Beast and Beauty

i
About the book Beast And Beauty:

I am the voice of the voiceless; I am the Equalizer, Larry Henares starts this 18
th
book
of his Make My Day series. In previous books, he writes that his column Make My Day
is a morality play where nationalists and liberals championing the poor are the heroes;
and colonial lackeys of foreigners, especially of the CIA and American monopolists, and
the exploiters of the great unwashed are the villains. In the essay, The intellectual art of
giving insult, Henares bares one of the weapons of his crusade, the others being to
enlighten, to inspire, to educate, to astound, to delight, to amuse, to imbue with a sense of
wonder. He says that while his friend Ninoy Aquino wrote at the beginning of his
career to open doors of opportunity in politics, and his friend Max Soliven wrote from the
beginning to the end of his career as a vocation, he, Larry Henares, chose to write at the
end of his career, when he has accumulated enough resources to sustain him against
political pressure, and when he has accumulated enough experience, knowledge and
wisdom to impart to his countrymen. Then again he observes that some columnists take
the role of a judge, or a witness, or an advocate, or an apologist but he himself assumes
the role of a protagonist who promotes, protects and defends the interest of the Filipino
people against the interests of other nations. To dream the impossible dream, to right
the unrightable wrong, to bear the unbearable sorrow, to reach the unreachable star is
his quest.
. And those define the parameters of Larry Henares Nationalist Crusade. And it is
in this role in this volume that he takes on President Cory Aquino and her Council of
Trent, the Army and the Americans, as well as the Holy Mafia that is the Opus Dei, and
the American invasion of Panama. And thus he writes informative and amusing essays
on the Elizaldes, Father Shay Cullen and Flash Gordon, the genius of Sixto Roxas, Kris
Aquino and People Power, , and other personalities Amang Rodriguez, Marcos
Soliman, Lee Aguinaldo, Juan Luna, Telly Zulueta, Platts Japanese Uncle, and Abraham
Lincoln. And thus he writes of the Destiny of Man, porque aprender espaol, a poignant
prayer Glory Be to America, the dilemma of the man in the middle, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, ham radio and the Patriotism of Humanity.
ii

BOOK 18: BEAST AND BEAUTY
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by Kim Jacinto-Henares, The Teachers Who Shaped His Life. v

PERSONALITIES 001
CHAPTER 1. Voice of voiceless, I am the Equalizer... 001
CHAPTER 2. Funny thing happened on the way to Malacaang 003
Part 1. The Unspeakable Aspiring for the Unattainable. 003
Part 2. Cory Has The Eyes Of A Woman In Love.. 005
Part 3. Cory, beware Cesar's Old Shell Game. 007
Part 4. Love is blind, conquers all, destroys!........................................ 010
CHAPTER 3. Cory, the Army and the Americans.. 012
Part 1. Civil War: deep wounds that never heal.. 012
Part 2. Security Guards or Masters of Destiny?................................... 014
Part 3. Stupid CIA creeps opened Pandora's Box 016
Part 4. Who will join me to die for Cory?............................................. 019
Part 5. Phony war for a protection racket 021
Part 6. The Cory speech that never was, on National Affairs (1) 023
Part 7. The Cory speech that never was, on Economic Affairs (2). 025
Part 8. Speech that never was: When all the songs have been sung (3) 028
Part 9. Good luck Cory, swim with the sharks 030
CHAPTER 4. CIA's Panamanian dictator.. 032
Part 1. Panama's tortured history reflects ours.. 032
Part 2. Noriega: US creates its own monsters.. 034
Part 3. Here lurk other Noriegas paid by CIA. 037
CHAPTER 5. Were the Elizaldes cronies of Marcos?.................................... 039
Part 1. Jacinto and Elizalde steel plagued with the same problems.. 039
Part 2. Marcos took over Elizaldes TV, newpaper and steel mills 041
iii
Part 3. Elizalde and the Filipinos improved Armalite for Colt. 043
CHAPTER 6. Shay, whadya expect from Flash Gordon?............................. 046
CHAPTER 7. Restless souls wander the earth as ghosts 048
CHAPTER 8. Cory, flatterers are our worst enemies 051
CHAPTER 9. The Holy Mafia: Opus Dei 053
Part 1. Secret World of Opus Dei, by Walsh 053
Part 2. Big Dif between what Opus says and does.. 055
Part 3. Taking a leak at the CIA and Opus CRC 058
Part 4. Octopus Diaboli, guardians of the press. 060
CHAPTER 10. Pinoy Woodstock: bury our grief in song.. 062
CHAPTER 11. The genius of Sixto Roxas 064
Part 1. Ting's eco-system plan better than NEDA's 064
Part 2. Winnie Monsod's Cargo Plane Cult. 066
CHAPTER 12. The Destiny of Man.. 068
Part 1. Virgin births in the future!........................................................ 068
Part 2. DNA and the Future of Man.. 071
Part 3. Grand Option: eternal life as part of God 073
CHAPTER 13. Porque debemos aprender espaol?....................................... 074
CHAPTER 14. Personalities.. 076
Part 1. LABAN: Kris started People's Power.. 076
Part 2. Amang's essences of purest copal.. 079
Part 3. The true story of Gen. Marcos Soliman 081
Part 4.. Lee Aguinaldo, the lonely heart 083
Part 5. Hot-headed Juan Luna killed his wife.. 085
Part 6. Stella by Starlight, for our amazement. 087
Part 7. Funny thing on the way to White House.. 090
Part 8. Platypus had a Japanese grand-uncle.. 092
Part 9. Our AFP and gov't are run by comedians 094
Part 10. Lincoln: something good about Americans 096
CHAPTER 15. Childermas, April Fool in December.. 098
CHAPTER 16. Lost heritage diminishes our humanity.. 100
iv
CHAPTER 17. We have met the enemy and he is us.. 103
CHAPTER 18. Glory be to America, war without end, Amen.. 105
CHAPTER 19. The day Our Lady was conceived.. 107
CHAPTER 20. Dilemma of the Man in the Middle.. 109
CHAPTER 21. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 111
CHAPTER 22. Fun to be a Ham, world in your sala 113
CHAPTER 23. Too late, our time bomb ticks on. 116
CHAPTER 24. I only rob blind men of their pennies.. 118
CHAPTER 25. Grandest Truth is Patriotism of Humanity. 120
END OF BOOK. 122

v
The Teachers Who Shaped His Life
Foreword by Kim Jacinto-Henares, Governor, Board of Investment
If Larry Henares is a master of the English language, of mathematics, of history,
of culture and literature a veritable Renaissance Man it is because of his college years
in the Ateneo de Manila College of Liberal Arts (1940-41) and the University of the
Philippines College of Engineering (1944-45), where he came under the influence of
great teachers who were to shape his life and destiny forever.
One of them was Father Guzman Rivas, his math professor, who taught him the
mystery and wonder of mathematical logic, order and symmetry: The derivative of y
with respect to x, is the increment of y divided by the increment of x, as the increment of
x approaches zero. Larry was to see him again in the United States after the war on a
visit to Boston from the Jesuits Maryland seminary, already a full fledged priest who
took his confession on a Sunday morning after a hot Saturday date And then? And
then what happened? Father Guzman Rivas would breathlessly say after every salacious
tidbit, and Larry knew that his favorite math professor was destined to jump over the
wall. And he did, with an American nurse.
Another of his wonderful professors was Father Horatio de la Costa, his history
professor. Now I will tell you the chismis of the nation, he would say, and then history
became a grand adventure into the past and into the hearts of the people, of the nation and
the world, a sweeping grandeur that encompassed what was and what might have been
and what was to be. Father de la Costa was one great Atenean who could discourse in
Latin, a summa cum laude with grades superior to that of Jose Rizal, but less impressive
than that of Don Claro M. Recto who had perfect grades in every subject and was
awarded a maxima cum laude, not only the highest, but the highest possible. Father de
la Costa wrote his greatest masterpiece, a history of the Jesuits called The Light
Cavalry, full of paradoxes in the style of Gilbert K. Chesterton. UP historians laughed
at the intrusion of a capricious, whimsical and alien style into the august halls of history,
and so he re-wrote it, too bad, taking the master out of the piece. Father de la Costa
went on after the war to be honored as an eminent historian, the head of Jesuit order in
the Philippines, and a street in the heart of Makati.
vi
Then there was Father James Reuter on his first assignment as a scholastic,
teaching English to a bunch of Ateneans destined to shape the nation. He is Larry
Henares favorite professor, the one who introduced him to the English language that is
full of truth, goodness and infinite beauty, including the writings of Arch Oboler and
Norman Corwin of radio fame. A living legend even today, Father Reuter coached the
Ateneo basketball team to the NCAA Championship and the Ateneo Glee Club to
prominence, pioneered as a director in stage, radio and television dramas, and is today the
spokesman of the Catholic Bishops Conference.
It was from him that Larry became enamored of William Shakespeare. In his
class, as he read the immortal lines, fencing with imaginary swordsmen and embracing
imaginary women, Shakespeare came alive for Larry and his classmates. Hamlet, Romeo
& Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth became instruments that searched men's hearts and
souls, baring the splendor and the meanness of the human spirit, the soaring heights it can
ascend and the miry depths to which it can sink. Larry was to write of his debt to Father
Reuter in his essay, Oh to be a Child of God and of Father Reuter!
Then there was the legendary Father Joseph Mulry, a great man of letters who
would speak of literature as the common heritage of mankind, the epitome of his ability
to communicate from the past to the future, as the only animal who can. In his hands,
John Keats, Percy B. Shelley, William Wordsworth and other poets became alive, in
mighty majestic cadences and lofty heights of fancy and imagination. Larry Henares
could still recite from memory, Shelleys Ode to the West Wind, his own ode to the spirit
of Nationalism:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;/ Destroyer and preserver, hear, Oh
hear!/. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;/ If I were a swift cloud to fly with
thee;/ A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share/ The impulse of thy strength, only
less free/ Than thou, Oh uncontrollable!.../ Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud, a cloud!/
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!/ Be thou, spirit fierce,/ My spirit! Be thou me,
impetuous one!/ Be through my lips to unawakened earth/ The trumpet of a prophesy! Oh
wind,/ If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Father Mulry in a flight of fancy would tell the class his version of the rebellion of
Lucifer against God and his angels, a battle of good and evil where there were a lot of
vii
neutral fence-sitters who deserved neither the horrors of hell or the pleasures of heaven,
and therefore were condemned for all time to wander the earth as fairies, leprechauns,
goblins and other restless spirits.
It was in Mulrys class when Larry almost got himself expelled. :Larry earned
pin money by writing love letters and poetry to specifications for his classmates. His
classmate JV Cruz hired him to write a poem for his girlfriend, Alma Fernandez. While
he was doing it, another classmate, Juan C. Tan pointed him out to Father Mulry who
sneaked up, grabbed his paper from behind, saying Aha, another masterpiece from our
poet laureate! And read Larrys poem thus:
Birds do it and sigh,
Cats do it and cry,
Dogs do it, and stick to it,
So why not you and I?
By God, thought Larry, I am going to get expelled from school for writing
obscenity! Whereupon, Father Mulry grabbed him by the nape of the neck, and hissed,
Henares, you knucklehead! Birds do not sigh, they twit! And Larry whimpered, But
Father, it does not rhyme with Cry!
But what Henares remembered and appreciated most about Father Mulry was an
insult hurled at him when he submitted an essay written with the aid of Rogets
Thesaurus, full of ten dollar words: Henares! thundered Father Mulry, In
promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial sentimentalities,
beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity,
jejune babblement and asinine affectations. Avoid all polysyllabic profundity, setaceous
vacuity and grandiloquent vapidity. In other words, avoid using big words. The Father
Mulry added gently, For big words do not necessarily reflect grand thoughts. And it
should the presumptuous ambition of all of us, to be said of us and it was once said of
Winston Churchill: By saying simply and plainly what we feel, he has enabled us to feel
it still more strongly. And by the power of his words, he has driven us to the limits of our
potentialities, and has given us a vision of our own best possibilities. No greater
accolade was ever spoken of Winston Churchill who in Englands darkest and finest
hour, under the glare of Hitlers bombs, told his countrymen: I have nothing to offer you
viii
but blood, sweat and tears Let us to the task, to the toil, to the battle, each to his part,
each to his station, let us go forward together in all parts of the land. There is not a week,
nor a day, nor a moment to be lost. Come, let us begin!
The war interrupted Larrys studies in the Ateneo which was closed down by the
Japanese military. Larry then enrolled to take up engineering along with another Ateneo
classmate Jose Neno Abreu Jr., in the University of the Philippines, then confined to
the Institute of Hygiene on Taft Avenue. That was the time of great rivalry between
Ateneo and UP, and no Atenean, except GG Gonzalez who was the son of the UP
President, could escape the wrath and contempt of the UP professors. Ateneo stalwarts
like Raul Manglapus and Emmanuel Pelaez had to go elsewhere to take up Law. Henares
on his first day in the class of Professor Hilario, brought his scrapbook of magazine
articles to show the Professor, who remarked patronizingly, You write well, Henares, for
an Atenean. And Larry answered, May I see YOUR scrapbook, Professor? Prof
Hilario glared at him and said, I see I will have trouble with you for the rest of the term,
with your split infinitives, dangling participles and stream of consciousness. I propose
you do not come to class anymore. But I will give you a passing grade. Passing grade
of 3? I deserve a perfect grade 1, said Larry and he got a 1.5 for absenting himself from
class.
He tried to do the same for his mathematics class. There are trick problems in
math, hard to solve because in the ordinary course of calculations, one comes up to a
blank wall all the time; then an inspiration comes in the dead of night, and the solution
becomes clear. Such a problem is hard to solve, but very easy to contrive. And this is
what Larry Henares did. He asked the instructor Angel Baking, a handsome ladies man
considered a math genius, to solve a trick problem, and watched him struggle with
solution after solution, erasing the blackboard several times, till Larry Henares elbowed
him out, saying: I think this is the way to solve the problem, sir, and proceeded to do so
as the girls in the class gave him a standing ovation. Angel Baking got the finger, and he
knew it. After class, Henares, he said curtly and afterwards, Putang ina mo, sinadya
mo yan, ha! Henares apologized: I am sorry sir, but I just wanted to make a point. I
solved every problem in your textbook during the summer, try me. I propose you give
me the privilege of not attending your class, and give me a perfect grade at the end of the
ix
term. Angel Baking said, Ten days absence and you flunk, no matter how good you
are. Those are the rules. But considering your capacity for mischief, perhaps it is the
better part of valor to let you off. Tell you what, show up for midterm and final exams, I
will base your grades on the exam results, okay? At the end of the semester Larry got a
perfect grade 1.
But Larry would later admit that Instructor Angel Baking who taught Solid
Geometry and Professor Ghokali, of Indian ancestry, who taught Chemistry were
wonderful teachers in quite another way. Both of them told their class that no one among
them is worth teaching except Neno Abreu and Larry Henares, so let everyone pay the
tuition to pay their salaries, so they can teach those two Ateneans. Both teachers were
two of the original founders of the Communist Party of the Philippines, and they spent
hours indoctrinating Neno and Larry in the Dialectic Materialism of the Communist
Ideology a spiral of causation involving thesis, antithesis and synthesis. For a time they
made Larry Henares a traitor to his class, his father being an exploiter of the masses as an
industrialist manufacturing charcoal gas generators that allowed cars and truck to utilize
charcoal as fuel instead of gasoline or alcohol.
In the United States after the war, at MIT, Larry Henares came in contact with the
great minds of the technological world. Professor Norbert Wiener, whose daughter he
dated, the pioneer in Cybernetics that laid the foundations of Computer Technology.
Professor Harold Edgerton who developed the stroboscopic flash that gives off a brief
and intense light at variable intervals -- he demonstrated how he could make a rapidly
revolving fan stand still, and how he could take a picture of a bullet puncturing a balloon
but he made millions with the use of his strobe light as a photo flash. Edwin Land who
developed the Polaroid lens and picture in a minute camera -- he hired Larry and his
classmates to tidy up his factory building and offered to pay them in Polaroid stock,
which Larry refused to accept -- if he did, his $1,000 would have ballooned to P250,000.
Natalie Kalmus, widow of the man who invented Technicolor, making color movies with
three separate black and white films, each to be dyed with complementary colors.
Eastman Kodak showing how they made color movies with one film with three layers
separated by filters, they called a Monopack. Peter Black, the president of Columbia
Broadcasting System (CBS) who invented the Long Playing record. Lucky Larry.
1
CHAPTER 1. Voice of the voiceless, I am the Equalizer

CHARITO PLANAS wrote to thank me for sticking pins into Regina Geraldez and
Miriam Defensor -- for eight months of delay in the signing of her papers on a low-cost
housing for the military near Fort Magsaysay. They finally signed the papers, she
stated happily.
On the other hand, Merci Velasco also wrote to say that Charito was being
abusive in seeking special privileges others do not enjoy. And then again two letters
printed on this page: one from Regina herself explaining why she could not attend to
Charito right away; and the other from Jovelina Cerdan singing praises of Regina as a
sweet and level headed official.
First of all, if Charito and I were unseemly angry, it is because we need to teach
our countrymen the value of righteous anger as a response to unfeeling and arrogant
officials.
Second, we congratulate Miriam Defensor Santiago for responding swiftly to the
challenge, without delay, without irritation, without excuse. Thats a girl we admire.
Third, we wish to remind Regina Padilla Geraldez that there is no excuse for
making it necessary for Charito or anyone else to complain, For SEVERAL WEEKS I
have been going to her office, leaving notes, calling up to follow-up my papers and this
one-hour waiting was the last straw.
You can make all the excuses you want, Gina, and have all your friends write
about your sterling virtues -- but if you cannot deliver satisfactory and efficient service to
the Filipinos who pay your salary, you have no right to occupy that office.
Fourth, don't you, Merci, ever say that anyone who demands efficient service
from a public servant is asking for a special privilege -- damn it, we are entitled to some
respect and consideration from all our public servants. And this column will never fail to
remind them of it, even if we have to call them bastards, leeches and bloodsuckers.
Fifth, dont ever forget the role of this column of mine. I am neither a judge nor a
witness, neither an umpire nor a referee. I am a protagonist, prosecutor and defender, and
my clients are the poor suffering public, who have no one to turn to in the face of an
arrogant colonial bureaucracy acting as the monkey on their backs.
2
I am the voice of the voiceless, I am the arm of the weak and defenseless, I am the
wrath of their avenging God.
I am the Equalizer.
Jaime Brillantes, I have no obligation to verify any of your excuses. I get
nothing but crap from most public officials who rarely answer phones, and spend all their
waking hours hiding their inadequacies and covering their asses anyway. I am not your
PR, I am not your hired hack and paid piper.
My obligation is to my readers. I voice their concerns, their frustrations, their cry
of pain. And when they scream, I echo and re-echo their agonies and torments. So en
garde, you bastards who cause that pain, we will rake you over the coals, we will nail you
to the wall! And this paper will give you the space to defend yourself, if you can.
Go to most government offices, especially those dealing directly with the public,
and see how dirty and smelly it is, full of sweating frustrated humanity on one side of the
counter. On the other side, you see a bunch of constipated assholes and lowdown
dungheaps, reading newspapers, scratching their bellies, gorging themselves on pancit or
suman, or leaving their desks for parts unknown.
In the days of Marcos, I came to the DBP at 10:30 AM and again at 3:30 PM.
Finding most of the desks empty, I took pictures, and brought them to DBP Chairman
Cesar Zalamea with my complaint. His assistant Bienvenido Tan III said I blew it, I have
challenged the system, I no longer can count on any favorable consideration. I gave
Cesar the dirty finger and left.
Once I was conducting some business with PAL over the counter when suddenly
this ill-bred half-breed pimple-face left me to attend to an American who just came in,
despite my entreaties to conclude my business. I was so mad, I wrote many times to PAL
president Benny Toda, employing the strongest language possible till I had the
satisfaction of seeing the colonial bastard fired.
The point, dear readers, is that you must learn to vent your anger at your
tormentors. Write letters of complaint to their superiors, because that goes into their files
and may affect their future promotions. Be specific and cite witnesses, above all, sign
your real name -- anonymity doesn't cut any ice.
If you come up against an uncaring and arrogant top man, give him the dirty
3
finger and write letters to the editor and/or columnists. Forget Malacaang, the buck
does not stop there, it is endorsed back to your tormentor.
Never let up with your anger. It's the only weapon you have.
November 18, 1989, Philippine Daily Inquirer

CHAPTER 2. Funny thing happened on the way to Malacaang

Part 1. The Unspeakable Aspiring for the Unattainable
REMEMBER that mad bawdy Broadway musical Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Forum? It was set in ancient Rome with the great Zero Mostel playing a sly,
eager-to-be-free slave, and co-starred Phil Silvers, Michael Crawford and Buster Keaton.
Well, one might make an even more hilarious play entitled A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to Malacaang, starring all the would-be candidates for the
Presidency in 1992. Never have we seen a sorrier funnier lot, a bunch of pathetic wimps,
the unspeakable aspiring for the unattainable.
But everyone has a right to a presidential ambition, even if he is not so stupid as
to know that he is not really worthy of the position, and hasn't got a chinaman's chance of
making it.
Line them up in your minds eye and weep.
Take Veep Doy Laurel for instance. The tragedy of Doy is that no one wants to
vote for him, and nobody knows why. My brother who is his classmate and childhood
friend was asked: Will you vote for Doy? He shook his head. Why not? And he
answered, I don't know.
I persisted: Is Doy a crook? He said no.
Is he a liar? No. Is he bolero? No. Is he greedy? No. Is he mayabang?
No. Is there anything about him you don't like? No.
Then why won't you vote for him? And he answered I JUST DON'T
KNOW!!
Well, if he doesn't know, neither does Doy, and he cannot do anything about it.
That is the tragedy of Doy.
4
Take Sen. Ernie Maceda. Here is a guy who has the sharpest, most brilliant
political mind in the country.
By 5 AM he is awake, reading the newspapers; by 7 AM he has statements ready
for every occasion. On every issue he takes a stand that is correct, logical and good for
the country. His public relations is unerring and effective.
Sometimes he goes off tangent like calling some generals crooks, and promising
to derail the nomination of Buddy Gomez as Press Secretary, and then developing a
yellow streak a mile wide, taking back his words and humbly eating crow.
But Ernie on the whole is playing his cards right. His tragedy is that for the rest
of his natural life and even beyond the grave, he will never live down what Mayor
Arsenic Lacson once said of him when he was councilor in Manila: So young, and
already so corrupt!
Take Juan Ponce Enrile, also one of the most brilliant in the senate, who
discharges his role as the only oppositionist well and responsibly, an indefatigable critic
of American bases. He was given a boost by the perception that he is being unjustly
accused and persecuted by Cory.
He can best project himself as a strong man, in contrast to what he pictures Cory
to be, a vaccilating wimp.
Yet can he ever survive the key role he played as Marcos hatchet man during
martial law? or his personal traits of being koriput and pikon, suing every newsman,
associate, or friend who offends him.
And Speaker Monching Mitra, who built his party on the ruins of the Cory
Coalition, in the hope that if Cory runs, he will be the Vice Presidential candidate; and if
Cory does not, then he becomes the Presidential candidate with the support of most of the
congressmen.
Monching's tragedy is the unwarranted assumption that congressional members of
his party, most of whom are pro-American idiots, rascals and crooks, will support him all
the way.
The probability is that they won't. If Monching cannot ring bells and make the
hearts of the voters beat faster, if he acts like a boring unimaginative clod and cannot help
them win votes in their districts, for sure they will drop him like a hot potato.
5
Fidel V. Ramos? He is taking populist positions, like Magsaysay did. I like him
very much. But according to political pundits, he can't win even among his constituency
-- the Armed Forces which are now fragmented into rightist pro-American Anti-Christ
forces, making war on students, priests, workers, peasants and intellectuals; criminal
syndicates dealing in drugs, gambling, murder-for-hire, carnapping, kidnapping; the rebel
RAMboys; Marcos loyalists and the nationalistic YOU.
And the ultra-rightist CIA creeps in the Heritage Foundation just wrote him off as
a viable candidate in 1992.
Miriam Defensor Santiago? She is a nut. Her stand on the bases based on the
people's preference, reminds us of Pontius Pilate's referendum on Christ and Barrabbas.
Barrabbas won and Christ was crucified.
These characters will never make it to the presidency, and they know it. Why
then do they launch their candidacy?
We will answer that question tomorrow, and well as other intriguing questions:
On a one-to-one basis, who can beat Cory Aquino if she decides to run again?
What if Cory falls in love, and decides to get married?
Abagan bukas.
June 4, 1990, Philippines Daily Inquirer

Part 2. Cory Has The Eyes Of A Woman In Love
WHY do these clowns -- Doy Laurel (pal of the Moonies), Ernie Maceda (chum
of Louie Beltran), Johnny Enrile (pal of Honasan), Fidel Ramos (chum of Cheney), Mon
Mitra (pal of Kaplan), Miriam Defensor (best friend of Miriam Defensor) -- pursue
presidential ambitions totally beyond their reach?
Because they want to gather and collect bargaining chips with which to influence
whoever will be president, thats why. To be able to say, I got 50 congressmen and 100
mayors. I want to be vice-president, or I already spent P40 million, I want to be
reimbursed.
My cousin Danding Cojuangco wants to get back San Miguel. PCGG has not
dismantled his power structure and has merely substituted itself for Danding, who hopes
to re-substitute himself as the Big Boss of San Miguel.
6
Danding quietly operates out of his cement company in Pangasinan and his
hacienda in Negros. Politicians like Condring Estrella take him around to meet mayors,
congressmen and officials, each of whom gets a personal letter from him.
He has a good staff preparing position papers, and is so accessible to the foreign
press that he enjoys a much better image in the USA than Cory herself.
Danding and Enrile are confident that come 1992, the stigma of the Marcos
Connection, will fade and wane into insignificance.
For one thing, Cory herself recycled some of Marcos men. Catalino Macaraig
was Marcos deputy minister of justice; Ronnie Zamora was Imeldas fair-haired boy;
Adolf H. Azcuna was the goffer of Kokoy Romualdez (Dolphy, go fer some sandwiches -
- go fer cigarets -- kiss my ass, Dolphy); Cesar Buenaventura was Monetary Board
member, and Jobo Fernandez was CB governor under Marcos. Cory ignored the best of
them, ex Postmaster General Roy Golez.
Dandings image as a Marcos Crony fades in comparison with Cesar
Buenaventura, most powerful Cory adviser who is behind the Luzon Petrochemical Corp.
and its transfer to Batangas near Shell; Bian LPG terminal; Tabagao LPG entrepot; oil
stabilization fund; demise of the Ministry of Energy; Shell stations on govt
superhighways; attempted take-over of PICOP; PAL and IFC; Council of Trent, ad
nauseum).
Jovito Salonga has the best credentials of all -- moral, intellectual, and political.
He may be Number One in a senatorial contest, as one among many, but on a one-to-one
presidential contest, he lacks the killer instinct and the network of utang na loob needed
to get people to die for him.
Corys recent demagogic statement making squatters immune from arrest, against
the interest of her landlord class, signals, I believe, her intention to run for re-election in
1992.
In such a case, the only one who can beat her is a single opposition candidate with
the voting getting potential of Erap Estrada.
Dont laugh, every political pundit we talk to marvel at Eraps charisma in the last
senatorial elections:
His name recognition is better than Salonga.
7
Intellectually he is like Magsaysay.
He has a pro-poor image nurtured throughout his movie and political career (Erap
sa mga mahihirap!).
He is eloquent and knows how to move the masses.
He needs only to bridge the gap to the captains of industry and finance, source of
election funds.
The only way to beat Erap is to recruit all the women he has ever loved, and all
the men he has ever beaten up... Inibig ko siya, at iniwanan ako... Sinampal ako, at umihi
sa aking zapatos... But Erap can always claim that these are agents of the rich abusing the
poor.
An intriguing possibility: Suppose Cory falls in love? A manghuhula named
Madam Fe Maligaso who serviced my employees in my company, who claims clients
like Nelly Sindayen of Time and friends, Linggoy and Baby Alcuaz, and others -- sent
me a hula on Cory.
I don't believe in hula. I think it is her keen knowledge of human nature that
gives Madame Fe an amazing 70 percent success in predictions:
President Cory has the eyes of a woman in love... if true, he may be a foreigner
or a Filipino, of strong character... She may not run again.
If it is true that Corys eyes shine on TV, an unknown quantity X is added to the
equation, and we shall not attempt to speculate.
All we can say is that Cory like all other women is entitled to all the happiness in
the world.
And an old song comes to us across the years:
Your eyes are the eyes of a woman in love/ and oh how they give you away./ Why
try to deny you're a woman in love/ when you know very well what they say.
They say no moon in the sky/ ever gave such a glow./ Some flame deep within/
make them shine./
Your eyes are the eyes of a woman in love/ and may they gaze evermore into
mine,/ tenderly gaze evermore into mine.
June 4 and 5, 1990, Philippine Daily Inquirer

