Erap rebuilds HK ties

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / April 23, 2014 / Daily Tribune


By now President-Mayor Joseph Estrada should already have landed on China’s Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. Erap will be carrying a check of as yet an undisclosed amount corresponding to the “compensation” expected by the families of the eight victims of the August 2010 Luneta massacre. Accompanying Mayor Erap is Councilor Bernie Ang of Manila who has been instrumental in the mayor’s efforts to mend the bridges with Hong Kong. Secretary to the Aquino Cabinet Rene Almendras, reported to be part of the entourage, apparently to represent Malacañang, was not in the entourage, however.

It must be remembered that BS Aquino and his extremely close and trusted police ally cum mayor of Manila at the time of the tragedy, Alfredo Lim, both became extremely disliked figures of the victims’ families, as well as the Hong Kong people and government, due to the bungling of the rescue effort of the Manila police under direct supervision of Mayor Lim, along with Aquino and his Malacañang officials’ unresponsiveness when being contacted by Hong Kong authorities during the crisis and his own maladroit demeanor displayed in media photos and newsreels during the incident (such as that infamous PeNoy grin in amid the mourning that set off the Hong Kong people’s chagrin). But topping it all was Aquino’s adamant refusal to issue an apology.

We are told by sources close to Mayor Estrada that his Hong Kong trip is actually in behalf of Malacañang to bring the compensation that the Hong Kong victims’ families have demanded all these years. Estrada’s role and presence was actually requested by the Hong Kong victims’ families, probably a result of the persuasive effect of Mayor Estrada’s early and open declaration of his feeling of remorse and expression of public apology for the City of Manila where the incident happened — a sort of substitute contrition for the Philippine government’s refusal to express that apology. Mayor Estrada’s acute empathy with the sensitivities of people, a unique quality of his, sets him apart as a leader. It is something found in very, very few other Filipino politicians, if at all.

Mayor Estrada is expected to return at the end of this week with all the expectations of fully normalizing relations between the Philippines and Hong Kong fulfilled. It’s been four years since that tragic incident at the Luneta that had soured Philippines relations with Hong Kong, mainland China, and many Chinese people, tarnishing the country’s image not only with its Asian neighbors but with many other countries in the world, west to east, whose people witnessed the Keystone Kops performance of the then Manila Police’s SWAT Team at the cost of eight innocent lives, and the then the mayor displaying utter incompetence and crudeness in allegedly ordering the rubout of the hostage-taker’s brother in full view of local and international media.

When Mayor Estrada returns — and, hopefully with the four years of acrimonious relations with Hong Kong ended — happier events await him. Aside from already clear successes in raising Manila’s revenues that’s going a long way to radically improving the city administration’s management of traffic, public security, health and sanitation, computerized tax management, and city governance, Mayor Estrada will be presiding over the revival of a tradition that made the City of Manila a landmark in the pre-war and immediate post-war times — the search for the 2014 Miss Manila, a new version of what was known as the Manila Carnival Queen from 1903 to 1939. The climax of this search, marking the return of the glory of Manila, will be on the June 24 “Araw ng Maynila” celebration.

Never forgetting the grim realities that face his “masa,” the poor, now especially of Manila, Miss Manila 2014 is aimed at raising funds for the benefit of the Manila Dialysis Center and the other projects of the city, as well as Mrs. Loi Estrada’s Mare Foundation, which also has many medical mission projects. The Miss Manila event is a change of pace from the tense and hard fought campaigns to rid Manila of the horrendous traffic that used to plague city residents and commuters, and the struggle to restore sanity to sidewalks and market areas such as Divisoria, which have all been successfully won. But one challenge coming up that will truly test the will of Mayor Estrada is the removal of the oil depots in Pandacan. That’ll be a fight of the century.

(Tune in to “Sulo ng Pilipino” on 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; catch GNN’s Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., this week on “’O-Bomb-Ma’ in Asia” and “An animal called ‘Bank bail-ins’”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

Russia, fulcrum for peace

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / April 21, 2014 / Daily Tribune


The West, led by the US, has been on a quarter-of-a-century crusade to impose its global hegemony on the world after its Cold War counterbalancing rival, the Soviet Union, collapsed under the weight of its inefficient and incompetent apparatchiks (political bureaucrats). But that crusade itself has been in collapse since 2008 as the Western economies got to be eaten by the cancer within. That cancer comprises the West’s own apparatchiks — from the corrupt monopoly finance bankers of the Western world’s financial centers, Wall Street, City of London, and European Central Bank, under the aegis of a handful of key banking families (including the Rothschilds and Rockefellers), who have controlled the world through their control of the US Federal Reserve, to the global oil and defense industries and establishments. Only a new world war can save them.

