The Maidan and Edsa

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / February 24, 2014


It has become clear that a US-sponsored coup d’état has transpired in Ukraine. The legally elected government and president faced mobs in the streets of Kiev that began at what we may call a plaza called the Maidan. It looked like the “Occupy Wall Street” attempts in New York and parts of the US in 2011.

But there was one major difference: Whereas the “Occupy” protesters remained passive in the face of violent police dispersals, keeping their peaceful conduct despite the tearing down of their tents, or seeing war veteran-participants being knocked unconscious and left bleeding and the gratuitous spraying of tear gas straight into the faces of already subdued and handcuffed female protesters, Kiev saw the reverse.

In the Ukrainian capital, helmeted, masked mobsters wielding long iron rods chased and mauled police, or shot the latter with telescoped rifles, and threw Molotov cocktails that burned down government buildings. Yet the police were allowed to carry firearms only after suffering seven deaths from bullets and other violence.

The US and EU never condemned these protesters’ violence, led by US-paid rightwing thugs, which numbered, by all the different estimates we read, 2,000.

A “peace deal” including new elections, was subsequently signed to stem the bloodshed. But before the ink could dry, President Viktor Yanukovych (refusing to resign, reminiscent of Erap) had to flee to a southern city to maintain government.

Last Feb. 7, international media and the Internet released news and a leaked video of Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, in a private conversation with US diplomatic staff, saying, “F….k the EU.”

That’s because the EU, represented by the interests of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, wanted to install a different president contrary to the wishes of the US, which had wanted a former boxer tuned leader of the pro-West opposition in Ukraine to be installed in the coup that Nuland said the US had invested “$5 billion” in already.

It now seems that the US would settle for nothing less; and no “peace deal” to save the democratic process in Ukraine could stop it. Thus, President Yanukovych is in the city of Kharkov to maintain his government.

The present trouble started when Yanukovych signed an economic pact with Russia that would help Ukraine come out of its deep recession, with a $15-billion financial package and a long-term guarantee of cheap fuel prices. The EU, which engaged in a tug-of-war of sorts with Russia over Ukraine, could offer no economic aid at all, as we have seen for struggling EU members Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Italy et al.

The US, on the other hand, instead of investing in Ukraine’s economy, chose to invest in the coup.

The demographics of Ukraine is a major factor in the continuing troubles of the land. While ethnic Ukrainians dominate Western Ukraine, the South has many ethnic Russians who gave Yanukovych his electoral victory. Conversely, there is also a huge Ukrainian population in Russia.

“So what about the Ukrainian people?” the Saker wrote in Asia Times, “The EU needs them as slaves (market and cheap labor), the US needs them as pawns (in geopolitical game), and the only party which needs them prosperous is Russia. That is simply a fact of geo-strategy. If the Ukrainians are too stupid and too blinded by their rabid nationalism to understand that, then let them pay the price for their folly. If they are smart enough to realize it, then let them find the courage to act on it and make it possible for Russia to help them.”

But then, without real democratic elections being respected, the judgment of the Ukrainian people will never be known and only the US gets to “f….k ‘em all.”

What do events at the Maidan (Independence Square) have to do with Edsa? Maidan today is what Edsa was at Edsa I, the place where a US-led coup that was hatched as a conspiracy with local oligarchs fronted by mobs forced out the relatively independent Ferdinand Marcos for a completely pliant Cory Aquino.

After Edsa I, the Philippine economy was de-industrialized and its manufacturing and agro-industries withered. Not long after, poverty and unemployment exploded as national assets in electricity, water and infrastructure, along with all their revenues, were privatized, and as the commercialization of education and the expansion of the country’s debt and taxes commenced.

With the social order now imploding, it is clear that Edsa I has failed in all its promises. What we instead have are the electronic “dagdag-bawas” of our election body, as well as a national enslavement to debt and total import dependency that impoverish our people, which make the Philippines nothing but a US geopolitical toady.

Twenty-eight years later, with the US-led Edsa I coup now totally discredited, as seen in the crowds at the Edsa Shrine celebrations dwindling to just hundreds, tomorrow’s celebrations at the ground of Malacañang are precisely so in order to hide that fact.

Ukraine, after this latest coup, will miss the chance of having a balanced economy, benefiting from both Russia and EU, and will be downgraded to a mere market for the latter and a geopolitical tool of the US.

