Luke Judge

By Ellen TordesillasFor Yahoo! Southeast Asia

The mysterious powerful man behind Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia is once again mentioned in the news following the outburst of retired Commodore Rex Robles after the suicide of former Armed Forces Chief Angelo Reyes.

Robles, who belongs to Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Class ’65, said his closeness to Reyes goes back to PMA days because he was the yearling, the academy lingo for mentor, of Reyes who was in Class ’66.

The following  version of  that controversy which has now involved  Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, PMA Class ’95, is the result of my interviews with Robles, Trillanes and talk with other sources even before  the  Ombudsman entered into a plea bargain agreement with Garcia, the  subject of the congressional investigation which has led to more revelations of  corruption in the military.

Last January 12, Trillanes, a few weeks after his release  from  a seven-and-a-half-year detention in Camp Crame  was quoted in media to have said, “”I believe General Garcia is only a front for somebody powerful. At some point in late 2009, he was actually willing to talk and reveal the story behind his enormous wealth. but I don’t know, maybe he got afraid.”

Trillanes refused to identify the person he believed is protecting Garcia but he said  he has told  Malacañang about it.

Trillanes and Garcia were both detained at the Camp Crame Custodial Center. Garcia, who was accused of a non-bailable  crime of plunder, was released  on bail last Decemcer 16 on the strength of the  plea bargain agreement which the Ombudsman said has not yet been approved by the Sandiganbayan.

On January 14, Reyes wrote Trillanes asking him to reveal  who that “powerful person” behind Garcia. He said,”And knowing you to be a forthright and just person, I am confident that when you do name this powerful person, you would be able to substantiate the allegation.”

The letter was hand carried to Trillanes by his PMA classmate on Jan. 18. this letter was a subject of Gloria Arroyo’s call to Reyes a few days before he killed himself.

Robles said that Trillanes told his mistah,””Mistah, hindi si Reyes.” That’s why Robles said he could not understand why Trillanes said it was Reyes in a media interview last Feb. 1, the day after Reyes published the letter through a paid advertisement in major newspapers.

Trillanes said Reyes was one of the “principals” behind Garcia based on the revelations of former military budget officer George Rabusa,

Take note that the delivery of the letter to Trillanes happened before Rabusa’s  Senate appearance  on January 27. It was in that hearing that Rabusa revealed that he personally delivered to Reyes, together with then military comptroller Jacinto Ligot, P50 million send- off gift when AFP chief retired sometime in March 2001. Rabusa also said that Reyes was receiving P10 million monthly for his personal allowances when he was AFP chief.

Trillanes admitted that at the time he met his mistah, the “powerful man” he was referring to was not  Reyes.

But Trillanes revealed that his mistah delivered a message from Reyes which indicated that he also knew who that powerful man that the senator was referring  to and he wanted him (Trillanes) to disclose it to the public  so he (Reyes) would be cleared.

Trillanes  said his mistah told him that Reyes admitted, “May dumadaan sa akin. Pero wala akong kinukuha. Wala ako diyan. (Some  pass  through me. but I don’t benefit from it. I didn’t get anything.”

Trillanes’ said his mistah relayed to him Reyes request “to absolve him.”

Trillanes said, “I couldn’t do that.”  instead he told his mistah that since the former AFP chief and also former defense secretary himself said   the deal just passed through his desk and he knew there was a higher destination, “Ituro na niya.” Identify the ultimate beneficiary.

The mistah said it’s unlikely  that Reyes would do that.

Presumably, Trillanes’ information who the powerful person behind Garcia came from the former military comptroller himself. The problem is, during that January 27 hearing, Trillanes asked Garcia if he was willing to cooperate with the government in eradicating corruption in the military. Garcia firmly declared, “I  am not applying to be a state witness.”

Trillanes said he was puzzled why Reyes even came out with a full page ad with his letter even after the Rabusa expose. He said he named Reyes based on the Rabusa testimony. He said that’s why he asked for procurement papers of military equipment because purchases for the armed forces pass through the office of the defense secretary.

