Taxpayers pushed off 'cliff'

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

1/4/2013

Daily Tribune

The Establishment-controlled US and RP mainstream media make it appear that a great deal by Obama and the Republicans was achieved to keep the US operational without new debt, taxing only the rich and without increasing fiscal burdens on the people. But the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) itself says that the "deal" results in $620 billion in tax hikes over the next decade offset by $15 billion in spending cuts now" as many critical American blogs like Zero Hedge reports. This is happening because "millions of wage-earners, will see a smaller paycheck as a result of the lapse in the 2 percent payroll-tax cut, enacted in 2010, which lowered the employee portion of the Social Security tax from 6.2 to 4.2 percent." That's $125 billion annually taken from the tax cut intended to help beleaguered Americans after the 2008 Financial Crash. In the end, the people are being made to pay again.

The Philippine mainstream media have seen written opinions "welcoming" the "fiscal cliff" deal. The opinions range from claiming that the resolution should help keep US investments coming, to a sigh of relief that the Philippines will continue to benefit from the US "recovery." Such raw views based on deliberately half-baked news and information from US mainstream reports and analysis simply miseducate and mislead the Filipino public. The reality is, Obama and the Republicans just gave another, maybe final shove to the teetering US economy and the tail-spinning purchasing power of the US consumers (read "US Holiday Sales disappoint" — various business news) and further pressure on employment and economic recovery. US investment in the Philippines, the lowest in the region, will not see any uptick; that's an illusion as many RP commentaries believe about the US.

The Obama-Republican deal on the "fiscal cliff" was a big farce, a cliffhanger to enrapt the US public to portray a working democratic political system where debates on crucial policies are engaged, similar to the Bush versus Democrats drama over raising the debt ceiling earlier. But, as we see with the CBO's report, in the end the oligarchy controlled government will return to taxing the people, robbing the future of the working class and the nation to pay for their profligacy. What profligacy will see no cutback? The most vital issue that a fall of the US government (not the taxpayers) over the "fiscal cliff" would have been the cut back in "war spending" by the US government which will cost the US "at least $3.7 trillion and could reach as high as $4.4 trillion, according to the research project 'Costs of War' by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. – Reuters."

The US and Philippine governments are controlled by global financial and banking mafias, and their various alliances, intertwined with major transnational corporations into a whole gamut of industries, from the arms industry to giant pharmaceuticals. Archetypal of such mafias is the Carlyle Group which, Wiki reports, invests in "aerospace and defense, automotive, consumer and retail, energy and power, health care, real estate, telecommunications, media." In the US Carlyle will benefit again from the fiscal cliff deal as taxes from US working classes will go up while the defense budget stays as is (US will not leave Afghanistan voluntarily, strategic goals are at stake) while in the Philippines Carlyle lurks somewhere behind the labyrinth of contraceptives and tobacco companies that will rake in P10 billion annually from the new Reprodcutive Health laws and billions more from cigarette smuggling to the RP.

They, the oligarchy, when they control government will always tax the people, US or RP or in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) to feed the corporate financial and banking beast. They will always push the people off the cliff, lest they themselves be made to jump over the chasms they create. Mainstream media are the oligarchy's handmaiden in all the swindle of all the peoples of the world, brainwashing, diverting attention and focus, browbeating with misinformation and disinformation overload to deaden the protesting minds of nations, and for those that continue to resist there is the final enforcer — the mercenary, professional, pay-rolled-form the taxes military and police forces. The only alternative for the people, and we quote co-organizer of Occupy Wall Street Kevin Zeese: "People can expect much worse in the months to come unless they get organized and mobilize against austerity in a big way. Elected officials will need to be scared by the public in a big way to stop the bi-partisan assault on the people." 

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Friday; Watch GNN Channel 8, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., 11:15 p.m. and Sunday 8am, and over www.gnntv-asia.com; tune to 1098AM radio Tuesday to Friday 5 to 6 p.m. Visit http://newkatipunan.blogspot.com)

The 'Asperger' killer

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

12/28/2012

Daily Tribune

In an article entitled "Newtown Shooter Had Asperger Syndrome, And Some US Gun Facts" Tyler Durden wrote last Dec. 15, "As we reported … buried inside the New York Times biopic of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was arguably one of the most important missing pieces in the story, at least so far, which could provide clues into partially explaining yesterday's tragic loss of young life, … namely that the 20-year-old man suffered from Asperger Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism (two conditions which are being merged in the upcoming update of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) manual of mental disorders), which has been traditionally associated with social communication difficulties, including flat affect, and one which in some clinical studies has been shown to have a causal link to violence."

