Cocoa farmers in trouble

Published on April 19

By Economic Tribune

Cocoa farmers across West Africa are worried for their livelihoods after the European Union (EU) announced plans to reject the import of cocoa beans containing certain levels of heavy metals. The measures are due to take effect by the end of April this year.

West Africa grows 75 percent of the world's 3.9 metric tons (tn) global supply of cocoa, with the bulk of the beans ending up in Europe. The EU move follows a January 2012 report into cadmium content in chocolate by the European Food Safety Authority Scientific Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain. It has recommended that cocoa imports containing more than 0.2mg/kg of cadmium be turned back.

"Of course, this is very unpleasant news. And the worst thing is that many of us are ignorant of cadmium and how to prevent it contaminating our plants," explains Alfred Effeti, a plantation owner in Muyuka in southwest Cameroon, the country's leading production hub.

Health Dangers

Cadmium is a bluish-white metal used in the production of fertilisers, pesticides, batteries, plastics, glass and steel plating. Upon release into the environment, cadmium accumulates in the soil and water. Medical research has established that besides causing cancer, it provokes kidney failure, high blood pressure and bone and reproduction complications.
 

"The final consumers in Europe, America, Asia and even Africa are increasingly very sensitive about quality and safety these days," says Michael Ndoping, managing director of Cameroon's National Cocoa and Coffee Board, adding that, the decision may be hasty, but will ultimately push us to grow top-quality cocoa.

"Cadmium is a real concern. When we were informed, we conducted a quick survey, collecting cocoa beans and soil samples from some growing regions of Cameroon," Ndoping explains.

He continued: "Preliminary tests show we are below the limits being fixed by the EU regulations, but that doesn't mean we're free. Further tests are needed to be certain."

West Africa's small-scale farmers have quality problems because some dry cocoa beans on tarmac roads or in smoky ovens, while others use improper fermentation techniques.

In December 2012, Cameroon's Association Nationale des Producteurs de Cacao et de Café reported that a 2,000tn consignment of cocoa was turned back by European ports owing to quality shortfalls. Sanitary inspectors found the beans had a smoky smell and contained high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – also banned by the EU under new regulations introduced on 1 January.

Cameroonian authorities are cracking down on sub-standard processing practices, confiscating beans dried on tarred roads and organising cadmium-awareness workshops. There are also plans to construct and rehabilitate drying ovens in the south-west.
 

 Elsewhere in West Africa, producing countries are demanding a five-year delay to the EU measures to enable them to adjust and protect the livelihoods of an estimated 100,000 farmers. In September, the EU announced it would study the moratorium request. According to Malachy Akoroda, director of Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, Europe is partly to blame.

“The climate change they've caused is affecting the quality of our cocoa. Now they're talking about cadmium. Who brings cadmium? Is it in the chemicals they bring for us to spray? Does the European buyer care about our efforts to correct the flaws? They say they want this quality, they want that quality. At what price? Better quality commands better price," he asks.

 Under Pressure

Buyers say West Africa's cocoa farmers have compromised on quality to rush for alluring prices.

"It's a serious problem," says Ed Seguine, a chocolate research fellow at Mars Chocolate.

 "Farmers have been put under pressure both economically and environmentally. With the ageing of the cocoa trees, quality has declined. Rejection rates for African cocoa are at an all-time high in Europe and the US."

Officials from the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries say they are banking on ongoing research to fight soil degradation, programmes to replace ageing plants with improved varieties and campaigns to educate farmers on best practice.

EDITORIAL

IT COULD NOT BE TRUE

When the Danquah Institute began pushing for televising the Supreme Court proceedings in relation to the petition filed by some leaders of the NPP against the declaration of results of the presidential election, Ghanaians were told that it would prevent biased reporting and commentary.

Right from the beginning, we knew that this could not be true but like many Ghanaians we waited to see what would happen.

Everyday leaders of the two parties appear before the cameras and spin the proceedings to their advantage.

 The public is not being educated by these spinning sessions which are clearly prejudicial to the cause of justice.

 The case before the Supreme Court is a very important one with serious consequences for the nurturing of democratic practice in Ghana.

In the view of The Insight the practice by both the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) would create conditions for the uninformed to contest the final decision of the Supreme Court on flimsy grounds.

