Worlds and Words

Worlds and Words
By Conrado de Quiros

Actual speech given at the launching of his fourth book “Tongues on Fire” at the Peta Theater Center, Quezon City on Sept. 21, 2007. This speech was personally transcribed by me with the aid of the shortened version he published on the 24th and 25th of September in the Inquirer. Enjoy, fellas.

There are a couple of interesting events today, or thereabouts today.

The first is the 35th anniversary of martial law. Or at least that is how martial law is reckoned in history books. The real 35th anniversary of martial law, as I wrote about yesterday, is this Sunday, September 23. Ferdinand Marcos merely antedated his decree to September 21 because he believed that the number seven and its multiples were lucky for him.

Maybe it was because it managed to make martial law last for more than 14 years, though if that were the case, 14 is also a multiple of seven so that number couldn’t have been entirely lucky for him. Apparently the only thing it proves is that, as Cassius said, “The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.” Or probably the only thing it proves is that if fate were decreed by numbers, it is only by the numbers of those who congregate to make People Power.

The other interesting event thereabouts today is that “There’s the Rub” will soon be celebrating 20 years of life.

Frankly I don’t know where all the time went. I just went from beating one deadline after the other and before I knew it, it was 20 years. Every time I see my daughter Miranda and my son Miguel, I find my brain humming, “Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play?” My brain swells into a chorus at the next line, which is “I don’t remember getting older.” Goddamn, I don’t even feel it except that the gout comes around after I indulge a little too much in Bacchus’s divine brew and it gives me exquisitely painful reminders.

Both events, the 35th anniversary of martial law and the 20th anniversary of “There’s the Rub,” are a good time for me to ruminate on certain things. I was tempted to say auspicious things in lieu of good things but you might think I have become a convert of the auguries foretold and realignment of stars. These two events have compelled me to try to answer a question some friends and strangers have asked me over the last few years. Which is: “Don’t you sometimes get tired of writing columns given that things don’t seem to change at all?”

It’s an excellent question. In fact things don’t just seem not to change, they seem to be changing for the worse. We seem to be stuck in a bog, as I said in a column recently, and if we’re moving at all it is only in the direction of sinking in it. Three and a half decades after the declaration of martial law, and 21 years after the declaration of Edsa Revolution, we’re back to where we started. And unlike what T.S. Eliot said in “Little Giddy” which is that at the end of all our exploring, we’ll be back to where we started and see things for the first time, we haven’t really explored anything. We’re just looking, like fools or people who don’t read their history, at the same things for the nth time.

Just as well, since I started writing “There’s the Rub,” I haven’t seen a country move forward, I’ve seen a country stagger backward. From Cory to Ramos to Gloria is not an ascent, it is a descent. Or as motions go, it rotates us all the way back to where we started, with Marcos as point of origin. Some friends and strangers have asked me: “Why haven’t you stopped criticizing our leaders?” But given where they’ve brought us to, with no small thanks from us ourselves, I’ve always replied to that question: “Give me one goddamn reason why I should.”

But which brings me to the earlier question if I haven’t gotten tired of writing columns because things haven’t changed at all.

And my answer to that is: Oh, Yes. A thousand times, yes. In fact, I haven’t just gotten tired of it, I’ve despaired of it. Enough to contemplate joining the lemmings that are hurling themselves off into the abyss of overseas work. Some years ago I even thought of working in a newspaper in Jeddah, imagining the bane of others, which is isolation, to be my boon. I thought I could always use time as vast as the desert, which has buried the soul of many an OFW in the sands of boredom, to write a novel with. Alas, or thankfully, a friend of mine (who is here right now, actually, Sammy Santos) disabused me of the thought, telling me that while working there he found himself at one point talking to his computer as though it were his girlfriend. That thoroughly cured me of my temporary insanity.

Each time I am tempted to leave the country out of despair to live elsewhere in search of hope, I remember what Winston Churchill said about democracy: It’s a horrible system, except that all the others are so much worse. I guess it’s the same thing for me living in and leaving this country. Living in this country is horrible. Except that living elsewhere is so much worse.

Quite apart from that, I take comfort in the thought that the better writers of this world have themselves been filled with anguish and despair at the seeming futility of their words. The great W. H. Auden for one in a moment of bitterness, arraigned himself thus: “No poem of mine saved a Jew from the gas-chamber.” If someone can say that about a poem, which is not really meant to meddle in the course of secular affairs, then one can say that about columns which exist for that very purpose. It’s enough to make me expostulate every now and then: “No column of mine ever saved a Jonas from oblivion.”

In fact, in these days of diminished expectations and augmented consternations, it’s enough to make me say now and then: I can only hope that a column or two of mine saves me from the monstrous malefactions of the merchants of mayhem.

Thankfully, Auden’s remark itself spawned a host of detractors who rightly pointed out that it wasn’t true at all that his poems haven’t saved a single Jew from the gas-chamber. They have probably saved many, if only by the doubt or hesitation they filled the heart and mind of those who pulled the lever in other chambers. In any case, the effect of words on life has never been direct. It has always been indirect. Words have a tempering effect on minds and hearts, giving people to see life not as a necessity but as a choice. Of course it is one thing to be presented by a choice and to pick the right one. Or it is one thing to know what to do and quite another to do it. I should know. I know I shouldn’t drink because it will unleash the demons of gout upon me. But it’s everything I can do, particularly on occasions like this, not to.

I do not know if any of my columns has saved a single kid from Palparan’s or Esperon’s clutches or claws. But I take comfort in the thought that maybe they fill the mind or heart of the executioner with a moment of doubt and hesitation enough to not let them pull the trigger or slide the knife across the throat. I do know the sum of my columns has not stopped this country from sliding full circle down the circles of hell, but I take strength in the belief that words do not really affect the laws of the physical universe like magical incantations, they affect the way we act and move like the woeful wails the cotton pickers chanted in unison or the heaves of slave rowers also cried out in unison.

Like God, the Word, written or verbal, works in mysterious ways. Like the Greek Oracle, the word, in the beginning or made flesh, offers intriguing truths.

There are a couple of speeches in this book that make what I’m saying a little clearer. They are truths that certainly helped me go on in those times when I cursed heaven from the gout, when I cursed the landlord from the rent, and when I wonder what in God’s name I’m doing, doing what I do when it doesn’t seem to matter.

The first is the speech about Anne Frank and the power—and transcendence—of witnessing.

There are several ways you can fight tyranny. You can take up arms against it, as the Polish resistance did, and push it back with the power of physical force. You can speak out against it, as Mark Twain did when the US embarked on its imperial venture, and push it back with the power of moral force. Or you can bear witness to your times, if only by talking about the fury of young love and dreams amid the swirl of war and intolerance around you, and by doing so push back tyranny with the power of the word.

Anne Frank did the last. She did not, of course, survive Nazi-occupied Holland. She and her family were discovered in their hiding place and sent to separate concentration camps, where she herself died of lupus not long afterward. But Anne Frank’s diary, the scribbling of a young, innocent and hugely talented girl full of life’s longings has become one of history’s greatest single acts of defiance against insanity—a true beacon of light in a wind-swept sea. More than the deaths of six million Jews who became unholy experiments in how fast human beings can be exterminated, the life of this one teenager has become the most powerful testament to the obscenity of the Holocaust, and living proof—yes, living—of how long the human spirit can survive.

The patent lesson I draw from this is that truly victory and defeat are not always patent. It is perfectly possible to be defeated at the moment of one’s triumph, as I have seen among friends who have been maimed in spirit at the time of their seeming progress, and it is also perfectly possible to be victorious in defeat as I’ve also seen in many friends who have found in their adversity, including prison, a bountiful source of joy and reward. In the end, history will have different things to say about who won and who lost.

But there’s one other, infinitely more subtle lesson I draw from this. Which is that victory and defeat are not just determined at the end of things. They are determined in the middle of things. Or they are not just found in the nether regions of posterity, they are found in the hard-edged space of the moment.

The power of Anne Frank’s diary, whether read or watched in play or movie form, is the wonder and magic of her life and that of her family in that small space of time between their taking to hiding and being found out, in that small space between the wall panels of a warehouse in Amsterdam. Suddenly that crack of time expands to encompass eternity; suddenly that crack of space expands to encompass the universe. Suddenly that life quite literally takes a life of its own, transcending the borders of the before and after, transcending the borders of the within and the without.

That holds a special meaning for me coming as I do from an activist background where I learned to believe for a while that things mattered only in the end. Victory was had only after a tyranny was brought down, a new life began only after the new world was built. Well, if Anne Frank's life has anything to say to me now, it is that that isn't true at all. The human worth is not found at the end of a life, it is found in the course of it. Victory and defeat are not found at the end of struggle, they are found in the course of the struggle itself.

