DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/12/2012
The global “Occupy Movement” opened the struggle of the 99 percent disposed peoples of the world against the miniscule but powerful one percent that monopolize the globe’s wealth. That one percent is, of course, the oligarchy. Like the rest of the world, the Philippines has had its own share of oligarchs who mimic and implement the same paradigm of greed and exploitation that has dominated the world these past two and a half decades — since the time of Thatcherism and Reaganomics.
Even though the Philippines’ own oligarchs may have spats — real or make-believe — with one another once in a while, all of them will always stand united when it comes to exploiting and exhausting the wealth and resources of this nation for their fat bank accounts and megalomaniac egos.
At their core, these oligarchs are the centurions of the global oligarchy in the country, the local gatekeepers of finance capital holding rein through money politics and mass media control. And because of this, the people must recognize the need to oust this oligarchy in order to free this nation from the global masters determined to extract every bit of wealth and anima from us.
Just the other day, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) again had called for new taxes on the Filipino people. IMF mission leader to the Philippines Vivek Arora reasoned that it is required for “growth to be sustained over the medium term.” However, what they won’t say is that while the oligarchy revels at the government assets to be privatized for their benefit, as well as the taxes from the people that finance the bureaucracy implementing the global and domestic oligarchy’s will, the people suffer from over-taxation just so that both public and private sector debts can be financed.
As I picked up a copy of the credo of a giant bank’s training manual which says, “We believe in the central role that private enterprise plays in economic development,” it is pretty clear that minions are being brainwashed to execute an ideology of servitude to the oligarchy.
But pray tell us, is the United States of America, the Mecca of capitalism that allows Wall Street to be the central power in its economy, a shining example of economic development today? We have seen the US of A become an economic wasteland as neoliberal economists of the Reagan period transferred all power to private capital, which went on to seek profit for profit’s sake and against continuous development of that nation’s physical or “hard” industries, which then led private enterprises to shift to Third World labor to further increase their profits.
So, should the Third World celebrate this? Are people too naive to realize that the Philippine oligarchy has also tapped into the much bruited about business process outsourcing (BPO) sector?
Though prone to window dressing, there are times when correct views emanate from multilateral agencies, like that Asian Development Bank (ADB) study by F. Tech Tschang, Associate Professor of Strategic Management, stating that “the (Philippine) government should not rely on the (BPO) industry in dealing with the poverty situation in the country.”
Further, Norio Usui, ADB Philippines senior country economist, said the economy must “walk on two legs,” one being the services sector and the other, the industrial sector (particularly manufacturing) in order to achieve growth. Of course, we should add the all-important factor: Agricultural development toward food self-sufficiency.
Yet the Philippine oligarchy will have none of these since they are averse to investing in long gestation projects with substantial original capital (as opposed to borrowed capital using government “sovereign guarantees”).
Hence, private enterprise can never be the central engine in economic development. As the state (i.e. the people and their territory) is the genuine agent of the people’s aspirations and will, it is the ultimate source of all capital.
Witness several state-led economies (such as China, India, Venezuela, Brazil, Vietnam and Argentina) that have shown the way since the advent of the 21st Century: Have they not successfully established their own nation-state leadership paradigms, which the Philippines can learn from? So then, how do we make this work given the local oligarchy’s control of all institutions of state and government, not to mention its control of all mainstream tri-media instruments, as well as the educational system that shapes the minds of our youth?
Ironically, the greatest ally of the people and the nation-state centered leadership will be the oligarchs themselves. As their ideology of greed inflicts greater and greater suffering on the population, intra-oligarchy rivalries will soon arise.
In the interim, the challenge to the genuine leadership agents of the people is to maintain the audibility and visibility of their nationalist ideology and its promise of genuine change and benefit to the general welfare.
The first priority, therefore, is to consolidate the diverse forces that represent the nationalist ideology into an alliance. From there, a consistent message, image and leadership must find constant projection in all forms of national media.
Those alleged “retired military officers” plotting a supposed ouster of PeNoy would do well to consider not just booting out a single trapo but the entire oligarchy. They must also ensure that in the ensuing vacuum, all their efforts are in support of a nationalist leadership. Otherwise, the same domination from PeNoy and the oligarchy will remain. But no matter the great effort and sacrifice needed for this, we must remember that the time is now ripe. As the global and domestic situation mature toward an explosion of the people’s rage, we will hear more and more exclaim, “Patria o muerte, venceremos!”
