People's triumphs

Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 09-16-2013 MON

The real anti-pork movement, which is shouting out loud for the biggest pork and porker to be eliminated, runs counter to the Yellows' efforts at limiting the scope of this crusade by leaving out BS Aquino and his presidential pork in all discussions.

The meager September 11 Edsa Sila (since I don't believe in them) "prayer rally" at the Edsa Shrine, led by another public relations man and highlighted by the speech of one of the oligarchy's icons, Solita Monsod, is another Yellow anti-pork activity where a ban on placards speaking against presidential pork and BS Aquino was imposed. The Philippine Daily Oink-quirer, in obvious support of it, even headlined, "Edsa Tayo: Leaner, meaner crowd but with more passion," when the truth is that the event was absolutely pathetic.

In contrast, it was the Friday the 13th anti-pork rally at the Luneta that was more authentic--highlighted by really outspoken and straightforward anti-pork crusaders who openly lambasted the biggest pork and porker, BS Aquino. I wanted to attend but had my GNN show taping on the Mindanao conflagration with Al Tillah (by phone patch from Mindanao), Bono Adaza, and Erik San Juan.

I watched the rally on the Internet and heard Party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares castigate BS Aquino for not rejecting pork even as VP Jojo Binay had already. Even though the Oink-quirer whittled the number of participants by half with the headline, "About 3,500 call for pork abolition in Luneta," the news still put the Yellows' Wednesday Edsa rally to shame.

The people's anti-pork campaign has succeeded in surmounting the formidable efforts at redirecting the campaign against BS Aquino and his cohorts despite the Yellows' massive media control. Though it is already a victory, it is only half the fight. Other administration and Yellow stooges in both houses of Congress, such as Angara, Drilon, Mar Roxas, the Abad husband-and-wife team (exemplars of fine Jesuit moral education) et al.--all much bigger porkers--are being spared the Commission on Audit hatchet job.

As such, the struggle to keep the anti-pork, anti-corruption crusade along the right path will continue well into the September 21 anti-pork rally in order for the people to discern the real from the fake.

On the global plane, the peoples-of-the-world won one round against the US and Western ruling classes in stopping their attack on Syria. We laud the efforts of Russia, through the brilliant diplomatic stratagem of President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov; the steadfastness of the Syrian Army; the unity of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations in and outside of the UN Security Council; and most of all, the Internet's alternative and social media, as well as the hundreds of thousands of anti-war marchers in the US and all over the world for this victory of peace over war.

Truth is the greatest weapon for the anti-war movement; and the ultimate truth is US capitalist-warmongers are at the core of such warmongering.

The truth in Syria is that the West and its Saudi-Qatari-Israeli partners have been on a campaign of destabilization in Syria from the onset of the civil war. The West had armed and infiltrated the internal "color" or "season" revolution (a la the "Arab Spring") in Syria, funding rallies and fielding armed agents provocateurs shooting at Syrian Army soldiers during mass demonstrations.

Based on United Nations data, of the 110,000 casualties of the Syrian civil war today, half are government troops or militia while only 30 percent are anti-Assad rebel-terrorists who are mostly male adult civilians. Eighty percent of refugees, meanwhile, are women and children, suggesting an organized exodus of families where males stay behind to wage the civil war.

Western propaganda, which some of the local Catholic priests have swallowed, is that Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator and the mastermind of the chemical gas attack that is giving Obama the reason to bomb Syria (the way the US did in Libya and killed more than Gaddafi could ever kill by putting terrorists in charge).

The fact is Syrian Christians, Alawites, Shiites, and even Sunnis who refuse the Western-backed rebels' atrocities are joining Assad's army against these rebel-terrorists and the foreign fighters sent in and armed by the US gang, who are, in fact, allied with the al-Qaeda and al-Nusra terror fronts.

Stopping the wars in the Middle East will end all wars under the ambit of Western imperialism. Without the total control of MidEast oil, the US cannot hope to succeed in its encirclement of Russia and, eventually, China.

There can and will be a 21st Century of universal peace when the world is finally rid of the idea of a lone "superpower" acting unilaterally as the global Wyatt Earp.

BRICS is the building block of global peace and prosperity on the principles of multipolarity, non-interference in nations' internal affairs, and their economic sovereignty (as embodied by a BRICS bank capitalized at $100 billion to counterbalance the International Monetary Fund's imposition of "privatization" economics).

It is therefore heartening to watch these victories. Corruption and war benefit only the ruling classes of each society, where ordinary people are always the main victims.

