| 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)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20120604com5.html
