|
|
 15 May 2008 @ 09:54
As I was browsing through the pages of the newspapers this morning, my eyes immediately caught the item about the China earthquake update. The latest quake flattened many towns to ground level, killing over 22,000 folks, and destroyed infrastructures thus cutting off the affected areas from outside relief operations. The quake registered 7.9 magnitude on Reichster.
That quake was 2000 times more powerful than the Big One that struck Luzon in the early 1990s and caused extensive damages across couples of regions and cities. Obviously much bigger, the China quake must be expected to wreak greater destruction than Luzon’s (Philippine’s) big tremor.
The difference between the Luzon and Sichuan (China) quakes is not just magnitude and damages however. The Luzon quake was natural, as it had got to do with tectonic plate movements. Past the Luzon quake came those secret innovations on building a new weapon of mass destruction or WMD, the leading one being the Tesla Earthquake Machine or Tesla-EM (my own term for it). China’s quake has got to do more with the latter, though its own authorities may keep mum about their findings. More >
|
|
|
|
 15 May 2008 @ 09:50
Within a nation-state, from micro to macro levels, there better be cooperation among the three main sectors of development: state, market, civil society...
The emerging term for cooperation today is ‘synergy’. In the original sense of the term, it denoted the causal chain of “one thing leading to another.” It had since become a staple term in ecology and cybernetics. Gradually the meaning of the term underwent change.
Today the term ‘synergy’ had come closer to the term ‘symbiosis’ of ecology. The neo-Weberians were among the advocates of this largely symbiotic signification, applied to the three sectors. Joel Migdal, Vivienne Shue, Theda Skocpol and Peter Evans are among these chief advocates of synergism as strategy for effecting development.
Synergism isn’t really new here in Asia, even here in my country of origin. For centuries now, we had at the grassroots level the ‘bayanihan’, practiced by helping each other in times of need. Bayanihan’s closest translation is gemeinschaft (Ferdinand Toennies’ term) or community. It means synergy precisely in today’s context. More >
|
|
|
|
13 May 2008 @ 12:36
While I argue strongly for a dirigist paradigm of development, I do not at all go for maximum state intervention such as the ones experimented on in socialist states and welfare states. Government is no Big Mama nor Santa Claus that provides everything for its citizens.
There should always be room for private initiatives, social spaces for people to think creatively and innovatively to provide for their own needs. State and civil society can come in to do enabling tasks when needed, but not to role-play as the Big Mama Forever of her infantile clientele who are forever dependent on ‘milk from mama’ (dole-outs, essentials of life). More >
|
|
|
|
13 May 2008 @ 12:35
Sometime back, the ‘basic needs’ framework rang strong bells in the development field as a potent framework for development. Having started with the defunct Ministry of Human Settlements in 1981 as a community development specialist, I still recall then how brilliant and exquisitely crafted was this Ministry’s adoption of the ‘basic needs’ framework as its guiding light.
“Higit sa lahat, Tao!” is the core premise of the Ministry’s development paradigm. Roughly, this translates as “man precedes everything else.” Meaning, man should be at the core of all development efforts, and not the objects of a synthetic (infrastructures, industries) or physical nature (raw materials, livestock, plants). More >
|
|
|
|
12 May 2008 @ 10:56
Almost everyone experiences fear, among which is the fear of the Devil. Why not re-examine your behavior, and one time or another you’d be going through the rituals of demonizing people around you: neighbor, fellow officesmate, Saddam Hussein, or anybody outside of you who would exemplify the Demon-incarnate.
Fellows, the demon is right inside of you, so please don’t over-bother yourself with looking for demons outside of you. True, there are ‘devils’(fallen angels, negative aliens of the Reptilian type) and ‘demons’ (interdimensional demented beings) everywhere, but you failed to see this Inner Demon inside of you. Mind you, we all have this petty demon inside of us, and it matters how we manage to rise above its dictates on us—through the Primal Self, or desire-driven pursuits.
Inside of us too is an ‘etheric double’ that looks just like us. It is our doppelganger, and at times it can disengage from us, show up elsewhere and materialize right there, looking exactly just like us, and then moves back to be re-integrated into your physical body. The doppelganger is the repository of everything negative in us, becomes our ghost when our soul departs with the astral body, and disintegrates after around 500 years or so. Our Inner Demon necessarily nestles in the doppelganger, they are One. More >
|
|
|
|
11 May 2008 @ 11:44
In the same article on New Nationalism, I advanced the thesis for value-based integrated frameworks.
