Philippines criticizes alleged harassment of Filipino senator at SFO airpo

[Judi Lynn]

Philippines criticizes alleged harassment of Filipino senator at SFO airport

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

(03-22) 19:50 PST MANILA, Philippines (AP) --


The Philippine government criticized the allegedly shabby treatment by U.S. immigration officials of a Filipino senator, who also is the wife of an ousted president on trial for corruption.

Sen. Luisa "Loi" Estrada, wife of jailed former President Joseph Estrada, reported to Senate President Franklin Drilon that she was detained for 90 minutes inside an immigration cubicle at San Francisco International airport on Sunday, and was questioned by an immigration agent about graft charges against her husband.

Drilon, in a statement Tuesday, denounced "this shabby treatment of a duly elected Filipino senator in the hands of U.S. immigration officials."

"These unnecessary and uncalled for cases of harassment of Filipino officials at U.S. airports should stop," he said.
(snip/...)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/03/22/state/n195014S65.DTL

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. but she's not a 'Mercan. And she's brown

'Mericans can treat those 'other people' that way, since all true 'Mercans are white, blonde, and blue-eyed and think Bush is the Second Coming. </sarcasm>

Seriously, can you imagine what Bush would do if one of his Repuke Senators were treated that way in Manila?

[MrModerate]

2. But to be fair . . .

This was not unlike having Imelda Marcos going through the passport line. This Estrada character is a Very Bad Actor.

If the officials were anything less than utterly professional with her, they should be disciplined. However, the questioning seems not entirely out of line.

[dArKeR]

3. Can you come up with links to anything Estrada has done?

Beside the framing of the one check supposedly as a kick-back from a casino? Wow, think of the hundreds of things one could come up with for Bush, Delay, Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz...

Obviously, I honestly don't know if Estrada took any money but I have been to the PI with many many PI friends over the last 40 years. Corruption in the PI is well modeled after their mentor the Americans. Every police chief, fire chief, building inspector... on and into the military ranks is a mafia gangster on the take. All modeled after Marcos, who the Americans installed and defended. The Marcos' family murderers, the favorite of Warren Beatty.

What happened to Estrada was most likely an American coup and installing the American Whore Child Arroyo. Whatever was going in the PI Estraded inherited from Marcos, Aquino, and Ramos. PNAC knew Estrada wouldn't go along with their plans as Arroyo bows to.

Did one forget the PI young and idealist lower command attempting a revolts over the last years to publicize the PI Government was planting and giving bombs to the rebels to "Create Terrorism" to justify "Patriot Act like laws"?

I'll search for the world news storys if I can find them. They were all posted on the DU.
one but not the one: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=206041

Two but not the one: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1096100

(I've got to go out, maybe another DUer can find the links on PI Gov. helping and doing terrorism.)


Friendly Dictators: http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Asia-Pacific.html

[MrModerate]

4. A quick google produces many sites . . .

Admittedly, I haven't vetted these sites for RW bias, but Estrada is in the mold of many Philippines leaders, and while I don't want to get into a whole thang here, I also have visited the Philippines quite a bit (although not for more than half a decade), and the type of corruption he was accused of is endemic.

As far as what we have on Schimpanski and his clot of snot, the sky's the limit and in a just world they'd be dusting off the Nuremburg records to figure out where to start.

My point was that the passport officers were likely operating in good faith when they questioned the wife of a deposed Philippines leader of substantially uncertain legitimacy.

http://www.worldpress.org/Asia/1184.cfm
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/dec2000/phil-d16.shtml
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ASIANOW/southeast/01/20/philippines.estrada.02/index.html