DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/30/2011
Did BSA III know what he was talking about when he said last Jan. 4 that the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) entered into by the Philippines with China and Vietnam — primarily for exploring offshore and deep sea natural resources, including oil and gas — “shouldn’t have happened” and scrapped it on the pretext that it encroached into the country’s territorial waters?
When the Philippines has a written understanding and invitation with two other parties to work together in an area where everyone has agreed to “jointly exploit,” how can there be encroachment? Don’t we have “joint ventures” with other countries in various mineral projects? The biggest fossil fuel project in the country with Royal Dutch Shell, Malampaya gas, necessarily had seismic surveys done. Wasn’t that undertaken with a foreign country and company, too?
What has likely determined the sad fate of the JMSU can be found in a paper written by a senior adviser and director of a Washington DC think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (“The JMSU: A Tale of Bilateralism and Secrecy in the South China Sea” by Ernest Bower), that reflects US attitude toward this joint Asian initiative for common exploration of shared resources for mutual benefit.
To the US, “bilateralism” simply means that it was out of the loop in relation to its former colony, the Philippines — a situation it is extremely uncomfortable with. The term is even inaccurate as the JMSU was a “trilateral” undertaking by the three concerned Asian nations. “Secrecy,” on the other hand, simply means that the US was kept in the dark. This is because it believes that every country in Asia is obliged to keep it informed about matters that are primarily its concern.
The JMSU was a good undertaking in the overlapping parts of the South China Sea for promoting the spirit of “joint development” that would preserve amity as well as provide impetus for economic progress for the nations involved. All three — China, Vietnam and the Philippines —contributed to the funding of marine facilities such as ships as well as equipment for the seismic survey project. The result would have been a treasure trove of information, especially for the Philippines, about each country’s marine resources (even in disputed territorial waters) — which, in the case of the Philippines again, would never have come about given its dire financial straits.
But it seems that BSA III would rather to stay in the dark about this and wait for his US sponsors to do the seismic surveys and keep the information to themselves as they have been doing in the past. Given this, the Philippines will just forever be at the mercy of western interests.
Expectedly, some local print and broadcast media have been raising the China bogey, after reports surfaced of Chinese MIG jets buzzing two Philippine Air Force turbo-prop planes in the Spratlys — this, despite the fact that China has since denied the existence of MIGs in its air fleet; as have Philippine authorities clarified that it was not a “buzzing” incident, since what specific flag those jets flew cannot be ascertained.
Most vociferous were some midget minds on AM radio calling for “the need to fight, even to die” for the Philippine territory, as well as Manila Times “Doctor” Dante Ang, whose column dated May 28 read “Use our US card in resolving the Spratlys issue.”
While the US can and has often used the Philippine card as a Joker now and then in UN diplomatic games (swing votes), as well as a regional gofer to issue derogatory pronouncements on Myanmar or North Korea, the Philippines just has no gravitas to play a so-called US card.
In fact, it was the US that used the Philippines as shock absorber during the Second World War, which sapped the might of the Japanese Imperial Army but decimated the Philippine economy, while the US top general then fled to the safety of Australia.
The US later “granted” independence to the Philippines in 1945 only to take it away with its left hand via the Laurel-Langley Agreement, the imposition of Parity Rights, and, as Salvador Araneta wrote in America’s Double-Cross of the Philippines, the US Congress-issued “Dodd’s Report” in 1948 that consigned our fate as a mere vegetables garden to Japan, an erstwhile enemy which Uncle Sam decided to industrialize to fortify against the “domino effect” from communist China.
Further, when the British, together with the Malaysians, instigated the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) war against the Philippine Republic for the latter’s attempt at retaking Sabah, the US simply sat at the sidelines, refusing even to resupply ammunition for guns and cannons. Why, it has even overtly supported the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) since the late Hashim Salamat sent his kowtow letter to George W. Bush in 2003.
All these therefore provide the context to the groveling of BSA III in relation to the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the purchase of old US Coast Guard Hamilton class cutters for the Philippine Navy.
The VFA “embeds” Americans in Philippine military units supposedly for the training of Filipino soldiers. But in actuality, Americans are the ones learning from us, and may someday use this know-how to kill Filipino soldiers if and when a nationalist Philippine government arises, or when the MILF wins a Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain set-up and sends its naval forces to the Sulu Sea that will trigger a military response from the Republic, which the US would then use as a “humanitarian threat” requiring the presence of international troops to “save” the oppressed minority. (Improbable, you say? Well, we can never tell given the vagaries of US geopolitics.)
While there’s a “Scrap the VFA Movement” that condemns this continuing (and escalating) US encroachment into Philippine sovereignty, Noynoy only has ears for Ambassador Harry Thomas. As for those Hamilton class Navy cutters, why is BS Aquino buying these discards (using our Malampaya revenues) when the US gives them as grants to other countries? Bugok na PeNoy talaga!
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “New 2011 Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, May 30, 2011
RH bill: A cop-out for industrialization
CRITIC'S CRITIC
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/30-6/4/2011
Last Monday, Conrado de Quiros, in his “There’s the Rub” Inquirer column, wrote: “RH, the antis keep saying, is not the solution to poverty. Of course not, as I said the last time. Not by itself. Neither is land reform, neither is fighting corruption, neither is graduating from college. Not by themselves. But taken together, they do push back poverty and misery immeasurably. Indeed, RH alone may not solve poverty, but the lack of it adds to poverty and misery all by itself. The absence of it deepens pain and suffering all by itself. The benighted opposition to it spreads benightedness and ignorance all by itself.”
I quote him fully here to show that the he omits an obvious common denominator in every country that has begun to overcome poverty, be it China , South Korea, or in particular, India, which had scrapped its population control program back when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984. That common denominator is agro-industrial development; and there’s the rub in De Quiros’ enumerated solutions to our nation’s poverty.
You can have all the RH laws to try to control population, push land reform and/or fight corruption through all eternity, and graduate all your young people from college; but without agro-industrial development, there’s no chance for them to rise from economic backwardness to progressive modernity.
However, if you have agro-industrial development, even without a population control program, you can grow the economy, expand a middle class, and raise the general level of employment and standard of living, such as what we have seen in India .
China, which is invariably used as a poster child of the pro-RH bill proponents such as De Quiros, would still be in the deepest mires of poverty even with its One-Child policy if it did not adopt a determined policy of agricultural development and food self sufficiency while building domestic industry in all facets, from steel to petrochemicals. China ’s first two great projects were Daching , its first domestic oil production around which industries were built, and Dachai, which was its agricultural prototype.
Conrado de Quiros’ column faulted his and the Yellows’ one-time idol Manny Pacquiao for opposing the RH bill. That after Pacquiao’s great “yellow gloves” in Nevada , where “He was going to put on yellow gloves for the fight, he said, to show that he wasn’t just fighting Mosley, he was also fighting poverty. Yellow is of course President Benigno Aquino III’s special color, so Pacquiao’s subliminal pitch was that he was in fact joining government in fighting it. I was elated and said after the fight that if he could only do to poverty what he did to Mosley, the poor would be saved in no time at all.”
Now, with Pacquiao opining from his simplistic “poor man, obedient flock” platform opposing the RH bill, he is suddenly “not so great” anymore for Conrado. It just goes to show how the pro-RH bill advocates use celebrity endorsers instead of firm demographic and economic arguments. But as Conrado de Quiros himself wrote in the column, “What the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away.” Never mind if they used Pacquiao before, Pacquiao as an argument has now been taken away.
The major disservice the pro-RH apologists in media are committing against the people is their obfuscation of the issue of the causes of poverty, bringing the discussion to the level of emotional sectarianism by invoking the “prayles” to distract from the economic policy issues. Population is a boon to development and growth if there is a program of economic growth based on the national development paradigm of the establishment of self-sustaining, self-sufficient agro-industrial infrastructure versus the neoliberal economics of liberalization, privatization, and deregulation.
The RH bill debates give the exploitative economic and political ruling class the excuse to distract from the need for the re-nationalization of privatized basic industries and public utilities, as well as the restoration of state direction and planning, its protection for industries, and the institution of anti-trust, anti-monopolistic policies to subdue the runaway greed of the oligarchs and their trapo cohorts amid the backdrop of US-imposed globalization.
Richard Mendoza sent us through our blog New Katipunero a YouTube videolink of an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the population issue by Dick Cavett 35 years ago. Ono opined that population is not really a problem since it is just a situation that will balance itself out, as some parts of the world have more populations whereas others have surplus food. Lennon called it a myth, a mere scare story to divert from the Vietnam War and the independence struggle in Northern Ireland .
Oh, and do you know that for the past 35 years the Philippines’ population growth of 7 percent has been reduced to 2.8 percent by 2008 without the multibillion subsidy the RH bill wants for RH drugs and devices? By sheer economic pressure and changing attitudes, this rate is expected to naturally decline to the replacement level of 2.1 percent by 2025 according to a group of UP scholars led by economist Prof. Romeo Balanquit. Why then are the pro-RH people insisting on spending billions?
By the way, couldn’t the pro-RH advocates and legislators zero in on other approaches that will utilize an effective exercise of iron free will, or reproductive choice, which will not cost the country a gargantuan sum? Ah, but I don’t think such a measure will pass as the billions waiting to be squandered for condoms and other contraceptives, not to mention other enticements from the contraceptives lobby, are just too tempting to resist for the porkers in Congress.
That said, though, we do agree with our dynamic OpinYon colleague Ms. Liza Gazpar that there is indeed a need for government to focus on the continuing challenge of reproductive health, of preventing abortions, and so on; but again, I maintain that this shouldn’t be before other life-and-death priorities such as support for MRT/LRT fares, rice production, funds for deadly diseases ranging from TB to dengue, and a program (and budget) for the re-industrialization of the national economy, among many others.
Finally, let me issue this challenge to the Inquirer, which is really pushing the RH bill, and its pro-RH columnists, Conrado de Quiros, Raul Pangalangan, Rina Jimenez-David, Jesuit Joaquin Bernas and other comers, to debate the issues--them against my solo self, anywhere, anytime, so long as it is in public. My cable TV show is open to them.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “More Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/30-6/4/2011
Last Monday, Conrado de Quiros, in his “There’s the Rub” Inquirer column, wrote: “RH, the antis keep saying, is not the solution to poverty. Of course not, as I said the last time. Not by itself. Neither is land reform, neither is fighting corruption, neither is graduating from college. Not by themselves. But taken together, they do push back poverty and misery immeasurably. Indeed, RH alone may not solve poverty, but the lack of it adds to poverty and misery all by itself. The absence of it deepens pain and suffering all by itself. The benighted opposition to it spreads benightedness and ignorance all by itself.”
I quote him fully here to show that the he omits an obvious common denominator in every country that has begun to overcome poverty, be it China , South Korea, or in particular, India, which had scrapped its population control program back when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984. That common denominator is agro-industrial development; and there’s the rub in De Quiros’ enumerated solutions to our nation’s poverty.
You can have all the RH laws to try to control population, push land reform and/or fight corruption through all eternity, and graduate all your young people from college; but without agro-industrial development, there’s no chance for them to rise from economic backwardness to progressive modernity.
However, if you have agro-industrial development, even without a population control program, you can grow the economy, expand a middle class, and raise the general level of employment and standard of living, such as what we have seen in India .
China, which is invariably used as a poster child of the pro-RH bill proponents such as De Quiros, would still be in the deepest mires of poverty even with its One-Child policy if it did not adopt a determined policy of agricultural development and food self sufficiency while building domestic industry in all facets, from steel to petrochemicals. China ’s first two great projects were Daching , its first domestic oil production around which industries were built, and Dachai, which was its agricultural prototype.
Conrado de Quiros’ column faulted his and the Yellows’ one-time idol Manny Pacquiao for opposing the RH bill. That after Pacquiao’s great “yellow gloves” in Nevada , where “He was going to put on yellow gloves for the fight, he said, to show that he wasn’t just fighting Mosley, he was also fighting poverty. Yellow is of course President Benigno Aquino III’s special color, so Pacquiao’s subliminal pitch was that he was in fact joining government in fighting it. I was elated and said after the fight that if he could only do to poverty what he did to Mosley, the poor would be saved in no time at all.”
Now, with Pacquiao opining from his simplistic “poor man, obedient flock” platform opposing the RH bill, he is suddenly “not so great” anymore for Conrado. It just goes to show how the pro-RH bill advocates use celebrity endorsers instead of firm demographic and economic arguments. But as Conrado de Quiros himself wrote in the column, “What the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away.” Never mind if they used Pacquiao before, Pacquiao as an argument has now been taken away.
The major disservice the pro-RH apologists in media are committing against the people is their obfuscation of the issue of the causes of poverty, bringing the discussion to the level of emotional sectarianism by invoking the “prayles” to distract from the economic policy issues. Population is a boon to development and growth if there is a program of economic growth based on the national development paradigm of the establishment of self-sustaining, self-sufficient agro-industrial infrastructure versus the neoliberal economics of liberalization, privatization, and deregulation.
The RH bill debates give the exploitative economic and political ruling class the excuse to distract from the need for the re-nationalization of privatized basic industries and public utilities, as well as the restoration of state direction and planning, its protection for industries, and the institution of anti-trust, anti-monopolistic policies to subdue the runaway greed of the oligarchs and their trapo cohorts amid the backdrop of US-imposed globalization.
Richard Mendoza sent us through our blog New Katipunero a YouTube videolink of an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the population issue by Dick Cavett 35 years ago. Ono opined that population is not really a problem since it is just a situation that will balance itself out, as some parts of the world have more populations whereas others have surplus food. Lennon called it a myth, a mere scare story to divert from the Vietnam War and the independence struggle in Northern Ireland .
Oh, and do you know that for the past 35 years the Philippines’ population growth of 7 percent has been reduced to 2.8 percent by 2008 without the multibillion subsidy the RH bill wants for RH drugs and devices? By sheer economic pressure and changing attitudes, this rate is expected to naturally decline to the replacement level of 2.1 percent by 2025 according to a group of UP scholars led by economist Prof. Romeo Balanquit. Why then are the pro-RH people insisting on spending billions?
By the way, couldn’t the pro-RH advocates and legislators zero in on other approaches that will utilize an effective exercise of iron free will, or reproductive choice, which will not cost the country a gargantuan sum? Ah, but I don’t think such a measure will pass as the billions waiting to be squandered for condoms and other contraceptives, not to mention other enticements from the contraceptives lobby, are just too tempting to resist for the porkers in Congress.
That said, though, we do agree with our dynamic OpinYon colleague Ms. Liza Gazpar that there is indeed a need for government to focus on the continuing challenge of reproductive health, of preventing abortions, and so on; but again, I maintain that this shouldn’t be before other life-and-death priorities such as support for MRT/LRT fares, rice production, funds for deadly diseases ranging from TB to dengue, and a program (and budget) for the re-industrialization of the national economy, among many others.
Finally, let me issue this challenge to the Inquirer, which is really pushing the RH bill, and its pro-RH columnists, Conrado de Quiros, Raul Pangalangan, Rina Jimenez-David, Jesuit Joaquin Bernas and other comers, to debate the issues--them against my solo self, anywhere, anytime, so long as it is in public. My cable TV show is open to them.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “More Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)
Sunday, May 29, 2011
The truth behind our workers' migration
BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
5/28-29/2011
One of the biggest lies we have been made to believe is that many of our workers leave because of acute unemployment. We take the statement that about 11.3 million of our people are out of work as logically correct. Added is the fact that as of January 2011, close to 19.4 percent of our labor force is underemployed, earning below what they are supposed to earn by their skill and qualifications, are engaged in intermittent work (mostly self-employed) which is short of the current minimum wage of P404 (now P426 daily), for an eight-hour work.
This reasoning persists because there has been no previous study why the estimated 11 million Filipinos opted to leave with many daring to gamble the unity of their family just to eke out a living abroad. But a random survey would startlingly reveal that close to 85 to 95 percent of those who left were in fact “not seeking employment”, but are “seeking for better employment” and “security of employment” abroad. For a labor analyst not to make a qualification on this could wrongly place the Philippines to the level of those countries in Central Africa, like Chad, Niger, Mali, Somalia and Sudan where migration to Europe for employment is a matter of survival.
Hence, analyzing why many of our workers leave would readily provide an answer that our problem is not unemployment, but security of tenure. We are not saying that unemployment is not a problem, but the kind of employment we propagated here has given rise to a more serious problem of job security and stagnating wage caused by the lack of opportunity to advance with a corresponding increase in income. The proliferation of labor-only contracting have instilled into the minds of those lucky enough to be employed here a painful truth. That truth is that there exists a barrier that prevents them from being promoted and correspondingly obtain increases by the merit of their length of service, experience and skill for the job and loyalty. It is this practice of leasing out of human services that has deprived many members of our precious labor force the incentive to hold on or to remain loyal to their job.
Admittedly, the minimum wage is fairly sufficient for an unmarried wage earner and without any dependent for support. In fact, the amount received by ordinary unskilled and semi-skilled workers is somewhat high if one would use as basis the low-value products manufactured by companies where they are mostly employed. Nonetheless, even if we say that our workers in that category are overpaid, the problem is not solved by their being employed. As contractual workers, of which many now belong, there is always in them the anxiety that before six months they could lose their jobs, with a grim prospect of not being rehired. That anxiety becomes most visible and apparent once they start to have a family and children to attend to. Indeed they constantly face the question: How long would they be able to hold on to their job?
The fear of economic dislocation matters most to many of them. While they know the scheme is to precisely prevent them from becoming regular employees, they could not however defer the needs of their families as they wait for the renewal of their contract. It is their family that suffers while in the meantime the scheme is being applied to them. If ever their contract is renewed, they will have to wait for a new job assignment for about one to two months.
The situation is worse for our educated white collar and technical workers. Even if many are receiving slightly above the minimum, that does not mean anything if they are entrapped into that vicious system of labor-only contracting. Aside from the absence of security of tenure, labor-only contractors peg to the lowest level their wage rate to maximize their profits. It is the intermittent employment that compels a great number of them to scout for greener pastures abroad. They know that for the entire years they would work as leased-out workers here they would only be receiving slightly above the minimum, if fortunate enough to be employed by a “fair-dealing” labor-only contractor. As contractual employees wanting to give up their employment here, they are willing to pay as much as from P90 thousand to P150 thousand for their placement fee.
