RURAL DEVELOPMENT SHOULD BE TOP PRIORITY WORLDWIDE

RURAL DEVELOPMENT SHOULD BE TOP PRIORITY WORLDWIDE

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Good evening from the Philippines’ highland suburbs!

 

For this note I will focus on the thesis that rural development should be pursued by developing countries. The world’s nations have pursued growth that has been badly skewed towards urbanization and commercialization since after World War II, a total effort that has seen many people become poor as a result. Most of the poor folks are in rural hinterlands and fisherfolks.

 

The Philippines is a classic case in point that has been direly affected by the badly skewed development in favor of urbanization, an endeavor that has been fostered at the expense of rural communities of farmers, fisherfolks, and Indigenous Peoples or IPs. Today, Philippine population is 66% urban and 34% rural, with 2% added to urban population every year.

 

As urbanization grows, rural poverty likewise grows in my beloved country. Rural to urban poverty ratio here is 2.5:1 and is still moving up. It was 2.1:1 in 1989, and the situation has been deteriorating ever since. 70% of the country’s poor families are rural, with only 30% as urban. Very clearly, between the two, it is rural development that must be pursued with vigor to reverse the poverty situation in the country as a whole.

 

To demonstrate what I mean by skewed development, consider the following information:

 

ü  MetroManila or simply Manila, the national capital region (NCR), produces 30% or nearly 1/3 of the nation’s wealth. Yet it supports merely 12% o3 1/8 of the nation’s population.

 

ü  As of end of 2009, Manila contributed a whopping US $65 Billion to the country’s $186 Billion GDP or gross domestic product. Using UNDP converter index, Manila’s GDP, multiplied by 4, registered an enviable $260 Billion-Purchasing Power Parity or PPP for 2009, rendering it as wealthy as the whole of Vietnam.

 

ü  Included among the world’s 35 most wealthy and powerful mega-cities—comprising the ‘global nexus’—Manila’s economy remains at 65% services and 35% industries, with nary a food base worth documenting. These economic sectors are the highest in value-added, ensuring high levels of income for all component cities and towns of the mega-city.

 

ü  Poverty in Manila has been reduced to a manageable 8%, rendering it on an even much better situation than the USA’s whose poverty incidence had climbed from 12% in 2002 to 15% today. Manila has all the resources it needs to solve its own poverty and development problems, which made it drastically reduce poverty since the 1990s.

 

ü  Therefore, Manila should no longer be subsidized by national government in terms of development projects, from roads to international airports (Los Angeles & US cities are building their own airports without federal or state government support). Yet, as records show, billions of dollars are still being poured by national government to bankroll gigantic projects here, such as lightrail systems, international airport expansion, and flood control.  

 

ü  On top of those national government-initiated projects is Pagcor City, a world-class theme park-cum-gaming complex that is costing U.S. $25 Billion (with private participation). It will employ 250,000 and will house the world’s tallest tower. It is targeted for completion in 2014.

 

So, as you can see from the Philippine case, whereas the mega-city receives billions of dollars for new projects and urban renewal, the rural areas continue to wallow in appalling states of abject poverty. Lucky enough if a region outside Manila would be appropriated P1 Billion or U.S. $24 Million at any given year from the pork barrels of Congress.

 

Fisherfolks in my country are particularly the most vulnerable to poverty and deleterious living conditions spawned by it. With poverty incidence at 66%, you could easily see why past 40% of fisherfolks’ children suffer from advanced malnutrition. The situation of over-fishing in the entire country compounds the poverty situation of marginal fisherfolks who can ill afford to equip themselves with state-of-the art fishing gears to compete with commercial fishers.

 

To say that the Philippines is in a transition phase, and that poverty and malnutrition will disappear it time as the country reaches development ‘maturity’, is pure delusion. Without active intervention to improve the capacities and capabilities of fisherfolks, farmers, and IPs, the problem of poverty will never fade away but will, as a matter of fact, worsen with time.

 

With so many rural folks wallowing in cesspools of pauperization, we can at best watch more rural insurgencies feast upon the resentment-filled minds of the rural poor. As the Philippine case has shown, past rural insurgencies have ceased only to be replaced by new, bigger, and more ferocious insurgencies.