Few Filipinos ponder the implications of the events in Ukraine and the parallels they hold in the Philippines, in China, as well as the China Sea issues. The Philippines is unique in its belligerence as not even Vietnam has taken the “no dialog” stance with its Asian neighbor. Few Filipinos understand that the crisis in Ukraine today was triggered by the last phase in a two-decades-long plan to cripple Russia (“Without Ukraine Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire,” Brzezinski, 1998). Vladimir Putin put a stop to that with the welcome reintegration of Crimea (including Sevastopol) into Russia to protect his country’s defense perimeter. China’s “superintendence” (not monopoly, as it offers bilateral development) in its own backyard also aims to define its defense perimeter against the West’s domination.

Overwhelming demographic and economic advantages of China ostensibly gave rise to Napoleon Bonaparte’s prescient prediction 200 years ago of the “waking dragon.” Strategic analysts see China as the West’s ultimate rival, although China has always declared that it seeks only respect as a coequal of other world powers.

Russia is the underestimated world power because of its moderate demographic potentials and 20th Century historical debacles, but these notions should now be set aside with Russia now shifting its global geopolitical relations, as seen in Putin’s actions in Ukraine and, more importantly, in his strategic economic vision of “turning to the East” not only rhetorically but in very unequivocal terms.

The 2012 Vladivostok Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit signaled Russia’s move to the East, away from the conflict zones to its West. Two years later, Putin orders a new production-type industrial zone in Vladivostok. Then, this May, Russia and China will sign one of the largest deals ever to realize the pipeline and facilities to supply 38 billion cubic meters of gas per year and 900,000 barrels of oil per day directly to China — using rubles and yuan. Russia and Iran are also discussing 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil in exchange for Russian goods. Moreover, Russia’s Rosneft is joining India’s state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. in setting up pipelines to supply oil to India over the long-term, circumventing the US dollar. All these spell the end of the US petrodollar hegemony.

And, as everyone should know, as the US dollar wanes, so goes its geopolitical clout. What remains is its military-naval supremacy, which is also fast eroding. US military development, upon which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization depends, also faces dwindling resources. Such uncertainties spawned by the US military’s decline, coupled with the certainty of Russian and Chinese military hardware and technological advances, have contributed to the vacillation of Western Powers in Afghanistan, Syria, Middle East, North Africa, and even East Asia. Only the Philippines is bullish on the US “pivot” to Asia. The decline of the US threat to the global balancing of forces is the best harbinger of durable peace in the world.

Meanwhile, the dwindling prospects of US global trade domination is also being clearly demonstrated in the difficult straits that the US-sponsored Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has faced even with a client state like Japan foot-dragging in signing on. And that’s because the TPP promotes US corporate interests over and against national economic and political sovereignty, sacrificing popular welfare and concerns in favor of profit and economic control of corporate transnationals.
Russia and China have shunned the TPP while promoting Apec, SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) alliance (with a BRICS Bank to challenge the International Monetary Fund), and the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership).

The year 2014 will see a great shift in geopolitical power relations. Thanks to Russia and its “Look East” policy, Putin’s new Russia has shaken off its infatuation with the Western model and rediscovered its destiny as the great balancer for global peace and development. Russia has become a fulcrum of sorts as the bridge for the New Silk Road to the East (to itself) and then to Europe’s most powerful nation, Germany, and at the same time, wresting the center-of-gravity away from the US (and British) hegemony.

(Tune in to “Sulo ng Pilipino” on 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; catch GNN’s Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., this week on “Ms. Manila revival” and “Bank ‘bail-in’ exposed”; visit http://newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

UN: Flu, climate and other frauds

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / April 14, 2014 / Daily Tribune


Last week Oxford University reported a study of the UK’s spending on anti-flu drugs — over a billion US dollars between 2006 and 2013 on medicines that had very limited efficacy, and often serious side effects. The United Nations (UN) and World Health Organization (WHO), it must be recalled, raised global swine and avian flu pandemic alerts from 2006 onwards, projecting millions of deaths. Governments then spent billions on useless flu drugs for pandemics that never happened. The Philippine government, for its part, spent at least P3 billion in 2006 for flu meds that never used.

