PORK BARREL SCAMS’ ADDRESSING IS POSITIVE SIGN FOR GOVERNANCE

PORK BARREL SCAMS’ ADDRESSING IS POSITIVE SIGN FOR GOVERNANCE

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Pork Barrel talk has become outlandishly stylish a gibberish of sorts for all stakeholders in the Philippines. Public outrage has been relentless since the scam involving a certain Janet Napoles’ and her politician beneficiaries’ plunders via the pork barrel were exposed to the light of day.

 

I may have been silent about the matter in my own blogs, as I preferred to write more positive developments about the sciences and technologies over the last two (2) years. My acquiescence however shouldn’t be equated to being apathetic about public issues concerning good governance. On the contrary, I was ever a social activist since my youth days, and I do silently support the tax payers’ crusade to ax those found criminally liable for diverting tax monies to their own pockets.

 

First of all, the Philippines is blessed with a Strong Civil Society. Social activism and dynamism for nigh three decades past already have been coming forth from civil society. The constant, sustained engagement of civil society with the Philippine state has in fact been a hallmark of good governance measures. Many economic and social reforms of a national character did spring off from civil society formations, and those reforming tasks continue till these days in order to solve problems of marginalization and mass poverty.

 

Contrasted to the Strong Civil Society, which renders it among the exemplars for studies internationally in political science and sociology, is a Weak State. Patrimonial interests of diverse natures continue to wield power and influence over the Philippine state and its purses which continues the history of ‘bureaucrat capitalism’ or ‘crony capitalism’ in the Philippine context.   

 

Albeit, in fairness to state players, reforms of governance institutions have been ongoing for over a decade already. For instance, the tax bureau, audit commission, justice system, and public works department have undergone reforms. The results of such reforms paid off as the Philippines’ credit standing, global competitiveness, and related indicators zoomed up very significantly as of late.

 

Now here comes the pork barrel scam centering on this obnoxious evil figure Napoles, even as another brewing scam investigation involves a shadowy ‘Madam Arlene’. Napoles engaged legislators and local government officials, while Ma’am Arlene engaged the Supreme Court and justice system. The Napoles-centered scam is now being addressed, while state bureaucrats search the Earth for the shadowy Arlene.

 

As of this writing, the Supreme Court already decided 14-0, declaring henceforth that the Philippine Development Assistance Fund or PDAF, pork barrel in layman’s term, is unconstitutional. This is truly a landmark decision, thanks to the civil society groups that lobbied the Supreme Court to rethink its earlier decision on the matter. So even the judicial branch of state is addressing the pork barrel issue, brooking no quarters with its added declaration that those state officials who personally benefited from pork barrel over the last 20 years are liable for criminal offense and should be penalized thereof.

 

Which brings us to the conclusion: the Pork Barrel Scam is a positive thing for good governance. The scams are being properly addressed, and it doesn’t need a sophistical mind to see that any social problem that is appropriately addressed is a positive thing. A social problem that remains un-addressed is a negative thing, such as many crime cases that remain unreported or unresolved.

 

Being a positive thing, the moment that the criminal cases will begin to show progress, as one by one the involved politicians will be incarcerated for their indubitable evil, the rating of the Philippines in the global competitiveness indicators will move up again. I have no doubt about this development. Napoles is in jail, and before her there was the corrupt former president Erap Estrada who spent 7 years in jail, so it should be clear to intelligent observers that it is a different time in the Philippines today as big fishes are getting criminalized and jailed for their heinous or sordid crimes, therefore the competitiveness of PH will go up along the way.

 

Eradicating graft in itself takes a long time to execute, and nothing can eradicate graft completely. The sociologist Emile Durkheim said in his classic books over a century ago that there shall always be criminals, as there shall always be deviants in society, for we are not a people who are complete saints but rather ones who have to deal with our own ‘insatiable desires’ that propel us to commit deviations (‘sins’ in church language) such as crimes.

 

Society and its institutions can only progress step by step towards desired ends. So will it be for instituting reforms towards good governance that will hopefully lead to a Strong State in the future. Civil Society is really strong in the Philippines, while the business community is nearly a Strong Market as corporate governance reforms were instituted over the last 2 decades. Witnessing the transformation of the Philippine state into a strong one isn’t far-fetched, but this will proceed on parri passu basis and not as an overnight phenomenon.

 

[Manila, 20 October 2013]

PH MURDER OF CONSERVATIONISTS COULD TRIGGER ECO-FASCIST ARMING

PH MURDER OF CONSERVATIONISTS COULD TRIGGER ECO-FASCIST ARMING

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day from the boondocks west of Manila!

A chilling, cryptic news about the murder of a forest ranger of the University of the Philippines in Los Baňos or UPLB struck a hard cord on the public mind recently. Elpidio Malinao, forest guard for the UPLB that owns and manages the entire Mt. Makiling, was gunned down while doing his sworn duty to help protect the most valued mountain.

Mt. Makiling used to be owned by the late general Miguel Malvar, one of the revolutionary leaders in the wars versus Spain and America. Malvar then donated the highland estate to the budding university over a century ago, as the colonizing Americans built the campus as the agriculture and forestry branch of the newly established University of the Philippines (then based in Padre Faura, Manila).

Measuring thousands of hectares in all, Makiling is home to a highly diversified flora & fauna, which renders it among the world’s prized natural environs. Unfortunately, illegal settlers built domiciles within it, a phenomenon of squatting that also took place in the 555-hectare U.P. Diliman campus (the flagship campus from 1949 onwards). And so the forest guards had to keep busy monitoring the valued mountain against illegal logging and smuggling of rare biological species.

Malinao is just a tiny fraction of a long list of environmental protectors who sacrificed their lives in the act of duty. And that list is getting longer by the month. It counts among them Prof. Leonard Co of UP Diliman and two (2) co-partner professors in UPLB, who were gunned down my army troops while they were gathering specimen for the Lopez-owned energy corporation.

A radio broadcaster, doctor by profession, was gunned down by an assassin in Palawan, just couples of weeks after the Co murder. Way before Co and fellow consultants were murdered, a priest in Mindanao went through the same path to death, his death being among the most celebrated in the island down south.

Those who died for Mother Nature in the Philippines are the true conservationists and guardians of the natural ecology, just to stress the point. There are pretender or quack environmentalists in the country who are photocopies of their equivalents in the West, are paid by sponsors from the Anglo-European oligarchy, and whose blabbermouth contentions for ecological balance come with sums of fat pays.

The quack environmentalists form a part of the rising global eco-fascist movement, who profit by demonizing humanity as the cause behind the deterioration of the natural ecology. Their burnt out verbiage echoes Prince Charles’ “humans are virus” madness, which now translates to classified foreign policies in the USA and EU to see to it that human population be brought down to a manageable 2 Billion by 2050.