8
Part 3. Cory, beware Cesar's Old Shell Game
EVERYONE knows the Old Shell Game, played among carnival crowds by
squint-eyed mountebanks who entice the suckers to guess under which of the three
walnut half-shells the single pea may be found. Old Squint-eyes shifts around the three
shells on a table, raising one shell at a time to show where the pea is. Then he leaves the
shells on the table, and asks you to guess where the pea is.
You who have been following the movement of the pea as it shifts from one shell
to another, are quite sure where it presently is. So you triumphantly point it out to Old
Squint-eyes. And Squint-eyes would laugh with his twisted mouth, raise each shell, and
there the pea is under another shell!
You have just been a sucker for the Old Shell Game, one of those born every
minute, as WC Fields used to say. The elusive pea is never under any shell, it is lodged
out of sight between the ring and little fingers of Old Squint-eyes, ready to be dropped
where you say it is not. It is a case of the hand faster than the eye. In the long run, you
never win. Squint-eyes never loses.
The Royal Dutch Shell and its local subsidiary Pilipinas Shell are experts in this
sort of game. That is why they have been able to maintain a practical monopoly in the
European continent, and everywhere the British Empire used to exist. In Third World
countries such as ours, they managed to keep the economies poor, export-oriented and
agriculture-based.
Partners in Progress they call themselves, and in that partnership, Shell supplies
the products of industry, fertilizers and agricultural chemicals, while the poor farmers
contribute cheap labor. In such an economy Shell gets richer and richer, while the poor
farmer gets poorer and poorer, ever at the edge of marginal existence.
A joint venture with Kokoy Romualdez's First Philippine Holdings, whose stocks
were transferred to Ayala Corporation without being sequestered by the PCGG, the
Pilipinas Shell is headed by my cousin Cesar Buenaventura, who got along famously with
both Marcos and President Cory, and remained Member of the Monetary Board in both
administrations.
Cesar is presently the head of the Council of Trent and is the most powerful
individual in the entire nation, the closest of Cory's advisers, without whose imprimatur
9
no cabinet member can sit safely in the seat of power.
The ease with which Cesar manipulates our government is illustrated by his latest
Shell Game. Cesar Buenaventura who is about to leave Shell with a retirement pay of
more than most of us earn in 40 lifetimes, made two booboos which he must set aright.
First, he set up at the cost of $100 million LPG storage facilities in Tabagao,
Batangas, as entrepot to service Southeast Asia. Unfortunately Thailand, Malaysia and
Indonesia set up their own facilities, leaving Cesar with a useless White Elephant.
Second, he set up a $20 million LPG distributing point right at the center of
Bian, Laguna, to which he plans to pipe the LPG from Tabagao, and control the entire
LPG market in Luzon. Unfortunately, the officials and people of Bian objected to the
danger the explosive LPG pose to their town, and went to the Supreme Court for a
preliminary injunction against its use.
The only way Cesar can solve these booboos is:
First, move the planned petrochemical complex from Bataan near the Petron
refinery, to Tabagao where they may use LPG instead of naptha as raw
materials.
Second, ask Cory and Local Government Sec. Luigi Santos to pressure Laguna
Gov. Felicisimo San Luis and the officials of Bian to withdraw their objection to
the LPG facilities that pose an explosive danger to their citizens.
Taking advantage of the four-month planned shut-down of the Petron plant for
repairs and maintenance, scheduled once every five years, and deliberately delaying
delivery of LPG from Shell to Petron as required by a signed contract, Cesar caused an
artificial LPG shortage in an effort to get Cory to support his Bian move.
Also Cesar bamboozled the BOI led by Joe Concepcion and Tom Alcantara who
are deathly scared of his influence on Cory, to transfer the petrochemical plant from
Bataan to Batangas, under a joint venture between the Taiwanese and a foreign Shell
subsidiary which assures complete Shell monopoly without government control exercised
in Malaysia and Thailand. This is under review by Cory who is expected to do as Cesar
wishes.
Already Cesar controls Phil. Petroleum Corp. of Kokoy, by special arrangement
with PNOC's Ting Paterno, with its complete monopoly of lubes and greases -- motor
10
oil, gear oil, transmission oil -- everything you put in the car except diesel and gasoline.
Dear Cory, please beware of Cesar's Old Shell Game.
December 14, 1989, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Part 4. Love is blind, conquers all, destroys!
AH sweet mystery of life, at last I found thee!/ Oh at last I know the secret of it
all,/ All the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning,/ The burning hopes, the joy, and
idle tears that fall!
For tis love and love alone the world is seeking,/ And tis love and love alone
that can repay./ `Tis the answer, `tis the end, and all of living,/ For it is love alone that
rules for aye.
For a several generations, including that of Ninoy and Cory, of Komong, Peping
and Cuyang Pete, young girls imagined they were Jeanette MacDonald singing this song
with Nelson Eddy.
Love is a many splendored thing. Specially for young widows, separated,
divorced or abandoned, it gets better the second time around. Also for young widowers
used to the loving attention of a wife suddenly departed.
The second time around is better, because of lessons learned in patience,
understanding and self-abnegation. Confirmed bachelors, celibates, eunuchs,
homosexuals are usually self-centered and devoid of selfless love.
The third or fourth time around, love gets tiresome and addictive. My godsister
Bobbie Lopez has had four husbands already, and still is looking for more.
Pretty widows as Isabel Wilson, Mercy Tuason, Judy Roxas, and I am sure our
beloved Cory, still have starlights in their eyes every time a bunch of roses is delivered to
their door. So why dont you guys just send them flowers just to make them feel good,
eh?
According to my tocayo Larry Sipin, the President receives gifts and flowers with
pleasure every so often, mostly from Cabinet members who want to be remembered
every time there is a cabinet reshuffle. They can hardly be called suitors.
One is a loverboy with three wives, all legitimate. Another belongs to a group of
professional eunuchs who convert a physical disability into a religious advantage.
11
Another sends roses with a card signed C.B. and is assumed to be from the Central Bank,
or is it?
I remember I came gallantly to the rescue of the President when a louse of a
columnist, as reported by Belinda Aquino, told jokes in Hawaii that Cory and Joker were
like a married couple without sex, and their child was Teddyboy. That was foul.
Cory herself when asked by a foreign newsman about the possibility of
remarrying said jokingly something like I am already president, I may find it difficult to
find a king to marry.
Great loves are born to die -- Romeo and Juliet, Tristam and Isolde, Evangeline
and Gabriel, Anthony and Cleopatra, Ninoy and Cory. What makes them great is the
wonder and added poignancy of what-might-have-been.
Some loves are simply bad chemistry for the nation: Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette, Henry VII and his six wives, Ferdinand and Imelda, Paris and Helen of Troy.
In Homer's Iliad is told the story of the Trojan War, which started with a beauty
contest between Hera queen of Olympus, Aphrodite goddess of love and beauty, and
Athene goddess of wisdom -- who asked Paris, prince of Troy, to be the judge, and tried
to bribe him.
Hera offered him power, Athene promised fame in war, Aphrodite promised him
a woman of unsurpassed beauty. And Paris gave the prize to Aphrodite who made
divinely beautiful Helen fall in love with Paris, and elope with him to Troy.
But Helen's husband King Meneleus led other Grecian kings to rescue Helen.
Thus began the epic Trojan War. By the time it ended, Achilles killed Hector in famous
duel and was himself fatally wounded in his Achilles heel, Odysseus launched his
Odyssey -- and the gods got involved: Ares the god of war, Apollo the archer, Aphrodite,
Artemis archer-goddess, on the side of the Trojans; and Hera, Athene, Poseidon the sea
god, Hermes the messenger and Hephaestus the smith, on the side of the Greeks.
After ten long years of fighting, the Greeks built the Trojan Horse with Odysseus
squad hidden inside, and pretended to go away. The Trojans brought the Horse within
their walls and celebrated. Odysseus came from hiding to open the gates of the city.
Drunk, the Trojans were surprised and massacred by the Greeks, and Helen was returned
to Meneleus.
12
Ah, love is blind. Love conquers all. But love can also destroy.
If love is so blind that it allows Shell to kidnap the petrochem plant from Bataan
to Batangas, as Paris took Helen...
If love makes conquerors of JoeCon, Ting Jayme, white trash Cuisia and those
promoting the Petroscam, whose perfidy has assumed the dire shape of a Trojan Horse...
If such love destroys ever faithful Joker as Hector was killed and dragged
ignominiously around the walls of Troy... open the Pandora's Box of CB scams to
Congressional investigation... ruin the Cory Coalition and build a new political party
headed by the Council of Trent...
Such a love can destroy our nation.
June 13, 1990, Philippine Daily Inquirer

CHAPTER 3. Cory, the Army and the Americans

Part 1. Civil War: deep wounds that never heal
LINGGOY Alcuaz was right after all, Cory, when he said that a coup detat is in
the offing. Ninez Cacho Olivares also said so in her exclusive interview with Gringo
Honasan, but we pooh-poohed all such warnings.
As he did on Aug. 28, 1987, Anding Roces, called us up as early as past midnight
Friday morning about the rebel raid on Villamor Base.
Interspersed with worried phone calls from my daughter Juno in the USA, the
whole drama was acted out for us by the intrepid reporters of DZRH, whom we must
commend for sheer courage and determination. Armed only with their mikes and
transceivers, they seemed to be the only ones who are engaged in combat.
Three Tora-Tora planes bombed and strafed Malacaang, and for a while we were
worried about the safety of President Cory. But then later four jet fighters from Basa Air
Base chased them away.
But then a Sikorsky showed up to bomb government forces in Camp Aguinaldo
and Camp Crame, and no jets came to the rescue.
One by one, the generals went on the air to reassure the public that the
13
government forces still have the upper hand with reinforcements coming -- Defense Sec.
Eddie Ramos, Renato de Villa, Oscar Florendo. They sounded pathetic, appealing to the
rebels to stop, because they are giving aid and comfort to the real enemy, the
communists.
General Aguinaldo from Cagayan Province called to say that he is heading a
column of reinforcements for the rebels. Legaspi in Albay where Col. Rex Robles was in
exile, fell into rebel hands.
His Immensity Louie Beltran complained about phone calls warning that DZRH
will soon be bombed. Don't scare us, said Louie, We are scared enough as it is. Don't
call us anymore, we need to keep our phone lines open.
Someone called up to say that the Armed Forces are defecting in droves. After
two messages to her countrymen early in the morning, President Cory in Malacaang
remained silent for a long time, while an anonymous phone call threatened to bomb
Malacaang if Cory did not surrender.
The rebels occupied Channel 4, and all TV stations went off the air. And there
seemed to be a persistent attempt to jam DZRH. On radio at Edsa, government forces
surrendered to rebel forces, with shouts of joy and fond embraces.
Rebel troops were moving into Manila through the Coastal Road. And
everywhere civilian mirones were on the streets hampering military operations, and
encouraging the troops on both sides to unite and shake hands. They suffered the most
casualties and thoroughly deserved it.
Friends called and gave us the news even before DZRH did:
While government spokesmen claim the two jets patrolling the skies were F-5
fighters from Basa Air Base, Toti Mendoza with binoculars accurately identified
them as F-4 Phantom jets from Clark Field.
Young Joe Alejandrino called to inform me that Cory has asked for help from
Clark Field, and that the Americans asked for two conditions: extension of the
Bases Agreement, and Corys remaining only as a figurehead. This before Cory
and Ambassador Kulas announced the American assistance.
For a time there, we were really worried that the coup attempt had succeeded.
But alls well that ends well, and we thank the Lord that He has seen it fit to
14
deliver us again from our enemies. Civil war is the worst and cruelest kind of war,
pitting brother against brother, bringing out the worst in us somehow, cutting deep
wounds that never heal.
The American Civil War between the industrial North and agricultural South is
still being fought in the arena of civil rights 130 years after General Lee surrendered and
Lincoln was assassinated.
The confrontation between imperialists and communists in such countries as
Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Philippines, Central America and others, bear scars that last
forever.
In Ireland, there is the enmity between the Orange Protestants and the Green
Catholics; in Canada, between the Quebec French and the English-bloods; in Belgium,
between the Flemish and the Walloons; in Mindanao, between the Moros and the
Christians.
Our colonizers, the Spaniards and the Americans have pursued the divide-and-
rule policy to keep us dependent and controllable.
Without Americans and IMF, we might have been industrialized with
opportunities for a decent living for our people.
Without Americans and their Cold War, we might have united to give our people
a society dedicated to social justice.
Without the support of Americans, Marcos would not have dared to declare
martial law, and impose the cancer of the military and military dictatorship on our people.
Without the Americans, it would not have been necessary to for Cory to ask for
the help of Americans to put down the coup attempt.
Putong ama.

Part 2. Security Guards or Masters of Destiny?
IN the seating arrangement of President Diosdado Macapagals Cabinet, as
Chairman of the National Economic Council, I found myself between Defense Secretary
Mac Peralta and Press Secretary Virgilio Reyes -- and the President asked jocosely how I
felt being wedged between the pen and the sword.
I answered that being in charge of the economy, I represented Money which is far
15
more powerful than either the pen and the sword.
Since then, I retired from the economy and money, and became a Pen. Last week
on December 19, I and other members of the press found ourselves the guests of the
sword. We were invited to Camp Aguinaldo for a dialogue with Secretary Ramos,
Generals de Villa, Montao, Biazon, Aguirre and all the Generals.
Ominously on the same day, the new cronies who represented the all-powerful
Money and Big Business -- Cesar Buenaventura, Jaime Zobel, Ramon Boy Blue del
Rosario (boss of National son-in-law Eldon Cruz), Pete Cojuangco (Cuyang of the
Nation), and Eugenio Lopez Jr. -- were in Malacaang with President Cory, getting
assignments to oversee government performance.
Our Man Squint from Shell was seen on TV with a lop-sided grin. This probably
means that the people in Bian, Laguna, are due to be cremated, as Old Shifty-Eyes was
able to get Malacaang to decide that the Shell LPG tank farm in Bian will be operated
as a tempting target for the NPA and the RAMboys to blow up.
These oligarchs made the most money out of the Cory Administration, would not
soil their hands joining peoples power, most of them with residences and much of their
wealth abroad. Greedy little peckers.
On Dong Puno's TV show, we saw Father Archie Intengan SJ, representing cause-
oriented groups and the KILOS movement, the only ones willing to take to the streets to
defend Cory and the Constitution, pathetically asking for a dialogue with the powers-that-
be, knowing that the Army, the CIA and Big Business, the sword, the spooks and the
leeches, would oppose it.
On US television the same day, the pro-American mutineer Gringo Honasan
threatened to kill President Cory, driving her predictably into the protective arms of the
USA.
All in all, it was a nightmarish day.
Those CIA creeps in the US Embassy, Col. William Lofgren and Col. Stephen
Perry, must have toasted each other for a job well done.
Back in the Officers Mess in Camp Aguinaldo, I found myself seated with my
fellow Pangalatoks, Sec. Eddie Ramos and Malacaang security adviser Gen. Jose
Magno; Chief of Staff Rene de Villa; His Immensity Louie Beltran, Max Sullivan,
16
peeping-squeak Emil Jurado, the orgasmic Ninez (not Niez) Cacho Olivares, Kit Tatad,
and Raul Locsin -- the Big Guns of pen and sword.
His Immensity was asked to act as moderator for the dialogue, and as he hobbled
heavily toward the lectern, one could feel the earth tilt in his direction. His first words
were, The last time I did this, the Army locked me up and threw away the key, and that
set the tone for the entire dialogue.
The Swords were conciliatory. His Nibs, Rene de Villa started off by saying that
the Inquirer was right: the AFP should confine itself to soldiering, and leave the
newspapering to the press. Then he appealed for media support in the AFP fight to
defend Cory and the Constitution.
Emil and Raul both said that we fight for democracy on a different plane, for
press freedom is the mother of all freedoms, whose main function, constitutionally
guaranteed, is to inform the citizenry of the truth.
Ninez (not Niez) said that the AFP recommendations to Malacaang to acquire
the power to close down any and all media, betrays the mind-set of the military, its knee-
jerk opposition to press freedom.
Kit said that the primary function of the Army is to protect and defend the
sovereignty of the nation -- which it surrendered on the first day of battle to the US
Phantom jets.
I suggested that the AFP also declare their position clearly and in writing. Are
they our Security Guards or the Masters of our Destiny? Whom do they consider rebels
and their enemies: dissenters and non-conformists among professors and intellectuals?
Nationalists opposing US imperialism? Labor leaders, priests and nuns, in sympathy
with the poor? Students pasting posters on the wall?
It seems to me that the AFP never makes distinctions, that those opposed to the
US bases and nuclear war, are automatically candidates for torture and decapitation.
Then Max sent shivers down our spine by recounting that Marcos and military
also asked the press to help defend the constitution and democracy -- only two weeks
before they declared martial law, locked up the critical press, plunged our nation into a
new dark age. On that note, I left.

17
Part 3. Stupid CIA creeps opened Pandora's Box
NOTHING ever riled the military so much as my request: We want a clear
statement from you on whether you consider yourselves as our Security Guards or the
Masters of our Destiny!
Gen. Rene de Villa: We laid our lives on the line. Thirty two of us in the AFP
died to protect you. That should answer your question!
No, general, it most certainly did not answer my question.
Sec. Eddie Ramos: We soldiers are Filipino citizens just like everybody else,
with our own feelings and opinions.
No, Eddie, you are not like everyone else. You have guns and we do not.
Gen. Rodolfo Biazon: Do not confuse the simple soldier. The time may come
that he will ask himself: Are these the people I am risking my life for? Is this the system
of government I am dying for?
Don't be confused, General, military discipline demands that soldiers should not
have opinions. You generals can not fight a war if your orders are subject to debate.
Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die, as Tennyson wrote. If you cannot
discipline your men, you should not be in command.
Our simple soldier, Gen. Biazon, should know that in a democracy, he is an anti-
democratic man, subject to a line of command that is essential dictatorial, because that is
the only way he can fight a war. He takes orders and gives orders, and he cannot do any
thinking in-between. A soldier is an anomaly in a democratic society, but we need him to
protect our society.
He is ultimately subject to civilian authority. He may have his political opinion,
but he not entitled to air publicly, because we civilians cannot argue with a man pointing
a gun at our head.
If he wants to sway public opinion, let him put down his gun first, resign from the
army and be a civilian. In the movie Seven Days in May starring Burt Lancaster and
Kirk Douglas, the last advice to disgruntled and rebellious army officers was, Quit the
Army and run for office.
Our so-called dialogue with the military in Camp Aguinaldo scared the shit out of
us newsmen. More and more we are being made to realize that the military is determined
18
to play the role of our Saviors and Redeemers, whether we like it or not. They see
themselves as men on white horses who are the masters of our destinies.
And more and more, we are made to realize that there is NO ONE who can
protect us from our protectors. Who will protect us from our protectors? The Americans,
perhaps? Hahaha.
Americans are on the side of the devils most of the time -- Marcos, Somoza,
Trujillo, Duvalier, Pinochet, Batista, the dictators of Taiwan and Korea, the Shah of Iran.
I want to assure you gentlemen that you will be allowed to get out of the camp
alive, Eddie Ramos joked. And when Max Sullivan seriously said that that was the
same line of Marcos, Eddie gave out his own standard line, President Cory is not
Marcos. Gen. de Villa is not Ver. And I am not Enrile. But Eddie, Honasan is still
Honasan, and Blando is still Blando, even as they committed treason.
I trust you Eddie, we grew up together, you are the godchild of my mother, and
my son Atom is your godchild. But you may not always be there, just as Gen.
Mohammed Naguib was replaced by Lt. Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt.
A recent Social Weather Station (SWS) survey (September, before the coup)
shows that Eddie Ramos is the most popular leader in the entire country; Jovy Salonga is
next, then Miriam Defensor; Cory came in a poor fourth, with Erap Estrada trailing close
behind as fifth.
Mahar Mangahas, head of SWS, is known to be a pro-American %$*&#, so factor
that into your judgment. The Opus Dei CRC of Bernie Villegas, also pro-American
%$#@*&, stated that in a survey more than 60 percent of businessmen favor a civilian-
military junta -- something that CRCs counterpart in Chile (IGS) accomplished when it
conspired with the military and the CIA to murder the duly elected president Salvador
Allende in 1973.
After the coup, my CIA source says, the US Embassy has concluded that although
Ramos remains popular among the civilians, the Armed Forces are not with him 100
percent. So the CIA creeps set into operation Oplan God Save Ramos, obviously their
most viable presidential bet in 1992. General de Villa has been chosen by the CIA to be
the sacrificial goat for the failures of the military.
On the other hand, the CIA is alarmed at the admission of rebel Col. Red
19
Kapunan in Newsweek that Honasan has lost control of the RAM movement to a new
group called the Young Officers Club (YOU) who are more radical, not pro-American
at all like Gringo, but most probably nationalistic and opposed to the Bases.
These stupid CIA spooks just opened Pandora's Box.
December 3, 27, 28. 1989, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Part 4. Who will join me to die for Cory?
OUR Armed Forces are not really focused on what they are fighting for. Early in
the game, the generals were appealing to the rebels to desist because We should be
united against our greatest enemy, the Communists. That is really pathetic.
The communist rebels are our enemies alright. But our greatest enemies are the
rightist army mutineers, who were trained and paid by our people to protect our
government and to uphold our Constitution.
Instead they betrayed us. Deserters are bad enough and they are usually shot. But
mutineers are worse, they turn their guns against us in treachery and treason. They
betrayed us. They are worse than rebels, they are traitors. These people deserve the
firing squad.
Our generals are pathetic, weeping and embracing the rebels when they surrender.
That goes for Gen. Biazon, a good soldier, whose voice cracks with emotion when he
speaks of the rebels. That goes for Gen. Palma who could not bear to attack Gen.
Comendador because he is his classmate and Gen. Abenina because he is a comrade.
Every time Gringo tries a coup detat, he gets better and better, correcting his
mistakes and honing his tactics. And more and more soldiers will join him. It is only a
matter of time before he succeeds.
With an army like ours, Cory might as well negotiate. Yesterday, as I was writing
this article, my sources said that Camp Aguinaldo sent its civilian employees home, and
flew in helicopter gunships in anticipation of attack. If true, rebel Cagayan Governor
Rudy Aguinaldo must have broken through and on his way to Metro-Manila with his
vaunted 2,000 troops.
My CIA connection says that if Gen. Biazon expects a classic frontal attack, he is
crazy. Gov. Aguinaldo, trained in the Special Forces, will probably wait till nightfall to
20
infiltrate the Greenhills residential area and mount an urban guerrilla war the government
is not prepared to fight.
Already, according to my source, the rebels are planting dynamite and booby
traps in the Makati buildings they are occupying. That is why government troopers
hesitate to attack, for fear entire buildings will be blown to bits with precious foreigners
and rich Filipinos inside.
Gringo Honasan is reported to be in one of the buildings, vowing to bring down
the Cory government with him. Facing a firing squad, he figures he might as well fight
to the death.
The Americans in Forbes Park and Dasmarias Village have been asked by their
Embassy to evacuate. With a little baby in the house, my family and I were forced to
transfer residences three times. The electricity in the villages were cut off, and we were
asked by Security to watch out for snipers and strafing.
We were told by our CIA connection that Cory cannot possibly win a protracted
urban guerrilla war, that the longer our forces are concentrated in Manila, the greater the
danger from the NPAs and Muslims in the provinces.
Corys hold on the military forces is at best tenuous. If a stalemate occurs, and
the Armed Forces believe they can settle the war by shifting their support to Gringo, they
probably will, as did Gen. Blando.
And Cory cannot depend on people power either. When Randy David in his TV
program asked the jeepney drivers and the poor people if they would go out on the streets
to defend the Cory government, no one volunteered. No way! Hindi na naman kami
nakikinabang sa atin pamahalaan, said most. And even those who were with us on
Edsa said, Let Cory get the Congressmen, Peping Cojuangco and Eldon Cruz to man the
barricades first.
The cause-oriented groups have the courage to take to the streets to support the
Constitution, but I do not think they will risk their lives for the Armed Forces who have
been decimating their ranks by salvaging and assassination.
On the other hand the only ones who got rich in this administration, those in the
Makati Business Club, are likely to run off to parts unknown to save their asses. Most of
their leaders are cowards with a yellow streak on their backs a mile wide. And I dare
21
them to show up in the streets to support Cory on whom they made billions of pesos with
their manipulations of the monetary system and bargain-basement acquisitions of
government assets -- leeches and bloodsuckers that they are.
That goes for you too, Emperor Tony of the PLDT monopoly and Cesar
Buenaventura of the Council of Trent. But I am sure you will do okay, as you did with
Marcos, as you do with Cory, as you will do with Gringo Honasan if he ever gets into
power.
The Armed Forces have been handing out this bullshit about winning the war
against Honasan for five days now, and the war still goes on -- and their credibility is
wearing thin.
Well, who will join me to die for Cory?

Part 5. Phony war for a protection racket
IN the Mendiola Massacre, 18 people died in a 15 minute volley, or 1.2 people
per minute. In the August 28th mutiny, 56 people died in 24 hours or 0.04 people per
minute. In the December 1 mutiny, 96 people died in five days, or 0.013 people per
minute. Of these 96 dead, a majority of 57 were civilians, and only 39 soldier
combatants on both sides were killed. The combatant dead were ushered into the afterlife
at the rate of 0.0054 soldiers a minute.
Cory just submitted another set of casualty figures: 48 dead government troopers,
25 rebel dead, and 46 dead civilians -- 0.017 people dead per minute, or 0.010 soldiers
dead per minute. Compare the last figure 0.010 with Mendiola's 1.2 people dead a
minute.
Our Armed Forces it would seem, were 120 times more effective fighting
unarmed demonstrators in Mendiola, than fighting each other during the December Coup.
This shows firstly that our valiant soldiers consider unarmed laborers and
civilians as their real enemies.
And secondly most soldiers were not really fighting each other, they were
involved in a bogus acoustical war to advance CIA protection racket, Cory, you need us
to protect you, and you need the Americans too.
22
During the Edsa Revolution, as Anding Roces and I watched the goings-on at the
Enrile-Ramos headquarters in Camp Crame, seeing all the snappy salutes, the macho
postures over television, the press conferences, Anding turned to me and said:
Look at all those toy soldiers playing at war, calling each other up to size up
their relative strengths, bluffing each other until they can all jump over soonest to the
winning side.
This is the first time in history two fully armed armies faced each other, with a
whole population of unarmed civilians in-between to keep them from shooting each
other.
These soldiers have never really done anything more exciting in their lives than
to march in loyalty parades for Marcos, shoot at civilians who have no arms to fight back,
and assassinate priests, students, peasants, labor leaders and nationalists upon the orders
of the CIA.
I answered: Yeah, look at that leader of theirs. A few hours ago, he was on
television saying this may the last time we will see him alive, and begging for people
power to come to his rescue. By God, I thought he had two Adam's Apples, but he did
not have even one. Those were his two balls stuck in his throat.
And these are the guys who want us to be grateful for having saved us from
Marcos! It was the other way around, we saved them!
Anding Roces: By God, Larry, here in Makati, we see and hear volleys of tracer
bullets, Armalite fire-power, 50-caliber machine gunfire, grenades, mortars -- shouts of
ready-aim-fire, followed by all hell breaking loose. If the soldiers were really aiming at
somebody, there would have been thousands of dead bodies around and bullet holes on
building walls. There were practically none. I don't buy it. It's been a phony war all
along -- all sound and no fury, signifying nothing.
It looks like we have been fooled by these anal apertures from the CIA. The
maneuver is part of what American gangsters call The Protection Racket.
The Mafiosi have a pretty standard formula for mulcting the public. They throw a
bomb at your house, and approach you for a large monthly fee to keep your house from
being bombed again.
Don't think the military is really divided, they are fully united in their war against
23
the enemies of American imperialism -- Communists, nationalists, priests and nuns in
sympathy with the poor, cause-oriented groups and most politicians -- no distinctions are
made. If you are against the IMF, American monopolies and military bases -- you are the
enemy of America and our Armed Forces.
Okay now, you revolt and we fight you. We'll shoot in the air, and scare the hell
out of Cory, the politicians and the civilians. We will let the US Phantoms kunyari
rescue those suckers with a few innocuous flights.
Don't forget what our CIA masters -- Billygoat Lofgren, Stevedore Perry and the
departed Vic Raphael -- told us. Let's not harm each other, we are all friends, classmates,
and compadres. Don't surrender, you just return to barracks and we will welcome you
with open arms and fond embraces.
We can't lose. You will be well paid by the civilian opposition. We will all get
a raise in pay from P18 to P30 per day. The Americans will get their bases with the help
of Senate faggots with appetites for hairy American marine sergeants. And one of us will
become President of the Philippines. Not bad, eh?''
WC Fields used to say there is a sucker born every minute. In the last December
coup, like Fundamentalists we Filipinos were all Born Again... as suckers.

