Leading manufacturing companies in Ghana, ought to appeal to all the political parties in the country, to make the renewable power sector an entirely tax-free one. Businesses in the sector's value-chain, ought to be allowed to import renewable energy products into Ghana, without any taxes being levied on them whatsoever.
That will enable private-sector businesses, particularly those in the national economy's hard-pressed manufacturing sector, to purchase less expensive solar power systems with battery storage - and in effect have nanogrids installed on their premises to enable them continue operating even when there are power outages in the national grid.
Will that not help those mostly-distressed entities to maintain relatively higher productivity levels than is currently the case with the multidimensional challenges faced by our national economy's power sector? And if manufacturing companies are able to be more productive, because they can operate even when there are power outages, will that not result in higher GDP figures for Ghana too?
Perhaps dynamic and innovative Ghanaian manufacturing enterprises like Kasapreko Company Limited, ought to consider approaching renewable power companies such as Aquion Energy Inc., in their quest for offgrid energy independence - to free them from the tyranny of the power sector companies that generate, transmit and distribute electricity in Ghana.
This blog hopes that the culled Marketwired press release posted below will spark interest in the adoption of leading-edge solar systems with battery storage by the captains of industry in Ghana.
Please read on:
"PITTSBURGH, PA--(Marketwired - Sep 12, 2016) - Aquion Energy, Inc., the manufacturer of Aqueous Hybrid Ion (AHI™) batteries and energy storage systems, Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation, and Azimuth Energy, a solar-energy and energy-efficiency engineering and construction company, today announced completion of an innovative AC/DC nanogrid at the Illinois Institute of Technology's (IIT) Keating Sports Center. The nanogrid, which was designed and installed by Azimuth Energy, is a combined solar plus energy storage system that uses Aquion Aspen batteries for storage and Schneider power control electronics for energy management.
IIT nanogrid energy storage systemEnergy storage system at IIT nanogrid
"This is the future of distributed generation, where isolated loads powered by renewables combined with energy storage can stand alone and operate without the grid," said Tim Poor, chief commercial officer of Aquion Energy. "Our safe and sustainable Aspen batteries are the optimal choice for long-duration storage and deep daily cycling, from nanogrids like this one at IIT to microgrids, island communities, and other nanogrids such as telecom base stations."
The IIT nanogrid is unique because it supports both alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) loads. During the day, the solar array directly powers the highly efficient DC LED lighting systems and AC loads, while simultaneously charging the batteries. Any excess solar energy can be exported to the grid. In the event of a grid outage, the batteries and solar panels deliver energy to the system 24/7.
"Schneider Electric has always been at the forefront of researching energy management technologies and solutions for microgrids. We were a proud partner in this innovative project, ready to demonstrate the benefits of the flexibility and intelligence of our Conext XW+ family of products. It supports multi-mode operation to create a perfect test-bed for validating a true hybrid system with mixed energy sources and loads on DC and AC distribution," said Xavier Datin, vice president of solar off-grid and residential at Schneider Electric.
"This project will greatly increase energy efficiency, as well as provide critical backup power in case of an outage," said Dr. Mohammad Shahidehpour, Ph.D, IIT's Director of the Robert W. Galvin Center for Electricity Innovation. "In case of emergencies, we will be able to separate the Keating Center from the rest of IIT's grid, while maintaining full power to the facility. We're very pleased with the benefits derived from this project and the innovative technologies that have been implemented."
Although the Keating nanogrid has a connection to the campus microgrid, it is engineered to operate autonomously using only solar and batteries, as an islanded off-grid system. The nanogrid is a demonstration of how a solar plus storage system can provide resilient electricity for critical building loads during power outages, such as police stations and hospitals. In the case of an outage, any building with a nanogrid could continue to be powered by its own sustainable, self-generated electricity. The nanogrid also allows building operators to respond to their power demand and control how and when they use power from the microgrid -- and ultimately from the utility.
iit sports center nanogridIIT Keating Sports Center
"This project was a fun challenge that stretched all our knowledge of microgrids," said Marc Lopata, president of Azimuth Energy. "The Keating nanogrid will provide a reliable and versatile platform for future research by the IIT Galvin Center under the direction of Dr. Shahidehpour. We had less than our expected share of surprises, and I attribute that to the functionality, quality control, and support from Aquion and Schneider."
Aquion's Aspen batteries are clean, sustainable, and long-lasting, can operate at high ambient temperatures, and do not degrade from partial state of charge cycling. Aspen batteries have a unique and environmentally friendly electrochemical design and are the first and only batteries in the world to be Cradle to Cradle Certified™.
The Schneider power electronics that were provided include the Conext XW+ 6848 Hybrid Inverter and the Conext XW MPPT80-600 Charge Controller.
Aquion Energy
Aquion Energy is the manufacturer of proprietary Aqueous Hybrid Ion (AHI™) batteries and battery systems for long-duration, stationary energy storage applications. Aquion's Aspen product line is optimized for daily deep cycling for residential solar, green architecture, off-grid and microgrid, telecom towers, energy management, and grid-scale applications. Aquion's high-performance, safe, sustainable, and cost-effective batteries deliver reliability and value for customers. The company's battery systems provide flexible, modular energy storage that enables broad adoption of renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, and optimization of existing grid-tied generation assets.
Schneider Electric
Schneider Electric is the global specialist in energy management and automation. With revenues of ~EUR 27 billion in FY2015, our 160,000+ employees serve customers in over 100 countries, helping them to manage their energy and process in ways that are safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable. From the simplest of switches to complex operational systems, our technology, software and services improve the way our customers manage and automate their operations. Our connected technologies reshape industries, transform cities and enrich lives. At Schneider Electric, we call this Life Is On.
Azimuth Energy
Azimuth Energy is an engineering, construction, and development-support services company focused on helping its clients improve the financial and environmental performance of their businesses. This means reducing their energy consumption and operating expenses, managing risk, improving their bottom line and the value of their property investment. Azimuth is expert at innovative and creative solutions for solar energy, advanced technology microgrids, and energy efficiency integration. Originally founded in 2009, the Azimuth team has construction, energy, and renewable deployment experience dating back to the early 1990s. Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, with offices in London and three Caribbean locations, Azimuth has a strong team of experts who have engineered and constructed over 500 PV projects and 80 energy storage plants in the U.S. and overseas, totaling over 700 MW of power."
End of culled Marketwired press release.
Tuesday, 13 September 2016
Sunday, 11 September 2016
Suggested Reading For Dr. Bawumia & Co
Recently, it was reported in sections of the Ghanaian media that Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia, the running mate of the New Patriotic Party's (NPP) presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, had stated that members of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) seldom read.
The question there is: How many Ghanaians - including even the leading lights of the NPP - ever bother to read? One presumes that Bawumia himself is widely read - and also continues to read regularly. At least one does hope so. Ours would definitely be a better society, if most Ghanaians - particularly the younger generation - read regularly.
Good Ghanaian writers of all ages would then have the incentive to write yet more books, and thrive financially to boot, too.
At any rate, if Bawumia wants an NPP regime to be able to successfully transform the enterprise Ghana from a heavily-geared financial basket-case into a prosperous one, then to free himself from the prison of his negative experience as a career central banker, this blog humbly recommends that he downloads and reads as many of the publications by Positive Money that he possibly can. He will find that that will benefit him hugely.
For this blog's many readers, who might also be keen to do so too, they are available at: www.positivemoney.org.
They will be fascinated by the possibilities that the creation of sovereign money in transparent and accountable fashion, to spend in Ghana's real economy, holds for our country's hapless citizens who now have to struggle to survive daily, despite decades of never-ending sacrifices for the betterment of their nation - a desired outcome, which, alas, has failed to materialise: whiles Ghana's vampire-elites have seen their net worth skyrocketing into the stratosphere, in inverse proportion to the ever-deepening woes of the bottom-of-the-pyramid-masses. But I digress.
That Dr. Bawumia has caught the imagination of many of Ghana's educated urban middle-class elites, is not in doubt. However, for a tiny minority of Ghanaians, for whom lateral thinking comes naturally, it is extraordinary that Dr. Bawumia - on the surface a decent-enough gentleman who is undoubtedly highly-intelligent too - should have such a hold on a supposedly-discerning Ghanaian demographic.
The question is: What earth-shattering radical ideas does Dr. Bawumia have to transform a corruption-riddled society, lumbered with a mostly unproductive and not very honest working population (with a public-sector full of white-collar thieves having nearly 70% of total tax revenues lavished on them ironically - although they are forever embarking on strike action), into an economically well-managed and politically well-governed nation that is prosperous?
More to the point: How will the economic management team he will lead do so within the stipulated maximum two-term tenure totalling eight years that Ghana's presidents are limited to by the Constitution - but which aren't even guaranteed in what is a democracy in which free and fair elections are held every four years?
And if even eight years aren't enough for any regime to transform Ghana into a prosperous society, what hope is there that such a transformation can ever be achieved in a country groaning under the yoke of a national debt of mammoth proportions, by an NPP regime in which Bawumia serves as vice president: in what will after all be a relatively short-spanned 4-year tenure - which all Ghanaian presidents are elected initially to serve for?
Indeed, some of us can foresee the possibility of a very bleak future for a Ghana under an NPP regime, which will excel in propaganda blame-game-politricks and the self-serving politics-of-equalisation: in which excuse after excuse will be deployed to explain away every failure by the regime in power to make significant progress in fulfilling its many empty election campaign promises, as the nation sinks further into the abyss - whiles many of those in power and their cronies, as well as their extended family clan favourites, grow super-rich cunningly ripping-off Mother Ghana by stealth through special-purpose offshore legal fronts set up for precisely that purpose.
Intelligent though Bawumia is, he is nonetheless a typical Ghanaian intellectual - a breed of the species amongst whose many shortcomings include: earning academic qualifications mostly by rote-learning; seldom doing any original and creative thinking; and hardly ever being able to innovate to introduce better ways of doing things in the real world.
So why the fascination with him amongst educated Ghanaians - and why should he have such a hold on so many Ghanaians? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o. Do such Ghanaians not understand the implications of electing politicians who aren't willing to voluntarily publish their own assets, and those of their spouses, in a country blighted by endemic high-level corruption?
When has Bawumia, who never ceases to point out examples of high-level corruption in the present administration, ever offered to publicly publish his assets and those of his wife Samira - and committed to doing so again immediately after leaving office? Hmm, Oman Ghana - eyeasem serbeh o: asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa.
Would doing so not show Ghanaians that he has good intentions in seeking power - and is unlikely to amass wealth illegally if elected as Ghana's vice president?
And do Ghanaians also ever contemplate the inherent dangers in handing power to opaque political parties - which are beholden to the very vested interests that profit from the high-level corruption slowly bleeding Mother Ghana to death - which refuse to publicly publish all the sources of their election campaign funds: and list the amounts donated by each 'donor' (whom they must also identify to the world)?
What a strange lot we are. No wonder our educated urban elites have succeeded in turning Nkrumah's Ghana into a banana republic - in which millions worship at the alter of the Cult-of-the-mediocre. Pity.
Some of us would take the Dr. Mahamadu Bawumias in our midst far more seriously if at least they had track records of radical thinking that have impacted the real economy positively, to show the world. In that regard, perhaps Bawumia could be Ghana's saviour, if he were an advocate for monetary reform - and championed its cause here.
However, that he is apparently proud of his legacy as a central banker, speaks volumes about his professional world-view as a banker: He is as welded to the damaging, prevailing monetary policy orthodoxy (championed by central bankers around the globe) as the rest of them are, alas. To therefore think that he is the economic Messiah for Ghana, is pretty daft, unfortunately, if truth be told.
Be that as it may, for those in Ghana who like us are also clueless when it comes to the subject of the art and science of economics, this blog is making available information below, on the subject of monetary reform (that would definitely help transform the Ghanaian economy positively if adopted here), from the Positive Money movement's website.
We do hope that somehow, as more educated Ghanaians get to learn about what the Positive Money movement stands for, it will lead to the formation of local chapters of the International Movement for Monetary Reform (IMMR) in Ghana too.
Finally, considering the fact he will lead the economic management team if the presidential candidate of the NPP were to win this December's presidential election, some of us are of the considered view that publications by Positive Money on the subject of monetary reform, really ought to be required reading for all educated young Ghanaians - particularly the NPP's Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia.
Please read on:
"The International Movement for Monetary Reform
Statement of purpose
Changing the way money is created to serve society
We are a coalition of organisations and people from across the world, campaigning to change the way money is created.
This Statement of purpose describes what the IMMR does, and also doesn’t do.
The Problem
The IMMR believes that our money system has mutated over the years in response to technology, regulation, de-regulation, and globalisation. The result is an unfair system which does not work in the public interest.
The IMMR has identified the following problems with the current money system:
* Unsustainable indebtedness: Because all money is issued as credit, debt increases at the same rate as the money supply.
* Financial instability: Money creation is pro-cyclical – too much is created in a boom, and too little in a recession, causing the pronounced boom and bust cycle.
* Anti-democratic: Because the government relies on commercial banks to create money, the government has to borrow more, and we have to pay higher taxes.
* Perpetual expansion: In order to service large amounts of debt the economy has to grow, even when markets are saturated and resources depleted.
* Unbalanced and unproductive economy: Banks choose where new money is spent on the basis of their own profits rather than the needs of the economy.
* Inequality and the concentration of wealth: Interest payments on the entire money supply suck wealth out of the economy in to the banks.
* Bank runs, subsidies and bailouts: The banking system is unstable and unprofitable without government subsidies and guarantees.
* Unfair, monopolistic and anti-competitive: The right to create money gives banks an unfair and damaging advantage over all other parts of the economy.
The IMMR believes that the money system is not fit-for-purpose and needs updating. A well-functioning money system will provide more stable economies, which will benefit everybody.
Our Goal
The IMMR is supportive of ideas and policies which move towards our end goal. We are not dogmatic about our proposals or the way they are implemented and the detail will vary from country to country. We do believe that our end goal can only be reached when these three things have been achieved:
New money to be spent in to the economy by the Government.
A transparent and independent process for the creation of new money, which regulates the money supply according to the needs of the economy.
Stop the banks creating new money when they make loans (full-reserve banking).
The IMMR is
IMMR is a collaboration of not-for-profit organisations set up to campaign to reform the money system, both nationally, and internationally.
IMMR believes that private banks should not be able to create new money when they make loans. This is an extraordinary privilege which gives the financial sector an unfair and damaging advantage over other businesses. Banks should be restricted to providing current accounts, payment services, lending, and investing money on behalf of their savers.
This will lead to a reduction in personal and Government debt, and will help to prevent another financial crisis occurring.
The IMMR maintains a very clear and specific aim, namely to change the way the money system works.
The IMMR is not
The IMMR does not subscribe to any conspiracy theories about the money system.
The IMMR does not act on the behalf of any particular lobby or interest group.
The IMMR is not a political organisation. We don’t campaign for either a bigger or a smaller role for government. We campaign for changes to the money system which would be to the benefit of all political parties.
The IMMR is not against privately owned banks. Privately-owned banks have an important function in providing payment services, a secure place for our money, investment opportunities, and to lend us money.
The IMMR is not against bankers. Most people who work in banks do not understand the money system and its effects, and are simply trying to provide a service for customers and earn a living. Undoubtedly some bankers have abused their power, but this is not the root cause of our financial crisis; the root cause is our current money system.
The IMMR is not against lending, or charging interest on loans where an investor is lending their money to somebody else.
The IMMR does not believe that regulation alone can solve the problems with banking or the money system. Regulation has been shown to be ineffective, and easily reversed, but furthermore it does not alter the root causes of the problem. What is needed is legislative change.
The IMMR is not a campaign for general financial reform, alternative economics or complementary currencies. While there are many other reforms that also need to take place, the IMMR has a specific and narrow purpose – to change the national money systems in order to create fairer and more stable economies.
The IMMR does not support the use of illegal or violent means to bring about change. We campaign for the money system to be changed with minimal social and economic upheaval."
End of culled content from the Positive Money website.
The question there is: How many Ghanaians - including even the leading lights of the NPP - ever bother to read? One presumes that Bawumia himself is widely read - and also continues to read regularly. At least one does hope so. Ours would definitely be a better society, if most Ghanaians - particularly the younger generation - read regularly.
Good Ghanaian writers of all ages would then have the incentive to write yet more books, and thrive financially to boot, too.
At any rate, if Bawumia wants an NPP regime to be able to successfully transform the enterprise Ghana from a heavily-geared financial basket-case into a prosperous one, then to free himself from the prison of his negative experience as a career central banker, this blog humbly recommends that he downloads and reads as many of the publications by Positive Money that he possibly can. He will find that that will benefit him hugely.
For this blog's many readers, who might also be keen to do so too, they are available at: www.positivemoney.org.
They will be fascinated by the possibilities that the creation of sovereign money in transparent and accountable fashion, to spend in Ghana's real economy, holds for our country's hapless citizens who now have to struggle to survive daily, despite decades of never-ending sacrifices for the betterment of their nation - a desired outcome, which, alas, has failed to materialise: whiles Ghana's vampire-elites have seen their net worth skyrocketing into the stratosphere, in inverse proportion to the ever-deepening woes of the bottom-of-the-pyramid-masses. But I digress.
That Dr. Bawumia has caught the imagination of many of Ghana's educated urban middle-class elites, is not in doubt. However, for a tiny minority of Ghanaians, for whom lateral thinking comes naturally, it is extraordinary that Dr. Bawumia - on the surface a decent-enough gentleman who is undoubtedly highly-intelligent too - should have such a hold on a supposedly-discerning Ghanaian demographic.
The question is: What earth-shattering radical ideas does Dr. Bawumia have to transform a corruption-riddled society, lumbered with a mostly unproductive and not very honest working population (with a public-sector full of white-collar thieves having nearly 70% of total tax revenues lavished on them ironically - although they are forever embarking on strike action), into an economically well-managed and politically well-governed nation that is prosperous?
More to the point: How will the economic management team he will lead do so within the stipulated maximum two-term tenure totalling eight years that Ghana's presidents are limited to by the Constitution - but which aren't even guaranteed in what is a democracy in which free and fair elections are held every four years?
And if even eight years aren't enough for any regime to transform Ghana into a prosperous society, what hope is there that such a transformation can ever be achieved in a country groaning under the yoke of a national debt of mammoth proportions, by an NPP regime in which Bawumia serves as vice president: in what will after all be a relatively short-spanned 4-year tenure - which all Ghanaian presidents are elected initially to serve for?
Indeed, some of us can foresee the possibility of a very bleak future for a Ghana under an NPP regime, which will excel in propaganda blame-game-politricks and the self-serving politics-of-equalisation: in which excuse after excuse will be deployed to explain away every failure by the regime in power to make significant progress in fulfilling its many empty election campaign promises, as the nation sinks further into the abyss - whiles many of those in power and their cronies, as well as their extended family clan favourites, grow super-rich cunningly ripping-off Mother Ghana by stealth through special-purpose offshore legal fronts set up for precisely that purpose.
Intelligent though Bawumia is, he is nonetheless a typical Ghanaian intellectual - a breed of the species amongst whose many shortcomings include: earning academic qualifications mostly by rote-learning; seldom doing any original and creative thinking; and hardly ever being able to innovate to introduce better ways of doing things in the real world.
So why the fascination with him amongst educated Ghanaians - and why should he have such a hold on so many Ghanaians? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o. Do such Ghanaians not understand the implications of electing politicians who aren't willing to voluntarily publish their own assets, and those of their spouses, in a country blighted by endemic high-level corruption?
When has Bawumia, who never ceases to point out examples of high-level corruption in the present administration, ever offered to publicly publish his assets and those of his wife Samira - and committed to doing so again immediately after leaving office? Hmm, Oman Ghana - eyeasem serbeh o: asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa.
Would doing so not show Ghanaians that he has good intentions in seeking power - and is unlikely to amass wealth illegally if elected as Ghana's vice president?
