Who’s to save the people?

CONSUMERS DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
9/26-28/2011



Tollway expenses are set to go up this first of October. Unless some miracle happens, the cold, cold hearts of those in Malacañang acting as collectors for the Paris Club will never ever be turned. Any hope of civil disobedience to turn the tide of extraction by international “banksters” (banker-gangsters) from people’s pockets is hopeless so long as the Yellow government, in the tradition of Ninoy and Cory Aquino, is all too willing to turn the screws on citizens’ livelihoods by threatening the removal of transport operators’ franchises or drivers’ licenses.

And because this was the Achilles heel of the strike called by Piston (Pinagkaisang Samahan ng Tsuper at Opereytor Nationwide) against oil deregulation last week, we can’t really blame the drivers who turned tail. It will be better in the long run to gather all the rage for one final strike in the only action that can change tyrannical regimes: An insurrectionary rampage to replace the existing system.

We hope middle class professionals (doctors, engineers, consultants, etc.) who are now being targeted by an IMF-controlled Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) are beginning to understand the burden over-taxed masses have been under for decades.

From news reports, the official word is that the BIR simply took “its cue from the (last) State of the Nation Address of President Benigno Aquino… (when it) vowed to go after doctors, lawyers, accountants and other professionals who are not paying the right income taxes.” But the tax agency already trained its guns on lesser brained professionals (such as entertainers and the like) much earlier.

This time, however, will the supposedly higher brained doctors and lawyers take this sitting down when they know that taxes in the Philippines never redound to services and infrastructure investments for the people but are instead used to pay off debts, which the country doesn’t need? Don’t they know that taxes are only meant for massive corruption, which, in turn, is necessary to maintain a government under vassalage to the US, its allies, and their “banksters,” who operate behind the cover of a local oligarchy?

In my earlier OpinYon column dialogue with colleagues, I responded on the topic of media consolidation (see Sheila Coronel’s three-part article) by making my point that money is often followed by media. That is why in liberal-capitalist systems, media will inevitably be controlled by the oligarchy and will be antithetical to the people’s welfare, as is the case in the Philippines and much of the world today.

Coronel aptly ends her piece on the Lopezes’ SkyCable network. But do we know who really owns SkyCable? In a despedida for a very close diplomatic friend, I was informed by this diplomat that his compatriot, the right hand man of CNN’s Ted Turner, apprised him of SkyCable’s provenance as one of Turner’s Philippine holdings upon the latter’s recent visit. Judging by that cable service’s channel line-up, one can already see a preponderance of Turner properties, which is another proof that control of Philippine media by foreign interests is largely behind the scenes. Only Destiny Cable has a news channel (Global News Network) that carries RT (Russia Today), which Hillary Clinton revealed in a March 2011 US Senate hearing that her country might lose an information war against.

In that same dialogue, I wanted to tie in the Electric Power Industry R(d)eform Act (EPIRA), climate change, health, and the Agham party list articles to one central issue. The EPIRA, our colleague Bernie Lopez explained, was really written by the IMF-World Bank and rammed down the Philippine government’s throat in exchange for a $300-million loan; but it could only be passed if the Estrada administration was out of the way as the “Ama ng Masa” didn’t approve of sovereign guarantees which all energy privatization programs entail.

The approval of the EPIRA was thus part of the mix of motives of foreign allies of the corrupt local oligarchy and political bureaucracy (including jueteng lords who opposed legalization of their game) in deposing the legitimately-elected president. Therefore, all those who were muddle-headed at Edsa Dos share part of the blame.

Meanwhile, on the issue of climate change (CC), which used to be known as anthropomorphic (i.e. manmade) global warming (AGW), the term only switched (from GW to CC) when the global warming theory suffered due to its computer modeling not squaring up with reality. This was brought about by the following: A decade of debates showing that man was never the greatest generator of carbon (the central theme of AGW) but nature itself; findings which point to the global climate as primarily driven by the sun’s activity since climate fluctuations occurred even before the Industrial Age (or the medieval warm period from 950 to 1100 AD and the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850 AD); the “Climate-gate” exposé in the University of East Anglia’s research unit, where leading global warming scientists faked weather data to fit the AGW theory, ad nausea; and, finally, the exposés of scams in the “carbon trading” and RE (renewable energy) programs.

Although we need to keep our environment clean, we need to be alert to the many hoaxes intended to keep the Third World exploited.

Finally, I was delighted to read Louie Montemar’s article on the Agham party-list as it showed uncommon concern for the real issues (as all his columns do) and not the superficial. I’d recommend that we all read the debate between Dr. Flor Lacanilao, retired marine biology professor, and UP Physicist and professor Dr. Roger Posadas, where the former argued that the Philippines was being left behind because it lacked investment in “basic research” while the latter lashed out, asking if Lacanilao knew anything about “the D part of R&D.”

The lack of development (or technological advancement) in the Philippines, argued Posadas, is “not because of our poor research productivity but because our political and business leaders have been brainwashed by mainstream economists into upholding the theory of comparative advantage which says that Filipinos should just import and use advanced equipment and technologies instead of trying to produce our own advanced equipment and technologies.” Thus, it means that we can and should begin on our own NOW.

From the problem of oligarchic media control to our concepts of “people power” and local approaches to global issues, the root of the problem is that we are controlled and conditioned by foreign powers or interests. He (or she) who will save this country must first be one who thinks for his- or herself and, more importantly, for this nation. And this, he or she should do without any hangover from polluted sources such as CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Forbes, World Wildlife Fund, etc.

(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on “ERC-Meralco-llusions?”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)