Love and Hate (Paperback) | Released: 02 Mar 2018

About The BOOK, LOVE AND HATE: Henares starts this book with Stage and Shadows, about stage performances and movies of his children, specifically the orations performed during Voice of Democracy oratorical contests which his children have the habit of winning (of Ronnie, of Atom and Elvira; the pieces of Juno, of Danby and Rosanna seemed to have been misplaced somewhere), and original scripts of three home movies that were shown to thousands of students, Atom the Great starring Ronnie and Atom, The Original Sin starring Atom and Martita Albert, and The Star Gazer starring Danby and Juno, and many others, printed in the various books he authored. Henares then takes a close look at Land Reform, why it is important for our economic development. He cites the first and most successful land reform under Emperor Meiji of Japan. In 1854, the shogun Iyemochi who then ruled in the name of the Emperor concluded a treaty with Commodore Perry of the United States by which certain Japanese ports were open to foreign trade. Ever aware of what happened to China, deliberately poisoned by the British with opium to be able to acquire Chinese manufactures without spending money, and bullied by Europeans through gunboat diplomacy, the landed daimos convinced Emperor Meiji to abolish the shogunate and rule the country as a strong leader to deal with the White foreigners. In a supreme moment of patriotism, the daimos surrendered their estates and privileges to Meiji, and gave the Emperor a free hand to rule. This was the death-knell of Feudalism, which triggered off one of history's most unique movements - the First Land Reform ever instituted. The wise Emperor compensated the daimos with twice the value of the lands they surrendered, and encouraged them to go into industry, sending Japanese scholars to England and other countries to learn technology and the techniques of production. Thus the landed daimos were instantly converted into zaibatzus. This was in the year 1868, when Japan was totally agricultural nation; 36 years later, Japan was a modern industrial nation making its own cannons and steel battleships, and winning the Russo-Japanese war against Imperial Russia in 1905. Unlike us, Meiji did not allow foreign experts or foreign investors to shape the Japanese economy; he relied mostly on the genius of his people and domestic credit to finance his country's industrialization. Here in the Philippines, a CIA agent named Roy Prosterman devised a Land Reform program for us, as Americans did for Vietnam, Nicaragua and El Salvador, that (1) impoverished our landed class by paying them very low compensation on a ten-year installment basis. (2) forbidding us from industrializing, and forcing us into a plantation type economy, agriculture-based, exporting cheap raw material and cheap labor, and importing finished goods. We became a basket-case, a vegetable garden to the industrial states of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Dung on the Neanderthal Americans! Then he continues with his POTPOURRI, this time a day-by-day narrative of Cory Aquino's middle years. He argues that we Filipinos tend to follow advice of foreigners, instead of following their example. In Japan where most people are "doers" rather than "bull-shitters," for instance, lawyers and economists are regarded very low on the social scale, dismissed as liars and parasites. Lawyer Ernie Maceda and economist Bernie Villegas whose Opus Dei declares that "All stolen wealth belong to God!" to justify its collaboration with Franco, Pinochet, Marcos and other dictators, simply cannot survive in Japan. For instance, Americans from way back in time, are known to be balasubas or welchers, who do not pay their debts and their loans. What we must realize is that nations do repudiate their debts, and the worst welcher of them all is the United States itself. Being balasubas has a long history in the United States, making the world safe for Hypocrisy, (MORE INSIDE)