Footnote to regression September 28, 2006

SOME friends have asked me what I think of the furor involving the Pope. There seems no escaping the subject, after all.

Mona Siddiqui, the director of the Centre for the Study of Islam in Glasgow University offers some very good insights about it, which I share fully. He is not sparing in his criticism of fellow Muslims. "As a Muslim I remain perplexed. Why are Muslims magnifying every incident to the level of a global conflict? Adulation and veneration of the Prophet may be laudable qualities but . the ease with which marches are mobilized and threats directed are symptoms of a community not only feeling under siege but slightly reveling in their victim status."

But he is unsparing in his criticism of the Pope as well: "I'm sure that Pope Benedict did not deliberately intend to offend the Prophet in particular. But as someone who was previously the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, he is not naive and must have known that his speech could be contentious and open to all sorts of interpretations. This incident is not about defending freedom of speech . it is about recognizing that pitting one faith against another to show the superiority of one and the deficiencies of the other is a dangerous and arrogant exercise. Both Christianity and Islam have blood on their hands."

He has very sage advice for people of his faith: "Muslims must learn that differing viewpoints and multiple voices are the very essence of civil society. Even when the viewpoint touches on something as sacred as the Prophet and his legacy, responses must be dignified and respectful. This would reflect the true essence of Islam; calling for revenge and retribution is doing little more than proving all the critics right."

I agree with the sentiment. I respect religion, but I am not a great fan of religions that cannot separate Church and State. That is an open invitation to intolerance. That was the case with Christianity not too long ago, which kept the sun revolving around the earth. Indeed, I am not a great fan of religions that construe difference as heresy and punish itharshly. Lest we forget, Salman Rushdie still has a "fatwa," or death sentence, hanging on his head for writing "The Satanic Verses," courtesy of that modern-day caricature of a religious fanatic, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Of course, Christians too have their share of fanatics – none better than Pat Robertson, the preacher who wants duly elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez murdered. But it's quite another thing when the death sentence carries with it the backing of the State -- as it does with Iran, its government lifting the fatwa against Rushdie in compliance with Britain's precondition for restoring normal relations but reimposing it soon afterward. That deserves the condemnation of the world. Intolerance may not invoke religious tolerance.

That said, nothing may justify either the uncalled-for remarks of the Pope about Islam. I am not a great fan of Benedict either, and find comparing him to his predecessor, John Paul II, not unlike comparing Martin Luther King to George W. Bush. Pope Benedict and his supporters have repeatedly explained that the offending passage about Islam, coming from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, was meant to highlight the theme that faith and reason are not incompatible, or indeed that holy wars are not holy at all, they are incompatible with true faith. But surely even Popes must know that meaning comes not just from the text itself, or from what is explicitly said, but from the context in which something is said. If you are an imam, and you quoted a Roman emperor saying the Jews were a people who thought nothing of butchering others, including their own, while Israel was busy invading Lebanon, you won't be able to explain that away as a historical footnote.

The Pope's supporters have said that, unfortunately, the Pope is not a PR dream, he is a PR nightmare. But this is more than a PR problem. Benedict isn't just the Pope, he is a Pope who has been at pains to reconvert Europe -- and not quite incidentally halt the advance of Islam – by demonstrating the superiority of Christianity. He is a Pope who, asSiddiqui points out, headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which not quite incidentally, too, traces its roots to the Inquisition. It was in that capacity that Benedict, then a.k.a. Joseph Ratzinger, sought to stamp out religious or ideological impurities within the Catholic Church itself, notably in the form of the Theology of Liberation that the Latin American bishops in particular were ardently espousing.

And if all that wasn't enough, Benedict's quote of a medieval emperor, which comes very early on his speech-I have this image of his audience's jaw dropping in disbelief-strikes a monumental contrast with one of his predecessor's brightest moments, when Pope John Paul II apologized to the world for the atrocities Christianity wreaked during the last two millennia. Islam and Christianity do have blood on their hands. The thrust of John Paul II's papacy was ecumenism, or trying to bring out what was best in all religions. The thrust of Benedict's papacy, at least so far, seems the opposite, which is pointing to the worst in other religions, and which is the worst aspect of Christianity itself, the mountain of bones of presumed heretics being fierce proof of it.

Completely ironically, the one who seems to inherit in part John Paul II's frame of mind is Bill Clinton who, after lambasting Fox in an interview by Fox itself last week, later told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the biggest problem in the world today is "the illusion that our differences matter more than our common humanity."

What can one say? Sometimes asceticism sucks and BJs improve the mind.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=23518

Oldies but goodies September 27, 2006

DON'T look now, but vinyl records are making a comeback.

