DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/27/2010
It can be classified as one of the greatest fiascos this nation has ever committed before the eyes of the world. The disastrously botched rescue of the Hong Thai tour bus hostages showed the whole world the absolute institutional collapse of the Philippine National Police (PNP) under nine-and-a-half years of Gloria Arroyo and an almost two-month old administration of PeNoy Aquino. The City of Manila is under intense scrutiny, too, run as it is by another Yellow stalwart, Mayor Alfredo Lim — who was a “darling” of Cory Aquino and an old reliable enforcer of the Edsa I and II cabals. The same is true for Fidel Ramos, who was among the last to head the old and much-maligned Philippine Constabulary — precursor to the PNP — at a time when jueteng became endemic in the entire organization.
Moral-professional decay has infected the PNP and “Manila’s Finest” since the Yellows took over and ruled our country for 24 years. All that rot has led to the showcasing of the complete collapse of institutional leadership, administrative and organizational competence, and amazing misappropriation of the PNP’s resources in the hostage incident.
Clearly, there was no direction from the PNP or from the national and local leadership the whole time, even when it became obvious that the local PNP was already botching the negotiations and later, the assault of the hostage bus cum fortress — such that not a single gas mask was produced in over 10 hours of the siege, which blinded the police with their own tear gas and rendered them inutile when the hostage taker fired back indiscriminately. Why, the PNP even took hours to break the windows and pry apart the door of the bus, only to finally open it by pulling down the lever of the emergency door. (Dumbkopfs indeed!)
All the rot the whole world saw on display last Aug. 23 could not have developed overnight under the PeNoy government; it was a long-standing infection that ate into the structures of our government and the PNP — corrupting its flesh while eating up and corroding its moral spine. There is no doubt that the nine-and-a-half years of unprecedented corruption under Gloria Arroyo — from the promotion to powerful positions of her co-conspirators in Edsa II, such as Ebdane, Mendoza, Berroya, and many others; to the three-fold increase in jueteng and consequently, the unprecedented size of the pot that the PNP top brass divvy up each month; to the misuse of the PNP as a personal tool to spy on critics and suppress the legitimate opposition; as well as massive election cheating, ad nausea — had all been a major accelerator of this decay in the police.
When the congressmen of Gloria’s party stepped up to brag of their President Arroyo “hostage crisis” handling, one can only wonder if they really think the population to be that stupid to swallow their ridiculous claims. Reps. Danny Suarez and Edcel Lagman should remember that the PNP hierarchy led by Director General Jesus Verzosa was inherited from them. The thing is, PeNoy was just showing his idiocy when he decided against replacing PNP Chief Versoza when he could have.
If PeNoy had really represented a clean break from the past, he should have started afresh with new leadership for the police organization. But then, the Yellow movement is really just a continuation of the old Arroyo regime — under names and faces doing the same old thing.
The Arroyo congressmen cited several hostage taking incidents during Arroyo’s watch that ended without casualties. Actually, we saw those operations and the PNP did not perform any better and neither did Gloria do anything significant in those cases. Plus, the cast of characters were different; as were the arms used, as well as, the motives — which included petty publicity for that other bus-taking incident.
The Manila Peninsula incident, meanwhile, would have ended with reporters and civilians killed had not Gen. Danilo Lim and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV taken the morally courageous stand to leave with the civilians to save everyone from slaughter. In fact, Gloria’s attack dogs staged the most ridiculous “glass façade assault” by using the PNP’s V150 APC as it was played across the globe too.
In Manila, the Yellow-backed Mayor Alfredo Lim was inexplicably absent from his usual role as “Dirty Harry.” Why so? Does this lend credence to what we gather from the Binondo, Manila grapevine that Lim had actually caused the cases to be filed against Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza? According to this story, Lim was afraid he would trigger a worse reaction from the hostage taker, thus all efforts toward dialog got assigned to the vice mayor, who failed to get the job done anyway.
But the top Yellow honcho, PeNoy Aquino, did worse: He hid from his Hong Kong counterpart the whole time and even smiled inopportunely at a somber press conference for the victims. All these must have caused the extreme “black” travel advisory imposed by Hong Kong on its citizen-tourists.
