The United Nations (UN) cited the Philippines as among the countries that registered incidents of police brutality during its corona virus lockdown.
In a news item on High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s statement issued Monday, April 27, the UN said, “From South Africa to the Philippines and from Hungary to Jordan, Ms. Bachelet’s Office, (OHCHR), high-lighted allegations of abuse that appeared to transgress key basic freedoms.”
“Of ‘many dozens’ of countries where new COVID-related abuses have emerged, the OHCHR official went on to describe how the Philippines’ “highly militarised response” to the pandemic had led to the arrest of 120,000 people for violating the curfew,” it added.
“Emergency powers should not be a weapon governments can wield to quash dissent, control the population, and even perpetuate their time in power,” Bachelet warned. “They should be used to cope effectively with the pandemic – nothing more, nothing less,” Bachelet said in her statement.
The High Commissioner’s statement came as a police officer assaulted a resident of a posh gated subdivision in Makati City while retired Philippine Army Corporal Winston Ragos, killed by the police in Quezon City last week, was being laid to rest at the nearby Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Since President Rodrigo Duterte imposed a Luzon-wide lockdown last March 15, thousands of so-called lockdown violators have been arrested with many ordered to stand under the heat of the sun as punishment.
Other forms of punishment include being hauled in pig pens, forced gardening, severe physical exercises, public-shaming and being locked up in already overcrowded jails, violating the government’s own physical-distancing orders.
The police and the government have defended the police actions, including those of local government units that have reportedly committed human rights violations in implementing the lockdown.
In one of his first press conferences after reinstatement as presidential spokesperson, Harry Roque said the alleged lockdown violators should be ashamed of themselves for making the Philippines as having the worst COVID record in Southeast Asia.
In her statement, Bachelet however said: “Shooting, detaining, or abusing someone for breaking a curfew because they are desperately searching for food is clearly an unacceptable and unlawful response. So is making it difficult or dangerous for a woman to get to hospital to give birth. In some cases, people are dying because of the inappropriate application of measures that have been supposedly put in place to save them.”
Respect for people’s rights covered their inherent freedoms “across the spectrum, including economic, social, and cultural rights, and civil and political rights”, Bachelet explained, adding that protecting these was “fundamental to the success of the public health response and recovery from the pandemic.” # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
In the face of the Filipino people’s growing anxieties about COVID-19 and life after the lockdown, president Duterte keeps heaping praises on China.
The Duterte government was reluctant at first to restrict travel and tourism from China and the operations of Chinese Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) because such moves to contain the virus would allegedly hurt China’s feelings. In the next presidential speeches, the government seemed to have flip-flopped from its cavalier attitude towards the pandemic, but it has not stopped uttering assurances to China.
That the Philippines remains to be by China’s side as China battles COVID-19. Or that China will help the Philippines overcome the health crisis and that president Duterte can directly send a personal note to Chinese president Xi Jin Ping. A you-and-me-against-the-world expression of devotion that is repeated ad nauseum.
In the most recent display, returning presidential spokesperson Harry Roque even got a little chummy – referring to the Philippines-China relationship as “BFF” (“best friends forever”), and that naturally China will prioritize the Philippines in giving COVID aid and funds.
It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth as the country continues to grapple with economic uncertainties and government’s lack of direction six weeks into the lockdown.
But is it even valid to cling on to China, or to any other country for that matter, for our survival as a nation post-COVID? Even without COVID-19, it is already insane as it is for the Philippine government to obsessively hold on to failed neoliberal policies and to rely on foreign capital for development. It would take some sobriety to tackle the question, but looking at the global economy and the seismic changes that have been happening is the sensible way to begin.
The world is coming down
China indeed remains the world’s leading merchandise trader and second to the United States (US) in trade of goods and services in the overall. But the slowdown in global trade that has been quite evident since 2016 on the back of a protracted global economic recession is weighing down on the world’s economies and leading traders. This has only been aggravated by the US-China trade war escalating at the end of 2018, which is hurting aggregate import demand, as well as the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic emanating from Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 whose impact on world trade is still unfolding.
World merchandise trade volume had a significantly lower growth of 2.9% in 2018 than the 4.6% growth registered in 2017 that raised false hopes of a return to better days. The slowdown in trade was accompanied by weaker output growth – the world gross domestic product (GDP) grew at exactly the same rate as trade (2.9%) compared to a minimally higher growth of 3.0% the year before.
The numbers turned uglier in 2019 – with the combined effects of the trade tensions in the first half clearly felt and the jitters in the second half over the possible lethal spread of COVID-19 across geographic and economic regions. The slowing world merchandise trade finally declined by 0.1% in volume in 2019. Likewise, in dollar values it fell by 3% to US$18.89 trillion, whereas it registered a 10% increase due to higher energy prices just the year before. The global GDP got even weaker with a preliminary growth figure of only 2.6% for 2019.
Projecting the full impact of COVID-19 on trade, the World Trade Organization (WTO) is looking at a further decline in 2020 by 12.9% in an optimistic scenario or by 31.9% in a pessimistic scenario. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects the global GDP growth in 2020 to fall to -3%, which is a major revision over a very short period. This crisis is going to be far worse than the global financial crisis, the IMF has said, and the worst since the Great Depression.
Palace photo.
China is symptomatic
The world is watching China with apprehension. The country has high demand for raw materials and intermediate goods and serves as a final-stage export platform for global production chains. But even before the number of COVID cases started climbing at the start of 2020, China’s GDP growth of 6.1% in 2019 was already slower than the 6.7% rate in 2018. It was in fact the country’s slowest growth in 29 years.
The National Bureau of Statistics of China reported a 6.8% year-on-year decline in the first quarter of 2020. It is the first contraction at least since 1992.
China experienced a deceleration in merchandise trade volume, from 8.0% in 2017 to its moderate growth of 5.2% in 2018. The value of exports slowed sharply at 0.5% growth in 2019 from a 10% rise in 2018, while the value of imports fell by 2.7%, the first decline in three years. In the first two months of 2020, exports plunged by 17.2% year-on-year, while imports shrank by 4%, amid factory shutdowns and travel restrictions to contain the virus.
China’s trade surplus and capital formation are its sources of economic strength to rise as an outward investor. In 2018, China ranked 2nd globally, next to Japan, in terms of foreign direct investment (FDI) outflows, and 3rd, next to the US and Netherlands in terms of FDI outward stock. But like global trade and the global economy, global FDI flows were in three consecutive years of decline, falling by another 13% in 2018. China’s FDI outflows slid further by 18%, the second year for China, based on UNCTAD data.
China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) reported a lower figure of 9.6% decline in 2018, pointing out that China’s FDI fall was still significantly lower than the world figure of 29% according to MOFCOM. It does not change the general picture, however, no matter how Beijing paints stability. Outward FDI is falling anywhere else in the world, and it is 40% smaller today than its post-global financial crisis peak in 2015.
The China Global Investment Tracker of the American Enterprise Institute, an alternative to MOFCOM data, which tracks Chinese investment and construction around the world with a threshold of US$100 million, is seeing a dramatic fall in China’s outbound FDI of about 40% for 2019 that will be similar to 2011, with Chinese investment returning to a domestic rather than global phenomenon.
