CHINA’S ULTRANATIONALIST FACTION BEGINS DOMESTIC HEGEMONY

CHINA’S ULTRANATIONALIST FACTION BEGINS DOMESTIC HEGEMONY

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

China’s impressive ascent from a struggling, poor, 3rd world agrarian economy to the growing industrializing giant that is it today renders the country truly worth accolades the world over. China achieved development with nary an aid from external sources which makes the development challenge truly a daunting one.

Yet China was able to forge ahead with its development targets. With the growth of China’s economy also comes the growth of its military might, which is raising eyebrows in the entire Asian continent. For its neighbors that are now locked up in territorial disputes with the economic giant, the positive esteem has turned into a nightmare of sorts as China’s military began to flex muscles by intruding into those disputed islands.

I just hope that the foreign policy analysts of the affected Asian countries would get to know well the configuration of political forces inside China. Foreign policy and actuations by the giant state can be best explained precisely by identifying and assessing the strength of the most powerful political forces inside the Chinese state.

My thesis about the matter is that among all political factions vying for hegemony over the Chinese state, it is the Ultranationalists who are at the helm of that state today. These are not nationalists of the old Kuomintang mold, as the Kuomintang was largely expelled from the mainland in 1949 yet. The nationalists are Communist Party cadres who are only communist in name but nationalists in mold.

Remember that socialist China was first dominated by the Maoists, whose rule reached up to 1976, the last year of the chaotic Cultural Revolution era (1966-76) of the Gang of Four. It was the Maoists who tied down China to its agrarian state, and equalized poverty as a sort of Spartan virtue.

The Liberal faction of the Communist Party took over the reigns of power, by overthrowing the Maoists in a coup d’etat post-1976. The Liberals produced the leader Deng Shao Ping whose faction was pro-West. This faction began the market reforms in China that led to its present social market economy, which was made possible with the return to power of technocrats (who were purged by the Gang of Four).

During the latter phase of the Liberals’ hegemony, a new nationalist mold calcified inside the Party. While not allergic to market reforms, they strongly adhered to dirigist principles that were steeped in mercantilist doctrines. They resonated with the Liberals for a while, whom they served as core allies in building an industrializing China.

The past president Guang Zemin and premier Zu Rongji are examples of leaders who were nationalists of a moderate mold. Their economic policies strongly align with Roosevelt’s New Deal and John Meynard Keynes’ demand-side economics and interventionist tools. The present president Hu Jintao falls within this ideological frame, even as the top executives of the state are of the moderate mold.

There is another faction within the nationalists that is extremist though, which we will label as Ultranationalists for lack of a better term. They are now well positioned in the bureaucracy’s echelon including the military. Ultranationalists tend to be militarists, and under their leadership expect the Chinese state to scale up military budgets and heap up hysteria of a ‘state of siege’ by neighboring countries and traditional world powers.

Ultranationalism could well be the cementing force that will rally the young Chinese behind the 21st Chinese state, a possibility that is worth watching. Ultranationalism is dreaded by Taiwan, a dread that is now spilling over to the other neighbors of China.

[Philippines, 15 June 2011]

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SCOURGE OF CORRUPTION

SCOURGE OF CORRUPTION

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day to you fellow global citizens!

We just celebrated the 25th EDSA People Power Revolution in PH last Feb 25. A full twenty-five (25) years after EDSA, the country remains mired in the gargantuan problem of bad governance. Graft & corruption continues to be a scourge to this country, ditto for other countries.

Patrimonial interest groups of every shade continue to pillage the national coffers and the business sector. Business and politics are as intertwined as ever, thus barring efforts to bring down patron-client relations in the public and private spheres. No wonder that corruption remains high and could be, in fact, scaling up the heights in exponential fashion.

For as long as bad governance (‘bureaucrat capitalism’ is the Maoists’ term for it) remains in a vicious circle pattern, poverty will loom large in the near future. People’s incomes will be relatively stagnant, resulting to a stagnant if not declining middle income class. The high growth figure of 7% annual growth will therefore be meaningless, as the growth benefits largely those who are already very rich.

It doesn’t matter if the Philippines has already been urbanized, with as large as 68% of the population and/or the labor force residing in cities and big towns. Urban it is alright, yet replete with narratives of burgeoning urban poor populations.

