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Tags: Aljazeera, Arab states, clash of generations, conflict, Erle Argonza, google.com, insurrection, Kadhafi, Libya, NewsAsia, North Africa, Qadhafi, social movements, social turmoil, technorati, turbulence

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‘CLASH OF GENERATIONS’ IN ARAB TURMOIL

February 25, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang araw sa inyo! Good day to you all! To the Arab pro-democracy forces, kudos for your initial successes in Tunisia and Egypt!

The unfolding democratization of Arab republics via people power means has got many sympathetic eyes aglow outside the Arab world. That includes this analyst who was among the youthful professionals that militantly brought down the Marcos dictatorship in 1986.

The clash within the Arab republics should not be equated, however, to a simplistic ‘clash of ideologies’. Neither is the conflict some ‘clash of civilizations’ that is being propagated today by the global oligarchy through sub-altern extremist groups.

I would prefer to highlight the conflict as a ‘clash of generations’. Though no fan of the Japanese technocrat Kenichi Ohmae, I am in tune with his thesis that the conflicts of the future will be one of ‘clash of generations’.

Much earlier than Ohmae, the Frankfurt school thinkers Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas already articulated on the discourse of the youth taking the cudgels for world-changing endeavors. The social turmoils of the 1960s up through the early ‘70s were largely initiated by the Youth, in far contrast to previous ones that were led by the working class astride a socialist ideology.

Fact of the matter is, the working class (via socialist parties) has been tailing behind in those conflicts of the past. In the Arab turmoils of the day, the influential Islamic groups have been quite tailing behind in initiating the protests versus the Permanent President regimes. It were the young ones—youth and young middle aged citizens—who initiated and manned the protest actions, though they may have seen light in some token senior citizen figures.

One shouldn’t make the slap-stick comedy that the Arab revolutions—that toppled perpetual presidents in Tunisia and Egypt—were genuine successes of ‘anarchist’ movements. That goes back to old hat 19^th century ideological discourse, and as I’ve stated earlier, the clash is not one of ideologies.

The Turmoil (with capital T to stress) in the Arab republics is one of ‘clash of generations’. It practically pitted the old versus the young. The older ones, who support the entrenched political elites, are those grounded in ideology cum clientelist politics. The younger ones, who are largely ‘netizens’, possess an outlook or perspective that is more global or trans-ideology, though their emerging discourses tend to appropriate from available ‘nation’ and ‘people’ discourse of old.

The Arab revolutions have some remarkable features that contrast with the people power revolutions that overthrew military dictatorships of the late 20^th century. The earlier revolutions (such as my own country’s in 86) were largely led by the ‘middle class’ or ‘middle forces’, while the Arab revolutions were initiated by young ‘netizens’ with a rather de-centered social feature or one that can’t be reduced to the class question.

Some quarters may hazard some reflections, using Edward Said and Antonio Gramsci, that intellectuals were the core articulators of the social turbulence. That would be belaboring the obvious by highlighting the micro-facets of the change, or those structures and processes that even kindergarten minds can easily perceive.

There is an over-arching change going on in the psyche of the younger generation Arabs of the day, and it pays to observe and use the logic of induction to conclude about what that change is. Or better still, employ ‘logic of abduction’ as what Charles Sanders Peirce innovated on, by holding in abeyance any hypothesis about the phenomenon, and generate the hypothesis, discourse, and conclusions later.

For now, let us bring the message across to global Western oligarchy to desist from further manipulating the Arabs’ turmoil for their ulterior motives. Like the turbulence going on in the global economy that isn’t susceptible to oligarchic manipulation, the Arabs’ ‘clash of generations’ is no stuff for manipulation by the same evil oligarchs who comprise the secret government called ‘new world order’.

The oligarchic cabals should recognize by now that their strangulation of peoples’ psyche and souls for nigh eons is now coming to a close. It is now time to consider moving away from polarities towards cooperation, consensus, and Oneness that is, in fact, the compass of the future.

[Philippines, 21 February 2011]

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NAZI HEALTHCARE AGENDA RISING IN AMERICA

February 22, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

It is night time as I write this note. The easterly winds have been blowing, seemingly reminding us here of the coming hot days. While this happens, winter has been bringing storms in America, storms that accompanied the torpedoing of the new health bill, the torpedo ‘storm troopers’ being the neo-fascistic ‘Tea Party’ of the Republican Party.

The world is watching the unfolding events in America concerning health care. This analyst is among those keenly interested, as the matter of making health care accessible to everyone in my own country has been a mind-boggling challenge for the development experts. We have been scouting around for models of health care accessibility, and the concept of ‘universal healthcare’ that some experts are espousing in the USA is worth examining.

A question that arises from the unfolding events is this: is health care headed for a new summer in America, or is it moving towards a long winter? The enthused readers can go ahead and choose to discuss the matter, and generate their own opinions about it.

My own reflection about the matter makes me conclude preliminarily that America’s health care is heading towards a parallelism with the Nazi health care of the Hitler’s heydays in Germany. Nazi policy in health means a dichotomous delivery of access to health: make those strongest physically and mentally have access to state-sponsored health care, while close the access to those who are the weakest.

To reduce the cost of sustaining a state-sponsored health care program, eliminate those who are the weakest. Round up those with lingering ailments, the lame and blind, the ‘subhuman’ or below-normal intelligence, and so on, line them up on the wall and machine gun them to death.

My own reading of the events in America makes me see, among other things, the increasing closure of health care to the impoverished families and individuals there. Poverty now exceeds 40 Millions of Americans, with the Blacks and Latinos comprising the greatest percentage of ethnicities below poverty line.

It seems, as of now, that no one single political force has a monopoly of Nazi-type health policies there. True, the fascist wing of the Republicans, coming under the names of ‘Tea Party’ and ‘neo-conservatives’, have deep, elitist, condescending scorn for poor folks and colored peoples who are receiving too much state attention via welfare subsidies for health. But that is belaboring the obvious.

There are forces within the Democrat Party—masquerading in the mantle of liberalism—who would have none of the drift of America towards a Welfare State akin to what befell Europe. They know that America’s coffers don’t cough up enough funds for subsidies, so what they do is pretend to be pro-people by voting for bills that allocate greater state subsidies for health care.

