Warming signs, warning signs January 11, 2007

YOU think that last year produced storms that could never possibly come this way again? Think again. This year could bring worse.

Stronger storms in Asia, floods in Latin America and harsher droughts in Australia and Africa: that is the prediction of scientists as a resurgent El Niño and La Niña combined stalk the length and breadth of the planet this year. 2007 could possibly be the hottest year ever in recorded history.

Raphael Satter of The Associated Press writes: “The warmest year on record is 1998, when the average global temperature was 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the long-term average of 57 degrees. Though such a change appears small, incremental differences can, for example, add to the ferocity of storms by evaporating more steam off the ocean.

“There is a 60 percent chance that the average global temperature for 2007 will match or break the record…. The consequences of the high temperatures could be felt worldwide. El Niño, which is now under way in the Pacific Ocean and is expected to last until May, occurs irregularly. But when it does … Pacific storms can be more intense.”

Even as we preoccupy ourselves with the burning events in this country, events that affect us immediately and powerfully, let us spare a thought for the cataclysmic, even if seemingly slow-acting, events in this planet, events that could mean the end of all life as we know it. I don’t know that it’s completely whimsical to think about it as the point where Science and the Bible meet; but unless humankind rouses itself up to the peril, we could be facing an Apocalypse in the not very distant future -- if not in our lifetime, at least in that of our children. The Bible identifies damnation as hellfire, Science identifies damnation as global warming. It’s a tossup which one is hotter.

You can’t have a more life-and-death issue than that. Which is how I’ve become an ardent espouser of the environmental cause lately.

A couple of years ago, I used to tell the environmental groups that came to ask me how to press their cause better before the public to find a way to make it a matter of life and death. My problem with the “green” advocacy, I said -- at least as it has been pitched in this country -- was that it radiated a strong aspect of tree-hugging. It seemed more like a luxury that bejeweled matrons who had little better to do indulged in, encouraged no end by their executive husbands for many reasons, the least being to find tax shelters and the most being to find time for their secretaries.

Saving the trees and clean air, among others, were what we associated the green cause with. Both, of course, had a glimmer of urgency in them, but only a glimmer. The environmental groups could always argue that the disappearance of the country’s forests posed the direst threats to this country, some of which had already turned into a frightening reality, and that tolerating the levels of smog in Metro Manila in particular was committing slow-motion suicide. But given that they paled in comparison with direr threats to life, like hunger -- I remember from my youth that we activists justified our chain-smoking by saying that, before cigarettes, a lot of things were bound to kill us first -- they always stood to be drowned by other seemingly more pressing issues.

A footnote to this is that a lot of things did fell friends before cigarettes could work their poison in their system. But many of them did also die from cancer, which probably came from a combination of cigarettes and a stressful life.

December 2004 changed all that. A couple of things during that month drove home the point about the green cause being a matter of life and death, which truly should shove Greenpeace and the other environmental groups into the limelight in this country today. Those two events were the fierce storm that brought the treeless hills of Infanta town in Quezon province tumbling to the ground, burying hundreds of folk below in a muddy grave; and the tsunami that wiped out an entire village in Aceh and ravaged neighboring islands.

Suddenly, green turned to red, as in blood. I would learn later that that year broke whole new records in ecological disasters, including the inconceivable, which was a hurricane hitting the South Atlantic. The writing on the wall has gotten bigger and more frighteningly gothic fonts since then. Not least for us, with the visitations of the new, improved, supertyphoons that have bleached parts of this country more efficiently than Mr. Clean. Yes, Virginia, there’s a better explanation for the utter devastation of the Bicol region than the not-entirely-unbelievable theory that the storms knocked everything about in the course of its frenzied search for Edcel Lagman and Luis Villafuerte, as per instructions of Divine Retribution. That is, that storms increase in water density and wind velocity from meeting heat, which is what the planet’s increasingly steaming oceans today emit.