The problem is China cannot simply work from home. It has been infected with the unbounded, reckless desire of expansionism – it has to continue going global.
Palace photo.
BFF?
The Philippines is not even among the top 15 trading partners of China. It is also not a significant destination of Chinese investment.
Hong Kong (PRC) receives about 60% (US$86.9 billion) of China’s net FDI, followed by the US (US$7.5 billion), Virgin Islands (US$7.1 billion), Singapore (US$6.4 billion), and Cayman Islands (US$5.5 billion). It is obvious how China uses Hong Kong as an intermediary to take advantage of Hong Kong’s liberalized agreements and competitive currency before investing somewhere else, or of “double dipping” wherein Chinese investors return to the mainland as “foreign investors” and take advantage of additional fiscal incentives.
It also appears that Chinese investors, like many global investors, have sought safe havens such as the Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands as times get rough. Removing these and Hong Kong for the meantime would show that the top 10 recipients of China FDI in 2018 were the US, Singapore, Australia, Indonesia, Canada, Germany, Vietnam, South Korea, United Kingdom, and Thailand. The Philippines does not figure anywhere in the line-up.
On the other hand, some 56 countries along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which the Philippines is part, captured 12.5% of China’s total outward FDI in 2018. BRI investment has been particularly pronounced in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Meanwhile in Southeast Asia where China’s state-owned enterprises have particular interest, Cambodia is the favorite.
Narrowing our map now to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Philippines captured 11% of China’s investment in the ASEAN in 2019, which is practically a fair share if China’s investment would be divided equally among the 10 member-countries.
In short, we may be among China’s friends, but we are not the best, and forever has not even started.
On the other hand, among the Philippines’ trading partners, China ranks 4th in terms of contribution to exports value, next only to US, Japan and Hong Kong (which is a trading port of many other countries apart from the mainland). Indeed, China is the country’s biggest supplier of imported goods, accounting for about one-fourth of Philippine import value, which shows a one-sided trading relationship. Exports to China in the first month of 2020 had a tepid 7% increase, while imports from China continued to increase at double-digit rate (16.4%), a trend that started in 2016.
Singapore, US, Japan and South Korea have remained the country’s top investors, with their combined net FDI of US$963.49 million in 2019. Inflow from China was US$106.16 million. Even if we add US$28.69 million (assuming 60% of what is coming from Hong Kong, since not all Hong Kong FDI is from the mainland), China would still come fifth. Surely there has been a dramatic rise in Chinese investments of 1,751%, from only about US$10.77 million in 2016 to its peak of US$199.38 billion in 2018, but net FDI from China has started to taper off and declined by 47% in 2019.
There has also been a phenomenal increase in Chinese official development assistance (ODA) loans from US$1.5 million in 2016 to US$364.9 million as of 2018. But Chinese ODA still pales in comparison with Japan ODA of US$6.2 billion or even USAID of US886.4 million.
In other words, even in un-reciprocated relationships that our liberalized and subservient economy has become so dependent on, China is not even the best master.
What then is the fixation on China all about?
There can only be one reason for China – it is unstoppable. Since building its internal strength and setting its sights on the endless possibilities in the global economy, China itself has been fixated on itself.
Its expansionist momentum has surged in the last two decades, perfecting its “go global” strategy and embarking on its biggest and most ambitious ever BRI as well as Made in China 2025, moving away from being the world’s factory to producing high-technology products and services. Beijing has been aggressive and at the same time cautious in its policy approach, which gives it confidence that it won’t crash as hard as its economic rivals.
It may be recalled that China held up well during the 2008 global financial crisis, compared to the slow recovery of the European Union and the US. Although today is different – China being the epicenter of the pandemic – China does its best to sustain the image of stability.
International observers have also pointed out that Westerners are finding it much more difficult than Asians to overcome the hardships arising from the health crisis. The observation could just be China’s own messaging echoed through its own propaganda machinery. In any case, China is sustaining the narrative.
This narrative has been copy-pasted in the language of lauding China’s ability to deal with the crisis, official restraint on China bashing and discrimination especially on social media (even setting up laws to penalize “fake news and rumors” about China and COVID-19), and loyalty to China to the point of endangering lives, as The Diplomat has observed across Southeast Asian governments. The Duterte administration has submitted to this propaganda line and has been most explicit about the fear of retaliation from China as expressed by none other than the health secretary.
For the Duterte government, there are two apparent reasons. One could simply be self-serving – that the Duterte administration, the most traveled to China, be able to maintain the business deals and transactions with Chinese firms. No matter how loose and small, these are big enough gains for its entourage of businessmen and cronies.
But the second reason is more on economic survival. The Duterte administration has yet to really jump-start its Build, Build, Build (BBB) infrastructure program and to capture the promise of China’s overflowing construction capital. Of the 100 flagship projects worth Php4.3 trillion, China accounts for only 17% of the number of projects and 16.3% of the cost, while only one of these projects is in the implementation stage. The economic managers are torn between revamping BBB and reallocating its budget for COVID-19 and leaving BBB unscathed. The fact remains, BBB is untenable now more than ever.
On endlessly praising China, the Duterte administration may not have really internalized China’s rhetoric, but it is clearly desperate. The Philippine economy is on its fourth year of slowdown, and the economic managers are still relying on foreign capital for pump-priming instead of building our industrial and agricultural core. The Philippine economy is down with the lingering illness of backwardness that has only been aggravated by neoliberal policies, yet government cannot think of a cure other than to be on its knees. #
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/duts-2.jpg640960Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2020-04-28 09:02:572020-04-28 09:02:58Why do we keep on begging China for friendship?
If I could sum up college in one word, it would be “liberating.” I savored every single new sensation that came with those years, the better ones being the taste of independence from living miles away from family for the first time; the drunken abandon of sprint racing in the wee hours in the streets of Krus na Ligas after ten bottles of beer or so; the touch and tang of another person’s skin in dark, cramped boarding rooms with only an electric fan to cool our bodies down; the sun’s prickling heat on the back of my neck as I marched countless steps, always catching my breath, in between classes and protest rallies. The slow but sure loss of innocence. As in any coming-of-age story, my college years were far from perfect. I had more than my fair share of bullies (although not as bad as in elementary or high school), terror professors, embarrassment that rendered me useless for days, angst, passion, heartache and a rage against the establishment that refuses to die to this day.
You know when you listen to a song and it triggers all sorts of feelings because you’ve somehow subconsciously attached certain memories to it? Well, I have a whole soundtrack of songs in my head, each associated with a secret. If college was a playlist, personally, it mostly consisted of tracks by singer-songwriter and pianist, Fiona Apple, from her 1996 alternative pop/rock debut album to the bluesy bizarreness that was The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (she likes poems for album titles) in 2012. Apple was, to me, kind of like an imaginary friend to a five-year-old and she’d let me read her diaries through her records. I was cutting myself since 14 so naturally, knowing that Apple also suffered from sexual trauma, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and anxiety since childhood comforted me in my own private acts of self-hatred. She was indeed my “patron saint of mental illness,” as she herself would describe the image that the unforgiving male-dominated press often portrayed her to be. As my source of solace and emotional catharsis, Apple made me feel that I was not alone, that I was not as weird.
