Manila's traffic problem is a class war

Manila's traffic problem is a class war
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-17-2014 WED)

For a year-and-half the City of Manila's residents and commuters
enjoyed deliverance from decades of horrendous traffic along its
streets. Mayor Joseph E. Estrada had been elected to solve the Manila
constituency's problems and he went at it with hammer and tongs. He
targeted traffic and was quickly faced with a concerted challenge from
provincial and colorum buses plying the narrow streets and avenues of
Manila, which made a depot wherever they chose. This he overcame and
traffic really eased. Not much later the truckers, with Big Business
behind them, and the incompetent national government started their
complaints.

The incompetent national government (particularly the Philippine Ports
Authority and the National Economic Development Authority), the
truckers and the Big Business interests, and foreign chambers of
commerce had over a year to respond to the City of Manila's traffic
alleviation operations but never took the necessary steps to tackle a
problem building up then in Manila's port area. A year and a half
later, we are told that one of the major constraints in the port area
is the accumulation of tens of thousands of unloaded containers that
have taken up the spaces for parking of thousands of loaded container
vans or those to be loaded and dispatched.

PPA general manager Juan Sta. Ana admitted that prior to the build-up
of empty container vans in the port, the City's truck ban was not a
problem. The daytime truck ban caused fewer trucks to egress, from
5,000 to 6,000 down to 3,500 a day. The question for the PPA general
manager is: Why didn't he do something about that then? One possible
solution to that is to ship out those empty containers to Subic or
Batangas ports by barges and other maritime route. It would have cost
a sum but the alternative is what we had--billions of pesos lost to
traffic standstills, and a public backlash--which buck Malacañang,
PPA, NEDA, and Big Business have tried to pass to the truck ban.

Malacañang could have done what the PPA wasn't bright enough to do,
but its brilliant geniuses didn't give a hoot until it became a
national crisis. Mayor Estrada's decisive action on a decades-long
problem of the City of Manila's constituency did solve the traffic
mess, where neglect and failure marked successive national governments
installed by the ruling class of Big Business oligarchs, as well as
corrupt Edsa I and II Yellow political and government bureaucrats.

Ferdinand Marcos had built thousands of kilometers of roads. Cory
Aquino built only the Ortigas flyover in six years but her oligarchs
raked in trillions while corrupt politicians feasted on her
Countryside Development Fund (pork barrel) legacy.

As Cory's oligarchs and Yellow politicians wallowed in the bacchanalia
of profits, little investment went into transport and port
infrastructure.

Today, we have the highest port service rates in the world, according
to former NEDA chief Romulo Neri, who made a presentation on this to
then Palace occupant, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and this was what led
to Neri's persecution in the NBN-ZTE case, where he was, in fact, sort
of a whistle-blower.

On the other hand, the business interests that lord it over in the
ports also do so in many of the lucrative privatization and
public-private partnership deals--from the quick profits in the
country's transmission grid to new, wasteful casino operations.

The biggest headache of this society--in traffic or other aspects of
the economy--are the oligarchs. The rich, as a social class, simply
wield too much disproportionate power for their interests and against
the general welfare. I saw this problem in 1992 when I thought I had
a viable solution to the traffic problem.

After months of study, and consultation with schools such as Ateneo de
Manila, and after seeking support from other citizens, like former
Quezon City Mayor Charito Planas, I proposed to the Metro Manila
Development Authority that mandatory school bussing for exclusive
school students be instituted to remove up to 200,000 cars from the
roads.

The Ateneo had approved the proposal and we were working on getting
the support of De La Salle and others, but when I discussed it with
the MMDA chair at that time, I was flatly told that "The rich will get
angry with us."

The City of Manila's traffic problem today has, as an underlying
condition, a class war--where the rich and powerful have gotten their
way through a government totally subservient to them and where the
poor do not have any say at all. What Manila's traffic woes have so
far uncovered is a ruling class that neither has any commitment to the
general welfare nor creativity to fashion a solution that can give
everyone a win-win solution. And it is absolutely reflective of how
the entire country has been messed up all these years.

