|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
To tell us what you think about Filipino Express Online or to comment on the stories published here, E-mail us at Filexpress@aol.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
WITH a bang and a promise -- that is how Filipinos always greet the New Year. The first is through firecrackers, and the second through a long list of resolutions.
Owing to our penchant to draw a long list of things we pledge to ourselves that we will do or accomplish for the New Year, it is no exaggeration to say that we Filipinos are arguably the most promising people in the world, surpassed only by our own politicians come election time.
We have no idea what our Filipino leaders, back at home and here in the US, have written down in their list of New Year’s resolution. But based on what we have observed the past year, we can offer our unsolicited advise.
For President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, what should be number one on her list is honesty. Remember that her credibility took a nosedive when the people perceived that she was not telling the truth regarding the “Hello Garci” tapes.
For the political opposition, a sense of fairness and level-headedness. They must not relent in compelling Mrs. Arroyo to shed light on some controversies plaguing her government. But at the same time, they should allow the government the chance to defend itself against accusations and to give its side on controversies.
For the leaders of the Filipino American community, unity and the willingness to work together no matter what. The past year was a disaster as far as forging unity was concerned. Poison letters galore during election time, lawsuits flying here and there after the polls. Was the public’s interest served that way?
For the ordinary Filipino immigrants, fortitude and resoluteness. This year will be a tough one, with several immigration bills already stacked up, each and every one of these proposed laws is expected to affect our very lives. But rather than wait, why not create? Let our voices be heard, Let our actions matter. Act, organize, lobby, campaign.
And finally, a little bit of a Chinese New Year wish for all of us: May our worst times for the New Year be better than our best times in the past year.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A media that cares about the community it serves delivers
|
|
|
|
NEW YORK --- In his video-taped acceptance speech as the 2005 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter, an English playwright, director, actor, poet and political activist, reflected on an article he wrote in 1958. He was then 28 years old.
He said: “There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.”
As if acknowledging that he made that statement some 47 years ago, he paused, and continued: “I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?” This time, Pinter is 75 years old.
In art, he said, truth is elusive. According to Pinter, the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art; there are many.
“These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost,” he said.
In politics, Pinter says, “majority of politicians are interested not in truth but in power and in maintenance of that power.” And he adds that, to maintain that power “it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives.”
There is a lot of truism in what Pinter said. In our work as reporters or columnists, there is no art and there is no politics. We ask the same questions whenever we file our stories and commentaries to our editors: What is true? What is false?
We take our work seriously despite the perils of our job. The difference between fact and fiction can be easily discerned because we take painstaking efforts to follow and report the news as they happen. And when we probe into and comment on the activities of our so-called community leaders, we follow the same standard of objectivity that similar publications do.
In a recent editorial, we pointed out why we do what we do. We stressed the importance of a newspaper bound by “ethical standards to be independent from both political persuasions, or from any persuasion for that matter.”
We said that “we are also duty-bound to report events and developments regardless of political affiliations,” and emphasized that “we cannot be for or against any political interest group. Identifying with one would only serve to cloud our judgment, which would eventually lead to our losing our impartiality.” Lately, however, this newspaper, its publisher and I are a subject of defamation lawsuits. Not one, but two. Of course, we know our rights just as the complainants claim they do. But some questions are begging for answers.
Were their legal actions initiated because they perceive us to be partial to a particular group? Or were they persuaded by someone else who is not appropriately apprised of what’s going on in our community? Could we have been trapped in between a personal fight of two groups? Perhaps when the air has finally cleared, some answers could surface.
Pinter’s viewpoint is correct, news reporting, analysis and commentaries are not an art. It is not based on some literary concepts but hard facts and commentary that are important to a reading public. It has a specific purpose in a free society where activists like himself who point out the excesses of politicians who are not interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power.
As we do our work in the community, we have a solemn responsibility to our people. And that is, to keep them informed, not ignorant of the issues that affect them. We need to affirm what is right and expose what is tacitly wrong.
As Pinter said, the truth is about how our community understands the role of its leaders and how it should act accordingly whenever abuses and deceptions are detected. Power belongs to the people not to politicians; truth is on the side of the people.
And only a media that cares about the community it serves delivers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yes, Alex, we can tell a lie to tell the truth
|
|
|
|
Chicago. ILLINOIS --- The mischaracterization of the Filipino pulled off by award-winning investigative reporter Renee Ferguson of NBC-Channel 5 in Chicago, Illinois is what social scientists call “majoritarianism,” when a dominant majority in a society will frame a minority to a certain category.
