'Mali-volent' wars

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

1/21/2013

Daily Tribune

Not until OFWs were reported to be imperiled by another hostage situation did Filipinos here at home realize the existence of a country such as Mali. If current mainstream news accounts were to be the sole gauge, we would be led to believe that Western powers led by France are on a righteous crusade in stemming the rising tide of war in that North African country. A careful study, however, leads back to the recent war on its neighboring Libya.
The late Libyan leader Muammar Kadhafi harbored a third of the Malian warrior tribesmen known as the Tuareg, who lived as citizens — and many as soldiers — of his erstwhile non-discriminatory Libyan state.

After Kadhafi's fall, the black Tuareg came under brutal attack by the victorious Western-backed Benghazi Libyans of Arab decent and were forced out of Libya — but not before carting off thousands of powerful and high tech weapons of Kadhafi, which enabled them to start a Tuareg nation liberation movement in Mali.
Two times the land area of France, Mali's population of up to 15 million consists of seven major ethnic groups, including the Tuareg. Mali was one of the few African electoral democracies until March 2012 when elected president Amadou Toumani Toure was ousted by the military, allegedly for failing to contain the Tuareg rebellion. Interim President Dioncounda Traore took office but was ousted two months later in another coup by the junta that seated him.

Despite its desperate maneuvers, the Mali government continued to lose territory to the Tuareg rebellion — this, as the rebels captured French intelligence agents.
France stepped in with a rescue mission in the second week of January 2013 that ended in a fiasco, leading to the deployment of up to 2,500 French troops in Mali and the expansion of the conflict into Algeria last week. With the US "leading from behind," the French claim they are there to stop the "Islamist terrorists." But this isn't France's first recent misadventure. Aside from its frontline role in the war against Kadhafi, France also intervened in Côte d'Ivoire, installing an IMF (International Monetary Fund) man, Alassanne Quattara, in place of elected President Laurent Gbabo in November 2011.

Is it all good intentions that bring the French, reminiscent of its Foreign Legion, back to action in Africa? R. Teichman writes in Center for Research on Globalization ("The War on Mali. What you should Know: An El Dorado of Uranium, Gold, Petroleum, Strategic Minerals"): "If we are to believe this (French) narrative, we are misled again about the real reasons. A look at Mali's natural resources reveals what this is really about:
"Gold: Mali: Africa's third largest gold producer with large scale exploration ongoing… Uranium … Exploration is currently being carried out by several companies with clear indications of deposits … thought to be 5000 tones… Diamonds … potential to develop its diamond exploration… Precious stones consist of the following… Garnets and rare magnetic minerals … Pegmatite minerals… corindons… pegmatite and metamorphosing minerals… quartz and carbonates… more than two million tons of potential iron ore reserves… Bauxite reserves are thought to be 1.2 million tons … Other mineral resources and potential … Calcarous rock deposits: 30 million tons estimated … Copper… 10.6 MT estimated reserves … Phosphate: Reserve located at Tamaguilelt, production of 18,000 t/per annum and an estimated potential of 12 million … Lead and zinc…

"1.7 MT of estimated reserves … Lithium … Bitumen schist: Potential estimated at 870 million tons… Petroleum potential has been documented since the 1970s where sporadic seismic and drilling revealed probable indications of oil… So here we have it. Whatever is reported by the mainstream media, the goal of this new war is no other than stripping yet another country of its natural resources by securing the access of international corporations to do it. What is being done now in Mali through bombs and bullets is being done to Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain by means of debt enslavement.
"And the people suffer and die…"

Teichman ends with a quote from an African: "God help any country and its people with natural resources to be exploited."

In "2013 and the New Scramble for Africa," Chris Marsden writes: "China has surpassed the US as Africa's largest trading partner with trade of $90 billion in 2009, compared with $86 billion for the US and foreign direct investments of over $50 billion. Bilateral trade topped $160 billion in 2011 and is expected to reach $200 billion this year. In addition, China has proposed or committed about $101 billion to commercial projects in Africa since 2010, of which construction and natural resource deals total approximately $90 billion. Unable to compete economically with Beijing, Washington is once again turning to militarism to secure its advantage."

What the US and the West cannot get by trade, they get by force. This is so typified in this "Mali-volent" African war and in all their malevolent wars across the world.

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Distinguishing image from reality

BACKBENCHER

Rod P. Kapunan

1/19/2013

Manila Standard Today

President Benigno Simeon "PNoy" Aquino III is about to cross the halfway mark of his term, and the people who gave him the adulating mandate are still awaiting some tangible achievements. They have yet to see what that modern-day American philosopher Eric Hoffer said as the "promise of hope" translated to one called "matuwid na daan".

