DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/14/2011
As of the last count, I read that 577,000 hits had already registered for YouTube video, “Aquino-Cojuangco: Facts they don’t want you to know.” That’s what some would call having gone “viral.” Made by “PinoyMonkeyPride Production,” the opening sequence introduces us to a riveting historical account while offering a glimpse into the makers’ real intentions.
The story begins with the Philippine Revolution and Gen. Antonio Luna taking the gold of the revolutionary movement from the Ilocos treasury and the Governor of Pampanga to Paniqui, Tarlac, specifically to the home of Luna’s supposed girlfriend, Ysidra Cojuangco. Three days later, Luna was assassinated by Aguinaldo officers and the “gold treasures of the First Philippine Republic suddenly disappeared,” which “even the American forces couldn’t find.”
By the year 1900, “Ysidra Cojuangco became one of the richest women in the Philippines,” leading to the expansion of Cojuangco lands across central Luzon, the establishment of the Paniqui Sugar Mills, the Finance and Investments Corp. and the Philippine Bank of Commerce, among other things.
By the 1930s, the family owned 12,000 hectares and controlled the rice trade of the entire province of Tarlac. It goes on to tell of the Cojuangcos’ invasion of politics, beginning with Melecio Cojuangco in Congress, followed by a long, long line down to Gibo, with special highlights on Corazon Aquino and son Noynoy. A voice fired off a list of all Cojuangco politicos in machinegun mode while decrying the lack of progress in the family’s home turf.
The narrative then moves on to the union of the two Tarlac clans, with the wedding of Ninoy Aquino and Corazon Cojuangco, whose matrimonial ninong was President Ramon Magsaysay.
With the crony deal concluded in 1958 for the Cojuangcos’ purchase of Compania Tabacalera’s Azucarera with government money, Magsaysay provided two conditions: The inclusion of the adjoining Hacienda Luisita and the distribution of hacienda lands to its farmers after 10 years.
We all know where that story ends and the video names the hundreds killed in the course of the Cojuangcos’ defense of the hacienda over the decades, including the Luisita Massacre and the murder of farmer-supporter Bishop Alberto Ramento, plus, the violation of the land reform law by Cory herself when she was president.
The video goes on to present Ninoy as the non-hero who died only for his ambition (as distinguished from Jose Rizal), as well as of Cory restoring the oligarchs; of Kris being the “Mary Magdalene of Media;” and of Noynoy as the “blame game” rock star.
I have been telling almost the exact same story in debunking the myths of the Yellow media, which the video brands as “Pro-Poor, Pro-Poverty, Pro-Oligarchy” Yellow Propaganda.
While I am happy that it is somehow shattering the hold that the Yellows still have over the mind of many Filipinos, especially the youth, there is one caveat that the public should take note of: It is part of a more insidious campaign to subvert a more basic issue for our nation.
The subliminal message does this so well by first latching on to the popular antipathy against oligarch families like the Aquino-Cojuangcos and then intersperses this with the argument that since the nationalist economic provisions in our Constitution only protects the oligarchs, the charter must be changed to open the country to foreigners.
This “Aquino-Cojuangco” video is part of a seemingly very well-funded Web campaign that clamors for Charter change (Cha-cha) and the removal of the protectionist provisions in our Constitution, as well as the shift to a parliamentary form of government. It is part of a series of YouTube videos that links up with GetRealPhilippines.com and AntiPinoy.com.
While I have issues in these sites that I can enthusiastically agree with, this one enigma — their push for the opening up of the Philippines to untrammeled entry of foreign capital and control of its economy; and for the removal of restrictions on foreign ownership of our national patrimony and media through Cha-cha by any means (including constituent assembly), which they say will end the rule and abuse of the local oligarchy — casts a very dark shadow on all the rest.
Given that we can already see the West having tumultuous revolts in the occupy protests against their own oligarchs, from the Wall Street mafia, Warren Buffet, et al., General Motors, to even Rupert Murdoch and the other media mega-corporations, that call to get rid of the local oligarchs, and in their place welcome their foreign counterparts, is simply inane. How can anyone think that giving the Philippines to these voracious profit gorgers will make things better for us?
The global oligarchs won’t be kinder and gentler than the local oligarchs have been to the Filipino public all these decades. The two will only reinforce each other.
