Monday, June 30, 2014

Which Propaganda to Believe? By Erick San Juan


Which Propaganda to Believe? By Erick San Juan



Veteran strategic analyst George Friedman of Stratfor wrote at the Businessmirror(6/29/14) about the US unfinished business in Ukraine and Iraq. He said that some of the international systems unfinished business has revealed itself. He believes that Ukraine's fate is not yet settled. Neither is Russia's relationship with the European peninsula. I agree. Friedman explained that geopolitical situation rarely resolve themselves neatly or permanently.

Among the written analysis about Ukraine that I've read, it was the Counter Punch's in depth report written by Diana Johnstone that i realize was the most balanced and accurate reading of what really transpired in Ukraine entitled, "Tightening the US Grip on Western Europe: Washington's Iron Curtain in Ukraine." To quote:"NATO leaders are  currently acting out a deliberate charade in Europe, designed to reconstruct an Iron Curtain between Russia and the West. Planned in advance, events that they deliberately triggered are being misrepresented as sudden, astonishing, unjustified Russian aggression.

The US and the European Union reportedly undertook an aggressive provocation in Ukraine to force Russia to react defensively. The US was allegedly manipulating political conflict in Ukraine to install a pro-Western government intent on joining NATO. It is a matter of life and death to the Russian navy and allegedly a grave national security threat on Russia's border.

Johnstone said that it is a trap for Putin, allowing NATO to advance its hostile forces to an ideal attack position. She added that the West was ready for this, prepared to tell that Putin was the 'New Hitler', poised to overrun helpless Europe which could only be saved like the 'Normandy' by the Americans. But the overwhelming majority of Crimeans are Russian, having been Russian citizens since Khrushchev bestowed the territory on Ukraine in 1954.

The take over of Ukraine was allegedly planned at Yalta in September 2013 when Ukraine's richest oligarch, Viktor Pinchuk paid for an elite strategic conference on Ukraine's future that was held in Yalta, Crimea. This was the same place where Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met to decide the future of Europe in 1945. Both President Viktor Yanukovych, which was ousted after five months and the recently elected successor Petro Poroshenko were present. Former US energy secretary Bill Richardson was there to talk about the shale gas revolution which the US hopes to use to weaken Russia by substituting fracking for Russia's natural gas reserves. The prospect of Ukraine's integration with the West was discussed and the possible break of Ukraine with Russia.

Sergei Glazyev,Putin's adviser noted that Ukraine was running an enormous foreign accounts deficit, funded with foreign borrowing and the increase in Western imports could only swell the deficit.

Planning to incorporate Ukraine into the sphere of the west would entail serious problems with Russian speaking Ukrainians and to Russia. Instead of working for a compromise, Western leaders allegedly decided to forge ahead and blame Russia for whatever would go wrong. Yanukovych faced an economic collapse, outraged protests ensued which were rapidly exploited by the west.

During the time of Yanukovych, Ukraine was playing a double game, telling the EU that it was interested in signing a trade agreement DCFTA while telling the Russians that it was interested in joining the union. He could not make up his mind and trying to get the best deal out of both sides. He was reportedly not a 'Moscow's man' and his downfall owes a lot to his role in playing the best of both worlds. It was perceived as a dangerous game of pitting big powers against each other.

According to Johnstone, the Russian position is not to split Ukraine because it could be a bridge between  East and West. But the arrangement calls for Western readiness to cooperate with Russia which the US vetoed preferring to exploit the crisis.

A blatant provocation, using Ukraine political confusion against Russia has astonishingly succeeded in producing a total change. We are told that the 'freedom-loving West' is faced with the threat of Russian expansionism. The US allegedly needs an enemy to save the world and Europe. Washington policy makers seemed to be worried that President Barack Obama's swing to Asia and neglect of Europe might weaken US control of it's NATO allies. The May 25 European Parliament elections revealed a large measure of disaffection with the European Union.

Washington is even able to exploit the anti-communist, anti-Russian and even pro-Nazi nostalgia of Northeastern Europe in order to obstruct the growing economic partnership between the old EU, notably Germany and Russia.

To tighten the grip of US on Europe, the United States is using the artificial crisis to demand that its indebted allies spend more on defense, by purchasing weapons system. The situation in Ukraine  is not only a chess game but chess combined with poker combined with Russian roulette., Johnstone concluded.

