Man plans, nature disposes

BIMBO CABIDOG

The thinking and use of stratagem may date back to the hunting-gathering societies that existed around 12,000 years ago.  In that stage, the activity of humans was still solely the procurement of food. They foraged in the wild savannas and woodlands. Their ways already exhibited planning and a rudimentary form of organization to overpower the stronger forces of nature.

The thinking beast in man became defined during the succeeding epoch of the herdsman. This time, humans no longer hunted but pastured animals for food. Pasturing and husbandry ushered a big leap in advancement for mankind.

Horticulture and the domestication of animals changed the mode of man’s existence. He would no longer lead a nomadic life. He began to settle in places. With the subsequent clustering of domiciles, communities emerged.

As human life progressed, method became more and more the determinant of survival rather than sheer force. Soon enough, it would chart mankind’s transition to unprecedented prosperity, then historical social development.

Among species in the animal kingdom, only the Homo sapiens can plan. With the ability to think and plan, man would be described as rational animal. Rational intelligence evolved cognitive language, then philosophy, then science.

Let’s go back to the topic of stratagem. In various fields of contemporary endeavor, there is talk of the best laid plans of men. Planning may be credited to have brought mankind to where it is today. Society throughout the globe is now marked by prodigious advancements in material life. The dizzying speed and scale with which these advancements are made boggles the mind. It may be owed largely to planning.

But did planning really bear out every development, every progress, or every advance that man enjoys today? Or were many of it anyway the outcome of things that happened beyond the best laid plans of men? Where a lot of the revolutionary ones intuitive, rather than deliberated?

Discoveries and inventions seem to be the latter. A lot of them seems to have occurred in a flash of the moment, not as the ultimate result of following a charted course.

For narrow purposes, human intelligence has competed with nature in shaping the future. Societies have charted their development, often diverging from sound natural course, in many cases even at loggerheads with it.

It is now being proven by the continued befouling of the environment and global warming that man’s narrow plans themselves have laid the course of his own self-destruct. Nature, on the other hand, through eons of time has always planned earthly life’s sustainability.

Five-year economic development strategies may be credited with having brought prosperity. But they also have wantonly destroyed ecosystems, and brought about the deleterious phenomenon called climate change. In fact, as things stand today, they may already have placed Homo sapiens in line with other species for extinction.

Science now tells that the biosphere, apart from the human brain, contains the best laid plan for a world with no hunger, no devastation from calamities exacerbated by climate change, and no depletion of natural resources beyond recovery. This plan is cast in the genetic code of species.

There is dynamic interaction of organic and inorganic elements in their vast diversity. Ecosystems in their perfect balance are preserved. Resources cycle with remarkable synergy. Mass and energy flow in harmony, moved about by living organisms.

Such is how nature designs.

The way a lion, a python or an eagle – to name a few, ensnares its prey is a study in ingenuity that human stratagems may look phony in comparison. But even as they kill, they close a gap in the cycle of life, connect the food chain, and ramp up balance of the whole environment.

Every organism from the microscopic protozoa to the mammoth whale, and every inanimate element from the tiny pebble to the biggest mountain range, take each one’s place and fulfill each one’s role in the entirety of things. Their DNAs written into their beings make everything dynamic, one and interconnected.

What fruit a man will eat, from what tree he will get shade, and what herb he will thresh to cure an ailment, are all imprinted in the chromosomes of each species. The biological genes draw the plan for him to have food over the next ten to fifty years, breathe ever fresh air, prevent landslides in the uplands, break the lash of winds, and regulate climate.

A mysterious intelligence charts with perfect synchronization of time and motion how the myriads of life forms in a richly diverse ecosystem interact with each and everyone, manage specie population, nourish through the predator-prey relationship yet live from generation to generation, reproduce themselves, and turn around the cycles of energy and matter.

No one or group with PhDs in their CV can ever engineer one journey of life, like a seed projectile coasting along the seashore, finding the exact right spot on the shallow waters, descending, planting itself on the sandy bed, taking roots, and becoming a new mangrove tree. The shape, buoyancy, reproductive characteristics and even the destined travel of the seed have been encoded in the species’ genetic blueprint.

There is a lot of brain in the supposedly thoughtless wilds. Intelligence and logic unmistakably are also their basis of change. Quite amazingly, the natural world is even better at it than human society. Scientific observation itself has shown that brilliant stratagem is present in the being and becoming of organisms, supposedly with far less intelligence than man.

Finally, man plans, nature disposes. He built the grandeur that was the city of Pompeii. In a fury, nature personified by Mt. Vesuvius demolished it with red hot lava and ash. Kingdoms that have once stood proud and basked in the glory of a golden age would become a heap of ruins invaded by layers of dirt, and choked by jungle growth.

Through the attrition of time great edifices of men succumb to the elements. Water dripping on stone, and roots creeping under masonry finally tear the whole structure asunder. With forest covers razed to almost zero by greed, towns that have stood for hundreds of years would at last vanish under landslips and liquefied mud cascading from the mountains.

Truly when nature is abused, it reacts violently. But people never learn. The only way to save themselves from disasters getting worse and more tragic is to let nature take its course. Men plan narrowly, nature designs comprehensively. They would spend colossal amount of money and resources on engineering structures to address a problem, like flooding, that can only be solved ecologically.

Humans alas plan ultimately against themselves. They plan to get rich in five years. In the next 50 years, there would be nothing else to live off, no natural biophysical systems to support life, and probably no more dry solid ground to stand on. They concoct short-sighted schemes that in the long run blow in their faces. The artificial human designs destroy the natural scheme of things. Then they destroy man himself.

Enough with the culture of destruction, enough with the proud stratagems of a limited mind, time to let nature under the bidding of an infinite intelligence again have its way.

Feel of living

BIMBO CABIDOG

Is the future upon us? New game formats in computers seem to suggest. In these models, you already forego with the joystick or mouse. You are ushered into the action. You are absorbed by the computer program and interact like you are in it.

Indeed, the shape of tomorrow is here. Exponentially more powerful computers than the 1980s desktop PC, packed with a new breed of software, are creating digital environments that are much the same in feel and texture as the world real people live in.

It is called virtual reality, and it is becoming the new reality. You don’t handle it. You are in it.

New software programs have made it possible for an artist to simulate reality in multimedia consoles that appear already indistinct from the real. A click triggers digital scenarios that are just like you are living them.

Because of the reach of the internet now encompassing all climes, the uneven development of societies does not keep experiences from being common throughout the globe anymore. Digital applications are creating a world of new conventions and universality that may just in the next spiral already blur the difference between virtual and actual as it used to be.

The futuristic world even cyberspace in the first blush of invention did not dream of is no longer science fiction. It is the feel of the present. Artificial intelligence has sewn together a prodigious revolution in information that can sooner than later replace a lot of the old reality.

What does this explosion augur? One is a reconceptualization of the Age of Man. Has thought created it? Or is it still the evolution of the species governed by changing genetics and molecular configurations? Is man trying to fool himself by believing in the opposition between objective and subjective states?

