HK Magazine issues written apology

The Department of Foreign Affairs has just received an apology from the publishers and editors of HK Magazine.

Re: Politically Incorrect column entitled “The War at Home”
By columnist Chip Tsao, published in HK Magazine on March 27

The publisher and editors of HK Magazine wish to apologize unreservedly for any offense that may have been caused by Chip Tsao’s column dated March 27.

HK Magazine has long championed the rights of Filipinos working in Hong Kong. We note that Filipinos have often been unfairly treated in Hong Kong, and that they make an important contribution to this community.

As a magazine, we would never want to say anything that would negate that belief.

The column in question was satirical. One aspect of satire is that it can at times be read in different ways. In this particular case, many people have read meanings into this column that were never actually intended.

We wish to assure our readers that we have nothing but respect for Filipinos, both living in Hong Kong and abroad.

--END--

Asia City Publishing

301 Hollywood Centre, 233 Hollywood Road, Hong Kong

...that is all because Chip Tsao doesn't know how to write a more mature satire. The HK Magazine should teach him the ethics of journalism, otherwise he would really be booted out by magazines and other media agencies such as the BBC.

However, I should say that the HK Magazine has made the correct response.

Chip Tsao the 'patriotic Chinese man'

Though it has earned a vast teeth-gritting from Filipinos, I do not think that Chimp Tsao's article (Pedestrian Observer provides a full text, for it seems that the HK Magazine has removed the article from its archives) in the trite Hong Kong Magazine deserves outrage or even a single attention especially from the scholarly. First, because just as Pat pointed out at FV, Chimp's writing reveals he is a Chinese-born worshiper of everything Japanese, something which casts a huge irony over what he claims is his being "a patriotic Chinese man." That alone is enough proof of the man's nonsensical and carelessly contradicting line of thinking. There is something of a retardation apparent in his writing.

Second, the "patriotic Chinese man" doesn't even know how to construct a satire, or even less, something sarcastically funny. This is despite the claims that he has a renowned "shock jock" reputation in HK's journalistic circles. What he wrote is not a satire but a pile of high-schoolish salvos (in the Philippine standard) on theme paper written in English.

Third, the Chimp's logic is twisted all throughout. How come he be "a patriotic Chinese man" when he is more than willing to allow Russians (no racial prejudice intended) break the necks of his fellow Chinese just because Lenin and Stalin once became "mentors" of his ideologues? His reasoning is inconsistent and groggy. Even so, the patriotic Chinese racist doesn't have a clear understanding of their history.

This obsequious Chimp (or was it Chip) Tsao, whoever he is, is a total nonsense. He isnt't even a journalist. He is a depraved attention-monger Communist trying hard to create any wannabe-famous English satire hoping to match the likes of Jon Stewart. And I have explained the reasons why.

Tsao's act, however justifiable by profound idiocy, does not excuse the editor-in-chief of the HK Magazine from being singled out to make a written public apology both in the HK and Philippine press.

Equal conditions in Mindanao must be met

Just last Friday seven Filipino soldiers were reportedly attacked and slain by MILF troops. This tragedy illustrates how determined are the separatists in securing a homeland that is not only autonomous, but totally independent.

In my opinion it is important to both parties (the GRP and the MILF) to continue negotiating for peace. We are running out of time and ways to achieve peace at the negotiating table. At all costs conflict must not be prolonged lest affected residents may soon, after the devastation of their families and properties, have no choice but to join the ranks of the separatists. Yet conflict still goes on, and while no concrete plan is being drawn, the government have to send more relief workers and request non-government organizations to focus in the recovery of the areas badly hit by warfare.

The time is ticking, and we still have no blueprint for peace unrolled on the negotiating table. It seems that while the origin of this crisis was a yearning to a self-governing homeland, there will come a time that we would arrive at no other answer to this problem but to finally agree to a modified version of the BJE. However, it cannot be concluded so easily. The geopolitical aspect must first be treated, the constitution of ethnic population as well as the consent of affected areas especially. The carving out of an independent state must ensure that the rest of Mindanao will not be drained of its important fiscal and natural resources, and similar requirements must be applied to the emerging entity. Above all, the Moro leaders must agree to a reduction of arms, and promise that for the sake of humanity they are going to build a democratic society. Otherwise, the government would have to become the caretaker of a state whose sense of sovereignty is extremely infantile, if not primitive.

Can such conditions be met?