We urge the Supreme Court to take immediate measures to end this very prejudicial practice.

 A word to the wise can be enough.  

Study reveals GMO corn to be highly toxic

A leaked study examining genetically-modified corn reveals that the lab-made alternative to organic crops contains a startling level of toxic chemicals.

An anti-GMO website has posted the results of an education-based consulting company’s comparison of corn types, and the results reveal that genetically modified foods may be more hazardous than once thought.

The study, the 2012 Corn Comparison Report by Profit Pro, was published recently on the website for Moms Across America March to Label GMOs, a group that says they wish to “raise awareness and support Moms with solutions to eat GMO Free as we demand GMO labeling locally and nationally simultaneously.” They are plotting nationwide protests scheduled for later this year.

The report, writes the website’s Zen Honeycutt, was provided by a representative for De Dell Seed Company, an Ontario-based farm that’s touted as being Canadian only non-GMO corn seed company.

“The claims that ‘There is no difference between GMO corn and NON Gmo corn’ are false,” says Honeycutt, who adds she was “floored” after reading the study.

According to the analysis, GMO corn tested by Profit Pro contains a number of elements absent from traditional cord, including chlorides, formaldehyde and glyphosate. While those elements don’t appear naturally in corn, they were present in GMO samples to the tune of 60 ppm, 200pm and 13 ppm, respectively.

Honecutt says that the United States Environmental Protection Agency (FDA) mandates that the level of glyphosate in American drinking water not exceed 0.7 ppm and adds that organ damage in some animals has been linked to glyphosate exposure exceeding 0.1 ppm.

“Glyphosate is a strong organic phosphate chelator that immobilizes positively charged minerals such as manganese, cobalt, iron, zinc [and] copper,” Dr. Don Huber attested during a separate GMO study recently released, adding that those elements “are essential for normal physiological functions in soils, plants and animals.”

“Glyphosate draws out the vital nutrients of living things and GMO corn is covered with it,” adds Honeycutt, who notes that the nutritional benefits rampant in natural corn are almost entirely removed from lab-made seeds: in the samples used during the study, non-GMO corn is alleged to have 437-times the amount of calcium in genetically modified versions, and 56- and 7-times the level of magnesium and manganese, respectively.

These studies come on the heels of a recent decision on Capitol Hill to approve an annual agriculture appropriations bill, even though a provision within the act contained a rider that frees GMO corporations such as the multi-billion-dollar Monsanto Company from liability. 

The so-called “Monsanto Protection Act,” written by a lawmaker that has lobbied for the agra-giant, says biotech companies won’t need federal approval to test and plant GMO-crops, even if health risks are unknown.

“The provision would strip federal courts of the authority to halt the sale and planting of an illegal, potentially hazardous GE crop while the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) assesses those potential hazards,” reads a letter to the House of Representatives that was delivered to Congress last month with the signatures of dozens of food businesses and retailers, as well as interest groups and agencies representing family farmers. 

“Further, it would compel USDA to allow continued planting of that same crop upon request, even if in the course of its assessment the Department finds that it poses previously unrecognized risks.”

Thatcher gets funeral fit for a dictator

By Finian Cunningham

 The funeral for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher takes place days ago in London with full military honors. Not since Sir Winston Churchill, the famous Second World War leader, has the British state bestowed such an honor on a deceased prime minister.

British monarch Queen Elizabeth II attended the funeral service at St Paul’s Cathedral for Thatcher, who died at the age of 87. The last time the head of the British state attended such an occasion was nearly 60 years ago, in 1965, for the funeral of Churchill. On that occasion, the British public was largely supportive of the farewell ceremony, as Winston Churchill was seen as the redoubtable leader of a national unity government during a period of great crisis.

But why such an honor is being afforded to Lady Thatcher - a partisan and bitterly divisive politician - is an inflammatory issue. What’s more, despite the widespread public contempt for Thatcher, the British state is foisting a high-profile day of mourning, at an estimated cost of $16 million - exceeding that of the funerals for the Queen Mother and Princess Diana.

The forced mourning and the military trappings is of course an ideological, propaganda stunt by the British state. In the face of public opposition to the stately honoring of Thatcher, today’s proceedings smack of dictatorship by Britain’s ruling elite. The occasion - paid for by the austerity-clobbered British taxpayer - is also being seen as an indulgence in British jingoism and imperialism.

