The US and Isra-Hell

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

5/8/2013

Daily Tribune

The latest travesty of International Law is committed by Israel, a country which this space will now always refer to as Isra-Hell, the deputy in the Middle East of the US imperialists. When this space refers to the US, it is about its ruling class and not its people. All people of the world are essentially peace loving and desiring only prosperity. What human being would not want that, for all people are mothers and fathers and want life and liberty for their children. Iran's late leader (and to my mind one of Mankind's great moral-political teachers) Ayatollah Khomeini calls the US the "Iblis" (Diabolis — the primary devil in Islam) or the Great Satan, and when we review the history of the US from the 19th Century down we can see the evolution of the Great Satan to its present, pre-eminent evil and destructive hegemonism. It has half the world doing its evil bidding of promoting wars, death and destruction.

In the past week and without provocation Isra-Hell attacked the Syrian Republic, destroyed defense facilities and reportedly killed 42 Syrian soldiers in the bombing assault using depleted uranium ordnance. US denials of its pre-knowledge of the attack is only laughed at by analysts, and only fools would accept Isra-Hell's claim that their attack is justified by its claim they bombed Syrian anti-aircraft missiles being delivered to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Isra-Hell has never shown proof. Reports leaked from Isra-Hell and the US initially claimed the attack was on transport convoys making the deliveries, but photos and videos from social media and the Syrian government now acknowledged to be indisputable shows Isra-Hell's bombs defense infrastructure of Syria (if in the Philippines, like hitting Camp Aguinaldo) which every country would have to defend itself against threats to the State.

Both Russia and China has protested the violation of the UN Charter by Isra-Hell's unprovoked attack on Syria. Significantly even the Arab League which has been at the forefront of the anti-Assad US-Nato-Isra-Hell crusades against the Assad government has been compelled to make an open and vocal stand against Isra-Hell's attack on Syria and called on the UN to stop the assaults on sovereign Syria. Egypt was especially adamant in condemning the attack and demanding that the UN take action. As expected, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon in masterful hypocrisy and sycophancy to the US called "all sides to exercise maximum calm and restraint" when an aggressor has brazenly violated the UN laws and should issue a condemnation posthaste. The Philippines, if it takes it duty to the International Community seriously should also issue a firm condemnation of the attack.

The US and Isra-Hell has cultivated the cultural domination of the Philippines and Filipinos for a very long time. I hear stories of Filipino tourists visiting Isra-Hell being accorded special treatment by the government and its people there. Very few Filipinos know that Apartheid, against Palestinians, in Isra-Hell is often worse than what had prevailed in South Africa before; but Isra-Hell money is very generous to many Christian-Zionist groups in the Philippines and with the US behind it, very little of the truth comes out in Philippine media. Many Filipinos are enamored with the "success" of Isra-Hell, from the myths of its economic miracle to its Merkava and its Israel Defense Force prowess, but the $ 10-B military and economic/business aid it gets from the US and Europe (particularly Germany and its reparations) and the Western Power's military support are the real reasons for its so called "success" and not its genius.

The roots of Isra-Hell's powers go back to money, i.e. the World's most powerful bankers and the Rothschilds which in the 19th Century had spread its power through domination of banking and the British government. It led one British labor leader to say, "This blood-sucking crew has been the cause of untold mischief and misery in Europe during the present century, and has piled up its prodigious wealth chiefly through fomenting wars between States which ought never to have quarreled. Whenever there is trouble in Europe, wherever rumors of war circulate and men's minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity you may be sure that a hook-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbance."

A chronology of the Rothschilds narrate, "In 1895 Edmond James de Rothschild visited Palestine and supplies the funds to found the first Jewish colonies there… their long term objective of creating a Rothschild formed country." The British create the State of Israel while the Rothschild bankers also create the US Federal Reserve and control of US politics. Today, the bankers behind the Western financial-military-industrial complex desperately need new wars — and the Big War — to save their system and its ruling class. The challenge has come from secular, socialist, independent and nationalist States or those evolving toward that. The US-Nato/Isra-Hell combine has destroyed Yugoslavia in Europe, Iraq, Libya and now it is destroying the secular Syria. They're trying the same against Venezuela, in the Philippines they are completing the destruction with the Bangsa Moro entity. Ultimately, the targets are China and Russia. Filipinos must wake up and end its enslavement to the US and Isra-Hell. 

