Arroyo’s Ghost
January 23, 2008 by mlq3
Filed under Daily Dose
Aside from the death of Heath Ledger, it’s stocks and currency that hog the headlines: On Wall Street, a Day of Frayed Nerves. In our neck of the woods, Asia recovers after Fed move, rupiah jumps. In Slate, Panic at Davos! the Global Financial Meltdown Intrudes on the World Economic Forum. I wonder, did the President notice?
Making sense of it all in The Economist in Desperate measures, from George Soros writing in The Financial Times: The worst market crisis in 60 years, and from Dr. Nouriel Roubini, who was predicting this all along, in The Coming Economic Recoupling and Financial Contagion in Global Stock Markets and Financial Markets: When the U.S. Sneezes the Rest of the World Gets the Cold:
The collapse of global equity markets on Monday January 21st is not just an episode of financial contagion from the US stock market to other stock markets.
It rather signals that global stock markets are now beginning to price the following things.
First, the US recession is unavoidable and has already started; and this recession will be ugly, deep and severe, much more severe than the mild 8-month recessions in 1990-91 and 2001.
Second, the rest of the world will not decouple from the US since – as discussed in detail below – many trade, financial, currency, policy, confidence links – lead to a transmission of negative growth shocks in the US to the rest of the world that will lead to a sharp global growth slowdown: 2008 will be the year of recoupling rather than decoupling.
Third, the US stock market has already started to reflect in the last few weeks the consequences on earnings and corporate profitability of a severe US recession.
Fourth, a growing realization that even aggressive Fed easing will not prevent this severe recession, i.e. that we are at the last leg of the stock market’s sucker’s rally and that the Bernanke put has very little value as massive financial losses will increase regardless of what the Fed does.
Fifth, now other global stock markets are now starting to price the effects of the US hard landing on the rest of the world growth, the phenomenon of recoupling.
Thus, the Monday Massacre in global stock markets is – more than a case of financial contagion – a revenge of economic fundamentals as investors are waking up from the delusion that the US would avoid a hard landing and that the rest of the world could decouple from such hard landing. A reality check is now occurring after stock markets remained for too long in the delusional triple dream of a US soft landing, of a Fed being able to ease and avoid the hard landing, and of a world miraculously decoupling from the US hard landing. As predicted here at the beginning of the year 2008 will be ugly bearish for US and global equity markets.
In terms of “decoupling” -the domestic adherents of which pooh-pooh the effects of a US recessions on the argument that we’re more closely tied to the Chinese economy, for example, Dr. Roubini debunks the idea; or, as he puts it, what’s happening is “recoupling”:
There has been a debate for the last year on whether the rest of the world would decouple or recouple from the US economic slowdown. If the US were to experience a soft landing – i.e. a “soft patch†period of slow growth followed by a recovery – then the rest of the world has enough growth momentum and domestic demand to decouple from this US slowdown. But if the US experiences a hard landing – an outright recession as now unavoidable – then the rest of the world cannot decouple and it will experience a serious economic slowdown as well. The US consumer spends about $9 trillion; the Chinese one only $1 trillion; and the Indian only $600 billion. And consumers in Europe and Japan have been cranky as low real income growth and growth insecurities has led them to save more rather than spend more. So there is not enough dynamic and fast growing domestic demand in the rest of the world to take the slack of a now faltering US consumer. An unbalanced global economy where the US was for the last few years the consumer of first and last resort – spending more than its income and running a current account deficit – while China and many other countries were the producers of first and last resort – spending less than their income and running large current account surpluses – needed the sustained growth and spending of the US consumer to maintain its unbalanced growth momentum.
Specifically, the recoupling of the rest of the world to the US hard landing will be due to variety of channels of interdependence and linkages among increasing integrated economies in a world of globalization:Â trade channels, financial channels, currency channels, investment channels, confidence and policy channels drive a transmission of negative economic and financial shocks from the US to other economies all around the world.
How can things spill over? He says:
* Financial Contagion:
Financial contagion occurs through stock markets: days when the US stock market plunges are followed by similar sharp falls in Asian and European stock markets when such markets open next: part of this high contagious correlation of markets is due to the rise in global investors’ risk aversion when markets are in turmoil and volatile that leads them to dump risky assets – such as equities – from their portfolios. In recent years this correlation of global stock markets has significantly increased especially in periods of high volatility, risk aversion and financial markets turmoil.
But a more important part of the “contagion†is due to the fact that bad economic news in the US – such as signals of recession – that trigger a fall of the US stock market also lead to expectations of lower growth in other economies that triggers in turn a weakening of their stock markets. Thus, the recent sharp fall of global equity markets is a signal that investors are now realizing that the rest of the world cannot decouple from a US hard landing.
* Direct trade links:
Since the U.S. is running a current account deficit that is still close to $700 billion this year, the effect of a U.S. slowdown on its imports is likely to be larger than its share of the global economy. Also, note that a number of countries are heavily dependent on exports to the U.S. (both as a share of their total exports and as a share of GDP). These economies include obviously Canada and Mexico but also China, Japan, Korea and a significant part of the rest of Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand). China is particularly at risk in the case of a US slowdown as so much of its recent growth has relied on the growth of exports, and of exports to the US of consumer goods that are now at threat as the US recession will be driven by a fall in private consumption.
* Indirect Trade Links:
If US imports fall and thus Chinese exports to the US fall, the Chinese demand for intermediate inputs from the rest of Asia falls and thus – indirectly – the growth of demand and exports of these Asian economies falls. Some have incorrectly argued that the large growth of inter-Asian trade in the last decade makes this region’s growth less dependent on US growth. But studies have suggested that this argument is faulty as the cyclical and structural dependence of Asia on US growth is now larger than a decade ago. The reasons is as follow: its used to be the case that Asian countries such as Korea, Taiwan and others produced final goods that were exported directly to the US. But with the rise of Chinese competitiveness in such goods the pattern of trade in Asia has now changed: increasingly these Asian countries produce intermediate inputs – such as computer chips – that they export to China and then China assembles them – into final goods (say consumer electronic goods) – and then exports them to US. So greater inter-Asian trade does not mean less dependence – rather greater dependence – on US growth.
* Effects on commodity prices:
Since the US and China have been the two major drivers of global growth in the last few years – the former as the consumer of first and last resort and the latter as the producer of first and last resort – the slowdown of these two locomotives of global growth – following a US hard landing – will seriously affect the rest of the world; in particular, there will be a sharp drop in the demand for commodities – oil, energy, food, minerals – and in the price of such commodities that had surged in the last few years following the high growth of China and, in part, India and other economies.. The ensuing fall in commodity prices will hurt the exports and growth rate of commodity exporters in Asia, Latin America and Africa. For example Chile’s exports of copper and its price will fall as both the direct demand from the US and the indirect demand from China will fall in the context of a US recession and of a global economic slowdown.
* Global Deflationary Effects of a Weaker US Dollar:
The US economic slowdown and the ensuing reduction in US policy interest rates has led to a sharp weakening of the value of the US dollar relative to many floating currencies. While this weaker dollar may stimulate US export competitiveness it is bad news for other countries that export to the US as the strengthening of their currencies relative to the US dollar increase the price of their goods in US markets and makes their export competitiveness lower. So a weak dollar is bad news for the exports and economic growth of many countries that depends on the fast growth of exports to the US as an important engine of their growth.
* Common Shocks such as high oil and energy prices:
A high correlation of growth rates of the US with that of other countries can also be due to common shocks such as high oil and energy prices that slow down growth among all oil importers. Such negative shocks hurt not just the growth of the US; they also hurt the growth of other oil importing regions such as Europe, China, India, emerging Asia and parts of Africa.
* Bursting of Global Housing Bubbles:
A cycle of housing boom and bubble followed by a bust has occurred in the US. But similar booms and bubbles did occur in many other parts of the world as easy money, low long-term interest rates and financial innovation occurred in many countries. We have seen such housing booms in Spain, UK, Ireland and, in smaller measure in Italy, Portugal, Greece, France; in Central and South Europe (the Baltic nations, Hungary, Turkey); in Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia (China, Singapore and parts of India). With a lag we are now observing the beginning of the bursting of such bubbles outside of the US, especially in the UK, Spain and Ireland. Such bust will lead to a domestic economic slowdown in these countries and outright recession in some.
*Effects on Consumer, Firms and Investors’ Confidence:
Bad news from the US and falling confidence of US consumers, firms and investors can be transmitted to a fall of confidence of similar economic actors in other countries: confidence is contagious. Global investors become more risk averse and dump risky assets (equities, credit instruments, etc.) not just in the US but across the globe; large international multinationals may decide to cut back new capital spending on factories and machines not just in the US but also in other countries as losses on their US operations lead to more caution and less internal funds available for global capital expansion (a “corporate boardroom investment strikeâ€). Consumer confidence outside the US – especially in Europe and Japan – was weak to begin with; it can only become weaker as an onslaught of lousy economic and financial news in the US affects the “animal spirits†of consumers worldwide.
* Constraints on Monetary and Fiscal Policy in Counteracting a Global Economic Slowdown:
…today the ability of policy authorities around the world to use monetary and fiscal policy to stimulate their economies and dampen the effect of a US and global demand slowdown are more limited than in 2001 recession. Then, the Fed slashed rates from 6.5% to 1%, the ECB from 4% to 2% and the Bank of Japan cut its policy rate down to 0%. Today the Fed is easing again but it cannot ease as aggressively as in 2001 as it has to worry about inflation and about the risk of a disorderly fall of the dollar that may lead foreign investors to reduce their financing of a still huge US current account deficit. While in Europe and Japan monetary policy had been recently tightened or, at best, kept on hold and the ECB is in denial of the serious downside growth risks in the Eurozone. Similarly, in 2001 there was a massive fiscal stimulus in the US (as we went from large budget surpluses to large budget deficits), in Europe where the 3% deficit limits were breached in the major eurozone economies and in Japan where the deficit went as high as 10%. Today instead, the existence of large structural budget deficits – and high public debt – in the US, Europe and Japan limits the fiscal stimulus that policy authorities can afford. Finally a weaker dollar is a zero-sum game: it may benefit the US but it hurts the competitiveness and growth of the US trading partners.
Noubini then concludes by saying,
2008 will be the year of re-coupling rather than de-coupling both in financial markets and the real economies; and the effects will be painful for the US and global economy. So, as Bette Davis warned in All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts as it’s gonna be a bumpy ride!†Not just bumpy; rather very ugly and scary as the risks of a systemic financial meltdown – that would seriously worsen the economic downturn and around the world – are seriously rising. As argued in detail in the past in this column this is the first crisis of financial globalization and securitization, an episode of a severe and worsening liquidity and credit crunch, a most severe case of systemic risk that will have dire consequences for the growth rate of the US and the global economy.
An additional, cautionary note, in Prof. Michael Pettis’ blog, China Financial Markets concerning the exposure of Chinese banks:
Chinese banks, much to the surprise of many, are among the most valuable in the world in terms of shareholder market value, even if the their assets or annual earnings are far lower those of other large international banks. Partly this reflects their bubble-like Shanghai-market valuations, but even abroad they are highly valued. A lot of very misinformed comment explains the value as somehow reflecting the market’s opinion that Chinese banks have cleaned up their portfolios, improved their management, and are now on a substantially sound footing. The high market values, they say, reflect the market’s evaluation of Chinese banks as solid, healthy, and rapidly growing (although few go so far as to say prudent). I was told this just last week during an investor dinner, when one investor hotly disputed my claim that Chinese banks still had serious problems with non-performing loans by pointing to their extremely high valuations. “Are you saying that the market is wrong, and if so why don’t you short their shares?â€
Tempting as it is to say the market is indeed wrong, and often is, I actually think the market is making a realistic assessment of value, but we need to be careful about what exactly what that assessment is. As I have argued in earlier posts and in a number of publications (for example see October 3: “Should Chinese banks acquire banks abroad?â€), markets value shares both as a function of intrinsic value and time value, and whereas the intrinsic value reflects assessment of the quality of a company and its management, the value of its assets, and the expected growth in earnings, time value is valuable almost exclusively as a reflection of underlying economic volatility, of which Chinese banks have a lot.
Chinese bank shares have extremely high time value and very little intrinsic value. They are expensive, in other words, not because the market gives high intrinsic value to the banks but rather because a rapidly reforming, rapidly growing economy is extremely volatile, and purchasing shares in low-capitalized banks are typically the best ways to purchase options on this volatility. In fact nearly every country going through substantial political and economic reforms during the past two decades has seen extremely high valuations placed on their bank stocks, even when, as is usually the case, the banks are bankrupt or near bankrupt.
Time value is extremely sensitive to change. As a consequence any shift in perception of asset quality or growth expectations will have a disproportionate impact on the stock prices of banks that have high time value. This makes them extremely volatile, and the recent subprime-related gyrations shows just how volatile. I remember when Mexican banks (also nearly bankrupt and also benefiting from an economy undergoing massive political and economic reform) went from having the highest valuations in the world in 1993 to some of the lowest in 1995. Chinese banks are not going to be noticeably different.
Here at home, Karina Constantino-David bows out: Outgoing CSC chief: Bureaucracy remains corrupt.
Here’s something novel: Supreme Court adopts Writ of Habeas Data (the problem is, the notoriously bad record-keeping of government agencies). And DoJ absolves Ayala Land in Glorietta 2 mall gas explosion.
Curious: Lass with curly hair being tagged Faeldon’s angel. The Inquirer editorial says it’s in government’s interest to remain vague.
A very interesting column on onions and agricultural prices by Marichu Villanueva:
At first, I thought it was just a case of mishandling inventory by the store manager when onions suddenly went out of stock in the market section in one of the malls in Metro Manila where I do my weekly marketing. I became alarmed something was wrong when it turned out that onions cost me more when I bought it from the wet market. Two weeks ago, it shot up to P80 per kilo, or double from the previous year’s price. When onions reappeared in the market section of the same mall, four medium-sized red onions had a price tag of P54. In simple arithmetic, each bulb was P13.50. Yesterday, I went to Chinatown in Binondo and I was able to buy red onions at P100 a kilo after much haggling. The white onions are more expensive at P120 to P140 per kilo.
