Again, terror 02/07/2007
MANILA, Philippines--RICARDO Blancaflor, director for legal, public information and advocacy of the Anti-Terrorism Task Force, writes to try to dispel my terror over the current antiterror bill they are proposing in Congress. Let me take up his points one by one:
“The threat of terrorism is real and ever present. It is not a concoction of the imagination or wild speculation. It’s real, it’s everywhere, with the public exposed to imminent danger unless we put terrorists in check, disrupt their plans and arrest and prosecute them before they can kill the innocent and wreak havoc on our security and economy.”
I agree absolutely, taking only minor exception to the word “threat.” Terrorism is not just a threat in this country, it is a reality. It is everywhere, it is in the very heart of Malacañang. It exists in the horrendous, if puny, form of a president who spoke to Garci about forcibly winning a million votes over her nearest rival and kidnapping a public school teacher who witnessed the cheating. Can anything be more terroristic than that conversation between Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Garci? The Abu Sayyaf only beheads victims, the current non-elected government has beheaded democracy, democracy’s (fountain)head being the vote.
We’re not just in imminent danger from terrorists, we’re being massacred even as we speak. Count the number of political activists and provincial journalists murdered in this country. Truly, we must check this vicious terrorism. That is not done by the antiterror bill, that is done by People Power.
“Terrorism is an extraordinary crime that necessitates extraordinary remedies in today’s extraordinary times. The Super Ferry and Valentine’s Day bombings could have been avoided had we had an antiterrorism law that could’ve kept the suspects behind bars.”
Not at all. Terrorism is an extraordinary crime that necessitates only the very ordinary remedy of common sense. If you hear a public official in a surveillance tape asking a shady character to plant a bomb in a schoolhouse or church, would you go on to appoint that public official as the head of national security on the ground that the taped conversation was illegally gotten and everyone has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty? Certainly not. If you can’t jail the fellow and throw away the key, you can at least put him under preventive suspension and keep him under a watchful eye. Well, we heard a president ask a shady character to plant a bomb in the very foundations of democracy, and not only did we not put her under suspension or behind bars -- or freeze her bank deposits, as the antiterror bill proposes -- we made her president of this country. No, you do not need extraordinary remedies for extraordinary crimes, you need only plain, simple, ordinary common sense.
Just as well, the most ordinary exercise of law enforcement and due process should do the trick. What idiocy that if we had an antiterror bill, we could have kept the suspects that wreaked the Super Ferry and Valentine’s Day massacre behind bars. If we had law-enforcers that simply did their jobs and given the courts the evidence to convict the suspects, they would have been behind bars. You cannot replace stupidity and incompetence with force. That is rewarding the undeserving. No, more than that, that is putting a gun to your head.
In fact Blancaflor’s reasoning is an old, and discredited, one that has been resorted to again and again by the police. Each time crime riots because they are busy extorting tong from businesses, if not kidnapping the Chinese, they ask for more guns and more powers to deal with the “emergency.” And when the “emergency” gets worse because the added guns and powers merely help them extort more from businesses, if not kidnap more Chinese, they ask for still more guns and powers. Ad absurdum, ad nauseam.
We have all the laws we need to stop crime and terrorism. It’s just a question of using them rightly. All the antiterrorism bill does is jack up terror.
“The proposed antiterrorism law is our government’s response to the challenge of trying to win the war on terror without losing our democratic values and ideals….”
Too late. A ruler who rules without a mandate, who excuses the violence done to the voters as a lapse in judgment, who prevents witnesses to the cheating from testifying without her consent, who has outlawed the very thing that brought her to power, which is people power, who has made lying, cheating and stealing supreme virtues apart from national policies, and who is killing journalists and activists right and left, is in no position to defend democracy. There ain’t any left.
“Our civil rights are not absolute. Such rights depend upon the survival of the government…”
False. Such rights depend upon the survival of the nation or republic or state or citizenry. Government is not any of those, least of all this one. Arroyo’s survival is not the survival of the nation, republic, state, citizenry, democracy or even government. Arroyo’s survival is merely her own.
“It is only the terrorists who should be afraid of the proposed antiterror law.”
Hahahahahaha! Tell that to the kin of the dead.
“The most dreadful terror, however, is the possibility of being consumed by our own biases and paranoia -- which see everything this administration does as always linked to political expediency and the quelling of legitimate political dissent.”
Paranoia is not just seeing what is not there, it is not seeing what is there. I have a better idea for Blancaflor to contemplate. It comes from Upton Sinclair and is quoted by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth.” All he needs do is substitute “seeing” for “understanding.”
