Best books chosen by the New York Times

The New York Times has chosen what in its opinion are the best books this year. They are:

THE BOUNTY: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty. By Caroline Alexander. (Viking.) Relax! The movies didn't lie to you -- not entirely. Fletcher Christian really led a mutiny on the Bounty in 1789; and Captain Bligh and 18 crewmen did sail 3,600 miles of the South Pacific for seven weeks in a 23-foot open boat to reach safety after the mutineers tossed them overboard. Caroline Alexander's threatening subtitle simply means she sets out to prove that we have never understood these two men and hadn't a clue about how Bligh, a caring officer, became the heavy in the legend or why Christian, who was detested even by his fellow mutineers, became a sympathetic character to later generations. Her dramatic presentation of the court- martial of several mutineers leads to a subtle investigation of how the interests, and the political influence, of several families of minor gentry who wanted to save the neck of one mutineer bent the law and the rules of the British Admiralty. We hear them questioning one another and government officials, suggesting interpretations of disputed testimony and spinning the story one way and another while Bligh, confident of his probity and his lifetime record of naval service, could not recognize that history, and his rightful reputation, were being stolen from him.

BRICK LANE. By Monica Ali. (Scribner.) Leaving home is a journey without end in this novel about Bangladeshi immigrants in London's East End. The story turns on itself like a winding spring. An 18-year-old woman from Dhaka in an arranged marriage with a man of 40 is practically immured in their flat, with only one neighborhood friend, bearing children and listening to her husband's dreams of being a success and then returning home. But her sister's letters from there tell her, in hints and silences, that the Dhaka of memory is gone. Her husband's loss of work, and then of his savings to a moneylender, forces her into garment making, and she falls in love with the man who delivers and collects her piecework. In the deep background, scarcely mentioned, Islamic culture is challenged by Western values and personal choice battles fate. It is the emotional force of the woman's brief affair that releases the spring, and the deep tensions of the story erupt in front of us. When the husband returns to Dhaka, resigned to failure, she stays on with her daughters, learns English from them, and by the end seems to be sailing out into the universe on her own. The expansive generosity of the last pages is a remarkable achievement, especially in a first novel.

DROP CITY. By T. Coraghessan Boyle. (Viking.) Is T. C. Boyle mellowing? Well, the debris left scattered up the entire West Coast of North America in this novel is as frightening and spectacular as any he's ever dropped on his readers -- wasted people, bears, goats, wolverines, dogs, a horse, bulldozed houses and wrecked rolling and flying machines. ''Drop City'' is a 1970's California commune of hippies who migrate to Alaska believing that the lawless tundra will let them live high as kites forever. Of course, it takes only a few months of early winter to make flower power fade to black. But Boyle's compassion for the oddballs, and even a few losers, is striking; he has not often achieved such emotional complexity. At the heart of this novel are two love stories: one involving two middle-class newcomers to the commune and the other a solitary Alaskan trapper and a woman from Anchorage who seeks him out as the only safe haven in a world melting down. The cranky, passionate attachments of these couples spread warmth through the book; Boyle's joy in sharing the music of the age gives it a nostalgic tone; and his delight in evoking the effects of a rainbow of narcotics endows it with authority -- he's obviously no amateur. (The music and dope seem to have inspired him to coin a witty word, one spoiled by a typographical error in the book. We find spacey hippies ''dancing like moonwalkers to the drugged-down testiduneous beat,'' when surely what he wrote was ''testudineous.'' You won't find either word in your dictionary, but look up ''testudo'' or ''testudinata'' and you will catch his intention.)

THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE. By Jonathan Lethem. (Doubleday.) Everyone seeks his own Garden of Eden, but who would think to find it in a single block of Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, in the 1970's, when New York City was going down the tubes? In Jonathan Lethem's new novel it is there for Dylan, a white geeky boy, and his friend Mingus, a hip black neighbor. These boys' knowledge of life comes in piles of hoarded comics; graffiti, which they streak together as if by a single hand across the borough; unending black and white confrontations of will on the street; and black music, from jazz and blues to hip-hop. If Dylan, who seems to be Lethem's alter ego, looks like the threatened outsider among the black kids on their street, what he gets from them makes him a prophet of cool among whites he later meets in college, but since he ends up a pedantic music critic, the cool must have worn off. It was Mingus who was the outsider all along; from Day 1 he had a lashing knowledge of the great world and he emerges out of a long silence at the novel's center as the tragic figure of the book. If at times this sometimes disheveled novel strikes one as a meander through memory, magic and regret, his fate gives it a bitter bite.

KHRUSHCHEV: The Man and His Era. By William Taubman. (Norton.) Nikita Khrushchev left a deep imprint on the first 47 years of the Communist era, almost two-thirds of its whole history. He was involved in Stalin's collectivization program that destroyed millions of peasants and the bloody purges of the late 30's. He supervised the arrests and executions of thousands in Ukraine in 1939. After World War II he was one of the three Soviet leaders closest to Stalin, and after the dictator died in 1953, Khrushchev outmaneuvered the others and took control in 1956. That year he made the famous ''secret speech'' to the Communist Party Congress, denouncing the crimes of Stalin in vivid detail and setting loose forces that would eventually bring down the Soviet Union. Before he was toppled from power in 1964, he also nearly caused a nuclear war over Russian missiles in Cuba, but he also arranged the first detente with America shortly afterward. William Taubman presents this sweeping history, and Khrushchev's explosive, vulgar, warm character, unobtrusively but not without measured judgments. And he never tries to explain the inexplicable -- how a man so deeply complicit in political crimes that were almost immeasurable could then have done so much good so courageously when the chance came.

THE KNOWN WORLD. By Edward P. Jones. (Amistad/HarperCollins.) What makes this novel so startling is that the situation Edward P. Jones imagines was reality in parts of this country in the 1850's: there were black slave owners, more than a few, and a few were pretty well heeled. Jones's story, centered on one such man in Virginia, exposes the heart of slavery; there are few real villains in this book, because slavery poisons the entire society, white and black, and for the same reason there can be no real heroes. Until now Jones has been a writer of short stories, and this first novel often reads like an assemblage of stories within stories. But he has a sharp ear for speech and a gift for spotting individualizing gestures; ''The Known World'' is crowded with individuals who refuse to get lost in the vast picture of humiliation and disgrace it presents. Jones knows how to create dramatic confrontations that appall us and will not let us escape, as in the treachery of a traveling white con artist who returns a freed black man to shackles by a despicable trick and thus sets the novel on a course to its tragic end. The book has an epic feel, and the seductive force of folk tales.

LIVING TO TELL THE TALE. By Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez. Translated by Edith Grossman. (Knopf.) At 76, Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez has the comforting confidence of a man unafraid to tease his admirers. This memoir, the first of three planned volumes, takes him to his early 20's, before he leaves his country as it sinks into violence. As the fantastic landscape of the Caribbean region of Colombia, where he grew up, passes in front of us, occupied by eccentric and, in some cases, bizarre members of his family, we realize that a good part of the ''magic realism'' in his novels was not so magic after all. A ghost who walks in on a family at dinner, a man who breeds a platoon of devoted bastards right across the country, a family that takes an exhumed corpse with its belongings when it moves -- such experiences make for great fiction. His parents and grandparents are masterpieces of memory infused with insight and sad humor. The middle of the book may be opaque to North Americans, who will not know the importance of many of his associates, but the first 100 pages and the last 50 make it all pay off. And there is a powerful moment so quietly stated that its meaning takes time to register: Garc�a M�rquez was in Bogota in 1948 when the murder of a popular liberal political leader just down the street from him ignited the civil war that continues today to tear Colombia apart.

RANDOM FAMILY: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx. By Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. (Scribner.) The detail in this extraordinary feat of reportage can be intimidating at times -- the etiquette of prison visits, techniques of cutting dope, rituals of dance clubs, people's clothes, voices, smells and hairdos. The sensuous detail makes reading about the lives of members of a loosely defined Bronx family through 10 years like watching Seurat add specks and daubs until crowds of Parisians rise living from his canvas and walk along the Seine. The people Adrian Nicole LeBlanc gives us are not so fashionable. She focuses on two Puerto Rican girls: one who has a baby by one man and twins by his brother before she's 19 and then ties up with a heroin kingpin and lives lavishly for a few years before going to prison; and another, who has two babies by the first girl's half brother and three more by three other men but who remains so vital and good-humored she lifts a reader's spirit at every encounter. These women, and the scores of relatives, friends and rivals who orbit them, go nowhere; they return repeatedly to the same ruts. The author seldom judges anything they do; they speak for themselves. And yet they are fascinating. It can be tough to read 400 pages about blight and struggle. But these people are such memorable personalities that you can easily read a short section and after you have put it down for some days you will not have lost track of who they are or what they are up to. This book took 10 years to report and it may well stand 10 years of reading.

SAMUEL PEPYS: The Unequalled Self. By Claire Tomalin. (Knopf, cloth; Vintage, paper.) Claire Tomalin rescues Pepys from his own diary, and a much larger figure he is outside it. For 10 years starting in 1660, when he was 26, Pepys wrote in his diary everything he experienced every day -- his countless romantic encounters, fights with his wife, talks with the king, dreams, the plague, the fire of London, work, nights in the theater and at concerts -- in shorthand, or in a pidgin of Latin, French and Spanish. It is the most voluminous account we have of life in the 17th century. Until the 19th century it was hardly known, and from then on was celebrated mostly for its sexual episodes; almost no one now reads the entire six volumes of the diary. But Pepys lived 70 years and became one of the greatest civil servants in British history; his organization of the work of the admiralty is often taken as having given Britain the ability to rule the world's oceans. And his times were as dramatic and dangerous in politics as any in British history. Tomalin resurrects the times vividly and puts him in the center of them. If some of her claims for his eminence as a writer or for his place in human psychology are a bit extravagant, well, Pepys is so captivating and her picture of his Britain so brightly drawn that you can ignore her theses and still hugely enjoy her book.

