Finalist-PhilBlogAwards 2010

Finalist-PhilBlogAwards 2010
Finalist for society, politics, history blogs

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

ECONOMY THAT HEALS: CHALLENGE OF THE NEW EPOCH

Erle Frayne Argonza / Guru Ra

Magandang Hapon! Good afternoon!

Please know first that this writer/analyst is both (b) economist and (b) mystic-healer. For some time now, the challenge of contributing to the construction of an ‘economy that heals’ has been knocking at my ‘mental coconut’, a task that explains this article and many yet that will succeed this one.

As an economist, my lines of subspecializations are: (a) development economics, (b) political economy & public policy, (c) international political economy, (d) economic sociology, and (e) enterprise economics (or biz economics). As a healer, my subspecializations are: (a) psychosocial counseling, (b) pranic healing, (c) distance healing (w/ angelic reinforcement); and, (d) soul healing (includes chakra alignment & cleansing, past life issues resolution).

Having laid out my brief economic & healing credentials, let me now proceed to my thesis. First of all, as a developmentalist (practical economist) and healer of long standing, let me declare my categorical observation that the ‘world system’ economy of today, which is an admixture of capitalist-dirigist-fascist-clerical economic systems, is characteristically: (a) non-healing, or pathological, (b) is hoarding-based rather than sharing-inspired, and (c) is already on its terminal phase, needing replacement rather than its recycling.

To simplify my terms, the present system, which is principally organized around capitalism (economy for profits, based on money system), is:

· SICK: A ‘sick economy’ is one based on flawed, sick principles that no longer work. Necessarily, a ‘sick economy’ (borrowing from Erich Fromm’s and Erik Erikson’s ‘sick society’) is a parametric condition that induces anxiety, anomie, alienation, and related pathologies that can lead to neuroses, sociopathy, psychoses, and total self-fragmentation.

· GREED-BASED: The ‘hoarding orientation’ (see Erich Fromm’s works) of the ‘world system’ (see Immanuel Wallerstein’s works) had propelled greed to the level of madness, thus reinforcing ‘system sickness’. Greed multiplies greed, more greed creates more greed, and so on, ad aeternum, thus leading to more ‘economic sickness’, to more madness and system collapse and societal catastrophe.

· SCARCITY PREMISE: Western economics had postulated (declared as a self-evident given) that scarcity is the fact of life. This postulate had since underpinned ‘hoarding’ economics, and had remained unchallenged in the West and mainstream circles. This is flawed from the very inception. Scarcity is not given, not a universal law either, but is a product of enslaving, hoarding power relations. It is an ideological rampart in support of the more real exploitative relations between the ‘hoarding classes’ and the producer underclasses that they bound and gagged in property relations.

· DYING & DEATH-INDUCING: The system is now dying, it is now on its death throes, yet many refuse to see it die. Bank bailouts and interest rate interventions are among those examples of tools that no longer work, yet they continue to be employed. Furthermore, the ‘sick economy’ also induces so many deaths due to poverty, anxiety, starvation, consumerist pathologies (obesity, cardiovasculars), genocides, etc. What is needed is to bury the system and build a new one rather than to perpetuate it.

Let me then declare the next thesis: that a new economic ‘world system’, which is in the nature of a ‘healing economy’, is a viable one. We may perhaps use different terms to refer to the same ‘world system’—sharing economy, cooperative economy, non-hoarding economy, consensus economy—but let us better recognize where we all converge: the ‘healing economy’.

Following from the foregoing statements, the contours of the new ‘healing economy’ or world system would be the obverse of the previous observations. They are:

· WELLNESS ECONOMY. A vibrant, wellness-oriented world system is one that will also see that everybody will have enterprises, jobs, and related pursuits that will see their talents grow and utilized to the utmost. It is an economy that also promotes the wellness paradigm, welcomes the advent of the alternative healers as ‘new kids on the block’ rather than to denigrate them as ‘quack doctors’, promotes equity and the highest values of the general welfare in their true sense, and is generally conducive to healthy relationships, institutions, communities, and healthy world.