In that way, the late Baroness Thatcher is to receive a funeral fit for a dictator. Amid gun salutes and a horse-drawn carriage, her flag-draped coffin will be given a full military guard of honor. Regiments and armed-service personnel will be drawn from the ranks of the Royal Air Force, Navy and Army. Personnel from regiments and wars
ships that featured prominently in Britain’s 1982 war with Argentina over Las Malvinas will carry her coffin up the steps of St Paul’s.

Other late British prime ministers of equal and more stature to Thatcher, such as Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Edward Heath, were consigned to history without any of the pageantry on display today. Why is the so-called Iron Lady being given such special privilege, especially when her public esteem is so low? It is all to do with British statecraft subtly elevating the pillars of the British state - class oppression and militarism.

In another symbol of state deification of Thatcher, the iconic Big Ben clock tower at Westminster Palace will be silenced during the funeral proceedings. Again, the last and only time Big Ben was silenced during its 155 years was for the funeral of Winston Churchill.

Churchill was a drunk, a racist and a mass-murdering imperialist, but at least he had a veneer of respect among the British public. Whereas Thatcher’s memory is one of an unvarnished demagogue who destroyed British industry and society more than German Luftwaffe bombers ever did, and yet the public is being dragooned into paying final respects. Her state-forced funeral is therefore a glaring insight into the unilateral rule of the British oligarchy.

The pomp and ceremony over Thatcher’s passing through the streets of the British capital today, including tight security arrangements for hundreds of international dignitaries, would be nowhere afforded, and therefore staged, if it weren’t for the taxpayer stumping the bill. The irony of that is that Thatcher supposedly stood for private financing and enterprise and against any form of state economic intervention. If her funeral were carried out strictly in accord with her supposed ideological principles, the occasion would pass off today as a minor footnote. Instead, the British ruling class is closing ranks to ensure that one of its dutiful political defenders is elevated to national and world stature - and, to boot, getting the oppressed working people of Britain to pay for the propaganda stunt.

As in life, so too in death, Margaret Thatcher continues to incite controversy and public outrage. Britain’s only female premier, she was elected three consecutive times between 1979-1990 before she was ousted from Downing Street by her own rat-like Conservative Party to appease growing public anger over her sinister policies.

Despite successive elections, her victories in the polls never commanded an outright majority among the British electorate, and her success was more to do with political weakness among Britain’s other main parties, Labor and the Liberals. Even members among her own party referred to her rule as “elected dictatorships.”

More than 20 years after her ouster, millions of Britons detest her memory for the mass unemployment and poverty that Thatcher inflicted with her apocryphal ideology of unfettered capitalism. Millions, too, detested her militarism, which cynically used war over the remote British colonial possession in the South Atlantic - Las Malvinas Islands - as a re-election stunt. Her covert war in Ireland in which she sanctioned the use of death squads and shoot-to-kill policing to terrorize Irish citizens also remains a source of ignominy.

The South Atlantic connection is rather appropriate. During Thatcher’s war with Argentina over Las Malvinas, also known as the Falklands, Britain received crucial military assistance from Chile’s dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet’s regime afforded Britain surveillance and territorial cover to defeat neighboring Argentine sea and air forces.
 

 That is why Thatcher remained life-long friends with the Chilean dictator and ensured that his junta received British military contracts despite its appalling human rights record.

When Pinochet died in 2006, he was facing hundreds of indictments for human rights violations, murder and embezzlement of millions of dollars. During his 17-year reign of terror, which began as a US-backed military coup against elected President Salvadore Allende in 1973, more than 3,000 Chileans were murdered, thousands were
disappeared, 30,000 were imprisoned and tortured, and some 200,000 political opponents were forced into exile. Many of the latter, accused of being communist subversives, would be later hunted down and killed by Pinochet’s death squads in Operation Condor - with the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency.

That is the kind of person Thatcher associated with. Not those who aspired for democracy in society, but those who aspired to crush democracy. As one Chilean woman living in Britain told media on the news of Thatcher’s death last week:

“The Thatcher government directly supported Pinochet's murderous regime, financially, via military support, even military training. Members of my family were tortured and murdered under Pinochet, who was one of Thatcher's closest allies and friend. Those of us celebrating are the ones who suffered deeply.”