Therefore, the antithesis to the local oligarchy is not the global oligarchy. The antithesis to both is national or popular ownership!
If there is to be any change in the Constitution, what’s needed is the further protection of the nation and the people’s fundamental economic rights. This can only be done through the nationalization and/or cooperativization of, among other things, basic and strategic utilities and industries, basic function of issuing money and credit management, the fundamental right to work, and the right to be free from the abuse and exploitation of private monopolies. Only through these can the state ensure the right of every citizen to employment, affordable food, low-cost government services, medical care, education and basic shelter.
PinoyMonkeyPride, AntiPinoy, and GetRealPhilippines are really insulting the Filipino intelligence if, like Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile and House Speaker Sonny Belmonte, they think Filipinos of all classes don’t already know that the country’s highest power costs in Asia is the very thing keeping local and foreign investments away — instead of the restriction on foreigners from owning properties and corporations in the Philippines, who, it must be said, already own the local oligarchs here.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, November 14, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Belmonte’s last HURA
BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
11/12-13/2011
There is nothing wrong with putting up a corporation, especially if motivated with some “laudable” projects, like building low-cost housing and carrying out urban renewal for the city. But in Quezon City, its officials, many of whom were not even elected by the residents, organized a corporation and giving it a high-sounding name called “Quezon City Housing and Urban Renewal Authority (QC-HURA), Inc.”
Among the incorporators of this mutant corporation that was granted certificate of incorporation by the SEC on July 15, 2003, were Feliciano Belmonte, Jr., former mayor and now Speaker of the House; Herbert Bautista, the incumbent mayor; councilor Jesus Suntay; Tadeo Palma, secretary to the office of the Mayor; Paquito Ochoa, Jr., former city administrator and now executive secretary; Bernadette Herrera-Dy, now party-list representative; and Salvador Enriquez, Jr., former budget secretary and now president and general manager of QC-HURA, Inc.
There are asking why our big time operators in City Hall took it to themselves to organize a corporation using the funds of the city government, specifically its revenues, with them openly parading as incorporators. These people should know that as officials they are required by law to divest their holdings in any private corporation, and the reason behind is to prevent then from incurring possible conflict of interest. In their case, they defied with impunity the ban by using their position to funnel the funds entrusted to them to their newly-created “private corporation.”
One lawyer whom this column consulted said local governments are prohibited from forming a corporation, be it public or private. Only Congress, by a legislative act, can create a government-owned and controlled corporation, irrespective of its purpose, and whether its scope and jurisdiction is national or local. The prohibition goes with the saying that public funds cannot be diverted by the simple expedient of forming a corporation, and making it appear that their systematic looting of public funds is legal all because they complied with the requirements of registering their corporation with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Aside from being required to have their own charter, the law mandates the officers to act independently, as they can likewise be held liable for graft and corruption. Hence, for all their ranting of QC-HURA, Inc. as a city--owned corporation, it is nothing more but an illegal corporation using the funds of the city as their seed capital, and the incorporators having their final say on how they intend to dispose of the funds they looted from the city government.
As the lawyer explained, for the city government to appropriate an amount to an illegal corporation amounts to malversation, and those who allowed it, including those now manning that questionable corporation, are liable for graft and corruption. For the fact that the amount is more than P50 million that now could make them liable for plunder for illegally diverting the funds of the city government to a “private corporation” thinking it could transform the status of the funds to a private fund, with them free to hire their private external auditor.
What is shocking about this last HURA of Belmonte and his acolytes is their enumeration of its primary duties. Among them: 1) “To own, develop, improve, administer, deal in, subdivide or lease any and all kinds of lands, buildings, estates and other forms of real property, owned, managed, controlled and/or operated by the Quezon City Government”; 2) “To borrow funds from any local or foreign institution independent of the bonds it may issue or may continue to issue, to carry out its purposes; and” 3) “To enter into contracts of any kind and description, to enable it to carryout its purposes and functions.”
Evidently clear in the ultra vires purposes of this questionable corporation is it practically usurped all the functions of the city council where as a matter of legal procedure every undertaking requiring the release of public funds has to be approved by an ordinance. The premium to this circumvention is it allowed the incorporators to open a sluice channel directly to their corporation with no responsibility to the people of Quezon City, they not having been elected or if were elected before are no longer officials of the city government. Some are even be thinking they could continue their racket of siphoning the funds of the city for as long as the illegal ordinance is not repealed, superseded or abrogated by another ordinance.