(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable
Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:15 p.m. and replay
Sunday, 8:15 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5
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Humoring their lonesome selves

Humoring their lonesome selves
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-15-2014 MON)

BS Aquino is on a trip to Europe ostensibly to "rally more support
behind his government's proposed 'triple action plan' (TAP) to resolve
the (China Sea) dispute through international arbitration."

TAP was the plan the Philippines presented at the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meeting last August in Myanmar, about
which Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Secretary Albert del Rosario
said, "When we put the TAP on the table, there were no objections... I
take that to mean that ASEAN was fully supportive..."

Truth to tell, it was Asean's fastidious politeness that did not allow
the overwhelming majority of its members to embarrass the Philippines
with an emphatic "NO."

Del Rosario explained, "The TAP, if you take a look at it, is DoC
(Declaration of Conduct)-centered. And the message that I wanted to
deliver is, TAP is good because it's DoC. If you don't accept TAP,
then you don't believe in DoC. So let's stop talking about DoC,
right? We're just humoring ourselves, 'di ba (right)?"

China rejected the TAP and turned around accusing the BS Aquino
government of proceeding to No. 3 of the DoC, i.e. prematurely
bringing the issue to international arbitration. Of course, the
Philippines has never complained about Vietnam, despite the latter
occupying the most number of islands and reefs in the Spratlys.

Now, BS Aquino is flying to countries 12,000 kilometers away, far away
from the Asian and Asean neighborhood, to rally support for his China
Sea action plan, which the Asean had already politely snubbed, by
visiting European personalities, who have little or no relevance at
all to Asean goings-on and who, on the whole, no longer significantly
represent the European majority's sentiments.

First stop in BS Aquino's European sojourn is Spain, where the
Royalty's corruption has forced an abdication and a new, untested
monarch King Felipe (who's not syphilitic, at least) assumes the
throne in a land facing economic depression and secession from one of
its most significant regions, Catalonia.

In Belgium, he visits European Union leaders Jose Manuel Barroso and
Herman Van Rompuy--dubbed the "Dream Team of Mediocrity"--as well as
the royalty in residence, who has figured in international news
recently as "King Philippe of Euthanasia" for signing "children's
euthanasia" into law in March this year.

In France, Aquino will meet socialist President François Hollande,
whom two-thirds of the French public are raring to kick out in the
wake of economic disaster and the exposé of his disdain for the poor
as "sans dents" (toothless), as detailed in the book of former partner
Valérie Trierweiler.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who still can't decide how to
say "no" to self-destructive economic sanctions being demanded by the
US against Russia, will be the lucky German leader awaiting Aquino.

Then, Aquino proceeds to his favorite destination, the US, to address
the United Nations on "Climate Change" in the midst of the fifth
highest level of all-time Antarctic Sea Ice reported last September 12
at 32,210 sq. km.

While there, BS Aquino will meet his counterpart Barack Obama, who is
not clear on how long it will take his mighty US of A military to
defeat "ISIL," with only 18,000 to 30,000 jihadists. Reviewing
Aquino's itinerary, it's impossible to see any reason for the journey.

What's Aquino going to bring home? Those European royalty and
bankrupt political entities won't make a dent on China's position on
the China Sea disputes; nor will any of the minor trade deals during
the trip--that are hardly even mentioned in Malacañang press
releases--improve the hollow Philippine economy.

Aquino's speech at the UN on Climate Change will mean even less as he
has been pushing the proliferation of coal-fired power plants in the
entire Mindanao area against the express wishes of the Mindanao people
themselves.

It's hard to believe BS Aquino is on this European-US-UN trip to
achieve anything other than to humor himself, along with others like
him in the Western powers' mutual admiration society, otherwise known
as the "Global Dream Team of Mediocrity."