Such forces are making use of political parties as Trojan Horses to wage a sadistic attack against the poor people of America. They will brook no quarters in excluding the poorer folks, including immigrants, from mainstream health care, and they commit the heinous act through rigmaroles of legislative fiats.

While such new Nazis, and real Nazis to stress the point, fiddle their superficial policy agenda and do backroom maneuvers that concern health care, hundreds of thousands of poor folks die yearly of every kind of ailment there. By dilly-dallying on the galvanization of the ‘universal health care’ idea alone, numerous dying folks are already being sacrificed in the altar of Evil there.

Let us all watch closely the events concerning health care, and see what happens after another year will elapse. If it will be so easy to forecast that more Americans are being kept out of the health care circuits, then rest assured a Nazi killer agenda is in place to satisfy the sadistic lust for blood by demoniacs in the Establishment.

That being so, the rest of the world, more so the emerging markets, will add another reason to their rising list of rationales for ignoring America as a recognized leading state by showing leadership through example. The year 2012 will be a clear turning point, when nations will decide whether there is still an iota of leadership that America can demonstrate.

Health is wealth, and a nation that closes health care access to its people is a nation without soul and conscience. Other nations should move on in life without that soul-less state to reckon with.

[Philippines, 17 February 2011]

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Tags: Erle Argonza, fascism, google.com, healthcare, Nazi healthcare, Nazism, neo-conservatives, public health, racism, Republican Party, Tea Party, technorati, United States

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APPLAUSE TO UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS ON ITS QUADRICENTENNIAL

February 16, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

This writer hereby extends Big Kudos to the Dominican-run University of Santo Tomas on its 400^th Anniversary!

The University of Santo Tomas or UST, established 400 years ago in the Intramuros district of (old) Manila, has finally grown, matured, and reached international acclaim as an institution of higher learning. It had added milestones to its earlier feat as the oldest university in the Philippines, which renders it worthy of the accolades on its quadricentennial.

I still recall as a young school boy in the 1960s, that my teachers as well as history & geography textbook authors cited the UST as the nest of brilliant youth who later became great minds. Our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, obtained his first level of university education from the UST (he took up advanced studies in Europe after the UST stint).

More patriots followed after the footsteps of Dr. Rizal later. The late Manuel L. Quezon, president of the country during the USA’s colonial occupation, was among them. A visionary whose thoughts were to linger long after he was gone, Quezon is among the great patriots of the motherland. He underwent collegiate education in the noble UST.

The UST did not only churn out great men in past eras. In this current context, we have the likes of Bienvenido Lumbera, one of the literary giants of the ASEAN and a National Artist, among UST’s alumni. And so is Brilliante Mendoza, CANNES Film Festival awardee as Best Director, among the long list of upcoming luminaries of the Philippines and the ASEAN.

If there is any coterie of minds that I would give due credit for re-inventing UST that enabled it to be among Asia-Pacific’s top 200 universities, it is the Filipino Dominicans and the Filipino professors who resonated with the innovative designs of their priestly sponsors. The new breed of Dominicans dared to transform the university’s teaching force from one of purely teaching tasks to one of scholarly research faculty broke the long tradition and moved the UST out of stasis.

Without meaning to denigrate the White Dominicans from Europe who dominated UST’s echelon for too long a time, I would have to state candidly that it was during their stewardship that UST stagnated. Thus, it was known for its oldness bereft of the qualitative substance of being a progenitor of new philosophies, arts movements, and scientific R & D.

UST’s faculty was merely tasked to teach, and was assigned huge teaching loads (e.g. teaching 24 units), hence disabling them from engaging in productive research and/or artistic productions. It was during the stagnation phase that the much younger universities—University of the Philippines, Ateneo De Manila University, De La Salle University—became international universities, breaching the UST’s records by several notches.

I asked some pals of mine in the 80s and early 90s—who were teaching in UST—to share their own opinion regarding the relative stagnation of the UST. Without batting eyelashes, they blamed the over-bearing and subtly racist predominance of White Dominicans for the long stasis. Accordingly, the latter were of the mindset that they came to PH to civilize the Filipinos, a condescending if not arrogant attitude.

I was appraised of the situation within the campus and of the arduous efforts of Filipino Dominicans to make their dent in a context where Jurassic colonial tradition was still strong. By the 1990s the innovative Filipino Dominicans and UST professors were finally making headway. As a result, the UST made it to the top 200 universities in the Asia-Pacific in the late 1990s.

Research institutions have since been evolving within the present campus in the Sampaloc district. Some professorial pals of mine, who were products of the U.P. and DSLU and who took up doctorates in top universities abroad, have decided to base themselves in UST. They are now taking up the cudgels of re-engineering their respective departments, thanks to the new policy environment crafted by Filipino Dominicans.

Finally, as UST’s professorial pool has been up-scaling their research & development capabilities, building research institutions and generating research & publications products, the university is on the way to move UST to the next level, which is that of ‘world university’ status. I am highly supportive of the re-engineering, even as I’m confident the university will get there in the foreseeable future.

[Philippines, 15 February 2011]

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Tags: 2011, academe, anniversary, CHEd, Dominicans, Erle Argonza, feudalism, google.com, Manila, Philippines, technorati, university, University of Santo Tomas, world universities

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PHILIPPINE ECONOMY 46th LARGEST WORLDWIDE, CAN GO UP SOME MORE

February 16, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Let me continue to tackle the matter of glad tidings for my beloved Philippines. I feel the exuberance and optimism of fellow East Asians who wish to share the joy of the growing economies we have here with the rest of the world.

For this note, I will focus on the Philippine’s national income, an update particularly of the Gross Domestic Product or GDP and the Gross National Product or GNP. The Philippines is one of ten (10) members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN, a grouping of cooperating nations that will integrate economically in 2015. PH’s growth pattern contributes in no small measures to ASEAN’s growing economic might.

In 2009 PH ended the year with a GDP of around PH P7.67 Trillions. Nominally, that translated to around U.S. $186 Billions. At that time, Net Factor Income from Abroad or NFIA, derived largely from overseas remittances and offshore operations, was around$17 Billions. GNP, which adds up the GDP and NFIA, totaled $203 Billions more or less for that year.

