Saving paradise Earth

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

4/10/2013

Daily Tribune

With the family for a clan reunion in Sorsogon, we have hopped to many sights and resorts for the past three days, savoring the idyllic scenes of Tulong Gapo, Halabang Baybay, Pagol in Bacon, Sorsogon and staying a night each in three great places — the New Sea Breeze, the splendidly designed Sirangan and Fernando's (the last of which is distinguished by the venerable Duran couple's personal and homey management, including regaling hotel clients with historical anecdotes of their long and colorful lives around Sorsogon and its politics, as well as sojourns in Asia).

Now I am writing from Vitton and Woodland at two in the morning in the cool sea breeze, in Donsol of the famed butanding, which we missed seeing after three hours of searching at sea. Tonight we did witness fairy tale scenes of mangrove trees lit by fireflies down the long Donsol River that stretches all the way to Albay.
The earth is a paradise and every country has many of its own Sorsogons to show — even the now devastated Iraq or Libya and Afghanistan. Some travel blogs feature some of the most beautiful spots even in places such as North Korea; one site identifies five paradises — from mountain havens to rivers and lakes — which travel agencies would like to bring tourists to but cannot due to the 73 years state-of-war in the Korean Peninsula. The world may never get to see these North Korean paradises if the war of words between Pyongyang and the US over provocative UN sanctions and US-South Korea military exercises escalate into a "hot" war which the North threatens in response. US officialdom charges the North of "provocations," but who is really the provocateur in the Korean Peninsula, when it has always been the US that has drafted collaborators into its puppet government in the South right after World War II?

The most strategic close neighbor of North Korea, China, has offered to "reduce friction over hotspots" in the Korean situation, according to the Associated Press, which reports Chinese President Xi Jinping last Sunday as saying, "No one country should be allowed to upset world peace." That statement is a classic double-entendre that raises the question: What is that one country that upsets world peace?

One can argue that North Korea frequently upsets the equanimity of the South Korean government or of its former colonizer Japan; but North Korea can hardly upset the peace of the world when its nuclear arsenal likely numbers less than the fingers on one hand. The US, of course, is estimated to possess $8.52-trillion worth of nuclear missiles numbering 5,000 warheads today, deployed in all major continents of the world, and in nearly 1,000 military bases with nearly 400,000 troops in foreign lands.
US officials justify this foreign military presence as necessary to keep "world peace," but as American author of Rogue State (referring to the US) and Killing Hope (about "actions of America's unaccountable government… 'killing' these people's hope") William Blum writes, the US has invaded 40 countries and bombed many of these back into pre-industrial states.

Maybe what US officials really mean is that they intend to bring the "peace of the cemetery" to the countries they "make safe for democracy," which they never succeed at as the people fight back eventually.
The most notable example today of a country fighting back is Afghanistan, where Afghan soldiers trained by the US are killing their US trainers more frequently than ever in "insider attacks." Sadly, while an invaded country tries to recover like in Iraq and Syria, it is subjected to endless suicide and roadside bombings to create permanent chaos and social collapse.

The paradises I'm now at may be far from the conflict zones created by the US — unlike Olongapo which houses Subic base where the BS Aquino III government has given the US the go-signal to redeploy its forces albeit in disguised form or the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) where the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has promised to allow the US to set up its bases if the substate finally pushes through — but there is no place on earth safe from the fallout of a thermonuclear exchange.
Today we are learning that radiation after-effects from even seemingly benign underground nuclear tests in the Pacific atolls decades ago still affect residents of the area and eventually the entire world.

We have seen how seemingly conventional warfare already leaves radiation sickness transferred to the next generations — like the deformed children of Fallujah resulting from "depleted uranium" in ammunitions used. Iran, a target of the USrael (US-Israel) nuclear arsenal, has called for global nuclear disarmament — a call that we should all support. Already, the US has deployed its nuclear capable bombers in its military exercises with South Korea, forcing North Korea to ratchet up its bellicosity. In turn, the US in doing so is threatening not only the North but China and the whole region as well.

While North Korea knows it cannot really threaten the US, it is telling South Korea and Japan to talk to their "boss" to come to terms with it, as it can make both of them pay dearly for their subservience to the Paradise Destroyer — the US.

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