The Nursing Scandal
By Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net 04/10/2007
Starting this week some 10,000 Philippine nurses who passed the tainted June 2006 Philippine nursing board exams will be taking review classes, paid for by the Philippine government, to retake two sections of the nursing exams they already passed – a requirement imposed by the United States’ Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) for Philippine nurses who wish to work in the US.
The retaking the 2006 exams may not end the controversy which has damaged the reputation of Filipino nurses throughout the world. "The outcome of the ongoing scandal on the alleged leakage in the June 2006 Nursing Board Examination could make or break the future of Filipino nurses who intend to work abroad," the Philippine Daily Inquirer noted,
The controversy began with the discovery of a “leakage” of exam questions disseminated by two nurses review centers to their examinees in Baguio City and perhaps other locales. The examinees were provided with a list of 500 questions and answers in two of the exam’s five subjects (Tests III and V).
After the board exams were conducted, test-takers in Baguio City who heard about the leakage protested, claiming the leaks “tainted the results of the test, bringing to question the qualifications of all who passed.”
The Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) which administers the nursing exams with the Philippine Board of Nursing (BoN) conducted an investigation and learned that two BoN members were responsible for the leakage. According to one of the two members who were removed for “negligence,” she just inadvertently left copies in a Baguio copy shop where she was “xeroxing” her 500 questions. Others charged that the BoN members were bribed by the review centers to provide them with copies of their questions and answers.
According to Business World columnist Greg Macabenta, however, the leakage did not affect the outcome of the exam.
Macabenta’s analysis is based on the fact that there are five subjects in the examination: Nursing Practice I to V. Five BoN nursing examiners are asked to provide a list of 500 questions from each of their particular subjects of expertise, a total of 2,500 questions in all. From this batch of 2,500 questions, computers arbitrarily extract 500 total questions, 100 from each subject. This computer extraction of the 500 questions is done shortly before the exams are given to allow time only for the printing of hard copies.
Of the raw “un-extracted” test questions, Tests III and V were “compromised,” in the sense that 20 questions for Test III and 90 questions for Test V were in the list of 500 questions in the final exam.
The PRC decided to invalidate the 20 questions in Test III, recomputed the scores on Test V, and re-averaged the results before announcing the list of the 17,781 who passed the exam out of the 42,000 nursing graduates who took it.
Even assuming that all 2,500 questions were leaked to all the nursing examinees, instead of just 1,000 questions to those who attended the two review centers who obtained the leaked questions, the examinees would not have known which of the questions would be computer extracted for the final exam.
It’s as thought I leaked to you the 100 questions and answers that I guarantee you will be asked in a US naturalization exam (which anyone can obtain from the immigration website, by the way), except that I can't provide you with the 10 particular questions that will be asked. I can similarly provide you with the list of all the questions and answers in a California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) exam without knowing precisely which questions will be asked.
The examinees who attended the Gapuz review center and the INRESS review classes of George Cordero apparently obtained advanced access to 500 questions in Tests III and V that will in a pool from which the questions would be selected. But they didn’t know which particular 100 questions from each subject
would be asked.
Interestingly enough, of all the test centers in the Philippines which conducted the nursing exams, Baguio City, where the leakage originated, reported a 36-percent passing rate, the lowest among the 11 national test centers.
But the damage was done. Before the exams, the Philippines was lobbying the US-based National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) to include Manila as a NCLEX exam site to ease the financial burden on Filipino nurses having to travel to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur just to take the exams. After news of the 2006 leaking scandal broke, Manila was removed from any such consideration.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration reported that 7,768 nurses went to work abroad in 2005, down from 12,822 in 2001. There are 450 nursing schools in the Philippines, 50 of which the PRC would like to close down as nothing more than diploma mills.
The nurses also face stiff competition from Philippine doctors, 6000 of whom, according to The Asian Pacific Post, are studying to become nurses so they can find higher-paying jobs abroad. A physician employed in a Philippine government hospital earns only about 25,000 pesos (446 dollars) a month. A doctor could earn around 8,000 dollars a month while working as a nurse overseas.
On February 15, 2007, the CGFNS announced in its website (www.cgfns.org) that it would not issue VisaScreen certificates to passers of the “compromised” Philippine nursing licensure exam of June 2006. The organization urged the Philippine government to “provide an opportunity for retake” of the compromised test parts so the affected board passers may qualify for the VisaScreen.
“The integrity of foreign licensing systems ultimately affects the health and safety of patients in the United States, a primary consideration of CGFNS in its role in evaluating candidates under US immigration law," the commission stated.
The New York Times reported on August 21, 2006 that the Philippine nursing scandal threatens the country’s status as the world’s top producer of nurses, regularly supplying US, Canadian, UK and Saudi hospitals with several thousand RNs a year. This number was likely to increase in the US with the lifting of the cap on the number of foreign nurses that US hospitals can hire.
Already, Philippine officials reported, American recruiters are turning away nurses who took the tainted board exams, while those who remain in the Philippines are having difficulty finding jobs. Questions also have been raised about the integrity of previous nursing board exams.
Meanwhile India is rapidly producing more nurses to fill the nursing void in the US and other countries, threatening to surpass the Philippines in that category.
But it is in the category of cheating in elections and in the rigging of government contracts that the Philippines has been unsurpassed in Asia. It is this widespread perception that has fueled the nursing scandal even where, ironically enough, the attempt at cheating did not actually affect the results.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
Friday, November 2, 2007
O YEE OF LITTLE FAITH
O YEE OF LITTLE FAITH
By Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net 04/04/2007
When I was running for re-election to the San Francisco Community College Board many years ago, I met with the publisher and the editorial staff of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. With a reported circulation of 200,000, the paper’s political endorsement was and still is considered vital to the success of any political candidate.
“We’ve had very bad experience endorsing minority candidates,” Bruce Brugman, the 6’5” burly publisher of the Bay Guardian, candidly told me after I made my pitch for his paper's support. “The minority candidates we endorsed turned out to be major disappointments,” he said. “They were bought off.”
Brugman’s views were disgustingly racist and I told him so. He was tarring all minority candidates with the same broad brush, creating yet another negative stereotype. Brugman was declaring, in effect, that it was better to endorse white candidates because they have more integrity and can’t be corrupted as easily as minority candidates.
I was reminded of Brugman’s words this past week when I reviewed the actions of State Senator Leland Yee who denounced the City College of San Francisco for planning “in the dead of night” to construct a 17-story building for the
Chinatown-North Beach campus, across the 31-story San Francisco Hilton Chinatown.
The Chinatown Hilton is owned by Justice Investors, a group which has hired high-priced lobbyists to block the construction of the Chinatown campus because the views of its hotel rooms may be blocked, even partially, by the new building. According to Chinatown community leader Dr. Henry Der, a former
California Deputy Superintendent of Schools, Justice Investors is waging “a mean-spirited campaign of deception to confuse and mislead the Chinatown community and general public” about the proposed Chinatown campus.
“This campaign of deception,” Dr. Der wrote in an AsianWeek op-ed piece, “has purposely made up unsubstantiated, wild-eyed allegations that City College is going to build a ‘massive high-rise’ that will negatively impact Chinatown parking, traffic and Portsmouth Square Park. To create the illusion of legitimacy to their campaign, these paid lobbyists have trotted out State Senator Leland Yee as a ‘community leader,’ rallying Chinatown against this "high-rise."
“What this campaign of deception does not disclose is that, according to public records, Hilton Hotel owners and their paid lobbyists and families have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Yee’s political campaigns. Knowing that Justice Investors and their lobbyists are capable of contributing more,
Yee has easily, and not surprisingly, kowtowed to Hilton Hotel’s interests, at the expense of immigrant educational needs. Pure and simple, Hilton does not want any building to block its hotel window views.”
Even though he immigrated to the US from China when he was three, Yee has chosen to turn his back on his own community and to support the interests of the Hilton’s millionaire owners. To Yee, Hilton’s interests in preserving its hotel views are more important than the needs of his own community to build a campus accessible to the people who live and work there, a campus of 42 classrooms with language and science labs, computer training rooms and a culinary program.
At his Chinatown press conference, Yee claimed that the proposed 17-story City College building would cast a giant shadow over Portsmouth Square. Yee was aware that this charge was baseless as he had been provided with the results of a study which showed that the proposed building’s shadow would only affect a narrow sliver of the northwest corner of the park, and for a very limited period of time during the summer, and no later than 7:45 AM.
