CAN THE NPP DELIVER ON ITS PROMISES?

President Akufo Addo

By Yao Graham

Thirty years of steady growth, two decades of an open political culture, relatively peaceful multiparty electoral politics and administration transitions (again illustrated by the defeat of the ruling NDC in the December 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections) have burnished Ghana's status as an African model, often referred to in the 'Africa rising' narrative.

Since 1984 Ghana's economy has grown steadily, at a rate widely considered to be among the most spectacular in Africa. The growth rate averaged 4.7 percent between 1983 and 2000, and 7.2 percent from 2000 until 2013, reaching an all-time high of 14.4 percent in 2011 with the onset of oil production. As a result of steady growth and the rebasing of the economy Ghana became a lower- middle income country as per capita GDP increased from US$502 in 2005 to US$1,604.9 in 2012. Over the past 25 years, the number of people in poverty has dropped significantly, from 52 percent in 1992 to 24 percent in 2013. There have also been notable improvements in education, health and other indicators.

The positive developments in Ghana's political economy over the last three decades today co-exist with many troubling realities. These are a combination of persisting problems of Ghana's political economy unresolved by 30 years of growth and also the new problems created by the strategy and policies responsible for the growth and the weaknesses in the political system.

Whilst the percentage of persons living in poverty has decreased significantly the actual numbers have not dropped by much, falling from 7 million in 2006 to 6.4 million in 2013. In addition, the chance of a Ghanaian child living in poverty has increased. While in the 1990s a child in Ghana was 15 percent is more likely to live in poverty than an adult, this has risen to 40 percent today. Significantly economic, social and political inequalities persist and economic inequality has been rising throughout the life of the 4th Republic, that is, since 1992. Over the past decade the consumption gap between the poorest 10 percent and the richest 10 percent has widened. Men predominate in the ownership of residential property and agricultural land and make up the majority of formal sector employees. Maternal mortality remains a problem.

Historically the public education system served as an important leveler of opportunities. No more. Increasing numbers of poor people feel the need to send their children to private schools, the preference of the rich and middle classes, as they lose faith in public basic schools. Even as more health facilities are being built and the National Health Insurance Scheme, the most important delivery institution in the public health service, has improved accessed for many, the quality of health care leaves much to be desired. Rising inequality is of course not only a Ghanaian problem or even an African problem.

Over the past three decades a process of perverse structural transformation has been unfolding in Ghana, as in many African countries, as a result of the pattern of economic growth and its associated effects and outcomes. There has been a steady fall in the share of agriculture in GDP which nonetheless remained the main sector of employment with poor productivity and low quality of employment and income. The manufacturing sector has continued to decline. The services sector has become the biggest economic sector where highly profitable transnational banks and telecom firms dot a sea of millions of low productivity and low income petty service providers and businesses. In 2015 Agriculture was 20.2 percent of GDP (employing 53% of labour force); Manufacturing 5.1 percent, Mining 5.4 percent and Services 49.5 percent.

The most glaring failure of the growth model has been its inability to deliver decent and secure jobs. In April 2016 a public controversy erupted over claims by the ousted Mahama Government that it had created hundreds of thousands of jobs, some directly as part of social protection programmes and others indirectly through economic policies. The skepticism and disputation that greeted the claim underlined the critical status of this issue. Fully 86 percent of Ghana's working people are involved in the informal economy, engaged largely in low income and low productivity jobs, ranging from illegal gold mining to selling in the streets. The precarious nature of many of these jobs makes them more basic survival undertakings than sources of meaningful livelihoods.

Ghana has been urbanizing whilst deindustrializing. Millions have fled poverty in the countryside looking for non-existent jobs in urban areas. This is resulting in huge housing, social services, and sanitation problems in overcrowded poor neighborhoods, especially in the main cities of the country: Accra-Tema, Kumasi, Tamale and Sekondi-Takoradi. In these cities sprawling poor neighborhoods lacking basic utilities coexist with well-furnished gated communities. Urbanization is growing at an annual rate of 3.55 percent: 31.3 percent of the population lived in urban areas in 1984 and 43.8% in 2000.

Currently more than half the population live in urban areas with Tamale, Accra,Tema, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi being the fastest growing poles of concentration. Tamale, with a population of close to 380,000, is said to be the fastest growing city in West Africa. The growth of three dormitory towns in the Accra-Tema area exemplifies the extremes of the urbanization process. Ashaiman grew from 50,000 people in 1984 to 190,972 people in 2010; Kasoa grew from 863 people in 1970 to 34,000 people in 2000 and 69,000 in 2010; Madina grew from 7,500 people in 1970 to 28,000 people in 1984 to 137,000 in 2010. These areas suffer a highly visible discrimination in allocation of public investment in infrastructure and other facilities compared to high income areas in Accra such as East Legon and Cantonments.

The jobs crisis is rooted in the sectoral drivers of growth and exports over the past 30 years and the resultant intensification of raw material commodity export dependence and the heavy reliance on imports of basic foods and most manufactures. The discovery of oil has merely intensified this raw material commodity export dependence. In 2014 with three products--gold, oil and cocoa accounted for 82 percent of export earnings. Ghana’s most impressive period of growth (2000-2013) coincided with the peak of the commodity boom, which also produced Africa's best period of growth in 30 years. Gold mining, which is dominated by foreign transnational corporations, has attracted the most FDI into Ghana since the 1990s and has been the primary export earner for many years.

Over the period of the commodity super cycle, specifically the decade to 2013, the high price of gold and the employment crisis in the country triggered an upsurge in illegal artisanal and small scale (ASM) gold mining popularly called 'galamsey'. Currently one third of gold production is from AS producers with the bulk coming from illegal miners. Galamsey operators range from highly capitalised businesses enjoying political protection through self-employed gangs to students scratching for school fees. Galamsey is an environmental disaster which is killing many rivers, trailed by un-reclaimed devastated lands. On the other hand the poverty reduction and economic livelihood benefits have been substantial for most of the illegal miners, their families and poor farmers who let them dig up their farms.

