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Broken, lawless under Noy EDITORIAL 11/29/2010

Monday, November 29, 2010

Broken, lawless under Noy

EDITORIAL
Click to enlarge
11/29/2010
The outside world has built a worrying perception about the country that its government is not capable of protecting its own citizens, much less those who are visitors of the country.

Noynoy, aside from incessantly trumpeting his so-called straight path of governance, has done nothing or cannot do anything to change such widespread sentiment. At least seven rich nations have issued travel advisories on their citizens in the country that Noynoy confronted by merely demanding that the countries lift the travel warnings. It was as if throwing a tantrum would convince the countries to leave the safety of their citizens on what they hold as an incompetent government.

The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) described the country as one where an individual can no longer protect himself nor his family and exists in a nation that cannot protect its own citizens.

“A nation that cannot protect families and the community where they live cannot hope to protect the foreigners on its soil. It is a broken and lawless nation,” according to the AHRC..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101129com1.html

No change in perception FRONTLINE Ninez Cacho-Olivares 11/29/2010

No change in perception

FRONTLINE
Ninez Cacho-Olivares
11/29/2010
Malacañang won’t admit it, but all those excuses from the Chinese government by way of saying that there is always a rescheduling problem only means that the Chinese government doesn’t want to officially meet the Noynoy Aquino delegation that was formed to come to China over the botched Aug. 23 rescue operations.

Of course it must be done diplomatically, which is why there is always that excuse of the Chinese not being able to reschedule the Philippine delegation.

But Noynoy and his propagandists aren’t about to admit it, saying that it is the Philippine government that had decided not to send the delegation to China anymore.

Even in Vietnam, it was already clear to all that China is still smarting from the botched hostage, apart from the fact that the Chinese government has certainly made it clear that it is miffed with the way Noynoy exculpated his pals and allies from any liability and accountability, since Noynoy couldn’t even get a brief one on one meeting with the Chinese high official, whether in Vietnam or Yokohama.

With Noynoy’s propagandists claiming that the Chinese official and he were in good terms, and that everything is back to normal, Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang, in a radio report, made sure that the Malacañang propagandists were not going to get away with it, as he gave a radio interview in Hong Kong to give his piece, and there was the additional information that the HK police would be doing an exhaustive forensic analysis of the botched rescue..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101129com2.html

NY’s subway dancers never stop moving FEATURE 11/29/2010

NY’s subway dancers never stop moving

FEATURE

11/29/2010
NEW YORK — No stage is too small — or moving too fast — for Donte Steele and his dance crew.

Broadway might be the most prestigious showbiz address in New York, but Steele surely works the most challenging: the subway trains hurtling under Manhattan.

There are no curtains on this stage, but when Steele’s crew burst through the automatic doors of the carriage, armed with a boom box, the drama is instantaneous.

“What time is it?” one calls out. “Showtime!” call back the others.

Passengers mostly look away from the sudden intrusion. But not for long.

The boom box is pumping Black Eyed Peas and the youngest performer, 15-year-old Marcus Walden, otherwise known as “Mr. Wiggles,” is break dancing. He back flips.

Next up, “LJ” Tamiek Steele, 21, stands on his hands and calmly, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, reclines to a horizontal position, supported only by his fingers. You’d think invisible strings held him..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101129com3.html

Why not Nene Pimentel? C.R.O.S.S.R.O.A.D.S Jonathan De la Cruz 11/29/2010

Why not Nene Pimentel?

C.R.O.S.S.R.O.A.D.S
Jonathan De la Cruz
11/29/2010
The early retirement of Comelec Chairman Jose Melo has stirred a hornet’s nest of sorts. Some sectors are speculating why Melo, who has four more years to serve after presiding over the country’s first automated elections last May, decided to abbreviate his stay by January 2011 when there are no especially difficult tasks ahead except for the scheduled ARMM elections next year. These sectors scoffed at Melo’s excuse that he wants to “spend more time with his grandchildren and play more golf” as an easy way out of a reported campaign by some close P-Noy partisans to ease him out to give way to their favored replacement. Reports are rife that some of them have actually seen Melo and in no uncertain terms “talked” him into issuing that resignation letter after insinuating that the latest barangay and SK elections fiasco was just the latest in a number of possible items which may be brought up in their year end assessment of the poll body’s operations. There were even suggestions that the J. V. Ongpin forum on the May elections featuring former Comelec Chairman Christian Monsod and others who have expressed concern over lingering problems at the poll body was just a preview of things to come. Of course, others believe that the amiable chairman deserves a break and this is as good a time as any for him to say goodbye. My only hope is that before he goes he gets to advice the nation on what to do with the balance of the budget allocated for last May’s election and the offer of Smartmatic, the poll body’s technology and solutions provider, the better to clear the air as some quarters are again hard at work trying to suggest that the impasse on these two concerns has something to do with the “division of spoils.” which is of course as ridiculous and wacky as many of those unsavory rumors about the Comelec and its employees immediately after the May elections which continue to linger up to now. But that is another story.
.... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101129com4.html

The nation and the SYM DIE HARD III Herman Tiu Laurel 11/29/2010

The nation and the SYM

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/29/2010
I received this text a few days ago: “Gud pm, Ka Mentong, r u aware of d SYM goin on? TY.” The text came from an old-time Edsa III Kabansang Leth (or compatriot Leth, as we call each other in the movement). I really wasn’t familiar with what SYM stood for. It was the first time I encountered it.


