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)
Saturday, May 14, 2011
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
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