#asia foundation

[whatisonthemoon]

Covert Operations and the CIA's Hidden History in the Philippines

By Roland G. Simbulan, Convenor/Coordinator, Manila Studies Program University of the Philippines (Lecture at the University of the Philippines-Manila, Rizal Hall, Padre Faura, Manila, August 18, 2000.)

For a long time, Manila has been the main station, if not the regional headquarters, of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for Southeast Asia. This is perhaps so because the Philippines has always been regarded as a stronghold of US imperial power in Asia. Since the Americanized Filipinos were under the spell of American culture, they were easy to recruit without realizing they were committing treason to their own people and country. And from the beginning of the 20th century to 1992, there were the US military bases, the mighty symbols and infrastructure of American power.

CIA human intelligence assets in Manila are said to have provided vital information at crucial times. According to declassified documents under the Freedom of Information Act, on Sept. 17, 1972, a CIA asset in the Philippines who was in the inner circle of Marcos informed the CIA station in Manila that Ferdinand Marcos was planning to proclaim martial law on Sept. 21,1972. The CIA station in Manila was also provided in advance a copy of Proclamation 1081--the proclamation that declared martial law in the country--and a list of the individuals whom Marcos planned to arrest and imprison upon the declaration of military rule.

I would like to mention --without going into any conclusions--that, so accurate was the CIA's assessment about the Sept. 21, 1972 declaration of martial rule that it boosted the prestige of the CIA station in Manila. Upon his retirement a few years later, Henry Byroade, the American ambassador to Manila when martial law was declared, was honored by the CIA headquarters in Langley,Virginia--a tribute that is said to be very rarely given to any retiring ambassador. Also, in 1982, the CIA was able to verify from a high-ranking Philippine immigration officer the names of the two doctors who visited the Philippines to treat Marcos for kidney failure, giving the CIA a clear picture of Marcos's health problems.(Richelson, 1999).

It is important to expose US imperialism's clandestine apparatus in the Philippines. If the activities of this sinister agency are not meticulously documented, there is a tendency to mythologize, or even Hollywood-ize, its notoriety and crimes against the Filipino people and Philippine national sovereignty. The CIA is the covert overseas intelligence agency of the United States government and is likewise an "action-oriented " vehicle of American foreign and military policy. The 1975 Church Committee Report of the US congressional investigations into the CIA's covert activities abroad revealed how countless foreign governments were overthrown by the CIA; how the CIA instigated a military coup d'etat and assassinated foreign political leaders like Chilean President Salvador Allende, who merely tried to safeguard the interests of their own country; and how "special ops" and paramilitary campaigns contributed to the death, directly or indirectly, of millions of people, as a result of those actions.

The 1974-75 US congressional investigations also uncovered CIA intervention in the domestic politics of target countries--from the overthrow of governments, attempted assassinations, to subsidies and financial support for the media, political parties, trade unions, universities and business associations--all designed "to clandestinely influence foreign governments, events, organizations or persons in support of US foreign policy." (Robinson, 1996; Richelson,1999). The CIA has gone beyond its original mission of gathering intelligence and was conducting Mafia-type operations not only in its own territory but against foreign governments and their leaders.

Doing covert action that undermines Philippine national sovereignty and genuine democracy in order to prop up the tiny pro-US oligarchical minority that has cornered most of the wealth in their poor country is what the CIA is all about and is the real reason for its existence. It is no longer just the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence which is officially its mandate under the US National Security Act of 1947 that created the CIA.

The CIA in the Philippines has engaged in countless covert operations for intervention and dirty tricks particularly in Philippine domestic politics. On top of all this is the US diplomatic mission, especially the political section that is a favorite cover for many CIA operatives. CIA front companies also provide an additional but convenient layer of cover for operatives assigned overseas. In general, wherever you find US big business interests (like Coca-Cola, Ford, Citicorp, United Fruit, Nike, etc.), you also find a very active CIA. But the covers often used are diversified.

Desmond Fitzgerald, for instance, a former CIA chief of station in Manila was said to have fronted as a legitimate businessman of an American multinational company. Joseph Smith, a top CIA agent assigned to the Philippines in the early 1960s, posed as a "civilian employee" of the Clark Airforce Base's 13th Air Force Southeast Asia Regional Survey Unit .On the other hand, CIA operative Gabriel Kaplan's initial cover was really more "civilian"--with the CIA-created Asia Foundation (formerly the Committee for a Free Asia), then later as resident director of another CIA creation, the COMPADRE both of which we shall be dealing with more extensively later.

On the other hand, CIA operative David Sternberg fronted as a foreign correspondent for an American newspaper based in Boston, the Christian Science Monitor, when he assisted Gabriel Kaplan in managing the presidential campaign of Ramon Magsaysay in the '50s.

The Agency's assets and technical infrastructure in Manila have been drastically affected by the withdrawal of the bases by 1992 because, before this, the CIA operated jointly with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) major listening posts into most of Indochina and southern China. The joint CIA/DIA structure called the Strategic Warning Staff, is headquartered in the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) and operated a number of similar posts as the one in Manila. The Manila station includes very sizeable logistical capabilities for a wide range of clandestine operations against Asian governments.

The loss of the bases in the Philippines was a tremendous blow to the CIA's Asian infrastructure, if not a major setback. From the mid-50s, the US bases in the Philippines served as operational headquarters for "Operation Brotherhood" which operated in Indochina under the direct supervision of the CIA's Col. Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conien, and it involved several Filipinos who were recruited and trained by the CIA. Lansdale was the classic CIA operative in Southeast Asia who was romanticized in Graham Greene's novel, The Quiet American. Lansdale was even appointed by former President Ramon Magsaysay as his "military adviser" but was, in fact, his speechwriter as well, who determined Magsaysay's foreign and military policy. So successful was the CIA in pulling the strings thru Lansdale that in 1954, a high-level US committee reported that, "American policy in Southeast Asia was most effectively represented in the Philippines, where any expanded program of Western influence may best be launched."

