TUC IS UP ARMS

TUC Secretary General Kofi Asamoah with Prez John Mahama

By Ekow Mensah

The language of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and its affiliates is increasingly becoming militant and reflecting the growing demand for a paradigm shift in the management of the national economy.

Early this week, the leadership of the TUC called on Government to abandon failed economic policies.

Even though it did not refer to any specifics, the veiled reference to policies imposed by World Bank and the International Monetary Fund could not be missed.

Over a forty year period, Governments of Ghana have obediently implemented recommendation of the two institutions with disastrous consequences for the national economy and the masses.

In 1983, the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) adopted the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) under the marching orders of the IMF and the World Bank.

The programme entailed the massive devaluation of the cedi, the mass retrenchment of labour, privatisation of state enterprises and the withdrawal of subsidies on social services and agriculture.

After more than 20 years of implementing the austerity measures under the direct supervision of the two institutions, the World Bank declared Ghana bankrupt.

By the end of the year 2000, inflation was running at more than 40 per cent, money supply had gone up by 46 per cent, more than 300,000 workers had been retrenched, more than 300 state enterprises had been privatised, the national currency had cumulatively been devalued by more than 20,000 per cent and the national debt exceeded 60 per cent of export revenue.

In the light of these extremely difficult challenges, the World Bank and the IMF advised the Kufuor administration to embrace the HIPC initiative which was still essentially within the neo-liberal framework.

By the end of Kofour’s rule, although inflation had come down considerably, the economy continued to suffer very high unemployment, mounting foreign debt, lack of access to credit, a power crisis, huge internal debt and low productivity.

Interestingly, the World Bank country representative informed the in-coming administration that  Ghana had again become bankrupt after the cancellation of debts of more than US$400 million.

Strangely, the current administration appears to be towing the same old discredited line and is also singing the mantra of “ the private sector being the engine of growth”.

The Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC) is still at work selling the few state enterprises left.

Ghana also continues to rely heavily on the advice of the IMF and the World Bank which are insisting on fuel price hikes, increases in utility tariffs and reduction in the capitalisation of state enterprises.

The TUC’s militant posture is not unique. It is increasingly becoming apparent that the Ghanaian public is anxious to see things done differently.

Currently, many contractors are not being paid for work done, some categories of workers have not been paid for two months and Ministries, Government Departments, and Agencies are being under funded.

Some experts say that rising unemployment, dwindling state revenues, mounting debts and a falling currency are some of the symptoms of the Ghanaian economic malady.

Meanwhile, the Public Services Worker Union (PSWU)  of the TUC has called on the Government to end the work of its special task force checking abuses in the collection of state  revenues.

The PSWU says that the work of the Task Force is undermining the work of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

Editorial

TUC IS RIGHT

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has asked the Government of Ghana to abandon failed economic policies and take measures to improve the standard of living of the people of Ghana.

We agree with the TUC.

Over the last 30 years or more various Ghanaian governments have acted on the marching orders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to the detriment of the National economy.

The Ghanaian economy continues to suffer from falling revenues, large scale unemployment, increasing national debt, unrealisable electricity supply and rising public sector wage bill.

More and more, it is becoming clear that the old ways don’t or can’t work.

We urge the Government to listen to organised Labour especially the Trade Union Congress.

Tip of the iceberg

NSA secret spying programme leaker, Snowden

By Dr. Kevin Barrett

Like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden is a media-trumpeted whistleblower hero. Like Assange, Snowden has striking, TV-star good looks. Like Assange, Snowden is involved in a dramatic TV-style chase across countries and continents.

It's almost like Assange and Snowden are starring in their own reality-TV shows. 

With all the hoopla about Snowden (and before him, Assange), it's easy to forget all of the other whistleblowers who have revealed even more explosive information. 

Consider two other NSA whistleblowers: Russ Tice and James Bamford. 

Russ Tice is a former NSA intelligence analyst who has also worked for the US Air Force, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was a real US intelligence insider, many pay grades above rookie contractor Edward Snowden. 

In 2005, Tice blew the whistle on the NSA's illegal spying on Americans. Tice and other NSA sources revealed that the NSA's computerized spy program ECHELON was reading and filtering over 100,000 emails and phone calls per second. That is an even worse abuse of Americans' Constitutional rights than the programs that Snowden has revealed, which store copies of emails and phone calls but (allegedly) do not read them except when legally authorized to do so. 

Worse yet, Tice's revelations raise even more troubling issues. Tice and his NSA whistleblower colleagues revealed that the NSA's massive, illegal spy-on-Americans program began in February, 2001 - seven months BEFORE the 9/11 attacks! As Andrew Harris reported for Bloomberg in July, 2006: 

“The US National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court... 'The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. 'This undermines that assertion.'''

The illegal NSA spy-on-Americans program apparently “became necessary” several months before 9/11, not after 9/11. Why? 

In an interview entitled “NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice Alleges NSA Wiretapped Barack Obama as Senate Candidate” Russ Tice recently explained to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds the real purpose of the NSA's illegal spying on Americans: To collect blackmail material and other information that can be used to control influential citizens. 

