They think Filipinos are stupid

Batas Mauricio

IMPEACHING President Duterte is an impossible mission at the moment, and Magdalo Party List Rep. Gary Alejano knows that. He was after all trained to always be discerning during his student days at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) where he graduated in 1995. So, why did he do it–file the impeachment complaint, that is–against the incumbent President?

Clearly, Alejano and Magdalo (whose founder is coup leader Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV) filed the complaint as part of a sinister and dark movement–which is to oust Duterte from power–obviously cooked up by Filipinos, civilians and military, who are used to rebelling and rising up against duly constituted authorities to attain their selfish ends and purposes.

In fact, it was not coincidental that as Alejano and Magdalo were filing their complaint against the President, Vice President Maria Leonora Robredo on the other hand was sending a video footage to the United Nations Commission on Drugs in Geneva, Switzerland, attacking Duterte on his fierce campaign against illegal drugs in the country. Their motives were all the same–to please foreign masters who are pulling their strings!

These maneuvers to remove Duterte from power are curses against the Filipino nation, destined to bring more hardships and difficult lives to many if not all of our unfortunate countrymen.

The experience of the Philippines in the hands of rebels and power-grabbers will confirm that while we all got plunged into immeasurable economic woes after they were installed as our new leaders, they, the rebels and power-grabbers and their own cronies and political allies, irretrievably and unstoppably became richer and richer.

What was worse was that in all their official actions, these power-grabbers managed to mislead us that they were acting with the interest of the country in their hearts, even if in reality they were already plundering the nation of its wealth and resources. Remember testimonies given to US courts about how a box of gold found in Malacanang in 1986 and which was turned over to the woman leader of the rebels could no longer be found now?

The thinking among these rebels and power-grabbers is that, Filipinos are gullible and could easily be made to believe their yarn of nationalism and patriotism. But they are in for a big surprise at this point in our country’s history, since our people are now more wary of fake nationalists and patriots, and of maneuvers aimed only at personal benefits and aggrandizement.

If they managed to fool the people in 1986 and in 2001 by toying with claims about national unity and democracy, that is no longer going to happen in 2017 and beyond. Filipinos now have the social media to turn to, to unmask and expose the fake nationalists and patriots, and to keep them abreast of what truly is going on in the country at any given time.

Filipinos now have the capacity to know who are behind the attacks against Duterte and their real motivations for their actions. Filipinos now know that those who were corrupt and plunderous while they were the ones in power are behind all these moves against Duterte, either to topple him for good, or to simply prevent him from prosecuting and jailing them during his term.

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There were interesting media reports in the past about the forthcoming strong typhoons and storm suges. We in the Philippines must pay attention to what they are saying: the threat of floods overcoming many parts of the world from severe storms is now greatly increased, and not just in low-lying areas.

From the Storm Surge Research Group at Stony Brook University in Long Island, US, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also in the US and the Alfred Wegener Institute of Germany, an attribution is being made about this coming widespread flooding and deadly storm surges arising from the melting of the polar ice caps and increasing sea levels.

The three are now proposing the building of dams or storm surge barriers around coastal cities in the US and in Europe as a first line of defense, at a cost of billions of dollars. They are also urging the building of additional satellites or the refurbishing of the old ones, to enable governments to determine with accuracy the strength of incoming typhoons, hurricanes, or other weather disturbances.

As far as the Philippines is concerned, what have we been doing to address this phenomenon other than forcibly evacuating Filipinos living in coastal areas and in the places which lay in the direct path of super storms? Is there anyone or any group which is thinking or planning how to combat the effects of deadly rains, floods and strong winds even before they happen?

The experience of other places would tend to indicate that planning responses to natural calamities and compelling authorities to act on those plans are not easy. A CNN report says many years were spent on warning officials of a storm surge in the nature of Hurricane Sandy, to no avail, until Sandy struck in October 2012 and caused some US$80 billion in property damage in New York and New Jersey alone.

I hope Philippine authorities will not be waiting for a similar devastation to happen in the country before even starting to plan on what to do to minimize, if not altogether eliminate, the death and destruction coming from rains, floods and winds. For sure, rains, floods and winds are here to stay, and the sooner we realize this fact and come up with a concrete plan to avert or soften the impact of these natural calamites, the better.

In all these preparations, it might be well to realize that global warming and climate change, and the destructive rains, floods and winds that go with these phenomena, have been warned about in the Bible, both in its Old and New Testaments.

In Deuteronomy 28:15 and 22-23, the Bible warns: if we do not listen to God anymore (that is, if we don’t read the Bible anymore) and if we do not obey His commands anymore, He will afflict us with scorching heat and drought, where the sky above our heads will be as hot as bronze, and the soil which we step on will be as hard as iron.

In Matthew 7:24-27, the Bible talks about death and destruction from rains, floods and winds. It says the same thing as Deuteronomy 28:15, 22-23: if we listen to the Word of Jesus Christ, our God and Savior, and obey it, we shall be saved. If we listen to Him yet we do not obey Him, we shall fall and suffer a “great crash”. Perhaps, our authorities can derive an inspiration from these Biblical verses when planning about storm surges and typhoons and floods.

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com