You want an image for that, take The Last Samurai where Katsumoto asks Nathan Aldren what happened to the 300 Spartans who fought the Persian hordes. Aldren replies: “They all died.” Katsumoto smiles and leads the charge against the enemy hordes. I think of that, and somehow it doesn't seem so bad that this country has gone to the dogs in the 20 years that I have been writing "There's the Rub."

The other speech in this book that I draw comfort from has to do with reading, in which connection I recall that wonderful book and movie, "Goodbye Mr. Chips." Mr. Chips is a teacher of classical literature in an Oxford school. When he begins teaching, which is before the First World War, the world is still kinder and more hospitable to the things he teaches, which represent the crowning glories of civilization. But his relevance gets to be challenged as time goes by.

The war comes, his students are drafted, and several die in lonely ditches in strange parts of the world. He himself despairs and wonders what the point of civilization is in a world where the barbarians have broken through the gates. The war ends, but his relevance isn't challenged less, it is challenged more. He now teaches classical literature in a world grown materialistic and utilitarian, one that defines getting ahead as getting going, getting rich, and getting laid.
Still Mr. Chips perseveres, trying as best he can to light the way for future generations with the wisdom of the past. And finally, in the evening of his life, he is forced to take the measure of himself, to ask himself what it all meant. Did his life really amount to anything? Did the things he teach really matter? Was the effort he exerted really worth it? He himself finds the answer to his questions while talking to an old friend. He says thoughtfully: "We did teach them to be more polite to each other, didn't we?"

A commonplace way to say the profoundest thing. A simple way to say the most awesome thing. For maybe that is what civilization is after all. If the generations that had come before had simply learned it, and if the generations that would come after would simply learn it, then maybe there would be no wars, then maybe there would be no “salvagings,” then maybe there would be no rotating full circle through the circles of hell.

That is how I console myself these days, when the bones creak, and the roof leaks, and the world reeks of rain and ruination. I tell myself: "I have tried to teach them to be more polite to each other.

"Haven't I?"

Thank you and good night.

Joke February 14, 2007

I’VE ALWAYS LIKED AND RESPECTED JOKER Arroyo. It’s not because he is a Bicolano. I don’t particularly like or respect the other Bicolanos who have been thrust into the limelight over the years, except for Raul Roco.

Joker I’ve liked and respected in the same way that I’ve always liked and respected Nene Pimentel. Despite drifting to the “Dark Side” at some point in their lives, they’ve kept a good deal of the “Force” inside them—in the form of defending human rights. That was how they made a name for themselves to begin with, as human rights lawyers. No, more than that, as people whose hearts burned with the libertarian fire.

Imagine, therefore, my profound dismay when I heard Joker last week, defending his decision to join GMA’s ticket. It’s bad enough that he did join it.

He would have been better off running as an independent and preserved whatever patches of believability still clung to his claim of being a maverick. Even if he wins this battle, he will have lost the war. Some defeats are luminous victories, some victories are crushing defeats. One would imagine that our natural trajectory is to commit mistakes in our youth, as we sow our wild oats; and grow wisdom in our age, as our thoughts turn toward bequeathing a good name to our children, if not to justifying our lives to our Maker. Alas, in this country the opposite happens.

It’s bad enough that Joker enlisted in GMA’s cause. It’s worse that he defended it the way he did.

In the past, he said, he’s crossed swords with GMA, particularly when she declared emergency rule, when she supported Cha-cha and when her government got involved in shady deals. But he has had no reason to give up on her. On the contrary, he has had every reason to be bullish about her. “No one can deny that the country is moving forward. The political choice in the coming election is to trip up the country or help it along.” The opposition, he said, has nothing to offer. All it has done is try to impeach GMA. While at that, “one has yet to hear the opposition denounce attempts by military adventurers to topple the government and set up one outside the Constitution.”

How can anyone who has ever been a human rights lawyer possibly be confused about the direction in which this country has moved? It is not forward, it is downward. At the very least, it’s no small irony that a day before Joker said this, his boss had just walked out of a press conference because our reporter, Gil Cabacungan Jr., kept asking her why the effects of her touted economic growth had not reached the hungry. In fact, Gil didn’t just ask a perfectly legitimate question, he asked the only question worth asking. Growth that happens explosively in only one part of the body is not called progress, it is called cancer.

But far more than that, how can anyone who has ever been a human rights lawyer possibly not see the killings? Or, indeed, the mayhem that is happening right in a Bicolano’s own backyard? The deaths caused by the superstorms from the Pacific are nothing compared to the deaths wrought by the evil wind from Malacañang. One has yet to hear the opposition denounce the extra-constitutional plots of adventurous military officers? One has yet to hear Joker denounce the extrajudicial executions by murderous state-sponsored cutthroats. The killings are not just a vicious trespass against human rights and civil liberties, they are an abomination against any decent community, never mind democracy.

And still that is nothing. One has yet to hear the opposition denounce attempts by military adventurers to topple government and set up one outside the Constitution? One has yet to hear Joker denounce the actual act by a presidential aspirant of stealing the vote and setting up a government outside the Constitution. How can anyone, human rights lawyer or not, possibly ignore the “Hello Garci” tape? The fact that it was illegally obtained may only prevent us from using it to jail GMA. It may not prevent us from using it to not hail her as President. The only reason no one, opposition or not, is denouncing any attempt to oust this regime, by coup or by Cory, by military strike or by People Power, is that this regime is a coup regime. One wrought by ballots rather than by bullets, one wrought by Garci rather than by guns. It has been defended by guns ever since, which brings us back to the killings.

It was Joker who rose brilliantly to damn the Erap government in the impeachment trial for having betrayed the public trust. Where is the Joker to damn this regime, brilliantly or sullenly, for never having had it in the first place?

All the opposition has done is to try to impeach GMA? I may not be a fan of the opposition, but if that is all it has done, then we owe it an eternal debt of gratitude—that is all that needs to be done. Not cross swords with GMA over details, but cross her out for having no right to rule. The issue is not performance, it is legitimacy. People who are not elected have no right to rule. People who try to do something about it are not being destructive, they are being constructive. People who fight injustice are not pulling the country downward, they are pushing the country forward.

If Cory had been “negativistic” when she heroically fought to bring Marcos down, Edsa would never have happened, and Joker would never have been executive secretary. If Joker had been “negativistic” when he fought heroically to bring Erap down, then Edsa II would not have happened, and Joker would never have ended up a GMA minion. Ah, but how soon people forget who they are and what they did.

The political choice in this election is to be a principled alternative or to be a huge joke. The latter brings tears to the eyes, and not from merriment.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=50214

Footnote to a farce 02/13/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- I never got to comment on it last week, what with one thing and another happening. But it’s too important to let pass.

That was the House of Representatives’ ethics and privileges committee’s decision to suspend Alan Peter Cayetano for 45 days. The vote, to nobody’s surprise, was 35-3-1. The lone abstention came from Butz Aquino who probably said it best: “I don’t want to have a part in this kangaroo court.”

Cayetano was suspended for accusing Mike Arroyo, also called the First Gentleman (well, we also call Raul Gonzalez justice secretary, Norberto Gonzales national security adviser, and Ronaldo Puno and Benjamin Abalos guardians of clean elections) of harboring deposits in a bank in Munich.

The only good in this is that it will probably catapult Cayetano upward in the voting charts. Who knows? Maybe it might even make him No. 1 when the smoke clears in May, assuming this country is able to thwart the advance of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as I wrote about yesterday. Cayetano’s suspension has yet to be approved by Congress in plenary session. What can I say? I most ardently hope it does, if only to give Cayetano more free advertisement than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s expensive ads paid for the charity sweepstakes office that now litter the NBA games on Basketball TV like debris after a super storm, do for the administration candidates. The equation is simple: Jose Pidal’s enemy is Juan de la Cruz’s friend. I can only plead earnestly with our congressmen: Please oppress Cayetano some more.

That is the only good thing about it. Everything else stinks.

To begin with, the ethics and privileges committee is so only in that Mike Arroyo represents gentleness, first or last, and Raul Gonzalez dispenses justice, legal or poetic. Look at the creatures that infest it and ask yourself if most of them have even heard of the word “ethics,” much less grasped its meaning. You can only be certain they have heard of the word “privileges,” clinging as they do to them with all their might.

While at this, the entire premise of Mike Arroyo’s suit against 43 journalists (last I looked) is that he is not a public official, he is an ordinary citizen. Therefore journalists may not simply claim good faith when they attack him, they must pay for the trespass in cash or kind. Well, if he is an ordinary citizen, why has the House ethics committee moved heaven and hell to try to remove one of their own from their ranks as though he were an absolute contamination because he dared raise as a matter of fundamental national interest the possibility he is not just a crook but a most unpatriotic one? If I recall right, a Muslim congresswoman attacked an ordinary citizen, in the form of a representative of a catering outfit, with a knife in the very premises of the House complex for inadvertently contaminating her soup with bits of pork, and she never met with any sanction.

