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FTR#1261 Bong-Bong and the Marcos Continuum

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— George Orwell, 1946

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FTR#1261 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Explor­ing a deep polit­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dynam­ic, this pro­gram sets forth fun­da­men­tal aspects of what the late, bril­liant Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave called “The Mar­cos Dynasty.”

This pro­gram excerpts two of their excel­lent books–which Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends. There are links pro­vid­ed with each text excerpt to facil­i­tate the acqui­si­tion of the books, which, again, Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends.

Recent­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines (with close rel­a­tives of for­mer pres­i­dent Duterte as aides), Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Jr.—nicknamed Bong-Bong—has net­worked with U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken and renewed an invig­o­rat­ed, anti-Chi­na alliance.

Essen­tial for an under­stand­ing of the Bong-Bong/Blinken liai­son is aware­ness of Mar­cos, Jr.’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in his dic­ta­tor father’s phe­nom­e­nal­ly lucra­tive recov­er­ies of Gold­en Lily war gold secret­ed in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II. 

This sub­ject is cov­ered in the land­mark text Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 688689, 1106, 1107 & 1108 deal with the sub­ject mate­r­i­al of that con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant book.)

Fer­di­nand, Sr.’s rise was aid­ed by his “god­fa­ther,” Judge Chua, who was his bio­log­i­cal father in an out-of-wed­lock liai­son. This was rel­a­tive­ly com­mon in the Philip­pines and not stig­ma­tized as in many oth­er soci­eties.

Judge Chua’s posi­tion in the Chua fam­i­ly gave him great influ­ence. In turn, the clan asso­ci­a­tions of Chi­nese in the Philip­pines were fun­da­men­tal to the pro­fes­sion­al and social under­tak­ings of mem­bers of that com­mu­ni­ty.

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the strong affil­i­a­tion of the clans with the Kuom­intang of Chi­ang Kai-shek, impart­ing a fas­cist ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion to them. This was a major deep polit­i­cal influ­ence on Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr., the out-of-wed­lock son of the influ­en­tial Judge Chua.

Next, we present the deep polit­i­cal back­ground that shaped Fer­di­nand Mar­cos and an explo­ration of the man­ner in which eco­nom­ic class con­sid­er­a­tions shaped alliances dur­ing the Japan­ese fas­cist occu­pa­tion of the Philip­pines and its after­math.

In FTR#‘s 905, 970, among oth­er pro­grams, we explored how the U.S. reha­bil­i­tat­ed and resus­ci­tat­ed the Japan­ese fas­cist infra­struc­ture from that nation’s World War II impe­r­i­al state.

We have spo­ken of promi­nent Japan­ese fas­cists Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in numer­ous pro­grams.

Com­bined with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s reac­tionary stance, those reha­bil­i­tat­ed Japan­ese fas­cists con­sti­tut­ed the crit­i­cal foun­da­tion of America’s Cold War in Asia.

The MacArthur team in the Philip­pines dur­ing the Cold War was culled from the col­lab­o­ra­tionist milieu who worked with the Japan­ese dur­ing the occu­pa­tion. This includ­ed the head of the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ment, Jose Lau­rel, as well as Benig­no Aquino Sr. and Manuel Rox­as.

Fol­low­ing the ouster of Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr. the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment was head­ed by Cory Aquino, the wid­ow of slain CIA agent Benig­no Aquino, Jr. and Sal­vador Lau­rel, the son of Jose Lau­rel.

Col­lab­o­ra­tor Manuel Rox­as was MacArthur’s “favorite son” to man­age post­war Philip­pine gov­ern­ment.

1.  Recent­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines (with close rel­a­tives of for­mer pres­i­dent Duterte as aides), Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Jr.—nicknamed Bong-Bong—has net­worked with U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken and renewed an invig­o­rat­ed, anti-Chi­na alliance.