 

[Philippines, 11 August 2010]

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

ISRAEL PREPARES TO COMBAT IRAN: SEMITE-PERSIA WAR HASTENS

ISRAEL PREPARES TO COMBAT IRAN: SEMITE-PERSIA WAR  HASTENS

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Good evening from the Philippines’ suburban boondocks!

 

Just a couple of weeks back, this analyst wrote and published briefer articles about the forthcoming war between pan-Semitic Zion-Sunni alliance and Persia (Shiite Iran). Barely had I rested from the theme of racial awakenings and the coming conflict, when news came out that Israel is now preparing to combat Iran head-on.

 

Just about a couple of days ago, I wind up of news from the internet economic intelligence reports that Israel is indeed preparing for a unilateral military strike on Iran. Accordingly, the United States is not privy to this conflict, even as its hands are heavily tied up in procuring peace between Israel and Palestine (the efforts will pay off eventually as I forecast rightly).

 

Accordingly, political groups from Israel who represent both Likud and Labor are strongly opposed to the unilateral strike, and are doing what they can to stamp out the planned action. The same anti-war forces have uncovered an agreement between the Israeli premier and the defense establishment to seal the strike plan and commence with war exercises pronto.

 

Meanwhile, reports had it that former intelligence officials of Israel, who are opposed to the war, have unwind of the Israeli military exercises now going on inside Romania. As to when the exercises will be concluded will be the subject of some more extra information gathering.

 

As per assessment from the oppositors themselves and from independent analysts, the combat missions will be launched in the months ahead. Let it be stressed again: MONTHS AHEAD and not years ahead of the present juncture.

 

A war with Iran will surely be an expensive one, and needed to be bankrolled by certain oligarchic forces. We can only surmise, based on near-catastrophic economic events in Europe, that the Anglo-European oligarchy is desperate to recoup from possible losses in the financial-monetary markets precisely by propping up their favorite currencies (dollar, pounds, euros, yen) through a calculated politico-military turbulence in Western Asia.

 

The bankrollers’ home point to Europe as far as our analysis holds. The same oligarchs are aching to prop up the dollar through derivative market gimmickries that have, as of late, been proving to be dead end solutions to their greed accumulations. Bankrupt with ideas as to how the financial-monetary system they built for centuries can still hold up to the global economic roof, they are now planning to unleash the propping up of oil price via a war.

 

The oligarchs’ own financial looting agenda incidentally coheres with the Arab sheikhdoms’ agenda of inflating their own oil, local currencies and the dollar for the same purpose, with the addition that the sheikhs mortally dread Shiite Iran. As already articulated by me before, such a dread springs from the ancient unconscious dread of Persia, a dread that is now re-surfacing after almost 2000 years of dormancy.

 

We won’t be surprised if the sheikhdoms will partly bankroll Israel’s frontal combat missions, with part of the cash registers shouldered by the Rothschild & Soros and financier circles. Not only that, the sheikhdoms may offer the bonus of permitting the use their territories for Israeli flight passes, landing, refueling, even for depository of military ordnance.

 

The dread of Persia is very extensive, which covers the entire ancient territories of Assyria-Canaan-Hyksos-Hamites-Berbers-Nubians. That’s a whopping 5-6 million square miles of territories populated today by over 500 million people, from Western Asia up to the western tip of North Africa (belt of lands north of the Sahara).

 

That does not include yet the peoples of the ancient empire of Bharat (India) that have confronted Persia’s might in antiquity. Pakistan, Kashmir, Afghanistan and central Asian states represent those territories and their descendants today.

 

For sure, those peoples and territories mentioned are now watching the unfolding events very closely. As the military preparations will build up, so will the tensions build up, backed up by negotiations about the alliances to be formed.

 

It is too early to see the exact membership of alliances from each side. For now, we can only presume that the axes of conflict will be the Zion Israel-Sunni Arab axis on one hand, and the Shiite Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas axis on the other hand. There will be fill-in-the-blanks on either side as the war nears, with horse trading done below the table.

 

Let’s all better observe the events closely, as this war won’t just be confined between Israel and Iran. Even before Christmas, the shaping war will sicken the world’s diverse bourses from West to East, thus leaving a bad taste to our annual Christmas and year-ender celebrations.

 

[Philippines, 23 August 2012]

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Good evening from the Philippine suburbs!

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

[Philippines, 31 July 2010]

 

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

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

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

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

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