GHANA’S OIL PRODUCTION DECLINED IN 2016

Boakye Agyarko, Energy Minister

By Lydia Asamoah/Deborah Apetorgbor

Crude Oil production recorded a decline of 13 per cent in 2016 despite the fact that Ghana’s second major oil production field, the Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN) Field came on stream.

The TEN Field came on stream in August 2016 and actually contributed 16 per cent to the annual production, but it dropped from 37.41 million barrels (mmbbls) in 2015 to 32.30mmbbl last year.

The Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) has explained that the crude oil production shortfall would have recorded approximately 28 per cent but for the TEN Fields.

At the launch of the 2016 PIAC Annual Report on Management of Petroleum Revenue in Accra on Thursday, officials of PIAC said Ghana lifted 4.86mmbbls from the Jubilee Fields in 2016 representing 18.06 per cent which is consistent with the country’s shareholding in the field.

The sole lifting undertaken by the Ghana Group from the TEN Field in 2016 also represented 18.60 per cent of the total liftings made by the TEN patrons.

Mr Mark Agyemang, Technical Manager at PIAC, who presented the sixth annual report of PIAC, at the launching noted that, actual petroleum receipt in 2016 was $247 million, being 29 per cent lower than the budgeted amount of $348 million and translating to 38 per cent year-on-year decline in annual petroleum revenues when compared to the 2015 receipts of $396 million.

Apart from the Corporate Income Tax (CIT) which exceeded target, none other sources of petroleum revenues achieved set targets, he said.

Ninety-two per cent ($27million) of the CIT received in 2016 was, however, in respect of tax liabilities that Tullow Ghana ought to have paid over the period 2011-2014.

A total of $229 million dollars, representing approximately 93 per cent of total petroleum receipts was allocated during the reporting period.

Mr Agyemang announced that an amount of $98 million, (about GHS 388 million), representing 70 per cent of the net amount $140 million was transferred to the Government of Ghana for further distribution and 42.95 per cent of actual disbursement) was transferred to the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) account in 2016.

The remaining 30 percent ($42 million) of the amount received by the government to be distributed to the ABFA and Ghana Petroleum Funds (GPF) in 2016 was transferred to the GPF with the Ghana Stabilisation Fund (GSF) receiving $29 million which is 70 per cent and the Ghana Heritage Fund (GHF) receiving $12 million.

Moreover, the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) in 2016 also received a total revenue allocation of 88 million dollars, which is 38.64 per cent.

At the end of 2016, the total balance in the Petroleum Holding Fund Account (PHF) was $27 million dollars which comprised undistributed petroleum receipts amounting to $27.369 million dollars and a mandatory minimum balance of $200,000.

Meanwhile, four priority areas selected by the Finance Minister to be funded with the Annual Budget Funding Amount from 2017-2019 with their projected 2017 allocations include; Agriculture with a projected allocation of 156 million cedis; while Physical Infrastructure and Service Delivery in Education was 211 million cedis.

Physical Infrastructure and Service Delivery in Health was also projected to receive an allocation of 50 million cedis, with the Road, Rail and other critical infrastructure development pegged to receive an allocation of 76 million cedis.

The PIAC was also projected to receive an allocation of 1.9 million Cedis for the period of 2017-2019.

The report however recommended that GNPC should desist from spending part of its dwindling allocations on non-core businesses such as financing of the Western Corridor Roads.

The GNPC was also asked to disclose what steps it had taken to retrieve the $50 million loan it advanced to the Ministry of Finance in respect of the Western Corridor Roads.

The report also advised that the ABFA allocation to road infrastructure should continue to be spent on fewer road projects so as to ensure timely completion of beneficiary projects.

The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) was asked to ensure that auditing of tax returns filed by the Jubilee Partners was carried out expeditiously so that any additional assessment payable was paid on time.

GNA

Editorial

NATURAL RESOURCES

Reports that Ghana’s oil production dipped in 2016 must be raising alarms because it will directly affect the capacity of the national economy to deal with the hydra-headed problems of the people.

The point is that when incomes from the exploitation of natural resources drop, the country suffers.

Unfortunately, Ghana is not in position to determine production levels and how much we earn from the global capitalist market.

These are determined by the cartels of multinational corporations which run our lives.

The only sensible option is to step out of the capitalist orbit to build an independent national economy firmly rooted in the bold attempt to construct a Pan- African world.

Unless countries like Ghana end the control of their resources by foreign predators, the exploitation of their resources would not lead to sustainable development.

Local News:

Judgment to retrieve looted state cash laudable – NDC

Asiedu Nketsia, NDC General Secretary

By Mohammed Awal

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has described as laudable a judgment by the Supreme Court ordering the Auditor General to retrieve every penny siphoned from the state’s coffers.

A seven-member panel of the Supreme Court has ordered the Auditor General to immediately initiate procedures to retrieve all looted state cash.

The panel headed by Ghana’s Chief Justice, Justice Sophia Akuffo further directed that where applicable, criminal action should be instituted against the accused persons by the country’s Attorney General.

