ANL July-Aug 2013
Issue
E D
I T O
R I A L
“Sona ma gun
2013!” [The “Recital”]
“State Of the Nation
Address”, SONA for short. This pivotal act of the
country’s chief executive is delivered yearly third week of July as enshrined
in the fundamental law of the land; or two months after the equally mandated
national elections. See your president “reporting” to his avowed “boss”—live on
radio and television—the overall situation of the nation in accordance to his
own perception, if not in lieu of some vested interests.
Lest we forget, a SONA won’t
stand without the promises yet again to lighten up the long wait and anxieties
for next year’s barb. SONA after all is a rosary of “I did-I do-I promise!” And,
have they prayed pretty well?
Listen to a virtual
religious recital from the podium of “matuwid
na daan” [“straight path”]. Only the major items for this limited
editorial page.
One. The economy is going great at 7.8% growth
during the first quarter of the year. “Show me the money,” cracks up former
president Erap’s budget and management secretary, UP professor Benjamin Diokno.
The good professor knows
only too well that the money goes up the purses of the country’s billionaire taipans [big Chinese businessmen]; to the landed gentry like the Cojuangco-Aquino
clique; to giant monopolies and foreign-owned transnational corporations [TNCs].
Hardly a morsel trickles down the lap of the jobless and the poor.
And where did the money
came from? It was election time and “grease money” flooded the “market”.
Remittances from overseas Filipino workers flowed in abundantly for Christmas
and the new year.
“SONA
MA GUN 2013!”
[On items P-Noy’s 2013 SONA missed—wittingly or
unwittingly—to divulge in his well-polished and lengthy report are enumerated
below @ Punchline.]
Two. Rather awkward for a leader to be so shallow,
Aquino dismisses the likes of solar and wind as alternative sources of power
supply. He reasons out that a cloudy period does not fit well for solar cells
while a no-windy day is no good for wind power mills. The president is simply innocent
of the fact that the Philippines is endowed with sunlight and wind most times
of the year. He proves to be an “indoor man” even as he offered no other clean,
safe and potent alternatives.
Three. Clearly in haste, P-Noy signed the “Wealth
Sharing Annex” of the Bangsamoro Framework Agreement few days prior to July 22 obviously
to spice up his SONA report. This was done with nary a critical third party
review-consultation on the matter prompting various sectors to dub the 75-25 percentage
sharing as a “sell-out” favouring heavily the Muslim rebel faction, Moro
Islamic Liberation Front. This is not even a 70-30, or 60-40 modification from
the original 50-50 sharing demand by government. Why the capitulation? Only a narrow,
moronic vested interest knows where the booboo lies.
Four. Mr. Aquino castigated in his SONA three
government bureaus under him for ineptness yet he was not able to clean up
these agencies in over three years as chief executive. No less than Bureau of
Customs chief Ruffy Biazon and his deputy Danilo Lim admit that politicians and
their wards at said agency are putting the bureau into a bad light and yet the
palace is obviously mum on these politician-godfathers. Shade of political
patronage and corruption?
Five. P-Noy must be telling a lie when he stated that Hacienda Luisita is now
being distributed to qualified tenant farmers when in fact the so-called “land
distribution” was soon stalled a day after it started when the farmers learned
that they were signing a fraudulent document
stipulating payments for the land that is supposed to be given back to them for
free. A tricky way employed by the recalcitrant hacienda owners to circumvent
the orders of the highest court, even using police and military force to coerce
the farmers into accepting a farcical paper.
Six. The Philippine Medical Association [PMA] is wondering
where did Aquino got his SONA data on the expansion of Philhealth coverage and
its benefit package.
Seven. The president must be outdated re:
“intercropping” technology that he sounds so
aghast at “hitting it first” for the coconut farmers as a means to
augment their income. Said technology is over half a century in use already but
it hardly makes a dent on the life of the Filipino farmers simply because the
incentives and built-in support mechanisms were never there. Most of them are
tenant-tillers and the fruits of their toil go mostly to the absentee landlords
and usurers.
