Advancing “Social Protection” and a “Social Asean”

Advancing “Social Protection” and a “Social Asean”

Tina Ebro called us to join a forum on “social protection”, i.e. ensuring the economic and social needs of peoples are provided for and ensured in all societies today. Of course this is not a new idea. Religious values that have evolved since ancient times have generally all advocated this in its various concepts of justice.

The more modern social ideologies universally advocate this. Even the ideology of individualistic capitalism believe its system is the best to fulfil this, and of course its anti-thesis called socialism and its variant communism believe only its own system based on forms collective ownership of tools and factors of  production.

                                                          Beyond Motherhood Statements.

 So now I am reporting from a seminar room of the Ferzal Hotel on Malakas St. here in Quezon City. The first talk by Dr. Francine Mestrum from the Global Social Justice NGO made very good points that woke me up from my cynical stupor, as I have come to expect “motherhood statements” form many of these discussions on “human rights” and “people’s welfare”.

Mestrum woke me up by referencing the latest “Paris shock” to the two ways provide protection to people, by means of Force such as military and police action or by economic and social provisions (food, shelter, clothing, health, work, peace and security). The use of Force has failed she said, and that is totally and universally correct and affirmed by all of history.

                                           Force versus Social Protection.

We are responding to this first comments of Mestrum relative to our breaking blog on the Paris Attack which we trace not simplistically to ISIS, as almost all French and Western news reports are stating, but to the historical roots of the use of Force by the colonialist Western cultures against what we can generally refer to as the “Third World” today – and more importantly now, the effort of the West to re-impose that colonialism under the cover of “War on Terror” which they insidiously created themselves.

The French people in the post-Paris Attack under the baton of its current President Francoise Holland and the Western mainstream media is being led to “use of Force” response to the Paris Attack and its presumed perpetrators IS (Islamic State). But it was the use of unprecedented Force that destroyed the particular countries from which IS has germinated; i.e.  the secular states of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and to a lesser extent Afghanistan.

                                           Force and  the “Million Migrants March”

It is appropriate to mention too that the current “million migrants march” to European Union countries also emanate from these countries Western “War on Terror” Force has literally destroyed and killed millions (Iraq primarily, followed by Syria, Lybia and Yemen, Somalia etc.)

Behind the “million migrants march” is embedded more potential for use of Force in decades to come as it cannot be doubted that thousands of families from MENA (Middle East and North Africa) have been decimated by murders of U.S.-Nato use of Force that contain the seeds of imminent violent reaction.

                                           The Neocons behind the chaos.

It doesn’t take much sense of realpolitik to understand that there is truth in the theory that elements of the U.S. neocon factions in collaboration with the “new Ottoman” opened the flood gates for this migrant wave to prevent Europe’s conciliation with Russia, and consolidation of the Eurasian land mass of peace and harmony beyond the intrigues of the U.S. “neocons” ruling powers.

There is an alternative to allowing the “Use of Force to Fight The War Against Terror” meme now being spread and swallowed by many in the World – to the delight of the “Perpetual War” advocates – an alternative that uses precisely the crusade of “Social Protection” to a global project.

                             “One Belt, One Road” Towards Universal Social Protection.        

That alternative is the “One Belt, One Road” project of China to connect all economies and societies of the World by millions of kilometres of railway lines, airline routes, roads, Information and Communication Technology networks, shipping routes and seaports, to open the World to “win-win” economic development.

Talking about “social protection” has been around for centuries and it is good to be reminded again, also around for centuries was the “Ancient Silk Road” but that was interrupted by the Age of Imperialism and Age of Colonialism that used Force to exploit weaker or development-deficit societies. It’s time to end the use of Force and link up to the “One Belt, One Road” of the New Silk Road and the New Maritime Silk Route.