PH’s eco-fascist could be emboldened to arm themselves, or even to secretly harbor a ‘call to arms’ mobilization in the coming months and years. While they prepare for the next rounds of conferences and churn out more rubbish press releases, the true nature guardians will die by the ‘muzzle of the gun’, notably the Indigenous Peoples or IPs, fisherfolks, and marginal planters.

[Philippines, 15 May 2011]

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KATE DISCOVERS GRACE KELLY EXTERMINATED BY ROYALTY TOO!

KATE DISCOVERS GRACE KELLY EXTERMINATED BY ROYALTY TOO!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good evening from Manila!

Let me continue with the Princess Kate discoveries of shadowy engagements and profane rituals by the Anglo-European royalty & elite cronies. As Kate will unwind the true causes behind the death of Diana—a death done in execution of an extermination order from ‘higher ups’—she will also most likely uncover the truth behind the death of Grace Kelly who was married to Rainier of Monaco royalty.

The majestic Grace is a narrative akin to Cinderella. The dreamy Cinderella of America who fantasized about marrying a prince one day, indeed was lifted off her feet to kingdom come by a prince, and a crown prince at that! So the very feminine beau from America turned into a majestic crowned royal person overnight, and the rest was history.

Then she was integrated into the circles of dirty & demonic elites of Europe, and she found out it was too late to quit. She knew that Bernard, of the Monaco royal family, was initiator and prime mover of the secretive elite club Bilderberger Group. This shadowy club met once a year to confer about the state of affairs of the world, and imposed tasks upon the members that should be strictly complied with.

Bernard’s task, as far as we can see his role in the hierarchy of evil in the planet, is to get the select leaders of nations into a seemingly loose formation. That formation will then meet annually, pass resolutions of sorts, and commit to implement them. The core leaders are actually members of the Committee of 300 or C300, the hierarchy of evil that was exposed by John Coleman, former British MI6 spy, as being behind the many woes and sorrows of the planet today.

If I pick the pattern right, a Holy Trinity of Father-Son-Mother/Spirit comprises a triad of evil in the C300 and a possibly tight Order of Luciferans. Princess Kate will discover the triad quite quickly, by inducting her inferences from the networks of cronies of her husband’s family. Bernard is the Son-equivalent in the hierarchy, while Queen Elizabeth is the Mother/Spirit equivalent. The Mother calls the shots, and so it would be best for the Son to always coordinate with the Mother whatever moves there are to be made in the Bilderberger and subsidiary formations such as the Trilateral Commission or TLC.

Well, it was apparent that Bernard could have overstepped his functions. At some juncture, he was also found to have been excessively greedy, whatever that means. Greed has got to do with getting his shares in the pies of investments, gold, drug deals, and more. Bernard could have lionized shares too much, and lionized influence too on the Bilderberger participants as his financial leverage grew meteorically.

Then came that tragic death of Grace, and there can be no denying that the Monaco royalty’s greed has to do with it. Punitive action was exercised with lightning speed of sweeping execution, and so the action came by exterminating the seemingly spotless Grace.

And so the world’s folks grieved for the beloved Cinderella, made ignorant as they were by the lies and cover ups. Folks can be deceived, but not a smart lady like Kate who will most likely stumble upon this gory fact.

[Philippines, 05 May 2011]
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PRINCESS KATE WILL UNCOVER GOLD HOARDING ANOMALIES TIED TO DRUGS!

PRINCESS KATE WILL UNCOVER GOLD HOARDING ANOMALIES TIED TO DRUGS!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good evening from the Pearl of the Orient!

It seems that my narratives about drug operations by British & European royalty are getting over-extended, so please bear with me. For this note, I will focus on the direct connection between gold hoarding and the drug trade, with the British Empire at the core of planning & operations of gold hoarding.

To recall, gold was declared as a monetary yardstick in the 1940s. The Breton Woods Agreement prescribed the formation of an International Monetary Fund or IMF to oversea trade and currency stability the world over, and so the ‘gold standard’ was declared as standard securitization instrument to back up currencies. Money can only be printed then with back up by gold reserves in the vaults of the central bank of any member nation of the IMF.

Then in 1971, all of a sudden, there was a reversal of the gold standard, till it was finally eradicated. Since then, currencies were traded like typical commodities, as the paradigm of monetarism (Friedman, Hayek) was to dominate economic policies across the planet. Gold’s very own value fluctuated, with the pattern pointing towards inflation, in fact towards hyper-inflation at some junctures.

Most likely Princess Kate will see the handiwork of Windsor & royalty pals in the process. Not only that, she will uncover the truth that there was a relentless campaign by the evil Committee of 300 or C300, led by Elizabeth and royal pals, to eventually hoard the bullions for all time.

The ‘stumble upon’ inquiry can lead to uncovering the shocking truth that gold is used for trading of narcotics by the British drug operators. Yes, fellows, that’s the fact divulged to us by the likes of John Coleman, former British MI6 spy who exposed the evil workings of the shadowy C300 elites’ club: that narco-traders on the British side use gold for exchange rather than currency.

You can make guesses for yourself as to why the British pounds sterling shouldn’t be used for exchange, or the US dollar, or even the Euros. Simple logic indicates that using currencies such as global tenders leave traces of the evil acts, traces that the Interpol might be able to track. To simplify the security equation further, certain Interpol cops are offered payola by the same narco-traders, thus exposing the weak side to the international institution. Payment in gold nuggets to opium and drug producers leaves no traces at all, and that’s classic British style transactions.

The general plan was actually to hoard all the world’s gold that can be hoarded. The goal of that criminal act was to propel the gold purchase values to meteoric heights, which will be the go signal to gradually release the gold. Gold trading alone will result to gigantic windfall gains for the dirty operators.

But there’s another facet of the gold hoard. This aspect wants to see gold used predominantly for the drug trade, with the end view that drugs will eventually be legalized. So you can see that gold has a dark side into it, the reason for its hoarding all the more clear for the greedy operators.

Where will all the ‘stumble upon’ of drugs, gold, business links lead Kate to? As far as Diana was concerned, it led to her extermination by the same C300. Will Kate also go that way?

[Philippines, 04 May 2011]
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PRINCESS KATE WILL UNCOVER DRUG TRADE BY ROYALTY

PRINCESS KATE WILL UNCOVER DRUG TRADE BY ROYALTY

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

I shall refer to ‘royalty’ the whole gamut of nobilities and noble pretenders from England in the Atlantic through Netherlands, Monaco, Venice, and other European lands. The same circles of families & cronies in fact comprise the ‘who is who’ in the elite Committee of 300, as exposed by former British MI6 spy John Coleman.

