Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza
Nutrition-related issues and problems in the Philippines constitute a long list. Among all the related issues and problems, hunger stands out as the most highlighted today. While there is no question about highlighting hunger and addressing it with determination, over-focusing on this single issue tends to mask the other issues involved.
Among the emerging issues and problems in nutrition, I would handily pinpoint obesity as the most focal. Needless to say, it challenges development stakeholders to highlight the issue as well, and address it on the same level as hunger is being addressed today. Addressing it would mean resorting to public policy tools, strategies and programs at a national level, and creating necessary institutional frames to accelerate the problem’s solution.
While doing the study on fair trade & food security for the KAISAMPALAD in 2005 (this NGO is a national center for fair trade & food security), I stumbled upon both problems of hunger and obesity. At that time, the latest data from the Social Weather Stations regarding hunger indicated a 12% incidence, a figure that I found alarming as anything past the 8.5% index is considered significant. So I included the hunger issue among those food insecurity ailments that must be salved pronto, recommended policy measures, and even recommended the formation of a Hunger Fund as the multi-stakeholder executor of the anti-hunger mission.
The same study made me stumble upon the findings of nutritionists of the state’s Food and Nutrition Research Institute, which indicated a 25% obesity at the turn of the millennium. That average had its expressed distribution among age groups, with varying indices per age bracket. What was alarming at that time was the 25% Phliippine obesity rate was already 5% above the global average of 20% (the USA’s was 66%).
While I was aghast at the obesity incidence, admittedly I wasn’t prepared to tackle it then, and so I remained silent about the matter in the final research report, save for citing indices of over-weight across age brackets. Today the obesity incidence had risen well above the previous 25%, and certain popular media estimates indicate well pass the 30% mark already (we still need some more update nutrition research on the subject).
Obesity is markedly higher than hunger in the Philippines, surpassing the latter by over double the incidence. The problem with hunger studies is that the methodology is often subjective, since they employ surveys (e.g. asking the informant if s/he has been eating sufficiently or not. In contrast, obesity measures are objective and very exact, as calibration entails the use of weighing scales administered by licensed nutritionists.
I admit that I still am relatively unprepared to tackle the issue as of this day, that is as a development issue. I can only think now of the typical lifestyle intervention to address it, such as combining physical regimen with diet program and a total lifestyle change. Being athletic and a health buff (I was formerly Silver Medalist in national powerlifting –middleweight division), I often offer myself as a prototype of an optimally balanced physical-nutritional wellness person, even as I can easily lecture on lifestyle change and personal intervention to address obesity.
I would end this piece by tossing the query to my fellow Filipinos in the country and to friends overseas: will Manila continue to ignore obesity altogether?
[Writ 28 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Finalist-PhilBlogAwards 2010
Finalist for society, politics, history blogs
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
DEPOPULATION, GENOCIDE: GLOBAL OLIGARCHY’S POPULATION AGENDA
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza
Good morning from Manila!
Those more aware fellows on Earth may be reflecting right now about the long-term agenda of the global oligarchy regarding population. We note the rise of the neo-Malthusians within and outside the UN and international bodies from the 70s onwards, their position buttressing the toxic ‘greenies’ demonization of humans as the cause of the planet’s predicament.
The greenies’ and Malthusian’s causes do tie up, as they are among the paid Pied Pipers of the global oligarchy for the long-term agenda of depopulating the planet. The global elite’s disdain of masses of humans, who they refer to as ‘useless Eaters’, do make sense when we reflect about the wars, pandemics, induced cyclones and earthquakes, and many more phenomena that tend to reduce the populations en masse at any given instance.
Below is a summary of the said long-term agenda, culled from the database of the Executive Intelligence Review. See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylIoU_Hnt4k
[28 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
==================================================
WORLD DEPOPULATION IS TOP NSA AGENDA: CLUB OF ROME
A Timely Repost:
The Haig-Kissinger depopulation policy by Lonnie Wolfe
Special Report EIR (Executive Intelligence Review) March 10, 1981
Investigations by EIR have uncovered a planning apparatus operating outside the control of the White House whose sole purpose is to reduce the world's population by 2 billion people through war, famine, disease and any other means necessary. This apparatus, which includes various levels of the government is determining U.S. foreign policy. In every political hotspot -- El Salvador, the so-called arc of crisis in the Persian Gulf, Latin America, Southeast Asia and in Africa- the goal of U.S. foreign policy is population reduction. The targeting agency for the operation is the National Security Council's Ad Hoc Group on Population Policy. Its policy-planning group is in the U.S. State Department's Office of Population Affairs, established in 1975 by Henry Kissinger. This group drafted the Carter administration's Global 2000 document, which calls for global population reduction, and the same apparatus is conducting the civil war in El Salvador as a conscious depopulation project.
"There is a single theme behind all our work-we must reduce population levels," said Thomas Ferguson, the Latin American case officer for the State Department's Office of Population Affairs (OPA). "Either they [governments] do it our way, through nice clean methods or they will get the kind of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran, or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it "The professionals," said Ferguson, "aren't interested in lowering population for humanitarian reasons.
That sounds nice. We look at resources and environmental constraints. We look at our strategic needs, and we say that this country must lower its population-or else we will have trouble. So steps are taken. El Salvador is an example where our failure to lower population by simple means has created the basis for a national security crisis. The government of El Salvador failed to use our programs to lower their population. Now they get a civil war because of it.... There will be dislocation and food shortages. They still have too many people there." Civil wars are somewhat drawn-out ways to reduce population, the OPA official added. "The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like in Africa or through disease like the Black Death," all of which might occur in El Salvador. Ferguson's OPA monitors populations in the Third World and maps strategies to reduce them. Its budget for FY 1980 was $190 million; for FY 198l, it will be $220 million. The Global 2000 report calls for doubling that figure. The sphere of Kissinger In 1975, OPA was brought under a reorganized State Department Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental, and Scientific Affairs-- a body created by Henry Kissinger. The agency was assigned to carry out the directives of the NSC Ad Hoc Group. According to an NSC spokesman, Kissinger initiated both groups after discussion with leaders of the Club of Rome during the 1974 population conferences in Bucharest and Rome. The Club of Rome, controlled by Europe's black nobility, is the primary promotion agency for the genocidal reduction of world population levels. The Ad Hoc Group was given "high priority" by the Carter administration, through the intervention of National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretaries of State Cyrus Vance and Edmund Muskie. According to OPA expert Ferguson, Kissinger initiated a full about-face on U.S. development policy toward the Third World. "For a long time," Ferguson stated, "people here were timid" They listened to arguments from Third World leaders that said that the best contraceptive was economic reform and development. So we pushed development programs, and we helped create a population time bomb. "We are letting people breed like flies without allowing for natural causes to keep population down. We raised the birth survival rates, extended life-spans by lowering death rates, and did nothing about lowering birth rates. That policy is finished. We are saying with Global 2000 and in real policy that you must lower population rates. Population reduction and control is now our primary policy objective- then you can have some development."Accordingly, the Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental, and Scientific Affairs has consistently blocked industrialization policies in the Third World, denying developing nations access to nuclear energy technology--the policies that would enable countries to sustain a growing population. According to State Department sources, and Ferguson himself, Alexander Haig is a "firm believer" in population control. "We will go into a country," said Ferguson, "and say, here is your goddamn development plan. Throw it out the window. Start looking at the size of your population and figure out what must be done to reduce it."If you don't like that, if you don't want to choose to do it through planning, then you'll have an El Salvador or an Iran, or worse, a Cambodia."According to an NSC spokesman, the United States now shares the view of former World Bank President Robert McNamara that the "population crisis" is a greater threat to U.S. national security interests than "nuclear annihilation." "Every hot spot in the world corresponds to a population crisis point," said Ferguson who would rename Brzezinski's arc of crisis doctrine the "arc of population crisis." This is corroborated by statements in the NSC Ad Hoc Group's April 1980 report. There is "an increased potential for social unrest, economic and political instability, mass migration and possible international conflicts over control of land and resources," says the NSC report. It then cites "demographic pressures" as key to understanding "examples of recent warfare in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, El Salvador. Honduras, and Ethiopia, and the growing potential forinstability in such places as Turkey, the Philippines, Central America, Iran, and Pakistan." Through extraordinary efforts, the Ad Hoc Group and OPA estimate that they may be able to keep a billion people from being born through contraceptive programs. But as the Ad Hoc Group's report states, the best efforts of the Shah of Iran to institute "clean programs" of birth control failed to make a significant dent in the country's birth rate. The promise of jobs, through an ambitious industrialization program, encouraged migration toward "overcrowded cities" like Teheran. Now under Ayatollah Khomeini, the "clean programs" have been dismantled. The government may make progress because it has a program "to induce up to half of Teheran's 6 million residents to relocate, as well as possible measures to keep rural migrants from moving to the cities." Behind the back of the President Ferguson and others involved with the OPA and NSC group maintain that the United States will continue a foreign policy based on a genocidal reduction of the world's population. "We have a network in place of cothinkers in the government," said the OPA case officer. "We keep going, no matter who is in the White House." But Ferguson reports that the "White House" does not really understand what they are saying and that the President "thinks that population policy means how do we speed up population increase. "As long as no one says differently," said Ferguson, "we will continue to do our jobs. "
Good morning from Manila!
Those more aware fellows on Earth may be reflecting right now about the long-term agenda of the global oligarchy regarding population. We note the rise of the neo-Malthusians within and outside the UN and international bodies from the 70s onwards, their position buttressing the toxic ‘greenies’ demonization of humans as the cause of the planet’s predicament.
The greenies’ and Malthusian’s causes do tie up, as they are among the paid Pied Pipers of the global oligarchy for the long-term agenda of depopulating the planet. The global elite’s disdain of masses of humans, who they refer to as ‘useless Eaters’, do make sense when we reflect about the wars, pandemics, induced cyclones and earthquakes, and many more phenomena that tend to reduce the populations en masse at any given instance.
Below is a summary of the said long-term agenda, culled from the database of the Executive Intelligence Review. See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylIoU_Hnt4k
[28 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
==================================================
WORLD DEPOPULATION IS TOP NSA AGENDA: CLUB OF ROME
A Timely Repost:
The Haig-Kissinger depopulation policy by Lonnie Wolfe
Special Report EIR (Executive Intelligence Review) March 10, 1981
Investigations by EIR have uncovered a planning apparatus operating outside the control of the White House whose sole purpose is to reduce the world's population by 2 billion people through war, famine, disease and any other means necessary. This apparatus, which includes various levels of the government is determining U.S. foreign policy. In every political hotspot -- El Salvador, the so-called arc of crisis in the Persian Gulf, Latin America, Southeast Asia and in Africa- the goal of U.S. foreign policy is population reduction. The targeting agency for the operation is the National Security Council's Ad Hoc Group on Population Policy. Its policy-planning group is in the U.S. State Department's Office of Population Affairs, established in 1975 by Henry Kissinger. This group drafted the Carter administration's Global 2000 document, which calls for global population reduction, and the same apparatus is conducting the civil war in El Salvador as a conscious depopulation project.
"There is a single theme behind all our work-we must reduce population levels," said Thomas Ferguson, the Latin American case officer for the State Department's Office of Population Affairs (OPA). "Either they [governments] do it our way, through nice clean methods or they will get the kind of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran, or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it "The professionals," said Ferguson, "aren't interested in lowering population for humanitarian reasons.
That sounds nice. We look at resources and environmental constraints. We look at our strategic needs, and we say that this country must lower its population-or else we will have trouble. So steps are taken. El Salvador is an example where our failure to lower population by simple means has created the basis for a national security crisis. The government of El Salvador failed to use our programs to lower their population. Now they get a civil war because of it.... There will be dislocation and food shortages. They still have too many people there." Civil wars are somewhat drawn-out ways to reduce population, the OPA official added. "The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like in Africa or through disease like the Black Death," all of which might occur in El Salvador. Ferguson's OPA monitors populations in the Third World and maps strategies to reduce them. Its budget for FY 1980 was $190 million; for FY 198l, it will be $220 million. The Global 2000 report calls for doubling that figure. The sphere of Kissinger In 1975, OPA was brought under a reorganized State Department Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental, and Scientific Affairs-- a body created by Henry Kissinger. The agency was assigned to carry out the directives of the NSC Ad Hoc Group. According to an NSC spokesman, Kissinger initiated both groups after discussion with leaders of the Club of Rome during the 1974 population conferences in Bucharest and Rome. The Club of Rome, controlled by Europe's black nobility, is the primary promotion agency for the genocidal reduction of world population levels. The Ad Hoc Group was given "high priority" by the Carter administration, through the intervention of National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretaries of State Cyrus Vance and Edmund Muskie. According to OPA expert Ferguson, Kissinger initiated a full about-face on U.S. development policy toward the Third World. "For a long time," Ferguson stated, "people here were timid" They listened to arguments from Third World leaders that said that the best contraceptive was economic reform and development. So we pushed development programs, and we helped create a population time bomb. "We are letting people breed like flies without allowing for natural causes to keep population down. We raised the birth survival rates, extended life-spans by lowering death rates, and did nothing about lowering birth rates. That policy is finished. We are saying with Global 2000 and in real policy that you must lower population rates. Population reduction and control is now our primary policy objective- then you can have some development."Accordingly, the Bureau of Oceans, International Environmental, and Scientific Affairs has consistently blocked industrialization policies in the Third World, denying developing nations access to nuclear energy technology--the policies that would enable countries to sustain a growing population. According to State Department sources, and Ferguson himself, Alexander Haig is a "firm believer" in population control. "We will go into a country," said Ferguson, "and say, here is your goddamn development plan. Throw it out the window. Start looking at the size of your population and figure out what must be done to reduce it."If you don't like that, if you don't want to choose to do it through planning, then you'll have an El Salvador or an Iran, or worse, a Cambodia."According to an NSC spokesman, the United States now shares the view of former World Bank President Robert McNamara that the "population crisis" is a greater threat to U.S. national security interests than "nuclear annihilation." "Every hot spot in the world corresponds to a population crisis point," said Ferguson who would rename Brzezinski's arc of crisis doctrine the "arc of population crisis." This is corroborated by statements in the NSC Ad Hoc Group's April 1980 report. There is "an increased potential for social unrest, economic and political instability, mass migration and possible international conflicts over control of land and resources," says the NSC report. It then cites "demographic pressures" as key to understanding "examples of recent warfare in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, El Salvador. Honduras, and Ethiopia, and the growing potential forinstability in such places as Turkey, the Philippines, Central America, Iran, and Pakistan." Through extraordinary efforts, the Ad Hoc Group and OPA estimate that they may be able to keep a billion people from being born through contraceptive programs. But as the Ad Hoc Group's report states, the best efforts of the Shah of Iran to institute "clean programs" of birth control failed to make a significant dent in the country's birth rate. The promise of jobs, through an ambitious industrialization program, encouraged migration toward "overcrowded cities" like Teheran. Now under Ayatollah Khomeini, the "clean programs" have been dismantled. The government may make progress because it has a program "to induce up to half of Teheran's 6 million residents to relocate, as well as possible measures to keep rural migrants from moving to the cities." Behind the back of the President Ferguson and others involved with the OPA and NSC group maintain that the United States will continue a foreign policy based on a genocidal reduction of the world's population. "We have a network in place of cothinkers in the government," said the OPA case officer. "We keep going, no matter who is in the White House." But Ferguson reports that the "White House" does not really understand what they are saying and that the President "thinks that population policy means how do we speed up population increase. "As long as no one says differently," said Ferguson, "we will continue to do our jobs. "
Monday, July 28, 2008
RE-ECHOING ROOSEVELT’S ‘PHYSICAL ECONOMY’ SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
My beloved country remembers the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt very well. It was his presidency that paved the way for preparing the Philippines as an independent state, by first granting the country the status of a commonwealth with its own constitution (1935 Constitution), and by permitting such domestic government to prepare the legislative measures and policy environment for a future independent state (granted independence in 1946).
Roosevelt’s regime also paved the way for the developmental paradigm that would propel the Philippines along the road to industrialization (we now term this as Import-Substitution Industrialization). The paradigm, based on the works of previous thinkers Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich von List, and the exemplar development policies of Abraham Lincoln, puts great stress on the ‘physical economy’ as the foundation for a prosperous and mighty economy in the long run.
Roosevelt further went on to cogitate that colonialism should fold up after the war, and that all former colonies must follow the road to development and prosperity, this being the road to genuine international peace and cooperation. The international doctrine of Roosevelt became the foundation for post-war cooperation, and buttressed the founding of the Bretton Woods agencies whose mandates were propelled precisely by the physical economy framework, the need for undertaking development in the former colonies, and the need to regulate national currencies via fixed exchange rate backed by the gold standard.
The current circumstance is now too remote from the ‘physical economy’ policy regime of the post-war era. Economic liberalization policies led to globalization and the galvanization of the ‘virtual economy’ based on predatory finance. The ‘virtual economy’ had led to de-industrialization, agricultural decay, decline of S&T, and deteriorating infrastructures in the most affected economies, and had fragmented developing states into ‘failed states’.
The global financial system created by the relentless liberalization of financial, fiscal and monetary policies across borders, had already collapsed and is beyond salvation using the present intervention tools that now seem to be burnt out tools altogether. A global conference must be convened most urgently to carve out a new financial architecture based on a ‘physical economy’ framework, and to decisively criminalize predatory finance.