As many of them would rightly surmise, two to three years of contractual service abroad would be equivalent to eight to ten years of continuous work here. If they are fortunate enough to work for a continuous service of 10 to 15 years, even if on a contractual basis, they could retire as though they worked here for 25 to 30 years with extra savings to allow them to send their children to private colleges and universities; own a house and lot which at times are even luxurious than that owned by upper middle class families; buy a car and other amenities they could not otherwise afford had they remained here. Most importantly, many of them open up their own businesses to contribute in their own way in helping our country.
What can be gleaned from this deplorable dilemma that confronts our workers, especially the technical and white collar workers, is they merely take their local experience as jumping board to qualify for employment abroad. Here, despite their educational attainment, qualification, skill and experience their status has been reduced to that of modern-day slaves paid an amount just enough to allow them to report for work. Their greatest fear is their serviceability as contractual workers. Many realize that at the age of 35 somehow they will have to go, and at 40 they resign themselves to the truth that no labor-only contractor will hire them. The reason is they are already considered too slow to cope up with the pace of work. Today, because of stiff competition, employer-beneficiaries demand much from their leased-out workers, like multi-tasking, and labor-only contractors willingly do that to secure that precious service contract in the supply of manpower.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod Kapunan
5/28-29/2011
One of the biggest lies we have been made to believe is that many of our workers leave because of acute unemployment. We take the statement that about 11.3 million of our people are out of work as logically correct. Added is the fact that as of January 2011, close to 19.4 percent of our labor force is underemployed, earning below what they are supposed to earn by their skill and qualifications, are engaged in intermittent work (mostly self-employed) which is short of the current minimum wage of P404 (now P426 daily), for an eight-hour work.
This reasoning persists because there has been no previous study why the estimated 11 million Filipinos opted to leave with many daring to gamble the unity of their family just to eke out a living abroad. But a random survey would startlingly reveal that close to 85 to 95 percent of those who left were in fact “not seeking employment”, but are “seeking for better employment” and “security of employment” abroad. For a labor analyst not to make a qualification on this could wrongly place the Philippines to the level of those countries in Central Africa, like Chad, Niger, Mali, Somalia and Sudan where migration to Europe for employment is a matter of survival.
Hence, analyzing why many of our workers leave would readily provide an answer that our problem is not unemployment, but security of tenure. We are not saying that unemployment is not a problem, but the kind of employment we propagated here has given rise to a more serious problem of job security and stagnating wage caused by the lack of opportunity to advance with a corresponding increase in income. The proliferation of labor-only contracting have instilled into the minds of those lucky enough to be employed here a painful truth. That truth is that there exists a barrier that prevents them from being promoted and correspondingly obtain increases by the merit of their length of service, experience and skill for the job and loyalty. It is this practice of leasing out of human services that has deprived many members of our precious labor force the incentive to hold on or to remain loyal to their job.
Admittedly, the minimum wage is fairly sufficient for an unmarried wage earner and without any dependent for support. In fact, the amount received by ordinary unskilled and semi-skilled workers is somewhat high if one would use as basis the low-value products manufactured by companies where they are mostly employed. Nonetheless, even if we say that our workers in that category are overpaid, the problem is not solved by their being employed. As contractual workers, of which many now belong, there is always in them the anxiety that before six months they could lose their jobs, with a grim prospect of not being rehired. That anxiety becomes most visible and apparent once they start to have a family and children to attend to. Indeed they constantly face the question: How long would they be able to hold on to their job?
The fear of economic dislocation matters most to many of them. While they know the scheme is to precisely prevent them from becoming regular employees, they could not however defer the needs of their families as they wait for the renewal of their contract. It is their family that suffers while in the meantime the scheme is being applied to them. If ever their contract is renewed, they will have to wait for a new job assignment for about one to two months.
The situation is worse for our educated white collar and technical workers. Even if many are receiving slightly above the minimum, that does not mean anything if they are entrapped into that vicious system of labor-only contracting. Aside from the absence of security of tenure, labor-only contractors peg to the lowest level their wage rate to maximize their profits. It is the intermittent employment that compels a great number of them to scout for greener pastures abroad. They know that for the entire years they would work as leased-out workers here they would only be receiving slightly above the minimum, if fortunate enough to be employed by a “fair-dealing” labor-only contractor. As contractual employees wanting to give up their employment here, they are willing to pay as much as from P90 thousand to P150 thousand for their placement fee.
As many of them would rightly surmise, two to three years of contractual service abroad would be equivalent to eight to ten years of continuous work here. If they are fortunate enough to work for a continuous service of 10 to 15 years, even if on a contractual basis, they could retire as though they worked here for 25 to 30 years with extra savings to allow them to send their children to private colleges and universities; own a house and lot which at times are even luxurious than that owned by upper middle class families; buy a car and other amenities they could not otherwise afford had they remained here. Most importantly, many of them open up their own businesses to contribute in their own way in helping our country.
What can be gleaned from this deplorable dilemma that confronts our workers, especially the technical and white collar workers, is they merely take their local experience as jumping board to qualify for employment abroad. Here, despite their educational attainment, qualification, skill and experience their status has been reduced to that of modern-day slaves paid an amount just enough to allow them to report for work. Their greatest fear is their serviceability as contractual workers. Many realize that at the age of 35 somehow they will have to go, and at 40 they resign themselves to the truth that no labor-only contractor will hire them. The reason is they are already considered too slow to cope up with the pace of work. Today, because of stiff competition, employer-beneficiaries demand much from their leased-out workers, like multi-tasking, and labor-only contractors willingly do that to secure that precious service contract in the supply of manpower.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Talk News TV with Herman Tiu Laurel
TOPIC: EDSA Tres Revisited
Guests: Ronald Lumbao of People's Movement Against Poverty and Jose Luis "Linggoy" Alcuaz
Guests: Ronald Lumbao of People's Movement Against Poverty and Jose Luis "Linggoy" Alcuaz
Friday, May 27, 2011
Power scammers riding high
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/27/2011
While the nation gets distracted by debates on the Reproductive Health (RH) bill, the oligarchs and their foreign partners continue to ride high on the 10-year-old Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) — responsible for making RP’s electricity rates the highest in Asia and now poised to raise these further to soaring atmospheric heights. The past week alone, three major news items already escaped the public’s attention: First, we have the Energy Regulatory Commission-backed “renewable rates” for solar and wind power. Passed by an idiotic Congress via Republic Act 9513 or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 upon the badgering of foreign and local energy lobbyists and the oligarchy-controlled media, the measure is now in the final stages of implementation. With the formulation of the feed-in tariff (FIT) for renewable power that will be transmitted through the National Grid (read: “Greed”) Corp. of the Philippines, such a mix of traditional and renewable power sources will definitely spell an increase on our already high generation cost.
Proponents argue that we have to develop renewables sooner or later; but with the premature enforcement of this program when solar and wind are still grossly inefficient in energy conversion, we will be adding to the already exorbitant burden not only of consumers but also of the industrial sector where many companies have left for countries with lower power costs.
Our media, environmentalist NGOs and legislators are either dupes or have been corrupted by various incentives — from direct lobby money to advertising budgets, as well as travel and NGO grants — to still be singing praises for this.
Filipino consumers and industries will be made to subsidize renewable energy development when this is supposed to be shouldered by foreign supplying companies that have tie-ups with local Big Business groups.
I have rallied on the past two decades against the disinformation spread by mainstream media and foreign-funded environmental NGOs; but even an unlikely voice in the person of World Bank consultant Leonardo Lupano has warned that the National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) overseeing the program and FIT rates “must be very careful in setting installation targets especially for the higher-cost technologies like wind and solar… (as) Spain had to drastically reduce the solar FIT rates and institute caps when 3 GW of solar was installed within one year.”
Lupano adds, “The impact on Spain ’s electricity rates was very high. Korea also experienced similar problems. Even German consumers are complaining that they subsidized the development of solar technology with high FITs, but China (the source of solar panels) is reaping the fruits… Ontario had to resort to every procedural trick in the book to slow down the approval of solar applications. NREB would (thus want) to avoid similar problems in the Philippines…”
But typical of the insensitivity of government bureaucrats feigning blindness to the plunder of power consumers, Bert Dalusong, former head of the NREB technical working group said that “…the P19 per kilowatt hour FIT rate being asked by the renewable energy developers is still cheaper than the price of diesel on the spot market, which could rise to as high as P30 per kWh.” But why compare with diesel when hydro is as low as P1 per kWh, as in Mindanao’s Agus and Pulangi, and geothermal ranges from P0.92 to P2.31 per kWh?
Second, there is the National Power Corp. (Napocor) May 12 rate hike petition of P0.2759 per kWh for one year, on top of the current P0.0454 per kWh universal charge for missionary electrification for the “off-grid service” in what it claims to be unrecovered P17 billion incurred over the years since Epira was passed. Reports state that the “adjustment will be used to ‘augment current financial requirements and in order to settle pending obligations with fuel and other suppliers which will enable NPC-SPUG (Napocor-Small Power Utilities Group) to shore up its financial situation.’”
What does Napocor think of us consumers, its perennial milking cow and piggy bank? But, as if this wasn’t enough, the state firm also wants to tap “restricted accounts normally used to settle court cases” for bridge financing.
Napocor is barred by a ruling of the Department of Justice from engaging in further borrowings and fund-raising activities such as bond issuances. Despite this, the company says it will even push through with its layoff of 600 to 700 employees, which means more separation pays.
Finally, the third item is thanks to a congresswoman of the “other” Kamag-anak Inc. who has chosen to do her worn-out “Person for Others” bit by generously sharing our hard earned (and even harder budgeted) money to pay for the power subsidies to the poor that they “love.” It appears Dina Abad, Ben Evardone, and some other legislators want to make more previously middle class power consumers join the ranks of the poor by certifying the bill amending the Epira as urgent, extending the lifeline rate paid for by the shrinking middle class (that can hardly afford the current power rates) — scheduled to end on June 26, 2011 — by another 10 years!
Abad, chairman of the House appropriations committee, certainly knows how to appropriate public money, just as her colleagues did in the CodeNGO PeaceBonds scam, and are doing now with the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) con game, and soon, we heard, in the government-funded “volunteer” housing construction program that the said NGO network is wresting away from Gawad Kalinga. Oh, when will we be spared of this Yellow ilk’s “goodness” toward society’s poor? Time to expose all these scammers for good.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “More Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/27/2011
While the nation gets distracted by debates on the Reproductive Health (RH) bill, the oligarchs and their foreign partners continue to ride high on the 10-year-old Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) — responsible for making RP’s electricity rates the highest in Asia and now poised to raise these further to soaring atmospheric heights. The past week alone, three major news items already escaped the public’s attention: First, we have the Energy Regulatory Commission-backed “renewable rates” for solar and wind power. Passed by an idiotic Congress via Republic Act 9513 or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 upon the badgering of foreign and local energy lobbyists and the oligarchy-controlled media, the measure is now in the final stages of implementation. With the formulation of the feed-in tariff (FIT) for renewable power that will be transmitted through the National Grid (read: “Greed”) Corp. of the Philippines, such a mix of traditional and renewable power sources will definitely spell an increase on our already high generation cost.
Proponents argue that we have to develop renewables sooner or later; but with the premature enforcement of this program when solar and wind are still grossly inefficient in energy conversion, we will be adding to the already exorbitant burden not only of consumers but also of the industrial sector where many companies have left for countries with lower power costs.
Our media, environmentalist NGOs and legislators are either dupes or have been corrupted by various incentives — from direct lobby money to advertising budgets, as well as travel and NGO grants — to still be singing praises for this.
Filipino consumers and industries will be made to subsidize renewable energy development when this is supposed to be shouldered by foreign supplying companies that have tie-ups with local Big Business groups.
I have rallied on the past two decades against the disinformation spread by mainstream media and foreign-funded environmental NGOs; but even an unlikely voice in the person of World Bank consultant Leonardo Lupano has warned that the National Renewable Energy Board (NREB) overseeing the program and FIT rates “must be very careful in setting installation targets especially for the higher-cost technologies like wind and solar… (as) Spain had to drastically reduce the solar FIT rates and institute caps when 3 GW of solar was installed within one year.”
Lupano adds, “The impact on Spain ’s electricity rates was very high. Korea also experienced similar problems. Even German consumers are complaining that they subsidized the development of solar technology with high FITs, but China (the source of solar panels) is reaping the fruits… Ontario had to resort to every procedural trick in the book to slow down the approval of solar applications. NREB would (thus want) to avoid similar problems in the Philippines…”
But typical of the insensitivity of government bureaucrats feigning blindness to the plunder of power consumers, Bert Dalusong, former head of the NREB technical working group said that “…the P19 per kilowatt hour FIT rate being asked by the renewable energy developers is still cheaper than the price of diesel on the spot market, which could rise to as high as P30 per kWh.” But why compare with diesel when hydro is as low as P1 per kWh, as in Mindanao’s Agus and Pulangi, and geothermal ranges from P0.92 to P2.31 per kWh?
Second, there is the National Power Corp. (Napocor) May 12 rate hike petition of P0.2759 per kWh for one year, on top of the current P0.0454 per kWh universal charge for missionary electrification for the “off-grid service” in what it claims to be unrecovered P17 billion incurred over the years since Epira was passed. Reports state that the “adjustment will be used to ‘augment current financial requirements and in order to settle pending obligations with fuel and other suppliers which will enable NPC-SPUG (Napocor-Small Power Utilities Group) to shore up its financial situation.’”
What does Napocor think of us consumers, its perennial milking cow and piggy bank? But, as if this wasn’t enough, the state firm also wants to tap “restricted accounts normally used to settle court cases” for bridge financing.
Napocor is barred by a ruling of the Department of Justice from engaging in further borrowings and fund-raising activities such as bond issuances. Despite this, the company says it will even push through with its layoff of 600 to 700 employees, which means more separation pays.
Finally, the third item is thanks to a congresswoman of the “other” Kamag-anak Inc. who has chosen to do her worn-out “Person for Others” bit by generously sharing our hard earned (and even harder budgeted) money to pay for the power subsidies to the poor that they “love.” It appears Dina Abad, Ben Evardone, and some other legislators want to make more previously middle class power consumers join the ranks of the poor by certifying the bill amending the Epira as urgent, extending the lifeline rate paid for by the shrinking middle class (that can hardly afford the current power rates) — scheduled to end on June 26, 2011 — by another 10 years!
Abad, chairman of the House appropriations committee, certainly knows how to appropriate public money, just as her colleagues did in the CodeNGO PeaceBonds scam, and are doing now with the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) con game, and soon, we heard, in the government-funded “volunteer” housing construction program that the said NGO network is wresting away from Gawad Kalinga. Oh, when will we be spared of this Yellow ilk’s “goodness” toward society’s poor? Time to expose all these scammers for good.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “More Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Angsioco, Damaso and DSK
CRITIC'S CRITIC
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/23-29/2011
The critics commentaries on the RH bill is reaching a crescendo and while new topic, the sexual assault case against IMF’s chief DSK (Dominique Strauss-Kahn) is catching the attention of many newspapers columnists of many newspapers columnists, but most of these opinion writers miss the heart of the issue and fail to enlighten the public.
We’ll start with Elizabeth Angsioco of the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines (apparently a branch of Bert Gonzales and Jesuit Archie Intengan’s PDSP) whose twopart article “Damaso and ovaries” appeared in the Manila Standard sometime April and is one of the popular expressions of the pro-RH bill that has come out and appears frequently in Internet discussions.
I commented on Angsioco’s title in a recent OpinYon column of mine pointing out the highly picturesque and effective title she used in her article. But now that the climax of the debate is nearing, I take the opportunity to evaluate the content of her article. I have found it to be vacuous except for the hysterics.
A Maria Clara or a Josephine Bracken?
Angsioco raged against the Damasos for using the pulpit to harangue against the RH bill, the anti-RH ordinances of Barangay Ayala Alabang and seven Bataan barangays, and Mayor of Manila Alfredo Lim’s city programs of family planning that is limited to the natural methods but nothing on the issues that the RH bill itself represents.
At the end of her two-part article she states: “I dressed up as Maria Clara and handed out condoms and he was in a barong. People were more than slightly amused by the idea and started having their pictures taken with us.”
I would be amused too if Maria Clara, the quintessential conservative and traditional Filipino who would use the abaniko as Muslim women use the burqa to hide their “evil” feminine allures, were used as a poster woman for the contraceptives and condoms crusade because that’s totally inappropriate.
Josephine Bracken would have been the only appropriate Philippine historical female to represent women’s liberation.
The woman’s rage of Angsiaco is a shrill and hysterical as the eunuch-y fits and frenzy of the Damasos, with the latter calling pro-RH advocates “terrorists” and the former considering anybody questioning the RH bill as anti-women’s rights bigots.
Women’s Rights
I wonder if Angsioco or many of the other pro-RH advocates, crusaders and lobbyists have even read the many versions of the RH bill.
If they did they’d discover that there is nothing in it that changes any basic women’s right to their own body, as they argue today, or their ovaries.
All Filipino women’s rights are already robustly protected by the Magna Carta for Women passed on August 14, 2009 by the previous Congress.
None of the updated RH bills is even attempting to change the present status of the law’s abhorrence of abortion as most pro-RH bill crusaders themselves recoil from the idea of a blanket de-criminalization of abortion which is inherently reprehensible.
Nobody but the Catholic Church issues edicts against the use of birth control devices and pills, but who follows the Church among the women’s flock these days?
Mythical Poverty vs Population
The Malthusian argument that population robustness equals poverty is inane, as a simple comparison easily shows: Japan, with a population of around 130 million (the 10th largest in the world), has a per capita income of $35,500 while the Philippines, with a population of around 94 million (ranking 12th in the world), has a per capita income of only $2,000.
Before the 2010 elections, where the previous lameduck government’s spending-inflated GDP “growth” became the basis for this latest estimate by some economists, ours even hovered lower at around $1,500 to $1,700 per capita.
The point is, the pro-RH proponents’ propaganda, based on an imaginary correlation between poverty and population, is hogwash (as Nobel prizewinning economist Simon Kuznets work demonstrated)--characteristic of the pigsty that is Congress, more so when spewed from the mouths of the usual pro-FVR-Gloria Arroyo porkers.
