INFOwars - Philippines

GNN Herman Laurel with Homobono Adaza - OSAMA OBAMA

2011-06-04T13:12:00.000+08:00

HTL GNN w/Dr. Roger Posadas on Thorium Reactor, the Alternative Nuke PT 1

2011-04-13T19:21:00.000+08:00

HTL GNN w/Dr. Roger Posadas on Thorium Reactor, the Alternative Nuke pt 2

2011-04-13T19:19:00.002+08:00

Herman Laurel on ARMM Hocus PCOS part 1

2011-04-05T11:19:00.001+08:00

Herman Laurel on ARMM Hocus PCOS part 2

2011-04-05T11:17:00.001+08:00

Herman Laurel Talk News TV - Cuba & Venezuela on Libya pt 1

2011-03-20T17:00:00.001+08:00

Herman Laurel Talk News TV - Cuba & Venezuela on Libya pt 2

2011-03-20T16:58:00.002+08:00

HTL GNN Sorry Yellow part 1

2011-03-08T21:51:00.001+08:00

HTL GNN Sorry Yellow part 2

2011-03-08T21:46:00.001+08:00

HTL GNN Sorry Yellow part 3

2011-03-08T21:44:00.001+08:00

HTL GNN & Alan Paguia on the Death of Angelo Reyes pt 1

2011-02-27T21:17:00.000+08:00

HTL GNN & Alan Paguia on the Death of Angelo Reyes pt 2

2011-02-27T21:15:00.000+08:00

HTL GNN & Alan Paguia on the Death of Angelo Reyes pt 3

2011-02-27T21:14:00.000+08:00

HTL GNN & Alan Paguia on the Death of Angelo Reyes pt 4

2011-02-27T21:11:00.000+08:00

HTL GNN & Alan Paguia on the Death of Angelo Reyes pt 5

2011-02-27T21:04:00.002+08:00

The art of the perfect rubout

2011-02-07T11:29:00.000+08:00

The testimony of one police officer pinning down the principal accused of one of the primary victims’ families (the Dacers) has been debunked by a second round of judicial determination by the Court of Appeals’ Sixth Division — a body that some lawyers say has a very checkered reputation.

That division’s judgment was based on its claimed “contradictions” in police officer Cezar Mancao’s testimony, despite the prosecution’s assertion that his initial statements were committed under duress while the final ones were freely and, therefore, truthfully executed. After considering from a layman’s point of view the arguments of both sides, I believe that the court was within bounds to have made that judgment.

Reconsideration and elevation to higher courts by the prosecution will certainly be in the offing; but it’s beginning to look like this murder mystery may just end as a cold case. After all, the defense will simply raise the issue of corpus delicti, which, in the now perfected art of the rubout, will probably never be produced at all.

Some fear that if Lacson is acquitted, the focus of attention will shift to President Joseph Estrada. For a while, I had this concern, too, knowing the many elements that have consistently and indefatigably subjected the former President to character assassination. This is especially true in light of the many US operatives who haven’t forgotten the slight to their country’s hegemony by Estrada’s campaign against US military bases, as well as his rejection of former President Clinton’s demand for a stop to his government’s determined moves against MILF and Abu Sayyaf operations in Mindanao.

For sure, the public mind is one that’s never comfortable with any vacuum. Once left with a Lacson acquittal, it will seek other personages to fill that void. But I have a No. 1 suspect. Not only is he well-connected to police and military assets, but a key piece of information that no one else wants to touch, the revelation of Fr. Baldostamon as told through Bishop Teodoro Bacani’s columns years ago, still rings loud.

Admittedly, the last remaining element that could be used against President Estrada in the Dacer-Corbito double-murder is Michael Ray Aquino. A theory being bruited about says that some forces may be dangling before Michael Ray a possible release from his iron-clad US prison cell for a return to the very slack justice system in the Philippines — provided that he points to Estrada as having given the direct orders.

This is a theory that Lacson himself insinuated in his speeches at the Senate to divert attention from himself at the height of the Dacers’ legal offensives. Lacson’s problem is that few, if any, believe him. To make matters worse, he (of the “Be Not Afraid” fame) eventually absconded, took flight, and gave the impression that he is indeed guilty.

Lacson’s few remaining supporters argue that the senator faced real mortal threat if he chose not go underground. For a while there, Lacson’s fear seemed justified, especially when the specter of his sworn enemies, Gloria and Mike Arroyo (who reportedly spent huge sums to build the case against him), still loomed large.

But what else can the public make today of his continued refusal to submit to the law when there now sits a more Lacson-friendly government? And this, despite repeated assurances from his colleagues, such as Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile, of his protection under the Senate’s ambit.

Some say that Lacson was just buying time to “settle matters” with the courts. If this is to be believed, then he was clearly successful. But it will take a whole lot more to erase that impression of guilt, if it can be done at all.

Obviously, I am not ready to swallow that latest court decision. I prefer to keep the public wary of the potential of rogue cops who have perfected the art of the rubout and of other rogue police networks continuing to make their pile, exacting revenge, or creating politically-turbulent situations.

The recent murder-cremation of the car dealers is an example. After seeing the illogical pieces of the puzzle — from an inexplicable motive to the apparent burning of vehicles to remove evidence while leaving behind a trail of IDs and the quick link to an identifiable suspect — don’t these all smack of a rogue operation that’s intended to distract and destabilize for a multitude of reasons?

I also prefer to keep the public wary of hoodlums in robes as we’ve had enough of them in the past year alone. All these wouldn’t have been as evident if Lacson never took flight; now we are better informed.

The Michael Ray Aquino threat I have brought up may just be a phantasmagoric fear. After all, it would be his word against the others. Further, admitting to be the most guilty is neither going to be likely nor necessary for him, as dentures can be replicated. So far, it still seems to be a “perfect crime” as there is no corpus delicti. With acid being the preferred “eraser,” the blank space can be easily sketched upon by rogue cops and courts.

Meanwhile, let’s go to the vital issue of the day: Mang Naro Lualhati and lawyer Mel “Batas” Maurico are presenting their opposition to the P92-billion Performance Based Rate (PBR) pricing scheme of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) at the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) later at 2 p.m. We are mobilizing to present as many consumers at the Pacific Center Bldg., San Miguel Ave., Pasig City in support of their petition — this as Meralco sends lawyers to prop up the ERC commissioners. Please join us. Text me at 0917-8658664 on how to join.

‘Competitiveness,’ GDP and other BS

2011-01-24T11:31:00.000+08:00

Charter change (Cha-cha) proponents are foisting their battle cry of economic “competitiveness” to hoodwink our people into letting down their guard like a boxer lowering his arms. This BS has prevailed in the country for the last 25 years ever since the Yellow fever took hold, with the Makati Business Club behind it. Just look at how much clobbering the Philippine economy and population has taken--beaten to a pulp, in the ICU--while countries which kept up their guard such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, India et al. have not only kept up their sparring form but have taken crown after crown in the ascending economic weight divisions.

Like the Philippines , the US is now being beaten to the canvass by the likes of China because, in its bigness, it led down its guard as China did the famous Ali “rope-a-dope.” So who’s the dope now?

This is what economist Paul Krugman had to say when Obama, in a crucial address, dwelt on the matter: “Sigh. So it appears that President Obama is going to make ‘competitiveness’ his main economic theme… But this is hackneyed stuff, and involves a fundamental misconception about the nature of our economic problems. It’s OK to talk about competitiveness when you’re specifically asking whether a country’s exports and import-competing industries have low enough costs to sell stuff in competition with rivals in other countries… But the idea that broader economic performance is about being better than other countries at something or other--that a country is like a corporation--is just wrong… As Robert Reich says, this could all too easily turn into a validation of the claim that what’s good for corporations is good for America , which is even less true now than it used to be.”

Last week we focused on the incontrovertible fact that the Philippines is fully equipped to achieve success in its national economic recovery aspirations, particularly in the availability of domestic capital, as the idle P1.22-trillion Special Deposit Account managed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas shows. Hiro Vaswani, forensic finance process consultant and research chief of KME (Kilusan para sa Makabansang Ekonomiya), pointed this out--something that we shared in our last column. Well, Hiro just sent us another e-mail on the subject of competitiveness and the Cha-cha:

“Maintaining nationalist (partial bars to foreign ownership) provisions in the Constitution in some sectors of the economy and qualified restrictions of land ownership for foreigners is not a bar to economic development. The present 1987 Constitution in many ways calls for a developmental state model that has not been clearly established by the government itself. The calls for changes to the Constitution, in the alleged face of the emergence of a borderless economy, are stupid and insane at best. Firstly, countries do not and cannot compete like corporations. Countries do not have a bottom line that, if not achieved, they die like corporations. Furthermore, the recent financial crisis has already put the lie to the ideas of this so-called borderless world economy led by the more developed economies of the world.

“Countries all over the world today are putting in place domestic policy measures to grow their domestic economies. Amongst the emerging market economies, strong state developmental policy paradigms are driving their economic development. The problem in the Philippines remains with the policy of importing demand (i.e. export market dependence) deeply imbedded in the Filipino psyche. The economist Simon Kuznets who is credited with the creation of national income accounts (such as GDP or Gross Domestic Product) warned the government then that this measurement does not measure the general welfare of the people in the country. He further warned that there will be a huge disparity in income with developing economies as they transition from agrarian economies… (which) can only be avoided if an industrialization process happens…

“Figures from the government today reveal that income from deployed foreign employment is greater than domestic employment. The so-called ‘employed,’ consisting of self-employed and unpaid family workers, comprise the bulk of the true unemployed in the country (30 percent to 40 percent).”

Simply put, competition as an exemplar only emerged from “corporate economics,” along with its myth of the “private sector”-led growth. Of this Vaswani says: “An economic system that depends on individual selfishness and greed without qualifications will always lead to perverse incentives. Lying, cheating and corruption in both public and private sectors become institutionalized. Individual and familial interests prevail over a non-existing national psyche. Economic systems are morally neutral. This is where politics come in. Any student of political economy knows that the material base will greatly influence the political structure. It is in the rational self interest of a poor man to sell his vote for lugaw to survive the day…

“Economic history has proven that the selfish motive of man to create a better life for himself with ever decreasing levels of effort was directed by men who established state institutions to direct this effort over the last three centuries with resounding success.

“These state institutions are still mainly national in character. The idea of competitiveness in a borderless economy is a utopian dream of nuts and carpetbaggers. Taking it in hook, line and sinker has created a dystopian situation in the country.”

So let’s cut the BS and get back to the National Development Economics paradigm. Let’s all junk the GDP mantra and replace it with a National Development Index of human, ecological, industrial and sovereign growth!

People's Court for Aquinorroyo

2010-12-10T11:46:00.000+08:00

Unlike mainstream newspapers and apparently everybody else, I am not at all impressed by the Supreme Court (SC)’s junking of the Truth Commission or by the PeNoy administration’s avowals to continue the prosecution of crimes against the people committed under the Arroyo regime. I have always seen Arroyo and Aquino III as part and parcel of a continuum of the system ruled by Western neo-colonial powers in partnership with the local ruling class of oligarchs and corrupt politicians. The conflicts among establishment political parties and personalities are more distractive illusions or moro-moro and zarzuela than real antagonisms.

How can they really be antagonistic when they are all the same, except for the brief period of genuine candor under President Joseph Estrada? Cory, FVR, GMA and PeNoy merely sustain the plutocracy that carry on the exploitation of the people for the benefit of the exploiting class.

Buried beneath the hullabaloo over the Truth Commission fiasco now confirmed by the majority decision of the SC are the real crucial issues of the nation, such as the government’s increasing of the wholesale price of NFA (National Food Authority) rice from P23.50 to P25 per kilogram while retail prices have been increased from P25 to P27 per kilo last Dec. 7, which the NFA claims is aimed at “ensuring the viability of the agency.”

If I understand this logic right, the NFA is raising its price not for the direct benefit of the rice farmers but for sustaining the agency which clearly would be good for its personnel, particularly those recently appointed. Yet it remains to be seen whether this would be any good for the farmers and for rice production in the country at all. This is the solution the new government found to plug the budgetary hole when PeNoy’s Cabinet cut the NFA’s funding. What PeNoy has taken away will be replaced by what they now will take from the people’s pockets.

This price increase comes at a time when incomes are stagnant and real unemployment — not to mention underemployment — continues to soar at the highest levels, i.e. between 40 and 60 percent, when one counts unpaid family-based labor in or out of the employed sector. The NFA rice price increase is but one of the many other increases in basic commodities and services the government is poised to approve.

Power rates have continued to rise with the continuing implementation of the PBR (Performance Based Rate) scheme, wherein power companies target profit and alleged performance levels which the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approves to allow the collection of those rates in advance — clearly an unconstitutional system being challenged by anti-power plunder consumer groups before the SC. Aside from this, water rates continue to rise as well in the face of declining foreign exchange burdens for these privatized utility companies.

We can go on with the expanding list of cost burdens the government is passing on to the shoulders of the people, such as the South and North Luzon toll fees, as well as that of the SCTex; same with the MRT and LRT rates, all of which the government is just waiting for some opportune time to raise.

Even this short list already presents tremendous financial dislocation for our people — the masa as well as the middle classes. The aggravation of the political moro-moros and zarzuelas for the Aquinorroyo clowns is essential for the ruling class to continue distracting the people from the real issues. These are simultaneously critical for PeNoy’s ConGroup to lay the blame on the past regime while they continue to implement the same conditional cash transfer program initiated under Gloria Arroyo; the same BOT scheme now renamed as public-private partnership projects; as well as another round of increase in the eVAT from 12 to 15 percent.

The SC’s junking of the Truth Commission (TC) exposes the complete paucity of the moral and constitutional integrity of its chief, Hilario Davide, as well as the other retired justices who joined it, for accepting their posts in a constitutionally infirmed body created by incompetent legal minds of the Chief Executive’s office.

They show themselves as no better than the amateurs in Malacañang today, and raise the question of their competence when they were not yet retired from the high court. “Sabagay,” a voice echoed, “the people never had any doubt about the lack of integrity and competence of Davide whose appointment to head the TC crippled its credibility from the very start.”

If these former justices had any dignity, they would have committed seppuku already. The collapse of the TC now sets off multiple football scenarios — an appeal to the SC and a clamor for the Department of Justice to initiate prosecution, which brings the ball to the Ombudsman where Arroyo has another goalie guarding her rear. It’s really a circus.

If the ruling class and its minions in the political sphere were serious in pursuing the crimes committed under the nine-and-a-half years of Gloria Arroyo’s tyranny, they would have set up a special court with impartial and dedicated judges. But can we expect any sense of justice from them especially with the way they persecuted their nemesis President Erap, whose only crime was to oppose the exploitation they wanted him to bless with presidential approval?

Alas, the ruling class and the system it runs will never want a serious inquiry and exposé of the crimes committed under the Arroyo regime for it will expose them too.

The whole truth will have to wait until a genuine people’s revolution (hopefully a peaceful one) establishes a truly democratic government and a People’s Court to expose the complete historical truth and pursue the multitude of particular crimes to mete out justice with finality.

P6.5-B ghost surplus

2010-12-06T11:48:00.000+08:00

The elections of 2010 brought out one of the most unique transitions in the annals of Philippine local government history. The old regime in Quezon City (QC) turned over its reins to its anointed mayor, vice-mayor, and team of officials. Whereas in the past, the new, incoming local government, especially if from the opposition, usually discovered “ghost projects” stemming from the looting of local government coffers left behind by the past administration, such was not the case in QC — or so it seemed.

That should have been very good news to everyone concerned. Many, in fact, expected him to have a splendid time fulfilling his campaign promises, especially since his predecessor was said to have left a budget surplus of P6.6 billion!

But poor little new mayor of QC: He suddenly realized that he won’t have a chance to be such a spectacular mayor after all. With his city’s coffers actually running empty, how on earth can he deliver on all his campaign promises? How could this have happened when QC is RP’s richest city, with a budget well over P9.5 billion that surpasses even that of Makati? And if there had been that surplus kept intact, where did it go?

Much to his consternation, the new mayor found that he was not going to have that claimed P6.5-billion inherited from his predecessor after all. Worse, he could not even talk about it nor explain to the public why he can’t do anything at all because the previous mayor is his mentor and his vice-mayor is the previous mayor’s daughter. He knows that he’d commit political suicide when he comes out with this in the open.

The significance of this revelation about the ghost QC budget surplus is far greater than the importance of the city itself, which neither has the business significance of Makati nor the political significance of Manila. It lies in the fact that the previous mayor of Quezon City represents a far greater political culture and clout than just local city politics because that previous mayor is now the Speaker of the House; and among the wards he trained and employed in his city administration is now Executive secretary in Malacañang.

Lurking in the shadows of this chief factotum of the Chief Executive is a coterie of Rasputins of the former QC mayor, such as the one whom more than a decade ago served the most unpopular Chief Executive then (beaten only by Gloria Arroyo), Fidel Ramos.

This coterie of Rasputins include the draftsman turned public housing developer nurtured by the former mayor when he was head of the premier public pension organization of the country. This housing estate developer dummy figured in the recent urban settlers demolition and relocation project in QC, which was reportedly due to the failure of this housing developer’s relocation site preparations that was 80 percent short of his promised delivery.

But since he’s a relative of the ward of the former mayor who is now Secretary No.1 of you-know-who, there has been no sanction for this failure. The National Housing Authority has been left to hold the bag. But this latest failure of this team of the former QC mayor is no longer new as it has been the greatest sandal of the city in the past 10 years — so much so that despite its almost P10-billion annual budget, Quezon City remains the largest squatter city in the country.

How is it that a grandly ballyhooed P6.6-billion surplus, supposedly accumulated by the previous mayor over nearly a decade of “superb” management, turned out to be a complete hoax and nobody was the wiser all that time?

This speaks of the link between media ownership and politicians in the country, as the mayor in question owns (or used to own) one of the mainstream newspapers and commands serious leverage in the community of journalists and journalism. That newspaper, founded by the former mayor’s late wife, was used to propel the Yellow movement, as well as the former mayor, into power. That newspaper gave this former QC mayor starring role in the Yellow movement that has dominated Philippine politics for two decades and a half and running. The Yellows’ gratitude is such that they named a street and an LRT station after his deceased wife.

This coterie of shadowy figures is now the real powerhouse in the present government. They have their tentacles not only in the House but all the way inside Malacañang as well as in Quezon City Hall itself. Moreover, they continue to control the quiet real estate scams that transfer QC properties to private titles.

The former QC mayor, meanwhile, assumes a greater political role today as the “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” i.e. the channel between Gloria Arroyo and Aquino III, as he ensures the smooth continuity of policies between the two, such as the Conditional Cash Transfer and Public-Private Partnership projects (previously known as BOTs), the unbroken protection of the oligarchs in the privatized public utilities, namely, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, Meralco, Manila Water, Maynilad, Energy Development Corp., AboitizPower, ad nausea.

Will the ghosts of Christmas ever really come to save the Philippines?

Abetting treason and corruption

2010-12-03T11:50:00.000+08:00

The House finally approved the amnesty bill for the military protestors who are better tagged as “conscientious objectors” rather than “mutineers.” This brings the nation closer to an act that is long overdue: A recognition of the protest actions of the Bagong Katipuneros (a.k.a. Magdalos) led by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Para sa Bayan (PsB) of Gen. Danilo Lim as just and courageous.

These soldiers are finally getting the justice they deserve even as the truly guilt-riddled Gloria Arroyo generals such as Reyes, Esperon, Ebdane, Mendoza, Espinosa, et al. remain scot-free for their gang rape of the Constitution in 2001 and their continuing transgressions thereafter, including the 2004 “Hello Garci” episode and their rape of the national coffers by partaking in the feeding frenzy throughout nine-and-a-half years of Arroyo’s misrule.

Instead of helping and supporting these conscientious and patriotic soldiers, a mainstream newspaper has joined the ranks of some Joker Arroyo factotums in Congress, i.e. Edcel Lagman and company, to demand an apology as condition for the amnesty.

But amnesty, as distinguished from a pardon, has never required an admission of anything. Even as the latter can only be granted after a conviction, the former is unconditional and erases whatever charges there are. Every lawyer worth his salt confirms this — most notably Alan Paguia, who backs up competence with proven integrity. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, probably the only Cabinet member who enjoys some degree of credibility, has likewise buttressed this position.

The fact is, this grant of amnesty, albeit political, is a recognition of the overwhelmingly moral justification for what Sen. Sonny Trillanes, Gen. Danny Lim, and their men did as part of their bounden duty as citizens — and even greater responsibility as “soldiers of the people” — to defend our nation from the treason committed by the corrupt and rapacious usurpers in government.

The people had already twice “amnestied” these patriotic soldiers: First in the electoral victory of Senator Trillanes in 2007 and secondly in the most recent elections where Gen. Danilo Lim obtained a sizeable number of votes but obstructed from actual victory by the “Hocus PCOS.” All that was lacking was a formal amnesty by the “institutional” authorities that the military, police and government organizations recognized.

The Inquirer, hewing to the line of those factotums, issued an editorial on Nov. 24, 2010, saying: “We wonder if he (Gen. Danilo Lim) is aware of the irony of it all. The protector-of-the-people provision was one of those post-Marcos innovations in the Constitution, designed precisely to prevent the use of the Armed Forces for political or partisan purposes. Lim joined the service at a time when the AFP had been completely corrupted by Marcos, when officer and men, like Lim himself, thought it was only natural for them to take an active part both in government and in business. The new provision was designed to help reorient the thinking of the military, to remove them from the exercise of political power and to demilitarize the political culture. Now, Lim cites this very provision as his justification for attempting to seize political control.”

