Rogue Generals V2 Reboot: A Different Post-EDSA Uno Philippines TL
Feb 25, 2023 8:08:12 GMT
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Post by TheRomanSlayer on Feb 25, 2023 8:08:12 GMT
RE-OMAKE 02: THE BLOODY LEGACY OF 1986
COMMEMORATION OF 1986 EDSA REVOLUTION MARRED BY VIOLENCE ON ALL POLITICAL SIDES, FAR-RIGHT EXTREMISTS STAGE TORCH RALLY IN TAMPALON SQUARE
Melbourne Observer
February 26, 2016
Supporters of the late Corazon Aquino had gathered in EDSA for the 30th anniversary of the EDSA Revolution of 1986 that toppled former President Ferdinand Marcos, but the massacre at Ortigas Avenue paved the way for the rise of another former dictator in Artemio Tadiar.
(Kabankalan, KABANKALAN SPECIAL WARD) - The 30th anniversary of the EDSA Revolution got off to a rocky start, as survivors of said revolution had gathered in the former capital of Manila for a grand special commemoration ceremony. It was also the first time since 2012 to not feature a single speaker from the military, in sharp contrast to the previous commemorations of the uprising that toppled former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Unlike this year's commemoration, the ones in previous years had always featured various military figures giving speeches. This practice had ironically enough, started when another former dictator, Artemio Tadiar, had been in power. This year though, not a single military person was invited, at the request of the EDSA Revolution Committee, which often oversees the commemoration ceremonies. Diosdado Talamayan, the ceremonial leader of the EDSA Revolution Committee, had also taken his time to commemorate the Ortigas 66, the name of the group of murdered protesters that were killed by the late Major General Tadiar's Marines, as news of the canonization by the Holy See had been confirmed by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines. In what was to be unusual in this special commemoration ceremony, hundreds of Catholic priests and nuns are expected to lead a large procession throughout the streets of Manila. However, separate gatherings are also expected to be held in Laoag and Kabankalan.
"Our brothers and sisters in Christ have suffered for far too long at the hands of madmen with dangerous ambitions in their minds. We've all starved under Marcos, and we've all been tortured under Tadiar, but the dictatorship of the latter was known for their most anti-Christian rhetoric and behavior when they imposed secularization from above," said Talamayan, while addressing the attendees along EDSA, which was closed down for a day for the commemoration. "Under Tadiar's dictatorship, every single Christian priest was persecuted for not supporting the junta's futile war against China, even if our intention was to defend our ally in Vietnam. Instead of allowing China to humble us, we gave in to our hatred, and carried out a kind of revenge that forever branded the term terrorist on our collective foreheads. We are still paying for the sins of the Tadiar dictatorship, even to this day."
The Roman Catholic Church had suffered from brutal persecution during the Tadiar regime, as many of its priests and nuns were slaughtered and placed in mass graves as part of Artemio Tadiar's attempt at forcibly secularizing the Philippines, through the introduction of agnostic policies that encouraged the public to vent their anger and frustration at the clergy for what they saw as the backbone of the Philippines's 'colonial backwardness', forgetting that the Catholic faith had been an integral part of Philippine history. At the same time, Tadiar had gradually allowed various religious movements to establish their foothold in the Philippines, including Hinduists, Buddhists, and to the shock of the world, Shintoist missionaries, despite Shintoism being a de facto Japanese ethno-religion. At the same time, there was also another push for the re-introduction of pre-Hispanic pagan practices that were once dominant, including animist ceremonies, though lack of information on the animist rituals had forced the so-called neo-Bathalist worshippers to improvise on the redevelopment of the worship of Bathala in their imperfect form. Although Iglesia ni Cristo, a prominent Protestant sect, had been left alone, many of its parishioners had fled from the country, also citing religious persecution, though there were several pastors from the INC that were found out to have taken part in abductions of pro-Tadiar informers and spies from within the INC parish inside the Philippines. In what was one of the biggest scandals ever to hit the INC leadership, it was also revealed that one pastor from the parish in Carranglan, Nueva Ecija, had been caught with a prostitute that was later revealed to be a NICA agent, who was tasked by the Tadiar regime to find out the persons responsible for murdering their informants working for the junta.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the Tadiar regime had actually managed to destroy the corrupt, decrepit sect we call the Iglesia ni Cristo. Since its founding, the INC has been rocked by every corruption scandal that we can think of," says Manolito Fruto, a former INC priest who later converted to Armenian Apostolic Christianity after his exodus to Yerevan, Armenia, where he resides. "The Manalistas don't even bother to defend their own religion, and instead, they try to debunk the Catholic, Protestant, and even Orthodox religions as fake."
