Thursday, October 12, 2017

Steven Seagal to Film Drug War Propaganda in the Philippines

What's your favourite Steven Seagal movie?  Every single title in Seagal's filmography would make a fitting title for a Duterte biopic: "Above the Law," "Out For Justice," "Hard to Kill," "Marked for Death," "Executive Decision."

Steven Seagal just happens to be in the country right now.
http://www.interaksyon.com/steven-seagal-back-in-manila-to-judge-miss-earth-scout-locations-for-next-film/
More than one year after visiting the country for a “business trip” without specifying details, Steven Seagal is back in town.  
As was in his last visit, Seagal was again welcomed by his friend, former Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson, who accompanied him to the welcome party hosted by the Miss Earth Organization for the international delegates of the Miss Earth pageant on Tuesday at the Carousel Mansion in Mandaluyong City. 
Now this is very interesting.  What kind of business trip was Seagal here for? How did he become friends with the former governor of Ilocos Sur? 

https://news.mb.com.ph/2017/10/12/duterte-is-a-good-president-makes-ph-safe-steven-seagal/
Steven Seagal, America’s famous actor, film producer and martial arts expert, said Tuesday that President Duterte is a good president and is instrumental in making the Philippines a safer place to live in. 
In a press conference at The Peninsula Hotel in Makati City, Seagal said that the country is now more safe under Duterte’s leadership. 
Seagal is in the country to make a series of movies on crimes, drugs, and corruption with local actors. 
Asked if he feels safe in the country amid the relentless and massive campaign by the government against illegal drugs that resulted in thousands of killings, Seagal said that he feels the Philippines is not a dangerous place but is now more safe. 
He cited Duterte for his initiatives in protecting the Filipino people. 
He also cited the Filipino people for their hospitality, humor and friendliness, and this is why he chose to make a series of movies here. 
Seagal is in the country for the production of the TV series “General Commander.” This is the third time the action star visited the Philippines. 
It is said that “General Commander” will tackle corruption, crime and drugs. The actor shared he is interested in getting Filipino cast members. 
Seagal is being assisted by his close friend, former Ilocos Sur governor Chavit Singson who is now the national president of the Philippine Councilors’ League, in filming the movies in various parts of the country. 
Singson revealed that the American actor will also make movies in the historic city of Vigan and neighboring areas. 
Seagal admitted that he is a “big fan” of President Duterte. 
“I’m a big fan of the government, and I think Duterte is a very good president and he has been instrumental in making the Philippines an up and coming place,” he said in an interview. 
Steven Seagal has only visited the Philippines 3 times and he is praising Duterte for making the country safer?  What can Steven Seagal possibly know about the situation in the Philippines to make such a categorical statement? Has he even met Duterte? What about that business trip he made to the Philippines last year?
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/showbiz/chikaminute/560011/hollywood-action-star-na-si-steven-seagal-nasa-bansa/story/

http://www.philstar.com/cebu-entertainment/2016/03/23/1565854/steven-seagal-breezes-through-cebu
Alugar said Singson brought Seagal to the country “to show the possibilities for his future projects. Singson has also been telling him how nice Cebu is.”
This is not Seagal’s first trip to the Philippines. He had visited once during the Marcos regime and again when Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (whom he refers to as a “friend”) was the president. A TV report stated that Seagal was shocked when told Arroyo is currently under hospital arrest.
Seagal, a major movie star, or former major movie star, at any rate a very famous man, arrives in the Philippines unannounced on business he will not specify and he is secreted away to Cebu in the private jet of the former governor of Illocos Sur. Nothing funny going on here right? Of course not because it turns out Seagal was only in the country to "show the possibilities for his future projects."

It also turns out this current visit is really his fourth visit. He visited the Philippines when Marcos was dictator, when Arroyo was President, in 2016 on business, and now in October 2017 to produce a television show and judge the Miss Earth contest. When Marcos was President Seagal had not even starred in his first film, "Above the Law."  By the time Arroyo was President Seagal's star had faded somewhat but it is interesting to note that he considers her a friend. How did they meet and form a friendship?

Steven Seagal's business is movies. He is an an actor, producer, screenwriter and director. Making movies is what he does and now he is in the Philippines to make a television show about  corruption, crime, and drugs which will feature Filipino actors with the assistance of his close friend, the former governor of Ilocos Sur, who just happens to be president of the Philippines Councillor's league.

It seems as if this organisation works in tandem with the national and local governments to ensure better governance in the Philippines.

https://www.philippinecouncilorsleague.org/about-pcl/constitution-and-by-laws/
Who is Chavit Singson?