I felt good that I got a good price after all when I heard a survey of prices of vegetables over the radio yesterday that onions sell in Paco public market at P140 per kilo. So upon seeing yesterday Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap in our Tuesday Club breakfast gathering at EDSA Shangri-La, it was the first thing I asked him about. Yap told me I was lucky that I got P100 per kilo because at one time, the price of onion in some parts of the country even went as high as P180 per kilo.
Only last Monday, Yap even called for a full-blown press conference where he presented a very rosy performance report on how the Philippine agricultural sector fared from January to December 2007. Yap reported that the country’s farm output rose 4.68 percent last year despite the combined effects of typhoons and dry spell that damaged many agricultural farmlands. Philippine agriculture accounts for almost one-fifth of the overall economic production, with rice and corn as our country’s basic staple products.
From the vegetable produce for 2007, the DA reported that onion registered “dramatic output increments†of 92.29 percent. Onion growers in Batanes, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan and Mindoro Occidental enjoyed good market price during the first semester of 2007.
Yap readily admitted, though, there is really a problem in onion supply. Obviously, Yap declared, this is the result of the policy decision by the DA to suspend the issuance of permits to import onions that has been in effect for the past five months now. The suspension was in consonance with the request of local onion growers to the government to give them some “breathing space†from undue competition of imported onions coming into the country at much cheaper prices. Without elaborating, I could sense that the DA Secretary has been under pressure from both sides of the supply chain, the local onion growers and the import traders.
Yap was already turning red as we needled him yesterday that agriculture’s best output last year was not good enough if we have soaring prices of onions. We teased him that he was being so “onion-skinned†if he gives in too much to our local onion growers at the expense of us consumers. Actually, the phrase “onion-skinned†traces its roots among our more popular Tagalog idiomatic expression that means a person who is overly sensitive.
He conceded that there is a crying need to strike a balance between these competing needs. Such government intervention could be construed as an unfair trading practice under the Philippine government commitments with the World Trade Organization (WTO). Unfortunately, since imported onions, rice, corn, fruits and vegetables and other agricultural products now flooding the Philippine markets that come in cheaper consequently displace our homegrown agricultural products. This is not to mention the problem of smuggled agricultural goods.
Today is the anniversary of the inauguration of the Malolos Congress, a subject I tackled in a column, last week, Mixed and muddled dates.
My column for this week in the Arab News is: Leave Those Giant Boots Unfilled.
It refers to Suharto, From Verge of Death, Is Making a Recovery by Seth Mydans, The ties that bind by Jim Studwell (as reproduced in The Straitjacket Times) and these articles from the Asia Sentinel. First, The December of Indonesia’s Patriarch, from which comes this remarkable passage:
Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew provided the hypocrisy. This is the “minister mentor†who has virtually created a leadership cult from his aversion to corruption, a man of famously high morals who encouraged pursuit of an opposition leader to bankruptcy for his alleged abuse of $140 worth of university postage. And yet here he was rushing to the deathbed of a political contemporary regarded as the 20th century’s biggest thief, who the World Bank and UN said stole as much as $35 billion, more than $1 billion for each of his 32 years in power in one of the world’s poorest countries.
“I feel sad to see a very old friend with whom I had worked closely over the last 30 years not really getting the honours that he deserves,†said Lee, who at 84 to Suharto’s 86 is perhaps sensing his own mortality. “He deserves recognition for what he did,†he told the Singapore media at the republic’s embassy. “That’s why I came here to visit him.â€
After visiting the old man’s bedside, Lee clarified his position on the morality of theft: “What’s a few billion dollars lost in bad excesses?†he told reporters, comparing Suharto favorably to Ne Win of Burma, who took power three years before Suharto and drove his country to absolute penury. “He built hundreds of billions of dollars worth of assets.â€
Lee, a member of JP Morgan Chase’s international advisory board, earlier had a unique take on Indonesia’s economic ills.
“From ‘67 when he became president right up to ‘97, the economy grew and Indonesia was on the point of taking off the economy. (That) it didn’t take off (is) not because of his fault (but) because Bank Indonesia’s interest rate was too high, and so the companies borrowed in US dollars for low interest rates.â€
“When confidence was lost after the Thai baht crisis and people wanted to pull their money out, the whole thing collapsed. It was not his fault.”
Much of that is nonsense. Suharto’s legacy was a collapsed economy, utterly dysfunctional state institutions, a putrid judiciary, radicalized mosques, a nation in an advanced state of break-up and a culture of corruption so deeply inculcated, indeed so normal to many Indonesians, that it will take generations to properly cleanse. It is bizarre to suggest that the mid-1990s financial crisis was caused by Bank Indonesia’s interest rate policy as if it was somehow independent of the palace.
And then Death won’t End Suharto’s Malign Influence, which strikes an uncannily familiar chord:
Rather than a historic relic, Suharto, the bland general who emerged from the shadows to dominate his country, remains the most influential figure in Indonesian politics even after a decade of seclusion. The cries of “reformasi†that accompanied his downfall went largely unheeded. Suharto’s influence will survive his burial and haunt Indonesia for years. In truth, Indonesia now is not so different from Indonesia under Suharto.
Yudhoyono and company promote the view that Indonesia is long past Suharto because, like most members of the ruling class, they have a long Suharto past. That’s principally because Suharto didn’t tolerate opposition or develop heirs. His last vice president, BJ Habibie, was chosen mainly for his wildly unconventional views and was intended to function as an insurance policy against his boss’s ouster. Nearly all of the politicians available as Suharto’s successors have been his collaborators.
Despite the sweeping changes in political language and banquet seating, Indonesia’s mentality of governing hasn’t changed. Political office is seen as an opportunity to benefit yourself, your family and your friends – as Suharto reportedly did to the tune of billions of US dollars – rather than serve the public.
At least under Suharto there was order in the corruption: if you paid the right people, things got done. Today, with decentralization and no strongman at the top, corruption is more chaotic and widespread and payoffs less effective.
In 1999 Time Magazine estimated Suharto’s wealth at Us $ 15 billion, that furthermore
at least $73 billion passed through the family’s hands between 1966 and [1998]â€. In a May 27, 1999 article, Time noted thus: “In July 1998 the U.S. Treasury’s attention was caught by reports that a large sum of money linked to Indonesia had been shifted from a bank in Switzerland to one in Austria. As part of a four-month investigation that covered 11 countries, TIME has concluded that $9 billion of Suharto money was transferred from Switzerland to a nominee bank account in Vienna. Not bad for a man whose presidential salary was $1,764 a month when he left office.†Suharto himself “denies he has any bank deposits abroad and insists that his wealth amounts to just 46.9 acres of land, plus $2.4 million in savings.
And the list goes on:
According to TIME’s investigation, the six Suharto offspring have significant equity in at least 564 companies, and their overseas interests include hundreds of other firms, scattered from the U.S. to Uzbekistan and Nigeria. The Suhartos also possess plenty of the trappings of wealth. In addition to a $4 million hunting ranch in New Zealand and a half share in a $4 million yacht moored in Australia, youngest son Hutomo Mandala Putra (nicknamed “Tommy”) owns a 75% stake in an 18-hole golf course with 22 luxury apartments in England. Bambang Trihatmodjo, Suharto’s second son, has an $8 million penthouse in Singapore and a $12 million mansion in an exclusive neighborhood of Los Angeles, just up the street from his brother Sigit Harjoyudanto’s $9 million home. Eldest daughter Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana (“Tutut”) may have sold her Boeing 747-200 jumbo jet, but the family’s fleet of planes included, at least until recently, four other jets.
Transparency International, citing the Daily Telegraph and other papers, reported in May, 1998 that
Ex-President Suharto and his family have homes in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Hawaii as well as a multi-million dollar mansion outside Los Angeles and a ski ranch in the New Zealand Alps. The value of their treasure in Indonesia may have declined with the collapse of the rupiah in recent months, but much of it is believed to be invested abroad. Suharto’s youngest son, Hutomo Mandala Putra (known as “Tommy”) boasted about this last autumn when one of his banks was closed. He did so at a press conference at which he arrived in a Rolls Royce. Recently the reviled “Tutut”, daughter Siti Hardijanti Rukmana, chartered a plane for a shopping trip to the USA at a cost of US$ 100,000. Much of the wealth comes from franchises and monopolies granted the children by their indulgent father, funded through soft loans from banks whose heads have been appointed by the ex-President. Suharto has defended his family’s vast business empires as being good for the country, but there is little evidence that any of this has trickled down. Rather, much of the country has been impoverished and excluded from the economic advances of the past 30 years.
To be sure, nothing has been proven, not least because President Habibie called an for end to investigations. In 2000, investigations were resumed under President Wahid. But in 2006, Suharto was found unfit to stand trial.
In 1998, the ex-dictator said, “The fact is I don’t even have one cent of savings abroad, don’t have accounts at foreign banks, don’t have deposits abroad and don’t even have any shares in foreign firms.”
At one point, Tommy Suharto owned Italian sports car maker Lamborghini.
President Wahid believed the fortune amounts to $45 billion. In 2000, the BBC reported “Much of the Suharto wealth is thought to be in overseas bank accounts as well as tied in to property in London and Los Angeles and golf courses.†Suharto sued Time for libel. He lost.
Ferdinand Marcos was our Suharto, but Marcos has been dead twenty years, and what the Indonesians are only beginning to contemplate, we’ve been living out. Some time ago I wrote that it’s only now that we’re beginning to see life beyond those who surrounded Marcos; the political torch is being passed to the generation that grew up during martial law and which had no recollection of life before the dictatorship. In a sense, my generation is the one most influenced by Marcos because of the absence of any personal recollection of the Third Republic. Someone, during a conversation, asked me what I felt this implied, and I said the internalization of a basic lesson: it’s not how you play the game, but winning that matters, because my generation only knew Marcos at the height of his dictatorial powers, and his cult of success at all costs. In contrast Marcos’s contemporaries still had to wrestle with the old concepts of gentlemanly politics, which, whether clung to or rejected, involved a conscious choice. Together with that win-at-all-costs mentality comes the mentality that nice guys finish last (something that, in off moments of psychologizing, I’ve always felt was the embittering lesson the President learned at an early age with her father’s defeat).
But as Marcos recedes beyond the living memory of the Edsa Dos generation, we also have to contemplate the eventual haunting of our political life by Arroyo’s ghost.
The other night, I saw a documentary titled Oswald’s Ghost (see reviews here), a trailer for which and supplementary material can be found over at The American Experience. One of the things that struck me most was the inclusion of Norman Mailer. His novel, Harlot’s Ghost, had been an enjoyable read for me back when I was still in college, and his thoughts provide a kind of ending theme for the documentary: how Oswald remains a kind of ghost, who haunts all investigations of the Kennedy assassination, but who, being a ghost, can never answer the question everyone wants to ask the most (did Oswald really do it, and alone?).
The PBS website includes an extract from Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery: the following passage, I think, was more eloquently expressed by Mailer in the documentary, but this is what he wrote:
…Oswald had a choice. He might not only be the instrument but the leading man. That presented a new conflict — to be the instrument of history or the leading man? The latter could occur only if he was captured and stood trial. If he succeeded in the act but managed to remain undiscovered, obscurity would be his lot again. He had learned as much from his attempt on Walker.
Capture, however, would guarantee him a very high level of attention. And if he was convicted, he had the temperament to live alone in a cell; he was more than half habituated to that already. He could even view his life up to this point as a preparation for spending many years in prison.
Indeed, it may even have been the thought of his trial that fired him on. What a podium! Such a trial could alter history, stimulate the stupid, rouse the lethargic, confound the powerful. So he had to feel divided between his desire to escape and his recognition that capture, trial, and incarceration might generate a vastly larger destiny.
His personal attitude toward Kennedy had little to do, therefore, with his act. In war, one may execute a man for whom one feels respect or even personal affection; Oswald saw it as an execution. One mighty leader was going to be dispatched by another high and mighty personage — of the future. The future would preempt the present.
If he failed to escape, well, he could tell his story. He could becloud the issue and possibly be acquitted, and if it came to twenty years of prison, he would be able to forge his political agenda — even as Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin had done. Should he face capital punishment, then, at the least, he would be immortal. He would take care of that at his trial. He would expound his ideas.
What he may never have taken into account is that the furies he set loose would devour him before he could utter one idea. The first element in the loss of an heroic trial became the four shots he fired into Tippit. There can be little doubt that he panicked. As soon as he killed Tippit, the mighty architecture of his ideology, hundreds of levels high and built with no more than the game cards of his political imagination, came tumbling down. He knew Americans well enough to recognize that some might listen to his ideas if he killed a President, but nearly all would be repelled by any gunman who would mow down a cop, a family man — that act was small enough to void interest in every large idea he wished to introduce. By killing Tippit he had wrecked his grand plan to be one of the oracles of history. Now he had to improvise a defense: I’m a patsy.
It may never have occurred to Oswald that the obfuscation and paranoia which followed the assassination of Kennedy would contribute immensely to the sludge and smog of the world’s spirit.
Mailer said that most people think Oswald was some sort of feebleminded crank, but that his life proved that the man, though not well-educated, was quite intelligent, and had managed some rather difficult transitions on his own, without connections or patrons. Mailer said, then, that the real question that should be asked is, why did Oswald kill Kennedy, what did he hope to achieve. Describing Oswald as an utopian, and one who’d studied Hitler’s life and career not because he sympathized with Nazism, but rather, as a kind of case study for how poor, obscure individuals can, by sheer force of will, become great and powerful figures, Mailer then says that Oswald saw killing Kennedy as the chance to make himself a great world-historical figure himself.
Now what struck me about the documentary was how in it, three assassinations -JFK’s, Martin Luther King’s, and RFK’s- served as kind of psychic bodyblow on American social cohesion and public morale: Kennedy had been the first US President born in the 20th century, himself pointing to the passing of the torch of leadership from the last American President born in the 19th Century (Eisenhower) to himself; a generational shift as dramatic as any. But then he would slain, the Dr. King was murdered, and finally, in the crucial political year, 1968, Robert Kennedy was assassinated, too; and in the Chicago national convention of the Democrats, old-time American politicians like Mayor Daley sent out the troops to assault a young generation for whom the still-youthful Kennedy’s were their elder mentors. It was as if the old ward bosses had mugged the country and stolen back the torch of leadership.
