EXPLOSIVE: GES Takes Action On Alleged Exam Malpractice

Prof. Opoku Agyemang, Ghana Min. of Education

By Christian Kpesese

The Ghana Education Service (GES) says that it has taken actions on allegations that its officials has aided in the perpetration of examination malpractices.

Mr Charles Parker-Allotey, Head of Public Relations told the Insight in an interview that Mr Aexander Atterh Ababio, Assistant Director who made the allegations has been invited to substantiate them. He said, the Director General of GES has asked Mr Ababio to report to the headquarters next week.

According to him the GES was not served with a copy of the 13 pages of allegations.

The GES says that its findings will be made available to the public as soon as it concludes the investigations.

Two weeks ago, the Insight published a confessional statement issued by Mr Ababio in which he names officials of educational institutions allegedly involved in the malpractices.

According to him, the teaching involved teachers writing exams for students, the bribing of invigilators and obtaining of exam papers before examinations day.

Even before the investigations have commenced, Mr Parker-Allotey stated emphatically Mr Ababio had a personal agenda to achieve and that was why he decided to use the media for his objective.

Mr Ababo who claimed that he has been involved in the malpractices wrote that he is ready to go any length to expose the malpractices. 

Editorial

VENEZUELA

It has taken too long for the United States of America to come to the realization that Venezuela can no longer be its backyard.

The desperation of the US in its futile attempts to impose a rabid neo-colonial puppet regime on the South American country is despicable.

Over the years, the US has deployed all its forces on the destabilization of Venezuela and there are credible reports that it may have engineered the death of Commandante Hugo Chavez.

The US has tried on several occasions to sponsor coups against the democratically elected Government of Venezuela and failed.

It is now becoming clear that the US has not abandoned its adventures in Venezuela and is trying to topple the infant government of Nicolas Maduro.

The people of Venezuela have elected Maduro as their President and the US has no business recognizing or refusing to recognize him as such.

The decision of the US not to recognize Maduro as the newly elected President of Venezuela is arrogant.

It is time for the US to realize that it is not the house master of Venezuela or any South American country.

Nestlé Denies that Water is a Fundamental Human Right

By Global Research News

The current Chairman and former CEO of Nestlé, the largest producer of food products in the world, believes that the answer to global water issues is privatization. This statement is on record from the wonderful company that has peddled junk food in the Amazon, has invested money to thwart the labeling of GMO-filled products, has a disturbing health and ethics record for its infant formula, and has deployed a cyber army to monitor Internet criticism and shape discussions in social media

This is apparently the company we should trust to manage our water, despite the record of large bottling companies like Nestlé having a track record of creating shortages:

Large multinational beverage companies are usually given water-well privileges (and even tax breaks) over citizens because they create jobs, which is apparently more important to the local governments than water rights to other taxpaying citizens. These companies such as Coca Cola and Nestlé (which bottles suburban Michigan well-water and calls it Poland Spring) suck up millions of gallons of water, leaving the public to suffer with any shortages. (source)

But Chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, believes that “access to water is not a public right.” Nor is it a human right. So if privatization is the answer, is this the company in which the public should place its trust?

Here is just one example, among many, of his company’s concern for the public thus far:

In the small Pakistani community of Bhati Dilwan, a former village councilor says children are being sickened by filthy water. Who’s to blame? He says it’s bottled water-maker Nestlé, which dug a deep well that is depriving locals of potable water. “The water is not only very dirty, but the water level sank from 100 to 300 to 400 feet,” Dilwan says. (source)

Why? Because if the community had fresh water piped in, it would deprive Nestlé of its lucrative market in water bottled under the Pure Life brand.

In the subtitled video below, from several years back, Brabeck discusses his views on water, as well as some interesting comments concerning his view of Nature — that it is “pitiless” — and, of course, the obligatory statement that organic food is bad and GM is great. In fact, according to Brabeck, you are essentially an extremist to hold views opposite to his own. His statements are important to review as we continue to see the world around us become reshaped into a more mechanized environment in order to stave off that pitiless Nature to which he refers.

The conclusion to this segment is perhaps the most revealing about Brabeck’s worldview, as he highlights a clip of one of his factory operations. Evidently, the savior-like role of the Nestlé Group in ensuring the health of the global population should be graciously welcomed. Are you convinced?

