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For the past 17 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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Government and the culture of lying
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IF THERE is on thing that the officials of the Arroyo government has perfected, it is the art of lying. Day in and day out, the poor Filipino public is bombarded by canards, deceptions and fallacies coming from Malacañang and other allies of Mrs. Arroyo.
Let’s lead off the parade with Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago. The feisty ex-Erap ally claimed that former President Corazon Aquino and Senate President Franklin Drilon were plotting to have President Arroyo assassinated. She said a chattering relative of Senator Drilon was the one who told her of the plot.
The fallacy in this accusation is in its flawed logic. If it were true, why did Senator Santiago disclose the plot to the media and not to the police? Surely, the police can do something to preempt the assasination plan. Exposing it via the media may only force the would-be assassins to lie low, but may still carry on the plan later when the guards are down.
Next in line is National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales. He may be saying a lot with what he was not saying. He refused to tell the Senate who gave him the go-signal to sign the $75,000-a month deal with a US lobbying firm. As a result, the Senate cited him for contempt and detained him.
In Gonzales’ case, it’s simple. Who is he protecting? If it’s someone of lower rank, do you think he would be as willing to incur the Senate’s wrath by not telling who authorized him to sign the lobby / PR contract?
And last but not the least (at least for now), is the President herself. Two of the biggest lies during her administration came from her. First, in 2003, she announced publicly that she will not run for president in the 2004 elections. But she did.
Next, she admitted calling an election official at the height of poll canvassing, but said she did so not to cheat but to protect her votes. But her very identifiable voice on the Garci tapes were telling us otherwise.
Hitler’s propaganda chief Goebbels once said that a lie repeated often enough becomes accepted as truth. The Arroyo camp took this Nazi thinking to heart and thought that they could spew out a barrage of lies which the unsophisticated Filipino puiblic will eventually believe as all true.
Nothing, however, is farther from the truth.
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NEW YORK --- Every radio station has a unique transmitting frequency. To achieve perfect reception you tune the receiver to said frequency. If the receiver drifts, even by a fraction, the signal loses some of its sharpness and clarity. More drift brings the funny sounds of other stations into the mix.
Eventually the ability to decode the signal is lost altogether. You can’t discern words or music anymore, just noise. This is analogous to the way people learn.
That’s what I’ve learned during the first week of a two-week intensive “Training of Trainors” workshop designed for would be facilitators. I’ve being attending the course in midtown Manhattan since October 3.
The course, which requires focus in our sessions, took my mind off from the on-going chatters I hear about the Philippine Independence Day Council, Inc. (PIDCI). I’ve also not paid regular attention to reading and responding to e-mails, which have now flooded my mailbox. Returning calls was also not easy due to time constraints.
Although I’ve read some of these e-mails with minimum attention and detail, I re-read a couple of these supposedly “news-alerts” from a squawk box operator.
One of these e-mails said that Ludi Hughes was filing a $50 million libel lawsuit against this newspaper, its publisher and myself. Some people who received this broadcast took the “news” as if a lawsuit had been filed and they fired-off e-mails to me to express their concern. They wrote that these e-mails may have been written with malicious intent and spite and they wondered what could be done with it.
However, I told them that like a radio station described above, the blurb comes down merely as a drift, which gives people the difficulty of differentiating fiction from fact. In other words, it’s just a noise to draw people’s attention away from the real issue.
The issue is not about this newspaper, its publisher, or myself; it is about Ludi Hughes and how best she projects herself as a leader, one that unites instead of divide, and one that cares about this community.
With the manner with which Hughes is reacting to her back-to-back electoral losses to lead the Eastern Region of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA) and recently, the Philippine Independence Day Council, Inc. (PIDCI), she is pulling herself down into a state of inelegance. As a result, the court of public opinion is now her worst opponent.
Is winning the NaFFAA and the PIDCI elections all that matters to Hughes? Is filing a lawsuit against PIDCI -- the organization she wants to serve and lead -- and claiming one million dollars in damages all that she can do to get a leadership position?
What is Hughes motivation to plan a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Filipino Express, its publisher and myself? Is it because I wrote she isn’t a friend of Arnie Rosario when she ran against him in the regional NaFFAA election? Is it because she wants to intimidate and muzzle a free press from speaking up about her actions or inactions while enjoying a public life?