---
ESTO MILITARY EXERCISE IN TWO CHINESE PROVINCES AND MONGOLIA RAISES FEARS OF POTENTIAL MILITARY INTERVENTION AGAINST THE PHILIPPINES AS NEWS OF FILIPINO NUCLEAR PROGRAM IS REVEALED
Japan Times
October 30, 2018
Russian, Chinese, and Mongolian troops participate in the ongoing Zhemchuka 2018 exercise inside Mongolia. This exercise, in addition to the ones held in southern China, has raised fears of a potential ESTO military intervention in the Philippines, in response to the exposure of the Filipino nuclear program.
(Dashbalbar, MONGOLIA) - The Eurasian Security Treaty Organization had organized one of the biggest military exercises seen since the Cold War, and the first time that all of the ESTO's founding members had taken part. The militaries of all 10 founding member states, plus the Korean National Defense Force (consisting of personnel from the two former Korean republics of the North and South) have taken part in live fire exercises on ground, air, and sea. Moreover, tactical and strategic maneuvers were also being conducted in the Chinese provinces of Yuunan and Guangzhou, with the Russian, Korean, Mongolian, and Kazakh troops also taking part in the acclimatization of their personnel, raising fears of a potential ESTO military operation against the Philippines. The ESTO military exercises, codenamed Zhemchuka 2018, had been organized by the ESTO, years prior to today, though the exercises had raised fears of a potential Filipino and/or Japanese military response to such a thing. In response to the ESTO military exercises, the Filipino and Japanese navies have conducted their own military exercises in Okinawa Prefecture, while their counterparts in the army and air force have also conducted joint landing exercises in Japan's Kyushu island. Ever since Japan's formal repealing of Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution back in May 3, 2017, after a nationwide referendum that saw a massive voter turnout in favor of re-establishing the Japanese military as a formal armed force, sworn to defend Japanese sovereignty, much of Japan's increased military activity has been focused on its territorial disputes with Russia and China, particularly the Kurile Islands and the Senkaku Island (Diaoyu Island in Chinese). Moreover, Japanese naval build up had taken up the majority of its military rearmament, as Japan's demographics would make it more challenging to maintain a large military, opting for a more focus on technology and firepower.
"Zhemchuka 2018 has demonstrated our determination to bring order to the chaotic region of the wider Asia-Pacific region, which has been plauged by Filipino fascist leftovers since the end of the Tadiar dictatorship. Moreover, the long arm of Japan is also influential in the emergence of a strident anti-China alliance, which the Japanese state is also leading, as well as overseeing the Asian side of the anti-Russia alliance," says Chinese Minister of Defense Wei Fenghe, during an emergency meeting of all the PLA military officers in Luoyang. "It is because of the resurgence of Japanese militarism that we have also decided to extend our offer of protection to our Korean brothers, since they will be the first ones to fight any potential Japanese invasion coming from across the Tsushima Strait."
The exposure of the Filipino nuclear program however, was not surprising, as former Defense Minister Hermogenes Esperon, who served his tenure during former President Grace Poe's administration, had already revealed the existence of such a program, but had insisted that the original purpose of the nuclear program was to enhance the Philippines's electrical grid through the Bataan Nuclear Powerplant. However, former defector from the Tadiar regime turned Legarda loyalist Cirilito Sobejana, who defected back in 1999 while studying nuclear physics in Ukraine, had revealed the secret project behind the late Tadiar regime's attempt to build a nuclear arsenal, even going as far as to propose that the Philippines should repeal its nuclear free status in order to be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. News of the exposure of the Philippines's nuclear program had been met with outrage from the international community, and even former US President Dick Gephardt, who succeeded the assassinated Carol Moseley Braun in 2009, had threatened to re-impose sanctions on the Philippines unless it stops its nuclear ambitions, to which Tadiar's successor Hector Tarrazona had rebuffed him by stating that they don't care much for American sanctions, as they've outlasted the other sanctions for a long time.
"We're quite aware that former President Jackson had abgorated the 1951 US-RP Mutual Defense treaty, which precisely led to the former Tadiar regime's decision to turn towards Japan for assistance. However, going back to diplomatic isolation would only make things worse for the people of the Philippines," says US Secretary of State Alan Leventhal, during a press conference in Washington, when asked about the possibility of drafting a new mutual defense treaty that the United States could sign with the Philippines. "Since the only ally that the Philippines could count on is Japan, it will only encourage more Chinese and Russian military adventurism in the wider Asia-Pacific region. Already, we are receiving reports of Chinese bombers flying even as far as Guam, while our Canadian partners are complaining of Russian nuclear bombers flying over Vancouver."