Which brings, curiously, to something here at home. The past few days have seen more articles on Edsa Dos, and the question asked time and again (see The Lonely Vampire Chronicles): does a plot to remove Estrada diminish the importance of the People Power aspect of the whole thing?
Relevant readings from From Amando Doronila in Edsa II unwanted child of RP history, and from Randy David in Forgetting EDSA II :
Ms Arroyo has shown us the limits of people power. We now know that as a moral force, people power will not succeed in shaming an amoral president out of office. We also now know that as a political force, people power cannot topple down a president without the consent or collaboration of the military. This realization, more than anything else, has diminished our people’s enthusiasm for mass protests. I think that what we should realize is not the futility of people power, but rather its eventual impotence if it remains unorganized and naively dependent on spontaneous sparks of moral outrage.
To forget EDSA II is to give up the quest for accountable governance. Estrada and Ms Arroyo both want us to feel bad about EDSA II. Why? Because they are twins. The memory of our struggle against the former sustains our struggle against the latter.
And Conrado de Quiros in Postscript, ante-script:
That brings me to my thesis: Contrary to rumor, in a country like ours People Power does not weaken democracy, it strengthens it. It does not impair democratic institutions, it repairs them. Or where they do not exist at all, it builds them.
That is patently so in the case of illegitimate leaders. Ousting unelected leaders does not deny democracy, it affirms it; it does not destroy the institutions of democracy, it restores them.
It’s so even in the case of elected leaders grown tyrannical, though that is less patent. Or so for countries like ours. In other countries like those of the West, the democratic institutions work in practice and not just in theory (in the United States, for example, a Kiefer Sutherland could be thrown in jail for drunk driving). Where the institutions truly, or reasonably, represent the general interest (that’s why it’s called “representative democracyâ€), you mount direct citizens’ intervention in the political process only at your own peril. In countries like ours, the democratic institutions exist only on paper — convicted ex-presidents are pardoned and political activists are shot to death; the vote, the most basic democratic institution of all, can be stolen at will. Where the institutions not only do not reasonably represent the general interest but exist to unreasonably thwart it, the law being used to justify, and foment, lawlessness rather than justice, you mount direct citizens’ intervention only at your own benefit.
You never experienced the utter pits this country found itself in during Estrada’s time and you’ll see a seemingly indulgent effort to oust a formidably elected president like him as mob rule. You saw what it was then and you’ll see the desperate effort to oust him as ridding this country of mob rule.
The dynamics of Edsa Dos were confusing: the commingling of the business leaders, the political veterans, the generals, the priests, the teachers, lawyers, middle class and the masses, all trying to figure out what to do about a President who simply refused to do some basic things: his paperwork, and refereeing competing parties wanting to influence policy -only to discover policy was liable to be overturned or modified during all-night drinking sessions.
But all the critics go about their organizing and plotting in the manner that an alumni homecoming associations puts together class reunions? Those on the outside can’t see the nuances that exist in such gatherings, the various subcultures of the professional classes at play, sometimes at cross-purposes.
In his blog, Red’s Herring tackles some of my previous comments and past thoughts on plebiscitary democracy and People Power, and the contending views of those who insist that protests are an evil. He says that constitutional mechanisms are the default option, but only if adhered to by officials themselves, otherwise People Power serves as a corrective mechanism of sorts:
People elect officials both on self-regarding and other-regarding concerns. The former serve the individual’s interests and wishes, the latter the common good. The elected officials have incentives to fulfill both concerns because they want to get elected again (if re-election is allowed) or, otherwise, keep in power the political organization or party they are identified with (with the expectation that even when out of office their interests will continue to be protected by allies).
When public office is tenured, the exercise by the people of their power to hold public officials immediately accountable is held in abeyance until the next election. During the inter-election period, aside from the fact that the individual electorates would go about attending to their personal needs such as earning a living, their voices are effectively muted unless they combine to coordinate their efforts or form “interest groups.†By contrast, under our constitutional system, for example, the president has full discretion to fire any member of her cabinet who has lost her trust and confidence; that same discretion, by the fact of auto-limitation, may not be exercised by the people as regards the president who may have breached her electoral promises or is not performing according to their expectation. Reckoning will have to wait for the next election.
Historically, the “office†that had filled the gap was the newspaper (of the “mucrakers†who leaked the truth – before, of course, the media took on the corporate form) through which the people expressed their individual concerns and frustrations during the inter-election period…
My thesis is this: Impeachment (which I also call the un–election process), initiative, recall, or “the way datus were chosen and replaced†as well as “muckracking†is of kindred mechanism with plebiscitary democracy that refreshes, revalidates or proves mandates in the interim.
Indeed, substantive democracy (or people power per se), as opposed to procedural democracy, predominates if political sovereignty (or the power of the people to have effective control over leaders) is maintained throughout.
And in light of the above, there’s a relevant quote of the day from Postcard Headlines.
In the blogosphere, Verisimilitude and a blog about nothing on monkey business.
Delicious
Facebook
Flickr
LinkedIn
Technorati
Twitter
Loading ...
Manila Bay Watch on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 10:13 am
“…utterly dysfunctional state institutions, a putrid judiciary, radicalized mosques, a nation in an advanced state of break-up and a culture of corruption so deeply inculcated, indeed so normal to many Indonesians, that it will take generations to properly cleanse. ”
For a moment, you might think Asia Sentinel was descrbing the Philippines under Gloria Macapagal Arroyo… What a striking resemblance!
cvj on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 10:48 am
LKY’s aversion to corruption is trumped by his belief in a paternalistic, elitist leadership which explains his double standard towards Suharto.
cvj on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 11:07 am
The observation of that journalist that you refer to in your Arab News column is supported by economist William Easterly in his book ‘The Elusive Quest for Growth’, i.e. centralized corruption is ‘better’ for economic development than decentralized corruption.
Also, as economist H.J. Chang noted in his ‘Bad Samaritans’, if the fruits of corruption are channeled towards domestic investments (as opposed to being kept in Swiss accounts), then it would be good for economic development as well.
(I’m not endorsing, just saying.)
hawaiianguy on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 11:20 am
Comparing Indonesia (post-Suharto) and RP (under GMA), the picture of freedom is inverse. Indonesia’s is from “bad” to “good,” RP’s, “good” to “bad.”
Indonesia began as a “partly free” (PF) political system and ended up “free” (F). The Philippines began as “free” (F) and slid down as “partly free” (PF), according to a watchdog of world freedom. (www.freedomhouse.org).
Here are the ratings on “freedom” (based on 2 measures, political rights and civil rights):
RP Indon
2007 PF F
2006 PF PF
2005 F PF
2004 F PF
2003 F PF
2002 F PF
F = Free
PF = Partly Free
hawaiianguy on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 11:22 am
RP Indon
2007 PF F
2006 PF PF
2005 F PF
2004 F PF
2003 F PF
2002 F PF
F = Free
PF = Partly Free
CDQdoesnotlie on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 1:13 pm
Conrado De Quirros never fails to point out that the difference between Suharto and Marcos is that Marcos’ greatest crime is that he spirited his stolen billions overseas whereas Suharto kept his money in Indonesia to help the Indonesian economy…
Now who do I believe? CDQ or that biased tabloid Australian newspaper Daily Telegraph? wink..wink..
mlq3 on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 1:32 pm
I’ve disputed CDQ’s assertion with him, but he won’t budget.
BrianB on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 2:52 pm
World economy:
Too bad it’s not advisable for people to simply concentrate on buying necessities as these would drive their prices higher. And when people stop spending for luxuries, the jobless rate would mount. Is this what they call a depression?
BrianB on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 3:03 pm
What is the point of saying that Marcos is worse than Suharto? I wonder. Will it convince Filipinos to look at Marcos for what he truly was: a criminal?
Didn’t Imelda used to brag she practically owned everything in the Philippines?
nash on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 3:31 pm
Can someone PLEASE tell me why The Philippines is no longer included in the Country Indicators list of the Economist?
I am genuinely puzzled as all the ASEAN countries are there. (BTW: Thailand Unemployment rate is 1.2%!!!)
cheers
cvj on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 4:20 pm
Manolo, maybe Suharto stole enough so both can be true?
mlq3 on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 4:33 pm
cjv, how?
cvj on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 4:55 pm
It could be that Suharto invested 7.5 Billion in Indonesia and 7.5 Billion in Singapore banks.
Jeg on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 4:59 pm
does a plot to remove Estrada diminish the importance of the People Power aspect of the whole thing?
It definitely tarnished it. I remember watching TV with my officemates before we headed off to EDSA. As things seemed to have reached stalemate (the AFP still hadnt mutinied), I said “Magresign ka na kasi Gloria. Para matapos na.” My boss said, “Oo nga!” We wanted new elections. And I thought that the reason there isnt widespread support for the People Power was because the people didnt want to install GMA. I dont know whether or not that’s correct but the point was rendered moot by the AFP’s mutiny. I stayed home for GMA’s inauguration. Although I was glad we were rid of an unfit president, I didnt feel any sense of victory at all.
DevilsAdvc8 on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 6:36 pm
global recession can only mean one thing: impending war. world war.
remember the 1st and 2nd world wars. precluded by periods of great economic depression.
nash on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 7:03 pm
@devilsadvc8
fortunately, unlike those times, there are no empires in existence now. there is simply no incentive for small nation states to indulge in a world war.
but I like your idea. war will spur the growth of labour intensive heavy industries.
shall we pick a fight with those who control the oil we need to launch our fearsome philippine air force? shall we pick a fight with the one country who supplies us with the cheap spare parts? shall we pick a fight with the one country who owns the iron mines from whence we can mould our machetes?
it’s a tough choice and we need to decide soon. huckabee for prez.
Manila Bay Watch on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 9:08 pm
Re: “shall we pick a fight with those who control the oil we need to launch our fearsome philippine air force? ”
Nash,
No need to go pick fights with oil rich countries out of SE Asia.
Suggest try Malaysia for starters. After all, the Philippines has a standing claim over Sabah where, incidentally, there’s oil and other sources of natural wealth. Besides spurring growth in industry, think too that it could spur much needed unity among Philippine natives. (Must say not optimistic about unity — suspect crab disease has become embedded in Philippine mentality.)
Need to remember though that Royal Malaysia Air Force have got good air fleet and in all likelihood can make mince meat of RP’s not so good S211. PAF fighter pilots will need all the courage they could muster to tackle Malaysian fighter pilots head on (hope it’s not going to be all about air and no force once more).
nash on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 9:55 pm
As a Cordilleran, let me be honest.
I don’t care about ‘our’ claim to Sabah. Let the indigenous peoples of Sabah decide for themselves. I will bet Madame Auring that if they had a referendum, those peoples will vote overwhelmingly to stay with Malaysia.
But then again, let’s not dwell on this. As Renaldo Lapuz says “We are all brothers. You and me…..”
Manila Bay Watch on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 10:05 pm
Don’t have to consult Madame Auring — you are spot on: “…if they had a referendum, those peoples will vote overwhelmingly to stay with Malaysia.”
One can’t blame them.
Manila Bay Watch on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 10:06 pm
They already had one and they voted against being with Pinas.
Manila Bay Watch on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 10:08 pm
Filipino population in Sabah were the first to campaign against Sabah being handed back to Pinas and until last year, no Filipino in Sabah, legal, illegal, Malaysia convert or whatever would want be caught dead with Sabah under Gloria and her Philippines today.
That’s how contemptuous they are of the Philippines and its government.
Manila Bay Watch on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 10:09 pm
So very like Benigno of the get real fame…
Manila Bay Watch on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 10:33 pm
Re Sabah referendum
But as ever, we can’t trust Malaysia that a second referendum will be done honestly and transparency.
In the run off to the wars in Mindanao, Malaysia sent to Sabah people from the mainland to populate the island with huge economic bonuses; Chinese communities were encouraged to immigrate to Sabah along with tons seed money and then KL called for a referendum. They also offered automatic citizenship to Filipinos on the island and gave them some monetary compensations. Truth is that kind of referendum operation is hard to beat.
vic on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 11:02 pm
With recession looming across the border, Ontario’s Premier Dalton McQuinty is optimistic we will get through all this, bruised maybe but will avoid the direct hit and here what he has to say to the 12 millions Ontarians:
Robert Benzie
Queen’s Park Bureau Chief
Don’t worry, be happy, and go shopping.
That’s Premier Dalton McGuinty’s advice to increasingly skittish Ontarians concerned about the province’s economy amid fears of a U.S. recession.
“My sense, based on all the best advice that we’re receiving, is that the impact here will be much less significant than the headlines would lead you to believe,” McGuinty told reporters yesterday.
“If you want to be helpful to the economy, then go ahead and buy that fridge, buy that new house, buy that car. That’s good for our economy and that’s good for our jobs,” he said.
The premier emphasized that he was not being “Pollyanna-ish about these kinds of things.”
“I’ve asked some really hard questions of some very thoughtful experts, both inside and outside of government, and all the best advice that we continue to receive is that we will continue to experience positive growth in the Ontario economy,” he said.
“We will continue to be challenged on the manufacturing jobs front, but we will continue to see job growth in the services sector. Remember, 85 per cent of jobs continue to be found in the services sector.”
Speaking on CFRB’s Bill Carroll Show earlier yesterday, McGuinty stressed “Ontario’s economy will continue to grow in the foreseeable future.”
That’s in contrast to concerns the U.S., by far Ontario’s largest trading partner, is slipping into recession.
Putting things in perspective, McGuinty quoted former U.S. Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan’s famous line about the dot-com driven stock market surge in the 1990s.
“You’ve got to guard against irrational exuberance. Well, I think you’ve also got to guard against irrational pessimism. I think of myself as a sober-minded optimist.”
McGuinty also rallied behind Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s assertion Canada is in far better economic shape than the U.S., which has been ravaged by a bloated trade deficit with China, a costly war in Iraq, and the subprime mortgage crisis.
“The Prime Minister is right in this regard. The fundamentals in Canada are sound. We don’t have the huge trade deficit and internal deficits that are at large measure driving the challenges south of the border. We continue to run surpluses here in Canada,” he said.
“I’d ask people not to become too guarded in terms of their outlook for the economy. We’re going to experience a challenging time, but we are going to find our way through this. We are going to emerge from this stronger than ever.”
But NDP Leader Howard Hampton expressed alarm at McGuinty’s laissez-faire attitude.