So that brings us back to square 1, which is the self-perpetuating bad governance cycle. Whether the vicious cycle can be broken during the incumbency of the Aquino regime is doubtful. This government is being run by mediocre bureaucrats who are predominantly Jesuit-schooled boys and girls, who as a whole administer the public sector like “running a student council” as Sen. Joker Arroyo aptly described them.

Sadly for the country and other emerging markets, it is this governance side of the equation that cancels out the very positive outlook resulting from high growth. To note, it is this same scourge that had angered youthful Arabs in Tunisia and Egypt who watched their national leaders plunder the coffers like they were lusciously consuming personal candies, and the scourge is now driving many other Arabs to the streets to overthrow their corrupt leaders.

Good governance, strong institutions, and right policies are getting to be appreciated all the more by the youthful working peoples of the day, such as those in the Arab states. They are values that strongly appeal to the middle class of developing countries, while they resonate well for the young generation of Arabs. Amusing observations!

If the middle class of emerging markets can inspire the young generations of Arabs and countries with authoritarian regimes at the helm, well and good. But let the ‘regime change’ agents be reminded that overthrowing corrupt authoritarian and/or autocratic regimes do not an incorruptible government make.

Examine the history of the Philippines and other countries that are similarly situated, where bad governance perpetually churns itself out long after dictatorships were overthrown. Our neighbor Indonesia is similarly situated, and so are couples of countries in Latin America. The more so for African countries where the problem of racial integration complicates the scourge of corruption.

It seems like we badly hit a quagmire in PH and other developing countries, in regard to graft & corruption. Whether we shall all jettison efficaciously out of the quagmire in the short run is a delusion. And maybe never will there be hope in reforming governance institutions that would enable eradication of poverty and attendant problems.

As to the reason behind the scourge, I am reminded of the explanation of the pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim. The noblesse gentleman cogitated that there will always be deviants in society, unless that society is populated by saints. Deviance, such as corruption, will always prevail at levels beyond the residual, to follow Durkheim’s logic.

Economists would have it that ‘rent seeking’ will assert itself in diverse circumstances, inclusive of the public sector. Rent seeking, or reaping profits beyond opportunity costs, explicates corrupt practices and no less. The UP School of Economics professor Emmanuel De Dios had already writ informative articles about the matter, so please try to search for his articles in university libraries and online.

I do perceive corruption as a scourge, even as I remain optimistic that in the very long run it will be minimized. Humans will gradually evolve across time, and I guess the conscience of future humans will work the greater to make values work in daily life. But it seems my concluding note is only wishful thinking, so I’d leave it up to you to form your opinions on the subject matter.

[Philippines, 27 February 2011]

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EVIL GLOBAL ELITES KILLED PH’S ANGELO REYES

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

In a previous article, this analyst tackled the matter of corruption in the echelon of the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines). As discussed, the AFP echelon’s corrupt acts have direct link to the US Pentagon that bred the former and continues to treat it as a subordinated institution.

It was during the recent ongoing investigations that former AFP chief and past Secretary of Defense, Angelo Reyes, was summoned by the Senate to answer allegations about slush funds for generals and related graft practices. Barely just days after facing the senate blue ribbon committee, Reyes committed suicide by shooting himself at the foot of his deceased mother’s grave.

Had Reyes died of a health-related cause such as cardiac arrest, I should have never suspected of the possible handiwork of an evil circle behind his death. Reyes died just like the way the late Ted Borlongan, former CEO of the Union Bank, end his life. Borlongan was blamed for the bank run that the Union Bank went through, and committed suicide by shooting himself at the foot of his mother’s grave.

People ought to know that the Union Bank is owned by the former president Fidel V. Ramos, also a retired general like Reyes. As president from 1992 through ’98, Ramos got was alleged to have received gargantuan kickbacks in power contracts, government estates sales (to favored buyers), and the infra for the centennial celebration of Philippine independence, among others.

Ramos left the presidency very much wealthier than before, enough for him to secure control of the Union Bank as a largesse for his favored actions for a certain patron comprising of evil cabal. That same cabal are persons among the Who Is Who of global elites, and comprise a section of the abominable Committee of 300 (C300), also known as the Illuminati or New World Order (a Luciferan global network or secret government).

