Angel
Tugado's syndicated column on current and recent news.
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WHAT
KIND OF PERSON TARGETS CHRISTMASTIME TO ROB FILIPINO
CHILDREN OF THEIR HAPPINESS? According
to the Philippine National Police, crime always increases
during the Christmas season. This is mainly petty crime,
but it can be significantly traumatic and damaging to
victims. If criminals are cruel enough to target ordinary
families in the season of goodwill, the affect on children
especially but also on parents is multiplied many times
over. Youth gangs causing trouble during Simbang Gabi,
pickpockets and bag snatchers in stores and malls, thievery
in churches, mugging and other thefts with violence
in city streets, burglary of family homes when the families
are Christmas shopping - all these and more are typical
of seasonal crime that turns Christmas into tragedy
for so many ordinary Filipinos. Our legacy from corruption
and robbery of the people on a grand scale at the top
of the political hierarchy inevitably contaminates the
whole of Philippine society, and we all need to support
President Aquino's war against political corruption.
In the meantime we must also be alert to the everyday
activities of petty criminals who seek to emulate it.
It cannot
be overemphasized that corruption is a disease, an evil,
and a sin. It's highly contagious and destructive. It
needs to be totally eradicated. Once our society is freed from strangulation and robbery by corrupt politicians and public officials at every level, there will be no limit to what every Filipino as a unique individual and the Philippines as a unique nation can achieve.
We have the creativity, the intelligence, the moral and physical strength, and the work ethic to succeed in any field of human life. This has been proved over and again by our breakthrough Filipino pioneers, and the time has come for us all to follow their lead. All it takes now is the will to win against all the odds that corrupt politicians and officials have piled up to stop us.
To borrow and expand the campaign slogan of Dr. Martin Luther King many years ago: "We shall overcome, and we are already doing it NOW!"
The corrupt are on the run like scared dogs with their tails between their legs. We will catch them all, and we will bring every single one of them to justice.
THERE'S A NEW LOVE IN MY LIFE - OR IN MY WIFE'S LIFE, TO BE MORE EXACT, BUT I CAN'T KEEP MY HANDS OFF IT EITHER! It's the cutting edge Asus N43SL Special Edition laptop produced in association with Taiwan's award winning singer-composer-actor-director Jay Chou. For readers outside of Asia or in parts of Asia not yet familiar with Jay Chou, both his parents are teachers, but his talents are natural. In other words they are not the result of advanced formal education in creative arts or anything else. His style is often a mixture of Asian and Western, making his music totally unique, and the culture shining through all of his creative work is fundamentally Chinese, yet its appeal expands on Eastern tastes to attract millions of fans in Europe and the USA. The laptop he designed for Asus - as well as a distinctive case that makes it look more like a work of art and a soft keyboard that makes it feel more like a musical instrument - has an amazing specification under the hood, with all the performance to match.
Just take a quick look at this PDF - it will make your mouth water. And for a lot more info visit the Asus website.
Jay Chou has sold more than 30 million albums
and has won the World Music Award 4 times.
RING ALL THE CHURCH BELLS IN THE PHILIPPINES TO CELEBRATE EVERY VICTORY THAT GOD WINS FOR US AGAINST OUR PUBLIC ENEMY #1 -- THE GODLESS GREED OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION!!! What could be worse than a so-called president who got there by election rigging, who during her fraudulent term of office was totally and remorselessly corrupt, who brought our nation the deplorable worldwide ill-repute of being one of the most corrupt countries in the world, who set us back decades in regard to progress with improving our infrastructure and eliminating the abomination of mass poverty, and who gave every level of government the role model of corruption to be emulated with her official approval? The contaminations and infections of Gloria Arroyo's corruptions tainted all our lives.
It is a great victory for good over evil that she has been charged, was arrested before escaping, and must now face justice in court.
THREE CHEERS FOR PRESIDENT AQUINO!!! He promised to take action against political corruption and he is doing just that. Gloria Arroyo is universally recognized as far the most corrupt president our country has ever had the misfortune to endure, except for Ferdinand Marcos. We must not be fooled by any mysterious fake disease that her cronies pretend has arrived by coincidence out of nowhere just in time to keep her out of court. Did any of the innocent people massacred by the Ampatuan army financed by Arroyo's administration get any sympathy from her? No! She shrugged off their deaths as a means to an end. An end to benefit herself.