“Dalton McGuinty has dithered amidst Ontario’s manufacturing maelstrom. Working women and men want a premier that’s more than soberly optimistic,” he said.
Hampton noted more than 200,000 manufacturing- and resource-sector jobs have been lost in Ontario since July 2004.
To help, he wants to see a “Buy Ontario” purchasing policy, a new industrial hydro rate, tougher laws preventing plant closures, and a job protection commissioner.
Progressive Conservative MPP Tim Hudak (Niagara West-Glanbrook) said McGuinty is either “wilfully ignoring the economic indicators or he is intentionally trying to cover them up.”
Manila Bay Watch on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 11:22 pm
Vic,
Gordon Brown is saying almost the same things to the Brits, ““If you want to be helpful to the economy, then go ahead and buy that fridge, buy that new house, buy that car. That’s good for our economy and that’s good for our jobs,†but there are no takers. Reason? Brown almost has zero credibility in the UK…
nash on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 11:52 pm
@ manila bay watch (strange, are all those posts really yours?)
“In the run off to the wars in Mindanao, Malaysia sent to Sabah people from the mainland to populate the island with huge economic bonuses; Chinese communities were encouraged to immigrate to Sabah….”
We did they same thing here. My paternal side were given incentives to ‘populate’ Mindanao back in the 70s (daw) as if no one live there and as if the land was free for the taking.
I think the main point is that time has moved on..(populations are enriched by migration and immigration…)
even if we did take Sabah with out superior Armed Forces, it’s not as if oil will be gushing out. You’ll have to spend billions to extract it and the profits will be spent on making sure Sabah is not grabbed back.
So the best way really is to be good neighbours with each other and maybe they will give us discount on oil (plus free chicken rendang).
aaanyways, all this is conjecture.
..we must go back to the what’s happening. Maybe Luli Arroyo and those 89 other hangers on in Switzerland have found a brilliant way to insulate us from the recession. (Unless of course they are at the Patek Philippe watch store…)
cvj on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 11:58 pm
Food for thought to those who put entrepreneurs on a pedestal. As we see from the appeals of the politicians, it is consumer spending (largely determined by consumer confidence) that determines whether or not economies fall into recession.
supremo on Wed, 23rd Jan 2008 11:59 pm
““If you want to be helpful to the economy, then go ahead and buy that fridge, buy that new house, buy that car. That’s good for our economy and that’s good for our jobs,â€
The first Bush package of $600 a household got my family a Nikon SLR camera. This time it’s $1600. The breakdown might be
New notebook – $600
Ski trip to Pennsylvania – $1000
Getting my taxes back from the government – Priceless
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 12:15 am
Chuck,
During the World Football Cup in France in 1998 (I think), France economy was in the pits, really down, worse perhaps than the US economy today but the victory of the French Bleus spurred incredible consumer spending, the wheels of economy started rolling…
Problem in the US is Bush can’t use his disastrous Iraq war to create that kind of victorious feeling in consumers which is greatly needed to grease the wheels of the economy into motion again.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 12:16 am
(Nash, am tempted to say they were my “ghosts”…)
cvj on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 12:36 am
Anna, you’re right. Where the US economy goes would depend in a large part on what Supremo would do with his next tax refund (if one is forthcoming), i.e. whether he chooses to spend it or keep it in a bank.
supremo on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 12:54 am
cvj,
The check for the tax rebate is on its way to my house. It may take time but it will come. The target is before spring (March 22). The amount that they are floating is $800 for individuals and $1600 for households. It maybe more but definitely not less than those amounts. I will definitely spend it. The notebook and the trip is a kind of a trophy for getting my taxes back. The yearly tax refund is a totally different matter. Nothing to do with Bush.
cvj on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 1:02 am
Supremo, in that case, then there’s hope that the US economy will avoid recession.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 1:02 am
1600 US$ for a notebook and a ski trip? That should translate into 1100 to 1200 Euros… Wow, that’s not much; you can’t get those two for that amount over here. Go for both and never mind the bank!
nash on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 1:18 am
huh? $600 notebook??? there is such a thing?
Poor poor chinese workers…(“The world is in recession so to encourage spending we lowah the price of goods which mean we lowah yo salaly…plus no toilet blake. Make wantawsan notebooks per shif or you not get paid..)
I want me one of them though. (but the macbook air is $1700!)
vic on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 1:19 am
Supremo, we don’t have a tax credit or refund but will surely get a tax reduction because the Feds reduced Personal Income tax effective this Tax year as promised during the Campaign..that will also reflect on additional tax refunds for some and less tax payable for some and also a 2 percentage point reduction in Goods and Services Tax (vat) from 7% to 5% and the Government still has 19B budget surplus to play around…
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 2:24 am
nash: get a portege r500 –has 3G connectivity, has three USB ports to Air’s one; Air does not have but the R500 includes an internal DVD drive, removable battery, a full-size DVI video port, a PC Card slot, Gigabit Ethernet and a Firewire connector.
And R500 is about a pound lighter and thinner. [Note: r500 has 12-in screen; Air has13.3]
DevilsAdvc8 on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 2:25 am
the only way for the US to avoid a recession is for them to hold the elections ASAP. the ensuing celebrations after Bush is replaced will spur the US economy back on track. it doesn’t matter who replaces him, as long as he is replaced, americans will be less apprehensive abt spending, and will be more hopeful of an economic turnaround. its a feeding cycle. fears of a recession, dampens spending, which in turn makes fears of recession self-fulfilling. but with consumer confidence high (or at least high enough to last throughout the shocks) it will soften any recession that might happen.
McGuinty and Brown may have the right idea in painting a rosy picture. they know US recession will hit them anytime. but they also know strengthening consumer confidence will at least soften the blow. so instead of fanning fears that their countries’ economy will be hit hard, they’re saying it won’t be hit hard so much.
and maybe, their gamble will work.
who knows? anywhoo, that world war is still looming.
madmen and megalomaniacs don’t need incentives to wage wars. the world has been polarized by the US’s “war on terror.” that BS has united the Muslim world against everyone else. the world war im talking abt isn’t like the 1st and 2nd world wars. if it’s ever going to happen, the 3rd world war will be a borderless war. there’s none of that shit abt occupying and defending territories.
it’s one giant guerilla warfare everywhere.
peachy.
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 2:28 am
nash: to see $600 laptops, go to www bestbuy com,
laptops — basic. You’ll see under $800 laptops with Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core mobile processor T2330; and at least 1GB DDR2 memory; 120gig or bigger hard drives.
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 2:30 am
DevilsAdvc8: your solution to a recession is an off-cycle changing of the president?!!!! EDSA down Pennsylvania avenue????
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 2:33 am
but your rant about muslims and borderless 3rd world war probably resonates in Europe more than USA or Canada. At minimum, both US and Canada have stronger laws to protect its new citizens and its legal immigrants. Now Europe is still unable to assimilate its legal immigrants and new citizens — witness Paris riots and the Denmark-cartoon thingy!!
supremo on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 2:38 am
‘1600 US$ for a notebook and a ski trip?’
Pennsylvania is nearby. We don’t have to go far.
‘huh? $600 notebook??? there is such a thing?’
The cheapest that I saw is $450.
‘we don’t have a tax credit or refund but will surely get a tax reduction because the Feds reduced Personal Income tax effective this Tax year as promised during the Campaign..’
There are rumors in the US that the 10% tax bracket might be eliminated temporarily. Almost everyone pays this tax.
supremo on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 2:48 am
nash,
mac is good but I will not spend that much for a computer. I don’t even buy desktops. I just assemble them myself.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 3:08 am
Upnstudent, re “Now Europe is still unable to assimilate its legal immigrants and new citizens — witness Paris riots and the Denmark-cartoon thingy!!”
maybe you should suggest US absorb them…US the magnanimous, US the kind, US where racial discrimination does not exist, surely world peace champion US will be happy to absorb them…
supremo on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 3:40 am
DevilsAdvc8,
‘it doesn’t matter who replaces him, as long as he is replaced’
Don’t worry it will happen.
DevilsAdvc8 on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:11 am
UPn, it’s not my “solution.” it’s my “opinion” that the only way for the U.S. to avoid (or at least lessen) recession is to replace Bush ASAP. hold elections ASAP. that isn’t EDSA (since EDSA I and II neither needed elections to change presidents) since US elections won’t happen till November, the impending recession cannot be avoided in time thru regime change. and even then, it is still doubtful that elections will push through.
supremo, i doubt it. just as i doubt GMA will go come 2010. both presidents’ actions, decisions, situations – have an eerie resemblance to each other.
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:17 am
Manila Bay Watch: Hey… that item — civil rights/racial equality/racism — is part of the Hillary/Obama election “high heat debate” of past weeks. You can not legislate away feelings of racism. So like there is a brown-skinned or tisoy-Pinoy still looking down on a poor tsinoy of Binondo or an Igorot or an Aeta, so there will be a 32-year-old white woman from Iowa who gets scared to her inner core when she encounters a group of brown-skinned Latinos at a 7-11 or she boards a plane and her seatmate is a turban-wearing Sikh. Now her fear is her problem, it is not illegal. But the practice of racism during working hours is a different ballgame. Federal laws apply if our white-woman-from-Iowa (or she can be a black-woman from Alabama) is the human/resources director for a company and she rules out any and all Asian- or Latino- job applicant (because they speak with an accent or because surely they are less American and more a security risk). Federal laws have made it tougher for INSTITUTIONS to practice racism during working hours. I always hear that the assimilation of the the Vietnamese into the US mainstream was a success. I know there are vietnamese centers (for food and shopping); I have not heard any mention of Vietnamese ghettoes. Now Daly city/California has a strong Filipino concentration but I have not heard that city labeled as a ghetto. The two or 3 NorthAfrican communities outside Paris that rioted — labeled as ghettoes.
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:21 am
Devils-8: … yours was ‘if you can, you should….. but if you can’t, well, there is a price to pay…” message. Got it. My mistake.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:30 am
Upnstudent — Wonderful!
Since there are no ghettoes in the US per your statement, perhaps, it would do the world a lot of good if you could suggest that the US absorb them two or 3 north african communites in the suburbs of Paris in ghetto-less USA…
Anything wrong with that?
By the way, here’s a mail coming from ghetto-less and Islam loving USA:
They should play this non stop at All Airports!!!
Turn up the sound and click on the link below…….
http://www.animatronics.org/strangers/strangers.htm
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:31 am
Upnstudent — Sounds just wonderful!
Since there are no ghettoes in the US per your statement, perhaps, it would do the world a lot of good if you could suggest that the US absorb them two or 3 north african communites in the suburbs of Paris in ghetto-less USA…
Anything wrong with that?
By the way, here’s a mail coming from ghetto-less and Islam loving USA:
They should play this non stop at All Airports!!!
Turn up the sound and click on the link below…….
http://www.animatronics.org/strangers/strangers.htm
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:32 am
ManilaBay: I think the US has done fairly with the Hmongs from Burma/Cambodia (it must be a sight — 5-4 or shorter brown skinned Hmongs co-mingling with 6-foot German and Danish-originated Americans in Minnesota!!!) and the Filipinos (but I know the history books are full of atrocious racism against Filipinos in the early days before, during, and immediately after WorldWar II).
But for the next years, in my opinion (but others have disagreed with my opinion on this) the US should triple the number of refugee-slots and accept Iraqi-refugees into the US. Specifically, the US has an obligation to accept the Iraqis who have worked for the US-agencies AND who are probably being hunted down by the radicalized elements in Iraq.
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:33 am
the u.s. is a nation of generally united people of all races, religions, colors, cultures, languages, education, political beliefs, sexes, wealth (or lack of it) and physical or mental abilities. it occupies a territory of astronomical proportions, blessed with all essential natural resources and superior technology, and where the sun rises at one end and sets on the other. it is a self-contained country that practically needs no outsider to sustain itself. if no alien nation would provide the u.s. with food, oil, steel, other mineral or agricultural products, science and technology, labor and manpower, it can provide itself what it needs and more – much more.
in worst case situation, the u.s. domestic markets and consumption are more than enough to sustain its production of goods and services. no other nation on earth, i think, has that unique ability. in short, other nations need the u.s. more than it needs them.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:44 am
Upnstudent,
Tell me, how could you be so absolutely sure of what you say or say obliquely that racism is standard or that racial discrimination dominate the work front or that it is some kind of a general trend and standard in the French work place?
Have you actually worked in France, in an office anywhere in Paris or in the suburbs of Paris that you can be so categorical or even infer that your assertion is the truth? Or that “ghettofication” is the rule of thumb in France?
Extraordinary thinking!
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:44 am
ManilaBay: I know that there are neighborhoods outside London that, if you don’t have business there, they by all means one should not go there; also in greater-LA and in some Washington DC wards. But come on already, there has not been any firebombing in these neighborhoods similar to what just happened outside Paris. [The one in LA, though, the FBI and local police have upped their presence because of brown-on-black killings over drug turf. The one in a DC ward -- increased police presence because of black-gang-versus-black-gang but the members can't aim.]
But before it gets forgotten as one listens to an mp3 rant — US Federal laws have made it tougher for INSTITUTIONS to practice racism during working hours.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:51 am
Bencard,
The Chinese have some 800 billion dollar collectibles from the US that if the Chinese pulled the “plug” America might here the gurglings of a drowing economy — that you could even begin to make people here believe that big and mighty America can live on its own is truly gobsmacking in the extreme.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want that to happen to America but you must understand that a statement like yours, “in short, other nations need the u.s. more than it needs them” smacks of arrogance.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:52 am
‘hear’ and not ‘here’
supremo on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:52 am
DevilsAdvc8,
‘i doubt it. just as i doubt GMA will go come 2010. both presidents’ actions, decisions, situations – have an eerie resemblance to each other.
Bush will definitely step down. I’m not so sure about GMA.
Bush admitted that the US economy is faltering. GMA said ‘We have a booming economy’.
Don’t worry about the US. Worry about the Philippines. Most Americans still eat 3 times a day even with a faltering economy. I’m not so sure that most Filipinos eat 3 times a day with a ‘booming economy’.
