere to all the rules and
regulations of the university and their programmes of study adding; “you have a
role to play in maintaining your
reputation and that of the university… the university does not compromise on
its academic standards”.
GNA
SFG SPEAKS ON “CUBA
FIVE”
 |
| Kwesi Pratt Jnr |
The Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) welcomes the belated
attempt by the Obama administration to normalize relations between the Republic
of Cuba and the United State of America (USA), and the announcement of the
release of the last three of the “Cuban Five” from prisons in the US.
In our view, the decisions of the White House are the direct
result of struggles waged by the Cuban people under the leadership of the
Communist Party and the worldwide solidarity from progressive and decent minded
people and organizations.
Over the last 50 years and more, millions of people from all
the continents of the world have made tremendous sacrifices in the heroic
effort to secure justice for Cuba and its people.
That the blockade on Cuba has lasted this long is more the
result of the intransigence of the ruling elite in the United State of America,
which was nurturing the false hope that it could through aggressive terrorists
acts force the Cuban Government and its people on their knees.
The Socialist Forum of Ghana sees the arrest, trial and
conviction of the “Cuban Five” as a violation of law and all principles of
justice and equality. These five heroes of Cuba were engaged in legitimate
actions aimed solely at preventing terrorists’ attacks against their country.
They did not in any way endanger the national security interests of the US and
even more importantly their findings were made available to the US authorities.
Whiles welcoming the moves by the Obama administration to
end the injustice inflicted on the Cuban people for more than five decades, we
urge Cuba to unite behind the call for the preservation of national
independence and its enviable Socialist system. This is because the battle
against imperialism cannot end before the complete defeat of the system which
seeks to dominate the world for the sole purpose of maximising the profits of
predatory giant companies.
The measures announced by President Barrack Obama, will no
doubt free the huge potential of the Cuban people to accelerate their
development processes but they could also be a modern day Trojan horse, well
designed to subvert the revolution inspired by Jose Marti.
On behalf of the entire membership of the Socialist Forum of
Ghana, we pledge to continue our acts of solidarity until final victory.
Cuban shall truly be free!
………………………
Kwesi Pratt, Jnr
For Convener
Paris Shooters Just
Returned from NATO’s Proxy War
 |
| Said Kouache and Cherif Kouache |
Global Research
Shooters were radicalized in Europe, sent to Syria,
returned, have been previously arrested by Western security agencies for
terrorism and long on the watch-list of French and other Western intelligence
agencies. Yet “somehow” they still managed to execute a highly organized attack
in the heart of Europe.
In an all too familiar pattern and as
predicted, the shooters involved in the attack in Paris Wednesday,
January 7, 2015, were French citizens, radicalized in Europe and exported to
Syria to fight in NATO’s proxy war against the government in Damascus, then
brought back where they have now carried out a domestic attack. Additionally,
as have been many other domestic attacks, the suspects were long under the
watch of Western intelligence services, with at least one suspect having
already been arrested on terrorism charges.
USA Today would report in an article titled, “Manhunt
continues for two French terror suspects,” that:
The suspects are two brothers — Said, 34, and Cherif
Kouachi, 32, both French nationals — and Hamyd Mourad, 18, whose nationality
wasn’t known, a Paris police official told the Associated Press. He spoke on
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
USA Today would also report (emphasis added):
The brothers were born in Paris of Algerian
descent. Cherif was sentenced to three years in prison on terrorism
charges in May 2008. Both brothers returned from Syria this summer.
The implications of yet another case of Western-radicalized
terrorists, first exported to fight NATO’s proxy war in Syria, then imported
and well-known to Western intelligence agencies, being able to carry out a
highly organized, well-executed attack, is that the attack itself was
sanctioned and engineered by Western intelligence agencies themselves,. This
mirrors almost verbatim the type of operations NATO intelligence carried out
during the Cold War with similar networks of radicalized militants used both as
foreign mercenaries and domestic provocateurs. Toward the end of the Cold War,
one of these militant groups was literally Al Qaeda – a proxy mercenary front
armed, funded, and employed by the West to this very day.
Additionally, in all likelihood, the brothers who took part
in the attack in Paris may have been fighting in Syria with weapons provided to
them by the French government itself. France 24 would report last year in
an article titled, “France
delivered arms to Syrian rebels, Hollande confirms,” that:
President Francois Hollande said on Thursday that France had
delivered weapons to rebels battling the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad “a
few months ago.”
Deflecting blame for the current attack on “radical Islam”
is but a canard obscuring the truth that these terrorists were created
intentionally by the West, to fight the West’s enemies abroad, and to
intimidate and terrorize their populations at home.
We Must Sidestep the
Canards
As with any false flag attack engineered by a government for
the purpose of manipulating public perception and pushing through otherwise
unjustifiable policy both foreign and domestic, a series of canards are erected
to distract the public from the true nature of the attack.
In the recent attack in Paris, France, the canards of “free
speech,” “condemning radical Islam,” “tolerance,” and “extremism” have all
taken center stage, displacing the fact that the terrorists who carried out the
attack were long on the leash not of “Islamic extremists” but Western
intelligence agencies, fighting in a Western proxy war, as a member of a
well-funded, armed, and trained mercenary force that has, on record since as
early as 2007, been an essential component of Western foreign policy.
Indeed, Al Qaeda and its various rebrandings are not the
creation of “Islamic extremism,” but rather Western foreign policy using
“extremism” as part of indoctrinating the rank and file, but directed by and
solely for the purpose of serving an entirely Western agenda.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush
Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the
Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s
government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to
weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S.
has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria.
A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist
groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and
sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
To this day, the US, its NATO partners including Turkey, and
regional partners including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are arming,
funding, harboring, training, and otherwise perpetuating these
“Islamic extremists” within and along both Syria and now Iraq’s borders.
