OBAMA LEADS POLL SURVEY, POLICY COMPASS AT STAKE

OBAMA LEADS POLL SURVEY, POLICY COMPASS AT STAKE

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Where points the policy compass of the USA? This seems to be indicated somehow by the latest survey poll in the states that showed incumbent president Obama leading his GOP rivals by huge margins.

Simpletons across the ideological spectrum, notably the conservatives or Right, have been demonizing Obama as going socialist. Lacking analytical sophistication, the simpletons tend to associate to policy initiatives that fail as ‘socialist’. The fundamentalist Evangelicals, neo-Nazis and Tea Party demagogues equate ‘socialist’ with the Devil, a nauseating contention that only mars the reality as it is.

Obama has shown a populist bent, from his domestic to foreign policy initiatives, and so the unsophisticated voters better do their homework to know what populism is. Populism as of late has tended to blend well with liberalism to which the Democrat Party has leaned on.

In its original sense, populism’s visionaries were inclined to highlight the oppressive living conditions of the marginal farmers, urban poor and petty artisans. Those classes are referred to as the ‘people down there’, people who supposedly were forgotten by policy agenda that favored the wealthy gentry class (oligarchs), middle class and workingmen (skilled).

In its more recent form as neo-populism, there has been the stress on concern for ‘marginal sectors’ at large. Popular Democracy or PopDem is among the recent morphs in PH, which jibed well with former president Estrada’s urban poor populist bias. The hard-line Maoists do have their variant of populism, which was demonstrated during the Gang of Four’s ‘great proletarian cultural revolution’.

Below is a report from the Time concerning the poll survey.

[Philippines, 13 November 2011]

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/time-poll-obama-still-ahead-gop-rivals-voters-081010901.html

TIME Poll: Obama Still Ahead of GOP Rivals, Voters Side With Dems on Taxes

By ALEX ALTMAN | Time.com – Fri, Oct 14, 2011

Despite sweeping pessimism about the nation's fortunes and his own sliding approval ratings, President Obama leads potential Republican rivals Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in hypothetical general-election match-ups, according to a new TIME poll.

Obama leads Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who sits atop the GOP presidential field, 46% to 43% among likely voters. The President has opened a double-digit lead over Perry, 50% to 38%, highlighting concerns percolating through the GOP that the Texas governor would face a steep uphill climb should he capture the nomination. Obama also boasts a 49% to 37% edge over businessman Herman Cain, whose strong Tea Party support has propelled him toward the top of Republican ranks in recent weeks. In each case, the President was buoyed by his performance among female voters. Women prefer Obama over Romney by eight percentage points (49% to 41%), by 17 points over Perry (53% to 36%) and by 21 points over Cain (53% to 32%). (See photos of Republicans taking over New Hampshire.)

Obama's strength in head-to-head match-ups with potential Republican rivals belies his own shaky footing with a weary electorate. Just 44% of voters approve of the President's performance, a slip of four points since a similar poll was conducted in June. Four out of five respondents say the U.S. has veered off track, and 71% think the country's clout in the world is waning. A scant 5% report feeling positive or unconcerned about the state of the nation.

The President's positive personal qualities have cushioned voters' frustration with the sagging U.S. economy, the exodus of capital to overseas markets and the declining value of the dollar. Most voters see Obama as tough enough to shepherd the U.S. through this rough patch (50% to 44%), and empathetic (59% to 37%) to the concerns of Americans like themselves. By a 48% to 37% margin, respondents consider him a better President than his predecessor, George W. Bush, who won a hard-fought battle for a second term amid falling approval ratings and an opposition galvanized by the war in Iraq.

For Democrats, the silver lining in a gloomy series of electoral rebukes and legislative setbacks is that voters remain partial to their chief economic principles, at least compared to the alternatives. Forty-two percent of respondents say they place greater trust in the Democratic Party to deal with the nation's problems, compared to the 31% who side with Republicans. In particular, some two-thirds of those surveyed say they prefer the Democrats' blueprint for trimming the federal deficit — a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes — to the GOP prescription, which would solely slash spending. At the same time, more voters think reducing spending is a better way to juice the moribund economy than an additional round of stimulus, the approach advocated by liberal economists. (See "Obama's Tax Plan: 'Fair Share' vs. 'Class Warfare.'")

