JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT IN DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS & BUSINESS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

A relatively pleasant month it is in Filipinas this month of the year, though it showers intermittently as cold winds up north converge with warm equatorial winds. As the air becomes cooler, let us reflect on a raging issue worldwide concerning the extent of judicial power in economic & business concerns.

Filipinas is mired right now in questions about the said powers of our magistracy (Supreme Court) in regard to interventions in franchises and business operations. The executive (presidency) is particularly getting peeved at the seemingly Draconian powers the magistracy has been exhibiting, powers that could obstruct presidential initiatives in pushing through the new investments in big ticket projects.

There is now a perception peddled by the president’s spin doctors that the magistracy is turning into an obstructionist. Recognizing that the Supreme Court is no perfect institution, as the Justices’ decisions on business and project concerns could be tainted with corruption, to declare that it is obstructionist (i.e. it makes decisions for the sake of demonstrating its powers over the presidency) demands deeper reflections and deconstruction.

Presidential prerogatives could turn into bad curves every now and then, as they are used to favor certain market players over and above the Law. This is where our reflections should begin. The presidency (executive institutions) in the Philippines is particularly very corrupt and inept, and favors certain market players at the expense of fairness and constitutional regulations.

The abuses of presidential prerogatives on business franchises during the time of President Ramos, among others, have seen onerous franchises and contracts executed. The energy sector in particular became infested with greedy power producers who were favored over other players, palpable acts of felony that should have incarcerated the president himself.

But that’s not all. There were the Malaysian investors known for notoriety, who cornered whatever state companies and business concerns there were available in the 1990s for their portfolio investments to gobble up. The National Steel Corporation landed in the hands of the Hottick Group that never introduced any internal development in the company but which, in fact, closed the company up and sold it at five (5) times its purchase price much later (with state intervention in the transaction) to the Indian group Global Steel.

So many big ticket projects during Ramos’ incumbency were akin to the National Steel fiasco, while others were mired in corruption in the granting of the franchises. Ramos himself became a very wealthy man after he left office, yet he remains free amid the questionable presidential prerogatives his Office exercised then.

It is within the context of abusive presidential prerogatives that one should comprehend the exercise of judicial oversight with high-level intervention. The judiciary is a last bastion of fairness and rationality in project contracts and business franchises in a country with weak governance institutions, and so it flexed its muscles as provided for any way by the national charter as the Philippine case exemplifies.

No matter how well meaning the executive department may be, it has no monopoly of powers and wisdom to decide prudently about projects and franchises. President Aquino’s coterie of aides is pregnant with greedy and corrupt elements that include those who served as cabinet members in previous regimes. So why should the public leave everything to the presidency, when the presidential office is a classic nest of graft?

When the judiciary commits flaws that must be addressed, then they can be cited by a vigilant civil society and be addressed properly. One case in point is the issue of plagiarism hurled against a Justice by the professors of the University of the Philippines College of Law, with the concomitant demand for resignation by the plagiarist concerned.

While the magistracy continues to strengthen its own internal weaknesses, it must just the same exercise its oversight powers concerning developmental projects and business franchises. It will prove catastrophic if the incompetent presidential aides will hatch an operational modus aimed at destroying constitutional powers of judicial oversight, as such will become a new monstrosity that will lead to new rounds of corrupt acts by state and business mafias.

[Philippines, 04 December 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]

 

U.S. GOVERNANCE FRAGMENTS, OBAMA’S RATIONALITY DWINDLES

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day to all ye global citizens! Magandang araw sa mga kapamilyang global!

The Republicans have recently slam dunked the Democrats in the House electoral contest. This update event has put a closure to Democrat dominance in US governance, an event that will highlight brinkmanship of a dangerously destructive path.

News have been disseminated worldwide that Obama fired his highly trusted economic aides. With no team to recline on in the White House, Obama is compelled by the situation to rely more and more on the likes of Gates of the defense community, Clinton for foreign policy, and other powerful figures inside the cabinet and senate other than the economic aides.

The people whom he relies upon at this time represent distinct voices of diverse ideological persuasions. The defense Establishment is very strongly neo-conservative (read: fascist), the diplomatic community is Wilsonian liberal (center to Left), and the Senate Democrats are liberal obscurantists.

The nationalists, or those articulators of regulation and protection of American economic interests in domestic and foreign policies, have been marginalized all of a sudden. Perhaps their advocacies will be taken over by the more Rightwing Republicans in congress and the bureaucracy, Republicans whose protectionist mindsets translate to protectionism for Big Business and the oligarchy.

Obama’s feat has been to curb the ceaseless economic downspin via the stimulus program. However, unemployment and poverty incidence continue to rise, indicating the flaws in social policies. Health care and war commitments continue to generate rabid detraction.

The question we’re raising this time is: how far governable is the government of the United States? The potency of governance institutions is being weakened by the year, and the direction of that weakening is towards a fragmentation of governance altogether.

I do recall having endorsed Obama’s candidacy to Filipino-Americans and their compatriots there. The reason was that being unencumbered to oligarchic interests, Obama can make a change in policy directions both domestically and internationally. A re-institution of New Deal policies, hopefully, can be effected by his regime, an audacious act that can be emulated by the other countries.

I expected that the Obama regime will re-carve U.S. policy environment towards re-structuring the economy, reviving the physical economy, and quashing predatory finance. Alas! Signs are aplenty that the feats didn’t go that far as expected!