In reality, without Western backing, “laundered” through the
Persian Gulf autocracies and manifesting themselves in a global network of
mosques jointly run by Persian Gulf and Western intelligence agencies, there
would be no “Islamic extremism” to speak of. To focus on “extremism” as a
cause, rather than as a means used by the true perpetrators of this
global-spanning campaign of Western-sanctioned terrorism, is not only to
perpetuate such canards, but to invite the perpetuation of this very terrorism
we are shocked and horrified by.
West Apparently Maintaining Domestic Radicalization/Recruitment Centers
The recent Sydney cafe
hostage crisis featuring an Iranian dissident
granted Australian asylum and featured in anti-Iranian propaganda,
exposed a vast network of radicalization and recruitment run in the
Australian city of Sydney, used to organize support and fighters to be sent to
the West’s proxy war in Syria. The network included
many notorious individuals, well known to Australian
law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and many of whom had
traveled to Syria, taken part in fighting alongside known terrorist organizations,
and were allowed to return and continue their political activities in
Australia.
The Daily Mail’s article, “Why did
police ask former terror suspect for an ISIS flag?” would state:
Counter terrorism police have contacted Sydney man and one
time terror accused Zaky Mallah and asked him for an ISIS flag.
Just over four hours into the Martin Place siege, officers
the NSW Police Joint Counter Terrorism Team and asked him if he could give them
an ISIS flag.
Zaky Mallah, 30, from Westmead in western Sydney offered the
Counter Terrorist police the flag that hangs on the wall of his apartment, the
moderate Islamic Front flag, but ‘they weren’t interested’.
The article would also state:
Two years ago Mr Mallah travelled to Syria and lived with
the FSA rebels engaged in the bloody civil war against Muslim hardliner
President Bashar el Assad ‘before it got crazy over there’. After returning
home, he encouraged young people to go to Syria and engage in jihad to
experience the freedom fight taken up against El Assad…
As in Australia, France apparently also has a stable of
former terrorists who had traveled to Syria and returned, all while on their
watch lists – and in Australia at least – some of these terrorists are
literally on security agency speed dials and are clearly a part of a network
the intelligence community both monitors and in fact, maintains.
Such networks have turned out thousands of recruits to fight
in NATO’s war in Syria. The BBC would report in an article titled, “Islamic State
crisis: ’3,000 European jihadists join fight’,” that:
The number of Europeans joining Islamist fighters in Syria
and Iraq has risen to more than 3,000, the EU’s anti-terrorism chief has told
the BBC.
Gilles de Kerchove also warned that Western air strikes
would increase the risk of retaliatory attacks in Europe.
How exactly is the public expected to believe that such a
vast number of terrorists can migrate overseas to fight alongside terrorist
forces the West is currently, allegedly, fighting, without the West being able
to stem such a tide? Clearly, just as arming Al Qaeda in Syria was done
intentionally, so to have the floodgates been open, allowing European
terrorists to both join NATO’s proxy war in Syria, and to return home and join
NATO’s growing war against its own people.
Operation Gladio on
Steroids
Such networks don’t just mirror NATO’s “stay behind
networks” formed during the Cold War, supposedly created to activate in the
wake of a full-scale Soviet invasion of Western Europe, but instead used as a
covert front of political and terroristic provocation – such networks today are
a continuation of NATO’s secret armies.
NATO’s provocateurs used during the Cold War were a mixture
of nationalists, anti-communists, former Nazi SS officers, and extremists of
every stripe. Their particular beliefs were, however, ultimately irrelevant
since they were used for a singular agenda defined not by these beliefs, but by
NATO’s own agenda.
Many of the militants and extremists NATO used were
liquidated upon the completion of the many false flag attacks NATO organized at
the cost of hundreds of innocent European lives. Likewise, today, many of the
gunmen or bombers involved in the long string of suspicious domestic attacks
carried out by NATO’s modern “stay behind network” are either killed on sight,
or imprisoned and forgotten.
While NATO’s Cold War operations appeared confined to
conducting terrorism upon its own people, today’s networks are used to carry
out both proxy wars overseas as well as to carry out terrorist attacks at home.
The expansive nature of this network and the threat it poses to global peace
and stability should be at the center of the Paris attack debate – not the
alleged beliefs, religion, or supposed agenda of the attackers who, just like
their Cold War counterparts, were nothing more than patsies and pawns amid a
much larger and insidious game.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and
writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern
Outlook”.
The Destruction of Food
and Agriculture
 |
| The Campaign against Bt Cowpea is heating up in Ghana |
Global Research
The UK government and its associated bureaucracy is
colluding with powerful global agritech corporations to get genetically
modified organisms (GMOs) into Britain (see here). Politicians and officials whose views of GMOs are
based on ignorance or whose statements are distorted as a result of their
conflicts of interest have been spearheading this campaign.
Government departments, academics and industry lobby and
media bodies are working to push a pro-GM agenda and weaken regulations
regarding GMOs and are engaged in a public relations campaign in an attempt to
win over a sceptical public.
Whether via the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP) (see here) or the drive to weaken the regulatory framework by
other means (see here), the GMO biotech sector has Britain and Europe firmly
in its sights.
Lawrence Woodward on the Beyond GM website (here) says the UK government is setting time aside to clear
away all obstacles to the introduction of GMOs to English farms. He reports
that in a letter to Beyond GM, Defra (Department for Environment and Rural
Affairs) junior minster Lord de Mauley, confirmed that:
“We do not expect any commercial planting of GM crops in the
UK for at least a few years as no GM crops in the EU approval pipeline are of
major interest to UK farmers… the government will ensure that pragmatic rules
are in place to segregate GM and non-GM production.”
De Mauley’s letter was in response to the Beyond GM
initiative ‘The Letter from America’ (here), which
was delivered to the Prime Minister’s office in November. Despite the British
public not wanting GM food (see here), the government’s intention is to get GMOs planted in
fields and put on plates.
Woodward argues that “pragmatic rules” imply as few and as
weak as possible with no rules on liability and nothing to ensure that ’the
polluter pays’ in the event of organic and non-GM crops and habitats being
contaminated. He also states that the last time the UK government engaged in a
serious consideration of co-existence of GM, organic and non-GM crops it let
Scimac, a pro-GMO industry body, write the rules and adopted them wholesale.
