Iligan: Cooked in own oil

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / November 4, 2013 / Daily Tribune

Iligan City's social media have raised a barrage against a columnist of a smaller Manila broadsheet who chastised them for opposing an Iligan City council's sale of two Build-Operate-Transfer power plants. These plants were turned over from the National Power Corp. — valued at almost P2.5 billion — and sold for only P300 million despite a higher bid of P500 million (with the balance turned into bonuses for awarding officials?).

The two power plants in question were originally owned by the same stockholders of the present receiving company. But worst for Iligan City is the renewed owners' claim that the plants' rehabilitation plus acquisition cost amounting to P1.318 billion should now form the new rate base. However, going by the estimate submitted by power plant manufacturer Wärtsilä to another bidder, the rehab cost should only be P36 million.

The first of these two power plants, by the way, was the first and only Independent Power Producer (IPP) contract for Mindanao signed by then President Cory Aquino two days before she turned over the reins of government to Fidel V. Ramos in 1992. It was a midnight deal signed by the "incorruptible" Cory favoring a longtime family friend (or crony, as others would say), the Alcantaras.

That was at a time when there were no power shortages in Mindanao except for a regular 15-year cycle of rain shortfall, which excuse was made for signing the unneeded power contract.

FVR, whose father Narciso Ramos worked for the same people, later even hurriedly awarded a second unnecessary IPP contract to the Alcantaras.
Iligan City, home of the famed Maria Cristina Falls and the giant Agus-Pulangi hydroelectric complex, had no power crisis in the 1990s. Even today, its shortfall is around only 10 megawatts; yet the plants that are to address it have a combined 100-MW capacity.

Power rates in Iligan City had always been the cheapest in Mindanao. Now, those rates will double due to the overpriced rehabilitated power plants.
Set up in 1992, the plants were hardly used — "broken-in" for 16,000 hours and subsequently operated for just 700 hours a year — literally brand new but sold for scrap. The buyer even got P60 million worth of oil in the plants' fuel tanks for free. Thus, Iligan City residents are really being cooked in their own oil.
So much for the "incorruptible" post-Marcos governments led by Cory Aquino: Her legacy of cronyism continues to this day as evidenced by the sale of Iligan City's IDPP-1 and IDPP-2.

The Save Iligan Movement, People Against Crime and Corruption (SIMPACC), through efforts of oppositor and intervenor Uriel Borja, has filed a fully documented complaint at the Ombudsman against officials of the Iligan City Council, including former mayor Lawrence Cruz and former Vice Mayor Henry Dy, as well as former councilors Chonilo Ruiz and Jose Zalsos, together with Tirso Santillan Jr., CEO of Conal Holdlings Corp. (which bought the two power plants for Iligan City). Also included among the respondents is the Commission on Audit (CoA), led by its chairman, Grace Pulido-Tan, and one of its commissioners, Heidi Mendoza.
The Ombudsman had ordered the respondents to submit their answers to the complaint, including a demand for the immediate suspension of the city council officials involved.

The Ombudsman's action naturally panicked Iligan City's council officials as well as the officers of the company, who must have instigated some of their paid media in Manila to begin their propaganda against the filing of the case. The columnist of a small Manila-based newspaper lambasted the concerned citizens for allegedly creating a situation in Iligan City akin to the damage inflicted of late by the Moro National Liberation Front.

Truthfully, while Zamboanga City may recover in time, Iligan City will suffer an unjust power rate base for decades on end if this "Con-al" deal isn't scrapped.
The Philippine government and the City of Iligan have lost billions upon billions from the series of "con" games played by various cronies of successive Yellow regimes of Cory Aquino, FVR, Gloria Arroyo, and now BS Aquino III. All these have been carried out in connivance with the corrupt political gofers at all levels of the endemically corrupt political system, including the incorrigibly partisan and politicized CoA to which BS Aquino III has personally appointed subservient minions.

The only hope left for the Republic is "citizens' action," as seen in the spirited struggle of Iligan City's residents, and for the rest of the nation to join in on the revolution.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch "Iligan City power struggle" on GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Skycable Channel 213, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)

3 frauds and a drip

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / October 28, 2013 / Daily Tribune

One fraud poses as a top defender of the territory of the Philippine Republic. A second poses as an anti-corruption crusader vs the opportunistic pork barrel system. Another is a global bank that local economists and business newspapers tout as a paragon of business virtue, with its endorsements of local finance officials cited as proof of their merit.

We have long and frequently denounced these frauds for what they are but it is not easy to expose them given the control of Philippine mainstream media by bigger fraudsters. Real events in the real world, however, would sooner or later unmask them.

The first fraud sits atop the highest defense post of the land. Last September, this fraud staged a scene announcing that Philippine reconnaissance had spotted 75 concrete blocks laid by the People's Republic of China's (PRoC) in an alleged prelude to the construction of a new base in Bajo de Masinloc. This information was dished out repeatedly by another fraud, a retired Philippine naval officer and Annapolis graduate who went around talk shows to lambast the PRoC. The Inquirer carried the story for weeks. But last Oct. 25, Malaya's Ellen Tordesillas burst the fraudsters' story in her report, "AFP probers say US, not China, put concrete blocks in Bajo de Masinloc."

Tordesillas wrote, "A military investigation found that the concrete slabs were covered by algae, an indication that they had been in the area for many years. The probe also found that the blocks had been used by the US Navy as 'sinkers' to preserve the wreckage of old ships they used for target practice."
Was the error just incompetence or a deliberate lie to please some higher master (in the US) while pushing military purchases?

The Philippine defense establishment has become the laughing stock of the Asian and global military community again; yet embarrassment is the least of the cost of this blatant faux pas. The loss for this country of billions worth of good will and investment from China is simply incalculable.

The next fraud is this "crusader" against political "pork" who has just latched onto the "People's Initiative to end Pork" of former Chief Justice Reynato Puno, by including it in his "Epirma" signature campaign against pork, political dynasties, while pushing the Freedom of Information (FoI) bill. This fraudster is obviously trying to package all motherhood statements under his umbrella and we have discovered the reason. Our sources are persons whom this fraudster had tried to recruit; and they've told this writer that the "Epirma" initiator even boasted of getting contributions from the top honchos of two major conglomerates. I have no doubt about these firms' participation as the "crusade" has been a perfect distraction from the oligarchy's shenanigans.

The third fraud you may help identify: Last week one business newspaper headlined, "BSP earns HSBC praise for "astute management." But I have been aware of the many penalties US and European financial authorities have imposed on Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corp. (HSBC), which the following headlines show: "HSBC Faces $2.46 billion Judgment in Securities Fraud Case..." (www.nytimes.com) and "HSBC to pay $1.9 billion US fine in money-laundering case" (Reuters). With so many crimes to its name, is HSBC a reputable endorser? What does this make of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) officials, i.e. Tetangco and Guinigundo, or of the business paper that uses HSBC as an authority on "management?"

But the biggest fraud of them all is a drip. The drip exposed more of his ineffectuality and weakness of character in a recent attempt to turnaround his deteriorating credibility and political stock. Faced with a crashing public image from the DAP (Disbursement Acceleration Program) "pork" exposé, despite the yeoman's efforts of controlled popular survey outfits to boost the perception of trust and popularity, this drip accused a "conspiracy" behind the attacks on his DAP pork. But wasn't it the drip's henchman in the Department of Budget and Management who cooked up DAP and Cory Aquino and Yellow stalwart, former Sen. Joker Arroyo, who first charged the DAP as an illegal animal?

Will Fraud Number One, the defense official, atone for his sin and resign after the gargantuan faux pas on the "concrete blocks" he wrongly accused China of placing at Bajo de Masinloc? We don't believe he is capable of such a dignified act since he seems to be fully inured to shame, not by a hide as thick as pachyderms or crocodiles, but because of a pineapple face that any shame would approach with trepidation. Will Fraud Number Two get his funds for his "crusades?" He certainly will, with the useful distraction it will provide for the money masters. As for Fraudster Number Three, is it HSBC, BSP, the newspaper, or all of the above?

Fraudsters are the plague of this country; they are in all sectors and come in all forms. We've discussed only three of these frauds here but they're all over. Then, of course, there's this one drip that the fraudsters of this land, using the fraud of Philippine elections, installed to preside over the fraud of Philippine democracy and economy. When will it all ever end?

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Skycable Channel 213, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)

The Pirma and Epira

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / October 30, 2013 / Daily Tribune

I couldn't help it. Reminded of the countless past signature campaigns by the Pirma and Eprima and their "anti-pork signature campaign, this echoed in my mind: "Here we go again."

To be clear, Pirma and Epirma are not one and the same, the former is purist and revolves around former Chief Justice (CJ) Reynato Puno and the latter is the project of that "fraud" I wrote about in my previous column boasting of his solicitations from big business honchos for his own campaign. Also, there is no unity in either "Pirma" and "Epirma" ranks, both being divided by the question of holding the B.S. Aquino administration to account for its own gargantuan "pork" or not.

The core groups of both "Pirma" and "Epirma" are reportedly against naming the administration in the campaign and want only to focus on the "pork barrel 'system'"

and/or on those who have plunder cases filed against them, which in a political and propaganda sense would wittingly or unwittingly be useful in the Liberal Party administration's partisan propaganda and political agenda. More militant groups have split. The theory of both signature campaigns is that the removal of the "pork barrel system" will end or, at least, drastically eliminate corruption in government through cleansing of the legislature and make the "separation of powers" and the "checks-and-balance" work.