The survey also revealed that respondents have a better impression of the left-leaning protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street than they do of the Tea Party movement. Fifty-four percent of respondents harbor a positive view of the burgeoning protest movement, well above the 23% with a negative opinion. By contrast, just 27% of those surveyed have favorable views of the Tea Party, while 65% say its impact on U.S. politics since its inception in 2009 has been negative or negligible.

Those results reflect a strain of economic populism common to the new movement's backers. Among those respondents familiar with Occupy Wall Street, nearly 80% argue the wealth disparity in the U.S. has grown too large and 68% say the rich should pay more taxes. Even so, this cohort is aware of the challenges facing the movement. Fifty-six percent predict Occupy Wall Street will have little impact on American politics, and another 9% say its effect will be negative.

The poll, conducted for TIME by Abt SRBI, surveyed 1,001 adults — 83% of whom described themselves as likely voters — between Oct. 9-10.

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MONGOLIA PROGRESSING IN HIGHER EDUCATION, KUDOS!

MONGOLIA PROGRESSING IN HIGHER EDUCATION, KUDOS!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

The scions of Genghiz Khan have slept for so many centuries since the heydays of their great ancestor. Genghiz Khan began an accelerated formation of central institutions of power and the growth of civilization among his tribes, thus transforming tribal primitivism to civilizational oasis.

Genghiz Khan’s lineages are that of Kublai Khan in China and the Mogul emperors Akbar, Shah Jehan, and others in India. Such is the greatness that Mongolia left upon the entire planet, to which I am in full awe and admiration for its people. And, I am saddened by the long dormancy or sleep that befell the great emperor’s scions, who at one time aped the Stalinist devils of Soviet ignominy to no avail.

“Time’s they are a-changing” today in Mongolia, and economic growth is rapid. Like the thunderous East Asia to the south and east of its borders, Mongolia is upbeat from economics to human development pursuits (health, education, gender empowerment).

The same pattern of growth is now wakening the education sector in Mongolia, inclusive of its tertiary education. Below is a very gladdening report from the Asian Development Bank about the innovations taking place in tertiary education in Genghiz Khan’s land.

[Philippines, 02 September 2011]

Source: http://beta.adb.org/news/adb-supports-mongolias-push-more-relevant-higher-education

ADB Supports Mongolia's Push for More Relevant Higher Education

29 Jul 2011

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing a $20 million equivalent loan to help Mongolia improve the quality of its higher education system and increase enrollment by youth from poor, remote communities.

The ADB Board of Directors yesterday approved the financing for the Higher Education Reform Project. Along with strengthening the relevance of existing higher education programs, it will also address issues such as governance and management, financing, and access.

“The ultimate goal is to boost the number of graduates who have the skills to match Mongolia’s changing economic needs, and who can bring international standards to its labor markets,” said Robert Schoellhammer, Country Director of ADB Mongolia Resident Mission.

Mongolia has over 100 higher education institutions but only about 40% of graduates manage to find employment. In response, the Government of Mongolia has drawn up a plan to rationalize higher education which includes reducing the large number of public universities from 42 to 16, and improving teaching and programs.

The project will aid the government’s plan by funding research facilities, staff training, e-learning centers and testing centers. It will aim to strengthen management capacity at universities to improve accountability and transparency, and will support new public-private partnerships and twinning arrangements with industry and foreign institutions to develop labor market-ready graduates.

It will also seek to tackle current imbalances in the system where few students from poor families in remote areas take higher education courses, and boys—despite being strongly outnumbered by girls—get the bulk of jobs on offer after graduation.

“Assistance will be given to increase state support mechanisms for students who are poor or living in distant areas, and for policies that can improve gender balance,” said Eisuke Tajima, Education Specialist in ADB’s East Asia Department. “As part of this initiative four rural institutions will be chosen to pilot distance learning courses to reach out to more students.”

ADB’s loan from its concessional Asian Development Fund has a 32-year term and will fund 90% of the project cost with the government providing an additional $2.2 million. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science will manage the project which is due for completion by December 2016.

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HUMAN RIGHTS IN DEVELOPMENT

HUMAN RIGHTS IN DEVELOPMENT

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Improving human rights as a sine qua non in socio-economic development is a big challenge to development stakeholders. Human rights the world over is agog in barbarities, as I said in one article writ in December 2010.

