When Media is The Tyrant

The sad fate of our generation is that since the 1980s, there had been no more real honest to goodness journalism. Much more so in the Philippines. In this country, in a significant way, journalism died. When Corazon Cojuangco Aquino came to power, journalism further regressed.

With the exception of three or four media organizations in Metro Manila and a few more in the rest of the country, there is no more credible Philippine media. To say in the jocular that those who were merely made to run an errand to buy suka (vinegar) suddenly became journalists, in the 1980s is to trivialize things. However, in many cases, this is true, most particularly in the entertainment industry. Barely graduates of elementary school, hardly finished in high school and unlearned college dropouts and graduates – many from out of place disciplines – invaded the entertainment journalism sector.

Unschooled, uncouth and foul language-spewing individuals pretend to be qualified and competent talent scouts – managers, with side jobs as tabloid “Columnists” (side jobs!) inevitably end up as runners for white slavery and prostitution syndicates and even drug trafficking rings. Imagine what the Profession of the media has become! These vermins have been feeding our young women to vultures and sharks — specially moneyed chinese, politicians, well-paid professionals and businessmen, tourists as well as flashy OFWs with a lot of loose money to throw around.

Young girl victims that cannot comprehend what the fake “movie journalists” cum “talent managers” (in reality white slavers, pimps, sex merchants) are doing to them are either killed when these victims complain too loud or are maimed or disfigured for life.

Unfortunately, in most cases, their deaths or injuries are reported by the decadent media and the corrupt law enforcement as suicide or self-inflicted – specially if the culprits are prominent personalities and will shell out grease money. Take the case of Miss Pepsi Paloma. Long after she was buried, her death was closed as the case of a desperate lass killing herself. In reality, the girl was so full of life and was a dauntlessly, ambitious young lady who could never contemplate suicide.

On the other side of the coin are the seasonal and sector-specific media. They apply for registration of a single proprietorship entity: a partnership or a corporation then print 200 or slightly more copies of a tabloid, weekly bulletin type newspaper, and focus on putting out stories about the police, the bureau of customs officials and offices, immigration issues, internal revenue concerns – targeting what is supposed to be just a micro-scale public.

These fly by night newspapers, most often with an organization of only one person, load up the editorial staff box with a lot of names of writers and pseudo journalists, editors and fake editors, business managers and pretend advertising executives.

All they do is collect money during Thursday or Friday – at the offices where they are welcome and are friendly with. The good thing about many of them is that they are able to buy membership with the National Press Club (NPC) and are able to peddle themselves to everyone and sundry as “legitimate members of the media”. During the happy hour time at the NPC every Friday evening, these fake journalists often converge at the NPC building in Intramuros to spend good money on alcohol and good food. A lot of gambling goes on at the pool tables and some at card games.

Photo credit: David Montasco Photography

On the regional-provincial scale, these charlatans become the praise makers for local politicians. In the more sordid cases, these fake media persons become the hitters in print or on the air for multi-millionaire or billionaire leaders of crime organizations, or drug trafficking syndicates, for gambling lords, kidnap for ransom as well as robbery gangs and all the other illegal elements of the Underworld.

A lot of well-trained mediamen, alongside their moronic, maleducated counterparts, are dirtying their hands with dirty skim money like freaking slimeballs devoid of any morality or redeeming value. Along with them, their own employers – the very owners of the media outfits themselves.

The biggest question to many quarters is: What happens to the public constantly fooled by media who takes bribes and indiscriminately dishes out humongous falsehoods? destructive information? demonization and extremely harmful smear campaigns?

What happens is the people get tired of media people lording it over in our communities and in our country. Like the fly on top of an elephant’s head, media practitioners believe they have grown big and impossible to defeat. Particularly those that were banished into oblivion for a reason, such media persons have come to the conviction that nothing and noone at all can kill them. In their mind, they have grown invincible.

We can only sympathize deeply with the victims of media who just suddenly wake up and find in the morning papers all splashed in the front pages no less, their personal character wholly besmirched by baseless, diabolic accusations by gargoyles in media.

Rapes That Never Took Place

Let us take a look at how Broadsheet dailies campaigned by publishing successive Front Page news for more than one whole week to totally wreck the reputation of a simple government worker serving as former Pres. Ramos’ and Secretary Winston Garcia’s undersecretary at the DOTC:

Together with the extremely dirty language spouting tabloids, the character of the good civil servant was totally ruined by these broadsheet newspapers.

The Secretary of DOTC later confessed to having worked with the media to publish on a consecutive, day-to-day basis the supposed complaints of rape against his own Undersecretary.

Even if Secretary Winston Garcia is a complete bastard and absolutely corrupt son of a bitch, the media should not have accepted the bruited about Thirty Million Philippine Pesos (Php30,000,000) blood money that was extorted from the owner of one of the famous mall chains in the country today.

It’s still money, even if dirty money? That should qualify as a preposterous response. The person whose reputation they destroyed was a fast and extensive performer.

The Undersecretary did not even tell a soul about discovering Secretary Garcia stealing funds from the DOTC, still Garcia and his contacts in media proceeded to crush the man and drive him as far away as possible from the department.

They were taking the bribe anyway, the least that the media should have done was to qualify that the rape was mere allegation and that therefore, should not have taken sides with the stupid lowlife scalawag Winston Garcia. In that sense the media should have made an escape hatch for themselves, but they did not.

By doing so and shamelessly spreading falsehood about an honest and incredibly capable, hard-working Ramos man, media proved itself to be fucking scoundrels and villains of the first order.

The humiliation, dehumanization and terrible shame that these owners of media and their trolls have to swallow for bringing out unprintable material that is inedible fare for all of us normal, average creatures of this country and people of other races around the world is superlatively degrading.

These owners of media and their similarly corrupt bootlicking underlings clearly have to stoop too low they will be crushed when run over by a pregnant ant. We wonder if there is any more humanity left at all in media owners and their army of ogres masquerading as journalists.

Such scuzzbag strategy of publishing lies and canards about immoral acts attributed to men of integrity makes many members of the media the bearers of the worst kind of disease in all of human history and the lowest form of members of the animal kingdom.

There was a time when media was called Fourth Estate. Time when media was so honored an institution that leaders of social thought declare: a nation without a government can survive, if there is but the press; yet a nation with a government, with no press, will surely die.

Rampant Killer Drugs For Sale At The MOA

Recently, media covered with pomp and all the attendant franticness the serious threat of drugs in the country. This long persisting drug phenomenon made itself manifest in a most brutal manner when 5 promising, vibrant, energetic youth died by ingesting a corrupted form of the drug Ecstasy during the Close Up Summer Forever Concert at the Shoemart Supermalls biggest regional category Mall of Asia. Those that suddenly collapsed and died were:

Ariel Leal, 22
Lance Garcia, 36
Bianca Fontejon, 18
Ken Lagubin Migawa, 18
Eric Anthony Miller, 33, American citizen

Ariel Leal (topmost); Lance Garcia (second to top); Bianca Fontejon (third from top); Eric Anthony Miller (bottom photo)

Among the final prognostic findings was stopping or bursting of the human heart due to intense overdrive caused by the illegal party drug.

PNP investigation report on cause of death

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Medico Legal issued a public statement that the cause of death of some of the victims was massive cardiac arrest which is the understatement of the century considering that the heart actually exploded.

If you look at all that massive volume of text and image about the Mall of Asia special event Close Up Forever Summer Concert, including photos and videos from various sources (see Mocha Uson’s blog) and The Summit Express post, it is clear to the mind of all audiences that the rave party goers at the MOA event Close Up concert, were undoubtedly drug-crazed.

The arrested drug pusher Joshua Hizola Habalo even went on to say, and this was supposedly being verified by posts over social media, that as young as 15 year old and even 12 year old minors were buying or have already ingested the drugs just by their very rowdy and sex-inviting behavior. Some of those that purport to “validate” Habalo’s claim present themselves as medics or hospital workers at San Juan De Dios Hospital.

Media on its own, without the Joshua Habaloses, appears to present that picture as well. This appears pinning the blame on the young people at the Close Up music event at the MOA. In many of the posts made by media, there is hardly even any mention of the Mall of Asia.

The closest they got to mentioning the name of that damned and forsaken place is “a mall at Pasay City.” It seems that media is afraid of Mr. Henry Sy and his children. They might lose advertising and promotional campaign contracts from the giant SM mall chain.

The question is: What if, as Coconuts Manila says, the deaths and the collapse of so many of the concert goers came from laced drinks that were passed around for free? What if the victims did not ingest the drugs at all?

Ecstasy tablets brought by foreigners to the Philippines

The Manila Bulletin as well published suspicions that this might have been the case here in this article. To be sensationalizing the statement for instance of drug pusher Joshua Hizola Habalo that many of the partyers had already ingested drugs into their system before coming to the concert is to overstretch the inverted theory: That the organizers basically, and categorically failed to make the concert grounds secure.

This erases the possibility that ill-intentioned individuals actually intended to poison many of the concert attendees by spiking the drinks that went around the concert venue.

Spiking of beverages has been in our country for the longest time. The entities and the media that are debunking this theory should be wary about what they are misinforming the public of.

There was a time long ago in the past when the chemical used to induce sexual arousal or heat for pigs was used to lace the drinks of women to make them vulnerable to “rape with (blind) consent.”

Waiters, drug pushers and many other individuals alert to a fast buck will agree to do the errand of spiking the drinks of either dates or else unescorted women and young girls with drugs in powder form that would turn them into sex crazed animals inside bars.

The victims who drank the spiked drinks would then be raped by the interested party or gang raped by a cruel group of men or boys who are out for a revolt of their basest senses.

Clubs in Manila, Makati and many other areas in Metro Manila, or even in the provinces were doing this practice since the 1970s, the 1980s or even earlier. Money changed hands before the lacing of drinks with powerful rape drugs – in many of the cases, in doses them not even safe for animals.

Over time, hundreds, thousands of victims suffered in silence the excruciating pain of being raped without even a memory of what had transpired.

Still and all, many executives and key people of media organizations even benefited from this brutal savaging of our women. No wonder that no media institution, however powerful, ever took up the cudgels except against those victimizing people using Ativan and robbing them of their valuables. As if the right of women as women and as persons not to be sexually abused is not one of the most valuable treasures that need to be guarded.

