Sunday, April 29, 2007

In the year 2040 . . .

Imagine the Green Generation

“Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one”

John Lennon

The color green has been associated with rebirth, growth, and success; consequently, the Green Generation received its name from the many strides it made to revive the environment, economy, true nature of democracy, and family structure. America has made many strides over the twenty-first century. The world is quite different from the year I took Global Peace and Conflict my sophomore year in college compared to today. This year of 2040 we have made much impact on the world around us.

The standard of living refers to the quality and quantity of goods and services available to people and the way these services and goods are distributed within a population. Americans in the beginning of the twenty-first century were consuming about eighty percent of the world’s total resources, including labor as materials. The standard of living was high in our country while other countries had people who were not even able to fulfill the basic needs of life. While there was enough food on the earth to distribute to everyone, people in undeveloped countries starved. Americans realized if we continued consuming at such an alarming rate wars would be fought. In fact a couple were, i.e. the Iraqi Conflict which led to almost World War III. While America still consumes a great deal of resources, the waste is becoming more environmentally friendly. Slowly, our consumption is declining. We realized that we must significantly reduce the rate we use resources in order to slow down conflicts because of resources. Recycling legislature was passed so that most of what we consume can be reused again instead of thrown out.

Material wealth has changed drastically in the past thirty years. Sports utility vehicles that consumed great amounts of gas were a sign of status. Today vehicles are much more fuel efficient - getting around ninety to a hundred miles because of technology advances. In fact, the last generation has made great contributions to alternate energy supplies which are realistically ten to fifteen years away. Material wealth has increased in countries that were undeveloped around the turn of the century. For example, people in Ghana used to only have an abundance food one month out of the year; however, now thanks to agrarian reforms the food the people farm stays in the country to feed their peoples before being exported. Also, people in these undeveloped countries have benefited from low, affordable housing that was built in cooperation with the United Nations II and the Global Peace Corps. Now people can live in housing without paying steep prices due to no limits on rent in places like Ghana.

Emotional wealth has increased throughout the globe. As traditional gender roles fade, men have begun expressing their emotions in many faucets. In the early 21st century, seeing a man cry was an unusual and shameful experience. However, today, people find this hard to imagine because men and women both express themselves in a range of emotions. Creative wealth is also on the rise throughout the globe. Workplaces in the past twenty-five years have begun including flexible hours. People can now work at home for more of their work. This allows for much more creativity.

The relationship between the standard of living and wealth has to do with money. More affluent societies have a greater standard of living and wealth. Money buys things. Also, money to a certain point actually can buy you happiness. Studies have shown that the more money a person has up to the national average does make a person happier. People who do not have to worry about housing or even where their next meal is coming from are going to be more emotionally stable. Also, positions tied with more money have the more creativity attached. For example, a professor has more creativity in his job than the cleaning-person. The more money a country has, the greater the standard of living and wealth one will find in that country.

The definition of comfort is the state of and conditions in which somebody feels physically relaxed. Comfort is being able to not worry about food, affordable housing, and job security. Comfort not having to worry one’s safety due to conflict in one’s home due to domestic violence; community due to gangs and police brutality; country due to war; ect. In 2040 the world has made great strides to reduce the causes of discomfort.

According to John Gaultung, an early student of peace studies there are several things necessary to humans to survive: clean air, water, food, a pleasant environment, latrines, clothes, shelter, quiet, space, and privacy. Unnecessary items would be more than what you need. For example, a home is necessary for shelter and privacy; however, for a family of four, a three-story house with a three-car garage is extravagant. Because of public transportation, it is unnecessary in most places, except rural areas, to have more than one vehicle. Clothes are necessary, but name-brands are not necessary for anyone’s survival.

In the early 21st century, needs were met using homo-centric development, where human needs were given priority over nature. However, as this development occurred, earth’s resources were being depleted faster than they could renew. The air was becoming polluted and scientists were beginning to realize this caused global warming. Water was being polluted and fought over. Land was being stripped of resources haphazardly, which caused problems to the surrounding area.

People realized humans needed to find more of a homo/nature-balance, in which human needs could be filled without destroying the environment at such an alarming rate. The Air Treaty of 2015 was put into effect. It calls for all countries to reduce the emission of green house gasses yearly. Also, countries began using China’s circulating, indoor water system as a prototype. In this system, water sent to treatment plants is heavily treated and sent back to the homes. This reduces pollution because the waste is not sent into the rivers, causing algae growth. Once each country has gathered enough water into their system, water does not need to be continuously taken from the rivers. The circulating, indoor water system decreases tensions in regions where water is scarce. Also, technology has made process of treating salt-water and making it drinkable less expense than previously thought possible. Stricter legislation has been enforced around the globe in relationship to mining and timbering. Gold, copper, and diamond mines are being investigated. Different nonprofit corporations have working with undeveloped countries in which illegal timbering is an issue. They are trying to create jobs in which the people do not have to cut down trees to farm and survive. Harsher punishments are being imposed on corporations who are imposing international laws.

The relationship between men and women has changed. Gender roles are becoming more equal. Women have made great strides. Americans have elected two women vice presidents into office. In the upcoming election the only candidates who are still in the running are females, ensuring that America will have their first female president. Also, women have fought to truly make wages equal and break the glass ceiling. Men help out more equally in families, helping do the housework and to take care of the children. Also, gay rights have been given. People no longer can be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.

Globalization has begun to structure the world and decrease the power of nation-states. Countries cannot sustain themselves, but must trade among themselves to have everything they need. America cannot sustain itself. We need to import oil and other products to survive. We outsource jobs so that we can buy materials for less. Nations in the Core have been slowly integrating the Gap to have the Core’s rule sets. However, some religions and various groups have been resisting these rule sets that the Core has forced upon them. Since the Core is so powerful, the Gap has to fight war in innovative ways. Yet, the Core deems these groups that want to be left alone to their own rule sets as terrorists.

America is run by the power elite both on a local and national scale. On the local scale business and financial leaders in the community have substantial way in the way a community is run. The power elite – top figures in the government, military, and corporate world – make great decisions that impact the country. While the United States is a democracy, hidden agendas of the power elite have a surprising impact on laws. In the last few decades, laws have been passed that attempt to equal the political playing field. America is trying to have each person’s vote truly only count once. Instead of becoming a money-raising race, elections are becoming more about the issue. Each party is given an allotted time on television at no cost to air their platform. There is a cap on the money each party is allowed to raise.

Klare believed that conflict is caused by resources. War and other conflicts have occurred because of water, oil, diamonds, copper, timbering, ect. A large oil reserve was found in Antarctica. Combined with new technology that has made it possible to drill there, World War III was averted. Alternative energy sources are just around the corner.

The job market shifted from manufacturing to services. Outsourcing occurred and went into countries that would make products for less. Today we have more service related industries – everything from doctors to McDonalds. Capitalism is here to stay in America.

Education has become more federally funded, which means the government has begun to take over schools. The government realized how standardized testing has a testing bias towards white, upper-middle class children. Also, metal detectors are mandatory in each school and college building to reduce violence that occurred frequently in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. To decrease violence in school peer mediation, natural helper, and other student training has occurred in middle and high school.

Social movements have been effective expressions of anger and rage which have brought about change. Since Gandhi, social movements have been used to impact history. Social movements in the 2030s brought about agrarian reform in undeveloped countries. They brought important issues into view. Ghana, which has a lot of farming, used to export their food crops while the rest of the people starved. However, social movements of the poor brought this issue into global light and helped legislation pass to right this wrong. Also, the social movement in Ghana helped bring about reasonable housing for the average citizen. In the early 21st century, there were no caps on rent. Many people lived in slums because they could not afford a place to live.

In June 2027 Americans in the lower class protested minimum wage and welfare being cut. Workers in the food, retail, and other service sectors went on strike. Much chaos ensued as the strike went on for fifteen days. Upper-middle class people could not go without their morning Starbucks or evening meal out. It was even hard to find a grocery store that was open. Legislature held emergency meetings to pass legislature that increased minimum wage and reinstated welfare. However, welfare has changed greatly. It includes programs that help people on welfare to learn a specific trade that will enable them to secure a better paying job. Also, programs were created that help lower-class people learn everyday skills to be successful.