A shocking truth that the bride Kate Middleton—of newly wed Prince Williams—will uncover or stumble upon drug trade practices by the (Anglo-European) royalty. Not only that, Princess Kate will also stumble upon the drug usage by the same royalty, a usage that was there for hundreds of years now. And thirdly, Kate will uncover the use of drugs for a very dark purpose: spiritual rituals by royalty.

The British drug trade has been in existence for nigh centuries now, as it precedes the formation of the British East India Company yet. The British traders are merely fronting for a hierarchy of European powers, just to make it very clear, not just fronting for the British crown. We need not belabor the point that the same drug operators utilize syndicate crime rings or Mafiosi to effectively engage in the trade across continents and oceans.

Remember well that through the networks of the all-powerful British East India Company or BEIC, the Opium Trade was hatched, grown to meteoric heights, and made wealth for many members of royalty and cronies. China was used as the ground for marketing the opium, with Christian missions (mere disguises by undercover operators) serving as vehicles for introducing the drug to the Chinese narcotics users. Not only did the Opium Trade weaken the moral fiber of China then, it also ruined the sovereignty of China’s polity in the aftermath of the bloody Opium Wars.

Fast forward to the present, when the British narco-traders shifted to the United States of America as drug market. Rock music, particularly ‘acid rock’, was used to induce the narcotics users into trying LSD and getting hooked into it. The list of narcotics had since become longer, to include cocaine, heroin, crack, cannabis, and more. The rest was history, as you’re all aware of, so much that approximately 25% of adolescents in America today try narcotics for at least once in their life (the research statistics was 20% in 1980).

How about the British traders residing in Shanghai before Maoists took over China in 1949? Well, to cut the story short, the Chinese Communists allowed them to operate just the same, with a secret modus Vivendi that goes as follows: there must be a balance of drug trade between the British and Chinese in East Asia, and such a balance shouldn’t be offset as much as possible. The British paid for their protection in large sum to the Chinese, and so till these days they get in and out of China to coordinate their tactics and moves with their home bosses in England & Europe.

Kate will come to know sooner that the British royalty carved new nations such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the aim of growing opium in Afghanistan and using Pakistan as safe route southwards for the commodity and initial returns on investments. Britain lost control over India, so it wouldn’t be safe to route drugs there downwards from Afghanistan. So an artificial nation—Pakistan—was created for that purpose.

Most likely Kate will know the truth that the Taliban almost eradicated the opium farming in Afghanistan, an act that badly hurt the pockets of the British drug traders. And Kate will know that the overthrow of Taliban by the fascistic ‘neo-conservatives’ in America, using America as hammerhead force, was the British crown’s punitive genocidal action against a hated regime of Talibans.

The long-term goal of the drug operators, inclusive of those traders on the Americas and the CIA that uses drugs to purchase arms for covert operations (without Congressional investigations whatsoever), is the legalization of drugs. With marijuana now legalized in certain states or countries, the legalization of all drugs just may be a few steps away. Charge that to the royalty & cronies and their British operators.

Where will the drug ‘stumble upons’ lead Prince Kate into? Just watch out for it, by observing what the Cinderella will do across the coming months. And the Cinderella better gather a huge fan base for herself, before Diana’s fate will befall her.

[Philippines, 02 May 2011]
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PRINCE WILLIAM’S BRIDE KATE CAN DIE LIKE DIANA!

PRINCE WILLIAM’S BRIDE KATE CAN DIE LIKE DIANA!

Erle Frayne D Argonza

As the folk world regales over the marriage of Prince Williams of House of Windsor to his fiancée Catherine ‘Kate’ Middleton, grand loots take place in the financial derivatives markets across borders. The same lootings, which caused the Asian financial meltdown and recessions in the USA and Europe, are being masterminded by greedy oligarchs who are directly linked to Queen Elizabeth, world’s wealthiest woman.

Knowing inner circle truths about such crimes and maybe others led to Diana’s death—by extermination that was made to appear as accident.
Diana knew too much about the dirty engagements of the Windsor family & cronies of financiers and their underworld operators.

Remember that before Diana died, she was involved in an advocacy for the banning of land mines, an advocacy that won her accolades and praises. The land mine owners (investors) directly connect to Q.Elizabeth, and so are the few hundreds of select pals constituting a hierarchy of evil called the ‘Committee of 300’ (see John Coleman’s book Committee of 300).

I just joined the Sunday Kapihan circle in Manila in 1998 when I got unwind right away of the investigative journalistic report exposing the foul play in Diana’s death. Upon the invitation of then Education Undersecretary Butch Valdez, whose daughter was my student at De La Salle University, I was brought into the circle of brilliant minds. The same circle published the magazine Independent Review, edited by the illustrious entrepreneur & opinion columnist Herman ‘Mentong’ Laurel (owner of Goto King and Mama Rosa restaurant chains).

The Independent Review economists and analysts are allies of the US economist Lyndon LaRouche who founded the prestigious Executive Intelligence Review. One of LaRouche’s trusted analysts is Mr. Tannenbaum, who collated the information regarding Princess Diana’s mysterious death and reported the daring expose about the assassination or extermination angle of that death.

Knowing all too well the dirty operations of the Windsor family across the globe doesn’t at all render me the least sympathetic to the latest wedding. I could already see that around couples of months from now, the bride Middleton will begin to uncover incontrovertible truths about the dark nature of the family she got integrated into. The sweetest moments, eclipsed by the honeymoon, can instantly turn into a nightmare of the most dreaded proportions.

Secrecy marked the death of Diana, so much that even her own sons could have been befuddled by the rather mafia-style pledge of secrecy that went with it. But the boys of Diana were already participating in inner rituals of the family, so that it didn’t take them long to accept the significance of ‘omerta’ or code of silence. Some day the boys will grow up to become major players in the games of the global oligarchs, and they are now at the age threshold for operations of those games.

Just to share to you an example of the dirty games:

In 1992, the Quantum Group, led by George Soros, was tasked to conduct a sizzling attack versus the British pound sterling. The experience was to serve as a test case for currency attacks, and no less than Britain, home of the Windsor family, was used as the guinea pig for the operations. Within just couples of days of operations, the value of the British currency was badly pounded by brickbats of attacks, and quickly had its effects felt on the commodities trading, stock markets, and finally on other economic sectors.

The Bank of England did what it can to salve the situation by direct intervention in the market. But the volume of currency trade and the dumping of portfolio (derivatives) investments that accompanied it were simply too much for the central bank. The Bank admittedly gave up on its seemingly heroic act, while the financiers whom Soros fronted for felt happy over the gargantuan boons they received. And that was just England by the way, for there were more later attacks to come, such as the ‘Asian flu’ of 1997 masterminded by the same Elizabethan operators & cronies.