Of course, those who have been lording it over are expected to praise the 7.1 percent increase in gross domestic product as phenomenal. They would be quick to say he surpassed what their favorite whipping boy Ferdinand Marcos had achieved during his time, even outpacing the brisk economies of Singapore – 0.3 percent, Malaysia – 5.2 percent, and Thailand – 3.0 percent. The Philippines has even overtaken the accelerating economies of Indonesia – 6.2 percent and Vietnam – 4.7 percent.

Despite that much-vaunted feat, we remain at the bottom, listed no. 102 in the ranking of real growth rate with the rest of the world. As of 2011, we have a per capita income of $4,100, but remain way below, ranking at 162 in comparison with other countries of the world. Mr. Aquino's hooters also trumpet the low unemployment rate at 7 percent. However, they fail to explain that it is the result of the reclassification of the underemployed, part-time, seasonal workers as employed, while those who have been unemployed for more than a year excluded from the statistics.

The greatest ambivalence is that poverty continues to stalk most of our people at 26.5 percent as of 2009. In the latest survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations, as of the last quarter of 2012 about 16.3 percent or 3.3 million families suffer from hunger. If that figure is multiplied by five, which is the average number of persons per family, that would be equivalent to 16.5 million Filipinos out of a population of 103,775,002 million suffering from hunger.

In fact, there is much doubt in that analysis. The experience of not having to eat once in every three months cannot be termed as hunger, but one we could say a bad day for the family. Hunger is rooted on extreme poverty, and it is a daily occurrence to poor families. They have to hurdle daily to make sure they would have something to share together on the table to go on with life.

This explains why to this date, 54 percent or about 10.9 million families, or equivalent to 54.5 million Filipinos believe they remain poor. Even if we are to take it that this administration is pushing our GDP to such an unprecedented level, the per-capita income, foreign investments which are mostly portfolio investment or casino-like gambling, increase in exports, etc., belie that. The real ledger in measuring progress is when the majority of our people are affected by the transformation in terms of increased income and purchasing power, reduced poverty, and the elimination of hunger and the endemic diseases brought by it.

That now reduces to nothing the 7.1 percent increase in GDP because that contradicts the fact that we remain the highest from among the Asean member countries in terms of economic inequality, according to Xinhua in its August 6, 2011 issue. Moreover, according to the study conducted by the Stratbase Research Institute, the Philippines registered a Gini coefficient of 44 percent in 2010 higher than Thailand with 42.5 percent, Indonesia with 39.4 percent, Malaysia with 37.9 percent and Vietnam with 37.8 percent. According to Stratbase, "the huge disparity in income could breed social tension and political instability."

The prioritized legislation like the Reproductive Health Act, the passage of the so-called "Sin Tax," and the amendment strengthening the AMLA bear the visible markings of subservience to repay debt to those who made possible his election. The questionable agreement with the MILF stands as a sellout than an earnest effort to achieve peace in Mindanao. The manner in which the chief justice was removed and replaced by an unabashed minion was a miscarriage than a vindication of justice.

Even our foreign policy is now perceived as implementing the blueprint of Washington's grand design to contain China. This can be drawn by the routine port of call of US warships, increased joint military exercises with our soldiers living up to their role of scouts, and the senseless purchase in arms that could never tilt by half a degree the balance of power in the region.

The irony in PNoy's success is that it is not borne out of craftsmanship in government, but one prepared for him by his benefactors. Everybody knows that the P2.006 trillion national budget is not the residual result of increased income from production and business activities, but the result of increased and vigorous collection of taxes. The sad part is the small local entrepreneurs and the wage earners are always the ones affected.

Even the constructions being undertaken are mainly designed to complement and enhance foreign and elitist businesses, and not really to open new opportunities for our people to participate. This one can observe by the thrust of those projects, which is to attract tourism, to instill love for luxury, mire our people crass consumerism. Constructions are designed to pave the way for the building of new shopping malls, luxurious hotels, exclusive resorts and restaurants, and condominiums only a few could afford.

The popularity of PNoy is more of an image itched into the ignorant mind of many, and that is precisely designed to generate a bandwagon for which his candidates hope would work. The promise of illusory democracy and freedom is a dead platform. What will be decisive is the question on what they have accomplished, and not on their credentials of being the supporters of the ideology of vengeance. It is not even about the GDP for which many of them could hardly understand. As one cynic would put it, "Yan ba ay nakakain?"

