MOVE RIZAL DAY TO JUNE! Every year on December 30, the citizens of the Philippines celebrate José Rizál Day by killing their National Hero all over again. Every year, in a strange official holiday celebration, they imitate the Spanish Taliban of the 19th Century and execute José Rizál on Bagumbayan Field (also called the Luneta) for the Nth time since that day in 1896 when the tradition was indeed, established. The "First Filipino" -- as the national hero has been called -- was in fact the first Filipino to suffer capital punishment for writing blasphemous fiction and refusing to retract his heresies and apostasies. It is a truly embarrassing fact, lil mentioned if at all in polite society, that the Philippine national hero was, and still is, an excommunicant from the Catholic Church. It was, I believe, Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono) who made membership in Masonry a cause for automatic excommunication from the Catholic Church, as were Rizal and most of the Philippine Revolution's leaders. If his case had been adjudicated by the Spanish authorities in an earlier, more strictly incendiary age, Rizal might have been burned at the stake instead of being felled by musket shot in the back -- though there WAS an apocryphal twist insisted upon. But no matter how one looks at it, after more than a century, Rizál Day in December is a morbid commemoration on a day that always falls between Christmas and New Year. I think it is time to move the present Rizál Day celebration to June 19, and begin to celebrate José Rizál's brilliant and patriotic life in addition to his noble and tragic death. Historian Ambeth Ocampo considers the accusation that Rizal was an American-made hero in Soul of the Revolution. Since the academic school year also begins in the month of June for many schools all over the Philippines, especially the public schools, the June 19th Birthday of José Rizál could get things off to a good start every year. (And even if the schedule is moved to start in September, as it does in most of the Western Hemisphere, that would still mean graduations in the month of June, and thus a guaranted exemplary role for Rizál.)

ARE WE SPENDING ENOUGH ON EDUCATION? OR TOO MUCH? This is a question that gets debated a lot around the time the kids go back to school in the Philippines. The answer given by virtually everybody trying to reform the education system is a resounding NO. But it seems that whatever the diagnoses of what is wrong with the education system someone comes up with, it also requires a cure that will cost a lot more money than what is being appropriated now. I think this usually leads to an intellectual dead-end for the analysis and proposed solution because I think the problem lies not in the amount we are spending, which has always increased in absolute terms, if not in per capita terms. I think the problem lies in HOW the money is spent, and on what: It goes mostly to salaries with little left over capital expenditures on school buildings, desks, computers, libraries and books.

Yet, the Education already gets "the highest budgetary priority" per the 1987 Constitution. To this point, I've been reading a very interesting document generated by the Congressional Planning and Budget Department An Analysis of the President's Budget For Fiscal Year 2006 (PDF). It's amazing what a treasture trove of information about the government and its spending habits such a document is.

For fiscal year 2006, the education sector will receive P146.45 Billion or 8.12% increase from theprevious year. Over the past years, the education sector continues to be the priority of the government as it receives a significant portion of the national budget, second to debt servicing. Apparently, the percentage share of education to total budget has been decreasing—from 14.85% in 2004 to 13.90% of the proposed 2006 budget. On the other hand, the share of debt servicing has jumped from its 2004 level of 30.90% to 32.28% in 2005. There was a 20% jump in budget for debt servicing while that of education had only a 5.17% increase.

Most illuminating is Table 8.7 on page 93 of the PDF, titled Deped Budget By Object of Expenditure, in which we find that the Department of Education (Deped) is programmed to receive 119.9 billion pesos in the 2006 fiscal year, of which 100.9 billion will go to salaries ("personal services") of the 400,000-strong national bureaucracy of teachers, principals, superintendents, directors, assistant-, under-, and acting secretaries, who by the way, also count the votes in our elections as Comelec's indentured and endangered, servants. It seems to me that the education budget is basically a hidden subsidy for the Commission on Elections.

I guess my answer is also, NO, we are not spending enough on EDUCATION as such, even if we are spending about 101 billion pesos this year on SALARIES. Any dispassionate analysis of the education system must face this fact. It is not so much an education system as it is a giant employment and welfare program in support of the manual election process. The share devoted to salaries in the budget far exceeds regional standards, and that given to capital expenditures such as school buildings, textbooks, computers, libraries, laboratories, etcetara, gets a miniscule 3.86 percent of the total budget. It's like running Fedex with 400,000 truck drivers you cannot fire, but without trucks, planes, computers, telephones or running water in the offices -- or even offices!

As members of the Republic's Board of Directors, citizens really ought to be asking why we should this year give 119.9 billion pesos of the public's meagre treasure to the largely faceless bureaucracy of politicians and their appointees and the rest of those government functionaries somewhere in Pasig. Why should we spend our money on them? Why DO we spend so much money on public education? Are we getting our money's worth? It does not seems so when Deped's own figures show that an inexplicable 2% (1 in 50!) graduates of the public schools were able to pass the standardized National Elementary and Secondary Assessment Tests (NEAT, NSAT) and that was with a passing grade of 50%! Moreover, it has been publicly admitted by the Deped that no one ever fails or is held back for academic nonperformance in the public schools. You either pass or drop-out. Is that an education system, or an aging vat?