2009 was quite a bad year, as the Great Recession of the Northern economies affected PH by a lowering of the merchandise exports. GDP grew so minimally at a mere 1.5% that analysts thought it couldn’t rebound soon enough. The forecast for 2010 was around 5-6% growth range, already considered a very optimistic forecast.

2010 proved to be a relatively bountiful year for PH, as it grew 7.5% during the first three (3) quarters alone. Election spending pumped up the growth rate to a certain extent, while exports and imports grew up at fat sums as the Northern economies were able to re-absorb higher volumes of merchandise imports. The yearend growth could be at 7% more or less.

A figure of $13 Billion is therefore expectedly added to the old 2009 GDP, to yield a 2010 GDP figure of U.S.$199 Billions. NFIA, based on overseas remittances, ends up at $18 Billions, so the GNP for 2010 stands at a least figure of $ $217 Billions of nominal income.

Manufacturing and services are proving to be the most consistent growth drivers of PH economy on the production side. Agriculture turns out to have a weak performance carried over yet from the 2009 incidence of the strong typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng.

With infrastructures and energy gearing up for larger projects, the growth will be sustained at a very positive level, ranging in the area of 6-7% for 2011. Exports will be sustained at upscale rate, and so will be imports. So we expect excitement in PH growth for 2011. We just hope that agriculture will be able to catch up and breach the 5% growth target at least, then sustain it at that level for the long term.

Consumption-wise, domestic consumption has gone up at an appreciable trend for 2010. Overseas remittances continued to sustain driving up domestic consumption. Private consumption was at all-time high, which contributed to heated retail sales of past 10% and housing & realty continuing its dynamic trend. Government consumption is the one that needs catching up here, a sluggish pattern that is a carry over of past years’ trends yet.

Accordingly, PH garnered the 46^th largest economy out of the 200+ nations worldwide in terms of nominal income. At that position, it is clear that PH is among the middle income countries, or that it is way out of the old ‘poor country’ status it had till the years 2002-‘03 when the middle income status was attained.

As the Northern economies are going through stagnation, it is best that PH should target higher growth rates and attain them decisively to be able to move up the ladder of prosperity. In a decade’s time, PH can facilely surpass the performance of European countries one after the other, till it can reach the level of Italy’s or France’s economy as early as 2025.

I am optimistic that in the long run, PH can breach the No. 30 largest economy worldwide. The momentum of growth and prosperity is already there, and a large labor force is proving great as harbinger of wealth production. A large population, with a rising middle class, is also contributing immensely to sustaining consumption in the long run.

As early as 2030, PH can be on the Top 25 economies and maybe even better. PH economy should better double every seven (7) years or so for a straight twenty-one (21) years to be able to make it to the top. When it does so, ASEAN’s aggregate income will surpass Japan’s and possibly the USA’s and EU’s. Let’s all look forward to seeing that day come in the future.

[Philippines, 12 February 2011]

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FILIPINOS 104 MILLION STRONG: 94 IN PH, 10 OVERSEAS

February 12, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang gabi! Good evening from PH’s suburban boondocks!

The Philippines just conducted a census last year, 2010, and the result shows a sum total of 94 Million heads in the archipelago. The population growth of 2 Million heads per year is also indicated, showing an increase from the 1.7 Million heads annual increase ten in the year 2000 (when the last census was conducted).

The 2 Million annual growth is already a total result in itself. Accordingly, about 500,000 fetuses are aborted every year in the country, a figure that has alarmed population and health experts. Never mind if the national charter bans abortion, women who commit unwanted pregnancies simply decide to go abortion.

94 Million Filipinos, at a time of economic boom and rising incomes, is a cause for celebration. With a rising middle class at hand—who form the demand base of consumption-led growth—we expect a steadily growing number of Filipinos who comprise the family income bracket earning U.S. $6,000-$30,000 annually. 20 Million Pinoys are in that category today, which will expectedly rise in the next couples of years.

Thus, PH qualifies as an ‘emerging market’. It has first of all a large population, and millions of people falling within the middle class spenders with incomes ranging from U.S. $6,000 to $30,000. Many heads working and earning well translates into economic wellness for a country, so we should welcome this development.

Now, let us not forget the Overseas Filipinos or OFs who comprise an estimated 10 Million heads across 200 countries more or less. These OFs earn an aggregate income of U.S. $400 Billions annually, $20+ Billions of which is remitted to the Philippines as Net Factor Income from Abroad or NFIA. Of the $20+ Billions, only around $18 entered legally established channels of remittance annually.

That means the OFs remit 5% of their earnings to the motherland, and that is good enough. No matter what misery-inducing policies the global elites would slap Pinoys with via the World Bank-IMF-WTO Group, the most demonic being the austerity policies of the IMF, the Philippines can survive thanks to the OF remittances. Let the evil elites shackle PH with crippling low credit ratings and low entry of ‘smart money’ and investments by them, we will still survive thanks to the remittances and our own domestic investments.

The signs are pretty clear that fecundity, the capacity to give birth, is high among Filipinos. This for me is a cause for celebration. Let us sustain our high birthing capacity and increase the number of middle class people by the year, and we will all the more exude our economic and social power as a people.

Contrast that high fecundity to the trends in Japan and Russia, where their populations are falling by the year. Russia has been alarmed a decade ago yet about falling population, and identified the phenomenon as the top national security problem. Japan just began to experience a falling population, and this early look at how alarmed and panicked the Japanese stakeholders are of the consequence of diminishing population.

Not so for my beloved Philippines. We will be producing 2 Million+ Filipinos annually in the archipelago and overseas for many years to come yet, and we shall use the burgeoning population as leverage in negotiating with other nations and regions. The global oligarchs can no longer be fooling us at this time, whacking us with oppressive policies that produce deplorable conditions for our poor folks.

Abroad, our own Kabayans are now crystallizing a consciousness as an Overseas Filipino Nation, and I do welcome this progressive development. United by culture, language, and shared experience, the OF Nation will wield the stick to leverage vis a vis governments, market players, and interest groups in their host countries. They can no longer be fooled in the negotiating tables, much more enslaved and butchered like unwanted pests by sociopathic monsters without responding in a pro-active way.

Clearly, the days when White Americans sang “Brown monkeys have no tails” in the archipelago, a sordid racist song they popularized upon invading the Philippines, are over. The figure of 200 Million Pinoys can be breached by 2050, at a time when PH will be a wealthy nation, huge and wealthy to lead the ASEAN Union.