Moreover, the costs of farm implements and inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides are prohibitively high while
the prices of their produce are exceedingly low courtesy of rapacious middlemen.
Aside from all these, farmers should be
trained to harness such farming technologies and provided market support by
government.
Eight. Aquino’s
SONA puts accolades to its “Conditional Cash Transfer” [CCT] program as a major arm to eradicate poverty. A rehash of
the former Arroyo regime’s “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino” program, CCT provides
funds ranging from PhP 300 to PhP 500 to qualified poor households with a
maximum of three children up to age 14, or a total of PhP 1,400 per month to at
least tide these children up past elementary grade.
Having had a share of
“likes” and “dislikes”, the CCT’s mechanism and huge budget amounting to PhP 44
billion for the current year is seen as wide open to abuse and corruption aside
from the uncertainties on its “dole-out” concept—that is—if it can effectively bail
out the beneficiary families from poverty in due time.
Realizing perhaps that
funding the education of poor kids through elementary is merely enhancing literacy at best, the government’s
2014 budget is set to expand the CCT’s assistance to poor high school-bound children
15 to 18 years of age aimed at qualifying
them for gainful employment with this higher level of learning. Still, critics
say that high school graduates or, for that matter, even college graduates can
hardly look for jobs in their own country.
Moreover, the budget woe
is tremendous for the CCT. The PhP 44 billion 2013 budget was raised to a
whooping PhP 62.6 billion for next year. This new budget for a dole-out is so huge that
it dwarfs all three combined allotments for irrigation systems at PhP 21.1
billion; the PhP 12 billion for farm-to-market roads; and the PhP 27 billion
for PDAF [priority development assistance fund, or pork barrel].
Nine. And more. But in sum, most are promises. Others are miscellaneous for a
decor. Rigoberto Tiglao, a Manila Times columnist and former cabinet
official of Gloria Arroyo, castigated P-Noy for being a liar, deceptive and
boastful for reporting some achievement not solely his own; half-done projects
and/or ongoing ones; hardly verifiable items; and even dubious ones. Quite
minimal in the list can be credited as his own even as he recited it all in 105
long minutes to set a record. –editorial board, anl
N E W S L I N E
Philex Mines
contaminates Agno River, San Roque Dam
Asingan, Pangasinan. - “Most likely, mining destructs!” Almost by instinct, this
is how the late anti-mining activist Maita Gomez reacts whenever confronted
with the issue on mining in the Philippines until her
passing late last year. “The perils are a million times greater than whatever
profit the country is squeezing from it,” she hastens to add—referring to the
tiny 2-5% share the government is getting from the huge profits of mining
companies operating on Philippine soil and waters.
Exactly a year ago this
August 2013, the worst and biggest mine tailings spill the country ever had
occurred in Itogon town, Benguet province right at the Padcal mining site of
the Philex Mining Corporation owned by businessman Manny V. Pangilinan.
Alarming in magnitude,
the disaster was a series of five incidents that started August 1 and end up September
13 spilling more than 26 million metric
tons of mine tailings and sediments into Itogon’s 2.5-kilometer Balog creek,
down to the 30-kilometer upper Agno river and into the huge San Roque dam down
south in Pangasinan province. The lower Agno river basin—slicing the mango-shape
province from San Manuel town in the east—catches the polluted dam water that finally flows out
into Lingayen Gulf at the west end
BALOG RIVER HEAVILY CONTAMINATED WITH
MINE TAILINGS
of Pangasinan. [To be continued: Other
details on the what’s and how’s on this tragic incident including the extent of
damages for Benguet and Pangasinan provinces shall be tackled on the ANL’s
Sep-Oct Issue, coming next]. –engr. joe
sevilla, asingan correspondent, anl
--o0o--
Most mining firms
have no environmental work program — Chief Justice Sereno
[Manila]. - Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno
on Tuesday slammed the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)
for failing to ensure that mining firms in the Philippines have measures to
protect the environment from their mining activities.
Sereno, reading from a list submitted by the DENR to the high court, revealed
that most of the 350 registered mining companies in the country apparently do
not have or have not indicated any "environmental work program" (EWP)
in their mining concessions with the government.