Fittingly, among the hundreds of foreign dignitaries at Thatcher’s funeral today will be FW de Klerk, the last white leader of the apartheid South African state. Thatcher was an ardent supporter of the racist regime that for decades brutally suppressed democratic majority black rule. In her support, Thatcher defied international sanctions imposed on the regime and she denounced the black leader Nelson Mandela as a “terrorist.” 

Also in attendance in St Paul’s Cathedral today will be former US vice president Dick Cheney, who was one of the main architects of the American-led wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, which have destroyed over 1.5 million civilian lives and have turned two sovereign nations into smoldering ruins. Henry Kissinger and James A Baker III, two other wanted US war criminals and figureheads of American imperialism, will be among the mourners lending a touch of solemnity to the passing of Britain’s dictator prime minister.

Like her close friend, Augusto Pinochet, Lady Thatcher’s bodily remains are to be cremated. Pinochet’s family said that procedure was taken in 2006 to avoid vandalism of his burial site - such was the hatred of the fascist dictator. Despite the pomp being afforded by the British state for Thatcher, perhaps the same concerns about public
anger underlie the reason for her discreet disposal.

She once arrogantly and famously said of her own intransigent policies, “The Lady is not for turning”. But, the Lady is for burning. 

Ouattara’s French Path

By Dr. G.K.Busch

The erstwhile illegal president of the Ivory Coast has just announced that the Constitution no longer binds him and that he has taken on the power to rule by decree on "economic matters".

When I read this it rang a bell. I had read of this before and it emphasised the continuing total French control of the country. As I read this I remembered where I had seen this before. This is almost exactly the same text and policy announced by Marshal Petain of Vichy France when he took over France. I reproduce it below

On 11 July 1940 the French decreed a CONSTITUTIONAL ACT NO. 2, DEFINING THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHIEF OF THE FRENCH STATE.
I, Marshal of France, Chief of the French State, in consideration of the Constitutional Law of July 10, 1940,

Decree:

ARTICLE I. Section 1. The Chief of the French State shall have full governmental powers. He shall appoint and revoke the appointment of ministers and of state secretaries, who shall be responsible only to him.

Section2. He shall exercise legislative power in the Council of Ministers:
1. Until the formation of the new Assemblies.

2. After this formation, in case of tension in foreign affairs, or of a serious internal crisis on his own decision and in the same form. In the same circumstances, he may issue all regulations of a budgetary or fiscal nature.

Section 3. He shall promulgate laws and assure their execution.

Section 4. He shall make appointments to all civil and military posts.

Section 5. He shall have full power over the armed forces….

ARTICLE II. All provisions of the constitutional laws of February 24, 1875, and July 16, 1875, which are incompatible with this act are hereby abrogated.

Vichy, July 11, 1940
PH. PETAIN

That's the current state of Ivory Coast Democracy.

Source:Ocnus.net 2013

A Memo to Boko Haram

By Adekoya Boladale

Dear Beloved,

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. I write to you today in peace, the upmost gospel of our Holy Prophet Muhammad (SAW). I understand the past few years have been a busy schedule thus I don’t intend wasting your time on frivolities. I must agree with you western education is a sin, it is a curse, in fact it is evil. 

The effect has dragged our nation to a very sorrowful state, our girls and women of pride now dress naked in the name of civilization, our youths have lost regards for the old, tradition has been thrown away, our culture and heritage forgotten. This is unacceptable and should be addressed. 

I must say your actions and inactions has sent a clear signal not just to Nigeria but the rest of the world, that this great country will not continue to be a puppet and tools in the hands of the western world. The echo of your cause is glaring on faces of children you have made orphans, wives you have made widows, mothers you have made barren and the hopeful you have made hopeless.

However, I must say you have failed. Yes you have. Your message has been heard but not by the people who ought to. You have proved your stand but only to the helpless citizen who cannot make your dream come through. From the church bombings, park killings, house attacks and street unrest you have only succeeded in adding to the pains of the already pained Nigerians. Ask yourselves how many relatives of the people in power have been affected by your actions? None. You no longer give the president sleepless night has he now sleeps comfortable in the arms of his wife. Aso rock has an already have prepared speech on condemnation which is periodically edited to suits every new attack you make. The only attentions you now get are from the Medias who are only there to make profit from the news you create.