Now the Republicans are back in the legislature and local governments, and so observers better anticipate brinkmanship jettisoning to higher altitudes. The result would prove catastrophic to America altogether, as the exacerbation of lowly governable state surfaces.

A similar fragmentation is now happening among European states and Japan, a development that could prove to be frightening. The situation will also be enormously puzzling to political scientists and sociologists who are deeply mired in ‘re-inventing governance’ paradigm line, a paradigm that is replete with flaws and imprudent peddler of the illusion of ‘end of ideology’.  

Political scientists and sociologists hold a similar contention that America’s civil society had badly fragmented. Such a lamentable situation has eroded the ‘social capital’ of citizens and folks, thus disabling their capacity for leveraging the state and market for greater social goods and services.

With state institutions and governance further weakened and an economy that has deteriorated across the decades, a weak civic life for Americans means they have to anticipate the worst yet to come in their access to social, economic, and public goods.

Obama’s very own sanity or psychological health could be deteriorating now, a fact that will undermine his own capacity to grasp grassroots reality and facts-of-life. Such a deterioration of psychic ‘wealth’ is the least that Americans expect nor dream of, and bodes a dark age for the Saxon power up north.

[Philippines, 29 November 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]

ASEAN’S THORN IN THROAT: BRITISH & AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS’ DIRTY ENGAGEMENTS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

It definitely feels great to see my country and region booming economically at this time, boom marked by strengthening currencies, bourses, and investment environments. However, the climb of ASEAN to economic prosperity is being hampered by the rouge manipulations of the Saxon Empire—British imperialism and U.S. hegemonism combined.

Western empires are on the decline now, and will continue to fragment in the years to come. However, the greedy oligarchs of the said empires, notably the Saxons’, will always have dirty things to hatch and manipulate client-states, relentless acts that can ensure the gravitation of the latter towards the power orbits of the former.

Take the case of the USA. Already declining as an economic power, it still nurtures the mad agenda of a future war versus China and Russia, and is so desperate to control the necks of Indonesia and the Philippines as its obedient client-states. Obama may be the civil libertarian that he was as a young man, but those days are over, and he is performing the presidential role of his imperialist Saxon nation.

As of the 1990s yet, the USA was already in the heat of nurturing client-states in the ASEAN, with the agenda of isolating China in the long-run. Signing of ACSA (acquisition & cross-servicing agreements) were done in flurries of diplomatic talks (read: subtle bullying) that resulted to the likes of Indonesia and the Philippines being hooked up anew to the USA’s militaristic pursuits (the Philippines already abrogated the Military Bases Agreement that decade, only to sign an ACSA treaty later!).

Meantime, the British Empire, led by Queen Elizabeth herself in behalf of the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy’s interest, had long held the necks of the Sultan of Brunei, Lee Kwan Yew & leaders of Singapore, and King Bhimibol & bureaucratic puppets of Thailand. Inside Myanmar there’s the puppet Aung San Suu Kyi, while in Malaysia there’s Anwar Ibrahim.

Now, knowing the links of Aung San and Ibrahim to the British oligarchy, you should not wonder why the Mahathir leadership of Malaysia jailed Ibrahim while Myanmar’s generals continue to house-arrest Aung San Suu Kyi. The media moguls of both the West, who are in league with Queen Elizabeth and the American elites, have done every demonizing they can versus Mahathir and Myanmar’s generals, but have told nary an expose about the connection of Ibrahim and Aung San Suu Kyi to the Anglo-American-Dutch oligarchy.

The greed of the British & American oligarchs is very insatiable, they already had a taste of such greed by attacking the currencies of East Asia in mid-1997. That dirty operations, to recall, was executed by George Soros and the Quantum group’s 99 or so financiers, a dirty act that began with the attack on the Baht and expanded like wild fire to take on the ringgit, peso, and other currencies of the region.

Almost overnight, the developmental gains that took the East Asians many decades to build were wiped out! In just a couple of weeks or so, around $1.5 Trillion were taken home by the Soros & greedy financiers, while more were taken out as ‘hot money’ investments in the ASEAN were rapidly withdrawn by the same circle of financiers.

ASEAN is to a great extent being consumed by the clientelism or imperialism of the British and Americans, a reality that contributes to both political and economic instabilities in the region. For as long as the member states of ASEAN will play fiddle with Saxon imperialism, the region will take time to arise as an autonomous economic and political power on the global front.

In some other writings of mine, I already delved into the drug traders in the region, a coterie of operators who are directly tied up to British financier interests. British drug traders are in a modus Vivendi with the Chinese mafia circles, a balance of trade that shouldn’t be offset so suddenly. This trade balance ensures unhampered British dirty drug operations in the ASEAN that is a portion of its drug operations in the entire Asia from East to West of the continent.

The same drug operators were identified by economic intelligence teams as having direct tie ups or representatives of the Inter-Alpha group of companies, a group that practically controls banking & finance in Europe and America. (See reports of the Executive Intelligence Review, The Guardian, and related news for the matter.)

In some other articles, I already articulated the British & Americans’ creation of jihad groups across the region and Asia. So much studies were already done on the matter, so many exposes of the link between Al Qaida and the British Intelligence & CIA already published by other observers. With jihad terrorists roaming the region, America thus has the rationale to stretch its muscles to intervene militarily in affected countries, thus reinforcing intelligence gathering by Americans at grassroots levels in ASEAN.

Empires are definitely tough to crack and knock out. Hence, ASEAN’s encounters of many thorns in the neck from the generic Saxon empire will ensue for some more time before it will be able to establish its secure autonomy.

