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Focus on the Philippines Number 40 |
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With Hunger on the Rise, It’s High Time We Revisited our Food, Agriculture and Trade Policies
By Jenina Joy Chavez, Mary Ann Manahan, and Joseph Purugganan
In this Issue
The looming fiscal crisis in the Philippines has been hugging the newspaper and broadcast news headlines for months now, spiced up by debates from academics and NGOs, and made juicy by discussions on slicing the pork barrel of Congress. Reacting swiftly to the crisis, the Philippine government has proposed a set of ‘quick fix’ solutions. New taxes, cost cutting measures, belt-tightening have all been served up as “bitter pills” to address the problem. What the government is not saying though and what media until recently has not been reporting on is a crisis that has been gripping the country for sometime—the crisis of poverty and hunger.
The Social Weather Stations (SWS) released last week the results of its survey for the third quarter of 2004. The survey, conducted over the period of August 5-22 2004 showed a “near-record-high 15.1% of household heads reporting that their families had experienced hunger, without having anything to eat, at least once in the last 3 months.” The survey also found “53% of respondents rating themselves as Mahirap or Poor.” The government quickly reacted to the SWS survey by announcing a plan to distribute food coupons for the poor.
The editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer last Saturday hit the nail right on the head when it said “Anyone with eyes to see would see that hunger has long afflicted this country. No one should be so blind to know that, for example, whole families daily depend on the refuse of others to survive. Parents and their wild-eyed children digging into filth and offal to find precious bits of sustenance, whether in broad daylght or in the dead of night, provide the macabre images; the Social Weather Stations survey merely provided the numbers.”
In this issue of FOP, we feature an article that analyzes these numbers against the policies on food, agriculture and trade that have been pursued by government. The authors are from Focus on the Global South – Philippines and members of the Stop the New Round!, a coalition campaigning against a new round of trade liberalization under the WTO.
An abridged version of this article came out in the Talk of the Town section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer last Sunday, October 10, 2004.
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Focus on the Philippines Number 39 |
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FOP 39 : The Micro Wars
[1] The Past as Prologue by Renato Redentor Constantino
[2] Monster at the Door by Mike Davis
In this issue
We have read about the so-called “small wars” or prolonged guerilla wars waged by the United States. In this issue we feature two articles that touch on wars of a much smaller nature, microscopic in fact. The first article is Red Constantino’s “Past as Prologue” a recounting of the horror of Imperial Japan's biological and germ warfare program benignly called Unit 731. The work of Unit 731’s main architect, Dr. Shiro Ishii and his links to the United States prompts Constantino to ask “Where else has the American government used Ishii's secrets? And who else has had access? Fifty years is a long time. Did not America invade Iraq to protect the world "from the potential horror of Saddam Hussein's supposed germ warfare capability?" Stuff happens, said Donald Rumsfeld. Will Ishii's weapons ever be used again? Where? By who?
The second article is the Monster at the Door by Mike Davis-an alarming article on the possibility of an avian-flu pandemic.
Whether it be through the use of biological weapons and germ warfare or the outbreak of killer viruses and diseases, the casualties of these “micro wars” can be staggering. “In May 1942, a cholera epidemic created by Unit 731 in Yunnan province kills over 200,000 people. Three months later, another 200,000 die in Shandong province as a result of Unit 731's germ warfare. In the Zhekiang province city of Quzhou alone, over 50,000 perish from bubonic plague and cholera” writes Constantino. Davis on the other hand cites “ In 1918-19 influenza pandemic: the single greatest mortality event in human history. In only 24 weeks, a deadly avian flu strain killed from 2 to 5 per cent of humanity (50 to 100 million people - including 675,000 Americans) from the Aleutians to Patagonia.
Yet, we are oftentimes caught defenseless against these attacks and are ill-equiped to confront these catastophic threats to peoples lives. Its about time we looked closer.
