Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh
Greetings of Peace to all of us
Salom
Namo Buddhaya
Om Swastiastu

It is with tremendous pleasure and happiness that I stand here and speak to you, delegates of the members of the Progressive Alliance, and delegates of political parties as well as those from labor parties and organizations. Welcome to the Gods Island. This moment reminds me to a historical event which also attended by several countries and initiated by Indonesia, the Asian African Conference. The spirit and soul of the conference has become milestone for the establishment of countries in the Asian, African, and Latin America regions. Dasa Sila Bandung has incinerated the birth of nation movements, to have mutual relationship in order to fight for their freedom and independence who have been under the claw of colonialism and imperialism. For me, this is the most important example in our human kind history, how collective awareness and also solidarity have been overstep the boundaries of countries, they became a positive strength of independence, which therefore was continued by the first Non-bloc Summit Conference in Belgrade/Beograd in 1961. I was present as the youngest delegate, at that time I was 14 years old.

What remained in my memory, and even became an aspiration/dream that I could not erase from my soul and thought is the establishing of a strong brotherhood among countries, an emotional bonding of nations, and eventually a cooperation between countries.  It was certainly extraordinary, that at the time the world’s political condition was crystallized into two huge blocs, the eastern bloc and the western bloc ,  a new hope emerged from and was spearheaded by a handful of  leaders of very young countries.

Clearly and distinctly they said “we non-blocs, we do not side with any bloc”. That movement was based by a spirit of effacing the practice of “exploitation de l’homme par l’homme, exploitation de nation par nation”.

It is an honour for the Building and Woodworkers’ International or BWI, to address this very important gathering of political parties, trade unions, progressive institutions, and other social movements to discuss decent work and migration.

BWI is a global union federation covering building-construction, building materials, and wood and forestry sectors.

We represent 12-million members in almost 130 countries and they are organised under 326 national trade unions – and some of them are members of your political parties.

Construction workers are the poster people of what is wrong with labour migration. Therefore BWI operates in 3 tracks to achieve our strategic objectives: ORGANISING, to build our constituency and organisational power; NEGOTIATING, to make binding agreements to enhance the terms and conditions of workers and their families; and INFLUENCING, to make changes in policies and legislations at the global, regional and national levels.

View Full PDF - Keynote Speech, Tos Anonuevo BWI

In the previous century, a general belief in the optimality of nuclear technology (as a source of power generation) and deep anxieties over energy security (in light of precarious fluctuations in hydrocarbon-supply) encouraged many countries to aggressively invest in and pursue nuclear option. Shortly after U.S.’ President Eisenhower ‘Atom for Peace’ speech (1953), marking the beginning of a global nuclear era, major countries embraced the technology as a supposedly reliable, safe, and clean source of energy -- a trend that was followed across the developing world as well as a number of communist countries in Europe and Asia. The ‘oil shocks’ in the 1970s and the 1980s further raised concerns over the stability and predictability of the global supply of oil, which, in turn, reinforced the imperative, at least in the minds of the leaders at the time, to rely on supposedly sound source of energy, i.e. nuclear technology – despite all its negative association with weapons of mass destruction and military adventurism. As a result, there was an element of ‘nuclear renaissance’ in the late-1970s and 1980s, with 233 reactors under construction globally and 50 in the U.S. alone in that specific period.