 |
| Mr Edward Doe Adjaho |
Former Speaker of Parliament, Mr. Edward Doe Adjaho, has
displayed remarkable maturity and like other leaders of the National Democratic
Congress (NDC) opted out of the race to become the Presidential Candidate of
the Party.
Doe Adjaho says that his priority is to help reorganise
the party into a wining machine for the 2020 elections.
He is widely tipped as a very strong candidate for the
presidency but he appears to realise that premature declarations of intent to
contest for the position would generate controversy and rancour which could
negatively affect attempts at reorganising the party.
He is also a member of the Kwesi Botchwey Committee
which has been tasked to look for the reasons for the defeat of the party in
the last elections.
Perhaps, Doe Adjaho realises that making a move for the
presidential candidature would amount to taking advantage of his membership of
the Committee to push his own interest.
He has always been a team player and his decision to opt
out of the race is not surprising.
So far, he has not declared support for any of the
numerous party faithful jumping over themselves to become the presidential
candidate of the party.
There are also very strong indications that Mr Ekow Spio–Gabrah,
former Minister of Trade may put aside his own ambition to become President and
support former President John Dramani Mahama.
There is growing speculation about who would become the
Vice Presidential Candidate if former President Mahama gets the nod.
The names which have popped up so far has Doe Adjaho and
Spio-Gabrah as hot favourites, with Zanetor Rawlings, Sly Mensah, and Professor
Joshua Alabi receiving mention in party circles.
Editorial
CHASING THE PRESIDENCY
CHASING THE PRESIDENCY
It is almost becoming fashionable for any Joe Block to
declare himself a presidential aspirant, sometimes even without reference to
the constitutional requirements.
It appears that many people fail to recognise that being a president carries with it a very huge responsibility which requires preparation.
For some of those people who are busily jumping into the
presidential contest, it does appear that they are only looking at the
glamorous side-the invitations to free lunch and dinners and frequent mentions
in the media.
It is in this light that we find the decision of Mr
Edward Deo Adjaho, former Speaker of Parliament to opt out of the presidential
race most enlightening.
We fully commend Edward Doe Adjaho for his decision.
Very soon we may all realise that not all of us have to
be president.
Local News:
Avoid early sex to
prevent cervical cancer
By Mildred Siabi-Mensah
Dr Shimaila Ibrahim medical doctor in charge of the
Daboase Ahmadiyya Hospital has entreated young ladies, especially teenagers to
desist from engaging in early sex to prevent cervical cancer.
She explained that about 90 per cent of cancers were
caused by the Human Papilloma Virus which was a sexually transmitted disease,
and that if young ladies engage in causal and pre-marital sex, they were at a
higher risk of acquiring Cervical cancer.
Dr Ibrahim said this at the "31st Regional Annual
Lajna Immailah Rally" organised by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Women's
Organisation at Daboase in the Wassa East District.
It was on the theme:"Self-Reformation, A Pathway to
Salvation".
Dr Ibrahim urged the women to go for check-ups at the
hospital at least every three years for early detection and treatment of the
disease.
Mrs Fatima Eshun Abass, the secretary for NAIB TARBIYYAT
urged Muslims to desist from sin and abide by the teachings of Allah to attain
salvation.
She added that most people sin with the notion that
Allah was merciful and would pardon them, but that they should bear in mind
that Allah was also best in punishment.
Mrs Abass who was the guest speaker, encouraged Muslims
to be proud and bold to profess their faith and religion and not be ashamed of
it, especially with their dressing (Purdah).
Madam Zinara Ibrahim, a participant said she had been
abreast with the teachings of Islam and prayed and hoped that Allah would help
all of them to abide by the teachings to attain salvation.
The Lajna Immailah is a Women's wing organization within
the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, which has its international headquarters in
Pakistan.
The association aims at improving the living conditions
of Ahmadi Muslim women and young girls and the development of their moral and
spiritual lives.
Foreign News:
“The Fall of Gaddafi
Was Not a Revolution, But a French Plot”
 |
| Silvio Berlusconi |
By Matthew Anderson
Sylvio Berlusconi back on the front of the Italian
political scene, made some embarrassing revelations for France, about the war
in Libya.
The Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, was the only
leader capable of maintaining unity in Libya, former Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi said in an interview with the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram.
At the Italian news agency (Agenzia Nazionale Stampa
Associata), the former Italian president, Sylvio Berlusconi, evoking the war in
Libya declares: “It has never been a revolution, but a European conspiracy”.
Its instigator? Berlusconi names a country and a man, “France and its then
president, Nicolas Sarkozy”.