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “Anti-large scale mining is pro-people;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, March 12, 2012
The FVR-IPP scam on Mindanao
CONSUMERS' DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/12-18/2012
For this issue I had wanted to write about the US State Department report on the Philippines as “one of the world’s most highly mineralized countries” with an untapped wealth of over $840 billion or around P40 trillion. But with the way Filipinos are already surrendering their present earnings and wealth to historic scams of powerful foreign and domestic plunderers, our children and the next generations will never ever get to taste the fruits of our national patrimony.
In this regard, there are two current issues that highlight the situation of our country: One is mining while the other concerns electricity. As there is an urgent development in the latter, I am compelled to focus more on the power issue, but still dwell a bit on mining later.
Why the urgency? That’s because there is again another case of corrupt government bureaucrats conniving with power oligarchs to foist more FVR-type IPP (independent power producer) deals for the next 20 years--this time, in Mindanao.
As we speak, there is an ongoing contrived power crisis of five to eight-hour brownouts in many parts of Mindanao, wreaking havoc to the island’s economy and the people’s lives. It was without a doubt brought on through deliberate non-maintenance and non-dredging of Mindanao’s abundant hydroelectric dams and facilities over the years, as the EPIRA (Electric Power Industry Reform, which I’d rather call “Deform,” Act) dictates the privatization of all government power generation assets and bans government from ever engaging in such activity even when emergency situations, where only swift government aid can help, would call for it.
The unfolding development is similar to what Cory Aquino and Joker Arroyo (who placed the Department of Energy under the Office of the President to ensure easy manipulation) did in mothballing the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) and four hydropower development projects, which ensured a power crisis that bloomed into a full disaster during Ramos’ time, which Ramos then used to sign lucrative IPP contracts way beyond the maximum the ADB warned of.
This time, we can clearly discern the sinister plot of the power oligarchs and the corrupt top government bureaucrats they endorsed when a call was made to shift away from hydropower. One of their former executives, for instance, Energy Secretary Rene Almendras, said last week, “Considering the future lower rainfall forecast in Mindanao, we cannot rely solely on hydropower plants. Non-hydro baseload is immediately needed and this will only happen if everyone cooperates,” with the report stating that “Key to this is fast-tracking the process of obtaining local government permits in setting up power plants.”
To zero in on the larcenous angle, I should report on what Mr. Jojo Borja, part owner of Iligan Light, narrates: “IPPs are Build-Operate-and-Transfer projects and many were set up since FVR’s time; after their contracts finish, these are transferred to government, which is banned by the EPIRA from engaging in power generation. So the power oligarchs will buy back these IPPs for a tenth of their worth with a few crumbs to local officials.”
As in the Cory-FVR-Arroyo IPPs, the new Mindanao IPPs will get “take-or-pay” terms or the infamous PPAs (power purchase agreements), where power rates will be based on a “re-evaluated” replacement cost of such power plants made three times higher than the “giveaway” acquisition cost from government and re-evaluated (or escalated) every three years as the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC)-formulated Performance Based Regulation (PBR) stipulates.
This is how Manny Pangilinan’s Meralco has been able to make an average of 100% increase in profits every year since 2006, affording him the limitless funds to buy everything, from basketball teams to a second TV network, to PAL, to several new seats in the Inquirer and Philippine Star, so as to control public perception of the plundering rampage, ad nausea.
In Mindanao, it will be the Aboitizes and the Alcantaras or their dummies lording it over, with IPP contracts to last the next 20 years and with double the power rates. Pity Mindanao as we have pitied the rest of the country victimized by the EPIRA, the ERC, and the collusion of corrupt politicians and the oligarchy.
Manila did not awaken to the historic scam until years later when, contrary to EPIRA proponents as well as Meralco congressmen and senators’ claims, power prices did not go down and competition did not thrive. Power rates, in fact, doubled and a pluto-poly (control by the plutocracy) emerged.
Privatization did not erase the $18-billion debt burden of the power sector on government even by just a dollar--this after 10 years with 90% of the state’s power assets privatized.
What a gigantic scam this has been and continues to be while our senators and congressmen entertain fools who may still believe they mean anything well for the country. So we must not allow the hoax to go unreported. Jojo Borja has been helping to rally Mindanaoans against this historic scam in Mindanao, which may even spark a revolution for the entire archipelago.
As for that US State Department report on our enormous untapped mineral wealth, we have long written about it from intelligence tidbits gathered over the years. For example, we’ve repeatedly heard of nationalist economist Alejandro “Ding” Lichauco having picked up a satellite sensing report of the US that shows the whereabouts of massive reserves of oil, gas, and other minerals in our islands and seas as far back as the 90s.