---
"The events in 1986 had given autocrats the courage to exterminate most of their own people if they demanded real change that could improve their lives for the better. Although we breathed a sigh in relief when bloodshed was avoided in the former South Korea, and the pro-democracy movement in China was plagued by infighting among its activists, eventually resulting in its collapse without a single shot fired, most of the tinpot dictatorships were eager to learn from the Tadiar phenomena. It is because of this idiocy that my organization, the Open Society Foundation, has been targeted by those same dictators, not only for its complete ban, but the extermination of its members that are operating on those territories. I believed that we're building a more liberal world where universal human rights would be respected, but then again, there are those autocrats that are still holding an irrational view of the world in colonial and imperialist terms. These very same autocrats are holding unacceptable viewpoints of how society should be run, and the big question that we should ask is, should we tolerate these tyrants? No. Not in our rules based order, should there be any room for such irrational modern day Caesars and Hitlers." George Soros, on '1986: The Year that History Extended a Bit Longer', Babel Group Global Summit 2016.
---
Portions from the Interview with Former President of the Philippine Government-in-Exile Aquilino Pimentel
Deutsche Welle, released on March 17, 2018
Discussing the Legacy of the 1986 EDSA Revolution and Beyond
Interviewer: Before we wrap up this final interview, there are some things that I have yet to ask you, which only you're capable of answering. Given your position as the successor to the late Corazon Aquino as the Second and Final President of the Philippine Government-in-Exile, before the election of Grace Poe and your formal 'resignation' and termination of the government-in-exile, I wanted to discuss the legacy of the 1986 EDSA Revolution. That is, if you don't mind.
Pimentel: Of course, although historians will definitely chat a lot more about its effects beyond the borders of the Philippines.
Interviewer: All right. (pauses) First question that I need to ask. How did the lives of the political exiles and the former veterans who fought in the Filipino Civil War were shaped by the rise of Artemio Tadiar as the dictator of the Philippines?
Pimentel: Our lives were immensely shaped by the events of the civil war, in that both former dictators; one, a kleptocratic thief who was backed by his cronies and an equally greedy woman who collected over a thousand pairs of shoes, and the other, a military autocrat who was infamously known as a mass murderer that unfortunately made the Philippines more famous for the wrong reasons. The entire world is shaped by the actions of the late Major General Tadiar, and the Oxales family was bitter about the ordeal. For crying out loud, Colonel Oxales and Tadiar were schoolmates during their time in the Philippine Military Academy!
Interviewer: Wow! I never knew that side of Tadiar's story. I can also guess that the controversies surrounding certain political exiles had also shaped the politics of the countries that hosted them, right?
Pimentel: Of course. The incident in Seattle regarding the Tito, Vic, and Joey trio where they were harrassing those servers before getting arrested, as well as Erap Estrada's drunken antics that led to one of his relatives denouncing his own family in favor of pledging his loyalty to Major General Tadiar. It takes a special kind of stupidity to even pull off such a thing. However, the Filipino political and social scandals, such as the Pepsi Paloma case, had garnered international attention, thanks to those jackasses who got themselves deported from the United States.
Interviewer: As I could also recall, the retrial of the Pepsi Paloma case also gave attention to the late Miriam Defensor Santiago, who died only two years ago from cancer in Australia. Even after Tadiar's death and the voluntary downfall of the military junta, Ms. Santiago refused to return to her country of birth, fearing that the Filipino Grey State, as the conspiracy theorists would call the leftovers from the Tadiar era, would assassinate her. Was that a well founded fear that she had, or was that an example of paranoia?
Pimentel: (sighs) Paranoia was the so-called new normal of the Tadiar dictatorship, because snitches were everywhere. There were twice as many informants working for the Tadiar junta than informants who used to serve the Marcos dictatorship. Heck, Tadiar even sent his agents to infiltrate the Iglesia ni Cristo, and the gruesome murders that followed had given him the opportunity to send the Berdugo and Bato Brigades in 2005 to liquidate them, but many of its parishioners had to escape through what they nicknamed the 'Mactan Underwater Ferry', where human smugglers were paid by the INC to smuggle the parishioners out of the Philippines, and made their way to the US. Of course, the Mactan Underwater Ferry had its risks, as the INC refugees were not always assured of political asylum due to their irregular methods of getting into foreign nations. Palau and Guam would emerge as the territories with the largest Filipino population that adhered to the INC.
