ZION-SUNNI COALITION: ANCIENT PAN-SEMITISM SURFACING

ZION-SUNNI COALITION: ANCIENT PAN-SEMITISM SURFACING

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Zion is courting Sunni and vice versa, courtesy of neo-conservative technocrats from Pentagon in tandem with the agents of the Anglo-European oligarchy. The enemy that both camps have to confront—Shiite Persia—is a very determined one and is arming to the teeth to advance its own interest.

 

Scrape both Zion and Sunni off the surface, and one can easily reveal the ancient Semitic bloodline that runs in both camps. The same Semites who for millennia fought for survival against the might of Persia, are now uniting to face Persia once again in a last war that fits well into the narrative of the last battle between the forces of Ahriman versus those of Ahura Mazda.

 

Cross over to the Shiite camp and do the same: scrape off Shiite Islam from the surface. Voila! The Persian bloodline is revealed to the observer in a very kindergarten fashion of quiz. Persia is resurfacing, Persian psyche that was long dormant is reviving, and sooner or later the empire that was so hated by its neighbors may come rampaging again to harass and conquer (if it can) the potentates of the ancient empire.

 

Racial consciousness, an awareness that operates on the collective level, doesn’t seem to die at all. At some juncture in the future, the dormant racial consciousness of a people may re-awaken again. I see this ancient racial consciousness re-awakening in today’s context when the borderline between reason and madness has been effectively erased.

 

Such is the case of the Semitic peoples, who were bred from the bloodlines of the Levantine Canaanites and the Sumerians. The Canaanites were a colored people while the Sumerians were white or Caucasian. The resulting race was a hybrid psyche that is suited to the rough and tough terrains of the Levant, Arabian peninsula, and North Africa’s sand dunes.

 

Indubitably, the Semites have competed against each other for millennia, this is beyond question. The future Arabs warred against each other, and so did the future Jews had their own conflicts. Hebrew-Arab conflict likewise brewed and boiled caldrons, conflicts whose embers haven’t ceased to die till now.

 

For some time, pan-Arabism served as a cementing force with which to unite the warring Arab tribes against an aggressive Zion. Real as the Zion-Arab conflict may seem, that reality can always get erased as soon as the line of polarity shifts.

 

With the decline of pan-Arabism came the advent of fundamentalist Islam represented by Shiite revivalism, a radical version of Islam that seeks to destroy both Zion and de-fang Western-collaborating Sunni sheikhdoms.

 

The advent of Shiite revivalism is indubitably the cementing force that is now uniting both Hebrews and Arabs together. No matter how superficial the Zion-Sunni coalition may appear for now, the superficiality will fade once the ferocity of Shiite Persia will be demonstrated with determined zeal in a war versus the coalition.

 

To this analyst, Zion and Sunni are no strange bedfellows. The genetic-psychical unity that is deeply embedded in the very DNA of all Semites is the decisive factor that will determine who should be friends versus a perceived predatory enemy, and such an enemy is no other than Persia in its new form as Shiite Islam.

 

No longer pan-Arabism but pan-Semitism is the order of the day. Pan-Semitism in the aegis of globalization is a borderless racial re-awakening. It is interesting to watch the formation of the contours of the emerging coalition as a surfacing of ancient unity and hatred versus a neo-Persian empire in the neighborhood.

 

[Philippines, 22 July 2010]

GULF STATES: ENFORCERS OF OLIGARCHIC ‘CLASH OF CIVILIZATION’ MADNESS

GULF STATES: ENFORCERS OF OLIGARCHIC ‘CLASH OF CIVILIZATION’ MADNESS

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Magandang gabi! Good evening!

 

Dusk is the mark of the day as I write this note. I wish to continue writing on the theme of Arab gulf states—whether they’re Asian or not. It seems that the ‘twilight of the gods’ scenario has been engulfing the gulf states altogether, a sort of reprieve prior to Armageddon.

 

For this piece, I’d focus on the observation that the Arab gulf states are the enforcers of the Anglo-European oligarchy’s ‘clash of civilizations’ madness. There has been so much military build-up in the gulf states lately, proof of a preparation for a larger conflagration. (The expenditure level measures by the hundreds of billions of dollars, with KSA leading the hemorrhage of military hardware buying spree.)

 

East Asia, as we can see, has been operating on the modality of a ‘dialogue of cultures’ expressed as economic, political, and cultural cooperation. The entire region has been the growth driver of the global economy for some time now, and will perform such an optimizer role in the foreseeable future.

 

Such a trend, however, does not characterize the gulf states. Already filthy rich with their petrodollars, they nonetheless aren’t progenitors of growth driving for the global economy. They grow for the sake of sustaining their own development gains and prepare themselves for the eventual drying up of the oil wells.

 

Gulf economies’ billionaires are deeply encumbered to the financier operations of the Anglo-European oligarchs who have been using the former as their dummies and/or junior partners. There is hardly any big commercial and industrial concern in the gulf states today that are not immersed in the investment interests of the likes of George Soros & cronies who represent the Who Is Who in the West.

 

Arab sheikhs style themselves in fact as Western-honed leaders who are no different from their Western counterparts. The difference lies only in the sheikhs’ profession of Islam, an ultra-conservatism that the West allowed to thrive to render the sheikhdoms as buffer regions versus pan-Arab nationalism or pan-Arabism of the Iraq, Syria, Lybia, and Nasserite Egypt.

 

Pan-Arabism is now rapidly decaying, and so the polarity game has shifted to Shiite Islam as the key enemy in lieu of the former. The Arab kings and sheikhs are surely having a great time nurturing hatreds versus the ayatollahs of Persia whom they demonize with deep disdain.

 

Back home, the sheikhdoms have to neutralize their homegrown jihadist movements led by the Al Qaida. While the home enemy grows in size and intensity of terror, tension grows as the sheikhs can’t help on anticipating the attacks by the revolutionary guards of Persia, attacks that may be accompanied by limited nuclear weaponry.

 

The situation in the gulf region had pushed the sheikhs into a toxic alliance with the Zionists who are the other leg in the beachhead of the Anglo-European oligarchy in regaining control of the entire Western Asia. A loose Zionist-Sunni (gulf states’ ecclesial religion) alliance has been in formation since couples of years back yet, to recall.

 

In my own analysis, it is now too late to see the possibility of the sheikhs dis-engaging from their active participation in the polarity game of the West’s oligarchy. The sheikhs and Arab billionaires are an organic part of that oligarchy while they feign difference via Sunni wahabism or equivalents. A superficial difference that is, to note.

 

The clock now ticks for the gulf states, an Armageddon clock that could unleash the forces of destruction in the region. And such a clock will continue to tick, unless a paradigm shift will be initiated by the sheikhs & Arab billionaires which is nauseatingly impossible an eventuality at this moment.

 

[Philippines, 22 July 2010]

PUNISH BUSH & NEO-CONS FOR WAR CRIMES!

PUNISH BUSH & NEO-CONS FOR WAR CRIMES!

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

A global Establishment has already galvanized before us, just as the global order had been established by the capitalist oligarchy that constitutes this Establishment. The same Establishment has been defining for us who should be punished for war crimes and who should not, and this is truly bothersome for us global citizens.

 

The likes of Bush, both father and son, who espoused hawkish policies of war and attrition in the guise of America’s role as global policeman, are indubitably war criminals. Yet they roam the world so freely like the wildest monsters that call the shots in a jungle.