The cost of medicine is being lowered as boards review patents. Prices of medicines to help treat AIDS, tuberculosis, and other life-threatening illnesses that are prevalent in undeveloped countries are being lowered. Also in medicine, there is a controversial drug trying to be approved by the FDA which has been proven to reduce aggression in males. Some believe these drugs should be given to men who were imprisoned for violent acts. Those in favor of the drug say it will reduce violence in society; however, the other faction says we should focus more on how children are raised. They question if the drug is ethical. People believe that children should be raised to never hit back in retaliation.

Children are being raised to be responsible for their actions. Boys as well as girls are being taught that it is acceptable to cry and not to hit back. Character education is being taught in elementary schools. Conflict resolutions skills are also being taught to children from preschool to high school. They are being taught to recycle and that less can be more.

While I did not become a radical social activist, I still played a part in the change our world has seen from the early 21st century to now. I started recycling my sophomore year in college. I married in 2014 to a man I met in graduate school. We participated in the social movement of 2027. We went to Ghana together on a two-year stint in the Peace Corps. My husband and I equally share household chores and make financial decisions together. We raised our two children to not be violent or hit back. We gave our boy dolls to play with and our girl trucks. My husband and I did not buy our children name-brand clothes. When I realized a man at my workplace who had the same job I did made more money than me I spoke up. I voted for the president who had a female as a running mate. I voted for the second woman president who ran, but she lost. I have written my share of letters to state senators asking them to pass agrarian reform here in the United States and to stop buying exports from countries that were made in sweatshops.

The world has gone through significant changes in my lifetime. In my 52 years, I have seen the standard of living change and the meaning of wealth in America become redefined. The Iraqi oil conflict has come to and end. Environmental issues have come to the forefront of American legislation as scientist realized the impact of the manner in which we were consuming resources. Global corporations have shifted the structure from geopolitics to geo-economics. Conflicts have arisen throughout my lifetime. The manner in which children are raised has changed. And --- I can say that I played a part.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Way Out for Poor Farmers

Agrarian reform is redistribution of the agricultural resources of a country. Traditionally, agrarian, or land, reform is confined to the redistribution of land; in a broader sense it includes related changes in agricultural institutions, including credit, taxation, rents, and cooperatives. While agrarian reform can result in lower agricultural productivity, especially if it includes collectivization, it may increase productivity when land is redistributed to the tiller. Pressure for modern land reform is most powerful in the underdeveloped nations.

Three-quarters of the world's 852 million men and women suffering from hunger are found in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their survival. Most of them are landless farmers or have such tiny or unproductive plots of land that they cannot feed their families.

For many of these poor farmers, new development opportunities in rural areas would allow more equitable access to basic land and water resources while offering an escape from hunger and poverty.

There are five main themes to agrarian reform:

  • policies and experiences that have improved resource access by the poorest people;
  • improving local natural resource planning and management capabilities;
  • identifying new development opportunities to strengthen rural communities;
  • combining such concepts as agrarian reform, social justice and sustainable development;
  • the primary role of food sovereignty and its contribution to more equitable resource access.

Tying agrarian reform into my country, African agrarian reforms have included distribution of excess land, nationalization of all land, abolition of all land titles to be replaced by rights of occupancy, and promotion of farming collectives. These reforms occurred with limited success.

Encyclopedia.com

Agrarian Reform: A way out of hunger and poverty for millions of impoverished small farmers

*Correction to Per Capita Income

Dollar Amount Per Year: US $450 (World Bank, 2006)

Country Profile: Ghana

Life in Ghana: An Overview

Life Expectancy: Males can expect to live 58.07 years , while females can expect to live 59.69 years.

Infant Mortality Rate: 55 deaths per 1,000 live births

Health Issues: The effects of excess mortality due to AIDS, which result in lower average life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex.
Also, the risk for other infections diseases is extremely high. Food or waterborne diseases, such bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever; vectorborne diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever; water contact diseases, such as schistosomiasis; and respiratory diseases, such as meningococcal meningitis are prevalent.

Education Issues: Only 74.8% of people age 15 and over can read and write (male: 82.7% female: 67.1%; note the discrepancy between males and females). Ghana has 12,130 primary schools, 5,450 junior secondary schools, 503 senior secondary schools, 21 training colleges, 18 technical institutions, two diploma-awarding institutions and five universities for thier population of 22 million. Primary- and middle-school education is tuition-free, but is not mandatory because there are not enough teachers and facilities available to accommodate all the students. After basic school, pupils may enter Senior secondary (or technical/vocational) schools for a three-year course, which prepare them for university education.At the end of the three year senior secondary course, students are required to sit for the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (WASSCE). Students who obtain aggregate 18 or better (six is best) can enter one of the five universities.Entrance to universities is by examination following completion of senior secondary school. School enrollment totals not quite 2 million: 1.3 million primary; 107,600 secondary; 489,000 middle; 21,280 technical; 11,300 teacher training; and 5,600 university.

Housing Issues: A brief history of the housing of Ghana.
Ghana struggles to accommodate all of the returning nationals who worked in the cocoa plantations and escaped rebel fighting in Côte d'Ivoire.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to which the Ghana government is a signatory, in Goal 7, Target 11, commits governments to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020; however, judging by the pace of progress in the delivery of housing in Ghana, it is doubtful that this goal would be achieved.
Currently, experts in the building industry say the government does not appear to have any housing policy. Most of the housing needs of the country are being provided by the private sector, and these come at exorbitant cost, beyond the reach of many workers. In fact, there is no laws to regulate rent in the country. The high cost involve in acquiring decent accommodation in the cities, is cited by analysts as a major reason more and more people are putting up unauthorized structures that invariably result in slums.

Conditions for Women and Children: In Ghana women face domestic violence and sexual abuse that gets swept under the door and witch hunts. Incidents of violence in Ghana often occur at home and that they are generally viewed as “family matters”. The social structures in which domestic violence is rooted, support the concept of men having power over women and of adults having power over children. Violence is tolerated in this context – particularly if exercised by the husband or used to control children’s behaviour. According to the data, 33 percent of Ghanaian women become victims of physical violence. Sexual abuse is experienced by 27 percent, while 27 percent likewise suffer psychological abuse at home. The study also showed that the victims rarely speak out about their experiences, and that, at most, ten percent of them report domestic violence to the authorities. The police tend to brush aside such complaints and pending court proceedings are often cancelled “as mutually agreed between families”.
1998, the government had begun setting up Women and Juvenile Units (WAJU) in the police force. They are meant to deal with violence against women and children. However, the skills of these units remain limited – as do their resources. Nonetheless, the WAJUs serve as strategic partners for civil society organisations fighting domestic violence. Some organisations inform victims about their rights and provide counselling services. It is a challenge to build up the human resources needed for this purpose. It is important to protect those women and children who are at risk. The Ark Foundation, a gender advocacy and human rights organisation, started setting up provisional shelters for victims and later became a refuge for abused women and children. This facility was the first of its kind in Western Africa. Personal safety has the utmost priority, and those in need can stay as long as necessary. However, Ghana’s inadequate institutional structures make issues of funding, professionalisation and rehabilitation a huge challenge.
Also in Ghana there is no foster care system for children. The Ark Foundation faces huge problems when children are born as a result of violence or incest because of this. Unfortunately this makes it hard to find families who areable to take in an unrelated or even traumatised child. Adoption procedures are troublesome and the authorities often lack the necessary skills.

Dollar Amount per Year: $2,600

Hunger:
It is said that the world today produces enough grain alone to provide every human being on the planet with 3,500 calories a day; however despite being a farming region, northern Ghana bears the brunt of hunger and malnutrition as demand quickly outstrips supply. Almost forty percent of children under five in the region are malnourished. The harvest of the early millet in July usually attenuates the six-month long hunger season, which lasts from January to June. Then in October, groundnut, the basic ingredient for making soups of all types to go with any kind of meal, is harvested in earnest across the district. There are also sweet potatoes and yams. In the central part of the district where an irrigation facility exists, rice is being harvested to make room for growing tomatoes, one of the main cash crops in the district. Leftover of the district's main meal can be found in the morning in even some of the poorest homes. But food is not always in abundance in the Kassena-Nankana district nor does the season of feasting last more than a few months in northern Ghana. Unfortunately, even in a good year there is never enough food to last the long dry season.