Part 6. The Cory speech that never was, on National Affairs
MY countrymen: With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in
the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to
bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the burden, and for his
widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace
among ourselves and with all nations.
So much for Lincoln's Second Inaugural. Now down to brass tacks:
What to do with traitors and mutineers? No more push-ups and reprimands that
only encourage treason and the perception that the officers are soft on each other so that
no matter what side they are in, they will never have to pay the ultimate price of defeat.
The mutineering soldiers will be disarmed and dismissed from service without
prejudice to criminal prosecution. Marcos saddled us with too many men under arms
24
anyway, many of them criminally inclined and treacherous.
The mutineering officers will get the maximum punishment provided by law for
crimes of treason and mutiny. The firing squad is too good for them. (HMH's
suggestion: Put them in the same cage as Senator John Henry Osmea.)
I have accepted the resignation of DOTC Secretary Reinerio Reyes, along with
those of NTC deputy commissioners Aloysius Santos and Florentino Ampil who were
recommended by my sons-in-law, Eldon and Manolo, and who unduly favor my
nephew's PLDT monopoly.
Manolo and my daughter Pinky Abellada have resigned from IBM, where they
were appointed by then IBM president Reinerio Reyes, and both they and Eldon and my
daughter Ballsy Cruz have left for abroad to pursue advanced studies.
In place of Reyes, I have appointed Undersecretary Josefina Lichauco, with full
authority to reorganize the department, and with orders to break up the PLDT monopoly
(like AT&T in the USA), and solve the transport problem.
I have no control over family members elected to public office, but I have
arranged to see them only in public functions outside of Malacaang. They together with
close friends Cesar Buenaventura and Jaime Zobel are requested not to go within 100
meters of Malacaang. (HMHs suggestion: have them shot by snipers if they come
within range.)
I have also initiated a major revamp of my Cabinet to be more attuned to the
expectations of our people. I have accepted the resignations of the following officials,
and have appointed their corresponding replacements:
Education Secretary Lourdes Quisumbing, to be replaced by former Education
Secretary Alejandro Roces.
Trade Secretary Jose Concepcion, upon his representation that his position is
incompatible with his family's business interests, to be replaced by
Undersecretary Gloria Macapagal.
CB Governor Jose B. Fernandez, to be replaced by PNB President Edgardo
Espiritu, definitely not Rafael Buenaventura as insisted by his brother Cesar.
Finance Secretary Vicente Jayme and his Undersecretary Ernest Leung, to be
replaced by Undersecretaries Vic Macalincag, and Diosdado Macapagal Jr.
25
respectively.
DSWD Secretary Mita Pardo de Tavera, to be replaced by Dulce Saguisag
whether her husband Rene likes it or not.
Natural Resources Secretary Fulgencio Factoran, simply because in every revamp
the Makati Business Club demands that at least one of Joker Arroyo's boys be
fired, to be replaced by environmentalist Domingo Abadilla.
Asst. Executive Secretary Jose de Jesus, to be replaced by Health Undersecretary
Mario Taguiwalo.
I do not regret having asked the Americans for their psychological help during
the emergency, but I do apologize for the seemingly obeisant tone with which I thanked
them. More, I resent the wavering loyalty of some of our troops that made the request
necessary, and I welcome any congressional probe to determine why we do not have a
Magsaysay who can inspire loyalty and devotion among our military.
Also I wish to state that I have never committed myself to give the USA their
military bases for their psychological help, thats treason at so cheap a price.
I repudiate the import liberalization program imposed upon us by the IMF,
which made us a nation of parasites, of consumers that do not produce what they need,
and dependent on other nations for their basic necessities.
I am determined to give back to our people their self-respect. From here on, no
more apples and grapes shall be imported, nor rice and corn. If we cannot produce our
own food on land so fertile all you have to do is to flip a seed into the ground to make it
grow, then we deserve to starve. We will reinstitute tariffs to protect our local industries.
Above all, I shall never again resent unsolicited advice from my countrymen, be
they ever so humble.
I thank you.

Part 7. The Cory speech that never was, on Economic Affairs
My countrymen: If there is any lesson to be learned from the recent coup, it is
this: Our economy is too fragile to survive political destablization.
With import liberalization, we are dependent on foreign sources for our basic
26
necessities, including food and medicines.
With an export-oriented agriculture, we are totally dependent on foreign markets
for our main export products.
With a floating currency, we are subject to dizzying devaluations that cut our
standard of living cruelly across the board, and keep us on marginal existence below the
poverty line.
We produce raw materials with cheap labor, and exchange it with high value-
added finished goods made with skills and knowledge.
Except for token gestures to appease the Americans, Japan and the Pacific Tiger
economies do not follow IMF policies on import liberalization, export orientation,
agriculture-base, currency liberalization -- for most of their development period, and even
today.
The industrial nations themselves practice protectionism, not free trade, in their
relations with us. While we accept any and all kinds of their goods without limit, the
USA imposes quantitative quotas on our sugar, coconut oil, tuna fish, textiles and
Philippine mahogany.
No more will we follow the politics and economics of poverty.
We shall pursue a policy of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. We shall
concentrate on producing our basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter,
medicine, education.
We shall not import apples or oranges or grapes, or rice or corn or sorghum or
soybeans. If we cannot grow our own food, we deserve to starve. There will be
no ceiling prices on agricultural products, only floor prices, in order to subsidize
producers, not big city consumers.
We shall no longer tolerate the smuggling of textiles. We shall make our own
clothing from our own cotton, ramie and synthetic fibers. Textile crafts is too
small an export market to risk the destroying textile industries that clothe the
Filipino people.
We shall continue to make medicines available to our people through our
Generics program, and also by withdrawing patent protection for medicines and
pharmaceutical preparations, like Switzerland and 30 other countries did. Also by
27
encouraging the commercialization of herbal and indigenous medicines.
Ours is probably the first administration that has made an enemy of our teachers.
That will change. We will not increase the number of Armed Forces, and will
allow natural attrition and purge of disloyal soldiers, to reduce our military to a
leaner and more disciplined force. With that and other budgetary savings, we will
finance universal education up to the secondary level.
We shall start a massive low cost housing program as pump-priming measure, and
as the engine of growth for our economy, as in most countries in the world.
Instead of deficit spending for infrastructures without assurance of immediate
return, we shall spend our resources setting up massive low-cost housing, an industry
that:
(1) Is not import-dependent, most materials being locally available;
(2) Is depression-proof, since historically, supply rarely exceeds
demand;
(3) Is largely self-liquidating;
(4) Is highly labor-intensive, making maximum use of our
unemployed;
(5) Tends to increase the value of real-estate, which is our ``store of
value'' (not stocks and bonds), and which is universally used as
collateral for bank loans -- and this increases the amount of capital
available for investment;
(6) Has a multiplier effect on the rest of the economy, specifically on
68 different industries, from cement to wood to electric appliances
to aluminum and many others.
We shall institute Protective Tariffs and Import Banning to conserve our foreign
exchange and encourage our industries. We spend $1.5 billion yearly on unneeded
imports, South Korea spends only $300 million.
We shall selectively repudiate immoral foreign debts, and buy our own debt
papers in the secondary market at full discount rather than share it with private
investors.
We shall welcome all foreign investments which do not compete for our domestic
28
resources; which accept limits on profit and capital outflows; which as partners
not masters, supplement, not supplant local capital; and which stimulate rather
than overwhelm local entrepreneurs.
As Winston Churchill once said in England's darkest and finest hour:
Come, let us to the task, to the toil, to the battle -- each to his part, each to his
station, we shall go forward together in all parts of the land.
There is not a week, nor a day, nor a moment to be lost.
Come, let us begin.

Part 8. When all the songs have been sung (Cory's speech that never was, No. 3)
MY countrymen, today I have served notice to the United States government that
their occupation of our baselands will be terminated in 1991 and will not be extended by
treaty beyond that date.
By this action I hope to put an end to an issue that has polarized and divided our
people since the birth of our nation.
I wish to state that this is not a reaction to the failure of the United States to pay
their obligations under the Manglapus-Shultz Agreement. We do not act like an unpaid
whore. We do not act for the wrong reasons.
We have taken this stand at the beginning of our Snap Election campaign in 1985
when we said to foreign correspondents that if we are elected, the Americans may keep
the bases only up to 1991.
We subsequently revised our stand, keeping our options open upon being
convinced that discretion and diplomacy must dictate the time and timing of such a policy
decision.
We now declare the end of foreign bases on our soil, for the following reasons:
It goes against the letter and spirit of American law that granted us our
Independence, and on which our 1935 Constitution was based. The Tydings
McDuffy Act, passed March 24, 1934 in Article 11, entitled The Neutralization of
the Philippine Islands: The President is requested at the earliest practicable time
to enter into negotiations with foreign powers with a view to concluding a treaty
29
for the perpetual neutralization of the Philippine Islands, if and when the
Philippine independence shall have been achieved. The Treaty envisioned was
similar to the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars, which
guaranteed the independence and neutrality of Switzerland. We hope that the US
President negotiates such a treaty among the great powers to guarantee, not only
for the Philippines but also for ASEAN in consonance with an agreement among
themselves, a Zone of Friendship, Peace and Neutrality in this part of the world.
Self delusion and hypocrisy always attended this issue from the beginning. It was
said in 1946 that the Bases were there for our protection. But what enemies did
we have then? Japan was already beaten, and the Soviet Union was still
Americas ally (the Cold War started in 1954). And why was the treaty period for
99 years from 1947, almost in perpetuity? And when it was amended to 25 years
from 1966, why was there a constant barrage of propaganda claiming that the
period was reduced from 99 years to 25 years, instead of to 44 years? And why
does the USA insist on calling their payment obligations aid to be paid on the
basis of best efforts and solely upon the discretion of the US Congress? Instead
of rentals which is an outright obligation?
Above all, the presence of the Bases has had its adverse effects on our way of life:
the smuggling of tax-free PX goods into the local market; 16,000 prostitutes and
3,000 sexually abused children; AIDS and other venereal diseases; drug abuse,
unpunished crimes committed against our people.
Worst of all is the colonial mentality that has become endemic among our people,
the AIDS of our minds that has made 85 percent of our adult population (according to the
Hodel Survey) prefer to be American citizens rather than Filipino, and more disturbing,
the UP Doronila Survey concluding that 90 percent of our children wish to have been
born a foreigner in their own country.
We cannot build a nation without the undivided loyalty and allegiance of our own
people, without the national pride that makes possible the impossible.
Soon we will be proud to pass the torch to a new generation of Filipinos who have
never known what it is to be under a foreign master, a postwar generation born without
an umbilical cord to the colonial past.
30
We shall pass on to them a nation united and indivisible, without the aberration of
self-doubt and double allegiance, without unequal treaties, without extraterritorial
privileges, without acquiescence to an export-oriented subsistence agriculture, without all
the colonial injustices that need desperately to be corrected, if we are to proceed with our
nation-building.
As the Indonesian ask their Dutch masters to leave, and welcomed them back as
friends -- as the Singaporeans asked their British masters to leave and welcomed them
back as friends -- we ask the Americans to leave the baselands, and return as friends and
partners.
This is our legacy to the future: a united nation free at last, free at last!
So that when all the stories have been told -- and all the songs have been sung --
and all there is to be, has become --
Then we, the generation of today, may well turn to the children of tomorrow and
say:
We have not lived in vain!
February 23, 1990, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Part 9. Good luck Cory, swim with the sharks
WELL, good luck, Mrs. President, you're just about to swim with sharks who
hope to eat you alive. Americans are not the best negotiators in the world -- they have
fumbled almost every treaty they ever signed except those they signed with us.
We are not stupid as they are, but we have an incurable colonial mentality, and
thats why we are always at the worse end of unconscionably unfair and one-sided
treaties.
For one thing, Americans seem able always to choose those Filipinos they will
negotiate with... in the past. with Carlos P. Romulo or Emmanuelle Pelaez, but never with
Claro M. Recto or Pepe Diokno... and today with Jobo Fernandez and Vicente Jayme, but
not with Solita Monsod or Teopisto Guingona.
For another, they choose Filipinos high up on the totem pole and clothed with
plenipotentiary powers, to negotiate with American clerks and messenger boys... Quirino-
Foster, whos Foster? Pelaez-Bendetsen, who the hell is Bendetsen? Romulo-Snyder,
31
whos Snyder? Laurel-Langley, who the devil is Langley??
That means, after negotiations, the American clerk says, Well, you know the
Secretary of State has to approve this agreement, and we Filipinos are subjected to an
ancient scam known as Calling Mr. Otis! used by used-car salesmen.
After the sucker initials the agreement, the salesman tells him the deal has yet to
be approved by Mr. Otis the Sales Manager. Of course there is no such person, but the
salesman finally tells the sucker that Mr. Otis disapproved the deal.
Does the sucker walk out of the deal? Dung, no, he has already invested too
much emotionally in the deal, he has already told everyone about how shrewd a
negotiator he is. To back out is to risk ridicule of his friends and family, so he signs up
for a lot less than he would otherwise settle for. Sucker.
Otis everyone knows makes elevators. Calling Mr. Otis is so-called because it
elevates the profits of the used car salesman. We are the only nation in the whole world
that ever falls again and again and again for this ancient scam.
The last time this happened was when Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus
negotiated with American clerk Kulas Platypus, an ambassador below his level. When
Raul thought he had a good deal, Kulas said, Your counterpart Secretary Shultz will
have to approve this. So both went to Washington, and when the signing came, we got a
lot less than we expected. We fell for the Calling Mr. Otis sucker play.
Cory, the Americans do not want to deal with Raul Manglapus but with
Ambassador Emmanuelle Pelaez who already believes that the best deal we can get is to
give the Americans the bases for minimum rent of $500 million a year, while relying on
the pie-in-the-sky promises of PAP for the money we need and want.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Cory, nobody ever loses
by saying No. You yourself said no, no, no to Ninoy till his proposition turned into a
proposal. The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to walk
away from the bargaining table without a deal.
Sometimes people expect that success in bargaining is measured by the act of
reaching an agreement, never mind what the agreement is. That was why Soviet Minister
Vyacheslav Molotov always put one over the Americans because he was so adept in
saying Nyet and in the waiting game that he was nicknamed Ironpants.
32
We can do the same because time is on our side. The more we say no, no, no,
they more desperate Americans will be. They have so much more to lose than we do. It
will take them at least $50 billion to place the bases elsewhere.
Surely they can pay $3 billion a year as they do Israel and Egypt, for nothing but
landing rights. Surely we can demand $3 billion a year, a measly sum needed to pay
merely the interest on our external debt, without strings for five years till they finally
leave forever.
If we only had Bert Romulo, Nene Pimentel, Jovy Salonga, Johnny Ponce Enrile
to negotiate for us! Alas, we shall probably have only Ernest Leung to speak for our
nation -- the same who conceded to IMF and the foreign bankers the excremental
conditionalities that Solita Monsod and Alejandro Lichauco regard as treasonous.
Ernest (not Ernesto) Leung is the worst kind of colonial, known as Filipino
Banana -- Chinese Yellow outside and American White inside -- all mush and no
backbone
Please, no more Pelaez, no more Leung.
Cory, we have long been the sardines to the American sharks... in 1898 when they
cheated us out of our successful revolution against Spain... in 1946 when they got the
Bases and the Parity Rights for nothing, zilch, zero... and now again, we face the sharks
of American imperialism.
Cuidado, Cory.
October 13, 1989, Philippine Daily Inquirer

CHAPTER 4. CIA's Panamanian dictator

Part 1. Panama's tortured history reflects ours
IN many ways the special relations between the USA and Panama parallels our
own -- unequal treaties enforced by gun-boat diplomacy; military base forcibly taken and
kept in perpetuity; US interference in internal affairs of the nation; a state within a state
and a people infused with colonial double allegiance; a subservient government that has
failed to industrialize and provide for its own people, and cursed with US approved
33
military dictatorships.
For the USA, the stakes are even higher in Panama than in the Philippines: the
Panama Canal which controls the shortest passage between the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans, the only alternative being all the way down around Cape Horn at the
southernmost tip of South America.
In the Suez Canal in Egypt, a simple canal was built by the Frenchman Ferdinand
de Lesseps between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, since the water level of both seas
are the same.
But the Panama Canal proved most difficult, because the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans, separated by two continents and subject to different pull of moon tides, have
different water levels most of the time. A simple canal would have resulted in a
tremendous torrent of sea water back and forth from one end of the canal to the other.
The Canal, built in the Isthmus of Panama by the USA, called for the creation of
an interior lake connected to both oceans by a series of locks that control the water level.
Just like the ones in Holland where the land is actually below sea level, and has dikes to
keep out the ocean.
The Panama Canal was started in 1904 and completed in 1914, after constant
struggle against yellow fever. The Canal is 40.27 miles long and lifts ships 85 feet above
sea level through a series of three locks on the Pacific and Atlantic sides. Enlarged later,
each lock now measures 1000 feet in length, 110 feet in width and 40 feet in depth of
water.
Panama was once part of the country of Colombia which declared its
independence from Spain in 1821. In 1903, with the USA at the threshold of being a
world power, Columbia rejected the US proposal to dig a canal in the Isthmus.
Whereupon, with the help of the USA, Panama revolted, declared its independence, and
signed a treaty with the big bully from the north.
For $10 million, half of what was paid for the Philippines five years before (in
1898), plus $250,000 annually, the USA obtained canal rights in perpetuity (forever and
ever). The payment was increased 30 years later in 1933 to $430,000 per year, and was
further increased under a revised treaty signed in 1955. In exchange the US wangled a
10-mile wide strip across the Isthmus -- and a considerable degree of influence in
34
Panama's affairs.
Under the USA, Panama became a true banana republic. By 1968, Dr. Arnulfo
Arias was elected President for the third time in three decades. And for the third time he
was thrown out of office by the military known for its loyalty to the United States. A
two-man junta took control and was promptly ousted by General Omar Torrijos.
To preview our bases negotiations with the USA in 1990 -- let us study the two
treaties signed by US and Panama in 1977, one reverting the Panama Canal to Panama by
the year 2000 AD, and the other guaranteeing its neutrality after the transfer (which
infringes on Panama's sovereignty and freedom of action).
Here is the stinger. After the treaties were signed by the dictator Torrijos and US
President Jimmy Carter in Washington DC on September 7, 1977, and duly ratified by
more than two-thirds of the Panamanian electorate on October 23, the US Senate refused
to ratify the treaties unless further changes are made.
The principal change was a reservation sponsored by an asshole Democratic
Senator from Arizona, Dennis de Concini, specifying that despite the neutrality treatys
specification that only Panama shall maintain military forces in its territory after the
transfer of the canal on December 31, 1999 -- the US should have the right to use military
force to keep the canal operating if it should become obstructed.
The USA forced Panama to accept these onerous post-negotiation conditions
which infringes on its sovereignty and makes it an American satellite forever.
On these and other premises, we can expect an RP-US Treaty that will have new
conditions imposed by the US Senate prior to its ratification, a treaty that will follow the
Panamanian model:

Part 2. Noriega: US creates its own monsters
THE worst dictators of the world, those who oppress their own people to further
the interest of American imperialism, then become such an embarrassment to the USA
that the Americans wash their hands off them and consign them to the dustbin -- usually
start their careers as traitors and CIA agents.
The psychological profile of present-day pro-American wimps among our
officials fits the same pattern -- greed and venality; ignorance, stupidity and lack of
35
compassion for fellow Filipinos; propensity to treason and to vicious violence against
nationalistic and cause-oriented groups. These are the potential Trujillo, Duvalier,
Somoza, Batista, Pinochet, Shah of Iran and Ferdinand Marcos among us, American-
created monsters that blight the human race all over the world.
Dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama -- drug lord, rapist, murderer,
traitor, and international spy -- whom the CIA is trying to depose and send to jail, is such
an American-created monster.
Born the illegitimate son of his father's maid, the bastard was put in a foster home
by his mother at the age of five. He was discovered by his benefactor, the CIA, when he
gained admission to the Chorrillos Military Academy in Lima, Peru, where his half
brother, a Panamanian diplomat based in Peru by the name of Luis Carlos Noriega
Hurtado, put him with a forged birth certificate.
There in 1959 Noriega was hired by the CIA to spy on his fellow students,
officers and instructors, and report those who are deemed nationalistic and left-leaning.
This standard CIA procedure is also followed in our own Philippine Military Academy
and other schools.
His predilection for violence emerged early. Joining the National Guard as a
junior officer, Noriega raped a prostitute and almost killed her. A rising young officer
named Omar Torrijos kept him from being punished and sent him to Chiriqui province.
There he raped a 13-year-old girl and beat up the childs sister. Again Torrijos
intervened.
There, in his drunken binges, he made prisoners take off all their clothes and run
around the yard naked; applied electric shocks to a young man's testicles; and stood by
laughing while his girlfriend was sexually tortured.
Throughout this period, as far as Americans were concerned, Noriega was an
ideal recruit into the ranks of the CIA. They sent him to Fort Gulick in Panama in July
1967 to be trained for intelligence and counterintelligence work under American officers.
They sent him to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in September 1967, for a course in
psychological operations that probably included lessons in torture and human rights
violations.
They sent him to the School of the Americas in Panama for a two-month course
36
called military intelligence for officers.
General Omar Torrijos took power as Panama's dictator in a 1968 coup-d'etat,
with the acquiescence of the CIA and the US government. And soon young Noriega
repaid him for his past protection by helping to quash an attempt to oust Torrijos when he
was out of the country.
A month later, Noriega was made head of the National Guards G-2 section,
giving him control over military intelligence, criminal investigations, customs and
immigration. During his 13 years in this job, he built up a collection of dossiers on
anyone who might ever be an enemy, and proved useful to the CIA and the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) for which he worked all this time.
Dictator Omar Torrijos died in a mysterious plane crash in 1981, and eventually
Noriega took his place as the strong man of Panama.
The CIA is convinced that Noriega planned the 1985 murder of oppositionist
leader Dr. Hugo Spadafora, who publicly accused him of drug trafficking.
The doctor's headless body was found in a US mailbag across the border in Costa
Rica, tortured and sodomized -- sexual humiliation being a favorite instrument of torture.
F-8, the name of Noriegas goon squad, was carved on his back, three of his ribs broken,
his testicles beaten till they were monstrously swollen. Then, while Spadafora was still
alive, he was beheaded slowly with three separate incisions.
This is the sort of torture that Filipino CIA military agents did on labor leader
Rolando Olalia.
With a personal fortune of as much as $1 billion, Noriega is a Babbitt who tries to
picture himself as a cultured man, dropping names of books, filling his luxurious home
with fine art and expensive furniture, and handing out Cuban cigars embossed with his
name.
With an annual salary of $40,000, he managed to have a fleet of BMWs, a Paris
apartment, a chateau in Southern France, properties in Spain, Japan, Israel and more than
a dozen buildings in Panama.
(to be concluded)

37
Part 3. Here lurk other Noriegas paid by CIA
LIKE many pro-American traitors in the Philippines, Panama's General Manuel
Antonio Noriega is thoroughly villainous, betraying his own countrymen, and eventually
betraying the Americans themselves.
He is ugly. Long taunted as cara pia (pineapple face) for his pockmarked face,
he is vain enough to have gone to Switzerland in 1982 to have his corrugated face
smoothed out, and touchy enough to have pushed a law making such offensive remarks
punishable by imprisonment.
His spy network served two top clients: the Panamanian government by
monitoring political opposition; and the US by tracking down the nationalists and union
organizers at the United Fruit Co.s banana plantations in Bocas del Toros and Puerto
Armuelles. United Fruit's interest is a priority for any Panamanian leader.
In 1967 he distributed handbills exposing a love affair between a local union
leader and the wife of his deputy -- a scandal that so divided the union leaders that the
government found them far easier to control.
For a long time the US was willing to ignore stories of Noriega's corruption. The
CIA paid him a stipend, initially $50 to $100 a month plus gifts of liquor and groceries
from the PX, a healthy boost to his salary as a junior officer of $300 to $400 a month.
When he became dictator his CIA stipend increased to $200,000 a year.
By the time he was lieutenant colonel, he expanded his contacts to include the
Cubans, Israelis, Taiwanese and any other intelligence service that came knocking. In the
State Department, he was called rent-a-colonel, a tribute to his ability to simultaneously
milk antagonistic intelligence services.
Yet CIA always insisted that his loyalty is primarily to the USA. Noriega plotted
with Lt. Col. Oliver North and Maj. Gen. Richard Secord to train Contra soldiers in
Panama, set up three dummy corporations to fund the Contras, arrange a sabotage attack
of arsenals in Nicaragua.
According to Sen. John Kerry, the CIA director William Casey acted almost like
Noriega's case officer. Noriega bragged that as long as he helped the Contras he could
manipulate the Americans like monkeys at the end of a chain.
In 1985 he met with Oliver North of the infamous Iran-Contra Scam, and both
38
hatched a CIA scheme to frame the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. East German
rifles and grenade launchers were to be shipped in a seized Danish freighter, Pia Vesta,
via Panama to El Salvador where the Salvadorean military would intercept the
weapons, claiming Nicaragua intended them for leftist guerrillas.
The plan fell through in June 1986, when the New York Times implicated
Noriega in drug trafficking. Enraged, Noriega took custody of the ship and its $26.5
million cargo, exposing the scam.
The Pia Vesta incident also exposed South African assistance in financing the
shipment, and many other scams involving the apartheid government made through the
solicitation of CIA director William Casey.
He was playing the other side too, helping Cuba and Nicaragua evade US trade
embargoes, allowing the Soviet KGB to set up operations in Panama City, helping
provide weapons for the Sandinistas since 1982, and cooperating with the East Bloc by
transfers of unauthorized high technology.
He made a monkey of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) too,
extending protection to the drug lords of Columbia. In May 1986, after Noriega raked in
millions in drug payoffs, DEA Director John Lawn sent him a letter expressing deep
appreciation for the vigorous anti-drug-trafficking you have adopted. Noriega would
allow Americans to catch penny-ante drug dealers, but not the big fishes which he
blackmailed and protected.
His connections with arrested drug traffickers moved the DEA to draw up a list of
five options for dealing with Noriega, including assassination.
He blackmails the Americans too. In 1976 he bought recordings of three
sergeants working for the US Armys 470th Military Intelligence Group, including
wiretaps of Gen. Torrijos own phone. In 1984, he compromised US officials in his
yacht, by involving them in a honey trap, and recording the event with sound and
video.
The US tends to make anti-communism more important than democratic ideals,
and find itself in the sordid embrace of people like Noriega whose lack of scruples make
them valuable allies in the Cold War.
We can be sure that in this land of ours where American bases are just as
39
important as the Panama Canal, there are many potential Noriegas lurking about, being
paid by the CIA, killing peasants and students, carnapping and robbing banks, protecting
drug and gambling lords, and just waiting to inflict their malevolence on the rest of the
Filipino people.
November 30, December 1 & 2, 1989, Philippine Daily Inquirer

CHAPTER 5. Were the Elizaldes cronies of Marcos?

