 |
| Professor Benjamin Jabez Narko |
By
Christabel Addo
Ghana
has achieved success in all the 19 infrastructural issues to be considered
prior to the commencement of the operation of a Nuclear Power Programme (NPP).
This
more or less completes the first of the three phases of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) required milestone approaches for every newcomer
country to achieve before the development of a national infrastructure for
nuclear power.
The
other two phases involve the preparatory work for the construction of a nuclear
power plant after a policy decision has been taken, and finally ensuring
activities to implement a first nuclear power plant.
The
19 infrastructural issues involves; the national position, nuclear safety,
management, funding and financing, legislative frameworks, safeguard issues,
radiation protection, regulatory frameworks, electric grid, and human resource
development.
The
rest are stakeholder involvement, site and supporting facilities, environmental
protection, emergency planning, security and physical protection, nuclear fuel
cycle, radioactive waste, industrial involvement, as well as procurement
issues.
Professor
Benjamin Jabez Narko, the Director-General of the Ghana Atomic Energy
Commission (GAEC), who disclosed this in an interview with the Ghana News
Agency, said the aim of achieving successes in these milestones, was to help
IAEA member states to understand the commitment and obligations associated with
developing a Nuclear Power Programme.
He
said all the necessary legislations and regulatory frameworks including the
passage of the Nuclear Regulatory Bill that established the Ghana Nuclear
Regulatory Authority, as well as the Ghana Nuclear Power Programme
Organisations which was tasked to coordinate, oversee and administer the phase
to phase implementation of the Nuclear Power Programme have been achieved.
Other
activities involving the other infrastructural issues especially with regards
to human resource capacity development, funding and financing, electric grid,
siting, emergency planning, managing the nuclear fuel cycle as well as
radioactive waste, among other safety measures, were also being diligently
pursued.
“We
have met with industry players and stakeholders across all key sectors, and we
are being advised by our lawyers on land and other legislative and regulatory
issues as well”, he said.
He
said with the successes achieved so far, Ghana was set to submit herself to an
international peer review programme from January 16 to 23, 2017 in Accra, to be
conducted by a team from the Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR)
Mission, made up of experts who have direct experience in specialized nuclear
infrastructure areas, as well as specialized IAEA staff.
Prof
Nyarko said building on the country’s documentation on an earlier
self-evaluation, the mission team would review the infrastructure status
through interviews with the various subject team leads, site visits and
document reviews, and make suggestions and recommendations in a report to the
country, enabling it to address the identified gaps if any, in accordance with
the national action plan.
“In
the long term, Ghana may be expected to become one of the countries that make
use of nuclear power. This will help overcome energy shortage, as well as
provide a necessary impetus for economic development in the country”, he said.
Prof
Nyarko said although nuclear energy offers the opportunity to grow greener
economies, and provides a cheaper and sustainable alternative to other sources
of power for both domestic and industrial uses, the country was not in a rush
to compromise on safety standards in spite of these benefits but would follow
the required procedures to ensure the achievement of a comprehensive Nuclear
Power Programme.
Editorial
VETTING THE NEW
MINISTERS
It is not for nothing that Parliament was
charged with the responsibility of vetting and approving Ministerial nominees
of the President.
In our view the responsibility of Parliament
is to ensure that only those competent enough to resolve the hydra headed
problems of Ghana are appointed to the high office of Minister.
This should mean that the scrutiny of the
nominees would be thorough.
On the other hand if the vetting process is
turned into a witch hunt then its purpose would be defeated.
The vetting process should not be about
scoring cheap points. It is about getting the right people to do the job.
We hope that Parliament will act in the best
interest of Ghana.
KNUST BUILDS 10
KILOWATT GASIFICATION PLANT
By Kwabia Owusu-Mensah /Florence
Afriyie Mensah
The Kwame Nkrumah University of
Science and Technology (KNUST) has built a 10 kilowatt gasification plant to
generate electricity using charcoal.
The plant, was constructed by
the Technology Consultancy Center (TCC) of the University in partnership with
the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV).
It is the first of its king in
Sub-Saharan Africa and has currently been supplying power to meet the energy
needs of the Center.
A 2015 research report of the
KNUST said the plant was built from readily available materials including
cement, sand, iron rods, and chicken wires.
According to the report, the
main objective of the gasification project was to create interest in that
technology - transferred to Ghana by Biomass Technology Group (BTG) of the
Netherlands.
Four students are currently
working on the plant and the expectation was that private sector would develop
business interest in the technology.
DECLINING POVERTY ERADICATION
 |
| Dr Osei Boeh Ocansey |
By
Priscilla S. Djentuh
A
report by the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS6) carried nationwide in
18,000 households in 1,200 enumeration areas from October 2012 to October 2013,
revealed that a quarter of Ghanaians are poor.
The
data further reveals that about 26 per cent of children from five years to 17
years engage in child labour, whilst another 25 per cent are found in hazardous
work.
Enumerating
the key findings of the survey, Dr Osei Boeh-Ocansey, Ghana Statistical
Service’ Board Chairman, said for education, the school attendance rate from
six-11 years were very high- 93.3 per cent for boys and 92.6 per cent for
girls.
In
an address that launched the Global End Poverty campaign in Ghana, Dr Jim Yong
Kim, President of the World Bank Group, said the World Bank Group had set up a
goal to end extreme poverty by 2030 and to boost shared prosperity for the
bottom 40 per cent of the populations in developing countries.
