Make That Change

 

International Day of the Disappeared

Sunday 30th August marks the International Day of the Disappeared

James Balao, an activist working on Indigenous Peoples rights, was forcibly disappeared on 17 September 2008 in Baguio City, Philippines. He was last seen near his home being roughly bundled by armed men into a white van. One of the men who took him shouted at onlookers, and told them not to interfere because they were police officers arresting James. A court has ordered the authorities to reveal where he is, and do no further harm to him, but has not authorised his family to look for him in places of detention. He is one of hundreds of Filipinos who have been forcibly disappeared and have not been found yet .

James, a member of the Indigenous Benguet Ibaloi tribe in the Cordillera region in Northern Philippines, dedicated himself to research and fighting for Indigenous Peoples rights, particularly ancestral land rights. He contributed to the drafting of the Philippines’ Constitution. He is one of the founding members of the Cordillera People’s Alliance (CPA), an alliance of local organizations from the different Indigenous tribes in the Cordillera region.

Take action! Join the call to Surface James Balao and Stop Enforced Disappearances in the Philippines. Take photos of yourself or with friends, ideally in front of a local landmark to show international solidarity, holding up a message such as: “End Enforced Disappearances — the world is watching” or “Where is James Balao?”

The photos will be used as part of an international solidarity campaign on the one-year anniversary of James’ disappearance. Email photos to philmasteam@gmail.com or online.communities@amnesty.org by 31 October 2009.

Amnesty International

 

Climate Talks at Copenhagen

There is no way an agreement can be reached between parties involved (the environmentally-minded public versus industry and governments), that would satisfy the concerns of both during Climate talks. The public will never be satisfied with low quotas, neither will industries agree to limiting factory outputs, nor governments allow national economies to struggle.

And how effective are the Climate talks when industrial nations can negotiate the “purchase” or trade of CO2 quotas from developing or non-industrial countries in order to circumvent the quota rule? How effective are the Climate talks when industrial nations (like Japan) set their targets way below of anything that impacts change in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions?

A more long-term solution is necessary, and one that could satisfy both. How about finding a scientific solution to neutralising greenhouse gas and CO2 emissions? I’m sure governments and industries will finance the research on that. Of course, it will still be necessary to set quotas, but a Plan B should also be considered, since Plan A falls short of reducing the pollution.

• COP15: United Nations Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen 2009
• Adopt a Negotiator: Help track negotiations as they head towards the UN Climate Conference in December 2009
• Home by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

And you adolescent losers, expressing contempt for and subjecting to ridicule those who are trying to save the planet and the world: If you can do a better job, let’s hear it, but unless you have a better solution, I suggest you listen.

 

Choose Peace

When we shall look back at history, we will all be able to say with conviction that Bush has effectively destroyed America’s goodwill with the rest of the world. Now America will choose a new leader, and between Obama and McCain, Obama would be the better President. He is far more intelligent, and far more likely to make wise decisions than his rival. McCain is a walking warmonger and fearmonger, itching for confrontation.

Will America’s enemies take advantage of Obama’s so-called inexperience? Will McCain make things better or worse with America’s enemies? Having your plane shot down in Vietnam does not automatically qualify one to lead a nation, nor is that experience enough for it. Taking advantage of the emotional empathy this circumstance generates in order to get into politics is contemptible.

But will a new President change what its enemies think of America? Whatever you want to think, please choose peace. Please give Obama the chance to prove that there is still goodwill left in America.

• Biography: Barack Obama: Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University, where he majored in political science and specialized in international relations. He then attended Harvard Law School, graduated magna cum laude, and served as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he worked as a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer in Chicago. He also taught at the University of Chicago Law School as a senior lecturer specializing in constitutional law.

• MarketWatch: Why McCain would be a mediocre president: Like the current occupant of the White House, McCain got his first career breaks from the connections and money of his family, not from hard work…. With the help of his new wife’s wealth, his new father-in-law’s business connections and some powerful friends he had made as a lobbyist for the Navy, he was elected in 1982 to Congress in a district that he didn’t reside in until the day the seat opened up.

… McCain says he doesn’t understand the economy. He’s demonstrated that he doesn’t understand the workings of Social Security, or the political history of the Middle East. He doesn’t know who our enemies are. He says he wants to reduce global warming, but then proposes ideas that would stimulate — not reduce — demand for fossil fuels.