Pundits believe that the planting of the western values in Ukraine was carried out by NGO's and non-profit organizations like  the NED(National Endowment for democracy) founded in 1983 on the initiative of then US President  Ronald Reagan which had been successful in dismantling the USSR. The official website of NED contains information about the organizations close ties with CIA. NED reportedly allocates $2.8 million dollars to implement  around 50 projects in Ukraine aimed at the development of democracy and civil society. It also provide support to several youth associations, activists and journalists. This was the reason i wrote about the NGO's in my previous article so that we will be aware of such lobby groups especially those funded by foreign governments. Most of it's trained leaders are expert in propaganda and in destabilizing governments.                                         

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Fukushima's Plague by Erick San Juan

President Benigno S. Aquino III went to Japan the other day to re-affirm a collective self-defense agreement between the Philippines and Japan in their territorial disputes with China. China's leadership has metamorphosed from a sleeping dragon into a fire dragon behaving like a bully to cover its internal problem which many pundits believe will implode soon.

President Aquino's short trip to Japan was quite fruitful especially when Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vows easier entry to Japan for Filipino tourists. But I felt bad and pity the Japanese victims of the multiple explosions at Fukushima's nuclear plant when a friend emailed me an article from Counterpunch written by Harvey Wasserman of nukefree.org entitled "Fukushima's Children are Dying."

Wasserman said that some months after the explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among children in the area and nearby have skyrocketed to more than 40 times normal.

"More than 48% of some 375,000 young people and nearly 200,000 kids tested by the Fukushima Medical University near a smoldering reactors suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts. And the rate is accelerating."

"More than 120 childhood cancers have been indicated where just three would be expected.", according to Joseph Mangano, the executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.

Wasserman explained that the nuclear industry and its apologists continue to deny this public health tragedy. "Some have actually asserted that not one person has been affected by Fukushima's massive radiation releases which for some isotopes exceed Hiroshima by a factor of nearly 30. But the deadly epidemic at Fukushima is consistent with impacts suffered among children near the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island and the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl, as well as findings at other commercial reactors."  Wasserman narrated that atomic power could cause such epidemics which has reportedly confirmed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which says that an increase in the risk of childhood thyroid cancer would accompany a reactor disaster.

"Nearby children are not the only casualties at Fukushima. Plant operator Masao Yoshida died at the age 58 due to esophogeal cancer. Yoshida heroically refused to abandon Fukushima at the worst of the crisis, thus saving millions of lives. Public anger is rising over local government plans to force families, many with small children, back into the heavily contaminated region around the power plant."

At the Three Mile Island's accident in 1979, owners denied the reactor had melted but a robotic camera confirmed otherwise.

A wide range of independent studies confirm heightened infant death rates and excessive cancers among the populace. Excessive  death, mutation and disease rates among animals were confirmed by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and by local journalists.

At Chernobyl, Wasserman stated that a compendium of more than 5,000 studies has yielded an estimated death toll of more than one million people. Physicians for Social Responsibility and the German chapter of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War have warned of parallel problems at Fukushima. "The situation can only get worse. Radiation from three lost cores is still being carried into the Pacific. Management of spent fuel rods in pools suspended in the air and scattered around the site remains fraught with danger."

Wasserman confirmed that Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe regime wants to re-open the remaining 48 reactors. It has pushed hard for families who fled the disaster area to re-occupy irradiated homes and villages.

Scientists believe that the Fukushima cleaning system is unable to conduct a full decontamination of the accumulated volumes of liquid radioactive waste nor reduce the nominal concentration of radiation that Japan intends to dilute with clean water and then pour into the ocean. This process does not reduce the final amount of radioactive substances entering the environment and therefore could harm the region's ecology.

Pouring of water with high content of radionuclides into the Pacific Ocean for a long time will cause serious harm to the region's environment. It could create a real threat to the economy and food security of neighboring states including the Philippines. It could also lead to the accumulation of harmful to human health isotopes in seafoods, making them unfit for consumption.

I hope that the Japanese government can still do something about it and give the world the true state of the plague and it's environmental threat.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Orchestrated Conflict by Erick San Juan

"Why is China acting like a bully in the neighborhood?", Satur Ocampo of PhilStar asked (6/14/14). It is pushing it's dominance like a tough guy. It's leaders are doing an 'angel and demon' op following the line of Sun Tzu's Art of War: "One step backward, two steps forward." Promising to espouse peace, business and economic assistance to it's neighbors.                                     

At the Shangri-La Dialogue, the respected security forum held annually in Singapore's Shangri-La Hotel, a Filipino top security expert, Prof. Rommel Banlaoi, head of the Center for Intelligence and National Security Studies said that China acted like a 'new predator' at the conference.                                                     

Lt. Gen. Wang Guanzhong, deputy chief of staff of the PLA(Peoples Liberation Army) and the highest Chinese military official in China's delegation undiplomatically snubbed Japan's Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera and at the same time accused the U.S. of hegemony, threats and intimidation. Wang added that the speeches of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel were coordinated with each other and challenges China. Wang concluded that China has NEVER taken the first step to provoke trouble and had only been forced to respond to the provocations of others (China Daily 6/6/14).                         

