That's Mr. Poe if you're nasty
After building up the supposed invincibility of FPJ and now that an FPJ presidency is in the opinion of almost everybody just about round the corner, the Inquirer has started its demolition job on FPJ the same way it subtly bulldozed buddy Erap--insider stories on the person's gaffes.

The Philippine Star also reports on the same subject, how FPJ got vexed with the myriad questions being thrown at him. He was asked about his opinion on, among other things, economic program and the death penalty.

Apparently FPJ was irked that some reporters were voicing faults with his economic program when he, in fact, has not announced it yet. Well, he has a point on that. One cannot find fault on something that does not exist yet.

FPJ is not used to ubiquitous inquisitorial reporters asking his opinion on almost everything under the political sun. Even as a movie star he never promotes his movies, guests on variety shows and have reporters ask him questions. He had a royal aloofness and movie reporters did not transgress that. News reporters, on the other hand, are all too ready to expose FPJ's political ignorance as long as it would make good copy.

FPJ is uncomfortable fielding the reporters' questions. He knows nothing about those things and he knows it. I seriously doubt if he read the broadsheets for most of his adult life. He is not politically conversant and is vexed that reporters should expect him to be so.

Miriam says FPJ is having some tutoring from UP professors (probably from the College of Public Administartion), but we have to see yet the result of that tutoring. FPJ still has no witty one-liners on every issue.

Running for president, unfortunately, is like joining a beauty contest. One has to memorize prepared answers for every imaginable question. How do we achieve world peace? What is the essence of a woman? All that crap.

Erap was better coached when he ran for presidency. Whenever asked to comment on a particular policy issue he never had time to ask about from his advisers, Erap would give a wry smile to the reporter and say that rest assured he would always consider "the greatest good of the greatest number." Erap had Jeremy Bentham then to parry the assaults of the reporters. FPJ should find his own handy philosopher--but then again public administration professors are not know to be philosophical.

Marco Garrido writing for the Asia Times on FPJ's citizenship and the possibility of American statehood for the Philippines. Human Rights Watch in its annual global survey says that the war in Iraq is not a humanitarian intervention. The inimitable Arundhati Roy writing for The Nation, lashing the new American century.

Lecture on the Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi
The LEGACY OF MAHATMA GANDHI:
Building a Character of Integrity, Harmony and Peace

by

Pascal Alan Nazareth
Former Ambassador, Embassy of India
Co-Founder and Managing Trustee,
Sarvodaya International Trust
(International Mahatma Gandhi Movement)

at four o'clock in the afternoon of Wednesday, 4 February 2004 at the Rev. Henry Lee Irwin Theatre Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City.

Guests are requested to be seated by 3:15 P.M.

Imelda incarcerated
Read Inquirer's feature on PCGG Commissioner Ruben Carranza:

The PCGG has so far filed close to 1000 civil cases against the Marcoses and their cronies, says Carranza, 43 of them before the Ombudsman. "We only need one conviction to put Imelda in jail."

THe PCGG would need a lot of of support as the coming FPJ presidency does not bode well for those cases . I saw how Susan Roces swooned at the presence of the Great Prodigal Imelda, probably titillated at the idea that she would be one day wearing the shoes Imelda once wore.

If only people would see Imelda in jail, then they would know that indeed she and her husband did something wrong. As things are now, people, especially those who were too young to experience the Marcos years firsthand, are all too ready to give her the benefit of the doubt.

It would also be a great downer for people who hitherto idolize the brazenness of the Marcoses in enriching themselves. It is a real shock, I know, but not a few UP students have this inchoate admiration for the Marcoses, especially the much-vaunted brilliance daw of Apo Marcos, which, Conrado de Quiros, assures us, is more a product of PR than real substance. (Marcos was real smart though in skirting all the rules, but smartness and brilliance are not the same. Everybody can be smart.)

I remember seeing Imelda confronted on TV about the prospect of her going to jail someday. You know what she said? If imprisoned and persecuted, she said, in the characteristic Imeldific just-about-to-cry-over-your-shoulder look, she will end up like Nelson Mandela and win the Nobel Prize. No matter how hard I try, I cannot imagine the Stockholm citation.

DionaText: Cellphone Text Poetry writing Contest
The National Commission for Culture and the Arts in cooperation with the Filipinas Institute of Translation, Inc., Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas and the UP Institute of Creative Writing launch DIONATEXT, a text (SMS) poetry writing contest. The contest aims to popularize and revitalize the tradition of one of the oldest forms of poetry by using modern technology. The diona is a short poem composed of three versified rhyming lines. Each line consists only of seven syllables expressing a complete thought. DIONATEXT entries must be written in Filipino and must express love within the family. Here’s an old example:

magkapatid mang buo,
kundi kapuwa suyo,
parang pinsang malayo.

Contestants must submit their entries through text to any of the following numbers: (0927) 4641814 at (0918) 2252718. Entries must be accompanied by the name and address of the author. Entries must be received not later than 5 p.m. every Friday of the contest week. Every week for the month of February, judges will pick 2 winners (Text Makata ng linggo) who will receive P5,000 each. Eight consolation prizes of P2,000 will be awarded. The winning entries will be compiled in a book which will be released at the awarding ceremonies.

Forum on cellphones and campaigns
Liberal Philippines magazine, the country’s newest political quarterly, and Media G8way, a leader in information technology publishing, have teamed up for a breakthrough event entitled Cell Phones and Campaigns. In this public forum, industry leaders and service providers will discuss the many innovative uses of the cell phone in launching a campaign in marketing, public service, health, education, and even in elections. With 15 million Filipinos using cell phones, indeed this gadget is the way to communicate.

Among speakers are officials from the country’s respected telecommunications companies, content and service providers and technical experts -- several of whom will also provide demonstrations of new and exciting services. We would like to invite you to join us in this public forum Cell Phones and Campaigns to be held on 29 January 2004, 9am in the Skytop of the Hotel Intercontinental, Makati City. Entrance is free of charge.

Howard Dean loses New Hampshire primary
I guess it is now official that Howard Dean will never be the Democratic candidate to challenge Bush come November. Senator John Kerry has scored a double whammy with his win, this time, in Dean's own turf New Hampshire. Kerry carried Iowa and, now, New Hampshire.

I guess it is all for the good of the party as Kerry is widely perceived to be more acceptable and electable by the general electorate. Dean is more idiosyncratic in style, i.e., weird. His " I Have a Scream" speech is now legendary. But I cannot help but commiserate. I can just imagine the heartbreak of hundreds of Dean's youth volunteers, his bloggers and all those who contributed their hundred dollars via the internet. It is Dean among the presidential contenders who has real grassroots support--especially in the internet.

If it is Kerry who has a greater chance to oust Bush from the White House, then so be it. Now that Dean seems to have faded from the scene, the Democratic Party now must buckle up and figure out how to get rid of Bush--for the benefit of the American people and all mankind.

I have recently stumbled on the Global Development Network's toolkit for proposal writing. Not only does it have tips on writing, it also has sections on networking and potential donors.

Newsweek has an interview with Imelda Marcos. She is as histrionic as ever.

Is Stephen Hawking a battered husband?
A report carried by The Times of India asks the question. Apparently, police detectives were expressing frustration that the scientist was refusing to cooperate to explain repeated instances of broken wrists, gashes to the face and throat, lip cuts and heat stroke.

We told Bush so
Fareed Zakaria, the resident pundit at Newsweek, writes about the ascendancy of Shiite Grand Ayatollah Sistani, how he has hostaged the American occupation of Iraq because of US"s lack of legitimacy in the region. Fearful that Ayatollah Sistani would declare the US an invader, the US is kowtowing to Ayatollah Sistani's demands.

Ayatollah Sistani is having an inordinate share of power now because the US unilateral invasion lacked legitimacy and is therefore in no position to antagonize Ayatollah however reasonably warranted--as in the case of the US's plan for a phased transition. (Ayatollah Sistani wants elections pronto.)

The American occupiers are now belatedly realizing the importance of multilateral action, the legitimacy that it bestows. The UN can do unpopular things without being accused of being colonizers. After dismissing the UN as irrelevant and going it alone in the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration is now courting the UN for favors. Zakaria writes:

American policymakers made two grave mistakes after the war. The first was to occupy the country with too few troops, creating a security vacuum. This image of weakness was reinforced when Washington caved in to Sistani's objections last June, junked its original transition plan and sped things up to coincide with the American elections. The second mistake was to dismiss from the start the need for allies and international institutions. As a result, Washington is now governing Iraq with neither power nor legitimacy.

James Fallows annotates US President Bush's State of the Union speech here.