Today the victims of the super spiked Ecstasy mixed with poison does not only make women hysteric for sex, but they kill everyone including children who are unfortunate to taste the loaded party drugs or sip drinks laced with death.

Back to the MOA drug deaths, the media reported that drug pushers Joshua Hizola Habalo (photo below) and 5 other perpetrators were later arrested in the persons of Seergeoh “Gio” Villanueva, 27, an IT professional; his partner Erica Valbuena, 26, a fashion designer; Marc Deen, 28; Thomas Halili and Martin Dimacali, 20.

Joshua Hizola Habalo, arrested pusher dealing in Ecstasy, Shabu

However, the arrested suspects, except for Habalo were too media shy to a fault. They never forgot to get their hands on anything that they could camouflage their faces with. If they don’t find an object for cover, they simply used their own two hands to shield themselves from the paparazzi.

Very young manufacturers, sellers of deadly drugs

The press were too circumspect in showing these suspects’ faces to the public. At the current state of media, many would wonder: Is this out of fear? or the prospects of getting rewards from the parents of the vaunted well-to-do young drug pushers who were not only selling drugs but actually manufacturing the illegal lethally poisonous substances in their own condominium unit at the Azure Urban Resort Residences situated near SM Shoemast at Bicutan, Taguig owned and operated by Century Propeties are too good to just throw away.

Azure Urban Resort Residences where the killer drugs were made

Photos below show the camera shy Drug Manufacturers-Pushers Erica Valbuena, Marc Deen (top photos), Martin Dimacali, and a supposed sixth suspect (bottom photos) who are part of the drug makers and sellers arrested by the NBI.

The Solaire Resort Casino Drug Overdose Case:
Media Reportage Of Murder That Never Happened

In a similar case that transpired a few months ago, both the media and heavy users of blogs and social media manifestly allowed themselves to be exploited in the cover up of a drug overdose by the Assistant Manager of Solaire Resort and Casino Hotel at Aseana Avenue, Paranaque City. The cause of death is similar to the drug intake — this time, clearly by self-inducement not from the lacing or spiking of beverages that was suspected to have been done by criminally minded parties at the concert venue at the SM MOA Arena concert venue.

The fatality at Solaire Hotel, Ms. Edgel Durolfo suffered massive heart attack and multiple organ failure. Her nerves appeared to have ruptured violently that even her skin burst as in the case of many drug overdoses here and abroad. The late Edgel was suffering from a dysfunction of one of her internal organs – her kidney.

There were times when she simply collapsed on the floor at the house she and her boyfriend were living together at. At other times, she would enter into a fit of desperately sucking in air due to breathing difficulty. She was a perfect candidate for a serious physical breakdown. Taking in drugs without relent was simply too much for her condition.

Both the social media, bloggers and the mainstream as well as the sleazy tabloid media projected the case bull headedly with headlines screaming MURDER.

Television reporters and staff kept pestering the neighbors of the fatality’s boyfriend, hungry for a statement that could be used against the person. The most aggressive media house that kept haranguing the community where the boyfriend lived prior to the drug overdose was GMA Channel 7. At one time, GMA Channel 7 actually planted a camera on tripod in front of the boyfriend’s rental apartment, for what reason and to what end, it could not be ascertained.

The president of the homeowner’s association and the parents of the boyfriend tried to discourage the media personnel but they kept using various ruses just to keep visiting the village now and again. Whenever the parents of Edgel Durolfo appeared at the boyfriend’s village, GMA TV was also around. Were the parents and GMA TV connected one way or the other? Or was there a bigger entity that linked them both together? We could only surmise.

Apparently they could not get anything useful, the people of GMA TV stopped their antics.

Solaire Hotel VIP Casino Assistant Manager Edgel Durolfo

Edgel Durolfo and her boyfriend, Rodney during happier days.

In the intelligence community, what appears as the story behind the death of the late Assistant Manager Edgel Durolfo, also known as Joy Mercado, is a multi-faceted tale.

Furthermore, there appears to be several angles to the case observers say. However, surprisingly, media and especially social media does not even delve into these aspects of the case.

For instance, the victim was brought to the San Juan De Dios Hospital by the boyfriend along with his relatives and friends – close friends of the late Edgel that are now considered as suspects in a sham murder case. Immediately upon admitting Edgel at the hospital, the parents of Edgel were called by the boyfriend and friends to inform them of Edgel’s condition.

Following a brief interval after the victim was brought to the San Juan De Dios Hospital upon recommendation of the company clinic officer at Solaire Hotel and around the time of arrival of the parents of Edgel, policemen showed up at the scene – suspected to have been contacted by the parents and “friends” of Edgel.

The boyfriend was alerted by his own relatives and friends that the police officers appeared to be ready to arrest him. Boyfriend left the hospital and stayed in the provinces thereafter.

The late Edgel died 12-13 hours later after boyfriend had her admitted at San Juan De Dios Hospital. The cause of death being bandied about is murder by strangulation. How could one person after being strangled still survive for one day? Was she killed by someone else other than her boyfriend?

It happens that one of the “friends” of Edgel, a supposed white slavery godfather disguising as a “talent manager” and “promoter”, one James Tiu, is wholly privvy to the drug abuse problem of Edgel. This James Tiu is allegedly the owner of a fly by night company that pretends to be a modeling agency but in actuality, James Tiu is very active in providing sex workers to foreign and local clientele.

Tiu’s enterprise is exceedingly lucrative that his models travel to as many places around Asia and other far off continents just to satisfy biological cravings of sex-starved patrons. Edgel herself traveled to Macau on the auspices of James Tiu’s business.

Tiu is the same crass person together with his wards who put up a Facebook Account called “Justice for Joy Mercado” – which account has been created, deactivated, reactivated, for no particular reason.

James Tiu is the same one along with his friends who have been feeding distorted information to the Philippine Daily Inquirer and to the other broadsheet as well as tabloid dailies. Tiu is also closely associated with a certain Angelo, said to be a very close relative of politician husband and wife Ralph Recto and Vilma Santos. Angelo is more closely identified with the Rectos of Batangas. Angelo is Edgel’s former live-in partner and he is the father of Shaun, the late Edgel’s pre-school son.

Shaun, Edgel’s son by former lover, Angelo of the Recto clan

At one time, a helicopter owned by the Recto family, made several flyovers at the house of the aunt of Rodney in Batangas – probably thinking that Rodney was hiding there. What is the interest of the Rectos in the boyfriend of a lady who was their relative’s ex-live in partner?

Why was media so quick to swallow the spin that the boyfriend is the murderer of Edgel when the victim and her boyfriend were very lovey-dovey in the extreme and would never be suspected to engage even in a shouting match much less in a violent quarrel?

And why is the media too keen on sniffing on the footsteps of the boyfriend? Is someone bankrolling their acts of planting a camera on tripod at abandoned apartments, going to and fro to tail the parents and other close connections to Mr. Boy Friend of the late Edgel Durolfo and doing such other inane acts not worthy of their station as members of the media?

How could media not allow the story about Angelo, the relative of Ralph Recto, clearly the father of Edgel Durolfo’s son, to play out in the open? Were they paid to protect the Recto family name? Were they paid not to rock the boat for this family or else the drug business which it is linked to and the smuggling of very expensive luxury cars in Batangas (thousands of Mustang sports cars), running illegal gambling operations, among many other criminal activities might emit a very pungent smell?

The pernicious acts of media does not only extend to playing allies with criminals and syndicated drug trafficking among many other outlaw organizations.

In the past, it was bandied about that ABS CBN was the key support group that encouraged and gave money so that the MAGDALO group will all of sudden, without any lengthy well-done planning, take over the Hotel Manila Peninsula in Makati City.

The scene of crime, the various areas of the hotel, were littered with bags where money were placed in and delivered to the hotel before the coup. A good volume of SIM kit envelopes containing Globe Telecom sim cards were all over the place. It is no secret to everyone and all that Ayala Group-Globe Telecom and ABS CBN are now joined together at the hip when the former bought into the Lopez Group of Companies to acquire Bayan Telecommunications (Bayantel). The more mysterious aspect of the coup d’ etat attempt of the MAGDALO Group commanded by Maestrocampo and has-been socialist revolutionaries based in the University of the Philippines like Professor Dodong Nemenzo was that the full cast of ABS CBN coverage team including an anchor no less in the person of Miss Pinky Webb were already very well and strategically positioned, perfecting the angles of coverage of their cameras and the location for their other equipment hours before the coup d’ etat attempt took place.

It is much talked about since then, that after the failed coup d’ etat attempt, Ms. Webb was promoted by her bosses to head the Investigative Journalism Team at her station. Investigative journalism my ass!

Guerilla media and politicians’ operations in the last May 2016 Elections

The 2016 Presidential Election hopefuls

In the recent elections, the television station owned by the Lopezes once more is in the thick of the fight. As if fighting the Arroyos and engaging them in a failed coup attempt was not enough, ABS CBN worked elbow to elbow with the suspected narcopolitical party – the Liberal Party to where Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III and Franklin Drilon belongs.

The battle that the Lopezes fought this time, together with the drugs-associated Liberal Party was the Philippine Elections of 2016.

The drug syndicate-linked Liberal Party headquartered themselves clandestinely at the Novotel Hotel in Cubao, Quezon City together with key elements of the Venezuelan company, the Smartmatic.

According to sources, Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. would become the ultimate accidental target of the cabal of ABS CBN, Liberal Party, Smartmatic, COMELEC several other television stations, as well as other organizations including those under two allied Senators of the ruling party.

If for anything else, this move was real media in action, black operations. It would appear as if media was back in World War II when the government of Winston Churchill utilized media extensively during the campaigns against Adolf Hitler.

Winston Churchill Adolf Hitler and his ward, Joseph Goebbels

However, in this case, the more proper description for the role of media here is that of Joseph Goebbels the head of Adolf Hitler’s propaganda machine itself and enemy to Churchill’s secret media army.

It is now the talk of the town that the plot to install Cong. Leni Gerona Robredo by hook or by crook was hatched by this same cabal nearly one year before the actual elections in May 2016.

The individual that changed the script at the transparency server, among all the other key movers of this dastardly bunch of political guerillas, was spotted in Hong Kong several times with the members of the narcopolitical party – Liberal Party, selected media personalities (on junket no less since they were idiots in computer programming and manipulation) and a motley of knowledgeable foreigners and natives in the field of computers.