According to Woodward, it is likely that in its plenary
session on 13th January the European Parliament (EP) will vote in favour of the
proposed GMO authorisation process and thereby open up the EU to GM cropping.
This so called ‘opt-out’ regulation will free up countries such as the UK,
which in reality want to ‘opt-in’ and enable genetically engineered crops to be
grown on their fields (see here, although the proposed policy has since been
modified).
In his article, Woodward notes that the authorisation
proposal has already been through a non-transparent process involving a
trialogue, where the European Commission (EC), EP and representatives of the
Council of Ministers secretly wheel and deal to facilitate the passage of
legislation. The process has stripped out all mandatory measures to prevent
contamination of non-GM crops and establish liability rules to give non-GMO
farmers legal and financial protection.
Woodward argues that it is very likely that research
institutions in the UK will gear up their GM crop trials and, using taxpayer
money, plant more research field trials to benefit the GMO industry and private
patent holders.
Regardless of what may happen in a couple of years from now,
Britain’s food is already contaminated. GM-fed animal products are in
British supermarkets (unlabelled), and GMO products (labelled) are also on the
shelves (see here). Moreover, consumers have little idea of what is
being served to them in restaurants.
The UK government is acting as a proxy for the GMO biotech
industry. It is attempting to force GMOs into Britain on the back of what it
hopes will be an apathetic, ignorant, confused or misinformed public.
GMOs are not needed to feed the world’s population
(see here). They represent another phase of intensive,
petrochemical agriculture that is causing environmental, health, social and
economic devastation across the planet (see here, here and here). They are not part of a solution for hunger or
poverty. As has been well documented, they and the globalised industrial model
of trade and agriculture they belong to are part of the problem (see here).
Under their current ownership, GMOs are being used as a
Trojan horse gift to humanity from a US State Department-backed agro-industrial
sector that seeks only profit and to further subjugate the rest of the globe to
Washington’s needs (see here and here).
Despite the slick lobbying and PR from Monsanto et al, this
isn’t about nutrition or ‘feeding the world’, it’s about modifying organisms to
create patents that will allow monopolistic control over seeds, markets and the
food supply. It’s not about objective science stripped of vested interests
either (if it were, we would not have this). It’s ultimately about the geopolitics of
oil-dependent agriculture and resultant debt, it’s ultimately about seed
freedom and and it’s ultimately about food democracy.
“The world already produces twice as much food as the world
needs… we should be focusing on food quality, social justice, sustainability,
and environmental protection. But the pursuit of quality and justice would not
be profitable to the corporates, so that is not the prime target if indeed it
is seriously on the agenda at all… GMOs… are designed expressly to
survive in a world drenched in agrochemistry… GMO technology… has been on the
stocks for about 30 years and in that time has produced no new food crops of
unequivocal value that could not have been produced in the same time at far
less cost and in perfect safety by conventional means. Yet the collateral
damage from GMO technology has been enormous… But the downside is denied or
air-brushed out, through propaganda and lobbying, at great expense, by those in
power.” Colin Tudge, biologist and writer (see here).
Be informed and take action:
The farce of Western
free speech
 |
| Francois Hollande, French President |
By Finian Cunningham
Speaking
outside Elysée Palace in the aftermath of this week's terror killings in
France, former President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the violence as "an
attack on civilization." Coiffured, sun-tanned and nattily dressed,
Sarkozy's solemn words made him appear like the embodiment of civility.
That's a quaint turn in etiquette by a politician who is
mired in allegations of sleaze and corruption, as well as war crimes.
Sarkozy wasn't too concerned about "civilization"
when he and his British allies launched the NATO bombing campaign of Libya in
March 2011 in stark violation of a UN mandate. That seven-month onslaught led
to the murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi - from whom Sarkozy had gladly
received hush-hush political donations in the past, before stabbing him in the
back.
The illegal French-led NATO blitzkrieg on Libya subverted a
constitutional government and resulted in the ongoing destruction of one of
Africa's most economically developed countries. Libya has been sacked to become
a failed state, over-run by extremist Takfiri militia and tribal warlords,
whose warped ideology is shared by the ISIS terror network destroying Syria and
Iraq. The same ideology includes the armed adherents who struck this week in
Paris, killing more than a dozen people.
So Sarkozy's concern for attacks on civilization is well
qualified - although you won't hear it put quite that way in the
thought-control Western media. The very extremist forces he helped to unleash
from the illegal overthrow of the Libyan state have now killed his own people
right in the capital of his republic.
One of the presumed touchstones of Western civilization that
was allegedly defiled this week is "free speech" and "freedom of
expression." Sarkozy was joined by other Western political figures, from
US President Barack Obama, to British Premier David Cameron, in condemning the
murderous assault on the Paris-based satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in terms
of a war on "our values."
The magazine had previously incensed millions of Muslims
worldwide by its publication of images profaning Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). That is
believed to have provided the motive for the gunmen who, while fleeing the
scene in Paris, shouted: "The prophet has been avenged."
French President Francois Hollande declared the slain
journalists and cartoonists as "heroes" who died for the lofty principle
of freedom of speech.
But like other presumed Western values, such as human
rights, freedom of speech is a much over-rated principle - over-rated by the
Western governments and institutions like the corporate-controlled media, who
invoke it as a ideological badge of honor that distinguishes them and makes
them superior to others.
In practice, however, such Western values are no more than
chimera. They are empty slogans whose mere espousal and conceited, disingenuous
profession is for propaganda purposes.
What human rights or respect for rule of law did Sarkozy,
Cameron and Obama adhere to when they oversaw the destruction of Libya? Or in
the ongoing covert destruction of Syria and Iraq (despite belated Western
claims of liquidating the terror network that they spawned in the first place
for regime change in Syria.)
Insofar that Western governments support free speech, it is
more often for expedient political advantage. It is not a universal ethic, as
claimed. And, laughably, they are telling barefaced lies to claim otherwise, as
they continually do.