Ah, but why are private school tuition fees so high?

I think it is because the "free public schools" have WARPED the education market. By offering free tuition at public schools, the government has taken over the lion's share of the education burden. Because its resources are necessarily strapped and limited, that education of a far lower quality than optimal or even acceptable by international standards. This durable ideology of "free universal public education" in a country like the Philippines, has only led to a ghettoization of the Have-nots and their children into the substandard public school system. Meanwhile the Haves, who groan and complain about exorbitant tuition fees in the private schools, nevertheless send their kids to them if their economic circumstances at all permit. Conversely, more and more people are moving their children to the public schools, when they cannot afford the high private school tuitions. But I don't believe that the largely religious Christian private schools are interested in MAXing out their tuition fees so they can repatriate obscenely large profits to their Mother Houses in Rome. I think it is akin to the situation that would certainly develop in the fast-food market if let us say, the government were to announce that henceforth, hamburgers will be free at all Jollibees restaurants because of a new government subsidy. People would still go to MacDonolds, KFC, and Chow King and even pay more for their non-subsidized food.

I think that by largely monopolizing the available market for students by offering tuition free public schools, the government is unfairly competing with the private school sector. I think giving even a billion pesos each to say the De La Salle Brothers, the Ateneo Fathers, the nuns of St. Theresa's and St. Scholastica's, and yes, even Assumption Convent, Ayala Corp., the Lopez Foundations, and the rest of the private sector would result in significantly more EDUCATION being delivered to the Filipino youth than what Deped, Ched and the national government have been able to accomplish under an essentially socialist education system.

Deped has a new logo. The website is highly functional and mostly up-to-date. Here is the Calendar for the 2006-2007 Academic School Year. Our best women--mothers, sisters, daughters--largely comprise the public school teaching corps. It is my belief that they are locked up in a system that is not designed, organized or run as an educational delivery system. Rather it is an adjunct of the traditional political system of patronage and the manual electoral system that is at the heart of Democracy's rot in the Philippines. I also believe that this sector of Philippine society, its teachers and nurturers of the hearts and minds of many, are the key to a new Revolution among Filipinos that will cast away the chains that bind them still, after centuries. There is no more grievous emotional loss, a famous philosopher once said, than that of an excuse for ones failures in terms of the actions of another. We have had no such excuse for over half a century, yet excuses are redolent in all of our Media.

I really think it is time for the Government to phase out of the education business and give the private sector a shot at illuminating the future of the Filipinos. Why should we give almost P120 billion to the government for educational purposes, when whoever runs the government only uses it for other things? Why should the public schools have an unfair, dare I say, unwisely granted advantage over the private schools to deliver education?

The national government has to get out of something at which it has been largely a monumental and historic failure, and the expenditures from the public coffers mostly a humongous waste. The hardest thing to change will be the utterly politically correct ideology of "free universal public education." Like in Cuba, or Russia, or China? Like most goods and services, I think most people would settle for education at the right price, even if it's not. zero I mean would you eat or support government-subsidized hamburgers at Jollibees? There are 18 million kids in the Basic Education sector, an overwhelming percentage of whom are in the public schools. But if government were not in the education business in such a big way, private school tuitions would go DOWN as economies of scale cut in. It is those economies of scale, competitive pressures, and enforced efficiencies, quality and productivity that a government-run education program, with its bureaucracies and monopoly position, simply cannot do very well at all.

Government should get out of education. It is unfair competition from the public schools that causes high tuition fees in the best schools in the country, not greedy nuns and priests who've taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in the very service of education. I say, privatize education.

UPDATE BREAKING NEWS: President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo reportedly asked the Palace Media to leave this morning's Cabinet meeting after Deped Officer-in-Charge, Dr. Fe Hidalgo, opened her presentation by saying there is currently a shortfall of 7,000 classrooms just two weeks ahead of School opening. I heard the taped exchange in which the President sounded really cross and "corrected" Dr. Hidalgo on her formula for computing the shortage in classrooms, just before she asked the media to leave. Poor Fe! I'm sure her ears are still ringing from what the President said after the cameras were turned off....Resigned Education Secretary Butch Abad came to Dr. Hidalgo's support however, saying that the government simply has not prioritized the building of these facilities. I agree! We are running a Fedex without any trucks or planes or computers. Oh well. She's good earnest person, but I never expected Dr. Hidalgo to get the Education post, which will surely be given to a POLITICIAN ahead of the real work of Deped next year: the 2007 national elections.

QUESTION: If you didn't have to turn it over to the Gang of Four Hundred Thousand in Pasig, what would YOU do with P149.9 Billion Pesos of cold hard cash every year to educate 20 million kids?

here are five articles in Sunday PDI's Talk of the Town section on the La Mesa Dam controversy, whose basic facts are laid out here by MLQ3 in The Desire for Land and Water. and in La Mesa Dam Quick Facts (no byline). Local Blawger Noel Punzalan contributes the meaty piece, Legal Issues in the La Mesa Dam controversy. Looks like bloggerdom was all over this one, at least from the legal standpoint, as La Vida Lawyer Marvin Aceron also weighs in with When Tribes Clash -- in which he considers the alternatives of the opposed sides and the national government.