Veiled Pecuniary Interests
The real issue in the RH bill is Big Pharma and political pork barrel feeders’ disguised pecuniary interests: providing subsidies to purchase and distribute for free as “essential” medications and devices such contraceptive and condoms, hundreds of RH supplied “vans” politicos can skim from and put their names on, amounting to at least P3 billion clearly described in the RH bill plus untold billions mandated by the bill that others agencies such as PhilHealth, Presidential Anti-Poverty Commission, Pop- Com, etc. must extend to the RH program which is estimated to top P10 Billion per annum, and that such budgets included in the RH bill when it becomes law “shall be” provided for in succeeding National Budget that is tantamount to “automatic appropriations”.
All these subsidies when there has never even been a specific allocation for real killer diseases such as TB, dengue, and many other illnesses.
And they can’t even have a kind word for MRT/LRT working and wage earning commuters who are seeking a mere P4-5billion fare “subsidy” which come from their VAT and income taxes, anyway.
The Damaso’s and Angsioco’s hysterics do not benefit the public debate, they only obfuscate and obscure allowing the Big Pharma (that’s why Fidel V. Ramos is there, for the Carlyle group with billions investments in contraceptives and condoms) and political porkers to slip their greed past the people’s scrutiny.
Enemies in High Places
As for l’affaire Dominique Strauss Kahn, disgraced IMF chief, what is the full story?
We all love a scandal story of the big and powerful and assuming their guilt is tempting. But I pulled the reins when Strauss Kahn was denied bail and then placed in solitary confinement, virtually incommunicado.
Could this be a “honey trap” case? Strauss-Kahn has enemies in high places: frontrunning candidate of the French Socialist Party against the sinking French President Sarkozy, a man of the global oligarchs and war coalition, caught in his stalemated Libya Attack amidst a worsening French economy.
Center for Research on Globalization’s Mike Whitney writes: “… Strauss-Kahn was trying to move the bank in … a direction that didn’t require that countries leave their economies open to the ravages of foreign capital … leaving behind the scourge of high unemployment, plunging demand, hobbled industries …. that would not force foreign leaders to privatize their state-owned industries ...
“Naturally, his actions were not warmly received by the bankers and corporatists …”
Exposés in the Business Circa
Reviewing the reactions from opinion writers in Philippine newspapers I found the following commentaries reflecting one-dimensional neoliberal, limited comprehension of the deeper geo-political and economic issues at stake: Business World’s “Calling a spade” by Solita Monsod, “Lessons on rule of law” describing her admiration for how the New York City law enforcers implemented its mandate without fear nor favor; but the view from those who critical watch the powerful globalists who control Wall Street and the US have this view, from Paul Craig Roberts, “The Strauss Kahn Frame- Up: the American Police State Strides Forward” exposing the true picture of the US as the title depicts – a police state ultimately in the service of the financial oligarchy.
This same thing happened to former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who tried to prosecute Wall Street’s Big Finance prior to the 2008 crash and he found his call girl affairs exposed and himself arrested to stop his investigations.
Veteran business columnist Tony Lopez had a more balanced view of the scandal, while Randy David in his Inquirer column “Public Lives” went into a Freudian analysis missing the real import in the global financial, economic and political scene of the Strauss- Kahn event.
(Tune to 1098AM, Radyo OpinYon Mon to Fri 5-6m, and Sulo M-W-F, 6 to 7 p.m. ; GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, TNT with HTL, Tuesdays, 8-9 p.m., replay 11 p.m.; visit http:// newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our radio and GNN shows)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/23-29/2011
The critics commentaries on the RH bill is reaching a crescendo and while new topic, the sexual assault case against IMF’s chief DSK (Dominique Strauss-Kahn) is catching the attention of many newspapers columnists of many newspapers columnists, but most of these opinion writers miss the heart of the issue and fail to enlighten the public.
We’ll start with Elizabeth Angsioco of the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines (apparently a branch of Bert Gonzales and Jesuit Archie Intengan’s PDSP) whose twopart article “Damaso and ovaries” appeared in the Manila Standard sometime April and is one of the popular expressions of the pro-RH bill that has come out and appears frequently in Internet discussions.
I commented on Angsioco’s title in a recent OpinYon column of mine pointing out the highly picturesque and effective title she used in her article. But now that the climax of the debate is nearing, I take the opportunity to evaluate the content of her article. I have found it to be vacuous except for the hysterics.
A Maria Clara or a Josephine Bracken?
Angsioco raged against the Damasos for using the pulpit to harangue against the RH bill, the anti-RH ordinances of Barangay Ayala Alabang and seven Bataan barangays, and Mayor of Manila Alfredo Lim’s city programs of family planning that is limited to the natural methods but nothing on the issues that the RH bill itself represents.
At the end of her two-part article she states: “I dressed up as Maria Clara and handed out condoms and he was in a barong. People were more than slightly amused by the idea and started having their pictures taken with us.”
I would be amused too if Maria Clara, the quintessential conservative and traditional Filipino who would use the abaniko as Muslim women use the burqa to hide their “evil” feminine allures, were used as a poster woman for the contraceptives and condoms crusade because that’s totally inappropriate.
Josephine Bracken would have been the only appropriate Philippine historical female to represent women’s liberation.
The woman’s rage of Angsiaco is a shrill and hysterical as the eunuch-y fits and frenzy of the Damasos, with the latter calling pro-RH advocates “terrorists” and the former considering anybody questioning the RH bill as anti-women’s rights bigots.
Women’s Rights
I wonder if Angsioco or many of the other pro-RH advocates, crusaders and lobbyists have even read the many versions of the RH bill.
If they did they’d discover that there is nothing in it that changes any basic women’s right to their own body, as they argue today, or their ovaries.
All Filipino women’s rights are already robustly protected by the Magna Carta for Women passed on August 14, 2009 by the previous Congress.
None of the updated RH bills is even attempting to change the present status of the law’s abhorrence of abortion as most pro-RH bill crusaders themselves recoil from the idea of a blanket de-criminalization of abortion which is inherently reprehensible.
Nobody but the Catholic Church issues edicts against the use of birth control devices and pills, but who follows the Church among the women’s flock these days?
Mythical Poverty vs Population
The Malthusian argument that population robustness equals poverty is inane, as a simple comparison easily shows: Japan, with a population of around 130 million (the 10th largest in the world), has a per capita income of $35,500 while the Philippines, with a population of around 94 million (ranking 12th in the world), has a per capita income of only $2,000.
Before the 2010 elections, where the previous lameduck government’s spending-inflated GDP “growth” became the basis for this latest estimate by some economists, ours even hovered lower at around $1,500 to $1,700 per capita.
The point is, the pro-RH proponents’ propaganda, based on an imaginary correlation between poverty and population, is hogwash (as Nobel prizewinning economist Simon Kuznets work demonstrated)--characteristic of the pigsty that is Congress, more so when spewed from the mouths of the usual pro-FVR-Gloria Arroyo porkers.
Veiled Pecuniary Interests
The real issue in the RH bill is Big Pharma and political pork barrel feeders’ disguised pecuniary interests: providing subsidies to purchase and distribute for free as “essential” medications and devices such contraceptive and condoms, hundreds of RH supplied “vans” politicos can skim from and put their names on, amounting to at least P3 billion clearly described in the RH bill plus untold billions mandated by the bill that others agencies such as PhilHealth, Presidential Anti-Poverty Commission, Pop- Com, etc. must extend to the RH program which is estimated to top P10 Billion per annum, and that such budgets included in the RH bill when it becomes law “shall be” provided for in succeeding National Budget that is tantamount to “automatic appropriations”.
All these subsidies when there has never even been a specific allocation for real killer diseases such as TB, dengue, and many other illnesses.
And they can’t even have a kind word for MRT/LRT working and wage earning commuters who are seeking a mere P4-5billion fare “subsidy” which come from their VAT and income taxes, anyway.
The Damaso’s and Angsioco’s hysterics do not benefit the public debate, they only obfuscate and obscure allowing the Big Pharma (that’s why Fidel V. Ramos is there, for the Carlyle group with billions investments in contraceptives and condoms) and political porkers to slip their greed past the people’s scrutiny.
Enemies in High Places
As for l’affaire Dominique Strauss Kahn, disgraced IMF chief, what is the full story?
We all love a scandal story of the big and powerful and assuming their guilt is tempting. But I pulled the reins when Strauss Kahn was denied bail and then placed in solitary confinement, virtually incommunicado.
Could this be a “honey trap” case? Strauss-Kahn has enemies in high places: frontrunning candidate of the French Socialist Party against the sinking French President Sarkozy, a man of the global oligarchs and war coalition, caught in his stalemated Libya Attack amidst a worsening French economy.
Center for Research on Globalization’s Mike Whitney writes: “… Strauss-Kahn was trying to move the bank in … a direction that didn’t require that countries leave their economies open to the ravages of foreign capital … leaving behind the scourge of high unemployment, plunging demand, hobbled industries …. that would not force foreign leaders to privatize their state-owned industries ...
“Naturally, his actions were not warmly received by the bankers and corporatists …”
Exposés in the Business Circa
Reviewing the reactions from opinion writers in Philippine newspapers I found the following commentaries reflecting one-dimensional neoliberal, limited comprehension of the deeper geo-political and economic issues at stake: Business World’s “Calling a spade” by Solita Monsod, “Lessons on rule of law” describing her admiration for how the New York City law enforcers implemented its mandate without fear nor favor; but the view from those who critical watch the powerful globalists who control Wall Street and the US have this view, from Paul Craig Roberts, “The Strauss Kahn Frame- Up: the American Police State Strides Forward” exposing the true picture of the US as the title depicts – a police state ultimately in the service of the financial oligarchy.
This same thing happened to former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who tried to prosecute Wall Street’s Big Finance prior to the 2008 crash and he found his call girl affairs exposed and himself arrested to stop his investigations.
Veteran business columnist Tony Lopez had a more balanced view of the scandal, while Randy David in his Inquirer column “Public Lives” went into a Freudian analysis missing the real import in the global financial, economic and political scene of the Strauss- Kahn event.
(Tune to 1098AM, Radyo OpinYon Mon to Fri 5-6m, and Sulo M-W-F, 6 to 7 p.m. ; GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, TNT with HTL, Tuesdays, 8-9 p.m., replay 11 p.m.; visit http:// newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our radio and GNN shows)
Monday, May 23, 2011
Subsidy for sex, yes; for MRT/LRT or rice, no
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/23/2011
As we near the climax — so to speak — of the so-called “Reproductive Health” (RH) debate, the main issue becomes all the more apparent as the excitement of the foreplay fades. One pro-RH columnist wrote in his column last Friday: “What is at the heart of the RH law — and this is what the anti-RH groups strangely underplay — is using government money to subsidize reproductive choices.” Well, lawyer-columnist, I am highlighting it in my column; and I say you and so many other pro-RH supporters are either being taken for a ride or are taking others for a ride on one of the biggest scams in this nation’s history.
It seems that the real reason for the RH bill is not stemming the Malthusian formulation of population robustness equals poverty, or preventing the spread of HIV, or promoting sex education, or upholding the woman’s right to decide on matters relating to her ovaries. The real purpose is “using government money to subsidize” sex choices!
RH bill proponents really have a strange idea of what government money or subsidy should be used for; and that is coincidentally the way Aquino III’s government and his “civil society” cohorts — who are all backing the RH bill to the hilt — think of it, too.
First of all, PeNoy does not look kindly on the subsidy for rice farmers that the National Food Authority has been extending all these decades. His Budget secretary has in fact made the motions of totally slashing the NFA budget several times. Neither does PeNoy view with kindness or understanding the appeal of millions of MRT/LRT commuters to continue with the state’s “subsidy” (if it can be called that) of their fares, which they solely rely on to travel daily from home to work or school, which is as basic a necessity as power and water in modern life. But when it comes to “reproductive choices” — or sex — this they will subsidize to the tune of billions!
The appeal for the MRT/LRT subsidy was met with different tactics of dissuasion by Aquino III to convince commuters that it is such a burden to government. And when the commuting public wasn’t fazed, PeNoy’s spokesmen even attempted to browbeat Metro Manila’s MRT/LRT-riding population into thinking that they’re being unfair, selfish and abusive for demanding this transport subsidy when the rest of the nation’s taxpayers aren’t using the system. Yet what these prevaricators conveniently omit is that these MRT/LRT commuters are precisely the majority that go to work everyday earning subsistence wages from which government exacts its pound of flesh in terms of taxes — taxes that pro-RH proponents would now want to subsidize the sex choices of the beneficiaries of “free contraceptives and condoms,” the poor and unemployed (that is, if these reach them at all, given that macho culture and inebriation are some reasons that condoms are cast to the wind).
The only thing certain is that, once it becomes law, billions will be specifically allocated by the RH bill, whereby its first approved budget “shall be included in the subsequent General Appropriations Act,” i.e. automatically appropriated and/or sponsored — in perpetuity. That budget is certain to reach Big Pharma (including the FVR-linked Carlyle Group), which then also translates to “automatic sales in perpetuity.” Equally certain are the congressmen’s pork barrel allocations for a least one RH van per congressional district (including drugs, condoms, sex education materials, staff and fuel) that will have the congressman’s likeness emblazoned for all to see. Then, all of these monies are sure to come from the nation’s taxpayers, a great majority of whom are Metro Manila commuters who won’t get any subsidy for their essential work-related fares.
Regarding the RH vans, it must stated that there is already a proliferation of barangay health centers with literally hundreds of thousands of health workers all over the country, so why the RH vans for each congressman, over and above the free ambulances? Local governments do have a big say in these health centers’ budgets and supplies, as well as the dispensation of essential drugs; but keep in mind that neither the national or local governments dedicate budgets for free medication for deadly diseases such a tuberculosis and dengue (go to East Avenue Medical Center and see how expensive these are for the poor).
Yet the bleeding hearts of PeNoy’s government as well as many RH bill proponents believe “contraceptives and condoms” deserve a subsidy of at least P3 billion or more (when we factor in other government agencies such as PhilHealth, National Anti-Poverty Commission, etc. being mandated to fund the RH program)?
An important observation was made by one veteran street parliamentarian about the RH bill proponents taking to the streets to picket, rally and demonstrate for this subsidy for the poor’s “reproductive choices.” He noted the brand new tarpaulins, canvasses and cardboards, and the gleaming colors of the streamers and placards used, not to mention the full page ads. These can only mean huge funds flowing into the pro-RH bill campaign.
I’m sure that — despite my opposition to the Church’s many positions — whenever the Roman Catholic Church funds its campaigns, we know where these are coming from; but for those activist groups associated with Etta Rosales and Dinky Soliman, just where do they get their money? I guess we shouldn’t look far.
We know that USAid, as mandated by Henry Kissinger’s 1974 NSSM 200 (which we have no space to elaborate on), has always been for population control; same with Big Pharma. And, lest we forget, these people have the conditional cash transfer funds at their disposal too, which, as of the latest news, has already been increased by P2 billion over the P21 billion originally allocated. Shades of the CodeNGO PeaceBonds again?
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/23/2011
As we near the climax — so to speak — of the so-called “Reproductive Health” (RH) debate, the main issue becomes all the more apparent as the excitement of the foreplay fades. One pro-RH columnist wrote in his column last Friday: “What is at the heart of the RH law — and this is what the anti-RH groups strangely underplay — is using government money to subsidize reproductive choices.” Well, lawyer-columnist, I am highlighting it in my column; and I say you and so many other pro-RH supporters are either being taken for a ride or are taking others for a ride on one of the biggest scams in this nation’s history.
It seems that the real reason for the RH bill is not stemming the Malthusian formulation of population robustness equals poverty, or preventing the spread of HIV, or promoting sex education, or upholding the woman’s right to decide on matters relating to her ovaries. The real purpose is “using government money to subsidize” sex choices!
RH bill proponents really have a strange idea of what government money or subsidy should be used for; and that is coincidentally the way Aquino III’s government and his “civil society” cohorts — who are all backing the RH bill to the hilt — think of it, too.
First of all, PeNoy does not look kindly on the subsidy for rice farmers that the National Food Authority has been extending all these decades. His Budget secretary has in fact made the motions of totally slashing the NFA budget several times. Neither does PeNoy view with kindness or understanding the appeal of millions of MRT/LRT commuters to continue with the state’s “subsidy” (if it can be called that) of their fares, which they solely rely on to travel daily from home to work or school, which is as basic a necessity as power and water in modern life. But when it comes to “reproductive choices” — or sex — this they will subsidize to the tune of billions!
The appeal for the MRT/LRT subsidy was met with different tactics of dissuasion by Aquino III to convince commuters that it is such a burden to government. And when the commuting public wasn’t fazed, PeNoy’s spokesmen even attempted to browbeat Metro Manila’s MRT/LRT-riding population into thinking that they’re being unfair, selfish and abusive for demanding this transport subsidy when the rest of the nation’s taxpayers aren’t using the system. Yet what these prevaricators conveniently omit is that these MRT/LRT commuters are precisely the majority that go to work everyday earning subsistence wages from which government exacts its pound of flesh in terms of taxes — taxes that pro-RH proponents would now want to subsidize the sex choices of the beneficiaries of “free contraceptives and condoms,” the poor and unemployed (that is, if these reach them at all, given that macho culture and inebriation are some reasons that condoms are cast to the wind).
The only thing certain is that, once it becomes law, billions will be specifically allocated by the RH bill, whereby its first approved budget “shall be included in the subsequent General Appropriations Act,” i.e. automatically appropriated and/or sponsored — in perpetuity. That budget is certain to reach Big Pharma (including the FVR-linked Carlyle Group), which then also translates to “automatic sales in perpetuity.” Equally certain are the congressmen’s pork barrel allocations for a least one RH van per congressional district (including drugs, condoms, sex education materials, staff and fuel) that will have the congressman’s likeness emblazoned for all to see. Then, all of these monies are sure to come from the nation’s taxpayers, a great majority of whom are Metro Manila commuters who won’t get any subsidy for their essential work-related fares.
Regarding the RH vans, it must stated that there is already a proliferation of barangay health centers with literally hundreds of thousands of health workers all over the country, so why the RH vans for each congressman, over and above the free ambulances? Local governments do have a big say in these health centers’ budgets and supplies, as well as the dispensation of essential drugs; but keep in mind that neither the national or local governments dedicate budgets for free medication for deadly diseases such a tuberculosis and dengue (go to East Avenue Medical Center and see how expensive these are for the poor).
Yet the bleeding hearts of PeNoy’s government as well as many RH bill proponents believe “contraceptives and condoms” deserve a subsidy of at least P3 billion or more (when we factor in other government agencies such as PhilHealth, National Anti-Poverty Commission, etc. being mandated to fund the RH program)?
