THE allegation that Vice President Sara Duterte kept “unexplained,” hidden “billions” by any rational analysis, is pure nonsense, concocted as a smokescreen to justify House members voting for her impeachment in exchange for budget allocations. It was diabolically crafted following classic black propaganda techniques, which bolsters the report that the propaganda blitz for Sara’s impeachment is a very organized, well-financed operation. Let’s identify these techniques. The first propaganda trick is category confusion, in philosophy, “category error”: treating two distinct concepts as if they were the same, so that a conclusion appears to follow when, in fact, it doesn’t.

The bank transactions reported by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) executive director for Sara’s account from 2005 to 2026 totaling P3.5 billion are both credits (inflows) and debits (outflows), not “balance” or what is left when you subtract outflows from total inflows. This could either be liabilities or assets.

If your company deposited P50,000 monthly as your salary in your bank in the last 21 years, and you withdrew it for your expenses, your “bank transactions” would be P100,000 monthly, P1.2 million yearly, and P25.2 million in the last 21 years. But if that were your salary, as many journalists would attest, you’d really be in hock, living paycheck to paycheck, and able to rent a small two-room apartment.

First of three parts

THE claim by politicians like Gerville Luistro, Joel Chua and David Suarez that bank records provided by the Anti-Money Laundering Council make up a “smoking gun” proving Vice President Sara Duterte’s alleged unexplained wealth is total rubbish, believed only by morons, repeated by intellectually lazy journalists and spread by media mercenaries.

Let’s take it step by step. The usual headline — and propaganda spin — after AMLC Executive Director Ronel Buenaventura gave a report last week to the House of Representatives Justice Committee was that Sara and her lawyer-husband had “bank transactions” from 2006 to 2026 amounting to P6.7 billion. Internet-only website Rappler’s report was worse: that these P6.7 billion were “suspicious transactions.”

The number is intended for propaganda impact. It creates the impression of hidden wealth, of wrongdoing, of corruption on a scale that demands outrage. It is the kind of figure that shuts down thinking and replaces it with reaction. This leaves gullible readers, or just those who do not bother to study issues, morons, or political mercenaries to claim, as Rep. Joel Chua did: “The truth has been revealed, our vice president is a billionaire.”

I can’t believe that Chua, a lawyer and politician from the country’s richest city, is so poor that he doesn’t have a bank account that he doesn’t understand what bank “transactions” are, which is information that banks report to the AMLC.

All Chua had to do if he were sincere in finding out the truth, and not merely following Marcos’ directive to get Sara impeached, was to look at one of his many bank accounts. He would find three columns: “Withdrawal/Debit, “Deposit/Credit” and the ”Balance,” or the credit items less the debit. The AMLC gave only the debit and credit columns, without the balance, which makes me suspect that this was intentional on its part to portray Sara as a billionaire.

TWO years to the end of his term as president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s camp is now deeply fractured, with the biggest faction led by his cousin former House speaker Martin Romualdez breaking away from him, not even threatening to expose his corruption.

While not giving details, sources confirmed this tectonic change in the country’s political landscape, which Romualdez’s 1,800-word statement released through his Facebook account and other venues also pointed to.

Romualdez had been mulling the decision for several months, as he was unable to even get to talk to Marcos to argue that he wasn’t involved in the ghost flood projects scam, much less debunk the widespread perception that he was its mastermind. Romualdez got a hint that Marcos suspected him to be so when in a meeting of a small group, the president blurted out, without specifying names: “I don’t have funds for my critical projects because you guys walked away with billions of pesos!”

THE Manila Times’ use of a poll as its banner headline on Tuesday (“Marcos bounces back in trust, performance”) reflects, in my view, its deep misunderstanding of both what opinion surveys are and of what journalism is. Opinion surveys are never ever treated as a banner (i.e., the day’s most important) story here and elsewhere, for various reasons I explain below.

Indeed, not a single one of the main broadsheets did so, including those that have demonstrated to be sympathetic to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Philippine Star, which has become so pro-Marcos in its coverage and through its columnists (such as Philippine Ambassador to the US Babe Romualdez, a cousin of the now-infamous former speaker and significant stockholder), reported it only way below the fold, meaning it considers it as only the fourth or fifth important story to be reported. So did The Manila Standard, which is owned by Marcos’ cousin, the former speaker.

The Manila Bulletin, whose DNA has always been to be supportive of whoever is the current president, and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, whose colors had changed from Aquino yellow to Marcos red, didn’t even report the poll.

MOST Filipinos oppose the House of Representatives’ move to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte, contrary to a dubious poll’s claim, headlined in front pages of all broadsheets two weeks ago, that “7 out of 10 Filipinos” want her to face a Senate trial.

Out of the four polling firms which delved into this question — three of them the country’s most credible outfits, two of which have been in the business for decades, and are run by professional pollsters — reported thus:

– The poll of the Social Weather Stations (SWS), established in 1985, in June 2025 asked 1,200 respondents “if they were for or against the impeachment of Sara. Some 42 percent said they were against it, while only 32 percent were for it, with the rest reporting they were undecided or don’t know enough of the issue.”

UNITED States President Donald Trump boasts that the US blockade of Iranian ports to stop its oil exports is already in force. Washington claims it has deployed naval assets in and around the Strait of Hormuz, activated surveillance networks, coordinated with allied fleets and tightened financial sanctions to choke off shipping linked to Tehran. In the language of US power projection, this is a fully functioning maritime interdiction regime, designed to make the movement of Iranian oil commercially and physically untenable.

Yet reality on the water tells a different story. Chinese-bound tankers have transited the Strait without incident, without interception and without even the symbolic friction that usually accompanies enforcement actions.

The absurdity of the US blockade, and the reality that it is another propaganda gimmick, is undeniable with the fact that China buys at least 91 percent of Iran’s oil exports. But the US cannot stop China’s oil tankers from leaving Iran’s ports and sailing through the Strait of Hormuz.