[Philippines, 14 November 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]

ASEAN AEROSPACE PROGRAM

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Magandang araw! Good day, most especially to fellow Southeast Asians!

For this piece I’m going to focus on the theme of an ASEAN-wide rocket industry-based aerospace program. ASEAN is about to integrate economically by 2015, so may the member states put in the list of agenda for action the launching of a regional aerospace program.

As the region’s member countries grow at immense rates, the middle class of the region will likewise grow that will serve as its sustaining consumption base. A large middle class will mean a higher demand for telecommunications infrastructures that will, in the main, depend on satellite and related facilities.

So, instead of each member country trying to outdo each other by launching their respective rocket industry-based aerospace programs, the countries better sit down together within the aegis of an ASEAN economic union, concur a binding agreement regarding the launching of an ASEAN aerospace program, and fund the entire program internally from ASEAN resources.

With an ASEAN central bank in place by 2015, it wouldn’t be so difficult to generate funds internally for all sorts of grand projects from infrastructures to aerospace. An ASEAN development bank would then be securitized by the central bank and allocate funds for the aerospace program.

Malaysia today is in the stage of research & development for a rocket industry and has begun training & development for its technical experts. It may be prudent for the ASEAN to assign to Malaysia a lead role in orchestrating the ASEAN aerospace, with the quid pro quo of compensating Malaysia for lending its expertise and certain aspects of the backward linkages for the future industry.

The aerospace program would largely be used to launch satellites and only secondarily for space research & development. The space R & D can come later, maybe at a time when the ASEAN will be prepared for political unification in the long run.

With a satellite industry in place, the ASEAN can then compete with other market stakeholders (countries & regions with satellite industry) to supply and launch the satellites of other developing countries. Project costs can be cut down at the satellite production phase, thus bringing down prices of ready-to-launch satellites and ensuring patronage by many developing countries.

All of the essential components—at the backward linkages—of satellite production are now present as running industries in the region. From metallurgy to computer software & hardware, name it and the region has it. Hence the viability of satellite industry is very high enough.

It is in the domain of rockets that the ASEAN would need to co-partner with other countries at the production phase. It can be an option for ASEAN to co-partner with Russia that can supply the rockets that will launch ASEAN’s satellites. China and India are other options also for supplying the rockets.

However, in the long run the economic union should work out to establish a strong rocket industry for itself. The rocket industry can spin off into a more comprehensive program later, one that can be extended to launching R & D in other planets and their respective moons, space tourism, and sending missions beyond the solar system.

Rocket technology can also be modified so as to integrate it into the mining industry, so that in the long term ASEAN can mine for metals in other celestial bodies. Environmental standards are getting to be stricter by the year, standards that can constrain the extraction of rare & precious metals regionally, so the alternative in such a context would be to mine for the metals in other celestial bodies.

The aerospace program is one developmental area that will prove the potency of a regional approach to launching it contrasted to country-initiated approach. Given the gargantuan level of funding that a rocket industry cum satellite industry will entail, funding that a member country will be hard put to supply, then regionalize the program altogether to circumvent country constraints.

[Philippines, 07 November 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]

$100B MEKONG INTEGRATED PROJECT TO BOOST ASEAN POTENCY

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Magandang araw! Good day!

Around two (2) years ago, I articulated in one article the gigantic project that will rise in the Mekong River very soon. I was at that time already very supportive of the project, a support that I will re-echo at this moment.

For those unfamiliar with the project, a plan was hatched at the middle part of the decade for an integrated project along the Mekong River. Since the river begins upstream at the China side, China logically has to be involved in it. Finally, with blueprints for implementation on the go around 2007 yet, China committed to fund the projected cost of $100 Billion.

So huge a project, it will have couples of components into it. Power generation, irrigation, flood control, transportation, and tourism comprise the core sector components. A project of that size is four (4) times bigger than China’s own 3-Gorges Dam (it cost $23 at 2000 price index) and could be the largest that the world will ever have experienced once fully accomplished.

Benefiting approximately 300 million beneficiaries along its courses, the project is bound to spur development and generate incomes many folds larger than its total investments. If we use the econometric index of annual income yield that is 10X, then we can expect an annual income yield of $1 Trillion from out of the upstream and downstream industries induced by the project.

Since China is involved in it right now (as implementation is going on), then we expect China to receive the ROI (return on investments) in the widest expanse of benefits possible. That means, once fully operational, China will infuse more investments in the region to fully benefit from the project alone. The ROI will then be much greater than the original $100 accruing to China alone on an annual basis.

We can therefore hope for an excellent win/win situation for China and the ASEAN countries involved (Vietnam is the lead country executor). In the long run, we should hope that the same project would accrue to the growth & development of the entire ASEAN region that is bound to institute an economic union by 2015.

A win/win formula for the ASEAN itself is for it to use the Mekong project as exemplar to design and implement similar projects in other member countries, particularly in island southeast Asia. A particular office can be created in the ASEAN secretariat to oversee and help similar projects that can spin off in other parts of the region.

Since an ASEAN central bank is due for institution by 2015, let us expect that monetary instruments for financial packages can be had for gigantic infrastructure projects of the magnitude of the Mekong project. Probably an ASEAN Development Bank can also rise alongside the central bank, thus reinforcing the potency for launching gigantic projects that will be financed internally by the region itself.

If ever the ASEAN will wish to tap other countries for co-financing of the projects, it should be the emerging markets as top priority such as China, India, and Brazil, countries that will be more sympathetic to regional development. The option will help us veer away from the mal-intents of Northern banks that tied up developing countries in debt peonage and won at the expense of the developing countries.