Completely literally, the oceans -- not the least of them the Pacific, which is where the Philippines lies -- are whipping up a storm. Suddenly, being the gateway to Asia, which has made this country ideal for US bases, is no longer something to be happy about. It also means being Asia’s welcoming committee for Pacific storms.

I won’t go into what can be done about this. This is a country that won’t move anyway until it’s scared to death, and sometimes not even then. But there is that prediction for this year -- the closest in known history that we will experience hell on earth. There’s only one thing that’s scarier than a scary movie. That is a scary truth.

Look at the face of Bicol today and see if words like “climate” and “environment” do not spell the difference between life and death. Between a box of chocolates and a coffin.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=42730

The issue will be GMA January 10, 2007

MIKE DEFENSOR has a fearless forecast. The May elections, he predicts, will be Round 3 of the GMA-Erap fight. "It's too early to say what our chances are, but we are confident that once the public realizes that this is all about Arroyo and Estrada, it would understand the issues more and not be carried away by the anti-GMA rhetoric."

It's a clever ploy, but it won't work. The billing of the elections as the third round between GMA and Erap is, of course, a not-too-subtle reference to the so-called "grand finale" of the Pacquiao-Morales rivalry some months ago, with its attendant associations. Pacquiao won the third match, GMA will win the third match. What can I say? The Palace spin doctors are earning their keep.

The billing of the elections as GMA vs. Erap is as well a throwback to the ploy GMA used against FPJ in 2004, which was to put the opposition on the defensive. Presidential elections normally have the incumbent as the issue: how well he or she has run the country. In the 2004 elections, the main challenger--Fernando Poe Jr.--became the issue. It was a clever ploy, and it is a testament to the paucity of talent in the opposition that it never managed to get out of that bind. To this day, I cannot fathom why it was never able to draw the voters' doubts about, if not revulsion, to GMA, given in particular that she had vowed she would not run but did, which was a character-defining moment.

That is clearly Malacañang's tack all over again: turn Erap, and not GMA, into the issue.
I must admit that isn't helped any by pictures suggesting so. Such as that group picture of the United Opposition that appeared on our pages last Saturday. That has Erap written all over it. It plays right into the administration trap.

I have suggested in several columns before that the forces opposing the current illegitimate government produce more Alan Peter Cayetanos, or indeed completely new faces, non-politicians who have done magnificently in other fields and are known to be reasonably honest, to range against the administration candidates. Good vs. Evil is always better than Evil vs. the Lesser Evil. I refuse to call it a "third force" because that suggests there are already two other (major) forces locked in contention. I propose to call it "the real opposition." I have suggested this in the past, and my only caveat to it now is that it be done fast. Really fast; the elections aren't that far away.

But even without this, I doubt that Malacañang will be able to divert the voters' attention, or indeed opprobrium, away from GMA all over again. At the very least, you see that in the lack of enthusiasm of the administration candidates being vigorously endorsed or worse--since it leaves an indelible image in the public mind--having their arms raised by their boss. It is not a gift of life, it is a kiss of death. The administration candidates might as well be saying, "We'll take the cash, never mind the credit."

There is a basic difference between the May 2004 and May 2007 elections, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the one was presidential while the other is senatorial. It has everything to do with the fact that during the May 2004 elections, GMA was still a legitimate president while after that she was not. In May 2004, despite the protestations of the Erap camp that GMA stole the crown from Erap, most Filipinos regarded GMA as the rightful president, a legitimacy bestowed upon her by a hallowed tradition, which was the tradition of People Power. After the "Hello Garci" tape, despite the protestations of the GMA camp she won the elections anyway despite that breathtaking act of fraud, most Filipinos saw GMA as having stolen the vote and wielding illegitimate power, one that has spawned the most humongous iniquities, not least of them runaway murder, in this country.