Therefore,
it was with contentment and relief when Ghana halved extreme hunger and poverty
target of the Millennium Development Goal from 52.6 per cent to 21.4 per cent.
Ghana
was the first country in sub-Sahara Africa to achieve the feat in 2015.
Economic
and socio-demographic change driven by structural transformation, the emergence
of a more skilled labour force and geographical mobility among others helped to
reduce poverty in Ghana, the report said.
Ghana
Poverty and Inequality Report in March 2016, revealed that growing inequality
in consumption, regional disparities and a deteriorating macroeconomic
environment pose challenges in eradicating poverty.
“We
found that children are significantly more likely to live in poverty than
adults. Given the long-term and intergenerational nature of child poverty, this
suggests that child poverty needs to become a specific focus of Government
policy, taking an integrated approach to ensure that child wellbeing is
tackled, particularly to address the 1.2 million children who are extremely
poor,” the report said.
A
survey by the Ghana News Agency in the principal streets of Accra exposes the
increased number of children from five to 15 years who ply on the streets
begging for alms during school hours.
On
the independence avenue road mainly around the Afua Sutherland Children’s Park
to Danquah Circle interchange towards Shiashie and Okponglo, children are seen
cleaning the wind screens of vehicles, carrying out menial jobs or begging to
survive.
Most
of these children end up being victims, especially the girls of sexual
defilements.
It
is worth mentioning that successive governments have over the years drawn
policies to achieving overall eradicating of poverty and building basic
educational facilities and materials as well as the National School Feeding
Programme, all in efforts to increase the number of children in basic schools.
However,
focus on poverty eradicating in the country has, in previous years been shifted
to the three Northern Regions with the Savannah Accelerated Development
Authority (SADA) policy being initiated to address the poverty challenges in
the north.
The
current government have proposed to restructure SADA, into a more focused
Northern Development Authority as originally envisaged and make it a
flagship programme for the economic transformation of the Northern, Upper
East and Upper West Regions.
As
much as the initiatives must be lauded in focusing poverty eradication in rural
and deprived communities, a careful attention ought to be given the declining
poverty reduction in the southern part of the country, especially among
school-aged children.
More
policies should be initiated to get the children off the principal streets of
Accra to where they ought to be- in the classroom and various orphanages.
Laws
should be enacted to critically and morally deal with parents and guardians who
force these Children to solicit for alms on the streets.
We
cannot afford to watch the future leaders of this country to turn into
“professional” beggars.
Children
in southern part of the country need attention and they need solutions to their
poverty condition too.
GNA
GOOD POLICIES VERSUS BAD ATTITUDE
 |
| President Nana Akufo Addo |
By
Hannah Awadzi
Expectations
of some Ghanaians this year are high; many are hoping for a Ghana with less
corruption, a Ghana where institutions work efficiently, where people will be
free to earn a decent income.
Many
also talk about the need for good policies, however, there are those who argue,
that there are a lot of good policies in Ghana, which just end on paper.
Sometimes,
the people who are supposed to help implement the policies probably do not know
of the policies or they simply cannot be bothered.
Others
also point to the bad attitude of majority of the people who probably do not
care and perhaps enjoy being corrupt for their own selfish benefit.
Aunty
Mansa (not the real name) narrated an incident that happened in one of the
country’s big hospitals.
She
said: “As a pregnant woman, I had gone to access ante-natal services, I was due
to be given the anti-malarial dose, which I know has been paid for, but when
the nurse gave me the drugs, she demanded that I gave her GH₵ 2.00.”
Confused
I asked: “Is this drug not supposed to be free, why am I being charged for it?”
This was the reply of the nurse: “My In-Charge asked me to collect that money.”
Aunty
Mansa said: “I felt like going to be supposed In-charge to ask questions but
fearing that I will be tagged as ‘too-known’, I just kept quiet.”
This
is just one of the numerous incidences that go on in Ghana everyday, which in
my opinion hinders the effective implementation of the policies that are put in
place to make lives better for all Ghanaians.
Sometimes,
one does not even know who to talk to or where to report such incidence of
corruption; however, many turn around to blame the government or the political
figure for how things are in the country.
One
could expand the talk about corruption to institutions such as the passport
office, the police, the Driver, Vehicle, Licensing, Authority and Lands
Commission.
There
is the need for programmes to be in place to ensure that persons in charge of
implementing certain policy decisions are aware and they ensure implementation
as expected.
The
new government should take steps to work on this and to ensure that policies,
directives and the like are communicated down to the last person in Ghana to
reduce corruption and give meaning to the mantra: “Knowledge is power.”
Hopefully,
with the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation, policies will be well
implemented and lapses reported for action to be taken.
GNA
JOBLESSNESS IS THE CAUSE OF PROPERTY GRABBING
 |
| Albert Kan-Dapaah, Minister for National Security Designate |
Reverend
Dr Fred Deegbe, a former General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana,
has said the grabbing of national assets by individuals are indications of the
state of joblessness in the country.
He
said these people alleged to be supporters of the ruling government are not
gainfully employed “so they want to rush to take over properties that belong to
the state”.
“This
is a very dangerous trend and must be nipped in the bud”, Rev Deegbe, a Senior
Pastor at Calvary Baptist Church, told the GNA in an interview on Thursday,
adding that the citizenry should be better educated on such national assets.
He
said it was also criminal and dangerous for any group of persons to take over
the passport office and such acts must be halted.
“It
is the duty of all of us to educate the citizenry over such national assets.
The Police should also get the perpetrators and warn them to stay off such
properties,” Rev Deegbe said.