Part 1. Jacinto and Elizalde steel mills were plagued with the same problems
I MET Don Manolo Elizalde in the mid-fifties when he sent for me, a 125-pound
stripling with wavy hair heading a small paint company, and challenging the Central
Bank to change its historical pattern policy of giving dollar allocations to American
paint importers, to one of contribution to the national economy giving the dollars
instead to Filipino paint manufacturers for raw materials.
Don Manolo and I were the only paint manufacturers at the time, and I had my
hands full against ten American companies, among whom were Cadwallader, Norton &
Harrison, Manila Trading of Jack Manning.
You are not afraid of these Americans, are you? Don Manolo asked. I want
you to know I am joining you in your fight. You can have one of my top lawyers to
research for you and to carry your attache case. His name is Ramon Bagatsing.
Bagatsing, the carrier of my attache case, subsequently became Congressman, Manila
City Mayor and father of a couple of Congressmen.
Later when I became a candidate for the senate with Ninoy Aquino, Don Manolo
gave me a TV program and commercials in his Channel 11, and sent me one of his
trusted advisers to serve as his liaison man. His name is Atty. Albert Romulo, now a
senator.
In 1962, during the administration of President Diosdado Macapagal in whose
Cabinet I served as Chairman of the National Economic Council, Don Manolo
inaugurated Elizalde Iron & Steel (Elisco) plant making hot-dip tin plates for canning
food and cooking oil. Later in 1962, he acquired an Electrolytic Halogen Tinning
40
equipment from the USA. Both equipment cost him $4.1 million at P3.92 to a dollar.
By the time Marcos came into power in 1965, Elisco was a major supplier to tin-
can manufacturers and was exporting tin-plates to the Middle East. Encouraged, Don
Manolo organized Elizalde Steel Rolling Mills Inc. (Elirol) for the manufacture of cold-
rolled sheets for the housing and appliance industries.
What plagued the IISMI of the Jacintos also plagued the Elisco and Elirol of the
Elizaldes:
Cut-throat competition between IISMI and the Elizaldes;
The 1970 devaluation that left both with higher debt-servicing and raw material
costs;
1972 floods that inundated Metro-Manila and forced the temporary shut-down of
the Elizalde plants;
Military control and supervision upon Martial Law, with Elisco under General
Salvador Mison (now Customs Commissioner);
The imposition of socialized pricing that imposed a freeze (1973) and even
rollback by 18 percent (1976) of prices in the face of higher cost resulting from
devaluation, and cutthroat competition with IISMI and foreign suppliers;
Increased importation (1977) of competitive products from abroad through the
IMFs Trade Liberalization and because of the demand of the food and milk
industries for high quality tin plate.
Elisco and Elirol were merged into Elizalde Steel Consolidated Inc. (Eliscon).
By 1977, the Eliscons losses peaked at almost P13 million a month, causing the
depletion of the companies working capital and operating reserves. Elizalde was forced
to restructure its loans, and enter into a dacion en pago arrangement with the DBP with
lease-back and option to repurchase.
The Price Control Council and the Presidential Steel Committee (chaired by BOI
Chairman Vicente Paterno) supervised the purchasing, marketing, and distribution of the
companies material and products. At the same time the government took over IISMI
and operated it under the name of National Steel Corporation (NSC). Later the Iron &
Steel Authority (ISA) was created to supervise the entire steel industry.
About 1977, the government initiated a rationalization of the steel industry,
41
whereby Eliscon gives up the rolling mill to NSC, in exchange for the tinning plant of
NSC, so that Elizalde gets a monopoly of tin-plate manufacture, and the NSC gets the
monopoly for all the rest of upstream production.
`According to Eliscon, the raw material supplied by the NSC was so inferior, it
yielded only 10 percent quality products, compared to 97 percent yield from the Japanese
supplied materials. This resulted in tinplate shortages that forced the government to
allow importation of Japanese tinplates for the use of the milk and food industries, further
prejudicing the Eliscon.
The rolling mill of Elizalde was not immediately shipped to Iligan because of
overcapacity in cold rolling. The mill is even now still packed in crates in Pasig, soaked
by the floods, its motors rendered useless, unneeded, unwanted.
Whose fault it was became moot when the government decided to take over the
Eliscon and integrate the entire industry under the National Steel Corporation.
(to be concluded)

Part 2. Marcos took over Elizaldes TV, newpaper and steel mills
IN 1981, Eliscon's board and stockholders approved the offer of government to
give up its tinplate business on condition the NSC absorbs also its liabilities. The final
agreement resulted in some P20 million in debts still to be paid by Eliscon inspite of the
fact it has completely lost its earning capacity.
This is the so-called behest acquisitions of Eliscon by NSC being denounced by
Senator Neptali Gonzales in the Senate.
Are the Elizaldes cronies of President Marcos -- like Kokoy Romualdez, Roberto
Benedicto, Lucio Tan, Tony Floreindo, Herminio Disini?
Certainly not Don Manolo Elizalde, chairman of Eliscon, Samar Mining, and a
conglomerate, Elizalde & Co., which is more than a century old, a respected business
leader and pillar of Philippine business and industry.
The Elizalde family members, Filipinos who were originally Basques known for
their independence movement against Spain, are known for their extraordinary passions.
Don Manolo's are sports, from polo to basketball, on which he lavished millions. His
brother, Don Joaquin became Ambassador to Washington and second husband to the
42
beautiful Susan Magalona. Another brother Federico was a composer and concert
pianist.
Don Manolo's sons had passions too, way off the beaten path.
His elder son Manda dedicated most of his life to the care of minority tribes,
including the controversial Tasadays, had a houseful of Aetas and negritos with G-
strings, and is known affectionately as Tarzan. He joined the Marcos cabinet as head of
the Presidential Administration of National Minorities or PANAMIN. As such he is
rumored to have surveyed and grabbed the lands of the minority tribes for his own, but
there is no evidence to back this up.
His younger son is Freddie, former swimming champion, who allegedly sleeps in
a coffin in a bat-ridden castle in Tagaytay, and is affectionately called Dracula. During
Marcos time, he was escort and chaperone for the high living Marcos children -- and
served in some sugar board that benefited only Roberto Benedicto, Marcos kingpin and
destroyer of the sugar industry.
Are they cronies of Marcos?
The evidence indicates otherwise.
The Elizalde-owned Channel 13 and Evening News newspaper were taken over
by the military, and never returned or paid for. In contrast, the Channel 9 of
Roberto Benedicto was kept intact and augmented with Channel 13;
The Eliscon was utterly devastated by the very policies used by the Technocrats
to destroy the IISMI of Jacinto. The technocrats keep product prices low, till they
took over, and then gave themselves the tariff protection and higher pricing that
they so cruelly denied to Jacinto and Elizalde. The technocrats would starve the
entrepreneurs of working capital and needed raw materials, till they took over and
filled the Iligan yards with rolls and rolls of steel plates that rotted and had to be
sold as scrap.
There are absolutely no court cases or legal suits instigated against the Elizaldes
as a defendants. or the against Elizalde companies even in the courts or the PCGG
for sequestration.
It is hard to see how the Elizaldes could be tagged Marcos cronies.
Elizalde is also involved in the most fascinating of all the downstream steel
43
industries, the Munitions Industry, with its high-value added that contributes mightily to
the economy.
Gunsmiths from Danao in Cebu, the kingdom of the late Ramon Durano and his
family, have been making guns for years for the gangsters of Yakuza and the petty
thieves of Metro Manila.
It is a sad commentary on the Filipinos that having been in continuous warfare
since World War II, against the Japanese and against each other, we have to beg for
surplus obsolete arms from our former colonial master, instead of making them ourselves.
Squires Bingham of the Tuasons made .22 and .38 small arms for our police forces for
quite some time; the big arms for the army were to follow.
Elizalde came into the picture with his own munitions plant, as a subcontractor of
Colt Industries under the Self Reliance Defense Program (SRDP), making the M16
Armalite for the Philippine Armed Forces. It is not an assembly plant, it is a real
manufacturing plant using basic steel materials to make the weapon, even boring and
rifling the gun barrel, stamping or machining or casting all the parts, including 9 to 13
round clips. It even makes 40 mm. and 60 mm. rifle grenades.
Called the Elitol and managed by Tomas Concepcion, Joses first cousin who
prefers not to work in Concepcion Industries, it has a capacity of 30,000 Armalites a year,
and has so far produced some 200,000 automatic rifles for our Army.
Someday I shall tell you the fascinating story of our munitions industry.

Part 3. Elizalde and the Filipinos improved Armalite for Colt
ISRAELIS (then only 600,000) won their independence against the British and
Arabs with Sten guns made in their basements. With only three million people, Israel
earns billions exporting UZIs and GALIL assault rifles.
Belgium (population: 10 million) with its Fabrique Nacionale is one of the biggest
munitions makers in the world, its FN assault rifle using 7.56 mm bullets now the NATO
standard.
Italy with its Beretta 9mm pistol now replacing the Colt .45 as the standard side
arm in the US Forces, is also a large manufacturer of arms.
The Soviet Union makes AK-47, undoubtedly one of the best assault rifles in the
44
world, better than the US M16 Armalite, as far as accuracy at long range is concerned.
The USA, by far the biggest user and exporter of arms despite its claim to be
peace-loving, is out of touch with the rest of the world, still using the English system of
measures when even England is already in the metric system. Its arms are not compatible
with the rest -- Garand .30-06, carbine .30 cal., Colt .45, Armalite .223 cal. (5.56 mm.).
As NEC Chairman, I was told by Chief of Staff General Alfredo Santos that the
Americans limited our supply of ammunitions to only three days use. The idea that the
USA controlling our defense capability, outraged me. I was determined to do something
about it.
I asked President Macapagal's authorization to secure an ammunitions plant from
abroad, and he approved. The JUSMAG laughed in our faces, and every other European
nation was pressured by the USA to refuse us. I decided to get it from Japanese
Reparations.
The Japanese told me that this is impossible because the provisions renouncing
war as an instrument of national policy in their Constitution forbids them to make any
weapons. President Macapagal helped by mentioning to the Japanese Prime Minister that
I speak with his authority.
Whereupon I told Gaimushu (Foreign Office) in no uncertain terms that I have the
ultimate authority to approve every Reparations deal, that unless I get my munitions
plant, they might find me uncooperative to the nth degree.
Soon I got my munitions plant as metal forming equipment, installed in Limay,
Batangas, and capable of producing more than 10 million rounds a year of 5.56 mm
bullets for Armalites, .30 cal. for M1 carbine, and .45 cal. for the Colt Pistol and the
Thompson machine gun.
For this hush-hush project, I hired retired Col. Manuel Salientes, West Pointer,
MIT man and Pangalatok like me -- as my trusted liaison man to pursue the project in
Japan. He did his job so well, Marcos later made him Undersecretary of Defense for
Munitions. This munitions capability was what Marcos used for plotting a war against
the Moros and Malaysia, in what is known as the Jabidah Affair, duly exposed by
Senator Ninoy Aquino. Our Government Arsenal at Limay, is now headed by General
Antonio Rocha.
45
Even then, there was already a small munitions plant set up by the Tuasons of
Squires Bingham, the Arms Corporation (Armscor) in Marikina. Headed by Board
Chairman Bololo Tuason and President Carlos Butch Tuason, it produces real guns --
.38 caliber police revolvers, .22 caliber revolvers and rifles, and 12 gauge shotguns --
with ammunition to match.
The Elizaldes set up Elitol to manufacture Armalites under contract with Colt
Industries.
The skill and genius of the Filipino that made the Danao revolver a legend among
Japans Yakuza, showed itself early in Elitols product which proved much superior to
those of the USA.
The US Armalite M16 in full automatic mode can spit 800 rounds a minute, with
a bullet grouping within a 4 1/2 inch diameter at 150 yards. Elitol's product consistently
did better, achieving a grouping within a 2 1/2 inch diameter at the same range.
How was this done?
First, Elitol eliminated the usual 2 o'clock kick of the Armalite by designing a
muzzle compensator with gas ports that force down the barrel of the gun accurately upon
firing.
Second, Elitol added a third mode to the single/automatic selector: a three shot
burst that saved a lot of wasted ammunition, and still be effective as an automatic.
The Americans were impressed. They adopted the Elitol innovations in the M16-
A2 model, and neither paid nor gave any credit to Elitol.
For that is the way with American patent holders; their technical agreements
stipulate that the patent user give any technical improvement he develops free of charge
to the patent holder. And then the patent holder may charge more royalty for its use.
This is also what happened to H. G. Henares & Sons when it manufactured and improved
Parkers Quink for Parker Pen Co.
This should be borne in mind by those who move to protect the intellectual
property of Americans.
Our gun-runners in Congress, military and dissidents, must realize that we have
good gunsmiths here, including those who accurize the Colt .45 or any other gun, better
than Pachmyr of the USA.
46
If we have to kill each other, for God's sakes, let's do it with our own weapons.
November 20, 21 and 27, 1989, Philippine Daily Inquirer

CHAPTER 6. Shay, whadya expect from Flash Gordon?

FOR years we have patiently endured the sophistry of Olongapo Mayor Richard
Gordon, his fallacious and specious arguments, propounded with such alacrity over
television, that:
Just because a hundred prostitutes exist in Ermita, we must allow 16,000
prostitutes in Olongapo.
To preserve the source of livelihood of whores, stripteasers, night-club owners,
pickpockets, drug pushers and a few base workers in Olongapo, the rest of the
Philippines must bear the risk of drug addiction, AIDS and nuclear annihilation.
Just because Sangley Point is a ghost town after those American dungheaps
stripped it of every building and plumbing, therefore we Filipinos cannot make
use of what the Americans leave behind, and must then bear to have them around
for the foreseeable future.
If one is a priest who takes care of the poor, the hungry and those addicted to
drugs, and who tries to protect children from sadistic molesters, to keep
prostitutes off the beds of brutish uncircumcised bastards, and to protest the
existence of bases that bring about these conditions, ergo the priest is anti-Filipino
and should be stoned, spat upon and declared persona-non-grata by screaming
pro-American banshees and whores.
Well, what the hell do you expect from a half-breed who thinks he is Flash
Gordon, defender of American democracy and prince of the PX? who must have spent
his childhood cadging chocolates from the sailors and marines, and dreaming of White
Christmas? whose idea of heaven is probably the Olongapo honkytonk with its
nightclubs, sauna-massage parlors, toro arenas, and snakepit of lost souls and shattered
lives? and who regards us Indios as Ming's cohorts on planet Mongo?
And what do you expect from his acting Mayor Sin Cajudo who would grant pro-
47
American dungheaps an indefinite rally permit, with which to harass Columbian priest
Father Shay Cullen in front of his Prevent and Rehabilitate Drug Abuse Center
(PREDA)?
As long as Flash Gordon and his cabal of whores and drug pushers confine their
aggression to the diarrhea of their mouths, we keep our peace and let their minds rest in
pieces.
But lately these little peckers have been stoning and spitting on their betters,
specifically on an Irish priest whose love for the Philippines surpasses even their lust for
flesh and greenbacks.
That is where we peaceful and intelligent people must draw the line. These right
wing lunatics have been on the rampage the whole world over, with the support of
government, army and CIA, in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, in the Philippines.
Every place the Americans have their Cold War Low Intensity Conflict -- they
bring into being CIA death squads, murderous vigilantes, lynch mobs, army and police to
kill for them, on the principle that American honkies are too precious to waste in a war
with IPs.
IP means Indigenous Personnel, a term used by Embassy people to describe with
contempt the natives of the lands they control. It is a term used to describe aborigines
like American Indians, Maoris, niggers of Australia, Aetas, for that matter, all of us
Filipinos.
In Washington DC, there is an obnoxious radio news commentator called the
Grease Man who keeps referring to Negroes as IPs. On Martin Luther King Memorial
Day which was a holiday falling on a Thursday, the Grease Man said, If we could shoot
a couple more IPs, we could have the rest of the week off.
Then he added: You have to be careful. You can't hit these IPs in the dark, till
you see the whites of their teeth. After blacks threatened to burn down the station, the
management was forced to apologize.
Apparently the CIA has given the go-ahead signal to their IP right wing lunatics
in Olongapo to get to work on Father Shay Cullen, as they did on Lean Alejandro, Lando
Olalia, and Bernabe Buscayno.
The CIA did the same in El Salvador when it gave the go-ahead signal to army
48
death squads to brutally kill six Jesuits for their sympathy with the poor, just as they did
in 1981, when they murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero in his chapel, and four
American nuns and lay worker on a deserted road after torturing and raping them.
Honasan continues to threaten Cory because as a right wing collector of Muslim
ears, he is being protected by the Embassy and the military. The military made that clear
when they penalized Honasans co-conspirators Lieut. Cols. Red Capunan and Nelson
Eslao with a mere reprimand for their role in the Aug. 28 coup attempt that claimed 53
lives.
This is the sort of thing we can expect from pro-Americans if we ever allow a
referendum on the bases before Senate ratification. The CIA and their friends in
Olongapo and in the army will simply waste us IPs.

CHAPTER 7. Restless souls wander the earth as ghosts

OCT. 31, the day before yesterday is Halloween, the last day of the old Celtic
calendar year, in the night of which witches and warlocks wander, while children in the
Ayala villages threaten us with trick or treat. Christians took over this day as the Eve of
All Hallows or All Saints.
Yesterday on All Saint's day, we visit the graves of our loved ones, with candles,
flowers and fond remembrances.
Today on All Soul's Day, we go to mass, Misa ng Patay, and pray for their eternal
rest.
But there are souls that never rest, who wander on this earth as ghosts seeking to
fulfill the shattered hopes of a life prematurely cut short of its promise, and scaring the
living daylights out of us.
49
Most of them are virgins cheated out of the joys of life. Like the Virgin Ghost of
Balete Drive, clad in white night-gown suddenly appearing before the astonished eyes of
those driving alone late at night just after a drizzle, in the deserted Balete Drive.
Like the Virgin of Mango Avenue in Cebu City, the ghost of a dalaguita who was
ran over and killed by a jeepney just outside a house party on that street. On certain
nights a beautiful girl would hail a calesa or a taxi on Mango Avenue and ask to be taken
to Fuente Osmea, then say Manoy, I don't have any money to pay you, just get the
cotton from my mouth. Whereupon, the cochero or driver turns around to see a grinning
skull with fire jetting out of its jaw.
King Henry VIII who had six wives most of whom he divorced, as a result of
which he was excommunicated by the Pope, turning England into a Protestant nation,
beheaded two of his wives who returned to haunt him and future Britishers.
One was Ann Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth I, in whose reign Shakespeare
flourished and the Spanish Armada was destroyed. Almost every year on May 19 since
1536 when she was beheaded, she returns back to Blickling Hall where she spent her
childhood, in a coach drawn by four headless horses and driven by a headless coachman.
Inside the coach she sits headless, carrying her own head on her knee. She also haunts
the Tower of London -- in the White Tower where she was imprisoned and the chapel of
St. Peter-ad-Vincula where she lies buried.
The other ghost is that of Catherine Howard who was beheaded on February 13,
1542, after 18 months of marriage to Henry VIII. The haunted gallery of Hampton Court
Palace and the Eythorne Manor, echo with her shrieks.
The Vermilion Phantom is part of the history of France. With a red beard, and
50
wrapped in a red cape, he appeared in Henry IV's bedchamber on May 13, 1610, and
predicted, Tomorrow you will die. Within 12 hours the king was assassinated by
Francois Ravaillac.
The Vermilion Phantom also appeared four times to Napoleon Bonaparte, on the
third occasion in January, 1814, witnessed by Count Mole-Nieuval; and on the fourth
beside Napoleon's death-bed on May 5, 1821, witnessed by Dr. Antomarchi.
Then there is the legend of The Flying Dutchman, subject of Richard Wagner's
opera Der Fliegende Hollander, a Dutch East Indies ship captained by Hendrick Van der
Decken sailing from Amsterdam to Batavia in 1680, and sunk in a hurricane near the
Cape of Good Hope.
Any ship that sights the phantom is said to be plagued with bad luck soon after.
Recently in 1939, some 60 people on Glencairn, South Africa, saw a fully rigged 17th
century vessel driven at full sail to destruction towards the sand bar, even when there was
not a breath of wind, then suddenly disappeared. It was The Flying Dutchman.
One reason why the musical play, Miss Saigon, with our Lea Salonga and
Monique Wilson, is sure to be a big hit, is that as per tradition, the famous ghost of Drury
Lane Theatre was seen during one of the performances. The skeleton of a young dandy
was found by workmen inside a wall in this century, covered with a gray riding coat with
a dagger sticking out of its ribs. He is to be seen coming out of the wall and at the back
of the Upper Circle.
Abraham Lincoln's ghost haunts the White House. When he was alive, he used to
hold seances there, as he was interested in psychic research. Almost a hundred years
later, Eleanor, wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, recorded: I was sitting in
51
my study when one of the maids burst in on me in a state of great excitement. I looked
up from my work and asked her what was the trouble. He's up there -- sitting on the
edge of the bed, taking off his shoes! she exclaimed. Who's up where taking off his
shoes? I asked. Mr. Lincoln! the maid replied.
Among others who saw the ghost of Abraham Lincoln was Queen Wilhelmina of
the Netherlands during a state visit in 1945.
Dear readers, expect the ghost of Marcos to haunt us soon.

CHAPTER 8. Cory, flatterers are our worst enemies

SECRETARY Eddie Ramos called to express resentment at some of the things we
wrote. Our families have known each other in Pangasinan for three generations, and he is
more than the Secretary of Defense, he said, he is family and friend, adding: We are
risking our lives here to protect you in your Makati Village. We love you more than you
love us, but you go out of your way to impair our morale while we fight your friend
Honasan. Honasan, the collector of dried Muslim ears, our friend??
President Cory also is reportedly disappointed at some headlines and articles in
the Inquirer. When she appealed for cooperation from the press, she invited only
Bulletin, Star and Chronicle. How strange that she missed the chance to get the
cooperation of the critical ones during the coup attempt when she needed it, and all
papers including ours were willing to extend it. Now she is threatening to bring to court
any reporter or publication that incite rebellion.
Gen. Renato de Villa reportedly wanted to close the Inquirer during the height of
the last attempted coup for stories he did not like. He added later that if he had his way,
he would close down all media establishments.
Four senators -- Shahani, Alvarez, Angara and Aquino -- filed a bill, increasing to
52
a maximum of 12 years the imprisonment of persons who incite to sedition through
libelous writings.
We have written nothing more critical than many newspapers do. But somehow
our paper is always compared to the Bulletin which has a circulation (200,000 per day)
comparable to ours (180,000 per day, audited). And we are perceived to be less friendly.
Others are even less friendly but they do not matter much because they have only 20,000
to 40,000 copies per day circulation.
The Inquirer is truly a national newspaper, selling three times more copies outside
Metro Manila than the Bulletin does, because Bulletin's weight adds to its cost of
transport, and its voluminous ads are irrelevant to provincial readers.
The reactions to the Inquirer are intelligent, immediate and nationwide. And
government officials react accordingly.
In the Shakespearean play, Julius Caesar, we witness a memorable scene between
two friends:
You wrong me every way; you wrong me, Brutus, complained Cassius to
Brutus who answered, I do not like your faults.
A friendly eye could never see such faults, Cassius said, and Brutus retorted, A
flatterers would not, though they do appear as huge as high Olympus.
Somehow a friends criticism hurts more than one that comes from a stranger or
an enemy. Somehow a friends praise is not as sweet as one that comes from a stranger
or an enemy. That is because we tend to take our friends very much for granted, and
fully expect them to be more supportive and less critical than others.
But in the last analysis, a flatterers honeyed words drips with acid. Flattery is
the food for fools, said Jonathan Swift.
What is it about the pinnacle of power that makes a national leader such an onion-
skinned pikon? Although critical of the men around her, we have supported Cory all the
way as our duly constituted leader in most of our columns, but nothing offends her more
than Ninezs attacks, and some columns critical of her Cabinet.
We write continuously of Eddie Ramos courage, honesty, integrity, nationalism,
and high qualifications as a potential President, even pooh-poohing his being an Amboy
as only skin deep -- but nothing matters to Eddie more than our having called his radio
53
statement pathetic.
We would like to think that being the friends of Cory and Eddie, we are in the
best position to point out their faults, to be corrected before it is too late -- that because
they are sensitive to what we write, they would react more constructively than if we were
their enemies.
Flatterers and obeisant toads are your real enemies, Cory and Eddie. Long after
other writers and newspapers start to make sipsip to whoever will be in power in the
future, as some of them did with Marcos -- long after they kowtow to US imperialists,
Kuomintang, Maoist communists, the Laurels and the Enriles -- we will still be around
carrying the flag you carried, of love of country and democracy.
Please note what our publisher Eggie Apostol has said again and again:
The Inquirer does not speak for the powers-that-be, or for our friends. Our real
bosses are not any vested interest (none of whom own us or subsidize us), or our
advertisers (who sometimes pull out their ads when they feel offended), or even ourselves.
Our real bosses are our readers and the people of the Philippines.
We remind you, Cory and Eddie and de Villa, that they are your bosses too.

CHAPTER 9. The Holy Mafia: Opus Dei

Part 1. Secret World of Opus Dei, by Walsh
LET it be known that I have nothing against the Opus Dei. Truth to tell, I am
quite fond of Kit Tatad, Cidito Mapa, and Joe Romero, who are all Opus Dei.
But how come I always receive information about Opus Dei from priests and nuns
who dislike it? Like this book review of The Secret World of Opus Dei, by Michael
Walsh (Grafton Books), by Nigel Townson, New Statesman, June 1989, which we quote
and paraphrase hereunder:
Opus Dei (or The Work of God) is at once the most powerful yet the least
known order within the Roman Catholic Church. The sect's extreme secretiveness, its
semi-autonomous status, and its colossal secreted wealth, have combined to produce what
54
is, in effect, a church within a church.
The most extraordinary feature of the Opus' shadowy existence, however, its
relentless pursuit of secular power within the framework of a theology that is short of
troglodytic. Although the latters anachronistic essence is highlighted by Michael Walsh,
he does not do justice to the paradox at the orders heart: for the modernizing forces
promoted by the Opus Dei have often worked against its ostensibly religious viewpoint.
Established in Spain in 1928, Opus Dei was overwhelmingly dominated by its
founder, the Godfatherlike Escriva de Balaguer, until his death in 1975. A vain,
unyielding and zealously reactionary man, who had a marked taste for the luxurious,
Escriva ruled his movement with an iron hand.
Addressed as The Father (which was knowingly confused with Our Father
meaning God), his followers inevitably became my children. In our docility, he
instructed, there will be no limits.
Lives were rigidly controlled (right down to the number of handkerchiefs and
pairs of underpants) and rigorously led. Self-flagellation, the kissing of floors, extended
periods of silence, the wearing of a spiked bracelet (the chilice), were all part of the
routine.
Escriva himself delighted in a cat-o-nine-tails (appropriately named the
discipline) into which were inserted metal splinters and razor blade fragments. The
beds of the devout are also sprinkled with holy water before sleeping because as one
member explains, chastity is a very difficult virtue.
There are undoubtedly similarities with sects such as the Moonies. Recruits are
preferably seized young, the parents are not informed if objection is likely, and it then
becomes extremely difficult -- once fished as Opus terms it -- to leave. Victimization
has often befallen those who have done so.
Opus has therefore moved in the contrary direction to most other orders within the
Catholic Church. Its conception of the spiritual life and its retrograde theology (as
epitomized by Escriva's visceral opposition to the Second Vatican Council), has made
Opus increasingly isolated and bizarre. The severe subjugation of women within the
sodality has also contrasted starkly with developments elsewhere within the Catholic
Church.
55
Its devout religiosity notwithstanding, Opus has concerned itself above all with
the conquest of secular power. Whether in government, the armed forces, the intelligent
services or industry and finance, Opus has assiduously courted the professional classes
for its cause.
As Walsh writes, El Camino (The Way), Escriva's revered book of guidance,
reads like a manual of how to win friends and influence people, or how to succeed in
business.
Religion, in other words, is strikingly subordinate within the Opus to the exercise
of power. This explains the organizations immense wealth and its extensive political
ambitions.
Not only did it wield considerable power under Franco, but it has been linked,
often in collaboration with the CIA, to numerous reactionary regimes in Latin America,
like Chiles General Pinochet.
With the support of the Pope, John Paul II, Opus is proceeding apace with the
canonization of Escriva. There is evidence, however, that its ascendancy within the
Catholic Church has peaked and that its political influence in general is on the wane.
Yet the orders economic resources remain redoubtable. In Spain alone, it
effectively controls over 1,500 banks and corporations. The strongly theological bent of
Michael Walshs passionate account nevertheless means that -- as with the freemasons --
there is still much to tell.
Well, from my experience, the only Opus Dei people like the ones described by
Michael Walsh are those mostly in the core group of celibate numeraries such as
Bernardo Villegas, Jesus Estanislao; such Kokoy boys as Rex Drilon, Mario Camacho,
Lito Sandejas, and Tony Ozaeta; the CRC which is promoting a Military Junta for us and
the Bases for the Americans; and the viruses that are proliferating in the DBP and PCA.
The rest seem okay.

Part 2. Big Dif between what Opus says and does
SOMEDAY we hope the Jesuits will teach the Opus Dei the basic rules of logic
and debate. It is not enough as Alexander Gilles of CRC does, to quote words of Opus
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Dei founder Msgr. Escriva, as though they were spoken ex cathedra to prove that there is
no link between CIA and the Opus Dei, or that there is only love between Jesuits and
Opus Dei. By God, this is like quoting Mein Kampf to prove Hitler had nothing but
good in his heart.
Nor is it enough to state as Milo Distor of Opus Dei does, that Opus Deis
exclusive spirituality is recognized by all including journalists of New York Times, Time
Magazine and others, without identifying who they are.
The clarifications of the Opus Dei make the organization look so good and
harmless, one wonders why so many critical articles are written about it, and why so
many nuns and priests and otherwise decent people are afraid of and antagonistic towards
the Opus Dei.
Precisely what is in contention is the big difference between what Opus Dei says
about itself (which its detractors say is deceiving and self-serving), and what other people
perceive to be its real purpose (which its defenders say is the result of envy, communism
and the devil).
Our bibliography on Opus Dei:
1. The Secret World of Opus Dei, by Henry Kamm, editor of New York Times
magazine, January 8, 1984.
2. John Paul's Shock Troops, Newsweek issue of September 2, 1981.
3. The Rapid Rise of the Opus Dei, by Theodor Weiser, April 1984, Swiss
Review of World Affairs.
4. Opus Dei: Secret Order Vies for Power, by Fred Landis, ICHTHYS, a
Catholic publication, July 29, 1983.
5. Their Will be Done: When the CIA goes to Church, it Doesn't Go to Pray, by
Martin A. Lee, ICHTHYS, a Catholic publication, August 26, 1983.
6. Opus Dei -- an Inside View, a 1983 book by Klaus Steigleder, Catholic
theologian and Opus Dei for five years.
7. La Prodigiosa Aventura del Opus Dei, a book by Jesus Ynfante, with Opus
Dei constitution in the appendix, Madrid, 1973.
8. The Inner World of Opus Dei, a paper by John Roche, ex-Opus Dei professor
at Oxford University.
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9. Rise of Opus Dei, by George William Rutler, New Oxford Review, June
1983.
10. The Way, by Josemaria Escriva.
Quoted from Fred Landis:
The courting of John Paul II by Opus Dei began when he was still Archbishop of
Krakaw. First he was invited to give speeches at various Opus Dei Colleges and later at
their headquarters in Rome. These speeches were then collected in book form and
printed by Opus Dei. During subsequent visits to Rome, Cardinal Wojtyla furthered his
image as papabile by distributing copies of this Opus Dei book to all members of the
Vatican Secretariat of State. During his visit in August 1979, for the burial of Pope John
I, John Paul II prayed at the tomb of Opus Dei founder, Escriva de Balaguer.
After his ascension to office, John Paul received a succession of Opus Dei
delegations and threw his support behind them in their struggle against the Jesuits. In
fact the Jesuits current dilemma is ironic in view of the fact that they were the right arm
of the Pope and before Vietnam, closely collaborated with US foreign policy interests.
Opus Dei's current head is General Alvaro de Portillo, who first suggested to Pope
John Paul II that Jesuit leader Pedro Arrupe be replaced. In an unprecedented move, the
Pope appointed an outsider, the Reverend Paolo Dezza, as Superior General of the Jesuit
order. This marked the first time in its history that the Jesuits were not allowed to select
their own leader. Dezza is regarded as an Opus Dei ally and was formerly father
confessor to John Paul I.
The sudden death of John Paul I was only one in a series of mysterious deaths of
liberal Catholic officials. Only weeks before, the Bishop of Moscow died of a supposed
heart attack at the age of 40 while in a Vatican ante-chamber waiting to see John Paul I.
The relationship between the CIA and the Vatican is an old and natural one. In an
age in which every intelligence outfit has huge sums to spend, loyalty is most reliably
based on belief, and the best true believers in the CIA are Eastern European or Latin
Catholics. Today the vanguard of this crusade is the Holy Mafia, the Opus Dei.
At the Vatican, Opus Dei has replaced the Jesuits as the Popes intellectual and
diplomatic arm. They will probably soon take over the Vatican radio station. The Jesuits
had an army of 26,000 and a history of Papal intrigue over a 442-year span, but lost out to
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a 54-year-old sect of whom not more than 1,000 are actual priests.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
January 19, 1989, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Part 3. Taking a leak at the CIA and Opus CRC
THE news leak engineered by CIA Chief Billygoat Lofgren and feeble-minded
McCarthyists in the military, that communist cadres have infiltrated Congress, only
elicited an outraged statement from Speaker Ramon Mitra that Congress will tolerate no
witchhunt for communists or other radical ideologues in Congress.
If the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) aims merely to use Congress as
a channel for airing the party line, issues, thoughts and ideas, then I believe we have no
cause for alarm.
That is what Congress is all about. It is, as it should be, a forum for every
political idea, including those of the Marxists.
Subversion is a different matter, and if it is in the field of ideas the communists
are challenging us, then we should not fear that our own democratic ideas will necessarily
end up second best in the competition to attract popular allegiance and support.
Gen. Renato de Villa, AFP Chief of Staff, backtracked and denied responsibility
for the news leak.
Like Adolf Hitler, militarists and clerico-fascists are using the Communist bogey
to destroy Democracy and Nationalism in the Philippines, to pursue the aims of American
Imperialism. They are planning a CIA-sponsored military junta in our country, as they
did in Chile. In Chile, the CIA instruments for the murder of President Allende and the
imposition of a dictatorship were the military and the Opus Dei Institute for General
Studies (IGS), the equivalent of our Opus Dei CRC.
Peter Lee U of CRC clarified the questionnaire showing that 43 percent of
businessmen support a military junta while only 6.8 percent oppose it:
There has been NO explicit NOR underhanded attempt by the CRC staff to
highlight the issue of a civilian-military government, let alone show that the majority of
businessmen would support a junta.
The questions are clear and straightforward. Even the question on the
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businessmen's reaction to a civilian-military junta, the one that sparked a lot of
controversy, was couched in as neutral a manner as possible.
The questionnaire was distributed four months ago to 765 businessmen. The
views of 90 respondents gave us an inkling on the private sector's probable responses to
certain hypothetical scenarios on the economic and political fronts.
The Opus Dei CRC which is funded by neo-fascist Hans Seidel Stiftung, known
to be a conduit for the CIA, is now conducting a Short-term Economic Prediction in Asia
(SEPIA) project, partly funded by the Tokyo Institute of Developing Economies (IDE) --
another CIA conduit?
Question: How many of the 90 correspondents of the CRC survey are
multinational companies, so-called Friends of the CRC, members of the American
Chamber and the ultra-rightist Makati Business Club?
Question: How come the civilian-military junta suddenly became interesting to
the CRC? No one in the Philippines even mentioned it before, except Embassy CIA
Chief Billygoat Lofgren who has been expressing interest in the Chile Scenario -- so how
did the question even crop up, unless the CIA and the CRC have some hidden purpose in
the back of their minds??
There are strange people in the Opus Dei CRC. Many of them are celibates with
an aversion to the opposite sex, like Bernie Villegas and Jess Estanislao. Go to the CRC
building on Pearl Drive, in the Ortigas Complex in Pasig, and you encounter closed doors
and furtive eyes. You enter after much questioning and you feel enclosed by well-
scrubbed and austere surroundings hemmed in by forbidding walls, almost like a
nunnery.
You go to the men's comfort room, and there are no urinals, for God's sake, only
toilet bowls in cubicles wide enough for two people, no tell-tale drops to betray a
masculine presence, and floors shiningly clean, clean enough to eat on. You exclaim,
Golly, they squat!
You are reminded of a science fiction story The Martians by Joseph Albright:
Strange people these Martians, they are neuters and they squat when they pee,
with pig's eyes and pig's snouts and all the love for us earthlings. They abolished disease
and hunger, and sent many of us, fat and happy, to their paradise in Mars, never to
60
return to our purgatory on earth. I don't trust them, slowly learned their language, and
read the book they all read, How to Serve Man.
My friend saw the book and exclaimed, You see, they are all good, these
Martians, they live only to serve us.
I hated to tell him that How to Serve Man was a cookbook!
When the CRC boys say they intend to serve Filipinos, we should ask: sauteed,
baked, or roasted? As a dish fit for the Americans?

