Manila's greatness

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

4/24/2013

Daily Tribune

Acomprehensive overview of modern world history would never be complete without the City of Manila. From the middle of the Second Millennia, from the Galleon Trade to last major city to fall in Japan's Second World War Empire, Manila has figured among the center of world focus. Recently, however, Manila is being remembered mainly for the tragic Luneta Hong Kong tourists' massacre and as one of the dirtiest cities in the world. I personally experienced the latter when I stepped off the LRT (Light Rail Transit) station at Carriedo and walked down its steps, which are being made the home and toilet of many of the homeless poor of the city. At night and wherever lighted, Manila's streets are a garish carnival of tasteless low standing street lamps that blind (if not, completely turn-off) motorists instead of lighting the way.

When the current administration of the City of Manila that started in 2007 removed various "tourist spots" for alleged immoralities, including the very well-patronized Boardwalk shops, the new mayor did not foresee the adverse impact on employment. Today, unemployment is the major problem of the citizens of Manila, where the urban poor communities are world-renowned. This in turn had had a very serious deleterious impact on the revenues of the city, probably equaling the impact of the loss from graft and corruption in the Manila mayor's office. Although vehemently denied by city hall officials, the City of Manila's budget deficit today stands at P3.5 billion, as published in various newspapers based on a CoA (Commission on Audit) report. The city is indeed in dire straits.

The CoA Web site contains the 2011 annual report on the Manila city government. Under its Significant Findings and Recommendations No. 18 report, it says: "The funds withheld for the BIR, GSIS, Pag-IBIG and PhilHealth in the amounts of P237.826 million, P97.664 million, P0.172 million and P20.794 million, respectively, were not remitted on time," while item No. 12 reports that "the city's available cash of P1.006 billion" including the remittances "is insufficient to cover liabilities" amounting to P3.553 billion.

The business and jobs losses in the city have obviously contributed in a major way to the massive decline in its revenues leading to this deficit — a deficit that the present city government has offered no solution to, except to lie through the skin of its teeth by denying the CoA report. What shameless chutzpah indeed.
The other major hemorrhage of revenues, of course, is graft and corruption. Retired Gen. Bobby Calinisan, once an aide to the incumbent city mayor, left the latter's entourage long ago to denounce the sleaze rampant in city hall. The hemorrhage is as yet unquantifiable without official investigation; but from the reports of whistle-blowers, the huge market and parking fee collections have allegedly been diverted to private pockets of the official family for years.

Being with the Yellow administration coalition protects the present city officials and this is why, if Manileños are wise, they should consider seriously every effort to change the present administration not only to restore business and jobs, but also to find solutions to the deficit and get to the bottom of the anomalies plaguing their beloved city.
Former President Joseph Estrada threw his hat into the ring in the hotly-contested mayoralty race after two dozen councilors and the vice mayor of Manila pleaded with him to lead the ticket against the feared and domineering Alfredo Lim.

Lim, known as the "Dirty Harry" in local law enforcement circles for a string of alleged "liquidations," is also said to have sprung a son from a "drug pushing" case and winning at a lottery he was investigating, among many issues — not to mention his infamous role in the botched handling of the Luneta hostage crisis in 2010.
But what is important in the current duel of the two elder Philippine politicians is not the increasingly agitated incumbent mayor but the former President who is preparing for the restoration of Manila's glory with the same vision he had for the country. Though thwarted by vested interests in the Edsa II coup of 2001, he hopes to prove himself this time in the nation's capital.

Estrada's visionary plans for Manila have been prepared by top notch professionals, such as former National Treasurer Liling Briones who presented a clear-cut plan to resolve Manila's budget deficit posthaste; an economic and livelihood plan led by a UN consultant that includes the replanting of mangrove trees (bakawan) to revive Manila Bay's shores, boosting tourism as a jobs multiplier, impact housing projects in the urban poor centers, the transfer of the Pandacan oil depots (remember the recent Texas chemical plant explosions), among many others, in an inch-and-a-half working plan already ready for implementation as soon as Estrada takes charge.

But I have one worry, the precinct count optical scan machines are already proven to be a cheating machinery and I can only hope Estrada's watchers are ready for it. Otherwise, Manila's greatness will never again see the light of day.