Human rights is among the governance prerequisites of welfare goals of equity and redistribution. Political culture factors into the governance equation, and a culture of violence to a large extent contributes to flagrant violations of human rights.

Below is an article that nourishes discourses on human rights and development. The position is taken by a technocrat of the World Bank, which allows you to examine the psyche or mindsets of technocrats of international organizations.

[Philippines, 05 July 2010]

Source: http://www.devex.com/en/blogs/the-development-newswire/what-is-the-role-of-human-rights-in-human-development-outcomes

What is the Role of Human Rights in Human Development Outcomes?

Posted by Ivy Mungcal on 21 June 2011 04:39:31 AM

Is concern for human rights needed in order to achieve human development results, particularly better health and education services? Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa, says such concern is not necessary nor sufficient.

Devarajan explains that concern for human rights is not necessary because a number of countries that have poor human rights records, such as Cuba and China, score high on various education and health indicators. It is also not sufficient because there are countries like South Africa and India that do well on human rights indicators but have relatively poor human development results, he adds.

The World Bank official says a possible reason for the latter is that making education and health human rights implies that a country’s government should fund and provide education and health services. However, there is evidence that governments of many countries have poor records in delivering such services to their people, Devarajan says.

“In short, achieving human development outcomes requires improving accountability in service delivery, which may or may not be driven by a concern for human rights,” he explains.

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THAILAND’S REDS REGAIN DOMINANCE

THAILAND’S REDS REGAIN DOMINANCE

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Thailand’s Red Shirts are back in power, as the For Thai Party of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra won landslide victory in the latest parliamentary polls. Yingluck Shinawatra, younger sister of the deposed premier, won as premier, rendering her the first woman chief executive of modern Thailand.

The victory is a big slap on the faces of the traditional elites of Thailand, who brooked no quarters in deposing any political party or movement that will not tow the globalization line. The message to detractors is “tow the line, no matter if the poor peasants, urban poor, and lowly artisans would eke a living.” Madly insane!

Thailand’s traditional elites are the king (and family), military offircers’ corps, big business, and technocrats. The elites are largely pro-West, with the King leading them in kowtowing to the dictates of the Western financiers led by Queen Elizabeth and the House of Rothschilds.

Under the rulership of the same elites and the Yellow Shirts that they have spawned, the benefits of growth have accrued to them only, with a negligible ‘trickle down’ of the same to the clerical class and underclasses. It has been a very lopsided development for Thailand as a whole, a prosperity track that left out many poor peasants, fisherfolks, urban poor, and poor artisans.

Incidentally, a populist party, the For Thai, arose from the bedrocks of obscurity to fame, led at first by its charismatic leader Thaksin Shinawatra. Healthcare and related welfare policies were thus crafted and executed with audacity during the brief stint of the deposed leader, welfare policies that mattered not to the callous elites.

Thus, Thailand has been so badly polarized along class lines, a polarity that will ensue in the foreseeable future. The populist For Thai is back in power, and most likely Big Business is again in jitters this early over the prospects of them paying up more (taxes) for redistribution as general welfare to the broad underclasses.

Thailand’s Reds are getting to be more homogenous through time, so the other ‘reds’ (social democrats, communists, Left anarchists, nationalists) can at best play the roles of swampy fringe groups vis a vis the mainstreamed populists. The latter better play it up as coalition partners with the populists or else face the consequences of irrelevance and low esteem by the underclasses who were badly marginalized by the globalization policies of liberalization, privatization, and deregulation.

Meantime, let me say my own kudos to the lady premier Yingluck Shinawatra over her victory. Kudos very big! Mabuhay!

[Philippines, 05 July 2011]

CHINA’S ULTRANATIONALIST FACTION BEGINS DOMESTIC HEGEMONY

CHINA’S ULTRANATIONALIST FACTION BEGINS DOMESTIC HEGEMONY

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

China’s impressive ascent from a struggling, poor, 3^rd world agrarian economy to the growing industrializing giant that is it today renders the country truly worth accolades the world over. China achieved development with nary an aid from external sources which makes the development challenge truly a daunting one.