The issue of GMA's illegitimacy remains an incendiary one, and it will be the central issue in the May elections. The surveys bear that. But more than surveys, the public will have a powerful reminder of it in Virgilio Garcillano running for congressman in Bukidnon. I am one of those who truly, deeply and sincerely welcome the fact that he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Department of Justice in the dead of Christmas, while our thoughts were turned to peace and love, and that he is running in these coming elections. It shows only the kind of justice this country might expect from its pseudo government and what the administration ticket represents in the coming elections.

I do not know if Garcillano will petition the Comelec to count any vote for "Hello" and "Garci" in his favor, but I do know that the opposition (and I truly hope it is the real opposition) will need only to produce posters or placards of Garcillano with the words "Hello Garci" to remind the voters of what these elections are all about. They are not about GMA fighting Erap, they are about GMA coddling Garci.

There is one last thing to remind voters of the issue of illegitimacy. That is that after Jan. 20 this month, GMA will be the longest-serving president in this country after 1986. Again, I have to say that the only thing that is correct about the phrase "longest-serving president" is longest: She has neither served nor is she president. After Jan. 20 GMA will be the longest occupant of Malacañang after Marcos, with the dubious distinction of never having been voted into that office. That cannot be lost on the voters this May, particularly with Garci there to drive home the point.

As in 1971, after the Plaza Miranda bombing, even a dog will win against a Malacañang candidate today, at least at the senatorial level. But the question is, can we count the votes right?

That is the biggest rub of all.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=42336

Honorable January 9, 2007

SENATORS Joker Arroyo and Miriam Defensor-Santiago are all praises for Undersecretary Zosimo Paredes who has just said he will resign from government.

Says Joker: "He resigns, it's accepted because he could not agree with Malacañang. That's an honorable course for him to take. That should serve as an example to officialdom."

Says Miriam: "That's good. That's the honorable thing to do. If his conscience does not allow him to toe the administration line, he will simply be able to get out of government because he's an appointive government official."

What's wrong with all that?

It's faint praise.

None of it draws any attention to why Paredes resigned. It draws attention only to form and not to content. And form in its good-manners-and-right-conduct sense: It's good form to resign when you're in disagreement with your boss. Other officials should emulate the example because it is good etiquette and not because it is righteous conduct.

At the very least, I don't know why Santiago should be pontificating about anything that has to do with the Visiting Forces Agreement. If I recall right, she was the one who argued for its being deemed a treaty notwithstanding that it was approved only by our Senate but not the United States. All this while in servitude to Erap who was under pressure to have it passed. She seems to have found a new master. Frankly, I don't know how Santiago has managed to pass herself off as an expert in international law, which is neither borne out by her academic credentials nor her pronouncements on pretty much anything, let alone the law. Certainly her grade in the bar exam does not commend it.

If it were merely a question of changing the color of the curtains in a room in the presidential palace, which currently houses a squatter, I can believe that it is good form to resign when an undersecretary prefers it to be restful green while his boss wants it to be flaming red. Aesthetic outrage is as much a good reason to resign as anything else, probably more so. Indeed, even if it were a question of deciding whether relief goods should be sent to Bicol or the Visayas first, I can believe that it is good form to resign when the undersecretary favors Bicol because he is a Bicolano and his boss wants the Visayas because it is more voter-friendly. Having differences in priorities qualifies as a reason to resign, even if their warped premises in this case suck.

Paredes' resignation is not of that middling order. This is not just a case of an official resigning because he disagrees with his boss, this is a case of an official resigning because he discovers his boss is a crook. Though why it took Paredes this long to discover his boss was one--metaphorically and "Garcistically"--only he can say. No matter, let us give credit where credit is due. Paredes resigned because he took violent exception to Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith being whisked out of Jejomar Binay's favorite jail, charging the executive--read, GMA--with taking the law into its own hands. That is not a difference in opinion between an official and his boss, that is a difference between right and wrong.