Ramos’ abominable handlers were the ones who planned all along to overthrow Marcos in 1986, which indeed happened. The same cabal again used Ramos to overthrow Erap Estrada in 2001, which also happened. Angelo Reyes, then chief of staff under Erap, was already a favored figure among neo-conservative honchos inside the Pentagon (installed there earlier by the old man Bush).

So you can see how easy it was for Ramos to connect to Angie Reyes who was his former subordinate (as chief of AFP and as defense secretary). Upon the behest of the neo-conservative wing of the C300 and old players like George Schultz (a C300 adept), Ramos gave the directive to Angie to tow the line and join the EDSA II forces that were massing up to overthrow Erap.

To claim now that Reyes voluntarily shot himself is old hat simpleton discourse. Writers and thinkers can go on with their reflections about his death, but I don’t buy any of them. Like Ted Borlongan couples of years back, Reyes was a fall guy. A cabal of dark adepts, using psychic attack method (e.g. meditating together to command the target to commit suicide), took down both Borlongan and Reyes.

Both Borlongan and Reyes knew of very highly classified information—regarding criminal money movements such as racketeering, money laundering—that were done by dirty operators of the C300. Borlongan knew of classified info in the banking sector, while Reyes knew of parallel information within the defense Establishment.

In Reyes’ case, information about direct commands from the C300 for the escalation of hostilities with the Muslim separatists in Mindanao was the bone of contention. AFP field forces were used to sell arms to the rebels (Sen. Trillanes and Magdalo rebel forces know much about this), indicating how important war was to the generals, defense officials and Pentagon honchos.

To cut the story short, Reyes must be eliminated in order to stop further investigations unleashing a can of worms. Investigations should stop at the level of retired generals, and venture not an iota into culpabilities of global networks of the abominable C300.

Reyes was clearly a fall guy in the dirty games of the elites. A person with a strong mind like Reyes, who isn’t ailing from sociopathy or personality disorder, has no suicidal ideation tendency. I am not about to be fooled by abominations who are playing tricks on the public mind, by making it appear that Reyes’ suicide was volitional.

The evil handlers of Ramos did it to Borlongan before, they did it to Reyes this time. It will only be a matter of time before some fall guys will die again as sacrificial pawns in their evil games for the sake of their insatiable greed and power over people’s minds.

[Philippines, 19 February 2011]

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PH MILITARY CORRUPTION CONNECTS TO PENTAGON

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Pleasant day to you fellow global citizens!

Criminal investigations are currently hounding the Philippine military, with retired generals serving as frontal targets of congressional investigations. The dirty practices among echelon officers in the headquarters of the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) include huge slush funds juggled from soldiers’ salaries and ghost battalions, and listening to the investigation proceedings is like watching a super-shocker horror film.

The new rounds of investigations have revealed corrupt practices that were heretofore untold. There is, for instance, the pabaon system whereby a retiring Chief of Staff will be automatically gifted with P50 Millions in cash. As a result of the corrupt practices, generals are able to own mansions, invest in estates and condominiums, or splurge cash outflows for assets that are way beyond what their salaries can afford them to consume.

I hope that the investigators will review the link between the AFP and the Pentagon (US Defense Department & military) to be able to effectively trace the roots of the corrupt practices. The AFP was a child of the Pentagon, US defense officials continued to have direct links to the AFP’s echelon even after RP gained independence in 1946, and the war policies of the AFP were copied straight from the father unit Pentagon whose war policies have been benefiting Defense and military officials from the colossal arms contracts.

War makes some people much richer than before, and that is the political economy of hot pursuit aggressions. Not only do some people in the military make money out of arms & supplies purchases, thus making war a necessity of the moment. Financier oligarchs, who finance wars, also make money from the hot fires of conflicts, as they rake in mega-profits from rapid cross-border movements of ‘smart money’ that take place in the region where conflict happens.

In the Pentagon, officials’ grins always stretch up to their ears, for the reason that arms contracts are ceaseless sources of boons like some waterfalls of cash. Concurred without biddings, arms suppliers and Pentagon bosses connive to jack up the prices of arms & supplies by as much as 14 times their expected wholesale prices. A bullet worth $1 for instance will be padded sky-high to $14, thus making Pentagon and arms producers very happy.

“Like Father like Son,” goes an old folk cliché. Though seemingly silly, the cliché seems to describe the AFP perfectly being a clone of the father (Pentagon). The matter of corruption in arms & supplies purchases is already a classic one to behold, investigated on and on like vicious circle.

