The Pope’s language

A marine scientist, upon seeing the damage of the recent oil spill on Guimaras, is likely to say to his fellow scientists, “The biota exhibited a 100 percent mortality response.”

We journalists would write, “All the fish died.” It thunders in its simplicity and you couldn’t get more dramatic than that.

Author Kurt Vonnegut says that his favorite line among James Joyce’s stories is from the short story “Eveline”. The sentence: “She was tired.” At that point, Vonnegut says, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

“Simplicity of language,” he says, “is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively 14-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’”

The subject of simplicity in language—and its sacredness—was going through my mind while I was going over the lecture that Pope Benedict XVI delivered at the University of Regensburg in Germany last week. It was not a papal “to the city and to the world” (Urbi et Orbi) speech, by the way, only a lecture for a select group of intellectuals in an academic compound.

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Surging like ‘The Oceanides’

Helsinki--After days of Nordic food, bottomless coffee, workshops, talk shops, civil society networking and so-called “open space” discussions (throw in a few films), the 450 participants of Asia-Europe People’s Forum 6 (AEPF 6) held in Helsinki called it a day.

There was no evidence of rice and spice deprivation withdrawal among the Asians as they were very vocal, as victims and potential victims of neo-liberalism should be. Asians and Europeans of the G&D (grim and determined) grassroots variety have, once again, found their collective voice. On the fourth day, they let it all hang out at a city square through songs, dance, mime and a “people’s soup kitchen” courtesy of the Finns.

Here in the land of a thousand lakes, the land of the revered composer Sibelius, (for cellphonephiles, the land of Nokia), Asian and European voices swirled and rose, like the ocean’s roiling surge in Sibelius’ symphonic poem “The Oceanides”. (Finland is just a wee bit larger in area than the Philippines but has a population of only five million. Compare that to our 80 million plus, or just Metro Manila’s 10 million.)

As AEPF ended, the object of its trajectory, the Asia Europe Meeting (Asem) was about to begin, with government leaders in attendance, GMA among them. These Asian and European leaders forge political and economic links that could spell the race to the top for some or the race to the bottom of the ocean (the Pacific, particularly) for many. Together, the Asem member states have influence over half the world’s GDP.

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Asian-European sounds in Helsinki

HELSINKI—Here in the land of revered Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) Asian and European peoples’ voices are being aired loudly. Here is a symphony of sounds, so to speak, rising, blowing with the cold Baltic wind that is getting colder by the day.

The event is the Asia-Europe Peoples’ Forum 6 (AEPF 6) for NGOs and civil society organizations (CVO) that are non-state and non-corporate. The theme is “People’s Vision: Building Solidarity Across Asia and Europe”.

What better way to start than with a short ferry boat ride and an informal dinner-gathering of kindred spirits at Suomenlinna Island, a historic tourist site just off the city. After that it was back to the city and the tasks ahead. Time for long words and CVO-speak.

AEPF aims to bring all these voices from the ground to the official Asia Europe Summit (ASEM) and create alternatives to ASEM’s “neoliberalist agenda”.

ASEM would be to Asia and Europe as APEC is to Asia-Pacific and the US. Well, more or less. Heads of state, Pres. Macapagal-Arroyo, among them, are attending ASEM. ASEM consists of the member countries of the European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asian countries China, South Korea and Japan.

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Arvind Kejriwal’s battle against corruption

So young and so brave. The opposite of that now-famous line that once aptly described a Filipino bureaucrat-turned politician: So young and so corrupt.

Arvind Kejrawal of India is this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Emergent Leadership. Only 38 years old, Kejrawal has spent six years now fighting corruption that is so ingrained in India’s bureaucracy. It has not been a desperate, useless battle though. His efforts have yielded results and benefited the simple and the lowly whose concerns might not have merited the attention of the high and the mighty.

I caught up with Kejrawal the other day during the launching of RM Award Foundation’s (RMAF) 3rd, 4th and 5th volumes of “Great Men and Women of Asia” (Anvil Publishing)—must-haves for school libraries. Kejrawal battles must indeed soon be part of the inspiring stories in these books (for which I have written a number of stories) that should inspire the young and confound the wise and, uh, wily.

(RMAF formal awarding ceremonies will be held tonight at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Inquirer founding chair Eugenia “Eggie” Apostol is this year’s awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Comm

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247

Just before I sat down to write this piece yesterday, I was reading the Inquirer banner story about another killing, that of peasant leader Hermilito Marqueza in Tandag, Surigao del Sur last Sunday. The lead paragraph said this happened hours after Pres. Arroyo announced the creation of an independent commission that would investigate the wave of politically linked killings.