The truth did not stop Hilton’s paid lobbyists from spreading the big lie among various ethnic community leaders including Filipino American community leader Alice Bulos who signed a statement, prepared by Hilton’s lobbyists, charging that “the current plan would cast a shadow and obscure the major milestones of Asian American history.”
The height of hypocrisy here is that it is the 31-story Hilton Hotel Chinatown, across from Portsmouth Square, which casts the overwhelming shadow over the park, all day long and all year long. The Hilton’s paid lobbyists also claimed that the campus would draw 6500 “new” students who would descend on the campus at the same time, causing massive traffic jams and parking congestion.
"I was misled," said Rudy Asercion, a Filipino American Veterans commissioner. "The person who approached us said that there will be 7,000 students coming all at once and there would be no parking spaces. That is really not true because the classes are going to be staggered throughout the day and night and throughout the week and weekend."
Campus advocates also point out that about 90% of the students who will attend the proposed campus already live in Chinatown and will simply be walking to the campus or taking public transportation to get there, belying the parking congestion argument.
City College has wanted to build its own Chinatown campus for more than 25 years to replace the current inadequate facility, a former elementary school rented from the School District. But finding a site in the densest part of the city and obtaining the funds to purchase it were major problems until 1997, when San Francisco voters approved bond funds to purchase the Colombo and Fong buildings in Chinatown for the Chinatown campus.
Before that Chinatown campus project could get off the ground, however, suit was filed by the “Friends of the Colombo Building” to preserve the historic building. It turned out the lawsuit was funded by the owner of the adjacent Montgomery Towers building who did not want his towers’ views to be blocked by the proposed 9-story building which was to be built on two sites.
When it was time to get the bond funds from the City to complete the purchase of the buildings, then SF Supervisor Leland Yee, as chair of the Board's Budget and Finance Committee, held up release of the bond monies unless and until City College reached a settlement with the “Friends of the Colombo Building”. Because the funds were needed immediately or the purchase the property would be lost, the Board agreed not to tear down the Colombo Building and to seismically retrofit it at an added cost of $10-M.
But even after the Board yielded to his political blackmail, Yee declared that he still would not release the funds unless the College agreed to reimburse the attorney’s fees that the Montgomery Towers owner had paid to finance the lawsuit. The Board was outraged as the money to pay the $150,000 would come from the general funds of the College. Board members believe that the Montgomery Towers owner contributed heavily to Yee’s political campaign.
The Board then lobbied the other two members of the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee to vote to release the funds. But Yee said that, as chair of the committee, he alone had the power to “agendize” the item and if he didn’t put it on the agenda, it didn’t matter if the College had the support of the majority.
As he did then, as he is doing now, Yee has shown that he cares more about the interests of his financial contributors the interests of the people of San Francisco, especially those of minority immigrants.
O Yee of little faith in the people (and a lot of faith in the moneymen), you ’re making Bruce Brugman look good.
Send comments to: Rodel50@aol.com_
Rodel Rodis, a 3-term president of the SF Community College Board, was chair of the Board’s Facilities Committee from 1991 to 2001.
By Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net 04/04/2007
When I was running for re-election to the San Francisco Community College Board many years ago, I met with the publisher and the editorial staff of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. With a reported circulation of 200,000, the paper’s political endorsement was and still is considered vital to the success of any political candidate.
“We’ve had very bad experience endorsing minority candidates,” Bruce Brugman, the 6’5” burly publisher of the Bay Guardian, candidly told me after I made my pitch for his paper's support. “The minority candidates we endorsed turned out to be major disappointments,” he said. “They were bought off.”
Brugman’s views were disgustingly racist and I told him so. He was tarring all minority candidates with the same broad brush, creating yet another negative stereotype. Brugman was declaring, in effect, that it was better to endorse white candidates because they have more integrity and can’t be corrupted as easily as minority candidates.
I was reminded of Brugman’s words this past week when I reviewed the actions of State Senator Leland Yee who denounced the City College of San Francisco for planning “in the dead of night” to construct a 17-story building for the
Chinatown-North Beach campus, across the 31-story San Francisco Hilton Chinatown.
The Chinatown Hilton is owned by Justice Investors, a group which has hired high-priced lobbyists to block the construction of the Chinatown campus because the views of its hotel rooms may be blocked, even partially, by the new building. According to Chinatown community leader Dr. Henry Der, a former
California Deputy Superintendent of Schools, Justice Investors is waging “a mean-spirited campaign of deception to confuse and mislead the Chinatown community and general public” about the proposed Chinatown campus.
“This campaign of deception,” Dr. Der wrote in an AsianWeek op-ed piece, “has purposely made up unsubstantiated, wild-eyed allegations that City College is going to build a ‘massive high-rise’ that will negatively impact Chinatown parking, traffic and Portsmouth Square Park. To create the illusion of legitimacy to their campaign, these paid lobbyists have trotted out State Senator Leland Yee as a ‘community leader,’ rallying Chinatown against this "high-rise."
“What this campaign of deception does not disclose is that, according to public records, Hilton Hotel owners and their paid lobbyists and families have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Yee’s political campaigns. Knowing that Justice Investors and their lobbyists are capable of contributing more,
Yee has easily, and not surprisingly, kowtowed to Hilton Hotel’s interests, at the expense of immigrant educational needs. Pure and simple, Hilton does not want any building to block its hotel window views.”
Even though he immigrated to the US from China when he was three, Yee has chosen to turn his back on his own community and to support the interests of the Hilton’s millionaire owners. To Yee, Hilton’s interests in preserving its hotel views are more important than the needs of his own community to build a campus accessible to the people who live and work there, a campus of 42 classrooms with language and science labs, computer training rooms and a culinary program.
At his Chinatown press conference, Yee claimed that the proposed 17-story City College building would cast a giant shadow over Portsmouth Square. Yee was aware that this charge was baseless as he had been provided with the results of a study which showed that the proposed building’s shadow would only affect a narrow sliver of the northwest corner of the park, and for a very limited period of time during the summer, and no later than 7:45 AM.
The truth did not stop Hilton’s paid lobbyists from spreading the big lie among various ethnic community leaders including Filipino American community leader Alice Bulos who signed a statement, prepared by Hilton’s lobbyists, charging that “the current plan would cast a shadow and obscure the major milestones of Asian American history.”
The height of hypocrisy here is that it is the 31-story Hilton Hotel Chinatown, across from Portsmouth Square, which casts the overwhelming shadow over the park, all day long and all year long. The Hilton’s paid lobbyists also claimed that the campus would draw 6500 “new” students who would descend on the campus at the same time, causing massive traffic jams and parking congestion.
"I was misled," said Rudy Asercion, a Filipino American Veterans commissioner. "The person who approached us said that there will be 7,000 students coming all at once and there would be no parking spaces. That is really not true because the classes are going to be staggered throughout the day and night and throughout the week and weekend."
Campus advocates also point out that about 90% of the students who will attend the proposed campus already live in Chinatown and will simply be walking to the campus or taking public transportation to get there, belying the parking congestion argument.
City College has wanted to build its own Chinatown campus for more than 25 years to replace the current inadequate facility, a former elementary school rented from the School District. But finding a site in the densest part of the city and obtaining the funds to purchase it were major problems until 1997, when San Francisco voters approved bond funds to purchase the Colombo and Fong buildings in Chinatown for the Chinatown campus.
Before that Chinatown campus project could get off the ground, however, suit was filed by the “Friends of the Colombo Building” to preserve the historic building. It turned out the lawsuit was funded by the owner of the adjacent Montgomery Towers building who did not want his towers’ views to be blocked by the proposed 9-story building which was to be built on two sites.
When it was time to get the bond funds from the City to complete the purchase of the buildings, then SF Supervisor Leland Yee, as chair of the Board's Budget and Finance Committee, held up release of the bond monies unless and until City College reached a settlement with the “Friends of the Colombo Building”. Because the funds were needed immediately or the purchase the property would be lost, the Board agreed not to tear down the Colombo Building and to seismically retrofit it at an added cost of $10-M.
But even after the Board yielded to his political blackmail, Yee declared that he still would not release the funds unless the College agreed to reimburse the attorney’s fees that the Montgomery Towers owner had paid to finance the lawsuit. The Board was outraged as the money to pay the $150,000 would come from the general funds of the College. Board members believe that the Montgomery Towers owner contributed heavily to Yee’s political campaign.
The Board then lobbied the other two members of the Board’s Budget and Finance Committee to vote to release the funds. But Yee said that, as chair of the committee, he alone had the power to “agendize” the item and if he didn’t put it on the agenda, it didn’t matter if the College had the support of the majority.