Eight years later, listening to her fifth album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters (released on April 17) is like catching up with an old friend, leaving me in complete awe of her evolution from once being a “Sullen Girl” (“And he took my pearl / And he left an empty shell of me / And there’s too much going on / But it’s calm under the waves / In the blue of my oblivion”) to becoming this full-grown, less self-deprecating woman because she’s now more cognizant of other women’s struggles. An artist who is still very much fragile, yes, but no longer afraid of being unapologetically angry. And it’s funny how writing this has also forced me to remember the girl I cannot believe I was at one point in my life. I haven’t harmed myself for a decade now. I mean, who was she? Why did she hurt so much? I almost forgot. How odd.
Apple’s latest 13-track baby which was four years in the making and recorded exclusively in her Venice Beach home is, pure and simple, a collection of protest songs anthemic of the #MeToo era. An assembling of women—fellow used and abused women or the women we used to be—and other casualties of late capitalist patriarchy to condemn our bullies and oppressors for the damages they’ve caused us, supposedly to empower us enough to move forward, conquering the victims within. The record’s title was derived from a scene in the BBC crime drama, The Fall, in which Gillian Anderson’s character said “fetch the bolt cutters” to the police in order to release a girl who was tortured.
Remarkably, Apple and her collaborators were able to produce this furious masterpiece without falling into the trap of sounding like your typical angry girl band, not that that’s bad, of course, but it has been done, not to mention that it isn’t as revolutionary for a comeback from a 90’s icon. Fetch’s overall avant-garde sound is distinctively percussion-heavy, which is a clear departure from her earlier more piano-driven albums. Bells, drums, walls, floors, metal squares, wooden blocks, oil cans filled with dirt, barking dogs and even a box housing the bones of Apple’s dead American Pit Bull Terrier were said to be utilized without any digital filters to create the organic, chaotic yet cohesive sound peculiar to the record. A most delicious cacophony! Apple has never been one to shy away from experimenting with her music and Fetch is arguably her wildest and most unorthodox yet.
Iterative lyrics abound, almost like chants akin to that of “Tiny Hands” (“We don’t want your tiny hands / Anywhere near our underpants”), the song she wrote for the 2017 Women’s March as commentary on the audio recording of Donald Trump bragging about “grabbing women by the pussy.” Personally, I’ve always found Apple’s songs a tad bit difficult to sing because of her expert pitch and tone manipulation, characteristic of jazz vocalists, and these tracks are no different. They compel me to first listen closely to Apple’s unending poetic wit and candor so that at the end of the day, I find myself unable to stop singing, “Evil is a relay sport when the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch” or “Shameika said I had potential” over and over again as in the songs themselves. Every line packs a punch, both in poetry and musicality, further solidifying her place amongst rare lyrical geniuses—a place she’s secured for herself since she was 17 in my humble opinion—in these times when millennials are drawn to easier hugot lines or swearing (Apple does both in Fetch, albeit artfully and intelligently). The DIY harmonies and unconventional song arrangements which lean more towards spoken word, chanting and rapping than solely crooning verses only accentuate Apple’s haunting dark vocals which can effortlessly vacillate from being soft and tender at one moment to raspy, harsh and frantic the next. Think Rachel Yamagata on crack or a more sober Yoko Ono circa Plastic Ono Band days.
Fiona Apple
The album’s title track, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is largely in spoken word and seems to be Apple’s rumination on how critics have ostracized her since her speech upon accepting the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist in 1997 in which she said that “the world is bullshit,” encouraging fans to be true to themselves and to not model their lives after what their idols considered cool and fashionable. Her equally infamous onstage meltdown due to sound and technical problems in 2000 pretty much cemented her reputation in the media as this “crazy lady” whose private life almost always took the spotlight over her art. “And you’ve got them all convinced / That you’re the means and the end / All the VIPs and PYTs and wannabes / Afraid of not being your friend… They stole my fun,” goes her Dylanesque drawl before breaking into a chorus with a meowing Cara Delevingne. It’s a pretty simple song about finding one’s bearings and breaking free from your past or other people’s misguided perceptions of you. It ends with dogs barking to a self-empowered lyric and an homage to Kate Bush (“I need to run up that hill / I will, I will, I will”), one of Apple’s biggest and most evident musical influences, I believe. Along the same narrative of being bullied and facing one’s insecurities is the preceding track, “Shameika,” which Apple says was inspired by a significant moment in middle school. She wanted to fit in with the cool girls but her OCD didn’t help and made her feel more like an outcast (“I used to march down the windy, windy sidewalks / Slapping my leg with a riding crop / Thinking it made me come off so tough / I didn’t smile, because a smile always seemed rehearsed / I wasn’t afraid of the bullies, and that just made the bullies worse”). One day, a tough, presumably black girl in school approached her and told her to stop trying to fit in because she, in fact, “had potential.” The song has a quirky, catchy rhythm that complements this anecdote from adolescence perfectly. As much as “Shameika” relates Apple’s life-long struggle with self-esteem, more importantly, it embarks on exploring inter-female relationships, which is a recurring theme in the album.
Three other songs, in particular, touch upon said relationships in varying tones of seriousness and feeling set against very different and yet interconnected contexts. “Newspaper” is the epitome of empathy between women, specifically of one towards the woman her ex is currently involved with. The lines, “I wonder what lies he’s telling you about me / To make sure that we’ll never be friends / And it’s a shame because you and I didn’t get a witness… We were cursed the moment that he kissed us / From then on, it was his big show” hint at the man’s egoism and possible abuse of the women in such a relatable way that it inspires as well as aspires to change the tired virgin-whore dichotomy in mainstream music (Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me,” Paramour’s “Misery Business,” Alanis Morisette’s “You Oughta Know,” to name a few), cinema, television and other cultural media. Although lighter and funnier, similar vibes run through “Ladies” (“There’s a dress in the closet / Don’t get rid of it, you’d look good in it / I didn’t fit in it, it was never mine / It belonged to the ex-wife of another ex of mine”). The third track about female connections, though, is anything but light despite its childlike melody accompanied by a chorus of women singing along with Apple. Aptly titled “For Her,” she says that this was written for a woman who was raped by a big shot in the film industry. The bridge of the song in which Apple shrieks, “Good mornin’! Good mornin’ / You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in” is easily one of the most powerful lyrics I have ever had to privilege to come across.
Apple’s undeniable sense of humor also shines in “Rack of His” (most likely punning a woman’s rack, i.e. breasts), a track that sounds a lot like her 2005 record, Extraordinary Machine, if I may add. Here, she grumbles about men objectifying and taking advantage of women in love with them for their own gratification, about internalized misogyny when a woman feels like she needs a man’s approval and how she arrives at an epiphany by turning her scars into art (“And I’ve been used so many times / I’ve learned to use myself in kind / I try to drum, I try to write… ‘Cause I know how to spend my time”). She radiates the same energy in “Drumset,” which is essentially a song about rejection.
