A ‘WRETCHED OF THE EARTH’ SURMOUNTS HUNGER & POVERTY

A ‘WRETCHED OF THE EARTH’ SURMOUNTS HUNGER & POVERTY

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

The narratives from poor communities in developing countries about folks thriving on a mere once-a-day meal is classic story of the ‘wretched of the earth’. Getting to know them closely through participant observation could make one feel what a living hovel is which, in esse, far outweighs the subjects of Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth.

In UN development parlance, such folks are concrete cases of those families earning below US $2 per day. The UN’s member countries were thus challenged to accelerate their poverty alleviation agenda so as to half the quantities of warm bodies falling within the ‘wretched’ criterion.

Below is an example of a human interest narrative coming from Asia that fits into the MDG success story.

[Philippines, 19 November 2011]

Source: http://www.beta.undp.org/undp/en/home/ourwork/povertyreduction/successstories/onemealadaytothree.html
From one meal a day to three
Asea Begum inside her home grocery store in Mymensingh district, northern Bangladesh. (Photo: UNDP)
Inside Asea Begum’s home, shelves teem with jars containing pulses, grains, spices and dried biscuits. A little girl runs in with a small plastic bottle that Begum fills with cooking oil in exchange for a few coins.
Asea Begum runs a small grocery store out of her one-room house in the Mymensingh district of northern Bangladesh. The store is a primary source of income for Begum, and allows her to provide for her family.
Highlights
• UNDP’s UPPR initiative has improved living standards for more than 2.3 million people in Bangladesh.
• UPPR has provided Slums in Bangladesh with 12,370 latrines, 2,122 tube wells, 46 kilometers of drains and 128 kilometers of footpaths.
• More than 90 per cent of all posts in the UPPR initiative’s community-led committees are held by women.
Not long ago, however, Begum and her family ate just one meal a day, consisting of plain rice and a few pieces of chili. Her children were always hungry and her husband, who pulls a rickshaw all day, was continually exhausted.
All this changed when Begum received a loan of 6,000 Bangladeshi Taka (about US$85) from her local community development committee. The loan allowed her to start a small grocery business and thereby signicantly increase her income.
After repaying the loan, she also borrowed cash to buy goats, which she raises and sells in front of her house. Her monthly income is now about US$15, after expenses, and she has become a member of her local community development committee.
These committees, made up of women like Begum, are the core of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) US$120m Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction (UPPR) initiative.
UPPR, which began in 2008 and will run until 2015, is implemented by various governmental and non-governmental partners and UN agencies. It currently has 100 government staff and 400 mostly national UNDP staff.
The project is the largest of its kind in Bangladesh and one of the largest in the world. Its goal is to reduce urban poverty in the country and improve the livelihoods and living conditions of Bangladesh’s three million urban poor and extremely poor people, especially women and girls.
“Poverty reduction initiatives have the best effects when they target women,” explains programme manager Richard Geier, “because [women] are the most affected, under-employed, and they are the ones caring for children.”
UPPR’s committees provide the necessary support for members to embark on income-generating activities and obtain eco-friendly job skills training. They also assess the community’s needs in order to develop action plans for providing needed services, such as health facilities and legal assistance.
“We are mobilising community members, integrating them into community organisations, and this helps them become empowered to address their needs,” says Geier. “They used to be isolated, but now they know they can seek help.”
By the end of 2009, Bangladesh had more than 1,200 committees, consisting of 1.7 million people from 23 towns and cities.
The committees, which also encourage members to form savings and credit groups, are highly effective in promoting the kind of development local people want and need.
As a result of the committees’ work, the slums covered by the UPPR initiative now have 12,370 more latrines, 2,122 more tube wells, 46 more kilometres of drains and 128 more kilometres of footpaths.
The UPPR initiative’s strategy also includes policy advocacy, which helps to develop policies that support the poor and implement them at national and local government levels.
It’s a strategy that seems to be working so far.
By selling groceries and rearing goats, Begum has been able to replace her house’s flimsy bamboo walls with sturdier material and her family now eats three meals a day including vegetables and fish. Best of all, through her local community development committee she has a cadre of other women on whom she can rely for support.
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RE-ECHOING ROOSEVELT’S ‘PHYSICAL ECONOMY’ SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE

Erle Frayne Argonza

My beloved country remembers the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt very well. It was his presidency that paved the way for preparing the Philippines as an independent state, by first granting the country the status of a commonwealth with its own constitution (1935 Constitution), and by permitting such domestic government to prepare the legislative measures and policy environment for a future independent state (granted independence in 1946).