Refugee Issues: 38,684 (Liberia), 14,136 (Togo) People are escaping rebel fighting in Côte d'Ivoire and seeking refuge in Ghana.
Armed conflict in Liberia and the western zones of Côte d’Ivoire has caused large numbers of Liberian refugees to flee to Ghana. The refugee population has risen from 3,000 to 52,820. These new influxes have placed enormous pressures on limited infrastructure and resources available to refugees, particularly in Buduburam Settlement, located some 30 kms from the capital, Accra. As well as adopting a generous asylum policy towards these refugees, Ghana has remained at the forefront of regional and international initiatives to find political solutions to the crises in Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia, both of which have threatened stability in the subregion.

The World Factbook
Education In Ghana
Social Watch: Ghana's Housing Sector, Who Cares for the Poor
Ghana: Protecting Women and Children
Ghana: The Paradox of Hunger in the Midst of Plenty
UNHCR Global Appeal 2005

Saturday, April 14, 2007

UNHCR gets set to repatriate Togolese refugees in Ghana

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR on Thursday signed an agreement in Lome with the governments of Togo and Ghana paving the way for the repatriation of Togolese refugees in Ghana. The accord defines protection and security measures aimed at stepping up the voluntary repatriation of Togolese, who fled political violence in their country in 2004. The UNHCR resident representative in Ghana, Mrs Aïda Hailo Mariam, who signed the agreement, the number of Togolese refugees in Ghana is estimated at 12,326, 63% of whom are women. The UNHCR signed a similar agreement with Togo, Benin on 3 April 2007 for the repatriation of some 20,000 Togolese refugees in neighbouring Benin.

http://www.republicoftogo.com/central.php?o=2&s=724&d=3&i=545

Barely one month after the government unveiled the draft of a 10-year development plan that is supposed to make Ghana a middle income country with a per capita income of US$1,000 by 2016, a prominent economist has advised the government to reconsider the figure and focus instead on human development as a means to improving living standards in Ghana.
In an interview with The Business Chronicle last week, Dr. Nii Moi Thompson explained that the government's medium-term development plan, the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS2) quotes the World Bank figure of US$965 as the "line" which separates low income countries from middle income ones.
He said on the basis of that measure, "even countries earning US$1,000 per capita today are only US$35 removed from being low income, how much more $1,000 in 10 years."
The eminent economist noted that US$1,000 in 10 years at a "conservative" international inflation rate of 3.5% would be worth "only about US$710 in today's prices". He said this is lower than the US$965, which means that even if Ghana attains the $1,000 in 2016, it will still be a low-income country.
Dr. Thompson said for Ghana to be at the "threshold of middle income status" in 10 years, the country's per capita income will have to be about US$1,333.00 in 2016, but, he said, "this will put us as the low extreme of low-middle income. The difference will be marginal."
He however advised government to worry less about per capita income and concentrate instead on human development issues, such as education and training. He pointed out that part of the reason Ghana's per capita income remains low is that majority of the labour force are either illiterate or semi-literate, adding that a well-educated labour force will lead to increased productivity, higher incomes, and a fall in poverty. "Let the government focus on education, training and productivity and income levels will take care of themselves," he explained.
Dr. Thompson cited Gabon, as an example that middle income status alone will not lead to poverty reduction. He said the country's per capita income of $5,000 is about 10 times the per capita income of Ghana, but life expectancy there is "roughly the same as in Ghana."
On the current energy crisis, Dr. Thompson said the time had come for us to "talk less about macroeconomics and macro-stability and deal more with institutional economics, which covers issues of leadership and how they affect economic management and national development."
He said the energy crisis was created by a "leadership crisis at all levels of government, from the presidency to the ministerial level to the level of technocrats," adding that "the president seems to be missing in action in this our hour of need."
He urged the president to "take charge" by setting up a "war room" at the Castle and directing solutions to the crisis. "The public needs to see that the president cares and he's in charge, not detached," he said, adding that how leaders deal with crises often define the legacies they leave behind.
Asked to elaborate his views on how the president has handled the energy crisis so far, Dr. Thompson accused the president of being insensitive to the plight of Ghanaians.
He asked: "What is the point of having lunch with the Queen in far away England and having it broadcast all day long on national TV at a time when some people don't have electricity to run their business much less watch TV? Is it to show how the president and his entourage were enjoying themselves while we were sweating it out here, literally," the frustrated economist asked. He described the event as "tasteless and unfortunate" and said he hopes that the president's handlers will be "more sensitive to our sufferings in the future."
He said a key element of good leadership is "empathy" or "the willingness of leaders to identify with the suffering of their people and work with them for solutions". When empathy is absent, "leadership becomes self-serving and counter-productive" he added.
Dr. Thompson, who is also a vocal critic of "cabinet reshuffles", urged the president to learn from what is happening in the energy sector, which has had four ministers in six years and "promote a culture of stability in political appointments."
The prominent economist said a new minister every one-and-a-half months "is unhealthy and disruptive" and makes it difficult for ministers to provide the kind of long-term leadership needed by their subordinates and their ministries.
He said it takes time for new leaders to understand the institutions they head and provide the needed leadership, so that if ministers are moved around "haphazardly" even before they have fully acquainted themselves with their ministries, those ministries suffer. "Unless a minister is involved in corruption or is grossly incompetent, leave them alone and let them work," he advised the president.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200704130816.html

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Russian intelligence Sees U.S. Military Buildup on Iran Border

MOSCOW, March 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran's borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

"The latest military intelligence data point to heightened U.S. military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran," the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran "that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost."

He also said the U.S. Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, said last week that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future.

A new U.S. carrier battle group has been dispatched to the Gulf.

The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around 80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are heading for the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been deployed since December 2006.

The U.S. is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the region.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070327/62697703.html

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Ghana Week 9

Political history:
Ghana is a unitary republic within the Commonwealth, having become independent from colonial Britain on March 6th, 1957, and the first sub-Saharan African country to become a State free from a European power. Despite its turbulent history in the first decades following independence, Ghana has emerged in the 1990s as a stable, multi-party democracy. Between independence and Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings's advent to power in 1981, Ghana had two political traditions - initially the socialist policies followed by Kwame Nkrumah immediately after independence, and a laissez-faire tradition, which succeeded him. Rawlings introduced a third element - policies of broad-based development favouring rural areas, and the expansion of the private sector. Under the terms of the 1992 Constitution (Fourth Republic), executive power is vested in the President, who is Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The President is elected by universal adult suffrage for a term of four years, and appoints a Vice-President. Rawlings was re-elected President in 1996 for his second and final term. Legislative power is vested in a single chamber parliament consisting of between 160 and 200 members elected by direct adult suffrage on a first-past-the-post basis for a four-year term.
At the last elections held in December 2000, His Excellency John Agyekum Kufuor was elected President and sworn in on 7th January 2001, and his political party, the New Patriotic Party forms the government in Parliament.

Political highlights

1957 - independence, Nkrumah of CPP is PM, 2 key parties
1960 - declared republic, one party system, presidential system
1966 - military overthrow of 1st republic
1969 - 2nd republic, Busia of PP is PM, 2 key parties
1972 - military overthrow of 2nd republic
1978 - palace coup to restructure military government
1979 - junior officer uprising and military housecleaning
1979 - ushered third republic, Limann of PNP is President, 3 parties
1982 - military overthrow of 3rd republic
1983 - palace coup to restructure the military government
1992 - ushered 4th republic, Rawlings of NDC is chairman, 2 parties **
1996 - elections in november

Summary: multiparty system 9 years
military system 21 years
one party system 6 years
pseudo multiparty system 3 years **

** fraud allegations led to an electoral boycott resulting in an
effective one party system. Also, marks the first time when the head
of a military regime had contested in an election.