Below is a press release of relevant notes on the global financial collapse, by the economist Lyndon LaRouche.
[27 July 2008, Quezon City, Metromanila. Thanks to the Executive Intelligence Review database news.]
===========================================
LaRouche: Financial System Is Dead, Cannot Be Saved
July 13, 2008 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
With the U.S. and British financial press full of wild speculation about how the Bush Administration is going to intervene Monday morning, to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lyndon LaRouche today issued a sharp, preemptive warning: "The financial system is already dead. It cannot be saved."
LaRouche expanded: "If any of the reports of a planned bailout of the two big mortgage lenders, by the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve are true, I say, 'Forget it.' Any such efforts to delay the funeral of the present global financial and monetary system will only make matters worse. A bailout will cause an accelerated hyperinflationary explosion, far worse than the hyperinflation that hit Weimar Germany in the autumn of 1923. Back then," LaRouche continued, "Germany had a gun pointed to its head. The gun was called the Versailles Treaty, and Germany had no choice. Today, the United States has a choice. I spelled out the choice in numerous recent locations."
LaRouche cited his recent call for the Federal Reserve to immediately raise interest rates to 4 percent, as a stop-gap measure to prevent a massive flight of institutional capital from the banking system. He demanded that this move be accompanied by clear statements from the Fed that there will be no more Bear Stearns-style bailouts of the speculative bubble. Instead, the Fed will protect the chartered Federal and state banks, through bankruptcy reorganization, on the model of what Franklin Roosevelt did, when he first took office in March 1933, and faced the same kind of collapse of the banking system that we face now. "Only, today's crisis is orders of magnitude worse," LaRouche added, "due to the massive leveraging by the banks and other financial institutions."
LaRouche warned that Bush Administration and Fed officials, like Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, may be on an "ego trip—unwilling to admit that they have failed miserably. But the reality is that they, like the George W. Bush Administration, have failed, with wretched incompetence. For one thing, they failed to reverse the Alan Greenspan monster bubble, which is now blowing."
LaRouche added that there is no way to even estimate the magnitude of the financial bubble, that has now blown. "The collapse of Fannie and Freddie means the end of the system. And that has already happened, and nothing can be done, within the rules of the current system, to solve that problem. We can keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alive, but only through actions reforming the system, in terms echoing the precedents of President Franklin Roosevelt, that in ways appropiate for the actual conditions of today.
"The only alternative is to implement my three-step solution to the crisis," LaRouche concluded. "If the so-called leadership in Washington is unwilling to do that, then this financial system, and, by extension, these United States, are finished. It may be a tough reality to swallow, but it is the only reality that there is."
Lyndon LaRouche will be delivering an international webcast on Tuesday, July 22, 2008, at 1:00 p.m. (EDT). The webcast takes place on the first anniversary of LaRouche's July 25, 2007 Washington, D.C. webcast address, in which he announced that the financial system had already crashed. Days later, the collapse of Countrywide, and other major mortgage lenders, and the blowout of Bear Stearns, illustrated that LaRouche was 100% correct.
My beloved country remembers the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt very well. It was his presidency that paved the way for preparing the Philippines as an independent state, by first granting the country the status of a commonwealth with its own constitution (1935 Constitution), and by permitting such domestic government to prepare the legislative measures and policy environment for a future independent state (granted independence in 1946).
Roosevelt’s regime also paved the way for the developmental paradigm that would propel the Philippines along the road to industrialization (we now term this as Import-Substitution Industrialization). The paradigm, based on the works of previous thinkers Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich von List, and the exemplar development policies of Abraham Lincoln, puts great stress on the ‘physical economy’ as the foundation for a prosperous and mighty economy in the long run.
Roosevelt further went on to cogitate that colonialism should fold up after the war, and that all former colonies must follow the road to development and prosperity, this being the road to genuine international peace and cooperation. The international doctrine of Roosevelt became the foundation for post-war cooperation, and buttressed the founding of the Bretton Woods agencies whose mandates were propelled precisely by the physical economy framework, the need for undertaking development in the former colonies, and the need to regulate national currencies via fixed exchange rate backed by the gold standard.
The current circumstance is now too remote from the ‘physical economy’ policy regime of the post-war era. Economic liberalization policies led to globalization and the galvanization of the ‘virtual economy’ based on predatory finance. The ‘virtual economy’ had led to de-industrialization, agricultural decay, decline of S&T, and deteriorating infrastructures in the most affected economies, and had fragmented developing states into ‘failed states’.
The global financial system created by the relentless liberalization of financial, fiscal and monetary policies across borders, had already collapsed and is beyond salvation using the present intervention tools that now seem to be burnt out tools altogether. A global conference must be convened most urgently to carve out a new financial architecture based on a ‘physical economy’ framework, and to decisively criminalize predatory finance.
Below is a press release of relevant notes on the global financial collapse, by the economist Lyndon LaRouche.
[27 July 2008, Quezon City, Metromanila. Thanks to the Executive Intelligence Review database news.]
===========================================
LaRouche: Financial System Is Dead, Cannot Be Saved
July 13, 2008 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
With the U.S. and British financial press full of wild speculation about how the Bush Administration is going to intervene Monday morning, to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lyndon LaRouche today issued a sharp, preemptive warning: "The financial system is already dead. It cannot be saved."
LaRouche expanded: "If any of the reports of a planned bailout of the two big mortgage lenders, by the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve are true, I say, 'Forget it.' Any such efforts to delay the funeral of the present global financial and monetary system will only make matters worse. A bailout will cause an accelerated hyperinflationary explosion, far worse than the hyperinflation that hit Weimar Germany in the autumn of 1923. Back then," LaRouche continued, "Germany had a gun pointed to its head. The gun was called the Versailles Treaty, and Germany had no choice. Today, the United States has a choice. I spelled out the choice in numerous recent locations."
LaRouche cited his recent call for the Federal Reserve to immediately raise interest rates to 4 percent, as a stop-gap measure to prevent a massive flight of institutional capital from the banking system. He demanded that this move be accompanied by clear statements from the Fed that there will be no more Bear Stearns-style bailouts of the speculative bubble. Instead, the Fed will protect the chartered Federal and state banks, through bankruptcy reorganization, on the model of what Franklin Roosevelt did, when he first took office in March 1933, and faced the same kind of collapse of the banking system that we face now. "Only, today's crisis is orders of magnitude worse," LaRouche added, "due to the massive leveraging by the banks and other financial institutions."
LaRouche warned that Bush Administration and Fed officials, like Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke, may be on an "ego trip—unwilling to admit that they have failed miserably. But the reality is that they, like the George W. Bush Administration, have failed, with wretched incompetence. For one thing, they failed to reverse the Alan Greenspan monster bubble, which is now blowing."
LaRouche added that there is no way to even estimate the magnitude of the financial bubble, that has now blown. "The collapse of Fannie and Freddie means the end of the system. And that has already happened, and nothing can be done, within the rules of the current system, to solve that problem. We can keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alive, but only through actions reforming the system, in terms echoing the precedents of President Franklin Roosevelt, that in ways appropiate for the actual conditions of today.
"The only alternative is to implement my three-step solution to the crisis," LaRouche concluded. "If the so-called leadership in Washington is unwilling to do that, then this financial system, and, by extension, these United States, are finished. It may be a tough reality to swallow, but it is the only reality that there is."
Lyndon LaRouche will be delivering an international webcast on Tuesday, July 22, 2008, at 1:00 p.m. (EDT). The webcast takes place on the first anniversary of LaRouche's July 25, 2007 Washington, D.C. webcast address, in which he announced that the financial system had already crashed. Days later, the collapse of Countrywide, and other major mortgage lenders, and the blowout of Bear Stearns, illustrated that LaRouche was 100% correct.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
CLIMATE CHANGE: PLANETARY OR GALACTIC?... ROCKET SCIENTIST BACKTRACKS GLOBAL WARMING
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
We cannot deny, as shown by evidences, that Earth changes are taking place today. There are no fixed interpretations of the changes though, and the scientific community is the least unified about such interpretations.
Whether the fixed idea of ‘global warming is carbon-based monstrosity’ is fully accepted across the sciences and civic groups remains as a hot issue. It is, for one thing, too contentious, and in my opinion as a social scientist, too reductionist with pugnacious eco-fascist underpinnings.
Astronomers have recently reported updates about all planets of the solar system undergoing changes in their polar areas. Even the sun does not escape its own equivalent changes that have repercussions on the electromagnetic belt of our very own planet. Unfortunately, global Establishment media and information niches have released the news in separate, isolated packets so that they won’t be noticed by the public, thus sustaining the rather erroneous and suspicious fixed idea of a carbon-based or human intervention-induced Earth changes.
Below is a news item about an Australian rocket scientist who was previously among the most vocal interpellators of a carbon-based global warming problematic. The same scientist has now backtracked on his previous statement, indicating as such the disagreements within the scientific community about the subject.
[27 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to the Executive Intelligence Review database news.]
===================================================
Former Global Warming Rocket Scientist Cools to Reality
July 18, 2008 (EIRNS)—An Australian Greenhouse Office consultant from 1999 to 2005, David Evans, now slams the global warming theory he once supported. In an opinion piece in Rupert Murdoch's national newspaper, The Australian, Evans stated that: I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
"We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet."
Evans said he initially thought the evidence seemed "pretty good," but had admitted it was not conclusive. Now he says straight out: "There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. [They are] going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise."
We cannot deny, as shown by evidences, that Earth changes are taking place today. There are no fixed interpretations of the changes though, and the scientific community is the least unified about such interpretations.
Whether the fixed idea of ‘global warming is carbon-based monstrosity’ is fully accepted across the sciences and civic groups remains as a hot issue. It is, for one thing, too contentious, and in my opinion as a social scientist, too reductionist with pugnacious eco-fascist underpinnings.
Astronomers have recently reported updates about all planets of the solar system undergoing changes in their polar areas. Even the sun does not escape its own equivalent changes that have repercussions on the electromagnetic belt of our very own planet. Unfortunately, global Establishment media and information niches have released the news in separate, isolated packets so that they won’t be noticed by the public, thus sustaining the rather erroneous and suspicious fixed idea of a carbon-based or human intervention-induced Earth changes.
Below is a news item about an Australian rocket scientist who was previously among the most vocal interpellators of a carbon-based global warming problematic. The same scientist has now backtracked on his previous statement, indicating as such the disagreements within the scientific community about the subject.
[27 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to the Executive Intelligence Review database news.]
===================================================
Former Global Warming Rocket Scientist Cools to Reality
July 18, 2008 (EIRNS)—An Australian Greenhouse Office consultant from 1999 to 2005, David Evans, now slams the global warming theory he once supported. In an opinion piece in Rupert Murdoch's national newspaper, The Australian, Evans stated that: I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
"We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet."
Evans said he initially thought the evidence seemed "pretty good," but had admitted it was not conclusive. Now he says straight out: "There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. [They are] going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise."
Saturday, July 26, 2008
ICC: IMPERIAL CRIMINAL COURT?
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
Good morning!
The decision of the International Criminal Court, which now seems to be a thin disguise for the Imperial Criminal Court of the European oligarchy, still rings loudly across the globe today. The decision had unlocked grave repercussions on the African continent as a whole, as it further threatens sovereign nation-states and turn them into hovels of failed states, as exemplified by Sudan.
Below is a an article culled from the Executive Intelligence Review that perceives the ICC decision as a handiwork of the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy.
Enjoy your read!
[26 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
===========================================
`Imperial Criminal Court'Opens Gates of Hell in Africa
by Lawrence K. Freeman
British imperialists escalated their ongoing destabilization of Africa on July 14, with the decision by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), to file charges of "genocide and crimes against humanity" against Sudanese President Gen. Omar al-Bashir. The British and their collaborators want to eliminate the sovereignty of African nations, so that Africa's population can be greatly reduced, thus ensuring that Africa does not "use up" its vast resource wealth for its own development, and for trade with Asia, China in particular. There is no mistake of the timing, the intent, and the forces behind this unprecedented action, which is premised on completely false charges. It is intended to blow apart Sudan's North-South peace settlement, plunging the country even deeper into civil war. The consequences of the ICC's decision, if not reversed, not only would be devastating to Sudan, and the stability of the Horn of Africa, but because of Sudan's strategic importance, the entire continent would bleed.
The hand of the British and the hypocrisy of the ICC's claims are revealed by the fact that one of the major funders and creators of the ICC is British agent, billionaire speculator, and former Nazi collaborator George Soros. Upon hearing of Soros's role in the formation of the ICC, through his Open Society Initiative and Justice Initiative networks, Lyndon LaRouche said: "If the International Criminal Court is to have any claim on credibility, let them take up the case of a real Nazi collaborator." If anyone should be put on trial before the ICC, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, it is George Soros (see Documentation, below).
The immediate danger to Sudan and Africa is that if the ICC is successful in de-legitimizing Bashir's Presidency, then negotiations between the government and opposition groups become impossible. As one African from the Washington diplomatic corps told me following the release of the ICC charges: "We have two options for Sudan. One is to maintain a positive peace process. The other is for chaos and the collapse into a failed state."
International opposition to the ICC move came swiftly. On July 14, in talks with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Paris, according to the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that the ICC escalation threatens to foil negotiation efforts between the Sudan government and rebels in Darfur. Egypt has promised to do all it can to avert any measure against the Sudanese leader that could further destabilize the country.
The Africa Union (AU) also denounced the ICC move. "We would like ICC to suspend its decision to seek al-Bashir's arrest for a moment until we sort out the primary problems in Darfur and southern Sudan," Tanzanian Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Membe said, speaking on behalf of Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, who chairs the African Union. "If you arrest al-Bashir," he continued, "you will create a leadership vacuum in Sudan. The outcome could be equal to that of Iraq. There would be an increase in anarchy, there would be an increase in civil war. Fighting between Chad and Sudan would increase."
The 22-member Arab League called for a July 19 emergency meeting of its foreign ministers, at the request of the Sudan government, to discuss how to diplomatically foil the ICC provocation. Arab League chief Amr Moussa was to travel to Sudan July 20, to report to President al-Bashir.
According to the Middle East Times on July 15, China, which is one of Sudan's major investors and buyers of its oil, expressed deep "concern and worry." The ICC "should be conducive to maintaining the stability of the Sudanese situation, and to the proper resolution of the problems of Darfur, not the contrary," a Chinese government statement said.
Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, called on the UN to "exercise restraint and find solutions that will help the people of Sudan and resolve the crisis in Darfur."
The Times added that Sudan's main opposition parties and critics of the Bashir regime have united with the government in rejecting the ICC decision, and vowed to prevent the President from being prosecuted in the international court, calling this a violation of the country's sovereignty and independence.
Blowing Up the Peace Process
Andrew Natsios, former U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan (2005-07), responded immediately to the indictment by the ICC with a statement entitled "A Disaster in the Making." After cautioning human rights groups focussed on Darfur against applauding the ICC's decision, he warned them "to think again about their enthusiasm." Natsios went on to say: "The question all of us must ask who care about what happens to the long-suffering Sudanese people is this: what are the peaceful options for a way out of the crisis facing the country and what measures are likely to move the country closer to that way out rather than further away? Without a political settlement Sudan may go the way of Somalia, pre-genocide Rwanda, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo." He concludes: "This indictment may well shut off the last remaining hope for a political settlement for the country."
Over recent months, saner forces in the Untied States, including Natsios, have been working with leaders in Sudan to prevent the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) from failing. The CPA ended 20 years of bloodshed between the North and the South, and led to the formation of a Unity Government composed of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement representing the South, and the National Congress Party for the North. Despite difficult moments, the CPA has prevented the country from returning to North-South war, and it is hoped that it will serve as a model to solve other conflicts in Sudan, including that in Darfur.
After fighting broke out between soldiers from both sides in Abyei (an oil-producing region whose boundaries are in dispute) earlier this year, concerned people recognized that if the CPA were allowed to go down, all of Sudan would go down with it. After the signing of the CPA in January 2005, international attention and money were diverted from the full implementation of the agreement, into the Darfur crisis, which has only become more intractable. Allegations of genocide against the Bashir government, promoted by the media, Hollywood celebrities, and former and current British, U.S., and European government officials, has been part of the dangerous and failed policy of "regime change." The claim that the Bashir government is pursuing a so-called Arab cleansing of the so-called Africans in the Darfur region is simplistically untrue, meant for simpletons who are willing victims of "group think" propaganda. In Darfur, almost all the people doing the killing and being killed are Muslims, in a complex, multi-nation war that involves Chad, Libya, the Central African Republic, and other countries not in the immediate conflict zone.
Sudan's Strategic Value
To understand the strategic importance of Sudan, start with the mighty Nile River,
which flows north from Sudan through Egypt before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. Think about what would happen to the 80 million Egyptians, 25% of whom inhabit Cairo, and who depend on the Nile for their very existence, if Sudan implodes through internecine warfare. Who will honor the 1959 water agreement between Egypt and Sudan? What will the Egyptian government do if the flow of water from the Nile is interrupted? Will they not be forced to act, militarily if necessary? Now, think about the countries that border Sudan, all of which are suffering from severe political and economic troubles: Chad, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Who benefits, and who will suffer from the decision made by Soros's ICC, acting as a "world court" over and above the interest of the nation-state?
