Mohammad and the mountain November 16, 2006

MY column last week about the impact on this country of the exodus of Filipinos abroad seems to have depressed many readers. I've gotten letters from them wanting to know what can possibly be done about it, surprisingly even from Filipinos abroad who feel a little guilty about it.

I won't go into the broader aspects of the problem, which I've touched on before. It has to do with our lack of "a sense of country," as I've put it, which is patent when you compare us to our Asian neighbors. Just look at the nationals of the other Asean countries, who will be gathering here soon, and us. We keep wondering how they've succeeded in life and how we've not, attributing it to all sorts of things, even to their authoritarian bent. We keep missing the simple fact that they have a sense of country and we don't. Suharto stole bigger than Ferdinand Marcos, but he never took the money out. They leave their countries as a last resort, we leave ours as a first.

But like I said, I won't go into that again here. I myself am not giving in to despair yet, simply because even as we speak I can glimpse the seeds of countervailing forces. Those countervailing forces are not in the form of incentives that the public and private sector can give, such as the Asian Development Bank proposes, which will be a trickle in the ocean given particularly that the ocean takes the form of the conscription of the entire educational system (nursing departments, functional English) to turn the local labor force into fodder for the world. Those countervailing forces are in the form of the mind-boggling technological changes that are turning the world, communications-wise, into one truly global village, much as Marshall McLuhan brilliantly predicted way back in the 1960s.

My point is this: Why should Mohammed feel compelled to go to the mountain when he can very well coax the mountain to come to him? Or for our purposes, why should we feel compelled to go out into the world when we can very well coax the world to come to us?

The new technology makes it possible. I caught a glimpse of that a month or so ago in one of our small items in this newspaper, in the ear of our front page on a slow day. It was a story about a service Bangalore is offering that is thriving magnificently. Bangalore, of course, is the IT capital of Asia. The service consists of gathering some of the best teachers in India to tutor American high school kids via on-cam, face-to-face, communication through the Internet. Those who subscribe to the service can ask their tutors any question they want about Geography, Math, and the various Sciences, and they are given answers complete with visual aids. Some tutors make their presentations with blackboards, as in a typical classroom.

The service is thriving because of sheer economics. Private tutoring in the United States goes for $40 an hour, the entire Bangalore package goes for $100 a month! In the United States, you'll have tutors who are probably grouchier than Groucho Marx and who will be constantly looking at their watches. In Bangalore, you can have tutors who are suffused with fatalistic patience, such as Salman Rushdie's brothers and sisters can be so suffused. All in all, a bargain by any standard, made possible by the digital revolution.

When I read that, the first thing I thought about was why we never thought about the idea in the first place. I wondered why we couldn't provide the same service, and so hold on to our professors who are queuing up for the universities in Singapore and elsewhere for lack of a decent living here. But then I realized why India has a natural advantage there. It's a country that continues to have a strong intellectual life, notwithstanding its teeming poverty and even widespread pockets of squalor. People there still read, and do so not because they have few other sources of amusement but because books sell for a song. Here only booze sells for a song, often literally. India has one of the cheapest prices in the world for books. The former Soviet Union used to have the cheapest, I don't know if India has gone past Russia there now.

I did think as well of our own call centers, the one thing that is mushrooming here faster than Jollibee burger shops. Well, better than nothing, even if the biggest skill it demands from its recruits is the ability to speak English like an Ateneo or La Salle student -- and even if Ateneans and La Sallians no longer speak that way. As Bangalore shows, you can have an accent thicker than curry sauce but get by magnificently in the world. But the call centers are significant not in and of themselves but for what they show, which is the way out of the rut. They show the fundamental paradox of our time and place, which is our burning need to go out into the world when we can easily summon the world into our doorstep.

I myself have quite another proposal than the ADB in this respect. That is for the public and private sector to move to inundate the countryside with PCs, and to introduce them to the kids in particular. The logic of that is that computer skills are basically language skills -- the PC is an extension of language, to borrow McLuhan's cute phraseology—and people learn languages faster as kids than as adults, the learning being more intuitive than cognitive. The further logic of that is that Filipinos have the gift of "ear" or oido, which is how we learn languages easily (look at the OFWs) and sing wonderfully (look at Philippine Idol etc.). Or so I ardently believe. Which is also why our IT skills are second to none. We produce great IT people, we just produce so few of them -- as compared with other countries.

But there you have it. To repeat: Why should Mohammad go to the mountain when the mountain can be made to go to him?

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Two cases November 15, 2006

THE first case has to do with the Marines who are currently under detention in Fort San Felipe, Cavite City. Tuesday last week was the 55th anniversary of the Marines. I don't know that they had much to celebrate.

