DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
6/5/2006
In the wake of the harrowing experience of the Erap Five, my colleagues in the Edsa Tres movement and crusaders for justice for the oppressed President Estrada are now the targets of violence and more threats of violence. I take it upon myself to make known to the public, without the permission of some of those being victimized as they prefer to deal with it in silence, that Boy Morales and his group has been receiving intimidating communications meant to scare them into submission. All these we blame solely on the criminal gang of Gloria, Mike Arroyo, Chavit Singson et al.
No one is intimidated, if anything at all our movement’s resolve to oust Gloria’s regime of official criminal gangs and violence is further strengthened. Anyway, a regime based on violence is a pushover for our broad mass based crusade based on the call for justice for all Filipinos and for President Estrada as the embodiment of the nation’s victimization. We shall overcome and soon because our weapons of truth, reason, faith and the appeal to other oppressed and victimized sectors and movements of Filipinos is undoubtedly overpowering and always subdues falsehood and injustice.
Already, Gloria’s pogrom to wipe out dissenters and opposition activists that reached a crescendo with the Erap Five abduction and Sotero Llamas assassination is mobilizing an interfaith response calling for an end to the violence, bringing perpetrators to justice, and an end to the roots of this violence – none other that the regime of Gloria and all her machinations to cling to power like the Cha-cha. Gloria is the root of the violence in our society today as her regime was born in violence, and all Filipinos should be reminded of the blood and murder that attended Gloria’s debut during Edsa Tres.
“The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles”, is what Mahatma Gandhi once explicated to the world. Look through the quotation and you will see Gloria in some of the main elements of Gandhi’s deep insight, starting from the last which reflects the underhanded politics of Gloria from the very start and through her vice-presidency to Estrada while plotting with the corrupt generals from Day 1 to illegally grab power.
The rest describes the local and global society today which a good and visionary leadership would and should seek to start changing. We see in almost all religions the lust for power more than sanctity through service; new technologies are churned out but all for profit and none for charity; corporate profit dictates over all in globalization, free trade, liberalization, deregulation and privatization; at no time has knowledge been so available than this age of the Internet dominated by child pornography; and money begets money and leisure here and globally while poverty multiply.
Only a society guided by leadership with vision will see the nation and the people to see through the violence, pain and hunger and rise above it all and aim to liberate itself and the entire country from the entangled roots of violence. Once it was proposed the corporate world is the hope with its “corporate social responsility”– but after Enron in the U.S. or here with Mirant and the Lopezes’ PPA plunder, Yuchengcos’ Pacific Education or the Sobrpeñas’ CAP, they are clearly part of the roots of violence. The leadership for the nation will have to confront these corporate oppressors.
The military and police brass today are among the roots of violence through cowardice of the likes of Senga or outright conspiracy of corruption that the AFP and PNP participants in Edsa Dos are continuously committing. The violence against the Batangas governor cannot be without the participation of the military or police with the C4 explosives used – but that is not surprising, if as they themselves say it is part of a “jueteng war” then how can the PNP or AFP protectors not be involved? Thank goodness for the idealistic young officers who are stirring up the AFP and PNP.
Will the hope come from the CPP/NPA/NDF which has touted its nationalist ideology and “people’s war”? But its engaged in violence itself and not against the real perpetrators of Establishment violence but against the small soldiers and policemen, which alienates it from the vast majority of the people even though its organized force can manage to win a number of party list seats that’s never going to unite the vast majority; it won’t succeed anymore than the INC or Dating Daan factions with their respective millions can hope to dominate the religious scene even in the next lifetime.
A new leadership will arise, and it will be a coalition of leaders, groups, faiths and forces that will understand Gandhi’s insight on the roots of violence, use his non-violent struggle and even use his “civil disobedience” (as some of the Oakwood officers have called for), for that is the only way to unite the people and overwhelm Gloria and her criminal cabal, and smother her violence and greed (including that of the corporatocracy) with love, for the nation, its children and grandchildren, that can propel it to change in the manner that other oppressed societies in Latin America are now liberating themselves.