She deserves no sympathy from the Philippine people, and the court must not let her off lightly.
DON'T ALLOW HER TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY! Gloria Arroyo is playing out a pathetic charade to attract sympathy and give cronies she personally appointed to the Supreme Court a plausible basis for defying our democratically elected President Aquino's directive to the Bureau of Immigration to prevent the Arroyos from leaving. What a fraud!
Why did she never wear these fashion accessories when she was in office? Why did her so-called rare disease suddenly manifest itself after revelations about her corruption began to appear in the media? Why is she is now in such a panic to leave the country just as she is about to be charged and brought to justice? What a fraud!
Leaks have already been spreading that the Arroyos are planning a coup d'etat from abroad enabling Gloria to return as a Dictator -- a female Marcos, and this is why she methodically placed so many cronies in positions of power before leaving office. Proceeds of the Arroyos' corruptions have certainly given them funds for it.
AS THE SAYING GOES: "THE TRUTH WILL OUT". What better describes the deep dark hole that
Gloria Arroyo has dug herself into? I deliberately do not refer to her
as a former president because this would falsely imply that she
recognized, understood, and carried out the constitutional duties and
responsibilities of a President to the nation and its people. The truth
is, she took the oath and immediately ignored it.
This is a
clear example of the legacy handed down by Dictator Ferdinand Marcos,
who believed that once elected he could do anything he wanted merely
for his own personal gain, with total disregard of his nation and
people, or even of basic human rights.
Revelations
of the Arroyo administration's corruptions go on and on, complete with
witnesses and documentary evidence. Sadly it doesn't stop there but
filters down through senate, congress, provincial and municipal
governments, barangay and SK officials. Her funding of the 2000-strong Ampatuan
private army in Mindanao amply demonstated this point, as did her appointment before leaving office in 2010 of so many cronies to positions of power, including justices placed in the Supreme Court to protect her from later prosecutions and convictions on charges of graft and corruption.
And now she claims to have
a rare bone disease and must leave the country to get medical
treatment. Come on! How often have we heard that one before?
It's a common cliche that corrupt politicians everywhere in
the world suddenly discover they have a rare virus or a rare
disease just in time to prevent their appearance in court and
enable them to escape into exile, knowing that their secret
Swiss bank accounts are overflowing with ill-gotten gains, and
that nearby corrupt Swiss doctors can be bought at any time to corroborate their
false claims. It is not a coincidence that Switzerland, the home of secret bank accounts, is also the home of secretive private clinics.
Rightly the government has rejected Gloria Arroyo's request for a waiver of her present travel ban. Despite the well-bribed bleatings of her Supreme Court cronies, the high standards of Philippine medical care attract thousands of foreigners to come here for treatment. Gloria Arroyo must not be allowed to evade justice. She must face trial. We have had more than enough of so-called unalterable Philippine corruption. I believe that People Power can and will not only alter it but eradicate it.
All it needs is vision and determination. It's so easy to see for ourselves
how much better our lives would be with honest transparent governance
at every level from national to local. The solution to corruption is in our own hands, not anyone else's. Our individual vote is the nation's most powerful weapon. That's why the Arroyos nationally, and in Sta. Rosa Laguna the despicable Manuel Manoy Alipon gang, have falsified past elections by a combination of diverse methods including bribery of officials, buying some voters, threatening other voters, and stealing the ballot boxes that they knew contained the majorities of votes for their opponents.
We need to
be constantly alert and aware. We need to know the truth about crooked
candidates in order to trash their deceitful lies and propaganda,
whether on printed flyers and tarpaulins or on Facebook or in newspaper and TV advertisements, or rammed down voters' throats in house to house election campaigns.
Who did you vote for last time? What is your situation right now? Has it improved or got worse? Did your preferred candidate fulfill her or his election promises? If not, why not? And would another candidate have done better? Remember that no individual candidate can ever control every conceivable circumstance -- and that the losers are still doing their damnedest to sabotage in the background, sometimes funded by ill-gotten gains that they previously stole from public coffers. What you really need to be absolutely 110 percent sure of is that your candidate is honest, responsible and doing her or his utmost best to carry out transparently the sworn duties of public office.