Curiously enough, the city government approved recently an ordinance dated October 17, 2011 imposing a special assessment tax equivalent to 0.5 percent of the assessed value of the land in excess of P100,000.00, as if there is still a property in the city valued less than that. The proponents, mostly hucksters of that Bautista-Belmonte tandem in the City Council, argued they need P223 million to finance the socialized housing and urban development forgetting it was their erstwhile boss who made a valedictory bluff of leaving a P6.5 billion surplus to the coffers of the city.
The question that puzzles is why Mayor Herbert Bautista and his confederates kept it to themselves the existence of QC-HURA, Inc. which was approved by city ordinance SP-1236 S-2003. Even if at its face the ordinance is patently illegal, the city government paid P100 million for the paid up capital upon incorporation, with the remaining P150 million of its subscribed capital paid later. In that one could see how these hustlers committed P250 million of our taxes to finance their “privatized corporation,” which they could operate even if they have long been trashed out by the voters of Quezon City.
If one will dissect QC-HURA, Inc., it states to have a subscribed capital of P250 million divided into 250,000 shares. All the mentioned incorporators contributed less than one percent of its capital stocks, while committing the city government they have made their regular milking cow to subscribe more than 99 percent amounting to P249,993,000.00. The ugly part is while the incorporators contributed a consuelo de bobo of P1,000 each representing their respective one share of stock, the city government paid the P249,993,000.00 for the project that is now being repeated by the so-called “socialized housing tax.”
Many are wondering because the objectives of this dubious corporation are no different to the objectives of their newly approved ordinance. The question is not even about the duplication of funds and functions, but the ulterior motive for clearly we have been witnessing how our corrupt and greedy officials in City Hall have been imposing confiscatory taxes left and right that every time they run out of money all they do is pass an ordinance, an actuation no different from an alley extortionist.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod Kapunan
11/12-13/2011
There is nothing wrong with putting up a corporation, especially if motivated with some “laudable” projects, like building low-cost housing and carrying out urban renewal for the city. But in Quezon City, its officials, many of whom were not even elected by the residents, organized a corporation and giving it a high-sounding name called “Quezon City Housing and Urban Renewal Authority (QC-HURA), Inc.”
Among the incorporators of this mutant corporation that was granted certificate of incorporation by the SEC on July 15, 2003, were Feliciano Belmonte, Jr., former mayor and now Speaker of the House; Herbert Bautista, the incumbent mayor; councilor Jesus Suntay; Tadeo Palma, secretary to the office of the Mayor; Paquito Ochoa, Jr., former city administrator and now executive secretary; Bernadette Herrera-Dy, now party-list representative; and Salvador Enriquez, Jr., former budget secretary and now president and general manager of QC-HURA, Inc.
There are asking why our big time operators in City Hall took it to themselves to organize a corporation using the funds of the city government, specifically its revenues, with them openly parading as incorporators. These people should know that as officials they are required by law to divest their holdings in any private corporation, and the reason behind is to prevent then from incurring possible conflict of interest. In their case, they defied with impunity the ban by using their position to funnel the funds entrusted to them to their newly-created “private corporation.”
One lawyer whom this column consulted said local governments are prohibited from forming a corporation, be it public or private. Only Congress, by a legislative act, can create a government-owned and controlled corporation, irrespective of its purpose, and whether its scope and jurisdiction is national or local. The prohibition goes with the saying that public funds cannot be diverted by the simple expedient of forming a corporation, and making it appear that their systematic looting of public funds is legal all because they complied with the requirements of registering their corporation with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Aside from being required to have their own charter, the law mandates the officers to act independently, as they can likewise be held liable for graft and corruption. Hence, for all their ranting of QC-HURA, Inc. as a city--owned corporation, it is nothing more but an illegal corporation using the funds of the city as their seed capital, and the incorporators having their final say on how they intend to dispose of the funds they looted from the city government.