Supporters
of the ruling NPP have been reported as taking over toll booths, NHIS offices,
and even invaded the passport office and the Tema Harbour in Accra, just after
the investiture of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on January 7.
Rev
Deegbe said many people do not also have the requisite skills and were not
employable so there is the need to “go back to the grass root to ensure that
they go back to school and build their capacities to be employable.
Rev
Deegbe also urged government to ensure that the rules of Presidential
Transition Act are made clear to avert any future controversies on Presidential
send-off packages.
HOW TO TURN BLACK EDUCATION AROUND
By
William Gumede
‘If we want to turn around black education in
South Africa, we must start by changing prevailing anti-learning attitudes’,
argues William Gumede. ‘Anti-learning attitudes’, says Gumede, are compounded
by a ‘lack of political will from leaders to do something beyond mouthing off
rhetoric, wrong official priorities and absentee black parents’.
Beyond
the usual official rhetoric, one does not get a real sense of crisis, and a
sense of urgency from government to do some different. Introducing shortcuts,
such as downgrading pass marks, is an indication of the lack of seriousness.
There
is a link between the rampant anti-intellectualism in the country, and the poor
matric results. In dominant political circles, knowledge is rarely appreciated.
In poorer black communities’, education is not strongly enough seen as an
escalator out of poverty.
Off
course, the fact that many black learners see former matriculants wandering the
streets, unemployed because they did not graduate with the right kind of
subjects and results, that would make them employable, does not help.
No
country after the Second World War industrialised without educating the masses.
Japan, South Korea, Singapore and now China’s prosperity is based on educating
their nations.
Education
is the single most effective black economic empowerment strategy, or
redistribution tool, to reverse the crippling apartheid legacy of deliberately
under-developing black communities, to lift substantial amounts of the poor out
of poverty. The continued slide in black education entrenches apartheid
patterns.
A
minority that are in private schools, mostly white, and a small black middle
class, can access education that can compare with the best in the world. The
majority, overwhelmingly black, gets the worst education imaginable, leaving
them without the skills to navigate the world of work.
At
this rate, blacks will continue to do the menial work, and whites will manage
the sophisticated parts of the economy. But the lack of skilled blacks is not
only a drain on the economy, black resentment, anger and powerlessness because
of the economic marginalisation is a ready time-bomb.
The
election of Jacob Zuma as ANC leader and South African President and Julius
Malema, as ANC Youth League President (and anointed by Zuma as future ANC
President) show that anyone, no matter how sparse their education can make it
to the most influential positions in the country.
Yet,
on the flipside, it could also easily send out the message that education does
not matter. One can advance without education, if one only joins the ANC,
became a loyal cadre, or links up with a local party boss, and stays loyal to
him or her, and so on.
The
current way in which the ANC’s deployment system is being frequently
manipulated means that even if someone has impeccable education, one can be
bypassed for a job in the public sector, if not connected to dominant party
bosses – the jobs given to those who lack competency but are allied to the
local party boss.
In
most of East Asia, almost every second politician is an engineer or a commerce
graduate.
To
expect delivery on promises for better education without parents, communities
and civil groups keeping the pressure on government and teachers is just silly.
As black parents we accept too much mediocrity from our government.
Often
a township school will be left without windows or a toilet, while the local
councillor or politician supposedly representing the constituency drives an
R1.2 million car.
Those
parents that can must be more involved, not only in tracking the progress of
their children, but also in putting greater pressure on schools and government
to improve schools.
The
reality that most black parents in poor communities cannot effectively support
children. We must find ways to support them. School hours must be extended, and
more after care support given at schools in poor communities. But poor families
with children in school must be given a basic income grant. In return, the
recipients of such grants, can be asked to guard, clean or offer general
support to schools.
Good
teachers must be rewarded by government, communities and parents, and lazy ones
disciplined. It is not the trade union’s job to protect poor teachers, just
because they are members of the union. In fact, it is the union’s job to see
that quality of teachers – its members – is high.
Business
must adopt poor schools, instead of appointing token politicians to boards and
striking meaningless BEE deals with the politically connected. Government must
provide resources to teachers and schools on time – and govern better.
US Politics: Making
Promises That Cannot Be Kept
 |
| Hillary Clinton, most deceptive politician in America |
We
must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we
cannot. ~Abraham Lincoln
When
I worked on Capitol Hill for a U.S. Senator, the Congress enacted a pay raise
for federal employees that was to take effect in January of the following year.
Astute observers noticed that in November, vendors of all kinds throughout the
area around the District of Columbia began raising the prices of most of what
they sold. By the time the pay raise went into effect in January, a large
portion of the raise the federal workers received went directly to vendors for
purchases of exactly what was being purchased all along but now at higher
prices. The workers received the raise but the vendors got the money.
What
happened taught me things about American economic practices that most people
don’t seem to recognize. Vendors have a legal, built in, mechanism for
commandeering any increases in income wage earners receive without giving back
anything whatsoever in return. Vendors can take the money any time they want
to. Merchants can keep consumers impoverished just by raining prices regularly.
Rather than an economy that promotes prosperity, America has one that prolongs
poverty.
In
an unregulated market, a so called “free” market, prices cannot be controlled.
Controlling them would destroy the market’s “freedom.” So in any free market,
vendors have an unlimited means of taking any increase in income wage earners
receive from them. All vendors have to do is raise prices. The freedom vendors
have of setting the prices of what they sell is what ultimately controls the
wealth of wage earning consumers. This freedom of vendors is nothing but
legalized theft.