Caracas to respond to US sanctions

Venezuela Foreign Minister Elias Jaua

Venezuela says it will retaliate with its own measures if the United States imposes sanctions on the South American country over the outcome of the presidential election.

"If the United States takes recourse to economic sanctions, or sanctions of any other kind, we will take measures of a commercial, energy, economic and political order that we consider necessary," AFP quoted Foreign Minister Elias Jaua as saying on Monday.

The United States imports some 900,000 barrels of oil a day from Venezuela. 

Socialist Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election on April 14. He won 50.8 percent of the vote against 49.0 percent for the opposition leader Henrique Capriles. 

Capriles said he did not recognize the official results, claiming that there were more than 300,000 incidents from the poll that would need to be examined.

He demanded a vote-by-vote recount, but the country’s Supreme Court said that there was no legal basis for it. 

On April 18, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Washington was not yet ready to validate the results of the poll. 

"We think there ought to be a recount. ... Obviously if there are huge irregularities we're going to have serious questions about the viability of that government," Kerry said.

Maduro responded by accusing Washington of interfering in Venezuela's internal affairs.

"We don't care about your recognition,” he said, noting "We have chosen to be free, and we are going to be free with or without you." 

Since Maduro’s victory, the opposition has staged several violent protests, which has left at least seven people dead and over 60 others injured. 

Maduro has said o that the US Embassy in Caracas was responsible for all the violence that happened in the wake of the election.

 

‘West planning genocide in Syria’ 

A victim of Western backed terrorists in Syria

By Tony Cartalucci

Terrorist-infested areas in Syria are scenes of sectarian brutality, fear, kidnappings, mass murder, collective punishment, and pillaging - the obvious end game of Western-backed regime change.

Reports are starting to creep into Western media regarding the sweeping atrocities committed by the militants in Syria. Areas where terrorists are present have become bleak landscapes both literally and socioeconomically - with sectarian extremists running the vast majority of civilians from towns and leaving whoever remains in perpetual fear for their lives, and in utter despair for their futures.

Fighting for "Democracy"

We were first told that the so-called "rebels" were fighting for "democracy." As the West began to acknowledge that the "rebels" were in fact sectarian extremists, the narrative shifted to simply, "fighting to oust Assad." However, entire battles have been fought not between the Western-backed terrorists and the Syrian Army, but rather between the terrorists and local tribes, Kurdish militias, and virtually anyone who attempts to oppose the invading militants, many of whom are foreigners.

In Reuters' "Rebels battle with tribesmen over oil in Syria's east," the narrative of "pro-democracy" "freedom fighters" crumbles entirely:

“Islamist rebels are clashing with tribesmen in eastern Syria as struggles over the region's oil facilities break out in the power vacuum left by civil war, activists said on Saturday.
One dispute over a stolen oil truck in the town of Masrib in the province of Deir al-Zor, which borders Iraq, set off a battle between tribesmen and fighters from the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda linked rebel group, which left 37 killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The fighting, which started in late March and lasted 10 days, was part of a new pattern of conflict between tribal groups and the Nusra Front, said a report from the Observatory, a British-based group which opposes Syria's government and draws information from a network of activists in the country.”

Despite quoting the discredited "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights," the Reuters report backs not only independent geopolitical analysis from the past two years, but the narrative put forth by the Syrian government itself. That al-Nusra is fighting in Syria, that it constitutes the most prominent armed front in the conflict, and that it is guilty of an increasingly long list of atrocities is a universally accepted fact.

The only point of contention put forth by the West is whether or not the opposition consists entirely of sectarian extremists, or if there are indeed "secular" fighters in any significant quantity amongst the opposition. In eastern Syria, at any rate, it appears al-Qaeda's al-Nusra is the sole "opposition."

Reuters continues:

“Masrib tribesmen called for help from Assad's forces against Nusra, according to the Observatory and a fighter with the Islamist group.

Nusra responded by blowing up 30 houses after the battle, in which 17 rebels were killed, at least four of them foreigners, the fighter said on Skype.”

What is being described is collective punishment of the variety used by the Nazis against the people it invaded and attempted to subjugate. The fate of territory under terrorist control in eastern Syria portends the fate of greater Syria should the government fall to what is clearly a pillaging sectarian tyranny. 

