RP Christmas gifts for US

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

12/21/2012

Daily Tribune

They were two long and hard battles fought by intellectually honest, caring, and patriotic Filipinos. No, I'm not writing here about the Philippine revolutionaries or the USAFFE soldiers or the Huks of the Fil-American War and World War II (WWII). I'm discussing the civil war over the Reproductive Health (RH) and the sin tax bills.
As it is generally true in all of Philippine History, the mentally and morally corrupt, the collaborators of foreign interests and powers, and the intellectually infirmed and depraved have prevailed — naturally with the hidden as well open interference of the alien interlopers.
This Christmas season, Filipino quislings (traitors) have legislated automatic annual gifts to the magis of America worth P10 billion (or $250 million), not to mention more in RH pork, for "essential medicines" to be bought from US condom-contraceptives makers — while forking perpetual billions to foreign cigarette manufacturers and smugglers.
"RH wins!" declared one newspaper headline. That's certainly the laugh of the year. It is nothing but an unmitigated victory for US strategic political and corporate interests, starting with Henry Kissinger's NSSM (National State Security Memorandum) 200 targeting the Philippines, with 10 other developing countries, for population reduction and preservation of the Third World for US economic interests.

The 30 years of population control crusades of the US, through the UN Population Commission, actually produced success. Philippine population growth rates declined from over three percent down to just 1.8 percent (as per World Bank data) the past years with massive funding from the US Congress. Thus, official funding for UN and NGO-sponsored population programs had been reduced as well. With that, Big Pharma condom and contraceptive firms need to continue having assured markets and profits — and have, unfortunately for us, found our country as the perfect sap.
Media and NGOs are the biggest components of this transnational pharmaceuticals propaganda war in getting distorted messages across — from myths that population growth is the cause of poverty instead of iniquitous economic policy and corruption, to making the issue a "feminist" crusade against the Catholic hierarchy's "male chauvinism," among other glib lines.

Such a campaign — rammed through "porkers" like Edcel Lagman, whose law office handles many of the multinational corporations' lobbying, or through the likes of the batty Miriam Santiago or the daughter of the late self-confessed BW shares scammer — goes to show that the RH campaign is another one of the big frauds committed by politicians again and again at the expense of the people's finances and welfare.
On the Sin Tax war, the onerous and lopsided Cesar Purisima, together with the BAT (British American Tobacco) company won in their machinations to make Filipino tobacco farmers and cigarette manufacturers pay the additional taxes the International Monetary Fund wants from the Philippines.
Though slightly reduced, the new and additional taxes on local tobacco and cigarettes are still more than what the overtaxed Filipino people can absorb, such that more of it will eventually wipe out the Ilocos tobacco sector, especially after the full blown equalization of taxes on foreign and local tobacco products is attained in the next five years. It will be boom times indeed for cigarette smuggling (for which BAT was indicted in an investigation by the British Parliament in 2002) after the passage of the new sin tax rates in the years to come. And Filipinos will be reduced to mere buyers of foreign or smuggled cigarettes, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lost local tobacco jobs.

As it was at the end of WWII when Japanese imperial forces were defeated and the tally of Filipino dead reached over one million, it was not the heroic Filipinos who fought the Japanese who were honored. It was the Filipino collaborators to the Japanese forces who were handed the victory flag and the helms of government in the new "independent" Philippine regime.
Sadly, the quislings almost always win here in this country. WWII Filipino patriots were eventually hounded out of participation in legal political processes (Rep. Luis Taruc and his party were ousted from Congress for instance) and had to continue the struggle via other means.
For Filipino patriots in the struggle to expose the RH law for the swindle that it is, as with the war to save our Philippine tobacco industry, the fight goes on but on a higher and broader plane.

In order to wipe out the quislings from Philippine society (or be wiped out in the process), it is the national revolution that must continue to be waged by letting the sham of the Republic of the Philippines be swept into the dustbin of history.
In the 2013 elections, we can contribute to this patriotic struggle against the quislings by selecting senatorial candidates with clear patriotic records. In the administration coalition line-up, there's only Sonny Trillanes who has shown this spirit; among the unaligned candidates, there's Teddy Casiño; and in the UNA slate, there's only the Estrada legacy to count on.

(Watch GNN's HTL show, GNN Channel 8, Saturdays, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m., 11:15 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m., and over at www.gnntv-asia.com on "2013: The World and Philippine Economy;" tune in to 1098 AM radio Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., and visit http://newkatipunan.blogspot.com)