Climate
The climate is tropical. The eastern coastal belt is warm and comparitvely dry; the southwest corner, hot and humid; and the north, hot and dry. There are two distinct rainy seasons in the south: May-June and August-September,whereas in the north, the rainy seasons tend to merge. A dry but gentle, north-earsterly wind, the Harmattan, blows in from the Sahel and the Sahara Desert in January and February. Annual rainfall in the coastal zone averages 83 centimeters (33.1 inches)

Overpopulation: See Population Trends: Ghana
popluation:22,409,572
note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected (July 2006 est.)
population growth rate: 2.07% (2006 est.)




Colonialism:
The Portuguese who came to Ghana in the 15th Century found so much gold between the rivers Ankobra and the Volta that they named the place Mina - meaning Mine. The Gold Coast was later adopted to by the English colonisers. Similarily, the French, equally impressed by the trinkets worn by the coastal people, named The Ivory Coast, Cote d'Ivoire. In 1482, the Portuguese built a castle in Elmina. Their aim was to trade in gold, ivory and slaves. In 1481 King John II of Portugal sent Diego d'Azambuja to build a castle. In 1598 the Dutch joined them, and built forts at Komenda and Kormantsil. In 1637 they captured the castle from the Portuguese and that of Axim in 1642 (Fort St Anthony). Other European traders joined in by the mid 18th century. These were the English, Danes and Swedes. The coastline were dotted by forts built by the Dutch, British and the Dane merchants. By the latter part of 19th century the Dutch and the British were the only traders left. And when the Dutch withdrew in 1874, Britain made the Gold Coast a crown colony. By 1901 the Ashanti and the North were made a protectorate. Britain and the Gold Coast. The first Britons arrived in the early 19th century as traders in Ghana. But with their close relationship with the coastal people especially the Fantes, the Ashantis became their enemies. 1817 - 1821: Two ambassadors were sent to Kumasi to discuss peace with King Osei Bonsu. This failed. 1823 - 1824: In Asante Denkyira war, Sir Charles Macarthy and his Fante allies supported the Denkyiras. Marcathy was killed. 1826: The Asantes were defeated in the Battle of Kantamanto near Dodowa. 1831: George Maclean signed treaty with the Asantes. 600 ounces of Gold kept for the Asantes. Two princes sent to Britain. Returned after 6 years in 1842. 1844: Commander Hill and the bond of 1844 1863: Battle of Bobikuma. Britain defeated . 1864: Britain lost another war. 1873-1877: Kofi Karikari invaded Southern and coastal areas. Major General Sir Garnet Woseley with British expedition forces defeated the Asantes. Treaty of Fomena in 1874. Asante forced to recognize the Independence of all states south of the Pra River. 1888: Nana Agyeman Prempeh I ascended the throne of the Asante Kingdom. 1896: British troops marched to Kumasi, led by Sir Francis Scott. The king was exiled first to the Elmina Castle, then to Sierra Leone and later to Seychels. 1900: Arnold Hodgson went to ask for the golden stool. The Asantes were infuriated. Yaa Asantewaa, the queen mother of Edwiso (Ejisu) led attack on the British Fort in Kumasi. 1924: Nana Agyemang Prempeh I returned . Died in 1931. Other events Events occurred that made Fantes and others to react: Fante Confederation - In Mankesssim. 1897 Aboriginess right Protection society. 1925 Guggisburg Constitution Legislative Council (legco) 15 Govt Officials, 14 non officials (9 Ghanaians, 6 elected by chiefs and 3 from Accra, Cape Coast and Sekondi). Central Administration was made of the Governor, the Executive Coucil and the Legislative Council. The latter only in advisory capacity. 1935: Prempeh II Asante Confideracy Council. Otumfuo Nana Osei Agyeman Prempeh II In the North were also Mamprusi, Dagomba and Gonja State Councils. Economic and Social Development (Before 1957) 1874--Gold Mine in Wassa and Asante. Between 1946-1950 gold export rose from 6 million pounds to 9 million pounds. 1898--1927 Railway expansion in Ghana. 1928--Takoradi Harbour. 1878--Tetteh Quarshie brought cocoa from Fernado Po. 1885--Cocoa first eported to Britain. 1951--Revenue from cocoa was 60 million pounds. Cocoa Marketing Board (CMB) was found in 1947. Poilitical Movements and Nationalism in Ghana (NA (1945 - 1957) The educated Ghanaians had always been in the fore-front of constructive movements. Names that come into mind are --Dr Aggrey, George Ferguson, John Mensah Sarbah. Others like king Ghartey IV of Winneba, Otumfuo Osei Agyeman Prempeh I raised the political consciousness of their subjects. However, movements towards political freedom started soon after WWII. This happened because suddenly people realised the colonisation was a form of oppression, similar to the oppression they have just fought against.The war veterans had become radical. The myth surrounding the whiteman has been broken. The rulers were considered economic cheats, their arogance had become very offensive. They had the ruling class attitude, and some of the young District Commissioner (DC) treated the old chiefs as if they were their subjects. Local pay was bad. No good rural health or education policy. Up to 1950 the Govt Secondary schools in the country were 2, the rest were built by the missionaries. There was also the rejection of African culture to some extent. Some external forces also contributed to this feeling. African- Americans such as Marcus Garvey and WE Du Bois raised strong Pan-African conscience. In 1945 a conference was held in Manchester to promote Pan African ideas. This was attended by Nkrumah of Ghana, Azikwe of Nigeria and Wallace Johnson of Sierra Leone. The India and Pakistani independence catalysed this desire. Sir Alan Burns constitution of 1946 provided new legislative council that was made of the Governor as the President, 6 government officials, 6 nominated members and 18 elected members. The executive council was not responsible to the legislative council. They were only in advisory capacity, and the governor did not have to take notice. These forces made Dr J.B. Danquah to form the United Gold Coast Conversion (UGCC) in 1947. Nkrumah was invited to be the General Secretary to this party. Other officers were George Grant (Paa Grant), Akuffo Addo, William Ofori Atta, Obetsebi Lamptey, Ako Agyei, and J Tsiboe. Their aim was Independence for Ghana. They rejected the Burns constitution. Events hastened this desire 1948: Nii Kwabena Bone II--an Accra chief organised the boycott of Europen and Syrian, Lebanese goods. 28 Feb 1948: Ex-servicemen marched on Christianborg Castle to hand petition to the governor about their poor conditions. The order was given and 3 laid dead. UGCC was held responsible and its officers were detained. (The dead were sergeant Adjetey, Corporal Attipoe, and Private Odartey Lamptey). The six detained were Kwame Nkrumah, Obetsebi Lamptey, Ako Adjei, Ofori-Atta, Dr Danquah and Akuffo Addo. Mr Aiken Watson was appointed by the British Government to look into disturbances. He recommended a new constitution. Mr J Cousey headed this committee. 1949: Internal trouble in UGCC. Nkrumah broke off to form his own Convention Peoples' Party (CPP), with the slogan of SELF GOVERNMENT NOW. 1951: First General election . CPP won 34 seats , UGCC --3. Kwame Nkrumah who was in prison for positive action, won the seat in central Accra, and was released to become the leader of Govt business, and Prime Minister on 21 March 1952. 1954: New Constitution with assembly and speaker. 104 elected representatives. CPP --72 seats, Northern People's Party (NPP) - 15, Independents - 11, and others - 6. The NLM (National Liberation Movement ) was formed by linguist Baffour Akoto. Leader was J B Danquah, and Dr K.A. Busia - member. This group wanted a federal government. 1956: There was another election. CPP won 72 of the 104 seats. The NLM and its allies won the remaining seats and so became the parliamentary opposition. The former British Mandated Togoland also voted to join the Gold Coast--Ghana. 1957: Ghana finally gained her Independence.