Let us turn off the lights for Earth's future

I invite you to vote for Mother Earth tomorrow, 28 March, by switching off your lights from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm. Earth Hour is a symbolic way to express your concern to our blue planet in the face of natural and man-made dangers. One hour may not be enough to solve our problem of Climate Change, but it is a way of ensuring your support and commitment, and spreading awareness so that more and more societies and governments would be urged to take action to fight this continuing global menace. The aim for this year is one billion votes, to be cast by turning off your unimportant household and office lights and appliances.

We would be glad if you would bear with one of humanity`s achievements. For one hour let us turn off the lights for Earth`s future.

The Wall

While rummaging my cabinet I finally found the notebook containing my poems of yore, along with these verses I wrote while I was a college sophomore (if God wills it, I'll be graduating on April 8th). Even though November 9 is months away I would like to publish this work written as a commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is symbolic for me that I was born in the year unity and solidarity destroyed the wall. The fall of the Wall, like EDSA, was the barrier of the old and the new. The end of the Cold War followed its collapse along with the entire Gulag and most of the Marxist-Leninist regimes. Vanquished by the power of the people were the last dregs of fear and torture. I was then in my boyhood, innocent of such events, yet as the years wore on, I started to ask, "How did they live yesterday?"

This poem is also dedicated to North and South Korea.

The graffito staining up that stone
Mark a nation's protracted misery;
Wide-eyed, crying behind those walls,
Though on their brows their dreams glow bright
Like the sun that stings the tyrant's eyes.
Cry now, oh thou who long
For freedom swiped away in dawnspring's breeze;
For right once bent within thy home,
Thy heart besieged with armories;
Thy living gripp'd, thy air decreased,
Until though breathe with neither air,
Nor ray of freedom and belief,
Hope driven off, thy dreams then bleed,
Yet though must hold on, and yes, believe;
For as thee choose, thine wisdom's light
Shall grant thee freedom's wings.

Copyright 2009 Vin#

Tony Blair urges Philippine gov't to keep on with the Mindanao peace process

From the Philippine Star
March 24, 2009 12:00 AM

MANILA, Philippines - Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair isn’t going to be a special adviser of the Philippine government on the peace process in Mindanao.

But he does have a message to the nation: just keep the peace process going.

“Never give up,” Blair told The STAR in an exclusive interview. “The alternative to the peace process is conflict.”

Over lunch at Malacañang yesterday, President Arroyo sought Blair’s advice on bringing peace to Mindanao after three decades of separatist bloodshed.

Blair is credited with bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is now envoy to the Middle East for the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union.

“The President is confident Tony Blair, with all his experience, can contribute a lot to resolving our peace and order problems in Mindanao,” deputy presidential spokeswoman Lorelei Fajardo told reporters.

But there was neither an invitation from Malacañang nor an offer from Blair to serve as the government’s adviser on the peace process, though he said he was willing to help.

In a speech at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza on “The Leader as Principled Negotiator,” Blair told his audience that “you don’t always succeed in bringing peace,” and both sides must be prepared to make compromises.

“What is forgivable is to fail. What is unforgivable is not to try,” he said. “What you must never do is give up… never let people think that your determination to bring peace is less than the determination of those who want to continue the conflict.”

Mrs. Arroyo has given herself until 2010, when her six-year term in office expires, to bring peace to Mindanao, where more than 120,000 people have been killed since 1978.

The 12,000-strong MILF signed a ceasefire in 2003, paving the way for formal negotiations with the government.

But the talks were suspended last August when the MILF launched deadly attacks across several mostly Christian towns and provinces in Mindanao after the furor over the MOA-AD,

In a related development, Japanese Ambassador Makoto Katsura also urged an immediate resumption of talks with the MILF as he announced the launch of grant contracts worth over half a million dollars for projects in Mindanao.

Japan is the Philippines’ largest aid donor and has poured over $1 million since 2006 in Mindanao

Tokyo “strongly hopes that peace talks between the government of the Philippines and the MILF will be resumed immediately,” Katsura said in a statement.

Nearly 300 people were killed in the latest fighting in Mindanao, including a large number of civilians, while more than 600,000 were displaced. More than 100,000 are still in evacuation camps, and sporadic clashes continue.

Greater challenge

Speaking at a forum at the Ateneo de Manila University, Blair stressed the need for greater global cooperation as the crises gripping the world have become more grave and challenging.

“None of these global challenges can be met by a single nation alone,” he said, noting that even the United States, “with all its power, cannot handle the problems alone.”

He cited the financial crisis that hit the US and which affected other nations. Blair said the challenge would be how to deal with such a global problem vis-à-vis national interest.

Blair said it would be a choice between opening up more and allowing freer flow of people and goods and becoming protectionist, particularly in the area of immigration.