Examples of such programs were the Freedom Company of the Philippines, Eastern Construction Co. and "Operation Brotherhood," which provided "a mechanism to permit the deployment of Filipino personnel in other Asian countries, for unconventional operations covertly supported by the Philippines." (Shalom, 1986). The CIA also actively used Philippine territory, particularly Clark Air Base, for the training and launching of operatives and logistics in the late 1950s, where the US covertly supported dissident Indonesian colonels in the failed armed overthrow of Indonesian President Sukarno. The CIA then established supply, training and logistical bases on several islands in the Philippines, including an airstrip in the Tawi-Tawi Island of Sanga-Sanga. A CIA-owned proprietary company, the Civil Air Transport, was actively used by the CIA from Philippine territory to give direct assistance to Indonesian military rebel groups attempting to overthrow Indonesian President Sukarno in the late 1950s.

Manila was also the center of operations for the Trans-Asiatic Airlines Inc., a CIA outfit operating along the Burma-China border against the People's Republic of China. Using the Trans-Asiatic Airlines Inc. as a front company, the CIA recruited for this operation in the early 1950s several Filipino aviators who were World War II veterans, including operatives of the Armed Forces of the Philippines' Military Intelligence Service (MIS) who were still in active service.

In his memoirs, former Philippine Ambassador to Burma Narciso G. Reyes narrates that one of these Filipino "undercover" MIS agents posed as the labor attache at the Philippine embassy in Rangoon even before this was formally established. The Filipino CIA undercover agent was also reporting to the American ambassador to Burma from whom he was also getting paid! (Reyes, 1995).

Side by side with CIA proprietary companies Civil Air Transport, Sea Supply Co. and Western Enterprises Co., the agency used Trans-Asiatic Airlines Inc. in an attempt to invade the People's Republic of China in the early 1950s, using the mercenary Chinese warlord Gen. Li Mi as leader of the invasion force. After a few skirmishes with the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Gen. Li Mi later on "retired" and pocketed the US financial and military assistance for an invasion against China and concentrated on the lucrative opium trade along the Burmese-Thai border.

US military advisers of the Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) and the CIA station in Manila designed and led the bloody suppression of the nationalist Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB) which was vehemently opposed to the post-war Parity Rights amendment and the onerous military agreements with the United States. The CIA's success in crushing the peasant-based Huk rebellion in the 1950s made this operation the model for future counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam and Latin America. Colonel Lansdale and his Filipino sidekick, Col. Napoleon Valeriano were later to use their counterguerrilla experience in the Philippines for training covert operatives in Vietnam and in the US-administered School of the Americas, which trained counterguerrilla assassins for Latin America. Thus, the Philippines had become the CIA's prototype in successful covert operations and psychological warfare.

After his stint in the Philippines using propaganda, psywar and deception against the Huk movement, Lansdale was then assigned in Vietnam to wage military, political and psychological warfare. It was Lansdale's view that the tactics that he used to solve the problem in the Philippines were applicable to Vietnam. He was wrong. In 1975, after two decades of protracted warfare, the Vietnamese people defeated the strongest superpower on earth.

The CIA's actions and activities in its Manila station have never been limited to information gathering. Information gathering is but a part of an offensive strategy to attack, neutralize and undermine any organization, institution, personality or activity they consider a danger to the stability and power of the United States. The late Senator Claro M. Recto was believed to have been a victim of the CIA's dirty tricks department because of his staunch crusade against the US military bases in the Philippines. It is now a well-documented fact that General Ralph B. Lovett, then the CIA station chief in Manila and the US ambassador, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, had discussed a plan to assassinate Recto using a vial of poison. A few years later, Recto was to die mysteriously of heart attack (though he had no known heart ailment) in Rome after an appointment with two Caucasians in business suits. Before this, the CIA had made every effort to assure the defeat of Recto in the 1957 presidential election wherein the CIA manufactured and distributed defective condoms with a label that said, "Courtesy of Claro M. Recto--the People's Friend." Could it be that Recto was a victim of the CIA's covert operations, or what they call "executive action" against those perceived as dangerous enemies of the United States?

It was also during the time of Recto and the Huks that the CIA covertly sponsored the Security Training Center as a "countersubversion, counterguerrilla and psychological warfare school" on the outskirts of Manila. CIA funds concentrated on the sensitive area of "rural development" and funds were channeled to the National Movement for Free Elections' (Namfrel) community centers, the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) and a rural development project called Committee for Philippine Action in Development, Reconstruction and Education (COMPADRE) thru CIA fronts and conduits like the Catherwood Foundation and the "Committee for a Free Asia (CFA), later renamed the Asia Foundation." (Shalom, 1986).

In the late 1980s, the CIA assigned Vietnam veteran U.S. General John Singlaub to organize anti-communist vigilante groups all over the country for mass terror, particularly as part of the Philippine government's "total war policy" against people's movements. General Singlaub posed as an American "treasure hunter" and even secured all the necessary official permits for treasure hunting in the Philippines. Another operative active in the "total war" operations in the Philippines was Vietnam counterinsurgency specialist Col. James Rowe, Joint US Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) adviser, whose cover was blown off when he was ambushed in 1989 by urban guerrillas of the New People's Army in Timog Avenue, Quezon City. Rowe was clandestinely involved in the organization of anti-communist death squads like Alsa Masa and vigilante groups patterned after "Operation Phoenix" in Vietnam which had the objective of eliminating legal and semi-legal mass activists and their political sympathizers that constituted the political infrastructure of the insurgency movement.