An important observation was made by one veteran street parliamentarian about the RH bill proponents taking to the streets to picket, rally and demonstrate for this subsidy for the poor’s “reproductive choices.” He noted the brand new tarpaulins, canvasses and cardboards, and the gleaming colors of the streamers and placards used, not to mention the full page ads. These can only mean huge funds flowing into the pro-RH bill campaign.
I’m sure that — despite my opposition to the Church’s many positions — whenever the Roman Catholic Church funds its campaigns, we know where these are coming from; but for those activist groups associated with Etta Rosales and Dinky Soliman, just where do they get their money? I guess we shouldn’t look far.
We know that USAid, as mandated by Henry Kissinger’s 1974 NSSM 200 (which we have no space to elaborate on), has always been for population control; same with Big Pharma. And, lest we forget, these people have the conditional cash transfer funds at their disposal too, which, as of the latest news, has already been increased by P2 billion over the P21 billion originally allocated. Shades of the CodeNGO PeaceBonds again?
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Elitism disguised as populist politics
BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
5/21-22/2011
Admittedly, it is easy for one to conceive of a constructive idea that would help put a sense of direction to our society than have it implemented. In fact, even if the idea stands as a mere suggestion, still that will encounter difficulty of being implemented if coursed through our politicians. That simple suggestion becomes one of arduous assignment because the person who conceived of that bright idea thinks quite differently from the politicians in whom we repose our trust to implement them.
Such is the sad realism that is happening in our society. Instances of bright ideas coming from ordinary people are innumerable, and yet many of them are not taken into consideration all because any suggestion that it will be good for the people, and society as a whole, may not be that good for our politicians. Maybe that can be attributed to the fact that we have relied much on that elitist (disguised as a populist) democracy. But even this view is bound to meet its dead end for what is good for the people may not necessarily be good for our politicians. Following that line, one could sense that our politicians are honed by their self-centered instinct of on how to survive in an election under our system of unlettered process of elitist democracy.
At a glance, the wishy-washy reluctance of our politicians to legislate well-meaning laws underscores their refusal to depart from the pseudo-populist line much that only by supporting populists policies will help determine their chances of being elected. But that the people do not know is that many of the proposed bills patronized by politicians came mostly from elitist interest and pressure groups often disguised populist policies. In fact, a much deeper analysis of the given political environment would reveal that our people are ignorant of what a populist democracy is.
Besides, modern propaganda communication have already perfected the art of mass deception to deprive our people of their ability keenly distinguish a real populist policy from an elitist pressure-laden policy, more so if packaged into our consciousness as a populist policy. The irony is we assume that an interest or pressure group policy as a people-oriented policy; that a populist policy is always right relying on that false notion that what is good for our people will be good to our society.
If one would have to ramify that theory, one would soon discover that it is one of the greatest political fallacies of our time. The truth is what is good for the people may not necessarily be good for the government, just as what is good for the government will not necessarily be good for the people. It is on this basic political postulate that exposes the hard truth about our understanding of democracy for frankly speaking the politicians we elected no longer epitomize our democratic idealism. As one would lament, what good is our democratic process if the politicians we elected were created and sponsored by interest or pressure groups made up of the elite that are more successful in exploiting populist sentiments than in actually supporting populist policies.
Rather, the correct theory is that what is good for the people is always and is necessarily good for the government. The trouble however about that theory is that the people themselves have failed to come out with what is essentially good for them. This explains why coming out with misguided form of populist policies has become the forte of politicians for the simple reason that it is most appealing to the people. Hence, through the years of catering to what we believe as constituting the majority, we have produced demagogues much that demagoguery is more appealing compared to a dour but straightforward politician.
This explains why all politicians want to play the role of chief executives because it is in that capacity where they are able to enforce their policies that reflect more of their abeyance to the elite that made possible their election. For instance, senators, congressmen, provincial board members, and city and municipal councilors all scramble to play the role of chief executives within their own limited dominion than in legislating laws and ordinances that would give to them the indelible trademark of becoming a statesman.
Moreover, politicians shun the idea of participating in debate or making a stand on such specific issues precisely because they know that what is being debated will not be on the basis that our people have politically matured, but an ominous hint that one pressure or interest group has gained the upper hand in the propaganda war. Classic to this is the stand of many of our elected public officials on the reproductive health bill. Their position is not based on their understanding of it, but on weighing which side is more popular.
This also explains why many legislative proposals on taxation, education, health, business franchise, public works, rights of certain minorities or groups, etc, are products of rigorous lobby. Despite that none of us would question because we believe they have with them that badge of having been elected by the majority, not knowing they were blinded by the volley of propaganda made by their financial brokers. So, as we move on in our crusade to fulfill our role as an independent state by legislating laws co-terminus to our exercise of sovereignty, we found ourselves mired deeper in political contradictions.
To date, many of our politicians have been reduced to political retardates incapable of seeing the rationale why they have to come out with this or that law. They failed to see the wisdom that good laws can never been inconsistent to good government which combines the policy of serving the people and a policy of disciplining them. Thus, unless and until we could do that, we will never be able to achieve a respectable level of political maturity. Forever we will be stacked to that self-centered elitist politics disguised as populist democracy which is susceptible to foreign exploitation, and our people degenerating to one devoid of any political morality and values.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod Kapunan
5/21-22/2011
Admittedly, it is easy for one to conceive of a constructive idea that would help put a sense of direction to our society than have it implemented. In fact, even if the idea stands as a mere suggestion, still that will encounter difficulty of being implemented if coursed through our politicians. That simple suggestion becomes one of arduous assignment because the person who conceived of that bright idea thinks quite differently from the politicians in whom we repose our trust to implement them.
Such is the sad realism that is happening in our society. Instances of bright ideas coming from ordinary people are innumerable, and yet many of them are not taken into consideration all because any suggestion that it will be good for the people, and society as a whole, may not be that good for our politicians. Maybe that can be attributed to the fact that we have relied much on that elitist (disguised as a populist) democracy. But even this view is bound to meet its dead end for what is good for the people may not necessarily be good for our politicians. Following that line, one could sense that our politicians are honed by their self-centered instinct of on how to survive in an election under our system of unlettered process of elitist democracy.
At a glance, the wishy-washy reluctance of our politicians to legislate well-meaning laws underscores their refusal to depart from the pseudo-populist line much that only by supporting populists policies will help determine their chances of being elected. But that the people do not know is that many of the proposed bills patronized by politicians came mostly from elitist interest and pressure groups often disguised populist policies. In fact, a much deeper analysis of the given political environment would reveal that our people are ignorant of what a populist democracy is.
Besides, modern propaganda communication have already perfected the art of mass deception to deprive our people of their ability keenly distinguish a real populist policy from an elitist pressure-laden policy, more so if packaged into our consciousness as a populist policy. The irony is we assume that an interest or pressure group policy as a people-oriented policy; that a populist policy is always right relying on that false notion that what is good for our people will be good to our society.
If one would have to ramify that theory, one would soon discover that it is one of the greatest political fallacies of our time. The truth is what is good for the people may not necessarily be good for the government, just as what is good for the government will not necessarily be good for the people. It is on this basic political postulate that exposes the hard truth about our understanding of democracy for frankly speaking the politicians we elected no longer epitomize our democratic idealism. As one would lament, what good is our democratic process if the politicians we elected were created and sponsored by interest or pressure groups made up of the elite that are more successful in exploiting populist sentiments than in actually supporting populist policies.
Rather, the correct theory is that what is good for the people is always and is necessarily good for the government. The trouble however about that theory is that the people themselves have failed to come out with what is essentially good for them. This explains why coming out with misguided form of populist policies has become the forte of politicians for the simple reason that it is most appealing to the people. Hence, through the years of catering to what we believe as constituting the majority, we have produced demagogues much that demagoguery is more appealing compared to a dour but straightforward politician.
This explains why all politicians want to play the role of chief executives because it is in that capacity where they are able to enforce their policies that reflect more of their abeyance to the elite that made possible their election. For instance, senators, congressmen, provincial board members, and city and municipal councilors all scramble to play the role of chief executives within their own limited dominion than in legislating laws and ordinances that would give to them the indelible trademark of becoming a statesman.
Moreover, politicians shun the idea of participating in debate or making a stand on such specific issues precisely because they know that what is being debated will not be on the basis that our people have politically matured, but an ominous hint that one pressure or interest group has gained the upper hand in the propaganda war. Classic to this is the stand of many of our elected public officials on the reproductive health bill. Their position is not based on their understanding of it, but on weighing which side is more popular.
This also explains why many legislative proposals on taxation, education, health, business franchise, public works, rights of certain minorities or groups, etc, are products of rigorous lobby. Despite that none of us would question because we believe they have with them that badge of having been elected by the majority, not knowing they were blinded by the volley of propaganda made by their financial brokers. So, as we move on in our crusade to fulfill our role as an independent state by legislating laws co-terminus to our exercise of sovereignty, we found ourselves mired deeper in political contradictions.
To date, many of our politicians have been reduced to political retardates incapable of seeing the rationale why they have to come out with this or that law. They failed to see the wisdom that good laws can never been inconsistent to good government which combines the policy of serving the people and a policy of disciplining them. Thus, unless and until we could do that, we will never be able to achieve a respectable level of political maturity. Forever we will be stacked to that self-centered elitist politics disguised as populist democracy which is susceptible to foreign exploitation, and our people degenerating to one devoid of any political morality and values.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Friday, May 20, 2011
A coup in the IMF?
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/20/2011
Then the international cable channels first reported breaking news of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest for alleged sexual assault, my reaction must have been typical of most: Another powerful man caught in a scandalous bind; serves him right. The assumption of guilt was too easy, especially since the IMF and its bureaucrats have the image of being instrumentalities of financial and economic tyranny all over the world.
Then, I had a quick rethink and pulled the reins in, especially when Strauss-Kahn was denied bail and later placed in solitary confinement — virtually incommunicado.
This can look very much like the Monica Lewinsky affair, which prompted Bill Clinton’s bombing of Yugoslavia to divert attention, as well as Eliot Spitzer’s “soft assassination” to stop the then New York governor from completing investigations into finance executives’ and investment bankers’ shenanigans in the run-up to the 2008 Wall Street crash.
I may not have given the news of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest a second thought had it not been for a deeper suspicion that something was fishy. Many of those in the highest echelons of power have proclivities they help each other hide. The shit only hits the fan when something disrupts the harmony.
Strauss-Kahn, like Spitzer, is tackling issues involving the global financial mafia in the European financial crisis. A scandal like this could actually be symbolic of a significant policy rupture within the global power elite. I researched the matter and found two significant articles — the first by Mike Whitney entitled “IMF chief Strauss-Kahn caught in ‘honey trap’” and the second by Michael Bucci, “‘Soft assassinations’: Strauss-Kahn and Eliot Spitzer.”
Strauss-Kahn does have enemies in high places: He is the presumptive front-running candidate of the French Socialist Party, seen to have an edge over the rapidly sinking and unpopular French President Nicolas Sarkozy, caught in his stalemated Libya attack amid worsening domestic economic conditions and workers’ protests.
Sarkozy, known as the candidate of the global oligarchy, is very cozy with the US neo-conservatives who have been pushing the hawkish war agenda on the global stage. Under his watch, they have taken France into two African imbroglios (Libya and Côte d’Ivoire), all for their interlocking defense and oil industries.
At the same time, the Euro currency bloc is in the midst of massive financial and economic readjustments that have instituted traditional monetarist financial and economic measures painful to the working class but extremely beneficial to the banking cartel through multibillion bailouts.
Whitney sees Strauss-Kahn as beginning to redirect the IMF away from this traditional monetarist IMF policy, saying, “…if Strauss-Kahn was set up, then it was probably by members of the western bank(ing) coalition, that shadowy group of self-serving swine whose policies have kept the greater body of humanity in varying state(s) of poverty and desperation for the last two centuries. Strauss-Kahn had recently broke(n)-free from the ‘party line’ and was changing the direction of the IMF. His road to Damascus conversion was championed by progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz in a recent article titled ‘The IMF’s Switch in Time’… (that says) ‘The annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund was notable in marking the Fund’s effort to distance itself from its own long-standing tenets on capital controls and labor-market flexibility. It appears that a new IMF has gradually, and cautiously, emerged under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.’”
Whitney sums up “Strauss-Kahn (as) trying to move the bank in a more positive direction, a direction that didn’t require that countries leave their economies open to the ravages of foreign capital that moves in swiftly — pushing up prices and creating bubbles — and departs just as fast, leaving behind the scourge of high unemployment, plunging demand, hobbled industries and deep recession. Strauss-Kahn had set out on a ‘kinder and gentler’ path, one that would not force foreign leaders to privatize their state-owned industries or crush their labor unions. Naturally, his actions were not warmly received by the bankers and corporatists who look to the IMF to provide legitimacy to their ongoing plunder of the rest of the world. These are the people who think that the current policies are ‘just fine’ because they produce the results they’re looking for, which is bigger profits for themselves and deeper poverty for everyone else.”
To conclude, Michael Bucci quotes French economist and socialist Jacques Attali: “The most likely outcome is that this case will stick… Even if he pleads not guilty, which he may be, he won’t be able to be (a) candidate for the Socialist primary for the presidency and he won’t be able to stay at the IMF.” Bucci then continues, “But farther behind the curtain might be found investment bankers and international financiers (the Spitzer “soft assassins”). While Messrs. Spitzer and Strauss-Kahn might share a common reprehensible lust, this group (the international financial mafia) represents the world’s top criminals. Like Al Capone and the Chicago mob, they continue to remain immune and prevail, while the audience is glued to sex, money and maids.”
What we are seeing may be an IMF coup in the form of a sex scandal. Reports have it that the detained IMF chief is already under suicide watch (a pretext for you know what). Let’s refocus on the real issues in this L’affaire Strauss-Kahn and wage a campaign to free him if we must. Most importantly, let’s redouble our efforts to rid this world of the menace that is the global financial mafia.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/20/2011
Then the international cable channels first reported breaking news of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest for alleged sexual assault, my reaction must have been typical of most: Another powerful man caught in a scandalous bind; serves him right. The assumption of guilt was too easy, especially since the IMF and its bureaucrats have the image of being instrumentalities of financial and economic tyranny all over the world.
Then, I had a quick rethink and pulled the reins in, especially when Strauss-Kahn was denied bail and later placed in solitary confinement — virtually incommunicado.
This can look very much like the Monica Lewinsky affair, which prompted Bill Clinton’s bombing of Yugoslavia to divert attention, as well as Eliot Spitzer’s “soft assassination” to stop the then New York governor from completing investigations into finance executives’ and investment bankers’ shenanigans in the run-up to the 2008 Wall Street crash.
I may not have given the news of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest a second thought had it not been for a deeper suspicion that something was fishy. Many of those in the highest echelons of power have proclivities they help each other hide. The shit only hits the fan when something disrupts the harmony.
Strauss-Kahn, like Spitzer, is tackling issues involving the global financial mafia in the European financial crisis. A scandal like this could actually be symbolic of a significant policy rupture within the global power elite. I researched the matter and found two significant articles — the first by Mike Whitney entitled “IMF chief Strauss-Kahn caught in ‘honey trap’” and the second by Michael Bucci, “‘Soft assassinations’: Strauss-Kahn and Eliot Spitzer.”
Strauss-Kahn does have enemies in high places: He is the presumptive front-running candidate of the French Socialist Party, seen to have an edge over the rapidly sinking and unpopular French President Nicolas Sarkozy, caught in his stalemated Libya attack amid worsening domestic economic conditions and workers’ protests.
Sarkozy, known as the candidate of the global oligarchy, is very cozy with the US neo-conservatives who have been pushing the hawkish war agenda on the global stage. Under his watch, they have taken France into two African imbroglios (Libya and Côte d’Ivoire), all for their interlocking defense and oil industries.
At the same time, the Euro currency bloc is in the midst of massive financial and economic readjustments that have instituted traditional monetarist financial and economic measures painful to the working class but extremely beneficial to the banking cartel through multibillion bailouts.
Whitney sees Strauss-Kahn as beginning to redirect the IMF away from this traditional monetarist IMF policy, saying, “…if Strauss-Kahn was set up, then it was probably by members of the western bank(ing) coalition, that shadowy group of self-serving swine whose policies have kept the greater body of humanity in varying state(s) of poverty and desperation for the last two centuries. Strauss-Kahn had recently broke(n)-free from the ‘party line’ and was changing the direction of the IMF. His road to Damascus conversion was championed by progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz in a recent article titled ‘The IMF’s Switch in Time’… (that says) ‘The annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund was notable in marking the Fund’s effort to distance itself from its own long-standing tenets on capital controls and labor-market flexibility. It appears that a new IMF has gradually, and cautiously, emerged under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.’”
Whitney sums up “Strauss-Kahn (as) trying to move the bank in a more positive direction, a direction that didn’t require that countries leave their economies open to the ravages of foreign capital that moves in swiftly — pushing up prices and creating bubbles — and departs just as fast, leaving behind the scourge of high unemployment, plunging demand, hobbled industries and deep recession. Strauss-Kahn had set out on a ‘kinder and gentler’ path, one that would not force foreign leaders to privatize their state-owned industries or crush their labor unions. Naturally, his actions were not warmly received by the bankers and corporatists who look to the IMF to provide legitimacy to their ongoing plunder of the rest of the world. These are the people who think that the current policies are ‘just fine’ because they produce the results they’re looking for, which is bigger profits for themselves and deeper poverty for everyone else.”
To conclude, Michael Bucci quotes French economist and socialist Jacques Attali: “The most likely outcome is that this case will stick… Even if he pleads not guilty, which he may be, he won’t be able to be (a) candidate for the Socialist primary for the presidency and he won’t be able to stay at the IMF.” Bucci then continues, “But farther behind the curtain might be found investment bankers and international financiers (the Spitzer “soft assassins”). While Messrs. Spitzer and Strauss-Kahn might share a common reprehensible lust, this group (the international financial mafia) represents the world’s top criminals. Like Al Capone and the Chicago mob, they continue to remain immune and prevail, while the audience is glued to sex, money and maids.”