The questions are past contemporary. They are the arrival of the future. It says that humankind should no longer debate the truth from the two standpoints of idealism and materialism. Computer revolution has led to making them one.

Science has always seemed to favor matter over mind, the demiurge versus the spirit. But isn’t the materialist construct coming into full circle with the creations of artificial intelligence? Isn’t so-called concrete reality the mind of it? What determines or abstracts the natural laws of motion, and the relationships that reveal phenomena or being.

Now, generating worlds of dream, artificial intelligence is designing phenomena that defy gravity and other laws that man has come to learn about his world. Anti-matter and paranormal existences do not run counter to rationality anymore as philosophers and the man-on-the-street would hold. They construct a higher level of rationality, the acceptance of concreteness beyond physical being, metaphysical phenomena as relatable and livable.

Is reality a product of thought processes? Is knowledge about a state that is in here, not out there?

Concepts, like concreteness, do also change over time. When man became a space traveler, he knew for sure with the confirmation of a camera shot that the earth is round. But this was not how it used to be, and until now folks still use the more convenient portrait of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, instead of the earth turning on an axis to produce the phenomenon of one half of it experiencing day, the other half experiencing night.

Hardness can be nothing but awareness of the mutual resistance of two forces impacting against each other. It can be but the thought of gravity being repealed by energy in mass.

Solidity is a suggestion that is not buttressed by what lies at the core of matter, the atom. There is nothing solid in an atomic particle that has one principle moving around a nuclear center defying shape and weight. While solidity seems to characterize matter, constant motion characterizes its basic building block: the proton-and-electron affair.

Consciousness lights that corner up, bringing the reality of atom whirling in empty space into the idea of matter. So, whether it is reality out there, or idea in the mind, no longer matters.

What does so is the feel. Without feeling there is no consciousness, and without consciousness there is no reality. Feeling signifies life, and life is the truth. Both concrete and imagined realities strike the same chord. And that chord produces the rhythm of living.

Ah, an esoteric abstraction to laugh at! Is love something to dismiss? Is the height of all feeling also the height of negation? But feeling is true, as the stab of hunger is true. Matter feels nothing. It is the mind that does. And mind feels even nothing.

Do you deny mind? Then you absurdly deny your very existence. You are, because you think. And what you think of is what you feel. Things are true because you feel them.

When you no longer feel, you do not exist anymore. Even death is felt. It is felt because it is a part of life.

People go through living trying to deny reality by shutting out one feeling for another. But what is shut out is also real, because it is felt. That’s why there is the word about shutting out.

The affirmation and negation, the thesis and antithesis, are all of living in an inescapable sense.

Futuristic digital world is the world more and more folks live today. In days ahead, will they already dwell in it? Live in it? Such is so if it gets the feel of living.

To feel is to be real, whether you are a butterfly dreaming of being a man, or a man dreaming of being a butterfly.

Night Of The Fireflies

Bimbo Cabidog

I once lived in a neighborhood rimmed by a patch of undergrowth. Our rented house was about two hundred meters away from the marketplace and almost the same distance from the town square where the municipal hall stood, on the opposite side. Although we lived already in an urban area, the ticket nearby afforded the experience of a rural scene.

The houses in the neighborhood were still few with wide open spaces between. Denser undergrowth hemmed the bank of the river a few hundred paces away where our street ended. On days when there were no classes (I was then in grade school yet) and the vibrant sun was up at eight or nine in the morning, I would wander into the surrounding nature bringing top-of-the-line bird hunting equipment, a slingshot.

The spot hummed with life. Chirping and buzzing were all over. I instinctively turned on my body radar for bird detection. The beautifully feathered kingfishers flitted in the thick canopy of leaves atop the tall trees. I always had bad luck with birds. So I content with spending the rest of the hunt catching dragon flies with a midrib from palm leaves tipped by the sap of a jackfruit tree.

I could spend the whole day lost in the mini jungle. But my father’s voice would ring near noon. And to signal the time to terminate the useless fling, he held the belt around his waist. I still couldn’t figure why we had to eat at twelve. But lunch was mandatory. Past it I was obligated to lay down for siesta.

In the noonday nap, I briefly dreamed of losing myself amid the forest of shrubs and bushes blanketed by an iridescent sea of yellow button-like flowers that broke into a dense swirl of malobago trees. Then I met the spirits inviting me to live in their dazzling kingdom.

Already awake at midafternoon, I would no longer go back to the nature trip, but waited for another thrilling sight to end the day. As the huge disk of blinding sun descended into the mountains, the bats flapped out of their day’s roost. The formations of the nocturnal creatures in flight above darkened the land with the advanced shadows of the coming night.

The night had a main attraction. I watched by the window the palisade of malobago growths disappear into the blackness and reemerge in evolving shapes mystically lit by an ethereal radiance. The radiance came from myriads of pin lights dancing in the ink black hollow of evening.

The bright scene at the Las Vegas strip that I would frequently see in movies in later years paled compared to the splendor of that nightly show. I had seen massive Christmas lights bathed houses and flooded streets, like the popular attraction at a posh subdivision in Mandaluyong during the yuletide season. I wouldn’t trade with it the mystery that I beheld every night in that time of my life.

Such was the nightly appearance of the fireflies transforming the ticket of malobago trees in our town into a theater. How I’ve yearned to embrace it. But the mesmerizing beauty was not for anyone to possess. It could not be wrapped in all its wholeness.

Childhood could be a dream and waking growing up. I had been a poor would-be marksman trying my luck with a crude slingshot. But somehow the hunt was not that much important. It was a child’s enchantment with nature, flowing with innocent belief. Adulthood overtook and snatched the gem away.

Electricity came to town when I was in second year high school. At that stage, I was already being taught to be a proud young man and have ambitions. Decades later, the environs I used to roam have vanished in the invasion of houses. I entirely lost the nights of the fireflies and a childhood forever. 

The Coming Of The Boat People, A Malayan Odyssey

Bimbo Cabidog 

What may be considered as the first Pinoy epic was that of the Bornean boat people who came to the country in a long distant past. Escaping from the tyranny of a certain Datu Makatunaw, they sailed on boats called a balangay and travelled at sea for several weeks until they reached the island of Panay. The ten datus with their families and followers settled here, 300 years before the Spanish and Portuguese explorers set foot on the archipelago on March 16, 1521.

A datu was the Malayo-Polynesian title of a chieftain. Ten of them would be said to be the fathers of the archipelago before the Spanish colonial times. Datu Puti then was neither a Caucasian nor a commercial vinegar. He was the leader of the expedition. He was with his wife, Piangpangan.

The others were Datu Sumakwel (and wife, Kapinangan), Datu Bangkaya (and wife, Katurong), Datu Paiborong (and wife, Pabilaan), Datu Paduhinogan (and wife, Tibongsapay), Datu Dumangsol, Datu Libay, Datu Dumangsil, Datu Domalogdog, and Datu Balensuela. All were of fair complexion.