Interviewer: And what of Tadiar's role in SE Asia's brush with terrorism?
Pimentel: That was driven by both the self-imposed diplomatic isolation that Tadiar had implemented on the entire country, as well as the training and interactions with the criminal underworld and various weird cults, such as Aum Shinrikyo and the Unification Church, or the Moonies, as you guys would call them. The fact that the terrorist attack on the Shanghai Oriental Pearl and Radio Tower had occurred, despite China's intense surveillance systems being top notch, is an indication that terrorism was being taken seriously. That was also how the US was able to foil several terror plots in New York. When former President Jack Kemp was warned of a possible terror plot against the World Trade Center, he got the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA to collaborate on who would carry out these terror plots. Their hard work had resulted in busting an entire al-Qaeda cell based in Michigan, but the only area where they failed was during that infamous Lima Senior High School Hostage Crisis of 1999, where most of the students there were held hostage. ATF carried out one of the most impressive hostage rescue operations, though al-Qaeda had executed over 36 high school graduates on orders of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. We ended up giving lessons on how to prevent terrorist attacks, ironically enough, by carrying out terrorist attacks ourselves.
Interviewer: Okay. (pauses) Was there such thing as EDSA Two?
Pimentel: If you count the protesters marching in EDSA before Tadiar seized power, that counts, although this time Tadiar didn't hesitate to kill numerous protesters when he brought in a military junta to power. If there was also such thing as EDSA Three, I'd say it was the Atienza Mutiny of 2001 that nearly dragged the Philippines into another civil war, with a small stint when a bunch of would-be separatists had taken control of northern Luzon, and proclaimed a breakaway republic that would formally ask the US to admit them. Even former President Kemp was not keen on supporting the pseudo-separatists, since he needed to coax the Tadiar regime out of its diplomatic isolation.
Interviewer: And the most important, but damning legacy of all?
Pimentel: I would say that Major General Tadiar, though a brutal thug that he is, had played a positive role in the collapse of two communist regimes. The fall of the communist regime in Vietnam as a result of the suspension of the Doi Moi reforms that led to greater instability that allowed the Tadiar-backed Vietnamese Green Shirts to infiltrate the Vietnamese government, and when those Green Shirts had triggered protests throughout the country in 2000, forcing the Vietnamese government to shoot them, that triggered a revolution that resulted in the collapse of Vietnam's government. The second great thing that Tadiar did of course, was the Philippines's participation in the Second Korean War, though in that conflict, the conflict between Chinese and Filipino soldiers had gotten so bad, they massacred each other's prisoners without any care in the world. Heck, those thugs from the Berdugo and Bato Brigades fired chemical weapons into mainland Chinese territory!
Interviewer: What? They really did that?
Pimentel: Yes, and what was worse was that those troops fighting under Tadiar's authority had nearly triggered a war between our country and Russia when the troops belonging to the Provisional Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea were killed by the Philippine Marines during the skirmish at the Tumen River. What was worse was that the helicopter strike against those troops had also killed 4 Russian Border Guards soldiers as well. The entire government-in-exile was trembling, because we feared that the Russians would declare war on us over an incident in the Tumen River. Luckily, cooler heads did prevail, but the upcoming Zhemchuka 2018 exercise indicates that ESTO is planning to invade my country.
Interviewer: Those chemical weapons were the ones that Tadiar secretly kept to himself while giving away the ones he wanted to give back to the Americans, right?
Pimentel: Exactly.
Interviewer: Well, I guess we'd better wrap this up then. Do you have any last words?
Pimentel: I might as well say this. The entire Filipino people were witnesses to the events in EDSA and beyond, and we were also there when Marcelo Blando was facing off against troops fighting for the fallen Marcos regime. Had Blando withdrew his troops from Cabanatuan City, and instead conducted guerrilla warfare, he could have been in a position to stop both Tadiar and Gregorio Honasan. Marcelo Blando was the man who could have stopped the Era of Rogue Generals from happening, but because of his stubborn commitment to defending his home, his death had opened up for Tadiar to become the dictator that he is today. Of course, we must never forget that both Tadiar and Blando were also allies, but the death of the latter was the work of Fabian Ver. It was also thanks to Artemio Tadiar that Japan was able to shake off its post-war self-imposed pacifism to re-emerge as a military power, albeit at the cost of the entire Korean peninsula swinging behind Russia and China. It was largely thanks to Tadiar that the Filipino far-right extremist factions around Larry Gadon, Elly Pamatong, and Nicanor Faeldon, were able to rally much of the extreme right in the Philippines, and became stalwart defenders of the legacy of the Second Philippine Republic. Our culture after 1986 was depressing, and it only became brighter when the junta dissolved and Grace Poe became President.
