DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/01/2010
The administration is on a continuing PR blitz to extract very ounce of propaganda gain it can from the recent US trip of Aquino III. After the so-called $434-million five-year Millennium Challenge Corp. “grant” (of roughly $87 million per year) — explained in our previous column as a “mirage” when stacked against our annual $17.8-billion debt service, which Aquino III isn’t squeaking about — now comes the so-called $2.4 billion in “investments” as pabaon.
Ado Paglinawan, one of the organizers of the “Solidarity for Sovereignty” movement exposing the Hocus-PCOS in the last elections, who has frequent tit-for-tat exchanges with US-based Yellows on the Internet, deftly answered a certain Mon Ram’s crowing about Aquino III’s alleged “huge investments” with this letter:
“Dear Mon,
“Of course, you know better than being swept your feet by this toy president.
“This is what a blogger among us, not I, once called ‘political masturbation.’
“You see, I worked for the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC for seven years under Ambassador Pelaez.
“Before Cory Aquino came to the US and Eddie Ramos after her (I was in charge of press protocol for these three visits), the whole Embassy, especially the economic and trade sections, was busy padding up hallelujahs in millions of dollars, even if they were still on paper or under negotiation or were already on the roll. The entire Philippine diplomatic mission in the US, including those in the UN, gets organized and makes a ‘praise list’ to play on public perceptions.
“Remember the multilateral aid initiative under Ambassador Elliot Richardson that was inspired and proposed by Ambassador Pelaez to serve as a mini-Marshall plan for the Philippines after being ‘ravaged’ by Marcos rule? That was billed at $3 billion (when the exchange was still P20:$1) from 19 countries and multilateral institutions.
“Know what? Less than half of it was used by the Philippines. Reason? We did not have the absorptive capacity to use all of it. $100 million of that money donated by the Sultan of Brunei, intended to build a state-of-the-art satellite receiving station in Barotac Nuevo in Iloilo, was even diverted by Cory Aquino to fuel the government’s budgetary requirements for salaries. Had that facility been built, we could have better prepared for ‘Ondoy.’
“The only thing that really made sense was the $800 million the Philippine Embassy lobbied through (the US) Congress, capitalizing on Cory’s home-run speech… But this was because the Americans themselves managed the project using Korean contractors in building the airport complex, the seaport and related infrastructure, the four-lane circumferential road around the Sarangani Bay, and financing for farmers and fishermen’s cooperatives in South Cotabato and Sarangani provinces. None of that money was lost to corruption, diversion or incompetence. Try visiting General Santos City and see what I mean. The second visit of Cory Aquino and the first visit of Eddie Ramos were basically fruitless.
“This is to say that PeNoy has nothing whatsoever to do with this $2.4-billion talking point that he is barking about in terms of US investments. He just read this from his teleprompter. In fact, I question this hot air because who would invest in a country where tourists are being mowed down by the police? (The millennium fund, of course, is also not his but in fairness, Gloria Arroyo’s legacy, even if that is hard for me to admit. The release of the fund is just happening during the toy president’s watch.)
“These billions that PeNoy is crowing about (are) merely a praise report to supplant: (1) his incompetent appointments; (2) his family’s Hacienda Luisita land-grabbing; and (3) the Rizal Park hostage-taking where the PNP’s ‘friendly’ fire massacred in cold blood innocent Chinese tourists.
“As PeNoy returns to the Philippines, he is still without any brownie point and his lackadaisical 100 days is about to end. I have not even verified yet if Enrico Puno and Tony ‘Boy’ Cojuangco are meeting him at the airport to give him a reality check. LOL!”
Frankly, I have long given up on such online debates with US-based Yellows. In fact, I’ve already opted out of the Worldwide Filipino Association forum led by a certain Cesar Torres who claims to have a thousand subscribers, most of whom are either Yellows or mere hecklers not interested in the truth.
The “Mon Ram” that Ado had his tit-for-tat with is just one of a number of confirmed Yellows. We can’t even tell if they’re for real or just part of a PR team hired to constantly prop up the Yellow argument.
During the last election campaign where debates on the Web got intensely acrimonious as tons of disinformation were being dished out, I challenged a certain Perry Diaz for a real square-off via an open and media-covered debate in Manila. After a long period of heehawing, Diaz accepted it only if it were held in Hawaii, which is really saying that he didn’t care enough to come home to his native land, which he supposedly cares so much for, to exhaustively ferret out the truth.
Well, it seems many of these US-based Fil-Am bloggers are only there to show off their sites to State Department people to gain points for their citizenship.