(rpkapunan@gmail.com)

Marx was for the abolition of the wage system

BACKBENCHER

Rod P. Kapunan

1/12/2013

Manila Standard Today

It was David Ricardo who first dissected the concept of wage in relation to labor and commodity. He advanced the economic formula that, "If the quantity of labor realized in commodities regulate their exchangeable value, every increase in the quantity of labor must augment the value of that commodity on which it exercised as every diminution must lower it."

The problem with that formula, as rightly observed by Karl Marx, is that commodity, when sold in the market, was wholly left to the discretion of the producers and/or sellers where labor was undoubtedly added to enhance its value. That was made inseparable to the sanctification of property rights led by John Stuart Mills. That "epochal recognition", as Marx called it, marked the beginning of the exploitative wage system that created a wedge between the owners of the commodity, the value of which was enhanced by the workers who could only sell their labor for value.

The excess value for which the commodity was sold, in the words of Marx, was "pocketed by the capitalists." They had no remorse for that practice because they rightly accepted profit as belonging to them by virtue of their property ownership. However, instead of referring to it as profit, Marx opted to call it "surplus value" because the value for which the commodity was sold in relation to the amount of labor spent far exceeded the amount for which the workers were paid. It was on that huge disparity that compelled him to urge for the abolition of the wage system. He made that clear in his immortal work, The Communist Manifesto.

Unfortunately, many ideologues are ignorant about that stand of Marx. On the contrary, present day communists and progressives are the ones defending the mechanism that made possible the exploitation of the workers. As some political and economic analysts would put it, the unity between the progressive Left and the neoliberals on the issue of wage has become repugnant, with the Left committing sacrilege to Marxism.

To begin with, the system of wage is a euphemistic term for the system of regulated wage. It has no other purpose except to peg the cost of labor to a miserable level. Although property ownership legalized the pocketing of the surplus value, it was wage that institutionalized the pegging in the cost of labor bare human existence.

As historically traced by Marx, wage was first observed by the craftsmen and artisans during the feudal era. Being few and valued for their craftsmanship, they formed their own guilds, specific to every type of industry, to maintain the cost of their labor. The advent of the Industrial Revolution saw the capitalists replacing them with their machines for mass production. As plain workers, they were detached from the commodity for which they work, and invariably in valuing the cost of their labor. It was in that relationship that the concept of wage was formalized.

Thus, from pre-capitalism to the early stage of capitalism, the costing of labor was wholly a private affair between the workers and the owners of the industry. It was a lopsided relationship much that it was the owner or the capitalist that dictated the cost of labor. The surplus of unemployed under that system of laissez faire gave life to profit borne out of scarcity. The small amount of fixed wage given to the workers, as observed by Marx, was a substitute to their emancipation from slavery as when the blacks were freed during the American Civil War.

The master was not obligated to pay his slaves the wage they need, but must provide them the most basic needs—in food, clothing and shelter. The wage system as substitute to their freedom did nothing to alleviate them of poverty. Rather, their condition worsened, for it turned out the pillars for human survival given by the slave-owners, at times including medication, were much greater than the pittance wage they received.

The clamor for higher wages plus the specter of communist revolution carried in the name of the workers forced the government to nationalize the system of wage, meaning that the determination of the amount of wage could no longer be left in the hands of the private employers. The State has to intervene by imposing the landmark "minimum wage law", and other labor laws pertaining to overtime, holiday pay, etc. that made significant adjustments on the cost of wage. The State made uniform the increase in the amount of wage by virtue of an edict.

But through the years, as inflation continues to erode the value of their earnings, viz., the reduction in their purchasing power, the system of regulated wage was no longer working in their favor. The nationalization of the wage system thought by many would work for their welfare is now the same instrument used by the capitalists to push back the cost of wage to a bare subsistence level. This is amplified today by the rampant practice of labor-only contracting or "contractualization". Others call it the revival of a new shade of slavery.

It is on this score any attempt to justify the wage system is to openly admit ignorance of what Marx advocated more than 150 years ago. The system of regulated wage only worsened the problem of unemployment. Maybe the transfer of the wage system from a private to a public concern is no different from the clamor to nationalize the industries that made the State the sole employer. That supposition did not solve the problem because the State as the sole employer failed to deliver what the wage earners thought as their liberation from the yoke of capitalist exploitation.

As it turned out, the State was perceived as the exploiter of its own people because it promised many things only heaven could provide. This now explains why many socialist states collapsed, not because they failed, but because they carried on the role of the private employers in pegging the cost of wage.

(rpkapunan@gmail.com)