These scum of the earth reportedly purchased a large volume of devices and computer internals and peripherals in Hong Kong that would be compatible with the Smartmatic Vote Counting Machine (VCM) and its CF memory card.

Smartmatic vote counting machine supplied to Comelec
Part of the culprit: The CF Memory Card

This item about the purchases by the gang could be very verifiable and the good People’s Republic of China Government can provide a great quantity of evidence to its cousins in the Philippine Government about what kind of purchases were made by the Venezuelan guerilla master idiot and his fellow members of the fraud team in Hong Kong.

As the story goes, this Mephistophelian gang upon return to the Philippines from their trip or succession of trips to Hong Kong, proceeded to create the means to add 5 Million votes for the Liberal Party presidential, vice presidental and Senatorial candidates as well as where possible, local candidates.

Come the close of the elections, the group barely was able to escape from an inspection of the premises at Novotel Hotel. According to insiders at this nefarious camp, they used the consistently roving ABS CBN outdoor broadcast (OB) van to load the gadgets and computers in order to escape detection and discovery.

Rigging the canvassing would not succeed. They could not arrive at the math. Mr. Mar Roxas II will fail to put down the multi million vote lead of Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte even with the 5 Million vote padding they had programmed into the system.

Fortunately, the illustrious infernal syndicate had a back-up plan and it was to defeat Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at all costs. The writing on the wall was apparent once ABS CBN started conducting its own supposed surveys of 4,000 respondents, claiming a miniscule degree of error. The rival of Marcos, Jr. in the horrendous narcopolitical ruling party suddenly, out of the blue, launched tirades against the Senator in public.

In so doing, an astounding feat was accomplished by this detestable demoniacal fraternity: placing an opportunistic nonentity called Cong. Leni Gerona Robredo in the post of Vice President.

To upset the win of Mayor Duterte, would be to invite a civil war that the cabal from Hell did not want to incite. It would have to be a bloody riot and many of the narcopolitical syndicate called Liberal Party will die in the process, and the lot of them do not certainly want that to happen. Especially the Chivalrous Knight of the Liberal Party who travelled to China 16 times who most of all is too afraid of death – an anachronism it appears. Least of all, the standing leader of the Liberals, the poseur president Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III who trembles in fear when there is flood did not want to be murdered like the PNP SAF soldiers. Most assuredly, the bayot candidate and his / her make believe spouse out of the bedroom, would not be the first ones to put their necks on the chopping block when the killings, if ever, would start. (It is best to stay safe.)

Not surprisingly however, the transsexual presidentita ordered a difficult menu from a retired general: The assassination of the soon-to-be President Rodrigo Roa Duterte for 30 Million Philippine currency and untold presidential favors in the future. (Wasn’t she/he already packing her/his bags?) Too bad for the insane bading the retired general rejected him and his offer. The stupid transsexual shit now must feel like traipsing in downtown fully naked.

The queer thing is, both media and people like Mr. Ki Moon Ban (best pronounced Di Mun Ban), are demonizing the president while news reports are exceedingly highlighting the

The question asked by intelligent quarters is why ABS CBN, Pulse Asia, the Social Weather Stations and other purported “reliable” survey companies do political surveys.

Why should a television station, known to be biased against the Marcoses, be conducting political surveys? By what right, what authority do these companies, especially a broadcasting network, conduct their surveys? Who will police these corporations with heavy vested interests and tell them what is the right way to administer a survey?

There was a time when journalists proudly held the Banner of Media upright and declare that no nation can survive without the media.

John F. Kennedy once said:

No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes support or opposition. And both are necessary.

Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive.

Were it not for debauched, corrupted journalism, and the incredible degradation of values of owners of media the times today will still make President John F. Kennedy’s statements hold true.

Alas, they can no longer be true. Media itself, has become the ultimate tyrant.

So that today, it is not so much as the corrupt journalist that needs heavy spanking. All around the world, owners of media outlets have become the subject of painful plaints. These owners of the pseudo harbingers of freedom of the press, freedom of speech have become the very suppressors of the truth. Top calibre journalists themselves decry the persecution they suffer from the very establishment whose existence and relevance they have upheld all throughout their lives.

Media Corruption

Leading Journalists Expose Major Corruption in Mass Media

The riveting excerpts below from the revealing accounts of award-winning journalists in the highly acclaimed book Into the Buzzsaw reveal major media corruption. These courageous writers were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major news stories. Some were even fired or laid off. They have won numerous awards, including several Emmys and a Pulitzer. Join in building a better world by helping to spread this news across the land.

Jane Akre – Fox News. After our struggle to air an honest report [on hormones in milk], Fox fired the general manager [of our station]. The new GM said that if we didn’t agree to changes that the lawyers were insisting upon, we’d be fired for insubordination in 48 hours. We pleaded with [him] to look at the facts we’d uncovered. His reply: “We paid $3 billion dollars for these stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!” [After we refused] Fox’s GM presented us an agreement that would give us a full year of salary, and benefits worth close to $200,000, but with strings attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to ever expose the facts. [After declining] we were fired. (click for more, revealing video clip)

Dan Rather – CBS, Multiple Emmy Awards. What’s going on is a belief that you can manipulate communicable trust between the leadership and the led. The way you do that is you don’t let the press in anywhere. Access to war is extremely limited. The fiercer the combat, the more the access is limited, [including] access to information. This is a direct contradiction of the stated policy of maximum access to information consistent with national security. There was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people’s necks if they dissented. In some ways the fear [now in the U.S.] is that you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. That fear keeps journalists from asking the tough questions. I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism. (click for more)

Monika Jensen-Stevenson – Emmy-winning producer for 60 minutes. Robert R. Garwood – 14 years a prisoner of the Vietnamese – was found guilty in the longest court-martial in US history. At the end of the court-martial, there seemed no question that Garwood was a monstrous traitor. Several years later in 1985, Garwood was speaking publicly about something that had never made the news during his court-martial. He knew of other American prisoners in Vietnam long after the war was over. He was supported by Vietnam veterans whose war records were impeccable. My sources included outstanding experts like former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Tighe and returned POWs like Captain McDaniel, who held the Navy’s top award for bravery. With such advocates, it was hard not to consider the possibility that prisoners (some 3,500) had in fact been kept by the Vietnamese as hostages to make sure the US would pay the more than $3 billion in war reparations. [After the war] American POWs had become worthless pawns. The US had not paid the promised monies and had no intention of paying in the future. (click for more)

Kristina Borjesson – CBS, Emmy award winner. Pierre Salinger announced to the world on Nov. 8, 1996, that he’d received documents proving that a US Navy missile had accidentally downed [TWA flight 800]. That same day, FBI’s Jim Kallstrom called a press conference. A man raised his hand and asked why the Navy was involved in the recovery and investigation while a possible suspect. “Remove him!” [Kallstrom] yelled. Two men leapt over to the questioner and grabbed him by the arms. There was a momentary chill in the air after the guy had been dragged out of the room. Kallstrom and entourage acted as if nothing had happened. [Kallstrom was later hired by CBS.] (click for more)

Greg Palast – BBC. In the months leading up to the November [2000] balloting, Gov. Jeb Bush ordered elections supervisors to purge 58,000 voters on the grounds they were felons not entitled to vote. As it turns out, only a handful of these voters were felons. This extraordinary news ran on page one of the country’s leading paper. Unfortunately, it was the wrong country: Britain. In the USA, it was not covered. The office of the governor [also] illegally ordered the removal of felons from voter rolls – real felons – but with the right to vote under law. As a result, 50,000 of these voters could not vote. The fact that 90% of these were Democrats should have made it news as this alone more than accounted for Bush’s victory. (click for more)

Michael Levine – 25-year veteran of DEA, writer for New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today. The Chang Mai “factory” that the CIA prevented me from destroying was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam. Case after case was killed by CIA and State Department intervention and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. … In 1980, CIA-recruited mercenaries and drug traffickers unseated Bolivia’s democratically elected president. Immediately after the coup, cocaine production increased massively. Bolivia [became] the source of virtually 100% of the cocaine entering the US. This was the beginning of the crack “plague.” … The CIA along with State and Justice Departments had to protect their drug-dealing assets by destroying a DEA investigation. How do I know? I was the inside source. … I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote evidence of my charges. I addressed it to Newsweek. Three weeks later DEA’s internal security [called] to notify me that I was under investigation. … The highlight of the 60 Minutes piece is when the administrator of the DEA, Federal Judge Robert Bonner, tells Mike Wallace, “There is no other way to put it, Mike, [what the CIA did] is drug smuggling. It’s illegal.” (click for more)

Gary Webb – San Jose Mercury News, Pulitzer Prize winner. In 1996, I wrote a series of stories that began this way: For the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods gangs of LA and funneled millions in drug profits to a guerilla army run by the CIA. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America. … The story was developing a momentum all of its own, despite a virtual news blackout from the major media. Ultimately, it was public pressure that forced the national newspapers into the fray. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times published stories, but spent little time exploring the CIA’s activities. Instead, my reporting and I became the focus of their scrutiny. It was remarkable [Mercury News editor] Ceppos wrote, that the four Washington Post reporters assigned to debunk the series “could not find a single significant factual error.” A few months later, the Mercury News [due to intense CIA pressure] backed away from the story, publishing a long column by Ceppos apologizing for “shortcomings.” The New York Times hailed Ceppos for “setting a brave new standard,” and splashed his apology on their front page, the first time the series had ever been mentioned there. I quit the Mercury News not long after that. … Do we have a free press today? Sure. It’s free to report all the sex scandals, all the stock market news, [and] every new health fad that comes down the pike. But when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff – such stories are not even open for discussion. (click for more)

John Kelly – Author, ABC producer. ABC hired me to help produce a story about an investment firm that was heavily involved with the CIA. Part of the ABC report charged that the CIA had plotted to assassinate an American, Ron Rewald, the president of [the investment firm]. Scott Barnes said on camera that the CIA had asked him to kill Rewald. After the show aired, CIA officials met with ABC executive David Burke, [who] was sufficiently impressed “by the vigor with which they made their case” to order an on-air “clarification.” But that was not enough. [CIA Director] Casey called ABC Chairman Goldenson. [Thus] despite all the documented evidence presented in the program, despite ABC standing by the program in a second broadcast, Peter Jennings reported that ABC could no longer substantiate the charges. That same day, the CIA filed a formal complaint with the FCC charging that ABC had “deliberately distorted” the news. In the complaint, Casey asked that ABC be stripped of its TV and radio licenses. During this time, Capital Cities Communications was maneuvering to buy ABC. [CIA Director] Casey was one of the founders of Cap Cities. Cap Cities bought ABC. Within months, the entire investigative unit was dispersed. (click for more)

Robert McChesney – 500 radio & TV appearances. [There has been a] striking consolidation of the media from hundreds of firms to an industry dominated by less than ten enormous transnational conglomerates. The largest ten media firms own all US TV networks, most TV stations, all major film studios, all major music companies, nearly all cable TV channels, much of the book and magazine publishing [industry], and much, much more. Expensive investigative journalism – especially that which goes after national security or powerful corporate interests – is discouraged. … A few weeks after the war began in Afghanistan, CNN president Isaacson authorized CNN to provide two different versions of the war: a more critical one for the global audience and a sugarcoated one for Americans. … It is nearly impossible to conceive of a better world without some changes in the media status quo. (click for more)

The Corruption of Mainstream Media
April 18, 2014

America’s mainstream media still pretends it is the custodian of “serious journalism,” but that claim continues to erode as the corporate press shies away from its duty to challenge propaganda emanating from various parts of the U.S. government, as Danny Schechter describes.
By Danny Schechter

First the good news: The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was not only the best covered of its awards this year, but it recognized a series of disclosures that made many media outlets nervous, if not adversarial the publication of National Security Agency secrets leaked by Edward Snowden.