We’re just glad the fight for truth is alive and well for some noted US-based Filipinos such as Ado Paglinawan, who are still bravely manning the ramparts.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today, Tuesday, 8 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)
Friday, October 1, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Aquino III: The face of cruelty
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/24/2010
Behind the quaint portraiture of Aquino III’s supposed modesty and frugality; behind that tired “wang-wang” spiel to the most recent juxtaposition of his “measly” P25-million US trip to Gloria Arroyo’s P1-billion junkets last year, lies a face that the three-headed miscommunications hydra is so desperately trying to hide from the public. That face, with its characteristic smirk and misplaced grin, dreadfully bespeaks a cruel, dehumanizing, and heartless government dead-set on fully implementing a so-called “legacy” that has brought this nation to ruin.
Such legacy, summed up in three decades of economic and political policy “reform” measures a.k.a. “neo-liberalism,” has put in place the following “deforms:”
1) Liberalization of the economy and the absolute rule of the market — which means total control of society by Wall Street, i.e. the Philippine Stock Exchange in local terms, as well as by Big Business in general; the removal of tariffs; and “trickle down” economics, or letting the big guys get all the goods while letting the crumbs trickle down ever so slowly (which has not even happened at all);
2) Cutting public expenditure for social services (such as education and health care, maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply, etc.) — reducing, if not eliminating, government’s role and increasing private corporatist control over these;
3) Deregulation — reducing government supervision and control of anything that may diminish corporate profits, including protecting the environment and ensuring food and job security, as well as public safety;
4) Privatization — selling state-owned enterprises, goods and services (including banks, key industries, railroads, toll ways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water) to private investors;
5) Eliminating the concept of “The Public Good” — replacing it with so-called “individual” or “corporate responsibility,” leaving the small and powerless to fend for themselves, then branding them as “lazy” for their joblessness and poverty;
6) Globalization under the rule of the Gatt-WTO — embodied in the policy that the West imposed on the rest of world through the United Nations’ various trade organizations.
The Philippines, which the past governments of Fidel Ramos and Gloria Arroyo had proudly declared to be the most globalized in the region, now has the highest electricity cost in Asia (and among the highest in the world), and the same in terms of water, port services, and toll fees — public services that were started to be privatized during Cory Aquino’s watch, after the so-called “People Power” of 1986.
Last week, upon prodding from Serge Osmeña III (the power industry’s Senate avatar) among others, Aquino III’s Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) withdrew the senior citizens’ exemption from the 12 percent value-added tax on electricity and water. Despite this just being one of the few token humanitarian concessions given to one of society’s most vulnerable sectors — the elderly who rely on measly retirement benefits of contracting real value — the BIR chief still hurriedly withdrew it without any qualms.
One of Aquino III’s spokesmen, Edwin Lacierda, then countered: “The Aquino administration is willing to sacrifice its overwhelming popularity in exchange (for) implementing revenue generation measures,” thus vividly replicating Judas sacrificing Christ for 30 pieces of silver!
I am using the term Aquino III and not PeNoy because I want there to be no mistake that I am writing any of these in jest. The cruelty and inhumanity of this administration is but an escalation of the previous Arroyo regime’s ills. From its progressing impoverishment of the nation; its diminution of every government capability to support public welfare; to its systematic devaluation of the people’s citizenship in a Republic for overseas and corporate slavery — all these are vintage Aquinorroyo.
The last is even worse as the fate of our citizens has been consigned to the International Monetary Fund-World Bank and mega corporations while these are merely kept alive by our sovereign guarantees, as well as tax money, to amortize over generations all our unjust debts (such as the P950-billion universal charge in electricity and the growing P140-billion public-private partnership projects).
Kim Henares must be proud of this dehumanization of our countrymen while she cavorts with her beloved hubby in their nice convertibles and grand motor bikes (as one lifestyle magazine showed).
I hope the 90 million Filipinos, especially those fooled into voting for this “good man” now being revealed as an ogre, will learn from their repeated mistakes from the time of Edsa I and Cory Aquino. Some, like Teddy Locsin on Karambola, are beginning to admit their grievous sin in the continuing perfidy of proclaiming the Aquinos and other Yellows as a bunch of saints.