Not only are the "rebels" not fighting for "democracy," they are not even fighting the Syrian government. Instead they are fighting to pillage the oil from a region they invaded and are currently occupying. What's worse is that the EU is attempting to lift sanctions on Syrian oil, specifically so these occupying sectarian extremists can further fund and expand their campaign.

Reuters reports:

“The incentive for disputes over lucrative resources may be increased by plans by the European Union to lift an embargo on Syrian oil, which would make it easier to sell.

The EU said this week it wants to allow Syria's opposition to sell crude in an effort to tilt the balance of power towards the rebels, who are outgunned by Assad's fighter planes and long range missiles.”

Syria's Christians

The Atlantic's article, "Syria's Christian Minority Lives in Fear of Kidnapping and Street Battles," gives us updated insight into the plight of Syria's Christian population, who had lived in fellowship with Muslims, Druze, and Kurds until the Western-fueled sectarian bloodbath was triggered in 2011.

The article states:

“Prior to the conflict, many saw Ras al-Ayn as a beacon of tolerance between Muslims and Christians. Residents say that there is still a camaraderie among the citizens that live there, but that problems arise from those fighting who don't live in the city, be they FSA, YPG [Kurdish militia known as the Popular Defense Forces], or Islamists.”

The article describes the fighting, with "rebel" militants invading Ras al-Ayn. The Syrian military and Kurdish militias (referred to in the article as YPG), were pushed out of areas where the militants then established a foothold.

Devastation by fighting, rampant crime, and sectarian violence caused some 65% of the population to flee the city - solving the mystery of just who is driving the refugee crisis - ironically the same refugee crisis the UN and the West have attempted to use as justification to further fund, arm, and aid the terrorists.

Foreign sponsored Free Syria Army in Syria

The article would continue by describing life for those who remain, who appear to be barricaded in what might be described as a ghetto:

“In an article written for a Christian Orthodox website, Syrian Orthodox Archbishop EusthathiusMattaRoham called the Islamists, without naming Jabhat specifically, a great threat to the lives of Syrian Christians in Ras al-Ayn. He also praised the YPG for rooting out the rebels and protecting the Christian neighborhood.

Like many other Christians interviewed, a 24-year-old Christian named Diana refuses to answer questions about the specific armed factions. ‘We don't know about the fighting groups. All we want is the fighting to stop,’ she said. ‘My home has been destroyed, everyone has left.’ 

I asked her who she was scared of. ‘Everyone,’ she replied. ‘My future is gone.’
Previously she had studied in Aleppo, but she rarely leaves her neighborhood now.
Of particular concern to the Christians is kidnapping, which only some would admit seems specifically targeted at Christians.”

Despite this damning indictment, the Atlantic piece is also filled with attempts to downplay what is clearly a catastrophic sectarian conflict, spawning atrocities and a humanitarian crisis. Such a bloodbath was warned against as early as 2007, where Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel were purposefully planning to unleash sectarian extremists in Syria to overthrow the government.

While the West now claims the rise of al-Qaeda is an unintended coincidence, Hersh reported in the 2007 article, "The Redirection," that:

“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”

Hersh quoted former CIA agent Robert Baer, who warned about the dangers of fueling sectarian extremists:

“Robert Baer … told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.”

While Baer's comments were in regards to Lebanon, the conflict in neighboring Syria has turned out to be just as "cataclysmic," with Syria's Christians and other minorities in equal or greater peril.

Clearly, Western-backed terrorists are not just fighting the "Assad regime," they are fighting anyone opposed to their sectarian ideology, which is both hardly "democratic," and hardly anything to do with "freedom."

Predictably, unthinkable atrocities are being carried out in a wave of violence and subjugation that is leaving a broken society everywhere it sweeps through. Through the destruction of Syria’s physical infrastructure, the crumbling of its institutions, and the extermination or driving out of its minorities, what the West backs as “regime change” is in reality calculated sectarian genocide.

In terrorist-infested territory, we see a vignette of the "future Syria" the West imagines - one not unlike the now dysfunctional, decimated Libya.