The Daily Mail report by Sharon Churcher on Adam Lanza, "'Goth (kids/teens who dress mostly in black and hang out with each other. They like Slipknot and dislike the rest of society) loner was 'ticking time bomb': But mother gave him shooting lessons'… Crazed killer Adam Lanza was a 'ticking time bomb' who suffered from Asperger's syndrome and was painfully shy and awkward, former classmates said yesterday... a troubling portrait began to emerge of the 'Goth' loner, who dressed all in black and was obsessed with video games …'No one is surprised. He always seemed like he was someone who was capable of that because he didn't really connect with our high school, with our town.' Beth Israel, whose daughter Alex attended the local high school with Lanza, added: 'He was just pale and scrawny, a weird kid. He was quiet, shy, socially awkward. He had vacant eyes.'"

Asperger's and a link to video games: "A new study (2008) maintains that people who are addicted to video games exhibit characteristics similar to those who suffer from Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism. As reported by Videogamer.com, the research was produced by Dr. John Charlton of the England's University of Bolton and Ian Danforth of Whitman College in the United States: 391 'computer game players,' 86 percent of whom were male, were questioned... Results found that the closer the players got to (game) addiction the more likely they were to display negative personality traits. With stronger signs of game addiction came three personality traits that would usually be associated with Aspergers: neuroticism, and lack of extraversion and agreeableness." This is from a GamePolitics.com report.

To balance the picture we quote from contrary views about Adam Lanza and the connection of his violence to his Asperger's Syndrome: Magaret Sullivan in New York Times, "'Adam Lanza, Asperger's and a Misleading Connection With Violence… This subject is important to many of those whose lives are affected by Asperger's or other forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder. They are troubled and angered by how the topic has been treated in The Times and other news organizations over the past several days. Joe McGinniss, the well-known author and the father of a son who has Asperger's, is among the many who wrote to me. 'The suggestion that Asperger's might be a clue to why this happened is offensive to me, … It's misleading to suggest that quiet people who don't pick up on social cues are more likely to become killers.'"

Nishi Roy in a mental health Web site writes, "Elizabeth Laugeson, psychologist and an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, says, 'There really is no clear association between Asperger's and violent behavior.' But aren't those who are autistic prone to greater violence? Sharing his views, psychologist Eric Butter of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who regularly treats autism, including Asperger's, said, 'Research suggests people with autism do have a higher rate of aggressive behavior — outbursts, shoving or pushing or angry shouting — than the general population. But we are not talking about the kind of planned and intentional type of violence we have seen at Newtown. These types of tragedies have occurred at the hands of individuals with many different types of personalities and psychological profiles.'"

Margaret Sullivan also quotes Dr. Ami Klin, an expert on autism at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, who said "This is not about autism… It's about mental illness and guns that those with mental illness should have no access to." So, is Asperger's Syndrome a real factor in this century's most inexplicable mass murder (Obama's drones murders are explicable, criminal acts). Asperger's syndrome remind us of one video game addict who has not only a gun fetish and his gun toting inseparable friends, but has been given canons, tanks, Armed Personnel Carriers, 250,000 toy soldiers and police forces, Hamilton naval cutters, OV-10 Bronco bombers and MD-500 Defenders (McDonell-Douglas) attack helicopters, among many others, to play with.

