September 2008

Woe is me

By:
Published September 24, 2008, in Politics & Government

Woe is me
By Manuel Buencamino

“A political organization is a transferable commodity.
You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by
packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of
thieves is sure to find useful.”—John Jay Chapman

My palace mole came through again. He sold me another page
purloined from the queen’s diary.

Dear Diary:

I’m off to New York City once again. My press secretary
said, “President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has decided to
proceed with her planned visit to New York to attend the
high-level debate of the 63rd United Nations General
Assembly [UNGA] and for other high-level meetings with
global leaders.”

As you can see, it’s not a junket this time around. The
UNGA will be addressing growing global hunger and poverty,
and it needs the world’s foremost expert on the subject to
explain how she made it work for her.

But that’s not the only reason I’m going to New York. I
need to talk to “high-level banking and financial
officials” to find out how much, if any, did the
Government Service Insurance System chairman invest in
those high-yield investment papers.

As my Press secretary explained, “There is going to be a
dialogue or briefing from high-level banking and financial
officials. We all know that financial markets in the United
States are going down and, whether we like it or not, we are
affected, although how severe it would be is not yet
known.” I intend to find out.

By the way, I wonder why my Press secretary keeps using
“high-level” to describe my activities. Should I buy him
a thesaurus?

Anyway, I wanted to be out of Manila to distance myself
from the plan to extend my term. I don’t want to stay
after my lease expires in 2010, believe me.

I know I changed my mind before, but that was then. I had a
family to take care of.

Now, don’t get me wrong, by “family” I don’t mean
only the Macapagal-Arroyo family. I’m also talking about
my political family.

Do you know how many very hungry mouths there are in that
family? They were the ones who begged me to run in 2004. I
relented because I felt I owed them.

2005 sealed my fate. There was no turning back after I was
caught talking to Garci. I was not going to go down alone.
Family members in Congress, the Court, the state security
apparatus, the business world and the Church knew they were
going to go down with me if they didn’t do what had to be
done.

They all understood the problem, and quick fixes followed.
Fake impeachment complaints were accepted and legitimate
ones were trashed. An Ombudsman was brought in to backstop
charges we could not evade, and the High Court sat on cases
it could not rule on without appearing too biased. The
Church, true to its calling, came through and ignored the
public’s demand for accountability through impeachment.

Things were beginning to smooth over when the 2007
election, followed by the ZTE-NBN exposé, threw everything
out of whack. Those two events made the Family realize that,
from then on, it was a fight to the finish.

I thought the Family meant 2010. I didn’t realize they
had something else in mind: to use me as their “get out of
jail” card for as long as they could.

The country is gagged and bound. My team at the Supreme
Court ruled that any deal involving me is off-limits to
inquiring minds, Merceditas Gutierrez is Ombudsman and Raul
Gonzalez is at Justice. The state security services pledged
to stand by me, and the state spiritual security service,
the Catholic Church, discerned that the real threat to the
country’s morals was birth control, not the Family’s
shenanigans.

Nothing stands between the Family and the nation’s vault,
and they will always have me to blame in case the shit hits
the fan. That’s why the Family will not allow me to ride
off into the sunset come 2010.

I am now a contraption for a gang of thieves. Woe is me.

Worrisome omens

By:
Published September 24, 2008, in Opinion

Worrisome omens
By Ellen Tordesillas

Let’s help Lorelei Fajardo, deputy presidential spokes-person, understand where the fear that Gloria Arroyo will ferociously hold on to power even after June 30, 2010 is coming from.

Fajardo said, “The President intends to vacate her office when her term ends in 2010, and does not know where such fear-mongering is coming from.”Let’s remind Fajardo that on Dec. 30, 2002, Arroyo pledged before the statue of Jose Rizal that she would not run in 2004. Ten months later, on Oct. 5, 2003, she said without blinking an eye, “I will run for President in May 2004.”

As we all know, not only did Arroyo run in 2004; she cheated and stole the presidency.

Would she now give up what she had stolen?

Who would believe that after perverting the electoral system, the bureaucracy and the military for her to stay in power, she will leave Malacañang and expose herself to the high possibility that she would end up in jail? Who would believe that the cabal that helped her execute the greatest election heist and subsequent massive payoffs, will just let her go and expose them to the people’s retribution?

A Malacañang source said that in October 2005, when Arroyo was shaking from what the people heard in the “Hello Garci” tapes, she and her hardline advisers were almost ready to impose martial law. They would call it by some other name but the effect would be the destruction of democracy and in its place an Arroyo dictatorship.

The plan, the source said, was to explode a bomb at the Senate at 5 a.m.. Casualties would be avoided with the early morning timing but the explosion in one of the three branches of government would give Arroyo justification to declare martial law. Exactly like the fake ambush of then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile which was used by Ferdinand Marcos to declare martial law in 36 years ago.

A businessman in the Arroyo’s circle of “hawks” asked if the defense secretary (Avelino Cruz) and AFP chief of staff (Generoso Senga) were into the plan. They were not.

When Cruz and Senga were told about it, they objected. A visit by John Negroponte, then the US Director of National Intelligence, who conveyed American disapproval of the martial law option, forced Arroyo to abort the plan.

At the presscon the other day by the FSGO (Former Senior Government Officials) at Club Filipino to launch the petition against moves to extend Arroyo’s term beyond 2010 and any step towards declaring martial law, Karina David, former chair of the Civil Service Commission, asked the public to verify if it’s true that the Special Action Force, the rapid deployment unit of the Philippine National Police, has dramatically increased from 400 to 8,000.

It was noted during the presscon that the military is being kept busy in Mindanao in a war that erupted after the fiasco over the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

It’s also worth noting that it was the PNP’s SAF, instead of the AFP, that led the assault in the Nov. 29, 2007 siege at the Manila Peninsula when Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Magdalo officers walked out of their trial at the Makati City hall.

The PNP is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Interior and Local Government headed by Ronaldo Puno.

Karina raised questions about Executive order 739 reorganizing the Peace and Order Council.

Issued only last August, EO 739 provides that the NPOC “shall have the same composition as the National Security Council except for the chairmanship. The chair of the NSC shall be the President of the Philippines while the chair of the NPOC shall be the Secretary of Interior and Local Government.”

One of the responsibilities of the NPOC is to “contribute to the strategies of the NSC that would effectively respond to the peace and order problems.”

One of the functions of its sub-national councils is to “initiate and/or oversee the convergence and the orchestration of internal security operations efforts of civil authorities and agencies, military and police.”

Karina said the new NPOC makes Ronnie Puno “the little president.”

With Ronnie Puno at the helm, let’s pray for this country.

Exploited workers Canada’s ’slave trade’

By:
Published September 23, 2008, in Featured

Ronald Galang, from left, Narciso Nicdao and Romero Bonete leave an abandoned farmhouse in Elmvale after their rescue by Filipino embassy officials. The men say they came to Canada because they were promised good jobs but were kept incommunicado, forced to do menial labour for little pay. At least 800 workers are trafficked into Canada yearly, according to the RCMP.