Roosevelt’s regime also paved the way for the developmental paradigm that would propel the Philippines along the road to industrialization (we now term this as Import-Substitution Industrialization). The paradigm, based on the works of previous thinkers Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich von List, and the exemplar development policies of Abraham Lincoln, puts great stress on the ‘physical economy’ as the foundation for a prosperous and mighty economy in the long run.

Roosevelt further went on to cogitate that colonialism should fold up after the war, and that all former colonies must follow the road to development and prosperity, this being the road to genuine international peace and cooperation. The international doctrine of Roosevelt became the foundation for post-war cooperation, and buttressed the founding of the Bretton Woods agencies whose mandates were propelled precisely by the physical economy framework, the need for undertaking development in the former colonies, and the need to regulate national currencies via fixed exchange rate backed by the gold standard.

The current circumstance is now too remote from the ‘physical economy’ policy regime of the post-war era. Economic liberalization policies led to globalization and the galvanization of the ‘virtual economy’ based on predatory finance. The ‘virtual economy’ had led to de-industrialization, agricultural decay, decline of S&T, and deteriorating infrastructures in the most affected economies, and had fragmented developing states into ‘failed states’.

The global financial system created by the relentless liberalization of financial, fiscal and monetary policies across borders, had already collapsed and is beyond salvation using the present intervention tools that now seem to be burnt out tools altogether. A global conference must be convened most urgently to carve out a new financial architecture based on a ‘physical economy’ framework, and to decisively criminalize predatory finance.

Below is a press release of relevant notes on the global financial collapse, by the economist Lyndon LaRouche.

[27 July 2008, Quezon City, Metromanila. Thanks to the Executive Intelligence Review database news.]

 

LaRouche: Financial System Is Dead, Cannot Be Saved

July 13, 2008 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).

With the U.S. and British financial press full of wild speculation about how the Bush Administration is going to intervene Monday morning, to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lyndon LaRouche today issued a sharp, preemptive warning: “The financial system is already dead. It cannot be saved.”

LaRouche expanded: “If any of the reports of a planned bailout of the two big mortgage lenders, by the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve are true, I say, ‘Forget it.’ Any such efforts to delay the funeral of the present global financial and monetary system will only make matters worse. A bailout will cause an accelerated hyperinflationary explosion, far worse than the hyperinflation that hit Weimar Germany in the autumn of 1923. Back then,” LaRouche continued, “Germany had a gun pointed to its head. The gun was called the Versailles Treaty, and Germany had no choice. Today, the United States has a choice. I spelled out the choice in numerous recent locations.”

LaRouche cited his recent call for the Federal Reserve to immediately raise interest rates to 4 percent, as a stop-gap measure to prevent a massive flight of institutional capital from the banking system. He demanded that this move be accompanied by clear statements from the Fed that there will be no more Bear Stearns-style bailouts of the speculative bubble. Instead, the Fed will protect the chartered Federal and state banks, through bankruptcy reorganization, on the model of what Franklin Roosevelt did, when he first took office in March 1933, and faced the same kind of collapse of the banking system that we face now. “Only, today’s crisis is orders of magnitude worse,” LaRouche added, “due to the massive leveraging by the banks and other financial institutions.”

LaRouche warned that Bush Administration and Fed officials, like Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, may be on an “ego trip—unwilling to admit that they have failed miserably. But the reality is that they, like the George W. Bush Administration, have failed, with wretched incompetence. For one thing, they failed to reverse the Alan Greenspan monster bubble, which is now blowing.”