Sereno added that for the small number of mining firms that have EWPs, the
budgets allotted for them have had "minuscule" discussion.
For instance, Sereno cited the Nationwide Development Corporation (Nadecor),
which only has a budget of P765,000 for environmental protection.
Celestial Nickel, meanwhile, only has a P20,000 environmental protection budget
for the 2,800 hectares of land it is mining.
The chief justice slammed the DENR for being "an agency which is not even
able to share to the court how much is being spent to protect the
environment."
Chief
Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. Photo by INQUIRER.net’s Noy Morcoso lll
"Data submitted
to us [so far] does not give this court comfort that the posterity of the
country is being taken care of [sufficiently]," Sereno told Assistant
Solicitor General Magtanggol Castro, who is representing the government in the
case.
The oral arguments stemmed from separate petitions filed by former Bayan Muna
Rep. Teddy Casiño and Akbayan Rep. Risa Baraquel-Hontiveros in March 2008,
contesting Sections 80 and Section 81 of the law on the government's share in
mining operations.
Making things worse during Tuesday's oral arguments, Sereno found out that
Castro has not gone over the data from the DENR.
"You had gone here very strongly defending what has been happening and you
haven't looked at data of the DENR? How can we say you are credible," Sereno
asked.
"If this is the kind of data coming to this court, [then] we have no basis
to believe you," she added. "This has been disastrous for you because
you are not looking at the facts and you want us to turn a blind eye."
She said there was a need to review what has happened to the mining industry
since the high court in 2004 ruled that the Mining Act of 1995 was
constitutional (La Bugal et al vs. Ramos).
"You convince this court to restrain itself but we don’t have anything to
hold on to," Sereno said.
"Assumptions of La Bugal are out the window. They don't hold," she
said.
Castro insisted there was no "viable reason to revisit" the La Bugal
decision.
Upon questioning from Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, Castro expressed fears
that mining companies might pull out if the high court strikes Section 80 and
81 as unconstitutional.
Associate Justice Roberto Abad emphasized that the high court was not concerned
with economics but with the constitutionality of laws.
"The Constitution did not define equitable share. Congress has passed a
law to implement it, but it has not fixed a permanent ratio of mining," he
said.
Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-De Castro told Castro to include in the
memorandum that his camp should later submit to the SC ways on how the
government could monitor compliance of the mining firms with the mining law
requirements.
--o0o—
“Horrendous August”
Typhoons
with accompanying southwest monsoon rains—or “habagat”—were most punishing this
August 2013 as was the case in the past two years. Four typhoons breached
through the country during the month alone with cyclones “Labuyo” and “Maring” as
major shockers costing billions of pesos in damages to crops, properties and
over a dozen fatalities.
A series
of five bombings rocked Mindanao during the period with two major incidents
claiming 16 lives; eight in the July 26 Cagayan De Oro City blast and another eight
in the August 6 Cotabato City explosion. Sixty people were
wounded in these attacks. Three more minor bombings occurred after Cotabato
with no death or casualty reported.
Two major disasters occurred at
sea during the month; the August 9 oil spill in Rosario, Cavite and the August 16
passenger ship-and-tanker collision off port of Cebu with 111 dead bodies so
far recovered as of this writing. A minor oil spill from the tanker was
likewise observed. The Rosario oil spill was so extensive that it affected
three more nearby towns and portion of Manila Bay on the north.
The month
was capped by an equally explosive bang of people’s anger on the lingering
graft and corrupt practices of elected government officials and their salacious
greed for people’s money notoriously known as “pork barrel”. A “Million-People
March” was held on National Heroes Day, August 26, with over a hundred thousand
marchers converging at Luneta until 3pm denouncing shenanigans in government.