We can arrive at any conclusion we can muster but the fact remains: she is unwilling to let go of herself into accepting defeat and its reality. And what makes it worst is that neither her messenger nor her friends can fix or undo the situation. Her magnanimity is her best option.
If she can’t exercise tack in dealing with folks who she thinks are against her, could this be a sign of the beginning of the end of everything she was preparing herself to be a leader of? Is she giving up future opportunities in NaFFAA, PIDCI or even a potential spot in New Jersey politics?
Even Loida Nicolas-Lewis, national chairperson of NaFFAA, had expressed her unhappiness about her taking the judicial process to resolve her complaint. Lewis said: “Had I known of this development during that September 28 meeting, I would not have encouraged the holding of the Town Hall Meeting and I would have voiced NaFFAA’s strongest objection to any move to delay the PIDC election.”
I wonder if Lewis also knew that Hughes had made up her mind to pursue a lawsuit even before their teleconference on September 28. Hughes signed her complaint on September 23 – five days prior to their seeking NaFFAA’s consent. On September 26, her lawyers filed the lawsuit. If Hughes and her allies within NaFFAA didn’t disclose this information to her, what was their hidden agenda?
When Consul General Cecilia Rebong spoke at the town hall meeting, she also expressed her sadness and frustration with what was going in the community. She said: “We need to accommodate and embrace each other as a sign of our unity. We should be bold enough to recognize that we ourselves are part of the problem.”
Her audience was intently listening to her message as she appealed to everyone at the Kalayaan Hall: “Suirin natin ang ating kapagiliran at ang ating mga sarili. Ang pagbabago ay dapat magsimula sa atin (let’s take a closer look at our community and ourselves; change should come from within us.) Nonetheless, she was hopeful and encouraged her audience to discuss ways to help the community.
Has the consul-general’s appeal fallen to deaf ears? I was hoping she would say: “This is only a parade,” which has been echoed many times over throughout this election. Instead, Hughes was defiant into accepting the result of the election: “This is only
the beginning.”
Curiously, except for Willy Macaraeg, no one was with her after the results of the election were known. While most of her supporters and teammates may have left the room earlier, the other three remaining members were away from her; they were busy congratulating the winners. What does this picture tell us?
A number of her teammates had mentioned to me that they weren’t really serious at filing a lawsuit. One of them approached me at the Philippine Center lobby and said: “I wasn’t in favor of this lawsuit.” And when I reminded her that her name was included as a complainant, she responded quite defensively: “But I didn’t sign the complaint.”
The winners have not yet been proclaimed pending court’s resolution. Although the community has spoken and two leading and influential women in our midst – Loida Nicolas-Lewis and Consul General Cecilia Rebong -- have publicly expressed their views about this unprecedented turn of events in our community, how would this unfortunate episode end?
Whether or not the court’s decision rule in her favor, what’s next? Will it be the beginning of the end?
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I HAVEN’T been keeping up with Philippine current events. It seems to me whatever happens with the government, with businesses – it’s all status quo. The rich get richer, the poor remain so, if not poorer.
And those in the middle simply try to get by. Unless they have the chance to escape – to America, Canada, the Middle East, Hong Kong or Japan – anywhere but there (or here, as the case may be.)
Even my aunt whose husband has a secure enough job with a top Philippine company decided that her kids are better off as Canadian immigrants. Ditto for a writer friend who migrated to Canada with his wife a year ago.
Even my dad has taken a consultancy in Indonesia. Indonesia! You might as well be in Manila, but he says no as Indonesia apparently is in the middle of an economic boom.
Two friends called over the summer sharing stories of their desperate attempts to secure work visas to the US.
Is it really that bad over there? Will I not recognize the Philippines when I go for a visit this Christmas? Will I be greeted by poverty and chaos and that sad eyes of hopelessness in the people?
No. But I will see the familiar happy faces that mask the poverty and despair of my people. I will smell puto bungbong wafting above sweat and smog, I will hear the sounds of my city, Manila.
I will be greeted by my brother and his new bride, my sister who turend 30 to whom I will always Ate. I will see my yaya, our dog Buloy. And all my aunts, uncles and cousins will be there to me. And however strangely, it will feel like home.
Because home isn’t place. It’s in your heart or mind or someplace, not a place.
* * *
And just when I thought all was quiet on the Philippine front comes news about the White House spy who happens to be, ta-dah!, Filipino.