But what supreme irony! The Inquirer conveniently omits the fact that it was that very same provision used by the Edsa II coup plotters to oust a popular and duly-elected president, a historic transgression which that leading Yellow army paper had stoked, supported and reveled at.

The leading role of the military generals in the Edsa II coup was openly boasted, as Gloria Arroyo was caught on video acknowledging the generals involved, from Espinosa, Mendoza, to Ebdane and many others, one by one. Then, there’s that infamous statement from Angelo Reyes, confirmed by witnesses, who told the busload of generals he waylaid to the Edsa shrine: “Gentlemen, we are committing treason.” The SYM (Sorry Yellow Movement) confirms all these.

Unlike the Yellows and the Arroyo generals, Trillanes and Lim never went against any legitimate government. And in Gloria’s case, her regime was not only an illegitimate government twice over but one that was horrendously corrupt and had gravely impoverished the nation. Trillanes, et al. raised the issue of corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that opened a Pandora’s box of cases, including Gen. Carlos Garcia’s multi-hundred million scams.

The Magdalos focused our attention on the plight of officers and men who died in the frontlines for lack of communication as well as medical equipment and supplies while higher officers diverted funds to graft and arms to insurgents who could pay for them. The indignation of the idealistic Magdalo and Para sa Bayan soldiers grew even more after the miscarriage of the 2004 elections which Arroyo generals Esperon, et al. stole in broad daylight for their principal.

The Inquirer harps that Lim “subverts the fundamental principle of civilian supremacy over the military… effectively trains the guns the people have provided the military, not on enemies of society, but on the people themselves… Not least, it gives unelected men and women like Lim the right to intervene.”

Yet the unelected and unelectable elite participated in 2001 with their treasonous and corrupt AFP generals to subvert the will of the people that saw the overwhelming victory of President Joseph Estrada in 1998.

In May 2001 at the gates of Malacañang, unarmed Edsa III protesters were fired at in defense of the illegal (and Yellow) Arroyo regime, bloodying and killing dozens. The SYM has already said mea culpas for these. But the Inquirer, instead of showing integrity by apologizing, still attempts to coddle the treasonous and corrupt by perpetuating the lies.

The nation and the SYM

2010-11-29T11:58:00.000+08:00

I received this text a few days ago: “Gud pm, Ka Mentong, r u aware of d SYM goin on? TY.” The text came from an old-time Edsa III Kabansang Leth (or compatriot Leth, as we call each other in the movement). I really wasn’t familiar with what SYM stood for. It was the first time I encountered it.

When Leth texted again with “Sorry Yellow Movement,” it was then that I recognized the words that I have long been hearing the past few months from many former loyal Yellow stalwarts who have finally given up believing that the Yellow legacy holds any remaining promise of change and hope for its believers and the broad masses of the people.

I discussed this on the latest episode of our radio show and I said that I had been “Sorry Yellow” long, long before — ever since the last few years of the Cory Aquino administration.

The newcomers to this “Sorry Yellow” tribe are therefore more than welcome. They can in fact be a “boon” to the nation and a tremendous help in freeing the minds of the remaining wayward souls aboard the Yellow train. After nearly 25 years of domination in the Philippine scene, the Yellow era in our politics and governance has failed miserably — nay, criminally — to bring its promise of democracy, economic development, and prosperity.

Instead, what it has given is reinforced neo-colonial chains by the plutocrats who pull the strings on corrupted national and local, election, judicial, security, defense, and other officials in a sham, make-believe democracy that nurtures and entrenches an army of career sycophants all the way to the top, so long as they pay homage to the US Ambassador, sing paeans to “foreign investors,” and genuflect before “globalization” and “privatization.”

A historical perspective to the “color revolutions” is useful at this stage. I have said that the Philippines is the political-economic laboratory of American imperialism. The US has time and again shown that it exercises in-depth mind and political control over this country very successfully.

My first impression of RP being a testing ground for US imperialist programs came from a study of the Philippines’ transition from the “Filipino First Policy” under President Carlos P. Garcia to the “decontrol” period of Diosdado Macapagal — a process imposed by the earliest “structural adjustment” programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which included liberalization of foreign exchange and trade controls.

In the decades that followed, “structural adjustments” became a byword in IMF-Third World relations (which is now being imposed on European countries). Also, the “Yellow Revolution” was soon followed by the “Rose” and “ Orange ” revolutions in former Eastern Bloc countries similarly destabilized by the US.

In all, crucial ideas forming the ideology of a nation’s sovereign governance changed with these color revolutions. The downgrading of the state (with its government) and the rise of the corporatocracy by the transfer of public assets to private transnational and local conglomerates (through privatization) placed the real power shift to the plutocrats.

The downgrading of productive industries also resulted as the economy was “financialized,” with the ascendancy of “shareholder value” and “capital markets” that create the “virtual” economy of financial and stock market speculation by the likes of George Soros, Warren Buffet, and the infamous Ponzi man Bernie Madoff.

All these as local oligarchs feed their respective nations to these speculators via the “debt sentence” amid booming stock markets in bankrupt economies marked by “jobless growth.” The net effect: The killing of the real, physically productive economy, with GDP and GNP indicators replacing genuine “development” in such areas as health and education.

The “Sorry Yellow Movement” must rise above personality politics and the prevailing materialistic culture into a higher plane of thinking where a moral and spiritual vision for a better country and a better life for all Filipinos and all nations is upheld. But this must also be grounded on historical empiricism, i.e. knowledge from evidence-based experience, against the quasi-occultism of the Ghost of Edsa Shrine historiography and Yellow necromancy around the death masks of its idols.

What is the better model of development in real terms (i.e. long-term vs flash in the pan), the balanced political-economy of Singapore and Malaysia as well as China ’s social-market and market-socialist system, or the ultra-capitalist system exemplified by the US? After 25- and 50-year cycles, the consistent developmental economics of China et al. outperforms the boom and bust-driven US system.

The chromatic symbolism of the Philippines must return to the multi-colors of the flag that evolved from the Katipunan’s sun and black or red background to the multi-colors of the flag of the First Republic representing the true nation-state republic that Apolinario Mabini and the other founding heroes envisioned. The yellow of royalty, theocratic power, and privilege — not to mention, cowardice — must be thrown into the dustbin of history where it belongs. The Republic represents the people; and as it is a government of, for, and by the people, it should stay that way.

The “Sorry Yellow Movement” must begin to understand these before it becomes, as some have already declared, the even sorrier “Very Sorry Yellow Movement.” And while they say goodbye to their old ways, we from the genuine mainstream of the nation of Filipinos — patriots by natural law — say “hello” to welcome them back to the fold.

Truth, the first casualty of war

2010-11-26T11:59:00.000+08:00

"The first casualty of war — Truth.”

At any point in history, wars are being waged on a daily basis on one level or another. This week in the Philippine and world stage, several exchanges of fire and eruptions of abnormally high intensity conflict have been reported by both the local and international media and, as expected, have led to tremendous distortion and disinformation.

As the North and South Korea conflict literally exploded just days ago, most of Western and Philippine media pinned the blame perfunctorily on “Stalinist” and “provocative” North Korea, when the fact is, South Korea fired the first artillery shot.

As an Associated Press (AP) report noted: “The skirmish began when Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills in the area, according to South Korean officials. When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters, albeit away from the North Korean shore, the North retaliated by bombarding the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations...”

North Korea has been accused as “provocative” and “aggressive,” as well as an “agitator” in this exchange of artillery fire. But the AP report objectively revealed that it was South Korea’s military forces that made the provocation.

This bolsters the conviction of some analysts that it is one of the US’ attempts to start a much needed war in this region to revive its economy, in line with US military-political think tank RAND Corp.’s proposal of two years now.

It is important for the Filipino nation to be informed of the facts underlying this build-up of tension in the Korean peninsula. Our countrymen shouldn’t be victimized by war-mongering Western propaganda which seeks to draw the Philippines into “their” wars. By setting the record straight, we are reminding the Filipino people that there is never any positive payback for being sucked into conflicts or wars designed for other countries’ interests.

The lesson from the WWll for the Philippines is there for all to recall: Manila became the second most devastated city in the world when General MacArthur decided to use it as a center stage for his own glorification.

The American and Western economies are now in shambles, so their ruling classes desperately need to create wars (while profiteering at the same time) to distract attention from their domestic crises and their own culpability for these.

In the Philippines, the wars of the social classes continue: The ruling class, represented by the Yellow political regime and its variations (including the Liberal, Lakas, Kampi and Nacionalista parties, the Aquinorroyo leftists and civil society, such as Etta Rosales, Karina David, et al., plus the oligarchs, ad nauseum) is constantly pitted against the people.

This week, Pag-IBIG, HUDCC, NHA and other government home financing borrowers are rising up to oppose their eviction from homes which they have been amortizing for over a decade but have had difficulty keeping up with due to loss of employment, shrinking purchasing power (with the lion’s share gobbled up by power and water overcharging), and the oppressive financial policies of financing agencies raring to turn these homes over to foreign mortgage buyers such as Deutsche Bank. And this is something that mainstream media won’t be carrying in their news.

Rising political alternatives to the dominant Yellow regimes continue to be suppressed, as with the unjust detention of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV who embodies the hopes of millions of Filipinos. The Aquino III administration may be going through the motions of responding to the cries for justice and the early release of Trillanes, but its moves in sync with like-minded Yellow elements are making a joke of this. Make no mistake: Joker Arroyo is Yellow to the core and he opposes the amnesty for our patriotic and idealistic soldiers who stood against the Gloria Arroyo regime only to mask his own complicity in one of the darkest periods of Philippines history and an era of untold suffering for the Filipino masses.

As Joker tries to put up more legal obstacles in this Palace show, suspended lawyer Alan Paguia says: Amnesty is an unconditional, political act; it does not require any admission of guilt, and requires no apology (and certainly not to Gloria as the Joker demands).

Joker Arroyo is, among other things, a legislative enforcer of the ruling class. He gave away Meralco without any compensation to what the public paid for when the state expanded its franchise coverage by four times, and allowed the electricity consumers’ payments to pay for what the Lopezes owed the government for getting it.

It is even said that when those blessings were being bestowed, Joker’s most beloved was working as a lawyer for the other party, constantly whispering into the ears of one who would decades later utter the empty phrase, “Kung Bad Ka, Lagot Ka.”

Joker complains about Trillanes’ “mutiny” against a clearly corrupt regime, but wasn’t his Edsa I made possible by the mutiny of a segment of the military against Marcos for a shallower reason — the rivalry between Generals Ver and Ramos? The truth is indeed the first casualty of war, and more so in an information war.

PeNoy, Gloria, et al. — all one family

2010-08-13T15:54:00.000+08:00

At the gathering for Sen. Sonny Trillanes’ birthday at Camp Crame last Aug. 7, I predicted the “rehabilitation” of Gloria Arroyo within a year or two. I was with Dodong and Princess Nemenzo, NGO leader Manjette, lawyer Argee Guevarra, Oliver Felix (of our guerilla radio Sulo group), and Linggoy Alcuaz at that time. The Nemenzos found this both funny and appalling, as they laughed, doubted and lamented at the same time. Someone interjected: “Sa bagay, the Marcoses are rehabilitated.” To which I hurriedly added that “at least Marcos had the right nation-building program,” unlike Arroyo’s which people believe was pure kleptocracy.

The truth of my prediction is already being seen on radio and in Congress today, as Teddy Boy Locsin glorifies Gloria’s non-imposition of the Value added tax (VAT) on toll ways while the likes of Rep. Neptali Gonzales Jr. shield her from Rep. Walden Bello’s righteous condemnation.

Gloria Arroyo will be “rehabilitated” under the present system because the system itself is corruption incarnate, in which Arroyo is just one of its children. The other children of the corrupt system will naturally come to her rescue, as sure as Speaker Sonny Belmonte will always be by Gloria’s side to escort the one who has been tagged by many youth activists as “President Evil.” But really, she can only be as evil as the system is.

Belmonte, meanwhile, is said to personify the institutionalization of corruption in Quezon City, the alleged basis of which is that he raised the corruption incarnate “pork barrel” and other fund prerogatives of the Office of the Mayor and all councilors to unprecedented amounts (P2 billion for the mayor, P42 million each for councilors). On the other hand, Lakas to Liberal Party turncoat Neptali Gonzales Jr. has been the alternating partner of Mayor BenHur Abalos in the exploitation of Mandaluyong, the latter being the heir apparent to Ben Abalos’ NBN-ZTE “borger” fortune.

Gonzales invokes “parliamentary courtesy” to shield Arroyo. Coming from a most vulgar Congress, it is truly laughable. They are all claimed to be part of the alleged corrupt family of political degenerates running the country. Walden Belo’s party-list group Akbayan may not be much different, maybe just a bit more ethical by some degree. His party-list matriarch Etta Rosales isn’t exactly a paragon of any virtue, having been a chief lackey of Gloria Arroyo during the 2004 illegal proclamation of the “Hello Garci” president. Rosales will be rewarded by the new Gloria Arroyo, i.e. Noynoy “PeNoy” Aquino, with an appointment to the Commission on Human Rights — to carry on the charade of human rights in an essentially plutocratic, oppressive and exploitative corporatocracy.

Already, PeNoy has proposed to raise the “pork” of senators and congressmen for 2011, from P6.9 billion this year to P22.3 billion next (a whopping 223.18 percent or P15 billion increase). This seems incredible since PeNoy campaigned on the promise of “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap,” but PeNoy’s Budget Secretary Butch Abad was quoted on it. In fact, one report stated, “Even as the PDAF allocation was increased, the government proposed a reduction of subsidy programs… amid the state’s cash flow problems.”

Those subsidies include those earmarked for the National Food Authority rice purchase. So are they saying that there will be no subsidy for farmers but increased “pork” subsidy for politicians? Everyone knows just how “pork” is the mother of all corrupt funds that politicians dip into, so why is PeNoy increasing this? Perhaps if we put this in context with a new development, a clearer picture on how invisible forces behind PeNoy are reinforcing the edifice of corruption will come about.

This new development is the proposed postponement of the barangay election slated for October on due to alleged financial constraints, together with the simultaneous proposal that it be synchronized with the 2013 national elections.

There are several deleterious effects of these two initiatives: (1) abusive and corrupt barangay officials will not be called into account as a democratic system requires; (2) it will strengthen the indebtedness of the present barangay officials to the present PeNoy regime; (3) these barangay officials will then be used by the current regime to consolidate tyrannical powers in 2013 toward the continuation of the corporatist dictatorship consolidated under Gloria Arroyo; and (4) it will make the “fully synchronized” 2013 elections even more massively chaotic than the already messy elections of 2010.

If the present system is corruption incarnate, then a super-synchronized election aimed at securing it is none other than a perpetuation of this systemic corruption, the evil results of which those jaundiced by the Yellow fever can’t seem to see as continuously ravaging the nation.

For those who still do not know, here’s a sampling of these evils — July 2010 item: Power rates to rise again in August (due to Wesm power horse trading); Aug. 8: Manila Water net income up 34 percent (while people suffer heavier costs); Aug. 9: Robredo wants strengthened Small Town Lottery (cover for jueteng); Aug. 10: AFP suppresses Adm. Feliciano Angue exposé on 2010 elections; Aug. 11: $10-billion offer for Pagcor.

As long as the corrupt system goes on and on — exploiting, inveigling and plundering — PeNoy only continues the legacy of Cory, FVR and Gloria.

RP coconut agencies: Same bananas

2010-08-09T15:59:00.000+08:00

In the first quarter of 2009, Philippine coconut exports plunged 60 percent whereas total revenues in 2008 reached $1.5 billion. It is thus alarming to note this decline in 2009. Tragically, very little is heard from those in government charged with ensuring that the coconut industry of the Philippines prospers and grows.

I have been involved in the advocacies for the coconut industry for the past several years, seeing it not only as an agricultural commodity with the greatest potential to raise the national per capita income but also as an industrial raw material that can multiply our nation’s income from our 340 million or so coconut trees. If only the country develops all of the Philippine coconut’s potentials in terms of cosme-ceuticals, nutra-ceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and industrial chemicals, it may well rival the BPOs in dollar earnings at $10 billion, if not more.

In 2009, I attended a series of meetings of coconut industry and government leaders, where it was once held at the Philippine Coconut Authority (Philcoa). Representatives from the Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF) and Congress were there, as was the staff of Philcoa — yet the Philcoa head was never around. Rep. Leonardo Montemayor was very active in those meetings. But I never got to see the Philcoa head either in any of the other activities conducted by the coconut sector organizations.

If you ask around today who heads the Philcoa, very few people will be able to give you an answer, unlike in previous administrations where the agency’s administrator was among the most recognizable public figures.

Sadly, an even more significant government coconut agency that has also been led by lackluster characters is the CIIF, which controls the funds of the sector.

We need to revive the public and government’s consciousness about the coconut industry and its bountiful potentials. The first 100 days of the new administration has slowly ticked by yet nothing is heard about its policies for this sector. The coconut sector has already suffered by omission during the inaugural speech and the State of the Nation Address of this new government. It therefore leads many to ask if the PeNoy administration has anybody in its team with coconuts at all.

If they don’t, then it’s high time they get some coconuts: The Philippine Coconut Week’s festivities are slated on Aug. 12 to 15 of this week, and the welfare of 25 million Filipinos directly and indirectly dependent on the coconut industry for livelihood (that’s over 25 percent of the population of 90 million) are staked in the success or failure of this effort to bring the vital issues of the coconut industry to the attention of our national leaders.

As I have written many times before, and discussed in our Global News Network (GNN) show, the coconut tree is a tree of unbounded potentials. Its water is the healthiest natural drink which provides a thousand times more nutrients than sports drinks like Gatorade or Powerade. The Taiwanese and Chinese know this better than many Filipinos; hence, they import our coconuts even at a premium price.

Virgin Coconut Oil (VCO) is a fantastic health supplement that neutralizes HIV and, as recently discovered by Western medicine, Alzheimer’s disease. I take VCO every day and have my own adobo formulation where I mix minced garlic, coco vinegar, and calamansi with over three tablespoons of VCO.

I use VCO on my hair as well before bathing, and I am the only one who doesn’t need to use hair dye among 10 siblings.

VCO’s potent health values are well understood, but its popularity has ebbed due to lack of promotion and advertising, as well as, due to deliberate sabotage by Big Pharma in cahoots with some Department of Health authorities.

Other parts of the coconut are also valuable: Its sap produces sugar of the best glycemic quality (30 in the index) for health. Its husks as mattings could have been used in the massive oil gush in the Gulf of Mexico if there had been enough supply, though these are already used to prevent soil erosion and in re-greening desert areas. It is much sought after in cosmetics for the finest oil is provides.

Of even greater potential is the coconut’s industrial and chemical application (even for industrial explosives), which could be produced in the Philippines if basic infrastructure were to be provided.

On Tuesday, Aug. 10, the “Politics (and Economics) Today” episode on GNN will feature a discussion on “Coconut: The Savior Commodity” with coconut sector leaders Sonny Villariba, Gerry Natividad, and Joey Faustino. I call the coconut “the savior commodity” as it has the potential to save the national economy. And unlike BPOs which are a servant industry dependent on the industrial economies, the coconut sector is a production industry and when developed to its fullest promotes economic independence, reduces imports, expands import substitution (such as replacing the $1-billion milk and related imports), multiplies layers of values from processed coconut exports, and builds the domestic industrial and chemical industries.

The potentials of the coconut industry to save the economy and the nation will never be realized if the “same bananas” stay on in the government coconut agencies. This sector needs leadership that knows its coconuts and knows how to use those coconuts.

Infowar vs. national mental rot

2010-01-11T23:52:00.000+08:00

Eleven days of our brand new 365 days of year 2010 have passed and things instead of getting better, things are getting worse each day. Foremost of the deterioration situation is the rot of the Filipino mind. This is perfectly illustrated by a mainstream news headline: “Disasters doubles devotees”, referring to the Black Nazarene procession Friday. The hordes flocking to the Quirino Grandstand looked so much larger than yesteryears. By the end of the day early Internet headlines declared two dead and fifty injured in the disastrous crush. This “disaster” is now on top of the financial-economic crash, the Ondoy devastation, and certainly the Maguindanao Massacre among many other. It seems that the Filipino mind had have gone back another century to the Dark Ages of superstition and ignorance.

Are there progressive, truthful and concerned priests and Catholics that can help the dispel the notion that idolatry and iconic images, considered blasphemy in other Christian sects and in Islam, can be solve real world problems of the economy, storms, or anguishing personal problems? The Black Nazarene was brought in from Mexico in by Augustinian Recolletos missionaries on May 31, 1606. I assume they’ve been having the processions for it since that time. If it were true that it solves problems then the Philippines, after four hundred years of processions to it, should be the most progressive nation in the world today. Would the late scientist-Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin countenance such voodoo Christianity if he were here today? The Catholic hierarchy is undoubtedly promoting primitive superstition by continuing these processions, supported by two Vatican popes no less.

If the masa has that black statue, the Filipino intelligentsia has many of its own. Some Filipinos who fancy themselves financially literate will tout as great the news that the GIR (Gross International Reserves) of the Philippines is up tnow o $ 45.03-B. The high priests of the Bangko Sentral ng Piilipinas have been going around singing Hallelujah; but the voodoo songs-and-dances of BSP’s Tetangco and Gunigundo show that they are covering up for some things. First, they claim that the reserves represent 7.1-months of imports, but the general rule is that a country needs to cover only three months of its imports. For a debt ridden country like the Philippines up to $ 60-B in debt, shouldn’t the 4.5-months over coverage of imports cost be used to pay off part of our large foreign debt? Why don’t they do this when we are paying high rates for those debts?