In sum, 104 Million Filipinos should be welcomed as good news. It is the leveraging power of Pinoys in the new era of Urban Philippines, whence 68% of Pinoys are residing in urban communities here.

[Philippines, 11 February 2011]

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RE-ECHOING CLEAN ENERGY

February 12, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

In the province of Ilocos Norte, in northern Philippines, is a pilot project for wind energy… Hydraulics application has already seen the rise of dams that generate at least couples of thousands of megawatts of power… Geothermal energy will be breaching the 3,000 megawatt level soon, making PH the world’s top geothermal power producer.

There are more such narratives of nascent and maturing power producers that tap alternative energy sources, or energy other than fossil fuel. We have vast reserves of natural gas in the country, which is fossil-related though clean energy in classification.

Solar power is a sunrise industry, and the good news is that our engineers here have exceeded the capability level of those in California and elsewhere in producing state-of-the-art solar panels. Ocean power research & development is proceeding at rapid pace, with installations projected in pilot areas in the short run.

Wind power potentials of the Philippines itself is projected at past the 70,000 megawatt level, which is a whopping figure that is over five (5) times the current electricity needs. Already, over 3,000 megawatts of wind power projects are in the pipeline, either as on-going or soon-to-start-installation projects.

In Manila, shuttle vehicles powered by electricity ferry shoppers at the Araneta Center and the Mall of Asia or MOA. Jeepneys in Makati using electricity are also shuttling shoppers as well as employees around the classy Ayala Central Business District, the country’s financial center. Tricycles powered by electricity are also rising, while motorbikes powered by electricity are now in use in Palawan.

The news about the usage of alternative energy is increasing by the day in the Philippines. Hopefully, the industrialized Northern countries will move ahead in shifting towards clean energy despite the economic downturns they are now experiencing. Emerging markets are surging ahead in this very dynamic field, and this phenomenon is causing me a sense of fulfillment and happiness being a habitué of the ASEAN.

In previous articles, I already shared the information about China’s perfection of the nuclear fusion technology. The news first reached my attention in 2007, and at that time it was projected that the first commercial prototypes for fusion breeder plants will be out in 10 years time. That means that as early as 2016 China will launch nuclear plants powered by fusion technology.

So dynamic is the field of alternative energy R & D that the sources of ideas for it are like oceans of thought. There simply are too many options for deriving alternative energy, so that in the not-so-distant future the starships for traversing space will be fueled by clean-recyclable-inexhaustible energy.

Let’s take the planet itself and its constant motion. As the planet moves around its axis, torque is generated. Torque is a potential source of energy, and for as long as the Earth revolves around its axis, torque will be inexhaustible. This is one area that I wish to be involved in the R&D phase itself.

Airplanes, airships, rockets and satellites can be fuelled in the future by torque among many options. By airships I mean maritime ships of today that can be retrofitted and re-engineered to be able to fly in the air, though at low altitudes, thus turning into a more efficient passenger vehicle more than today’s airplanes.

Another planetary source of energy for tomorrow is albedo. Around 1/3 of the heat that gets to the Earth from the Sun and other celestial sources escape as albedo. My thesis is that the escaping albedo can be tapped as an inexhaustible source of energy.

Necessarily, the policy environment and institutions that will propel clean energy and make it the sole energy source in the future should be prepared and strengthened early enough. Incidentally, the Philippines is among the countries with an exemplary policy environment for clean energy, and so industrialized and emerging markets can emulate the experience of my country in this line of endeavor.

The long-term goal, of course, is to rid the planet of fossil fuel. At some point in the future, extraction of oil & gas should be put to a stop. Prolonged extraction is causing imbalances in the geological structures of the planet, imbalances that can be irreparable in the long run. It would be best to carve out a global policy architecture to cease all fossil fuel extractions in the future, and enforce this strictly.

I would be celebrating the day when fossil fuel will cease to be the source of electricity and vehicular power in the foreseeable future. As far as electricity generation is concerned, the Philippines is almost there. But I shall wait a bit till electricity will be totally clean and using non-fossil energy sources.

[Philippines, 09 February 2011]

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COMMUNITY SOLIDARITY THROUGH FESTIVALS

February 12, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang araw! Good day!

We just had couples of festivals in Filipinas. Manila held its annual Black Nazarene with around 6 Million devotees participating; Cebu, its Sinulog festival centered on the patron saint Sto. Niño (divine child, child Jesus) that drew 2 Million participants; Kalibo in Aklan, the Ati-atihan that also centered on the Sto Niño; and, other towns in the Visayas and Mindanao, festivals of the Sto. Niño.

More such celebrations and/or festivities are going on around the world today. Despite the inclement weather in flood-stricken areas, peoples around the world deserve to celebrate life through community undertakings with spiritual symbolisms as core unifying signifiers. They are spectacles to the appreciative eyes, wonderments worth documentations for special television features.

Fragmentation of community bonds had already caused so much damage on the human psyche across the planet. Suicides and crimes have gone up at startling speeds and scales since the predominance of modernity and urbanization, and alienation is still moving up the scales of pathology today.

We are all puzzled about the effects and causes of social fragmentation, and challenged to reverse the trends towards a new order of harmony, balance, cooperation, and respect for the ‘integrity of creation’. The situation is leading to madness of a grand scale never before faced by mankind, madness that is the indicator of an even larger malaise of a Dark Age.

There is not a single country left in the world today unaffected by the rapid and sustained fragmentation of community bonds, and the crescendo of violence, crimes and suicides. Even suicide is used as a tool for sectarian violence, as suicide bombers use their bodies to destroy those whom they hold with deep resentment.

It is too late to go back to a primordial past, a past of relative calm and peace, as the wheels of history or ever moving forward. So we are challenged to re-invent the worlds we live in while time moves and the rugs under our feet are changing. The greatest challenge is to build a ‘culture of peace’ marked by a ‘dialogue of cultures’ or tolerance of differences.

As part of building that culture of peace, it is of fundamental import to see folks embarking on and sustaining spiritually or religiously-oriented festivals. The thought-forms of a very positive nature released by devotees during such an occasion is sufficient a regenerative force to reduce crimes, induce healing of wounded community bonds, and replenish energies for confidence-building among erstwhile estranged members of a larger community.