Yet China was able to forge ahead with its development targets. With the growth of China’s economy also comes the growth of its military might, which is raising eyebrows in the entire Asian continent. For its neighbors that are now locked up in territorial disputes with the economic giant, the positive esteem has turned into a nightmare of sorts as China’s military began to flex muscles by intruding into those disputed islands.

I just hope that the foreign policy analysts of the affected Asian countries would get to know well the configuration of political forces inside China. Foreign policy and actuations by the giant state can be best explained precisely by identifying and assessing the strength of the most powerful political forces inside the Chinese state.

My thesis about the matter is that among all political factions vying for hegemony over the Chinese state, it is the Ultranationalists who are at the helm of that state today. These are not nationalists of the old Kuomintang mold, as the Kuomintang was largely expelled from the mainland in 1949 yet. The nationalists are Communist Party cadres who are only communist in name but nationalists in mold.

Remember that socialist China was first dominated by the Maoists, whose rule reached up to 1976, the last year of the chaotic Cultural Revolution era (1966-76) of the Gang of Four. It was the Maoists who tied down China to its agrarian state, and equalized poverty as a sort of Spartan virtue.

The Liberal faction of the Communist Party took over the reigns of power, by overthrowing the Maoists in a coup d’etat post-1976. The Liberals produced the leader Deng Shao Ping whose faction was pro-West. This faction began the market reforms in China that led to its present social market economy, which was made possible with the return to power of technocrats (who were purged by the Gang of Four).

During the latter phase of the Liberals’ hegemony, a new nationalist mold calcified inside the Party. While not allergic to market reforms, they strongly adhered to dirigist principles that were steeped in mercantilist doctrines. They resonated with the Liberals for a while, whom they served as core allies in building an industrializing China.

The past president Guang Zemin and premier Zu Rongji are examples of leaders who were nationalists of a moderate mold. Their economic policies strongly align with Roosevelt’s New Deal and John Meynard Keynes’ demand-side economics and interventionist tools. The present president Hu Jintao falls within this ideological frame, even as the top executives of the state are of the moderate mold.

There is another faction within the nationalists that is extremist though, which we will label as Ultranationalists for lack of a better term. They are now well positioned in the bureaucracy’s echelon including the military. Ultranationalists tend to be militarists, and under their leadership expect the Chinese state to scale up military budgets and heap up hysteria of a ‘state of siege’ by neighboring countries and traditional world powers.

Ultranationalism could well be the cementing force that will rally the young Chinese behind the 21^st Chinese state, a possibility that is worth watching. Ultranationalism is dreaded by Taiwan, a dread that is now spilling over to the other neighbors of China.

[Philippines, 15 June 2011]

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NATIONS FRAGMENT AS 1ST DECADE CLOSES

Erle Frayne D. Argonza
30 November 2010

A noble 30th of November! We celebrate National Heroes’ Day in the Philippines as the month closes, so may the spirit of self-sacrifice and change-oriented mindset of our founding patriots be with us all!

As the year closes, we continue to witness the lamentable fragmentation of states across the globe. ‘Failed states’ has become a new standard term to label those former colonies that gained their independence after the 2nd world war, but only to fragment later.

Not only that, governments of once dynamic nations have also been continuously battered by exceeding demands to salve ailing economies, sustain employment drives, and reduce poverty. The US government itself, notably its presidency, continues to see powerful forces that render its institutions as lame duck and weak. It has become more ungovernable than before, and this is an alarming development.

Civil societies are likewise eroding in potency, and fragmenting in ideological squabbles and internal weaknesses. Thus, human rights get to be violated all the more each day as the very vanguards of civility and people’s causes couldn’t grapple with the demands of emerging realities and turn out like nuisance entities in the growing dis-order, while fascistic state leaders and gendarmes clamp down dissenters like unwanted pests.

The serial liberal reform agenda have immensely contributed to the shackling of welfare and erosion of the general interest as a whole. With social services at the grassroots reduced to negligible levels by IMF-imposed conditionalities of austerity, protest and rebel movements at the localities have arisen, thus contributing more to the fragmentation and balkanization of once viable states.

The political landscape in the USA is soon to change as the quantitative equation of party representation had been altered. Protest movements have been flexing their muscles across Europe, fighting a diversity of causes such as garbage collection (Italy), nuke waste (Germany), and extension of retirement age (France). Institutional fragmentation is going on in the West/North right now, and few seem to observe them sharply.