The attitude of the state to this complex problem has been a heavy handed 'law and order' response of criminalization and raids but this has dismally failed to curb the problem. The Akufo-Addo government has signaled its determination to continue with the policy. Given how profitable gold mining has been for foreign investors it is hardly surprising that hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people break the law, risk their health and lives whilst wreaking environmental damage so as to also earn a living from the sub sector. There is a widespread perception that the biggest galamsey operators are aided by official corruption and complicity; this is an aspect of the pervasive public perception of key public institutions and political leaders as corrupt and not acting in the public interest.

Ghana’s Constitution has some clear mandatory provisions on the right to work and the state's responsibility in that regard. Under the Economic Objectives of the Directive Principles of State Policy [Article 36 (1)] the State is enjoined to take all necessary steps "to ensure that the national economy is managed in such a manner as to maximize the rate of economic development and to secure the maximum welfare, freedom and happiness of every person in Ghana and to provide adequate means of livelihood and suitable employment and public assistance to the needy". Article 36 (2) (a) states principles of decent work. Article 24 (1) provides that "every person has the right to work under satisfactory and safe and healthy conditions and shall receive equal pay for equal work".

 Although Ghana's policymakers proclaim the importance of industrialization for job creation, the country's policies and actions do not match these proclamations. For example, industrial policy is fragmented and there is no coherent and overarching relationship among industrial policy frameworks and local content in specific sub-sectors such as mining and oil and gas. The potential of agro-industrial linkages for increasing agriculture output, reducing post-harvest losses, improving the supply of foods and raw materials, creating jobs and raising incomes is well known.

Over the past 30 years ideology of the role of the state as merely creating an enabling environment for actors in the market has gained a strong holding Ghanaian public discourse. In practice however state is heavily deployed selectively in support of the elite, be it land acquisition for a mine or a large-scale agricultural or housing project. This selective use of state power is consistent with how the foundational processes and implementation of key policy decisions that created the current neoliberal economic model and growth path involved strong and purposive actions and choices by the state, an authoritarian state. State power was used to silence dissent and resistance to privatizations, layoffs and massive job losses, commercialization of public goods and the reordering of the focus and objectives of public institutions and the establishment of the hegemony of the new order.

 Thirty years on, purposive state action is required to break away from this model and advance inclusive and equitable socioeconomic transformation. Such an approach will also be a process of deepening Ghana's democracy beyond the focus on the procedural elements represented by multiparty elections and regime alternation. This focus has elevated electoral politics onto a pedestal as being the essence of Ghana's democracy rather than being an instrument for selecting political office holders. A broader view will be consistent with the statement in Article 36(2) (e) of the Constitution which state that “the most secure democracy is the one that assures the basic necessities of life for its people as a fundamental duty".

This Constitutional injunction calls into question the shift towards policies and politics of inclusive and equitable transformation will require the development of not only appropriate policies and practices but also institutions and the orientation of state cadre to be more democratic and accountable. It will also require a readiness by the state to challenge the power of vested interests in the economy and society -whether it is to abolish cultural practices that perpetuate patriarchy and the subordination of women in economic and social life; reform land relations in favour of the users of the land against chiefs and landlords, or promote domestic production in the face of the import lobby.

Ghana has rightly received for its relatively peaceful electoral transitions from ruling parties to the opposition. This cannot however mask the growing public disillusionment with the policy continuities among successive governments and the failure of these policies to address the most pressing concerns of most Ghanaians and the seeming cross-party consensus within the political and economic elite to tolerate the self-serving use of public office and political power.

Yao Graham is coordinator of TWN-Africa

Editorial

PROMISES

Nobody expects the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the Akufo-Addo administration to keep all the promises they made in the run up to the 2016 elections.

This is because, Ghanaians know better now that the reality has dawned on everybody. The fact is that the pursuit of the neo-liberal agenda over the last 30 years has rendered Ghana broke.

However, nobody can forgive the Government if it destroys the peace and security of citizens which has been relatively well guaranteed for a number of years.

That is why the case of Eric Ekwow Nyarku, a Foreign Service officer ought to be taken seriously.

Eric was shot three times in his car by a lone assailant and left for dead at around 1.30am February 10, 2017.

He has since named a suspect but strangely no arrest has been made.

This is exceedingly worrying and we demand that the authorities act with despatch on this matter.

We will not allow our security and safety to be jeopardised.

37 Military Hospital needs support

By Samira Larbie

Brigadier General Ernest Cosby Saka (Jnr), the Commander of the 37 Military Hospital, Tuesday appealed to corporate bodies, charities and individuals to support the Hospital in taking care of the victims of the Trade Fair gas explosion fire incident.

Brig. Gen. Saka said this was important as the Hospital had run out of the seed money provided by the Government to treat the patients on admission.

He said the GHȼ125,000.00 seed money the Government provided to treat the patients was exhausted long ago; while the Hospital had run into a bill of more than GHȼ250,000.00.

The patients have been on admission since December 2016 following the incident at the Louis Gas Station, behind the Trade Fair Centre.

Brig. Gen. Saka, who was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), explained that 28 persons were brought to the Hospital with severe burns. Four of them are still on admission, five lost their lives, while the rest have been discharged.

He said though the family members of the patients had been visiting them from time to time, they were reluctant to contribute to the payment of the bills because they heard the Government at that time announce that they would foot the bills.

He said those who were still on admission had undergone series of surgeries to correct their defects but they still needed more.

Brig. Gen. Saka, therefore, called for more support and supplies to address the situation.

