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<div class="MsoNormal"><b>Civics 101</b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">There are three branches of the U.S. government represented
by the White House, the Capitol Hill, and the Pentagon. That's how I would have started SVES' 6th
grade classes in Social Studies in the last decade were I brave enough to
describe reality as I saw it. The
textbook used the idealized Lincoln characterization of a government "of
the people, by the people, and for the people", constitutionally structured
with three branches of the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">"Tell that to the Marines," I said to my two
Honolulu nephews who beamed because they were both trained to be gung-ho Marines
with the U.S. Navy! To maintain their
branch of the Armed Forces with their military cohorts, we allocate more than
fifty percent of the national budget; considerably more than the cost of the
social nets we have in place for the marginalized and the elderly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Spying Big Brother overseeing every aspect of our lives depicted
in Orwell's novel <i>1984</i> has become
altogether too real. No amount of
mimicking President Ike's warning to beware of a powerful
"military-industrial complex" can get us off the <i>deja vu</i> that we've been through this dystopian path before. The cost of a drone built by the mighty feats
of engineering of defense contractors commercialized our native propensity to
distrust the stranger, to the happy smirk of our stock markets. The liberal amongst us, at least, intends
only to manage those who hold the oil in their land, which evidently belongs to
US! </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">General Keith Alexander recently defended NSA's massive
spying efforts before members of the US Congress on the aftermath of Snowden's
revelation of the extent of our snooping since we went on war footage against
terror, and the audacity of his claim that the enterprise made the nation safe
from terrorists indicates that the reality of the Ministry of Truth, the core
of disinformation, has become operational.
On the other hand, we do live in terror since we woke up to the number
of loose guns legally held in our neighborhoods, and the number of killings
since Sandy Hook reveal what we've tried to deny, or, at least, hide in the
Columbine incident: we are a trigger happy nation determined at the slightest
provocation against our comfort and pleasure to resort to violence!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The military and the police have legitimate places in the
functioning of a society. A disciplined military
in the art of war can assume the role of protecting humanity from the gruesome
effect of exploded extinction. We might
heed Sun Tzu's admonition that the point of war preparation is to avoid war! Increasingly becoming obsolete, as the
competition among nation-states is under judgment by the reality that we all
occupy the same planet and the economic structures that regulate our finances
need not blur the distinction between greed and profit, it has become obvious
that the job of the military is to insure the survival of our specie with some
semblance of humanity and sanity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Still, Police work cannot deteriorate into a laboratory
branch where the latest in restraining gizmos, biological, mechanical, and
digital, are tried out on members of society.
Our police departments have been harshly observed to be dumping ground
of former military personnel whose major skill is following orders, unable to
fit on roles in the productive trades and industries of the land that requires
critical intelligence. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Three years ago, I journeyed to Dandong by the Yalu River through
the iron mill town of Benzi (think<i> </i>Pittsburg
of the 70s) where most of the ironworks, from gates to sewage manholes, are
made, and the skies stay smoggy all day!
At the train station, ready to be hauled on rolling platforms, were 50-some
anti-Sherman tanks reminiscent of old war footage from Rommel's rat-of-the-desert
days in North Africa. Photos of them now
accompany accounts of the Uyghur region protests around Taklimakan desert. The solo protester in front of a tank in
Tiananmen Square in 1989 is iconic in protest land. The tanks are now stationed not too far from
the Square as the latest Uyghur terrorist act of an exploding SUV at the gate
of the Forbidden City where Mao's portrait reigns tightens security measures in
the city's primal visitors' destination.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">In our region, sabre rattling has become the high profile
function of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in frequent pronouncements. While it is understandable that Japan gets
off the "apologizing" stance it was forced to assume since WWII
military debacle, Abe need not be a mouthpiece of US military vigilance that
still considers South Korea a branch of the Defense Department, and Japan's
Domestic Defense Forces its organized vigilantes in Far East Asia under the US
Marine boot. Geologists clearly
recognize the Senkaku/Daoyu islands as part of the Taiwan island group rather
than the Ryukyus, and since we recognize Taiwan to be part of China, ergo,
Daoyu is a part of Taiwan rather than Japan.
But then, politics trump rationality any day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">For foreign policy wonks, the aforementioned makes sense but
the transfer in 1970 of the Taiwan islands from a US weather station to Japan's
sovereignty, with the ardent protest of Zhou Enlai and China, had the added but
unheralded datum: there is oil in them ocean shelves. That spins another tale.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Oil Exploration 101, anyone?</div>
<br>
<div style="clear:both">Jaime Vergara<br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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