The ‘systemic’ solution

Yesterday’s Tribune editorial, “Desperately Looking,” correctly criticized Malacañang spokesman Jess Dureza’s retort to critics on his regime’s total failure to meet the challenges of the global “free market“ system’s unfolding collapse, including the massive job losses in store for OFWs and the domestic sector. The fact that he challenged critics to come up with concrete steps, instead of him supplying the answers, reflects his administration’s wide-ranging bankruptcy.

Dureza has obviously not been reading up on the right solutions to the crisis. For if he did, the first thing someone in his position ought to have done is to step back and see the fire that is spreading across the forest from the individual burning trees. Moreover, Dureza is ill-equipped to comprehend complex matters, which is par for the course for all of Gloria’s men and so-called opposition trapos.

However, this inability to appreciate the “whole picture” is true even of more “educated” people, as can be gleaned from Internet articles like “The Crisis of Common Sense: Is It So Difficult to Understand the Financial Crisis?” by Matthias Chang, or “We Can’t Rely on Superficial Mainstream Media Reporting at a Time of Deep Crisis-As the New Year Begins: Things to Think about More Deeply” by Danny Schechter, and “Capitalism in Crisis: Actually, ‘It’s the System, Stupid’” by Prof. Rick Wolff.

Everyone, thus, can benefit from sources such as the Center for Research on Globalization, for the best political-forensic economists and geopolitical analysts from all over the world. And to condense voluminous data, thereby understanding the problem faster, we can apply such simple common sense thinking as: 1) There’s never any free lunch, 2) When an offer sounds too be good to be true, then it’s not, 3) If you’re enticed to get something for nothing, you’ll be the sorry loser in the end, and 4) Never judge a book by its cover--because bankers, investment advisers, and “economists” dress the best.

But even before we get to understand, we must first remove the “blinders” that hamper our vision. The Guerilla News Network, another helpful Web site, for one, has an article, “Financial Meltdown Decolonizing Asian Minds,” on the connection between colonial thinking and economic subjugation.

Across the region, the Filipino mind is sadly the most colonized in Asia , with Filipino intelligentsia and media being the worst of the lot. In fact, the better “educated” one is, whether he’s from Ateneo, La Salle , or AIM, the more colonized and inutile he becomes without even being aware of it.

Worse, our traditional political leaders are not just of this colonial mold, they are even conscious and willing colonial servants, side by side with Gloria Arroyo in her sickening sycophancy to western leaders, from Bush to Juan Carlos, or in Joe de Venecia’s sucking up to the Heritage Foundation’s “free trade” advocacy.

In the same way, Philippine media is as seriously afflicted with colonial mentality. Take Melinda Quintos de Jesus’ Center for Media Freedom, which is tied to CIA front National Endowment for Democracy, or the PCIJ, which has a USAid ad crawling on the masthead of its Web site, promoting western colonial liberalism and economics; or CNN veteran cum western asset Maria Ressa’s readiness to air via ABS-CBN the official US State Department line on the Mumbai Massacre blaming “al-Qaeda,” even when the fog of war had not yet lifted (a line that has been discredited by more exhaustive investigations that pointed to the Pakistan-based, CIA-Mossad-Hindu underworld).

Other than that, these media “professionals” are used regularly by US and Makati corporate predators to demonize Filipino leaders and dish out disinformation on the Philippine economic crisis.

This “colonial mentality” issue is important because it is part of the root problem of RP’s society in general, and its economy in particular. Nothing is ever done by government, business and “civil society” intelligentsia without first waiting for the signals, if not direct instructions, of the US .

Thus, at the very start of the financial collapse in August-September of last year, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) continued to raise interest rates even as other Asian governments, particularly China , announced rate cuts posthaste to stimulate their domestic economy. The BSP only reduced interest rates after the US Federal Reserve cut rates last December--a subservience to US economic policy that is the real obstacle to our nation’s economic survival, recovery and take-off.

For the real solutions, I have long posited that interest rates be cut drastically and a “debt moratorium” be instituted to channel such money to “pump-priming” programs, such as the P100-billion package mouthed by the Arroyo regime, hopefully not for “fertilizers in urban jungles” and grass cutting schemes, but directed toward economic self-sustainability. This can run the gamut from geothermal energy production facilities, integrated coconut production centers for every thousand hectares of coconut land, brown rice consumption education, System of Rice Intensification (SRI) technology dissemination, import-substitution industries, to the revival of indigenous raw materials like abaca and ramie, among other programs.

Alas, these real solutions cannot come because leadership still lacks the nationalistic will and the independent economic imagination that similarly plagues the economic elite, which controls the direction of the economy. Thus, the entire system must be changed, beginning with a change of people from the top of every institution in government and society, to be purged of the colonially-enslaved and replaced with nationalists and patriots.

In a “dying society” such as ours, the urgency to act--and act fast--for the common weal becomes all the more apparent. Because, as it has often been said, “Dissent without action is consent.” And such action can only come from, and be directed at, all of us collectively as a people because: “Walang tutulong sa Pilipino kundi kapwa Pilipino.” If such themes sound familiar, it is because these are the battle cries of our genuine patriotic leaders, Pres. Estrada, Sen. Trillanes and Gen. Danny Lim.

Since genuinely nationalistic and patriotic leadership is fundamental to begin this process of “systemic” change, with the current dearth of such leaders in the political horizon, we then ask: Can elections even hope to achieve this?

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