Abetting human rights violations

Time reports in this week's issue that UNOCAL is in court in the United States, accused of abetting and aiding human rights abuses committed by Burmese soldiers. The abetting happened when UNOCAL decide to undergo projects in Burma and allegedly turned a blind eye on the use of slave labor. The Burmese regime said they were volunteers and apparently UNOCAL took the regime's word for it despite massive evidence to the contratry.

The case is of paramount importance not only because it will pave the way for other similar cases, but because, in a sense, it makes globalization accountable. If the case is successfully prosecuted, it will show, as Joanne Mariner opines in a Findlaw commentary, that "one country's gross human rights abuses might be of legitimate concern to an outside forum, and that international human rights standards might be legally enforceable, rather than merely hortatory."

Best books of the year

The Economist and the Guardian have chosen their best books of the year.

On politics and current affairs, the Economist chooses the following books:

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America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy. By Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay. Brookings Institution Press; 245 pages; $22.95

President Bush is widely seen, abroad if not at home, as a bonehead. This view is rubbish, argue Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, both scholars at American think-tanks. Mr Bush is his own man; he sees himself as the chief executive officer of a huge enterprise and acts accordingly; he has a world view and a clear idea of how America should fit into it; and he is no fool.
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Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions. By Clyde Prestowitz. Basic Books; 336 pages; $26 and �16.99

Clyde Prestowitz's book must be commended for the effort he has made to listen to those who are troubled by the political uses and limitations of American power, and also for the clarity with which he explains, particularly to American readers, how the United States and its foreign policy are all too often regarded by others.
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World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. By Amy Chua. Doubleday; 352 pages; $26. William Heinemann; �12.99

Do not be misled by the over-excited title. This is a serious, sober and well-written analysis of the challenges to peace and prosperity posed by the phenomenon of economically dominant ethnic minorities. No anti-globalist tract, it nonetheless gives globalists plenty to think about.
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Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx. By Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. Scribner; 416 pages; $25. Flamingo; �17.99

Adrian LeBlanc spent ten years interviewing two Latina women from the Bronx as they made their way in and out of public housing, emergency rooms, prisons and courts; a startling portrait of how demanding it is to be poor.
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The Zanzibar Chest: A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands. By Aidan Hartley. Grove/Atlantic; 432 pages; $24. HarperCollins; �20

An African-born reporter with a lyrical gift muses on his homeland, his rage at its horrors and the fatal attraction of its wars.
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The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. By Franklin E. Zimring. Oxford University Press; 272 pages; $30 and �13.99

Franklin Zimring, one of America's leading criminologists, rises above the cacophony of comment from politicians and campaigners with a thought-provoking and genuinely original book.
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The Dark Heart of Italy: Travels Through Space and Time Across Italy. By Tobias Jones. Faber and Faber; 266 pages; �16.99. To be published in America North Point Press in June 2004

Tobias Jones casts a chilling light on the government of Silvio Berlusconi, the corruption that continues to undermine the country and the canzonissima culture he so vividly personifies.

Best dictionary to buy

Slate has an article on which is the best dictionary to get. It is the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, now on its eleventh edition. According to the article, the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate is "the aristocrat who can afford to be a Marxist." Nice way of putting it.

Whichever way the wind blows

The Inquirer reports that GMA will enforce the death penalty beginning next year:

"I shall no longer stand in the way of the executions scheduled by the courts for January," the President said at a press conference in the Camp Crame national police headquarters. "Much as I am averse, as a matter of principle, to the taking of human lives, the President must yield to the higher public interest when dictated by extraordinary circumstances."

GMA is lifting the moratorium on executions ostensibly because public interest demands it. But just last Nov 25, she said that the death penalty is of no use, and the Inquirer reports that:

"We have had executions in the past and these have provided a steam valve to vent the public's ire against hardened criminals. But these executions did not stop heinous crime," she said in that statement 11 days ago. "Executions may give us some form of emotional release and a transient sense of retribution and security, but the more effective solutions lie in fielding the entire criminal justice system against criminals, so that we can effectively curb kidnapping, robbery, murder or rape."

In short, the president will send the convicts to their execution simply because there is a demand for it. What happened to her prior reasoning against the death penalty? Is the president too much an economist that she is willing to supply whenever she sees a demand ?

This reversal in the president's position is not so much a yielding to public interest as a spineless betrayal of moral principles. Now, this is the reason why people simply cannot get to like GMA. Who, I ask, can genuinely like a leader who will do whatever her people bid her to do even if it means going against her conscience?

The president is too nebulous; you never really know her. This week she is this, the next who knows? With Estrada---he may be corrupt, unreliable and all--but you somehow have a feeling of what you are gonna get from him.

This recent volte-face on the death penalty shows how the president is vulnerable nowadays and is willing to play for an audience as minuscule as the Filipino-Chinese community. Given her lackluster popularity as evidenced by the recent surveys, she must have realized that she will need every single vote she can get come 2004. After all, there is no harm in hoping.

Bush's fake turkey

Just when you wonder how mendacious the Bush administration can be, here comes the report that the golden-brown turkey Bush was supposed to have served to the American troops in Irag during Thanksgiving Day was a fake and was only meant for the cameras.

According to the Washington Post, the 600 soldiers present never ate Bush's turkey and were, in fact, served from cafeteria-style steam trays.

Published

A previous entry from this blog has been published by Youngblood here.

Understanding the Bush Doctrine

Robert Jervis writes in the most recent issue of the Political Science Quarterly about US President Bush's national security strategy of pre-emption.

ROBERT JERVIS argues that the Bush doctrine presents a highly ambitious conception of U.S. foreign policy. Based on the premise that this is a period of great threat and great opportunity, the doctrine calls for the assertion and expansion of American power in service of hegemony. He concludes that this assertion and expansion is not likely to succeed.

Dolphy for president

Marvin Aceron wants Dolphy for president. And why not? Dolphy, after all, is a bigger star than FPJ.

Dolphy would be such a big hit in campaign sorties and speaking engagements, (not to mention that Zsa Zsa would be in constant tow). Dolphy can sing, dance and crack jokes. That could be just the qualifications to make a president.

Politics of indolence

Felipe Miranda bewails in his column what he calls a politics of indolence. According to Miranda, it is unfortunate that even today the only block of electoral support that a candidate can expect to rely upon is the ethnic vote. There is no political constituency that can meaningfully deliver votes except the regional ethnic vote.

(Raul Roco, for example, can count on his fellow Bicolanos to elect him as their choice for president. Six out of ten Bicolanos are just about ready to go to the polls and vote for Roco.)

The absence of any other constituency, says Miranda, is lamentable because it reflects the indolence of our politicians. They are too lazy to organize sectors dying to be organized. Miranda further opines that:

The consequences of dedicated indolence by this nation�s politicians are readily apparent. To date, one finds no organized labor vote that any politician can tap or rely on. A similar dearth is noticeable among sectors that are practically begging to be politically organized and delivered to those who would take the trouble of articulating, aggregating and dynamizing them.

Battle between the big screen and the television

The Inquirer, the Philippine Star , the Daily Tribune, and Today all front with the latest SWS survey registering a surge in FPJ's popularity and a neck-and-neck competition with Noli de Castro.

While most of the dailies hype the now number one standing of FPJ, the narrow lead of one point is statistically insignificant given the plus or minus 3 % margin of error. The number one status of FPJ is not secured just yet.

The survey was conducted before FPJ announced his decision to run so he can be expected to gather more points in coming surveys.

If the present trend will continue (FPJ surging, Roco sliding), the coming elections will be a battle between the big screen and the television as FPJ and Noli de Castro fight for the people's votes. Noli de Castro has a significant thing going for him though. While FPJ probably cannot manage to release a new movie come election season, Noli would probably still be on air doing his TV Patrol on ABS-CBN.

FPJ and Erap

Teddy Boy Locsin compares Erap and his friend FPJ in his Today column:


Add to those circumstances the fact that FPJ lacks Erap�s quick wit that can turn any insult around to his advantage. Make fun of FPJ for dropping out of school because a death in the family left them penniless, and he doesn�t bounce back with a quip. What happens is you almost see him flinch and his lovely wife�s eyes drift off in sadness.

With Erap, the general reaction was a grudging admiration for a lovable rascal who could hold up his own. With FPJ, the hurt just cuts deep all around those who went through the same things.

Roco's aspirations for greatness

Raul Roco has formally launched his campaign for the presidency. Numerous dailies today had as banner headlines his declaration of candidacy. What struck me in his speech is his vaulting ambition. He said that if he were elected president, he would outperform Lee Kuan Yew and Dr. Mahathir. The Philippine Star reports that:

If chosen to lead one of Asia�s most vibrant democracies, Roco boasted he will outperform Singapore statesman Lee Kuan Yew and just-retired Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, both highly credited for modernizing their economies and incidentally, both strongmen who ruled for decades.

"Ten years from now, they (Singaporeans and Malaysians) will all say how we wish we had a Raul Roco in Malaysia and Singapore," he told business leaders on the eve of his announcement.

Now, I cannot help but compare this to President Arroyo, who, in her early days as president, was quite emphatic about her non-desire to be a great president. She said then that she just wanted to work quietly as president and that she harbored no desire for greatness.

Is Roco overshooting now or was GMA being falsely modest then?

People Power 2

I have submitted the following essay to people planning to put up an anthology of articles on People Power 2 written by the youth who participated in it. I hope they find it worthy of inclusion. I hurried writing, hoping to beat the deadline so I must have been incoherent in some parts. Whew! Anyway, I am posting it below.


