The Lover

A man who loves a lady more than he loves himself is a man who loves all danger, a knight in an armor shining, goring through hell and high water in order to make his sweetheart smile; who despite all kinds of humiliation shall not forget that his lady is his pride, his fortune. He is contentment to the lady a lover ought to serve, and to serve mainly at all times. He is a man who smiles in trouble, when all else is gone the last spit of earth shall belong only under his feet, his hands belonging to his lady.

Praise be to love, for love, like sadness, is a great and glorious poet.

Why we broke at the Olympics

Our failure at the Beijing Summer Olympics has received differing reactions both across the mainstream media and the blogosphere, prominent views amongst them are those which express dismay and blame the athletes for being either too confident or underestimating to the significance of rigorous practice.

Mind me, sports in the Philippines really took a dwindling status since the day it became one of the avenues of politicking including public relations, promotion of personalities, betting and gambling, and electioneering. Sports is being used as an instrument of blowing the egos of politicos stuffin' our athletes with promises of material wealth and yes, for the love of money everything became commercialized from basketball to boxing, the reason why the Philippines cannot erect a monument of prominence in the world of the best sporting nations.

On Solar Sports I watched a teary athlete from our Olympic contingent complain that he was not given enough attention during his preparations. It is true that they were trained just months before the Games (Philippines Sports Commission Chairman Butch Ramirez admitted it), something quite portending of the results when compared to countries whose athletes had already been training for the events more than three years earlier. Worse, the Olympian said that he practiced in irregular periods with non-permanent trainors and monitormen, reflecting the situation of our delegates whose needs in the field were not given immediate support. They were treated insignificantly and left to themselves like hens expected to lay golden eggs after some time. Our strategies are very far from other nations' which study with close scrutiny the performance of their players during practice, providing proper recommendations and additional facilities to improve them whenever necessary. It doesn't need much money because the right mind would no doubt apply improvisation, as what contingents from poor countries in Africa and South America did which led them to exceptional successes that even broke records.

Our athletes should not be the ones to blame. Put the target on the backs of the PSC and the Philippine Olympic Committee for not learning from the two previous Olympiads where we likewise zeroed in the medal tally. Sports is never improved but misguided, and there is no optimum technology advanced to the athletes; I would not be surprised if facilities used in their trainings were substandard.

And of course she is not happy. PSC's Ramirez picks the gun but saves his head by arguing that “the PSC has not received money it should be getting” for sufficient training of our Olympians.

That makes a ridiculous stimulus out of the cash incentive the government raised to 15 million per gold medal. I do not believe that the best idea they could think of was to put a carrot in front of a donkey to make it move, though our players were not into the pledge, but still it made a wrong motivation when the P10M additional to the P5M the cash incentive law provides per gold medal could have done a very big help if appropriated as training funds. But it was too late. It is difficult to energize someone to try to do it money in mind over rickety matter. What they need was improved technology and close attention to enhance their systems to a degree comparable to the upper-box if not champion performers of the world.

Dammit. The light of Reason and Common Sense is really closing along the chaotic horizon of the always-dimming Philippines.

P. S. It is in Wushu where we got our only gold medal; however, Wushu being only an exhibition sport, the victory is not counted in the medal tally. Nevertheless it gives some consolation; glass of water for a strong pint of intoxicating wine.

Did Allah ever tell the MILF, "Go make my people thine human shields"?

Based on what the MILF is doing in the past days we can conclude a picture of inhumanity complete with atrocious apartheid leadership they are likely to commit if ever they succeed to carve a self-governing pan-Islamic state out of Mindanao. I have always seen throughout history nations founded upon the blood of armies, rebels or secret societies, but never has such act of using the people as human shields been tenable inasmuch as it reflects the true colors of the bandits' agendum in raising up arms against the status quo state; that they are moving according to the MILF's vested self-interest and nothing more, not of the people, neither of Islam. They are making a fallacious logic whenever they involve the name of God (Allah) in their tempestuous undertakings, a notable one being that in the deceptive Mess of Agreement on Ancestral Domains, which begins:

IN THE NAME OF GOD THE BENEFICENT, THE MERCIFUL
MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT ON THE ANCESTRAL DOMAIN ASPECT OF THE GRP-MILF TRIPOLI AGREEMENT ON PEACE OF 2001

Yes, they are extolling God before they go raiding towns, open firing on everyone and hacking innocent residents with machetes and burning homes down to the ground, then they hostage the remaining civilians and use them as human shields upon voicing retreat. I've never heard of George Washington, Simon Bolivar, José de San Martin or Andres Bonifacio doing the same thing back in the old "Enlightenment" days of countries. Perhaps in the Balkans Kosovar Albanians were harassed and used as human shields back in '99, but it was Slobodan Milosevic's status quo government who allegedly carried them out.

