DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/30/2010
While the whole country is distracted with the Hong Thai tourist bus massacre and the subsequent embarrassing and demoralizing imbroglio, the PeNoy Aquino government is insidiously conniving with its financial overlords to transfer taxpayers’ money to the oligarchs under the guise of an “investment fund to finance loans for infrastructure under the public-private partnerships (PPPs)... at very low interest rates.” Big Business’ DPA (deep penetration agent) in the National Economic Development Authority, Cayetano Paderanga Jr., adds that the money will be used “for loans to pump-prime the economy” to boost infrastructure “if we are to generate the six million tourists we hope to achieve,” as well as “strengthen the legal, institutional, and governance framework” of the PPPs.
Take out the gibberish and the scheme is simple: Subsidized loans for private corporations that will engage in government projects, with sovereign guarantees yet again!
Frankly, the pump-priming and six million tourists Paderanga is dreaming about went up in smoke after PeNoy allowed the police under his authority, as commander-in-chief, to go without timely interference despite the Keystone Kops’ odious performance from the moment they pumped bullets into the tourist bus’ tires without immediate follow through. But since that fiasco has been already whipped more than the proverbial dead horse, we will not beat it anymore. Nonetheless, there are still live horses which PeNoy and his Big Business masters are intending to ride on to another six years of unprecedented corporate profits — hoping to beat their previous P3-trillion bonanza in the nine-and-a-half years of Gloria Arroyo. With the announced PPPs of PeNoy yielding billions of low interest loans, Big Business will be off to a very spectacular start again under its new puppet government.
Of course, PeNoy’s economic plotters believe that affixing any plan with a “pump-priming” tag will sound academic and economic, a kind of techno-talk enough to impress the public into acceptance. However, such a step will only impoverish the nation and destroy its economy, while enriching only the oligarchs. It’s much of the same pump-priming that US President Obama did, which is why it’s now almost certain that not only will a “double dip recession” descend upon that once mighty superpower, but that it will most probably lead to its “greatest depression.” Already, top American economist David Rosenberg, along with trend researcher Gerald Celente and other luminaries such as Arthur Laffer and Paul Krugman believe so. That’s because Obama’s stimulus package, which amounted to trillions of dollars, merely went to bailing out the financial mafiosos that left the people penniless.
In stark contrast, China’s pump-priming consists of tax rebates and the raising of minimum wages, along with massive infrastructure expansion by the state. The Chinese people therefore have more money to keep domestic consumer activity expanding; to fuel demand; to keep farms and factories viable; and to sustain employment.
PeNoy’s Big Business-biased cheap loans, meanwhile, will result in infrastructure projects that only favor business interests. And, as we have seen in the past three decades, the supposed “trickle down” effect will only fall into the catch basin of Big Business and its corrupt partners in the government bureaucracy through corruption — as exemplified by the Gloria to PeNoy holdover of appointees’ financial perks, including a “privatization bonus,” which is actually a bribe to government executives who will betray public interest by promoting the oligarchy’s privileges.
The Big Business bias in Philippine government and society started with the Edsa I coup. This was then institutionalized by Cory Aquino through her 1987 Constitution with provisions that mandated the economy to be “private sector-led” and the Monetary Board to be dominated by bankers.
As public wealth and power started getting transferred to the giant corporations of the oligarchs, it made government progressively bankrupt, and among many other things, caused the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ store of equipment to shrink (from over 100 helicopters down to two dozen in recent years) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to rely more on jueteng and other sidelines to keep the loyalty of its generals and officers to the ruling class (while many in its rank-and-file resort to petty crimes to survive). All these have led to the low morale (and morals) of our uniformed service — fostering a deteriorating professionalism, the rise of a “pera-pera” culture, as well as, careerist opportunism in its ranks.
Should we be surprised then, given the overall decay of society and the government institutions, that at the Hong Thai crisis the Manila Police District and the PNP showed utter lack of cooperation and cohesion; or that on the same day, two Korean missionaries in the Philippines were kidnapped, with their two companions killed; or that eight policemen were ambushed and killed elsewhere in the Philippines that same week; and so on? Should we be surprised that the nation’s psyche, in reaction to the hostage fiasco, has come to mirror national confusion and paranoia?
We as a nation are already in the ICU (intensive care unit). Radical brain surgery of the Edsa I-Edsa II tumor is therefore imperative if we are to recover. Here’s an SOS to all patriotic citizens, soldiers, officers, and civilian leaders!