 

I will never forget the Bush father & son, as the war policies they hatched emboldened the hawkish policies of the army of my own country, an army that is a compliant clone of the Pentagon up North. Not only did the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and countries affected by their war policies suffer miserably, my very own Muslim compatriots and countryside folks suffer from the war policies of the neo-cons clone army here.

 

With displeasure I regard those actuations of Western liberals who condemn the war crimes of the leaders of Sudan and Serbia but who are blind to the very war crimes of the hawkish leaders of their hegemonic countries. For if they indeed are sincere with condemning such war crimes of their leaders, they should by now be prospering in the cases they file at the International Criminal Court versus such criminals.

 

One would say, “hey the ICC is funded by Soros & cronies, so how can the ICC ever punish the likes of Bush father & son and crony neo-cons who are their colleagues in the global Establishment?” True indeed, the Establishment funds the ICC, and it may prove futile to file cases against their members.

 

Be that as it may, why don’t the West’s liberals and New Left advocates push through with the filing of war crimes just the same? Whether they file it at the ICC or in their own home countries, the challenge of the day is for such cases to be filed most urgently.

 

Monsters that were responsible for the destruction of nations and genocidal deaths to millions of people, such as what the Bush & crony neo-cons have factually committed, shouldn’t be allowed to roam freely around the planet.

 

Failure to file such cases can be misconstrued by us Eastern observers as an attempt of White liberals and their colored humanoid clones to cover up for their Establishment sponsors. So to speak, an instance of White intellectual prostitutes paid to kowtow to their own kind, or paid dogs of Establishment masters who can rock the boats provided that they don’t touch their masters who feed them lusciously.

 

The cycle of mass terminations by the likes of Bush & neo-cons have to cease soon enough. And the Establishment war criminals should be made to pay dearly for their crimes. Just exactly when will such a payment of crime happen, if in case it would happen at all?

 

[Philippines, 13 July 2010]

 

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,

UNLADTAU: https://unladtau.wordpress.com,

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

 

 

ONE ASEAN: GET READY!

ONE ASEAN: GET READY!

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Good evening! Magandang gabi!

 

The dark clouds of the electoral contests are now getting clearer in the Philippines. With our polls settled and our elected leaders about to begin their mandates, I’d now depart from election-related advocacies and move back to the international-global arenas.

 

I have written quite enormously about international political economy and subsidiary themes for over two (2) decades. Even my blogging has been consumed with peregrinations on the international arena. So let me go back to this arena, even as I now clarify that I am a strong advocate of One ASEAN.

 

As I’ve elucidated in my past writings (see 2007-08 articles), I perceive the ASEAN as the larger polity to which my own country will return in the future.

 

The Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, the whole of island Southeast particularly, were largely creations of Western powers. They used to be part of the Majapahit Empire, the world’s wealthiest region before Western colonization fragmented it.

 

Being a strong believer in ASEAN unity, I am willing to shed off my hard-line Filipino nationalism and don the cloak of pan-ASEAN patriotism. Majapahit was the original nation to me and to those who resonate with the same worldview, and eager am I to see my country return to the Empire.

 

The Empire no longer bears that name today. Rather, it goes by the name of ASEAN, short for Association of Southeast Asian Nations. But it bears the same geo-political and geo-economic contours of the Empire before it fragmented.

 

A benevolent Empire it was, as it used the fiat of trade cooperation to get membership into the polity. That is, to be able to become a part of the Empire, concur trade with its nexus and prinzeps. This was a much different track from the typical military occupation used by other regional and world powers to expand their territorial confines.

 

If we reflect back on what our state players are doing here today, where they’re concurring agreements and treaties using the most civil means conceivable to get to a higher level of unity, the same means actually revives the consensus methods used by our peoples in antiquity. Today, no matter how diverse our political, economic, and cultural systems are, we are talking to each other here, which is reflective of a ‘dialogues of civilizations’ approach.

 

From state-to-state and civil society-to-civil society talks, let us move on to direct people-to-people talks in the region. People-to-people interactions precede people-to-people cooperations. I strongly contend that people-to-people cooperation should eventually be the base for state-to-state and civil society-to-civil society cooperation and no less.

 

State-to-state talks are quite slow in results, even if market players joined state actors to buttress the former stakeholders’ positions. In some areas of talks, such as those involving territories, snags are observed.

 

People-to-people interactions and cooperation will do much to accelerate state-to-state talks that get snagged for one reason or another. The same cooperation can also accelerate the building of a pan-ASEAN identity which should precede any writing of a general treaty that will unify the region at least economically.

 

People-to-people interactions have already been taking place in the region for almost 2000 years in fact. Western colonization may have diminished the scales of interactions for a long while, but that era of imperialism is much behind us now.

 

As states, market players, and civil society players are preparing for larger talks ahead, let us noble peoples of the region go ahead and expand the levels of talks to build greater mutual confidence, appreciation of each other’s cultures, and trust. Along the way, we have fellow Asians and global citizens who will support our efforts as true friends.

 

In any way we can, let us get to know each other better. Let’s set aside utilitarian gains (e.g. get to know Asean pals who can become network marketing partners) and interact based on a true call of our hearts, of our souls.

 

That way, we contribute to building our preparedness for the grand future coming. We just can’t be caught flat-footed, not knowing what’s going on in our larger backyard because we allowed state players to monopolize the talks.

 

Fellow ASEANians, let’s get ready!

 

[Writ – Philippines, 11 May 2010. E. Argonza is adept at international political economy. He was a graduate student of former ASEAN Deputy Secretary General Wilfrido Villacorta, PhD. He has published various articles on the subject, as well as a book on global trade regime.]

WEST MARKETS SHRINK, ASIANS’ RISE AND OVERTAKE WEST SOON

WEST MARKETS SHRINK, ASIANS’ RISE AND OVERTAKE WEST SOON

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Good evening from the Pearl of the Orient!

 

The International Monetary Fund or IMF has been quite bullish lately about Asian growth. It had forecast East Asia’s average growth at past 7% for this year, and shares an equally positive growth trend for RP at 5.5%-6%. Just what could be the implications of the growth trends on the global economy and the West?

 

As Asia expands, the West (Europe, USA, Canada, Japan) contracts. The trend will not change much over the next five (5) years, so let’s see where the East and West are headed for in the foreseeable future.

 

In early 2008 yet, the economists and financial analysts of the West (or North) were of the opinion that the technological cutting edge of the West was already breached by Asia by the end of 2007 yet. Remember that 2007 was the beginning of a new cycle of recession for the West which began in the USA with the implosion of the realty bubble.

 

Given that the Western economies are flat on their back growth-wise, and their toxic bubble economies have given them only virtual economy results (read: inflated values not based on real production but on speculation), there is ample reason to forecast that they will be mired in problems of saving their ailing banks, financial-monetary systems, and providing sovereign guarantees to their capitalists at the expense of taxpayers and infusing investments in the physical economy. This is now matter of fact, as we can clearly see.

 

Western economies have suffered from the ill effects of continuous de-industrialization for decades, of being remiss in their own infrastructures (USA seems to be the worst in infrastructure decay), and deteriorating investments in science & technology. From being a producer economy, Western economy generally has become a parasitical ‘eater economy’ that stands on no clear foundation other than financial quicksand.

 

In contrast, the Eastern economies have steadily built their strategic industries across the decades, reinforced their infrastructure expenditures and projects, and invested in science & technology. The Eastern economy generally has therefore been role-playing as ‘producer economy’ worth the emulation of other developing economies worldwide.

 

Result: by 2007, at the downspin year of a recessionary West, the East overtook the West in terms of cutting-edge technologies. To qualify, the technologies we refer to are those life-inducing technologies, not those death & destruction technologies that the West has clear edge till these days.

