The plunder 'elite'

The plunder ‘elite’

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 10-14-2013 MON)

 

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 House 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 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% 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, 8:00 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 09234095739)

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War-puppet regimes

War-puppet regimes.

(Herman Tiu Laurel/ DieHard III/ Tribune column for 7-2-2014 Wednesday)

 

I really want to refocus on several crucial domestic issues, such as the MELORS (Manual Election or Revolution) call from one of our readers. That is a battle cry for this country cheated by the PCOS Smartmatic machines in 2010 and 2013. The need is highlighted today by presidential election candidate runaway leader VP Binay’s warning of “high tech election fraud in 2016”. Indeed, countries like Germany, Netherlands andIreland have banned electronic or automated voting, many others have put them on hold or banned various aspects of it. Its two years to the next election, we have to begin the MELORS campaign now.

 

              However, something overshadows all the immediate domestic issues. The PCOS Smartmatic manipulations were possible because a power far greater that any local force caused the Smartmatic PCOS to be installed. When one really looks into it deeply one will see the U.S. hand. which controlled. The machines in the 2010 and 2013 elections were Smartmatic but the software was from Dominion Voting Systems, a Denver based company today enjoying a seeming monopoly of automated voting technologies after it bought U.S. companies Sequoia, Diebold, ES&S. Reporter Chris Flyod writing in Moscow Times described: “CIA-owned Voting Machines Ensure Bush Victory in 2004”.

 

              The “U.S. pivot” was first broached in 2009, during then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first trip to Asia. There followed three elections in the region reveal the U.S. hand in installing what would subsequently be the abuilding anti-China coalition with the U.S. In September 2009 a new Japanese Prime Minister was elected on the basis of a pledge to remove the U.S. Futenma base from island of Okinawa, nine months later PM Yukio Hatoyama resigns on the basis of his “failure” to deliver on that promise. Yoshihiko Noda succeeds Hatoyama in February 2011 and falls in December 2012 with only one memorable act – the nationalization of the Diaoyu or Senkaku islands.

 

              The alleged reasons for the Noda cabinet’s resignation were its “failure to improve the economy and its perceived lack of strong leadership”. So why did the Japanese Diet oust Hatoyama when he was the Japanese leader who dared to do what the Okinawan and Japanese desired – remove U.S. bases. The LDP’s Shinzo Abe, traditional U.S. political enforcers since WWII replaced Noda and championed the removal of the “peace provisions” of the Japanese Constitution and push the “collective defence” for Japan to deploy troops with allies in “defence” of each other. U.S. pressure and not Japanese electorates was behind Japan’s political changes.

 

              Last June 29 a Japanese man committed self-immolation on an elevated railroad girder in Shinjuko district, protesting Shinzo Abe’s “collective defence” and military expansionist plans. Our article “Two-faced U.S.-Aquino-Abe” reported Japanese survey showing as much as 70% of Japanese opposed to Abe’s sabre-rattling. “Abe-nomics” devalued the Yen, raised taxes and inflation but not consumption. Some Japanese are upset enough to commit fiery hara-kiri, yet Abe gets only praises form the West.  Meanwhile, in South Korea, a petition to manually recount the results of the 2012 elections that installed Park Geun-hye has circulated on the Internet.

 

              South Korea presidents have single term limit and hawkish. Rabid anti-North President Lee Myung-bak had to go in 2012. Major candidates to replace Lee were Moon Jae-in, human rights advocate, and former strongman Park Chung-hee’s daughter Park Guen-hye. South Korean voters manually stamp their votes followed by a machine count. As the petition for manual recount says, “The graphs representing the voter turnout and the votes earned for Mr. Moon and Ms. Park, measured over time, were consistently smooth to have occurred in real life,… Only the graphs implied by the Formula of Logistic Function can produce such a beautiful, smooth curves.” Shades of 60-30-10!

 

              U.S. covert operations in its formerly directly occupied countries are bequeathed “left behind” covert operators - those countries’ intelligence agencies. South Korea’s NIS (National Intelligence Service) is one such “left behind”. From various South Korea reports: “Since the Presidential elections…. debate has continued over suspected election interference…. The head Prosecutor has confirmed that from 2011 to December 2012, NIS employees of the Psychological Operations Group made 22 million tweets from 2270 Twitter accounts, tweets that were systematically posted …. linked to interference in the presidential election and politics … postings praising or blasting specific parties or lawmakers…”

 

              The Philippine Comelec’s removal of security measures from its Smartmatic PCOS machines, i.e.  removal of vote receipt to teacher’s digital signatures, last minute switching of 80,000 CF cards, and Dominion Voting System’s non-delivery of the source code in both the 2010 and 2013 elections, ensured installation of U.S. puppet leaders in Malacañang and the Senate. The few independent politicians who made it through are now being ousted for alleged “pork crimes”. These had to happen before the crucial Cha-cha that could change the Constitution and install a 2016 government that will be wholly controlled by the U.S. and ally with the collective Asian war faction.