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21 about “Ninoy’s Death: A False Flag Operation?”; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Yellows, GMA to blame
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/27/2010
It can be classified as one of the greatest fiascos this nation has ever committed before the eyes of the world. The disastrously botched rescue of the Hong Thai tour bus hostages showed the whole world the absolute institutional collapse of the Philippine National Police (PNP) under nine-and-a-half years of Gloria Arroyo and an almost two-month old administration of PeNoy Aquino. The City of Manila is under intense scrutiny, too, run as it is by another Yellow stalwart, Mayor Alfredo Lim — who was a “darling” of Cory Aquino and an old reliable enforcer of the Edsa I and II cabals. The same is true for Fidel Ramos, who was among the last to head the old and much-maligned Philippine Constabulary — precursor to the PNP — at a time when jueteng became endemic in the entire organization.
Moral-professional decay has infected the PNP and “Manila’s Finest” since the Yellows took over and ruled our country for 24 years. All that rot has led to the showcasing of the complete collapse of institutional leadership, administrative and organizational competence, and amazing misappropriation of the PNP’s resources in the hostage incident.
Clearly, there was no direction from the PNP or from the national and local leadership the whole time, even when it became obvious that the local PNP was already botching the negotiations and later, the assault of the hostage bus cum fortress — such that not a single gas mask was produced in over 10 hours of the siege, which blinded the police with their own tear gas and rendered them inutile when the hostage taker fired back indiscriminately. Why, the PNP even took hours to break the windows and pry apart the door of the bus, only to finally open it by pulling down the lever of the emergency door. (Dumbkopfs indeed!)
All the rot the whole world saw on display last Aug. 23 could not have developed overnight under the PeNoy government; it was a long-standing infection that ate into the structures of our government and the PNP — corrupting its flesh while eating up and corroding its moral spine. There is no doubt that the nine-and-a-half years of unprecedented corruption under Gloria Arroyo — from the promotion to powerful positions of her co-conspirators in Edsa II, such as Ebdane, Mendoza, Berroya, and many others; to the three-fold increase in jueteng and consequently, the unprecedented size of the pot that the PNP top brass divvy up each month; to the misuse of the PNP as a personal tool to spy on critics and suppress the legitimate opposition; as well as massive election cheating, ad nausea — had all been a major accelerator of this decay in the police.
When the congressmen of Gloria’s party stepped up to brag of their President Arroyo “hostage crisis” handling, one can only wonder if they really think the population to be that stupid to swallow their ridiculous claims. Reps. Danny Suarez and Edcel Lagman should remember that the PNP hierarchy led by Director General Jesus Verzosa was inherited from them. The thing is, PeNoy was just showing his idiocy when he decided against replacing PNP Chief Versoza when he could have.
If PeNoy had really represented a clean break from the past, he should have started afresh with new leadership for the police organization. But then, the Yellow movement is really just a continuation of the old Arroyo regime — under names and faces doing the same old thing.
The Arroyo congressmen cited several hostage taking incidents during Arroyo’s watch that ended without casualties. Actually, we saw those operations and the PNP did not perform any better and neither did Gloria do anything significant in those cases. Plus, the cast of characters were different; as were the arms used, as well as, the motives — which included petty publicity for that other bus-taking incident.
The Manila Peninsula incident, meanwhile, would have ended with reporters and civilians killed had not Gen. Danilo Lim and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV taken the morally courageous stand to leave with the civilians to save everyone from slaughter. In fact, Gloria’s attack dogs staged the most ridiculous “glass façade assault” by using the PNP’s V150 APC as it was played across the globe too.
In Manila, the Yellow-backed Mayor Alfredo Lim was inexplicably absent from his usual role as “Dirty Harry.” Why so? Does this lend credence to what we gather from the Binondo, Manila grapevine that Lim had actually caused the cases to be filed against Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza? According to this story, Lim was afraid he would trigger a worse reaction from the hostage taker, thus all efforts toward dialog got assigned to the vice mayor, who failed to get the job done anyway.
But the top Yellow honcho, PeNoy Aquino, did worse: He hid from his Hong Kong counterpart the whole time and even smiled inopportunely at a somber press conference for the victims. All these must have caused the extreme “black” travel advisory imposed by Hong Kong on its citizen-tourists.
The dismal performance of the PeNoy government, capped off by the disastrous Hong Thai hostage crisis fiasco, bolsters the point we raised during the campaign: We need mature, experienced, involved leadership, determined to institute change and forthrightness in governance; curtail PNP corruption by flushing out jueteng payola through legalization; and restore faith in the justice system by cleansing it of “hoodlums in robes” and “rogue cops at the very top.” There was only one candidate who could have filled such shoes; but the Yellows Hocus-PCOSed him, “wheeled and dealed” with religious sects, and manipulated surveys to get their unprepared, reluctant, dense, stiff, uncoordinated, and maladroit puppet in.