(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., on "A Vision for Manila" with Prof. Liling Briones of Kaakbay; also visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)

Set up or frame up?

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

4/22/2013

Daily Tribune

The arrest of the alleged second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing ushered in a celebratory bonanza for the US mainstream media (MSM). "We got him," they trumpeted; "Prayers and jubilation," one headline declared with pictures of crowds massing in apparent thanksgiving. Like the aftermath of the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden where motorcades that were launched to celebrate this were emblazoned in US media, the Philippine MSM apishly follows it with headlines such as "Terror is over," as if it was a terror event in the Philippines.

While the spotlights were super bright on the police chase and as stolen snapshots of the arrested 19-year-old second suspect appeared in front pages, shadows cast on the protagonists' backgrounds raise many questions.
The US alternative media have focused on many telltale signs of a possible "false flag" operation. The Web definition of false flag is "a terrorist act committed by one group for the express purpose of discrediting another group, which is framed for it."
The US MSM are already dragging along the uncritical and unquestioning among their media audiences to conclude that the Chechen brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were actually the culprits in last week's bombing.

But what the MSM and government spokesmen are not raising questions about — which is the focus of the alternative media — is that recorded closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage depicted the presence of private security contractors on the scene dressed similarly and carrying similar black backpacks as the Tsarnaevs.
One CCTV snapshot shows two of the private security contractors standing around 12 feet away from where the "pressure cooker" bomb exploded and were seen leaving just before the bomb went off (see more of the story and pictures at globalresearch.org). Yet, there is no CCTV video or screenshot of the Tsarnaev brothers close to the blast. Are US authorities still in the process of "producing" them?

Meanwhile, the private security (or mercenary) contractor identified by alternative media by the company logo on some of the operatives, which looked like the Phantom comic hero skull logo, is Craft International, owned by bemedalled American hero and top SEAL sniper (with a 160 kills), Chris Kyle, who was also killed by a former fellow Marine. Well, problem solved, as Craft's motto "Violence does solve problems" says.
The moment I saw pictures of the Tsarnaev brothers on TV as the bombing suspects, I immediately wondered why they would walk around without disguises if they were planning to plant a bomb in the areas well known to be covered by CCTV.

Later, TV audiences were told of an arrest and a picture was shown apparently of the older Tsarnaev face down, legs crossed, and hands up in the air as police are known to instruct suspects to do; but not long after, it was announced that the older Tsarnaev brother was dead. Gory pictures of the dead Tamerlan Tsarnaev are now on the Internet, with a huge gash on his side, which some accounts say is from being run over by a vehicle.
Then there was the killing of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police officer, the circumstances around which are still unclear up to this time — which is also the case with the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the boat.

The Boston operations of the police are now expectedly being lionized as "heroic," but the lockdown of 400,000 people for several days for the marathon manhunt of one suspect who ends up being arrested on the tip of a private citizen, and not the sledgehammer or shotgun approach, does not sound to me like an efficient, effective, and highly skilled police force.
The massive use of heavy mobile equipment, helicopters, and countless screaming and flashing police cars looked more like a movie production than a police operation.

Maybe the actual intent, as theorized by millions Tweeting on the Internet, is "mind conditioning" for all the legislation and budget sought for the various security, intelligence, and military "War on Terror" apparatuses of the US government, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) abetting terror plots to fuel this.
As James Corbett (of Corbett Reports' "How the FBI Fosters, Funds and Equips American Terrorists") said, "After decades of conditioning, the public automatically equates such terrorism with Muslim radicals … (Yet) the evidence shows that every major terror plot on American soil in the past 10 years has been fostered, funded and equipped by one organization: The FBI."

Of course, by now our studious readers should know — with the proper research — that the Tsarnaev brothers were already in the FBI's radar years ago, with the mother and an aunt saying that the brothers were "handled" by the FBI for years.