Economic Issues:
1957 Inherited 200 million pounds from British
1957 to 1966
Development Projects/Policies:
socialist path to development
proliferation of state farms and industries
no linkages between farms and industries
universities and secondary schools (free for all)
health care facilities
negative NPV projects (e.g., Job 600)
WET (e.g., Akosombo Dam)
Price controls
emphasis on cocoa for export
Cost:
inheritance is fully spent (no more free lunch for the future)
balance of payment deficits
inflation
disguised unemployment
Foreign debts
1966 to 1972
Privatization of state farms and industries
university student loan scheme
families asked to take more responsibility for education
proliferation of private medical practice
blue print for sewage system for the whole country
devaluation to solve inherited problems
elimination of price controls
emphasis on staples for domestic consumption
Cost:
unemployment
foreign debts and servicing
cedi value allowed to fall
good excuse for military
1972 to 1979
repudiate foreign debts (a la yentua)
Operation feed yourself and industry
revaluation
price controls
import licensing
university loan scheme
CMB scholarships for education on whom you know basis
increase money supply
Cost:
Kalabule
inflation
smuggling
1979
seize assets from cheats
burn down makola, the citadel of kalabule
enforce tax code
price controls
rationing
1979 to 1982
relax price controls
reestablish credibility with donor and donor countries
cost:
inflation persists
balance of payment problems persist
kalabule persists
1982 to 1984
socialist path to development
price controls
rationing
PDC's in charge of distribution
WDC's in charge an as part of the IMCC
use of force to control prices, smuggling
confiscate 50 cedis note
blame the rich
Cost:
embargo on Ghana
Inflation
queing
lack of medicine, food, transportation, etc.
Rawlings chain and necklace
1984 to present
Economic recovery program
free markets
layoffs at civil service
students bear more of cost
patients bear more of cost
stock exchange
PAMSCAD
more privatization of state industries
float the cedi
boost exports
VAT, then UNVAT
Cost
inflation
cedi is worthless
massive unemployment
schools/health care is broken down
everyone is a trader
interest rate at close to 50%
manufacturing sector is dead
Goods available but not affordable

Debt:
Ghana opted for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) program in 2002, but was included in a G-8 debt relief program decided upon at the Gleneagles Summit in July 2005. Priorities under its current $38 million Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) include tighter monetary and fiscal policies, accelerated privatization, and improvement of social services. Receipts from the gold sector helped sustain GDP growth in 2006 along with record high prices for Ghana's largest cocoa crop to date. Ghana received a Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant in 2006, which aims to assist in transforming Ghana's agricultural export sector.
revenues: $3.616 billion
expenditures: $3.947 billion; including capital expenditures of $NA (2006 est.)

Market Economies:
Agricultural products: cocoa, rice, coffee, cassava (tapioca), peanuts, corn, shea nuts, bananas; timber
Industries: mining, lumbering, light manufacturing, aluminum smelting, food processing, cement, small commercial ship building

Ghana's economy is based primarily on agriculture (cocoa, domestic food crops, forestry, and fishing), which accounted for 40-45% of GDP in the period 1991 to 1995, but has now declined to some 20%. The mining and manufacturing industry accounts, however, for only a fifth of GDP, with services making up the remainder.

Cocoa is Ghana's best known crop, and it accounted for between 45% and 70% of commodity exports from the 1970s to the 1990s, when increased mineral revenues led to a decline in its share of exports, to some 37%. Between January and September 1999, cocoa prices fell by 33% reaching a 5 year low in May, causing a severe revenue loss for the country.

Other major exports are gold and timber. Both the gold and timber industries were established in the 1880, with gold enjoying a major revival in the 1990s. Gold production is running at about 2.4 million ounces per annum. However, gold also suffered in 1999 as prices hit 20 year lows, but has since recovered to better levels. Ghana also has sizeable deposits of diamonds, bauxite and manganese. Mineral exports account for almost half of Ghana's foreign exchange earnings.
The government's privatisation programme, which envisages the outright sale or reduction of equity in some 300 government-owned corporations and enterprises, received an important boost in 1994 with the sale of 25 percent of its equity in the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, Ghana's largest gold mining company (1.24 million ounces per annum from 4 mines), and the 9th largest in the World. Ghana has now sold more than 180 of its state-owned enterprises to private investors and, since the passing of the Investment Act in 1994, has recorded 250 new foreign investments, 70% of which are joint ventures involving Ghanaians.

Economic Promise:
Ghana is one of the few countries in western Africa to offer real economic promise, and, as one of the model reformers in Africa, is unlikely to face sanctions from donors, including the IMF. Fiscal reforms continue, for example the introduction of a 10% VAT in December 1998, and increases in electricity tariffs, which are linked to improvements in the over-strained power grid. The regional drought in 1998 crippled the country’s chief power supply facility, the Akosombo Dam built in 1968, which was reduced to supplying only 400MW of its 912MW capacity. Additional thermal capacity has been installed at Takoradi (660MW by 2001) and Tema (80MW), and there is a longer term plan to pipe natural gas from Nigeria. Good rain in recent years has restored the dam at its highest levels since 1993. As capacity constraints are lifted with more power becoming available, however, real GDP growth was 4.6% in 1999, and remained strong in 2000, at around 5%. Inflation has increased from moderate levels in 1998-99 to around 30-40% currently. The relative stability of the cedi, which averaged C2370:$US1 in 1998, has declined in line with inflation differentials to be around C7000:$US1 recently. There are currently over 25 Australian companies with ongoing operations (mainly mining related) in Ghana, and a resident Australian community totaling around 500. The success of their activities has had the effect of encouraging Australian companies to venture further afield to other parts of West Africa, using Accra as a base.
Figures are not available for Australian investment in Ghana but it is reliably estimated at $A1billion, primarily in gold mining, exploration and support operations. The following are the main Australian firms with operations in Ghana: Minproc Engineering (Perth), African Mining Services Ltd (Ausdrill-Eltin joint venture), Bayswater Contracting, Lycopodium Pty Ltd, Ranger Minerals Ltd, and Resolute Ltd. Australian companies mine 25% of the gold produced in Ghana and are heavily engaged in exploration and contracting to other mining companies, such as the giant Ashanti Goldfields Corporation. In 1997/98, Australian exports to Ghana (industrial machinery, civil engineering equipment, heating/cooling equipment, chemicals etc) totalled A$62.9 million. Australian imports from Ghana (mainly cocoa and wood products) during the same period totalled A$ 6.1 million. As Ghana's economy develops, there are likely to be increasing opportunities for Australian exporters in areas such as food and beverages, environmental services, agricultural and textile manufacturing. The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) governs almost all investments within the country except for the mining and petroleum industries. The latter are handled by the Ministry of Lands, Forestry & Mines, and particularly the Minerals Commission. During the year 2000, the GIPC registered 180 projects in various sectors including manufacturing, service, tourism, building and construction, agriculture and general trading. These projects were estimated to cost US$132 million and to generate employment opportunities for some 9,700 Ghanaians, and 80% were located in the Accra region. Between September 1994 and December 2000, a cumulative total of 1160 projects made up of 397 wholly foreign-owned (estimated at US$1.32 billion) and 763 foreign-Ghanaian joint ventures (estimated to cost US$0.28 billion) were registered. These investments were expected to generate a total employment of 63,800 Ghanaians and 4,040 non-Ghanaians mainly in the manufacturing (21,800), agriculture (10,600), building and construction (10,800) and services (13,500) sectors. Great Britain remains the major source of GIPC-registered foreign investments into the country with 116 projects since 1994, followed by China and India with 93 each, then the USA (82), Germany (79), and Lebanon (63). Lower down the scale are Canada (23), South Africa (20) and Australia (18). Mining investment does not form part of these figures.

References:
http://www.ashanti.com.au/pb/wp_c168f63a.html#Republic%20of%20Ghana%20:%20Summary%20Facts
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/gh.html

Port Huron Statement

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.

When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world; the only one with the atom bomb, the least scarred by modern war, an initiator of the United Nations that we thought would distribute Western influence throughout the world. Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people--these American values we found god, principles by which we could live as men. Many of us began maturing in complacency.

As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most of us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time. We might deliberately ignore, or avoid, or fail to feel all other human problems, but not these two, for these were too immediate and crushing in their impact, too challenging in the demand that we as individuals take the responsibility for encounter and resolution.

While these and other problems either directly oppressed us or rankled our consciences and became our own subjective concerns, we began to see complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The declaration "all men are created equal..." rang hollow before the facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of the North. The proclaimed peaceful intentions of the United States contradicted its economic and military investments in the Cold War status quo.