A RECENT SURVEY INDICATES THAT MANY PEOPLE STILL THINK PHILIPPINE CORRUPTION CAN NEVER BE ELIMINATED BECAUSE ALREADY IT'S TOO ENTRENCHED
IN OUR CULTURE. These doubts are understandable, because it's true
that corruption is entrenched, but what we all need to realize is that
ordinary people like us can change this situation ourselves if we
really want to.
Most of us
have lived at least part of our lives in a kind of apathy and lethargy
in the face of all the endless corruptions from public officials. In
the past we've all felt powerless to do anything about it and have just
accepted that it's unchangeably "the Philippine way".
But isn't
it time we questioned and updated our negative national mindset? Isn't
this mindset itself a big part of the corruption problem? It's what
keeps corruption going. Why not start by simply telling ourselves that
corruption can be eliminated and at last we now have the opportunity to
see it through?
Nothing is
impossible. Especially in the Philippines. Look at all the
extraordinary successes that individual Filipinos have achieved both
here and in the wider world against odds that most people thought were
impossible. There are so many for us to be inspired by and positive
about. Let's change ourselves first by giving ourselves a fresh new
mindset. Why should we allow past corruption to control our minds and
brainwash us? Wiping the slate clean is not impossible.
Each
of us has the ability to create a fresh new mindset, and together we
have the ability to create a fresh new society in a fresh new culture.
All it takes is to start with one simple thought: "nothing is
impossible". Empowered by government-declared all-out war against
corruption, elimination will succeed.
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND. This
popular saying, however trite and inconsequential its
description by critics, nevertheless returns perennially
to haunt everyone that it applies to.
Here in Santa Rosa
it includes the deposed criminal gangster vice mayor
Manuel Manoy Alipon whose bottomless corruptions backfired
on him to energize the massive Voter
Power that ousted him permanently from City Hall.
On a national level
it includes the ruthless Marcos clan and more recently
the nefarious Arroyo clan for innumerable corruptions
on a bigger scale. Without the popular efforts of People
Power these two criminal clans would both still
be dictating how others must obey the law whilst they
continually broke the law themselves for their own benefit
and profit.
The worst aspect
of all this is that it's so universal. Corruption is
not a Philippine phenomenon. Our corrupt politicians
and corporations are merely copying what's going on
in the rest of the world. This never makes it right,
but in their eyes it justifies their lack of ethics
and morals because they've been conditioned to believe
this is what will make them competitive and that competition
is what it's all about.
But is this true?
I for one don't believe that it is. I believe that their
ruthless cut-throat competitiveness is merely greed,
and that their greed is destroying our lives and our
planet.
I don't blame our
people individually. Our thoughts and actions have been
conditioned by our education and training. I blame government
institutions that created this false situation and continue
to sustain it despite all the many years' irrefutable
evidence of its abject failure.
Consider
what's happening right now in the USA and Europe. Their
greed-based economies are in shambles. Their greed-based
banking systems are collapsing. Their greed-based societies
are falling apart. So in God's Holy Name why are we
in the Philippines attempting to copy them? Are we insane?
China is making mistakes, but at least China is attempting
to modify the extremes of communism and capitalism into
a new economic blend that might finally lead to harmony
and prosperity for all. No other country is trying to
find a new solution that might work.
P-NOY IS RIGHT TO REJECT CALLS FOR ALL-OUT WAR VS MILF IN MINDANAO, and
before you throw up your hands with exasperation, just take a little
time to browse the internet on this subject and try to imagine what
your feelings would be if you were living in Maguindanao instead of
Metro Manila.
These
people have been oppressed and kept in abject poverty for decades by
corrupt national, provincial, municipal and barangay administrations.
Whatever advances have been enjoyed elsewhere in the Philippines,
theirs is still our nation's poorest region.
How would
you feel if you could not find work and you could not feed or clothe or
shelter or educate your children? How would you feel if your kids got
sick and you had no money to pay for doctors' fees or for life-saving
medications?
How would
you feel if the community you were born into and grew up in was ravaged
by your local politicians who took under-the-table payments from
commercial and industrial interests, with callous disregard of the
people living there?
I do not
believe this is a question of conflicting religions, as many people
think. It's a basic matter of life and death. Decades of unceasing
corruption, suppression and oppression have understandably made these
people desperate, and the situation has been exploited by criminal
gangsters posing as Muslim rebel leaders. The rebel leaders are not
true Muslims. They are criminal gangsters taking advantage of a
downtrodden people. They are as corrupt as the criminal politicians who
have been taking advantage of the same people for decades. It is the
corrupt gangsters and the corrupt politicians who are responsible for
killing our soldiers in Mindanao.