You have succeeded in adding more to the hardship of the people you claim to be fighting for as no individual or company would afford to invest in the North, people now run away including your kinsmen. Who then would the Sharia law operates on, the ones you have killed or the ones that have fled over to the south? Prophet Muhammad (SAW) once said ‘To acquire knowledge is binding upon all Muslims, whether male or female’ he went further to say that ‘The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr’. These principles I believe you know as a strong believer of the faith. These are not knowledge of how to make the society ungovernable or bring death upon the people but knowledge to know right from wrong, knowledge to seek the truth and act in the way of light.

I hope am not getting on your nerves, please let me know when am crossing the line. Some people believe you are ghost, I don’t. Ghosts don’t kidnap foreigners, attack military barracks, blow up the parks, kill students and traders, and get arrested. Ghosts are not blood suckers, they only scare. Some say you are politically sponsored, again I defer. Even though most of your leaders have been arrested in various government lounges and guest houses, one of which is a Bayelsa government house in Lagos, I share a different view. I see some groups of people who are tired of the misrule and corruption, I see people who want an end to the wastefulness of the people in power, I see people who are frustrated to carry arms to drive down their voices to the government, I see people who are tired of life.

 Been in Sokoto state for two years I understand these feelings. I understand what it feels like to be a Northerner, I understand the pains and agony of the starving children who roam the street in bunch looking for daily bread, I have watched on several occasions as these children get knocked down by cars and vans. I understand the difficulties experienced in feeding the large family and why female children are given out quickly in marriage to make ends meet. I understand there may be no other way to draw attention to your plight as the nation doesn’t feed on agriculture but rather oil.

But I must let you know you are not alone. The situation in the south is no different, the only reason you have heard little of our cry or action is because we smile even in death. The footprints of poverty and starvation are evident in Makoko, Ijora Badia, Ajegunle, and Mushin in Lagos. The creeks in Bayelsa, Rivers state, Ondo and other Niger Delta region. The villages in the East and West speak for themselves. Misrule, poverty, corruption and administrative neglect are mutual.

The fight should not be against the people but rather against the government, it should not be about segregation of the North but rather freedom for Nigeria, it should not be about Sharia but a restoration of our morals and tradition which our society is missing. If this new cause you wish to take, then your strategy must change. Government officials don’t stay in Parks and Markets, our collective enemy don’t stay on streets and stores. They live in high tall mansions; they reside in duplex paved with tiles and marbles mounted by heavily armed security men.

We should work together, as collective and deprived Nigerians. The planned attack in Lagos should be shield, the killings of the Igbos should be stopped, the massacre of the Hausa should end. We have to sit down together and draw a new mode of operation to civil liberty. We need not go back to innocent blood shielding, you have done enough. You have proven to be men of actions rather than cheap talks, this is good but your actions should be right and just. No Nigerian would raise a voice at you if you go to the right target. Our nation needs you, our future requires your skills not to cause us more pain but bring to an end this tears that has made our eyes home.

Ma Salam

Adekoya Boladale is a Political Scientist and wrote via adekoyaboladale@gmail.com Twitter: @adekoyabee

Martin Luther King, from Dallas to Memphis

By Gabriel Molina Franchossi

The assassination of Afro-American leader Martin Luther King, April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee 45 years ago, is considered by many researchers as part of a sinister plot which included the assassinations of Malcolm X, John F. and Robert Kennedy. (1)

In the stormy decade of the 1960’s, the radicalization of those in favor of civil rights, peace and other popular causes had the United States in flames. Two months after MLK’s death, Senator Robert Kennedy was shot. The world had been shocked previously by the November 22, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy and that of Malcolm X on February 21, 1965.

King and Malcolm had challenged the racial segregation which replaced slavery in the United States, abolished by Lincoln during the Civil War. The country’s founding fathers had protected the enslavement of Blacks with a strict legal system of racial separation.

Blacks were crowded into impoverished ghettos and denied access to public facilities reserved for whites, such as transportation, bathrooms, commercial establishments and schools. They were destined to work in the most difficult, low-paying jobs. Afro-Americans’ very limited right to vote guaranteed the stability of the system.