As he did then, as he is doing now, Yee has shown that he cares more about the interests of his financial contributors the interests of the people of San Francisco, especially those of minority immigrants.
O Yee of little faith in the people (and a lot of faith in the moneymen), you ’re making Bruce Brugman look good.
Send comments to: Rodel50@aol.com_
Rodel Rodis, a 3-term president of the SF Community College Board, was chair of the Board’s Facilities Committee from 1991 to 2001.
Being in Egypt
Being in Egypt
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net March 27, 2007
No, I didn’t travel to Egypt the past week. No such luck. It’s just that when I think of Egypt, I think of the Nile. When I think of the Philippines, I think of denial. The government, the politicos, and the people are all in denial. And so when I think of being in denial, I think of being in Egypt.
I was reminded of this state of being by a column written by Randy David on the confluence of four recent attacks on the Philippine nation’s image, all occurring within weeks of each other, like a perfect storm.
The first was the decision of the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) to deny VisaScreen certification to Philippine nursing graduates who failed to retake and pass the leaked portions of the June 2006
licensure exams. This decision would adversely affect thousands of Philippine nurses applying to work in the US.
Then came the visits to the Philippines by the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s special rapporteur on human rights, Philip Alston, and the European Commission’s director general for external relations, Eneko Landaburu, who both expressed their deep concerns over the unsolved murders of hundreds of Filipino activists and journalists in the last five years.
The third storm was a hearing in the US Congress by the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs chaired by California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who criticized the Arroyo administration for failing to take “sufficient action to address unsolved killings and bring those responsible to justice.”
The fourth was the release by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) of their findings on perceptions of corruption in the Asian region, which found the Philippines to be the “most corrupt” in a list of 13 countries in Asia.
The response of the Philippine government was to go to Egypt and visit the Nile. A government delegation went to the CGFNS to deny that there was a problem with the cheating in the nursing exams and to assert that the Philippine government was doing everything to deal with the problem. The CGFNS debunked the government's position stating that "It's not what the Philippine authorities did not do, it's what the US authorities would have done in a similar situation."
On the issue of foreign governments’ criticisms of the Philippines human rights record, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, speaking for the administration, declared that foreigners should butt out and not lecture Filipinos on human rights if they have no experience in fighting insurgencies in their own countries.
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, for his part, called the US Senate hearing an insult to Philippine sovereignty. With regard to the PERC corruption report, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo denied that there was widespread government corruption, insisting that PERC was basing its analysis on old data, when Erap Estrada was president. Another spokesman said that the report was about the perception of corruption, not the reality of it.
According to psychologists, denial is a defense mechanism in which a person, faced with a painful fact, rejects the reality of that fact, insisting that the fact is false, despite what may be overwhelming and irrefutable evidence.
According to Sigmund Freud, there are three forms of denial: simple, “minimisational,” and transference. Simple is when the painful fact is denied totally. Minimisational is when the painful fact is admitted but the seriousness minimized. Transference is when the painful fact and its seriousness are admitted, but the person's moral responsibility is downplayed or denied altogether.
The government used all three forms of denial in responding to these attacks. But the Philippine government is not alone in tripping out to Egypt. The so-called Genuine Opposition (GO) has been paddling its oars in the Nile as well. It can hardly criticize the government’s human rights record when included
in its slate is Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, who was second in command of the Military Intelligence Security Group (MISG) which was responsible for the torture and murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of activists during the Marcos dictatorship. Lacson was also implicated in the Kuratong Baleleng massacre and in the kidnap, torture and murder of Bubby Dacer and Emmanuel Corbito.
The GO can hardly criticize the Philippine government on corruption charges when it is led by the notoriously corrupt former president Erap Estrada, who personally handpicked the members of the GO senate slate and is reportedly funding the slate with his own personal wealth (which he didn’t earn from
acting).
Both the government (Team Unity) and the opposition (GO) senate slates are filled with rank opportunists, professional politicos who crave power and influence in the worst way, and who owe their loyalties only to themselves. Why can’t there be senate candidates who can propose that the Philippine school year begin in September and end in June so that there aren’t any classes during the monsoon or rainy season (June to August).
It has always been a source of wonder why the Philippine school year begins just when torrential rains pour down on the country, drenching its students on their way to school. It is "summer classes" now for Philippine school kids and it is incredibly hot, forcing students to either go to the beach or stay home or in the shade. It would be a good time for them to still be studying if the school year began in Sepatember.
But that would mean that these politicos really care about the people, about the youth, about education. That’s not really why they're running for senator. To them, being senator is about receiving pork from the government and money from influence peddlers. It’s about running for president in order to receive more pork from the government and more money from influence peddlers.
It’s about practicing transference denial, blaming others, to absolve themselves of any moral imperative whatsoever.
It’s about being in Egypt.
Send comments to: Rodel50@aol.com
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net March 27, 2007
No, I didn’t travel to Egypt the past week. No such luck. It’s just that when I think of Egypt, I think of the Nile. When I think of the Philippines, I think of denial. The government, the politicos, and the people are all in denial. And so when I think of being in denial, I think of being in Egypt.
I was reminded of this state of being by a column written by Randy David on the confluence of four recent attacks on the Philippine nation’s image, all occurring within weeks of each other, like a perfect storm.
The first was the decision of the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) to deny VisaScreen certification to Philippine nursing graduates who failed to retake and pass the leaked portions of the June 2006
licensure exams. This decision would adversely affect thousands of Philippine nurses applying to work in the US.
Then came the visits to the Philippines by the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s special rapporteur on human rights, Philip Alston, and the European Commission’s director general for external relations, Eneko Landaburu, who both expressed their deep concerns over the unsolved murders of hundreds of Filipino activists and journalists in the last five years.
The third storm was a hearing in the US Congress by the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs chaired by California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who criticized the Arroyo administration for failing to take “sufficient action to address unsolved killings and bring those responsible to justice.”
The fourth was the release by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) of their findings on perceptions of corruption in the Asian region, which found the Philippines to be the “most corrupt” in a list of 13 countries in Asia.
The response of the Philippine government was to go to Egypt and visit the Nile. A government delegation went to the CGFNS to deny that there was a problem with the cheating in the nursing exams and to assert that the Philippine government was doing everything to deal with the problem. The CGFNS debunked the government's position stating that "It's not what the Philippine authorities did not do, it's what the US authorities would have done in a similar situation."
On the issue of foreign governments’ criticisms of the Philippines human rights record, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, speaking for the administration, declared that foreigners should butt out and not lecture Filipinos on human rights if they have no experience in fighting insurgencies in their own countries.
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, for his part, called the US Senate hearing an insult to Philippine sovereignty. With regard to the PERC corruption report, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo denied that there was widespread government corruption, insisting that PERC was basing its analysis on old data, when Erap Estrada was president. Another spokesman said that the report was about the perception of corruption, not the reality of it.
According to psychologists, denial is a defense mechanism in which a person, faced with a painful fact, rejects the reality of that fact, insisting that the fact is false, despite what may be overwhelming and irrefutable evidence.
According to Sigmund Freud, there are three forms of denial: simple, “minimisational,” and transference. Simple is when the painful fact is denied totally. Minimisational is when the painful fact is admitted but the seriousness minimized. Transference is when the painful fact and its seriousness are admitted, but the person's moral responsibility is downplayed or denied altogether.
The government used all three forms of denial in responding to these attacks. But the Philippine government is not alone in tripping out to Egypt. The so-called Genuine Opposition (GO) has been paddling its oars in the Nile as well. It can hardly criticize the government’s human rights record when included
in its slate is Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, who was second in command of the Military Intelligence Security Group (MISG) which was responsible for the torture and murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of activists during the Marcos dictatorship. Lacson was also implicated in the Kuratong Baleleng massacre and in the kidnap, torture and murder of Bubby Dacer and Emmanuel Corbito.
The GO can hardly criticize the Philippine government on corruption charges when it is led by the notoriously corrupt former president Erap Estrada, who personally handpicked the members of the GO senate slate and is reportedly funding the slate with his own personal wealth (which he didn’t earn from
acting).
Both the government (Team Unity) and the opposition (GO) senate slates are filled with rank opportunists, professional politicos who crave power and influence in the worst way, and who owe their loyalties only to themselves. Why can’t there be senate candidates who can propose that the Philippine school year begin in September and end in June so that there aren’t any classes during the monsoon or rainy season (June to August).