A liberal revolution
By Ronnel Lim


Judgement is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told they ought not to use it at all?
--John Stuart Mill, On Liberty


The people, it is said, always get the government that they deserve. A democracy disgraced has only itself to blame.

When Joseph Estrada ran for president in 1998, I confess I was taken in. I had just finished some courses at the College of Public Administration at the University of the Philippines and that college�s enthusiasm for Estrada must have somehow rubbed on me. And why not? Estrada was loved by the people who, for once, thought someone of their own, or at least someone who was speaking in their behalf, would assume power. I felt then that Estrada�s brand of macho populism may just be the needed boost to rouse the people from the political slumber induced by Ramos�s incantations to the altar of the free market. Some people thought Estrada was demeaning the electoral process by cheaply resorting to populist rhetoric, but I felt then that that same populist rhetoric may once again remind us of an oft-forgotten tenet of democracy as a form of government: that it exists in the service of the people.

I also distinctly remember then that whenever a particularly nosy reporter would corner Estrada into extemporaneously commenting on a policy, Estrada would quote Jeremy Bentham and reply with a smug smile that in considering his policy options he would always consider �the greatest good of the greatest number.� I know it was more or less a cheap political trick, a highly efficient whisk to brush off people who would only be too happy to see Estrada display his ignorance, but I cannot help thinking then that Estrada made more sense than the other candidates.

The people were also of the same mind when it elected Estrada with a whopping landslide. Everybody was hopeful that everything would turn out for the best. Estrada made all the promises, appointed the right people in his cabinet and vowed to do well in what he called the greatest performance of his life.

And then everything went wrong. Estrada started shredding the many guises he wore, confident in the support that the elections turned out for him. The people supported him wholeheartedly-- there was no doubt about it-- and so he regarded those who criticized his transgressions with contempt and neglect, preferring to think of them as sore losers jealous of his power. It was according to him, �weder-weder lang,� and those who did not like his presidency were free to sit out the six years of his term.

When People Power demonstrations broke out on the night of January 16, 2001, people who were at the beginning no great fans of the Estrada were moved by disgust to converge at EDSA and call for his resignation. I was watching the impeachment proceedings that night and was totally incensed at the decision of the senators not to open the envelope. How dare those senators, purportedly servants of the republic, hide something so important to the people? Estrada�s egregiously venal behavior had been exposed and the senators, by refusing to open what could possibly be damning evidence, were, in effect, instituting a cover-up for the president right in front of the people�s eyes.

I arrived at the EDSA shrine shortly after midnight of January 16, 2001. Having heard the news that people were beginning to converge at EDSA to protest the censoring of evidence at the impeachment trial, I decided to go there myself. I was so incensed that sleep was the farthest thing on my mind. Since everybody at the house was then already sleeping, I went alone.

The first thing that caught my attention upon reaching the shrine was the striking presence of religious banners strewn all over. Had I not known better, I would have suspected some religious event was in the offing.

The people were not yet that many when I arrived and one could still walk freely around the shrine. The media people had started to arrive and were taking some video footage of the crowd. Surveying the crowd, I observed that the people were mostly middle class and young. The mestizo class of the country�s capital was out in full force that night. It was the kind of crowd one sees at the Araneta Center whenever La Salle and Ateneo play a game of basketball at the UAAP. In fact, I remember seeing decals from the two universities. Anthony Spaeth, writing in Time, would later comment that it was the nicest mob he had ever been in.

The composition of the People Power 2 crowd would later lend fodder to the charge that it was an elite insurrection. Critics, including some in the foreign media, would later characterize the event as a subversion of democracy rather than, as political scientist Alex Magno described it, an exercise in direct democracy.

In a way, what happened at EDSA in January 2001 was an elite and middle class insurrection, and I think there is no shame in admitting that. This is, of course, not to say that only the elite of this country wanted Estrada removed, only that the issues that gained salience during the impeachment trial�issues of good governance, transparency in government transactions, freedom of the press, rule of law�were issues that only the elite and the middle class have invested on and therefore could sufficiently appreciate. That the poor classes were not markedly present in EDSA 2 as they were conspicuously in attendance during EDSA 3 was not so much because of a class war as because of a disparity in their political education. The crowd in EDSA 2 trooped to the shrine for the virtues of liberalism; the crowd in EDSA 3 went to the shrine to insist on their democratic rights.

Fareed Zakaria, in an influential essay in Foreign Affairs in 1997 made a distinction between democracy and liberalism. Democracy, according to Zakaria, means open, free and fair elections. Governments produced by elections may be inefficient and corrupt but that does not make them any less democratic. Liberalism, on the other hand, is about the limitation of power rather than its accumulation and use.

Estrada never understood the virtue of liberalism. He was democratically elected by a landslide and everything that he did, he deemed, sanctioned by the people. He believed that his democratic government had absolute sovereignty, that his victory at the polls bestowed upon him plenary powers. When criticized, his standard retort was said to be, �Sino ba sila? Magpresidente muna sila.� He felt no differently than Alexandr Lukashenko, elected president of Belarus with an overwhelming majority in a free election in 1994, when asked about limiting his powers: "There will be no dictatorship. I am of the people, and I am going to be for the people."

I hazard a guess that the anger of the many young people who called for Estrada to resign significantly stem from their refusal to concede that a president of this country, no matter how popular, could get away with so many things. It is in this sense that EDSA 2 was a liberal revolution. The people who trooped to EDSA 2 were checking the powers of the president, which the impeachment trial showed to be growing by leaps and bounds, even extending its tentacles to the criminal underground. To criticize EDSA 2�s undemocratic nature, as the critics are wont to do, is to miss the point. And to insist that it was an exercise in direct democracy is belaboring a political anachronism.

I went to EDSA to call for Estrada�s resignation, not because I believed Estrada was especially corrupt or especially odious among an otherwise illustrious roster of our country�s leaders. Only God in his Infinite Wisdom can truly tell and compare the relative venality of our leaders.

I went to EDSA because the insolence of Estrada�s wrongdoings and the temerity of the senators to hide the evidence of them fly in the face of everything a liberal democracy should stand for: the rule of law, internal checks and balances in the operation of government, good governance. Had Estrada gotten away with an innocent verdict and continued serving the people in that way he knew how, the psychic investment that the Filipino people invested at EDSA in 1986 would have been totally depleted.

That it was the youth who made up the bulk of the people who went to EDSA 2 underlies our commitment to what the American professor Carroll Quigley called future preference, the conviction that that the future could be better than the present and that every citizen has an obligation to make it so. That belief has taken the country out of the chaos and deprivation that people toiled in during the martial law years to the point where we are today. The collapse of our liberal democratic way of life will come when people no longer have the will to prefer the future to the present.

Future preference. The present is always on the verge of ending; the future may someday yield us a government that we truly deserve.

Published online

I know i should have done this a little sooner. A former entry in this blog has been published both by Tinig.com and peyups.com last month.

The survey wars has begun

Pulse Asia, in a survey that made headlines today (see Today and the Manila Times), put up different scenarios pitting President Arroyo against different sets of presidential contenders. The field interviews for the survey were conducted from 04 to 17 November 2003.The survey shows that 2004 would be kinder to the president the more candidates contest the presidential elections. In fact in an eight-way race, the president is expected to get 24% of the votes, with De Castro, Roco and FPJ trailing quite closely (with 21%, 20% and 19% of the potential votes respectively).

The differences in the ratings in the different scenarios though are all negligible. The Pulse Asia survey has a plus or minus 3% margin of error at the 95% confidence level. The minute differences of 1%-3% therefore could all be attributable to error in the surveys.

What can be gleaned from the surveys with certainty, as Pulse Asia Director Felipe Miranda said, is that none of the candidates has a sure track to the presidency. May 2004 seems to be pretty much an open season. What personally struck me though is that President Arroyo is not so lame after all, as some people are wont to believe and expect. I, for one, expected her to be somewhere in the bottom, and yet the survey shows her hovering near the top and, given luck, potentially winning the presidential contest.

As far as I am concerned, the most important thing the survey showed is not who is the potential winner but that President Arroyo's ambition for re-election is not that ill-founded after all. What remains to be seen now is how FPJ ratchets up his ratings in the coming surveys and, if Kabayan Noli decides to run for president, how the two of them will divide the masa vote.

With FPJ now running, the Pulse Asia outfit may be seen as the more "objective" polling outfit. FPJ, I have heard, is a cousin of SWS Director Mahar Mangahas.

Presidential choices

Earlier in the week, Bill Clinton, the last elected American president, has released his list of favorite books in anticipation of the opening of his library next year. Here's his list:

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," Maya Angelou.


"Meditations," Marcus Aurelius.


"The Denial of Death," Ernest Becker.


"Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963," Taylor Branch.


"Living History," Hillary Rodham Clinton.


"Lincoln," David Herbert Donald.


"The Four Quartets," T.S. Eliot.


"Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison.


"The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-First Century," David Fromkin.


"One Hundred Years of Solitude," Gabriel Garcia Marquez.


"The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes," Seamus Heaney.


"King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa," Adam Hochschild.


"The Imitation of Christ," Thomas a Kempis.


"Homage to Catalonia," George Orwell.


"The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis," Carroll Quigley.


"Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics," Reinhold Niebuhr.


"The Confessions of Nat Turner," William Styron.


"Politics as a Vocation," Max Weber.


"You Can't Go Home Again," Thomas Wolfe.


"Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny," Robert Wright.


"The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats," William Butler Yeats.

The tumultuous life of Arthur Rimbaud

The New Yorker has an essay on Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet.

The legal battle concerning Davide's impeachment begins today as the Supreme Court begins hearing arguments on whether the impeachment complaint filed against Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. is unconstitutional. The Inquirer reports that the Supreme Court will hear arguments from Solicitor General Alfredo Benipayo, the petitioners, the respondents, as well as eight amici curiae, friends of the court.