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=47912
“The threat of terrorism is real and ever present. It is not a concoction of the imagination or wild speculation. It’s real, it’s everywhere, with the public exposed to imminent danger unless we put terrorists in check, disrupt their plans and arrest and prosecute them before they can kill the innocent and wreak havoc on our security and economy.”
I agree absolutely, taking only minor exception to the word “threat.” Terrorism is not just a threat in this country, it is a reality. It is everywhere, it is in the very heart of Malacañang. It exists in the horrendous, if puny, form of a president who spoke to Garci about forcibly winning a million votes over her nearest rival and kidnapping a public school teacher who witnessed the cheating. Can anything be more terroristic than that conversation between Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Garci? The Abu Sayyaf only beheads victims, the current non-elected government has beheaded democracy, democracy’s (fountain)head being the vote.
We’re not just in imminent danger from terrorists, we’re being massacred even as we speak. Count the number of political activists and provincial journalists murdered in this country. Truly, we must check this vicious terrorism. That is not done by the antiterror bill, that is done by People Power.
“Terrorism is an extraordinary crime that necessitates extraordinary remedies in today’s extraordinary times. The Super Ferry and Valentine’s Day bombings could have been avoided had we had an antiterrorism law that could’ve kept the suspects behind bars.”
Not at all. Terrorism is an extraordinary crime that necessitates only the very ordinary remedy of common sense. If you hear a public official in a surveillance tape asking a shady character to plant a bomb in a schoolhouse or church, would you go on to appoint that public official as the head of national security on the ground that the taped conversation was illegally gotten and everyone has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty? Certainly not. If you can’t jail the fellow and throw away the key, you can at least put him under preventive suspension and keep him under a watchful eye. Well, we heard a president ask a shady character to plant a bomb in the very foundations of democracy, and not only did we not put her under suspension or behind bars -- or freeze her bank deposits, as the antiterror bill proposes -- we made her president of this country. No, you do not need extraordinary remedies for extraordinary crimes, you need only plain, simple, ordinary common sense.
Just as well, the most ordinary exercise of law enforcement and due process should do the trick. What idiocy that if we had an antiterror bill, we could have kept the suspects that wreaked the Super Ferry and Valentine’s Day massacre behind bars. If we had law-enforcers that simply did their jobs and given the courts the evidence to convict the suspects, they would have been behind bars. You cannot replace stupidity and incompetence with force. That is rewarding the undeserving. No, more than that, that is putting a gun to your head.
In fact Blancaflor’s reasoning is an old, and discredited, one that has been resorted to again and again by the police. Each time crime riots because they are busy extorting tong from businesses, if not kidnapping the Chinese, they ask for more guns and more powers to deal with the “emergency.” And when the “emergency” gets worse because the added guns and powers merely help them extort more from businesses, if not kidnap more Chinese, they ask for still more guns and powers. Ad absurdum, ad nauseam.
We have all the laws we need to stop crime and terrorism. It’s just a question of using them rightly. All the antiterrorism bill does is jack up terror.
“The proposed antiterrorism law is our government’s response to the challenge of trying to win the war on terror without losing our democratic values and ideals….”
Too late. A ruler who rules without a mandate, who excuses the violence done to the voters as a lapse in judgment, who prevents witnesses to the cheating from testifying without her consent, who has outlawed the very thing that brought her to power, which is people power, who has made lying, cheating and stealing supreme virtues apart from national policies, and who is killing journalists and activists right and left, is in no position to defend democracy. There ain’t any left.
“Our civil rights are not absolute. Such rights depend upon the survival of the government…”
False. Such rights depend upon the survival of the nation or republic or state or citizenry. Government is not any of those, least of all this one. Arroyo’s survival is not the survival of the nation, republic, state, citizenry, democracy or even government. Arroyo’s survival is merely her own.
“It is only the terrorists who should be afraid of the proposed antiterror law.”
Hahahahahaha! Tell that to the kin of the dead.
“The most dreadful terror, however, is the possibility of being consumed by our own biases and paranoia -- which see everything this administration does as always linked to political expediency and the quelling of legitimate political dissent.”
Paranoia is not just seeing what is not there, it is not seeing what is there. I have a better idea for Blancaflor to contemplate. It comes from Upton Sinclair and is quoted by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth.” All he needs do is substitute “seeing” for “understanding.”
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=47912
posted by dqfan06 @ 9:30 AM
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