What we are seeing may be an IMF coup in the form of a sex scandal. Reports have it that the detained IMF chief is already under suicide watch (a pretext for you know what). Let’s refocus on the real issues in this L’affaire Strauss-Kahn and wage a campaign to free him if we must. Most importantly, let’s redouble our efforts to rid this world of the menace that is the global financial mafia.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Rail transit un-fa(ir) hike
CRITIC'S CRITIC
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/16-22/2011
We noted in the Manila Times May 10 editorial on the impending MRT/LRT fare hike (entitled, “The hot MRT-LRT potato”) many inanities in the article’s reasoning and information.
To wit, the following were the claims: “The fact is that the government is losing a lot of money having the MRT and the LRT in its hands. It doesn’t want the public to stop using the two transit systems, so it must keep the ticket rates low enough.
Otherwise, the loss would even be bigger than the P7 to P8 billion spent annually to subsidize the fare for the two systems’ more than one million passengers every day.”
Subsidy to Investors
First of all, we heard a representative of the National Consumer Council of the Philippines (NCCP) say over a morning radio program that in their discussions with the MRT/LRT authorities where the financial books were present, it was perfectly clear to all that neither the MRT nor the LRT was losing money. They were just, at worst, breaking even.
What is actually causing the losses, they say, is the financial cost from borrowing. This is the first apparent misinformation that the Manila Times should correct.
Second, the MRT was supposed to have been set up with investors such as the Ayalas, Sobrepeñas, and Agustines. Their consortium, which set the terms and conditions for the MRT during Fidel V. Ramos’ time, specified very steep terms for their participation, such as a very high fare rate, maxing at P40 for the length of Taft to North EDSA back then, and a
minimum passenger load that was never reached under those expensive rates.
Hence, then Joseph Estrada had to bring them down drastically to a minimum of P9 and a maximum of P20, which led to commuters packing the MRT in 1999, thereby reducing government’s payment for the sovereign guarantee made by the previous regime as a “subsidy to the investors.”
In the Debt Trap
Let’s make this very clear: The commuting public has never been subsidized by government. The truth is actually the reverse: Commuters cum taxpayers are the ones who have subsidized the Ayalas, Sobrepeñas, and Agustines!
Here, I distinguish the MRT form the Mega Tren (the line on Aurora Blvd.) to avoid confusion. For that line, I recall that the sovereign guarantee (a practice Erap abhorred) was given by Gloria Arroyo to Maurice “Hank” Greenberg after EDSA II when the latter arrived to sign the loan.
As for the LRT line established during Marcos’ time, which had always run on a lower fare schedule than the MRT, its debt should have been paid long ago under the 25-year Aquino-FVR-Arroyo reign.
But, as they’ve always done in the past such as with the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant debt (which, according to the Freedom from Debt Coalition, has never really been paid off), I suspect that it, too, has been lumped with all the other debts.
Such are the obfuscations on our debt management which the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and financial managers, all invariably handmaidens of the international finance mafia, perpetuate to keep us in the debt trap.
The issue of the MRT/LRT/ Mega Tren fare hike involves broader issues that indict our country’s financial and economic policies, as well as the national political, financial, and business leaders in this conspiracy to deceive, defraud, and swindle the public.
Under Wraps
Mainstream media has been a party to this with its constant refusal to report things as they are and act only as megaphones of the oligarchs that own each of them.
Let’s take the relationship of vital issues against the interest of mainstream newspapers to cash in on a good opportunity to earn mega bucks.
The day after the Pacquiao fight, these were the headlines: “Lopsided Pacquiao win” (Inquirer); “Pacquiao too much for Mosley” (Malaya); “Pacquiao shames Mosley” (Manila Bulletin); “Pacquiao tears Mosley apart” (Manila Times); “Mighty Manny shames Shane” (Philippine Star). Notwithstanding the preponderance of boxing enthusiasts and sports analysts who complained about the lousy and unexciting fight, the mainstream dailies still chose to highlight a non-issue.
The only newspaper that put out the truly important headline that day was the Tribune, the other newspaper I write for. Its “Gov’t to spend not earn from MRT-LRT PPP bid” alerts the public to the P15 billion government will be paying to, instead of receiving from, the winner of the MRT/LRT PPP bid when it comes in June. Imagine that major a scandal being kept under wraps by obfuscating media!
OP-ED Reviews
Before we end, here’s my review of this week’s significant op-ed pieces, which to my mind are worthy of comment, either positively or negatively.
On May 9: Ben Diokno’s Understanding hunger, explaining the difference between moderate and severe hunger, and how the survey agencies have shown the worsening hunger incidence in the past 10 years under Arroyo (NEWS FLASH to Tiglao and Saludo; please review your figures); PhilStar’s editorial ‘Buying more time’, explaining the BSP’s latest interest rate hike (which I disagree with since rates should be reduced for productivity to bring down inflation); and Manila Times’ Osama’s fifth column? piece by a group calling itself the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy (PCID), saying Malacañang is right to call on Muslim Filipinos not to hail Osama as a martyr but to view him as a terrorist (Whoa! Shouldn’t theyfirst ask themselves who killed 3 million in Vietnam , killed and maimed 1.6 million in Iraq, and 50,000 in Afghanistan to date? It’s the US , you dummkopfs!)
On May 10: Several newspapers’ feature of “Spreading the jihadi virus in Southeast Asia” by Isabel Escoda, which Juan Mercado of the Inquirer also spun, saying “Do all nay-sayers believe it would have been better to present OBL’s corpse to his followers or Saudi Arabia, his birth place, so shrines could have been built for him… ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish’ sums it up well. Unless we forgot about attacks in Nairobi, Madrid , Bali, London and Mumbai…” (Obviously Escoda is an ignoramus about the geopolitics of this world and the false flag attacks engineered by covert intelligence groups; but the fact is the US embalmed the corpses of Saddam Hussein’s murdered sons and showed them off to the world for four days. OBL’s is a case of no “corpus delicti” and “dead man tells no tales, a disappeared dead man tells even less” arrangement); John Nery in the Inquirer did something good in his “How the Osama raid, and Mosley, was spun” as it tried to understand how it all can just be media spin, and finally, there’s “doctor” Dante Ang’s “Bin Laden, not a holy warrior” spiel (Well, who asked him?).
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “MRT/LRT un-fa(ir) hike; visit http://newkatipunero. blogspot.com for our articles)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/16-22/2011
We noted in the Manila Times May 10 editorial on the impending MRT/LRT fare hike (entitled, “The hot MRT-LRT potato”) many inanities in the article’s reasoning and information.
To wit, the following were the claims: “The fact is that the government is losing a lot of money having the MRT and the LRT in its hands. It doesn’t want the public to stop using the two transit systems, so it must keep the ticket rates low enough.
Otherwise, the loss would even be bigger than the P7 to P8 billion spent annually to subsidize the fare for the two systems’ more than one million passengers every day.”
Subsidy to Investors
First of all, we heard a representative of the National Consumer Council of the Philippines (NCCP) say over a morning radio program that in their discussions with the MRT/LRT authorities where the financial books were present, it was perfectly clear to all that neither the MRT nor the LRT was losing money. They were just, at worst, breaking even.
What is actually causing the losses, they say, is the financial cost from borrowing. This is the first apparent misinformation that the Manila Times should correct.
Second, the MRT was supposed to have been set up with investors such as the Ayalas, Sobrepeñas, and Agustines. Their consortium, which set the terms and conditions for the MRT during Fidel V. Ramos’ time, specified very steep terms for their participation, such as a very high fare rate, maxing at P40 for the length of Taft to North EDSA back then, and a
minimum passenger load that was never reached under those expensive rates.
Hence, then Joseph Estrada had to bring them down drastically to a minimum of P9 and a maximum of P20, which led to commuters packing the MRT in 1999, thereby reducing government’s payment for the sovereign guarantee made by the previous regime as a “subsidy to the investors.”
In the Debt Trap
Let’s make this very clear: The commuting public has never been subsidized by government. The truth is actually the reverse: Commuters cum taxpayers are the ones who have subsidized the Ayalas, Sobrepeñas, and Agustines!
Here, I distinguish the MRT form the Mega Tren (the line on Aurora Blvd.) to avoid confusion. For that line, I recall that the sovereign guarantee (a practice Erap abhorred) was given by Gloria Arroyo to Maurice “Hank” Greenberg after EDSA II when the latter arrived to sign the loan.
As for the LRT line established during Marcos’ time, which had always run on a lower fare schedule than the MRT, its debt should have been paid long ago under the 25-year Aquino-FVR-Arroyo reign.
But, as they’ve always done in the past such as with the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant debt (which, according to the Freedom from Debt Coalition, has never really been paid off), I suspect that it, too, has been lumped with all the other debts.
Such are the obfuscations on our debt management which the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and financial managers, all invariably handmaidens of the international finance mafia, perpetuate to keep us in the debt trap.
The issue of the MRT/LRT/ Mega Tren fare hike involves broader issues that indict our country’s financial and economic policies, as well as the national political, financial, and business leaders in this conspiracy to deceive, defraud, and swindle the public.
Under Wraps
Mainstream media has been a party to this with its constant refusal to report things as they are and act only as megaphones of the oligarchs that own each of them.
Let’s take the relationship of vital issues against the interest of mainstream newspapers to cash in on a good opportunity to earn mega bucks.
The day after the Pacquiao fight, these were the headlines: “Lopsided Pacquiao win” (Inquirer); “Pacquiao too much for Mosley” (Malaya); “Pacquiao shames Mosley” (Manila Bulletin); “Pacquiao tears Mosley apart” (Manila Times); “Mighty Manny shames Shane” (Philippine Star). Notwithstanding the preponderance of boxing enthusiasts and sports analysts who complained about the lousy and unexciting fight, the mainstream dailies still chose to highlight a non-issue.
The only newspaper that put out the truly important headline that day was the Tribune, the other newspaper I write for. Its “Gov’t to spend not earn from MRT-LRT PPP bid” alerts the public to the P15 billion government will be paying to, instead of receiving from, the winner of the MRT/LRT PPP bid when it comes in June. Imagine that major a scandal being kept under wraps by obfuscating media!
OP-ED Reviews
Before we end, here’s my review of this week’s significant op-ed pieces, which to my mind are worthy of comment, either positively or negatively.
On May 9: Ben Diokno’s Understanding hunger, explaining the difference between moderate and severe hunger, and how the survey agencies have shown the worsening hunger incidence in the past 10 years under Arroyo (NEWS FLASH to Tiglao and Saludo; please review your figures); PhilStar’s editorial ‘Buying more time’, explaining the BSP’s latest interest rate hike (which I disagree with since rates should be reduced for productivity to bring down inflation); and Manila Times’ Osama’s fifth column? piece by a group calling itself the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy (PCID), saying Malacañang is right to call on Muslim Filipinos not to hail Osama as a martyr but to view him as a terrorist (Whoa! Shouldn’t theyfirst ask themselves who killed 3 million in Vietnam , killed and maimed 1.6 million in Iraq, and 50,000 in Afghanistan to date? It’s the US , you dummkopfs!)
On May 10: Several newspapers’ feature of “Spreading the jihadi virus in Southeast Asia” by Isabel Escoda, which Juan Mercado of the Inquirer also spun, saying “Do all nay-sayers believe it would have been better to present OBL’s corpse to his followers or Saudi Arabia, his birth place, so shrines could have been built for him… ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish’ sums it up well. Unless we forgot about attacks in Nairobi, Madrid , Bali, London and Mumbai…” (Obviously Escoda is an ignoramus about the geopolitics of this world and the false flag attacks engineered by covert intelligence groups; but the fact is the US embalmed the corpses of Saddam Hussein’s murdered sons and showed them off to the world for four days. OBL’s is a case of no “corpus delicti” and “dead man tells no tales, a disappeared dead man tells even less” arrangement); John Nery in the Inquirer did something good in his “How the Osama raid, and Mosley, was spun” as it tried to understand how it all can just be media spin, and finally, there’s “doctor” Dante Ang’s “Bin Laden, not a holy warrior” spiel (Well, who asked him?).
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “MRT/LRT un-fa(ir) hike; visit http://newkatipunero. blogspot.com for our articles)
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Talk News TV with Herman Tiu Laurel
TOPIC: Hydroelectric Swindle, Again?
Guests: Butch Junia, Columnist, OpinYon and Bobby Deciembre, Media and Communications Officer, Freedom from Debt Coalition
PART I
PART II
Guests: Butch Junia, Columnist, OpinYon and Bobby Deciembre, Media and Communications Officer, Freedom from Debt Coalition
PART I
PART II
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Talk News TV with Herman Tiu Laurel
TOPIC: Lacson: Above the Law?
Guest: Atty. Ferdinand Topacio
PART I
PART II
Guest: Atty. Ferdinand Topacio
PART I
PART II
Monday, May 16, 2011
RH: Robbery holdup bill
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/16/2011
I have not previously commented on the RH or Reproductive Health Bill since I know it is not a highly essential action that will address the poverty of this nation. First off, the Malthusian argument that population robustness equals poverty is inane, as a simple comparison easily shows:
Japan, with a population of around 130 million (the 10th largest in the world), has a per capita income of $35,500 while the Philippines, with a population of around 94 million (ranking 12th in the world), has a per capita income of only $2,000. Before the 2010 elections, where the previous lame-duck government’s spending-inflated GDP “growth” became the basis for this latest estimate by some economists, ours even hovered lower at around $1,500 to $1,700 per capita.
The point is, the pro-RH proponents’ propaganda, based on an imaginary correlation between poverty and population, is hogwash — characteristic of the pigsty that is Congress, more so when spewed from the mouths of the usual pro-FVR-Gloria Arroyo porkers.
Rep. Edcel Lagman, for one, with the help of his allied NGOs and “cost”-oriented groups, has been taking many people for a ride without revealing the highway robbery built into the RH wagon. Few people know that the original bill presented before Congress already contained a list of brands of contraceptives and other birth control paraphernalia that was only subsequently removed when certain quarters began to smell something scandalously foul.
Big Pharma all over the world, particularly in the Philippines, is well known to provide lavish commissions and paybacks to its agents, promoters, medical prescribers, as well as to political lobby clients and NGOs. Many of these NGOs beholden to foreign funding, such as those linked with Etta Rosales and other Noynoy “leftists,” are with Lagman’s campaign. Ditto the likes of pro-Big Pharma, anti-natural medicine former Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral and former (so he says) Carlyle Group director Fidel Ramos.
The transnational investment group Carlyle, which makes use not only of corporate but also global political clout in promoting its military-industrial interests, is also into pharmaceuticals in a very big way. William Shannon reports: “The Carlyle Group… manages nearly US$13 billion investments in various pharmaceutical laboratory and telecommunication, waterway transport companies.” He further calls it a “tentacular financial complex” and lists its “four most significant companies” (and their principal activities and periodic turnovers in parentheses) as: 1) Empi, Inc. (medical drugs and products, $73 million for year 2000); 2) MedPointe Inc. (drugs and condoms, $223 million estimated for 2001); 3) United Defense Industries Inc. (manufacture of tanks and armored vehicles, $1.18 billion for 2000); and 4) United States Marine Repair (the largest American company of non-nuclear warships, $400 million for 2000).
Disguised in this RH bill are the interests of Lagman and his ilk in the legislature (egged along by the similarly financially lascivious Big Pharma): automatic appropriation of the budget for their pork barrel plus government’s purchase of birth control “devices and supplies” as stipulated in Section 30 of the final draft of the RH Bill which states, “The amounts appropriated in the current annual General Appropriations Act (GAA) for Family Health and Responsible Parenting under the DoH and PopCom and other concerned agencies shall be allocated and utilized… Such additional sums… shall be included in the subsequent GAA.”
You see, more funds will have to be allocated (taken from PhilHealth), with the PDAF or pork barrel requiring additional allocation to the delight of those porkers in Congress, along with Big Pharma selling these “devices and supplies” while obtaining a declaration of such as “essential drugs,” thereby opening these to “tax free” classification.
Furthermore, according to the draft, each congressional district “shall” be provided with a “mobile health care service unit,” which will, of course, sport the names of the congressmen and maybe the NGOs working with them. Legislators say the bill will only cost P3 billion; but when you add all the other funding sources (including the Anti-Poverty Commission, which will be required to chip in), then it will run to over tens of billions of pesos!
Meanwhile, RH bill spinmasters, both foreign and local, have been very good at framing the issue as an emotional cause for “women’s rights,” as a fight for “their own bodies,” etc., which no one can argue against. However, in some women’s groups’ hysteria, what is being missed is that they, too, are being used to swindle this nation of its much fed-upon budget pie.
The Magna Carta for Women already protects women more than a chastity belt can; and even among them, many recoil from the idea of removing constraints on abortion. Moreover, nobody follows the Church diktat against the use of condoms and contraceptives anymore (except for those who are still fearful or ignorant), so what else is at issue?
This is perhaps why RH bill spinmasters have thrown in many red herrings, such as the control of HIV — even when a country such as Thailand still leads the world in HIV incidence despite its well known free condoms program. I am told that this is also the case in Bangladesh.
That said, the prevalence of HIV is a problem of values and social education, not sex education. It’s a problem of media culture too. Some young students having their OJT in my radio program have raised an upsetting problem — that of too many young girls (as young as 12) getting pregnant and selling their bodies for sex. But isn’t that a problem of poverty as well — a poverty spawned not by population per se but by a socio-economic system that is exploitative; that concentrates national wealth in an infinitesimal few; and extracts surplus out of the country in the form of unjust debt and taxes, ad nausea?
Ah, but such is the systemic cancer that the RH robbery hold-up gangs and their foreign partners, with their RH debates, would want to distract us from.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “The Robbery Holdup Bill”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/16/2011
I have not previously commented on the RH or Reproductive Health Bill since I know it is not a highly essential action that will address the poverty of this nation. First off, the Malthusian argument that population robustness equals poverty is inane, as a simple comparison easily shows:
Japan, with a population of around 130 million (the 10th largest in the world), has a per capita income of $35,500 while the Philippines, with a population of around 94 million (ranking 12th in the world), has a per capita income of only $2,000. Before the 2010 elections, where the previous lame-duck government’s spending-inflated GDP “growth” became the basis for this latest estimate by some economists, ours even hovered lower at around $1,500 to $1,700 per capita.
The point is, the pro-RH proponents’ propaganda, based on an imaginary correlation between poverty and population, is hogwash — characteristic of the pigsty that is Congress, more so when spewed from the mouths of the usual pro-FVR-Gloria Arroyo porkers.