As a matter of goodwill, ASEAN should better enter into the picture and look at other facets of the project that the future union can fund. The expansion phases of the Mekong project, for instance, can be taken over by the ASEAN itself, thus lessening dependence from external funders.

There are always pains to any large project, these being part of the costs of any undertaking. Nonetheless, the Mekong project should be supported and must go on until full completion. This will render it as an exemplar just right in time for the creation of the ASEAN economic union by 2015.

[Philippines, 05 November 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]

ASEAN TRADE LIBERALIZATION, PREPS FOR 2015 UNION

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

 

Will the ASEAN ever achieve economic integration that its member states have long dreamed of? Being an advocate of ASEAN unification, let me once more share thoughts about my humble region.

Binding rules of tariff reforms are now in the offing for implementation this year across the region, a proof that the unification efforts are going on despite internal barriers. The original ASEAN 5 –Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand—are the most prepared for execution of the rules, while Brunei can test-case them as it has the resources to cushion off negative repercussions if ever.

Agreed, the continental countries that are catching up in their development—Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos—need some breather space of five (5) more years to be considered as executors of the same rules. They can catch up, rest assured, so collective trust should permit their self-confidence to propel themselves to high growth.

Economic integration can induce enormous growth and fast-track development in the region altogether. Pushing through with the integration would yield a result that no more member country would be poor by as early as 2020. In other worlds, every country would move on to middle income country status, fast-tracked in its growth momentum by the economic union.

Integration would go beyond tariff reforms, for a reminder. An economic union would need central institutions to note: (a) central bank, (b) regional currency, and (c) related regulatory institutions. Governance institutions, such as a regional parliament and executive council, can undergo deeper study and preparatory formation right after 2015 (political union will take a longer time to traverse).

As to a regional currency, do note that Asian countries have already agreed on a resolution to create an Asian Monetary Fund and an Asian currency. The former speaker of the Philippines’ House of Representatives, Speaker De Venecia, was a prime mover in getting the Asian states to agree on the matter. With him out of power now in the legislature, some other key personalities in Asia should take on the cudgels for implementing the resolutions.

There are surely kinks to be resolved in matters pertaining to economic sector priorities. ASEAN countries tend to compete with one another in certain manufactures and services, so the resolutions could yield an elimination of competition and/or concurring cooperation among the competitors concerned.

ASEAN integration is coming at a time of an evolving paradigm of mixed land use. This paradigm, on a macro-level, could justify well the existence of all key manufacturing and services in a member country, thus undercutting complaints about competition across borders.

Population-wise, the ASEAN will be 700 million head-strong before 2015, which renders the region as a gigantic one. Imagine if just half of the population will be middle income in status, the class that can sustain consumer spending across time. That would be a 350-million head count serving as the economic powerhouse at the household level!

In terms of aggregated Gross National Product or GNP, the figure is nearing $3 Trillions for the region. The prospect of the ASEAN overtaking Japan is no longer remote, a possibility that can happen before 2020. Such a possibility, however, can best happen should economic integration take place as scheduled, an eventuality that will render more focused managing of economic policies and governance reforms that will fast-track growth & development.

Meantime, we can only wish for now that the trade reforms will push through, thus resulting to a semi-integrated economy. The semi-integration will produce pronto a context of ‘import-substitution’ on a regional scale, which I think is a long-overdue goal in the region.

From hereon, ASEAN has only over four (4) years to resolve the last kinks, study the integration directions inclusive of institutional designs. It will be 2011 in just two months’ time, with we hope will be another auspicious year for the humble region and its noblesse diplomats, experts, and leaders.

[Philippines, 03 November 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]

MONTH-ENDER: OCTOBER FEST TO OCTOBER STORMS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

October 2010

Good day to you all!

For this month, which was captured by the celebratory mood of the German Octoberfest, the world went through both tumultuous and celebratory moods.

I began this month with a publication of an article on “Fitness Program & Capacity-Building.” Being athletically and fitness-inclined, I began reflections with fitness & wellness as a way of reminding people about the supreme import of de-toxifying the body through a regular fitness program.

This analyst actually got sick by late September, an ailment that over-flowed till early October. I often get sick of severe allergic rhinitis, with the severity moving to acquiring inflammations with fevers.

So starting the month with physical wellness was also a way to remind myself to get back to the fitness game pronto, and go back to the gym as early as possible. By October the 5^th I was back on the gym, back on a 4-day gym regimen, and back to long walks in the alleyways and nature sites of my work home south of Manila.

To reverb the times, storms hit the planet as usual, with Indonesia going through another flood episode. Indonesia seems to have solved its forest haze that was an issue sometime back, so we say our own kudos to the environmental precautions implementors in Jakarka and the ASEAN. Finally, there was the powerful 260 KPH typhoon that struck Luzon island of the Philippines.

The anti-terror campaign up North had found renewed vigor after the USA’s own celeb of the 9/11 event. This prompted me to write about concealed truths regarding the terrorist-makers of the USA and Europe, truth that trace such terror-makers right inside the Establishment of the two continents.

Meanwhile, we all watch as the North’s economies continue to flounder, with a 2^nd recessionary dip threatening America altogether. Europe continues to wallow in the Jurassic flaks of the financiers (IMF-led) to institute austerity measures in the form of wage cut-backs, social services budgetary cuts, health benefits cuts, and so on.