The eight are : retired justice Florenz Regalado, constitutional law expert Father Joaquin Bernas, Justice Regalado Maambong, retired justice Hugo Gutierrez Jr., former justice minister Estelito Mendoza, Dean Pacifico Agabin, Dean Raul Pangalangan and former Senate president Jovito Salonga.

The House of Representatives has decided not to send its counsel to the Supreme Court, consistent with its stand that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction.

Report on the Magdalo Mutiny

The report of the Feliciano Commission is available online click here.

Free Islamic ebooks

Full texts of Islamic religious books by Turkish author Harun Yahya are available online free of charge. The texts are in PDF format. I have not personally read him, but some of the titles are intriguing. One book purports to debunk the theory of evoltion, for example.

Against love�s histrionics

The denouement of the forbidden love affair between Kris Aquino and Joey Marquez has been such a big scandal these past few days that I half-expected the Philippine Stock Exchange to crash and the peso to take a nose-dive. Fortunately, nothing of such sort has happened. What we have instead is a gross and pornographic spectacle of a relationship falling apart, of erstwhile lovers turned into the bitterest of enemies.

Such episodes in one�s life are the most embarrassing�doubly so when the circumstances leading to the breakup are narrated in national television ad nauseam and dissected in our country�s risqu� tabloids.

The White House�s advice to president Marcos in 1986 should apply to lovers intending to break up: Cut quick, and cut clean.

A sense of level-headedness is called for in moments like this. Now, if only Kris Aquino had the levelheadedness of her brother, we could have been spared the emotional excreta that inevitably comes from love�s decomposition.

I guess Kris and Joey�s love for each other was simply too intense to survive. Nowadays, people would not settle for a relationship whose emotions do not rival the intensity of Catherine and Heathcliff�s love. No, love must be tempestuous, the kind of romantic love we see on soaps. Why can we not see more of Elizabeth Bennetts and Mr. Darcys , who approach love pragmatically and with good sense not to subject oneself to great paroxysms of emotion? A love like Kris and Joey's, so showbizy and marked with too frequent protestations of love, was never bound to last. Perhaps only Kris believed otherwise.

Edward Said is dead

The scholar Edward Said, a professor at Columbia University for most of his career, has died of leukaemia. Said is the author of Orientalism, the book that launched post-colonial studies. The Guardian reports on his death.

The Telegraph has a short bio on its website.

Who killed Jesus?

Slate has an essay by Steven Waldman on the topic. Waldman writes:

For a lot of Christians, the answer to the question "Who killed Jesus?" is "God did"�or "we all did," the abundance of sinful human behavior having made his sacrifice necessary.

The complexity of that debate notwithstanding, it is clear that the Crucifixion and Resurrection are central to the faith. While the Crucifixion in itself wasn't a good thing, it was, according to much Christian doctrine, an entirely necessary and pre-ordained thing. Without it, Christianity as we know it wouldn't exist.

So, really the answer to the question "Who killed Jesus?" should be: Who cares? Theologically, the answer is irrelevant, which means Christians can stop blaming Jews and Jews can stop being defensive. And people of both faiths can get back to disagreeing about more important things like whether you get more presents at Hanukkah or Christmas.

Arnault v. Nazareno and the right to privacy


Joaquin Bernas discusses Arnault v. Nazareno, the 1950 case cited by Sen. Angara to compel Iggy Arroyo to answer the questions asked of him in the Senate. Bernas opines:

The nation then did not yet have the experience of what is now a common phenomenon -- legislative harassment or investigations in aid of election. This phenomenon gave rise to a command now found in the 1987 Constitution: �The rights of persons appearing in or affected by such inquiries shall be respected.� These factors need to be considered in dealing with the Iggy Arroyo case.

Should Arnault v. Nazareno be upheld? Blogger Marvin Aceron has this to say:

In this age of the individual, can we afford to affirm the lack of power of the individual against the abusive transgressions of the police state? With all its resources and might, the Philippine State has become susceptible to abuse by politicians who cares not for public service but caters solely to personal and crony interest. There is no doubt that the Jose Pidal expose is motivated by political interest -- vengeance, resentment, political leveraging, what have you, but definitely not for the public interest or in "aid of legislation". The State is imperfect. Should it have the power fit only for a perfect State?

In defense of the Cancun Summit

Alex Magno laments the passing of the Cancun summit of the WTO and rails against the protectionist agenda of Philippine agriculture. He writes:

In order to maintain present policies covering rice and corn, including quantitative restrictions on imports, we have exchanged policies that removed all protection on the more efficient sections of our economy. It is a no-win situation with grim strategic implications. While our otherwise competitive sections crumble under intense competition, subsidies for our most uncompetitive sections drain our ability to invest in the broader economy.

Subsidies in our most inefficient agricultural sectors could have been diverted instead to, say, improving our educational system to reinforce our highly competitive services sectors or to cure the infrastructure gap that discourages investment in manufacturing which employs more and creates more value while using less land and water.

This is an irrational set-up. It will not only produce an economic disaster in the long term, it inflicts misery on many of our people today.

The irrationality persists because of sentimentality and ideology. The militant farmers groups must admit this as a matter of honesty. They must admit it is the irrationality of our own economy and not some foreign conspiracy that is to blame for the crippling poverty that plagues our people.

By refusing dramatic changes in the composition of our national economy, we are merely postponing the resolution of our structural problems and inviting an economic cataclysm down the road.

Instead of confronting the real problem, militant groups are marching in the streets urging our government to withdraw from the WTO. That distracts us from the real issues.

The inspiration for the WTO is inherently valid. It seeks to establish a regime of rules that will ensure fairness in global trade. It has failed in its vision not because a regime of fair rules is wrong but because nations could not do what is right because of the power of domestic constituencies that clamor for protection and subsidies � as well as the power of economic superstitions that grip the most conservative sectors resisting change driven by rationality.

Cancun postmortem

The World Trade Organization's two-year attempt to create a new global trade pact collapsed without an agreement on Sept. 14 in Cancun, Mexico. The immediate cause of the collapse, to the shock of many as the Economist reports, is not agricultural subsidies but the so-called Singapore issues which the EU countries have been pushing: rules on foreign investment, competition policy, government purchases and �trade facilitation� (things like customs clearance). As a result of the collapse, the WTO�s own 2004 deadline for a comprehensive reform in world trade may prove impossible to reach.

The deadlock on the Singapore issues, in a sense, preempted the expected showdown on agricultural subsidies. (The developing countries have been continuously pushing for rich countries (EU, US, Japan) to scrap their over-generous subsidies, which total about $300 billion a year, to domestic farmers.) The Economist reports that some cynics believe the Singapore issues were thrown in the negotiations by the EU and Japan to disguise their own intransigence over agricultural subsidies.

Ever since the current round of trade talks was launched in 2001, Japan and the EU have been on the defensive. The Doha round�s focus on agricultural liberalisation has forced them to defend some of the most illiberal but well-entrenched systems of agricultural protection in the world. Japan�s import tariffs on rice go up to 1,000%. The EU spends more on annual subsidies for each of its cows than most sub-Saharan Africans earn in a year. Both insist on progress on the Singapore issues as a quid pro quo for long-overdue agricultural reforms that still seem politically beyond them. If poor countries refuse to yield ground, the EU and Japan can blame them for their inflexibility over the Singapore issues, rather than taking the blame for their own inflexibility over agriculture.

The United States announced at the very start of the negotiations that it was prepared to do away with its own agricultural subsidies provided that the developing countries reciprocate by opening their markets to foreign investment. But as the New York Times reports, this initial posture by the United States was nothing but bluster. President Bush is simply not prepared to alienate his farmers before he gets re-elected. US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick in Cancun was not only negotiating trade agreements but was given the unenviable task of keeping safe President Bush�s 2004 re-election. The New York Times reports:

The farm states voted heavily in favor of Mr. Bush in the 2000 election, and were the backbone of the states that gave him the bulk of his electoral votes. Agribusiness, which profits from the low cost of corn, soybeans and other crops subsidized by American taxpayers, has shifted its allegiance to the Republican Party. Political contributions from agribusiness jumped to $53 million in 2002 from $37 million in 1992, with the Republicans' share rising to 72 percent from 56 percent, according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The collapse of the talks in Cancun, though, is not all positive for President Bush. It is, Business Week reports, �a serious blow to the Bush Administration's efforts at opening markets worldwide for U.S. exports and shrinking America's massive $500 billion trade deficit with the rest of the world.� With a hurting US economy, Bush Jr. may follow the career path of Bush Sr. come 2004.

Antiglobalization networks, such as our own Focus on the Global South, have been quick to claim victory after the collapse of the trade negotiations. Trade Secretary Mar Roxas is also quoted by the above Business Week analysis as saying, " We are elated that our voice has now been heard."

But as a statement of the coalition led by the Focus on the Global South said, the challenge lies in making concrete the reforms needed to match Mar Roxas's new-found rhetoric.

F4 as Chinese ambassadors

Newsweek has an article on the Taiwanese band F4. Newsweek reports that:

The members have turned into unwitting ambassadors for greater China. Thanks largely to F4, Thais, Filipinos and Indonesians�not generally known for their interest in contemporary Chinese culture�are embracing it with a vengeance. In Jakarta, �There is growing acceptance that Chinese boys are good looking,� says Tumiwa. �It�s quite a shift here.� Indonesia has had a checkered history with its Chinese population, highlighted by anti-Chinese riots and targeted violence. Now, the only mobs are those lining up to see F4 perform in concert. Young people are adopting F4�s style of dress, which tends to be casual with a flair, such as tight jeans and fitted white shirts.