An addition to the list of corrupt practices was the embezzlement of pension funds for military veterans. Again, the same echelon officials were involved in the anomalies, even as their bottomless greed resulted to the bankrupting of accumulated pension funds for veterans. As a response to the problem, the national government was compelled, via legislative measure, to allot additional appropriations to fund the pension gap so as provide crumbs to the obedient retired soldiers.

Just less than a decade ago, young officers sent to the battlefields (versus local rebels) were shocked over the directive that they drop off caches of arms and munitions to the enemy area. That was a clear indication that echelon officers were selling arms to the enemy, making big bucks and living in style in the Big City, while young officers and enlisted personnel were eking a living in the battlefields and living in shabby Spartan barracks.

The mafia behavior of echelon AFP officers, such as selling arms to the enemy and racketeering, surely couldn’t have been bred as a genuine unique behavior by themselves. The behavior was copied elsewhere, and that the same officers were emboldened to do their criminal graft acts as they felt they were protected by gods in the Philippine Establishment and the Pentagon.

As a matter of fact, the directives for the AFP to resume large-scale attacks on the rebels (Muslim separatist & Maoist) and jihadist terrorists could have come straight from Pentagon and not the PH presidential palace. The chiefs of staff of the AFP are henchmen of certain Pentagon officials, the most recent Pentagon honchos being the neo-conservatives entrenched there by the Bush father & son.

Ergo, in the case of any large-scale investigation of military corruption, the investigation shouldn’t stop at the AFP generals alone. It should go much higher than the generals, and that “much higher” should point out straight to the US Pentagon. Not only is the PH AFP corrupt, it also comprises of officers whose patriotism is for sale to the highest bidders, and it is high time to reform it or abolish it altogether.

[Philippines, 19 February 2011]

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FAILURE OF POLLS: WHO GAINS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day to you all!

Manila’s mass media has been filled with news recently about the possibility of a failure of the May elections. The failure scenario is being forecast at a time when Filipinos will have a first taste of computerized elections.

For everyone’s clarification, the failure to computerize previous elections had got nothing to do with absence of expertise locally who could design software and hardware systems customized for poll purposes, since our infotech sector here had reached maturity sometime back in the 1990s yet precisely due to high-level expertise here. Our computerization has failed because dirty politicians (who were accustomed to cheating) and poll officials (COMELEC) have been exhibiting a ‘cultural lag’ in adapting to rapidly emerging technologies, hence their effective barring of poll computerization in the past.

Finally here we are, dangled with the state-of-the-art poll tools and methods, now ready or so it seems to face the polls with the new game. Albeit, in the process of the preparations for the polls, obstacles kept on cropping out from the mouths of poll execs, thus rendering the entire exercise as low in credibility in terms of public trust.

To make matters worst, the post of Chief Justice (CJ) of the Supreme Court has been rendered vacant. So crucial is the CJ as the magistrate is the one mandated to formalize the oath-taking of execs who win in the polls. Capping this rather toxic issue is the controversy in the choice of the next magistrate.

The clear scenario is that, after the polls, the positions of all the top state posts will be vacant, leaving no one to steward the nation during the brief transition to the time when execs will be declared winners and will then begin their respective incumbencies. To add incendiary overtones to the already heated discourses on the matter, which were spiced up with protest rallies of late, a state official (USec Planas) pronounced the possibility of a take-over by the military as a pre-emptive measure to avoid anarchy during the period of vacancies.

Belaboring the obvious, like unto some kindergarten quacks, political stakeholders have already started accusing palace officials as the diabolical plotters and greatest beneficiaries of a poll failure. Supposedly, military’s top chief Gen. Bangit takes over government, and then declares outgoing Gloria Arroyo as president on an extended term, thus perpetuating the governance by the ruling Arroyo family.

What is less obvious, which many would fail to realize, is that the neo-conservatives or ‘neocons’ who are well entrenched in the US Defense establishment is again into another set of synarchic destabilization in the region, and they are using their pawns inside the Philippine military to do their bidding. The country’s military maintains its organic ties to Pentagon and is ever-ready for some destabilization from the top (Washington & Europe).

The neocons and global oligarchic operators have been behind the institution of insurgent groups in the country, to create a situation of perpetual polarization and anarchy. Insurgencies are part of the politico-military games of the global elites (military-industrial complex is another term), and the game goes to the extent of our own military being cajoled to sell arms to the insurgents in order to renew armed confrontations, leading to more arms sales and ballooning the wallets of corrupt military & state officials.

