Sulo ng Pilipino

Monday, August 24, 2015

We salute Adm. Taccad

We salute Adm. Taccad

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 08-24-2015 MON)

US Naval Academy emanation Roilo Golez has been on a rampage. He first ran amok against Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff Gen. Hernando Iriberri and other AFP higher officers for putting into proper perspective the country's internal security needs relative to its realistic external threats.

The AFP leadership had just reallocated P6.5 billion for the purchase of Israeli missiles, which at best would just be decorations, to the much needed procurement for our troops of better equipment (such as night vision goggles), more powerful weapons, and better protective gear in their fight against proliferating insurgency groups.

Golez called Gen. Iriberri and other high staff officers "incompetent," which the Association of Generals and Flag Officers (AGFO) in a letter to media countered by holding a mirror to Golez's face, declaring him the incompetent.

That AGFO reaction was again reflected in a social media topic among the country's naval experts under the heading, "Will Taccad reverse the Golez/Pama decline (in the Navy)?" That, of course, was in reference to Rear Admiral Taccad, the new Navy chief appointed very recently, as well as, Golez, former National Security Adviser under Gloria Arroyo, and one of the more recent top Navy officers.

What apparently got Golez foaming at the mouth was Rear Admiral Taccad's pronouncements in an interview with media on the situation in the West Philippine/South China Sea (WPS/SCS), where he said: "It was much heated before. I think we are in a better position now. We are communicating with China, and more or less not as threatened as before. You know what they are trying to do and we try to maintain more or less peaceful coexistence or settlement of what issue we have… They have been there for a long time and they are guarding what they think is their interest in the South China Sea. No expansion is happening…"

Golez tweeted on Aug. 18, 2015: "Admiral Taccad, you owe the people an explanation," attaching an article by Perry Diaz, a US citizen of Filipino decent blogging on Philippine issues. Ten years ago I debated with Diaz on the Internet when he adulated Mrs. Arroyo. But, when the Amboys of Hyatt 10 turned against their erstwhile patron, Diaz also did. I challenged him to a personal debate on these Philippine issues here in Manila but he insisted to have it in Hawaii--where perhaps the US State Department can be his audience.

The American Diaz seems to feel that he has every right to insult a Filipino officer and gentleman by titling his article, "To whom does Taccad owe his loyalty?" even when Taccad had already prefaced everything by saying, "We will continue to protect our seas and secure the future of our nation and its people. We shall continue to be a dependable naval force, prompt in response, and sharp in action… I shall steer the Philippine Navy towards continued transformation, modernization, professionalization, and overall progress in order to provide the maritime defense and security that is expected from a strong and formidable navy."

Adm. Taccad was only trying to be objective and accurate when he proclaimed that the situation in the WPS/SCS is cooling down; that communication between the militaries of the two countries has improved (which is one of the actions taken by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations); and that the Philippines is not as "threatened as before."

Taccad also factually stated that China is just protecting its interests over its claims, much like what the Philippines is similarly doing. If pursuing one's claim is expansionist, then Vietnam and the Philippines are also "expansionist." It's good that the Asean has called for a freeze and gladly that is happening.

While Diaz uses "aggression" in describing China's actions, he conveniently glosses over the other claimants. Vietnam, which is currently occupying the largest number of islands (22) in the South China Sea and is also building structures there, should, by Diaz's twisted standards, be accused of being an aggressor. The same should be true of the Philippines as well in its continued occupation of nine islands, which are more than China's eight.

Moreover, to verify such naked charges of aggression, I reviewed a four-page list of incidents among the claimants at the Boston Globe Forum (http://bostonglobalforum.org/wp-content/uploads/Recent-Trends-changes-in-the-South-China-Sea-Disputes.pdf) and found that, since 1999, the Philippine Navy and Coast Guard have sunk two Chinese fishing boats and killed two Chinese fishermen. I looked elsewhere on the Internet for any Chinese sinking or killing of Filipino fishermen and found absolutely none. So who's the aggressor?

Recently, another American franchise, CNN Philippines, added a twist, quoting Magdalo Party-list Rep. Ashley Acedillo at Taccad's installation, saying: "This is now a big problem, because once BRP Sierra Madre disintegrates and we leave the area, the Chinese can immediately take over…"

But why make it such a big deal when Acedillo was merely voicing out a legitimate fear of a prospective situation that could result from a standoff due to a breakdown of communication and BS Aquino's failure of diplomacy with the Chinese government? Verily, the offer of "dialog without preconditions" is still on the table. And dialog may still result in shared responsibility over the area and a fisheries agreement.