The terminator's sex life

For people who are interested in Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1977 interview with Oui, where he admitted to, among other things, participating in a gang bang, click here. The interview caused quite a commotion in California, I understand. With Arnold's sex life now in the open, can his political views be far behind?

Dual Citizenship

Joaquin Bernas on the law on dual citizenship, writing in his Today column.

Use of father's surname

The Senate has approved on third reading a bill allowing a child born out of wedlock to use his father's surname. Senate Bill 2510 amends Article 176 of the Family Code which mandates an illegitimate child to use his mother's surname.

Former US State Secretary Madeleine Albright has an essay appearing in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs. Albright must be on a writing spree these days. The latest issue of Foreign Policy also has an article written by her, this time on the relevance of the United Nations.

Below is the summary of the essay appearing in Foreign Affairs:

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has pressured every country in the world to make a simple choice: Are you with the United States or with the terrorists? But by casting the choice so starkly--and expanding the war on terror to include its campaign in Iraq--Washington has alienated many natural and potential allies and made the fight against al Qaeda more difficult. It didn't have to be this way. The White House has acted as if it doesn't care what others think, and the country is paying the price for its mistake.

A race to the bottom

Teddy Benigno is taking his annual one-month hiatus from journalism, but not before firing off this column deeply lamenting the sorry state of Philippine politics. Nostalgic for the bygone years of our country�s history, he is so melancholy that the column reads like Antigone resigned to her cruel fate, unable to find succor in any quarter. His grief is so great that he seems to run out of the signature metaphors in his writing.

Is Teddy Benigno merely being a laudator temporis acti or does his memory serve him right in characterizing the present juncture as especially wretched? (A little caveat: Old men are wont to wax poetic about things past.) But still he has a point. Government, these days, has indeed been transmogrified into one ugly wrestling bout, with politicians forcing each other off balance. As a nation, we are in a race to the bottom, and one can only hope that we get to it soon.

On the disillusionment of our PMA cadets

Benjamin Libarnes, former intelligence chief of the AFP, writes in Newsbreak about the disillusionment of PMA cadets upon leaving the idyllic confines of the military academy and fending off for themselves in a corrupt military bureaucracy.

Exactly what causes the disillusionment?

Cadets at the PMA, when compared to the other undergraduates in the country, relatively live ggod lives. They get to enjoy a first-class education in an elite institution at zero expense. They enjoy full scholarships and receive monthly allowances equivalent to a month's salary of a fresh graduate. They enjoy Baguio's weather, eat good vegetables, and accumulate pogi points during their stay at the PMA. Upon graduation, they are spared the lamentable experience otherwise known to the rest of the population as looking for a job; they get automatic assignments in the service of their own choosing.

But, alas, things fall apart once they enter the service. The government does not provide adequate housing facilities for soldiers of lower rank. They must sorely miss the spartan sleeping quarters at the PMA. Libarnes writes:

Young officers had to stay at the less-equipped Bachelor Officers� Quarters or rent a house or apartment outside the camp in the area of assignment. Military housing was practically not available for junior officers. Most low-salaried military personnel had to stay in squatter areas in the camps or outside since they could not be provided with government quarters. If they were married, they could not stay in the barracks with their families.

Added to this indignity is the offending sight of generals living in mansions they could not possibly afford had they lived honorably. Libarnes writes that if a soldier desires promotion and success in the service, it is necessary that he cultivates advantageous relations with certain politicians (ie, by currying favors here and there). This is essential because of the constitutional provision requiring the confirmation of the Commission on Appointments for promotion in the military. Libarnes avers:

Perhaps what is needed is the confirmation of those holding the position of chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) down to the area commanders with three stars. There is no need to confirm the promotion of officers with the rank of colonel up to major general.

All this is enough for an officer's blood to curdle. What more if he sees his secretary of national defense entrepreneurially selling the army's weapons to rebel forces.

Madonna hooking up with Britney

I failed to catch the MTV Video Music awards on TV yesterday, but I have read the newspaper accounts this morning. Apparently the highlight of the show was Madonna tongue-kissing Britney Spears. Washington Post reports:

The first musical number epitomized the kind of commercialized outrageousness that MTV has perfected in recent years. It featured Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, decked out in white wedding ensembles in a homage to Madonna, who famously wore a wedding dress on MTV's first Video Music Awards broadcast in 1984, when she performed "Like a Virgin." Madonna appeared dressed as a groom, and the number, which also briefly featured Missy Elliott, provided the evening's first gyrating rumps, as well as a truly yechy moment: The sight of oversexed old Madonna tongue-kissing oversexed young Spears. It didn't seem outrageous or sultry; it smacked of desperation.

Britain's Guardian reports (with a picture of the kiss, so go click the link!):

She didn't win anything, but last night's MTV Video Music Awards belonged to Madonna. The 45-year-old singer proved that middle-aged respectability is still far off with a sexed-up rendition of Like a Virgin and Hollywood.
Clad in black with dominatrix-style boots as she performed alongside Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, she caused a commotion when she fondled them before kissing them both full on the lips.

Lacson v. Arroyo

Isagani Cruz today has an opinion piece in the Inquirer on the expose of Senator Lacson against Mr. Arroyo. In Cruz's column today, he opines that:

... it does not seem proper to simply dismiss the senator's privilege speech against Mr. Arroyo for being, as the latter insists, baseless. That dismissal should not put an end to the matter, which has aroused the curiosity and suspicion of the people. It is a clear subject of public interest on which we citizens have a right to be informed.

Lacson's gambit

Any conscientious Filipino citizen must be quite at a loss on how to properly regard the recent allegations of Senator Panfilo Lacson against Mr. Mike Arroyo. The country�s political atmosphere has simply been too poisoned following EDSA 2 that one does not know whom to believe anymore. In fact, with all the muckraking going around, it is arguably judicious for one to simply tune out, assume a pose of Laodicean neutrality, ignore the venomous words being spattered everywhere and forget all things political like long-suffering docile citizens do most of the time.

Members and sympathizers of the political opposition are all too eager to believe. Administration stalwarts and sundry critics of Lacson are all too sure the allegations are nothing more than sick convolutions in the mind of an inveterate dissembler. Caught between the two camps of opposing faith are citizens who simply are at a loss, citizens who would only be too happy that the accusations be proven wrong but who nonetheless continue to harbor nagging suspicions that Mahusay�s accusations could all be true.

Granted, Sen. Lacson is throwing the kitchen sink at Mr. Arroyo for his own self-aggrandizement. No doubt, his explosive speech at the senate floor is part of his concerted effort to malign the present administration, destabilize the current political configuration and lay down the red carpet for the opposition�s ascension to power. By the senator�s reckoning, anything remotely dimming the President Arroyo�s political star couldn�t possibly hurt his own bid for the presidency. His legal problems in the United States are also effectively brought to a less harsh light given the far sexier controversy involving Mr. Arroyo.

Yet the allegations made by the senator cannot all be readily dismissed simply because the senator is a polluted source. Governor Chavit Singson, not so long ago, was also a polluted source. Singson then, as Sen. Lacson now, was also doing the exposes for equally self-aggrandizing reasons. Singson then wanted to stay alive; Sen. Lacson now wants to be president.

That the media are treating these news reports in what may appear to some a carnival manner is understandable. After all, President Arroyo came to power with a promise to begin things anew. It is only natural for people who were outraged by the corrupt Estrada administration to hold the Arroyo administration against the same exacting standards they set against Estrada.

The solution to the sorry impasse we are now is, alas, the one championed by Ms. Bunye, Mr. Arroyo�s spokesperson. The courts must now thresh out all these accusations. (I do not know how this will all work out since the allegations in Mahusay�s sworn statement are not exactly actionable criminal offenses: entering the LTA Building, calling Mr. Arroyo on the phone, receiving money from messengers, making bank deposits.)

The papers this morning reported that Mr. Arroyo has already filed libel charges against Sen. Lacson et al (including Rep. Gilbert Remulla of the NPC and Lacson�s chief of staff Lito Banayo). All well and good. The only hitch is that the Senate seems to be unstoppable in its own investigation regarding the matter. Some senators, no doubt, deeply regret that Mr. Arroyo, unlike former President Estrada, cannot be impeached (as what? husband to the president?) With elections just around the corner, I guess many of the senators can make use of some time appearing on the television, hugging free publicity and confounding our minds.

A more irenic political atmosphere is much desired nowadays. It is not congenial hearing anyone�s reputation besmirched with such freedom and ill will, be it one�s neighbor or the president�s husband. The president must do whatever is in the legal power of her office to settle these recriminations once and for all so that we could all apply our faculties to far weightier matters, like the coming WTO Cancun meeting, or, thank God for the Chinese, the Meteor Garden.

Top Filipino films of all time

Nestor Torre of the Inquirer lists his top ten Filipino films of all time (in no particular order):

Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag
Biyaya ng Lupa
Juan Tamad Goes to Congress
Geron Busabos, ang Batang Quiapo
Kundiman ng Lahi
Ganito Kami, Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon?
Batch '81.
Sister Stella L
The Moises Padilla Story
Jose Rizal

A President's Worth

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism offers an analysis of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's asset statements since she became senator in 1992.

Mahusay's statement against Mike Arroyo

Below is the sworn statement of Eugenio P. Mahusay executed on July 21, 2003.