And do Ghanaians also ever contemplate the inherent dangers in handing power to opaque political parties - which are beholden to the very vested interests that profit from the high-level corruption slowly bleeding Mother Ghana to death - which refuse to publicly publish all the sources of their election campaign funds: and list the amounts donated by each 'donor' (whom they must also identify to the world)?
What a strange lot we are. No wonder our educated urban elites have succeeded in turning Nkrumah's Ghana into a banana republic - in which millions worship at the alter of the Cult-of-the-mediocre. Pity.
Some of us would take the Dr. Mahamadu Bawumias in our midst far more seriously if at least they had track records of radical thinking that have impacted the real economy positively, to show the world. In that regard, perhaps Bawumia could be Ghana's saviour, if he were an advocate for monetary reform - and championed its cause here.
However, that he is apparently proud of his legacy as a central banker, speaks volumes about his professional world-view as a banker: He is as welded to the damaging, prevailing monetary policy orthodoxy (championed by central bankers around the globe) as the rest of them are, alas. To therefore think that he is the economic Messiah for Ghana, is pretty daft, unfortunately, if truth be told.
Be that as it may, for those in Ghana who like us are also clueless when it comes to the subject of the art and science of economics, this blog is making available information below, on the subject of monetary reform (that would definitely help transform the Ghanaian economy positively if adopted here), from the Positive Money movement's website.
We do hope that somehow, as more educated Ghanaians get to learn about what the Positive Money movement stands for, it will lead to the formation of local chapters of the International Movement for Monetary Reform (IMMR) in Ghana too.
Finally, considering the fact he will lead the economic management team if the presidential candidate of the NPP were to win this December's presidential election, some of us are of the considered view that publications by Positive Money on the subject of monetary reform, really ought to be required reading for all educated young Ghanaians - particularly the NPP's Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia.
Please read on:
"The International Movement for Monetary Reform
Statement of purpose
Changing the way money is created to serve society
We are a coalition of organisations and people from across the world, campaigning to change the way money is created.
This Statement of purpose describes what the IMMR does, and also doesn’t do.
The Problem
The IMMR believes that our money system has mutated over the years in response to technology, regulation, de-regulation, and globalisation. The result is an unfair system which does not work in the public interest.
The IMMR has identified the following problems with the current money system:
* Unsustainable indebtedness: Because all money is issued as credit, debt increases at the same rate as the money supply.
* Financial instability: Money creation is pro-cyclical – too much is created in a boom, and too little in a recession, causing the pronounced boom and bust cycle.
* Anti-democratic: Because the government relies on commercial banks to create money, the government has to borrow more, and we have to pay higher taxes.
* Perpetual expansion: In order to service large amounts of debt the economy has to grow, even when markets are saturated and resources depleted.
* Unbalanced and unproductive economy: Banks choose where new money is spent on the basis of their own profits rather than the needs of the economy.
* Inequality and the concentration of wealth: Interest payments on the entire money supply suck wealth out of the economy in to the banks.
* Bank runs, subsidies and bailouts: The banking system is unstable and unprofitable without government subsidies and guarantees.
* Unfair, monopolistic and anti-competitive: The right to create money gives banks an unfair and damaging advantage over all other parts of the economy.
The IMMR believes that the money system is not fit-for-purpose and needs updating. A well-functioning money system will provide more stable economies, which will benefit everybody.
Our Goal
The IMMR is supportive of ideas and policies which move towards our end goal. We are not dogmatic about our proposals or the way they are implemented and the detail will vary from country to country. We do believe that our end goal can only be reached when these three things have been achieved:
New money to be spent in to the economy by the Government.
A transparent and independent process for the creation of new money, which regulates the money supply according to the needs of the economy.
Stop the banks creating new money when they make loans (full-reserve banking).
The IMMR is
IMMR is a collaboration of not-for-profit organisations set up to campaign to reform the money system, both nationally, and internationally.
IMMR believes that private banks should not be able to create new money when they make loans. This is an extraordinary privilege which gives the financial sector an unfair and damaging advantage over other businesses. Banks should be restricted to providing current accounts, payment services, lending, and investing money on behalf of their savers.
This will lead to a reduction in personal and Government debt, and will help to prevent another financial crisis occurring.
The IMMR maintains a very clear and specific aim, namely to change the way the money system works.
The IMMR is not
The IMMR does not subscribe to any conspiracy theories about the money system.
The IMMR does not act on the behalf of any particular lobby or interest group.
The IMMR is not a political organisation. We don’t campaign for either a bigger or a smaller role for government. We campaign for changes to the money system which would be to the benefit of all political parties.
The IMMR is not against privately owned banks. Privately-owned banks have an important function in providing payment services, a secure place for our money, investment opportunities, and to lend us money.
The IMMR is not against bankers. Most people who work in banks do not understand the money system and its effects, and are simply trying to provide a service for customers and earn a living. Undoubtedly some bankers have abused their power, but this is not the root cause of our financial crisis; the root cause is our current money system.
The IMMR is not against lending, or charging interest on loans where an investor is lending their money to somebody else.
The IMMR does not believe that regulation alone can solve the problems with banking or the money system. Regulation has been shown to be ineffective, and easily reversed, but furthermore it does not alter the root causes of the problem. What is needed is legislative change.
The IMMR is not a campaign for general financial reform, alternative economics or complementary currencies. While there are many other reforms that also need to take place, the IMMR has a specific and narrow purpose – to change the national money systems in order to create fairer and more stable economies.
The IMMR does not support the use of illegal or violent means to bring about change. We campaign for the money system to be changed with minimal social and economic upheaval."
End of culled content from the Positive Money website.
Wednesday, 7 September 2016
National ID System For Ghana: Let Us Follow The Example Of Cameroon
Today we are posting a press release fom the digital security company, Gemalto, which we have culled from the website of the African Press Organisation (APO).
Our hope, in so doing, is that it will inspire all the members of Ghana's political class to work together, to finally move ahead to complete the stalled project to have a national ID system for Ghana.
Surely, if the ruling elites of Cameroon can muster the political will to undertake such a vital initiative in an age of global terrorism, Ghana's ruling elites ought to do so too - especially as the footprint of terrorist organisations active in other parts of the world now covers the West African subregion? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o.
Please read on:
''Cameroon tackles Identity Fraud with Gemalto’s Advanced eID Solution
Surpasses 100 references in Government Programs
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, September 7, 2016/ -- Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) (www.Gemalto.com), the world leader in digital security, is supporting DGSN, the General Delegation for National Security in Cameroon, in tackling fraud and document counterfeiting (http://apo.af/E0hqwI) with the deployment of Sealys Color in PC for polycarbonate eID cards, a first in Africa.
This innovative approach consists in laser engraving high resolution color photos into the durable Sealys card body to provide Cameroon with the benefits of irrefutable proof of identity (http://apo.af/zqOSsd) for its 20 million citizens. Gemalto also contributes to the country’s comprehensive identity modernization program with its Coesys enrolment solution, its personalization platform implementing color laser engraving technology and eID verification terminals (http://apo.af/Ezg8xL) .
Gemalto’s Sealys Color in PC eID offers DGSN significant security benefits compared to solutions that simply print photographs on the surface of a card. Furthermore, the tamper-proof image is combined with a digital copy of the card holder’s fingerprint stored within the embedded microprocessor. Additional levels of protection are provided by a series of visible and invisible document security features (http://apo.af/zrLjpv). The card body, which is entirely made of polycarbongate foils, guarantees a minimum ten year service life with outstanding resistance to extremes of temperature and mechanical stress.
Gemalto will enable DGSN to operate the fully integrated system autonomously via a comprehensive training, maintenance and knowledge transfer program. DGSN will therefore be in a position to take full responsibility for enrolling citizens and issuing personalized eID cards, then verifying eIDs on the terminals supplied.
“Gemalto is the perfect match for our ambitious project goals. The end to end solution will give us full flexibility and autonomy to manage and operate our new national eID program in house,” said Martin Mbarga Nguele, the General Delegate to the National Security, Head of DGSN (http://apo.af/D61dng). “Establishing and verifying every citizen’s identity is at the heart of a successful and secure nation state, and we are confident this solution will help us achieve this key strategic objective.”
“Representing the first deployment of Color in Polycarbonate in Africa, the solution chosen by DGSN puts Cameroon at the very forefront of the world’s secure document programs,” said Frédéric Trojani, Executive Vice President Government Programs at Gemalto. “As well as a technological leap towards greater security and efficiency, it will provide the foundation of trust on which a modern digital society and economy can be built. With this new contract, Gemalto surpasses 100 references in government programs.”
Distributed by APO on behalf of Gemalto.
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Media Contacts:
Philippe Benitez
North America
+1 512 257 3869
philippe.benitez@gemalto.com
Peggy Edoire
Europe & CIS
+33 4 42 36 45 40
peggy.edoire@gemalto.com
Vivian Liang
大中华地区 (Greater China)
+86 1059373046
vivian.liang@gemalto.com
Ernesto Haikewitsch
Latin America
+55 11 5105 9220
ernesto.haikewitsch@gemalto.com
Kristel Teyras
Middle East & Africa
+33 1 55 01 57 89
kristel.teyras@gemalto.com
Shintaro Suzuki
Asia Pacific
+65 6317 8266
shintaro.suzuki@gemalto.com
About Gemalto:
Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) (www.Gemalto.com) is the global leader in digital security, with 2015 annual revenues of €3.1 billion and customers in over 180 countries. We bring trust to an increasingly connected world.
Our technologies and services enable businesses and governments to authenticate identities and protect data so they stay safe and enable services in personal devices, connected objects, the cloud and in between.
Gemalto’s solutions are at the heart of modern life, from payment to enterprise security and the internet of things. We authenticate people, transactions and objects, encrypt data and create value for software – enabling our clients to deliver secure digital services for billions of individuals and things.
Our 14,000+ employees operate out of 118 offices, 45 personalization and data centers, and 27 research and software development centers located in 49 countries.
For more information visit www.Gemalto.com or follow @gemalto on Twitter.
SOURCE : Gemalto"
End of quoted Gemalto press release culled from APO.
In addressing this particular blog post to all the members of Ghana's political class, this blog will borrow a pidgin English phrase made popular once upon a time, by Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) football commentators, when handing over commentary to Joe Lartey, one of the best English language football commentators ever to come out of the African continent: "Over to you, Joe Lartey!"
Every politician in Ghana knows what it means in the context in which this blog is using that pidgin English phrase to address them: So let them get on with it and get Ghanaians a modern national ID system as soon as practicable - by learning from Cameroon's shinning example.
Our hope, in so doing, is that it will inspire all the members of Ghana's political class to work together, to finally move ahead to complete the stalled project to have a national ID system for Ghana.
Surely, if the ruling elites of Cameroon can muster the political will to undertake such a vital initiative in an age of global terrorism, Ghana's ruling elites ought to do so too - especially as the footprint of terrorist organisations active in other parts of the world now covers the West African subregion? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o.
Please read on:
''Cameroon tackles Identity Fraud with Gemalto’s Advanced eID Solution
Surpasses 100 references in Government Programs
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, September 7, 2016/ -- Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) (www.Gemalto.com), the world leader in digital security, is supporting DGSN, the General Delegation for National Security in Cameroon, in tackling fraud and document counterfeiting (http://apo.af/E0hqwI) with the deployment of Sealys Color in PC for polycarbonate eID cards, a first in Africa.
This innovative approach consists in laser engraving high resolution color photos into the durable Sealys card body to provide Cameroon with the benefits of irrefutable proof of identity (http://apo.af/zqOSsd) for its 20 million citizens. Gemalto also contributes to the country’s comprehensive identity modernization program with its Coesys enrolment solution, its personalization platform implementing color laser engraving technology and eID verification terminals (http://apo.af/Ezg8xL) .
Gemalto’s Sealys Color in PC eID offers DGSN significant security benefits compared to solutions that simply print photographs on the surface of a card. Furthermore, the tamper-proof image is combined with a digital copy of the card holder’s fingerprint stored within the embedded microprocessor. Additional levels of protection are provided by a series of visible and invisible document security features (http://apo.af/zrLjpv). The card body, which is entirely made of polycarbongate foils, guarantees a minimum ten year service life with outstanding resistance to extremes of temperature and mechanical stress.
Gemalto will enable DGSN to operate the fully integrated system autonomously via a comprehensive training, maintenance and knowledge transfer program. DGSN will therefore be in a position to take full responsibility for enrolling citizens and issuing personalized eID cards, then verifying eIDs on the terminals supplied.
“Gemalto is the perfect match for our ambitious project goals. The end to end solution will give us full flexibility and autonomy to manage and operate our new national eID program in house,” said Martin Mbarga Nguele, the General Delegate to the National Security, Head of DGSN (http://apo.af/D61dng). “Establishing and verifying every citizen’s identity is at the heart of a successful and secure nation state, and we are confident this solution will help us achieve this key strategic objective.”
“Representing the first deployment of Color in Polycarbonate in Africa, the solution chosen by DGSN puts Cameroon at the very forefront of the world’s secure document programs,” said Frédéric Trojani, Executive Vice President Government Programs at Gemalto. “As well as a technological leap towards greater security and efficiency, it will provide the foundation of trust on which a modern digital society and economy can be built. With this new contract, Gemalto surpasses 100 references in government programs.”
Distributed by APO on behalf of Gemalto.
View multimedia content
Media Contacts:
Philippe Benitez
North America
+1 512 257 3869
philippe.benitez@gemalto.com
Peggy Edoire
Europe & CIS
+33 4 42 36 45 40
peggy.edoire@gemalto.com
Vivian Liang
大中华地区 (Greater China)
+86 1059373046
vivian.liang@gemalto.com
Ernesto Haikewitsch
Latin America
+55 11 5105 9220
ernesto.haikewitsch@gemalto.com
Kristel Teyras
Middle East & Africa
+33 1 55 01 57 89
kristel.teyras@gemalto.com
Shintaro Suzuki
Asia Pacific
+65 6317 8266
shintaro.suzuki@gemalto.com
About Gemalto:
Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) (www.Gemalto.com) is the global leader in digital security, with 2015 annual revenues of €3.1 billion and customers in over 180 countries. We bring trust to an increasingly connected world.
Our technologies and services enable businesses and governments to authenticate identities and protect data so they stay safe and enable services in personal devices, connected objects, the cloud and in between.
Gemalto’s solutions are at the heart of modern life, from payment to enterprise security and the internet of things. We authenticate people, transactions and objects, encrypt data and create value for software – enabling our clients to deliver secure digital services for billions of individuals and things.
Our 14,000+ employees operate out of 118 offices, 45 personalization and data centers, and 27 research and software development centers located in 49 countries.
For more information visit www.Gemalto.com or follow @gemalto on Twitter.
SOURCE : Gemalto"
End of quoted Gemalto press release culled from APO.
In addressing this particular blog post to all the members of Ghana's political class, this blog will borrow a pidgin English phrase made popular once upon a time, by Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) football commentators, when handing over commentary to Joe Lartey, one of the best English language football commentators ever to come out of the African continent: "Over to you, Joe Lartey!"
Every politician in Ghana knows what it means in the context in which this blog is using that pidgin English phrase to address them: So let them get on with it and get Ghanaians a modern national ID system as soon as practicable - by learning from Cameroon's shinning example.
Sunday, 4 September 2016
Great To Be Back Blogging Again!
This blog has been to hell and back. Since we posted our last article on the 19th of August, 2016, we have been fighting to protect part of our portfolio of freehold farmlands - from very determined illegal gold miners, illegal loggers and illegal sand-winners.
Unfortunately, a number of those wealthy crooks succeeded in using some criminally-minded members of our extended family (Nii Thompson and Elizabeth Thompson) to encroach on the late P. E. Thompson's estate's freehold farmlands at Thompsonakura - five minutes as the crow flies off the Accra-Kumasi highway at Kyekyewre (between Teacher Mante and Asuboi) - and our freehold upland evergreen rainforest property in the Akyem Juaso section of the Atewa Range.
Naturally, we have no intention of allowing those greed-filled conspirators to get away with what amounts to a crime against humanity. Ever.
For participating in the brutal gang-rape of Mother Nature, Messrs Kwame Thompson, John Awuku (aka Red) and the sly and evassive CEO of Hagnella Mining Company Limited, as well as his assigns (all of them thoroughly dishonest individuals to a man - judging by the many barefaced lies they have told police investigators), who are now using a 32-tonne excavator to destroy a gem of nature in the Akyem Juaso section of the Atewa upland evergreen rainforest that has taken millions of years to evolve, will all face the music in due course.
The long arm of the law will eventually catch up with all of them. And, in the end, they will get their just desserts as sure as day follows night - no matter how long it takes and regardless of the number of dishonest public officials they bribe to cover up their criminal activities in our freehold properties.
Naturally, we will keep readers posted on further developments as we battle our way through Ghana's Byzantine system's maze of dysfunctional regulatory bodies, and interact with its small army of hard-of-hearing public officials - to get justice for what are egregious violations of the laws and regulations governing gold mining and sand-winning.
Just as an aside, talking of our Byzantine system, it appears that that gullible non-thinking-demographic amongst the Ghanaian populace (teeming with millions, who alas wear blinkers permanently, and whose motto in politics appears to be: "My party, my tribe, right or wrong!"), will fall for the empty election campaign promises of the corruption-riddled two major political parties - the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the largest opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) - that make up the dissembling NDC/NPP duopoly so dominant in our nation's politics since the 4th Republic came into being in 1992.
Speaking personally - as someone who has close connections with smallholder farmers - in my humble view, any politician who talks about boosting agricultural production in Ghana, without first giving a firm commitment to end the environmentally-destructive lawlessness that illegal sand-winning, illegal gold mining and illegal logging represent, neither ought to be taken seriously nor trusted by Ghanaians.
At a time when global climate change is already impacting Ghana's agricultural sector so negatively, the activities of those engaged in illegal logging, illegal gold mining and illegal sand-winning are destroying vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside - denuding a sizeable chunk of the landscape of the Ghanaian landmass resulting in the loss of significant forest cover, poisoning soils, streams, rivers and groundwater sources.
How can politicians who give succour to illegal gold miners - by promising them legitimacy should they win power - possibly be taken seriously by discerning folk: when those selfsame super-ruthless criminals are destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of farmlands with total impunity today? Does an apocalyptic future not await rural Ghana, instead?
How can we possibly boost cocoa production, for example, in such circumstances - when countless smallholder cocoa farms are disappearing as a result of the greed and ruthlessness of illegal gold miners, I ask? Ghanaian politicians need to understand that they cannot fool Ghanaians all the time - for we aren't all fools in this country. Luckily, some Ghanaian can put two and two together - and know it equals four: not six.
Furthermore, what reasoning-being in this country of contradictions dos not understand that prolonged drought periods and regular flash floods (resulting from extreme wheather) in an age of global climate change have increased the rate at which dams in the tropics silt up and dry out?
(Incidentally, governments setting up factories in all Ghana's districts and constructing dams in each village in the north, is not a bottom-up developmental model. It is a classic top-down approach to economic development - a costly folly that has failed wherever in the developing world it has been inflicted on those in the base-of-the-pyramid demographic. But I digress.)
The question is: Are those super-clever politicians promising to construct dams in every village in parts of the north of our nation - particularly when we lack a maintenance culture in this country - not simply going to end up as case studies in the Ghanaian political world, of winning candidates whose election campaign promises, turned out to be good intentions used to pave the road to the hellish scenario of hundreds of silted-up and dried-out small dams in villages across the north: with no available cash to rehabilate them? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o!
Some of us will take such politicians more seriously if they promised to make soft loans available to enable farmers across the country acquire simple rain water harvesting and storage systems. Ditto make it possible for the hundreds of frustrated micro-entrepreneurs (who exist in their thousands in all the districts of our country incidentally), whose plans are currently in limbo because of financial constraints, to access such funds too.
