“NEW YORK, November 25, 2004 — The valedictorian of the prestigious Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Class 2004, who was in the United States for schooling as a reward for topping his class, was arrested by US authorities for alleged theft by deception and deported back to the country, a report said.

Army 2Lt. Rolly Joaquin, a student of the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, was caught supposedly removing the 50-cent discount tag from a sale item and attaching it to a non-sale item that he purchased sometime in October.”

The rest of the article is here….

http://www.filipinoexpress.com/18/48_news.html

I think thats the whole part of the SOFA agreement that never gets mentioned. If a local national can do the work - they get the job - not US citizens. Especially since they are not here under a ‘working VISA’.

Yet you will never (rarely?) hear bout that ‘unfair SOFA’ issue.

One worker was fired last year for stealing merchandies at the main exchange but has appealed and was reinstated with back pay to her job, and then there are all the beer and booze thefts. The tunnel from the warehouse to a building off base, and the trucks that made “unauthorized” stops on their way to the Camp Long PX (at least they paid for that stuff).

If it were up to me, I’d only employ family members at AAFES. They need an opportunity to have a job/career and get out of the house. At least then, if they stole something they could be convicted under US law.

At least I hope so, assuming that they would publish with equal fearlessness a story about a high-ranking Korean diplomatic PX-privilege shoplifter. There’s certainly no doubt that American shoplifters would receive prominent front page treatment in the KH, is there?

This situation may have ended up being an interesting “4 party” parallel version of the “6 party talks” — in this case the US DoD, US State Department, Phillippine Foreign Ministry, Korean Foreign Ministry.

I hope Gen Bell sticks (has stuck?) to his guns, in spite of whatever pressure is/was brought to bear, though I’m not optimistic that he won’t be (wasn’t?) quietly ordered by DoD to restore PX privileges to the faux-outraged Filipino diplomats. After the handwringers in State insist (insisted?) that we must make one more concession to foreign corruption, in order to preserve some notional public image of allied solidarity.

“Filipino liasion officers to the UN Command” must be a legacy of the Korean War, when the Phillippines sent combat soldiers to really fight. The thought that any current or future Filipino govt would do the same, for some future conflict on the peninsula, is surely as self-delusional as this Filipino diplomat’s outrage.

Neffster: I figured Ol’ BB wouldn’t have liked your KT article too much.