The Rape And Destruction Of A Rice Granary

The following note and accompanying video was posted by one Noel Esquela on Facebook! I am re-posting this here for everyone to read and watch how Villar employed dubious schemes to acquire land covered by Land Reform to transform them into one of his housing projects!




VILLAR: THE REAL STORY OF SAVANNAH SUBDIVISION
Savannah Subdivision is Villar’s flagship in Pavia and Oton, Iloilo. This is the stage where the story unfolds, and provides damning evidence against Villar as a shrewd businessman who employs devious and illegal methods to accomplish his objectives, a politician who doesn’t hesitate to use his clout to compel government regulators to close their eyes and allow him to willfully violate the law.

It began in 1994 when Villar started scouting for an area where to put up the project. Villar saw the lands in Barangays Jibao-an in Pavia, Abilay Norte and Pulo Maestra Vita in Oton, as an ideal location. The wide land area sat close to the national highway leading to Iloilo City. The cost of the lands was dirt-cheap compared to potential locations within the city. From the real estate developers’ point of view, it was the dream place for a housing development.

There was just one catch: the lands were covered by agrarian reform, and these were classified as first-class irrigated rice lands. This fact alone will trigger alarm bells in the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), which has the mandate to regulate the conversion of agricultural lands to other purposes. As then DAR regional director Elmo Banares said, such lands are categorized as “non-negotiable”. These lands are ineligible for conversion.

An Open Letter To Manny Villar From Bill Esposo

Apart from Winnie Monsod, another respectable writer/columnist who exposed the truth behind Manny Villar's absurd claim of being dirt poor is William "Bill" Esposo who writes for the Philippine Star and the blogger behind "As U Wreck This Chair". I am re-posting the letter here for everyone to read!


AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR By William M. Esposo (The Philippine Star) Updated April 04, 2010 12:00 AM

My dear Kumpareng Manny:

Poll Computerization In 2010 - Courting A Disaster

The 11.4 Billion Pesos Poll Computerization Project is definitely shrouded with suspicions as well as clouded with questions. The uncanny haste with which Philippine authorities are implementing the project smacks of another large scale "Garci" election fraud in the making. (The amount of 11.4 billion pesos is the biggest budget for an IT project ever undertaken in the entire IT history of the Philippines. Why the important players like computer IT companies, communications companies, software houses, government IT agencies, the academe, and local computer organizations, were not consulted in the design of this all important IT project is totally questionable. On top of this, no IT person was appointed to the Comelec at this time when the Poll Body needed an IT expert among its commissioners.)

Adding up to the already messy outlook, an opposition senator (a staunch enemy of the poll computerization project), in an attempt to stop the computerization, mindlessly filed a bill in the senate offering huge monetary rewards to any hacker who can successfully hack the Poll body's computerized system. In childish reaction to the senator's move, the head of the poll body took the opportunity to do his own grandstanding antics and declared they are willing to bet that no hacker will be able to penetrate the electoral system. He claims he has invited and talked to some Singapore based hackers and invited them to try to hack the poll body's network.  Unknowingly, both the senator and the COMELEC head have delivered the 2010 Philippine Elections into the vultures' nest. They have both ignorantly courted disaster for the country on the May, 2010 elections. Both personality do not realize they are now stirring a hornet's nest!

While I share the senator's sentiment in going up against the poll body's computerization project at this time, I feel his grandstanding antics is uncalled for, and only invites more trouble - trouble that can come from every nook and cranny of the blogosphere where hackers of varying degrees of skills and abilities,equipped with more sophisticated gadgets lie in waiting for such a chance, ready to network with each other to do a monumental hack of the 2010 Philippine elections -  if only to make their presence felt (even without monetary considerations!)

On the other hand, the tech ignorant head of the local poll body (COMELEC), unaware of what hackers can really do, and seemingly ignorant of the power and the damage that a network of hackers can unleash, has stupidly stood up against the senator's pronouncements and made his own dare to hackers all over the globe to give their poll system a try!

Sadly, both have courted disaster for the country come May, 2010! Sadly, both have unknowingly been used to camouflage where the real risk of poll computerization lies.

The real risk of poll computerization lies from within the poll body itself!

It has been shown so many times all over the globe that votes can be stolen in automated machines using a simple malware script that is only 100 lines long, and which can be written even by budding hackers. It has been demonstrated that such a program can be written on a memory card and will take a mere 10 seconds to get it installed on a single machine where after which it starts infecting all the other machines in the network - hardly, if not totally undetectable!  Worst, it has been proven that such a set up have been used by insiders in the 2004 U.S. presidential elections. Videos of how to hack computerized polls are aplenty at You Tube! I am posting the more relevant videos for reference here.