The award recognized the reporting by the Guardian in England and also Bart Gellman’s work in the Washington Post even as they, did not recognize the work directly of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras whose independent reporting appeared in many newspapers.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaking in Moscow on Oct. 9, 2013. (From a video posted by WikiLeaks)

Thomas E. Patterson is Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press and teaches at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His latest book, Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism, examines the causes and consequences of declining news quality and what news organizations and journalists can do to reverse the trend.

The Corruption of Information

10 Most Censored Countries

See updated list of 10 Most Censored Countries at https://cpj.org/2015/04/10-most-censored-countries.php.

North Korea tops CPJ’s list of “10 Most Censored Countries”

New York, May 2, 2006 – North Koreans live in the most censored country in the world, a new analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists has found. The world’s deepest information void, communist North Korea has no independent journalists, and all radio and television receivers sold in the country are locked to government-specified frequencies. Burma, Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea, and Libya round out the top five nations on CPJ’s list of the “10 Most Censored Countries.”

“By any international standard, the practices of these governments are unacceptable,” said Cooper. “We call on the leaders of these most censored countries to join the free world by abandoning these restrictive actions and allowing journalists to independently report the news and inform their citizens.”

Here are summaries of the Most Censored Countries:

1. NORTH KOREA

Leader: Kim Jong Il, chairman, National Defense Commission. In power since his father Kim Il Song’s death in 1994.

How censorship works: North Korea has wedded the traditional Confucian ideal of social order to the Stalinist model of an authoritarian communist state to create the world’s deepest information void. All domestic radio, television, and newspapers are controlled by the government. Radio and television receivers are locked to government-specified frequencies. Content is supplied almost entirely by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). It serves up a daily diet of fawning coverage of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il and his official engagements. The country’s grinding poverty or famines are never mentioned. Only small numbers of foreign journalists are allowed limited access each year, and they must be accompanied by “minders” wherever they go.

Lowlight: After a deadly munitions train explosion in April 2004 in Ryongchon near the Chinese border, KCNA reported that citizens displayed the “spirit of guarding the leader with their very lives” by rushing into burning buildings to save portraits of Kim “before searching for their family members or saving their household goods.” The international press, meanwhile, was barred from the scene, where more than 150 died and thousands were injured.

2. BURMA

Leader:  Than Shwe, who took over as chairman of the military junta known as the State Peace and Development Council in 1992 after the resignation of 1988 coup leader General Saw Maung.

How censorship works: The junta owns all daily newspapers and radio, along with the country’s three television channels. Media dare not hint at, let alone report on, antigovernment sentiments. Burma’s few privately owned publications must submit content to the Press Scrutiny Board for approval before publishing; censorship mean that none publishes on a daily basis. In 2005, the junta took control of Bagan Cybertech, Burma’s main Internet service and satellite feed provider.  Citizens have been arrested for listening to the BBC or Radio Free Asia in public. Entry visa requests by foreign journalists are usually turned down except when the government wants to showcase a political event.

Lowlights: An article in the June 4, 2005, edition of New Light of Myanmar (Burma) titled, “Have positive attitude in broadcasting news” explains the government’s approach to media: “The Myanmar people do not wish to watch, read, or listen to corrupt and lopsided news reports and lies. The Myanmar people even feel loathsome to some local media that are imitating the practice of featuring corrupt and lopsided news and lies.” The Voice, a Rangoon-based weekly was suspended in May 2005 as punishment for an innocuous front-page story about Vietnam’s withdrawal from Burma’s New Year water festival, which the junta found embarrassing.

3. TURKMENISTAN

Leader:  Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov, elected 1991 and declared President for Life in 1999.

How censorship works: Niyazov has isolated the country from the rest of the world and created a cult of personality declaring himself “Turkmenbashi,” father of the Turkmen. The state owns all domestic media and Niyazov’s administration controls them by appointing editors and censoring content. Niyazov personally approves the front-page content of the major dailies, which always include a prominent picture of him. In 2005, the state closed all libraries except for one that houses the president’s books, and banned the importation of foreign publications. The state media heap fulsome praise on Niyazov as they ignore important stories on AIDS, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, crime, and drugs. A handful of local and foreign correspondents work for foreign–primarily Russian–news agencies, but their freedom to report is minimal.

Lowlight: State television displays a constant, golden profile of Niyazov at the bottom of the screen. Newscasters begin each broadcast with a pledge that their tongues will shrivel if their reports ever slander the country, the flag, or the president.

By the principle of destabilization, if the corrupt media that helped install a fake vice president, will contribute everything in its power to kill a sitting president, we will no longer be surprised if the owners of media and their snake in the grass, miscreant, good-for-nothing dirtbag paid hacks will get killed one by one.

If their acts will be so crass as to be telegraphed this early or in the midterm, it won’t be as much surprise as well if they keep dying like the rice and corn stalks of our poor farmers during the last El Niño. The devious charlatans and spinners of canard truly deserve what will come to them.

In coming out boldly with their brazen election fraud support system and demonization plan, media has effectively declared war on the people.

The president-elect and Senator Bongbong Marcos happened to be in the people’s path and unfortunately had to be the corrupt media and the miscreant elite’s biggest target.

In a parallel development, the misguided and blind United Nations has done it again: Sending a supposed UN Rapporteur to admonish the Philippines’ incoming chief executive to respect the rights of journalists and not to endorse their killings.

Everyone now knows what the United is for and what it stands for. Everyone is aware of how the UN is not for the people and in fact it is advocating global decimation — campaigning this early that the planet will no longer have peace, stability because of lack of food to feed people once the population of our dear Earth reaches 10 Billion people.

But that is light years away. In between now and that time, a huge number of catastrophes will hit the world that will reduce the global demographic so why espouse decimation?

The United Nations cannot be trusted. What does it have to do with protecting journalists in the Philippines or around the world when it is advocating the death of billions of people on the planet?

Related Readings:

Tabloidization, Popular Journalism and Democracy

Death of Good Journalism

Slow Death of Free Speen in Britain

Death of Freedom of Expression

Free Speech Almost Gone

Postscripts June 11, 2016

UN Rapporteur Prof. Christof Heyns, race: European but hails from South Africa (Afrikaans) issued statements against the Philippines to press the point of respecting members of media, “stop instigating deadly violence.” Professor David Kaye, from the United States has toured the world teaching about international law and denounces the Philippines incoming president’s supposedly giving permission to kill journalists.

Journalists’ killings: UN experts urge Philippines president-elect to stop instigating deadly violence

GENEVA (6 June 2016) – Two United Nations independent experts on summary executions, and on freedom of expression today urged Philippines president-elect Rodrigo Duterte to stop instigating deadly violence immediately. The experts strongly condemned Mr. Duterte’s recent statements suggesting that journalists are not exempt for assassination.

Speaking at a press conference, Mr. Duterte reportedly stated that most journalists killed in the country have done something wrong. ‘You won’t be killed if you don’t do anything wrong,’ the President-elect said, suggesting that victims were partly to blame for their fate.

“A message of this nature amounts to incitement to violence and killing, in a nation already ranked as the second-deadliest country for journalists,” said the UN Special Rapporteur on summary executions, Cristof Heyns. “These comments are irresponsible in the extreme, and unbecoming of any leader, let alone someone who is to assume the position of the leader of a country that calls itself democratic.”

For the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom opinion and expression, David Kaye, “justifying the killing of journalists on the basis of how they conduct their professional activities can be understood as a permissive signal to potential killers that the murder of journalists is acceptable in certain circumstances and would not be punished.”

Cristof Heyns and David Kaye, UN Rapporteurs

“This position is even more disturbing when one considers that Philippines is still struggling to ensure accountability to notorious cases of violence against journalists, such as the Maguindanao massacre,” the human rights expert added.

Mr. Duterte is further reported to have questioned the legal guarantees to journalists who are perceived to have made defamatory comments. ‘That can’t be just freedom of speech. The constitution can no longer help you if you disrespect a person,’ the President-elect stated.

“Such provocative messages indicate to any person who is displeased by the work of a journalist or an activist, for example, that they can attack or kill them without fear of sanction,” Mr. Kaye stressed.

The President-elect has also been reported as promising to pay bounties to police and military officials for every drug lord they turn in. ‘I’m not saying that you kill them, but the order is dead or alive,” Mr. Duterte reportedly said in a televised news conference.

“Talk of ‘dead or alive’ has no role to play in any state that claims to uphold human rights in law enforcement,” Special Rapporteur Heyns stressed, while recalling the limits imposed by international instruments on the conduct of law enforcement forces.

When the people of the Philippines suddenly saw a fake president rammed into their throats, the United Nations did not say anything about the rights of the people not to have a mentally aberrant child-man as president who was never elected by the majority but only by machines.

The entire Filipino nation, absent the members of media who have lucrative careers, suffered for the last 6 years because of this abnormal and corrupted turn of this great nation’s history.