Steven Seagal's friend, the former governor of Ilocos Sur, just happened to have been appointed the deputy national security adviser by President Gloria Arroyo in 2008.
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/118617/arroyo-names-chavit-singson-deputy-nat-l-security-adviser/story/
Considered as one of the most powerful Filipino politicians, Singson is not known for playing second fiddle to anyone, other than the President. He played a key role in events that led to the ouster of President Joseph Estrada in 2001.
Singson is also an astute and wealthy tycoon controlling many businesses here in the Philippines.
The LCS Group of Companies, also known as the LCS Holdings Inc, is a Filipino business conglomerate owned by the Singson family in Ilocos. It is a diversified company with interests and investments in agriculture, aviation, mining, renewable energy, media, and retail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chavit_Singson
Earlier this year the LCS Group paid 13 million dollars to bring the Miss Universe pageant to Manila.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-philippines-missuniverse-singson/im-no-trump-says-battle-hardened-sponsor-of-miss-universe-in-manila-idUKKBN15B09F?il=0
Luis Singson, a larger-than-life Filipino tycoon who has brought the Miss Universe pageant to Manila, has much in common with the man who owned the franchise two years ago: U.S. President Donald J. Trump. 
Singson, long-time governor of the northern Philippine province of Ilocos Sur before handing over to his son in 2013, amassed a fortune through agriculture, mining and transport. He hopes the beauty pageant will boost tourism and banish ugly headlines about his country’s bloody war on drugs.  
“We might lose a little but it’s good for our country, good for our business,” he told Reuters. “This is the best vehicle to promote the Philippines.”  
Singson supports Duterte and the anti-drug campaign and says the Philippines is “much safer” because of it.  

One Manila congressman has urged Duterte to declare Monday a national holiday so that more people might watch the pageant. The reigning Miss Universe, Pia Wurtzbach, is a Filipina. 

Singson said he has survived six ambush attempts by a private army run by his cousins. Sixteen enemies died in one shoot-out, he said, and a 2003 film called “Chavit” - which he co-wrote - suggests he picked them off one by one. 
Singson travels the world to hunt big game, an expensive hobby that might horrify many of Miss Universe’s 86 contestants who profess, in their official biographies, a passion for wildlife conservation and animal welfare.  
He said an elephant he shot in Zimbabwe cost $150,000 “just to kill”, and tens of thousands of dollars to stuff and ship to his museum in Ilocos.  
Displayed at his Manila mansion is a bloodstained shirt. Singson said he was wearing it when enemies threw grenades into a party he was attending in 1972, killing 11 people and wounding many more.  
“Luckily I was dancing with a fat lady,” he said. “She absorbed all the shrapnel.” 
The woman died in the attack, Singson said.
Clearly Singson is no ordinary guy for Steven Seagal to be friends with. In fact he is no ordinary guy at all. This is a man of great power and influence in the Philippines. Having been President Estrada's right hand man and having been appointed deputy national security advisor by President Arroyo his ties to the intelligence community both here and abroad necessarily run deep.

Singson is also a supporter of Duterte's war on drugs and believes that it has made the country safer. What better way to support the war on drugs that to have your good friend and famous Hollywood actor Steven Segal make a television series about crime, corruption, and drugs?


In addition to the former governor of Ilocos Sur, Seagal is also being assisted by the Film Development Council of the Philippines.  Members from this organisation even met him at the airport.


https://www.facebook.com/FDCP.ph/posts/1448355078563067

What is the FDCP?
The Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), an agency under the Office of the President of the Philippines, is tasked to promote and support the development and growth of the Philippine film industry. 
https://www.facebook.com/pg/FDCP.ph/about/?ref=page_internal
The FDCP is under the direct control of Duterte who appoints the agency's chief and oversees it's mission.

https://www.rappler.com/nation/142822-liza-dino-appointment-film-development-council
Let's review.

Steven Seagal visited the Philippines last year for a business trip to discuss future film projects and flew to Cebu on the private plane of one of the most powerful politicians and business tycoons in the country, former governor of Ilocos Sur Chavit Singson. Nineteen months later he visits the country for the fourth time, praises Duterte for making the country safer, and declares that he will be making a television show about corruption, crime, and drugs starring Filipinos. He will be doing this with the help of  his good friend Chavit Singson and the FDCP which is under the control of Duterte.

Isn't it obvious what is going on? Steven Seagal is being used by the Duterte administration and friends of the Duterte administration to propagandise Filipinos to support the bloody war on drugs.  Think that's crazy? Think again.


As the former CIA man Bob Baer - whose books on his time with the agency were the basis for Syriana - told us: "All these people that run studios - they go to Washington, they hang around with senators, they hang around with CIA directors, and everybody's on board."
The CIA and the Pentagon heavily influence the film industry in the USA. These films are then distributed around the world and shape the hearts and minds of the millions of people who view them.  Hollywood, the CIA, and the Pentagon are a global propaganda machine of enormous proportions.  Now it only stands to reason that Steven Seagal's good friend Singson, who was the deputy national security advisor under Arroyo, would be familiar not only with these sorts of tactics but even friends with high ranking CIA and Pentagon officials. How did Seagal and Singson meet anyway?  Who introduced them?  Why would Singson fly off to Hollywood just to have dinner with Seagal?

http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/99923/ricky-reyes-birthday-gift-to-himself-remodeling-seven-floors-of-pghs-cancer-institute/
One Sunday, Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson canceled his dinner in Hollywood with actor Steven Seagal to be at The Cancer Institute of the UP Philippine General Hospital. Without missing a beat, he wrote a check for P1 million after seeing the wards.
Who flies ten thousand miles just to have a meal? Surely business was going to be discussed. Four years later Seagal is now in the country to do business.