My personal favorites, however, are the angriest, those that flash the most defiant middle finger to the ruling class and their apologists. “Under the Table” begins with an R&B tune (“I would beg to disagree / But begging disagrees with me”), reminiscent of Tidal’s, before Apple goes on a confrontational dialogue with somebody who stifles her from calling out another person “when they say something that starts to make her simmer.” The song manages to balance angst, contempt and sarcasm (“Kick me under the table all you want / I won’t shut up…I’d like to buy you a pair of pillow-soled hiking boots / To help you with your climb / Or rather, to help the bodies that you step over along your route / So they won’t hurt like mine”) that could only have been mastered by a child from Generation X. The next track, “Relay,” is inspired by the 2018 Kavanaugh hearings as well as Apple’s personal journey towards forgiveness and justice since being raped by a stranger when she was 12. She reflects on the cycle of elitist bigotry and violence (“And I see that you keep trying to bait me / And I’d love to get up in your face / But I know if I hate you for hating me / I will have entered the endless race”) and how it should end by exposing the guilty and holding them accountable. Its martial verses, “I resent you for being raised right / I resent you for being tall / I resent you for never getting any opposition at all / I resent you for having each other / I resent you for being so sure / I resent you presenting your life like a fucking propaganda brochure” are proof of Apple’s lyrical brilliance at its most playful and progressive.
Overall, the fiery spirit of the album is offset by Apple’s familiar emotional vulnerability in “Cosmonauts” and “Heavy Balloon.” The former weighs in on the jadedness of an idealistic long-term monogamous relationship while the latter, I feel, is what depression and anxiety would sound like if it were a song, especially around the part where Apple sings huskily, “I spread like strawberries / I climb like peas and beans / I’ve been sucking it in so long / That I’m busting at the seams.” It’s the kind of narrative on mental health that’s as haunting as it is comforting and empowering in its collective bid for understanding—an unspoken cry for help, if you will. What makes the record even more special is the contextual chronology that frames the tracks. It begins with “I Want You to Love Me,” whose title practically sums up its intention, seducing listeners with Apple’s recognizable fingers on the piano. “I’ve waited many years / Every print I left upon the track / Has led me here… And while I’m in this body / I want somebody to want” then escalates into a frenzy with her crooning hoarsely and tediously over the piano’s tumultuous racket, conveying both ecstasy and pain as if sharing a synchronized orgasm with the instrument. The song summons a dreamy state as if running through the woods in one of David Hamilton’s photographs before it strikes you in the head with the sounds of discord and rage in the 12 songs thereafter. What a strong first track! The final one, “On I Go,” on the other hand, has been called “weak” by some critics—male ones, not surprisingly—but I don’t find it to be the case. Who says that a finale needs fireworks? Who says that songs should follow strict pop structures? The fact that Apple ends with a track in which she chuckles while messing up the lyrics, and not fixing it, reinforces the album’s message of fury and nonchalant thoughtfulness. Apple recites, “On I go, not toward or away / Up until now it was day, next day / Up until now in a rush to prove / But now I only move to move” almost like a mantra as her voice calms and disappears. She clearly does not give a fuck.
The entire discourse in Fetch makes it undeniably one of the most authentic and impactful masterpieces to ever reach a global listenership in a long time. There are a few throwback moments evocative of Apple’s past records, but Fetch possesses a sound entirely its own. It communicates raw, honest emotions that are not dressed in idealism or romance if only to please mainstream sensibilities. There’s anger, there’s madness, there’s joy even. And buried underneath is also a sense of contentment—the acceptance that the world is, indeed, pure bullshit, but that you just have to “go with yourself,” echoing the exact same piece of advice that she once gave at 17, stammering, holding an MTV Moonman trophy, her voice shaking, her eyes wider than they are now. She was right all along.
In a pandemic-afflicted world where fascism and misogyny still reign supreme, markedly so in the Philippines and other Third World countries, this record’s release was well-timed. In our isolation, without the hubbub of road traffic, the noise of noontime shows before live audiences and the commotion of everyday life in general, there is a heightening of the senses. We are forced to see what were often overlooked, to hear the sounds and voices that matter, to discern that the “normal” we were so accustomed to was everything that was wrong in the first place. Through Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Apple only gives us a bite of her unfiltered consciousness. As if heeding my prayers, she has blessed me with another cathartic playlist that corresponds to my current mood: this renewed restlessness, this insatiable, rebellious craving to be free. “Fetch the bolt cutters. We’ve been in here too long,” indeed. #
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/find.jpg340650Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2020-04-27 09:27:342020-04-27 09:27:36The Emancipation of Fiona Apple and Me
Students of a Central Luzon university are protesting plans to increase their tuition and other fees amid the coronavirus pandemic as well as the holding of online classes for the coming semester.
Students of the Holy Angel University (HAU) in Angeles City, Pampanga province launched a Twitter protest which became a trending topic nationwide “hashtag” #HAUyokoNa.
Their campaign reached more 12.3 thousand tweets from 6:00 PM of April 24 12 noon of April 25.
According to sources, the HAU management proposed last January an average of 6% increase on tuition and 22% on miscellaneous fees.
This led the University Student Council (USC) to launch a petition last February 26 against the fee increases.
Aside from the free increases, the students also protested the university’s decision to begin enrollment for the second semester of the current academic year on May 18 and start the academic year on July 15.
The students are also against the proposal by the university management to conduct online classes while the pandemic rages.
According to Anakbayan-HAU, the university’s decision ‘considering the situation we are all in at this moment, the said schedule ignores underprivileged students who may not be able to attend online classes which the school proposes.
“This will also leave the students with insufficient time to recover from their financial burdens caused by the pandemic,” the group said in a statement.
The students pointed out that many families are hard up during the government-imposed lockdown with the “No Work, No Pay” situation.
“This fee increase is another hindrance towards the goal of making education an accessible right for the youth,” Anakbayan said. #
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/hau-1.jpg488650Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2020-04-27 08:51:232020-04-27 08:56:49Students up in arms over tuition increase plan amid pandemic
Families of political prisoners expressed fear their loved ones may contract the coronavirus after different jails across the country reported detainees getting sick from the disease.
The Bureau of Corrections reported an additional 27 new cases of Covid-19 from the Correctional Institute for Women bringing the total case to 50. A 56 year-old inmate from Medium Security Compound of New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa died last April 23 at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine.
Cebu City jails recorded the highest number of cases at 207 while the Quezon City Jail reported nine positive cases last week.
According to Kapatid, the group of families and friends of political prisoners, no lockdown or even quarantine measures at this stage can contain the outbreak of the disease in the country’s prisons the Philippine Red Cross said is 500% over-congested.
The group earlier warned the government that jails are safe against the virus and urged immediate and extensive testing of both inmates and personnel to stop contagion in prisons/
Kapatid, counsel slams OSG comment
Meanwhile, Kapatid lamented the Office of the Solicitor General’s (OSG) comment to dismiss the petition filed by the group last April 8 asking the Supreme Court (SC) to free low-risk offenders from prisons on humanitarian grounds, including old and the sick prisoners.
In a statement, Kapatid said that OSG’s summary dismissal of their petition is “the height of callousness and disregard for human life.”
The group added that the OSG’s reply to the SC’s order to comment on the petition became a platform for attacking the Left instead of addressing the plight of the elderly and the sick, including a 21-year old prisoner afflicted with leprosy and a six-month pregnant woman.