We have no doubt Party-list Rep. Acedillo and Rear Adm. Taccad are loyal, faithful, and genuinely patriotic Filipinos who are just stating the facts. It is the Amboys like Golez, Diaz, and their cohorts who distort and exaggerate in order to create wrong impressions that feed the tension between China and the Philippines.

(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)

Monday, July 27, 2015

Pretending

Pretending

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-27-2015 MON)

It's time for another massive dose of deception. It's the Palace Idiot's State of the Nation Address (SoNA) and another day of pretend.

Pretend this country is a democracy. Pretend that the bumbling Idiot is reporting to and not deceiving the nation in another annual SoNA. Pretend that the nation's political leadership cares for anything other than its own perpetuation in undeserved privilege and power. Pretend that this country is a republic, independent and sovereign. Pretend that the economy is growing. Pretend that the nation's poor are getting a better deal now than before. Pretend ad nausea.

Outside of politics: Pretend that this nation is blessed because of religion, and this WE proclaim this to the World. Pretend that religions, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, Evangelical, Iglesia ni Cristo, Dating Daan, Tamang Daan, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, Islam, and what have you are savings souls. Pretend they don't instead enrich their own clergy and the economic oligarchies--the real masters who share billions of the loot. Pretend to keep the masses from realizing that they have a right to this world and not just the next.

In foreign relations: Pretend that this country has a right to more territories when it does not and cannot defend and develop territories it is already entrusted with by history. Pretend that this country must fight for its international rights when it cannot even preserve and protect its own people's rights to basic food, health care, education, housing, creativity, productivity, and family life.

Pretend that the most fundamental guarantees of its Constitution--written, too, by the most pretentious people--entitle Filipinos to "a just and humane society, and… a Government that shall embody our ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity, the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace…"

Pretend that all this is true even when 50 percent of the nation is assured of permanent unemployment or underemployment due to the oligarchic structure of this society's finance, credit, property rights, and economy.

Pretend as well that this country can and should aggressively prepare for "credible defense" when all of the nation's economic surplus, amounting to a trillion pesos or over $20 billion a year, is appropriated as profits by 40 oligarchic families or corporations in cahoots with transnationals while the national budget is left with a pittance to partition among 100 million hapless Filipinos.

Pretend still that the Philippines' defense budget of $500 million isn't paltry compared to Vietnam's $4 billion or China's $150 billion. Pretend, as some self-proclaimed US-succoring Filipino patriots do, that a $15-million Israeli missile system is "credible defense."

Can we stop pretending and, as a nation, start reclaiming even only half of the P1 trillion in annual profits the 40 or so oligarchic families and corporations siphon off into their bank accounts? Can we finally devote such resources to this nation's social welfare, economic and defense development, for a stronger population with a stronger will, and a stronger defense force? Can we seriously build a self-reliant economy by way of self-sufficient agriculture and industry so as to break free of the perpetual cycle of mendicancy?

Can we stop our religious pretense and return to secularism, science, and technology as the liberators of our people, and end the nurturing of the myth of religion as the savior of this nation? Can we wake up to the fact that religious groups are granted tax free status on billions of their annual revenues from collections and behest businesses with government, even when they do not produce real goods and render only service to the oligarchy to keep the masses and the nation docile, uninformed, and prostrate? Let's stop pretending that religiosity is spirituality--one is slavery and only the latter is authentic.

Some of the young leaders I am investing hope in have seemingly lost faith in the essential goodness of man. They have begun to believe in the articles of faith of the capitalist and oligarchic system, that "Greed is good" and there can be no genuine altruism, no natural instinct, among human beings for the collective good. They have been indoctrinated with the pretense that capitalism promotes, that all men are greedy at the core. That is the greatest sham one can delude himself into accepting even if, deep down, we must love all of creation since we are part of it.

We pretend today that there is no more "ism" to debate about; but as we can see in the stark and desperate realities our suffering society and people now face, the "ism" debate is still vital to our nation and our family's and our individual survival as human beings with human values.

Capitalism--along with its most grotesque embodiment, imperialism--is a failed god while the old "mixed economy," with new names of "social-market" or "market-socialism," is proving to serve nations and the peoples of the World better. Of course, there's the shift from unipolarism to multipolarism that this nation is still oblivious to.

So let's stop pretending!

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Futile end games to every Yellow problem

Futile end games to every Yellow problem

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-22-2015 WED)

It's a feeling of exasperation when one takes stock of this country's trajectory--from its elections to its foreign policy, its economic realities, and so on.