Economists
sanitize, launder, the practice by giving it a neutral name. The practice is
called inflation and is universally approved of by free market economists.
Central bankers even set “targets” for it. The Fed’s current target for
inflation is two percent. What this means is that if the target is reached, any
pay raise a wage earner gets that is less than or equal to the target goes to
vendors even though it nominally is given to wage earners. Wage earners have
their pockets picked by inflation. If inflation exceeds the target, the theft
is even greater.
No
free market group of business practices can ever work for the benefit of all
people. People are told, for example, that thrift is good for consumers but bad
for economic growth which is measured by increases in consumer spending. So
what’s good for consumers is bad for vendors. People are also told the
opposite: What is good for vendors is bad for consumers because it means they
spend more of their incomes on consumption and save less. It follows from both
of these claims that the free market, the unregulated market, cannot work for
both consumers and vendors at the same time. The practices that work for
vendors impoverish wage earners. A free market works well only for marketers.
No battle in a free market’s war on poverty has or will ever be won. Lyndon B.
Johnson’s War on Poverty was not lost; it was never fought because fighting it
was impossible.
Yet
on June 22, 2016, Hillary Clinton said,
“The
measure of our success will be how much incomes rise for hardworking families.
How many children are lifted out of poverty. How many Americans can find good
jobs that support a middle class life—and not only that, jobs that provide a
sense of dignity and pride. That’s what it means to have an economy that works
for everyone, not just those at the top. That’s the mission. . . .”
But
this mission is impossible to achieve. Any attempt to raise wages only raises
the profits of vendors and allows governments to take credit for generating
economic growth without showing that any real growth has taken place. Being
forced to pay more for the same stuff is not equivalent to buying more of it.
Gross Domestic Product is not thereby enhanced.
All
of this should be known by Hillary Clinton, other astute politicians, and
economists. But what Americans don’t know about America is legion. Even those
who pass as “highly educated” are found in this ignorant group. Many are highly
successful; many are elected office holders. Hillary Clinton, for example, is a
graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. She has been both a U.S.
Senator and Secretary of State. Yet she does not seem to even know how the
economy works. But she knows how government works. She has promises to break,
And years to go before she weeps.
The
free market puts a drain in the pockets of every wage earner that is routed to
the slimy, green sewer that empties into the pockets of the rich. So in free
market economies, an underclass always exists that can never earn a gainful
wage. The economy never works for the people in that class. They are constantly
robbed by the free market.
Promises
made to induce people to support immoral economic practices, especially free
market capitalism, are slimy green lies. The more vicious the promise, the
slimier the lie. Political campaigns in America consists of making such
promises.
Instead
of building a shining city on a hill, America’s Founding Fathers created a slum
in a slimy sewer of immorality and ignorance. What’s worse, people the world
over allow this government to guide their own actions. Nothing good can come of
it!
John
Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social,
political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the
Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years
working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially,
in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has
written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be
found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that
site’s homepage.
The
original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright
© John Kozy, Global Research,
2016
The Year of the
Commando: U.S. Special Operations’ Forces Deploy to 138 Nations…
They
could be found on the outskirts of Sirte, Libya, supporting local
militia fighters, and in Mukalla, Yemen, backing troops
from the United Arab Emirates. At Saakow, a remote outpost in
southern Somalia, they assisted
local commandos in killing several members of the terror group al-Shabab.
Around the cities of Jarabulus and Al-Rai in northern Syria, they partnered
with both Turkish soldiers and Syrian militias, while also embedding with
Kurdish YPG fighters and the Syrian Democratic Forces. Across the
border in Iraq, still others
joined the fight to liberate the city of Mosul. And in Afghanistan, they assisted
indigenous forces in various missions, just as they have every year since 2001.
For
America, 2016 may have been the year of the commando. In one
conflict zone after another across the northern tier of Africa and the Greater
Middle East, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) waged their particular brand
of low-profile warfare. “Winning the current fight, including against the
Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and other areas where SOF is engaged in conflict and
instability, is an immediate challenge,” the chief of U.S. Special Operations
Command (SOCOM), General Raymond
Thomas, told the Senate
Armed Services Committee last year.
SOCOM’s
shadow wars against terror groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (also
known as ISIL) may, ironically, be its most visible operations. Shrouded
in even more secrecy are its activities — from counterinsurgency and
counterdrug efforts to seemingly endless training and advising missions —
outside acknowledged conflict zones across the globe. These are conducted
with little fanfare, press coverage, or oversight in scores of nations every
single day. From Albania to Uruguay, Algeria to Uzbekistan, America’s
most elite forces — Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets among them — were deployed
to 138 countries in 2016, according to figures supplied
to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command. This total,
one of the highest of Barack Obama’s presidency, typifies what has become the
golden age of, in SOF-speak, the “gray zone” — a phrase used to describe the
murky twilight between war and peace. The coming year is likely to signal
whether this era ends with Obama or continues under President-elect Donald
Trump’s administration.
In
2016, according to data provided to TomDispatch by SOCOM, the U.S.
deployed special operators to China (specifically Hong Kong), in addition
to eleven countries surrounding it — Taiwan (which China considers a breakaway province), Mongolia,
Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Laos, the Philippines, South
Korea, and Japan. Special Operations Command does not acknowledge sending
commandos into Iran, North Korea, or Russia, but it does deploy troops to many
nations that ring them.