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 5:14 am
mbw, it may lead to armageddon but, like it or not, the great u.s. of a has the logistical and technological capabilities of rendering your “$800 billion” china collectibles worthless simply by not honoring it. it may smack of arrogance but, hey, when you got it, you got! i don’t think any nation on earth can “pull the plug” on america and live to savor the sight of a its drowning.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 5:19 am
Bencard, I don’t believe that US-born Americans agree with your petty arrogant statement.
You think got it? Heh, you wish!
supremo on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 5:22 am
mbw,
China is slowly dumping the treasury bonds. Part of the $300 billion China sovereign wealth fund came from those bonds. But where do they invest most of the wealth fund? In the US. They just want a bigger return for their money. They cannot dump the rest of the bonds. Where will they put the dollars? They cannot exchange it for euros. The European Central Bank will not be able to absorb it.
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 5:38 am
well, mwb, after all there are homegrown al quaedas and al quaeda sympathizers (as well as assorted u.s. haters) in the u.s., right?
i know, you’re a transformed “french”. everybody knows how the french are not a great lover of america. don’t know why, after all the american lives and materials lost in normandy, among other places.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 5:40 am
Supremo,
Nothing against that – I say, could only be good on the US and by extnsion the world.
To me, a US economic turnaround, Bush or no Bush is the better scenario. My take on the woes besetting the US today is not adversarial at all.
One thing that should worry everyone, Americans included is the arrogance with which some people express themselves — such arrogance is not lost on the Russians for instance who at this very moment are mimicking Americans and are adopting a stance that they believe rightly or wrongly is typical American:
“Argumenty I Fakty, the respected weekly newspaper read by 3m Russians, asked last week whether Russia should, in effect, become a ’second America’ and attempt to return to its former Soviet greatness by arming itself as though it were still a superpower? If so, this would mean flexing military might at every available opportunity.
“If the US can invade Iraq and get away with it, Russia should not be afraid to protect her own interests  as in Georgia, for example.
“In order for America not to beat Russia we will need to be as cruel and aggressive as the Americans.” Russia, Alexander Dugin believes, is not far off becoming a great European empire.”
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 5:43 am
“everybody knows how the french are not a great lover of america.”
Can you back that assertion of yours with airtight proofs, tangible facts, clear figures, etc, Counsellor?
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 5:50 am
And Bencard, let the French and the Americans settle their Normandy quarrel, alright?
A Pinoy like you even if you are an American convert I’m sure have more than enough on your Pinoy plate, more than you can handle, i.e., Pinoy wars, Moro wars, NPA wars,…
hvrds on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 5:54 am
This time the experts at Citigroup, Merril Lynch will be lining up to borrow from the Arabs in Davos since these sheiks are under the protection of the U.S. military in the M.E. The Chinese would rather buy commodities and agricultural resources that are still in the ground.
Big Mike and GMA are expecting to get in line to borrow money also for all her projects. Just to make sure she is going by Dubai to issue her IOU’s to the OFW’s there.
Isn’t it great.
The Japs want the built up real estate and access to fishing grounds and the Chinese want the undeveloped and agricultural land in the Philippines. The Arabs want our women.
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 6:00 am
why do you think americans, generally, boycotted evian bottled water and french champagne and wines? why was france in the forefront of the opposition to u.s. policies against terror? historically, france had been acting more as a u.s. adversary than an ally, except when being an ostensible ally was beneficial to its own interests (e.g., fighting the germans in world war ii).
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 6:06 am
Bencard,
Your reminiscence of the past is not PROOF! Hardly tangible and palpable… You may rant and go back into time all you want and even cite George Washington as your witness if it suits you but your reminiscing AIN’T PROOF Counsellor!
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 6:08 am
Again, Bencard, such blanket statement “why do you think americans, generally, boycotted evian bottled water and french champagne and wines?” is no show of proof…
As you like to say yourself in your posts, PROVE IT!
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 6:18 am
mwb, let me give you some lesson in law. public knowledge can be the basis of “judicial notice” which is proof in itself, and requires no further substantiation. what i cited are generally-accepted historical facts in america, if not the whole world.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 6:33 am
Bencard
I am not convinced by your legalese that “everybody knows how the french are not a great lover of america.†because in my view, your phrase “everybody knows how THE french are not a great lover of america.†is a thoroughly perverted assumption — has it occurred to you that it could be the other way around?
Chirac and de Villepin ARE NOT “THE” FRENCH…. in the same manner I don’t believe Bush and his neo-con advisers ARE “THE” AMERICANS….Ordinary French citizens do not dislike Americans. Again, has it occurred to you that it could be the other way around?
But feel free, be my guest to make thorough generalizations as much as you want — but I think many French will NOT agree with you.
But I am in no doubt that you could whip up one of your general statements again, wrap it in some legalese and convince yourself that you are right… What could I say (or any French for that matter)? So, right on Counsellor! After all, it’s you who you are kidding.
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 6:39 am
Ciao Counsellor (gotta hit the sack), next time, be careful about generalizing — generalizations and perverted assumptions as you know muddle issues and unecessary widen the divide… Think Sarkozy…
nash on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 6:42 am
I wish this would come true in my lifetime:
” it is a self-contained country that practically needs no outsider to sustain itself. if no alien nation would provide the u.s. with food, oil, steel, other mineral or agricultural products, science and technology, labor and manpower, it can provide itself what it needs and more – much more.”
And so the rest of us lesser beings outside this magical land of plenty can finally be left alone and in peace.
DevilsAdvc8 on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 8:14 am
i suppose that’s why the US empire was built on predatory policy. bec it’s so self-sustaining it needs no other nation to satisfy its need.
great! can i have lidocaine along with whatever you’re having bencard?
cvj on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:01 am
That’s Bencard’s rule of law for you.
DevilsAdvc8 on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:03 am
Doronilla’s column today, “Memory Holes” shreds to pieces Malacanang’s explanation of “healing wounds” for its wish to forget EDSA II. as he writes..
that’s why if im asked, our country’s education should focus only on these subjects: math, science, history (Philippine and world history) and english. english should be scrapped as the language used in teaching these core subjects in favor of the vernacular, and should only be used in english classes itself.
subjects such as MAPE, Religion, Filipino should become electives.
and damn it, any teacher emphasizing rote memorization should be burned at the stake and chopped to pieces. that method of teaching ensures students graduate to become mindless mumblers of pieces of information they memorized instead of being analytical and critical thinkers.
if only history teachers teaches history thru story telling instead of idiotically insisting on memorization of dates, places, and names without understanding, students would be more inclined to stay awake throughout the whole lesson. of course those facts are important, but these should not subsume the more important aspect of teaching history – we teach history to kids not for their trivial aspect but for the lessons it brings. (as i’ve said often in this blog, imagine if memories could be inherited, society today would be more advanced than ever, since succeeding generations would never repeat the mistakes of the past)
and so is it also with all the other subjects. science is not abt memorization of scientific names, famous scientists, states of matter, etc. teaching science should all be abt imprinting in the young the joy of discovery, the attitude of curiosity and questioning even of established truths. i used to want to become a scientist when i was young. but i had this one teacher in elementary who totally destroyed my love for this subject bec of the way she taught it. anyway, my point is – horrific teachers destroy otherwise promising kids, and vice-versa (in contrast when i studied in ateneo, i met this teacher, whom i consider my mentor until now. he unlocked everything good in me, including writing)
anyway, i’ve strayed from the subject too much.
vic on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:10 am
The U.S.A. rich in Human and Natural resources than any nation, I would say would could not sustain its economic prosperity without the Rest of the World..First its Thirst for Energy to fuel its prosperity needs the supply from other sources mainly from OPEC and some through the Pipelines from the North (Alberta) that we can not even reduce the export of oil to the U.S.A. unless we reduce our consumption by corresponding percentage, that is the agreement..
They U.S. may isolate itself if it is ready to surrender its status as the World Power, Militarily and Economically…
DevilsAdvc8 on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:17 am
i laughed out loud when i read De Quiros’ column today. it seems he only caught wind of kindle this year when i’ve wished for it as my xmas present last year, and it’s been on any book lovers’ radars since early 2006.
i laughed as he described how he wished for an electronic version of a book with all its trappings: no LCD glares, portable and as light as a paperback, and crazily enough, even smells like one!
he had that one pat down to the smallest detail. i wished for that one too even as a kid. and now the amazon kindle came. product reviews are not very good, but this device is revolutionary. it won’t be long before an improved, much better version comes out. the possibilities of this device are boundless!
cvj on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:31 am
Vic, in an energy crunch, the US can always invade Alberta and comandeer its [shale-]oil reserves in the name of National Security. Of course the US will try to use friendly persuasion first so it likely will not come to that.
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:38 am
cvj, much as u.s.a. was founded on, and adheres to, the rule of law, you cannot fault it for using every means available to preserve itself, including force. the need for self-preservation (as when somebody is about to “pull the plug” on you) is, to my mind, a law in its own right, much higher than a contractual obligation. then again, i don’t expect you to understand that.
devils, “u.s. empire”? “predatory policy”? for all its size and power, the ONE and ONLY colony that u.s.a. maintained (for a relatively short time frame) was the philippines. there is no such thing as a u.s. empire. you must be dreaming or what you’re taking is more potent than “lidocaine” or ecstasy. u.s.a. was founded on the ideals of democracy, effectively promoting it, as well as advocating self-determination for all the nations of the world.
nash, if those thing are not yet happening in your present life, you must not have been born yet. either that or something is seriously wrong with your senses.
cvj on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:47 am
Bencard, i understand that the US adheres to the rule of law at its discretion which is limited only by the extent of its military capabilities. Your remark…
…explains a lot, and i’m not just referring to the topic at hand.
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:49 am
vic, u.s.a has the right to preserve its own resources by BUYING what it needs from countries who are only too eager and willing to SELL.
if each country would be left to its own devices and resources, i bet my last greenbuck, u.s. would be the last one standing.
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 10:03 am
cvj, you may be right but you, probably, will agree with me that u.s.a. generally wields its power responsibly, consistent with the ideals of justice and equity. not every american is a good angel but those who pursue the path of injustice are usually made to face the consequences of their crimes through a fair application of the rule of law. abu graib is a particular case in point.
cvj on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 10:13 am
Bencard, i can only agree with you if by ‘generally‘, you mean ‘selectively‘ which means, among other things, ignoring the death and destruction it has inflicted on the Iraqis.
vic on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 10:15 am
Thats ok bencard, we got a lot of resources to sell, especially our oil and few of us to consume, more than enough and we can use the Surplus for the Rainy Days just in case…
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 11:02 am
cvj, then agree with yourself for all i care.
cvj on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 11:14 am
Bencard, is adopting a diva attitude something they teach you in Law School?
tonio on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 11:16 am
the cure for the US recession? a few armed conflicts in different parts of the globe. the US makes a lot of the weapons anyway, and if they’re careful with the deals they may not even have to involve American combat troops.
and why not guide a few smaller nations towards “self-determination”?
dubya’s “War on Terror” has given them carte blanche for that kind of thing anyway.
about three or four new hotspots should do it.
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 11:38 am
devilsAdvc8: I believe that the best thing about humans is, in fact, that memory is not inherited. The lack of inherited memory is what predisposes the youth to challenge what the elders (either arrogantly or patronizingly) insist on as absolute truth. If memory were inherited, this generation will repeat what the previous generations have done. Whoopee-doo!!!
hawaiianguy on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 11:46 am
Who says USA is not an empire?
USA was, still is, and will be, an empire. Googling “US imperialism” alone yields tons of references about this word. Surprisingly, many of those who write the most biting criticism about it are Americans themselves. One among the first (I would say most ardent) oppositionist to the almost insatiable desire to expand (aka imperial design) is the Anti-Imperialist League.
The Philippines, its only colony, is called as the First Vietnam (now the First Iraq), followed by a long list of foreign interventionist programs and policies (www.apk2000.dk/netavisen/artikler/global_debat/2002-1126_us_imp_basic_stats.htm). But even before US went to the Philippines, its expansion had begun at home – terrorizing/decimating the Indians, taking their lands, not honoring many of those treaties. The story of the “wild, wild west†is a story of homegrown imperialism disguised as nationalism.
Evidence? Follow these links -http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/toc.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Empire_%28disambiguation%29
http://www.besthistorysites.net/USHistory_EarlyImperialism.shtml
http://www.neravt.com/left/invade.htm
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Imperialism_Neocolonialism/Imperialism_Neocolonialism.html
http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/league.html
I like this take of Stephen Bender, on US “anti-imperialism today†(www.antiwar.com/orig/bender.php?articleid=4335):
“The sending of hundreds of thousands of young men and women off to kill and be killed – in order to occupy a country that did not threaten us – was based on a pack of lies perhaps unique in the unsavory history of the American government’s justifications for war. The Mesopotamian blitzkrieg conquered a nation that was depicted as “a threat to the world” more rapidly than Hitler subjugated Poland. And yet, this disconnect, among many others – if the presidential election is any indication – did not sufficiently stir the American public. But the war didn’t end with the fall of Baghdad, as we know all too well. A look back at the Anti-Imperialist League offers a guide to moving forward today – if we’re prepared to work together.”
Jeg on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 12:04 pm
UPn: I believe that the best thing about humans is, in fact, that memory is not inherited. The lack of inherited memory is what predisposes the youth to challenge what the elders (either arrogantly or patronizingly) insist on as absolute truth.
But memory IS inherited. It’s called ‘culture’. The youth challenges what their elders hold as true because they think they can do a better job and this too is a part of a culture they inherit. Fortunately, sometimes theyre right. Unfortunately, sometimes theyre wrong and come into power. Either way, sooner or later they become the elders who’ll have to defend their ideas from the new youth.
cvj on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 12:25 pm
Not only is memory inherited, but it is the stuff upon which our society (any society) is built on. The sociologist Niklas Luhman posited that society is not composed of people. Rather, the basic building block of society is what he calls communication which is the unity of information, message and understanding. People exists outside society, i.e. as part of the environment.
cvj on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 12:26 pm
the last phrase should read as part of its environment.
hawaiianguy on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 12:42 pm
jeg, cvj:
I do believe that memory is shared, ergo it is communicated and becomes a cultural stuff. I had pointed in an earlier post how collective memory endures, esp. with the aid of print. Good (or bad) behavior is encoded into our memory, particularly those acts that are salient, significant, even disdainful ones. I agree, (was it you Nash who said it?) that those entrenched in power (or have newly risen to power) will try to obliterate memory, because it is antagonistic to their interest.