We have also heard Nur Misuari use the same report to make the case that those areas must not be given away when controversy on the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD)’s ceding of territories to the US dummy MILF exploded.
The timing of that report is clearly in aid of the large scale mining interests that are pushing their case against any opposition to their avaricious and destructive mining that will exhaust all of the nation’s mineral resources before it is able to tap them all by itself in order to preserve these as a legacy for our future.
Next column: “Their ‘mining’ is not our mining.”
(Tune in to 1098AM, DWAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “New Mindanao IPP scams of DoE;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/12-18/2012
For this issue I had wanted to write about the US State Department report on the Philippines as “one of the world’s most highly mineralized countries” with an untapped wealth of over $840 billion or around P40 trillion. But with the way Filipinos are already surrendering their present earnings and wealth to historic scams of powerful foreign and domestic plunderers, our children and the next generations will never ever get to taste the fruits of our national patrimony.
In this regard, there are two current issues that highlight the situation of our country: One is mining while the other concerns electricity. As there is an urgent development in the latter, I am compelled to focus more on the power issue, but still dwell a bit on mining later.
Why the urgency? That’s because there is again another case of corrupt government bureaucrats conniving with power oligarchs to foist more FVR-type IPP (independent power producer) deals for the next 20 years--this time, in Mindanao.
As we speak, there is an ongoing contrived power crisis of five to eight-hour brownouts in many parts of Mindanao, wreaking havoc to the island’s economy and the people’s lives. It was without a doubt brought on through deliberate non-maintenance and non-dredging of Mindanao’s abundant hydroelectric dams and facilities over the years, as the EPIRA (Electric Power Industry Reform, which I’d rather call “Deform,” Act) dictates the privatization of all government power generation assets and bans government from ever engaging in such activity even when emergency situations, where only swift government aid can help, would call for it.
The unfolding development is similar to what Cory Aquino and Joker Arroyo (who placed the Department of Energy under the Office of the President to ensure easy manipulation) did in mothballing the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) and four hydropower development projects, which ensured a power crisis that bloomed into a full disaster during Ramos’ time, which Ramos then used to sign lucrative IPP contracts way beyond the maximum the ADB warned of.
This time, we can clearly discern the sinister plot of the power oligarchs and the corrupt top government bureaucrats they endorsed when a call was made to shift away from hydropower. One of their former executives, for instance, Energy Secretary Rene Almendras, said last week, “Considering the future lower rainfall forecast in Mindanao, we cannot rely solely on hydropower plants. Non-hydro baseload is immediately needed and this will only happen if everyone cooperates,” with the report stating that “Key to this is fast-tracking the process of obtaining local government permits in setting up power plants.”
To zero in on the larcenous angle, I should report on what Mr. Jojo Borja, part owner of Iligan Light, narrates: “IPPs are Build-Operate-and-Transfer projects and many were set up since FVR’s time; after their contracts finish, these are transferred to government, which is banned by the EPIRA from engaging in power generation. So the power oligarchs will buy back these IPPs for a tenth of their worth with a few crumbs to local officials.”
As in the Cory-FVR-Arroyo IPPs, the new Mindanao IPPs will get “take-or-pay” terms or the infamous PPAs (power purchase agreements), where power rates will be based on a “re-evaluated” replacement cost of such power plants made three times higher than the “giveaway” acquisition cost from government and re-evaluated (or escalated) every three years as the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC)-formulated Performance Based Regulation (PBR) stipulates.
This is how Manny Pangilinan’s Meralco has been able to make an average of 100% increase in profits every year since 2006, affording him the limitless funds to buy everything, from basketball teams to a second TV network, to PAL, to several new seats in the Inquirer and Philippine Star, so as to control public perception of the plundering rampage, ad nausea.
In Mindanao, it will be the Aboitizes and the Alcantaras or their dummies lording it over, with IPP contracts to last the next 20 years and with double the power rates. Pity Mindanao as we have pitied the rest of the country victimized by the EPIRA, the ERC, and the collusion of corrupt politicians and the oligarchy.
Manila did not awaken to the historic scam until years later when, contrary to EPIRA proponents as well as Meralco congressmen and senators’ claims, power prices did not go down and competition did not thrive. Power rates, in fact, doubled and a pluto-poly (control by the plutocracy) emerged.
Privatization did not erase the $18-billion debt burden of the power sector on government even by just a dollar--this after 10 years with 90% of the state’s power assets privatized.