According to reports, this guy Leandro Aragoncillo gave Filipino politicians documents stolen from the White House. Nakakahiya!
On the other hand, here’s some nice news – our dear Manila is currently included in the pages of Wallpaper Magazine, that very cool design magazine. Yes, October’s City Guide features Manila and lists interesting Things To do – including “Rummaging for antiques on Evangelista Street in Makati City,” and “Singing at a karaoke comedy club.”
E-mail me at manilagirl01@hotmail.com, visit www.missingmangoes.com
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Bill filed in Congress for return of The Bell
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Chicago, ILLINOIS --- On September 28, this year, the Philippines observed the 104th anniversary of “Balangiga Massacre” which was the subject of a doctoral dissertation and later a book by UP Prof. Rolando O. Borrinaga, Ph.D., titled The Balangiga Conflict Revisited.
It was in the morning of Saturday, Sept. 28, 1901, when some 500 native fighters mostly armed with bolos staged a successful attack on soldiers of Company C, 9th US Infantry Regiment, who were mostly eating or lining up for breakfast in their garrison in the town of Balangiga, in the southern part of Samar Island.
This “worst single defeat” of the US Army during the Philippine-American War, resulted in the death of 44 of the 74 men, including three commissioned officers, of Company C, and disappearance of four now presumed dead.
The natives suffered 28 deaths and 22 wounded.
2 Books Written on the Bells
It had been widely believed that the church bells of Balangiga were tolled to signal the attack on the US troops. And the two recently published books, including Borrinaga’s about the Balangiga event, had documented that the attack had begun when a bell was rung as signal for the hidden reinforcements to join the attack on the garrison.
The other complimenting book was written by Bob Couttie, British screenwriter and video director based in Subic, Zambales titled Hang the Dogs: The True Tragic History of the Balangiga Massacre.
In retaliation, US military authorities issued a “kill-and-burn” order to re-take Samar province the next four months after the attack. The order was carried out by the Sixth Separate Brigade under Brig. Gen. Jacob H. Smith of the US Army, resulting in the alleged disappearance of some 15,000 people in Samar.
Shocked Conscience of Americans
Gen. Smith reportedly gave orders to kill anybody capable of bearing arms (specifically, 10 years old and above) during the combat operations to reduce Samar into a “howling wilderness.”
When news of the retaliation made headlines in the US, they shocked the conscience of the American people and forced the retirement of Smith after a court martial in Manila.
The three church bells of Balangiga were taken days after the attack by men of the 11th US Infantry. Two of these bells taken as “war trophies” are now ensconced at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base, in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The smallest bell is now on permanent display at traveling museum of the 9th US Infantry at Tongduchon, South Korea.
The return of the bells of Balangiga to the Philippines remains the last bone of contention between the US and Philippine governments related to the Philippine-American War.
House Resolution 313
There have been countless attempts to recover those bells.
The latest one is the introduction this year by Rep. Bob Filner (CA-51) in the US Congress of House Resolution No. 313, urging the US President to authorize the transfer of ownership of one of the bells back to the town of Balangiga. It gained four co-sponsors, namely, Rep. Ed Case (HI-2), Rep. Danny K. Davis (IL-7), Rep. Lane Evans (IL-17) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46).
Senator Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel filed in 2002 Senate Resolution 48, calling for the return of the bells to the Philippines in the light of developments that some looted artifacts by occupying countries are being returned to the countries of origin. But his resolution fizzled for lack of counterpart resolution in the lower House.
But Borinaga, Couttie, and Ms. Jean Wall, daughter of the first American soldier who survived the attack in Balangiga in 1901, have formed the Balangiga Research Group, a think tank that advocates for the return of those bells. Ms. Wall is also planning to write a book on the Balangiga and her two sentimental journeys to Balangiga.
7-4 Vote for the Return of the Bells
According to Borinaga, Ms. Wall successfully argued last March before the Wyoming Veterans commission, when it voted 7-4 for the return of the bells based on the following reasons:
1. Not one of the two bells, displayed at Cheyenne Wyoming, was pealed during the attack. If at all, the one rang was the third and smallest of the three now kept in a US base in South Korea; and
2. There is no connection between Wyoming and Company C, which had their regional headquarters in New York in the early 1900’s. No member of the ill-fated Company C came from Wyoming.
But this decision was not properly relayed to Wyoming Gov. David Freudenthal, who listened instead to the advice of a losing member of the commission.