This country has only two living Marines who have received the Medal of Honor for bravery. They are Lt. Col. Ariel O. Querubin and Capt. Custodio P. Parcon Jr. Querubin was given the medal for leading his men against the heavily fortified camp Abdulatef of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Despite heavy bombardment, he and his men held their ground. At great personal risk, Querubin drew enemy fire to himself to expose the enemy's position. They continued to hold their ground despite several ferocious assaults by the enemy. After their reinforcements arrived, they subdued the camp.

Parcon got his medal for rescuing Abu Sayyaf kidnap victim Luis Anthony Biel III. His citation reads almost like an FPJ movie. In the course of a three-day engagement with the bandits, Parcon's unit was pinned down by enemy fire. Parcon crawled toward the enemy under cover of grass and bush and took out the enemy single-handedly. When reinforcements arrived, they overran the Abu Sayyaf camp and rescued Biel.

Both Querubin and Parcon are currently detained in the maximum-security prison in Cavite, along with four other much decorated Marines.

The other case has to do with Dodong Nemenzo. Who is Dodong Nemenzo? Well, you must have lived in the mountains or some obscure corner abroad all this time to not know him. You don't even have to be a graduate of the University of the Philippines (UP) to know him. Though Dodong was at one point the UP president, his accomplishments go well past UP. He is one of the foremost political scientists in this country. His academic credentials are formidable, and well known beyond this country's borders.

He has never hidden his activist bent, but has openly expressed it, if not indeed advertised it. In the past, that was regarded as a boon: to be an activist while an academic meant to practice as one preached. It meant to stop being academic while being an academic. Today, that is regarded as a crime. Stealing the vote is not regarded as a crime, murder is not regarded as a crime, ruling without a mandate is not regarded as a crime. Activism is regarded as a crime.

The first thing that these two cases have in common is that they involve people who have shown courage and/or dedication over and beyond the call of duty. The first thing they have in common is that they have shown an enormous capacity and desire to serve the people. What are they being tried for?

Lt. Col. Achilles Segumalian, the burly Marine we all saw on TV at the Fort Bonifacio standoff saying all the Marines wanted were clean and honest elections, hit the nail on the head with a joke. He "offered" government his services to cheat in next year's elections. "Since wanting clean and honest elections will send you to jail, I am now supporting election fraud so I can be free and be promoted like those who were involved in cheating." Segumalian, like Lt. Col. Alexander Balutan and Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani, personally witnessed the cheating in Lanao and neighboring areas.

What are they in jail for? They are in jail for believing the Marines should live up to their code of honor and duty.

Nemenzo on the other hand is being tried for plotting to oust the people currently holding power (I doubt if he would call them "government"). He is on trial because of the word of people whom Armed Forces chief Hermogenes Esperon's boys are guarding like the national treasure, and who cannot be interviewed by the media to see if they were not made to say things under duress. He is on trial because, as he himself put it in his opening statement (he refused to have a lawyer say it for him), he is resolved to defend the democracy this country won back during the two People Power uprisings at much sacrifice.

He argues that rebellion involves the use of arms or force, and he has never used arms or force, other than the arms of solidarity and the force of reason. A rally, he says, however mammoth, does not constitute rebellion. Wishing for a coup, however ardent, is not rebellion. Indeed, he says, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is lucky the protest movement has not yet reached the stage of rebellion—but which this trial among others is likely to spark.

But even if you grant that what he has done constitutes rebellion, even if you grant that what Querubin et al. have done constitutes rebellion, the question is: What are they rebelling against?

They are rebelling against an order that was put up against the wishes of the voters and against all the tenets that the military and academic communities at their best stand for. They are rebelling against an order that extols -- no, sanctifies -- wrongdoing of every possible shape and hue, and damns -- no, extirpates -- every effort to correct it. They are rebelling against an order that has resurrected the corpse of dictatorship and is regaling the world with its stench, calling it enchanted. They are rebelling against an order that is so rotten to the core the maggots are oozing out of it like pus from gangrenous wound. They are rebelling against an order that has no right to exist.

The only thing worse than setting a hundred guilty persons free is jailing one innocent one. The only thing worse than rewarding a hundred people who do wrong is punishing one person who tries to stop it. The only thing worse than Arroyo and Esperon not being tried for plain existing is Nemenzo and Querubin et al. being tried for bravely rebelling.

As with most cases in this country, particularly today, these cases do not reflect on the tried, they reflect on the trier. You charge Nemenzo and Querubin with rebellion, you might as well charge 85 million Filipinos with rebellion.

You will find them guilty as charged.