[Philippines, 01 May 2011]
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CHINESE MAFIA UNTOUCHABLES IN AQUINO’S PREX INCUMBENCY?

CHINESE MAFIA UNTOUCHABLES IN AQUINO’S PREX INCUMBENCY?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Is the Philippines completely free from infestation, manipulation and control by Chinese Triad gangland syndicates during the incumbency of president Noynoy Aquino? Or is PH in fact hopelessly a free zone for the unhampered operations by Triad underworld operators?

This country already underwent a traumatic experience of being ruled at the top by local mafia godfather Erap Estrada and his underlings who in turn were co-partners with the Triad. Estrada was overthrown, yet Triad networks seem unaffected by the ‘regime change’. Taiwanese authorities was even able to shackle PH diplomacy to accepting an almost near-closure of Taiwan to Pinoy overseas workers, in exchange for PH’s endorsement of demonic Triad prisoners to China.

What’s the real score on the mafia operations during the Aquino incumbency anyway?

[Philippines, 10 April 2011]
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ERAP CANDIDACY: CHINESE MAFIA RETURNS WITH VENGEANCE

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

The world may be aghast at the latest eventuality where a jailed ex-president of the Philippines, Joseph Ejercito or Erap, was allowed to run again as president of the country. Overthrown in 2001 after massive plunder of the public coffers led to a near system collapse, and having served couples of years in jail for his sordid crime, Erap is back again in the campaign trails, wooing the rural and urban underclasses that serve as his voters’ base.

To recall, the public knew and highlighted the rather obvious plunder of the coffers by the Erap regime then. What was less visible, with evidence more of circumstantial (to use legalese parlance), was the ballooning role of the Chinese mafia, or Triad, in East Asia as a result of the victory in the Philippines of a coterie of organized crime operators led by no less than the President Erap.

East Asia has been largely a backyard for drug traders for nigh centuries, even as such operations were largely in the hands of the (a) British drug traders and (b) Triad operators. The said traders operated on a modus vivendi modality, and maintained a ‘balance of drug trade’ as partners in crime. Any imbalance in the trade—caused by the over-bearing domination of the same by the Triad—would be highly prejudicial to the British traders from whose hands depend the operations of British & Dutch financiers and the wellness Western economy for that matter.

Simply put, any imbalance in the trade in favor of the Triad & Asian organized crime partners would greatly impair the flexibility of maneuverings by the Western financiers who, as we all know, comprise a cartel that had yoked the global and national economies in their predatory pursuits. Financier operations are dependent to a large degree on underworld operations of gold trade that is tied up to the drug trade—the linkage being that drug traders often than not trade in gold more than in paper bills (dollars, pounds, euros).

What peoples of the world knew so little about was that the Erap regime was galvanizing the Philippines into a mafia state where government was merely a paper institution. Power was about to be brokered or exercised entirely by Triad & Partners godfathers, and should the same regime been allowed to stretch a couple of more years to govern, the domino effect could have seen Triad puppet states rising in Asia and elsewhere.

To say that the Erap overthrow was merely one of historical accident—accomplished by Filipinos via people power—is to overstress mass ignoramus by a dumb Herd of folks. Erap’s overthrow was determinatively and deliberately plotted by the Western financiers or global oligarchs (they’re the same by the way), whose Filipino puppet operator was Fidel Ramos and certain local technocratic-oligarchic circles embedded in the Makati Business Club.

Thus, the Erap overthrow returned the ‘balance of drug trade’ in the ‘ecology of organized crime’, so to speak. … That is, until the 10th of May 2010, when the next presidential poll comes.

As of this writing, the poll ratings of Erap have again been moving up. Whether this upsurge can be factored to Erap’s popularity alone is highly contentious. My intuition tells me that behind the scene, mafia operators are silently working to bring fresh cash and patronage gifts to the underclasses—funds that don’t pass at all in the hands of the Erap campaign organizers—by way of gargantuan drug sales, large parts of which are funneled to covert grassroots operators.

Is it really coincidental that tons of cocaine were dropped off in haste from sea vessels, with large amounts landing in the hands of fisherfolk? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to recognize that vessels were in the act of transacting with local mafia operators—aimed at flash and lightning-speed transactions to gain funds for the traders and surplus for the underclasses as well?

With the return to the electoral arena of Erap the mafia godfathers’ favorite subaltern, Triads & Allied mobs have to quickly put into place a contingency plan that may facilitate their installation of puppet regimes in the region. Such regimes’ presence would instantly magnify the incomes of the criminal operators, and will enable them to buy more state officials and business groups across Asia, with the end-goal of completely erasing the divide between legitimate business and criminal operations.

Such an erasure of the distinction between legitimate business and mafia operations was excellently institutionalized in Russia, where the oligarchs are likewise mafia operators themselves. This happened during the country’s rush to privatize state firms, under the aegis of the British financiers’ puppet president Yeltsin. Already deeply ensconced in Russian life, the 9,000 mafia groups were the only ones who possessed the money to buy state firms.

At one juncture in the early 90s, 80% of Russia’s enterprises was in the hands of organized crime, and was alarming to say the least. It was just a matter of time before the ballistic missiles and modern armaments of Russia would land in the hands of the oligarchic mafia lords, and the situation proved far tougher to deal with than the previous situation of brining down the Stalinist state.

It has to take some Draconian measures from the dreaded KGB (renamed as FSB) to checkmate the powers of the criminal godfathers in Russia. And the power struggle between the mafia and KGB continues up until these days, with the KGB taking the upper hand when its agent Putin ruled the country and began jailing oligarchs as cautionary reminder to criminal godfathers that the Russian patriots will not be sitting ducks to the predatory plunder of the nation’s wealth and arms by demonic malefactor gangs.

Will such a situation galvanize in the Philippines too? How many votes can be mustered by Erap in the next polls remain to be counted and seen. What this analyst sees clearly is that every vote of Erap is a vote for the mafia godfathers and the consequent erasure of the business-criminal syndication divide. Conversely, every vote against Erap means a vote of repudiation against that demonic future of mafia-state unity.

[Philippines, 19 March 2010]
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PH PRESIDENT AQUINO: CROCODILE’S SMOKESCREEN

PH PRESIDENT AQUINO: CROCODILE’S SMOKESCREEN

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Noynoy Aquino, flagbearer of the Liberal Party for the presidency, has been in power for almost a year now. He continues to exude incorruptibility. True that may be, but as I declared in an article of mine writ during the campaign period, he is a mere smokescreen for crocodiles.

Aquino’s first year will be completed by June yet, and we already have reports of anomalous dealings by officials he appointed. Not only are many of his appointed cabinet members down to assistant secretaries highly incompetent, many of them have already shown their true colors as dirty corrupt officials. Let us wait for another eight (8) months or so, and see how the ‘short list’ of grafters will mutate to a ‘long list’.