Favorite Songs
Suddenly inspired by Nick Hornby’s list of favorite songs (see previous blog entry), I have taken the time to list my own. Here are some of my favorites:

Hava Nageela, Harry Belafonte
Thunder Road, Bruce Springsteen
Respect, Aretha Franklin
Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, Edith Piaf
Take On Me, A-ha
Walang Hanggang Paalam, Joey Ayala
I’ll Be There, Michael Jackson
Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Kingston Trio
Kanlungan, Noel Cabangon
Livin’ On a Prayer, Bon Jovi
Father and Son, Cat Stevens
Eternal Flame, Bangles
Esa Noche, Café Tacuba
El Pueblo Unido, Intillimani
Cool Change, Little River Band
Nomakanjani, Brenda Fassie
Forever Young, Alphaville
Kokomo, Beach Boys
All Day Love, Leon Lai
Dancing in the Moonlight, Toploader
No Woman, No Cry, Bob Marley
Let’s Fall In Love, Diana Krall
Xing Qing, Jay Chou

Job opening
The Philippine Daily Inquirer is looking for desk editors. PDI's human-resources management services head can be reached at this email: recruitment@inquirer.com.ph.

Teodoro Valencia Lecture Series on Journalism and Mass Communication
The 16th Teodoro F. Valencia Lecture Series on Journalism and Mass Communication will be held Jan. 30 March 19 at the T.F. Valencia Media Study Center at the Rizal Park. The lectures will be held every Friday 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Selected students of journalism and mass communication from 12 leading universities in Metro Manila will attend the lecture. Among the lecturers will be Manila Bulletin associate editor Ramon Francisco, Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros, Philippine Star entertainment associate editor Ricky F. Lo, Abante managing editor Nick V. Quijano, Manila Bulletin and Agriculture Magazine editor Zac Sarian, Philippine Star columnist and Malacañang reporter Marichu Villanueva, Prof. Dr. Ceciliano-Jose Cruz and photo journalist Anjo Perez.

COMELEC: FPJ is fit to be president
COMELEC has declared FPJ a natural-born Filipino citizen and thus qualified to become the president. Business World has an informative report on the decision. This is not yet the end of the matter. We will hear more of this citizenship business in the coming days because the issue has been brought to the Supreme Court.

The Inquirer asks "Who is Ricardo Manapat?" The Observer reviews VS Naipaul's Literary Occasions.

Justice Philippe Kirsch, president of the International Criminal Court, talks about the structure and goals of the ICC. He does not answer hypothetical questions though so all the interesting questions are left unanswered, e.g., the Guantanamo incarcerations and the Iraq invasion.

The joys of popular music
For anybody here who loves popular music and has not yet gone classical, you may be interested to check out the following songs. They are Nick Hornby's favorites, which he individually discussed in his Songbook, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

Teenage Fanclub, "Your Love Is The Place That I Come From"
Bruce Springsteen, "Thunder Road"
Nelly Furtado, "I'm Like A Bird"
Led Zeppelin, "Heartbreaker"
Rufus Wainwright, "One Man Guy"
Santana, "Samba Pa Ti"
Rod Stewart, Mama, "You Been On My Mind"
Bob Dylan, "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?"
The Beatles, "Rain"
Ani DiFranco, "You Had Time"
Aimee Mann, "I've Had It"
Paul Westerberg, "Born For Me"
Suicide, "Frankie Teardrop"
Teenage Fanclub, "Ain't That Enough"
J. Geils Band, "First I Look At The Purse"
Ben Folds Five, "Smoke"
Badly Drawn Boy, "A Minor Incident"
The Bible, "Glorybound"
Van Morrison, "Caravan"
Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture, "So I'll Run"
Gregory Isaacs, "Puff The Magic Dragon"
Ian Dury, "Reasons To Be Cheerful"
Richard and Linda Thompson, "Calvary Cross"
Jackson Browne, "Late For The Sky"
Mark Mulcahy, "Hey Self-Defeater"
The Velvelettes, "Needle In A Haystack"
O.V. Wright, "Let's Straighten It Out"
Royksopp, "Royksopp's Night Out"
The Avalanches, "Frontier Psychiatrist"
Soulwax, "No Fun / Push It"
Patti Smith, "Pissing In A River"

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS
The UP Press is interested in a collection of stories on the supernatural for the UP Jubilee Student Edition. These stories should be short and should have a strong Filipino element. They may be scary, funny, romantic, or action-packed, as long as they deal with the supernatural and are told in the mode of popular literature, i.e., light. We are also open to stories told in comics form (as long as they are done in black and white).

Please submit your contributions to:

Supernatural Story Collection editors
University of the Philippines Press
UP Press Bldg
E de los Santos St., UP Campus
Diliman, Quezon City

Or email uppress@uppress.org. Indicate `supernatural story' in the subject.

Deadline for submission is on February 20, 2004. Manuscripts should be no more than 10 pages long, double-spaced, on short bond paper. Please submit three (3) copies in a brown envelope and include your contact information.

The editors will select 10-20 stories for a total book-length of around 100 pages. The chosen authors will be given a copy of the book and will be included in promotional material during the UP Press Book Caravan and other marketing activities involving the Student Edition line.

Previously published material will be considered. Please make sure to include bibliographic information regarding the initial publication.

Angara to talk in UP
Senator Angara will be at the University of the Philippines to deliver a talk on Choosing the Next President at the Sta Ana Room of the university's College of Law, January 27, 3:30-5:00 PM. Come if you can. It would be a good venue to heckle Angara. It is sponsored though by Sigma Rho, so prepare yourself for fraternity boys.

The original manuscript of Bicol's Sarung Banggi has been burned in a fire in Sto. Domingo, Albay, the Inquirer reports. An archives official at the University of the Philippines tells how microfilm can be faked. Observing the paintings of Mindanao artist Bert Monterona in a Vancouver exhibit, Alan Haig-Brown asks the question "Can a Man Be a Feminist?" in MindaNews. Michael Tan, on the occasion of the Chinese New Year, writes on the confusing diversities of calendars across cultures.

Is Manapat smarter than others?
After wondering for days if the Ricardo Manapat of recent controversy is the same Manapat who digged the dirt on the Marcoses with the book Some are Smarter Than Others, I finally found out that they are, in fact, one and the same. And more: Manapat, it turned out, has been doing work for Ramos and Almonte digging up dirt on their political enemies. Manapat was also behind the questioning of Alfredo Lim's citizenship some years ago. (COMELEC then held that Lim is a natural-born Filipino.) For a background on the recent job positions of Manapat, read this Manila Times story.

Manapat has three documents from the National Archives: the birth certificate of FPJ, the marriage certificate of FPJ's parents and another certificate of a prior marriage of FPJ's father to another woman.

The birth certificate is supposed to show us that FPJ's father was a Spanish citizen and his mother an American. Do such protestations in a birth certificate constitute conclusive proof of one's and one's parents' citizenships? No. So there goes down the drain the much-ballyhooed birth certificate.

The presumption is that FPJ's father was a Filipino by virtue of Philippine Bill of 1902 which granted automatic Filipino citizenship for the Spanish citizens living in the Philippines when Spain ceded control of the islands in the Treaty of Paris. Unless Manapat can show that FPJ's old man actively renounced his Filipino citizenship and vowed allegiance to Spain, the presumption is that he was a Filipino. He served the Philippines during World War II. He even was supposedly the model for the UP Oblation.

With regard to the marriage certificate: Let us suppose that indeed FPJ is an illegitimate son, but his father was Filipino as argued above. There is, as father Bernas recognizes, case law that says illegitimate children follow the citizenship of their mothers. Following case law therefore, FPJ would follow the citizenship of the mother, which was American. However, the 1935 Constitution was clear that children born of Filipino fathers are Filipinos themselves.

Father Bernas therefore holds that FPJ is a natural-born Filipino--but may be a dual citizen of the Philippines and the United States. The legal question for Father Bernas now is: Can a dual citizen be president of the Philippines?

My personal opinion though is that FPJ is a Filipino pure and simple. The case law holding that illegitimate children follow the citizenship of the mothers must give way to the constitutional provision in the 1935 Constitution that children of Filipino fathers are Filipinos. We simply cannot afford to disqualify a front-runner on flimsy legal nitpicking. It is undemocratic. FPJ is not qualified to be president, but he CAN run and win if people want him.

The COMELEC is expected to render its decision this week. If it finds FPJ unqualified to run for president, FPJ is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Well and good. FPJ's citizenship must be decided NOW before he becomes president. Imagine the chaos if the Supreme Court were to pronounce a sitting president constitutionally unqualified to be president. The Davide impeachment brouhaha would pale in comparison by at least a thousand degrees.

So is Ricardo Manapat smarter than others? Well, not in this case. He wrote an interesting book though. Read Some are Smarter Than Others and know the dirt on Danding Cojuanco, Lucio Tan, the Tantocos of Rustans and other people.

A short survey of the freedom enjoyed by the the 20 million ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. Disgust is a disease-avoidance mechanism, according to this Economist article. Columbia Professor Jagdish Bhagwati is interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations on the subject of free trade. Click here for the transcript.

Starvation diet
I was bowled over by this so-called calorie-restriction diet that some people are on to prolong their individual life spans. Newsweek has an article on its latest issue. Apparently, food-deprived rats lived longer and looked younger than those that ate normally.

The effect has been seen in animals from fruit flies to roundworms to mice: reduce food intake by roughly a third, while maintaining adequate nutrition, and life span goes up by about 30 percent.