Was the UN involved in this sinister installation, but of course it will not confess. What else is new. Did the media indulge itself in a campaign to discredit this fake poseur acting as president? It did not dare because most of the owners of media are joined at the chest and abdomen to the fake regime.

When the government did not allow aid to reach the victims of Yolanda, UN did not say a word about Aquino. Neither did it condemn Aquino’s resolve to push through with the Mamasapano affair that led to the Massacre of tens of PNP Special Action Forces members. Neither did UN even lift a finger to prevent an international incident between China and the Philippines during the Quirino Grandstand Massacre. Why?

This time, the president has not even taken his seat at the Office, UN is already increasing the crescendo of the destabilization effort in order for the devious interest groups to accelerate their agenda of a coup d’ grace. From the UN Rapporteurs now to the disgraceful head of the fiendish UN itself, they are all throwing tantrums, in the spirit of destabilization. Short of just saying we are at War with the Philippines (except with the disgusting narcopolitical Liberal Party and its hideous satan-worshipping elements.)

Ominous massive fraud in the May 9 Philippine Elections 3

Re-Engineering and Modernization of Electoral Systems

The end of the Reign of Small Men

Welcoming the Reign of Great Men

Last of 3 parts

If one looks at the Miting De Avane of the Liberal Party, it was a “nilalangaw” gathering, devoid of luster and even the candidates as well as their endorser, Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino the 3rd looked unenthusiastic, unhappy and glum.  The Philippine National Police (PNP) estimate the crowd to be within the range of 20,000.  The venue, Quezon Memorial Circle at the Elliptical Road, Quezon City, hosts about 15,000 bodies or slightly higher.

Whereas the rally of his opponents were a little more lively and festive. Sen. Grace Poe Llamanzares’ final campaign rally at Plaza Miranda, the historic bastion of Philippine Democracy did not appear colorless and spiritless.  The Plaza Miranda venue accommodates from 10,000 up to a very high of 100,000  bodies. On the other hand that of Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte…

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Flooding in the Philippines: Lethal and Problematic

by the Resource Recovery Movement, Center for Human and Society

In the recent period, floods plagued a considerable area, encompassing broad sections across the globe.

Heavy recent flooding in India and Serbia, China, Japan among many other areas around the world

With heavy inundations such as these that can often kill with their own sheer power by drowning,is there still a need for the water to be poisonous, toxic and very much hazardous to health or even deadly enough to kill?

 

In the Philippines, not the Secretary of the Department of National Defense now a bit too advanced in years unlike many past defense secretaries who braved calamities and got wet and dirty on the ground, but the helmsman of the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) is a mite too busy nowadays. The chief is extremely tied up in many corners that at most times the poor disaster response executive does not even know where to plant his foot next.

Yet it is an inescapable Catch-22 situation. If the new chief of the Philippine Office of Civil Defense and the Secretariat of the NDRRMC follows the examples of his bosses, just stay put and let things unveil all by themselves, the people will be angry.

If the NDRRMC head appears very mobile and busy, the people are still not going to be appeased. They will be just as angry anyway. No option is a better one, even that of balancing between not doing anything and making an effort to be hyperactive.

A senseless new tragedy most recently hit the Philippines – not so much a tragedy as thousands of helpless citizens getting killed.

The powerful storm caused a maritime vessel Maharlika II in Cebu to drown, leaving as many as more than one hundred casualties. As of this writing, 70 persons are missing due to the tragedy.

All over the nation: Floods and landslides, destroyed crops, dead farm animals

ruined houses, buildings, vital installations and much more other forms of damage

A really sensible government will take every means to prevent people from getting caught in floods. Sadly enough, this is never true in the Philippines and not in many places around the world. They will simply snort: Expensive solutions! No one specially me needs them! So they let whole communities drown or suffer getting submerged waist or neck-deep in murky, life-threatening floodwaters

Both children and adults brave the waters in floods. No one puts the fear in their hearts that doing so is extremely dangerous to their health and the effects may only be felt after a long time.

 

Posted Under Themes:

#MarioPH

#Fong-Wong #Fung-Wong

#Flood

#Philippines

#FloodControl

#RescuePH

#Rescue

Read more from here. 

Supplemental Themes and Tags:

Climate Change, clusters, collection of STP fees, commercial establishments, damage wetland ecosystems, death, deep in water, Department of National Defense, devastation of riverine ecosystems, disasters, diseases, Divisoria, effluent, flood control, flood-borne epidemic, government offices, graft and corruption, health hazard, life-threatening, Lopez, Lucio Tan Foremost Farms, malls and factories Pasig River, Manila Water, Manila Waterworks Sewerage Systems, Marikina Basin, Maynilad, more than 10 billions of STP fee collection, National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council, Philippines, poision, preventive, pro-active, release dam water, sale of relief goods for Yolanda, Secretary Voltaire T. Gazmin, septage, septage treatment plant, septic tank, sewage treatment, sewerage, solution to flood, spend public money, STP, surface runoff water, Tacloban Basin, toxin, Tropical Storm, Tutuban Mall, typhoon, Undersecretary Alexander Pama.

Philippines: Hoping against Hope on Transforming Customs and Internal Revenue

The Philippine Bureau of Customs: Hogs bred for the slaughterhouse

Bureau of Customs (BOC) is taunted as a revenue generating agency, a supposed contributor to the national treasury. In reality, the BOC as an inutile herd of swine, awaiting the date of their final trip to the abbatoir.

Nowhere in the world can you find highest executives of The Customs agency that will say this:

   ●  We are powerless here in this agency. 
   ●  The smugglers, smuggling syndicate dictate every move that we make. 
   ●  We are only able to do what the smugglers approve. If they oppose, we cannot make our move. 
   ●  We are not even allowed to use a Radio Communications net in the agency, anywhere in the port, or wherever the Bureau of Customs is conducting its official or side duties. (That is the least of the restrictions imposed by the syndicates engaged in highly illegal activities in the country’s coastal cities and towns.)

If that is the case, the two functions of the Bureau of Customs: regulatory – enforcement and recording – registry, are patently useless. It leaves all of us in a sizable quandary about whether there is any reason at all for the agency to keep getting paid with the hard earned money of the people.

The Bureau of Customs and the Bureau of Immigration are the first, and the last, lines of defense of the country.

At the very same time, they are also the face of the state in many dealings and encounters with subjects from the rest of the world. With the Bureau of Customs being a crippled and inutile agency, we can only begin to imagine what kind of relations they are building with our neighbors? Surely enough these relations cannot and never be positive in whatever sense.

On the other hand, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is supposed to be the bastion of the state’s police power to exact the contributions of its subjects for the national good.

For a long time, this has not been happening, will not happen and may never at all happen, despite the posturings of the head of that agency of showing herself / himself as a gun-toting hoodlum aiming to shoot at some target.

The Collections Commissioners. Madam Kim Henares – Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Mr. John “Sunshine / Sunny” Sevilla – Bureau of Customs.

The enemy of the state in this case, not excluding the smugglers, illegal establishments, criminals, con personalities and terrorists, ad hominem that do not pay their taxes – are the top echelon of the economic pyramid that controls the country’s wealth but provide a mere pittance to the public sector in terms of taxes.

Unlike most certainly many of the opulent in countries like Taiwan, Korea, Japan, United States, where tax payments are strictly enforced, the vaunted police powers of the state are laid to waste with mindless grandstanding by the BIR chief of running after champion pugilist Rep. Manuel Pacquiao for earnings that are already tax-deducted in the United States where most of his income derives from.

Conversely, the so-called elite that nourish not even an iota of nationalist fervor at all, cheat the government all the time and bribe their way to complete freedom from being subjected to the police power of the state to collect booty for the public coffers.

The preponderance of skill and quasi-skills, not art, nor science of doctoring income tax documents has bred the culture of tax vitatio or a conviction of vitare solutio tributi (avoid paying taxes) or vitare nullo modo pendere statum (do not pay the state by all means).

Nowadays, these criminal minded entities have gone into the act of teaching how to cheat income taxes event-managed, highly outrageous hotel and executive function room-held seminars, symposia, and all that ersatz gimmicks-loaded marketing. Just so to propagate even further non-payment of taxes to the government. The criminal minded and the criminal non-payers clearly have each other to keep. A shameful lot of money is saved in between them.

So the benefits to the state are therefore not provided, but those that bridge the obligated and the state, prosper. In turn, the state cannot service the people whom it must nurture. In many ways dissimilar to neighboring countries that give subsidies for telecommunications, build sufficient or extra large infrastructure that have the capability to offer surplus electric power for both the poor and all the other sectors of society in the Philippines the government allows the people to suffer from power shortage.

The masses are bled dry from excessive charges that only profit the owners of telecommunications companies – whereas from the 1980s in Taiwan for instance – one can set up a small office and spend hours on the telephone calling long distance without paying horrendous costs of communications. However, that small entrepreneur, the farmers and all the rest, dutifully fulfill their obligation of paying their taxes to the Taiwanese government correctly.

It will be difficult to find very highly paid and affluent skilled and semi-skilled accountants numbering by the hundred thousands in Taiwan or even Fujian, China. The best possible destination for these workers is the Philippines where they can fool and defraud the Philippine government and rob the people of the Philippines of the rightful public sector revenue.

Syphillitic Relations with the Rest of the World

The trauma-inducing claim at the Bureau of Customs of over-stocking of container vans, is not only a loss to all the stakeholders as publicly lamented that no less than Philippine Pesos Seventy Billion (PHP70-B) was lost due to the overflowing volume of container vans in the Bureau of Customs warehouses and the container port.

The problem is ridiculous.Container vans mostly spend their time traveling around the world. For intelligent, adequate and responsible state authorities, these items may be allowed to spend some time on land but their real value is when they are on board ships and bringing goods from one port to another. With these the harmless container vans bring in revenue, profits and therefore taxes.

But this equation does not tally with the math of Mr. Sevilla and his fellow appointees at the Bureau of Customs, who abide by the dictates of syndicated operators on how to compute the numbers for each day until Thursday and Friday when the grease monies start rolling into palms of the highly privileged receivers of magnanimous tributes.