Let’s reflect back on the article I wrote more than a year ago yet about the ‘crocodile syndrome’ among the people surrounding him then. As we reflect and discuss, insurgencies of the Maoists and Muslim secessionists continue, insurgencies that are part caused by ‘bureaucrat capitalism’ of graft & corruption.

[Philippines, 10 April 2011]

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NOYNOY: CROCODILES’ SMOKESCREEN

Prof. Erle Frayne D. Argonza
07 January 2010

Noynoy Aquino, presidential candidate of the Liberal Party, has been projecting an image of an anti-graft crusader for some couples of years now. To recall, he was cajoled by his Mama, the late president Corazon Aquino, to join the anti-GMA movement precisely on the issue of good governance.

After his Mama’s death, public sentiment blew the winds of electoral fortune for Noynoy to take on the Aquino’s unblemished mantle and run as president of the republic. Seeing this groundswell of public sympathy arising from his Mama’s departure, vested interests of every shade found a window of opportunity to reap future rewards as largesse of a would-be victorious campaign of Cory Aquino’s son.

Indeed, as shown by preliminary information that reached my ears late last year, Noynoy is surrounded by diverse vested interest groups that (a) couldn’t see each other eye-to-eye and (b) are in active search for a smokescreen for their largesse pursuits. Some of the leading elements were former Ramos- and Erap-era bureaucrats, while others served GMA during her early heydays. Some others represent ideological blocs that are known for their classic opportunism, obstructionism, factionalism, and ‘termite behavior’.

Anyone who is interested to do serious empirical studies on graft and rent-seeking is advised to start with the Noynoy camp. There are couples of circles surrounding Noynoy, all of which the bachelor has no control over.

• Friends and kins comprise a ring of influence-peddlers. This ‘circle’ alone comprises a diversity of “we-bulong” factions that somehow show a semblance of goodwill though on a superficial level. A Noynoy presidency would serve as bread-winning opportunity for the crocodiles within them, in case Noynoy wins.

• Experts comprise another ring of potential state carpetbaggers. While the first ring shows semblance of mutual goodwill, the experts’ ring hardly shows such goodwill at all. During the crafting of Noynoy’s platform, the factions couldn’t even see each other eye-to-eye to iron out the agenda. No wonder that the final platform turned out as a hodge-podge of mother statements that was haphazardly finished to meet the deadline of the Comelec for registration. All of these factions are crocodile nests.

• Civil society groups comprise yet another ring. The Black & White Movement, largely a social democratic-controlled coalition, seems to have the strongest “bulong power” which renders the other social democratic or ‘soc-dem’ factions ‘outside the kulambo’. The unconsolidated state of these diverse groups make it so tough for volunteers to join the Noynoy camp, as they are pressed to identify first of all which faction could be most friendly to them. The top crocodile here is led by a former GMA cabinet member whose coalition received funds from treasuries when her sibling was finance secretary.

• The Liberal Party comprises the final inner ring. Final, because this serves as Noynoy’s homebase group being a party-mate. Fr. Intengan’s ‘soc-dem’ cadres are well entrenched in the directorate and think-tank of the party (even as another Intengan ‘soc-dem’, Norbie Gonzales, is in the GMA camp). The same ‘soc-dems’ possess a lifeline in Europe—the Eurosocialists and Jesuits—who can use them for Europe’s own Bonapartist agenda. Meanwhile, other kibitzer liberals, who are simply eager to waft in the energy of the Noynoy upsurge to gain respective electoral mileage, are just that: kibitzers whose fragmentary opinions wouldn’t weigh as much as the Intengan Euro-bonding puppets and the stalwart oldies.

I was almost lured into the Noynoy trap right after the burial of the Tita Cory. But after receiving information about the inner rings and realizing the power of the Primal-Corruptitious among the crocodile leaders, I decided against this pro-Noynoy option.

Maybe Noynoy should present clear credentials of a true-and-honest saintliness that may make his words worth the salt of the earth. He is hardly any perfected human who merits my attention, which makes it all clear that the country needs a leader—a true leader who’s most experienced, prepared, and has made enormous sacrifices as prelude to his preparation for a feat with Destiny—other than Noynoy.
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FUGITIVE SENATOR LACSON’S RETURN MOCKS JUSTICE

FUGITIVE SENATOR LACSON’S RETURN MOCKS JUSTICE

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Fugitive Philippine Senator Panfilo Lacson, who has an arrest order served on him over a double murder case (killings of PR man Bobby Dacer and his driver Corbito), came out of over a year of hiding. On the strength of a decision of the Court of Appeals, which centered on questions of propriety of witness testimony, the arrest warrant served Lacson was nullified, hence permitting the fugitive to surface and resume with his duties in the Philippine Senate.

Lacson, former police director-general under President Erap Estrada (who was overthrown and jailed for 7 years on ill-gotten wealth case), is a very controversial figure. He is known among media, military, and police circles as a verdugo and protector of big crime syndicates, and may in fact have been chief organized crime operator himself in the areas of drugs, illegal gambling, kidnap-for-ransom or KFR, and more.

As police director-general, he was a highly dreaded man, dangerously sociopathic, but who can easily put a human face in front of media cameras. He was alleged to have ordered the extermination of Kuratong Baleleng mafia members, who already surrendered but were shot dead inside a van while being driven at the middle of a Manila highway on the way to a destined police station.

That is, Lacson has a penchant for eliminating as much witnesses as possible to crime cases that could pin him down. At some point, event the US Central Intellgence Agency found bothersome enough his being scot-free and occupying powerful state posts, that CIA agents themselves gave out intelligence reports thru channels to prospective investigators. I won’t be surprised if the Kuratong Baleleng case would resurface anytime now, compliments of CIA working behind the scene to see Lacson hanged.

Honestly, I feel very nauseated whenever Lacson speaks in public as a supposedly anti-corruption advocate. Why don’t you see for yourself the house where Lacson resides in the posh Ayala Alabang village? Isn’t that a mansion that is worth millions of bucks? Where and how did Lacson ever derive the funds to purchase such a house, when his pay as a state official can nil afford him to acquire one such property?

How did Lacson ever go into hiding in couples of countries, if he were as poor as ‘wretched of the Earth’? Who were Lacson’s contacts overseas, such as east Asia and western Europe where he stayed the longest? Who gave him passports to use along his routes of escape? The Interpol and CIA do have dossiers of Lacson, and he is far from the incorruptible or clean guy that he pretends to be.

