Big bang on May 9

Local fair trade advocates opened a mini-fair at the Matina Town Square yesterday to prepare for the big bang on May 9 to mark the World Fair Trade Day.

Activities for the mini-fair includes a forum, product exhibits and demonstrations and an evening concert.

Thanks to Katakus, an award-winning micro-enterprise NGO and volunteers of the UK-Philippines Global Xchange for organizing the mini-fair.

Join the big bang on May 9 by beating drums against poverty, against the global economic crisis and against climate change.

Mock not medal

In spite of her loyalty and congratulatory letter to George Bush, the Malacanang occupant was not among those given medals as “true friends” by the outgoing US president.

She was among the first to enlist in the “coalition of the willing” in Mr. Bush’s war on terror and a staunch lapdog of US foreign policies. Unfortunately, she’s not in the league of the likes of Tony Blair, John Howard and Alvaro Uribe.

Possible explanations – the US sees RP as a colony and not a friend, or, like most Filipinos, the US sees Gloria as a total failure who deserves mock than medal!

Reversal of roles

The holocaust was a most horrible attempt to exterminate the Jews in Europe during World War II. Adolf Hitler’s “final solution” against the Jews was despicable and condemnable.

Many of those who survived this genocide settled and built what is Israel today.

Many lessons should have been learned from this malady to prevent its recurrence. Unfortunately, history is repeating itself. But there is now a reversal of roles.

The Israelis are now the Nazis exterminating the Palestinians.

The Gazans are today’s Davids fighting the Jewish Goliaths.

This Israeli apartheid is horrible, despicable and most condemnable.

Alternatives

Here is an historic opportunity for transformation.

Sign in here to help address the global economic crisis.

Tits for tat

Kosovo declared its independence early this year with the backing of the EU and the US to the objection and consternation of Serbia and Russia.

Yesterday, Russia supported the independence of not one but two breakaway regions of Georgia – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – to the objection and condemnation of the EU and US.

Russia had its tits for EU’s and US’s tat.

The conflict in Georgia has strained relations between Russia and the EU and the US to a point that a new cold war has begun. And it is getting hotter.

Kosovo is now recognized by 46 countries but is not yet a member of the United Nations. Russia is certain to veto its membership in the world body.

The same can be said of Abkhazia and South Ossentia. Even if more countries, particularly allied with Russia, would give it recognition, its membership at the UN would be blocked by EU states and the US.

Hhmmm. My mind is playing tricks on me due to this issue.

What if the Bangsama Moro nation declares its independence and Abhkazia and South Ossetia recognize it? What if Taiwan calls for the formation of the United Countries (UC) to rival the UN and invites Abkhazia, South Ossetia, the Bangsa Moro, and perhaps Kosovo as its charter members?

What if the likes of Iran and North Korea which are pestered by a UN atomic agency or Palestine which is fed up with UN Resolutions that Israel does not respect suddenly bolt the UN and join the UC?

What if liberation fronts all over the world seeking their own homelands are given observer status at the UC?

The possibilities playing tricks on me are endless. Thank God they are only in my mind.

Tit-for-tat, the cold war is indeed getting hotter!

5:20 a.m.

US hand in Mindanao

You might say I am stretching the issue of US involvement in Mindanao too far. But here are interesting views from respected columnists in Manila:

The untold realities of the MILF Pact by veteran media executive Billy Esposo; and

MILF proxy to international oil powers by nationalist economist Ding Lichauco.

And here are my previous posts:

A new kind of US military base – August 16, 2007;

GIs no fair game in Mindanao – September 2, 2007;

Defiant diplomat – February 22, 2008

The latter is about the visit of the US Ambassador Kristie Kenney to the “lion’s den” in the heartland of the Bangsamoro rebels in Mindanao in open defiance to the US State Department’s advisory against travel to troubled Mindanao. She was seen in Kuala Lumpur last Tuesday where the signing of the peace accord on ancestral domain was supposed to take place.

I received this email yesterday from a Davaoeno in Las Vegas – who is the US supporting in the Mindanao War? He was not actually asking me a question. He was emailing me a copy of a previous article written by Billy Esposo of the same title – Who is the US supporting in the Mindanao War?

A letter of MILF founder Hashim Salamat to President George W. Bush was featured in this column piece. Esposo asked particularly “promoters of all-out war in Mindanao” to read it and “see the hidden dimensions of the current conflict.”

6:15 a.m.

President-elect Obama

Israel must be the luckiest country in the world.

One of the richest and undoubtedly the mightiest in the Middle East, Israel is getting further windfall.

US President-elect Barack Obama has just committed to Israeli security once he sits at the Oval Office. Last Monday, I heard the same assurance from British PM Gordon Brown when he became the first British leader to address the Knesset.

What a lucky nation!

I pity dozens of countries around the world particularly in Africa and Asia which are suffering from abject poverty, hunger, disease, calamities and strifes. They are not getting the same singular attention Israel is having from the world’s most powerful nations.

I could not believe the world is being fooled once again. The mass deception is sickening. Before, it was Taliban fundamentalism in Afghanistan, then WMD against Iraq, now they have raised the same bogey against Iran.

Israel is indeed the luckiest of nations. I wonder how American and British citizens, now suffering from credit crunch and rising prices, feel in putting the bill for the security of another country.

It has also become crystal clear to me that there is no divide between the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and that of the Republicans. Obama and John McCain are of the same mold when it comes to America’s self-styled role as “policeman of the world.” In Germay, Obama sounded like George W. Bush drumbeating a “war on terror.” To many aggrieved peoples in the world, the “policeman” is the “terrorist.”

Both Obama or McCain would continue to wear imperialist cap and intervene in other countries as they did brutally in the Philippines a century ago, or in Vietnam four decades ago, and impose their brand of “democracy” on other nations.

5:12 p.m.