Part 4. Octopus Diaboli, guardians of the press
WELL, Gorgeous George, our publisher tells us you are a fan of ours, and
therefore an intelligent and humane reader, so we shall take your criticism in the spirit it
was given.
We have known many public relations guys during our lifetime: Fenny
Hechanova, Joe Aspiras, RR de la Cruz, Tony de Joya, Blas Ople, Joan Orendain, Tony
Decolongon, and many others who would rather be known as writers, poets, columnists.
Most of them are honorable men and women, as we hope you are, concerned in
disseminating Truth, and they will not accept any client not worthy of being an example
to our youth and a credit to the nation. They will not accept any assignment they feel is a
betrayal of the nation or a perversion of the Truth.
Then there are the few who prostitute themselves, little men given to sarcasm and
innuendo, brass and brusque, who hang around bars cadging drinks and cigarets, like
some street walker, peddling rumors, the whispered lie, the secret dossier.
To build up the image of their clients, most of them carpetbaggers, colonials,
corrupt officials, outright crooks and traitors, these few hired hacks and paid pipers try to
suppress the ugly truth about their clients, enhance their reputation by prepared
statements not their own, regurgitating press releases of doubtful value and authenticity
(being paid by the column inch), and contribute heavily to envelopmental journalism.
They decry name-calling against their clients while with honeyed words, they
cloak the even worse obscenities their clients are actively promoting:
The IMF policy of keeping us pastoral and poor, resulting in beggars, whores and
61
child prostitutes on our streets.
The American policy of LIC bloodbath by which Filipinos are given arms to kill
each other, and assassinate unarmed nationalists, students, professors, labor
leaders, peasants and priests who are against the bases and American monopolies.
In a previous article, Gorgeous George, I was elaborating on how to fight
columnists like me -- by demanding equal space in my paper, and getting other papers to
print your side, most important, by fully savoring the joy of intellectual combat. But I
did not have the space to tell you what NOT to do.
What you should not do because it rarely works and frequently backfires, is to
demand the ouster of the columnist who offends you. That is what Bea Zobel tried to do
once, and what Aunt Teresa Feria Nieva and the Opus Dei try to do all the time. It rarely
works because it goes against the grain of the publisher who would rather have open free
fair unlimited debate than heavy-handed censorship.
Any writer worth his salt, even if thrown out of one paper, will get a job in
another, and his readers will transfer with him. Few newspapers would suppress
constitutionally guaranteed free press, by forcing out very good writers for telling the
truth: Arlene Babst, Ninez Cacho Olivares, Letty Jimenez Magsanoc, Ramon Tulfo. All
of them were snapped up by other papers, and continued their writings.
A delegation of religious nuts from Octopus Diaboli several times demanded that
I be forever banned from writing in the Panorama and then in the Op-Ed section of
Bulletin. These self-righteous bar-sinisters have the mentality of Nazis and Fascists, with
no taste for free expression and frank exchange of ideas.
Along with Ayatollah Khomeini, Maomar Gaddafi, Jim Jones of Guyana and
Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, these religious fanatics think they have a direct line
to God, and therefore know what is good for us more than we do ourselves. Spanish in
origin, they have the mentality of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition which burned
heretics at the stake. In Spain and Chile they conducted intellectual pacification
campaigns to suppress dissent in support of dictators Gen. Francisco Franco and Gen.
Augusto Pinochet.
Most of the self-proclaimed guardians of the press and media are usually those
who make a profession of catering to American interests, from the prostitutes of
62
Olongapo to certain elements in Makati business circles. And the object of their
affectations are those who inveigh against American Bases, multinational monopolies
and IMF policy.
And they are at an advantage, George, because the CIA, the NICA and the
military are on their side. They never get their phones tapped, neither are they spied
upon, accused of subversion, jailed nor assassinated with impunity in broad daylight.
We who love the Philippines more than Mommie Dearest America are on the
losing end, and we need the help and sympathy of the Filipino people.

CHAPTER 10. Pinoy Woodstock: bury our grief in song

El alma de mi Raza tiene ensueos romanticos./ Calma sus pesadumbres con
amorosos canticos/ en edilicas noches, bajo un claro fulgor.../ fingiendo dulce calma,
ahogando su dolor.
The soul of my Race has romantic dreams./ It hushes its griefs with amorous
singing/ on idyllic nights, beneath a limpid radiance.../ feigning sweet calmness, burying
its grief.
Claro M. Recto, El alma de la raza (1909)

IN the August summer of 69, along with the mini skirt, the Vietnam war, the
Beatles, and Apollo on the moon, three days of love and peace in Max Yasgurs 600-
acre alfafa farm in Bethel, New York, became the mind blower of all time.
It is the Woodstock rock festival, attended by half million young men and women
burying their grief in song. Attended by the greatest rock artists -- Jimi Hendrix, Joan
Baez, Joe Cocker, Santana, Arlo Guthrie, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Sha Na Na, Ten
Years After, Ritchie Havens -- Woodstock was a lighthouse in a hostile sea.
It brought its message of peace, love and freedom to a world racked by the
assassination of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, the Berlin Wall, the racial
wars and the mad dogs of white supremacy.
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In the Philippines tomorrow, December 16 at 6 AM in the morning, will start our
own Pinoy Woodstock, for a round-the-clock 24-hour Rock Festival that will end with a
Mass at 6 AM on Sunday.
To be held at Amoranto Stadium on Roces Avenue in Quezon City, it brings
together Joey Albert, Freddie Aguilar, the Hot Dogs, RJ & the New Riots, Randy
Santiago, Rico Puno, Sampaguita, Banyuhay ni Weber, Pen Pen ni Emil Sanglay,
Edmindo Fortuno, Labuyo, Cocojam, Identity Crisis. Arenarr. Kojaqk & Orioles, Hiyas,
Hi-Jacks, Southern Comfort, Hysteria, and others performing music that will span three
generations from 1955 to 1989 -- with the hope to end the turbulent Eighties with its
upheavals -- and usher in the last decade of the 20th Century with a message of hope.
Charging only P50 per person, the organizers will donate most of the proceeds to
Tito Sottos Quezon City Anti-Drug Campaign, and relief for the injured soldiers in the
last attempted coup.
When Ramon Jacinto came back with his parents and family after 14 years of
exile by Marcos who wanted their steel mill, he found the Philippines a lot different from
the time he was a teen-aged rock star with a group called The Riots.
Live bands were no longer in vogue. Instead there were one-man piano bars,
karaoke bars and discos. And Pinoy musicians migrated abroad.
As a result, pop music in the Philippines deteriorated. Records and albums began
to sound the same, because music gravitated to the control of a small group of session
musicians and producers. And the man in the street who is the most natural source of
new songs and musical material, is nowhere to be found.
When Ramon Jacinto set up his Bistro RJ on July 25, 1986, he started a revolution
of sorts, starting a movement for the come-back of live music. Today, many night clubs
present live bands, and new and refreshing musical compositions are now hitting the
airwaves, thanks to Ramon's DZRJ-FM station and my own son Atom's 107 NU new
rock station on the FM band.
These two stations are encouraging musicians to submit their compositions on
cassettes for auditioning and broadcast. Here we witness the door opening to our musical
future -- the emergence of the garage bands, the bathroom singers, the street artists and
the unknown musicians to write songs about our times.
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And this is what the Pinoy Woodstock is all about. It is about Pinoy Music
coming from the soul of our race, el alma de nuestra raza ahogando su dolor, burying its
grief in its music, and calling for love, peace and freedom in our land.
Joey Albert will sing songs from Jesus Christ Superstar. John Lesaca will do a
rock medley with his violin, Randy Santiago will sing with RJ, Joey Pepe Smith will
greet the dawn with music, Sampaguita will sing her current hit Nosi Ba Lasi or Sino Ba
Sila in reverse, and Freddie Aguilar -- together with 45 live bands.
So tomorrow, you who want to forget last coup attempt, and who are tired of
political speeches and inane TV programs on the boob tube and the idiot box -- pack up
your blankets, your sleeping bags, your pup tents. Fill up your thermos and lunch boxes,
and bring the entire family to the Amoranto Stadium where there will be Food Booths
and souvenirs: T-shirts, bandanas, hats, buttons, and other attractions to delight you.
There in the Pinoy Woodstock you will sing and dance to an all-day-and-night
rock festival concert, for the benefit of drug addicts and wounded soldiers -- for love,
peace, freedom and Christmas cheer.
Come.

CHAPTER 11. The genius of Sixto Roxas

Part 1. Ting's eco-system plan better than NEDA's
SIXTO K. ROXAS III, Ateneo valedictorian and Harvard graduate with
distinction, wonder boy of the 1960s and my predecessor as Chairman of the National
Economic Council, father of the Money Market in the Philippines, ninong of my
youngest son and a cousin of a cousin, is one of those rare geniuses with brains
practically oozing out of his ears. When he married Bing Escoda, now head of the
Cultural Center Complex, my own dear mother brought the wedding gown all the way to
New York where the wedding took place.
We were both invited to Puerto Azul by Speaker Ramon Mitra to speak before a
selected group of legislators. In cases like this, I always bring along my beautiful wife
65
Cecilia, as a one brings a canary into the mine shaft. When a canary dies underground,
that means a deadly gas is present and it is time to leave, scram, 23-skiddo. When Cecilia
falls asleep during a lecture, as she does many a time listening to Winnie Monsod, it
means the speaker is talking nonsense, and the time has come to hurl the salt-shaker at
the offender.
This time Cecilia perked up in rapt attention as our white-haired genius Sixto
Ting Roxas expounded on the causes of poverty in the Philippines.
Contrary to what American advisers say -- that ours is an agricultural country
with large areas of arable lands suited for plantation farming -- the Philippines is land-
poor, with a population density of 483 persons per square mile as against Australia's 5.4,
USAs 66, Chinas 284, Japans 833, South Koreas 1,094, Taiwans 1,396.
The farmer's income per hectare is P3,587 in the Philippines; in Japan it is
P180,000 per hectare; in South Korea, P128,000; in Taiwan, P108,000; in China,
P50,000.
The Filipino farmer is poor because he utilizes land as if he lives in land-rich
countries like Australia and the USA where large plantations abound. He must realize
that he should use his land for intensive farming like the land-poor countries of China,
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
One hectare of land which in 1970 supported three persons, now has to support
five. The bottom 20 percent of our population contributed two percent of the total
income in 1985; 90 percent of farmers are below the poverty line.
Percent utilization of labor is 7 percent for corn lands; 10 percent for coconut; 14
percent for sugarcane; and 42 percent for palay.
Ting Roxas is appalled at the inefficiency of land use in an export-oriented
agriculture like Coconut which employs 25 percent of the households, 35 percent of the
agricultural lands, and contributes only 3.6 percent of the total GNP. Here land
productivity is only P1,600 per hectare.
In order to raise coconut household income above the poverty line, we have to
increase exports to five times current levels! But historically export demand has been
decreasing.
Economic development supported by the Americans and the World Bank,
66
according to Ting, has been oriented to sectoral development by large firms and large
plantations, by which farmers earn marginal incomes. For instance in Guimaras Island
where Atlas Fertilizer has a mango project, farmers are displaced from their lands and a
few of them are given work in the plantation and processing plant.
Ting suggests as an alternative an eco-system development based on domestic
production for domestic consumption where the land is intensively cultivated for
intercropping and crop rotation, supplemented by the raising of domestic animals.
For instance, the coconut farm of three hectares can also produce 160 heads of
chicken broilers, and okra, tomatoes, corn, cassava and cow-peas that will raise family
income to P30,000 a year. In addition, 160 of these farms can give rise to an integrated
coconut feed and oil production plant processing 1,280,000 coconuts per year and
providing for 100 persons an income of P25,000 a year. A capital of P6 million can
generate P8.85 million income a year, an internal rate of return of 92 percent per annum;
and provide feeds for the livestock industry.
Ting presents modules of development also for riceland (family income P38,500 a
year); fruit orchards (additional P7,430 per family) and a fruit processing plant (P25,000
per year for 241 persons); rice-chicken-goats (P55,000 per family) and a broiler
processing-hatchery (P50,000 a year for 204 persons).
For a total investment of P573.3 million, Ting's eco-systems can generate a net
income of P233.4 million, plant salaries of P33 million, and farm income of P576 million
-- a total impact on the GNP of P854 million.
That is better than NEDA and the World Bank can come up with.
October 26, 1988

Part 2. Winnie Monsod's Cargo Plane Cult
IN ancient Greece, the Master of House is called OIKOEPOTE (with delta
the equivalent of D, and with sigma the equivalent of an S, oyko-despot-es); and the
Manager of the Household Finances, either the wife, a slave or a hired professional, is
called OIKONOMO (oykonomos), from which we derive the word Economics.
Economics is the art and science of allocating scarce resources for unlimited
needs and wants. In early times, kings and potentates, the government and the state took
67
charge of allocating these resources (Mercantilism), until a divinity student named Adam
Smith postulated that a hidden hand, a whip of necessity, wielded by market forces can
allocate these resources much more efficiently (Laissez Faire, meaning leave em alone).
We have learned since then that this hidden hand is probably the heavy paw of
Big Business and robber barons, resulting in a distortion of market forces called
Monopoly (control of the seller over the price of the goods he sells), and Monopsony
(control of the buyer over the price of the goods he buys). That is why in countries like
the USA, the government exerts social control over business through Anti-Trust laws.
Economist Manuel Butch Montes who never sold his soul to CityBank, in a
seminar conducted for legislators in Puerto Azul, said that economic systems take
different approaches: Trickle-down vs. Redistributive, Free Market vs. Interventionist,
Openness vs. Protectionist, Outward-looking vs. Inward-looking, Infrastructure-oriented
vs. People-oriented. The Trickle-down, Free Market, Open, Outward, Infrastructure-
oriented system is the Hong Kong type. The other extreme is the Sri Lanka type.
But most economies are a mix of the two. That of the USA lean to the Free
Market, and those of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea lean to the Protectionist.
If Winnie Monsod and Bernie Villegas have their way, our economy would be
Free Market, and in the world division of labor, we would continue to be suppliers of raw
materials and importers of finished goods.
Ex NEC Chairman Sixto Ting Roxas characterized the Winnie-Bernie school of
thought as a modern Cargo Plane Cult.
In World War II, during MacArthurs island-hopping combat operations, a
landing field was built in the jungles of New Guinea. There, as the natives watched with
wonderment, plane after plane landed bringing war materials, food, medicine and
supplies for the troops. The natives of course consumed the scraps including chocolate
bars thrown to them by American GIs.
After the war, the natives of New Guinea looked up at the empty sky and
surmised that they were abandoned by the sky gods, to appease whom, the natives built
the replica of a cargo plane from scraps of wood and metal on the landing strips of the old
airfield. And there, day by day to this day, for almost fifty years, they utter sing-song
incantations to tempt the gods of the sky to come down with chocolate bars.
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This is the pathetic Cargo Plane Cult whose existence weigh heavily on the
conscience of modern man.
Ting Roxas suggests that our economic leaders are members of a similar cult.
They spent so much for infrastructures and expect its fruits to trickle down to the
mass of the people; they opened up our domestic markets (import liberalization) for
foreign firms to supply from abroad yet expect them to invest in factories here; they
deprive our industries of tariff protection, and expect them to survive unfair foreign
competition.
Then they scan the skies in vain for some sign of true economic progress, while
our people retrogress back to where they were in 1949, forty years ago.
To be sure, the import-export plantation economy of Winnie and Bernie can show
a 5 or 6 percent GNP increase on a smaller base of GNP, as we emerge from negative
growth -- merely by allocating little of our dollar reserves and borrowings, to achieve an
increase fed by consumption, not by investment.
Nations in the ASEAN and on the Pacific rim continue to post more rapid 10 to
15 percent growth on an ever higher base ... while the portion of our farm population
below the poverty level continue to rise above 90 percent; our farm income declined to
only P3,587 per hectare, compared to Taiwan's P108,000 and China's P50,000; our labor
utilization in coconut lands is 10 percent, in corn lands 7 percent, in sugar cane 14
percent; and every dip in our exchange rate from P7 per dollar down to P23 per dollar
today, means a daily across-the-board cut in our people's standard of living to fatten the
profits of foreign carpetbaggers and Filipino scalawags.
Dung. Dung. Dung.

CHAPTER 12. The Destiny of Man

Part 1. Virgin births in the future!
AS All Souls Day and All Saints Day approach, we ponder on the death of our
loved ones, heaven and hell, the imponderables of time, space, eternity and God. And not
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the least of our concerns is the future of Man on this earth.
What is the future of Man? Man has progressed more in the last fifty years than
in the first five million years of his existence. Man has within living memory learned to
split and fuse the atom, and acquire a source of power equal to those of suns and stars.
Man now knows how to free himself from Mother Earth, and reach out into the timeless
space beyond.
More exciting than Nuclear Power and the Race to the Stars, is the coming
Biological Revolution. Man can shape his world, yes, but he is also learning how to
shape himself.
We already have artificial insemination that makes it possible for a woman to bear
the child of a man she has never met. Now it is possible for a woman to bear another
woman's child.
Dr. E.S.F. Hafez at Washington State University pioneered in techniques that
make it possible, a few years hence, for a housewife to walk into a store, look down a
row of packages not unlike flower-seed packages, and pick her baby by the label.
Each packet would contain a frozen embryo one day old, and the label would tell
the shopper what color of hair and eyes to expect as well as the probable size and IQ of
the child. It would also offer assurance of freedom from genetic defects.
After making her selection, the lady could take the packet to her doctor and have
the embryo implanted in herself, where it would grow for nine months, like any baby of
her own. A virgin birth, no less. Husbands and lovers no longer necessary.
Dr. Daniele Petrucci of Bologna, Italy, was able to conceive and grow a human
embryo outside of the womb, until he was forced to terminate his experiments, by an irate
citizenry condemning his manipulating human life in this fashion.
Other scientists, including the Russians and at least two Americans -- Dr. John
Rock at Harvard and Dr. Landum B. Shettles at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New
York -- had grown embryos in vitro (in glass) along the same line of research.
More advanced vitro culture techniques are in the offing. Already it is
commonplace to keep alive various kinds of human cells in tissue culture for long periods
of time, growing whole colonies from single cells again and again. It has been seriously
suggested that it may be possible eventually to grow an entire organ like a kidney or a
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liver in tissue culture.
Some years ago, the eminent French biologist Jean Rostand even predicted that a
man might someday be able to have a culture of his own cells stashed away somewhere
so that a complete replica of himself could be grown in case he met with an untimely
accident.
Impossible? Dr. Frederick C. Steward of Cornell University had achieved exactly
this sort of sexual reproduction with a lowly carrot. As a result, Dr. Rostand predicted
that tissue culture techniques would in theory enable us to create as many identical
individuals as might be desired. A living creature would be printed in hundreds, in
thousands of copies, all of them real twins. This would in short be human propagation by
cuttings, by xeroxing, assuring the indefinite reproduction of the same individual -- of a
great man, for example.
Would anyone like to name the great man he would care to see duplicated by the
dozen, by the hundreds, by the thousands? Just think of having 30 million Ferdinand
Marcoses to make this nation great again!
Of all the variations that may be played upon the theme of human procreation, the
ultimate will be the production of human beings whose specifications can be drawn in
advance. This could come about through the manipulation of the genetic material itself --
deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA.
When that time comes, Man's powers will be truly godlike. He may bring into
being creatures never before seen or imagined in the universe. He may even choose to
create new forms of humanity -- a being that may be better adapted to survive in the
airless surface of the moon, or on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Even without going that far, Man presumably will be able to write out any set of
specifications he might desire for his ideal human being. This is what scientists mean
when they talk of Man controlling his own evolution, when they say we are in a
biological revolution that will more than any other scientific advances -- even more than
nuclear power or the race to the stars -- determine the final destiny of Man.
(to be continued)

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Part 2. DNA and the Future of Man
THE future of Man depends on his knowledge and use of the genetic material
called deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA. In the coiled structure of the DNA molecule and
the complex arrangements of its atoms lie the final secrets of life and heredity.
The DNA is present in all life -- in a microbe, a tree, a fish or a human being --
the immortal carrier of life on earth. For all its potency and complexity, the DNA
molecule is infinitesimally tiny, yet in one single cell is crammed instructions that would
fill several 24-volume sets of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Instructions in the DNA are
written out in a four-letter code, each letter being a specific chemical substance.
Just as 26 letters of our Roman alphabet may spell out millions of stories, poems,
novels and textbooks; just as 10 digits of Arabic numerals can spell out millions of
formulas, scientific laws and solutions thereof; just as the two digits of the computers can
work out the most complicated calculations of a thousand lifetimes in a split second of
time -- the four-letter code of the DNA molecule gives out instructions that will make of
a single cell any of the millions of earths creatures: an elephant, a worm, a germ, a
vegetable or a human being.
Scientists are beginning to read this genetic code -- but only in a halting
incipient way, and it may take a long time before they become really fluent readers. But
once they can read, they may begin to write -- that is to give genetic instructions in the
genetic code. Several bio-engineering patents have already been given to scientists who
invented new kinds of microbes to produce drug cures and instruments of biological
warfare.
In time scientists may be able to create new forms of humanity -- one that can
survive the trip to planets a million light-years away, or another to work under
tremendous water pressure on the ocean bottom. Or they may be able to create an ideal
man with a desirable set of specifications.
Man can sure stand some improvement, but who shall we appoint to play God for
us? Which scientist, statesmen, artist, judge, poet, philosopher, educator -- of which
nation, race or creed -- will we trust to write the specifications, to decide which
characteristics are most ideal?
This is the supreme challenge to Man today: the Grand Option which urgently
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confronts not only our leaders, but each and every single one of us. A decision to let
things ride or ignore this biological revolution is simply a decision to turn it over to any
unscrupulous opportunist who chooses to employ it for his own ends.
We need only to imagine some totalitarian nation of the future, led by a man who
is sure he knows what is best for everybody. He has at his command all the new means
of controlling reproduction, the human brain and behavior.
He can raise entire populations in vitro or tissue culture, on a set of specifications
he alone will decide -- a mass of workers here, an army of fighters there, drones, queen
bees -- like an efficient bee-hive -- maintaining his subjects in a constant state of euphoria
by stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain. Practically no one in such a society
would have any true choice, but everybody would be happy. If everybody is happy,
can anything be wrong?
If we think so, says Sir Julian Huxley, we must ascertain once again that we know
the answer to the basic question: What are people for? What is the purpose of human
existence?
Without an answer to such questions we remain helpless to use scientific advance
as it should be used -- as a tool to serve human values in a democratic society.
We can make things happen beyond our wildest dreams. But what ought to
happen? There are powerful institutions to give us guidance about what ought to happen
-- the most powerful being religion. Regardless of what science makes possible, moral
approval or disapproval has, throughout man's history, influenced which advances he
accepts instantly, which he accepts more slowly and which he rejects altogether. In the
new age however, it is unlikely that any scientific advance can be totally ignored even by
religion.
Scientists themselves are trying hard to build their own codes and standards out of
logic and scientific knowledge. The growing movement is called Scientific Humanism.
Influential on it have been such figures as Sir Julian Huxley, author of Religion Without
Revelation and the late French Jesuit priest-scientist-philosopher Pierre Teillard de
Chardin (tilard de zhardan) who wrote The Future of Man and The Phenomenon of Man.
(to be concluded)

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Part 3. Grand Option: eternal life as part of God
ONE man flying in the face of appearance, perceived that the forces of nature
depicts the flow of a tremendous tide, and cried out to Mankind peacefully slumbering on
the raft of Earth, We are moving forward!
Part of mankind, startled by the look-outs cry, has left the huddle where the rest
of the crew slumbered. Gazing over the dark sea, they study for themselves the lapping of
waters along the hull of the craft that bears them, breathe the scents borne to them on the
breeze, gaze at the shadows cast from pole to pole by a changeless eternity.
And all things while remaining separately the same -- the ripple of the water, the
scent of the air, the lights in the sky -- become linked together and acquire a new sense:
the fixed and random Universe is seen to move.
No one who has seen this vision can be restrained from guarding and proclaiming
it!
Thus began The Future of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (tilard de zhardan),
a French Jesuit priest-scientist-philosopher who along with Sir Julian Huxley is trying to
unravel the mysteries of the final destiny of Man.
Father de Chardin extrapolated the past into the future, and had to invent new
words to describe the future of man -- homonisation, complexification, christogenesis.
He saw Man as the only creature that interbreeds -- black, white, yellow, brown races all
interbreeding, while other creatures evolved into widely separated species. Birds have
8,500 separate species, the insects over half a million.
Man is converging or enfolding upon himself. Not only is he interbreeding, but
he is interthinking. Through contact with one another, the speeding of the means of
communication, and ever denser tangle of economic and social relationships, mankind
has found itself seized in the mould of a communal existence -- a biological and mental
compression that will precede the death of humanity as we know it now, and our rebirth
in another evolutionary stage -- which he called Ultra-Humanism.
Pressed tightly against one another by the increase of their numbers and
relationships, forced together by the growth of common power and a sense of common
travail, the men of the future will in some way form a single consciousness -- like the
different cells of the body, separate but interrelated and united in thought and deed, as if
74
we were all part of one universal body and mind.
Does de Chardin mean that the man of the future will submerge his individuality
to a super organization -- like ants or bees? He himself says that all this Total
Homonisation will come to us voluntarily, of our own free will in the exercise of our
Grand Option.
De Chardin writes in mystic terms hard to understand. Man must destroy and
recreate himself. But what will ultra humanity be like? Chardin himself does not know,
but let me hazard a guess. Suppose I was empowered to recreate the human being, to
write out the specifications in DNA code for the next stage of human evolution.
I will create human brains capable of mental and sensual telepathy, so that each
man can think and feel through the brains of another, so that each of us can absorb the
knowledge and skills of the greatest scientist, the greatest doctor, engineer, poet,
philosopher, and participate in the adventure of a man climbing the highest peak, in the
delights of another making love to a beautiful woman, or another listening to great music,
or another feasting his sights on a beautiful painting.
There will be no selfishness because in mind and senses we are all united. There
will be no ignorance, poverty or injustice -- for what is experienced by one will be
experienced by all. Our bodies may die, but each will renew existence in the mind and
body of another - like brain cells that die and are replaced in a continuously living brain.
We shall all indeed be part of one universal eternal consciousness, one Being that we
cannot do better than simply call God -- for did not Christ promise that we shall all
someday be united in one Mystical Body?
Teilhard de Chardin ends his book The Future of Man with these beautiful words:
Like a vast tide the Being will have dominated the trembling of all beings. The
extraordinary adventure of the World will have ended in the bosom of a tranquil ocean, of
which however, each drop will still be conscious of being itself. The dream of every
mystic will have found its full and proper fulfillment. Erit in omnibus omnia Deus.
In a world racing madly towards nuclear self-destruction, we are offered a Grand
Option: eternal life as part of God.
October 29. 30, 31, 1988, Philippine Daily Inquirer

75

CHAPTER 13. Porque debemos aprender espaol?