However, just look at what the MILF did, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

In another part of Kolambugan, in Barangay Kulasihan, the rebels
shot at houses at around 4:30 a.m. PO1 Dexter Salvacion and a companion, Ricky
Sulicar, were gunned down while riding a motorcycle. Also killed in Kulasihan
were a cab passenger, Ricardo Gil, and an unidentified woman.

In Kauswagan, two passengers of buses that were either
torched or fired at were killed. Seven farmers also were slaughtered apparently
while attempting to flee. Some of the dead were left lying on the streets for
hours.

Television footage Monday showed mayhem in one smoldering
village as residents ran for their lives, jumping over the fence of their
houses. Burned-out vehicles littered the streets.

This is probably one of the most bone-cringing periods of our history:

A force of around 80 heavily armed MILF men slipped at 2 a.m. into Maasim, a
coastal town of around 50,000 people in Sarangani in another part of Mindanao.
They ransacked a pharmacy and a pawnshop, set several shops ablaze and strafed
buildings, said Chief Supt. Felizardo Serapio. Two civilians were killed—pedicab
driver Joelito Omas and James Varon.

According to MILF vice chair for political affairs Ghazali Jaafar the offensive in Lanao del Norte had no “clear orders” coming from their leaders, and it strikes me with ultimate surprise that the MILF leadership's reaction to this violation of the 2003 ceasefire agreement is very dismissive, eversince Commander Umbra Kato's takeover of villages in North Cotabato last week they haven't made any move to punish the bellicose initiatives of their commanders. Is it because the central leadership of the MILF approves of what they are doing?

AFP Chief of Staff Alexander Yano explained this in Manila:

“It appears that several MILF sub-commanders are not controlled by the MILF
leadership and just using the peace process as a blanket to launch violent
attacks against the people of Mindanao,” he said.

This seems to spur President Arroyo to call for the “defense of the territory” as this PDI article reports, and may certainly sound decisive for the moment, as Yano called the attacks a “virtual declaration of war.”

If Arroyo sincerely wants to defend every inch of our territory, it makes sense for her not to pursue the country's convertion to Federalism because that will just put the Philippines in a losing grip and appease the self-serving claims of the war-hungry separatists.

Games of union, games of peace

It is sad that it took a week before I got home to behold the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony through a replay on RPN 9. I am lodging in an apartment 25 kilometers from home where television is not a good companion of one who wishes to concentrate on his studies, and I have been taking my dosage of news only from newspapers or internet cafes (where I also update my blog in costly proportions.)

The ceremony in the Bird's Nest was without doubt the best-ever I saw since I was mature enough to watch the Sydney Olympics back in 2000. Yet the part that impassioned me was the parade of the 204 nations (I think Brunei failed to register on time). I was filled with awe seeing the flamboyant march of different nationalities brimming with pride under their respective flags.

Much had the ceremony become dream-like to me as I saw the presence of nations in discord and unrest participating under the theme of One World, One Dream. I was in silent tears upon seeing Georgia and Russia, the two Koreas, Iran, Israel and Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Myanmar, China, and most of all my nearly-separating country the Philippines walk in that parade which united the world, and wished that may we truly reach world peace. Never mind the controversies of the games; the lipsynching 9 year-old and the eye-stretching Spanish basketball team photo, this is rather extraordinary especially at a time when the world is swept by political chaos.

I realized that the attendance of countries implied a hidden message that somehow each of them wanted to be embraced by the world no matter what differences they have. It is a message desiring to bind us all; hundreds of nations with a single yearning of becoming to be one.

God please give us wisdom to know how.

"Run, brothers, your race,

Joyful, as a hero to victory.

Oh millions be embraced!

This kiss for the whole world!

Brothers, beyond the star-shield

Must a loving Father dwell." (Friedrich von Schiller)

Peace to the wide world! =' (

On Osettia, secession and the Bangsamoro

There is no chance for me to ignore the Bangsamoro conflict especially the howitzers breaking through the bellowing winds of the North Cotabato rice fields. The sound of their barrels are giving a grumbling sensation to the ear, which is analogous to the grumblings of the stomachs of the more than 100, 000 displaced residents infested by the fighting between the AFP and Commander Ombra Kato's lost command. Did I hear there was another breakaway group among the bandits' ranks?