The CIA lost its huge telecommunications installation at Clark Air Base--the Regional Relay Station when the Philippine Senate rejected on Sept. 16, 1991, the proposed treaty for the bases' renewal. Before 1970, according to a former CIA operative, the sprawling Subic Naval Base was the site of a China operations group of the CIA and "the agency even constructed 100 expensive modern homes, a large two-story office building and a big warehouse at Subic Bay." (Smith, 1976)

There is, however, a vital covert installation that the CIA was able to retain and maintain: the "Regional Service Center" (RSC). Located along Roxas Boulevard in Manila at the Seafront Compound about a mile south from the US Embassy, the RSC fronts as a facility of the United States Information Service (USIS), formerly called the US International Communications Agency. This ultra-modern printing facility functions as a secret CIA propaganda plant. It has the ability to produce large quantities of high-quality color offset magazines, posters, leaflets and the like in at least 14 Asian languages.

During the Vietnam War, the RSC was ceaselessly involved in economic sabotage against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) or North Vietnam. The RSC was involved in counterfeiting North Vietnamese currency which were airdropped all over the DRV to sabotage the economy and weaken the country's resistance. The CIA's Technical Services Division maintains close liaison with the RSC, which still actively operates within the Seafront Compound along Roxas Boulevard. The post-Vietnam War and later on, the post-bases era has only increased the importance of Manila as a major listening post and regional headquarters of the Agency.

A former junior case officer of the CIA, Janine Brookner, who was stationed in Manila described the capital city of the Philippines as "a wild place" for CIA operatives who spent a lot of time in bars, sex shows and brothels. This was because, according to her, the standard CIA procedure for recruiting targets was to "get him drunk, get him laid, and then get him on the Agency's dole." Brookner was an attractive but determined blonde who claimed to have developed assets in both the government and the Communist Party during her assignment to the Philippines. Brookner was also a very productive recruiter who, as a handler of important assets and as a CIA case officer, claims to be able to make her targets confess everything. "You take care of them," Brookner recalls, "and they tell you their fears and nightmares...I'm good at people depending on me." In fact, her targets, especially high-ranking Philippine government officials, often propositioned her. (Starobin, 1997)

Cultural Fronts

The CIA has long utilized in the Philippines sophisticated or subtle means for clandestine propaganda, such as the manipulation of trade unions and cultural organizations, rather than heavy-handed activities such as paramilitary operations, political assassinations and coups as they had done extensively in Africa, Latin America and Vietnam. During my interview in 1996 with Ralph McGehee, a former CIA agent, and other former CIA operatives assigned to the Manila station, I was told that the CIA had many unheralded successes in the Philippines such as the manipulation of the trade union movement through the Asian-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) and through funds which were channeled thru the USAID, Asia Foundation and National Endowment for Democracy.

In a recent article in the Journal of Contemporary Asia, American sociologist James Petras describes how progressive non-government organizations can be neutralized, if not coopted, thru US government, big business-backed funding agencies or CIA fronts and conduits masquerading as foundations. The purpose, according to Petras, is "to mystify and deflect discontent away from direct attacks on the corporate/banking power structure and profits toward local micro-projects ...that avoids class analysis of imperialism and capitalist exploitation." Neo-liberalism today, according to Petras, encourages NGOs to "emphasize projects, not movements; they 'mobilize' people to produce at the margins, not to struggle to control the means of production and wealth; they focus on the technical financial aspects of projects not on structural conditions that shape the everyday lives of people." While using the language of the Left such as "people empowerment," "gender equality," "sustainable development" etc., these NGOs funded by USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Asia Foundation, etc. have become linked to a framework of collaboration with donors and even with government agencies with whom they have partnerships that subordinate activity to nonconfrontational politics, rather than militant mass mobilization. (Petras, 1999)

It must be emphasized that the US places high premium on the ideological legitimation of its continuing neo-colonial domination over the Philipines and, as such, depends heavily on US-financed and US-sponsored institutions, especially on the ideological front. Thus, grants are generously poured in by such agencies like USAID, NED, Asia Foundation and the big business-sponsored Ford Foundation. The objective is to constantly lure and lull the masses into the elite-dominated electoral process, thus legitimizing the neo-liberal economic system and its political apparatus, producing a fragile social peace and a "peaceful" mechanism for competition among the Filipino elite and oligarchy. In his book on French colonialism in Algeria titled, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon wrote:

"Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in itsgrip, and emptying the native's brain of all form and content.By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it."

One of the most critical moments of the CIA station in Manila was the immediate post-Marcos years when they tried to dissociate US links with the Marcoses and politically influence the contours of the post-Marcos era. Financial, technical and political support for the pro-US "agents of influence" assured the dominance of pro-US local elites and institutions as a counterweight to the progressive anti-imperialist, anti-Marcos forces that threatened to define and restructure the architecture of the post-Marcos neo-colonial regime.

USAID was directed to grant the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) with a generous financing so it could formulate a position paper on an economic program anchored on "the partnership between labor and capital." USAID even temporarily set up an agrarian reform office, working closely at TUCP offices. Political analysts of the CIA and USAID wanted to design an agrarian reform program that would not disrupt the agro-export sector and one which could be synchronized with the counterinsurgency program and defuse peasant unrest. The CIA and US military advisers also wanted a deeper role in the design and command of counterinsurgency. These funds were supplemented by the so-called "democracy promotion" initiatives of the NED which poured in heavy funding for TUCP, Namfrel, the Women's Movement for the Nurturing of Democracy (KABATID) and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI). The NED gave a total of $9 million from 1984-1990 to these institutions and organizations.