Legend has it that upon arrival the foreigners encountered the short, black and kinky-haired natives who inhabited the island, the Aeta. They were terrified of the arrivals. Datu Puti convinced them not to fear. He told the native chief Marikudo that his group came in peace. The two parties then struck a trade deal later.

Marikudo held a feast for the datus. During the revelry the Borneans negotiated for the buying of Panay with a golden salakot. Since the land was immense for their own settlement, the Aetas consented and went to the forest in the uplands and mountains. The Datus partitioned the purchased estate among themselves, namely Aklan, Irong Irong (Ilo-Ilo) and Hamtik (Antique).

The epic is accounted to have given birth to the Filipino people and culture. Some say the story was just legend, and is not backed by concrete historical evidence. But it stuck, and much of it anyway resonates up to present day historical conversation. 

The balangay patterned the village communities that would emerge in the country throughout the past. The boat community originated the DNA for the basic political-administrative subdivisions that the country has today. They are called barangay, a noun coined from the word balangay.

The authenticity of the epic may be contested. But the oral historical account has become part and parcel of the Pinoy culture down the centuries. It would also be an indelible mark of the Ilonggo and Panay people's identity.

And by the way, the head of the basic unit of governance that compose the Filipino nation state now is called a barangay captain. Isn’t the title after the fact that the head of the community in that remote past from which the barangay of today originated was also a captain of the boat called balangay?

The Song Bayan Ko (My Country)

By ILIAD

Of course you know this song. But if you don't, OMG you should. What about it?

Bayan Ko has become a widely popular patriotic song right after the People Power Revolution that toppled the 14-year Marcos Dictatorship in February, 1986. It would be sung by the newly politicized citizenry and post-Edsa activist circles second to Lupang Hinirang, the national anthem.  

But before the triumph of the anti-dictatorship struggle, Bayan Ko would in itself be the story of the suppression of the freedom and democratic rights of the people when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and placed the entire country under authoritarian rule. It was taboo. Singing it in the open invited incarceration by the military, for being seditious and promoting rebellion.

Like the activists and leftist "subversives" that fought with even greater zeal during the dark years of the dictatorship, the music also went underground. It would be sung in secret meetings inside safe houses, in rites of compacts under the thick canopy of trees, the far-off hills, and houses of remote barrios beyond the reach of military operations. The stirring melody would also be hummed by detainees in the inner chambers of the enemy camp insulated by prison walls.

Yet like the freedom fighters and rural-urban warriors that never gave up even under extreme hardships in the constant shadow of death, Bayan Ko was imbued by its own lyrics with the spirit of indomitable courage. This was the sort of courage that underpinned the unwavering commitment to fight for the country’s liberation. It broke the barriers of fear to sing, to articulate, and to express the deep longing for release from Marcos’s imposed garrison state. As a line from the song says, “Ibon mang may layang lumipad, kulungin mo at pumipiglas.”

On February 21-25, 1986 around two million people massed up at the twelve-lane highway named Edsa to mount a political upheaval that irreversibly severed the fearsome military machine of Marcos, grounded his absolute power to a halt, and after four days of stalemate finally sent him fleeing from Malacanang Palace out of the country to a sojourn in the American state of Hawaii. Bayan Ko was now free. Its courageous hymn reverberated throughout the archipelago.

The February 1986 uprising was the historical watershed that separated how Bayan Ko would be sung then, prior to the ouster of Marcos’s fascist rule, and now in the climate of openness and free expression. Then, it was sung as a symbol of protest and defiance. Now, it is sung as a celebration of the people’s heroism,  and as a reaffirmation of the values of liberty and basic rights that the country can just no longer take for granted, given that harrowing ordeal of state terror of a repression.

As throwback further to the past, Bayan Ko was originally written in Spanish lyrics for the Severino Reyes zarzuela, Walang Sugat (no wound). It was attributed to General José Alejandrino, a propagandist. The melody and words were constructed to express opposition to the American Occupation that was going on at that time.

The well-known Tagalog wording now is by José Corazón de Jesús. The music was composed by Constancio de Guzmán.

Here is the song:

Bayan Ko

Ang bayan kong Pilipinas,

Lupain ng ginto't bulaklak,

Pag-ibig nasa kanyáng palad,

Nag-alay ng ganda't dilág.

At sa kanyáng yumi at ganda,

Dayuhan ay nahalina;

Bayan ko, binihag ka,

Nasadlak sa dusa.

Ibon mang may layang lumipad,

Kulungin mo at umiiyak,

Bayan pa kayáng sakdál dilág,

Ang 'dì magnasang makaalpás?

Pilipinas kong minumutyâ,

Pugad ng luhà ko't dalita;

Aking adhika,

Makita kang sakdál laya!

Post Script: Rock artist Freddie Aguilar popularized the taboo (because it was “subversive”) song during the heyday of the anti-dictatorship protest in 1986, which also saw the waning moment of Marcos’s rule. How ironic that Aguilar would now sing it at the inauguration of the republic’s 16^th president Rodrigo Duterte, in front of the dictator’s son and namesake who wants to revise history and vindicate his father by, among others, getting him buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, which the new president has agreed to. 

Why Bilateral Talks with China Won’t Do

Purely bilateral dialogue between us and China to win our right in the West Philippine Sea won’t do. It is the height of naiveté to believe it will.

China’s actuation in the disputed waters has made it obvious that might trumps right. It has been that way with conflicts even before the first empire appeared on the planet.  China won't be the exception.

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, nation states that resisted the “benevolent” intrusion of colonizers would ultimately yield due to the gunboat diplomacy, the use of overpowering navy artillery when talks fell.

For the past 15 years, China has employed against its weak neighbors approximately the same tactic in enforcing possession over 90 percent of the South China Sea and a large portion of our exclusive economic zone. This is to flex superior military muscle.

China is occupying the large ocean out there and encroaching in our waters, not because of the truthfulness or rightfulness of its nine-dash line, but because of the might of its naval and air assets. Had it nothing like them, it wouldn’t even think of trying.

By building an artificial island in the Spratlys, the Chinese government has signified the intention to lay over for good. No diplomatic words, persuasive reasoning, legality or resort to gift-laden compromises will stop that.

We have nothing to contest China’s aggression in terms of equal war capability on air and sea. Are we to believe that its bullying patrols are going to abandon the territory and retreat to their mainland shores out of moral compunction, or deference to an aggrieved friendly neighbor?

Moral persuasion or begging doesn’t work in resolving territorial disputes. Neither is readiness to give up what otherwise should be a non-negotiable position – like our exclusive marine entitlement, in exchange for some project with dubious social and economic value.

On the other hand, resorting to bilateral talks forfeits the one big advantage of our cause: the potent backing of other stakeholders. This involves not only economic and political pressure, but composite military force, not only for parity, but to get the upper hand in maneuver or brinkmanship.

Alone by ourselves across the negotiating table, we will have no option but to just play foolhardy or grudgingly accept the inevitable, because we have waived our source of strength: the big stakes of powers – equal to or even greater than China, that are interested in settling the rift in our favor.