CARAMBA! Porque debemos aprender espaol? There are many reasons
why we shouldnt learn Spanish. Primero, in the Philippines we would have no one to
talk to except that ignorant pijutero Antonio Speedy Gonzalez (Andale, andale!''
como se ve en los movie cartoons), and Jaime Zobel who wont even speak to us; in the
USA, we speak Spanish to no one but the Chicanos and the Puerto Ricans who would
rather stick a knife between our ribs than tell us the time of day.
Segundo, having been forced in high school to conjugate Spanish verbs, most of
us can't speak it anyway, and those mestizos who do, cannot do better than to intersperse
their fractured Spanish with joder, coo, cabron, pueta -- hardly the words to carry on a
decent conversation.
Tercero, during the Spanish times, los frailes nunca nos ensearon espaol,
instead the frairs learned our various dialects and became the power broker between the
Spanish authorities who spoke only Spanish, and us Indios who spoke only our dialects.
We were the only Spanish colony that never learned Spanish, so why should we start
now?
Quarto, Spanish is a lousy language without world class literature, except perhaps
Miguel Cervantes Don Quixote de la Mancha, known more for its satire than its style.
The reason for this is that Spanish is too simple and confining, with all feminine words
ending in -a, masculine in -o, and infinitives in -r. Rhyming is too easy, the rules leave
no room for much creativity.
In English, French and Russian, where there are many rules of grammar and just
as many exceptions to the rule, there is room for creativity and genius. That is why we
have Ernest Hemingway, Percy B. Shelley, William Shakespeare in English; Lyev
Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky in Russian; Francois Villon, Guy
de Maupassant, Victor Hugo in French.
But Spanish? I can not even remember who wrote Blood and Sand or Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and I remember Miguel Cervantes only because he was
born in the university town of Alcala de Henares, by the Henares River, in the Henares
76
Valley in Castille, Spain, near Madrid.
And between you and me and the lamp post, Nick Joaquin's translation of Mi
Ultimo Adios, and Leon Ma. Guerrero's of the Noli and the Fili are better literature than
Rizal's originals which are too florid and saccharine, with sentences too kilometric for the
modern mind.
Pero espaol es parte de nosotros, de nuestra historia, de nuestra alma. Our
revolutionary leaders learned Spanish and used it to weld us together as one people and
one nation. Whether we like it or not, 350 years of Spanish Occupation changed our
language and our character; gave us our Catholic religion, our family names, our metric
system of weights and measures, our Napoleonic code of laws, our notions of justice,
democracy and nationhood no matter how denied us; and made us part of the history of
the world.
And in this modern world where we need friends to survive, it has given us
cultural identity with a potent political bloc: Spain, Latin America, and a large ethnic
grouping that is changing the demography and national character of the United States.
In the world, we Filipinos are an anomaly, the odd man out. We are the second
largest English-speaking country in the world but we are outside the Anglo-Saxon bloc
and the British Commonwealth of Nations. We are part of Southeast Asia, but are the
only Christian nation in it, with funny-sounding Western family names among the Abduls
and the Mohammeds of the Muslim faith. We were part of the Spanish Empire and the
Catholic Church, yet we do not consider ourselves as parte del mundo hispanico.
We are apart from, yet part of many. We are the illegitimate child, the bastard,
prodigal son of many parents. What are we?
It is about time we discover our unique identity. America is part of us, and we are
part of the English world. We are part of Southeast Asia too, along with our Malayan
brothers, part of the Pacific Rim that will soon dominate the world economy: Pax
Pacifica, at last a peaceful peace. And we are part of the Hispanic brotherhood of
nations, bound together by history, language and faith.
By God, We Are the World.
And God willing, We shall be the bridge between all Nations.
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CHAPTER 14. Personalities

Part 1. LABAN: Kris started People's Power
LABAN came into being when Ninoy Aquino from his prison cell, with Anding
Roces and a group of hardy souls decided to fight Marcos in the Batasan elections of
1978. Because the Liberal Party boycotted the elections, it was necessary to name a new
group as the opposition.
The first name proposed was Katipunang Pilipino. Nobody liked it because
Katipunan brought to mind old veterans being pushed in wheel chairs during the June
12
th
parade.
Then Soc Rodrigo, one of the 21 who ran, came up with Lapian ng Bayan, with
the acronym LABAN. Everybody liked LABAN, but not Lapian (party) which was not
aggressive enough to describe their movement.
Lorenzo Taada, coming back from a visit with Ninoy, came up with Samahan
Para sa Kalayaan, with the acronym SAPAK, meaning terrific! But Charito Planas
who was also running, objected because the word SAPAK has a slightly obscene
connotation, being the word used by a man after a spectacular act of love.
Neptali Gonzales suggested Nagkakaisang Opposision with the initials NO!
which seemed too negative.
So it was back to Socs LABAN, and a committee was formed to find a word
starting with LA that would better than Lapian.
It was Poly Policarpio, who discovered the word Lakas, meaning strength. And
its been Lakas ng Bayan ever since... Strength of the Nation, or as it turned out later,
PEOPLES POWER.
How did Lakas ng Bayan become Peoples Power??
It started with a Newsweek article about little Kris Aquino, 6 years old,
campaigning for her father Ninoy, who after one successful television appearance, was
sent back to his cell for the rest of the campaign.
Newsweek in translating Lakas ng Bayan, used the term Peoples Power, which
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became a household word eight years later during the 1986 EDSA Revolution.
It was little Kris Aquino who triggered off the first and most successful
demonstration of Peoples Power.
Two weeks before election day in 1978, Marcos, sensing a swelling tide of
opposition, ordered that on the eve of election, political rallies were forbidden. This put a
cramp on the LABAN's plans for a Miting de Avance traditionally held on the eve of
election day.
It started with an anonymous chain letter that said: On the eve of election, at
exactly 7 o'clock in the evening, let us demonstrate our opposition to Marcos with a
Noise Barrage. At 7 pm, stand in front of your gate, with all your family, and with pots
and pans, make as much noise as you can. If you are in your car, honk your horn. Go out
into the streets and shout. Let Marcos in Malacaang hear the cry of our people.
Enough! Enough!'
It started with a chain letter written by one anonymous person, bless you whoever
you are. It was copied over and over again and sent to others, till all Metro Manila was
aflood with that message of defiance.
Most candidates were embarrassed to take note of it, according to Soc Rodrigo,
simply because attracting more crowds than even Magsaysay had in his campaigns, Soc
and company were afraid that such a Noise Barrage conducted out in the streets in the
open, under the watchful eyes of the Metrocom, might fizzle out and prove to be anti-
climactic.
It was little Kris Aquino who was announcing the Noise Barrage in her speeches,
she thought it was a fascinating idea. Make so much noise that my daddy Ninoy can
hear it in his prison! she cried.
Bless you, Kris, you can be a movie star and be silly the rest of your life -- you've
had your moment of magnificence, your date with destiny.
When the time came, a few hardy souls came out of their houses and beat upon
their pots and pans. Then followed a few honks on car horns.
Then by God, the noise began to mount like a sonic tidal wave.
Thousands of people turned on their radios to full volume. Thousands of people
were on the streets, shouting, singing, screaming, beating on drums, on anything that
79
made noise. Thousands of cars appeared on the streets honking their horns, dragging
bundles of tin cans behind.
Movie theaters suddenly emptied, as movie-goers streamed out screaming onto
the streets. Orchestras in night clubs poured into the sidewalks playing loudly.
Factory whistles blew. Church bells pealed. Policemen blew their whistles, some
even fired their guns.
In the prison of his mind, Ferdinand Marcos heard and shivered before the
collective wrath of the Filipino people.
In the prison of his body, Ninoy Aquino heard and his heart leaped with joy and
glowed with hope.
It was the dawn of People's Power. Eight years later it would herald the High
Noon of our nation's history.

Part 2. Amang's essences of purest copal
DURING the Snap Elections, Anding Roces and I fell into conversation about a
perennial problem of minority parties, the difficulty of raising funds for the political
campaign of Cory Aquino, enough to pose a serious challenge to President Marcos in the
coming elections.
Anding paused in silent reflection, reached back into the mists of living history,
and recounted an incident involving the Nacionalista Party in its darkest and finest hour,
I was there, Larry, and I saw Nacionalistas from every province stand up and say, We
will win in my province, but to do so, we need campaign funds... money... money...
money...
And over there in the center of the head table in the midst of a financial and
political depression, was seated like a wise Buddha, their president Amang Rodriguez,
who was famous for his malapropisms and speeches suffused with essences of purest
copal (resinous sap of trees, as well as smegma in the Tagalog dialect).
At the end Amang stood up and solved the problem in words that echo through
the corridors of time, Copal, wala bang intsik sa probinsiya ninyo? (Are there no
Chinese in your province?) The Nacionalistas got their needed funds and won the
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election.
Come short, Amang would say when he meant, Come closer. And during
one of the darkest periods of our history, he said to boost our spirits, The death of
Magsaysay is a disgrace, meaning it is desgracia, a tragedy.
Alejandro Roces, who is probably the only man in recorded history to be jailed
for not voting, is a self appointed custodian of our living past. He was the one who
recovered the stolen manuscripts of Rizal, and the best Secretary of Education we ever
had. He commissioned and raised funds to set up five monuments so far, that of Juan
Luna, of Ninoy Aquino, of Pigafetta in Cebu, Angel Hidalgo of Mexico outside of
Intramuros, and the Galleon Trade by the Pasig, without cost to the government.
He changed the date of the Independence Day and restored the honor due Emilio
Aguinaldo, whom he considers as great as Rizal and Bonifacio: Aguinaldo is the father
of our country as Washington is to America. We owe him our flag, our national anthem,
and our very republic.
He wrote and is still writing about our history (seven volumes illustrated in color,
we hope Bea Zobel will help publish), to make it more revelant, more interesting, more
understandable to his fellow Filipinos. History is not just a compilation of dates and
facts, it is the story of a people, an expression of their common heritage, the family
chismis of the nation. When I finish writing my books, we will never again have to
search for the Filipino soul.
Anding is also the organizer and sole member of the Committee for the
Extirpation of the Memory of Mr. Marcos, which is presently compiling a list of all
roads, bridges, plazas and monuments named after Marcos and his First Lady. Anding
explained:
In Mexico, the people have one pet hate, the Spanish conquistador, Hernando
Cortes, who took an Indian princess, Malinche, as his mistress, and with her plotted the
genocide of the Mexican Indians. In Mexico there is no mention of Cortes in the history
books, only a reference to El Conquistador, and no public works or buildings bearing
his name. Traitors are called malinches. It is as if Hernando Cortes had never existed
in Mexico. His memory is simply wiped out of the national consciousness like a bad
dream.
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The only way we can punish Marcos for having destroyed our democracy is to
expunge him from the memory of our people. Someday we shall rename all public works
named after him and Imelda, and refer to him in our history books only as Ang
Diktador. And rerout the toilets in his Agoo mountainhead to drain out of his nose.
With such an obsession, I doubt if Anding will ever survive to die of old age. But
whether he does or not, he will have bequeathed to us his countrymen, a sense of history,
a conviction that we Filipinos are not isolated individuals bounded by birth and death,
whose only concern is self ... that we Filipinos are a chosen people, an eternal race whose
existence is bounded by the beginning and the end of time.
As such we do not belong to ourselves. We belong to each other, we belong to all
the Filipinos who died in the past, we belong to all the Filipinos who are to be born in the
future -- and the present time in which we live is the time for self sacrifice and united
action -- the time to labor, to build, to dream if we will -- the time to fight, to bleed, to die
if we must --- in order to link a glorious past with an equally glorious future, a glorious
extrapolation of Andings Living History.

Part 3. The true story of Gen. Marcos Soliman
TIBO Mijares in his book Conjugal Dictatorship, wrote that Gen. Marcos Mark
Soliman was killed by the military for exposing Oplan Sagittarius, Marcos plan for
Martial Law.
Tibo wrote that the plan was given to selected people under different code names,
the one given to Soliman being code-named Sagittarius because Marks name begins with
an S. The exposure by Ninoy of Oplan Sagittarius, according to Tibo, exposed the
source of the leak and made inevitable to execution of Mark Soliman.
Mark Soliman was born in Candaba, Pampanga, graduated from PMA class 1933,
and in 1935 married my aunt Jacoba Braganza of Alaminos, Pangasinan. My grandfather
Daniel Maramba, who was a Katipunero, a Governor, Congressman, Senator, and a
friend of Quezon, was practically responsible for the many Pangasinenses proliferating in
the Army, Education Department., BIR and pre-war politics (the Sisons, Speaker Eugenio
Perez, Narciso Ramos) -- and Mark Soliman was his protege, as was another
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Pampangueo, Justice Carmelino Alvendia.
Mark Soliman, also of Fort Benning and Fort Leavenworth, was a Huk fighter,
and classmate of Diosdado Macapagal in high school (Dadong was valedictorian, he was
salutatorian). Mark could have been Defense Secretary or re-entered the service as Chief
of Staff in the Macapagal administration, but he chose to be NICA director when I was in
the cabinet.
In 1965 President Ferdinand Marcos who called him tokayo na baliktad asked
him to stay for another assignment, but Mark knew that with Blas Ople (on whom he had
a thick dossier) in the cabinet, he would never be welcome.
So he left the NICA to be Chief of Police for his cousin Manila Mayor Tony
Villegas for four months, but left disgusted with corruption, joined the AmCham as
executive vice-president, and devoted his time to golf, books and family.
He and my Auntie Joving had a daughter, named Jenny Ma. Teresa who died of
polio in 1942 at the age of seven. In 1952, they had another daughter, lovingly named
after the first one, Jennie Ma. Teresa whom Mark shamelessly spoiled and had escorted
by a yaya and a guard even in high school.
Jennie and Joving were in Pangasinan when in the evening of Holy Tuesday,
April 18, 1973, Mark Soliman was found sprawled in his bathroom, apparently of a
stroke, and brought to V. Luna North Hospital where he lay neglected till his sisters
Maring, Lolita and Libing called up his compadre Gen. Sotto, then director of Veteran's
Memorial, who assigned neurologist Dr. Aldanese to attend to him. It was too late, his
spinal fluid contained blood, a sign of brain hemorrhage, and his body was turning blue.
Jennie and Joving drove back to Manila the next morning, to find him comatose
and half paralyzed, still fighting for life, and sometimes communicating with his beloved
Jennie with hand pressures. On the eve of his birthday, Jennie whispered to him, Get
well, Papa, tomorrow I will bring pancit and cake to celebrate. Tears came to his eyes,
and as she looked back from the door, his fingers waved.
Early the next day, 1:27 am on April 23, 1973, on his 63rd birthday, General
Marcos Soliman died. And what a funeral he had -- motorcycle cops from all over Metro
Manila led the procession, three six-by-six trucks could hardly carry the flowers, a
procession a kilometer long was led by Macapagal, and cars parked fender to fender from
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Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina all the way to Edsa.
After the funeral, his daughter Jennie looked over his papers and found a folder
marked Jennie Soliman, 1950. For the first time she discovered the story of her life.
During the 1952 Huk campaign, Mark was assigned to Canlubang where in camp,
a little girl two years of age broke away from the crowd to pick up papers he threw away.
Her father was a Huk commander beheaded by the military. Reminded of his own Jenny
who died in 1942, Mark arranged her adoption with Lydia Mondoedo, army wife and
social worker.
Why did you not tell me? asked Jeannie. Answered Jacoba, Your father was
afraid you might leave us and look for your mother.
Is my mother the woman who comes here often?
Yes, she wanted you back, but no way, you are legally adopted. Your father
loved you so much, he spoiled you. I had to discipline you, can you forgive me for
spanking you often?
I love you, mama, said Jennie, And I am proud to be a Soliman. Jeannie
Soliman Castelo never bothered to find out the name of her other mother, and her only
child is called Mark Jacob Castelo, in honor of Mark and Jacoba.
As for Tibo Mijares, he is an unmitigated liar.

Part 4.. Lee Aguinaldo, the lonely heart
NONE but the lonely heart can know the sadness of a man who remembers past
happiness in his present misery. Lee Aguinaldo, son of multi-millionaire Daniel
Aguinaldo, saw himself a internationally acclaimed artist, a son disinherited, and finally,
tired and ailing, a man without a home, evicted from the house he lived in for half a
century.
His father Dan Aguinaldo was the heir to the millions of pre-war L.R. Aguinaldo
& Sons which operated the largest department store in the country. Dan parlayed his
wealth to more than a P100 million in forest concessions, pearl farm, industries and real
estate, to manage which he reportedly offered Monching del Rosario a salary of a million
pesos a year.
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In 1964, Dan met a dentist named Dr. Thurston H. Ross Jr. who allegedly
introduced him to the drug Librium to which Dan got so addicted that he kept a huge
salad bowl filled with 10 milligram tablets in the middle of the conference table for his
use, for 21 years, up to January 29, 1985, when he died.
By the time he died, Dan's fortune dwindled to less than P6 million in non-liquid
assets and uncollectibles, and liabilities of P8.5 million, or a net estate of minus P2.7
million, administered by executor ex-Secretary of Finance Dominador Aytona, who,
according to Lee, collaborated with others to dissipate the inheritance.
Most of Dan's valuable assets were transferred at give-away prices to a certain
Nestor Jose whom Dan did not meet till less than three years before his death, in
documents signed in Los Angeles, with Dr. Ross in attendance.
Dan transferred to Nestor L. Jose, his wife Belen, and brother-in-law Manuel
Abrugar III, 53 percent of his holdings in Agro-Seafood Corp. four months before death;
59.5 percent of Mindanao Realty, two months before death; all his holdings in
Nationwide Development, three months before death; all his holdings in the Rural Bank
of Mabini (Davao); 3,500 square meters in Tagaytay; 806 hectares of pastureland in
Palawan, 5,786 square meters of Valley Golf, and 1,524 square meters in Antipolo all for
only P250,000, all on Aug. 22, 1984, 5 months before death.
Dan's children are Leopoldo II or Lee, Andrea, Victor and Norman, all by Helen
Leontovich Aguinaldo; and a daughter Adora by Ms. Kimiyo Koyano of Japan. Who is
Nestor L. Jose? He is identified as Dan's nephew -- not true according to Lee and
relatives.
Lee Aguinaldo was a graduate of Culver Military Academy in the state of Indiana,
and was so turned off by military life that for spite he decided to be an artist. He turned
out to be a good one.
He is the only artist ever to win first prize twice (1962, 1965) in the Art
Association annual exhibit and competition. In 1963 he made the cover of Asia
Magazine, and in the 1970 Expo Museum of Fine Arts in Osaka to show the world's
major masterpieces from 3,500 BC to 1970 AD, his Linear No. 101 was included.
Among the 125 artists chosen to represent contemporary trends, among Piet Mondriaan,
Edvard Munch, William De Kooning, Victor Vassarely, Jean Dubuffet, Ben Nicholson
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and Salvador Dali, was included Lee Aguinaldo.
On March 21 1969, disgusted by American parity rights and the bases pact, the
American-born Lee Aguinaldo went to the US Embassy and renounced his US
citizenship, and was promptly declared persona non grata by the Embassy and CIA.
On Dec. 10 1974, Lee was picked up by the infamous Col. Rolando Abadilla and
was confined at Camp Crame for 16 days, spending his Christmas under detention,
because in one party he stumbled upon the girlfriend of a Cabinet official making love
with someone else on the bathroom floor.
Today, Lee and his 75 year old mother are being evicted from the Sta. Mesa estate
of his father, at 3186 V. Mapa street, by the executor D. Aytona who sold the property for
only P16.2 million in spite of offers up to P25 million, without prior knowledge of the
Aguinaldo family.
Worse of all, they are subjected to the most cruel harassments imaginable from
Aytona and Combined Security Agency owned by Doy Laurel -- electricity
unreconnected; threats by guard Silvestre Suello to cut the throat of the mother, bash the
skull of and shoot Lee; theft by six security guards of plywood walls, yakal flooring,
electrical wiring, bathroom fixtures; throwing rocks on the roof from 12 midnight to
morning; forcing Lee to climb a 6.5 foot steel gate which guards refuse to open -- all
subject of a petition six months ago, ignored by Judge Marcelo R. Obien of RTC Manila,
whom Lee suspects is under Aytona's influence.
None but the lonely heart can know such sadness.

Part 5. Hot-headed Juan Luna killed his wife
ALEJANDRO Anding Roces, former Secretary of Education under President
Diosdado Macapagal, is my friend. I have to be, he says, I am the only friend you
have left. And added, There are two ways to commit suicide: either kill yourself, or
write like Henares.
Notwithstanding his high-pitched voice and constantly repeated corny jokes, to be
with him is to be welcomed into the company of an educated man. In his mind,
Philippine history lives and breathes, ever reminding each of us that we Filipinos do not
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really belong to ourselves. We belong to each other, and to something outside of and
greater than ourselves -- the nation.
Just before the Revolution, Anding and I went together to the unveiling of a huge
monument of Juan Luna, facing P. Burgos between Intramuros and Rizal Park. The
eleven-foot statue was sculpted by Anastacio T. Caedo, a gift he solicited from the Italian
people, because it was in Rome where Juan Luna spent the most fruitful years of his life.
Anding's story:
Juan Luna, the painter of Spoliarium and some 400 masterpieces, is probably
the greatest Filipino painter, the only one to achieve international recognition. At the end
of the last century, he went to Europe where he won several prizes in Rome and Madrid,
and had his work commissioned by no less than the Spanish Cortes and the Queen of
Spain.
A member of a barbarous race, he was one of the most famous artists of his
time. Of his time, but not in our time. While Luna was getting international recognition,
he did not realize that he was one of the last of a long line of classical painters that
included Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
At the time a new and exciting school of painting was emerging. In the garrets of
Paris, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse and others were
painting with specks of primary colors in what has come to be known as the
Impressionist and post-Impressionistic School. They suddenly burst into prominence and
blotted out the glory that might have been Lunas.
Like most Filipinos, Luna was a century too late, Abe Cruz wryly observed.
Anding Roces added, Juan Luna was a hothead you know, like his own brother
Antonio. Before the discovery of tranquilizers, this could lead to serious consequences.
In Madrid, his brother Antonio Luna would seek out a Spanish writer called
Mierdes who wrote against Philippine independence. His friends tried to calm him down
telling him that he did not even know how Mierdes looked like. But he shouted hed kill
everyone he saw who looked like mierda (shit). He must have assaulted at least seven
people before he found the right Mierdes.
During the Revolution, General Antonio Luna horsewhipped a group of soldiers
in Caloocan, because they were dressed sloppily. When the time came to assassinate
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him, there were no lack of volunteers for the job.
Juan Luna himself was a man of violent temper. He suspected his wife of
infidelity, and when his wife and mother-in-law locked themselves in a room to escape
his anger, he shot them both and killed them.
Guess who Luna's wife was? The sister of the grandfather (Trinidad Pardo de
Tavera) of Mita, our present Social Welfare Secretary.
The court case involving the killing of his wife and daughter (he was acquitted of
his crime of passion), and the assassination of his brother contributed to his death by
heart attack at the age of 42 in Hong Kong on his way to join the Revolution in 1899.
His son Andres brought his remains back in 1920, with the expectation that his
father would be buried with honors as befits a Patriot of the Revolution. No one even
met him at the pier.
What happened to Andres Luna? After World War II, he married a strip teaser,
Grace McCready, who came to the Philippines with the Marcus Circus. With her came a
comedy duo: one, Dave Harvey, stayed and with his wife Phyllis set up a furniture
business; the other went back to the United States and became the famous movie star,
Danny Kaye.
Andres and Grace never had children. The only Lunas left are not direct
descendants of Juan and Antonio, but those of their brothers: Nena Cardenas Bayle,
granddaughter of Joaquin; and Gilberto Ongpin, grandson of Jose. The latter is the
second cousin of the two brothers Ongpin.
Before he died, Juan Luna uttered his famous curse against the family of his wife.
A series of strange incidents plagued the Pardo de Taveras. One fell off an ocean liner
and disappeared from the face of the earth. Another was found hanging by his necktie.
And still another married a character who like Dracula, sleeps in a coffin in a bat-ridden
castle in Tagaytay.

Part 6. Stella by Starlight, for our amazement
SHE might have been a great concert pianist, a nightingale at twilight, Stella by
starlight, playing not only for our amusement, but also for her own amazement.
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Fingering snatches of her favorite piano pieces -- Enrique Granados The Maiden and the
Nightingale, Chopins Etudes and Nocturnes, Debussey, Bachs Toccata, Gershwins
Rhapsody in Blue, Liszts Liebestraum -- she is astounded, amazed and delighted at the
beauty and mystery of the world around her, including the miracles of Medjugorje, of
which she is writing a series.
She does not talk, she twitters like a bird, a maya by moonlight, in the upper
registers of sound frequencies beyond human hearing where only dogs and cats can
figure out what she is saying.
She hardly reaches five feet in height, and weighs less than a hundred pounds, yet
she has stood amidst tanks, howitzers and bayonets like a lighthouse in a hostile sea,
radiating light and love and everlasting life.
Her name is Stella Ignacia Albert de Zulueta, known to all as Telly, one of the
most lovable creatures on this earth.
She was born, like many birds, in Mehan Botanical Gardens, right behind
Metropolitan Theater, fourth in a family of eight, in the house of Manila Mayor Justo
Lucban, her maternal grandfather.
A fortune teller once ruled their lives, predicting that an elder sister, Maria Martha
Albert (Reyes) would be Miss Philippines (she became one in a Red Cross charity ball);
that her father would be promoted out of the Court of First Instance (Quezon created the
Court of Appeals and put him there); that her brother Charlie Albert would get promoted
and marry the daughter of the number two man of the government (Only a war would
get me promoted, Annapolis grad Charlie said, and lo, the World War II started. He was
expected to marry either Ruby Roxas or Rosie Osmea, but during the war, Laurel
became President, Benigno Aquino Sr. became number two, and Charlie married Ninoys
sister Mila.
She studied in the Assumption Convent both in Manila and in Paris, and in the
Vienna Conservatory of Music where she was the pupil of Franz Liszts only surviving
pupil Emil Sauer. She was only 19 years of age, but Sauer wanted her to study more and
go on concerts in Europe. He mother said no, and she came home in time to avoid the
start of the World War II in Europe.
Telly nevertheless gave two piano concerts with the Manila Symphony under the
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baton of Herbert Zipper, performed in ballet spectaculars with our foremost ballerina,
Mita Pardo de Tavera, with whom she studied under Russian Madame Adameit (as did
my sister Norma, hahaha), and under Austrian Kaethe Hauser.
She taught piano and languages -- English, Spanish, French, Italian. Three of her
paintings went on exhibit in Lydia Arguilla's gallery, several of her short stories were
published. And she was editor of Women's Magazine, nursing it from a 4-page
supplement to a full magazine.
She married Rafael Zulueta da Costa and is separated from him after 27 years of
marriage. He can be very antipatico to people, but he has a good excuse: he is a
genius. Ralph is indeed a genius, a poet who wrote the epic poem Like the Molave, and
won the Commonwealth Award over Jose Garcia Villa; a serious music critic with
impeccable taste and sensitivity, who once discovered a missing high C of a visiting
performer (but by God, you should see Dindo Gonzalez mimic Ralph listening to
Beethoven!); a master of the English language writing a column called Mountains and
Molehills.
The genius Rafael Zulueta da Costa at his best:
Not yet, Rizal, not yet. Sleep not in peace.
There are a thousand waters to be spanned,
There are a thousand mountains to be crossed.
There are a thousand crosses to be borne.
Not yet, Rizal. The glory hour will come.
Out of the silent dreaming,
From the seven thousandfold silence,
We shall emerge, saying We are Filipinos,
And no longer be ashamed.
Ralph and Telly had five children: Mati who died of cancer in 1977 at 25; Raffi
who also died of cancer in 1988; and three surviving ones, Carol, Dickie and Miguel.
Telly may be dying too, cursed with congenital cancer that already killed her
brothers Justo, Alex, Charlie, even the sister of Joey Albert and many of the Albert clan.
Having undergone eight major operations, she says cheerfully, Like a cat I have
nine lives. Eight down and one to go. Stella by Starlight, playing out her life for our
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amazement:
I burn my candle at both ends,
I will not last the night;
But oh my family and ah my friends,
I'll give such lovely light.