When Leth texted again with “Sorry Yellow Movement,” it was then that I recognized the words that I have long been hearing the past few months from many former loyal Yellow stalwarts who have finally given up believing that the Yellow legacy holds any remaining promise of change and hope for its believers and the broad masses of the people.

I discussed this on the latest episode of our radio show and I said that I had been “Sorry Yellow” long, long before — ever since the last few years of the Cory Aquino administration.

The newcomers to this “Sorry Yellow” tribe are therefore more than welcome. They can in fact be a “boon” to the nation and a tremendous help in freeing the minds of the remaining wayward souls aboard the Yellow train. After nearly 25 years of domination in the Philippine scene, the Yellow era in our politics and governance has failed miserably — nay, criminally — to bring its promise of democracy, economic development, and prosperity.

Instead, what it has given is reinforced neo-colonial chains by the plutocrats who pull the strings on corrupted national and local, election, judicial, security, defense, and other officials in a sham, make-believe democracy that nurtures and entrenches an army of career sycophants all the way to the top, so long as they pay homage to the US Ambassador, sing paeans to “foreign investors,” and genuflect before “globalization” and “privatization.”

A historical perspective to the “color revolutions” is useful at this stage. I have said that the Philippines is the political-economic laboratory of American imperialism. The US has time and again shown that it exercises in-depth mind and political control over this country very successfully.

My first impression of RP being a testing ground for US imperialist programs came from a study of the Philippines’ transition from the “Filipino First Policy” under President Carlos P. Garcia to the “decontrol” period of Diosdado Macapagal — a process imposed by the earliest “structural adjustment” programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which included liberalization of foreign exchange and trade controls.

In the decades that followed, “structural adjustments” became a byword in IMF-Third World relations (which is now being imposed on European countries). Also, the “Yellow Revolution” was soon followed by the “Rose” and “ Orange ” revolutions in former Eastern Bloc countries similarly destabilized by the US.

In all, crucial ideas forming the ideology of a nation’s sovereign governance changed with these color revolutions. The downgrading of the state (with its government) and the rise of the corporatocracy by the transfer of public assets to private transnational and local conglomerates (through privatization) placed the real power shift to the plutocrats.

The downgrading of productive industries also resulted as the economy was “financialized,” with the ascendancy of “shareholder value” and “capital markets” that create the “virtual” economy of financial and stock market speculation by the likes of George Soros, Warren Buffet, and the infamous Ponzi man Bernie Madoff.

All these as local oligarchs feed their respective nations to these speculators via the “debt sentence” amid booming stock markets in bankrupt economies marked by “jobless growth.” The net effect: The killing of the real, physically productive economy, with GDP and GNP indicators replacing genuine “development” in such areas as health and education.

The “Sorry Yellow Movement” must rise above personality politics and the prevailing materialistic culture into a higher plane of thinking where a moral and spiritual vision for a better country and a better life for all Filipinos and all nations is upheld. But this must also be grounded on historical empiricism, i.e. knowledge from evidence-based experience, against the quasi-occultism of the Ghost of Edsa Shrine historiography and Yellow necromancy around the death masks of its idols.

What is the better model of development in real terms (i.e. long-term vs flash in the pan), the balanced political-economy of Singapore and Malaysia as well as China ’s social-market and market-socialist system, or the ultra-capitalist system exemplified by the US? After 25- and 50-year cycles, the consistent developmental economics of China et al. outperforms the boom and bust-driven US system.

The chromatic symbolism of the Philippines must return to the multi-colors of the flag that evolved from the Katipunan’s sun and black or red background to the multi-colors of the flag of the First Republic representing the true nation-state republic that Apolinario Mabini and the other founding heroes envisioned. The yellow of royalty, theocratic power, and privilege — not to mention, cowardice — must be thrown into the dustbin of history where it belongs. The Republic represents the people; and as it is a government of, for, and by the people, it should stay that way.

The “Sorry Yellow Movement” must begin to understand these before it becomes, as some have already declared, the even sorrier “Very Sorry Yellow Movement.” And while they say goodbye to their old ways, we from the genuine mainstream of the nation of Filipinos — patriots by natural law — say “hello” to welcome them back to the fold.

