Posted tagged ‘EU’

EURO-OLIGARCHS’ SLASH FUNDS AWASH AMID EU’S BANKRUPTCY

August 21, 2010

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good evening from the Philippine suburbs!

I wish Europeans could find sufficient reason to brighten themselves up these days. Maybe the northern Europeans can still find some reason to smile in the light of welfare state graces still flowing to their pockets, while those of southern Europe’s are grilling in the heat of a continent burning in economic firestorm.

Europe is rapidly going down the route of bankruptcy as shown by the panic behavior of its Brussels-based central bank as well as the respective member-states’ own central banks. Whatever the serial bankruptcy could forebode, the Europeans better prepare for the worst scenario.

Economic intelligence updates report that only the IMF and USA are infusing some fresh monies unto the European coffers. The problem is that the IMF is itself running out of funds soon, and so it may decide to   probably print money that it just puzzlingly couldn’t securitize enough (does IMF possess gold bullions to back up those monies in case?).

As to the USA providing fresh cash to Europe, we concerned observers are simply befuddled about. The USA was bankrupt even before Obama became president, a fact that amplifies our own confusion about where does the USA source such funds and how will it securitize them in case of its aiding of a burning Europe.

It seems that coteries of Nero officials were designated as chief execs and technocrats in the entire continent plus the UK & Ireland, Neros who fiddled in their palatial roofs while their respective countries burned. I wish the likes of Brown, Merker, Sarkozy, and Barroso could convince me that they are not some Nero clones who collectively did burn their own continent at the behest of the financiers. [Cameron replaced Brown recently, performing a “too late the hero” act.]

Now, just to remind the readers more so the Europeans, around a couple of years back, when the USA was in the midst of its ‘great recession’, the greedy Anglo-European financiers reportedly stashed a staggering $3 Trillions worth of slash funds in the big financial houses of the continent itself. That was then, it’s now 2010 and the slash funds may have grown to at least 33% its original size.

A very suspicious act for sure, as it reveals a highly privileged class that operates outside the ambit of established rules in the continent. Just exactly what are those funds intended for, we can only speculate. The greedy financiers know about a coming turbulence that will engulf the entire trans-Atlantic economies most likely, and they were preparing for the worst scenario.

The worst scenario is now taking shape, the scenario of total bankruptcy and the Eurozone’s economic roof collapsing. The Jurassic bank IMF was already called upon to intervene with emergency measures for central banks to stash hundreds of billions of euros to salve ailing banks, while it imposed austerity measures on heavily affected countries such as Greece.

To say that the financiers are but passive observers of events would be over-stretching naïve posturing bordering torpor. The greedy financiers led by the House of Rothschild and its subordinate subalterns (Soros & cronies) have been orchestrating the events in the continent, even as they were responsible for directing the pliant IMF to enter the scene in order to hasten anarchy and economic collapse.

Europe’s member states could all but wish for some more industries that could be sold to the financiers who wait in the wings for more bankrupt companies to be sold at cheap dirt prices. Europe has already been effectively de-industrialized across the decades via virtual economy policies of deregulation, privatization, and liberalization, so there isn’t much an industry left for such a purpose.

Maybe the last frontier of Europe to generate money is to sell all of its major infrastructures—freeways & roads, bridges, levees, wharves, airports/runways, railways—to the financiers via their agents. Netherlands’ flood control infrastructures, for instance, would surely be cause for salivation by the same greedy moneybags which they can perhaps maneuver to buy at rummage sale.

Concerned Europeans themselves should keep watch over the reports filtering to the OECD and Bank for International Settlements about the country performance of EU’s member states. Panic and desperation, at a given juncture, is sufficient cause to pad data, rendering such central institutions as unreliable and suspect. When an economic house burns, a central bank would casually resort to lying such as our own central bank in the Philippines did during the depression years of ‘84-‘86.

Likewise should the Europeans, more so the working class, better keep track of oligarchic slash funds being stashed surreptitiously in their own backyard. Such funds should be allowed to surface and be applied with transparency rules to know what they are intended for.

[Philippines, 31 July 2010]

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

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

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

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

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

PAN-AFRICAN AWARENESS RISES: WILL IT BITE?

August 12, 2010

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang gabi mula sa Perlas ng Silangan! Good evening from the Pearl of the Orient!

Pan-Africanism seems to be getting sweeter an idea recently, so I chose to delve on the subject for this article. Pan-Africanism as a pathos (group feel & aware) seeks to unify the diverse ethnicities of the continent from southernmost South Africa to the northern Arab-Berber-Hamite territories, to indicate the contours of the emerging pathos.