Bilateralism should be borne in mind as not just an alternative or a parallel track to the multilateral approach. It is opposite to the latter, for it shuns the involvement of other concerned parties. It excludes the other nations which also have stake on the outcome. It cancels out multilateral resolution.

The problem with this is it foists two counterproductive effects. One is we lose bargaining chips, or political ammunition when fireworks become inevitable. Second is we do not only ignore, but end up trashing, the equally important concerns of other geopolitical players. Thus, we alienate them, instead of mustering a united front, with them weighing in.

Our interest on the West Philippine Sea is linked to the interest of the global community at large, that is: in disputes and international relations the rule of law must be followed. In the case of the WPS conflict, it is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Throw the pact away, and it opens an uncertain course fraught with political and economic hazards for every maritime nation.

Under UNCLOS, Filipinos are accorded the right to solely conduct economic activity over and underneath the Scarborough Shoal and Spratly. Won’t any developing nation like us want to enshrine that rule with no ifs and buts? It is for our economic growth, national security, internal stability and social development that China clears out of those waters less than 250 kilometers off our shorelines.

Why then should countries like America, Japan, Australia, India and now, coming into the fray, France and the European Union bother that we win in this? The magic phrase as well as the basis for it is the interest of FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION: their freedom.

If the UNCLOS is ruled out in the case of the West Philippine Sea, it means that China’s territorial claim on almost all of the South China Sea prevails. And if the SCS indeed becomes the exclusive lake of the People’s Republic of China, then the other countries can no longer pass there by air or by sea, without anybody's permission, as they used to since time immemorial.

It does not go deep to see that our loss in the dispute will be bad not only to our country, but also to others. A defeat will have the repercussion of disturbing the existing world order in a tremendous way. It will alter the present geopolitical and economic landscape with outcomes that may no longer be acceptable to a large number of members in the community of nations.

For the vast part of the South China Sea to be declared no longer international waters and the traditionally free maritime routes closed to transnational shipping lines plying their old commerce, is untenable. It will truly wreak havoc on the global market and rearrange the economic status quo.

If countries, like the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada are unable to ply anymore the vital sea and air lanes to our west whether for economic or military purposes, unless the PRC approves, a powder-keg situation will arise. It may take only a match stick of an accidental or intentional collision of hostile forces to light up a conflagration far worse than World War II.

The festering conflict in the West Philippine Sea is definitely not just a problem between our country and China. It is a problem of many nations. It is one with overarching global implications that countries affected would be in a good place to take part. It therefore demands multilateral solution.

Finally, international leverage drawn in by the inter-regional nature of the issue can be used to maximum political advantage for us.

Bilateral versus multilateral, narrow view versus the big picture, which are we for?

When the people rose and the dictator fell

On February 25, 1986 Ferdinand Marcos's 20-year reign ended. The dictator, with his family and a handful of followers, flew out of Malacanang palace on a helicopter that the American government provided. He would spend the next three years in exile in Hawaii.

It was a hurried flight that left uneaten food on the table, the strongman's diapers strewn  around the place with shit, Imelda's 3,000 pairs of shoes, and a paper trail of riches that would send the next regime pursuing leads on his fabled loot all over the globe.

By a "bloodless" political upheaval, the citizenry overthrew the Marcos dictatorship. This is the story that has been told countless times, and extolled the world over. The other one is what is not talked about. In almost all instances, it is not even recognized or  realized. It is the situation at that time that was the product of unwavering anti-dictatorship struggle dating back to the day after Marcos put the entire country under martial law. The situation made the so-called "Edsa revolution" imminent.

Nearing the end in the tumultuous days of the first quarter of 1986, right after Marcos won a snap election through massive fraud and cheating, his regime has run smack into a deep crisis. The nature of the crisis was that Marcos could no longer rule the way he used to, by sowing fear. Athwart such was the opposite aspect: the people could no longer be ruled in the same old way, because they have lost fear. If not for the latter, there couldn't have been any mass-up at Edsa.

Every self-styled analyst, instant chronicler and historian would throw in each one's gem of thought about people power revolution and even the miracle at Edsa. But they miss the more salient narrative: the masses ended the reign of a fearsome dictator, because they ended fear. The end was the product of long years of fighting the dictatorship by a minority showing the majority that the only way to vanquish tyranny was to overcome the climate of fear. That led to the birth of people power

The night Marcos fled, I was at the Mendiola Bridge at the head of seven hundred males, mostly drivers and factory workers, that marched from the barricade of four buses around Gov. Forbes and Espana. We have set the barricade earlier in the afternoon to dig in for what may be a long haul. Our contingent had arrived from Cubao on three JD transits and public utility jeepneys.

We figured that the next episode of shifting from the standstill at Edsa, where the great multitude massed, to forceful engagement at the gates of the seat of power would already be bloody, prolong into weeks, and spill into towns throughout the archipelago.

We trudged in military-style formation from Espana towards Morayta, to Recto, Lepanto and around San Sebastian College, ending right in front of the mesh of barbed wires at the bridge. A throng of gays did not leave our side. We asked them to fall behind, as they could not join the seven-man-per-squad elbow to elbow link-up. But they plodded alongside our column. Some of them were saying: "Pag nandoon na tayo, pakurot ha!" (When we get there at Malacanang, allow us to pinch Marcos.)

While cutting the layers of concertina wire across the base of the bridge to breach the first line of defense and put our streamers and banners right inside the stretch of the eerie road to Malacanang, we heard the chanting of onlookers from the buildings around rising to fevered pitch: "Pasok! Pasok!" The dangerous perimeter that had been a no-man's land to street protests was poised to give way to the forces of resistance wanting Marcos removed.

The cutting of steel proceeded, and the breach on the barricade further widened. It was at this time that an officer of the Presidential Security Command appeared to negotiate for his men to be able to leave melting into the swell of the masses behind us at Recto Avenue. We advised them to just stay for the night in the San Beda campus. Right then, we high-fived: Game Over!

Above the trees lining the university belt, a beautiful moon hovered. History must have its spice of romance. In anticipation of an expected clash, our ranks folded the streamers and banners and what remained were pieces of sturdy wood. Kapit bisig disengaged. A tense moment of anticipation of something epic, but life-threatening, built up our adrenaline. Then, we actually believed we heard low-flying helicopters chugged. I wondered, what could it be?

Shortly after, the buzz went around quickly. Marcos is gone! A portable transistor radio fed the info from Camp Crame.  Ha, the bastard had flown the coop? A comrade beside me blurted, "Tumakas ang yawa!" (The monster escaped.) The immediate question was: what are we going to do?

The barbed-wire fence at the Mendiola Bridge was completely gone. The people were surging, raring to dash into the palace. We persuaded them not to yet, worried about loyalist snipers that may lay in ambush and start shooting. But the flood could no longer be contained, the mass of citizenry heaved and pushed. In seconds, everybody was racing towards Malacanang.