As I have written before, like a thief in the night, China is installing its oil rig in Vietnam without further notice and grabbing even the shoals and reefs also claimed by other Asian nations like the Philippines. Intimidating its neighbors in the process.                                                     

What emboldened China to act this way? According to David Feith of Wall Street Journal (6/5/14), "China seems to have bet in the South China Sea, that now is the time to bully and bluster because the US response will be limited. In Beijing's calculation, it appears that before the US can complete it's pivot to Asia by boosting military cooperation with Japan, start returning troops to Philippine bases, make port calls in Vietnam, China has already deployed  their war materials and the PLA warm bodies through the 9 dash lines and ADIZ as deterrent to the containment and encirclement of China. Feith added that China's Gen. Zhu Chenghu diagnosed American foreign policy suffering from 'erectile dysfunction'. Citing US weakness toward Russia's president Vladimir Putin, Zhu said that he doubts Washington will get involved or use military  intervention once there is a territorial dispute involving China and its neighbors.                                                 

"That's a dangerous belief for Chinese officialdom to hold. First, it signals more grabs for territory, natural resources and shipping lanes. And if China misjudge American passivity, it could initiate a shooting war with US in East Asia.", Feith warned.                                     

The truth about China's aggressiveness, over expansion and the myth of growing economy is now being unmasked as a cover-up and a possible bubble burst is in the offing.                             

Due to its tight control of media and the internet, China's slowdown, too much graft and corruption among its leaders, capital flight, real estate bubble, and mounting debt poses as an internal threat which is being kept secret to the people. Even President Xi Jinping's family was exposed by Bloomberg in 2012, amassing an estimated $376 million. Reason why Xi cant dictate, its the millionaires among the political elites who will ultimately decide the faith of China (William Pesek 6/14/14).

This could be the reason why China's politburo is using the principle of "painting in the west and fighting in the east", by showing to the world that their economy is OK and at the same time showing to their restive nationals that 'China's Dream' will soon be a reality and a greater China and the reunification of Taiwan is on.              

Pundits believe that China's leaders are being selective in charting their history. Some have forgotten how the globalists lured the Soviets in believing  that their on the verge of being a first worlder.                                                 

According to Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in their best seller book- Why Nations Fail, as late as 1977, an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment, price stability and even producing people with altruistic motivation. Nobel peace prize winner Paul Samuelson predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. He said that the Soviet national income would overtake that of the US possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. By the 1970's, Soviet's economic growth had all but stopped. Then the Soviet Union hit a roadblock. Sounds familiar! Then in November of 1989, I witnessed the historic chopping of the Berlin wall and ended the Soviet empire.                                 

"China's debt reckoning is coming!", William Pesek said (Bloomberg 6/4/14). "Maybe not this quarter or this year, but President Xi's unbridled effort to keep growth from falling below the official 7.5% target is cementing China's fate. And it seems that China's financial excess is leading to ruin and Xi is continuing down this road."                                                             

Quoting Nikolas Guosdev, a professor of national security studies at the US Naval War College reiterated that "war can start through unintended consequences and an economically interdependent world does not necessarily stop it from happening. Some of the systems supposed to prevent conflict may be starting to weaken (Reuters june 4,2014 report).             

Last week, Danny Schechter, news dissecter of MediaChannel.org said that, "The financial crisis is still with us. With no end in sight, it may be time to GIVE WAR A CHANCE once again."                 

Lets prepare for the worst! Be self reliant!

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

The Black and White of NGO's by Erick San Juan

 The Black and White of NGO's by Erick San Juan

At this morning's Tuesday Club fellowship of top level media practitioners at EDSA Shangrila Hotel in Mandaluyong City, the talk is how genius scammers are using NGO's to siphon government funds by conniving with corrupt government functionaries. The talk is how some NGO leaders connived in toppling governments of Marcos, Estrada and Arroyo and becoming cabinet secretaries as success fees. These NGO's (non-government organization) and PO(people's organization) rally the people in disguise as for social change. They have perfected the infiltration at the grassroot level. One example  was the CODE NGO where some of its leaders were behind the so called Hyatt 10 which almost ousted former President Gloria Arroyo. Up to now there's no accounting of the P35 billion that was supposed to be returned to the government coffers.                                                                                               

Ka Maning Almario, a veteran editor mailed me some information about NGO's.  Sam Vaknin site was his source of information. To quote- "NGO's arrival portends rising local prices and a culture shock. Many of them live in plush apartments, or five star hotels, drive SUV's, sport $3000 laptops and PDA's. They earn a two figure multiple of the local average wage. They are busybodies, preachers, critics, do-gooders, and professional altruists. They are parasites who feed off natural and manmade disasters, mismanagement, conflict, and strife. Always self-appointed, they answer to no constituency. Though unelected and ignorant of local realities, they confront the democratically chosen and those who voted them into office. A few of them are enmeshed in crime and corruption. They are the non-governmental organizations, or NGOs."