SPECIAL TO THE STAR
DALE BRAZAO
STAFF WRITER

It was 5:30 in the morning when Edwin Canilang realized he had been bought and sold.

Crowded in the back of a van heading north of Toronto with four other Filipino men last summer, the skilled welder faced another unpaid day on a cleanup detail at a bottling plant.

He thought of his wife, who had just given birth to their third child back home in San Carlos, a five-hour drive north of Manila.

He thought of the promises that lured him to Canada – $23 an hour, plus overtime, food and lodging, to help build two icebreakers for the Canadian Arctic.

He thought of his first week in Canada, eight men in the basement of a Toronto house sleeping four to a bed, their passports taken from them. Then they were trucked north to their new home – a filthy, abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

Now, bumping down a dirt road in August 2007, Canilang mustered the nerve to ask Bob De Rosa, his labour boss, when the first paycheque was coming.

“Don’t you guys know that I spent $4,000 to get you?” De Rosa snapped back.

What Canilang experienced last summer is an all too-common situation – foreign workers brought to Canada under false pretences and exploited. Federal officials call it the “modern-day slave trade” and warn of “People for Sale in Canada” in a poster campaign in 17 languages, distributed through Canadian missions around the globe.

At least 800 workers are trafficked into Canada yearly and another 1,000 or more pass through Canada and into the United States, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Settling back in his seat, Canilang seethed. De Rosa headed east from Elmvale to deliver his workers – welders and plumbers – to job sites in Barrie and Orillia.

Some were pressed into service at a water bottling plant, run by De Rosa’s family. Others dug ditches or picked up garbage around a large rural estate where De Rosa lives. The workers, threatened with deportation, did every menial job thrown at them. None of the work involved welding and plumbing, the trades that brought them here.

Their ordeal ended six weeks later when welder Eric Martinez, fed up with the squalid living conditions, long hours and no pay, bolted while on a work detail near Hamilton.

Eventually, Martinez managed to contact Philippine embassy officials who alerted ambassador Jose Brillantes to the deplorable situation. Days later, the men were rescued by Filipino consular staff.

“We didn’t believe such scum existed here,” Canilang, 32, said recently from the safety of a new home and job in Saskatoon. “Canada has such a great reputation worldwide.”

“This was nothing short of slavery,” said Frank Luna, the labour attaché with the Filipino consulate in Toronto. “This was a chain gang without the chains.”

At the heart of the case of the Elmvale 11, as the men have been dubbed by Filipino consular staff, are immigration documents called Labour Market Opinions (LMO) issued by Service Canada.

These are Canadian gold cards for foreign workers. With an LMO, a foreign national can get a temporary permit to work in Canada. The company that wants the workers must first show Service Canada it made a reasonable – but unsuccessful – effort to hire or train Canadians for the job. LMOs stipulate the number of workers approved for the job. Copies are then sent to the workers, who apply for work permits upon arrival in Canada.

Since the federal government relaxed LMO rules two years ago, the program has expanded rapidly. In 2007, there were 201,057 temporary foreign workers in Canada, up from 162,046 in 2006 and 142,705 in 2005.

South of the border, the U.S. State Department recently called Canada “a destination for foreign victims trafficked for labour exploitation” and in an annual report recommended Canada “intensify efforts to investigate, prosecute and convict trafficking offenders.”

Canada’s justice department said the country is combating human trafficking, with new training of RCMP officers and border officials. Spokesperson Carole Saindon cautioned that the U.S. report is based on the state department’s “own standards and its own perceptions of the situation in Canada.”

A half dozen business people brought the Elmvale 11 to Canada. Most talked to the Star – pointing fingers of blame at the others. Bob De Rosa, the labour boss, refused numerous interview requests.

Here’s what happened, according to interviews with most of the players, and documents including work permits, LMOs, invoices and correspondence.

Two years ago, Oakville labour supply company ComFact anticipated a federal contract to supply labour to build two ocean-going icebreakers. ComFact owner Robert McAllister said he decided to “bank” a workforce and, after obtaining LMOs for more than a hundred workers, sent the paperwork to the Philippines.

Two local recruiting companies in Manila, Cete Millenium, and Sanlee, ran advertisements for jobs with McAllister’s company. Canilang and the other workers signed up. They underwent medical exams, upgraded their professional skills and took English lessons – at their own expense.

When they got word they had been approved, the men quit their jobs. Some sold everything they owned and borrowed at loan-shark rates to make the $12,000 payments to the recruiter for an LMO and to buy plane tickets. They said goodbye to their families and flew to Toronto on June 29, 2007.

What they didn’t know was that the Canadian government had scrapped the icebreaker contract and that ComFact had no jobs for them. McAllister said his LMOs, which circulated like hard currency in Manila, were improperly used to get the Elmvale 11 into Canada.

“They (recruiters in Manila) basically stole our workers from us and spirited them away,” he said. “This is human trafficking, but we had nothing to do with it.”

When Canilang and the other workers arrived at Pearson International Airport, they were expecting a ComFact representative.

Instead, they were met by Susan Teng, a woman who said she worked for ComFact but in reality was part of Cete Millenium, the recruiting company in Manila.

A Taiwanese national in Canada on a visitor’s visa, Teng jammed the men into two taxis and ferried them to a house in Scarborough near the Pacific Mall. Eight arrived that day; three came a few days later.

Settling them into two sparse rooms in the basement, Teng demanded they turn over their passports and work permits. She removed all telephones and warned them not to try to phone relatives.

“We slept four people to a bed,” Canilang recalled. “It was awful.”

A week later, Teng told them ComFact had backed out of the deal. She said a new company had work, but they would have to relocate.

In an interview, ComFact boss McAllister said this was untrue. He said he had no idea these workers came to Canada using the LMOs he had obtained. He later flew to Manila and told local recruiters to stop using the ComFact LMOs.

The workers were picked up at the house by Susan Teng and another man, Imtazur Rahman. Rahman said he was a lawyer and was there to help them. A Star investigation (see tomorrow’s Star) found labour recruiter Rahman is a twice-bankrupt businessman whose law degree is bogus.

The drive north to Elmvale took two hours. Teng and Rahman handed over their human cargo to labour boss Bob De Rosa at an abandoned green and white farmhouse on a country road outside of Elmvale.

“This is your new home boys,” De Rosa said.

Ronald Galang couldn’t believe his eyes. “Outside, the grass was five feet tall. Inside there was mud on the floor everywhere. We had to spend a week cleaning it up.”

Four used mattresses on the floor in two rooms in the attic, four more in the living room. The sheets and towels were dirty. There was no food in the fridge.

De Rosa put the men to work at various tasks. They would be paid eventually, he told them.

The De Rosa family has many business interests, including real estate, construction, and some production facilities. They also raise buffalo for food. Bob De Rosa and his brother Vince made headlines in 2003 when police raided two of their properties (one the former Molson Brewery in Barrie) and busted a $120 million marijuana grow-op. Seven men involved later pleaded guilty to production and possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking and received sentences ranging from five years in prison to two years’ house arrest. The De Rosas, who were not charged, told police they had only leased the brewery space.

For the Filipino men working last summer for Bob De Rosa, a typical day started at 5:15 a.m.