If indeed Arroyo is amenable to being re-instated as chief exec on an extended term, she knows the arrangement as entirely hatched from Washington DC. Whatever role she performs in the latest political fiasco is only peripheral, she being just another pawn in the broader agenda of the neocons and global elites for the southeast.

The possible election of a nationalist regime, led by the noblesse senator Manny Villar, is perceived as a threat to the neocons and global oligarchs. Such a regime would put an end to the insurgencies most likely, an act that would snuff off the polarity games of the elites and hurt the pockets of corrupt military & state officials who would lose their contract payolas and gains from arms procurements.

Another scenario that could happen is that a people power by the Yellow Forces will be launched, bringing us back ala déjà vu to 1986. Seeing that the mass rising is unstoppable, the generals would then opt to support the civil disturbance and the presidency of Noynoy Aquino, even if it turns out that this mediocre candidate tails in survey ratings and poll returns.

Noynoy is the candidate choice of a greater wing of the global oligarchy led by the Anglo-Dutch financiers, with their puppet personages active in the Makati Business Club. The clerico-fascist wing (which has links with the Vatican) is with this conglomerate, with one of their leaders at the helm of the CIA-initiated Namfrel.

A hyper-convergence of the efforts of these unholy puppets of the global financiers/oligarchs and their militaristic subalterns (neocons) isn’t far-fetched a reality, as one ought to recognize. Since the neocons faction has been marginalized with the recent pre-eminence of the liberal-to-left factions of oligarchic subalterns (eg. Democrat victory in the USA), it is most likely that RP’s generals will play the game and ride the wind whichever it will go, and will not attempt to put up a junta that is too autonomous from their Pentagon sponsors’ agenda.

With just around seven (7) weeks before poll day, the plot is unfolding fast and making the polls more colorful though threateningly crisis-filled. Let’s see whether the cry-wolf propaganda about failure & military take-over will spoil the polls at all.

[Philippines, 21 March 2010. See: https://unladtau.wordpress.com, http://erleargonza.blogspot.com%5D

GAZA: NEO-CONSERVATIVES’ HATCHERY FOR LARGER CONFLAGRATION

Erle Frayne Argonza

Magandang gabi! Good evening!

Modern Israel had ceased to be an underling state that it used to project itself during its early historic phase. It had grown into a regional power, its military might made possible by massive infusion of western aid and the economic prosperity resulting from that external intervention. It has 300 nuclear warheads, per intelligence reports and revelation by former US president Jimmy Carter, and is a key pawn of the Western financier oligarchs in their political pandemics worldwide.

The ascent of the neo-conservatives in the USA, led by the likes of Cheney, had surely been a great boon to the fascistic forces within the Israeli Establishment whose appetite for aggression has been driven by obsessive desires to carve out new territories—for the rambunctious nation—outside Israel’s borders. A convergence of mindsets between two fascistic forces, in the USA and Israel, would surely fit into the mad plan of hegemonistic Anglo-European-American oligarchs to ignite another world war, which coincides with the crashing recessionary economies in their backyards.

To contend that the latest conflict between Israeli forces and the Hamas is merely a brawl between neighbors is idiocy fit for the blind and simpletons. The neo-conservative agenda, hatched by Cheney & comrades, is to hook up Israel in an alliance with Sunni Arab states and pit the alliance against Shiite Islam led by Iran. Israel was simply compliant with agreements already preset as early as late 2007 yet, when neo-cons officials frequented the region and forged this Zion-Sunni.

That the conflict has already quite spread to a new domain, namely the Israeli-Lebanese rebel conflict, shows that some hidden forces are working to expand the conflict to one that is region-wide. A terrorist 3rd force in Lebanon, which the British & American intelligence could have created (just as they did in my own country by creating and funding the Abu Sayyaf), was hatched with the purpose of widening the latitudes of the conflict.

Now that the neo-conservatives were effectively booted out of power, the world community can dowse water on this mad conflict which doesn’t serve the welfare of both Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Let us hope that the new US president, Barack Obama, will be informed and advised more wisely by cooler and saner officials in Washington about the real score in Western Asia: that the conflict better end up and a ceasefire declared.