Even with the growing vigilance against election fraud in the country, stealing votes on election day does not seem to wane. And, with the impending poll computerization, stealing votes will even be easier and almost undetectable! There is no way poll watchers and volunteers against electoral fraud and other election watchdogs will ever know votes have been stolen! The malware script contained in a memory card can be secretly inserted into a single machine by a poll body official or an assistant all within a span of 10 fleeting seconds. It will then automatically spread to the other computers in the network to shave off votes on opposition candidates and pad up the votes for the favored ones. No hacking from the outside is required. Just a little help from the poll officials who owes allegiance not to the country they are supposed to serve but to the 'powers that be' who conveniently appointed them to their positions. (Still wonder why the local IT specialists and the academe were not consulted at all for the poll computerization project?)

How can I not paint such a sordid scenario for the 2010 Philippine elections? - When all through out the country's electoral history, electoral fraud has been showing its ugly head without fail on election day?

In the past, "flying voters" openly transported to the election precincts on election day were commonplace. After citizens electoral watchdogs were formed, "flying voters" dwindled in numbers, however, politicians quickly resorted to vote buying. When this too was being exposed, ballot switching became the change-over order of the day come election time.  Again, when the poll watchdog's growing vigilance made ballot switching harder, fraud was perpetrated by the poll officials themselves who were switching official electoral returns with manufactured ones in the municipal canvassing as well as in the electoral tribunal level. It is not wishful thinking for us to expect that electoral fraud will be perpetrated by the electoral officials themselves! We have helplessly seen these done over and over again as in the now infamous "Garci" case. Poll computerization will allow them to commit fraud with total ease.

Corruption has been a way of life in this country... "ruling by theft" seems to be the political way of life. Every effort by its citizenry to preserve the sanctity of the ballot is constantly met by more sophisticated ways to steal votes crafted by corrupt politicians longing to desperately hang on to power! It seems that their appetite for power will always be insatiable as they continue with their ways in bleeding the country's coffers dry.
With the current administration's notoriety for rigging election returns, it will not be a surprised if the poll computerization project turns out to be a ploy to steal the votes and perpetrate their rule of corruption and intimidation!

Watch these videos and tell me if such a scenario is only a pigment of my imagination!

Princeton University Exposes Diebold Flaws

Main Findings The main findings of this study are:

1. Malicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss. We have constructed demonstration software that carries out this vote-stealing attack.

2. Anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a machine, can install said malicious software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute. In practice, poll workers and others often have unsupervised access to the machines.

3. AccuVote-TS machines are susceptible to voting-machine viruse! s - computer viruses that can spread malicious software automatically and invisibly from machine to machine during normal pre- ! and post-election activity. We have constructed a demonstration virus that spreads in this way, installing our demonstration vote-stealing program on every machine it infects.

4. While some of these problems can be eliminated by improving Diebold's software, others cannot be remedied without replacing the machines' hardware. Changes to election procedures would also be required to ensure security.

American Voting Sytem Hacked
Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org demonstrates to Howard Dean how EASY it is for anyone with access to the central tabulator computer to RIG the ELECTION. Diebold software is used in this demonstration and in the American voting system.

American Computer Hacker Testifies

American computer programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis is seen in this video testifying under oath in front of the U.S. House Judiciary Members in Ohio.

He tells the members how he was hired by Congressman Tom Feeney in 2000 to build a prototype software package that would secretly rig an election to sway the result 51 / 49 to a specified side.

He explains that it would be undetectable and only takes 100 lines of code to implement, watch it and then think about where your vote is really going !

Hack The Vote
"Hack The Vote" is an in-depth look at the still-unsolved problems with electronic voting. Reporter Carter Evans secured the first-ever exclusive on-camera interview with a former employee (now turned whistleblower) of Diebold, one of the companies making these machines.

Hack The Vote (Part 1)

Hack The Vote (Part 2)

Hack The Vote (Part 3)

Hack The Vote (Part 4)

Related articles by Zemanta

• The GOP's ACORN 'Voter Fraud' Scam Continues (bradblog.com)
• Diebold Voting System Has 'Delete' Button for Erasing Audit Logs (wired.com)
• Stealing the Election (tedshelton.blogspot.com)

Making A Difference In The 2010 Philippine Elections

Guns, Goons, and Gold used to reign over elections in the Philippines. It still does! 