SOCOM
is willing to name only 129 of the 138 countries its forces deployed to in
2016. “Almost all Special Operations forces deployments are classified,”
spokesman Ken McGraw told TomDispatch. “If a deployment to a
specific country has not been declassified, we do not release information about
the deployment.”
SOCOM
does not, for instance, acknowledge sending troops to the war zones of Somalia, Syria, or Yemen, despite
overwhelming evidence of a U.S. special ops presence in all three countries, as
well as a White House report, issued last month, that notes “the United
States is currently using military force in” Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, and
specifically states that “U.S. special operations forces have deployed to
Syria.”
According
to Special Operations Command, 55.29% of special operators deployed overseas in
2016 were sent to the Greater Middle East, a drop of 35% since 2006. Over
the same span, deployments to Africa skyrocketed by more than
1600% — from just 1% of special operators dispatched outside the U.S. in 2006
to 17.26% last year. Those two regions were followed by areas served by
European Command (12.67%), Pacific Command (9.19%), Southern Command (4.89%),
and Northern Command (0.69%), which is in charge of “homeland defense.”
On any given day, around 8,000 of Thomas’s commandos can be found in more than
90 countries worldwide.
The Manhunters
“Special
Operations forces are playing a critical role in gathering intelligence —
intelligence that’s supporting operations against ISIL and helping to combat the
flow of foreign fighters to and from Syria and Iraq,” said Lisa Monaco, the assistant to
the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, in remarks at the
International Special Operations Forces Convention last year. Such
intelligence operations are “conducted in direct support of special operations
missions,” SOCOM’s Thomas explained in 2016.
“The preponderance of special operations intelligence assets are dedicated to
locating individuals, illuminating enemy networks, understanding environments,
and supporting partners.”
“[W]e
have put our Joint Special Operations Command in the lead of countering ISIL’s
external operations. And we have already achieved very significant
results both in reducing the flow of foreign fighters and removing ISIL leaders
from the battlefield,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter noted in a
relatively rare official mention of JSOC’s operations at an October press
conference.
A
month earlier, he offered even more
detail in a statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee:
”We’re
systematically eliminating ISIL’s leadership: the coalition has taken out seven
members of the ISIL Senior Shura… We also removed key ISIL leaders in both
Libya and Afghanistan… And we’ve removed from the battlefield more than 20 of
ISIL’s external operators and plotters… We have entrusted this aspect of our
campaign to one of [the Department of Defense’s] most lethal, capable, and
experienced commands, our Joint Special Operations Command, which helped
deliver justice not only to Osama Bin Laden, but also to the man who founded
the organization that became ISIL, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.”
Asked
for details on exactly how many ISIL “external operators” were targeted and how
many were “removed” from the battlefield by JSOC in 2016, SOCOM’s Ken McGraw
replied: “We do not and will not have anything for you.”
When
he was commander of JSOC in 2015, General Thomas spoke of his and his unit’s
“frustrations” with limitations placed on them. “I’m told ‘no’ more than
‘go’ on a magnitude of about ten to one on almost a daily basis,” he said. Last
November, however, the Washington Postreported that the Obama
administration was granting a JSOC task force “expanded power to track, plan
and potentially launch attacks on terrorist cells around the globe.” That
Counter-External Operations Task Force (also known as “Ex-Ops”) has been
“designed to take JSOC’s targeting model… and export it globally to go after
terrorist networks plotting attacks against the West.”
SOCOM
disputes portions of the Post story. “Neither SOCOM nor any of
its subordinate elements have… been given any expanded powers (authorities),”
SOCOM’s Ken McGraw told TomDispatch by email. “Any potential
operation must still be approved by the GCC [Geographic Combatant
Command] commander [and], if required, approved by the Secretary of
Defense or [the president].”
“U.S.
officials” (who spoke only on the condition that they be identified in that
vague way) explained that SOCOM’s response was a matter of perspective.
Its powers weren’t recently expanded as much as institutionalized and put “in
writing,” TomDispatch was told. “Frankly, the decision made months
ago was to codify current practice, not create something new.” Special
Operations Command refused to confirm this but Colonel Thomas Davis, another
SOCOM spokesman, noted: “Nowhere did we say that there was no codification.”
Last
November, Defense Secretary Carter offered an indication of the frequency of
offensive operations following a visit to Florida’s Hurlburt Field, the headquarters of Air Force
Special Operations Command. He notedthat “today we were
looking at a number of the Special Operations forces’ assault
capabilities. This is a kind of capability that we use nearly every day
somewhere in the world… And it’s particularly relevant to the counter-ISIL
campaign that we’re conducting today.”
In
Afghanistan, alone, Special Operations
forces conducted
350 raids targeting al-Qaeda and Islamic State operatives last year, averaging
about one per day, and capturing or killing nearly 50 “leaders” as well as 200
“members” of the terror groups, according to General
John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in that country. Some sources
also suggest that while
JSOC and CIA drones flew roughly the same number of missions in 2016, the
military launched more than 20,000 strikes in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria,
compared to less than a dozen by the Agency. This may reflect an Obama
administration decision to implement a long-considered plan to put JSOC in
charge of lethal operations and shift the CIA back to its traditional
intelligence duties.
