The port scam

The port scam
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 11-03-2014 MON)

"Manila truck ban knocks Philippines nine notches down World Bank's
Doing Business rank," declared a GMA News Online on Oct. 29 shortly
before noon. Nine hours later, that same site declared, "Philippines
rises 13 spots on WB's revised Doing Business ranking." In between
the two contradictory headlines at midpoint, or at 4:22 in the
afternoon, this was the reaction: "Government downplays Philippines'
slip in WB Doing Business report."

What is evident in the twist and turns of these headlines is the
pliability of the World Bank's reports. Were these the result of
simple PR or other elaborate efforts to portray certain interests in a
better light?

Particularly but not exclusively in the Philippines, government and
business inordinately value image, and generally do cover up unsavory
truth. That's because government and business--Big Business in
particular--are engaged in the sordid abuse of their powers to take
advantage of the nation. But the so-called multilateral institutions,
such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are in on
it too. So to them, perception is all important.

The contradictions in the said news outfit's reportage exposes the WB
as an unreliable source of information because it is similarly subject
to the allures and lobbying of vested interests.

For example, the WB said the Philippines raised its business ranking
by "improvements in... (ease of) getting electricity..." But that is
hardly an issue in this age of countries providing full spectrum
services, especially of power at cheap rates, to get business
investments.

The Arangkada Philippines Project of the Joint Foreign Chambers of
Commerce stated in 2012 that "The very high cost of power remains a
common complaint of businesses ... and a very important negative factor
... In 2010 a factory in the Philippines could pay more than twice as
much for power than a factory in Indonesia and Vietnam and almost
twice as much as a factory in Malaysia and Thailand."

The unwillingness to define the electricity issue correctly becomes
understandable only when one recalls that in 2001 it was the WB that
inveigled the Philippines to pass the Electric Power Industry Reform
Act and its radical privatization program of the state's power assets,
which is the root cause of the "highest power cost in Asia" bedeviling
the Philippines today. High power costs are without doubt the most
fundamental obstacle in the "ease of doing business" in the
Philippines, but the WB can't be expected to expose its own perfidy in
its survey and report. It is the journalist's duty to expose such
duplicity of the WB.

Going back to the first headline: Just four days earlier on Oct. 24
this was presented in another newspaper, "'Port logjam still a
scourge' ... Despite the recent lifting of the truck ban in Manila, the
National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said port
congestion remains a major threat to the expansion of the country's
external trade..."

Correlating this with another headline of May 29, which said, "Cargo
traffic rose 4.7 percent in first quarter despite truck ban -- PPA
(Philippine Ports Authority)," it becomes clear that someone is lying
about the truck ban and port congestions connection.

I talked to two port users, both importers, and it became clear to me
that the port congestion problem does not have anything to do with the
Manila truck ban--but has everything to do with the operators in
cahoots with two ruling party leaders (both in the cabinet of BS
Aquino, with one preparing to run in the next presidential race), as
well as port managers sharing the loot from the overtime charges
imposed on shippers, traders, exporters, and importers. Let us wait
for concerned legislators to open a formal investigation.

The question I'd like the public to ask are: 1) who caused the WB
reportage to be "revised" from a "nine-notch" fall to a rise of "13
spots" within nine hours and 2) why the persistence in laying the
blame for port congestion to the truck ban despite official
pronouncements to the contrary.

It is obvious to me that only the well-connected giant players have
both the vested interest, money, and the political clout with the
media, government, and even the WB to get these perfidious results.

If there's any doubt about the WB's capacity to connive with
oligarchs, one should study the exposés of its former officer turned
whistle-blower Karen Hudes on the Internet.

(Listen to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch
GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel
213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:15 p.m. and replay Sunday,
8:15 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and
visit http://newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com)

Westernocracy of addled minds

Westernocracy of addled minds
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 10-06-2014 MON)

It was once the playbook of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but
when it got too hot to handle, the US hid the same behind various
fronts and international foundations handing out funds to domestic
non-government organizations (NGOs), institutions, and parties for
falsely claimed "democracy" education and "good governance"
initiatives, but with the old CIA aim of using these paid elements as
5th Columns in societies where they are imbedded.