The GIR is parked in U.S Treasury Bills at the lowest interests possible. Between the huge foreign dollar debt and the GIR parked in T-Bills or other bonds that earn much lower returns, the Philippines is losing money while America gets cheap money to finance U.S. bail outs. What Tetangco and Gunigundo are covering up are their personal as well as the Philippine financial system’s peonage and servitude to the U.S. Federal Reserve. An overly large GIR does not serve Philippine economic interest but U.S. financial interest. The BSP high priests claim the GIR increased also because of portfolio “hot money” inflows, but these can as quickly go out! It is a phantom asset. Maintaining the excessively high GIR, parking it in U.S. T-bills or bonds while sustaining the foreign debt levels ends up losing massive amounts of money for the country. Many Pinoys still worship the GIR god, a sign of the mental rot as well.

The Philippine Left has its own idolatry and sacred doctrines. One faction has become the “orthodox” church and dubbed “re-affirmist” in re-confirming its obedience to the Lord Jose Ma. Sison. Of course, central to its doctrine is the “People’s War” with its sub-verses such as “surrounding the cities from the countryside” etc. Despite fifty years of the failure of these idols and doctrines, and thousands of lives of the youngest, best and brightest, they haven’t updated to the new realities and the lessons of decades. The orthodoxy recently claimed another life, as reported in the Inquirer: Kemberly Jul Luna, a beauteous 21 years young lass and state university scholar was killed in an NPA-AFP gun battle. She follows a long line of fallen young warriors over the past five decades which includes several of my own friends and comrades. Is this still the right way to fight for national liberation?

A former NPA said of the Kemberly report: “This is still fighting the imperialists with 1,000 armed young guerillas when we should be mobilizing the millions of our people by enlightening them to through political education.” Young idealists, nationalists and anti-imperialists should live and grow to maturity to educate the nation through media, the Internet and schools, especially aiming for the AFP nationalist officers, instead of triggering a cycle of fraternal murder. That’s the lesson of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. The Inquirer’s style in its report glorified the death of Kemberly Jul Luna, the NPA and their struggle - promoting the Filipino’s internecine war. Yet, the Inquirer is a pillar of U.S. imperialism’s and its local comprador-oligarchy partners’ economic and culture condition of the nation for the ruling class’ economic exploitation and U.S. domination. It’s a neat set up for the oligarch-owned Inquirer.

This country’s economic recovery depends on its achieving sovereign, which requires breaking free of the chains of ignorance, superstition, mental mendicancy and rot to bring about the political underpinnings of economic sovereignty. The first struggle is to liberate the nation’s mind and consciousness. Only education, information and enlightenment of the people, as well as the AFP – an information war, can achieve final and real victory for the people.

No ‘Bliss’ under the Yellows

2009-10-12T13:24:00.000+08:00

A political generation has been brought up under the Yellows. This generation, unaware of the “Bliss” that the country experienced during the time of Marcos, has been largely uninformed about those housing developments for the poor, set up in places like Carmona and Sapang Palay, where development costs have shot up since the Yellows took over.

This same generation also doesn’t know that President Joseph Estrada, during his time as mayor, similarly had a novel approach to the squatter problem, when he moved San Juan ’s many squatter communities to a resettlement site in Taytay that still stands today. It seems that they just can’t comprehend how this, as well as, his many other feats could account for his great popularity among the landless urban poor and how, surprisingly, his housing projects even had cabanas and swimming pools, just like in Erap City.

The Marcoses (through President Ferdinand Marcos’ development program and Imelda’s human settlement vision) offered “Bliss” as the beginning of an organized tenement housing campaign. At that time, Bliss was well within the reach of the middle class. Teachers, journalists (like Dick Pascual, the late Julius Fortuna, current GMA ambassador Bobi Tiglao), and government employees were able to obtain comfortable urban housing that rose four stories-high in mainly flood-free areas.

But as soon as the Yellow Plague enveloped the Philippines , soon-to-be-completed Bliss projects were put to a halt, with already existing units deliberately left derelict, apparently to rot and be displayed as failures of the Marcos era--one of many examples of what the “good” Cory Aquino threw out with the bath water.

Comparisons between the 21 years under the Yellows and the same during the Marcos era will then naturally provide a contrast between Marcos’ achievements and Cory and her Yellow ilk’s failures, extending to both the FVR and GMA regimes.

While Marcos built the Pan Philippine Highway and the Samar-Leyte Bridge , which span thousands of miles of roads, the only infrastructure achievement of Cory has been the Edsa-Ortigas flyover, which FVR even had to repair right after its inauguration. (Notice the rounded, steel-jacketed pillars that were mounted after serious flaws were found?)

And, as Marcos was responsible for the North and South Expressways, the former being 80 kilometers long, when Cory took over, she eventually handed them to the oligarchs, who added only six kilometers or so to Sta. Inez but raised the toll by up to 2000 percent!

Meanwhile, the Marcos national budgets from 1965 to 1985 totaled P486 billion, including his infrastructure projects, whereas Cory, in seven years, had a total national budget of P1.6 trillion, with domestic borrowings of over P400 billion (at the exchange rate then of around P21 to the dollar). That’s $19 billion to Marcos’ $27 billion over 21 years!

When we lambast Gloria Arroyo for raising the national debt sky high, we must remember that there was a precedent--Cory Aquino--who borrowed even more heavily but masked it under the cover of “domestic debt,” with no real infrastructure legacy at all. FVR, who followed Aquino, built nothing and only sold off power plants, Fort Bonifacio , reclaimed Manila Bay lands, ad nausea.

Yet, in all this time, the Yellows have never raised these issues about Cory and FVR nor have they taken responsibility for installing GMA.

Comparing unemployment rates, Ka Popo Villanueva sent us these stats:

YEAR/UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983* 1984 1985

Marcos 4.1% 4.0% 5.0% 5.3% 6.0% 5.4% 6.2% 7.1%

*destabilization of Marcos began

1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

Aquino 9.1% 8.3% 8.4% 8.1% 9.0%

No wonder that even today, 23 years after Edsa I, whenever I interview young people such as our 21 year-old GNN production assistant, they would often relate their parents’ lament that times were much better under Marcos.

Well, that’s because the oligarchs back then were kept under a leash. The Lopezes’ abuse became a thing of the past when they lost in the 1970 peso devaluation, forcing them to sell-off Meralco to government, just as they suffered in the 1997 Asian Financial Crash and 2008 Subprime Collapse, but recouped their losses through political machinations.

Thus, whenever I see SUVs and cars with yellow ribbons, I can only surmise that these belong to two kinds of people: (a) one who has no understanding of the historical facts, in other words, a historical idiot; or (b) one who is partaking of the plunder of the Yellow ruling class in Big Business, government or in illegal gambling operations.

If the vehicle is old, beat up, and run-down, it must be of the first kind, the idiot who has suffered from high power, water, toll, and tax rates but doesn’t know it’s the Yellows who did him in. But if it’s spanking and gleaming, it would be owned by the latter, who’s probably an executive of one of the Big business groups, like Meralco or Manila Water, or one of the bevy of entertainers of ABS-CBN, a Couples for Christ leader, or another typical elitista.

Lastly, it was in Marcos’ time that the likes of UNDP scholar, Arch. Jun Palafox got commissioned to lay out the flood control master plan for Metro Manila and flood-prone areas of Luzon . Real estate developer giants (like the Ayalas) were barred from land-grabbing and covering up esteros to expand their property bounds. Nevertheless, all these programs were deliberately delayed, undercut, sabotaged and buried in the 21 years of the Yellow Plague.

So, next time you see a vehicle with the yellow ribbon fluttering inanely in the wind or pass by the Centers of Mammon with all the yellow ribbons tied to lamp posts, remember the bliss that we could have had all these years had the economic and infrastructure development plans of a generation ago not been allowed by the Yellow Reign to be sabotaged by the oligarchs.

Blackouts: The Yellows’ Dark Age

2009-10-09T14:09:00.000+08:00

As we begin with this piece, we find ourselves in more dark days, reminiscent of the great Dark Age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the time of Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos. Those were the days of week-long blackouts that ensued from Cory’s mothballing of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, plus her cancellation of the mini- and large-scale hydro-electric dams and other alternative energy programs of Marcos. Millions of Filipino households and enterprises suffered staggering losses while the oligarch cronies of the Yellows, such as the Aboitizes, earned billions in supplying emergency generators. FVR’s Yellow business cronies then packaged almost 50 Independent Power Producer (IPP) contracts worth hundreds of billions of pesos. And just like déjà vu, we are again being plunged into blackouts by the privatized Transco for two days now.

In our continuing effort to cite incontrovertible evidence of state and government decay under the Yellow regimes of the past 21 years, we listed the collapse of the rescue infrastructure of the Armed Forces of the Philippines that was sorely missed during the recent flood crisis. According to a group of retired soldiers, other vital transports that would be essential in other crises--say, tsunami disasters in Mindanao, which would need C-130s to transport rescue personnel and facilities from Luzon and elsewhere--were there during Marcos’ time. Back then, the country could count on a huge number of C-130s; but today, there are only two. An officer thus quipped, “We have an Air Force that’s all ‘air’ and no ‘force,’ and an ‘Italian’ Navy that should be read as ‘Itale yan’” because it’s roped at port all the time lest it sinks.

The Armed Forces’ dire strait is just a sample of the deterioration of a public instrumentality that has been systematically stripped of its capacity to be of service to the nation. All government institutions have been subjected to this kind of emaciation. Twenty-one years of shrinking budgets; attrition of our best and brightest minds; spin-off of revenue government functions through privatization; continuous demonization of government, demoralizing the civil service; diminution of government regulatory powers through deregulation and liberalization, resulting in corporatocratic exploitation of what used to be services provided by government, ad nausea have all led to this sorry state. That’s why, these days, it’s not uncommon to hear, “Mabuti pa sa panahon ni Marcos. Mabuti pa sa panahon ni Erap.”

Atty. Alan Paguia cited one example of this demonization and demoralization of government institutions by private, corporate powers using their vast TV and print media. They lambast barangay assistance efforts by indiscriminately alleging that barangay officials steal relief goods. Given that in flood affected areas, literally thousands of barangays are involved, such a blanket condemnation is absolutely wrong and unfair. Private mainstream media make themselves out to be the focal point of “honest, efficient” relief work by announcing over P100 million’s worth of donations but none of these can really be verified or audited independently. Paguia then points out why, despite some charges of impropriety, the barangays should still be the main grassroots relief arm: Because they have public accountability.

Of course, the Yellows denigrate public institutions while espousing “corporate responsibility.” In the recent floods, Yellow mainstream media denigrated the public sector by alleging the “stealing” of relief goods by lowly barangay officials, among other things. Yet they continue to be blind to the larger larceny of corporate exploiters. For example, I heard over radio that Maynilad, in consideration of the plight of millions of flood victims, will not immediately raise the 20 centavos or so it had projected as an increase of its water rates; but media didn’t bother to report the fact that Maynilad had already raised its rates even earlier and earned almost P2 billion more year-on-year in the first half of 2009 alone. The same goes for electricity rates, too, which are touted to be the lowest in five years come October without them explaining that oil prices have also gone below $66/bbl. Seems like media is a willing accomplice to this price-gouging.

The rolling blackouts we are experiencing are causing havoc everywhere. Food commissaries, for one, have to move tons of stock from small storage facilities to large cold storages with power generators. Businesses, which have suffered billions in losses during the floods, stand to lose more, this time due to power outages. The night before, when the blackouts first started, these were traced to a fire at the privatized Transco Taytay substation. This scenario is exactly what I had feared and written about months before the Transco privatization pushed through. It is reminiscent of the 1990s, in which failures of power plants, such as in Sual, Pangasinan, caused massive power outages that led to added justification for more IPP projects.

I am afraid that a few weeks or months down the road from today, Transco, now under the management of China State Grid and Monte Oro (identified with FVR boys) will be seeking additional rate increases. It will be argued that such rate adjustments will be required to avoid similar power outages in the future. We have already seen a glimpse of this from the yearly “bogey” of power shortages that government and corporate officials raise. Aside from this, these same people, who are also Yellow stalwarts and acolytes to Gloria Arroyo, would want a state of calamity declared until Gloria’s term ends (or, for it never to end).

Gat Jose Rizal in his Noli Me Tangere, wrote of a treacherous and vicious villain he called “ang taong dilaw” who almost murdered Crisostomo Ibarra. Well, it appears that today’s taong Dilaw are as treacherous and vicious.

The Philippines cannot survive another Dark Age of the Yellows.

People versus the Yellow rot

2009-10-05T14:10:00.000+08:00

After observations that there was severe scarcity in government and Armed Forces of the Philippines helicopters in the “Ondoy” flooding rescue effort, I checked out the numbers past and present. I gathered from several retired military generals that during the Marcos era in the 1970s, AFP helicopter assets numbered from a minimum of 100 to a maximum of 150 units. Today, the AFP’s helicopter complement hovers between 25 to 30 units — max. Imagine these two dozen helicopters having to serve anti-insurgency operations in Mindanao and other parts of the country while at the same time trying to fly over to the flood rescue operations? No wonder we couldn’t see helicopters plucking flood victims from roof and tree tops — when in the past we could find so many photo records of such rescues!

When I asked the retired generals about the absence of amphibious trucks in the Ondoy disaster, none of them could cite any existing units of amphibian trucks in the Coast Guard or Navy. In contrast, we can remember during the Marcos era’s flood crises such as “Gloring” and “Edeng,” which were almost double in wind and flood intensity, that amphibian trucks were ubiquitous. For so long, even the number of C-130 planes of the Air Force had been down to just one unit; and only recently was an old C-130 finally re-commissioned, in order to make for two now in flying condition. Undoubtedly, the Armed Forces of a nation is its pillar. The whole world was reminded of this during the 60th anniversary parade of the People’s Republic of China which brought two aspects of modern China to fore: Its military might — most prominently displayed, followed by its economic progress.

The crisis in AFP capabilities reflects the massive overall decay and deterioration — rot for short — of government’s capabilities under 21 years of Yellow governance. This rot followed policies initiated by Cory Aquino: Trade liberalization crippling government tariff generation; flood of imports and smuggling devastating domestic agriculture and industry, thus shrinking the revenue base; deregulation and privatization transferring trillions of GOCC (government corporations like Napocor, Petron, PNOC, etc.) revenues; and corruption throughout the three Yellow governments of Cory, FVR and Arroyo, none of which has been called to account. The greatest blow to AFP resources was the massive and mysterious loss of the AFP modernization fund by Ramos, which he has not answered for to this day. Yet the Yellows could so quickly prosecute President Estrada on trumped-up trifles.

The Yellows have ruled for 21 years, reasoning, rationalizing, arguing for the demotion of the State and the Republic of, for and by the people. The Yellows favor power and exploitation by, of and for the few — the oligarchy and corporatocracy. Their argument is imposed through the money-controlled, Pied Piper media: Mesmerizing the population into a catatonic state of passivity, subservience and social-historical suicide at the altar of the Yellow idols and false gods (adding Cory Aquino’s statue soon) erected at Mammon’s Ayala Avenue , Makati . In the Ondoy deluge, ABS-CBN and its Yellow acolytes pack relief goods on TV, subliminally reinforcing the Yellow mythology. In truth, ABS-CBN and its ilk suck billions away that could have obtained choppers, boats, and Doppler radars for the public good.

For 21 years, the Yellows have gypped the people this way; thus, this con game should end.

One of the lies of the Yellows is about media — that media today are a direct antithesis of the controlled media during Marcos’ time. In a Global News Network Talk News TV interview, Yellow leader Frank Drilon, wagged his fingers, lecturing the interviewee that, “I know you’ve criticized Cory Aquino. If it weren’t for Cory Aquino you wouldn’t be able to talk this freely.” To which the interviewer retorted that he, too, was at Edsa so the Yellows have no monopoly over righteous claims. More important was Drilon’s slick lie: That there was absolutely no media space under Marcos while it has been absolutely free under the Yellows. We Forum and Malaya, dzME on radio, were the mosquito press and media in Marcos’ time; today, it is us in the Tribune. Although in both eras, the mosquito media have been severely restricted by advertising boycotts by corporations and government institutions, they still plodded on.

Despite our misgivings, we have to hazard a chance for change in the 2010 elections. The big con, however, is the Yellow spiel that their candidate is antithetical to and separate from the Gloria administration. Gloria Arroyo is a creature of the Yellow forces, one whom the Yellows have not cut out from their continuing legacy. Cory Aquino tried by starting an apology for installing the Arroyo regime, but the Yellows and their presidential candidate shrugged that off as “a joke.” They deny the mother of their movement rather than rectify the error of installing Gloria. President Estrada and the movement behind him remain the only true anti-Gloria option throughout the past nine years, and in 2010. Gloria is, in fact, helping the Yellow candidate by preserving the non-factor Yellow oligarchy. Gibo has sunk even lower after his disastrous Ondoy disaster performance.

The issue in the 2010 election boils down to the Yellows and the rot they have caused in 21 years. The people are suffering while the oligarchy and corporatocracy ride high the chariots of private profit. Isn’t it any wonder that yellow ribbons flutter in Ayala Avenue and Araneta Center , the two hotbeds of Mammon?

The 2010 election should be a showdown of the People versus the Pro-Profit Yellows who have to be stopped from doing more damage — or nothing will be left to the next generation: No helicopters, no ships, no armed forces anymore, not even government or public institutions, like the failed states western powers love to invade to “save from themselves.” The chaos and helplessness we saw in the flood crises in Marikina , Cainta, Tanay, and other stricken areas foreshadow the future national collapse if the Yellows run the country any second longer.

The Yellow disaster a la Ondoy

2009-10-02T21:08:00.000+08:00

The sewers overflowed and yellow shit floated along the Pasong Tamo stretch where I was stranded last Saturday. I was on my way to the studio with natural health advocate, Hans Palacios, to tape our episode on the tyranny of the globalization of food, medicines, and health protocols when this happened. Seeking out the nearest coffee shop to no avail and faced with rising waters, I ramped my old Corolla up an abandoned driveway and witnessed the ebb and flow of two feet of water that just stopped below my dashboard. It turned out to be a six-hour wait; I drove through an abandoned Edsa by six p.m. to get home.

The day after, I got texts from the usual Yellow suspects blaming “Gloria Arroyo’s incompetence” for the devastating flood. I texted back and said, “Blame the incompetence of Edsa Uno and Edsa Dos,” the latter for putting Gloria into power and still not apologizing nor learning from it, and the former for depleting the state’s capacity to mobilize for such times of crisis.

It’s not true that the Ondoy flood disaster is the worst in our history. We are reminded by Ka Popo Villanueva of the successive typhoons Gloring (274 kph) and Edeng in 1972 that turned Central Luzon and Metro Manila into a swimming pool, which government improvised for months to turn tragedy into productivity—one, by converting the flooded San Lazaro hippodrome into a rice paddy field.

I was just out of my teens when that deluge struck but I could remember the great number of helicopters and amphibian boats mobilized by government and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the rescue operations. That was the age before globalization, deregulation, and privatization. That was before 1986. By transferring massive resources from public hands to private pockets, Edsa I, like a gargantuan storm, has devastated government’s capacity to stand on its own.

In this light, I responded to an e-mail carping about government waste and corruption, particularly the ultra-expensive GMA dinners in New York :

“What Inday Varona forgets are the corporations that have been sucking unconscionable profits through the years since 1986’ so-called people power. Just this year alone, 100 corporations increased profits by 46 percent in the 1st half from P130 billion last year to P193 billion this year, dwarfing the Dwarf’s corruption take--all while the people continue to get poorer. Why don’t ‘leftists’ like Inday want to see this, or don’t they? But they are silent collaborators of the real corrupt and exploitative elements in society that use politicians like Gloria Arroyo, whom they’ll simply replace with the darlings of the Yellows and the ‘Left’ of the moment--i.e. the Yellow dummy or the real estate manipulator. Inday Varona has all the credentials of the Left, anti-Marcos, anti-Erap; but anti-corporatocracy ? No!!! They will work with the corpo-rats.. . “

Today, the Filipino people are being prodded to seek alms from ABS-CBN’s telethon for donations. The Coast Guard can only field 14 rescue teams in total; there’s not an amphibian truck in sight; helicopters are sparing; civilians with jet skis and speedboats do the rescuing; and government is a pitiful shadow of what it once was decades ago when such crises struck. This is a far cry from societies where strong governments marshal resources for the public welfare, like China and Vietnam , where early evacuations are organized and massive state resources are mobilized.

One of the Yellow apologists, Billy Esposo, writes, “…Ondoy showed just how flawed the national preparation is.” But the jaundiced Yellows have ruled the country the past 20 years and if there’s any group that has failed, it is them.

Marcos and Estrada were priming the state for nation-building and had regulated the power of Big Business by providing affirmative action for the poor. Unfortunately, the Yellows and the Left didn’t want to have any of that. They’d rather work with the corporatocracy, just as they are gunning for the Lopez-Prieto- Ayala candidate or the real estate wheeler-dealer (who overprices properties sold to government by 1000 fold). They’d rather write for elite publications rather than the real Edsa Tres newspaper, The Tribune. It’s amazing how they rationalize their contradictions!

Having said all that about the Yellows and the Left, we can now focus on their relation to Big Pharma’s profiteering on poisons being injected into world populations such as here in RP.