Until now, affected farmers are still crying for justice 21 years after that Mendiola massacre. Their collective memory has not been erased, despite being repeatedly truncheoned.
Collective memory (esp. from the poor and oppressed), no matter how repressed, continually surfaces. It is a subtle plea of dissent.
nash on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 4:41 pm
“nash, if those thing are not yet happening in your present life, you must not have been born yet. either that or something is seriously wrong with your senses.”
Says the man whose country has its borders hyperextended….
Clearly something is wrong with YOUR senses if you think Greenland is part of the USA…
Oh well, but who am I kidding, I TOO want to be part of your country so that I can be spiteful of the rest when I am inside.
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 8:41 pm
From “Memory holes†article by Juan Mercado:
Filipinos have “a very special problem†in recalling, Ateneo de Manila University president Bienvenido Nebres, S.J. observes. “It is not just wrong memories. It is the lack of a national memory… The consequence is, we tend to live in a perpetual present. We have little collective memory of the past and thus we can not see well into the future.â€
Quick, tell me. Is there an official Malacanang historian? What are the laws about keeping (for posterity) the notes of meetings (closed-door and otherwise) by Malacanang and the Congress? What is the (official or unofficial) position of the CBCP regarding meetings between CBCP and Malacanang?
Manila Bay Watch on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 8:46 pm
Nash,
Re “And so the rest of us lesser beings outside this magical land of plenty can finally be left alone and in peace.’
If it’s any satisfaction, Bencard’s petty arrogance is not the “general” sentiment of Americans.
Here’s an exchange in my blog (Tom authors his http://www.politicsplus.blogspot.com and is a regular commenter in my blog):
¤¤¤¤¤
TomCat said…
Reading this as an American does not prompt me to feel proud. I can only offer that there are those in my country who are as horrified by our government’s behavior outside our borders, and we are working hard to conform our nation to the ideals we claim to represent.
January 9, 2008 8:12 PM
anna said…
Thank you for the kind words, Tom.
I’m sure they will be appreciated greatly by the readers of this blog.
January 9, 2008 10:36 PM
TomCat said…
You’re welcome Anna. I meant every word. Our country needs to learned that friendship cannot be obtained through threat or bribery. It must be earned by being a friend.
January 12, 2008 6:12 PM
¤¤¤¤
Another remark by another by The Vigil (another regular commenter in my blog) in http://www.the-vigil.blogspot.com/2008/01/finding-our-way-back-to-traditional.html in Finding Our Way Back to Traditional American Foreign Policy from the Wilderness of Neo-Con Fairy Tales ):
HILLBLOGGER said…
Vigil,
Pray, enlighten me — what is “Traditional American Foreign Policy”?
Thanks.
1/16/2008 03:09:00 AM
Vigilante said…
Hills, I have dealt with this often.
Look at this.
And don’t hit me over the head with Reagan’s invasion of Grenada or Bush I’s invasion of Panama. Or McKinley’s pacification of the Philippines.
(I’m not in the mood to be embarrassed by splitting hairs over my country’s crimes before Bush.)
1/17/2008 06:05:00 PM
mlq3 on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:03 pm
Upn: there *is* an office tasked with these things: the Presidential Museum, which is part of the Office of the President, is tasked with the history of the presidency. However, its effectivity depends on each administration.
While I favor a legislation (an official secrets act, for one, and then, as part of it, a freedom of information act, the two are not totally incompatible), there is ample precedent to show that a proper bureaucratic atmosphere will suffice.
this is the purpose of the official gazette. it is actually quite easy to thoroughly chronicle the presidency prior to 1972. literally, hour-by-hour records of presidential activities, including meetings and those present, were published in the gazette. actually, since then, the records have been kept except they’ve mainly been released to the press and, nowadays, released electronically (which means, for example, that the records for the estrada administration have vanished with the perpetual revamping of staff and websites).
prior to 1972, in addition to the thorough documentation in the official gazette (i can also tell you, on a weekly basis, presidential appointments at all levels and executive issuances, too, of all kinds, including important letters, telegrams, memoranda, and of course speeches), minutes were kept for public and private meetings of the presidents, whether in the cabinet, council of state, press conferences, etc. these were not released to the public but they were kept, except that several fires in the malacanang records office has ravaged those records, not to mention the deliberate destruction of pre-marcos presidential records during the martial law years.
so you do not need a law, just the right attitude. the ramos administration was the tidiest in terms of record-keeping, for example, the most complete post-marcos files in the palace were the ramos-era papers; the estrada years were chaotic, as you can imagine. the present administration has created so many offices that the completeness of the record is quite uneven. the president, however, has already made arrangements to deposit her presidential papers in the ateneo de manila. her father’s papers, as far as i know, are already at UST. fvr and cca have their papers in their respective libraries. the marcos papers, sadly, are embargoed because of the pcgg.
certainly, prior to 1972, record keeping was meticulous and done as a matter of routine. what happened during martial law was a confluence of events: around that time, the palace bureaucrats who’d all entered service prior to the war or soon after independence retired; and of course the martial law system did not encourage transparency, this is the time the official gazette began to be spottily kept, after all there were many secret decrees, and the armed forces started taking on a lot of civilian functions (afp records in turn were devastated by the burning down of ghq during the 1989 coup attempt). it has not been in the interest of administrations, since, to return to the old record-keeping ways, which ironically, means unearthing what past presidents were doing prior to 1972 is much easier than what their successors did since then.
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:09 pm
Was “spreading the Judaeo-Christian faith”, which many Filipinos seem to want, part of “American Foreign Policy”? Is food-and-grain aid? Will it be acceptable if the US sends troops into DARFUR to nullify the bandits?
IS this “Traditional American Foreign Policy” like pornography…. don’t bother to define it ‘cuz people always know it when they see it?
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:21 pm
mlq3: Thanks (re notekeeping by Malacanang). I had hoped that’s what you’d point out to — that the Philippines does have official institutions in regards “national memory”.
[ One of my discomforts about the "Mercado" article is that he did not bother to identify actionable items and responsibility. ]
UP n student on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 9:26 pm
…the marcos papers, sadly, are embargoed because of the pcgg. Wow!!!! Still???? This is when you want a law — no presidential papers should be under wraps for longer than a dozen years.
My sentiment is that justice will be served sooner if the sun is allowed to shine on these Marcos-papers!
Bencard on Thu, 24th Jan 2008 11:56 pm
mwb, like i said above, there is no shortage of american critics among americans, and they, as well as others, invariably, are protected by the law to say anything they want, with few limitations. often, they outdo foreigners in their expressing their hate, and some of them are former immigrants to whom gratitude is an alien concept. that said, i have also pointed out that not all americans are good americans, and not all its policies agree with the rest of the world.
hawaiianguy, a nation doesn’t become an “empire” simply by calling it one. i don’t care if the ideologues and antagonists of the world refer to “u.s. imperialists” or the “u.s. empire”. the simple fact is that imperialism is inimical and anathema to american way of life and everything that it holds sacrosanct.
nash, no, not greenland but alaska, the marianas, the solomons and part of samoa are.
cvj on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 12:17 am
That would be news in Iraq.
Bencard on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 12:36 am
cvj, do the iraquis believe that iraq has been annexed by the u.s. as the latter’s conquered territory? who currently governs the country? americans? who formulates, promulgates and implements its laws, the americans? you seem to know more than the iraquis about what’s going on in their country. brilliant!
cvj on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 12:55 am
Bencard, from your line of argument, it appears that you’re restricting the definition of ‘Empire’ to annexation and/or direct rule. That does not do justice to the range of possible geopolitical relationships in an imperial system. Here’s an entry over at 3quarksdaily that gives an overview of the structural and network characteristics of such a system:
http://www.3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/06/america_and_emp.html
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 1:02 am
For the sake of precision in discussions:
imperialism : The policy of extending a nation’s authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations. (American Heritage dictionary)
–
Here is a cut-and-paste from a Wikipedia page:
After its origins as a Western European trade bloc, the Post-Cold War era European Union has since issued its own currency [14], formed its own military [15], and exercised its hegemony in Eastern European Nations and abroad.[16][17][18][19] . As a consequence, political scientist, (a> Jan Zielonka, has argued that the EU has transformed itself into an empire by coercing its neighbours into adopting economic, legal and political patterns in its own image.
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 1:12 am
Then, there will have to be the Islam Empire and the Christian Empire (each with their own ambassadors, footsoldiers (of missionaries and soldier-soldiers), provocateurs and quislings). There is no atheist empire, is there?
cvj on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 1:18 am
UPn Student, here’s how Nexon and Wright (that i linnked to above) distinguish between an Empire and Federal arrangement:
From the above, we can determine whether the EU more resembles the Federal arrangement among the 50-states that comprise the USA, or whether it’s like the kind of hegemonic arrangement between the USA and Iraq.
Manila Bay Watch on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 1:38 am
Trust upnstudent to stretch bad faith by citing sources that hardly provide the most basic fact about how the EU works.
“the EU has transformed itself into an empire by coercing its neighbours into adopting economic, legal and political patterns in its own image.”
Hahahahaha! Coercing its neighbours???? What a load of crap!
Fact: Britain and Sweden are not in the Euro and Schengen zones because they didn’t ratify the Euro and Schenghen treaties when they were put forward.
There are rules and regulations in the EU and coercing neighbours to adopt their whatever is not one of them. If someone wants to join a club, one’s got to abide by the rules and regulations, otherwise chaos. Same as in the Asean or what Asean is trying to do.
Now, it’s another thing to refuse to ratify a treaty when that nation is already a member of the club after a treaty is proposed — that becomes a right of the new and old members alike, and that’s what exactly is happening today. Those that are already members of the EU, including the recent ones are asked to ratify or not the Lisbon treaty.
No coercion there.
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 1:51 am
Baywatch: Hop on a plane or do your blogging and take your problem with political scientist Jan Zielonka. Jan Zielonka is Professor of European Politics at the University of Oxford and Ralf Dahrendorf Fellow at St Antony’s College. He studied Law at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, and Political Science at the University of Warsaw where he received his Ph.D. in 1981. In 1982 he settled in the Netherlands, first at the University of Groningen and then, as from 1984, at the University of Leiden. In January 1996 he was appointed Professor of Political Science at the European University Institute in Florence (Joint Chair in European Studies at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and the Department of Political and Social Sciences). He took up his present position at the University of Oxford in January 2004. He has published numerous works in the field of comparative politics (Soviet and Eastern European studies), the history of political ideas, international relations, human rights and security. His current research deals with the evolving nature of the European Union and the process of the EU’s eastward enlargement. His books include Europe as Empire. The Nature of the Enlarged European Union, (Oxford University Press, 2006), Europe Unbound: Enlarging and Reshaping the Boundaries of the European Union, (Routledge 2002), Democratic Consolidation in Eastern Europe, vol. 1 & 2 (Oxford University Press, 2001), Explaining Euro-paralysis. Why Europe is Unable to Act in International Politics (Macmillan, 1998), and Political Ideas in Contemporary Poland (Avebury 1989).
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 1:59 am
Baywatch: whether or not Prof Zielonka has a more astute understanding of EU machinations than you, I’m inclined to believe that he has a wider audience than you. You may want to get cracking if you want the professor to modify his beliefs before he spreads his point-of-view to another batch of still-innocent students.
cvj on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 2:01 am
UPn Student, i believe that the fallacy, in which you point to Zielonka’s credentials, is called Appeal to Authority.
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 2:03 am
that should be Bay watch, not baywatch.
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 2:07 am
cvj: again, take it up with him if you have a problem with Zielonka’s statement. No worries, life is good!
Manila Bay Watch on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 2:58 am
Upn, He could be Pope Benedict for all I care, doesn’t alter the fact that your cut and paste of his treatise is a lot of bull!
Manila Bay Watch on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 3:01 am
And even if you said that he was Christ incarnate, I’d still say the same thing of your cut and paste: It’s a lot of crap!
Bencard on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 3:43 am
cvj, whatever quotations you provide from other sources (including google or wikipedia), i don’t think the iraquis believe that they have become subjects of the americans, or that iraq has become part of the u.s. i told you before, there is no argument against a fact.
upn, thanks for straightening cvj (and like-minded people here) out on the real concept of imperialism.
hawaiianguy on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 4:36 am
Bencard,
“hawaiianguy, a nation doesn’t become an “empire†simply by calling it one. “
Agree! But you got me wrong there by that one-liner. Yours is just one small episode of the whole story. In a more complete way, the power of word, uttered by those in authority, is what actually makes a nation get a tag, pleasing or unpalatable, and how that tag becomes part of its “becoming.†Your word, against the word of many others in-the-know, is moot and muted. I thought you believe in “majority rule?â€
On “becoming,†realize that many nations, or groups of people, have been called by names other than what they really are. Eventually, they lived up to, even enamored, and got imprisoned by those labels. The clearest example is the “Philippines,†after King Felipe of Spain, demonstrated in Manolo’s previous thread. Think of the “Indians†of North America (hurrah to Columbus!) who, until now are called Indians, regardless of their diversity and lack of commonality. Or, of the Afro-Americans (or blacks), Fil-Ams, and other hyphenated identities.
Often, people call another group according to its observed character. “Moro†is one example, and “Ibaloy†is another. (Moro was equated to “pirate, infidel,†– the bad boy among the Spanish, while Ibaloy meant “enemy†from the eyes of their more “civilized,†hegemonic Ilokano neighbors.) Those labels are still remembered and used almost daily, of course sans the stigma they once carried.
Well, it’s always expected of a hegemonic entity to resist a seemingly “negative†label. That’s how power plays out. So, those who believe in that power they command would counter with another self-identifying and deodorizing label(s): “benevolent assimilation,†“manifest destiny,†or even “Uncle Sam.â€
“the simple fact is that imperialism is inimical and anathema to american way of life and everything that it holds sacrosanct.â€
You sound like Nick Joaquin, a known apologist to Hispanic imperialism. One difference being that, Joaquin lived and died in RP, while you are now domiciled in the US. (no offense intended)
Bencard on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 4:36 am
btw, upnstude, take it from cvj, the expert on “appeal to authority”. the only caveat is that i’m not too sure of his authorities’ credentials.