He also appealed to every citizen to also help to clear the bills because the hospital was confronted with other major challenges, such as retooling and replacement of old machines and equipment to keep the place vibrant and be able to deliver on its mandate.

“Job remuneration is not the only thing we need and demand, but if we have the resources to work with, it makes staff happy and willing to work,” he said.

GNA

Aftershocks of Peaceful Transition

President Akufo Addo

By Cornelius Adedze.

A t the January 7 inauguration of Nana Akufo-Addo as the 5th President of Ghana's Fourth Republic there was an important yet unintended illustration of why the fuss about Ghana's peaceful transition. After Akufo-Addo's swearing in and the speeches, various African Presidents and leaders of government delegationspresent queued to congratulate Ghana's new President and in the process offered a kaleidoscope of the worthy, the dubious, the troubling and the illegitimate foundations of the power of African governments.

The guest of honour Cote d'Ivoire's AlassaneOuattara attended despite a mutiny by soldiers which offered remindersof his route to power and continued uncertainties in his country. There was Teodoro ObiangNguemaMbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, in power since he ousted his uncle in 1979 and who runs the country like a family business and tolerates no dissent.

Also in the queue were Ali Bongo of Gabon, Faure Gnassingbe of Togo, disputed successors to their autocratic fathers. At the other end of the spectrum were Senegal's MackySall and Nigeria's Muhammadu Buhari.

On the home front, the euphoria of electoral victory by the opposition New Patriotic Party, NPP, for the second time since Ghana's return to multiparty rule in 1992 seems to have, momentarily, masked the many challenges the country faces. It was a great sigh of relief when the elections not only successfully came off but also ended peacefully despite the numerous challenges and near escalation of violence that characterized the campaign and the sporadic violence recorded in some polling stations during the elections. Even as political observers praised Ghana for peaceful elections and transition to a new government, developments following the elections highlight the many challenges that Ghana shares with other Africa countries which need to be address for the consolidating and deepening of a democratic culture.

In addition to the economic hardships facing many Ghanaians, the NPP's victory was aided by public perceptions of widespread corruption and nepotism, poor management of the economy and the sheer arrogance of the political appointees of the defeated National Democratic Congress (NDC) government. This has generated expectations of better performance from the new government. High among these are jobs and improvements in economic conditions, free secondary school education, reduced taxes, lower electricity tariffs, and a government ready, willing and able to deal ruthlessly with corruption. These are but some of the promises made before the elections by then opposition NPP.

The smooth transition of power has been marred somewhat by suspected grassroots supporters of the party who have been at their rampaging best driving out managers and workers, believed to be sympathizers of the defeated, National Democratic Congress (NDC) party, from toll booths, public toilets and other public offices like National Health Insurance Authority and the Youth Employment Agency. All these took place as the security agencies, the police especially, looked on helpless, even as some of the leaders of these activities, brazenly, carried out the unlawful evictions in broad daylight or justified their actions in the media. Some have attributed the seeming inaction of the security agencies to the fear of commanders who rightly or wrongly believed any attempt to rein in supporters of a victorious political party may lead to punitive actions against them through victimization by political authorities.

The government itself at the higher levels continued with the sacking of heads and other high level staff of public and state institutions, replacing them with party stalwarts or cronies. Among those sacked include head of the National Communications Authority, the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority, COCOBOD (the marketing board of the country's highest export earner, cocoa) and some security heads. This has become a pattern of post- elections political dividends payoff where every electoral cycle change of government goes with replacement of public officials. High unemployment and patronage seem to be providing the triggers of these actions. Others talk of retaliation as presumed supporters of the NPP were at the receiving end after the NDC won the elections in 2008. For some these reprisals represent a throwback to the days of coups d’états, when all hell broke loose and appointments were terminated haphazardly and continuity in public administration was undermined. For others still, these are just ways of paying back some stalwarts and activists of the party for their contribution to the electoral victory.

Table: Approved and Recommended Salary levels for Article 71 Office holders (GHC)

Office holder	*Appr	#Recom.	Appr	Recom	Appr.	Recom	Appr.	Recom	Appr	Recom
	2016	2016	2015	2015	2014	2014	2013	2013	2012	2012
MP	19,430	13,686	17,663	13,364	16,057	13,049	14,598	12,742	14,598	12,742
Speaker	24,287	17,791	22,079	17,372	20,072	16,963	18,247	16,564	18,247	16,564
President	30,359	22,809	27,599	20,865	25,090	19,087	22,809	17,460	22,809	15,972

The continued creation of new ministries and re-designation of others with every change of government reared its head again. Some of these are a repeat of earlier ministries created by the first NPP government (2001-2008) but scrapped by the NDC government (2009-2016). Such ministries as, Ministry for Railways Development, when there is a Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Regional Re-organisation and Mobilisation, the Ministry of Inner City and Zongo Development, when there is a ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, a ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation as well as the post of Senior Minister.

Commenting on the issue, Prof. RansfordGyapong, of the department of Political Science, University of Ghana, Legon, said, 'By the current arrangement there will be a Chief of staff, an Executive Secretary to the President and a Senior Minister. This is duplication of roles that can create some confusion.' This more likely to feed into the perception that governance in Ghana has become like the creation of 'job for the boys', an attempt to ensure party members get their share of the spoils of political victory. A possible recipe for chaos and invariably a drag on the overburdened coffers of the country as each appointment goes with its financial and logistical arrangements.