I cannot go beyond writing and raging about these since I am already a known dissident, but those who are yet unrevealed should take action to stop this cruel social and economic violence committed by these ogres against Philippine society. If something isn’t done soon, there will be no redeemable nation by the end of the term of this “last Aquino,” who will by then have succeeded to drag the entire country down with his sorry self.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today, Tuesday, 8+ 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
09/24/2010
Behind the quaint portraiture of Aquino III’s supposed modesty and frugality; behind that tired “wang-wang” spiel to the most recent juxtaposition of his “measly” P25-million US trip to Gloria Arroyo’s P1-billion junkets last year, lies a face that the three-headed miscommunications hydra is so desperately trying to hide from the public. That face, with its characteristic smirk and misplaced grin, dreadfully bespeaks a cruel, dehumanizing, and heartless government dead-set on fully implementing a so-called “legacy” that has brought this nation to ruin.
Such legacy, summed up in three decades of economic and political policy “reform” measures a.k.a. “neo-liberalism,” has put in place the following “deforms:”
1) Liberalization of the economy and the absolute rule of the market — which means total control of society by Wall Street, i.e. the Philippine Stock Exchange in local terms, as well as by Big Business in general; the removal of tariffs; and “trickle down” economics, or letting the big guys get all the goods while letting the crumbs trickle down ever so slowly (which has not even happened at all);
2) Cutting public expenditure for social services (such as education and health care, maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply, etc.) — reducing, if not eliminating, government’s role and increasing private corporatist control over these;
3) Deregulation — reducing government supervision and control of anything that may diminish corporate profits, including protecting the environment and ensuring food and job security, as well as public safety;
4) Privatization — selling state-owned enterprises, goods and services (including banks, key industries, railroads, toll ways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water) to private investors;
5) Eliminating the concept of “The Public Good” — replacing it with so-called “individual” or “corporate responsibility,” leaving the small and powerless to fend for themselves, then branding them as “lazy” for their joblessness and poverty;
6) Globalization under the rule of the Gatt-WTO — embodied in the policy that the West imposed on the rest of world through the United Nations’ various trade organizations.
The Philippines, which the past governments of Fidel Ramos and Gloria Arroyo had proudly declared to be the most globalized in the region, now has the highest electricity cost in Asia (and among the highest in the world), and the same in terms of water, port services, and toll fees — public services that were started to be privatized during Cory Aquino’s watch, after the so-called “People Power” of 1986.
Last week, upon prodding from Serge Osmeña III (the power industry’s Senate avatar) among others, Aquino III’s Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) withdrew the senior citizens’ exemption from the 12 percent value-added tax on electricity and water. Despite this just being one of the few token humanitarian concessions given to one of society’s most vulnerable sectors — the elderly who rely on measly retirement benefits of contracting real value — the BIR chief still hurriedly withdrew it without any qualms.
One of Aquino III’s spokesmen, Edwin Lacierda, then countered: “The Aquino administration is willing to sacrifice its overwhelming popularity in exchange (for) implementing revenue generation measures,” thus vividly replicating Judas sacrificing Christ for 30 pieces of silver!
I am using the term Aquino III and not PeNoy because I want there to be no mistake that I am writing any of these in jest. The cruelty and inhumanity of this administration is but an escalation of the previous Arroyo regime’s ills. From its progressing impoverishment of the nation; its diminution of every government capability to support public welfare; to its systematic devaluation of the people’s citizenship in a Republic for overseas and corporate slavery — all these are vintage Aquinorroyo.
The last is even worse as the fate of our citizens has been consigned to the International Monetary Fund-World Bank and mega corporations while these are merely kept alive by our sovereign guarantees, as well as tax money, to amortize over generations all our unjust debts (such as the P950-billion universal charge in electricity and the growing P140-billion public-private partnership projects).
Kim Henares must be proud of this dehumanization of our countrymen while she cavorts with her beloved hubby in their nice convertibles and grand motor bikes (as one lifestyle magazine showed).
I hope the 90 million Filipinos, especially those fooled into voting for this “good man” now being revealed as an ogre, will learn from their repeated mistakes from the time of Edsa I and Cory Aquino. Some, like Teddy Locsin on Karambola, are beginning to admit their grievous sin in the continuing perfidy of proclaiming the Aquinos and other Yellows as a bunch of saints.