Whether this pathos will gel in order to effectively create synergies among Africans of so heterogenous a composition remains to be seen. As a matter of development imperative, I’d encourage such a colossal effort myself, and I hope that the Africans would truly get together to solve their deep-seated social, political and economic malaise.

As far as I see it, the pathos was there from the time of the early pharaohs through the time of Carthage, but declined rapidly during the advent of the Hellenic monarchs of the northeastern region. When Cleopatra ruled Egypt, the fragmentation and decay of that unity was completed. Africa was thereafter subordinated to empires and potentates to its north (Rome and later empires).

For two thousand years such a pathos slept and lay dormant in the antechambers of the African psyche. Western powers arrived, occupied, and declared Africa and its peoples as their chattels, and that latter imperialist act of the West seems to have doomed any effort to revive pan-Africanism via a renaissance movement.

Thereafter, before and after the colonial periods for each of Africa’s regions, each nation waged its own version of nation-building and national renaissance. Sadly, the post-colonial period saw the nation-building efforts degenerate, with many African states cascading catastrophically down ‘failed state’ syndrome.

Africa’s nations were actually creations of the West, and they fail because tribes that were like oil and water just couldn’t get their acts together in the last instance in each nation concerned. They sold their sovereignty to warlordism and Anglo-European oligarchic moneybags. The superficial states just couldn’t hold water much longer, and so we witness fragmentation and balkanization till these days.

It seems that the last salvation for the end of the chaos and fragmentation is pan-Africanism itself. Africans are trying to construct a new center—not geographical but cultural-ideational—that could cement the diverse ethnicities of a chaotically decentered continent.

Pan-Africanism will have to compete though with other revivalist movements. Pan-Arabism, as represented by Ba’ath ideology, used to be a strong contender but is now on the rapid decline. Pan-Islamism is on the rise, though it has its own competing discourses—Sunni and Shiite. There is Christian fundamentalism that the Opus Dei, Jesuits, evangelical and Baptist groups are stirring up in a frontal clash with pan-Islamism.

Such revivalist movements tend to secure a region or select African ethnicities, such as the Arab-Berber-Hamite triad for pan-Arabism. They may get some pieces of the African pie with them, but they are narrow and parochial as they divide the continent and its component ethniticies. Pan-Africanism can therefore supersede all of them, though its maturation is a tenuous endeavor.

A very rough political-cultural ocean this pathos is surely confronting. Getting together hundreds of tribal and ethnic groups, with their own inter-ethnic conflicts raging till these days, is enormously enigmatic a goal to hurdle, with so many gourdian knots to cut.

Africans have no better choice but get together. Poverty, ethnic conflicts, bio-warfare ailments (AIDS & others), balkanization, and the looting of its resources by Western moneybags is leading the continent and its peoples to a cul de sac Hades.

Europe had been re-awakening the long dormant Roman pathos, and that “grandeur that was Rome” is running through the gamut of the European psyche on both sides of the Atlantic. Bonapartism is crystallizing rapidly as the state ideology of the emerging New Rome (EU-USA), its contours now forming though straddling sand dunes. Rome is re-acquiring its old territories as we’re now witnessing.

The subordination of ancient Africa (Egypt-Nubia leading) to Rome is again being revived. Such a revivalism would get expressed as an enchainment of pan-Africa to New Rome’s agenda of conflagration versus a renascent Persia (Shiite Iran). If the conflagration will ensue, pan-Africa’s gains will collapse under the roof.

So the question that we ask now is, will pan-Africa yield to the Anglo-European oligarchs and become canon fodders for the latter’s war versus Persia? Or, will pan-Africa truly unite the vast continent’s diverse ethnic communities and galvanize a sovereign continent that can’t be dragged into the ‘clash of civilizations’ madness of Western moneybags?

[Philippines, 30 July 2010]

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

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

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

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

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

CURRENCY: PERSIA’S OVERKILL WEAPON VERSUS NEW ROME (EU-USA)

August 10, 2010

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Observers may be wondering about what revived Persia (Shiite empire) possesses that serves as its leverage in a Manichean ‘clash of civilizations’ with revived Rome (EU-USA). Nukes and petrol (Iran cuts down oil pumping levels) are the most easily identifiable at the moment, and those with Jurassic linear thinking are inclined to forecast these possible leverages.