COMMEMORATION OF 1986 EDSA REVOLUTION MARRED BY VIOLENCE ON ALL POLITICAL SIDES, FAR-RIGHT EXTREMISTS STAGE TORCH RALLY IN TAMPALON SQUARE
Melbourne Observer
February 26, 2016
Supporters of the late Corazon Aquino had gathered in EDSA for the 30th anniversary of the EDSA Revolution of 1986 that toppled former President Ferdinand Marcos, but the massacre at Ortigas Avenue paved the way for the rise of another former dictator in Artemio Tadiar.
(Kabankalan, KABANKALAN SPECIAL WARD) - The 30th anniversary of the EDSA Revolution got off to a rocky start, as survivors of said revolution had gathered in the former capital of Manila for a grand special commemoration ceremony. It was also the first time since 2012 to not feature a single speaker from the military, in sharp contrast to the previous commemorations of the uprising that toppled former dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Unlike this year's commemoration, the ones in previous years had always featured various military figures giving speeches. This practice had ironically enough, started when another former dictator, Artemio Tadiar, had been in power. This year though, not a single military person was invited, at the request of the EDSA Revolution Committee, which often oversees the commemoration ceremonies. Diosdado Talamayan, the ceremonial leader of the EDSA Revolution Committee, had also taken his time to commemorate the Ortigas 66, the name of the group of murdered protesters that were killed by the late Major General Tadiar's Marines, as news of the canonization by the Holy See had been confirmed by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines. In what was to be unusual in this special commemoration ceremony, hundreds of Catholic priests and nuns are expected to lead a large procession throughout the streets of Manila. However, separate gatherings are also expected to be held in Laoag and Kabankalan.
"Our brothers and sisters in Christ have suffered for far too long at the hands of madmen with dangerous ambitions in their minds. We've all starved under Marcos, and we've all been tortured under Tadiar, but the dictatorship of the latter was known for their most anti-Christian rhetoric and behavior when they imposed secularization from above," said Talamayan, while addressing the attendees along EDSA, which was closed down for a day for the commemoration. "Under Tadiar's dictatorship, every single Christian priest was persecuted for not supporting the junta's futile war against China, even if our intention was to defend our ally in Vietnam. Instead of allowing China to humble us, we gave in to our hatred, and carried out a kind of revenge that forever branded the term terrorist on our collective foreheads. We are still paying for the sins of the Tadiar dictatorship, even to this day."
The Roman Catholic Church had suffered from brutal persecution during the Tadiar regime, as many of its priests and nuns were slaughtered and placed in mass graves as part of Artemio Tadiar's attempt at forcibly secularizing the Philippines, through the introduction of agnostic policies that encouraged the public to vent their anger and frustration at the clergy for what they saw as the backbone of the Philippines's 'colonial backwardness', forgetting that the Catholic faith had been an integral part of Philippine history. At the same time, Tadiar had gradually allowed various religious movements to establish their foothold in the Philippines, including Hinduists, Buddhists, and to the shock of the world, Shintoist missionaries, despite Shintoism being a de facto Japanese ethno-religion. At the same time, there was also another push for the re-introduction of pre-Hispanic pagan practices that were once dominant, including animist ceremonies, though lack of information on the animist rituals had forced the so-called neo-Bathalist worshippers to improvise on the redevelopment of the worship of Bathala in their imperfect form. Although Iglesia ni Cristo, a prominent Protestant sect, had been left alone, many of its parishioners had fled from the country, also citing religious persecution, though there were several pastors from the INC that were found out to have taken part in abductions of pro-Tadiar informers and spies from within the INC parish inside the Philippines. In what was one of the biggest scandals ever to hit the INC leadership, it was also revealed that one pastor from the parish in Carranglan, Nueva Ecija, had been caught with a prostitute that was later revealed to be a NICA agent, who was tasked by the Tadiar regime to find out the persons responsible for murdering their informants working for the junta.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the Tadiar regime had actually managed to destroy the corrupt, decrepit sect we call the Iglesia ni Cristo. Since its founding, the INC has been rocked by every corruption scandal that we can think of," says Manolito Fruto, a former INC priest who later converted to Armenian Apostolic Christianity after his exodus to Yerevan, Armenia, where he resides. "The Manalistas don't even bother to defend their own religion, and instead, they try to debunk the Catholic, Protestant, and even Orthodox religions as fake."
