Monday 26 March 2012

Heroes (in the awesome David Bowie sense among other senses) and NGOs


Non-Governmental Organizations are quite awesome. In a nutshell, NGOs lobby for specific causes that are more or less also under the responsibility world governments but since NGOs were created for a specific cause they can do more concentrated work. Also, I find the beauty of NGOs not just coming from what they’re for but even stemming from what they’re called. Non-governmental, just hearing and looking at that term makes every other little girl who grew up resenting the corruption in governments and its officials breathe a sigh of relief (and mind you, I was one of those little girls). So yeah, I like NGOs for the fact that they act as the vigilantes if not superheroes of the world when states themselves and all their regionalisms and supranational institutions just can't solve every important problem out there.

I shall now pave way to bring about the reason why this blog entry is about NGOs and why the title of this post references Bowie.

This rad compilation is about to get even more rad.

Sunday 25 March 2012

My Ideal Theory on Who Will Rule International Relations/The World


All it takes is one huge governmental fuck-up by a superpower and the world system will shake, rattle, and roll.

If there’s one thing I have a love-hate relationship with in the world of politics, its democracy or better yet, the rule of the masses. Someone will always be bloody marginalized when you have the masses ruling the world and no one really contests with this ideology. Communism tried to challenge it but ultimately communism failed and many, especially the uneducated, see communism as something “bad”. I consider this as great anti-propaganda by the democrats. I have no real qualms about democracy other than the fact that I dislike how it’s difficult to work with when you’re on the marginalized side. See, what I believe in is the rule of many without the need for one supreme being, organ, and/or institution. I don’t believe we need a leader as long as people are honest, logical, and agree that everyone wants to live so let’s all try to live together in one piece. This train of thought it, to put lightly, unconventional thus something marginalized. After reading a bit too much on David Mitrany’s functionalism, I’m quite sold on the idea that all you need to keep the world system in balance is just a series of institutions that would do the jobs the government does/tries to do. Of course, all of this thinking is considered too extreme, radical, different, and improbable given the current state of the world right now. At least up until the giant governmental fuck-up which will trigger the masses to think otherwise and say, “Hey, maybe that thought of not having a supreme leader and running on logic isn’t oh-so-bad”.

See, I find that most people don’t want to rattle the cage and change the system if they’re pretty content with how things are. No one wants a revolution when you got a handful of people content with the world as it is, and o as long as superpowers don’t cause a huge stir, then everyone sees them as awesome (or un-awesome, depending how you like your superpowers). However if a country as big a shark in the international system decides to fuck-up, say accidentally bomb China out of paranoia and cause a chain reaction of superpower fuck-ups then obviously people wouldn’t be content anymore. Hell, they’d be pissed, scared, and above all, frustrated with the system. Call in for a change because I cannot deal with my superpowers fucking up and making me all jumpy and frightened and unsettled with the world! If the superpowers fucked up enough I think it’d result to people losing their faith in the government and perhaps their countries all together.

Think about it: haven’t you ever thought that your government, whenever they committed a huge fuck-up, was incompetent and you wished someone else was running the show? Someone, anyone, regardless of nationality, ideology, sexuality, or what have you just because you wanted something better for your country? I sure as hell had a lot of those moments and I figure people would do if superpowers started becoming incompetent.

Going back, to the governments are faltering and the people are getting agitated, what happens next? This is when the NGOs come in and make their dramatic moves and entrances. Of course, I think that the most influential NGOs would’ve coordinated with one another first to plan their next course of action. The transition is always the hardest part, but once you get to cross over and take that first step things get easier. The transition that needs to be made is that of people suddenly putting their faith in global security and welfare to come from NGOs, which shouldn’t be too hard considering that the NGOs always played the good guys or the neutral not-so-cool kids in the international system. I figure the transition happens after several live broadcasts coming from the leaders of all these NGOs for a better world system and thus they advocate how they’ll not fuck-up like how the governments did.

All of this, to me, would follow functionalist logic.