Robles said in his last conversation with Reyes, which was the day before he killed himself, the latter confided to him that Arroyo called him up about his letter to Trillanes. Robles said Reyes sounded concerned about Arroyo’s probe about the letter telling him about it in conspiratorial way. “Pare, tinawagan ako ni GMA,” Reyes told him half-whisper over the phone.

Robles said one of the things that Arroyo wanted to know was  the identity of Trillanes’ mistah who delivered the letter.

Does this mean now that Arroyo will grill that young officer?  Was Arroyo worried that it was her former aide, nor LCDR Christopher Magdangal, who delivered the letter? Was  she worried that Magdangal would talk? no, it was not Magdangal.

There is also there is also the question why Reyes was challenging Trillanes to name the “powerful person” behind  Garcia, who apparently he also knew. He knew that coming up with proofs to pin down this powerful person would be difficult. Was he laying a trap for Trillanes?

With Reyes gone, that powerful person may think that as long as Garcia adheres to his code of omerta, he is safe. but we got information that Garcia has written a letter, copies of which were given to three persons he trusts, with the instruction that it be made public in case something happens to him.

Uneasy must be the head that sleeps on stolen comforts.

Photo by NPPA Images/Voltaire Domingo

c16 Plus-4 Vic-20 enormous wealth, mentor, outburst, plea bargain agreement

DEFRAG advises you to assume the brace position, because this is going to be a bumpy ride: we’re going to talk about Justin Bieber.

Sorry, it has to be done. The Shadowy Department of Media Agenda has been in touch to inform us that, as a journalist, we have been derelict in our Justin Bieber-mentioning duties and if we don’t rectify this, we will be sentenced to write about an old person who bought an iPad.

We tried explaining that we didn’t know any of the Canadian pop sensation’s songs, but the SDoMA wasn’t having it.

“Then write about how he sucks,” it said.

“But isn’t slagging Bieber a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, a barrel without water in which the many fish inside it are already dead?” we asked.

Then SDoMA said “iPad. Old people,” and hung up.

But we can’t slag off Bieber. Sure, his haircut is kind of stupid and he seems to act boneheaded occasionally, but it’s our understanding that’s what 16-year-olds are for.

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.

End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.

We don’t get Justin Bieber, but as we were born in the 1970s, he’s not ours to get. Every generation of teenage girls is supposed to have a fresh-faced bubble-gum pop act who brings out the crazy in them, an act that will grow older and either reinvent themselves as serious artists, or become tragic drugpigs whose songs are ironically revived a decade later. And as it says in the Bible “let she who is without ownership of a Bros LP cast the first stone”.

Still, we were quite intrigued to read the widely reported news last week that Justin Bieber and his 5 million followers Biebering it up on Twitter accounted for 3 per cent of traffic on the micro-blogging website.

The source of these statistics, as far as Defrag can tell, is a designer named Dustin Curtis, who tweeted, “At any moment, Justin Bieber uses 3 per cent of our infrastructure. Racks of servers are dedicated to him.

– “A guy who works at Twitter”.

Assuming this is true, all Defrag can say is: “What’s wrong with teenage girls today?” Because, as someone who once sat outside a hotel for hours to get Simon Le Bon’s autograph, we can only say they are rank amateurs at teenybopper obsession.

Had Twitter been around at the height of Defrag’s Duraniness — in which case you would have had to use a Commodore 64 to access it, and uploading just one 140-character tweet would have taken six to eight weeks because you would have had to print it out on a dot matrix printer and then mail it to Twitter — we can confidently assert that we would have accounted for 3 per cent of its traffic by talking about Duran Duran on our own. Assuming we could have taken time out from practising our signature in case we married any of the band’s members, and from covering every surface in our bedroom with posters.

In fact, we might go and start tweeting about the band now, just to prove it can be done. Our screen name will be Mrs Le Bon-Rhodes-Taylor-Taylor-Taylor.