What a gigantic scam this has been and continues to be while our senators and congressmen entertain fools who may still believe they mean anything well for the country. So we must not allow the hoax to go unreported. Jojo Borja has been helping to rally Mindanaoans against this historic scam in Mindanao, which may even spark a revolution for the entire archipelago.
As for that US State Department report on our enormous untapped mineral wealth, we have long written about it from intelligence tidbits gathered over the years. For example, we’ve repeatedly heard of nationalist economist Alejandro “Ding” Lichauco having picked up a satellite sensing report of the US that shows the whereabouts of massive reserves of oil, gas, and other minerals in our islands and seas as far back as the 90s.
We have also heard Nur Misuari use the same report to make the case that those areas must not be given away when controversy on the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD)’s ceding of territories to the US dummy MILF exploded.
The timing of that report is clearly in aid of the large scale mining interests that are pushing their case against any opposition to their avaricious and destructive mining that will exhaust all of the nation’s mineral resources before it is able to tap them all by itself in order to preserve these as a legacy for our future.
Next column: “Their ‘mining’ is not our mining.”
(Tune in to 1098AM, DWAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “New Mindanao IPP scams of DoE;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The United States’ criminal act
BACKBENCHER
Rod P. Kapunan
3/10-11/2012
The United States is the only country that resorts to branding states to denote some kind of political categorization. Often such name calling is reflective of its attitude towards that state. It has called some states “totalitarian states” in referring to the former Soviet Union, China under Mao, North Korea, and Cuba; “failed states” for countries like Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and other famine-stricken countries in the Sahel Region of Africa; and, “narco States” like Colombia, Mexico, and Afghanistan.
“Totalitarian states” are perceived as undemocratic where power is concentrated in one ruler; “failed states” or those it consider to have lost its power to govern; and the “narco states” or those governments sustained through the production, sale and distribution of drugs like cocaine and opium. The US has also branded some as “rogue states” in referring to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Libya under Muammar Gaddhafi, Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and North Korea under Kim Jong Il. The US views their behavior as odd for refusing to kowtow to what it wants. The US often accuses them of sponsoring “international terrorism” or are “endeavoring to acquire weapons of mass destruction.”
Surprisingly, as the world looks at how the US has prejudged them, it has overlooked using the most important categorization that would fit to its status as a country that has no respect for international law, always seeking to enforce its interest by the use of force in defiance of the United Nations Charter. Perhaps, the US purposely reserved that title to itself. After all, it alone has the power, and the ability to use it with arrogance to subjugate other states with unparalleled ferocity and savagery to be fittingly called a criminal state, together with its Zionist enforcer in the Middle East, Israel.
At the outset, the economic embargo imposed on Cuba was a criminal act committed by one state against a sovereign state. We say this because in 1962 or barely three years after Cuba ousted Fulgencio Batista, the US arbitrarily reacted by imposing an economic blockade against a people just wishing to chart their own destiny. For the last 50 years the economic blockade has become much tighter that it has caused untold sufferings to the entire population, with the US hoping it would dampen their spirit to turn their back against their legendary revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
No state is authorized to impose an economic blockade against another state. That would be tantamount to war. But what is Cuba against a criminal state that parades itself as the guardian of democracy? It was criminal because the US sought to internationalize its aggressive design against Cuba by urging its allies or by blackmailing other countries to join the embargo which has never been sanction by the UN. The US has emerged as a mafia Godfather because it exerts its power and influence to secure the cooperation of law-abiding states to initially obey its criminal design of economically squeezing Cuba as what the members of the Organization of American States did to expel Cuba on July 26, 1964.
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the world thought it would usher in the end of the Cold War. But true to its instinct as a criminal state, the US rather tightened the screw on the partial restriction imposed by President Kennedy on February 7, 1962. On October 15, 1992, US Congressman Robert Torricelli introduced a misnomer act dubbed as “Cuban Democracy Act.” That act sought to widen the scope of the embargo by prohibiting foreign-based subsidiaries of US companies from trading with Cuba, prohibiting US citizens from traveling to that island, and curtailing remittances to family relatives in Cuba.
It was followed on March 12, 1996 by the Helms-Burton Act, also given a misleading title of “Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act.” It sought to impose much tougher sanctions on foreign companies doing business in Cuba, gave a go-signal to US citizens to sue foreign investors who make use of American-owned properties seized by the Cuban government, and to deny entry to the US to such foreign investors doing business in Cuba. It was an act of gangsterism for intimidation is not only evident, but went beyond to blackmail legitimate business transactions carried out by other countries.