Reacting to the ruling on Okay FM, the General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia said “retrieving stolen state money is welcoming news and that I fully support the ruling of the Supreme Court.”

Bemoaning parliament’s inability to conduct the exercise assigned the Auditor General by the Supreme Court, he noted “so Occupy Ghana took advantage of the Constitution where it mandates the Auditor General to take those culprits to court before it presents its report to Parliament for resolution.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling Wednesday was necessitated by an action instituted against the Attorney General and Auditor General by pressure group Occupy Ghana for refusing to surcharge persons who are said to have misappropriated monies belonging to the state to the tune of over GHS40 billion.

Health experts call for more action on tobacco control

Health experts and stakeholder organisations have declared a seven-point of action to be taken by government on tobacco control, the reduction of its usage and its effect on  non-communicable diseases and premature deaths.

The actions place emphasis on the promotion of partnerships, building of capacities of different stakeholders to advocate, support and monitor progress on tobacco control as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) implementation effort.

The declaration was made during a round-table discussion held under the theme: “Tobacco a threat to development” in Accra.

At the meeting were representatives from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Tourism, and Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection.

Others were the Food and Drugs Authority, Ghana Revenue Authority, Ghana Police Service, Ghana Education Service, Environmental Protection Agency, National Sustainable Development Goals Secretariat, the Christian Council of Ghana, Office of the National Chief Imam, Ghana Coalition of NGOs in Health, Coalition of NGOs in Tobacco Control and the Media Alliance in Tobacco Control/Health.

The conference was organised under the auspices of the Vision for Alternative Development (VALD), a non-governmental organisation and was sponsored by Framework Convention Alliance and the Norwegian Cancer Society.

The health experts called for the prioritization of tobacco control to combat the epidemic in order to achieve the SDGs; strengthen national tobacco control and Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) policies, legislations and resources, in addition to reorient health system to address prevention of NCDs.

They said there is the need to step up efforts to increase tobacco taxes in accordance with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (2015), adding that the increase in tobacco taxes is the most direct and effective strategy to reduce tobacco use.

The declaration called for support mechanisms to educate and offer treatment support and cessation services; mobilise and allocate resources for tobacco control implementation; and to strengthen mechanisms for monitoring and countering tobacco industry interference.

They said the tobacco concern is a development issue and must be addressed as part of our national development agenda.

“We declare that we will work together to strengthen the implementation of tobacco control efforts in the country as part of our strategies to attain sustainable human development.”

They reaffirmed their commitment to a comprehensive multi-sectoral action plan to effectively implement the Tobacco Control Measures of the Public Health Act (Act 851) to ensure reduction in consumption, sustainable investment in a healthier productive population.

“We know that reducing tobacco use is critical to achieving all the 17 SDGs, as it will improve individual health and prosperity, advance economic productivity and protect the planet,” the conference said.

Madam Juliana Ansong, the World Health Organisation Focal Person on Tobacco, called for urgent increases on tobacco taxes to control its use and prevent premature deaths from non-communicable diseases.

She said the revenue generated from the taxes should be used to finance universal health coverage as well as other development programmes.

Madam Ansong said tobacco control could break the cycle of poverty, contribute to ending hunger, promote sustainable agriculture and economic growth and combat climate change.

She urged Ghanaians to support the fight for tobacco control to save lives, uplift development and reduce health inequalities.

Mr Emmanuel Kofi Nti, the Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority, expressed his support for tobacco control especially among the poor and the youth.

He said the most effective way to reduce tobacco use was to increase prices on cigarette which is in an elastic demand to raise revenue for national development.

Mr Nti said currently the excise tax on cigarette products were below 20 per cent whilst the advanced countries are taking 70 per cent, hence the need to adjust our current rate.

GNA

News from Africa:

Cashing in on the Rwandan tragedy

By Yves Engler

The mass killings in Rwandan in 1994 are often invoked inside and outside the country for ulterior purposes. In Canada, the story is part of developing a “do-gooder” foreign policy mythology designed to lull the nation into backing interventionist policies. More generally, a highly simplistic account of Rwanda ‘94 has repeatedly been invoked to justify liberal imperialism, particularly the responsibility to protect doctrine.

Rwanda’s tragedy has been exploited for many purposes. Add slandering a pro-Palestinian activist to the list.

Since I wrote this article about the Jewish Defense League last month Toronto’s Alex Hundert has repeatedly labeled me anti-Semitic. The self-declared “anti-fascist” tweeted at Pacific Free Press, Rabble, the NDP political party and others to “cut ties” with me.

In response to this article the former Upper Canada College student harangued at least one prominent woman for posting it on her Facebook page. Hundert told her — wait for it — I’m anti-Semitic. Lacking in evidence or maybe sensing diminishing returns with that smear he added that I’m a Rwandan genocide denier.