The progressive elimination of corruption and war thus becomes a triumph of the people.

(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., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on "Martial Law: Historical review"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 09234095739)

9/11, WTC 7 revelations

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 9/11/2013 / Daily Tribune

Twelve years ago today, I was lying on my bed, sick and woozy, as I turned to cable TV, switching from channel to channel. Then the images suddenly froze on the scene of the Twin Towers in plumes of smoke, burning. Replays of the two planes crashing into the tall structures soon followed.

I stopped at one particular channel, CNN, as I was mesmerized by the clips for long, long minutes before I could think of the next thing, which was to rush to the Internet to get the reaction of my geopolitical "guru" at that time, Lyndon LaRouche, a legendary prophetic political-economic American philosopher and leader of the LaRouche Movement, whose analysis then perplexed me.

LaRouche believed that the complexity, not to mention extensive intelligence and resources, required for the World Trade Center (WTC) terror attacks could only have meant that states (governments) were behind it.

And if I recall correctly, despite the many long years since that initial moment of reading his commentary, LaRouche had already identified elements from within the US government or the Israeli Mossad as among the main suspects.

At that time, I couldn't even comprehend the meaning of it. How could the US cause the death of its own citizens? Why would Bush Jr., who had just become President, allow that? Why would Dick Cheney, his Vice President, similarly allow it? Does the Mossad have that capability?
I have to admit I was still skeptical of LaRouche's analysis then even though I was already a follower, but as I learned in the months after the 9/11 incident the many contrived aspects of the said terror attacks, I became convinced.

In the years that followed, thousands of US citizens, scientists, engineers, architects and families of victims who died in the Twin Towers have become convinced that the "terror attacks," including the buildings' collapse, were an "inside job." The evidence just kept pouring in as the worldwide movement demanding the reopening of the investigation into the 9/11 incident has grown.

This year, the movement has launched Rethink9/11.org to focus on WTC Building 7.
If the reader is still skeptical about 9/11 being an inside job, it would take all the columns of the next two weeks if I were to try to explain it here. I would therefore suggest visiting Rethink9/11.org to follow the hundreds upon hundreds of investigations conducted by competent civilian experts of different nationalities.

These individuals were all free to study with objectivity, unlike the investigations conducted by two US agencies, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), which reported conclusions that the late American National Science Medal winner, scientist Lynn Margulis (former wife of late physicist Carl Sagan), severely criticized.

We must first bring to the reader's attention WTC Building 7 because it was a 49-story structure one football field away from WTC 1 and 2, and with Buildings 5 and 6 sandwiched between them. Yet it burned and collapsed on its footprint at the speed of gravity, without any plane crashing into it.

Then, the government investigation claimed "office fire" melted and collapsed the building, a conclusion not supported by the history of burning buildings and by thousands of experts. And worse, some 185,101 tons of structural steel from Buildings 7, 1, and 2 were scrapped without being examined and shipped to China and India, with other debris sent to recycling yards in New Jersey.

Margulis thus said of the FEMA and NIST probes: "You can't do science when you are deprived of the evidence, and when your hypothesis is the least valid, instead of the most likely … The most likely hypothesis, in the case of Building 7, wasn't even mentioned. This is not science. So the claim is that it's something else? It's trying to prove preconceived ideas."

Indeed, the WTC official investigation was meant to be a cover-up. But evidence citizens innocently picked up during and after the buildings' collapse soon mounted, and ran the gamut from pictures taken from Ground Zero, to firemen's testimonies of explosions, as well as comparative videos of explosions, melting steel, plumes of dust that only explosions can create, spherical molten iron balls, steel beams cut clean, chemical nano-thermite, etc.

Why should anyone in the Philippines care about the truth in the so-called 9/11 terror attacks? Don't we have enough issues, i.e. pork barrel, Edsa Tayo (a.k.a. Edsa "Sila" of the oligarchy's patsies whom I reject), the Moro National Liberation Front's Zamboanga City attack (thanks to Aquino, Deles and Leonen's brilliant "a-peace-ment" and Edsa II's sabotage of Erap's pacification), bedeviling us?

Everyone should care because 9/11 reveals how power cabals that control money, politics and mainstream media can keep vital facts — such as WTC 7 — out of everyone's awareness and, in the process, murder thousands of innocents by creating decades-long "wars on terror" for profit.

Every Filipino should care because, in the Philippines, this cabal and its local counterparts have kept 100 million Filipinos perpetually addled in a state of perpetual poverty — and they're not about to stop anytime soon.