An example of the racism faced by Blacks in southern states occurred on October 19, 1960, when Reverend King was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia, for refusing to leave a department store where he was denied service. A few months earlier in Dekalb County, he had been convicted of a minor traffic offense and given a suspended sentence. The local judge ruled that his arrest in Atlanta provided just cause to revoke this suspension and sentence King to four months of hard labor.

The sentence aroused fear for the Reverend’s life, given what such a punishment meant for Blacks in Atlanta. King was brusquely awakened in his county jail cell, at 4:30 am. With his hands cuffed and legs restrained, he was transported over dark rural roads to a penitentiary deep within Georgia’s countryside. (2)

Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver received a request to revoke the sentence from John F. Kennedy, a Presidential candidate at the time. His response was that such a move would be politically disastrous in the South, just a month before the elections, asserting that it would mean the loss of at least three states. Robert Kennedy called the judge, who at first criticized the intervention, but the next day, after considering the younger Kennedy’s indignant reaction to the sentence, freed Dr. King.

Committed Black leaders took the lead in the movement against segregation, which employed a variety of resistance tactics, such as sit-ins in public White Only facilities and buses, as well as boycotts of stores and theaters. With new laws supported by the Kennedy’s in place, the struggle intensified. The federal government sent in the National Guard and Federal Marshals to protect King, James Meredith and other leaders when the civil rights movement’s peaceful activists were threatened and beaten by police in states where change was violently opposed.

 King and Malcolm X, in particular, became targets, not only of racists but of the national military-industrial complex when the Black and trade union struggle began to radicalize and organize against the war in Vietnam, as was made evident by the 250,000 strong march in Washington where King gave his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech. 

This process also had an effect on the Kennedy brothers, whose support for civil rights legislation distanced them from the powerful elite established within the CIA and FBI. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, told Atlanta Police Chief Herbert Jenkins that two of the three enemies he most hated were Kennedy and King (3). Robert Kennedy considered Hoover a threat to democracy in the country. 

Allen Dulles, head of the Central Intelligence Agency, was so intent on organizing interventions in Cuba and throughout the Third World that Kennedy decided to replace him.

The close surveillance of the four leaders – King, Malcolm X and the two Kennedy brothers – expanded to include persecution and threats which make Dulles and Hoover prime suspects in the four assassinations. They had a motive, the opportunity and the means.

(1) James W. Douglass. JFK and the Unspeakable. Simon and Shuster, p. XVII

(2) Arthur Schlesinger. Robert Kennedy and his Times. Random House 1978, p. 233

(3) Ibid, p.280

Woman heads CIA spy unit for first time

By Pam Benson

Another glass ceiling has been cracked at least temporarily with a woman now running the CIA's spy division.

The long time CIA veteran leading the National Clandestine Service on an acting basis cannot be publicly named because she is still a covert officer.

The question is whether she will get the job permanently. But her background could be problematic for new CIA boss John Brennan.

According to sources familiar with her career, she was assigned to a senior position at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.

In that role, she was involved in the controversial interrogation and detention program set up as the agency tracked and captured suspected al Qaeda terrorists.

She moved to the clandestine unit as chief of staff when her boss at the time, Jose Rodriguez, was tapped to run the service in 2004.

The sources said the two were involved in a decision to destroy 92 videos of terror detainee interrogations, a move that infuriated congressional lawmakers and prompted a Justice Department investigation that did not result in any charges.

The Bush administration came under fire at the time because some interrogations at clandestine CIA prisons overseas involved harsh techniques, like waterboarding and stress positions.

Questions over terrorism interrogations and the CIA detention program also dogged Brennan during his Senate confirmation hearings last month.

Some senators wanted to know if he had a role in managing the program when he served as the agency's executive director.

Brennan said he did not and indicated he privately raised objections with colleagues to enhanced interrogation techniques.

He acknowledged saying several years ago that those interrogations did produce some valuable intelligence and saved lives.

But Brennan said he didn't know what to believe when confronted with questions about a recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report that concluded the CIA exaggerated the effectiveness of the program.

"Reading this report from the committee raises questions about the information that I was given at the time, the impression I had at the time," Brennan told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing.