Many of those micro-entrepreneurs are in that unfortunate situation simply because they cannot afford the fees needed to pay for obtaining needed certification from the Ghana Standards Authority, and the Food and Drugs Authority. It wouldn't take much by way of start-up cash to give them a helping hand and enable them lift themselves out poverty by their own bootstraps, would it?
Will the availability of such soft loans not place all of them in a position to enable them start producing and selling the sundry products they are easily capable of manufacturing once the needed certification is obtained, I ask?
Above all, in light of the many challenges facing the industry, which result from global climate change, politicians across the spectrum ought to understand what is actually needed to boost production in farms and agro-industries nationwide, is to make the entire agricultural sector of the national economy (not just cocoa farming) tax-free - including all the sector's various agricultural input businesses' value-chains.
Smallholder farmers are fiercely independent and hardworking individuals who don't need handouts from anybody - they simply need government policies that create a conducive economic environment for them to thrive and prosper in: such as the availability of low interest rates for both short-term and long-term loans.
Finally, it is vital that our current leaders take the menace of those committing environmental crimes far more seriously than they currently are - for it is not inconceivable that one day they will become the local allies of terrorist groups looking for new sources of cash to fund their global activities. It was the desire to loot diamonds and timber that fueled the brutal fratricidal civil wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone, let us not forget.
That is why it really ought to be made mandatory that all Environmental Protection Agency and Minerals Commission mining permits, for small-scale gold mining companies, should be issued by those institutions, only after actual site visits to ascertain the facts-on-the-ground, as narrated in Environmental Impact Assessment documents (attached to applications for those selfsame permits and licenses), have been undertaken by their officials.
Those officials ought to be made personally responsible for all fraudulently acquired such permits - and should be prosecuted for same together with those wealthy criminal syndicate members who obtain them by corrupting public officials: and then go on to use them as 'legal' cover to engage in illegal gold mining, illegal sand-winning and illegal logging across the country.
Furthermore, why do those in charge of national security not form grassroots volunteer forest protection guards, made up of local environmental activists in fringe forest communities - such as those at Akyem Juaso and Akyem Saamang - who are keen to protect forests: which will work with small mixed detachments from the Ghana Armed Forces' and the Ghana Police Services' Special Forces?
Equipped with UAV drones that have cameras and night vision kit, it will be possible for this government to lay the foundations that will finally enable our country to halt the criminal activities of illegal gold miners, illegal sand-winners and illegal loggers across Ghana, once and for all.
One hopes that the dynamic deputy minister of lands and natural resources, Dr. Mintah Akandoh, whom I met last Friday, and the hard-working minister in charge of Ghana's Eastern Region, Ms. Mavis Frimpong, whom I am yet to meet, will take note of this idea and try it out at Akyem Juaso as an experiment - which if successful can then be replicated nationwide.
One also hopes that both ministers will ask the deputy head of small-scale mining at the Minerals Commission, Mr. Orlands Kofi Tetteh, to give them a copy of the report he wrote when a team from the Minerals Commission, led by its then head, Mr. Aryee, paid a working visit to the P. E. Thompson estate's 14-square mile upland evergreen freehold rainforest property, in the Akyem Juaso section of the Atewa Range, years ago.
It is great to be back blogging once more - and this blog is eternally grateful to the many readers who contacted us during the hiatus to find out if all was well with us. We are very well indeed, considering - and are deeply appreciative of their concern for this cantankerous old foggey. Mu yinaa ye bue!
Unfortunately, a number of those wealthy crooks succeeded in using some criminally-minded members of our extended family (Nii Thompson and Elizabeth Thompson) to encroach on the late P. E. Thompson's estate's freehold farmlands at Thompsonakura - five minutes as the crow flies off the Accra-Kumasi highway at Kyekyewre (between Teacher Mante and Asuboi) - and our freehold upland evergreen rainforest property in the Akyem Juaso section of the Atewa Range.
Naturally, we have no intention of allowing those greed-filled conspirators to get away with what amounts to a crime against humanity. Ever.
For participating in the brutal gang-rape of Mother Nature, Messrs Kwame Thompson, John Awuku (aka Red) and the sly and evassive CEO of Hagnella Mining Company Limited, as well as his assigns (all of them thoroughly dishonest individuals to a man - judging by the many barefaced lies they have told police investigators), who are now using a 32-tonne excavator to destroy a gem of nature in the Akyem Juaso section of the Atewa upland evergreen rainforest that has taken millions of years to evolve, will all face the music in due course.
The long arm of the law will eventually catch up with all of them. And, in the end, they will get their just desserts as sure as day follows night - no matter how long it takes and regardless of the number of dishonest public officials they bribe to cover up their criminal activities in our freehold properties.
Naturally, we will keep readers posted on further developments as we battle our way through Ghana's Byzantine system's maze of dysfunctional regulatory bodies, and interact with its small army of hard-of-hearing public officials - to get justice for what are egregious violations of the laws and regulations governing gold mining and sand-winning.
Just as an aside, talking of our Byzantine system, it appears that that gullible non-thinking-demographic amongst the Ghanaian populace (teeming with millions, who alas wear blinkers permanently, and whose motto in politics appears to be: "My party, my tribe, right or wrong!"), will fall for the empty election campaign promises of the corruption-riddled two major political parties - the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the largest opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) - that make up the dissembling NDC/NPP duopoly so dominant in our nation's politics since the 4th Republic came into being in 1992.
Speaking personally - as someone who has close connections with smallholder farmers - in my humble view, any politician who talks about boosting agricultural production in Ghana, without first giving a firm commitment to end the environmentally-destructive lawlessness that illegal sand-winning, illegal gold mining and illegal logging represent, neither ought to be taken seriously nor trusted by Ghanaians.
At a time when global climate change is already impacting Ghana's agricultural sector so negatively, the activities of those engaged in illegal logging, illegal gold mining and illegal sand-winning are destroying vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside - denuding a sizeable chunk of the landscape of the Ghanaian landmass resulting in the loss of significant forest cover, poisoning soils, streams, rivers and groundwater sources.
How can politicians who give succour to illegal gold miners - by promising them legitimacy should they win power - possibly be taken seriously by discerning folk: when those selfsame super-ruthless criminals are destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of farmlands with total impunity today? Does an apocalyptic future not await rural Ghana, instead?
How can we possibly boost cocoa production, for example, in such circumstances - when countless smallholder cocoa farms are disappearing as a result of the greed and ruthlessness of illegal gold miners, I ask? Ghanaian politicians need to understand that they cannot fool Ghanaians all the time - for we aren't all fools in this country. Luckily, some Ghanaian can put two and two together - and know it equals four: not six.
Furthermore, what reasoning-being in this country of contradictions dos not understand that prolonged drought periods and regular flash floods (resulting from extreme wheather) in an age of global climate change have increased the rate at which dams in the tropics silt up and dry out?
(Incidentally, governments setting up factories in all Ghana's districts and constructing dams in each village in the north, is not a bottom-up developmental model. It is a classic top-down approach to economic development - a costly folly that has failed wherever in the developing world it has been inflicted on those in the base-of-the-pyramid demographic. But I digress.)
The question is: Are those super-clever politicians promising to construct dams in every village in parts of the north of our nation - particularly when we lack a maintenance culture in this country - not simply going to end up as case studies in the Ghanaian political world, of winning candidates whose election campaign promises, turned out to be good intentions used to pave the road to the hellish scenario of hundreds of silted-up and dried-out small dams in villages across the north: with no available cash to rehabilate them? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o!
Some of us will take such politicians more seriously if they promised to make soft loans available to enable farmers across the country acquire simple rain water harvesting and storage systems. Ditto make it possible for the hundreds of frustrated micro-entrepreneurs (who exist in their thousands in all the districts of our country incidentally), whose plans are currently in limbo because of financial constraints, to access such funds too.
Many of those micro-entrepreneurs are in that unfortunate situation simply because they cannot afford the fees needed to pay for obtaining needed certification from the Ghana Standards Authority, and the Food and Drugs Authority. It wouldn't take much by way of start-up cash to give them a helping hand and enable them lift themselves out poverty by their own bootstraps, would it?
Will the availability of such soft loans not place all of them in a position to enable them start producing and selling the sundry products they are easily capable of manufacturing once the needed certification is obtained, I ask?
Above all, in light of the many challenges facing the industry, which result from global climate change, politicians across the spectrum ought to understand what is actually needed to boost production in farms and agro-industries nationwide, is to make the entire agricultural sector of the national economy (not just cocoa farming) tax-free - including all the sector's various agricultural input businesses' value-chains.
Smallholder farmers are fiercely independent and hardworking individuals who don't need handouts from anybody - they simply need government policies that create a conducive economic environment for them to thrive and prosper in: such as the availability of low interest rates for both short-term and long-term loans.
Finally, it is vital that our current leaders take the menace of those committing environmental crimes far more seriously than they currently are - for it is not inconceivable that one day they will become the local allies of terrorist groups looking for new sources of cash to fund their global activities. It was the desire to loot diamonds and timber that fueled the brutal fratricidal civil wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone, let us not forget.
That is why it really ought to be made mandatory that all Environmental Protection Agency and Minerals Commission mining permits, for small-scale gold mining companies, should be issued by those institutions, only after actual site visits to ascertain the facts-on-the-ground, as narrated in Environmental Impact Assessment documents (attached to applications for those selfsame permits and licenses), have been undertaken by their officials.
Those officials ought to be made personally responsible for all fraudulently acquired such permits - and should be prosecuted for same together with those wealthy criminal syndicate members who obtain them by corrupting public officials: and then go on to use them as 'legal' cover to engage in illegal gold mining, illegal sand-winning and illegal logging across the country.
Furthermore, why do those in charge of national security not form grassroots volunteer forest protection guards, made up of local environmental activists in fringe forest communities - such as those at Akyem Juaso and Akyem Saamang - who are keen to protect forests: which will work with small mixed detachments from the Ghana Armed Forces' and the Ghana Police Services' Special Forces?
Equipped with UAV drones that have cameras and night vision kit, it will be possible for this government to lay the foundations that will finally enable our country to halt the criminal activities of illegal gold miners, illegal sand-winners and illegal loggers across Ghana, once and for all.
One hopes that the dynamic deputy minister of lands and natural resources, Dr. Mintah Akandoh, whom I met last Friday, and the hard-working minister in charge of Ghana's Eastern Region, Ms. Mavis Frimpong, whom I am yet to meet, will take note of this idea and try it out at Akyem Juaso as an experiment - which if successful can then be replicated nationwide.
One also hopes that both ministers will ask the deputy head of small-scale mining at the Minerals Commission, Mr. Orlands Kofi Tetteh, to give them a copy of the report he wrote when a team from the Minerals Commission, led by its then head, Mr. Aryee, paid a working visit to the P. E. Thompson estate's 14-square mile upland evergreen freehold rainforest property, in the Akyem Juaso section of the Atewa Range, years ago.
It is great to be back blogging once more - and this blog is eternally grateful to the many readers who contacted us during the hiatus to find out if all was well with us. We are very well indeed, considering - and are deeply appreciative of their concern for this cantankerous old foggey. Mu yinaa ye bue!
Friday, 19 August 2016
Nation-Building Is A Joint Effort That All Must Contribute To
''It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
- U.S. President Harry S. Truman
It is such a pity that many Ghanaian politicians spend so much time arguing endlessly on the airwaves of television and FM radio stations about which political party ought to take the credit for being the original source of ideas underpinning all manner of policies that led to the implementation of sundry development projects.
It has led to the sabotaging of the nation-building effort by those who find themselves in the political wilderness - so that those in power will have nothing much to show for their years in power: a nonsensical scorched earth political strategy detrimental to the well-being of Ghanaian society as a whole.
In any case, what exactly is the point of such pointless arguments - when political parties in the continent of Africa exist precisely for the purpose of formulating and carrying out beneficial policies that will transform societies across the continent into prosperous ones, when in power?
The question we should pose is: What is the nature of society that those who seek power in Ghana envision for our nation and all its people? And what are the policies they intend to pursue when elected to power that will lead to the coming into being of that particular envisioned society - and within what time-frame exactly will it come into being?
Above all, should those whose neo-liberal policies are responsible for the evolution of today's dog-eat-dog society in Ghana - that dysfunctional society in which so many are prepared to lie, swindle and even commit ritual murder on occasion, to enable them get to the top of the greasy pole, which we are now lumbered with - still be allowed to continue taking turns to govern our nation in perpetuity?
Today, incredibly, even casual labourers are being taxed - just so that the many square-pegs-in-round-holes appointed to man top positions in the public sector can continue to live the life of Riley at their expense.
Instead of killing personal initiative in Ghana by piling on tax after tax on hardworking people merely to provide more opportunities for those who engage in egregious white collar crimes - such as siphoning taxpayers' money into private private pockets through rip-off public procurement deals - to grow super-rich at the nation's expense, why do politicians not rather think of more creative ways to fund Ghana's development through win-win public private partnerships (PPP) that do not call for the spending of any public money?
Instead of needless taxation merely to find money to develop a network of poorly constructed roads that will only end up becoming pothole-ridden, for example, why not, at a time of global climate change, give Ghanaian entrepreneurs the opportunity to build and maintain a network of durable plastic roads, which will remain pothole-free throughout their extended lifespans?
Could they not be suitably icentivisied by being given the opportunity to collect fees for the use of tolled plastic roads by motorised vehicles for a period of 25 years, during which they would be required to maintain those roads in perfect condition: failing which they will face heavy fines and if need be have their PPPs abrogated?
In other words, let us back political parties and politicians whose vision is to transform Ghana into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia - not by overburdening Ghanaians with endless taxes, but by offering Ghanaian entrepreneurs PPP opportunities, which will help bring into being an egalitarian and prosperous Ghana: in which all enjoy high living standards.
We must no longer tolerate living in an unjust and amoral society, dominated by a greedy and powerful few who constantly scheme to enable them end up owning what justly ought to belong to all Ghanaians (and therefore ought to benefit all of them equally too), by exploiting our Byzantine system for that ignoble purpose.
That is what political parties in Ghana must focus on - not never-endingarguments about who originated an idea and therefore ought to take credit for it. Nation-building is a joint effort that all must contribute to, after all, is it not?
- U.S. President Harry S. Truman
It is such a pity that many Ghanaian politicians spend so much time arguing endlessly on the airwaves of television and FM radio stations about which political party ought to take the credit for being the original source of ideas underpinning all manner of policies that led to the implementation of sundry development projects.
It has led to the sabotaging of the nation-building effort by those who find themselves in the political wilderness - so that those in power will have nothing much to show for their years in power: a nonsensical scorched earth political strategy detrimental to the well-being of Ghanaian society as a whole.
In any case, what exactly is the point of such pointless arguments - when political parties in the continent of Africa exist precisely for the purpose of formulating and carrying out beneficial policies that will transform societies across the continent into prosperous ones, when in power?
The question we should pose is: What is the nature of society that those who seek power in Ghana envision for our nation and all its people? And what are the policies they intend to pursue when elected to power that will lead to the coming into being of that particular envisioned society - and within what time-frame exactly will it come into being?
Above all, should those whose neo-liberal policies are responsible for the evolution of today's dog-eat-dog society in Ghana - that dysfunctional society in which so many are prepared to lie, swindle and even commit ritual murder on occasion, to enable them get to the top of the greasy pole, which we are now lumbered with - still be allowed to continue taking turns to govern our nation in perpetuity?
Today, incredibly, even casual labourers are being taxed - just so that the many square-pegs-in-round-holes appointed to man top positions in the public sector can continue to live the life of Riley at their expense.
Instead of killing personal initiative in Ghana by piling on tax after tax on hardworking people merely to provide more opportunities for those who engage in egregious white collar crimes - such as siphoning taxpayers' money into private private pockets through rip-off public procurement deals - to grow super-rich at the nation's expense, why do politicians not rather think of more creative ways to fund Ghana's development through win-win public private partnerships (PPP) that do not call for the spending of any public money?
Instead of needless taxation merely to find money to develop a network of poorly constructed roads that will only end up becoming pothole-ridden, for example, why not, at a time of global climate change, give Ghanaian entrepreneurs the opportunity to build and maintain a network of durable plastic roads, which will remain pothole-free throughout their extended lifespans?
Could they not be suitably icentivisied by being given the opportunity to collect fees for the use of tolled plastic roads by motorised vehicles for a period of 25 years, during which they would be required to maintain those roads in perfect condition: failing which they will face heavy fines and if need be have their PPPs abrogated?
In other words, let us back political parties and politicians whose vision is to transform Ghana into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia - not by overburdening Ghanaians with endless taxes, but by offering Ghanaian entrepreneurs PPP opportunities, which will help bring into being an egalitarian and prosperous Ghana: in which all enjoy high living standards.
We must no longer tolerate living in an unjust and amoral society, dominated by a greedy and powerful few who constantly scheme to enable them end up owning what justly ought to belong to all Ghanaians (and therefore ought to benefit all of them equally too), by exploiting our Byzantine system for that ignoble purpose.
That is what political parties in Ghana must focus on - not never-endingarguments about who originated an idea and therefore ought to take credit for it. Nation-building is a joint effort that all must contribute to, after all, is it not?
Wednesday, 17 August 2016
A Government Of National Unity, Not The NPP, Is The Alternative To The NDC
If all Ghana's registered voters were rational and intelligent beings, and deep thinkers, they would vote massively for the only presidential candidate who has signaled his intention to form a government of national unity, consisting of the finest minds in Ghana, regardless of their political backgrounds, if elected.
All such Ghanaians - where they currently live notwithstanding (be it here at home in Ghana or abroad elsewhere in the Diaspora) - would be considered for appointment to that national unity government. That is what Ghana actually needs.
What our nation most definitely does not need, is a handover of power from one of the two constituent political parties, which make up the deceitful and hypocritical NDC/NPP duopoly, to the other.
That will be disastrous for our homeland Ghana - for nothing much will change then. And high-level corruption will become even more rampant and rapacious. It is therefore important for ordinary people in Ghana to be wary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
They must not be beguiled by the many NPP hypocrites who talk endlessly about high-level corruption under the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime of President Mahama - but have thus far refused to publicly publish their own assets and those of their spouses: as a sign of their good intentions in seeking power to govern our homeland Ghana.
No wise voter should help elect such disarming-dissemblers into power ever again - especially when they criss-cross the nation making absurd empty-promises that they themselves know perfectly well will not be kept should they win power, in the December elections (God forbid!). What perfidy.
It is an indictment of the media in Ghana that journalists seldom point out the fact that politicians criticising others for being corrupt, who themselves refuse to publicly publish their assets and those of their spouses, must not be trusted either by voters.
Why are the media in Ghana so blinkered in that respect, I ask? What happened to the trillions of old Ghana cedis of HIPC funds that simply disappeared into the ether when the NPP ruled Ghana for 8 solid years?
Who does not remember the unfathomable greed of the well-connected gang-of-hypocrites, who profited mightily from the massive high-level corruption, which was so rampant during the NPP's 8 years in power - that catastrophe for our country otherwise referred to by some as the golden age of business for Kufuor & Co?
So why is the media giving the NPP a free pass to power - when there is the real possibility that an even greedier cabal - a Mk-2 gang-of-hypocrites - will surpass even Kufuor & Co's brutal gang-rape of Mother Ghana? Why do the Ghanaian media suddenly see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing when it comes to highlighting the miasma that envelopes the handling of the NPP's finances by Freddy Blay & Co, I ask?
If the greater part of the Ghanaian media were not themselves so egregiously corrupt, perhaps Ghana would not be failing to make much headway, in terms of raising the living standards of the base-of-the-pyramid poor - as most journalists who interact with politicians in the public space would be pressuring our political class to work harder and be more honest in governing Ghana. Pity.