I saw that in the Internet, from a CNN report. In many parts of Britain in particular, vinyl is flourishing. It is the preferred medium of dance deejays who say that for some reason, vinyl sounds so much better on the dance floor. It is the preferred medium as well of some bands, which have been producing singles on vinyl. Yes, producing. Vinyl is no longer just old records, it is new ones, too. Some recording companies have taken topressing them all over again.

One storeowner says it's not just the sound of the thing buyers go for, it's also the look of the thing. The covers of vinyl albums, which are bigger than those of CDs, make for a better canvas for artwork, and serve as posters that can be pinned on walls. In fact, the storeowner says, there are quite a few buyers of LPs who do not own a turntable or recordplayer, they just find the visuals "cool." Vinyl remains a niche market though. It's thriving, but it's not selling in the volumes it used to before the CD. It's not bound to overrun the music stores anytime soon.

Quite apart from my own interest in vinyl, I found the news fascinating because of one remarkable thing. Which is the survival of a seemingly antiquated article in an age of dizzying invention. Indeed, more than survival, a triumph of sorts. It's almost like beholding the manual typewriter giving the PC a run for its money.

This is an age, as I wrote some weeks ago, where digital technology has accomplished levels of compression that can fit an entire TV series in one DVD disc. In sound, you have MP3, or WMA, or even smaller audio files. You can convert your whole music library into them and fit it into a 20-gig iPod, or whatever player you prefer. Indeed, digital technology has even freed sound from its corporal vessel or container in the form of vinyl, cassette, CD, or DVD, by thrusting it into Cyberspace. It's just something floating out there that you can download via your friendly neighborhood peer-to-peer service as MP3 or whatever audio file you like.

Now, with that feast laid out before you, you'd go for the "tuyo" [dried fish]? Well, sometimes tuyo is great, especially with egg and "sinangag" [fried rice] (some Visayans like to pour chocolate onto the rice) on a gray and rain-drenched morning.

Which is what vinyl is. Its disadvantages are patent from the perspective above. On average you have only about 10 songs on a vinyl record, five or so on one side and the rest on the other -- or "flip" -- side, which is where the word "flipside" comes from. To the vinyl also owes the expressions, "You sound like a broken record," or "you're stuck in a groove," which happens when the turntable needle gets quite literally stuck in a groove of a vinyl record and keeps repeating and repeating a part of a song. But that's another story.

If you just want songs to pour forth from your sound system while you snuggle on a sofa, you will curse the vinyl. I don't know that they have invented a remote for the turntable. What I do know is that you physically have to go to the turntable to flip the record once it's through with one side. Might be good for therapy but not if your concept of therapy islistening to music till you doze off. You listen to an MP3 player with earphones stuck in your ears, and when you wake up the damn thing is still playing.

But if you're finicky about sound, there's the miracle of it. I've written about the aural wonders of vinyl in past columns, I leave the reader to read them if they can find them. Suffice it to repeat something I've discovered on my own in that respect. Which is that with vinyl you can raise the volume of your sound system without being assaulted by it: It kind of just floats around you or envelops you. With a CD, you hit a wall of sound, or the wall of sound hits you. You can play a vinyl at a fairly loud volume and still talk to people. With a CD forget talk, you'll just raise your BP.

That's the difference between the manual typewriter and the vinyl record. The vinyl record produces better sound, the manual typewriter does not produce better writing.

The survival, even triumph, of the vinyl, however, says something grander than that certain technologies have a way of refusing to die. It says to me at least that some oldies are goodies, and are often better than "newies." Or on a still grander scale, it says to me at least that more is not necessarily better, new is not necessarily better, convenient is notnecessarily better. Sometimes less is more, old is newer, and doing the extra work infinitely more rewarding.

Reading easily comes to mind as against watching video, the first now more and more going the route of the turntable. Video today is easily the more plentiful, the more digestible, the more conveniently consumable. It is also in the larger scheme of things the less deeply pleasurable, the less a fountainhead of knowledge and wisdom. A book remains the best way two minds -- the writer's and the reader's -- can be linked together inpleasant conversation.

There are other examples. Sometimes black-and-white is more "colorful" than color: I don't know that color will make "Schindler's List" or "Good Night and Good Luck" better. I understand that the US Film Board has banned the colorization (something they've done to many old black-and-white Hollywood movies) of the classics, among them "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca." They may exist only in their original black-and-white. That is a wonderfully sage decision. "Improvements" do not always improve.