Asia continued to kept the world in awe though, which is the positive side to the month. Asia’s stock markets continue to move up, defying patterns set in old fogey New York stock exchange (Dow Jones, Nasdaq). Asia’s growth patterns continue at sustained paces, with China on the lead, thus sustaining the global growth amid the downturns of the North.

In my own country, the patterns of growth have so far indicated the positive side. G.I.R. was at all time-high of $49.6 Billion (9-10 months imports), Balance of Payments or BOP stood at past $3B, exports & imports are back to high-growth times, unemployment remains checked at past 8%, and it was identified as the top investment area for Europeans to go to (per British financiers’ assessment).

The only black mark in RP’s growth pattern is the inability to meet the UN MDG target of cutting poverty by half by 2015 (poverty remains at 33% or more of the labor force). Aside from that, there’s the corruption low standing of the country in international yardsticks, something that chief exec Aquino should address very positively.

For the spirit of Octoberfest, Brazilian samba, and Asian world music, let’s celebrate our own growing sense of global brotherhood, peace and cooperation.

[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]

OBAMA’S AIDES DEPART, WHERE BLOWS PUBLIC POLICY?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang gabi! Good evening!

Obama’s aides—who have been with him all the way since electoral campaign days—are departing. We do hope to get to the bottom of the real reason behind the departures, such as those of his ideologue chief-of-staff, but it seems the answer will be confined to the White House as classified information.

What we ought to reflect on is, after the departures, where does the wind of public policy—domestic and international—blow for Obama’s government? Will the oversight/regulatory powers be reinforced somehow, to checkmate the intrusive manipulations of financiers in America’s economy? Will the Wilsonian inclination for democracy cum civil rights be sustained in foreign policy?

The North’s economists have already pronounced their evaluation of America’s and Europe’s economies, with pessimistic-to-gloomy forecasts of both continental economies over the next two (2) years. The stimulus package has clearly backfired, unemployment has ballooned to past 9% (may hit 10% by 2011), and poverty incidence has gone up to 15% (from the pre-crisis 12% level).

Meantime, Clinton is entrenched as foreign policy executor, and her presence bodes well for the Wilsonians who have always held sway in the state department. How much can Wilsonian clout remain till the rest of Obama’s term will be up for observation, more so that the midterm election is bound to erode the Democrats’ congressional seats.

To get straight to the point, with Republicans forecast to re-dominate both houses of legislature, both domestic and foreign policy directions are bound to alter. On the foreign policy front, the isolationism of traditional Republicans may come back, thus undermining the ‘engagement policy’ of the Obama regime in the short run.

How many Obama aides are bound to depart soon we can only surmise for now. But it seems that as a forecast fallout of Democrats increases by the day, so shall the Obama aides get to have some quantitative reductions too.

The quantitative reductions in aides could tip the balance inside the White House in favor of a certain policy initiative. So we observers have no choice but to stay glued to the changes right within Obama’s headquarters. We can only hope that a resurgence of the neo-conservatives, who hold sway in Pentagon & Defense, won’t be in the offing.

With the USA’s possible spiral down a 2^nd recessionary dip, a return of the hawkish neo-cons to power (they’d be dictating terms for Obama behind closed doors) would spell the doom to America’s prestige worldwide. A neo-cons return would coincide with Israel’s unilateral plan to strike down Iran in hot warfare, an act that could take Obama down the global esteem ratings if he will resonate with the hawks.

The electoral campaigns are now heating up as the polls near, so let us monitor the events very closely in the USA. Just exactly who those Republican additions are in both houses will galvanize very soon, bringing along with them the Jurassic solutions of Reaganomics cum Bush tax cuts, along with Federal Reserve antique tool of interest rate intervention.

[Philippines, 06 October 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]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONFEDERATE POWER & NEO-CONSERVATISM: HATCHERY OF TERROR

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day to all ye fellow global citizens!

The Philippines just held a commemorated reflection on the powerful Ondoy typhoon that struck on the 26^th of September of 2009, resulting to hundreds of deaths and billions worth of damages. It seems that, one year after, we are basking in a situation that Robert Dahl hypothesized as “after the storm, society in a better authority.”

Well, let us hope that authority (governance) will be better here in the Pearl of the Orient after so many political turmoils. I wish too that America will indeed be under a better authority after the economic and political-military turmoils of the giant Saxon nation.

Terror-builders are well embedded in America’s Establishment, and for as long as such rouge forces are allowed to go unchecked in their heinous crimes, terror cells will continue to rise in America (and its sibling Europe) and wreak havoc there, thus breeding new turmoil. Such terror-builders trace their roots to the Confederate ideologues of civil war ignominy, and they have morphed well across the decades so as to encroach and ensconce in the key institutions of American life.

The Confederate forces may have lost that continental war in the 1800s, but the lost was only temporary. Via underworld vehicles notably the Ku Klux Klan, the Confederates have morphed anew, remade their images so as to hide in thick masks of subterfuges, and have made significant inroads into the core power institutions.

There is no mistake that the neo-conservatives, a hawkish force within the Establishment, is among the new morphs of the Confederates. They are, however, among the front morphs, even as more clandestine groups are operating autonomously of the neo-cons. Ideological and financier operators are the ones consolidating the diverse morphs, ensuring that at any given time special events can be hatched, leaving the Confederate abominations untouched.

The resort to Islamic or jihadist cells is a recent tactic of the Confederates. Islam has been a replacement for communism as a core decoy force that can be used to wage terror events, with the plotters ending up as exquisitely sealed in their true identities. Communism, to recall, was badly decimated in the USA after the Cold War witch-hunting (with Sen. McCarthy serving as front man inquisitor for the fascist-Confederate spinners).