LaRouche added that there is no way to even estimate the magnitude of the financial bubble, that has now blown. “The collapse of Fannie and Freddie means the end of the system. And that has already happened, and nothing can be done, within the rules of the current system, to solve that problem. We can keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alive, but only through actions reforming the system, in terms echoing the precedents of President Franklin Roosevelt, that in ways appropiate for the actual conditions of today.

“The only alternative is to implement my three-step solution to the crisis,” LaRouche concluded. “If the so-called leadership in Washington is unwilling to do that, then this financial system, and, by extension, these United States, are finished. It may be a tough reality to swallow, but it is the only reality that there is.”

Lyndon LaRouche will be delivering an international webcast on Tuesday, July 22, 2008, at 1:00 p.m. (EDT). The webcast takes place on the first anniversary of LaRouche’s July 25, 2007 Washington, D.C. webcast address, in which he announced that the financial system had already crashed. Days later, the collapse of Countrywide, and other major mortgage lenders, and the blowout of Bear Stearns, illustrated that LaRouche was 100% correct.

ERLE FRAYNE ARGONZA’S INTERVIEW BY THE PAKISTANI SPECTATOR

By The Pakistani Spectator • Jun 25th, 2008 • Category: Interviews • (2,809 views) • No Responses

 

Would you please tell us something about you and your site?

Erle: The erleargonza.blogspot.com’s my main site. About relations, wisdom, cosmic awareness, self-development. …I am a sociologist, economist, consultant, yogi, mystic, guru of self-realization, artist, powerlifter. Age 49.

Do you feel that you continue to grow in your writing the longer you write? Why is that important to you?

Erle: Yes. I’m learning to write blog-style. I used to write technical-academic-scientific. I’m learning.

I’m wondering what some of your memorable experiences are with blogging?

Erle: I’m new as a blogger. The most memorable now is the commentary, both positive and antipathetic. I like feedbacks a lot.  Among all feedbacks, those from spiritual seekers who seek a guru are the most memorable.

 What do you do in order to keep up your communication with other bloggers?
Erle: Open the blogs everyday. Begin at 7 a.m. Continue on time availability. Till 9:30 pm I work.

 What do you think is the most exciting or most innovative use of technology in politics right now?

Erle: Blogs, cellphones are the coolest. Blogs for internet-based.

Do you think that these new technologies are effective in making people more responsive?

Erle: Very much. Tried & tested even here in Manila.

What do you think sets Your site apart from others?

Erle: I’m a guru and yogi, I can intuit on higher knowledge not knowable to the ordinary, not even to geniuses. Such as the opening of the stargate portal to other star systems, I saw this in my vision.

 If you could choose one characteristic you have that brought you success in life, what would it be?

Erle: Big dreamer, far-sighted dreamer.

What was the happiest and gloomiest moment of your life?

Erle: Happiest: release of my 1st book. …Gloomiest? None really, simply sad but not ‘gloomiest’.

Do you think [the use of Twitter and other social networking tools by politicians] is bandwagon jumping or what?

Erle: Of course. But do they have any better choice?

If you could pick a travel destination, anywhere in the world, with no worries about how it’s   paid for – what would your top 3 choices be?

Erle: Egypt–Great Pyramid; Glastonbury in England; Maui in Hawaii

What is your favorite book and why?

Erle: Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky. It’s the most advanced lesson in wisdom, mysticism for me.

What’s the first thing you notice about a person (whether you know them or not)?

Erle: Level of intelligence, by looking at their forehead, head configuration, sensing their aura.

 Is there anyone from your past that once told you you couldn’t write?

Erle: No, never.

 How bloggers can benefit from blogs financially?

Erle: I can’t say much. My blogging is for serving spiritual seekers, hobby, not for money (I’m studying this now).

Is it true that who has a successful blog has an awful lot of time on their hands?

Erle: Not exactly. Even very busy professionals became successful bloggers which is just their hobby.

 What are your thoughts on corporate blogs and what do you think the biggest advantages and disadvantages are?

Erle: It’s their choice, not mine to make judgement about. It’s cool, it can reach out to many, can’t say of disadvantages.