Since the time the President, Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III sat in Malacañang, the movement of business has been ultra-slow. The grease and pretend tax payments equivalent to under-the-table-payment of slightly over Forty Thousand Philippine Pesos (PHP40,000) per container to allow the release of said, has ballooned to more than One Hundred Thousand Philippine Pesos (PHP100,000) so that no smugglers have been lifting their fingers to conduct their illicit business at the ports. This is called the “Tara”.

Legitimate shippers on the other hand, even though they have proper documents cannot pay the bribe plus pseudo-taxes particularly now that the rule has been laid down that said “Tara” may reach up to half a million “depending upon the real worth of the goods inside the container.”

Were it so that all of plus or minus Five Hundred Thousand Philippine Pesos (+ – PHP500,000) will go to the coffers of the government, that will be kindly to the people of the country. However, no one knows how PHP400,000 or PHP500,000 will be treated once it changes hands from the owner of the goods to the people at the BOC. No one at the BOC nowadays is ever worthy of any kind of trust at all.

As all of these heavy-duty money making is going on at the revenue centers of the government and a myriad of problems beset the country due to the incompetence and deliberately determined neglect of the administration, one of the most affected aspects of the life of this country is its relations with the world community of nations.

When Mr. Aquino allowed the Quirino Grandstand Hostage Crisis to happen, the farcical drama of the invasion of Malaysia by a band of misfit pirates as in the movies, the resolute murder by omission of the poor people of Tacloban City and other localities affected by Yolanda, the Zamboanga City Siege, among so many other incredibly stupendous faux pas, together with the killing of commerce and trade at the container ports and playing God with his syndicate mob’s rivals by exhausting the tremendous powers of the government at his disposal to literally crush the perceived enemy, this man and his underlings have shamed the Philippines and reduced the standing of the country in the eyes of the world.

Whereas there are enormous ways of curing the problem of the subservience of the Bureau of Customs to criminals and terrorists, the collusion and connivance between the Bureau of Internal Revenue and unimaginative, skilled workers called accountants working for moneyed entities, despite and in spite of the make-believe policy of transparency called “Matuwid na Daan” (straight path) nothing will be done.

With greater revenues, a large number of projects can be completed under Mr. Aquino’s regime. Most services, foreign loan or debt remittances need not be too much a burden – particularly since the trend for many creditors is debt write-offs; condonation; forgiven remaining, outstanding balances.

While it is true that such a move may be impossible to make on the part of the regime of Mr. Aquino considering that his finance secretary is a protege of one of the skill-ful workers that doctor income taxes and steal with fierce impunity from government – Mr. Washington Sycip, still, a great amount of pressure can make the regime be conscienticized from within the ranks of the government itself.

The ugly signs of the monster has been rearing its head when it became known how workers in the disaster assistance sector have gradually been kicked out of their jobs due to lack of financial support from the very government expected to take care of them so in turn they can take care of the people when calamitous tragedy strikes. Recently, the head of the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) is complaining he has no money to pay employees. How on earth can a government – if not of stone-faced thieves and criminals – be able to afford to pretend to be doling out what was initially just more than One Billion Philippine Pesos (PHP1-B) under a so-called Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program is bloating and bloating relentlessly until it reaches the equivalent of the magic figure of One Billion United States Dollars (USD1-B).

The CCT purports to be paying millions of poor people for not doing anything, but simply being poor and yet the disaster workers that number only less than four hundred cannot be allocated the sum for their salaries.

The unbelievably tiny and insignificant NDRRMC issue and similar cases like these are small and isolated islands in the sea of mishaps and horrifying bumblings by the regime of Mr. Aquino. These do not considerably create dents and kinks in the Philippines’ diplomatic, economic, or other vital relations with foreign nations.

Yet the government continues to keep entreating the people with the motherhood statements and pop song-style repetitive speech lines of Mr. Aquino who most cluelessly sticks to his sophomoric, dense and painfully inadequate speech writers. Those that have written speeches for several past presidents loudly complain that the tirades and lecturing, kindergarten oratory of Mr. Aquino are not worth archiving in the annals of the country. Simply because those speeches are sheer garbage.

Since the government incorrigibly shares and maintains the present devil-may-care attitude that “let all be damned as long as I do what I want, say what I want, cry when I want, date when I want, I am Noynoy the President after all,” even with little time left before the final curtain call, there will be foot dragging over the problem at the Bureau of Customs and no one will dare to rock the boat at the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Who needs development from taxes? The people manning the “Matuwid” jeepney and their leader need the skim, so away with the taxes and a big LOLOLOL to the poor for expecting decent services. In the meantime, these behavior and beliefs degrade the closeness and bonds of the people of the Philippines and those of other races and nationalities.

It is hoped that the advancements in current scientific biomedic research will truly happen. There might be a time when the benefits of medicine and pharmacology will be critically important to the well-being of the country, as the government simply keeps allowing the relations of the Philippines and rest of the world to deteriorate to severely syphillitic, gonorrheaic and HIV-AIDS like proportions whereas the original diagnosis of the disease being spread by the good Mister’s family and circle of close friends was only at the level of Chlamydia complexed with Electra syndrome.

We have the Power. We will Overcome!

The people are tired of living under the very dark aegis of the current regime. It appears as though a cloud of evil enveloped the country.

From the onset, weird things were happening under the disguise of “reviewing contracts,” therefore there was a complete cessation of public spending. No projects were being started or continued, everything came to a halt. Other rationalizations came in the form of: “We have no money, the previous administration spent it all, and advanced budget allocations ahead of time…” and so on and so forth. But nobody believes this canard. Because it started to show in the burgeoning national budget despite that there was no spending being made.

The funds for mysterious utilizations like the dole-outs called conditional cash tranfers or CCT, Development Acceleration Program – DAP, among many other diabolically ingenious money-grubbing schemes by the national leadership, ballooned into mind-boggling size that the hunger for money of these creatures becomes clearly, shockingly unbelievable.

 

Where do they get the gumption and gutzpah to engineer such thievery of the people’s money? It cannot be because of telephone and mobile cellular conversations with pastors, Cardinals nor the Pope himself. Because such horrific, sinister schemes speak only of the work of the darkest elements and the malevolent so-called laman-lupa.

 

To make it worse much further, this administration was not only lazy, it was insane. The regime was both psychologically and somatically impaired. The disease it suffered was incurable, irreparable.

 

When everyone noticed that Malacañang was never holding any Cabinet Meetings at all (inpossible for any administration anywhere in the world – but the minions were all in agreement and enjoyed traipsing and gathering money all over town) it pretended to hold such meetings. Yet no meetings took place. The supposed leader dictated terms of endearment on how to tastefully, very slowly kill the regime’s enemies. The great idiotic leader cajoled them into filing cases before the artificial pretend cabinet meetings. When the pretend meetings came, he cajoled them further, over and over again like a decrepit record player – but this one spewed saliva all around.

 

This filing of cases – even one against Philippine and World Champion boxer Manny Pacquiao was all part of a masquerade borne of a depraved and diabolic mind.

 

However, it will be near to impossible for these cold hearted and dark spirited creatures to win in any situation, for always crime does not pay.

 

The rule of law always prevails. Even in the situation of powerful banksters ruling the global economy, where they hold sway over all of us small people – the citizens of the world – the tides are already shifting. Soon as not, these fiendish ogres will ultimately get what they deserve: the wrath of the People.

 

No matter how heinous and nefarious the capability of these wicked few in society now lording it over the public coffers and wielding power over the seemingly helpless Philippine society and people, they cannot triumph.

 

 

Even the Secretary General of the United Nations himself was shamed into visiting Tacloban City after all the members of the world community of nations admitted to the fact that the entire league of governments, including that of Aquino’s quisling regime have failed a small chartered city in Eastern Visayas and embarrased itself in the bar of international public opinion.

 

Whatever the U.N. will say to the contrary, if ever, has no use, because the entire world population has spoken: everyone, to the exception of no one, failed the victims of Yolanda. And after all, Mr. Ban Ki Moon like Aquino, is not perfect and absolutely as adequate as unselfish saints and prophets and will not attempt to rationalize the situation nor draw flak any further than he already has.

 

So now we go into the scenario where we have all been lied to with thorough impunity from the Quirino Grandstand fiasco, to the Zamboanga Siege, the Malaysia farce invasion engineered behind the scenes, and all the other violent, harmful conundrum that the pitiful country has been drawn into by these tyrant monsters.

 

The situation is thus:

 

Someone is painfully doing everything very hard to delete a sin in his heart kept for a long time, diluted by substances and chemicals known and unknown, all the sudden staring into empty space, all the impulse to be alone to smoke and smoke and shoot with guns. But the sin will not go away. Instead the sinner will have to go somewhere and leave the place where he does not deserve to be at all.

 

It has something to do with the death of a very young female inside a car that was caught during a running gun battle between soldiers from the Reform the Armed Forces Movement involved in a coup d’ etat in the late 1980s and those defending the government. Her date promised her a “Joy Ride”. It was a Joy Ride that led straight to hell.

 

 

That animal will die someday but this time, that animal has to go and fast. The country never ever had a need for an abnormal creature in that post. Mr. Ricky Monfort shared this article:

THE VERY, VERY SAD DEATH OF PRESIDENT CORY 

The vaunted Dinner in NY pales in comparison with the “Boston Flower Arrangement”

FACTS

Before and during the wake and funeral of the late Madam Corazon Cojuangco AQUINO CORY, it was bruited about that the Filipinos lost a mother, a woman of integrity, an icon, etcetera.

It was said that the death of the late Madam Corazon Cojuangco AQUINO CORY was a great loss to the Filipino nation but it was also an opportunity to use her well talked about popularity to kick out GMA from the presidency, among other possibilities. See the rest of the article here.

Its not true that the guy wants to be President once more after six years. There is no more time left for the guy. He caused the death of an innocent young female and this West Point Academy graduate officer of the Philippine Army, Armed Forces of the Philippines to lose his legs. Even the West Point of the US itself and the parents of and the victim Army officer themselves, are forbidden up to this day to expose the real culprit of that incident where one life was to be sacrificed just because of an insane date in the middle of gun battles raging and a gentleman from West Point Military Academy had to lose his legs. That culprit has to go. If this is not one of the greatest reasons we can never solve in the Philippines, graft, corruption, lying in the face of the public such as a psychologically impaired broadcaster who killed his wife and is instead not restrained from gallivanting freely about and showing his face shamelessly over national television, no other will suffice. It is truly high time for the Pinoy people to take real action. Article Source: The omnibus blog.