Some even like to believe that old-fashioned love is better than newfangled sex, that "When I fall in love, it will be forever" is better than "What's love got to do with it?" But I leave others to debate that point.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=23303

Death goes on September 26, 2006

I WANTED to write about the murder of Pablo Glean last week. Glean, Jejomar Binay's close-in security for the last couple of decades, was gunned down the other Saturday as he and some friends drank coffee at a Shell station in Fort Bonifacio preparatory to motor-biking to Tagaytay City. I didn't know if the killing was politically or criminally motivated. All my instincts told me it was a political killing, but I decided that prudence was the better part of outrage and waited last week for some sudden revelation that Glean was bumped off by partners or clients he had pissed off. Glean was also at one point in charge of giving business permits in Makati City, a job that naturally spawned enemies.

None came, though the authorities have lately been making noises to that effect, largely by way of speculation, or indeed suggestion. Presumably, Glean was gunned down by people he had ripped off during the aborted Feb. 25 "withdrawal of support" by military officers. Presumably, he had gotten money but failed to deliver on his promises. That tack carries with it the added suggestion that Binay himself was involved in the military officers' "withdrawal of support" or what Raul Gonzalez irascibly calls coup attempt.

Which adds insult to injury, or injury to injury, this government no longer limiting to insult what it can accomplish by injury. Already hurting from the death of a friend -- the copious tears Binay shed on TV looked completely spontaneous and genuine; he had lost a close friend, he said, one who on more than one occasion had saved his life -- Binay now has to reckon as well with the prospect of hurting in quite a literal sense. Or not hurting at all, if he should be sent to a place past hurting.

As things stand today, this looks every inch like a political killing. And the astonishing thing is why it has not met with more furious condemnation from the media, the NGOs, and the public. Because if this is a political killing, then it ups the ante on the killings that have been taking place in this country on an already mind-boggling scale. It adds whole new dimensions to them, which bodes ill not just for the health of democracy, or what little is left of it today, but for the health of living, breathing, human beings who happen to detest a rule by rulers the voters did not vote for.

At the very least, the killing of Glean brings the escalating mayhem right at the doorstep of Metro Manila. Or never mind doorstep, right at the heart, or pit, of Metro Manila. You can't get any more at the center of Metro Manila than the Fort. It is not a place you associate with mayhem, other than the aesthetic kind, or the kind the youth like to inflict on themselves. So far the killings of both journalists and political activists, notably of the party-list group Bayan Muna, have been taking place outside of Metro Manila. Yes, even the killings of activists. Now and then, you have an activist killed, or abducted, in the fringes of Metro Manila, but never at the heart of it. And never in this brazen, high-profile way.

The reason for this is not that fascist governments have a superstitious respect for the capital. The reason for this is that not even a fascist government wants to draw international attention to something like this. A killing of a journalist or party-list representative in Metro Manila (Gen. Hermogenes Esperon was openly suggesting to the Melo Commission there was no great distinction between communists and party-list representatives; he backtracked only when he was grilled on that point) would open the floodgates to international scorn and crippling sanctions from the US. As it is, the international journalist and human rights communities have already issued worldwide alerts against the killings in the Philippines. And as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo found out in her latest sortie abroad, where she was haunted by the ghosts of the dead wherever she went, you can become an international pariah for it.

But there's always a first time, and I've always thought that if any first was going to happen in this respect, which is bringing the killings to Metro Manila, it was going to happen under Arroyo's watch. Or lack of it. This one knows no limits, this one knows no bounds.

At the very most, the killing of Glean brings the escalating mayhem right at the doorstep of the "opposition," by which I mean not just the political figures opposed to the administration but everyone critical of Arroyo. I was about to say it graduates the killings on to political figures but I don't know that political figures, even those based in Metro Manila, are more important than journalists, even those based in the provinces. I've always thought the opposite was true.

Glean, of course, is not himself an opposition figure, but he is an alter ego of an opposition figure who is Binay. Binay's camp is at least convinced, and for very good reason, that the murder of Glean is meant to put the fear of God or government, whichever comes in more smiting mode, in the mayor of Makati. As an official of that camp told me recently, the message is: "If we can do that to your security officer, we can do that to you." Particularly with the current tack of implicating Binay in the "withdrawal of support" or coup, pick your poison, that is no idle threat.

And if that can happen to Binay, that can happen to anyone.

I've been saying it again and again: We do not rise to stop the killings even now, they will get worse. We do not rage against the dying of the light because it is somebody else's light and not our own, we will wake up one day to hear the snuffers of light loudly knocking at our door. Enough with that stupidity about forgetting iniquity and "kawalanghiyaan" [wrongdoing], let's move on, life goes on. Life does not go on with iniquity and kawalanghiyaan.