(Tune in M-W-F 6-7pm to 1098AM; T-Th 7:30-8:30am to 1242AM)
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Anti-terror and other laws
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/31/2006
There’s a turnabout amongst Filipino legislators who once supported the anti-terror legislation Arroyo and the U.S. embassy has been trying to push through Congress. They say they fear that such powers will be abused by Gloria to terrorize, torture, murder and oppress innocent citizens and dissenters. I am glad they have come around to my view from the onset of the anti-terror gig in 2001, although their understanding of the dangers is still limited to shortsighted anti-Gloria posturing, not appreciating that it’s intended to kill Philippine sovereignty and democracy.
Power corrupts and the corrupted hankers for absolute power which the anti-terror laws proposed will give. Yet, even in the U.S. the popular fear of anti-terror laws such as the Patriot Act is growing and even institutions such as the CIA, Pentagon and the Defense Department are revealing serious cracks over this because they know its meant to kill democracy. The clamor for impeachment of the anti-terror Bush and Cheney have also been growing. A report by Allan Uthman lists ten signs of conflict over the impending U.S. police state:
The clampdown on the Internet, the U.S. Patriot Act, the “long war” against terrorism theory of Bush (to justify endless conflict), establishment of “prison camps” in the U.S., “touchscreen voting machines” to manipulate elections, warrantless wiretapping (recently uncovered), “free speech zones” (much like our Freedom Parks) where right to free speech is limited to, high ranking protesters (six generals calling for Rumsfeld resignation) and the CIA counter-leaks to Bush’s leaks.
The temporizing in Filipino politicians’ change of heart is dangerous as they also say it may be all right under a new and different Philippine ruler. They are in effect still going to justify tyranny so long as it’s a different face? What they miss or deliberate keep silent about is that these anti-terror gigs is all about the Global Corporate Dictatorship the world corporatocracy (or kleptocracy) wants to install, and anti-terror laws will stifle the resistance to being taken over and exploited. It’ll be a world for their profit, and damn people’s sovereign will.
Look at the centers of the anti-terror war: Afghanistan, democracy so long as former Unocal executive, now Afghan President Karzai can open the pipeline of for Central Asian oil through Afghanistan; Iraq’s chaotic democracy so long as U.S. controls its oil. The Afghans and Iraqis know they are being robbed of their birthrights and the insurgencies there are growing stronger. No anti-terror war is needed where those who in power have wisdom, humanity and vision; any community ruled by such values would not have any terror threat.
It is the corporatocratic interests’ control of American power that engendered modern world terrorism in Afghanistan’s mountains in the 80’s - to feed the industries of war and control regions of the world. Where there is no terrorism they will create it, like terrorism in U.S. soil or in Europe and in our own backyard Mindanao, to introduce the “need” for anti-terror legislation. But even before the terrorism bogey there are other means to squeeze the vise, like the RP-US defense agreement now that allows the U.S. to “help” in crimes and other none defense problems.
There are other mechanisms too like Goebellian methods. A classic case is the Ozone scare their global media and NGOs whipped up. As we said years ago, the human CO² and CFC emission-global warming thesis is a hoax but it allowed their controlled politicians to ram through laws that force us to pay for products the West seek markets for. The ozone scare is now proven to be a hoax in a scientific work by Westhead and Andersen appearing in the May issue of Nature showing how the ozone layer has been recovering by nature’s own ways.
The Philippine Land Transportation Office is enforcing a law for car air-conditioning to shift from CFC’s to expensive HFC refrigerants which needs costly retooling. As I said when they passed that Clean Air Act: we are being forced to buy expensive coolants based on misinformation! Ditto for the mining law opening us to foreign exploitation: beware of media and government panhandlers to Lafayette and giant mining interests. No African country got rich from giving foreign miners free rein to their minerals; they are impoverished to virtual genocide.