Rep. Edcel Lagman, for one, with the help of his allied NGOs and “cost”-oriented groups, has been taking many people for a ride without revealing the highway robbery built into the RH wagon. Few people know that the original bill presented before Congress already contained a list of brands of contraceptives and other birth control paraphernalia that was only subsequently removed when certain quarters began to smell something scandalously foul.
Big Pharma all over the world, particularly in the Philippines, is well known to provide lavish commissions and paybacks to its agents, promoters, medical prescribers, as well as to political lobby clients and NGOs. Many of these NGOs beholden to foreign funding, such as those linked with Etta Rosales and other Noynoy “leftists,” are with Lagman’s campaign. Ditto the likes of pro-Big Pharma, anti-natural medicine former Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral and former (so he says) Carlyle Group director Fidel Ramos.
The transnational investment group Carlyle, which makes use not only of corporate but also global political clout in promoting its military-industrial interests, is also into pharmaceuticals in a very big way. William Shannon reports: “The Carlyle Group… manages nearly US$13 billion investments in various pharmaceutical laboratory and telecommunication, waterway transport companies.” He further calls it a “tentacular financial complex” and lists its “four most significant companies” (and their principal activities and periodic turnovers in parentheses) as: 1) Empi, Inc. (medical drugs and products, $73 million for year 2000); 2) MedPointe Inc. (drugs and condoms, $223 million estimated for 2001); 3) United Defense Industries Inc. (manufacture of tanks and armored vehicles, $1.18 billion for 2000); and 4) United States Marine Repair (the largest American company of non-nuclear warships, $400 million for 2000).
Disguised in this RH bill are the interests of Lagman and his ilk in the legislature (egged along by the similarly financially lascivious Big Pharma): automatic appropriation of the budget for their pork barrel plus government’s purchase of birth control “devices and supplies” as stipulated in Section 30 of the final draft of the RH Bill which states, “The amounts appropriated in the current annual General Appropriations Act (GAA) for Family Health and Responsible Parenting under the DoH and PopCom and other concerned agencies shall be allocated and utilized… Such additional sums… shall be included in the subsequent GAA.”
You see, more funds will have to be allocated (taken from PhilHealth), with the PDAF or pork barrel requiring additional allocation to the delight of those porkers in Congress, along with Big Pharma selling these “devices and supplies” while obtaining a declaration of such as “essential drugs,” thereby opening these to “tax free” classification.
Furthermore, according to the draft, each congressional district “shall” be provided with a “mobile health care service unit,” which will, of course, sport the names of the congressmen and maybe the NGOs working with them. Legislators say the bill will only cost P3 billion; but when you add all the other funding sources (including the Anti-Poverty Commission, which will be required to chip in), then it will run to over tens of billions of pesos!
Meanwhile, RH bill spinmasters, both foreign and local, have been very good at framing the issue as an emotional cause for “women’s rights,” as a fight for “their own bodies,” etc., which no one can argue against. However, in some women’s groups’ hysteria, what is being missed is that they, too, are being used to swindle this nation of its much fed-upon budget pie.
The Magna Carta for Women already protects women more than a chastity belt can; and even among them, many recoil from the idea of removing constraints on abortion. Moreover, nobody follows the Church diktat against the use of condoms and contraceptives anymore (except for those who are still fearful or ignorant), so what else is at issue?
This is perhaps why RH bill spinmasters have thrown in many red herrings, such as the control of HIV — even when a country such as Thailand still leads the world in HIV incidence despite its well known free condoms program. I am told that this is also the case in Bangladesh.
That said, the prevalence of HIV is a problem of values and social education, not sex education. It’s a problem of media culture too. Some young students having their OJT in my radio program have raised an upsetting problem — that of too many young girls (as young as 12) getting pregnant and selling their bodies for sex. But isn’t that a problem of poverty as well — a poverty spawned not by population per se but by a socio-economic system that is exploitative; that concentrates national wealth in an infinitesimal few; and extracts surplus out of the country in the form of unjust debt and taxes, ad nausea?
Ah, but such is the systemic cancer that the RH robbery hold-up gangs and their foreign partners, with their RH debates, would want to distract us from.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “The Robbery Holdup Bill”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Cartelizing the supply of labor
BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
5/14-15/2011
If labor-only contracting is a new shade of slavery, then this new form of exploitation promises to be more cruel and painful for it seeks to effectively destroy the current system of employment. The conventional mode where the workers are free to find employment under the open labor market system, and employers equally free to hire workers of their choice would soon be a thing of the past.
As labor-only contracting widens to cover all industries and businesses, and qualitatively train their manpower to cater to every specialized and technical field of undertaking, such could not only result in the virtual enslavement of the workers done through the misplaced leasing of human services, but could eventually destroy the universally accepted mode in labor relations anchored on that concept of “employer-employee relations.”
Labor-only contracting has already evolved from its generic nomenclature of being called “manpower or employment agencies” to one styling as “manpower specialists.” Hence, from their traditional line of merely offering janitorial and messengerial services, they have evolved to offer manpower that have the educational qualifications, skills, technical specialization, and experience needed by wide range of industrial, commercial and business establishments. Many now style themselves as management and legal specialists, accounting and financial analysts, computer experts, and even medical technicians. Their objective is to completely debase companies of employees working on the principal business for which they were hired.
Notably, once labor-only contracting gain widespread acceptance, the first thing that will be affected is the practice of direct hiring, which is possible only under an open labor market system. Under this, workers directly apply to companies in need of their services, and get hired if they are qualified. Under this conventional mode, there is a meeting of the minds between the two on the terms of employment, amount of wage, benefits, and the assurance of becoming permanent after hurdling the six months probationary period. It is direct hiring that gives rise to the term “employer-employee relations” because the contractual relation is between the employee and the employer.
With the advent of labor-only contracting, direct hiring will slowly be replaced by the system of “indirect hiring.” Invariably, the open labor market system will be replaced by the closed labor market system because workers could no longer apply for a specific job, except through a specialized manpower service agency. In that case, employers will more and more rely on labor-only contractors for their specific manpower requirements until they finally do away with the practice of directly hiring workers beginning with the scrapping their personnel or human resources development or HRD. This modification to slavery was never anticipated by Karl Marx despite his extensive treatise about the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists.
One must bear it in mind that indirect hiring came about because there no longer exists a direct relationship between the workers and the employers. Employers under this new mode are now called “employer-beneficiaries” because they benefit from the services rendered by workers supplied by labor-only contractors carried out under the unorthodox method of leasing out human services. Employer-beneficiaries now stand as lessees of human services, while labor-only contractors stand as lessors of human services. The workers, which are the object of their misplaced lease agreement, stand as leased-out or for-hire workers, not contractual workers because they are not really a party to the contract of employment.
Because of this new arrangement, the term “employer-employee relations” now becomes meaningless. What will prevail is the contractual relation between the lessor and the lessee. In that sense labor relations becomes an empty subject because there is nothing to conciliate, negotiate or arbitrate under that situation. For that matter, labor unions and trade federations that contributed to enrich the concept of labor relations would no longer exist much that labor-only contractors would now play the role of “negotiators” for their for-hire workers. We are already seeing the withering of trade unions, and sadly enough the emergence of labor-only contracting is rooted on that defective system of regulated wage which they blindly supported.
As the system of direct hiring is gradually phased out, workers could only find employment through their labor-only contractors. So, the workers, whether blue- or white-collar ones, and even those aspiring for managerial positions, to find employment will have to enlist first with the labor-only contractor or specialized manpower agency, like Job Street. It is only after an employer-beneficiary finds interest in their educational qualifications, skill or experience would they will be able to find a job, and that can only to be concluded after the interested employer-beneficiary has agreed to the terms demanded by their agency.
Considering that labor-only contractors are organized and operate on a different plane often favorable to the interest of their clients, their evolution will eventually alter the entire landscape in labor relations. From their original objective of aiding employer-beneficiaries reduce the cost of wage, they could then metamorphose to one of labor cartel once they reach that level of operating on a near monopoly. They could then dictate the price for the services of their for-lease workers, and easily they could do that in a manner no different from the oil and rice cartels which have proven to effectively operate under all systems of closed market.
In that we will be witnessing the emergence of a cartel exclusively engaged in the supply of labor. The unholy alliance now between the employers and the labor-only contractors to reduce the cost of wage would only be good for as long as labor unions exist. Once they have been eradicated, the contradiction will be between the employer-beneficiaries and the labor-only contractors, and not between the workers and the capitalists as anticipated by the stereotype Left.
Right now, big companies are putting up their front specialized manpower agencies to justify indirect hiring. Even if the cost is higher than the prevailing labor market cost, they would still be glad to engage their services because they would no longer be saddled into giving their leased-out workers the array of benefits corollary to their becoming regular employees, more so if their exists a union.
rodkap@yahoo.com.ph
Rod Kapunan
5/14-15/2011
If labor-only contracting is a new shade of slavery, then this new form of exploitation promises to be more cruel and painful for it seeks to effectively destroy the current system of employment. The conventional mode where the workers are free to find employment under the open labor market system, and employers equally free to hire workers of their choice would soon be a thing of the past.
As labor-only contracting widens to cover all industries and businesses, and qualitatively train their manpower to cater to every specialized and technical field of undertaking, such could not only result in the virtual enslavement of the workers done through the misplaced leasing of human services, but could eventually destroy the universally accepted mode in labor relations anchored on that concept of “employer-employee relations.”
Labor-only contracting has already evolved from its generic nomenclature of being called “manpower or employment agencies” to one styling as “manpower specialists.” Hence, from their traditional line of merely offering janitorial and messengerial services, they have evolved to offer manpower that have the educational qualifications, skills, technical specialization, and experience needed by wide range of industrial, commercial and business establishments. Many now style themselves as management and legal specialists, accounting and financial analysts, computer experts, and even medical technicians. Their objective is to completely debase companies of employees working on the principal business for which they were hired.
Notably, once labor-only contracting gain widespread acceptance, the first thing that will be affected is the practice of direct hiring, which is possible only under an open labor market system. Under this, workers directly apply to companies in need of their services, and get hired if they are qualified. Under this conventional mode, there is a meeting of the minds between the two on the terms of employment, amount of wage, benefits, and the assurance of becoming permanent after hurdling the six months probationary period. It is direct hiring that gives rise to the term “employer-employee relations” because the contractual relation is between the employee and the employer.
With the advent of labor-only contracting, direct hiring will slowly be replaced by the system of “indirect hiring.” Invariably, the open labor market system will be replaced by the closed labor market system because workers could no longer apply for a specific job, except through a specialized manpower service agency. In that case, employers will more and more rely on labor-only contractors for their specific manpower requirements until they finally do away with the practice of directly hiring workers beginning with the scrapping their personnel or human resources development or HRD. This modification to slavery was never anticipated by Karl Marx despite his extensive treatise about the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists.
One must bear it in mind that indirect hiring came about because there no longer exists a direct relationship between the workers and the employers. Employers under this new mode are now called “employer-beneficiaries” because they benefit from the services rendered by workers supplied by labor-only contractors carried out under the unorthodox method of leasing out human services. Employer-beneficiaries now stand as lessees of human services, while labor-only contractors stand as lessors of human services. The workers, which are the object of their misplaced lease agreement, stand as leased-out or for-hire workers, not contractual workers because they are not really a party to the contract of employment.
Because of this new arrangement, the term “employer-employee relations” now becomes meaningless. What will prevail is the contractual relation between the lessor and the lessee. In that sense labor relations becomes an empty subject because there is nothing to conciliate, negotiate or arbitrate under that situation. For that matter, labor unions and trade federations that contributed to enrich the concept of labor relations would no longer exist much that labor-only contractors would now play the role of “negotiators” for their for-hire workers. We are already seeing the withering of trade unions, and sadly enough the emergence of labor-only contracting is rooted on that defective system of regulated wage which they blindly supported.
As the system of direct hiring is gradually phased out, workers could only find employment through their labor-only contractors. So, the workers, whether blue- or white-collar ones, and even those aspiring for managerial positions, to find employment will have to enlist first with the labor-only contractor or specialized manpower agency, like Job Street. It is only after an employer-beneficiary finds interest in their educational qualifications, skill or experience would they will be able to find a job, and that can only to be concluded after the interested employer-beneficiary has agreed to the terms demanded by their agency.
Considering that labor-only contractors are organized and operate on a different plane often favorable to the interest of their clients, their evolution will eventually alter the entire landscape in labor relations. From their original objective of aiding employer-beneficiaries reduce the cost of wage, they could then metamorphose to one of labor cartel once they reach that level of operating on a near monopoly. They could then dictate the price for the services of their for-lease workers, and easily they could do that in a manner no different from the oil and rice cartels which have proven to effectively operate under all systems of closed market.
In that we will be witnessing the emergence of a cartel exclusively engaged in the supply of labor. The unholy alliance now between the employers and the labor-only contractors to reduce the cost of wage would only be good for as long as labor unions exist. Once they have been eradicated, the contradiction will be between the employer-beneficiaries and the labor-only contractors, and not between the workers and the capitalists as anticipated by the stereotype Left.
Right now, big companies are putting up their front specialized manpower agencies to justify indirect hiring. Even if the cost is higher than the prevailing labor market cost, they would still be glad to engage their services because they would no longer be saddled into giving their leased-out workers the array of benefits corollary to their becoming regular employees, more so if their exists a union.
rodkap@yahoo.com.ph
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Bin Laden, Pacman: Same WMD
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/13/2011
Despite the contradictions in Barack Obama’s bin Laden “epic thriller,” it was reported on May 4 that three US opinion polls (i.e. CNN/Opinion Research, Washington Post/Pew Research Center, and USA Today/Gallup) upped his approval rating from four to 14 points. Obama’s spinmasters know just what the mass American mind wants. No matter the lies they will be dishing out, they know that Americans will believe what they want to believe.
One such lie has been al-Qaeda’s recent “confirmation” of Osama bin Laden’s death taken from SITE (Search for International Terrorist Entities) Institute, an organization funded by the US government to the tune of $500,000 a year.
SITE is run by Jewish-Iraqi Rita Katz, whose father was executed by Saddam Hussein for spying for Israel. The firm has been “caught red-handed releasing fake al-Qaeda tapes on numerous occasions,” according to one of the best intelligence sources I follow, Alex Jones of infowars.com.
It seems one local broadsheet dutifully reproduced that SITE-announced confirmation through its May 7 headline (“Al-Qaeda vows revenge on US”) without as much as an honest-to-goodness background check of the source. Had it done so, its editors would have, at the very least, immediately treated SITE as suspect and informed its readers accordingly. But then, being a newspaper that has described the US raid as a “spy thriller,” it is instead, wittingly or unwittingly, lending aid to Obama’s spinmasters in boosting the US’ stock while promoting the “Clash of Civilizations” mindset among Filipinos with wars that are only profitable for the Western military-industrial complex.
The alleged bin Laden videos made public by the US, showing him making al-Qaeda tapes, now turn out to be four-year-old videos released by SITE.
Osama is being used by Obama as a WMD, a “Weapon of Mass Distraction” to shift attention from the disaster that is the US-Nato attack on Libya, as well as the downward spiraling US economy, with jobless numbers and the need for QE3 (quantitative easing) or financial bailouts to its financial institutions erupting yet again.
Obama’s poll numbers for his reelection bid were undoubtedly re-inflated after this gimmick. But this will backfire when other facts about bin Laden surface, such as Iran’s assertion that Osama has long been dead, with the release of such proof probably just a matter of time.
Russian news network Russia Today has long balanced its reportage by presenting skeptics such as Webster Tarpley, James Corbett, et al. in exposing Barack Obama’s lies. Even Benazir Bhutto, before her assassination, already stated that Osama has long died; same with former ISI chief Gen. Hamid Gul and former US State Department official Dr. Steve Pieczenik.
In the sports arena, Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao is similarly a continuing WMD for entertainment tycoons, the Nevada gaming board, media moguls, bookies, and the Yellow movement alike. It is without doubt that the US State of Nevada and its entertainment moguls have earned more than anyone else in this, taking most of the money from the pockets of Filipinos.
As media define what most people take as enjoyable sport and entertainment, the Philippine mainstream is not about to miss this Pacquiao bandwagon despite the greater calling of the Fourth Estate to address truly substantive news and issues.
Of the May 9 banner stories, only one Philippine broadsheet focused on a genuine issue of public concern. It was only The Daily Tribune that headlined “Gov’t to spend not earn from MRT-LRT PPP bid” to alert the public to the P15 billion government will be paying to, instead of receiving from, the winner of the MRT-LRT PPP (public-private partnership) bid when it comes in June. It’s a major scandal!
Compare that to the other headlines: “Lopsided Pacquiao win”; “Pacquiao too much for Mosley”; “Pacquiao shames Mosley”; “Pacquiao tears Mosley apart”; “Mighty Manny shames Shane.” Heck, if these were all true, then why do veteran sport writers such as Mico Halili say “…Mosley performance leaves bitter aftertaste,” describing the whole fight as lousy and unexciting?
Why, even my radio listeners/texters made much more sense. From AR: “The Pacman-Mosley fight is senseless. Only business.” From Myrna: “It was all acting, they should pit young against the young, not a boxer nine years older. All Pacquio’s fights lately are like this, pitting has-beens just to make money.” From Lito V: “Where’s the glory in beating a has-been, washed-up 39-year-old boxer like Mosley?” From another texter: “Mommy Dionesia appeals to son to quit boxing, but asks to bring home Hermes bag — worth P1 million.” What perfect models for petty bourgeois consumerist culture!
The power of the human mind is infinitely more potent than atomic nuclear fission. That is why the ruling powers of the world (and of this country) put such a premium (and investment) in controlling that public mind.
George W. Bush could not have attacked Iraq without first detonating the WMD hoax on unsuspecting minds. Similarly, the warmongers behind Obama could not begin to move to the next stage of the global war masked behind the anti-terror war and other secondary purposes without this new hoax of Osama’s “death.”
The ruling classes of this country cannot restrain the explosion of the people’s rage over the rising economic damage to their lives by the Establishment’s privatization and liberalization programs — such as the expected MRT-LRT re-privatization and all the PPP projects of PeNoy — without such distractions as the Pacquiao fights.
But, just as the Iraq WMD and other hoaxes continue to be exposed, so is the power of the Establishment in perpetuating these also waning.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/13/2011
Despite the contradictions in Barack Obama’s bin Laden “epic thriller,” it was reported on May 4 that three US opinion polls (i.e. CNN/Opinion Research, Washington Post/Pew Research Center, and USA Today/Gallup) upped his approval rating from four to 14 points. Obama’s spinmasters know just what the mass American mind wants. No matter the lies they will be dishing out, they know that Americans will believe what they want to believe.