Now think about what Sudan could be for Africa. It is the largest nation on the continent, with the proven potential to feed all of Africa, if it were assisted in managing its water systems, mechanizing its agriculture, and providing irrigation. Instead of sliding into chaos, Sudan could become the "breadbasket" of Africa. The completion of the Merowe Dam, in collaboration with China, provides a glimpse of the potential for food production that is possible with basic infrastructure. (See "Defying Britain's Genocide System: Sudan's Great Project in Agriculture," EIR, July 18, 2008). What is the true potential of Sudan and Africa, if credits for long-term investments in water systems, high-speed rail transportation, and nuclear power were extended by the West, instead of formenting wars and destabilizing poor nations? Sudan with its size, location, and agricultural potential can play a central role in the development of Africa, if we are wise enough to assist it for that purpose.
Why Africa Is Targeted
Look at a map of Africa. Start in Nigeria and let your eyes move east across Sudan to Ethiopia and Somalia. Then look south from Sudan through Kenya, to Tanzania, across Zambia, to Zimbabwe, and finally to South Africa, which represents a portion of Britain's old colonial empire. Now look at the destabilization of these former colonies, including the recent elections: Nigeria's flawed Presidential election in April 2007, the organized mayhem that followed Kenya's December 2007 Presidential election, and the crisis organized from outside following Zimbabwe's March 2008 Presidential election. And what do you think is being planned for South Africa's Presidential election in 2009? Will there even be a Sudan in which to have national elections that are presently scheduled for the Spring of 2009?
The British imperialists have never given up their desire to eliminate even the semblance of an independent nation in Africa, that could offer resistance to their policy of controlling the abundant, rich land, and vast resource wealth. To this very day, British Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, like his predecessor, Tony Blair, cannot accept the fact that Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and millions of courageous Zimbabweans will not submit to British control of their nation, and will not return the land that rightfully belongs to them. The people of Zimbabwe have fought longer and harder than any other African nation against the heirs of Cecil Rhodes, the founder of British imperialism in Africa; and Zimbabwe still today represents a bulwark against British re-colonialization. Many otherwise thoughtful people refuse to understand that the British oligarchy still functions as an empire, but an empire whose power comes from an international financial syndicate, known as the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy.
This British policy of treating Africans as chattel, wiping out their people, and looting their resources became the official, although not public policy of the United States, under President Richard Nixon, with Henry Kissinger's 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200). This report targeted the fastest-growing populations in the "Third World" for population reduction—i.e., genocide. It also sought to prevent those nations from expending their natural resources for their own benefit, when these resources were deemed vital to the Western financial cartels. NSSM 200 was a Malthusian tirade against population growth, especially that of non-Caucasian people, but also included the importance of the "advanced sector" having a continuous flow of "mineral supplies" from developing countries which had high rates of population growth.
In its Executive Summary, under the subhead, "Minerals and Fuels," Kissinger's report states: "Rapid population growth is not in itself a major factor in pressure in depletable resources (fossil fuels and other minerals), since demand for them depends more on levels of industrial output than on numbers of people. On the other hand, the world is increasingly dependent on mineral supplies from developing countries, and if rapid population growth frustrates their prospects for economic development and social progress, the resulting instability may undermine conditions for expanded output and sustained flows of such resources" (emphasis added).
If one truly desires to understand why people are suffering in such horrible conditions today, and why countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and South Africa are under attack, one need only refer to NSSM 200.
Good morning!
The decision of the International Criminal Court, which now seems to be a thin disguise for the Imperial Criminal Court of the European oligarchy, still rings loudly across the globe today. The decision had unlocked grave repercussions on the African continent as a whole, as it further threatens sovereign nation-states and turn them into hovels of failed states, as exemplified by Sudan.
Below is a an article culled from the Executive Intelligence Review that perceives the ICC decision as a handiwork of the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy.
Enjoy your read!
[26 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
===========================================
`Imperial Criminal Court'Opens Gates of Hell in Africa
by Lawrence K. Freeman
British imperialists escalated their ongoing destabilization of Africa on July 14, with the decision by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), to file charges of "genocide and crimes against humanity" against Sudanese President Gen. Omar al-Bashir. The British and their collaborators want to eliminate the sovereignty of African nations, so that Africa's population can be greatly reduced, thus ensuring that Africa does not "use up" its vast resource wealth for its own development, and for trade with Asia, China in particular. There is no mistake of the timing, the intent, and the forces behind this unprecedented action, which is premised on completely false charges. It is intended to blow apart Sudan's North-South peace settlement, plunging the country even deeper into civil war. The consequences of the ICC's decision, if not reversed, not only would be devastating to Sudan, and the stability of the Horn of Africa, but because of Sudan's strategic importance, the entire continent would bleed.
The hand of the British and the hypocrisy of the ICC's claims are revealed by the fact that one of the major funders and creators of the ICC is British agent, billionaire speculator, and former Nazi collaborator George Soros. Upon hearing of Soros's role in the formation of the ICC, through his Open Society Initiative and Justice Initiative networks, Lyndon LaRouche said: "If the International Criminal Court is to have any claim on credibility, let them take up the case of a real Nazi collaborator." If anyone should be put on trial before the ICC, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, it is George Soros (see Documentation, below).
The immediate danger to Sudan and Africa is that if the ICC is successful in de-legitimizing Bashir's Presidency, then negotiations between the government and opposition groups become impossible. As one African from the Washington diplomatic corps told me following the release of the ICC charges: "We have two options for Sudan. One is to maintain a positive peace process. The other is for chaos and the collapse into a failed state."
International opposition to the ICC move came swiftly. On July 14, in talks with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Paris, according to the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that the ICC escalation threatens to foil negotiation efforts between the Sudan government and rebels in Darfur. Egypt has promised to do all it can to avert any measure against the Sudanese leader that could further destabilize the country.
The Africa Union (AU) also denounced the ICC move. "We would like ICC to suspend its decision to seek al-Bashir's arrest for a moment until we sort out the primary problems in Darfur and southern Sudan," Tanzanian Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Membe said, speaking on behalf of Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, who chairs the African Union. "If you arrest al-Bashir," he continued, "you will create a leadership vacuum in Sudan. The outcome could be equal to that of Iraq. There would be an increase in anarchy, there would be an increase in civil war. Fighting between Chad and Sudan would increase."
The 22-member Arab League called for a July 19 emergency meeting of its foreign ministers, at the request of the Sudan government, to discuss how to diplomatically foil the ICC provocation. Arab League chief Amr Moussa was to travel to Sudan July 20, to report to President al-Bashir.
According to the Middle East Times on July 15, China, which is one of Sudan's major investors and buyers of its oil, expressed deep "concern and worry." The ICC "should be conducive to maintaining the stability of the Sudanese situation, and to the proper resolution of the problems of Darfur, not the contrary," a Chinese government statement said.
Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, called on the UN to "exercise restraint and find solutions that will help the people of Sudan and resolve the crisis in Darfur."
The Times added that Sudan's main opposition parties and critics of the Bashir regime have united with the government in rejecting the ICC decision, and vowed to prevent the President from being prosecuted in the international court, calling this a violation of the country's sovereignty and independence.
Blowing Up the Peace Process
Andrew Natsios, former U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan (2005-07), responded immediately to the indictment by the ICC with a statement entitled "A Disaster in the Making." After cautioning human rights groups focussed on Darfur against applauding the ICC's decision, he warned them "to think again about their enthusiasm." Natsios went on to say: "The question all of us must ask who care about what happens to the long-suffering Sudanese people is this: what are the peaceful options for a way out of the crisis facing the country and what measures are likely to move the country closer to that way out rather than further away? Without a political settlement Sudan may go the way of Somalia, pre-genocide Rwanda, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo." He concludes: "This indictment may well shut off the last remaining hope for a political settlement for the country."
Over recent months, saner forces in the Untied States, including Natsios, have been working with leaders in Sudan to prevent the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) from failing. The CPA ended 20 years of bloodshed between the North and the South, and led to the formation of a Unity Government composed of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement representing the South, and the National Congress Party for the North. Despite difficult moments, the CPA has prevented the country from returning to North-South war, and it is hoped that it will serve as a model to solve other conflicts in Sudan, including that in Darfur.
After fighting broke out between soldiers from both sides in Abyei (an oil-producing region whose boundaries are in dispute) earlier this year, concerned people recognized that if the CPA were allowed to go down, all of Sudan would go down with it. After the signing of the CPA in January 2005, international attention and money were diverted from the full implementation of the agreement, into the Darfur crisis, which has only become more intractable. Allegations of genocide against the Bashir government, promoted by the media, Hollywood celebrities, and former and current British, U.S., and European government officials, has been part of the dangerous and failed policy of "regime change." The claim that the Bashir government is pursuing a so-called Arab cleansing of the so-called Africans in the Darfur region is simplistically untrue, meant for simpletons who are willing victims of "group think" propaganda. In Darfur, almost all the people doing the killing and being killed are Muslims, in a complex, multi-nation war that involves Chad, Libya, the Central African Republic, and other countries not in the immediate conflict zone.
Sudan's Strategic Value
To understand the strategic importance of Sudan, start with the mighty Nile River,
which flows north from Sudan through Egypt before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. Think about what would happen to the 80 million Egyptians, 25% of whom inhabit Cairo, and who depend on the Nile for their very existence, if Sudan implodes through internecine warfare. Who will honor the 1959 water agreement between Egypt and Sudan? What will the Egyptian government do if the flow of water from the Nile is interrupted? Will they not be forced to act, militarily if necessary? Now, think about the countries that border Sudan, all of which are suffering from severe political and economic troubles: Chad, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Who benefits, and who will suffer from the decision made by Soros's ICC, acting as a "world court" over and above the interest of the nation-state?
Now think about what Sudan could be for Africa. It is the largest nation on the continent, with the proven potential to feed all of Africa, if it were assisted in managing its water systems, mechanizing its agriculture, and providing irrigation. Instead of sliding into chaos, Sudan could become the "breadbasket" of Africa. The completion of the Merowe Dam, in collaboration with China, provides a glimpse of the potential for food production that is possible with basic infrastructure. (See "Defying Britain's Genocide System: Sudan's Great Project in Agriculture," EIR, July 18, 2008). What is the true potential of Sudan and Africa, if credits for long-term investments in water systems, high-speed rail transportation, and nuclear power were extended by the West, instead of formenting wars and destabilizing poor nations? Sudan with its size, location, and agricultural potential can play a central role in the development of Africa, if we are wise enough to assist it for that purpose.
Why Africa Is Targeted
Look at a map of Africa. Start in Nigeria and let your eyes move east across Sudan to Ethiopia and Somalia. Then look south from Sudan through Kenya, to Tanzania, across Zambia, to Zimbabwe, and finally to South Africa, which represents a portion of Britain's old colonial empire. Now look at the destabilization of these former colonies, including the recent elections: Nigeria's flawed Presidential election in April 2007, the organized mayhem that followed Kenya's December 2007 Presidential election, and the crisis organized from outside following Zimbabwe's March 2008 Presidential election. And what do you think is being planned for South Africa's Presidential election in 2009? Will there even be a Sudan in which to have national elections that are presently scheduled for the Spring of 2009?
The British imperialists have never given up their desire to eliminate even the semblance of an independent nation in Africa, that could offer resistance to their policy of controlling the abundant, rich land, and vast resource wealth. To this very day, British Labour Party leader and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, like his predecessor, Tony Blair, cannot accept the fact that Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and millions of courageous Zimbabweans will not submit to British control of their nation, and will not return the land that rightfully belongs to them. The people of Zimbabwe have fought longer and harder than any other African nation against the heirs of Cecil Rhodes, the founder of British imperialism in Africa; and Zimbabwe still today represents a bulwark against British re-colonialization. Many otherwise thoughtful people refuse to understand that the British oligarchy still functions as an empire, but an empire whose power comes from an international financial syndicate, known as the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy.
This British policy of treating Africans as chattel, wiping out their people, and looting their resources became the official, although not public policy of the United States, under President Richard Nixon, with Henry Kissinger's 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200). This report targeted the fastest-growing populations in the "Third World" for population reduction—i.e., genocide. It also sought to prevent those nations from expending their natural resources for their own benefit, when these resources were deemed vital to the Western financial cartels. NSSM 200 was a Malthusian tirade against population growth, especially that of non-Caucasian people, but also included the importance of the "advanced sector" having a continuous flow of "mineral supplies" from developing countries which had high rates of population growth.
In its Executive Summary, under the subhead, "Minerals and Fuels," Kissinger's report states: "Rapid population growth is not in itself a major factor in pressure in depletable resources (fossil fuels and other minerals), since demand for them depends more on levels of industrial output than on numbers of people. On the other hand, the world is increasingly dependent on mineral supplies from developing countries, and if rapid population growth frustrates their prospects for economic development and social progress, the resulting instability may undermine conditions for expanded output and sustained flows of such resources" (emphasis added).
If one truly desires to understand why people are suffering in such horrible conditions today, and why countries like Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and South Africa are under attack, one need only refer to NSSM 200.
Friday, July 25, 2008
OIL PRICES GOING DOWN FOR GOOD? TOO EARLY TO SAY!
Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
Good evening from Manila!
We Manilans were met this morning with the seemingly good news that oil price nose dived to $125 per barrel. As this news was released, we have just three (3) days before Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo or GMA, will deliver her State-of-the-Nation Address or SONA.
With due respect to a fellow economist, the eminent world woman leader GM Arroyo should better not say lies comes Monday SONA that her actions on oil tax in Manila are responsible for bringing down global oil. Rather, her regime’s actions on state imports of rice immensely led to more speculation on the global commodities markets that indeed contributed in no small measure to raising the price of rice world-wide, actions that added pressures on oil prices to go up too.
Fellow Earthans, please look at the backyard of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the honorable King pledged before the UN Secretary General last month that the oil wells will pump out more stocks of the commodity so as to shore up the supplies by the month of July. It is now the tail end of July, and so it seems that the Midas touch of the KSA King has been creating sure-fire effects on gas prices.
The question worth asking is, will the latest decline in the price of oil be for good? Remember that the soaring prices of oil were largely caused by massive speculations in the spot markets, conducted by diverse financier groups. To a certain extent, the inflationary patterns in the grains prices also contributed to inflationary patterns in the oil sector.
There was the demand side that was cited as possible cause of the oil price decrease. The observed decline in the usage of oil by American consumers had accordingly factored into the equation, thus reducing oil price in global spot markets.
A simple multivariate analysis would show us that a combination of (a) supply side actions (KSA King’s ‘pump more oil’ policy) and (b) demand side behavior (Americans consume less oil) have (c) dampened speculative pressures and eased oil prices a bit. In other words, the predatory financiers were caught flat-footed by the double-whammy, even as some losing speculators are now hurting badly over the latest developments.
But do mark this: the financiers will strike back. The cyclone season is around, one can muse safely that cyclone devastations will induce short-term shocks on food, oil, and some non-durable commodities. Such eventualities could then induce pressures on cyclone-related or force majeure-coverage insurance, possibly impelling prices of the said commodities to go up from this month till November.
There also is the US federal campaign period coming, which will see inflationary spending from both parties as well as from the federal government as part of pump-priming measures. Such eventualities will altogether lead to new rounds of oil consumption in America, which will continue till the winter months.
No, definitely not, we are not at the tail end yet of oil hyper-inflation. This is the least that I can forecast for the moment.
[Writ 25 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Good evening from Manila!
We Manilans were met this morning with the seemingly good news that oil price nose dived to $125 per barrel. As this news was released, we have just three (3) days before Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo or GMA, will deliver her State-of-the-Nation Address or SONA.
With due respect to a fellow economist, the eminent world woman leader GM Arroyo should better not say lies comes Monday SONA that her actions on oil tax in Manila are responsible for bringing down global oil. Rather, her regime’s actions on state imports of rice immensely led to more speculation on the global commodities markets that indeed contributed in no small measure to raising the price of rice world-wide, actions that added pressures on oil prices to go up too.
Fellow Earthans, please look at the backyard of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the honorable King pledged before the UN Secretary General last month that the oil wells will pump out more stocks of the commodity so as to shore up the supplies by the month of July. It is now the tail end of July, and so it seems that the Midas touch of the KSA King has been creating sure-fire effects on gas prices.
The question worth asking is, will the latest decline in the price of oil be for good? Remember that the soaring prices of oil were largely caused by massive speculations in the spot markets, conducted by diverse financier groups. To a certain extent, the inflationary patterns in the grains prices also contributed to inflationary patterns in the oil sector.
There was the demand side that was cited as possible cause of the oil price decrease. The observed decline in the usage of oil by American consumers had accordingly factored into the equation, thus reducing oil price in global spot markets.
A simple multivariate analysis would show us that a combination of (a) supply side actions (KSA King’s ‘pump more oil’ policy) and (b) demand side behavior (Americans consume less oil) have (c) dampened speculative pressures and eased oil prices a bit. In other words, the predatory financiers were caught flat-footed by the double-whammy, even as some losing speculators are now hurting badly over the latest developments.
But do mark this: the financiers will strike back. The cyclone season is around, one can muse safely that cyclone devastations will induce short-term shocks on food, oil, and some non-durable commodities. Such eventualities could then induce pressures on cyclone-related or force majeure-coverage insurance, possibly impelling prices of the said commodities to go up from this month till November.