The Star interviewed the Filipino workers and read affidavits they prepared at the request of their embassy, which called in the RCMP. “They were living in deplorable conditions,” said Frank Luna, the labour attaché who took part in the rescue and prepared a report for the Filipino government.

Welder Ronald Galang worked a 17-day stretch, splitting his time between an Orillia mechanical company and Aurora Beverage, owned by the De Rosas.

Worker Narciso Nicdao’s affidavit states his time sheets from last summer show he did a 24-hour shift “cleaning beer cage” at Aurora Beverage.

Some of the Elmvale 11 worked at Moonstone Mechanical (not a De Rosa company). While workers say they were not paid, Moonstone’s Ken Fraser told the Star he paid De Rosa for the services of two men he subcontracted to him. “All I know is that I paid off all my bills, if they didn’t get paid I guess they have to go after Bob,” Fraser said.

Repeated attempts to interview De Rosa were eventually answered by a brief email: “No comment. Please stop calling,” De Rosa wrote.

At the Elmvale home, food drop-offs were intermittent. One day, De Rosa brought pasta and tomatoes. Another day, buffalo meat.

Two weeks into their harsh new life in Canada – broke, depressed and anxious to contact their families in the Philippines – they wandered across the road to a neighbour’s house. The farmer, a Barrie city cop, took pity on them, took two into town, bought them soft drinks and a meal, and gave them money to buy phone cards.

“They were strangers in this country, isolated, without a phone,” Sgt. George Cabral said.

To combat boredom they constructed a pool table from scrap wood and rigged an old black and white TV with rabbit ears. Finding two kids’ bikes in the shed they patched the tires and took turns riding up and down the dirt road.

They were never paid their agreed wages. After many complaints, some received a pittance, always in cash.

Plumber Romero Bonete, for example, was paid only $200 by De Rosa. Bonete now works in Lloydminster, Sask., in a maintenance job at a local hotel. Others received $900 for six weeks of labour – far below the amount agreed upon.

On Aug. 23, six weeks after they arrived, they muscled up the courage to tell De Rosa they weren’t going to work for him any more.

“Bob de Rosa was so angry with us,” Galang recalled. “He said, `I am warning you for the last time,’ then took off saying he was going to sign our deportation order.”

Two hours later, Filipino consulate officials arrived at the farm and took the men out.

A week after his entire Filipino workforce quit on him, De Rosa applied for LMOs to hire 191 workers for a large construction project. He promised $18 to $28 an hour and full benefits. The Canadian government denied the application, saying he had not shown “sufficient efforts” to hire Canadian workers.

So, who made money off the Elmvale 11? Documents suggest some of the people involved have been selling the Canadian LMO documents – which is illegal. For how much, and who was paid, is not known.

One memo from a Filipino recruitment agency said Toronto-based recruiter Rahman would be paid “one thousand per head” for signing up a worker and another $1,000 when the worker arrived in Canada. It’s not known if those payments went through.

Rahman denies he received money. He said he got jobs for the Elmvale 11 “from the goodness of my heart.”

“Bob de Rosa asked me if I know any workers. I know this one girl have some workers. So I put them together, that’s all.”

Susan Teng did not respond to requests for an interview.

Another person who touched the case was Nelma de Celis. ComFact’s McAllister accuses her of selling his LMOs to agencies in the Philippines. Tracked down to the modest Edmonton house she shares with several of her Filipino clients, de Celis denies the charges. “You can’t sell LMOs,” she bellows. “Those are government documents.”

A memo the Star obtained shows de Celis acknowledging receiving $12,000 cash as “partial payment of released LMOs.”

De Celis said any money she received was simply to cover her expenses.

Out west, the Elmvale 11 are spread among several job sites.

As he cooks dinner in the kitchen of the little house on the prairie, Ronald Galang’s thoughts are with his wife and three children, including his twin girls, back in the Philippines.

And he is worried.

Not only was he forced to sell his house and move his family to an apartment in Manila before he left, he also borrowed hard to finance his trip to Canada.

“I haven’t been able to pay anything on the loans and I am scared about what these companies might do,” he says his voice trailing off. “We’re all scared.”

But at least he and the others are in Canada. They have jobs, they have contracts, and they have a future.

Facing deportation, Galang and four others were hired by Cover-All Building Systems and now work as welders for that company in Saskatoon.

The rest of the 11 are in Canada also, working elsewhere in Saskatchewan, or in Alberta and British Columbia.

“We want them to be Cover-All employees for life,” said Byron Hardy, the company’s manager of human resources. “They are great workers. We are now working on having their families join them.”

In the wake of the trafficking scam, the Filipino government closed down Cete Millenium and Sanlee recruitment agencies.

After months of investigations by the RCMP and the Canada Border Services Agency, no charges have been laid.

Amended in November 2005 to reflect the UN’s definition of human trafficking, Canada’s criminal code says it’s a crime for anyone who “recruits, transports, transfers, receives, holds, or harbours a person” for the purpose of exploitation.

“The way exploitation is phrased in the criminal code, they have to fear for their safety or their lives,” said RCMP Const. Julie Meeks, who conducted the initial investigation. In her opinion, Meeks said “they just didn’t have that fear.”

Edwin Canilang, for one hasn’t given up on getting the money he believes is owed to him by De Rosa.

“Even slaves,” he says, “have some rights.”

Dale Brazao can be reached at

dbrazao@thestar.ca or (416) 869-4433

US Capitalism Implodes

By:
Published September 23, 2008, in Opinion

US Capitalism Implodes
By Antonio C. Abaya

The decision of the Bush administration to inject $700 billion into the credit and finance sectors of the US economy is a tacit admission that American capitalism, especially under the stewardship of the Republican Party, has imploded and unraveled, probably beyond repair.

The $700 billion bailout is meant to buy bad housing debts and thus prolong the service lives of banks, credit and finance houses and institutional holders of mortgages, the total collapse of which would no doubt lead to a Global Depression that would dwarf that of 1929.

The interconnectivity of national economies, made possible through advances in communications – especially through the Internet – makes almost the entire world vulnerable to the ups and downs of the major players.

For once, something positive can be said of the hermit economies like Myanmar and North Korea, that they are somewhat immune to the vagaries of what must now be referred to with supreme irony as the Free Market.

The $700 billion bailout is the anti-thesis of that “Free Market,” also referred to reverentially as simply “The Market.” It runs counter to the sacrosanct Jeffersonian ideology, to which the Republican Party has traditionally genuflected, that the best government is the one that governs least.

Suddenly, Big Government is all over the place, like a wayward elephant – appropriately, the symbol of the Republican Party – straying into a studio apartment, now on its second mortgage, which the harassed occupant can no longer afford to pay, and which he or she will soon be forced to vacate in favor of a trailer or the back seat of a car.

How did this monumental American tragedy come to pass? The proximate cause is the sub-prime mortgage bubble that burst in July 2007. The crisis showed that millions of Americans had been sold mortgages that they could not afford to pay, leaving dozens of banks holding empty bags, which they in turn packaged with good assets and passed on to other banks and finance houses, not just in the US but all over the capitalist world.