It has always been a source of wonder why the Philippine school year begins just when torrential rains pour down on the country, drenching its students on their way to school. It is "summer classes" now for Philippine school kids and it is incredibly hot, forcing students to either go to the beach or stay home or in the shade. It would be a good time for them to still be studying if the school year began in Sepatember.
But that would mean that these politicos really care about the people, about the youth, about education. That’s not really why they're running for senator. To them, being senator is about receiving pork from the government and money from influence peddlers. It’s about running for president in order to receive more pork from the government and more money from influence peddlers.
It’s about practicing transference denial, blaming others, to absolve themselves of any moral imperative whatsoever.
It’s about being in Egypt.
Send comments to: Rodel50@aol.com
Four Years of Shock and Awe
Four Years of Shock and Awe
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net March 20, 2007
This week’s fourth anniversary of America’s “shock-and-awe” invasion of Iraq brought back memories of a family discussion four years ago on whether to join an anti-war rally to protest the impending war. Our three young sons told us that they had already been discussing the war in school all week and everyone was opposed to it. “Of course we’ll all go,” they said.
So off we went the next morning to join the massive February 16, 2003 anti-war rally at the Civic Center in San Francisco. Police officials estimated that 200,000 people marched and participated in the rally to denounce President George W. Bush’s plans to invade Iraq. Whole families just like us were there to show their opposition to the war, with babies in strollers and old folks leaning on their canes.
When my father-in-law, Romulo Austria, learned that we had attended the rally, he was upset. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have joined you,” he said. This proud man, who was a young guerilla during the war against the Japanese, who enrolled in the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) after the war (class of ’51), who obtained a PhD in Engineering at the University of Rome in 1958, who worked for Bechtel as a nuclear engineer, and who had been a Republican, was dead set against the war early on.
“Bush is crazy,” he would tell his tennis buddies. “It’s a lie. There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush is just using this excuse to fool the people,” he said with firm conviction. “Papa,” as I call him, turns 80 this week still firm in his conviction as he was back then that the war in Iraq was and is a tragic mistake.
If Bush had listened to my father-in-law back then, more than 3,200 American soldiers and more than 150,000 Iraqis would likely still be alive today. We would not have close to 30,000 American soldiers in veteran’s hospitals like Walter Reed, struggling to survive their war injuries. And we would have more than $600 billion to spend on education, health care and decent housing for the American people. There would be money to fully fund the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill.
But why should Bush have listened to my father-in-law when he wouldn’t even listen to his own father? In his book, "A World Transformed," published in 1998 and coauthored with his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, former President George H. Bush wrote that if he had pursued the retreating Iraqi Army back to Baghdad in 1991, the United States "would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq."
That would have caused the collapse of the international coalition and alienated the Arab members to desert it.
“There was no viable 'exit strategy'... violating another of our principles," GH Bush and Scowcroft wrote. "Furthermore, (had) we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome."
In an article published in the Wall Street Journal on August 15, 2002 (7 months before the invasion), Scowcroft expounded on this point by asserting that an invasion of Iraq "was certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism. Worse, there is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack."
Invasion of Iraq would require the United States "to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive ... (and) very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation." Such actions would result in a "degradation" of international cooperation, and an "explosion of outrage against us" especially in the Muslim world. Such a policy "could even swell the ranks of terrorists."
These points seem so obvious now in 20-20 hindsight; they were obvious to my kids and to father-in-law even back then. When asked why he didn’t listen to the advice of his father and his father’s national security adviser, Bush told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that it’s because he listens to a “higher Father.” That was his reason, he claimed – “God told him” to invade Iraq, just as Allah told Osama bin Laden to destroy the World Trade Center.
Both Bush and bin Laden are basically religious fundamentalists who believe God is on their side, that they’re doing God’s will, even if God had commanded, “Thou shalt not kill.” For Christian or Muslim fundamentalists, God’s commandments do not apply to non-believers or infidels.
Religious zealots are basically all Bush has left in the US to support his failed Iraq policy. (Imagine there's no religion, as John Lennon mused.) The latest polls show his popularity rating at 29%, one of the lowest ever for any US president. Even Donald Trump has come out publicly to declare that Bush is the worst US president ever.
At the anti-war rally we attended in Feb.16, 2003, there were many other Filipinos, a fact the San Francisco Chronicle noted in its front-page coverage of the rally. “In the 400,000-strong (Bay Area) Filipino community,” the Chronicle reported, “many have friends or family members working in the Middle East as maids and construction workers,” said Rhonda Ramiro, a San Francisco resident. An estimated 1.5 million Filipinos are employed in such jobs there.
Several of those marching with her and the 150 members of Filipinos for Global Justice Not War were airport screeners laid off last fall in the wake of a new federal act requiring screeners to be U.S. citizens. "The younger people here know that their schools are bad already and will get worse if there's more money going for the military," Ramiro said.
In that rally, one of my sons bought a colorful “No Blood for Oil” t-shirt which he proudly wore in school the following week, prompting discussions on the real reason for the Iraq war may be.
This past week, The Washington Post reported that President Bush had asked the Iraqi Parliament for a “benchmark” for measuring Iraqi progress – to pass the Iraqi Oil Law that would allow US multinational oil companies to take over their country’s oil. It turns out my son’s t-shirt was right on the mark.
“They hate us because we value freedom” Bush has said time and again. Just exactly what freedoms are valued by Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney? One of them is surely Halliburton -Cheney’s old company, the US corporation that has profited the most from the Iraq War through its no-bid contracts, enjoying the freedom to move its operations from Houston, Texas to Dhubai.
More than 3200 American soldiers gave up their lives for this freedom. Happy 80th birthday, Papa, may you yet outlive this terrible war.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net March 20, 2007
This week’s fourth anniversary of America’s “shock-and-awe” invasion of Iraq brought back memories of a family discussion four years ago on whether to join an anti-war rally to protest the impending war. Our three young sons told us that they had already been discussing the war in school all week and everyone was opposed to it. “Of course we’ll all go,” they said.
So off we went the next morning to join the massive February 16, 2003 anti-war rally at the Civic Center in San Francisco. Police officials estimated that 200,000 people marched and participated in the rally to denounce President George W. Bush’s plans to invade Iraq. Whole families just like us were there to show their opposition to the war, with babies in strollers and old folks leaning on their canes.
When my father-in-law, Romulo Austria, learned that we had attended the rally, he was upset. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have joined you,” he said. This proud man, who was a young guerilla during the war against the Japanese, who enrolled in the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) after the war (class of ’51), who obtained a PhD in Engineering at the University of Rome in 1958, who worked for Bechtel as a nuclear engineer, and who had been a Republican, was dead set against the war early on.
“Bush is crazy,” he would tell his tennis buddies. “It’s a lie. There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush is just using this excuse to fool the people,” he said with firm conviction. “Papa,” as I call him, turns 80 this week still firm in his conviction as he was back then that the war in Iraq was and is a tragic mistake.
If Bush had listened to my father-in-law back then, more than 3,200 American soldiers and more than 150,000 Iraqis would likely still be alive today. We would not have close to 30,000 American soldiers in veteran’s hospitals like Walter Reed, struggling to survive their war injuries. And we would have more than $600 billion to spend on education, health care and decent housing for the American people. There would be money to fully fund the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill.
But why should Bush have listened to my father-in-law when he wouldn’t even listen to his own father? In his book, "A World Transformed," published in 1998 and coauthored with his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, former President George H. Bush wrote that if he had pursued the retreating Iraqi Army back to Baghdad in 1991, the United States "would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq."
That would have caused the collapse of the international coalition and alienated the Arab members to desert it.
“There was no viable 'exit strategy'... violating another of our principles," GH Bush and Scowcroft wrote. "Furthermore, (had) we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different - and perhaps barren - outcome."
In an article published in the Wall Street Journal on August 15, 2002 (7 months before the invasion), Scowcroft expounded on this point by asserting that an invasion of Iraq "was certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism. Worse, there is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack."
Invasion of Iraq would require the United States "to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive ... (and) very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation." Such actions would result in a "degradation" of international cooperation, and an "explosion of outrage against us" especially in the Muslim world. Such a policy "could even swell the ranks of terrorists."
These points seem so obvious now in 20-20 hindsight; they were obvious to my kids and to father-in-law even back then. When asked why he didn’t listen to the advice of his father and his father’s national security adviser, Bush told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that it’s because he listens to a “higher Father.” That was his reason, he claimed – “God told him” to invade Iraq, just as Allah told Osama bin Laden to destroy the World Trade Center.