If you have learned about how Filipino farms and industries have been devastated by economic globalization, be alerted to the globalization of food and nutrition protocols under the “Codex Alimentarius” to be implemented by the Food and Agricultural Organization, World Food Program, and the World Health Organization, backed by threats of sanctions from the World Trade Organization.

The Codex classifies all nutrients as toxins that must be regulated (you can’t just take Vitamin C without prescription) ; meats will require antibiotic and other injections; all food (including “organic” ones) will require irradiation; and innumerable human vaccinations will be mandatory (never mind the side effects such as autism). Said bodies claim “consumer welfare and protection” as their rationale but it’s actually Big Pharma that’s stemming the popular tide toward natural health and nutrition in combating disease.

The focus of our struggle today is the vaccinations for H1N1, HPV and others. Big Pharma is bamboozling the world to accept this through media deception. Aside from having no real H1N1 pandemic, the HPV vaccine has just killed 14-year-old Natalie Morton in England hours after it was administered, forcing Britain to suspend all HPV vaccinations.

In the Philippines , guess who are among the top Yellow instigators: Zuellig chief Dick Romulo, who framed President Estrada in the Equitable Bank controversy in year 2000. Big Pharma, like all of Big Business, has always backed the Yellow globalization spiel, from Cory Aquino down to the present Yellow dummy. They’ll herd us into the mass inoculations like sheep for the slaughter as they did with the devastation of economic globalization.

The Yellows’ balimbing morals

2009-09-28T14:06:00.000+08:00

The Inquirer headline of Sept. 24, 2009 barked, “More to follow Romulo,” with a subtitle, “Another GMA man for… (the Yellow candidate),” suggesting Silvestre Bello, who works for Gloria, also supports the supposedly “anti-Gloria” candidate of the ABS-CBN-Inquirer-Ayala elite. Since Bert and Silvestre have been with every Yellow regime, i.e. Cory Aquino and FVR, this headline was not just plain reportage. Looking deeper, it was clearly trying to set the tone for more balimbingan, hence, the line, “more to follow.” Frankly, the Yellow media also did this in 1986 and 2001. It represents what the Yellow crowd of Edsa Uno and Dos deems fundamental to its existence — balimbingan as an ethical good.

In 2001, the Yellows, through a succession of defections from the legitimately-elected government, conspired to mount a coup backed by the Makati and foreign Big Business interests (Impsa, Mirant, and AIG rushing in to consummate their contracts with “sovereign guarantees”). I remember the resignations of then secretaries Gloria Arroyo, Orly Mercado, Mar Roxas, and Mayor Lim, among many others.

Then Defense chief Angelo Reyes was the final defection. (We have testimony, which we can identify in time, that instructions from US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “turned” Reyes.)

Reyes brought all the other generals to the Edsa treason-rally in an air-conditioned van to ensure that there was no counter-defection to the constitutional order from the military defectors.

The Yellow defectors invariably claim that they act for honor and principle, but then they’re not adverse to expecting or haggling for “rewards” for treason and betrayal. Worse, when they get high and lucrative positions, they hang on despite the worsening performance of the new governments they chose to jump onto. That’s the most nauseating balimbingan of all: Staying on even as the evils they claim to have shunned worsen.

Thus, from 1986 to 1998, we’ve only had more of the same from them: Corruption; economic collapse; aggravating illegal drugs scourge; worsening health, hunger and poverty; and accelerating insurgencies.

Estrada’s two-and-a-half years abated poverty and the insurgencies. But after the Yellows’ Edsa Dos, the crisis accelerated again as they went back to get more appointments, corrupt deals, and businesses (PeaceBonds, Impsa, privatization, etc.)

At first, the Yellows feigned blindness to these worsening conditions. But by the second year after Edsa Dos, the people already saw the gripping truth: The tripling of jueteng and the doubling of electricity and water rates, ad nausea. Life was harder — harder under Aquino than under Marcos; harder under Gloria than Erap.

In 2004’s elections, the Yellows’ darling could not win without massive cheating. Thus, the true opposition leader, President Estrada, helped NBI regional director Samuel Ong expose the “Hello Garci” tapes, making the Yellow Arroyo regime indefensible in the eyes of the people.

But the Yellow crowd knew it had to dissociate, lest its own luster erode with its dummy’s unpopularity. So Frank Drilon and the Hyatt 10 bolted, with the Yellow media building them up. Many others, like Bert Romulo, stayed on until the right moment; timing their defections for the new dummy that is to come.

Take note: All these Yellow Cabinet members have been with the three Yellow regimes — Cory Aquino, FVR, and Gloria Arroyo — and have not batted an eyelash joining one and the other. Now, they will try to be part of the next Yellow government again if plans do not miscarry. They will tout what that they know the people, especially the uninitiated youth, fervently hope for — change.

Yet they represent the continuity of all the failed policies of Western-inspired liberalization, deregulation, privatization and globalization of past administrations.

They are one and the same mafia, covering each others’ back: Kamag-anak Inc. was not investigated by Ramos and Ramos’ Centennial Scam, etc. were not investigated by Gloria. Any new Yellow government will then only “dribble” Gloria’s cases.

Only Estrada went after FVR seriously and only Estrada will go after Gloria’s crimes with the same seriousness.

For 23 years now, this Yellow dynasty and its media have ruled the country. They’ve “convicted” Marcos of crimes aplenty, yet after 900 cases, three Yellow governments, and nearly 30 years, there’s not been one conviction, making the alleged Marcos crimes staple cover-ups for the Yellows’ own graft and corruption.

Estrada refused exile because he knew he was innocent, but they convicted him on trumped-up jueteng and stock manipulation charges to tie him up in legal controversies. They “pardoned” him because the injustice just didn’t stand up to scrutiny. But now, the kangaroo conviction of Erap comes in handy to deflect attention from the Gloria-Yellow conspiracy to block Erap’s hope for a unified opposition and genuine pro-Filipino, pro-poor leadership.

The Philippine mainstream media, controlled by the economic ruling class, abets the media-political culture that sustains their plutocratic control. It is therefore not an instrument of information, education, and enlightenment. Venezuela ’s President Hugo Chavez and Honduras ’ President Manuel Zelaya constantly battle with the same kind.

RP’s mainstream media demonize enemies of the Yellow peril and provide PR spin for the Yellows. Which explains why they are the media for the Yellow candidates today, trying to whip up a bandwagon effect; projecting Romulo and Bello for others to follow; and portraying their kind of betrayal and balimbingan as acts of benevolence.

Secretary Romulo, however, spoiled it by being “kapit tuko” to his post while announcing his support for the Yellows’ candidate. By doing so, he betrayed the truth that to the Yellow crowd, Gloria and this other candidate are no different.

Romulo’s betrayals insult the memory of the first foreign secretary of the Republic, Apolinario Mabini, who chose lonely exile to Guam rather than betray the Philippines for a cushy job with the Americans.

The Yellows demonize anti-Japanese guerilla Marcos while bestow dugong bayani to Japanese collaborators; they demonize Erap while extol Hashim Salamat — all really twisted, balimbing views.

The people at Edsa Tres had one battle cry: “Walang Iwanan,” i.e. to never abandon each other nor their principles, for simply, all these go together. And since loyalty, integrity, and honor all form part of our nationhood, sovereignty, and national dignity, we have to be ready to temporarily give up wealth and power until true democracy, anchored on popular rule, is restored.

FVR, corporatists and the Yellow peril

2009-09-25T18:17:00.000+08:00

In March of 2001, at the height of the vilification of President Joseph Estrada, I wrote a column entitled “Investigate Almonte.” It starts thus, “Two weeks ago, news of the explosive revelation from the Dacer parish priest hit the newspapers. Fr. Baldostamon of the Sun Valley parish church came forward to make public overtures he heard from Ramos henchman Joe Almonte to the Dacer children a short time after their father disappeared--that he could negotiate for his release provided Dacer is immediately shipped to the US and the family continues to mourn like he had never been found. Why has NBI chief Reynaldo Wycoco not called in Almonte to find out more about this crucial angle…?

“Fr. Baldostamon’s revelation was brought to the surface in one of the newspaper columns of Bishop Ted Bacani. Last week, I read a letter-to-the-editor from Ramos to Bacani, outlining his response to the Bacani column. It was a very lame letter recalling his expressions of concern for Dacer’s disappearance, citing such inane publications as Customsweek. Readers will recall that it was precisely Ramos’ dubiously premature and hammed up concern, when Dacer’s disappearance was not even an established fact yet, that triggered suspicions about a Ramos hand in the abduction.

“The story is now told to close friends by the Dacer children, Ampy and Sabina, that the Ramos visit to Dacer’s office on that fateful day of the disappearance was very uncharacteristic. In the many years of Dacer and Ramos’ professional dealings, never once did Ramos visit Dacer’s office. But on the day of Dacer’s kidnapping, Ramos did and after only an hour of waiting, he started making it too obvious he was concerned--by calling media about his alarm over Dacer’s disappearance… Gen. Wycoco is obliged to invite both to be interviewed. The story must be officially verified, and Almonte’s side should be looked closely into. The Dacer children must also be asked, to crosscheck the parish priest’s story. But foremost among these actions is this--send a summons to Almonte. This Rasputin of Ramos has some explaining to do.”

To date, neither Ramos nor Almonte has ever been called to account for their strange actions.

A close friend of Dacer told me: “Two days before his reported disappearance, Dacer and I had coffee, complaining that he was being evicted from his Manila Hotel office and he couldn’t update his rent because Ramos (FVR) owed him a six-figure professional fee and wouldn’t pay up.”

The day after that coffee talk, Dacer, with his daughter Ampy, met with Erap in Malacañang and had their gusot ironed out. In an interview with Karen Davila, Cong. Baby Asistio, who was also in that meeting, advised Karen to seek out daughter Ampy to confirm that Erap and Dacer were reconciled over a happy merienda.

Of course, Ramos had his DPAs in Estrada’s offices such as Generals Jose Calimlim and Alexander Aguirre. Since Dacer was among them, FVR could have thought that Dacer turned against him that day and took drastic action.

Almonte came out on two radio stations a few nights ago claiming to be in possession of a Dacer letter stating that if there is any threat against Dacer, it would only come from Ping Lacson or Estrada. But then, if Almonte can say the things that Fr. Baldostamon heard, he could have obtained anything from Dacer, whose whereabouts is really still unknown as there is no corpus delicti to this day.

FVR is a fundamental component of the Yellow peril that brought about the Edsa I and II conspiracies. Today, he is still moving his tentacles--from Gloria’s Lakas-Kampi, to the purported Lakas originals’ fielding of Ebdane, to the Liberal Party’s political operations. As in 1998, where he employed the strategy of confusion to diffuse the votes for easier cheating but failed, he is doing it again in 2009 with better prospects of succeeding, due to the perceived erosion of the masa’s solidarity behind President Estrada.

With FVR are the foreign and local corporatists. Among their latest national swindles: The Transco sale to the China Grid and Monte Oro group (the latter comprising FVR’s men). Naturally, all of them would not want the nation to figure these out because they are hoping for more of the same governance that they got from Gloria to continue enjoying what only the Tribune highlighted recently: “Listed firms’ profits surge 45% to P193-B in 1st half.”

In that report, First Philippine Holdings, the ABS-CBN mother company founded on power distribution, boosted the figures; likewise, privatized Maynilad’s net income soared 145 percent from P945 million to P2.32 billion “primarily due to the impact of an extraordinary gain recognized upon the approval of rebased rates effective last May 4, 2009.” In all, these huge profit increases accrued to only 100 companies at almost two billion per company.

Compare this to how much 90 million Filipinos get per capita from the national budget: P28 billion for health or P300 per capita; P2 billion for school houses, good for only 3,500 units while the shortfall is 40,000; P5.3 billion for housing, good for 254,000 units, of which 200,000 are very low cost units, when the backlog is 4 million units. And such has been the dire picture under two-and-a-half decades of Yellow and corporatist governance.

Then, behind the ABS-CBN-Inquirer-Makati Business Club (MBC) presidential and vice-presidential bets are the gofers of the corporate tyranny in the Philippines: Butch Abad of Batanes, who sponsored the Omnibus Power Bill that became the Epira, which brought us the highest electricity rates in Asia; corporate lawyer Frank Drilon, a remnant of “The Firm;” plus the rich Jesuits’ mascot Chito Gascon, ad nausea.

Thus, a horde of carpetbaggers and balimbings from “civil society” are scrambling to cling to the Yellow wagon again, salivating at the prospects of riding the oligarchy-backed bid after what they deemed as their self-deodorizing attacks against Gloria. But the interconnectedness of the Yellow crowd with the Arroyo regime is clear. The actuations of DFA Secretary Bert Romulo and presidential adviser Silvestre Bello, for instance, show that this crowd sees no fundamental difference between Gloria and the Yellow dummy.

The people should not be fooled. The country will not survive another stint of the jaundiced Yellow peril from the likes of FVR, ABS-CBN, Inquirer, and the MBC. They are now the nation’s Public Enemy No. 1.

(Tune in to 1098AM, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Persecution and greatness

2009-09-21T12:01:00.000+08:00

For daring to stand up to the plutocracy and its foreign overlords; for defying the rule of the hypocrites with his openness and sincerity; and for preserving the nation’s sovereignty by wiping out the secessionists in Mindanao, President Joseph Estrada was unceremoniously ousted in an elite coup more than eight years ago.

Then, for winning the moral struggle over that elite conspiracy and for marching toward full vindication in light of the apologies of erstwhile tormentors such as Cory Aquino and Bishop Antonio Tobias, the elite’s resentment against him simmered even more. Erap’s caring for the poor and the middle class, as well as, his preserving the coffers of the State against the oligarchy’s rapacious profit-taking quite simply dismayed them and their foreign counterparts no end.

Thus, for agitating the nation to seek genuine leadership that brooks no puppetry and for challenging the alternatives by standing for consideration yet again, Estrada is being persecuted today.

The conspiracy that deposed Estrada in 2001 has coalesced once more to thwart the will and wisdom of the people, despite some previous acts of contrition. That conspiracy, whose players hardly paid any respect to the supreme act of humility of their “icon” through words of dismay or claims of downplaying the apology as being made “in jest,” is set to stop Estrada’s crusade again by coalescing with the evil of the worst kind--the fiend of the highest order who figured in the Kuratong Baleleng infamy many years past.

Now I understand what some of Ping Lacson’s most ardent critics have warned people against. Although I’ve never given them much credence before, owing to the goodwill that Ping once had, I began to have serious misgivings about the man ever since he chose not to defend the constitutional order during Edsa II.

From my review of John Campos’ assassination, I now understand why Lacson was tagged in that murder, which also took the life of an innocent waitress, 27-year-old Emily Dumlao. And as I am now convinced that the murder of Dacer witness Jimmy Lopez three weeks ago smacked of a “warning” to the other witnesses, it now seems a trail of blood always follows Lacson wherever he goes.

Yet, despite this, rabid anti-Erap fanatics would rather root for their new man, Lacson, than give the persecuted Estrada, who has but a record of compassion, kindness, and magnanimity, even an ounce of sympathy.

It’s not that Erap really needs it; but their calibrated attacks reflect more on their character than the one they are persecuting. Characters like Rodel Rodis, who persistently dishes out falsehoods from the US --against Estrada, as well as, about the Plaza Miranda bombing to protect his icon in Utrecht , Jose Maria Sison--are just as vile as those who stand idly by while watching the extreme injustice being perpetrated. Political players who similarly savor the unfolding events for whatever reason without a tinge of indignation are just as cruel as the oppressors.

But there must be a greater, more transcendent reason for all this. As German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright Johann Friedrich Von Schiller once said, “… great people are always subject to persecution and always getting into straits.”

Always chastised by his mother and jailed by Marcos twice, Erap nevertheless ended up being Doña Mary’s favorite and soon got recruited by Marcos for higher office. Always subjected to persecution, the way Cardinal Sin declared “Anybody but Erap” and with the patent injustice from Gloria Arroyo’s kangaroo court, Erap still won in 1998 and graciously accepted Cory’s apology years later. And after being declared a political “washout” repeatedly, Erap still figures in the surveys’ top two berths without much campaigning.

Independent US political thinker Don Mashak, likewise, has something for us to ponder on: “Throughout History, Empires have persecuted the great agitators; Noah, Socrates, Jesus, Columbus, Voltaire, Charles Darwin, Gandhi, the US Founding Fathers, Martin Luther King, Jr. et al.”

Of course, one of the most persecuted Filipinos in history was Jose Rizal; another was Andres Bonifacio, who suffered a persecution more akin to Estrada’s--as theirs came from the ilustrados and the foreign powers.

What then makes for Estrada’s greatness? It was in his persecution years ago by the local political establishment of San Juan that shunned him as a “mere actor,” but which didn’t stop him from winning the TOYM in the field of public administration just the same. It’s in how he inherited one of the most decrepit of cities but shaped up its police force, cemented all its streets, and alleviated squatting through pioneered resettlements.

The mere actor-mayor thus became senator, then vice-president; then as president, made his mark with the largest margin of victory, accomplishing what no president before had done; cleaned up the Mindanao insurgency; integrated the welfare of the masses into governance for the first time; challenged the imperious authority of the Church on such issues as population and the legalization of jueteng; and thumbed down demands by Big Business of sovereign guarantees and public utility rate hikes.

Through it all, Erap has always defied the demands of the powerful in favor of the welfare of the greater majority. This defiance awed and disconcerted the powerful even more when he courageously tackled the threat of incarceration by facing the kangaroo court and winning his moral victory.

If Erap is again facing persecution, it is because he is living up to his greatness; forging ahead with his mission despite all the odds against him. I only hope the nation will have as much mettle and courage to win in this renewed battle against the persecutors of this nation.

(Tune in to 1098AM, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday with Atty. Alan Paguia, Wednesday with former Mayor Jun Simon, and Friday with Ver Eustaquio; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday on “Sept. 21 1972: Martial Law and the New Society Revisited;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

The US hand

2009-09-17T17:33:00.001+08:00

The US hand is never absent from any political-economic situation in countries such as the Philippines . To discount it is to be ignorant of history and reality.

The fall of Quirino, Garcia, Marcos, and Estrada were all US-engineered. Col. Edward Lansdale established Namfrel and propped up Magsaysay to trump the nationalist Quirino. The American Manufacturers Association generously funded Macapagal versus the “Filipino First” advocacy of Garcia. The Schultz-Wolfowitz-Casey operations against Marcos culminated in the 1986 Edsa I coup; and similar moves against Estrada by the Rumsfeld-Hank Greenberg group led to the infamy that was Edsa II.

Today, the US is at it again. It grooms the new Yellow dummy while mobilizing local mainstream media and Big Business to ride on “Mister” Panfilo Lacson’s wicked stratagem.

Nationalist Filipinos understand President Estrada’s struggle. They know there is far more at stake than just the elections of 2010. Estrada is the only leader in the horizon who has taken a patriotic stand when he preserved the national territory by vanquishing the MILF in 1999.

Thus, in whatever attack against Estrada’s leadership, any treasonous agreement that yields huge swathes of land (and sea) in the furtherance of a select group’s or foreign power’s objectives always becomes the core issue.

Contrast this to the new Yellow dummy, whose family of Quislings has left a disgraced legacy--from the grandfather’s leadership of the Kalibapi (Kapisanan ng Lingkod ng Bagong Pilipinas) or the pro-Japanese occupation legislature; followed by the father’s betrayal of RP’s effort to reclaim Sabah ; and then, the mother’s contraction of Philippine territorial limits in her so-called “Freedom Constitution.”

To support this new Yellow dummy is to therefore surrender Mindanao to the MILF. But beyond that, it is also to turnover Mindanao, along with Palawan , to the US Congress-backed United States Institute for Peace (USIP) on a silver platter. USIP is, of course, headed by J. Robinson West, the founder of PFC Energy.

The mission statement of West’s company reads: “…strategic advisors in global energy committed to providing innovative insights and solutions that help our clients make quality decisions and succeed… with deep industry knowledge and a profound understanding of the geopolitical landscape.” But what all that euphemism obscures is the use of intelligence and other operations.

PFC Energy can only obtain its goals for western oil and gas companies if there is a compliant Philippine government, which it had found in Gloria Arroyo. But since Arroyo is already too weak politically to enforce the already junked Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain, a new surrogate is needed.

In Lacson’s latest tirade against Estrada, timing is of the essence. It is not to expose any truth but to wage a baseless character assassination, serving both as a distraction from his supposed role in the Dacer-Corbito case, as well as, a monkey wrench on Estrada’s 2010 campaign and the unification of the popular will. Simultaneously, the public is denied media space to examine the new Yellow dummy.

But there is a more sinister angle in the claims that Estrada directly ordered those under Ping to harass the Yuchengco son or that he was involved in rice smuggling: It tries to impress upon the audience that it is Estrada’s practice to undercut the military and civilian chain-of-command.

Lacson is clearly laying the ground for accusing Estrada in the kidnap-murder of Dacer and Corbito. The remaining witnesses will be made not forget the fate of others like Jimmy Lopez and his companion who were recently killed. They can be persuaded to tell the lies that are necessary to get Lacson off the hook and pin Estrada just as well.

Another party that has even more persuasive powers, with an even more pressing interest in Mindanao, is the US government. Since it has Michael Ray Aquino in the palm of its hands in the same way it has Lacson by the balls, it could then offer Michael Ray a way out in exchange for pinning down Estrada. Likewise, the US-based Dacer family is very much within its reach.

With regard to the Yuchengcos, the public wouldn’t get the chance to find out if the son is really into drugs. Their media handlers will keep issues moving so fast that spectators won’t have any more time to look into the details.

