Typhoons and Tigers: Why Taiwan Has Outpaced the Philippines

[unhappycamper]

http://fpif.org/typhoons-tigers-taiwan-outpaced-philippines/



If it weren't for decades of Western-backed political and economic repression, the Philippines might have joined the Asian Tigers years ago.

Typhoons and Tigers: Why Taiwan Has Outpaced the Philippines
By Scott Charney, January 20, 2014

~snip~

Filipinos have been known to summarize their country’s history as “400 years in a convent and 100 years in a brothel” (with variations in vocabulary and number of years). The former span of time refers to the years of Spanish colonization, while the latter refers to the subsequent American occupation and heavy post-independence influence. Indeed, the Philippines has been shaped to an overwhelmingly degree by Spain and the United States (and briefly Japan) since 1521, when the ill-fated Ferdinand Magellan first walked ashore.

The archipelago formally became a Spanish colony in 1565. Though few Spaniards settled there (at least compared with Latin America), their impact was momentous: Spanish authorities peacefully converted the vast majority of the Filipino population to Catholicism and remade Filipino society from one with much communal usage of land into a feudal system. The village chiefs thus became a prosperous land-holding class, wielding immense power (together with the clergy) over most of the rest of the population. These tensions have roiled Filipino society ever since.

And here’s the short version of “100 years in a whorehouse”: After defeating Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States took possession of the Philippines, enraging Filipino nationalists who thought their liberation was at hand. U.S. colonial authorities and their Filipino collaborators then viciously and indiscriminately crushed a rebel movement (whose own brutality cost them the support they needed to win), leaving hundreds of thousands dead, most of them civilians. The pattern after that was always largely the same, through the Philippines’ time as an American colony (1898-1933), an American commonwealth (1934-1946), an independent-but-undemocratic country (1946-1986), and finally as a nominally free and democratic country (1986-present): the same basic neoliberal paradigm of welfare for the rich and “free market” discipline for the rest.

In the years following the failed uprising, the U.S.-backed Filipino elite looted many billions of dollars through widespread corruption while violently repressing any attempt by the Filipino masses to improve the situation. First under a banner of naked colonialism, and later under the rationale of “anti-communism,” U.S. business interests profited from Filipino resources, while the U.S. military controversially constructed bases on Philippine land.



unhappycamper comment: http://www.warisaracket.org/semperfi.html

Semper Fi

Semper Fidelis, Always Faithful, is the motto of the United States Marine Corps. But faithful to what?

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, one of the most colorful officers in the Marine Corps' long history, was one of the two Marines who received two Medals of Honor for separate acts of outstanding heroism. General Butler was still in his teens when, on 20 May 1898, he was appointed a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps during the Spanish-American War. In the early part of the last century General Butler led assault troops in Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Mexico and Haiti. He was a regimental commander in France during World War I and later served in China. On 1 October 1931, he was retired upon his own application after completion of 33 years' service in the Marine Corps. Major General Butler died at the Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, on 21 June 1940, following a four-week illness.

After his retirement General Butler wrote a book WAR IS A RACKET, which begins as follows:

WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

And in a speech delivered in 1933, General Butler said:

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

General Butler has had a naval destroyer, a military base and a chapter of Veterans for Peace (the 'Smed Butts') named for him. He is loved and quoted not only in the United States, but around the world.

Like all officers General Butler swore the following oath upon his commissioning:

"I, _____ , having been appointed an officer in the Marine Corps of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God."

Was General Butler faithful? You decide.