Give or take several transitional years of struggle between the faltering world governments and that of the NGOs (with aid from the MNC’s, I bet), eventually the new world order would be that of a world ran by NGOs and, well at the most general and ambiguous of senses, people themselves. It sounds ludicrous if you think about the world stage now but if you imagine it in the context that the masses now don’t have faith in governments of political institutions driven by power, its attainment and its abuse, then the scenario seems fitting. NGOs would facilitate international relations, the MNCs would facilitate world trade, and people would be focused on making the world a better place with the help of at least one NGO to back up their cause.

The trick is to think of the world being run nut under one umbrella anymore but under a series of umbrellas. See, the old system had the world run by governments which are part ultimately bound to one larger umbrella which is that of the UN or international law. The new system is similar, it still understands that certain factions must handle/regulate certain things, education, health, security, etc., and there can be one for each country but each faction only runs and answers for itself and all the problems that encompass its duties responsibilities (i.e. you don’t go to a bakery and ask how much for a three-piece suit). Elections won’t be needed less it’s necessary because the leader of each faction would be the most competent, everything will be based on how good are you and how suited you are for leading and handling a certain faction, and not on some majority believes in you campaign/election glamorama image. The NGOs would be the larger factions that operate the same way factions within the domestic arena would, except project it for the entire world. And this is how I see the world dominated by the NGOs.

It’s a rather crude idea, and even I would admit that there a zillion and one things to work with but what I’m aiming for in this alternate and cool future is that by then people would know how to take care of themselves by now and learn that by this day and age, everyone just wants the same thing: to live and be happy and prosperous is their life. Why is there the need to be scared of other people if that’s the case? I figure it’s because people are afraid that people aren’t logical enough to get help legally or proficiently and resort to crude means like violence, however I digress and go back to the whole need for honesty to make the world a better place. Perhaps this new tandem of honesty mixed with pragmatism should dominate the new world system run by NGOs…perhaps.

A cultural revolution is in order, something that’ll strike the world like how Jesus and Catholicism did back in the day and all we just need is for one large global fuck-up to get the ball rolling. Hopefully by then NGOs would learn to band together and take the opportunity to change the system, and hopefully by then people would’ve grown tired enough and want said change.

Saturday 10 March 2012

Charities are like bandaids

Usually in the debate on how to "end" poverty the two arguments I often hear are the following:

SIDE A: "The less fortunate should be the ones to alleviate themselves from this problem which they go into in the first place!"
SIDE B: "We, the more fortunate, should help the less fortunate out of their poverty as it is the right thing to do!"

There are always cons to each of these arguments.


Friday 2 March 2012

Taking a few minutes to thank Globalization a bit

One of things I've learned from taking up International Studies is that, thanks to Globalization, world politics doesn't revolve around the relationships of states anymore. When people think about what's going on in the world they don't always go "So Germany did this to Poland" or "And then the United States and Canada decided to...", but rather names are now dropped and the mentions of civilians come into the fro as something substantial.

People are as important as the state now.

Monday 20 February 2012

Doing a Septillion Number of Things Per Second

Today I watched the 11th Hour during GLOBDEV class so right now I'm going to go do my obligatory reaction post about the film in order to have another post in this required blog thus fulfilling my class requirements. So let's get this ball rolling, yes?


[If anyone's wondering why I chose an OBEY poster for this reaction/blog post about 11th Hour, it's simply because thesis work tends to creep everywhere nowadays (yes, my thesis involves looking at OBEY posters, jealous yet?).]

Sunday 29 January 2012

Oh my Gramsci!

Antonio Gramsci.

If that name is not familiar, then you better clear out your brain because I'm going to give a bit of my two cents on this bad-ass Marxist-influenced philosopher/International Relations theorist. It would totally help if you read this with the voice in your head is narrating all epic like with some suave voice because it would really help enhance the experience. For the next few paragraphs I will now attempt to do the following:

  1. Inform you who Antonio Gramsci is
  2. Give you a damn good reason why you should give a damn
Without further ado, here's Gramsci,

Look at this suave motherfucker right here.