It was a
horrendous August with equally horrible manmade and natural tragedies gripping
the country at a time of turmoil in the socio-economic and political fields. It
is even more disastrous to think that each time the country tries to rise up
with the likes of EDSA 1, and so forth and so on, we fail to learn as we seem
to be forgetful and overly forgiving even to the wicked in sacred robes. –wena agaton-balino . lay-out/photo artist, anl
P U N C
H L I N E
“The people’s
‘sona’ 2013” [The “Hidden Icons”]
At the tail-end of President
Noynoy Aquino’s fourth SONA speech we heard the melodramatic lines: “SONA po
ninyo ito,” [“This is your own SONA”] sort
of dedicating his lengthy barb to the listening public. Then the finale for an
icing: “At talagang napakasarap maging Filipino sa panahong ito!” [“Feels great
to be a Filipino at this point in time!”] stressed he.
From the looks of it,
Aquino’s SONA is obviously tailored to lift his sagging leadership image and not
exactly to present the objective condition of the country along people’s
expectation and wellbeing on the ground and not on the drawing board.
Consider what the Asingan NewsLine refers to as “hidden icons”, or the real major issues skipped by P-Noy in his boring
SONA.
“Quo vadis OFW’s?” Aquino’s
SONA took no token glance at the embattled overseas Filipino workers especially
those in war-torn Middle East where a “sex-for-flight” syndicate thrives in our
very own embassies out there devouring on hapless Pilipino women workers.
No mention was made on an old and vital bill—the Freedom of Information
Bill—hoped to deter to a great extent the pestering
graft and corruption that is eroding not only the nation’s values and morality
of elected leaders but the country’s economy and competitiveness as well.
How’s the infamous Maguindanao
massacre? No one heard it. P-Noy’s camp seems too remote to remember; much less dare to pursue
it more vigorously. It’s a lapse like leaving behind the bungled Luneta hostage
taking that happened barely two months into Aquino’s assuming the presidency. And yes,
this hostage booboo is yet to be settled conclusively three years after
Aquino’s rule. Sheer incompetence of the nincompoops!
How about the debt
standing of the country? P-Noy’s SONA is won’t to delve on accounting the
country’s debts as he himself goes borrowing more bucks and bury us deeper to
indebtedness. Government’s total foreign and domestic debts hit PhP5.325
trillion [US$ 129.2 billion] as of end February 2013. Said amount is 8.4
percent higher than the PhP4.913 trillion [US$ 119.2 billion] at same period in
2012 due to double-digit rise in domestic debts. [philstar.com/18apr’13] This despite the boisterous claim of P-Noy’s economic
managers that the economy is growing robustly.
Not a news from P-Noy’s
SONA on the country’s environmental situation particularly on issues of illegal
logging; on the NGP [national greening program]; and the very vital issues on
climate change and alternative source(s) of energy supply. None, whatsoever.
Seems busy cooking up spices for the boiling pork barrel scam that eventually erupted
towards the end of August.
No updates either on the
row between the Philippines and China re: occupation by China of the Philippine-claimed
Panatag and Ayungin shoals. Neither a bit of progress on a murder-shooting spat
with Taiwan re: shooting by a Philippine coastguard personnel of a Taiwanese
fisherman north of Batanes in July.
President Aquino failed
not to scare our pockets when he warned us in his SONA of impeding increases in
MRT fares as well as hikes in both power and water supply rates. And yes, what
is this we heard of a presidential sister and brod-in-law who allegedly dipped
their fingers in an MRT supply deal with a Zech company Inekon for a
multi-million dollar “commission”? Well, the talk seems to have died a natural
death along the corridors of power.
And more to make the list
long. But at this point, the prime occupant at the snake pit called Malacanang has
a lots ‘a nonsense explaining to his avowed “boss”. That is, if skipping such
major issues is pure intent at hiding something in somebody’s skirt. –ticong diaz, manila correspondent, anl
F E A
T U R E
“Inclusive
growth”: Is it attainable under the
“system”?
By: RUBEN M. BALINO . Editor, ANL
Of late, the phrase “inclusive
growth” has been a by-word among technocrats in
IMF-World Bank client states like the Philippines. It’s the latest of
highfalutin terms coined by these foreign usurer-banks to impress upon debtor
nations on their monopoly not only of cash but of technology as well. Reminds
us of earlier terminologies such as “paradigm shift” that is more of an abstract for the ordinary
stomach.