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Repercussions November 14, 2006

DÉJÀ VU. I remember that in the 1970s and early 1980s, this country followed the American elections with watchful eyes. The martial-law government, in particular, which earnestly hoped for a Republican American president. Ferdinand Marcos himself was rumored to be a donor to the Republican kitty. The reason was that a Republican administration could always be expected to turn a blind eye to the oppressions of martial law. Lest we forget (though I suspect most of us already have), George W's father, Bush the elder, toasted Marcos' "adherence to democracy" when he visited here, a thing the rest of the world, including most Filipinos, couldn't see.

Jimmy Carter's administration didn't particularly sit well with the martial law government, especially since it gave human rights pride of place in its diplomatic policy, which made life miserable for Marcos. There was much jubilation in Malacañang when Ronald Reagan finally won. It assured US support for the continuation of iron-fisted rule, an expectation Reagan lived up to. Up till the twilight of martial law, Reagan and his Heritage people believed in keeping Marcos, arguing that he was still part of the solution.

I don't know how Malacañang received the crushing rejection of George W. Bush by the American people. I can't imagine Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was elated. It wasn't a presidential election, but it might as well have been one.

The immediate implication of the Democratic victory for this country is that the new government in America might not look too kindly on the killings here. I got an insight into that recently when my media friends in Chicago e-mailed me some of their discussions there. Many of them had picked up my call for stopping the killings in the Philippines, even proposing to lobby the US government in that wise, but they got this cautionary advice from a fellow Filipino-American, Jose Caedo:

"John Negroponte, the secretary of homeland security, was chief of the US anticommunist operations in Costa Rica. Take that alongside the Bush administration's anti-terrorist agenda in the Philippines, and (you have a problem). With a Republican majority in Congress, which just passed the wiretapping law, it is doubtful you can get anything from them, despite all the cries from human rights and church groups. But if you can have a Democratic majority in Congress this November, you may just have a change for the better."

That was more than a month ago. And that is exactly what has happened. You do not just have a Democratic majority in the House, you have a Democratic majority in the Senate, too. Now is the best time to draw the US government's attention to the merciless killings in this country, the likes of which have not been seen since Marcos -- or maybe not since the World War II, since Marcos limited the killings largely to combatants, not to journalists, NGO workers and bishops of the Philippine Independent Church. That is especially so since the next speaker of the House is expected to be Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to become so in the US. Pelosi is a staunch liberal and a firm believer in human rights and civil liberties. She was one of Marcos' fiercest critics because of the wanton killings, and she is likely to become one of Arroyo's fiercest critics for exactly the same reason. To this day, she wants China to face up to the Tienanmen massacre.

Truly, there's much reason to bring out the champagne.

But there's bad news, too, which ironically owes to the good news. The good news is that the issue in the last American elections was first and last George W. Bush and the American voters voted to reject him. That is going to be the case as well with our elections next year: The issue will be Arroyo, first and last, and this country's voters will reject her. But only so theoretically. Because there is one fundamental difference between the American elections and ours: Cheating is insignificant there, it is decisive here.

The quality of the opposition notwithstanding, I have little doubt that the administration candidates will lose big the way they lost big in 1971 after the Plaza Miranda bombing, when Ferdinand Marcos also became the issue in the senatorial elections. I have little doubt the senatorial elections next year, like the senatorial elections in 1971 and like the senatorial elections in the US last week, will bring out the best in Filipino voters: They will not vote on the basis of self-interest, they will vote on the basis of principle. I have little doubt the voters will reject Arroyo, in the same way that the American voters rejected Bush, by turning the elections into their political graveyard.

But there's the big rub. I have little doubt as well that Arroyo and cabal will cheat the hell out of the voters again. Given the writing on the wall, they are not going to slink away, gnash their teeth, and weep. They are going to brazen it out and cheat. They are going to use the "superior machinery" that Gabriel Claudio talks about to wreak that deed. The only way the administration can stop a massacre in next year's polls is to add the wholesale killing of votes to the wholesale killing of journalists and activists. The lesson of the elections in the US cannot be lost on them.

Unless we, the people, move to stop it. Never mind vigilance, just get incensed. Never mind taking to the streets, just get furious. People who see no opposition to wrongdoing will do wrong. People who get away with murder will murder. People who see slaves will be tyrants.

The Americans have already freed themselves from Bush. It's time we did so as well from his karmic Little Sister across the seas.

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Don't forget: Tonight, the Stop the Killings Bar Tour stops at Pier 1, Gil Puyat Avenue corner Roxas Boulevard, in front of World Trade Center. Cynthia Alexander, Color It Red, Paolo Santos and Pido will play. Show starts at 9:00 p.m.