The PeaceBonds scam, which the Yuchengcos packaged with civil society group CodeNGO in the wake of Edsa II, was a P10-billion loan ten years ago that the people will have to repay to the tune of P35 billion today..

The Yuchengcos’ Pacific Educational Plans racket, meanwhile, had duped thousands of policy planholders; yet mainstream media is not focusing on this. Neither will they headline the PLDT officials’ announcement that no pressure was exerted on the sale of PTIC shares and that they, in fact, jacked up the price upon the Yuchengcos’ request.

Lacson’s tirades by themselves signify nothing; same with all the black propaganda of mainstream and Internet media against Estrada. What is of true significance is the power behind these pawns. From Lansdale’s mascot to the present dummy, the US government has always pushed hard for its candidates from the dummy pedigrees because that power has always assaulted the sovereignty and patrimony of this nation.

Inasmuch as taxi and jeepney drivers love their pro-masa man, there is still that subliminal lure from the media campaigns of ABS-CBN, Inquirer, Mon del Rosario et al. that package their bet “like a virgin”--uncomplicated, canned, and ready to eat tinapa for free.

But once the people bite, two years down the road, they’ll discover--as they did after Cory, FVR and Arroyo--that from one worst fire, they’ve been thrown to hell yet again. That has been the case since 1986 to 2009. There is just no end to the downward spiral as long as the US and the oligarchs rule with their puppets and dummies.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7’s Talk News TV, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. on “Sept. 21, Martial Law Revisited” with the FDC, Party-list Rep. Jonathan de la Cruz, and Tribune columnist Rod Kapunan; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

The Yellows’ game plan

2009-09-14T22:43:00.000+08:00

The ABS-CBN-Inquirer-Ayala candidate, otherwise known as the “Yellow dummy,” is now the subject of a communications plan that seeks to cover up the fact that he’s really a political non-entity.

To date, this plan is being taken to a few basic directions. One, distract the public’s attention from the only presidential candidate who has the experience, a clear national agenda, and one who’s clearly gaining ground at the homestretch. Two, pit “the Palace” against this non-entity as if he were Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s chief nemesis, through items such as last Friday’s Inquirer headline, “Palace to Noynoy: Be a Man.” Three, maintain the focus on Villar at all cost as a secondary candidate so as to obviate the presence and momentum of President Joseph Estrada. Erap will, of course, be covered only when negative developments come up, such as that contrived Ping Lacson bomb of a tell-all. But they would have to keep doing all these till election day, lest their dummy’s empty shell be exposed.

Then, the Inquirer’s Sunday headline, which attempts to distance the Aquino family from its Hacienda Luisita shares, is a step to remove one of the major PR banes off the Yellows’ cacique candidate’s back. In fact, according to a veteran financial sleuth I spoke to, Danding Cojuangco has already acquired Cory Aquino’s Luisita shares lock, stock and barrel.

Nevertheless, as the call for justice looms for all Hacienda Luisita massacre victims, this will forever haunt the non-entity, who at Club Filipino even had the gall to juxtapose “justice” with “just-tiis” in his speech. But beyond this, what true opposition forces should highlight is Cory’s swift and easy turnover of Meralco to one of the Yellow dummy’s biggest oligarchic backers, which has led to the most expensive power rates in Asia today. And that is the real travesty!

Going back to their plan, it seems, too, that aside from the other oligarchs, the Cojuangcos themselves are consolidating for their blue-blooded candidate. I am told that Channel 5 has just fallen into line.

Meanwhile, I’m expecting false surveys to come out soon, showing a runaway figure for the dummy in hopes of creating a bandwagon. But, this time, a band might be there from the Yellow media’s end with no wagon in sight.

The current combined tri-media “shock and awe” of the invading Yellow forces is taking its toll on the more rational discussion of issues and alternatives for 2010. That’s why genuine thinkers must put up with the unrelenting struggle in this war for truth and genuine democracy. For us, there’s simply no retreat, no surrender.

We received enthusiastic responses to last Friday’s column on the true Aquino legacy--from a grandfather who volunteered to head the pro-Japanese Kalibapi (Kapisanan ng Lingkod ng Bagong Pilipinas), to the betrayal of Sabah, to the twin massacres that marked the Cory era, and the “massacre” of electricity consumers.

Many others are fighting back. I had two of them on my GNN program which will be shown Tuesday evening--former Gov. Homobono Adaza of Misamis Oriental and Bulletin columnist Eric Espina, both serious students of history. Bono has written a book on Philippine leaders and finds Cory as the most incompetent; while Eric brought E. Glick’s book, “Sainthood Postponed,” which was a book that Cory had de-shelved from the bookstores to be kept out of the public eye.

One really cannot see valuable historical truth while allowing even token genuflection at the yellow ribbon because even a hint of respect for it reinforces a myriad of lies in the service of oligarchic and corporatocratic exploitation. Inversely, one cannot even perfunctorily accede to the demonization of Marcos just to avoid the hassle of being tagged pro-Marcos without reinforcing all the rabid lies of the Yellow crowd and the oligarchs behind them.

Marcos was both good and bad--a culprit and a victim--like most Filipino leaders who had to navigate the treacherous politics of a land under the shadow of an evil global empire. But in the end, Marcos was a nationalist--cutting short the US bases’ lease and demanding rent; while Cory in 1991 marched in the rain to the Senate to appeal for their extension.

ABS-CBN and the Inquirer still try to raise the old formula of the Marcos bogey with their candidate’s promise to recover the “Marcos wealth.” Well, they tried but failed. They didn’t follow it up because the non-issue no longer struck a chord with the people. What keeps striking, though, is the “Kamag-anak Inc.” tune. That’s why they are keeping Peping Cojuangco out of the way.

Most left-wing or “progressive” activist movements in the Philippines are witting allies of right-wing oligarchs in perpetuating the Marcos bogeyman. (Satur Ocampo and Teddy Casino are going for Villar, the real estate usurper, while Etta Rosales and her puppies are gunning for the Yellow dummy.) This is the main reason for the failure of real ideological alternatives in the country. Their confused alliances, which they think can aid them in their objectives, as when Rosales supported Gloria in 2001 and 2004, confuses the nation and leaves it bereft of ideas and alternatives.

Today, only Estrada stands out with a clear message--pro-poor, nationalist and patriotic (particularly on the MILF issue).

Likewise, there are plenty of disinformation going around, as when Manny Portes said his non-entity of a candidate was endorsed by Bongbong and Imee Marcos. Fellow columnist Jonathan de la Cruz also called to ask if what’s being circulated in some blogs is true--that I’ve gone over to the dummy’s side; to which I said, “When hell freezes over.”

This early, it seems, we can already witness how they’ll do anything to nab power the way Gloria Arroyo does.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7’s Talk News TV, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. on “The Battle of the Legacies: Marcos, Aquino, Estrada” with former Gov. Homobono Adaza and columnist Eric Espina; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

The new Yellow dummy

2009-09-11T13:01:00.000+08:00

The color yellow is said to represent cowardice. Such is true of the Yellow crowd that conspired in 2001 to topple the popularly-elected leader who tried to protect the nation from the oligarchy’s predatory profit-seeking. Supported by the likes of ABS-CBN, Inquirer, and Big Business establishments of Ayala Avenue , this Yellow crowd, proudly calling itself “civil society,” later on earned the moniker “evil society” after the nation bore the brunt of their abusive reign. Epitomized by their erstwhile puppet Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, these people fast-tracked approval of onerous power projects; privatized energy production, water utilities, and expressways, thus, jacking up Filipinos’ cost-of-living horrendously; and saddled us with the greatest debt surge, in the trillions, since Cory Aquino’s seven-year P400-billion debt post-Edsa I.

In 1986, these Yellows, backed by the US corporate oligarchy, deposed the besieged former President Ferdinand Marcos, then gave away the media assets held by the state. ABS-CBN and dzMM, for instance, were taken back by the Lopezes, even when their financing came from the Meralco power firm that was similarly turned over for nothing. Marcos’ Daily Express print media domination was likewise replaced by the Inquirer-Philippine Star tandem that has received advertising support from local and transnational Big Business ever since.

When Aquino took power, she had supposedly restored electoral democracy. But what actually happened, and what’s not being told, is that she merely turned over public utility assets from the state back to the oligarchs, thereby entrenching their political and economic domination of our land and its democratic institutions.

What the nation suffered under Mrs. Aquino and her anointed, Gen. Fidel Ramos, were crises upon crises in the power sector, which profited the largest generator-importing crony family at that time and also opened the way for Ramos’ infamous emergency take-or-pay contracts with Independent Power Producers (IPPs). As a consequence, the nation was made to pay for power that has not even been used, due to the notorious Purchased Power Agreements (PPAs) that enjoyed sovereign guarantees.

Meanwhile, privatization of our water utilities proceeded posthaste in favor of the Ayalas and Lopezes, and water rates zoomed ten times. As the people suffered, they decided in 1998 to rally behind a leader of their own, prompting Cory’s Rasputin, the late Jaime Cardinal Sin, to issue his “Anybody but Erap” call to the faithful.

Still, Erap won overwhelmingly. And a regime of restrained debt amortization, increased social spending for the poor, and self-reliant economics ensued. Most of all, President Joseph Estrada put a stop to all sovereign guarantees.

And since precipitate power and water rate hikes were refused outright, much to the chagrin of the oligarchs, and with the US Embassy intensely miffed by Erap’s ban on sovereign guarantees, as well as, his decisive wipe-out of the US’ MILF surrogates in Mindanao, a campaign of vilification through the oligarchs’ captive tri-media came underway. Bombings were contrived by police elements allied to the Yellows, who hid behind alleged Muslim terrorists. Then, Cory called on Estrada to step down in January 2001, culminating in Arroyo’s unconstitutional ascent to power.

Although Cory apologized to Erap nine years later, the damage to the nation her error has caused is one that a mere apology can never repair.

With the 2010 polls close at hand, Estrada, in pursuing his sense of destiny, began to ascend to the top two ranks of the main poll surveys, the SWS and Pulse Asia. Competing against him is a renegade Edsa II stalwart who had spun off his own bid with the secret backing of Gloria Arroyo. The dyed-in-the-wool, blue blood candidate, meanwhile, had long been black and blue in the surveys, slipping badly to fifth place. Then Cory Aquino died.

ABS-CBN and the Inquirer drummed up the dirge 24/7; the Ayalas sent down employees to line the streets; and Filipinos who are suckers for funerals and “uzis” brought in more “uzis.” Eureka ! A perfect opportunity for a new blue blood to take up the cudgels for the elite was concocted.

Never mind if this Lopez-Ayala-Prieto candidate was congressman for nine years and produced only five House bills, of which none was passed into law. Never mind if, as senator, he only had the renaming of streets as accomplishment. He didn’t have anything to say on the CARP either, maybe because of his family’s Hacienda Luisita embroilment that saw 14 farmers killed. And this non-entity suddenly becomes material for the presidency?

He is built up as a patriot, as it says in his Web site: “Dugong Bayani.” But “Dugong Traydor” is more like it with a grandfather who volunteered to head the Japanese occupation government Kalibapi and a father who betrayed the Philippines ’ efforts to retake Sabah . Still, ABS-CBN, the Inquirer, the Ayalas et al. can turn black into white, traitors into heroes, and even make an opposition hitchhiker into “the” opposition candidate.

To wit, the Inquirer had the idiocy to publish this story yesterday: “Erap busts opposition’s hopes for unity.” This, despite a long line of contrary historical evidence:

Estrada, through the Pwersa ng Masa (PnM) Coalition, shepherded the opposition senatorial slate in 2001 against Gloria’s “13-0” People Power Coalition, winning six seats. In 2004, Estrada’s Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) became the backbone of FPJ’s candidacy which won but was cheated, as admitted by Gloria in her 2005 “I am sorry” spiel. In 2007, Estrada cobbled the Genuine Opposition (GO) slate from detention in Tanay, Rizal, and won eight out of twelve slots, clobbering Arroyo’s Team Unity. Given these, who is the rightful opposition leader today?

The Yellow crowd’s dummy was only a hanger-on in the GO slate, owing to his late mother’s request. So even with ABS-CBN and the Inquirer on his side, the people should still strive for final emancipation. Estrada must hammer on the message that his struggle is the people’s fight against these exploiters.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m.. on “Comparing the Marcos, Aquino, and Erap Legacies” with ex-Gov. Bono Adaza and columnist Eric Espina; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

From coconuts to other ‘nuts’

2009-09-07T00:01:00.000+08:00

On Tuesday, Sept. 8, 9 a.m., various organizations of coconut farmers, processors, and dealers will converge at the newly-opened Coconut House at the Quezon Memorial Circle . Under the aegis of the Coconut Forum, led by organizations such as the Coconut Industry for Reform Movement (COIR), Virgin Coconut Oil Producers (VCOP), Cooperative of Virgin Coconut Producers and Traders (COVCOPT), this initiative is being supported by many veteran champions of the coconut industry’s democratization. They include: Bobby Tañada and Oscar Santos; Reps. Leonardo Montemayor, Erin Tañada, Proceso Alcala, and other legislators from coconut-growing provinces; plus government officials such as Danny Coronacion of the Coconut Industry Investment Fund (CIIF) and Oscar Garin, administrator of the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), who will be represented by his information chief Thelma Tolentino.

One of the main issues driving this sector to sound the alarm is the impending conversion of the CIIF’s San Miguel Corporation (SMC) shares from “common and voting” to “preferred and non-voting” status, which would result in the coconut farmers’ loss of control and participation over their investments in the said corporation.

Although the SMC management today is offering higher dividends in exchange for this conversion, no one can really rest assured since any earning levels will all depend on the performance of the company’s stocks. A food and beverage conglomerate that is now running amuck, investing in politically-tainted and non-food interests, cannot offer assurances of safety and security or the long-term yield of its shares.

The CIIF is supposed to be only for “coconut industry investment” but that is certainly not where the SMC board is putting this money into. As I understand, a separate fund is to be created after the conversion. Still, the problem is the absence of any guidelines as to where the money should be placed.

The coconut industry sector has the potential to lift the Philippine national economy out of the woods. It can give 25 percent of our people meaningful livelihood once it increases the value added to its production by up to 10 times. To be done through “integrated processing,” measures range from instituting import substitution of dairy products, amounting to $1 billion a year; to exporting high value oils and industrial chemicals; to replacing chemical imports for the detergent industry; and exporting other pharma-, nutri- and cosme-ceuticals.

Mr. Joey Faustino of COIR, the main grassroots coconut farmers’ group, has written a paper in August 2009 entitled, “Where have the coconut levy shares in San Miguel gone?” It states, “Today the real coconut farmers are again being duped into an out-of-court settlement to the advantage of the same privileged few despite a victory in the Courts. And while court decisions are stalled or left out for some political compromise, the sequestered coco levy fund assets appear to slowly dissipate or disappear under layers and layers of corporate maneuverings… Action is yet to be seen both from the House committee and the PCGG. Meanwhile, where has the ‘Cojuangco’ block gone to by now? That too was funded by the coconut levies with contributions coming from the millions of already impoverished coconut farmers.”

Another interesting issue to be raised on Tuesday is the “other levy” on coconut. Imposed by the US since the time of Quezon, from which money was used to build Quezon City and open up Mindanao, this levy, or what’s officially called an “excise tax” by the US, was pushed because it feared the influx of low-cost coconut oil and milk into its market; thus, multiplying to 200 percent the price of our coconut oil exports.

Save for the masked inducement, an ominous condition imposed on the Philippine government’s use of this excise tax was that it “would not be… for the development of the coconut industry.” Even then, almost 100 years ago, the US already knew that our coconut industry was the key to developing an independent, strong Philippine economy. Maybe this is why even today, a prominent “Kano” in our midst continues to stunt the industry.

As I started writing this column, Linggoy Alcuaz informed me of Sen. Ping Lacson’s supposed privileged speech about President Joseph Estrada on Tuesday. Of course, the Dacer-Corbito case immediately came to mind. Based on his information, however, including some from Sandra Cam, Linggoy said that it will just be one among other issues Lacson would be raising. So my reaction was, “He’s nuts. Character talaga itong si Ping .” The fact that the Dacer family itself is pinpointing Ping really settles much of the question; and that’s why he has to try very hard to distract the public. Coupled with his call for Erap to withdraw in favor of Noynoy, it’s clear that Ping is doing the exact same thing as in 2004--divide the anti-Gloria opposition.

These people advising Erap to withdraw are losing sight of the fact that this will surely cause the opposition to lose up to 30 percent of the masa vote to Noli de Castro. Well, that’s probably their real agenda. Those egging Noynoy to gun for the top post for should listen well to the vast majority who are saying, “Musmusin pa siya.” They should push instead for his merger with Erap to make the opposition unbeatable, even with the administration’s use of automated cheating. Cory Aquino in 2007 sought Erap to include Noynoy in the opposition’s senatorial ticket. She later publicly apologized to Erap for Edsa II. If these aren’t enough food for thought for Erap’s detractors, then I don’t know what else can pierce through their thick skulls.

After mulling about Lacson in a similar way, it dawned on me that here we see not only a character but a “police character,” who’s as devious as the rest of the devious civil society can be.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 on “Sept. 11, WTC Attack/Noynoy for Prexy or VP” with Linggoy Alcuaz and Manny Portes; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Magdalo, Noynoy, Erap

2009-09-04T13:23:00.000+08:00

As I write this piece, supporters of the Magdalo party-list group are gathering in front of the Comelec for its official registration. That’s one party to watch: Young, energetic, visionary. Though still in need of some guidance in ideological discourse, this is definitely one of the best things that can happen to our national politics. The Magdalo’s party-list candidates are still to be known; but for the Senate, it already has BrigGen. Danilo Lim; for the congressional seats of Taguig and Cebu , it has Lts. James Layug and Ashley Acedillo, respectively; and for Sipalay City Mayor, it has Lt. Gary Alejano. As I await the Magdalo’s party-list campaign materials, I now have the red, blue, and yellow Danny Lim stickers all over my car, in conjunction with his stickers and pocket calendars, which I’m eagerly distributing in the four public markets I go to.

While the Magdalo’s political leaders are still young and new, no one can say the same for Sen. Noynoy Aquino or the other so-called “young” leaders of the Liberal Party (LP).

Capitalizing on a well-attended funeral, this new presidential bet of the LP, being billed as non-trapo and, as Conrad de Quiros claims, “one deserving to be president because he does not seek it”--as if there’s a public clamor for him to run--is the product of the party’s political somersault in junking its failed presidential hopeful in the person of Mar Roxas. How did this come about?

First of all, the LP is one of the two grand old traditional parties in the Philippines , the other being the Nacionalista Party, and both are rooted in the incipient parties from the Commonwealth era eight decades ago.

It’s not only that these two are the oldest political parties, but their leaders whose names span generations--Roxas, Aquino, Cojuangco--are as old as those of disreputable American and Japanese colonial collaborators and exploitative elites, whose wealth was either stolen from the Philippine Revolution’s coffers or from war reparations, the latter of which was salted to New York when the LP had one of its own sitting as president.

Decades of wealth and power and control over media may have covered up a lot of these seamy beginnings, but we should not allow these to be forgotten. The other traditional party, the Nacionalista, while not having an old elite-sounding name heading it, nonetheless has a nouveau riche leadership that is as corrupt as the LP’s.

The LP is alive today because this “new” candidate supposedly brings new hope; which, if I may add, also brings back a lot of old, bad blood. Hence, the so-called Kamag-anak Inc. is now abuzz. I’ve just heard from my friends in the banking sector that the former organizer of the Northern Alliance has been visiting bank presidents, soliciting funds for this new bet. The Northern Alliance, as you may recall, controlled jueteng operations in Luzon during Cory Aquino’s incumbency. Can the reader guess who this kamag-anak is?

Another kamag-anak, who similarly ran jueteng in his turf, even egged Sonia Roco to come out using her paper party, Aksyon Demokratiko (which has fewer members than a taxi can hold), to support this new candidate.

Meanwhile, other rah-rah boys who aren’t kamag-anak but just as bad also have tarnished records. The LP’s Butch Abad, for one, pushed the Epira power privatization that has wreaked havoc in our lives and national economy.

The supposedly intellectual writers of “civil society,” presumably revolutionary in the spirit of the extreme Left like Conrad de Quiros, simply ignore the facts about the political parties and candidates they are supporting. That goes as well for Billy Esposo, in previously going for the Nacionalistas’ Manny Villar until he faltered in the surveys.

Right now, they are all going gung-ho for this new LP bet (who’s still praying for divine guidance, as if the public is yet to know what his God’s “advice” would be) without facing these issues squarely. If a real providential adviser were to be consulted, the correct advice would be for him to join forces with President Joseph Estrada and run as his vice president to overcome the automated election system’s cheating and ensure a change in the next government. But that would only be over the dead bodies of Kamag-anak Inc.

For sure, they are praying for Estrada’s disqualification by the Supreme Court (SC). But since 62 percent of the people surveyed by Pulse Asia already believe Estrada will be allowed to run, the SC simply cannot ignore this. Those who are still unwilling to accept this most basic democratic tenet should read carefully what Dean De la Paz of the BusinessMirror quoted from noted US jurist, Justice Thomas McIntyre Cooley: “The Constitution does not derive its force from the convention which framed it, but from the people who ratified it. The intent to be arrived at is that of the people. ”

President Estrada represents wisdom, compassion, vision, and experienced leadership. Most of all, he embodies a set of ideals for the country’s flag and its poor, which he hopes to achieve through practical, determined means. His vision: Food security and agricultural self-reliance; an end to sovereign guarantees; debt renegotiation; commissioning the AFP for a massive infrastructure campaign; professionalizing the cabinet as he did in 1998; legalizing jueteng to utilize its revenues for the public good; an end to the NPA insurgency through forceful negotiations; and allowing only one flag to fly in Mindanao--the Philippine flag.