Those cross-burning Klansmen belong to the days of antiquity, even as they’d now look ridiculous in a new social landscape. A repetition of those rituals are only for theatrics, for psychological warfare purposes, and should not be regarded as the real core of the Confederates. The neo-Confederates are far more sophisticated than the small-town goons and should never be under-estimated.

Remember, the neo-Confederates were able to install the neo-cons into power, and with the neo-cons at the nadir the possibility of the Bush father and son on the presidency were made possible. Though the Bush dynasty is already out of power, a government without Bush doesn’t mean the neo-cons have withdrawn in the background, but have consolidated in fact within the Defense establishment.

But since the neo-cons were burnt out by the negative backlash of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which led to the installation of an alternative leader in the person of Obama, the neo-cons are on the defense. The core committees of the Confederates have other operators in mind to mobilize for sure, operators who can display the technocratic savvy and sophistication of the neo-cons.

Whatever will replace the neo-cons as tour de force, the new core operator group is just biding its time as Obama is still in the White House. They can at the minimum work to co-opt Obama more so as White House technocrats are bound to leave their sponsor after the perceived bungling of the economic recovery agenda (read: stimulus package failed). With fewer men to trust, Obama may indeed be cajoled to install more dangerously sociopathic personages in the White House, who will be the new operators of the Confederates.

From the top, they’d be monitoring the terror events taking down more lives, burning buildings, and fulfilling the impact expectations of the echelon abominations. At the maximum, they can assassinate Obama, the success of which will give greater space for the sociopaths-in-power to scale up the terror events.

[Philippines, 04 October 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]

McVEIGH, DAVIDIAN CULT: U.S. ESTABLISHMENT’S TERROR CREATIONS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang gabi sa inyo! Good evening to you all!

In a previous article, I echoed the contention that the dreaded terrorists of the United States and Europe are inside their respective Establishment. Let me resume this theme, with a highlight on recent historical events in America.

The featured events are (a) the McVeigh bombing of a federal office in Oklahoma, and (b) the Davidian cult in Waco, Texas that was practically annihilated by federal forces. Both events may seem distantly related to the uncritical minds, but to the keen observers of global events they are so closely linked in terms of their command structures.

To go directly to the point, the McVeigh mission team and the Davidian cult were creations of rouge elements inside the US establishment. The latter, to my mind, are the real terrorists who should be closely monitored and exposed by the patriotic forces in the USA. Those rouge elements are out to destroy the fabric of American life altogether, as they are rooted in the causes of the rebel Confederates of civil war era yet whose loyalties seem to lie elsewhere than the Union.

To recall, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing, McVeigh was apprehended and the investigation on the command structure of the bombing mission was relentlessly pursued for a short while. To the shock of the federal investigators, the directors of the bombing pointed to very powerful people on the echelon of the elites of the Union.

The rest was history of course. And by history we mean that the investigation stopped dead in woods. We can only surmise that the investigating teams realized how untouchable the rouge elements are, that a continuation of the exposures thereof could have compromised the very lives of the investigators and their loved ones.

Meanwhile, in another context, a supposed cult in Waco was declared to be a threat to the public order as it was found to have amassed a cache of arms or sort of. Just as the cult’s own dynamics were so wrapped up in mystery, so was the overkill assault of the cult by federal forces wrapped in seemingly unfathomed mystery.

Such an overkill, with the goal of annihilating the cult altogether, meant only one thing: the cultists were living witnesses to the line of command thereof, a line that points upwards to rouge elements in the Establishment. Talkative cultists are a risk to the plotters of the cult’s adventurism, and so they were totally annihilated.

McVeigh, who as per media information was trained in Fort Bragg, was much luckier than the Waco cultists. Luckier in that he was permitted to live physically. Cornered by the arresting team, McVeigh could have thought of getting himself secured by the police forces, for he knew all the while the grave threat to his own life of being apprehended.

But the investigation stopped dead in the woods, as if the federal team involved suddenly fell into a cul de sac. Had they proceeded further with investigations and criminal litigations of the true spinners of McVeigh, they could have opened up a can of worms that could have led to a major crisis in America at a time of relative politico-economic stability.

And so the big challenge to the investigators was how to execute the exit strategy. That is, how to pull out of the task and leave the crime with McVeigh as the main culprit. In the end, the team can rest a bit before their next task, they thus left unscathed by the discovery of the true monsters behind the bombing event.

Those very same terror forces within the Establishment are the very same players who pulled off the 9/11 event. And, shall we hasten to add, every other mysterious cult and terror engagements inside the USA.

What has empowered the terror players immeasurably is the availability of (a) hypnosis and (b) microchip that they can both use in mind control over the terror cells and cult groups. The key leaders of the ground level cells and cults are Manchurian Candidates or MCs who are out on errands for the elite monsters hiding in the shadows of America’s political, legal, business, and media institutions.

It is the supreme duty of the true patriots of America to unveil and expose the true terrorists who are inside the Establishment. Time is of the essence for the patriots of the Union, for failing to act soon enough, they might all see America unravel in the short-run as the Union is confronting another potential recession that can lead to a schism of the social and political forces in their country.

[Philippines, 03 October 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]

AMERICA’S & EUROPE’S TOP TERRORISTS ARE INSIDE ESTABLISHMENT

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang araw sa inyong lahat! Good day to you all!