As the lawyer explained, for the city government to appropriate an amount to an illegal corporation amounts to malversation, and those who allowed it, including those now manning that questionable corporation, are liable for graft and corruption. For the fact that the amount is more than P50 million that now could make them liable for plunder for illegally diverting the funds of the city government to a “private corporation” thinking it could transform the status of the funds to a private fund, with them free to hire their private external auditor.
What is shocking about this last HURA of Belmonte and his acolytes is their enumeration of its primary duties. Among them: 1) “To own, develop, improve, administer, deal in, subdivide or lease any and all kinds of lands, buildings, estates and other forms of real property, owned, managed, controlled and/or operated by the Quezon City Government”; 2) “To borrow funds from any local or foreign institution independent of the bonds it may issue or may continue to issue, to carry out its purposes; and” 3) “To enter into contracts of any kind and description, to enable it to carryout its purposes and functions.”
Evidently clear in the ultra vires purposes of this questionable corporation is it practically usurped all the functions of the city council where as a matter of legal procedure every undertaking requiring the release of public funds has to be approved by an ordinance. The premium to this circumvention is it allowed the incorporators to open a sluice channel directly to their corporation with no responsibility to the people of Quezon City, they not having been elected or if were elected before are no longer officials of the city government. Some are even be thinking they could continue their racket of siphoning the funds of the city for as long as the illegal ordinance is not repealed, superseded or abrogated by another ordinance.
Curiously enough, the city government approved recently an ordinance dated October 17, 2011 imposing a special assessment tax equivalent to 0.5 percent of the assessed value of the land in excess of P100,000.00, as if there is still a property in the city valued less than that. The proponents, mostly hucksters of that Bautista-Belmonte tandem in the City Council, argued they need P223 million to finance the socialized housing and urban development forgetting it was their erstwhile boss who made a valedictory bluff of leaving a P6.5 billion surplus to the coffers of the city.
The question that puzzles is why Mayor Herbert Bautista and his confederates kept it to themselves the existence of QC-HURA, Inc. which was approved by city ordinance SP-1236 S-2003. Even if at its face the ordinance is patently illegal, the city government paid P100 million for the paid up capital upon incorporation, with the remaining P150 million of its subscribed capital paid later. In that one could see how these hustlers committed P250 million of our taxes to finance their “privatized corporation,” which they could operate even if they have long been trashed out by the voters of Quezon City.
If one will dissect QC-HURA, Inc., it states to have a subscribed capital of P250 million divided into 250,000 shares. All the mentioned incorporators contributed less than one percent of its capital stocks, while committing the city government they have made their regular milking cow to subscribe more than 99 percent amounting to P249,993,000.00. The ugly part is while the incorporators contributed a consuelo de bobo of P1,000 each representing their respective one share of stock, the city government paid the P249,993,000.00 for the project that is now being repeated by the so-called “socialized housing tax.”
Many are wondering because the objectives of this dubious corporation are no different to the objectives of their newly approved ordinance. The question is not even about the duplication of funds and functions, but the ulterior motive for clearly we have been witnessing how our corrupt and greedy officials in City Hall have been imposing confiscatory taxes left and right that every time they run out of money all they do is pass an ordinance, an actuation no different from an alley extortionist.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Friday, November 11, 2011
From WMD to ‘laptop WMD’
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/11/2011
This century began with hopes of lasting peace as the threat of a nuclear MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) came to an end. Only one superpower was left; and in its hands, the peace that could prosper. But no sooner had the new century limped through toddlerhood that this lone superpower staged a “false flag” operation against its own people. Supposedly to avenge the three-building 9/11 World Trade Center “terror attacks,” the US pounded heavily on the medieval nation of Afghanistan in order to flush out the attacks’ alleged mastermind, Osama bin Laden. But it was too small a war.
In his 2002 State of the Union Address, then US President George W. Bush lashed out against the “Axis of Evil,” shattering all dreams of world peace. The following year, his country attacked another nation (Iraq) under the pretext of securing Saddam Hussein’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD), which scenario turned out to be a “Weapon of Mass Distraction.”
Ten years later, and with $1.2 trillion spent, 30,000 civilian casualties (including disproportionate number of children and women); 20,000 Taliban and 2,700 coalition forces’ deaths in Afghanistan; 650,000 (according to a Lancet study) to 1.5 million dead Iraqis; mounting Pakistani civilian drone killings; and an expansion of the conflicts into Côte d’Ivoire and Libya, now coming to be known as the new colonial resurgence, there is no end in sight to the Western powers’ 21st Century wars.