A satirical online publication, Yesiyesi, put the situation thus, “The new government led by Nana AkufoAddo will have a new ministry to oversee the creation of more jobs for friends and other party functionaries. The new Ministry for Strategic Development of Jobs for the Boys has been tasked with the development of new and innovation ways of splitting up existing ministries and creating a multitude of needless bureaucracy. An official statement said the new ministry is in line with the president's promise of insisting on “value for money” by ensuring that all his campaign funders are able to recoup their investments” (yesiyesighana.com, January 31,2017

Management of government information

Conflicting information and public verbal spats between members of the transition teams of the outgoing and incoming governments also raised some hairs. Vice-president, Dr. MahamaduBawumia's stoked the fires further with his announcement that they had just discovered that 7bn could not be accounted for by the NDC government. Spokesperson for the NDC, former deputy Finance minister, Cassiel Ato Forson derided the Vice-President's accusations saying 'the amount in question was the result of a reform on government contracts and expenditures which formed part of the Ghana Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMIS) project' and were reported in the handing over notes of the Transition Team. He further stated that 'the project, which the new government was expected to continue implementing, was covered in the new Public Financial Management Act under the Budget Responsibility provision'.

Meanwhile, as the supposed misunderstanding between outgoing and incoming governments went on, retirement packages for former officials attracted no disputes from any quarter possibly because both parties stand to benefit from them. Not even a whimper was head from either quarter and Members of Parliament would go home with their ex-gratia just like other former government officials. No arguments here. These political office holders are going home with back-dated increases in salaries from 2013 as well as 4 months' salary for each of the 4 years served. What this means is that between 2013 and 2016, the percentage increase in nominal wage for the President is 74 percent, Members of Parliament, 54 percent and the Speaker of Parliament, 56 percent when workers on government payroll got 30 percent over the period. These approved rates fly in the face of the recommended rates by the EduBuandoh Committee that was set up to determine emoluments for Article 71 office holders (political office holders from the President to ministers, parliamentarians and others defined under Article 71 of the Constitution etc). Although the Committee's recommendations were initially accepted by outgoing President Mahama, they were roundly rejected by Parliament which in the end carried the day. Auction of fairly used government cars to politicians at giveaway prices especially when they lose power is another exchange that the two parties are good at without any qualms. Top range cross country vehicles and saloon cars are mostly the target. Public lands have not suffered less as they are 'appropriated' by politicians.

The two major political parties, the NDC and NPP who have so far rotated power between them seem to know how to 'share the spoils' of political power when it comes to taking care of themselves even as the citizenry is told there is not

enough money to go round.

 Bribery in the Legislature

 Long- held public suspicion of bribery in Parliament was given a lease of life when some members of the legislature accused others of attempting to bribe them. A ministerial nominee was alleged to have attempted bribing members of the Appointments Committee of Parliament to ease his approval process. Some members of the minority on the committee raised the issue when they said the supposed bribe was offered them and they rejected it. Once more, the denials and hot exchanges between the NPP and the NDC (and even within the NDC, where the Minority Chief Whip, who supposedly was the conduit of the bribe to the minority committee members initially, denied) have characterized the debate on the matter. The appointment of a 5-member committee by Parliament to look into the issue has however, been rubbished by some groups as an attempt by Parliament to cover up as it cannot be a judge in its own case. Calls have therefore gone for an independent body to conduct investigations into the matter. At the heart of the matter is transparency, fairness and rule of law, the very tenets of democracy that Ghana's legislature seem to be losing sight of in this case. Even as the president in his inaugural address assured that Ghana would under his leadership see a true separation of powers, this seems to have been lost on the legislature.

Predictably the election defeat has triggered soul searching and arguments in the NDC, now the main opposition party. The margin of defeat in both the Presidential and parliamentary elections was unprecedented with the party losing as many as 50 seats in the legislature. The party leadership has set up a committee to investigate why the party lost the elections. This move will buy the different factions time to plan their next moves but a struggle for control of the party ahead of the next elections in four years is inevitable and has already broken out. There are conflicting signals about what ousted president John Mahama will do but the scale of his loss to Akufo-Addo may have fatally undermined the prospects for another run for the top job. Ex-President Jerry John Rawlings, reportedly marginalised by the Mahama bloc has already signaled an intention to return as a key influence on the NDC's future. Speaking on the 35th anniversary of his 1981 coup Rawlings, who sees himself as the embodiment of the party's values, blamed the party's election defeat on the corruption and arrogance of Mahama and his government. The intra NDC power struggle is certain to intensify and other factions will show their hands.

NDC members are currently united in a defensive posture as the NPP government seeks to reinforce the legitimacy conferred by its election victory with disclosures about the failings and misdeeds of the Mahama government. The new government intends to create a new office of Special Prosecutor to deal with corruption, though it is yet not clear how it will fit in with existing offices and institutions with a mandate to tackle corruption. No doubt many misdeeds will come to light. However, now, as in past post-election transitions there is a troubling and difficult challenge of how the new regime deals with the infractions of officials of its predecessor. Should it go for short term political gain of dramatic gestures drawn from the autocratic culture of Ghana's past military regimes, which feed red meat to its support base or take a considered, less populist, approach which reinforces the processes of rule of law and democratic accountability? Wittingly or unwittingly both the NPP and the NDC have shown a preference for the traditions left by the soldiers, thereby ensuring that a gray zone of power play, marked by both legal and dubious use of power by election victors continues to bubble below the peaceful surface that the wider world keeps its narrow gaze on.

The People Who Die to Make Your Cell Phone 

Artisinal Miners

With a population of at least 67 million, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the poorest countries in the world. In 2014, the World Bank ranked it second to last on the Human Development Index.

Despite the DRC’s poverty level, there is one thing that it has in abundance – cobalt. Cobalt is a mineral used to make lithium ion batteries that Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, Dell, and many other companies use in their devices.

According to experts, more than half of the world’s supply of cobalt comes from the DRC, with 20 percent of it from what are called “artisanal mines.” For many Congolese people, mining cobalt is the only way to feed their families. Unfortunately, artisanal mines are smaller, independent mines, where an industrial-sized operation is not an option. These mines are unregulated and are not a part of the country’s Mining Code and Regulations, this means they are often unauthorized and extremely dangerous.

