Dependency disorder

Dependency disorder

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 11-18-2013 MON)

 

A Philippine Star columnist declared, “Thank God for the United States!”  That really got my blood boiling and my heart gushing with rage.  Here is this US Embassy PR man reinforcing the “dependent personality disorder” (DPD) of Philippine culture again amid the devastating aftermath of super typhoon “Haiyan,” despite the fact that it was the United States that had placed the country into the helpless state it’s in today.

 

For those who may not be acquainted with DPD (formerly known as asthenic personality disorder), it is “an enduring maladaptive pattern of behavior, cognition, and inner experience” that is characterized by “a pervasive psychological dependence on other people.”

 

In the case of this country, it is the dependence on other states and countries for almost everything--including the selection of its president, as in the case of former US envoy Harry Thomas’ favorite in the 2010 polls, BS Aquino.

 

As I said last week, we have no choice today but to swallow pride and accept all aid and assistance, whatever the motives behind them; but this doesn’t mean that we should swallow everything hook, line, and sinker.  Foreign aid pouring in is not without its likely intended or unintended negative consequences, as other countries that had received massive aid in the wake of equally massive calamities have seen.

 

Haiti, demolished by an earthquake in 2010, has found many unsavory consequences from US and United Nations aid, including this one that Stephen Lendman wrote about for the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti: “Two and a half months post-quake, the major media mostly ignore Haiti… out of sight, mind … (such as) USAid (US Agency for International Development) and other aid organizations diverting most of the $700 million plus donated to contractors and profiteering NGOs…”

 

Lendman continues: “thousands of US combat troops obstructing aid, getting none to the most impoverished neighborhoods, and amounts to emergency shelters have been woefully inadequate, making calamitous conditions worse…”

 

The UN aid contingent that remained to supposedly help in the reconstruction phase got embroiled in rape charges and caused a cholera outbreak that killed more than 8,000 (and brought down hundreds of thousands), leading to lawyers filing charges against the UN (BBC, Oct. 9, 2013 “UN sued over Haiti cholera epidemic”).

 

Over and above all these is the history of Haiti destroyed by European colonialists and more recently by repeated US intervention, like in the US-engineered ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 for his opposition to International Monetary Fund “reforms” that have long impoverished nations.

 

If the Philippines today under BS Aquino has been exposed as totally incompetent and woefully inadequate in dealing with the Yolanda catastrophe, it is because the US, since 1986, has reasserted its hand in the micromanagement of this country under the same reforms that had crippled Haiti and left aid-receiving countries prostrate in the face of calamities--all without governmental, economic, industrial, military, and social infrastructure to deal with any major disaster, natural or otherwise.

 

The last time the Philippines was able to cope well with devastation wrought by major typhoons (such as “Yoling,” “Ruping” and others) was during Marcos’ time when helicopters and amphibious trucks were ample and ready to be fielded.  Ferdinand Marcos was deposed with US help; and ever since, the Philippines has been turned over to serial incompetents.

 

However, failure to cope with natural disasters is not just a consequence of poverty or underdevelopment.  In hurricane after hurricane, Cuba experienced far less casualties than its giant northern neighbor, the US.  With Hurricane Katrina, Cuba suffered only two casualties while the US had more than 1,800 dead.

 

Wikipedia reports that “According to the UN, it’s not because Cubans are lucky but because they’re prepared… (Aid organization Oxfam further stated that) from 1996 to 2002, only 16 people were killed by the six hurricanes that struck Cuba… (leading them to attribute this to the fact that) around 72 hours before a storm’s predicted landfall, national (Cuban) media issue alerts while civil protection committees check evacuation plans and shelters (plus) hurricane awareness is taught in schools and there are practice drills…”

 

On a similar front, every weather calamity these days has become an opportunity for proponents of the fraudulent “man-made global warming” campaign to pound their occupational advocacy, funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by global finance and big business.

 

The Climate Action Network that announced its solidarity with the announced fast of the Philippine delegate to the Warsaw climate change conference had a net income in 2010 of $2.5 million.

 

Greenpeace, too, had $27.5 million in income, which funded energy campaigner Red Constantino’s crusade against Philippine industrialization.  You can read the over half a billion dollars in funding enjoyed by climate change non-governmental organizations in James F. Tracy’s “CO₂ and the Ideology of Climate Change: The Forces behind ‘Carbon-Centric Environmentalism.’”

 

Tracy concludes: “In light of these ongoing catastrophes and the powerful financial interests behind carbon-centric environmental advocacy … Posturing over anthropogenic climate change and environmentalists’ well-funded overtures may be seen for what they actually are—the visible components of a complex social engineering program far advanced in convincing the public that its return to a pre-feudal-like existence will not only be agreeable, but absolutely imperative for the greater good.”

 

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