Left behind at the bridge, our contingent waited for a command to answer the question: What are we going to do now? That was not the question for the sea of people down Recto and Legarda. The spontaneous and unorganized masses, with no clear and certain direction, upon seeing the barbed wires disappeared darted forward. The formerly meek and subservient from the hovels of poverty around the city suddenly transformed into an unstoppable battering force directed at the seat of power, mindless of grave danger and the death that possibly waited to spring up.

The first thought that dawned was: power still was not going to the millions of common citizens across the country, or to even the portion of them that powered the upheaval at Edsa. It was going to the faction of the elite opposed to Marcos, the other clique of the ruling class long excluded from rule. It was going to the pre-martial law and martial law political opposition, the opportunistic bureaucrat who could easily change color, self-serving politicians riding on the tide of popular defiance, the same pompous exploitative feudal lords of the past, voracious business proprietors, and monopolistic oligarchs overthrown by Marcos and his cronies. For sure, the failed coup leaders - Gringo et al, and generals that rallied with them against the authoritarian Commander-in-Chief in that providential moment will have their share of the luscious power pie.

The gut reaction from those of us in the national democratic ranks was this was not victory for the vast masses. It was also not victory for the consistent revolutionary forces that waged the obstinate and unwavering struggle against the dictatorship since day one in 1972 when Marcos put the country under martial law. In that hour of national  jubilation when ordinary citizens coming from different locations were already literally dancing in the streets around Malacanang, we paused for a sigh.

But we are no longer going to die, the thought also dawned. Oh damn, we were ready. What we weren't for was the sudden relaxing of the guard. What we were caught unprepared for was the disappearance of danger. We weren't tuned up to standing genuinely carefree. But oh yeah, there was nothing more to be on war footing. Time to join the fiesta. To my comrades' pleasant surprise, back at Espana where we retreated at 1:00 to 2:00 in the morning, I momentarily dispensed with the clenched fist, and began flashing the L sign and joined the festive crowd in shouting: "Cory! Cory!"

Constitutional authoritarianism, smiling martial law, revolution from the center, New Society, the whole construct of labels and rationale that underpinned repressive rule, crumbled. Fourteen dark years concluded easily in flight. The gut reaction was not to believe it. The monolithic rule that once held a killer military machine beholden only to its whim dissipated in seconds and rushed out the backdoor defenseless. It went in hot-house fashion. Even in downfall, Marcos cheated. We expected a bitter fight to the last. The demon finished on the run with tail between its legs.

Some hoodwinked citizens say, Marcos was brilliant bordering on genius. No, he wasn't. He was dense bordering on megalomania. He was a fool to think he could trick history with fake war medals, fake ambush of his martial law henchman Juan Ponce Enrile, and fake democracy purportedly saved from the communists by martial law, which was no other than the suppression of the civil and political rights of the citizenry by his Rolex generals. He tampered with the inviolable freedoms of the people, believe in unlimited power, and make plundered wealth the cornerstone of his search for a place of greatness among his countrymen. All that is history now, and history judged him harshly.

Yes, for a while the people cowered. For a while, they hurried to go home before they can be caught by the curfew round. They surrendered their weapons of defense to an atrocious military, kept their uneasy peace, and tried to go on with their lives despite the absence of their right to vote, and their freedom to express. In the end, the injustices boiled up to the rim, tolerance snapped.

I was among the circles that at the beginning could not just yield to the dark force in our midst. Marcos intended to be ferocious, to leave no opposition or challenge standing. But right on Day One of Proclamation 1081 when military domination transformed the country into a garrison state, we embarked on the equally ferocious fight to vanquish the evil. From the hills, to the plains, and streets of the urban centers of the 7,100 islands comprising this woebegone archipelago, the flame of the fight for freedom raged,

Finally, 14 years later, the nation of "48 million cowards and one son of a bitch" rose up to kick the son of a bitch in the ass. Three decades have passed after the civilian uprising and military paralysis that send the dictator on the lonely journey out of Malacanang, to Paoay and ignominious exile in Hawaii. Bongbong Marcos, the unapologetic offspring would now want us to ignore the murder and pillage his father wrought on the country, and move on to the future with him probably as the Vice President and perhaps later, President.

To Bongbong I say, the dark years of his father's dictatorial rule are not yet a distant past. It is not so distant as to forget the eerie silence of cowering acceptance, the climate of fear, the stockades with the bestial deeds that happened inside, the arrests without warrant, the involuntary disappearances in the wake of raids by his military minions, the gag on the people's mouth which wanted to say something, and the sanitized pleasures in a fully artificial society.

We in the long resistance wrestled with fear day and night. Courage was high octane. It fueled the endless marches in the streets, the lightning protests, the guerilla theater, the blurting of subversive songs, and operation pinta that refuses to bow to police brutality. It is too soon to cast into oblivion the defiant chants: MARCOS, HITLER, DIKTADOR, TUTA! DIKTADURANG US-MARCOS, LANSAGIN, LANSAGIN, LANSAGIN! No, we'll never forget. As long as there's still one like Bongbong trying to stage a comeback, we shall fight once more.

In commemorating Edsa, February 1986, the end of Marcos's dictatorial rule, let us also remember: the other one that equally fell flat on the floor during those glorious days of people power was the fear that the dictator sowed on the Filipino's hearts. 

The Fiercest Typhoon Whipped Up The Miracle of Survival

Two years since, folks can already smile with no lingering bitterness. It wasn't so, immediately after Supertyphoon Yolanda battered Eastern Visayas sending a 15-foot sea rise two kilometers inland.

Where I was in a suburban village of Tacloban City, the lashing of 280 kilometer per hour winds subsided around ten in the morning. Towards noon, the punishment was over and that was it.

But Yolanda finished San Jose, the environs of Fatima Village, the housing sprawl at Old Road Sagkahan and Magallanes, and the densely populated blocks that hemmed downtown Tacloban.

Thousands from these residential and commercial clusters met their death. The aftermath of the disaster bared cold bodies strewn all over the fury's violent path. The weather would clear on a great mountain of rubble, piles of corpses, and a sea of desolation.

I don't want to remember Leyte November 08, 2013 and immediately thereafter that way. But the poignant scenes of destruction blended with the pallor tragedy and stink of death can't help but sear into the memory. I know it will, in decades to come.

The devastation was so colossal, it was hard to think anymore, to fathom, to understand. In the afternoon of the second day after, food or rather the prospect of its disappearance was in the mind. My companions have to trek 16 kilometers from our place to get rice and viand with it.

They returned at eight in the night, shadows moving under a total blackout. They brought stories of looting, holdups of folks traveling on foot on the road from the airport to Palo, and pure terror of man victimizing man in dog-eats-dog fashion. 

Jinggoy’s Nightmare, The Nation’s Awakening

Before Jinggoy Estrada opened a new door in his life, literally his detention cell at the refurbished custodial center of Camp Crame, he encountered an emotional storm. He was going to leave his family, sleep in bed alone for an indefinite number of days that can go into months and years, shirk an enviable life of luxury and power, and go through the thorny road of trial for the capital crime of plunder. Those gave him nightmares.