When I met Senator Pimentel early this year in the Philippines, I suggested to him that he revive the resolution by tying the return of those bells to an amendment to one of the bilateral treaties existing between the Philippines and the United States dealing with education and cultural issues.
If not, proponents can always make a good case before the United Nations, citing a Geneva convention, which prohibits the occupying forces from taking religious artifacts, like church bells, as “war trophies” from the occupied countries.
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NEW YORK --- The Philippines and Russia today find themselves “strange bed fellows” as they dither over a common yet startlingly different problem: what to do with the embalmed corpses of dictators after their ideas and programs collapsed?
For eight decades now, people in Moscow filed past to gawk at the embalmed cadaver of Bolshivek revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. Clad in black suit, his body is encased in a glass boxwithin the Red Square granite mausoleum.
Lenin led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. He died in 1924 at the age of 53. A near theology rose around him in the ensuing decades.Viewing Lenin’s body was mandatory for visitors to what was then the Soviet Union --- until Gorbachev’s time.
The first Filipino journalists who were invited to the USSR, in the 1960s, were shephered on that tour with a guide bearing an implausible Jewish name: Felix Burstein.”
Two of the five newsmen have since passed on: Manila Chronicle’s Francisco de Leon and Manila Times Juan V. Saez who later joined the foreign office.
The other three were: Philippine News Service and later Graphic editor Manuel Almario, Philippines Herald Nestor Mata and sole survivor of the Magsaysay plane crash and myself, then with the Evening News. Thus, we find the Lenin report of more than passing interest.
“Many who revere him say he is at peace,” writes the New York Times C.J. Chivers. “Others think he just looks macabre”.
For over a decade now, Filipinos file past to gawk at the embalmed cadaver of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, in white barong, encased in a glass box of Ilocos Norte mausoleum.
“He did much for us Ilocanos,” says a former BIR attache and Marcos loyalist. “Nonsense,” a Sun Star column noted. This ghoulish air-conditioned exercise seeks to buy time until he’s interred in Libingan Ng Mga Bayani. That’d rehabilitate his family. “This is not about the dead but salving the egoes of the heirs without giving up their loot.”
Both mausoleums attract people. But a debate over burying these bodies, in the two countries, is now stirring.
“Time has been unkind to Lenin”, the New York Times report says. Now and then “occasional fungi” sprout. These are quickly scrubbed away
There is no scientific reason why time has been kinder to our dictator. All men are dust. “And unto dust you shall return”, the Ash Wednesday rites remind all, even heads of state.Fungi and other signs of decay have not been reported in the Batac coffin. But that’s just smothering of the news.
Now. Lenin’s ideology and party have long fallen into ruins. So has Marcos corrupt “New Society”. In Moscow, Chiver writes: “The inevitable question has returned”. Should Lenin’s body be moved from it’s place of honor to some humbler grave?
No less than a senior aide to President Vladimir V. Putin last week, said it was time to bury the man. “Our country has been shaken by strife, but only a few people were held accountable for that in our lifetime,” said the aide, Georgi Poltavchenko. “I do not think it is fair that those who initiated the strife remain in the center of our state near the Kremlin.”
In the Philippines, the question is reversed: ? Now, Marcos KBL has crumbled.
Should his cadaver be moved from its garish site to National Heroes Cemetry?
No less than a newly-elected Joseph Estrada planned to authorize the state honors for the Filipino dictator. He was whipped from pillar to post by furious citizens.
Erap was knowledgeable about women, wine and song. But but foreign affairs was not his cup of tea -- or Petrus wine. The poor man couldn’t tell Boris N. Yeltsin from Nikita Khruschev.
Depending on who is speaking, Lenin was a gifted revolutionary or a syphilitic mass murderer. Here, Marcos was a hero or heel, depending on who talks.
Some still see Lenin as architect of a grand and daring social experiment. Others describe an opportunist who ushered vicious cronies to power, resulting in a totalitarian police state. “It is time to get rid of this horrible mummy,” said Valeriya Novodvorskaya, head of the Democratic Union, a small reform party.
Here, Marcos was the savior of democracy. Imelda says. But the deaths of those wdo were salvaged have never been fully totalled. In this controversy -- in Russia and in the Philippines -- a people’s values will be laid bare.
E-mail: juan_mercado@paci-fic.net.ph
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