Rawlings hoax worth investigating?

Fellow Ghanaians,
You all know what is going on. Those of us who have read this e-mail have no doubt that it is a fake.

My own initial reaction to a friend who sent this to me was the following:

Hi, Fresh Trebs, Jonh T! Joe Atta ! James !
Good day!
What a pleasant surprise! The only thing good about this spam is that at least I can say coccoo! How is life. I am working quite late as you can see from the time of sending this mail! I am so busy these few days because I want the NPP to fall!

I hope none of you have fallen to this propaganda?

I hope you are well.
Fresh Trebs, please say hi to your London clan on my behalf!

Anyway, Fred, what kind of nonsense is this? I have been receiving a lot of 419 spams in my mail. This is the first one with a familiar name! I shall be asking Kwesi Pratt, Jnr. an experienced and seasoned politician on threats to his life to advise me personally on this one before I make my final conclusions. In the meanwhile when you have an authentic e-mail message the standard format is always like this:

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Isaac Quist

Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 8:48 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Could this possibly be true???
OR
from
to Ali-Masmadi JEHU-APPIAH ,

and not like this:

>
date
subject FW: Could this possibly be true???
mailed-by hotmail.com
And not like this:
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2008 03:52:27 -0700 (PDT)
From:
This sender is DomainKeys verified
"J. J Rawlings"

Add sender to Contacts
Subject : MARSH POTATO - additional input
To: "Atomic Breeze"
Pay particular attention to this e-mail address:
To: "Atomic Breeze"
The reason why only yahoo is is blue is because it is a stupid forgery!

1. This fact is independent upon whether or not the sender is DomainKeys verified!

2. Yahoo senderdomain key, even if accurate does not prove the message did originate from Rawlings. Yahoo does not ask for your birth certificate in order to open an e-mail address. Any fool can sign in as JJ Rawlings!

3. It is quite curious that our JJ hear takes great pains to use all sorts of names for this "operation" such as "

" MARSH 1" and "BULL DOGS", "RAINBOW 5" was to draw "MAPS" for a "MILD BUFFER" and "ROUGH HARRIS"

and yet he does nothing to disguise his own name on Yahoo! It takes less than five minutes to open one with a million of names possible! He is supposed to have sent an e-mail to a "Atomic Breeze" !!!!!

4. There is a clear beneficiary inside this spam:
"Nunoo -Mensah flirts with NPP and cannot be trusted."

5. Here I think the writer is singing more from an NPP hymn sheet that the minimum intelligence we are all obliged to credit Rawlings else we do not even understand politics! It has been overdone.

" We gave birth to the NDC and made them all what they are today after a hard won revolution, at a time when these cowards were hiding under their beds. Today, they want to take over our asset, reaping heavily where they have sown little or nothing. With respect to Fifi, the least said about him the better. Akufo-Addo is far better candidate in terms of public appeal. He is charismatic, fluent, healthier, politically up to scratch, streetwise, globally accepted and has a better message. We also have a problem with the floating voters and Spio would have been the right choice. This is why I said the NDC is not ready to take power. Hear what Kufuor is saying about Fifi's health. This kind of enterprise requires a very healthy person in the eyes of the public and we all know that our man is not. Are we waiting for him to drop dead in November? John Mahama may have an appreciable level of public appeal but not what can translate to votes. He is not frontline leadership material. The man worked under me and I know him. I have been in politics for quite sometime now and have stood twice for elections and won. I have been Head of State of this nation for about two decades and privy to what most of you are not privy to, so when I speak, the NDC should listen. The NPP people are very smart so we should not take any chances.

As for the GA people, they exposed all our land dealings with them to Kufuor. Now they want to use us to blackmail Kufuor. They can go to hell. After all, the majority of occupants of Greater Accra are Akans and other tribes, not Gas.

All ops, foreign and local on the ground are ready. This ops must be executed with the sharpest precision to accord it the credibility it requires. Keep track of your shadows and beware of the Army and Police who seem to have developed some stupid love for this government, thereby making it difficult to break their ranks. Kufuor and his brother Addo-Kufuor have cocooned them. God help us.

Justice"
6. Typical NPP elitist vocabulary, not that of Rawlings: "Victor – ex boy".

7. Keep your domain keys to yourself! If there is an empirical evidence what are the tribunals for? I see, sorry, perhaps you are expecting me to go and arrest and try him! Is someone confusing our e-mail addresses with the IGP or the Minister of the Interior who is also on the list?

8. This e-mail is telling me it is coming directly from Rawlings yet it says

"People of Ghana, on Rawlings' Hot list of people 'to be dealt with' being circulated by email amongst certain NDC gurus and operatives, are names such as..."