True, there are some thefts and petty crimes committed during the conduct of special events of community festivals. There also are deaths due to stampedes in some other festivals, such as the deaths in the latest India festival. But such incidences are more the exception, the sacrifices that are X sub-events attendant to a major event.

Take the case of the Sinulog in Cebu. How many crimes were committed in Cebu while the Sinulog was going on? Chances are that the crime rate on that day itself was negligible, inclusive of possible petty crimes of thefts done by pick-pockets on unsuspecting devotees. The same is true for the Black Nazarene in Manila, ergo for all the other community festivals done across the world.

To further demonstrate what I’m driving at, let me cite to you a study done couples of decades back yet. A significant group of Maharishi yoga fellows meditated at the same time, with focus on the theme of reducing crime rate in a certain city in the USA. Mind you, indeed the crime rate in that city on that particular day went down to half of its regular crime rate!

Now, some may say that is a miracle of sorts. I’d say it is the product of very positive high frequency thought-forms that are, in physics, of a very high level of energy. The energy elicited by the prayerful folks were sufficient enough to reduce crime rates. How much more to obtain fulfillment of the wishes of the devotees concerned, materialization of such wishes could have been fulfilled, reinforced as they are by attuning to the energy of that event of being together in prayers and celebrations.

So the message for everyone else is, whenever a large community festival is being held, which to a great extent is marked by prayerful moments by huge flocks of devotees, attune yourself to that event. No matter if you may not approve of cult engagement, never dis-engage from nor throw dagger-hostile thoughts on those events or towards the folks carrying them out. Devotion done together is a wonderful human phenomenon, itself worth watching and attuning to.

I am all too glad that many such festivals are held each year across the globe. Cities and towns that don’t have such festivities and are now deciding to launch their own version of them are increasing by the year. These are all indications of the personal and collective efforts to junk madness and fragmentation going on in our daily lives in all countries of the world.

[Philippiines, 08 February 2011]

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AFRICA ON FIRE!

February 4, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Africa is on fire. From north to south, east to west of the continent, politico-military turbulences are taking place, hence tending to confuse and scale up fear among the ordinary folks of the continent.

You can go ahead and harbor your own perspective in explaining the causes of the conflicts there. You can see the conflicts from a domestic vantage point, thus explaining turbulence based on internal factors such as religious, ethnic, and geopolitical factors. You can also choose to explain them from the vantage point of a globalist, thus explicating the turbulences as offshoots of global synarchy of chaos fomented by the financier oligarchs of the West.

At a time when a new millennium is accelerating momentum, bringing forth glad tidings of prosperity and relative peace, hot fires are taking place in Africa. Whether a single set of explanations would suffice to comprehend the predominance of negative imagery in the continent would be subject of debates. What is clear first of all is that the continental imagery tends to recline on the negative which bodes ill for the Africans.

To name a few representative projections of the turbulences: growing protests in Tunisia; contested poll results in Cote d’Ivory, spiraling into civil war proportions; paper governance in Somalia where pirates abound as offshoot of a failed state; still unabated turbulence in Zimbabwe, spilling off millions of migrants to South Africa; Sudan’s split between North and South as a result of religious and ethnic divergences; and, brewing conflict between Copts and Muslims in Egypt.

Those representative turbulences alone demonstrate that in every corridor of the continent—north, east, west, south—turbulence is the pattern. The anarchy practically overshadows or masks the peace, cooperation and development now going on in countries that have struggled hard to depart from the path of failed states that were balkanized by internecine wars.

Let us take the case of the Sahara. A gigantic effort to green the historically desert region has been going on for years now, which to me is a milestone event that will reverse the age-old desertification. With the turbulences going on in the cardinal corridors of the continent, who would now care to examine and extol the very admirable eco-balancing inter-country efforts in the pan-Sahara?

Tanzania and Ghana would also be worth your enquiry. Both countries are undertaking development efforts, with external investors showing great interest in both countries as showcase of cross-border direct foreign investments. Ghana is most especially important to my beloved Philippines, as many of its leaders were schooled by top universities in Manila. Who would ever care for such exemplary developments in both countries, with the media perpetually presenting staccato and crescendo of turbulences in the continent?

Africa is indeed on fire, all of its representative regions have their respective versions of hot spots, so the situation must first of all be accepted by all stakeholders there. There must be no denying about the hot fires and brewing caldrons, so that the alternative courses of action can be configured, and the compass of peace be identified and executed.

As an external observer who is keenly interested in seeing Africa accelerate its development and poverty-reduction, I am very supportive of efforts by all stakeholders in the continent to forge ahead the agenda for stamping out hot fires, contain brewing caldrons, and prevent other fires from igniting in the foreseeable future. Africans who wish for my moral support can go ahead and let me sign advocacy positions that need the support of solidarity groups and individuals outside of the continent as I’ve done in the past.

Watching those exemplars of positive development in the continent, I am optimistic that Africans will be able to transcend their predicaments, imbroglios, and anarchies in due time. I hope that the fast rising ‘emerging markets’ in other continents would expand and diversify on their support for peace and development in Africa, and reinforce their deployment of grassroots volunteers to the continent.

To all concerned Africans, Love & Peace! You shall overcome!

[Philippines, 01 February 2011]

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OPUS DEI ARMED SUDAN’S CHRISTIAN SOUTH

January 29, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Sudan is undergoing a schism, the dividing line being the north-south axis. North is the predominantly Muslim section, with large infusion of Arab genetics into the ancient black ethnicities of the area; south, the Christian section, with predominantly Negroid ethnicities as core population.

A cursory review of history would show us that the Arabs, who were at one time the nexus of world culture, easily reached Sudan and the northern African regions. Egypt, Sudan, Chad and other countries were a bit contiguous to Baghdad and Arabia, and so the Arabs could easily reach the area contrasted to the European lands near the Atlantic during their westward conquests.

We should also be reminded of the era of rise of capitalism when slave trade was a normal predilection of the British, Portuguese and other European powers. Arabs cashed in on the opportunity, raided Negro areas of northern and eastern Africa for the chattel (slaves). In the process, large numbers of Arabs decided to reside in Africa as new entrants or additions to northern Africans of Arab descent.