Which brings us to Cayetano’s “crime.” Did he make a mistake in identifying the deposit? Probably. Does he have the right to get a waiver from the First Gentleman, one that applies to all possible deposits abroad? Absolutely. It’s not just he who has the right, the entire Filipino nation does. Ping Lacson did issue such a waiver when he was on the hot seat, and, as he pointed out to me in a text message last week, even went on to file a couple of bills that would make such a blanket waiver compulsory. The bills went unheeded but he vows to revive them if he gets back to the Senate.

At the very least, Cayetano’s mistake is an honest one. At the very most, his motivation is a laudable one. Contrast this with a humongous crime that remains unpunished to this day. That is an incumbent president calling up a Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner right in the middle of canvassing and asking to win by a million votes over a nearest rival. That mistake is a thoroughly dishonest one, having as it does the gravest consequences and its perpetrator having as she did full knowledge and full consent, which are, if I remember my catechism right, the requirements for mortal sin. And its motivation sucks, its perpetrator simply wanting power at any cost. Yet Congress’ ethics committee never ruled to suspend its perpetrator from power, it promoted her to dictator.

But in the end the worst thing about the fate Cayetano has met in the hands of his inferiors (they are by no means his peers) is that they make a farce of elections. Frankly, I don’t know why we’re going ape about the May elections. Frankly, I don’t know why we’re betting feverishly on the candidates like the loud and drunken crowd in off-track betting stations. We already have the killings and the cheating that are making a mockery of elections. But added to that, you can get voted into office and lose it anyway on various ruses by a corrupt and ruthless administration.

We’ve already seen the attempted ouster of Jojo Binay as mayor of Makati City and the actual ouster of Pasay City Mayor Pewee Trinidad and other elected public officials. We’ve already seen the attempted ouster of Legaspi Mayor Noel Rosal, with fake ballot boxes suddenly materializing in the Comelec premises and the Comelec ruling that a rival candidate actually won the vote. And now we see a representative suspended by Congress for a crime against the people, the people defined as Mike Arroyo. Different tactics, same result. In this country, it’s not enough to be voted by the voters to hold office. You have to be voted as well by the Department of Interior and Local Government, Comelec, Congress, and whomever they’ll think of next.
You don’t get murdered or cheated in the polls, you’ll get massacred afterward.

Cayetano’s fate in the hands of his colleagues razes down the entire concept of an elected official. But then why expect them to appreciate the concept of an elected official? Their big boss is not.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=49073

Apocalypse 02/12/2007

The reason Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is President today owes to one other reason than that she asked Garci to make her win by a million votes over Fernando Poe Jr. and that her minions carried out a massive switching of ballots in Tawi-Tawi and neighboring districts. The latter borne out by the fact that the tallies in many precincts were either not signed by the public school teachers or carried signatures that bore no resemblance to human hand. I am not exaggerating. Look at the “thumbprints” in some of those tally sheets and ask yourself if they were made by thumb or paw.

But like I said, the reason GMA is President is not just because she did that. It is also because of something equally important, if not more so. That is that the so-called opposition, represented in great part by the FPJ camp, bungled things monumentally. The way the FPJ campaign was conducted remains an object lesson in how to lose without really trying. How anyone can possibly manage to not get the most popular candidate on earth—more popular even than Erap, who won over his nearest rival, JDV, by the kind of landslide you see only in Ormoc and Infanta—to dominate an election, it takes talent of the vastly negative kind.

The point is this: GMA became President not just because she cheated but because she made her victory over FPJ plausible.

Until the Garci tape came out a couple of years ago, by the grace of God and Ong, I myself thought GMA might have won the elections. That was so because she ran a more efficient, if epically corrupt (Joc-Joc Bolante, the PhilHealth card, the PCSO and Pagcor ads), campaign. Or conversely, because her main rival, or his handlers, ran theirs to the ground.

Had the FPJ camp been half as competent as Erap’s, the cheating would have been patent and intolerable, and would have driven FPJ’s legions into the streets in violent protest. As it was, well, all Kiko Pangilinan had to do was say, “Noted,” and that was that.

Well, folks, it’s happening all over again.

Truly, people who do not heed their history are doomed to repeat it. Hell, people who cannot stop, look and listen for the history train are doomed to be run over by it. Two developments are particularly scary in that respect.

The first is that the cheating machinery isn’t just in place, it is well-oiled and ready to spring into action. Only recently I got a text message that said: “What are the bishops doing about the Comelec officers in the ‘Hello Garci’ tape that have just been promoted? They are: Francisco Pobe, Renato Magbutay, Ray Sumalipao, Remlane Tambuang.” Good point. And should be addressed not just to the bishops but to everyone: What the hell are we doing about them?

Yet that is nothing compared to something even scarier. Look at the placements of public officials. You have Ronaldo Puno as head of the DILG, you have Benjamin Abalos as head of the Comelec, you have Hermogenes Esperon as AFP chief, and now you have Hermogenes Ebdane as the new defense secretary. What do they have in common? They are the people believed to have engineered the massive cheating in the last elections. Puno as mastermind, Abalos as chief executor, and Esperon and Ebdane as implementers in the field. The two Hermogeneses specifically appear in the “Hello Garci” tape.

They are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

But here’s the bigger rub. A massive hoax is about to be sprung upon an unsuspecting electorate while the so-called opposition is self-destructing right before our very eyes. I’ve always thought, and said, that the May elections will go the route of the American elections last year and our own elections in 1971. The issue in the last American elections, though not a presidential one, was George W. Bush, because of the Iraq War. The issue in the 1971 elections, though not a presidential one as well, was Ferdinand Marcos, because of the Plaza Miranda bombing. The issue this May will be Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo because of the “Hello Garci” tape.

Or so I thought. One would imagine with the elections shaping up that way, the “opposition” would put up a united front and make the contrast between them and GMA a lot starker. Or put the distance between them and her a lot longer. Or one would imagine that they’d get their act together and register their opposition to GMA’s illegitimacy and dictatorship a lot more stridently.

But no, the opposite is happening. Instead of creating a broad united front, the opposition has divided itself into the Erap people and the non-Erap people, with the Erap people getting favored treatment in UNO. JV Ejercito’s decision to make way for Sonia Roco is far too little and probably far too late. The rest of the pack, disgusted by that turn of events, but with their own political ambitions flailing at them like a whip to a horse, have gone their separate ways, many of them making their own pacts with the devil. Or joining the administration camp or groups allied with GMA. What thoroughly idiotic things to do.

What it does is not just to confuse the issue, turning an election that would and should have been a judgment on GMA, the way the American elections of 2006 and the Philippine elections of 1971 were, into a farce. It reduces a historical watershed into a choice between relative bastards and opportunists. Indeed, what it does is render the cheating that is about to be sprung on this country invisible. At the end of the day, the administration can claim—with much believability—that the opposition candidates lost, not because the Four Horsemen wrought an apocalypse upon them but because they shot themselves in the head.

It’s bad enough that we’re back to the rule of a tyrant. But for people to fight it armed only with stupidity! Onli in da Pilipins.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=48856

Footnote to doomsday February 8, 2007

FRANKLY, I don’t know why the Democrats are limiting their choices only to people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for 2008. Of course, I’d like nothing better than to see the first woman president of America. About time it had one. And given that Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the House, has broken the barriers, Hillary seems to have a good crack at the White House. And, of course, I’d like nothing better than to see the first mulatto become president of America, which would break an even bigger American taboo.

But there is better. It comes in the person of Al Gore. I don’t know why he shouldn’t be shoo-in.

It’s not just because he will be fighting a Republican foe laboring under George W. Bush’s jagged shadow. It’s also because hindsight has shown that Bush did not just lie about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he lied about the votes he got in Florida. Gore should have been US president way back in 2000. I don’t know why he can’t get a bagful of sympathy votes for that alone. Surely the American voters know how to pay back someone they owe, and owe big?

But far, far more than that, it’s because Gore has not just become the biggest thing in America of late, he’s become the biggest thing on the planet of late. That is because his crusade to save the planet from its biggest scourge, which is its annihilation by man-made global warming, has just been given a terrific push by the recent report of a UN panel of scientists saying global warming is real, global warming is dire, and global warming is here. There are no ifs and buts about it: The planet is dying even as we speak.

Of course, that report comes well before the American presidential election of 2008, but it is not likely to be forgotten -- neither by the American voters nor indeed by the citizens of the world. The reason for it -- a most frightening one -- is that there will be no lack of terrifying reminders of it over the next couple of years. The report predicts that in the immediate future, we are going to have intolerable heat waves and droughts along with storms, hurricanes and cyclones of mind-boggling fury. And further on in that future, unless something drastic is done to stop it, another Ice Age. The super storms that hit this country late last year, packing winds of more than 200 kph, already gave a hint of the shape of things to come. As does Hurricane Katrina, which flattened out New Orleans a couple of years ago. If the report is to be believed, things won’t get better, they will get worse.