“French planes attacked Libya well before the decision
of the UN Security Council,” he said, explaining that the goal for France,
immediately followed by Great Britain, was to destroy Equipment and
infrastructure of Libya, in addition to killing Gaddafi.
“France, Great Britain and the United States were
interested in what we now call” the Arab Spring “. However, having no clear
strategy for the political and social development of countries after the change
of regimes, they have been mistaken, especially with regard to Libya. Yes,
Gaddafi was a dictator. Yes, he made many mistakes, but he was the only man
capable of maintaining the unity of Libya. At the moment, we are all observing
in this country the reign of anarchy, violence and the debauchery of extremist
Islamist groups, “Berlusconi said.
According to him, the arrival of the Islamists in power
in Libya would be a “catastrophe” for the Mediterranean region.
“This will become a permanent source of instability in
the region as well as throughout the African continent. Illegal immigration
will continue, causing disputes and instability in Europe, “said the former
Italian Prime Minister.
Libya is undergoing a deep crisis since the overthrow
and assassination of its leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. A violent conflict
between the army’s moderate forces and radical Islamist parties backed by
former rebels.
Source: en.awdnews.com
France:
‘Centrist’ Macron?
Yes, a dead-center insider for global capitalism
 |
| Emmanuel Macron |
By Finian Cunningham
Everything about France’s new president Emmanuel
Macron suggests a theatrical production of hype and illusion. He is being
“sold” to the masses as an “outsider” and “centrist”, a benign liberal.
In reality, enter the economic hitman who will blow
French society apart in the service of the oligarchy.
At age 39, Macron has been described as a “political wonderboy” and France’s “youngest
leader since Napoleon Bonaparte.” The former Rothschild banker who reportedly once had the nickname “the Mozart of Finance” is now
promising to renew France and bring the nation together, where people will no
longer “vote for extremes.”
Fittingly for the Mozart of Finance, the new president
used the “grandest of backdrops for entrance on the world
stage,” when he made his victory speech on Sunday night in the courtyard
of the Louvre, noted the Financial Times. His dramatic walk to the stage
through the world-famous museum courtyard took a full four minutes. The night
lights and shadows played with Macron’s unsmiling, stoney face as he strode
purposely forward amid the strains of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. The choice of the
European Union’s national anthem, rather than France’s, is a harbinger of
Macron’s political project and the globalist interests he serves.
Geographically, the Louvre is situated midway between
the traditional political venues of the Place de la Concorde for the right, and
La Bastille for the left. Here was Macron intimating once again, as he did
during his campaign, that he represents neither right or left. He has vowed to
overturn the bipartisan structure of French politics, creating a
new “centrist” movement. Just like his other moniker of being an
"outsider,” however, this image of Macron is a deftly manicured
illusion.
Superficially, there is a semblance of variance from
the political establishment. Macron formed his En Marche (Forward) movement
only a year ago. He has never held elected political office. And until three
years ago hardly anyone had ever heard of him. Now he is to become the eighth
president of the French Fifth Republic.
Paradoxically, Donald Tusk, the head of the European
Council, congratulated the French people for “choosing liberty, equality and
fraternity, and saying no to fake news.” Paradoxical because everything
about Emmanuel Macron’s “meteoric rise” through elite banking and his
equally stellar crossover to politics smacks of fabrication and fakery. With
his elite education at the Ecole National Academie (ENA) where future French
political leaders are groomed, to his precocious elevation in investment
banking, followed by his seamless entrance into top-flight government politics,
Macron is evidently a person with powerful guiding forces behind him.
Former banking colleagues recall that he wasn’t
particularly capable in his four years at Rothschild’s while on a
multi-million-euro income. But he “mastered the art of
networking.” In a Financial Times profile published before the election, a senior banker is quoted as
saying: “What Mr Macron lacked in technical knowledge and jargon at first,
he made up for with contacts in government." Other sources recall
that “it was never quite clear who Macron worked for.”
As the Financial Times noted: “At the bank, Mr
Macron… navigated around the numerous conflicts of interest that arise in
close-knit Parisian business circles, making good use of his connections as an
Inspecteur des Finances — an elite corps of the very highest-ranking graduates
from ENA.”
After quitting private finance, Macron joined the
government of Socialist President Francois Hollande, where he at first served
as a “special advisor.” In 2014, Hollande appointed him as economy
minister where he drew up a draconian program to undermine French employment
rights in favor of corporate profits. Macron resigned from his ministerial post
only last year when he set up his own political party in anticipation of
contesting the presidential election.