So some people are trying it as well. How is this calorie restriction supposed to work to humans? Here's one theory:

... calorie restriction slows metabolism, the burning of glucose for energy. This effect—which presumably serves the evolutionary purpose of conserving calories during periods of famine—is well known to dieters; as they eat less, their metabolic rate drops, and it becomes progressively harder to burn off fat. It's clear that metabolism slows in people on CR regimens; in one study, core body temperature dropped by one full degree. Metabolism, an essential life process, is also a destructive one; it produces free radicals, unstable molecules that can damage the structures of living cells by the process known as oxidation. Antioxidant vitamins and supplements ranging from vitamin C to green-tea extracts have been the rage for decades, though there is little evidence that they have any effect on longevity; calorie-restriction diets reduce oxygenating compounds at their source—a plausible, if equally unproved, mechanism for extending life.

Great website
If you want to listen to radio interviews of your favorite authors, here's the site for you: Don Swaim's audio interviews on Wired for Books. I have just found the site this morning and I was able to listen to a thirty-minute interview with Jeffrey Archer. I never knew Sir Jeffrey Archer was such a lively speaker. He loves making these long sentences in his high-pitch voice that makes him eerily sound like a character in some Victorian English novel. Totally endearing, if I may say so.

The particular interview I listened to was the one where Archer was discussing his novel As the Crow Flies. When I heard Archer discussing the costermonger protagonist in the novel and how the character's ambition propelled him to buying the whole block of property in the novel, I felt so nostalgic about reading Archer novels that if I have time I probably would sit down and gulp more of them. Archer was one of my great reads in high school, my first favorite author. In fact, my first interest in politics and government was sparked by my reading his The Prodigal Daughter. If anybody of you want to read about ambition, drive and stamina, then Archer is the author to read. Great entertainment too.

Job Opening
KAISAHAN tungo sa Kaunlaran ng Kanayunan at Repormang Pansakahan is a social development organization involved in agrarian reform, local governance, and sustainable integrated area development. Its Policy Research and Advocacy Unit is in urgent need of a:

POLICY RESEARCH & ADVOCACY OFFICER


The tasks of the officer would focus on:

- Collating, consolidating, analyzing issues for advocacy and translating these into policy formulation

- Conducting policy researches on key AR/LG issues affecting partner communities

- Advocating and lobbying for specific policy recommendations and the release of pro-AR/LG issuances from both the legislative and executive branches

- Developing and writing position papers, briefers, bills, issuances, letters to the editor and press releases

- Networking with like-minded POs, NGOs, GAs in pushing for policy reforms

- Organizing policy conferences and other advocacy fora

Applicants must:

- Be a graduate of communication arts or any 4-year social science course

- Have at least 2 years experience in related NGO work, preferably agrarian reform, local governance and land use

- Have excellent research and writing skills

- Be willing to travel

For inquiries, please look for Lia or Nina. Interested applicants should send their application letter, résumé and sample written work to:

Atty. Magistrado Mendoza
Executive Director
KAISAHAN tungo sa Kaunlaran ng Kanayunan at Repormang Pansakahan
#3 Mahabagin Street, Teachers’ Village West, Quezon City
Tel. Nos.: 433-0760, 925-4303, 925-4307 Telefax: 926-6042
Email: kaisahan@info.com.ph

Deadline for submission of applications is on 24th January 2004.

U2's Bono has an op-ed on Burma's lonely heroine of democracy Aung San Suu Kyi.

Ateneo lecture
KRITIKA KULTURA
www.ateneo.edu/kritikakultura

in cooperation with the Ateneo de Manila Press, the Ateneo History Department, the Dean's Office of the School of Social Sciences and the Institute of Philippine Culture

Welcomes you to a lecture by

Professor BENEDICT ANDERSON

"The Noli Quantified: Reflections on the Origins of Rizalian Nationalism,"

This will be followed by the launching of the Philippine edition of Prof. Anderson's

The Spectre of Comparisons"

Tuesday, January 27, 4.30 to 6.30 pm, SDC Conference Hall, Social Development Complex, ADMU campus.

Professor Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, until his recent retirement, was Aaron L. Binenkorb, Professor of International Studies and former Director of the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University. He is the author of the highly influential Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983, 1991). His other books include Java in a Time of Revolution (1972), Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era (1985), and Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (1990).

The Nation compares the lives and memoirs of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. Quick differences: Vargas LLosa was an early success while Garcia Marquez faced a tough battle in the beginning. Vargas Llosa got a scholarship to Madrid right after graduation from the university, where he apprenticed with an eminent historian. Garcia Marquez dropped out of law school to pursue what in his parents' mind was a thankless profession: journalism and writing. Of course, the rest is literary history.

Needless to say, another difference is in their politics. Vargas Llosa solidly belongs to the right, a disciple of Thatcher, and possibly a neoconservative. Garcia Marquez identifies with the political Left, and a friend of Fidel Castro.

Italian PM Belusconi gets a facelift. Also learn from the linked article that the abrasive Berlusconi is a mere 5'6", small for Italian standard.

The decision of the Supreme Court voiding the billion-peso contract for automated counting machines is now online. Click here.

Call for Papers
New Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference: Where Big Budget Meets No Budget

May 3rd-4th 2004, Singapore

The last few years have seen the emergence of art films from Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore even as authoritarian regimes collapsed, and the ensuing economic downturn signaled the end or near-ending of mainstream filmmaking industries. These films, sometimes little known or unpopular in their own countries, have been making the international film festivals circuit and attracting much critical attention from Cannes to Singapore to Japan, Vancouver and Montreal. Concurrently, there has also been a revival of more commercial films such as Iron Ladies, Ong Bak, Suriyothai (Thailand) and Ada Apa Dengan Cinta (Indonesia) in local cinemas. Globalization, the internet, video piracy and the creation of niche market art cinemas have also meant that films from neighbouring ASEAN countries are being viewed in metropolitan cities like Bangkok, Singapore, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. In addition, the development of digital video technology has spawned groups of young eager filmmakers and video activists throughout the region who are producing quick, low-budget films. Confronting budget constraints, those trained in the west in film and video production have also seized the new media to make newer cheaper films.

How are these films breaking from the moulds of their national cinematic traditions? In establishing difference from the commercial mainstream of melodramas or ‘bomba’ cinemas, are SEAsian avant garde films merely reverting to an older Western avant garde cinematic tradition like the French New Wave? Or are there other trends that are equally influential in this deterritorialised space and age? Are we beyond theories of postcolonial Third Cinema? How do filmmakers balance popular viewing desires with their own desire for making art? What makes a Malaysian film uniquely Malaysian? Can these Third World narratives be read as national allegories? If not, how should they be read and in what context?

This conference seeks to showcase and create academic and social discourse among scholars, film critics, buffs and media activists about the multiple new cinemas from the region. We want to create better awareness of film as both an artistic expression and ideological and educational tool and to provide a forum and international networking for participants.

We hope to publish selected papers in an edited book on Emerging Southeast Asian Cinemas after the conference.

We welcome paper abstracts that:
* explore and analyse the complexities and problems of the current industries in any Southeast Asian country: effects of funding, censorship, bureaucratic and state policies in production, distribution, exhibition, etc.
* employ critical approaches from film theory, film aesthetics and reception studies to discuss Southeast Asian films
* focus on sociological, anthropological, cultural, postcolonial aspects (including questions of race, gender, class, sexual/queer identities, ideology) of Southeast Asian films
* discuss independent filmmaking as opposed to mainstream national cinema
* reflect SEAsian diasporic film perspectives of SEAsia
* deal in-depth with specific SEAsian film genres: horror, romance, comedy, melodrama, documentary, war, video essay, sexploitation/bomba, etc.

deadline: February 15th, 2004

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract to Khoo Gaik Cheng: arikgc@nus.edu.sg

BENEDICT ANDERSON, Cornell University
Public Lecture

"The French Connection: Rizal, Decadence, and Revolutionary Anarchism"

Friday, 23 January 2004
2:30-5:00 pm
Pulungang Claro M. Recto
Bulwagang Rizal (Faculty Center)


BENEDICT ANDERSON is Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies, Emeritus, Cornell University. He is the author of Java in the Time of Revolution (1972), Imagined Communities (1983), Language and Power (1990), The Spectre of Comparisons (1998), and Violence and the State in Suharto’s Indonesia (2001) among others.

Organized by the UP Office of the President, College of Arts and Letters, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy and the Third World Studies Center.

A Swedish parliamentarian has nominated soccer for a Nobel Peace Prize. Pure hogwash, says this Foreign Policy essay. Soccer deserves a Nobel for Economics.

India versus China? Peter Drucker says it's India as quoted in this International Herald Tribune article.

On FPJ's citizenship once again
Today has a lead editorial and a column by Bernas on this topic. Put them together and you get this: FPJ is a natural-born Filipino.