Both Bush and bin Laden are basically religious fundamentalists who believe God is on their side, that they’re doing God’s will, even if God had commanded, “Thou shalt not kill.” For Christian or Muslim fundamentalists, God’s commandments do not apply to non-believers or infidels.
Religious zealots are basically all Bush has left in the US to support his failed Iraq policy. (Imagine there's no religion, as John Lennon mused.) The latest polls show his popularity rating at 29%, one of the lowest ever for any US president. Even Donald Trump has come out publicly to declare that Bush is the worst US president ever.
At the anti-war rally we attended in Feb.16, 2003, there were many other Filipinos, a fact the San Francisco Chronicle noted in its front-page coverage of the rally. “In the 400,000-strong (Bay Area) Filipino community,” the Chronicle reported, “many have friends or family members working in the Middle East as maids and construction workers,” said Rhonda Ramiro, a San Francisco resident. An estimated 1.5 million Filipinos are employed in such jobs there.
Several of those marching with her and the 150 members of Filipinos for Global Justice Not War were airport screeners laid off last fall in the wake of a new federal act requiring screeners to be U.S. citizens. "The younger people here know that their schools are bad already and will get worse if there's more money going for the military," Ramiro said.
In that rally, one of my sons bought a colorful “No Blood for Oil” t-shirt which he proudly wore in school the following week, prompting discussions on the real reason for the Iraq war may be.
This past week, The Washington Post reported that President Bush had asked the Iraqi Parliament for a “benchmark” for measuring Iraqi progress – to pass the Iraqi Oil Law that would allow US multinational oil companies to take over their country’s oil. It turns out my son’s t-shirt was right on the mark.
“They hate us because we value freedom” Bush has said time and again. Just exactly what freedoms are valued by Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney? One of them is surely Halliburton -Cheney’s old company, the US corporation that has profited the most from the Iraq War through its no-bid contracts, enjoying the freedom to move its operations from Houston, Texas to Dhubai.
More than 3200 American soldiers gave up their lives for this freedom. Happy 80th birthday, Papa, may you yet outlive this terrible war.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com
Travel Writer
Travel Writer
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net March 13, 2007
In my next life, I think I would like to return as a travel writer gallivanting all over the globe, checking out and reporting on exotic locales for various publications. I didn’t have to wait that long, it turned out, because my fantasy happened just this past month.
It all began in January when I received an unexpected invitation from the Taiwan Tourism Bureau to cover that country’s Lantern Festival to be held on March 4. Out of curiosity, I accepted the invitation as I had never been to
Taiwan; besides the offer was for all expenses to be covered by the Taiwan government, a price I could easily afford.
Before I knew it, I was on a 14-hour EVA Air flight toTaipei, arriving there on March 3, billeted at the Grand Hyatt Hotel and meeting with our tourism hosts, along with nine other travel writers from Europe, Canada and the United States who were similarly invited. Aside from a Chinese-Canadian editor from
Toronto, I was the only other non-Caucasian in the group.
After lunch, we were brought to Shihlin, north of Taipei, to the fabled Palace Museum which boasts 6,000 works of art culled from 5,000 years of Chinese history. My personal favorite was the incredibly intricate Jade Cabbage - carved during the Qing Dynasty. The art and artifacts on display were only a fraction of the 700,000 pieces of precious art objects stored in 4,000 crates in tunnels behind the museum, smuggled from China to Taiwan in 1948 just before Mao’s Communists defeated the fleeing Kuomintang army of Chiang Kai-Shek.
The next day, Sunday, we boarded a bullet train on the Taiwan High Speed Rail that zipped us to Chayi, 250 kilometers in just 50 minutes. It was an impressively smooth ride. After visiting a cultural park at Chayi, we had lunch at the provincial magistrate’s home where I met a Filipina housemaid who worked there. According to her, in Taiwan, a Filipina housemaid is a redundancy as almost all Pinays there are domestic helpers. In The Taiwan News, an English language daily, I saw a full page of photos and articles about Filipinos in Taiwan.
Later in the afternoon, we were bussed to Taibao City for the big event, the Taiwan Lantern Festival which was to be held in a park, attended by over 100,000 people, with Taiwan’s president as main speaker. The prime minister and other officials spoke before the president and although I couldn’t understand a word the politicians said, I could imagine their content because they had the same cadence and bombast as their Philippine counterparts.
That was not the only similarity. Taiwan’s martial law ended in 1987, just a year after it ended in the Philippines. But Taiwan’s version of People Power occurred earlier in 1979 in Kaohsiung, when over 150,000 democracy activists rallied to demand an end to martial law. Eight of the rally’s organizers, including Annette Lu, were arrested and charged with sedition. They were defended by a panel of distinguished lawyers led by Chen Shui-bian.
Although the organizers were found guilty and sentenced to long jail terms, the rally galvanized public opinion against martial law, which led to its end and the eventual pardon of the Kaohsiung 8. The democracy activists later formed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to challenge the one-party hegemony of the Kuomintang. In 2000, the DPP slate of Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu won the presidency and vice-presidency of Taiwan, "the first democratic change of power in 3400 years of recorded Chinese history." Both were re-elected to second terms in 2004.
Later in the evening, after the lantern festival extravaganza, we went by bus to Yanshuei for the Beehive Rockets Festival. This is an audience participation event unlike any other in the world where thousands of firecrackers are fired directly into and around the tens of thousands of festival attendees. Like the bulls at Pamplona, there are casualties. In 2006, we were told, 19 participants required serious medical attention although hundreds more were singed or burned, a badge of distinction to many.
Our brave group was equipped by our hosts with motorcycle helmets, gloves and yellow raincoats as we waded into the thick crowds to get as close to the fireworks stage as we could. Unfortunately, try as we might, none of us was able to write a first-hand account of what it’s like to be struck by fireworks.
Maybe next time.
We don’t exactly remember where we slept that night as we were all asleep in the bus but w hen we got there, wherever it was, we were off and running early the next morning for a long bus ride to the Haomeiliao Nature Preserve. There we boarded a raft that took us to inspect oyster beds and shown how they're grown. Later during lunch, we observed two horseshoe crabs actively having sex in a fish tank. We asked the owner how long the pair had been at it and he said he doesn’t remember when they started but he thought they would be finished sometime in April. Now that's a crab mentality to look up to.
After lunch, we visited a salt drying field where two workers were busy plowing salt back and forth as we took photos of the process. There used to be hundreds of such salt fields in that area, we were told, but now there is just that one along with a salt history museum to show students and tourists what used to be. The labor and administrative costs were too prohibitive, it was explained. “It’s cheaper to import salt from Australia than to grow it here,” our guide candidly disclosed.
After checking out the Black-Faced Spoonbill bird at a nature preserve, we drove up the steep mountain to the Guanzihling Hot Springs. We quickly checked into our hotel and rushed to get to the hot springs known for their mud quality, which is reportedly therapeutic for skin allergy and "tiredness elimination."
As we soaked ourselves in mud like carabaos, we started to share past experiences with each other. One talked of his nightmare in Zambia, another of finding her Eden in Marrakech, while yet another recalled being awakened by monkeys in his hotel room in the Amazon jungles of Brazil. The oldest member of our group, Dominic, told me that he has been to the Philippines on at least six occasions since the Marcos era.
“The Philippine islands are among the most beautiful that I have ever seen and I have traveled all over the globe,” he assured me. “But it’s just too dangerous over there,” he said. “The conditions of poverty there are appalling. It’s just not safe in many areas, especially at night.”
While we were chatting, a photographer took our photos. The photographer was Mark Edward Harris, whose photos from over 60 countries are featured in the photo books (“Wanderlust,” “The Way of the Japanese Bath,” “Inside North Korea”) he shared with us in the bus.
I didn’t have much to share with the other journalists (“I remember when I was shopping at Walgreens in San Francisco one night” is somehow not as exotic as the Zambian escapade) so I mostly listened. After all, they were professional travel writers who did this work full time, all year round. I was just an accidental one, along for the ride.
The next morning, we were off to Kaohsiung for tours of more temples, museums and parks. In one Confucius park, we were intrigued by the men's room which featured a breathtaking view of the lake which you could only see if you were disposing of a pressing bladder problem. Then as we wound our way through the streets of the city, we noticed the presence everywhere of scooters, the predominant mode of transportation in Taiwan. They’re everywhere – filling every intersection and every sidewalk. Amazingly, there are hardly any motorcycles and bicycles.
Later in the day, I flew back to Taipei and later that night, back to San Francisco, back to my everyday reality. But at least, my next life came in this one, if only for a taste of what it might be.