Bencard on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 4:56 am
hawaiianguy, it seems that another difference (w/n. joaquin) is that he was disputing a fact – that, at all times relevant, spain was an imperialist in the true sense of the word. whereas, i am pointing out a fact – that u.s. is not an imperialist nation, or an empire, despite the labels attached to it by its adversaries or haters.
Bencard on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 5:00 am
correction: he (n. joaquin) was JUSTIFYING, not “disputing” a fact.
hawaiianguy on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 5:38 am
Bencard,
Joaquin’s disputation only confirmed it even more. He was more comfortable with “colonization” which, in effect, is as bad as and synonymous with “imperialism” in the sense of Spain being both colonizer and imperialist then. But I like some of his arguments, esp. on etiology of Filipino identity.
Words morph from one form to another, making them somewhat indistinguishable after the mutation process. But in substance, old meanings refuse to die. “Imperialism” of yesteryears is now referenced, even camouflaged, by its new morphs – “aggressive interventionism” being one of them.
Bencard on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 6:35 am
hawaiianguy, excuse my “french” but a crap by any other name or label would still stink the same, morphed or not.
hawaiianguy on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 8:47 am
Words from an American scholar-critic: (wrongly posted in another thread)
Harry Magdoff, Imperialism Without Colonies (2003).
“In the decades after 1945, as colonial possessions became independent states, it was widely-believed that imperialism as a historical phenomenon was coming to an end. The six essays collected in this volume demonstrate that a new form of imperialism was, in fact, taking shape—an imperialism defined not by colonial rule but by the global capitalist market. From the outset, the dominant power in this imperialism without colonies was the United States.
“Magdoff’s essays explain how this imperialism works, why it generates ever greater inequality, repression, and militarism, and the essential role it plays in the development of U.S. capitalism.â€
HARRY MAGDOFF has been a co-editor of Monthly Review since 1969 and is the author of The Age of Imperialism and Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present.
Bencard on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 9:15 am
hawaiianguy, can you ask magdoff (i never heard of him): since, as pointed out by manila bay watch, u.s. owes china $800 billion, is the latter now the dominant power in this new-fangled form of capitalist imperialism? also, by his definition, are japan, italy, france, canada, australia, g. britain, netherlands, germany, s. arabia, and others engaged in global capitalism, necessarily imperialist countries?
cvj on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 9:48 am
Bencard, you can say that the USA is a declining empire (thanks in part to Bush) while China may be an up and coming one (but still has quite some way to go). The other countries that you mention have not achieved the dominance of the US, hence cannot be called imperialist (in a global sense although they may be considered as such in some region of the world).
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 9:57 am
Harry Magdoff won’t be able to answer any questions. He died at age 93 about 2 years ago. Do your google-search. He’s not a John McCain nor a Rudy nor a Fred Thompson. Beatrice Magdoff who died in 2002 was Harry Magdoff’s wife of almost 70 years.
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 10:13 am
cvj: That link you provided had a lot more substance than I expected. The link provided a review of the Nexon and Wright’s article — a theoretical investigation of empires and the dynamics of imperial relations by building on Nexon’s previous work on the network properties of early-modern empires. In the end, it looks like the network-model is the “theoretical” version of “divide-and-conquer” methodology of imperialists. One of the conclusions from the reviewer is that in terms of the Nexon/Wright model, America’s actual resort to imperial governance since the end of the Cold War has been declining, not increasing. Also that the Nexon model states that a dyed-in-the-wool imperialist would vigorously pursue “divide-and-rule†policies in Iraq instead of the current US insistence on nation-building policies of “unite and rule.â€
———-
Addendum: My perception (using the current debates in US election politics as basis) the USA’s focus is on how quickly for US to get out of Iraq (within one year if Edwards wins). Bencard, Supremo and even Abe Margallo can provide you with their own opinions.
hawaiianguy on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 10:29 am
Thanks, UPnS. that settles the question of Bencard.
Bencard on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 11:29 am
cvj, once again, you got it all screwed up. i never agreed that there is such a thing as u.s. imperialism. as far as i’m concerned, the idea is heresy – novel but poppycock.
i only asked a rhetorical question to hawaiianguy who apparently was taken in by magdoff’s wordplay. like america, none of those countries i mentioned is imperialist simply by virtue of being capitalist. in the context of nations, as well as individuals, in a civilized world, debtors do not become the subjects of their creditors. the era of slavery for unpaid indebtedness is long gone, save for a few unenlightened societies that are holdouts from the dark ages.
cvj on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 1:17 pm
UPn, i’m glad you clicked through. I take it then that you agree to the existence of US Imperialism of the Nexon-Wright model and on the assertion that its practice of imperialism is actually declining.
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 9:56 pm
cvj: The Nexon Wright model is a network model — nodes and communication lines. Interestingly, the Vatican fits the Nexon Wright model. Look deeper and the Vatican’s history of imperialism has crusaders into the middle east, too. Now the Philippines ran straight smack into Spanish Imperialism of many centuries ago, but if true then, we know that today, Spain has no interest in world domination. But the Vatican’s objective in the past is its objective now, and Vatican objective IS world domination. And the Vatican has quislings and boots on the ground (these quislings do not carry rifles); the Vatican is jawboning its wishes to affect how a population dresses, how a population spends its money; and yes, the Vatican interferes in the internal affairs of countries — witness the EdsaDos-Vatican-Cardinal Sin story.
As for the the US, yes, the US-of-A of today fits the Nexon Wright network model of imperialism, along with Great Britain, Russia, France, China.
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 10:23 pm
The Nexon Wright model is a network model — nodes and communication lines. It does not include “goodness of intentions” , “pureness of heart”.
Bencard on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 10:59 pm
upn student, applying the “nexon-wright” model of imperialism to create a u.s. “empire” is like applying the leftist-opposition model of “dictatorship” to make pgma a “dictator”.
btw, there will be no vatican world domination so long as there are muslims, hindus, buddhists, scientologists, taoists, agnostics, atheists, etc., in the world and as long as universal freedom of thought and worship are observed. the commonplace cliche “there are no tyrants where there are no slaves” evokes truth that never will go stale.
UP n student on Fri, 25th Jan 2008 11:39 pm
Bencard: you and M-bay watch may, after all, agree on something — that “Nexon Wright” network model can’t be good if it concludes that the Vatican is an imperialist entity.
Bencard on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 12:06 am
upnstudent, maybe, but aiming to be an “imperialist” or world dominator is different from being one.
cvj on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 12:30 am
UPn, on the Vatican being considered an ‘Empire’ according to the Nexon-Wright model, it fails to qualify in one very important aspect, namely:
In the case of the Catholic Church, such differentiation and segmentation of the peripheries is not there. As far as i can see, whenever i attend Mass in the different countries i visited, there is no attempt by the local Church to segregate the different parishes and/or parishioners according to nationality. On the contrary, contact among the different ‘peripheries’ is encouraged. Just the other week, the priest in a mass i attended here in Singapore was showing the congregation slides of his visit to a parish in Cambodia.
Anyway, thanks for acknowledging the imperial nature of the United States.
Bencard on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 1:02 am
upnstudent, see? it’s a “personal” thing with cvj – the “imperial nature” of the u.s. i think you made his day (or night), lol.
UP n student on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 1:29 am
Bencard: I am reassured that all is well with the world. At least one landed firmly to notice the humor in the discussion of these issues!!!
cvj: I guess we all smile since the Philippines, having no comm-lines and nodes (and “boots on the ground”) other than what is within its own borders, will pass the Nexon/Wright “imperialism” model.
hawaiianguy on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 3:56 am
Bencard, “i only asked a rhetorical question to hawaiianguy who apparently was taken in by magdoff’s wordplay.”
I wish Magdoff were alive to answer your query, which is like beating a deadhorse. Taking a cue from UPnS who kindly volunteered some info on Magdoff, I think it is grossly unfair and unkind to the man to dismiss his lifetime works as just WORDPLAY. Just because you don’t believe that “USA is NOT imperialistic.”
Apparently, it’s you who is taken in by Rumsfeld’s infamous retort (“we don’t do empireâ€) by your passionate essentialism of America.
Btw, if you’re interested in real wordplay, read this authority on linguistics -
Noam Chomsky – Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World.
“In this first collection of interviews since the bestselling 9-11, our foremost intellectual activist examines crucial new questions of U.S. foreign policyTimely, urgent, and powerfully elucidating, this important volume of previously unpublished interviews conducted by award-winning radio journalist David Barsamian features Noam Chomsky discussing America’s policies in an increasingly unstable world. With his famous insight, lucidity, and redoubtable grasp of history, Chomsky offers his views on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the doctrine of “preemptive†strikes against so-called rogue states, and the prospects of the second Bush administration, warning of the growing threat to international peace posed by the U.S. drive for domination. In his inimitable style, Chomsky also dissects the propaganda system that fabricates a mythic past and airbrushes inconvenient facts out of history.Barsamian, recipient of the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, has conducted more interviews and radio broadcasts with Chomsky than has any other journalist. Enriched by their unique rapport, Imperial Ambitions explores topics Chomsky has never before discussed, among them the 2004 presidential campaign and election, the future of Social Security, and the increasing threat, including devastating weather patterns, of global warming. The result is an illuminating dialogue with one of the leading thinkers of our time—and a startling picture of the turbulent times in which we live. “
hawaiianguy on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 4:56 am
More about empire and US imperialism (in response to Bencard’s “…am pointing out a fact – that u.s. is not an imperialist nation, or an empire”).
American Empire Project
(www.americanempireproject.com)
“In an era of unprecedented military strength, leaders of the United States, the global hyperpower, have increasingly embraced imperial ambitions. How did this significant shift in purpose and policy come about? And what lies down the road?
“The American Empire Project is a response to the changes that have occurred in America’s strategic thinking as well as in its military and economic posture. Empire, long considered an offense against America’s democratic heritage, now threatens to define the relationship between our country and the rest of the world. The American Empire Project publishes books that question this development, examines the origins of US imperial aspirations, analyze their ramifications at home and abroad, and discuss alternatives to this dangerous trend.”
The project was conceived by Tom Engelhard and Steve Frazer, editors who are themselves historians and writers.
Bencard on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 5:09 am
hawaiianguy, since you persist, here’s another “rhetorical” question (cvj, you can help, if you want): assuming, following the nexon-wright’s or magdoff’s model, the u.s., great britain, france, china, japan, russia, canada, australia, new zealand, south africa, saudi arabia, dubai, kuwait, israel, italy, sweden, germany, netherlands, spain, switzerland, among other capitalist countries, are all “empires”, what areas of the world are within, and comprise, each of said empires? would it be possible for one nation to belong to several “empires” at the same time? also, would it be possible for one “imperialistic” nation to be a part of another “empire” or several empires for that matter?
to me, the words “empire” and “imperialism” in today’s world are mere ideological terms with derogatory connotations used by anti-democratic doctrinaires and their followers.
hawaiianguy on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 5:38 am
Well, then, I guess I’ve to answer you in kind. Aren’t we debating here US imperialism? Straying away from that topic by assuming, following, etc. talking of other countries… etc, are, well, refuge. And as you convenitently said, all “crap.”
I believe UPnS has made a point on that. If I take him correctly, one can’t assault authoritative knowledge by simply dismissing it with mere personal opinion.
That’s one of the main points I’ve been trying to raise since the beginning of this argument. But your responses are seemingly oblique, moving left or right, up and down, straying to other topics. I just ranged your “fact” (“USA is not imperial”) against what many in-the-know have painstaking studied as another “fact” (USA is imperial, pursuing imperial designs, intervening, dominating, etc.).
“to me, the words “empire†and “imperialism†in today’s world are mere ideological terms with derogatory connotations used by anti-democratic doctrinaires and their followers.”
So, terms are not facts? but “USA is not an empire today” is a fact?
Bencard on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 6:20 am
i think we are not on the same wave length, hawaiianguy. i’m not gonna waste my time any further with you on this one. carry on, my man.
UP n student on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 7:04 am
hawaiianguy: There is a blogsite that contains an interview with Noam Chomsky. On … staying out of the foreign affairs of other nations (unless … home is directly attacked, and must respond to defend it).
Noam Chomsky responds: “morally unacceptable”. Chomsky considers this as …. a form of ultranationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc. Apart from being next to meaningless, the idea is morally unacceptable, in my view.
Do google-search on “Noam Chomsky Ron Paul interview” for the links.
hawaiianguy on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 8:15 am
UPnS,
Thanks, got it.
The second paragraph actually refers to Chomsky’s take of Ron Paul, on the latter’s proposal (your first par.- “staying out of foreign affairs, but defending home if it must”).
Ron Paul, a republican “libertarian,” favors the use of force against terrorists in Afghanistan, but vetoes the Iraq war. Although some of his “extremist” views conform to Chomsky (e.g., on non-interventionism), Paul does not appeal to Comsky on a number of issues (health care, immigration). Paul’s libertarianism, opines Chomsky, is a “nightmare” – it implodes!
cvj on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 1:56 pm
UPn, the according to the Nexon-Wright model, the Philippines would not qualify as an Empire because the different nodes are formally tied together by an Institutional site i.e. the Constitution (nothwidthstanding, i think, present illegitimacy issues of certain officials). The presence of the institutional site would mean that the Philippines would fall under diagram ‘c’ (instead of ‘d’) in the accompanying figure.
UP n student on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 9:44 pm
Hawaiianguy: On “..one can’t assault authoritative knowledge by simply dismissing it with mere personal opinion.” Does this mean one should always agree to “authoritative knowledge”? Me, what I would tell a 20-year old is the wisdom of the youth-mantra to CHALLENGE AUTHORITY!
So if a twenty-year old is being told to believe in proposition-A (because of authorities X1, X2 and X3 plus books B1 and B2), but the 20-year old’s gut-reaction is to disagree, then for the 20-year old to hang onto their contra-position. Now propo-A may be “1.412309 is the square root of 2″, so finding TRUTH is easy. But it can be reasonable to disagree as it is to agree for other questions [examples (1) prostititution should be legal; (2) divorce should be legal; (3) Jesus Christ appeared to the Iglesia-ni-Kristo founder; (4) minimum-wage for Filipinos should be increased by P500 ]. Further research can uncover “authorities Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4, and Y5 and book W1 and W2″ to support the contra-position.