FPJ's father seems to be a Filipino by virtue of the Philippine Bill of 1902 granting mass naturalization. He also served the Philippine army and was a decorated veteran of Bataan. The issue thus remaining is whether FPJ's being an illegitimate child makes him an American, following his mother's citizenship rather than the father's. Bernas has this to say:

I grant that there are decisions, which say that the citizenship of the child follows the citizenship of the mother. The basis for such a decision could very well be statutory. But there is nothing in our Constitutions which says that recognition of citizenship, based on that of the mother’s, has the effect of stripping the child of citizenship received from the father. I suggest that such a child would have dual citizenship. The next question, of course, would be whether one who has dual citizenship, Philippine and another, is not qualified to become president.

FPJ supposedly taking charge
Former Senator Ernesto Maceda, to counter everybody's opinion of FPJ's proxying for other people (Angara et al) in his bid for the presidency, cites an instance of FPJ's hands-on management style: the KNP's photo shoots.

Maceda went to great lengths to describe how FPJ personally selected the photos for each of the candidates and how he requested a platform on which to stand for Legarda since she's shorter than FPJ. And after this lengthy anecdote of the photo shoot, Maceda concludes:

FPJ was in control. He knows what he wants, what he intends to do.

Don't underestimate him anymore. He is the leader of the opposition team and he is ready to slug it out with two fists blazing away. He is Da King.

I wonder how Maceda came to that conclusion. Personally supervising the taking of pictures does not mean one is also capable of personally supervising a presidency. The two are markedly different. Is Maceda losing his wits or was he simply being cute? (Mind you, Maceda was the man who predicted the EDSA 2 crowd would pack up and ask for Erap's forgiveness in 4 days.)

Maceda is wrong again this time, UNLESS he believes that the coming FPJ presidency would be just one big photo op.

Call for literary works
Dear friends of Manoa journal,

For an upcoming issue of Manoa, I would like to gather international writing from younger authors from throughout the Pacific region, without regard to national boundaries. As you know, over the last several years, we've been focusing on specific countries. I'd like us to break out of this format, at least for now, and showcase a greater mixture of voices, all bound together.

I'm requesting that Manoa corresponding editors and friends please join in collaborating on this issue, which we will call, unglamorously for now, "The Pacific Hemisphere Under Thirty-Five: Younger Writers from Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas." For now, I'm looking for prose only: either fiction or literary nonfiction. (Perhaps we can do a volume of poetry like this later. )

The age "thirty-five" is pretty arbitrary; the impulse here is simply to see what upcoming---rather than beginner or established---writers around the region are doing. I am not seeking experimentation for its own sake, so the work need not be explicitly "post-" anything. Good writing is hard enough to find without putting too many requisites on its form or content. In this case, age, hemisphere, and quality are enough restrictions.

Please look around your region for what you think are the best stories by younger authors and send them to me by no later than the first week of March 2004---or have the authors send them directly.

Send as many as you like, and tell others if you like---but really I'm depending on each of you as individuals that I trust. The works should be previously unpublished---or, they may be previously published provided they have had only limited distribution, not worldwide, and have no unreasonable copyright restrictions on them. The works may be written originally in any language, but they need to be sent to me in translation and will be published in English. All of you who send submissions and suggestions will be credited with editing the book; Manoa's general editor and staff will make final final selections. Of course I would like to have as broad and equitable arepresentation of voices as possible, but that is not the book's goal and will not drive the final contents.

Authors, translators, and contributing editors will receive multiple copies of the book, but shouldn't expect a fee. We are too poor. The book, however, will be beautiful and the content as wonderful and surprising as we (with your help) can make it.

Thanks very much. As usual, you can send things by post to:

Manoa Journal
Department of English
University of Hawaii
1733 Donaghho Road
Honolulu HI 96822 USA

Best wishes and aloha for the new year,

Frank

Frank Stewart, Editor
Tel: 808-956-3059

Job Opening
ICANVAS MEDIA is looking for editorial assistant/ staff writer for their in house operations. The applicant must be good in writing business/ technical correspondences and reports. Please send your sample work and resume directly to choloflorencio@icanvasmedia.com.

Call Cholo at 09179335670 or 9950201 ASAP

Marites Vitug, writing for Newsweek, on Filipinos trading their politicians for movie stars. George Soros, writing for the Atlantic Monthly, on the bubble of American supremacy.

Funny story on a couple running against each other for the post of mayor in Lanao. Onli in da Pilipins.

More on the Sandiganbayan faux pa
Former Senate President Jovito Salonga and UP Professor Florin Hilbay wrote this Inquirer op-ed on the volte-face of the Sandiganbayan granting Estrada the permission to seek medical help abroad. The two opine that "Beyond the inexplicable bases for the resolution of the Sandiganbayan special division is the unimpeachable information that the special division was constituted in violation of the Rules of Procedure of the Sandiganbayan." The op-ed adds that:

Rule XIII, 1(b) of the Rules of Procedure of the Sandiganbayan provides that in cases where no unanimous vote of the three members of a division is obtained, a special division of five should be constituted with the two members being designated by raffle on a rotation basis.

Apparently, the voting conducted last Dec. 18 resulted in Justices Chico-Nazario and Leonardo-de Castro going in favor of the motion and Justice Sandoval dissenting.
As no unanimous vote was had, this should have resulted in a raffle to determine the two special members of the division.

However, Bantay Katarungan has found out that, instead of a raffle as provided for in the rules, the two special members-Justices Diosdado M. Peralta and Norbert Y. Geraldez Sr.-were merely handpicked by the presiding justice.

From whom did Salonga and Hilbay got that unimpeachable information? The op-ed did not say. But it confirms the suspicion by many of us that the turnaround by the Sandiganbayan was motivated by something more than simple judicious rumination of the issues involved.

Si Poe ay Filipino?
The Manila Times quotes GMA as believing Fernando Poe is a Filipino. In a statement released by Malacanang, GMA has apparently offered FPJ help to expedite the resolution of FPJ's citizenship issue.

I get confused though with GMA's coming forth protesting that she believes FPJ is a Filipino. She probably should have stated that she believed FPJ is a natural-born Filipino if she wished to dispel rumors that she is behind the attack on FPJ, apparently aimed at pre-emptively disqualifying FPJ for the presidential run.

The make-or-break issue here is not the citizenship per se of FPJ, but the manner by which FPJ bacame a Filipino. Apparently, FPJ has the documents to prove his citizenship: passport issued to his name, for example. But not all Filipinos can run for president; those qualified are people who were born Filipino and did not have to do anything to perfect their Filipino citizenship.

BIG SKY MIND
APPLICATION FOR RESIDENCY PROGRAM
Big Sky Mind Artists’ Projects Foundation, an independent artist-run organization based in Manila, Philippines, offers studio residencies to young visual artists at the 18th Avenue Artists Compound in Cubao, Quezon City.

Located in a warehouse complex, Big Sky Mind offers young artists space to create and develop their work amidst an environment of community, camaraderie and professional support. Its Residency Program grants one-year studio residencies to young Filipino visual artists and short-term residencies to foreign visiting artists.

The Compound has three studios for local artists and one studio for foreign artists. Technical and support facilities include a library of books, magazines, catalogues, portfolios and other reference material on contemporary art, a computer lab with cable internet access, scanner, printer, fax, CD burner and video editing equipment.

Each quarter, Big Sky Mind hosts exhibitions by the resident artists, providing them with a platform to present their work to a wider public. Talks and
workshops are also held in order to broaden public awareness on contemporary art and practice.

The 2004 Residency period is from July 1, 2004 ­ June 30, 2005. Artists who wish to apply may submit their cv, portfolios, and other supporting documents from 15 January ­ 15 March 2004. Artists also need to submit a clear, concise proposal of works to be developed during the residency. Qualified applicants will be notified by April 2004.

Big Sky Mind
70 18th Avenue, Murphy,
Cubao, Quezon City

Tel/Fax 421-2125
Email big_sky_mind@hotmail.com
info@bigskymind.org
Website: www.bigskymind.org

Office Hours: Wednesday ­ Saturday, 9 am ­ 12 nn, 1 ­ 6 pm.

Job opening
San Min Book Co., Ltd, one of Taiwan's best-known publishers, seeks experienced writers who are interested in writing English short stories/articles for EFL students and already have works waiting to be published. The target readers are Taiwanese EFL students (children, ages 7-12, or teenagers, ages 13-18).

Manuscript length varies from 300-1500 words. Welcomes various topics and forms of writing, especially a series of creative stories. Guidelines available upon request. Applicants please send resume and writing samples to: editor@sanmin.com.tw (please note on the title of your e- mail "application for children's writer" or "application for teenagers' writer").

Deadline: January 31

Source: http://www.writerfind.com/freelance_jobs/job511.htm

Show of power
The NPAs have been quite busy these days. Not only have they been collecting money for permits to campaign on their supposedly controlled areas, they have also been engaging in terrorist acts like trying to blow up power plants, like the one in Calaca.

The Philippine Star reports that Sorsogon Representatice Jose Solis, a former army man, has been accosted by the NPAs and told that he was unwelcomed in Barangay Union, Gubat since he refused to pay for a campaign permit. His driver was shot and seriously wounded, but Solis was unharmed. This is the first election-related incident in the country. Solis is running for a re-election in the second district of Sorsogon.