That makes Gore not just the most winnable president of the United States, that makes him the most relevant one. That makes Gore not just the most tenable president of the United States, that makes him the most important one. What is at stake is not merely America’s ability and authority to lead the world to progress, what is at stake is America’s ability and authority to lead the world to survival. What is at stake is not just the future of America, what is at stake is the continued existence of humankind.

Of course, George W. Bush’s people have been quick to spin the report and conscript it to their cause. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the report confirmed what Bush had been saying all along about “the nature of climate change, and it reaffirms the need for continued US leadership in addressing global climate issues.” Well, Bush does share one quality with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which is the ability to lie through his teeth. And which, as in these parts, has been imbibed by his lieutenants.

The Republicans, in fact, had been harshly condemning Gore for making the predictions he did, which they are now claiming as their own. Bush’s father, George Sr. said of Gore then (Gore had been campaigning for saving the earth way back): “This guy is so far off in the environmental extreme we’ll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American. This guy’s crazy.” Well, Bush Sr. must know something about crazy that we don’t. He offered a toast to Marcos for his adherence to democracy.

This guy’s crazy? Well, Gore was crazy enough to be saying -- well before it became popular to do so, indeed when it was the political kiss of death to do so -- that there was no doubt about the reality, immediacy and direness of global warming except the doubts Exxon et al. were trying to spread about it, in the same way that the cigarette companies tried to spread doubts about the ironclad medical finding that smoking caused lung cancer. Gore was crazy enough to be saying -- well before it became relevant to do so, indeed when it was the political kiss of death to do so -- that America was the number one polluter of the earth’s atmosphere, and that unless it curbed its carbon emissions, it would plunge the planet into a state beyond resuscitation. Gore was crazy enough to be saying—well before any American politician dared say it, indeed when it was the political kiss of death to do so -- that if we want to stop the earth from being murdered, let’s compel his country to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

What’s crazy for the Bushes, of course, is the sanest thing in the world for the rest of the world. Indeed a completely literal life-and-death agenda for it. One can only hope that what has been a kiss of death for any American politician, not to speak of presidential aspirant, will turn out to be the breath of life for Gore’s future—as well as that of the human species. In the end, the American elections of 2008 are of monumental concern not just for the American voter but also for the citizen of the world.

The UN report reaffirms the need for continued US leadership in addressing global climate issues? There’s only one way that can be true: with Gore in charge.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=48135

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

There oughta be a law 02/06/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- I always make out in talks, whenever a question about corruption is raised, that there’s a fundamental difference between our corruption and that of other Asian countries. It’s not that ours is bigger. Other Asian countries, or closer to home, Southeast Asian ones, have more astronomical levels of corruption. Transparency International lists Ferdinand Marcos only second among the all-time crooks of Asia. The dubious honor of being first belongs to Indonesia’s Suharto. Marcos stole “only” $15 billion, Suharto stole $35 billion.

But you look at Indonesia and the Philippines today, and you are going to weep only for the Philippines. Indonesia hasn’t quite reached such levels of desperation that it has to export its people wholesale to survive. That’s not simply explained by the fact that Indonesia is bigger and richer and can tolerate higher levels of pillage.

Quite simply, though Suharto stole more, he never took the money out of Indonesia. He plunked his loot in all sorts of businesses there, big and small, multimillion and penny-ante. Marcos stashed his loot abroad, in Swiss and other banks. At the end of the day, Suharto remained in Indonesia, ready to face, or buy off, his detractors. At the end of the day, Marcos fled to Hawaii to enjoy the bitter fruit of his murderous labor, such as he could with lupus and Imelda, whichever made living more unbearable.

That is the difference between corruption here and other Asian countries, which explains the abject state we’re in. Other Asian countries at least have patriotic crooks; we have treacherous ones. The blood money of other Asian tyrants go on to employ the citizens of their country; the blood money of local ones go on to employ only a few Filipino maids and chauffeurs in America.

That was the first thing I thought of when I read about this business of Mike Arroyo signing a waiver allowing the HypoVereinsbank in Munich to divulge his accounts, if any, to the ethics committee of the House of Representatives. He did this to counter Alan Peter Cayetano’s allegations that he held accounts there and apparently to comply with the lawmaker’s demand for him to sign a waiver to ascertain it. Cayetano is unimpressed by the gesture and says that is not exactly, or entirely, what he is asking for. What he is asking for is a waiver that will free not just this particular bank in Munich but all foreign banks to reveal the First Gentleman’s deposits upon request by Philippine authorities. What he was trying to determine, Cayetano said, was whether there existed “a pattern of corruption and money-laundering by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and members of the First Family.”

I leave others to debate the question of who has scored the more points in this latest round of the ongoing bout between Arroyo and Cayetano. My point is simply this: Why should signing a waiver allowing foreign banks to disclose the deposits of Filipino public officials—and their families—upon request of Philippine authorities be voluntary or optional? Why should it be done out of the goodness of one’s heart? Why shouldn’t it be compulsory or a requisite of public office? Why shouldn’t that be something candidates explicitly or implicitly agree to when they run for any position in this country, from barangay councilor to president?

Frankly, I don’t know why no representative or senator has yet filed that as an urgent bill. Henceforth, every Filipino official, elected or appointed, agrees to have his assets abroad scrutinized without legal impediment from him. Or more to the point, henceforth every Filipino official, elected or appointed, agrees to waive his right to secrecy in bank deposits abroad. That should be written in the oath of office public officials must swear to before they occupy their positions. Which, of course, should apply to the members of their immediate families as well. For obvious reasons: A public official’s loot may not be laundered by his or her spouse or children.

The logic is simple: At the very least, even if those deposits are well-gotten (although the notion that Filipino officials could possibly harbor legitimate wealth in Swiss and other banks is about as believable as the notion of military intelligence or Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s capacity for honesty), what is a Filipino public official doing not using that money to improve the lot of those he professes to serve? At the very most, if those deposits are ill-gotten -- which they almost axiomatically are, notably where they carry the name “Jose Pidal” or variations thereof -- then their depositors should be shot by firing squad in, well, not in Bagumbayan, that would be sacrilege. Those deposits do not just represent corruption, they represent treason. Those deposits do not just represent a betrayal of public trust, they represent a betrayal of the nation.

We have a proposed anti-terror bill that proposes to terrorize the citizens by freezing the bank deposits of suspected terrorists. Why can’t we have a saner anti-corruption and anti-treason bill that simply obliges public officials to disclose their deposits in foreign banks by waiving their right to secrecy there? What can be more a matter of national security than preventing the remaining wealth of this already much ransacked country from being smuggled outside and frittered away by crooked traitors or treacherous crooks? What can be higher treason than plucking food from the mouth of the hungry to bet on Manny Pacquiao’s fights? What can be a worse act of terrorism than planting a bomb at the heart of this country’s survival?

Will Mike Arroyo sign a waiver allowing all foreign banks to disclose any deposits he might have made with them? That shouldn’t be a matter of choice, that should be a matter of course. By God, by law and by golly.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=47682

Pandora's box February 5, 2007

MANILA, Philippines--FE DOLOT, president of the Legazpi City Public School Teachers and Employees Association, had an urgent letter to the editor last Friday. In her letter, Dolot attests to the genuineness of the vote count in Legazpi after the May 2004 polls. In that count, Noel Rosal won as mayor with 44,792 votes while his nearest rival, Michael Imperial, lost with 33,747 votes. Rosal is currently the mayor of Legazpi.

What compelled Dolot and her group to write that letter is that Rosal's legitimacy has been challenged by Imperial and has been upheld by the Comelec's Second Division and then by the Comelec en banc. The case is now pending before the Supreme Court.

What happened was this: After the May 2004 elections, the counting of the votes for mayor was done in full view of the public and duly signed by the teachers. The count produced the results above. No one complained about any irregularity in the counting. No one among the watchers, including the representatives of the candidates, said the teachers called out the wrong names from the ballot forms. The counting was clearly, transparently, unassailably aboveboard.

Now comes the curious part. When the ballot boxes got to the Comelec, Imperial challenged the count, claiming that many of the ballots were fake. When the Comelec Second Division opened the boxes, lo and behold, its members did in fact find a host of fake ballots. How in God's, or Beelzebub's, name those things got in there, only they know. The public school teachers at least are absolutely certain the fake ballots were not there when they turned the ballot boxes over to the Comelec. They know that for a fact because all the ballot boxes bore their signatures certifying them to be authentic. The fake ballot boxes the Comelec "discovered" in their premises did not carry those signatures.

And still comes the curiouser, or more ingeniously devious, part. The fake ballot boxes did not contain votes for Imperial, they contained votes for Rosal! So, putting on the face of stern benignity, the Comelec Second Division and en banc, in sync ruled to blot out the obscenity--the fake ballots--from the face of the earth. And, lo and behold, Rosal ended up with 30,517 votes and Imperial with 32,660 votes. Ergo, by the Comelec's reckoning, Imperial is the rightful mayor of Legazpi City, a matter the commissioners have now laid out before Solomon, also called the Supreme Court, to adjudicate. Ah, but truly, they add whole new meanings to the word "commissioner."