On June 23, came the moment of truth: no big talk was going to hold back detention anymore. The indicted named Sexy was going through the unsexiest pose of them all: fingerprinting and mug shot at the police camp. No amount of showbiz drama and body language choreography could make up for the disaster that waited to damn his movie-fashioned political career.

In the day of his surrender to the Philippine National Police, as he came into the glare of media at his house in the Corinthian Gardens, the senator’s eyes swelled. He held back tears, but could not. His jaws quivered as he answered questions. Yes, he was still defiant. He was going to yield to the authorities with head unbowed, he said, because he had done nothing wrong. But he struck a distant mien from that brave stance, once, on the podium of the Upper Chamber for a privilege speech denying having anything to do with the Priority Development Assistance Fund scam. He had immensely softened.

It was a nightmare indeed, but one that would be his nation’s awakening. Was it ever possible for personalities like him and Senator Bong Revilla to be so humbled? Was it ever foreseeable in the near future for powerful political figures like them to go down from their lofty perch and go through the police criminal procedure? Was it ever imaginable to see top government officials and movie idols of their level lose clout and be forced to take the finger print and mug shot, and later shamefully locked up?

That used to happen only to folks in the lower rungs of society. But they happened to Bong and Jinggoy, capped by their iconic images melting in the public esteem. And the people, who have been used to viewing the law as a spider web where only the small get caught but the big ones pull through, were starting to view power – specifically where it resides, differently.

There were things that were hard to believe in the country, not the least the high and mighty going to prison. But Bong and Jinggoy are where they are now, probably because they did not thought such could happen. They must have always believed as the people did in the past that no crime can be attached to them, that they were beyond the arm of the law, and out of reach of punishment for violating it. Indeed, there was an era when these were so. But the recent nightmares of the two riveting figures in Philippine politics today signify such may no longer be the case.

The incarceration of the two top vote-garnering senators begs the question: Could it have happened if the people have not awakened? Could it have passed if public consciousness remains as it was? What have recently unfolded in mass media about their fate were once untenable. But they happened, because the people would no longer settle for less. It had become impossible for the Department of Justice to merely sweep aside the news of the P10 billion heist of the people’s PDAF money, not conduct an investigation, and avoid filing the merited charges.

It has become impossible already to halt without any logical conclusion the course of getting into the truth of the Janet Lim Napoles racket, the connivance of senators and congressmen, and the modus operandi of corruption in the halls of power. The overarching interest of the people not only on the truth, but in seeing things done compelled it to go all the way, eradicate the source of the evil, and do justice to the aggrieved. The awakened citizenry would no longer permit anything short of them.

This was the new reality that slammed the effort of Jinggoy and Bong to wriggle out of their mess.  Politicians and celebrities were losing power, because the people have begun to regain it. Once, their word was bible truth. Now, most of it are either dismissed or taken with tongue in check. The people know better to trust the politicians or take them by their word.

Part of the nascent empowerment is the amount of information accessible by citizens, coming to them no longer through the traditional mass media, but alternative media at their fingertips, the cell phone in the age of social networking. Ordinarily gullible segments of society have caught up with the phenomenal advancement in the modes of information delivery available.

If Bong and Jinggoy can only find it in their brains to stop their self-delusion, they will find out that it is hard to override anymore the tide of awakening that has met with scepticism their denials and obfuscations of criminal liability on the PDAF scam. The citizenry is getting truths long hidden from it from sources other than that of traditional authority. Simply put, it is getting them on its own, with big help from the ceaseless upgrading of information and communication technology.

The people are getting information in amounts unheard of before. With these, they weigh, they think, they analyze. They form their own conclusion. Most of the time what comes out of the mouth of politicians are no longer given any weight. They are heard not to be believed, but to believe the opposite. Because of what the people know of the corruption that assail their daily lives, they won’t go for other outcomes than that the public thieves in the guise of public service are meted the brand of justice that they deserve, or at the very least subjected to the course of justice to ferret out the truth. And when the thieves simply say, “We did not steal,” all the more that they invite lynching.

Up to now, senator Jinggoy insists that he is just being persecuted for being in the opposition. Hence, his predicament is allegedly all about 2016, the administration’s plot to eliminate the imagined formidable challenge he and his peers in the opposite camp will mount in the presidential race. He either has come around to believing the deception or is clueless of the fact that the people do not believe that angle. Even his camp takes caution at giving credence to the political persecution theory, or personalities like Vice President Jejomar Binay and other stalwarts of the United Nationalist Alliance would have already rallied behind him. What got him and Bong Revilla was not politics of the powers-that-be, but power already in the hands of the people. That power is information.

Hopefully, the new door that Jinggoy has opened would lead him to change for the better. The nation is awakening. His fate would have been unthinkable yesterday. But today it’s become the compelling thought. 

Ang Krimen Sa Mga Matataas Es Mor Pan En Da Pilipens

The Napoles Gang hits the august chamber.

Kahit sa paggawa ng krimen, iba pa rin talaga dito sa ating bansa. 

Nagdudumilat na ang mga ebidensya, deny to death pa rin at saksakan ng drama ang may sala. Kung makapagtalumpati ang mga naaakusahang mandarambong na nasa itaas at makapangyarihan, animo'y api. Preskon dito preskon doon, pana-panahong painterbyu sa media na iisa ang sinasabi, "Pulitika lang ito!" Totoo nga mga kagalang-galang, pinupulitika niyo lang ang isang napakabigat na pagkakasala sa sambayanang Pilipino. 

Ni hindi man lang kayo makapagbigay ng matinong sagot ika nga direct to the point. Puro pakyut, paawa epek, na para bang: "Ah ang masa, mga fan lang namin yan, sunod-sunuran at paniwala lang ang mga yan kung ano'ng aming sasabihin." Ang pang-iinsultong ito ay bulag o nagbubulag-bulagan sa karumaldumal na krimeng ginawa laban sa masang pinagkakautangan (inaamin din naman nila) ng tagumpay kung nasaan man sila ngayon. Ninakawan na ng katakot-takot na halagagang sana'y ikabubuhay ng maayos ng kanilang mga pamilya, pinapatungan pa sa ulo ng mga kasinungalingan, at ginagawang tanga. Yan ang kasamahang palad ng mamamayang nagluklok sa kanila sa rurok ng kaluwalhatian.

At pati ang Diyos sa itaas idinadamay. Aba, ayon sa nakasulat sa T-shirt ng isang akusado, "God is on my side." Ang panginoon ay nasa panig ng inaakusahang magnanakaw? Papano yong ninakawan? Hanep, di manlang seguro nanginig! Palibhasa, tagos sa buto ang pagiging pulitiko at pagkakagaling sa showbiz, dinadaan nalang ang pagkakasala sa samabayanang Pilipino sa mga palabas at padrama para makalimutan. At may hypnotic sound effect pa. 