· SHARING &/OR NON-HOARDING. ‘Hoarding orientation’ had degraded us humans to the most putrid hovels of the non-human or anti-human for many eons now. It is time to reverse such demonic conditionality and state. In the economic sphere, the highest principles of the ‘rule of Divine Love’ (compassion as core value) and ‘principle of giving’ (golden rule) must become dominant and sacrosanct. To talk of ‘compassionate capitalism’ is an oxymoron and subtly demonic. We have no more need for capitalism and the other isms, what we need is a non-ideological sharing economy and enough of those isms that have only exacerbated our ‘sick economy’ and ‘sick society’. Ditto for competition principle, the core of capitalism, which has no place in the emerging context. Cooperation-loving-sharing is the value trilogy of the emerging context, not competition-hatred-hoarding of the capitalist world system.

· ABUNDANCE. The true state of the universe is one of abundance, not scarcity. “From above, so below,” declares the Teaching. From the abundance of the cosmos, to the abundance of the Earth & Solar system, this is the sacrosanct law and not that peddled lie about scarcity. Healing economy is one that is attuned to the very dynamics of the cosmos and not divorced from it. An operative healing economy will ensure that all members of society, all citizens of Earth or Terra, will be attuned to this sacrosanct law, and will experience abundance in everyday life. “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed,” declared the late Mahatma Gandhi in his swadeshi writings. Gandhi referred to the same law, and stated it in axiomatic manner.

· DYNAMIC & LIFE-INDUCING. The healing economy will prove itself to be dynamic and life-inducing as well. It does not follow from absurd ‘creative destruction’ demonology worship of capitalism, but from ‘creative constructivism’ of a Godly society. In the present system, just by destroying the currency of one nation (e.g. currency attack versus ASEAN/East Asia, 1997), many workers will lose their jobs and many small enterprises forcibly close shop, leading to anxieties and deaths. Is that what you call Godly and ‘creative destruction’? Very boldly I’d say, echoing spiritual masters who said the same, that a wellness-sharing-loving-giving economy will be truly life-inducing, as it will not need wars and destruction of nations to sustain it.

Having shared to you in brief the contours of the new economic world system, let me now close with the reiteration of the challenge: building the healing economy is the greatest economic task of the moment and the eon now unfolding before us. We can no longer be clinging to dinosaur world systems that bred so much maladies in the past, we should move on and build a new one that will be the economic foundation of a new society of loving, giving, sharing, Oneness, and authentic human liberation.

Enough with those bailouts, IMF-World Bank mergers, bank mergers, interest rate manipulations, stock markets, speculations, government take-overs, hedge funds,...Enough with greed, hoarding, hatred, competition, bloody vampire economics of the Old World!

Peace & Love Advocates of the world, let us build the New Economy of Healing without reserve. Let’s not be cowed by the intimidations of the demonic Pied Pipers and fascistic war machines of the Old World elites. We shall overcome! Carpe diem!

[Writ 08 December 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

Thursday, December 04, 2008

PAKISTAN’S CREATION, AFGHAN OPIUM: BRITISH TRADE LINKS

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

In the name of the Father (British oligarchy), the Son (Pakistan) and of the Holy Spirit (Afghan opium). So mote it be.

Pakistan and India are now on the verge of another war, one that will extend the frontiers of a brewing World War III to the South Asian corridor. Many are befuddled by the events in the region, the continuing animosities among the erstwhile ‘sibling’ neighbors, the latest terror attack on Mumbai, and more to come. Many in India and Pakistan still think that the hostilities are rooted in the Hindu-Islam competition, and/or in the lack of foresight of Nehru for approving the partition plan. Never do they bother at all to reflect about external forces, notably British financier oligarchs, that were responsible for that very faulty partition.

The creation of Pakistan is directly a result of the old British East India Company’s or BEAC’s search for safe opium trade route, in case that Indian independence would galvanize. BEAC enterprises are mired in every kind of underworld financial sources, to say the least, the revenues of which are then used to finance businesses in the aboveground. Among such covert sources were (a) slave trade (Adam Smith was BEAC-hired to design a doctrine that will justify free trade of slaves by the British) and (b) opium trade.