Digging deep into Wikipedia’s
pages, this authoritative online encyclopedia says, and we quote: “Inclusive growth basically means a broad-based growth, a shared growth, and a pro-poor growth. Aimed at arresting the rapid growth of
poverty in a country, inclusive growth involves people in the growth process.
Inclusive growth by its very definition implies an equitable allocation of resources with benefits accruing to every section of
society.
But the allocation of
resources must be focused on the intended short-term and long-term benefits of
the society such as availability of consumer goods, people’s access to employment, good standard of
living, etc.. Inclusive growth sets a direct relationship between macro and micro determinants of the economy and its
growth.
The micro dimension
includes the structural
transformation of the society and macro dimension includes the
country’s gross
national product [GNP] and gross domestic
product [GDP].
To maintain rapid and
sustainable growth is some time very difficult because resources vaporize during
the allocation
and may give rise to negative externality such as rise in corruption which is a problem in
developing
nations. But however it had created an environment of equality in
opportunity in all dimension of livelihood such as employment creation, market,
consumption, production, and has created a platform for people who are poor to
access good standard of living.
If we focus on the
inequality between poor and rich household in a country we can reach to an
optimal solution so that we can minimize the difference.”
Wikipedia further
explains: “Inclusive growth has created a platform to create market, or rather
inclusive marketing.
This is because there is a huge competition in regular market, or rather a
saturation point has been reached where no further growth can be achieved. But
there is a huge consumer base in the rural market that remains unexplored.
Corporate in India shows
interest to explore this consumer base by their corporate social responsibility [CSR] projects. It is a new business strategy
emerging in India. It offers economic value to goods and services produced in
the rural area.
ITC’s e-Choupal is the
best example re: inclusive marketing. This business model offers farmers better price for their produce
while providing technological and financial assistance to increase their
productivity. Once the business model starts the company channelize their
consumer product into the new market.
Is inclusive marketing efficient enough to eradicate poverty? It is the
only way to reduce the difference, or rather minimize the gap.”
But perhaps a missing link or an intervening point wasn’t dealt with more clearly at Wikipedia’s
discourse. Take back the macro-micro determinants to the economy’s
inclusive growth. Macro refers to the
country’s GNP-GDP factors of the economy, on the one hand; whilst micro tackles on the very ticklish issue of structural
transformation of society, on
the other.
Wikipedia has this to say on structural transformation : It
boldly stress the meaning-definition, “large-scale transfer of resources from some sectors to others
in a system, necessitated by fundamental changes in its policies or objectives.” The big-propertied landlord-compradors, taipans
and multi-national corporations never had a bit of pleasure hearing such a
definition that entails partaking their wealth and power to the vast majority
poor.
Much less the rich and the
mighty agree to the very essence, or honest-to-goodness definition of inclusive growth
as the “equitable
allocation of resources with benefits accruing to every section of society “. For them, genuine structural transformation of
society and equitable allocation of resources are socialist doctrines that send
shivers down their spines to their balls.
In conclusion, for a nation
buried perpetually deeper into trillions of both domestic and foreign debt; in a country governed by well-entrenched oligarchs
in cahoots with big foreign monopoly interests, the so-called inclusive growth
floated by such a syndicated elite group
is a mere lip service to an actually fledgling “paper tiger” of an economy. [some emphasis mine –author]
--o0o--
US, the real global terror
A man stands in a sea of rubble in Hiroshima on September 8, 1945
Tue / Aug 6, 2013 / 3:6PM GMT / Press TV
By: Finian Cunningham
Sixty-eight years ago this week, the United States wiped out more than
200,000 people when it dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Tens of thousands more victims were to die over the ensuing years due to slow,
painful deaths from cancers and birth defects.
Yet the US - the only state to have ever used atomic weapons - has never
apologized or made any atonement for this singularly horrific crime.
Officially, the US justifies it as a legitimate attack during war even though
many historical sources show that there was absolutely no military necessity
for the bombings.
Even former president and top military commander Dwight Eisenhower would later
go on record as saying that the A-bomb attacks on Japan in August 1945 were
completely unnecessary.