Conservative estimates put it that direct damage to the Cuban people as a result of the economic blockade that has been broadened to include commercial and financial blockade as of December 2010 would run to $104 billion. Taking into consideration the continued depreciation of the US dollar against the price of gold in the international financial market, damaged to the Cuban economy would exceed $975 billion.
For 15 straight years, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to end the US embargo against Cuba. One hundred eighty-three member-states voted for the lifting while a fellow criminal state, Israel, voted against to show both its color and loyalty to the US. The two other states voted to oppose, and they were Marshall Islands and Palau. Their vote was understandable for without the US food and economic assistance, the people there would starve and their economy would sink deep into the ocean.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod P. Kapunan
3/10-11/2012
The United States is the only country that resorts to branding states to denote some kind of political categorization. Often such name calling is reflective of its attitude towards that state. It has called some states “totalitarian states” in referring to the former Soviet Union, China under Mao, North Korea, and Cuba; “failed states” for countries like Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan and other famine-stricken countries in the Sahel Region of Africa; and, “narco States” like Colombia, Mexico, and Afghanistan.
“Totalitarian states” are perceived as undemocratic where power is concentrated in one ruler; “failed states” or those it consider to have lost its power to govern; and the “narco states” or those governments sustained through the production, sale and distribution of drugs like cocaine and opium. The US has also branded some as “rogue states” in referring to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Libya under Muammar Gaddhafi, Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and North Korea under Kim Jong Il. The US views their behavior as odd for refusing to kowtow to what it wants. The US often accuses them of sponsoring “international terrorism” or are “endeavoring to acquire weapons of mass destruction.”
Surprisingly, as the world looks at how the US has prejudged them, it has overlooked using the most important categorization that would fit to its status as a country that has no respect for international law, always seeking to enforce its interest by the use of force in defiance of the United Nations Charter. Perhaps, the US purposely reserved that title to itself. After all, it alone has the power, and the ability to use it with arrogance to subjugate other states with unparalleled ferocity and savagery to be fittingly called a criminal state, together with its Zionist enforcer in the Middle East, Israel.
At the outset, the economic embargo imposed on Cuba was a criminal act committed by one state against a sovereign state. We say this because in 1962 or barely three years after Cuba ousted Fulgencio Batista, the US arbitrarily reacted by imposing an economic blockade against a people just wishing to chart their own destiny. For the last 50 years the economic blockade has become much tighter that it has caused untold sufferings to the entire population, with the US hoping it would dampen their spirit to turn their back against their legendary revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
No state is authorized to impose an economic blockade against another state. That would be tantamount to war. But what is Cuba against a criminal state that parades itself as the guardian of democracy? It was criminal because the US sought to internationalize its aggressive design against Cuba by urging its allies or by blackmailing other countries to join the embargo which has never been sanction by the UN. The US has emerged as a mafia Godfather because it exerts its power and influence to secure the cooperation of law-abiding states to initially obey its criminal design of economically squeezing Cuba as what the members of the Organization of American States did to expel Cuba on July 26, 1964.
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the world thought it would usher in the end of the Cold War. But true to its instinct as a criminal state, the US rather tightened the screw on the partial restriction imposed by President Kennedy on February 7, 1962. On October 15, 1992, US Congressman Robert Torricelli introduced a misnomer act dubbed as “Cuban Democracy Act.” That act sought to widen the scope of the embargo by prohibiting foreign-based subsidiaries of US companies from trading with Cuba, prohibiting US citizens from traveling to that island, and curtailing remittances to family relatives in Cuba.
It was followed on March 12, 1996 by the Helms-Burton Act, also given a misleading title of “Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act.” It sought to impose much tougher sanctions on foreign companies doing business in Cuba, gave a go-signal to US citizens to sue foreign investors who make use of American-owned properties seized by the Cuban government, and to deny entry to the US to such foreign investors doing business in Cuba. It was an act of gangsterism for intimidation is not only evident, but went beyond to blackmail legitimate business transactions carried out by other countries.
Conservative estimates put it that direct damage to the Cuban people as a result of the economic blockade that has been broadened to include commercial and financial blockade as of December 2010 would run to $104 billion. Taking into consideration the continued depreciation of the US dollar against the price of gold in the international financial market, damaged to the Cuban economy would exceed $975 billion.
For 15 straight years, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to end the US embargo against Cuba. One hundred eighty-three member-states voted for the lifting while a fellow criminal state, Israel, voted against to show both its color and loyalty to the US. The two other states voted to oppose, and they were Marshall Islands and Palau. Their vote was understandable for without the US food and economic assistance, the people there would starve and their economy would sink deep into the ocean.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
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