Let’s fast forward to the present when an authoritarian regime rules the whole of Sudan. Previous to the authoritarian drift of this nation, there were already covert operations by Christian clerico-fascist operators to enforce an agenda of creating a schism in the long run by carving out a Christian south.

The Opus Dei, to note, has been notoriously engaged as partner-operators of fascist forces for a long time. Having had practice in Spain as co-partners of the totalitarian Phalangist regime of Franco, the Opus Dei would later replicate their positioning for global power by arming and financially supporting Christian rebel forces such as the Irish Republican Army and the Croatian Army.

Croatia is an example of a mini-state carved out from a larger entity (former Yugoslavia) via an army that was practically entirely supported by the Opus Dei. For your own study of the subject matter, you may as well begin with the book Thy Kingdom Come by the controversy writer Robert Hutchison. From there you can branch out to other research materials regarding the fascistic group Opus Dei that aspires to be a modern Knights Templar aiming to defend the interests of the Papacy.

In my own country, the Philippines, couples of Christian militias suddenly cropped up in the southern island of Mindanao after the 2^nd world war. The militias went on a rampage of massacre of Muslims there, supported as they were by the big landlords and the Christian Right. A most notorious group was the Tadtad, which revived after long dormancy to help the Establishment contain the rise of the guerilla Maoists and Muslim rebels.

As you can see, Christian ultra-conservatives or clerico-fascists are carving out their own spheres of influence. With so much money stashed in many banks and secret vaults across the different continents, aided by the previous policies of financial and monetary liberalization that permitted unhampered money laundering across borders, the Opus Dei is so powerful today as to be able to create new countries out of regions that are predominantly Christian more so Catholic.

Accordingly, so gargantuan are the tentacles of the Opus Dei, with mafia groups involved in its money laundering, arms trading, and other large-scale crimes across borders. The group was to a great extent responsible for the collapse of the Vatican banks in the 1980s, a crash aided by a mafia Masonic group. That crash led to the domino effect of financial crash of Italy as a whole.

When that crash was investigated by the newly installed Pope John Paul I, the pope was tragically assassinated barely a month into office. It was the same mafia cum Opus Dei operators that were responsible for the assassination of the pope. Now that the pope comes from the extreme Right, the Opus Dei has no worry about further machinations behind the scene.

We should therefore be not surprised if Pope Benedict mouths lines about Christians as the most victimized by terror attacks of a sectarian nature. These are mere cover ups or masks for covert operations being undertaken by Opus Dei and another powerful force, the Society of Jesus, to bring back the power of the papacy in the globe.

In the Philippines, both Opus Dei and Jesuits openly supported the candidacy of the moron blabbermouth Noynoy Aquino, son of the late Ninoy Aquino (husband of former president Corazon Aquino) who was a CIA operative. Both Opus Dei and Jesuits were well positioned in power during Corazon Aquino’s incumbency, so you can see how they have gotten back to power with the victory of their blabbermouth puppet.

Thus, it should not surprise us to find out that Benedict badmouths those who persecuted the Sudanese Christians, as both Opus Dei and Jesuits were behind Benedict’s ascent to the papacy. The involvement of the both religious groups in Sudan’s Christian insurgency and the campaign for an independent Christian Sudan is logically expected.

Now that the Opus Dei has a stronger position in Africa and its puppet state Croatia is in operation, where would the group strike next to enlarge its fascistic sphere of influence and control?

[Philippines, 21 January 2011]

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INDIA JETISSONS 2011, ALL SET FOR BIG GROWTH

January 25, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Gracious day to you fellow global citizens! Special goodwill greetings to the people of India!

The year 2011 just kicked off with a good start for Asia, today’s indubitable growth driver of the global economy. From macro-economic fundamentals to micro-innovations, things are heading for another great year of bountiful growth and future prosperity for Asians.

India, known in ancient times as Bharat, is no exception to the Asian trends. Its income grew by double digit the past year, its macro-economic fundamentals are reclining on the positive side, and so external observers like me have reason to infer a very optimistic year of performance for modern Bharat.

Not only is India growing with sufficient prudence domestically, but even on the international terrain the Bharat ‘emerging market’ has done well. India’s enterprise moguls have sustained the patterns of expansion in overseas investments, which is laudable.

Just recently, the news bannered the gladdening reportorial about investments moving to Africa. As this is happening, the tie up between Tata Group and Siemens for producing the Nano car (priced at $2,000) and a diversity of machines and tools is now in the pipeline, with joint ventures expected to permeate Brazil, China, and other ‘emerging markets’.

So far so good! Well, the social sectors of Bharat may have a different opinion, such as the rural food producers who still number the greatest in the population, so they are entitled to their perceptions. And, the women who for millennia have been subjugated in yokes of patriarchalism, they too must feedback their advocacies about greater economic and social freedoms for women.

As to the market players, they have already advanced their reservations about the move to tap through their private communications networks (e.g. bug them, in search for possible money salting overseas or racketeering, and so on…). They have aired their concern about possible abuse of their privacy, a move that is short of installing a fascist tyranny in India.

India has been an exemplary democracy in Asia and the world, so there really should be no apprehension about the moves there to monitor money laundering and related criminal activities via covert tapping of communications lines and channels. However, there are fundamentalist groups in the power structure there, so there is some reason to be bothered about possible abuse of such intelligence discretions by right-wing Establishment groups.

One wish I’d like to share for Bharat’s people is that they should avoid advancing materially at the expense of their spiritual growth. India’s greatest wealth, as I observe it, is its spiritual wealth. It would prove very tragic if not catastrophic if Indians will eventually drop off their spiritual practices, such as going the Yogic Path, in order to metamorphose completely into a materially prosperous federation.

I remember that couples of years back I said the same thing about Nepal. I just couldn’t believe that Nepalese regard themselves as a poor nation, when in fact their spiritual wealth remains intact. Such a perception could lead to a win/lose situation, whereby Nepalese would prosper materially by throwing away eventually their spiritual wealth, and that for me will prove catastrophic as it bodes a Dark Age for the future materially wealthy nation.

It would be best for India and south Asian nations to prosper in an integrative way, by synthesizing material progress and spiritual wellbeing. That compass would lead to a new experience of win/win situation, where both techno-economic progress and spiritual growth would go hand-in-hand.