The unleashing of the atomic infernos on
mostly civilian populations was simply this: an act of supreme terrorism. It
was an act of barbarity callously calculated by the US planners to demonstrate
their country’s demonic power to the rest of the world - and the Soviet Union
in particular. This premeditated rationale makes it an unpardonable crime of
the highest order.
Fast-forward sixty-eight years on, the US government has this week issued a
global terror alert, closing down more than 20 diplomatic sites across the
world and vacating staff from various countries. Following suit are the British
and French governments who have shut their embassies in Yemen on the basis of
an unspecified, secret terror alert issued by Washington.
The rest of the world is thus obliged to believe the word of Washington over
this unverifiable warning.
Of course, it is a propaganda stunt, aimed at renewing the whole fraudulent
‘war on terror’ charade and distracting from recent politically embarrassing
developments, such as the vast scope of illegal surveillance against US
citizens and the rest of the world; or the increasing public awareness of the
collusion between American and Western intelligence and regime-change terrorism
in Syria.
This is the same American political establishment that launched wars on
Afghanistan and Iraq on the back of spurious and outright mendacious claims
over the alleged 9/11 terror attacks and weapons of mass destruction.
This is the same government, along with Britain and France, that secretly
claims the Syrian armed forces of President Bashar al-Assad used chemical
weapons - when the hard evidence is that it is actually the US-backed foreign
mercenaries who have launched these weapons to kill civilians.
This week, the US military killed more people in Yemen with its assassination
drones under presidential executive orders, just as it has done every week over
the past 10 years as it wages covert and overt criminal wars in several
countries simultaneously.
These US-led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and
Syria have caused as many as two million, mainly civilian, deaths.
And yet ludicrously, the US government is
putting the world on alert against terrorism. Even more ludicrously, the
Western news media are amplifying this warning from the world’s biggest
terrorist state as if it is a benign service to international public safety.
In this awful
anniversary week of Hiroshima and Nagasaki it is rather astounding that the
perpetrator of that genocide is still strutting the globe as if it is God
almighty. On a global terrorist offender list, the United States is the
paramount offender without compare.
In a saner world, the US should be a pariah state, shunned and sanctioned, its
government leaders past and present locked away for life.
Perhaps, the world is finally beginning to wake up from the illusory spell that
it has been kept under till now, to realize that humanity’s security is
threatened not by states such as Iran or North Korea, but by the one whose
president is a Nobel Peace laureate.
The US terror state slaps sanctions on Iran,
North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Zimbabwe and others, causing women and children to
die from medial and other basic deprivations. But what we should realize is
that this is not depraved double standards or hypocrisy. No, such criminality
is simply consistent with the actions of American state terrorism.
Iran does not have any nuclear weapons, yet it is being strangled with illegal
trade sanctions by the world’s number-one nuclear terrorist - the US - and its
rogue partners, Britain, France and Israel.
Today, there are some 17,000 total nuclear weapons in the world. About half of
them are possessed by the US. The other major holder of such weapons is
Russia.
In Russia’s defense, it would most likely not have this atomic stockpile if it
were not for the fact that the US embarked on the Cold War with its act of
genocide at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Stalin knew that that act of terror by US President Truman was aimed at Moscow
by way of demarcating the post-war lines of global hegemony. By 1948, the
Soviet Union had acquired the A-bomb and the world was then well on the road to
mutually assured destruction - in direct consequence of the US original act of
nuclear terrorism on Japan. [On the same year, the US-controlled
United Nations created Israel by supplanting what was then Palestine. --ANL Editorial Board]
Perhaps more frightening than the planet-destroying power of US-held nuclear
weapons is the monstrous mentality of the American ruling class that wields
them, including its mass media propaganda system.
In the same week that the world should be mourning the death of
Hiroshima,
Nagasaki and many other victims of US state terrorism, we are instead expected
to pander to the “terror warnings” of American politicians and their media as
if they should be taken seriously and virtuously.
These American leaders should be in prison, not promulgating to the rest of the
world.
The truly appalling thing is that the world’s number one nuclear-terror state
is still at large.
L I T E
R A R Y
“Thoughts and images…”
“Talkies…talkies…
...lots ‘a nonsense!”