Following the ouster of Marcos, the US set about to transform the "new" Armed Forces of the Philippines into an effective counterinsurgency force that would integrate military, political, economic and social initiatives, including broad "civic action" campaigns, psychological operations, military aid and training. It was a massive comeback of the low-intensity conflict years of the Magsaysay-Lansdale era! Between 1987-1990, Washington reportedly authorized stepped-up clandestine CIA operations against the Left in the Philippines, including a $10 million allocation to the AFP for enhanced intelligence-gathering operations. There was also an increase in the number of CIA personnel, from 115 to 127, mostly attached as "diplomats" to the US embassy in Manila. (Oltman and Bernstein, 1992)

In general, US military and economic aid are used quite effectively and they remain key elements of US policy in the Philippines. The CIA station handles political aid and political matters. This means, according to the CIA's Intelligence Memorandum on the 1965 Philippine presidential elections for instance, assuring that the victorious national candidates who are acceptable to the US should be "western-oriented and pledge to continue close and equitable relations with the US and the West on matters of mutual interest." (Bonner, 1987) The CIA station also conducts widespread covert operations, among them: stage-managed national elections to assure preferred US outcome; payoffs to government officials under the guise of grants; financing for favored business and civic groups and pro-US propaganda campaigns among the population; the supply of intelligence information on activists and dissidents to the Armed Forces of the Philippines and so on. (Robinson, 1996)

Among the most prominent CIA fronts in Manila is the Asia Foundation with offices at Magallanes Village, Makati. According to a former US State Department bureaucrat William Blum in a recent book, the "Asia Foundation is the principal CIA front" and funding conduit in Asia. The Asia Foundation funds and supports known anti-communist groups or influential personalities, i.e. academics, journalists, local officials, etc. and institutions. (Blum, 1999) According to the former executive assistant to the CIA's Deputy Director for Operations Victor Marchetti in his book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the Asia Foundation had the objective "to disseminate throughout Asia a negative vision of Mainland China, North Vietnam, and North Korea." (Marchetti and Marks, 1980 edition). New York Times investigative journalist Raymond Bonner has also identified the Asia Foundation as "a CIA creation" and "front" in one of his books, Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (1987). My interviews with former CIA operatives in the Philippines in 1996 confirm the active use of this foundation for the "Agency."

But the most credible and authoritative source that I have come across identifying the Asia Foundation as a CIA front and conduit is Marchetti's book where the CIA-Asia Foundation link is defined in no uncertain terms:

"Another organization heavily subsidized by the CIA was the Asia Foundation. Established by the agency (CIA) in 1956, with a carefully chosen board of directors, the foundation was designed to promote academic and private interest in the East. It sponsored scholarly research, supported conferences and symposia, and ran academic exchange programs, a CIA subsidy that reached $88 million dollars a year. While most of the foundation's activities were legitimate, the CIA also used it...to recruit foreign agents and new officers. Although the foundation often served as a cover for clandestine operations, its main purpose was to promote the spread of ideas which were anti-communist and pro-American--sometimes subtly and stridently...Designed--and justified at budget time--as an overseas propaganda operation, the Asia Foundation also was regularly guilty of propagandizing the American people with agency views on Asia. The Agency's connection with the Asia Foundation came to light just after the 1967 exposure of CIA subsidies to the (American) National Student Association. The foundation clearly was one of the organizations that the CIA was banned from financing and, under the recommendations of the Katzenbach committee, the decision was made to end CIA funding. A complete cut-off after 1967, however, would have forced the foundation to shut down, so the agency made it the beneficiary of a large 'severance payment' in order to give it a couple of years to develop alternative sources of funding. Assuming the CIA has not resumed covert funding, the Asia Foundation has apparently made itself self-sufficient now.... during the 1960s, the CIA developed proprietary companies for use in propaganda operations. These proprietaries are more compact proprietaries and more covert than the now exposed fronts like Asia Foundation and Radio Free Europe." (Marchetti and Marks, pp.157-158)

The CIA-linked Asia Foundation has long been active in the Philippines. It has generously funded academic seminars, researches, study tours, and conferences in most of the leading Philippine universities, most especially among many colleagues and programs at the University of the Philippines (UP).

You name it, they have their fingers stuck into it! Many nongovernment organizations, journalists, local governments and civic organizations have had their projects funded by Asia Foundation. This is what makes it strategic and well-placed, thus naturally, a matter of great concern and alarm to friends and colleagues in both the academe and the NGO sector who may be very upset by this information on the origins and CIA links of the Asia Foundation. But I did not invent this issue about the CIA-created Asia Foundation. I merely documented the previous testimonies from mostly open sources. It is part of the CIA's history in this country, which I have documented from the accounts of former CIA agents and operatives. Many recipients of Asia Foundation grants as well as the Filipino staff of the Asia Foundation in Manila may not even be aware of its notorious history. But now we know a little better.

It is important to note that in 1961, the chief of the CIA's Covert Action Staff wrote that books were "the most important weapon of strategic propaganda." Tens of thousands of books have been produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA and its conduits such as the Asia Foundation in support of US foreign and military policy.

Project Echelon

Together with the National Security Agency, the CIA also maintains "Project Echelon," the most sophisticated and the most technologically advanced eavesdropping system that has ever been devised. Through a relay system of satellites and spook stations in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada and United States, the US intelligence system is able to intercept all telephone, fax, e-mail, Internet and cellphone transmissions worldwide. Its nerve center is located at Fort Meade in Maryland where the NSA maintains its headquarters. This has grave implications for both our public and private security.