As a result, the workers are subjected to dangerous conditions that include poor ventilation, lack of protective gear, and frequent accidents—many of which prove deadly. But it’s not just adults that are risking their lives. The United Nations says there are at least 40,000 children in the DRC working in these artisanal mines. Working in high temperatures, rain, and storms, children as young as 7-years-oldcarry sacks of mineral ore that are sometimes heavier than themselves. Most of these children’s parents can’t afford to send them to school. The few that are able to send their kids to school must have their children work at the mines on the weekends to help support the family. Many suffer from breathing problems, others from sickness and disease. At least half reported being beaten for not working fast enough.

Half of the workforce of the artisanal mining sector is comprised of children. Without viable economic alternatives, most children must join their parents in rudimentary mining pits. Children as young as two years transport, wash, and crush minerals to earn half a dollar a day.

Some of the possible long-term effects the children suffer from include joint and bone deformities, respiratory issues, and musculoskeletal injuries. Most complained of excruciating back and hip pain, others of chronic illness. But beyond the physical risks are less visible dangers. Chronic exposure to cobalt can be fatal, resulting in a condition called “hard metal lung disease.”

Despite the prevalence of studies confirming this, most of these miners work without protective equipment—no gloves, masks, or even work clothes. The workers are not provided safety equipment nor given directions on what to do in a crisis. Without any sort of armor against the hazardous conditions, death is common.

The route of the cobalt from these mines can be followed to a large corporation called Congo Dongfang Mining International (CDM). CDM is a subsidiary of the China-based company Huayou Cobalt, which supplies batteries to the most prestigious tech companies—including Apple, Sony, Samsung, Dell, and more.

Millions of people around the world enjoy the benefits of technologies that use cobalt but few are concerned with how they are made.

Why Are We So Blessed?

By Baffour Ankomah

“Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy” – Margaret Thatcher.

Having disappeared for several months from these pages, I think I owe the long-suffering readers of Beefs a special treat, on this my long-awaited return. So please, sit back and gird your loins. During my lengthy disappearance, I have been reading up on some of the things I had allowed to pile up on my to-do list, such as the press cuttings yellowing in my Scrap Book. My faithful Scrap Book. And what great treasure it holds!

Well, is it only me or is it the sin of people of a certain age – I love history, it has a lot to teach. Sometimes I am inclined to think that Africa’s struggle for a place in the economic sun has become even more difficult because we have neglected to properly learn history, our history and the history of the other people who inhabit the same planet as us, and use that history as a guide for our tomorrow.

I write this with the words of the great John Hendrik Clarke of blessed memory, ringing in my ears. “If we are to change tomorrow, we are going to have to look back in order to look forward. We will have to look back with some courage, warm our hands on the revolutionary fires of those who came before us, and understand that we have within ourselves, nationally and internationally, the ability to regain what we have lost and to build a new humanity for ourselves.”

So what history has my Scrap Book thrown up in the interim? Please wait for this. It comes in the form of a letter written by one David Cayde of London to The Guardian, published on 15 April 1998. It is a shocker! Mr Cayde began:

“After Peter Tatchell reminded the Archbishop of Canterbury of his Church’s discrimination against gay and lesbian people (Gay activists storm Carey pulpit, April 13), George Carey resumed his sermon saying: ‘People in Britain are forgetting their Christian past.’

“Ordinances (catalogued MS e Mus 229) in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, support the fact that for 550 years, from 1000 to 1546, the Church administered London’s Bankside brothels. The Church managed its 20 or so brothels so that they filled its coffers.

“For example, as many nuns financed their convents by working as prostitutes, the Church’s ordinances of 1161 levied a fine of 20 shillings upon any brothel [not part of the Church’s network] permitting a nun to work. With Christian fastidiousness, the Church also ordained that on Holy Days, no whore should work between 6am and 11am or 1pm and 6pm. These are just a few examples of our Christian past that we must, as the Archbishop says, not forget.”

Imagine a church, of the standing of the Church of England, having its own brothels – 20 or so of them! And filling its coffers with the money coming from the brothels.

Imagine a nun, all saintly and holy, with head covered in a white veil, hands in a prayerful position, receiving it in the inner sanctum of the brothel despite the knowledge that a hefty fine of 20 shillings against the whore house awaited at the door. She had to finance her convent with the proceeds from prostitution! Some might say: “But what do you expect, the Church of England itself came into being because its founder, Henry VIII, wanted to have more illegal sexual liaisons against the wishes of Rome.” In Ghana, our elders say, “a crab never gives birth to a bird”. So the Church’s history continued. To me, the real funny bit is the ban imposed on Holy Days. The brothels’ clientele were allowed by the Church to gorge themselves on the forbidden fruit within only two hours of daylight on Holy Days – they couldn’t do it between 6am and 11am or 1pm and 6pm. So what was special about the two scant hours between 11am and 1pm? Unholy hours?

For non-Christians who might not know, “holy days” in the Christian firmament are the high days such as Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, the Day of Atonement, and such like. And yet, even though people had so much time on their hands to burn on those Holy Days, the clientele were restricted to just two hours of daylight work. Not fair, is it? The good side though, was that the Church still filled its coffers! History – where would we be without it?

Sadly, in Africa, some people think we can do without history. “Oh, colonialism ended 50 years ago, so don’t waste our ears.” Yet in London, on every 11 November, an elaborate ceremony is held at the Cenotaph to remember the British war dead – in the two world wars and even beyond. They do it, faithfully, every year, rain or shine, because they know the importance of history. They are forever reminded of what George Orwell (the journalist and novelist – real name Eric Arthur Blair) wrote: “He who controls the past, controls the future; he who controls the future, controls the present.”

But in Africa, we want our iPads without the history. But even iPads have a history. They didn’t just land in the shops. They started in R&D rooms. The research and development that went into making iPads would blow your mind if Apple Computers cared to tell you. That is history.