The peoples of the world should take heed: There is planning for all these wars and more to come. This was already detailed in the 1990s by US neoconservative think tank, PNAC (Project for a New American Century), which drafted the plan “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” that called for a “New Pearl Harbor” to justify US military resurgence.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), a military alliance against a bygone Soviet regime, then shifted its support to US military aggression and went off to start its own adventures in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya, with current US President Barack Obama “leading from behind.” The whole of Africa is now even threatened by the US’ own Africom (Africa Command) as interventions in Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Yemen loom.
Even the much ballyhooed “Arab Spring” was a component of the plan with Arab Spring NGOs and “civil society” now shown to be funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House, and trained in Serbia’s CANVAS (Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies), with experience in the Balkanization of Serbia.
Now, Egypt is far more repressive than ever, with sham elections bringing in worse dependency on the West, as in Tunisia and Libya. Then there’s the US-Israeli thrust through Syria and then Iran.
The drums of war against Iran have been beaten for years now. Previous IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) heads, though, from Hans Blix to Mohamed El Baradei, have never given credence to claims of Iran’s nuclear capability for military use.
But suddenly, with a new Japanese nuclear watchdog chief who was aggressively lobbied for by the US, the agency is now producing a “laptop” of weapons of mass distraction.
The latest came in 2004 when “a mysterious figure handed over to the CIA a laptop he had purloined from an Iranian technician, purportedly working at a nuclear plant in Iran. (It was) said to contain pages and pages of top-secret information in English detailing Iran’s lust for attaining technical knowhow to produce nuclear payroll for Shahab III missile” — this, according to Iranian scholar and author Ismael Shalabi on the Center for Research on Globalization Web site.
Furthermore, “non-proliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation says the biggest loophole in the claim is the crude manner in which the laptop documents were constructed… (with reports indicating that) ‘some of the view graphs were done in Power Point, which suggested to me that the program was not terribly sophisticated.’ Another fault… is that the documents were written in English, a language barely used in official Iranian documents, let alone in documents of such paramount sensitivity. In 2005, the US officials briefed the IAEA of the contents of the documents, but they declined to provide the IAEA officials with any actual documents. In 2008, a battle ensued between IAEA chief Mohamed El Baradei and George W. Bush… (as El Baradei) thought Iran should be given a fair chance to see at least some of the invisible documents” (Inter Press Service, Dec. 9, 2006; New York Times, Dec. 4, 2007). But the US would not oblige.
According to a cable released by WikiLeaks in October 2009, “(Yukiya) Amano (current IAEA chief) reminded (the US) ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 (the developing countries group), which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”
Furthermore, “Amano recently delivered, reporting that Iran had carried out activities ‘relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device’ with ‘evidence’ provided by ‘more than 10 member states as well as its own information’ which turns out to be the US ‘laptop of WMD.’”
All these remind us of Bush’s infamous “Sixteen Words” in his 2003 State of the Union speech: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Those 16 words were about the Niger “Yellow Cake” Colin Powell said before the UN that Saddam obtained for his WMDs. After, the CIA sent US Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate and found the allegation to be false, the US eventually had to admit that Saddam had no WMDs. It was a barefaced lie told to 300 million Americans and 6 billion people of the world.
We have an obligation today to inform our fellow human beings of this new US lie for war — this “laptop Weapon of Mass Distraction.” We must take our role seriously as peacemakers and stop the warmongers-for-profit from destroying more than they already have. A war on Iran will raise oil to $300 per barrel that would devastate our already suffering nation.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/11/2011
This century began with hopes of lasting peace as the threat of a nuclear MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) came to an end. Only one superpower was left; and in its hands, the peace that could prosper. But no sooner had the new century limped through toddlerhood that this lone superpower staged a “false flag” operation against its own people. Supposedly to avenge the three-building 9/11 World Trade Center “terror attacks,” the US pounded heavily on the medieval nation of Afghanistan in order to flush out the attacks’ alleged mastermind, Osama bin Laden. But it was too small a war.