Elections here are a proven farce with its election body and its automated election system completely discredited. Yet the freak show goes on.

Its major foreign policy pursuit is mired in a hopeless conundrum: UP Maritime Affairs Director Jay Batongbacal recently wrote that the UN arbitral tribunal may still rule in favor of China despite the latter's absence, a disaster as much as any hoped for win that will never yield any compliance even for a hundred years.

The Philippine "No Dialogue with China" crowd believed it had struck on a very powerful argument in the international stage when it raised the "island building" issue against China. But brought to wider attention by US and French-reared geopoliticist Peter Lee's July 18 article on Asia Times ("Okinotorishima-ization: South China Sea arbitration case enters middle game") on the Okinotorishima rock features near Taiwan and mainland China, visible during high tide and built up by Japan into a huge facility with a lighthouse, four-story structures, etc., and the basis of their argument becomes flimsy at best. Google the word and you'll see the huge Japanese "island," which these rabble-rousers are silent on.

At the conclusion of the lengthy article and to point out the futility of it all, Lee referred to our Iranian-Filipino colleague, Ateneo political science professor Richard Javad Heydarian, as "the leading defender of the Philippine strategy in the Western media, (who) endeavored to manage expectations if the Philippines does not prevail in the arbitration case… or prevails and the PRC disregards the ruling…" I texted to Richard that Lee apparently does not read enough of what he has written as I know that Richard has been calling on BS Aquino to start engaging in dialogue with China.

Richard texted back to me, "Actually even in my TV interviews on GMA and CNN, I emphasized on the need to have diplomatic engagement and on The Diplomat (an Australian foreign policy-military magazine) they have asked me to analyze the downside of pure confrontation with China. But there's a lot of negative reaction from the hardliners here when I talk about engagement…"

The hardliners he's referring to include the likes of the so-called West Philippine Sea Coalition and big mainstream papers, including the Inquirer, working non-stop to muffle broadminded discussion that could break the "information gulag," which they obviously would like to fence the Filipino public in.

But broadminded and visionary discussions calling for productive engagement with China and promising multiple bounties from such actions are eliciting positive responses. To our last column ("Thailand gets trains; RP, bases"), we received this text from a former multiple-term congressman: "Tnx. Quarreling with China deprives us of opportunities to link up the whole country by rail. Huhuhu…"

Of course, we also get our share of brickbats and name-calling (like "Fifth Columnist"… hahaha) from the hardliners who can articulate no more than such Neanderthal grunts.

The defense alliance of Filipino anti-China and Amboy crowds hoping to rope in to backstop their offensives against China are facing rough seas at home. The US, though still the world's largest military, is cutting back its forces by 40,000 troops and its budget by $90 billion, both of which do not augur well for its "Asia Pivot."

Meanwhile, Japan's Shinzo Abe government that is leading the "reinterpretation" of that country's Constitution to allow its military to join other allied armed forces (like those of the US and Philippines) is being opposed by 66 percent of the Japanese people (represented by a hundred thousand who protested before the Diet's deliberations).

Back home, Philippine mainstream media and a premier survey group are hyping the "lowest hunger rate" in a decade, which uncannily comes just before presidential election year, hoping to gloss over the country's continued dependence on food importation to complete its food requirements, its agricultural sector still trapped in marginal productivity, or its institutions for agricultural development wallowing in corruption.

What they won't say is that the Philippines continues to be trapped in "austerity programs," as evinced by the real 50 percent under- and unemployment rate for the past 30 years after the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustments saw millions leave for jobs abroad--this much Greece shall begin to see in the years ahead.

The Filipino nation is made to hope that the unending cycle of problems, among the many others that cannot fit here, can be solved in the next presidential elections. But the same old personality game of oligarchy-endorsed, media moguls cum US embassy- nurtured candidates are still in it while the political parties are the wagging tail to the celebrity candidate and not the other way around as it should be in a genuine democracy. And, to top it all, a foreign-controlled, non-transparent, graft-ridden election company and its machines are still usurping the electoral process.

Smartmatic was disqualified twice by the Commission on Elections' briefly reigning, straight and honest Bids and Awards Committee, headed by Helen Flores. But the Right Honorable Lord Mark Malloch Brown, newly-minted British full owner of Smartmatic (whom the US-based LaRouche movement calls the "guru of color revolutions" and finance predator George Soros' associate), arrives in Manila, sups with BS Aquino in Malacañang, and a week later Ms. Flores is removed, with Smartmatic getting the contracts for 170,000 Smartmatic voting machines. Where does this end? Only Noytards will pretend not to know what this end game will be.

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