---
ESTO MILITARY EXERCISE IN TWO CHINESE PROVINCES AND MONGOLIA RAISES FEARS OF POTENTIAL MILITARY INTERVENTION AGAINST THE PHILIPPINES AS NEWS OF FILIPINO NUCLEAR PROGRAM IS REVEALED
Japan Times
October 30, 2018
Russian, Chinese, and Mongolian troops participate in the ongoing Zhemchuka 2018 exercise inside Mongolia. This exercise, in addition to the ones held in southern China, has raised fears of a potential ESTO military intervention in the Philippines, in response to the exposure of the Filipino nuclear program.
(Dashbalbar, MONGOLIA) - The Eurasian Security Treaty Organization had organized one of the biggest military exercises seen since the Cold War, and the first time that all of the ESTO's founding members had taken part. The militaries of all 10 founding member states, plus the Korean National Defense Force (consisting of personnel from the two former Korean republics of the North and South) have taken part in live fire exercises on ground, air, and sea. Moreover, tactical and strategic maneuvers were also being conducted in the Chinese provinces of Yuunan and Guangzhou, with the Russian, Korean, Mongolian, and Kazakh troops also taking part in the acclimatization of their personnel, raising fears of a potential ESTO military operation against the Philippines. The ESTO military exercises, codenamed Zhemchuka 2018, had been organized by the ESTO, years prior to today, though the exercises had raised fears of a potential Filipino and/or Japanese military response to such a thing. In response to the ESTO military exercises, the Filipino and Japanese navies have conducted their own military exercises in Okinawa Prefecture, while their counterparts in the army and air force have also conducted joint landing exercises in Japan's Kyushu island. Ever since Japan's formal repealing of Article 9 of the 1947 Constitution back in May 3, 2017, after a nationwide referendum that saw a massive voter turnout in favor of re-establishing the Japanese military as a formal armed force, sworn to defend Japanese sovereignty, much of Japan's increased military activity has been focused on its territorial disputes with Russia and China, particularly the Kurile Islands and the Senkaku Island (Diaoyu Island in Chinese). Moreover, Japanese naval build up had taken up the majority of its military rearmament, as Japan's demographics would make it more challenging to maintain a large military, opting for a more focus on technology and firepower.
"Zhemchuka 2018 has demonstrated our determination to bring order to the chaotic region of the wider Asia-Pacific region, which has been plauged by Filipino fascist leftovers since the end of the Tadiar dictatorship. Moreover, the long arm of Japan is also influential in the emergence of a strident anti-China alliance, which the Japanese state is also leading, as well as overseeing the Asian side of the anti-Russia alliance," says Chinese Minister of Defense Wei Fenghe, during an emergency meeting of all the PLA military officers in Luoyang. "It is because of the resurgence of Japanese militarism that we have also decided to extend our offer of protection to our Korean brothers, since they will be the first ones to fight any potential Japanese invasion coming from across the Tsushima Strait."
The exposure of the Filipino nuclear program however, was not surprising, as former Defense Minister Hermogenes Esperon, who served his tenure during former President Grace Poe's administration, had already revealed the existence of such a program, but had insisted that the original purpose of the nuclear program was to enhance the Philippines's electrical grid through the Bataan Nuclear Powerplant. However, former defector from the Tadiar regime turned Legarda loyalist Cirilito Sobejana, who defected back in 1999 while studying nuclear physics in Ukraine, had revealed the secret project behind the late Tadiar regime's attempt to build a nuclear arsenal, even going as far as to propose that the Philippines should repeal its nuclear free status in order to be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. News of the exposure of the Philippines's nuclear program had been met with outrage from the international community, and even former US President Dick Gephardt, who succeeded the assassinated Carol Moseley Braun in 2009, had threatened to re-impose sanctions on the Philippines unless it stops its nuclear ambitions, to which Tadiar's successor Hector Tarrazona had rebuffed him by stating that they don't care much for American sanctions, as they've outlasted the other sanctions for a long time.
"We're quite aware that former President Jackson had abgorated the 1951 US-RP Mutual Defense treaty, which precisely led to the former Tadiar regime's decision to turn towards Japan for assistance. However, going back to diplomatic isolation would only make things worse for the people of the Philippines," says US Secretary of State Alan Leventhal, during a press conference in Washington, when asked about the possibility of drafting a new mutual defense treaty that the United States could sign with the Philippines. "Since the only ally that the Philippines could count on is Japan, it will only encourage more Chinese and Russian military adventurism in the wider Asia-Pacific region. Already, we are receiving reports of Chinese bombers flying even as far as Guam, while our Canadian partners are complaining of Russian nuclear bombers flying over Vancouver."