Essen­tial for an under­stand­ing of the Bong-Bong/Blinken liai­son is aware­ness of Mar­cos, Jr.’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in his dic­ta­tor father’s phe­nom­e­nal­ly lucra­tive recov­er­ies of Gold­en Lily war gold secret­ed in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II.

This sub­ject is cov­ered in the land­mark text Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 688689, 1106, 1107 & 1108 deal with the sub­ject mate­r­i­al of that con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant book.)

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 219.

. . . . As evi­dence that Mar­cos [Sr.] was in pos­ses­sion of enor­mous quan­ti­ties of gold bul­lion, far in excess of known Philip­pine reserves, [pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor Arlene] Fried­man tracked down two Aus­tralian bro­kers who, in the ear­ly 1980’s, had nego­ti­at­ed nine con­tracts with Mar­cos to sell a total of $1.63-trillion in gold. . . .

. . . . Nor­man “Tony” Dacus, a Las Vegas investor, told Fried­man that on a vis­it to the Philip­pines, he was tak­en to Mt. Apo, where Mar­cos was build­ing a Mt. Rush­more style memo­r­i­al to him­self. Dacus said the president’s son Bong-Bong took him into secret tun­nels in Mt. Apo, where he was shown box­es of gold bars and oth­er trea­sure. Dacus said Bong-Bong told him this gold was wait­ing to be flown out of the coun­try by the U.S. mil­i­tary, at the behest of the CIA. . . .

2. Fer­di­nand, Sr.’s rise was aid­ed by his “god­fa­ther,” Judge Chua, who was his bio­log­i­cal father in an out-of-wed­lock liai­son. This was rel­a­tive­ly com­mon in the Philip­pines and not stig­ma­tized as in many oth­er soci­eties.

Judge Chua’s posi­tion in the Chua fam­i­ly gave him great influ­ence. In turn, the clan asso­ci­a­tions of Chi­nese in the Philip­pines were fun­da­men­tal to the pro­fes­sion­al and social under­tak­ings of mem­bers of that com­mu­ni­ty.

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the strong affil­i­a­tion of the clans with the Kuom­intang of Chi­ang Kai-shek, impart­ing a fas­cist ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion to them. This was a major deep polit­i­cal influ­ence on Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr., the out-of-wed­lock son of the influ­en­tial Judge Chua.

The Mar­cos Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Copy­right 1988 by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Endeav­or Press Ltd. [SC]; p. 33.

 . . . . It was absolute­ly essen­tial for indi­vid­ual Chi­nese to main­tain these ties because the clan asso­ci­a­tion was the most impor­tant social orga­ni­za­tion in the islands. . . .

. . . . In the years fol­low­ing World War II, as Chi­ang Kai-shek’s strug­gle with Mao reached a cli­max, a new Fed­er­a­tion of Chi­nese Cham­bers of Com­merce was formed by KMT loy­al­ists in Mani­la, draw­ing its lead­er­ship exclu­sive­ly from clans com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing Chi­ang. The . The Chua clan was promi­nent among them. Two of its mem­bers served as pres­i­dents of the Fed­er­a­tion. . . .

3. The rise of the Mar­cos dynasty is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, which, in turn, res­ur­rect­ed fas­cists through­out Asia to pur­sue anti-Com­mu­nism.

The Mar­cos Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Copy­right 1988 by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Endeav­or Press Ltd. [SC]; p. 123.

. . . . Through­out the Far East, Wash­ing­ton was attempt­ing to install right-wing gov­ern­ments as a first line of defense against com­mu­nism, and its suc­cess depend­ed heav­i­ly on two dubi­ous allies, Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-shek’s noto­ri­ous­ly cor­rupt KMT and the Japan­ese under­world [inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Japan­ese fas­cists, Kodama Yoshio in particular–D.E.] . . . . Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang was anx­ious to influ­ence the pol­i­tics of wealthy over­seas Chi­nese and main­tained an under­cov­er army of polit­i­cal agents through­out the Far East. This pro­vid­ed an ide­al fun­nel for the CIA’s anti-Com­mu­nist funds and a ready-made vehi­cle for U.S. covert oper­a­tions. . . . For its part, the KMT became more obsessed than ever with destroy­ing left­ist and lib­er­al ele­ments in the Philip­pines and with dom­i­nat­ing its Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty. . . .