The National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States has developed a global surveillance system, Echelon, which is a powerful electronic net operated by super-computers that intercept, monitor and process all phone, fax, e-mail and modem signals. The European Parliament in a 1998 report entitled, "An Appraisal of Technologies of Political Control" has listed serious concerns and has recommended an intensive investigation of US-NSA operations. The NSA Echelon system provides awesome potential for abuse against civilian targets and governments worldwide, even against allies of the United States.

It can be recalled that under the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the coverage for special privileges and criminal immunity includes not only US armed forces personnel but also "civilian personnel who are employed by the US armed forces and who are accompanying the US armed forces." These US "civilians" include technicians of the secretive US National Security Agency which, during the existence of the US bases here, operated the spy communications facilities at Clark, Subic and Camp John Hay, among others. (Simbulan, 1985) All private citizens' and government communications are intercepted and monitored by the Echelon System.

According to Nicky Hager's book, Secret Power (1986) which deals with the international electronic spy network, the US has not only been using its NSA Echelon system to collect political, military and economic intelligence against its enemies, but it also targets its own allies. According to Hager:

"...there is extensive interception of the ASEAN countries, including the Philippines....ASEAN meetings receive special attention with both public and private communications of these countries being intercepted to reveal the topics discussed, positions being taken and policy being considered."

Through the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the US plans to fully restore its Echelon system in the Philippines which was greatly interrupted by the pullout of US military facilities and bases in 1992. The CIA heavily relies on the Echelon Project for its technologically advanced Signal Intelligence or SIGNIT, which is managed by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Conclusion

Every CIA station is virtually an infrastructure for political, military, cultural and even economic intervention. In the Philippines, the CIA has not only functioned as a listening post but has been actively used to engage in covert operations, sabotage and political intervention to undermine Philippine sovereignty and self-determined national policies. Former CIA operatives in the Philippines confirm the use of official "diplomatic covers," especially in the political section of the US Embassy where they are given secure communications, protected files and diplomatic immunity. They have also used "non-official covers," disguised as businessmen in US firms. Covers under the guise of US naval or air force personnel are now minimal after the US bases and military facilities in the Philipines were dismantled. But as we can now see, the CIA has long been operating with virtual impunity and has always gotten away with its deep involvement in Philippine domestic affairs. Shall we allow this continued intervention in Philippine political and economic life?

Bibliography

Books

Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press,1995.

Hager, Nicky. Secret Power. New Zealand: Craig Porton Publishing, 1996.

McGehee, Ralph. Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA. New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1983.

Reyes, Narciso G. Memories of Diplomacy:A Life in the Philippine Foreign Service. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing Inc.,1995.

Richelson, Jeffrey T. The US Intelligence Community. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999.

Robinson, William I. Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention and Hegemony. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Shalom, Stephen. The United States and the Philippines: A Study of Neo-colonialism. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1986.

Simbulan, Roland. The Bases of Our Insecurity: A Study of the US Military Bases in the Philippines. Quezon City: Balai Foundation, 1983.

Smith, Joseph Burkholder. Portrait of a Cold Warrior. Toronto: Longman Canada, Ltd., 1976.

Articles

Petras ,James. "NGOs in the Service of Imperialism," Journal of Contemporary Asia. Vol. 29, No. 4 (1999).

Oltman J. and Bernstein, R. "Counter-insurgency in the Philippines," Covert Action Information Bulletin. No. 4, 1992, pp. 18-21

Starobin, Paul. "Agent Provocateur," George Magazine. Oct. 1997, pp.86-91.

Interviews

Ralph McGehee, former CIA operative assigned to the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand; Herndon, Virginia, April-May 1996.

Interviews with former CIA operatives in the Philippines at McLean and Herndon,Virginia, April-May 1996.

Highly Recommended Websites:

CIABASE (use alltheweb.com or dogpile.com as search engines)

http://www.fas.org/sgp/index.html

http://www.pir.org (click Freedom of Information Act documents)

http://www.boondocksnet.com (click U.S. as a World Power)

http://www.Heavens-above.com (for U.S. spy satellites)

http://www.dtic.mil/defenselink/ (U.S. Department of Defense)

http://www.Nuclear Files.org (FOIA documents on nuclear issues)

http://www.odci.gov (the CIA's World Factbook)

http://www.bullatomsci.org

[iron-shears]

New Dialogue system fully implemented and here's another character for y'all.

I had originally convered my dialogue system from my previous .json dialogue to a fully-incode dialogue system... but realized I wanted translation to be easier... so I ended up just fully redesigning the way the .json files were formatted and made my life a lot easier.

[mabelsguidetolife]

it’s nice that asian and asian-inspired beauty products are finally coming in a larger variety of skin tones and pigments, like, it’s about time that they made decent bb cushions that didn’t range from practically paper white to light beige…….

[xtruss]

US Clinging To Cold War Delusions: The First Time a Tragedy, The Second a Farce

— John Pang, Former Malaysian Government Official | September 03, 2023

Illustration:Xia Qing/Global Times

Editor's Note:

The China-US bilateral relationship is one of the most important in the world. The trajectory of this relationship has attracted international attention. Still, the US is stepping up its efforts to suppress China on various fronts such as politics and diplomacy, economy, trade, technology, and military security, showing the true meaning of a cold war. The Global Times invites Chinese and foreign experts to expose the US' manipulation of the new cold war and reveal the damage it may potentially cause to the world.

US President Joe Biden felt it necessary to deny that the US was waging a cold war against China at his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bali last year. Despite this, US actions against China, in the form of strategic encirclement, military escalation, propaganda and economic warfare, and its trespass of every red line of China over the island of Taiwan, show the US is intent on a new cold war.