The dismal performance of the PeNoy government, capped off by the disastrous Hong Thai hostage crisis fiasco, bolsters the point we raised during the campaign: We need mature, experienced, involved leadership, determined to institute change and forthrightness in governance; curtail PNP corruption by flushing out jueteng payola through legalization; and restore faith in the justice system by cleansing it of “hoodlums in robes” and “rogue cops at the very top.” There was only one candidate who could have filled such shoes; but the Yellows Hocus-PCOSed him, “wheeled and dealed” with religious sects, and manipulated surveys to get their unprepared, reluctant, dense, stiff, uncoordinated, and maladroit puppet in.
Although I sympathize with PeNoy whenever he has that awkward, incongruous look on his face as he tries to defend himself, such follies merely create more problems. Ultimately, he can only blame his Yellow alalays for pushing him into this.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http:hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Friday, August 27, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Was Ninoy’s death a US operation?
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/23/2010
The Aquino children’s repudiation of the reopening of the Ninoy Aquino slay inquiry, under the pretext of “having already forgiven the perpetrators,” is facile and unacceptable. The Filipino people are entitled to know the truth in their continuing conduct of history; and the unclosed chapter is unfair to Ferdinand Marcos et al. who were long condemned as the masterminds through insinuations by the Aquino family and the Establishment media.
Take Billy Esposo’s logic, written in 2007: “…The responsibility falls squarely on the Marcos regime… The compelling reason for ordering the Aquino assassination was to remove the all-too-real threat of Aquino rallying the opposition…” That same facile logic about the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing — which has been proven absolutely false to waylay the nation — created chaos and almost absolved the real perpetrator, Jose Ma. Sison.
Esposo, echoing the logic of all those still simplistically blaming Marcos or those around him, argues: “The power dynamics of the Marcos era was such that the Aquino assassination could only have been undertaken with the go-signal of Marcos or someone who could act on his behalf in ordering the military to undertake the elaborate operation.”
But could Marcos have forced the US not to renew the visa of Ninoy Aquino and his family? And why exactly didn’t the US extend the visas of the Aquinos, since there were countless humanitarian grounds to grant this, particularly the alleged threat of physical harm to his family in the event they returned to Manila? Could Marcos have arranged the acceptance of the obviously faked passport of Ninoy (under the name “Marcial Bonifacio”) through the British in Hong Kong and the Taiwanese authorities? Could he have imposed upon these governments to let a fake passport holder slip through?
Ken Kashiwahara, Ninoy’s Japanese-American brother-in-law, writing his firsthand account in 1983 of that last plane leg at the Chiang Kai Shek International Airport before arriving in Manila (republished by The New York Times last week), said: “Ninoy had no problems going through immigration as Marcial Bonifacio… but as soon as he left the counter, the two ‘security’ men escorted him around the corner. I panicked. ‘This is it,’ I muttered. ‘He’s been discovered.’ I hurried through the immigration, rounded the corner and there was Ninoy, grinning. ‘That was the Taiwan garrison commander,’ he said, ‘and he just wanted to make sure I got through O.K. Can you imagine? A general?’”
The point I am driving at should be clear by now: There has always been a power that could supercede Marcos and any other president to this day. (Erap tried to insist on his way and got ousted, too.)
The official investigation of Ninoy’s assassination stops at Sgt. Pablo Martinez, the identified gunman. But after decades of incarceration and religious guidance from Msgr. Robert Olaguer, assigned by the late Cardinal Sin to minister to the spiritual needs of the 10 soldiers implicated in the assassination, Sgt. Martinez decided to come out with his personal knowledge of who the mastermind was.
On November 2007, Gloria Arroyo pardoned the convicted Ninoy Aquino killers on humanitarian grounds. And as the Aquino siblings denounced this decision, Msgr. Robert Olaguer came up to defend the soldiers to insist on their innocence.
Meanwhile, Esposo, in his aforementioned 2007 article, came to Danding’s defense saying, “What rules out Danding Cojuangco from being the mastermind is the fact that (he) was only in the money game during that time but was nowhere in the line of succession. He neither had the title to vie for it nor had command of the legions to be able to grab it...”