A French satirical publication may have been allowed to
denigrate Islam, but it would never be allowed to condemn Zionism and all its
provable criminality. It is doubtful the magazine in question would print
cartoons of Sarkozy, Obama or Cameron with explosives tied to their heads or
dropping bombs on Libya. Even though the latter is not satire; it actually
reflects the reality of criminal actions and events.
So, Western "free speech" is really just freedom
for the powers-that-be to demean and demonize whomever the West requires for
furthering its political interests. When free speech legitimately attacks
Western interests, exposes hypocrisy and fraudulence, then it stops being a
"universal principle." Censorship is then the ironclad order.
French comedian Dieudonné, for example, has been banned from
public performances by the French government owing to his farcical arm gesture,
known as the "Quenelle." The gesture can be interpreted in many ways,
from a vulgar personal insult, to a derisory slur on the ruling class. The
French authorities claim that the sign is "anti-Semitic" and a
reverse Nazi salute. Dieudonné denies this and instead says the gesture is
"anti-Zionist" and "anti-establishment."
The comedian has been banned from travelling to Britain by
the London authorities, also as a result of his political parodies. His friend
and professional footballer, Nicolas Anelka, was last year banned from playing
soccer games in England and fined over $100,000 for signaling the Quenelle
after scoring a goal.
Almost a year before the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo
magazine this week in Paris, French President Francois Hollande gave notice
that there would be zero-tolerance of Dieudonné or anyone else who practiced
the Quenelle. "We will act… we will fight against the sarcasm of those who
purport to be humorists but who are actually professional anti-Semites,"
said Hollande.
But hold on a moment. That's just what the French ruling
class deems to be the meaning of Dieudonné's Quenelle. On the basis of their
prejudice, the artist and anyone who displays the gesture in public is subject
to prosecution. That's not just censorship; it is state persecution for having
an opinion.
Evidently, it's acceptable to insult Islam, according to
Western select use of free speech because it suits political agendas of
demonizing Muslim countries so that they can be attacked with Western warplanes
or covert terrorist proxies. But it is not acceptable to satirize Zionism or
Western ruling classes.
And here is another revealing touchstone. Why is Press TV
banned from British terrestrial and satellite television broadcasting? Why is
the Iran-based channel banned across Europe and North America? Where is Western
free speech in that case? What is the problem?
Press TV is not tolerated. It is banished. Because the truth
of Western state terrorism, as practiced by the likes of Sarkozy, Hollande,
Obama and Cameron is too much to bear for how it might enlighten and empower
public opinion. The truth of Western-sponsored state terrorism as practiced by
the genocidal Israeli regime is too much to bear for public discourse; any
criticism is shoved down the memory hole under the spurious pretext of
"anti-Semitism." The fact that Western leaders should be prosecuted
for war crimes is too much to bear. All such views, no matter how
intellectually rigorous, morally scrupulous and legally substantiated, must be
censored, and those who articulate them must be hounded into isolation.
Western free speech is nothing but a cynical charade by
those in power to maintain their unlawful positions of power.
A satirical magazine championed by Western war criminals for
its "free speech" to dehumanize Muslims is hailed as
"heroic?" While an informative, serious news channel like Press TV is
banned. Now that is farcical cartoon.
FC/HJL
Source:www.presstv.com
How the Transnational
Elite created Islamic terrorism
 |
| Mahmoud Abbas stirs benjamin in the face and says 'You're terrorist' |
By Takis Fotopoulos
Paris saw the 'biggest' rally in France's
history, as the French Interior Ministry described it. This was of course
hardly surprising, as the entire political part of the Transnational Elite (TE-i.e. the elites which run the New
World Order of neoliberal globalization, based mainly in the G7 countries),
attended it. On top of this, it was a prominent country-member of the same
elite that organized it. The main aim of the rally was ostensibly to condemn
terrorism. Yet, as I will try to show, it was the same TE, which also created
the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, particularly during the period of the
thirty years or so since the emergence of the NWO, which is defined by two parallel systemic events. First,
the rise and mass expansion of the transnational corporations that today rule
the world economy and the consequent phasing out of economic and national
sovereignty that is replaced by a new form of transnational sovereignty shared
mainly be the members of the TE. Second, the parallel collapse of 'actually
existing socialism' in the form of the Soviet bloc.
The concept of modern terrorism derives from the French
revolution, where terrorism was only state terrorism, although this concept had
been distorted in the NWO to fit its own needs, so that it is not defined
anymore on the basis of who carries it out and why, as in the past, but almost
exclusively on the basis of the methods and tactics used and particularly the
targeting of civilians.[1] This means that if a
conquering army occupies your country, kills women and children in their
thousands and then, in desperation, you kill women and children of the
occupying country wherever you find them, the crimes of the occupying army will
be as a rule pardoned, as a kind of collateral damage or 'error', whereas your
action will be characterized as crime and either you are going to be killed
instantly in action, or you are going to rot in prison for the rest of your
life. Needless to add that on the basis of this convenient (for the TE)
definition of terrorism most liberation or anticolonial movements would have
been characterized as terrorist, including the ANC and the Algerian FLN. This
is why Hamas, for instance, has been defined today as terrorist
because it killed a few hundred Israeli civilians in its history, while the
thousands of Palestinian civilians and many children among them killed by the
Israeli security services, settlers and others were just characterized as
'collateral damage', if not 'human shields' used by their parents! No wonder
that in yesterday's mass rally the Israeli PM was a prominent guest and he did
not even have any qualms about comparing the Paris attack at Charlie Hebdo with
the "rocket" attacks on Israeli cities[2]
(which had perhaps fewer victims than the former!) characterizing Palestinian
resistance as 'terrorist'!
The new 'ideology' used to justify the present war on terrorism is expressed in terms of the 'barbaric' methods
used by the ISIS jihadists-despite the fact that the elites were fully aware of
the fact that the same (mostly) jihadists, with the elites' connivance, used
exactly the same methods against the Libyan and Syrian peoples in the past few
years to achieve 'regime change' in the corresponding cases. It is therefore
clear that the elites simply adopted a convenient definition of terrorism,
which, however, had nothing to do with the historical origin of the term and
its traditional meaning.