The question is: If it is in the supreme national interest that the selfless and honest Nduom becomes Ghana's president after the elections - rather than either President Mahama or Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo who lead the dreadful NDC/NPP duopoly - why then are responsible and patriotic journalists not making that point to voters, and advising them to plump for Nduom in the presidential election, I ask: especially when Nduom is committed to probing all the regimes that have held power since the 4th Republic came into being?
Would that not help Ghana to claw back some of the zillions of Ghana cedis of stolen taxpayers' money, salted away by the many crooks-in-high-places who participated in the gang-rape of Mother Ghana, whiles in power?
A direct result of the lack of close media scrutiny in Ghana, is that despite both the two parties that make up the NDC/NPP duopoly having been in power before - and governing our homeland Ghana between them for all of the 24-year period since the 4th Republic came into being - our nation has still not fulfilled even a quarter of its full potential yet: and, alas, Mother Ghana still continues to mark time, unfortunately.
Yet many politicians and their business cronies have profited hugely from high-level corruption over the years, and their personal net worth risen to stratospheric heights - in inverse proportion to falling living standards and the continuing impoverishment of millions of ordinary people across the nation. Amazing.
To lull the minds of ordinary people to sleep, many of those in power in Ghana, often resort to propaganda - churned out on their behalf by their unprincipled rented-press and their conscienceless bought-media outlets - to hide their animal-farm-philosophy of governance: in which ordinary people are constantly asked to make never-ending sacrifices for a better tomorrow that never comes, whiles lucky fatcats across the nation grow super-rich, through sole-sourcing public procurement deals.
It is the reason why so many of those who have been in power in Ghana, since the return to constitutional democracy, in 1992, have always dabbled in the dark arts of the politricks-of-equalisation - in which failed politicians play the blame-game: to cover up their abject failure to improve the quality of life of the teeming millions of marginalised fellow citizens trapped in the bottom strata of Ghanaian society.
To end that charade, ordinary Ghanaians must bring the era of the NDC/NPP duopoly's hold on power in Ghana, to a swift and abrupt end, in this December's presidential and parliamentary elections - by rejecting the NDC/NPP duopoly's candidates for the presidential election: President Mahama and Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo.
The time has come to begin the transformation of Ghana into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, by voting Paa Kwesi Nduom - the only presidential candidate who has promised to form a government of national unity, consisting of the most talented individuals in our country, irrespective of their political backgrounds - to power as Ghana's next leader.
Ghana needs the selflessness, honesty, wealth-and-job-creating-genius of Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, to lead a government of national unity to propel the enterprise Ghana forward, and transform it into a prosperous and fair society, in which hard work actually pays - and those engaged in egregious chicanery and cronyism at our nation's expense always end up in jail after their prosecution.
The alternative to the NDC regime of President Mahama, is a new government of national unity led by a President Paa Kwesi Nduom - not yet another corrupt, vindictive, divisive and super-ruthless NPP regime. Period. Haaba: Ghanafuo abre papaa pa o. Hmm, asem ebeba debi, ankasa.
All such Ghanaians - where they currently live notwithstanding (be it here at home in Ghana or abroad elsewhere in the Diaspora) - would be considered for appointment to that national unity government. That is what Ghana actually needs.
What our nation most definitely does not need, is a handover of power from one of the two constituent political parties, which make up the deceitful and hypocritical NDC/NPP duopoly, to the other.
That will be disastrous for our homeland Ghana - for nothing much will change then. And high-level corruption will become even more rampant and rapacious. It is therefore important for ordinary people in Ghana to be wary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
They must not be beguiled by the many NPP hypocrites who talk endlessly about high-level corruption under the National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime of President Mahama - but have thus far refused to publicly publish their own assets and those of their spouses: as a sign of their good intentions in seeking power to govern our homeland Ghana.
No wise voter should help elect such disarming-dissemblers into power ever again - especially when they criss-cross the nation making absurd empty-promises that they themselves know perfectly well will not be kept should they win power, in the December elections (God forbid!). What perfidy.
It is an indictment of the media in Ghana that journalists seldom point out the fact that politicians criticising others for being corrupt, who themselves refuse to publicly publish their assets and those of their spouses, must not be trusted either by voters.
Why are the media in Ghana so blinkered in that respect, I ask? What happened to the trillions of old Ghana cedis of HIPC funds that simply disappeared into the ether when the NPP ruled Ghana for 8 solid years?
Who does not remember the unfathomable greed of the well-connected gang-of-hypocrites, who profited mightily from the massive high-level corruption, which was so rampant during the NPP's 8 years in power - that catastrophe for our country otherwise referred to by some as the golden age of business for Kufuor & Co?
So why is the media giving the NPP a free pass to power - when there is the real possibility that an even greedier cabal - a Mk-2 gang-of-hypocrites - will surpass even Kufuor & Co's brutal gang-rape of Mother Ghana? Why do the Ghanaian media suddenly see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing when it comes to highlighting the miasma that envelopes the handling of the NPP's finances by Freddy Blay & Co, I ask?
If the greater part of the Ghanaian media were not themselves so egregiously corrupt, perhaps Ghana would not be failing to make much headway, in terms of raising the living standards of the base-of-the-pyramid poor - as most journalists who interact with politicians in the public space would be pressuring our political class to work harder and be more honest in governing Ghana. Pity.
The question is: If it is in the supreme national interest that the selfless and honest Nduom becomes Ghana's president after the elections - rather than either President Mahama or Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo who lead the dreadful NDC/NPP duopoly - why then are responsible and patriotic journalists not making that point to voters, and advising them to plump for Nduom in the presidential election, I ask: especially when Nduom is committed to probing all the regimes that have held power since the 4th Republic came into being?
Would that not help Ghana to claw back some of the zillions of Ghana cedis of stolen taxpayers' money, salted away by the many crooks-in-high-places who participated in the gang-rape of Mother Ghana, whiles in power?
A direct result of the lack of close media scrutiny in Ghana, is that despite both the two parties that make up the NDC/NPP duopoly having been in power before - and governing our homeland Ghana between them for all of the 24-year period since the 4th Republic came into being - our nation has still not fulfilled even a quarter of its full potential yet: and, alas, Mother Ghana still continues to mark time, unfortunately.
Yet many politicians and their business cronies have profited hugely from high-level corruption over the years, and their personal net worth risen to stratospheric heights - in inverse proportion to falling living standards and the continuing impoverishment of millions of ordinary people across the nation. Amazing.
To lull the minds of ordinary people to sleep, many of those in power in Ghana, often resort to propaganda - churned out on their behalf by their unprincipled rented-press and their conscienceless bought-media outlets - to hide their animal-farm-philosophy of governance: in which ordinary people are constantly asked to make never-ending sacrifices for a better tomorrow that never comes, whiles lucky fatcats across the nation grow super-rich, through sole-sourcing public procurement deals.
It is the reason why so many of those who have been in power in Ghana, since the return to constitutional democracy, in 1992, have always dabbled in the dark arts of the politricks-of-equalisation - in which failed politicians play the blame-game: to cover up their abject failure to improve the quality of life of the teeming millions of marginalised fellow citizens trapped in the bottom strata of Ghanaian society.
To end that charade, ordinary Ghanaians must bring the era of the NDC/NPP duopoly's hold on power in Ghana, to a swift and abrupt end, in this December's presidential and parliamentary elections - by rejecting the NDC/NPP duopoly's candidates for the presidential election: President Mahama and Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo.
The time has come to begin the transformation of Ghana into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, by voting Paa Kwesi Nduom - the only presidential candidate who has promised to form a government of national unity, consisting of the most talented individuals in our country, irrespective of their political backgrounds - to power as Ghana's next leader.
Ghana needs the selflessness, honesty, wealth-and-job-creating-genius of Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, to lead a government of national unity to propel the enterprise Ghana forward, and transform it into a prosperous and fair society, in which hard work actually pays - and those engaged in egregious chicanery and cronyism at our nation's expense always end up in jail after their prosecution.
The alternative to the NDC regime of President Mahama, is a new government of national unity led by a President Paa Kwesi Nduom - not yet another corrupt, vindictive, divisive and super-ruthless NPP regime. Period. Haaba: Ghanafuo abre papaa pa o. Hmm, asem ebeba debi, ankasa.
Monday, 15 August 2016
Why The Vast Majority Of Ghanaians Want The Mahama Administration Probed
It is amazing just how easily some Ghanaian politicians can delude themselves. If that were not the case, how could the leadership of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), possibly think that their party would be returned to power again, by voters, in this December's presidential and parliamentary elections?
Is that not whistling in the dark and wishful thinking? Big, time? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o: asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa.
The bald truth, is that both the NDC and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) - the two corrupt and opaque political parties that constitute the NDC/NPP duopoly, which have dominated our nation's politics since the 4th Republic came into being - are no longer fit-for-purpose entities.
That is why the truly democratic, non-tribalistic and patriotic one-nation-politicians in leadership positions in the two parties, ought to summon the courage to wrest control of their parties from the iron-grip that the ruthless vested interests - which control both parties from the shadows for private gain at public expense - have on the two parties.
They must then carry out root-and-branch reforms in their parties, and rid themselves of the super-greedy, verbally-aggressive, violence-prone and criticism-averse hardliners, in their midst.
Until they carry out those much-needed reforms, which will make them truly tolerant one-nation political parties dedicated to the well-being of Mother Ghana, and committed to the welfare of all the people of our country, none of the two constituent parties that make up the corruption-riddled NDC/NPP duopoly, deserve to govern Ghana again. Period.
Luckily for ordinary Ghanaians, the era of impunity in our homeland Ghana, could finally draw to a close: for, if elected, Nduom, who is selfless, dynamic and principled will serve as a unifying and disciplined leader whose presidency will be truly world-class.
He will ensure that all those involved in high-level corruption are always prosecuted when caught ripping Mother Ghana off.
A government of national unity made up of Ghana's best brains - regardless of party affiliation - led by Nduom, is the alternative to the NDC, not the NPP as presently constituted.
The question is: Why would Ghanaians return President Mahama and his party to power again - after their party has been in power for eight long years: during which the eardrums of hapless Ghanaians have been assaulted by story after story of egregious high-level corruption?
Who in this country is not livid that dishonest companies like Smarttys Management and Productions Limited have been able to rip-off the enterprise Ghana and gotten away with it - because their promoters happen to be the cronies of some of those in power at the moment?
And who has not felt insulted by the various Kweku-Ananse-stalling-schemes employed by that scoundrel Woyome - the so-called NDC "financier" - who swindled Mother Ghana out of the sum of some GHc51 million: and yet still continues to sleep in his own bed despite ignoring the Supreme Court's ruling that he refunds the money?
Woyome is one of the reasons why so many Ghanaians want the NDC out of power - so they can finally read his long list of compromised big-shots who aided and abetted him to swindle Mother Ghana: and how much they were each suitably rewarded for their hard work on that viper's behalf.
The plain truth is that millions of ordinary people simply want the NDC turfed out of power- so that President Mahama's regime is probed: and all those who have served in that administration found to have stolen taxpayers' money prosecuted and jailed for their crimes against Ghanaians and their nation.
That is why the NDC's leadership need to understand one thing clearly: Even if their regime succeeds in turning Ghana into a paradise-on-earth before the December presidential and parliamentary elections are held, the vast majority of ordinary people will still vote against them, in the December elections.
Many Ghanaians have neither fogotten, nor forgiven, the insufferable, unspeakable and unpardonable arrogance, of the Stan Dogbes - and the actions and inactions of the greedy and corrupt denizens of the corridors of power at the presidency: over the years since the NDC assumed power nearly eight years ago.
Ridding Ghana of the greed-filled NDC is what the December presidential and parliamentary elections are actually about for many voters - in case the Stan Dogbes haven't cottoned on to that yet.
Many Ghanaians want genuises like the Stan Dogbes out of government - and in jail if they are guilty of amassing wealth unlawfully.
Hopefully, on polling day, millions of voters will remember that Paa Kwesi Nduom, intends to probe all the regimes that have held power, since the 4th Republic came into being, should he become Ghana's next leader - and vote massively for him to finally become President of the Republic of Ghana, when he is sworn into office on 7th January, 2017. Hallelujah. Amen.
Now thoroughly fed up with the Mahama regime, the vast majority of ordinary Ghanaians just want his hard-of-hearing regime to leave the scene - because they feel that Mahama & Co have overstayed their welcome: and voters will therefore make sure that their departure is signed and sealed on polling day this December. End of story. Case, closed.
Is that not whistling in the dark and wishful thinking? Big, time? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o: asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa.
The bald truth, is that both the NDC and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) - the two corrupt and opaque political parties that constitute the NDC/NPP duopoly, which have dominated our nation's politics since the 4th Republic came into being - are no longer fit-for-purpose entities.
That is why the truly democratic, non-tribalistic and patriotic one-nation-politicians in leadership positions in the two parties, ought to summon the courage to wrest control of their parties from the iron-grip that the ruthless vested interests - which control both parties from the shadows for private gain at public expense - have on the two parties.
They must then carry out root-and-branch reforms in their parties, and rid themselves of the super-greedy, verbally-aggressive, violence-prone and criticism-averse hardliners, in their midst.
Until they carry out those much-needed reforms, which will make them truly tolerant one-nation political parties dedicated to the well-being of Mother Ghana, and committed to the welfare of all the people of our country, none of the two constituent parties that make up the corruption-riddled NDC/NPP duopoly, deserve to govern Ghana again. Period.
Luckily for ordinary Ghanaians, the era of impunity in our homeland Ghana, could finally draw to a close: for, if elected, Nduom, who is selfless, dynamic and principled will serve as a unifying and disciplined leader whose presidency will be truly world-class.
He will ensure that all those involved in high-level corruption are always prosecuted when caught ripping Mother Ghana off.
A government of national unity made up of Ghana's best brains - regardless of party affiliation - led by Nduom, is the alternative to the NDC, not the NPP as presently constituted.
The question is: Why would Ghanaians return President Mahama and his party to power again - after their party has been in power for eight long years: during which the eardrums of hapless Ghanaians have been assaulted by story after story of egregious high-level corruption?
Who in this country is not livid that dishonest companies like Smarttys Management and Productions Limited have been able to rip-off the enterprise Ghana and gotten away with it - because their promoters happen to be the cronies of some of those in power at the moment?
And who has not felt insulted by the various Kweku-Ananse-stalling-schemes employed by that scoundrel Woyome - the so-called NDC "financier" - who swindled Mother Ghana out of the sum of some GHc51 million: and yet still continues to sleep in his own bed despite ignoring the Supreme Court's ruling that he refunds the money?
Woyome is one of the reasons why so many Ghanaians want the NDC out of power - so they can finally read his long list of compromised big-shots who aided and abetted him to swindle Mother Ghana: and how much they were each suitably rewarded for their hard work on that viper's behalf.
The plain truth is that millions of ordinary people simply want the NDC turfed out of power- so that President Mahama's regime is probed: and all those who have served in that administration found to have stolen taxpayers' money prosecuted and jailed for their crimes against Ghanaians and their nation.
That is why the NDC's leadership need to understand one thing clearly: Even if their regime succeeds in turning Ghana into a paradise-on-earth before the December presidential and parliamentary elections are held, the vast majority of ordinary people will still vote against them, in the December elections.
Many Ghanaians have neither fogotten, nor forgiven, the insufferable, unspeakable and unpardonable arrogance, of the Stan Dogbes - and the actions and inactions of the greedy and corrupt denizens of the corridors of power at the presidency: over the years since the NDC assumed power nearly eight years ago.
Ridding Ghana of the greed-filled NDC is what the December presidential and parliamentary elections are actually about for many voters - in case the Stan Dogbes haven't cottoned on to that yet.
Many Ghanaians want genuises like the Stan Dogbes out of government - and in jail if they are guilty of amassing wealth unlawfully.
Hopefully, on polling day, millions of voters will remember that Paa Kwesi Nduom, intends to probe all the regimes that have held power, since the 4th Republic came into being, should he become Ghana's next leader - and vote massively for him to finally become President of the Republic of Ghana, when he is sworn into office on 7th January, 2017. Hallelujah. Amen.
Now thoroughly fed up with the Mahama regime, the vast majority of ordinary Ghanaians just want his hard-of-hearing regime to leave the scene - because they feel that Mahama & Co have overstayed their welcome: and voters will therefore make sure that their departure is signed and sealed on polling day this December. End of story. Case, closed.
Saturday, 13 August 2016
A Practical Demonstration Of Paa Kwesi Nduom's Personal Philosophy Of Creating And Sharing Wealth Honestly Earned
''It will be acknowledged even by those that practice it not, that clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it."
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
The decision by the Nduom family to float shares in their conglomerate, Groupe Nduom, shows what an innovative, forward-looking and generous-spirited family they are.
It offers Ghanaians an insight into Paa Kwesi Nduom's personal philosophy of honest stewardship and abundance-sharing made possible by the fruits of wise investments.
The fact that they were thoroughly scrutinized by the U.S. authorities in due diligence checks before being given permission to acquire and operate a then ailing Illinois Service Federal Savings and Loans - now know as IFS Bank after its acquisition - for U.S.$9 million speaks volumes about the integrity of the Nduoms.
The question is: Would President Mahama and Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo and members of their nuclear families have survived similar scrutiny by the U.S. authorities? Alas, one doubts that very much, for a number of reasons.
President Mahama would definitely have been disqualified from owning a U.S. bank, becuase of the odd trip he undertook to Turkey when he first came to power.
The purpose of that particular trip was to help free a U.S. registered business jet - owned by one of his brother Abrahim Mahama's companies - that was carrying gold worth some US$84 million destined for Iran, but had been seized by the Turkish authorities, when it landed in their territory.
Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo would also not have been allowed to acquire and operate a U.S. bank either - because the Kufuor regime failed to protect Ghana's vital interests, when it discontinued a London court case in a matter involving the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), and Societe General: similar to one that the GNPC had won when it countersued Societe General, which had sued it in the U.S.
The fact that after Ghana settled the matter with Societe General, that French bank then subsequently acquired a bank owned by a government pension fund in Ghana - for U.S.$9 million: a figure less than the annual bonuses of many of their senior executives - would have also raised a red flag against him in any due diligence checks by the U.S. authorities.
Years after entering the Ghanaian market, Societe General then also went on to purchase a hotel belonging to Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo's family, for U.S.$3 million - which it then had demolished to enable it build a new headquarters building on the land it was on. That would have definitely also raised a red flag against him too.
Thus, in the world of Ghanaian politics, Nduom and his family are in a class of their own, in as far as their personal integrity goes: They survived close scrutiny by the U.S. authorities. Nduom is therefore someone Ghanaians can trust will never sacrifice the national interest for personal gain, if elected as Ghana's President. Ever.
Through their honest stewardship of other people's money, they have been successful in increasing their own family's wealth too - and now want to offer others the opportunity to profit from investing in their profitable and dynamic conglomerate, Groupe Nduom.
Aside from the family of the late R. A. Darko, who floated shares in their family business, Mechanical Lloyd, on the Ghana Stock Exchange years ago, virtually no high-profile Ghanaian family business has since opened its shareholding to the general public, by floating shares on the Ghana Stock Exchange.
Naturally, such a strategic move will provide Groupe Nduom with interest-free capital to fund the operations of its subsidiaries as they expand. But, above all, it shows the confidence the Nduoms have in Ghana's future - a future that Paa Kwesi Nduom wants to help shape and secure for all Ghanaians.
From the point of view of Diasporans wanting to invest in Ghana's economy, Groupe Nduom represents a fantastic opportunity - both in terms of buying the company's stock, and in executing their own projects through the company's many well-run and profitable subsidiaries.
It ought to be possible, for example, for a Diasporan in the U.S., with an investment portfolio made up of parcels of land in all the 10 regions of Ghana, who wants to build warehouses and establish a logistics business here, to do so with the assistance of relevant Groupe Nduom subsidiaries.