These are purposefully imposed nightmares couched behind "humanitarian concern" and "democracy promotion." It is clear that in areas the Western media claim are devoid of government troops, abuse, atrocities, tyranny, humanitarian catastrophe, and despair only increase.

The rationale made by the West to continue fueling this conflict and extend this state of chaos across the entire country, poses to the rest of the world a moral imperative to not only condemn this conspiracy against the Syrian people, but to oppose it and ensure that it utterly fails.

Why Can't the IMF Face Up to the Truth ?
By Jeremy Warner

I've been in Washington most of this week for the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund. I wish I could say there was light at the end of the tunnel, but the reality is still deeply depressing. Sorry to use cliches, but two sayings spring to mind: fiddling while Rome burns, and re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

IMF Logo

 In "The Economic Consequences of the Peace", the British economist, John Maynard Keynes, wrote that his preference in any negotiation or arbitration was for "violent and ruthless truth telling" but there has been very little evidence of that in this week's discussions. Instead of addressing the underlying causes of today's economic funk  the failing euro debate has focused on marginal fiscal and monetary issues such as whether the UK and the US are consolidating too fast.

That the IMF's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, and his managing director, Christine Lagarde, could think some minor loosening of the fiscal purse strings in the UK either appropriate or capable of getting growth going again, when there is such a deep seated crisis going on in Europe is not just odd, it is pitiful. I've already written about the wider failings of the IMF in confronting the worst economic crisis since the second world war in today's print edition of the Daily Telegraph, but there is a lot more to say about it.

Instead of forcing eurozone leaders to face up to the truth  that their project in its present form is failing not just them, but the whole world the IMF busies itself with irrelevances such as whether the UK has the fiscal space for a little more debt fuelled demand management. Worse, it meakly goes along with attempts to sustain what is plainly in its current form a completely unsustainable endeavour.

One of the big "puzzles" under discussion this week at the IMF is why the massive degree of monetary stimulus applied to advanced economies over the past four years has gained so little traction. I would have thought the answer was obvious. You can have as much demand management as you like, but as long as underlying imbalances in the world economy go unaddressed and unresolved, companies and households are not going to have the confidence to spend and invest.

The biggest example of these problems lies in the eurozone. It's long been apparent that there are really only two permanent solutions to the single currency's malaise. Either it must break up, allowing the magic of free floating currencies to restore economic equilibrium to Europe, or it must move rapidly to a full-scale transfer union, where surplus nations subsidise deficit economies. Instead of forcing eurozone leaders to face up to this choice, the IMF acquiesces in sticking plaster solutions that fail to address the underlying sickness.

If you prevent relative prices moving in the way they must to restore balance in the European economy, which is what the single currency effectively does, then the whole process of economic correction becomes virtually impossible. Why are these things not being said, openly and honestly at the IMF? Why are the eurozone's political leaders being allowed to run away from a problem which is causing misery not just within their own borders, but throughout the industrialised world.

IMF Boss Christine Lagarde

At a press conference on Friday, Oli Rehn, vice president of the European Commission, said the strategy of fiscal austerity was working. The eurozone's deficit would be halved from 6 to 3 per cent this year, allowing the pace of fiscal consolidation to slow from 1.5 per cent last year to 0.75 per cent next. This was slower than for the US, so he was going to take no lessons from anyone about undue harshness in the fiscal medicine that was being doled out.

Unfortunately, this is rather the nature of the problem. These are aggregated figures, substantially influenced by the fact that Germany, back at something like a balanced budget, is ceasing fiscal consolidation this year. The same is not true of weaker eurozone nations, for which there is very little let up. The eurozone is still a collection of 17 sovereign nations, some surplus and some deficit, but Rehn speaks of it as if it is one. His analysis is therefore ridiculous. If you were to aggregate the entire world economy, you would find it in a state of perfect balance. Yet as we know, there are huge pluses and minuses within it.

The present situation is hopeless. There is too much political capital, too many egos and careers, riding on the continuation of monetary union to be able to admit failure. The IMF was set up for dealing with international economic crises of just this sort. Yet confronted by the biggest crisis since the second world war, the fund has proved unequal to the test.

The crisis, I fear, is going to have to get very considerably worse before the collective resolve emerges to deal with its underlying causes. How sad it is that in order to get yourself admitted to hospital you have to shoot yourself in the foot first.