"Some NGOs - like Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Amnesty - genuinely contribute to enhancing welfare, to the mitigation of hunger, the furtherance of human and civil rights, or the curbing of disease. Others - usually in the guise of think tanks and lobby groups - are sometimes ideologically biased, or religiously-committed and, often, at the service of special interests.
                     
NGOs - such as the International Crisis Group - have openly interfered on behalf of the opposition in several parliamentary elections in Macedonia. Other NGOs have done so in Belarus and Ukraine, Zimbabwe and Israel, Nigeria and Thailand, Slovakia and Hungary - and even in Western, rich, countries including the USA, Canada, Germany, and Belgium.

The encroachment on state sovereignty of international law - enshrined in numerous treaties and conventions - allows NGOs to get involved in hitherto strictly domestic affairs like corruption, civil rights, the composition of the media, the penal and civil codes, environmental policies, or the allocation of economic resources and of natural endowments, such as land and water. No field of government activity is now exempt from the glare of NGOs. They serve as self-appointed witnesses, judges, jury and executioner rolled into one. Regardless of their persuasion or modus operandi, all NGOs are top heavy with entrenched, well-remunerated, extravagantly-perked bureaucracies. Opacity is typical of NGOs. Amnesty's rules prevent its officials from publicly discussing the inner workings of the organization - proposals, debates, opinions - until they have become officially voted into its Mandate. Thus, dissenting views rarely get an open hearing.
                                        
Contrary to their teachings, the financing of NGOs is invariably obscure and their sponsors unknown. There's lack of transparency.

Indeed, the bulk of the income of most non-governmental organizations, even the largest ones, comes from - usually foreign - powers. Many NGOs serve as official contractors for governments. NGOs serve as long arms of their sponsoring states - gathering intelligence, burnishing their image, and promoting their interests. There is a revolving door between the staff of NGOs and government bureaucracies the world over. The British Foreign Office finances a host of NGOs - including the fiercely "independent" Global Witness - in troubled spots, such as Angola. Many host governments accuse NGOs of - unwittingly or knowingly - serving as hotbeds of espionage. Very few NGOs derive some of their income from public contributions and donations. The more substantial NGOs spend one tenth of their budget on PR and solicitation of charity. In a desperate bid to attract international attention, so many of them lied about their projects.
                    
All NGOs claim to be not for profit - yet, many of them possess sizable equity portfolios and abuse their position to increase the market share of firms they own. Conflicts of interest and unethical behavior abound.

Large NGOs resemble multinational corporations in structure and operation. They are hierarchical, maintain large media, government lobbying, and PR departments, head-hunt, invest proceeds in professionally-managed portfolios, compete in government tenders, and own a variety of unrelated businesses. Some NGOs are more like cults than like civic organizations.Many NGOs promote economic causes - anti-globalization, the banning of child labor, the relaxing of intellectual property rights, or fair payment for agricultural products. Many of these causes are both worthy and sound. Alas, most NGOs lack economic expertise and inflict damage on the alleged recipients of their beneficence. NGOs are at times manipulated by - or collude with - industrial groups and political parties. It is telling that the denizens of many developing countries suspect the West and its NGOs of promoting an agenda of trade protectionism. Stringent - and expensive - labor and environmental provisions in international treaties may well be a ploy to fend off imports based on cheap labor and the competition they wreak on well-ensconced domestic industries and their political stooges.
             
According to the Red Cross, more goes through NGOs than through the World Bank. Their iron grip on food, medicine, and funds rendered them an alternative government - sometimes as venal and graft-stricken as the one they replace.

Local businessmen, politicians, academics, and even journalists form NGOs to plug into the avalanche of Western largesse. In the process, they award themselves and their relatives with salaries, perks, and preferred access to Western goods and credits. NGOs have evolved into vast networks of patronage in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

NGOs chase disasters with a relish. More than 200 of them opened shop in the aftermath of the Kosovo refugee crisis in 1999-2000. Another 50 supplanted them during the civil unrest in Macedonia a year later. Floods, elections, earthquakes, wars - constitute the cornucopia that feed the NGOs.