Dolot laments in her letter: "The ballots that were counted by the division were obviously tampered with as they did not bear our real signatures as members of the BEI. This prompted us to file an affidavit with the Comelec Second Division questioning the spurious signatures on the documents, but it never gave us, some 110 teachers, a chance to be heard."

I can understand the teachers' wrath. The Comelec's decision to uphold Imperial's challenge makes them out to be either incompetent or crooked. Either they are too stupid to allow such humongous wrongdoing to get past them or they are too bright to improve their plight by selling principle. Public school teachers in this country have nothing in life but their good name. To have that taken from them too, they have every right to go to war, or write letters to the editor, whichever delivers them first.

But Jesus Christ, between the public school teachers who counted the votes before the burning gaze of the voters of Legazpi and Benjamin Abalos' cohorts who unearthed the fake ballot boxes amid the shadows of their tomb, beyond the gaze of human eye, whom will you believe? That's a no-brainer.

Seemingly a local issue that affects only local politics, it is in fact a matter of life and death, and one that should transfix our gaze. Two things particularly make it infuriating.

The first is: Why is it so easy for the Comelec (or indeed Congress) to discover machination in vote counts whose honesty the teachers themselves swear to upon their children's lives, while they find it next to impossible to espy any ghost of wrongdoing in vote counts whose rottenness everyone, from priest to general, from God to Gudani, is loudly condemning?

The second is that it makes a mockery of elections. In the same page where Dolot's letter came out last Friday was another letter by a Rudy Coronel that bitterly, and completely rightly, protested the firing of elected officials by the Ombudsman. It was a good reminder that in this country it is not enough to win elections to hold office. You have to snarl and claw as well throughout your term to fend off enemies who mean to grab your office by hook or by crook. Ronaldo Puno's dismissal of officials he does not like is horrendous enough as it is, and I myself cannot understand why we, the public, have not gone to the streets to exorcise that deviltry. That is an ice pick shoved into the heart of democracy. Henceforth, elected local officials may exist only at the sufferance of one of the most insidious and obnoxious characters to crawl out of this planet.

The Rosal-Imperial case pours gasoline into that fire. Henceforth, the ultimate arbiter of who should govern this country is not the Filipino Voter, it is the Alien Comelec. Forget campaigning among your constituents, just remember to campaign among the commissioners. Forget the voters' votes, just remember the commissioners' commissions.

Rosal is removed from office by this act of malice and maliciousness, elections become nothing more than a costly exercise in self-flagellation. The boxes from Legazpi that the Comelec Second Division opened were not just ballot boxes that contained fake ballots, they were a Pandora's box that unleashed an army of evil upon this land.

They get away with this, heaven help us.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=47455

Wanted 02/01/2007

ON THE face of it, our circumstances today do look desperate.

We have, as the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has just pointed out -- thank God we now have someone heaven-sent guiding it, who is Angel Lagdameo; the previous one smelled of sulfur -- murder and mayhem rioting like hoodlums, with government unable or unwilling to do a thing about it. Hell, with government aiding and abetting it at every turn. We have, as the CBCP has also just pointed out, an impending election with all the machinery for cheating in place, the Commission on Elections, the electoral body that doesn’t know how to count votes, at the heart of it.

We have, as the CBCP has further pointed out, a President who is not the president at all. Or in its more churchly language, one shrouded in much controversy, the “Hello Garci” scandal being one of the “unresolved” issues of the 2004 elections.

We have, as sundry commentators have pointed out, or as our own senses warn us, an ironfisted ruler who is universally loathed but who has been able to do what she pleases with this country; an opposition in shambles with no political or moral authority to commend it to the public; no political figure in sight to pose a serious challenge to the usurper; a military that sets dishonesty up for emulation and nobility down for incarceration; duly elected local officials booted out by a President who never won a presidential election; a people losing all hope things will get better.

On the face of it, our circumstances today do look desperate. But that was the same face of this country two-and-a-half decades ago. We had pretty much the same circumstances then.

In the early 1980s, we had a dictatorship headed by an ironfisted ruler who was universally hated but who was able to do what he pleased with this country. Though assailed by lupus and an increasingly hostile US Congress, Ferdinand Marcos seemed destined to last forever: On the very twilight of his rule, the Reagan government was still talking about him being part of the solution. The military was in total control, a military that rewarded evil (also called mindless obedience), and punished good (also called mindful dissent).

There wasn’t much of an opposition, all challenges by way of the vote being thwarted by barefaced cheating. Which made boycott the only sane response to offers of elections periodically dangled by the dictatorship. Murder and mayhem were rife, quite apart from internment in the camps for harboring political beliefs contrary to the fascistic ones of the New Society, the forerunner of today’s Strong Republic. And we were a people that had given up hope things could be better.

Then from out of the blue came a Cory Aquino. Or probably more accurately from out of the red, which was the blood her husband spilled on the tarmac in August 1983. The murder of Ninoy Aquino, of course, harnessed the nation’s anger. But it does not explain how Cory became the hope of her country.

Indeed, Cory seemed to have everything stacked against her from the start. She was not a politician, or savvy in political affairs. While Ninoy lived, she had stayed in the background, content to be -- as Marcos would later tag her deprecatingly -- a housewife. She was not charismatic, she spoke in a quiet and unobtrusive way, her detractors having less polite words for quiet and unobtrusive. And to top it all, she belonged to what Marcos had been reviling as the “oligarchy.” Cory would later be called a modern-day Joan of Arc, but Joan was the daughter of a poor peasant driven to serve God and country from ecstatic visions. Cory was the daughter of a rich landowner, driven to serve God and country by a traumatic experience.

But she conjured a vision that had all the power in the world, and that has all the bearing on our present circumstances. She stoked up the image of being the opposite of Marcos. In the end, it did not matter what her personal circumstances were. All that mattered was what she represented. Marcos was corrupt, she was innocent. Marcos was death, she was life. Marcos was tyranny, she was freedom. Marcos was repression, she was liberation. Marcos was a liar, she told the truth. Marcos was despair, she was hope. Marcos was a devious politician, she was an honest citizen. Marcos was a nation-wrecker, she was a house-maker. Marcos was evil, she was good. The list went on and on.

Which brings me to my question: Why can’t someone like that emerge from the loins of today’s despair? Someone who can be the opposite of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo? The thing to give voice to the nation’s anger is already there -- the “Hello Garci” tape. Why can’t someone who is the opposite of Arroyo arise from those ashes?

The mistake is for us to look for someone like that from the ranks of the usual suspects, who are the politicians. Why should it be a politician? Cory was not, but she compelled the politicians to rally around her by the force of what she represented. Enough to compel even Doy Laurel, who imagined himself (completely wrongly) to be Marcos’ able-bodied challenger, if not replacement, to give way to her came the snap elections. Don’t look for the opposite of Arroyo from the ranks of the politicians, look for him or her from the ranks of the artists, the teachers, the youth, the poets, the innocent.

The issue is not political, it is moral. The solution is not political, it is moral. Or the first will follow the second.

Don’t worry about the organization or the resources or the manpower. If you build it, they will come -- said that line in “Field of Dreams.” Which is just another way of saying that an idea whose time has come will demand to be fulfilled, will bend everything -- even the will of a tyrant -- to its will.

Think of this as a full-page ad. Wanted: The Opposite of Gloria.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=46809

Psychic twins 01/31/2007

THAT was a breathtaking piece of demagoguery George W. Bush unleashed upon the Filipinos, if not the world, last weekend. He called up his equally miserable and alienated counterpart in that miserable and alienated part of the world called the Philippines to thank her for her support in fighting terrorism.

We know at least that that phone call really took place. We know that not because Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s voice, if not Bush’s, is unmistakable, something we heard in another phone conversation some time ago. We know that because an American official confirmed the fact. This government being what it is, it is not beyond inventing it (certainly it has not been loath to embellish it). Bush called up Arroyo in Davos at 4 p.m. last Friday to congratulate her for her “fantastic leadership” in fighting the Abu Sayyaf.

That is all very nice, except for one thing: Nobody believes Bush is fighting terrorism. Indeed, nobody believes Bush, period. Still, indeed, nobody believes Arroyo, either.

Of course, Bush will praise Arroyo for being at his corner at this time. Nobody else is. Not the United Nations, and not the usual suspects, which are America’s traditional allies, except the Philippines, probably not even the government he installed in Iraq after invading it on the basis of an outright and outrageous lie. Bush’s latest decision to escalate US troop deployment in Iraq has met only worldwide condemnation, even from timid Japan. Japan’s foreign minister said invading Iraq on the notion that it had weapons of mass destruction was a fatal mistake, and sending more troops to Iraq on the notion it will improve the situation there is an even bigger mistake.