The Weekly Standard, Bush's favorite journal, writes about the two Americans dubbed by Philippine immigration authorities as undesirable aliens, who have been allegedly interacting with Al Qaeda cells here.

Is FPJ a natural-born Filipino?
If all the facts Fornier was saying on TV are true, then, FPJ is clearly not. According to Fornier, both parents of FPJ were not Filipinos and even if his father were Filipino, FPJ would follow the citizenship of his mother because marriage of his parents was void. Therefore, FPJ is an illegitimate son and followed the American citizenship of his mother.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, perhaps under pressure from Malacanang, has now become less enthusiastic in declaring FPJ a Filipino. Foreign Affairs spokesman Julia Heidemann now stressed that having a Philippine passport is not conclusive proof that Poe is a natural-born Filipino. I remember seeing someone from the DFA--maybe it was she--confirming that FPJ is a Filipino quite matter-of-factly.

Or perhaps there is just a slight misunderstanding here: FPJ could be a Filipino without being a natural-born Filipino. They are not the same. Natural-born citizens, the only people allowed by law to be president, are those Filipino citizens who did not have to perform any act to acquire or perfect their citizenship. Thus, FPJ can be Filipino and still not qualify as president.

Max Soliven shares in his column a brief backgrounder on Fornier. Fornier is the younger brother of the Fornier who complained about Alfredo Lim's citizenship during the last presidential elections. Lim was then declared a Filipino by the COMELEC at the eleventh hour, thus, damaging his campaign.

Wow Mali!
The Philippine Star has this really funny story on the damage control being done by the Palace to counter the public sour-graping of Lakas spokesperson Heherson Alvarez. Apparently, Alvarez was faxed a copy, by mistake obviously, of the directive instructing political strategists on how to deal with his public grousing.

Somebody near the office's fax machine obviously doesn't know how to read. Well, at least K-4's vice-president does.

Interview with Loida Nicolas-Lewis
Click here to read the transcript of an interview with Sorsogon-born Loida Nicolas-Lewis, chairperson and CEO of TLC Beatrice International Holdings, Inc. and one of the wealthiest women in the United States.

She says her fondest memories of Sorsogon include weekends on Rizal Beach. Reading the interview made me feel a little bit nostalgic of Sorsogon. (Sometimes you miss the place more than the people.)

Anyway, here's something for women readers:

HW: What is your advice to women who are trying to reach their personal best?

LNL: They cannot do it all. They cannot have four -- a happy family life, a very satisfying career, an economically advanced home and personal satisfaction. They can only choose three, they have to give up one. Either they have a very happy family life, they have personal satisfaction, they are economically well-off but she's not in her profession. Or she's active in her profession, is very economically well-off and has personal satisfaction but her husband leaves her or her children are drug addicts. They cannot have it all. I chose the three. My husband was successful, my daughters were successful, we had a very economically viable [home] but personal satisfaction in the sense that i was a senior partner in a law firm, that did not happen. I chose to have a 9 to 5 job in the government as an immigration lawyer so I can attend to my husband and my children. So don't make any mistake women. You cannot have it all and you choose. After you choose, after prayer, be happy with it and live with it.

Job Openings
I got this from the e-mail today and I am relaying it here. From now on, I will be posting job openings and other announcements in this blog.

Tambuyog Development Center is in need of the following:

1) 2 Community Development Workers (CDWs);
2) 1 Team Leader (TL), and;
3) Enterprise Development Officer (EDO)

for its project with Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) called Fisheries Resources Management Project in Lingayen Gulf.
-------------

The CWDs job is to organize and capacitate fihserfolk organizations and cooperatives and assist them in their livelihood and enterprise projects.

He or she must be of good health, must be able to speak ilocano, willing to stay in coastal barangays for extended period of time, can build trust and confidence with the fisherfolk. Must have at least one year experience in organizing work in rural communities.
--------------

The TL is to lead a team of CDWs, giving them proper and timely assistance in their work, do advocacy and coordination work with the municipal agriculture office and municipal officials, do network or linkage with offices/agencies, government or private in support of the work in the project.

He or she must be of good health, willling to stay in the project area for extended period of time, a team builder and can build confidence and self-steem of CDWs, and must have at least three years experience in organizing in rural communities. Good at oral and written communications.
-------------

The EDO is to assist fisherfolk organizations and cooperatives in their savings and credit porject and capital build up, assist them in making feasibility studies, proposals and/or business plans. Assist the organizations and cooperatives to link production of the local communities with back up or ancilliary industies, and with local and distant markets.

He or she must be competent in making feasibility studies and business plans. Can analyze and match physical, material, and financial resources with human capabilities.

Applicants can send their application letter and biodata addressed to The Administrative Officer through this email address or at tambuyog@netgazer.com.ph or mail to Tambuyog Development Center, # 91 V. Luna Rd. Ext., Sikatuna Village, Q.C. not later than January 31, 2004.

Newsbreak reports on the incompetence of COMELEC Chairman Benjamin Abalos, who is too busy playing golf that he is rarely seen in his office.

PM THaksin: Cruisin' for bruisin' ?
Newsweek has an article on Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin's version of Keynesian spending, which, at least for now, seems to be working. Newsweek reports:

Thaksin's new paradigm is actually an old formula of Keynesian public spending and loose credit to boost consumption. This can be healthy, if the credit goes to productive uses and stays under control. The state-run banks have doled out $3.4 billion to small and medium enterprises. That's a significant sum in a $130 billion economy, yet entrepreneurial production appears to be playing a small part in the boom. Many borrowers are using state credit to buy mobile phones or motorcycles or repay old debts, even though the fund is intended solely for new businesses.

The article points out that in the long-term Thaksin may be able to pull it off if the credit extensions he has been giving to Thais propels a new entrepreneurial class in Thailand's provinces. And they better work. Thaksin is not a man of modest ambitions. This early, he seems to be gunning to replace PM Mahathir of Malaysia as the dominant leader in Southeast Asia. He has, in fact, tried exporing his Thaksinomics to the Philippines. He has also brokered the roadmap proposed by the Burmese military government to reconcile with the opposition led by the jailed Aung San Suu Kyi.

Thaksin is running on 80% popularity rating in Thailand. His family owns all TV stations in Thailand so that helps tremendously in publicizing his government's efforts. What remains to be seen though is whether these good times in Thailand can be sustained in the long run or fizzle out in a flash--and ruin Thaksin's pretensions to the throne of SE Asia.

The Guardian has a story on the media-shy Anne Tyler, author of the Pulitzer-winning Breathing Lessons.
Read AS Byatt's shorter version of her introduction to The Annotated Brothers Grimm by Maria Tatar, to be published in the US in June by WW Norton.

Personal ads for love
The Sydney Morning Herald has an amusing article on the very amusing practice of placing ads looking for love in highbrow publications like the New York Review of Books.

One ad read: "Before I turn 67 - next March - I would like to have lots of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me." Another one read: "Tap-dancing Classics lecturer. Chilling isn't it? (M, 38)." And: "Some chances are once in a lifetime. Not this one, I've been in the last 12 issues. Either I strike gold this time or I become a lesbian. Man, 43."

Asian Fellows Awards 2004
If you wish to do social science research on an Asian country and has the necessary education to do it, then you might be interested in applying for an AFA grant. Here's the application form.

Demographic politics
Sheila Coronel in Who wants to be a President? points out that:

For some time now, young voters have made up the bulk of the electorate. Today a little more than half of the more than 39 million voters are below 35, with a significant number of them aged 18 to 25. In all, two-thirds of the electorate is below 45.

At the same time, the 2000 census shows that 48 percent of Filipinos now live in urban areas, compared to 37.5 percent in 1980 and 32 percent in 1970. The latest National Statistics Office bulletin says that five of the top 10 vote-rich provinces are also the most urbanized in the country. Cavite and Laguna, for example, are now more than 80 percent urban.

New identification procedures for visitors to the US
The United States has beefed up its defense against unwelcome terrorist visitors by now requiring all visitors, save from Canada and European countries, to be photographed and biometrically profiled upon arrival in the US. The reaction from around the world has been varied, but one Brazilian judge, as the New York Times reprts, was so furious that Brazilians would have to be fingerprinted and photographed that he took revenge.

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," the judge, Julier Sebastiao da Silva, said last week in a court order subjecting all Americans entering Brazil to the same practice.

Visitors from the Philippines are probably not exempted from the hassle of profiling, but Singapore is exempted though as the above report tells us.

Online Newshour discusses the pros and cons of the new ID procedures with Mark Kirkorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, and Jeanne Butterfield, head of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Click here to find that humanities professors say you know and uh 4.85 times per minute, social scientists 3.84 and natural science professors 1.39 times.

Slate on hooking up with your professors.