Switching channels I went over yet another crisis brought by ethnocentric delusion in South Osettia, a province in the Republic of Georgia which is struggling to secede from the country who has just tasted its sovereignty not long ago. It makes no surprise that when the Georgian parliament declared a state of war last Saturday, Russia, who has been too anxious to assist secessions from its former regions pledged to back the Osettian struggle, deploying its Black Sea fleet off the Georgian coast.

It is noteworthy that George Herbert Warlord Bush, Jr. has expressed his deep “concern” about the catastrophe. With Georgian troops concentrated in Iraq to support his war, too few are left to defend the young republic, which makes it necessary for US to call for the pacifying of the situation. Yet the catch is that at a period when US-Russian relations are thought to have been getting more civil than before, will Georgia become a factor to severe their ties again? So ring the hints in my ears, just like the Star Wars theme indicating Darth Vader's entrance.

The Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin has raised some points regarding the moral legitimacy of Osettia's secessionist struggles. He argued that secession must be seen on a “case by case basis,” and should be devoid of any precedents because such movements have their relatively differing causes or grievances doing justice for the separation. Hence it is without sense for a region to try to detach itself or create a self-governing institution or entity when in fact it has suffered no oppression under the status quo government. Furthermore, Somin also reasoned out the legitimacy of a separation according to the government to be established.

"The worse the existing government and the better the new one the secessionists are likely to set up, the stronger the justification for secession. A secessionist movement that seeks to establish a new state in order to engage in repression is very different from one intended to defend its own people against oppression by the central government. "

He also goes on to explain that:

The key variable is the relative quality of the central government as compared to the new regime the secessionists seek to establish.

Now let us go back to the Bangsamoro. The BJE proposal, which smells like secession in the most delicate sense (although Esperon rebutted that it isn't going to be like that), is built on soft ground, when reality has it that Philippine status quo does not suppress either of the Muslims’ rights or liberties. There is no segregation nor ethnic cleansing, neither gestures of racism that can provide them just cause to express the necessity of ”federalizing” away from others. It is clear that the MILF, who goes on blackmailing or taking hostage barangays in North Cotabato are acting only for their sole interest, and not for those who constitute Muslim Mindanao, whose immediate cry is PEACE.

The yearning for an Islamic nation is in itself a guise of racism, especially when it emanates from a source whose temperament is characterized by the extreme tendencies of emphasizing Muslim supremacy that may curtail or even take away the freedom of religion, among other important human liberties.

BREAKING MESS UPDATE: PGMA finally verified the fear of sensible Filipinos: the country must be converted to Federalism in order to solve the chaos in North Cotabato. Charter change in order to make things up? Should the Constitution be submissive to alter itself for such situation when there are other means to make peace? That clever...

ANOTHER UPDATE: The military says that 7 North Cotabato villages are now wrenched from the hands of the MILF, and some of its displaced population are going back to their homes.

The BJE may lead to the implosion of the Republic

During the previous days I've been awfully struck by cold and fatigue due to the inclemency of the weather conspiring with my various duties as a student. This made me miss quite a lot of news and readings concerning the MILF rebels of Mindanao and their search for a brand new horizon in the BJE so that they will no longer do the power-grabbing from LGUs, something they have been used to. The news of the MOA being put into TRO by the Supreme Court because some provisions failed to harmonize with our daddies' constitution fell late into my notice. Nevertheless the blood-shot bandits sore in frustration went as far as to hail the deal done after the mockery they consummated with Esperon along with a third party representing Malaysia the nation who is havin' a good time playing jackass with a former Sabah-claim adversary and a future territory (holy mackerel they are going to devour us!).

The last time I wrote about the Bangsamoro I described the whole idea as “inchoate,” and I base it on a variety of reasons. One is that the agreement is raw enough, being unstudied in many parts thus the inability to conform to the laws of the Republic. Second is that its Muslim proponents aren't that good enough in exercising authority without guns mounted on their shoulders; an RPG is an integral part of a body just like a dextrose is to the critical. They are needed to be taught not to run with deadly items such as scissors and armalites, or those unfriendly-looking bazookas especially with masks on like the Al-Queda who enjoys rolling the camera with these weapons (it reminds me of those politicians who spend their time before the cam too and then leave the country massacred by the blades of sloth and corruption).

Furthermore, that Mess of Agreement appears only to enhance the long failed expectations on the first ARMM. Isn't the failure already a hint that a similar one will never work out as well? An extension to feed their thirst and give the miserable people to the care of warlords? I am not into suggesting that the only way possible is to engage them in armed warfare because unlike Churchill's era today no such thing is inevitable. There are always several means save for Federalism (unless She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is no longer the President) which the cerebrums of our politicians are meant and are verily obligated to formulate.