There also is the US federal campaign period coming, which will see inflationary spending from both parties as well as from the federal government as part of pump-priming measures. Such eventualities will altogether lead to new rounds of oil consumption in America, which will continue till the winter months.
No, definitely not, we are not at the tail end yet of oil hyper-inflation. This is the least that I can forecast for the moment.
[Writ 25 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Thursday, July 24, 2008
US WATCH: TRANSPORT U.S. BACK TO PROSPERITY
Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
The final feature of the US ‘real economy’ worth featuring is transportation & communications. This is among the most productive sectors that produce real wealth, contrasted to the ‘casino economy’ of predatory finance that produces wealth from out of wealth itself, producing really nothing worth our value. Broad as it is, let me focus on the transport sector.
Time was when the railway industry took off, inducing growth as soon as the railways hit the West. The continental divide among the US states was bridged quickly, intra-trade exponentially increased. Soon enough, foreign trade also increased in leaps and bounds as maritime shipping grew and matured quickly, making US articles of trade be exported to all corners of the planet.
Trains, ships, airplanes, automotives, trucks, heavy equipment, tractors, and other state-of-the art prototypes came out of America’s workshops to propel growth not only in the US but in other countries as well. “Made in the USA” products became household words everywhere, including my Wild Wild West province of Cagayan in Northern Philippines, precisely due to the miracle of the transport sector that was broadly a facet of the ‘real economy’ of America. I was a child in the 1960s and early 70s when the “Made in the USA” was chic and almost a cult-level cliché.
That era now is now consigned to the dustbins of a remote past. Sure, America still produces state-of-the art transport prototypes. But look, railways have stagnated (is there a mag-lev there now?), automotives are shrinking by the day (laying off and displacing thousands of top quality industrial technicians), while the cutting edge technology for almost all prototypes, save for military transport, have already been surpassed by Asia.
McCain and Obama should better do their homework and understand the catastrophic future that awaits America if the transport sector remains neglected and ceaselessly ravaged inch-by-inch by the infernal fires of predatory finance. The policy makers there better salve the ailing sector quickly, and get back those laid-off topnotch industrial technicians to work before they lose every iota of motivation to even get involved in the sector they grew up with but which rejected them (how traumatic!).
If there’s any sector to begin with, it’s railways. Better renovate the railways, and establish maglevs in all the major continental routes of the US. And quickly take the initiative to establish cross-border maglevs with Canada and Mexico. Later, establish maglevs connecting Alaska with Russia via Siberia, thus connecting US to the Asian land mass.
Sorry for sounding ‘interventionist’, fellows in America. We Asians are as concerned with your economy as you are, and we would want your economic leadership to again rise to the fore. If America does that, other nations will then move on, propelled by growth in the ‘real economy’ because America is doing so. Failing to do that, the economic baton will transfer to Asia, and it will crash our hearts to see our fellow Earthans of America sinking in esteem by the day, because of their collapsing prosperity.
We are all siblings on Earth, this is certain, that’s why we share words of wisdom about your economic conditions. May you finally have a reform-oriented President comes this coming electoral contest.
[Writ 07 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
The final feature of the US ‘real economy’ worth featuring is transportation & communications. This is among the most productive sectors that produce real wealth, contrasted to the ‘casino economy’ of predatory finance that produces wealth from out of wealth itself, producing really nothing worth our value. Broad as it is, let me focus on the transport sector.
Time was when the railway industry took off, inducing growth as soon as the railways hit the West. The continental divide among the US states was bridged quickly, intra-trade exponentially increased. Soon enough, foreign trade also increased in leaps and bounds as maritime shipping grew and matured quickly, making US articles of trade be exported to all corners of the planet.
Trains, ships, airplanes, automotives, trucks, heavy equipment, tractors, and other state-of-the art prototypes came out of America’s workshops to propel growth not only in the US but in other countries as well. “Made in the USA” products became household words everywhere, including my Wild Wild West province of Cagayan in Northern Philippines, precisely due to the miracle of the transport sector that was broadly a facet of the ‘real economy’ of America. I was a child in the 1960s and early 70s when the “Made in the USA” was chic and almost a cult-level cliché.
That era now is now consigned to the dustbins of a remote past. Sure, America still produces state-of-the art transport prototypes. But look, railways have stagnated (is there a mag-lev there now?), automotives are shrinking by the day (laying off and displacing thousands of top quality industrial technicians), while the cutting edge technology for almost all prototypes, save for military transport, have already been surpassed by Asia.
McCain and Obama should better do their homework and understand the catastrophic future that awaits America if the transport sector remains neglected and ceaselessly ravaged inch-by-inch by the infernal fires of predatory finance. The policy makers there better salve the ailing sector quickly, and get back those laid-off topnotch industrial technicians to work before they lose every iota of motivation to even get involved in the sector they grew up with but which rejected them (how traumatic!).
If there’s any sector to begin with, it’s railways. Better renovate the railways, and establish maglevs in all the major continental routes of the US. And quickly take the initiative to establish cross-border maglevs with Canada and Mexico. Later, establish maglevs connecting Alaska with Russia via Siberia, thus connecting US to the Asian land mass.
Sorry for sounding ‘interventionist’, fellows in America. We Asians are as concerned with your economy as you are, and we would want your economic leadership to again rise to the fore. If America does that, other nations will then move on, propelled by growth in the ‘real economy’ because America is doing so. Failing to do that, the economic baton will transfer to Asia, and it will crash our hearts to see our fellow Earthans of America sinking in esteem by the day, because of their collapsing prosperity.
We are all siblings on Earth, this is certain, that’s why we share words of wisdom about your economic conditions. May you finally have a reform-oriented President comes this coming electoral contest.
[Writ 07 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
US WATCH: S & T CUTTING EDGE EROSION
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
As I’ve been stressing in previous articles, “it’s the economy” that count much as top agenda to be addressed by policy makers, bureaucrats and growth stakeholders in the USA. And this should be the primary concern of the political bigwigs when election comes by the end of the year.
A policy shift that will veer away America from the destructive flames of the ‘virtual economy’ founded on predatory finance, back to the ‘real economy’ based on tangible outputs in manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructures, S & T, and transportation & communications.
This time around, do make reflections on the S&T facet of America’s economy and society. For over two (2) centuries the USA was a hallmark of development, precisely due to the ingenuity manifested by its entrepreneurs who built the mighty industrial economy. The S&T facet of production has been a well established fact-of-life in America, and I should stress that facet here means ‘cutting-edge’.
Without S&T cutting-edge, America would still be a backwoods economy today, much like some backwoods states there. But since the founding fathers of America laid down the foundations of growth and prosperity—foundations based on the ‘real economy’ or ‘physical economy’—and propelled by the collective will to drive relentlessly till the grand visions are achieved, America has risen meteorically to where it is: a mighty economic juggernaut, the object of high esteem by many nations.
But when the ‘virtual economy’ began encroaching on every economic sector there, most specially after the collapse of the gold standard, gradually did the priority for developing S & T erode. Today that erosion is severely felt, as many analysts from the West have heralded the admission that Asia had already surpassed the essential technological cutting edge of the West as early as 2007 yet.
Let’s take solar technology for instance. Solar panel design had already reached maturity in California, home to solar energy development. The early take off of the industry there prompted the investors to immediately establish branches overseas, one of which is the Philippines. One leading company was so surprised that its Filipino engineers (Philippine-based) had already surpassed the innovation designs of their California counterparts (Americans) before the end of 2007 yet.
Now, as you go from one economic sector to another, most specially the productive sectors, and assess the cutting edge situation of technologies, then you can see the reality that America & EU (West) were already surpassed. It won’t take long before the wealth boosted by the Asian cutting edge will move up, making Asian regions surpass both the US and EU in terms of GDP.
Well, the other option is the ‘neo-con’ option: nuke all competitor nations back to the stone age. If you do so, say if you nuke the Philippines today which designs and produces ½ of the worlds Intel chips, think of the consequences. Nuke India, China, ASEAN, South Korea, come on demonic neo-cons! Enjoy your Nero madness with wild abandon!
I’d rest my case.
[07 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
As I’ve been stressing in previous articles, “it’s the economy” that count much as top agenda to be addressed by policy makers, bureaucrats and growth stakeholders in the USA. And this should be the primary concern of the political bigwigs when election comes by the end of the year.
A policy shift that will veer away America from the destructive flames of the ‘virtual economy’ founded on predatory finance, back to the ‘real economy’ based on tangible outputs in manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructures, S & T, and transportation & communications.
This time around, do make reflections on the S&T facet of America’s economy and society. For over two (2) centuries the USA was a hallmark of development, precisely due to the ingenuity manifested by its entrepreneurs who built the mighty industrial economy. The S&T facet of production has been a well established fact-of-life in America, and I should stress that facet here means ‘cutting-edge’.
Without S&T cutting-edge, America would still be a backwoods economy today, much like some backwoods states there. But since the founding fathers of America laid down the foundations of growth and prosperity—foundations based on the ‘real economy’ or ‘physical economy’—and propelled by the collective will to drive relentlessly till the grand visions are achieved, America has risen meteorically to where it is: a mighty economic juggernaut, the object of high esteem by many nations.
But when the ‘virtual economy’ began encroaching on every economic sector there, most specially after the collapse of the gold standard, gradually did the priority for developing S & T erode. Today that erosion is severely felt, as many analysts from the West have heralded the admission that Asia had already surpassed the essential technological cutting edge of the West as early as 2007 yet.
Let’s take solar technology for instance. Solar panel design had already reached maturity in California, home to solar energy development. The early take off of the industry there prompted the investors to immediately establish branches overseas, one of which is the Philippines. One leading company was so surprised that its Filipino engineers (Philippine-based) had already surpassed the innovation designs of their California counterparts (Americans) before the end of 2007 yet.
Now, as you go from one economic sector to another, most specially the productive sectors, and assess the cutting edge situation of technologies, then you can see the reality that America & EU (West) were already surpassed. It won’t take long before the wealth boosted by the Asian cutting edge will move up, making Asian regions surpass both the US and EU in terms of GDP.
Well, the other option is the ‘neo-con’ option: nuke all competitor nations back to the stone age. If you do so, say if you nuke the Philippines today which designs and produces ½ of the worlds Intel chips, think of the consequences. Nuke India, China, ASEAN, South Korea, come on demonic neo-cons! Enjoy your Nero madness with wild abandon!
I’d rest my case.
[07 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Saturday, July 19, 2008
US WATCH: INFRASTRUCTURE DECAY, NEEDS MASSIVE REDEVELOPMENT
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza
A bridge has fallen, the Mississipi river flooded Orleans like some pathetic third world city, airports are too cramped up as they are incapable of containing the surge in passenger & cargo levels, the East Coast experienced the emergency shut down due to grid overload (causing massive blackout), railway tracks are thinning out and overall capacity is on downward trend, and more.
They seem to be unrelated, but for economists and sociologists the trends all tell the same story. Pieced up together, they indicate crumbling infrastructures. Not because the structural engineers of America are sloppy, and definitely not that the heavy equipment sector couldn’t provide quality machines to reinforce the burgeoning infrastructure need of the juggernaut US economy.
The true story is that, as the economy shifted to the ‘virtual economy’, there was the systematic abandonment of infrastructure as a priority for fiscal and budgetary allocations. “Leave that to the private sector!” was the slogan for infrastructure. Even the famed fast lanes of America are already being sold out one after the other to the highest bidders, financial speculators all led by the likes of Felix Rohatyn & partners, thanks to deregulation and liberalization.
The thing is, most of America’s major infrastructures—airports, wharfs, roads, bridges, dikes, dams, power distribution, and more public works—were built in the 50s and 60s yet, at the height of the post-war boom under the aegis of the New Deal. Such infrastructures now require massive renovation, with entire replacement for those decaying beyond salvaging.
Did the civil engineers of America speak about the matter clearly? They did, and they have been saying alarming things since the 1990s yet. At the height of the ‘bridge over troubled water’ fiasco, they came out with the report that ¼ of America’s roads and bridges needed major repairs and replacements as soon as possible.
The other sectors’ experts have spoken as well. In the airlines industry, no less than state officials have forewarned that if no renovations (toward expansion) will be done on airports in 10 years’ time, there will be major crisis in the airlines sector. The possibility of emerging markets overshooting the USA’s cutting edge in air transport delivery also looms ahead in the short run.
With no reversal of policies in sight, chances are that, in 20 years’ time, the USA will be an apocalyptic landscape of fallen bridges, impassable roads, rotten wharfs, fallen dikes and inoperable dams, rotten buildings left to nature, and forest cover claiming back once bustling cities.
Only a timely policy reversal can nip the apocalyptic future in the bud. That is, if the political bigwigs in the coming election—McCain and Obama—do their homework well, comprehend the problem deeply, and begin large-scale strategic solutions to colossal problems in infrastructures.
[Writ 06 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.]
A bridge has fallen, the Mississipi river flooded Orleans like some pathetic third world city, airports are too cramped up as they are incapable of containing the surge in passenger & cargo levels, the East Coast experienced the emergency shut down due to grid overload (causing massive blackout), railway tracks are thinning out and overall capacity is on downward trend, and more.
They seem to be unrelated, but for economists and sociologists the trends all tell the same story. Pieced up together, they indicate crumbling infrastructures. Not because the structural engineers of America are sloppy, and definitely not that the heavy equipment sector couldn’t provide quality machines to reinforce the burgeoning infrastructure need of the juggernaut US economy.
The true story is that, as the economy shifted to the ‘virtual economy’, there was the systematic abandonment of infrastructure as a priority for fiscal and budgetary allocations. “Leave that to the private sector!” was the slogan for infrastructure. Even the famed fast lanes of America are already being sold out one after the other to the highest bidders, financial speculators all led by the likes of Felix Rohatyn & partners, thanks to deregulation and liberalization.
The thing is, most of America’s major infrastructures—airports, wharfs, roads, bridges, dikes, dams, power distribution, and more public works—were built in the 50s and 60s yet, at the height of the post-war boom under the aegis of the New Deal. Such infrastructures now require massive renovation, with entire replacement for those decaying beyond salvaging.
Did the civil engineers of America speak about the matter clearly? They did, and they have been saying alarming things since the 1990s yet. At the height of the ‘bridge over troubled water’ fiasco, they came out with the report that ¼ of America’s roads and bridges needed major repairs and replacements as soon as possible.
The other sectors’ experts have spoken as well. In the airlines industry, no less than state officials have forewarned that if no renovations (toward expansion) will be done on airports in 10 years’ time, there will be major crisis in the airlines sector. The possibility of emerging markets overshooting the USA’s cutting edge in air transport delivery also looms ahead in the short run.
With no reversal of policies in sight, chances are that, in 20 years’ time, the USA will be an apocalyptic landscape of fallen bridges, impassable roads, rotten wharfs, fallen dikes and inoperable dams, rotten buildings left to nature, and forest cover claiming back once bustling cities.
Only a timely policy reversal can nip the apocalyptic future in the bud. That is, if the political bigwigs in the coming election—McCain and Obama—do their homework well, comprehend the problem deeply, and begin large-scale strategic solutions to colossal problems in infrastructures.
[Writ 06 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila.]
Friday, July 18, 2008
US WATCH: AGRICULTURE DECAYS, BIOFUEL MATTERS MOST!
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza
Agriculture remains to be among the most protected sectors of the US economy. Enough to cause ceaseless chagrin on the members of the WTO, who have been demanding that the EU-USA-Japan trilateral belt better play by the rules and remove the trade barriers in agriculture.
But the overall alarming trend in America’s agriculture is the rapid shrinking of arable lands altogether. Lucky enough that America is blessed with millions of acres of arable land, but the liberalization of land use conversions affected this mighty economy strongly like in other countries. Prime agricultural lands are being transformed into commercial and residential lands, most specially those southern regions that practically fed the whole America for nigh centuries long.
Agriculture is following a general trend of economic decay. The historic practice of mono-cropping alone had already created havoc on the soil quality in many places across the US. Compounding the decay problem is the pressure by WTO members for the sector to bring down the trade barrier, thus possibly bringing in floods of cheap food imports from Europe and the south.
Just recently, the inflated marketability of biofuels led many a planter to shift to massive corn production, for the sole purpose of raking profits on alternative fuels. Of course, many hedge funds and enthused investors had cashed in on the biofuels craze, and news came out that even Bill Gates had invested in this ‘greenfield’ energy source.
Estimates put the amount of corn planted to biofuels as more than enough to feed over 110 million people. That’s a lot of mouths to feed for sure! But feeding mouths is hardly the priority in the US agriculture today, the core focus being the next round of looting on the consumers’ purse by driving food prices upwards both due to the biofuels craze and speculation on food stocks.
So, what say you, voters of America? Let’s just hope the political bigwigs contesting the presidency will indeed take the interest of ‘food security’ at its core. Failing to do so, America itself might end up with inflated food prices in the couples of years ahead, and believe it or not, the Depression era of seeing people without food on their plates may come back. The difference being that the Great Depression was only quite temporary, while this coming ‘food insecurity’ will be around for a very long time.
This brings to mind what the late John Meynard Keynes declared cryptically, “in the long run, we shall all be dead!”