Kritika Kultura Lecture Series 2004
"'Dignity - always dignity': Isolationism vs. Colonialism"

by Dr. Victor Bascara
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison

January 7, Wednesday, 4 p.m.
English Department, de la Costa bldg.
Ateneo de Manila

Abstract

Recent developments in American studies have well established the previously unacknowledged significance of U.S. colonialism in the Pacific at the turn of the century. Just as importantly, that scholarship makes a strong case for that unacknowledgment as perhaps the great amnesia of the American Century. Much path-breaking research has drawn that occluded history into visibility, at least for an American Studies with scales before its eyes.

This current ongoing work explores the historical understandings and misunderstandings that cemented that amnesia, an amnesia that now, with current geopolitical crises and the overwhelming evidence of American colonialism brought to light by a generation of revisionism, seems too hard to believe ever could have existed.

Toward tracking the receding of empire in American culture, Dr. Bascara is examining the period in which, for reasons that may be altogether plausible, American colonialism effectively disappeared. Part of a larger project on isolationism, the presentation considers how American popular culture texts of and about the 1920s and 30s, including Frank Capra's Prelude to War (1942), the adaptation of James M. Cain's Double Indemnity (1936, adapted for film in 1944), and Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain (1952). Of particular importance to the latter two texts is the curious emergence and disappearance of Filipino migrant labor.

Brief CV

Dr. Victor Bascara has been Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin at Madison (English and Asian American Studies) since 2001. He received his B.A. University of California at Berkeley (English) 1992; M.A. Berkeley (English) 1994; Ph.D. Columbia University (English and Comparative Literature) 2000. His book, Unburdening Empire: Asian
American Cultural Politics and the Emergence of United States Imperialism, will be published soon by the University of Minnesota Press.

Among the courses he has been teaching are "American Literature and Empire," "Survey of Asian American Literature," "Asian American Cultural Politics," "Law, Literature, and Critical Race Theory," "Asian Americans and Popular Culture," "Violence and Legitimation: Comparative Asian American and African American Studies."

New York Times reports on the communist revival in the Philippines.

Newsweek's Malcolm Beith reports from the Shan State of Burma, bordering China, and finds that:

In Burma it's hard to know what year it is, let alone what time it is. The country is stuck in 1962, when it invented a brand of socialism that's a bit like the abandoned sandals I saw lying on the main road in Kengtung—as if one day the Burmese simply stopped walking with the rest of the world. Water buffalo have yet to be replaced by modern agricultural equipment. The traditional longyi (sarong) is still largely favored over trousers by men both young and old. In Kengtung, nighttime activity is usually conducted by candlelight, thanks to lack of power.

The New York Times reports that Philippine authorities are deporting two American brothers arrested for suspected links to terrorism. One of the men worked until 2000 for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the laboratory said.

A mess of political parties
Today has this op-ed on the mess of the political parties in the Philippines. The op-ed specifically points to the split in the LDP caused by the serious dispute between the Angara-led bloc and that of the party secretary-general, Agapito "Butz" Aquino. The op-ed points out that "When people can not be trusted to stay loyal to their party, it would be the height of stupidity to believe they can be trusted to carry out grand visions of government."

The recent lists of candidates showing a dearth of political talents (thus the need to recruit celebrities with no political background at all aside from their pretty faces) point to another pernicious problem with our political parties: they never develop political stars inside their parties, but simply coopt people from outside.

Our political parties, devoid of any youth component, fails in one important function of a political party in a democracy, that of apprenticing young people for future public office. We are faced therefore with candidates like Bong Revilla who has a perverse way of assessing his political bankability.

Recent developments
The Manila Times reports that MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando won't be running as vice president now that Arroyo has chosen Kabayan Noli de Castro as her running mate. Wise move. Fernando would be better off MMDA chairman than vice president. His work sprucing up metropolitan Manila can serve as a platform for a run for higher office later. If he can do to Metro Manila what he did in Marikina, popular approval will propel him to, not the vice presidency (that oh-so inconsequential office), but to the top post that requires residence in the palace.

For the opposition (the FPJ side of it, anyway), it looks like it would be Loren Legarda after all who would be the sarimanok for vice president. Estrada is said to prefer Miriam Santiago or Honasan since Legarda was markedly anti-Estrada during the impeachment trial. The choice of Legarda as vice-president could mean that either FPJ is having a slight tiff with his erstwhile buddy or is simply learning fast in the Philippine art of political accomodation. I wonder though where Loren Legarda gets the stomach to run as vice president of FPJ. It was she after all who cried when Estrada's trial broke up. Whither the tears now?

Shape of things to come
A friend who is currently a graduate student in Bangkok has been asking for news on the early presidential intramurals here in the Philippines. So here it is:

The five leading candidates who have declared their intention to run for the presidency are President Arroyo, Raul Roco, FPJ, Brother Eddie Villanueva of the Jesus is Lord Movement, and Panfilo Lacson. The front runner in some of the surveys Noli de Castro has announced today, ending months of vicious speculation, that he would be sliding down to run as the vice president of Arroyo's. There were many people who were hoping De Castro would decide to contest the presidency, give FPJ a run for his money and secure the presidency for Roco.

But such things are not meant to be. Questions of the motivations of Kabayan Noli are now moot and academic, but it would be quite interesting to find out: Was he simply too lily-livered to stomach a presidential joust or was he heeding an ABS-CBN memo ordering him to run as GMA's partner? (incidentally, Noli de Castro would be running against another ABS-CBN talent Loren Legarda)

The latest polls show that FPJ, Roco and GMA are in an statistical dead heat; nobody has a clear command of the field. Arguably, FPJ, having been late in announcing his candidacy, is still gathering momentum and can significantly increase his lead in the polls. But just how much moss FPJ's rolling stone can gather in the coming months is not yet clear. (Felipe Miranda of Pulse Asia though says it would probably not exceed +10%.)

There is much talk of the popular invincibility of FPJ, but the polls do not show that invincibility just yet. FPJ, in short, does not lead the pack of presidential candidates the way Estrada led it in 1998, that is, with a tight hold at the top spot. FPJ, contrary to what Estrada and Tito Sotto would have us believed, can be defeated.

Most of the media though are selling the story that FPJ is a virtual shoo-in to the presidency, and some people who are supposed to be in the political know seem to believe so. The media understandably subconsciously wants FPJ to win, because he makes for good copy and good copy means revenues. President FPJ will surely be more exciting than, say, President Roco, and probably we would have more of Estrada's kangkungan talk.

Because there is no clear candidate leading, the coming election in 2004 would most likely resemble the 1992, rather than the 1998, election, with machinery and money gaining hyper-critical importance and potentially spelling the winning edge. This is why people from the opposite camps want to see Roco lose his momentum in the pre-election polls so that businessmen supporting his campaign war chest would shift sides and look for more hopeful pastures. Although rumors circulate that Lucio Tan is backing Roco, the time is still too early for businessment to make irrevocable commitments. And Roco, without money and machinery, would probably be running again come 2010.

Lacson, even without the support of Estrada but running under the LDP banner, is adamant in taking a shot at the presidency, but his poll numbers simply do not add up. While quite a sizable number of Filipinos, especially taxi drivers, ardently support his candidacy, they are simply not enough to propel him to Malacañang. Unfortunately for Lacson, only the number of votes count in democratic elections, not the intensity of the voters’ sentiments.

Villanueva though is a bit of a downer for GMA. He has been a supporter of GMA until he suddenly announced his own candidancy. Although impossible to win the presidency himself, he is widely expected to draw out voters away from the president.

Young people turning red
The Inquirer reports on the claim of the National Democratic Front that the number of youth going to the boondocks to join the NPA is increasing.

A housemate of my sister's friend has also recently went underground to join the NPA somewhere North of Baguio, to the dismay and shock of her parents it turned out. The mother, who was understandably distraught, recently came to Manila to look for the daughter, but to no avail. She went back to Mindanao unable to see and talk with her daughter who did not even text her goodbye.

It is always sad to hear families being broken apart by ideological politics, but, what the hell, birds got to fly, fish got to swim. I just hope these young people turning red will survive long enough to realize their mistake or see the wisdom of their choice to go underground, as the case may be.

UP Professor Walden Bello is interviewed by the New Left Review. Chalmers Johnson on the Japanese Looting of Asia during World War II. War historian John Keegan writing for Time magazine on the American G.I.

The Illiberal Naipaul?
A profile on the illiberal Nobel Prize laureate VS Naipaul on the Atlantic Monthly. I have read his A Bend in the River (gorgeous title) some months ago, and I was like what was the fuss all about. I don't really feel much enthusiasm for the book, but I can understand why people like Naipaull: he offers a totally alien perspective on the post-colonial experience of the Third World. Naipaul is after all a double-exile, from India and the Caribbean, and now residing in Britain. The protagonist in this particular novel feels that independence was much worse than colonialism. He felt more secure protected by the colonial interests, before African natives got it on their heads that they could be just like the Europeans. I did not really like the book ( I think Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart was better), but still worth reading if only for its unique political perspective.

