Of the many urgent subjects that have piled up over the week, there’s one that mustn’t escape our full and undivided attention: The latest in the US-UK’s drive to take away the richest parts of Mindanao . While the MILF “Ancestral Domain” (AD) ruse suffered a setback when practically the whole nation stood up against it, the US-UK plots have not seized at all. Blair’s visit to Manila to sell “a-peace-ment,” for instance, was one such step, but the more sinister is the recent “human rights” campaign against one of Mindanao’s most militant law-and-order stalwarts: Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
Last April 6, 2009, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) suddenly charged Duterte for being behind the “Davao Death Squads.” The Human Rights Commission of the Philippines, in turn, kowtowed by acknowledging the report posthaste, producing nothing but a propaganda windfall for Duterte’s would-be rival Nograles in the next local election.
Just what is the HRW? Birmingham University -New York Prof. James Petras says it is “a US-based group claiming to be a non-governmental organization, but which is in fact funded by government-linked quasi-private foundations and a Congressional-funded political propaganda organization, the National Endowment for Democracy…”
HRW has been at the forefront of the destabilization of states such as Yugoslavia and Venezuela. It published a report critical of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez which was shot with “blatant falsifications and outright fabrications.” It also defended the criminal gang in Kosovo--the KLA--which the West used to sow terror in Yugoslavia to justify its destruction and subsequent break-up.
It builds up credibility through such campaigns as the ban on land mines, but also uses this to undermine countries that are unwilling to yield to the West’s imperial demands.
To my mind, the reason why Duterte is suddenly on the HRW’s radar is the heightened drive of the US-UK tandem to press the MILF-MoA-AD in a more radical fashion--that is, through the increased use of terrorism and the strategy of tension to justify internationalization of the issue for more intervention. Tough patriots and crusaders like Mayor Duterte will be a major stumbling block to the “Balkanization” of Mindanao by the West. All Filipinos should therefore take this struggle very seriously for the future is in Mindanao, with its oil, gas and natural deuterium in great abundance.
Meanwhile, our apology for the slip-up in last Monday’s column; something got lost in the transmission. We touched on two of the four measures of Barack Obama and Gordon Brown in the recent G20 summit. These were: 1) a $1.1-trillion for the IMF, and 2) a re-regulation of the financial sector. The first is just to ensure continued flow of Third World (including Eastern Europe ) debt with many strings attached. The second, meanwhile, remains useless for as long as USURY is the name of the game. As what American artist Jim Kirwan, in Usury Remains Untouched, argues: “We have dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury… We have not focused enough on the big deregulation… (on) the amount of interest that banks can get… (And today,) banks can charge 17, 18, 19, 30, 35 percent, not to mention payday lenders charging 200, 300, 400 percent in states like Illinois (and) California.”
The main point against re-regulation sans de-institutionalizing usury is: “If you’re able to charge 30 percent... You (will) want people to go into debt… This addicted the financial sector to very, very, very high rates of return compared to what investors were used getting in the real economy, the manufacturing sector, General Motors…”
Now, on to the third and fourth measures that were cut out--climate change issues and a clamor against “protectionism.” It is quite funny that Obama and Brown stressed the issues of man-made global warming, in spite of the fact that the weather these days isn’t agreeing with them, as cooling patterns are everywhere--from US cold spells to nice cool evenings in Manila . Marina Litvinsky, writing for the International Press Service, headlined: “G20 Leaders Wrangle over Kyoto Successor,” to stress that there is no consensus over this proposed new climate protocol.
World leaders know that the US-British aim in the global warming scare is to institute the “carbon tax” scheme, to tax everything from power plant emissions to methane from cows’ dung (a greenhouse gas, as reported by The New York Times--I’m not kidding--which would make milk more expensive). Carbon credits trading has already reached $59 billion in the first half of 2008. Once they fool more countries like the Philippines into accepting it because the G20 and the UN say so, it’ll run to the trillions globally, stunt Third World industrialization, and enrich global carbon traders.
Carbon credits trading has already reached $59 billion in the first half of 2008. Once they fool more countries like the Philippines into accepting it because the G20 and the UN say so, it’ll run to the trillions globally, stunt Third World industrialization, and enrich global carbon traders.
The fourth proposal--the G20’s warning against protectionism--is, of course, to be expected. Clearly, the US , Britain , China , India , and even Brazil , are all eager to keep markets open for their agricultural and industrial exports. But this would only perpetuate the centralization of the global economy around a few giant economies that want to be super-rich and super-powerful. What we, instead, should do is democratize the global economy by fostering a Nationalist Development Economy (NDE) model for every nation, making each one a positive contributor to the global economy in a trickle up fashion, and reduce their dependency on the global superpowers. We, Filipinos, should champion this NDE paradigm and lead the world into genuine global democracy.
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