I think it a bit odd that Rawlings would be delivering a list in the third person. I do net see 'I' or 'me'. What is wrong? Is it a story that ends with Rawlings committing suicide by shooting himself four times on his back?

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2008 04:14:07 -0800 (PDT)
From:
This sender is DomainKeys verified
"J. J Rawlings"

Add sender to Contacts
Subject : MARSH POTATO - LIST
To: "Atomic Breeze"

People of Ghana, on Rawlings' Hot list of people 'to be dealt with' being circulated by email amongst certain NDC gurus and operatives, are names such as Rev. Aboagye Mensah, J.A. Kufuor, Francess Essiam, IGP Patrick Acheampong, CDS J.B. Danquah, Nana Ama Kufuor, Steve Asamoah Boateng, Archbishop Palmer Buckle, Professor Attefuah, Gabby Okyere Darko, Kweku Baako,

You should be able on you own to intelligently secure the important doubts surrounding an e-mail like this, rather than peddling it around without even a single comment! What kind of aftologist is this?

Akufo Addo is going to lose the elections, whether you like it or not. The circulation of such lies will speed this up and not do anything to prevent the far reaching changes that I smell in the air!

Yes, we can!!!
ali
My comments solicited this reaction:
Folks,
Ignore this. It can never be true. Not that Rawlings is not capable of these acts; indeed he is capable of even worse acts.!!

Unfortunately for him, Ghana has moved on and will not tolerate such acts again. More importantly, the man is not computer literate and probably hasn't sent an email in his life before. Although he is capable of mischief, he is not capable of stringing together the sentences in that mail.

Enjoy whatever food and drink u have and forget about this yesterday's man.

Johnny
For those of you who have not seen the original e-mail, I invite you to visit http://www.pan-africanist.int and judge for themselves to sign this petition. We must stand up and be counted. This is the only way we can ensure peace in our country.

I feel a deep sorrow for revealing my e-mail correspondence with the addresses of my friends in this way. We have done nothing wrong. We just received this message and make comments on them. This apparently is a serious matter of national security proportions so I am sure I shall be forgiven.

Rawlings hit list a hoax worth invetigating

________________________________________

View Current Signatures - Sign the Petition

________________________________________
To: The Government and People of Ghana
Subject: RED ALERT : RAWLINGS PLOT TO DESTABILIZE NATION AND MURDER GHANAIANS/HIT LIST

Background and Introduction
This is a story of an e-mail that announces itself as a fake right from the beginning and yet capable of causing great confusion at the most sensitive time in the history of our young democracy. It begins like this:

Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2008 03:52:27 -0700 (PDT)
From:
This sender is DomainKeys verified

"J. J Rawlings"
Add sender to Contacts
Subject : MARSH POTATO - additional input
To: "Atomic Breeze"
Please note carefully the absence of hyper test link in the recipient's address. This is technical impossibility and automatically renders the correspondence as unreliable.

An e-mail that tells you that the recipient could not have received the mail with an e-mail address in which only one part is highlighted and the other part without any of the normal hyper text links must not be allowed to create any tension at this time of the day.

This petition seeks to demonstrate that many people who have read the e-mail:

Subject: RED ALERT : RAWLINGS PLOT TO DESTABILIZE NATION AND MURDER GHANAIANS/HIT LIST

We are calling on the government to trace the perpetrators and punish them. The earliest origin of the e-mail is traceable to the following;

[email protected]
[email protected]
We appeal to them to urgently assist the police to throw more light on how they came into possession of these mails and who sent them.

PETITION STATEMENT
We are very satistified about the incontrovertible fact that it is nothing but a fake and cheap attempt to confusion we do not need especially at this time and it must not be allowed to endanger our young democracy.

We ask our fellow countrymen to remain calm and not allow themselves to be influenced in any way whatsoever by such unconscionable falsehoods. We are even more alarmed that such falsehoods are being given respectability by people who should probably know better. The last call by Most Rev Dr Samuel Asante Antwi, a former General Overseer of the Methodist Church of Ghana, challenging the security agencies to act expeditiously to confirm the veracity or otherwise of an alleged 'hit list' contained in this e-mail is an example of the negative consequences that this lie could have on the peace of the Republic of Ghana. The principal motive behind this e-mail is mischief. The need to expose this is what has motivated this petition.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned
[Click Here to Sign Petition]
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The Rawlings hit list a hoax worth invetigating Petition to The Government and People of Ghana was created by Peace is Justice and Fairness Campaign and written by Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appaih ([email protected]). This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.