Africa and Western Asia are the most vulnerable at this juncture to balkanization and fragmentation. Latin American countries are experiencing a parallel fragmentation too, owing to new global crime problems of drug cartels and drug-related conflicts. Such vulnerabilities render African economies flat on their backs, while Latin American countries will have to work out doubly harder to insulate themselves from the burning economies and polities of the North.

Fortunately, we see the light of the globe in the very positive developments that are going on in East Asia (ASEAN + India + China + Korea) as their respective economies soar the heavens and drive growth for the globe as a whole. Brazil’s socialist president Rousseff was just elected to power, thus sustaining a general welfare program begun by his very popular predecessor Lula.

Light for the globe is coming from the South, from Asia and the dynamic economies of South America. For as long as such growth exemplars abound, the planet is will not fall into the Hades of another Dark Age.

Clearly, it is the northern countries and their dirty operators that foment troubles across the planet, that are in dire straits. As they seemingly stretch out their hands to engage the dynamic South in cooperation, their leaders at the same time bad mouth China and countries of the South like dirty pests. Such doublespeak is sociopathic, and is indicative of the fragmentation and fascistic behavior brewing up North.

For as long as we have leaders and states that operate along a perspective of ‘dialogues of cultures’, the world will continue to be a livable place. The contagion of the ‘dialogue of cultures’ is powerful enough to make waves, neutralizing the demonic ‘clash of civilizations’ peddled by the intellectual prostitutes of the global oligarchy.

Sometime back, our own patriot Andres Bonifacio turned into a rallying banner for inventing a new nation-state. May each and everyone of us go back to the virtues taught to us by our founding patriots, and let us espouse their very own cause for creating strong nation-states while we also continue to enlarge our spheres of influence for a ‘dialogues of cultures’.

Mabuhay kayong lahat! Long live!

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,
UNLADTAU: http://unladtau.wordpress.com,
COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,
BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,
ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

CONFEDERATE POWER & NEO-CONSERVATISM: HATCHERY OF TERROR

Erle Frayne D. Argonza


Good day to all ye fellow global citizens!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Philippines, 04 October 2010]

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com,
UNLADTAU: http://unladtau.wordpress.com,
COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com,
BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com, ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com,
ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com]

NATIONALIST AGENDA RE-VISITED

Hello Partners, Global friends!

I'm back from a sabbatical leave from blogging. A long story about why I was seemingly monastic for a while, so I guess I better extend my apology to you readers and my friend followers.

I'm back and as iconoclastic as ever, trying as much as possible to think outside the box. There are issues that I have to contend with though, which will make me borrow some boxed thoughts just so that I can effectively get my message through.

As a revitalization message, I am re-echoing the nationalist agenda for my country the Philippines and for other countries now that are being threatened by the destructive synarchist operations of the global oligarchy. Nations were created by the people and the Divine Mother, and in no way will we citizens of nation-states just stand still and watch our homes be destroyed by the wars and crimes committed by the 'military industrial complex' of global elites.

Nationalism is a progressive ideology in my country and many states, and my nationalism shouldn't be confused with the moribund nationalism of ethno-nationalists, fascists and nazis. I speak of progressivist nationalism which liberates peoples from shackles of imperialist, fascist, and emerging neo-Bonapartist oppressions.

So, in consonance with this progressivist nationalism, the same nationalism that inspired spiritual leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, I will share thoughts on diverse themes, inclusive of those eventualities related currently to the national polls in the Philippines (May elections).

For all pro-nation and pro-people global citizens, carpe diem!

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR): CORPORATE DEODORANT OF ‘LATE’ CAPITALISM

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

Good afternoon from Manila!

The late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippines’ most brilliant and deviously cunning chief executive, was so elated one day during his tyrannical incumbency. The reason for the unusual elation was this: his soldiers captured Bernabe Buscayno, the first national head of the Maoist insurgent group New People’s Army or NPA, who was a prized catch for the strong man. After some military interrogation, Buscayno was directed to be brought to the presidential palace to face Marcos, who at one point in the encounter, asked Buscayno for a remark. Obliging like a school boy, Buscayno replied that “no matter how evil a person can be, s/he can still be transformed into a good person.”