(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., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on "The MNLF rebellion redux"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)

MRT ghost resurrects

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / 9/9/2013 / Daily Tribune

The public relations operators of this administration probably thought the extortion scandal involving the First Family was finally buried when they put up that act of publicly shaming and "firing" a high-level official of the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) system. They were, after all, busy burying every other vital issue under the continuing avalanche of the Janet Lim-Napoles caper, as well as the pocket rallies against it.

But truth will always out as the saying goes and the truth about the MRT extort try is not about to stay buried for too long.

The high officials they suspended (or sidelined — nobody really knows what action was taken) then put under investigation have been quietly reinstated, as reported by one veteran media man, Deo Macalma of Pilipino Star Ngayon.

MRT general manager Al Vitangcol, for instance, surprised the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) rank-and-file when he reappeared and assumed his old post. Vitangcol was put in the freezer after being named by Czech Ambassador Josef Rychtar as among those involved in the $30-million kickback try for the purchase of new coaches for the MRT.

The explosive report that was originally aired on radio station dzRH two months ago that smashed the lily-white image of BS Aquino, sister Ballsy and husband Eldon was primarily due to insinuations attributed to the Czech envoy, which were not denied until weeks into the scandal.

Eventually, BS Aquino first cousin Jorge Aquino-Lichauco was revealed to be brokering the deal for Inekon, the Czech company. It's all in the family as they say, with an in-law of a close Aquino Big Business ally also acting on Inekon's behalf.

In addition, that controversy (had it been covered properly) would have seriously marred Mar Roxas as it happened under his watch as DoTC secretary. Mar must therefore be feeling a sense of relief over the Napoles scandal as he is spared continuing bad publicity over the MRT case — at least for now.

But before we get too far into the other aspects of the story, it must be recalled that since Vitangcol was the only name mentioned by the Czech ambassador, even when, in truth, three other officials were supposed to be in on the deal, too, it would appear that he was made the sacrificial lamb, with reports, as late as Sept. 2, still depicting him as having gone "on leave" while under investigation.

Alas, Macalma's update on Vitangcol's reentry leaves very serious implications for those who have tried to make him a scapegoat. It implies that the guy is actually untouchable and only one thing could make him so — his knowledge of who the real "brains" behind the MRT extort try are.
Vitangcol may have leveraged this knowledge to get back to his post while DoTC chief Emilio Abaya hopes and prays that the controlled newspapers' front pages and broadcast media headlines will still be so preoccupied with Napoles, the anti-pork hype, and the meager rallies to allow him to tide this over.

This MRT extort try ghost will continue to haunt BS Aquino, his family, and their ruling class allies who feed on the people's blood, sweat, and tears. There will be hell to pay for them when the population finally rises up and drives the stakes into their hearts. The pork plunders certainly pale in comparison to their large-scale looting.

Meanwhile, the Riles Laan sa Sambayanan (or Riles) Network continues to coordinate efforts to organize popular opposition to the threatened fare hikes of the MRT/LRT (Light Rail Transit). Every delay we can deal these exploiters in their effort to hike the fares is without doubt another stake in their blackened hearts.

Elsewhere, on the geopolitical front, particularly in the matter of Philippine-China relations and the Syrian situation, the BS Aquino administration's policy direction is really proving to be a huge liability to the nation. With China, it is too combative to the point of bringing upon us the kind of trade isolation highlighted by that "snub" on BS Aquino at the recent Nanning trade show; but with the US, this government is obsequiously canine. Either way, the consequences are devastating for the country.

Highlighting the first is this text we received: "World's biggest ship the… Triple E, can in one trip, transport 111 million pairs of shoes from Shanghai to Rotterdam or 182 million iPads from China to Northern Europe, boosting record trade between Asia and the West. Maersk of Denmark has ordered 20 of these giant ships. Can we in the Philippines afford to be economically cutoff from China instead of being pragmatic like the Viets, Thais, etc.?"

Highlighting the effect of the BS Aquino regime's canine loyalty to the US is the country's isolation from the BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which is the hope for world peace and prosperity.

In the last G20 meet, BRICS plus Indonesia and Argentina, together representing 3.2 billion people (and 40 percent of the global economy), opposed the impending US attack on Syria, while countries representing only 850 million people signed the ambiguous statement sponsored by the US.

None of these augurs well for our nation's future. It's time to get rid of the economic and geopolitical baggage that is BS Aquino.

(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., also on www.gnntv-asia.com; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)