In his 2002 State of the Union Address, then US President George W. Bush lashed out against the “Axis of Evil,” shattering all dreams of world peace. The following year, his country attacked another nation (Iraq) under the pretext of securing Saddam Hussein’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD), which scenario turned out to be a “Weapon of Mass Distraction.”
Ten years later, and with $1.2 trillion spent, 30,000 civilian casualties (including disproportionate number of children and women); 20,000 Taliban and 2,700 coalition forces’ deaths in Afghanistan; 650,000 (according to a Lancet study) to 1.5 million dead Iraqis; mounting Pakistani civilian drone killings; and an expansion of the conflicts into Côte d’Ivoire and Libya, now coming to be known as the new colonial resurgence, there is no end in sight to the Western powers’ 21st Century wars.
The peoples of the world should take heed: There is planning for all these wars and more to come. This was already detailed in the 1990s by US neoconservative think tank, PNAC (Project for a New American Century), which drafted the plan “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” that called for a “New Pearl Harbor” to justify US military resurgence.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), a military alliance against a bygone Soviet regime, then shifted its support to US military aggression and went off to start its own adventures in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya, with current US President Barack Obama “leading from behind.” The whole of Africa is now even threatened by the US’ own Africom (Africa Command) as interventions in Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Yemen loom.
Even the much ballyhooed “Arab Spring” was a component of the plan with Arab Spring NGOs and “civil society” now shown to be funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House, and trained in Serbia’s CANVAS (Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies), with experience in the Balkanization of Serbia.
Now, Egypt is far more repressive than ever, with sham elections bringing in worse dependency on the West, as in Tunisia and Libya. Then there’s the US-Israeli thrust through Syria and then Iran.
The drums of war against Iran have been beaten for years now. Previous IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) heads, though, from Hans Blix to Mohamed El Baradei, have never given credence to claims of Iran’s nuclear capability for military use.
But suddenly, with a new Japanese nuclear watchdog chief who was aggressively lobbied for by the US, the agency is now producing a “laptop” of weapons of mass distraction.
The latest came in 2004 when “a mysterious figure handed over to the CIA a laptop he had purloined from an Iranian technician, purportedly working at a nuclear plant in Iran. (It was) said to contain pages and pages of top-secret information in English detailing Iran’s lust for attaining technical knowhow to produce nuclear payroll for Shahab III missile” — this, according to Iranian scholar and author Ismael Shalabi on the Center for Research on Globalization Web site.
Furthermore, “non-proliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation says the biggest loophole in the claim is the crude manner in which the laptop documents were constructed… (with reports indicating that) ‘some of the view graphs were done in Power Point, which suggested to me that the program was not terribly sophisticated.’ Another fault… is that the documents were written in English, a language barely used in official Iranian documents, let alone in documents of such paramount sensitivity. In 2005, the US officials briefed the IAEA of the contents of the documents, but they declined to provide the IAEA officials with any actual documents. In 2008, a battle ensued between IAEA chief Mohamed El Baradei and George W. Bush… (as El Baradei) thought Iran should be given a fair chance to see at least some of the invisible documents” (Inter Press Service, Dec. 9, 2006; New York Times, Dec. 4, 2007). But the US would not oblige.
According to a cable released by WikiLeaks in October 2009, “(Yukiya) Amano (current IAEA chief) reminded (the US) ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 (the developing countries group), which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”
Furthermore, “Amano recently delivered, reporting that Iran had carried out activities ‘relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device’ with ‘evidence’ provided by ‘more than 10 member states as well as its own information’ which turns out to be the US ‘laptop of WMD.’”
All these remind us of Bush’s infamous “Sixteen Words” in his 2003 State of the Union speech: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Those 16 words were about the Niger “Yellow Cake” Colin Powell said before the UN that Saddam obtained for his WMDs. After, the CIA sent US Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate and found the allegation to be false, the US eventually had to admit that Saddam had no WMDs. It was a barefaced lie told to 300 million Americans and 6 billion people of the world.
We have an obligation today to inform our fellow human beings of this new US lie for war — this “laptop Weapon of Mass Distraction.” We must take our role seriously as peacemakers and stop the warmongers-for-profit from destroying more than they already have. A war on Iran will raise oil to $300 per barrel that would devastate our already suffering nation.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
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