We witnessed, and continue to witness, other paradoxes. With nuclear energy whole cities can easily be powered, yet the dominant nation-states seem more likely to unleash destruction greater than that incurred in all wars of human history. Although our own technology is destroying old and creating new forms of social organization, men still tolerate meaningless work and idleness. While two-thirds of mankind suffers under nourishment, our own upper classes revel amidst superfluous abundance. Although world population is expected to double in forty years, the nations still tolerate anarchy as a major principle of international conduct and uncontrolled exploitation governs the sapping of the earth's physical resources. Although mankind desperately needs revolutionary leadership, America rests in national stalemate, its goals ambiguous and tradition-bound instead of informed and clear, its democratic system apathetic and manipulated rather than "of, by, and for the people."

Not only did tarnish appear on our image of American virtue, not only did disillusion occur when the hypocrisy of American ideals was discovered, but we began to sense that what we had originally seen as the American Golden Age was actually the decline of an era. The worldwide outbreak of revolution against colonialism and imperialism, the entrenchment of totalitarian states, the menace of war, overpopulation, international disorder, supertechnology--these trends were testing the tenacity of our own commitment to democracy and freedom and our abilities to visualize their application to a world in upheaval.

Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority--the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox; we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through," beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might be thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and by our own improvements we seem to have weakened the case for further change.

Some would have us believe that Americans feel contentment amidst prosperity--but might it not better be called a glaze above deeply felt anxieties about their role in the new world? And if these anxieties produce a developed indifference to human affairs, do they not as well produce a yearning to believe that there is an alternative to the present, that something can be done to change circumstances in the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today. On such a basis do we offer this document of our convictions and analysis: as an effort in understanding and changing the conditions of humanity in the late twentieth century, an effort rooted in the ancient, still unfulfilled conception of man attaining determining influence over his circumstances of life.

Values

Making values explicit--an initial task in establishing alternatives--is an activity that has been devalued and corrupted. The conventional moral terms of the age, the politician moralities--"free world," "people's democracies"--reflect realities poorly, if at all, and seem to function more as ruling myths than as descriptive principles. But neither has our experience in the universities brought us moral enlightenment. Our professors and administrators sacrifice controversy to public relations; their curriculums change more slowly than the living events of the world; their skills and silence are purchased by investors in the arms race; passion is called unscholastic. The questions we might want raised--what is really important? can we live in a different and better way? if we wanted to change society, how would we do it?--are not thought to be questions of a "fruitful, empirical nature," and thus are brushed aside.

Unlike youth in other countries we are used to moral leadership being exercised and moral dimensions being clarified by our elders. But today, for us, not even the liberal and socialist preachments of the past seem adequate to the forms of the present. Consider the old slogans: Capitalism Cannot Reform Itself, United Front Against Fascism, General Strike, All Out on May Day. Or, more recently, No Cooperation with Commies and Fellow Travelers, Ideologies Are Exhausted, Bipartisanship, No Utopias. These are incomplete, and there are few new prophets. It has been said that our liberal and socialist predecessors were plagued by vision without program, while our own generation is plagued by program without vision. All around us there is astute grasp of method, technique--the committee, the ad hoc group, the lobbyist, the hard and soft sell, the make, the projected image--but, if pressed critically, such expertise in incompetent to explain its implicit ideals. It is highly fashionable to identify oneself by old categories, or by naming a respected political figure, or by explaining "how we would vote" on various issues.

Theoretic chaos has replaced the idealistic thinking of old--and, unable to reconstitute theoretic order, men have condemned idealism itself. Doubt has replaced hopefulness--and men act out a defeatism that is labeled realistic. The decline of utopia and hope is in fact one of the defining features of social life today. The reasons are various: the dreams of the older left were perverted by Stalinism and never re-created; the congressional stalemate makes men narrow their view of the possible; the specialization of human activity leaves little room for sweeping thought; the horrors of the twentieth century symbolized in the gas ovens and concentration camps and atom bombs, have blasted hopefulness. To be idealistic is to be considered apocalyptic, deluded. To have no serious aspirations, on the contrary, is to be "tough-minded."

In suggesting social goals and values, therefore, we are aware of entering a sphere of some disrepute. Perhaps matured by the past, we have no formulas, no closed theories--but that does not mean values are beyond discussion and tentative determination. A first task of any social movement is to convince people that the search for orienting theories and the creation of human values is complex but worthwhile. We are aware that to avoid platitudes we must analyze the concrete conditions of social order. But to direct such an analysis we must use the guideposts of basic principles. Our own social values involve conceptions of human beings, human relationships, and social systems.

We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love. In affirming these principles we are aware of countering perhaps the dominant conceptions of man in the twentieth century: that he is a thing to be manipulated, and that he is inherently incapable of directing his own affairs. We oppose the depersonalization that reduces human being to the status of things--if anything, the brutalities of the twentieth century teach that means and ends are intimately related, that vague appeals to "posterity" cannot justify the mutilations of the present. We oppose, too, the doctrine of human incompetence because it rests essentially on the modern fact that men have been "competently" manipulated into incompetence--we see little reason why men cannot meet with increasing the skill the complexities and responsibilities of their situation, if society is organized not for minority, but for majority, participation in decision-making.

Men have unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity. It is this potential that we regard as crucial and to which we appeal, not to the human potentiality for violence, unreason, and submission to authority. The goal of man and society should be human independence: a concern not with image of popularity but with finding a meaning in life that is personally authentic; a quality of mind not compulsively driven by a sense of powerlessness, nor one which unthinkingly adopts status values, nor one which represses all threats to its habits, but one which has full, spontaneous access to present and past experiences, one which easily unites the fragmented parts of personal history, one which openly faces problems which are troubling and unresolved; one with an intuitive awareness of possibilities, an active sense of curiosity, an ability and willingness to learn.

This kind of independence does not mean egotistic individualism--the object is not to have one's way so much as it is to have a way that is one's own. Nor do we deify man--we merely have faith in his potential.

Human relationships should involve fraternity and honesty. Human interdependence is contemporary fact; human brotherhood must be willed, however, as a condition of future survival and as the most appropriate form of social relations. Personal links between man and man are needed, especially to go beyond the partial and fragmentary bonds of function that bind men only as worker to worker, employer to employee, teacher to student, American to Russian.

Loneliness, estrangement, isolation describe the vast distance between man and man today. These dominant tendencies cannot be overcome by better personnel management, nor by improved gadgets, but only when a love of man overcomes the idolatrous worship of things by man. As the individualism we affirm is not egoism, the selflessness we affirm is not self-elimination. On the contrary, we believe in generosity of a kind that imprints one's unique individual qualities in the relation to other men, and to all human activity. Further, to dislike isolation is not to favor the abolition of privacy; the latter differs from isolation in that it occurs or is abolished according to individual will.

We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstance by power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason, and creativity. As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation, governed by two central aims: that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provide the media for their common participation.

In a participatory democracy, the political life would be based in several root principles: that decision-making of basic social consequence be carried on by public groupings;

that politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of social relations;

that politics has the function of bringing people out of isolation and into community, thus being a necessary, though not sufficient, means of finding meaning in personal life;

that the political order should serve to clarify problems in a way instrumental to their solution; it should provide outlets for the expression of personal grievance and aspiration; opposing views should be organized so as to illuminate choices and facilitate the attainment of goals; channels should be commonly available to relate men to knowledge and to power so that private problems--from bad recreation facilities to personal alienation--are formulated as general issues.

The economic sphere would have as its basis the principles:

that work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival. It should be educative, not stultifying; creative, not mechanical; self-directed, not manipulated, encouraging independence, a respect for others, a sense of dignity, and a willingness to accept social responsibility, since it is this experience that has crucial influence on habits, perceptions and individual ethics;

that the economic experience is so personally decisive that the individual must share in its full determination;

that the economy itself is of such social importance that its major resources and means of production should be open to democratic participation and subject to democratic social regulation.

Like the political and economic ones, major social institutions--cultural, educational, rehabilitative, and others--should be generally organized with the well-being and dignity of man as the essential measure of success.

In social change or interchange, we find violence to be abhorrent because it requires generally the transformation of the target, be it a human being or a community of people, into a depersonalized object of hate. It is imperative that the means of violence be abolished and the institutions--local, national, international--that encourage non-violence as a condition of conflict be developed.

These are our central values, in skeletal form. It remains vital to understand their denial or attainment in the context of the modern world.