(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on “RP’s Home Mortgage Crisis: Ready to Explode,” on Global News Network, Destiny Cable channel 8; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com; P.S.-“10 minutes of lights out vs power plunderers,” 7 to 7:10 p.m., Monday nights)

 (Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)


SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101129com5.html

The next billionaire HE SAYS Aldrin Cardon 11/29/2010

The next billionaire

HE SAYS
Aldrin Cardon
11/29/2010
To get rich quickly, that has become an obsession to many.

Like everyone else, it has also been my dream. But I have no chance at politics, where winners always hit the jackpot and players are almost, as always, like the jackpot winners if they know how to play their politics right.

For the common man, it’s the lotto which is their ticket out of poverty.

I don’t gamble, but on some days, I welcome the exceptions.

I love playing golf with my Philippine Sports Association buddies because, even if I play the worst among the PSA lot, I usually bring home a prize, the most common of which are umbrellas.

The occasional television sets they give out during special games are always tempting, and I have brought home a couple since I started taking up the sport to the detriment of the many public courses where we play.
I also cherish victories during Christmas parties and other special occasions where raffle items are at stake..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101129com6.html

Odds and ends SHE SAYS Dinah S. Ventura 11/29/2010

Odds and ends

SHE SAYS
Dinah S. Ventura
11/29/2010
The Grand Lotto pot has reached over P600 million. That is a dazzling figure that you only ever see attached to roads or condominium projects. Indeed, it could fund so much of our development plans that one congressman took it upon himself to suggest that the pot money be used for such. A random survey among citizens, however, revealed a resounding “Heck, no!” I bet each one of us wants a shot at that money — a chance to be the next Manny (Pacquiao, Villar, Pangilinan)!

The lines in lotto outlets are long, but people patiently wait their turn. Hope burns in their chest that their luck would turn and they would finally know how it feels to have money at one’s disposal, never having to worry about how to pay for the next month’s bills; how to find the money for one’s kids’ tuition fees and pricey gadget obsessions; how to pay for treatment at the hospital and buying those medicines; never having to slave away at minimum wage.

If it’s not the lotto, there’s jueteng, albeit illegal. And that is the root of this issue that has had the church and state locking horns, just like that issue over the use of condoms and contraceptives.

Poverty pushes people to try anything and everything their conscience can take just to survive. Try watching one of those Brilliante Mendoza films, which strive to portray reality at its ugliest so that you can’t turn away – glued by a deep-seated knowledge that these things do exist, we just never wanted to acknowledge them..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101129com7.html

RP troops to Korea possible under MDT By Angie M. Rosales 11/29/2010

ENRILE SAYS U.S. MAY INVOKE TREATY OBLIGATION

RP troops to Korea possible under MDT

By Angie M. Rosales 11/29/2010

The government will be compelled to deploy Filipino soldiers in South Korea if the United States invokes the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) in the event that the tension between North Korea and South Korea escalates into a full-blown war, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said yesterday.

Enrile, in a radio interview, added the developing situation in the Korean peninsula is also a concern to the country.

North Korea had warned of unpredictable consequences if the US and South Korea go ahead with naval exercises in the Yellow Sea. The drill, nevertheless, started yesterday.

The USS George Washington aircraft carrier and its battle group were planning four days of exercises with South Korea from yesterday as a show of force after Pyongyang stunned the world with artillery strikes on Yeonpyeong Island.

The planned drill has also heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing since China regards the Yellow Sea as its own ancestral waters and has refrained from condemning its communist ally Pyongyang over Tuesday’s attack..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20101129hed1.html

US, Sokor start drill; China calls for talks 11/29/2010

US, Sokor start drill; China calls for talks

11/29/2010
Yeonpyeong Island — The United States and South Korean navies staged a potent show of force against North Korea yesterday, as China called for emergency talks about the crisis on the divided peninsula.
Tensions remained high after the North’s deadly bombardment last week.

People on the South Korean border island hit by shells and rockets scurried to bunkers after hearing explosions — apparently a firing drill miles away on the North’s mainland.

China, the isolated North’s sole major ally, proposed “emergency consultations” in Beijing early next month among chief envoys to the stalled six-nation talks on the North’s nuclear disarmament.

Its top envoy on North Korea, Wu Dawei, speaking in Beijing, stressed the proposal did not constitute a formal resumption of the negotiations. But he said he hoped they would lead to such a resumption soon.