If he means a researcher and writer on foreign affairs who always questions official government narratives/propaganda then I guess a “no contest” plea would be appropriate. The common portrayal of the Rwandan Genocide in Canada omits important context and is factually incorrect in substantial ways. It is also logically hollow, only believable because of widespread racism and anti-Africanism. (According to the most outlandish aspect of the official story, Hutu extremists murdered the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and much of the Hutu-led Rwandan military command, which brought the Hutu to their weakest point in three decades, and then decided to begin a long planned systematic extermination of Tutsi.)

Do I believe hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsi were slaughtered in mid-1994? Yes, definitely.

Was there a long planned high-level effort to wipe out all Tutsi? Probably not.

Were tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Hutu also slaughtered in mid-1994? It’s likely.

Was Paul Kagame, the person widely hailed for ending the killing, instead the individual most responsible for the mass slaughter? Probably, since his forces invaded Rwanda from Uganda, engaged in a great deal of killing and blew up the presidential plane that unleashed the genocidal violence.

It’s telling Hundert would seek to smear me as a Rwanda genocide denier, rather than criticize my other controversial views such as that the private automobile should be eliminated, or that former Prime Minister Lester Pearson was a war criminal or that Canadian peacekeeping is often a form of imperialism. Maybe it’s because the label “genocide denier” hints at some type of hatred rather than a political disagreement. Or maybe Hundert hopes to associate me with Nazi Holocaust denial, which we’ll see more about below.

Fundamentally Hundert chose the issue because most Canadians know little about Rwanda and, to the extent they know anything about the country, they’ve heard an extremely one-sided media account of the complex tragedy that engulfed Rwanda and Burundi in the mid-1990s. News consumers are generally familiar with a Rwanda fairy tale focused on a white Canadian saviour. According to serial Kagame-Rwanda propaganda spreader Gerald Caplan, “the personal relationship so many Canadians feel with Rwanda can be explained in two words: Roméo Dallaire.” In a forthcoming book about Canadian left foreign policy I detail how, in their haste to laud a Canadian military “hero”, progressives have echoed a highly simplistic version of Rwanda’s tragedy, which has legitimated Africa’s most blood-stained dictator, Paul Kagame.

Beyond aligning with liberal Canadian foreign policy mythology, Hundert is tapping into the US Empire’s narrative. Washington and London’s support for the Uganda backed Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), as well as Kagame’s more than two-decade long rule in Kigali, explains the dominance of the Rwandan Genocide story. According to Edward Herman and David Peterson in Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Year Later, “[US and British] support, combined with the public’s and the media’s distance from and unfamiliarity with central African affairs, made the construction and dissemination of false propaganda on Rwanda very easy.”

After the Cold War, Washington viewed Kagame’s RPF as an imperial proxy force in a French-dominated region. A trio of authors explains in The Congo: Plunder and Resistance: “The plan expressed clearly by the White House at the time was to use the Rwandan army as an instrument of American interests. One American analyst explained how Rwanda could be as important to the USA in Africa as Israel has been in the Middle East.” Over the past two decades Kagame has repeatedly invaded the Congo, which has as much as $24 trillion in mineral riches.

Alongside his role as a US client, Kagame has drawn close to Israel. Trained at the US Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Kagame visited Israel for the first time in 1996 and Africa’s most bloodstained dictator has been back repeatedly. In March Kagame was the only international head of state and first-ever African leader to speak at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) annual conference. On May 21 Kagame received the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Prize for Outstanding Friendship with the Jewish People at a New York event with Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer and Alan Dershowitz. In 2013 the “butcher of Africa’s Great Lakes” shared a New York stage with staunch Zionists Elie Wiesel, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson.

“He is the only living man to stop a genocide,” said Boteach to the Jewish Forward in 2014. “You need to look at the criticism on Rwanda through the same lens you look at criticism against Israel.” (After National Security Adviser Susan Rice criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for speaking to Congress about the Iran nuclear agreement without President Obama’s approval, Boteach placed an ad in the New York Times which read "Susan Rice has a blind spot: Genocide ... both the Jewish people’s and Rwanda’s”.)

Pro-Israel Jewish groups have bequeathed Kagame the genocide moniker. Author of Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction, Robin Philpot explains that long-time director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Efraim Zuro, and former US Holocaust Memorial Museum project director, Michael Berenbaum, were invited to a conference in Kigali a year after the mass slaughter in Rwanda. Philpot notes, “Efraim Zuro then became an advisor to the Rwandan government in its hunt for génocidaires, and from then on Zionists throughout the world were willing to share the use of the term ‘genocide’ with Rwandan Tutsis. Israel has very jealously guarded the use of that term; they have, for example, never agreed to share it with Armenians, largely because of Israel’s strategic alliance with Turkey.”

But, those who draw an analogy between the 6 million killed in the Shoah and the hundreds of thousands slaughtered in Rwanda are partaking in something akin to Nazi Holocaust denial (or extreme minimization). European Jews were targeted because of their religion/ethnicity, the violence was state organized and it mostly flowed from an ideology promoted from above.