One such lie has been al-Qaeda’s recent “confirmation” of Osama bin Laden’s death taken from SITE (Search for International Terrorist Entities) Institute, an organization funded by the US government to the tune of $500,000 a year.
SITE is run by Jewish-Iraqi Rita Katz, whose father was executed by Saddam Hussein for spying for Israel. The firm has been “caught red-handed releasing fake al-Qaeda tapes on numerous occasions,” according to one of the best intelligence sources I follow, Alex Jones of infowars.com.
It seems one local broadsheet dutifully reproduced that SITE-announced confirmation through its May 7 headline (“Al-Qaeda vows revenge on US”) without as much as an honest-to-goodness background check of the source. Had it done so, its editors would have, at the very least, immediately treated SITE as suspect and informed its readers accordingly. But then, being a newspaper that has described the US raid as a “spy thriller,” it is instead, wittingly or unwittingly, lending aid to Obama’s spinmasters in boosting the US’ stock while promoting the “Clash of Civilizations” mindset among Filipinos with wars that are only profitable for the Western military-industrial complex.
The alleged bin Laden videos made public by the US, showing him making al-Qaeda tapes, now turn out to be four-year-old videos released by SITE.
Osama is being used by Obama as a WMD, a “Weapon of Mass Distraction” to shift attention from the disaster that is the US-Nato attack on Libya, as well as the downward spiraling US economy, with jobless numbers and the need for QE3 (quantitative easing) or financial bailouts to its financial institutions erupting yet again.
Obama’s poll numbers for his reelection bid were undoubtedly re-inflated after this gimmick. But this will backfire when other facts about bin Laden surface, such as Iran’s assertion that Osama has long been dead, with the release of such proof probably just a matter of time.
Russian news network Russia Today has long balanced its reportage by presenting skeptics such as Webster Tarpley, James Corbett, et al. in exposing Barack Obama’s lies. Even Benazir Bhutto, before her assassination, already stated that Osama has long died; same with former ISI chief Gen. Hamid Gul and former US State Department official Dr. Steve Pieczenik.
In the sports arena, Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao is similarly a continuing WMD for entertainment tycoons, the Nevada gaming board, media moguls, bookies, and the Yellow movement alike. It is without doubt that the US State of Nevada and its entertainment moguls have earned more than anyone else in this, taking most of the money from the pockets of Filipinos.
As media define what most people take as enjoyable sport and entertainment, the Philippine mainstream is not about to miss this Pacquiao bandwagon despite the greater calling of the Fourth Estate to address truly substantive news and issues.
Of the May 9 banner stories, only one Philippine broadsheet focused on a genuine issue of public concern. It was only The Daily Tribune that headlined “Gov’t to spend not earn from MRT-LRT PPP bid” to alert the public to the P15 billion government will be paying to, instead of receiving from, the winner of the MRT-LRT PPP (public-private partnership) bid when it comes in June. It’s a major scandal!
Compare that to the other headlines: “Lopsided Pacquiao win”; “Pacquiao too much for Mosley”; “Pacquiao shames Mosley”; “Pacquiao tears Mosley apart”; “Mighty Manny shames Shane.” Heck, if these were all true, then why do veteran sport writers such as Mico Halili say “…Mosley performance leaves bitter aftertaste,” describing the whole fight as lousy and unexciting?
Why, even my radio listeners/texters made much more sense. From AR: “The Pacman-Mosley fight is senseless. Only business.” From Myrna: “It was all acting, they should pit young against the young, not a boxer nine years older. All Pacquio’s fights lately are like this, pitting has-beens just to make money.” From Lito V: “Where’s the glory in beating a has-been, washed-up 39-year-old boxer like Mosley?” From another texter: “Mommy Dionesia appeals to son to quit boxing, but asks to bring home Hermes bag — worth P1 million.” What perfect models for petty bourgeois consumerist culture!
The power of the human mind is infinitely more potent than atomic nuclear fission. That is why the ruling powers of the world (and of this country) put such a premium (and investment) in controlling that public mind.
George W. Bush could not have attacked Iraq without first detonating the WMD hoax on unsuspecting minds. Similarly, the warmongers behind Obama could not begin to move to the next stage of the global war masked behind the anti-terror war and other secondary purposes without this new hoax of Osama’s “death.”
The ruling classes of this country cannot restrain the explosion of the people’s rage over the rising economic damage to their lives by the Establishment’s privatization and liberalization programs — such as the expected MRT-LRT re-privatization and all the PPP projects of PeNoy — without such distractions as the Pacquiao fights.
But, just as the Iraq WMD and other hoaxes continue to be exposed, so is the power of the Establishment in perpetuating these also waning.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Violence begets violence
KIBITZER
Rod Kapunan
5/9-15/2011
Maybe the world cannot compel the US to change its tagging of Osama bin Laden as the world’s number one terrorist.
But how the US Navy Seals carried out their mission instantly changed that perception. Many are beginning to believe the US as more ruthless than the man they killed. Such is the conclusion for if the objective was to get Bin Laden alive and whished him to their notorious prison camp in Guantanamo.
Public perception might have been positive to possibly justify President Bush’s decision to set up of a prison camp for terrorists with security as primordial than the issues of international law, human rights, and jurisdiction.
His own History
Osama bin Laden has made his own history by daring to fight the mightiest state in our modern era. But what he did not know, the state has already metamorphosed to one of a criminal state capable of unleashing an incomparable degree of ruthlessness and brutality to countries it calls rogue states.
The method with which Bin Laden and his motley band of jihadists used to bravely challenge the might of the US was something of a “quixotic war.” It was only their hatred that fired up their adrenalin to fight and gave them the idea to open a new dimension in warfare understood as an “asymmetrical warfare” because it imposes to no limitations and inhibitions to its target.
But even if the US successfully eliminated its most dreaded enemies, the world did not see it that way.
As one would quip, the US has become a criminal state for it now openly flaunts its might to make a travesty of international law by violating the sovereignty of Pakistan and disregarding the basic rules of engagement.
It was Murder
The world was stunned knowing how the special team carried out their mission.
It was murder because Bin Laden was unarmed when he was cornered at the top floor the building. Although he might have attempted to resist, he could have easily been overpowered by the US Navy Seals if their objective was to get him alive.
Unfortunately, even the plan to execute Bin Laden went beyond bounds. The raid resulted in his eldest son being killed and his wife shot.
Perhaps, the only thing that has been altered in that mission was, instead of his head being chopped and placed in an ice box to be brought to the White House for the viewing of US President Bush, as one leading US weekly magazine wrote, they decided instead to throw his body to the Indian Ocean, a final act of scoffing the dead.
Not Unprecedented
No doubt, the dumping his body was an insult not to the dead who knows nothing of how his executioner intended to dispose of his body, but to the believers of Islam who equally adhere to the morals of allowing relatives to give a decent burial to their dead. But it was not unprecedented.
The CIA did that to the body of that Latin American revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara. They chopped off his hands to be presented as evidence that indeed it was Guevara they felled, and buried his partly charred body in the dense forest of Bolivia without a marker so that those who believed in his ideology could not give him their hero- worship.
A CIA Creation
Besides, few people know that Osama bin Laden was a US creation.
The CIA exploited his deep conviction for Islam by urging him to wage a jihadist war in Afghanistan by forming an international brigade.
In Afghanistan Bin Laden was tasked to form an army of mujahidin volunteers made up of fanatical Muslims from all over the world to liberate that country from the Soviet occupation.
Many Filipino Muslims volunteered, and they were recruited under the close supervision of the CIA. They became veterans only to return this time seeking to establish a separate puritanical Islamic state by forming the Abu Sayyaf.
Having outlived their usefulness they were promptly reclassified as terrorists no different from what happened to their recruiter Bin Laden.
Capitalizing on Osama
But what the world is now witnessing is that the US is capitalizing on Bin Laden’s unbridled fascination for violence to inflict a far greater degree of violence.
Maybe the greatest blunder of Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda is not that they dared to fight, but did not know gruesome consequence of the US using its arsenal of cruise missiles to hit targets from far away Somalia, Yemen and Tanzania, and the use of drones loaded with high explosives in Pakistan.
Weeding out terrorists was used to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and as a result killed millions of innocent civilians, while insisting their presence there is needed to strengthen their version of democracy and freedom.
Stone-Age Mentality
For that the US has become more unpopular that its own ally Germany has become cynical of its objective with former Chancellor Helmut Schroeder cautioning Chancellor Angela Merkel from making unnecessary comment on the execution of Bin Laden.
Germany has refused to participate in collectively punishing an entire population by NATO’s bombing of Libya that could push that country back to Stone Age.
The so-called “no-fly zone” become the license of the US and NATO to bomb population centers resulting in death to thousands of innocent civilians, including the son of Muammar Gaddafi and three of his grandchildren, but would never admit their act is terrorism.
As usual, the US is telling the world its decision to bomb Libya is intended to prevent the spread of violence by Gadaffi’s forces short of saying that a criminal state always wants a monopoly of violence.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod Kapunan
5/9-15/2011
Maybe the world cannot compel the US to change its tagging of Osama bin Laden as the world’s number one terrorist.
But how the US Navy Seals carried out their mission instantly changed that perception. Many are beginning to believe the US as more ruthless than the man they killed. Such is the conclusion for if the objective was to get Bin Laden alive and whished him to their notorious prison camp in Guantanamo.
Public perception might have been positive to possibly justify President Bush’s decision to set up of a prison camp for terrorists with security as primordial than the issues of international law, human rights, and jurisdiction.
His own History
Osama bin Laden has made his own history by daring to fight the mightiest state in our modern era. But what he did not know, the state has already metamorphosed to one of a criminal state capable of unleashing an incomparable degree of ruthlessness and brutality to countries it calls rogue states.
The method with which Bin Laden and his motley band of jihadists used to bravely challenge the might of the US was something of a “quixotic war.” It was only their hatred that fired up their adrenalin to fight and gave them the idea to open a new dimension in warfare understood as an “asymmetrical warfare” because it imposes to no limitations and inhibitions to its target.
But even if the US successfully eliminated its most dreaded enemies, the world did not see it that way.
As one would quip, the US has become a criminal state for it now openly flaunts its might to make a travesty of international law by violating the sovereignty of Pakistan and disregarding the basic rules of engagement.
It was Murder
The world was stunned knowing how the special team carried out their mission.
It was murder because Bin Laden was unarmed when he was cornered at the top floor the building. Although he might have attempted to resist, he could have easily been overpowered by the US Navy Seals if their objective was to get him alive.
Unfortunately, even the plan to execute Bin Laden went beyond bounds. The raid resulted in his eldest son being killed and his wife shot.
Perhaps, the only thing that has been altered in that mission was, instead of his head being chopped and placed in an ice box to be brought to the White House for the viewing of US President Bush, as one leading US weekly magazine wrote, they decided instead to throw his body to the Indian Ocean, a final act of scoffing the dead.
Not Unprecedented
No doubt, the dumping his body was an insult not to the dead who knows nothing of how his executioner intended to dispose of his body, but to the believers of Islam who equally adhere to the morals of allowing relatives to give a decent burial to their dead. But it was not unprecedented.
The CIA did that to the body of that Latin American revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara. They chopped off his hands to be presented as evidence that indeed it was Guevara they felled, and buried his partly charred body in the dense forest of Bolivia without a marker so that those who believed in his ideology could not give him their hero- worship.
A CIA Creation
Besides, few people know that Osama bin Laden was a US creation.
The CIA exploited his deep conviction for Islam by urging him to wage a jihadist war in Afghanistan by forming an international brigade.
In Afghanistan Bin Laden was tasked to form an army of mujahidin volunteers made up of fanatical Muslims from all over the world to liberate that country from the Soviet occupation.
Many Filipino Muslims volunteered, and they were recruited under the close supervision of the CIA. They became veterans only to return this time seeking to establish a separate puritanical Islamic state by forming the Abu Sayyaf.
Having outlived their usefulness they were promptly reclassified as terrorists no different from what happened to their recruiter Bin Laden.
Capitalizing on Osama
But what the world is now witnessing is that the US is capitalizing on Bin Laden’s unbridled fascination for violence to inflict a far greater degree of violence.
Maybe the greatest blunder of Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda is not that they dared to fight, but did not know gruesome consequence of the US using its arsenal of cruise missiles to hit targets from far away Somalia, Yemen and Tanzania, and the use of drones loaded with high explosives in Pakistan.
Weeding out terrorists was used to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and as a result killed millions of innocent civilians, while insisting their presence there is needed to strengthen their version of democracy and freedom.
Stone-Age Mentality
For that the US has become more unpopular that its own ally Germany has become cynical of its objective with former Chancellor Helmut Schroeder cautioning Chancellor Angela Merkel from making unnecessary comment on the execution of Bin Laden.
Germany has refused to participate in collectively punishing an entire population by NATO’s bombing of Libya that could push that country back to Stone Age.
The so-called “no-fly zone” become the license of the US and NATO to bomb population centers resulting in death to thousands of innocent civilians, including the son of Muammar Gaddafi and three of his grandchildren, but would never admit their act is terrorism.
As usual, the US is telling the world its decision to bomb Libya is intended to prevent the spread of violence by Gadaffi’s forces short of saying that a criminal state always wants a monopoly of violence.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Talk News TV with Herman Tiu Laurel
TOPIC: Economics from Marcos to the Present
Guests: Prof. Rene Ofreneo, Director of Center For Labor Justice, Rod Kapunan, Writer and Columnist, Manila Standard Today and OpinYon and Jun Aristorenas, Former President of Fertilizer Industry Association of the Philippines.
PART I
PART II
Guests: Prof. Rene Ofreneo, Director of Center For Labor Justice, Rod Kapunan, Writer and Columnist, Manila Standard Today and OpinYon and Jun Aristorenas, Former President of Fertilizer Industry Association of the Philippines.
PART I
PART II
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Talk News TV with Herman Tiu Laurel
TOPIC: NFA Privatization Equals Food Crisis
Guests: Roman Sanchez, President of National Food Authority Employees Association (NFA-EA) and National President of National Federation of Employees Association, Department of Agriculture, Larry Tan, Vice-President of NFA-EA and Spokesperson of Koalisyon ng Progresibong Manggagawa at Mamamayan (KPMM) and Marlene Cui, First Vice-Chair, Collective Negotiations Agreement of the NFA-EA.
PART 1
PART 2
Guests: Roman Sanchez, President of National Food Authority Employees Association (NFA-EA) and National President of National Federation of Employees Association, Department of Agriculture, Larry Tan, Vice-President of NFA-EA and Spokesperson of Koalisyon ng Progresibong Manggagawa at Mamamayan (KPMM) and Marlene Cui, First Vice-Chair, Collective Negotiations Agreement of the NFA-EA.
PART 1
PART 2
Monday, May 9, 2011
No tales from dead OBL
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/9/2011
Assuming the real Osama bin Laden was still alive when Obama ordered the US Navy SEALs to raid his Abbottabad lair, and considering that no firefight ensued during the assault as officially reported, why did they have to kill this most wanted “terrorist leader?” Was it out of sheer spite or rage, or a vicarious long distance revenge thrill? Or was it something else?
Washington says it had never intended to capture Bin Laden, only to kill him. US officials have repeatedly tried to equate this with “justice.” Three people died in the assault and a video of the “spy thriller” showed blood splatters where there were neither weapons nor empty shells. Is this the “rule of law” America speaks of? Doesn’t this smack of old Westerns and Charles Bronson vigilante flicks?
Even setting all that aside, the real question remains: Doesn’t the US want to know the details of how bin Laden so masterfully executed the so-called 9/11 terror attacks?
A bin Laden caught alive would have been a treasure trove of information: How did he elude the world’s largest intelligence dragnet (by the CIA, Mossad, and all the allied intelligence operations combined) for 10 years? What were the details of his group’s 9/11 World Trade Center attack plans; and who were the contacts?
A living Osama bin Laden would have also been crucial in finally breaking the back of al-Qaeda’s global network (if ever one does exist outside the realm of US intelligence assets). Flushing out these details would have helped prevent the kind of “terrorist backlash” Uncle Sam is now telling the world to brace for.
From a pragmatic standpoint, wouldn’t keeping Osama alive have been more prudent than simply killing him then saying that the photos of his cadaver can’t be shown as these may further inflame hatred toward the West? Didn’t the US for a minute think that the many countries it calls its allies would certainly have wanted to mine bin Laden for intelligence in solving their own terrorism problems, such as RP’s supposed al-Qaeda cells in Mindanao ?
The more one thinks about it, the more the killing of an unarmed target smacks of “a dead man tells no tales” scenario. Whether it was really bin Laden himself or, as some high Pakistani military sources as well as intelligence researcher Webster Tarpley put it, a “pseudo-bin Laden,” the bottom line is the same: His death gives the US a happy closure (however, tenuous that is). The important thing for now is to give the American people a final end to the story.
Never mind if that leaky closure breaks open again as the corpse was hurriedly sank into the sea. Never mind if a forensic autopsy that could still squeeze some final answers is sure to never occur. All that is of utmost significance is the way the US government insists that it meant only to kill, never to capture — making it out as a state out for bloodthirsty vengeance instead of peace.
Human civilization started organizing international bodies, such as the League of Nations and today the UN, to “end all wars.” These institutions established conventions for conflicts across the globe, the rules of engagement, as well as bodies to try war crimes and such.
However, Obama and the US today, and for the past decades, clearly have had none of these. But should we still be surprised at their barbarity after having seen the atrocities at Guantanamo, the extrajudicial “renditions” of suspects to third countries, the massacre of countless civilians by US Predator drones, or the killing of Gaddafi’s grandchildren and son for which US and Nato express no compunction and apologies for? Even a look back at our own Philippine history will reveal the US’ barbarity in its murder of at least a million of our ancestors.
If any, an occasional admission of collateral damage, with one or two trials (out of thousands of cases against US servicemen) is all that has ever come about. Obama’s effusive triumphalism over the “bin Laden” kill project only infuses a dehumanizing, lawless mindset of “endless war” instilled by the likes of “Clash of Civilizations” prophet Samuel Huntington.
Oddly enough, the real underlying debate in the world today is between that “Clash of Civilizations” paradigm and what Eastern nations such as China and Iran continuously proffer as a “Dialogue of Civilizations.”