Their theory fails to take into account the fact that the real corruption is not just in the "pork barrel system" but in today's "monopoly-finance capitalist" system. The Web defines it, as I use it: "…the subordination of processes of production to the accumulation of money profits in a financial system. ..." Which is why unemployment, high prices and poverty/hunger, and oligarchy capture of government prevails here, in the US Europe and the World.
In the celebrated "The Great Financial Crisis (Causes and Consequences)" Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster writes:

"At the center of the story is … monopoly-finance capital, that has generated a giant casino economy and promotes enormously exorbitant, exploitative and corrupt practices as well as violence abroad — all geared to finding and protecting profitable ways to invest the corporate capital surplus. Meanwhile, the real, pressing needs of most people in the society go unaddressed. The…way out of trap, … is the promotion of the security of the working class, and democratizing ownership of productive property —
Satan is not the politicians; it's the global finance-capitalists mafia. The politicians are but acolytes. The global mafia has local enforcers in the BSP, the Department of Finance and the local "bankster" capo-di-tutti-capos.

Their crowning achievement here is: the privatization of public utilities that is now milked for profits and not operated for the promotion of production of cheaper goods and services for democratic betterment. While the "Pirma" figurehead, former CJ Puno may have a clear understanding of that "democratic betterment" as in his term as Supreme Court (SC) chief justice, But there are numerous negative factors, such as being the "ponente" (writer of the verdict) of the "constructive resignation" that deposed a live, healthy, elected president of the Philippine republic — a decision few among legal luminaries can justify in the post-Gloria Arroyo era.

For the most dedicated Filipino legal scholars such as lawyer Alan Paguia, this "constructive resignation" is the height of constitutional transgression for a SC justice. Paguia also disdains Puno's known socializing with US Embassy officials such as former ambassador Kristy Kenney, playing regular tennis while with the SC. Puno also accepted a directorship in San Miguel Corp.

Former CJ Puno was sponsored by Jimmie Regalario of the KME (Kilusang Makabansang Ekonomiya) as the alternative leader in the post Gloria Arroyo scene in case the 1997 Manila Peninsula "people power" attempt succeeded. Elements of the Catholic Church supported that. But what's this fetish with the "superman," that we have to look for one "savior," as if historic events, shifts and changes are ever due to one, single person. All great changes, revolutions, are products of collective passion and efforts based on "the idea." That "idea" is what all post-Marcos changes lacked. The "transition" talk should first raise the idea of what should come after a change and during the "transition."

I propose that: the transition leadership be a State Council and chairmanship rotational (like Malaysia's sultans), major stakeholders are represented — the Catholic Church to militant Left, Philippine Chamber of Commerce to farmers' groups, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, etc. to secure their concerns. There must be a consensus for: cutting the price of power and re-nationalizing it.

The social morale will rise, the economy will revive, the oligarchy's power shall be tamed, "captive government" and politics can be sovereign again.

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 p.m to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Friday; Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m. — Destiny Cable, GNN Channel 8, Skycable channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com — "Thorium Nuclear Power"; visit: http//www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com; text comments to 0923-4095739)

Nukes, MRT/LRT, Kadhafi

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / October 23, 2013 / Daily Tribune

The mainstream media are still channeling along the anti-pork, anti-opposition and distract-from-BS Aquino failures line. Vital national and global issues are being bypassed. There are other issues that cry for attention: First, BS Aquino's P50 million to restore the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) which will be a waste if the obsolete uranium-reactor mindset persists while the 21st century option of Thorium is swept by the wayside. Secondly, the best priced option for new Metro Rail Transit (MRT) coaches is being threatened by the Aquino-Rychtar cabal while the 21-km Light Rail Transit (LRT)-1 to Cavite is being given exorbitant subsidies for the corporate oligarchy. Thirdly, a day of reckoning for those who condemned and killed Kadhafi is again at hand.

The BNPP revival was basically from a local ideological group with antiquated nuclear ideas and the uranium nuke lobby. Uranium nuke will lead the nation into a second bitter energy debacle. The uranium-nuclear option is a dead option, there will be "a next Fukushima" (est. ten-year clean-up cost: $ 250-billion) sooner or later, as there was Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Uranium-nuclear technology is simply inherently "dirty" and strategically suicidal, its pressurized systems prone of explode, Labyrinthian cooling systems tend to failure, radioactive wastes a threat literally forever and permanently costs billions to store. Thorium has none of these problems.

This is not to support the anti-nuke position which is anti-Third World and pro-financial "cap-and-trade" energy lobby. Neither is it against renewable energy but we do demand renewables costs to be lowered before they are imposed. Like China and India's nuclear scientists and our own Dr. Roger Posadas, I am advocating the leap-frog into Thorium nuclear energy. As Dr. Posadas explains: the Philippines has known Thorium deposits (such as Palawan monazites), its low risk level require technology within Filipino technological and engineering capabilities (we can do it ourselves), it has no by-product that is easily used in nuclear weapons and minimal wastes.

China and India are going into Thorium in very big ways, the former devoting $350 million into its development and the latter is already running a experimental thorium reactor (watch my show Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m. on Destiny Cable, GNN Channel 8 and SkyCable channel 213, or www.gnntv-asia.com with Dr. Roger Posadas, with video of India Thorium operation).

Last June, 2013 Norway successfully converted a uranium-power plant to use thorium. Chile and Indonesia are also in the process of converting their uranium-fuel plants to test Thorium. The Philippines needs a popular Thorium campaign to educate solons and the public on this fuel of today into the future.

On the MRT-3 "capacity expansion project" which is now post-qualifying the winning bid of $1.8 million/coach, the MRT-3 technical team is currently in China evaluating Dalian Locomotive. Since 1954 the company has supplied the world's largest train network, China. The Czech's Inekon wants $3 million/coach and did not join the bidding. Instead, it wants a "government-to-government" deal. The Czech company and embassy are raising a ruckus over alleged "corruption" of MRT-3 executives when it is clear the Czechs have been cultivating its "special relationship" with Aquino related personalities like Psinakis, Aquino-Lichauco, Ballsy Aquino and Eldon Cruz.

On the LRT-1 bidding, the public should read the Department of Transportation and Communications secretary's announcement on the terms it is giving to the corporate oligarchs-bidders: "…the government's absorption of the real property tax; protection of the concessionaire against "radical power rates changes" (why can't residential consumer get same); a "negative bid" or subsidy for the bidders (but they accuse commuters of being pampered with "subsidies"); government will assume the responsibility of rehabilitating LRT-1 in case structural defects arise. If they are getting all these subsidies, guarantees and perks, why doesn't government do the LRT project by itself?

Finally, to the many mainstream media personalities who supported by parroting the US-British-North Atlantic Treaty Organization justification for the "no fly zone" against Gaddafi, the bombing and genocide of his people for "democracy": in this second anniversary of Gaddafi and his family members' murders, let us look at the "democracy" the killers promised. Even British Reuter's had to report Oct. 10 that "Libyan gunmen on the government payroll seized the prime minister in his nightshirt on Thursday and held him for several hours, in a new manifestation of the anarchy that has followed the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi." Libya's oil cannot be exported with anarchy reining supreme.

If lashes could be given for every failed opinion of the "human rights" chatterboxes who supported Western interventions in Third World countries, those self-righteous do-gooders should be bleeding to death by now.

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6 p.m., Tues. to Fri.; "The Thorium Future" on Destiny Cable, GNN Channel 8, Skycable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m.; visit: http//www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com; text comments to 0923-4095739)

BSP squanders reserves

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / October 21, 2013 / Daily Tribune

In the midst of the US debt ceiling impasse and the losses it could inflict on the Philippines' GIR (Gross International Reserves) last week, in the report "Top economist chides Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for keeping too much GIR" The Tribune writer cited former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno's criticism of the BSP holding on to the equivalent to a year's imports and four times the internationally required level of foreign currency reserves the majority of which are in US dollars. One devastating cost is a crash of the dollar if and when a US default occurs. A few days later the BSP's Governor Tetangco and, separately, deputy governor Diwa Gunigundo skirted the implications of Diokno's comment on the GIR in the midst of the crisis.

Diokno's comment reminded me of my previous Tribune articles on the issue. One is my Sept.5, 2012 column "RP: Moody's 'walking debt?'" where I stated that Moody's and other rating's agencies' upgrade of the Philippines is just an enticement for the country and its people to take in more debt when the Philippines is awash in reserves with its $ 83-billion GIR — which in my reckoning is three times more than what the country is required to keep to cover three months imports. The interest on this dollar holding is much lower than the interest on the country's foreign debt and we argued that the huge GIR surplus should immediately be used to pay off the country's foreign debt of $63 billion.