With Erap, there’s no more learning curve, no more compromise, and no more ambition--just getting things done for the good of the nation.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 on “Sept. 11 WTC Attack: A False Flag Operation;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Worse than Gloria Arroyo

2009-08-31T13:25:00.000+08:00

It’s been on many people’s lips: “The way Manny Villar is buying up everyone and everything with his money, he’ll be worse than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.” Worse than the fake Palace occupant who has corrupted everything almost irreparably--from elections to watchdogs; to police and AFP generals; to princes of the Catholic Church and other sects; to US diplomats, poll surveys, media; as well as, NGOs, opposition politicians, ad nausea.

Villar, who isn’t even in Malacañang yet, has been doing pretty much the same thing but with much more vehemence and gusto. Aside from spending what’s known to be between P350 to P800 million on his media blitzes alone, he is also into an even bigger spending spree--buying local and provincial politicians to his side, bringing his pre-election expenditure way into the billions!

Admittedly, tracing the sources of Villar’s bottomless wealth is herculean. No matter how often it is explained, this labyrinthian cornucopia always goes beyond comprehension. One real estate expert we spoke to avers to the old Unified Home Lending Program (UHLP) and National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation (NHMFC) as the roots.

Decades ago, these two programs were designed to serve state workers’ and private sector employees’ home financing needs by tapping the combined resources of three government housing agencies. Villar was a major player in these undertakings. Working through real estate brokers, he bought up housing loan privileges from the beneficiaries without intending to build the promised homes, took the financing proceeds, and let the projects get foreclosed.

These comprised hundreds of thousands of “ghost deliveries” of non-existent homes; thus, netting at least P43 billion in losses to government housing and finance agencies.

Needless to say, the ill-gotten windfall from these massive, anomalous deals were believed to have started Villar’s other land development and banking interests and his use of congressional and senate privileges to divert road funds to these properties to boost their stock.

Villar’s rise to fortune is all but a story of his genius in corrupting government officials; in resorting to financial shenanigans--such as DOSRI loans using overpriced real estate collaterals from his own bank, which he eventually collapsed, and his abuse of the SPAV law to buy back his own debts at a huge markdown; and in diverting public money for infrastructure to inflate the value of his properties and holdings.

If someday an honest government starts its own inquires into Villar’s tree of plenty, it will likely find the gnarled roots from the losses of the UHLP and NHMFC, which losses, up to now, still have to be resolved according to housing industry sources. If the multi-billion Daang Hari scam, exposed by Senators Panfilo Lacson and Jamby Madrigal, already shows how Villar’s neck can be put to the chopping block, what more await when even bigger scams from way, way back are uncovered? Frankly, these may well be his undoing.

Villar has to run and run hard to stay ahead of these cases. He has to spend more, and in the billions, in buying up air time, media practitioners, and pundits to brainwash the public mind. In a way, the media blitzkriegs are taking effect. He is surging ahead in public consciousness, especially with his “tulong sa OFW” spiel. And this bolsters his notion that he can buy everyone and everything even more. But for how long?

If Villar is not effectively exposed for what he truly is, and with his frame of mind fixed toward Malacañang, we will no doubt have someone as bad as Arroyo heading the next government. Or he’ll probably be worse since Gloria, in grabbing power, had to rely on various groups, which somehow put a dampener on her voracity.

Villar, in contrast is only using money, money, and more money to buy his way to victory. What then can be expected from an administration set-up a la Villar? Another conjugal kleptocracy to not only to recoup their wild campaign spending in the shortest time possible but to expand their riches by using government resources?

We should therefore ask the people: Do they want more of the same (or probably worse)?

To campaign against the money and media of Villar is to wage a two-pronged assault on his false image. First is a “truth campaign” to expose the lie behind his wealth. Second is a vigorous unmasking of his fraudulence by identifying the qualities of a true leader. These qualities--engendering the spirit of love for and among Filipinos; a palpable compassion for the nation; a proven capacity for reconciling conflicting forces to overcome the crises of the times; a record of concrete achievements; and a correct, pragmatic and effective governance that champions peace and order, as well as, patriotic and developmental economic strategies--are all that Villar can only pretend to have.

Chiz has been stuck in his pandering to the youth vote while Korina has hopelessly muddled Mar’s message. Noli, on the other hand, is so desperate he’s now amenable to Gloria’s “kiss of death.” The rest, like Loren, are being relegated to the vice-presidential derby. So the race is now down to Estrada and Villar.

Since Villar has already “peaked” too early, any truth campaign will easily make minced meat of this. Estrada is cruising along at the right pace. A very human and humorous movie with Ai Ai de las Alas will touch the heart of the nation. Plus, a record of the achievements of his abruptly interrupted regime and how, over time, his vindication came because of his passion for truth and justice, will highlight the message that Erap brings. And such is a message and a vision of hope, versus the only thing that Villar offers--a leadership worse than Gloria.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 with the FDC on “Laban sa Laiban Dam-nation;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Villar: Double agent?

2009-08-28T13:26:00.000+08:00

It was about the time of the last Sona that presidential-son Mikey Arroyo was quoted as saying there are a number of poseurs in the opposition faking criticism of his mother while actually courting her support. One of those alluded to has come out openly to deny it. Sen. Chiz Escudero has long had a hard time in shaking off the stigma because of his direct association with the financial oligarch suspected of fronting for the many deals of the First Couple. Still, he has more than once come out publicly to reject any such insinuations. But the same isn’t true for the other politician alluded to. Whenever asked about it, Sen. Manny Villar has only equivocated, bobbed, and weaved time and time again.

One interview with Villar on the subject from the Senate Web site follows:

Q: May binabanggit si Mikey Arroyo na meron daw presidential aspirant na bumabanat sa Nanay niya pero nagba-backchanneling through her allies para humingi ng support.

Villar: Mahirap naman akong mag-komenta doon dahil unang-una, sigurado namang hindi ako iyon kaya lang mahirap din namang magkomenta ako sa iba naming colleague. Hindi ko rin naman alam kung totoo iyon o hindi. Siguro hanapin n’yo na lang kung sino iyon.

Q: Hindi ninyo alam kung sino?

Villar: Hindi ko alam. Tatanungin ko rin kayo.

Q: Is it wrong to ask for support or endorsement?

Villar: Wala namang mali sa lahat ng tao na tumulong kaya lang, syempre meron tayong mga programa ng gobyerno, meron tayong mga patakaran, meron tayong mga linya. Syempre iyon ang una mong bibigyan ng pagpapahalaga sa hihingan mo ng tulong. Syempre titingnan mo rin ang motibo ng hihingan mo ng tulong kung merong pangangailangan nga siya ng tulong.

Q: Hindi asset ang endorsement ni PGMA?

Villar: Mahirap magsabi ng ganyan kasi ayaw kong husgahan ang kapasyahan ng kung sino man iyon kung meron mang ganun.

Everyone, including Escudero, knows that Arroyo’s endorsement or any association with her is a “kiss of death” for any politician. That is why it was wise of him to go out on a limb to show the whole country that he would have nothing to do with Gloria whenever he’s pressed for a show of independence from Malacañang. Villar, however, isn’t even willing to do that, leading some to think that he’s just making sure not to jeopardize his cozy relations with Malacañang. Others, too, believe that he may already have received advanced funding from the Palace, given the huge campaign costs he has so far incurred, estimated at around P800 million for just his TV and radio spots alone. When you add the hefty sums he’s spent on dole-outs to hordes of local and provincial politicians, then you end up with an even more staggering amount!

Villar has been very easy with his money, if indeed these are all his. From the alleged manipulation of congressional budgetary allocations that favor his real estate projects, to the billions borrowed from government financial institutions that are later defaulted and bought back at huge discounts, to the unpaid debts and obligations for real estate properties bought or leased representing outstanding debts, what kind of a president will he be when he has to remain in power to stave off financial and political Armageddon?

The latest Pulse Asia results only reflect the immediacy of Villar’s “Akala mo conyo, iyon pala taga-Tondo” ads. Such gimmicks, however, are only ephemeral. True enough, the other side of the survey picture, which catapults Estrada to No. 1 in the latest SWS results, with Villar dropping to second place, paints a completely different picture as the latter was conducted without the contravening “Akala ko…” ads.

All candidates for the presidency who’ve advertised themselves have already peaked and have started to decline. The only one who’s still .01 percent away from declaring his run, who has paid for no ad of his own, is President Joseph Estrada. Instead, the only ad that features him, the one for Arthro, has Estrada as the recipient, not the spender, of advertising money. And, in spite of these circumstances, Estrada has risen from fourth to second and first rank with nary a sweat.

But, headlines such as the Inquirer’s “Estrada ordered slay, Mancao tells court,” along with the timing of the belated extraditions and testimonies, make it obvious that the administration will be using the Dacer-Corbito case as a bludgeon against Estrada (not Panfilo Lacson). Imagine that the Mancao testimony has been kept simmering for months on end, only to be timed for the rise in Estrada’s public approval, as well as, the unprovoked assault by Gloria-FVR hatchet man Gabriel Claudio of him “splitting” the opposition. By putting Estrada down at this time, aren’t these administration moves designed to help Villar?

Thus, Mikey’s insinuation of “double agents” in the opposition is plain wrong because one is actually a bona fide agent of Gloria Arroyo. This has become ever so blatant since the impeachment proceedings against Estrada were railroaded in 2000, laying the red carpet for Gloria to prance all the way to Malacañang. And with Malacañang’s silence, along with its help and support for all of Villar’s financial machinations, not to mention the seemingly “fortuitous” events abetted by the Palace for him, it seems the favor has been returned many times over. But what they all cannot buy, as the late Ramon Mitra and other trapos have found out, is the love of the people that makes someone their leader. And this, only Erap has.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Distilling muddled waters

2009-08-23T21:45:00.000+08:00

“Good water cannot come from a muddled pond.” – Rizal

Last Friday was a good occasion to clear up a lot of muddled waters from the wellspring of Philippine history. August 21 was the anniversary of two very significant but very muddled events: The 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing and the 1983 Ninoy Aquino assassination. The muddle consists of erroneous conclusions still repeated by local and foreign media, pundits and ignorant peoples alike, all enshrined in many pseudo-historical resource materials. Although the two grizzly incidents both occurred on August 21, only 12 years apart, these still spook the minds of many Filipinos. Today, the post-Edsa I, II and III generations think of these only as stories and, thus, take the wrong conclusions as gospel.

Too many have used disinformation to serve their own purposes. Certain media networks and political parties have deliberately kept established facts under the rug to keep them out of public consciousness.

The only existing documentary of the bombing that has since been put on YouTube depicts a host of personages being interviewed from their hospital beds or wheelchairs. Among them, including the late Sen. Gerardo Roxas, John Osmeña, Eva Estrada-Kalaw, plus a dozen others, it was only then senatorial candidate Eddie Ilarde who had a correct assessment of who might have perpetrated the bombing.

Ilarde, who had almost lost his foot in the blast, was then being interviewed at the nearest medical facility to Plaza Miranda, the Singian Clinic near Malacañang. Speaking to the foreign press, he pointed to certain “ideologues” as behind the bombing, which deviated from his party mates’ “script.” Quite naturally, he got immediately chastised for not pinning the blame on Marcos as the whole world seemed to be doing at that time.

Another important guest alongside Ilarde in my upcoming Tuesday TV program is columnist Eric Espina. Based on the research he did and the various evidences he culled--books by two bombing victims, former Senators Jovito Salonga and Eva Estrada-Kalaw, and a third one by former AFP-then-communist turncoat Victor Corpus, all these point to Jose Ma. Sison and the New People’s Army (NPA) as the supposed “brains.”

I already had an inkling of this 10 years after Plaza Miranda when I, as secretary to the opposition coalition UNIDO, often overheard discussions among Liberal Party (LP) stalwarts who were convinced that Ninoy Aquino had prior knowledge of this event. Ninoy, as we know, was late for the LP’s miting de avance so he was spared from the fate of his colleagues in that blast. In later years, of course, more testimonies came from former NPA leaders like Fluellen Ortigas to support this.

So, after 38 years, Ilarde and all those who held a contrary view have been proven right.

Yet to this day, what many fail to ask about the Plaza Miranda bombing is: Cui bono? Or, who stood to benefit? Sen. Ilarde certainly knew Marcos was not stupid to have made something that would generate sympathy for his rivals. Even though the LP claimed that Marcos had wanted a stop to the so-called Haruta case scandal, on hindsight, it wasn’t at all very significant compared to his regime’s other controversies.

Still, the “Marcos as the Plaza Miranda bombing mastermind” tale, no matter how implausible to sober analysts, continues to be a myth. And as John F. Kennedy said: “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

The late President Ferdinand Marcos was certainly a big loser in the Plaza Miranda bombing incident as sympathy poured onto the LP senatorial bandwagon that swept it to power. At the same time, the stigma that became attached to him from it would also haunt him throughout his political and biological life.

On the flip side, the biggest gainer from that gruesome but brilliant “false flag” project was Sison and his Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), who intensified the contradictions within the ruling class’ two-party system, radicalized the youth into the arms of the CPP, and left the rest of society in a daze against Marcos. Sison would have probably gotten away with it had internal conflicts within the CPP, including the execution of Danny Cordero, the identified grenade thrower, not eventually caused defections that allowed the true story to leak out.

Sadly, however, all the befuddling tales on the Plaza Miranda Bombing as told by mainstream media, particularly ABS-CBN, never give us a hint of the real culprits. Even institutions like the Catholic Church and the intelligentsia, who help shape our school curricula, share the same blindness. For vested interests like ABS-CBN, the anti-Marcos groups, the CPP-linked organizations, in tandem with the Church plus the economic oligarchs, this is understandable. The legitimacy of what they’ve been doing for almost 40 years now squarely depends on this continuing demonization of Marcos. The same is true for the US and foreign Big Business in their desire to open up the Philippines for liberalization and globalization. Marcos’ demonization only beclouded the benefits of the late leader’s protectionist and development-driven economic policies. But, in all, the country has become the biggest loser in this Plaza Miranda bombing myth.

With all that have transpired after Marcos, the perpetuators of this myth thus owe the nation an apology for waylaying us for so long. Now that truth is at hand, we are another step closer to setting ourselves free. This, along with another truth we will uncover next, the mystery behind the brains of Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, will surely help us achieve victory in this cause.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 with former Sen. Eddie Ilarde and Bulletin columnist Eric Espina on “The August 21 Mysteries;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Exploiting a death

2009-08-20T21:07:00.000+08:00

I had been waiting impatiently for the 40th day when the period of mourning would be over to discuss the issues pertaining to Cory’s death. But obviously, some are just too eager to take advantage of this period to pursue their self-serving agenda. Take, for instance, those who are pushing for the presidential run of someone whom they hope to be the heir apparent to their fallen “icons.” Never mind if this mediocre politician’s mental and leadership capabilities are in doubt. All they seem to care about is to strike fast and hard while things are still warm and fresh. Alas, the more they exploit the public’s sympathy, the more they appear to be clutching at straws--like Mar Roxas, who, even with Korina Sanchez, just couldn’t make the grade, and Villar, who’s now falling like a rock despite spending billions for his early campaign.

Columnists of other newspapers, too, are egging on their straw man. Apparently, the death of their yellow “icon” and the sea of condoling Metro Manila crowds seemed a good opportunity to take advantage of the people’s sympathies. PhilStar’s Billy Esposo used to be a Villar rah-rah boy until his bet’s declining survey fortunes made him look around in desperation. The yellow columnists of the Inquirer also joined in, like Jose Ma. Montelibano, who started writing that Noynoy has what it takes to lead and Conrado de Quiros, who asked who can better “carry on the fight” than the heir, whose parents died as heroes of the yellow crowd--a crowd that had seen better times two decades ago.

There was indeed a wave of sympathy for the former president (who, by the way, was never elected). No one would be so insensitive as not to be deferential; but shouldn’t those bereaved be as respectful? What is emerging among the yellow crowd, however, is nothing but blatant exploitation.

The scion of the dead tells everyone to “emulate” his parents. If indeed there is such great universal admiration deserved, it would be better heard from others paying tribute than from the family, so it would not come across as self-serving, coming as it does after an announcement of being open to “seek higher office.” If they in the yellow crowd think the Filipino people are as shallow as they make them out to be, then they should have their straw man declare his candidacy posthaste--and get themselves chastised in the surveys.

This matter of declaring the two yellow icons as heroes has pestered this country long enough. I wouldn’t mind emulating Rizal for his life and legend are a universal, moral, intellectual, and patriotic beacon. Rizal, unlike one of the earlier deceased yellow icons, was completely devoid of chicanery; whereas the other, who left his team to be blasted and maimed on August 21, 1971 in Plaza Miranda, appeared to have had advanced information on what would happen and deliberately arrived late to avoid the disaster. Whereas Rizal sacrificed himself, this late politician sacrificed his party mates. And irony of ironies, this politician’s death was later exploited to the hilt, enabling his family, which rose to power, to stonewall investigations to cast the blame wrongfully on the innocent.

Another demi-hero of Edsa I, Jovito Salonga, delayed admission of his knowledge of the true culprits behind this bombing for 20 years, apparently to perpetrate the myth of Marcos’ culpability. It turns out that the “hero” of the radical Left was the mastermind, a fact that their apologists such as De Quiros still deny, despite the admission of former CPP-NPA leaders Fluellen Ortigas (who confided this to me decades ago), Peter Mutuc, Ariel Almendral, and other victims whom Salonga had openly affirmed.

Since heroes must be as universal in acclamation as possible, no one other than Rizal fits this pedestal in the context of Philippine history. None of Rizal’s heirs, too, ever had to claim anything for their patriarch or their heroic family name. They simply continued on with their quiet dignified lives as teachers, writers, artists, and patriots.

If the Filipino people were to need another hero, Apolinario Mabini, acclaimed to be the brain of the Filipino Republican Revolution, should be it. There’s no need for anymore superfluous add-ons.

My bosom friend and comrade, former Mayor Jun Simon suggests that yellow be our color of national unity. But from the very onset, this color had already been appropriated for the elite-led social movements that reinforced plutocracy, enriched the already rich, and expanded the impoverishment of the vast majority of Filipinos. Borrowed from an American convict’s song, the symbolism of the yellow ribbon is moreover convoluted and concocted by foreign and elite-controlled mainstream media. Lastly, the color of this nation isn’t just yellow; it’s also red, blue, white, and dare I add, orange and green.

Like the round little golden pocket watch of the hypnotist, the yellow ribbon has been imbued with all the subliminal images from 1983 of that bloodied face framed by a coffin window; the large crowds that lined the streets; and the fall of an alleged “dictator” who couldn’t have avoided the use of force to quell the conspiracies of the Left and the Right. Yet, even more decidedly, the deepening darkness and misery in the impoverished lives of a great many Filipinos will awaken this nation from its trance to again see the massive oppression perpetuated by the powerful heirs of Edsa I.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 on “The August 21, 1971 and 1983 Mysteries;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

End the folly, start the action

2009-08-17T00:14:00.000+08:00

What are the endless follies? Consider everything that has happened in Mindanao under Gloria Arroyo. Her “resuscitation” of the MILF; her annual ritualistic threats of “crushing” the Abu Sayyaf serial killers going pfft; the pointless peace talks with the MILF, enabling it to regroup, thereby keeping its Abu Sayyaf comrades alive and kicking repeatedly; the comedy of these talks allowing Malaysian and US interference to stoke further conflict, with the view of dismembering from our Republic our most treasured resource-rich territories; and, not to forget, our continued toleration of US troop presence in the whole of Mindanao. All these occur as we sacrifice hundreds of our soldiers’ lives yearly for a war directed at the wrong enemies, and these even after President Estrada had already clobbered the MILF at Mt. Buldon .

This folly in Mindanao isn’t new. Veteran Mindanao war generals narrate how, even during the time of Marcos, orders would come from Manila to desist from finishing off the rebels whenever they would be close to annihilating Nur Misuari’s forces. Thus, it wasn’t at all surprising that in 2001, when scores of fleeing Abu Sayyaf extremists were surrounded by government troops at the Jose Torres Memorial Hospital compound in Lamitan, Basilan, a reinforcement order by the brigade commander to finish them off was countermanded by higher authorities. Thus, all the cornered rebels managed to escape with their hostages, rendering several hours of heavy fighting, which had killed a number of soldiers, all for naught.

Only when the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) desists from being used as pawns in this game against the surrogates of Malaysia and the US, and once it truly becomes a nationalist army against foreign subversion in all corners of the country, will the follies ever stop.

On the political front, we, too, are witness to this spectacle of a demonstrably corrupt and uncouth lady senator who openly admits to joining her colleague’s election slate only if the real estate trickster can donate oodles of money to her campaign chest. This, after she’s had a field day of berating executive officials who’ve aired costly infomercials using their offices’ budgets. It seems when it comes to her self-serving ends, she would have no qualms in selling her political loyalty to the highest bidder, even from someone whose funds also come from dubious means. So whenever mainstream media regale the public with her lies and manic laughter, they, too, share in this folly.