On the basis of this distorted definition of terrorism, in
retrospect, it is relatively easy to see who and how has created the phenomenon
of modern terrorism, or what I would better call transnational terrorism. In
fact, transnational terrorism is a new phenomenon, characterizing the New World
Order of neoliberal globalization, namely, terrorism that is controlled by the
TE and its client states. As I argued elsewhere,[3]
transnational terrorism is, in effect, the form that state terrorism takes
today against the victims of neoliberal globalization and its main weapons are
either economic violence (e.g. Greece, Portugal, Spain e.tc), or physical
violence (Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine e.tc.).
Thus, it can easily be shown that a lot of today's butchers
of ISIS, Al Nusra e.tc. had carried out similar (if not worse) massacres in the
recent past. First, in Libya, in 2011 when they were playing the role of NATO
infantry. Next, after finishing their "work" there, many of these
jihadists moved to Syria, where they continued the same project. This time, the
aim was the destruction of the Assad regime, which was based on the Ba'athist
national liberation movement, and its replacement by a theocratic caliphate.[4] At least this is what the gullible followers
of these organizations believed, not being usually conscious of the actual role
played by them as instruments of the TE and its client criminal regimes in the
region, e.g. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which excelled in organizing crimes
against the peoples of Libya and Syria. Finally, when these organizations began
attacking the direct instruments of the TE in the area (e.g. the 'Free Syrian
Army'), which were earmarked to succeed Assad and transform the country into an
informal protectorate of the NWO (something like Greece), then the TE decided
that their time was up. In other words, ISIS simply functions at present as the pretext for the
continuation of the 'long war', this time against Syria. That is, the main
objective has always been to crush the national liberation movement in Syria
today and Iran tomorrow, whether this is achieved by a coup 'from above' (the
traditional military coup), or 'from below,' (the "Maidan" model), or
whether it is done by external intervention combined with a 'coup from below'
(the Libyan model).
So, as in the case of traditional state terrorism in the
pre-globalization era of nation-states the victims of it were mainly
individuals or organizations resisting the concentration of power in the hands
of national elites, in today's transnational terrorism, the victims of it are
mainly states that have not been fully integrated into the NWO, either because
they are based on national liberation movements (e.g. the Ba'athist regimes in
Iraq and Syria, or Jamahiriya in Libya) or because they are based on peoples
who have a vivid memory of self-determination and are struggling to maintain
their national and economic sovereignty in the globalization era (Russia).
However, to understand the nature of political Islamism, from which Islamic terrorism emerged, we have to
go back to the former's historical development, particularly in the post-1948
period. The earliest main expression of political Islamism, which was supported
by the Western elites, was the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) but in the last
few years, following its failure in Egypt, the TE shifted its sympathies
from the MB to the Salafists and the jihadis supported by the Gulf regimes and
particularly Saudi Arabia. Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists
have used violence in their clashes with Arab secularism and particularly the
Arab regimes based on national liberation movements. No wonder that both the MB
and Salafists were supported at times by the Western elites and the TE today.
This is how political Islam gave rise to Islamic terrorism. But let us see in
some more detail this process.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which initially expressed the Islamist
movement, was formed with the active support of the British colonialists and
expressed "the most reactionary, antidemocratic and against social
progress version of the newborn 'political Islam.'"[5]
Their main aim has always been the Islamization of Egypt's political and
cultural institutions and the promotion of sharia as the basis for legislation.
This is summed up by its main slogan used worldwide: "Islam is the
solution". So, the old Islamic movement, i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt, which later expanded all over the Middle East, was a traditionally
conservative movement mainly concerned with the cultural aspects of
colonization and later of globalization. The Brotherhood has always made
pragmatic alliances with regimes - those of King Farouk from 1936; the Free
Officers under Nasser, (who ousted Farouk in 1952); and Sadat from 1970 (who
used the Brothers against the Nasserites and the left). The tactical alliance
with the Free Officers however was inevitably short lived as they had divergent
political goals: the Officers believed in a secularist national liberation
movement whereas the "Brothers" in an Islamist regime. No wonder that
a failed attempted assassination of Nasser in 1954 led to the brutal
suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood and the imprisonment and sentencing to
death of Sayyid Qutb, one of its leading ideologues, which led to the jihadist
movement. In fact, a year after Qutb's death in 1966, Ayman al-Zawahiri, aged
16 at the time, set up a jihadist cell at his school and invited a few friends
to join.In May 2011, Zawahiri became the leader of Al-Qaida, following the
murder of Osama bin Laden by US Special Services. As Fawaz A Gerges
pointed out, "the birth of the jihadist movement cannot be
understood without reference to this great clash between the Muslim Brotherhood
and Nasser's forces". [6] This early
clash developed later on into a clash between the Muslim Brotherhood and
Ba'athists in Iraq and Syria and in the last couple of years into a clash
between Salafists and the MB, which in 2014 was declared a terrorist
organization by Saudi Arabia.
The Brotherhood's relation to Western powers had started
early on, and even during the Second World War, the British viewed the
Brotherhood as a possible counterweight against the secular nationalist party,
the Wafd, and the communists.[7] But it was
in the post-Second World War period, and particularly since 1946-1948, when two
crucial events took place, almost at the same time, which marked the post-war
period in the Middle East and the entire world, i.e. the beginning of the Cold
War in 1946 and the establishment of the Zionist Israeli state in 1948 on
occupied Palestinian land. In the immediate post-war period, i.e. during the
Cold War, the main division was between pro-Soviet and pro-Western Arab
countries. Then, with the rise of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, on the one hand, a
kind of front developed between the supporters of national liberation (Nasser's
Egypt, the Ba'athist regimes in Iraq and Syria, Libya's Jamahiriya) and, on the
other, the front of Western stooges emerged (i.e. the reactionary Gulf regimes,
Jordan, Morocco etc.).