Some years from now, celebrations at the Maidan may look a lot like the pathetic celebrations of Edsa today.

(Watch GNN’s Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to “Sulo ng Pilipino” on 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

MRT 'Fangs Club'

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / February 19, 2014


The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and the Federation of Associations of Private Schools and Administrators (Fapsa) are at odds over the correct approach to the problem of horrendous traffic jams involving hundreds of thousands of private school-bound vehicles each day to be brought about by the start of the construction of 15 major road projects this year.

The MMDA proposed a four-day school week while the Fapsa proposed “carpooling.” I don’t see how either approach can work. The four-day school week does not reduce the number of vehicles while car-pooling reduces it only by half, at the most. The 15 road projects, in contrast, will constrict the roads involved by half or more.

For two decades now I have raised the need for private schools within the inner cities of Metro Manila to accept school busing of all their students and for government to organize a school bus consortium to equip this busing system with the latest safety, convenience, and security features.

However, echoes of Cory Aquino’s MMDA Chairman Elfren Cruz saying, “The rich will get angry at such a plan,” when he declined my proposal despite the concurrence of the Ateneo and Maryknoll school authorities with whom I had then tried to work, still come to mind. Former Quezon City Mayor Charito Planas, who supported my plan, wondered years later what ever happened to it.

I had proposed the mandatory school busing for private schools way back in 1992 to 1994 when the Metro Rail Transit was not yet running along Edsa. Now, we have the MRT 3 shuttling passengers between Taft and Monumento; and the Light Rail Transit from Muñoz to Baclaran, where one can transfer to LRT 2 at Recto to go to Santolan through Edsa-Cubao, where one can hop back to the MRT 3.

All these light rail systems, though, are already overloaded, especially the MRT 3 and LRT 1. I know because I take them regularly. The best and easiest solution to relieve road congestion is to bring both public and private transport passengers above the road. And for that to happen, the LRT-MRT system has to double its coaches.

MRT 3 was all set to almost double its number of coaches with the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) completing the requirements for the lowest cost bidder, Dalian Locomotive and Rolling Stock Company Ltd., CNR group of China. Dalian bid P3.759 for 48 coaches, P10 million lower than government’s estimate. The Aquinos tried to swipe the deal said to have used Ballsy Aquino-Cruz and husband Eldon’s cronies Yorgo Psinakis and Jorge Aquino-Lichauco, with the Czech company Inekon, for double that price. Only principled MRT 3 management professionals stopped this before being heaped with calumnies by the Aquino conspirators. The DoTC team that visited Dalian to verify its capabilities appeared on my GNN show.

Obviously, Dalian Locomotive could prove its capabilities, which was why the awarding of the project was scheduled. But, as expected, a monkey wrench was thrown in by the cronies of this Yellow Aquino government. This group, which I shall call the MRT “Fangs Club;” loves the MRT so much because all of its vampire-players have been sucking dry the blood of the system, with exorbitant fares charged to the MRT’s 750,000 daily passengers in order to fill the P60/trip fare this “Fangs Club” had imposed in the contracts signed by Fidel V. Ramos.

BS Aquino and Mar Roxas lie when they say government subsidizes MRT passengers to the tune of P7 billion a year. That subsidy is to the “Fangs Club.”

With the prospect of 48 new additional coaches for millions of MRT passengers close to reality, the “Fangs Club” petitioned the courts to restrain the awarding of the contract to Dalian Locomotive on the grounds that it (the “Fangs Club” or the MRT Corp. consisting of the original “investors”), being the so-called substantial owner still with a Build-Lease-Transfer contract, should have the right to purchase the additional coaches and that Dalian’s capabilities are in doubt.

To wit, Dalian has over ¥10 billion in annual revenues; exports trains and coaches to 20 countries; and supplies the country with the most extensive network of trains in the world, China.

With capacity-building measures of the light rail systems in place (maybe dedicating some coaches at peak school opening and closing times to students), and in coordination with a mandatory school busing system to shuttle passengers to and from MRT-LRT stations (with special entry and exit areas), this system would be a permanent, far cheaper, and economical mode of transport.

Billions in wasted fuel of chauffeured students’ cars and precious road space (space occupied by one private car for one or two passengers could hold 10 or more in a bus) would be saved.