[Writ 06 June 2008, Quezon City, MeroManila]
Agriculture remains to be among the most protected sectors of the US economy. Enough to cause ceaseless chagrin on the members of the WTO, who have been demanding that the EU-USA-Japan trilateral belt better play by the rules and remove the trade barriers in agriculture.
But the overall alarming trend in America’s agriculture is the rapid shrinking of arable lands altogether. Lucky enough that America is blessed with millions of acres of arable land, but the liberalization of land use conversions affected this mighty economy strongly like in other countries. Prime agricultural lands are being transformed into commercial and residential lands, most specially those southern regions that practically fed the whole America for nigh centuries long.
Agriculture is following a general trend of economic decay. The historic practice of mono-cropping alone had already created havoc on the soil quality in many places across the US. Compounding the decay problem is the pressure by WTO members for the sector to bring down the trade barrier, thus possibly bringing in floods of cheap food imports from Europe and the south.
Just recently, the inflated marketability of biofuels led many a planter to shift to massive corn production, for the sole purpose of raking profits on alternative fuels. Of course, many hedge funds and enthused investors had cashed in on the biofuels craze, and news came out that even Bill Gates had invested in this ‘greenfield’ energy source.
Estimates put the amount of corn planted to biofuels as more than enough to feed over 110 million people. That’s a lot of mouths to feed for sure! But feeding mouths is hardly the priority in the US agriculture today, the core focus being the next round of looting on the consumers’ purse by driving food prices upwards both due to the biofuels craze and speculation on food stocks.
So, what say you, voters of America? Let’s just hope the political bigwigs contesting the presidency will indeed take the interest of ‘food security’ at its core. Failing to do so, America itself might end up with inflated food prices in the couples of years ahead, and believe it or not, the Depression era of seeing people without food on their plates may come back. The difference being that the Great Depression was only quite temporary, while this coming ‘food insecurity’ will be around for a very long time.
This brings to mind what the late John Meynard Keynes declared cryptically, “in the long run, we shall all be dead!”
[Writ 06 June 2008, Quezon City, MeroManila]
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
ASIAN RENAISSANCE: ANTIDOTE TO NEW DARK AGE
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
Maganding umaga! Good morning!
A gladdening news for me is the fact that many people in the West (or North) highly appreciate Asian growth and its role as today’s life-breather of the global economy. Without Asia, given the recurrent recession of Western/Northern economies, the global economy would be in a collapsed state today.
The added news that certainly warms the heart is that many Northerners/Westerners look up highly to Asia as the hope of the world, that hope coming precisely from the Asian Renaissance. We seem to be in a rehash of that situation of the medieval age, when the ‘world system’ collapsed due to incessant wars organized and financed by the Venetian mercantile oligarchs, leading eventually to a Dark Age. The (Western) Renaissance became the light of the Dark Age and teleported mankind out of that catastrophe.
In the current circumstance, a Dark Age looms as the Anglo-Dutch oligarchs organize and finance conflicts of every kind across the globe, which will expectedly lead to a larger conflagration that will be sparked off by the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict and then move on to ignite other conflicts in all regions and continents. The conflagration will be a near repeat of the Peloponnesian Wars (Athenian oligarchs’ wars), the Crusades (Venetian oligarchs’ and Norman warriors’), and 30 Years’ War (Church wars, Dutch-Teutonic oligarchs). After each conflagration, mankind fell into a Dark Age.
Only a Renaissance, led by Asians, will be the hope for the coming decades or couple of centuries. When the North-South dialogue will collapse and give way to the next Dark Age, induced by the incessant wars of the Anglo-Dutch-Teutonic-Zaibatsu oligarchy (to identify a longer list) up North, then peoples will by instinct look to the south for the sparks of hope, of dialogue and civility. Then the planet shall be jettisoned out of the holocaust, back to the ‘Light Age’ (light is opposite of dark).
Incidentally, many peoples across the globe have already immersed themselves in Asiatic thought streams and their practical applications, such as yoga meditation. So, the Asian Renaissance will not just be a monopoly of people of Asian genetic origin, but will be multi-player from the very inception. Many Asian spiritual masters, gurus and intellectuals transplanted themselves in the West during the past decades, so this explains the permeation in Western cultures of Asiatic thought streams. On the other hand, many peoples of the West/North took up studies in the Eastern institutions and ashrams (retreat centers of spiritual masters and gurus), thus ensuring a more expanded diffusion of Asiatic thought streams in the process. So, as one can see, it has been a two-way process of diffusion and enculturation to Asiatic thought streams.
Any Renaissance takes a long time to percolate, brew and galvanize, so it will not be prudent to demonstrate the exact contours of a gigantic movement—with so diverse players—that is continuously evolving. It affects all human endeavors: philosophy, arts, sciences, technology (biotech, physical tech, social tech). I would confess my own limitation and be honestly humble when asked about the exact contours of this movement. I make no pretensions for being God Almighty who knows best about the matter in its expansiveness and universality.
The following short list of items are what I can share about the matter:
· Oneness & Becoming: Asiatic thought and practices are products of this single most important cosmic Law of One. Western modality is dualistic and/or binary, resulting to polarity principles and practices that have eroded the very condition of humanity and endangers the species itself. The added premise concerns the process of ‘becoming’ contrasted to Western stress on ‘being’.
· Pure Thought - without prejudgemental Qualities, premises, biases: Sri Krishna taught us well about the matter. Go back to Srimad Bhagavad-Gita, in the sermon of Govinda to the warrior-saint Arjuna. The essence of Asiatic metaphysics, epistemology, ethics. Jesus and many masters followed through on the ‘pure thought’ modality, on what benefits can be derived from them, what truths derived too. See the New Testament, Dhammapada, Mahabharata, and onwards to the teachings of Baha’ullah, Vivekananda, PR Sarkar (neo-humanism, tantra), Sri Aurubindo, Mahatma Gandhi (Ahimsa).
· Dialogue & Consensus: In this domain, Asians regard that theory is fact, such as in Western physics where “a theory is also a fact.” Nobody even thinks anymore why dialogue should be ensued as a matter of exercising consensus. It is theory, it is fact, period. But do go back to Lao Tsu, Confucius, Mencius, Buddha. Unfortunately, the Western powers destroyed the teachings of Malayan gurus upon occupying the Southeast, while Khmer and ancient Javanese teachings of the same were simply lost in time as the same civilizations eroded and died. Incidentally, Filipino indigenous teachings, derived from folk lore (of which there are now encyclopedic volumes of scholarly translations) are available, which I myself will have to review (budget constraints delimiting buys).
· Physics and Multi-Dimensions: The true elements of matter, the different ontological dimensions, and the properties of matter congruent with each dimension. Steven Hawkin’s ‘hyperspace’, ‘lower space’, and ‘higher space’ concepts are nearer the truth than ever. The Book of Dzan, theosophical writings (e.g. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine), and synthetic writings such as Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics would be good reads. Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi also contains details of masters’ teachings about the same subjects. On the practical side, how to conduct dematerialization and bilocation are explained and demonstrated by the masters. Didn’t mahayogi Jesus Christ (master Issa in India) demonstrate how to walk above the water and materialize fish for a huge crowd of devotees?
· Yoga and Meditation: Yoga is the science, meditation the practice. Too many traditions to choose from, study and investigate, and practice. Choose that which is in accord with your psyche. In my case, I chose Agni yoga, which synthesizes rajah yoga (focus on crown chakra, will-development), Kriya or Christ yoga (pineal/higher faculties), karma yoga (service/solar plexus chakra), and bhakti (opening up heart chakra). If you wish to use yoga to reinforce healing, Kundalini yoga would be perfect. Bhakti and practices that develop the solar plexus chakra would be excellent for peace keepers and conciliators. Zen would be perfect for highly contemplative, introspective types. Sure, you can combine them, such as what I do.
· Natural Healing Paradigms & Therapies: Too many to behold, and too popular nowadays. In Manila, with the signing of the ‘traditional and alternative law’ in the late 90s and the creation of a state institution for this, natural healing has become an institution in itself. In my case, I was trained in Pranic healing, and I practice it (pro bono) for psychosocial counseling. Deepak Chopra’s ‘mind-body-soul’ writings (e.g. The Way of the Wizard) would be a good entry point.
Well, Partners, Fellows on Earth, those items would suffice. Before I be accused of causing you indigestion, I would stop right there. There are more, so please go ahead and draw the compass of your journey into the ‘Eastern way’. But just to remind you, the great statesman Mao Tsetung once cautioned us: “no investigaton, no right to speak” (see: Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung, 5 volumes). Nobody should pretend to know Asiatic thought streams without first fully immersing in them, for at least two (2) decades.
Let me now end by encouraging everyone to learn the ‘Asiatic way’, integrate these into their largely Western psyche, and help in any way to bring us to the ‘dawning of a new age of Light’.
[Writ 26 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Maganding umaga! Good morning!
A gladdening news for me is the fact that many people in the West (or North) highly appreciate Asian growth and its role as today’s life-breather of the global economy. Without Asia, given the recurrent recession of Western/Northern economies, the global economy would be in a collapsed state today.
The added news that certainly warms the heart is that many Northerners/Westerners look up highly to Asia as the hope of the world, that hope coming precisely from the Asian Renaissance. We seem to be in a rehash of that situation of the medieval age, when the ‘world system’ collapsed due to incessant wars organized and financed by the Venetian mercantile oligarchs, leading eventually to a Dark Age. The (Western) Renaissance became the light of the Dark Age and teleported mankind out of that catastrophe.
In the current circumstance, a Dark Age looms as the Anglo-Dutch oligarchs organize and finance conflicts of every kind across the globe, which will expectedly lead to a larger conflagration that will be sparked off by the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict and then move on to ignite other conflicts in all regions and continents. The conflagration will be a near repeat of the Peloponnesian Wars (Athenian oligarchs’ wars), the Crusades (Venetian oligarchs’ and Norman warriors’), and 30 Years’ War (Church wars, Dutch-Teutonic oligarchs). After each conflagration, mankind fell into a Dark Age.
Only a Renaissance, led by Asians, will be the hope for the coming decades or couple of centuries. When the North-South dialogue will collapse and give way to the next Dark Age, induced by the incessant wars of the Anglo-Dutch-Teutonic-Zaibatsu oligarchy (to identify a longer list) up North, then peoples will by instinct look to the south for the sparks of hope, of dialogue and civility. Then the planet shall be jettisoned out of the holocaust, back to the ‘Light Age’ (light is opposite of dark).
Incidentally, many peoples across the globe have already immersed themselves in Asiatic thought streams and their practical applications, such as yoga meditation. So, the Asian Renaissance will not just be a monopoly of people of Asian genetic origin, but will be multi-player from the very inception. Many Asian spiritual masters, gurus and intellectuals transplanted themselves in the West during the past decades, so this explains the permeation in Western cultures of Asiatic thought streams. On the other hand, many peoples of the West/North took up studies in the Eastern institutions and ashrams (retreat centers of spiritual masters and gurus), thus ensuring a more expanded diffusion of Asiatic thought streams in the process. So, as one can see, it has been a two-way process of diffusion and enculturation to Asiatic thought streams.
Any Renaissance takes a long time to percolate, brew and galvanize, so it will not be prudent to demonstrate the exact contours of a gigantic movement—with so diverse players—that is continuously evolving. It affects all human endeavors: philosophy, arts, sciences, technology (biotech, physical tech, social tech). I would confess my own limitation and be honestly humble when asked about the exact contours of this movement. I make no pretensions for being God Almighty who knows best about the matter in its expansiveness and universality.
The following short list of items are what I can share about the matter:
· Oneness & Becoming: Asiatic thought and practices are products of this single most important cosmic Law of One. Western modality is dualistic and/or binary, resulting to polarity principles and practices that have eroded the very condition of humanity and endangers the species itself. The added premise concerns the process of ‘becoming’ contrasted to Western stress on ‘being’.
· Pure Thought - without prejudgemental Qualities, premises, biases: Sri Krishna taught us well about the matter. Go back to Srimad Bhagavad-Gita, in the sermon of Govinda to the warrior-saint Arjuna. The essence of Asiatic metaphysics, epistemology, ethics. Jesus and many masters followed through on the ‘pure thought’ modality, on what benefits can be derived from them, what truths derived too. See the New Testament, Dhammapada, Mahabharata, and onwards to the teachings of Baha’ullah, Vivekananda, PR Sarkar (neo-humanism, tantra), Sri Aurubindo, Mahatma Gandhi (Ahimsa).
· Dialogue & Consensus: In this domain, Asians regard that theory is fact, such as in Western physics where “a theory is also a fact.” Nobody even thinks anymore why dialogue should be ensued as a matter of exercising consensus. It is theory, it is fact, period. But do go back to Lao Tsu, Confucius, Mencius, Buddha. Unfortunately, the Western powers destroyed the teachings of Malayan gurus upon occupying the Southeast, while Khmer and ancient Javanese teachings of the same were simply lost in time as the same civilizations eroded and died. Incidentally, Filipino indigenous teachings, derived from folk lore (of which there are now encyclopedic volumes of scholarly translations) are available, which I myself will have to review (budget constraints delimiting buys).
· Physics and Multi-Dimensions: The true elements of matter, the different ontological dimensions, and the properties of matter congruent with each dimension. Steven Hawkin’s ‘hyperspace’, ‘lower space’, and ‘higher space’ concepts are nearer the truth than ever. The Book of Dzan, theosophical writings (e.g. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine), and synthetic writings such as Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics would be good reads. Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi also contains details of masters’ teachings about the same subjects. On the practical side, how to conduct dematerialization and bilocation are explained and demonstrated by the masters. Didn’t mahayogi Jesus Christ (master Issa in India) demonstrate how to walk above the water and materialize fish for a huge crowd of devotees?
· Yoga and Meditation: Yoga is the science, meditation the practice. Too many traditions to choose from, study and investigate, and practice. Choose that which is in accord with your psyche. In my case, I chose Agni yoga, which synthesizes rajah yoga (focus on crown chakra, will-development), Kriya or Christ yoga (pineal/higher faculties), karma yoga (service/solar plexus chakra), and bhakti (opening up heart chakra). If you wish to use yoga to reinforce healing, Kundalini yoga would be perfect. Bhakti and practices that develop the solar plexus chakra would be excellent for peace keepers and conciliators. Zen would be perfect for highly contemplative, introspective types. Sure, you can combine them, such as what I do.
· Natural Healing Paradigms & Therapies: Too many to behold, and too popular nowadays. In Manila, with the signing of the ‘traditional and alternative law’ in the late 90s and the creation of a state institution for this, natural healing has become an institution in itself. In my case, I was trained in Pranic healing, and I practice it (pro bono) for psychosocial counseling. Deepak Chopra’s ‘mind-body-soul’ writings (e.g. The Way of the Wizard) would be a good entry point.
Well, Partners, Fellows on Earth, those items would suffice. Before I be accused of causing you indigestion, I would stop right there. There are more, so please go ahead and draw the compass of your journey into the ‘Eastern way’. But just to remind you, the great statesman Mao Tsetung once cautioned us: “no investigaton, no right to speak” (see: Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tsetung, 5 volumes). Nobody should pretend to know Asiatic thought streams without first fully immersing in them, for at least two (2) decades.
Let me now end by encouraging everyone to learn the ‘Asiatic way’, integrate these into their largely Western psyche, and help in any way to bring us to the ‘dawning of a new age of Light’.
[Writ 26 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Monday, July 14, 2008
US WATCH: DE-INDUSTRIALIZATION
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
The public (in America) is of the broad position that the NAFTA was responsible for the folding up of many factories and the transfer of jobs to Mexico/South. This NAFTA-bashing has some validity to it, but the semi-economic integration alone with Mexico and Canada isn’t a sufficient reason for the bigger problem of de-industrialization.
Once robust and colossal, the industrial sector of the USA contributed over 50% of the Gross Domestic Product or GDP, and employed half the labor as well. As early as the mid-50s, the futuristic sociologist Daniel Bell already warned that the trend wouldn’t hold long enough, as the ‘post-industrial society’ was already knocking its doors on the USA. Not only that, he also forecast that by the 21st century, the center of global economic growth would be the Asia-Pacific, while labor would shift to the services sector.
Had the policy-makers heeded the warning of the likes of Bell then, and fine-tuned the ‘real economy’ principles of Franklin Roosevelt, the de-industrialization of America couldn’t have happened. By the early 1980s, Alvin Toffler added resounding echoes to the forecast of a post-industrial society, by adumbrating the ‘3rd wave technology’ thesis. Such a thesis expounded that knowledge-intensive technologies would dominate post-industrial society, and will destroy institutions founded on old economic-ideological precepts notably liberal capitalism and socialism.
However, the neo-liberals led by Friedman and Hayek became the dominant Pied Pipers in shaping the public policy of America. All sectors of the economy soon became dog-eat-dog arena for private sector hegemony, leading to the ascent of the ‘virtual economy’ founded on predatory finance. Gradually did the ‘virtual economy’ wreck the classic industries of America, the most exemplary being the steel industry.
The tragic closure of Bethlehem Steel tells it all: that the ‘virtual economy’ has no interest in sustaining strategic industries or to develop their technological edge further. One after the other, manufacturing concerns were closed shop, dis-assembled and re-assembled in emerging markets where labor and factor inputs were cheaper. The ‘industrial belt’ of America—stretching from up New England down to the automotive & machine tool shops of the south—is rapidly evaporating.