Just
imagine what it would take for you to sacrifice your own life as a
protest against the government. This vulnerable degree of desperation
would also make you open to exploitation by ruthlessly corrupt
gangsters and politicians who promise to improve the situation while
secretly making it worse.
All-out war
against the MILF would fail because it would target the wrong enemy.
What we really need is an all-out war against corruption, not only in
Mindanao but everywhere in the Philippines. Corruption is the true
public enemy no. 1 of the entire Philippine nation. We need stringent
new laws against corruption, with stringent new punishments, and we
need them fast.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE, FERDINAND MARCOS JR. WISHES TO OVERTHROW THE AQUINO
ADMINISTRATION. His exaggerated stories of plots and coup d'etat plans are devious ways of
describing his own desires, and it is rumored that he is secretly
financing troublemakers to stir up violence and attract media
attention. He should be closely watched. If money stolen from the
Philippine people by the late dictator Marcos is now being used to fund
criminal elements in a series of attempts to destabilize our
democratically elected government, it is a very serious matter indeed.
This
demonstrates the urgency and importance of declaring all-out war
against corruption, which is the real killer behind the deaths of so
many of our soldiers and civilians. The AFP and the PNP need to be
redirected and re-energized with the clearly defined target of
eradicating corruption, the Philippine public enemy #1. Many people are
demanding the death penalty as a just punishment for politicians and
public officials convicted of graft and corruption.
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO RECOVER PUBLIC FUNDS STOLEN IN PAST CORRUPTIONS AND
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO PUNISH CORRUPT DIPLOMATS, POLITICIANS OR OTHER
PUBLIC OFFICIALS FOR THEIR CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE THEY WERE THERE TO REPRESENT. To be more specific, former Ambassador Benjamin
"Kokoy" Romualdez, younger brother of former First Lady and current
Ilocos Norte Representative Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, and his wife face
a case before the Sandiganbayan over their Swiss bank deposits of
US$5.19 million at a time when his required statement of assets and
liabilities claimed they had a total net worth of PHP2,348,495.22.
Their
deposits at UBS-Geneva account no. CO-920.310.0 and Invested Trust
account No. CO-920.310.1 originated from Standard Chartered Bank-Zurich
account no. 7676, which was opened with an initial deposit of US$2
million transferred from the Philippine branch of Standard Chartered.
The
Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) states that
comparison of Benjamin Romualdez' reported net worth with his initial
Swiss bank deposit shows a huge disparity between his lawful income and
the secret Swiss bank accounts which he opened during his incumbency.
President
Aquino has vowed to defend the Philippine Spratly Islands if any
attempt to seize them is made by China, the world's biggest nation. As
if this wasn't enough, we have Filipinos in our own country who seize
our national assets by corruption. PNoy has vowed to defend us against
them too, and we can help him and each other by resisting every
corruption, by voting out every corrupt politician, and by reporting
every corrupt public official.
THE MARCOS FAMILY IS STILL WHINING THAT THE EVIL PHILIPPINE DICTATOR
FERDINAND MARCOS, WHOSE MURDEROUS DISREGARD OF HUMAN RIGHTS WAS
RENOWNED THE WORLD OVER AND WHO TOOK CORRUPTION TO UNPRECEDENTED DEPTHS
BY DIVERTING BILLIONS OF PESOS FROM OUR PUBLIC COFFERS INTO HIS
PERSONAL SECRET SWISS BANK ACCOUNTS, SHOULD BE GIVEN AN OFFICIAL STATE
FUNERAL WITH FULL HONORS AT THE TAXPAYERS' EXPENSE. Take a long hard look at what
the people of other countries do to dictators like Marcos. His wife and
family should be expressing gratitude to the Philippine people for
their restraint and mercy, instead of continuing to lie about him and
making fanatical demands on the Philippine people who were and still
are his victims.
The legacy
of Ferdinand Marcos is not only our failure to recover the billions
that he stole from us. It's also the millions of Philippine lives
destroyed by his ruthless cruelty. It's also the many millions of
Philippine lives ravaged by poverty because his corruption spread
downwards like a disease from Malacanang to the lowest levels of
officialdom, preventing reduction of poverty and increasing the numbers
of poor people in the country. It's also his methodical destruction for
profit of our environment and ecology that will take us decades to
recover from and restore.