Dispirited Diasporans who have been ripped-off by people they trusted in Ghana - such as a childhood friend of mine who over the years has virtually seen over U.S.$500,000 of his personal savings siphoned off into the pockets of a long line of dishonest people he relied on to execute his projects in Ghana - can now turn to Groupe Nduom to realise their ambitions of setting up businesses in Ghana and executing sundry projects of theirs through Groupe Nduom subsidiaries.
It is that proposition that makes Groupe Nduom's business model such a winsome one - and purchasing the company's shares such a wise investment decision.
Diasporans constitute a powerful economic force that can be harnessed for accelerated growth of our national economy. Groupe Nduom's various businesses offer Diasporans a multiplicity of services and investment opportunities that they can tap to help them achieve their wealth-creation goals in Ghana.
GN Bank, for example, has the potential to evolve into a pan-African internet banking giant, through which Diasporans could avail themselves of the many products it will put together to empower them, to gradually build up their African investments to a level that transforms their status to that of high net worth investors.
It is a well-run bank that has the potential to outpace and grow bigger than Ecobank within the next five years.
One of the ways the GN Bank could do so would be to create a niche in which it enables Diasporans selling goods to importers in the markets in which it has a presence in the African continent (such as Ghana and Liberia), to do business safely and securely using escrow accounts.
Thus, a Ghanaian-American selling brand new Caterpiller spare parts bought at rock-bottom prices at government auction of ex-military stocks in the U.S., for example, could sell them to an importer in Ghana, who is perhaps a member of the Caterpillar Spare Parts Dealers Association at Kokompe, who would pay for the parts in cedis, into an escrow account at a GN Bank near him or her, set up for that purpose.
The U.S. bank owned by Groupe Nduom would inspect the spare parts, arrange for their shipment to Tema, clear them, and have the parts delivered to the importer, at a designated delivery point. The Diasporan exporter then gets his money released from the escrow account.
The process of getting the spare parts shipped from the U.S. exporter to Tema port, cleared through customs, and delivered to the designated offloading-point for the Kokompe importer, would have been handled by relevant subsidiaries of Groupe Nduom.
Anyone who can visualise that chain of events providing business for Groupe Nduom's subsidiary companies, in the import-export business, in that one instance of the export from the U.S. of Caterpillar spare parts to an importer at Kokompe, can see an example of the manifold opportunities that buying shares in Groupe Nduom represents for investors.
The decision by Paa Kwesi Nduom to float shares in his family's conglomerate, Groupe Nduom, is a practical demonstration of his desire to see his fellow humans prospering through honest endeavour and foresight - and shows his commitment to help create a prosperous society in which all in Ghana enjoy high living standards.
Is that not precisely the kind of honest and far-sighted leader our homeland Ghana needs to be its President after 7th January, 2017: a world-class doer and giver?
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
The decision by the Nduom family to float shares in their conglomerate, Groupe Nduom, shows what an innovative, forward-looking and generous-spirited family they are.
It offers Ghanaians an insight into Paa Kwesi Nduom's personal philosophy of honest stewardship and abundance-sharing made possible by the fruits of wise investments.
The fact that they were thoroughly scrutinized by the U.S. authorities in due diligence checks before being given permission to acquire and operate a then ailing Illinois Service Federal Savings and Loans - now know as IFS Bank after its acquisition - for U.S.$9 million speaks volumes about the integrity of the Nduoms.
The question is: Would President Mahama and Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo and members of their nuclear families have survived similar scrutiny by the U.S. authorities? Alas, one doubts that very much, for a number of reasons.
President Mahama would definitely have been disqualified from owning a U.S. bank, becuase of the odd trip he undertook to Turkey when he first came to power.
The purpose of that particular trip was to help free a U.S. registered business jet - owned by one of his brother Abrahim Mahama's companies - that was carrying gold worth some US$84 million destined for Iran, but had been seized by the Turkish authorities, when it landed in their territory.
Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo would also not have been allowed to acquire and operate a U.S. bank either - because the Kufuor regime failed to protect Ghana's vital interests, when it discontinued a London court case in a matter involving the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), and Societe General: similar to one that the GNPC had won when it countersued Societe General, which had sued it in the U.S.
The fact that after Ghana settled the matter with Societe General, that French bank then subsequently acquired a bank owned by a government pension fund in Ghana - for U.S.$9 million: a figure less than the annual bonuses of many of their senior executives - would have also raised a red flag against him in any due diligence checks by the U.S. authorities.
Years after entering the Ghanaian market, Societe General then also went on to purchase a hotel belonging to Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo's family, for U.S.$3 million - which it then had demolished to enable it build a new headquarters building on the land it was on. That would have definitely also raised a red flag against him too.
Thus, in the world of Ghanaian politics, Nduom and his family are in a class of their own, in as far as their personal integrity goes: They survived close scrutiny by the U.S. authorities. Nduom is therefore someone Ghanaians can trust will never sacrifice the national interest for personal gain, if elected as Ghana's President. Ever.
Through their honest stewardship of other people's money, they have been successful in increasing their own family's wealth too - and now want to offer others the opportunity to profit from investing in their profitable and dynamic conglomerate, Groupe Nduom.
Aside from the family of the late R. A. Darko, who floated shares in their family business, Mechanical Lloyd, on the Ghana Stock Exchange years ago, virtually no high-profile Ghanaian family business has since opened its shareholding to the general public, by floating shares on the Ghana Stock Exchange.
Naturally, such a strategic move will provide Groupe Nduom with interest-free capital to fund the operations of its subsidiaries as they expand. But, above all, it shows the confidence the Nduoms have in Ghana's future - a future that Paa Kwesi Nduom wants to help shape and secure for all Ghanaians.
From the point of view of Diasporans wanting to invest in Ghana's economy, Groupe Nduom represents a fantastic opportunity - both in terms of buying the company's stock, and in executing their own projects through the company's many well-run and profitable subsidiaries.
It ought to be possible, for example, for a Diasporan in the U.S., with an investment portfolio made up of parcels of land in all the 10 regions of Ghana, who wants to build warehouses and establish a logistics business here, to do so with the assistance of relevant Groupe Nduom subsidiaries.
Dispirited Diasporans who have been ripped-off by people they trusted in Ghana - such as a childhood friend of mine who over the years has virtually seen over U.S.$500,000 of his personal savings siphoned off into the pockets of a long line of dishonest people he relied on to execute his projects in Ghana - can now turn to Groupe Nduom to realise their ambitions of setting up businesses in Ghana and executing sundry projects of theirs through Groupe Nduom subsidiaries.
It is that proposition that makes Groupe Nduom's business model such a winsome one - and purchasing the company's shares such a wise investment decision.
Diasporans constitute a powerful economic force that can be harnessed for accelerated growth of our national economy. Groupe Nduom's various businesses offer Diasporans a multiplicity of services and investment opportunities that they can tap to help them achieve their wealth-creation goals in Ghana.
GN Bank, for example, has the potential to evolve into a pan-African internet banking giant, through which Diasporans could avail themselves of the many products it will put together to empower them, to gradually build up their African investments to a level that transforms their status to that of high net worth investors.
It is a well-run bank that has the potential to outpace and grow bigger than Ecobank within the next five years.
One of the ways the GN Bank could do so would be to create a niche in which it enables Diasporans selling goods to importers in the markets in which it has a presence in the African continent (such as Ghana and Liberia), to do business safely and securely using escrow accounts.
Thus, a Ghanaian-American selling brand new Caterpiller spare parts bought at rock-bottom prices at government auction of ex-military stocks in the U.S., for example, could sell them to an importer in Ghana, who is perhaps a member of the Caterpillar Spare Parts Dealers Association at Kokompe, who would pay for the parts in cedis, into an escrow account at a GN Bank near him or her, set up for that purpose.
The U.S. bank owned by Groupe Nduom would inspect the spare parts, arrange for their shipment to Tema, clear them, and have the parts delivered to the importer, at a designated delivery point. The Diasporan exporter then gets his money released from the escrow account.
The process of getting the spare parts shipped from the U.S. exporter to Tema port, cleared through customs, and delivered to the designated offloading-point for the Kokompe importer, would have been handled by relevant subsidiaries of Groupe Nduom.
Anyone who can visualise that chain of events providing business for Groupe Nduom's subsidiary companies, in the import-export business, in that one instance of the export from the U.S. of Caterpillar spare parts to an importer at Kokompe, can see an example of the manifold opportunities that buying shares in Groupe Nduom represents for investors.
The decision by Paa Kwesi Nduom to float shares in his family's conglomerate, Groupe Nduom, is a practical demonstration of his desire to see his fellow humans prospering through honest endeavour and foresight - and shows his commitment to help create a prosperous society in which all in Ghana enjoy high living standards.
Is that not precisely the kind of honest and far-sighted leader our homeland Ghana needs to be its President after 7th January, 2017: a world-class doer and giver?
Friday, 12 August 2016
An Open Letter To Pastor Mensah Otabil
Dear Pastor Mensah Otabil,
I shall go straight to the point: It might have to fall upon you and other globally-competitive Ghanaians, such as Bishop Doug Heward-Mills, to save our homeland Ghana from the clutches of the ruthless and divisive political parties, which constitute the NDC/NPP duopoly.
At what is a critical juncture in Ghana's history, ordinary people in our country, also need to receive their fair share of the national cake - something that amongst all the candidates vying for the presidency in this December's elections only Nduom's astuteness can guarantee.
Clearly, there is a national consensus that given the natural resources it is blessed with, Ghana ought to become a nation with a well-managed national economy - if it is to continue to remain stable and peaceful.
A well-managed national economy will enable our benighted country to be transformed into a stable and well-governed society - one that is prosperous: and in which every strata of society enjoys a good quality of life and decent living standards.
Only a government of national unity made up of some of the best brains in Ghana - yours and that of Doug Heward-Mills included - and led by a President Nduom is capable of bringing about such a transformation.
For that reason, you must all help bring Nduom to power - by endorsing his candidacy and leveraging the enormous influence that preachers such as your good self and Bishop Doug Heward-Mills wield across the nation: to appeal for support for Nduom.
How can we hand over the governance of our nation to those criss-crossing Ghana promising one factory in each district - when disruptive 3D printing technology will make virtually all those 275 or so state-owned entities obsolete in a few years? Heaven help us.
The question there is: How well do we manage even the existing state-owned entities - which are almost all over-geared financial basket-cases?
Why not assist the hundreds of micro-entrepreneurial start-ups, in all the 275 or so Districts, which only need funding to obtain certification from the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), and the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), to start operating?
Will the dynamic and ambitious micro-entrepreneurs who founded them not grow them organically through hardwork, perseverance and creative marketing?
And will that not mean that they will be much better at providing employment, for some of the scores of young people desperate for jobs, as they expand their businesses - than any Kweku Ananse state-owned factories run by square-pegs-in-round-holes party-hacks and jam-packed with party foot soldiers, ever will?
Those micro-entrepreneurs will definitely do a far better job at creating jobs galore nationwide, than those Kweku-Ananse state-owned factories - apparently planned for each of Ghana's 275 Districts - can ever dream of doing.
Will providing the aforementioned micro-entrepreneurs with soft loans - or better still "helicopter-money" from the African Development Bank - to enable them obtain certification from sundry regulatory bodies, not be a far more beneficial and realistic policy, for any serious regime dedicated to empowering those willing to work hard, to improve their own individual circumstances, to pursue? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o!
And how can we hand over power again, to President Mahama and his cohorts, when they have not had the nous and gumption to negotiate win-win oil industry and power-sector agreements, for our country, in all the 8 long years that their hard-of-hearing regime has been in power for?
And to think that some of those geniuses have the gall to insult nation-builders like you, Pastor. Hmm, Ghana - asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa!
Pastor, the simple act of your endorsing Nduom's candidature will make Ghanaians wake up - and sit up to ponder the difference an Nduom presidency could actually make to their own individual living standards.
There is no question that individuals who establish universities, which over time go on to become reputable tertiary institutions, are well-regarded individuals, wherever in the world they live. And rightly so, too.
They are valued for the important societal roles that they play in preparing the younger generations to take over the running of their countries' from older generations.
That is why highly-regarded individuals in Ghanaian society, such as yourself, Bishop Doug Heward-Mills, Reverend Sam Korankye Ankrah, Bishop Adjin Asare, Archbishop Duncan Williams, and Bishop Agyemang - who have established tertiary institutions - are veritable nation-builders whom many discerning Ghanaians admire and treasure.
And it is natural that individuals of your calibre should feel frustrated from time to time that Ghana is marking time - especially as God has blessed our nation with all that is needed to transform it into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia.
No one should insult you when you openly express your frustration with the condition of our country today - and it is unpardonable that some of those responsible for the problems of our country have the audacity to disparage you when you criticise them.
We must stop allowing the clueless and super-ruthless professional-incompetents who control the NDC and NPP from the shadows from wasting our time yet again, Pastor Otabil.
They will instigate their followers to plunge Ghana into chaos and violence, if either of the NDC/NPP duopoly's constituent parties presidential candidate is defeated by the other. A victory by Nduom will sidestep that impending doom neatly, will it not?
Sir, perhaps it has never struck you before, but all of the church founders that this blog has mentioned above, can make a real difference, at the critical crossroads-moment that our nation will face on polling day, during this December's presidential and and parliamentary elections.
Pastor, you must all ask Ghanaians to reject the two ruthless, corrupt and opaque poltical parties that constitute the NDC/NPP duopoly that dominate our nation's politics, and have done so since the 4th Republic came into being in 1992, at the polls, this December.
Is it not unpardonable, unspeakable and abominable that they have succeeded in polarising Ghanaian society to the extent that they have? How can a badly divided society possibly progress and prosper, I ask?
Pastor, endorse the unifying candidacy of Paa Kwesi Nduom - and ask the supporters of the NDC and NPP to plump instead for him to become President of the Republic of Ghana: and lead a government of national unity to which competent, honest and world-class Ghanaians (irrespective of their political leanings!) will be appointed.
Pastor, the plain truth, is that both the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), are beholden to the very vested interests profiting from our corrupt system. High-level corruption in Ghana will never cease if those divisive and greed-driven parties continue to rule our homeland Ghana.
That is because, as you are aware, they are both in the firm grip of ruthless hardliners, whose scorched-earth political philosophy dictates that they sabotage the nation-building effort, whenever they find themselves in the political wilderness.
Alas, it is ordinary people, who eventually suffer from the harsh consequences of the nation-wrecking-selfishness - which the sabotaging of the nation-building effort by those sly and amoral politicians amounts to.
What Ghana needs now, is an honest and disciplined one-nation political leader, such as Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom - who clearly understands the importance of making Ghana a nation with the world's lowest taxes on individuals and businesses.
Sir, would abolishing taxes on private universities not enable Central University, for example, to lower the fees it charges, and offer more scholarships to brilliant but needy students, I ask?
There is no sense in continuing to tolerate the totally unacceptable situation in which ruling parties pile on tax after tax on Ghanaians - just to be siphoned off by the many white collar criminals in our national economy's public-sector.
Why overburden hardworking Ghanaians with tax after tax just to mollycoddle government ministers and other public-sector appointees? Do many of them not collude with the selfsame crooks sucking the very lifeblood out of Mother Ghana?
So why should Ghanaians entrust the NDC/NPP duopoly with power yet again - and give the powerful crooks that control them from the shadows the opportunity to rip-off our nation - and enable them to live the life of Riley at the expense of ordinary people: who have to struggle daily just to survive? It must not happen. Full stop.
Nduom is committed to transparency and accountability - which is why he will publicly publish his assets as well as that of his entire nuclear family before the December elections. Have you heard President Mahama and Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo and their acolytes making a similar declaration? They will never do so. Ever.
Nduom also intends to publicly publish all the sources of his party's campaign funds, before polling day. Thus far, have you heard the leading lights of the NDC and NPP, committing to do so too? Food for thought, Pastor.
And as you know, Nduom is a truly world-class individual, who actually knows how to create wealth and meaningful jobs - and will therefore focus on creating a conducive climate for entrepreneurs to thrive in Ghana and the Diaspora too.
A President Nduom will never allow Ghanaians and their nation to be taken advantage of in any agreement that his one-nation administration signs with local and foreign investors. All the agreements his government signs will be win-win ones.
Above all, his administration will probe all the regimes that have held power since the 4th Republic came into being - and send a signal to the world that impunity has finally come to an end in Ghana. All those who have stolen taxpayers' funds will be made to pay them back with interest. Fantastic.
Pastor, help kick-start the transformation of Ghana into an African equivalent, of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, by endorsing the candidacy of Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, to enable him become the next President of the Republic of Ghana, after 7th January, 2017.
Brilliant Ghanaians, with stellar track-records of solid achievements, such as your good self, and Bishop Doug Heward-Mills, will definitely play prominent roles in government, when Nduom becomes Ghana's President.
You both qualify and deserve to help run the enterprise Ghana - and will doubtless do so when Nduom becomes President on 7th January, 2017.
For the sake of the ordinary people of Ghana, you must all endorse Nduom for president now - so that Mother Ghana benefits from your undoubted talents.
Thank you very much indeed, Pastor Mensah Otabil - and peace and blessings to all of you.
Yours in the service of Mother Ghana,
Kofi.
I shall go straight to the point: It might have to fall upon you and other globally-competitive Ghanaians, such as Bishop Doug Heward-Mills, to save our homeland Ghana from the clutches of the ruthless and divisive political parties, which constitute the NDC/NPP duopoly.
At what is a critical juncture in Ghana's history, ordinary people in our country, also need to receive their fair share of the national cake - something that amongst all the candidates vying for the presidency in this December's elections only Nduom's astuteness can guarantee.
Clearly, there is a national consensus that given the natural resources it is blessed with, Ghana ought to become a nation with a well-managed national economy - if it is to continue to remain stable and peaceful.
A well-managed national economy will enable our benighted country to be transformed into a stable and well-governed society - one that is prosperous: and in which every strata of society enjoys a good quality of life and decent living standards.
Only a government of national unity made up of some of the best brains in Ghana - yours and that of Doug Heward-Mills included - and led by a President Nduom is capable of bringing about such a transformation.
For that reason, you must all help bring Nduom to power - by endorsing his candidacy and leveraging the enormous influence that preachers such as your good self and Bishop Doug Heward-Mills wield across the nation: to appeal for support for Nduom.
How can we hand over the governance of our nation to those criss-crossing Ghana promising one factory in each district - when disruptive 3D printing technology will make virtually all those 275 or so state-owned entities obsolete in a few years? Heaven help us.
The question there is: How well do we manage even the existing state-owned entities - which are almost all over-geared financial basket-cases?
Why not assist the hundreds of micro-entrepreneurial start-ups, in all the 275 or so Districts, which only need funding to obtain certification from the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), and the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), to start operating?
Will the dynamic and ambitious micro-entrepreneurs who founded them not grow them organically through hardwork, perseverance and creative marketing?
And will that not mean that they will be much better at providing employment, for some of the scores of young people desperate for jobs, as they expand their businesses - than any Kweku Ananse state-owned factories run by square-pegs-in-round-holes party-hacks and jam-packed with party foot soldiers, ever will?
Those micro-entrepreneurs will definitely do a far better job at creating jobs galore nationwide, than those Kweku-Ananse state-owned factories - apparently planned for each of Ghana's 275 Districts - can ever dream of doing.
Will providing the aforementioned micro-entrepreneurs with soft loans - or better still "helicopter-money" from the African Development Bank - to enable them obtain certification from sundry regulatory bodies, not be a far more beneficial and realistic policy, for any serious regime dedicated to empowering those willing to work hard, to improve their own individual circumstances, to pursue? Hmm, Ghana - eyeasem o!
And how can we hand over power again, to President Mahama and his cohorts, when they have not had the nous and gumption to negotiate win-win oil industry and power-sector agreements, for our country, in all the 8 long years that their hard-of-hearing regime has been in power for?
And to think that some of those geniuses have the gall to insult nation-builders like you, Pastor. Hmm, Ghana - asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa!