… His major accomplishment, in Vietnam and in the Senate, has been merely to survive.
Just surviving doesn’t make you a hero, or a decent president. America needs to do more than survive the next four years.

• The New York Times: Rivals Split on U.S. Power, but Ideas Defy Easy Labels
• The Nation Institute: McCain and the POW Cover-up

update:
• BBC: Al-Qaeda’s ‘mild’ message to Obama
• alJazeera: Mideast echoes Obama’s ‘change’ message

 

Massive Fraud and the Financial Crisis

I once had a discussion with a fellow British blogger who is studying Economics in London. He argued that for a state economy to be productive, free enterprise is the way to go. I argued that it is the duty of the State to look after its people and to regulate the economy to ensure prosperity for all.

Capitalism is well and good for individuals who have capital to begin with, and when the majority of the populace are of equal socio-economic status. But what about the little guy, the salary-man who survives day-to-day, whose livelihood, take-home pay and means of survival are at the whim of enterprise? When there is a gap between the rich and poor, the inequality raises serious social, political and economic issues.

Let’s say that these same salary-men place their savings in stocks and bonds, touted as good investments. Let’s say they also invest in a home, tied to a bank mortgage. They hope that by joining the bandwagon, they would make a profit off the volatile caprices of the market, traders gambling on a bet that the market would go this way or that.

Then the whole arrangement collapses. Who is now asked to step in, but told to keep out when the wolves were at the slaughter? Who is now asked to do something to save the traders who most profited by paying themselves appallingly huge salaries? Disgustingly huge salaries for a job that supposedly they had the know-how of, to wisely invest hard-earned money for a profit. It now appears that the Government will use taxpayers’ money to bail out banks and investment houses. All that hard-earned money gone to pay enormous bonuses and salaries, and empty pockets for the investors.

Now Capitalism is asked to step aside and Socialism to come in to salvage what little there is left to salvage in a financial crisis that capitalism has no means to solve.

Lehman Bros head took home $300m in pay and bonuses
How the financial turmoil affects you

• Capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
• Socialism: a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole

• Betraying the Spirit of Capitalism, by Nicolas Sarkozy: An unprecedented crisis of confidence is rocking the global economy. Major financial institutions are threatened, millions of small savers in the world who have invested their savings on the stock market are seeing them melt away, day after day, millions of pensioners who contributed to pension funds fear for their retirement, millions of modest households are being put in a difficult position by the rise in prices.

Basically, a certain idea of globalization is biting the dust with the end of a financial capitalism which had imposed its rationale on the whole economy and contributed to corrupting it. The idea of the all-powerful market which wasn’t to be impeded by any rules or political intervention was a mad one. The idea that the markets are always right was mad.

For several decades we created conditions in which industry operated with the aim of achieving short-term profitability. The growing risks people were forced to take to obtain increasingly exorbitant profits were concealed.

Remuneration systems were put in place which drove dealers to take more and more absolutely reckless risks. Banks were allowed to speculate on the markets instead of doing their job which is mobilize savings for economic development and analyzing the credit risk.

The speculator rather than the entrepreneur was financed.

… The current crisis must prompt us to build capitalism on a new sounder foundation, base it on an effort and work ethic; it must prompt us to restore a balance between the necessary freedom and regulation, between collective and individual responsibility. We must find a new balance between the State and the market when public authorities the world over are being compelled to intervene to save the banking system from collapse. A new relationship must be established between the economy and politics through the development of new regulations.

Self-regulation as a way of resolving all problems is finished. Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market which is always right is finished. We must learn the lessons from the crisis so that it doesn’t reoccur. We have just been a fingertip away from disaster and we can’t take the risk of it happening again.

If we want to rebuild a viable financial system, raising the moral standards of financial capitalism is a priority. I have no hesitation in saying that from now on there must be a limit on the remuneration of executives and dealers. There have been too many excesses; there have been too many scandals. So either the financial industry agrees on acceptable practices or the government of the Republic will settle the problem through legislation before the year is out.

The remuneration of executives must be indexed to the business’s actual economic performance. They must not be able to claim a golden parachute when they have committed errors or caused their businesses huge problems. And if the executives have a stake in the company’s performance, which is a good thing, its other employees, particularly the lowest-paid, must too. If the executives have stock options, the other employees must also have them or, failing that, benefit from a profit-sharing system.

