April 12, 2009, 4:00 PM, Mauban Gymnasium, Quezon Province,
Luzon, Philippines

By Eric V. Encina

Speech Text:

My Former Classmates and Friends, Good Afternoon!

Thank you for inviting me as your speaker today in this reunion-meeting. I will discuss some of the monstrous problems and issues present in our country. In order to do so, I put together a talk titled "SOLUTIONS FOR THE PHILIPPINES -- THE CHOICES THAT WE TOGETHER FACE," which I hope that you will find of interest.

As many of us here today know, we are in the climax of the problems and litmus test for our very survival. We are all in the same boat facing hardships and trauma due to the economic downturn and our government's related policies.

May I ask you? Do you think that we can find a solution for the Philippine crisis? Given the enormity of the country's endless assorted interconnected problems, we have to seriously understand the matters that I am going to try to clearly explain to you that pertain to origins for some of these problems and my concern for monetary reform.

IN OTHER WORDS, THE ORTHODOX AND CONVENTIONAL SOLUTIONS OF THE PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT TO OUR JOINT DIFFICULTIES concern DEBT and the issues related to further debt at interest. This debt includes both the public debt held by the government and private, personal debt held by the many citizens, who are unable to sufficiently provide for their most basic needs in light of our government leaders not helping us find solutions relative to jobs, housing, food and other necessities. (The latter, individual debt, will not be, though, discussed here today. Instead, the focus will be the other sort of debt -- our national debt and the ways to deal with it.)

However, please take note: From the original IMF loan to our government of $800 Million and WB loan of $700 Million in 1978, our country's TOTAL DEBT HAS horrendously increased by endless further borrowings and is accompanied by HIGHLY USURIOUS INTEREST rates over the years to become close to US$350 BILLION or P6 Trillion plus Pesos with the INTEREST PAYMENT OF P700.6 Billion or US$14 Billion in 2009. Regardless of the high initial loan and the staggering amount of interest owed, it is generally not a part of government's debt management plans.

So while our government, eventually, will have to seemingly endlessly borrow more money to service the debt and its interest payment, are social services to be cut even further for Filipinos? Are our taxes, then, to be used not for our welfare and improvements to society, but be used instead to enrich the managers of organizations like International Monetary Fund and World Bank? Where is this pattern of continuous loans taking leading us as a country and as a people?

PLEASE TAKE NOTE, TOO, THAT OUR DEBT IS INCREASING AT P1.2 BILLION DAILY IN THE CALENDAR YEAR IN THE EQUIVALENT OF $millions of dollars.

MEANWHILE, MOST DEBTS ARE IDENTIFIED TO BE ODIOUS AND ANOMALOUS and, therefore, criminal against the Filipino people as a whole while others are greatly enriched off of them. In addition, anyone who has had a long term individual debt and its interest payments to creditors know that it is hard to manage as paying back takes money away from fulfilling other needs and wants. So our government is in the same situation -- unable to tend its citizens due to its funds going to pay-backs.

So given this situation, should we have TAXES AT ALL OR MORE TAXES SIMPLY TO POUR MONEY INTO DEBT PAYMENT?

Personally, I consider TAXES, under our present economic system, to be A LEGALIZED ROBBERY DUE TO DEBT FINANCE THAT STUPENDOUSLY PROVIDES FOR BANKERS, BAILOUTS OF THE GREED FILLED ENTITIES FOR WHICH THEY WORK AND GIFTS OF EXCESSIVE BONUSES TO OVER-FED AND SUMTUOUS BANKERS, THEMSELVES. THE FUND, LIKEWISE, GO TO OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND WELL-PAID ORTHODOX ECONOMISTS WHO HELP CAUSE THE CRISIS.