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Friday; Watch GNN Channel 8, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., 11:15 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m., and over www.gnntv-asia.com, delayed showing of: "2012 and 2013: Hopes and Fears"; tune to 1098AM radio Tuesday to Friday 5 to 6 p.m. http://newkatipunan.blogspot.com)

RP Christmas gifts for US

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

12/21/2012

Daily Tribune

They were two long and hard battles fought by intellectually honest, caring, and patriotic Filipinos. No, I'm not writing here about the Philippine revolutionaries or the USAFFE soldiers or the Huks of the Fil-American War and World War II (WWII). I'm discussing the civil war over the Reproductive Health (RH) and the sin tax bills.
As it is generally true in all of Philippine History, the mentally and morally corrupt, the collaborators of foreign interests and powers, and the intellectually infirmed and depraved have prevailed — naturally with the hidden as well open interference of the alien interlopers.
This Christmas season, Filipino quislings (traitors) have legislated automatic annual gifts to the magis of America worth P10 billion (or $250 million), not to mention more in RH pork, for "essential medicines" to be bought from US condom-contraceptives makers — while forking perpetual billions to foreign cigarette manufacturers and smugglers.
"RH wins!" declared one newspaper headline. That's certainly the laugh of the year. It is nothing but an unmitigated victory for US strategic political and corporate interests, starting with Henry Kissinger's NSSM (National State Security Memorandum) 200 targeting the Philippines, with 10 other developing countries, for population reduction and preservation of the Third World for US economic interests.

The 30 years of population control crusades of the US, through the UN Population Commission, actually produced success. Philippine population growth rates declined from over three percent down to just 1.8 percent (as per World Bank data) the past years with massive funding from the US Congress. Thus, official funding for UN and NGO-sponsored population programs had been reduced as well. With that, Big Pharma condom and contraceptive firms need to continue having assured markets and profits — and have, unfortunately for us, found our country as the perfect sap.
Media and NGOs are the biggest components of this transnational pharmaceuticals propaganda war in getting distorted messages across — from myths that population growth is the cause of poverty instead of iniquitous economic policy and corruption, to making the issue a "feminist" crusade against the Catholic hierarchy's "male chauvinism," among other glib lines.

Such a campaign — rammed through "porkers" like Edcel Lagman, whose law office handles many of the multinational corporations' lobbying, or through the likes of the batty Miriam Santiago or the daughter of the late self-confessed BW shares scammer — goes to show that the RH campaign is another one of the big frauds committed by politicians again and again at the expense of the people's finances and welfare.
On the Sin Tax war, the onerous and lopsided Cesar Purisima, together with the BAT (British American Tobacco) company won in their machinations to make Filipino tobacco farmers and cigarette manufacturers pay the additional taxes the International Monetary Fund wants from the Philippines.
Though slightly reduced, the new and additional taxes on local tobacco and cigarettes are still more than what the overtaxed Filipino people can absorb, such that more of it will eventually wipe out the Ilocos tobacco sector, especially after the full blown equalization of taxes on foreign and local tobacco products is attained in the next five years. It will be boom times indeed for cigarette smuggling (for which BAT was indicted in an investigation by the British Parliament in 2002) after the passage of the new sin tax rates in the years to come. And Filipinos will be reduced to mere buyers of foreign or smuggled cigarettes, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lost local tobacco jobs.

As it was at the end of WWII when Japanese imperial forces were defeated and the tally of Filipino dead reached over one million, it was not the heroic Filipinos who fought the Japanese who were honored. It was the Filipino collaborators to the Japanese forces who were handed the victory flag and the helms of government in the new "independent" Philippine regime.
Sadly, the quislings almost always win here in this country. WWII Filipino patriots were eventually hounded out of participation in legal political processes (Rep. Luis Taruc and his party were ousted from Congress for instance) and had to continue the struggle via other means.
For Filipino patriots in the struggle to expose the RH law for the swindle that it is, as with the war to save our Philippine tobacco industry, the fight goes on but on a higher and broader plane.

In order to wipe out the quislings from Philippine society (or be wiped out in the process), it is the national revolution that must continue to be waged by letting the sham of the Republic of the Philippines be swept into the dustbin of history.
In the 2013 elections, we can contribute to this patriotic struggle against the quislings by selecting senatorial candidates with clear patriotic records. In the administration coalition line-up, there's only Sonny Trillanes who has shown this spirit; among the unaligned candidates, there's Teddy Casiño; and in the UNA slate, there's only the Estrada legacy to count on.

(Watch GNN's HTL show, GNN Channel 8, Saturdays, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m., 11:15 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m., and over at www.gnntv-asia.com on "2013: The World and Philippine Economy;" tune in to 1098 AM radio Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., and visit http://newkatipunan.blogspot.com)