Paredes' resignation is worthy of emulation by other officials not just because it shows good form but because it shows good judgment; not just because it shows good manners but because it shows basic decency. It is not an act of protocol, it is an act of protest. It indicts wrongdoing to high heavens, notably this occupation government's predilection not just for abusing power but for taking power that does not belong to it. It demands to know: Where is GMA's right to defy the courts? Indeed it reminds us of what we've always demanded to know: Where is GMA's right to call up Garci?

I am glad, quite incidentally, that "Nicole" has called for the abolition of the VFA. If the VFA allows convicted American rapists in the Philippines to be rescued by America, then the solution is to scrap the VFA. It has no right to exist. Justifying Smith's departure as called for by the VFA is not unlike justifying molesting a female co-worker during office hours because one was drunk at the time. The justification is totally unjustifiable. Review the VFA? What for? Here and now we have all the proof we need that we need it like a hole in the head, or like an exercise in self-flagellation outside of Good Friday.

But to go back: It is a brave thing Paredes has done. I can imagine how hard it must have been for him to have made that decision given that times are hard and jobs do not come as plentifully as rain in July. Particularly for people with principle. Easy enough for those without one, they can always join government, or refuse to resign even when the world calls upon them to. Santiago should really stop talking about the honorableness of public officials resigning when they have differences with their bosses. That she once served Erap and is now serving Gloria suggests the concept escapes her completely. But then one must wonder if she sees differences at all in what people stand for, or is bothered by it. There's a term for it, but I leave her to discover it.

I agree: Other officials would do well to emulate Paredes' honorableness. Even now I don't know why they shouldn't resign en masse to show a profound disgust with wrongdoing, which is serving a government that shouldn't be there. Or there is another way to look at it, which is to agree entirely with Joker and Miriam when they say that public officials who disagree with their boss should resign posthaste. They should address it to their boss. GMA should resign because she has a fundamental difference of opinion with her own boss, who is the People of the Philippines.

She thinks she is the President, they just think she is the anti-Christ.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=42499

Courage January 8, 2007

I GOT THE TEXT MESSAGES IN THE MIDDLE of last week: My good friend, Harry Roque, had just got a number of death threats via his cell phone.

One text message read (I’ve spelled out the text abbreviations and added punctuations; otherwise I’ve retained the original sentence constructions) “Dura lex sed lex, our law may be harsh but it’s still our law. Not all the time are you lucky. Your end is near and your family.” Another read: “Atty. Roque RIP. Kami sa Bagong Hukbong Bayan ay patuloy ang pagmamanman sa mga ginagawa mong kataksilan sa bayan. Muli kaming magbabala to shut your fishy mouth. (Atty. Roque. RIP. We, the New Army of the Nation, have noted your treacherous acts against the nation. We repeat our warning: Shut your fishy mouth).”

And yet another message read: “To all interested parties: We are giving away P5 million/$100,000 reward for the capture of Atty. Harry Roque, dead or alive. Atty. Roque is lawyer of terrorist communist group in the Philippines. A destabilizer, insurgent, an anti-American. Caution: He’s armed and dangerous.”

I can imagine how unnerved my friend must be. I saw him on TV last Thursday, a little subdued, which is saying a lot in light of Harry being normally bouncy and full of energy. He has already reported the incident to the police, though I doubt that he expects to get any results. Indeed, though I doubt that he hasn’t thought that the police might be more sympathetic to the issuers of the threats than to him. But like I said, I can imagine how it must weigh on him: Never mind the death threats to one’s self, mind only the mention of family.

Who might want to do Harry harm? Well, as all the world’s sleuths say, who stands most to gain from it? The messages accuse Harry of betraying the nation. I do know that he has figured prominently in two particular cases. One is the “Joc-joc” Bolante case, where he has been busy trying to get a deposition from the former Department of Agriculture official charged with supplying administration congressional candidates, even those in the pit of urban jungles, with fertilizer funds. Bolante is currently being held in an American jail apparently for violating US immigration rules. He is wanted by the Philippine Senate, whose summons he has repeatedly spurned. Harry has monitored his whereabouts in the United States with the doggedness of a bloodhound.