FURTHER THERE ARE THE Billions of Pesos allocated for PORK BARRELS FOR OUR FILIPINO LEGISLATORS, WHO ARE doing nothing practically EXCEPT TO INCREASE their OWN political power AND SELF-SERVING MONETARY GAINS. In other words, the LEADERS (NOT ALL BUT MANY OF THEM) primarily use the money for graft, corruption and personal aggrandizements.

At the same time, the same group of officials invite transnational corporations into our country to take our resources for pennies on the dollar relative to actual worth. Meanwhile, our citizens get no remuneration for these Filipino treasures that disappear from our land through mining, agriculture and other means to create huge financial gains for foreigners, along with the most affluent Filipino class who are in cahoots with them.

PHILIPPINE BUREAU OF INTERNAL REVENUE or BIP - the tax department of the Department of Finance TARGETS a goal TO DRASTICALLY COLLECT taxes by 2009, this year, in the amount of P11.6 Billion EXACERBATED BY the WASHINGTON CONSENSUS and imposition of the IMF-WB 12% EXPANDED VALUED ADDED TAX or E-VAT that would become 15% by the year 2010-2011.

LIBERALIZATION AND PRIVATIZATION -- are these two directions collectively ahead of us?

DO WE HAVE NO CHOICE? Are the increasingly lax federal regulations concerning the ravage of our country's resources good for our natural environment on which we depend for enough fresh, pollution free water, forests, healthy agricultural soil and other material goods on which we, as the people of our land, depend? Are they not favoring wealthy industrialists and agricultural giants at the expense of citizens? Are our government heads, with their focus on such an operation to remove our resources, creating sufficient jobs, decent wages, robust local economies, adequate housing and health care provision, food for all and other necessities? (... We all know the answer to this question.)

Please note that the BANKING LIBERALIZATION AND PRIVATIZATION, ALONG WITH THE SALE OF PHILIPPINE ASSETS, that is criminal against the Filipinos, ARE AMONG THE MANY STRINGS ATTACHED to LOANS from the IMF and the WB to Philippine Government. And given our collective compliance to such damaging international (mandated) COVENANTS, the Philippines has rushed into GATT or General Agreement On Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization or WTO with short term monetary relief in mind.

Yet alas, AFTER HAVING COMPLIED, the Philippines, along with other poor highly indebted nations, such as Uruguay, Costa Rica and Malaysian Territories Labua, are all accused as WORST OFFENDERS BY THE ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT OR OECD FOR providing NON-COOPERATIVE TAX HAVENS. This was disapprovingly aired at the recent G-20 Meeting in London, UK.

ALL CONSIDERED, WHAT BENEFITS DO OR DID WE FILIPINOS EVER DERIVE FROM THE INTERNATIONAL CONVEVANTS, PER SE? WHAT ADVANTAGES DO WE OBTAIN FROM IMF MEMBERSHIP AND ITS PRESCRIPTIONS, BITTER PILLS OF ECONOMIC STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENTS? IN ADDITION, how big are the DAMAGES that have been caused to us and how much ill-gotten PLUNDER has been taken from our land? The answer is that the damages and plunder are immeasurable.

Then, too, we have to deal with LIBERALIZATION -- the lax regulations:

Right now, many local factories and companies have closed down as we can't compete on world markets and we are supposed to be able to do so by having pathetic wages rather than our simply making products for regional use and having a robust economy on account of primarily only serving our own indigenous needs. In light of this, one has to wonder about the many millions of jobs that were painfully and heartbreakingly lost when we opened the floodgates of imported goods with inadequate safety nets and protection to our own local producers? How did we get aided then -- when this whole process started? How were derived benefits, in the end, really provided for us?

LIKEWISE, HOW MANY FILIPINO FAMILIES BECAME IMPOVERISHED AND ARE DYING OF HUNGER RIGHT NOW IN THE COUNTRYSIDE when local companies that were built over several decades were suddenly wiped out in the name of TRADE LIBERALIZATION. The liberalization policies that exacerbate the increase rate of huge indebtedness of most families, along with the SHAMEFUL RATE of beggary and mendicancy in the countryside is tragic to behold.