Pastor, the simple act of your endorsing Nduom's candidature will make Ghanaians wake up - and sit up to ponder the difference an Nduom presidency could actually make to their own individual living standards.
There is no question that individuals who establish universities, which over time go on to become reputable tertiary institutions, are well-regarded individuals, wherever in the world they live. And rightly so, too.
They are valued for the important societal roles that they play in preparing the younger generations to take over the running of their countries' from older generations.
That is why highly-regarded individuals in Ghanaian society, such as yourself, Bishop Doug Heward-Mills, Reverend Sam Korankye Ankrah, Bishop Adjin Asare, Archbishop Duncan Williams, and Bishop Agyemang - who have established tertiary institutions - are veritable nation-builders whom many discerning Ghanaians admire and treasure.
And it is natural that individuals of your calibre should feel frustrated from time to time that Ghana is marking time - especially as God has blessed our nation with all that is needed to transform it into an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia.
No one should insult you when you openly express your frustration with the condition of our country today - and it is unpardonable that some of those responsible for the problems of our country have the audacity to disparage you when you criticise them.
We must stop allowing the clueless and super-ruthless professional-incompetents who control the NDC and NPP from the shadows from wasting our time yet again, Pastor Otabil.
They will instigate their followers to plunge Ghana into chaos and violence, if either of the NDC/NPP duopoly's constituent parties presidential candidate is defeated by the other. A victory by Nduom will sidestep that impending doom neatly, will it not?
Sir, perhaps it has never struck you before, but all of the church founders that this blog has mentioned above, can make a real difference, at the critical crossroads-moment that our nation will face on polling day, during this December's presidential and and parliamentary elections.
Pastor, you must all ask Ghanaians to reject the two ruthless, corrupt and opaque poltical parties that constitute the NDC/NPP duopoly that dominate our nation's politics, and have done so since the 4th Republic came into being in 1992, at the polls, this December.
Is it not unpardonable, unspeakable and abominable that they have succeeded in polarising Ghanaian society to the extent that they have? How can a badly divided society possibly progress and prosper, I ask?
Pastor, endorse the unifying candidacy of Paa Kwesi Nduom - and ask the supporters of the NDC and NPP to plump instead for him to become President of the Republic of Ghana: and lead a government of national unity to which competent, honest and world-class Ghanaians (irrespective of their political leanings!) will be appointed.
Pastor, the plain truth, is that both the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), are beholden to the very vested interests profiting from our corrupt system. High-level corruption in Ghana will never cease if those divisive and greed-driven parties continue to rule our homeland Ghana.
That is because, as you are aware, they are both in the firm grip of ruthless hardliners, whose scorched-earth political philosophy dictates that they sabotage the nation-building effort, whenever they find themselves in the political wilderness.
Alas, it is ordinary people, who eventually suffer from the harsh consequences of the nation-wrecking-selfishness - which the sabotaging of the nation-building effort by those sly and amoral politicians amounts to.
What Ghana needs now, is an honest and disciplined one-nation political leader, such as Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom - who clearly understands the importance of making Ghana a nation with the world's lowest taxes on individuals and businesses.
Sir, would abolishing taxes on private universities not enable Central University, for example, to lower the fees it charges, and offer more scholarships to brilliant but needy students, I ask?
There is no sense in continuing to tolerate the totally unacceptable situation in which ruling parties pile on tax after tax on Ghanaians - just to be siphoned off by the many white collar criminals in our national economy's public-sector.
Why overburden hardworking Ghanaians with tax after tax just to mollycoddle government ministers and other public-sector appointees? Do many of them not collude with the selfsame crooks sucking the very lifeblood out of Mother Ghana?
So why should Ghanaians entrust the NDC/NPP duopoly with power yet again - and give the powerful crooks that control them from the shadows the opportunity to rip-off our nation - and enable them to live the life of Riley at the expense of ordinary people: who have to struggle daily just to survive? It must not happen. Full stop.
Nduom is committed to transparency and accountability - which is why he will publicly publish his assets as well as that of his entire nuclear family before the December elections. Have you heard President Mahama and Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo and their acolytes making a similar declaration? They will never do so. Ever.
Nduom also intends to publicly publish all the sources of his party's campaign funds, before polling day. Thus far, have you heard the leading lights of the NDC and NPP, committing to do so too? Food for thought, Pastor.
And as you know, Nduom is a truly world-class individual, who actually knows how to create wealth and meaningful jobs - and will therefore focus on creating a conducive climate for entrepreneurs to thrive in Ghana and the Diaspora too.
A President Nduom will never allow Ghanaians and their nation to be taken advantage of in any agreement that his one-nation administration signs with local and foreign investors. All the agreements his government signs will be win-win ones.
Above all, his administration will probe all the regimes that have held power since the 4th Republic came into being - and send a signal to the world that impunity has finally come to an end in Ghana. All those who have stolen taxpayers' funds will be made to pay them back with interest. Fantastic.
Pastor, help kick-start the transformation of Ghana into an African equivalent, of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, by endorsing the candidacy of Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, to enable him become the next President of the Republic of Ghana, after 7th January, 2017.
Brilliant Ghanaians, with stellar track-records of solid achievements, such as your good self, and Bishop Doug Heward-Mills, will definitely play prominent roles in government, when Nduom becomes Ghana's President.
You both qualify and deserve to help run the enterprise Ghana - and will doubtless do so when Nduom becomes President on 7th January, 2017.
For the sake of the ordinary people of Ghana, you must all endorse Nduom for president now - so that Mother Ghana benefits from your undoubted talents.
Thank you very much indeed, Pastor Mensah Otabil - and peace and blessings to all of you.
Yours in the service of Mother Ghana,
Kofi.
Thursday, 11 August 2016
Why The Council Of State Must Advice President Mahama Not To Pardon The So-Called Montie Three
Recent events make one weep that our homeland Ghana has come to such a sorry pass that government ministers feel compelled to engage in sychophantic behaviour - such as signing petitions that deep down in their own hearts they know are morally wrong for decent people to sign.
It is a sobering thought that as a result of the steady erosion of the moral fabric of Ghanaian society, we have ended up becoming a nation in which ruthless, amoral and uncouth individuals, who have the temerity to threaten the lives of even judges on the airwaves of FM radio stations, and are jailed for doing so, can have petitions organised on their behalf, asking the President of the Republic of Ghana to grant them pardons.
Do those who for partisan reasons sign petitions of that nature not realise the effect that such death threats have on judges - who instead of dispensing justice without fear or favour are rather forced to think of their own personal safety when judging cases brought before them in the law courts, on which they have sat?
As reasonable and sane beings, it is well-nigh impossible for judges not to be affected by death threats, when they are presiding over cases involving members of the general public appearing before them. Does that not deny justice to those who seek reliefs from the law courts when their rights are infringed upon?
In that sense, is threatening the lives of judges, not tantamount to attacking the justice system? That is why all Ghanaians who believe in due process and the rule of law, ought to support judges, whenever they are threatened by reckless individuals - by refusing to sign petitions asking the President of the Republic of Ghana to pardon them: when jailed by the selfsame judges they threatened.
How can we preserve our democratic system and deepen the roots of Ghanaian democracy yet further, when society does not show judges clearly and without equivocation that they will always be protected by the state, when vile individuals threaten to harm them?
That is why the President of the Republic of Ghana must show the world that that is not behaviour he will either countenance or support - by refusing to grant pardons to those who threaten judges: when they are sentenced to prison by properly constituted courts of law.
In the hope that some of the more independent-minded, principled and patriotic members of the Council of State, who might chance upon this blog post, will read it, we are posting a culled published transcript of a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) programme - "TALK OF THE NATION" - hosted by Neil Conan, which was aired on 1st April, 2013.
Hopefully, having read the transcript of Neil Conan's programme that discussed the issue of death threats against public officials - including judges - in the U.S., members of the Council of State, who have held on to their sense of fairness and maintained their integrity, thus far, will be persuaded to resolve to advice President Mahama that he must not pardon the so-called Montie Three, under any circumstances: because ours is a society underpinned by common decency.
We must always be mindful of the fact that the genocide in Rwanda occurred because ruthless and amoral individuals wirh direct access to a radio station went on air to urge their followers to kill their fellow humans - whom they referred to as "cockroaches".
We should never underestimate the harm done to society, by vitriolic attacks on the airwaves of television and FM radio stations, against public officials - such as the issuing of death threats against public officials (including judges): because it makes them fearful of their lives in the performance of their official duties.
How can our country continue to remain a free and liberal society in such circumstances? If such things are tolerated will we not eventually end up seeing the law of the jungle operating in Ghana? We must never tolerate such abhorrent behaviour in our homeland Ghana - which is why President Mahama must not pardon the Montie Three.
To do so would be sending the wrong signal to Ghanaian society generally - and to the younger generation in particular: who will come to believe that this is a nation in which impunity is alive and well, because even those who issue death threats on the airwaves of radio stations against judges can rely on the President of the Republic of Ghana to pardon them when they are jailed.
Please read on:
''Life Under Death Threats: Dangers Faced By Judges, Prosecutors
Transcript
April 1, 20131:00 PM ET
Heard on Talk of the Nation
Guests
Mike Cicconetti, municipal judge, Painesville, Oh.
Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security, U.S. Marshals
Sid Harle, district court judge, San Antonio, Tx.
The recent shooting and killing of a Texas District Attorney has local law enforcement and prosecutors on high alert for other threats. Threats against prosecutors, judges and DA's have been on the upswing in the U.S. in recent years. In 2012, 1,370 threats were made against federal judges.
NEAL CONAN, HOST:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. We've received many kind messages since last Friday, when NPR announced that this program will cease production at the end of June. Our heartfelt thanks to everybody who took the time to write. We have a lot of programs before we sign off and a lot of stories to share.
We begin today with the threats faced by law enforcement officials and their families. Some officials in Texas say the murder of Kaufman County district attorney and his wife Saturday may be linked to the shooting death of an assistant DA on the county courthouse steps in January and maybe to the killing of Colorado's prisons chief last night. Their names: Mike McLelland, Cynthia McLelland, Mark Hasse and Tom Clements.
Kaufman County Judge Bruce Wood told ABC News this is not just an attack on two very fine people but an attack on the justice system. Too often cops, DAs, prison officials and judges live under threat, and as we saw in Texas, that can include their families. If that's your story, call and tell us how you deal with those threats. Our phone number: 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Later in the program on The Opinion Page, an argument that U.S. intervention could contain violence in Syria just as, Jackson Diehl argues, it did in Iraq. But first life under threat of death. Judge Mike Cicconetti is a municipal judge in Painesville, Ohio, and he joins us on the phone. Thanks very much for being with us today.
MIKE CICCONETTI: I'm happy to be here; hello, Neal.
CONAN: And your story is, well, sobering, isn't it?
CICCONETTI: It was very sobering. We were coming up on an anniversary here in April. We're coming up on seven years here, seven years ago that this happened. And, you know, you still think about it every day when you had a threat of death over you and your family. And it's, as you say, very sobering.
CONAN: What happened?
CICCONETTI: Well, I had a couple in court here, and I have a misdemeanor court, and these people came in here on just a minor charge. It was a tax evasion of their village income tax. And, you know, the possible penalty, I don't even know if it was more than 30 days in jail. And they were set for a trial, which would have been on April 20th of that month.
And they felt like everybody was out to get them. And I think you find that this rings true with so many of these people who are seeking vengeance on public officials that, you know, it's everybody's out to get them syndrome that they have.
So they were plotting against the mayor of the village, the police chief of the village, the prosecutor of the village and myself, the judge who would have heard the case. And it was a death threat where they had - as a matter of fact, not planned - they were constructing and in the final phase of constructing an IED, a pipe bomb, that would explode in my house.
CONAN: And did you know you were under threat?
CICCONETTI: Well, on April 4th, the - I was called by one of the local police departments. I was at my doctor's office, and they said come meet us. So I went and I met them, sat in their patrol car, and they pulled out a CD, put it on the computer and played it. And I heard the voice of the defendant. They had - there was an informant that went to the police and told them hey this - you know, I'm not a good guy - the informant, matter of fact he had a felony charge pending - but this is way out of my league here. This is wrong, this is sick.
So he went to the police, told them. They put a wire on him, and he went and recorded it, and that's what I heard. And I heard the death threat being made and the plans as to how it was to be carried out on this CD. And then it was six days of actual living hell, of living like a nomad and hiding and having the FBI, ATF, local police departments all involved in this.
CONAN: And your family?
CICCONETTI: Well, you know, I had - I have two sons, and at the time they were eight and 10 years old. And we had told them that we had to move out of the house, that there was a gas leak. Well, kids are pretty smart and intuitive, and they, you know, they said to us, well, mom and dad, if there's a gas leak, why aren't we taking the guinea pigs out of the house.
So I said OK, got me. So then we had to really - we had to sit down and explain to them what was going on, and it had an adverse effect on them psychologically. I mean, they're kids, they're little kids. They were scared. You know, grades, you could see the grades were dropping just in a period of a week. And we had to live in secret places in other houses for that period of time, until they were apprehended, which was about a week later.
CONAN: And thank heavens it was only a week, but then something like this incident happens in Texas, I'm sure you get flashbacks.
CICCONETTI: I mean every time it happens, it sure does, Neal. And you look at that, and you go just how, you know, how many sick people are there out there in this world. And, you know, you talk about gun control bills, and all this is up in the air. And, you know, it's - I don't care what you do in this country, it's not going to stop somebody from building a pipe bomb.
It's easier to go on the Internet. It's easier than making a batch of cupcakes to put together a pipe bomb. So, you know, it's a society that - our thinking in this society that needs to change. You know, rules, laws, you know, that's not going to change anything. We have the laws. There's a law against murder. Well, does that stop people? No. There's a law against tax evasion here. Does that stop people? No.
It's, you know, the entire society has to change, our mode of thinking.
CONAN: And did it change the way you did your job?
CICCONETTI: You know, I want to say no, but honestly I'd have to say yes - that I hope that it doesn't, but I know that it probably does, when I get someone in court that looks a little off-balance or a little eerie, or, you know, or perhaps threatening. You know, when you sit on the bench for 20 years like I have, you pretty much get a feel of how this is going before they even get up to the bench.
On their walk, you know, the 10, 15 paces that they make up to the bench, I pretty much tell - I can know where this is going just by body language. And it's - you know, it's - you don't even think about it. And do I become a little apprehensive, at times, with certain defendants? Yeah, I probably do, that I didn't do seven years ago. Yes, you know, I'd be lying if I said I didn't.
You know, I carry stun guns on my bench now, and I never even thought about that before. When I leave the court in the afternoon, you know, I look around the parking lot before I go down the stairs to my car. Sure, yeah, I do things that I didn't even think about doing before.
CONAN: Well, I'm sorry you had to go through it, judge, and...
CICCONETTI: Well, thank you, Neal.
CONAN: And we'll let you get back to work. But thank you very much for sharing your story.
CICCONETTI: OK, you're welcome. Good luck with your show.
CONAN: Thanks very much.
CICCONETTI: All right, take care.
CONAN: Mike Cicconetti is a municipal judge in Painesville, Ohio, currently in his third six-year term in office. Joining us here in Studio 3A is Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security for the U.S. Marshals. Thanks very much for coming in today.
CARL CAULK: Good afternoon, Neal.
CONAN: And U.S. Marshals, obviously a municipal court judge outside of your jurisdiction, but these kinds of things happen to federal officials, too.
CAULK: Absolutely, and we literally have hundreds of threats and inappropriate communications that are made against judicial and prosecutorial officials at a federal level every year.
CONAN: And how do you decide which to take seriously?
CAULK: Well, to be frank, we take all of them seriously. We have a cadre of threat investigators around the United States, and those individuals investigate each and every one of those threats and inappropriate communications that are received by our protectees.
CONAN: And when do you decide to disrupt the lives of someone who's been threatened?
CAULK: Well, after an initial assessment is made of a threat, then we generally put in a set of protective measures that can run the full gamut all the way up to a 24/7 protection detail with any number of people around a protectee's home and their travel, et cetera.
CONAN: Now the FBI is involved in this case in Texas. I - again not your bailiwick, but I wonder, when you hear something like that, what's your reaction?
CAULK: Well, you know, our reaction quite frankly is - I mean, we share reaction that is, you know, any time we see an attack on a prosecutor or a judge at any level, it shows a general disregard for the rule of law. And anytime we see that, obviously it's concerning to us because from where we sit it does not matter whether it's a state or a local judge or a prosecutor. You know, an attack on the law is an attack on the law.
And so it does give us pause, and obviously, you know, we try to work as closely with our law enforcement partners to not only track what's going on in this case but in all types of threat cases, even if they involve state and local officials.
CONAN: And is your job strictly reactive, you wait until there's a threat, or is there a proactive element, as well?
CAULK: Well, I think there's several proactive things that we like to do. One, I mean, we're charge with a physical security of court facilities around the United States, and so obviously there's some proactive steps that we put in place. There's an education part of this for our protectees. As the judge just mentioned, being aware of your surroundings, being aware when you commute to and from work.
And so there's a whole education piece about personal security awareness when you're not in those secure facilities, when you're at home, when you're commuting. And then of course there's the work that we do to share our knowledge and work closely with state and local law enforcement so they have benefit of our experience and vice versa whenever they're providing protection for state and local officials.
And so that relationship building is very important to us, and then that whole education piece for our protectees is very important from a proactive standpoint.
CONAN: And it was interesting, when Judge Cicconetti was talking about, you know, the feeling that even in a municipal court case like his where at worse somebody might get 30 days in jail, everybody's against him, the feeling that some people have that this is, you know, a terrible wrong that needs to be righted.
CAULK: It is. It's a common - as he pointed out, it's a common feeling that a lot of individuals who threaten, they have that feeling. They have a paranoid feeling that the system is stacked against them. And at the end of the day, judges and prosecutors make decisions that change people's lives. So whether it's a murder case or whether it's as simple as a bankruptcy case, at the end of the day people's lives are being changed, and people react to those decisions that are made by prosecutors and judges.
CONAN: And do these snowball? If one case happens, Atlanta courthouse a few years ago, do you worry that other people may get the same idea?
CAULK: I think, you know, anytime you see a crime perpetrated in a particular way against a judge or a prosecutor, again I go back to it makes us think, it gives us pause because we do worry about individuals taking, you know, like steps to - if they feel that, you know, the system is not giving them a fair shake, so to speak.
CONAN: All right, we want to hear from those of you whose story this is, from judges and prosecutors, from cops, prison officials, as well. Sadly, we are having difficulties with our telephone system. If you're trying to call in, we apologize. We'll try to get it straightened away. We'll give out the phone number again when we do. And please, we want to hear your stories, as well.
I'm Neal Conan. Stay with us. We're talking with Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security at the U.S. Marshals Service. If you're in law enforcement, if you have a family member who is, tell us: How do you deal with threats? We'll try to get that phone system sorted out. In the meantime, you can send us email, talk@npr.org. Stay with us. We'll be back in a minute. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. This morning, deputies escorted courthouse employees into the building in Kaufman County, Texas, a measure of security just two days after District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia were found shot to death in their home.
Elsewhere in Texas, law enforcement agencies are offering extra protection to their staffs. For example, Mike Anderson and his family accepted the sheriff's offer of 24-hour security. He's district attorney in Harris County, which includes Houston. He told ABC News that district attorneys across Texas are still in a state of shock.
If you're an officer, a DA, a prison official, a judge, if you've lived under threat, call and tell us how you deal with it. Our phone number, well, our regular phone number is still not working, but you can give us a call, 202-513-2531. Again the number, right now, 202-513-2531. You can also reach us by email. That address, that's the usual one. That's talk@npr.org.
Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security for the U.S. Marshals Service, is our guest. He's with us here in Studio 3A. Joining us now, Judge Sid Harle, a district court judge in San Antonio, Texas, also a former prosecutor. He's on the line with us from his office there in San Antonio. And Judge Harle, nice to have you with us today.