I recall that weeks after the sub-prime mortgage bubble burst in 2007, the US Federal Reserve Board, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the central bank of Australia collectively released a total of $325 billion into the banking sector, in a bid to allow the global banking system, which had suffered massive losses, to continue to function and lend money out to businesses and individuals.

For a while, that seemed to have staunched the hemorrhaging. But it came back with a vengeance in mid-2008. Some of the biggest names in capitalist banking and finance – Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers – had to be bailed out, or sold at fire sale prices, or simply allowed to go belly up, followed by the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the biggest institutional holder of real estate mortgages.

The last straw seems to be the death rattle of American International Group (AIG), the biggest insurance/banking/finance company in the world which was in effect nationalized by the Bush administration with an $85 billion buy-out of almost 80 percent of its equity, making the US federal government neck-deep in the business of business, contrary to the deeply held Republican ideology.

The rationale was that AIG was too big to be allowed to fail. But there is speculation that, with its many tentacles in every nook and cranny of the globe, the AIG was the financial conduit of choice of the CIA.

There is also speculation that the reason President Arroyo suddenly left for New York yesterday, after this trip had been cancelled last August, was to look after her family’s supposed investments in the suddenly nationalized AIG.. Illicit funds parked in AIG would now be subject to US anti-racketeering RICO laws.

(Sept. 23 Update: Today’s Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that while in the UN building in New York President Arroyo will “also have meetings with St. Vincent and Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Antigua and Barbuda, all from the popular tourist destination Caribbean group of islands…”

(Why is this insignificant piece of trivia being passed off as news at all? Is it possibly to cover a meeting with representatives from those other Caribbean islands, Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, both well-known havens for laundering illicit money?)

There is also speculation that the two remaining financial giants on Wall Street – Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley – are also in big trouble and are looking for either a buyer or a bail-out. The three US automakers – Ford, GM and Chrysler – are also said to be asking for a $25 billion bail-out.

But it is no idle speculation that American capitalism has imploded and must be redefined in the coming weeks and months

Since January 1 this year, some 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs, and the job losses continue at the rate of 80,000 a month.. And since July last year, some 1.5 million Americans have lost their homes because they could no longer to pay the monthlies.

And the troubles are not likely to end with the $700 billion bail-out, assuming it is approved by a cynical Congress.. Most adult, even teenaged, Americans are up to their necks in debt, either to their credit card providers or to their car financiers, or to both. It is safe to assume that those 600,000 Americans who have lost their jobs, and the 80,000 who will lose their jobs every month, will be an unabated drain on the US economy as they default and lead more banks to bankruptcy.

Will this economic meltdown have an effect on the November presidential elections? In Europe, such a debacle would indeed affect the politics. But I am not so sure it would in the US.

American voters are being made to choose between John McCain, who confessed early in the primaries that he knew absolutely nothing about economics, and two very talkative lawyers (Obama and Biden) who, from their public utterances, do not seem to know any more or better than McCain..

The only certitude seems to come from Sarah Palin and her Christian Evangelicals who fervently believe that the world is coming to an end soon, as predicted in the Bible. In their closed universe, hermeneutics – the interpretation of Scriptures – is more important than economics. Hallelujah!

Simultaneous to the collapse, or the impending collapse, of the credit and financial basis of American capitalism would or should be a rethinking of the Free Trade and Globalization religion and its own gibberish sect, the Free Movement of Capital.

Free Trade and Globalization was/is an Anglo-American ideological construct meant to allow the surplus outputs of their economies to be dumped into the global marketplace with the least hindrance from other governments in the form of customs levies and numerical quotas. To some extent, this has succeeded. The pre-sub-prime prosperity in many countries can indeed be credited to Free Trade and Globalization.

(The saling-pusa Philippines under President Fidel Ramos was suckered by Opus Dei economists Bernie Villegas and Jess Estanislao into embracing Free Trade and Globalization even ahead of fully developed Taiwan and South Korea, thus decimating many domestic producers who could not compete with a flood of imports and forcing hundreds of thousands of laid-off Filipinos to look for jobs overseas.)

But it has also backfired or boomeranged with the unforeseen rapid growth of China – plus South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, India – as manufacturing centers that took away millions of jobs from the US heartland, leading to its massive trade deficits and a weakened dollar, and becoming hostage to foreign oil.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997 was the direct result of the Free Movement of Capital, another article of faith of Anglo-American capitalism, which allowed currency speculators to move in and out of any economy in search of quick profits, even if it meant millions of people losing their jobs and sinking into poverty..

It is not a coincidence that the Asian country which was least affected by the Asian financial crisis was China, which refused and still refuses pressure from the IMF to allow its currency to be fully convertible, which prevented ‘hot money’ from playing with it.

Then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed specifically castigated Jewish currency speculators – in particular, the Hungarian-American Jew, George Soros – as being responsible for the global debacle in 1997.

I have not read any comments from Dr. Mahathir regarding the current debacle, but I would say that the Unbridled Greed that motivated the currency speculators in 1997 is the same Unbridled Greed that motivated the sub-prime speculators who are responsible for the wider debacle of 2008.

American capitalism, with or without Jewish speculators, will never be the same. *****

Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in acabaya.blogspot.com. Tony on YouTube in www.tapatt.org.

Landscape: Zamora’s sacrifice

By:
Published September 23, 2008, in Opinion

Landscape
Gemma Cruz Araneta
Zamora’s sacrifice
Those who remember (like Mayor Alfredo S. Lim) will celebrate the birthday of Padre Jacinto Zamora, who with Jose Burgos and Mariano Gomez championed the cause of secular priests during the 19th century. They believed it was a travesty and an injustice for religious priests, (called friars) to hold on to the parishes which most of them were using to wield political power and from where they relished socioeconomic privileges. GOMBURZA , a password of the Katipunan, is how we refer to the heroic triumvirate.
Although Padre Zamora was originally from Pandacan, (where his memory is dearly revered) he served in Intramuros and Cavite where he was implicated with a workers mutiny in 1872, so brutally repressed by the colonial authorities who rounded up, captured, arrested, tortured, summarily executed and exiled anyone remotely suspected of sedition and rebellion. The three priests were implicated by a certain Zaldua who turned government witness thinking he would be spared the garrote.
According to the historical grapevine, Padre Zamora was given to gambling; he had a group of card-playing friends and one of them sent him a cryptic note about gun powder and ammunition being ready (meaning the gambling paraphernalia) and, unfortunately for the young priest, that fell into the wrong hands and was used as evidence against him. Padre Zamora did not leave a substantive body of written works, like Jose Rizal and other Propagandists, none of his sermons are extant but he was said to have contributed to the underground press of his time. His death and the terrible circumstances and manner of execution has made his (as well as Burgos and Gomez) sacrifice a turning point in the nation’s history.As it was, during the period that led to the Cavite Mutiny and to the reformist campaign of GOMBURZA the natives, then called indios, appropriated the tern Filipino which was used to refer to Spaniards born in the Philippines. Historians have interpreted that as as indelible sign of a collective feeling of nationhood which became widespread and more passionate and eventually sparked the Philippine Revolution and bore fruit in the First Republic.
Strikingly different were those times, compared to what its going on these days . Last week, Governor Joey Salceda of Albay was reported to have declared during a television interview that we are ”genetically destined to fail as a nation state” or some such barbarity. An erstwhile congressman and close adviser of the president, Mr. Salceda certainly did not mince words as he demolished our past, present and future in one fell swoop. He mindlessly denigrated the sacred memory of Filipino heroes like Padre Jacinto Zamora who gave up their lives for a nation they envisioned ; he deliberately dismissed the efforts of millions of Filipinos who are making ends meet and keeping the country afloat, and worst, Mr. Salceda has totally obliterated our future as Filipinos. What are we to be, entities without any sovereignty, jurisdiction or identity?
Could that be why Fr. Jacinto Zamora went mad at the last minute? Was he gripped by a sudden desperation that perhaps all would be for naught?(gemma601@yahoo.com)