SO, BACK TO THE EARLIER AND RELATED TOPIC, WE TOGETHER MUST CONSIDER WHETHER WE SHOULD HAVE INCREASED PRIVATIZATION OR THE SALE OF PHILIPPINE ASSETS TO PAY OFF OUR FOREIGN DEBTS. IF SO, WE WILL, DOUBTLESSLY, MAKE OUR COUNTRY EVEN WEAKER AND UNABLE TO PROVIDE FOR OUR OWN LOCAL NEEDS, EVEN IF JOBS ARE PROVIDED FOR SOME IN THIS PILLAGING OF OUR RESOURCES FOR THE BENEFITS OF FAR-AWAY OTHERS.

All the same, our Philippine leader continues to sell our COUNTRY'S NATURAL WEALTH AND MATERIALS to foreigners who allow 100% ownerships to multinational companies and global tycoons that only promote greed and destruction of HUMAN life and environment. THE REASON IS, OBVIOUSLY, TO RAISE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR THE PURPOSE OF MEETING ANNUAL BUDGET DEFICIT ORIGINALLY CAUSED BY DEBT PAYMENT under debt-based economy.

SO I SOMEWHAT REDUNDANTLY ASK: DO WE FILIPINOS GAIN FROM PRIVATIZATIONS? (WE KNOW THE ANSWER IN THAT MANY of these state-assets have become already privately owned like electric generating supplies, water and our major terminals, ports, even airports, etc. What next will be added? Are we all to maintain our status as impoverished serfs in our own land on account?)

IN ADDITION, ARE WE EVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO PAY THE TOTAL DEBTS AND INTEREST FROM THE BORROWED FUNDS FROM THE SELLING OF THE STATE-OWNED ASSETS? The answer is "of course not" since the plan is to keep us in debt and keep taking our resources and money in payment until so few resources and dollars are left that we are simply, as a nation and a people, discarded on the world's stage.

All considered, deregulation of industry in support of transnational companies and the wealthy elite is one of the big problems ahead that we must resist in any way possible as this is robbery from all of us. At the same time, it is robbery from our children and future generations to come.

Meanwhile, the cartel-like operation of oil industry through their many financed-backed multinational corporations will continue with increase in prices being dictated by the cartel bosses, whose only goal is immediate highest profit obtainable. This is dangerous as we are dependent on fossil fuels for nearly everything that we do unless we want to live like our primitive ancestors and, with our population, we cannot afford to do so.

Instead, we must find alternative forms of energy and demand that our government invest in their provision as they are not harmful in relation to climate change and are almost cost free after the initial cost to build and install -- such as solar panels and wind generators. However, there is no money available to allocate for the creation of energy security or the management of other needs in our country under our current economic system.

This in mind, DEBT, INTEREST, TAXES, PRIVATIZATION, DEREGULATION AND COMPLIANCE TO INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM UNDER WASINGTON OR OTHER CONSENSUS are not THE SOLUTIONS TO PHILIPPINE CRISIS. Therefore, we must make plans, not hastily or rashly, but slowly and deliberately to address our woes.

Simultaneously, we must be patient while we wait for remedies to take fruition. Moreover, we must bear in mind about what is most important to us as a nation and what is not.

'WAITING IS THE HARDEST WORK OF HOPE" - Lene's Smeade stated.

"THIS IS OUR PREDICAMENT. OVER AND OVER AGAIN, WE LOSE SIGHT OF WHAT IS IMPORTANT AND WHAT ISN'T." - Epictetus wrote.

Indeed, we must remember these thoughts as we move ahead in addressing our national dilemma... So what is the solution given this backdrop?

THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE:

In a nutshell, we must have a DEBT-FREE MONEY CREATION ECONOMY.