(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable
Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay
Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.;
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9/11: How our wars today began

9/11: How our wars today began
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-10-2014 WED)

The end of the Cold War and the 1990s brought the notion that the
horrors of war and nuclear Armageddon ended prospects of future wars.
America's taste and budgets for war also dove (or so it seemed). A
1992 book, The End of History by Francis Fukuyama, laid the myth that
capitalist liberal-democracy's victory as the perfect and "final form
of human government" had obviated conflict. Samuel Huntington, of the
neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), saw a new age of
conflict along cultural-religious lines. In a lecture series, he
posited "The Clash of Civilizations" (a phrase from Bernard Lewis'
"The Roots of Muslim Rage"), which laid the basis for "jihadism" in
subverting the world.

Fukuyama and Huntington come from the same community of conservatives
and neoconservatives (with some dressed as liberal and progressive
intellectuals), comprising the vast majority of 1,800 US "think tanks"
incubating and propagating justifications for US world dominance. AEI
is among many, such as the Council of Foreign Relations, Rand Corp.,
Heritage Foundation, Freedom House, National Endowment for Democracy,
US Institute for Peace, ad nausea, supported by either or both US
government and private funding. Many of them, in turn, promote and
fund projects and NGOs in targeted countries, including the
Philippines.

Drawing from the many neoconservative think tanks, a new strategic
plan and brain trust to establish US dominance in the 21st Century was
formed (which included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, et
al., all part of George W. Bush's core). Called "The Project for a
New American Century (PNAC)," the strategy set out for "American
global leadership" on the pretext that "American leadership is both
good for America and... the world."

Interestingly, PNAC's Section V, Rebuilding America's Defenses, states
that "the process of transformation (of the military) ... is likely to
be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a
new Pearl Harbor."

The 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, with 2,403 Americans killed, is the
moment that tipped an insular, pacifist US population in the mainland,
which up until then refused to join the raging war in Europe and Asia,
into committing itself body and soul to the war.

A "new Pearl Harbor" in September 2001 did transpire as if, and many
like this writer believe to be, by design--starting with the attack on
New York's World Trade Center (WTC) 1 and 2, and then the collapse of
WTC 7--which killed over 3,000 and left the US population in "shock
and awe," overwhelming the people with emotional vulnerability to
suggestive propaganda that "Muslim rage (and) Bin Laden did it."

"Shock and awe" is still employed with regularity today. As recently
as two weeks ago, US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were
supposedly beheaded by a British-accented Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (ISIS) terrorist. But even outlets such as Al Jazeera now
question the authenticity of the beheadings, as there was no blood
shown besides the inexplicably stoic expressions of the men about to
have their heads cut off.

Still, the Foley and Sotloff events overwhelmed the US population's
aversion to restarting US bombings and eventual troop redeployment in
the Middle East after forcing Obama to hold off from bombing Syria,
turning the US public into "sheeple" once again.

People normally can think for themselves, but the art of turning the
most rational of them to "sheeple" has been a well-developed one and
all rulers require it, from Joseph Goebbels to PR-marketing master
Edward Bernays for capitalist-consumer society, to benignly named
London-based Travistock Institute of Human Relations and the MKUltra
program of the CIA.

"Shock and awe," as a basic tool to overwhelm people's rational
senses, was used in recent times also in the East Ukraine MH17 plane
destruction, which Western powers used to ramp up anti-Russian
feelings and are now covering up.

Goebbels said, "Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the
government can play." Today, the press is "the Media," including the
omnipresent "social media" down to individual cellphones. All of them
have played up the WTC 1 and 2 collapse, but few in world know about
Building 7 not being hit by any plane yet still imploding in gravity
speed.

To understand the "inside job" that was 9/11, the "sheeple" must
become "people" again, by shaking off impressions from controlled
mainstream media and by studying for themselves "AE 9/11 Truth" of
2,200 architects and engineers calling for a new investigation of the
event.