So the lying, warmonger beasts believe they can get away with what they are heaping upon the Philippine public, including to some extent those that are living overseas. But that will no longer continue. The sleeping dragon awakened. Now, the balance is tipped. The greater weight in the scales of Lady Justice is now on the side of the hitherto constantly duped, fooled and bamboozled public.

 

From the time of the ascendancy of the forcibly installed ruthless regime up to this time, the dragon might have taken its sweet time to sleep but its waking time. And the reptile is poised to strike at the visible and known enemy. The signs are in the air as they had always been, as the writing on the wall says it will:

 

 

The criminals have to thank the Heavens that the Guillotine has been banned from use. But then again, with an awakened world movement against corruption, they will have nowhere to run nor hide. But for the dragon, the catch is, to make something like this stupendous and grand-scale chicanery never happen again, especially to the blessed Filipino people.

 

The criminals are well-advised, surrender, embrace jail or just plain succumb to suicide. Crime perpetrators, your ball.

 

Source: Power of the People for Change

Post: August 2, 2014

HMES Papers (a1)

The Philippines:

Forecasting with confidence

Self-doubting prophecy

For nearly five years ago today, it was suggested to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) to enhance its satellite capability instead of simply getting hand-me-down issuances from UN OOSA (United Nations Outer Space Affairs and the NOAA (United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the other geospatial information and intelligence agencies all over the world.

At a certain point in time around the period of the occurrence of the devastation by tropical storm Ketsana (Ondoy) in the Philippines, the PAGASA was clamoring for the purchase and installation of its Doppler radar system, an outmoded and unreliable system for weather forecasting.

In 2010, all throughout the government circuit, the company of Mr. Philip King called AAA, went on a lecture-presentation effort to sell the sensing and image capture technology developed by a Malaysian scientist and technology specialist who was also engaged in a similar high technology, extensive venture for the government of Canada, among other countries.

Had the Department of Science and Technology considered using a network of sensing stations with clear-photo capture capability on a 1-camera-per-station (or possibly a cluster of cameras), weather forecasting in the country, aided with charity hand-outs from NOAA, UNOOSA, the European Union, among other satellite capable agencies, will definitely be more precise at the same time vivid and viewable in real time.

It was foreseen in this site that absolutely nothing will be allowed by Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) to block its path. As early as the morning of the raging of this typhoon that PAGASA decided to merely attribute the powerful rains and killer floods to monsoons, it was already the consensus among the advocates that started this site that many people will die by Ketsana (Ondoy). More > >

Reissuing call for Renewing Paradigms

Eastern Visayas: Hardest hit area during Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda)

As earlier stated in this site: “The level of confidence with which government addresses the challenges of disaster forecasting is extremely low.

“It appears that even being able to obtain certain satellite data about a tropical cyclone’s strength, and the inevitable accompanying storm surges as in New York and other parts of USA very recently, due to inferiority the PAGASA cannot shout out its warnings to the public loud enough so the people can feel the poignant threat of what is going to hit them and at what point in time in the near future.”


Furthermore, as in the case of Tropical Cyclone Ketsana (Ondoy), the Zamboanga City Siege, the Haiyan (Yolanda), among other disasters, there are a lot of dubious, suspicious, highly contradictory statements and acts by government.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) has disclosed to national media that on several days prior to November 8-9, 2013, when tropical cyclone Haiyan codenamed Yolanda struck Eastern and Central Visayas, it had issued warnings about storm surge.

A weather specialist interviewed over national television sounded extremely defensive during the interview, stating in no uncertain terms that he and his agency (PAGASA), cannot and should never be blamed for not issuing warnings about the storm surge.

The Weather Philippines Foundation
On the other hand, on 9 PM November 28, 2013, a search over the internet yielded a page called SUPER TYPHOON HAIYAN (YOLANDA) UPDATE NUMBER 010 constituting findings by a private weather forecasting entity called The Weather Philippines Foundation (WPF) that stated through a written weather advisory disseminated publicly on the internet, that storm surge of up to 18 feet or 5.5 meters will hit coastal, inland lakes and beach front areas of Eastern Visayas between 8-9 AM of Friday, November 8, 2013.

WPF is owned by the Aboitiz Group of Companies (owner of Aboitiz Shipping, Union Bank, etc.) and in partnership with the Meteomedia – a Swiss company established in 1990 by its owner, Jörg Kachelmann.

WPF warned that catastrophic damage is likely on this type of storm surge. Danger from Rip Currents or Rip Tides can be expected along the rest of the beach-front areas of Eastern Luzon, Eastern and Northern Mindanao and the rest of Visayas incl. Palawan.  More > >

Previous: Forecasting with confidence

Next: Response Effort

You might also want to read:

2010 Briefing Paper on hazards mapping and environment Summit 

Resolving post-yolanda settlements concerns

Appeal to international financial community on resettlement, relocation

Photo Gallery: Public Warning Systems

  

                                     Diagram of a PWS

Images of the destruction by calamities in the Philippines and in Japan

Forecasting for the future with more confidence

If you warn them and they keep on sinning and refuse to repent, they will die in their sins. But you will have saved your life because you did what you were told to do. If good people turn bad and don’t listen to my warning, they will die. If you did not warn them of the consequences, then they will die in their sins. Their previous good deeds won’t help them, and I will hold you responsible, demanding your blood for theirs. But if you warn them and they repent, they will live, and you will have saved your own life, too. . . Some of them will listen, but some will ignore you, for they are rebels.

<< Ezekiel 3:18-22 >>

For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me anything to drink. 43 I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me no clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’ 44 “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’ 45 And he will answer, ‘I assure you, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’

<< Matthew 25:41Matthew 25:42-45 Matthew 25:46 >>

Self-doubting prophecy

For nearly five years ago today, we have been goading the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) to enhance its satellite capability instead of simply getting hand-me-down issuances from UN OOSA (United Nations Outer Space Affairs and the NOAA (United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the other geospatial information and intelligence agencies all over the world.

At a certain point in time around the period of the occurrence of the devastation by tropical storm Ketsana (Ondoy) in the Philippines, the PAGASA was clamoring for the purchase and installation of its doppler radar system, an outmoded and unreliable system for weather forecasting.

In 2010, all throughout the government circuit, the company of Mr. Philip King called AAA, went on a lecture-presentation effort to sell the sensing and image capture technology developed by a Malaysian scientist and technology specialist who was also engaged in a similar high technology, extensive venture for the government of Canada, among other countries.

Had the Department of Science and Technology considered using a network of sensing stations with clear-photo capture capability on a 1-camera-per-station (or possibly a cluster of cameras), weather forecasting in the country, aided with charity hand-outs from NOAA, UNOOSA, the European Union, among other satellite capable agencies, will definitely be more precise at the same time vivid and viewable in real time.

It was foreseen in this site that absolutely nothing will be allowed by Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) to block its path. As early as the morning of the raging of this typhoon that PAGASA decided to merely moonsoon rains, it was already the consensus among the advocates that started this site that many people will die by Ketsana (Ondoy).

What kind of weather forecasting transpired during Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) was that by 10:00 AM up to 12:00 noon, PAGASA continued to refuse to declare even a Storm Signal No. 1 for Metro Manila and Rizal Province even at the height of severe rainfall, destructive and killer floods hitting entire subdivisions in Marikina and parts of Rizal, large areas in the urban center of the national capital.

In real time, it was being recommended strongly by this site that a state of calamity and state of emergency already be declared by the Office of the President.

When the media started reporting, albeit belatedly, that some people were reportedly getting killed by Ondoy, it may have dawned on PAGASA that their forecast needed to be amended. Nearing nightfall when panic and frenzy hit the public due to massive negative reports reaching media and feedback filtering through to the lower and highest levels of government, PAGASA relented and finally announced Signal No. 1. It was too late, Malacanang was then preparing to announce a serious state of calamity for the entire Metro Manila including parts of Rizal.

Hundreds died in Provident Village in Marikina. Hundreds died inside a popular Mall at the Riverside commercial complex built beside the huge Marikina River. Still hundreds others were swept by raging waters or seriously injured by stampeding objects and died instantly or were killed by being in the flood and unable to get help for their injuries.

The Haiyan (Yolanda) Fiasco

If the PAGASA did actually issue a warning, albeit introvertedly and timidly, about the storm surge in coordination with the rest of government, the evidence of the storm surge warning only appears at 5:00 AM on d-day, three hours before the storm surge has hit Tacloban City on November 8, 2013 in the national disaster risk reduction agency (NDRRMC) Advisory called Severe Weather Bulletin No. 6.

Still and all, much, much earlier that day, Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) already passed through Tolosa, Leyte and hit neighboring towns beginning its slew of devastations across the entire length of nine Regions of the Philippines.

The NDRRMC Bulletin stated that:

“Residents in low-lying and mountainous (sic) under signal #4, #3, and #2 are alerted against storm surges which may reach up to 7-meter wave height (sic).”

ACTIONS TAKEN 

o   NDRRMC Operations Center disseminated Severe Weather Bulletin No. 6 on Typhoon “Yolanda” to all OCD Regional Centers through SMS and facsimile and uploaded on the NDRRMC website for further dissemination to their respective local disaster risk reduction and management councils (LDRMMCs) from the provincial down to the municipal levels 

o   Directed RDRRMCs concerned through the OCD Regional Centers to undertake precautionary measures in their areas of responsibility (AOR) and subsequently advised local DRRMCs to initiate pre-emptive evacuation of families in low-lying and mountainous areas if situation warrants.

Had the one preparing the Severe Weather Bulletin (SWB) not merely cut and paste from one SWB to the next as can be observed in the various and different advisories issued by the NDRRMC, it must have been possible to introduce some new wording into these so-called severe bulletins. More > >

Next: Reissuing call for a paradigm shift     

hmes2013: Will there be more Negros, Bohol Killer Quakes?

Source: http://www.hazmapping.com

From over 40 casualties, the death toll has risen to nearly 100 in the Carmen, Bohol Province-Cebu City earthquake. At that figure, the Carmen-Cebu tremor can qualify as a Killer Quake. Cebu and nearby areas has to be declared to be in a state of calamity. There are limited manuevers that aircraft can make at the Cebu airport due to the cracking and opening up of the airport’s runways.

The six million dollar question is: how many more incidents like those in Carmen, Bohol and Cebu City and the other ones in Leyte, Samar will we be expecting?

