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After the big show DIE HARD III Herman Tiu Laurel 06/04/2012

Monday, June 4, 2012

After the big show

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
06/04/2012
The people, especially the younger generations, should be taught how their minds are being shaped by staged cathartic events, such as the five-and-a-half-month-long impeachment and conviction of Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Renato Corona.

From all angles, the just concluded drama is no different from Edsa I or Edsa II, where powerful forces behind the scenes — through their manipulation of key political, economic and media factors — produced, directed and marketed a crisis large enough to create a particular state-of-mind in the public. In Edsa I (circa 1986), after years of demonizing Ferdinand Marcos, coupled with that staged election computer operators’ walkout, the Yellows laid the basis for military mutiny and the mobilization of Catholic-led middle class mass actions — the same script that was followed in Edsa II with the impeachment prosecutors’ walkout.

It is fairly clear that, for such moves to have been a success, these elite forces have had to repeatedly appeal to the mass ego with such myths as “a return of democracy” in Edsa I, or of it being our “Handog sa Mundo” (“Gift to the World”), or even an Edsa II utopian hope for an “end to corruption” — all of which were never realized.

Undeniably, this formula has been replicated by the global power elite through their social engineers all over the world, in such cases as the “Arab Spring” as well as the “Right-to-Protect” campaign in Libya. Both were produced with trained and funded in-country NGOs and “civil society” groups which opened the way for “regime change.”

In Egypt, the Sunni-based Muslim Brotherhood that came to power has called for military intervention by the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) into non-Sunni Syria, which will obviously lead to an encirclement of Iran.

In Libya, with the way the country is now disintegrating, the objective was to deconstruct the nation-building infrastructure of Muammar Kadhafi and lay that nation to waste.

In a post-Gloria Arroyo Philippines, the design is for the US to continually prop up a totally dependent and dependable puppet regime that will exercise authoritarian power to push vital US interests, such as a Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) “substate” and a restoration of US military bases throughout the archipelago. Of course, an important goal is to ensure a re-colonization of the economy through transnational corporations and the local oligarchy, unhampered by any obstacles. This is most probably the reason for the push for a pliant judiciary that will, for instance, acquiesce to the billions being sought by a feudal family as just compensation for the land that is to be returned to the farmers.

The impact of the cathartic Corona impeachment on another generation of Filipinos is clear. My GNN program guest Christine Conti, UP student regent and law student who was part of an impeachment monitoring initiative, believes the exercise of convicting Corona was good despite her misgivings about the many violations of law by the prosecution, Malacañang, and the Senate court.

The contradiction (hence, invalidation) in her conflicting views is pretty clear: A law student now justifies the violation of the Rule of Law by the “new standard of transparency” supposedly established for public officers. Question is, would that still hold after most senators and BS Aquino III himself finally decline to sign the waivers to their bank accounts?

In addition, despite Conti’s fiery conviction that Mrs. Arroyo is “unforgivably corrupt” and that the country was run aground after Edsa II, she still justifies her generation’s pride for the Edsa II coup as if it were “the defining moment for (her) generation,” inasmuch as Edsa I was supposedly the Philippines’ “Handog sa Mundo.” Hopefully, she will soon get to see such contradictions.

All told, the participation of mainstream media in the mind manipulation vs CJ Corona has been blatant. They have gone all out to sustain the “legality” of his conviction, with a case in point being the powerful front-page story about a lowly court interpreter being sacked for not declaring one small asset, which was intended for the public to draw a parallel between the small fry and Corona. The only problem is, the former court employee was sanctioned not for the non-declaration but for double compensation.

This outright misinformation and disinformation are part of what is called “manufacturing consent” for the illegal removal of Corona. Anyone desiring to study the mind control techniques of the powerful, especially of establishment media, can watch two documentaries entitled, “A Century of Self” about Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud and the father of modern propaganda, marketing and advertising) and “Manufacturing Consent” by Noam Chomsky, both available on the Web.

Meanwhile, the propagandists of BS Aquino III did not spare any means to prop up their “feel good” campaign after the Corona conviction. To lull the masses into an unthinking stupor, they tried to create a positive economic mood via the National Economic Development Authority (Neda)’s announcement of a “surprising” economic growth rate that “surpasses (the) Asian growth average of 3.7 percent” (even better than Singapore!), as well as other headlines that proclaim, “investors hail Corona conviction.” Even the American Chamber of Commerce through its local gofer got into the act at the last minute with its “strategic analysis” of how inevitable and good the conviction is. But as Ado Paglinawan in the US e-mailed us, “the verdict on Corona came toward the end of May (that) it perked the economic growth during the first quarter (January to March)??? Ano ito, hook shot?”

Interestingly, those prevaricators will not highlight the fact that the first quarter saw surveys reporting increases in unemployment (with adult unemployment at a record high of 34.4 percent and with 13 percent jobs lost), as well as hunger at a record high of 23.8 percent of families (with families that rated themselves poor also rising to 55 percent). As such, we can expect Neda and mainstream media to announce a hushed “recalibrating” of data a month from now.

After the big show, reality seeps back in.

(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m.; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)

(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu Laurel)


SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20120604com5.html

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