Let us also hope that the leaders of Israel, Palestine, Eqypt, and Jordan, who are all stooges of the Anglo-European financier oligarchy, would recognize to some fresher insights about how to attain stability in the region, by listening to new leaders in Washington who, in turn, should work to veer away America from the mighty clutch of the same oligarchic cabal. The prophetic timeline for World War III is not a fixed one, but rather a flexible timeline that can be changed, leading us away from abominable conflagration to world peace and cooperation.

[25 January 2009, Quezon City, MetroManila]

US GENERAL: AFGHANISTAN’S A FAILURE, STRESSES DEVELOPMENT

Erle Frayne Argonza

Good day!

A retired US general recently spoke about the overall conduct of war in Afghanistan. To the surprise and chagrin of defense experts and officials, the general most candidly declared that Afghanistan was a disaster.

The retired general spoke more like a development expert than a uniformed defense official. Accordingly, there is no military solution to Afghanistan’s problems. The ideas proposed by the same (ret) uniformed official combine relief and rehab, infrastructures, and capacity-building efforts, or those solutions that have to do more with a total development package. This is a clear departure from the demented thinking in Pentagon and DC that tend to exacerbate the destructive facets of US engagements in Afghanistan.

Below is the news item about the (ret) official’s pronouncements.

[18 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to Executive Intelligence Review database news.]

McCaffrey: Afghanistan Disaster, Unless We Send in the Engineers

Aug. 7, 2008 (EIRNS)—Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who often functions as an informal advisor to senior Army leadership on the current wars, reported on the disaster in Afghanistan following his July 21-26 trip to that country and to NATO headquarters in Belgium. In a memo dated July 30, addressed to the Social Sciences department at West Point, McCaffrey writes: “Afghanistan is in misery.” Sixty-eight percent of the population has never known peace, life expectancy is only 44, and Afghanistan has the highest maternal death rate in the world, he reports. The security situation, the economy (including agriculture, which is “broken”), governance, and the opium problems, are “all likely to get worse in the coming 24 months.”

There is no military solution, McCaffrey writes: “The atmosphere of terror cannot be countered mainly by military means. We cannot win through a war of attrition…. Afghanistan will not be solved by the addition of two or three more US combat brigades from our rapidly unraveling Army.”

Instead, McCaffrey argues that, in addition to building up the Afghan security forces, economic measures are also required. He calls for the deployment of a “five battalion Army engineer brigade… to lead a five year road building effort employing Afghan contractors and training and mentoring Afghan engineers…. The war will be won when we fix the Afghan agricultural system which employs 82% of the population…. The war will be won when the international community demands the eradication of the opium and cannibis crops and robustly supports the development of alternative economic activity.” McCaffrey pointed to the tremendous growth in the poppy crop since the US invasion in 2001 and warned that “Unless we deal head-on with this enormous cancer, we should have little expectation that our efforts in Afghanistan will not eventually come to ruin.” On Pakistan, McCaffrey warns against a US military intervention in that country from across the border in Afghanistan, which he says “would be a political disaster. We will imperil the Pakistani government’s ability to support our campaign. They may well stop our air and ground logistics access across Pakistan and place our entire NATO presence in severe jeopardy.” In dealing with Pakistan, “We must do no harm…” 

ANTHRAX SCARE: SPIN DOCTORS, ROUGE FORCES

Erle Frayne Argonza

 

News came out recently about the suicide by a biodefense researcher who may have something to do with the anthrax scare weeks after the 9/11 event in the USA. I was in the USA at that time, and I witnessed the anxiety and trauma done by that sordid event.

 

My own theory then was that rouge forces within the USA were the ones behind the 9/11. The series of scare tactics and bombing hoax that followed could have been part of that overall agenda. The grand levels of fears could have been used to justify more police state intervention, at the worst leading to a declaration of Martial Law in the whole USA.

 

The bad thing, I think, is that the biodefense researcher’s death cut up the opportunity to find out who were the real people behind that anthrax scare. The rouge forces connects to Establishment, this is most likely, so the researcher’s death will bury forever that channel of command between this researcher and the real manipulators behind the screen.

 

The news report below reflects the update news about the researcher’s death.

 

[02 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to MSN database news.]

==================================================================

By LARA JAKES JORDAN and DAVID DISHNEAU, Associated Press Writers Fri Aug 1, 3:57 AM ET

 

WASHINGTON – A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at the government’s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md., had been told about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI’s investigation of the anthrax attacks, which killed five people.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. The Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.