The clear message for this year’s presidential poll in America is: resuscitate the industrial sector. Re-tool both the hardware, institutions and human resources to make them competitive again. Revive all the strategic reproducible industries (steel, machine tools, railways, automotive, shipping, airlines, etc.), or else face the specter of ‘third worldization’ of America. A tall order, but what choice does the USA have?
[Writ 06 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
The public (in America) is of the broad position that the NAFTA was responsible for the folding up of many factories and the transfer of jobs to Mexico/South. This NAFTA-bashing has some validity to it, but the semi-economic integration alone with Mexico and Canada isn’t a sufficient reason for the bigger problem of de-industrialization.
Once robust and colossal, the industrial sector of the USA contributed over 50% of the Gross Domestic Product or GDP, and employed half the labor as well. As early as the mid-50s, the futuristic sociologist Daniel Bell already warned that the trend wouldn’t hold long enough, as the ‘post-industrial society’ was already knocking its doors on the USA. Not only that, he also forecast that by the 21st century, the center of global economic growth would be the Asia-Pacific, while labor would shift to the services sector.
Had the policy-makers heeded the warning of the likes of Bell then, and fine-tuned the ‘real economy’ principles of Franklin Roosevelt, the de-industrialization of America couldn’t have happened. By the early 1980s, Alvin Toffler added resounding echoes to the forecast of a post-industrial society, by adumbrating the ‘3rd wave technology’ thesis. Such a thesis expounded that knowledge-intensive technologies would dominate post-industrial society, and will destroy institutions founded on old economic-ideological precepts notably liberal capitalism and socialism.
However, the neo-liberals led by Friedman and Hayek became the dominant Pied Pipers in shaping the public policy of America. All sectors of the economy soon became dog-eat-dog arena for private sector hegemony, leading to the ascent of the ‘virtual economy’ founded on predatory finance. Gradually did the ‘virtual economy’ wreck the classic industries of America, the most exemplary being the steel industry.
The tragic closure of Bethlehem Steel tells it all: that the ‘virtual economy’ has no interest in sustaining strategic industries or to develop their technological edge further. One after the other, manufacturing concerns were closed shop, dis-assembled and re-assembled in emerging markets where labor and factor inputs were cheaper. The ‘industrial belt’ of America—stretching from up New England down to the automotive & machine tool shops of the south—is rapidly evaporating.
The clear message for this year’s presidential poll in America is: resuscitate the industrial sector. Re-tool both the hardware, institutions and human resources to make them competitive again. Revive all the strategic reproducible industries (steel, machine tools, railways, automotive, shipping, airlines, etc.), or else face the specter of ‘third worldization’ of America. A tall order, but what choice does the USA have?
[Writ 06 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Friday, July 11, 2008
US WATCH: ECONOMY’S REAL VALUE
Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
Great and mighty is America’s economy! America can buy the whole earth and feed all the world’s people! Americans are the world’s wealthiest, they can buy any and all guys outside the borders!
What delusional arrogance from some demonic Pied Pipers! The USA’s GDP ended up at $12.5 Trillion last year, though some indicator massage could yield a higher figure of $13.5 Trillion (using Purchasing Power Parity or PPP). Measure this against the Gross World Product of GWP of $59 Trillion more or less, end of 2007. Estimates by experts is that the US contributes to 22% of the GWP, and ditto for the EU.
That figure of $12.5 Trillion, fellows, is simply the ‘nominal value’ of the US economy. Nominal and real are two different categories in economics. Granting that the ‘virtual economy’ based on financial speculation has been the one that raised values of commodities and services in the USA, the ‘nominal value’ is actually inflated, rendering the ‘real value’ at a much lower level.
Do recall when the stock market crashed in 2001. At that time, the psychological benchmark was 10,000 points at the Dow Jones. Each point in the Dow Jones then was approximately $1 Billion worth. A decline of 100 points means $100 Billion pared off from the economy, or at least the virtual economy. The stock market eventually crashed down to 7900+, which made my own hair rise with horror all over my body.
The stock market then stayed for a time at the 7,900-8,300 points, for couples of months, before it again steadily climbed. For simplification, let us use the figure of 8,000 points as the lowest level that the economy can crash down to, the rock bottom. That is around 77% of the 10,000+ benchmark more or less.
That figure, fellows, is the rough estimate of the ‘real value’ of the US economy. If we multiply 0.77 by $12.5 Billion, this yields $9.63 Billion. That’s the real figure, the real value, the real score of the US economy. If we convert this to PPP, this will rise a bit to $9.8 Billion more or less. The remaining balance of $3 Billion, to complete the $13.5B –PPP, is all ‘casino economy’ value, all speculative value and nothing more.
So now, going back to a previous question, where and how will the USA get funds to pay for $50 Trillion worth of debts? Do the electoral bigwigs in America possess with them the proper framework to comprehend and recommend practicable solutions to America’s ailing debt crisis and overall economic malaise?
I wish you American voters will do your own deep inquiries about the depth of your problems. The health of the global economy is being endangered by the impending US economic collapse, a fire that can easily burn out the EU as well (this fire had already begun there in fact). When both the EU and USA are in economic collapse or ‘fire function’, the entire global economy will catastrophically fall in deep quagmires.
[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, Metromanila]
Great and mighty is America’s economy! America can buy the whole earth and feed all the world’s people! Americans are the world’s wealthiest, they can buy any and all guys outside the borders!
What delusional arrogance from some demonic Pied Pipers! The USA’s GDP ended up at $12.5 Trillion last year, though some indicator massage could yield a higher figure of $13.5 Trillion (using Purchasing Power Parity or PPP). Measure this against the Gross World Product of GWP of $59 Trillion more or less, end of 2007. Estimates by experts is that the US contributes to 22% of the GWP, and ditto for the EU.
That figure of $12.5 Trillion, fellows, is simply the ‘nominal value’ of the US economy. Nominal and real are two different categories in economics. Granting that the ‘virtual economy’ based on financial speculation has been the one that raised values of commodities and services in the USA, the ‘nominal value’ is actually inflated, rendering the ‘real value’ at a much lower level.
Do recall when the stock market crashed in 2001. At that time, the psychological benchmark was 10,000 points at the Dow Jones. Each point in the Dow Jones then was approximately $1 Billion worth. A decline of 100 points means $100 Billion pared off from the economy, or at least the virtual economy. The stock market eventually crashed down to 7900+, which made my own hair rise with horror all over my body.
The stock market then stayed for a time at the 7,900-8,300 points, for couples of months, before it again steadily climbed. For simplification, let us use the figure of 8,000 points as the lowest level that the economy can crash down to, the rock bottom. That is around 77% of the 10,000+ benchmark more or less.
That figure, fellows, is the rough estimate of the ‘real value’ of the US economy. If we multiply 0.77 by $12.5 Billion, this yields $9.63 Billion. That’s the real figure, the real value, the real score of the US economy. If we convert this to PPP, this will rise a bit to $9.8 Billion more or less. The remaining balance of $3 Billion, to complete the $13.5B –PPP, is all ‘casino economy’ value, all speculative value and nothing more.
So now, going back to a previous question, where and how will the USA get funds to pay for $50 Trillion worth of debts? Do the electoral bigwigs in America possess with them the proper framework to comprehend and recommend practicable solutions to America’s ailing debt crisis and overall economic malaise?
I wish you American voters will do your own deep inquiries about the depth of your problems. The health of the global economy is being endangered by the impending US economic collapse, a fire that can easily burn out the EU as well (this fire had already begun there in fact). When both the EU and USA are in economic collapse or ‘fire function’, the entire global economy will catastrophically fall in deep quagmires.
[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, Metromanila]
Thursday, July 10, 2008
US WATCH: CAN THE USA PAY ITS DEBTS?
Erle Frayne Argonza
Just exactly at what level had the totality of US debts had reached is practically anybody’s guess. So complex is America’s financial system and the mess created by the ‘bubble economy’ over the last three (3) decades, that it takes an enormous amount of research efforts led by top economists and financial consultants to undertake.
One thing is clear though: whoever will be the USA’s next execs must never fail to measure, comprehend, and reverse the debt trends. The estimates today, using combined data from the Fed, the Bank for International Settlements or BiS, and independent researches would put the figure at $50 Trillion.
Measured against the GDP, which stood at around $12.5 Trillion more or less last year, indicates that America doesn’t have the money to pay debts at all, assuming that the bubble bursts and the economy crashes to depression level. Well, the burst began last year yet, the recession is now on, and we need to observe events more closely to determine whether a depression will be at hand.
To say that US savings will salve America’s debt problems is baloney. The savings rate is barely 1%, which accounts for the need for large doses of foreign direct investments and portfolios to cover up for the lack of investible savings. Compare this to East Asia’s average of 30% savings rate, which makes this region’s economy verdantly robust for years to come amid US-EU economic collapse.
On the other hand, to bank on gross international reserves as the source of salvation would likewise bring guffaws. America’s reserves could never exceed $90 Billion at any given time (in real value), which couldn’t even suffice to buy for 1 month’s imports. Compare this to East Asia’s reserves, which range from 4 months imports in RP’s case to at least a year’s for China’s.
So, let us repeat the question, where and how will the US source its funds for salving the debt crisis? What concrete steps will be taken to reverse the debt trap? Who among the political bigwigs in America today possesses the soundest theory and practice for solving the gargantuan debt crisis?
Those questions remain to be answered. Let us hope that the two bigwigs McCain and Obama will do their homework well. The electorates’ expectations are enormously high, and meeting those expectations using traditional, flawed approaches and practices would only endanger both the economic and political stability of this once mighty giant.
[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Just exactly at what level had the totality of US debts had reached is practically anybody’s guess. So complex is America’s financial system and the mess created by the ‘bubble economy’ over the last three (3) decades, that it takes an enormous amount of research efforts led by top economists and financial consultants to undertake.
One thing is clear though: whoever will be the USA’s next execs must never fail to measure, comprehend, and reverse the debt trends. The estimates today, using combined data from the Fed, the Bank for International Settlements or BiS, and independent researches would put the figure at $50 Trillion.
Measured against the GDP, which stood at around $12.5 Trillion more or less last year, indicates that America doesn’t have the money to pay debts at all, assuming that the bubble bursts and the economy crashes to depression level. Well, the burst began last year yet, the recession is now on, and we need to observe events more closely to determine whether a depression will be at hand.
To say that US savings will salve America’s debt problems is baloney. The savings rate is barely 1%, which accounts for the need for large doses of foreign direct investments and portfolios to cover up for the lack of investible savings. Compare this to East Asia’s average of 30% savings rate, which makes this region’s economy verdantly robust for years to come amid US-EU economic collapse.
On the other hand, to bank on gross international reserves as the source of salvation would likewise bring guffaws. America’s reserves could never exceed $90 Billion at any given time (in real value), which couldn’t even suffice to buy for 1 month’s imports. Compare this to East Asia’s reserves, which range from 4 months imports in RP’s case to at least a year’s for China’s.
So, let us repeat the question, where and how will the US source its funds for salving the debt crisis? What concrete steps will be taken to reverse the debt trap? Who among the political bigwigs in America today possesses the soundest theory and practice for solving the gargantuan debt crisis?
Those questions remain to be answered. Let us hope that the two bigwigs McCain and Obama will do their homework well. The electorates’ expectations are enormously high, and meeting those expectations using traditional, flawed approaches and practices would only endanger both the economic and political stability of this once mighty giant.
[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
US WATCH: THE ‘VIRTUAL ECONOMY’ WRECKED UNCLE SAM
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza
So, fellows out there, whatever happened that the once mighty US economy—once contributing to 40% of Gross World Product (GWP)—is now drifting downwards, producing now just 22% of GWP? That the EU would itself catch up with the USA and equally produces 22% of GWP, though EU’s money is bloodily mightier than Uncle Sam’s once mythical Dollar?
As a matter of realistic forecasting, if trends today would continue across the globe, Asia would overshadow both the US and EU, as follows: China will overtake each one of them by 2015; India, by 2022; ASEAN, by 2030.
While the US ‘real economy’ keeps on contracting (and the EU’s stagnates), the Asian economies are still expanding. 100 years ago the Western thinkers Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee already forecast so sharply the ‘decline of the West’, while Daniel Bell foresaw in the 1950s-60s the rise of Asia-Pacific and its overtaking of the US 60 years hence (2005-2015 period). No one listened to them.
If we all recall, in the 1930s the great statesman Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the ambitious New Deal. This program initiated gigantic growths in the ‘real economy’, solved unemployment, and led to high-growth and high-wage trends for sustained periods. By ‘real’ is meant the most productive sectors, namely: manufacturing/industry, agriculture, infrastructures, S&T, and transportation & communications.
By 1971, with enormous pressures from the financial cartels, the famed ‘gold standard’ was junked, the fixed exchange rate system was likewise junked in favor of ‘floating rate’, and after which serial liberalization of economic sectors and the bureaucracy went on in very radical fashion. This led eventually to the rise of the ‘virtual economy’ led by predatory finance, featuring hedge fund operations and ‘vulture funds’ to salve crisis-ridden financial enclaves more so overseas.
The ‘gambling economy’ based on speculation, conceit, lies, rather than based on the real value of consumable articles of trade, became the dominant modality in the USA. Debts and more debts piled up, since having no debt was moralized as bad behavior. Debs quadrupled in just a few decades, resulting to $5 Trillion worth of debts today.
How can an economy that churns out merely $12+ Trillion a year pay up for debts worth 4 times the GDP? It’s madness, blatant madness! The US economy is largely now a bubble, so gigantic that when it bursts, it can reveal the real flaws behind the ailments, and the weakness of the ‘real economy’ altogether.
The message to the next President & VP of the USA is to take down that ‘gambling economy’ or ‘virtual economy’ and quickly bring back the powerful ‘real economy’ in place. Failing to do that, Uncle Sam will be faced with many mass out-migrations beyond 2010, as true-blue Americans leave for more stable and promising jobs and businesses offshore. They’ve already began doing that in fact.
[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
So, fellows out there, whatever happened that the once mighty US economy—once contributing to 40% of Gross World Product (GWP)—is now drifting downwards, producing now just 22% of GWP? That the EU would itself catch up with the USA and equally produces 22% of GWP, though EU’s money is bloodily mightier than Uncle Sam’s once mythical Dollar?
As a matter of realistic forecasting, if trends today would continue across the globe, Asia would overshadow both the US and EU, as follows: China will overtake each one of them by 2015; India, by 2022; ASEAN, by 2030.
While the US ‘real economy’ keeps on contracting (and the EU’s stagnates), the Asian economies are still expanding. 100 years ago the Western thinkers Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee already forecast so sharply the ‘decline of the West’, while Daniel Bell foresaw in the 1950s-60s the rise of Asia-Pacific and its overtaking of the US 60 years hence (2005-2015 period). No one listened to them.
If we all recall, in the 1930s the great statesman Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the ambitious New Deal. This program initiated gigantic growths in the ‘real economy’, solved unemployment, and led to high-growth and high-wage trends for sustained periods. By ‘real’ is meant the most productive sectors, namely: manufacturing/industry, agriculture, infrastructures, S&T, and transportation & communications.
By 1971, with enormous pressures from the financial cartels, the famed ‘gold standard’ was junked, the fixed exchange rate system was likewise junked in favor of ‘floating rate’, and after which serial liberalization of economic sectors and the bureaucracy went on in very radical fashion. This led eventually to the rise of the ‘virtual economy’ led by predatory finance, featuring hedge fund operations and ‘vulture funds’ to salve crisis-ridden financial enclaves more so overseas.
The ‘gambling economy’ based on speculation, conceit, lies, rather than based on the real value of consumable articles of trade, became the dominant modality in the USA. Debts and more debts piled up, since having no debt was moralized as bad behavior. Debs quadrupled in just a few decades, resulting to $5 Trillion worth of debts today.
How can an economy that churns out merely $12+ Trillion a year pay up for debts worth 4 times the GDP? It’s madness, blatant madness! The US economy is largely now a bubble, so gigantic that when it bursts, it can reveal the real flaws behind the ailments, and the weakness of the ‘real economy’ altogether.
The message to the next President & VP of the USA is to take down that ‘gambling economy’ or ‘virtual economy’ and quickly bring back the powerful ‘real economy’ in place. Failing to do that, Uncle Sam will be faced with many mass out-migrations beyond 2010, as true-blue Americans leave for more stable and promising jobs and businesses offshore. They’ve already began doing that in fact.
[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
PSYCHIC CRACKPOT DOOMS PHILIPPINES ON 18TH, PAY NO ATTENTION!
Erle Frayne Argonza
An email has been circulating around the globe lately, detailing in one-liner fashion the claim by an erstwhile ‘prophet’ from Brazil the forthcoming 8.1 Reichter quake that will rock RP on the 18th of July. The email also included a listing of claims made by the same spiritist crackpot, enumerating them in Kindergarten-like fashion without the benefit of deeper articulation spiced with wisdom.
Being a yogi-mystic of long-standing (I joined the mystical circles in 1994), and having been endowed with the power to prognosticate and do intuitive forecasting as part of my tasks, I know the great difference between a mystic’s work and that of a psychic’s. Mystics are of an awareness higher than genius, and are just one step closer to being a spiritual master, while psychics are plain folks whose astral bodies are activated and ‘3rd eyes’ open which happens to most people only when they’re physically sleeping.