In short: The whole purpose of the NSA spy program was to enable 9/11, protect the perpetrators, and maintain the 9/11-triggered covert dictatorship. 

Before 9/11, the neoconservatives of the Bush-Cheney Administration needed to ensure that no influential Americans would dare to stand up against the coming coup d'état. So they directed the NSA to begin wiretapping the American people. 

From the billions of intercepted communications, the 9/11 plotters focused on those of extremely influential Americans: Politicians, wealthy people, military and intelligence officers, media figures, and other well-connected individuals. All of these people were profiled: Were they likely to resist the coming 9/11 operation? If so, how could they be stopped? 

In some cases, blackmail material was collected. In others, more intensive surveillance was instituted. 

Two “actionable threats” to the 9/11 coup were Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. After 9/11, they received US government anthrax in the mail. Frightened, Daschle and Leahy quickly stopped questioning 9/11 and opposing the Constitution-shredding USA Patriot Act.

If any influential Americans wanted to expose 9/11, and could not be blackmailed or controlled, they would have to be assassinated. The most illustrious victim was Senator Paul Wellstone, who was murdered, along with his family members and campaign staff, on October 25th, 2002, shortly after being threatened by then-Vice President Dick Cheney. 

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) spoke out against the murder of Senator Wellstone, calling it “a message to us all.” She added that if quoted, she would deny her statement. Apparently she was not anxious to get anthrax in the mail, or to have herself and her family members murdered. 

Another Senator from Minnesota, Mark Dayton, was also threatened by the 9/11 perpetrators. Senator Dayton fled Washington, DC and evacuated his entire staff to Minnesota in August 2004 - then announced his retirement from national politics - after receiving death threats due to his speech on the Senate floor attacking the 9/11 Commission Report as a pack of lies. 

So as far back as 2005, Russ Tice and his colleagues revealed that the NSA spy program was used to murder almost 3,000 Americans in an act of bloody treason, and to kill or terrorize anyone who stood in the way. Compared to that, Edward Snowden's revelations are relatively tame. 

Another NSA whistleblower is James Bamford, the Agency's quasi-official biographer. Bamford alerted Americans back in 2001 to a plot called Operation Northwoods. Like 9/11, Operation Northwoods was a fake “attack on America” designed to brainwash Americans into marching off to war. And like 9/11, it involved the murder of large numbers of Americans. 

Operation Northwoods was designed to trigger war against Cuba and Russia in 1962. It called for US forces to bomb American cities and sink American ships. The CIA-controlled “Operation Mockingbird” mainstream media would blame Cuba for these murders. 

Operation Northwoods was planned by Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Every member of the Joint Chiefs signed off on the proposal. It was one month away from happening, when President John F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara vetoed it. 

In his book Mary's Mosaic, author Peter Janney discusses evidence that the Operation Northwoods plan was not just aimed at Cuba. Its deeper purpose was to trigger a pre-emptive US nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. Such a strike would have led to tens of millions of Russian and American deaths. 

Every member of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 wanted to murder thousands of Americans in a false-flag operation designed to trigger a war that would have killed millions. In 2001, it finally happened. 

So the truth is much worse than Edward Snowden is telling us. Our rulers are not just criminals - they are madmen, psychopathic liars and mass murderers of the worst imaginable sort. 

If the mainstream media publicized the most dangerous whistleblowers, the American National Security State would come crashing down. 

Let us hope and pray that Edward Snowden's example will inspire other whistleblowers to come forward...and that the most powerful and dangerous truths will finally be revealed.

Yes, I do have four kids by two fathers. So what?

By Lucy Cavendish

Multi-dadding — having children by different fathers — is on the rise. Lucy Cavendish celebrates the new family, in all its complexity.

What makes a woman have children with more than one man? There are names for them. Ulrika Jonsson is a 4x4. Paula Yates was a 4x2. Raw food guru Leslie Kenton is a 4x4. Now 37-year-old Kate Winslet has joined the club: she recently announced her pregnancy with her third husband, Ned Rocknroll, elevating herself to the status of a 3x3.

“Multi-dadding” is not uncommon. Many women have children with more than one man. I am one of them, a 4x2: one child with one man, three subsequent children with another. I am no longer with either of the fathers and if I were younger would probably be perfectly happy to go on and have another child with another man.

Some people may raise an eyebrow at this — how irresponsible! But I don’t see it as bad to have children with more than one man. In the best of worlds, blended and extended families can all jog along together in some form of harmony. Yet Winslet’s pregnancy has caused an outcry. She has been lambasted from many quarters — mainly female journalists — claiming that her life is “a mess” and calling her “Calamity Kate”. Even mothers on Mumsnet turned on her, saying her actions were “disgusting”.

But what is the truth? Is Winslet disgusting, a bad mother? Or is she just a woman who sees herself as the centre of the family? Some women have a desperate urge to have children, especially with a man they love.

Julia Joyce understands this. She has four children by three men. Her eldest children are 18, 16 and 12 and she has a five-year-old son with her current partner.

“I have loved each of the three men I have had children with,” she says.