Ako, EUGENIO P. MAHUSAY Jr., sapat ang gulang, Filipino, may asawa, at naninirahan sa Kaingin 1, Barangay Pansol, Lungsod ng Quezon, pagkatapos maka-panumpa nang sang-ayon sa ipinag-uutos ng batas ay malaya at kusang-loob na dito ay nagsasaysay:'

1. Na kami po ni Atty. Miguel Arroyo ay nagkakilala ng ako ay kasalukuyang Sangguniang Kabataan Chair-man ng Barangay Pansol. Ako po ay madalas na dumalaw sa kanyang tahanan sa 14 Badjao Street, La Vista Subdivision. Quezon City;

2. Na nang ako po ay ikasal noong Sept. 14, 1997 sa simbahan ng Sta. Maria dela Estrada sa Katipunan, Lungsod ng Quezon, si Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo at Senadora Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ang isa sa aking ninong at ninang;

3. Na ako po ay nagsimulang maglingkod kay Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo at Senadora Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo noong 1996 bilang isang mensahero sa Velco Bldg., Port Area, Manila;

4. Na nang si Senadora Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ay nahalal bilang Bise-Presidente ako po ay inilipat ni Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo sa LTA Realty Inc. na matatagpuan sa 118 Perea Street, Makati City bilang mensahero hanggang Marso 2002;

5. Na nang ako po ay nasa LTA Realty Inc. ako po ay madalas maatasang mag-deposito at mag-withdraw ng salapi na umaabot po ng milyun-milyong piso sa mga sumusunod na bank accounts

(See table page 7 - eds.)

6. Na kasama sa aking mga naideposito sa Jose Pidal account at Lualhati Foundation ay mga tseke mula sa mga kaibigan o ka-negosyo ni Atty. Miguel Arroyo at Presidente Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo tulad nila Honeyboy Palanca, Bob Go Tong, Amable Aguiluz, Dante Soriquez, George Ty, Ramon Jacinto at marami pang iba (Annex A);

7. Na mayroon din po akong naideposito na cash mula sa iba't ibang tao na nag-kakahalaga ng milyun-milyon na kanilang dinadala sa opisina ni Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo tulad po nila Benjamin Chua ng La Tonde?a, Efraim Genuino ang Chairman ng PAGCOR, Kishore Hemlani - isang rice trader at in-charge sa rice importations ng NFA, Atty. Ching Vargas - Office of the President, Finance Division, Pantaleon Alvarez - DOTC Secretary at Jeff Cheng ng PIATCO;

8. Na ang pinakamaraming salapi na dinala sa aming opisina ay mula kay G. Efraim Genuino ng PAGCOR. Halos dalawang beses isang linggo kung magdala ng salapi na nakalagay sa malaking bag si G. Ryan Cordeta, katiwala ni G. Efraim Genuino;

9. Ang karamihan po ng salapi ay akin pong naideposito o na-withdraw sa Union Bank-Perea Branch, sa Account No. 00-0073001483-6 na nakapangalan po kay Jose Pidal at ang signatory po ay si Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo at sa Account No. 073-001283-9 na nakapangalan po sa Lualhati Foundation. Marami rin po akong naideposito sa Account No. 073-001820-9 sa pangalan po ni Victoria Toh at sa Account No. 073-001993-7 sa pangalan naman po ni Thomas Toh Jr. na kapatid ni Victoria Toh. Mayroon din po akong naideposito at nawithdraw na nagkakahalaga ng milyon-milyon sa bank account ni Kevin Tan. na bayaw ni Victoria Toh, sa Union Bank-Perea Branch, sa Account No. 073-001833-7 at sa International Exchange Bank, Perea-Legaspi Branch na may Account No. 041-02-0-001720 na naka pangalan rin kay Kelvin Tan. Lahat po ng nasabing bank account ay may address na c/o Vicky Toh, 8th Floor, LTA Bldg., Perea Street. Makati City, Si Victoria Toh ay naabutan ko na sa LTA Realty Inc. na gumawa ng trabaho ng accountant
Siya pala ay kalaguyo ni Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo.

10. Na bilang patunay na ako po ay napag-uutusang mag-withdraw ng milyun-milyong salapi buhat sa mga nasabing bank accounts, makikita po ninyo ang aking lagda sa likod ng mga tsekeng nagamit na kung atin pong ipapakuha ang lahat ng record ng bangko sa mga nabanggit na accounts.

11. Isa sa mga nahawakan kong tseke ay mula kay Congressman Mark Jimenez na ibinigay kay Atty. Jose Miguel arroyo at aking ideneposito sa Jose Pidal at Lualhati Foundation accounts sa Union Bank-Perea Branch. Sa katunayan ito po ay lumabas sa pahayagang Daily Tribune noong Disyembre 29, 2002 at nagsasabing sa Union Bank-Perea Branch Account No. 0073-001483-6, isang pribadong bank account, naideposito ang ilan sa mga tseke ni Congressman Mark Jimenez.

12. Na ang lahat po ng utos patungkol sa pag-deposito at pag-withdraw ay nanggagaling kay Victoria Toh. Maging ang mga tseke nina Thomas Toh at Kelvin Tan, Jose Pidal at Lualhati Foundation ay si Vicky Toh ang gumagawa. Ang lahat ng aking ginagawang mga transaksyon sa bangko ay maaring patunayan ni G. Nestor "Atoy" Pineda, isang opisyal ng Union Bank-Perea Branch at aking personal na kakilala sa kadahilanang ako po ay laging tumatawag sa kanya sa telepono bago ako mag-withdraw ng salapi upang maibasta ang pera ng nagkakahalaga ng milyun-milyong piso;

13. Na kung susumahin ang halaga ng salapi na dumaan sa aking kamay bilang mensahero na napag-uutusang madalas sa bangko, aabot po ito ng Isang Bilyong Piso o higit pa hanggang ako po y umalis sa kumpanya noong Marso 2002;

14. Na ako po ay nauutusan din ni Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo sa kanyang mga personal na pangangailangan katulad po ng pagpapainom ng gamot, pagluluto ng kanyang paboritong pritong galunggong at pinakbet. Ako rin po ang taga-bili ng bulaklak na rosas para kay Victoria Toh sa tuwing sasapit ang araw ng mga puso. Ako rin po ang taga-masahe ni Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo kung wala si Ernesto Beltran o mas kilala bilang si "Tiyana". Nagsisilbi rin po ako ng red wine kina Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo at Victoria Toh sa silid ni Atty. Arroyo sa opisina hanggang alas diyes ng gabi lalo na kung wala si Presidente Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at may biyahe sa probinsiya. Ako po ay naisama na rin ni Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo at Victoria Toh sa pag-gagala sa Tagaytay sakay ng dilaw na helicopter, pag-aari ni Atty. Arroyo. Ito ay mapapatunayan ni "Nestor" at Weng Salud, mga maintenance crew ng helicopter.

15. Na noong pangalawang linggo ng Hulyo ng taong 2001, makaraan ang kaarawan ni Atty. Mike Arroyo, nagpa-withdraw siya ng pera sa account ni Jose Pidal at mula piso ito ay ipinalit sa dolyar sa Union Bank. Ito ay nagkakahalaga ng higit kumulang sa sampung libong dolyares. Ito ay aking binigay kay Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo at kanyang inilagay sa isang brown envelope at nakita kong ibinigay kay Col. Corpus at narinig ko po na ito ay gagamitin sa pagkalap ng mga impormasyon laban kay Senator Lacson.

16. Na ang salaysay na ito ay aking sinagawa bilang patotoo sa lahat ng nabanggit.

SA KATOTOHANAN NG LAHAT NA ITO, ako ay lumagda sa ibaba nito ngayong ika-21 araw ng buwan ng Hulyo, 2003 sa Makati.

Filipino entertainers in Japan

Yesterday, I chanced upon entertainers rehearsing their numbers prior to leaving for Japan come September. I was with a friend working for a talent agency hurrying the talents for the opening of a club in Kyoto (I think) on September 3. I thought we would be there briefly but it turned out my friend had to be there until the end of the rehearsal.

A quick observation first: These entertainers, contrary to popular notion that you may have of them, really do take their numbers seriously. You probably think they just improvise and be haphazard in their numbers, but no, they actually rehearse and as far as I saw were absolutely earnest in their desire to put up a good show. Professionals.

They were practicing until almost midnight. My friend, who had to supervise the rehearsal, and I had to eat our dinner at past midnight. The gaudy colorful costumes come straight from Kuya Germs and Belle Dancers� tailors, and one of the big bosses of the agency was particularly exacting in her sartorial standard. Shoulder pads had to be added to the shirts of the male entertainers to make their shoulders fuller. The bra top of one okama (gay transvestite) had to be tightened to better highlight his (or is it her?) ample bosom. And in a flash of great immodesty, one okama, questioned by the big boss on how to better highlight his breast, took off his bra top so that anybody passing on the street fronting the dance studio could have perfectly seen the display. My friend said the okamas are particularly proud of their breasts so they flaunt them every chance they get. Well, I guess if they aren�t real why be modest about them? Besides they look real and even look better than some of the real things. I am, of course, just guessing about the comparison.

It is easy to be dismissive of the work Filipino entertainers do in Japan. For one, their massive presence in the Land of the Rising Sun (which, incidentally, is no longer in the rise) effectively makes them the de facto ambassadors of our country--whether we like it or not. Most Japanese with any modicum of contact with the Philippines would have had the acquaintance with Philippine culture through an entertainer. And the dancers I saw at the rehearsal are all highlighting the hackneyed aspects of our dance culture from bamboo poles for their faux tinkling production number to a Tagalog song which sounds awfully reminiscent of the American group that sang the YMCA (the name escapes me presently). Besides, the Japanese government has not yet formally apologized for the crimes perpetrated by the Kempetai forces against our women during the Second World War.

But I guess those entertainers are simply doing their jobs. Surely there�s no harm in trying to earn a living. With our dear country in such a shitty state of affairs, it is almost a sin to begrudge our young people the chance to move up the social ladder in any way they can.

I wonder though how our entertainers in Japan could possibly contribute to Jessica Zafra�s grand plot to rule the world through our domestic help network, those bagong bayani dusting the seats of power in almost every country in the world. Our domestic helps are present in the houses of world leaders. I don�t know if the clientele of our japayukis and hostos include the party bosses of Japan�s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Hmmm, that should be a big enough thought to last me a day at least.