(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable
Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay
Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.;
search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit
http://newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com)

Government as private business

Government as private business
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-08-2014 MON)

When politicians and businessmen make the same call to "run government
like a business," we are reminded of this one caveat from one of the
greatest reformers in history: Former US President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, who saved the United States of America from the Great
Depression, said of those who bankrupted his country, "They had begun
to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to
their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is
just as dangerous as Government by organized mob."

Thus, when a major Philippine political leader calls the top corporate
money bag of foreign and local finance capital as his "bossing,"
Filipinos really have to worry.

The "bossing" quote accompanied an assertion by the politician that he
runs his constituency "like a business enterprise (similar to his
bossing's) whose successes in administration and public service he
wanted to replicate in the national government," according to one
report.

Clearly, the politician also wants to replicate the record of a
previous Malacañang tenant, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whose then
economic adviser (now Albay governor) Joey Salceda boasted as having
the "most pro-business" government, with the top 1000 corporations
earning almost P4 trillion" (excluding unreported incomes) from 2001
to 2010. Of course, what Salceda left out was that the official
hunger rate upped from 11.4 percent in 2000 to 20.3 percent in 2010.

Even as current Palace occupant BS Aquino likes to repeat that his
"bossings" are the people, few believe that claim--especially so when
it comes to the vast sea and growing tsunami of the poor in this
country.

Despite the much ballyhooed GDP growth, the country remains faced with
growing joblessness in the jobless economic growth model (despite
Manila Times' Ben Kritz finally swallowing the skewed definition of
"employed" that includes garland vendors and the like); and the
reality of Gross Domestic Pain increasing as profits of
foreign-controlled and domestic Big Business expand through the
highest rates in Asia in corporate-controlled public utilities, such
as power, water, telecoms, fossil energy, transportation, ad nausea.

We debated this issue at our small Sunday market coffee clique, whose
other members include two World Bank consultants, one former Ayala
executive, and one engineer of a multinational oil company. They were
ranged against my Franklin Delano Roosevelt quip and my view that
government should not be run like a business and that it should
restrain the avarice, especially of Big Business. I have to qualify
that because, as I told the group, the business model is appropriate
for small, medium, and even large-scale businesses only when these do
not deal with inelastic demand commodities, services, and sectors
imbued with basic public interests.

They argued that the private business model is more efficient. But
where's the proof when it comes to governance? Which society is
better run for its people today--China, Vietnam, and Singapore (all
late economic tigers compared to 1950s Philippines) or the
Philippines? Or compare the US today with China.

I asked the World Bank consultant about Indonesia. Is it dominated by
private business or the state? He had to admit that Indonesia is a
state-run society and is better than the Philippines. We cited
examples in the Philippines, like the MRT, which is privately owned
with all sorts of problems, in contrast to the LRT run by government
since Marcos' time, which had been comparatively trouble free.

The Philippines today is actually being run exactly like a
business--entirely for profit. The general rule is that politicians
run it for profit too--for themselves, their business "bossings," and
foreign capitalists controlling the major Filipino companies through
the backdoor.

I highlighted the deterioration with policy retrogressions, such as
the removal of the "political ads ban" by Sen. Edgardo Angara in the
early 2000s after Edsa II, which restored the primacy of political
funding from the oligarchs, the profits of their media corporate
giants, and the money power of the two. There is also the complete
non-compliance by the tri-media owned by the oligarchs to any media
control limitations.

The struggle for democracy of the people against these money powers
stretches back centuries. I'll go as far back only to the 18th
Century when the US Constitution was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, who
said, "I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and
crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which
dare already to challenge our Government to trial, and bid defiance to
the laws of our country."

The US today has forgotten Jefferson's warning; and the Ferguson,
Missouri riots are a reminder.

In the Philippines, top business auditor (and US army sergeant)
Washington Sycip already has his sights set on Little Miss Poe-ppet
(see the September 3 Inquirer headline).

We need leadership that is sworn to defend and protect the State and the People.

(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable
Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay
Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.;
search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit
http://newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com)