New Rome (EU-USA) itself has been projecting a rather alarmist tone that had overstressed those leverages as the weapons of its revived ancient enemy. In my analysis, this projection is just a cover-up or ‘decoy’ propaganda by new Rome whose technocratic-military-oligarchic elites know too well the real leverage that Iran possesses.

My contention is that currency will be new Persia’s most powerful weapon versus its ancient adversary. Iran’s ayatollahs and partisan ideologues aren’t dumb, they’ve been preparing for this weaponry a long time ago yet (since after Islam’s take-over of Teheran in the early 80s), and they will use this weapon with determined zeal.

The U.S. intelligence community had actually created dollar-manufacturing machines outside the USA to churn out humungous volumes of the currency that will escape the inquisitive eyes of Congress. The dollars are used for covert operations overseas—to buy weaponry, drugs, gold, and stash assets elsewhere beyond Congress’ prying eyes.

Sadly for the USA and New Rome, one such machine—located inside Iran during the regime of the Shah—fell into the hands of Islamic revolutionaries after the overthrow of the Shah. It would be overstretching naïve posturing if one thinks that Shiite Islam won’t use the machine for its purpose: to produce dollars by the mighty lot.

The Western oligarchy had shown its competence at destroying economies via currency attacks. Recall the devastation of the Asian economies when Soros & cronies waged an organized campaign of currency attacks beginning in June 1997. The offshoot was the Asian ‘financial meltdown’ as we called it then.

It isn’t difficult to recognize that Persia will use the same currency attack to take down the economies of its adversaries. New Rome is already teetering on the edge of a deeper economic collapse that could send it down to 3rd world infamy in the short run, a fact that Persia’s experts and strategists are watching so closely with glee.

Persia may decide to rain dollars on the world’s coffers as a pre-emptive attack versus its ancient enemy. Let’s better take this scenario very seriously.

The moment that dollars will flood the global coffers, by which the dollar will become a mere over-the-counter commodity, both the Euro and Yen will go down in value as well. All those financial, monetary, and merchandise commodities that are dependent on the said currencies will come crashing down from economic roofs as well.

Bellicosity towards Persia will prove to be New Rome’s folly, as we will see later. It may prove more worthy for Rome to cajole its ancient enemy via carrots (diplomacy and merchandise leverages) rather than sticks that can only lead to the eventual destruction of the West in a hot war versus Iran (see previous article).

Even East Asia, which is the global growth driver today, will be severely affected by a crash of the dollar via a Persian currency attack. With gargantuan stocks of dollars stashed in their vaults, a badly devalued dollar will suddenly de-stabilize their domestic economy and external trade as well.

It is futile for the Anglo-European-American oligarchy to decide on nuking Iran in order to destroy its dollar-making capabilities. Vaults upon vaults full of the currency are most likely stocked up all over the planet via the agents and friends of Shiite (that includes mafia operators, corrupt state officials, and dirty bankers) from where the currency can be released like relentless rocket attack weapons.

The Manichean ‘war of the worlds’ betwixt ancient enemies Rome and Parthia will prove to be the most catastrophic of all wars. No one power will win this war at all, although Persia will end up having the last laugh as the West gets fragmented and destroyed.

[Philippines, 24 July 2010]

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

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

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

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

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

PERSIA RE-AWAKENS TO CONFRONT REVIVED ROME (EU-USA)

August 7, 2010

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day! Magandang araw!

In previous articles I have articulated about ancient racial consciousness that could awaken at some juncture after a long dormancy period. The dormancy could be 2,000 years approximately, which coincides with Arnold Toynbee’s 2,000-year civilizational life.

The revival of ancient Roman consciousness had already been galvanizing, with the European Union and USA (w/ Canada) serving as the two (2) sections of the New Rome. Brussels is the capital of the revived Rome, a fact that is now well established. The revival of Bonapartism, also articulated in previous articles, is also unfolding at this moment, with war policy serving as option to abolish nations.

As such an eventuality is happening, another ancient power, Persia (Romans termed it Parthia) is also re-awakening. To recall history, Persia/Parthia challenged Rome with devastating results, and Rome was never able to conquer the Persians who continued to harass Roman provinces in Asia till the beginnings of Byzantium.

If there is any one power that knows the agenda of Rome (knows it instinctively or unconsciously), it is Rome’s ancient enemy Parthia. Parthia is now rising like a phoenix, and it is preparing to face New Rome in an offensive manner. ‘Offensive’ means confronting an adversary from a position of strength, just to stress the point.