4. Next, we present the deep polit­i­cal back­ground that shaped Fer­di­nand Mar­cos and an explo­ration of the man­ner in which eco­nom­ic class con­sid­er­a­tions shaped alliances dur­ing the Japan­ese fas­cist occu­pa­tion of the Philip­pines and its after­math.

In FTR#‘s 905, 970, among oth­er pro­grams, we explored how the U.S. reha­bil­i­tat­ed and resus­ci­tat­ed the Japan­ese fas­cist infra­struc­ture from that nation’s World War II impe­r­i­al state.

We have spo­ken of promi­nent Japan­ese fas­cists Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in numer­ous pro­grams.

Com­bined with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s reac­tionary stance, those reha­bil­i­tat­ed Japan­ese fas­cists con­sti­tut­ed the crit­i­cal foun­da­tion of America’s Cold War in Asia.

The Mar­cos Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Copy­right 1988 by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Endeav­or Press Ltd. [SC]; pp. 130–135.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include:

  • Sasakawa Ryoichi’s and Kodama Yoshio’s recruit­ment by MacArthur’s G‑2, Charles Willough­by, to serve as bul­warks of reac­tion in Japan: “ . . . . This time their ener­gies and genius would be devot­ed to eco­nom­ic rather than mil­i­tary impe­ri­al­ism. . . . The deal made Sasakawa and Kodama the kuro­maku (‘the men behind the black cur­tain’), the fix­ers of Japan’s biggest post­war polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial deals. . . .”
  • The role of Chi­ang Kai-shek in the post­war Asian polit­i­cal land­scape: “ . . . . the emer­gence of Kodama and Sasakawa as two of the lead­ing pow­er bro­kers in East Asia was part of a pack­age deal they made with Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang and MacArthur’s G‑2, Gen­er­al Willough­by. . . .”
  • The piv­ot that the Japan­ese fas­cists made from mil­i­tary to eco­nom­ic Asian pen­e­tra­tion: “ . . . . After Japan’s defeat in the Pacif­ic War, Sasakawa’s real inter­ests revolved around rebuild­ing Tokyo’s eco­nom­ic pen­e­tra­tion of South­east Asia. . . .”
  • Sasakawa and Mar­cos were coop­er­at­ing by the late 1950’s, with the CIA as appar­ent shep­herd of the rela­tion­ship and Mar­cos par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Agency’s desta­bi­liza­tion effort against Sukarno’s gov­ern­ment in Indone­sia. The desta­bi­liza­tion of Sukarno was dis­cussed in FTR#1212, among oth­er pro­grams: “ . . . . Offi­cial­ly, they were brought togeth­er by the CIA’s anti-Sukarno rebel­lion. . . . This was one of the first exam­ples of the new CIA bring­ing in for­eign prox­ies and cutouts to sup­ply ster­il­ized weapons for a secret war. . . .”
  • Class divides and eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties both drove fas­cist alliances and tran­scend­ed them, before, dur­ing and after the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion: “ . . . . Many of MacArthur’s friends in Mani­la were bound to him by a com­mon com­mit­ment to big mon­ey and fas­cism. In the islands, pri­or­i­ty was giv­en to defend­ing bil­lion­aire landown­ers from peas­ant farm­ers who earned less than a dol­lar day, for­feit­ed half their har­vest, and could only make ends meet by bor­row­ing from the land­lord at 500 per­cent inter­est. . . .”
  • A Span­ish colony tak­en by the U.S. dur­ing the Span­ish Amer­i­can War, the Philip­pines retained a strong link to the Falange—the Span­ish fas­cist par­ty of Fran­cis­co Franco—including Andres Sori­ano, whose fam­i­ly owned the San Miguel brew­ery: “ . . . . As the Span­ish Civ­il War raged in Europe, MacArthur’s spon­sors, among them Franco’s wealthy con­sul in Mani­la, Andres Sori­ano, per­suad­ed him that Fil­ipino farm­ers were led by Com­mu­nist cadres plot­ting a Marx­ist regime. . . .”
  • Fun­da­men­tal to under­stand­ing the above-not­ed MacArthur ori­en­ta­tion toward the class antipa­thy of Philip­pine agri­cul­tur­al inter­ests was his intel­li­gence chief (G‑2) Charles Willough­by: “. . . . after his [Willoughby’s] retire­ment from the U.S. Army he became the chief Amer­i­can advis­er to Gen­er­alis­si­mo Fran­co in Madrid. . . .”
  • The class antipa­thy dom­i­nant in Philip­pine agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion man­i­fest­ed dur­ing the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion: “ . . . . Dur­ing the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion, this unequal con­flict between land­lords and farm­ers inten­si­fied. Big landown­ers sup­port­ed the Japan­ese because the Japan­ese pro­tect­ed their prop­er­ty. . . .”
  • As the class war­fare inten­si­fied, many ten­ant farm­ers joined the Huk rebel­lion. Lat­er more or less forced into a Marx­ist ori­en­ta­tion, the Huks were not ini­tial­ly aligned in that man­ner. They refused, how­ev­er, to be com­mand­ed by U.S. inter­ests in the Philip­pines, which led to their demise: “ . . . . the Huk lead­ers offend­ed Amer­i­can gueril­la offi­cers by refus­ing to put them­selves under Amer­i­can com­mand. The Amer­i­cans retal­i­at­ed by issu­ing a gen­er­al order that all anti-Japan­ese gueril­las who were not mem­bers of USAFFE were ene­mies of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. . . . .When the Huks turned over their wartime ros­ters to the U.S. Army as a ges­ture of good faith, the lists were used to iden­ti­fy, arrest, or kill Huk vet­er­ans . . . . Huk squadron 77 was walk­ing home to Pam­pan­ga in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 1945 . . . Amer­i­can and Fil­ipino sol­diers sur­round­ed the Huks, dis­armed them and took the before a USAFFE colonel . . . . With­out a tri­al, Maclang forced the Huks to dig a mass grave, then had his sol­diers shoot them all. Those only wound­ed were clubbed to death with their shov­els. Amer­i­can coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence offi­cers were present the entire time. . . .”