What is
their bullshit about the country being united in wanting Marcos to have
a state funeral? In fact it's the opposite. The country is united in
supporting P-Noy's controlled politeness in deciding to decline the
Marcos family's ridiculous demands.
The
longer the Marcos play acting goes on, the more the Philippine people
will wish they had treated him in the same way the Libyans treated
Gadhafi - forcing him to hide in a rat and trash infested drainage
pipe, dragging him out, taking videos of his cowardly pleas on the back
of a pickup truck, beating him with his own boots and his own favorite
handgun, then executing him like an animal in a slaughterhouse. Already
there are campaigns to apply the death penalty to corrupt Philippine
politicians because they cause so much suffering and so many premature
deaths. It could easily be argued that Gadhafi's treatment is how every
evil murderous corrupt dictator like Marcos should be treated. He got
off very lightly, and his family should be thankful. After all, they're
still wallowing in his ill-gotten gains.
WE ARE NOW TOLD THAT MANILA IS THE WORST LOCATION IN ASIA FOR PROPERTY
INVESTMENT. Why? Not because of the property situation itself, but because the Philippines
in general has such a bad image that international investors don't even
rate it. And why does our nation have such a bad image in the world? Do
you really need to ask? It's our appalling record of political
corruption.
Don't blame
me for plugging away on this subject. If you've purchased or leased a
property or are thinking of doing so, you and your wallet and your bank
account and your lifestyle are all directly affected if the value of
your property is steadily declining instead of increasing.
Why should
you or any of us suffer personal financial losses because people
claiming they want to be public servants immediately switch to serving
themselves if they're elected? Is it not long overdue that all
politicians are made transparently accountable by law for every public
peso they spend? This is certainly not the case at present.
Have you
ever seen a poor Barangay Captain or Municipal Mayor or Provincial
Governor or Congressman or Senator? A surprising number of them have
come from poor or middle class backgrounds, and the riches they've
acquired in public service are far in excess of normal public service
salaries and expenses. Where does their disproportionate wealth come
from?
It comes
from you and your wallet and your salary and your bank account and your
lifestyle and your property. It's stolen from taxpayers like you. It's
your money they're lining their pockets with. Work it out for yourself.
If you have
your own business or plan to start one, the situation is worse yet.
Being an entrepreneur is never easy with so many economic factors to
contend with, like inflation for example, that are outside your
control. You need dedication, skill, hard work and determination to
succeed. What you don't need is corrupt politicians and public
officials who handicap and rob you at every turn. These blood-sucking
parasites pretending to be public servants undermine our national
economy and are a menace that threatens every facet of Pinoy society.
Thank God that President Aquino is beginning to take action against
them.
BIR
rightly clamps down on tax evaders, so why not give BIR powers to clamp
down -- at every level from top to bottom -- on every politician and
every public official who in any way misuses the taxes after BIR has
collected them?
PARENTS BEWARE! YOU MAY THINK YOUR CHILD'S ONLINE GAMING IS A WASTE OF
BOTH STUDY TIME AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS, BUT ONCE AGAIN THE GLOBAL
GAMING COMMUNITY HAS PROVED THAT YOU ARE OUT OF TOUCH. Professor Anders Ynnerman received a Ph.D. in
Physics from Gothenburg University. During the early 90s he was doing
research at Oxford University and Vanderbilt University. In 1996 he
started the Swedish National Graduate School in Scientific Computing,
which he directed until 1999. From 1997 to 2002 he directed the Swedish
National Supercomputer Centre and from 2002 to 2006 he directed the
Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC).
Since 1999
he is holding a chair in scientific visualization at Linköping
University and in 2000 he founded the Norrköping Visualization and
Interaction Studio (NVIS). NVIS currently constitutes one of the main
focal points for research and education in computer graphics and
visualization in the Nordic region. Ynnerman is currently heading the
build-up of a large scale center for Visualization in Norrköping.
In a
description of his work, Ynnerman says: "And this is a bit of science
fiction now ... So in this particular situation, it's a scan of a
living person. I have this pen, and I look at the data, and I move the
pen towards the head ... And then I can feel the brain inside ... Now
we're going even further into science fiction ... He's seeing his own
brain."