Years after the fall of Marcos that began with the Ninoy Aquino assassination, many US State Department bigwigs, among them former State Secretary George Schultz and then ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz, have come out to claim credit for the former leader’s ouster. They’ve stated this either in their memoirs or in various speeches which I have accessed by patiently searching on the Net.
The fall of Marcos caused a reversal of his nation-building programs; then restored and reinvigorated the power of the old privileged elite; demolished trade protection; and accelerated privatization and deregulation, which all led to the greatest transfer of wealth from the Philippine state’s coffers (and the people’s pockets) to global transnational corporations and their local partners. From then on, the sinister program to obliterate the existence of a sovereign Philippine Republic has all but ended with finality.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21 about “Ninoy’s Death: A False Flag Operation?”; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/23/2010
The Aquino children’s repudiation of the reopening of the Ninoy Aquino slay inquiry, under the pretext of “having already forgiven the perpetrators,” is facile and unacceptable. The Filipino people are entitled to know the truth in their continuing conduct of history; and the unclosed chapter is unfair to Ferdinand Marcos et al. who were long condemned as the masterminds through insinuations by the Aquino family and the Establishment media.
Take Billy Esposo’s logic, written in 2007: “…The responsibility falls squarely on the Marcos regime… The compelling reason for ordering the Aquino assassination was to remove the all-too-real threat of Aquino rallying the opposition…” That same facile logic about the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing — which has been proven absolutely false to waylay the nation — created chaos and almost absolved the real perpetrator, Jose Ma. Sison.
Esposo, echoing the logic of all those still simplistically blaming Marcos or those around him, argues: “The power dynamics of the Marcos era was such that the Aquino assassination could only have been undertaken with the go-signal of Marcos or someone who could act on his behalf in ordering the military to undertake the elaborate operation.”
But could Marcos have forced the US not to renew the visa of Ninoy Aquino and his family? And why exactly didn’t the US extend the visas of the Aquinos, since there were countless humanitarian grounds to grant this, particularly the alleged threat of physical harm to his family in the event they returned to Manila? Could Marcos have arranged the acceptance of the obviously faked passport of Ninoy (under the name “Marcial Bonifacio”) through the British in Hong Kong and the Taiwanese authorities? Could he have imposed upon these governments to let a fake passport holder slip through?
Ken Kashiwahara, Ninoy’s Japanese-American brother-in-law, writing his firsthand account in 1983 of that last plane leg at the Chiang Kai Shek International Airport before arriving in Manila (republished by The New York Times last week), said: “Ninoy had no problems going through immigration as Marcial Bonifacio… but as soon as he left the counter, the two ‘security’ men escorted him around the corner. I panicked. ‘This is it,’ I muttered. ‘He’s been discovered.’ I hurried through the immigration, rounded the corner and there was Ninoy, grinning. ‘That was the Taiwan garrison commander,’ he said, ‘and he just wanted to make sure I got through O.K. Can you imagine? A general?’”
The point I am driving at should be clear by now: There has always been a power that could supercede Marcos and any other president to this day. (Erap tried to insist on his way and got ousted, too.)
The official investigation of Ninoy’s assassination stops at Sgt. Pablo Martinez, the identified gunman. But after decades of incarceration and religious guidance from Msgr. Robert Olaguer, assigned by the late Cardinal Sin to minister to the spiritual needs of the 10 soldiers implicated in the assassination, Sgt. Martinez decided to come out with his personal knowledge of who the mastermind was.
On November 2007, Gloria Arroyo pardoned the convicted Ninoy Aquino killers on humanitarian grounds. And as the Aquino siblings denounced this decision, Msgr. Robert Olaguer came up to defend the soldiers to insist on their innocence.
Meanwhile, Esposo, in his aforementioned 2007 article, came to Danding’s defense saying, “What rules out Danding Cojuangco from being the mastermind is the fact that (he) was only in the money game during that time but was nowhere in the line of succession. He neither had the title to vie for it nor had command of the legions to be able to grab it...”
Years after the fall of Marcos that began with the Ninoy Aquino assassination, many US State Department bigwigs, among them former State Secretary George Schultz and then ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz, have come out to claim credit for the former leader’s ouster. They’ve stated this either in their memoirs or in various speeches which I have accessed by patiently searching on the Net.