Another article I wrote in early 2011 on BSP mismanagement of RP financial resources, I retrieved from the "Asia Finest Discussion Forum" site entitled "RP wasting $ 30-billion fund." It was prefaced by the site, "The Philippine political leadership and its Financial managers especially those in the BSP better flex their political muscle and show some sovereign testicles instead of being beholden to the Foreign Financial controlling interests led by the Dark cabals." That article I wrote focused on the wasted SDA (Special Deposit Account) that is now about P 1.7 trillion despite BSP reducing interest rates paid on it - from four percent in previous years down to today's 1 percent. In the discussion I touched on the GIR and a comment of former Neda chief Romulo Neri:

"… former Neda Chief Romulo Neri was of the opinion that our dollar reserves of $ 65 billion (2011) is substantially above what the IMF (International Monetary Fund)…. Neri …. believe(s) that 'we can, if we wish to, use perfectly legal means to liberate half of the fund ($30 billion) to jump-start a number of badly needed initiatives…" Neri added that these "… funds outsourced to external managers and invested in longer-dated maturity securities, … The BSP's external fund management program started in 1997 (FVR's time), when a portion of the gross international reserves was invested in long-term instruments. The BSP currently has 10 external fund managers including JP Morgan Chase." These external fund managers do not extend this services for free, of course.

Former Budget Secretary Diokno's comment on the wasteful BSP policy of excessive levels of GIR is actually years behind this columnist and others in raising the questions about the management of the GIR; but better late than never. However, Diokno's timing is good. The US dollar's current crisis highlights the issue for all to ponder and to come up with a responsive new policy. Why are we risking the collapse of about half of the $83-billion GIR if and when the US dollar crashes? Shouldn't the country use this amount to pay of the external debt ASAP? Why are the BSP bosses, Tetangco and Gunigundo insisting otherwise? Are "external fund managers" enjoying "financial pork" with local cohorts?

The questions raised on the BSP's policy on the high level of GIR involves up to P4 trillion of the country's funds and reserves. In interest cost alone it involves hundreds of billions. It involves the major drag on the Philippines' financial independence and economic development — the unnecessary foreign debt the country is carrying. It involves the risk of tens of billions of dollars in reserves that could lose half its value in the course of the US financial crisis. Compared to these issues the current and raging "pork barrel" controversy involves a paltry sum of only tens of billions of pesos, why have the media, the "sow-lons," PeNoy and the public devoted two manic months on the pork barrel controversy and almost nil on the GIR waste and other BSP funds issues?

Is there anyone left in this country, in the legislature or media or public not overwrought with the "pork barrel" scandal that can devote time to asking questions and delving into these BSP issues? The largest plunder is being conducted in the government's financial management sector with the "banksters" of Wall Street and the local financial mafia.

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Friday; Destiny Cable, GNN Channel 8, Skycable channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m.; visit: http//www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com; text comments to 0923-4095739)

Aquino-Rychtar-Abaya scheme

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / October 16, 2013 / Daily Tribune

Our commuting public, including this writer, owes Metro Rail Transit (MRT) general manager Al Vitangcol a debt of gratitude. Vitangcol did the study and recommendation that became the basis for the bids and awards committee (BAC) to set the optimum price of a little over $1.8-milion/coach.

Czech company Inekon, which triggered the allegations of $30-million "kickback" demands by certain Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) officials, proposed as far back as 2012 $3.3-million per coach. It is the Czech company that painstakingly networked with relations of the Aquino family, employing Steve Psinakis' nephew Yorgis Psinakis as agent, linking with Ballsy et al through presidential cousin Jorge Aquino-Lichauco and working the DoTC through Rene Limcaoco, brother of Cory Aquino gofer Dodi, among others we name in next columns.

The difference in price of what is now the lowest bid in the MRT3 supply of coaches contract at P1.8 million and below the recommended optimum bid price and the final offer of the Czech company of $3.05 million is between 47 coaches against 25 coaches. It is easy to imagine how much more room and comfort our daily MRT3 commuters including me, and my sons who commute to Makati and to La Salle Taft, will enjoy with 47 more coaches against 25 more.

It is clear now that Czech Ambassador Rychtar created the ruckus to sow confusion aiming to abort the best plans of dedicated DoTC officials like first-time government executive Vitangcol who is being made a villain and a fall guy instead of the ideal public servant that he has tried to be.

Al Vitangcol was recruited by former DoTC Secretary Mar Roxas from the private sector, but Liberal Party honchos higher than Mar Roxas (who could be higher?) had other plans for the DoTC. In came Liberal Party stalwart Joseph Emilio Abaya who's not been shy to tell friends that the DoTC is his stepping stone to the Senate in 2016 and then the presidency beyond 2020, hence he had also brought in cronies from the Philippine Science High School and entrenched vested interests with conflict-of-interest within the DoTC such as Manolo Maralit, Wilson de Vera, Marlo de la Cruz (this links to Korina Sanchez and Mar), Dan Palami and Allan Dilay (now GM of PNR) who are all connected with MRT3 maintenance contractors PH Trams and Global APT; and more on these people next issues.

Other than the P 1.8-million recommendation for the optimum price of new MRT3 coaches, Vitangcol radically improved operations: maintenance fee reduced from P1.4-billion per year to P700 million; Insurance cover from reduced from P200 million per year to P96 million; fare box collection increased from 3 to 4 million per day in 2010 to 6 to 7 million in 2012. Averaging the fare box collection to P6.6-million per day, times 365 days a year the total revenues would be P2.34-billion per annum. Take that and less maintenance and insurance cost the MRT3 would still be left with P 1.58 billion. How can the MRT3 be losing money? The truth is, the MRT3 is profiting handsomely and all is paid to the Equity Rental Payments.

MRT3 general manager Vitangcol has been "requested" by the DoTC secretary to go on "indefinite leave" from his post. While Vitangcol had willingly acceded to one or two previous requests to go on leave to clear the air and pending investigations, we are told by our sources that this time Vitangcol has directed the DoTC request to a lawyer. Apparently, this last request for Vitangcol to go on leave is to ease him out permanently, but that's not going to happen without the DoTC mafia of Abaya being the ones to get the ax from the public. We have been shown the paper trail of the Czech company Inekon, the formal communications and instructions from Psinakis, Limcaoco, through Lichauco, to DoTC officials and the trail leads back to the Aquinos, Inekon, Abaya and cabal.

The DoTC and Inekon are now obfuscating the issue using the Yellow controlled or influenced mainstream media newspapers and broadcasters have either never aired the information they have presented or the interviews they have given, and the two major newspapers have even twisted the information they have provided to implicate the "whistleblower" instead. The Tribune, some Internet bloggers and independent columnists have been the sources' reliable avenues to bring the truth about the DoTC-MRT3 scandal to light. At this point this writer believes the DoTC, Inekon and the Malacañang relations' objective is to create confusion, try to bury Vitangcol into obscurity and attempt to disqualify the winning bidder with the $1.8 billion/coach price to supplant this with Inekon's $3.0 million/coach.

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Friday; Destiny Cable, GNN Channel 8 and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m. "Gaddafi's Struggle: Lessons for R.P."; visit: http//www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com; text comments to 0923-4095739)

The plunder ‘elite’

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 10/14/2013 / Daily Tribune

For three decades now we have heard and read how establishment institutions, from school books to Western media, such as Time/CNN, to local mainstream and the addled social media, have portrayed how "plundering" Ferdinand Marcos was. But the desire of BS Aquino, expressed through Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, to expand presidential discretion over, for instance, the disposition of government's share of revenues from the Malampaya natural gas facility reveals just who has the real plundering mindset. And it's none other than the jaundiced, Yellow Edsa I power elite led by the likes of the Aquino family and cronies such as Belmonte.

Marcos' earmarking of the Malampaya Fund to energy-related projects at the project's inception defined a clear sense of priority, propriety and foresight. It indicated the clear understanding of the Philippines' need for continued dedication to indigenous energy source development and protecting the revenues from the Malampaya project from diversion to anything other than that goal. Decades after Marcos set up the energy development programs to create a self-sufficient energy base for the country, we have been witness to a progressive dismantling of that energy self-sufficiency program and, now, the imminent threat of dissipating one of the last sources of funds dedicated to it.

Is the idea of dissipating the Malampaya Fund really BS Aquino's or is it simply Belmonte manipulating his little "tyke" from the Boston years of Ninoy Aquino's exile? The current House Speaker is seen as the epitome of the greed that marks the Yellow decades of governance in this country. In fact, if the public were to look for the root of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) schemes, it should call for the investigation of Belmonte and his coterie known as "the Quezon City mafia" that includes Executive Secretary Jojo Ochoa and a one-time treasury chief who is a master in packaging financial instruments to plunder government coffers. Not surprisingly, Belmonte, in the name of BS Aquino, has now set his sights on frittering away the Malampaya Fund to "alleviate poverty and job creation."

Just think about it: BS Aquino and his top House henchman have passed a national budget of over P2 trillion every year. They have allocated over P100 billion for the anti-poverty conditional cash transfer (CCT) program the past years and over P48 billion for 2014. Yet one cannot see where the poverty and unemployment alleviation goes. It's so bad that even BS Aquino and Yellow crony Walden Bello had to admit that recently in the news article, "Global poverty down, Philippine poverty remains high," given the National Statistics Coordination Board data that 27.9 percent live below the poverty line. Worse, National Economic Development Authority chief Arsenio Balisacan, in "Unemployment rate inches up to 7.3 percent in July 2013," even had to admit that the "September 2013 underemployment rate rose to 22.7 percent — the highest since July 2006."

So why is Belmonte coming up with this scheme to divert the roughly P150-billion Malampaya Fund? With three years left of the BS Aquino administration, this gang is showing its intent on cleaning out every fund it can lay its hands on, no matter the scandal that may ensue. This proposal for opening the use of the Malampaya Fund to other than energy-related purposes will ensure its travel down the long drains of official greed and corruption.