Back in 1953, the CIA's job was exemplified in the coup against
elected President Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran. Many assassinations,
coups, and wars in aid of the US' various regime change programs had
been carried out since then. Most recently, it was in Ukraine,
particularly at the Maidan in February 2014. Now they are trying it
in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong.

But Hong Kong and its mother country, China, are no European versions
of the "banana republics" of Latin America or of captive Eastern Bloc
states such as Ukraine, nor is any region or province of China one of
those struggling, impoverished countries that have seen the worst of
chaos and disastrous "failed state" scenarios of recent years, namely,
the "Arab Spring," where excited youths and smatterings of the middle
class, tickled by Twitter and Facebook bandwagons, create upheavals
praised by the New York Times, Foreign Policy magazine, et al., but
which end in heaps of broken dead bodies in endless civil wars,
countless suicide and IED bombings, or militia warfare.

Hong Kong is a premier world city that has prospered with its handover
to China, a milestone for Asia freeing itself from 19th Century
Western imperialism that I personally witnessed in 1997. The People's
Republic of China is not only the country that has lifted 500 million
of its people out of poverty within 30 years of its triumphant
revolution in 1949; it is also soon to bring its nation's economy to
become the largest in the history of mankind.

The US playbook for destabilization and "people power" programs may
work in impoverished and desperately stagnating countries, such as the
Philippines, but certainly not in Hong Kong and China.

Those British-accented parrots in Hong Kong, from British-Chinese
civil servants such as Martin Lee and Anson Chan pining for the days
of British Rule, as well as the infantile British-accented Occupy
Central student leaders, are not crusading for democracy but for
Westernocracy--the rule of the Western powers over Hong Kong again.

It was not surprising that rarefied Yellow tabloid, the Philippine
Daily Inquirer, hailed the Occupy Central agitators--for it was (and
still is) the newspaper that has moved for the restoration of total US
control of the Philippines ever since the US-engineered ouster and
kidnap to Hawaii of President Ferdinand Marcos aboard US Air Force
jets.

The PDI, to wit, headlined on its October 2, 2014 issue, "Filipinos
join HK protest" with a half-page shot of two supposed Filipinas and a
placard that says "Because I Love HK." It then quotes a certain Mang
Ben as claiming, "We brought along our kids because this is a teaching
opportunity for them to learn that, 'You know, your freedom, you have
to fight for it..."

Yeah. And that's why Mang Ben and 250,000 OFWs are in Hong Kong as
maids and peons.

But the irresponsible part of PDI's front page story goes beyond that;
it is its endangerment of Filipinos' jobs and security from possible
backlash in these tense times in Hong Kong.

Review Philippine reports the past few years on foreigners joining
Philippine protests: "BI: Foreigners joining protests to be deported"
(philstar.com, Oct. 29, 2008); "Canadian citizen who joined SONA rally
to be deported" (rappler.com, Sept. 14, 2013); "Foreigners warned
against marching vs pork" (inquirer.net, Sept. 17, 2013); and many
more.

Besides, these Yellow dumbos (and their US-funded Akbayan cohorts)
obviously know nothing about the Hong Kong Basic Law provision
pertaining to the autonomous region's elections and the background to
the players behind Occupy Central.

Tony Cartalucci on GlobalResearch writes, "Behind the so-called
'Occupy Central' protests ... is a deep and insidious network of foreign
financial, political, and media support. Prominent among them is the
US State Department and its National Endowment for Democracy (NED), as
well as NED's subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI)."

Mark Simon and Jimmy Lai, the men behind the anti-China Apple Daily
and Occupy Central back-stoppers, were caught with emails discussing
links with the CIA and "financial support for pan-democrats and the
planned Occupy Central pro-democracy protests, and Simon's role in the
transfer of money" (Ng Kang-chung, South China Morning Post, Aug. 11,
2014).

Yet the most disgusting image of Occupy Central is The Guardian's
photo on the founders of the movement: Rev. Chu Yiu-ming, academic
Benny Tai, and Chan Kin-man, in front of a huge Christian cross.
What's this, the Crusades in Asia, again, like the white man's
invasion of Japan, China, and Korea?

Obviously, there is a more fundamental fight underneath all these: The
attempt to stoke not just Westernocracy but the Clash of Civilizations
in this part of the world. So patsies and suckers beware! Your
addled brains may just flatline for good.

