Imperial laughter
| DIE HARD III |
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| Herman Tiu Laurel |
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
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