 

I still remember what my nationalist colleagues in the Sunday Kapihan that we then held every Sunday at the Sulo Hotel in Manila: the West knows nothing but perfect its Armaments. Dr. Emmanuel Yap, an economist who finished his PhD at Harvard University, was the most vocal about that emphasis on the death & destruction focus of Western innovations.

 

To continue, the added forecast that I’d share at this moment is this: from the years 2007 through 2015, Western markets will contract by at least 30%. That means their own consuming public will spend less and less across a 9-year stretch, until the consumption pattern will settle down by 2016 or so. Real GDP (gross domestic product) will radically decline during the period, shrinking by as much as 30%-40% contrasted to their 2006 levels (the last of the best years of the West).

 

In contrast, the Eastern markets will expand by at least 100% during the period. The giants China and India will go farther than that, with China expanding by as much as 200% during the same period. That means the middle income earners in the East will continue to rise by the year and consume more products by the year, even travel more overseas year by year.

 

Result: China will clearly overtake the shrunken economies of EU and USA by end of 2015. India may follow suit, at around the years 2020-2025. The last would be ASEAN, which will overtake the West by 2025-2030 period.

 

Once a region overtakes others technology-wise, it will just be a matter of time before the same innovator region will overtake the rest wealth-wise. Technologies—physical technologies, biotechnologies, social technologies, medical technologies—are precisely the cutting edge practices that will enable one region to overtake others across the globe.

 

The bad news for the West is this: if their own states and markets will fail to solve their ailing problems in infrastructures and reverse de-industrialization, they will pathetically go down as 3^rd world or ‘developing economies’ past 2020. No less than their own economists warned of this possibility in the early 1990s yet, and sadly no one paid attention to them in their own backyards. City after city in the USA and EU will immerse in urban decay, becoming 3^rd world cities in the process.

 

My mother just retired from New York where she migrated since the 80s yet. She decided to come home back to the Philippines, and visited the Libis & Cubao areas of Quezon City/Manila suburb pronto upon her arrival. She was so deeply enchanted by the esthetic beauty of the architectures and planning in those mixed land use zones, while she complained of the dilapidated buildings and nauseating smells of cinema theatres in downtown Manhattan.

 

Those observations are signs of the times indeed. In just a year from now, the Pagcor City will rise in Manila, housing the world’s tallest tower. Burj Dubai, Petronas Twin Towers, and Taipei 101 are already similar hallmarks in other Asian cities, signifying the power shift from East to West.

 

The message is hereby brought to the West’s peoples: shift back from virtual reality to physical reality, from the virtual economy to the real economy. We Asians will help you along the way, as we’ve already been doing through our colossal treasuries investments, direct foreign investments, and quality Asian expatriates in your backyards that have been saving your collapsing economies from rapid decay.

 

 

[Philippines, 13 July 2012]

LARGE CLASS, MAD DISCOURSE: SAME ROOTS

LARGE CLASS, MAD DISCOURSE: SAME ROOTS

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Magandang hapon! Good afternoon!

 

Classes have resumed here in Manila/Philippines, and our campuses are again swarming with pupils, students, teachers. Focused on their tasks, the same stakeholders are barely aware of what’s going on in the world around them, a world that is changing fast at confusing rate.

 

While the rugs under our feet our changing, the old context of large classes (class sizes of 100-250) are still in vogue in many universities worldwide. Some other universities that may have abolished them in the past, are re-instituting the large class platform.

 

As I’ve said in a previous article, the large class platform belongs to the past ages of medievalism and industrialism. To implement it now, at this time, is a regressive decision.

 

The large class, which unconsciously glues students to the ‘Herd instinct’, is anathema to the overall evolutionary movement of the human psyche towards greater individuation. University education is supposedly an opportunity field for the flourishing of that individuation.

 

The ‘mad discourse’ is finding expression in many venues today. The large class platform feeds inputs to the mad discourse, and is subtly rooted in it in fact. Its rationale hides under the rubric of technocratese language, but any sharp observer will easily unveil the illusion and show the large class platform’s connection to the ‘mad discourse’.

 

Imagine if all students are subjected to the same large classes, where they cannot air feedbacks or questions at all as they are consigned to passive receivers of inputs from a lecture professor. Imagine exposing freshmen students to this platform for 4-5 years, and assess the degeneration of the same students into the hovels of passivity.

 

Such a regimentation is just but one step short of what the Phase III cybernetics is up to these days: chipping humans. Phase III cybernetics had worked out to erase the dividing line between human behavior and machine behavior, with practical uses aimed at chipping all humans in the future.

 

The same chipped humans can then be put under the control of mega-computer systems, their behavior eventually reprogrammable to make them more in tune with what the System demands. They can be sent to war fronts as armies and technicians, and will experience no fear as fear will be deleted or subjugated by mega-control commands from their own psyche.

 

Wars and police states of the near future will be easily justified with every technocratese language conceivable, rendering them as typical ‘mad discourse’ in the argot of Michel Foucault. Mad, in that the erasure of the boundary between reason and the irrational has been effectively erased or deleted.

 

If there is anything that university policy makers must do now, it is to abolish all large classes while there is still time. Globally, we concerned citizens are doing what we can to deter moves by elites to install nazi-type regimes in the West, leading to a global state later that will be in need of compliant citizens.

 

Let us all do our tasks now to take down school platforms that will be the launching pads for compliant humans who can be chipped in couples of years’ time. The VeriChip by Verizon Corp is now out, and before 2015 a more perfected prototype will be out, ready to be implanted to humans via syringe (by trained doctors/medics).

 

We still have the time to act, to note. Any decision that infringes on human liberties is dangerously fascistic, such as re-instituting or maintaining large classes.

 

Failing to act in time, we shall watch in horror as new ‘das boots’ kids will be churned out from our youth, commanded via chips to participate in building a Draconian deux ex machina of the near future. And they’re products of our universities, products of large classes.

 

By then, I will be having the last laugh. With resonating guffaws will I declare “I told you so.”

 

 

[Philippines, 27 June 2012]

 

MANILA WILL BE DESTROYED & SUNKEN AFTER PLANET NIBIRU FLYBY CATASTROPHE

MANILA WILL BE DESTROYED & SUNKEN AFTER PLANET NIBIRU FLYBY CATASTROPHE

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Gracious Day to you all!

I was invited to be the resource speaker for a Round Table Discussion just last 26^th of July, 2:30-4:30 pm, on the subject titled “Planet Nibiru: Flyby, Catastrophe, Challenges.” A discussion group—Insight Fellowship Circle—conducted the discussion, as they regularly hold discursive engagements regularly on a monthly basis.

For a quick browse on my talk & discussion, please follow the following publication [summary of the Nibiru RTD] in this same IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com/2015/07/planet-nibiru-flyby-catastrophe.html

Many questions and inputs from the Fellows of the Circle did crop up during the RTD on Nibiru. Being Filipinos who are based in the global city of the nation—Metropolitan Manila—they were interested to know most of all the prospect of Manila being damaged by the catastrophe.

My answers to their queries were very straight forward. As regards the whole Philippine Islands, my estimate is that 6/7 of the archipelago will sink to the seabed as it goes along the tectonic plate (Philippine plate) that will most likely experience subsidence during the catastrophe peak (c. April-May 2017).

Manila falls mainly on the Western side of the quake fault. Almost all lands to the west of that Fault will go below the sea level, as a combination of monster quakes, tsunami past 150 meters altitude, and superstorms will smash up the entire metropolis and archipelago probably beginning on the last week of April of 2017 (or maybe 2016 as some other analysts and researchers argue).