Landscape: Thomasites had a tough time

By:
Published September 23, 2008, in Opinion

Landscape
Gemma Cruz Araneta
Thomasites had a tough time
One wonders if the Thomasites were ever told that they were sent to the Philippines to teach English as part of the “policy of attraction” of the USA government. The Philippine-American War began a year before they arrived and neither Admiral Dewey nor President Mckinley imagined that Filipiino resistance could be so much more relentless than that in Puerto Rico and Cuba.
In fact, even before the Thomasites arrived on 21 August 1901, (aboard a converted cattle ship USS “Thomas”) the American soldiers ( who had already seen action) were teaching English in some areas, as a “pacification” strategy. In jest, they said they were educating “them Injuns with the crank and the kragg”. But Pres. McKinley had put it more elegantly- “to christianize, to educate and civilize” the Filipinos.That was probably why the Thomasites were surprised to see, upon arrival, that even if Filipinos spoke no English, they were not totally uncivilized and were already christianized. They enjoyed certain amenities like potable water and electricity specially in urban areas, were wearing silk and cotton garments , and were writing notes to friends but also using telephones and the telegram. Even then Filipinos loved concerts and theatrical performances.
Although the Thomasites arrived five months after Pres. Emilio Aguinaldo was captured the Philippine-American war was till raging. A month after they landed Filipino Revolutionary forces led by Gen Vicente Lukban wiped out a whole company of American soldiers in Balangiga, Samar, which in retaliation was left a “howling wilderness” by American General Jacob Smith.
In Laguna, parts of Central Luzon, Negros, Leyte and Cebu, fighting was still going on , guerilla style, in defense of the First Philippine Republic. Generals Macario Sakay, Luciano San Miguesl, Artemio Ricarte, and Julian Montalan had not surrendered, even if Apolinario Mabini had been arrested and exiled to Guam.
As they were fielded to various provinces, did the Thomasites notice that communities were being uprooted and reconcentrated (hamletting) ? Crops were being destroyed (scorched earth) to prevent the Filipinos from supporting the revolutionary fighters, according to historian Augusto . de Viana, .resistance continued in the islands even if the Bringandage Act of 1901 branded those who continued to resist USA domination insurgents, tulisanes , bandoleros and ladrones.
Be that as it may, the Thomasites were well-received by most of the municipalities and communities. An American linguist of the time, Mary I. Bresnahan, made this striking observation about the Filipino’s purported desire to learn English: “Documents tell us about Filipinos trembling with fear inside their huts built on stilts as they expected the intrusion of the cruel Americans reputed to be blood thirsty giants bent on killing even the most trusting among them. Unsure about the real motives of the invaders, the Filipinos did what they thought would please the Americans the most. And that was to learn their language, —English”
In 1902, the Colegio de San Juan de Letrán, established during Spanish colonial times, wrote a textbook to aid Thomasites in the teaching English. Entitled Mañga Onang Turô sa Uicang Inglés the authors were Tagalog Professor P. Ulpiano Herrero and Spanish Dominican friar.Francisco García. Published by the Universitiy of Santo Tomas press, this book had 482 pages of English language lessons explained in both the Tagalog and Spanish.

Admirable as the Thomasites were as they braved the tropical heat and humidity and deprivations brought about by the war, not all the reports emanating from American authorities were appreciative of their heroic efforts.. Director of Instruction David P. Barrows in the 1908 School Report (p. 96) wrote:

“It is to be noted that with the increased study and use of English, there has been an increased study of Spanish. I think it is a fact that many more people in these islands have a knowledge of Spanish now than they did when the American Occupation occurred. Spanish continues to be the most prominent and important language spoken in political, journalistic and commercial circles. English has, therefore, active rivals as the language of trade and instruction. It is equally probable that the adult population has lost interest in learning English. I believe it is a fact that many more people now know the Spanish language than when the Americans sailed for these islands and their occupation took place…The customary prerequisite for dispatchers is for them to know English and Spanish. Through the great upsurge in numbers and circulation of newspapers and publications, there is much more reading matter in Spanish than before.”
Eight years later, in 1916, Henry Ford to wrote to President Woodrow Wilson :
” Although, as based on the school statistics, it is said that more Filipinos speak English than any other language, no one can be in agreement with this declaration if they base their assessment on what they hear on the testimony of their hearing……Spanish is everywhere the language of business and social intercourse…In order for anyone to obtain prompt service from anyone, Spanish turns out to be more useful than English…And outside of Manila it is almost indispensable. The Americans who travel around all the islands customarily use it.” (The Ford Report of 1916. Chapter 3. The Use of English, pp. 365-366.)

In fact, many Filipino educators, supporters of the First Republic, had set up schools like the Universidad Literaria, the Liceo de Manila, co-founded by Dr. Leon María Guerrero and Don Enrique Mendiola,; Librada Avelino, founded the Centro Escolar de Señoritas, Mariano Jócson, the Colegio de Manila,; the Avanceña sisters and Don Manuel Locsin, the Instituto de Molo, Iloilo; Doña Florentina Tan Villanueva, established the Escuela de Cebú, and Gran Maestra Rosa Sevilla de Alvero the Instituto de Mujeres.