And
Ynnerman has no doubts about the value of gaming. "This is my
daughter," he says with great fatherly pride. "She's playing a computer
game. She's only two years old, and she's having a blast. So she's
really the driving force behind the development of graphics processing
units. As long as kids are playing computer games, graphics is getting
better and better and better. So please go back home, tell your kids to
play more games, because that's what I need."
INGENUITY
OF GAMERS LED TO MAJOR MEDICAL DISCOVERY THAT DEFEATED THE WORLD'S TOP
SCIENTISTS. In
September 2011 it was no surprise to Ynnerman that online gamers had
deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that some
of the world's top scientists had struggled unsuccessfully to decipher
for a decade. In a a fun-for-purpose video game developed by the
University of Washington, gamers were divided into competing groups to
unfold chains of amino acids, which are the building blocks of
proteins. To scientists' great astonishment, the gamers produced an
accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
It's the
first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific
problem. "We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where
automated methods had failed," said Washington University's Firas
Khatib.
His
next statement was the most perceptive I've ever heard on the subject:
"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly
directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."
TRY TO GET YOUR HEADS ROUND THIS ONE. YOU'D EXPECT SENIOR CAREER DIPLOMATS
FROM MAJOR DEVELOPED COUNTRIES TO BE DIPLOMATIC IF NOTHING ELSE, RIGHT? Yet after the last US Ambassador to the Philippines, Kristie Kenney,
slagged off the most popular and revered Phippine President of all
time, the late Cory Aquino, the United States Foreign Service dumped
another arrogant ignoramus on us.
Harry
Thomas is the replacement Ambassador from Washington. After studying
the Benigno Aquino government's efforts to grow our tourism industry,
with special focus on expanding the eco- and cultural tours which are
our strengths, Thomas slagged off Philippine tourism by stating that it
was based on sex.
How much
less diplomatic can US Ambassadors possibly get? Are they on dope, or
insane? Just compare their performance with that of Australian
Ambassador, Rod Smith, who leads an environmental cleanup drive and
physically helped to clear garbage from the polluted creek at Taguig,
or that of British Ambassador Stephen Lillie who speaks tagalog and
makes videos helping attract European investors and tourists to the
Philippines.
Has Harry
Thomas ever visited Cebu or any of the other places with a large number
of American expatriates? Following approximately 50 years' occupation
of the Philippines, then maintaining its huge US Air Force base at
Clark and huge US Navy base at Subic for a further 50 years, is it
surprising that so many American servicemen met up with Filipinas and
after being posted to the USA came back to visit and marry their
Philippine girlfriends?
I have a
personal friend who did this. He and his Filipina wife lived first in
the States and are now living here, still happily married after 28
years. No doubt Harry Thomas would have described my friend as a sex
tourist, but he revisited the Philippines for love, not sex. This made
him a love tourist, not a sex tourist.
No doubt
Harry Thomas would describe as sex tourists all the men who come here
for scuba diving or swimming with dolphins. What does he call the women
who accompany them and enjoy the same activities? Does he think they
all have sex with the dolphins? He may like to try it himself one day,
but our dolphins prefer the Germans, Australians, French, New
Zealanders, English, Swedes, Canadians, Japanese and Koreans. They're
not so crazy about Americans, due to all the American dynamite fishing
years ago that destroyed so many of our coral reefs and other coastal
ecological systems.
Anyways,
American men have no need to come here for sex. They can get as much
sex as they want in the red light district of Washington DC, where so
many US diplomats get theirs. Rumor has it that in the cocktail circles
of foreign diplomats posted to Manila, there's now a special corner
reserved for US Ambassadors complete with a child's wooden stool and a
dunce's cap.
"EAST IS EAST AND WEST IS WEST, AND NE'ER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET" commented the American writer/philosopher Mark Twain after a brief
visit to British occupied India, which at that time included Pakistan
and Bangladesh, and "THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING" was a wider comment of the popular 60s American
singer/songwriter Bob Dylan long after Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi
independence. Is there any connection between them? Do these quotes
have any significance in a modern world, or are both nothing more than
narrow-minded trite observations expressed during their creators'
limited personal life experiences in the remote past?