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Friday; Destiny Cable, Channel 8, Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m.: this week "Hocus PCOS elections: seeds of revolution"; visit: http//www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com)

Fears beyond 2013

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

5/6/2013

Daily Tribune

My youngest are twins. One is in Philosophy in DLSU who has delayed his graduation this year by taking fewer units, opting to work part-time. The other is a graduate of Journalism from UST and is already job-hunting while helping out in the family business. Deciding on either of their prospects has not been easy as starting pays don't look attractive. Having started driving regularly of late, the latter of my twins went along with me to my grocery trip a few days ago. While I was paying at the check-out counter, he scanned the bill and exclaimed, "How could these few things cost over a thousand?" Perhaps because he's now earning an allowance tending to one of the family's stores, he's beginning to understand the economic angst I've always discussed with the family over meals and how everyone should be ready to cope with harder times.

One recent headline reflects the worsening economic prospects ahead. Coming out on Labor Day, the report entitled, "Joblessness increases," centered on the recent jobs data culled by survey firm Social Weather Stations (SWS), which indicated that "Unemployment has picked up anew after an improvement seen at the end of last year… with one million more Filipinos joining the ranks of the jobless. At 25.4 percent, unemployment among Filipinos at least 18 years old was higher than December's 24.6 percent…" And the joblessness reports, particularly with respect to new labor entrants, just keep piling up.

Still, my journalism graduate son is undeterred. Seeking a job in reporting or writing, he apparently wants to prove that his skills can be of use in the market place. Indeed, after months of searching, he seems confident of landing a job in a transnational headhunting firm. His twin brother, meanwhile, is tending to their eldest brother's bar and is earning an income even if less than the minimum wage. As such, one of the frequent issues in our family's discussions is the electricity bill, particularly the use of air-conditioning units in the twins' separate rooms. With the first billing this summer doubling from the same period last year, awareness of the high power cost has finally seeped into the consciousness of all members of the family.

I am therefore no longer alone in my obsession to keep power cost tamed by turning off the lights whenever leaving any room and the sala; Or quitting the use of the water pressure pump for showers, opting for the tabo instead; Or sharing a single air-conditioner for two instead of going solo in one's room.
Indeed, the power price crisis is not going to go away even if the artificial power shortages created by the ruling powers are halted by everyone's (including the Mindanaoans') capitulation to the blackmail of using coal-fired plants instead of cheap hydroelectric power, under an abusive regime of the 17-percent so-called Performance Based Regulation and the privatization-mad Electric Power Industry Reform Act where power companies of all stripes get to enjoy ridiculously humongous profits.

If labor groups and trade federations were powerless in extracting even paltry concessions from BS Aquino III (as is traditionally expected on Labor Day), what other reason should the ruling capitalist foreign powers and their local partners have in shunning their mercilessness toward Filipinos, whose nation's wealth they have long extracted in support of the West's failing economies?

By the way, the SWS jobs survey also indicated that jobseekers are still hoping for a better future — even if such perennial hope remains unfulfilled. And even after two ballyhooed Philippine ratings upgrades (the last from Standard and Poor's), the usual mainstream media (such as Bloomberg) obligatorily feature shallow headlines such as "Philippines beats Indonesia in gaining S&P investment grade," while deliberately skirting a real economic indicator — foreign direct investment (FDI) — that shows an appalling negative for the Philippines. From Indonesia Investments: "'Domestic and Foreign Direct Investment in Indonesia Grows Strong in Q1-2013' … US $9.58-B;" while for Philippine business news, it was "'FDI drops almost 50 percent to $576 million in January (2013)'… lower than the previous year level of $1.1 billion…"

According to Wikipedia, Indonesian electricity price (in US dollar terms) is $0.0875 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) while the Philippines is at $0.3046/kWh. Despite FDI being a real measure of a country's economic prospects, reflecting the assessment of foreign and local businesses (not the subjective views of governments) and despite the holding of elections in a week's time, the Philippines will still not see any improvement as no candidate of consequence has dared raise this issue of power rate-gouging. Hopefully, though, a few will go out on a limb and start taking up the matter as it is a life-or-death issue for the Philippine economy and for our children's prospects for a good, productive and happy future.