On another killer, the debt trap: the West forced Third World “automatic appropriations” legislation for debt service which keep us in perpetually growing debt. Then they feign charity with “debt relief”, but a new World Bank report finds the HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) given debt relief deeper in debt after ten years. What the World Band cannot say is that the conditions for debt relief, i.e. power, water, and even education privatization cause further indebtedness. Do we now see the connection of Western gimmicks with laws they instigate in our country that adversely impact on us?
The nation’s focus today is on the anti-terror bill today but we must see the broader connection of the corporatocratic power in the world and how they use corrupt local politicians to legislate their immoral and illegitimate methods and ends. The culmination of the Western corporatocracy’s legalization of their global corporatocratic control is the anti-terror laws which they will use to clamp down on opposition to global exploitation.
(Tune in M-W-F 6-7pm to 1098AM, T-Th 7:30-8:30am to 1242AM)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/31/2006
There’s a turnabout amongst Filipino legislators who once supported the anti-terror legislation Arroyo and the U.S. embassy has been trying to push through Congress. They say they fear that such powers will be abused by Gloria to terrorize, torture, murder and oppress innocent citizens and dissenters. I am glad they have come around to my view from the onset of the anti-terror gig in 2001, although their understanding of the dangers is still limited to shortsighted anti-Gloria posturing, not appreciating that it’s intended to kill Philippine sovereignty and democracy.
Power corrupts and the corrupted hankers for absolute power which the anti-terror laws proposed will give. Yet, even in the U.S. the popular fear of anti-terror laws such as the Patriot Act is growing and even institutions such as the CIA, Pentagon and the Defense Department are revealing serious cracks over this because they know its meant to kill democracy. The clamor for impeachment of the anti-terror Bush and Cheney have also been growing. A report by Allan Uthman lists ten signs of conflict over the impending U.S. police state:
The clampdown on the Internet, the U.S. Patriot Act, the “long war” against terrorism theory of Bush (to justify endless conflict), establishment of “prison camps” in the U.S., “touchscreen voting machines” to manipulate elections, warrantless wiretapping (recently uncovered), “free speech zones” (much like our Freedom Parks) where right to free speech is limited to, high ranking protesters (six generals calling for Rumsfeld resignation) and the CIA counter-leaks to Bush’s leaks.
The temporizing in Filipino politicians’ change of heart is dangerous as they also say it may be all right under a new and different Philippine ruler. They are in effect still going to justify tyranny so long as it’s a different face? What they miss or deliberate keep silent about is that these anti-terror gigs is all about the Global Corporate Dictatorship the world corporatocracy (or kleptocracy) wants to install, and anti-terror laws will stifle the resistance to being taken over and exploited. It’ll be a world for their profit, and damn people’s sovereign will.
Look at the centers of the anti-terror war: Afghanistan, democracy so long as former Unocal executive, now Afghan President Karzai can open the pipeline of for Central Asian oil through Afghanistan; Iraq’s chaotic democracy so long as U.S. controls its oil. The Afghans and Iraqis know they are being robbed of their birthrights and the insurgencies there are growing stronger. No anti-terror war is needed where those who in power have wisdom, humanity and vision; any community ruled by such values would not have any terror threat.
It is the corporatocratic interests’ control of American power that engendered modern world terrorism in Afghanistan’s mountains in the 80’s - to feed the industries of war and control regions of the world. Where there is no terrorism they will create it, like terrorism in U.S. soil or in Europe and in our own backyard Mindanao, to introduce the “need” for anti-terror legislation. But even before the terrorism bogey there are other means to squeeze the vise, like the RP-US defense agreement now that allows the U.S. to “help” in crimes and other none defense problems.