Although I sympathize with PeNoy whenever he has that awkward, incongruous look on his face as he tries to defend himself, such follies merely create more problems. Ultimately, he can only blame his Yellow alalays for pushing him into this.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http:hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/27/2010
It can be classified as one of the greatest fiascos this nation has ever committed before the eyes of the world. The disastrously botched rescue of the Hong Thai tour bus hostages showed the whole world the absolute institutional collapse of the Philippine National Police (PNP) under nine-and-a-half years of Gloria Arroyo and an almost two-month old administration of PeNoy Aquino. The City of Manila is under intense scrutiny, too, run as it is by another Yellow stalwart, Mayor Alfredo Lim — who was a “darling” of Cory Aquino and an old reliable enforcer of the Edsa I and II cabals. The same is true for Fidel Ramos, who was among the last to head the old and much-maligned Philippine Constabulary — precursor to the PNP — at a time when jueteng became endemic in the entire organization.
Moral-professional decay has infected the PNP and “Manila’s Finest” since the Yellows took over and ruled our country for 24 years. All that rot has led to the showcasing of the complete collapse of institutional leadership, administrative and organizational competence, and amazing misappropriation of the PNP’s resources in the hostage incident.
Clearly, there was no direction from the PNP or from the national and local leadership the whole time, even when it became obvious that the local PNP was already botching the negotiations and later, the assault of the hostage bus cum fortress — such that not a single gas mask was produced in over 10 hours of the siege, which blinded the police with their own tear gas and rendered them inutile when the hostage taker fired back indiscriminately. Why, the PNP even took hours to break the windows and pry apart the door of the bus, only to finally open it by pulling down the lever of the emergency door. (Dumbkopfs indeed!)
All the rot the whole world saw on display last Aug. 23 could not have developed overnight under the PeNoy government; it was a long-standing infection that ate into the structures of our government and the PNP — corrupting its flesh while eating up and corroding its moral spine. There is no doubt that the nine-and-a-half years of unprecedented corruption under Gloria Arroyo — from the promotion to powerful positions of her co-conspirators in Edsa II, such as Ebdane, Mendoza, Berroya, and many others; to the three-fold increase in jueteng and consequently, the unprecedented size of the pot that the PNP top brass divvy up each month; to the misuse of the PNP as a personal tool to spy on critics and suppress the legitimate opposition; as well as massive election cheating, ad nausea — had all been a major accelerator of this decay in the police.
When the congressmen of Gloria’s party stepped up to brag of their President Arroyo “hostage crisis” handling, one can only wonder if they really think the population to be that stupid to swallow their ridiculous claims. Reps. Danny Suarez and Edcel Lagman should remember that the PNP hierarchy led by Director General Jesus Verzosa was inherited from them. The thing is, PeNoy was just showing his idiocy when he decided against replacing PNP Chief Versoza when he could have.
If PeNoy had really represented a clean break from the past, he should have started afresh with new leadership for the police organization. But then, the Yellow movement is really just a continuation of the old Arroyo regime — under names and faces doing the same old thing.
The Arroyo congressmen cited several hostage taking incidents during Arroyo’s watch that ended without casualties. Actually, we saw those operations and the PNP did not perform any better and neither did Gloria do anything significant in those cases. Plus, the cast of characters were different; as were the arms used, as well as, the motives — which included petty publicity for that other bus-taking incident.
The Manila Peninsula incident, meanwhile, would have ended with reporters and civilians killed had not Gen. Danilo Lim and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV taken the morally courageous stand to leave with the civilians to save everyone from slaughter. In fact, Gloria’s attack dogs staged the most ridiculous “glass façade assault” by using the PNP’s V150 APC as it was played across the globe too.
In Manila, the Yellow-backed Mayor Alfredo Lim was inexplicably absent from his usual role as “Dirty Harry.” Why so? Does this lend credence to what we gather from the Binondo, Manila grapevine that Lim had actually caused the cases to be filed against Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza? According to this story, Lim was afraid he would trigger a worse reaction from the hostage taker, thus all efforts toward dialog got assigned to the vice mayor, who failed to get the job done anyway.