The historical Cold War was fought between the US and the USSR from the end of World War II to 1991. It was "cold" because its principal antagonists did not fight each other directly, not because it was not violent. Millions died in its proxy wars, coups and purges in Latin America, Africa and Asia. "Cold War" was the umbrella concept for a bipolar struggle against an ideological, political and economic enemy. While the USSR was the ultimate adversary, the Cold War was in reality waged against peoples of the Global South fighting for independence and decolonization. The Cold War turned the world, especially the developing world, into a battleground.

Is the "Cold War" a useful analogy for what is happening today? Yes and no. There is the same mobilization, the same aggressive ambition; only this time it is attended by a delusional quality, an unmistakable air of unreality. History appears, said Karl Marx, "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

The Cold War is back, above all, as the ritual re-enactment of the American Empire's foundational myth of heroic victory over Hitler and Communism. A gerontocratic US political class, some of whom are actually left over from the first Cold War, imagines itself in yet another apocalyptic struggle. Recycling Cold War tropes, reviving McCarthyism at home, and fighting Hitler once again, they have discovered in China a totalitarian octopus that must be defeated before it swallows Freedom and advanced semiconductors. The US has saturated the cultural space of the West with a propaganda campaign so relentless and malign that it has cretinized its pundit class. It has hammered its vassals into a set of NATO-like alliances, such as the Quad and AUKUS, in preparation for war on China. It is attempting a technological blockade to cripple China's development.

Yet This Is Not The Postwar World, China Is Not The USSR, And The US Is Not What It Once Was.

The US economy was way larger than the Soviet economy all through the Cold War. Against China, the disparity in economic and industrial capacity that won the Cold War runs in the other direction. Indeed it is China's increasing technological prowess that the US means to knee-cap. This time the US is making an enemy of a nation with an economy that is in PPP terms larger than its own, with an industrial capacity greater than of the US, EU and Japan combined.

The US and USSR led separate economic blocs. China and the US participate in one integrated global economy. They are so interdependent that some commentators dismiss the Cold War analogy, likening the relationship instead to a bad marriage. Meanwhile, China is not carving out a separate economic sphere. It is transforming the present one by bringing development and the common good to the center of the global agenda. To "Contain China," the US is hacking at the sinews of a new globalization for all humankind. In doing so it is also attacking the developing world, impoverishing its allies and hurting itself. What it cannot do is isolate a global economic presence larger and more dynamic than its own. Not everyone in the US is excited about Washington's efforts. US CEOs have lined up to speak against the suicidal ideas of decoupling from China.

The Cold War involved an ideological conflict between rival universalisms. This time all the fanatical universalism is on one side. In a sort of dumbed-down Manichaeism, the struggle is now between "democracies and autocracies." The rest of the world asks only that different paths be respected. In President Xi's words, at the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg: "There are many civilizations and development paths in the world, and this is how the world should be. Human history will not end with a particular civilization or system."

The Cold War was fought to re-impose Western supremacy after WWII. The order it imposed continued to subjugate the nations of the developing world after they had won nominal independence. Today world order is again at stake, except these nations have risen and are acting upon their sovereignty. The world is already multipolar, post-American and post-Western.

BRICS, overshadowing the G7, has just been enlarged. A long list of countries waits to join. The US is fighting a war it has already lost. Clinging to Cold War delusions amid its collapsing domestic order, the US is pitting itself not just against China but against a second era of decolonization, with declarations of independence ringing out from Niger to Argentina to Saudi Arabia.

This Time It's Farce.

— The Author is a Former Malaysian Government Official and a Senior Research Fellow at Perak Academy, Malaysia.

[love-everlasting]

me when i’m writing a paper about the history of grass in america and landscaping because of the stupid founding fathers and the lack of forests and the invasive species EVERYWHERE and insects cant eat those species but theyre stealing all the resources and theres WAY less insects than there should be and most species in the US dont have a high enough population to effectively do their jobs in their respective ecosystems BECAUSE theres no bugs to eat and it runs all the way up the food chain because bugs are how most energy is converted from plants to animals AND the animals have nowhere to live because of our obsession with grass and perfectly trimmed lawns with only the occasional invasive species as decoration and we cannot escape this hell without planting native plant species and actively removing invasive species

[alif-ovi]

Tour de Nepal, Kathmandu 😍😎

[jcmarchi]

Miracle, or marginal gain?

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/miracle-or-marginal-gain/

Miracle, or marginal gain?

From 1960 to 1989, South Korea experienced a famous economic boom, with real GDP per capita growing by an annual average of 6.82 percent. Many observers have attributed this to industrial policy, the practice of giving government support to specific industrial sectors. In this case, industrial policy is often thought to have powered a generation of growth.

Did it, though? An innovative study by four scholars, including two MIT economists, suggests that overall GDP growth attributable to industrial policy is relatively limited. Using global trade data to evaluate changes in industrial capacity within countries, the research finds that industrial policy raises long-run GDP by only 1.08 percent in generally favorable circumstances, and up to 4.06 percent if additional factors are aligned — a distinctly smaller gain than an annually compounding rate of 6.82 percent.

The study is meaningful not just because of the bottom-line numbers, but for the reasons behind them. The research indicates, for instance, that local consumer demand can curb the impact of industrial policy. Even when a country alters its output, demand for those goods may not shift as extensively, putting a ceiling on directed growth.

“In most cases, the gains are not going to be enormous,” says MIT economist Arnaud Costinot, co-author of a new paper detailing the research. “They are there, but in terms of magnitude, the gains are nowhere near the full scope of the South Korean experience, which is the poster child for an industrial policy success story.”

The research combines empirical data and economic theory, using data to assess “textbook” conditions where industrial policy would seem most merited.

“Many think that, for countries like China, Japan, and other East Asian giants, and perhaps even the U.S., some form of industrial policy played a big role in their success stories,” says Dave Donaldson, an MIT economist and another co-author of the paper. “The question is whether the textbook argument for industrial policy fully explains those successes, and our punchline would be, no, we don’t think it can.”