THe American battle for same-sex marriage
US Judge Richard Posner, in an essay appearing on the New Republic, considers the wisdom of pushing the US Supreme Court to decide whether the right to same-sex marriage exists. The right of gays and lesbians to marry has taken the spotlight in the US lately with the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that such right does in fact exist. Posner argues that the court is the wrong venue to settle the matter, because if the US Supreme Court declares that such a right exists it will be making a discretionary moral judgment that is odious to American public opinion, which currently is adamantly opposed to same-sex marriages. Rather than judicialiazing the issue, a better alternative would be social experimentation, " the democratic way to handle this explosive issue, an issue intractable to legal analysis and inappropriate for judicial resolution." What Posner is recommending is that Americans should sit out the battle, observe first Vermont's (the only state with civil unions) and Massachusetts's same-sex marriages/civil unions and proceed from there. That rather than dubious legal reasoning from the federal Supreme Court, according to Posner, is the democratic way of settling the issue.


Irrational gift-giving
An Australian daily has an amusing article on the economic irrationality of gift-giving. Consider this: "... when I give up $50 worth of utility to buy a present for you, the chances are high that you'll value it at less than $50. If so, there's been a mutual loss of utility. The transaction has been inefficient and "welfare reducing", thus making it irrational. As an economist would put it, "unless a gift that costs the giver p dollars exactly matches the way in which the recipient would have spent the p dollars, the gift is suboptimal".

Lately, I have been thinking of this question: Which would you appreciate more, a gift you really like but which the giver thinks of no value, or a gift which you do not like but which the giver dearly values? I will be happy with the first, but touched by the kindness of the second.


The Weekly Standard disses The Return of the King
I have read rave reviews of the Return of the King, but this review by Jonathan Last on the Weekly Standard is the first one I have read dissing the last installment of the Tolkien trilogy. I have not seen it yet so I can not really comment just yet. Last though violently dislikes it.

Bad writing
Lately, I have taken a liking for the law commentaries of Jose Sison on the Philippine Star. They are usually insightful and concise in their presentation of legal issues, but today's column on the Leyte flood is terribly bad, I must protest. Had I not known it was Sison I was reading, I would have presumed that it was written by some high school student taking a jab at editorial writing. Two sentences are particularly jarring:

Countries, whether economically rich or poor, are endowed by the Creator with natural resources to be conserved and developed for the benefit of their own people. But in third world countries like the Philippines, this is not the case.

What did Sison mean by this? That the Philippines was not endowed by the Creator with natural resources? Surely he could not have meant that, but the juxtaposition of the two sentences suggests so.

The column could have used some editing. Alert: former Justice Isagani Cruz, here on exhibit is another instance of atrocious legal writing.

Edith Grossman translates Don Quixote
The literary world is abuzz with great excitement with the translation of Don Quixote by Edith Grossman, the woman who brilliantly translated Gabriel Garcia Marquez's works.

Earlier last year a poll of 54 writers from all over the world voted Don Quixote as the number one book of all time, with the remaining 99 books of the best 100 unranked. You can read here how literary critic par excellence Harold Bloom gushes over Don Quixote, stating with great conviction, as is characteristic of the professor-critic, that only--and only-- Shakespeare in all the western canon comes close to Don Quixote.

Edith Grossman was interviewed by PBS on her translation. Here is the transcript.

A math problem for the Christmas season
Britain's Telegraph has an amusing article on the song "On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, a partridge in a pear tree". Professor Marcus du Sautoy of Oxford asks just how many gifts did the true love send in all of twelve days. How do we compute for the total number of gifts given in any day without tediously adding them all up?

Our second-year math class was given the same problem as a homework. When the day arrived for the homework to be checked, it turned out nobody--except me--in the class figured out the formula: nx(n+1)/2, with n being the number of days. The teacher got so incensed with the class that he called me up at asked me to go to the blackboard and write my formula. Perhaps not knowing that I got the right one, she made the promise that she will give the highest grade of 95 on the grading card--effectively disregarding the rest of the student's performance in the class-- for that school year quarter to whoever will get the answer correctly. Boy, was I happy then.

How did I get it? For anybody with rudimentary knowledge of quadratic equations or mathematically brilliant like Karl Friedrich Gauss as the article points out, the problem would be a cinch to solve. Now I was neither of the two then (as now), but what I did was add up all those numbers and, by trial and error, practice different equations that might fit the total for each number of day. By staying up very late and waking up very early, I was lucky to find that nx(n+1)/2=total number of gifts was the equation that fits.

The teacher gave me the highest grade possible on that grading period. I was glad though that she did not ask in detail how I came up with the formula. I would have had to reply that I added all the numbers up and looked for a fitting equation, a roundabout time-consuming way that is hardly the mark of a numerate man.

Web sightings
Garbriel Garcia Marquez on Bill Clinton in a 1999 piece on Slate. The BBC on the history of the MP3 and how Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" was used as a model for the MP3 compression algorithm.

Finished reading Flannery O'Connor's collection of really tragic stories called Everything That Rises Must Converge.
The memorable title, according to Robert Fitzgerald who introduces the book, was from Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit philosopher. The short stories in the book are good and all tragic, all of them with one character dying at the end except for the two stories in the book.

Common among the characters in the stories is a certain trait of self-righteousness and a fastidious desire to reshape other people's characters according to one's conception of what is good. Driven and irritated by that feeling of insatisfaction with the characters of other people around them, the people in O'Connor's stories all ended up tragically, most of them dying.

GMA gave Estrada a brand-new golf cart
Max Soliven shares this gossip in today's Philippine Star:

GMA had a couple of weeks ago sent Mr. Estrada a golf cart to enable him to get around (despite his frozen knees) his place of detention in Camp Capinpin, Tanay, Rizal, and navigate the grounds within his fenced-off compound. When it was pointed out that the golf cart was only "second-hand", GMA – again through Mike – sent a second golf cart, this time brand-new.

Why do I know this? My former neighbor businessman and industrialist I. G. Atendido is the one who makes those golf carts, and he confirmed to me he had sold one second-hand, and two brand-new golf carts to Defensor.

The Sandiganbayan changes its mind

I do not fully understand what legal jujitsu the Sandiganbayan undertook when it overturned its earlier ruling barring Estrada from seeking medical treatment abroad. The justification for that bar in the earlier Sandiganbayan decision was that doctors in the Philippines could very well provide the treatment being sought by Estrada abroad.

Those same capable doctors of the earlier ruling are still capable and are willing to provide Estrada with the treatment he needs. So what were the new things considered by the Sandiganbayan to warrant a reversal of an earlier decision?

The Philippine Star reports that what prompted the Sandiganbayan to overrule it earlier decision was the supervening possibility of paralysis:

In its 13-page ruling, which overruled objections from prosecutors, the court said it could not be "so heartless as to deprive Estrada his choice of surgeon and hospital this time around considering his deteriorating health which will lead to paralysis."

It said the possibility of paralysis was a "supervening event" that convinced the anti-graft court to reverse its 2002 ruling.

Now that supervening possibility of paralysis was right there last year. The facts then were quite the same as the facts now. The Sandiganbayan simply overlooked what it now takes notice of to justify its revision of an earlier ruling.

Estrada is intransigent in his decision to consult his doctor at the Stanford Medical Center, and in the face off such intrasingence the Sandiganbayan was the first to blink, hence the new decision. I have not read the decion (no copy can be found in any of the government's websites), but judging from the news accounts everywhere I can hazard a guess it was not so much the supervening possibility as the wish of the administration to get rid of Estrada come election season that was the motivating factor in the decision. With Estrada conveniently out of the way, there would be greater room for political maneuver for the Arroyo Administration. Estrada can still help FPJ, alright, but long distance calls are expensive (but then again, not that Estrada would mind the bills).

Rites of acceptance

AR Santiago, the son of former Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, was reported to have been devastated by the cruel way he was interviewed by the UP College of Law panel which ultimately turned down his application. Some of the questions were said to be, “ How do you cope with your mother’s insanity?” and “Do you know how much your father bets in cockfights?”

Following the suicide of AR Santiago, some people began raising the issue of the appropriateness of the questions raised in that particular interview. The prevailing opinion seems to be that the interview panel went overboard and that the questions asked of AR were too personal and hard-hitting, and therefore have no place in an interview purportedly done to evaluate the aptitude of a person for law studies.

AR was treated shabbily, no doubt, but what most people do not know is that just about everybody else was treated the same dismissive way AR was treated. People are howling now simply because someone committed suicide afterwards; had there been none, the interviews would have peacefully treaded on till the next application season without so much an introspection among the law faculty in between.

Exactly what happens in those interviews? The applicant faces a panel of three or four people belonging to the law faculty. Questions are open-ended and could be anything under the sky. Some applicants would be asked to explain their thoughts on one particular thing and the panel would then proceed to skewer the sense of what the applicant has just said, taking pains to show the haphazard way the applicant thinks. It would not be a far stretch to say that the panel resembles the sophists as portrayed by Aristophanes in The Clouds in their enthusiasm to find holes in one’s statements.

The panel also freely dispenses with insults during the interview and it is not uncommon for an applicant to cry during the interview. In AR’s same batch of applicants, for example, one lady applicant was chastised for her odious brand of perfume. These unreasonable attacks are necessary because they supposedly show the applicants who can think on their feet under pressure.