Unfortunately, in the midst of the blood and hate-mongering, as well as the promotion of “tit-for-tat” terrorism by the most powerful terror state (the US ) against enemy terror bands (e.g., al-Qaeda), dialog is a lost cause. That is, unless the peoples of the world wake up to the subtle psychological ploys in these “spy thrillers” by Western media.
Allowing the global warmongers to get away with their lies is ushering the world into “endless war” and, imminently, pocket nuclear battles. These are already happening with the depleted uranium contamination in such Iraqi towns as Fallujah and in the Nato bombing of Libya .
In 2001, many among the so-called “conspiracy theorists” already predicted that the US was building up toward war when Dubya Bush pronounced the three words that started it all, the “Axis of Evil.” The wars, of course, did come.
Now, after the bin Laden kill, instead of an end to these terror wars, Hillary Clinton warns the world of al-Qaeda retaliation. Yet, as Western covert forces have time and again committed much graver acts of terror and blamed it on others — no different from Hitler’s burning of the Reichstag — the worst case scenario is a “dirty bomb” somewhere in a population center, which will then be blamed on Western targets (Libya, Syria, Iran, etc.) to justify tactical nuclear weapons use.
Ultimately, the goal is the re-colonization of Africa and the Middle East; then a tightened encirclement of China. It’ll be a repeat of the start of the War in the Pacific where the West embargoed oil to Japan.
(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m.; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, with this week’s topic, “Ten Years of PNAC: Project for a New American Century;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/9/2011
Assuming the real Osama bin Laden was still alive when Obama ordered the US Navy SEALs to raid his Abbottabad lair, and considering that no firefight ensued during the assault as officially reported, why did they have to kill this most wanted “terrorist leader?” Was it out of sheer spite or rage, or a vicarious long distance revenge thrill? Or was it something else?
Washington says it had never intended to capture Bin Laden, only to kill him. US officials have repeatedly tried to equate this with “justice.” Three people died in the assault and a video of the “spy thriller” showed blood splatters where there were neither weapons nor empty shells. Is this the “rule of law” America speaks of? Doesn’t this smack of old Westerns and Charles Bronson vigilante flicks?
Even setting all that aside, the real question remains: Doesn’t the US want to know the details of how bin Laden so masterfully executed the so-called 9/11 terror attacks?
A bin Laden caught alive would have been a treasure trove of information: How did he elude the world’s largest intelligence dragnet (by the CIA, Mossad, and all the allied intelligence operations combined) for 10 years? What were the details of his group’s 9/11 World Trade Center attack plans; and who were the contacts?
A living Osama bin Laden would have also been crucial in finally breaking the back of al-Qaeda’s global network (if ever one does exist outside the realm of US intelligence assets). Flushing out these details would have helped prevent the kind of “terrorist backlash” Uncle Sam is now telling the world to brace for.
From a pragmatic standpoint, wouldn’t keeping Osama alive have been more prudent than simply killing him then saying that the photos of his cadaver can’t be shown as these may further inflame hatred toward the West? Didn’t the US for a minute think that the many countries it calls its allies would certainly have wanted to mine bin Laden for intelligence in solving their own terrorism problems, such as RP’s supposed al-Qaeda cells in Mindanao ?
The more one thinks about it, the more the killing of an unarmed target smacks of “a dead man tells no tales” scenario. Whether it was really bin Laden himself or, as some high Pakistani military sources as well as intelligence researcher Webster Tarpley put it, a “pseudo-bin Laden,” the bottom line is the same: His death gives the US a happy closure (however, tenuous that is). The important thing for now is to give the American people a final end to the story.
Never mind if that leaky closure breaks open again as the corpse was hurriedly sank into the sea. Never mind if a forensic autopsy that could still squeeze some final answers is sure to never occur. All that is of utmost significance is the way the US government insists that it meant only to kill, never to capture — making it out as a state out for bloodthirsty vengeance instead of peace.
Human civilization started organizing international bodies, such as the League of Nations and today the UN, to “end all wars.” These institutions established conventions for conflicts across the globe, the rules of engagement, as well as bodies to try war crimes and such.
However, Obama and the US today, and for the past decades, clearly have had none of these. But should we still be surprised at their barbarity after having seen the atrocities at Guantanamo, the extrajudicial “renditions” of suspects to third countries, the massacre of countless civilians by US Predator drones, or the killing of Gaddafi’s grandchildren and son for which US and Nato express no compunction and apologies for? Even a look back at our own Philippine history will reveal the US’ barbarity in its murder of at least a million of our ancestors.
If any, an occasional admission of collateral damage, with one or two trials (out of thousands of cases against US servicemen) is all that has ever come about. Obama’s effusive triumphalism over the “bin Laden” kill project only infuses a dehumanizing, lawless mindset of “endless war” instilled by the likes of “Clash of Civilizations” prophet Samuel Huntington.
Oddly enough, the real underlying debate in the world today is between that “Clash of Civilizations” paradigm and what Eastern nations such as China and Iran continuously proffer as a “Dialogue of Civilizations.”
Unfortunately, in the midst of the blood and hate-mongering, as well as the promotion of “tit-for-tat” terrorism by the most powerful terror state (the US ) against enemy terror bands (e.g., al-Qaeda), dialog is a lost cause. That is, unless the peoples of the world wake up to the subtle psychological ploys in these “spy thrillers” by Western media.
Allowing the global warmongers to get away with their lies is ushering the world into “endless war” and, imminently, pocket nuclear battles. These are already happening with the depleted uranium contamination in such Iraqi towns as Fallujah and in the Nato bombing of Libya .
In 2001, many among the so-called “conspiracy theorists” already predicted that the US was building up toward war when Dubya Bush pronounced the three words that started it all, the “Axis of Evil.” The wars, of course, did come.
Now, after the bin Laden kill, instead of an end to these terror wars, Hillary Clinton warns the world of al-Qaeda retaliation. Yet, as Western covert forces have time and again committed much graver acts of terror and blamed it on others — no different from Hitler’s burning of the Reichstag — the worst case scenario is a “dirty bomb” somewhere in a population center, which will then be blamed on Western targets (Libya, Syria, Iran, etc.) to justify tactical nuclear weapons use.
Ultimately, the goal is the re-colonization of Africa and the Middle East; then a tightened encirclement of China. It’ll be a repeat of the start of the War in the Pacific where the West embargoed oil to Japan.
(Tune in to 1098AM, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m.; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, with this week’s topic, “Ten Years of PNAC: Project for a New American Century;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)
The new 9/11 and WMD hoax
CRITIC'S CRITIC
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/9-15/2011
The destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) north and south towers was not engineered by Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden (OBL) because neither had the means. It was an inside job that had the highest American political and security officials involved.
All these years, they’ve been hiding the fact that these were all controlled demolitions. (Else, how was it that WTC Building 7, which was not hit by any plane, also collapsed?) And so today, 70 percent of New Yorkers already doubt the official government story.
In the background lies Israeli intelligence, together with a Jewish financier who gained at least $3.5-billion in insurance payments and sued for up to $7 billion more. George W. Bush used the post-WTC hysteria to attack Afghanistan which supposedly harbored OBL and then Saddam Hussein, despite his anti-OBL disposition, by “sexing up” propaganda on his cache of so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), now totally debunked as a hoax.
This new tale of the US’ killing of OBL is the latest hoax this time around, a new Weapon of Mass “Distraction” to divert people’s attention from the massively negative impact of the US and NATO’s killing of Moammar Gaddafi’s three pre-teen grandchildren and his youngest son Saif al-Arab.
Personally, the impact on me was so great I wanted to write an article entitled “We are all Saif al-Arab today” to commemorate the brutal murder of these innocents by the Western hegemonists. Filipinos may not feel the impact as much as the Arab nations, but the US, NATO, and their Arab puppet allies would have been put in an impossible spot when the bodies of Saif al-Arab and Gaddafi’s grandchildren were presented to the world--which happened but with a muted reaction, owing to the pre-emptive “spy thriller” of OBL’s death (a mood the Americans wanted to project and which the Philippine Daily Inquirer dutifully bannered).
The attention of the world should be on the inhumanity of the US and NATO in Libya, which Obama successfully diverted, along with his own crashing public popularity.
OBL has been a US ally and avatar in the Afghan war against the Russians. The Al Qaeda he is supposed to lead has been exposed again and again in the past. Shortly before his untimely death in August 2005, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that “Al Qaeda” is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.
Given this reminder, it should not be difficult then to understand why the US, NATO, and Al Qaeda are united in Benghazi, Libya to depose Gaddafi. Al Qaeda was used in Kosovo to break up Yugoslavia. Al Qaeda in Mindanao and the MILF are assets of the US and, when necessary for US interest, will be used to rebel in full against the Republic. They’re not that different from the “peace panel” on the Philippine side, which, being made up of US assets, wants a postponement of the ARMM elections--to weaken local government warlords and strengthen their MILF nemeses.
Teddy “Boy” Locsin was wrong on his morning “Mambobola” program of May 3 where he said the killing of Bin Laden spells the end of the “Anti-Terror War.” It will and is already actually escalating as news headlines across the globe show, with justifications on increased heavy armed presence in public places; greater intrusions into privacy via extra-judicial wiretappings; and websites already banning comments questioning Obama’s story on Bin Laden’s “death” (Huffington Post is one). Hasn’t he learned from the local version of Al Qaeda and OBL, the Abu Sayyaf and leaders just as Abubarak (1998) and Kaddafy Janjanlani (2006), whose deaths authorities claimed would have ended the group’s activities, only to have it (Abu Sayyaf) resurrect endlessly whenever the military needed eruptions of violence to suit its ends?
Locsin is also wrong in fawning over Obama for this “kill” and his endorsement of the US forces’ return to RP, which only promotes a repeat of the victimization of the Philippines in World War II as a “sapper” country. It seems the whole caboodle in “Mambobola” has been taken in by the hoax that OBL was cornered in that little house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which, contrary to US reports, the locals deny is a mansion, just 1.5 kilometers from the Pakistan Military Academy (Pakistan’s own West Point). That area must have always swarmed with security and cadets, yet nobody ever noticed anything? Even my youngest twin boys couldn’t believe Obama especially when it was reported that OBL’s body was buried-at-sea. Someone even commented, “Maybe with military honors as a soldier of the US?”
People should recall that popular and dyed-in-the-wool CBS news anchor Dan Rather’s report on 9/11 where he said a CBS investigation discovered that Osama Bin Laden was admitted for dialysis to the military hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on September 10, 2001 under heavy US protection. Fast forward today with that shot of Obama and Hillary Clinton, with their staff, viewing the video of the firefight that supposedly did OBL in, and begin to see flashes of the 1997 “Wag the Dog” flick with Robert de Nero.
Bin Laden, the bogeyman, has been very useful to the US neoconservatives and defense industries for their profit-mongering. The likelihood is that Bin Laden had already died years ago from his kidney failures. There have been numerous assertions in the past from such figures as Benazir Bhutto (before her assassination) that OBL had died. Alex Jones of prisonplanet.com also reports a Republican source telling him OBL has been preserved in cold storage for eventual use. Is that why the alleged corpse was dumped into the ocean?
Former Pakistani intelligence chief Hamid Gul went on the Alex Jones Show and described the unverified assassination of OBL as symbolic theater, a “make believe drama” for Obama’s upcoming re-election campaign. We won’t have the whole story for some time but the truth will out soon, like the WMD lie of Bush and the WTC 9/11 hoax. What we should learn, and Teddy Locsin should take this seriously, is not to be taken for a ride by the warmongers who will ruin this world and this country called the Philippines for the nth time.
Meanwhile, let me point out the major historical error in Gloria Arroyo hack Rigoberto Tiglao’s April 28 column on Danding Cojuangco’s coco levy fund machinations. He is correct that the PCGG exemplifies the height of the Yellow government’s incompetence in failing to nail Danding, but his account of the 1992 elections is wrong--it was not Danding who ran to soil Imelda Marcos’ chances for the presidency but the other way around. The real protector of Danding wasn’t Cory Aquino but the Americans who also probably used him in its operation to martyr Ninoy Aquino and force a counter-democratic revolution in 1986.
On the other hand, I have praises for Ellen Tordesillas on Michael Ray Aquino’s possible extradition. Her blog raises the issue of Fr. Baldostamon who witnessed Almonte’s offer to the Dacer children to see their father, provided they maintain their public mourning. Ellen provided information that I had long searched for, the whereabouts of the priest--in Linköping, Sweden. Very good investigative work, Ellen!
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/9-15/2011
The destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) north and south towers was not engineered by Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden (OBL) because neither had the means. It was an inside job that had the highest American political and security officials involved.
All these years, they’ve been hiding the fact that these were all controlled demolitions. (Else, how was it that WTC Building 7, which was not hit by any plane, also collapsed?) And so today, 70 percent of New Yorkers already doubt the official government story.
In the background lies Israeli intelligence, together with a Jewish financier who gained at least $3.5-billion in insurance payments and sued for up to $7 billion more. George W. Bush used the post-WTC hysteria to attack Afghanistan which supposedly harbored OBL and then Saddam Hussein, despite his anti-OBL disposition, by “sexing up” propaganda on his cache of so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), now totally debunked as a hoax.
This new tale of the US’ killing of OBL is the latest hoax this time around, a new Weapon of Mass “Distraction” to divert people’s attention from the massively negative impact of the US and NATO’s killing of Moammar Gaddafi’s three pre-teen grandchildren and his youngest son Saif al-Arab.
Personally, the impact on me was so great I wanted to write an article entitled “We are all Saif al-Arab today” to commemorate the brutal murder of these innocents by the Western hegemonists. Filipinos may not feel the impact as much as the Arab nations, but the US, NATO, and their Arab puppet allies would have been put in an impossible spot when the bodies of Saif al-Arab and Gaddafi’s grandchildren were presented to the world--which happened but with a muted reaction, owing to the pre-emptive “spy thriller” of OBL’s death (a mood the Americans wanted to project and which the Philippine Daily Inquirer dutifully bannered).
The attention of the world should be on the inhumanity of the US and NATO in Libya, which Obama successfully diverted, along with his own crashing public popularity.
OBL has been a US ally and avatar in the Afghan war against the Russians. The Al Qaeda he is supposed to lead has been exposed again and again in the past. Shortly before his untimely death in August 2005, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that “Al Qaeda” is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.
Given this reminder, it should not be difficult then to understand why the US, NATO, and Al Qaeda are united in Benghazi, Libya to depose Gaddafi. Al Qaeda was used in Kosovo to break up Yugoslavia. Al Qaeda in Mindanao and the MILF are assets of the US and, when necessary for US interest, will be used to rebel in full against the Republic. They’re not that different from the “peace panel” on the Philippine side, which, being made up of US assets, wants a postponement of the ARMM elections--to weaken local government warlords and strengthen their MILF nemeses.
Teddy “Boy” Locsin was wrong on his morning “Mambobola” program of May 3 where he said the killing of Bin Laden spells the end of the “Anti-Terror War.” It will and is already actually escalating as news headlines across the globe show, with justifications on increased heavy armed presence in public places; greater intrusions into privacy via extra-judicial wiretappings; and websites already banning comments questioning Obama’s story on Bin Laden’s “death” (Huffington Post is one). Hasn’t he learned from the local version of Al Qaeda and OBL, the Abu Sayyaf and leaders just as Abubarak (1998) and Kaddafy Janjanlani (2006), whose deaths authorities claimed would have ended the group’s activities, only to have it (Abu Sayyaf) resurrect endlessly whenever the military needed eruptions of violence to suit its ends?
Locsin is also wrong in fawning over Obama for this “kill” and his endorsement of the US forces’ return to RP, which only promotes a repeat of the victimization of the Philippines in World War II as a “sapper” country. It seems the whole caboodle in “Mambobola” has been taken in by the hoax that OBL was cornered in that little house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which, contrary to US reports, the locals deny is a mansion, just 1.5 kilometers from the Pakistan Military Academy (Pakistan’s own West Point). That area must have always swarmed with security and cadets, yet nobody ever noticed anything? Even my youngest twin boys couldn’t believe Obama especially when it was reported that OBL’s body was buried-at-sea. Someone even commented, “Maybe with military honors as a soldier of the US?”
People should recall that popular and dyed-in-the-wool CBS news anchor Dan Rather’s report on 9/11 where he said a CBS investigation discovered that Osama Bin Laden was admitted for dialysis to the military hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on September 10, 2001 under heavy US protection. Fast forward today with that shot of Obama and Hillary Clinton, with their staff, viewing the video of the firefight that supposedly did OBL in, and begin to see flashes of the 1997 “Wag the Dog” flick with Robert de Nero.
Bin Laden, the bogeyman, has been very useful to the US neoconservatives and defense industries for their profit-mongering. The likelihood is that Bin Laden had already died years ago from his kidney failures. There have been numerous assertions in the past from such figures as Benazir Bhutto (before her assassination) that OBL had died. Alex Jones of prisonplanet.com also reports a Republican source telling him OBL has been preserved in cold storage for eventual use. Is that why the alleged corpse was dumped into the ocean?
Former Pakistani intelligence chief Hamid Gul went on the Alex Jones Show and described the unverified assassination of OBL as symbolic theater, a “make believe drama” for Obama’s upcoming re-election campaign. We won’t have the whole story for some time but the truth will out soon, like the WMD lie of Bush and the WTC 9/11 hoax. What we should learn, and Teddy Locsin should take this seriously, is not to be taken for a ride by the warmongers who will ruin this world and this country called the Philippines for the nth time.
Meanwhile, let me point out the major historical error in Gloria Arroyo hack Rigoberto Tiglao’s April 28 column on Danding Cojuangco’s coco levy fund machinations. He is correct that the PCGG exemplifies the height of the Yellow government’s incompetence in failing to nail Danding, but his account of the 1992 elections is wrong--it was not Danding who ran to soil Imelda Marcos’ chances for the presidency but the other way around. The real protector of Danding wasn’t Cory Aquino but the Americans who also probably used him in its operation to martyr Ninoy Aquino and force a counter-democratic revolution in 1986.
On the other hand, I have praises for Ellen Tordesillas on Michael Ray Aquino’s possible extradition. Her blog raises the issue of Fr. Baldostamon who witnessed Almonte’s offer to the Dacer children to see their father, provided they maintain their public mourning. Ellen provided information that I had long searched for, the whereabouts of the priest--in Linköping, Sweden. Very good investigative work, Ellen!
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)
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