The paper, “The Textbook Case for Industrial Policy: Theory Meets Data,” appears in the Journal of Political Economy. The authors are Dominick Bartelme, an independent researcher; Costinot, the Ford Professor of Economics in MIT’s Department of Economics; Donaldson, the Class of 1949 Professor of Economics in MIT’s Department of Economics; and Andres Rodriguez-Clare, the Edward G. and Nancy S. Jordan Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley.

Reverse-engineering new insights

Opponents of industrial policy have long advocated for a more market-centered approach to economics. And yet, over the last several decades globally, even where political leaders publicly back a laissez-faire approach, many governments have still found reasons to support particular industries. Beyond that, people have long cited East Asia’s economic rise as a point in favor of industrial policy.

The scholars say the “textbook case” for industrial policy is a scenario where some economic sectors are subject to external economies of scale but others are not.

That means firms within an industry have an external effect on the productivity of other firms in that same industry, which could happen via the spread of knowledge.

If an industry becomes both bigger and more productive, it may make cheaper goods that can be exported more competitively. The study is based on the insight that global trade statistics can tell us something important about the changes in industry-specific capacities within countries. That — combined with other metrics about national economies — allows the economists to scrutinize the overall gains deriving from those changes and to assess the possible scope of industrial policies.

As Donaldson explains, “An empirical lever here is to ask: If something makes a country’s sectors bigger, do they look more productive? If so, they would start exporting more to other countries. We reverse-engineer that.”

Costinot adds: “We are using that idea that if productivity is going up, that should be reflected in export patterns. The smoking gun for the existence of scale effects is that larger domestic markets go hand in hand with more exports.”

Ultimately, the scholars analyzed data for 61 countries at different points in time over the last few decades, with exports for 15 manufacturing sectors included. The figure of 1.08 percent long-run GDP gains is an average, with countries realizing gains ranging from 0.59 percent to 2.06 percent annually under favorable conditions. Smaller countries that are open to trade may realize larger proportional effects as well.

“We’re doing this global analysis and trying to be right on average,” Donaldson says. “It’s possible there are larger gains from industrial policy in particular settings.”

The study also suggests countries have greater room to redirect economic activity, based on varying levels of productivity among industries, than they can realistically enact due to relatively fixed demand. The paper estimates that if countries could fully reallocate workers to the industry with the largest room to grow, long-run welfare gains would be as high as 12.4 percent.

But that never happens. Suppose a country’s industrial policy helped one sector double in size while becoming 20 percent more productive. In theory, the government should continue to back that industry. In reality, growth would slow as markets became saturated.

“That would be a pretty big scale effect,” Donaldson says. “But notice that in doubling the size of an industry, many forces would push back. Maybe consumers don’t want to consume twice as many manufactured goods. Just because there are large spillovers in productivity doesn’t mean optimally designed industrial policy has huge effects. It has to be in a world where people want those goods.”

Place-based policy

Costinot and Donaldson both emphasize that this study does not address all the possible factors that can be weighed either in favor of industrial policy or against it. Some governments might favor industrial policy as a way of evening out wage distributions and wealth inequality, fixing other market failures such as environmental damages or furthering strategic geopolitical goals. In the U.S., industrial policy has sometimes been viewed as a way of revitalizing recently deindustrialized areas while reskilling workers.

In charting the limits on industrial policy stemming from fairly fixed demand, the study touches on still bigger issues concerning global demand and restrictions on growth of any kind. Without increasing demand, enterprise of all kinds encounters size limits.

The outcome of the paper, in any case, is not necessarily a final conclusion about industrial policy, but deeper insight into its dynamics. As the authors note, the findings leave open the possibility that targeted interventions in specific sectors and specific regions could be very beneficial, when policy and trade conditions are right. Policymakers should grasp the amount of growth likely to result, however.

As Costinot notes, “The conclusion is not that there is no potential gain from industrial policy, but just that the textbook case doesn’t seem to be there.” At least, not to the extent some have assumed.

The research was supported, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

[roysexton]

From DBusiness: Clark Hill Director of Marketing Roy Sexton Named to Outstanding 100 LGBTQ+ Executives Role Model List for 2024

Thank you, R.J. King, Tim Keenan, and DBusiness Magazine, for your consistent and kind support and for all you do for Southeast Michigan and Detroit. Original article here. Roy Sexton, director of marketing at Clark Hill and 2024 International Immediate Past President of the Legal Marketing Association, has been named to the INvolve Outstanding 100 LGBTQ+ Executives Role Model List for…

[jimluce]

Building Bridges: How Cultural Exchange Shapes Future Leaders

Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz, embodies this spirit of cultural exchange. His year teaching in Guangdong, China, in 1989 was during the Tiananmen Square massacre. This period offers him a unique perspective on one of the most pivotal moments in modern Chinese history. His background highlights the potential for educational exchanges to foster deep, nuanced understandings of…

[eduspiral]

Top 10 Reasons to Study Foundation in Engineering at Asia Pacific University (APU) after SPM or IGCSE/O-Levels

Why you Should Choose Asia Pacific University (APU) to Study Foundation in Engineering after Secondary School The Foundation in Engineering course at APU is an intensive, focused one-year Pre-University programme which prepare students for your engineering degree studies in Malaysia. The Foundation in Engineering Programme is recognised for entry into MQA Accredited and BEM Accredited…

[coopsday]

Local communities learn about the cooperative model in Lao People's Democratic Republic.

The ILO organized training workshops for district officers, vocational teachers and students and cooperative members in Attapeu province, Lao PDR utilizing its Think.COOP and Start.COOP packages.