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Do bring out the champagne November 13, 2006

I REMEMBER AGAIN TIME MAGAZINE’S excellent tribute to Martin Luther King in its year 2000 issue about the 100 most influential persons of the 20th century. It noted the irony that King was much revered by the black community in the United States, with many buildings, parks and streets named after him, but not by the larger white community. Yet King’s contributions were not just to his race, they were to his nation.

If King hadn’t come along, the essay said, America would never have had the moral ascendancy to lead the world. Without King, the United States would have looked hypocritical lecturing the world about the virtues of egalitarianism.

The US elections last week made me remember this. They perform a function not unlike King’s contributions to America. If these elections hadn’t come along, the United States would never be able again to claim a moral ascendancy to lead the world. For the tyrannical orders that breed terrorism, which that country has been fulminating against, would have been matched iron-fist for iron-fist by the thuggish rule of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and cabal.

If the last elections hadn’t come along, or produced the kind of results that they did, the United States would have looked hypocritical, if not ridiculous, trying to build a democracy in Iraq—it’s ridiculous enough as it is, the proposition that democracy can fly on the wings of a gratuitous occupation—given that it can’t even build, or keep, one in its own shores. There was barely anything recognizable in the democracy bequeathed by Thomas Jefferson and King in the landscape that had arisen after 9/11. It was a landscape bleaker than the one that presented itself in Ground Zero, the twisted dreams and shattered hopes being far more horrifying than the rubble and debris that lay at the heart of New York.

For some time now, I had begun to wonder if Americans had not become like Filipinos in their ability to tolerate patent oppression. For some time now, I had begun to wonder if Americans had not become like Filipinos in the ease with which they could be manipulated by Fox TV and cowed by the threats of the Homeland Security Act. I still could not believe that Bush won a second term notwithstanding the ineptness of John Kerry. Surely anyone, or any creature in the vast animal kingdom, was better than Bush? A couple of months ago, in the gathering of Filipino-Americans in Hawaii, many Republican Filipinos—oh yes, there are such things, but then you also have Filipinos who believe in GMA—were predicting confidently they would spring a surprise and crush the Democrats at the polls. The way things were in America, I wasn’t so sure they wouldn’t.

The outcome was magnificent in that light. It wasn’t just a rout of Bush's hordes, it was a wipeout. It had People Power written all over it, albeit one wrought through the vote. If this had been a parliamentary system, the prime minister would have promptly resigned. You can’t find a more complete rejection, both houses of Congress now in the hands of the Democrats. Bush isn’t just a lame duck, he’s a dead duck.

I am particularly glad that, as the commentators have pointed out, the Iraq War—or “Occupation,” which it really is—was at the core of the elections. For the first time in a long time, Americans voted not on the basis of self-interest but on the basis of principle. For the first time in a long time, Americans voted not on the basis of who could provide them with jobs and security but on what America was all about and could be again.

The result of that is not just a victory of, by, and for the Democrats in America. It is a victory of, by, and for democrats around the world. It’s a good reminder that tyranny, however seemingly impregnable, however seemingly interminable, has to end sometime, if people wake up to it and want to do something about it. The tempting comparison is with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the two people who shoved America into the Dark Side, and who eventually slunk away in disgrace. The temptation is especially strong because the cause of both debacles is an unjust war, one that showed America at its bullying worst. The Iraq War is the Vietnam War, however that idiot Rumsfeld continues to say Americans never understood it. He is the only one who never understood it, or the harm it has wreaked not just upon the world but upon his country. He is the only one who never saw how hubris always ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

But the more appropriate comparison is with the McCarthy period in the United States, when a minor politician (like Bush) who had more ambition than brains, more lust for power than lust for life, caused an Iron Curtain to fall upon America comparable to that of the then Soviet Union. Who in the 1950s became the most powerful and feared political figure, capable of ruining people’s lives—particularly those of artists. No one thought Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts—comparable to Bush’s anti-terrorist witch hunts— would end as fast as they did. Everyone thought they would go on and on.

They did end, just as dramatically, and McCarthy slunk away in disgrace. Few Americans remember him now. A few years from now, many Americans will also probably say, “George who?”

I don’t know about you but I'm bringing out the wine, in lieu of the champagne, and—gout notwithstanding—getting drunk. All is right with the world again.

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We can open that wine bottle together tomorrow, Nov. 14, at the Stop the Killings Bar Tour, which moves to Pier 1, Buendia, corner Roxas Boulevard, in front of the World Trade Center. Color It Red, Paolo Santos, and Pido are playing. Show starts at 9:30.

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