Macron’s En Marche does not have any members in
parliament. His government will thus likely be comprised of patronage and
technocrats selected from years of networking in the financial and Élysée
Palace establishment. What little is known about Macron’s policies is his stated commitment to more stringent economic austerity, promises to slash €60
billion in public spending over the next five years and axe up to 120,000 state
sector jobs. He is also setting to drive through more “business
friendly” changes in labor laws that will allow bosses to more easily hire
and fire employees. He is giving companies license to negotiate increased
working hours and lower salaries outside of statutory law. So, the notion that
Macron is some kind of benign “centrist” is an insult to common
intelligence. He is a “centrist” only in the sense of illusory corporate
media branding; in objective terms, Macron is a dedicated economic hitman for global
capitalism.
Whatever one might think of his defeated rival Marine
Le Pen of the Front National, she certainly had Macron accurately summed up
when she referred to him as the “candidate of finance.” Independent
Socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was narrowly knocked out in the first round
of the election on April 23, predicts that Macron will be
a “disaster” for French society, blowing apart economic inequality
and social contracts to turn the country into the kind of poverty-wage slavery
seen in the US and Britain.
There is sound reason why the French and European
political establishment exulted in Macron’s victory. He is no outsider,
overturning the status quo for a more democratic outcome. He is in fact a
consummate insider who will pursue policies pandering to elite interests, at
the expense of the great majority.
Macron’s “centrist [sic] victory brought joy to
Europe’s political establishment,” reported the New York Times, while the
BBC informed of “palpable relief among European leaders.” Outgoing
President Francois Hollande – the most unpopular French leader ever – warmly
congratulated Macron, as did incumbent prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve and
other senior government figures. Macron had been endorsed by Hollande’s
so-called Socialist Party and the center-right Republicans. So much for his
vaunted “outsider” image. Macron was also endorsed prior to the
weekend vote by former US President Barack Obama and European
leaders, including Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and European
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
The irony of such brazen “electoral
interference” is of course that this was what such Western leaders have
accused Russia of. Again, it also shows that Macron will be
a “centrist” in more ways than is meant. He will serve as a “dead-center” advocate
of the transatlantic politics of Washington-led neoliberal capitalism and NATO
militarism. The French President-elect published a political autobiography
earlier this year entitled ‘Revolution’. The only
thing “revolutionary” about Macron’s victory is that the political
establishment has invented an image for itself that upturns reality.
The intense media marketing of Macron as
a “centrist outsider” is a coup against the meaning of words and
plain language. It is also worth noting that over 16 million French
voters abstained or spoiled their votes against the 20 million who opted for Macron. French
society, as for other Western nations, is riven by the ravages of global
capitalism. And now here comes the “Mozart of Finance” to allegedly
bring harmony from the appalling discord he and others like him have sown.
America:
“Making America
Great Again” by Reducing the World to Ashes?
“In the event
of a nuclear war, there will be no chances, there will be no survivors – all
will be obliterated… nuclear devastation is not science fiction – it is a
matter of fact. The world now stands on the brink of the final abyss. Let us
all resolve to take all possible practical steps to ensure that we do not,
through our own folly, go over the edge.” Former First Sea Lord, Lord
Louis Mountbatten (1900-1979) Strasbourg, 11 May 1979.”
As US threats ratchet up towards North Korea, the
latest hinging on the accusation that the country attempted a further ballistic
missile test on the annual Day of the Sun, the annual national holiday holiday
commemorating the birth of the country’s founder and Kim Jong Un’s
grandfather, Kim Il Sung.
Without the slightest proof produced by the US that
such a test was attempted, yet alone a nuclear one, Donald Trump’s
language and that of his fiefdom have been on the level of a bar room brawl
rather than statesmanlike. The sabre rattling, intemperate recklessness in
threatening to do “whatever it takes” with serially verbally challenged
spokesman, Sean Spicer calling the invisible test “an unsuccessful
military attack”, is sending shivers down governmental and national spines
across the globe.
“All our options are on the table”, said National
Security Advisor H.R. McMaster.
The Presidency being a family affair, Trump’s son Eric
chipped in on Fox and Friends with:
“And you saw that quite frankly in Syria and you saw
that in Afghanistan. And he will take action if he needs to take action.”
“You have to have massive backbone when it comes to
dealing with awful, awful dictators who don’t like us, don’t like our way of
life.”