There are other mechanisms too like Goebellian methods. A classic case is the Ozone scare their global media and NGOs whipped up. As we said years ago, the human CO² and CFC emission-global warming thesis is a hoax but it allowed their controlled politicians to ram through laws that force us to pay for products the West seek markets for. The ozone scare is now proven to be a hoax in a scientific work by Westhead and Andersen appearing in the May issue of Nature showing how the ozone layer has been recovering by nature’s own ways.
The Philippine Land Transportation Office is enforcing a law for car air-conditioning to shift from CFC’s to expensive HFC refrigerants which needs costly retooling. As I said when they passed that Clean Air Act: we are being forced to buy expensive coolants based on misinformation! Ditto for the mining law opening us to foreign exploitation: beware of media and government panhandlers to Lafayette and giant mining interests. No African country got rich from giving foreign miners free rein to their minerals; they are impoverished to virtual genocide.
On another killer, the debt trap: the West forced Third World “automatic appropriations” legislation for debt service which keep us in perpetually growing debt. Then they feign charity with “debt relief”, but a new World Bank report finds the HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) given debt relief deeper in debt after ten years. What the World Band cannot say is that the conditions for debt relief, i.e. power, water, and even education privatization cause further indebtedness. Do we now see the connection of Western gimmicks with laws they instigate in our country that adversely impact on us?
The nation’s focus today is on the anti-terror bill today but we must see the broader connection of the corporatocratic power in the world and how they use corrupt local politicians to legislate their immoral and illegitimate methods and ends. The culmination of the Western corporatocracy’s legalization of their global corporatocratic control is the anti-terror laws which they will use to clamp down on opposition to global exploitation.
(Tune in M-W-F 6-7pm to 1098AM, T-Th 7:30-8:30am to 1242AM)
A mid-year political assessment
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/29/2006
We are entering the year’s sixth month and an assessment is timely after: Countless massive popular demonstrations, several anti-Arroyo serious military protests by young officers and then higher officers, a number of dramatic reversals such as the bishopric apology to Estrada and the virtual exoneration by the results of the detained president’s testimonies in the Sandiganbayan, the defeat of the Cha-cha initiative, the resurrection of Estrada and the Edsa Tres forces as the principal and leading opposition leadership. The situation is crystallizing and polarizing.
Global events relative to the Philippine situation must be taken into account, and foremost among these is the revolution transpiring in our fraternal Latin American countries: the patriotic ex-colonel and once-deposed President Hugo Chavez’s triumph in Venezuela, Argentina successful debt re-negotiation and phenomenal economic growth afterwards, social activist Evo Morales victory in Bolivia and nationalization of it natural gas, Ecuador’s nationalization of oil company Occidental, deposed Fujimori impending return to Peru and expected victory of ex-colonel Ollanta Humala in the Peru’s elections.
These Latin American countries have many similarities to the Philippines. It’s not only their colonial past but also their domination by the U.S. and the conservative Catholic hierarchy, centuries of oppression by compradors classes that control and abuse their natural resources and economies, the internal communist-vs.-military conflicts triggered by the 50’s to 70’s proxy Cold War, the banana republic syndrome, and the debt trap and poverty that ensnared them all. Yet now all these countries of Latin America today are breaking the chains of the past.
A most significant insight we found in studying the Latin American situation is the triumphs of the patriotic, nationalist and popular leaders that come from the ranks of retired military officers, non-communist social activists and even from a “elite” patrician. Chavez and Humala are ex-colonels, Morales an indigenous populist leader, Argentina’s Krichner the anti-IMF patrician, while Tabara of Uruguay is a socialist and da Silva of Brazil a labor leader. Chile’s President Bachelet was a political prisoner during the Pinochet regime and now a liberal leader. They’re all break free U.S. stranglehold now.
Notable in all these countries is the earlier withering of the armed communist and anarchist movements. This apparently allowed the patriotic-nationalist forces such as military officers, social and political activists, to focus on the national problems instead of being diverted by the violent insurrection and insurgency. That’s confirmed by our reading of Chavez’s biography and now priming Peru to move forward after Fujimori’s capture of the Sendero Luninoso’s Abimail Guzman (which civil society and U.S. sponsored President Armando Toledo, who deposed Fujimori, wants to release).