South Korea, which is pressing Beijing to be more even-handed in the standoff, reacted cautiously as did Japan. The United States and Russia are the other members of the talks along with the North itself..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20101129hed2.html

Dinky facing possible subpoena from House panel By Gerry Baldo 11/29/2010

Dinky facing possible subpoena from House panel

By Gerry Baldo 11/29/2010
Members of the House minority bloc are planning to subpoena Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman if she continues to ignore the invitation of the House committee on good government and public accountability which is conducting an inquiry into the controversy surrounding the P10-billion zero coupon Poverty Eradication and Alleviation Certificate (PEACe) bonds floated by the Code-NGO (Caucus of Development-NGO Networks).

Zambales Rep. Ma. Milagros “Mitos” Magsaysay, a member of the Lakas-Kampi-Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD), said Soliman, former head of Code-NGO, snubbed the first hearing last Wednesday when the panel had uncovered that her husband, lawyer Hector Soliman, was Code-NGO’s corporate secretary.

Code-NGO had received a windfall earnings of P1.3 billion from the flotation of the P10-billion zero coupons bonds which was allegedly engineered by a relative of then Finance Secretary Isidro Camacho.

Magsaysay warned the Social Welfare chief of facing possible subpoena from the committee if she insists on snubbing the lower chamber’s hearing..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20101129hed3.html

Maguindanao vice mayor shot dead 11/29/2010

Maguindanao vice mayor shot dead

11/29/2010
A vice mayor in Maguin-danao province was killed in an ambush staged by teenaged-looking suspects in Davao City yesterday, a police official said.

Police Regional Office-XI (PRO-11) spokesman Supt. Querubin Manalang said Alexander Tomawis, vice mayor of Barira town, was shot in the head by two unidentified assailants around 10:45 a.m. yesterday.

Quoting reports from the field, Manalang said Tomawis was along Hill Drive beside the Heritage Church in Bajada, Kilometer 5, Barangay Buhangin in Davao City, whentwo teenaged-looking suspects shot him, using a handgun.

Manalang said the suspects managed to approach Tomawis by pretending to have some documents signed by the vice mayor.

“The victim, who was with his security detail at the time of the shooting, was rushed to the Davao City Doctors’ Hospital for medical attention but was declared dead on arrival thereat,” he added..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20101129hed4.html

Malacañang double standard raised over amnesty grant 11/29/2010

Malacañang double standard raised over amnesty grant

11/29/2010
Malacañang may be accused of exercising double standard in the grant of amnesty to soldiers who launched a series of coup attempts against former President Arroyo while refusing to act on the case of healthworkers suspected of being communist rebels, Sen. Joker Arroyo said yesterday.

Arroyo, for the first time, directly chastised President Aquino for pressing the grant of amnesty to rebel soldiers yet denying the same to the Morong 43, the group of health workers accused of being members of the New People’s Army (NPA).

The lawmaker warned Malacañang of the possibility of being accused of double standard in this particular issue.

The senator questioned Aquino’s posturing, intervening in the case of the rebel soldiers, due to be meted with a possible sentence while refusing to lift a finger on the case of the alleged leftists.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, meanwhile, maintained on radio there’s no more need for the rebel soldiers to admit guilt for apologize, before they are granted amnesty..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20101129hed5.html

6 Pinoys killed in bus crash in Japan 11/29/2010

6 Pinoys killed in bus crash in Japan

11/29/2010
Six Filipino factory workers — three men and three women — were killed and 22 others were injured in a road accident yesterday in western Japan, the Department of Foreign Affairs said.

The Filipinos died when their bus collided with a trailer truck at an intersection in Kameyama, Mie prefecture while on their way to a factory manufacturing flat-screen televisions for Japanese electronics firm Sharp.
Twenty other Filipino workers, including one who had obtained Japanese nationality, and two Japanese — the drivers of the bus and the trailer truck — were injured, reports said.

Philippine Consul General Maria Lourdes Ramiro-Lopez said five of the Filipinos died immediately, while the other died on the way to the hospital.

Reports said the fatalities are in their 20s and 30s.

Lopez said 10 of the 20 injured Filipinos are in serious condition..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20101129hed6.html

Binay to suspend insurance coverage for OFWs By Jerrylyn Barcelo 11/29/2010

Binay to suspend insurance coverage for OFWs

By Jerrylyn Barcelo 11/29/2010

Vice President and presidential adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers’ (OFWs) Concerns Jejomar Binay urged the joint congressional oversight committee to suspend the implementation of the law requiring insurance coverage for agency-hired migrant workers.

Binay said he is pushing the review of Republic Act 10022 or the amended Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act in light of the issues raised concerning the compulsory insurance for OFWs.

“Considering the complaints, I believe it is necessary to re-evaluate RA 10022. That is why I’m calling on the labor committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives overseas workers affairs committees to defer the implementation of the law pending its review,” Binay said.

In a meeting with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) Governing Board, representatives from the joint congressional oversight committee assured that they will convene to look into the issues pertaining to the RA 10022..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/nation/20101129nat1.html

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