In May 11, 2010, Filipinos will again troop to the polls to elect  a new president and a host of other local and national officials. My bold prediction is that the 2010 elections will be no different from the past elections in the country. It will still be fraught with fraud! It has been historically proven  over and over again that those in position will do everything to remain at the helms of power and ensure the continuity of their political clout through whatever means possible.

As the people become more vigilant in protecting their right to vote, the high and mighty holding sway in the corridors of power, have not stopped thinking of ways and means to subvert the people's will and rig election results to their favor. Whereas before, elections can be won by simple vote buying, the traditional dirty politicians are now finding this practice to be an ineffective and costly way to win electoral votes.  Like viruses, they are quick to adapt to whatever remedies placed in their way.

The incessant and continuing awareness campaigns launched by various cause oriented groups and some religious organizations to raise people's conciousness and resist vote buying  are finally yielding positive results. Former President's Estrada's win in 1998 with an unprecedented margin despite the massive resources poured in by his administration-backed opponent made the political strategists of these traditional dirty politicians shift tactics. Not wanting to suffer the same fate as Estrada's opponent in the 1998 election, Arroyo made sure she will win the 2004 presidency against her rival, who was another movie actor just as popular as popular as Estrada and commands the same respect and idolation by the masses. Her four years as carry-over president after Estrada's ouster did not seem to quench her voracious political appetite. She spent these years augmenting her political kitty and spreading her political clout and following. She made sure her party and their cohorts are in control of both houses of congress by bankrolling the political campaigns of local officials who allied with her. She formed political alliances with practically anyone to protect each other and perpetuate their rule. (This she did with the knowledge that come election time, these are the people who will sit in the electoral tribunal which will proclaim the new president and handle all electoral protests.) Grease money, fattened budgets, and payolas freely flowed out of Malacanang to muzzle opposition in and out of the political arena and effectively silence even the most critical in the media circles. Finally, immediately prior to the 2004 elections, she appointed the notorious Garcillano, known for successfully rigging the elections in the southern islands as commissioner in the country's poll body - the Comelec. The rest is now history! She won despite trailing by millions of votes from Day 1 of the counting! She won after questionable votes from the southern islands under Garcillano's administrative sphere were counted. She was proclaimed by an electoral tribunal dominated by her party mates despite the clear evidences of electoral fraud manifested by evidently manufactured electoral returns. She was proclaimed with malicious haste by her lap dogs in the electoral tribunal despite the numerous muffled protests lodged by the minority opposition.

When evidences of and witnesses to the massive election fraud perpetrated by Arroyo in 2004 started coming out, opposition senators conducted a fact-finding probe in the Senate, but Garcillano immediately went into hiding giving Arroyo's political strategists sufficient time to prepare for a defensive stance and silence all witnesses. He surfaced only after Arroyo received assurances her political allies in the Senate will protect her guy.

Today, after 8 years of  Arroyo rule, her political appetite seemed to remain still insatiable! To circumvent the one term, six year presidency, her allies in the lower house are pushing for a legislation to change the country's charter and transform the government into a parliament where she can run as the premier! Worst, under the the proposed legislation, her term (as well as those of  the proponents of the legislation and other public officials) will be extended for another two years  during the transition. This move is being met with grave protests from practically all sectors of the society with some warning of possible widespread violence if the legislation pushes through. But despite the protests, Arroyo's allies in congress are stubbornly and silently pushing the legislation in the guise of having an immediate need to address some pressing economic concerns. Arroyo has since publicly denied any links to these attempts after the local media exposed the new move to push the legislation (despite the fact that her two sons and brother in law, who are members of the congress are major proponents of the same).

The only remaining answer to the continued perpetration of election fraud in the Philippines is sheer vigilance and active participation in the electoral process. As early as now, one year before the elections, let us campaign for massive participation to the 2010 elections. Let us make people aware of the fact that the only way we can protect the sacredness of the electoral process is by participating and being heard through votes that will be counted. Let us be vigilant from today onwards to election day. Let us blogswarm the blogosphere with calls for a clean and honest election in 2010. Let us expose any and all attempts to undermine the people's will.

Join Bloggers Unite and instill the New Hope in the 2010 Elections! Get the badge below (actual size is shown my the right sidebar) and post it in you site to let people know that we value the sanctity of the ballot and that we will no longer allow the powers that be to trample on our basic right!

<a href="http://www.bloggersunite.org/event/2010-philippine-election-new-hope"><img src="http://www.bloggersunite.org/image/resource/badge/69476a1e99f5c12409c873b10d227436.jpg"></a>