While we are wary of any "ouster" moves against a government or president without a prepared alternative, I'm afraid we have to join the call as nothing may be left of the government treasury after BS Aquino and his Yellow cronies are through with it.

Although weakened by the sinking US dollar, the Yellow ruling class, being a collaboration of the US neocolonial overlords and their traditional financial-economic-political oligarchy, prevails because of divisiveness built into Philippine society — from obscurantist religious sects, a military indoctrinated against genuine nationalism, to the addled middle class and "social media," etc.

Impoverished Filipinos now see through the Yellow Edsa I "democracy" and "growth" frauds. Hope lies in the rise of reformist young officers, the militant nationalists, principled "rejectionists" of the Left, and the latent Edsa III forces (if revived in the face of oppression), among other reform movements.

But for genuine social reformers to win, weaving a thread of unity across the progressive nationalist elements is a precondition. Only a meeting of minds of these anti-Yellow forces will suffice.

The time to stop and end the plundering elite around BS Aquino and the Yellows is now. The opportunity to coalesce and win for genuine change is approaching with the anti-presidential pork crusade rising and the US continuing its downward spiral into social and political chaos that not even the resolution of its "shutdown" and its "debt ceiling" crises will stop.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on "Gaddafi's struggle: Lessons for RP"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)

Boomerang

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 10/7/2013 / Daily Tribune


Ireceived this from a source monitoring the anti-pork activities on the Web: "Peachy Bretaña is one of the organizers of the first Luneta anti-pork rally and the just concluded Ayala rally. The following post on her Facebook timeline is interpreted by many as an admission of her yellow agenda:

"It is with utmost sadness that I withdrew my video message for the MPM@Ayala just now, being in Singapore for a scheduled trip since June. I can't personally gauge it and reports have reached me that there are strong groups trying to hijack the messaging at the Ayala rally and turning it into an oust P-Noy messaging. 'This is not the intent.' Please, to these groups and you know who you are, 'Manggagamit lang din kayo.' You are no different from the congressmen and senators who have taken advantage of us all these years. 'Mahiya sana kayo sa ginagawa ninyo.'"

Tracing the Million People March (MPM) activities, we noted that Bretaña, after some Internet debate with other so-called "leaders," such as Inday Varona of ABS-CBN, missed the Sept. 21 activity at the Edsa Shrine (led by another PR operator Junep Ocampo) where anti-government protest placards were supposedly banned. Actually, from the very beginning, Bretaña and her ilk not only banned the "oust" message but all reference to BS Aquino's "porks."

Obviously, Bretaña was referring to the groups associated with Bayan Muna when she decried them as "trying to hijack the messaging at the Ayala rally."
I congratulated these militant groups even at the first Luneta rally for staging their own pocket rallies on the anti-pork issue, thereby unmasking the likes of Bretaña, whom I have long believed to be Malacañang operators using "pork" to divert from the Ballsy Aquino-Eldon Cruz Metro Rail Transit scandal.

These "militant" groups deserve thanks and kudos for being the only ones serious enough to be organized on the ground and deliberate in their strategy of "boomeranging" Malacañang's "anti-pork" diversionary attack on the legislative opposition, always bringing the rallies to Malacañang's doorstep at Mendiola.

While these militant groups worked on the ground, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada set the tone for the "boomerang" in his Sept. 24 privileged speech by exposing the gamut of pork of this administration and its party mates. Then, former Sen. Joker Arroyo exploded an even bigger bomb with his exposé of the Aquino-Abad Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) of P72 billion worth of pork.

On the Internet, the campaign to "boomerang" the anti-pork crusade was most effectively conducted by the group, Tanggulang Demokrasya (Tandem). Its members were among the first to spot the similarities between Bretaña's anti-pork posters for the first Luneta MPM drumbeating and those of BS Aquino's 2010 presidential campaign.

Later, Bretaña was compelled to admit that she indeed lifted the design from BS Aquino's 2010 posters. Moreover, she, too, has admitted to being a publicist or PR person for an international agency, a fact that took time to be discovered. But isn't it ironic that while she accuses others to be "users" ("manggagamit"), she herself spurs some rallies then disappears to foreign lairs?

When we discovered the MPM posters as a facsimile of BS Aquino's 2010 run, it became very clear what Malacañang's intention was on the supposed anti-pork campaign. I recall emailing to Tandem that we must begin figuring out some moves to "jujitsu" Malacañang's plot and turn it against the Palace. Little did I know then that the efforts of various groups to expand the search for truth would trip

Malacañang's plans completely, now having BS Aquino, Butch Abad, and all their partisans tightly by their necks with a "poor Nelson" wrestling hold. On the other hand, because Bretaña and company kept insisting on a no-Aquino-criticisms-allowed policy, their rallies just kept dwindling.

Malacañang had a complete PR plan laid out — starting with the anti-pork campaign then culminating in the musical advocacy we now see on the Internet. The "Kayanihan" song, penned by Ryan Cayabyab (the composer of choice of the Yellows), suddenly made the rounds on the Internet just before the MPM@Ayala, with a music video akin to "Ako'y Ninoy" and "Ako Mismo" targeting the youth with young faces interwoven with known images.

But PR or propaganda has its limits. As we can see the whole truth that is coming out, BS Aquino and his regime, much like the previous Arroyo government, are as synonymous to corrupted human nature at its core, where everyone and everything can be bought and sold, and where bribery rules the day.

Now, as for the Yellow taboo of ousting PeNoy, that actually is already in the minds of an unprecedented number of people I come in contact with — from FX and taxi drivers, to media camera crew, office staff, even priests and nuns, as well as radio anchors and listeners, ad nausea.

But, as we've had so many ousters before where we were merely thrown from the frying pan to the fire and then to purgatory, the next one for us might just be hell — unless we are prepared with a collective coalition that has a vision inspiring enough to overcome the fears of major power factions of society and capable enough to contain the financial mafia. Only the ripening crisis will reveal this to the nation; but now the forces have begun to coalesce.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on "Thorium nuclear power"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)

It's still a class war

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 10/2/2013 / Daily Tribune

If what we are witnessing is just a negative media campaign against Jinggoy Estrada, then we might consider it in a more limited light. But given that fresh from this pounding comes another political assault, this time using one of the oldest charges of "election overspending" to oust another Estrada from elected office — who, by the way, heads a province with the largest voting population in the country — and that these are happening amid rumors (and texts) of an impending disqualification of President-Mayor Joseph Estrada from the City of Manila based on the "whereas" clauses of his political pardon, it's clear that the old war of the elite against the masa's Erap is raging again.

What has triggered this renewed war against Estrada and his family? The anti-pork crusade is clearly not just an anti-pork campaign as the media focus is not on all porkers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in various pork orgies. The Angaras and Cayetanos are prominent among those who have huge pork barrel allocations but very little attention is paid to them by mainstream media. It took Jinggoy to expose the Liberal Party (LP)'s other major porkers (such as Mandaluyong's Boyet Gonzales) before Frank Drilon attracted attention to himself by becoming the Senate President — among the noisiest during the impeachment of Renato Corona — who now has brought upon himself the onus of the impeachment-linked P100-million bribe.

The speculation going around among analysts and pundits regarding this targeted crucifixion of the Estradas is one of two — first, the spectacular electoral victory of Mayor Estrada against incumbent and administration- (as well as automated machine-) backed Alfredo Lim, allowing him to overcome the pessimism over his capacity to introduce improvement in Manila; and second, the electoral victory of ER Ejercito in Laguna, which planted a flag in the province with the largest voting base to become a solid jumping board for any future plans the Estradas may have. Did they fear Erap running for Malacañang again, with the memory of US President Ronald Reagan winning his second term at 73?

There is no consensus that Mayor Estrada is of a mind to run again in any presidential contests. Estrada himself has said that younger leaders should take over.

It is well known that Jinggoy is being groomed only for the second top post. The other speculation is that the vilification campaign against the Estradas is really the first stage of the campaign against Vice President Jejomar Binay.

It is no secret that Binay is the top bet for 2016 and behind him are the Estradas who can command at least 30 percent of the nation's votes — that is, if the 2010 elections are to be believed. LP strategists are surely up to an early start to erode that base expected to be cast for Binay by the Estrada family.

Behind the LP is an array of supporters from the ruling class that can trust only one of its own, i.e. Mar Roxas. While Binay has played his cards very well, keeping the Yellows at arm's length, the ruling class is not only uncomfortable but is very uncompromising over absolute control of the presidency, especially at this critical juncture where Western powers are gearing for a comeback in the world stage but getting beaten along the way. All these forces need total control in the next administration to put in place every detail for the next major global scenario.

The rabid anti-Estrada tier in the upper crust of Philippine society is being made to focus on so-called corruption but only on a limited in scope. They know that the entire system is corrupt from the top feeders in the food hierarchy down to their prey. International and local bankers feed on the usurious system of unnecessary foreign and local debt imposed on the nation; then the top 50 corporations feed on the population through price gouging in service utilities; and only then do the politicians and bureaucrats provide the legislation and administration for these top feeders through privatization laws, financial usury rules, the flawed electoral system, the dispensing of pork barrel, etc.