Three workshops using ILO’s training tools, Think.COOP and Start.COOP, were held in Attapeu Province on 29 February and 1 March 2024, by the ILO in collaboration with COOP Okinawa, Japan International Labour Foundation (JILAF) and Lao Federation of Trade Unions (LFTU).

Around 75 participants from the Attapeu Department of Industry and Commerce, vocational training educators and students, and members of Lao’s rice whiskey producing cooperative Lao-Lao took part in the workshop. Representatives from JICA Laos and Okinawa also joined as observers. The training sessions used select modules of Think.COOP and Start.COOP tools to help participants learn about the benefits of collective action, principles of cooperatives and rights and responsibilities of cooperative members.

Ms. Heejin Ahn, Technical Officer in ILO Bangkok stated in her presentation that ILO is the only specialized agency of the United Nations with an explicit mandate on cooperatives. Ms. Ahn gave an overview of ILO’s support for cooperative policy development, where over 100 countries have used the Promotion of Cooperatives Recommendation, 2002 (No. 193) to develop and revise cooperative policies and laws. Ms. Ahn also provided an overview of the Our.COOP tools, including Think.Coop, and Start.Coop, developed for people interested in setting up, launching, or joining a cooperative.

Mr. Ishihara from COOP Okinawa quoted the origins of the cooperative idea in Lao PDR as “If you share it, there will be more; if you compete for it, it will never be enough”. An official of the Attapeu Department of Industry and Commerce noted that “This training helped me put into words what I have been practicing all along. Now I can share this knowledge with others.”

Participants visited the cooperative’s production facility of the Lao-Lao (Lao’s rice whiskey) in Xai Village, Attapeu Province. The ILO will continue raising awareness and strengthen cooperative development by conducting trainings using Our.COOP tool with COOP Okinawa, JILAF and LFTU.

The training was conducted jointly by two projects; ILO’s Building Youth Capacity and Network in Asia-Pacific project, which aims to empower 50,000 youth and vulnerable people using sustainable, scalable and impactful training tools in countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Lao PDR; and COOP Okinawa’s Project which aims to support the establishment of cooperatives in Attapeu Province. Both projects are funded by the Government of Japan.

[ranisyahreza]

Suatu Hari Di Bengkel

Judul: Suatu Hari Di BengkelPenulis: Oky E. NoorsariPenerbit: The Asia Foundation — Let’s Read Tahun: 2022Halaman: 24Peresensi: @ranisyahreza Mengisahkan tentang seekor anak macan tutul bernama Arum yang membantu pekerjaan ayahnya di bengkel. Kisah ini merupakan proyek pengembangan buku yang menampilkan para perempuan tangguh sebagai tokoh cerita. Makanya, di sini, meskipun Arum adalah perempuan,…

[deadpresidents]

"What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 millions people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn't carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America's founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn't paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen."

-- "How Far Would He Go", TIME Magazine's interviews with Donald Trump, April 30, 2024.

I know we're saturated in coverage of Trump and it's easy (and probably better for our mental health) to usually ignore most of the articles when we see them, especially since he's so full of shit and infuriating. But it's also important to recognize that he is going to be the Republican nominee for President and he could absolutely be elected in November, and if you thought his first term was scary and dangerous, you need to understand that in a second term he's going to have people around him that are better prepared and VERY willing to do the crazy shit that he wants to do to this country. They aren't even hiding the fact that they are seeking vengeance against political opponents whom they feel have wronged them, and are ready to fundamentally dismantle the democratic foundations that are barely holding this country together after nearly 250 years.

Just look at what Trump says about the people who he incited to attack the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and halt the peaceful transfer of power that has happened every four years since 1789:

"Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. 'I call them the J-6 patriots,' he say. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, 'Yes, absolutely.' As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor."

Oh, and please note that Trump -- a former President of the United States and possible future President of the United States -- said on the record in these interviews with TIME: "There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country and that can't be allowed either." We are at a point where political leaders are outright saying that in this country again, and it's because of Donald Trump.

So, take the time to recognize that Trump is straight-up telling us the country we're going to be living in if he wins again in November. And understand that your vote matters -- and WHO you vote for matters -- because, as I've been saying for years now, ELECTIONS HAVE FUCKING CONSEQUENCES.

[economicsinaction]

Notes from Central Asia: A university with a direct social purpose up in the mountains

Though I have been in touch with the University of Central Asia (UCA) for the last 4-5 years, I could see its campuses in Bishkek and Naryn only last week. Naryn is a town on the Tian Shan mountains that borders Kyrgyzstan and China. This campus provides good quality (and high cost but heavily subsidised) liberal undergraduate education to nearly 200 students, mostly from the three countries in…

[ariannapeterson]

Unlocking Manila's Gaming Potential: SiGMA Asia Summit's Triumph

Manila, a vibrant hub, witnessed gaming’s innovation wave at the SiGMA Asia Summit. With over 12,000 attendees at the SMX Convention Center, it reshaped the city’s landscape. Backed by PAGCOR, the event merged Western expertise with Asian dynamism. 

A keynote byPAGCOR’s CEO outlined ambitious gaming plans. Awards and charities mingled, highlighting SiGMA Foundation’s impact. Expert talks explored AI and esports fusion. Clinton Sparks spotlighted inclusive gaming marketing.

click here to read more about SiGMA Asia Summit.

[cristinabcn]

PAKISTAN: A Visit to 14th Karachi Expo Book Fair Karachi

PAKISTAN: Una visita a 14th Karachi Book Fair, Expo. Center. Dra. Naila Hina Writer Asia Continent Manager, Dir. Gral. La Agencia Mundial de Prensa Pakistan. Columnista Pakistan, officially known as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located in South Asia. It shares its borders with India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast.…