Nepotism

Adam Bellow, son of novelist Saul Bellow, talks about his book In Praise of Nepotism in a Booknotes interview with Bryan lamb. The transcript of the interview is available online.

The pleasures of Chinese pop

My younger sister Leny is currently moving heaven and earth to get enough cash to secure a good seat at the coming September concert by the two members of F4. She has been frantically calling on her friends, inquiring if they happen to be interested in the mobile phones she is selling. (Nokia 8850 if anyone is interested.) She is, I think, batting for the P3,000 seat at the Ultra.

Leny does not speak Mandarin, but, like most fans of the hit show Meteor Garden, will nonetheless troop to Ultra come September. For most Filipinos, no doubt, the coming concert will be their first encounter with Chinese music. Judging from the sales of the F4 cds and the rumored impressive early sales of the concert tickets, yes, the intsik behos, are now matinee idols.

I hope the enthusiasm for F4 music will lead Filipinos to discover other Mando- and Canto-pop singers. For those who are interested to hear more Chinese pop music, try listening to Jackie Cheung, who enjoys a reputation in Chinese pop equal to Michael Jackson�s in Western pop music. His repertoire is mostly saccharine-sweet love songs, but for people hopelessly in love Cheung may just be the singer they need to reinforce--and hopefully extend the duration of--their feelings.

Jay Chou, a much younger singer than Cheung, is also hugely popular in Taiwan. Although not as good-looking as most of the other Chinese pop singers, Jay Chou writes great lyrics. Time magazine has recently done a story about his music here. (The Time story tells that people thought he was simply stupid and just plain ugly;he later proved them all wrong.) I personally like his Ban Shou Ren, Xing Qing and Kai Bu Liao Kou.

Or some of you may also be interested in Leslie Cheung, who jumped off his hotel suite sometime during the SARS scare in Hong Kong. He is an actor known among international audience for the films Happy Together and Farewell to my Concubine. A Time story on his death is available here.

A techno version of mainland China's National Anthem "March of the Volunteers" was recorded by another Hong Kong icon, Leon Lai. The song is entitled "All Day Love." When it was released the song raised quite a furor from Beijing as authorities denounced it as sacrilege to the Chinese people. I wonder how our local singers would manage a techno version of our Lupang Hinirang. Now who would be the ideal singer to update our national anthem ?

Alas, these artists are not so readily available in Philippine record stores. The only record store I know that has a Chinese pop collection is the Tower Records at the Ayala Center. The collection can be found in the store�s world music section. Or you can visit Binondo. Or better yet, download the songs through the net through you p2p software.

GMA does an Elizabeth

I don't know if any of you caught this on the news, but a press statement from the president said that she will not intervene to clear her husband and that she is married to the republic.

Whew! First, Mike Arroyo was shown in the media suspiciously close to another woman, Victoriah Toh, and then the president disowns him and claims fidelity to the republic. I am sure the other tabloids had a field day . Abante had for its headline: Gloria kay Mike: Bahala ka sa Buhay Mo.

The "married to the republic" part of the statement seems to be off-tangent. The president, the state of her amatory feelings toward her husband notwithstanding, is still very much married to Mike Arroyo. The allusion to Queen Elizabeth I of England is misplaced. Elizabeth I was married to England because she never married anyone and was therefore known as the Virgin Queen. President Arroyo is not only married, she is also having plenty of sex, as she claimed in one press conference when a reporter audaciously inquired about her bedroom activities.

The statement seemed insincere and the effect desired cheap. Instead on invoking the sense of sacrifice, the statement only managed to portray the president as having an illicit bigamous marriage with the republic. Now this is the kind of thought that is daily fare for people like former President Joseph Estrada.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how the President Arroyo will take to wearing lead make-up as was Elizabeth's wont.

Martin Luther King's Dream

Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech will have its 40th anniversary on August 28. The Guardian reprints the speech and offers an essay on how the speech came about.

I memorized the speech for a high school oratory class. What struck me then was that it was not hard to memorize at all. The speech seems to flow with an unmistakeable
cadeance, the words flowing mellifluously:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

The Guardian essay above discusses how President Kennedy wanted the whole demonstration aborted, fearing that such a large crowd of blacks may be a cause of destabilization for the nation's capital. The general feeling then, I gather, was that the reforms being advocated by Martin Luther King, albeit desirable and just, were simply going too fast. When you really come to think about it, perhaps the great changes that happened in history have all been considered ill-timed. Great reformers have all been considered brash and extremist, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King included.

Incidentally, I have read somewhere that Kennedy, no slouch at public speaking himself, was impressed with the oratorical skills of King. Watching King deliver the "I Have a Dream Speech," Kennedy was said to have uttered, "this man [King] sure is good in what he's doing."

So come August 28, Let freedom ring.

An English of our own

Every Sunday afternoon, the �Buzz,� a show business magazine on ABS-CBN hosted by Kris Aquino and Boy Abunda, carries a regular feature called �Tigilan Ako/ Stop Me� where up-and-coming sexy actresses are caught unawares spewing grammatical abominations during interviews. After the footage of each unfortunate faux pa is shown, the honest mistake is replayed ad nauseam, with a hysterically scornful laughter playing in the background and a gay reporter, in a �screaming queen� voice, throwing witty jeers at the actress�s ignorance of the English language.

The grammatical lapses in the footages are mostly true horrors. After salivating for the sexy stars, any literate male must necessarily experience a momentary ebbing of the libido upon seeing the actresses murder the language. Ranging from subject-verb agreement to incorrect tenses, the mistakes are indeed elementary that any self-respecting high school student should be able to identify them readily. What makes the segment farcical is the fact that the sexy actresses deliver those blatant grammatical lapses with great bravura and in a feigned co?o accent that, had one not known better, one would think they were weaned on Emily Post and the BBC.

The Sunday magazine confirms, what we have known all along, that our show business people, the sexy stars being a subspecies, are a bunch of word-butchers. These embarrassing episodes are also, mind you, not limited to sexy stars of dubious celebrity. The Philippine Daily Inquirer�s entertainment section regularly prints a congeries of bloopers from almost every star in the firmament of Philippine show business. One star, for example, claims that she is �sweatening.� Another asks, �Did he came yesterday?� When asked of her racial pedigree, another star, desperately trying to emphasize her mestiza value, replied, that she is �half-Filipino, half-American, half-Spanish.� Surely, a marvel of miscegenation.

Even the social circle of Kris Aquino, the venerable doyen of English-speaking mestizas on TV, is not blameless. Pops Fernandez, during an interview with Saksi on prime time TV, was discussing her marital life when she casually dropped in her accented English of the Loyola Heights variety her parenthetical phrase, �for Martin and I.� Now the cloddishness of our sexy stars are easily understandable and forgivable. After all, tout comprendre c�est tout pardonner. Some of them, I understand, come from bedraggled clubs straight from GRO work and a nightly diet of hors d�oeuvre and alcoholic drinks is not exactly conducive to furthering one�s linguistic skills. But this particular gross violation of the English language comes from the woman formerly known as Mrs. Martin Nievera, the same Martin Nievera who, nowadays, is everyman�s beau ideal of someone approaching English nirvana.

Exactly what kind of literacy does our show business celebrities foist on their unsuspecting public? Why do our actresses and actors risk foisting illiteracy on an unsuspecting public and insist on speaking English rather than switch to Filipino? And more importantly, why do we poke fun at their mistakes?

English is the lingua franca of most of the half-breed elite in the Philippines. Ramos�s championing of the free market, even while crushing portions of the country�s poor, have launched the ambitions of a considerable number of people of someday joining the ranks of the upper middle class and the rich. For these people who are suddenly awashed in cash, there is a pressure to adopt the lifestyles of the rich of this country. They now have the house, the car, the bank accounts; by all means, they must have the language.

For most people in show business the same thing applies. If one can not be glamorous and posh, one can always fake being glamorous and posh. For sexy actresses this pressure is doubly intense because the semi-respectability of their status demands that they continually differentiate themselves from lowly untutored hawkers of cheap flesh; the boundary between the glossy FHM and the risqu� Toro is thin and must be continually observed lest the distinction blur all together. Thus, the clumsy resort to English.

An incident at the Buzz is particularly instructive. Belinda Bright, who claims to be a coed at the upscale De La Salle University, was promoting a movie in her posh English of the co?o variety when toward the end she classified her new movie as belonging to the genre of film noire which she pronounced, erroneously, as film nwa without the r sound at the end, as one would correctly say moi. Aquino, bumptious and a little condescending, grilled the sexy actress, telling the audience several times she knew of no such word before acknowledging the correct pronunciation with the r sound. The embarrassment for Bright is palpable. Anyone with a heart can commiserate with her for having given herself away on national television. (The above shows why Henry Higgins, in Pygmalion, is a genius. He is able to remedy this particular handicap because he doesn�t just dress up Eliza Dolittle in a ball gown and get her to use a knife and fork properly: he teaches her to speak posh English�to use a kind of voice-- with an accent and pronunciation indistinguishable from the real thing.)

Another case I saw, the mother of one actress, when prompted to deliver a message to her daughter via telephone patch, read a long Hallmark-type English note in dull monotone. The telephone patch was supposed to be impromptu but the mother�s reading of her message left no doubt to the TV viewers that she was, in fact, reading a prepared message rather than improvising one. The mother did not only manage to sound stupid, she was by all indications insincere in her protestations of love for her daughter.

But through all these embarrassments and pretensions, there is a greater illiteracy at work here�an illiteracy of the soul. Jettisoning the Filipino language on our way to upper-class bliss, especially with English of such ignominious incompetence, is nothing more than misplaced snobbism and truckling ingratiation with the elite in this country.