Foreign and local elite corruption over the centuries is untouchable so much so that political and bureaucratic corruption is made endemic by the culture of impunity promoted by the ruling class for its "controlled" politicians and bureaucrats; this, as uncontrollable political and bureaucratic elements are selectively persecuted as the situations demand.

Especially dangerous to the corrupt ruling class is competitive or rival leadership that can rouse the masses into consciousness and consolidation, which Erap Estrada can still singularly achieve when he so decides.

In the 2010 presidential elections where the ruling class' candidate had the advantage of the "funereal sympathy wave," the masa, who should have been solidly tapped for the Estrada campaign, were unfortunately drawn in. Even as his campaigners debated the use of the "final solution" — that of sending out the "class war" message — Erap never wanted it framed that way, given his appreciation of Cory Aquino's "apology." But that, in reality, is still the main issue: The war the ruling class is waging against the people (including the middle class), impoverishing everyone below the "upper crust."

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on "Thorium nuclear power"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)

The forest's afire, stupid!

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 9/30/2013 / Daily Tribune

There is a forest fire but social media trolls were chopping away at one tree. That was the picture in a newspaper reporting some social media tweets day after Jinggoy Estrada's privileged speech last week. Jinggoy didn't dwell on the charges against him, that's for the courts now and he had already said so in his speech.

Jinggoy's offensive was an extensive exposé of systemic corruption of the Yellows' system. The Yellows don't want that. Jinggoy dwelt on the comprehensive picture, exposing presidential use of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and other levers to bribe politicize and distort legislation, fiscal conduct and justice, the perfidy of Commission on Audit (CoA) with its BS Aquino appointees, etc. Jinggoy didn't start the fire, it raged angrily even before he got there.

The hostile tweets on Jinggoy reflected, also from the usual civil society-yellow types, foaming-in-the-mouth anti-Estradas neurosis from the Edsa II days. They afflicted fume at a personality but are blinded to the broader systemic crisis. Rabid "evil society" types refuse to see the CoA turned from fiscal watchdog into attack dog against Liberal Party rivals, or the channeling of the PDAF for Malacañang's bribery, or the LP "sow-lons'" pork orgies from the diarist whose fabricated entries "convicted" Erap in 2001, to political-porker-with-wings (butterflies are passé) Drilon and P 6-million burger gorger look alike's pork, or the P70-billion unaudited PDAF likely going to other LP "sow-lons."

The newspaper that front-paged the anti-Jinggoy tweets also headlined Jinggoy's exposé comprehensively. But focusing attention on the anti-Jinggoy tweets already tilts some readers' perception is led to various stages of cognitive dysfunction. Cognitive dysfunction is the inability to think clearly, organize thoughts, analyze that obsessive hate can cause. It's the same as some of those who have absorbed the hate Marcos psychosis. This is the mass mania cultivated by the Yellow machine in the mainstream media over the past 25 years which is still effective in deflecting any potential frustration and rage away from the present Yellow power wielders.

The pork barrel controversy has so overtaken the national psyche that the nation, and not accidentally, has lost the balanced and comprehensive perspective required to solve the national crisis. One cannot douse the forest fire by chopping down or spraying water on just one tree. The individual trees are singed or are burning because the forest was ablaze long before the conflagration exploded with Janet Lim Napoles today.

Jinggoy didn't start the fire. Ah, yes, that was in 1989 when under Cory Aquino's watch the PDAF formally made its way into the General Appropriations Act. Point this out to anyone of the tweeting Yellows and they'll pull your hair out.

This space has long fought for the causes that could restore sanity and balance to the politics of this country. It is among the first to expose the insanity of burning down the house to drive out from power the imagined "rat" from Malacañang in 2001. Edsa II, of course, eventually led to the whole house being taken over by the biggest rats. We exposed the fraudulence of the digital elections based on countless violations of security safeguards provided by law. We were among the first to raise the "pork" issue but saw how the Yellows redirected it as a political ploy to divert from an Aquino sibling's shenanigans in the Metro Rail Transit deals and eventually from Malacañang's own pork-related corruption.

For Oct. 4, "patsies" of the financial and economic interests that have maneuvered all "people power" exercises since Edsa I (only too happy to redirect the rage against them to the "sow-lons") have organized a "Million Man March" again but at the Ayala-Paseo junction. It will be a Friday afternoon affair, easy for the social media yuppies to congregate at before partying in the evening. The choice of place and time was made because the last Sept. 21 "Million Man" activity flopped after the Sept. 11 Edsa Shrine gathering had more cops than rallyists because of their insistence not to link the issue to BS Aquino's pork.

Tsk, tsk. That's just so typical of the Yellows.

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6pm, Tues. to Fri.; Destiny Cable, GNN Channel 8, Sat. 8pm and Sun 8 a.m. "Thorium nuclear power"; visit: http//www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com; text comments to 0923-4095739)

Officer salutes MNLF

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 90/25/2013 / Daily Tribune

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in early September 2013 officially informed the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that the Philippine government had terminated the tripartite review of the full implementation of the parties' 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA). Even as Absalom Cerveza, a member of the MNLF peace panel, relayed his group's desire for the full implementation of the 1996 peace accord, the stand of the Philippine government was already "irreversible." And that, says former Tawi-Tawi Gov. Al Tillah, was what "broke the camel's back."

Since the OIC still recognizes the leadership of Nur Misuari over the MNLF as representative of the so-called Bangsamoro in the Philippines, the MNLF is thus continuing its "decolonization" of Mindanao to this day.

BS Aquino clearly underestimated the implication of his letter terminating the 1996 FPA that led to the recent MNLF offensive. He also clearly didn't fathom that added threats would only spur warrior Tausugs to further resistance. As a Tausug saying cited by Al Tillah goes, "In a fight it's better to see the white of one's bones than the white of the sole of one's feet."

Thus, from a renowned retired Philippine Air Force Gen. Nick Sotelo comes this letter dated Sept. 22, 2013 saluting the 200 MNLF fighters, the vital parts of which we quote: "I pray that the debacle in Zamboanga City in the south will soon be over … While I do not wish death upon them, the measly band of 200 MNLF fighters, I would say, have balls of steel since they know that they will be martyred when going into the hornet's nest.

"Our government seems to have sidelined the importance of their group in the peace agreements … Let's not forget that even just having the capability to sting like a small bee, they chose to, with about the same number of fighters, challenge Malaysia on the issue of Sabah … (Now) we go back to poverty, the root of most, if not all, rebellion in the Philippines. We go back to our masters of the last 30 years who have created a very conducive climate for such activities. I am sure, without poverty, nobody in their right mind would join the communist NPA (New People's Army), the MNLF, the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front) … We go back to recent revelations that our elected and appointed officials are, in fact, part of the biggest syndicate of them all…
"Now, we have a political leadership that is trying its best to maintain the 'daang matuwid' or the straight path. But how straight is it, really? Does this path also apply for his circle of friends and party mates? … We will see. And when we do see, we will judge how real their quest for a better Philippines really is. Let us all pray that our country starts bettering itself, like a body fighting off an infection. I am sure we are not a hopeless or terminal case. There are still a lot of men and women in our nation who are willing and able to make the sacrifice of doing things the right way … Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!"

We say "Mabuhay" as well to Gen. Sotelo, whom we remember from the Edsa I days when he flew his helicopters in favor of change.

Would it be correct for me to read his saying, "We go back to our masters of the last 30 years who have created a very conducive climate for such (rebellious?) activities" as an indictment of the succession of Edsa I political leaderships (or the "Yellows" as many call them) and their failure? If so, this is significant as it represents a rethinking of our nation's view of the legacy of Edsa I that's about 30 years now — a legacy leaving the Philippines worse off than ever before 1986.

Gen. Sotelo's zeroing in on "poverty" as the unresolved root of rebellion and a legacy of the past 30 years is absolutely on target, but naming the "elected and appointed officials" of government as the "biggest syndicate of all," I would say, is short of the mark.

Even tripling the corruption of these "elected and appointed officials" would not reach half of the plunder of the foreign, traditional and corporate oligarchy who are the real abettors of the country's farcical elections and economy through funding all sides and paying off politicians to legalize the immoral — from the privatization of public utilities and services to their monopoly of mineral projects, such as Malampaya, the gold mines, ad nausea.

The oligarchy remits trillions abroad or just earns interest from the people in the P1.8-trillion Special Deposit Account with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Just a fraction of that already makes them rich beyond imagination; yet they deny the nation it's just share of the wealth from its labors and its territory's riches.

Like all of our gallant soldiers, Gen. Sotelo has served and sacrificed for the nation — but most have only protected this present system and not the people. When patriots like him start joining the broader struggle against the entire "system" and allow the genuine transfer of power to policies and programs that truly represent "the greater good for the greatest number of people," then we shall have begun changing this country.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on "Kudos MWSS: Water rates reduced"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)

Move UN out of US

Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III/ The Daily Tribune / 09-23-2013 MON

The Latin American community of nations was up in arms against the US last week. Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro was denied permission to fly through US air space en route to China. At the same time an official Venezuelan delegation to a United Nations (UN) conference was being given by the US a very difficult time obtaining visas, jeopardizing the country's participation in an important international discussion.

Just days prior to those incidents, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff had already cancelled a scheduled meeting in the US with President Barack Obama in protest of the latter's National Security Agency (NSA) spying on the Venezuelan president's communications.