---
"The events in 1986 had given autocrats the courage to exterminate most of their own people if they demanded real change that could improve their lives for the better. Although we breathed a sigh in relief when bloodshed was avoided in the former South Korea, and the pro-democracy movement in China was plagued by infighting among its activists, eventually resulting in its collapse without a single shot fired, most of the tinpot dictatorships were eager to learn from the Tadiar phenomena. It is because of this idiocy that my organization, the Open Society Foundation, has been targeted by those same dictators, not only for its complete ban, but the extermination of its members that are operating on those territories. I believed that we're building a more liberal world where universal human rights would be respected, but then again, there are those autocrats that are still holding an irrational view of the world in colonial and imperialist terms. These very same autocrats are holding unacceptable viewpoints of how society should be run, and the big question that we should ask is, should we tolerate these tyrants? No. Not in our rules based order, should there be any room for such irrational modern day Caesars and Hitlers." George Soros, on '1986: The Year that History Extended a Bit Longer', Babel Group Global Summit 2016.
---
Portions from the Interview with Former President of the Philippine Government-in-Exile Aquilino Pimentel
Deutsche Welle, released on March 17, 2018
Discussing the Legacy of the 1986 EDSA Revolution and Beyond
Interviewer: Before we wrap up this final interview, there are some things that I have yet to ask you, which only you're capable of answering. Given your position as the successor to the late Corazon Aquino as the Second and Final President of the Philippine Government-in-Exile, before the election of Grace Poe and your formal 'resignation' and termination of the government-in-exile, I wanted to discuss the legacy of the 1986 EDSA Revolution. That is, if you don't mind.
Pimentel: Of course, although historians will definitely chat a lot more about its effects beyond the borders of the Philippines.
Interviewer: All right. (pauses) First question that I need to ask. How did the lives of the political exiles and the former veterans who fought in the Filipino Civil War were shaped by the rise of Artemio Tadiar as the dictator of the Philippines?
Pimentel: Our lives were immensely shaped by the events of the civil war, in that both former dictators; one, a kleptocratic thief who was backed by his cronies and an equally greedy woman who collected over a thousand pairs of shoes, and the other, a military autocrat who was infamously known as a mass murderer that unfortunately made the Philippines more famous for the wrong reasons. The entire world is shaped by the actions of the late Major General Tadiar, and the Oxales family was bitter about the ordeal. For crying out loud, Colonel Oxales and Tadiar were schoolmates during their time in the Philippine Military Academy!
Interviewer: Wow! I never knew that side of Tadiar's story. I can also guess that the controversies surrounding certain political exiles had also shaped the politics of the countries that hosted them, right?
Pimentel: Of course. The incident in Seattle regarding the Tito, Vic, and Joey trio where they were harrassing those servers before getting arrested, as well as Erap Estrada's drunken antics that led to one of his relatives denouncing his own family in favor of pledging his loyalty to Major General Tadiar. It takes a special kind of stupidity to even pull off such a thing. However, the Filipino political and social scandals, such as the Pepsi Paloma case, had garnered international attention, thanks to those jackasses who got themselves deported from the United States.
Interviewer: As I could also recall, the retrial of the Pepsi Paloma case also gave attention to the late Miriam Defensor Santiago, who died only two years ago from cancer in Australia. Even after Tadiar's death and the voluntary downfall of the military junta, Ms. Santiago refused to return to her country of birth, fearing that the Filipino Grey State, as the conspiracy theorists would call the leftovers from the Tadiar era, would assassinate her. Was that a well founded fear that she had, or was that an example of paranoia?
Pimentel: (sighs) Paranoia was the so-called new normal of the Tadiar dictatorship, because snitches were everywhere. There were twice as many informants working for the Tadiar junta than informants who used to serve the Marcos dictatorship. Heck, Tadiar even sent his agents to infiltrate the Iglesia ni Cristo, and the gruesome murders that followed had given him the opportunity to send the Berdugo and Bato Brigades in 2005 to liquidate them, but many of its parishioners had to escape through what they nicknamed the 'Mactan Underwater Ferry', where human smugglers were paid by the INC to smuggle the parishioners out of the Philippines, and made their way to the US. Of course, the Mactan Underwater Ferry had its risks, as the INC refugees were not always assured of political asylum due to their irregular methods of getting into foreign nations. Palau and Guam would emerge as the territories with the largest Filipino population that adhered to the INC.
Interviewer: And what of Tadiar's role in SE Asia's brush with terrorism?