Source:Ocnus.net 2013

Meet the Ruthless New Group Terrorizing Nigeria

By John Campbell

Through its murder of seven European and Middle Eastern hostages over the weekend in northern Nigeria, Ansaru has trumped Boko Haram through the propaganda of horror, at least for the time being. Ansaru also probably holds the French family of seven kidnapped in Cameroon last month, with the potential of more horror to come. 

Those kidnappers have made no public ransom demands; instead they are demanding that the Abuja government release Islamist prisoners, a demand that will be all but impossible for Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan's government to meet. Ansaru has become a direct threat to Westerners working in northern Nigeria in a way Boko Haram in the past was not. There is not much Western-funded economic activity left in northern Nigeria, but what there is will likely diminish. Foreign companies working on infrastructure projects are likely to pull back. The same is true of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on development and other projects. 

The Abuja government has labeled the general insurgency in northern Nigeria as "Boko Haram" -- not just the followers of the movement's founder, Mohammed Yusuf, whom Nigerian police killed in 2009. Its base has been in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, on the edge of the Sahara. Its leadership is associated with the Kanuri ethnic group. It is now led by Abubakar Shekau. He is a shadowy figure who communicates mostly through videos and whose location is unknown. 

Violence associated with his part of the insurgency has been almost entirely directed against agencies of the Abuja government, especially the police and the military, and Muslims who are seen as having sold out to the Jonathan administration. Over the past year, attacks on Christians have also increased, though it is usually unclear what group has actually carried them out. 

The Shekau-led part of the insurgency has especially targeted members of the traditional Islamic establishment, with nearly-successful attempts to murder the Shehu of Borno (the primate of Kanuri traditional rulers) and the Emir of Kano. They successfully assassinated the brother of the Shehu, and an attack on the octenagerian emir killed his bodyguards and apparently wounded him and two of his sons. That part of the insurgency has showed little or no interest in Western targets, and Shekau has specifically denounced kidnapping. 

Instead, the successors to Mohammed Yusuf appeared to be at war with the Nigerian state and with the fellow Muslims who participate in it. Its victims cross the traditional ethnic divides; the Shehu is a Kanuri, the Emir is a Fulani, and speaks Hausa. The international dimension of the jihad has been essentially irrelevant to their Nigeria focus. 

Ansaru is different. In January 2012, in the aftermath of an especially bloody action In Kano attributed to Boko Haram that left many Muslims dead, a distinctive group emerged from the insurgency called Ansaru. Its proper name is the Arabic for Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa. Its leader, Abu Ussamata al-Ansary, is even more shadowy than Abubakar Shekau. Its likely base is Kano, by far the largest city in northern Nigeria and a major West African Islamic center. 

 It is likely that its ethnic makeup is predominately Fulani. It is opposed to spilling the blood of innocent Muslims and uses tactics associated with al-Qaeda, including kidnappings and beheadings. The most important distinction is that its orientation appears to be international, rather than domestic. That makes it likely that it is in contact with other jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The relationship between Ansaru and Shekau's followers, and other factions of Boko Haram is unclear, though it is likely to be highly fluid. Nor is it clear whether Ansaru's supposed Fulani character and Shekau's Kanuri ethnicity plays a significant role. 

Ansaru predates the French intervention in Mali and the subsequent deployment of a West African force organized by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). 

Nevertheless, that event and the close ties between Britain, France and the United States to the government in Abuja probably contributes to its anti-Western stance. All three western states are assisting the ECOWAS force, and the largest contingent is the contribution from Abuja. The United States is establishing a drone base in Niamey as part of that effort. From a radical Islamist perspective, Abuja, Paris, and London are joined in a war with Islam. 

It should be anticipated that Ansaru kidnappings of foreigners will continue, and the group is likely to try to strengthen whatever ties already exist with other radical Islamists in Mali and elsewhere in the Maghreb. It may come to supersede Shekau's followers as the predominate radical Islamist group operating in the north. Alternatively, the two may cooperate, as seems already to have been the case, on killings and bombings credited to "Boko Haram." Ansaru's new salience represents another, serious challenge to Nigeria's stability and a deadly threat to those Western interests it can reach in northern Nigeria.