(Rodel Rodis is a California attorney in private practice who is also an elected official in San Francisco as a college trustee.)
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net March 13, 2007
In my next life, I think I would like to return as a travel writer gallivanting all over the globe, checking out and reporting on exotic locales for various publications. I didn’t have to wait that long, it turned out, because my fantasy happened just this past month.
It all began in January when I received an unexpected invitation from the Taiwan Tourism Bureau to cover that country’s Lantern Festival to be held on March 4. Out of curiosity, I accepted the invitation as I had never been to
Taiwan; besides the offer was for all expenses to be covered by the Taiwan government, a price I could easily afford.
Before I knew it, I was on a 14-hour EVA Air flight toTaipei, arriving there on March 3, billeted at the Grand Hyatt Hotel and meeting with our tourism hosts, along with nine other travel writers from Europe, Canada and the United States who were similarly invited. Aside from a Chinese-Canadian editor from
Toronto, I was the only other non-Caucasian in the group.
After lunch, we were brought to Shihlin, north of Taipei, to the fabled Palace Museum which boasts 6,000 works of art culled from 5,000 years of Chinese history. My personal favorite was the incredibly intricate Jade Cabbage - carved during the Qing Dynasty. The art and artifacts on display were only a fraction of the 700,000 pieces of precious art objects stored in 4,000 crates in tunnels behind the museum, smuggled from China to Taiwan in 1948 just before Mao’s Communists defeated the fleeing Kuomintang army of Chiang Kai-Shek.
The next day, Sunday, we boarded a bullet train on the Taiwan High Speed Rail that zipped us to Chayi, 250 kilometers in just 50 minutes. It was an impressively smooth ride. After visiting a cultural park at Chayi, we had lunch at the provincial magistrate’s home where I met a Filipina housemaid who worked there. According to her, in Taiwan, a Filipina housemaid is a redundancy as almost all Pinays there are domestic helpers. In The Taiwan News, an English language daily, I saw a full page of photos and articles about Filipinos in Taiwan.
Later in the afternoon, we were bussed to Taibao City for the big event, the Taiwan Lantern Festival which was to be held in a park, attended by over 100,000 people, with Taiwan’s president as main speaker. The prime minister and other officials spoke before the president and although I couldn’t understand a word the politicians said, I could imagine their content because they had the same cadence and bombast as their Philippine counterparts.
That was not the only similarity. Taiwan’s martial law ended in 1987, just a year after it ended in the Philippines. But Taiwan’s version of People Power occurred earlier in 1979 in Kaohsiung, when over 150,000 democracy activists rallied to demand an end to martial law. Eight of the rally’s organizers, including Annette Lu, were arrested and charged with sedition. They were defended by a panel of distinguished lawyers led by Chen Shui-bian.
Although the organizers were found guilty and sentenced to long jail terms, the rally galvanized public opinion against martial law, which led to its end and the eventual pardon of the Kaohsiung 8. The democracy activists later formed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to challenge the one-party hegemony of the Kuomintang. In 2000, the DPP slate of Chen Shui-bian and Annette Lu won the presidency and vice-presidency of Taiwan, "the first democratic change of power in 3400 years of recorded Chinese history." Both were re-elected to second terms in 2004.
Later in the evening, after the lantern festival extravaganza, we went by bus to Yanshuei for the Beehive Rockets Festival. This is an audience participation event unlike any other in the world where thousands of firecrackers are fired directly into and around the tens of thousands of festival attendees. Like the bulls at Pamplona, there are casualties. In 2006, we were told, 19 participants required serious medical attention although hundreds more were singed or burned, a badge of distinction to many.
Our brave group was equipped by our hosts with motorcycle helmets, gloves and yellow raincoats as we waded into the thick crowds to get as close to the fireworks stage as we could. Unfortunately, try as we might, none of us was able to write a first-hand account of what it’s like to be struck by fireworks.
Maybe next time.
We don’t exactly remember where we slept that night as we were all asleep in the bus but w hen we got there, wherever it was, we were off and running early the next morning for a long bus ride to the Haomeiliao Nature Preserve. There we boarded a raft that took us to inspect oyster beds and shown how they're grown. Later during lunch, we observed two horseshoe crabs actively having sex in a fish tank. We asked the owner how long the pair had been at it and he said he doesn’t remember when they started but he thought they would be finished sometime in April. Now that's a crab mentality to look up to.
After lunch, we visited a salt drying field where two workers were busy plowing salt back and forth as we took photos of the process. There used to be hundreds of such salt fields in that area, we were told, but now there is just that one along with a salt history museum to show students and tourists what used to be. The labor and administrative costs were too prohibitive, it was explained. “It’s cheaper to import salt from Australia than to grow it here,” our guide candidly disclosed.
After checking out the Black-Faced Spoonbill bird at a nature preserve, we drove up the steep mountain to the Guanzihling Hot Springs. We quickly checked into our hotel and rushed to get to the hot springs known for their mud quality, which is reportedly therapeutic for skin allergy and "tiredness elimination."
As we soaked ourselves in mud like carabaos, we started to share past experiences with each other. One talked of his nightmare in Zambia, another of finding her Eden in Marrakech, while yet another recalled being awakened by monkeys in his hotel room in the Amazon jungles of Brazil. The oldest member of our group, Dominic, told me that he has been to the Philippines on at least six occasions since the Marcos era.
“The Philippine islands are among the most beautiful that I have ever seen and I have traveled all over the globe,” he assured me. “But it’s just too dangerous over there,” he said. “The conditions of poverty there are appalling. It’s just not safe in many areas, especially at night.”
While we were chatting, a photographer took our photos. The photographer was Mark Edward Harris, whose photos from over 60 countries are featured in the photo books (“Wanderlust,” “The Way of the Japanese Bath,” “Inside North Korea”) he shared with us in the bus.
I didn’t have much to share with the other journalists (“I remember when I was shopping at Walgreens in San Francisco one night” is somehow not as exotic as the Zambian escapade) so I mostly listened. After all, they were professional travel writers who did this work full time, all year round. I was just an accidental one, along for the ride.
The next morning, we were off to Kaohsiung for tours of more temples, museums and parks. In one Confucius park, we were intrigued by the men's room which featured a breathtaking view of the lake which you could only see if you were disposing of a pressing bladder problem. Then as we wound our way through the streets of the city, we noticed the presence everywhere of scooters, the predominant mode of transportation in Taiwan. They’re everywhere – filling every intersection and every sidewalk. Amazingly, there are hardly any motorcycles and bicycles.
Later in the day, I flew back to Taipei and later that night, back to San Francisco, back to my everyday reality. But at least, my next life came in this one, if only for a taste of what it might be.
(Rodel Rodis is a California attorney in private practice who is also an elected official in San Francisco as a college trustee.)
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com
A Toast to EDSA
A Toast to EDSA
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net March 02, 2007
Edsa People Power turned 21 this past week. If it were a man, he'd now be old enough to drink in California. But virtually no one drank a toast to Edsa in the Philippines this year, a sign of popular disenchantment with what was hailed at the time as the most epochal event in Philippine history.
In terms of historic significance, there are probably only two other dates in Philippine history that parallel February 26, 1986 - July 4, 1946 and June 12, 1898. These three events represent historic ends to dark periods of prolonged suffering by the Filipino people.
June 12, 1898 marked the declaration of Philippine independence from 333 years of Spanish colonial rule. July 4, 1946, while celebrated as the day of Philippine independence from American neo-colonial rule, actually marked the day
of liberation from more than four years of Japanese imperial aggression.
February 26, 1986 is and should always be celebrated as the day of liberation from 14 years of the brutal corrupt dictatorship of homegrown despot Ferdinand Marcos.
Why then is February 26, 1986 not held in the same high regard as the other two other historic events?
Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Rina Jimenez-David suggests a reason: “It is difficult, from this remove, to recall exactly those days and nights of February 1986. Not so much the events themselves, as there are enough written records, photos and videos to bring those days back to life. But can we summon again the memories -- the feelings, thoughts, fears, hopes and moods -- that we who lived through those days experienced and wallowed in? It might seem futile, even foolish, to revive the ghosts of EDSA I when its very spirit has these days been mocked and trashed.”
Indeed. It has been a source of personal frustration for me to see that Gen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, one of the most vicious henchmen of Marcos, 2nd only to Col. Rolando Abadilla in the leadership of the dreaded Military Intelligence Support Group (MISG) responsible for the torture and murder of hundreds of activists during the martial law era, was never prosecuted for his crimes against humanity. Incredibly, he was promoted to chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), elected senator in 2001, ran for president in 2005, and is running for senator again this year.