There is, in fact, a precedent for Bush calling up Arroyo to congratulate her for being a passionate crusader against terror. That was George Bush Sr., who was still Ronald Reagan’s vice president at the time, while on a visit here toasting Ferdinand Marcos for the latter’s passionate adherence to democracy. Like father, like son.

But what can one say at that spectacle of Bush Jr. coddling Arroyo, or the other way around? They deserve each other!

They do quite incidentally in more ways than one. Bush’s congratulatory phone call last Friday drove home one awesome point to me with the force of Zen enlightenment. That is, that they are uncanny political psychic twins.

Both are the scions of presidents who did not particularly distinguish themselves and ended up being battered by flamboyant rivals in elections. Bush the elder lost to Bill Clinton, who sneered at him with the line, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Diosdado Macapagal lost to Ferdinand Marcos who sneered at him with the line, “Alis d’yan” [“Get out of there”]. Both scions carried a huge chip on their shoulders. Both got to have the hots for absolute power.

Both cheated in elections to become president. Bush ripped off Al Gore in Florida, with no small aid from his brother Jeb, who orchestrated the cheating, not least by wrongly listing large numbers of blacks and Democrats as “felons” who were ineligible to vote. Jeb also fought off a recount that would have shown Gore ahead.

Arroyo, well, ask Garci, though all you will get are lies. But ask him anyway if only to elevate his blood pressure to lethal levels.

America lost more, of course, not just in having a thug in the White House but in not having an enlightened being in the form of Gore in it. But, well, FPJ doesn’t loom badly from hindsight: He seemed at least to have been possessed of epic decency in contrast to the epic indecency of the one currently occupying Malacañang.

Both Arroyo and Bush are breathtakingly mediocre individuals whose capacity for evil their respective constituents completely underestimated. Bush was -- and is -- a bumbling idiot who bumblingly idiotically turned the world into a quagmire, trashing the UN, trashing age-old protocols about international relationships, and trashing the foundations of peace his predecessors spent their lives to build. Arroyo was just hanging on by the coattails of Corazon Aquino and Jaime Cardinal Sin until she was thrust to power. And then she screwed them, too, turning this country into a quagmire, trashing the presidency, trashing democracy and trashing every hallowed tradition of freedom her predecessors spent their lives to build.

Both are God’s -- or the devil’s -- gift to lying. Bush invaded Iraq claiming it had weapons of mass destruction. Arroyo invaded the presidency claiming votes of massive invention. Well, she said she would not run to begin with.

Both have completely terrorized their countries -- in Bush’s case apart from the world. Bush unleashed a new McCarthyism upon the United States, witch-hunting terrorists who were people who looked suspiciously like Arabs or wore beards, luxurious or otherwise, demanding levels of patriotism known previously only to Joseph McCarthy and sundry jingoists. “You are either for me or against me,” he said after 9/11, which, like I said earlier, made the choice extremely easy. Later, one magnificent philosopher-cum-sage-cum-student of glorious cultural learnings would come to show him up. His name was Borat.

Arroyo, well, look at the characters around her: Ronnie Puno, Raul Gonzalez, the Garci generals, the Prosperos and Katzenjammer Kids from Bicol of Congress, and Mr. Libel Suit himself. And count the number of dead over the last couple of years.

Both have become the most hated persons on the planet. Both, like Medusa, have caused people to die simply by gazing at them, which in these media-fed times is virtually inescapable. Both have become the Number One (and Two) recruiters of al-Qaeda.

Ah, but there’s the rub. The Americans have already rejected Bush, turning him into a Barely Smoldering, Never Mind Burning, Bush for the remainder of his second term. When will we do the same for someone who never won it?

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=46559

Conspirator 01/30/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- I remember that there was much debate among the Conspiracy Café people about whether to charge entrance fee at the gate or only at the “Music Room.” The place has a garden outside, where people who just want to talk hang around; and a small room inside, to where people who want to listen to the performers perform amble.

Eventually, proponents of the latter won out. The speakers aimed at the garden to enable the patrons there to hear the performances as well were taken out, and only the music room charged an entrance fee. It stood to reason: Only those patrons who chose to bathe in the waters of the musical, and magical, springs inside needed to pay for it. Listening to those glorious sounds was a privilege, and one that came at so small a price.

I recall this now with no small amusement. Because these concerns, which elicited much passionate discourse, were clearly lost on one of Conspiracy’s neighbors out back. Conspiracy is located on Visayas Avenue in Quezon City, a commercial area. But the neighborhood at the back of Visayas Avenue is residential. Unfortunately for Conspiracy, it happened to be in proximity with a resident, or residents -- a middle-aged couple -- who did not share its view about the fabulous worth of its musical offerings. Indeed a couple that believed that people shouldn’t have to pay to listen to these things, they have to be paid to do so. Despite Conspiracy’s heroic efforts to insulate its sound, some of it apparently continued to escape through to their ears.

That was the reason that patrons found a huge sign at Conspiracy last Tuesday night announcing that the place was being closed by order of City Hall. The neighbor, who apparently had some connections with City Hall, lodged a complaint, and City Hall ordered Conspiracy to cease and desist from spewing “noise pollution” (its term) into this planet. I am seriously suggesting that as the title for the next album of any of the artists involved with Conspiracy -- “Noise Pollution.” Isn’t it a grand (or as Gary Granada says, "gara") album title? Or title of a song?

Unfortunately, a couple of things were lined up for last Tuesday at Conspiracy. They were the book launching of Charlson Ong’s novel, “Banyaga: A Song of War,” published by Anvil; and a session with Session Road. City Hall, with its tremendous talent for making life miserable for taxpayers, issued the closure order at 4:45 p.m. with an almost gleeful view to making an appeal next to impossible. Petty tyrants may be petty, but they are, oh, so tyrannical. Happily, the Conspiracy people -- by dint of cajoling, badgering and pleading -- were able to make the next-to-impossible possible, and were able to bargain at least for the continuation of the book launching. Happily, too, Karina Bolasco, by dint of racking up a minor fortune in cell phone bills, managed to assure all and sundry the event was pushing through. A crowd of the usual suspects, writers, artists and poseurs came through. They came late, but they came -- and were game, singing themselves hoarse afterward. Now that, I grant, Conspiracy has to pay people to listen to.

The reason I am writing about all this is that for the strangest reason, the thing got blown out of proportion and landed on TV, radio and newspapers. I got to be interviewed a couple of times because my name kept cropping up as the owner of, or one of the partners in, Conspiracy. I’ve had to explain that though I am proud to be a “Conspirator,” I am nowhere near to owning it. Nobody is. Conspiracy is the brainchild of Gary Granada who conspired with fellow singers Noel Cabangon, Bayang Barrios, Cynthia Alexander, Joey Ayala and Cooky Chua to put it up. They invited other people to join the conspiracy, and last I looked, some 150 people had done so -- artists, NGO people, and plain lovers of music, however some might dispute the term. You can’t own more than five shares, at P15,000 per. I claim the princely sum of two shares. The place itself is rich only in goodwill, creativity and talent.

I’ve had to explain two other things as well. One, it is not true that the place was shut down for political reasons. Surprisingly, that one rumor flew off faster than a speeding bullet, Conspiracy’s attempt at mischievous humor finally catching up with itself. No, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had nothing to do with it, Conspiracy being engaged only in dark plots to ensnare more patrons to survive the horrible business climate today under her. Two, it is not true that the place has been operating without a business permit. The only reason it does not have one physically in its hands is that City Hall refuses to release it in light of its neighbor’s complaint. But Conspiracy has been paying for that permit faithfully and on time.

In truth and in sum, the only reason Conspiracy was shut down last Tuesday was that a couple found the lush sounds Conspiracy was denying its garden patrons -- sounds that were seeping in their direction -- a diabolical distraction designed to disturb their disposition, and they lodged a protest against it. Happily, that has been settled, the closure lasting only 24 hours. An inspector from City Hall found the place to have reasonably complied with demands to mute its sound. Quite unhappily though, it may now offer only “acoustic music,” effectively ruling out explorations in jazz and ethnic music, which are heavily percussive. But you never know, maybe, some music lover-cum-philanthropist out there might want to offer to soundproof the place completely (which is costly) and make everybody happy.

I have my own reason to be happy at the tempest in the teacup, for which I must thank its raiser, or the complainant, profusely. It’s that I’ve just gotten all the ethical excuse I need to advertise Conspiracy shamelessly.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=46356

Absolute terror 01/29/2007

MANILA, Philippines--Don’t look now, but we could wake up tomorrow in absolute fear for our lives. Courtesy of a government that likes springing nasty surprises on us while we sleep.

That’s what’s going to happen to us if we allow the current anti-terror bill to pass. It won’t stop terror, it will unleash terror. The people standing in its way in the Senate are few, though quite formidable in the strength of their convictions. They include Nene Pimentel and Jamby Madrigal, both of whom have been raising shrill warnings about the new iniquity. As both point out, the anti-terror bill will mount full-blown martial law in this country.

