Laughing imperialists

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
4/13/2012



The Mandarins in Washington must be laughing their bellies out.  How clever they must think of themselves in making half the world scamper around for cover while they screamed, "The sky is falling."
 
Indeed, the US ordered its minion-states to perpetuate the fable of a North Korean (NoKor) "missile" test.  It even poked its surrogate to threaten the shooting down of said rocket "if it threatens any part of Japan."
 
While ordinary folks do not have the means to judge if that is even possible, not having the maps nor the trajectory the NoKor leadership announced, others would see that the trajectory flies south, away from Japan, and toward the seas east of Taiwan and the Philippines.
 
It is funny that the scare fanned across Metro Manila--a good six or seven hundred kilometers away, covered by the mountain ranges of Cagayan and Quezon provinces--that a bishop called on the people to pray.  How silly Filipinos must look to the Western powers.
 
The NoKor nation and its leaders are made out to be mindless and stupid fanatics by Western propaganda, which some Philippine "intelligentsia" pick up perfunctorily.  One view from a religious official repeats the lie that NoKor leaders "allow its people to starve," betraying ignorance of historical realities of Korea.
 
The geography of many nations--and Korea is no different--is often divided into a northern region of cold climes that is harsh on agriculture and a warmer south conducive to food production.  For North Korea, this reality, plus the economic sanctions and embargo imposed by the US (as was done to countries like Cuba or Iran), have severely limited the influx of agricultural inputs and goods.
 
That North Korea uses technology or arms development as leverage, as its political-defense potential to obtain food reserves, is a testament to its concern. The West, in actually, merely sheds crocodile tears for hungry people as it does for Africa.  It does not give a damn if, say, Iran has had to rush importing hundreds of thousands of tons of grain just to beat the recent US economic sanctions deadline.
 
The "missile test" claim is belied by the opportunity given to Filipinos to witness and verify the truth about this NoKor rocket launch.  Over his radio program on dwAD, Rep. Crispin "Boying" Remulla informed the audience that he was officially invited to visit North Korea and observe its test launch.  Unfortunately, the congressman declined the invitation for reasons he could not satisfactorily provide.
 
As a public official of the Philippines privileged to be invited to the rocket launch, Remulla had a duty to the Filipino people to proceed to Pyongyang to ascertain the nature and intent of the move.  He could have then either confirmed or denied to all the veracity of US and Japanese allegations.
 
Boying did, I recall, say something about his need to be "careful;" hence, declining the invitation; but "careful" for what he did not say.  Was he afraid of offending the US Embassy or of losing his US visa?  I wonder.
 
From the US State Department to Wall Street, the imperial Mandarins always get good laughs from the Philippines.  One recent headline must surely have made them happy: "Gov't readies vaccine PPP."
 
The PPP (Public-Private Partnership) projects are the old BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) and hybrid IPP (Independent Power Producer) scams where government contributes taxpayers' money, grants sovereign guaranteed contracts for a captive Filipino market in joint ventures with private  corporations (usually foreign firms or with local dummies) which it securitizes to raise funds then charges exorbitant "deregulated" rates or prices.
 
The PPP Center said that "government can save approximately P240 million to P360 million out of the P1.2 billion annual purchase cost of the vaccines."  But, that is, if the vaccines are needed at all.
 
The necessity of vaccines is being questioned more and more as the primary role of nutrition on overall health is increasingly being recognized.  Besides, Gloria Arroyo bought billions of Swine Flu vaccines in 2010 and where are they today?
 
The imperial Mandarins have time and time again turned every Philippine crisis into their opportunity.  One headline reveals what they have in mind for the Mindanao power price crisis: "Mindanao may go nuke."  Of course, this is uranium nuke, which is "so last century." After Chernobyl and Fukushima, uranium must be shelved forever, with the correct nuclear technology being thorium nuclear power.
 
China and India are already in this direction.  Thorium is four times more abundant than uranium (as we have our own in Palawan).  It produces less than 1 percent waste of today's uranium reactors and cannot be weaponized; it is failsafe and thus costs a fraction of uranium reactors to build; and, according to Filipino physicist Dr. Roger Posadas, Filipinos have existing technology to build them indigenously.  But, instead of pursuing this track, the imperial Mandarins are getting their surrogates to unload their poison plants and uranium stockpiles on our country.
 
The already laughing US Mandarins must be laughing off their butts more as they await the so-called power summit in Davao--which they expect would be pretty much like what they have witnessed in summits past. They should know because weren't they the ones who foisted the Epira (Electric Power Industry Reform Act) on us Filipinos?
 
Ah, but they need not wait for yesterday alone a headline already declared, "Metro brown outs loom" with a subtitle, "Power rate increases also feared with Malampaya Facility's Shutdown"--thanks to Shell-Texaco. Well, that ought to be thanks to Cory Aquino and the Yellows for giving the oil and power sectors to them.
 
In the meantime, while fear over the NoKor rocket is kept up, NASA has a $750 million Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) satellite set to fall from the sky in weeks; its pieces likely landing in densely populated areas on six continents, including parts of Britain, Europe, North and South America, and Asia.  No scare there?
 
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