Tom Ivins, a brother of the scientist, told The Associated Press that another of his brothers, Charles, told him Bruce had committed suicide.

A woman who answered the phone at Charles Ivins’ home in Etowah, N.C., refused to wake him and declined to comment on his death. “This is a grieving time,” she said.

A woman who answered the phone at Bruce Ivins’ home in Frederick declined to comment.

Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr and FBI Assistant Director John Miller declined to comment on the report.

Henry S. Heine, a scientist who had worked with Ivins on inhalation anthrax research at Fort Detrick, said he and others on their team have testified before a federal grand jury in Washington that has been investigating the anthrax mailings for more than a year.

Heine declined to comment on Ivins’ death.

Norman Covert, a retired Fort Detrick spokesman who served with Ivins on an animal-care and protocol committee, said Ivins was “a very intent guy” at their meetings.

Ivins was the co-author of numerous anthrax studies, including one on a treatment for inhalation anthrax published in the July 7 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

Just last month, the government exonerated another scientist at the Fort Detrick lab, Steven Hatfill, who had been identified by the FBI as a “person of interest” in the anthrax attacks. The government paid Hatfill $5.82 million to settle a lawsuit he filed against the Justice Department in which he claimed the department violated his privacy rights by speaking with reporters about the case.

The Times said federal investigators moved away from Hatfill and concluded Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert Mueller changed leadership of the investigation in 2006. The new investigators instructed agents to re-examine leads and reconsider potential suspects. In the meantime, investigators made progress in analyzing anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two U.S. senators, according to the report.

Besides the five deaths, 17 people were sickened by anthrax that was mailed to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the news media in New York and Florida just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The victims included postal workers and others who came into contact with the anthrax.

In the six months following the anthrax mailings, Ivins conducted unauthorized testing for anthrax spores outside containment areas at USAMRIID — the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick — and found some, according to an internal report by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, which oversees the lab.

In December 2001, after conducting tests triggered by a technician’s fears that she had been exposed, Ivins found evidence of anthrax and decontaminated the woman’s desk, computer, keypad and monitor, but didn’t notify his superiors, according to the report.

The report says Ivins performed more unauthorized sampling on April 15, 2002, and found anthrax spores in his office, in a passbox used for moving materials in and out of labs, and in a room where male workers changed from civilian clothing into laboratory garb.

Ivins told Army investigators he conducted unauthorized tests because he was worried that the powdered anthrax in letters that had been sent to USAMRIID for analysis might not have been adequately contained.

In January 2002, the FBI doubled the reward for helping solve the case to $2.5 million, and by June officials said the agency was scrutinizing 20 to 30 scientists who might have had the knowledge and opportunity to send the anthrax letters.

After the government’s settlement with Hatfill was announced in late June, Ivins started showing signs of strain, the Times said. It quoted a longtime colleague as saying Ivins was being treated for depression and indicated to a therapist that he was considering suicide. Family members and local police escorted Ivins away from the Army lab, and his access to sensitive areas was curtailed, the colleague told the newspaper. He said Ivins was facing a forced retirement in September.

The colleague declined to be identified out of concern that he would be harassed by the FBI, the report said.

Ivins was one of the nation’s leading biodefense researchers.

In 2003, Ivins and two of his colleagues at the USAMRIID received the highest honor given to Defense Department civilian employees for helping solve technical problems in the manufacture of anthrax vaccine.

In 1997, U.S. military personnel began receiving the vaccine to protect against a possible biological attack. Within months, a number of vaccine lots failed a potency test required by federal regulators, causing a shortage of vaccine and eventually halting the immunization program. The USAMRIID team’s work led to the reapproval of the vaccine for human use.

The Times said Ivins was the son of a Princeton-educated pharmacist who was born and raised in Lebanon, Ohio. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees, including a Ph.D. in microbiology, from the University of Cincinnati.

He and his wife, Diane, owned a home just outside the main gate to Fort Detrick. …

MANILA’S ESPERON – FASCIST PEACEMAKER

Erle Frayne Argonza

The ‘neo-cons’ and Pentagon guys have quite some nice news to savor with the appointment of retired army general Hermogenes Esperon Jr. as official peacemaker. Esperon has shown fascistic ‘cold war’ behavior during his watch, which serves the purpose of the global oligarchy and US military-industrial elites well.