SID HARLE: Thank you, Neal, thanks for having me.
CONAN: And I know you used to be a prosecutor, as well. So this must be an alarming situation as you think about what's happening in Kaufman County.
HARLE: Well absolutely, and I'd like to start by offering my deepest condolences and sympathies to the McClelland family, the Hasse family and of course the Clements family. They were dedicated public servants, and it was a great tragedy. But it is concerning and alarming.
CONAN: Mr. Hasse of course the assistant district attorney in Kaufman County who was killed on the courthouse steps in January; Mr. Clements, the heads of prisons in Colorado, who died last month, shot at his home. And, you know, there's a suspicion, and it's just a suspicion now, that these may be connected.
HARLE: That is true. That's what I'm reading and from the briefings we're getting. They're taking that as a very serious possibility.
CONAN: I wonder, Carl Caulk, as you sit here with us in the studio, when you're thinking about one incident, well, one threat bad enough. When it might be an organized group, how does that change your thinking?
CAULK: Well, in terms of the investigation itself, it does not change it significantly in that our entire investigative thrust is to mitigate whatever threat has been made. That's done through a variety of means, be it subject interviews, be it cooperative interviews with family and friends. Certainly if you introduce a group dynamic with group thinking and a group hierarchy, it makes it more difficult in terms of span of control of an investigation.
The investigation certainly becomes exponentially larger, in terms of possible threateners.
CONAN: Judge Harle, did you face threats as a prosecutor? Do you face threats as a judge?
HARLE: Certainly everyone in this line of work at some point in time has threats leveled at them, and it is part of the job, and you can't let it change the way you run your court or the way you prosecute or frankly your quality of life. You worry more about your family than yourself, but you just need to be aware and take precautions and always, you know, just be aware of your surroundings and know what's going on.
But we rely heavily on the law enforcement end to evaluate the credibility and the seriousness of the individual threats. We get briefings from, here locally, in San Antonio, the U.S. Marshalls Office has come over and helped us with our security. And our head of security here, the sheriff of Bexar County, is excellent at keeping us apprised of potential threats.
CONAN: And how do you decide when to notify the authorities that you've received a threat?
HARLE: Oh, we notify them about anything, something that occurs in the courtroom, something that occurs by mail or telephone. We've got some harassing phone calls going on in Bexar County right now that the sheriff is keeping everyone apprised of so everybody knows what's going on. So everyone takes every threat seriously, but the level of preparation and concern kind of changes.
We had one a couple of weeks ago against one of our local judges that was originated by someone that was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and that's obviously very concerning because they are a well-organized and dangerous group, and you can't prepare enough for something like that.
And as we've discovered, there's no level of preparation that's going to be absolute. You can carry a gun. You can be aware of people coming to your home. You can have absolute security. But if it's someone lying in wait in an ambush situation or a home invasion, there's not much anybody can do in that regard.
CONAN: And we had been told that District Attorney McLelland, particularly after Mr. Hasse's murder, was, well, very aware of the possibility that he might be under threat, too, carried a gun, and that didn't - do you also try to protect yourself like that as well?
HARLE: I have on occasion carried a gun on my person. Typically I do not carry it daily. I have many weapons at my home. I have a concealed weapon handgun license. I'm a magistrate, so I can carry a weapon. I do have them in my vehicles. But unless I'm concerned about an overt threat, I don't carry it on my person generally.
But frankly you don't want to rely too much on weapons. you want to rely on awareness and knowledge of your surroundings and varying your, you know, time you get here and what time you leave and just take general precautions, rely on that over and above weapons, because someone else could certainly be out - you could be outgunned, and someone else could be in a situation where they're going to be lying in wait in an ambush like we saw, and there's really not much you can do in that regard.
CONAN: One place anybody knows you're going to be is at your bench. We heard Judge Cicconetti tell us earlier that he keeps a stun gun at his bench when he hears cases. What about you?
HARLE: Well, I rely on my bailiffs in the court. We have some excellent sheriff's deputies assigned. And, you know, we're talking about criminal cases, but really some of the worst cases that we deal with on a daily basis are family law cases, child custody, divorces, and those individuals are at a high level of emotional state, distraught and concerned. And we've had threats of judges that are hearing those cases here in Bexar County.
And they have one bailiff to my two bailiffs. So everyone has to be prepared and be ready. But mostly the judges rely on their security in the courtroom.
CONAN: Carl Caulk, I guess you have to rely on security in the courtroom, though as we've seen, sometimes that does break down, very rarely. But outside the courtroom, varying your habits, this is not living your life in a normal way.
CAULK: No, you're 100 percent correct. And the judge referenced the education and that personal security awareness when you're outside of the courthouse. Unfortunately that's become the norm for both prosecutors, as well as judges, at all levels. And you're correct that it takes away some of your flexibility, it takes away some of your freedom, if you will, but unfortunately it's become a requirement to vary those commuting habits, to be certainly aware of your surroundings, to look at home security, home alarms, how you can harden your residence, if you will.
And then as the judge said, anything untoward whatsoever, reporting that to law enforcement so that it can be investigated whether it's an overt threat or even if it's what we call an inappropriate communication, which is somewhat more veiled in nature, but anything that's inappropriate or out of the normal course of business.
CONAN: Let's see if we can get a caller in on the conversation. Again our regular phone line is not working today. We apologize for that. 202-513-2531. And we've gotten some emails, as well. This is from Barbara in Red Bluff, California: Please don't limit this problem to judges and prosecutors. My husband practices criminal defense exclusively, private and indigent, through contracts with our superior court system.
Believe me, when an angry and irrational defendant is reactive, the defense counsel is also a target, and my husband's dealt with threats through his career, as well. We believe the situation is growing more and more dangerous as people seem to lose respect for the judicial system and human life in general.
This from Helen: As the child of an adult circuit court probation and parole officer, I understand these concerns. As a child if we bumped into one of my mom's parolees in the grocery store, she would be cordial, but she did not introduce us. We were trained never to ask someone's name nor introduce ourselves. She was required to keep our home phone number published, and that included our address. Early on, you learn to be careful.
Your address, Judge Harle, I assume you are very cautious with that.
HARLE: Well, it is, it's easily accessible. We have to file reports with the state that list properties that we own, and it wouldn't take very much for anybody to find out where you live. So you just have to be aware of that. But let me echo that first email. I was a defense attorney for a long time, and trust me, they get equally as serious threats because they have to deal with court-appointed clients that they didn't choose, that are irrational, as she stated, and those threats are often and perhaps even more often than what we see on the prosecutor and judges' side.
CONAN: John's on the line with us from Oklahoma City.
JOHN: Yes, hello, how are you?
CONAN: Fine. Thank you very much for calling.
JOHN: Yeah. I was going to comment on - the actual event, as transpired recently. I'm a security consultant for a company out here in Oklahoma City, and we work exclusively with the district attorney's office and the municipal courts. Now, we all privately hire, though, and I know in our situation, some of the prosecutors and judges that we protect and their families, we actually stay in the courtrooms with them and sometimes stay at home with them, up to 24 hours a day, and we do wear plain clothes. But we're in the courtrooms with them just a member of the actual court, so to speak, but...
CONAN: And this is presumably after some sort of credible threat?
JOHN: Absolutely, absolutely. Now, the only downfall is here in Oklahoma City, they currently don't have, in the city limits, an area in which the city or the state will help foot this bill, so to speak. So this is entirely out of these individuals' pockets, and it does get quite costly after a while.
CONAN: I can understand that. This is - these are highly trained professionals, and obviously, you don't want somebody who isn't highly trained.
(LAUGHTER)
JOHN: Yeah. See can say on firsthand knowledge, though, just really quick for your callers, is mitigation. You know, if one is aware of their surroundings beforehand, two-thirds of the time, you can alleviate any initial threat. It just - you have to be really, really aware and think outside the box, especially some of my clients. When they are targeted, a lot of times, you know, they'll focus the security on themselves, but their families become the initial target after that, as well. So it's tough.
CONAN: All right. Well, thanks very much, and we appreciate the call.
JOHN: You bet.
CONAN: Here's an email, we have this from William in Media, Pennsylvania: Does angry criticism of a judge, prosecutor, law enforcement official qualify as a threat? Carl Caulk?
CAULK: Well, I would say angry criticism is kind of a relative term. I mean, we certainly - if it's criticism of a judge's ruling that they have made in a particular case, and we're certainly aware of and we respect individuals' First Amendment rights. So, I mean, we have a number of what we would consider to be kind of triggering events that would come into play whenever we assess whether or not somebody's kind of crossed a line. But angry criticism or criticism in of itself, we do not consider threatening. We consider it to be protected by an individual's First Amendment rights.
CONAN: We're talking about - after three murders now in Texas and one in Colorado, just in the past couple of months - about the threats received by cops, prosecutors, judges, prison officials and, as we're hearing, criminal defense attorneys, as well. 800-989-8255 is our phone number. Looks like the phone system's back up. Email us: talk@npr.org. Our guests, you just heard Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security for the U.S. Marshal Service, with us here in Studio 3A.
Also with us, Judge Sid Harle, a district court judge in San Antonio. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. And Judge Harle, as you consider the kinds of threats you face, is this something you signed up for? Is this something, had you known about it, might have change your decision about your career choices?
HARLE: Well, frankly, Neal, I was a prosecutor. I've been on the bench since 1988, but I was a prosecutor for several years before that, and I was a criminal defense attorney. And, you know, I enjoy what I do. I ran for the bench knowing exactly what happens and what could happen. You don't really have a lot of concern for yourself, but you always worry about dragging your family into it. And I've been fortunate in that the threats that I've received have not been credible to the extent that I was overly concerned about them, and I didn't have to have the 24/7 security.
But we do, in Bexar County, have that, and several of my fellow prosecutors and judges have had the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week security until the threat level has been assessed to be minimal, or the individual has been caught. So it is - it's kind of part of the job, and you just, again, can't let it change your quality of life and can't let it change the way you rule on cases and run a fair and impartial court.
CONAN: Paula's on the line with us from Rockford, Illinois.
PAULA: Hi. My father was a chief felony prosecutor. And as a child, it was absolutely terrifying living with someone in that profession. We were threatened all the time, and we were told to take caution wherever we went. We had bomb threats. We had snipers trying to kill my father, trying to kill us. It was terrifying.
CONAN: And how did you cope with it, in the long run?
PAULA: Well, as I grew older, I'm a psychotherapist now, and I know now that we had post-traumatic stress. That's - all my brothers and I both developed - all three of us developed post-traumatic stress from living as children with a career prosecutor.
CONAN: And your dad?
PAULA: And my father was a tough Marine prosecutor, and he just worked through it. But that's not true for this family, and that's what's so difficult to hear in this situation, because I feel like families have been neglected in terms of their protection. One thing to the prosecutor, that's his career. That's his choice. The children are innocent victims.
CONAN: Carl Caulk, I know that families are, as we heard earlier, sometimes the first attention's deflected onto them, rather than the initial source of the anger.
CAULK: Yeah. We've actually had threats made against family members primarily, instead of our normal, what we would call our normal protectee. And in many of those cases, we've seen protection provided for not only a judge or a prosecutor or other court family member, but also for family members. I would echo Barbara's email in that defense counsel are subject to threat. We investigate threats involving defense counsel, as well, in the federal system.
I've seen defense counsel physically attacked in a courtroom more so than I have prosecutors inside of a courtroom. But certainly, family members become a part of the entire threat investigation. Our security briefings that are being given include family members and kind of what they can do from a personal security stand point, as well.
CONAN: Well, Paula, thank you very much for the phone call.
PAULA: And it works just fine as long as we know that there is an immediate threat, but the problem is those people who were prosecuted get out of prison, and then they often try to target the family. We had bomb threats put underneath our - we had to check the roofs of our cars and lids of our car before we got into them after college classes, because we were supposed to be having bombs underneath those. Now, if you know there's an immediate threat, then you can take care of it. But with prosecutors, they have cases for years that can eventually be a threat to them and their family, and they're not going to know about it until it happens.
CONAN: Again, Paula, thanks very much for the phone call. We appreciate. And our thanks, as well, to Judge Sid Harle, who joined us today from San Antonio, Texas. Appreciate your time.
HARLE: Thank you, Neal.
CONAN: And Carl Caulk of the U.S. - director of judicial security at the U.S. Marshal Service, who joined us here in Studio 3A. Thanks very much for coming in. And again, all our thoughts go out to those families in Texas and in Colorado who's - well, suffered such terrible losses in the past couple of months. We hope this can be resolved very, very quickly. Thanks very much for your time today.
CAULK: Thanks very much.
CONAN: Coming up next, we'll be going to the Opinion Page and Jackson Diehl of The Washington Post, who argues that we've got the Washington - what the Iraq War taught him about Syria. Stay with us for that, and we apologize for the problems with the phone system, as well. It's working. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
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It is a sobering thought that as a result of the steady erosion of the moral fabric of Ghanaian society, we have ended up becoming a nation in which ruthless, amoral and uncouth individuals, who have the temerity to threaten the lives of even judges on the airwaves of FM radio stations, and are jailed for doing so, can have petitions organised on their behalf, asking the President of the Republic of Ghana to grant them pardons.
Do those who for partisan reasons sign petitions of that nature not realise the effect that such death threats have on judges - who instead of dispensing justice without fear or favour are rather forced to think of their own personal safety when judging cases brought before them in the law courts, on which they have sat?
As reasonable and sane beings, it is well-nigh impossible for judges not to be affected by death threats, when they are presiding over cases involving members of the general public appearing before them. Does that not deny justice to those who seek reliefs from the law courts when their rights are infringed upon?
In that sense, is threatening the lives of judges, not tantamount to attacking the justice system? That is why all Ghanaians who believe in due process and the rule of law, ought to support judges, whenever they are threatened by reckless individuals - by refusing to sign petitions asking the President of the Republic of Ghana to pardon them: when jailed by the selfsame judges they threatened.
How can we preserve our democratic system and deepen the roots of Ghanaian democracy yet further, when society does not show judges clearly and without equivocation that they will always be protected by the state, when vile individuals threaten to harm them?
That is why the President of the Republic of Ghana must show the world that that is not behaviour he will either countenance or support - by refusing to grant pardons to those who threaten judges: when they are sentenced to prison by properly constituted courts of law.
In the hope that some of the more independent-minded, principled and patriotic members of the Council of State, who might chance upon this blog post, will read it, we are posting a culled published transcript of a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) programme - "TALK OF THE NATION" - hosted by Neil Conan, which was aired on 1st April, 2013.
Hopefully, having read the transcript of Neil Conan's programme that discussed the issue of death threats against public officials - including judges - in the U.S., members of the Council of State, who have held on to their sense of fairness and maintained their integrity, thus far, will be persuaded to resolve to advice President Mahama that he must not pardon the so-called Montie Three, under any circumstances: because ours is a society underpinned by common decency.
We must always be mindful of the fact that the genocide in Rwanda occurred because ruthless and amoral individuals wirh direct access to a radio station went on air to urge their followers to kill their fellow humans - whom they referred to as "cockroaches".
We should never underestimate the harm done to society, by vitriolic attacks on the airwaves of television and FM radio stations, against public officials - such as the issuing of death threats against public officials (including judges): because it makes them fearful of their lives in the performance of their official duties.
How can our country continue to remain a free and liberal society in such circumstances? If such things are tolerated will we not eventually end up seeing the law of the jungle operating in Ghana? We must never tolerate such abhorrent behaviour in our homeland Ghana - which is why President Mahama must not pardon the Montie Three.
To do so would be sending the wrong signal to Ghanaian society generally - and to the younger generation in particular: who will come to believe that this is a nation in which impunity is alive and well, because even those who issue death threats on the airwaves of radio stations against judges can rely on the President of the Republic of Ghana to pardon them when they are jailed.
Please read on:
''Life Under Death Threats: Dangers Faced By Judges, Prosecutors
Transcript
April 1, 20131:00 PM ET
Heard on Talk of the Nation
Guests
Mike Cicconetti, municipal judge, Painesville, Oh.
Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security, U.S. Marshals
Sid Harle, district court judge, San Antonio, Tx.
The recent shooting and killing of a Texas District Attorney has local law enforcement and prosecutors on high alert for other threats. Threats against prosecutors, judges and DA's have been on the upswing in the U.S. in recent years. In 2012, 1,370 threats were made against federal judges.
NEAL CONAN, HOST:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. We've received many kind messages since last Friday, when NPR announced that this program will cease production at the end of June. Our heartfelt thanks to everybody who took the time to write. We have a lot of programs before we sign off and a lot of stories to share.
We begin today with the threats faced by law enforcement officials and their families. Some officials in Texas say the murder of Kaufman County district attorney and his wife Saturday may be linked to the shooting death of an assistant DA on the county courthouse steps in January and maybe to the killing of Colorado's prisons chief last night. Their names: Mike McLelland, Cynthia McLelland, Mark Hasse and Tom Clements.
Kaufman County Judge Bruce Wood told ABC News this is not just an attack on two very fine people but an attack on the justice system. Too often cops, DAs, prison officials and judges live under threat, and as we saw in Texas, that can include their families. If that's your story, call and tell us how you deal with those threats. Our phone number: 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
Later in the program on The Opinion Page, an argument that U.S. intervention could contain violence in Syria just as, Jackson Diehl argues, it did in Iraq. But first life under threat of death. Judge Mike Cicconetti is a municipal judge in Painesville, Ohio, and he joins us on the phone. Thanks very much for being with us today.
MIKE CICCONETTI: I'm happy to be here; hello, Neal.
CONAN: And your story is, well, sobering, isn't it?
CICCONETTI: It was very sobering. We were coming up on an anniversary here in April. We're coming up on seven years here, seven years ago that this happened. And, you know, you still think about it every day when you had a threat of death over you and your family. And it's, as you say, very sobering.
CONAN: What happened?
CICCONETTI: Well, I had a couple in court here, and I have a misdemeanor court, and these people came in here on just a minor charge. It was a tax evasion of their village income tax. And, you know, the possible penalty, I don't even know if it was more than 30 days in jail. And they were set for a trial, which would have been on April 20th of that month.
And they felt like everybody was out to get them. And I think you find that this rings true with so many of these people who are seeking vengeance on public officials that, you know, it's everybody's out to get them syndrome that they have.
So they were plotting against the mayor of the village, the police chief of the village, the prosecutor of the village and myself, the judge who would have heard the case. And it was a death threat where they had - as a matter of fact, not planned - they were constructing and in the final phase of constructing an IED, a pipe bomb, that would explode in my house.
CONAN: And did you know you were under threat?
CICCONETTI: Well, on April 4th, the - I was called by one of the local police departments. I was at my doctor's office, and they said come meet us. So I went and I met them, sat in their patrol car, and they pulled out a CD, put it on the computer and played it. And I heard the voice of the defendant. They had - there was an informant that went to the police and told them hey this - you know, I'm not a good guy - the informant, matter of fact he had a felony charge pending - but this is way out of my league here. This is wrong, this is sick.
So he went to the police, told them. They put a wire on him, and he went and recorded it, and that's what I heard. And I heard the death threat being made and the plans as to how it was to be carried out on this CD. And then it was six days of actual living hell, of living like a nomad and hiding and having the FBI, ATF, local police departments all involved in this.
CONAN: And your family?
CICCONETTI: Well, you know, I had - I have two sons, and at the time they were eight and 10 years old. And we had told them that we had to move out of the house, that there was a gas leak. Well, kids are pretty smart and intuitive, and they, you know, they said to us, well, mom and dad, if there's a gas leak, why aren't we taking the guinea pigs out of the house.
So I said OK, got me. So then we had to really - we had to sit down and explain to them what was going on, and it had an adverse effect on them psychologically. I mean, they're kids, they're little kids. They were scared. You know, grades, you could see the grades were dropping just in a period of a week. And we had to live in secret places in other houses for that period of time, until they were apprehended, which was about a week later.