The Students

In the last few years, thousands of American students demonstrated that they at least felt the urgency of the times. They moved actively and directly against racial injustices, the threat of war, violations of individual rights of conscience, and, less frequently, against economic manipulation. They succeeded in restoring a small measure of controversy to the campuses after the stillness of the McCarthy period. They succeeded, too, in gaining some concessions from the people and institutions they opposed, especially in the fight against racial bigotry.

The significance of these scattered movements lies not in their success or failure in gaining objectives--at least, not yet. Nor does the significance lie in the intellectual "competence" or "maturity" of the students involved--as some pedantic elders allege. The significance is in the fact that students are breaking the crust of apathy and overcoming the inner alienation that remain the defining characteristics of American college life.

If student movements for change are still rarities on the campus scene, what is commonplace there? The real campus, the familiar campus, is a place of private people, engaged in their notorious "inner emigration." It is a place of commitment to business-as-usual, getting ahead, playing it cool. It is a place of mass affirmation of the Twist, but mass reluctance toward the controversial public stance. Rules are accepted as "inevitable," bureaucracy as "just circumstances," irrelevance as "scholarship," selflessness as "martyrdom," politics as "just another way to make people, and an unprofitable one, too."

Almost no students value activity as citizens. Passive in public, they are hardly more idealistic in arranging their private lives: Gallup concludes they will settle for "low success, and won't risk high failure." There is not much willingness to take risks (not even in business), no setting of dangerous goals, no real conception of personal identity except one manufactured in the image of others, no real urge for personal fulfillment except to be almost as successful as the very successful people. Attention is being paid to social status (the quality of shirt collars, meeting people, getting wives or husbands, making solid contacts for later on); much, too, is paid to academic status (grades, honors, the med school rat race). But neglected generally is real intellectual status, the personal cultivation of the mind.

"Students don't even give a damn abut the apathy," one has said. Apathy toward apathy begets a privately constructed universe, a place of systematic study schedules, two nights each week for beer, a girl or two, and early marriage; a framework infused with personality, warmth, and under control, no matter how unsatisfying otherwise.

Under these conditions university life loses all relevance to some. Four hundred thousand of our classmates leave college every year.

The accompanying "let's pretend" theory of student extracurricular affairs validates student government as a training center for those who want to live their lives in political pretense, and discourages initiative from the more articulate, honest, and sensitive students. The bounds and style of controversy are delimited before controversy begins. The university "prepares" the student for "citizenship" through perpetual rehearsals and, usually, through emasculation of what creative spirit there is in the individual.

The academic life contains reinforcing counterparts to the way in which extracurricular life is organized. The academic world is founded on a teacher-student relations analogous to the parent-child relation which characterizes in loco parentis. Further, academia includes a radical separation of the student from the material of study. That which is studies, the social reality, is "objectified" to sterility, dividing the student from life--just as he is restrained in active involvement by the deans controlling student government. The specialization of function and knowledge, admittedly necessary to our complex technological and social structure, has produced an exaggerated compartmentalization of study and understanding. This has contributed to an overly parochial view, by faculty, of the role of its research and scholarship; to a discontinuous and truncated understanding, by students, of the surrounding social order; and to a loss of personal attachment, by nearly all, to the worth of study as a humanistic enterprise.

There is, finally, the cumbersome academic bureaucracy extending throughout the academic as well as the extracurricular structures, contributing to the sense of outer complexity and inner powerlessness that transforms the honest searching of many students to a ratification of convention and, worse, to a numbness to present and future catastrophes. The size and financing systems of the university enhance the permanent trusteeship of the administrative bureaucracy, their power leading to a shift within the university toward the value standards of business and the administrative mentality. Huge foundations and other private financial interests shape the under financed colleges and universities, making them not only more commercial, but less disposed to diagnose society critically, less open to dissent. Many social and physical scientists, neglecting the liberating heritage of higher learning, develop "human relations" or "morale-producing" techniques for the corporate economy, while others exercise their intellectual skills to accelerate the arms race.

Tragically, the university could serve as a significant source of social criticism and an initiator of new modes and molders of attitudes. But the actual intellectual effect of the college experience is hardly distinguishable from that of any other communications channel--say, a television set--passing on the stock truths of the day. Students leave college somewhat more "tolerant" than when they arrived, but basically unchallenged in their values and political orientations. With administrators ordering the institution, and faculty the curriculum, the student learns by his isolation to accept elite rule within the university, which prepares him to accept later forms of minority control. The real function of the educational system--as opposed to its more rhetorical function of "searching for truth"--is to impart the key information and styles that will help the student get by, modestly but comfortably, in the big society beyond.

The Society Beyond

Look beyond the campus, to America itself. That student life is more intellectual, and perhaps more comfortable, does not obscure the fact that the fundamental qualities of life on the campus reflect the habits of society at large. The fraternity president is seen at the junior manager levels; the sorority queen has gone to Grosse Pointe; the serious poet burns for a place, any place, to work; the once-serious and never-serious poets work at the advertising agencies. The desperation of people threatened by forces about which they know little and of which they can say less; the cheerful emptiness of people "giving up" all hope of changing things; the faceless ones polled by Gallup who listed "international affairs" fourteenth on their list of "problems" but who also expected thermonuclear war in the next few years; in these and other forms, Americans are in withdrawal from public life, from any collective effort at directing their own affairs.

Some regard these national doldrums as a sign of healthy approval of the established order--but is it approval by consent or manipulated acquiescence? Others declare that the people are withdrawn because compelling issues are fast disappearing--perhaps there are fewer bread lines in America, but is Jim Crow gone, is there enough work and work more fulfilling, is world war a diminishing threat, and what of the revolutionary new peoples? Still others think the national quietude is a necessary consequence of the need for elites to resolve complex and specialized problems of modern industrial society--but then, why should business elites help decide foreign policy, and who controls the elites anyway, and are they solving mankind's problems? Others, finally, shrug knowingly and announce that full democracy never worked anywhere in the past--but why lump qualitatively different civilizations together, and how can a social order work well if its best thinkers are skeptics, and is man really doomed forever to the domination of today?

There are now convincing apologies for the contemporary malaise. While the world tumbles toward the final war, while men in other nations are trying desperately to alter events, while the very future qua future is uncertain--America is without community impulse, without the inner momentum necessary for an age when societies cannot successfully perpetuate themselves by their military weapons, when democracy must be viable because of its quality of life, not its quantity of rockets.

The apathy here is, first, subjective--the felt powerlessness of ordinary people, the resignation before the enormity of events. But subjective apathy is encouraged by the objective American situation--the actual structural separation of people from power, from relevant knowledge, from pinnacles of decision-making. Just as the university influences the student way of life, so do major social institutions create the circumstances in which the isolated citizen will try hopelessly to understand his world and himself.

The very isolation of the individual--from power and community and ability to aspire--means the rise of a democracy without publics. With the great mass of people structurally remote and psychologically hesitant with respect to democratic institutions, those institutions themselves attenuate and become, in the fashion of the vicious circle, progressively less accessible to those few who aspire to serious participation in social affairs. The vital democratic connection between community and leadership, between the mass and the several elites, has been so wrenched and perverted that disastrous policies go unchallenged time and again....

The University and Social Change

There is perhaps little reason to be optimistic about the above analysis. True, the Dixiecrat-GOP coalition is the weakest point in the dominating complex of corporate, military, and political power. But the civil rights, peace, and student movements are too poor and socially slighted, and the labor movement too quiescent, to be counted with enthusiasm. From where else can power and vision be summoned? We believe that the universities are an overlooked seat of influence.

First, the university is located in a permanent position of social influence. It's educational function makes it indispensable and automatically makes it a crucial institution in the formation of social attitudes. Second, in an unbelievably complicated world, it is the central institution for organizing, evaluating and transmitting knowledge. Third, the extent to which academic resources presently are used to buttress immoral social practice is revealed, first, by the extent to which defense contracts make the universities engineers of the arms race. Too, the use of modern social science as a manipulative tool reveals itself in the "human relations" consultants to the modern corporations, who introduce trivial sops to give laborers feelings of "participation" or "belonging," while actually deluding them in order to further exploit their labor. And, of course, the use of motivational research is already infamous as a manipulative aspect of American politics. But these social uses of the universities' resources also demonstrate the unchangeable reliance by men of power on the men and storehouses of knowledge: this makes the university functionally tied to society in new ways, revealing new potentialities, new levers for change. Fourth, the university is the only mainstream institution that is open to participation by individuals of nearly any viewpoint.