Since the terminology used by Ms. Ferguson did not sit well among a broad progressive cross-section of the Filipino community, NBC-Channel 5’s big boss, Larry Wert, issued an apology for the insensitive Filipino label to a rape suspect. In a public relations attempt to mollify leaders of the Filipino community, who met with him, Mr. Wert turned into a damage control mode, by accommodating coverage of some Filipino community events suggested to him by the community leaders.
But the conduct on how the whole matter was handled left my friend, Alex B. Cirera, the publisher-editor of the Chicago-based Filipino American Community Builder, begging a question in his “Editor’s View” column for the December, 2005 issue of his monthly newspaper: Can someone be justified to tell lies while telling the truth?
The “lies” involve the omission of the writer’s name who signed up merely as Filipino American Council of Greater Chicago Rizal Center in a mass email, “asking the community to complain to WMAQ-TV (NBC Channel 5) by phone calls, letters and e-mails regarding the insensitive and insulting remarks by Ms. Ferguson when she said, ‘The suspect is an 18-year-old Filipino who was arrested at his home in Schaumburg.”
The mass emailer was concealing his identity because as an employee of the rival TV station, revealing his identity will amount to a “professional suicide” because it is “unethical to expose the wrongdoings of a colleague” in the profession.
Looking Beyond Chinatown
Alex said that the anonymous emailer believes that in order to resolve the issue of insensitivity, there is a need for the NBC to hire more Asians in its newsroom. The emailer also suggested that Ms. Ferguson’s superior, Mr. Larry Wert, should also be told that NBC should look beyond Chinatown if it is looking for Asian subjects of their coverage, suggesting that the Rizal Center, a Filipino community center in Chicago, should be added in its list of Asian coverage.
According to Alex, at first, the anonymous emailer volunteered to be a “moderator” of a town hall meeting Alex’s staff member, Ms. Alpha Nicolasin, arranged with Mr. Wert. The town hall meeting was approved by a majority that composes an ad-hoc Coalition for Unbiased and Fair Reporting that included this columnist.
Since Mr. Wert declined to show up at the town hall meeting arranged by Ms. Nicolasin, the two-timing anonymous emailer volunteered and was accepted as “moderator” of a meeting Mr. Wert had with the board members of the FACC at the Rizal Center.
Alex said that since the public has the right to know, he is raising the question: Is the anonymous emailer justified in hiding his identity, which was lying and deceiving the whole Filipino community about his true identity? Alex added that when the emailer exposed Ms. Ferguson’s insensitivity, he made it appear that the “FACC is genuinely concerned about the problems and issues such as this, which are important to the community, when in fact, it is not.”
Compelling Need to Tell a Lie
Dear Alex, under the exacting deontological (duty-based) theory espoused by Emmanuel Kant, the emailer was not justified to use deception by any means unless “there is a compelling reason not to do so” such as “telling a lie to prevent a murder.” An example to this is a request by the police to a TV reporter to knowingly broadcast false information to save a life of a hostage being held at gunpoint.
Fortunately, for the emailer, American media is also adopting a contradictory school of thought -- the teleological (consequence-based theory) also called “utilitarianism” espoused by such philosophers as Mills, who believes that we should attempt to promote the greatest good (the most favorable consequences) for the greatest number of people and we should minimize harm. This theory makes a hero out of Robin Hood or approves the hated Machiavillian theory of the “ends justify the means.”
Under this latter category belongs the controversial effort by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward who concealed his identity in extracting a hospital deathbed confession from a dying CIA Director William Casey.
Lying is Ethical if it Benefits the Greatest Number
So, under this utilitarian theory, the unidentified emailer was ethical when he lied or concealed his identity because his goal to expose the insensitivity of Ms. Ferguson towards the Filipino was not going to benefit himself personally but the whole Filipino community.
Another thing, when he used the name of the FACC Rizal Center in sending the email to the community, the anonymous author was acting as an advocate not only for the FACC Rizal Center but also for the Filipino community.
And last but not the least, even if the anonymous emailer has personal motivation by harboring ambition to be employed at the NBC Channel 5, his employment will benefit not only himself but also the entire Filipino community because his employment will increase the Asians in the NBC newsroom. And therefore, his presence will minimize the harm or insensitivity towards the Filipinos because as Filipino American, he can be the gatekeeper in the NBC Channel 5 of matters concerning Filipino issues.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
“NO one ever regarded the First of January with indifference...because it is every man’s birthday”, Charles Lamb once wrote.