Two is the class suit against Mike Arroyo—also called, for reasons that do violence to the English language, the First Gentleman—filed by the 43 journalists he has filed libel suits against. It’s the first class suit of its kind filed anywhere in the world. The plaintiffs are suing Arroyo for abuse of power, among many other abuses, professional and existential. It is the brainchild of Harry, and he himself prepared the brief for it. He filed it only a couple of weeks ago, which was much publicized in the media.

I agree with the people who sent the text messages: Harry is armed and dangerous. But he is armed only with the weapons of his principles and convictions, and he is dangerous only to people with neither. His accusers accuse him of betraying the nation. Pray, what do they hold as being true to the nation? Ruling without an electoral mandate? Using the money that belongs to dirt-poor farmers to give to tongressmen so that they can pay off officials to cheat for them? Defending a rule that has turned lying, cheating, stealing—and now murder—into instruments of national policy?

Of course, one cannot discount the possibility that the threat is the handiwork of pranksters who have nothing better to do, or annoyers-for-hire who routinely call up TV stations and write letters to the editors to express their undying support to an occupation government. But even if so, the text messages to Harry may not be so blithely dismissed as of little consequence. It is a humongous crime, which I lay at the doorstep of the illegal occupants of Malacañang.

What makes it so is the climate of murder that, more than El Niño and La Niña, has this country in its grip, a climate of murder that the current illegal occupants of Malacañang have caused directly or indirectly, tacitly or expressly, by commission or by commission. This country isn’t just becoming the murder capital of the world, it has become so. At least it has become the political-murder capital of the world.

The murders have spread from journalists and political activists in the countryside to political public figures themselves. Last December alone, we saw the murder of a congressman (Luis Bersamin) and the near-murder of another (Dudut Jaworski). With none of these murders being greeted by the shock and violent outrage they deserve. Certainly, with none of them finding government unduly embarrassed. Murder has not just become prevalent in this country, it has become an acceptable political option for dealing with “the enemy” in this country. And it is escalating daily, the violence being as much real in the threat as in the execution. The rules, written or unwritten, no longer apply. They are being broken as we speak. Nothing is inconceivable anymore.

During Cory’s (President Cory Aquino), Ramos’ (President Fidel V. Ramos) and (President Joseph Estrada) Erap’s time, somebody threatens you with bodily harm, you laughed it off. During GMA’s (President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) time, somebody threatens you with death, you take it deathly seriously.

I don’t know though that it will stop Harry from doing what he finds himself compelled to do. Yes, compelled, as in morally compelled, as in needing to do what is right, amid adversity, amid derision, amid the threat to life itself. Some people have that capacity: the only thing they find more odious than betraying the nation is betraying themselves.

The courageous ones are not those who are afraid of nothing. They are those who push on despite their fears.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=42157

As the new year turns January 4, 2007

AGENCE France-Presse had an interesting item about the fate of dictators, which appeared on our front page last Sunday. It included a whole bunch of people, not the least of them Saddam Hussein who was hanged by the Iraqis but with obvious American approval the day before.

The list included our very own Ferdinand Marcos. The part about him read: “Ousted in February 1986 after a 20-year rule, the Philippine dictator went into exile in Hawaii where he died on Sept. 28, 1989, at the age of 72.” That has to be qualified a bit. Marcos ruled legitimately for close to seven years before he became a dictator for less than 14 years after declaring martial law.

The dictators are classified into four categories: those who died in office, in exile, were executed, and are facing justice. Many names are familiar: Adolf Hitler (committed suicide in a bunker in April 1945), Pol Pot (died in exile in April 1998), Benito Mussolini (shot to death by partisans in April 1945 while fleeing for Switzerland with his mistress), Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet (died in December 2006 of a heart attack while facing charges of mass murder), Slobodan Milosevic (died in prison in the Hague in March 2006 while on trial for war crimes).