But, as those in power are the “rich” and can see the problem only through their own stupid eyes, the “rich” are an essential part of the current traffic problem, along with other problems of society in general.

(Watch GNN’s Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to “Sulo ng Pilipino” on 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

Build Bricseus, tame the US

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / February 17, 2014


“C hina has not replaced America — and it never will.” For starters, China doesn’t want to be a global hegemon,” wrote Zack Beauchamp on Feb. 13, 2014. I read it on RealClearWorld among dozens of articles reacting to China’s rise.  Beauchamp echoes some of my own replies to fear-mongering China-bashers who conjure up the “aggressive” and “provocative” Chinese ogre. He takes the right perspective by saying that “China faces too many… regional rivals to ever make a real play for global leadership.” Indeed, there’s India, Russia, the EU and the US itself. More importantly, China sees the lesson of US overreach that is slowly and surely destroying that fading superpower.

However, just two days after that Beauchamp article, another writer was immediately stoking the fires of a “China threat.” Zachary Keck (“Of Course China Wants to Replace the US”) countered that “If China becomes the world’s most powerful country, it won’t be satisfied being America’s number two.” Keck’s basic arguments, though, only reflect the twisted obsession of quite a number of US chauvinists that there has to be “a number one” and that everyone else would want to be that — which the US has been for so many decades since the end of World War II, with its over 800 military-naval bases across the globe (the cost of which is destroying it).

And so the stream of anti-China misinformation and disinformation continues. Even before Keck’s opinion piece, there was this article by Robert Kaplan that really got my goat: “Why is China Really Provoking Its Neighbors?” Why raise tensions as much as they have in the Pacific Basin? Beijing’s recent declaration of new fishing rules in disputed territorial waters has raised the ire of maritime neighbors and the consternation of the United States. It follows on the heels of the recently declared air defense identification zone or ADIZ.”

First, China is neighbor to 14 countries sharing land borders with it and 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean); of these, only three countries are involved in the issues Kaplan identified.

Then Kaplan further errs: China has issues involving the Pacific Basin with only one country, Japan, while the Philippines and Vietnam have issues involving the claims in the China Sea. China bashers invariably generalize and gloss over inconvenient details just to impress upon the generally uniformed public the terms “aggression” and “provocation.”

In the Asean, China is in extremely friendly relations with the rest of its 10 members, making that eight out of 10. Cambodia is, of course, China’s bosom buddy while Malaysia’s defense officials see no problem even with Chinese coastal patrols traversing the commonly claimed sea territories. Only the Philippines has internationalized its territorial dispute with China.

The US and its minions are very uncomfortable with the rise of China and fear losing US hegemony, particularly its freedom to interfere and dominate the world. China poses no aggressive threat as it continues to stress that it needs a peaceful and harmonious environment to pursue its “dream” in order to benefit the region and the world.
China, however, understands the historical record of Western capitalist-imperialists and their need for “markets.” Though the West is using China as a manufacturing base today, time will come when the capitalist-imperialist West will again resort to the “creative destruction of war” where human lives are just incidental.

US chauvinists in what remains of the empire the US still holds (particularly in the Philippines) have difficulty getting used to the idea that a “one-superpower-world” can no longer hold. Another World War may well revive this, as world wars are “winner-take-all” pursuits where the winner becomes the hegemon; but a thermonuclear war immediately banishes that thought.

The real rebalancing that is needed is not the US coming to the Asia-Pacific but keeping it in its place so that the world can have a “balance of powers” toward productive peace and harmony. The US has to get used to the idea that it can and will never again regain its “single superpower status.”

Promoting the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) alliance plays a strategic role in keeping this pompous US ambition in check.

The Philippines, which has no foreign policy vision today, can begin to count again in the world community by taking this up as a mission. Activating the Philippines’ role in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which recently called for global disarmament, will be a great boost as well.

The Brics should become the Bricseus (Brics with the EU and US). China can nudge the US toward this by crowding US hegemonism out of Asia.

In a truly balanced world, we can spare our children, grandchildren, and future generations what will be immeasurably worse than what history has witnessed in two world wars.

(Watch GNN’s Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., this week on the “MRT TRO: Prolonging suffering”; tune in to “Sulo ng Pilipino” on 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)