Achieving sustainable energy that is environment-friendly is also a major challenge, Blair noted.

He said the Philippines, composed of islands, should develop its own sources of energy, while new technology and other measures must be adopted by nations to protect the environment.

Blair also said governments must learn to deal with two elements in Islam – one that is open to working with the West and the other that is not and would rather be left alone.

He said it would be best to “partner with the modernizing and moderate element” to achieve peace and development in the Middle East.

“We need strong action,” Blair said, noting that governments could not solve the problem, “unless we solve it together.”

Blair emphasized that solutions to global problems should be based on fairness, equality and justice.

Caution

Sen. Manuel Villar said Blair is free to offer his help in the peace process but that the administration should also exercise caution in soliciting foreign help.

“He can be of help. There is nothing wrong if he wants to help. But as far as I am concerned, anybody who wants to help in the peace process can do,” Villar said.

“In my opinion not everyone who comes here should automatically be made an adviser,” Villar said in Filipino at a press conference.

“Choosing a peace adviser is a serious matter,” he said.

Villar also said Britain has more problems, especially in economy, that need Blair’s attention even more.

Sen. Loren Legarda, meanwhile, welcomed the administration’s initiative to invite Blair and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to serve as advisers in the peace negotiations.

“What we need is a new perspective on the war between brothers,” Legarda said.

She said the Muslim rebellion has “gone on far too long, draining our treasury and the blood of our young men and women on both sides, not to mention the civilian casualties and the billions of pesos in damage caused by the conflict.”

“We must do everything in our power to end these destructive hostilities in the southern Philippines,” Legarda said.

Interfaith summit

Pangasinan Rep. Jose de Venecia Jr., meanwhile, is urging Blair to organize a global inter-faith summit.

“On the occasion of your Manila visit, I felt that it (summit) should be a joint British-American initiative, since the British Commonwealth includes almost all the nations that gave birth to great religions, great civilizations and cultures in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and which are also represented in significant numbers in the United Kingdom,” De Venecia told Blair in a letter.

He cited the “pre-eminence and respect” the former prime minister enjoys and that his religious commitment “would help provide the leadership and impetus for this initiative.”

De Venecia said a much smaller inter-faith summit could be held in Manila or Mindanao “to address the peace process, while drawing on the high points of the successful Northern Ireland model, which you helped craft.”

He reminded Blair that they had a brief chat at a global conference in Madrid on July 16, 2008, which was sponsored by Saudi King Abdullah and King Carlos of Spain.

At the conference, he said he and Blair proposed the creation of a United Nations Inter-faith Council. With Aurea Calica, Christina Mendez, Paolo Romero, Jess Diaz

Evolution Will Not Take God into His Grave

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law —
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed —

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H. (1849)

It is beyond my physical and intellectual powers to disprove God's existence either through science, mathematics or philosophy. I myself grew up a lover of science, and I have observed that the greatest misunderstanding which has endured to this day is the hypothesis of pedants claiming that modern and post-modern scientific discoveries make evolution irreconcilable with the idea that God exists.

Men are entrenched between two types of credulities; one is bigotry to bodies proclaiming a stiff adherence to the unreasonable and superstitious, while the other is credulity to the raw (and sometimes shallow) understanding of ultra-liberal “intellectuals.” The latter went on to an inchoate but radical conclusion that God does not exist, without springing out of their little wilderness to find the crucial link to correct Creationism and Darwinism's vehement discrepancy.

Darwin's theory of evolution has convinced me as much as it has convinced many a resident of Reason, but it does not necessarily reverse my equal belief in the existence of the Creator. The basis of my belief does not rest in the biblical creationist passages; the dictates of Reason bring a striking similarity to the story underlying the biblical genesis - that God created the universe.

One usual confusion surrounding the identity of God is His appearance. In my opinion it is not necessary for God to be human-like; he might be another form of matter, a stone, fire, water, or something mankind never saw nor knew. If it be true that we humans were cast after His “image” such should not be taken on the literal and physical aspect. We have no way to determine what His own “image” is because humans, however powerful our minds can be according to the measurements of our history, are still powerless and ignorant compared to the inimitable scale of God's vast genius. Despite the coming of an age when man is supposed to learn everything, he is still unable to learn everything.