An
interesting illustration of what's happening today is the Russian
(Eastern) authorities' attempt to improve the food supplies to their
armed forces that even their poorest citizens consider to be
disgustingly inedible. Meanwhile American (Western) authorities are
shocked and are seeking to restrain the wasteful and extravagant
spending of their -- proven by evidence to be unjust -- Justice
Department, which paid 16 US Dollars for each muffin eaten by its
delegates at an official seminar.
In case you
might think that at least the two authorities are aware of what's going
on and are trying their best to rectify their respective situations,
take a look at two more:
Spain
(West) is famous for its culture of bull fighting which has long been
subject to criticism for cruelty to animals. Spanish authorities are
finally starting to ban their tradition. India (East) on the other hand
regards the cow as sacred and accordingly permits cows to freely create
total havoc in towns and cities, regardless of any damage to people or
property from traffic accidents and injuries directly caused by them.
Indian authorities are taking no action to prevent tragic consequences
to humans of their tradition concerning cows.
Here the
difference between East and West remains. Spain does, albeit belatedly,
respond to the pressure of changing times, whereas India remains
solidly stuck in the mud of outdated customs despite the fact that
gently guiding cows into safe zones would not in any way detract from
their religious sacredness.
East
is West and West is East may not be desirable to anyone anywhere
anyway, but signs are appearing that each can learn to appreciate the
other's identity and value without the slightest detriment to their
own. The same thing, although at a less advanced stage, is definitely
happening between Africa and the more developed continents. However
long it takes and however many past mindsets need updating, this bodes
well for the future of our planet.
THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND in July 2011 described the Philippine outlook as
favorable and praised the Aquino administration for its reforms,
particularly those that will bring faster economic growth and
alleviation of poverty. High marks both for
their observation and for our performance.
But in
September 2011 the IMF criticized China's economy because it's
controlled by government. It seems to me that the IMF in this case is
simply wallowing in Capitalist economy conventional wisdom, which is
falling apart in the West. I can't claim to be an economist with a
capital "E", but I have eyes, and without asking any experts I can see
for myself in the present world financial crisis that the USA and
Europe have got things terribly wrong.
China is
thinking outside the box. It's clearing a new path that no country has
ever trod before. It's combining Capitalism with Communism in a unique
way that the USA and the USSR in their long and futile "Cold War" never
ever considered. Zero marks for IMF's lack of
perception and high marks for China's performance.
BANKS ACT VERY HIGH AND MIGHTY WHEN
ANYONE APPLIES FOR A LOAN. They talk to individuals, corporations and even
governments as if they (bankers) are the only people on the planet who
know how to handle money. They demand household income and expenditure
plans, business income and expenditure plans, government income and
expenditure plans. They demand collateral and guarantors. They want to
control your life down to the last peso, as if they are appointed by
God as the ultimate arbiters of how money should be managed.
How then
can "rogue traders" operating within these banks' own internal
management and accounting systems lose billions of dollars of clients'
money?
Sari-sari
store owners know at the end of the day if they're 20 pesos short. If
it was 200 pesos, they'd be tearing their hair out. If it was 2000
pesos they'd be in deep shock and rushed to hospital. Yet right under
the noses of his bosses at UBS, one of the biggest Swiss banks, a
"rogue trader" has apparently lost not 2000 pesos, not 200,000 pesos,
not 2,000,000 pesos, not 2,000,000,000, but 2 billion United States
Dollars (more than 80 billion pesos)!
Are we to
believe that nobody anywhere in UBS management knew what was happening?
Are we to believe that nothing anywhere in the giant UBS computerized
accountancy control systems picked up the slightest hint of anything
going amiss?
I
DO NOT BELIEVE IT. I don’t believe there is such a thing as "rogue
trading". I believe that "rogue traders" are the fall guys who take the
rap for their managers who condone and approve every trade, and I
believe that computerized accounting control systems record every
detail of every trade and issue warnings in programmed reports that
managements knowingly and deliberately override.
THE UBS DEBACLE IS NOT THE FIRST GLOBAL FRAUD OF SUCH MAGNITUDE BY THE SWISS, WHOSE SQUEAKY CLEAN IMAGE
IS TOTAL HYPOCRISY. Another giant Swiss Bank, Credit Suisse, was
recently reported to be aggressively soliciting business from American
and other countries' tax evaders, as was UBS.
Branches of
Credit Suisse in 13 German cities were raided as part a probe of 1,100
clients and bank staff suspected of hiding funds from German tax
officials after a computer disc from Credit Suisse was purchased with
information on wealthy Germans linked to the official investigation.