However, the NWO that was imposed on the Middle East, first
through economic means and corruption in Egypt, and then through brutal
military violence by the TE in Iraq and Libya, completely changed the balance
of power within the Arab World. Particularly when the client Muslim Brotherhood
regimes that emerged in Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab "Spring",
under the cover of "revolutionary movements", played a leading (and
dirty) role in the destruction both of Libya and of Syria. It was of course
hardly surprising that the TE backed the MB when one takes into account its
real nature, as Samir Amin stressed:
"The Muslim Brotherhood is committed to a market-based
economic system of complete external dependence. They are in reality a
component of the comprador bourgeoisie. They have taken their stand against
large strikes by the working class and against the struggles of poor peasants
to hold on to their lands. So the Muslim Brotherhood are 'moderate' only in the
double sense that they refuse to present any sort of economic and social
program, thus in fact accepting without question reactionary neoliberal
policies, and that they are submissive de facto to the enforcement of U.S,
control over the region and the world. They thus are useful allies for
Washington (and does the US have a better ally than their patron, the Saudis?),
which now vouches for their 'democratic credentials." [8]
On the other hand, Ba'athism was a synthesis of nationalism (initially in the
form of pan-Arabism) and Arab socialism, in so far as it adopted socialist
principles like the public ownership over the strategic sectors of the economy,
the belief that socialism is the only way to develop an Arab society that is
truly free and united, and secularism. In other words, Ba'athism was mainly a
left-wing Arab-centric ideology, a kind of "socialism with Arab
characteristics". In fact, the most important characteristic of Ba'athism
was its anti-imperialist nature. The Western hostility against it, in fact,
began in the mid seventies, as it did also in the Syrian case, when the Iraqi
Ba'athists embarked on a program of Arab socialism that culminated in the
nationalization of oil, seeking to achieve a form of economic independence to
complement political independence. Then, they soon realized that they had to
de-integrate Iraq's economy from the capitalist market economy and minimize
free enterprise on the means of production, with the ultimate objective to
establish an Arab socialist society in which all citizens would enjoy the
benefits of development. Clearly, therefore, the main economic aim of the
campaign on Iraq was to return oil exploitation to the western powers and
reintegrate the Iraqi economy into the world capitalist market. This aim
was confirmed by later reports according to which State Department blueprints,
sent to Congress before the invasion began, laid out a vision for Iraq's
reconstruction that would move the country aggressively toward "self-managed
economic prosperity, with a market-based economy and privately owned
enterprises that operate in an environment governed by the rule of law."[9]
This is why the Ba'athist regime in Syria as well as the
Iraqi Ba'athist regime in Iraq had to be destroyed. Their
secular, multi-ethnic and multi-faith societies, and, even more important,
their historical foundation on national liberation movements, which by definition
were enemies to the NWO, were obviously anathema not only to the TEs but also
to the reactionary regimes belonging to the Cooperation Council for the Arab
States of the Gulf (GCC) and Turkey--the main client regimes (together
with Jordan) in the area. The campaign to destroy Iraq began early on with the
Gulf war, followed by heavy sanctions and frequent bombings, which culminated
with the invasion and occupation of the country for a ten year period leading
to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives being destroyed in the process. This
was followed by similar processes in Libya and finally in Syria. Yet, although
such huge crimes never led to any demonstrations in the West comparable to
yesterday's demonstration, the resentment created among the Arab populations
was growing all the time and in the absence of any strong secular national
liberation movements (which have been effectively destroyed by the TE) their
only way to express their anger against the West was to join the various
Islamic terrorist movements, mostly supported by the Gulf states and
particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
It is of course not surprising that Saudi Arabia and its
ideology was enthusiastically embraced in the West, both in the
pre-globalization era and at present. In fact, Saudi Arabian Salafis seem to be
even more reactionary than Muslim Brothers. As Benjamin Schett wrote in a
significant recent article on Salafism/Wahhabism:
Wahhabi ideology serves U.S. interests for several reasons.
Its followers' archaic perception of society makes them reject any kind of
progressive social change. Therefore they are well equipped to push back
socialist, secular or nationalist movements, whose independence-oriented
policies are a threat to America's geopolitical agenda. Although Wahhabism
certainly is not representative of the majority of Sunni Muslims, Wahhabi
Muslims are Sunni extremists, which causes them to maintain an extremely
hostile stance towards Shi'te Islam.[10]
So, Saudi Salafis were useful to the TE both in the
pre-globalization era, because it was a useful tool in the hands of Western
elites to fight Soviet influence and pan-Arabic socialism, as well as in the NWO
because they were a valuable tool in the hands of the Transnational Elite to
fight any nations resisting the abolition of their sovereignty within the New
World Order (NWO) of neoliberal globalization. This was clearly shown, for
instance, when Saudi Arabia supported in every possible way the Salafi jihadis,
who butchered the peoples of Libya and Syria. In fact, it was only very
recently that they stopped supporting their offspring, ISIS, when they had
become targeted by the Transnational Elite for attempting to follow their own
line in building an Islamic State.[11]
Unsurprisingly, the methods used by ISIS, like beheading, which were
repeated ad nauseam by the TE media in order to terrorize Western middle
classes and justify its 'war on terrorism', have in fact been practiced for
years by its client Saudi regime, with nobody in the 'civilized' West bothering
much about it, as long as they were able to keep expanding their highly
profitable business of arms selling to the regime.
In conclusion, it is the TE itself, which today pretends it
suffers because of the activities of Islamic terrorists, that, in fact, bears
the main responsibility for Islamic terrorism. Not just in the simple sense
that it funded and supported jihadists fighting national liberation regimes in
Iraq, Libya or Syria, as the degenerate Western Left argues but, even more
important, because, historically, it did everything possible to assist the
flourishing of Islamic terrorism. In other words, the massive support the TE
provided over time to political Islamism and Islamic terrorism, in its
campaign to destroy Arab national liberation movements, had led to the
flourishing of an 'army' of jihadists, lacking of any political ideology for
national liberation and against globalization and relying instead on religious
irrationalism. This was of course the desired by the TE aim, in order to
prevent them from understanding who their real enemy is, so that they could
organize accordingly to fight it. Yet, even if the aim of many (but by no means
all) of these jihadists is irrational, i.e. to create a caliphate, this does
not prevent them from understanding that, even achieving this aim, they have to
fight against the TE, which, all these years, has destroyed their countries
and/or their fellow believers.