Pero ganoo't ganun man, nasa kulungan na yong orihinal na kompositor ng musical scoring sa drama sa senado, patunay nga seguro na hindi pumapanig si Lord sa pandarambong at panloloko sa kanyang mga minahal na anak. Kaya lang Lord, napakaliwanag pa rin ng di pagkaparehas ng hustisya sa bansa. Para sa mga mayayaman at matataas na pagkatao, tunay na may espesyal na trato kumpara sa nakararami.

May isang tatay na hindi matiis na wala manlang sumayad na pagkain sa tiyan ng kaniyang mga nagugutom na miyembro ng pamilya, sa kaarawan pa man din ng isang anak. Siya'y nagnakaw ng isang bandol ng instant noodles sa palengke. Huli kaw, dampot agad ng mga masugid na alagad ng batas, pantsak sa kulungan, wala nang imbe-imbestiga. Sa mahigit na dalawang taon, at sa awa ng diyos na kapanig daw ni Senador, nandoon pa rin yong mamang hinugot at biglang nawala sa kanyang pamilya. Walang maipyansa, walang abogadong gustong mag-aksaya ng panahon para tapunan ng kahit katiting na pansin man lang ang kaso.

Pero ang mga damuho na nangulimbat ng daan-daang milyon sa kabang-yaman ng mamamayan, kailangan muna ng napakahabang panahong pag-iimbestiga, paglilikom ng trak-trak na ebidensya, at pinakamasusing pag-aaral, animo'y gumagawa ng doctoral thesis sa isang kurso. Sa wakas, naisampa na ang kaso, kailangan pa uli ng halos isang taong pagrerepaso. Sa wakas uli, naiangat na sa korte, hindi pa rin basta-basta magagawan ng aresto, kasi rerepasuhin pa muli kung totoo ngang may "probable cause." Samantala, sangkaterbang mosyon naman sa korte hanggang sa pinkamataas na hudikatura ang iwinawasiwas ng mga abogado ng mga akusado mapigilan lang ang ultimong kahihinantnan, pagkakulong ng walang pyansa. Naks!

Maghambing kayo. Ano ang pagkakaiba ng isang bandol ng instant noodles at sampung bilyong pisong ninakaw sa mamamayan? Ang una ay di dapat pamarisan. Pero ang huli ay pinagkakaubosan pa ng pera sa pangangandidato mula sa pagkakapitan ng isang barangay hanggang sa pagkasenador ng buong kapulohan magaya lamang. Ika nga: Ten billion is ten billion! Sabi pa ni Jinggoy, "Everybody is corrupt." Pero iilan lang ang mangangarap maging isang small-time magnanakaw ng noodles sa palengke.

Pero kung kabigatan na rin lang ng krimen ang pinag-uusapan, maliwanag naman yata sa sikat ng araw. Ang isang bandol ng noodles ay wala pa segurong P200, sisiw sa mata ng madla. At ninakaw ito sa isang pribadong negosyante, isang maliit na pagkakasala laban sa isang mamamayan dahil sa sobrang kagipitan. Ang P10 bilyon ay lahat-lahat. Ito'y makabubuhay ng libo-libong katulad ng pobreng nakulong. At ito'y ninakaw sa 90 milyong Piilipino. Dahil sa pagnanakaw nito, ang ilan ay natulak na rin na magnakaw sa kadahilanang sila'y winalan ng pagkain sa kanilang hapag ng mga hinayupak na kurakot sa gobyerno. 

Di ba maisip ng mga tiwaling pulitiko at opisyal, sampo ng kanilang mga sibilyang kasabwat sa pangraraket, na ang pangungulimbat ng halimbawa P10 bilyon o higit pa sa kabang yaman ng mamamayan ay katumbas na rin ng tinatawag na crime against humanity? Pero gayun pa man, di hamak na ang layo sa buhay ng karaniwang mamamayan ng buhay na nag-aantay sa mga mandarambong sa bayan, loob at labas ng kulongan.

At heto ang panghimagas sa unang hain pa lang ng putahe ng hustisya. Habang isinasagawa ang paikot-ikot na daan ng pagbibigay katarungan sa bayan, nandoon ang pagsasabay rito ng mga privilege speech ng mga naakusahan, pagsasalita sa media, at kuno'y mga pasabog ng isyu, na iisa ang layunin: ilihis ang diskusyon sa totoong isyu ng kanilang krimen. Magtiis na lang sa walang solusyong pagkakapiit sa bilangguan kayong mga wala ng kung ano-anong mayroon ang mga akusadong ito. Maski isang di binayarang siopao lang ang nasiba ninyo sa tindi ng gutom.

Sa bandang dulo, kagaya ng pagkahaba-habang prosesyon ng Nazareno na sa simbahan pa rin ng Quiapo ang tuloy, kung matuwid ang hustisya sa likod ng mga harang nito, nanduo't nag-aantay ang kulongan. Pero ibahin nyo silang mga nasa itaas at kilala. Tingnan mo nalang ang magagarang kuwarto na inihanda ng gobyerno sa custodial center ng Crame. Di hamak na hinde naman kayang upahan ang mga silid na kagaya nito ng isang karaniwang sahurang manggagawa sa ating bansa. 

Isang natatanging lugar pa rin ang naghihintay sa kanilang mga nasanay sa naglalakihang mansyon at maluluhong pamumuhay, na tinustosan ng pera ng taumbayan. Ikumpara mo sa mga nagsisiksikang boarders ni Big Brother sa Kampo Karingal at Manila City Jail, change them. Ibig sabihin: IBAHIN MO SILA!

What Do We Care About Troubled Iraq?

The state of Iraq is falling apart, if it has not yet. This is the grim scenario that the world is witnessing today. In an unexpected turn of events, jihadis in the style of Al Qaeda and Sunni militants raising the banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) have overrun a vast portion of the country.

The ISIS juggernaut has captured major population centers one of which is the second largest city Mosul, grabbed strategic industrial and military facilities, and moved with lightning speed within striking distance of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The cataclysmic events that saw also the big city of Tikrit, hometown of former President Saddam Hussein fell into the militants, accompanied by the meltdown of the Iraqi armed forces, happened only in June.

Why is it important for us thousands of miles away to keep an eye on these developments? We have our own problems, what do we care? We should for two reasons.

First, there are Filipinos working there. The safety of our very own nationals in the hapless though oil-rich land is an overriding concern. Seeing to it that overseas Filipino workers get out of there in one piece is second nature to our human instinct at self-preservation.

On the other hand, there is also the economic interest. The dollar remittances our OFWs send help keep us afloat. They contribute to our national survival and, if you please, to the yearly growth of our Gross Domestic Product. The instability in the large oil producing country will disrupt the inflow of a vital commodity to our shores, dollar currency.

If the situation gets worse, there will be a big problem. The precariousness of the condition of our overseas workers in the midst of war engenders national anxiety, besides the government having had to address the edginess of their families. This automatically sends everyone into a crisis mode.

Meanwhile, a vital lifeline from export labor will be cut off. The severance of that lifeline aggravates the fact that the repatriation of our overseas workers, as the Iraq government itself scrambles in disorder for the safest exit, is going to be a logistical nightmare.

