| DIE HARD III |
 |
| Herman Tiu Laurel |
04/13/2012
The mandarins in Washington must be laughing their bellies out, how
clever they must think themselves to be making half the World scamper
around for cover to their screams of “The Sky is Falling.” The US
ordered its minion states create the fable of a North Korean (NK)
“missile” test, poking its surrogate state Japan to threaten to shoot
down the NK rocket “if it threatens any part of Japan.” While ordinary
folks don’t have the means to judge if that is even possible, not having
the maps and the trajectory the NK leadership announced, a few who
might have taken the trouble to look up on the Internet would see that
the trajectory flies South, away from Japan, and toward the seas of east
of Taiwan and the Philippines. In the Philippines, the scare fanned
across Metro Manila, 600 or 700 kilometers away and covered by the
mountain ranges of Cagayan and Quezon provinces. A bishop called on the
people to pray. How silly Filipinos must look to the Western powers.
The
NK leadership and the nation are made out to be mindless and stupid
fanatics by Western propaganda and some Philippine “intelligentsia” pick
this up perfunctorily. One view from a religious official repeats the
lie that “NK leaders allow its people to starve” betraying ignorance of
historical realities of Korea.
The geography of many nations, and
Korea is no different, is often divided to a northern region of cold
climes harsh on agriculture and a warmer south conducive to food
production; for NK this reality plus the economic sanctions and embargo
imposed by the US upon it, as it does on countries like Cuba or Iran,
limit imports of agricultural inputs and goods. NK uses its only
leverage, its political-defense potential to obtain food reserves, is a
testament to its concern. The West sheds crocodile tears for hungry
people, as it does for Africa. Iran has rushed to import hundreds of
thousands of tons of grain to beat the recent US economic sanctions
deadline.
The “missile test” claim is belied by the opportunity
given to Filipinos to witness and verify the truth about this NK racket
test. Over his radio program on DWAD, Rep. Crispin “Boying” Remulla
informed the audience that he was officially invited to visit NK and
observe the NK rocket test launch. Unfortunately, Remulla declined the
invitation and for which he could not give a satisfactory reason. I
think that he, as the public official of the Philippines privileged to
be invited to the NK racket launch, had a duty to the Filipino people to
proceed to Pyongyang to ascertain the nature and intention of the
rocket launch. He could have then reported back to the nation and
confirm to all the US and Japanese allegations that the NK did indeed
launch a “missile.” Boying Remulla did, I recall, say something about
being “careful” hence declining the invitation; but “careful” for what,
that he would not offend the US Embassy? I wonder.
State
Department or Wall Street, the imperial mandarins always get good laughs
from the Philippines. One headline certainly made them happy, “Gov’t
readies vaccine PPP.” The PPP (Public-Private Partnership) projects are
the old BOT (build-Operate-Transfer), and hybrid IPP (Independent Power
Producer), scams where government contributes taxpayer’s money,
sovereign guaranteed contracts for a captive Filipino market in joint
venture with private (usually foreign firms or with local dummies)
corporations which it securitizes to raise funds then charges exorbitant
“deregulated” rates or prices. The PPP Center said “(The) government
can save approximately P240 million to P360 million out of the
P1.2-billion annual purchase cost of the vaccines,”— if the vaccines are
needed at all. Vaccines are being questioned more and more as
nutrition’s primary role is increasingly recognized, in 2010 GMA bought
billions of swine flu vaccines which still wait to be used today.
The
imperial mandarins turn every Philippine crisis into their opportunity.
One headline reveals what they have in mind for Mindanao’s power price
crisis: “Mindanao may go nuke.” Of course, this is uranium nuke, which
is “so last century.” After Chernobyl and Fukushima they must be shelved
forever, the correct nuclear technology for this century is Thorium
Nuclear Power. China and India are already in this direction. Thorium is
four times more abundant than uranium (we have our own in Palawan),
produce less than 1 percent waste of today’s uranium reactors and cannot
be weaponized, failsafe and thus cost a fraction of uranium reactors to
build, and according to Filipino physicist Dr. Roger Posadas, Filipinos
have existing technology to build them indigenously. The imperial
mandarins are getting their surrogates to unload their poison plants and
uranium stockpiles on the Philippines.
The laughing US mandarins
are laughing all the more watching the Power summit in Davao next week
as they have all past power summits. They foisted the Epira on the
Filipinos. Yesterday a headline declared “Metro brownouts loom” and
subtitled “Power rate increases also feared with Malampaya Facility’s
Shutdown” — thanks to Shell-Texaco. Thanks too to Cory Aquino and the
Yellows giving all these to them.
In the meantime, while fear
over NK’s rocket is kept up, NASA has a $750 million Upper Atmosphere
Research Satellite (UARS) satellite set to fall from the sky in weeks;
pieces could land in densely populated areas on six continents including
parts of Britain, Europe, North and South America and Asia. No scare
here?
(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., on
“More Hocus PCOS” with Bono Adaza and Jun Estrella; visit
http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio
archives)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20120413com6.html