Speaking of mainstream media, another folly of theirs in being captive to the oligarchs has just been exposed. Reeling from the nitpicking of top mainstream newspapers of her Marie Antoinette dinners in New York and Washington, Gloria has recently ordered her Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera to sue the Inquirer’s owners for P630 million as unpaid lease payments due the government. The accused supposedly leased the huge property from the Ministry of Human Settlements in the time of Imelda Marcos and, after Edsa I, arranged for the extension of the lease for a song with the aid of Joker Arroyo through concocted documents, which someday will also see the light of day. Just like Gloria, these Inquirer oligarchs also live like Marie Antoinettes, using their media clout as a shield for their economic ventures.

Ditto for the other major newspaper’s owner, an erstwhile customs broker’s pal who is now a Metro Manila city mayor. Arguably, scandals in his city government are muted because of some quid pro quo, as evidenced by the deafening silence of media over the fire that gutted his city’s accounting records, which insiders say would expose shenanigans of high city hall officials. Still, the largest con game played on the Filipino people this decade was the power privatization law this politician “shepherded” through Congress, with incentives allegedly provided by key players, including Gloria, to the tune of P10 million per congressman. This, most significantly, has been played down by the Edsa II media because the Epira was one of the centerpieces of their elite conspiracy to loot the people.

The Filipino people and the AFP should thus wake up to the follies and start doing something serious about them. Begin with the refusal to tolerate or humor the politician-fools who perpetrate these follies; start shouting out loud against atrocities which the government politicians permit the secessionist rebels to inflict on our soldiers; condemn the policy of “appeasement” which the US Embassy, through its Trojan Horse the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), imposes on our nation through the treasonous “peace talks” in Kuala Lumpur; curse the business elite and their controlled media for their political-economic leveraging; condemn media stalwarts who prostitute themselves by aligning with the USAid and its other media fronts. Let’s start a passive resistance campaign, a boycott and non-cooperation, with all this foolishness.

Let us likewise support leaders who have stood up to denounce such follies: President Estrada who’s always led the crusade for the final stabilization of Mindanao (which cost him his first presidency); Gen. Danilo Lim who is a prisoner today because of refusing to play along with the follies any longer; and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and the Bagong Katipuneros who’ve exposed the follies in Mindanao, the AFP, and the Arroyo regime without let-up.

Finally, let us devote time to work with truly concerned citizens in circumventing the foolish political system. Find socio-economic groups to work with: The Philippine Virgin Coconut Oil Producers’ Association, to boost awareness for the great economic and health boons in developing coconut products and consumption; former Senator Shahani on local dairy development; former Mayor Jun Simon with the Advocates for Servant Leadership; and many other such activities we will list in our next columns.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 with former SBMA Chairman and Administrator Felicito “Tong” Payumo on “SBMA: The True Story;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

A corrupt and profligate social elite

2009-08-09T23:37:00.000+08:00

At last, the news media has regained its sense of balance and perspective. News of the typhoon casualties could be read and heard again. For a while, the real storm that stretched over hundreds of kilometers darkening the Philippine skies was drowned out by the yellow squall. The whirlwinds of spin whipped up “Kris for President” then shifted to “Noynoy for VP or President,” and then the sainthood proposal; but these are all part of the passing emotional surge triggered by that hyped up event. As Edsa I and II proved to be ephemeral sensations in the light of history, reality and truth will catch up and put things in their proper places. The fact is, after Edsa I, the nation is poorer and in deeper trouble, with the threat of dismemberment more imminent than ever.

Edsa I’s luster tarnishes even more in light of the “death” of the National Artist Award. Cecille Guidote-Alvarez, wife of the Edsa I “steak commando” Heherson Alvarez, was quoted as saying, “Before you make a judgment, read my achievements first as an artist. Was I an idiot before I became a national artist?” Now I confess; I am no aficionado of Philippine arts and culture but in the few times I was compelled to watch Cecille perform, I have never detected a hint of talent in her “forced through” performances. From what I know, her recognition as an artist has only stemmed from her political connections. But it is still the voice of the artists’ community that counts; and a community of this caliber can’t be wrong about Cecille’s lack of merit as any layman like me can see.

The headlines today are about the P1-million wining and dining soiree of Gloria Arroyo’s entourage on the eve of her return for Cory Aquino’s wake. But for all of them atop of Philippine society and politics, I do believe this is standard fare. I remember one Metro Manila city vice-mayor identified with the opposition buying 49 tickets to the last Pacquiao fight in the US for his friends, costing P50,000 a piece. But let’s not stop only the politicos. What about the top 1 percent upper class of Filipinos who travel around the world regularly; the oligarchs of the land who would think nothing of spending that amount from the hundreds of millions they have bilked from the people in paying for power and water rates that are among the highest in the world; or lawyers like that partner of the now defunct “The Firm” who easily spent a fortune in one day for his daughter’s wedding in a Palawan resort? Gloria’s callous spending is just more open to scrutiny than the rest.

It’s good that Gloria and her entourage are being put under the spotlight for this. I just want to expand its focus to all the rest who are similarly exploiting the Philippines. In fact, most are working in tandem with Gloria, but unlike her, they enjoy immunity by virtue of being from “the private or corporate sector.” Just look at those “respectable” corporate pals (or cronies) of Gloria who are actually her bagmen, like the Kastilaloy banking clan that took Land Bank of the Philippines deposits to their own bank and bought a building at San Miguel Avenue posthaste, or the other one that charges the highest harbor rates in the world and flies off to the US to catch his favorite NBA games, or the power magnate’s children who give Hummers as gifts. Others don’t even care about public knowledge of their profligacy, like that “notoriously corrupt” Ilocos politician who piles up millions in loses in just one night in Las Vegas.

What we have is a class of corrupt and profligate people in this endemically corrupt and exploitative society, comprising a substantial part of what the National Statistical Coordination Board classifies as the Upper Class--the 1 in 100 families that control 80 percent of the nation’s wealth, whether earned by merit or other means. Unfortunately, wealth earned the hard way by entrepreneurs who set up genuine factories, catch fish, grow food, or export goods, is getting rare in the Philippines while that from exploitative activities is growing. One example of this is the Camp Crame parking lot. Before Edsa II, you’ll hardly find a third of the number of cars there today. Today, police officers are getting awfully rich; same with military generals whose addresses are now at Corinthian’s or Green Meadows.

The corrupt and profligate Gloria Arroyo may soon be out of power if she sticks to what many speculate to be Obama’s advice to her. But would that mean that once she’s out, the corruption will subside to more tolerable levels? It could, if the next president will not be under the thumb of not only the corrupt bureaucrats but, more importantly, the corrupt corporatocracy and criminal mafias that are invariably giving funds to each candidate in the field. It would be just as bad, if not worse, if the next president simply filled up his campaign chest from swindling government. We’ll just get a repeat of Gloria Arroyo who’ll steal as much to bribe his way out of the fixes he’ll find himself in when in power. It seems there’s no escaping the worsening corruption and profligacy in Philippine society while this class of greedy and extravagant spenders stays in place. To change things, we would need a revolution, installing a parsimonious and industrious social elite to restore the nation’s vitality.

(Tune to 1098AM, M-W-F, 6-7pm; Global News Network, Destiny, Cable Channel 7, Tuesday 8:15-9pm, “Talk News TV” with FDC on “Presidential, Parliamentary or Authoritarian?” [also seen on Internet, TVU Channel 61713]; visit www.http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Reflections in an unexpected holiday

2009-08-06T16:34:00.001+08:00

While the great outpouring of solidarity for Cory Aquino was being covered nonstop in Metro Manila, a great outpouring of torrential rains devastated Mindanao . With the great suffering brought about by the deluge, I wonder how many felt as deeply about this tragedy. The floods, destroyed farms, and bald mountains are all a testament to the continuing failure of government to control the greed of logging companies, the ignorance of “kaingineros,” and the incompetence or complete lack of concern of government to protect our forests and reforest them where desperately needed.

On the economic front, Gloria’s much ballyhooed Sona boast of a Moody’s ratings upgrade for the Philippines, said to be a sign that the country has escaped the worst of the recession, which is also based on earlier data that are invariably fudged, was belied by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ assessment of our 2009 second quarter prospects. But even as this sobering view was tempered by some optimism, my friends in the Divisoria retail and food distribution trade narrate the drastic 20-percent decline in their sales. And when you add the rampant extortion by anti-smuggling authorities that shake down and padlock retailers instead of stop the release of smuggled goods from the source, then you have a perfect storm.

Retailers have no defense against these predatory “enforcers.” Even when they show proper documentation, they are still made to undergo verification, with inventory checks delayed by authorities for months on end, leading to the release of goods only after the customary payoffs.

And with 70 percent of tax collections going to debt amortization to the IMF-WB, and some more going to corruption, it would be better for Filipino consumers to save themselves from being bilked through the best tax revolt strategy, which is to look for goods and services from the underground economy. Better still, they can go into the underground economy and avoid paying taxes altogether--like the extortionist ones in Belmonte’s Quezon City where there is even an “employment tax” that treats work not as a constitutional right but a privilege.

Speaking of Belmonte’s thirst for funds, I caught a few portions of his self-serving eulogy and immediately remembered the Marcos buildings which he was in charge of recovering but did not earn for the government any substantial amount due to what he claimed were “lawyers’ fees” that gobbled up their worth upon liquidation. And can he answer why he was banned from the customs bureau during Marcos’ time for being “notoriously undesirable?” Moreover, who was the payroll master that got the Epira fast-tracked through Congress five months after Edsa II? And who got Meralco without reimbursing the state, given Belmonte’s added claim that there were no cronies after Marcos?

Cronyism has always been part of politics; it exists even in much admired economic powerhouses like Japan and South Korea . In the US , Bush has the Halliburton and Carlyle groups while Obama has Goldman Sachs et al. Truth is, the issue is not cronyism but economic policy. What is clear is that after Edsa II, the country became poorer in terms of expanding development and ownership of state resources to more people. Since Marcos’ development plans were aborted by the economic sabotage between 1983 and 1986, and since the misdirection of national economic policy after Edsa I, we have essentially been re-colonized economically, with public assets and our national patrimony turned over to foreign and local corporations that extract profit and leave very little behind for the people.

Fortunately, two good things came up during the week of mourning. The railroading of the Comelec’s automated system made me fear that the 2010 elections would be totally lost, with cheating virtually undetectable and proclamation so swift that there will be no more time to zero in on the sources of fraud. But after consulting with several top-notch lawyers, which view Archbishop Oscar Cruz shares, I became convinced that Atty. Harry Roque’s arguments before the Supreme Court will succeed due to the automation deal’s many violations. If they are proven right, this would move the filing of candidacy back to the original February date and pave the way for true elections with verifiable ballots.

The other good news is the “passing of the torch” to the new Aquino generation. Hopefully, Kris will supersede Noynoy in carrying this since she is more in touch with the masses and owes much to them. She could, like Erap, finally learn to be “para sa masa,” utterly convinced that raising the masses from poverty would also raise all the boats on our lake.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, August 11, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 on “Presidential, Parliamentary or Authoritarianism” with Bono Adaza and Eric Espina; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Learning from CCA

2009-08-03T16:22:00.000+08:00

“Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man — yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.” — Marcus Aurelius

“When I pass, speak freely of my shortcomings and my flaws. Learn from them, for I’ll have no ego to injure.” — Aaron McGruder, Boondocks

This phrase is what Corazon Aquino put on view when she expressed her contrition to President Joseph Estrada in December 2008, in front of a huge audience and the national and international media. She apologized for her role in the 2001 ouster of the legitimately-elected President and showed her capacity for discerning the historic truth objectively. And her intellectual honesty on this score earned her the ire of the deceitful, resentful and hypocritical among the “civil society.” That apology was really not only to Joseph Estrada but to an entire nation symbolized by the Edsa III masses of the poor and not-so-poor who stood for the truth but were beaten down to the ground by a rule of force that followed Gloria Arroyo’s power grab, backed by the “corporatocracy” and the fascist elements of the military, police, and Catholic Church hierarchy.

Other disharmonious matters should be left to later times, but one is urged to speak in response to praises for the life of the Edsa I icon that are infused with self-serving interests. Corazon Aquino delighted the US Congress in her speech before it on Dec. 18, 1986 where she announced she would pay even unjust debts incurred over the decades from the exploitative US international bankers, which we’ve been paying ever since. Paeans from local Big Business, particularly the bankers, are understandable as this sector benefited immensely when Edsa I financial mis-managers incurred P400 billion in domestic debt in seven years, amounting to 80 percent of Marcos’ 21-year debt! Foreign and local Big Business further raked it in from Edsa I’s deregulation, liberalization and privatization, thereby impoverishing the State and its people.

As satirist Aaron McGruder advices, let us learn. As Corazon Aquino learned and apologized for her shortcomings and flaws, she found out about herself eight years after her role in Edsa II. She saw the disaster that period brought upon the nation and shared in the guilt of helping install the most corrupt and evil regime this country has ever seen to date — a regime that we are not going to see the last of even after the 2010 electoral exercise, it seems. US President Barack Obama is giving Gloria Arroyo (the foremost example of “...those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent” and who are “...on the wrong side of history”) a seat at the side of the US ; for what? To parrot White House propaganda against sovereign North Korea and to fight in the phony “anti-terror” war intended to sow perpetual war in Asean, Asia and the world?

But Obama adopted Arroyo to be bosom buddy for a more atrocious deed, a bit of which she showed to the horror of those who can see what lies beneath. Just before Arroyo left Manila to step into Obama’s parlor in Washington , the “peace process” with the MILF was restarted and set in Kuala Lumpur again, a clear internationalization of the issue that goes against the national interest to keep it a domestic matter. And after Gloria’s tête-à-tête at the White House, Obama has since been full of praise for the “peace process” and Arroyo’s pursuit of the deal with the MILF. So as Gloria is now on the side of Obama and, it seems, on the best side of the butcher of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and father of the Latin American “death squads:” John Negroponte — what does this augur for Philippine dissenters?

There is some consolation in reading that the late Corazon Aquino’s son has expressed his lack of enthusiasm for a Gloria Arroyo visit to the wake of his mother. That’s a visit nobody needs. Everyone believes that nothing Gloria does is ever without devious self-serving motives. It’s better that the public not be pushed into such speculation, for it would cloud the somber mood. Thus, the “ban” on Gloria’s visit seems a fitting measure of retribution for the heaps of insults she has directed toward the Aquino family and the nation. I imagine the public enjoying that little punishment Gloria is being meted. She may have gotten Obama but she has lost the entire nation. (Anyway, Obama is already negative 12 in the latest Rasmussen poll survey of Americans; just a little better than the negative 25 of Arroyo here.)

Corazon Aquino finally embraced Edsa III when she showed her humility and apologized in front of the people for the error of Edsa II. President Estrada has returned the kindness with an effusive love for the late President; and to show this, he held a mass for her with the masa at the Payatas community with Fr. Larry Faraon. Estrada wanted to show the sympathy and admiration that comes specifically from the poor people of this nation, and that Corazon Aquino is no longer just the icon of Edsa I and the “elite” but also of Edsa III and the teeming poor of this country. I was told that Corazon Aquino, at her hospital bed, tacked up at her headboard a newspaper snapshot of herself with Joseph Estrada in the background. Was it just coincidence or did it have any meaning in the deepest recesses of the Edsa I icon’s subconscious? But what is clear is that a historical link between Edsa I and Edsa III could now be formed to advance the revolution that every Filipino yearns for — the emancipation of this nation.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Talk News TV, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713, on “Power, Water Sona;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Last words on that useless Sona day

2009-07-31T16:26:00.000+08:00

Obama was asked to press Arroyo on human rights. But why should Filipinos expect this when he had already broken his inaugural promise to oppose the corrupt who continually hold on to power through violence and deceit by meeting the most traitorous of them all? What Obama should have done was to actively rein in on his envoy’s continuing subversion of the sovereignty and economic security of this nation. Instead, he has allowed Ambassador Kristie Kenney’s PR work for Mrs. Arroyo, in setting up a “Fifth Column” in this country, to buttress the political stock of the most hated US puppet of the Filipino people to date. Indeed, pinning false hopes on the American factor, thus deceiving the nation, is most abominable and self-defeating. Any genuine opposition must perforce expose Obama as the real employer of Gloria.

In doing so, the nation should similarly deepen its understanding of the real corruption that plagues this country. The overlords using Arroyo to impoverish the people, despite our rich patrimony in land, sea, and human resources, are the financial institutions she proudly proclaimed at her Sona as having raised her fiscal ratings. Looking deeper, one will see the scandalous truth about these ratings agencies. Moody’s (nothing but an institutionalized Madoff), Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch’s were all sued by one of the largest, if not the largest, pension fund, Calpers, or the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, for ratings that “ultimately proved to be wildly inaccurate and unreasonably high” for subprime mortgage investments that caused it billions of dollars in losses.

Meanwhile, Gloria says she is not president to be popular. But she never was president to begin with! And we all know that she only craves for popularity with the likes of Amb. Kenney, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and previously, Bush and Condy Rice, and, of course, with King Juan Carlos, whom she so desperately wanted to engage in her Spanish to gain acceptance despite her lowly pedigree.

Gloria has had to lie, cheat, and steal, among many other things, just to get to her present status. But she has also run scared from the eventual jail that awaits her. Unlike Estrada, who was vindicated by apologies from a bishop and a former president who saw a man wronged, who lived in no “glass house,” Gloria, after losing power, will be condemned by millions and caged in a Petri dish for generations to gawk at as a specimen of Dipylidium Caninum.

Gloria has incurred more debt than three of her predecessors combined, so much so that every man, woman and child in RP now owes P57,000! But fewer still are aware of the fantabulous privatization Gloria has wrought on this nation--around P105 billion from 2001 to 2007--and boy, she ain’t finished yet. Compare that to FVR’s two-year 1996-1998 record of around P12 billion (since we couldn’t find 1992-1995 figures at the time of this writing) and Estrada’s two years of around P10 billion, and easily, Gloria has sold off so much more of the state’s most profitable assets, including PNOC-EDC, which was earning billions--with the figure of P105 billion even excluding the (underpriced by P100 billion) P200-billion crown jewel Transco sold just recently, which was in fact earning P17 billion annually. No wonder Gloria can’t shore up enough revenues to keep the deficit on target; she’s given her oligarch-cronies almost all the state assets that are earning profits for the nation’s coffers!

Gloria Arroyo has been a national disaster and 75 percent of the people know this as surveys show. But as much a calamity as she is are congressmen, senators and some opposition politicians. Noli de Castro on radio touted his arithmetical “prowess” with how many applause for Gloria he observed, counting 125 which he said didn’t tally with someone else’s 126; and he repeated this observation three times as if trying to impress listeners on how “bright” he is. Then, there was the battle of the backless and kabuki faces, involving even so-called “leftist” party-list congresswomen, who’ve all become distractions in this bizarre zarzuela.

At the Iglesia ni Cristo-Rizal Memorial gathering, only a few of the major presidential timbers were invited. As they were introduced, Binay got much more applause than Villar. And since this was a microcosm of the masa sentiment, we should ask how Villar could be number one in the SWS and Ibon surveys, especially since Jinggoy Estrada got even more applause than Binay, and Erap brought the house down.

It seems SWS is doing what it did in 2004, which Mahar Mangahas eventually apologized for, while Ibon is parroting Bayan Muna in parlaying its service to whoever can finance its own candidates for the senate. And, by the way, why is it that despite showing outright political ads, as against the other bets’ product endorsements, Villar is not being cited for this patent violation?

Finally, the cat has been let out of the bag. Mikey says that Chiz has been asking for Gloria’s endorsement while Malacañang says four candidates have already approached it for 2010. As noted by many, Gloria’s speech hit neither Villar nor Chiz; so why are we not surprised? Clearly, the only serious candidates that are beyond suspicion are President Estrada and Mayor Binay.

But for all the uselessness which that Sona day brought, one signal event that became a worthwhile hit was the Bagong Katipunan motorcade from Taguig organized by Lt. James Layug’s congressional campaign picked up by media--a sign, perhaps, of a new grassroots opposition movement a-brewing?

A celebration of the struggle

2009-07-29T14:06:00.000+08:00

July 27 is a day of significance and celebration in our nation’s history, not because it is Sona day in Congress. That is the least of things to celebrate and is even less of an occasion of significance as the Sona has become a meaningless drivel of half-truths and pompous delusions of an unelected politician, among others who are best at selling the virtues of their once august body. July 27 only becomes a day of celebration because, six years ago, a group of 321 young officers and men of the AFP courageously marched to Oakwood Premier at the Ayala Center to echo their call for the cleansing of the corruption in the Armed Forces and the investigation of high defense and AFP officials in “false flag” activities dubbed “Operation Greenbase.” The charges hurled by the group, correctly named by Wikipedia as the “Bagong Katipuneros,” have been proven true but continue to remain unsolved.

The Arroyo government created the Feliciano Commission with former Supreme Court Justice Florentino Feliciano as head; joined by Jesuit Joaquin Bernas, UP Prof. Carolina Hernandez, Capt. Roland Narciso and Commodore Rex Robles (ret.) as commissioners. Retired Supreme Court justices are regularly appointed to head such investigations to offer a veneer of impartiality and probity; but invariably, from the time of the Agrava Commission that investigated the Ninoy Aquino assassination down to the Melo Commission on the “extra-judicial killings,” they’ve never been impartial nor imbued with probity. Instead, the heads and some members of each one of those commissions reported regularly to the appointing power. In fact, one of the Feliciano Commission members was even said to have attested that Feliciano himself reported to Gloria Arroyo everyday.