The context in Rwanda was different. Speaking the same language, sharing the same culture and practising the same religion, the Tutsi/Hutu divide is historically a caste-type distinction the Belgians racialized. “Prior to colonization,” explains Ann Garrison, “the Tutsi were a cattle owning, feudal ruling class, the Hutu a subservient peasant class. Belgian colonists reified this divide by issuing ID cards that labeled Rwandans and Burundians as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa [1% of the population].”

The genocidal killings were not a long planned attempt to exterminate all Tutsi, which even the victors’ justice dispensed by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) effectively concluded. Instead, it was the outgrowth of a serious breakdown in social order that saw hundreds of thousands slaughtered by relatively disorganized local commands fearful of a foreign invasion that eventually conquered Rwanda and drove a quarter of the population out of the country. Probably an equal — and possibly a greater — number of Hutu were killed.

Jews didn’t end up in power in European countries after World War II, nor did the Herero in Namibia, Armenians in Turkey, indigenous people in North America, Maya in Guatemala, etc. Rwanda is a peculiar case where the minority — 10% of population — targeted for extermination ended up ruling after the bulk of the violence subsided.

Of course, Hundert doesn’t care about what happened in Rwanda. He’s labeling me a genocide denier because I’ve challenged Canada’s contribution to Palestinian dispossession. Hundert seems particularly bothered by my linking pro-Israel Jewish organizations to fascistic, anti-Muslim groups, which pits his “anti-fascism” against his liberal-Zionism.

The Rwandan tragedy is often invoked in Canada for ulterior purposes. The Romeo Dallaire fairy tale is part of developing a “do-gooder” foreign policy mythology designed to lull Canadians into backing interventionist policies. More generally, a highly simplistic account of the Rwanda Genocide has repeatedly been invoked to justify liberal imperialism, particularly the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

Maybe I should be honoured that Rwanda is now cited as a reason to suppress my writing. 

Source: Pambazuka

3,700-Year-Old Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter Found 

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be the burial chamber of Princess Hatshepset, the daughter of Pharaoh Ameny Qemau, who reigned 3,800 years ago.

In the tomb, diggers found a box containing four canopic jars, each ritually filled with human organs: liver, lungs, intestines and stomach. Mummy wrappings were also found in the box, but they were poorly preserved and the actual body was nowhere to be found.

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities issued a statement that they believe the tomb and the organs to belong to Ameny Qemau's daughter Hatshepset. They also found the remains of a sarcophagus, as well as a hieroglyphic inscription bearing Ameny Qemau's name.

"The inscriptions are typical for such boxes in the Second Intermediate Period [the period during which Ameny Qemau lived] and belong on the side [of the box] facing east," Brown University egyptologist James Allen told Live Science. 

"[The top line reads] "Neith, extend your arms over the Duamutef who is in you." Duamutef is the god associated with the canopic jar for the stomach [while] Neith is the goddess charged with protecting it [the jar]."

Another line reads "Venerated with Neith, King's daughter Hatshepset," according to Allen. "I presume Hatshepset was a daughter of Ameny Qemau."

Also speaking to Live Science, University of Bristol archaeologist Aidan Dodson noted something unusual about Hatshepset's tomb. "The pyramid is not of a type appropriate to a princess. It must therefore have been built for a king, but then usurped for her burial," he said.

"[The] presence of the Ameny Qemau text suggests that he may have usurped the pyramid built for his predecessor for the interment of one of his daughters, as there is no reason why he should have built two pyramids of his own."

Ameny Qemau is shrouded in relative mystery, with few things known about him save for his tomb and name (and even that is controversial). The pyramid where he is interred was discovered in 1957, long since pillaged by tomb robbers. 

His pyramid is the oldest smooth-sided pyramid ever discovered, leading archaeologists to believe that it may have been the first attempt to build such a thing. Ameny Qemeau's tomb is about 1,900 feet away from the one believed to belong to his daughter.

"All the discovered parts of the pyramid are in very good condition and further excavation is to take place to reveal more parts," said the Ministry of Antiquities in a statement.

The tomb was discovered in Dahshur, a well-preserved necropolis of important figures from ancient Egypt about 25 miles south of Cairo. After the Giza Pyramid complex and the Valley of Kings, it is probably the most famous of the resting places for the pharaohs. Its most recognizable landmark is the 341-foot Red Pyramid, the third largest surviving pyramid in Egypt. It was built by Sneferu, a pharaoh who reigned 800 years before Ameny Qemau.

Foreign News:

Jeremy Corbyn has won the first battle in a long war against the ruling elite

Jeremy Corbyn

By Paul Mason

Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci understood that before taking power, the left must disrupt and defy common sense – just as Labour defeated the proposition that ‘Corbyn can’t win’

To stop Jeremy Corbyn, the British elite is prepared to abandon Brexit – first in its hard form and, if necessary, in its entirety. That is the logic behind all the manoeuvres, all the cant and all the mea culpas you will see mainstream politicians and journalists perform.