The Swiss
conglomerate Nestle, which has multiple operations in the Philippines,
was once notorious for profitably flooding the Third World with baby
format milk that had been banned by Western governments as dangerous to
infants' health.
Sadder yet
than this, the murky past of Swiss immorality goes all the way back to
when its government decided to declare the country officially neutral
and to give government backing and legal protection to the infamous
secret Swiss bank accounts, offered as a safe haven for deposits from
either winners or losers in any war so that Switzerland would profit
from both.
As the
famous saying goes, "the rest is history". These secret Swiss bank
accounts guaranteed and protected by its supposedly neutral government
were in fact open invitations not only to warmongering dictators like
Hitler and followers like his Nazis, but also to criminal gangs like
the Sicilian Mafia and their American cousins, and also to every other
criminal and corrupt politician everywhere in the world -- including a
very large number of corrupt Philippine politicians and public
officials.
Any
criminal could deposit ill-gotten gains in Switzerland with no
questions ever asked about the source. It was an immediate recipe for
success. The government protected Swiss banks made enormous profits
that soon made Switzerland the richest nation per capita in the world.
And the most corrupt from the top down.
The fact
that the Swiss formula for gaining national wealth was based on murder,
robbery, kidnapping, torture, extortion and every conceivable evil and
corruption in other countries did not deter the Swiss for a single
second. On the contrary, they gleefully congratulated and rewarded
themselves.
They
developed a national arrogance and aloofness in the misguided belief
that their crime-based wealth made them superior to people in countries
with higher standards of ethics and morals, even though Switzerland
would have been rapidly crushed and occupied by the Nazis if people of
other countries had not sacrificed their lives to fight for freedom and
defeat Hitler's ruthless attempt to conquer and oppress the world under
his tyrannical dictatorship.
If
you ever buy Swiss cheese, you'll see it has holes in it as if mice and
maggots have got there first. The Swiss response to criticism is the
same. Their feigned declarations of purity and innocence are as full of
holes as their cheese.
THE RECENT LONDON RIOTS caused
quite a stir in the West and hardly a ripple in the Third World. Yet
photos of the rioting and looting clearly show
young people of African and Asian descent actively participating
alongside the white Anglo-Europeans that we would expect to see. When
all the various races are taking part together, this rules out any
possibility of the riots being caused by different races acting against
each other.
There's something going on here that the Third World,
including the Philippines, can learn from. Sifting through the many
theories put forward in the West, some deadly serious and some crazy
beyond a joke, it seems to me that these young people finally reached
the end of their tether and broke out in explosive anger at exactly the
same things that we complain about.
Yes, you've guessed
it, political corruption at every level of government from national to
county (province) and all the way down to city and borough (barangay).
In the UK the culture is different, the style is different, and the cover-ups are
more sophisticated, but political corruption undoubtedly exists just
the same.
It would be a big
mistake to imagine that similar rioting could never happen here. It's happening
in Libya, Syria, Thailand, parts of India and China, and in other
places with totally different cultures and circumstances. What they
have in common is grievances causing ordinary people to riot against
their governments. Rioting in the East tends to be directly targeted
against specific leaders or specific issues. In London it was more like
a wildly destructive expression of frustration, helplessness and
finally anger at what several decades of different governments have
successively done to the people and society.
Not every grievance
that people have is due to corruption; nothing is ever that simple. But
the majority of them are. And even normally peaceful, law-abiding,
God-fearing Filipinos could reach the end of their tether and break out
into explosive rioting if political corruption is allowed to continue
destroying our lives, our environment and our nation. Retired Chief
Justice Reynato S. Puno coined the term "social volcano" to describe
this possibilty, and he founded the Moral Force Movement to help
prevent it from ever erupting.
They
don't have natural volcanoes in England, but with global warming they
might in the future. What they do seem to have is a social volcano
erupting right now, just as Mr. Puno foretold might happen here in the
future.
WHAT IS AND WHAT ISN'T ASIA?
As the academic experts disagree with each other, we take a broad view to include as many nations as possible. To check out our dilemma, just take a look at Wikipedia's page on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia
Whatever!
There are two things about Asia that we will always be absolutely sure of:
1) Asia is the future of Planet Earth
and
2) We love it!
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