NGOs are proponents of Western values - women's lib, human rights, civil rights, the protection of minorities, freedom, equality. Not everyone finds this liberal menu palatable. The arrival of NGOs often provokes social polarization and cultural clashes.

The British government ploughs well over $30 million a year into "Proshika", a Bangladeshi NGO. It started as a women's education outfit and ended up as a restive and aggressive women empowerment political lobby group with budgets to rival many ministries in this impoverished, Moslem and patriarchal country.

Other NGOs - fuelled by $300 million of annual foreign infusion - evolved from humble origins to become mighty coalitions of full-time activists. NGOs like the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and the Association for Social Advancement mushroomed even as their agendas have been fully implemented and their goals exceeded. It now owns and operates 30,000 schools.

This mission creep is not unique to developing countries. As Parkinson discerned, organizations tend to self-perpetuate regardless of their proclaimed charter. Remember NATO? Human rights organizations, like Amnesty International.

As "think tanks", NGOs issue partisan and biased reports. The International Crisis Group published a rabid attack on the then incumbent government of Macedonia, days before an election, relegating the rampant corruption of its predecessors - whom it seemed to be tacitly supporting - to a few footnotes. On at least two occasions - in its reports regarding Bosnia and Zimbabwe - ICG has recommended confrontation, the imposition of sanctions, and, if all else fails, the use of force. Though the most vocal and visible, it is far from being the only NGO that advocates "just" wars.

The ICG is a repository of former heads of state and has-been politicians and is renowned (and notorious) for its prescriptive - some say meddlesome - philosophy and tactics. "The Economist" remarked sardonically: "To say (that ICG) is 'solving world crises' is to risk underestimating its ambitions, if overestimating its achievements."

"NGOs have orchestrated the violent showdown during the trade talks in Seattle in 1999 and its repeat performances throughout the world. The World Bank was so intimidated by the riotous invasion of its premises in the NGO-choreographed "Fifty Years is Enough" campaign of 1994, that it now employs dozens of NGO activists and let NGOs determine many of its policies.

NGO activists have joined the armed - though mostly peaceful - rebels of the Chiapas region in Mexico. Norwegian NGOs sent members to forcibly board whaling ships. In the USA, anti-abortion activists have murdered doctors. In Britain, animal rights zealots have both assassinated experimental scientists and wrecked property.
Birth control NGOs carry out mass sterilizations in poor countries, financed by rich country governments in a bid to stem immigration. NGOs buy slaves in Sudan thus encouraging the practice of slave hunting throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Other NGOs actively collaborate with 'rebel' armies - a euphemism for terrorists.

NGOs lack a synoptic view and their work often undermines efforts by international organizations such as the UNHCR and by governments. Poorly-paid local officials have to contend with crumbling budgets as the funds are diverted to rich expatriates doing the same job for a multiple of the cost and with inexhaustible hubris.
This is not conducive to happy co-existence between foreign do-gooders and indigenous governments. Sometimes NGOs seem to be an ingenious ploy to solve Western unemployment at the expense of down-trodden natives. This is a misperception driven by envy and avarice.

But it is still powerful enough to foster resentment and worse. NGOs are on the verge of provoking a ruinous backlash against them in their countries of destination. That would be a pity. Some of them are doing indispensable work. If only they were a wee more sensitive and somewhat less ostentatious. But then they wouldn't be NGOs, would they?"

Operating in the countries of Southeast Asia, some NGO's are funded by USAID which many believe is associated with US intelligence agencies which often have close contact to local radicals and opposition. Despite the declared humanitarian nature of their activities, they actively influence the political situation in several nations including street protests. The 'Arab Spring' in the Middle East was instigated through NGO's. Protests in Thailand, in Venezuela and in Ukraine according to several news reports were inspired by PO's and NGO's. These NGO's  have been successful in using the internet through the Twitter, You Tube and Facebook to spread anti-government propaganda, disinformation, etc. These social networks were used to mold public opinion in the process.
                                                                                                                                                              
Foreign funded NGO's are regulated in several countries  like China, Laos and Cambodia allegedly due to perceived shady financial assistance to the local opposition and to neutralize governments that cannot be dictated by big foreign powers.
                                                                                                
Our National Security Council should study this concept or safety valve if the government really wants to move on without fear or favor. If other nations have the political will and understanding and wary of these facts, why not us? Lets take the necessary measures to monitor and restrict their activities that contradict our national interests. Especially now that our nation is on the verge of turbulence due to too much corruption being exposed.