Being a member of the last batches of ‘cold war’ mold military academy students, Esperon rose to power in the military for his records of loyalty to past regimes beleaguered by relentless putschist attacks from military rebels. He particularly served his former boss, Angelo Reyes (past military and defense boss, now Energy boss), very well.

Reyes was the crux of attack by young officers who took on the cudgels of militaristic  adventurism this decade. The rebel officers perhaps know their intelligence information by heartl: that the Philippine military is simply but a cog in larger games played by the global oligarchy to create troubles everywhere (synarchism agenda) aimed at total control of population and resources of the planet.

Reyes has direct links with the Pentagon, and took directives from his ‘political officers’ there, notably Ramsfeld when the latter still called the shots. His command’s actions included sales of military arms to Moslem rebels and related groups. The military rebels’ coup attempts somehow put a stop to the ‘neocons’ covert operations in the southern Philippines, but sooner or later this could pick pace up again.  And this is the importance of seeing ‘neocon’ stooges installed to sensitive exec posts in Manila.

So among young and middle officers, the knowledge that anti-insurgency is not really meant to cease insurgency but to perpetuate it, is a fairly accepted one. They are practically retired to it. Insurgency brings colossal cash to the purses of the oligarchs who produce arms, as well as to the military and political officials who profit from the transactions. This is clear.

It is not surprising that rebel officers and civil rights advocates are today squirming against the appointment of Esperon. This man indeed had a very bad human rights record during his watch. Hundreds of civil society activists, notably from the Left but also from media (journalists), died in the hands of military death squads most especially under the command of Esperon’s stooge General Palparan who’s most notorious for hundreds of activists slain in his areas of jurisdiction.

Now, fast forward, Esperon just took on the precious tiara of Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process. Imagine that! Somebody with fascistic mien that he conceals in most adroit manner, intoxicated with power and working directly now inside the palace, well within stone’s throw from the chief exec.

Hopefully, sanity still remains in presidential decisions delivered these days. If Esperon retains his post long enough, it won’t be long when another military coup will be launched. The question is no longer “will the rebels do it again” but rather “when will they launch it?”

[Writ 22 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila] 

BURMA’S LEADERS? CALLOUS!

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Callous! Mad and utterly callous up to the end!

This is what I can say of the praetorian leaders of Burma. The country has been clearly devastated by the powerful typhoon that razed through the Irrawady area recently, killing past the 100,000 death mark as of a couple of days ago. Humanitarian work had almost halted as the praetorians have focused their efforts more on preparing the electorate for the democratization process and forthcoming polls.

Sure, there is no lack of merit for democratizing Burma and widen the political stream to include state players from among the other competing political parties and interest groups. But to over-focus on  vote-gaining democratization issues at a time of catastrophe, contingency and national mourning for the dead escapes our comprehension and will only lead to a cul de sac of greater catastrophe. For sure the great men U Thant and Aung San must be squirming in their graves right now.   

By ‘more catastrophe’ we don’t only mean deaths on the victims. We mean that, after the typhoon relief tasks are over, and the country indeed moves on to that phase of public choice of new political forces and leaders, the military will be crashed by its own callousness in the relief operations days. Then, unwilling to admit the results of the polls, the praetorians would again move on to crash legitimate efforts to replace the military in power.

Sad! How tragic and sad are the affairs of life in Burma. This once citadel of growth right after Britain left the country in cognition of its full sovereignty, turned into a developmental nightmare of unfathomable poverty when the praetorians took over power through the might of the gun.

“Political power comes from the barrel of the gun,” Mao once declared. Following such a dictum, we may add that “perpetual violence from the barrel of the gun causes more vicious cycles of misery.” That’s my line, fellows, and I’m citing the dictum based on experiences in my own country and elsewhere wherever ceaseless violence happens: more misery and economic collapse.

Meantime, we can only hope that the international pressures on the Burmese praetorians to open up the gates for humanitarian work by international players will be heeded. Strategically, in the long run, the ASEAN may have to equip itself with a regional armed force that can serve as equalizer against any tyrannically abusive political group—topped by the Burmese praetorians and the Khmer Rouge—that only knows how to bring down their respective country to graveyard status after centuries of glorious High Culture and greatness.   

[Writ 19 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]