I actually had too many meditation and dream visions—precognitive sensory observations—of the forthcoming global catastrophe, from the late 1980s through the current year (2015). Tsunami 7-10 times taller than the tallest coconut trees, waves taller than condominiums, entering the Manila bay; waters rising fast, inundating a high rise city section, rapidly gobbling up a condominium whose panicky residents tried to pump out the waters but to no avail; ghost city with no residents to boot, its high rise structures already in total shambles and rubbles, with the last standing structures of a high rise building (close up view) crashing down as its weakened structure can’t withstand the pressures of accumulated waters on its upper storeys; and more.

In 2012, the last dream vision one fine night showed that my present residency then, a 4-floor apartment, was filled with waters. I was then residing at the 4^th floor, which, as per my vision, was filled with water like it were an aquarium full of clear water, with fishes gamely fishing about. I instantly felt difficulty in breathing during the dream scene, like I were simulating the feeling of those persons who will die by drowning.

That residence, in UP Village of the hilly Quezon City, lies to the West of the Fault. Being clearly sunken, like unto an aquarium, is indicative of the possibility of a sunken Manila (metro) after the catastrophe. Amusingly, the water of the “new sea” was so clean, thus showing the effect of the melted ice caps that will cleanse dirt and salt off the dirty waters of modernity, ensuring new life for aquatic species.

I had a recent vision, in dream, showing my present residence in total shambles. Yet this residence’s neighborhood remains intact, though a ghost town of totally flattened homes and buildings, in a hilly area near the Commonwealth Avenue of Quezon City. My 2-floor aparment building was merely a single floor in the vision, the roof gone and so is the cement structure of the 2^nd storey, all window materials gone, the wall on one side totally gone. Like bombed out by warplanes, the scenery so surreally dreadful.

That the apartment building and neighboring structures still stand, as per dream vision, is indicative of the survival of the East side of the fault after the catastrophe. Social, cultural, and economic life can always return on that side, which can extend all the way eastward to the Rizal highlands that will, in the main, be the safe havens for survivors.

In 2012 did I also see precognitive vision of a future Big City that will be encased on crystalline dome. Several times did I see such dome contours rising from the plateau or related areas of the Rizal highlands, probably at the edge of Antipolo on its south moving northwards toward BosoBoso, Tanay, and contiguous areas. The future city I saw while standing at the patio of the 4^th floor of my residential unit, often at noontime during warm sunny days.

Appreciably, Manila’s quake & calamities preparedness is being honed at this juncture. As of this writing, a Big Quake drill was held in the whole metropolis, with certain national agencies, e.g. Department of Health, steamrolling the preparedness simulation. This preparedness honing bodes well for Manilans as a whole. Hopefully, such a preparedness will be extended to monitoring the skies or space for celestial bodies approaching that may indeed bring forth catastrophe, such as the Planet X or Nibiru, comets, and big meteors.

[30 July 2015]

PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE: ASIA’S BEACON OF HOPE

Erle Frayne Argonza

Philippine solidarity to all Fellows on Planet Earth!

On the 12^th of June 1896, as the sun was rising, the Philippine Flag was raised for the first time in Kawit, Cavite. The Philippine National Anthem was also played, in the genre of classical marches, putting it alongside the French Republic’s anthem. Emilio Aguinaldo, first president of the new republic, declared the independence of the Philippines from Spain and the official birthing of the Philippine nation-state.

That moment of victory, no matter how short-lived it was as the American forces soon snapped off the flame of liberty in the islands, was of gigantic significance to all Asia. For the first time, a modern republic was born, forged from out of the struggles and blood of the Filipino people, who fought arduously against the mighty empire of the Spanish Crown. Over three (3) centuries of Western imperial cruelties, demonic calumnies and abominable barbarities were officially ended that day.

All of Asia watched the unfolding events in the islands then. The young patriarch of the nation, Dr. Jose Rizal, was terminated by the Spaniards in 1896 yet, but his ideas of nationhood spread like wildfire across the archipelago after that infamous moment of his execution. With the founding of a new republic, the Asians realized that nationhood ideas, typified by the thoughts of Rizal, were viable. No matter how mighty an evil empire would be against a colonized people of Asia, the latter will be able to forge collective might and will, terminate imperial rule and build a new sovereign nation-state.

Thus were our fellow Asians emboldened to study the path of national liberation, build the patriotic ideas and revolutionary movements that will serve as their executor vehicles, and wage libertarian campaigns to the finish, even if it will take thousands to millions of martyrs to conclude the national liberation project. Gandhi, Aung San, Sukarno, Sun Yat Sen and leading patriots from fellow Asian lands, who read and digested Rizal’s writings well, stood out among our great leaders in Asia, and the rest was history.

Modern nationhood in Asia started in my beloved country. This is an established fact, though seemingly ignored and forgotten. Because it started here, let it be the duty and obligation of all fellow patriotic Filipino to continue to spread goodwill and good faith unto all the peoples of Earth, whether from developing or developed states. For in today’s context, there are those powerful predatory forces that aspire no end to snuff out the nation-states in the name of their ignominious greed, lust for power, and tyrannical might.

Back home, here, we nationalist patriots continue our struggle against the pro-colonial forces in all spheres of life. Rizal’s dream here hasn’t completely galvanized yet, as the pro-colonials and the oligarchs they serve are ensconced in all terrains of social, cultural, political and economic life. We nationalists are in the margins, while the pro-colonials and pro-oligarchs are hegemonic, and so we will continue with our struggles until the destructive dragons of colonialism and oligarchism will be effectively slaughtered here.

Let the world remember this heraldry, that on the 12^th of June 1896, nationhood and the values that underpin it (sovereignty, liberty, brotherhood, patriotism, prosperity) were born and planted in the Philippines as the first instance of nationhood in all of Asia. This being the sublime narrative, we patriotic Filipinos shall continue to bear with us the flame of liberty, and will defend the values that forged nationhood to the last instance of our breaths and energies. That which was first will be the last to fall, and will, with the blessing of Divine Hierarchy, never fall in spirit and wisdom to pursue the grand mission of helping other nations build their own narratives and practices of nationhood.

Hail the Philippine nation! Glory, genius, grandeur!

[12  June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

NEO-NATIONALISM’S PREMISES & CONTENTIONS / Let ‘unbridled free trade’ give way to ‘fair trade’

NEO-NATIONALISM’S PREMISES & CONTENTIONS / Let ‘unbridled free trade’ give way to ‘fair trade’

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

In the international trade scene, the President had declared it emphatically: “no to unbridled free trade!” Fair trade should be the game in trade, not free trade. This does not mean a full return to protectionism, which proved counterproductive in the past. Protectionism had only served rent-seekers, who did not engage in full-scale S&T innovations that could have propelled us to advance in product development, achieving world-class standards in many of our articles of industry & trade quite early. Returning to a regime of protectionism is surely out of the question.

Permit articles of imports to come in, employ this strategy to meet ‘commodity security’ and keep prices at competitive rates, while minimizing the possibility of shocks. This should also challenge domestic market players to become more competitive, precisely by engaging in dynamic research & development or R&D, resulting to higher-level product innovations (intended for the domestic market). Meanwhile, continue to institute a regime of ‘safety nets’ and strengthen those that have already been erected. However, where ‘infantile enterprises’ are barely out of the take-off stage, e.g. petrochemicals and upstream steel, provide certain tariff protection, but set limits up to that point when dynamic R & D have made production more cost-efficient, permitting thereafter competitiveness in both the domestic and global market. The latest move of government to provide the greatest incentives on upstream steel, for instance, is a right move, as it will entice market forces to install our long-delayed integrated steelworks.