I cannot go beyond writing and raging about these since I am already a known dissident, but those who are yet unrevealed should take action to stop this cruel social and economic violence committed by these ogres against Philippine society. If something isn’t done soon, there will be no redeemable nation by the end of the term of this “last Aquino,” who will by then have succeeded to drag the entire country down with his sorry self.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today, Tuesday, 8+ 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, September 20, 2010
BSP (Bunk-O Sentral ng Pilipinas)
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
09/20/2010
Nowhere can a Filipino find more bunk in this bunk rich land than at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which again boasts of an expansion in the country’s gross international reserves when the value of the currency it keeps is in danger of imminent massive crash. That means Filipinos will be holding close to $50 billion of worthless bunk, or US T-bills, when the music stops. But do Tetangco, Guinigundo, Paderanga et al. give a hoot? Would they even bother with the thought of more Filipinos finding themselves in the poorhouse once the dollar crash descends upon the world, since they are paid tens of millions anyway to keep the farce alive? Quite simply, this kind of bunk, in tandem with the Department of Finance (DoF)’s peso bonds, will be our final ruin.
A whole spectrum of financial and currency analysts, as well as scholars — from renowned economists such as New York University Professor Noriel Roubini to similarly prestigious Mark Solomon — have already projected the dollar crash between now and the middle of 2011.
According to Roubini, “If markets were to believe, and I’m not saying it’s likely, that inflation is going to be the route that the US is going to take to resolve this problem, then you could have a crash of the value of the dollar… The value of the dollar over time has to fall on a trade-weighted basis, but not necessarily relative to euro and yen.”
Solomon adds, “…a 20-percent drop in the value of either a stock or financial holding over a period of time is considered a crash. The US dollar already crashed from 120 on the USDX down to its current level of 75. This 45-point drop, or roughly 33-percent drop, over several years, meets the definition of a crash.”
A growing number of Filipinos who are becoming aware of this but still cannot do anything, as the Aquino government is simply clueless as can be, must therefore keep on educating fellow Filipinos on this.
Last week the Japanese Central Bank intervened by buying up dollars to support it. Take this news two days ago: “Japan props up dollar for first time since 2004… for the first time in six years, selling the yen to buy dollars. It follows a surge in the value of the Japanese currency to a 15-year peak which was spooking business leaders worried about its effects on exports…”
The BSP, in turn, is building up precarious US dollars while the DoF issues more debts in the $1-billion peso bonds, which are inevitably dollar debts because all of its transactions will still be in dollars. Despite the DoF’s Foolish-ima spin, the Philippine peso is not of reserve quality anywhere.
At the same time, Malacañang’s P15-billion public-private partnership (PPP) projects which are really taxpayer-driven, will give sovereign guarantee funds again to the plutocrats and US crony capitalists, who are now boosting the local stock market.
Foreign portfolio investors always smell easy, quick, and gargantuan profits whenever PPP-type projects in power, water, infrastructure (such as tollways), etc. are given special financial packages guaranteed with taxpayers’ and consumers’ money.
These inelastic or unavoidably necessary public utilities, which used to be a right of any citizen and provided free or for the most minimal of costs since the public funded them, were, under the Yellows’ political-economic philosophy beginning with Cory Aquino, converted into profiteering opportunities for private enterprises, with complete disregard for public welfare and development. For this reason, state revenues will continue to dwindle and public institutions will have to rely more and more on other means to survive.
These economic and financial policies are directly connected to such issues as the current “Juetengate” bedeviling the new Aquino. Jueteng is now the only source of funds for the Philippine National Police (PNP) top brass to maintain a lifestyle befitting of members of the ruling class. After all, what’s all the hardship for if not to give them the wherewithal to put their children into exclusives schools, travel on European junkets, and have the latest cars and the money to run for elections? Aren’t most members of the ruling class living it up, say, on the sinecure of a congressman’s “pork barrel,” which come from debts such as the Foolish-ima peso bonds, which in turn increase the state’s penury and inability to sustain itself?
PeNoy Aquino knows the realities of life in government; he has seen it all since childhood. Surely, he’s not about to start a rebellion in the police brass by really cracking down on that illegal numbers game.
Archbishop Oscar Cruz’s campaign against the “immoral” jueteng is also a bunk-load in the contradiction that he personally faces for not condemning all forms of gambling such as church bingos, raffles, sharing in horse racing proceeds, and legalized gambling that impoverish and break up families. And if he condemns jueteng because it is illegal, then it is another contradiction for him not to endorse its legalization.