Which reminds me of a remark made by the lead actress of a new movie I saw the other day. “Today was yesterday’s tomorrow”, she admonished her students. That movie, a Ghanaian/Nigerian collaboration, is cantankerously titled “Somewhere in Africa”.

Somewhere in Africa, the guiltiest of the people who appear to have no truck with history are politicians, especially the opposition type, those who aspire to leadership, and not just any leadership, but the presidency! I know some in Zimbabwe. I have known some in Côte d’Ivoire, in Ghana, in DRCongo, in Zambia, and elsewhere. We are seeing some in Malawi right now. They get so blinded by the urge to please their foreign sponsors that even if it means supping with the devil without a long spoon, they will still sup with the devil. And only when they get bitten, do they realise the dangerous game they had been playing with the devil.zI am reminded of this by what has happened to the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor. At a certain point in his eventful life, he was a “good boy” of the Americans. We are always “boys”, aren’t we? The Americans loved Charles Taylor and he loved them back. They even released him from their jail in Boston and made it look as if he had broken jail. Clever cats, these Americans.

In five interviews I had with Taylor over a 10-year period (from 1992-2002), he consistently stressed the point that “during the war [meaning his rebel war in Liberia], every move we took, we informed Washington first”. Which shows the closeness and friendship Washington and Taylor had in those days. Sadly, Taylor forgot one cardinal rule: Once you lie in bed with the Americans, you don’t get out until they tell you to do so. Now Taylor is paying for that forgetting. And what a heavy price it has turned out to be!

The contraption called the Special Court for Sierra Leone is nothing but a regime-change device manufactured by the Americans to get Taylor out of the politics of Liberia forever – his punishment for breaking with them in early 1990. The other guys who were caught in the Court’s web were mere collateral damage.

The Americans wanted to teach Taylor a lesson, and they relentlessly pursued him ever since he broke away from them. They never forgot him. That is why the Special Court for Sierra Leone struggled to pin Taylor down on the legal issues. That is why they struggled to give him the “right” sentence. For those of us who knew the background, what Taylor calls the “contextual framework”, and followed the case, it was purely a political case, which, unsurprisingly, ended up with a “political” sentence.

Notice how the Court accepted that Taylor was not guilty of the weightier modes of liability on the charge sheet – “joint criminal enterprise”, “command and control”, “instigating”, and “ordering” the crimes. But because he “aided and abetted” the crimes – a lesser mode of liability – he gets 50 years in jail.

As the judges themselves put it – in the judgement: “…The jurisprudence of this Court, as well as that of the ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] and ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda] holds that aiding and abetting as a mode of liability generally warrants a lesser sentence than that imposed for more direct forms of participation.

“While generally the application of this principle would indicate a sentence in this case that is lower than the sentences that have been imposed on the principal perpetrators who have been tried and convicted by this Court, the Trial Chamber considers that the special status of Mr Taylor as a head of state puts him in a different category of offenders for the purpose of sentencing.”

So out goes the universal principle of equality before the Law. Now the Law becomes a respecter of persons. “The special status of Mr Taylor” means that though the Court accepts that he is not the “principal perpetrator” of the crimes on the charge sheet, he, nonetheless, gets a higher punishment than the principal perpetrators.

So Issa Sesay, a one-time leader of the RUF, a principal perpetrator, was sentenced by the same Court to concurrent terms, the longest being 52 years. Morris Kallon, a principal perpetrator got 40 years in jail. Augustine Gbao, a principal perpetrator, got 25 years. Charles Taylor, not a principal perpetrator, gets 50 years. Can you see the politics behind it?

Which reminds me of Salon of Athens, the philosopher, who wrote more than 2,000 years ago: “The Law is like a spider’s web. The small are caught and the great tear it up.” The great Americans can tear up any law when they want to get their way, as we have seen in Taylor’s case. That should be the real lesson for those who aspire to leadership in Africa. The same foreign powers that are sponsoring your activities as an opposition leader, will be the same powers who will spit you out when they are finished with you. Today, they even have a bigger weapon lying in wait: the ICC and its frightful judges in The Hague.

As an African, I find it quite frustrating that we don’t seem to learn from history, and as a result, more aspiring leaders in Africa today, the ones with the beautiful title of opposition leaders, still continue in the same mode, to be used by the metropolitan powers – especially France, America and Britain – for their own selfish interests. Why? I ask. Why are we so blessed?

The Planet Is Not Warming Up, But Drying Out!

By Prof. Claudia von Werlhof

Recent satellite data show that there has been no warming up of the planet in general since the late 1990s. This contradicts the normal information given to the public by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, regarded as being the most reliable institution on questions of climate change. This has been the topic of a recent hearing of the US-Senate on the question. It seems that the IPCC is relying on statistical assumptions alone and cannot explain the reality (www.pbme-online.org).

It is my thesis that if the planet is not warming up it is nevertheless drying out.

This is a very different perspective, as the drying out does not necessarily have to do with the temperature alone or at all.

The “temperature” may even be a dubious concept.

A growing temperature anywhere on earth is unlikely to be the result of growing CO2 emissions, as contended by the IPCC and others. In fact, if there is a warming up at all, it is not occurring low on earth where the CO2 sinks down, but higher up in the atmosphere.

This is partly due to the ionizing of the Ionosphere through the EM-emissions of “Ionospheric heaters” like Haarp in Alaska and estimated two dozen more installations on the planet.

Additionally something else is coming down from above – the heavy metals sprayed via “solar radiation management” – SRM – activities or “stratospheric geoengineering”, as we call it, be it through civil or more likely military geoengineering. They mainly consist of aluminium, barium and other metals and materials.

Something is coming down from above that works as or like a “warming” and effects especially the glaciers in the mountains, and makes them disappear.