But the top Yellow honcho, PeNoy Aquino, did worse: He hid from his Hong Kong counterpart the whole time and even smiled inopportunely at a somber press conference for the victims. All these must have caused the extreme “black” travel advisory imposed by Hong Kong on its citizen-tourists.
The dismal performance of the PeNoy government, capped off by the disastrous Hong Thai hostage crisis fiasco, bolsters the point we raised during the campaign: We need mature, experienced, involved leadership, determined to institute change and forthrightness in governance; curtail PNP corruption by flushing out jueteng payola through legalization; and restore faith in the justice system by cleansing it of “hoodlums in robes” and “rogue cops at the very top.” There was only one candidate who could have filled such shoes; but the Yellows Hocus-PCOSed him, “wheeled and dealed” with religious sects, and manipulated surveys to get their unprepared, reluctant, dense, stiff, uncoordinated, and maladroit puppet in.
Although I sympathize with PeNoy whenever he has that awkward, incongruous look on his face as he tries to defend himself, such follies merely create more problems. Ultimately, he can only blame his Yellow alalays for pushing him into this.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http:hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Monday, August 23, 2010
Was Ninoy’s death a US operation?
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/23/2010
The Aquino children’s repudiation of the reopening of the Ninoy Aquino slay inquiry, under the pretext of “having already forgiven the perpetrators,” is facile and unacceptable. The Filipino people are entitled to know the truth in their continuing conduct of history; and the unclosed chapter is unfair to Ferdinand Marcos et al. who were long condemned as the masterminds through insinuations by the Aquino family and the Establishment media.
Take Billy Esposo’s logic, written in 2007: “…The responsibility falls squarely on the Marcos regime… The compelling reason for ordering the Aquino assassination was to remove the all-too-real threat of Aquino rallying the opposition…” That same facile logic about the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing — which has been proven absolutely false to waylay the nation — created chaos and almost absolved the real perpetrator, Jose Ma. Sison.
Esposo, echoing the logic of all those still simplistically blaming Marcos or those around him, argues: “The power dynamics of the Marcos era was such that the Aquino assassination could only have been undertaken with the go-signal of Marcos or someone who could act on his behalf in ordering the military to undertake the elaborate operation.”
But could Marcos have forced the US not to renew the visa of Ninoy Aquino and his family? And why exactly didn’t the US extend the visas of the Aquinos, since there were countless humanitarian grounds to grant this, particularly the alleged threat of physical harm to his family in the event they returned to Manila? Could Marcos have arranged the acceptance of the obviously faked passport of Ninoy (under the name “Marcial Bonifacio”) through the British in Hong Kong and the Taiwanese authorities? Could he have imposed upon these governments to let a fake passport holder slip through?
Ken Kashiwahara, Ninoy’s Japanese-American brother-in-law, writing his firsthand account in 1983 of that last plane leg at the Chiang Kai Shek International Airport before arriving in Manila (republished by The New York Times last week), said: “Ninoy had no problems going through immigration as Marcial Bonifacio… but as soon as he left the counter, the two ‘security’ men escorted him around the corner. I panicked. ‘This is it,’ I muttered. ‘He’s been discovered.’ I hurried through the immigration, rounded the corner and there was Ninoy, grinning. ‘That was the Taiwan garrison commander,’ he said, ‘and he just wanted to make sure I got through O.K. Can you imagine? A general?’”
The point I am driving at should be clear by now: There has always been a power that could supercede Marcos and any other president to this day. (Erap tried to insist on his way and got ousted, too.)
The official investigation of Ninoy’s assassination stops at Sgt. Pablo Martinez, the identified gunman. But after decades of incarceration and religious guidance from Msgr. Robert Olaguer, assigned by the late Cardinal Sin to minister to the spiritual needs of the 10 soldiers implicated in the assassination, Sgt. Martinez decided to come out with his personal knowledge of who the mastermind was.
On November 2007, Gloria Arroyo pardoned the convicted Ninoy Aquino killers on humanitarian grounds. And as the Aquino siblings denounced this decision, Msgr. Robert Olaguer came up to defend the soldiers to insist on their innocence.
Meanwhile, Esposo, in his aforementioned 2007 article, came to Danding’s defense saying, “What rules out Danding Cojuangco from being the mastermind is the fact that (he) was only in the money game during that time but was nowhere in the line of succession. He neither had the title to vie for it nor had command of the legions to be able to grab it...”
Years after the fall of Marcos that began with the Ninoy Aquino assassination, many US State Department bigwigs, among them former State Secretary George Schultz and then ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz, have come out to claim credit for the former leader’s ouster. They’ve stated this either in their memoirs or in various speeches which I have accessed by patiently searching on the Net.