Takis Fotopoulos
Takis Fotopoulos is a political philosopher, editor
of Society & Nature/ Democracy and Nature/The International Journal of
Inclusive Democracy. He has also been a columnist for the Athens
Daily Eleftherotypia since 1990. Between 1969 and 1989 he was Senior
Lecturer in Economics at the University of North London (formerly Polytechnic
of North London). He is the author of over 25 books and over 1,000 articles,
many of which have been translated into various languages.
[2] "Hezbollah leader on Charlie
Hebdo: 'Extremists more offensive to Islam than cartoons'", RT, 10/1/2015
http://rt.com/news/221343-hezbollah-nasrallah-charlie-offends/
[3] see Takis Fotopoulos, The New
World Order in Action: Integrating Eastern Europe and the Middle East (Published
shortly by Progressive Press) ch 9
[5] Samir Amin, "2011: An Arab
Springtime? Reflections from Egypt", Europe solidaire sans
frontiers, 15/5/2011 http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article21911#top
[7] Jack Shenker & Brian Whitaker,
"A rare glimpse into the world of the Muslim Brotherhood", The
Guardian, 9/2/2011
[9] Jonathan Weisman and Mike Allen
"Officials Argue for Fast U.S. Exit From Iraq", Washington
Post , April 21, 2003
[10] Benjamin Schett, "US Sponsored
"Islamic Fundamentalism": The Roots of the US-Wahhabi Alliance",
Global Research, 7/9/2012 http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-sponsored-islamic-fundamentalism-the-roots-of-the-us-wahhabi-alliance/
[11] See Takis Fotopoulos, The New
World Order in Action: Integrating Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Source:www.pravda.ru
WHO PROVOKED
OUR PRESIDENT?
 |
| President Goodluck Jonathan |
By
Dele Momodu
Fellow Nigerians, barely one month and some days to the
start of our 2015 general elections, things are already falling apart. There
was never a doubt in my mind that politicians would naturally heat up the
polity to a boiling point before God rescues us as always from some wondrously
amazing people. The two leading parties of PDP and APC would do our country a
great favour if they can eschew violence and stick to the basic tenets of
Democracy. Their foot-soldiers in particular must be warned specifically about
the inherent danger associated with deliberately causing mayhem aimlessly in
one’s own country. Most times, it is the poor who would be used as political
canon-fodder while the children of the rich would be far away from the theatre
of war.
The one man I expected to rise above the petty squabbles of
electioneering campaigns is the President and Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, at
the inauguration of his Presidential Campaign Team on Tuesday President
Jonathan urged his campaign team and Party faithful to be decorous in their
language, focusing on issue and not personalities. However, barely two days
later he was doing the exact opposite of what he had preached. It is
unfortunate that the President chose to go back on his words as he joined the
fray two days later as he practically exploded in public during the flagging
off of his re-election bid as President. The tone and tempo of his speech was
stylishly vituperative. It could easily have been described as spitting fire
and shooting from the hips. He appeared to me like a man who was under
intensive pressure and didn’t really know how to off-load the heavy burden on
his chest.
I should have suspected that something unpleasant was about to happen after I read the news that the Presidency had responded in kind to the myriad of attacks and salvos fired at Dr Goodluck Jonathan by former President, General Olusegun Obasanjo, who has since become a loose cannon in the PDP. The former President has arguably become a one man riot squad against the second coming of President, was savagely and mercilessly described as a "motor park tout."
For me, this was the climax of a long-drawn battle between father and his godson. We've witnessed such bitter altercations and mutual insults in the past but this recent one took the cake. It is sad that this are the canapés we are being served before the main dishes of sloganeering begin. The global community must be wondering what manner of country ours is where elders throw decorum to the wind in the presence of infants and toddlers. What examples are we setting for the youths we all claim to love so much when we can't tolerate ourselves in the political arena?
All eyes are on Nigeria and in particular the President who is at present the father of the nation. This position is the highest in the land and it was apparently freely handed to him by the good people of Nigeria in 2011. Even before then, the same people had shown him immense love at a time he was being harassed by the proverbial cabal. At that time, no one complained that we hated the North just because we rallied round a man from the Niger Delta. Most of those claiming ownership of Mr President today were nowhere to be seen then. It is strange how success instantly catapults a man into a different level and planet. All manner of claimants would suddenly surface from nowhere and chase everyone away. It is the tragedy of power in our clime where the man on the throne has to go through this terrible, and self-immolating, process of deification. This is why most leaders often fail in office because they are usually far removed from reality.
This trait became very obvious as I watched the President
deliver his speech in Lagos days ago at the start of his 2015 Presidential
campaign. His party leaders were not in short supply. Everyone came to pay
homage to the man with the power to turn water into wine over 2,000 years after
such a miracle was performed in Galilee. One speaker after the other eulogised
the President in superlatives. They raved about his transformation agenda which
in their dream or reality must have transfigured Nigeria into a Paradise on
earth. Listening to those incredible guys one would have thought they were
describing some far-flung places and a true reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew or a
Chairman Mao leading the industrial revolution in Nigeria.
The President himself did not waste this moment, he was visibly pleased with the adulations which in reality were not meant by many of the speakers who had mastered the art and science of lying to anyone in government. I had waited patiently for the President's speech. I was certain he was going to take a very subtle and conciliatory approach but I was very wrong. The moment he took the microphone till he finished, the President was on the offensive. It was certainly not a charm offensive but one laced with pent up frustration and anger. He came on like a Heavyweight boxer chasing the World Heavyweight title. The President did not pretend about his intention which was to jab at his challenger using mostly unlawful blows and pummel him to a corner for a possible knockout.