The fall of Marcos caused a reversal of his nation-building programs; then restored and reinvigorated the power of the old privileged elite; demolished trade protection; and accelerated privatization and deregulation, which all led to the greatest transfer of wealth from the Philippine state’s coffers (and the people’s pockets) to global transnational corporations and their local partners. From then on, the sinister program to obliterate the existence of a sovereign Philippine Republic has all but ended with finality.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21 about “Ninoy’s Death: A False Flag Operation?”; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Friday, August 20, 2010
The money masters’ subversion of the peso
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/20/2010
The cat is now out of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)’s bag: New pesos are being printed without the knowledge of the Filipino people. And these will be circulated by December, according to the best information we got. Worse, the BSP is not duty-bound to inform anyone as to when, how or why this decision was made!
The 1987 Cory Aquino Constitution states in Article XII, Section 20 that “The Congress shall establish an independent central monetary authority… (which) shall provide policy direction in the areas of money, banking and credit. It shall have supervision over the operations of banks and exercise such regulatory powers as may be provided by law over the operations of finance companies and other institutions performing similar functions…” By “independent,” it means that the BSP does not even have to report to government whenever it does so to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).
The details of the BSP’s operations, contained in Republic Act 7653 or the New Central Bank Act, were passed during Cory’s time by the late Sen. Raul Roco, considered by some as “The Father of the BSP.” The law passed on old debts of the former Central Bank of the Philippines of around P300 billion to taxpayers (when the exchange rate then was still half of what it is today). Yet it established something even more insidious which very few know of: It organized a Monetary Board to govern the BSP and redefined the composition of the members of the board from five representing government and two from the private sector — which was the case in the old Central Bank board — to a reverse of five representing the private sector and two representing government. Although all are supposedly appointed by the President, the law predetermines that the private sector’s interests shall always dominate the board.
But that’s not all: The new pesos are being printed abroad in foreign money printing facilities instead of our own Security Printing Complex (built by Marcos in 1978 to ensure that the Philippines would have currency sovereignty). The excuse for this is that the new currency will have the most modern security features that would make it impossible to counterfeit. But have we had any reports of major counterfeiting problems with the peso to date? Unlike the dollar which is widely accepted across almost all borders, there is very little advantage to counterfeiting the Philippine peso because of its limited acceptability.
A complete change of a currency normally occurs in the wake of a revolutionary change of the existing political order, as when Marcos tried with the Bagong Lipunan notes, as well as, after Edsa I when Cory Aquino took over. This always results in the flushing out of savings, demonetization of hidden wealth, and the establishment of total financial control.
Of course, there had been new issuances in recent times such as Gloria Arroyo’s P200 bills, which were for a specific purpose and in limited amounts, which would not change the system substantively. But a total replacement of all the cash and coins in circulation means something far more extensive is afoot. Coming as this does with the new regime under PeNoy Aquino, who clearly doesn’t know that this is going on, it shows that the real money powers over our country had planned this long before the last elections, where they expected their surrogate to win through the Hocus-PCOS, to ensure that there will be no resistance to this “coup d’état” being carried out against our peso.
Our suspicions are further heightened by the fact that while this is happening, a great number of former employees of the WB continue to be appointed to high government positions.
From the Bureau of Internal Revenue to the Supreme Court; from the Presidential Management Staff to the government financial institutions and pension funds, elements formerly associated with the WB — who are invariably drawn from Big Business, financial conglomerates and other oligarchs and corporatocracies — are making the PeNoy Cabinet look very much like a structure run by these vested interests.
With the complete change of our money and coins commencing by the final month of 2010, we would have completely lost our Republic by next year if this isn’t stopped. By then, the program for a complete takeover of our state by the corporate powers, planned from Day 1 of Edsa II, would have been fulfilled. Then the Charter change referendum through another Hocus-PCOS will follow for the de jure separation of the richest resources of Mindanao for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front-US partnership.
Resistance by the usual means is now futile. These money masters totally control the money of the land — and consequently, the law and government, mainstream media, all elections, as well as, the guns and goons, and even the forces of coercion of the state.