And the logic is sound. The Brexit referendum result was supposed to unleash Thatcherism 2.0 – corporate tax rates on a par with Ireland, human rights law weakened, and perpetual verbal equivalent of the Falklands war, only this time with Brussels as the enemy; all opponents of hard Brexit would be labelled the enemy within.

But you can’t have any kind of Thatcherism if Corbyn is prime minister. Hence the frantic search for a fallback line. Those revolted by the stench of May’s rancid nationalism will now find it liberally splashed with the cologne of compromise.

Labour has, quite rightly, tried to keep Karl Marx out of the election. But there is one Marxist whose work provides the key to understanding what just happened. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist leader who died in a fascist jail in 1937, would have had no trouble understanding Corbyn’s rise or predicting what happens next. For Gramsci understood what kind of war the left is fighting in a mature democracy, and how it can be won.

Consider the events of the past six weeks a series of unexpected plot twists. Labour starts out polling 25% but then scores 40%. Its manifesto is leaked, raising major questions of competence, but it immediately boosts Corbyn’s popularity. Britain is attacked by terrorists but it is the Tories whose popularity dips. Diane Abbott goes sick – yet her majority rises to 30,000. Sitting Labour candidates campaign on the premise “Corbyn cannot win” yet his presence delivers a 10% boost to their own majorities.

None of it was supposed to happen. It defies political “common sense”. Gramsci was the first to understand that, for the working class and the left, almost the entire battle is to disrupt and defy this common sense. He understood that it is this accepted common sense – not MI5, special branch and the army generals – that really keeps the elite in power.

Once you accept that, you begin to understand the scale of Corbyn’s achievement. Even if he hasn’t won, he has publicly destroyed the logic of neoliberalism – and forced the ideology of xenophobic nationalist economics into retreat.

Brexit was an unwanted gift to British business. Even in its softest form it means 10 years of disruption, inflation, higher interest rates and an incalculable drain on the public purse. It disrupts the supply of cheap labour; it threatens to leave the UK as an economy without a market.

But the British ruling elite and the business class are not the same entity. They have different interests. The British elite are in fact quite detached from the interests of people who do business here. They have become middle men for a global elite of hedge fund managers, property speculators, kleptocrats, oil sheikhs and crooks. It was in the interests of the latter that Theresa May turned the Conservatives from liberal globalists to die-hard Brexiteers.

The hard Brexit path creates a permanent crisis, permanent austerity and a permanent set of enemies – namely Brussels and social democracy. It is the perfect petri dish for the fungus of financial speculation to grow. But the British people saw through it. Corbyn’s advance was not simply a result of energising the Labour vote. It was delivered by an alliance of ex-Ukip voters, Greens, first-time voters and tactical voting by the liberal centrist salariat.

The alliance was created in two stages. First, in a carefully costed manifesto Corbyn illustrated, for the first time in 20 years, how brilliant it would be for most people if austerity ended and government ceased to do the work of the privatisers and the speculators. Then, in the final week, he followed a tactic known in Spanish as la remontada – the comeback. He stopped representing the party and started representing the nation; he acted against stereotype – owning the foreign policy and security issues that were supposed to harm him. Day by day he created an epic sense of possibility.

The ideological results of this are more important than the parliamentary arithmetic. Gramsci taught us that the ruling class does not govern through the state. The state, Gramsci said, is just the final strongpoint. To overthrow the power of the elite, you have to take trench after trench laid down in their defence.

Last summer, during the second leadership contest, it became clear that the forward trench of elite power runs through the middle of the Labour party. The Labour right, trained during the cold war for such trench warfare, fought bitterly to retain control, arguing that the elite would never allow the party to rule with a radical left leadership and programme.

The moment the Labour manifesto was leaked, and support for it took off, was the moment the Labour right’s trench was overrun. They retreated to a second trench – not winning, with another leadership election to follow – but that did not exactly go well either.

As to the third trench line – the tabloid press and its broadcasting echo chamber – this too proved ineffectual. More than 12 million people voted for a party stigmatised as “backing Britain’s enemies”, soft on terror, with “blood on its hands”.

Theresa May turned the Conservatives from liberal globalists to die-hard Brexiteers. And Gramsci would have understood the reasons here, too. When most socialists treated the working class as a kind of bee colony – pre-programmed to perform its historical role – Gramsci said: everyone is an intellectual. Even if a man is treated as “trained gorilla” at work, outside work “he is a philosopher, an artist, a man of taste ... has a conscious line of moral conduct”. [Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks]

On this premise, Gramsci told the socialists of the 1930s to stop obsessing about the state – and to conduct a long, patient trench warfare against the ideology of the ruling elite.

Eighty years on, the terms of the battle have changed. Today, you do not need to come up from the mine, take a shower, walk home to a slum and read the Daily Worker before you can start thinking. As I argued in Postcapitalism, the 20th-century working class is being replaced as the main actor – in both the economy and oppositional politics – by the networked individual. People with weak ties to each other, and to institutions, but possessing a strong footprint of individuality and rationalism and capacity to act.