UP n student on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 11:00 pm
Bencard: There was a ceremony (June 6, 2004) where French Minister of Defense Michele Alliot-Marie presented the Legion of Honor, France’s nation’s highest award, upon 100 World War II American veterans who fought to liberate France from the Nazi stranglehold on Paris. “You were prepared to sacrifice everything, including your love for freedom,” Vinchon said. “Many of your comrades never saw France liberated. For sure, they’re very present in our minds today and forever.
“We French people owe you our liberty,” he told the aging heroes of the D- Day invasion 60 years ago. “And we will never forget it.”
———
The French people today, be they the older or the younger generation, retain a profound gratitude. They do remember.
When you are a tourist in France and asked where you’re from, you’ll do well to say “Je suis Americain.”
UP n student on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 11:30 pm
Do Filipinos (especially those born after 1960) feel gratitude regarding American role in World War 2?
cvj on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 11:35 pm
UPn Student, i was about to ask you whether Americans (including Fil-Ams) still feel gratitude towards the French for their help in their own revolution against the British.
cvj on Sat, 26th Jan 2008 11:44 pm
As for any feelings of gratitude towards Americans, you do know that we Filipinos went to war with them. They came to the Philippines as allies against Spain but in the end they took away our hard won victory.
How do you think the American revolutionaries would feel towards the French if the latter, after helping them defeat the British, proceeded to occupy the Colonies?
How do you think the French would feel if after kicking out the Germans, America declared France to be an American colony and proceeded to appoint a Governor General?
As far the American help in World War 2 is concerned, i won’t thank them for making us a target in the first place. Instead, they should thank us for our people’s sacrifices in Bataan which helped cover their retreat.
Bencard on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 12:57 am
cvj, that was a partisan (i should say ignorant) view of history if not outright revisionism. the americans came to the philippines to go after the spaniards as part of the spanish-american war that started in cuba. the fact that a group of filipinos in luzon was engaged in hostilities with the spanish colonial government was of no moment – the objective was to subdue the spaniards and bring spain to its knees. of course, the filipino’s effort made the americans’ job easier (“the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, etc.) but, in the context of the prevailing world order of the time, did not necessarily create a legally-binding obligation to grant the filipinos independence. u.s. stepped into the shoes of spain by virtue of the treaty of paris, the former becoming the colonial rulers of the philippines and the filipinos becoming subjects of the u.s.
when japan attacked pearl harbor and u.s. declared war against japan, there was created a state of war between the colonial philippines and japan. filipinos had to fight japan, not so much out of the goodness of their heart, but out of duty to their sovereign. they were fighting the enemy of their masters, so, technically, they were defending themselves. to expect “gratitude” is a bit out of place.
btw, considering the atrocities and barbarism committed by the japanese against filipino non-combatants in a magnitude never experienced under the american occupiers, i personally would thank the americans for liberating and granting us self-government, albeit “run like hell” by filipinos since then.
Bencard on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 1:08 am
upnstudent, thanks for the info. btw, some american friends of mine tell me they don’t enjoy going to france because of visible hostility whenever they identify their home origin. worst, they refuse to talk to them in english (whether or not they could). i, myself, have not experienced it owing perhaps to the color of my skin. but i could feel the negativity towards americans, even in montreal or quebec.
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 2:20 am
cvj: Didn’t you see the Nicholas Cage movie “National Treasures” which had “reminder” that there is a Statue of Liberty in Paris? But more seriously, in 2002 even during the differences between USA’s Bush and France’s Chirac, the US Congress granted Honorary Citizenship of the United States to Gilbert du Motier. Gilbert du Motier served in the American Revolutionary War both as a general and as a diplomat, serving entirely without pay in both roles. Gilbert’s role in American Independence was so highly appreciated that George Washington legally adopted Gilbert du Motier. It was in 1824 that du Motier was provided with his honorary United States citizenship.
cvj on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 3:02 am
UPn, i didn’t see National Treasure but i saw Mel Gibson’s ‘Patriot’ where the role of the French Navy in blockading the British is depicted in one of the final scenes. It is just right that you honor Motier since the French did turn out to be honorable allies. They did not negotiate with the defeated British to purchase the American Colonies.
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 3:14 am
cvj: I think we have circled back to:
….propo-A may be “1.412309 is the square root of 2″, so finding TRUTH is easy. But there are issues [examples (1) prostititution should be legal; (2) divorce should be legal; (3) Jesus Christ appeared to the Iglesia-ni-Kristo founder; (4) minimum-wage for Filipinos should be increased by P500 ] where person-A can say to-mah-to and person-B can say toh-may-to based on the books or persons they choose to quote.
———–
So I can chalk up one vote — you are one Filipino who feels NO GRATITUDE regarding American role in World War 2.
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 3:23 am
So far, fifty-fifty split — cvj for “NO GRATITUDE” and Bencard for “Yes Gratitude”.
cvj on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 4:09 am
UPn, but isn’t Bencard an American?
cvj on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 4:10 am
…also he was born before 1960.
Bencard on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 5:45 am
i’m also not a communist/leftist ideologue like nemenzo, constantino, or beltran – all no spring chicken themselves!
but i’m also filipino whose father and uncle died fighting side by side with, and qualified to express gratitude to, the americans.
hawaiianguy on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 8:49 am
UPnS: On “..one can’t assault authoritative knowledge by simply dismissing it with mere personal opinion.†Does this mean one should always agree to “authoritative knowledge�
Nope! “Always” agreeing may not even be appropriate, for it means almost blind obedience or wholesale acceptance. One can agree (disagree) but not for the sake of agreement (disagreement), and abandoning critical examination and search for more answers. That’s my point there.
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 8:53 am
With only two respondents, the survey results are statistically unreliable.
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 9:06 am
Survey results:
1. 50% of the respondents express GRATITUDE. The other 50% of the repondents express NO GRATITUDE. (The respondents are males, born in the Philippines; currently not residing in the Philippines at time of survey.)
2. Of the sub-population born before 1960, 100% express NO GRATITUDE.
1. Of the subpopulation born after 1960, 100% express GRATITUDE.
Bencard on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 10:06 am
upnstudent, did you get it upside down – shouldn’t it be: born before 1960 – 100% express gratitude; after 1960 -100% no gratitude? i think history (the real one) was removed from school curricula after 1960, and was replaced with leftist, anti-american propaganda.
btw, what’s your vote?
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 10:49 am
Errata Survey results:
1. 50% of the respondents express GRATITUDE. The other 50% of the repondents express NO GRATITUDE. (The respondents are males, born in the Philippines; currently not residing in the Philippines at time of survey.)
2. Of the sub-population born before 1960, 100% express GRATITUDE.
1. Of the subpopulation born after 1960, 100% express NO GRATITUDE.
Bencard: I vote
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 11:23 am
Bencard: I don’t think I’d want to have been forced to talk Nippongo by a group of taskmasters who believe that their race is not only superior but that their emperor is a direct descendant of God.
Bencard on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 11:33 am
neither do i, upn student.
cvj on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 1:16 pm
You are also a naturalized-American so in matters where the National Security interest of the two nations clash, dual allegiance influences your thinking. By contrast, i’m 100% Filipino.
UPn, you’re changing the subject again.
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 6:32 pm
Go do google for “del rosario ambassador heritage 2002 survey” and click on “A Progress Report on the Philippines”. In a March 2002 speech on Balikatan, Ambassador del Rosario states:
“…the Filipino nation is indeed grateful for the American support in our campaign against terror. A recent national survey showed that 84 percent of the 78 million Filipinos approve of the U.S. presence in the country.
….
The majority of Filipino Muslims, who comprise around 5 percent of our total population of 78 million, also approve of the activity.”
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 6:47 pm
South Korea and India statistics :
Do google for “Anne Applebaum 2005 who are the pro-americans” and click on the link for the Washington Post article. The author reports:
…In Britain, for example, 57.6 percent of those whose income are low believe that the United States has a mainly positive influence in the world, while only 37.1 percent of those whose income are high believe the same. Breaking down the answers by education, a similar pattern emerges. In South Korea, 69.2 percent of those with low education think the United States is a positive influence, while only 45.8 percent of those with a high education agree. That trend repeats itself not only across Europe but in many other developed countries. Those on their way up are pro-American. Those who have arrived, and perhaps feel threatened by those eager to do the same, are much less so.
In developing countries, by contrast, the pattern is sometimes reversed. It turns out, for example, that Indians are much more likely to be pro-American if they are not only younger but also wealthier and better educated, and no wonder. Because India has only recently been open to foreign investment, younger Indians have had the experience of working with Americans, whereas their parents have not. The poor in India are still untouched by globalization, but the middle and upper-middle classes — those who see for themselves a role in the English-speaking, American-dominated international economy — are aspirational, and therefore pro-American. Some 69 percent of Indians with high incomes think the United States is a mainly positive influence in the world, and only 29 percent of those with low incomes agree. This same phenomenon may also account for the persistence of a surprising degree of popular pro-Americanism in such places as Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil and the Philippines. They’re getting wealthier — like Americans — but aren’t yet so rich as to feel directly competitive.
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 7:01 pm
cvj: Don’t you have any survey results from, say University of the Philippines or LaSalle?
cvj on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 9:13 pm
UPn, i don’t know of any such survey done specifically for UP or La Salle.
UP n student on Sun, 27th Jan 2008 9:56 pm
Result: One out of 10 French would like to live in USA.
Question: If you had the chance, would you like to live in America?
Indonesia-Yes 23% Jordan–Yes 15%
Brazil—Yes 25% Canada–Yes 17%
France—Yes 12% UK—Yes 24%
Australia–Yes 25% Russia–Yes 10%
Israel—-25% Korea—Yes 24%
Source: BBC world survey
Bencard on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 12:20 am
upn student, i wouldn’t be too surprised if philippines registered 11 out of 10. i think the poor and middle class would want to move out lock, stock and barrel, whereas the wealthy and the political class would want to have a second home (just in case), while continuing to maintain their wealth and power locally.
Bencard on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 12:38 am
cvj, i have news for you. the national security interests of the philippines and u.s. are not likely to clash because the controlling majority of the filipinos are convinced that america, as a nation, is on the side of reason, justice and world peace, more than any other power in the world today.
cvj on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 12:46 am
Bencard, we may differ on the relative likelihood of such a clash, but what is clear to me is in the event they do clash, your rationalization of the USA’s takeover of the Philippines from the Spanish (at January 27th, 2008, at 12:57 am above) leaves no room for doubt on which side you’ll take.
Bencard on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 12:51 am
upnstudent, btw, too bad u.s. has adopted and still poised to adopt more stringent immigration laws that immigrating to the u.s. would be as difficult as getting through the eye of a needle. that’s why most filipinos have to bite the bullet and opt for such explosive places as middle east, africa, and virtual no-man’s land where they could find work.
Bencard on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 2:18 am
cvj, if you’re perceptive enough, my “rationalization” is based on pure historical fact, not ideology or political pretensions or theories. i didn’t make up u.s. right to take over from spain. it was ordained by existing order of the time, i.e., conquest resulting from a declared war, and bilateral treaty entered into between two sovereigns.
cvj on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 2:46 am
Bencard, you can use the cover of legalisms again, but your acceptance of the right of the United States to undermine Philippine sovereignty is not shared by Americans living at that time, among them Mark Twain:
His view is closer to the ideals that the United States fought for in its own war of independence.
Bencard on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 4:24 am
you have to go back to real history again, cvj, instead of quoting commentaries that suits your argument, without understanding the context in which they were made. as a free country, u.s. had opposing forces with divergent opinions, much like it is today vis a vis iraq. mark twain happened to be on the side of “anti-imperialist” which was opposed to colonization of the philippines and in favor of outright independence. mckinley adopted the policy of “benevolent assimilation” whose core idea was to prepare the filipinos for self-government and eventual independence in due time. that was exactly what happened (albeit interrupted by your idols in japan).
take a cue from upnstudent. stop using other people’s comments to validate your argument. use your own and if you don’t have any, just zip it up!
cvj on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 8:57 am
Bencard, benevolent assimilation is another weasel word. Do you know how many Filipinos suffered and died during the Philippine-American War? BTW, it is disingenuous to argue that just because i oppose the American invasion of the Philippines, i welcome Japan’s. Those are two different things.
Bencard on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 9:30 am
cvj, call it whatever non-”weasel” word you want but the facts are: u.s. ALLOWED filipinos to govern themselves shortly after subjugating them, write their own constitution, organize their own government through free election, then gave them full independence. even under their brief military rule after aguinaldo’s capture, u.s was never accused of cruelty, oppression or barbaric acts.
lives were lost from both sides because, as you called it, it was a WAR. your “opposition” to u.s. invasion of the then spanish colony called philippines is a little too late and useless, i think.
the way you have been singing the praises of japan? you could have fooled me!
UP n student on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 12:05 pm
Food for thought: With the Treaty of Paris, Spain renounced all claim to Cuba, ceded Guam and Puerto Rico and its dependent islets to the United States, and transferred sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States for $20,000,000. The citizens of Guam and Puerto Rico were granted American citizenship.
(1) Guam – After the war, the Guam Organic Act of 1950, which established Guam as an unincorporated organized territory of the United States, provided for the structure of the island’s civilian government, and granted the people United States citizenship.
(2) Puerto Rico – A law – Jones Act 1916 – made Puerto Rico a United States territory which is “organized but unincorporated”. It also granted U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans.
(3) Philippines — independence
UP n student on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 12:34 pm
During the discussions about going to war against Spain, many US lawmakers feared McKinley was simply priming the island for annexation. When the US Congress approved for the US to go to war with Spain, it included the Teller Amendment authored by US Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado. According to the clause, the U.S. could not annex Cuba but only leave “control of the island to its people.” After Spanish troops left Cuba in December 1898, the United States occupied Cuba until May 1902, and as promised in the Teller Amendment did not attempt to annex the island.
cvj on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 1:54 pm
Bencard, you cannot give the excuse people suffered or died because it was war if it was your side that instigated it. Whatever concessions the US gave, the Filipinos fought for. (Perhaps the Americans were also bothered by their guilty conscience.) As to ‘barbaric acts’, if you have waterboarding today, your forefathers had water cure a century ago.
Bencard on Mon, 28th Jan 2008 10:21 pm
cvj, i gave you the FACTS, chew on them.