New Rome has already prepared the Semitic coalition (tackled in previous articles) which it will use as a buffer against a marauding New Parthia. Both Sunni (gulf states) and Zion are armed to the teeth and are showing a semblance of an offensive coalition as well, though it remains to be seen whether the coalition will indeed be able to demonstrate muscle in a ‘clash of civilizations’ with revived Parthia.

A forecast Zion-Sunni versus Parthia conflict could indeed take place any time now, with New Rome (probably using American assets) igniting the war at its inception. But on the unconscious level, Zion & Sunni isn’t what Parthia will be staking claims on.

Parthia is after Rome (EU primarily, USA secondarily), and it will use the conflict with Zion & Sunni precisely to scourge the latter so that its scared peoples will migrate westward in massive herds. Waves after waves of Semites (largely Arabs) will move by land, water, and sea to Europe, the most likely new home, to escape Parthia’s wrath.

Berbers, Hamites, Arabs and black Africans will also most likely take sides in such a conflict, even as many of their scared peoples will move northwards to Europe from Africa in massive herds. Whoever the African hordes will be siding with, the result will be the same: tens of millions of its peoples buzzing off northwards to perceived safe havens.

The possible destruction of Iran via conventional means and limited frontier nukes may not necessarily destroy Parthia. Parthia is bigger than Iran, as Shiite allies will join the fray and be home to guerilla assets who can be used to harass the West no end. While the West uses conventional warfare, Parthia will use a combination of conventional and non-conventional strategies (e.g. Hezbollah rocket attacks inside Lebanon, Syria, and maybe even inside Europe).

Destroying and depopulating Iran will prove to be a hallow victory. Because even with Iran gone, at least 150 Millions of Arabs and African hordes will have nestled in Europe who, a short time later, will continue the ‘clash of civilizations’ wars via cultural conflicts and economic over-stretch for a continent that is now rapidly decaying back to 3rd world status.

Cultural decay in the West can be a catastrophic result of the coming clash with Parthia. Just as in ancient times, when “barbarian” hordes took over Roman provinces, Arab and African hordes will be moving up to squeeze themselves in lands they will occupy. Meanwhile, Parthia will be having the last laugh as its ghost will hover over Europe via the migrant hordes.

If New Rome wishes to survive the coming decades, its sane stakeholders should think many times before waging a cataclysmic war versus a revived Parthia. No one power can ever win such a conflict, the only winner being Death & Destruction of a scale heretofore untold.

[Philippines, 24 July 2010]

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

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

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

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

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

FAIR TRADE AND THE NATION-STATE

April 28, 2008

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

[Writ 23 March 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

 

In a recently written book by me titled Fair Trade and Food Security: Framework and Policy Architecture (Kaisampalad, 2004), I was able to gather clear evidences of the failures of free trade policies. Not only free trade but the whole policy regime of economic liberalization—that paved the way to globalization—had downgrading effects on our currency, agriculture, and industry here in my home country.

 

I argued right then for a policy reform in the direction of fair trade. The totality of policy change should be the re-crafting of the entire policy architecture, which if commensurately followed can become fitful guides for foreign policy and diplomacy.

 

In the light of the massive acceptance of liberalization policy frameworks in the 80s and 90s, I gave their advocates a chance to prove the potency of free trade and laissez faire in general. In the long run, free trade is unsustainable, and can only be perpetuated, as shown by the experiences of the previous centuries, by imperialism.

 

Autarchy, which was experimented in the Hapsburg empire, is more of a hermitage option that can work only if, as the Hapsburg had fittingly shown, the domain for intra-trade exchange and distribution is large enough. The option, even for nationalist economics, is for the conduct of overseas trade. But whether his has to be a free trade option is contentious.

 

The British Empire, which calls itself by the euphemy British Commonwealth of Nations, is still alive today. That empire was built precisely because it is the only way by which Great Britain, or England, can sustain its trading edge through the power of the ‘stick’. But this empire, the last among the ancien regime formations, is now crumbling, and cannot hold water for long as the member nations continue to assert their sovereignty.

 

Globalization based on free trade had already crumbled, as we can see. Unless there is another perception out there. It had failed. What I am arguing for now is that globalization can succeed only if it takes into consideration the interests of nations and marginal sectors within them rather than be based on the interests of a chosen few of financier oligarchs and their TNCs.

 

The contention from the article New Nationalism is shown en toto below.

 

Let ‘unbridled free trade’ give way to ‘fair trade’.

 

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

 

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