    What role can bloggers of the world play to make this world more friendlier and less hostile?
Erle: Very much. Blogging is new. But it’s beginning to become the ’salon’ or ‘coffee shop’ of the future where ideas get to shape the world out there.

 Who are your top five favourite bloggers?

Erle: I hardly have time to read others’ blogs really, can’t comment.

Is there one observation or column or post that has gotten the most powerful reaction from people?

Erle: Catchy title, non-technical but short.

What is your perception about Pakistan and its people?

Erle: A great people! Nothing can erase that. Pakistan was once part of the seat of Mogul (I was a majarajah there during Akbar’s time, what can I say…)

Have you ever become stunned by the uniqueness of any blogger?

Erle: Not really. Being a sociologist, I expect uniqueness.

What is the most striking difference between a developed country and a developing country?

Erle: Developed: the most strategic industries are in the high-tech industrial sectors. Developing, still mired in low-tech industries such as furniture, garments & textiles, and very big agricultural sector (past 50% of GDP).

What is the future of blogging?

Erle: Very very big! It is the salon of the future! It is where geniuses of the world meet, also the mystics and superhumans of the world. Very big!

You have also got a blogging life, how has it directly affected both your personal and professional life?

I got connected to new contacts, professional friends. Some of them already arranged face-to-face negotiations with me in Manila, inviting me to projects. It began when they read me, and i read their interests.

What are your future plans?

Erle: Become a master of wisdom, travel to other nations as a guru-master. Continue using blogs and open a formal URL.

Any Message you want to give to the readers of The Pakistani Spectator?

Work out to strengthen your nation, unite, bond amid ethnic differences. Don’t succumb to the whims of the global oligarchs who want to fragment Pakistan and then control the mini-states later. You are a great people, believe in your historical grandeur and collective strenth. Allah hu Akbar!

FILIPINOS COMPRISE 1/3 OF FRIENDSTER END-USERS

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

I just came from the gym at this moment, and surfed a bit before my lunch break. Among the first news that greeted me was this one about Filipinos comprising 1/3 of Friendster users.

Let me quote the news below:

“Filipinos still make up big chunk of Friendster users,” Erwin Oliva, INQUIRER.net, First Posted 09:39:00 05/22/2008

MAKATI CITY, Philippines — A third of the traffic going to social networking site Friendster are contributed by Filipinos or at least the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses are from the Philippines, an executive told INQUIRER.net.

Of the 39 million unique visitors recorded in March 2008, about 13.2 million unique users are from the Philippines, said David Jones, vice president for global marketing of Friendster, in an interview.

Jones said that if there are 14 million Internet users in the Philippines as of 2007, about 98 percent are going to Friendster.

These figures indicate that Filipinos make up the biggest population of Friendster users in the world, even surpassing the United States, where the service was originally launched.

Such numbers have prompted the social networking site to consider the Philippines as a major market for its services, including its mobile service, Jones said.

Typically, Filipino Friendster users are in the age range of 16 to 30 years old, with 55 percent of them being female. {End of quote)

Whether the news is good or bad is something to reflect on. For someone like me, who’s among the 13.2 million users from the Philippine end (there are also Filipinos overseas, remember?), the news is worth noting.

It means, first of all, that millions of fellow Filipinos now surf the internet, whether they their own DSL or wireless at home, or access cyberspace through commercial internet shops. This is already good news.

The 2^nd point to observe is that Filipinos do love to connect to people. We are a relationship-conscious people. And so our social networking is indicative of our contribution to make a high-tech world into one that is ‘high-touch’ at the same time.

I just hope that the Friendster company will provide some dividends to Filipino end-users for this meritorious behavior (as far as the company is concerned). Some other sites provide dividends based on the traffic of any user’s site alone, so why can’t the Friendster do the same.

Failing to do so, there would be reason later for the smarter newcomers (young ones) to skirt off Friendster altogether and proceed to the more reward-oriented sites. It’s already happening.  May the tribe of these smarter ones increase.

[Writ 22 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]