This petition, while initiated by families of political prisoners, is meant to help all prisoners at risk from the COVID-19 pandemic they say is now invading prison facilities.
Atty. Maria Kristina Conti of the Public Interest Law Center told Kodao that the OSG’s comment to the petition maligned and red-tagged political prisoners.
Conti added that it’s because the OSG cannot deny that the petitioners are indeed vulnerable to the deadly virus and cannot promise detainees are safe, it resorted to attacking character and motives.
“Legally, the OSG failed to refute the application for equity relief in these extraordinary times. We hope that the Supreme Court sees through the government’s rhetoric and gas-lighting tactics, The virus is the enemy, not the people,” Conti said.
The PILC and the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers are set to file a reply on Monday, April 27, to the comment filed by the OSG. #
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TORONTO, Canada–Several people were reported to have died from coronavirus in Canada, including Filipinos.
With the Canada death toll at 1,580 deaths, according to Public Health Agency of Canada as of April 19, the Filipino community is hard hit.
Many Filipino-Canadians are working in the health sector in roles including nurses, care aide, facility maintenance and as “front-line essential” workers during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Marie Christine Bacalocos Mandegarian, 54, succumbed to the virus on April 15 less than 24 hours after testing positive.
“I am a little bit scared, but duty calls,” she wrote on her Facebook account last month. “I can’t stay home, I’m a healthcare worker” she said. For 31 years, Mandegarian, worked as a personal support worker at Altamont Care Community, a long-term care center in Scarborough, Toronto.
Mandegarian was the first health worker in Toronto and second in the province of Ontario to die of COVID-19.
On April 9, Brampton Civic Hospital mourned the loss of their environmental services associate Ronald V. David. Uncle Ronald, 58, as he was fondly called, is believed to be the first known Ontario health-care worker to die after getting sick with the highly contagious respiratory disease.
Health-care staff make up about 11% of all reported COVID-19 cases in the province but make up only about three% of Ontario’s population.
The province is also reporting outbreaks of COVID-19 at long-term care homes where nearly half of total coronavirus-linked deaths in Canada happen according to chief public health officer Teresa Tam.
“We know that close to half of the deaths that we’re tracking are linked to long-term care facilities, but that ratio is actually different in different provinces,” Tam told reporters during her daily ministerial update on the virus.
Other Filipino victims of COVID-19 in Canada include Victoria Salvan, 64, who as a patient attendant. She immigrated to Canada from the Phillipines, and worked with senior citizens for 25 years.
Salvan, or Vicky to her colleagues, passed away April 17 just weeks away from retirement. She is survived by her husband and two children. One of Salvan’s sons said that she cared deeply for the elders in her care working overtime up to her final days of work at the understaffed Grace Dart Extended Care Centre, where nearly a quarter of the residents have been infected with COVID-19, according to public health records.
Warlito Valdez, 47, had been a residential worker at Pendleton House run by the Richmond Society for Community Living helping people with intellectual and physical disabilities.
Valdez died April 5 despite being in self-isolation following a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. According to a GoFundMe page that Valdez’s co-workers started, he was a “tireless provider” who worked multiple jobs. His wife Flozier Tabangin, who also works as a frontline care worker, described her husband as “a hero”
According to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), the total number of COVID-19 cases among overseas Filipinos across 42 countries rose to 990. The number of overseas Filipino fatalities is now at 143 as of its April 20 report.
“The DFA remains committed to ensure the welfare of our people and stands ready to provide assistance to the COVID-19 positive Filipino nationals as needed,” it said.
A number of others continue to fight for their livelihood where Covid-19 is believed to have been on an outbreak making a hard job perilous.
In the province of Manitoba, the first presumptive case of COVID-19 is a woman in her 40s from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. The province says she was exposed to the virus through travel to the Philippines.
More than 850,00 people of Filipino descent are living in Canada, with settlement primarily in major urban areas, according to the 2016 census.
The country’s supply of health care workers is impacted by government’s reliance on immigration making the Filipino community one of the major sources of Canada’s health care providers who may be registered nurses or unregulated workers, such as nursing aides and orderlies.
Some Filipino workers, however, have raised concerns of being discriminated against and unprotected from the virus due to a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE).
In the province of Alberta, Cargill Meat Processing Plant is vital to a bourgeoning immigrant community of Filipinos. Workers there tell Canadian media of poor working conditions and fears of viral transmission in an overcrowded “elbow-to-elbow” facility.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups, including Tulayan Filipino Diaspora Society, Sulong UBC, and Migrante BC, have penned an open letter calling on all levels of the Canadian government for “increased and timely resources” to be available for Filipino workers.
“The general feedback we are getting from our community is the lack of accessible information regarding the pandemic in Filipino languages. While we are doing our best as a community to translate and offer support to each other at this difficult time, we would like to ensure that Filipinos in Canada are getting direct and accurate information from the proper health authorities,” the groups said in the letter. #
A group of distressed female overseas Filipino workers in Damman, Saudi Arabia is seeking the Philippine government’s help to be repatriated after their employer stopped paying for their salaries since the corona virus lockdown has been imposed in the Kingdom last March 17.
In a video sent to Kodao by a Migrante International member, the workers also asked for food and other relief items as they grapple with what they described as “very difficult conditions.”
In an online interview, the group said that since they have posted their first video online, their employer got angry with them and even tried to block donations of personal hygiene items sent them by concerned individuals.
The OFWs said they have been kept within the confines of their dormitory since the lockdown started.
The group said they were recruited in the Philippines by Mission Way Manpower Agency that said they would be working for the Al-Ajeer Recruitment Company that in turn deployed them to Noura Foundation for house-school-hospital cleaning duties.
They added that they also worry for their families in the Philippines who rely on their remittances especially during the coronavirus pandemic.
The distressed OFWs call on the Philippine Embassy in Saudi Arabia, the Department of Labor and Employment, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and the Philippine Overseas Labor Office for help.
“We are no longer safe here,” the group told Kodao. # (Report by Raymund B. Villanueva/Video subtitling by Jek Alcaraz/Video by the OFWs)
INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS WHO WISH TO HELP AND CONTACT THE GROUP MAY CALL ANNALYN LABANON (0542588065) OR MARY JANE MARFIL (0591511439)
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The Duterte administration can end the lockdown sooner and help every Filipino in need. It can raise the resources needed for this if it lets go of its infrastructure fantasies, prioritizes life over debt, and is bolder in tapping the accumulated wealth of elites and large corporations. Not doing any of these means making the people bear the disproportionate burden of dealing with the pandemic.
Funds are available
In their most recent taped address last Thursday, April 24, the president and other members of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Emerging Infectious Diseases took turns lamenting how little funds there are for responding to the COVID-19 crisis. No one doubts that huge resources are needed. However, using this an as excuse for failing to implement the necessary public health measures against the pandemic and for failing to help millions of poor Filipino families not just during the lockdown but amid the country’s worst economic crisis in decades is completely unacceptable.
Pres. Rodrigo Duterte declared: “Our country comes first.” For this to mean anything, the Duterte administration needs to take bolder measures to raise funds for dealing with the pandemic including letting go of its sacred cows.
Realigning the national government budget away from items that have fallen in priority is a start. However, the finance secretary’s latest declaration that the administration is preserving funds for its Build, Build, Build (BBB) program is particularly out-of-date. These BBB projects were conceptualized and justified at a time of giddy optimism about the economy. The pandemic, global recession, and domestic economic collapse mean that many projects in the Php989 billion public infrastructure program for 2020 are no longer viable and of much less priority than urgent health measures, emergency relief, and social protection.
The finance department’s earlier position that debt servicing will continue unhindered is also out-of-date. The national government is paying Php1.03 trillion to service debt in 2020 – Php451 billion for interest payments and Php582.1 billion for principal amortization. The current crisis however means that millions of Filipino families are at risk not just from the coronavirus but from disrupted livelihoods and loss of incomes. COVID-19 response spending should be prioritized over debt payments, starting with at least moratoriums on US$5.2 billion in debt service to so-called development agencies and supposedly friendly governments. The government’s human rights obligations to its people far outweigh debt service obligations.
The president said that the government will do everything necessary to raise money to fight COVID-19. This should include tapping the huge concentration of wealth and income in the country’s richest families and largest corporations. The 50 richest Filipinos had a combined wealth of Php4,061 billion in 2019, according to Forbes. The 50 largest conglomerates meanwhile had combined profits of Php856.4 billion in 2018 alone.
Much of this wealth and income is more socially useful today spent on COVID-19 response rather than accumulated as personal wealth or used for self-interested business purposes. The Duterte administration can take the bold step of issuing COVID-19 emergency bonds on solidarity terms targeted at these elites. There is also the daring step of reforming the tax system to become progressive with higher personal income and wealth taxes on the richest Filipinos and higher corporate income taxes on the largest corporations. The Duterte administration cannot say it has no money if it is not doing anything to mobilize concentrated income and wealth for socially urgent purposes.
Photo by Joseph Cuevas/Kodao
Lockdown can be ended
Millions of Filipinos are looking forward to the end of the lockdown, especially the vulnerable majority who have gone hungry and desperate over weeks of sparse or non-existent emergency relief from the Duterte administration. However, despite Malacanang’s posturing and government agencies’ reports, the fact remains that the national government is still being slow in putting the necessary health measures in place for the lockdown to be lifted safely.
The government needs to accelerate the pace of health measures for battling the coronavirus. At the same time, it needs to immediately arrest the enormous backlog in socioeconomic relief and assistance for millions of poor and vulnerable households affected by the lockdown.
The coronavirus continues to take its toll. As of April 23, the total number of reported cases has reached 6,981, with 462 fatalities. These include 1,062 infected health care workers with 26 fatalities.
Health experts such as from the UP COVID-19 Pandemic Response Team point out that the epicenter of the virus is the National Capital Region (NCR) and surrounding regions but also that it continues to spread elsewhere and still needs to be contained. The Department of Health (DOH) concedes that it is too early to say if the curve of COVID-19 transmission has begun to flatten.
While experts attest to the contribution of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in controlling the spread of the coronavirus, it has heavily impacted on the poorest sections of the population, especially in Luzon, and the economy as a whole. The ECQ is disrupting 73% of the economy, corresponding to Luzon’s share in the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019. IBON estimates that 14.5 million workers and informal earners have been dislocated. The 7.5 million lowest-income families in Luzon are most in danger of deeper poverty and hunger since they have little savings or means to absorb the shock of disrupted livelihoods.
The lockdown need not have been expanded or dragged on for so long had the government been more efficient and immediately started putting the necessary health measures in place. Yet three months since the first case of COVID-19 and almost six weeks into the lockdown, the government is still ill-equipped to contain the pandemic.
Despite the arrival of donations and test kits, only 55,465 individuals have been tested as of April 22. This is too few, according to health advocates, compared to the potential community and hospital transmission of the virus. There are still only 17 COVID-19 testing centers out of 78 that the DOH plans to install nationwide. Only 7,000 have been contact-traced, which is low compared to the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Quarantine, isolation, and treatment facilities remain insufficient: the health system is not yet ready for when infections and hospitalizations peak in the coming months. Frontline health workers still lack protective equipment. This has already resulted in the Philippines having among the worst infection rate and highest number of COVID-19-infected health workers in the world.
Photo by Joseph Cuevas/Kodao
Unnecessary suffering
At the same time, the government is failing to ensure that all poor and vulnerable families affected by the lockdown get adequate emergency relief. Their rights to food, health, water and sanitation, and social protection are grossly unmet and even violated.
Over 13 million of government’s targeted 18 million low income families have not received emergency subsidies and are going hungry. Only 264,154 formal workers out of the IBON-estimated 10.7 million workers in the country have reportedly received assistance, and just 235,949 informal earners out of 5.2 million nationwide. Only 353,037 of 9.7 million farmers, farmworkers, and fisherfolk are reported to have received emergency subsidies.
The government claims to have released Php205 billion for emergency assistance. However, it is unconscionable for the government to have created so many bureaucratic barriers before this much-needed aid reaches the poor. These should be immediately removed.
The ECQ will be extended until May 15 in selected high-risk areas including the NCR, Calabarzon, Central Luzon, Benguet, Pangasinan, Albay, Catanduanes, Mindoro Island, Antique, Ilo-ilo Cebu, Davao Del Norte, and Davao City. Other parts of the country considered “low-risk” or “moderate-risk”, meanwhile, have been put under a “general community quarantine”, where aside from ECQ measures, “non-leisure stores” can partially open, higher education can finish the academic year, some construction projects may resume, and public transportation may operate on reduced capacity.
Affected families need expedient emergency relief in the period to come on top of what is due them for the past six weeks.
Making the most-affected families wait a day longer for aid that should have started coming many weeks ago nullifies government’s facade of being resource-capable with supposedly Php1.49 trillion towards its 4-pillar socioeconomic strategy against COVID-19. This amount gives the impression of huge spending but is really bloated by items that should not be counted as a ‘budget’ for the response.
In truth, the government plans to spend just Php366.9 billion with another Php133.7 billion for loan programs and credit guarantees. There is just Php50.7 billion for health response – it remains to be seen if this is enough to address the worst public health crisis in the country’s history.
The balance of Php316.2 billion is for social assistance. Yet this barely covers the Php297.1 billion in emergency socioeconomic relief that IBON estimates is needed for every month of the lockdown, which should include: emergency relief packages for the poorest 5 million families (Php15 billion); unconditional cash transfers for the poorest 10 million families (Php100 billion); wage subsidies for 10.7 million workers in formal establishments (Php53.5 billion); financial assistance for 5.2 million informal workers (Php26 billion) and 9.7 million farmers and fisherfolk (Php97 billion); and emergency support for 5.6 million indigent seniors and pensioners (Php5.6 billion).
Protecting people’s lives is the paramount concern, and the government should do everything necessary for this. This includes ensuring that the millions of families do not go hungry or suffer. It also includes giving special attention to high risk groups aside from the poor, such as the sick, elderly and those in congested jails. It however does not mean setting aside human rights as the Duterte government’s militarized approach is doing.
The lockdown may help contain the spread of the virus but this is at great social and economic cost and will be more and more untenable the longer it drags on. The necessary health measures have to be secured for the lockdown not be put to waste. At the same time, the government must ensure that it is giving enough attention to mitigating the lockdown’s effect especially on the poorest Filipinos. The country must deal with the pandemic, and the Duterte administration has the responsibility and obligation to ensure that this is done humanely and compassionately. The government also cannot claim that it does not have the money to respond well if it is just being blind to what really needs to be done. #
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Kodao publishes IBON articles as part of a content-sharing agreement.
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(This article is presented in two parts and will be given in three posts. The first part covers “Covid 19 in the Phillippines”, “The Imperialist Neo-Liberal Policies of the IMF-WB-WTO”, and the “The Neo-Liberal Policies and US Overproduction”. The second part comprises “The Emergence of Chinese Imperialism”, “China’s AIIB”, “China’s Debt Trap”, “The US-China Rivalry and Covid 19” and the “Conclusion”. While the rapid spread of Covid 19 in the Philippines is due to its poor health system because of the policies of the IMF-WB, the virus was directly caused by the easy entry of Chinese nationals into the country due to the too open accommodation of the Duterte’s administration of Chinese imperialism.)
Covid 19 in the Philippines
The Covid 19 pandemic has put into full light the long neglect of the Philippine government of its health system because of its strict adherence to the neo-liberal policies of deregulation and privatization initiated by the Group of 7 capitalist nations, led by the United States, in the developing countries, starting in the latter 1970’s. Private hospitals in the Philippines, which purchase their drugs and other medical supplies from the foreign multinational companies (MNCs) have continuously increased their prices, as the government has abided by the deregulation policy. Hospitalization for an ordinary Filipino worker costs three months or more of his monthly wages. Even government hospitals like the Philippine General Hospital ], because of government low priority for health, have hiked their fees and reduced the number of their free patients to still remain viable. Further, the Duterte government is planning to privatize 33 out of 72 government hospitals like the National Orthopedic Center, the National Center for Mental Health, the Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center, Dr. Jesus Fabella Maternity Hospital and others. (InquirerNet) These policies of deregulation of prices and eventual privatization of public hospitals have compromised the quality of health services extended to the general public so that when Covid 19 came roaring into our shores, brought by Chinese tourists, there was a dire lack of PPE (personal protective equipment) like face masks and shields, long sleeve gowns, gloves and respirators for health workers. Ventilators and hospital beds for Covid 19 patients were inadequate. Testing for the virus was also very limited so that people may not even be aware that their neighbor is already Covid positive.
The Philippines due to its unprepared health system, coupled with the gross incompetence of Duterte has become No. 1 by April 15, 2020 with Covid positive people in Southeast Asia with 5,222 cases and 335 deaths followed by Malaysia with 4,917 cases and 77 deaths. (Statista) The martial-law like implementation of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), only in the Philippines, has added more sufferings to the inhabitants of Luzon apart from the high costs of hospitalization if they catch the virus.
The low regard of the Philippine government for the health of its people compared to its payment of foreign debts is shown by the constant decrease of its health budget through the years. For example, from 2016 to 2020, the health budget declined by 11% from P113 billion to P101 billion. (Department of Health [DOH] website) The DOH’s measly P101 billion budget in the 2020 General Appropriations Act is far below that of the payment for interest alone for foreign and local debts of P451 billion and the budget for the Armed Forces at P192 billion in the same year.(2020 national budget) In the Philippines there is only one doctor to every 33,000 Filipinos when the required ratio should be 1 to 1000 and it is worse for the number of nurses at 1 to 50,000. Thousands of Filipino nurses and doctors go abroad to work since there is a lack of job opportunities in the country and salaries are very low. This is why six out of 10 Filipinos die without seeing a doctor. (IBON) Philhealth, which seeks to lower the costs of hospitalization, has been mired in corruption and some have even called for its abolition.
Private hospitals cannot be relied upon to meet the growing health needs of Fillpinos because their expertise are concentrated on the sickness of the rich like cancer and heart diseases and give less priority to contagious diseases like the Covid 19 pandemic which hit the poor the most. Infectious diseases fall under the category of public health concerns which government hospitals are supposed to be more expected to address. Private hospitals exist primarily to profit from the sick after all and not for public service. The inequity of Philippine society has come to the fore because of the Covid pandemic with more poor dying from it than the rich. This is further exacerbated because the costs of medicines in the Philippines are also the highest in Southeast Asia, benefiting the foreign pharmaceutical MNCs like Pfizer, Wyeth, Sanofi Aventis and Abbot that dominate the drug industry in the country.
Photo by Joseph Cuevas/Kodao
The Neo-Liberal Policies of the IMF-WB-WTO
The reason why the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the implementers of neo-liberal policies in the Philippines, have demanded privatization and deregulation in the country’s health system is that these financial institutions, both dominated by US capital, want the government to prioritize the payments of foreign debts obtained from the Group of 7 nations. The priority for the defrayment of debts has been made legal by PD 1177, an obsolete law passed during the martial law regime of Marcos which should have long been abolished after EDSA I. This law allows the automatic appropriation for debts in the national budget so that if our debts grow so huge, there may be zero budget left for health and other social services like education and social welfare. This is why the government, in order to meet its debt obligations, has also squeezed more taxes like Train 1 and 2 (VATs required by the IMF-WB) from the masses since the rich has preferential treatment for decrease in taxes from the Duterte regime.
Among all nations, the Philippines has been the most obedient client of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with 34 stand-by agreements with this institution (completed in 2002). The debts of the Philippines from the IMF-World Bank (WB)consortium has resulted in the high foreign debts of the country, reaching $83.7 billion at present (2020), which still includes the debts absconded by Marcos and his family and new loans from Chinese banks (to be discussed later). The Duterte government has borrowed the greatest percentage of our foreign debts during only its four years in office. (IBON)
Accompanying the stand-by agreements with the IMF are the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) dictated by the WB as conditions for new loans from it and the Fund and from their bank clubs, called the London club and the Paris club. Capitalist banks need to acquire profits from their surplus capital and those of their big depositors, the industrial and commercial capitalists, and they do this by lending this capital to other nations, particularly in the Third World for it to earn interests instead of just lying idle. Loans of surplus capital, particularly to other sovereign nations, also aid the capitalist countries to offset the falling rate of profit due to overproduction in the firms of the industrial capitalists. (To be discussed below) And the IMF-WB, their protector, make sure that those who borrow this surplus capital from capitalist banks and their investors will pay their debts on time. Thus, the stand-by agreements of the Fund and the SAPs of the Bank. The tie-up between the financial capitalists who own banks and other financial institutions with the industrial capitalists(commercial capitalists sell the goods of the industrial capitalists) is what constitutes the “financial oligarchy” or monopoly capitalism(imperialism).
The WB, various SAPs-covered industry, the energy sector, the financial sector and agriculture
The main thrust of these SAPs is trade liberalization in developing countries, aside from its policies of privatization and deregulation. Trade liberalization of goods was more fervidly pushed after the long-delayed founding of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. WTO became the third member of the capitalist triad, apart from the Fund and the Bank. The Philippine Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) in 1996 with the WTO has become the most oppressive of all the country’s trade agreements with the capitalist nations, killing local agriculture particularly the planting of staple crops of rice and corn, and pauperizing millions of Filipino peasants and farm workers. The capitalist nations, particularly the US, were dumping their surplus agricultural products on the Philippines to avoid overproduction. The increasing importation of rice by the country demanded by AoA eventually made the Philippines to become the no. 1 importer of this crop in the world by early 2000 in spite of its very fertile soil. There were extensive land conversions accompanying the AoA, favoring the comprador bourgeoisie in the real-estate business, like the Villars and the Ayalas, because agricultural lands were being turned into subdivisions and leisure places for the rich like golf courses and high-class resorts.
Photo by Joseph Cuevas/Kodao
The Neo-liberal Policies and US Overproduction
The neo-liberal policies, particularly trade liberalization, were adopted by the capitalist triad due to the growing crisis of overproduction of goods of US monopoly capitalism or imperialism, which started to manifest itself again in the middle of the 1970’s after a lull of 25 years.(Brenner, 1998) After the war periods which ended in 1976, comprising World War II, the Korean and the Vietnam wars, the rate of profits of US corporations were falling by a worrying 40% caused by overproduction of goods as production for wars has ceased. It is always profitable for the US military industrial complex (MIC) or the American monopoly capitalists to have wars in the world so that they can sell their war materiel to the US government which cost so high. It is to be noted that during the US war with Iraq in 2003, the American economy grew by 4.3%, the highest after the lull and never attained since then. After hot war periods (the US MIC’s profit from the cold war with the USSR was less compared to the hot wars), in order to offset the continuing decline in their rates of profits, more and more US corporations and even other foreign corporations were turning to the financial market, particularly the stock market to sell and buy stocks and other financial papers, for their surplus capital to earn profits through credits. This is the reason why after hot wars, bubble economies grow and burst, victimizing ordinary people who also buy the stocks of the capitalists. The worst of such bursting after the 1929 Great Depression in the US caused by a plunge of stock values in Wall St. was the financial crisis of 2008, which also originated in Wall St., the center of world capitalist activities.
The growing poverty in the developing countries, which includes the Philippines, manifested, among other social factors, by the inaccessibility of the poor to affordable health care is due to the imperialist neo-liberal policies implemented by the IMF-WB. (From Adjustments Effects on Child Welfare, Cornia, 1990) In truth, there has long been a pandemic of poverty among the lower echelons of society in the developing countries as shown by the fact that in the Philippines alone, 85 children on the average die every day due to malnourishment, 31,000 per year, higher than from any contagious disease that has visited the country.(Save the Children. org) This is a foregone conclusion since the SAPs affecting the health systems and other aspects of society and the payments of their foreign debts cause the client state of the Group of 7 to suffer budget deficits and they are made to raise more taxes to continue paying their debts and to balance their budgets. The IMF stand-by agreements are euphemistically called by the IMF-WB as “stabilization programs” to attain supposedly stable economic fundamentals, meaning for governments to balance their budgets with savings to boot, the latter of course adding to the defrayment of foreign debts. #
(Part II: Covid 19, the Neo-liberal policies and Chinese Imperialism)
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The author is a retired Social Sciences Professor of the University of the Philippines-Manila and De La Salle University. He is also a novelist and an author of several books on many topics.
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The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) described as squid tactics Rodrigo Duterte’s latest tirades against the revolutionary movement and called the President’s renewed threats to impose martial law a mere cover up of his government’s failure to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
After an invective-peppered rant against the New People’s Army (NPA) Friday morning, April 24, the CPP said Duterte’s latest threat to impose military rule on the country is a classic deflection tactic to draw away the people’s attention from the government’s “inept, uncompassionate and irresponsible actions in the face of the pandemic.”
“Duterte is using the Covid-19 crisis, one that has blown up because of his government’s military-minded response and failure to conduct mass testing, to carry out agenda of imposing martial law. Duterte’s ultimate aim is to establish his dictatorship, something he has long sought to do,” the CPP said in a statement.
Duterte again riled at the NPA in his televised address accusing the guerrillas of killing two government soldiers he claimed were escorting relief workers delivering aid to communities in Aurora Province last Tueday, April 21.
“If you persist in your lawlessness—and it is happening all over the Philippines—maybe I will declare martial law,” Duterte said.
The Philippine Army (PA) identified Pfc. Ken Lester I. Sasapan and Pfc. Jackson M. Mallari as those killed in a clash with the NPA Barangay Diaat, Maria Aurora town.
The Philippine Army however said the 91st Infantry Battalion of 7th Infantry Division was “conducting a security patrol in the vicinity in relation to the distribution of the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Special Amelioration Program.”
CPP information officer Marco Valbuena said the government troops attacked the local NPA unit who merely defended themselves.
“Sugod kasi ng sugod ang AFP. Utos ni Duterte eh. Pinambabala sa kanyon ang mga sundalo niya. Siyempre, NPA is alert and ready to defend themselves,” Valbuena said. (They keep on attacking. It was Duterte’s order. He treats his soldiers as cannon fodder. Of course, the NPA is alert and ready to defend themselves.)
The CPP said the armed clashes between the NPA and the AFP in the past days are a result of the attacks of the AFP and active defense of the NPA.
Since Duterte’s ceasefire lapsed last April 15, the AFP has further stepped up its counterinsurgency operations, the group said.
“In fact, the AFP never went on ceasefire, even when Duterte ordered a suspension of offensive operations last March 19 to April 15, deploying troops to more than 350 barangays and 120 towns to conduct counterinsurgency, mounting at least 24 offensives and six aerial bombardments,” the CPP said.
The CPP pointed out that a separated clash in Himamaylan City, Negros Occidental last April 15 that killed three AFP soldiers happened in the interior areas 10 kilometers away from Barangay Carabalan, where the DSWD was scheduled to distribute “social amelioration” to the residents.
“The 94th IB platoon was clearly on combat operations when they carried out the attack against the NPA. The NPA fighters rightfully defended themselves in battle,” the CPP said.
The CPP in turn accused the AFP of conducting “pang-press release” (for press release purposes) relief work that serve as cover for its intensified counterinsurgency operations against the NPA.
“The AFP has stepped up its counterinsurgency drive to prevent the NPA from conducting its own public health campaign in response to the Covid-19 and economic and production work to help the people cope with the sharp economic downturn,” the CPP said.
The group added that should Duterte impose martial law, the move will not stop the Covid-19 pandemic but will only cause greater hardships on the people.
“The Party condemns Duterte’s further extension of the lockdown in lieu of any decisive push for mass testing. The lockdown is now deceptively referred to as ‘general’ or ‘modified’ quarantine has been expanded to cover large parts of Visayas and Mindanao. There is now creeping nationwide martial law and the entire country is now effectively under the highhanded and control of the military and police,” the CPP said. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
https://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/jopes.jpg13652048Kodao Productionshttps://kodao.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/kodao.pngKodao Productions2020-04-24 16:37:122020-04-24 16:44:19Cover up for failure to stop COVID spread, CPP says of Duterte’s threat to impose martial law