But frankly, I'm not optimistic. As Western powers desperate for war will stop at nothing to recapture their former glory, there is just nowhere to run. Thus, I'm preparing my mountain redoubt farm cum social laboratory, concentrating mainly on coconuts (which, after a long study, are a far superior economic investment to mangoes) cross-cropped with coffee, cacao, macadamia nuts and orange camote. It's a long-term project I can leave my grandchildren as a refuge in the really perilous decades ahead and a teaching laboratory for all to learn how to grow food and stay free and dignified in the looming Dark Age.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., on "Hopeless elections: Looking for revolution"; also visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)

Cheap power = Jobs, wage hike

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

5/1/2013

Daily Tribune

It is the Philippine labor movement's day today. It is once again an opportunity for our workers' unions and federations to make an impact with whatever demands from government or the rest of society they would wish to highlight.

In the statements we have read from this sector the past days, we have found reason to be hopeful. In the order of its major demands, the call for "cheaper electricity" is now on top of the labor movement's list, with "higher wages" coming in second. I believe this is the first ever May Day celebration that will see the ritual demand for an increase in the minimum wage come second to anything else — an indication of the severity of the electricity price gouging that has become the hallmark of the Philippine economy as well as an enlightened maturity of our laborers to discern the broader economic issue that affects the working class of the nation.

This new order of priorities had been in the works since the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines and other major labor federations issued demands on BS Aquino III to personally step into the electricity overpricing crisis. The other major group, led by Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), which also issued a similar call for this year's Labor Day, has put the issue ahead of all others. Its chairman, Elmer Labog, declared that "High power and water rates, the flood of imported products, high taxes and government corruption… make doing business in the country difficult" before taking the BS Aquino government to task as the latter "refuses to address these issues and merely keeps on pressing down workers' wages." As a citizen and social journalist-activist relying on our small family enterprise to earn a daily bread for my advocacy and family, I appreciate the line expressed by KMU.

BS Aquino III did step out alright but on the wrong side of the fence, chastising those who press for the lowering of power rates while weighing his presidential authority on the side of the decade-and-a-half-old global corporatist energy and electricity industry privatization scam. Remember the gigantic swindle that was the Enron debacle in California that got transplanted to the Philippines with unequalled success compared to other Third World countries? That resulted in the "highest power rate in Asia," causing the country to be at the tail-end of foreign direct investments in the region, in stark contrast to the bonanza in the energy sector. Today, foreign power companies and local oligarchs are sharpening their knives yet again to feast on Mindanao's energy woes — much like how they feasted on Luzon and Visayas in the past decade — this, after BS Aquino blackballed and blackmailed Mindanaoans with massive blackouts.

To reinvigorate the Philippine labor movement, labor leaders must begin to harness the people's anger over the exorbitant electricity price into a popular and highly charged issue for the nation as all sectors of society are suffering. From the largest companies to the smallest sari-sari store (or at least, the few that still exist), the burden of high electricity cost is universal. In fact, the true driver of the Philippine economy, the small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) that provide up to 98 percent of the total jobs in the country, are reeling from high power costs. The health of ordinary citizens is being adversely affected by the high power cost as well, especially that of senior citizens, who would have to bear the scorching heat of summer as air-conditioning becomes a luxury too costly to afford. With all these insights, the labor movement will surely find renewed enthusiastic support from the people —something it had lost in the past.

While today 97 million Filipinos and their economy suffer exorbitant power costs, power companies enjoy yearly profit bonanzas. For the first quarter of 2013, the dominant player in the power sector, had 20 percent higher profits than last year without any significant increase in its customer base. In fact, this company had been piling up annual profit increases of up to 90 percent per annum since the 2001 Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) and the 2005 PBR (Performance Base Regulation) scheme of the Energy Regulatory Commission made the power business better than any pyramid scam around.

As Jojo Borja, a major stockholder of Iligan Light and Power, would repeatedly stress, "With Epira, power companies earned in six months what used to take them a year; with PBR added, it's down to three months to earn what used to take a year." Thus, poverty rates have worsened over the decade as the people's purchasing power has been sucked dry by exorbitant power rates. The SMEs have always gotten the short end of the stick in the minimum wage issue; the conglomerates, on the other hand, are hardly affected as their employees are largely above minimum wage levels already.

Labor leaders should know the kind of distortions that new minimum wage orders cause the SMEs, which have always teetered at the edge of survival with the onslaught of high power rates, as well as the other operating costs and demands of labor groups, i.e. trade dumping, high water costs, taxes, corruption, high financing costs, indiscriminate senior discounts, etc. Across-the-board minimum wage hikes will be realistic only after other economic inputs for SMEs are rationalized and balanced.

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., on "Liling Briones, Kaakbay and Manila's Glory"; also visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)