The White House had recently delivered remarks concerning reports about the latest terrorists in the USA. The report from the top pinpointed supposedly independent small groups scattered across the continent and acting autonomously of each other, thus disseminating terror in far greater ways than before.

Across the Atlantic, Europe’s own leaders have already delivered the same line: that terrorists are independent groups scattered across the continent, sowing dread and damages at scales that are heretofore unprecedented.

We can observe in the bylines of the political-military elites a copycat version of each other. As Europe speaks of the line, so will America copycat it. If America says a line—about terrorism—Europe’s leaders will copycat it. Never mind all those semblances of independent-minded leaders across the Atlantic, that’s only a semblance as the leaders themselves have spin doctors behind them who come from the financier oligarchy of the West/North.

I wish I was born in the ‘cave man’s era’ to believe those sickening line about terrorists across the Atlantic. Having keenly observed global realities since my adolescent days yet (as a student of sociology and political economy), I know all too well that the terrorists who appeared in the political-military landscapes across the decades were criminal elements recruited and commanded by rouge elements within the Establishment.

The terrorists’ tactics may have varied across the decades, but one thing hasn’t varied at all: the financier oligarchs and their political-military subalterns were behind the recruitment, training, indoctrination, and deployment of the criminals-turned-ideologues whose missions shall come at their behest.

From the time of the radical Mazzini up through Russia’s Lenin & Trotsky, we have observed the same pattern: a circle of wealthy oligarchs utilizing operators for sleazy tasks to recruit assassins and malefactors who can be converted to ideologues. Lenin and Trotsky, as per research findings, were both funded by the Rothschildes and their elite circles, tasked with the mission to overthrow the Tsarist line for the refusal of the latter to succumb to the plan of creating a unified Europe under the Habsburg tutelage. Lenin & Trotsky then recruited malefactors of all kinds, notably from the rabble, and the rest was history.

Across the Atlantic, in the USA, the same phenomenon had flourished. White supremacist groups notably the Ku Klux Klan or KKK were directly manipulated by elite circles in the union, circles that added Nazi elites during the Great Depression era. Do you even want to believe that the KKK is dead at this time, supposedly as civil liberties have become granite rock solid since after the assassination of Martin Luther King?

Fast forward to the 9/11 event, and we have the same phenomenon being churned out to repack terrorists supposedly in a new cloth: Islamic jihadists. True, the jihadists came from outside the USA, but the spin doctors of the jihadists were well embedded within the Establishment. These are the true terrorists, those who have been calling the shots in defense and foreign policies particularly, whose faces remain behind masks till these days.

Move back to Europe, examine the likes of the Red terror cells, Carlos the Jackal, Irish Republican Army, and onwards to the jihadist cells, and you’d find the same pattern like some Xerox copies of the US precedents. In ecological language, we call that isomorphism in the politico-military niches.

Terrorists are important to the financier oligarchs for the following purpose: terror attacks in any part of the world create financial-monetary panic in that area, and induces heavy financial flows across borders. Since the financiers have portfolio exposures in that part of the globe, then expect that they will benefit the most from the ‘velocity of financial flows’ induced by the terror attacks.

With the stock markets of both the USA and Europe sputtering again recently, there needs to be a re-oiling of financial flows to take advantage of the situation. And that will be done precisely by unleashing terror groups in both continents to shore up their bourses and derivatives markets for that matter.

What has been alarming for me is that Obama himself seems to be inclined into believing the lie coming from his own spin doctors. Does Obama seriously know the consequences of his own pronouncements post-9/11 commemoration?

[Philippines, 02 October 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]

US ECONOMISTS WARN OF ANOTHER CRASH!

US ECONOMISTS WARN OF ANOTHER CRASH!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang araw, mga kapamilyang global! Good day, fellow global family members!

Let me echo a theme that has been reverberating among circles of economists in the USA lately: a new cycle of economic crash. I’ve already begun to echo notes about whether the ‘stimulus package’ did its task as effectively as it can to deliver the goods, notes that connect to what the economists have been saying of late.

Among a leading light of the US economist circles is Joseph Stiglitz, former executive at the World Bank. A brilliant and dynamic mind in America, Stiglitz represents a coterie of rare experts who can be adjudged as independent-minded, for most of America’s experts are intellectual prostitutes whose purses are fattened by their loyal patronage of oligarchic and political interest groups.

America’s economists are again echoing the alarm calls about another round or cycle of recession which could lead the USA into a ‘double-dip recession’ the impact of which could be the worst that the U.S. work force will have ever experienced. The alarm call practically resonates with an identical forewarning by European economists on the bigger crash that could happen to Europe’s already burning economy.

The very same experts are very keen observers of the global economy aside from their deep grounding in their own domestic economies, and so the cautionary echoes include Japan’s and Canada’s economies as well. Practically all of the pillars of the Western economy—all powerful members of the OECD—have been receiving alarm calls from their own economists.

Maybe the media should better seek audiences with other experts as well, notably the sociologists and public policy as well, who have been keenly observant of the domestic (USA’s) and global economies. Why not consult the likes of Peter Evans and Theda Skocpol for instance, who have been doing works over the past decades that run parallel to what economists have been doing?

Chances are that the experts across a broad spectrum of the social sciences will end up with parallel if not identical evaluations about the impact of the stimulus package and the directions of the US economy and society.

The last round of financial reforms and a new stimulus package announced by White House recently just don’t seem to fit into the expectations of the noblesse experts who all trace the economic malaise of America to the effects of excessive liberalization reforms. Those reforms saw the diminution of the ‘real economy’, to note: (a) de-industrialization, (b) agricultural decay, (c) infrastructure neglect and collapse, (d) neglect of transport & communications sectors, and (e) decay/erosion of science & technology.