A month earlier in August, the plane of Bolivia's President Evo Morales, which was traveling home from Russia, became grounded in Austria after Spain, Portugal, and Italy abruptly blocked their airspace to it--a move that was later learned to have been made upon the request of the US, which suspected the presence of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden on board.

Never mind if the hostile act of these countries endangered the lives of the Bolivian president and the other passengers on board. It was done all at the behest of the US, violating international law.

This incident, coupled with the latest US acts against Venezuela's Maduro, has prompted Morales to prepare a lawsuit against the US government for "crimes against humanity."

The Bolivian president now also proposes that the 33 members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) withdraw their ambassadors to send a message that "The US cannot be allowed to continue with its policy of intimidation and blockading presidential flights."

These problems, with the increasingly overbearing US attitude toward all countries, is highlighted by revelations of the NSA's spying on the UN itself and all significant member-countries, leading to a UN warning to the US government. But why stop at just issuing a warning to the UN host country that is so incorrigibly abusive of the UN and its member-states? Why not move the UN out of the US once and for all to a country that is genuinely neutral and away from the snooping and abuses of the latter?

There are about a dozen countries that are internationally recognized as neutral: Austria, Costa Rica, Finland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Malta, Panama, San Marino, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Geneva, Switzerland is the site of the headquarters of many international as well as UN family organizations, such as the International Red Cross and the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, among many others. But smaller countries that are entirely innocuous may be even better choices, such as the small republics of Malta or San Marino, which could never be suspected of having the capacity to spy or intimidate other countries; as they are expected to be the perfect host for the international community's center for dialogue and cooperation.

The idea of moving the UN headquarters out of New York is not a new one. Iran's leaders have raised this in the past, stressing that the US "has proved that it does not deserve to host the United Nations member states… but seeing as the articles of association of the UN state that the United Nations' permanent headquarters is located in New York, transfer of the headquarters requires rectification of the said articles of association."

Although some other suggested sites that are heavily tainted with anti-US sentiments, such as Darfur and Zimbabwe, don't seem appropriate, those two small republics (Malta and San Marino) seem most "neutral" among the neutrals.

There are many other advantages to moving the UN's headquarters out of the US. One of these is reducing the cost of maintenance and operation as New York is one of the most expensive cities in the world; same with saving $2 billion required for any renovation the UN's aging 60-year-old buildings and the replacement of asbestos components that proliferate in them. More importantly, this will end the perennial high handed bellyaching of the US over its comparatively higher share in funding the UN, said to constitute 22 percent and often made a basis by the US to pressure and manipulate various UN agencies to unfairly bend policies toward US interests. It's about time the five permanent and 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council augment their contributions.

A genuinely neutral location for the UN will really enhance the independence of the premier international forum for resolving the gravest issues of our world today; boost humanity's prospects for permanent peace and prosperity for mankind's children and grandchildren; and avoiding the dreaded final world war that will permanently poison the future of Earth.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on "Kudos MWSS: Water rates reduced"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 09234095739)

Laying the premise

Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-18-2013 WED

The Yellow faction of the ruling class is laying the premise for the conviction by publicity of some of the leading lights of the political opposition. Consider these headlines: "3 senators amassed P581M in kickbacks" and "Exclusive: Napoles partied, joined Estrada family affairs," the latter of which unjustifiably drags the entire family into the picture.

The oligarchy's controlled mainstream and online media--from the Oink-quirer to Rap-purge--are blatantly sidestepping the main stories of the preeminent role of administration porkers (e.g., the Angaras and the Abads) in the entire pork system. While an administration ally like Ruffy Biazon has been included in the plunder case with Janet Lim-Napoles, the consensus is that such a move is mere tokenism.

Moreover, even if it has been repeatedly claimed that other administration allies will eventually be charged, the administration's operators are merely hoping that time and other issues will overtake the public's interest, allowing the Palace's protected species an easier exit.

This administration's complicity in the pork scams is as rooted to the system that has prevailed since 1986. As the inception of the pork barrel was made possible by the mother of the Yellow movement, Cory Aquino, how can we expect the son to be any different?

Former Senator and Marcos Press secretary Kit Tatad, who has reinforced his statesman stature several times over since retiring from elective politics, has written an exposé that has gone viral on the Internet of BS Aquino's day-long session with Napoles in Malacañang before the latter "surrendered."

Tatad exposed the secret August 28 closeting of Napoles with Lacierda and company in Malacañang before her publicized surrender, with BS Aquino joining them intermittently while attending to various events within the Palace grounds. Malacañang tries to belie the exposé by showing BS Aquino's engagement on that day, yet none of his scheduled activities negate Tatad's revelation about the closeting of Napoles in Malacañang.

But even without it, the general public had already believed that the suspicious behaviors of BS Aquino, Malacañang officials, and Cabinet members (e.g., calling Napoles "Ma'am," BS Aquino's deference to her, etc.) indicated long ties between the administration and Napoles.

Continuing with the Yellows' grand zarzuela, the other premise being laid that's farthest from the truth is that the "system" will now be cleansed with these plunder charges.

Truth is, the system will not change because the most fundamental cause of the corruption in our society persists and will become even stronger. The Tribune report of Charlie Manalo at the start of the week is more than enough proof: "'Epira flaws more costly than pork barrel scam – lawmaker'… The chairman of the House committee on energy wants a thorough review of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira), saying Filipinos may be losing more in high power rates compared to the alleged irregularities in the pork barrel funds involving businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles." Kudos to Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali for raising this issue and Manalo for reporting it.

Manalo's report points to one of the root causes of the disproportionate concentration of wealth in our society and how these powerful economic interests play the most dominant role in a "system" that will continue to corrupt politicians of all stripes through other means than pork to get the legislation they want in order to feed their greedy schemes.

These economic powers who control mainstream media and finance much of the organized PR within social media are also directing the selective campaign on pork and will likely call off their attack dogs only when the right time comes--which is just before they completely suck in the administration "sow-lons."

Rep. Umali will, thus, have to watch out from hereon as he will be a target of these oligarchs, given his comment on the public's losses from Epira dwarfing the cost of legislative pork.

On the international front, the premise being laid by Western media on Syria's chemical weapons use is that the evidence from the United Nations investigation points to Bashar al-Assad's government--that is, that the chemical canisters bearing Cyrillic (Russian) markings point to chemical weapons supplied to the Syrian government during the Soviet era; that the quantities were huge (350 liters) and fired by rockets, etc.

The problem is Western media had already been projecting these conclusions long before the UN investigators had submitted their official findings and before the voluminous report can even be read through by the UN Security Council.

As always, the game is propaganda--setting the premise even before audiences can get the facts straight. Citizens of the world, beware.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 09234095739)

People's triumphs

Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-16-2013 MON

The real anti-pork movement, which is shouting out loud for the biggest pork and porker to be eliminated, runs counter to the Yellows' efforts at limiting the scope of this crusade by leaving out BS Aquino and his presidential pork in all discussions.

The meager September 11 Edsa Sila (since I don't believe in them) "prayer rally" at the Edsa Shrine, led by another public relations man and highlighted by the speech of one of the oligarchy's icons, Solita Monsod, is another Yellow anti-pork activity where a ban on placards speaking against presidential pork and BS Aquino was imposed. The Philippine Daily Oink-quirer, in obvious support of it, even headlined, "Edsa Tayo: Leaner, meaner crowd but with more passion," when the truth is that the event was absolutely pathetic.

In contrast, it was the Friday the 13th anti-pork rally at the Luneta that was more authentic--highlighted by really outspoken and straightforward anti-pork crusaders who openly lambasted the biggest pork and porker, BS Aquino. I wanted to attend but had my GNN show taping on the Mindanao conflagration with Al Tillah (by phone patch from Mindanao), Bono Adaza, and Erik San Juan.

I watched the rally on the Internet and heard Party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares castigate BS Aquino for not rejecting pork even as VP Jojo Binay had already. Even though the Oink-quirer whittled the number of participants by half with the headline, "About 3,500 call for pork abolition in Luneta," the news still put the Yellows' Wednesday Edsa rally to shame.

The people's anti-pork campaign has succeeded in surmounting the formidable efforts at redirecting the campaign against BS Aquino and his cohorts despite the Yellows' massive media control. Though it is already a victory, it is only half the fight. Other administration and Yellow stooges in both houses of Congress, such as Angara, Drilon, Mar Roxas, the Abad husband-and-wife team (exemplars of fine Jesuit moral education) et al.--all much bigger porkers--are being spared the Commission on Audit hatchet job.

As such, the struggle to keep the anti-pork, anti-corruption crusade along the right path will continue well into the September 21 anti-pork rally in order for the people to discern the real from the fake.

On the global plane, the peoples-of-the-world won one round against the US and Western ruling classes in stopping their attack on Syria. We laud the efforts of Russia, through the brilliant diplomatic stratagem of President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov; the steadfastness of the Syrian Army; the unity of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations in and outside of the UN Security Council; and most of all, the Internet's alternative and social media, as well as the hundreds of thousands of anti-war marchers in the US and all over the world for this victory of peace over war.

Truth is the greatest weapon for the anti-war movement; and the ultimate truth is US capitalist-warmongers are at the core of such warmongering.