That the Court of Appeals would dismiss the case against Lacson mocks of justice as we know it. You could just imagine the dread and anger of the family members of the late Bobby Dacer, who all migrated overseas to save themselves from the vergudo Lacson and a possible invisible sponsor of higher rank (Lacson identified Erap Estrada as the mastermind behind the double-murder case).

Not just the Dacer family, but also the political enemies of Lacson could have rounds of sleepless nights again as the dangerous man could be up to wiretapping them or doing nasty intelligence surveillance. That is, of course, to gather evidences of their dirty linens, and such dirty linens will be used for Lacson’s grandstanding committee investigations in the Senate.

Lacson’s detractors should move quickly and decisively to pin him down, inclusive of the United State’s CIA and Drug Enforcement Agency. The lesson in dealing with the likes of Lacson is: never play footsy with a Demonic Mind.

[Philippines, 27 March 2011]

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SCOURGE OF CORRUPTION

SCOURGE OF CORRUPTION

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day to you fellow global citizens!

We just celebrated the 25th EDSA People Power Revolution in PH last Feb 25. A full twenty-five (25) years after EDSA, the country remains mired in the gargantuan problem of bad governance. Graft & corruption continues to be a scourge to this country, ditto for other countries.

Patrimonial interest groups of every shade continue to pillage the national coffers and the business sector. Business and politics are as intertwined as ever, thus barring efforts to bring down patron-client relations in the public and private spheres. No wonder that corruption remains high and could be, in fact, scaling up the heights in exponential fashion.

For as long as bad governance (‘bureaucrat capitalism’ is the Maoists’ term for it) remains in a vicious circle pattern, poverty will loom large in the near future. People’s incomes will be relatively stagnant, resulting to a stagnant if not declining middle income class. The high growth figure of 7% annual growth will therefore be meaningless, as the growth benefits largely those who are already very rich.

It doesn’t matter if the Philippines has already been urbanized, with as large as 68% of the population and/or the labor force residing in cities and big towns. Urban it is alright, yet replete with narratives of burgeoning urban poor populations.

So that brings us back to square 1, which is the self-perpetuating bad governance cycle. Whether the vicious cycle can be broken during the incumbency of the Aquino regime is doubtful. This government is being run by mediocre bureaucrats who are predominantly Jesuit-schooled boys and girls, who as a whole administer the public sector like “running a student council” as Sen. Joker Arroyo aptly described them.

Sadly for the country and other emerging markets, it is this governance side of the equation that cancels out the very positive outlook resulting from high growth. To note, it is this same scourge that had angered youthful Arabs in Tunisia and Egypt who watched their national leaders plunder the coffers like they were lusciously consuming personal candies, and the scourge is now driving many other Arabs to the streets to overthrow their corrupt leaders.

Good governance, strong institutions, and right policies are getting to be appreciated all the more by the youthful working peoples of the day, such as those in the Arab states. They are values that strongly appeal to the middle class of developing countries, while they resonate well for the young generation of Arabs. Amusing observations!

If the middle class of emerging markets can inspire the young generations of Arabs and countries with authoritarian regimes at the helm, well and good. But let the ‘regime change’ agents be reminded that overthrowing corrupt authoritarian and/or autocratic regimes do not an incorruptible government make.

Examine the history of the Philippines and other countries that are similarly situated, where bad governance perpetually churns itself out long after dictatorships were overthrown. Our neighbor Indonesia is similarly situated, and so are couples of countries in Latin America. The more so for African countries where the problem of racial integration complicates the scourge of corruption.

It seems like we badly hit a quagmire in PH and other developing countries, in regard to graft & corruption. Whether we shall all jettison efficaciously out of the quagmire in the short run is a delusion. And maybe never will there be hope in reforming governance institutions that would enable eradication of poverty and attendant problems.

As to the reason behind the scourge, I am reminded of the explanation of the pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim. The noblesse gentleman cogitated that there will always be deviants in society, unless that society is populated by saints. Deviance, such as corruption, will always prevail at levels beyond the residual, to follow Durkheim’s logic.

Economists would have it that ‘rent seeking’ will assert itself in diverse circumstances, inclusive of the public sector. Rent seeking, or reaping profits beyond opportunity costs, explicates corrupt practices and no less. The UP School of Economics professor Emmanuel De Dios had already writ informative articles about the matter, so please try to search for his articles in university libraries and online.

I do perceive corruption as a scourge, even as I remain optimistic that in the very long run it will be minimized. Humans will gradually evolve across time, and I guess the conscience of future humans will work the greater to make values work in daily life. But it seems my concluding note is only wishful thinking, so I’d leave it up to you to form your opinions on the subject matter.

[Philippines, 27 February 2011]

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RUSSIAN STATE’S KINDNESS TO THE MAFIA OLIGARCHS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Russia’s federal state had exhibited kindness so far to the mafia oligarchs, one of whom is in jail (the top honcho in the energy industry). This is a clear departure from the Soviet days when organized crime leaders and subordinates were jailed by the thousands in ‘gulag archipelago’ conditions.

The Soviet days are long over in Russia, yet democracy is struggling to take root and governance institutions are strengthening from the fragmentation induced by the anarchic policies of Yeltsin who was, in reality, an agent of the British MI6. It will take some more time for democracy to show strength and resiliency, but clearly the urgency of clipping the powers of the mafia oligarchs is a matter of national security in FSB (KGB) country.

To replay recent history, the former Soviet Union fragmented in ’89 during Gorbachev’s leadership. The Russian Federation was then led by Yeltsin, puppet agent of the Anglo-European oligarchs, and got the largest shares of the pie of Soviet wealth, resources, and military assets (nuke missiles included).

Independent Russia, like the other states, was immediately confronted with the problem of shifting to a market economy. Enterprises were state-owned, and so a sacrosanct policy of the Western puppet Yeltsin was to privatize the firms upon the behest of the International Monetary Fund.

The question thereafter was: who in Russia possesses the money to buy state firms, such as those in heavy industries, oil & coal? Legitimate persons just couldn’t afford those firms no matter if the company prices are dirt cheap, so the option of buyers was the Russian mafia (organized crime groups) of which around forty-five (45) ‘families’ were the largest and most awash with money.

Such mafia groups were far more powerful, wealthy and dreadful than the Sicilian mafia from which the term ‘mafia’ originated. Without further ado, upon the go-signal from Yeltsin’s regime, mafia families gobbled up whatever firm they could lay their hands on. As a result, during the last years of Yeltsin, 80% of Russia’s corporate assets and incomes were in the hands of the mafia.

The dreadful scenario of the mafia taking hold of the nuclear and military assets of Russia soon confronted the patriots of the country. It seems that in the last instance, the FSB (former KGB) was the only institution that can mount a challenge to and clip the gargantuan influence and economic power of the mafia that was rapidly producing the new oligarchy of Yeltsin-era Russia.