The question can now be raised in the Philippines: is the CPP-NPA’s insurgency distracting the Filipino people from the true national-democratic liberation? That is what the Lava-ites have long contended. The CPP-NPA tactics in the field of engaging and liquidating small AFP units and small fry soldiers give the Establishment forces the propaganda ammunition raise the bogeyman of communism and lump all opposition forces, including the Estrada and Edsa Tres forces, idealist and reformist military officers, with it and isolate them all.
Picking up from the lessons of Latin America, it should become clear that when “vanguardist”, i.e. ideologically chauvinist, parties that tend to split the patriotic and nationalist constituencies are sidelined, the broad unity of the people may be attained more quickly. The CPP-NPA is not helping in the unity of the patriotic-nationalist forces with its obsession to promote Jose Ma. Sison as the sole inspiration for revolution, an armed struggle that only alienates the broad masses that still identifies with the lowly small soldier, and insistence on calling itself communist knowing full well that the overwhelming majority of Filipinos are religious and are turned of by that.
As bad as the “re-affirmists” (those who reaffirm Joma’s leadership) are the “rejectionists” led by Etta Rosales who have become as dissolute as the trapos, and their unprincipled flexibility made them tools of Gloria in the 2004 cheating and proclamation.
The worst among the split-ists are those of the Right, i.e. the Black and White (B&W) movement which would not count for anything (being without any mass base or support) if not for the not-so-hidden hand of the U.S. Embassy, the USAID, the Makati Business Club, Transparency Int’l and that caboodle of CIA fronts subverting Philippine sovereignty.
These people of the B&W abided by Gloria-Manapat’s slander against FPJ and the 2004 cheating results until the SGV gave instructions to pressure Gloria for the EVAT. But B&W is inconsequential compared to the “re-affirmists” who provide the Establishment the greatest ammunition to divide the people, giving GMA the excuse to constrain some AFP leaders who might otherwise have joined the movement for change. The anti-thesis to these split-tists is the emerging genuine patriotic-nationalist-reformist retired and active military officers, the progressive Catholic Church-nationalist economics coalition, and the popular Edsa Tres movement.
With President Estrada and FPJ’s (represented by Susan Roces) 40-50% support amongst the people, the unity of these genuine patriotic-nationalist forces could easily steamroller GMA and the oppressive forces. If we hope to see the same kind of liberating but peaceful politics of change as in Latin America then let us learn our lessons: leave behind split-tism and support the unity of genuine patriotic-nationalist forces until victory.
(Tune in M-W-F to 1098AM, 6-7pm and T-Th to 1242AM, 7:30-8:30am)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/29/2006
We are entering the year’s sixth month and an assessment is timely after: Countless massive popular demonstrations, several anti-Arroyo serious military protests by young officers and then higher officers, a number of dramatic reversals such as the bishopric apology to Estrada and the virtual exoneration by the results of the detained president’s testimonies in the Sandiganbayan, the defeat of the Cha-cha initiative, the resurrection of Estrada and the Edsa Tres forces as the principal and leading opposition leadership. The situation is crystallizing and polarizing.
Global events relative to the Philippine situation must be taken into account, and foremost among these is the revolution transpiring in our fraternal Latin American countries: the patriotic ex-colonel and once-deposed President Hugo Chavez’s triumph in Venezuela, Argentina successful debt re-negotiation and phenomenal economic growth afterwards, social activist Evo Morales victory in Bolivia and nationalization of it natural gas, Ecuador’s nationalization of oil company Occidental, deposed Fujimori impending return to Peru and expected victory of ex-colonel Ollanta Humala in the Peru’s elections.