People who never attended UP are naturally appalled at such displays of insensitiveness to other people’s feelings, but what they do not know is that such degrading treatment is quite de rigeur at the university when it comes to applications. The seeming callousness of AR’s interview reflects the larger organizational mindset that pervades the university.

The University of the Philippines hosts a lot of student organizations. Any student desiring to be accepted as a member needs to apply formally. The applicant is usually required to spend a required number of tambay hours at the organization’s tambayan, during which time he is supposed to ask all the members to sign on his so-called sig sheet. The sig sheet must be signed by all the members at the end of the application period. When an applicant asks a member to sign his sig sheet, he can be asked to do anything, say, crack a joke or tell who one’s crush is in the organization.

The real degrading treatment though comes during the talent night and the interview. In one regional organization’s talent night I was able to attend, the members of the organization, irked by the low production value of the applicants’ presentation, bludgeoned the applicants with insulting contumely. Some of the members of that organization are my friends, but until this day I cannot fully reconcile myself with how they treated those young insecure freshmen in such a cruel, insensitive way like vultures descending upon a dead carcass. (Or does the psychological insight of Hitler also works in this case: dress people in uniforms and give them roles to play and you will be able to unleash their cruelty?) When one lady began crying because of the invectives hurled upon her, one member of the organization had the graciousness to point out that in other campus organizations she would be treated far worse.

There are, I am sure, many such instances happening all around the campus. Also rumors of risqué rites especially in sororities and fraternities abound. I also have heard from one applicant that a certain Christian student organization regularly brings its applicants to girlie and gay bars purportedly to expose and inoculate them against temporal temptations. When I first heard of this particular silly application requirement, my first impression was why not proceed to other more damnable sins like, for instance, seducing one’s married professor or interning with a drug syndicate. Now those two will give one quite an exposure to evil.

Cruelty, insensitiveness and degrading treatment of applicants are, mind you, all prohibited by law. Republic Act 8049, otherwise known as the Anti-Hazing Law, is unequivocal in its definition of outlawed hazing. Hazing, according to RA 8049, is “an initiation rite or practice as a prerequisite for admission…placing the recruit, neophyte or applicant in some embarrassing or humiliating situations such as forcing him to do menial, silly, foolish and other similar tasks or activities.” The law says that the applicants need not be whacked blue with a paddle in order to be legally considered as having been subjected to hazing. UP students do not realize this when they rail against fraternities hazing applicants. Hazing does not necessarily mean being physical; acting contrary to good morals may constitute hazing.

What is truly sad about this state of affairs among the university’s campus organizations is that it apparently elevates one’s being thick-skinned into a competitive edge, nay, even a desired virtue. Applications like this if left unchecked can degenerate into pakapalan ng apog. ( Perhaps this explains away some of the politicians who come from the university.)

A person’s pachyderm quality as an indicator of potential merit is misleading. It can sometimes be serviceable in separating the chaff from the grain, but it can also hurt other people deeply. Surely, the good minds at the University of the Philippines can devise something better than mortifying people.

Finished reading Joaquin Bernas's A living Consitution:The Cory Aquino Presidency today.

It is a collection of op-ed pieces written during Aquino's presidency. I wouldn't really recommend it for the general reader since the essays are all dated, but for anyone interested on the legal issues confronted during those times the book is an interesting read especially on the debates of the Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitutuion. Bernas was a member of the commission so he has an insider perspective.

Web sightings

New Yorker has an article on the debts of JRR Tolkien to Wagner. Alex Ross writes that although Tolkien vehemently denied any connection, one "could see 'The Lord of the Rings' as a kind of rescue operation, saving the Nordic myths from misuse—perhaps even saving Wagner from himself."

US News notes how Yale alumni are crowding the democratic presidential race in the US. They must be all encouraged by precedence. Come to think of it, Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, all graduated from Yale. The candidates though never mention their having attended the preppy university, bad for masa credentials. Even the inimitable Howard Dean, I found out, come from Yale, or as he demurely put it, from a college in New Haven, Connecticut.

Asia Times reviews Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai, and sees parellelisms between Koizumi's Japan today and Japan three hundred years ago when it first opened up to the world. The review notes that
"Hollywood's East-meets-West samurai epic makes an attempt to detail the historical clash between Japan's traditionalists and its modernizers - a story still playing out today. But with its cliched dialogue and predictability, even Tom Cruise's good looks can't make this action flick-meets-historical drama what it should have been." Oh well. What can we expect? Even the trailer looked like B-moviesh, like those of another fading star by the name of Van Damme.

Ople eulogy

Barely had the dust settled on Ople's corpse than some people began raising doubts--and eyebrows--on the old man's legacy. The doubts were triggered by the president's calling Ople a hero and a statesman and the profuse euologies delivered in the Senate, where Ople was called inter alia a demigod.

Teddy Casiño has fired what I think would be a first salvo. In his yesterday's column on Business World, which unfortunately is unavailable online, he delivered a eulogy a la Mark Antony.

Ople did fairly well as foreign secretary. What especially endeared him to me was the strident representation made by the DFA at the ASEAN supporting the Burmese democracy movement. The Philippines during his term was the most vocal in calling for Burma's military government to engage with the opposition. (But then again others would point to his kowtowing to Bush for the war in Iraq.)

Ople though is criticized mainly for serving Marcos as labor secretary until 1986 when the regime was unceremoniously booted out. Ople was, more than any other person save Marcos, responsible for the brain drain in the country. It was during Ople's office at the Labor Dedaprtment that the policy of exporting the country's labor was first concocted to stave off popular unrest. By exporting the country's labor, the Marcos goverment got dollar remittances to stave off irreversible economic decline and, more importantly, got rid of the people who would otherwise constitute the politically modernizing class had it not been for their overseas jobs. It was a neat plan and it worked until 1986.

Who knows how long Marcos could have lasted without the safety valve provided by this policy of massively exporting the country's labor. Maybe shorter. A lot shorter.

The young Ople

Teddy Benigno in his column reminisces the time he spent with the young Ople when they were both cub reporters.

Roco's platform

Roco's website made available online his Agenda of Hope platform. Click here. I will comment on it later in the day.

Death Penalty and the International Human Rights Day

We celebrate today the International Human Rights Day. Today has for its main editorial "the heightened threats to human rights" both locally and globally. THe editorial sadly notes that those new threats are coming at a time when human rights have been almost universally acknowledged:

Indeed, just when the sanctity of human rights has achieved near universal acceptance and absolute respect, fresh threats to them have emerged. But this time, the threat to and abuse of human rights no longer comes from or at the hands of agents of brutal elites, but from entire societies, two of them profoundly democratic, which have been so scared out of their wits and stripped of all sense of decency as to clamor like Old Testament savages for a bushel of eyes for an eye, and scores of innocent lives to get at the one or two who are guilty.

The editorial also takes a potshot at the recent decision of GMA to reinstitute the death penalty for kidnappers. Surely, the president could not have chosen a worse time to announce the lifting of the moratorium, with the International Human Rights Day coming and the Christmas Day just around the corner.

Manolo Quezon, though, worries about the constitutionality of a blanket moratorium on the death penalty. He seems to be of the opinion that commuting the death penalty should be on a case-to-case basis because it is founded on the executive privilige of pardon. Quezon writes that:

A president may, in his or her heart of hearts, take a moral position against the death penalty, but it is incumbent on that president to at least maintain the appearance of a personal intervention, a considered decision, by picking up the phone each and every time as the time of execution draws near, to tell the warden the execution has been called off. It reminds everyone concerned that the law was not being thwarted in a general sense, but instead, the maximum penalty substituted for another (death for life imprisonment) on an individual basis. A blanket moratorium is an expression of subversion -- subverting a law enacted by the representatives of the people.

I am not so much troubled by the constitutionality of a blanket moratorium. The constitution says the president may grant pardons. If she has the power to grant pardon to whomever catches her fancy; she has the power to grant it to all. Picking up the phone each time she wants to commute a sentence may be more appropriate but it is tedious and would constitute bad policy.

What is far more troubling is GMA's decision to enforce the death penalty only to kidnappers and not to the other convicts guilty of heinous crime. In GMA's previous blanket moratorium, there were no aggrieved parties among the convicts. Everybody, I presume, was happy to be spared the execution. In her selective policy of death penalty only to kidnappers, I can hear the grumbling of the kidnappers who may think they are not being treated equally by law and are being especially persecuted.

Such a selective enforcement of the death penalty may constitute, in my opinion, a denial of equal protection of laws. There is a denial of equal protection of the laws where persons subject to legislation are not treated alike, under like circumstances and conditions, both in privileges conferred and liabilities imposed ( Toledo v Dones, December 7,1973). By selectively imposing on the kidnappers the death penalty, the president may be, in effect, imposing upon them special liabilities.

First chapter

If you are like me who hasn't yet taken hold of Garcia Marquez's first installment of memoirs, you can read the first chapter here.

Warrior

New Yorker's David Denby reviews Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai.