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Update on the Calatagan Farmers' Campaign

Wednesday, 10 September 2008 07:13 administrator
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8 September 2008

Several events have occurred since the Calatagan farmers launched their "pre-walk" in 1 September 2008.  On that day, the farmers put up streamers that contain their calls along the road of Barangays Baha and Talibayog.  On 4 September, Bishop Broderick Pabillo, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Manila and Chair of the NASSA, celebrated a Holy Mass in Calatagan.  A day after, the farmers received the Resolution of the DAR Secretary denying the farmers' Motion for Reconsideration on their petition to cover the contested 507-hectare land under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).  On 7 September, Akbayan partylist Representative Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel also visited Calatagan to express solidarity with the farmers.
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300 farmers rally to oppose 'CARP land as collateral' measure

Thursday, 04 September 2008 18:29 administrator
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By Jonathan L. Mayuga

Originally published in the Business Mirror, September 4, 2008.


SOME 300 farmers belonging to Reform CARP Movement (RCM) picketed the House of Representatives compound at the Batasan Complex in Quezon City on Wednesday to oppose the passage of bills allowing the use of CARP-awarded land as collateral.

A broad coalition of small farmer organizations, nongovernment organizations and other agrarian-reform advocates, RCM is also pushing for the immediate enactment of the CARP extension with reforms bills.

Public hearings were set to deliberate on the proposed farmland as collateral bills and other related measures on Wednesday.


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Foreign aid and CARP extension

Tuesday, 08 July 2008 08:09 administrator
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By Saturnino Borras Jr., Mary Ann Manahan, Eduardo C. Tadem
First published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer 5 July 2008

OPPONENTS OF EXTENDING THE COMPREHENSIVE Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) insist that we suspend land redistribution and focus assistance on the farmer households that have received land under the program. We argue that it is not a question of land redistribution versus support. The challenge is how to effectively assist land reform beneficiaries while completing land redistribution.

Read also Focus-Philippines' position paper on CARP extension

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Will capitalism survive climate change?

Monday, 31 March 2008 02:37 administrator
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by Walden Bello
Originally published by Bangkok Post, 29 March 2008.

There is now a solid consensus in the scientific community that if the change in global mean temperature in the 21st century exceeds 2.4 degrees Celsius, changes in the planet's climate will be large-scale, irreversible and disastrous. Moreover, the window of opportunity for action that will make a difference is narrow _ that is, the next 10 to 15 years.

Throughout the North, however, there is strong resistance to changing the systems of consumption and production that have created the problem in the first place and a preference for ''techno-fixes,'' such as ''clean'' coal, carbon sequestration and storage, industrial-scale biofuels, and nuclear energy.

 

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The Global Financial System in Crisis

Friday, 28 March 2008 16:32 administrator
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by Walden Bello 
 
Speech at the Seminar on "Dismantling Obstacles to Advancing Development Agenda and Accountability," People's Development Forum, Bahay ng Alumni, University of the Philippines, 25 March 2008.

I have been asked to address the issue of the international financial architecture that provides the context for aid flows. 

My response is what architecture?  In fact, we now stand on the brink of what former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan last week characterized as possibly the worst economic crisis since the Second World War because of the lack of architecture or structure to govern global capital flows.  The so-called subprime mortgage crisis that has resulted so far in losses of some $400 billion and threatens a chain reaction of collapsing financial institutions globally is the end product of a process of deregulation of financial markets that began during the Reagan-Thatcher era.  This is the latest of some 100 financial crises in the last 30 years, according to the count of the Brookings Institution.
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