 

[From: Erle Frayne D. Argonza, “New Nationalism: Grandeur and Glory at Work!”. August 2004. For the Office of External Affairs – Political Cabinet Cluster, Office of the President, Malacaňan Palace.]

NEO-NATIONALISM’S PREMISES & CONTENTIONS / Generate wealth from both external and domestic markets

NEO-NATIONALISM’S PREMISES & CONTENTIONS / Generate wealth from both external and domestic markets

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

 

Various stakeholders in the past were divided along the question of what should be the driver of growth & development (demand-side discourse): the external, or internal market? The followers of the ‘externalists’ were the ones behind the export-oriented development strategy, whose rationalizations for massive exports were quite poor recycles of the mercantilist contention that wealth should be produced more from out of the external markets (colonies during the time of empires). The ‘internalists’ were the ones behind import-substitution strategies, whose rationalizations were poor photocopies of Keynesian demand-side formulations.

In today’s context, it is wiser to view both the external and domestic markets as synergistic spheres for accumulating national wealth and meeting head-on the demands for delivering welfare. The external market discourse can work only in circumstances where a domestic demand has failed to develop, which in our case was the pre-1990s economy. By the late 1990s, it was clear that a significant change had taken place on the demand side of our economy, as folks were buying a lot of articles of commerce at a time of crisis. The middle class population is rising relative to the entire population, whose households’ needs have become more differentiated and have leaped beyond the bounds of ‘rice-and-galunggong’ expenditures. Today, Filipino families purchase around fifty-three percentum (53%) of their household needs from supermarkets, malls and large retail centers, even as the wet markets and sari-sari stores are declining in importance. These changes are real, and we cannot be blind to them by continuing to harp on an export-driven growth.

We must then fast-track large-scale redistribution schemes, such as to witness the rise in purchasing powers of our own people. This cannot be done outright during the next three (3) years, as we face a fiscal dilemma of crisis proportions. But beyond 2007 lies new opportunity fields. The fiscal route to stabilization will have been solidly achieved by then, and the nation can embark on more ambitious endeavors aimed at increasing incomes, reducing unemployment and poverty and increasing domestic consumption.

As the domestic market catches up in stabilizing the economy and producing national wealth, stakeholders shouldn’t be remiss in improving the competitiveness of our export products. Our great advantage is that we have ample supplies of skilled labor, with wages still relatively low. The power sector is also quite rich in supply of electricity, even as new projects are now being planned to neutralize possible supply problems in the short run. Hopefully, power supply would stabilize and electricity cost would decrease, contributing thus to rendering our exportable articles more competitive enough. Save for capital goods and petroleum, large volumes of which our producers continue to import, the other factors of production are within our hands to control and manipulate, inclusive of rent and interest rate. It is hereby argued that, with such factors controllable enough, we can optimize conditions for rendering our exportable articles maximally competitive and continue to permit the external market to be a source of substantial wealth. What more if we produce all of our essential capital goods, thus further bringing down the cost of production, given that the price of other factor inputs also go down?

 

[From: Erle Frayne D. Argonza, “New Nationalism: Grandeur and Glory at Work!”. August 2004. For the Office of External Affairs – Political Cabinet Cluster, Office of the President, Malacaňan Palace.]

SOCIAL CAPITAL FOR MINING

SOCIAL CAPITAL FOR MINING
Erle Frayne D. Argonza

This paper advocates for an alternative framework regarding mineral resource extraction. It begins with the contention that mining must be considered as primarily a community undertaking, whether the community be national or local. As such, mining must necessarily depart from market-driven models of extraction, or from state-centered models of development, and proceed to a community-oriented or constituency-based engagement.

To be able to comprehend the theme of this paper, let me begin with a story. About four (4) years ago, a former university student of mine at the University of the Philippines Manila informed me that a mining engineer wished to establish a (mining) foothold in the Cordillera. Accordingly, the engineer heard about my mystical background, and was interested to know if there are indeed precious metals in the proposed project site. That is, the engineer expected me to communicate directly to the invisible elemental entities in the area and ask their permission to establish a mining project.

Not only that. Having heard about my background as a political economist, with diversified interest and studies in indigenous culture, the mining firm he represented wanted to know what acceptable methods to employ in flushing out the indigenous people residing in the area.

To cut the story short, I declined the offer, even as I registered my vehement opposition to the sordidly profit-oriented venture of this engineer. If mining has to prosper at all, it must begin with the reality that there are people who have been settled for many epochs in the area of extraction. A win-win solution to the mining problem must be executed, not by expelling the local residents but precisely by involving them in the venture.

Let me now share to you another story. In 1998, at the height of the Asian financial crisis, my consulting firm then, the Phoenixkonsult, contracted a project with a client. The project was about yellow clay extraction, with Bicol as the project site. In a small town in Bicol is found yellow clay, a rare material that has various industrial applications as well as aesthetic uses. Incidentally, the area also has some Aeta-related residents as well as marginal peasants.

Being then the board chair of the corporation, or being in a central position to direct the developmental strategies of the firm, I strongly proposed that the project involve the residents in a number of ways.

First of all, in the feasibility study preparation, the residents can be tapped as eco-scanners to identify possible sites where the material was highly concentrated. Also, the same residents will be constituted into a cooperative, properly trained in social entrepreneurship, and invited to be co-investors in the mining project through their cooperative. A third involvement would be to tap those residents who are physically capable enough as human resource for the extraction and production activities.

Such a scheme is what social scientists and development practitioners like myself refer to as tapping ‘social capital’. Mining should not just be regarded as investment capital, but should also consider the vast wealth of social networks—‘social capital’—that can wield tremendous powers of production. Studies in comparative political economy have shown that developmental pursuits that tapped ‘social capital’ ended up more appreciably better than those that failed to do so.

The development experiences of Brazil are particularly instructive. As documented by such social science luminaries as Peter Evans (see Evans’ works on ‘state-society synergy’), those projects in agriculture, irrigation and urban-based infrastructure and housing in Brazil where a state-civil society partnership was consistently used, turned out really good in results. On the other hand, those projects that were largely state-centered or market-driven and insulated from the community networks eventually faltered, as indicated by typical experiences in most Third World economies.

In today’s evolving global context, state-centered development has become ridiculously passé. In this old framework, the state performs the role of a ‘provider state’—giving out everything such as candies and shelter units to helpless people waiting for the ‘Santa Claus’ dole outs. Such a framework had proved to be disastrous in results. Not only did it reinforce a strong dependency syndrome among the people, it also led to vicious poverty instead of eradicating this malaise. It need not be stressed that much money went to the pocket of state officials and contracting firms’ managers through this old framework.

The new framework delimits the state’s role to that of an ‘enabler state’. In this framework, development efforts are properly the tasks of market players, who possess the investment capital, and civil society players, who possess the vast social networks of ‘social capital’. The state then builds the policy environment and strong institutions that can support and sustain various developmental efforts.

I strongly contend for a ‘social capital’ approach to mining. In this approach, the first thing to do is to recognize the institutional capacity building efforts of people who live in the areas of resource extraction. Stewardship agreements must be concurred between market players and community or social enterprises of the folks, with the state serving as a mediator or facilitator. I am very optimistic about the positive results of this scheme, compared to market-driven and state-centered approaches.