The new terror bill ups the ante on the terrorist methods of fighting terror. Pimentel points out the exceptionally fascistic ones: One, it authorizes the surveillance, interception and recording of messages of suspected terrorists. Two, it allows the arrest without warrant and imprisonment of suspects on the basis of the say-so of anonymous informants and assets. Three, it allows the ironically named law enforcers access to the bank deposits and other property records of suspects. And four, it allows the same ironically named law enforcers to seize those same deposits and assets.

As Pimentel points out, the arrest without warrant of people on the say-so of hooded figures brings us straight back into the days of the Makapili. Well, what can you expect from a Macabebe? Metaphorically that is, she is a daughter of Lubao. But the comparison with the Japanese Occupation is accurate: We are living in similar times, under another Occupation, and with much the same results.

That such an obscenity has no place in a country that pretends to be sane—never mind democratic—is patent. But what makes it even more obscene from where I stand are three things.

First off, all that anti-terror posturing is no better or worse than all the gaya-gaya—from Elvis to basketball, from anti-communism to anti-terrorism—we’ve done with things American. Until George W. Bush took it upon his head to pose as God’s avenging sword after 9/11, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo couldn’t even spell the word terrorist, she was busy just trying to survive with Erap’s loyalists making life miserable for her. Well, the very premises of Bush’s anti-terror campaign, which GMA merely imported wholesale along with flour, are now being questioned not just by the world but by America itself. Certainly the American voters have rejected the idiot who spawned it, the one who said idiotically, “You are with me or against me,” making the choice an easy one—would anyone in his right mind be for him? Americans have since rediscovered their right minds and turned him into a lame duck in the last elections—as Filipinos will do to GMA this coming May. But the point is clear: This is not fighting terror, this is mounting terror. This is not defending democracy, this is pulverizing democracy.

More than that, the way things are today, we need the kind of anti-terror bill being loosed by GMA and one Ponce Enrile, who shares with GMA a talent for lying—he mounted a fake assassination attempt on himself to justify Marcos’ martial law—like a hole in the head. We already have most of the elements of martial law, as it is. We have political activists and journalists being slaughtered with impunity. We have elected local officials being ousted from office on one pretext or another, while the father of all liars, that fellow named Hello Garci, continues to thrive, and will probably become an elected official after May, “elected” in the same way his boss, GMA, got “elected” in 2004. We have dissent and protest being silenced by law and lokohan, by corruption and coercion, by madness and murder. Do we want a legal instrument that justifies all that, too?

But still even more than that, look at the utter stupidity, if not monstrosity of it all. Under the new anti-terrorism law, suspected terrorists will have themselves surveilled, will have their conversations tapped, will have their property confiscated, and will languish in jail after being deemed to have committed, or plotted to commit, or being capable of committing acts of terrorism against the citizens of this country.

Well, by God, by Allah, and by your leave, we have someone who has committed an act of breathtaking terrorism against the good citizens of this country, whose guilt has been proven beyond a shadow of doubt by a serendipitous act of official Isafp monitoring (never mind surveillance), but who has not had her property confiscated, who has not had her name entered in the list of the world’s most wanted criminals, who is not rotting in the wilds of Muntinlupa, the key to her cell delivered somewhere in the bottom of the Philippine Deep. She is in fact the self-appointed president of this country.

What can be a more terroristic act committed against the citizens of this country than planting a bomb at the heart of their vote? Planting a bomb in a church or schoolhouse doesn’t come close to it. What could be more ironclad proof of it than the self-appointed winner of the elections caught on tape, in all the glory or terror of her distinctive, inimitable, DNA-imprinted voice, plotting with a Comelec commissioner not just to steal the vote but also to steal a public school teacher-cum-poll watcher, and to hold up the truth she carries in her heart for ransom? Better to admit as evidence the word of characters with bayongs on their faces?

We want to push back terror in this country? We want to stop terror in this country? We want to obliterate terror in this country? Easy.

Just throw the one person guilty as hell of it to the bottom of the Philippine Deep.

The rest is just fomenting terror. Pure, venomous, and absolute terror.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=46155

Opposition January 25, 2007

THAT was a very nice picture that appeared on our front page last Saturday, during the sixth anniversary of Edsa People Power II. It featured Patsy Abad today and (in the inset) yesterday, or specifically six years ago. Patsy is the daughter of Butch and Dina Abad. The inset shows her as a kid during the inauguration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo: She is standing on the stage beside Arroyo, holding a Bible. Everybody else, including Arroyo, has their hands on their hearts, vowing eternal fealty to God, country and People Power.

The picture in the foreground shows Abad as she is now. She is 17 and has grown much, much bigger, and certainly much, much taller, than Arroyo who dwarfed her in the earlier picture. But she has grown in more ways than one. She is no longer at the Edsa Shrine, she is at University of the Philippines in Diliman, marching in front of its Hall of Shame. And she is no longer holding the Bible, she is holding a placard that says “Itakwil ang mga taksil sa diwa ng Edsa 2!” (Down with the betrayers of the spirit of Edsa II!) A reference to the person beside her six years ago, the person who went on to trash People Power. Holding the Bible and holding that placard have one thing in common: It’s holding on to the truth.

The significance of that picture to me—quite apart from the fact that there’s hope for this country yet, particularly to come from the young—is that it encapsulates the essence of a word that has been bandied about in this country, without people stopping to wonder what it means. That word is “opposition.” What does opposition, or more formidably, Opposition with a capital “O,” really mean?

Well, it means many things to many people. But there is really only one true or real opposition, or Opposition, in this country, one that is sanctioned by history. That—as Patsy Abad articulates with the dazzling simplicity of the uncluttered mind—is opposing the beneficiary of Edsa II for betraying Edsa II.

I say this in light of the growing debate about an emerging “Third Force,” which Erap’s people who have set themselves up as the “Opposition,” namely the characters in UNO, seem unhappy about. I myself am unhappy about it only in that it calls itself “the Third Force.” You talk of “Third Force” and you conjure images of Rogelio de la Rosa and Raul Manglapus and all the other candidates that rose to challenge the Liberal Party and Nacionalista Party candidates before martial law, and who -- unlike Bernardo Carpio who managed to push back the two mountains that were trying to crush him -- were cut to pieces ere they began. You talk of Third Force, and you talk of token, or "saling pusa," or, as that Bicol word puts it so well with all its connotations of nuisance, “sawong-sawong.”

You talk of “Third Force” and you grant that there is already an Opposition in this country represented by the people associated with Joseph Estrada. I know Estrada has the financial resources, but he does not have the moral one. Indeed, the vastness of the first is matched only by the paucity of the second. That is not an opposition, that is a restoration. That is not a step forward, that is a step backward.

In fact, they are the one and only reason an Edsa III or People Power III has not taken off in this country, notwithstanding that everyone knows that Arroyo conspired with that snake, Garci, to steal the apple from Eden; or completely secularly and viciously, to kidnap a public school teacher-cum-poll watcher who wanted to testify on the cheating. People Power requires as its most essential element the contention of Good and Evil, the undiluted venom of the Evil matched only by the pure magnificence of the Good. The Evil sparking outrage in the mind, and the Good, or the glimpse of it, driving people out into the streets.

You have Evil, however unparalleled, without Good, however dimly espied, and you produce only cynicism. You have a people burning in anger but unable, or unwilling, to do a thing about it. Which is what we have now. Which is why despite survey after survey showing that Arroyo is the most detested person in this country, we have spectacle after spectacle of attempts to rouse the citizens falling on deaf ears. There is no Good flailing unceasingly at people, enough to tear them away from the siren’s call of the NBA and storm the gates of Hell, or Malacañang.

What we need today is not a Third Force, what we need is a real Opposition. What we need is a force that rejects, refutes, or indeed, opposes, all that Arroyo stands for. What we need is a project that moves the country forward and not merely grinds it to a halt.

That, too, is why I am unhappy about the “Third Force” that is currently being forged by the Liberal Party, Nacionalista Party, Aksyon Demokratiko and other small political groups. I have no problem with its smallness: Great oaks come from small seeds. What I have a problem with is its identity. It is more defined by what it is not than by what it is. The “Third Force is not for Arroyo or for Estrada, it is not for the Administration or the Opposition. That is a location, that is not an affirmation. That is a geography, that is not an identity.

You want an identity, take it from Patsy Abad, take it from the desperate souls sending out their lamentations to the heavens from the pit of this land: Enough of the betrayers of the dreams of Edsa People Power II. Let their heads roll. It is opposing Arroyo not because she thwarted Estrada but because she thwarted People Power. Not because she cut short Estrada’s term but because she cut People Power in the fullness of its flower. Not because she substituted herself for Estrada but because she substituted personal ambition for national aspiration, scraggly greed for epic heroism, boundless spite for boundless gratitude.

That is real Opposition. All the rest is just masturbation.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=45475

The last word January 24, 2007

ART Buchwald had a very interesting announcement last week. “Hi,” he said on an obituary video, “I’m Art Buchwald and I just died.”