Marqueza was the 247th victim of this “type” of killing since 2001 when Pres. Arroyo became president. If one goes by the victims listed in Amnesty International’s (AI) report released last week, Marqueza should be the 51st victim of year 2006. AI’s list ended with victim number 50, city mayor Delfinito Albano who was killed on June 27, 2006. The 49th is Wilfredo Cornea, of Task Force Mapalad, who was killed on June 20, 2000.

But one cannot breezily go down the list that way. After AI’s number 50 there must have been a few more before Marqueza who did not make it to the AI list and deadline. I cannot believe that there were no victims in July. What, no victims? That would have been unusual. Killings have been so common, so every-day, that a sudden lull is unbelievable. Marqueza is not the 51st, he’s probably the 55th. Throw in a couple of slain journalists in between.

I am appalled that I am talking numbers, sequence and lists here, like these victims were just to be ticked off a list. But they happen to have names and faces, they have families, professions, places in their communities, organizations, churches and in the hearts of those they loved and those who loved them.

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Tyre and Sidon

Tyre and Sidon. The names of these two ancient biblical cities have been floating in my head since the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah began a month ago. These two coastal cities in Lebanon are always shown on the war maps on TV, being among the places threatened by Israeli fire.

These cities are mentioned in the bible 14 times, always as a pair (like Sodom and Gomorrah) and in significant situations that they have a way of remaining in one’s subconscious. In mine, at least. But since I’m no bible scholar, I couldn’t easily find where in the bible they’re mentioned.

Then last week, at the height of the Middle East crisis, the twin names popped up on the Inquirer’s “The Daily Gospel” readings. Synchronicity?

The names are mentioned in Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman who begged him to heal her demon-possessed daughter. The scene portrays an example of great faith and feminine spunk. But Tyre and Sidon are mentioned here rather casually, to only establish the location perhaps, while in other parts of the bible, the mention of Tyre and Sidon seems to have greater significance. Like the ones in Isaiah 23, Joel, Luke and Matthew.

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Accidental heroes, reluctant exiles

The armed conflict going on between Israel and the Hezbollan in Lebanon that is forcing thousands of terrified overseas Filipino workers (OFW) to go home, the stories and the images one reads, hears and sees are the stuff OFW nightmares are made of.

I couldn’t help thinking of the many past crises in that part of the world that OFWs have had to bear. And I thought, if we were to put together the feature stories on the overseas Filipino workers that came out in the Inquirer, the human interest stories particularly, and the photos too, they would fill several volumes. This has been playing in my head for days now. (By the way, the Inquirer has a book publishing department.) The stories would form part of our written national history. As they are, they would also be interesting stories—cinematic, dramatic, heart-rending, tear-jerking, sad, triumphant. Future generations would certainly look upon these stories with amazement at how their ancestors survived hardships in hostile lands in order to give their descendants a better life.

I have lost count of the many OFW stories I have written over the years. There was this Filipino domestic helper (DH) in Kuwait who killed her employer (a cruel princess) while they were vacationing in Cairo, while another DH lived it up in another royal household somewhere across the desert. Here were husbands and children who were left behind by the women in their lives, and NGOs that help OFW families stay whole. Recently I wrote about the Filipinos who work aboard a luxury cruise ship.

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Environmental group sounds an alarm

What is wrong with this piece of news? What is wrong with this picture?

Not so long ago the Manila Bulletin came out with a story that said that The Fuhua Group of China has broken ground in Silang, Cavite. It launched the “first of 500 technology demonstration and industrial processing sites that will be put up in the Philippines over the next five years.”

The industrial site will run under the Philippine Fuhua Sterling Agricultural Corp. (PFSAC) and is part of what is called a programmed production from a corn-sorghum facility from which will come ethanol and other by-products such as milky starch livestock feed, corn protein, corn oil and amino acid.

According to the article by Melody M. Aguiba, the ethanol supply from the integrated plants is apparently aimed at beefing up China’s ethanol requirement in its intensive drive to shift to cheaper and renewable biofuel as alternative to dwindling crude oil. China is also stepping up production in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos.

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‘u.g.’

Just out of the presses is “u.g.: An Underground Tale” by Benjamin Pimentel which is about “the journey of Edgar Jopson and the First Quarter Storm Generation.”