Birthday notwithstanding, today’s economic crunch, taped muzzles of cops’ guns plus 2005’s treadmill crises, audibly hushed the usual New Year’s firecracker eruption.
To make up, soused drivers leaned on car-horns. Others banged pans. Giddy youngsters resorted to lung power. All were oblivious to what Thomas Mann pointed out : “It is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols... when a new year or a new century begins”.
We have New Year greetings in our major regional dialects. Feliz año nuevo, Spaniards call out. Italians say: buon capodanno. And on ( lunar ) new year, the Chinese greeting is: kung hei fat choy.
Time, however, is not held back by popes, presidents, congressmen or generals. There’s no pause when a New Year comes. Kings who watched crude sand hour glasses, in ancient palaces, knew that. So, did the medieval monks, who worked by sun dials.
But Royal Observatory scientists, in Greenwich, replaced, in 1852, rail timetables in the realm. Greenwich Mean Time evolved into a worldwide reference – until accurate atomic clocks, in 1972, blended GMT with Coordinated Universal Time.
“Yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights,” Hamilton Mabie mused. Why is this so?
Does this stem from a tantalizing idea : that there can be fresh beginnings in a New Year? Bagong tuig, bagong kinabuhi, the old Visayan proverb says.
Eight out of every 10 Filipinos will enter 2006 with new hopes rather than old fears, the latest Social Weather Stations survey found.
This hopeful outlook is “widespread in all areas” : Visayas, 88 percent ; Metro Manila, 87 ; Mindanao, 84 and in Luzon, 83, SWS reports.
Significantly, the poorest hold more hope than the affluent. Among bottom-rung E class respondents, 83 percent were optimistic. The D class were even more upbeat at 87 percent. Are these not the groups poised to revolt? That’s what local communists and their multiple fronts claim.
“Only 73 percent of the middle to upper classes ( A,B and C slots ) expressed hope about the coming year. “This is the lowest recorded proportion of ABCs” that appeared ( sanguine ) since 2000.”
This buoyancy is striking. Given our inept corrupt leaders, we’ve become a country of deferred hopes. “The miserable have no other medicine / but hope,” Shakespeare claimed in Measure For Measure.
In the impeachment and electoral fraud hearings, both government and opposition, for example, gave us everything but truth. Senator Panfilo Lacson struts as morality champion. But the Senate swept under the rug it’s three-committee report on alleged drug-dealing by then policeman Lacson and his men.
“Would you buy a second hand car” from Benjamin Abalos and his crooked colleagues? They perch atop an irreversibly tainted Commission on Elections. Fugitive Oakwood mutineer Capt. Nicanor Faeldon calls for “civil disobedience” against the regime; but he won’t resign first his commission. And all Erap wants is yet another pass from his luxurious detention penthouse.
“Ring out the old, ring in the new/... The year is going, let him go; / Ring out the false, ring in the true”, Alfred Tennyson wrote in 1850. Are we up to it?
Battered by our own frailties and daily evidence of “hard as flint” avarice that our “leaders” work by, ordinary yokels like us are worn to a frazzle.
There’s no shortage of skeptics either. A New Year’s resolution “goes in one year and out the other”, sneers one. And there’s enough backsliding, in our individual life stories, to confirm that.
“Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath,” Mark Twain remarked on one New Year’s Day. “Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.”
Or there’s killing of fresh starts with a thousand cuts.
“Technically”, January 1 an is extension of New Year’s Eve, argues Bridget Jones’s Diary. Resolutions should bite on January 2. Smokers can’t stop cold turkey at midnight, with so much nicotine in the system. You need cushion your hangover. So, dieting and other resolutions can begin on January 2. Or maybe later.
But hope in fresh starts persists. This is bolstered by individuals and institutions who, despite odds, rose to remarkable lives and dedication to the common good . The list of “Men for Others” is long – and uplifting.
These include, among others : graft buster Haydee Yorac; Christine Tan, the Good Shepherd nun who spent her life in the slums; journalists Joaquin “Chino” Roces and Teodoro Locsin, Sr; anti-kidnap fighter Teresita Ang See, Supreme Court Justice Hilario Davide, Naga City mayor Jesse Robredo.
Then, there are innovative, dedicated institutions, springing up from the private sector, making a difference in lives, often despite government opposition..