And so the FSB, acting as a patriotic fraternal order of sorts, deposed Yeltsin in a silent coup of sorts. Putin, former KGB operative, became the favored leader by the chekka that decidedly took down Yeltsin. With Putin in power, returning Russia to a state of civility was now a huge task laid upon his shoulders.

Returning civility and re-asserting state sovereignty means taking back to Russia its economic powers. It was time to let the new mafia oligarchs taste justice and stop them from further fragmenting the federation. Russia was already on the verge of total fragmentation, and could have been balkanized into mini-states with Russian oligarchs taking over their own respective mini-state to govern, plunder and loot.

Thus was the British oligarchy and its MI6 dirty operators stopped from further destroying Russia and looting whatever they can from its fragile economy by buying dirt-cheap enterprises and joint venturing with Russian mafia families. Putin’s strong arm tactics, with aid from FSB, were necessary in order to restore Russia to its civility and sovereignty, without which the federation could have fragmented at the turn of the new century.

Observably, the FSB is the only solid institution that can face up to the dreaded mafia families and the Anglo-European oligarchs. In China, the equivalent group is the Communist Party that wields draconian powers to direct the compass of growth there. In Turkey, the Army is the one that performs the equivalent of a solid patriotic core that continues to modernize the country and prevent a restoration of the Caliphate.

Each country has its own set of gargantuan national security concerns to look up to, so one better understand Russia from within the context of its colossal dilemmas with the Frankenstein of mafia power. An oligarch in Russia is synonymous to a mafia godfather; oligarchic wealth, derived from criminal operations.

Hard tactics are best to clip the powers of mafia Frankensteins. However, such tactics can no longer recline on Stalinist repression or elimination as Russia is facing a new history of democratic governance. The ‘rule of law’ must be advanced to the max in a global context of strengthening democracies.

[Philippines, 04 February 2011]

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DRUG WAR IN MEXICO: HEIGHTENED PARANOIA TOWARDS MAFIA

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Good day to all fellow global citizens!

 

In a previous article, I wrote about the possibility of mafia states rising to power. As tackled, Belarus could very well be the start of such a mafia state should it get entrenched for long, so the events there are worth watching. Meantime, a drug war ensues in Mexico, and so let us do some reflections about that war.

 

Over 36,000 were already declared dead due to the drug war in the country of patriot Emiliano Zapata. The war that was declared by then president Calderon ensues ceaselessly, deaths thus rising in seemingly exponential fashion by the year. That war is proving too tragic for the NAFTA country, and bodes ill for the entire North America as both the USA and Canada are experiencing their own hotfires of economic malaise.

 

To recall, Colombia was the nest of drug cartels’ power just about a decade ago. With the effective clipping of the powers of drug lords there, drug lords’ lairs became more diffused thereafter, no longer to be ever concentrated in just one country in Latin America.

 

Mexico, Jamaica, Brazil, and other countries are now experiencing the growing powers of mafia lords in Latin America. Mexico seems to be the most vulnerable to entrenchment by the drug cartels since the country is just a step away from the United States that is the main drug market in the Americas.

 

Americans indeed are the most voracious drug users, so that one may wonder whether Americans are still holding own to their nature as humans—that they haven’t already tipped over to their demonic side. A research done in the early 1980s yet showed that as much as 40% of high school students admitted to having used a narcotic at least once, with 20% admitting to having used narcotics repeatedly.

 

That was the 1980s cited, and it is now 2011 or the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century. Drug use there has been growing steadily, and so it is safe to infer that over half of Americans are hooked into narcotics. Those heavy users of drugs may be less than 10%, but that still counts around 25 to 29 millions of Americans forever dependent on narcotics.

 

Next to America would be the European Union or EU. Nobody knows exactly the level and frequency of drug use there. But given the huge 450 million population, even just a 5% heavy usage would translate to 22.5 millions of Europeans heavily dependent on narcotics. At least over a hundred millions more are moderate or non-dependent users.

 

So it isn’t difficult to see why drug trade is so lucrative a business. In my country alone, drug production and trade is a whopping $10 Billion industry, and that estimate could well be under-estimated. Drug user count here is moving up the ladder too, while the Asian and American markets are also active destinations of drug exports.

 

Going back to Mexico, it may not be accurate to just cite the American market as the sole impetus for drug production and trade there. Mexico itself has a large population, enough to absorb a very large portion of locally produced narcotics. And there is South America that very well serves as a huge backyard in the Latino world for any salivating drug lord to flood with low prized narcotics, thus ensuring big bucks to the criminal honchos’ pockets.

 

With a string of conservative governments installed from the late 90s through the present, the paranoia towards drug cartels is understandable. The same conservatives unleashed the sword of a crusade versus the drug lords who are now being hunted down in the same way that heretics were tracked down and massacred by the Church during the infamous Inquisitions around the globe.

 

Insurgents used to be top national security threats in Mexico, but that fizzled out much later. The last insurgent group Zapatistas were a ragtag peasant group in an erstwhile urban-led Mexico, and that group’s potency fizzled out as soon as its uprisings were mounted.

 

Now the drug mafias comprise the major national security threat to Mexico, or that is what the Inquisitionist conservatives want Mexicans to believe. So huge is the anti-drug Crusade that the entire machineries of military and police are engaged in large-scale offensive operations that are akin to facing men-at-war in a conventional war between conflicting nations.

 

Keen observers are noticeably irked at the rather excessive force being used to stump out drug mafias in the country. The paranoia is simply too much, the force is excessive, and so expectedly the ‘collateral damage’ of the war is proving too much for ordinary citizens caught in between the violent fireworks.

 

Mexicans should better exert efforts to bring down that paranoia and bring back the Mexican central government to reality. Mafia groups ought to be stumped out all right, but the war need not be in the vogue of a full-scale war akin to engagement in a world war.

 

[Philippines, 03 February 2011]

 

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WILL BELARUS BE THE START OF MAFIA STATES?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

The month of February is the 2^nd month of the year. 2 in numerology signifies change, whether this be change for the better or for worst. So let me take up with you the matter of change in states from legitimate to mafia regime.

 

The question worth reflecting is: is it possible for a mafia state to gel in the foreseeable future? We are witnessing today the rise to the executive department of a mafia power in Belarus, so let us continue to observe the events in that country.

 

By mafia state is meant the rise to power of a mafia group—a group engaged in organized crime—to state power and sustaining that power in the long run. Such a rise would then demolish the accepted rules of the game of governance, though the mafia regime may show semblance of legitimacy through electoral victories.

 

During the incumbency of any mafia regime, it is possible that mafia operations across the country concerned will become the norm more than the exception. Mafia groups will then declare cities and/or regions within the country as their enclave, and bless those elected and appointed officials there being the strategic powerbrokers.