These, at least, are facts, no matter how dull the teaching, how paternalistic the rules, how irrelevant the research that goes on. Social relevance, the accessibility to knowledge, and internal openness--these together make the university a potential base and agency in a movement of social change.

  1. Any new left in America must be, in large measure, a left with real intellectual skills, committed to deliberativeness, honesty, reflection as working tools. The university permits the political life to be an adjunct to the academic one, and action to be informed by reason.

  2. A new left must be distributed in significant social roles throughout the country. The universities are distributed in such a manner.

  3. A new left must consist of younger people who matured in the postwar world, and partially be directed to the recruitment of younger people. The university is an obvious beginning point.

  4. A new left must include liberals and socialists, the former for their relevance, the latter for their sense of thoroughgoing reforms in the system. The university is a more sensible place than a political party for these two traditions to begin to discuss their differences and look for political synthesis.

  5. A new left must start controversy across the land, if national policies and national apathy are to be reversed. The ideal university is a community of controversy, within itself and in its effects on communities beyond.

  6. A new left must transform modern complexity into issues that can be understood and felt close up by every human being. It must give form to the feelings of helplessness and indifference, so that people may see the political, social, and economic sources of their private troubles, and organize to change society. In a time of supposed prosperity, moral complacency, and political manipulation, a new left cannot rely on only aching stomachs to be the engine force of social reform. The case for change, for alternatives that will involve uncomfortable personal efforts, must be argued as never before. The university is a relevant place for all of these activities.

But we need not indulge in illusions: the university system cannot complete a movement of ordinary people making demands for a better life. From its schools and colleges across the nation, a militant left might awaken its allies, and by beginning the process towards peace, civil rights, and labor struggles, reinsert theory and idealism where too often reign confusion and political barter. The power of students and faculty united is not only potential; it has shown its actuality in the South, and in the reform movements of the North.

The bridge to political power, though, will be build through genuine cooperation, locally, nationally, and internationally, between a new left of young people and an awakening community of allies. In each community we must look within the university and act with confidence that we can be powerful, but we must look outwards to the less exotic but more lasting struggles for justice.

To turn these mythic possibilities into realities will involve national efforts at university reform by an alliance of students and faculty. They must wrest control of the educational process from the administrative bureaucracy. They must make fraternal and functional contact with allies in labor, civil rights, and other liberal forces outside the campus. They must import major public issues into the curriculum--research and teaching on problems of war and peace is an outstanding example. They must make debate and controversy, not dull pedantic cant, the common style for educational life. They must consciously build a base for their assault upon the loci of power.

As students for a democratic society, we are committed to stimulating this kind of social movement, this kind of vision and program in campus and community across the country. If we appear to seek the unattainable, as it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.

http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/SDS_Port_Huron.html

Several held in US over Iraq protests

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 22:13 IST

SAN FRANCISCO: Police arrested more than 100 Iraq war protesters in San Francisco and New York City as the nation marked the fourth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.

Uniformed police outnumbered the fewer than 100 protesters outside the stock exchange building at the corner of Broad and Wall streets in New York’s historic financial district. “Stop the money, stop the war,” demonstrators chanted as police hauled away limp-bodied protesters.

A police spokesman said 44 were arrested. Demonstrators said they were directing their protest at major defence contractors Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Halliburton, General Electric and others. The protest had no impact on the stock exchange’s trading.

“US service members and Iraqi civilians are dying so that an elite few can profit,” said Fabian Bouthillette, 26, a high school teacher who served for two years in the US Navy. In San Francisco, dozens of demonstrators, many of them old enough to have once protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s, conducted a “Die In” by lying on the sidewalk and pretending to be dead.

Some wore fake blood to recall the more than 3,200 US military personnel killed in the Iraq War. Many later moved to obstruct Market Street, running through the city’s central business district. “As soon as they went out there we started making arrests,” police spokesman Neville Gittens said. “They were warned.”

Another spokesman said police arrested 57 people in two separate San Francisco locations. Polls show most Americans now oppose the war in Iraq.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1086085

Friday, March 16, 2007

Ghana Basics


Country: Ghana

History: Several major civilizations flourished in the general region of what is now Ghana. The ancient empire of Ghana (located 500 mi northwest of the contemporary state) reigned until the 13th century. The Akan peoples established the next major civilization, beginning in the 13th century, and then the Ashanti empire flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Called the Gold Coast, the area was first seen by Portuguese traders in 1470. They were followed by the English (1553), the Dutch (1595), and the Swedes (1640). British rule over the Gold Coast began in 1820, but it was not until after quelling the severe resistance of the AshantiGermany, was incorporated into Ghana by referendum in 1956. Created as an independent country on March 6, 1957, Ghana, as the result of a plebiscite, became a republic on July 1, 1960. in 1901 that it was firmly established. British Togoland, formerly a colony of

Premier Kwame Nkrumah attempted to take leadership of the Pan-African Movement, holding the All-African People's Congress in his capital, Accra, in 1958 and organizing the Union of African States with Guinea and Mali in 1961. But he oriented his country toward the Soviet Union and China and built an autocratic rule over all aspects of Ghanaian life. In Feb. 1966, while Nkrumah was visiting Beijing and Hanoi, he was deposed by a military coup led by Gen. Emmanuel K. Kotoka.

A series of military coups followed, and on June 4, 1979, Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings overthrew Lt. Gen. Frederick Akuffo's military rule. Rawlings permitted the election of a civilian president to go ahead as scheduled the following month, and Hilla Limann, candidate of the People's National Party, took office. Rawlings's three-month rule was one of Ghana's bloodiest periods, with executions of numerous government officials and business leaders. Two years later Rawlings staged another coup, charging the civilian government with corruption. As chairman of the Provisional National Defense Council, Rawlings scrapped the constitution, instituted an austerity program, and reduced budget deficits over the next decade. He then returned the country to civilian rule and won the presidency in multiparty elections in 1992 and again in 1996. Since then, Ghana has been widely viewed as one of Africa's most stable democracies. In Jan. 2001, John Agyekum Kufuor was elected president. In 2002, he set up a National Reconciliation Commission to review human rights abuses during the country's military rule. He was reelected in Dec. 2004.

Language:
English is the official language; however, the African languages of Akan,
Moshi-Dagomba, Ewe, and Ga are also spoken.

Political structure: Ghana has a constitutional democracy, which is a form of government in which the sovereign power of the people is spelled out in a governing constitution.
Executive branch:
chief of state:
President John Agyekum KUFUOR (since 7 January 2001); Vice President
Alhaji Aliu MAHAMA (since 7 January 2001); note - the president is both the chief of state
and head of government
head of government: President John Agyekum KUFUOR (since 7 January 2001); Vice
President Alhaji Aliu MAHAMA (since 7 January 2001)
cabinet: Council of Ministers; president nominates members subject to approval by
Parliament
elections: president and vice president elected on the same ticket by popular vote for
four-year terms (eligible for a second term); election last held 7 December 2004 (next to be
held in December 2008)
election results: John Agyekum KUFUOR reelected president in election; percent of vote -
John KUFUOR 53.4%, John ATTA-MILLS 43.7%
Judicial branch: Supreme Court
Legislative branch:
unicameral Parliament (230 seats; note - increased from 200 seats in last election; members are elected by direct, popular vote to serve four-year terms)
elections: last held 7 December 2004 (next to be held December 2008)
election results: percent of vote by party - NA; seats by party - NPP 128, NDC 94, PNC 4,
CPP 3, independent 1

Religion: Christian 63%, Muslim 16%, indigenous beliefs 21%

Independence: March 5, 1957 from the United Kingdom; it was the first African country to obtain independence from colonial rule. http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2928270 (News article about Ghana celebrating its 50th year of freedom.

International disputes: Ghana struggles to accommodate returning nationals who worked in the cocoa plantations and escaped rebel fighting in Côte d'Ivoire.

References: CIA Factbook and http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107584.html