That represents a daunting challenge for India and its people. For those persons and groups in India who resonate with my thesis, they are already assured of my moral and spiritual support—me being a spiritual guru here in Manila/Philippines. Should they invite me to their cyberspace forums, sure I will join them and be a process observer of these tech-savvy scions of Rama.

For the Indians of today, cheers! Namaste!

[Philippines, 17 January 2011]

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SET YOUR ANNUAL GOALS FOR 2011

January 19, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza
2011 has already started, and it began with an ambience of all-time high optimism across Asian countries. In my beloved country Filipinas, the Hope index measured an incomparable 89%, or that Filipinos are of the predominant hopeful mood that all will be well for their respective lives.

To start the year right, it would be best for each and every one of us to set our goals for the year. On the informal level of the lifeworld, there is this fancy for setting ‘new year’s resolution’ as the old year is about to end and the new year is just minutes away. This ritualistic practice can be improved on if the person sit down and put into writing the goals for the year.

As a professional, I have made it my personal practice to set goals for the year since I began working way back in 1981 yet. Then, at the end of the year, I would assess the level of goal attainment, correct flaws by rectified goal-attainment for the coming year, and then setting all in all the goals for the year in a very organized manner.

It would be best if you scribble your goals in the very diary or appointment book that you are using for the current year. Identify just about a few workable or doable goals, e.g. in my practice I would have just three (3) maximum goals to work on. Scribble each goal thereafter on a distinct or dedicated page in your diary.

After I write down a goal, I would then write some descriptions of the goal, and even identify sub-goals. Then, it would pay that I would also identify the ways to achieve the goal and sub-goals.

You can go ahead and prioritize the goals. Present the goal first which is top priority, then which is moderate priority, and which is least priority. Go ahead and scribble descriptions, sub-goals, and articulations about quantitative and qualitative targets.

After writing down your goals, make sure to check them every week or so. It would be bad practice to log them in, and then forget to check on them later.

The style of goal-setting can be as creative as it can get. For the prepped up young working persons, adding graphic images and jotting down the goals on one’s Blackberry or cellphone would be add fun and excitement to the goal-setting and execution.

For all ye global citizens, please don’t forget to set your goals for the year. If you have no fondness for this kind of exercise, better rethink about your position and begin the practice for your own sake. Moving ahead blindly, without a personal plan for the year, is like straitjacketing yourself.

[Philippines, 14 January 2011]

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IS THE PHILIPPINES ALREADY INDUSTRIALIZED?

January 14, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Let me continue with the reflections on my beloved Philippines’ economy. This effort is often part of my self-accepted duties to update myself and my compatriots about the state of the Philippine economy at the start of every year.

Just a week ago, I came across an article writ by one of the stock market columnists in the Philippine Daily Inquirer of PDI, that re-echoed an emerging perception in the international business community concerning the Philippine economy’s being ‘industrialized’ today. Coming from the business community itself, this evaluative perception is replete with many implications for the country. It bodes well for the country in fact.

I wish that the perception will resonate with greater power by the day so that those in academic and ideological circles will rethink their positions about the Philippine ‘mode of production’. As far as the Maoists are concerned, PH will always remain as semi-feudal/semi-colonial, backward, agrarian economy. Some academic circles will re-echo the same old worn out “PH is a service economy, with mixed economy features.”

This analyst still recalls very well the ‘mode of production’ debate that reverberated the halls of the University of the Philippines in the 1980s. I graduated from this university in October 1980, then came back to take up graduate schooling in sociology from Nov. ‘83 to April ‘89, and so I was able to flow with the discussions and debates ensuing. The debate centered largely on whether the Philippines is semi-colonial/semi-feudal (Maoist) or capitalist mode (moderate Marxists, populists, social democrats).

By the mid-90s, the debate was already faltering and dying out. It was a dead debate when the year 2000 rang a sonorous beacon of the new millennium. But if you ask any of the competing ideological blocs today about their perceptions of Philippine reality, you will notice that they will churn out the same lines that they’ve been saying for decades.

As regards the perception that PH economy is a ‘service economy’, the criterion is largely based on what sector—agriculture & forestry? industry? services? –contribute the greatest to the gross domestic product or GDP. Since services contribute 55% to the GDP, then PH is a ‘service economy’.

That evaluative perception has a kindergarten undertone to it, as it relies on simplistic assumptions. Just because the industrial sector, which churns out barely 30% (manufacturing + infrastructure combined) of the GDP, looks diminutive than services, doesn’t merit an economy to be judged as ‘services’ or ‘non-industrial’ economy.

To be fair to those opinion quarters who have their own paradigm that churn out specific evaluative judgements, the term ‘industrializing’ was used to label Philippine development since the 1980s. At one point, PH was included among the NIEs or ‘newly industrializing economies’, and so the reference point was industry more than services.

Let’s go back to the USA in the year 1900 when it was already adjudged as industrialized. Industries began to enable the imperialistic pursuits of the USA then, if you recall your history well. But at that time, agriculture was still employing over 90% of the workforce, and nary an evidence can be shown that industry had out-stripped agriculture at that juncture as the main contributor to the national income (today’s GDP) perentage-wise. Yet the USA was already adjudged as ‘industrial’ at that time!

If the criteria would be largely the (a) prevalence and (b) impact of capital goods or ‘reproducible goods’ industries, then the market players have clear evidences to show such increased prevalence and impact. Save for integrated steel and castings & forging industries, every vital capital goods are already being manufactured in PH today. Unless of course that the ‘services economy’ judges are blind to these developments.

The emerging perception and judgement about PH economy should be impetus enough to cause a re-tooling by the analysts and ‘best practices’ innovators. It would prove beneficial for everyone if coteries of opinion-makers, business executives and capitalists themselves would begin the ball rolling by publishing their emerging perception about the ‘emerging markets’ such as PH to be already ‘industrialized’.

As a related event, I just signaled the young Prof. John Ponsaran, head of the development studies program in the UP Manila, about the emerging perception. I once taught in the UP Manila’s department of social sciences, where development studies is niched, so I know the temper of the faculty there that goes for debating on anything under the sun. I hope the emerging perception will be tackled in that campus.

[Philippines, 08 January 2011]

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WESTERN ECONOMIC SHRINKAGE A REALITY AS ASIA RISES

January 14, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang araw sa kapamilyang global! Good day to fellow global citizens!