You see, when people, through their social enterprise groups, are motivated to co-direct development projects, the people themselves will do so much to zealously guard and monitor the entire project or enterprise venture. The bonus for indigenous peoples is that they have easy access to the spirit world, to the nature beings in the area (called ‘elementals’ by mystics), beings that can also be tapped to guard the project.

Now, go back to the cranky old models (market-driven and state-centered), and remove the indigenous peoples from the scene of a gargantuan development effort. What will you have?

It would be instructive to recall the Celophil and Chico dam projects, both Cordillera-based, that proceeded from the old frameworks. The disastrous offshoots of the projects became the fuel for insurgent groups, largely peopled by the I.P.s, to wage zealously bloody campaigns against the colossal projects.

There is no further reason today for the likes of the Celophil and Chico projects to be repeated. We must have learned lessons from their failures at this juncture. But it seems that those who now wish to revive a mining sector that has been in the doldrums for two (2) decades to go the route of Celophil and Chico.

I wish not to further highlight the folly of any idea today that wishes to pursue development by expelling people like they were deadly toxins. Many advocates of win/lose pursuits are well placed in government even as they dominate the corporate sector. They simply couldn’t see the folly behind their antiquated approaches, blinded as they are by greed.

As a final statement, let me declare that the framework elaborated in this brief paper is not an official policy framework of state. Rather, it is a policy framework that should be discussed among various quarters and social sectors, the state included. The state after all comprises of a plurality of framework trends operating in a vast array of bureaucratic mechanisms. There is no such thing today as a monolithic state with a singular framework dominating the policy environment. Rather, the state is a fluid field for contestation by various interest groups that are all aiming to influence the shaping of the policy environment.

But this I am optimistic about: if given a chance to prosper, a ‘social capital’ framework for mining will sell like very hot cake. I am very sure about this forecast. And may the communications enclaves allow this idea of ‘social capital’ for mining to germinate and percolate, because whether we like it or not this will be the direction of resource extraction in the foreseeable future. Bar it from crystallizing, and the result will be more resentments leading to more vicious insurgencies. Permit it to galvanize, and the whole nation becomes heroic in the eyes of the international community for setting new precedents. So, which option is the better choice?
[Note: The author is a political economist and social development consultant. The paper was delivered in a panel lecture at the Kamayan Forum, Kamayan Restaurant, Manila, 12 noon-2 pm, 19 November, 2004.]

‘LATE’ CAPITALISM ENDS IN CRASHING BLOW POST-‘MAD ECONOMICS’

‘LATE’ CAPITALISM ENDS IN CRASHING BLOW POST-‘MAD ECONOMICS’
Erle Frayne Argonza

Good afternoon!

At this moment, I’m sipping coffee contained in a pack that is sold for worth P130, or $3.00. The pack is one of the domestic brands of brewed coffee blends, ready for the drip coffee maker, of the Arabica and/or Robusta varieties. In economic parlance, this coffee is a commodity because (a) it was intended for exchange and not for the coffee producer’s consumption alone, and (b) money was used to acquire (purchase) it.

I have such deep fondness for coffee, as I acquired my coffee-drinking behavior as a childhood habit yet. In my hometown of Tuguegarao (city), Cagayan province (North Philippines), coffee beans were grounded into powder form and sold right inside the ‘wet’ market, was brewed using the local decoction techniques, and was consumed by people of all ages from pre-school to senior’s age. That was then, and that was how I learned to drink this beverage at age 5 more or less. I was hooked to the habit since then, even as I continued to drink milk that I still do till now. Both coffee and milk are among my health formulas, and both are commodities.

The question I’m asking now is, will commodity-based economics survive the times ahead? Both coffee and milk will survive for sure, but will the money economy that underpins them survive as well? As to the broader world system of capitalism, will it survive too or is it in fact on its death knell today?

Capitalism was the last of the world systems that embodied the ‘money economy’ to which it properly belongs. With the opening of the 20th century, the socialist world system appeared on the social landscape and attempted to serve as an alternative to capitalism, but this experienced its early demise as its implementers found out that it cannot be sustained after all. Both capitalism and socialism are embodiments of the ‘money economy’ as it later turned out to be, they are just but two sides of the same coin: the ‘money economy’.

Socialism is gone, and no matter what attempts there may arrive to survive it in some other forms, this variant of the ‘money economy’ is gone. Now capitalism is all alone, and it is getting more real than virtual that it too is bound to crash a catastrophic end, and with its demise, the “last of the (economic) Mojicans” is bound to disappear (my apologies to Mojicans if my note sounds ethnically incorrect). And with capitalism’s demise, the whole of the ‘money economy’ folds up like unto a book that had reached its last chapter, and deserves more to be consigned to the archives of history.

The Frankfurt school thinkers, notably Jurgen Habermas, cogitated that capitalism’s life span was extended somehow, and was dubbed as ‘late’ capitalism in this last phase of the world system. In this phase, state planning and interventionism were infused into the system to extend its life. Before ‘late’ capital came the mercantile, free enterprise, and monopoly phases of this world system. Will there be another phase to capitalism after ‘late’ capital?

Before I answer that extension of life span, let me stress that ‘late’ capitalism shall end in the following process and manner:

• The re-introduction of liberalization—of free market and free trade principles—into ‘late’ capital shifted engagements away from production, the real foundation of the economy, to the sphere of predatory finance, thus producing the gargantuan ‘bubble economy’. The ‘physical economy’ of production transmogrified into the ‘virtual economy’ that produces no real value other than imaginary or delusional values. It is ‘mad economics’ in operation, no longer the ‘rational economics’ of mercantilists, classicists and neo-classicists.

• The ‘mad economics’ led to the yawning gap between actually produced values and the aggregates of financial derivatives and debts combined, to the extent that the former shrinks at a rapid rate relative to the latter. As bubbles burst from one commodity sector to another, leading eventually to a crisis of gargantuan proportion, all the more will production shrink, unable to produce values that can input into the demand functions for fresh money to pay for aggregate credits, primary debts, secondary debt obligations, and so on.

• The crisis will then move on to the further shrinking of production, tightening of credit sources, and hyperinflationary situation in utilities (notably gas & power), food, base metals and other vital commodities. Total economic collapse results from the foregoing.

• The economic collapse then leads to social unrests, turmoil, upheavals, civil wars, food wars, water wars, and possibly intercontinental wars such as another 3rd world war. The clash of world powers and their surrogate emerging markets will become the flames of a possible long war akin to the 30 Years War (c.1618-48).

Let me now end at that instance. Suffice me to proclaim that the death knell of ‘late’ capitalism and the whole of the ‘money economy’ of the last 2000 years or so are ending. The ‘non-cognitive economics’ of the Roman to feudal era, the ‘rational economics’ of the Renaissance to monopoly capital era, and the ‘mad economics’ of ‘late’ capital were markedly the underpinning mediation processes of that entire 2000-year epoch. The epoch and its last phase of capitalism is rapidly drawing to a close.

[Philippines, 22 August 2008]

SMITH-RICARDIAN ‘FREE TRADE’ JUSTIFIED SLAVE TRADE

SMITH-RICARDIAN ‘FREE TRADE’ JUSTIFIED SLAVE TRADE

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

To continue on the theme of laissez faire, a doctrine started by the French physiocrats and systematized further by the Scots, let it be known that the principle of ‘free trade’ generated by physiocracy was largely a doctrinal defense of slave trade. [Physiocrats were philosophers who focused on economic problems, while philosophes focused on political, ethical, and epistemological problems.]