The truth in Syria is that the West and its Saudi-Qatari-Israeli partners have been on a campaign of destabilization in Syria from the onset of the civil war. The West had armed and infiltrated the internal "color" or "season" revolution (a la the "Arab Spring") in Syria, funding rallies and fielding armed agents provocateurs shooting at Syrian Army soldiers during mass demonstrations.

Based on United Nations data, of the 110,000 casualties of the Syrian civil war today, half are government troops or militia while only 30 percent are anti-Assad rebel-terrorists who are mostly male adult civilians. Eighty percent of refugees, meanwhile, are women and children, suggesting an organized exodus of families where males stay behind to wage the civil war.

Western propaganda, which some of the local Catholic priests have swallowed, is that Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator and the mastermind of the chemical gas attack that is giving Obama the reason to bomb Syria (the way the US did in Libya and killed more than Gaddafi could ever kill by putting terrorists in charge).

The fact is Syrian Christians, Alawites, Shiites, and even Sunnis who refuse the Western-backed rebels' atrocities are joining Assad's army against these rebel-terrorists and the foreign fighters sent in and armed by the US gang, who are, in fact, allied with the al-Qaeda and al-Nusra terror fronts.

Stopping the wars in the Middle East will end all wars under the ambit of Western imperialism. Without the total control of MidEast oil, the US cannot hope to succeed in its encirclement of Russia and, eventually, China.

There can and will be a 21st Century of universal peace when the world is finally rid of the idea of a lone "superpower" acting unilaterally as the global Wyatt Earp.

BRICS is the building block of global peace and prosperity on the principles of multipolarity, non-interference in nations' internal affairs, and their economic sovereignty (as embodied by a BRICS bank capitalized at $100 billion to counterbalance the International Monetary Fund's imposition of "privatization" economics).

It is therefore heartening to watch these victories. Corruption and war benefit only the ruling classes of each society, where ordinary people are always the main victims.

The progressive elimination of corruption and war thus becomes a triumph of the people.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on "Martial Law: Historical review"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 09234095739)

9/11, WTC 7 revelations

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 9/11/2013 / Daily Tribune

Twelve years ago today, I was lying on my bed, sick and woozy, as I turned to cable TV, switching from channel to channel. Then the images suddenly froze on the scene of the Twin Towers in plumes of smoke, burning. Replays of the two planes crashing into the tall structures soon followed.

I stopped at one particular channel, CNN, as I was mesmerized by the clips for long, long minutes before I could think of the next thing, which was to rush to the Internet to get the reaction of my geopolitical "guru" at that time, Lyndon LaRouche, a legendary prophetic political-economic American philosopher and leader of the LaRouche Movement, whose analysis then perplexed me.

LaRouche believed that the complexity, not to mention extensive intelligence and resources, required for the World Trade Center (WTC) terror attacks could only have meant that states (governments) were behind it.

And if I recall correctly, despite the many long years since that initial moment of reading his commentary, LaRouche had already identified elements from within the US government or the Israeli Mossad as among the main suspects.

At that time, I couldn't even comprehend the meaning of it. How could the US cause the death of its own citizens? Why would Bush Jr., who had just become President, allow that? Why would Dick Cheney, his Vice President, similarly allow it? Does the Mossad have that capability?
I have to admit I was still skeptical of LaRouche's analysis then even though I was already a follower, but as I learned in the months after the 9/11 incident the many contrived aspects of the said terror attacks, I became convinced.

In the years that followed, thousands of US citizens, scientists, engineers, architects and families of victims who died in the Twin Towers have become convinced that the "terror attacks," including the buildings' collapse, were an "inside job." The evidence just kept pouring in as the worldwide movement demanding the reopening of the investigation into the 9/11 incident has grown.

This year, the movement has launched Rethink9/11.org to focus on WTC Building 7.
If the reader is still skeptical about 9/11 being an inside job, it would take all the columns of the next two weeks if I were to try to explain it here. I would therefore suggest visiting Rethink9/11.org to follow the hundreds upon hundreds of investigations conducted by competent civilian experts of different nationalities.

These individuals were all free to study with objectivity, unlike the investigations conducted by two US agencies, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), which reported conclusions that the late American National Science Medal winner, scientist Lynn Margulis (former wife of late physicist Carl Sagan), severely criticized.

We must first bring to the reader's attention WTC Building 7 because it was a 49-story structure one football field away from WTC 1 and 2, and with Buildings 5 and 6 sandwiched between them. Yet it burned and collapsed on its footprint at the speed of gravity, without any plane crashing into it.

Then, the government investigation claimed "office fire" melted and collapsed the building, a conclusion not supported by the history of burning buildings and by thousands of experts. And worse, some 185,101 tons of structural steel from Buildings 7, 1, and 2 were scrapped without being examined and shipped to China and India, with other debris sent to recycling yards in New Jersey.

Margulis thus said of the FEMA and NIST probes: "You can't do science when you are deprived of the evidence, and when your hypothesis is the least valid, instead of the most likely … The most likely hypothesis, in the case of Building 7, wasn't even mentioned. This is not science. So the claim is that it's something else? It's trying to prove preconceived ideas."

Indeed, the WTC official investigation was meant to be a cover-up. But evidence citizens innocently picked up during and after the buildings' collapse soon mounted, and ran the gamut from pictures taken from Ground Zero, to firemen's testimonies of explosions, as well as comparative videos of explosions, melting steel, plumes of dust that only explosions can create, spherical molten iron balls, steel beams cut clean, chemical nano-thermite, etc.

Why should anyone in the Philippines care about the truth in the so-called 9/11 terror attacks? Don't we have enough issues, i.e. pork barrel, Edsa Tayo (a.k.a. Edsa "Sila" of the oligarchy's patsies whom I reject), the Moro National Liberation Front's Zamboanga City attack (thanks to Aquino, Deles and Leonen's brilliant "a-peace-ment" and Edsa II's sabotage of Erap's pacification), bedeviling us?

Everyone should care because 9/11 reveals how power cabals that control money, politics and mainstream media can keep vital facts — such as WTC 7 — out of everyone's awareness and, in the process, murder thousands of innocents by creating decades-long "wars on terror" for profit.

Every Filipino should care because, in the Philippines, this cabal and its local counterparts have kept 100 million Filipinos perpetually addled in a state of perpetual poverty — and they're not about to stop anytime soon.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on "The MNLF rebellion redux"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)

MRT ghost resurrects

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 9/9/2013 / Daily Tribune

The public relations operators of this administration probably thought the extortion scandal involving the First Family was finally buried when they put up that act of publicly shaming and "firing" a high-level official of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) system. They were, after all, busy burying every other vital issue under the continuing avalanche of the Janet Lim-Napoles caper, as well as the pocket rallies against it.

But truth will always out as the saying goes and the truth about the MRT extort try is not about to stay buried for too long.

The high officials they suspended (or sidelined — nobody really knows what action was taken) then put under investigation have been quietly reinstated, as reported by one veteran media man, Deo Macalma of Pilipino Star Ngayon.

MRT general manager Al Vitangcol, for instance, surprised the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) rank-and-file when he reappeared and assumed his old post. Vitangcol was put in the freezer after being named by Czech Ambassador Josef Rychtar as among those involved in the $30-million kickback try for the purchase of new coaches for the MRT.

The explosive report that was originally aired on radio station dzRH two months ago that smashed the lily-white image of BS Aquino, sister Ballsy and husband Eldon was primarily due to insinuations attributed to the Czech envoy, which were not denied until weeks into the scandal.

Eventually, BS Aquino first cousin Jorge Aquino-Lichauco was revealed to be brokering the deal for Inekon, the Czech company. It's all in the family as they say, with an in-law of a close Aquino Big Business ally also acting on Inekon's behalf.

In addition, that controversy (had it been covered properly) would have seriously marred Mar Roxas as it happened under his watch as DoTC secretary. Mar must therefore be feeling a sense of relief over the Napoles scandal as he is spared continuing bad publicity over the MRT case — at least for now.

But before we get too far into the other aspects of the story, it must be recalled that since Vitangcol was the only name mentioned by the Czech ambassador, even when, in truth, three other officials were supposed to be in on the deal, too, it would appear that he was made the sacrificial lamb, with reports, as late as Sept. 2, still depicting him as having gone "on leave" while under investigation.

Alas, Macalma's update on Vitangcol's reentry leaves very serious implications for those who have tried to make him a scapegoat. It implies that the guy is actually untouchable and only one thing could make him so — his knowledge of who the real "brains" behind the MRT extort try are.
Vitangcol may have leveraged this knowledge to get back to his post while DoTC chief Emilio Abaya hopes and prays that the controlled newspapers' front pages and broadcast media headlines will still be so preoccupied with Napoles, the anti-pork hype, and the meager rallies to allow him to tide this over.

This MRT extort try ghost will continue to haunt BS Aquino, his family, and their ruling class allies who feed on the people's blood, sweat, and tears. There will be hell to pay for them when the population finally rises up and drives the stakes into their hearts. The pork plunders certainly pale in comparison to their large-scale looting.

Meanwhile, the Riles Laan sa Sambayanan (or Riles) Network continues to coordinate efforts to organize popular opposition to the threatened fare hikes of the MRT/LRT (Light Rail Transit). Every delay we can deal these exploiters in their effort to hike the fares is without doubt another stake in their blackened hearts.