More than 15 years ago, Pimentel came out with a book on Jopson, the young leftist leader in the underground movement who was shot and killed while being chased by the military. Two editions have since been printed but Pimentel, feeling that more needed to be told, recently came out with a more complete story. And so “u.g.”, the book, emerged from the underground, so to speak.

For total political innocents, UG means underground, or that political movement (armed and unarmed) that operated clandestinely at that time and worked toward revolutionary change in society and were therefore considered threats to the status quo. They were called subversives by the establishment. That is my loose definition of it. It still applies today.

“UG” is now part of the leftist jargon, like “mob” (for mobilization), “PO”, “CS”, “DPA”, “H”, “kasams”, “oryentasion”, to name a few. (Hey, someone should do a compilation of the undergroundspeak of the martial law era.)

Anyway, “u.g.” still tells the same story of a young man from a rich family, educated at the Ateneo, and gave up his life of privilege in order to pursue his dream of helping the poor and the powerless by struggling to change the oppressive structures in society. That was what the old edition “Edjop: The Unusual Journey of Edgar Jopson” was about. What “Edjop” did not have “u.g.” now has. “u.g.” includes the nuances of Edjop’s struggle.

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DNA on soiled panties and condoms

In the news these past days were the items related to the alleged rape case that involved Filipino complainant-victim “Nicole” and the four accused US Marines. Forensic analyst Dr. Francisco Supe Jr. of the PNP Crime Laboratory told the court that DNA was indeed present in the two pieces of evidence that he had examined.

The panty yielded male and female DNA samples, with the female DNA sample matching Nicole’s. Strangely, the condom did not yield a male DNA profile. The male DNA found on the panty has yet to be matched with those of the accused, particularly DNA from Lance Corporal Daniel Smith who had used it in what the defense called “consensual sex.”

In this case, a lot will depend on the material evidence. I hope this will yield lessons on how evidence should be preserved and handled with utmost care by the victims and investigators. The accused and their conspirators have all the reasons to cover their tracks.

Well, in their hurry to get back to their ship the accused in this rape case weren’t able to get rid of the condom and Nicole’s panty as well.

Still, there might have been some mishandling of the vital pieces of evidence when these were turned over and this might have allowed environmental factors to damage other vital traces.

A “rape kit” would have come in handy for Nicole and the persons trying to help her immediately after the traumatic incident.

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How much for a drink of urine?

How much would it be for Wildredo Quijano who was made to drink urine (“I don't know whose urine it was,” he said) and who spent his 17th birthday and nine birthdays after that in prison?

How much should Paula Romero, a former seamstress, receive for her missing son Henry, a newspaperman at the time of his disappearance?

How much for the 34-year-old woman in Mindanao who woke up one night to find her house being set on fire by some 15 armed men who then stabbed her husband who died in front of her? How much for her own 10 stab wounds? This woman bled till morning and was still clasping her six-month-old baby when help came. Her five-year-old child ran for his life and called for help. When the village people came it was already morning but the woman was still alive. I interviewed her many years ago.

How do you put a price tag on the pain of Purificacion Viernes, a health worker from Mindanao whose husband and two children were killed? In 1984, armed men came in the dead of night and strafed the home of the Vierneses who were suspected of being rebel sympathizers. The next thing Purificacion saw were brain tissues and blood splattered all over. Her two children died instantly and she heard her husband breathe his last.

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Bishops treated as hacks?

If it is true that someone had been distributing money envelopes, supposedly from Malacanang, to members of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) during their retreat and plenary assembly I hold the bishops partly to blame. How could this have happened?

According to an Inquirer news report yesterday by Christian V. Esguerra, a bishop (described as “soft-spoken” and “low-key”) admitted having been handed an envelope by a “casual-looking” man who had introduced himself as a messenger “from Malacanang.”

How could the bishops or their personnel allow in an outsider during their retreat and deliberations on a much-awaited statement? Why was this Mr. Moneybags allowed to walk around and distribute envelopes containing between P20,000 and P30,000? If this indeed happened or was allowed to happen, then one could only conclude that the bishops were caught unawares or “tatanga-tanga”. Sorry, but that is the translation in Filipino and its root word does not sound nice.

If they were in conclave electing a pope, word would have gotten out before white smoke could come out of the chimney.

And why didn’t anyone raise a howl right there and then? The bishops were after all in their territory. They were not guests in a place where decorum would have dictated that they did not embarrass their host with an uproar. If I were on the receiving end, I would have roared, “Who the devil sent you?!” or “Begone, Satan!” then called security and staff to help investigate who the uninvited guest was.

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