So, were they patsies, set up, framed, then murdered; or were they maimed physically and psychologically to do the bidding of those who would have many uses for "terror stories"? Just asking.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., on "Liling Briones, Kaakbay, and Estrada's Plan to Restore Manila's Greatness"; also visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)

Rising hope

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

4/17/2013

Daily Tribune

On all fronts, the prospect for global and national betterment is on the rise. Various developments engender rising hopes, but the most fundamental of these has been the growing awareness of people of the house of mirrors they have been herded through all these years by the circus and show masters that rule their lives. These circus masters are the ruling powers everywhere in the world conspiring to keep nations and people captive with misinformation and disinformation in order to maintain control and dictate their destinies. But one by one the myths that have deceived the peoples are falling.

In the Philippines, the unmasking of some of the key deceptions of the past is gaining traction. One of the biggest lies has been the sanctity of Philippine elections and the "respectable" people who run it, such as the lithe and "sweet," Vatican-blessed Tita de Villa of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), her election watchdog.

The Tribune headlined the report that groups have accused the PPCRV of being a "poll fraud agent." This, of course, has taken a long time to become common knowledge, especially considering that this should have been the common sense conclusion back in 2004 when military officers refusing to participate in wide-scale electoral fraud for Gloria Arroyo (e.g., Colonels Ariel Querubin, Francisco Gudani, and Alexander Balutan) already blew the whistle and a year later NBI deputy director Sammy Ong and Isafp agent Vidal Doble produced hard evidence of this via the "Hello Garci" tapes.

Statistically speaking, the 2004 elections were also proven by the late IT expert Mano Alcuaz as well as progressive IT pioneer Obet Verzola to be a calculated cheating operation. Yet, throughout that election and the years that followed, PPCRV (with Tita de Villa as its head) remained quiet about it.
In the course of reviewing the PPCRV, De Villa's record, and the fraudulent 2004 polls, I stumbled across a Gloria Arroyo hack writing in the Inquirer disputing Mano Alcuaz's statistical studies on that electoral exercise. Under the title, "Ghost Stories on the 2004 Election Fraud," this writer even suggested that it was FPJ who cheated in 2004! Like De Villa, the recruited writer for another newspaper by a fellow journalist who now owns that newspaper — must also be exposed, but we will leave their names to the readers to decipher.

It's a pity that the Catholic Church and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) took so long to admit the truth about the PPCRV and De Villa, and, for that matter, the plain truth that Philippine elections have always been a sham; but we will no longer look a gift horse in the mouth, as we are thankful that the CBCP is now exposing the fraudulent Smartmatic and its PCOS machines.

On the global front, the focal danger to mankind — and that also means my countrymen in the Philippines and my own family, children, grandchildren and future generations — is the inhuman designs of the Western ruling elites, the US, Britain, Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and Israel, to restore their hegemony over the world at any cost — including thermonuclear war.

Thankfully, by their own perverted greed and twisted minds, the ruling elites (organized around the Bilderberg group, among other alliances) are also completely exposed, with their economic-military clout systematically cut down by the economic crises they themselves spawned on their home ground.
Such internal crises can only weaken the West in the coming years. One recent example is yesterday's Boston Marathon bombing where three reportedly died and scores were injured. Whoever is really behind it, one message is clear: US domestic stability will suffer greater dislocation in the years ahead.

What is important for my own family, nation and region called Asia is that the US "pivot" or refocusing of its military resources may truly be more acoustics than reality. As John Feffer writes in Asia Times, "the promised bump up of US capabilities in the region will probably, because of US budget cuts, turn out to be a reduction. Panetta predicted that sequestration would leave the United States with the smallest ground forces since 1940, a fleet of fewer than 230 ships, and the smallest tactical fighter force in the history of the US Air Force … The Pentagon has nevertheless insisted that the pivot is happening and recently sent a new class of combat ships to Singapore as proof. But if you believe that the 'Pacific pivot' will mean a larger US footprint in the region, think again."

In the meantime, China is increasing its military budget while North Korea is perfecting its missiles. Even though this space is not rooting for China or North Korea, we are rooting for equalizing the balance of military power so that no power can claim a decisive advantage — for in this balance of power, Asia and the Philippines will find the gale forces cancel each other out, thus, calming the seas of our region.

Most unfortunately, the BS Aquino III regime is trying to give strategic advantage to the US yet again by offering our military bases, further exposing the current Palace occupant's absolute bankruptcy of vision for peace and prosperity for the region and the country.

(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., on "Ratings upgrade: It's the eVAT stupid!"; also visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)