Contradictions make for a lot of bunk; so does hypocrisy; even fraud. Although some priests can almost beat the Bunk-O Sentral ng Pilipinas in its amount of bunk, in the end, the financial sector still beats ‘em all. With the help of controlled mainstream media, many Filipinos still unconsciously swallow them in leaps and bounds. This space, however, will continue to try its darn best to expose the bunk to save our fellow citizens from it.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics 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
09/20/2010
Nowhere can a Filipino find more bunk in this bunk rich land than at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which again boasts of an expansion in the country’s gross international reserves when the value of the currency it keeps is in danger of imminent massive crash. That means Filipinos will be holding close to $50 billion of worthless bunk, or US T-bills, when the music stops. But do Tetangco, Guinigundo, Paderanga et al. give a hoot? Would they even bother with the thought of more Filipinos finding themselves in the poorhouse once the dollar crash descends upon the world, since they are paid tens of millions anyway to keep the farce alive? Quite simply, this kind of bunk, in tandem with the Department of Finance (DoF)’s peso bonds, will be our final ruin.
A whole spectrum of financial and currency analysts, as well as scholars — from renowned economists such as New York University Professor Noriel Roubini to similarly prestigious Mark Solomon — have already projected the dollar crash between now and the middle of 2011.
According to Roubini, “If markets were to believe, and I’m not saying it’s likely, that inflation is going to be the route that the US is going to take to resolve this problem, then you could have a crash of the value of the dollar… The value of the dollar over time has to fall on a trade-weighted basis, but not necessarily relative to euro and yen.”
Solomon adds, “…a 20-percent drop in the value of either a stock or financial holding over a period of time is considered a crash. The US dollar already crashed from 120 on the USDX down to its current level of 75. This 45-point drop, or roughly 33-percent drop, over several years, meets the definition of a crash.”
A growing number of Filipinos who are becoming aware of this but still cannot do anything, as the Aquino government is simply clueless as can be, must therefore keep on educating fellow Filipinos on this.
Last week the Japanese Central Bank intervened by buying up dollars to support it. Take this news two days ago: “Japan props up dollar for first time since 2004… for the first time in six years, selling the yen to buy dollars. It follows a surge in the value of the Japanese currency to a 15-year peak which was spooking business leaders worried about its effects on exports…”
The BSP, in turn, is building up precarious US dollars while the DoF issues more debts in the $1-billion peso bonds, which are inevitably dollar debts because all of its transactions will still be in dollars. Despite the DoF’s Foolish-ima spin, the Philippine peso is not of reserve quality anywhere.
At the same time, Malacañang’s P15-billion public-private partnership (PPP) projects which are really taxpayer-driven, will give sovereign guarantee funds again to the plutocrats and US crony capitalists, who are now boosting the local stock market.
Foreign portfolio investors always smell easy, quick, and gargantuan profits whenever PPP-type projects in power, water, infrastructure (such as tollways), etc. are given special financial packages guaranteed with taxpayers’ and consumers’ money.
These inelastic or unavoidably necessary public utilities, which used to be a right of any citizen and provided free or for the most minimal of costs since the public funded them, were, under the Yellows’ political-economic philosophy beginning with Cory Aquino, converted into profiteering opportunities for private enterprises, with complete disregard for public welfare and development. For this reason, state revenues will continue to dwindle and public institutions will have to rely more and more on other means to survive.
These economic and financial policies are directly connected to such issues as the current “Juetengate” bedeviling the new Aquino. Jueteng is now the only source of funds for the Philippine National Police (PNP) top brass to maintain a lifestyle befitting of members of the ruling class. After all, what’s all the hardship for if not to give them the wherewithal to put their children into exclusives schools, travel on European junkets, and have the latest cars and the money to run for elections? Aren’t most members of the ruling class living it up, say, on the sinecure of a congressman’s “pork barrel,” which come from debts such as the Foolish-ima peso bonds, which in turn increase the state’s penury and inability to sustain itself?
PeNoy Aquino knows the realities of life in government; he has seen it all since childhood. Surely, he’s not about to start a rebellion in the police brass by really cracking down on that illegal numbers game.
Archbishop Oscar Cruz’s campaign against the “immoral” jueteng is also a bunk-load in the contradiction that he personally faces for not condemning all forms of gambling such as church bingos, raffles, sharing in horse racing proceeds, and legalized gambling that impoverish and break up families. And if he condemns jueteng because it is illegal, then it is another contradiction for him not to endorse its legalization.
Contradictions make for a lot of bunk; so does hypocrisy; even fraud. Although some priests can almost beat the Bunk-O Sentral ng Pilipinas in its amount of bunk, in the end, the financial sector still beats ‘em all. With the help of controlled mainstream media, many Filipinos still unconsciously swallow them in leaps and bounds. This space, however, will continue to try its darn best to expose the bunk to save our fellow citizens from it.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics 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)
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