Whatever the reasons are, it is clear that we can already foresee a future without sufficient fresh water, as 70% of the freshwater are packed within the glaciers and the ice of the poles.

The melting of the glaciers, therefore, happens without a general warming, and it happens independently from producing CO2 or not.

If we want to stop it, and we will have to stop it, if we want to survive on this planet, we have to know the real reasons why it is happening that the glaciers are melting down – and a very high speed!

Even if they did not affect the overall temperature, the temperatures on the mountains seem to have grown indeed. How and why so? Where does a “temperature” come from, and what else is important for its effect?

A personal experience:

On the 16th of March in 2017, I had to drive by car from Innsbruck in Tirol, Austria, to Salzburg, and back. I started in the morning at about 8.30 and soon I was wondering about the air. It was a sunny day, early spring, and it was if I was driving through a cloud, but not a humid one. It appeared like the summer haze of June/July that is the result of humidity dissolving with the sun rising. But it was only March, and there was no humidity at all.

Everything was completely dry, though I could still see the snow in the mountains. Second, I was wondering about the light. Though the sun was blocked by the haze, the light was blinding, very aggressive and bright, but in a strange way, and I had to protect the eyes for not having to look into it. There was dust around on the road, in the fields and the landscapes. It was difficult to concentrate on driving because there were nearly no colours around, the road, the cars and the surroundings looking the same way as if they were all light grey.

Soon I felt my eyes burning and scratching as if some sand had touched them or if I were completely tired and had to close them.

I arrived at the location near Salzburg where I had to do some work together with a friend. Afterwards we sat on her terrace outside in her garden, the faces turned to the sun. I felt, nevertheless, I could nearly not open my eyes, as the aggressive heat of a sun buried behind a thick haze, hit me and burned me, scratched me and made me feel always more uncomfortable.

I thought this to be a rather strange day in spring, where one prefers to go back into the house instead of enjoying one of the first nice days of the year.

Then I drove back to Innsbruck. It was afternoon, and still the same experience. After a while, I started to get angry. The light was still shrill and piercing, I had to put on the sunglasses because otherwise I wouldn’t see enough, something that never has happened to me before. The haze was still everywhere and the landscape could nearly not be seen. Eyes, nose, throat scratching, and very tired and frustrated I approached the city. Suddenly, I had left the “cloud” and drove under a blue sky, the sun full shining and colours appearing around me. At the same moment, the scratching was over, normal breathing, no piercing light any more though the sun was not behind a haze any more….

This was the proof! The whole had to do with the cloud, this dry aggressive, thick and hazy cloud. What was it about?

I first had to go to a Shopping Centre. When I entered it the air was so clean and fresh, that I was shocked realizing the difference with the air I had been breathing the whole day already outside.

When coming home I started thinking about this strange experience. During that night I started to get it:

I had been driving in a SRM – solar radiation management – or stratospheric geoengineering cloud on the ground! They – whoever they are – released it below the stratosphere in the lower troposphere next to the ground! So, what other people and I were experiencing that day was having been inside of a cloud of aluminium, barium and I don’t know what else. A heavy metal like aluminium, however, must have been responsible for the effects of burning and scratching, making the light piercing as it reflects it and functions like a multiple solar panel, together with it being materially in the air – as Nano-particulates! This is why it felt so aggressive, unnatural, disturbed and frustrated.

It felt like an attack on one’s own life.

And – it was unnaturally and aggressively “hot” and super-dry!

Why? This we know:

The aluminium in the sprayings takes all the humidity out of the air, so that even thunderstorms that occur under these conditions pass without a single rain shower.

Didn’t I observe this effect of a drying out of everything many times already?

Didn’t I see the grey dust running through the dry city several days ago as well?

Didn’t two years ago a mountain-wood burned down in Tirol – in the middle of the wettest season of the year in March too?

Didn’t I miss these days where it is raining the whole day, not too much, but going on persistently?

Didn’t I observe this strange aggressive, blinding and piercing light/heat already in the 1990s, which feels like poison?

Yes, it is poison! The difference being only that normally we are not walking in the middle of such a metal cloud, but get it through the air, when it comes down from the stratosphere. This is not so shocking but finally the same…

It makes clear that somebody is experimenting with us, does not like us, and is keen enough to even attack us directly, mocking at us, because most of the people who made the same experience may not have understood it the same way. My way is that we are “weaponized”, turned into metallic monsters, machines that can receive orders or stop living if it is wanted, cyborgs that have started to not live a genuine organic life anymore… science fiction becoming real?

There is, nevertheless, something,which exceeds my personal feeling and experience.

The glaciers’ experience?

It has to do with the fact that SRM-sprayings or stratospheric geoengineering-measures are taking place every day and everywhere on this planet, their effects being maybe comparable. Using heavy metals, the sprayings attract and absorb the humidity of the air, reflect the white of the glaciers and turn it into piercing light and local heat as if working with millions of mirrors or solar panels, burning and drying down snow and ice, leaving a dry rocky poisoned desert…

If this is the real reason, why the glaciers are melting or “drying down”, why did nobody find out about it yet, or did not make it public, and what does this mean?

It means that it is not CO2, which is responsible for the melting of glaciers, and it is not a general warming, but an “artificial”, local one, combined with/ expressed in a drying process. This “warming” is the result of the artificial existence of metals in the air, that change the air and the temperature at the same time, drying the humidity of the air radically out and producing an artificial, non-meteorological “heat”, resulting from the meeting of metallic mirrors with snow/ice, dry air and sunlight.

It may be a “collateral damage” of the activities of people who gain from it – be it for businesses at the stock exchange, be it for gaining much, much power over this planet. Because, what do we know about geoengineering and its aims and methods, even beyond SRM-sprayings? We know, for instance, that the latter are needed in order to guide EM-waves, to guide storms and freak weather, and to build bridges over Ozone holes…

This means that we would need to change nothing less than profit-interests and even military ones in order to save the glaciers and with them our freshwater and our future as humanity.