Psychics, including those spiritist mediums or ‘chanellers’ who receive communications or messages from lower beings notably ‘discarnates’ and negative beings such as asuras (demons), are notably emotionally unstable and are of a low intellectual caliber. That is why their claims are steeped in fear and emotional sensationalism, bereft of sound interpretation and rationale about the future event being described. Their prognostications are also largely negative, proof that these were relayed by negative beings (discarnates, demons, Fallen Elementals) who normally disguise as angels in the astral domain (where the events can be perceived through the ‘3rd eye’ or astral faculties).
Mystics, on the other hand, are emotionally stable, intellectually adroit (most of us went to the university, while over half have gone to graduate school), endowed with writing abilities, and are intuitively awake (5th eye). Mystics are of a much higher frequency than psychics, permitting High Beings such as angels, who are of higher vibrational make ups, to manifest themselves. Mystics don’t normally perceive ghosts (discarnates) and lower invisibles precisely because we operate on the higher ‘bandwidth’ of frequencies (e.g. somebody listening to an FM station cannot hear disc jockeys on the AM band unless one purposely lowers the frequency band towards AM).
True prophecies, including those relayed by Higher Beings, don’t normally have dates. It is now normal staple for me to see future events while meditating and in the sleeping state, but I don’t see dates at all emblazoned on the scene. The mystic has to estimate the date, and that takes a very clever process. Even those dates relayed by Higher Beings can change, because mankind’s future is subject to ‘timeline changes’, and the forecast event may no longer happen at all or will take place at a later time.
As a longtime mystic, I don’t interact at all with psychics or spiritists (church people call them ‘visionaries’). They are of low wisdom, lack intellect, emotionally unstable, and possess depressive disorder conditions. Psychologists found out that the accuracy of psychics’ clairvoyant is only 22%. They lack scientific merit and should be dismissed if not condemned as disinforming and panic-forming in impact.
So, dear readers, I am going out on the 18th to watch a movie in a mall nearby (Trinoma most probably). I have no place for crackpot disinformation in my system. Let the mall crash down on me if God so wishes on the 18th. “Govinda jaya jaya, Gopala jaya jaya, Radha ramanahari Govinda jaya jaya.” Amen.
[08 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
An email has been circulating around the globe lately, detailing in one-liner fashion the claim by an erstwhile ‘prophet’ from Brazil the forthcoming 8.1 Reichter quake that will rock RP on the 18th of July. The email also included a listing of claims made by the same spiritist crackpot, enumerating them in Kindergarten-like fashion without the benefit of deeper articulation spiced with wisdom.
Being a yogi-mystic of long-standing (I joined the mystical circles in 1994), and having been endowed with the power to prognosticate and do intuitive forecasting as part of my tasks, I know the great difference between a mystic’s work and that of a psychic’s. Mystics are of an awareness higher than genius, and are just one step closer to being a spiritual master, while psychics are plain folks whose astral bodies are activated and ‘3rd eyes’ open which happens to most people only when they’re physically sleeping.
Psychics, including those spiritist mediums or ‘chanellers’ who receive communications or messages from lower beings notably ‘discarnates’ and negative beings such as asuras (demons), are notably emotionally unstable and are of a low intellectual caliber. That is why their claims are steeped in fear and emotional sensationalism, bereft of sound interpretation and rationale about the future event being described. Their prognostications are also largely negative, proof that these were relayed by negative beings (discarnates, demons, Fallen Elementals) who normally disguise as angels in the astral domain (where the events can be perceived through the ‘3rd eye’ or astral faculties).
Mystics, on the other hand, are emotionally stable, intellectually adroit (most of us went to the university, while over half have gone to graduate school), endowed with writing abilities, and are intuitively awake (5th eye). Mystics are of a much higher frequency than psychics, permitting High Beings such as angels, who are of higher vibrational make ups, to manifest themselves. Mystics don’t normally perceive ghosts (discarnates) and lower invisibles precisely because we operate on the higher ‘bandwidth’ of frequencies (e.g. somebody listening to an FM station cannot hear disc jockeys on the AM band unless one purposely lowers the frequency band towards AM).
True prophecies, including those relayed by Higher Beings, don’t normally have dates. It is now normal staple for me to see future events while meditating and in the sleeping state, but I don’t see dates at all emblazoned on the scene. The mystic has to estimate the date, and that takes a very clever process. Even those dates relayed by Higher Beings can change, because mankind’s future is subject to ‘timeline changes’, and the forecast event may no longer happen at all or will take place at a later time.
As a longtime mystic, I don’t interact at all with psychics or spiritists (church people call them ‘visionaries’). They are of low wisdom, lack intellect, emotionally unstable, and possess depressive disorder conditions. Psychologists found out that the accuracy of psychics’ clairvoyant is only 22%. They lack scientific merit and should be dismissed if not condemned as disinforming and panic-forming in impact.
So, dear readers, I am going out on the 18th to watch a movie in a mall nearby (Trinoma most probably). I have no place for crackpot disinformation in my system. Let the mall crash down on me if God so wishes on the 18th. “Govinda jaya jaya, Gopala jaya jaya, Radha ramanahari Govinda jaya jaya.” Amen.
[08 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Monday, July 07, 2008
US WATCH: IT’S THE ECONOMY!
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza
The US presidential polls are approaching. The Democrat Party nomination was recently concluded, and there goes the polls.
As an observer of ‘US reality’, I’d candidly say that if there’s anything most worrisome in the US right now, it’s the economy. Without the pejorative ‘stupid’ by the way, I leave that to Bill Clinton’s spin doctors.
Whoever wins, and whoever would be vice president, this tandem of statesmen (hopefully) will have to go about moving heaven and earth to salve the ailing economy. The ailment is not just a structural one that will be resolved with some palliatives.
First of all is the recession. There is no more denying about this fact. The more that the fed and monetary officials would deny information, the greater the amount of suspicion, the greater the legitimacy question. It was good that finally, there was the admission about the sad state of the economy.
Now, folks, most especially you American voters out there, the recession may not be the end of the downspin yet. Watch out, for the recession could well slide into depression. A 6-quarter period of sustained depression (which means a contraction below the established average, or below zero growth) could be the final blow to the long-drawn drift towards the total collapse of the once-mighty US economy.
Look at the signs of the times, Joe! After World War II, the US produced 40% of the Gross World Product or GWP. It’s now down to 22%. The EU, by integrating their economies, produce a similar aggregate of 22% of GWP. The trend is still of a downward drift, including the EU’s, over the years, not an upward lift.
As to what has been causing the downward drift, let’s take those matters slowly in quite chewable fashion. For now, it’s clear to this observer that “it’s the economy” and not the war or parochial sectoral matters such as immigration, gender, more autonomy for states and cities, and so on.
[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
The US presidential polls are approaching. The Democrat Party nomination was recently concluded, and there goes the polls.
As an observer of ‘US reality’, I’d candidly say that if there’s anything most worrisome in the US right now, it’s the economy. Without the pejorative ‘stupid’ by the way, I leave that to Bill Clinton’s spin doctors.
Whoever wins, and whoever would be vice president, this tandem of statesmen (hopefully) will have to go about moving heaven and earth to salve the ailing economy. The ailment is not just a structural one that will be resolved with some palliatives.
First of all is the recession. There is no more denying about this fact. The more that the fed and monetary officials would deny information, the greater the amount of suspicion, the greater the legitimacy question. It was good that finally, there was the admission about the sad state of the economy.
Now, folks, most especially you American voters out there, the recession may not be the end of the downspin yet. Watch out, for the recession could well slide into depression. A 6-quarter period of sustained depression (which means a contraction below the established average, or below zero growth) could be the final blow to the long-drawn drift towards the total collapse of the once-mighty US economy.
Look at the signs of the times, Joe! After World War II, the US produced 40% of the Gross World Product or GWP. It’s now down to 22%. The EU, by integrating their economies, produce a similar aggregate of 22% of GWP. The trend is still of a downward drift, including the EU’s, over the years, not an upward lift.
As to what has been causing the downward drift, let’s take those matters slowly in quite chewable fashion. For now, it’s clear to this observer that “it’s the economy” and not the war or parochial sectoral matters such as immigration, gender, more autonomy for states and cities, and so on.
[Writ 05 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Friday, July 04, 2008
GLOBAL OLIGARCHS AND THE FOOD & ENERGY PRICE HIKES
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
Good afternoon, Fellows on Earth!
As already presented by this writer/analyst in my previous notes and articles, the current state of affairs of the global economy—which featured the inflationary upswings in the food and energy sectors—have a great deal to do with the machinations of the global financiers or oligarchy.
Across the ideological and paradigm streams, there has been the preponderance for speculations by the same financiers and subalterns that have been the main upward driver of prices in oil and food. The very same operators were also responsible for the temporary upswing in the price of the US dollar which remains as the chief legal tender for exchanging oil.
Below is an article from the Executive Intelligence Review that authenticates to a large degree the positions I took so far regarding oil and food.
[Writ 01 July 2008, Quezon City, Manila]
LaRouche: British Are Behind Food and Energy Hyperinflation
June 22, 2008--This release was issued on June 22 by the Lyndon Larouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
Lyndon LaRouche today forcefully denounced Prince Philip and his fellow genocidalists in the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy, for willfully promoting the food and energy hyperinflation, which threatens to kill billions of people around the globe. "You cannot understand the current hyperinflationary crisis," LaRouche charged, "without first considering Prince Philip and the late Prince Bernhard's stated committment to wipe out 80% of the human population, through a combination of wars, diseases and famine. If Prince Philip, and his slavish followers like Al Gore were to succeed, the population of the planet would be reduced, in the next several generations, to well-under two billion people."
LaRouche was responding to news reports, in the past 24 hours, that the combined food and energy hyperinflation, has created a global national security crisis, threatening the survival of such leading nations as China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Morocco, and Egypt. "I warned, months ago, that the food crisis would soon emerge as the number one issue facing every government in the world," LaRouche commented. "The combined shock of $140 a barrel oil and food hyperinflation and shortages, willfully promoted by Anglo-Dutch speculators and their oligarchical backers, has thrown the world into an immediate crisis."
On Sunday, June 22, representatives of the world's leading oil producing and oil consuming countries will meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to consider actions to deal with the crisis. Over 40 nations around the globe have been rocked by food riots and other protests over the hyperinflationary crisis, and the worst shocks, LaRouche warned, are coming during the immediate summer months ahead. "By the time we reach October," LaRouche warned, "the situation will be catastrophic."
"There are remedies, even at this late date, to deal with the energy and food hyperinflation," LaRouche continued, "but nothing is going to work unless and until we crush the power of the British oligarchy." LaRouche asked: "Do you really think that Saudi Arabia is going to cooperate, so long as their BAE ties to London remain intact—even if the very survival of the Saudi Royal Family is at stake?"
Good afternoon, Fellows on Earth!
As already presented by this writer/analyst in my previous notes and articles, the current state of affairs of the global economy—which featured the inflationary upswings in the food and energy sectors—have a great deal to do with the machinations of the global financiers or oligarchy.
Across the ideological and paradigm streams, there has been the preponderance for speculations by the same financiers and subalterns that have been the main upward driver of prices in oil and food. The very same operators were also responsible for the temporary upswing in the price of the US dollar which remains as the chief legal tender for exchanging oil.
Below is an article from the Executive Intelligence Review that authenticates to a large degree the positions I took so far regarding oil and food.
[Writ 01 July 2008, Quezon City, Manila]
LaRouche: British Are Behind Food and Energy Hyperinflation
June 22, 2008--This release was issued on June 22 by the Lyndon Larouche Political Action Committee (LPAC).
Lyndon LaRouche today forcefully denounced Prince Philip and his fellow genocidalists in the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy, for willfully promoting the food and energy hyperinflation, which threatens to kill billions of people around the globe. "You cannot understand the current hyperinflationary crisis," LaRouche charged, "without first considering Prince Philip and the late Prince Bernhard's stated committment to wipe out 80% of the human population, through a combination of wars, diseases and famine. If Prince Philip, and his slavish followers like Al Gore were to succeed, the population of the planet would be reduced, in the next several generations, to well-under two billion people."
LaRouche was responding to news reports, in the past 24 hours, that the combined food and energy hyperinflation, has created a global national security crisis, threatening the survival of such leading nations as China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Morocco, and Egypt. "I warned, months ago, that the food crisis would soon emerge as the number one issue facing every government in the world," LaRouche commented. "The combined shock of $140 a barrel oil and food hyperinflation and shortages, willfully promoted by Anglo-Dutch speculators and their oligarchical backers, has thrown the world into an immediate crisis."
On Sunday, June 22, representatives of the world's leading oil producing and oil consuming countries will meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to consider actions to deal with the crisis. Over 40 nations around the globe have been rocked by food riots and other protests over the hyperinflationary crisis, and the worst shocks, LaRouche warned, are coming during the immediate summer months ahead. "By the time we reach October," LaRouche warned, "the situation will be catastrophic."
"There are remedies, even at this late date, to deal with the energy and food hyperinflation," LaRouche continued, "but nothing is going to work unless and until we crush the power of the British oligarchy." LaRouche asked: "Do you really think that Saudi Arabia is going to cooperate, so long as their BAE ties to London remain intact—even if the very survival of the Saudi Royal Family is at stake?"
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
4TH REICH IS A TRANS-ATLANTIC 2-HEADED TOTALITARIAN MONSTER
Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
Good morning, Fellows across the globe!
Let me continue to write awareness-raising materials about peace, cooperation and development, by focusing on the machinations of the financier oligarchs. The Empire is rising again, the logic being that it is a most fit governance machine for global oligarchic games and forthcoming conflicts.
Guessing gamers have been busy releasing speculations about the next financiers’ great war, and the state machinery that will undertake it. Lacking sophistication in political economy, the guessing gamers end up with superstitious sloganeering and fear-mongering, or reactive behaviors that hardly possess merit and serious attention by the more adroit minds of younger generations.
Following the historic patterns of Empire formations, it has always proved fruitful to wage synchronized conflicts and fatten the oligarchic purses in the process, if an empire formation would do the hot-work jobs for the oligarchs. The last Empire that did the massive aggression for the Anglo-Dutch oligarchs was dubbed as 3rd Reich by its created abomination, Hitler & Nazi movement.
The same Anglo-Dutch financiers, who control at least 80% of the world’s total financial flows, are itching to create a 4th Reich totalitarian state. It is time for a great war, the result of which will flatten the economies and enterprises of contending nations. The wrecked enterprises will then be bought at dirt cheap price by the same oligarchs, and the flattened economies funded back to life by the same financiers.
The question is, just exactly what oligarchic state formations to employ? The EU and USA each produce over 22% of the world gross product, or altogether produce 45% of GDP. The Anglo-Dutch financiers, on the other hand, control over 80% of the global financial flows. Using such data, it is very easy to see the congruence of continental economies and financier interests.
In my analysis, using a combination of institutional analysis and political economy, the combined EU-USA force would be excellent for creating the draconian 4th Reich. Of course, the possibility of a North American Union can be examined, but such a Union doesn’t have the purse power to leverage political strength, do understand this. On the other hand, the EU cannot impose its will on the USA without public dissent being aroused to hell fires, and so no USA-EU political integration is in the offing.
The web of institutional arrangements will see a mega-alliance of USA-controlled North America and a Brussels-based European Union. The trans-Atlantic alliance is a last-ditch effort of the same financiers to exhibit muscle power over the planet, and only the USA-EU axis remains as the loyal consenter to the financier machinations. Japan can still veer away from the axis, while the emerging markets’ giants—China, India, Brazil—are beyond the ambit of such machinations.
The institutional plan calls for the implementation of the final treaty in Europe, the Lisbon Treaty, that will see the advanced unification of the continent. Synchronically, a North American Union, with a common currency called Amero, will replace the NAFTA, complete the political unification process, and form the American bulwark of the new fascist axis. That done, the 4th Reich will be in place, rock-solid in armaments and awash with liquidities for more ambitious, gigantic war efforts.
Part of the governance innovations will be to abolish nations in both continents. Region-states will rise to replace the nations, each region being almost of equal population and size. With no more nations in Europe, the nuclear arsenal of France and UK will be placed in the custody of Brussels, thus transforming Brussels into a nuclear power overnight.
Transformed into police states, both continents will then wage population-control campaigns in the neighborhoods.
Gangster groups will logically be deputized to augment police in searching for guns, drugs, insurgent evidences, terrorist cells, petty criminals, and other perceived enemies of the state. Those young ones engaging in binge drinking and sex orgy parties will also most likely be apprehended.
To accelerate public compliance toward the new order, riots can be engineered in cities across both continents. Food price hikes, oil price hikes, massive unemployment, social welfare cuts, overnight hyper-inflation are the most contentious issues that easily inflame quiet neighborhoods into angry urban mobs. Any high school student taking up a subject on sociology can very facilely see this possibility today. It has already been tried and tested across the globe in fact most recently.
While the continental backyards are being provided draconian order by police forces, the military assets will then flex their muscles for huge wars overseas. To ensure that competing regions and continents will be mowed down fast, inter-regional wars will be engineered. The Sunni-Israel versus Iran-Shiite war is now on the pipeline, waiting for a go-signal, a conflict that will see the weakening of the Semitic military establishments and economies, thus paving the way for less costly involvement there.