"Now I have determined what, based on that information as well as what CIA says, what the truth is. And at this point ... I do not know what the truth is."

As CIA director, Brennan is responsible for providing the agency's response to the Senate report. He told the lawmakers he would do so by early next month.

With that backdrop, he also has to decide who will run the clandestine service permanently.
Regardless of whether the female acting director is tainted by her role in the interrogation program, she is not the only candidate.

There are at least two others: a former chief of station in Pakistan and a former head of the Counterterrorism Center, both whom are undercover.

In an unusual move, Brennan has asked a team of former senior CIA officials-John McLaughlin, Stephen Kappas and Mary Margaret Graham– to review the choices.
The Washington Post, which first reported on the female acting director, quoted sources as saying the review panel could provide political cover for Brennan at a time when the interrogation controversy is prominent.

The current and former intelligence officials CNN spoke with dismissed that suggestion, saying Brennan simply would like outside opinions for a very senior job.
CIA spokesman Preston Golson the female acting director "is one of the most senior and respected officers in the agency and is, of course, a strong candidate for the job."

A Journey Of Discovery

By John Nagenda

In race, which is where we all emanate, it is absolutely essential for human equality that all can meet at the mountain top. My search on relationships between Black Africans and Black Americans, on which I embarked all but half a century ago, was, as it happened, the start of self-knowledge.

It was very early in 1965 that I journeyed to the United States of America for the first time, to the city of New York. Even writing that city’s name now, brings me back a heady excitement across the years! In some ways I must have been somewhat of a callow youth, although I had stayed in London a couple of years before, and had also been to Nairobi in Kenya (hardly a metropolis compared to London and New York, but very big in our East African terms).

Indeed it was while working in Nairobi that an invitation from the Farfield Foundation came, to attend a 10-day seminar. True to those times the Foundation proved to be CIA funded, as had been the case of the famous magazine Encounter in England, and perhaps a myriad of others.

But even had this CIA association been known to me, I would still have gone. If the spy-body was going to do its business in this laid-back fashion, where was the pain? To this day I would likely take the same view; although we have since heard of the exploding cigars with which they were hoping to entice Fidel Castro of Cuba. To say nothing of the more hugely explosive stuff for Libya’s Muammar Al Gathafi half a century later, which in the end more or less helped to finish him off!

Landing in New York was rather pulverising to the spirit; the city immediately gobbled you up, with you helpless to resist, and its tempo was dizzyingly fast. No, it wasn’t until a couple of months later that I semiconsciously began to pick up its rhythm and go with it, that I truly came to know New York: to feel it; and how by doing so other cities knelt before its presence. The original trip had only been for a couple of weeks; I kept extending it, to nearly 11 months!

One of the principal reasons for this was that I got interested in what in the early 60s came to be called “Black Power”. The spinoff was the slogan: “Black Is Beautiful”. Who first thought of it? It was powerful, beautiful, arresting: it made you pause in your tracks. And, of course, it was true! Now perhaps these words have become “Square”, “Un-cool”, “Too much”. I don’t care!

 Mention the words and I am wafted back: to 1965, to New York, and, after I arranged my trip all over the States, to: Syracuse, Buffalo, Chicago, Washington, Iowa, Madison, Colorado, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Jackson Mississippi, Little Rock, New Orleans (these names as I write come off my tongue as if I had memorised them, or visited and revisited them, but not so; for most it was one-offs, but somehow I never unpacked them from my suitcase of discovery).

How I arranged this trip was to go to Life magazine and raise my idea of traversing the United States, talking to American Negroes (as they were then called) everywhere I went, to see what they thought about any connection between them and Africans. Should I meet any Africans on the trip I would put the same question. As I wrote in my article on my findings, nearly 50 years ago, the trip ended up by being a Journey of Discovery, not least of myself. It was a turning point in my life.

For in the event, by the time I returned to New York from my travels, at which I was eager to make more contact with people with whom I was increasingly identifying, I found what I sought, and more. For I had discovered dark hitherto neglected corners in myself. Before coming to America, I had never realised to what an extent the unity of black people was necessary to gain (or re-gain) the dignity of our race.