World of Warcraft
“[I]t
is important to understand why SOF has risen from footnote and supporting
player to main effort, because its use also highlights why the U.S. continues
to have difficulty in its most recent campaigns — Afghanistan, Iraq, against
ISIS and AQ and its affiliates, Libya, Yemen, etc. and in the undeclared
campaigns in the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine — none of which fits the U.S.
model for traditional war,” said retired
Lieutenant General Charles Cleveland, chief of U.S. Army Special Operations
Command from 2012 to 2015 and now a senior mentor to the chief of staff of the
Army’s Strategic Studies Group. Asserting that, amid the larger problems
of these conflicts, the ability of America’s elite forces to conduct
kill/capture missions and train local allies has proven especially useful, he
added, “SOF is at its best when its indigenous and direct-action capabilities
work in support of each other. Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq and ongoing CT
[counterterrrorism] efforts elsewhere, SOF continues to work with partner
nations in counterinsurgency and counterdrug efforts in Asia, Latin America,
and Africa.”
SOCOM
acknowledges deployments to approximately 70% of the world’s nations, including
all but three Central and South American countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, and
Venezuela being the exceptions). Its operatives also blanket Asia, while
conducting missions in about 60% of the countries in Africa.
A
SOF overseas deployment can be as small as one special operator participating
in a language immersion program or a three-person team conducting a “survey”
for the U.S. embassy. It may also have nothing to do with a host nation’s
government or military. Most Special Operations forces, however, work
with local partners, conducting training exercises and engaging in what the
military calls “building partner capacity” (BPC) and “security cooperation”
(SC). Often, this means America’s most elite troops are sent to countries
with security forces that are regularly cited for human
rights abuses by the U.S. State Department. Last year in Africa, where
Special Operations forces utilize nearly 20
different programs and activities — from training exercises to security
cooperation engagements — these included Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, among others.
In
2014, for example, more than 4,800 elite troops took part in just one type of
such activities – Joint Combined
Exchange Training (JCET)
missions — around the world. At a cost of more than $56 million, Navy
SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operators carried out 176
individual JCETs in 87 countries. A 2013 RAND Corporation study of the
areas covered by Africa Command, Pacific Command, and Southern Command found
“moderately low” effectiveness for JCETs in all three regions. A 2014
RAND analysis of U.S.
security cooperation, which also examined the implications of “low-footprint
Special Operations forces efforts,” found that there “was no statistically
significant correlation between SC and change in countries’ fragility in Africa
or the Middle East.” And in a 2015 report for Joint Special Operations
University, Harry Yarger, a senior fellow at the school, noted that “BPC has
in the past consumed vast resources for little return.”
Despite
these results and larger strategic failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, the Obama years
have been the golden age of the gray zone. The 138 nations visited by
U.S. special operators in 2016, for example, represent a jump of 130% since the
waning days of the Bush administration. Although they also represent a
6% drop compared to last year’s total, 2016 remains in the upper range of
the Obama years, which saw deployments to 75 nations in
2010, 120 in 2011, 134 in 2013,
and 133 in 2014,
before peaking at 147countries in
2015. Asked about the reason for the modest decline, SOCOM spokesman Ken
McGraw replied, “We provide SOF to meet the geographic combatant commands’
requirements for support to their theater security cooperation plans.
Apparently, there were nine fewer countries [where] the GCCs had a requirement
for SOF to deploy to in [Fiscal Year 20]16.”
The
increase in deployments between 2009 and 2016 — from about 60 countries to more
than double that — mirrors a similar rise in SOCOM’s total personnel (from
approximately 56,000 to about 70,000) and in its baseline budget (from $9
billion to $11 billion). It’s no secret that the tempo of operations has
also increased dramatically, although the command refused to address questions
from TomDispatch on the subject.
“SOF
have shouldered a heavy burden in carrying out these missions, suffering a high
number of casualties over the last eight years and maintaining a high
operational tempo (OPTEMPO) that has increasingly strained special operators
and their families,” reads an October
2016 report released by the Virginia-based think tank CNA. (That report
emerged from a conference attended by six former
special operations commanders, a former assistant secretary of defense, and
dozens of active-duty special operators.)
The American Age of
the Commando
Last
month, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Shawn Brimley, former director
for strategic planning on the National Security Council staff and now an
executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security, echoed the worried
conclusions of the CNA report. At a hearing on “emerging U.S.
defense challenges and worldwide threats,” Brimley said “SOF have been deployed
at unprecedented rates, placing immense strain on the force” and called on the
Trump administration to “craft a more sustainable long-term counterterrorism
strategy.” In a paper published in
December, Kristen Hajduk, a former adviser
for Special Operations and Irregular Warfare in the Office of the Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and now
a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called for a
decrease in the deployment rates for Special Operations forces.
While
Donald Trump has claimed that the U.S. military as a whole is “depleted” and has called for increasing
the size of the Army and Marines, he has offered no indication about whether he
plans to support a further increase in the size of special ops forces.
And while he did recently nominate a former Navy SEAL to serve as
his secretary of the interior, Trump has offered few indications of how he
might employ special operators who are currently serving.
“Drone
strikes,” he announced in one of his
rare detailed references to special ops missions, “will remain part of our
strategy, but we will also seek to capture high-value targets to gain needed
information to dismantle their organizations.” More recently, at a North
Carolina victory rally, Trump made specific references to the elite troops soon
to be under his command. “Our Special Forces at Fort Bragg have been the
tip of the spear in fighting terrorism. The motto of our Army Special Forces is
‘to free the oppressed,’ and that is exactly what they have been doing and will
continue to do. At this very moment, soldiers from Fort Bragg are deployed in
90 countries around the world,” he told the crowd.