The classical frameworks of development were largely rationalistic models, or Western-oriented. I don’t have a problem with accepting Western development frameworks. However, I found out in my own long practice of social development that they don’t completely work in the field.
The ‘value-neutral’ premise of rationalism is particularly suspect and dangerous, in that it can lead to the treatment of clientele as hard objects. Those frameworks coming from the East that are strongly value-based rather than value-neutral do serve the greater purpose of recognizing the powers of people to transform their own lives. More >
|
|
|
|
11 May 2008 @ 11:42
In my meaty article on New Nationalism, I advanced fourteen (14) contentions in substantiation of what neo-nationalism is.
The first basic contention is that the nation-state can thrive and grow amid globalization. In other words, globalization shouldn’t lead to the destruction of nation-states. The trend since the start of massive implementation of liberal reforms leading to global integration of markets has been, in fact, the destruction of nation-states. This trend has to be stopped now.
There is really no reason to destroy the nations just so that our global community can be integrated. In the Philippine experience, nationalism has been a positive, progressive force that had united close to 100 ethno-linguistic communities. The Philippine nation had just lately crystallized, with a national identity now in shape though in moderate level, a phenomenon that took over 200 years to build.
There is no way that we can allow the massive destruction of nations today just in order to whet the appetites of the global oligarchy and their transnational corporations or TNCs for control over the world’s resources and labor. The conservation of nations must be a pre-requisite to building the ‘peace condition’ nationally and globally, guided by the principle of ‘dialogue of civilizations’. More >
|
|
|
|
10 May 2008 @ 12:33
[Concluding portion of the article: E. Argonza, “New Nationalism: Grandeur and Glory at Work.”]
This paper now ends with a note on the prospects of neo-nationalism making waves. Note that Old Nationalism is the dominant discourse within the nationalist streams, and this fact is fully recognized in this paper. Old Nationalists will definitely have a hard time digesting the premises and contentions presented in this article. Being anchored on Western discourses, secular and materialistic to the extremes, the said articulators will have none of neo-nationalism save for viewing it as another exotic fad that will soon fade away. This is understandable. “Old dogs can’t learn new tricks!” goes the idiom, and this holds true in every sphere of human endeavor.
But one thing is sure at this juncture: New Nationalism is germinating right at the very center of state power, as the President herself expressed her subscription to and advancement of the new discourse. Surely, a coterie of like minds are gravitating around her, who are looking for an alternative to the neo-liberal frameworks that sorely failed, but who nonetheless find the extremist dirigism of Old Nationalism passé and repulsive. GMA’s reaching the helm of power signifies that nationalism has finally won amid over a century of struggle, as patriots of diverse ideological orientation won the previous electoral rounds nationwide. But a new phase of nationhood is coming into being, an evolving context that demands a corresponding new discourse to defend it and root it firmly. More >
|
|
|
|
10 May 2008 @ 12:31
The following statements are excerpts from the article E. Argonza, “New Nationalism: Grandeur and Glory at Work.” This article is my humble contribution to the current efforts at formulating policy frameworks for development and growth within the context of a globalizing world. The basic contention of neo-nationalism is that it is sacrosanct to conserve and advance the interests of nation-states, however this should also take note of the opportunities that a globalized economy and world community can offer.
It differs much from Old Nationalism which views anything outside of the nation-state as suspect and anathema to growth. Old nationalism for instance regales at the advancement of ‘national champions’ of enterprises, whereas new nationalism recognizes the obsolescence of these enterprises and the intermeshing of ideas from diverse nations within the content grid of commodities. Old nationalism is predisposed to extremes of maximum dirigism or interventionist policies, whereas new nationalism brings one to a balance of sustaining a market, albeit a ‘social market’, but retains a certain set of state intervention for advancing the general welfare. More >
|
|
|
|
9 May 2008 @ 10:40
NEW NATIONALISM: BASIC CONTENTIONS
By: Erle Frayne D. Argonza
[Culled from: E. Argonza, “New Nationalism: Grandeur and Glory at Work!”]
Being an advocate of new nationalism or neo-nationalism, I outlined in the original article a number of contentions about this emerging ideology. I would prefer to treat the body of ideas as ‘policy framework’ than as ideology, given the new trend to veer away today from anything ideological. More >
|
|
<< Newer entries Page: 1 ... 112 113 114 115 116 ... 119 Older entries >> |