--o0o--
“Reign of impunity…then
and now”. [ U S
OF A … ]
While Syria is
“burning”, Iraq slides to genocide courtesy of the Zonists!
[Middle East]. – The so-called rebellion now raging in Syria
for over two years now is said to be a home-grown ire of its own people aimed
at toppling the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Independent observers,
however, say otherwise. The war in Syria—at the moment tickling like a bomb
that likely will signal World War III—is actually a “Proxy War”, that is: By
and between the government forces of Syria, in the one hand; and the Al
Qaeda-led mercenary-terrorist group financed and armed by Zionist warmongers
and expansionist conduit USA-Israel, on the other hand.
But while waiting US
folly in Syria to explode on its face, lets report back some recent woes the US/NATO-wrecked
Iraqi land and people are suffering right now.
Yet again, the “mass
murder-killing” going on in Iraq is a fallout of the “Dessert Storm” invasion
of this former sovereign country by a US-Briton war machine hungry for oil
rather than serious about ferreting out WMD’s [weapons of mass destruction]
suspected to be at Saddam Hussein’s disposal which, of course, the war crooks
themselves and the United Nations—know there is none in the very beginning.
Reason why the US and
Britain went on anyway with the illegal invasion [and occupation] of Iraq as
the pretender’s pretext for war was kaput and the real agenda is to get Saddam
killed and the oil fields seized. Now, it sounds even more familiar accusing
Syrian President Bashar Assad having an arsenal of deadly chemical weapons [CW’s]
so he must face Saddam’s fate.
The infightings in Iraq
is no less a proxy war, too, say politico-military analysts and observers
familiar with the Middle East as a distinct region. Although largely vacated
now by US and its allied forces, the unending conflict here is being fanned by the
conflict in Syria wherein Shite and Sunni Muslims in contention are virtually
in a political divide wherein at the back of one side is the US-Israeli cabal.
In less than a dozen of
violent incidents for July this year, more than 600 casualties were recorded—one
of the highest in the over ten-year war. Incidents for August slowed down but
still quite a number of deaths were reported. Several attacks by US drones were
included in these violent incidents where mostly civilians, children, women and
the old are the usual victims in lieu of their vulnerabilities.
One analyst surmised: “As
long as there is one single free and independent Arab nation-state remaining,
the US and it’s client state Israel won’t rest on their laurels. Dangerous
premise, indeed. –rudy antonio . vancouver
correspondent, anl.
--o0o--
“OFWs: Forgotten…forsaken?”
--o0o--
“meme na, bunso…”
meme na aming bunso
ang dilim sisirin mo
yumupyop ng mahigpit
nang sikmura’y maidlip
meme na bunsong mahal
ang bukas mo’y nasasakdal
maglakbay-managinip
sa banig na gulanit
paggising ‘wag iiyak
muli tayong sasabak
sa masungit na buhay
na ating ginagaygay
meme na bunsong mahal
mag-ipon ka ng lakas
maglakbay at mangarap
maalwang
hinaharap
bauni’y tibay-dibdib
prinsipyo’y halukipkip
maglayag-pumalaot
sa matarik na gulod
magsikhay at usigin
ang taksil at
salarin
kipkip-pusil at tabak
tutugisin ang kidlat!
rmb . 05agosto’13
E D I T O R I A L B O
A R D
MEMBERS:
Rudy D. Antonio [Canada Correspondent]; Engr. Silver
Casilla & RN Merly Grospe-Mayo [U.S. Correspondents]; Ronilo R.
Corpuz [Vienna Correspondent]; Fely Dumaguing-Malgapo [Milan Correspondent]; Engr. Joe
L. Sevilla [Asingan Correspondent]; Col. Lalin Layos-Pascual; Ross C. Diaz; Engr. Lorie
dG. Estrada; CPA Rod A. Layco; Wena Agaton-Balino [Photo & Lay-out Artist]; Ruben “Bencio” Balino [ Editor-In-Chief].
Bohol’s famous Lobok Church in ruins after the October 15
magnitude 7.2 earthquake 