(Listen to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch
GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel
213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:15 p.m. and replay Sunday,
8:15 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and
visit http://newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com)

Manila's traffic problem is a class war

Manila's traffic problem is a class war
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-17-2014 WED)

For a year-and-half the City of Manila's residents and commuters
enjoyed deliverance from decades of horrendous traffic along its
streets. Mayor Joseph E. Estrada had been elected to solve the Manila
constituency's problems and he went at it with hammer and tongs. He
targeted traffic and was quickly faced with a concerted challenge from
provincial and colorum buses plying the narrow streets and avenues of
Manila, which made a depot wherever they chose. This he overcame and
traffic really eased. Not much later the truckers, with Big Business
behind them, and the incompetent national government started their
complaints.

The incompetent national government (particularly the Philippine Ports
Authority and the National Economic Development Authority), the
truckers and the Big Business interests, and foreign chambers of
commerce had over a year to respond to the City of Manila's traffic
alleviation operations but never took the necessary steps to tackle a
problem building up then in Manila's port area. A year and a half
later, we are told that one of the major constraints in the port area
is the accumulation of tens of thousands of unloaded containers that
have taken up the spaces for parking of thousands of loaded container
vans or those to be loaded and dispatched.

PPA general manager Juan Sta. Ana admitted that prior to the build-up
of empty container vans in the port, the City's truck ban was not a
problem. The daytime truck ban caused fewer trucks to egress, from
5,000 to 6,000 down to 3,500 a day. The question for the PPA general
manager is: Why didn't he do something about that then? One possible
solution to that is to ship out those empty containers to Subic or
Batangas ports by barges and other maritime route. It would have cost
a sum but the alternative is what we had--billions of pesos lost to
traffic standstills, and a public backlash--which buck Malacañang,
PPA, NEDA, and Big Business have tried to pass to the truck ban.

Malacañang could have done what the PPA wasn't bright enough to do,
but its brilliant geniuses didn't give a hoot until it became a
national crisis. Mayor Estrada's decisive action on a decades-long
problem of the City of Manila's constituency did solve the traffic
mess, where neglect and failure marked successive national governments
installed by the ruling class of Big Business oligarchs, as well as
corrupt Edsa I and II Yellow political and government bureaucrats.

Ferdinand Marcos had built thousands of kilometers of roads. Cory
Aquino built only the Ortigas flyover in six years but her oligarchs
raked in trillions while corrupt politicians feasted on her
Countryside Development Fund (pork barrel) legacy.

As Cory's oligarchs and Yellow politicians wallowed in the bacchanalia
of profits, little investment went into transport and port
infrastructure.

Today, we have the highest port service rates in the world, according
to former NEDA chief Romulo Neri, who made a presentation on this to
then Palace occupant, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and this was what led
to Neri's persecution in the NBN-ZTE case, where he was, in fact, sort
of a whistle-blower.

On the other hand, the business interests that lord it over in the
ports also do so in many of the lucrative privatization and
public-private partnership deals--from the quick profits in the
country's transmission grid to new, wasteful casino operations.

The biggest headache of this society--in traffic or other aspects of
the economy--are the oligarchs. The rich, as a social class, simply
wield too much disproportionate power for their interests and against
the general welfare. I saw this problem in 1992 when I thought I had
a viable solution to the traffic problem.

After months of study, and consultation with schools such as Ateneo de
Manila, and after seeking support from other citizens, like former
Quezon City Mayor Charito Planas, I proposed to the Metro Manila
Development Authority that mandatory school bussing for exclusive
school students be instituted to remove up to 200,000 cars from the
roads.

The Ateneo had approved the proposal and we were working on getting
the support of De La Salle and others, but when I discussed it with
the MMDA chair at that time, I was flatly told that "The rich will get
angry with us."

The City of Manila's traffic problem today has, as an underlying
condition, a class war--where the rich and powerful have gotten their
way through a government totally subservient to them and where the
poor do not have any say at all. What Manila's traffic woes have so
far uncovered is a ruling class that neither has any commitment to the
general welfare nor creativity to fashion a solution that can give
everyone a win-win solution. And it is absolutely reflective of how
the entire country has been messed up all these years.

(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable
Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:15 p.m. and replay
Sunday, 8:15 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5
p.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit
http://newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com)