Straight out of the George W. Bush handbook:
“They hate our way of life.” Wait for: “You are either
with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
But again, why no proof of North Korea’s much vaunted
threatening action? The US has: “an existing armada of spy planes and drones on
and around the Korean Peninsula.”
Moreover: “The Pentagon’s Space-Based Infrared System
(SBIRS) employs multiple types of satellites and sensors to address some of
these issues and provide greater coverage. According to defense
contractor Lockheed Martin, the constellation can watch for the heat
signature of enemy missile launches and track them in flight, gather details
about those weapons and their capabilities …
“Closer to earth, spy planes and drones are
almost constantly zipping around North Korea. The Air Force and the Army have
spy planes and unmanned reconnaissance aircraft permanently deployed in the
region …
“Satellite data links, known as Senior Span and Senior
Spur, mean the spy planes can send back some of this information back to base
while still in flight so analyst can begin picking it apart. The Air Force has
the 694th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group at Osan in part
to help ‘exploit’ this kind of data.”
There is also:
“ … the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 72, the unit overseeing
the U.S. Seventh Fleet’s aerial patrol and reconnaissance forces. P-3C Orion
and P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft and EP-3E Aries II spy planes rotate through
deployments to the unit’s bases at Naval Air Stations Atsugi and Misawa Air
Base in Japan. From there, they make routine trips to South Korea proper for
training exercises. The EP-3E Aries IIs are dedicated intelligence gathers, but
all three types could help monitor North Korean developments.”
Further:
“The RC-135S Cobra Ball and RC-135U Combat Sent have
very different missions. The Air Force’s three Cobra Balls have specialized
gear to track ballistic missile launches … The two Combat Sents have equipment
to detect and analyze electronic emissions from sites on the ground.”
It is also worth quoting former UN weapons Inspector
in Iraq, Scott Ritter back in 2002, seven months before the illegal
invasion and destruction of Iraq (ongoing) describing sophistication of
monitoring, with warning words on how politics can cause irreversible disaster:
“And we had in place means to monitor – both from vehicles
and from the air – the gamma rays that accompany attempts to enrich uranium or
plutonium. We never found anything. We can say unequivocally that the
industrial infrastructure needed by Iraq to produce nuclear weapons had been
eliminated.”
Further: “We eliminated the nuclear programme,
and for Iraq to have reconstituted it would require undertaking activities
eminently detectable by intelligence services.” Equally certain is that North
Korea’s activities are equally detectible.
“It is not just heat”, states Ritter,
“centrifuge facilities emit gamma radiation, as well as many other frequencies.
It is detectable. Iraq could not get around this.”
“Our radar detects the tests, we know what the
characteristics are, and we know there’s nothing to be worried about.”
In 2015, Scott Ritter wrote a further detailed article
with facts which surely apply to North Korea . Arriving in Iraq their ground
vehicles were accompanied above by: “… sensor-laden helicopters and U-2
high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft above and high-resolution spy satellites
providing further imagery … satellite imagery detected a still existing covert
missile force …”
He concludes:
“ … in Iraq … the end result was a war based on flawed
intelligence and baseless accusations that left many thousands dead and a
region in turmoil.”
If the US makes a nuclear attack on North Korea, the
megalomaniacal, narcissistic and seemingly frighteningly ill informed Donald
Trump – who, in an early telephone call to President Putin was reported as having
to put his hand over the mouthpiece and ask someone what the START Treaty
(Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, 4) was – could trigger the unimaginable.
“In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which
supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should
come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button.
“Such a war will not last long and none will ever
follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred
bones of the dead on and uninhabited planet.”
Israel’s New
Cultural War of Aggression
 |
| Benjamin Netanyahu |
By Richard Falk
A Small Battleground in a Large Culture War
A few weeks ago my book Palestine’s Horizon:
Toward a Just Peace was published by Pluto in Britain. I was in London and
Scotland at the time to do a series of university talks to help launch the
book. Its appearance happened to coincide with the release of a jointly
authored report commissioned by the UN Social and Economic Commission of West
Asia, giving my appearances a prominence they would not otherwise have had. The
report concluded that the evidence relating to Israeli practices toward the
Palestinian people amounted to ‘apartheid,’ as defined in international law.
There was a strong pushback by Zionist militants
threatening disruption. These threats were sufficiently intimidating to
academic administrators, that my talks at the University of East London and at
Middlesex University were cancelled on grounds of ‘health and security.’
Perhaps, these administrative decisions partly reflected the awareness that an
earlier talk of mine at LSE had indeed been sufficiently disrupted during the
discussion period that university security personnel had to remove two persons
in the audience who shouted epithets, unfurled an Israeli flag, stood up and
refused to sit down when politely asked by the moderator.