Last
month, President Obama traveled to Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base, the home
of Special Operations Command, to deliver his capstone counterterrorism
speech. “For eight years that I’ve been in office, there has not been a
day when a terrorist organization or some radicalized individual was not
plotting to kill Americans,” he told a crowd packed with
troops. At the same time, there likely wasn’t a day when the most elite
forces under his command were not deployed in 60 or more countries around the
world.
“I
will become the first president of the United States to serve two full terms
during a time of war,” Obama added. “Democracies should not operate in a
state of permanently authorized war. That’s not good for our military,
it’s not good for our democracy.” The results of his permanent-war
presidency have, in fact, been dismal, according to Special
Operations Command. Of eight conflicts waged during the Obama years,
according to a 2015 briefing slide from the command’s intelligence directorate,
America’s record stands at zero wins, two losses, and six ties.
The
Obama era has indeed proven to be the “age of the commando.” However, as
Special Operations forces have kept up a frenetic operational tempo, waging war
in and out of acknowledged conflict zones, training local allies, advising
indigenous proxies, kicking down doors, and carrying out assassinations, terror
movements have spread across
the Greater Middle Eastand Africa.
President-elect
Donald Trump appears poised
to obliterate much of
the Obama legacy, from the
president’s signature healthcare
law to
his environmental
regulations,
not to mention changing course when it comes to foreign policy, including in
relations with China, Iran, Israel, and Russia. Whether he
will heed advice to decrease Obama-level SOF deployment rates remains to be seen.
The year ahead will, however, offer clues as to whether Obama’s long war in the
shadows, the golden age of the gray zone, survives.
Nick
Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch, a fellow at
the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the Intercept. His
book Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in
Africa received an American Book Award in 2016.
His latest book is Next Time They’ll
Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan. His website
is NickTurse.com.
The
original source of this article is TomDispatch
A SPY COUP IN
AMERICA?
As
Official Washington’s latest “group think” solidifies into certainty – that
Russia used hacked Democratic emails to help elect Donald Trump – something
entirely different may be afoot: a months-long effort by elements of the U.S.
intelligence community to determine who becomes the next president.
I
was told by a well-placed intelligence source some months ago that senior
leaders of the Obama administration’s intelligence agencies – from the CIA to
the FBI – were deeply concerned about either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump
ascending to the presidency. And, it’s true that intelligence officials often
come to see themselves as the stewards of America’s fundamental interests,
sometimes needing to protect the country from dangerous passions of the public
or from inept or corrupt political leaders.
It
was, after all, a senior FBI official, Mark Felt, who – as “Deep Throat” –
guided The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Watergate
investigation into the criminality of President Richard Nixon. And, I was told
by former U.S. intelligence officers that they wanted to block President Jimmy
Carter’s reelection in 1980 because they viewed him as ineffectual and thus not
protecting American global interests.
It’s
also true that intelligence community sources frequently plant stories in major
mainstream publications that serve propaganda or political goals, including
stories that can be misleading or entirely false.
What’s Going On?
So,
what to make of what we have seen over the past several months when there have
been a series of leaks and investigations that have damaged both Clinton and
Trump — with some major disclosures coming, overtly and covertly, from the U.S.
intelligence community led by CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James
Comey?
 |
| James Comey |
Clinton
– already burdened with a reputation for secrecy and dishonesty – suffered from
the drip, drip, drip of releases from WikiLeaks of the DNC and Podesta emails
although it remains unclear who gave the emails to WikiLeaks. Still, the
combination of the two email batches added to public suspicions about Clinton
and reminded people why they didn’t trust her.
But
the most crippling blow to Clinton came from FBI Director Comey in the last
week of the campaign when he reopened and then re-closed the investigation into
whether she broke the law with her sloppy handling of classified material in
her State Department emails funneled through a home server.
Following
Comey’s last-minute revival of the Clinton email controversy, her poll numbers
fell far enough to enable Trump to grab three normally Democratic states –
Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – enough to give him a victory in the
Electoral College.
Taking Down Trump
However,
over the past few weeks, the U.S. intelligence community, led by CIA Director
Brennan and seconded by FBI Director Comey, has tried to delegitimize Trump by
using leaks to the mainstream U.S. news media to pin the release of the DNC and
Podesta emails on Russia and claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin was
personally trying to put Trump into the White House.
 |
| Donald Trump |
If
on Monday enough Trump electors decide to cast their votes for someone else –
possibly another Republican – the presidential selection could go to the House
of Representatives where, conceivably, the Republican-controlled chamber could
choose someone other than Trump.
In
other words, there is an arguable scenario in which the U.S. intelligence
community first undercut Clinton and, secondly, Trump, seeking — however
unlikely — to get someone installed in the White House considered more suitable
to the CIA’s and the FBI’s views of what’s good for the country.
Who Did the Leaking?
At
the center of this controversy is the question of who leaked or hacked the DNC
and Podesta emails. The CIA has planted the story in The Washington Post, The
New York Times and other mainstream outlets that it was Russia that hacked both
the DNC and Podesta emails and slipped the material to WikiLeaks with the goal
of assisting the Trump campaign. The suggestion is that Trump is Putin’s
“puppet,” just as Hillary Clinton alleged during the third presidential debate.
But
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has publicly denied that Russia was the source
of the leaks and one of his associates, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan
Craig Murray, has suggested that the DNC leak came from a “disgruntled”
Democrat upset with the DNC’s sandbagging of the Sanders campaign and that the
Podesta leak came from the U.S. intelligence community.