These native educators taught in Spanish and in vernacular languages like Tagalog, Visayan and Ilocano. To them English was “a language of economic conquest”. As it was, the Thomasites ‘ noble task was hampered by native resistance, albeit passive. They were made to understand that it was difficult for the Filipino masses to learn English because unlike the vernacular languages, English is not written as it is spoken.
In the same 1916 report, Mr. Henry Ford wrote:

“The use of Spanish as an official language has been extended to January 1, 1920. Its general use seems to be spreading. Natives acquiring it learn it as a living speech. Everywhere they hear it spoken by leading people of the community and their ears are trained to its pronunciation. On the other hand, they (the natives) are practically without phonic standards in acquiring English and the result is that they learn it as a book language rather than as a living speech. “(P.368, Historical Bulletin. Ford Report on the Philippine Situation).
The use of English had to be legislated: Act No. 190 of the Philippine Commission made English the official language of all courts effective January 1, 1906 but Act No. 1427 amended the date to January 1, 1911 and Act No. 1946 again extended the effective date to January 1, 1913.” Significantly, Executive Order No. 44, was issued on August 8, 1912, to allow Spanish to continue as an official language as it was deemed a “practical impossibility to substitute English for Spanish in court proceedings and in municipal government . The first Philippine Assembly (elected in 1907) further extended the use of Spanish up to 1920.
In 1925 , the “Monroe Commission” came to the islands to assess the educational system and the imposition of English through the Thomasites. The commission concluded:
“Upon leaving school, more than 99% of Filipinos will not speak English in their homes. Possibly, only 10% to 15% of the next generation will be able to use this language in their occupations. In fact, it will only be the government employees, and the professionals, who might make use of English.”
Be that as it may, the Thomasites did not only teach English, they also taught American values and way of life, American history and the lives of American heroes. In all the public schools set up during their time, they taught Filipino school children gardening, how to plant vegetables and fruit trees that eventually improved their diet. They also popularized sports and physical fitness.
The Thomasites also trained a lot of young Filipinos how to teach English and other subjects as they could not cope with the growing enrollment in public schools all over the country.
The Thomasites composed many songs that we still sing today like “Planting Rice” , “My Nipa Hut” and “I was poorly born on top of a mountain.” If Filipinos learned from them, they must have also learned from their experience in the Philippines.. I wonder what their letters to home were like.

Glimpses: The Patriotism of Filipinos

By:
Published September 23, 2008, in Opinion

The Patriotism of Filipinos
GLIMPSES
Jose Ma. Montelibano

Disaster, after all, is not the exclusive experience of Filipinos, it is a growing nightmare in America as well. The collapse of giant business enterprises that symbolize American stability is sending a tremor in American society that is cracking its core confidence and occasional economic arrogance today. The panic of the public is not yet uncontrollable only because the government is the one who is panicking ahead of everyone and trying to save even what may be saved anymore.

When the Asian crisis in 1997 saw several currencies lose great value, many already realized how absolutely unreliable the global financial systems were, and how utterly brutal they were to people. At that time, it was already acknowledged that more than 90% of the world’s financial transactions were not based on actual products or services but on speculation. That should be nobody’s business then butt of speculators – except that the currencies of nations rose and fell on those same speculative transactions. Asia teetered but Asia recovered. Perhaps, that experience has made Asian economies stronger, so strong that Asia is now the center of global growth today and tomorrow.

Asia’s growth, though, is borne of its resiliency. It has precisely because of its experience of pain and inferiority that it has developed a capacity for taking hard punches, of being beaten, but of surviving through it all. The effect of that whole process of being conquered, colonized, exploited, and kept at the bottom of the cellar has been submission on the outside than resentment at the inside. China and India broke loose from historical imposition and beating the West in its own game. Even Russia that was almost begging from its Western counterparts just yesterday seems determined to regain its dominant status even in global economics.

Where, then, is the Filipino in all of this?

At home, things are not well all. Government as represented by the president and Congress are overwhelmingly unpopular. The Catholic Church is slowly losing its own credibility as an institution with respect and admiration for it waning as fast as the confusion that its highest leadership generates with less than united and consistent actuation on several issues. Philippine society is virtually leaderless as the traditional State and Church dominance clings on mostly by the force of police state and the fear of hell. In the whole equation, both State and Church provide no inspiration, no vision, no noble mission which they can send their people to eagerly pursue.

The American economic debacle hurts Filipino-Americans, and the pain of Fil-Ams translate to pain for their families and relatives in the homeland. Remittances from America still comprise the the majority of all remittances to the Philippines, and decreased earnings by Fil-Ams will result in less remittances to Filipinos and the Philippine economy. A century ago, history created an umbilical cord between the Philippine and America. The relationship has not always been a fair one or a kind one, but it is there and it is being evolved to being a more intimate one with a few million Filipinos now citizens of the United States.

Filipinos rank as the second most highest income earner among ethnic groups in America, Filipino families earning even higher incomes than American families on the average. In a small gathering I attended last night in Chicago, I was told by one Fil-Am lady that she did not feel having done anything spectacular to achieve economic well-being except seize opportunity after opportunity that she encountered along the way. With her was one Fil-Am after another who, too, had done the same and who, too, were progressing by the day. There were dentists, artists, journalists, TV producers and the simply employed, a good representation of first and second generation Fil-Ams.

I was amazed at the spirit that was prevalent in that gathering. Whatever generation they belonged to, whatever profession or business they were involved in, a common thread of love for the homeland and concern for the poor was clearly evident, and the determination to each find a tangible way to share their blessings. Everyone accepted that the divisiveness that defined especially the first generation Fil-Ams but it was obvious that the younger generation was moving under a different environment.

The memory of a native land of of blood ties to a people left behind deeply mired in poverty and corruption is not anymore simply discouraging Fil-Ams as they used to. Perhaps, decades of frustrations have pushed many Fil-Ams today to think of different ways by which they can help the Philippines despite the absence of inspiring leadership and good governance. In other ways, the urge to help is getting stronger and can soon overtake the propensity to merely gripe about things.

I have been moving to one city from another, so many in California, Maryland, Virginia and, now, in Illinois. I have several to visit before I can complete this trip, but it is obvious that a special moment in the evolution of Filipinos is now emerging. It is an awesome emergence, one I had feared I would not live to see in my lifetime. Today, though, I am convinced that the trend is irreversible, and becomes more so under adversity. Truly, patriotism for the native land is alive and being stoked, not discouraged, by failed leaderships all around us.

It seems true, then, that despair can lead to determination, that frustration can lead to action. The air is truly laden with a strange and rare quality of hope that is undeterred by a darkening moment. It is not a hope of fantasy, but a hope grounded on a resolve to act, to contribute, to change, to share, to save the poor, to build a nation. It is an energy preparing to burst, difficult to describe but palpable enough to sense.

In the midst of an extended helplessness in the motherland, in the midst of an economic depression in America, it is not anymore surrender that is forming in the hearts of Filipinos worldwide but a surprising determination to move forward even without leadership. After all, it may be America where great change is expected from the propaganda of politics. Indeed, it may be in the Philippines from the patriotism of Filipinos.

–
“In bayanihan, we will be our brother’s keeper and forever shut the door to hunger among ourselves.”

As I Wreck This Chair: Mar Roxas can become president sans negative campaigning

By:
Published September 23, 2008, in Opinion

Mar Roxas can become president sans negative campaigning
AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR By William M. Esposo
I have three reasons for writing this column.
One — I want to see the dawn of a new type of political campaigning in the Philippines where candidates, especially presidential candidates, sell themselves to the voters on the basis of real values that they can offer.
What we want to remove from our political exercises is the destructive type of campaigning where a candidate wins because he succeeded in making his rival candidate appear less palatable — selling himself as the lesser evil. That is how we ended up with the present evil in the land!