Resistance by other means is imperative if the nation is to be restored to viability and sustainability. But are the forces of patriotism and nationalism still standing? Are there still clear hearts and minds that can discern the vision of a vibrantly free, just, and prosperous Philippines or have all but a few been reduced to unthinking zombies by these money masters?
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics [and Economics] Today, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/20/2010
The cat is now out of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)’s bag: New pesos are being printed without the knowledge of the Filipino people. And these will be circulated by December, according to the best information we got. Worse, the BSP is not duty-bound to inform anyone as to when, how or why this decision was made!
The 1987 Cory Aquino Constitution states in Article XII, Section 20 that “The Congress shall establish an independent central monetary authority… (which) shall provide policy direction in the areas of money, banking and credit. It shall have supervision over the operations of banks and exercise such regulatory powers as may be provided by law over the operations of finance companies and other institutions performing similar functions…” By “independent,” it means that the BSP does not even have to report to government whenever it does so to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).
The details of the BSP’s operations, contained in Republic Act 7653 or the New Central Bank Act, were passed during Cory’s time by the late Sen. Raul Roco, considered by some as “The Father of the BSP.” The law passed on old debts of the former Central Bank of the Philippines of around P300 billion to taxpayers (when the exchange rate then was still half of what it is today). Yet it established something even more insidious which very few know of: It organized a Monetary Board to govern the BSP and redefined the composition of the members of the board from five representing government and two from the private sector — which was the case in the old Central Bank board — to a reverse of five representing the private sector and two representing government. Although all are supposedly appointed by the President, the law predetermines that the private sector’s interests shall always dominate the board.
But that’s not all: The new pesos are being printed abroad in foreign money printing facilities instead of our own Security Printing Complex (built by Marcos in 1978 to ensure that the Philippines would have currency sovereignty). The excuse for this is that the new currency will have the most modern security features that would make it impossible to counterfeit. But have we had any reports of major counterfeiting problems with the peso to date? Unlike the dollar which is widely accepted across almost all borders, there is very little advantage to counterfeiting the Philippine peso because of its limited acceptability.
A complete change of a currency normally occurs in the wake of a revolutionary change of the existing political order, as when Marcos tried with the Bagong Lipunan notes, as well as, after Edsa I when Cory Aquino took over. This always results in the flushing out of savings, demonetization of hidden wealth, and the establishment of total financial control.
Of course, there had been new issuances in recent times such as Gloria Arroyo’s P200 bills, which were for a specific purpose and in limited amounts, which would not change the system substantively. But a total replacement of all the cash and coins in circulation means something far more extensive is afoot. Coming as this does with the new regime under PeNoy Aquino, who clearly doesn’t know that this is going on, it shows that the real money powers over our country had planned this long before the last elections, where they expected their surrogate to win through the Hocus-PCOS, to ensure that there will be no resistance to this “coup d’état” being carried out against our peso.
Our suspicions are further heightened by the fact that while this is happening, a great number of former employees of the WB continue to be appointed to high government positions.
From the Bureau of Internal Revenue to the Supreme Court; from the Presidential Management Staff to the government financial institutions and pension funds, elements formerly associated with the WB — who are invariably drawn from Big Business, financial conglomerates and other oligarchs and corporatocracies — are making the PeNoy Cabinet look very much like a structure run by these vested interests.
With the complete change of our money and coins commencing by the final month of 2010, we would have completely lost our Republic by next year if this isn’t stopped. By then, the program for a complete takeover of our state by the corporate powers, planned from Day 1 of Edsa II, would have been fulfilled. Then the Charter change referendum through another Hocus-PCOS will follow for the de jure separation of the richest resources of Mindanao for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front-US partnership.
Resistance by the usual means is now futile. These money masters totally control the money of the land — and consequently, the law and government, mainstream media, all elections, as well as, the guns and goons, and even the forces of coercion of the state.
Resistance by other means is imperative if the nation is to be restored to viability and sustainability. But are the forces of patriotism and nationalism still standing? Are there still clear hearts and minds that can discern the vision of a vibrantly free, just, and prosperous Philippines or have all but a few been reduced to unthinking zombies by these money masters?
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics [and Economics] Today, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
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