CONAN: And thank heavens it was only a week, but then something like this incident happens in Texas, I'm sure you get flashbacks.
CICCONETTI: I mean every time it happens, it sure does, Neal. And you look at that, and you go just how, you know, how many sick people are there out there in this world. And, you know, you talk about gun control bills, and all this is up in the air. And, you know, it's - I don't care what you do in this country, it's not going to stop somebody from building a pipe bomb.
It's easier to go on the Internet. It's easier than making a batch of cupcakes to put together a pipe bomb. So, you know, it's a society that - our thinking in this society that needs to change. You know, rules, laws, you know, that's not going to change anything. We have the laws. There's a law against murder. Well, does that stop people? No. There's a law against tax evasion here. Does that stop people? No.
It's, you know, the entire society has to change, our mode of thinking.
CONAN: And did it change the way you did your job?
CICCONETTI: You know, I want to say no, but honestly I'd have to say yes - that I hope that it doesn't, but I know that it probably does, when I get someone in court that looks a little off-balance or a little eerie, or, you know, or perhaps threatening. You know, when you sit on the bench for 20 years like I have, you pretty much get a feel of how this is going before they even get up to the bench.
On their walk, you know, the 10, 15 paces that they make up to the bench, I pretty much tell - I can know where this is going just by body language. And it's - you know, it's - you don't even think about it. And do I become a little apprehensive, at times, with certain defendants? Yeah, I probably do, that I didn't do seven years ago. Yes, you know, I'd be lying if I said I didn't.
You know, I carry stun guns on my bench now, and I never even thought about that before. When I leave the court in the afternoon, you know, I look around the parking lot before I go down the stairs to my car. Sure, yeah, I do things that I didn't even think about doing before.
CONAN: Well, I'm sorry you had to go through it, judge, and...
CICCONETTI: Well, thank you, Neal.
CONAN: And we'll let you get back to work. But thank you very much for sharing your story.
CICCONETTI: OK, you're welcome. Good luck with your show.
CONAN: Thanks very much.
CICCONETTI: All right, take care.
CONAN: Mike Cicconetti is a municipal judge in Painesville, Ohio, currently in his third six-year term in office. Joining us here in Studio 3A is Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security for the U.S. Marshals. Thanks very much for coming in today.
CARL CAULK: Good afternoon, Neal.
CONAN: And U.S. Marshals, obviously a municipal court judge outside of your jurisdiction, but these kinds of things happen to federal officials, too.
CAULK: Absolutely, and we literally have hundreds of threats and inappropriate communications that are made against judicial and prosecutorial officials at a federal level every year.
CONAN: And how do you decide which to take seriously?
CAULK: Well, to be frank, we take all of them seriously. We have a cadre of threat investigators around the United States, and those individuals investigate each and every one of those threats and inappropriate communications that are received by our protectees.
CONAN: And when do you decide to disrupt the lives of someone who's been threatened?
CAULK: Well, after an initial assessment is made of a threat, then we generally put in a set of protective measures that can run the full gamut all the way up to a 24/7 protection detail with any number of people around a protectee's home and their travel, et cetera.
CONAN: Now the FBI is involved in this case in Texas. I - again not your bailiwick, but I wonder, when you hear something like that, what's your reaction?
CAULK: Well, you know, our reaction quite frankly is - I mean, we share reaction that is, you know, any time we see an attack on a prosecutor or a judge at any level, it shows a general disregard for the rule of law. And anytime we see that, obviously it's concerning to us because from where we sit it does not matter whether it's a state or a local judge or a prosecutor. You know, an attack on the law is an attack on the law.
And so it does give us pause, and obviously, you know, we try to work as closely with our law enforcement partners to not only track what's going on in this case but in all types of threat cases, even if they involve state and local officials.
CONAN: And is your job strictly reactive, you wait until there's a threat, or is there a proactive element, as well?
CAULK: Well, I think there's several proactive things that we like to do. One, I mean, we're charge with a physical security of court facilities around the United States, and so obviously there's some proactive steps that we put in place. There's an education part of this for our protectees. As the judge just mentioned, being aware of your surroundings, being aware when you commute to and from work.
And so there's a whole education piece about personal security awareness when you're not in those secure facilities, when you're at home, when you're commuting. And then of course there's the work that we do to share our knowledge and work closely with state and local law enforcement so they have benefit of our experience and vice versa whenever they're providing protection for state and local officials.
And so that relationship building is very important to us, and then that whole education piece for our protectees is very important from a proactive standpoint.
CONAN: And it was interesting, when Judge Cicconetti was talking about, you know, the feeling that even in a municipal court case like his where at worse somebody might get 30 days in jail, everybody's against him, the feeling that some people have that this is, you know, a terrible wrong that needs to be righted.
CAULK: It is. It's a common - as he pointed out, it's a common feeling that a lot of individuals who threaten, they have that feeling. They have a paranoid feeling that the system is stacked against them. And at the end of the day, judges and prosecutors make decisions that change people's lives. So whether it's a murder case or whether it's as simple as a bankruptcy case, at the end of the day people's lives are being changed, and people react to those decisions that are made by prosecutors and judges.
CONAN: And do these snowball? If one case happens, Atlanta courthouse a few years ago, do you worry that other people may get the same idea?
CAULK: I think, you know, anytime you see a crime perpetrated in a particular way against a judge or a prosecutor, again I go back to it makes us think, it gives us pause because we do worry about individuals taking, you know, like steps to - if they feel that, you know, the system is not giving them a fair shake, so to speak.
CONAN: All right, we want to hear from those of you whose story this is, from judges and prosecutors, from cops, prison officials, as well. Sadly, we are having difficulties with our telephone system. If you're trying to call in, we apologize. We'll try to get it straightened away. We'll give out the phone number again when we do. And please, we want to hear your stories, as well.
I'm Neal Conan. Stay with us. We're talking with Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security at the U.S. Marshals Service. If you're in law enforcement, if you have a family member who is, tell us: How do you deal with threats? We'll try to get that phone system sorted out. In the meantime, you can send us email, talk@npr.org. Stay with us. We'll be back in a minute. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan.
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CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. This morning, deputies escorted courthouse employees into the building in Kaufman County, Texas, a measure of security just two days after District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia were found shot to death in their home.
Elsewhere in Texas, law enforcement agencies are offering extra protection to their staffs. For example, Mike Anderson and his family accepted the sheriff's offer of 24-hour security. He's district attorney in Harris County, which includes Houston. He told ABC News that district attorneys across Texas are still in a state of shock.
If you're an officer, a DA, a prison official, a judge, if you've lived under threat, call and tell us how you deal with it. Our phone number, well, our regular phone number is still not working, but you can give us a call, 202-513-2531. Again the number, right now, 202-513-2531. You can also reach us by email. That address, that's the usual one. That's talk@npr.org.
Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security for the U.S. Marshals Service, is our guest. He's with us here in Studio 3A. Joining us now, Judge Sid Harle, a district court judge in San Antonio, Texas, also a former prosecutor. He's on the line with us from his office there in San Antonio. And Judge Harle, nice to have you with us today.
SID HARLE: Thank you, Neal, thanks for having me.
CONAN: And I know you used to be a prosecutor, as well. So this must be an alarming situation as you think about what's happening in Kaufman County.
HARLE: Well absolutely, and I'd like to start by offering my deepest condolences and sympathies to the McClelland family, the Hasse family and of course the Clements family. They were dedicated public servants, and it was a great tragedy. But it is concerning and alarming.
CONAN: Mr. Hasse of course the assistant district attorney in Kaufman County who was killed on the courthouse steps in January; Mr. Clements, the heads of prisons in Colorado, who died last month, shot at his home. And, you know, there's a suspicion, and it's just a suspicion now, that these may be connected.
HARLE: That is true. That's what I'm reading and from the briefings we're getting. They're taking that as a very serious possibility.
CONAN: I wonder, Carl Caulk, as you sit here with us in the studio, when you're thinking about one incident, well, one threat bad enough. When it might be an organized group, how does that change your thinking?
CAULK: Well, in terms of the investigation itself, it does not change it significantly in that our entire investigative thrust is to mitigate whatever threat has been made. That's done through a variety of means, be it subject interviews, be it cooperative interviews with family and friends. Certainly if you introduce a group dynamic with group thinking and a group hierarchy, it makes it more difficult in terms of span of control of an investigation.
The investigation certainly becomes exponentially larger, in terms of possible threateners.
CONAN: Judge Harle, did you face threats as a prosecutor? Do you face threats as a judge?
HARLE: Certainly everyone in this line of work at some point in time has threats leveled at them, and it is part of the job, and you can't let it change the way you run your court or the way you prosecute or frankly your quality of life. You worry more about your family than yourself, but you just need to be aware and take precautions and always, you know, just be aware of your surroundings and know what's going on.
But we rely heavily on the law enforcement end to evaluate the credibility and the seriousness of the individual threats. We get briefings from, here locally, in San Antonio, the U.S. Marshalls Office has come over and helped us with our security. And our head of security here, the sheriff of Bexar County, is excellent at keeping us apprised of potential threats.
CONAN: And how do you decide when to notify the authorities that you've received a threat?
HARLE: Oh, we notify them about anything, something that occurs in the courtroom, something that occurs by mail or telephone. We've got some harassing phone calls going on in Bexar County right now that the sheriff is keeping everyone apprised of so everybody knows what's going on. So everyone takes every threat seriously, but the level of preparation and concern kind of changes.
We had one a couple of weeks ago against one of our local judges that was originated by someone that was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and that's obviously very concerning because they are a well-organized and dangerous group, and you can't prepare enough for something like that.
And as we've discovered, there's no level of preparation that's going to be absolute. You can carry a gun. You can be aware of people coming to your home. You can have absolute security. But if it's someone lying in wait in an ambush situation or a home invasion, there's not much anybody can do in that regard.
CONAN: And we had been told that District Attorney McLelland, particularly after Mr. Hasse's murder, was, well, very aware of the possibility that he might be under threat, too, carried a gun, and that didn't - do you also try to protect yourself like that as well?
HARLE: I have on occasion carried a gun on my person. Typically I do not carry it daily. I have many weapons at my home. I have a concealed weapon handgun license. I'm a magistrate, so I can carry a weapon. I do have them in my vehicles. But unless I'm concerned about an overt threat, I don't carry it on my person generally.
But frankly you don't want to rely too much on weapons. you want to rely on awareness and knowledge of your surroundings and varying your, you know, time you get here and what time you leave and just take general precautions, rely on that over and above weapons, because someone else could certainly be out - you could be outgunned, and someone else could be in a situation where they're going to be lying in wait in an ambush like we saw, and there's really not much you can do in that regard.
CONAN: One place anybody knows you're going to be is at your bench. We heard Judge Cicconetti tell us earlier that he keeps a stun gun at his bench when he hears cases. What about you?
HARLE: Well, I rely on my bailiffs in the court. We have some excellent sheriff's deputies assigned. And, you know, we're talking about criminal cases, but really some of the worst cases that we deal with on a daily basis are family law cases, child custody, divorces, and those individuals are at a high level of emotional state, distraught and concerned. And we've had threats of judges that are hearing those cases here in Bexar County.
And they have one bailiff to my two bailiffs. So everyone has to be prepared and be ready. But mostly the judges rely on their security in the courtroom.
CONAN: Carl Caulk, I guess you have to rely on security in the courtroom, though as we've seen, sometimes that does break down, very rarely. But outside the courtroom, varying your habits, this is not living your life in a normal way.
CAULK: No, you're 100 percent correct. And the judge referenced the education and that personal security awareness when you're outside of the courthouse. Unfortunately that's become the norm for both prosecutors, as well as judges, at all levels. And you're correct that it takes away some of your flexibility, it takes away some of your freedom, if you will, but unfortunately it's become a requirement to vary those commuting habits, to be certainly aware of your surroundings, to look at home security, home alarms, how you can harden your residence, if you will.
And then as the judge said, anything untoward whatsoever, reporting that to law enforcement so that it can be investigated whether it's an overt threat or even if it's what we call an inappropriate communication, which is somewhat more veiled in nature, but anything that's inappropriate or out of the normal course of business.
CONAN: Let's see if we can get a caller in on the conversation. Again our regular phone line is not working today. We apologize for that. 202-513-2531. And we've gotten some emails, as well. This is from Barbara in Red Bluff, California: Please don't limit this problem to judges and prosecutors. My husband practices criminal defense exclusively, private and indigent, through contracts with our superior court system.
Believe me, when an angry and irrational defendant is reactive, the defense counsel is also a target, and my husband's dealt with threats through his career, as well. We believe the situation is growing more and more dangerous as people seem to lose respect for the judicial system and human life in general.
This from Helen: As the child of an adult circuit court probation and parole officer, I understand these concerns. As a child if we bumped into one of my mom's parolees in the grocery store, she would be cordial, but she did not introduce us. We were trained never to ask someone's name nor introduce ourselves. She was required to keep our home phone number published, and that included our address. Early on, you learn to be careful.
Your address, Judge Harle, I assume you are very cautious with that.
HARLE: Well, it is, it's easily accessible. We have to file reports with the state that list properties that we own, and it wouldn't take very much for anybody to find out where you live. So you just have to be aware of that. But let me echo that first email. I was a defense attorney for a long time, and trust me, they get equally as serious threats because they have to deal with court-appointed clients that they didn't choose, that are irrational, as she stated, and those threats are often and perhaps even more often than what we see on the prosecutor and judges' side.
CONAN: John's on the line with us from Oklahoma City.
JOHN: Yes, hello, how are you?
CONAN: Fine. Thank you very much for calling.
JOHN: Yeah. I was going to comment on - the actual event, as transpired recently. I'm a security consultant for a company out here in Oklahoma City, and we work exclusively with the district attorney's office and the municipal courts. Now, we all privately hire, though, and I know in our situation, some of the prosecutors and judges that we protect and their families, we actually stay in the courtrooms with them and sometimes stay at home with them, up to 24 hours a day, and we do wear plain clothes. But we're in the courtrooms with them just a member of the actual court, so to speak, but...
CONAN: And this is presumably after some sort of credible threat?
JOHN: Absolutely, absolutely. Now, the only downfall is here in Oklahoma City, they currently don't have, in the city limits, an area in which the city or the state will help foot this bill, so to speak. So this is entirely out of these individuals' pockets, and it does get quite costly after a while.
CONAN: I can understand that. This is - these are highly trained professionals, and obviously, you don't want somebody who isn't highly trained.
(LAUGHTER)
JOHN: Yeah. See can say on firsthand knowledge, though, just really quick for your callers, is mitigation. You know, if one is aware of their surroundings beforehand, two-thirds of the time, you can alleviate any initial threat. It just - you have to be really, really aware and think outside the box, especially some of my clients. When they are targeted, a lot of times, you know, they'll focus the security on themselves, but their families become the initial target after that, as well. So it's tough.
CONAN: All right. Well, thanks very much, and we appreciate the call.
JOHN: You bet.
CONAN: Here's an email, we have this from William in Media, Pennsylvania: Does angry criticism of a judge, prosecutor, law enforcement official qualify as a threat? Carl Caulk?
CAULK: Well, I would say angry criticism is kind of a relative term. I mean, we certainly - if it's criticism of a judge's ruling that they have made in a particular case, and we're certainly aware of and we respect individuals' First Amendment rights. So, I mean, we have a number of what we would consider to be kind of triggering events that would come into play whenever we assess whether or not somebody's kind of crossed a line. But angry criticism or criticism in of itself, we do not consider threatening. We consider it to be protected by an individual's First Amendment rights.
CONAN: We're talking about - after three murders now in Texas and one in Colorado, just in the past couple of months - about the threats received by cops, prosecutors, judges, prison officials and, as we're hearing, criminal defense attorneys, as well. 800-989-8255 is our phone number. Looks like the phone system's back up. Email us: talk@npr.org. Our guests, you just heard Carl Caulk, assistant director of judicial security for the U.S. Marshal Service, with us here in Studio 3A.
Also with us, Judge Sid Harle, a district court judge in San Antonio. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. And Judge Harle, as you consider the kinds of threats you face, is this something you signed up for? Is this something, had you known about it, might have change your decision about your career choices?
HARLE: Well, frankly, Neal, I was a prosecutor. I've been on the bench since 1988, but I was a prosecutor for several years before that, and I was a criminal defense attorney. And, you know, I enjoy what I do. I ran for the bench knowing exactly what happens and what could happen. You don't really have a lot of concern for yourself, but you always worry about dragging your family into it. And I've been fortunate in that the threats that I've received have not been credible to the extent that I was overly concerned about them, and I didn't have to have the 24/7 security.
But we do, in Bexar County, have that, and several of my fellow prosecutors and judges have had the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week security until the threat level has been assessed to be minimal, or the individual has been caught. So it is - it's kind of part of the job, and you just, again, can't let it change your quality of life and can't let it change the way you rule on cases and run a fair and impartial court.
CONAN: Paula's on the line with us from Rockford, Illinois.
PAULA: Hi. My father was a chief felony prosecutor. And as a child, it was absolutely terrifying living with someone in that profession. We were threatened all the time, and we were told to take caution wherever we went. We had bomb threats. We had snipers trying to kill my father, trying to kill us. It was terrifying.
CONAN: And how did you cope with it, in the long run?
PAULA: Well, as I grew older, I'm a psychotherapist now, and I know now that we had post-traumatic stress. That's - all my brothers and I both developed - all three of us developed post-traumatic stress from living as children with a career prosecutor.
CONAN: And your dad?
PAULA: And my father was a tough Marine prosecutor, and he just worked through it. But that's not true for this family, and that's what's so difficult to hear in this situation, because I feel like families have been neglected in terms of their protection. One thing to the prosecutor, that's his career. That's his choice. The children are innocent victims.
CONAN: Carl Caulk, I know that families are, as we heard earlier, sometimes the first attention's deflected onto them, rather than the initial source of the anger.
CAULK: Yeah. We've actually had threats made against family members primarily, instead of our normal, what we would call our normal protectee. And in many of those cases, we've seen protection provided for not only a judge or a prosecutor or other court family member, but also for family members. I would echo Barbara's email in that defense counsel are subject to threat. We investigate threats involving defense counsel, as well, in the federal system.
I've seen defense counsel physically attacked in a courtroom more so than I have prosecutors inside of a courtroom. But certainly, family members become a part of the entire threat investigation. Our security briefings that are being given include family members and kind of what they can do from a personal security stand point, as well.
CONAN: Well, Paula, thank you very much for the phone call.
PAULA: And it works just fine as long as we know that there is an immediate threat, but the problem is those people who were prosecuted get out of prison, and then they often try to target the family. We had bomb threats put underneath our - we had to check the roofs of our cars and lids of our car before we got into them after college classes, because we were supposed to be having bombs underneath those. Now, if you know there's an immediate threat, then you can take care of it. But with prosecutors, they have cases for years that can eventually be a threat to them and their family, and they're not going to know about it until it happens.
CONAN: Again, Paula, thanks very much for the phone call. We appreciate. And our thanks, as well, to Judge Sid Harle, who joined us today from San Antonio, Texas. Appreciate your time.
HARLE: Thank you, Neal.
CONAN: And Carl Caulk of the U.S. - director of judicial security at the U.S. Marshal Service, who joined us here in Studio 3A. Thanks very much for coming in. And again, all our thoughts go out to those families in Texas and in Colorado who's - well, suffered such terrible losses in the past couple of months. We hope this can be resolved very, very quickly. Thanks very much for your time today.
CAULK: Thanks very much.
CONAN: Coming up next, we'll be going to the Opinion Page and Jackson Diehl of The Washington Post, who argues that we've got the Washington - what the Iraq War taught him about Syria. Stay with us for that, and we apologize for the problems with the phone system, as well. It's working. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
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