In all my years of speaking on various topics around
the world, I had never previously had events cancelled, although quite
frequently there was similar pressure exerted on university administrations,
but usually threatening financial reprisals if I was allowed to speak. What
happened in Britain is part of an increasingly nasty effort of pro-Israeli
activists to shut down debate by engaging in disruptive behavior, threats to
security, and by smearing speakers regarded as critics of Israel as
‘anti-Semites,’ and in my case as a ‘self-hating,’ even a self-loathing Jew.
Returning to the United States I encountered a new
tactic. The very same persons who disrupted in London, evidently together with
some likeminded comrades, wrote viciously derogatory reviews of my book on the
Amazon website in the U.S. and UK, giving the book the lowest rate possible
rating. This worried my publisher who indicated that how a book is rated on Amazon
affects sales very directly. I wrote a message on my Facebook timeline that my
book was being attacked in this way, and encouraged Facebook friends to submit
reviews, which had the effect of temporarily elevating my ratings. In turn, the
ultra-Zionists went back to work with one or two line screeds that made no
effort whatsoever to engage the argument of the book. In this sense, there was
a qualitative difference as the positive reviews were more thoughtful and
substantive. This was a new kind of negative experience for me. Despite
publishing many books over the course during this digital age I had never
before had a book attacked in this online manner obviously seeking to
discourage potential buyers and to demean me as an author. In effect, this campaign
is an innovative version of digital book burning, and while not as vivid
visually as a bonfire, its vindictive intentions are the same.
These two experiences, the London cancellations and
the Amazon harassments, led me to reflect more broadly on what was going on.
More significant, by far, than my experience are determined, well-financed
efforts to punish the UN for its efforts to call attention to Israeli
violations of human rights and international law, to criminalize participation
in the BDS campaign, and to redefine and deploy anti-Semitism so that its
disavowal and prevention extends to anti-Zionism and even to academic and
analytic criticism of Israel’s policies and practices, which is how I am
situated within this expanding zone of opprobrium. Israel has been acting
against human rights NGOs within its own borders, denying entry to BDS
supporters, and even virtually prohibiting foreign tourists from visiting the
West Bank or Gaza. In a remarkable display of unity all 100 U.S. senators
recently overcame the polarized atmosphere in Washington to join in sending an
arrogant letter to the new UN Secretary General, António Guterres,
demanding a more friendly, blue washing, approach to Israel at the UN and
threatening financial consequences if their outrageous views were not heeded.
Israel’s most ardent and powerful backers are
transforming the debate on Israel/Palestine policy into a cultural war of
aggression. This new kind of war has been launched with the encouragement and
backing of the Israeli government, given ideological support by such extremist
pressure groups as UN Watch, GO Monitor, AIPAC, and a host of others. This
cultural war is implemented at street levels by flame throwing militants that
resort to symbolic forms of violence. The adverse consequences for academic
freedom and freedom of thought in a democratic society should not be
underestimated. A very negative precedent is being set in several Western
countries. Leading governments are collaborating with extremists to shut down
constructive debate on a sensitive policy issue affecting the lives and
well-being of a long oppressed people.
There are two further dimensions of these developments
worth pondering:
(1) In recent years Israel has been losing the
Legitimacy War being waged by the Palestinians, what Israeli think tanks call
‘the delegitimation project,’ and these UN bashing and personal smears are the
desperate moves of a defeated adversary in relation to the moral and legal
dimensions of the Palestinian struggle for rights. In effect, the Israeli
government and its support groups have given up almost all efforts to respond
substantively, and concentrate their remaining ammunition on wounding
messengers who bear witness and doing their best to weaken the authority and
capabilities of the UN so as to discredit substantive initiatives;
(2) while this pathetic spectacle sucks the oxygen
from responses of righteous indignation, attention is diverted from the
prolonged ordeal of suffering that has long been imposed on the Palestinian
people as a result of Israel’s unlawful practices and policies, as well as its
crimes against humanity, in the form of apartheid, collective punishment,
ethnic cleansing, and many others. The real institutional scandal is not that
the UN is obsessed with Israel but rather that it is blocked from taking action
that might exert sufficient pressure on Israel to induce the dismantling of
apartheid structures relied upon to subjugate, displace, and dispossess the
Palestinian people over the course of more than 70 years with no end in sight.
Richard Falk is an international law and
international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty
years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the
local campus of the University of California in Global and International
Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
He initiated this blog partly in celebration of his 80th birthday.