“I don’t feel at all guilty about the fact that my relationships with my first two husbands broke up. We were in love when we married, but our relationships changed. I would rather bid something farewell than eke out a failed, painful marriage. We had children because we loved each other and I tell the children that all the time. My current husband Max adores the older children and they love him. I have a family life that is flexible. That’s very important. The fathers are all involved.”

Joyce says she doesn’t find her relationships with the fathers in any way difficult. “I get on with everyone. It’s just that they don’t necessarily get on with each other, but that’s not really my problem. They are all good with the children.”

I ask her who calls who Dad. “I decided after husband number two that it was best if we all called my husbands by their first names. It means that no one is Dad really. It gives the children a chance of having a relationship with all or any of the three men equally.” It’s not conventional, she acknowledges, but “as long as I am happy they are happy, so I make sure I keep myself in the best place I can possibly be in. I am the mother, but that doesn’t mean the fathers are not important. They are, but it is me who binds us all together.”

She is not alone in feeling this way. Years ago I interviewed three women who had many children by different men and they all saw themselves as the ultimate matriarch. Tierney Gearon, the LA-based photographer who has four children by three men, described herself as the Elastoplast that held everyone together. Jemima French of underwear label Frost French (a 4x3, all girls) refused to let her children use any other terms than sister to each other. “There are no half-anythings in this family,” she said.

Jonsson was given a particularly tough time in the press over her 4x4 status. When questioned about it, she said her point of view was that she was Swedish and ultimately had a different attitude. “Swedish women are brought up to be independent,” she said. “We are used to having freedom and making the sorts of decisions we wish to make for ourselves. I just don’t get judged like this in Sweden.” Her children were her business, she insisted.

But are these women more interested in having children than their men? Maybe it is the maternal urge that motivates them. As Gearon said, “My friends used to say: ‘If you want a baby, call Tierney. ”

Hester Gray, 49, a rental property consultant, has been married twice and has two children with both husbands. They are Charlotte, 21, and Oscar, 17, then Cara, 8, and Ines, 6. She is now separated from her second husband, Mikus. Oddly enough given her failed marriages, she calls herself a romantic. “For me it is about the dream of love,” she says. “I think it is the same for Kate Winslet. We are always hoping it will work out the next time around.”

Gray was married to her first husband, Justin, for nine years from the age of 26. “I have an excellent relationship with him,” she says. “He has always been a great father and very supportive of me. We are even quite flirtatious with each other. I see him all the time. In fact, I just spent the weekend with him and his wife and cooked his 80-year-old father dinner.”

She says that Justin treats her subsequent two children with love and respect. “He sends them birthday cards and presents.” But she believes it is difficult for a man to come in to a family that is already formed. “I think being a step-parent is very hard. It didn’t really help my second marriage.”

In fact, Gray says parenting her brood as a single mother is easier. “Being on my own now is a good thing. When you are married, the decisions you take about your children are often clouded by whatever else is going on with your husband and if that is stressful and difficult you may well make bad decisions. When you are not married it is easier to make better decisions for your children, then ask the man for support. If he is wise, he will support you.”

For Gray the children come first. “I always wanted to have children. When I was a younger I used to say I was going to have 20 children by 20 different men because I wanted to have the variety. I was always desperate to have a baby. I always thought the men aren’t that important, only in a romantic, naive sense. I think I still believe that.” She does have regrets, though. “When I am at my lowest point, I do feel sad that I didn’t have four children by the same man. I love the idea of happy families.

We’re all looking for the happily ever after, really.”

Perhaps this is the key for Winslet, too: she marries and has children in search of the happily-ever-after dream. Or perhaps it is closer to the truth that in the eyes of many women (myself included) the “norm” of the nuclear family — one mother, one father, 2.4 children — is outmoded. We believe that families come in all shapes and sizes, so we are unconventional pioneers, trailblazers, while still seeking a mutually supportive relationship.

Jenny Green, 56, a 4x2, says her second long-term relationship has brought her great personal happiness. “I had three children, all girls, with my first husband. They are now 30, 28 and 25. After we separated I got together with Bob. He has three girls the same age as my girls. Our youngest daughters have been best friends since they were three years old. I was bowled over by him and fell utterly in love and then realised I wanted to have a child with him. I couldn’t believe it when I got pregnant with Tom, a boy after all these girls. He is 9 now and we are all very happy. Bob says Tom is the centre of all our lives and he is right.”

But Green concedes that step-parenting is problematic. “My first husband feels that his daughters are adults now, so in a way he puts his feet up and lets them get on with it.

I can’t do that, though. I will be a mother for ever.”

She also admits that there was a three-year period when she wasn’t the best mother she could be.“I fell so much in love with Bob and now I wonder if my children suffered. I don’t feel like the glue that holds us together. For me it has been hard work emotionally. I feel I am constantly tiptoeing on hot coals, trying to keep everyone going.”

She has a word of warning for Winslet. “It’s been extremely hard at times. The step-parenting has been the most difficult dynamic in our relationship by far and I have a feeling that the same goes for anyone else — even superstars.”