These Latin American countries have many similarities to the Philippines. It’s not only their colonial past but also their domination by the U.S. and the conservative Catholic hierarchy, centuries of oppression by compradors classes that control and abuse their natural resources and economies, the internal communist-vs.-military conflicts triggered by the 50’s to 70’s proxy Cold War, the banana republic syndrome, and the debt trap and poverty that ensnared them all. Yet now all these countries of Latin America today are breaking the chains of the past.
A most significant insight we found in studying the Latin American situation is the triumphs of the patriotic, nationalist and popular leaders that come from the ranks of retired military officers, non-communist social activists and even from a “elite” patrician. Chavez and Humala are ex-colonels, Morales an indigenous populist leader, Argentina’s Krichner the anti-IMF patrician, while Tabara of Uruguay is a socialist and da Silva of Brazil a labor leader. Chile’s President Bachelet was a political prisoner during the Pinochet regime and now a liberal leader. They’re all break free U.S. stranglehold now.
Notable in all these countries is the earlier withering of the armed communist and anarchist movements. This apparently allowed the patriotic-nationalist forces such as military officers, social and political activists, to focus on the national problems instead of being diverted by the violent insurrection and insurgency. That’s confirmed by our reading of Chavez’s biography and now priming Peru to move forward after Fujimori’s capture of the Sendero Luninoso’s Abimail Guzman (which civil society and U.S. sponsored President Armando Toledo, who deposed Fujimori, wants to release).
The question can now be raised in the Philippines: is the CPP-NPA’s insurgency distracting the Filipino people from the true national-democratic liberation? That is what the Lava-ites have long contended. The CPP-NPA tactics in the field of engaging and liquidating small AFP units and small fry soldiers give the Establishment forces the propaganda ammunition raise the bogeyman of communism and lump all opposition forces, including the Estrada and Edsa Tres forces, idealist and reformist military officers, with it and isolate them all.
Picking up from the lessons of Latin America, it should become clear that when “vanguardist”, i.e. ideologically chauvinist, parties that tend to split the patriotic and nationalist constituencies are sidelined, the broad unity of the people may be attained more quickly. The CPP-NPA is not helping in the unity of the patriotic-nationalist forces with its obsession to promote Jose Ma. Sison as the sole inspiration for revolution, an armed struggle that only alienates the broad masses that still identifies with the lowly small soldier, and insistence on calling itself communist knowing full well that the overwhelming majority of Filipinos are religious and are turned of by that.
As bad as the “re-affirmists” (those who reaffirm Joma’s leadership) are the “rejectionists” led by Etta Rosales who have become as dissolute as the trapos, and their unprincipled flexibility made them tools of Gloria in the 2004 cheating and proclamation.
The worst among the split-ists are those of the Right, i.e. the Black and White (B&W) movement which would not count for anything (being without any mass base or support) if not for the not-so-hidden hand of the U.S. Embassy, the USAID, the Makati Business Club, Transparency Int’l and that caboodle of CIA fronts subverting Philippine sovereignty.
These people of the B&W abided by Gloria-Manapat’s slander against FPJ and the 2004 cheating results until the SGV gave instructions to pressure Gloria for the EVAT. But B&W is inconsequential compared to the “re-affirmists” who provide the Establishment the greatest ammunition to divide the people, giving GMA the excuse to constrain some AFP leaders who might otherwise have joined the movement for change. The anti-thesis to these split-tists is the emerging genuine patriotic-nationalist-reformist retired and active military officers, the progressive Catholic Church-nationalist economics coalition, and the popular Edsa Tres movement.
With President Estrada and FPJ’s (represented by Susan Roces) 40-50% support amongst the people, the unity of these genuine patriotic-nationalist forces could easily steamroller GMA and the oppressive forces. If we hope to see the same kind of liberating but peaceful politics of change as in Latin America then let us learn our lessons: leave behind split-tism and support the unity of genuine patriotic-nationalist forces until victory.
(Tune in M-W-F to 1098AM, 6-7pm and T-Th to 1242AM, 7:30-8:30am)
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