What we learned on Friday morning was how easily such networked, educated people can see through bullshit. How easily they organise themselves through tactical voting websites; how quickly they are prepared to unite around a new set of basic values once someone enunciates them with cheerfulness and goodwill, as Corbyn did.

The high Conservative vote, and some signal defeats for Labour in the areas where working class xenophobia is entrenched, indicate this will be a long, cultural war. A war of position, as Gramsci called it, not one of manoeuvre.

But in that war, a battle has been won. The Tories decided to use Brexit to smash up what’s left of the welfare state, and to recast Britain as the global Singapore. They lost. They are retreating behind a human shield of Orange bigots from Belfast.

The left’s next move must eschew hubris; it must reject the illusion that with one lightning breakthrough we can envelop the defences of the British ruling class and install a government of the radical left.

The first achievable goal is to force the Tories back to a position of single-market engagement, under the jurisdiction of the European court of justice, and cross-party institutions to guide the Brexit talks. But the real prize is to force them to abandon austerity.

A Tory party forced to fight the next election on a programme of higher taxes and increased spending, high wages and high public investment would signal how rapidly Corbyn has changed the game. If it doesn’t happen; if the Conservatives tie themselves to the global kleptocrats instead of the interests of British business and the British people, then Corbyn is in Downing Street.

Either way, the accepted common sense of 30 years is over.

Theresa May's ''coalition of chaos'' - Who are the DUP?

Theresa May enters allians with DUP

By Ben Curry

The shock result of the June 8th election, called by Theresa May with the intention of strengthening her position, has left the Tories without a majority and May’s political career in tatters. Like a drowning woman, she is now clutching at straws in a desperate bid to cobble together a government. The result is likely to be a deal with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), with the leaders of both parties meeting today to discuss the terms of a Westminster alliance.

Since the ceasefire in Northern Ireland and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland has remained largely out of the newspapers and off the TV in Britain. This is as the ruling class would like things: out of sight and out of mind. Unfortunately for them the instability of British politics means this can no longer remain the case.

Upon waking up on June 9th millions of people have been horrified to discover that a key partner in government will be a party of homophobic, anti-abortion, climate change denying bigots...and we are not just talking about the Tory Party. Many are now asking themselves two questions: who are the Tories' new bedfellows? And what can be expected of this "coalition of chaos"?’

Of course, the utterly reactionary and sectarian nature of the DUP has been a daily fact of life for the people of Northern Ireland. However, it is worth recounting the history of the DUP for those who aren't aware of this party’s sordid past.

The ugly face of sectarian reaction

The British ruling class carved out the sectarian statelet in the North of Ireland principally for strategic reasons in the wake of the Irish War of Independence. The entire basis of British rule was founded upon sectarian divisions between Catholics and Protestants. By the 1960's, however, Britain’s strategic interests in Ireland had moved on but the sectarian quagmire it created had not. Northern Ireland no longer had the same importance to the ruling class that it once had. However, once the British ruling class had whipped up sectarianism, they found themselves confronted by a monster that they could no longer control.

No-one typified the monstrous features of this loyalist sectarianism better than the Rev. Ian Paisley, the founder of the DUP. Paisley was a founder of the fundamentalist breakaway Free Presbyterian Church in the 1950’s. Beginning as a street preacher in Wales, he discovered an early talent for oratory and in particular a knack for manipulating mobs.

At loyalist rallies and at the pulpit, Paisley regularly preached violent hatred against Catholics, who he denounced as "breeding like rabbits and multiplying like vermin". When the Civil Rights movement in the late 1960's threatened to turn in a revolutionary direction, the ruling class began preparing to make concessions to forestall such a movement. Paisley and his followers saw in this only treachery and he denounced in biblical language the Judases preparing to give in to the Anti-Christ. The mad sectarian dog began to bite the hand that had fed it.

In his frenzied way, Paisley helped to incite gangs of loyalists to brutally attack Civil Rights marches wherever they went. His insane rants were one factor in preparing a pogrom atmosphere against the Catholic population. Thousands of Catholic youth turned to the IRA in self-defence; meanwhile the British Army was deployed on the streets of Northern Ireland, supposedly to protect the Catholic population. So began a 25 year cycle of bloodshed.

In 1970, as he grew to prominence due to his chilling calls to bloodshed, Paisley was elected MP for North Antrim and in 1971 he established the DUP as a political force, basing itself on his fundamentalist message, to challenge the main party of the unionist bourgeoisie, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).

In all respects the DUP represented the distilled essence of all the reactionary poison that the ruling class had poured into the North of Ireland. Besides its virulent British loyalism and its hatred of Catholics, there was its paramilitarism - which went as far as the establishment by leading DUP figures of their own outfit, the Ulster Resistance, in 1986. The DUP held (and still does hold) fundamentalist views taken straight out of Leviticus on all social issues, from LGBT rights to abortion.