Good thing the conscientious Oakwood protestors have been vindicated time and again by the corruption scandals that have rocked the AFP and the PNP since July 27, 2003, such as the “Gen. Carlos F. Garcia & Sons” graft case, the RSBS’ missing billions, and many others. While the Feliciano Commission did recommend some steps to stem the tide of AFP corruption, the problem has, except for a few years when it laid low, since reemerged with a vengeance, reaching new heights with every challenge to the corrupt regime, such as the military protests of Feb. 2006 and other such occasions. Now that the last election under Gloria Arroyo is about to transpire, AFP and PNP corruption is, as usual, on the rise again. But quite apart from the corruption issue, Chairman Feliciano also apparently skimmed over, with deliberate lack of interest, the investigation of “Operation Greenbase.”

Operation Greenbase is the title of a document outlining instructions and events that included the bombing of mosques to trigger a mass evacuation of Muslim populations from certain areas in Mindanao . The document proved to be very accurate as almost 100 percent of the incidents listed thereat eventually happened. It was in this connection that three young officers who joined the Oakwood protest executed an affidavit, claiming they were given instructions to bomb a mosque, purportedly intended to stir up or exacerbate Muslim-Christian tensions. That being the case, Justice Feliciano is squarely responsible for not having seriously investigated the allegations because Operation Greenbase implied not only mayhem and murder but more grievously, treason. And like the beheading of the ten Marines on July 2007 in Basilan and the recent Mindanao bombings, it seems many Operation Greenbases still abound.

The Oakwood soldiers and officers should be given accolades for their courageous exposés of these evils in the AFP and Philippine society; but instead of being offered “amnesty,” as the bloody Abu Sayyaf brigands even had occasion to be given, they’ve been kept under detention for the past six years, denied rightful bail even after already reverting to civilian status, with Senator Trillanes, elected by 11 million Filipinos, still blocked from attending Senate sessions to carry out his duties as a legitimate senator of the republic, having a mandate that even Gloria Arroyo and her minions cannot deny, much as they want to. Albeit often dramatic, the Oakwood soldiers have persistently used peaceful means of protest to capture the world’s attention, and have always been proven true. Yet they and their families are made to suffer while the corrupt and vile continue to ride high in Gloria’s government.

The July 27 Oakwood anniversary is an occasion to celebrate the struggle that began on May 1, 2001, when hundreds of thousands of poor Filipinos marched from the Edsa Shrine to Malacañang to protest the power grab of Gloria Arroyo and her cronies from big business (who’ve lost no time in accumulating hundreds of billions in profits and privatized state assets), the corrupt trapos, “civil society,” the corrupt clerics in the Catholic hierarchy (who seem to have increased in numbers), and the massively corrupt PNP and AFP top brass—all sponsored by discredited US corporate behemoths like AIG, Mirant et al. Oakwood is also a celebration of President Joseph Estrada’s struggle, the first protestor against the injustice of Edsa Dos, which unleashed Gloria Arroyo and company’s power- and wealth-grabbing frenzy.

Oakwood was a watershed in the anti-Gloria Arroyo movement that now, six years hence, it dominates every facet of the yearning for change and progress of the Filipino people. There should be no doubt that the Oakwood protest was in no small measure inspired by the struggle of President Estrada who has set the example of courage in the face of all odds. In late 2003, there were no apologies yet from Bishop Tobias or Corazon Aquino; no beeline of opposition wannabes toward Estrada’s home for any sort of mea culpa. It was lonely then and I was there.

But then, I was at Oakwood too, only blocked from getting close by a police phalanx. And in the years that followed, I visited the young officers consistently, as I did Estrada. Today, there are more visitors than I can recognize; and it’s good to remember those years when there were only a few of us in the struggle.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 with the FDC on “Sona: Financing Gloria’s Failures;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

The plots of the parasites

2009-07-23T15:48:00.000+08:00

On Wednesday morning, the Internet news edition of a major network highlighted one of the “Three Stooges” of the now defunct Pancho, Villaraza, Cruz law firm, or “The Firm” as it was once called. This stubby fellow was quoted as urging the AFP to defy illegitimate orders and uphold the law, which are things he obviously forgot when he supported Gloria from the 2001 coup down to his last years in her Cabinet.

Without a doubt, “The Firm” has played beyond respectable bounds in the past two decades under every regime, except President Estrada’s, that yielded it untold power and pelf. So it isn’t anymore surprising to hear that this rotund fellow had the ultra-luxurious Amanpulo Resort, costing $3,000/room, all to himself for the exclusive use of his daughter’s wedding, with guests planed in from around the world.

Among political activists, there are plenty of such characters too. There’s even this prominent family that has attempted to ride every wave of “people power” to rake the benefits of each new regime in Malacañang, by fanning out to all Establishment factions while posturing as “change agents.” One ties up with Makati’s oligarch-patriarchs; another gets appointed to the civil service body; while another postures himself as consigliore of a major political opposition figure--all of them converging lately for the “Tindignation,” a thinly veiled front for Mar Roxas’ candidacy. And because of the shift in strategy of the true opposition figure as anti-Arroyo rallies wane, they had to drag some disparate groups of the Left to scrounge for political funds. But then, yet another member of this family sticks to this true opposition figure by using the Far Left as leverage to remain relevant.

These days, as the anti-Arroyo campaign reaches its crescendo, our Filipino version of “carpetbaggers”--opportunists ready to take advantage of the political dislocations to be appointed to positions in the bureaucracy (numbering at least 5,000)—start to re-surface as well.

“Carpetbagger” is a term used for US Northerners who rushed with their things in bags made out of carpet cloth to take over businesses and political positions in the Confederate South when the Northern “Yankees” won. Sadly, the Philippines has its own parasitic class of perennial carpetbaggers waiting for the latest “coup” sponsored by the Establishment class or the US .

The Edsa II cabal is a case in point. While it took advantage of the abrupt regime change in 2001 to get their just rewards from Gloria, a number of them bolted, as typified by the “Hyatt 10,” after the drastic plunge in her standing in the eyes of the people.

It is thus the continuing tragedy of the Filipino nation that these carpetbaggers keep being restored to prominence after taking part in massive perfidy, corruption and treason. Take this plump former Defense chief: After having possibly committed all the possible transgressions for Gloria, he still remains in good standing--nay, even lionized by the legal community--because of his so-called “abilidad.” But another lawyer of the best caliber and integrity, Alan Paguia, continues to suffer for standing up to the Supreme Court’s (SC) “constructive resignation” travesty in 2001.

This tragic injustice is further entrenched, in the case of Paguia, by the fact that the SC even dilly-dallies, requiring him to seek endorsement from the IBP and other institutions to lift his suspension when it was the SC alone that decided on it. And so, as any principled man would, Paguia has rejected these conditions flat-out.

The Philippine Establishment is both at odds and in collaboration with Mrs. Arroyo at this point. Even as Gloria is already too much of a PR liability for them, there are still some who are making use of her to the hilt, such as in the Laiban Dam project or in the transfer of the tollways operations (which we just discovered cost more per kilometer than the Diosdado Macapagal Avenue). At the same time, the local oligarchy and the US are letting their dogs of war loose on Gloria Arroyo, with the carpetbaggers tagging along. These parasites of fellow parasites within the Arroyo regime are also on the move, trying to pass off options to ease Arroyo out peacefully while restructuring the political milieu, by promising that elections will be held and that Gloria will go. This last group has tried to ensnare genuine movements for change in the vain hope of attaining a modicum of credibility.

Such was the occasion of Norberto Gonzales and Jesuit Archie Intengan’s visit to Bishop Tobias to broach their “transition government” trap. Tobias fortunately arranged for another meeting where other witnesses unknown to the duo would be present, paving the way for the exposé last Wednesday of the Kilusang Makabansang Ekonomista (KME) on this, as carried by the Tribune.

Separately, the Gonzales-Intengan duo also “encountered” Chief Justice Reynato Puno on a plane to broach the idea, to which the CJ was said to be unflappable. In short, this, along with their other plots, have amounted to nothing so far. The only plotting that would matter for 2010 is that of Obama and Gloria’s on July 30 or, hopefully for the rest of us, a final consolidation of nationalist civilian-military forces made possible by the chaos that the parasites will stir up.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 with the FDC on “Sona 2001-2009;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Right questions for the “presidentiables”

2009-07-19T16:26:00.001+08:00

There have been several “presidential debates” in the past few months but no question or answer seemed outstanding enough for most people to remember. What only struck as noteworthy was the surprising enthusiasm UP students had for President Estrada, contrary to what many had expected. Call it his charm or wit, but that phenomenon was replicated later on, leaving one with a clear impression that the youth now have an open mind about Estrada. It seems none of the demonization of “civil society” has taken root, thanks in large part to “evil society” pet Gloria Arroyo’s dreadfully miserable performance the past nine years.

When I asked people to weigh in on these debates, everyone agreed that since discussions often involved motherhood questions, what could be elicited were only motherhood statements. Worse, pertinent questions on more pressing concerns were apparently being omitted.

In the ANC debates, for example, moderators didn’t ask at all what the presidentiables will do about RP electricity rates being the highest in Asia and among the highest in the world. Is it because it’s still taboo in the media network owned by those who continue to have a stake in the biggest Luzon power monopoly, Meralco? Is it similar to why, in the FVR-sponsored debate, the issue of the onerous independent power producers’ contracts was also skirted--obviously because Ramos is the biggest culprit?

Although in the PPCRV debate, slightly more insightful questions from several sectors were raised, all of these merely boiled down to issues of job availability and security, housing, price and tuition control, fuel price control, etc., with each sector wanting its respective problems solved but without tying everything together into a coherent, national response to the overall problem of economic backwardness and mis-distribution of resources.

Some would say that this is too “high level” an expectation, but isn’t that what debates are supposed to lead to--a level of discourse that will illuminate the road toward progress and prosperity? If we continue to treat each problem as a sectoral problem, then there will be no national solution and the sectors will just quarrel over the same-sized pie that’s always too small.

Other than asking the right questions, quite a number of issues that have recently cropped up also merit attention in successive debates. One such thing involves a new sweetheart deal between the Arroyo regime and one of its mega conglomerate-owning super-cronies (who many say is really fronting for Big Mike). This conglomerate, which took a huge bite out of Meralco recently and has entered the wireless broadband, as well as, infrastructure and mining industries, has reportedly bagged, in its latest foray into water utilities, the highly suspicious contract to build and run the P52 billion Laiban dam without the benefit of public bidding.

It is so fast-tracked and lopsidedly arranged for this conglomerate by the government water authority that proposals from other bidders were given only five days for submission--an impossibility, considering the enormity and complexity of the project.

Sure, the question about this deal was raised by an organization known to be supported by another conglomerate that’s also into water utilities, leaving one to wonder if this is just about competing oligarchic interests. But the bottom line is that this Laiban Dam deal would cost us an additional P20/cu. m. in water charges on top of the already horrendous P33 to P55/cu. m. already being charged by Manila Water and the DMCI-run Maynilad.

Checking on the Internet, I found that water rates in Bangkok are only $0.29/cu. m. or around P15/cu. m., and the ones in Kuala Lumpur are even cheaper at $0.22/cu. m. or just around P10/cu. m. Thus, Philippine power, as well as, water rates are now among the highest in the region!

Going into the future debates, it should be asked: Who among the presidential wannabes will stand against this onerous deal? And what would Chiz and Loren say when they are running under this conglomerate-potentate’s political party? Honestly, who among them will stand up to the oligarchs who have been exploiting the Filipino people for so long, with the highest cost in all the basic utilities--not only in water and electricity but also in tool ways, telecommunications, port handling and power transmission fees?

Let’s see if Villar and Roxas can answer these when they are themselves part of the oligarchic class. Let’s see if Noli de Castro can when he’s beholden to his puppet masters’ media mileage and doesn’t have much else between his ears, much less ask questions about public utility rates.

And then, here’s the final clincher: What will each wannabe do about the MILF problem? If the answer is the usual “peace talks,” then that’s no different from what has been done in the past decades, in keeping with the United States Institute for Peace’s veiled impositions. Verily, peace talks are only an ap-“peace”-ment that will end up with a capitulationist and treasonous Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain-type deal.

A country goes into peace talks only when the State gets the upper hand, the way President Estrada did by launching a strong-willed reassertion of our sovereignty in MILF-claimed areas--territories and riches which the group has since offered to partake with their new-found ally, the US .

Now who among Chiz, Loren, Villar, Roxas or Noli has ever shown any will for an honest-to-goodness fight?

It was only Erap who stood his ground in reclaiming all MILF-held territories back to the nation’s fold. It was also Erap who said “No” to the oligarchs when they sought a water rate hike during his term, leading them to get into the Edsa II coup. Let’s all ask the right questions to get to the right kind of leader. And with the proper leadership next time around, these oligarchs and traitors should be put in their proper places for good.

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713 with ret. Comm. Rex Robles on “Oakwood, Meiring and False Flags;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Obama blues

2009-07-16T17:29:00.000+08:00

“To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” declared Obama in his inaugural address to rousing cheers from people across the globe. Later on, when the incorrigibly corrupt, deceitful and oppressive Gloria Arroyo couldn’t get as much as a phone conversation with him, Pinoys cheered even more. Some opposition politicians, in hopes of being anointed by the US someday, also showed their obeisance by effusing over the new US leader’s statement. All that enthusiasm was, of course, only the height of naiveté, if not downright delusion, for what I had long expected of Obama is now coming to fore: He’s more of Bush--just more beguiling.

On July 30, 2009, Gloria will get to wear a magic halo on her head simply by being received at Obama’s White House. Speculation is rife over how she got that long coveted encounter finally calendared. Is it because of Gloria’s cozy relations with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Or is it the threat of the growing influence of China in our region? For one, I don’t think the US conducts business on the basis of personal ties; although it is important. On the other hand, the US-China rivalry is no longer new and nothing drastic has changed that would suddenly require a personal meeting between the US and Philippine presidents.

Both China and the US already have a modus vivendi in that it’s economic fair game for them in the Philippines , with the US having a slight edge due to its military presence. A prime example is the Transco privatization packaged by the Carlyle group, which the China State Grid took over courtesy of the Razon and FVR-linked Monte Oro Corp., with all parties merrily raking in, using the nation’s power transmission lines. In other instances where competition can be fierce, the US will simply scuttle, through its various assets in local media and the academe, Chinese “advancements” like the ZTE-NBN and NorthRail projects or the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking between China and the Philippines .

Since none of these cases ever necessitated the US president to receive Gloria who, on the other hand, had to run to China frequently to explain her gouging up on “down payments” without delivering anything, what could be behind this latest caper?

Despite presidential candidate Jojo Binay’s reported warning about an attempt to re-establish US military bases in the Philippines, more specifically in Mindanao, I seriously doubt if the US still needs any formal arrangement since there is already an existing chain of its radar and monitoring facilities dotting Southern Mindanao, along with thousands of its troops, whose pictures pop up regularly on our papers’ front pages, ostensibly giving medical assistance or building school houses, but actually conducting military operations.

The truth is, there are still a few things the US covets here, which it has yet to get its hands on: The Liguasan Marsh natural gas and Sulu Sea oil.

During his time, George W. Bush tried to overtly obtain these via the highly treasonous Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) that sought to carve out the BangsaMoro Juridical Entity (BJE). Through it, the MILF was to be granted its own territory, plus control of all its resources, including the seas with its own navy. Such a deal, which almost came into effect, was signed and sealed last year until an overwhelming tsunami of popular and military opposition compelled Arroyo to allow the Supreme Court to strike it down for lack of public consultation.

But since the MoA-AD’s freezing last year, the MILF and its “rogue” elements have been on the warpath with over 40 attacks, causing numerous deaths and displacing well over 200,000 Filipino Muslims and Christians--which the US has never condemned. Recently, as terror bombings began spreading anew, calls for a resumption of “peace talks,” egged on by US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, have also re-emerged.

When Obama agreed to receive Arroyo, he and his people knew the political significance this tacit seal of approval brought. They also knew that given Obama’s inaugural address, there will be a great dent on his reputation once his renowned smile beams down on the diminutive tyrant. Gloria, meanwhile, sees this as an ecstatic moment to blunt the continuing crash in her approval and trust ratings, now at below -30. Why, it could even be construed as an approval of her Charter change (Cha-cha) efforts so long as elections are held, with Cha-cha going for federalism to unblock the road toward the MoA-AD’s BJE.

Of course, Kenney says the US expects “free and fair elections” in 2010. But why doesn’t she mention “presidential elections” nor does she say anything about a “proclamation,” both of which are expected loopholes for Mrs. Arroyo? But then again, she might be thinking: Why go through that fuss when Gloria has already ushered in an era of massive election cheating, to be made worse by Melo and Rafanan’s automation foray unless an insider squeals again?

Gloria Arroyo is definitely the US’ kind of leader--infinitely “buyable,” “blackmail-able,” and “coup-able”; a perfect cheat who has moreover killed (in the Edsa III massacre) and is willing to kill more of her own people to stay in power, to continue her entire cabal’s plunderous reign.

No one in the opposition can be that kind of perfect minion just yet. So with that invitation, Obama has undoubtedly given Filipinos a slap in the face. And since all we can say is, “Thanks, we needed that,” let’s now get on with the business of tirelessly exposing Obama, Kenney, Gloria et al. till the final revolution comes!

(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 7, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m., and on the TVU Internet Channel 61713; also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)

Will the AFP preserve Philippine territory?

2009-07-12T22:00:00.000+08:00

After the aborted signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) crafted by the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) and Gloria Arroyo, should any thinking Filipino still have doubts about the US ’ wish to rob every ounce of our true, materially valuable wealth? The people seethed over the plan; and for a rare moment there, the AFP (which had sacrificed thousands of lives in Mindanao ) rumbled with a unanimous sense of outrage. Gloria Arroyo knew better than to confront the indignation head on and feigned “no knowledge of the details” while the Supreme Court halted the signing of the agreement and finally declared it unconstitutional. MILF “elements” then went on a rampage, displacing 300,000 civilians and killing scores along the way.

Months later, with those events still unresolved, the recent bombings in Mindanao are but a continuation of the atrocities, be they by “rogue” MILF or other groups like the Abu Sayyaf. Although these elements--who, no matter what intelligence sources say, have mutual links one way or another, even with the MNLF--still do not have the economic base to sustain their expensive firepower, the weapons used by these groups, despite still being inferior to the AFP’s that are sustained by billions of taxpayers’ money, have never run out, courtesy of foreign supporters. Plagued by divisiveness in their own ranks, as seen in the MNLF-MILF split decades ago and the countless “rogue” groups, these rebels possess neither the ethnic nor ideological cohesion their movement once had before Marcos neutralized them with military and diplomatic success in the mid-1970s.

From being a respectable anti-imperialist force, these Muslim rebel groups have now deteriorated into pawns of US neo-colonialism in this part of the world. The late MILF chief Hashim Salamat’s letter to US President George W. Bush on January 2003 undoubtedly signaled this collaboration. Salamat, who wasn’t writing from a base in the Philippines at the time of his exile in Malaysia, where he had been given protection ever since President Joseph Estrada pummeled Camp Abubakar, clearly did not have the support of our local Muslim population for him to have sought succor from Uncle Sam. Today, another indication of MILF’s role as one of the many puppet-agents of the US in destabilizing and “Balkanizing” nation-states is the current US ambassador’s open hobnobbing with MILF leaders.

The August 5, 2008 signing of the MoA-AD was only scuttled because closet political and military patriots, even in the administration, leaked out damaging details of the document, and exposed the complicity to treason of various parties, including the US and British ambassadors, and even the Bayan Muna congressmen. What stopped it, aside from the furious reaction of the population, was, for the first time in a long, long time, the military establishment seemed ready to unite with its more idealistic and nationalistic young officers to take action against this, forcing Gloria and her MILF allies to backtrack.

But it was not a full retreat as events would show; just a shift to new flanking tactics. Since January of this year, 38 attacks and two major terror bombings that killed over a dozen and wounded scores of civilians still remind us of how the MILF considers the MoA-AD to be already “a done deal,” and how it would resort to terror acts as blackmail. And, as if on cue, US Ambassador Kristie Kenney sheds tears for the victims before news cameras, and appeals for “peace talks,” which the USIP--an advocate for carving out a BangsaMoro Juridical Entity (BJE) for the MILF--has been force-feeding on Filipinos. Gloria Arroyo then starts a scare campaign in Metro Manila by raising a veiled Martial Law threat, after which the CIA chief comes a-visiting, with a July 30 Obama-Arroyo meet immediately floated. After Obama’s repeated snubs of Gloria, she must have given them a lot for this to have materialized.

Gloria, with the MILF, will give the MoA-AD-created BJE to the US and American Big Oil. Filipinos will lose the estimated $580 billion natural gas reserves of the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh, a figure once intimated by US engineers to Nur Misuari. But the trillions of pesos worth of natural gas isn’t the only prize, as billions more of Sulu Sea oil are at stake, which the MILF will lay claim to after it establishes its own naval force under the BJE. What’s more: The US would want to get its hands on deuterium in the Philippine Deep so that when technology allows hydrogen to be used for all the world’s energy needs, it can cash in on it as well.

Gloria has shown that she is willing to give anything and everything to the MILF and the US for the right price--her continued stay in power. Meanwhile, the US --no matter who heads it--has shown that it is willing to deal with anyone to get what it wants.

While the nation can get to the bottom of this treasonous deal, we cannot stop it without our patriotic officers. The potential of the AFP to liberate the country was demonstrated when its recalcitrance succeeded to temporarily force Gloria and the US to shelve the MoA-AD. Now that they are about to take their two steps forward again, will the AFP help our nationalists and patriots put a stop to this once and for all?