We have to find out where the blame lies and those responsible for this collapse must at least pay some financial penalty. …

– Betraying the Spirit of Capitalism, by Nicolas Sarkozy (excerpts from his speech on 25 September 2008), published on ABS-CBN News on 10/9/2008 by Dennis Gaviola

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Sign the petition: Buy In — Not Bail Out: To world leaders: As citizens, we call for a global public “buy-in” to tackle the financial meltdown, instead of a “bail-out” of reckless bankers. We urge you to agree on a bold public rescue package without further delay – taking stakes in the banks, fixing failings, and mobilising public investment to benefit the many not the few.

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Staff at six banks set for huge bonuses: Financial workers at Wall Street’s top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year – despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash….

 

France and Its Major Problems

France has many serious problems. I believe that foremost among these are their government’s socialist policies and the long-term effects of their colonial exploits in French-Algeria.

During the Socialist era, a number of policies were implemented, one of which was the heavy social security tax (about 42% paid for by employers on each employee salary). This tax was used to “reward” the unemployed and the middle class with generous social benefits. True, a government has to look after its people, but unfortunately, these benefits are not only too generous that the government and people’s taxes are hard-put to sustain them, but also these benefits have been exploited by the champagne socialists (the gauche caviar).

So you find the French are better paid to do nothing, because starting salaries are less than what the government gives to the unemployed. You will find the French going on strikes and demonstrating against any adverse reforms on these benefits. Ultimately, the working class are the losers because jobs are few and ill-paid, employers being constrained with financial and government limitations. There is an uncommonly high unemployment in France.

The other issue is the immigrant problem. Algeria was a French colony, and like most colonialists, the French took advantage of the natural resources of the country and treated its citizens as inferiors. The French government improved Algeria’s infrastructure and implemented modernising changes, but what the French government did and what the French as people did in Algeria were two different matters.

The French people exploited the Algerians, alienating them. Algerians rebelled, began to clamour for independence and set up the FLN, the National Liberation Front. When de Gaulle proposed a referendum, asking Algeria if they wanted independence, the colonialists French who were against independence, set up the OAS, a terrorist organisation whose objectives not only included a hostile stance towards Algerians, but also to bring down the French government. The brutality of this organisation which involved the slaughter of Algeria’s civil population, is unprecedented.

Many Algerians fled across the Mediterranean sea to France. They constitute the largest immigrant class in the country. Many of them were granted French citizenship, but they are stigmatised all the same. And like the French lower social class, they also take advantage of the benefits of socialist policies. They are resented for this even more.

It would take a very complex solution to solve these two issues. The French have a penchant for paralysing infrastructure by going on strikes. If labour syndicates were limited in certain capacities from doing this, then socialist policies can finally be reworked on. This will require a firm hand, and absolutely necessary to unspoil a spoiled class of people. But we do not wish for a government dominated by the rich, but neither do we wish a government shackled by the poor.

There is a law against racism in France, but however overt this is, racism is widely practised. Education could be the key for both sides. Algerians must be taught to adapt to French culture. The French must learn to be more understanding of their plight.

Oh, if it were only as effortless as it sounds…

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To extraordinary circumstances we must apply extraordinary remedies.
– Napoleon Bonaparte

 

Black Hawk Down: The Lesson of Somalia

On this day, the 3rd of October 1993, a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Mogadishu by gun-toting civilians. The mission of the American Army’s Delta Force and the Ranger Infantry was to capture two top men working under the Somalian warlord, Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

But the mission went terribly wrong. In what was estimated to take half an hour, the shooting down of two helicopters extended their time to well over the following day. A Somali man with a camcorder recorded American soldiers tied at the feet being dragged in the streets of Mogadishu.

What happened in Somalia, in what began as a humanitarian effort to alleviate the suffering of the civilian population from starvation and poverty under Aidid, resulted in a cautionary stance in America’s foreign policy with regards to intervening into foreign local war zones.

One might now question the reason for America’s intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, as if the lesson in Somalia went unheeded. While the mission in Mogadishu was a humanitarian effort by both the United Nations and the United States, there is a sinister reason for that of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Defining Battle, by Mark Bowden

 

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist is a documentary film that accurately describes the historical politicization of religion, the clever creation and manipulation of events, and for what grand purpose these serve for controlling society in the way it thinks and behaves in order to enrich the powerful.

Part I: What the Bible is, What Religion Is, and Who is Jesus Christ
Part II: The 9/11 Lies and the Realities
Part III: The Financial Element Behind the Power

Zeitgeist: Statement, Sources, Interactive Transcripts