The rise of the DUP in unionism

Throughout the period of the Troubles, Paisley and the DUP fanned the flames of hatred into a bloody inferno. After the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) negotiations, Paisley obdurately refused to recognise the power-sharing Executive. However, the ruling class paid little heed; the mood across the North of Ireland was strongly for peace and the reliable UUP remained the biggest political force in the unionist camp. Far from settling sectarianism however, the GFA only institutionalised it. Meanwhile sectarianism has continued to be fed by poverty, deprivation and alienation - all of which have become worse as the crisis of capitalism becomes more acute.

The result has been a growing polarisation, with the more "hardline" sectarian parties gaining at the expense of the "centre-ground" parties, and in 2005 the DUP emerged as the biggest party in the Stormont Assembly, leading to a temporary crisis until they agreed, under pressure from British and US imperialism, to enter into coalition with Sinn Fein.

The most recent elections confirm this process of polarisation. Whilst in 2015 the DUP and Sinn Fein took 12 of the 18 Westminster seats between them, on June 8th that increased to 17 out of 18 seats. However, these figures do not reveal the full picture. In actual fact unionism has never been in such a deep crisis as it is currently in. Unable to offer any material improvements to the lives of ordinary Protestant workers and with the leader of the DUP, Arlene Foster, mired in corruption scandals, the party has been left with only one string in its bow: to ramp up its bigoted and sectarian behaviour.

Meanwhile this has had the effect of shattering the power-sharing agreement with Sinn Fein and has served to politicise growing layers of nationalist youth.

The new parliamentary voting deal between the Tories and the DUP will snuff out once and for all any possibility of the restoration of power-sharing at Stormont. Direct rule from London will return to Northern Ireland for the foreseeable future and under the most foreboding circumstances for British capitalism.

A coalition of chaos

British capitalism now faces the most unstable period in its history. Contradictions inside the Tory Party caused Cameron to gamble on the EU referendum. He lost. Contradictions inside the Tory Party caused May to call an early election. It has backfired spectacularly. The only thing worse for the ruling class than staggering on with Brexit negotiations with a weak, May-led Tory-DUP coalition, would be a Corbyn government. Any new election would surely bring the latter to pass.

However, the Tories may live to regret the day they decided to join hands with the DUP. Formally it seems to make sense: both parties are in favour of Brexit (and vehemently anti-Labour). However, beyond these points of agreement, a whole series of contradictions threaten to tear them apart.

Firstly, the Tory Party remains utterly split on Brexit. Under pressure from big business in the North of Ireland, the DUP has adopted a compromise position. Whilst it is virulently anti-EU, it must also oppose the imposition of a hard border, which would be ruinous for business. To achieve the latter will require a softening of Britain’s Brexit stance - something which will be anathema to the Little Englander Tory ranks for whom “no deal is better than a bad deal”.

Meanwhile the DUP will be demanding a high price for its cooperation in Westminster: possibly including more spending for Northern Ireland and concessions on points where it differs from the Tories, including winter fuel allowances, pensions, abortion limits and LGBT rights. Of course any extra cash that the Tories do send the DUP’s way will go straight into lining the pockets of their mates, as we have seen time and time again. Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Tory Party, has already come out seeking assurances against concessions on social questions and the prospect has been raised in some quarters of a fissure opening between the Scottish and British parties.

Secondly, the consequences in the North of Ireland have the potential to be destabilising in the extreme. The entry of the DUP into a Westminster government, which will now be directly running affairs in the North of Ireland, has killed off whatever life might have lingered in the GFA. The demands by Sinn Fein for special status for the North will be completely ignored as a DUP-Tory position is presented before the 27 other EU states in negotiations.

Although the DUP has been the biggest party in Belfast until now, it has been able to deflect responsibility for unpopular policies to Westminster or to its junior partner in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Now it must take full political responsibility for the fallout, and we can expect the DUP to suffer a similar fate to the Tories when Brexit turns into a much-anticipated debacle.

What will fill the vacuum when the DUP is exhausted as a political force? The question is an open one with an unpredictable answer - there are a whole number of far-right parties on the flanks of the DUP, preparing to hoover up their support. A far more important factor however is the working class in the North of Ireland, which is yet to place its stamp on the course of events.

Meanwhile, in Catholic communities there is a growing resentment against their denial of equal treatment, the sectarian attacks of the DUP, and ongoing austerity. This mood of anger will grow and grow as the Tories ride roughshod over the rights and living conditions of the working class.

As we can see, the epithet “coalition of chaos” is quite appropriate - its effects will be disastrous for British capitalism and the North of Ireland in particular. Sooner or later it will be blown apart by events.

It is the task of the labour movement to assist in smashing this coalition from day one. Corbyn has already gone on the offensive and thousands have already demonstrated in cities across Britain against the coalition. It is necessary to step up this action and give it a coordinated character.

The ballooning of the Labour Party and the development of huge grassroots movement of radicalised workers and youth has created a mass force in British politics, which must now be mobilised on the streets. The trade union leaders too must play their role and prepare the ground for a day of united action against the coalition as a means of preparing the working class for a general assault against the government. The DUP-Tory lash-up is a sign of weakness on the part of the ruling class - the “coalition of chaos” can be beaten!

CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Power and WikiLeaks 

Mike Pompeo

By Dr. BinoyKampmark

 “Vested interests deflect from the facts that WikiLeaks publishes by demonizing its brave staff and me.”

Julian Assange, The Washington Post, Apr 11, 2017

The Central Intelligence Agency’s current director, Mike Pompeo, has a view of history much like that of any bureaucrat as understood by the great sociologist Max Weber. The essential, fundamental purpose of bureaucracy is a rationale to manufacture and keep secrets. Transparency and accountability are its enemies. Those who challenge that particular order are, by definition, defilers and dangerous contrarians.

On Thursday, April 13, Pompeo was entertained by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, an opportunity of sorts to sound off on a range of points.[1] Pompeo’s theme is unmistakeable, opening up with a discussion about Philip Agee’s “advocacy” as a founding member of CounterSpy, which called in 1973 for the outing of CIA undercover operatives.

Richard Welch, a CIA station chief working in Athens and identified in a September 1974 issue of CounterSpy, was duly deemed a victim of Agee’s stance.

“When he got out of his car to open the gate in front of his house, Richard Welch was assassinated by a Greek terrorist cell.”

Agee is then the mint and mould for the current WikiLeaks agenda, deemed by Pompeo to be compromised in “the harm they inflict on the US institutions and personnel”. What bothers Pompeo is their zeal, their determination, even romance, those self-touted “heroes above the law, saviours of our free and open society.”

Pompeo’s methods are blunt, and shower generous disdain on the notion that free speech protections should extend to such an organisation as WikiLeaks.

“It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

This is the language of fear about the fifth columnist, that WikiLeaks is mimicking the CIA, even surpassing it. (Such flattery!) The organisation “encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence.” Gravely, claims the CIA director, “It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information.”

Never mind what that information actually revealed.

For the director’s myopic appraisal of the world, only the select should be in a position to steal.

“We steal secrets from our foreign adversaries, hostile entities and terrorist organizations. And we’re damn proud of it.”

These words are hardly going to fluster Assange, though they have provided the main front man of WikiLeaks food for thought about what individuals like Pompeo really think about democratic virtue, given the continuous insistence by US officials that they keep the sacred flame of liberty alive the world over. The very defender of the US Republic is willing to ignore a fundamental feature of that Republic’s existence: the need for public debate about the limits of power.

Assange is aware of this, noting how the “American idea”, or the United States as “idea” throbs within his mind and body. It is precisely that idea that needs conservation, even purification. What Pompeo is really bothered about is how similar the intelligence goal is for an organisation charged with the task of dealing in secrets, be it their theft and exposure, or their protection.

What matters in such information environments, and notably the one so currently crowded by a noisy battle between digital rabblerousers and orthodox followers of the closed society, is where they fit in holding the powerful accountable. All positions ultimately turn on matters of power and how information is best wielded.

Assange uses his piece in the Washington Post not merely to rubuff the CIA’s position, but to reference the words of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address:

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

The motives, then, are “identical to that claimed by the New York Times and The Post – to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the US Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true irrespective of whether sources came by that truth legally or have the right to release it to the media.”

Assange also reminds readers of an old, proposed taxonomy on the issue of how the fourth estate might function in terms of accuracy and content with President Thomas Jefferson’s own proposal. An editor might wish to “divide his paper into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, ‘Truths.’  2nd, ‘Probabilities.’  3rd, ‘Possibilities.’  4th, ‘Lies.’  The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information.”

The modus operandi is significant here: the exposure of truths deemed inconvenient, complicating, disrupting.  Reduced to that dimension, Pompeo’s supposedly patriotic bile seems one of simple objection, an age old struggle between those who wish to know, and those who prefer to keep ignorance central to the argument.  The ever tantalizingly relevant point remains: Who is so entitled?

Dr. BinoyKampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge and lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

Jeans Sells for $425

Nordstrom is selling $425 jeans with fake mud stains for shoppers who wish to embody “rugged, Americana” workwear.

The clothing giant has come under fire for the bizarre fashion statement. According to the clothing item’s description the medium-denim, straight-leg, jean embodies:

“Rugged, Americana workwear that's seen some hard-working action with a crackled, caked-on muddy coating that shows you're not afraid to get down and dirty”.

As if all that wasn’t ridiculous enough, the company are actually charging the extortionate price of $425 to wear the fake-stained pants.

It’s worth noting that last month Nordstrom were ridiculed for selling clear-knee ’mom jeans’ for $95 and before that, a sold-out literal rock in a pouch for $85. Either the joke’s on us or Nordstrom have gone off the deep end.

The perpetrators behind the offensive ‘mom jeans’ – aka. Topshop – have also just launched an escalated version of the former, in an equally ridiculous $100 ‘clear plastic straight leg jean’, which really shouldn’t be considered as jeans, nor actual clothing.