Other continents will surely see their own war fireworks fanned to the maximum most likely. It would be an instructive work to analyze and forecast the shaping of events there. For instance, the China-Taiwan and inter-Korean conflicts may ensue again on their 2nd phases. Japanese aggression may also be pursued on a 2nd phase, which could see the Japanese islands devastated with nukes combined with the Tesla Earthquake Machine to put an abrupt end to its zealous militarism.
To cap the article, it is a Trans-Atlantic 4th Reich that is now fast rising. How fast the citizens of both America and Europe can neutralize the abominations now shaping up in their backyards remains to be observed. One this is sure here: it doesn’t matter who will be president of the USA or EU. The financiers and their paid technocratic-political subalterns have already ensured that the oligarchy is in control of the situation.
[Writ 22 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Good morning, Fellows across the globe!
Let me continue to write awareness-raising materials about peace, cooperation and development, by focusing on the machinations of the financier oligarchs. The Empire is rising again, the logic being that it is a most fit governance machine for global oligarchic games and forthcoming conflicts.
Guessing gamers have been busy releasing speculations about the next financiers’ great war, and the state machinery that will undertake it. Lacking sophistication in political economy, the guessing gamers end up with superstitious sloganeering and fear-mongering, or reactive behaviors that hardly possess merit and serious attention by the more adroit minds of younger generations.
Following the historic patterns of Empire formations, it has always proved fruitful to wage synchronized conflicts and fatten the oligarchic purses in the process, if an empire formation would do the hot-work jobs for the oligarchs. The last Empire that did the massive aggression for the Anglo-Dutch oligarchs was dubbed as 3rd Reich by its created abomination, Hitler & Nazi movement.
The same Anglo-Dutch financiers, who control at least 80% of the world’s total financial flows, are itching to create a 4th Reich totalitarian state. It is time for a great war, the result of which will flatten the economies and enterprises of contending nations. The wrecked enterprises will then be bought at dirt cheap price by the same oligarchs, and the flattened economies funded back to life by the same financiers.
The question is, just exactly what oligarchic state formations to employ? The EU and USA each produce over 22% of the world gross product, or altogether produce 45% of GDP. The Anglo-Dutch financiers, on the other hand, control over 80% of the global financial flows. Using such data, it is very easy to see the congruence of continental economies and financier interests.
In my analysis, using a combination of institutional analysis and political economy, the combined EU-USA force would be excellent for creating the draconian 4th Reich. Of course, the possibility of a North American Union can be examined, but such a Union doesn’t have the purse power to leverage political strength, do understand this. On the other hand, the EU cannot impose its will on the USA without public dissent being aroused to hell fires, and so no USA-EU political integration is in the offing.
The web of institutional arrangements will see a mega-alliance of USA-controlled North America and a Brussels-based European Union. The trans-Atlantic alliance is a last-ditch effort of the same financiers to exhibit muscle power over the planet, and only the USA-EU axis remains as the loyal consenter to the financier machinations. Japan can still veer away from the axis, while the emerging markets’ giants—China, India, Brazil—are beyond the ambit of such machinations.
The institutional plan calls for the implementation of the final treaty in Europe, the Lisbon Treaty, that will see the advanced unification of the continent. Synchronically, a North American Union, with a common currency called Amero, will replace the NAFTA, complete the political unification process, and form the American bulwark of the new fascist axis. That done, the 4th Reich will be in place, rock-solid in armaments and awash with liquidities for more ambitious, gigantic war efforts.
Part of the governance innovations will be to abolish nations in both continents. Region-states will rise to replace the nations, each region being almost of equal population and size. With no more nations in Europe, the nuclear arsenal of France and UK will be placed in the custody of Brussels, thus transforming Brussels into a nuclear power overnight.
Transformed into police states, both continents will then wage population-control campaigns in the neighborhoods.
Gangster groups will logically be deputized to augment police in searching for guns, drugs, insurgent evidences, terrorist cells, petty criminals, and other perceived enemies of the state. Those young ones engaging in binge drinking and sex orgy parties will also most likely be apprehended.
To accelerate public compliance toward the new order, riots can be engineered in cities across both continents. Food price hikes, oil price hikes, massive unemployment, social welfare cuts, overnight hyper-inflation are the most contentious issues that easily inflame quiet neighborhoods into angry urban mobs. Any high school student taking up a subject on sociology can very facilely see this possibility today. It has already been tried and tested across the globe in fact most recently.
While the continental backyards are being provided draconian order by police forces, the military assets will then flex their muscles for huge wars overseas. To ensure that competing regions and continents will be mowed down fast, inter-regional wars will be engineered. The Sunni-Israel versus Iran-Shiite war is now on the pipeline, waiting for a go-signal, a conflict that will see the weakening of the Semitic military establishments and economies, thus paving the way for less costly involvement there.
Other continents will surely see their own war fireworks fanned to the maximum most likely. It would be an instructive work to analyze and forecast the shaping of events there. For instance, the China-Taiwan and inter-Korean conflicts may ensue again on their 2nd phases. Japanese aggression may also be pursued on a 2nd phase, which could see the Japanese islands devastated with nukes combined with the Tesla Earthquake Machine to put an abrupt end to its zealous militarism.
To cap the article, it is a Trans-Atlantic 4th Reich that is now fast rising. How fast the citizens of both America and Europe can neutralize the abominations now shaping up in their backyards remains to be observed. One this is sure here: it doesn’t matter who will be president of the USA or EU. The financiers and their paid technocratic-political subalterns have already ensured that the oligarchy is in control of the situation.
[Writ 22 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
SPECULATION PESTERS FOOD: U.S. CASE
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
Greedy financiers across the globe made humungous killing in the commodities futures recently, which largely explains the sudden hyper-inflationary price increases in grains. The panic that resulted from the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ that food stocks are running out further exacerbated the already volatile situation of the food markets.
The flawed reasoning—that the problem has a great deal to do with the supply side—has been bandied by the paid Pied Pipers of the greedy financiers. This is an old hat lie, and facts about the capital and financial markets belie such cranky rationale for a sector (food) that has been subordinated to predatory finance worldwide.
Below is a case study regarding the subject matter of sky-rocketing food prices on account of speculation, culled from the Executive Intelligence Review. Make your own assessment about the matter.
[Writ 30 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Speculators Making Killer Profits Off Midwest Flooding While Farmers Can't Sell Grain
June 16, 2008 (EIRNS)—This morning's frantic speculation on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) opened with corn (December futures) up 19 cents, for a record $8.06 a bushel (contrast to $4 a year ago); and new crop soybeans hit a record $15.53 a bushel (contrast to $8 a year ago). This is the 12th consecutive day for record-setting corn prices on the exchange, occasioned by binge-speculation off the likely destruction of at least 5 million acres (2 million hectares) of crops in the Midwest flood zone, including at least 3 million acres of corn (out of 86 million nationally).
The volume of grain and soy trading contracts is soaring on the CBOT, part of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). All futures trading has risen 26 percent over the first part of 2008 on the CME, compared to same time 2007 (including non-commodity futures of all kinds). The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal agency which could stop the deadly game, but will not, released a report June 13, showing huge flows of funds going into the corn market. The CFTC report gives specifics on the record volumes of outstanding corn commitments—amounting to paper bushels, the way paper barrels exist in oil speculation. The CFTC says that speculative funds have added 34,732 contracts to their long positions and cut 4,588 contracts from their short positions, putting them net long on 219,041 corn futures contracts. Index funds are now net long on 427,352 contracts.
At the same time, prices are falling for the farmer trying to forward-sell his corn or soybeans to his local buyer. There has been a 12 cent drop in the prices offered to farmers for their corn over the past 24 hours! This comes on top of an average 4 cent a bushel drop in prices to the farmer last week in the Cornbelt, according to a spot check of local grain buyers, by Dow Jones. This farmer price disparity with the exchange prices, reflects not only the physical destruction of shipping and processing infrastructure, but also the fact that whenever prices spike on the Chicago Board of Trade, the local grain elevator or buyer is hit with a margin call, that he now cannot meet. So he is not offering farmers forward-contracts. Many local terminals, strapped for cash, have gone bankrupt, or sold out to the wave of hedge and index funds now on a buying spree for hard infrastructure, with which to further hold and hoard grain. E.g. WhiteBox, based in Minneapolis. The cartel terminals, dominated by Cargill and ADM, started denying forward contacts to purchase farmers' grain months ago, under the principle: protect yourself, screw the farmer. The cartel firms offer the farmer take-it-or-leave-it prices, and terms of delivery.
On top of this, key grain and meat processing facilities are shut down by the flood all over the Midwest, for example, a huge ADM corn-processing plant in Cedar Rapids.
Greedy financiers across the globe made humungous killing in the commodities futures recently, which largely explains the sudden hyper-inflationary price increases in grains. The panic that resulted from the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ that food stocks are running out further exacerbated the already volatile situation of the food markets.
The flawed reasoning—that the problem has a great deal to do with the supply side—has been bandied by the paid Pied Pipers of the greedy financiers. This is an old hat lie, and facts about the capital and financial markets belie such cranky rationale for a sector (food) that has been subordinated to predatory finance worldwide.
Below is a case study regarding the subject matter of sky-rocketing food prices on account of speculation, culled from the Executive Intelligence Review. Make your own assessment about the matter.
[Writ 30 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Speculators Making Killer Profits Off Midwest Flooding While Farmers Can't Sell Grain
June 16, 2008 (EIRNS)—This morning's frantic speculation on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) opened with corn (December futures) up 19 cents, for a record $8.06 a bushel (contrast to $4 a year ago); and new crop soybeans hit a record $15.53 a bushel (contrast to $8 a year ago). This is the 12th consecutive day for record-setting corn prices on the exchange, occasioned by binge-speculation off the likely destruction of at least 5 million acres (2 million hectares) of crops in the Midwest flood zone, including at least 3 million acres of corn (out of 86 million nationally).
The volume of grain and soy trading contracts is soaring on the CBOT, part of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). All futures trading has risen 26 percent over the first part of 2008 on the CME, compared to same time 2007 (including non-commodity futures of all kinds). The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal agency which could stop the deadly game, but will not, released a report June 13, showing huge flows of funds going into the corn market. The CFTC report gives specifics on the record volumes of outstanding corn commitments—amounting to paper bushels, the way paper barrels exist in oil speculation. The CFTC says that speculative funds have added 34,732 contracts to their long positions and cut 4,588 contracts from their short positions, putting them net long on 219,041 corn futures contracts. Index funds are now net long on 427,352 contracts.
At the same time, prices are falling for the farmer trying to forward-sell his corn or soybeans to his local buyer. There has been a 12 cent drop in the prices offered to farmers for their corn over the past 24 hours! This comes on top of an average 4 cent a bushel drop in prices to the farmer last week in the Cornbelt, according to a spot check of local grain buyers, by Dow Jones. This farmer price disparity with the exchange prices, reflects not only the physical destruction of shipping and processing infrastructure, but also the fact that whenever prices spike on the Chicago Board of Trade, the local grain elevator or buyer is hit with a margin call, that he now cannot meet. So he is not offering farmers forward-contracts. Many local terminals, strapped for cash, have gone bankrupt, or sold out to the wave of hedge and index funds now on a buying spree for hard infrastructure, with which to further hold and hoard grain. E.g. WhiteBox, based in Minneapolis. The cartel terminals, dominated by Cargill and ADM, started denying forward contacts to purchase farmers' grain months ago, under the principle: protect yourself, screw the farmer. The cartel firms offer the farmer take-it-or-leave-it prices, and terms of delivery.
On top of this, key grain and meat processing facilities are shut down by the flood all over the Midwest, for example, a huge ADM corn-processing plant in Cedar Rapids.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
21ST CENTURY’S PLAGUE: COMMODITY SPECULATION
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza
Speculation, more speculation!
Speculation has driven food prices up, and is now driving gas prices up as well. It is a core feature of the ‘virtual economy’ based on predatory finance, the main game of the global financier oligarchs who are now in practical control of the world’s strategic economic sectors.
Commodity speculation is getting to be a ‘plague of the 21st century’ as claimed by a noblesse gentlaman from Europe, Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti. How to stump out this plague is the greatest challenge facing mankind right now, at a time of recession in the Northern economies, recession that threatens to intensify into a global financial meltdown.
Below is an article from the Executive Intelligence Review that sums up the plague of the century. You may as well participate in the debates on how to curb it and reverse the global trend of financial madness.
Writ 30 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Tremonti: Commodity Speculation Is `The Plague of the 21st Century'
June 23, 2008 (EIRNS)—Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti, an outspoken advocate of convening a New Bretton Woods conference, gave a speech in front of a meeting of the Italian trade union CISL, on June 22, calling on the trade unions to join him in the fight against the real causes of oil and food price increases: "international speculation."
According to the daily Il Messaggero, Tremonti called "surrealistic" his own government's plan, which projects a "planned inflation" of 1.7%. The reasons for that, he said, "are two. The first one is technical, the second one is political. The first one, everybody can get by calling the ECB, which demands to set an inflation rate under 2%."
Tremonti gave the real ECB telephone number. "It is wrong to speak about inflation today. For at least the last six months, we should have been talking about speculation. International speculation was first financial speculation and in the past period, after some disasters, focussed on commodities, starting with oil." Therefore, either you fight a local battle, with old methods and old perspectives, or you fight a global fight, where you fight Public Enemy Number One: speculation.
"Speculation is the plague of this century, a specter that we knew would come, but not in this way and not so fast. Inflation can no longer be explained with the simple laws of supply and demand," Tremonti continued. He then attacked the left, because "in the Left camp, there are speculation managers who have been accustomed to smoke cigars and sail on yachts, and therefore the Left does not talk about speculation." The head of the leftist CGIL trade union, Epifani, protested. If what Tremonti says is true, he was asked, why does the government write the draft budget plan based on those figures? The draft, demanded by the EU, "is a surrealistic document of no use," Tremonti said.
The Anglo-Dutch financial oligarchy is realizing that Tremonti is becoming more and more of a threat. That might be the reason why the Financial Times today published a belated review of Tremonti's book Fear and Hope, saying in its headline, "Tremonti's Best-seller on Fear Strikes Chord." The review reports that Tremonti's actions are gaining popularity and support in Italy, and profiles his book from its weakest sides (anti-China, fortress Europe, etc.), but it does say that he calls for "a new, far-reaching Bretton Woods system," for "a strong state" and "deplores the left-wing protest movements of 1968."
Speculation, more speculation!
Speculation has driven food prices up, and is now driving gas prices up as well. It is a core feature of the ‘virtual economy’ based on predatory finance, the main game of the global financier oligarchs who are now in practical control of the world’s strategic economic sectors.
Commodity speculation is getting to be a ‘plague of the 21st century’ as claimed by a noblesse gentlaman from Europe, Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti. How to stump out this plague is the greatest challenge facing mankind right now, at a time of recession in the Northern economies, recession that threatens to intensify into a global financial meltdown.
Below is an article from the Executive Intelligence Review that sums up the plague of the century. You may as well participate in the debates on how to curb it and reverse the global trend of financial madness.
Writ 30 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Tremonti: Commodity Speculation Is `The Plague of the 21st Century'
June 23, 2008 (EIRNS)—Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti, an outspoken advocate of convening a New Bretton Woods conference, gave a speech in front of a meeting of the Italian trade union CISL, on June 22, calling on the trade unions to join him in the fight against the real causes of oil and food price increases: "international speculation."
According to the daily Il Messaggero, Tremonti called "surrealistic" his own government's plan, which projects a "planned inflation" of 1.7%. The reasons for that, he said, "are two. The first one is technical, the second one is political. The first one, everybody can get by calling the ECB, which demands to set an inflation rate under 2%."
Tremonti gave the real ECB telephone number. "It is wrong to speak about inflation today. For at least the last six months, we should have been talking about speculation. International speculation was first financial speculation and in the past period, after some disasters, focussed on commodities, starting with oil." Therefore, either you fight a local battle, with old methods and old perspectives, or you fight a global fight, where you fight Public Enemy Number One: speculation.
"Speculation is the plague of this century, a specter that we knew would come, but not in this way and not so fast. Inflation can no longer be explained with the simple laws of supply and demand," Tremonti continued. He then attacked the left, because "in the Left camp, there are speculation managers who have been accustomed to smoke cigars and sail on yachts, and therefore the Left does not talk about speculation." The head of the leftist CGIL trade union, Epifani, protested. If what Tremonti says is true, he was asked, why does the government write the draft budget plan based on those figures? The draft, demanded by the EU, "is a surrealistic document of no use," Tremonti said.
The Anglo-Dutch financial oligarchy is realizing that Tremonti is becoming more and more of a threat. That might be the reason why the Financial Times today published a belated review of Tremonti's book Fear and Hope, saying in its headline, "Tremonti's Best-seller on Fear Strikes Chord." The review reports that Tremonti's actions are gaining popularity and support in Italy, and profiles his book from its weakest sides (anti-China, fortress Europe, etc.), but it does say that he calls for "a new, far-reaching Bretton Woods system," for "a strong state" and "deplores the left-wing protest movements of 1968."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)