For three decades already, I have been echoing a prognostication that was already current stock within sociology, about the ‘decline of the west’. Let me return to the same theme, as the rapid decline of the West and the fast rise of Asia is now a reality of the current historical juncture.

Just a couple of days ago, the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s or PDI’s opinion pages published an article by the past recent premier of the UK, Gordon Brown (PDI, 7 January 2011). Titled “Reviving the West,” it was a rather straightforward admission of the techno-economic decline that the West had undergone and the rapid ascent of Asia as the global economy’s growth driver.

As Brown succinctly stressed, “Time is running out of the West, because both Europe and the United States have yet to digest the fact that all the individual crises of the last few years—from the sub-prime crisis and the collapse of the Lehman Brothers to Greek austerity and Ireland’s near-bankruptcy—are symptoms of a bigger problem: a world undergoing a far-reaching, irreversible and, indeed, unprecedented restructuring of economic power.”

That was the former premier speaking, a technocrat and economic manager prior to his premier stint, so it does carry weight as much as those of the globe-trotting former US president Bill Clinton. Gordon went on to demonstrate his deep knowledge of the rising middle class consumers of Asia who altogether will make the greatest consumers the world over in the foreseeable future.

Said Gordon:

Of course, we all know of Asia’s rise, and that China exports more than America and soon will manufacture and invest more as well. But we have not fully come to terms with the sweep of history. Western economic dominance—10 percent of the world’s population producing a majority of the world’s exports and investment—is finished, never to return. After two centuries in which Europe and America monopolized global economic activity, the West is now being out-produced, out-manufactured, out-traded, and out-invested by the rest of the world.

That indubitably is an empirical substantiation of the thesis long held by Western social forecasters about the ‘decline of the West’. Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, Daniel Bell, Alvin Toffler, and John Naisbitt have churned out voluminous prognosis and forewarnings about the same thesis within a century’s span…and that thesis is now a reality.

In the middle and last portions of Brown’s article, he admonished Americans in particular to re-invent the ‘American dream’. The way to the revival of the West, with the USA showcasing the compass, is to re-structure the economy altogether. Accordingly, the nascence of over a billion middle class Asian consumers is a huge opportunity for America to re-invent itself and revive a strong economy.

Brown also forewarned America’s politicians, notably the Right, about criminalizing external forces, such as China’s currency, as culprits behind the decline of the US economy. Intervention measures such as currency wars are flawed, precisely because they fail to address the internal factors that are truly the causes of the economic decline.

To a great extent, I do agree with the evaluations and interventions of Brown. Fact is, I have already begun to echo the theme that America and Europe ought to reverse the policies of liberalization, privatization, and deregulation that led to de-industrialization, agricultural decay, infrastructure decay, and the rise of a ‘virtual economy’ based on predatory finance (vulture funds, derivatives or hedge funds). As I had been saying all along, the West should go back to the principles of the ‘real economy’ where wealth is produced from agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructures, transportation & communications, and science & technology.

As a matter of fact, I have been among Asian analysts and development practitioners who have urged the Americans to go back to the economics of New Deal propounded by the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Likewise should the tried & tested policies upheld by Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick von List, and John F. Kennedy, policies that impelled the rise of the physical economy and brought bountiful prosperity to Americans (read: created a predominant middle class), be put to the fore in rebuilding America.

Gordon resonates somehow with the ‘physical economy’ framework, even as he heralded the need for a new Marshall Plan for the world. Accordingly, the Plan could help to recast the banking system that was dirtied by its engagements in speculative financing and contributed to creating financial bubbles. The Western peoples should better listen to him, more so the youth who will be tomorrow’s Western leaders.

Let me re-echo the same message I have been saying all along: that prosperity should be a win/win phenomenon. No one here in Asia would ever want the USA and Europe to go back to the era of ‘cave man’ economy of hunting & gathering. I’d be happier many more times if the West should re-invent itself, cease from playing the destructive game of win/lose logic in order to prosper, and move back to reconstruct its physical economy altogether.

Asian spiritual masters, who incidentally also discoursed on economic doctrines (i.e. Baha’ullah, Gandhi, Vivekananda, Sarkar, Sri Aurubindo), left us all the legacy of building prosperity through the way of peace, cooperation, and mutual-help. It’s time for the Western peoples to retool themselves, by throwing away the binary and destructive thought system they inherited from their forebears, and by learning from Asia’s spiritual and intellectual giants.

[Philippines, 09 January 2011]

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WOMEN CHIEF EXECS: INCREASING COUNT, KUDOS TO WOMEN POWER!

January 10, 2011

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Women are making themselves felt more and more in the field of state governance these days. It surely pays to reflect on the increasing ascent of women in this field of endeavor.

In my own country PH, women have since expanded their presence in the top management of state and business bureaucracies. Latest count by the commission on women puts the number at 40% of total exec seats held by women, which renders PH among the exemplars of women empowerment in Asia and the world.

Our immediate past president, Gloria Arroyo, showed her own executive acumen as the Philippines graduated to middle income status from that of a poor 3^{rd world country during her incumbency. In 1986, our first lady president Corazon Aquino became the iconic symbol of democracy domestically and worldwide. Both lady leaders joined the select coterie of globally influential lady execs for their exemplary feats.}

The most recent additions to the lady chief execs are Australia’s Premier Julia Gillard and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. I’ve already expressed my kudos to the noblesse ladies, and I wish that they will propel their respective countries towards greater growth and magnanimity in the global community.

The latest gender report shows the following list of lady chief execs (see AFP, 2011):

Australia: Prime Minister Julia Gillard

Argentine: President Cristina Kirchner

Bangladesh: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed

Brazil: President Dilma Rousseff

Costa Rica: President Laura Chinchilla

Croatia: Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor

Finland: President Tarja Halonen

Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel

Iceland: Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir

India: President Pratibha Patil

Ireland: President Mary McAleese

Kyrgyztan: Interim President Roza Otunbayeva

Liberia: President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Lithuania: President Dalia Grybauskaite

Slovakia: Prime Minister Iveta Radicova

Switzerland: Confederal President Doris Leuthard

Trinidad & Tobago: Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Goodwill and best wishes to all the women chief execs! Mabuhay!

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