Although
Assange recently has sought to muzzle Murray’s public comments – out of
apparent concern for protecting the identity of sources – Murray offered
possibly his most expansive account of the sourcing during a podcast interview with Scott
Horton on Dec. 13.
Murray,
who became a whistleblower himself when he protested Britain’s tolerance of
human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, explained that he consults with Assange and
cooperates with WikiLeaks “without being a formal member of the structure.”
 |
| John Kiriakou |
Former
CIA analyst Ray McGovern, a founder of the Sam Adams group, told me that Murray
was “m-c-ing” the event but then slipped away, skipping a reception that
followed the award ceremony.
Reading Between
LInes
Though
Murray has declined to say exactly what the meeting in the woods was about, he
may have been passing along messages about ways to protect the source from
possible retaliation, maybe even an extraction plan if the source was in some
legal or physical danger.
Murray
has disputed a report in London’s Daily Mail that he was receiving a batch of
the leaked Democratic emails. “The material, I think, was already safely with
WikiLeaks before I got there in September,” Murray said in the interview with
Scott Horton. “I had a small role to play.”
Murray
also suggested that the DNC leak and the Podesta leak came from two different
sources, neither of them the Russian government.
“The
Podesta emails and the DNC emails are, of course, two separate things and we
shouldn’t conclude that they both have the same source,” Murray said. “In both
cases we’re talking of a leak, not a hack, in that the person who was
responsible for getting that information out had legal access to that
information.”
Reading
between the lines of the interview, one could interpret Murray’s comments as
suggesting that the DNC leak came from a Democratic source and that the Podesta
leak came from someone inside the U.S. intelligence community, which may have
been monitoring John Podesta’s emails because the Podesta Group, which he
founded with his brother Tony, served as a registered “foreign agent” for Saudi
Arabia.
“John
Podesta was a paid lobbyist for the Saudi government,” Murray noted. “If the
American security services were not watching the communications of the Saudi
government’s paid lobbyist in Washington, then the American security services
would not be doing their job. … His communications are going to be of interest
to a great number of other security services as well.”
Leak by Americans
Scott
Horton then asked, “Is it fair to say that you’re saying that the Podesta leak
came from inside the intelligence services, NSA [the electronic spying National
Security Agency] or another agency?”
“I
think what I said was certainly compatible with that kind of interpretation,
yeah,” Murray responded. “In both cases they are leaks by Americans.”
In
reference to the leak of the DNC emails, Murray noted that “Julian Assange took
very close interest in the death of Seth Rich, the Democratic staff member” who
had worked for the DNC on voter databases and was shot and killed on July 10
near his Washington, D.C., home.
 |
| Julian Assange |
Though
acknowledging that such killings can become grist for conspiracy buffs, Murray
added: “But people do die over this sort of stuff. There were billions of
dollars – literally billions of dollars – behind Hillary Clinton’s election
campaign and those people have lost their money.
“You
have also to remember that there’s a big financial interest – particularly in
the armaments industry – in a bad American relationship with Russia and the
worse the relationship with Russia is the larger contracts the armaments
industry can expect especially in the most high-tech high-profit side of
fighter jets and missiles and that kind of thing.
“And
Trump has actually already indicated he’s looking to make savings on the
defense budget particularly in things like fighter [jet] projects. So, there
are people standing to lose billions of dollars and anybody who thinks in that
situation bad things don’t happen to people is very naïve.”
An Intelligence
Coup?
There’s
another possibility in play here: that the U.S. intelligence community is
felling a number of birds with one stone. If indeed U.S. intelligence bigwigs
deemed both Clinton and Trump unfit to serve as President – albeit for
different reasons – they could have become involved in leaking at least the
Podesta emails to weaken Clinton’s campaign, setting the candidate up for the
more severe blow from FBI Director Comey in the last week of the campaign.Then,
by blaming the leaks on Russian President Putin, the U.S. intelligence leadership
could set the stage for Trump’s defeat in the Electoral College, opening the
door to the elevation of a more traditional Republican. However, even if that
unlikely event – defeating Trump in the Electoral College – proves impossible,
Trump would at least be weakened as he enters the White House and thus might
not be able to move very aggressively toward a détente with Russia.
Further,
the Russia-bashing that is all the rage in the mainstream U.S. media will
surely encourage the Congress to escalate the New Cold War, regardless of
Trump’s desires, and thus ensure plenty more money for both the intelligence
agencies and the military contractors.
Official
Washington’s “group think” holding Russia responsible for the Clinton leaks
does draw some logical support from the near certainty that Russian
intelligence has sought to penetrate information sources around both Clinton
and Trump. But the gap between the likely Russian hacking efforts and the
question of who gave the email information to WikiLeaks is where mainstream
assumptions may fall down.
As
ex-Ambassador Murray has said, U.S. intelligence was almost surely keeping tabs
on Podesta’s communications because of his ties to Saudi Arabia and other
foreign governments. So, the U.S. intelligence community represents another
suspect in the case of who leaked those emails to WikiLeaks. It would be a
smart play, reminiscent of the convoluted spy tales of John LeCarré, if U.S.
intelligence officials sought to cover their own tracks by shifting suspicions
onto the Russians.
But
just the suspicion of the CIA joining the FBI and possibly other U.S.
intelligence agencies to intervene in the American people’s choice of a
president would cause President Harry Truman, who launched the CIA with
prohibitions against it engaging in domestic activities, and Sen. Frank Church,
who investigated the CIA’s abuses, to spin in their graves.
Investigative
reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The
Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an
e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
The
original source of this article is Consortiumnews
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