Red Constantino writes for the newspaper TODAY and its on-line partner abs-cbn.com, where this article is published. Mike Davis is the author of Dead Cities: And Other Tales as well as Ecology of Fear, and co-author of Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, among other books. His article Monster at the Door was lifted from CommonDreams.org |
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Focus on the Philippines Number 38 |
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Contra Factum non esse disputandum: Reply to the UP School of Economics on the Fiscal Crisis
By Walden Bello, Lidy Nacpil, and Ana Maria Nemenzo*
The September 19, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer featured a response to the critique of Walden Bello, Lidy Nacpil, and Ana Maria Nemenzo on the UP School of Economics paper on the fiscal crisis (FOP 36). The response entitled “The Bello, et al critique: Biased and Economically unsound” was penned by six Phd student of the UP School of Economics (available at HYPERLINK "http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=1&col=&story_id=11939"http://n
ews.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=1&col=&story_id=11939). In this issue of FOP we feature Bello, Nacpil, and Nemenzo’s reply to the paper of the UPSE students. This came out in the Talk of the Town section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer last 26 September 2004.
Walden Bello is professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and executive director of Focus on the Global South. Lidy Nacpil is secretary general of the Freedom from Debt Coalition.Ana Maria Nemenzo is president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition. |
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Focus on the Philippines Number 37 |
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Beirut 2004: A Milestone in the Global Struggle against Injustice and War
Speech at the Assembly on "Where Next for the Anti-War and Anti-Globalization Movements?," in Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 17, 2004
By Walden Bello
In this Issue
We feature the speech of Walden Bello at the opening of the International Strategy Meeting of the Anti-War and Anti-Globalization Movements held from September 17-19 2004 in Beirut, Lebanon. The historic assembly in Beirut had two main objectives: It was organized to provide a venue for activists to debate and agree upon a global plan of action to oppose US-led globalization, imperialism and militarism and to build a broad, international movement by establishing links between anti-war, anti-globalisation, Arab/Middle East movements and the rest of the international movement.
In his speech, Bello outlined the historical context of the movement (the Anti-War and Anti-Globalization Movements) from marginalization less than ten years ago to global civil society’s emergence as a global political force. The meat of Bello’s speech of course centers on the war in Iraq and the Iraqi Peoples’ Resistance. Bello posed a challenge to the Movement to come to terms with its position on the Iraqi Resistance. To overcome the hesitation to support the Resistance that Bello observed within the peace movement and to help understand its important role in Iraq, he emphasized that “there has never been any pretty movement for national liberation or independence.” “What progressives forget is that national liberation movements are not asking them mainly for ideological or political support. What they really want from the outside, from progressive like us, is international pressure for the withdrawal of an illegitimate occupying power so that internal forces can have the space to forge a truly national government based on their unique processes.”
Walden Bello was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for 2003. The prize is better known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. Bello is executive director of the Bangkok-based research organization Focus on the Global South and a professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines
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Focus on the Philippines Number 36 |
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The UP School of Economics Report: Overdue, Selective, Not Daring Enough
By Walden Bello, Lidy Nacpil, and Ana Marie Nemenzo*
In this Issue:
We feature Bello, Nacpil, and Nemenzo’s response to the much talked-about UP School of Economics report on the fiscal crisis. Prior to this critique, the discussions on the fiscal crisis, in media and among government bureacrats and advisers, have all focused on the dire need to raise revenues through new tax measures and cutting down on expenditures by reducing the “pork” . This article points out the problem of the UP reports in so far as timing--“This is a report that should have come out before the election campaign. Then it could probably have acted as a brake on the administration’s spending its way to victory in the May 10 elections—a fact underlined by the sharp P7.8 billion rise in government expenditure in April compared to the figure for April 2003.”, of bias – “What it fails to point out is that the unilateral liberalization program initiated by Ramos’ technocrats made it more difficult for succeeding administrations to balance the budget.Why is such a major cause of significantly reduced revenue completely ignored by the UPSE report? Can it be that the reason lies in the ideological bias of some of the authors, who were uncritical supporters of the program of unilateral trade liberalization?”, and lack of courage in addressing the issue of public debt-- “The truth of the matter is that the main item that has busted and will always bust any attempt at fiscal alleviation, much less balance, is the never ending and rising payments to foreign creditors.”
This article came out in the front page of the BusinessWorld last 27 August 2004.
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