The fall of Marcos caused a reversal of his nation-building programs; then restored and reinvigorated the power of the old privileged elite; demolished trade protection; and accelerated privatization and deregulation, which all led to the greatest transfer of wealth from the Philippine state’s coffers (and the people’s pockets) to global transnational corporations and their local partners. From then on, the sinister program to obliterate the existence of a sovereign Philippine Republic has all but ended with finality.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21 about “Ninoy’s Death: A False Flag Operation?”; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/23/2010
The Aquino children’s repudiation of the reopening of the Ninoy Aquino slay inquiry, under the pretext of “having already forgiven the perpetrators,” is facile and unacceptable. The Filipino people are entitled to know the truth in their continuing conduct of history; and the unclosed chapter is unfair to Ferdinand Marcos et al. who were long condemned as the masterminds through insinuations by the Aquino family and the Establishment media.
Take Billy Esposo’s logic, written in 2007: “…The responsibility falls squarely on the Marcos regime… The compelling reason for ordering the Aquino assassination was to remove the all-too-real threat of Aquino rallying the opposition…” That same facile logic about the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing — which has been proven absolutely false to waylay the nation — created chaos and almost absolved the real perpetrator, Jose Ma. Sison.
Esposo, echoing the logic of all those still simplistically blaming Marcos or those around him, argues: “The power dynamics of the Marcos era was such that the Aquino assassination could only have been undertaken with the go-signal of Marcos or someone who could act on his behalf in ordering the military to undertake the elaborate operation.”
But could Marcos have forced the US not to renew the visa of Ninoy Aquino and his family? And why exactly didn’t the US extend the visas of the Aquinos, since there were countless humanitarian grounds to grant this, particularly the alleged threat of physical harm to his family in the event they returned to Manila? Could Marcos have arranged the acceptance of the obviously faked passport of Ninoy (under the name “Marcial Bonifacio”) through the British in Hong Kong and the Taiwanese authorities? Could he have imposed upon these governments to let a fake passport holder slip through?
Ken Kashiwahara, Ninoy’s Japanese-American brother-in-law, writing his firsthand account in 1983 of that last plane leg at the Chiang Kai Shek International Airport before arriving in Manila (republished by The New York Times last week), said: “Ninoy had no problems going through immigration as Marcial Bonifacio… but as soon as he left the counter, the two ‘security’ men escorted him around the corner. I panicked. ‘This is it,’ I muttered. ‘He’s been discovered.’ I hurried through the immigration, rounded the corner and there was Ninoy, grinning. ‘That was the Taiwan garrison commander,’ he said, ‘and he just wanted to make sure I got through O.K. Can you imagine? A general?’”
The point I am driving at should be clear by now: There has always been a power that could supercede Marcos and any other president to this day. (Erap tried to insist on his way and got ousted, too.)
The official investigation of Ninoy’s assassination stops at Sgt. Pablo Martinez, the identified gunman. But after decades of incarceration and religious guidance from Msgr. Robert Olaguer, assigned by the late Cardinal Sin to minister to the spiritual needs of the 10 soldiers implicated in the assassination, Sgt. Martinez decided to come out with his personal knowledge of who the mastermind was.
On November 2007, Gloria Arroyo pardoned the convicted Ninoy Aquino killers on humanitarian grounds. And as the Aquino siblings denounced this decision, Msgr. Robert Olaguer came up to defend the soldiers to insist on their innocence.
Meanwhile, Esposo, in his aforementioned 2007 article, came to Danding’s defense saying, “What rules out Danding Cojuangco from being the mastermind is the fact that (he) was only in the money game during that time but was nowhere in the line of succession. He neither had the title to vie for it nor had command of the legions to be able to grab it...”
Years after the fall of Marcos that began with the Ninoy Aquino assassination, many US State Department bigwigs, among them former State Secretary George Schultz and then ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz, have come out to claim credit for the former leader’s ouster. They’ve stated this either in their memoirs or in various speeches which I have accessed by patiently searching on the Net.
The fall of Marcos caused a reversal of his nation-building programs; then restored and reinvigorated the power of the old privileged elite; demolished trade protection; and accelerated privatization and deregulation, which all led to the greatest transfer of wealth from the Philippine state’s coffers (and the people’s pockets) to global transnational corporations and their local partners. From then on, the sinister program to obliterate the existence of a sovereign Philippine Republic has all but ended with finality.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21 about “Ninoy’s Death: A False Flag Operation?”; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
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