Part 7 Funny thing happened on the way to White House
WE are glad Mr. George Bush (Senior) was elected President of the
United States. The Americans deserve him, and God thinks so too; He gave Bush a black
man and seven dwarfs as opponents, and assured the final victory of this former CIA spy,
an unreflective man lacking much depth and ideological conviction, a wimp who
relishes covert actions and never objected to arms deals with Iran, who dislikes press
leaks and snoopers, and sees private charity as the solution for poverty and
homelessness -- in what amounts to the Third Term of Ronald Wilson Reagan.
In a way, Reagan was a great president. He may have trouble getting his facts
straight and remembering things, but he made the presidency a stage show where sound
bites and body language counted more than command of facts, where one liners delivered
in ambush interviews, accompanied by the tilt of the head and cupped ear, became tools
to infuse his office with a sense of drama.
Make my day, he said with a smile and a shrug.
Reagan invaded tiny Grenada, with 88,000 population. less than Pasay, and made
it look like the winning of World War III; he constantly bullied Nicaragua with its 3
million people, less than half that of Metro Manila, while making the USA look like the
beleaguered defender of democracy; he transgressed the law in the Iran-Contra Scam, but
in the eyes of Americans, he was Gary Cooper in High Noon, tough in facing down the
enemy. In the end he signed a disarmament treaty with the Russians, and made America
believe once more in itself.
In a gilded age of personal wealth and public neglect, when the USA once banker
to the world became its leading borrower ($1 trillion by 1992 and heavily mortgaged to
the bankers in Tokyo, Frankfurt and Riyadh), with a $200 billion budgetary deficit
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resulting a $2.6 trillion national debt with annual interest of $160 billion, a full 38 percent
of federal tax revenues -- Reagan was Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,
full of purity of purpose and unshaken principles.
In a time of decline in industrial wealth, moral fiber and imperial sway, Reagan
brought an aw-shucks majesty to the presidency that transcended the details of
governing. There are countless better actors around, but no one can play the presidency
like Ronald Reagan.
Against Reagan's candidate George Bush, the Democrats pushed Jesse Jackson
and the Seven Dwarfs: Senators Gary Hart, Joseph Biden, Albert Gore, Paul Simon;
Congressman Richard Gephardt; Governors Mike Dukakis and Bruce Babbitt -- all
competing in rough-and-tumble primaries that left none with enough strength to mount a
credible challenge to Bush in the elections.
The best was a non-candidate Mario Cuomo, who looked like a Mafia goon and
hemmed and hawed all tease and tingle, but no orgasm.
The second best was Gary Hart, New Age prophet, potentially another Jack
Kennedy with the same predilection for Camelot and a pretty face. Way ahead at 31
points lead over his nearest rival, his libido simply blew him away.
Rumors of marital cheating plagued him for years, and warned again and again
that his candidacy cannot survive a sex scandal, he persisted.
On the good ship Monkey Business, in scarlet trunks, he cradled Donna Rice on
his lap while the camera clicked. An airport limousine driver told everyone that he took
Gary Hart to a girlfriends house, and to convince doubters, he produced the womans
name and address.
In April he flew back to Denver to meet Donna Rice, and stayed with her in his
apartment, drove out for a picnic to Mt. Vernon, George Washingtons house, without
noticing he was being trailed by a photographer from Miami Herald. While out for a
walk, Gary and Donna were photographed.
As he withdrew from the race, a woman friend of his wife Lee, shouted, Lee,
you've just got to cut his thing off. When you see him, just BAM! cut it off!
Bruce Babbitt was the next casualty. He was a dog on TV, with bulbous eyes,
bobbing Adams apple and uncontrollable eyebrows. Joseph Biden was the third, an
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unmitigated plagiarist cribbing lines from Bobby Kennedy, Humbert Humphrey, and
British politician Neil Kinnock.
Gephardt bloodied Paul Simon in the crucial Iowa caucus. Al Gore in turn
bloodied Gephardt on Super Tuesday, the South's multi-state primary. All three did not
survive.
Jesse Jackson persisted to the end, bringing inspiration and charisma into the
campaign. But he was a black man in a racist society, so Michael Dukakis won the honor
of losing to George Bush.
But Bush rules a divided nation as Democrats won decisively in both houses of
Congress.

Part 8. Platypus had a Japanese grand-uncle
IN Edmond Rostand's play, the villain Valvert was taunting our hero Cyrano de
Bergerac: Dolt, bumpkin, fool, insolent puppy, jobbernowl!
Cyrano pretending that Valvert was introducing himself, answered, Glad to meet
you. And my name is Cyrano Savinien Hercule De Bergerac!
Well I received a letter in Spanish from a Dennis who, I assume, introduced
himself with the kilometric Spanish name of Bobo Tonto Estupido Comico Necio
Cretino Ignorante Atontado Zoquete Lerdo Alcornoque Bobalicon Idiota Imbicil
Majadero Mameluco Memo Obtuso Palurdo Papanatas Rustico Simplon Zompenco
Inepto Paleto Tocho Mentecato... en una palabra, Bobo de Coria.
Mucho gusto de conocerle, Seor Dennis Bobo de Coria. Yo soy Hilarion Daniel
Guillermo Mateo Francisco Henares y Maramba, Hijo. That name is registered in my
baptismal certificate. The last word Hijo is the Spanish equivalent of the word Junior.
Many friends and enemies, not knowing that my name is already much too long,
keep adding something else after Hijo... like Hijo de la gran kikay, or something worse.
Dont think that just because I disagree with American policy and US
Ambassador Kulas Platt, I do not like him. Far from it, I like and respect him, but I
resent Filipinos treating him like a Great White Father. I meet Kulas occasionally in
Repertory, parties or official functions. And we always exchange pleasantries.
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Once I kidded him about being an Old China Hand -- with all the connotations of
being Taipan, Dug-out Dog and William Holden in a Many Splendored Love with Han
Suyin -- with his knowledge of Chinese, and assignments to China, Japan, and Hong
Kong.
I asked about his relationship to the Platt Amendment imposed on Cuba as part of
its Constitution on June 12, 1901 which leased naval stations to the USA and recognized
the right of the American government to intervene in Cuban affairs.
Though he is related to the guy somehow, he denied any direct descendancy. But
he did tell me an interesting story of being the great grandnephew of a Japanese samurai.
In 1864, the year Lincoln was assassinated, a Japanese samurai warrior by the
name of Nijima Jo, to escape his enemies, sneaked into a boat bound for the USA. The
boat was owned by Kulas Platt's grandmothers grandfather on his fathers side, whose
name is Alphius Hardy.
Alphius Hardy adopted Nijima Jo as a son (which makes him the great grand-
uncle of Kulas) and sent him to school in Andover, Amherst and Avion Theological
Seminary. After ten years in the USA, Nijima Jo went back to Japan and founded
Goshisha, the first Christian university in Japan. That makes Kulas progenitor,
Protestants answer to our Francis Xavier SJ.
* * *
On television with Juliette Yap, ex-Governor Tillah of Tawi-Tawi who is
Santanina Rasul's brother spoke heatedly about the goverment discrimination against
Muslims. Not quite true.
There may be some prejudice against Muslims by the Armed Forces; Gringo was
said to have presented General Espino with a whole bayong full of dried Muslim ears; but
then the Armed Forces is prejudiced against all the people, especially those who love the
Philippines more than Mommie Dearest America.
But certainly not the civilian government. Two Muslim senators, more than their
proportionate share populationwise, sit in Congress. A Muslim justice sits in the
Supreme Court and two in the Court of Appeals, along with so many judges in the lower
courts, including Judge Omar Amin, brother of Misuari's right hand man. The judiciary
is not unfair to Muslims.
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Former Misuari lieutenants are in government: Governor Tapai Loong of Jolo,
good-looking Gerry Salapuddin of Basilan, and the governor of Tawi-Tawi too.
Rizal Alih is known to control the arrastre services and a whole row of barbecue
stands in Zamboanga City. Where did he get the capital on his salary as a policemen?
He is said to be the junior partner of a Blas Perez, the former owner who was killed in a
gangland rub-out. Rizal Alih took over after his death.
When General de Villa ordered the overkill operation against Alih, the revolt
had already turned into a mutiny. General Batalla was murdered. By Friday night, 60
additional people joined Alih.
Tausogs from Jolo were part of the PC detachment in the camp, and were friends
of Alih. General Bueno himself is half Tausog.
President Cory sent General Batalla to purge the town of undesirable elements.
Everyone knows about the four armed groups in Zamboanga: Alihs, Alams, Aquels
and Bocarams. But no one dares talk about it. Batalla was able to break up crime
syndicates and gather evidence against them.
By the way, why did Generals Aguilar, Afabeto and Jimenez not attend Batalla's
funeral?

Part 9. Our AFP and gov't are run by comedians
THAT Rizal Alih is something, policeman and murderer, businessman and
racketeer, political hack and tong-collector, and probably the most daring swashbuckler
of our time and place.
When you come right down to it, Filipino Muslims are probably the best fighting
men, pound for pound, man for man in the whole world, better than the Israelis. My
uncle, who was involved in pre-war Moro campaigns, recounted stories of Muslim
juramentados who bound their bodies tightly with a strip of cloth to keep their guts from
spilling out. Then they ran amok, killing many Christians before they were themselves
killed.
My uncle told of an American soldier who stood his ground with an Enfield rifle,
pumping 30.06 caliber bullets into a Moro running towards him with a kris from yards
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away. The Moro never stopped or wavered, and as he came closer, the American fixed
his bayonet, and charging, thrust it into the Moros chest.
The Moro took hold of the Enfield rifle with his left hand, thrust it deeper into his
own chest, and with his right hand swung his kris toward the American. My uncle with a
shudder recalled, For a moment, the American stood there headless, while his head hung
from his neck by a strip of skin. Then both fell in the dust.
John Joseph Pershing fresh from the Indian wars against the Apaches and Sioux,
and the Cuban campaign against the Spaniards, was sent here by President Theodore
Roosevelt to pacify the Moros. The .45 caliber pistol with a wallop of a mule was
invented to subdue the Moro, but to no avail. Pershing figured that the only good Moro
is a dead one, and proceeded to make Muslim Mindanao a howling wilderness, the
pictorial proof of which is available in the Library of Congress.
So successful was Pershing that he was promoted from captain to brigadier
general over 862 officers, entrusted with a punitive force (against international law) to
pursue Pancho Villa into Mexico, and given the command of the American Expeditionary
Army to Europe in World War I. In 1919, he was given the permanent rank of general, a
grade previously held only by Washington, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan.
As far as our Armed Forces are concerned, let's face it, they are a big joke -- the
only things they are good at are shooting at unarmed people who cannot shoot back:
students, priests, nuns and concerned women, peasant families sleeping in the dead of
night, workers and labor leaders walking the streets, nationalists like Ninoy Aquino shot
at the back of the head -- not to mention being involved in carnapping, bankrobbing, and
escorting smuggled goods. These jokers are only good for disseminating McCarthyist
dung from the colon of CIA Chief Billygoat Lofgren: from a news-leak that communist
cadres infiltrated the Congress, to the allegation that nuns and bishops are Communist
dupes.
Against our real enemies they are useless. Pit the Army against one armed goon
like Rizal Alih, or one charlatan like Gringo Honasan, or General Baula and Ka Roger --
and our soldiers stumble and fumble and fall over each other like the Keystone Cops
chasing Charlie Chaplin. With all the modern weapons in the world, and a 10-to-one
numerical superiority over the rebels, they are about as effective as Lilliputans against
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Gulliver.
During the attack on Alih, the army announced that the operation was called off
on account of darkness. Holy Dung, they think its a baseball game!
What do you do about police forces who can not enforce a firecracker ban, and
whose only solution is to legalize firecrackers? What do you think of an army who
cannot control unlicensed firearms, and whose only recourse is to license them? Just like
the Bimbo who cannot catch most illegal aliens, and suggests that we legalize them all.
Just like the Banshee who cannot stomach smuggling, therefore legalized smuggling by
import liberalization. Like the Bruja who cannot prevent the Army from violating human
rights, and therefore depicts them as being the victims rather than the violators.
By God, we have a bunch of comedians running our government!
Face it, following the example and advice of Mommie Dearest America is a
mistake. Even in peacetime, U.S.A. is the most violent in the world. In 1980, handguns
killed 77 persons in Japan; 8 in Great Britain; 24 in Switzerland; 8 in Canada; 23 in
Israel; 18 in Sweden; 4 in Australia; and 11,522 in the United States.
We should follow the example of Costa Rica which abolished their army in their
1949 constitution, and never had any trouble from communists and carpetbaggers ever
since, unlike its neighbors Nicaragua and Honduras.
January 14. 1989, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Part 10. Lincoln: something good about Americans
RAUL CONTRERAS, also known as Real Contrary, gave me advice: You have
a talent for black humor and invective, Larry, as good as that of Disraeli, Churchill, Oscar
Wilde, H.L. Mencken, it's hilarious and frightening. But do not waste it by using it too
frequently. And another thing, do not cut yourself off from the business community of
which you have long been a part, especially American businessmen. You have a special
ability to analyze business problems, and you'd be surprised what you can learn from
foreigners about your own country. Also there must be something good you can say
about the Americans.
Good advice. I have made my point about our colonial mentality many times
over, it is time to say that it is more our fault than that of Americans.
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The best thing I could say about the Americans is that they produced one of the
greatest men that ever lived -- Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States,
born February 12, 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky, self-taught lawyer in Springfield,
Illinois, freed the slaves, and was assassinated on April 14, 1865, in a theater in
Washington DC.
Lincoln is best remembered for his Gettysburg Address, a two-minute speech he
wrote on the back of an envelope, which articulated for all time the glory of mans
struggle to be free. Many of us never read it. For those in the EDSA revolution, it
acquires a poignant meaning:
Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new
nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal.
We are now engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion
of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation
might live. It is altogether fitting and proper than we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor
long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion --
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by
the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The world forgot the bloody battle of Gettysburg, but it never forgot Lincolns
deathless words. Nor did it forget the words of National Reconciliation in his Second
Inaugural on the eve of final victory:
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With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the
nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and
his orphans, and to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace,
among ourselves and with all nations.
Asked why he doffed his hat to a negro who doffed his hat to him, Lincoln
answered: I allow no man to be more of a gentleman than I am.
A judge dared Lincoln to engage in horse-trading, horses unseen. The judge came
with the sorriest specimen of a horse, while Lincoln came with a wooden saw-horse.
Lincoln surveyed the judge's horse: Judge, this is the first time I ever got the worst of it
in horse-trading.
Lincoln to an aristocratic lady: Jeepers creepers, lady, you sure are a handsome
woman!
Lady, arrogantly: I wish I could say the same of you, young man.
Lincoln: You could, lady, if you were as big a liar as I am.
Lincolns political opponent was a man of means who put on his house the first
lightning rod in the county, prompting Lincoln to say: Those of you who know me,
know that nothing in my character makes it necessary for me to put on my house a
lightning rod to save me from the just vengeance of Almighty God!
Two Quakers were discussing Abe Lincoln. One said, Abe will succeed because
he is a praying man. The other answered, I don't know, the Lord might think Abe was
only joking.

CHAPTER 15. Childermas, April Fool in December

THE Feast of the Holy Innocents, or Childermas, is celebrated on 28 December to
commemorate the Massacre of the Innocents. The slaughter of the male children of
Bethlehem from two years old and under when Jesus was born (Matt. 2:16), was done
at the command of Herod the Great in order to destroy the babe who was destined to
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become King of Jews.
In parliamentary parlance, the Massacre of the Innocentsdenotes the withdrawal
at the close of the session of bills unconsidered and unpassed due to lack of time.
It used to be the custom of Childermas to whip the children and even adults that
the memory of Herods murder of the innocents might sink deeper. This practice forms
the plot of several tales of Decameron (from the Greek deka, ten, hemera, day), a
collection of 100 tales by Boccaccio, completed circa 1353 AD, told in ten days during
the plague at Florence in 1348 AD, by seven ladies and three gentlemen each telling a
tale daily.
The Decameron told hilarious and outrageous tales of sexual peccadillos during
the Middle Ages -- and was condemned by the church as being obscene because it told of
sinning monks and nuns. But when Boccaccio re-issued the book, changing monks and
nuns to gentlemen and ladies, the Council of Trent forgave him and removed his name
and the book from the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books. For once the church decided
that fornication was all right between ladies and gentlemen, but not between nuns and
monks.
Here in the Philippines, Childermas is celebrated by playing tricks on the
Innocents, something like April Fools Day in December. This is done mostly by
borrowing money that will not be paid, or sending someone on a fools errand to the
other side of town.
The funniest incident I experienced on Childermas had to do with my cousin Felix
Fedi Maramba Jr., head of the flour millers, and once president of the Chamber of
Commerce and Industry, a position I occupied long ago as a dreaded capitalist.
Now, imagine Fedi during World War II, in short pants in the town plaza of Sta.
Barbara, Pangasinan, walking home with his friends after an evening of serenading the
girls. There was no electricity then, the town plaza was pitch-dark, and the houses all
around were lighted by oil-lamps, with the denizens peering into the plaza, curious as to
who was there at the ungodly hour of eight oclock at night.
Suddenly three flashlights flashed in the dark, intersecting on Fedi Maramba
emptying his bladder, Aleg, aleg! Anak na lasi! Then he started to run after us,
wielding it like a garden hose, trying to inundate us, Siritan ko kayon amin' while the
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whole town watched from their windows, cheering him on as he tried to escape the web
of spotlights focused on him. Fedi never lived that down.
Pranksters abound in my family specially during weddings. Chito Quintans,
brother of Dulce Saguisag, found his bride missing and ensconced in Tagaytay Vista
Lodge. Nephew Teddyboy and his bride Paching found their hotel room sprinkled with
itch powder, supplied with soap that turns blood-red when wet, and invaded by a
toothless hag claiming to be the mother of his illegitimate child.
Pranksters abound among the famous too.
Charles Dawson (1864-1916) a lawyer and amateur geologist, gained fame as the
discoverer of the Piltdown Man, the bones of the so called Missing Link between Ape
and Man in 1912 from a gravel pit in East Sussex, England. Experts authenticated the
find and bestowed upon Dawson the honor of naming the species Eoanthropus dawsoni.
Long after Dawson died, by new chemical test in 1949, and by the carbon dating in 1953,
the Piltdown Man was proved a fake, the jaw of an orangutan filed down and stained in a
crucible. It was Dawsons joke.
Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), famous Vienna violinist, a genius as an interpretive
performer, added to his insufficient repertoire from the 1880s onward, by writing pieces
and ascribing them to little known composers such as Couperin, Pugnani, even Vivaldi,
calling them little masterpieces, which they were. In 1935, he casually confessed his
brilliant forgeries amidst an uproar in the musical world.
Clifford Irving, in 1971, claimed he was hired to ghostwrite for the famous
elusive billionaire, Howard Hughes, forging over 20 pages of handwritten and contracts
by Hughes, which were unanimously declared genuine by experts. His wildly
imaginative 1,200-page book was a best seller. He would never have been caught if the
Swiss banks did not break their traditional secrecy by revealing that the account of H.R.
Hughes was in fact that of Irving's wife.
Happy Childermas!

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CHAPTER 16. Lost heritage diminishes our humanity

TONIGHT WE LOVE, my American friend said, and I looked at him
quizzically for I do not know him as a homosexual. He isn't. He nodded at the car
stereo, That's a nice instrumental of Tonight We Love, while the moon beams down on
dreamland tonight. / We touch the stars, love is ours... the song made popular by Frank
Sinatra in the 1950s, making me feel like a cultural slob.
It was my turn to make him feel like a cultural slob, Friend, that is Piano
Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, played by Vladimir
Horowitz, and that is only one of the many classical pieces he composed that was
plagiarized by Tin Pan Alley because Tchaikovsky never bothered to copyright his
compositions. Tin Pan Alley is a district in New York City where American song-hits
used to be published, so-called from the rattling of tins by rivals when a performance was
too loud and too protracted.
While he listened open-mouthed, I laid it on real thick. Out of Tchaikovsky's
Fifth Symphony came Moon Glow. From his Sixth Symphony, the Story of A Starry
Night. From his Romeo and Juliet Overture came Our Love is like an evening prayer...
From his Serenade for Violin and Piano came an almost forgotten classic: The glow of
sunset in the summer skies, / The golden flicker of the fireflies, / The gleam of lovelight in
your lovely eyes, / These Are the Things I Love...
And do not forget Tchaikovskys None But the Lonely Heart / can know my
sadness, / Alone and parted far from joy and gladness./ Heaven's boundless arch I see /
Spread out above me -- / Oh what a distance dear to one who loves me!
The classic composer whose compositions are next in popularity in Tin Pan Alley,
is Frederic Francois Chopin (pronounced franzwa shopan), composer of Polands
patriotic songs called Polonaise, and who made love to a woman writer who wore pants,
called George Sand. His Fantasie Impromptu gave us that perennial song hit, I'm Always
Chasing Rainbows, watching clouds drifting by. / My schemes are just like all my
dreams, ending in the sky...
His Polonaise is E Flat Major gave us the song, Till the End of Time, long as stars
are in the blue, / Long as there's a spring, a bird to sing, / I'll go on loving you...
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And his Etude # 3 in E Major, Opus 10, No. 3 gave us No Other Love can warm
my heart / Now that I've known the comfort of your kiss...
Remember Full Moon and Empty Arms? That is from Serge Rachmaninoffs
Piano Concerto No. 2.
Remember The Lamp is Low? That's from Maurice Ravel's Pavanne for a Dead
Princess. And of course there is the famous Franz Shuberts Serenade, Johannes Brahms
Lullaby, and Franz Lizts Song of Love.
And guess where Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star comes from? From 20 Variations
on a Theme by Franz Josef Haydn.
We should be grateful to Tin Pan Alley for attuning our ears to some of the
classical music that survived the centuries, to educate those who think classical music is
Cole Porter instead of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (motzart).
In the family my generation was lucky. Every one had to go through the ordeal of
piano and violin lessons. I studied piano for 12 years and can only play two pieces: Fairy
Waltz and Chopsticks. I studied violin for seven years, and cannot play even the scales.
But years of having to attend recitals of my cousins, of being dragged against my
will to concerts and ballets, took its toll. My ears became used to Beethovens Moonlight
Sonata, Mendelssohns Song Without Words, Offenbachs Barcarolle, Chopins Preludes
and Etudes, and such as Shuberts Unfinished Symphony, Tchaikovskys Swan Lake and
Nutcracker Suite. And specially Beethovens Fifth Symphony with its maddening dot-
dot-dot-dash Morse code for letter V for Victory, Churchill's theme against Hitler during
World War II.
In Boston, New York and many other cities, there are FM stations dedicated
solely to classical music, some of them surviving without commercials through voluntary
subscriptions. The FM stations here are forced to play three Original Pilipino Music
(OPM) for every hour of broadcast, to provide surcease from modern American music
with its jungle tom-toms, discordant noise and what sounds like cats making love on a hot
tin roof.
How about one hour every week for classical music? Also another hour a week
for Broadway musicals -- we have not even heard on the radio the music of Phantom of
the Opera, Les Miserables, Me and My Gal, and those currently being played in the Great
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White Way. But there is a Far East Broadcast Protestant station dedicated exclusively to
classical music, 98.7 MHz on your dial.
These are part of our heritage as civilized human beings, part of our racial
memory, part of the immortality of mortal Man. To erase it, is to diminish our own
humanity.

CHAPTER 17. We have met the enemy and he is us

TO live bravely by the convictions of free peoples, we Filipinos must put our faith
in ourselves, in stable, long range policies that advance our permanent interests, and not
those of our temporary friends -- policies that will not be heated and cooled with the
brightening and waning of our relations with Mommie Dearest America. It is time we
charted our way by the stars, not by the lights of each passing ship.
Such words, paraphrased from General Omar Bradley, should have guided us in
our negotiations with the IMF, World Bank, our foreign bank creditors, and the American
panel in the review of the military bases pact.
If we have been led astray by American grutnols about the mini-Marshall Plan
and succumbed to relentless pressure from these neanderthals on the bases review, if we
got from these cheapskates an amount less than one-sixth of the annual interest we have
to pay on our foreign debt -- it is because of our incurable colonial mentality.
We allow Ambassador Hoy Kulas Platypus, against diplomatic protocol, to
distribute rice in the provinces like Emil the Siopao Man, to send his embassy personnel
fanning out into boondocks like Tarzan among the natives, to call in our legislators for
briefing and dinner as if he were an oriental potentate, and send them on expense-free
junkets to the United States.
We allow these American carpetbaggers and their Filipino scalawags unlimited
access to the higher councils of state, letting them strut around the corridors of power
with offensive familiarity. Foreign Affairs Secretary Raul Manglapus complains that an
hour after every bargaining session, a memorandum from the Americans is on the desk of
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Executive Secretary Catalino Macaraig for transmission to the President. That is how
insidious these Americans can be; we do not have the same facilities to bypass Kulas and
write to Reagan.
It was a lousy Agreement that Manglapus signed with Fatso Kalbo Shultz. We
did not get what we needed or what we expected, but it is better than the old agreement,
which would have been in force if we did not agree on this one. We get an increase for
1989 and 1990, but not for the last year of the Agreement up to September 1991.
We got only a 68 percent increase on the Economic Support Fund, from an annual
$95 million to $160 million, and the US still tells us how to spend it, not for
industrialization or anything that will raise our standard of living. For it is the policy of
these neanderthals to keep us poor, pregnant, barefooted and controllable.
We got a 700 percent increase in military aid, from an annual $25 million to $200
million, so that we call kill each other more efficiently without risking American lives,
and advance Reagan's LIC bloodbath doctrine.
All these of course is subject only to ``best efforts,'' not a firm commitment like
those to Spain and other countries.
We do not have to pay for military sales credits ($29.4 M) we never used anyway.
The Export Import Bank will consider loans, guarantees, insurance for the purchase of
US equipment which is more expensive and less efficient than that of Japan.
And the Overseas Private Investment Corporation will provide guarantees against
political risk for US companies investing here, guarantees which the Philippines assumes
by reimbursing the USA for any losses incurred therein, as provided for by a secret
protocol signed by Foreign Secretary Carlos Romulo in 1954.
Our government undertakes to get rid of the bases squatter problem, which
probably means firing on our own people to keep these Americans cozy, safe and
comfortable.
The criminal jurisdiction on American crimes against Filipinos remain firmly in
American hands, so American soldiers still feel free to rob, abuse and kill Filipinos with
impunity in our own country.
So thanks for nothing, O ye blue-eyed redeemers of the unworthy brown race!
On the other hand, we got some scraps: title to the non-removable assets of the
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bases; our permission to store nuclear weapons on our soil (but blanket US authority to
pass through our territory with nuclear weapons); access to markets in the bases (but no
protection against PX smuggling); and the knowledge that in the real negotiations for the
extension of the bases agreement, we need to protect ourselves from the betrayal of
friends and our own colonial mentality.
Julius Caesar once said, Veni, vidi, vici -- I came, I saw, I conquered.
Napoleon Bonaparte said: We have met the enemy and he is ours.
In the aftermath of the military bases review, we can only say: We have met the
enemy and he is us.

CHAPTER 18. Glory be to America, war without end, Amen

THE Chinese hardware store owner had a friend of a friend who was a friend of
this Colonel, during the martial law era. So he sent word that some steel bars were
missing from his bodega, that he would like the Colonel to help recover them.
Days later, the Colonel had a suspect, a bodeguero whom he tied to a chair and
interrogated. The Colonel sharpened the edges of a tablespoon, and calmly, smilingly,
scooped out the eyes of the bodeguero. The screams of the victim drew the Chinese to
the scene, Tama na, tama na, he cried out, I do not care anymore about the steel bars!
The Colonel looked up, Well, this man is no longer of any use anyway, might as
well kill him. He took out his .45 caliber pistol and calmly, smilingly, put a bullet into
his brain.
As brain and bone fragments splashed onto his shirt, the Chinese had a massive
stroke. Up to now he is still paralyzed.
Up to now the Colonel is still in the Army. The Defense department says that he
must be released because of insufficiency of evidence in the many cases filed against
him.
The son of a bitch is considered a valuable Communist fighter, needed to counter
such dastardly communist fronts as Sister Mariani Dimaranan, Sister Mary John
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Manansan, Sister Soledad Perpian, Lorenzo Taada, Senator Bobby Taada, the
magnificent daughters of Pepe Diokno, and Nikki Coseteng.
The son of a bitch.
Christmas cards were sent out in the name of Satur Ocampo, NDF chairman, to
members of Congress and humanist progressive liberals opposed to violations of human
rights. Inside are the usual Christmas greetings on the right, and on the left are the logos
of the KMU, BAYAN and the NDF.
Nona Ocampo, daughter of Satur, and Nikki Coseteng think that Satur Ocampo is
not stupid enough to confirm any links between the three organizations, as army
intelligence and Defense Undersecretary Shorty in particular are trying to do. The cards
must have been sent out by right-wing militarists.
This is virtually an invitation to CIA-paid assassins to ambush Senator Bobby
Taada, the venerable Lorenzo Taada, and ConCom Commissioner SengSeng Suarez
who are connected with BAYAN. ConCom Commissioner Jimmy Tadeo has been
marked for liquidation long ago, as was Nemesio Prudente, Bernabe Buscayno, Crispin
Beltran, Lando Olalia, and Lean Alejandro.
What is happening to our country is the continuing implementation of the LIC
(Low Intensity Conflict) bloodbath doctrine being promoted by right wing extremists and
the CIA, as was done in El Salvador in the early 1980s.
We hope this does not start next year with the assassination of priests, nuns and
bishops, as it did in El Salvador with the killing of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero
and the rape murder of American nuns, by vigilante death squads.
Nowhere is there proof of our colonial mentality and subservience to American
military-industrial complex, more compelling than the budget just passed in Congress.
The largest item of the budget is P100.8 billion for servicing debts to the IMF and
foreign banks.
The second highest is that of the Defense Department, P21 billion plus another P4
billion ($200 million from American military bases agreement) or a total of P25 billion.
Out of this, the CAFGU vigilantes from the private sector, to be trained by the army, will
get P385 million, more than the entire budget for NEDA (P259 million).
The Education Department, which mandated by the constitution as being first in
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priority in government, has only the third largest item in the budget -- P23.8 billion. The
teachers who are educated and whom we depend on to mold the minds of our youth, are
underpaid compared to unschooled soldiers, some of whom steal our chickens and our
cars, rob our banks, and salvage and savage those who oppose American military
bases, IMF conditionalities and multinationals.
The Department of Health, which is the only department that has made an impact
on the lives of the poor people, having pushed the Generic Drug Act to fruition against
pressure from American politicians, the Almighty Embassy, American Chamber and
CIA, has a lousy budget of P6.8 billion.
In the name of Reagan, Bush, and Kulas Platypus, Amen. Let us pray.
Our Master who art America, hollowed be Thy guns, Thy bullets come. Thy Will
be done right here as it was in Vietnam.
Give us this day our daily blood, and let us be killed in Thy service, as we kill and
behead those who turn against Thee. And lead us not into lasting peace, but deliver us
from freedom.
For Thine is the Empire and the Wealth and the Glory, War without end.
Amen.