TOP 10

This Week: With smartphones and laptops, workers can be constantly in touch with work, but surveys suggest people have trouble switching off. Here are the top 10 signs you’re checking in with work too much while on holiday

10. You check your work email while you are on holidays.

9. Your boss rewards your diligence by making you redundant because your work was done when you weren’t even there.

8. Your fishing rods all have Bluetooth.

7. Your partner throws your mobile phone, laptop, address book — and you — into the pool three storeys below your “Sunlit Balcony with Sea View”.

6. You wonder when “bring your kid to work” day is going to end.

5. Holiday? What’s a holiday?

4. You try mountain climbing, but only because it might improve mobile phone reception.

3. Your overseas phone bill was more expensive than the holiday.

2. You’re not sure if you ordered a ‘Bloody Mary’ or swore at your secretary.

1. You look forward to going back to work so you can relax in the peace and quiet of your office.

Contributors: Don Knowles, Leon Said, Ian McColl, Craig Williams, Matthew Gregory, Sabrina Ferguson, and John Bennett

Next week: According to a study, 17 per cent of players of social games like Farmville or Mafia Wars would classify themselves as “addicted”. Send us the top 10 signs you’re one of them. Answers by Thursday to:

c16 Plus-4 Vic-20 canadian pop, justin bieber, old person, pop sensation, shooting fish in a barrel, twitter

Its a slow day at work and I’m feeling a bit nostalgic so I thought I would post some questions I’ve had stored in my head for a long time now:

1. Does anybody know the names of any of the Microsoft programmers who wrote AmigaBasic? I always thought it would be interesting to hear their stories.

2. When the Amiga 500 was first introduced they did a roaming tour and I went to their ‘show’ here in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They were showing off Amiga technology at the university here (IPFW) and also showed the Amiga 500. It had the Commodore Key and Amiga Key at the time.

During the show I asked them about loading older Kickstarts since 1.2 would not load some older games that were playing on the Amiga 1000 they had. (Archon and ACS, I think.) Anyway, the Commodore folks thought about it and even called Commodore HQ to ask about this question.

Now, the answer has always been interesting to me: The people on the phone told us to hold down CNTRL – CBM – AMIGA for a number of seconds and the Amiga 500 should ask for a Kickstart Disk.

We tried it several times and conversations went back and forth but it never worked. In the end, they said that this was a demo unit but the production Amiga 500s will have this feature.

I swear I’m not making this up. If you are from the Fort Wayne area, Computer Corner (THE Amiga store at the time) sponsored this and Kevin, Bob, and Tom were there with a bunch of other Amiga people from the area.

Has anybody else ever heard of this before? I often wondered if this was something they thought about but decided against later on

3. Like most of you I bet, I get tired of the Apple/Microsoft computer history that tends to leave out the major contributions of other companions like Commodore, Atari, Tandy, etc I enjoyed “On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore”. Are there any the books like this that I might be missing out on?

4. In many ways, I wish that “On the Edge” would have a sequel because there are many questions I wish were answered about other Commodore products. Does anybody know who designed the Commodore SX-64? I thought it was a great design for the time and easily head and shoulders above competing products (for the time).

5. I wanted to share a Rob Peck story with you: When a very early copy of Kickstart 1.4 leaked on the Amiga 1000 my friends and I got a copy from the usual places (Fear and Loathing, I’m looking in your direction). This was before there were any Kickstart relocater programsAnyway, the Kickstart was located at $F8000 but having Amiga 500s we need it to be some place else so we were writing a program that would relocate the KickTags to $200000 I thinkanyway we got stuck. In a flash of brilliance, we decided to call Rob Peck because he wrote the ROM Kernel manuals. His ‘bio paragraph’ listed the city/state were he lived so we called all the Rob Pecks there and left a message on the answering machines.

He actually called us back and we told him what we were trying to do. I was worried he would get mad and call the Police/FBI/NSA/CIA/Bil Herd/Bryce Nesbitt (Hey I was just a kid) but he actually helped us along and we created a program that moved Kickstarts around in memory.

I was really sad when I learned he passed away a few years after that.

Thanks for letting me ramble,
-P

c16 Plus-4 Vic-20 fort wayne, microsoft computer, rise and fall