What we learned: UN bureaucrats, beholden to powerful member-governments that are beholden to big business in their home countries, are often used as tools in gigantic money-fleecing schemes of global big business.

The UN led the charge against “population explosion” since the 1990s. It wasn’t known until later that the US was behind the anti-population campaign. That was when Henry Kissinger’s National State Security Memorandum (NSSM) 200 was declassified, revealing the US view that population growth in 11 underdeveloped countries — the Philippines among them — threatened US access to their raw material resources.

With US-initiated population control funding for the UN and others like USAID, Third World governments were compelled to add their own and buy from US-invested contraceptives companies. That funding dwindled with the US financial crisis of 2011; and that was when the Reproductive Health (RH) bill was torpedoed in the Philippines.

The Supreme Court last week declared the RH Law “not unconstitutional.” Both anti- and pro-RH partisans declared themselves winners from the High (or Hyde) Court’s decision. Known “porkers” in Congress, such as Edcel Lagman, spoke for the solons: “A grateful nation salutes the majority of the justices.” It was a gratefulness that Dinagat Island Rep. Kaka Bag-ao expressed more honestly: “For as long as the State is still mandated and empowered to implement a reproductive health program with the appropriate funding… the historic Supreme Court decision is still a victory for the people, albeit incomplete.” In the final analysis, it is the people’s money at stake, and billions of pesos of it.

Given the supposed “end” of the “pork barrel,” the RH Law will certainly offset the expected losses of our senators and representatives. When it was last debated in Congress, the amount earmarked for an RH program was upwards of P10 billion per annum that government is obliged to provide under the law. That’s several hundreds of millions of dollars for big pharma for condoms, contraceptives, etc., as well as millions for PR agencies behind the pro-RH campaign every year, and millions more for NGOs and women’s organizations of the “Akbayad” stripe; while no specific earmarks for the biggest health scourges of the land such as tuberculosis, dengue, and many other diseases including the “unemployment” epidemic, which is the real driver of poverty and disease.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which issued new alarmist projections, is like the WHO and the UN Population Commission. Its roots and money go back to Britain’s Prince Philip and The Netherlands’ Prince Bernhard, both of Royal Dutch Shell, setting up the World Wildlife Fund in 1961, from which clubs and networks of the man-made global warming campaign sprung. Later WWF associate Maurice Strong (“the international man of mystery”), Rockefeller trustee and oil magnate, set up and sat as first executive director of the UN environmental program, from which rose multilateral government and corporate funding for “global warming” campaigns and an IPCC-Al Gore Nobel Peace Prize to hype Antropogenic Global Warming.

New climate alarmism is being spread by “green” crusaders, including Western PR darling Bishop Desmond Tutu equating the climate change campaign with the anti-Apartheid crusade. (By the way, South Africa’s Apartheid persists, with 70 percent of that nation’s resources still owned by Whites as of 2006, and with Black unemployment five times higher than that of Whites).

But even as IPCC alarmist projections are six times higher than factual temperature increases the past decade, there is a “warming pause” that these alarmists are hard put to explain: “Physicist and Arctic research expert Syun-Ichi Akasofu of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the US predicts that the temperature in 2100 will be 0.5C± 0.2C higher than today, rather than the 4.0C± 2.0C predicted by the IPCC.”

Following the money leads to these: Friends of the Earth got $5 million from the EU between 2007 and 2009; Coca-Cola donated $24 million to WWF in 2008 alone; in 2007, Conservation International raised $9.4 million from corporations, about 5 percent of its total revenues of $176.6 million; WWF took in about $7 million in corporate grants, about 4.3 percent of its $161 million in revenues in 2007; A Wiki report projects “carbon trading” revenues to hit $50 billion if UN and Kyoto Protocol carbon caps are implemented (Gore’s company GIM earned $218 million between 2008 and 2011); Washington Examiner reports that the leaders of 15 top Big Green environmental groups are paid more than $300,000 — up to half a million dollars for the top “earner.”

I wish I could be that poor.

(Tune in to “Sulo ng Pilipino” on 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; catch GNN’s Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; visit http://newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)