Ce sont des hypocrites

Ce sont des hypocrites

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 01-14-2015 WED)

 

The response of many anti-war, anti-imperialist, human rights, and peace activists expressing themselves on alternative media to the “Je suis Charlie” slogan has been “Je ne suis pas Charlie” (We are not Charlie), a clear denunciation of the hypocrisy of those rallyists, writers, pundits, and global political leaders who uphold the wrong principle by calling for the wrong response (vengeance) and maintaining the wrong message (discrimination) in light of the Charlie Hedbo incident and the cry of the oppressed peoples.

 

A surviving member of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists’ group, Dutch-born Bernard Holtrop, said this of the many personalities who joined the Je suis Charlie Paris unity march: “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends.”  Indeed, with personalities like Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who thinks nothing of bombing to death Palestinian children and women; or the US State Department’s Victoria Nuland, who triggered the Ukrainian coup that has now killed 5,000 ethnic Russian civilians in East Ukraine; or French leaders who’ve caused 50,000 deaths in Libya and destroyed that nation, I, too, vomit.

 

MailOnLine reports that Bernard Holtrop found the new fame of Charlie Hedbo “laughable.”  Alternative media have published many articles of genuine freedom advocates: Justin Raimondo’s “March of the Hypocrites” (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40681.htm); Chris Hedge’s “Message from the Dispossessed” (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40677.htm); and Dr. David Halpin’s “Je suis Ali Abbas: The Forgotten Victims of State Terrorism” (http://www.globalresearch.ca/je-suis-ali-abbas-the-forgotten-victims-of-state-terrorism/5424384).

 

It should not escape the serious analysts of such terror events that there are sufficient newspaper accounts of how the four “terrorists” involved in the Charlie Hedbo and Kosher store attacks have histories with Islamist rebel-terrorist groups operating in Syria, Yemen, and other countries where such movements are supported by Western funding, training, and arms supply, and under close surveillance by the Western authorities.  Read “Charlie Hebdo Killers Armed and Trained in Syria--Terrorism Made in France?” from the Activist Post, and you’ll get the sense that the events were somehow allowed to happen by elements in the security apparatus.

 

GlobalResearch’s report, “Ankara Mayor Gökçek: ‘Mossad is Behind the Paris Attacks’,” alleges that the deadly attacks in Paris “are the result of France expressing support for Palestine, and that Israeli intelligence is behind the attacks,” as the semi-official Anadolu news agency reported.  We must recall that just prior to the Paris attacks, several European states had already signified support for Palestine’s membership in the UN.  This incident now puts France in a difficult position vis-à-vis its population already brainwashed by mainstream media’s anti-Muslim take of the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher store attacks.

 

The main argument of the “Je suis Charlie” multimillion marchers is that they are marching for Western civilization values of “freedom of speech” and the “use of the pen against bullets.”  But the 500 year-old history of Western nations using the cannon to invade Third World nations (that continue today with drones), maiming and killing thousands upon thousands in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan et al. should show these historically-dumbed down Western peoples that the rest of the world may not see them in the same light that they do.

 

The West is now getting its comeuppance of sorts from centuries of imperialist policies.  So long as Western populations fail to reflect upon these truths and their ruling classes’ continuing oppressive, murderous, imperial adventures on the rest of the world, the carnage will continue as more zeroes will be added to the number of the dead.

 

It is the duty of global media, and especially alternative media, to educate Western populations with the true story of global terrorism and the West’s provocateur role, in the face of the blowback of Islamist “shock and awe” inevitably rising in frequency and severity.

 

Unless Western peoples learn the whole truth and force their ruling powers to cease the oppression and murders by their armed and covert forces in the Third World (most victims of which are Islamic), their protests against terrorism and bigotry will amount to nothing but sheer hypocrisy--Ce sont des hypocrites--as there will be no peace anywhere in the world and in these Western peoples’ homelands.

 

(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 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 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

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Modernizing faith

Modernizing faith

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 01-12-2015 MON)

 

Last December, at a round table discussion on Philippine-China issues for a visiting professor from Yonsei University held at the Ricardo Leung Center for Chinese Studies at the Ateneo de Manila, one comment arose: “The number of mainland Chinese Catholics is growing.”  My reaction: “Do we want to see China become an economic backwater like Catholic-dominated Latin American countries or like the Philippines in Asia?”

 

That said, the basic conditions of human existence and ethical and moral behavior is indeed a gnawing need of all peoples.  Even the atheistic communist leadership of China understands this.

 

In 1980, supreme leader Deng Xiaoping enunciated the “socialist spiritual civilization” (reemphasized by Jiang Zemin in the 1990s), an ideological drive to reflect the improving material conditions of society in social transformation, raising political consciousness and morality to mitigate “nihilism, commercialism, hedonism and consumerism… in the course of modernization.”

 

It is estimated that mainland China has 100 million Christians today and projections about its growth are hyped by Western media, even though it can decline as well with further economic advances as in most parts of the world.

 

A mainland Chinese cousin, whom I and another Chinese-Filipino cousin had the pleasure of entertaining, recently visited the Philippines.  When the subject of religion came up, this cousin of ours declared himself a Christian (without distinguishing between Catholic and non-Catholic).  This, he said, is because Christianity promises an afterlife if he behaves.  My other cousin interjected: Isn’t Christianity (lumped with Catholicism) called “tsia kaw” (Hokkien for “eating religion”) because Christian missionaries offered food for conversion at a time when “old China” was plagued with famine?