Two — I want to advise a still unannounced presidential candidate I respect and admire (and I won’t mind it if he becomes president) that he can and should concentrate his energies on projecting himself and the positive values he can offer the voters in 2010. I refer to Senator Mar Roxas of the Liberal Party (LP).
I was very disappointed to see Mar Roxas get involved in last week’s demolition job that was done on Senate President Manuel “Manny” Villar. My September 18 column (“Another Panfilo Lacson dud”) expressed my views regarding that baseless tirade against Villar where neither crime nor evidence were presented and established.
Mar Roxas has the credentials and the pedigree (if you’re the type who believes in pedigree as presidential qualification) to make a positive pitch as a serious presidential candidate. He does not need to resort to demolition jobs like the one Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson is doing on Manny Villar who happens to lead all Senate presidentiables in public trust ratings.
Maybe Sen. Lacson has nothing better to offer the 2010 voters and therefore needs to resort to negative campaigning. Lacson does not have the credentials to convince voters that he can make the economy boom. Cops are not known to have that skill. Lacson has his image of bloody hands hounding him, a terrible handicap for a presidential candidate.

But Mar Roxas does not have any such handicaps. Mar has no business getting involved in negative campaigning. Live by the gun and you die by the gun. Provoke your political opponents and they’ll find a way to dig up some negatives that can be used against you.
Three — I want to promote the evolution of a new type of voters who will elect public officials on the basis of who offers the best values for the voter, the community and the country.
To be quite frank — and your Chair Wrecker has never been otherwise — I was disgusted at what Senator Panfilo Lacson staged last week when he delivered that ‘Road to Nowhere’ speech.
I was disgusted because the emerging candidates for the 2010 elections offer the national voters an excellent array of presidentiables. Senate President Manuel Villar, Senator Mar Roxas, Senator Richard Gordon, National Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, Quezon City Mayor Sonny Belmonte, Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay — they are six of the most qualified presidential candidates who can turn around our sinking country.
Sec. Teodoro and Mayor Belmonte do not appear to be interested in the 2010 presidency but they have been in many people’s wish list and I can only agree to that. In fact, my personal choice for 2010 president would zero in on Gordon, Belmonte, and Binay.

Gordon, Belmonte, and Binay have excellent track records in local governance. Gordon has Subic as his showcase — how he made a success story out of a disaster zone created by the US naval base shutdown. Belmonte turned around a bankrupt Quezon City on his very first year as Mayor and has kept it financially healthy for the past 8 years. Binay has all those benefits that Makati residents enjoy to entice the national voters with.
I have always advocated for voters to look at candidates with proven ability in local governance for their choice of the Chief Executive of the land. In the US, there has been a steady preference for governors over legislators in the search for a Chief Executive. The current US campaign is one of the few after World War II where there isn’t a governor among the presidential candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties.
When you have such a fine array of candidates, as those now being lined up for 2010, you simply hate to see the political campaign degenerate into a “Karl Rove” type of mud slinging. Karl Rove is the negative campaign specialist of US President George W. Bush who was largely credited for the Bush 2000 and 2004 poll victories.

There is more than enough poison in our society already and that is an understatement. Anarchy rides all over the land. Just watch the primetime news for a week and you’ll see the extent of the anarchy. Filipinos are killing each other for the silliest reasons. That can only reflect how low human life is now regarded in Philippine society.
The current regime, in fact, is the biggest promoter of the anarchy. Anarchy is best served when laws become subjective and selective, when courts of law are no longer trusted by the people.
If the Filipinos do not arrest this build up of toxic attitude in our society, we will open ourselves to the severe prescriptions of history — revolution by the suffering lower class, civil war between political combatants or be overrun by superpowers who will not refuse the temptation to take advantage of a disunited nation sitting on land and seas that are rich with natural resources.
It is high time that presidential elections become opportunities for charging the air with positive vibes and real hope that is founded on well-conceived programs that are being offered by candidates with the qualifications and integrity to implement a great vision.
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Chair Wrecker e-mail and website: macesposo@yahoo.com and www.chairwrecker.com

PerryScope: The Palin Effect

By:
Published September 22, 2008, in PerryScope

PerryScope
by Perry Diaz
The Palin Effect

When Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, a lot of people wondered if Palin was qualified to become Vice President of the United States. Having been a mayor of a small Alaska town of 9,000 residents and governor of Alaska with a population of 700,000 for less than two years, was Palin ready to take over the presidency should anything happen to 72-year old McCain if he were elected president?

McCain was criticized — particularly by the media — for his choice of a seemingly inexperienced politician with no evident exposure to foreign policy or world affairs. But as soon as Palin was presented at the Republican National Convention last September 3, 2008, she became an overnight sensation. Instantly, she boosted McCain’s presidential stock and reenergized his campaign. McCain wouldn’t go anywhere without Palin in tow. Palin — who calls herself “pit bull with a lipstick” — was very effective in getting the Republicans excited. In effect, Palin became McCain’s ultimate “weapon of mass deception” which he needed to torpedo and derail the turbo-driven campaign of Barack Obama.

Palin was so effective that some people started making reference to the McCain/Palin ticket as the Palin/McCain ticket as if she was the one running for president, which in a sense she was. In his campaign rallies, McCain would make a short introductory pitch and then let Palin do the talking… and attacking. Enthusiastically, she would do the dirty job of smearing Obama for McCain. And McCain would just stand grandfatherly-like behind her, happy as a clam. It was a great script.

Within a week of the emergence of Palin from nowhere, McCain obliterated Obama’s nine-point lead. In recent polls, McCain had surged ahead of Obama, thanks to the entry of a “super star” into his campaign. Indeed, the presidential campaign was beginning to look like a Palin vs. Obama contest. Why not? Given McCain’s age and health issues, Americans could be electing two Republican presidents in this election. But this could also cause the voters to take another hard look at the real Palin — not the stunningly attractive and sweet-talking “hockey mom” that they’re seeing in scripted appearances.

That first opportunity to see the real Sarah Palin came when she was interviewed by Charles Gibson on television. Gibson was selected in the belief that he would give Palin an easy pass. Wrong! Gibson seemingly knew Palin’s weak and vulnerable areas. So when he asked Palin if she agreed with the “Bush Doctrine,” she paused for a few seconds, breathed deeply as if she was going to perform a triple-somersault dive, and then asked, “In what respect, Charlie?” Gibson then asked her: “What do you interpret it to be?” Dumbfounded and with eyes agog, Palin said, “His world view,” which sounded more like a question. She then tried to wing it but it was one of those moments when you don’t know the answer, it’s better not to give an answer. However, to admit ignorance would have been more disastrous for a person seeking the vice presidency.

The second test came when Gibson asked her how Alaska’s proximity to Russia would give her an “insight” into that country. Palin responded: “They’re our next door neighbor and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.” Now, is that the extent of Palin’s foreign policy experience and world view?

Gibson’s interview with Palin has put an indelible black mark on Palin’s façade. Consequently, tons of information surfaced when an army of media people and researchers descended on Alaska turning over every stone under the artic tundra to unearth the trail that Palin left behind before catapulting to the national scene. And lo and behold, there were enough damaging and disparaging information that painted Palin quite differently from her “star power” image. Interviews with people and public officials revealed more about the “Troopergate” scandal in which Palin allegedly fired the Public Safety Commissioner when he refused her demand to fire Palin’s former brother-in-law from his job as state trooper.