 

From the advent of the Great Depression through the recovery era of the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, around five (5) cities in the United States were reputedly under the control of mafia groups. Had such a trend gained momentum in the manner of a domino effect, city after city and then state after state in the USA could have fallen into mafia hands, and it would just be a matter of time before the federal government itself will become the enclave of the most powerful mafia godfather in America.

 

The scenario of a mafia USA didn’t take place as early enough the trend towards a domino effect was nipped in the bud. Humbled by the power of central government that jailed the topnotch mafia lords, the mafia then became subordinate operators that can be tapped by Establishment rouge elements for sabotage and assassination operations, e.g. the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.

 

Fast forward to the year 1998, when the Philippines’ presidency of Joseph Estrada gelled. A scary regime it was, as Estrada himself was a growing mafia lord and his Mafiosi pals expropriated the presidential palace by night as a ‘midnight cabinet’. So corrupt was that regime, that the damage it had done to crime solution, fiscal balance, and good governance seem irreparable. It was overthrown in January 2001, and so the mafia state was nipped in the bud before it would calcify in the long run.

 

As the Philippine mafia was basking in power in 1998-2000, Colombia was showing a peculiar situation. Though its central government was no mafia at all, drug lords were literally the power brokers there. Drug lords were the real government in Colombia, while the central government was only the virtual government. It took about a decade for the legitimate state to re-assert its power and efface the power of the mafia lords who eventually faced squid tactics of elimination.

 

The situation of a mafia state almost calcified in Russia during Yeltsin’s incumbency as president. So sudden was the shift to capitalism then, as state enterprises were ordered privatized (from their original state-owned status). The only people with huge funds to buy state firms were the mafia families in Russia, so that before Yeltsin bowed out of power 80% of Russia’s corporate world was already in the hands of mafia lords.

 

That conundrum in Russia was reversed only with the ascent to power of Putin and the FSB (former KGB). The FSB knew that the emerging oligarchs of a capitalist Russia were actually mafia lords. It is within the context of dominating mafia power that the state sampled some oligarchs for jailing as a signal to all mafia groups that their powers are delimited. At a certain juncture, the mafia there knew that it cannot mutate to a political power broker without suffering the consequences.

 

Yet no matter what measures are done to clip mafia power, sooner or later there will be one state in the world where a long-term mafia state will succeed. It seems that Belarussia is the first such state to endure if ever. As of today though, forces in Germany and Poland are already working out to stamp out the Belorussian mafia from an enduring power entrenchment, and so the events there are worth watching.

 

A mafia state is like a ‘pacman fever’ (to recall that old video game), that once it is entrenched and endures through time, it can gobble up experientially other states as well. Those most contiguous to it could be the first to be infected. That is why Poland and Germany are bothered so badly, they are mobilizing resources for an overthrow of the mafia presidency in Belarussia.

 

[Philippines, 02 February 2011]

 

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INDIANS MURDERED IN AUSTRALIA UNABATED

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Racism has been a major issue in Australia. The gruesome racial attack by the Anglo-Saxons (whites) of the land down south has been particularly focused on Indians (Asians), a reality that is bluntly denied by the Australian central government.

To date, the frequency of murders against the Indians has been by the hundreds every year. To claim that each murder is an isolated case is hubris, a fascistic garbage aimed at treating colored peoples like ‘monkeys with no tails’ who cannot comprehend what human psyche is all about (i.e. white man psyche).

Australia is a Saxon nation, an appendage of the British Empire, and therefore a puppet of the Anglo-Saxon oligarchy based in Europe. It has been behaving recently as a nation hungry for world power status, ready to bamboozle its neighbors to the north with military might.

You might as well have a deeper knowledge of psychology and cognitive sociology (sociology of knowledge) to see for yourself what’s going on in the collective psyche of the Saxon Australians. A Saxon people that will do everything to exhibit racial arrogance will have no second thought in bullying colored peoples and taking them down as worthless ‘monkeys with no tails’.

From the Australian side, there has been the projection that terrorists among its neighbors are out to take down White Australians, and raised the precautionary flag to desist from traveling in Asia. While Saxon Australia has highlighted the flaks that its citizens did receive via bombings up North, it consciously conceals to the world the hundreds of Indians it kills every year in its own backyard.

Just exactly why Indians have been the subject of attacks is a puzzle to observers notably sociologists and anthropologists. Of course, the Australian observers have their versions of reasons for the gruesome attacks, with emphasis on the ‘isolated case’ perspective for their explanatory justifications.

Outside observers should go back to the contentions of Michel Foucault about the possibility of escalation of the mad discourse to be able to understand what’s going on down south. As the post-structuralists like Foucault were articulating, madness has been ascending to dominant level and replacing reason that has become inutile in the emerging postmodern context.

What outside observers need to see is that Foucault is a white man, and his thoughts were products of his own social context: the context of white society. White society’s mad discourse has been over-extended to other societies as well, which is an abusive resort to over-generalization.

Mad discourse is largely a phenomenon in white society, and Australia is no exception to the phenomenon. Australia is white society, with other races merely but fragments from the margins whose roles are negligible, secondary, subordinate and slave to the Saxons’.

Even the Islamic terror groups that Saxon Australians have been demonizing were creations of the British (Saxon) oligarchy via the espionage agencies. Bin Laden is a paymaster for the British intelligence, with his terror network used to justify mass terminations via warfare by the White nations on the Arabs and Moslems.

Of course the Saxons have the innate feeling of superiority and exclusive possession of wisdom, and they’d impose their thoughts on other peoples for as long as the institutions of mind control (mass media, books/culture industry) are in their hands. Colored peoples cannot reason out as they are ‘halfway between apes and man’.

“The ways of England are the ways of the world,” so exclaimed the hubris of Victorian Britain during its heydays. Today it is Australia that had donned the cloak of British imperialists, with the contention that “the ways of Australia are the ways of the Pacific” sort of subtlety.

Whether Asians will just idly observe the Saxon Australians demonstrate their hatreds and bigoted condescension over the colored peoples remains to be seen. Saxons have already terminated too many millions of colored peoples to count, enslaved too many millions too, plundered and looted too many nations, and so we ask ourselves how far we can trust the Saxons of the day (Australians, Americans, British, Canadians, New Zealanders).

We hope that a serious psychiatric test be administered on all of the Saxon Australians to give scientific credence to our queries about them. This way, there can be no more denial about what psyche the Australians possess. The findings can then be used by the Asians to decide how to relate to Australia as a whole.

[Philippines, 25 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]

SMITH-RICARDIAN ‘FREE TRADE’ JUSTIFIED SLAVE TRADE

Erle Frayne 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 who 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’ (Spencer’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 20^th 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.]