With incomplete tools he cannot generalize upon such inquiries of the greatest magnitude. Otherwise everything is but utter conceit, as what is often displayed by atheists. Atheists do not belong to just one classification; they have as well a diversity of species. There are atheists who refuse to believe in God merely as a protest against the conservatism of the Church, and there are those who, after an indefinite period of meditation, temporarily accept the absence of a Creator, during which time his unsettled inquiry is still in search of answers. There are atheists who are just gullible enough so as to be convinced to retract their faith without venturing into deeper investigations of their own (truly it is easier to destroy than to construct), and bloggers and writers of the atheist robe belong to this classification, which in evolution we call proselyting. Some merely expresses the weariness of an age that long hoped and waited for an evidence of His presence. In this crisis-stricken epoch when the depressed turns to God for help, the impatient quickly gives in to reneging his faith after a grim bout with disappointment.

Men of science and some others with similar illustrious capacity are the principal proponents of the non-existence theory, stemming from their various empiricisms and calculations. They are reluctant to accept the romantic story at Eden; of Adam and Eve and the snake of mortality. They question the truth behind the assertions of the Christian Bible. They ask, if its authors had the extraordinary privilege of knowing the most ancient of histories by direct an actual virtue of Divine Providence. The literal meaning of the Genesis outraged rationalists, giving them the “reason” to convert themselves away from the abstractions of the Church and breaking God down into genes and memes, and then calling this campaign Atheism.

But let us suppose that God watches while the universe expands from the beginning. He watches as its bodies form, and in the Earth, a couple of marine microorganisms called Adam and Eve take shape, and in a short period spanning to millions of years one of them transformed into the various hominid species, the lone survivor of which we are today. Hence He has watched, all throughout those times sprinkling Reason until the developed man finally caught it in his grasp and used it to know his past; that by this revelation man was able to write grudgingly in codified tablets or transmit them through word of mouth (as the case may be). Of course he was then completely ignorant of microbiology and any kind of complex science, thus he designated as actors in his history things known in his day. He made his kind a generic symbol to describe the origin of his specie (of course he was ignorant of his being an evolved creature, thus it never occurred to him to involve apes or earlier hominids in the process), naming it Adam. However, in spite of such primitive ignorance he was still aware of the requisite for propagation, therefore from Adam's side he depicted the birth of Eve. He now had a symbol for what was to be known as mankind. This was what God, through reason understandable in his day, revealed to him.

This is why I find the war between the fundamentalist factions in the Roman Catholic Church and atheists very humorous. The former limits themselves within the confines of what was assumed in the past, rejecting any notions outside its realm fearing they would bring about the religious institution's collapse. The latter, on the other hand, are equally stubborn and repugnant against the literal biblical genesis that such repugnance has grown into a severe allergy to everything which involves the idea of a God.

Yet in our universe/multiverse's definite history, can we find out who really is that Maker who caused the bang that are now us? A most supreme thing or being must be responsible to this, who triggered that primeval fireball and threw open a beautiful supersymmetrical order of fields filled with particles, bodies and energies, and the invisible dimensions which may lie hidden in between. Who was their Creator, who has remained passive for too long, observing all these commotions from a distance, and who might have been laughing at the various follies we human beings call intelligence? What was the reason he left Nature red in tooth and claw? Is this the Great Test which determines the true purpose of the Grand Design? Will he be silent even though in the delusions of many, they think what they are digging is His very grave?

Sophia

The spites of Fortune are boring slowly, painfully
Into my head the cavities of folly, many
Years of conceited thought and illusions, delusion
Of the magnanimous king, a person --
Spirited, witty, confident, yet silly, really
I spent too much time catching dewdrops, sorry
For the refusal of the rainfall of yesterday, unknowing
That God and His mysterious purpose lies
Outside the purpose of our ignorance.
There is too little in being great
And too much greatness in being low.
The curse of knowledge takes us to the middle
Of the unfathomable sea,
And we grope under the keel,
And are proud of what we feel,
Thinking that what we reach
Is an object lying in the black bottom.
I faced the mirror and asked
Myself if what I see before me
Is my real face, my reality,
Or just a ghost of my frustrations,
Of my illusion.
Hell, I broke the rhytm of the universe,
And imposed along these lines
Chaos and confusion;
Confusion that produced a nation.
Farther down the streets Sophia calls,
Dressed in her celebrated gown.
I stood, and before the evening goes
I removed my hat and immediately made way.
For her to stay,
For her to say,
DO NOT FALL INTO THE HELL THEY MADE!

Copyright 2009 Vin#

So why call it a right to reply bill?

A right is a right because it gives the people choice, therefore granting them as well the option to waive these rights either by acts of omission (ignoring right of oneself) or submission (surrendering right of oneself, usually under pledge or contract). Once subjected under mandatory or arbitrary rules similar to what the Right to Reply Bill wishes to implement, a right loses the essence of choice which in turn should give the very essence of the legitimate Right.