Pimentel: That was driven by both the self-imposed diplomatic isolation that Tadiar had implemented on the entire country, as well as the training and interactions with the criminal underworld and various weird cults, such as Aum Shinrikyo and the Unification Church, or the Moonies, as you guys would call them. The fact that the terrorist attack on the Shanghai Oriental Pearl and Radio Tower had occurred, despite China's intense surveillance systems being top notch, is an indication that terrorism was being taken seriously. That was also how the US was able to foil several terror plots in New York. When former President Jack Kemp was warned of a possible terror plot against the World Trade Center, he got the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA to collaborate on who would carry out these terror plots. Their hard work had resulted in busting an entire al-Qaeda cell based in Michigan, but the only area where they failed was during that infamous Lima Senior High School Hostage Crisis of 1999, where most of the students there were held hostage. ATF carried out one of the most impressive hostage rescue operations, though al-Qaeda had executed over 36 high school graduates on orders of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. We ended up giving lessons on how to prevent terrorist attacks, ironically enough, by carrying out terrorist attacks ourselves.
Interviewer: Okay. (pauses) Was there such thing as EDSA Two?
Pimentel: If you count the protesters marching in EDSA before Tadiar seized power, that counts, although this time Tadiar didn't hesitate to kill numerous protesters when he brought in a military junta to power. If there was also such thing as EDSA Three, I'd say it was the Atienza Mutiny of 2001 that nearly dragged the Philippines into another civil war, with a small stint when a bunch of would-be separatists had taken control of northern Luzon, and proclaimed a breakaway republic that would formally ask the US to admit them. Even former President Kemp was not keen on supporting the pseudo-separatists, since he needed to coax the Tadiar regime out of its diplomatic isolation.
Interviewer: And the most important, but damning legacy of all?
Pimentel: I would say that Major General Tadiar, though a brutal thug that he is, had played a positive role in the collapse of two communist regimes. The fall of the communist regime in Vietnam as a result of the suspension of the Doi Moi reforms that led to greater instability that allowed the Tadiar-backed Vietnamese Green Shirts to infiltrate the Vietnamese government, and when those Green Shirts had triggered protests throughout the country in 2000, forcing the Vietnamese government to shoot them, that triggered a revolution that resulted in the collapse of Vietnam's government. The second great thing that Tadiar did of course, was the Philippines's participation in the Second Korean War, though in that conflict, the conflict between Chinese and Filipino soldiers had gotten so bad, they massacred each other's prisoners without any care in the world. Heck, those thugs from the Berdugo and Bato Brigades fired chemical weapons into mainland Chinese territory!
Interviewer: What? They really did that?
Pimentel: Yes, and what was worse was that those troops fighting under Tadiar's authority had nearly triggered a war between our country and Russia when the troops belonging to the Provisional Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea were killed by the Philippine Marines during the skirmish at the Tumen River. What was worse was that the helicopter strike against those troops had also killed 4 Russian Border Guards soldiers as well. The entire government-in-exile was trembling, because we feared that the Russians would declare war on us over an incident in the Tumen River. Luckily, cooler heads did prevail, but the upcoming Zhemchuka 2018 exercise indicates that ESTO is planning to invade my country.
Interviewer: Those chemical weapons were the ones that Tadiar secretly kept to himself while giving away the ones he wanted to give back to the Americans, right?
Pimentel: Exactly.
Interviewer: Well, I guess we'd better wrap this up then. Do you have any last words?
Pimentel: I might as well say this. The entire Filipino people were witnesses to the events in EDSA and beyond, and we were also there when Marcelo Blando was facing off against troops fighting for the fallen Marcos regime. Had Blando withdrew his troops from Cabanatuan City, and instead conducted guerrilla warfare, he could have been in a position to stop both Tadiar and Gregorio Honasan. Marcelo Blando was the man who could have stopped the Era of Rogue Generals from happening, but because of his stubborn commitment to defending his home, his death had opened up for Tadiar to become the dictator that he is today. Of course, we must never forget that both Tadiar and Blando were also allies, but the death of the latter was the work of Fabian Ver. It was also thanks to Artemio Tadiar that Japan was able to shake off its post-war self-imposed pacifism to re-emerge as a military power, albeit at the cost of the entire Korean peninsula swinging behind Russia and China. It was largely thanks to Tadiar that the Filipino far-right extremist factions around Larry Gadon, Elly Pamatong, and Nicanor Faeldon, were able to rally much of the extreme right in the Philippines, and became stalwart defenders of the legacy of the Second Philippine Republic. Our culture after 1986 was depressing, and it only became brighter when the junta dissolved and Grace Poe became President.