Were the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs) prepared adequately enough with equipment to monitor ground movement, tectonic plate disturbance, the nearly 100 deaths could have been avoided. 27 Billion Philippine Pesos is earmarked for pork barrel in the 2014 General Appropriations Act out of a total expenditure program of 2.26 Trillion Philippine Pesos. Would it be difficult to allocate even half of that pork barrel budget for emergency preparedness, disaster risk reduction, equipment upgrade?

Past Warnings of Big Disaster

This site has been warning the public for more than four years since the time of the former President, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Due to the total torpedoing of the private sector (Corinthian Gardens, Forbes Park, Dasmarinas Village, the owners of high rise condominiums at the left side of EDSA southbound, among others), of the program for predicting highly lethal effects of a major tremor in Metro Manila and the replication of this effort in many urban areas in the country by the same sector in collusion with some corrupt officials in the government, a large disaster and environmental hazards summit was proposed to be supported by the Philippine Government and the United Nations, among other institutions from many other sectors – including the non-profit (minus the Napoles et al NGOs).

Wanting responses

It is reiterated that in the time of Mrs. Arroyo, only the then Administrator of the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA), Ms. Elaine Bautista, now Mrs. Horn, had the small effort to make an email message to the proponents of the 2010 Disaster and Environmental Hazards Mapping Summit. And that was only because the United Nations Environment Programm (UNEP)  told the former Ms. Bautista to get in touch with HMES 2010 organizing group. At the time, concurrent to her post in MARINA, Ms. Bautista was considered a friend of UNEP and a significant point person for the Philippine Government in relation to selected UNEP concerns – particularly about emergency and assistance.

When Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino 3rd became President, the organizing group wrote to Ms. Corazon Juliano Soliman of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Gen. Voltaire Tuvera Gazmin. Ms. Soliman did not respond. It was noticed however that several days later, Gen. Gazmin, the Secretary of the Department of National Defense gave an interview to national media.

In that interview, when Gazmin was asked about what the people should do when a disaster strikes, he replied: “Run for your lives.”

Carrying the barest minimum luggage in their bodies, the poor, helpless people in above photos must have taken advice similar to that of Gen. Voltaire Gazmin’s to leave and forget belongings elsewhere and to “run for your lives.”

It will appear that the kind of response the government has given is exceedingly wanting in substance. It is hoped however that as a grandfather and parent, Gazmin to no fault of his own was merely showing his personal concern for the safety of the life of the average citizen. He was probably very well-meaning and was admonishing the people not to bring their television sets, beds, furniture, cash safety vaults, washing machines, cabinets, sofa, stoves with their fuel gas tanks, desk-stand-ceiling fans, air conditioners, desktop computers and refrigerators outside of their homes and instead to proceed to a more safe location and be saved in time of major catastrophe.

The head of the Philvolcs, Dr. Renato Solidum absolutely cannot be faulted and is blameless. For decades, had been ready to accept the support for equipment upgrade and modernization. Despite the billions of funds allocated to the departments of the government, the great oversight of perpetually forgetting to take care of the Philvolcs modernization programme has consistently been committed by this government.

Despite the billions lost for the personal enrichment of selected persons in our public sector and their intimate partners in very enterprising undertakings in the private sector, no one has shown keen interest in allowing the Philvolcs to finally get hold of the adequate funding for acquisition of hardware and software that will highly increase its forecasting accuracy and its earthquake trending studies and research on the major faults all over the country. Click here for more.

Yolanda: There is a lesson to all this

What is Roxas really doing

in Tacloban anyway if the

glitches and troubles in attending

to the needs of disaster victims

can’t be resolved?

Elders used to say, even in darkness you will find some light, spelling hope and possibly a better future ahead. With the darkness wrought by Yolanda, it cannot be helped that somewhere we will find that light and the signs that all the suffering of the victims will somehow come to a close.

The occasion of doing micromanagement, grandstanding and other similar acts, apparently towards political ends, might ruin instead of prop up the chances of some politicians. This has contributed to making the situation darker in Leyte, other areas that were devastated by Yolanda.

In the case of Senator, now DILG secretary Manuel A. Roxas the 3rd, the desire to show exemplary performance and to do what other acts in Tacloban that he may not be able to perform with partners in Metro Manila, he had to sacrifice not being with the other member of his family, Mrs. Corina Sanchez Roxas and spend his working day as well as nights in Tacloban – or somewhere near that no man’s land: His stay in Tacloban irks the people who see him there and does not bode well for his political future. (Photo credit: Inquirer news)

Ms. Corazon J. Soliman on the other hand, is compelled by her duty to at least make an appearance on occasion at disaster areas being a key member of the top brass of the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) unlike Mr. Roxas who has to go to Tacloban on his own resolves and determinations.

Unlike Mr. Roxas, unless there are changes we do not expect in the future, Ms. Soliman is not running for President in 2016. Eduardo D. Del Rosario, the head of the NDRRMC, should be the one staying in Tacloban – especially if he is running for President or Senator in 2016. But that may never happen. So far, because Del Rosario is a might shy over the idea of setting up camp in the disaster affected areas, even the very presence of NDRRMC according to international observers, is not felt in Tacloban and other places where they are needed the most.

This man, Del Rosario, like his seniors Secretary Voltaire T. Gazmin and Assistant Secretary Efren Q. Fernandez, is deeply embattled in the Department of National Defense where there is an invisible battle being waged by certain ambitious persons who have made it their daily mantra to campaign for the civilianization of the defense department due to the fact that they are now in the most important positions. Some of these multi-diplomaed civilian persons hold four to five concurrent positions under the Secretary, the undersecretaries and assistant secretaries.

Another secretary, this one without portfolio, Jose Rene Almendras, a very close friend of the President of the Philippines, former President of Manila Water, is in the limelight of the post Yolanda tragedy possibly by the design of Mr. Aquino or Almendras’ dream of reviving the golden days of the Almendras clan in politics. From being energy secretary to cabinet secretary, Almendras, aside from Mr. Roxas is now one one of the country’s hands-on disaster response management experts. And doing a bad job with Roxas at it.

As Mr. Simeon Benigno Cojuaungco Aquino the 3rd wades through the waters of indifference over the plight of the victims of Yolanda, the share prices in the Philippine stock market plummeted, ostensibly due to the risk avoidance stance of many investors worldwide. The inside track of course will reveal that apprehensions over the Aquino regime’s handling of government and the severely wanting response to Yolanda, is a main factor in the share price plunge.

There appears to be lessons in all this. Among the most critical lessons learned during the brief past few days, considering the media perception that Mr. Aquino does not fire incompetents, the following might be more sensible to sane people:

1. Roxas must return to Manila. After the Anderson Cooper faux pas of Roxas’ wife, Corina, who was merely defending her traipsing husband, Roxas should no longer be burdened with sneaking and tripping away from Metro Manila and continue with his job at DILG as Secretary in earnest.

2. As an alternative, Mr. Aquino could also replace Roxas and move him up to become the head of a new super body on trade, finance and economic development. As trade secretary, Roxas was very effective. Given that expertise, this person can scale heights beyond Mt. Everest especially in the face of our plummeting stock market performance. (If Malacanang will pay for it, http://www.qualitychange.org can draft the executive order creating the temporary super body and the law that will make it permanent provided that this site will be allowed to bill Mr. Aquino for these expensive assessments and tedious effort of drafting an enabling order tailored fit for 2016.)

3. To make DILG run smoothly, a civilian person, not a retired military nor police officer, with traits similar to or better than that of Mayor Rodrigo Duterte should be appointed by Mr. Aquino to replace Roxas. As much as possible, whether that person comes from alta sociedad (high society) or not, the new DILG secretary must be very down-to-earth and willing to hold hands with the people – particularly in disaster stricken areas. Roxas refused to dirty his hands in Tacloban and while he is perennially making his presence felt there, he appears not to be winning confidence by being a snub and appearing to be disinterested and indifferent to the suffering Taclobanons.

4. Almendras should share his powers with Undersecretary Eduardo Del Rosario. Almendras, with the absent-mindedness of Mr. Aquino, should also use the same power to with Del Rosario to goad the entire might of the NDRRMC to action. While Del Rosario is not an expert in disaster response, as a former figure head of the special warfare community in the entire armed forces, he should be a quick thinker, tactician and smooth operator. With the powers of Almendras (who has Mr. Aquino’s backing), Del Rosario’s fast execution, all government apparatus available and even private equipment, installations can be tapped and made to work in favor of the quickest resolution of the issues in the disaster afflicted regions of the country.

What appears to be necessary at this time, is massive mobilization. The tragedy brought by Yolanda spawned so many social problems. It is needless to mention all of these negative effects of that typhoon in this space. What appears to be in order is for Del Rosario to wage war against these social problems, treat these ills as the enemy and engage a gargantuan force mobilization to end the disease persisting in Leyte and neighboring provinces.

5. Ms. Corina Sanchez should no longer speak of Anderson Cooper even in jest. (www.qualitychange.org suggests sleep therapy and positive advice on hatred for men.)

6. The suggestions of qcfcgroup.com for a more meaningful approach to managing the relief distribution, by increasing to put in place a new paradigm for managing disaster response along with hazmapping.com‘s advocacy to relocate from extreme high risk areas is recommended to be followed by the government as well as Asia Health Network to increase relief goods packing centers would be a positive step to take for this regime.

7. Finally, Mr. Aquino should give importance to this man in the photo below: his appointee to the post vacated by Almendras, Secretary Jericho Petilla of the Department of Energy. Mr. Aquino can task him with providing all the support and information Del Rosario will need.

The Petilla family and the Veloso family, have almost completely replaced the Romualdezes in achieving total control and power over Leyte.

For  generations the Petillas have lorded it over Leyte, and now they have adequate power and control as well in Southern Leyte. Therefore the energy secretary, Jericho Petilla, 3-term Leyte Governor, after having benefited from the fruits of their family’s being the overlord of Leyte should know the province like the back of his hand, plus it will be a way of giving back to the province what he had received in bountiful blessings in the past.

Related Topics:

For relocation away from danger zones:

Relocation from fire vulnerable areas

New Zealand: Large scale evacuation, relocation

Relocation away from landslide threat

UNICEF: Relocating families to safe areas

Comparative view:

To relocate or not to relocate