These would include : Adopt-A-School program to prop up an education system in crisis; Philippine Business For Social Progress which funnels corporate help for acute social needs; Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism; Ateneo’s Health program further trains doctors while enducing them to serve in rural areas abandoned by en masse immigration of caregivers.
Their track records, not words, give substance to hope. “The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year,” G.K. Chesterton wrote. “It is that we should have a new soul.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Alien smuggling requires an affirmative assistance
|
|
|
|
RECENTLY, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (which is one level below the U.S. Supreme Court) held that a person was not guilty of alien smuggling, despite being fully aware that an illegal alien was in the trunk of the car in which she was riding, and she knew fully well that the alien was trying to enter the U.S. in violation of U.S. immigration laws.
The Court held that the person’s “mere presence in the vehicle at the port of entry does not constitute alien smuggling... despite her knowledge that an alien was hiding in the trunk of the vehicle.” Instead, the law requires “an affirmative act of help, assistance, or encouragement.”
In that case, the person (who was a citizen of Mexico), made frequent trips back and forth from the U.S. to Mexico. On one of the trips, she attempted to enter the U.S. in a vehicle in which an illegal alien was hiding in the trunk. She admitted in court that she knew the alien was in the trunk when the vehicle attempted to pass through the border checkpoint. She claimed that she was not guilty of alien smuggling because “she did not affirmatively assist the alien in attempting to enter the United States.” All she did was sit in the car, but knew fully well that the alien was in the trunk.
The Department of Homeland Security charged her with alien smuggling because she knew that, “there was undocumented and unauthorized [alien] in the trunk of the car”, and thus, was guilty of alien smuggling.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal noted that in order to be guilty of alien smuggling, the person must have “knowingly encouraged, induced, assisted, abetted, or aided any other alien to enter or to try to enter the United States in violation of law...”
The Ninth Circuit reasons that the plain meaning of this law requires “an affirmative act of help, assistance, or encouragement.” In this particular case, the person did not “affirmatively” act to assist the alien who was hiding in the trunk, and therefore did not engage in any alien smuggling, even though she know fully well he was hiding in the trunk and that he was trying to cross the border.
The Court further noted that even the Foreign Affairs Manual (which is a guidebook for the U.S. Embassy) notes that there must be some “action” on the part of the person being charged with alien smuggling. If no such action took place, there’s no alien smuggling.
I think that this case could be important to many Filipinos who have been charged with alien smuggling. For example, I have come across several cases where siblings were being petitioned as “single” by their parent, but one of them may have married.
In some cases, the truly single brother(s) or sister(s) had been charged with alien smuggling, based on the conclusion that, as siblings, they must have known of the other sibling’s marriage, and didn’t say anything. Accordingly, the truly single sibling(s) were “aiding or abetting” the married one to enter the U.S.
However, this recent Ninth Circuit case indicates that such conduct (or lack thereof) may not constitute alien smuggling, if there was no affirmative assistance or “action”. Remember, mere knowledge of another alien’s attempt to enter the U.S. would not be enough to constitute alien smuggling under this case.
If you were refused a visa, or know someone who was refused a visa for alien smuggling under these circumstances, you may want to seek the advise of an attorney, who could evaluate your case and determine if or whether you committed alien smuggling.
(Please note that claiming a child as your own when such is not the case (i.e. a given child, grandchild, niece, or nephew), in order to get a visa for that child, may not be covered by the exception in this recent case. This is because in such a situation, there may have been an “affirmative act” in aiding or abetting the other alien, such that it could be alien smuggling).
Michael J. Gurfinkel has been an attorney for over 24 years, and is an active member of the State Bar of California and New York, as well as the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Immigration Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. He has always excelled in school: Valedictorian in High School; Cum Laude at UCLA; and Law Degree Honors and academic scholar at Loyola Law School, which is one of the top law schools in California.
WEBSITE: www.gurfinkel.com
Four offices to serve you:
LOS ANGELES:
219 North Brand Boulevard, Glendale, California, 91203
Telephone: (818) 543-5800
SAN FRANCISCO:
601 Gateway Boulevard, Suite 460, South San Francisco, CA 94080
Telephone: (650) 827-7888
NEW YORK:
60 East 42nd Street, Suite 2101, New York, NY 10165
Telephone: (212) 808-0300
PHILIPPINES:
Heart Tower, Unit 701, 108 Valero Street, Salcedo Village, Makati, Philippines 1227
Telephone: 894-0258 or 894-0239
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