Of course it is beside another telling effect: added numbers of balik-bayans to our unemployed labor force. Hundreds if not thousands of jobless will pour back to the country needing work that pays as much as they get in Iraq. That is quite a huge headache. And this is still just about Iraq.

Analysts predict the likelihood of the conflict spreading all over the region. The conflagration can spill beyond Iraq's borders and gobble up countries in the Middle East where the bulk of our workers abroad are stationed. The widening of the Iraq conflict to the whole of the region poses a hell of a problem for our export-labor-dependent economy.

Second, the cataclysm in Iraq is not far from what happened to us more than a century ago. It brings some historical flashbacks worth taking stock of. Those were when we lost a nation just as we were about to win a revolution against colonialism.

Nation building is for the native inhabitants of a country themselves to do.  But purporting to teach how to govern ourselves, American imperialism at the turn of the 20th century took that away from us riding on our struggle to oust colonial rule. The Americans did not mind that our revolutionaries were already churning out a state by and for Filipinos, and we would be the first in our parts to declare independence from foreign domination. They took the chance of the weakening of a rival world power, Spain, to wedge in.

Since then, the country would not only lose nationhood and independence, but get stuck in prolonged underdevelopment.

The coming of the US forces offered self-proclaimed native leaders among the ilustrado (nascent landlord-bourgeoisie) class the opportunity to help themselves to the bounties that the new turn of events could offer. They have never really trusted the masses, and thought the struggle to liberate the country from superior aliens was nothing but an exercise in futility. They lost no time in betraying the anti-colonial revolution and capitulating to the new colonialist, the vaunted great North American nation.

Under the auspices of another foreign power, allied Filipino opportunists and traitors took over national leadership. But they did so as lackeys of the new colonial masters. They would repeatedly impose on the people the tragicomic irony of sacrificing national interest to an aggressor up to foisting on Filipinos its subjugating way of nation building deceptively for them.

Like in Iraq, under invasion by the US about a decade ago, the way was the way of war. It meant the Krag-wielding Yankees in the new American age storming a country that has just won freedom from foreign rule. It meant then US President William Mckinley's quaint dream about the "assimilation" of overseas territories to promote democracy, if by force of arms. The democratic dream ended up, as the emerging Filipino nation did, in the exploitation of one country by another country, the subjection of the latter by the former.

The same act of aggression was what would surface in Iraq more than a century later, three decades away from unleashing its genocidal bent on the Vietnamese people in the late 60s and the first half of the 70s. For this reason, Iraq's current existential bind does and must concern us. Like our being in constant war with ourselves, such traces back to the country's destabilization and molestation by an alien power.

What happened to Iraq, when George Bush ordered the American armed forces to bomb and shoot down the defenseless country, happened to us around 1900 when the Yankee contingents swarmed in on the Philippine isles and started shooting at Filipinos, expressly to pacify them. Whatever euphemism is used to deodorize the putrid act of war, it is nothing but naked foreign intervention. 

Victory would be snatched by imperialism professing to teach self-government, just as our freedom fighters were winning a revolution for self-determination, Because of the intrusion, the continuation of the Filipino nation that had been united by revolutionary struggle was aborted. The paradox was that the violence was presented as something that had to be done to introduce the new democratic country to nationhood and democracy. Over the years, such propaganda has not changed, in Iraq 2003-2011 as was in our land when the forces of foreign aggression crushed our people's aspiration for independence.

Once more, the self-professed champion of democracy and nation-building took it upon itself to occupy the defiant nation of Saddam Hussein and remove its existing government. The United States emblazoned into the posters of the aggression the rhetoric about wanting the Arab state to get rid of a dictator and have the citizenry savor western freedom.

The initial reasons for the war was Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction and his links to Al Qaeda. These turned out to be pure deception. The pretexts and the democratic rhetoric could not for long hide the fact that the adventure was truly to inject American enterprise into the Muslim heartland, and cash in on its coveted oil wealth.

But after the US's Coalition of the Willing barged in and executed Saddam, his bombed-out country entered an era of social fragmentation and endless antagonisms. The war mission would be rephrased over time, from getting rid of fictional WMDs and Al Qaeda to nation building. Ironically, the US succeeded in smashing what was holding the country together against the challenge of radical Islamism, Baath Party rule.

After a previous unholy alliance to bring war to the US's arch enemy Iran, alliance partner Saddam would himself be targeted for standing in the way of America's Middle East ambitions. But in his removal, the victim would be the whole of Iraq. So much for American-style nation building and exporting of democracy.

Saddam's elimination opened the floodgates to what the US and its allies had feared, the flow of jihadi groups and militant fundamentalist sects aiming to gain foothold on a piece of territory where they can finally hoist the dreamed-of Islamic state. Was the reverse karma? What else? Eleven years since the US invasion, the country would be bristling with lethal weapons in the hands of deadly Islamic radicals and its American-sponsored institutions attacked at will by them.

To sum up, the US got what it manifestly aimed to prevent. It unleashed an endless war that rived Iraq along sectarian and ethnic divides and weakened its defenses against Muslim extremism. The US aggression, instead of bringing security, destabilized the nation. Destabilization paved the way for the influx of Al-Qaeda-type militants poised to rule the country.

This is a lot to think about as President Barrack Obama positions the recent US pivot to Asia. While the US economy and military establishment still reel from the fallout of the war in Iraq, America would begin refreshed military, political and economic overtures to our region. The experience in Iraq could only send shivers at what the much ballyhooed pivot bodes. Are we in for another destabilizing intervention?

America is intensely training its sights on the emerging markets of the east. Not the least is the Philippines which has become a fast rising economy, mainly because it has began to wiggle out of the constricting imperialist impositions of the past and explore new economic relationships particularly among neighbors. Let there be no mistaking it, the enticingly fresh attention is for America and its exclusive interests alone.

Do we need a reinvigorated and larger US presence once again? We need that like the Krag that once decimated our forefathers.

The renewed turbulence in Iraq urges us to review history, specifically at the time when the powers of the northern hemisphere were reshuffling the division of the world into each one's sphere of interest, a time when foreign intervention postponed our independence and subjected us to a new type of colonialism. Did we progress because of foreign intervention, or despite it? Weren't our chance of a new Filipino century just embroiled in subservience to alien dictates, protracted insurgencies, self-defeating social conflicts, and a state busying most of the time with suppressing its citizens rather than making the country progressive?

The Filipinos did not sacrifice so many lives in the fight against Spain. But they would pay a cost of 600,000 lives in the resistance to US imperialism, as with Vietnam more than half a century later. As if that experience was not enough, the nation would lose more in the internecine uprisings against the tyranny of the new ruler, when the Japanese declared war on the US and besieged the country for being part of the American lake, and in the latter nationalist struggle of the awakened middle-class, the intelligentsia, the workers, and peasantry.

Wherever it goes, the US brings the curse of war, the slavery of nations, and the stench of death. This was so before. This is still so now. And tragically other peoples, not the least the Iraqis and we, pay the biggest price.