President Jonathan sounded angry and agitated. He made generous use of the literary style of rhetorical questions. He threw many of such posers to his jubilant crowd who must have wondered at the physical transformation of their candidate. If the President was known to be gentle and somehow taciturn in the past, he was the exact opposite on Thursday, January 8, 2015. He was clearly in an upbeat mood and it reflected in his grandstanding.
Let's now go to the meat of his speech and try to examine
the merits of the self-glorification, whether vain or otherwise. The summary
can be put simply thus: Mr President blames his predecessors for all the woes
that have bedeviled Nigeria. I wonder if he forgot that as at the last count,
his political party has been in power for 16 years and he has been the only
Nigerian permanently in power since our return to democratic rule in 1999 as
Deputy Governor, Acting Governor, Governor, Vice President, Acting President
and President. 16 years is a very long time in the life of a nation. Nigeria
must have spent more money in those 16 years than all the different Republics
and regimes put together but sadly without commensurate results. Moreover, he
also appears to have selectively forgotten that most of the predecessors that
he is lambasting like Obasanjo and General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, are card
carrying members of his Party, the PDP, and thus their failings are the
failings of his Party and by extension himself.
The President spoke repeatedly about the youths and referred to himself and others as being too old and half-dead. If so why is he contesting when there are many brilliant young people in his party? But it was a subliminal message to discredit General Muhammadu Buhari as being too old to rule this generation. "I do not want to address old people like me because we are spent already."
Unfortunately, it seems the President is not in tune with the current mood of the nation and his supporters are not likely to give him the true picture. Many of us don't care if the man coming is going to rule from a wheelchair. We all run to the elders of the house in the days of tribulations. I wish to assure Mr President that unlike in the past when the PDP propaganda was able to truncate Buhari's mission of rescuing Nigeria from the doldrums the story has changed miraculously today. The youths have chosen to follow his crusade even if his enemies decide to change his age to over 80. They believe the younger leaders have not done any better than the gerontocrats we all love to deride as causing our failure. Therefore playing the kite of old age won't fly this time around.
The President boasted that he has been able to conduct credible elections. I daresay that is not his doing but the action of the People of Nigeria who have resolved to protect their votes. Besides, he forgot to add that after wasting billions of naira on data capture machines they were abandoned. The Nigeria Governor’s Forum held an election of 35 people which saw a winner emerge with 19 to 16 votes yet our President recognised a loser choosing 16 above 19. He said he believes in the rule of law yet the law is being desecrated and there are too many sacred cows in PDP. I dare our security agencies to storm any PDP Secretariat and carry away their computers and staff the way they have been doing to APC. It is pitiable that a supposedly impartial State security and intelligence outfit will give one reason for carrying out such a dastardly unconstitutional act but then recant and give another wholly diametrically opposed justification for such a raid.
The President is proud that Nigeria has the biggest economy
in Africa but people are asking how that has affected the lives of the people.
The Agricultural revolution being trumpeted is good no doubt, but it is not yet
Uhuru. The question is where is the food? What are the Prices? Where is the
income that should flow from such agricultural miracle.
The President claims that he has done a lot for the security situation in the country. However, it seems that the President is fantasising about another country. At no time in Nigeria’s history has insecurity reached the level that it is now. There are regular killings, bombings, kidnappings, abductions, raping not to mention the unresolved saga of the Chibok Girls. A country whose military has received endless praise on many peace-keeping missions overseas cannot deploy the same military to effective use in finding almost 200 girls who remain missing. That is an indictment on the President which no whitewash can hide. The simple truth is that our people feel unsafe, even those few who have turned our much maligned police force and soldiers into personal ‘maiguards’!
The President claims that one of his achievements in the petroleum sector is that Nigerians no longer queue for petrol. Although that is incorrect because there are still regular intervals when there is petrol scarcity the truth is that Nigeria as an oil producing nation has never had it so bad. The price of petrol and petroleum products are the highest they have ever been. Even when the world crude oil prices have fallen by more than 100% and the Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iwealla admits that there is no longer any subsidy on petrol, the price has remained the same. Her justification, which I referred to previously, is too puerile to repeat because it is an insult on the intelligence of Nigerians.
As Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola said in his own reaction
to the President’s speech:
“I spent about an hour this afternoon listening to the President in my State and, for almost the same period, I saw a very angry President. I saw a President who was recriminating about people recriminating about people criticising his job performance and was blaming all those who ruled before him forgetting that he had been on this job for six years.
“I spent about an hour this afternoon listening to the President in my State and, for almost the same period, I saw a very angry President. I saw a President who was recriminating about people recriminating about people criticising his job performance and was blaming all those who ruled before him forgetting that he had been on this job for six years.
And he kept saying that, ‘They say we don’t have a plan.’ But for 25 minutes, he did not reveal a plan on power; he did not reveal a plan on security; he did not reveal a plan on corruption.
Now after six years, without being able to articulate what
he is doing and what he will do, and he keeps blaming everybody, forgetting
that he is the Commander-in-Chief, if the kitchen is too hot, as it is becoming
of late, you must get out of the kitchen.”
I’m almost certain the President will receive more knocks from other stakeholders for this newly acquired belligerent disposition. My advice as usual is very simple. A man should never change what has worked wonders for him all his life. The President’s gentle mien had always been his secret weapon. A man who did not lift a finger to become President need not wage a war to retain it. Elections are never won by abusing potential voters but usually through the use of persuasion. Those who are misleading the President are not helping him. All they’ve succeeded in doing is to alienate the electorate and paint him as someone who is very desperate for power.
I advise the President to maintain his calm dignity instead of fighting real and imaginary enemies on all fronts. There is nothing more he wants from God. He has been very lucky but there is no need to overstretch that luck. If perchance he is defeated on FEBUHARI 14 (as some people have described the election date), the President should accept his fate graciously and return home triumphantly. Anything else may wipe out all that he has effortlessly achieved.
Mr President, there is life outside government.
Source: www.nigeriavillagesquare.com
No comments:
Post a Comment