The Philippine Government must take back its power of creating money from the private banks and, in doing so, CREATE MONEY DEBT FREE BY LEGISLATION AND BY THE PROVISION OF THE NEW PHILIPPINE CONSTITUTION. This in mind, I am favorable to charter change for the reform of the economic system or banking system and not for the extension of power of the President and any other present incumbent government officials as absolute power corrupts.

AT THE SAME TIME, THE DEBT FREE MONEY CREATION OF PHILIPPINE PESO CAN BE PERFECTLY DONE BY THE FACILITIES OF THE PHILIPPINE CENTRAL BANK.

IN SHORT, DEBT FREE MONEY CREATION CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEMS OF DEBT, INTEREST, TAXES, BANKRUPTCY, POVERTY AND HUNGER OF THE FILIPINO FAMILIES IN THE COUNTRYSIDE. THERE WILL BE SMOOTH FLOW OF MONEY IN VOLUME AND IN CIRCULATION TO KEEP THE ECONOMY IN MOTION without debt. In addition, the government leaders can renegotiate our debt package details.

AT THE SAME TIME, THE WHOLE PROCESS WILL HELP CREATE JOBS WHILE ENSURING THAT THERE IS FOOD, HEALTHCARE AND OTHER NECESSITIES FOR ALL. IN OTHER WORDS, DEBT FREE MONEY CREATION CAN PROVIDE DIVIDEND OR SUPPLEMENTARY BASIC INCOME TO EVERY FILIPINO CITIZEN AND STRENGTHEN THE ECONOMY AT THE SAME TIME. SO WE CAN HAVE A father, A mother, A child or children BENEFITTING FROM A foundation of sustainable economic security and STILL SUPPORT democracy, TOO, BY NOT EVER ALLOWING OUR GOVERNMENT TO ACT ON MAJOR POLICIES WITHOUT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.

WARNING:

IF YOUR REJECT THIS SINGLE SOLUTION, then WHAT ELSE is there before us collectively?

Friends, former classmates in sufferings, if you don't agree, I HAVE THE LAST DRASTIC SOLUTION:

It is death... We can either give up and, not being able to bear the suffering a moment longer, have a mass suicide as a form of protest or we can take THIS OTHER more constructive course of action.

In other words, we can, instead of choosing our quick demise rather than the slow one that we already face, try to create the life that we want and deserve. We can move to create the changes that absolutely need to be put in place.

As such, we can work together to develop a revolution such as took place in France when silly and ignorant Marie Antoinette, an aristocrat much like our wealthy elite of today, suggested that the peasants eat cake if they have no bread. One wonders at such foolish commentary since, obviously, there was no cake, bread, nor other foods in ample supply for the poor French people just as there isn't enough for us today.

However, we must remember, if we plan this alternative to premature death, that we do not wish to create harm. We have all seen more than enough harm already. So the revolution, our collective and forceful demand for change in our monetary system, must be nonviolent in nature.

All considered, we must remember that we want to support -- not destroy -- life just as Mahatma Gandhi recognized when he led the strike relative to cloth for which people in Great Britain were supportive and in sympathy even though they were economically impacted by his actions. We must, too, remember the power in numbers created in his salt march.

In the end, I hope that I have clearly enlightened you all about our enormous problems. Please help me and follow me into action so that we can together make decisions that will benefit us all before it is too late to put the need changes in place that are long overdue. (We cannot continue to go on in the current ways of life. Deep down in our guts, we all know this. We all know this as we worry that our family members might begin to starve and our neighbors are terrified to become like the sad, destitute, listless beggars on the streets, who engender both revulsion and compassion.)

SO, IF YOU ARE FED UP AND HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THE WAY THAT OUR LIVES ARE GOING, DON'T JUST STEW IN YOUR DISCOURAGEMENT AND ANGER. INSTEAD, RESOLVE TO PUT THESE STRONG REACTIONS TO GOOD USE:

LET US MAKE RALLIES IN THE COMING WEEKS, MONTHS, YEAR AHEAD TO DEMAND AND PRESSURE, not just ask, THE GOVERNMENT leaders, the officials WHO WE VOTED IN TO OFFICE DURING LAST ELECTION, TO HEED OUR MAJOR CALL to ABANDON THE DEBT BASED ECONOMY in order to move towards DEBT-FREE MONEY CREATION.