Life, in the form of one of its editors, Dave Manness, took to my idea swiftly. I can even today remember my excitement, my incredulity, at how such a big fish as Life magazine had been so easily landed. As in fishing it might prove a long time before the fly re-did its magic; if ever! Sometimes I look back and wonder what at that particular time made me pick this subject; or even (I am being serious!) what made the subject choose me!

True, I had met some Black Americans in Uganda, when during my final year at Makerere University, a very few came (the huge majority was white) in the programme, Teachers for Africa, to be sent around the country teaching in senior schools. If there was, which I doubt, any special attraction between those black visitors and our black country, I was hardly aware of it.

But a half decade afterwards, here I was in America, precisely in New York, and, unknown to me, in this city there was Harlem, where the American Negroes lived their lives, in various stages of want, very many in penury. Perhaps one day I was driven through Harlem, not totally unlike going to the cinema, or, God forbid, a game park! Then one night somebody said, “Come party in Harlem,” and it sounded like unfinished business.

Nothing might have evolved. But in the event, enjoying the people and their atmosphere, it was as if in my soil a seed was planted; which could not but grow. And so I went to Life and my scheme was accepted. (As it happened, because of massacres in Uganda, I lost the plot. But the article appeared in UK’s Race journal in 1967. You can find it at www.onemansweek.com).

I truly didn’t know what to expect. Some Ugandan friends hadn’t seen merit in my journey; the growing number of Black American friends, in New York, and on my trip (especially on my trip) had been keener. For, by the time I set off, I was already preaching the Gospel of Black to Black: African to American. Perhaps time makes me more certain now than I really was. But my great excitement, as in Mao Zedong’s first step of a thousand miles’ journey: that had me by the throat!

I must say most places I went, especially when the Brothers and Sisters knew what I stood for, it was like light filtering through fog, and mostly as One People. I remember especially in Madison County outside Jackson, Mississippi, a working-women’s group making me there and then a rudimentary shirt of startling green that could not fail to be beautiful. 

These ladies and I seemed to be holding hands across time and distance. Of course, there were some American doubters of this closeness between Black Africans and their kin who had spent centuries in a foreign land when brought across the Atlantic as slaves. Some of the doubters were famous. James Baldwin, author of strong fiction, but also a powerful polemicist, including the early 60s’ The Fire Next Time, went to Ghana looking for any spark among Africans. He found none (which was okay) but wrote in very disparaging tones about any possibility of it. From that day to this I have never read another book of his.

I cannot finish without mentioning sport. In fact because of South Africa’s apartheid policies, I got the opportunity to play in the First World Cricket Cup in the UK in 1975. South Africa was barred and a Combined Team from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia substituted. (Part of me almost thanked apartheid!)

Before, in 1963, I had watched the great cricketer Sir Frank Worrell captain the West Indies in the twilight of his career. With a hand here, a finger there, he controlled his mercurial players like conducting an orchestra. It was the true birth of the Windies modern era. It was the first time I saw Garfield Sobers, the game’s all-time greatest all-rounder. 

To be mingling, in 1975, with these heroes was a gift from God. Within a decade the West Indians, under Clive Lloyd, had become arguably the greatest warriors ever seen on the cricket battlefield and went without a series-defeat for the next 15 years; latterly under the fearsome batsman Vivian Richards. No wonder some philosophised that cricket was like life, only more so! See the film Fire in Babylon by Cowboy Films.

The point is that with mainly black West Indians rising to these pinnacles, they served as heroes reaching pinnacles to which others of their race (and any race) would aspire. For a people who had been downgraded for centuries around the known-world, nothing could better raise the rallying cry of togetherness-as-one. Probably nobody today serves the purpose of role model better than the fantastic sprinter, Usain Bolt. At that elevated level, those attaining it belong rightly to the Whole Wide World, in addition to a section of it. But until they get there, those of racist mode find it difficult to picture them in such positions. In race, which is where we all emanate, it is absolutely essential for human equality that all can meet at the mountain top.

We were already learning in Africa that for our continent to grow apace we had to work as a unit, difficult though that might be to put in practice. But to reach elsewhere to others of our kind, was new to me. My search on relationships between Black Africans and Black Americans, on which I embarked all but half a century ago, was, as it happened, the start of self-knowledge. Without in any way segregating against other races, which is sinful, I find myself still travelling the journey!