With Philippine show business people on the lead, just how long can impressionable young people resist the temptation of sounding cool at the price of mangling the English language? When the quality of English instruction in public schools on a free fall and the pressure to speak it on the rise, this is what we get in our sad state of affairs: abominable English delivered with co?otic bravura. The inordinate influence of young stars on the youth is marginalizing the Filipino language, now increasingly viewed as a preserve of the political leftists, the intellectuals at the University of the Philippines and the irredeemably jologs. Woe to one who belongs to all three.

When the sexy stars in the �Buzz� commit flagrant grammatical errors, they should be berated for their pretensions; the lapses themselves are forgivable and should not be mocked as what the �Buzz� has been doing for some time now. The ignorant person, after all, can be enlightened except if he is totally stupid or demented. The Catholic Church has a beautiful phrase for this: �invincible ignorance,� referring to a state of paganism that is forgivable because the word of Christ was not available to it. Such a phrase should also apply to our ungrammatical actors--and to the rest of us who. The ignorance is forgivable because these actresses probably did not have the economic resources to master Fowler. If the Church can forgive invincible ignorants like Plato and Socrates, how can Boy Abunda and Kris Aquino harden their hearts so?

The more decent stance should be one of forgiveness and correction, not mockery. The memorable advise in the opening lines of F. Scott Fitzgerald�s �The Great Gatsby� comes to mind: "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one�just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." But in our confused world of bilingual education and class pretensions, the �Buzz� becomes arbiter of the English language every Sunday, dispensing disdain upon the unlettered members of our benighted realm.

GMA v. GMA 7

The controversy regarding GMA 7's Tina panganiban-Perez's exclusive interview with Sen. Honasan is turning out to be a bigger story than I previously thought (see blog entry below). Two papers (PDI and BusinessWorld) I have read today carry follow-up stories on the controversy. Conrado de Quiros has this to say:

"Even if you grant that Perez did the interview during the state of rebellion and not after, what of it? Honasan is just a suspect, notwithstanding that he is in hiding. His role in the last mutiny remains a matter to be proven. Last I looked, in this country a person is innocent until proven guilty."

Springsteen's Thunder Road

I have just accidentally downloaded a song called Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen on the Kazaa (yup, I am an unrepentant violator of copyright laws). I got curious with the euphonious title and after listening to it, I got totally swept off my feet. I have been listening to it over and over again and could not have enough of it. I too came from a small � but idyllic--beach town about 600 kilometers south of Manila. And yes, small- town life can be limiting. Anyway, those who may be interested, I am posting below the lyrics. Simply a perfect song. Download it now.


The screen door slams
Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside
Darling you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
Oh and that's alright with me
You can hide 'neath your covers
And study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers
Throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets
Well now I'm no hero
That's understood
All the redemption I can offer girl
Is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair
Well the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back
Heaven's waiting on down the tracks
Oh oh come take my hand
Riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road
Oh Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it's late, we can make it if we run
Oh Thunder Road, sit tight take hold
Thunder RoadWell I got this guitar
And I learned how to make it talk
And my car's out back
If you're ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free
And I know you're lonely
For words that I ain't spoken
But tonight we'll be free
All the promises'll be broken
There were ghosts in the eyes
Of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road
In the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets
They scream your name at night in the street
Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn
You hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch they're gone
On the wind, so Mary climb in
It's a town full of losers
And I'm pulling out of here to win

GMA�s fury

The Philippine Daily Inquirer has this story about the latest flaring of President Arroyo�s temper. This time around, the one on the firing line is GMA 7�s hapless Tina Panganiban-Perez. The accusation: Perez abetted the rebellion by 1) interviewing Sen. Honasan even before the state of rebellion was lifted and 2) failing to air the side of the government by not interviewing Southern Luzon Army commander Alfonso Dagudag. Perez apparently told the president that the interview took place after the state of rebellion was lifted by president Arroyo and that the GMA management gave prior approval to the interview. In fact, according to Perez, GMA had a set of incentives for anyone who will land a Honasan interview. The story took a denouement when the President herself drove to GMA�s Kamuning office and personally reconciled with the station�s management.

Who is Tina Panganiban-Perez in the grand scheme of Philippine politics? No more than a broadcast transcriber--no matter how proficient--of things that matter in the political life of the nation. Viewed with Machiavellian objectivity, the President�s public displays of anger do nothing more confirm the nagging suspicion of a sizable number of Filipinos that she is a rich spoiled presidential brat weaned on the obsequiousness of servants ( not to mention that the president is probably now in the menopausal age when hormonal changes in the body are known to affect a woman�s disposition) .

All this is utterly unfair because the President, no doubt, is far from such misplaced pettiness. The reasons are ably described by PCIJ director Sheila Coronel in a recent essay. But the President would do well to redirect her animus to people far worthier than a lowly TV correspondent. After all, as Machiavelli advised the great Lorenzo de Medici more than four hundred years ago: One should choose one�s enemies more carefully than one should choose one�s friends.

Our coconut farmers, no doubt, would be jumping with glee if she would give Danding Cojuangco a public dressing down that the San Miguel chairman so richly deserve. Or for a diversion, she could probably do well to publicly berate Sen. Honasan for his latest display of military incompetence and political adventurism. And while she is at it, would the President do the public the favor of asking Sen. Honasan to please present his magic thesaurus which says intentional inaccessibility is different from hiding. Is the thesaurus an arcane, limited edition of Roget�s or an especially recondite one by Oxford University Press which our National Bookstore branches do not sell? The citizenry�s linguistic skills will surely improve if such a thesaurus could be publicly distributed.

Golden blogs

The Economist has an article on the folly of weblogs going commercial.

Unproffesionalism and corruption

In a paper read at a BAYAN-sponsored forum at the University of the Philippines today, retired Captain Rene Jarque, former chief of the AFP Strategic Research of the AFP�s Office of Strategic and Special Studies, pinpointed the twin problems of the armed forces today: unprofessionalism and corruption. Unprofessionalism refers:

"to those practices that undermine the three elements of the military profession as explained by Samuel Huntington: expertise, responsibility, corporateness. In other words, those decisions and/or actions that result in weakening or destroying the manner with which the soldier can optimally perform his duty within a framework of integrity and camaraderie. Examples are poor leadership, tactical and technical incompetence, favoritism and nepotism, ticket-punching, inexperience or lack of combat experience, promotions and appointments not based on merit but on palakasan and bata-bata, extracting personal services from soldiers and criminal activities such as the blackmarketing scandal in East Timor, human rights abuses or engaging in the drug trade or arms smuggling."

Corruption, according to Jarque, is principally the process of conversion, which he defined as �converting procurements to its cash equivalent�. Jarque writes:

"'if an amount is originally intended for office supplies but is instead spent for construction materials, this amount has to be "converted" so that government accounting and auditing requirements are satisfied' (read: circumvented). In the process of conversion, either from one expense item to another or to outright cash, a certain percentage called the �cost of money� is skimmed off the top which goes to everyone in the signature chain, from the supply requisitioners to the auditors. Rates of 25% or higher are normal but the dealer actually only gets somewhere between 9-16% as the rest goes to approving and auditing authorities in various offices."

Unprofessionalism and corruption sap the morale of the troops. While generals and high-ranking officers live luxuriously in camps through corruption, the bulk of the soldiers suffer ignoble conditions fighting in the field.

Magdalo's accusations

Naomi Klein writes about the Philippine government's bombing its own citizens and the curious whisking away of Michael Meiring, a suspected CIA operative in Davao who accidentally detonated explosives in his hotel room. The comment piece is available from the Guardian website.

UN's relevance

Former US Secretary Of State Madeleine Albright dispels recent cogitation about the irrelevance of the United Nations in an article on the most recent issue of Foreign Policy. A special preview is available online.

Doctors

My sister and her friend figured in a vehicular accident this morning. After their morning jog at the UP campus, they boarded a jeepney going home. Shortly after passing the PHILCOA overpass and approaching the Department of Agrarian Reform, their jeepney hit a lane-swerving bus. In the ensuing impact, my sister, who was sitting at the midsection together with her friend, was thrown in a pile near the landing together with the other passengers.

My sister suffered no visible injuries, but is sore in some parts of the body. Her friend though was not as lucky with a slight concussion in the head.

Right after the impact, they immediately left the scene and headed for the nearby East Avenue hospital for a quick check-up. My sister�s friend, not used to being in hospitals (and an overburdened hospital one at that ), was grossed out by the quality of care the hospital gives to its patients. They were in a queue standing up with no seats for the patients available. So my sister�s friend was bleeding in the head and trying to remain in an upright position. It was a quick matter altogether. An X-ray was done and the concussion was pronounced non-serious. They were off in a huff.

Enjoying Finding Nemo

I watched "Finding Nemo" over the weekend, and surprisingly found it quite entertaining. The New Yorker gave it a lukewarm, almost hostile, review, something to the effect that a fish becomes expressive only when it hits the grill, but i found it a rollicking good fun. The story revolves around the heroic adventures of Marlin, a non-amusing clown fish who sees his young son, Nemo, borne off in a diver's net. Unfazed by the threat of both sharks and taking on a whole colony of stinging jellyfish, Marlin sets off to rescue his only child.

The most entertaining character is that of Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, a cheerfully blue tang suffering from short-term memory loss, who accompanied Marlin to Sydney to rescue Nemo from a dentist's aquarium. DeGeneres is simply a delight! watch Finding Nemo to know what i mean. A New York Times review of the movie is available here.

Trillanes papers

The papers on corruption in the Navy written by Lt. SG Trillanes for his courses at the National College of Public Administration and Governance (NCPAG) are posted at the PCIJ website. More comments on the papers later.