Whether the Bush & Obama stimulus package was able to shore up the collapsing ‘real/physical economy’ is now doubtful. The recent Obama-initiated reforms is only putting some caps on regulation problems for big business and ensuring some fairness in the games of the financial-monetary sectors. The coming tax cuts are added incentives to big business that do not necessarily ensure the revivification of the physical economy.

And that’s where the rub lies in America today. By the very fact that a new ‘stimulus package’ is being prepared in the pipeline means precisely the failure of the recovery program. As already shared by me in a previous article, the pronouncement of a new pump priming package is already causing jitters among portfolio and long-term investors.

With the investment field blurred anew in the USA, the resuscitation of employment to full employment level had been turned into an elusive dream. Whether tax cuts can induce new investments (inclusive of the realty sector), factoring the new financial reforms, will be a raging debate not only in America but among other global observers as well.

I am now of the opinion that Obama has been badly advised by his own economic team about the policy and institutional options for salving the structural ailments of the US economy. Bad advise means the resort to ‘bad economics’, a behavior that is ‘bad science’. Bad science breeds bad practice, and bad practice breeds disasters and catastrophes.

Will Obama and the policy-makers listen to the independent-minded economists this time?

 

[Philippines, 01 October 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]

RUDD AS AUSTRALIA’S FOREIGN MINISTER: A RUDE CHOICE!

RUDD AS AUSTRALIA’S FOREIGN MINISTER: A RUDE CHOICE!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good Day from the Pearl of the Orient!

I am having a great time as storms haven’t come our way yet for almost two (2) weeks now. Showers do come once a day, and I’m glad the streets are swept clean by the cascading tropical waters. I just wish that the waters here can cleanse the political dirt down south too, and by south I mean the Australian subcontinent.

The news of former premier Rudd getting appointed as Foreign Minister of the new dispensation (premier Gillerd’s) in the southern Saxon country has already been out for some days. Knowing the hubris and arrogance of Rudd, exemplified by his rather shoddy treatment of Australia’s neighbors that he regards as huge backyards of ‘brown monkeys with no tails’ worth Australia’s Bomb preparations for future attacks, I find nothing worthwhile about Rudd’s comeback.

It seems we’re witnessing a series of premiers of the southern Saxon land who have begun to show the true colors of Anglo-Saxon imperialism, racial arrogance and fascistic hubris that lie underneath the genes and collective unconscious of the White occupants of the subcontinent. The premiers have been behaving as potentates of the Queen of England rather than the chief executives of a sovereign country.

While manifesting a modicum of cooperation towards their northern neighbors (largely Malayan and Indo-Mongolian populated ASEAN countries), there also is the overt exhibition of ambivalence about the latter. Why not examine for yourselves the heavy military preparations of Australia, prepared with the presumption of enemies to their north, the offensive planning thus rationalizing the acquisition of huge stockpiles of intermediate-range ballistic missiles?

We can only surmise, in fact, that the Australo-Saxon leaders’ behavior has been one of reptilian character that always regards its neighbors as pesky underlings. It is outright predatory behavior to even think of preparing for a large-scale war, when the international norm in the region has been one of cooperation marked by trade and cultural exchanges.

Australia indeed has failed to develop a true identity of its own, even as it continues to be administered by the governor-general representing the Queen of England. Australia remains as Saxon as ever, a truism that is shared by the USA, Canada and New Zealand, the very same Saxons that its own neighbors in ancient Europe dreaded for their predatory behavior.

If only Charlemagne were alive today, the world press should corner him for series of interviews to find out why the Franks were so ambivalent if now outrightly dreadful of the Saxons whom they chased and slaughtered with impunity and drove outside of the consolidated Frankish empire. The world press should likewise interview the Celtic king Arthur of Camelot, who was determined to hold back the Saxon occupation of parts of Britain during his aegis.

But destiny had its way, and destiny had built appendages of the British empire to the south of Southeast Asia. Those Saxons down there are cultural-psychic clones of the Anglo-Saxons, and like their Father race they can take the rouge step of plundering and marauding their neighbors if left unchecked by the norms of global civility and ‘dialogue of civilizations’.

As far as the financial-monetary markets are concerned, we can already see the shadow of a future looting of the Asian bourses and purses by Australian oligarchic operators upon the behest of the Anglo-European financiers. That is why Australia’s arrogant leaders are hurrying up the formation of APEC through which they can manipulate, loot and plunder Asia on behalf of their British sponsors.

Australia is pretending to be an Asian country which it is not, as its oligarchy and culture trace roots from the all-powerful British empire and its omnipotent oligarchic royalty. Australia’s leaders are prone to doublespeak, to Machiavellian pretensions of solidarity with their neighbors, a solidarity that is viewed from the ethnocentric Victorian hubris of White culture as the nadir of the long process of cultural evolution with the mission of civilizing other cultures.

To re-instate Rudd to government, more so to install him at the helm of foreign relations portfolio, is to bastardize the very norm of civility that we Asians have so cherished and fought for with our blood for so many millenia. Rudd is classic Saxon operator who knows only the language of bullying as a way to establish relations with non-White countries.

Rudd is the rudest choice for foreign policy post and should resign from his post, if he is sensitive at all to the opinions of ‘brown monkeys with no tails’ to the north of his deluded throne.

[Philippines, 17 September 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]