Death does.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=23044

Importations September 25, 2006

LAST THURSDAY, WE CARRIED THE HEADLINE “Martial law in Thailand.” It was inevitable. Last Thursday was the 34th anniversary of martial law in this country, and that martial law should also be imposed in a neighboring country on the very eve of it was too rich to ignore. If that suggested however that what happened in Thailand last week is the same thing that happened in this country 34 years ago, start disabusing yourself of the thought.

The differences are patent.

First off, Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law was about ruling forever. He mounted a dictatorship because his second term as president was ending and he couldn’t find a way to get around the ban. He tried to change the form of government from presidential to parliamentary by bribing the members of the Constitutional Convention, but his shenanigan was exposed by an honest old man named Eduardo Quintero. His legal avenues blocked, he took the illegal one.

If the Marcos lieutenants I interviewed while writing a book on martial law (“Dead Aim”) are to be believed though, Marcos initially thought of martial law as just a temporary measure, a way to buy time while he pursued other alternatives. He was astonished however to find virtually no opposition to it. So “ginanahan,” he decided to keep the barbed wire strung around the country permanently. That should sound a shrill warning to us, particularly in light of the way we keep tolerating every (worsening) act of iniquity today. Indifference is the breeding ground of abuse.

If the Thai coup is about ruling forever, the plotters don’t seem to know about it. They are currently expected to name a new prime minister within the next couple of weeks, probably a lawyer. Their top priority is a new constitution, one that would usher in political reform, and they figure a lawyer would be the best person for that. They are wrong to think that of course, but that is another story. And they have announced they would hold elections in October next year.

Second, and monumentally ironic, Marcos, who was not a general but a lawyer, unleashed a truly martial rule upon this country, putting the generals in power and making them run the country, or make a mess of it. A few years into martial law, the provincial commander had become far more powerful than the mayor or governor—a thing that was reversed after 1986, and is increasingly being brought back by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. By the time Marcos was ousted, Fabian Ver had become the second most powerful man in the country.

If the Thai conspirators want to take over themselves and plunge Thailand back to the days of the generals, they don’t show it. With the much revered Thai King endorsing their action, they have shown only every intention of giving back the reins of government to the civilian authorities.

And thirdly, Marcos’ martial law was an unpopular one, the Thai coup is, if not the opposite, at least one the Thai public finds acceptable, no small thanks to the backing of the King. The shock with which Marcos’ martial law was greeted soon wore off and widespread resistance against it grew. If the Thai plotters carry out their agenda as planned—though I personally think they should hold elections much, much earlier and restore civil liberties with the naming of an interim prime minister—they should appease the international community whose protestations have been largely muted and pro-forma. Except for this country where the official protestations have been exceptionally heartfelt.

Which brings me to: The coup in Thailand is not like Marcos’ martial law, it is like the (aborted) “withdrawal of support” by Danny Lim and company last February. The only exception I can think of is that Lim and company’s “withdrawal of support” would have worlds more popular than the coup in Thailand. I’ve said it before and I say it again: If a coup takes place in this country, it will be the most popular coup in the world.

The parallels here are just as patent. Like the Thai coup, the “withdrawal of support” the military officers were contemplating, at least as I understand it, would have paved the way for a civilian council as interim government preparatory to elections. Like the Thai coup, the “withdrawal of support,” which had the blessings of pretty much everyone who is not corrupt in this country, was expected to have met with public acceptance, if not dancing in the streets.

Eduardo Ermita and company say a replication of the Thai coup is impossible in this country. Well, if it’s so, why do they keep saying it, as though they want to convince themselves of it?

And Edcel Lagman says such a coup is impossible in this country because of “a popular aversion to extra-constitutional means of subverting the status quo.” Well, he’s right about the popular aversion to a coup, or an extra-constitutional means of seizing power. That is why there is a popular aversion to the regime he is determined to serve, the GMA regime, which is a coup regime, one wrought by ballots instead of bullets. The surveys bolster that fact. The overwhelming majority of Filipinos do not think GMA is the President and a clear majority wants her ousted from power. You can’t find clearer proof of the popular aversion to a coup or the forcible seizure of power than that.

But which is why another coup is not just possible in this country, it is probable. If not soon at least down the line. The specter will always be there. It can only be a counter-coup to end a coup, and if it keeps along the lines of the Thai coup, it will be more than accepted, it will be embraced. There is no question about public resistance, there won’t be any. The only question is the template, there doesn’t seem to be any either.

Maybe, we should import some Thai generals?


http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=22840