Let us take THIS ACTION ALL TOGETHER AS THERE IS STRENGHT IN NUMBERS AND LET US DO SO AS SOON AS WE HAVE BEGUN PLANNING THE ACTUAL ACTIONS THAT NEED TO BE UNDERTAKEN TO FORCE OUR GOVERNMENT TO, FINALLY, SERVE ITS CONSTITUENTS -- WE THE PEOPLE!

They must begin to do so, especially since hunger and destitution is both terrible AND UNACCEPTABLE with more than 2.9 Million Filipinos suffering hunger daily in the Philippines according to recorded statistics. Yet honestly, there are more than 20 million Filipinos in the actual starvation circumstances, including those who are ill from being malnourished, such as the little children -- the next generation of Filipinos on whom our country will depend for it to be a strong, robust and secure nation during the rest of this century.

This all in mind, please contact me if you want to be a part of a big change and help develop procedures for the activities that we will all together undertake to begin to make a debt free system come into being. To this end, please put your name and contact information, especially e-mail address if you have one, on one of the pads of paper being sent around (while trying to use as little paper as possible so that we do not run out) if you wish to explore the creation of a widespread demonstration aimed at our government about their altering the ruinous fiscal course of our country. Indeed, this must happen so that our land can start providing for all of its citizens -- not just the wealthy few. So in joining up with each other, we can all make plans together to initiate our meaningful action towards fiscal reform.

Please realize, too, that we have many ideological sisters and brothers facing the same plight as ours around the world. They are in sympathy and solidarity with us. They come from all nationalities, cultures, religions and overall varying backgrounds. They write to try to help us. They share our goals and send us words of encouragement.

At the same time, they are quietly doing good works to help each other and have formed a sense of community despite their differences of opinion, skin color, ethnic background or religion. In relation, we must strengthen our own sense of unity at home and overcome separations, too. Like them, we must show increased empathy and decency -- caring more about each other than personally hoarding profits for our own individual selves while taking unfair advantage of others.

Meanwhile, we, as we press for change in our own nation, can set an example for them to follow. As such, we can inspire them to see that there is hope and a solution as they quietly go about providing food at soup kitchens and beds in homeless shelters for their comrades, who, too, have been marginalized like us.

Yes, we can show the world the way forward by our example of pressing for change while the others like us increasingly have to create community gardens and bring provisions, such as clothing, to the many destitute people since the number of have-nots keep growing... and growing. They do so despite them and us having desire for change because our various governments will not alter course unless strongly encouraged to do so by a dedicated group such as us.

Meanwhile, these sister and brothers are at web sites such as Global Research CA, Countercurrents, World Prout Assembly, Thomas Paine's Corner, Information Clearing House, MWC News and countless other ones that I recommend as they are helpful so that we can all see our way forward to a better future.

Moreover, these many other peoples are with us in spirit and we can all learn from each other. We can, for example, realize that are not alone in our struggle and we can pull off this whole new way to live wherein we are supportive of each other and society as a whole if and only if we demand that our government either gets out of the way or effectively helps us to develop a new economic system and lifestyles that support justice, mutual concern and a positive way to go forward in life instead of ramming down our throats this living hell that we currently have. So let us start to make the changes today. Let us start to join together to strongly encourage the needed monetary and other reforms so that our country and other ones once again can be strong, vital and beneficial places to live for all!

Thank you and God bless you!


Eric V. Encina
ericencina@yahoo.com

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:06 PM, Eric Encina wrote:

I give up. I canceled. No one cares to help.

We are literally suffering hunger here right now