CHAPTER 19. The day Our Lady was conceived

DECEMBER 7 and 8 are red-letter days for me. December 7 is the birthday of
my mother who was then named Maria Concepcion because the following day is the
Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It is also the birthday of my first grandchild Celine,
now in Portland, Oregon.
On December 8 World War II started in the Philippines. I remember that Sunday
so well. The family was attending mass in the Assumption at Herran where my sister
Norma was having her first Communion.
After the mass, we heard the roar of airplanes sneaking an attack on the oil tanks
in Pandacan, and we did not even know a war had already started.
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The Americans will exterminate the Japanese yellow vermin in short order, and
we will back to normal in a few months, we said. We didn't know that in a few months
we would be occupied by the Japanese, and that the war would last almost four years, tear
apart the national soul, and make us the colonial lapdogs that we are now.
By tradition, December 8, 14 BC, was the day Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ,
was conceived in the womb of her own mother. The doctrine of Immaculate Conception
was defined by Pope Pius IX in his Bull Ineffabilis Deus on December 8, 1854.
The doctrine states that Mary was conceived without the stain of Original Sin by
which Adam, Eve and all of us are cursed at birth and from which we are freed by
Baptism. This should not be confused with the Virginal Conception and Birth of Jesus
Christ by which Mary was made pregnant by the Holy Ghost without the participation of
her husband Joseph.
Of Marys parentage nothing is recorded, but she lived in the village of Nazareth
in the land of Galilee. The Magnificat in Luke 1 tells of her destiny as the mother of
our Saviour. The Fourth Gospel records that she was present at the Crucifixion where
she was commended to the care of Apostle John (John 19:26ff). In Acts 1:14 Mary was
among those who prayed with the apostles in Jerusalem during the interval between the
Ascension of the Lord and the Pentecost. Her death was not recorded.
In tradition, legend and belief, the churchs devotion to Mary grew out of (1) her
perpetual virginity, (2) her absolute sinlessness, and (3) her ability to intercede with God
on behalf of mankind:
The Virgin Birth was nowhere taught during the first three centuries of the
Christian era, and only appeared in the 2nd century in Protevangelium
Jacobi, a work condemned as heretical. This source laid the basis for one
later accepted by the Church, Liber de Infantia, which recounts that Mary
was born to Joachim of the tribe of Judah, and his wife Anna.
From her third to her twelfth year, Mary was in the Temple of the Lord as a dove
that is nurtured; and she received food from the hand of an angel. When she became of
age, a guardian was sought for her among the widowers lest she should defile the
sanctuary of the Lord; and Joseph, a widower with family, was chosen.
When Mary was found with child, she was subjected to the water ordeal of the
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Lord, (as described in Numbers 5:11ff), and declared an innocent virgin. At last her
perpetual virginity was made part of the Catholic doctrine by the Council of Chalcedon in
AD 451.
Much of apocryphal literature spoke of her as undefiled before God, but
even St. Augustine repeatedly asserted that she was born in original sin (De
gen. ad lit. x. 18). In the 12th century, the canons of Lyons instituted a
festival in honor of her holy conception and were rebuked.
A little more than a century ago in 1854, Pope Pius IX speaking ex-cathedra with
the infallibility of the Pope in matters of faith and morals, made the Immaculate
Conception an official doctrine of the Church.
The term Mother of God was first applied to Mary by the theologians of
Alexandria at the close of the 3rd century.
In AD 430, Proclus at Constantinople spoke of her as the holy Virgin and
Mother of God... the one bridge between God and man. And in following year, Cyril of
Alexandria at the opening of the Council of Epheseus saluted her as Mother and Virgin
through whom the Trinity is glorified and worshipped... and the fallen creature raised up
even to heaven.
After the Council of Epheseus, figures of the Virgin and Child began to
proliferate, and the idea of Mary's intercession for us before God, was given full sanction
by the Church.
But the church always distinguished between latria and dulia, and declared that
the worship (latria) to be paid to the Mother of God must never exceed the superlative
degree of worship (dulia) to be paid to God Almighty.
December 11. 1988, Philippine Daily Inquirer

CHAPTER 20. Dilemma of the Man in the Middle

THE protagonists pounce on each other with murderous alacrity, with every intent
to maim or kill. Their friend watches in horror and moves to push them apart. Knives
flash, the two protagonists look at each other dumbfounded. On the floor before them,
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their friend, the peace-maker, the man-in-the-middle, lies in the pool of his own blood,
dead.
How many times has this scene been played? Blessed are the peace-makers for
they shall see the Kingdom of God faster than most people.
There is drama going on in the field of Commodity Futures like the final scene of
the tragedy of Hamlet -- when Queen Gertrude was poisoned, King Claudius killed at
sword-point by Hamlet, Laertes and Hamlet killed by the poisoned tip of a dueling sword.
Before that, Hamlet's father had poison poured into his ear, Polonius stabbed by
Hamlet, Ophelia driven to madness and drowned, and alas, poor Yorick was exhumed.
And I am the man in the middle.
There is a four-cornered war going on in the Commodity Futures game: Hong
Kong Brokers led by Carroll Tang, Futurelink Futures headed by Norihiro Kihara, SEC
under Comm. Rosario Lopez and Director Fe Gloria, and Commodity Futures Victims
Association headed by Atty. Salvador Bagamasbad. I am the peace-maker in the middle.
I started it all with a series of exposes on the anomalies of futures trading. This
led to bills introduced in the Senate (by Romulo and Guingona) and in the House (by
Oscar Orbos), creating a new Commission to regulate the futures trading, which is seven
to ten times larger than the Manila and Makati stock exchange trading combined.
I agree with the Victims that the abuses must be investigated, their money
returned and the abusers punished. But I do not agree that the commodity futures trading
be made illegal.
I agree with the Hong Kong brokers that the futures market is important to
economic development since it gives producers and users of coconut oil, copra, coffee,
and raw sugar the means to hedge against price fluctuations, that it does not deserve to
die like the mutual funds in the 1950s. I agree with them that it should be regulated, but
not by the SEC.
I do not agree with Futurelink's defiance of the SEC, but I do hope to have them
in the community of brokers, because it is the spoiler in a group that is being perceived,
rightly or wrongly, as in collusion.
I do not agree with SECs curtailment of international trading in futures, because
it isolates the local market and makes it susceptible to price manipulation. I do not agree
111
with its draconian policy that since Futurelink initially defied the SEC in court and lost,
therefore its application to operate will not be given due course as a punishment. The
application should be judged on its own merits.
Each side of the controversy accuses me of siding with the others, but that is not
true, I am merely the man in the middle.
I am friend to all sides. Along with others I was guest of Kihara and Futurelink in
Singapore to observe the Financial Futures Market. I was in turn a guest along with
others, of Peter Choi and his colleague Ric Tongco in Hong Kong to observe the Gold,
Commodities and Financial (Hang Seng) Futures Market. And it was worth the trips, I
learned enough to be a real expert. The new Comm. Laureta asked me to be his adviser.
I was a hero to the victims because of my exposes. But I cannot understand the
SEC people -- Chairman Julio Sulit, Comm. Rosario Lopez, Director Fe Gloria and her
assistant Tina Fernandez. I talked to Lopez and Gloria in the senate hearing, and I
thought we had a consensus on what is the best thing to do, but subsequent events did not
bear this out.
So I brought together for lunch Ric Tongco and Sixto de Guzman (lawyer for
MIFE), Gerry Geronimo (lawyer for Futurelink), SEC Comm. Rosario Lopez and in the
absence of Gloria, Tina Fernandez.
We came to the same consensus that international trading in futures be allowed so
as to discourage price manipulation in the local market, and that as a spoiler,
Futurelinks application be given due course.
Yet in the next few days, Futurelink remained padlocked and threatened with
extinction; international trading still forbidden; in the Senate, the Victims have ignited a
clamor for the killing of the industry; and lawyers led by Roger Z. Reyes accused SEC
officials of graft and corruption in the performance of their duties.
I hope that as the man in the middle, I am not called upon to witness the death of
the industry, as Horatio did Hamlet's: Goodnight sweet prince, / And flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest!

112
CHAPTER 21. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

THE goodlooking and respected Dr. Jekyll who is kind to animals and little girls,
driven by scientific curiosity to concoct a witchs brew, takes a swig of the distasteful
stuff and staggers, eyeballs popping, hands clutched at his burning throat. His handsome
face contorts itself into ugliness, furry hair sprouts on his face, his mouth twists to reveal
fangs, his fingers curl up into claws -- presto, he is now Mr. Hyde, a sadistic maniac who
prowls the streets to commit mayhem on sirens and old maids.
Grandma remembers him as John Barrymore; mother, as Frederic March; and my
wife remembers him as Spencer Tracy. These three movie stars launched their careers on
a vivid portrayal of the dual personality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in performances
calculated to fill our nights with fantasies and cold sweat.
The story reminds us that we are all a mixture of good and evil, the legacy of our
progenitors Original Sin. The psychologists interpret it as the struggle between the Ego
and the Id -- the Ego, our conscious self, striving to conform to the dictates of society
outside of self; the Id, our unconscious self, drawing its motivations from a reservoir of
primordial selfishness that lies within every man, knowing no logic, no values, no
morality save the need for its own satisfaction.
A man who feels free of the inhibitions of his accustomed society, responds
unpredictably to his subconscious Id.
A respectable man who is faithful to his wife and prays before angelus bells
sweetly pealing, finds himself abroad oogling at belles sweatily peeling.
A matron woman whose heart bleeds for the poor spends her waking hours in
social work, neglecting her children and driving them to juvenile delinquency.
A clean-cut American who grew up in a Puritan society, is thrown into the mass
anonymity of an overseas army and turns out to be a PX smuggler and rapist.
Nations have a dual personality too. The British who at home would die to
defend the sanctity of home, property and person, sallied forth abroad on a rampage of
colonial plunder still unequaled in the annals of history. The Mr. Hydes of the British
colonial office obliged Asians and Africans to pay the cost in tears, agonies and death so
that the Dr. Jekylls at home could be cultured, prosperous and free.
113
Americans abroad do not represent the best of the Americans at home. The
Americans in the USA are of liberal and humanist persuasion -- condemning by anti-trust
action big business monopolies, shackling the military with firm civilian control,
damning rednecks of the Klu Klux Klan and McCarthyists who employ Communist
methods to combat Communism.
American image abroad is shaped by greedy men who, frustrated at home, venture
abroad preaching monopolistic free enterprise that spawned robber barons and great
depressions; white trash who, unable to find employment in the stagnant society south of
the Mason-Dixon line, join the armed forces and government agencies abroad, bringing
with them the bigotry and McCarthyism of their unlovely land.
Those quick to condemn Americans in general are advised to seek the company of
American scholars, artists, newsmen -- liberal, tolerant, generous, freedom-loving, and
sensitive to aspirations of the people whose hospitality they enjoy.
The point is that no one, except God on Judgment Day, may pass final judgment
on a people, or any individual -- for each at a particular instant of time and place is
influenced in his actions and actuations, by the eternal push and pull of the forces of good
and evil, Ego and Id, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Which of these forces will ultimately prevail?
In all ages, Man has looked upon himself as the image of God and believed, as an
article of faith, in the inevitable triumph of good over evil.
In the movie, Mr. Hyde is killed and passes on to eternity as the good Dr. Jekyll.
The erring husband eventually comes home. The social worker turns to her juvenile
delinquent with a mothers love and a firm rod. The PX smuggler and rapist is thrown
upon the mercy of the local courts. The British have changed and are still changing,
ushering new nations into being. And by the grace of God and a little help from us, the
Americans abroad may comport themselves in glorious traditions of Lincoln, Wilson,
Roosevelt, and Kennedy.
Ultimately, good will prevail over evil, the Ego will suppress the Id, Dr. Jekyll
will triumph over Mr. Hyde. And such is the everlasting optimism of mankind -- such is
the indomitability of the human spirit -- that the human race and its humanity will endure
to the end of time. December 4, 1988, Philippine Daily Inquirer
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CHAPTER 22. Fun to be a Ham, world in your sala

NO fun to be a smoked ham -- favorite food of Joe the Immaculate Concepcion --
because if Joe is within the vicinity, you are liable to get masticated by his jaws, and
dissolved in his gastric juices.
No fun to be a ham actor either, because you are liable to end up a Las Vegas card
dealer like Romeo Vasquez.
But it is fun to be a radio ham, ham being the abbreviation and corruption of the
word amateur. To be a radio amateur is to be a citizen of the world, a patriot of
humanity, a lover of fellowmen. Indeed the word amateur is derived from the Latin word
amator, meaning loverboy.
A radio ham is a lover of radio communications, one who serves without
pecuniary consideration. It was a radio ham Marconi who invented the wireless radio.
Another ham, Lee de Forest invented the vacuum tube and made possible the
amplification of radio signals. Edwin Armstrong invented the superheterodyne that made
possible reception of distant signals. And a radio amateur working in his garage invented
color TV compatible with black-and-white sets.
Song-writer Billy Rose first contacted the sinking Titanic, and father of Pol
Tolentino (DU1PT) first contacted MacArthur in Australia during the war.
If you are a radio ham, the world is your living room. You can talk to fellow
amateurs everywhere -- Senator Barry Goldwater in Arizona, King Hussein of Jordan, ex
Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia, and thousands of enthusiasts in the
Soviet Union, China and elsewhere otherwise inaccessible.
You can exchange pictures with them by Slow Scan Television (SSTV), send
them messages through RTTY or the newfangled Packet or Fax, faster than teletype.
You can ask them to patch you through a telephone to anyone else (and bypass PLDT
long-distance). You can compare equipment and relative signal strengths, and exchange
QSL cards to mark the time (Greenwich) and radio frequency of your contact.
If you pass an exam on radio principles and the Morse Code and get yourself
licensed as a radio ham through the bureaucratic jungle of the National
115
Telecommunication Commission (NTC), you are given a call sign. Mine is DU1 NRS.
DU means Filipino amateur as DZ means commercial radio; 1 means Metro Manila Area,
just as 2 means Baguio. And NRS is my own, sounds like Henares with a silent H.
On the air, you talk in gobbledegook. You spell out in words instead of letters:
Alpha for A, Baker for B, etc., so that Kulas is Kilo Uniform Lima Alpha Sierra --
convenient when letters like D,B,P,T begin to sound the same over the static. You speak
in Q code: CQ means hello, QTH means location, QRN means radio interference. Or, in
the VHF band, you may choose to speak in the 10 code: 10-4 means I hear you, 10-20
means location.
Amateur frequencies are granted by international law, the most used is VHF-FM
in the 2-meter band, used for line-of-sight contact from cars and portable sets. But our
Boying Horilleno (DU1ESH) and Bobby Garcia (DU6BG) established a world record by
transmitting VHF 500 miles from Baguio to Iloilo, without repeaters!
Single Side Band (SSB) is used for long distance transmission, on 40 meter band
around the Philippines, on 15 and 20 meters for the rest of the world.
Another is via the Oscar Satellite. The logo of the Satellite Corporation has an
igloo and a nipa hut, because the first transmission via Oscar 2 was between a ham in
Alaska, and DU1CE (Eliodoro Claro) in the Philippines.
Most dramatic is the way the amateurs respond to emergencies. In the closed
Communist societies, radio hams operate openly because they are the most reliable
means of communication during emergencies like the recent Armenian earthquake.
Even in the Philippines, legends are rife. Earl Hornbostel (DU1AE), Filipino
citizen, was first to hear the Sputnik signals. Cesar Maloles (DU1CM) was the first to
reach the site of the PanAm crash in Antipolo. Eduardo Garcia (DU6EG) performed an
appendectomy operation by instructing the male nurse on a tramp steamer. I was able to
rescue a disabled sailboat in the Carolinas by contacting a Coast Guard in San Francisco.
Jose Mari Gonzalez (DU1JMG) got news of Gemma Cruz and her kids during the
Mexico earthquake for her husband Tonypet Araneta.
My most exciting experience was during the Tet Offensive and the evacuation of
Americans from Vietnam, when broadcast conditions and radio traffic jams prevented use
of the regular means of communications. I was able to contact American civilians and
116
soldiers, and patched them by overseas phone to their families in the USA. It cost me a
fortune, but it was worth it.
Americans owe me plenty.

CHAPTER 23. Too late, our time bomb ticks on

On the way to the city / I saw a scrawny baby / with sunken eyes / sitting on the lap of her
/ pencil-thin sister blankly staring at: / a fat man in his / air-conditioned car / rolling
down the window / and flicking his cigar.
-- Pearl Gamboa Doromal, 1987
BY juxtapositioning a scrawny baby with the fat man flicking his cigar, Pearl
comments on the wide gulf between the rich and the poor in this country, the cruel and
uncaring attitude of the rich concerned primarily with the profits they derive from swap-
deals, zooming dollar rates and IMF credits.
Debt-equity swap deals force the government to buy back debt papers at full value
today, when it can be bought at 42 percent of its face value in the secondary markets, or
redeemed at full value 12 years from now. It does so by printing money, which
contributes mightily to inflation.
At least $1 billion of debt papers were bought back with a resultant loss of some
P14 billion by the government, and resultant inflation rate of 9.2 percent this year and
estimated 11 percent next year. For this that pompous ass CB governor Jobo Fernandez
should have been canned.
Every time the rate of the dollar goes up by one centavo, the cost of living of the
common tao goes up by one peso a day. He pays more for food and the various
commodities he needs to keep body and soul together. But banks and big businessmen
make more money, by speculation, arbitrage, and higher prices. That is why these wimps
in the PCCI (Victor Lim), the BAP (Manuel Morales), MBC (Dick Romulo), BBC
(Christian Monsod, and CRC (Bernie Villegas) support Jobo Fernandez and Ting Jayme
in giving in to the IMF and foreign banks.
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IMF and bank credits given in the face of massive payments for debt service, with
nothing left to sustain economic growth, are futile. Nearly half of our 1989 budget is set
aside for debt servicing. From 1987 to 1992, the Philippines will pay out $16 billion
more than it will receive from the rich countries in trade, investment and aid.
In his analysis of our debt policies, UP Professor Manuel Butch Montes notes
that the country has been two years behind, always too late to solve its debt problems.
In 1983 Mexico and Brazil relied on official borrowings from IMF, multilateral
agencies and governments at concessional rates, and stopping all commercial borrowings
at market rates. In 1986, the Philippines resorted to the same policy too late, at the time
official sources have almost dried up.
Meanwhile in 1986 Mexico and Brazil resorted once again to commercial
borrowings -- a new money policy that enabled them to strengthen their international
reserves and marshal domestic resources for economic recovery.
According to Montes, by 1988, the limits of the new money policy began to be
obvious, and that was the time our inept negotiators again borrowed from commercial
sources, again two years too late!
The limitation on the new money policy is that borrowing for debt payments
increases the debt the country must service, not only increasing interest expense but also
making the country less creditworthy.
For this reason, Mexico and Brazil resorted in 1987 to debt reduction schemes,
using the borrowed commercial funds. Mexico used US zero-coupon treasury bonds to
back Mexican bonds it floated in exchange for a portion of its $100 million foreign debt.
Brazil declared a moratorium on all payments for its debts and early this year reached a
new agreement reducing its debts by $5 billion -- all the while we were increasing our
commercial debt.
This year 1989, the Philippines is exploring a debt reduction scheme -- again two
years too late! -- but it just does not have enough funds to invest in zero-coupon bonds,
not even to back up its trade! By not getting new money in 1987, the Philippines
simply missed the boat!
The United States with its own debt running at $1.2 trillion equaling the combined
debts of the Third World will resist any debt solution that will transfer the surplus funds
118
of Japan and West Germany to the poor countries and reduce the resources to finance US
trade deficits.
Poverty of mind, bankruptcy of will -- always too late, too late -- while our time
bomb ticks on.
In the silence one can hear a soft monotonous dripping. It is the dividends of the
capitalist continuously trickling in, continuously mounting up. One can literally hear
them multiply, the profits of the rich. And one can hear too, in between, the low sobs of
the destitute, and now and then a harsher sound, like a knife being sharpened.
-- Heinrich Heine (1842)
January 9, 1989

CHAPTER 24. I only rob blind men of their pennies

I DREAMT once I was at Heaven's Gate, and St. Peter asked, Are you with
those in army uniforms and their colleague in the Human Rights Commission? pointing
to Shorty, Ermita and MaryCon. And I answered... geez, I am getting ahead of my story.
Beetle-brains like Shorty in the Armed Forces depend on the CIA for definitions
of an insurgent. CIA dungheaps in the Embassy define an insurgent as anyone opposed
to the US Bases, American multinationals, IMF economic policy, human rights
violations, and whoever loves peasants, workers and Filipinos above Mommie Dearest
America.
An insurgent, according the dictionary, is one who takes up arms against a
legitimate government. Therefore, the NPA, MNLF, the forces of Gringo Honasan, Col.
Cabauatan and Rizal Alih -- who use violence to achieve their ends -- are insurgents. But
Gabriela, PAHRA, BAYAN, Task Force Detainees, KMU, FLAG and others which
advocate change by legal and peaceful means, are not insurgents.
Unfortunately beetle-brains like Shorty cannot make such distinctions. To them
Gringo is a wayward brother and prodigal son, on whom no reward must be posted,
because someday he may be useful for destabilizing Cory for the benefit of the
Americans. And to them cause-oriented groups imbued with nationalism are considered
119
killable rebels.
A few nights ago, there were two excellent TV programs on human rights, one
Velez This Week, and the other Straight from Beltrans Clavicle. Jose Mari Velez,
himself a victim of military abuse, hosted the first with guests Mari Serena Maris
Diokno of FLAG, Sister Mariani Dimaranan of Task Force Detainees, Defense
Undersecretary Eduardo Ermita, and Human Rights Commissioner Mary Concepcion
Bautista.
Jose Mari started the show with an excellent exposition of what human rights
violations mean. Human rights are many: civil, political, economic, social, constitutional
-- the violations of which are considered crimes against society. The term human rights
violations, however, as contemplated in the United Nations and its agencies, are crimes
committed by the state and its coercive instruments -- the army and the police -- against
its own citizens.
These are crimes committed by the very agencies charged with responsibility to
uphold the majesty of the law and protect the rights of the citizens. Among these crimes
are arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, solitary confinement, denial of due process,
robbery, rape, murder, disappearances and salvaging. These are high crimes that merit
the attention of UN and international organizations, because there is no defense of the
ordinary citizen against a government intent upon violating his rights. Only world
opinion and condemnation can save him.
Jose Mari then showed a tape of a young mother with her small daughter,
tearfully recounting how her husband after a leftist drama performance at Sta.
Escolastica, was taken into custody by members of the Intelligence Service of the Armed
Forces (ISAFP) and was never seen again.
This was followed by a series of truly frightening images of beheadings by
vigilantes, wholesale massacres of peasant families, bewildered faces holding up
photographs of their beloved ones made to disappear by army agencies, mass graves of
those who are savaged and salvaged, interspersed with accusations of Sister Mariani
and Maris Diokno.
Then Defense Undersec. Ed Ermita and MaryCon Bautista nonchalantly claimed
that these are exaggerations by radicals and that the Army is investigating all charges.
120
Hellfire and brimstone, why should the Army investigate its own crimes?? You feel
shitty and suppress the urge to go to the studio and bean them both with a baseball bat.
Beltran's TV program was better. At least one Army man, PC General Rodolfo
Biazon spoke with intelligence, stressing the importance of soldiers being supportive of
civilians, the need to recognize that there is a wide spectrum of allowable political beliefs
between extreme right and extreme left. He said the Army is changing; but you know
damn well it is not. Most Army officers still view the world with beady unblinking eyes
in mute hypnotic stupor, under the spell of CIA chief Billygoat Lofgren.
Like O. Henry, I dreamt once I was at Heavens Gate, and St. Peter asked, Are
you with those in army uniforms and their colleague in the Human Rights Commission?
pointing to Shorty, Ermita and MaryCon.
Not on your eternity, St. Peter, I answered with distaste, I don't belong to that
rotten crowd. I only set fire to orphan asylums and rob blind men of their pennies.
January 25, 1989

CHAPTER 25. Grandest Truth is Patriotism of Humanity

AN American scholar unburdened an uncomfortable thought: We have been
college-educated in the finest tradition of American liberalism. We pride ourselves on
being Internationalists -- yet we discover a keen sense of kinship and sympathy with
Filipino Nationalists.
An American businessman who boasts of being a Nationalistic super-American,
volunteered this observation: Filipino nationalists are chauvinistic and xenophobic. You
Flips should try to be more international-minded, like the Makati Business Club, and
serve the cause of the free world above selfish national interest.
To minds mass produced in the mold of Lil Abner, this is indeed a paradox: The
American Internationalist and the Filipino Nationalist are kindred spirits; the American
Nationalist and the Filipino Internationalist are strange bedfellows.
To one imbued with a sense of history, this is an understandable historical
development.
121
Nationalism is a revolutionary movement born in the West. Dutch and English
national consciousness generated the courage that destroyed the might of Imperial Spain;
then turned inwards to unleash forces of democracy that destroyed the despotism of
Dutch and English kings.
By the 19th century, the spirit of nationalism swept over the diverse peoples of
Europe, inspiring them into a belief in their own uniqueness, their common heritage, and
right to political unity and self-government.
By 1870, the Germans achieved unification under Bismarck; the Italians won
independence under Cavour and Garibaldi; France was transformed from an absolute
monarchy to an enduring republic.
Western nationalism, at first a liberative force, degenerated into Western
Imperialism in Asia and Africa. Nation pride turned into arrogance, prejudice and greed.
By some cruel logic, the peoples of Asia and Africa were made to pay the cost in tears,
agonies, and death so that the Europeans could be cultured, prosperous and free.
Americas Manifest Destiny, the British Empire, Kaisers and Hitlers Reich,
Japans Co-Prosperity Sphere, and Russias Third Internationale gave the world no peace
in the 20th century -- and brought forth the worst in humanity: Imperialism, and Colonial
Mentality of the oppressed peoples.
For they go together in mutual contagion: tyrant and slave, carpetbagger and
scalawag, Colonel Blimp and Gunga Din, the Super American and his Little Brown
Brother -- the white man's Nationalism and the colored man's Internationalism (another
word for colonial double-allegiance).
The arrogance of the strong keeps company with the cloying obeisance of the
weak.
On the other hand, the compassion of the strong keeps company with the dignity
of the weak.
Indeed, two liberative forces are stemming the tide of Imperialism and
Colonialism: (1) the enlightened Internationalism of strong nations, and (2) the
revolutionary Nationalism of weak nations.
The Internationalists of the West -- Woodrow Wilson, Bertrand Russell, John
Kennedy, scholars like Robin Broad and John Cavanaugh -- are the kindred spirits of the
122
Nationalists of Asia and Africa -- Rizal, Gandhi, Nasser, Quezon, Recto.
If Woodrow Wilson and John Kennedy were born in the Philippines, they
probably would have been Filipino Nationalists of the highest order, decrying the
impositions of Communists, and Imperialists.
If Jose Rizal and Claro M. Recto were born in the United States, they probably
would have been American Internationalists concerned with civil rights and the self-
determination of oppressed peoples.
For the Filipino Nationalist and the American Internationalist are intrinsically of
the same humanist and liberal persuasion. They argue the case of the weak against the
strong, and ask the strong nations to renounce all selfish claims in the larger interests of
mankind, especially the oppressed and the poor.
They ask the weak nations to assert themselves in pride and dignity, and take their
place as equals among the rest of the nations of the world.
They call upon both the strong and weak nations to adhere to what Thomas Mann
calls the Patriotism of Humanity -- to underline the idea that human welfare is
indivisible, and to demonstrate the greatest and grandest Truth of our time -- the truth of
which poets sing and philosophers dream:
That across all artificial borders of national sovereignties, above the diversity of
political and economic systems, beyond all differences in race, culture and creed -- lies
under God, the common humanity of Man.
It is this truth that makes men brothers.
It is this truth that will set men free.
November 27, 1988. Philippine Daily Inquirer

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