5.  The MacArthur team in the Philip­pines dur­ing the Cold War was culled from the col­lab­o­ra­tionist milieu who worked with the Japan­ese dur­ing the occu­pa­tion. This includ­ed the head of the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ment, Jose Lau­rel, as well as Benig­no Aquino Sr. and Manuel Rox­as.

Fol­low­ing the ouster of Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr. the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment was head­ed by Cory Aquino, the wid­ow of slain CIA agent Benig­no Aquino, Jr. and Sal­vador Lau­rel, the son of Jose Lau­rel.

The Mar­cos Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Copy­right 1988 by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Endeav­or Press Ltd. [SC]; p. 120.

. . . . On March 19 [1945], Tokyo ordered that Pres­i­dent Lau­rel be flown to Japan to estab­lish a gov­ern­ment-in-exile. Three days lat­er, Lau­rel and oth­er lead­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors, among them Benig­no Aquino [Sr.] of the Kalibapi par­ty, left Baguio secret­ly. The rest of the pup­pet gov­ern­ment, includ­ing Manuel Rox­as, remained behind. . . .

6. Col­lab­o­ra­tor Manuel Rox­as was MacArthur’s “favorite son” to man­age post­war Philip­pine gov­ern­ment.

The Mar­cos Dynasty by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Copy­right 1988 by Ster­ling Sea­grave; Endeav­or Press Ltd. [SC]; p. 135.

. . . . Long ago, MacArthur had cho­sen Rox­as as the man to do his bid­ding. . . .

 

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