 

(1098AM, SWAD 5-6pm Tues. to Fri.; GNN Talk New TV program, S “PCA versus Cocolisap”at. 8pm and Sun. 8am on Destiny Cable chn. 8 and SkyCable chn. 213 or www.gnntv-asia.com. or YouTube Talk News TV and add date; visit www.newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com) ###

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Two-faced US-Aquino-Abe

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Focusing real issues

Focusing real issues.

(Herman Tiu Laurel/ DieHard III/ Tribune column for 6-25-2014 Wednesday)

 

              The mainstream media (MSM) obsession and treatment of the “pork barrel” issue has really become a joke, focusing on the shallow drama of mug shots and Spartan living conditions of the first celebrity detainee while urgent issues like the rice price crisis are given passing glances. Politicians have been worse. Miriam Santiago shrieked that detention facilities should not be turned into a “private resort”. The lady is not lily white and may find herself someday in the same prison situation, denied ceiling to floor padding. BS Aquino too, when his time comes to stay in a cell he will certainly be denied his play station.

 

              What are the more urgent issues? One is Atty. Alan Paguia’s crusade to put “Hello Garci” back on the public’s agenda. The Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes says a statute of limitations has buried. Atty. Paguia has filed a second motion with the Comelec Legal Department to his first in 2007 which was never answered by the Comelec. The crimes in the “Hello Garci” case is incontrovertible because of  evidence provided by the recordings of the incriminating conversations between Commissioner Garcillano and then president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and the latters’ “I am sorry” TV confession. Public accountability in the country is farce until this case is resolved.

 

              Rice prices shot up this month and all Malacañang could say was the disingenuous line that the administration’s anti-smuggling campaign must be causing the price spike. It does not explain anything, instead it betrays the administration’s utter incompetence and lack of coordination. The fact is its caught unprepared and a shortage ensued. They should have prepared local production or legally imported supply to maintain the normal stock and price levels. It was a rice price spike that spelled the doom for Fidel V. Ramos’ “Philippines 2020” in 1997. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had a longer rice crisis,  2008 to 2010. Rice self-sufficiency and price affordability is the topmost priority of the nation.

 

              Garlic prices shot up fourfold last week. Supermarket shelves are empty of it. Some attribute it to price manipulation by traders. The government again claimed that its intensified monitoring of garlic smuggling may be the reason. That stinks. If government planned a crackdown on smuggled garlic they should also have expected a tightening of supply and took action to increase production in anticipation. Given the high unemployment figures in the agricultural sector a “two birds with one stone” solution should have been foreseen in the garlic situation, expand land areas dedicated to growing garlic and mobilization of idle farm family hands to grow and process the harvest.

 

              Anticipating and avoiding crises like the rice and garlic supply slumps is a fundamental government mission, BS Aquino should have focused on such tasks Day One of his administration in 2010. Medium term planning and day-to-day coordination among the numerous government agencies, and orchestrating legislative support is esential. But BS Aquino concentrated on morality plays, his “no wang-wang” and “tuwid na daan”, instead of getting his cabinet to roll up sleeves and pants’ legs, get into the rice paddies, dig irrigation canals and till vegetable patches with the farmers. Now, the country today is in deep trouble with shortages of the most basic staples.

 

              Agricultural problems require two to three years to solve, in agricultural time has run out on BS Aquino. Among the many crises there is one area where immediate decisions can bring immediate improvement – the fruitless and self-defeating foreign policy direction BS Aquino government has been dragged into on the South China Sea dispute with China. For three years the Philippines has taken an adversarial, no-dialogue, litigious stance which has not gained a single new islet of territory for the country but instead has lost/atoll after islands/stools to punitive occupations of disputed sea formations by China.

 

              The litigious policy with China has proven a totally bankrupt. It is based on the equally bankrupt thesis that the U.S. will honor its “ironclad” promise to back the Philippines. Philippine intransigence allowed China the excuse to occupy and develop the most strategic Mabini or Johnson Reef which pro-U.S. Filipino politician Roilo Golez said is a “game changer”. That neutralizes whatever strategic gain the U.S. hoped for in the EDCA with the Philippines. Aquino can change all these, by a stroke of a pen appointing a new, independent minded Foreign Affairs secretary Aquino can start productive dialogue and earns billions in joint development projects with China.

 

              The idealistic “pork barrel” narrative has become a soap opera. After eleven months, it still is news - but not headline news. The MSM and the ruling powers clearly want it to be the central news to prevent the nation from focusing on the real problems and solutions. The real, alternative media should persist in bringing the real issues to the fore. (1098AM, DWAD 5-6pm Tues. to Fri.; GNN Talk New TV program on June 14, Sat. 8pm and Sun. 8am on Destiny Cable chn. 8 and SkyCable chn. 213 or www.gnntv-asia.com. or YouTube Talk News TV and add date; visit www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com) ###

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