The enormously witty man Marcos was dumbfounded by the witty remark from the Maoist rebel, for that comment made its mark so clear: Marcos is evil, yet he can still be reformed. Probably pissed off by the stubborn rebel, who never the least conceded to defeat so as to bow in obeisance in recognition of the chief executive, Marcos made sure that Buscayno will suffer miserably inside the prison cell.

You see, I cited that story of Buscayno, as a matter of reflecting on the rationale behind Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR. Buscayno, who has been active in the cooperative movement in the Philippines after his release from prison in 1986 (the year Marcos was overthrown), could very well repeat his witty line when asked about CSR, with a curt reply that “CSR, no matter what evil may be behind it, can be reformed.”

Asians put greater stress on ‘becoming’ as a category more than ‘being’ (Westerner’s granite category), that is why we Asians are inclined to see positive reformations of things or beings whose evils may be irredeemable. And this I can say of CSR: it is an ideological deodorant for Big Business greed, but somehow it can be reformed. To use Organization Development language, it can be ‘re-engineered’.

CSR is already a re-engineering of philanthropy in fact, and belongs squarely to ‘late’ capitalism. Old fogey philanthropy operated with a Victorian underpinning: I possess the money, and you recipient are a Beggar who came to me. You are lucky enough because I am giving you part of my purse, for I have none reserved for you folks save for the theatres, performers and socialite circles thay may the better be served by my extra monies for posterity’s sake. …

Well, Big Business was able to re-engineer its image precisely by reformatting old-fogey philanthropy (which was a reformatted version of medieval charity of the pretentious church Orders or ‘corporations’). CSR appropriated the ‘social development’ practices (social technologies) of NGOs and peoples’ organizations or POs, stressed the supposedly core element of ‘compassion’, and voila! CSR was born! How effable, how sweet, how infinitely Angelic and Godly is this ‘new way’ of helping people by the Gods of Corporate World! Hail capitalism! Hail beneficent Gods!

Deodorant, pure deodorant! Take a look at Lucio Tan, who at one time was the top landlord-capitalist oligarch in the Philippines. A one-time Marcos croney, Tan made enormous fortunes from Marcos’ time to the present, probably with start-up capital coming from the dictator’s purse (but which Tan refuses to admit in public). Tan’s fortunes made him land in the Fortune 500 (world’s richest), yet he was also found wanting in the manner of paying taxes. His unpaid taxes may be worth P80 Billion (almost $2 Billion) today, and is still growing, yet not a single cent was paid to the state by this notorious oligarch for those ‘tax evasion’ cases…Yet Tan has captured the eyes of fund recipients from his CSR give-away items, even as he is fondly regarded as an angelic patron by the same armies of beggar recipients. (Beggar here means not the literal beggar, but the condescending image of oligarchs on recipients: filthy Eaters, ‘useless eaters’).

Capitalism is a system that is founded on greed and hoarding, and no sagely or wise personage, or the most evolved beings could ever rationalize capitalism as a system that will sustain the drive towards Nirvana or represents the final liberation of humans from their subhumanizing hovels of dense life. Besides, this current phase of capitalism—‘late’ capitalism—is now DEAD, and the dead system is rapidly crashing down. Only those materialistic ‘eaters’ whose perceptions are as delimited as their own astigmatic perceptions of reality principles can ever justify that capitalism is still working, for the reality we have today is that of ‘virtual economy’ of the most perverted, evil greed of all.

If CSR would have to survive the times, as ‘late’ capitalism is now DEAD, then now is the time to refurbish its image. Because its life is deeply embedded in the corporate purses, this image-change is hard to imagine at all. But being of the Asian-yogic way of life, being a mystic and development expert at the same time (though now in the twilight of social development engagements), I wish to give CSR a chance and see it grow along the trajectory of the hereafter that was declared by Buscayno: transformed from ‘evil’ to ‘good’.

I’d end this piece by clarifying to you a reality we know among mystics: demons can also return to the Path of Light. Yes, Fellows, those Belzeebub abominations, those Asuras or Demonyos, those Diaboli, or whatever term you may use for the same species of evil demented beings, many of those abominations have already returned to the state-of-balance and are now taking the Path of Light back to the Almighty I Am Presence (God)! Yes! CSR can!

[28 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]