Other scandals and anomalies involving Palin’s public and personal life surfaced and inundated the media as well as the late-night shows. She became staple for jokes by Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Craig Ferguson and others. Sarah Palin cartoons and funny pictures mushroomed in the Internet.

But the final test of Palin will come during her debate with her Democratic vice presidential rival Joe Biden on October 2. Their debate would be the defining moment for Palin. A mediocre performance could repel a lot of her supporters and put McCain’s candidacy at risk.

Although McCain’s selection of Palin momentarily boosted his candidacy, at the end of the day the American people will reserve their final judgment on which presidential candidate is best suited for the job. On November 4, 2008, the American people will troop to the polling booths to decide once and for all whether McCain or Obama should lead the nation — and the world — in the next four years or probably eight years. And like every U.S. presidential election, there are two criteria that the voters would use to decide whom to vote for: CHARACTER and LEADERSHIP.

Palin and Biden would become incidental to the voters’ choice for president. With less than six weeks left in the campaign, a lot of things could happen that could sway the Americans’ preference for president, particularly at a time when the country is experiencing a financial meltdown which could be worse than the Great Depression 80 years ago. And whoever that person is, there are two things he or she must possessed: strong character and great leadership.

(PerryDiaz@gmail.com)

As I Wreck This Chair: Who really wanted martial law in the Philippines in 1972?

By:
Published September 21, 2008, in Opinion

Who really wanted martial law in the Philippines in 1972?
AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR
By William M. Esposo
If once-upon-a-time dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos is to be believed, it was the United States who wanted martial law in the Philippines in 1972.
Now, likely you will think that the suggestion is absolutely preposterous and that Marcos — who is known to lie — was merely covering his tracks with that assertion.
However, in the light of established US track record in supporting dictatorships and the recent US intervention in Mindanao which could severely reshape our geographic setup as a country, it would be good to view the declaration of martial law in a larger perspective, one that rises above the popular belief that Marcos simply wanted to extend his term beyond its expiration in 1973.
Not to gainsay its truly democratic system of government, its enviable justice system, its contributions to science, communications, literature and development worldwide and its people’s great humanitarian bounty for assisting many needy nations — there is no denying that there is this dark, Machiavellian side of US history that has made many nations very wary and suspicious of US foreign policy. This is the US inclination to create and support dictatorships in the pursuit of its geopolitical agenda.
Per the eminent Professor Emmanuel Q. Yap, founder of the People’s Patriotic Movement (PPM) and perhaps the most knowledgeable resource person on true Philippine contemporary history and what really happened here during the East-West Cold War, Marcos made the assertion that the former dictator simply complied with US wishes in implementing martial law during a meeting in 1972 at Malacañang Palace with former House Speaker Jose “Pepito” Laurel Jr.
Shortly after martial law was declared, Speaker Laurel asked Prof. Manoling Yap to accompany him to the said Palace meeting with Marcos. Marcos was known to be very close to the Laurels. Marcos felt that he owed his Supreme Court murder charge acquittal to the then Supreme Court Chief Justice (and later Japanese Occupation Philippine President) Jose Laurel Sr.
It was also Speaker Pepito Laurel who brought Marcos into the Nacionalista Party (NP) and paved the way for his nomination as NP Official Candidate for the 1965 Presidential Election which Marcos won over incumbent President Diosdado Macapagal.
In that Palace meeting, Laurel asked Marcos: “Brod, why did you have to declare martial law?” According to Manoling Yap, Marcos replied: “Brod, kung hindi ako nag-declare ng martial law, ako ang papatayin ng mga Amerikano. (Brod, if I didn’t declare martial law, the Americans will kill me).”
According to Prof. Yap, no Filipino in 1972 knew how to conceptualize, plan and implement martial law and that the blueprint for this dark chapter of our history was drafted for Marcos by the US in South Korea and was personally hand carried here from South Korea by a Marcos cabinet member who was very close to the US.
Now, even if I too had the privilege to be present in that Malacañang Palace meeting, I would not have believed Marcos at the time. I would have seen the declaration of martial law in the same way that most people saw it — Marcos’s last card to retain power after 1973 when his second term would have expired.
But I am older now and I’d like to think — much wiser. And not only that, we also have the benefit today of knowing and appreciating other facts that have since surfaced to shed light on US actions during the 1960s all the way to the end of the Cold War and beyond.
Let me be clear on this issue — I do not believe that what Marcos told former Speaker Pepito Laurel was the whole truth. Simply put, it takes two to tango. I do believe that the US wanted to install a dictator here just as Marcos himself wanted to be that dictator.
So I suppose now you’ll ask: Just why would the US, which prides itself as a shining light of democracy in the world, want to install a dictatorship in the Philippines — its then showcase of US-style democracy in Asia?
Why — it is because of the then great American fear of the Domino Theory happening in Asia after the US lost South Vietnam to the Communists.
The Domino Theory is the great US fear of the spread of Communism — that the fall of one State in a region could trigger the fall of other States into Communist hands. The Domino Theory is not only confined to Asia. The fear is also experienced in the Americas, in Central and South America.
In Asia, Communism expanded from China to North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. In the Americas, it took its roots in Cuba when Fidel Castro ousted US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and then was poised to export the ideology to Central and South America with Che Guevara as point man.

For a supposed ‘shining light of democracy’ in the world, it is unbelievable how many dictators — many of them murdering tyrants — the US has supported. It is also no coincidence that many of these dictatorships were during the 1960s and 1970s which was the height of the Cold War.
To rattle off some of these US-supported dictators, there were Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier of Haiti, Pinochet of Chile, Somoza of Nicaragua, Videla of Argentina, Sadat and Mubarak of Egypt, Stroessner of Paraguay, the Shah of Iran, Banzer of Bolivia, Noriega of Panama, Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Branco of Brazil, Armas of Guatemala, Batista of Cuba, Park of South Korea, Suharto of Indonesia and not the least of all — Marcos of the Philippines.
This practice of supporting dictators is best summed up by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt who said: “He may be a son-of-a-bitch but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”
There is a truism in politics that is very similar to the economic law of supply and demand. This political truism states that as a country becomes poor, it tends to veer Left and when it becomes richer — it tends to veer Right.

It is easy to see that most of the countries where the US supported dictators were poor or have large segments of their population living below the poverty line. It was natural at the time (few would buy Communism now) for these countries to become attracted to the siren song of Communism or at the very least favor a system of government with a Socialist slant (though not necessarily Communist).
Nowadays, there is no longer such an ideological fight between the US and China (and Russia). Both China and Russia are now enjoying capitalist booms although China continues to be governed via the single party Communist system.
However, the US preference for dictators is not just confined to the fight against Communism. The US will create and support any dictator who can serve its geopolitical agenda.
The US and China, both superpowers, are now locked in a desperate race for the last remaining sources of energy. And we Filipinos are right in the middle of that eventual superpower confrontation as the Spratlys and the South China Sea are being targeted by both superpowers for its vast reserves of oil and gas.
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Chair Wrecker e-mail and web-site: macespos@yahoo.com and www.chairwrecker.com

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