 

According to Albert Einstein, “If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

 

I am, at 64 years of age this year, at the pre-departure as seniors would like to joke; but I felt more terror about the problem of death in my youth.  As an acolyte serving mass, I remember squeezing out tears to show piety.  But in light of my rational mind, I have come to terms with what Einstein once said: “The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion.  It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology.  Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity.”

 

The distance from faith in the Black Nazarene and Jesuit anthropologist Teilhard de Chardin’s effort to reconcile his Catholic faith with scientific experience (an irreconcilable contradiction that led him to be near excommunication) was what started me toward seeking spiritual truth in scientific insight.  There I discovered that we can find solace and our basis for a moral structure and spiritual optimism.

 

Max Planck, the father of quantum physics, held that “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together.  We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind.  This mind is the matrix of all matter.”

 

But that mind isn’t in the form of a brain that humans conceive but a “cosmic brain” that is formed by the stuff that makes up the universe, including each and every human being and living thing.

 

As such, three modern scientific insights led me to my “religion” today: Quantum mechanics and its “spooky actions” such as quantum entanglement; “biocentrism” where the universe is an unfolding consciousness and our human consciousness participating in creating it; and the theory of the “morphogenetic universe” where all living things and human individuals are in a “field” (visualize iron filings forming fields around a bar magnet) and our decisions and actions are retained in the “field” as specie lessons for all time.  From these scientific insights I conclude that elements that constitute “me” are indestructible and my moral acts have permanent consequences in the “field.”

 

But the all-important question to 99.9 percent of human beings is “What happens after death?”  Do I go on living as “I,” in heaven or hell; do I exist no longer as “I” with eternal life around dozens of virgins?  My answer: “Did you exist when you were conceived in the womb and before the world molded your personhood?”

 

As there was no “person” then, why should there be an afterlife?  Nonetheless, the force that gave life is still there and that is what or who we really are, waiting to be reborn.  That’s Buddhism’s view and ideal (which Einstein says is closest to that cosmic religion)--to be and act as one before one became an “ego.”

 

(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 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 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

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Justice is beyond the courts

Justice is beyond the courts

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 01-07-2015 WED)

 

Monday morning I joined the different Bayan groups in filing the motion to stop the mass transit system fare increases imposed by the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC).  In an update the day later I was told that the Supreme Court (SC) would convene on January 9 to consider the matter.

 

The filing of the motion, assisted by the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL), was a significant act that succeeded in galvanizing public opinion against the fare hikes.  It shed light on the fraudulent claims of government in justifying the fare increases and exposed the scams behind the build-lease-transfer scheme engineered by Philippine finance oligarchs in cahoots with their controlled politicians.

 

While the TRO on the MRT fare hike is awaiting the SC’s deliberations, another court has decided that the 2013 water rate hikes implemented by the two private water concessionaires for Metro Manila and its environs--acts that were deemed illegal by the water regulatory agency, Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) due to disallowed charges to water consumers (such as the corporate income taxes of the two companies)--are to be upheld.  This court, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), is the arbitration venue that the two private firms, namely, Maynilad and Manila Water, brought their case to in 2013 and which this column predicted that same year would decide against consumers’ interest.

 

Water rate hikes for the opening of the year 2015 now consist of a double whammy--the first from the Foreign Currency Differential Adjustment (FCDA) clause of the concession agreements despite the peso strengthening against most currencies (that is, hikes up to P9.12/30 cu. m.) and the second, the 2013 water rate hike upheld by the ICC arbitration court in a decision dated Dec. 29, 2014 as Filipinos were preparing for New Year’s celebrations, announcing that “the Appeals Panel... upheld the alternative rebasing adjustment of Maynilad.”  As a result, the company’s stock price went up, and Filipino water consumers will now pay a 9.8-percent increase on P31.28/cu. m.

 

The other private company’s appeal with the same body is awaiting decision early this year and is expected to favor the water oligarchs again.  Manila Water in 2013 proposed a P5.83/cu. m. increase in its basic water charge of P24.57/cu. m., although then it was ordered by MWSS to reduce tariffs by P7.24/cu. m. due to disallowances of many of its expenditures.

 

All these increases will become retroactive and charged on a “staggered” basis, supposedly to mitigate the negative impact on consumers and the economy.  That they have to “stagger” the rate hikes shows that these water companies and the MWSS know how debilitating these increases will be for Filipino households.

 

The effect of all these rate hikes will be a further erosion of the purchasing power of the Filipino working classes and a dampener to consumer spending on other commodities that would have otherwise fueled a wider base of the productive economy.  The little hopes of consumer upticks from the oil price crash dividend would be significantly wiped out by these increases in water and the MRT-LRT fares, and more of the poorest would be alienated from these basic services.

 

This is simply a suicidal economic policy designed to sate the greed of transnational financial oligarchs, who continue to be fed by the prevailing economic paradigm of privatization and globalization made into law by our legislature.

 

While the ICC arbitration court has confirmed our prediction that any consumer welfare case raised before it will inevitably lead to defeat and satisfaction of the global financial oligarchy’s interest, the Philippine courts still present an image of reliability.

 

However, from my experience in raising such issues before the SC, we, consumers, lose 9 out of 10 cases; and the one case we would win would be a Solomonic decision in favor of the oligarchs--such as the December 2013 case of “market manipulation” by a power distributor, which the SC treated only as a “market failure,” with the culprits getting off without even a slap on the wrist.

 

Still, raising these consumers’ issues before the courts generates enough public interest, raises the level of public consciousness, and prepares us for the next level of collective action that could someday lead to real physical occupation of the political and economic spaces by the people and their genuine avatars.

 

(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 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 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

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