Of the thousands who committed vicious crimes against the Filipino people during the Marcos years, was anyone prosecuted and punished? Did anyone go to jail for plundering the Philippine economy during the Marcos dictatorship? None. So what is so different from what happened after June 12, 1898 and after July 4, 1946?
When Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo declared Philippine independence from Spain on June 12, 1898, he was surrounded by dozens of Filipino ilustrados he appointed to draft the Philippine Constitution in the Malolos Congress. The constitution they crafted was intended to show the Americans that Filipinos were fully capable of self-government.
But, as historian Teodoro Agoncillo noted, this group “deserted Aguinaldo even before hostilities broke out with the United States and enthusiastically indicated to the Schurman Commission their desire to collaborate with and serve in the autonomous government proposed by the Americans. The forces of “conciliation” led by Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Cayetano Arellano, Felipe Buencamino, and Benito Legarda testified before the Schurman Commission that the Filipinos “were not capable of independent government.”
When the Japanese imperial forces occupied the Philippines in 1942, they installed a puppet government to help them rule the Philippines. These puppets included Jose B. Laurel, who was appointed president, Manuel Roxas (a cabinet member), and Gen. Jorge Vargas, chair of the Executive Commission. For their
collaboration, the Japanese showered them with the best food (see Hernando Abaya’s "Betrayal in the Philippines" for a sample of the regular menu in Malacañang served to the Laurels), luxuries and the finest accommodations, while the people suffered under harsh Japanese rule. Laurel’s sons were even sent to Japan to study.
Most of the members of the Philippine Congress collaborated with the Japanese as well and were also compensated for their efforts. When the Japanese were driven out of the Philippines by the Filipino guerillas and the American allied forces, these collaborators immediately switched allegiance to the Americans and proclaimed that they were only pretending to collaborate but were actually patriots.
The US government favored Roxas as its candidate in the 1946 presidential elections and he was dutifully elected. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the commanding general of the allied forces, wanted the collaborationist Philippine Congress convened to pass laws that would benefit US businesses but the first act of the Congress was to reward its members with three years of back pay.
After Roxas was elected president, one of his first acts was to issue a general pardon to all those who collaborated with the Japanese, which just happened to include him.
Despite the disappointments following the American suppression of Philippine independence after Aguinaldo’s declaration, it cannot be denied that there was progress under American rule compared to the Spanish masters. The Americans offered universal public education which allowed for people to advance regardless of their previous caste. While anything was better than what the Filipino people endured during the Japanese occupation, there was substantial progress in the Philippines in the post-war years.
Despite the bitter letdown that people feel following the overthrow of Marcos, with President Cory Aquino’s disappointing restoration of the oligarchy to its prior status, it must be admitted that there was progress, too, during her tenure in terms of human rights and economic opportunity.
Whatever criticisms there may be of the present Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration, it cannot be denied either that the economy has improved so that much less of the people’s money is used to pay off the interest on the foreign debt.
Instead of paying 70 pesos to every dollar borrowed from the International Monetary Fund, the people now pay 49 pesos, so more can be used for infrastructure development.
But Filipinos want immediate glowing results, apparently unwilling to take the long view. Many want the country to be modeled after China, but let us consider that China has been around for more than 3,000 years while the Philippines is a relatively young republic.
To inspire his people in 1945, Chairman Mao told the story of the Foolish Old Man who lived in a house with a view blocked by two great peaks. He called his sons to join him to dig up the two mountains. While they were digging, a Wise Old Man saw them and told them they were silly because it was impossible to remove the two huge mountains.
Undeterred, the Foolish Old Man replied, "When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons and then their sons and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away?"
Mao's point was that change takes time but it will happen. Perhaps we all need to be foolish old men. Or perhaps we should just scale down our expectations and follow Oscar show host Ellen deGeneres' advice: "aim lower." With lower expectations, we just might appreciate February 26, 1986 more.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net March 02, 2007
Edsa People Power turned 21 this past week. If it were a man, he'd now be old enough to drink in California. But virtually no one drank a toast to Edsa in the Philippines this year, a sign of popular disenchantment with what was hailed at the time as the most epochal event in Philippine history.
In terms of historic significance, there are probably only two other dates in Philippine history that parallel February 26, 1986 - July 4, 1946 and June 12, 1898. These three events represent historic ends to dark periods of prolonged suffering by the Filipino people.
June 12, 1898 marked the declaration of Philippine independence from 333 years of Spanish colonial rule. July 4, 1946, while celebrated as the day of Philippine independence from American neo-colonial rule, actually marked the day
of liberation from more than four years of Japanese imperial aggression.
February 26, 1986 is and should always be celebrated as the day of liberation from 14 years of the brutal corrupt dictatorship of homegrown despot Ferdinand Marcos.
Why then is February 26, 1986 not held in the same high regard as the other two other historic events?
Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Rina Jimenez-David suggests a reason: “It is difficult, from this remove, to recall exactly those days and nights of February 1986. Not so much the events themselves, as there are enough written records, photos and videos to bring those days back to life. But can we summon again the memories -- the feelings, thoughts, fears, hopes and moods -- that we who lived through those days experienced and wallowed in? It might seem futile, even foolish, to revive the ghosts of EDSA I when its very spirit has these days been mocked and trashed.”
Indeed. It has been a source of personal frustration for me to see that Gen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, one of the most vicious henchmen of Marcos, 2nd only to Col. Rolando Abadilla in the leadership of the dreaded Military Intelligence Support Group (MISG) responsible for the torture and murder of hundreds of activists during the martial law era, was never prosecuted for his crimes against humanity. Incredibly, he was promoted to chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), elected senator in 2001, ran for president in 2005, and is running for senator again this year.
Of the thousands who committed vicious crimes against the Filipino people during the Marcos years, was anyone prosecuted and punished? Did anyone go to jail for plundering the Philippine economy during the Marcos dictatorship? None. So what is so different from what happened after June 12, 1898 and after July 4, 1946?
When Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo declared Philippine independence from Spain on June 12, 1898, he was surrounded by dozens of Filipino ilustrados he appointed to draft the Philippine Constitution in the Malolos Congress. The constitution they crafted was intended to show the Americans that Filipinos were fully capable of self-government.
But, as historian Teodoro Agoncillo noted, this group “deserted Aguinaldo even before hostilities broke out with the United States and enthusiastically indicated to the Schurman Commission their desire to collaborate with and serve in the autonomous government proposed by the Americans. The forces of “conciliation” led by Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Cayetano Arellano, Felipe Buencamino, and Benito Legarda testified before the Schurman Commission that the Filipinos “were not capable of independent government.”
When the Japanese imperial forces occupied the Philippines in 1942, they installed a puppet government to help them rule the Philippines. These puppets included Jose B. Laurel, who was appointed president, Manuel Roxas (a cabinet member), and Gen. Jorge Vargas, chair of the Executive Commission. For their
collaboration, the Japanese showered them with the best food (see Hernando Abaya’s "Betrayal in the Philippines" for a sample of the regular menu in Malacañang served to the Laurels), luxuries and the finest accommodations, while the people suffered under harsh Japanese rule. Laurel’s sons were even sent to Japan to study.
Most of the members of the Philippine Congress collaborated with the Japanese as well and were also compensated for their efforts. When the Japanese were driven out of the Philippines by the Filipino guerillas and the American allied forces, these collaborators immediately switched allegiance to the Americans and proclaimed that they were only pretending to collaborate but were actually patriots.
The US government favored Roxas as its candidate in the 1946 presidential elections and he was dutifully elected. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the commanding general of the allied forces, wanted the collaborationist Philippine Congress convened to pass laws that would benefit US businesses but the first act of the Congress was to reward its members with three years of back pay.
After Roxas was elected president, one of his first acts was to issue a general pardon to all those who collaborated with the Japanese, which just happened to include him.
Despite the disappointments following the American suppression of Philippine independence after Aguinaldo’s declaration, it cannot be denied that there was progress under American rule compared to the Spanish masters. The Americans offered universal public education which allowed for people to advance regardless of their previous caste. While anything was better than what the Filipino people endured during the Japanese occupation, there was substantial progress in the Philippines in the post-war years.
Despite the bitter letdown that people feel following the overthrow of Marcos, with President Cory Aquino’s disappointing restoration of the oligarchy to its prior status, it must be admitted that there was progress, too, during her tenure in terms of human rights and economic opportunity.
