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: http://unladtau.wordpress.com, http://erleargonza.blogspot.com]

ANTHRAX SCARE: SPIN DOCTORS, ROUGE FORCES

Bro. 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. …