Elsewhere, on the geopolitical front, particularly in the matter of Philippine-China relations and the Syrian situation, the BS Aquino administration's policy direction is really proving to be a huge liability to the nation. With China, it is too combative to the point of bringing upon us the kind of trade isolation highlighted by that "snub" on BS Aquino at the recent Nanning trade show; but with the US, this government is obsequiously canine. Either way, the consequences are devastating for the country.

Highlighting the first is this text we received: "World's biggest ship the… Triple E, can in one trip, transport 111 million pairs of shoes from Shanghai to Rotterdam or 182 million iPads from China to Northern Europe, boosting record trade between Asia and the West. Maersk of Denmark has ordered 20 of these giant ships. Can we in the Philippines afford to be economically cutoff from China instead of being pragmatic like the Viets, Thais, etc.?"

Highlighting the effect of the BS Aquino regime's canine loyalty to the US is the country's isolation from the BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which is the hope for world peace and prosperity.

In the last G20 meet, BRICS plus Indonesia and Argentina, together representing 3.2 billion people (and 40 percent of the global economy), opposed the impending US attack on Syria, while countries representing only 850 million people signed the ambiguous statement sponsored by the US.

None of these augurs well for our nation's future. It's time to get rid of the economic and geopolitical baggage that is BS Aquino.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)

Billions of dollars lost, yet Napoles rules

Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-04-2013 WED

The failure of BS Aquino III to develop good relations with the rising economic power in the region--and the world--will cost the Philippines billions of dollars in lost economic opportunities. Still, all that BS Aquino, his government, Pinoy "social media" operators, and their mainstream media cohorts are focused on is the Napoles scandal. If they were truly intent on doing better for this country, they would have promptly focused on the message sent by China to the Philippines--that the present attitude displayed by the leader of this country toward its Asian neighbor is unacceptable.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is alleging that China's snub of BS Aquino's trip to the 10th China and Asean Expo is due to unofficial conditions it imposed on the Philippines. These conditions were supposedly not to be publicized, namely, the Philippines' withdrawal of its case against China before the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal and the pull-out of its military presence in Ayungin Shoal.

Analysts have noted that the Chinese conditions and the subsequent cancellation were made when the Philippines and the United States started talks on a new framework agreement and when Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin offered all Philippine military bases for US troops' "rotational" presence.

Vietnam, which has similar territorial disputes with China and had experienced more physical encounters with Chinese maritime and naval elements, did not receive such a snub. That should be a dead giveaway that the territorial dispute alone is no major reason for China's tiff with BS Aquino--neither should negotiations for increased presence of US troops in the Philippines be as the US has also had similar talks with Vietnam since 2009 (when former US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lauded the "tremendous potential" of US ships again becoming a common sight at the deep-water port of Cam Ranh Bay).

In the months leading up to the September trade meet, BS Aquino had already publicly enthused about attending the expo in Nanning, capital of southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. And so, the unwelcome mat that China sprung late last month had a shock effect on almost all observers such as this writer, who could recognize the primordial significance of this act emanating from the Chinese side. For China to do so is indeed earthshaking, as it has not even acted this way with another Asean country with which it had drawn blood in the past. Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, in fact, attended with over 100 Vietnamese businessmen.

To wit, three other prime ministers from the Asean (i.e. Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand) attended while Myanmar and Singapore sent their Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister, respectively. Although others such as Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia merely sent cabinet-level representatives, the Philippines' embarrassment emanated from its president announcing enthusiastically his attendance last August 28 and the DFA reversing this the day after on the 29th.

Ellen Tordesillas gives a good account of the timeline of the fiasco:

July 24: DFA Undersecretary Evan Garcia informed Chinese Ambassador Ma Keqing that Aquino wants to visit China; subsequently Garcia and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin met to discuss Aquino's possible visit at the Nanning expo on September 3 and for Garcia to "feedback" the Chinese side on their talks. Reportedly, Garcia never communicated to Liu or to the Chinese Embassy in Manila.

August 23: Just a week before the event, the Chinese Foreign Ministry informed the Philippine Embassy in Beijing that since no formal preliminary meetings on the President's trip to Nanning transpired, China "can't guarantee that it would be fruitful," which apparently in diplomatese means "you're not welcome."

Tordesillas' account points to a failure of the DFA to coordinate the affairs on the Philippine side that could have resulted in the embarrassing situation. China expert Chito Sta. Romana also referred to this when we corresponded with one another about this incident. He, however, additionally pointed to the alleged Chinese conditions, wondering if these would be indicative of a "hardening in China's position and diplomatic tactics."

If true, I agreed that it may be an overreaction. But, at the same time, it sends a "crystal clear message," which should lead one to ask: Does this mean a "shut out" of Philippine trade efforts with China for as long as BS Aquino and his Cabinet's policies prevail?

Chinese tourists visiting the Asean region increased from 3.9 million in 2007 to 7.3 million in 2011. The Philippines got only around 150,000 of that.

Over the past 10 years, China-Asean two-way trade reached $400 billion, a six-fold increase, which now makes China the largest trading partner of the Asean bloc. Mutual investment is over $100 billion.

In the next five years, China's overseas direct investments will increase by $500 billion, while its imports will reach $10 trillion, with its outbound tourists jumping to over 400 million.

Therefore, we ask: Is the combination of increased US troop presence, together with BS Aquino and his Cabinet's incompetence, as well as the presence of US gofers in the elite, the bureaucracy, and media meant to sabotage Asean economic collaboration and progress for the Philippines?

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., this week on "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 09234095739)

BS Aquino, Obama exposed

Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-02-2013 MON

They were both touted by their respective social elites as their hope for change. Barack Obama won a second term promising to carry "Forward" the change away from the wars of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Instead, he has pursued more wars and now promises an imminent attack on Syria. BS Aquino campaigned on "Kung walang kurap, walang mahirap" but even a taxi driver, in noting Aquino's enigmatic behavior in his super-special treatment of fugitive Janet Lim-Napoles--personally receiving and escorting the pork plunder facilitator from "surrender" to "detention"--had to ask, "Is he taking care of Napoles to keep her silent on his pork secrets?"

The Napoles caper is actually the almost decade-old "Fertilizer Fund Scam" of the Gloria Arroyo regime where Napoles NGOs helped divert sow-lons' pork barrel funds to ghost fertilizer deliveries. The current case only resurfaced amid the scandal involving BS Aquino's sister Ballsy and her hubby Eldon Cruz in the alleged attempt to extort $30 million from Czech train company Inekon.

Around a month and a half ago, a major mainstream daily raised and sustained its headlines on the Napoles case, focusing on the alleged involvement of major opposition figures. Expectedly, some PR elements joined in through social media and came up with a "Million Man March" in tandem with the Catholic hierarchy.

All of mainstream media, controlled by Big Business oligarchs who for some weeks had also been on the hot seat over income tax issues, also started to zero in on Napoles while drumming up the protest marches that the Catholic Church was to have a big role in. Of course, it is no secret that many elements of the Church hierarchy, being bona fide Yellows, are promoters of the Ninoy and Cory Aquino "sainthood" legacy--which is why such moves smacked of efforts by the clerics to insulate BS Aquino from the Napoles pork scandal.

Now this inexplicable "tenderness" with which BS Aquino is treating the "criminal" Napoles, being accorded better treatment than presidential political prisoner Joseph Estrada over 10 years ago. Prisoner Estrada was treated like a common criminal while last week Napoles was treated like a VIP.

This has made the entire Filipino nation wonder what exactly BS Aquino sees in Napoles that she should be treated with such special care. Some headlines on the public's reaction reported, "Napoles surrender in Palace draws mixed views in Visayas," while another said, "Roxas defends Aquino's handling of Napoles' surrender." BS Aquino has thus come under suspicion himself.

Obama, on the other hand, found himself in dire straits late last week when the attack on Syria, announced for him by US State Secretary John Kerry, suddenly lost the support of longtime ally UK. Other countries also stepped back: Jordan announced it would not allow any staging of the attack from its territory while Iraq denied its airspace to any US war planes. The US Congress, too, had enough dissenting voices to finally compel Obama to take cognizance and promise to consult it. Even the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) has held back, leading the Prison Planet Web site to sum it up as "Under Colossal Global Backlash, Obama Holds Off on Syria Strike," underscoring the world's realization that it has nothing to gain but has everything to lose from such an attack.

Nonetheless, nobody is to gain except one. That beneficiary is certainly neither the US nor Israel (as some would think) but the House of Saud, ensconced in its oil kingdom, fending off demands for an end to its ancient monarchy and for greater democratization and/or secularization as represented by the multiple threats from the populist Muslim Brotherhood (hence, the Saudi coup in Egypt) to Syria's secular government, as well as democratic-Shiite Iran.

A US attack on Syria invites retaliation via an attack on the US' key Middle East ally Israel, with Syrian allies Hezbollah and Iran promising to follow suit. This can then spill over into a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, threatening 80 percent of the world's oil supply.

The House of Saud is the ultimate intriguer in the current Syrian crisis. This has been highlighted by the recent Moscow visit of Prince Bandar a.k.a. Bandar Bush (as he is often called due to his closeness with "Dubya" Bush) where the following were offered for Russia to drop Syria--a $15-billion arms purchase and a promise to hold back the House of Saud's proxy, the Chechen fundamentalist terrorists, from threatening the multi-billion Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Just what did Bandar Bush offer the Obama officials to push this attack on Syria, despite many vigorous objections? This is Obama exposed.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., this week on "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 09234095739)