If you think this is a wild and untenable conspiracy theory take a look again because Steven Seagal himself has admitted he has ties to the CIA.
It was during Seagal’s period in Japan that his activities took a turn into intrigue. As he has told, then denied, the story, he met some people “from a particular” agency. “These guys were my students. They saw my abilities both with martial arts and with the language,” Seagal told the Los Angeles Times in 1988. “You can say that I became an adviser to several CIA agents in the field, and. through my friends in the CIA, met many powerful people and did special works and special favors.” 
Some of the powerful people for whom Seagal claims to have done security work are the Shah of Iran, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. While it is the CIA’s policy neither to confirm nor deny the identity of its operatives, sources familiar with the agency say Seagal’s tale is improbable. Still, that hasn’t stopped the star from trotting it out whenever he sees the need. On the 1988 talk show circuit for Above the Law, an action melodrama about CIA crazies, he told Jane Pauley, “There are certain parts of the movie that are very autobiographical.” 
Miyako confirms that Seagal was away for long periods during their 10-year marriage but is hazy about his whereabouts. “My children don’t have any memory of him as a father,” she says, adding that they have seen Seagal when he has visited Japan and that Kentaro visited his father in Los Angeles two years ago. Seagal, she says, also pays a small amount of child support. 
With a glamorous wife and a list of students that reads like a Hollywood Who’s Who (including James Mason and James Coburn), Seagal began making powerful connections. In 1987 CAA head Michael Ovitz, another Seagal student, introduced him to Warner’s top brass by arranging for him to give the executives an aikido demonstration. 
http://people.com/archive/sure-hes-making-a-box-office-killing-but-who-is-steven-seagal-vol-34-no-20/
It should be noted that his claim to have ties to the CIA might be false.
First, the actor suggested to the veteran CIA official that he had worked for the agency – a ludicrous notion, according to Saunders, who had already checked him out and found he’d never worked there. 
“In his discussion, he sort of implied he was a CIA operative,” Saunders recalled, looking amused. “He used little words like ‘those of us familiar with the Company.’ We almost never said ‘the Company.’ “
Nevertheless it true that his former business partner had ties to the mafia.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steven-seagal-muscled-by-the-mob/
Seagal was called as a government witness Tuesday at the racketeering trial of Peter Gotti, brother of the late crime boss John Gotti, and other reputed gangsters. 
Authorities say Seagal — known for his martial-arts moves in films like "Under Siege", "Marked for Death" and "Exit Wounds" — was a victim of a bid by the Gambino crime family to infiltrate the film industry for profit. 
Prosecutors say Seagal, 50, was extorted after a falling-out with his former business partner, Julius Nasso, an alleged Gambino associate.
In addition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Seagal has also become friends with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Chechnya ruler Ramzan Kadryov, and President of Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev.


https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/sep/05/steven-seagal-continues-tour-of-post-soviet-leaders-in-name-of-world-peace
Asked by the Guardian why he had embarked on this unusual tour of meetings with post-Soviet leaders, Seagal said he believed Putin, Lukashenko and Atambayev to be great men. 
You don’t have to be a great man or a good man or an ethical man to be the president of a country, but the fact of the matter is in my humble opinion these presidents that God has blessed me with the honour to know are all really, really great men,” the actor said.  
“Along with the blessings that God has given me to know these great people, it is my deepest desire to transcend any kind of politics, particularly those that are divisive and manipulative and untrue.” He criticised western media for their coverage of the region, saying western countries “are jockeying to say things that are not true”. 
Seagal also said he planned to shoot films in Kyrgyzstan in the future, and was looking for “tough men, fighters, people who can do stunts on horses and beautiful women” to star in them. The actor said it was “probably – not for sure – but probably my first time in Kyrgyzstan”. He was given a hero’s welcome in the central Asian nation, and his press conference ended with applause, followed by journalists gathering with the actor for a group photograph.
Why is Seagal not sure about whether or not that was his first time in Kyrgyzstan? Kyrgyzstan is an obscure country that would certainly be easily remembered if he had visited before.  It's not like it's Canada or Mexico.

Steven Seagal is a man with business and political connections all over the world. Now he is in the Philippines to film a television show with the assistance of business tycoon Singson which will no doubt be used to propagandise Filipinos into supporting Duterte's was on drugs.

There is no better time than now to throw out your television.

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