Why is it not enough that these interest groups must have an interest in saving them too?

Of the Arctic, by the way, we know that it is melting, because Electromagnetic extreme low frequency –“ELF”-waves – have been used to produce this effect, starting in 1974 already. The interests behind that crime have won. They can now get to the resources under the ice shield… They started to do it already.

Again, all this has nothing to do with CO2 and “global warming”…

What can we, the people, do? What should we do to stop these crimes going on? Together with the soil, the air and the sun, the light, it is the element Water that is now endangered, representing literally our soul itself, the Love we may feel for this life… or not anymore? It is time to take a decision. Without enough freshwater there will be nearly no life on earth anymore. We have to stop Geoengineering!

Claudia von Werlhof is Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies, University Innsbruck, Austria.

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof. Claudia von Werlhof, Global Research, 2017

The CIA’s secret arsenal

CIA uses smart samsung TV to record conversation

By Sergio Alejandro Gómez 

THE world is learning more everyday about the functioning and scope of U.S. espionage. While former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Edward Snowden revealed the National Security Agency's massive surveillance programs in 2013, the spotlight is now on the CIA, considered a state within the state, given its modus operandi and infamous independence.

According to the most recent documents released on Wikileaks, directed by Australian Julian Assange, the CIA runs a network of hackers charged with exploiting weaknesses in the security systems of the world's most widely-used digital devices, with the goal of gathering information and carrying out secret operations.

Under the title of “Year Zero,” Wikileaks published 8,761 documents and classified files, from the period 2013-2016, extracted from the CIA's high security network in Langley, Virginia.

According to Wikileaks, at the end of 2016, the CIA had some 5,000 experts working on cyber-intelligence, and produced more than a thousand hacking programs, cyber-weapons, and malware to gain access to computers, smart phones, and even Samsung televisions.

The agency lost control of a large part of this arsenal, which ended up in the hands of former government hackers and other private agents, in an “unauthorized” manner. It was one of these individuals who provided Wikileaks with the information recently published.

This is to be only the first installment of a series of more serious revelations from

what is known as “Vault 7,” which the website describes as the largest leak of confidential documents in history.

Assange, who has been confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, following the “Year Zero” revelations stated,"It is impossible to keep effective control of cyberweapons. If you build them, eventually you will lose them," and insisted that a debate on the political, legal, and forensic dimensions of the problem is in order.

MORE THAN TELEVISIONS

One of the most startling programs revealed included that to hack a Samsung smart TV - albeit a now discontinued model.

The project named “One” used the microphone embedded in the screen as an electronic listening device, which could function even when the TV was turned off. The data recorded could be stored on the TV's hard drive and transmitted to CIA servers once the set was connected to the internet.

According to Wikileaks, the program was developed in collaboration with British intelligence services.

WEAPONS IN YOUR POCKET

The leaked documents confirm that cell phones are the intelligence agency's preferred targets. These devices have become part of the daily lives of millions and contain all sorts of sensitive information about their users.

The CIA's programs were directed for the most part toward taking advantage of vulnerabilities in the phones' operating systems, be they Google's Android or Apple's iOs.

When an operating system is hacked, any application can be controlled, regardless of the system used to protect data.

For the companies involved, who have repeatedly described their wares as the world's safest, the news about how their weaknesses had been exploited arrived like a bucket of cold water.

Apple insisted that the majority of the vulnerabilities involved had already been patched in the latest version of their operating system, used in the famed Iphone and Ipad. Samsung, their great South Korean rival and leader in Android telephones, simply stated, “Protecting consumers' privacy and the security of our devices is a top priority.”

ENCRYPTION

Another widely-used element of modern telecommunications, encrypted messaging services like Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram, also appear to be vulnerable.

The documents leaked show that the CIA has tools which can gain access to audio and text conversations conducted with these applications.

Experts have explained that the technique used does not involve breaking the codes used to encrypt messages, but rather takes advantage of the phone's vulnerabilities to access data before it is encrypted.

Open Whisper Systems, the company that developed the technology for the encrypted instant messaging app Signal, noted on Twitter that the documents published by Wikileaks show that hackers were able to introduce viruses into telephones, emphasizing,“The CIA / WikiLeaks story today is about getting malware into phones, none of the exploits are in Signal or break Signal Protocol encryption.”

OPERATING SYSTEMS TARGETED

The latest leaks showed that network computers, servers, and devices did not escape the attention of CIA hackers. Apple, Microsoft and Google were in trouble in 2013, when Snowden showed that the National Security Agency had access to their servers. It is now known that the CIA has ways to infect and control computers running on Windows operating systems. One such hacking tool with the codename “Hammer Drill” is designed to sabotage operating systems, and is spread via programs installed by CD or USB.

The Agency has also developed multi-platform weapons that are capable of exploiting vulnerabilities in computers running on MAC OS (Apple), Solaris and Linux.

SCIENCE FICTION

Although the latest news on electronic spying may appear to be nothing new, many believe that these Wikileaks revelations have opened a new era.

On the Teknautas website, Sergio de los Santos, Innovation and Labs Leader at ElevenPaths, commented, “What's interesting is that many of the things we thought were science fiction are really possible.”

It is now perfectly plausible that the control systems of new automatically driven vehicles could be accessed, in the opinion of De los Santos, and used as to commit crimes.

Another program, “Umbrage,” would be able to take control of and operate the aggressive technology of other countries or agencies, with the objective of camouflaging their own actions and confusing investigators.

Snowden himself, who is still being sought by the United States to be prosecuted for the 2013 leaks, criticized his country's intelligence methods on Twitter, commenting, “Imagine a world where the actual CIA spends its time figuring out how to spy on you through your TV. That's today.”