Whatever criticisms there may be of the present Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration, it cannot be denied either that the economy has improved so that much less of the people’s money is used to pay off the interest on the foreign debt.
Instead of paying 70 pesos to every dollar borrowed from the International Monetary Fund, the people now pay 49 pesos, so more can be used for infrastructure development.
But Filipinos want immediate glowing results, apparently unwilling to take the long view. Many want the country to be modeled after China, but let us consider that China has been around for more than 3,000 years while the Philippines is a relatively young republic.
To inspire his people in 1945, Chairman Mao told the story of the Foolish Old Man who lived in a house with a view blocked by two great peaks. He called his sons to join him to dig up the two mountains. While they were digging, a Wise Old Man saw them and told them they were silly because it was impossible to remove the two huge mountains.
Undeterred, the Foolish Old Man replied, "When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons and then their sons and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away?"
Mao's point was that change takes time but it will happen. Perhaps we all need to be foolish old men. Or perhaps we should just scale down our expectations and follow Oscar show host Ellen deGeneres' advice: "aim lower." With lower expectations, we just might appreciate February 26, 1986 more.
Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.
In US Congress, a Final Battle for Fil Vet Equity
In US Congress, a Final Battle for Fil Vet Equity
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net
WASHINGTON DC - The Filipino Veterans Equity Bill finally got its long-awaited hearing day in the US House Veterans Affairs Committee on February 15, eve of the 61st anniversary of the day the US Congress passed the infamous Rescission Act excluding Filipino WW II veterans of the US Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) from receiving US military benefits.
At the committee hearing chaired by Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), 15 witnesses testified in support of the equity bill that will provide approximately 20,000 surviving Filipino WW II veterans with a monthly US military disability pension.
Among those who testified at the hearing were Franco Arcebal, 83, a former Philippine guerrilla intelligence officer in WWII who serves as vice-president of the American Coalition for the Filipino Veterans (ACFV), and Alma Quitans Kern, chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), which initiated the formation of the 20-organization National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity (NAFVE) last December 7.
As veterans affairs committee chair, appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Filner has fast-tracked the equity bill, holding the hearing just two weeks after re-filing it as HR 760 on January 31, with Republican Congressman Darrell Issa (California) among the co-sponsors.
"We're going to try to take this up in committee within a few weeks,” Rep. Filner said, “and I would like to take it on the floor (for a vote) before Bataan Day (April 9)."
At the hearing, Rep. John Boozman (R-Arkansas) raised the question of whether the US could afford to pay the full $880 maximum veterans monthly pension to poor veterans with non-service related disability who served a minimum of 90 days in the US military during a wartime period.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Florida) supported the proposal of Rep. Lane Evans (D-Illinois) allocating a $200 monthly pension for veterans in the Philippines which he said was “reasonable” given the cost of living in the Philippines and the fiscal constraints caused by the US deficit and the growing expense of the Iraq war.
Whether the Filipino veterans should accept anything less than the maximum amount to which they are entitled has been a source of contention among the various veterans support groups in the past. All the groups agree, however, that the issue now is passage of the veterans equity bill and that the issue of the amount of the pension to be paid to the veterans should be determined later in the appropriations committees of the Congress.
In reply to a question, Philippine Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Carlos D. Sorreta said that there are only 20,000 WW II veterans still alive today from the 472,000 vets who originally served under the USAFFE. The US Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) provided a higher figure of 22,000, with about 15,000 in the Philippines and 7,000 in the US.
In his testimony, Sorreta urged the committee to pass the bill "on behalf of a nation that has stood by yours in the name of liberty and freedom in World War II, in the uncertain decades after, and in facing today's new and grave challenges."
House approval of the Equity bill will provide momentum for its Senate counterpart sponsored by Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) who refilled the bill as S 57 when the 110th US Congress opened on January 4. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), the new chairman of the committee on veterans affairs, promised a senate hearing in April.
“We will get it in and we will get it passed this year,” Sen. Inouye said. Sen. Akaka also reintroduced his Filipino Veterans Family Reunification Bill which would exempt children of Filipino WW II veterans from the numerical limitations on immigrant visas. Sen. Akaka’s bill “seeks to reunite the naturalized Filipino veterans with their sons and daughters, many of whom have been on the immigration waiting lists for years.
In the 109th Congress, Akaka’s bill was included as an amendment to the Omnibus Immigration Reform Bill after it passed the Senate with a vote of 99-0 last year. The Omnibus bill was not enacted into law, however, because the House and Senate could not agree on a compromise bill.
Before the Thursday house committee hearing, members of the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans, led by ret. Maj. General Antonio Taguba (author of the Abu Ghraib report), visited the House offices of veterans’ affairs committee members to thank them for their support of the equity and reunification bills and give them Valentine’s Day roses.
It has been 61 years of struggle for the Filipino WW II veterans to rescind the Rescission Act. The veterans in dwindling number hope that the equity bill will finally pass the US Congress this year.
Rodel Rodis, INQUIRER.net
WASHINGTON DC - The Filipino Veterans Equity Bill finally got its long-awaited hearing day in the US House Veterans Affairs Committee on February 15, eve of the 61st anniversary of the day the US Congress passed the infamous Rescission Act excluding Filipino WW II veterans of the US Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) from receiving US military benefits.
At the committee hearing chaired by Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA), 15 witnesses testified in support of the equity bill that will provide approximately 20,000 surviving Filipino WW II veterans with a monthly US military disability pension.
Among those who testified at the hearing were Franco Arcebal, 83, a former Philippine guerrilla intelligence officer in WWII who serves as vice-president of the American Coalition for the Filipino Veterans (ACFV), and Alma Quitans Kern, chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), which initiated the formation of the 20-organization National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity (NAFVE) last December 7.
As veterans affairs committee chair, appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Filner has fast-tracked the equity bill, holding the hearing just two weeks after re-filing it as HR 760 on January 31, with Republican Congressman Darrell Issa (California) among the co-sponsors.
"We're going to try to take this up in committee within a few weeks,” Rep. Filner said, “and I would like to take it on the floor (for a vote) before Bataan Day (April 9)."
At the hearing, Rep. John Boozman (R-Arkansas) raised the question of whether the US could afford to pay the full $880 maximum veterans monthly pension to poor veterans with non-service related disability who served a minimum of 90 days in the US military during a wartime period.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Florida) supported the proposal of Rep. Lane Evans (D-Illinois) allocating a $200 monthly pension for veterans in the Philippines which he said was “reasonable” given the cost of living in the Philippines and the fiscal constraints caused by the US deficit and the growing expense of the Iraq war.
Whether the Filipino veterans should accept anything less than the maximum amount to which they are entitled has been a source of contention among the various veterans support groups in the past. All the groups agree, however, that the issue now is passage of the veterans equity bill and that the issue of the amount of the pension to be paid to the veterans should be determined later in the appropriations committees of the Congress.
In reply to a question, Philippine Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Carlos D. Sorreta said that there are only 20,000 WW II veterans still alive today from the 472,000 vets who originally served under the USAFFE. The US Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) provided a higher figure of 22,000, with about 15,000 in the Philippines and 7,000 in the US.
In his testimony, Sorreta urged the committee to pass the bill "on behalf of a nation that has stood by yours in the name of liberty and freedom in World War II, in the uncertain decades after, and in facing today's new and grave challenges."
House approval of the Equity bill will provide momentum for its Senate counterpart sponsored by Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) who refilled the bill as S 57 when the 110th US Congress opened on January 4. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), the new chairman of the committee on veterans affairs, promised a senate hearing in April.
“We will get it in and we will get it passed this year,” Sen. Inouye said. Sen. Akaka also reintroduced his Filipino Veterans Family Reunification Bill which would exempt children of Filipino WW II veterans from the numerical limitations on immigrant visas. Sen. Akaka’s bill “seeks to reunite the naturalized Filipino veterans with their sons and daughters, many of whom have been on the immigration waiting lists for years.
In the 109th Congress, Akaka’s bill was included as an amendment to the Omnibus Immigration Reform Bill after it passed the Senate with a vote of 99-0 last year. The Omnibus bill was not enacted into law, however, because the House and Senate could not agree on a compromise bill.
Before the Thursday house committee hearing, members of the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans, led by ret. Maj. General Antonio Taguba (author of the Abu Ghraib report), visited the House offices of veterans’ affairs committee members to thank them for their support of the equity and reunification bills and give them Valentine’s Day roses.
It has been 61 years of struggle for the Filipino WW II veterans to rescind the Rescission Act. The veterans in dwindling number hope that the equity bill will finally pass the US Congress this year.
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