It’s a cautionary tale on the whole for would-be dictators. Only rarely do they manage to stay in office and die of old age in a state of grace or serenity. Some do; unfortunately life isn’t always fair. It’s an interesting story, the AFP item, but quite an incomplete one -- apart from a controversial one (some will protest violently the inclusion of people like Mao Zedong). I myself have three more entries to add to that list.

One, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Came to power in January 2001 on the wings of people power. Stole the elections in 2004 with the connivance of an official of the Commission on Elections and has since used force to stay in power. Has caused the wholesale murder of political activists and provincial journalists, apart from the wholesale murder of democracy and decency. Remains in office, but is everywhere hounded by the writing on the wall.

Two, Richard Nixon. (It is a testament to the narrowness of the American viewpoint that it is able to espy dictators elsewhere but not under its nose. If a dictator is a self-appointed leader who tyrannizes his constituents, then surely a self-anointed leader who tyrannizes the world constitutes an even bigger dictator?) Escalated the Vietnam War by bombing Cambodia and Laos. Along with Henry Kissinger, he instigated the coup in Chile which led to the massacre of more than 3,000 Chileans. Why only Pinochet had to face justice afterward and not Nixon and Kissinger, well, that is the world order as we know it. Nixon further ushered in the US policy of supporting tyrants all over the Third Word, not least Marcos, with the unstated motto, “We don’t mind that he’s an SOB, so long as he’s our SOB,” which led to the slaughter of tens of thousands of people in poor countries.

He died in April 1994 from a stroke while preparing to have dinner. His last words apparently were calling out to a maid for help. It is not known if his maid was Vietnamese, but he did not survive the episode.

George W. Bush. Stole the vote in Florida from Al Gore. Deliberately lied to the American people about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and, despite the loud protestations of the UN and pretty nearly all the world, with the exception of leaders like those of Britain and Australia who think American and European lives are worth more than Iraqi and Arab ones, bombed Iraq to submission. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden, who authored 9/11 but whose family has business dealings with Bush’s own family, remains scot-free.

Until recently, Bush, who has added whole new meanings to mediocrity and pettiness, apart from viciousness and murderousness, has been free to contemplate carving the world into his image and likeness -- a chilling thought given his image and likeness physically, never mind mentally. Indeed, until recently, he and his bunch have been free to have their way with America, like Daniel Smith and his bunch with “Nicole.”

They’ve already hanged Saddam Hussein. When the hell are they going to hang him?

* * *

Sunday night wasn’t so bad. The din lasted for only about half an hour where I live. And the smoke wasn’t as thick as in previous years, though my throat still felt raw next day, a hangover from my asthmatic days as a kid. But I still minded the pyrotechnics in light of one thing: Surely all that money that went up in smoke, completely literally, could have gone to feeding the hungry and putting a roof over the heads of the storm-ravaged people of the Bicol region?

I know exploding firecrackers on New Year’s Eve is tradition, but tradition, as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” learned, can always be changed. We also have a tradition of “bayanihan” [communal self-help], as far as I can recall, and I cannot understand why we’ve allowed that to drift away like shifting sand.

The tradition, I know, says that if you make that much ruckus on New Year’s Eve, you will drive the demons away. Frankly, I find that incomprehensible. I don’t know how the belief began, but surely demons are more likely to thrive in that madness than be scared by it? In any case, I’ve always thought there was a surer way to drive out the demon of hunger that stalks Bicolandia and the eastern seaboard of the Visayas today, and that is by giving food and clothing to the victims in lieu of burning things, and uttering a silent prayer to go along with it.

Indeed, I’ve always thought there was a surer way to drive out the other and far more vicious demons in our midst, a way we discovered some time ago and have since turned into hallowed tradition. It’s called people power.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=41472