Afghanistan and Burma were then in British hands, and were already prospering on the ground as producers of dope. The main market, to recall, was China, whose drug users were enticed to do so by British agents disguised as Christian missions that introduced the dope deep into Chinese society. When the Indian independence movement was up, the BEAC hierarchy knew that it was only a matter of time before the rest of Western territories in Asia would follow the same route. That was precisely what happened, which proved to be tough in terms of ensuring sustained drug production and the safety of the trade routes toward external markets.

When India was almost a-born, it wasn’t a coincidental event that Moslems within the rising star party (Congress), or those associated with Gandhi and Nehru, would demand for a partition. Behind the scenes, British agents moved quickly to do their appointed tasks of creating divisions within the Indian independence movement, by manipulating Moslem Indians of established esteem who could be their lackeys in a new state whose very purpose is to secure the drug trade route. That new state, supposedly “Moslem”, was to be named as PAKISTAN.

Few people across the globe are aware about why there is so much dope being peddled. Maybe if these folks would just look at themselves, reminisce those moments when one had quaffed about five (5) jiggers of brandy or two (2) glasses of red wine, one gets into a euphoria of sorts and feels like exploding in love for his/her fellows at some instance. Then one would understand why there is so much dope moving around: people simply like it! Or, there is a growing section of the population that loves dope, no matter how dangerous it is to be hooked up into the habit. For as long as people take dope, drug trade will flourish.

And the goal of the drug traders is no less than the legalization of dope across the world. When you have certain states such as the Netherlands that legalized marijuana, then you see the ‘signs of the times’. As anxiety and anomie will rise within an anarchic global context across the coming decades, the possibility of legalizing dope isn’t a far-fetched reality. This is, again, the ultimate goal.
In the meantime, observers have to content themselves with the thought that the drug trade flourishes because it is Big Money. Take the case of my country, the Philippines. Dope here is now the biggest source of underground money, and estimated annual revenues by the manufacturers-traders is as high as P600 Billion. That’s roughly U.S. $14 Billions in nominal value. In Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) value, that amounts to US. $56 Billion.

That is just the Philippines and not Afghanistan, USA, Colombia, Mexico, and China (with Triad groups operating) where dope revenues are higher. The aggregate sums of incomes from all the drug trade in the world would easily reach the Trillions of US Dollars or Euros, a whopping lot! The same monies have easily funded many legitimate businesses, name them: manufacturing, construction, hedge funds, banking, housing, agriculture, shipping, and more. They were even used to fund charities of churches! I need not remind the readers that they are used to fund electoral campaigns by politicians all over the globe, even kindergartens know this.

Now, let’s go back to Pakistan and Afghanistan, these two being interlinked by the British dope trade. The expectation of the traders is that these two should be safe havens, (a) Afghanistan for the production, and (b) Pakistan for the transit/trade. There is also some consumption in both countries, but the main markets are the USA and EU. Both countries should therefore always in the hands of ‘friendly forces’, to ensure undisrupted operations. I need not remind the reader that so much of bribery went into developing new oligarchs and politicians in both countries, in order to ensure ‘friendly forces’ ensconced in all quarters.

When the Soviets and Talibans took over Afghanistan, production was disrupted. Both regimes were unfriendly to dope, and had no second thoughts in razing down ground production. Hundreds of billions of dollars are lost in just three (3) years of ‘enemy forces’ occupation of the ground, which pains the pockets. That served Pakistan good, which, being a ‘friendly force’, was always there to kowtow to the whims of the British and their allies (Americans) who also benefitted immensely from the dope trade.

So, to conclude my piece, the Islam-Hindu conflict has nothing to do with the India-Pakistan partition. Such a conflict was contrived, there was religious tolerance in India since the days yet of the Moguls (who re-instituted tolerance policy), and fundamentalism was never a phenomenon at all. Having reviewed tons of materials on comparative religions, being both sociologist and yogi-mystic, I am very sure about the latter, a phenomenon that was in fact created by the financier oligarchs themselves as smokescreen for their rather noxious trade operations.

As to what forecasts to make, I would leave that to the readers. I’d move on to some other related topics later.

[Writ 04 December 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]