I already elaborated in a previous briefer that Adam Smith was an ‘intellectual prostitute’ whose services were procured by the British East India Company, precisely for the purpose of crafting in theoretical form the ‘free trade’ doctrine that was to justify, though subtly, the slave trade of that historic juncture. I gained the information about this rather shady background of Smith from a fellow political economist, Butch Valdez, a Fellow in the defunct Independent Review circle of 1990s Manila.

The physiocrats were already quite sophisticated in their modeling of economic reality then existing, and from out of that physiocratic subculture emerged Adam Smith whose synthesis of the existing doctrines of his time produced the Wealth of Nations. In the same book and related philosophical writings, Smith discoursed both on micro and macroeconomics, explaining in physiocratic terms the source of national income (termed ‘wealth’ at that time) from out of domestic engagements by landlords, capitalists and laborers, as well as international operations notably those accruing from overseas colonies’ operations.

It was from the latter that David Ricardo, disciple of Smith, took off to articulate the principle of ‘comparative advantage’. In the writings of Ricardo, the discipline of political economy moved much closer to empirical science, a feat that I myself had come to admire. David Ricardo was hardly any ‘intellectual prostitute’ to reckon with, but rather was he a financier who engaged in the evolving bourse and speculative pursuits of his own time. But slave trade was very much alive during his time, and there could be no doubt on his part that his theory of international trade served in no small measure to justify the conduct of slave trade.

In my youth yet did I come to learn, from the likes of Alejandro ‘Ding’ Lichauco, a Harvard-schooled economist and corporate executive, that free trade couldn’t be enforced without imperialism. It was a perfect income-generating strategy for Britain particularly since this world power had an entire empire to manage. Absent that Empire, and free trade will collapse. (Ding Lichauco was later a leading Fellow of the Independent Review in the 1990s.)

However, it was only much later that I was able to connect free trade directly to slave trade practices, thanks to my Fellows in the Independent Review, notably Butch Valdez. Slave traders were legion around the years 1700-1850, or up to the decade preceding the US Civil War and China’s Taiping Rebellion, and at one time British traders alone owned over 20,000 ships plying the oceans to market African slaves. Within America, Portugal and Spain both engaged in the same trade, though including Indians aside from Blacks, often with the blessings of the Vatican. It was huge bucks, this slave trade, more so that the bourses began to factor slave availability and chattel quality in the valuation of certain cash crops, which then factored in the valuation of main stock trading articles and nascent insurance forms.

The very same slave traders had in their employ not only those early stock traders in London and elsewhere, but also lobby groups and journalists whose tasks included bribing legislators and bureaucrats to keep them blind about the noxious trading of human chattel. There was no way that slave trade could survive in a policy environment of high regulation, more so in a context of ‘activist state’ intervening so heavily in investment areas (dirigist development).

It was only in a state with least regulations did slave trade flourish, the only regulations it seems coming from God Almighty (who would punish the traders for their sins post mortem). But even God Almighty had a long-drawn policy of non-interventionism in the physical plane, a laissez faire attitude that favored the physiocrats and their notorious slave trader sponsors. As far as Earth was concerned, it was the oligarchs who are gods till now, and so they define which doctrine to advance at every turn of epochs, historic periods and cyclical episodes.

Since the slave traders then had to reckon with powerful mercantilist doctrinaires such as Colbert, whose writings influenced France’s intellectual and governance circles and US’ policy makers notably A. Hamilton, there was no way that slave trade would fail to catch the eyes of politicians and libertarian groups, and before long the same trading ‘best practices’ would be criminalized as malpractices. The same mercantilist policy makers, who were dirigists and regulationists, swarmed the Kings’ courts everywhere, who didn’t mince words in attacking slave trade and slandering the traders before the nobles and mediocre bureaucrats (who always needed some godfather thinkers as mentor-guides for their actions).

That was why physiocracy failed to gain foothold in its own home ground of France, and had to be exported to the neighboring British Isle where it obtained further fertilization. Finally, upon the further expansion of the British Empire, physiocracy caught the eyes of the nobles, politicians and bureaucrats. At that moment of convergence of interests for laissez faire, Smith was already ripe for the picking, via the British East India Company, whose satisfactory work was vigorously propagandized by the coteries of doctrinal converts.

Smith gained not only fame but also great following, and among his followers emerged David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. The works of Smith and his contemporaries, five to seven decades later, inspired another coterie of philosophers, the Classical Evolutionists (Darwin, Spencer, Morgan, Tylor, Frazer, etc), whose theories of ‘natural selection’ (Darwin’s) and/or ‘survival of the fittest’ (Spenser’s) were defended via the physiocratic principles of scarcity and competition.

With a fairly equal number of free market-free trade theorists at hand, promoted in public and private circles by an emerging financier class that was awash with money and enjoyed wide social networks among the elites, free trade came to challenge and demolish mercantilist doctrines in shock waves of mighty discourses. Needless to say, for a certain period, the slave traders celebrated to the highest heavens their shallow victory for seeing their candidate doctrine ascend the intellectual pinnacle, their intoxication behooving them into believing perhaps that they were Gods of Olympus, a deluded image inherited by their financier pedigrees of today.

That was then. Till slavery in its old form eroded. Free trade declined at the inception of the 20th century, but was later revived by the Chicago school and its adherents. Are we then ready to slide back into another round of slavery? What would be the forms of slavery this time, if the old form refuses justification and public acceptance? Isn’t the trading of human labor overseas a mere disguise for slave labor? Isn’t the privatization of jails—currently being experimented in the USA—an undisguised slavery as the prisoners will be considered chattel of Big Business, the same corporate groups that fund the purses of ‘corporate social responsibility’?

I’d end this piece right here. A pleasant day to everyone.

[21 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.]

ADAM SMITH: ‘INTELLECTUAL PROSTITUTE’ FOR BRITISH EAST INDIA & SLAVE TRADERS

ADAM SMITH: ‘INTELLECTUAL PROSTITUTE’ FOR BRITISH EAST INDIA & SLAVE TRADERS
Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Amigos y Amigas, Buenos dias! Magandang umaga! Good morning!
The title of this briefer may come as a shock to all those who pretend to know Adam Smith and, more so, for those who revere Mr. Smith as a cult Icon. Just to clarify to everyone, being a political economist and ‘economic sociologist’, I hold Smith personally in high esteem as an intellectual, and this briefer is not meant to flaunt irreverence on this gentleman. Smith’s place in economic history is already granite rock, no matter if laissez faire or physiocracy has become obsolete before World War II yet.

The thing is, fact of all facts, contemporary thinkers such as those guys from the ‘Chicago school’, led by Nobel notable J. Friedman (weren’t there Nobel winners who were demented, nay demonic in mindset? E.g biologist Watson, who claimed that Blacks are genetically inferior in mental intelligence). The revival of laissez faire, as one can see, was responsible for flawed policy regimes that led to the series of short cycle crisis since the early 70s yet, and which is now leading finally to the Great Depression that will mark the death blow to liberal capitalism that is now on its terminal phase. From this point of time onwards, there can be no more return to laissez faire without bringing back humanity to a catastrophic Dark Age reminiscent of that demonic age of the Medieval Era when sanity fled humanity for nigh 200 year at least.

I used to be a Fellow of the Independent Review circle here in Manila, a circle of eminent and illustrious intellectuals and business leaders (I was the only humble fellow here in the 1990s). Unfortunately, this group disbanded in 2002, due perhaps to methodological differences (I was active only till 2001 when I left for the USA for about a year). Entry to this group was by invitation, and that was how I got wind up of it: a female student of mine at the De La Salle University (DLSU Manila) had some of my articles (readings in class) read by his father, the Undersecretary Butch Valdez (Dept of Education) who in turn extended the invitation to the Independent Review circle thru her daughter.