Dylan Thomas says it, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light!” Let us apply it in a different context, “Rage, rage against the dying of Reason and Common Sense!” before the people exclaim, “Rage, rage against the Machine (government)!”

The Second World War had illustrated how appeasement led to the recognition of one party's weakness (in our contemporary case, the GRP) and the other's stimulated ego soaring to exaggerated heights. Our national integrity is already at odds in conciliating rebels by ransom (the MOA is a ransom that provides a win-lose result with the obfuscated IPRA as the ground for agreement.) Let us cite as example the 1938 Sudetenland to know how appeasement failed the expectations of peace. Sudetenland (of the former Czechoslovakia) was in no way similar to the present-day Moroland but the point is that when Hitler obtained the German-populated Czech region through negotiations of appeasement with Britain's Neville Chamberlain and France's Edouard Deladier (I think Benito Mussolini was also part of it) after threats of war, the German Fuehrer accrued a big boost enough for him to extend his aggression from Czechoslovakia to almost the entire European continent. That is something we should remember, among other instances which world history is ample of.

As the concluding part of this ranting let me leave you with three worst case scenarios:

WCS # 1: If the MILF achieves their BJE the fate of all Mindanao is left hanging by a thread waiting to fall to the laps of its dynastic sultans and military oligarchs. Encroachments will amplify and the island (-state) runs into civil war.

WCS #2: The ego of the MILF rises to the point that they will challenge the GRP's authority over Mindanao, eventually yearning for ultimate independence. The Malaysians will assist their cause and if triumphant, the Bangsamoro will become a Malaysian commonwealth, then later on a province like Sabah.

WCS #3: We will also call for the Aeta Juridical Entity, Dumagat Juridical Entity, Magahat J. E., or even more like the Christian J. E., etc. (The IPRA stating that in order to be called indigenous we must remain uninvaded by colonizers??? Naaaaaahh! Didn't they believe in the transformation through intermarriage and the conversion to Catholicism?)

Related entries from the blogosphere:
from DJB's Philippine Commentary
an aggregate of posts with some analyses from Manuel L. Quezon III

The inchoate Bangsamoro Juridical Entity is the generic name of Iraq

Yes the GRP will not lose our sovereignty over Mindanao, but let us not be surprised when, as virtually a caretaker government, the Arroyo administration finds it necessary to stay in power with the pretext of upholding peace and order in the territory of the Bangsamoro.

Just how close have they studied the consequences of the preliminary agreement to be signed tomorrow by Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Hermogenes Esperon, Jr. and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front? Are the silenced people of the Moro “homeland” prepared to see themselves under a brand new government of military oligarchs who for years have stood their grounds against each other? The absence of an apparent leader will result to a war of factions similar to that froth of hostilities already brewing and spewing in Baghdad. The government who would be closely monitoring the juridical state endowed with a regional security force (that would surely be used as clannish or partisan bodyguards) will find it soon imperative to sound an alarm after threats of infantile destabilization in the Bangsamoro, paving the way to more breakaway groups and imminent extremism.

To understand the future of Mindanao we must understand its present status. The numbers of dissenting groups have long lurked in the shadows, and they are waiting for the slackening of the Moro ties to the GRP before they re-emerge into the political battlegrounds. History has it that what they cannot attain by law they struggle to take hold by force. I wonder how many of the 712 villages fear the same.

Indeed, whatever decision emanates from their partial plebiscite it would certainly bear the reflection of a people’s fear of the ensuing chaos or support to their faction, but rarely hope. The Bangsamoro Juridical Entity designed to satisfy the MILF fighting for ancestral domains is no more than mere appeasement to the rebels and without any clear benefit to the people of Mindanao.

The fact that the people of Mindanao cannot integrate themselves into one society with solidarity disproves what a columnist once told me about them feeling more of a nation than northern Filipinos. How come. Just like Christians, Muslims do have irreconcilable warlords contesting interminably over an awful lot of reasons such as patches of land, supremacy and hegemony, familial friction or even want of revenge. They don’t seem capable of being a nation inasmuch as they kill their own blood, and abduct their own kin, appearing more like fortified islets with cannons pointed at each other. With such disposition they cannot be successful in integrating themselves into one society built around unity despite diversity. There is no commonality. The acrid fumes of dissension tend towards warfare, terrorism and separation. These are the signs of a new Baghdad, a new Iraq.

The Arroyo government will probably have the advantage in this issue. By Jove, she will have the reason to declare a state of emergency as her political alarmists ring amidst the escalated tension in the chaotic Mindanao, some presumptions of secession for instance or terror metastasizing to the north, and therefore achieve the legitimacy of suspending the elections in 2010!