Buchwald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, bit the dust at 81 last Thursday in the United States, after accomplishing his mission in life, which was “to make people laugh.” He did that while writing a humor-filled column for five decades. He ended as he had begun.

While at this though, my favorite American columnist of that generation isn’t Buchwald, it is Russell Baker. Thank God he remains with us, even if his hold on this earth is slowly slipping. He’s a year older than Buchwald and a veritable font of wit and wisdom, the one often indistinguishable from the other. His funniest statements contain gems of insight, such as, “Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all but just terrible things.”

To go back: Buchwald’s announcement made me recall some pretty slick deathbed utterances, and I went on to look them up in the world library, also called the Internet. I was astonished by the sheer abundance of them. We can all do with laughing in the face of adversity today -- in lieu of heckling a non-president, which the audience of El Divo already brilliantly did last weekend -- and we can’t do better than to laugh in the face of death.

The utterances I picked out are outstanding in that regard. I disregarded the more serious ones, like Jesus Christ’s “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” or Julius Caesar’s “Et tu, Brute?” in favor of the more outrageous ones. John Donne did say, “Death, be not proud,” and Dylan Thomas did declare, “Death shall have no dominion.” But somehow the lines below seem to say it better, helped in no small way by the fact that their authors put their bodies where their mouths were. You get to have the image of the swashbuckling Errol Flynn, sword in hand and grin on mouth, daring death catch up with him, or do its worst.

Or you get to have a sense of people fighting to have the last word.

• P. T. Barnum, entrepreneur, d. 1891: “How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?”

• John Barrymore, actor, d. May 29, 1942: “Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.”

• Ludwig van Beethoven, d. March 26, 1827: “Friends applaud, the comedy is over.”

• Humphrey Bogart, d. Jan. 14, 1957: “I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.”
• Elizabeth I, Queen of England, d. 1603: “All my possessions for a moment of time.”

• Ernesto “Che” Guevara, d. Oct. 9, 1967 (while facing his assassin): “I know you have come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.”

• Edmund Gwenn, actor, d. Sept. 6, 1959 (asked if dying was tough): “Yes, it’s tough, but not as tough as doing comedy.”

• Timothy Leary, d. May 31, 1996: “Why not? Yeah.”

• Karl Marx, d. 1883 (to a housekeeper who wanted to know if he had any last words): “Go on, get out, last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.”

• Eugene O’Neill, d. Nov. 27, 1953: “I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room -- and God damn it -- died in a hotel room.”

• Anna Pavlova, ballerina, d. 1931: “Get my swan costume ready.”

• Dylan Thomas, d. 1953: “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies, I think that’s the record . . .”

• Anton Chekhov, d. 1904 (from TB): “It’s been a long time since I’ve had champagne.”

• Oscar Wilde, writer, d. Nov. 30, 1900: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”

• Marie Antoinette, after accidentally stepping on the foot of her executioner on the way to the guillotine: “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur.” ["Pardon me, sir."]

• John Jacob Astor, the richest man in the world, while about to board a lifeboat with his family during the sinking of the Titanic, to his wife (his second and his great love, Madeleine) upon seeing a desperate female passenger: “The ladies have to go first.... Get in the lifeboat, to please me.... Goodbye, dearie. I’ll see you later.”

• Lord Chesterfield, an absolute gentleman, to a servant when his godson visited him as he lay dying: “Give Dayrolles a chair.”

• Archimedes, to a Roman soldier who was arresting him during the Roman invasion of Carthage, while working out a mathematical problem on the ground: “Don’t step on my equation!” (The soldier killed him.)

• Charlie Chaplin, after being told by a priest, “May the Lord have mercy on your soul”: “Why not? After all, it belongs to him.”

• General John Sedgwick, Union commander, shot dead in 1864 while surveying the field of battle: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist.…"

• Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, d. 1702: “I am about to -- or I am going to -- die. Either expression is correct.”

• Marquis de Favras, on his way to the guillotine, after being shown his official death sentence by the clerk of court: “I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.”

• John Fields, musician, asked on his deathbed if he was a Papist or a Calvinist: “I am a pianist.”

• Joe Hill, legendary unionist, while about to be executed for murder: “Don’t mourn for me. Organize!”

• Saint Lawrence, martyr, while burning at the stake: “Turn me. I am roasted on one side.”

• James French, plain murderer, while about to be electrocuted in 1966: “How about this for a headline: ‘French fries’?”

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=45265

The greatest 01/23/2007

I CAUGHT the Ali-Foreman fight again on ESPN late last Thursday night, which made me sleep late again, but it was worth it. That fight in October 1974 in Zaire, billed “The Rumble in the Jungle,” is my absolute favorite. I like it even better than the “Thrilla in Manila,” which took place a year later.

I can still remember the air of electricity generated by the Ali-Foreman fight in this country. Ali had become very popular by then and had legions of diehard fans here. I was one of them. I am not a betting man and have never betted money on fights. (I’ve betted life and limb only on causes, but that’s another story.) But I kept telling friends that if I were to put my money on that fight, I’d put it on Foreman. I loved Ali, but, alas, Foreman was just going to kill him.

Foreman was the Mike Tyson of his time. Frazier, who had beaten Ali during his comeback, hadn’t just lost to Foreman, he had been pulverized. I saw the fight, and I swear Frazier lifted up an inch or two as Foreman caught him with an upper hook, which sent him to dreamland. I hoped for the best and feared for the worst. The best being that Ali would be floored instantly, the worst being that he would be maimed permanently. As it turned out, that was what Ali’s people were thinking, too, as the documentaries revealed. They very literally feared for his life.

I won’t go into the fight but urge the reader instead to look it up with that background in mind. You can imagine the frenzy that followed its result. It was Edsa People Power I and II combined, with the breathtaking ecstasy coming from the future downfall of this government thrown in. For Ali did not only do the improbable, which was to win the fight, he did the impossible, which was to knock out Foreman. Hercules could not have done a more Herculean deed. For days afterward, the jeepneys I took home during late nights reeked of alcohol and resonated with loud conversations about the fight. It also echoed with lamentations from people who lost big from betting on the "llamado" [favored].

The fight was shown on ESPN because it was Ali’s 65th birthday last week. One he had wanted to celebrate quietly but which the world would not let him. For good reason: Ali is more than a boxer, he is a freedom fighter. His arena isn’t the ring, it is the world. He isn’t just a sports hero, he is a hero in the epic sense of the word. As observers have observed, he doesn’t belong to the company of Joe Louis, he belongs to the company of Nelson Mandela.

Looking back, incredible as Ali’s triumph was over Foreman, it wasn’t the most incredible. For Foreman wasn’t Ali’s greatest challenge, the one foe that loomed invincible, that threatened to crush anyone and anything in his path. Nor was it Sonny Liston, the ex-con whom you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley and whose brute strength made him the most fearsome fighter a decade before Foreman. Ali’s greatest enemy was the US government.

Or more specifically the Racist and Imperial America that that government represented. The martial law babies will probably not be able to fully appreciate it, but it’s almost mind-boggling how Ali defied the draft during the Vietnam War in the 1960s. He was at the height of his career and stood to lose everything by it. He stood to lose his title, his money and his fame. Far more than that, he stood to earn the revulsion, the spite and the condemnation of the country he lived in.

And did: He was stripped of his title, he fell into penury, settling for what little he could lecturing in colleges, his erstwhile friends disappearing faster than his bank deposits, and he became one of the most hated men in America. To this day, even his kids are astonished that he lived to be 65 -- and metamorphosed from pariah to icon, from leper to legend. Ali was far more hated than Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and they killed King and Kennedy. Yet for the strangest reason (Ali always claimed Allah was his shield), no one lifted a murderous hand against him.

Why did he refuse to go to war? Because, as he put it: “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home, and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I am not going 10,000 miles from home to murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end.”

Later, he would add, “No Vietcong ever called me a nigger.” Somehow that seemed more poetic than saying, “Healer, heal thyself.”

Those words take on particular resonance today in light of what George W. Bush is doing to America. Except that there is no Ali to say: Why should I go 10,000 miles from home to free a people when right here in the home of the free and brave freedom is being extirpated everywhere and bravery replaced by fearful acquiescence?

No, Foreman was not Ali’s greatest enemy, and much as I delight watching that fight again and again, I revel even more running in my mind again and again Ali’s even greater fight against Lyndon B. Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s America. Ali didn’t do the rope-a-dope there, he just slugged it out toe to toe, armed with the fists of conviction and the fury of belief. And showed the world that he couldn’t just land a flurry of punches on his opponents, he could also take a haymaker—and remain standing.

Ali won that fight, in more ways than one. Richard Harris would sum it up beautifully: Other fighters would have given up their souls to gain the championship of the world, Ali gave up being champion of the world to gain his soul.

The greatest? You bet he is.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=44975