Within the circle, it was Butch Valdez, the eminent Principal of the Valdez & Co that is one of the Philippines’ top auditing firms, who studied with intensity the physiocratic paradigm. He came across various readings about the life and works of Adam Smith, and wrote series of articles in the Independent Review (a journal-type magazine) in ‘97 and ‘98. Being among DLSU’s privileged coterie of most brilliant alumni, Valdez’s most revealing inquiry—Smith’s being a paid intellectual for the slave traders—did come as a shock to me, though it doesn’t shock me anymore that intellectuals do prostitute themselves before high paying clients (Antonio Gramsi and Edward Said devoted kilometric pages about intellectuals, both the ‘organic’ and the ‘autonomous’ types).

The research findings of Mr. Valdez concerning Mr. Smith can be summed up as follows:

• Previous to the years before the ascent to eminence of Smith, slave trade and the British East India Co or BEIC were among the accepted economic modalities. Needless to say, the BEIC was engaged in the trading of slaves. [Actually, my research went beyond that, as the same BEIC was also engaged in the DRUG TRADE, in the opium trade, and had an army of its own separate yet from the King’s army.]

• Physiocracy, which bannered ‘free enterprise’, was especially important for the BEIC and related monopolistic imperial groups since the paradigm promoted ‘free trade’ as well. Laissez faire was in a clash with mercantilism’s dirigist policy regime, remember, as it was also opposed to mercantilism’s promotion of industrialism even as laissez faire championed agriculturalism and the ulterior interests of the landlord class. Needless to say, physiocracy championed the cause of the gentry or big planter landlord and was scornful of the industrial class (in the Philippines there is nary a disjunction between ‘landlord’ and ‘industrial’ interests anyway, they are in conjunct.)

• At that historic juncture when the British Empire was expanding and eclipsing its power, the BEIC desired to optimize its profits from out of diverse trading engagements, most of all for optimizing the slave trade. It need not belabored that slaves were tied up to colonial plantations, and plantation economy was the only modality permitted by the British Monarchy as the definitive economic formation for the ‘4th world’ peripheries (colonies). The BEIC engagements’ optimization can best be done by procuring the services of intellectual mercenaries who could articulate in sophistical vogue the very doctrinal expectations of the Lords of the BEIC Hierarchy (a ‘Committee of 300’, per my research findings).

• It was precisely at that juncture of expanded slave trade when the BEIC’s talent scouts eyed the services of a Scottish gentleman, named Adam Smith, who could fit into the mental Pied Piper prototype for BEIC enslavement pursuits. It would be no wise to contend that Smith was a mental robot or ‘Manchurian Candidate’ controlled by overlords behind the scenes, for Smith was a man of his own mind, and up to the last instance he was indeed that ‘organic intellectual’ for the slave traders. He just couldn’t qualify as ‘independent intellectual’ though, for Smith was, in the yardsticks of the autonomous intellectuals, a ‘prostituted intellectual’ or ‘intellectual prostitute’.

The rest was history. Both the erudite and simpleton among the schooled populations of Earth know what Smith’s economic doctrine is all about. And many folks today are aware that the neo-liberal policy regime of the moment was a rehash of the same Smithian physiocracy.

I do wish that I could converse with Antonio Gramsci face-to-face today and request this noblesse thinker whether the term ‘intellectual prostitute’ is appropriate an inference for Adam Smith. I might have erred in judgement. Mr. Smith was a willing party to the enslavement, plunder and looting by the British oligarchs, and this ‘willing party to’ aspect may cancel out my inference altogether. Sous rapture, to quote Jacques Derrida.

At any rate, I have shared my notes, and thanks to the gentleman Butch Valdez for his inquiries shared to our circle. Thanks to Gramsci and Said too for their recondite peregrinations about intellectuals. Fellows, I hereby leave the inferential option to you, to decide whether Smith was indeed ‘intellectual prostitute’. Have a nice day!

[Philippines, 21 August 2008]
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IS THE WTO DEAD? WHAT SAYETH THINE PHYSIOCRATS?

IS THE WTO DEAD? WHAT SAYETH THINE PHYSIOCRATS?
Erle Frayne D. Argonza

The World Trade Organization may be dead in the woods. We may need to prepare dirges as a form of respect for this deadwood institution. It isn’t working at all, this idea of global trade regime galvanized as WTO and the GATT before it.

Probably the idea of ‘globalization’ as proposed by contemporary thinkers, which concretely incarnated in the institution of the WTO, may have been badly incubated. It’s like forcing antiquarian ideas of free trade—writ by physiocrats of France (Quesnay et al) and Scotland (Adam Smith, et al)—unto a context that is altogether different.

Remember that free trade could have never worked at all without imperialism, that Smith’s idea of free trade was in fact a policy project of the British East India Company which had Smith on its payroll. Without imperialism, free trade can’t be enforced.

That is why there is another section of the world population called the ‘fair traders’ who opt for another paradigm track in place of ‘free trade’. I am among these sub-population of fair traders, no matter how odd fair trade may be.

Below is a news item released by the economist Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee, which pronounced the death knell on the WTO.

[18 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to Executive Intelligence Review database news.]

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WTO Dies, Brits Mourn

July 30, 2008 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).

Yet another bankrupt institution of the British imperial world order of free trade and globalization bit the dust this week, with the thunderous collapse of the Doha round of trade liberalization talks of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In mid June, the British blueprint for European fascism, the Lisbon Treaty, likewise was buried by a plebiscite in Ireland.

European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, a top British imperial mouthpiece, summarized his master’s voice on Doha’s decease: “We missed the occasion to put into place the first world pact to redraw the world order.” Visibly emotional, Mandelson added: “I’m afraid that on this subject an irresistible force met an unmovable object in the negotiating room, and the rest is history.”

The “unmovable object” was the resistance of the majority of the world’s population—as represented by the governments of India, China, Indonesia, and 90 other nations—as well as substantial political forces in Europe and elsewhere, that refused to go along with slitting their own economic throats in order to please London.

For example, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to a highly annoyed Le Monde, reached the director general of the WTO, the Frenchman Pascal Lamy, on the phone on July 28, to tell him that, “in the name of the European people, he could not give his support to the agreement as it was.” Le Monde complained about Sarkozy’s activism, who in three days called numerous European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to explain his point of view. “France joined a ‘coalition of the willing’ whose objective was to increase the pressure on M. Mandelson,” Le Monde wrote, “at the price of worsening divergences which appeared in the European camp. Along with Paris, there were eight countries, among which Italy, Ireland and Poland are members of the circle” which didn’t accept the deal crafted by Mandelson.

The entourage of Mandelson, who refused to come to Paris when Sarkozy summoned him for discussions, is nagging: “France is putting into question the institutional mechanism… In the end, France will find itself alongside Cuba, Venezuela and Argentina,” Le Monde sputtered, “and Germany will become the real pivot of the European Union.”

Other international financial media also engaged in moaning and hand-wringing over the WTO demise. The July 30 Wall Street Journal ran an article headlined “Global Trade Talks Fail As New Giants Flex Muscle,” in which they confess that the failure “leaves the so-called Doha Round of talks dead in the water… The setback could also signal an end to some 60 years of continuous expansion of global free-trade deals.” And the Financial Times ran an article with a headline that just as well could have applied to the Lisbon Treaty collapse six weeks ago: “Negotiatiors Sift the Debris for Signs of Hope.” They confess that none could be found.