Taken from the perspective of Game Theory, this clash of "tribal" interests over environement resources such La Mesa Dam, has surprising connections with many other quite general problems, such as the population explosion and nuclear proliferation. They come together in a classic problem that has been widely studied, called The Tragedy of the Commons. (This link is to Garret Hardin's well-known 1968 essay on the topic.) A relevant quote from this essay are in order:

Garret Hardin: "In a reverse way, the tragedy of the commons reappears in problems of pollution. Here it is not a question of taking something out of the commons, but of putting something in -- sewage, or chemical, radioactive, and heat wastes into water; noxious and dangerous fumes into the air; and distracting and unpleasant advertising signs into the line of sight. The calculations of utility are much the same as before. The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them. Since this is true for everyone, we are locked into a system of "fouling our own nest," so long as we behave only as independent, rational, free enterprisers...The pollution problem is a consequence of population. It did not much matter how a lonely American frontiersman disposed of his waste. "Flowing water purifies itself every ten miles," my grandfather used to say, and the myth was near enough to the truth when he was a boy, for there were not too many people. But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights."

The resolution of the issue as it stands will indeed be found by the Supreme Court, but I would be interested to see how my two blawger friends and MLQ3 might react to this same situation if the people involved were not "ex-MWSS employees" but let us say, indigenous peoples living in La Mesa Dam for generations. Would they have a different attitude or analysis of the situation?

BUT I was nonplussed by the last of the articles in Talk of the Town, Watersheds and Survival by Valerio Mendoza which opens with this sentence--

The human body and the Earth both comprise 75 percent water.

I know we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but if any book seriously had this title I would have to think it was being misleading because the Earth is most definitely not 75% water. Rather it has a thin wispy covering of surface water and ice, at most a couple of miles thick, but is solid rock or molten iron for most of its 7,900-mile plus diameter. (via GeoScience) The human body is mostly water though, so we shall accept the point being made that water is important, even essential to human life on the planet, though it certainly does not inspire confidence to read such a brazen falsehood in the lead. The rest of Mendoza's essay is really a Paean to Forests ("...prevent soil erosion, hasten infiltration, fix carbon dioxide and many other greenhouse gases (GHG)...modify local temperature...act as the lungs of the metropolis, the reservoir of a genetic pool for our biodiversity. Forests are excellent sites for recreation and education...") But please see Michael Crichton's Environmentalism as Religion for a perspective.

SPEAKING OF POPULATION (via SCIENCEBLOG) 'Rhythm Method' May Kill Off More Embryos than Other Methods of Contraception Here is a new study from the Journal of Medical Ethics that suggests the only method of "natural birth control" allowed by the Roman Catholic Church may actually be more deadly to human embryos than artificial means of contraception! This could really shake things up since it has always been assumed by everybody that this "natural method" doesn't actually "kill." But look at how statistics indicates a chilling other possibility...

The money quote from Tragedy of the Commons, and the conclusion really to the only effective means of dealing with such problems is this: "Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon." -- otherwise "tragedy" as Whitehead defines it inexorably occurs: "The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things."

In this regard, Garret Hardin's conclusion is worth quoting in full:

Perhaps the simplest summary of this analysis of man's population problems is this: the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density. As the human population has increased, the commons has had to be abandoned in one aspect after another.

First we abandoned the commons in food gathering, enclosing farm land and restricting pastures and hunting and fishing areas. These restrictions are still not complete throughout the world.

Somewhat later we saw that the commons as a place for waste disposal would also have to be abandoned. Restrictions on the disposal of domestic sewage are widely accepted in the Western world; we are still struggling to close the commons to pollution by automobiles, factories, insecticide sprayers, fertilizing operations, and atomic energy installations.

In a still more embryonic state is our recognition of the evils of the commons in matters of pleasure. There is almost no restriction on the propagation of sound waves in the public medium. The shopping public is assaulted with mindless music, without its consent. Our government has paid out billions of dollars to create a supersonic transport which would disturb 50,000 people for every one person whisked from coast to coast 3 hours faster. Advertisers muddy the airwaves of radio and television and pollute the view of travelers. We are a long way from outlawing the commons in matters of pleasure. Is this because our Puritan inheritance makes us view pleasure as something of a sin, and pain (that is, the pollution of advertising) as the sign of virtue?

Every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of somebody's personal liberty. Infringements made in the distant past are accepted because no contemporary complains of a loss. It is the newly proposed infringements that we vigorously oppose; cries of "rights" and "freedom" fill the air. But what does "freedom" mean? When men mutually agreed to pass laws against robbing, mankind became more free, not less so. Individuals locked into the logic of the commons are free only to bring on universal ruin; once they see the necessity of mutual coercion, they become free to pursue other goals. I believe it was Hegel who said, "Freedom is the recognition of necessity."

The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all. At the moment, to avoid hard decisions many of us are tempted to propagandize for conscience and responsible parenthood. The temptation must be resisted, because an appeal to independently acting consciences selects for the disappearance of all conscience in the long run, and an increase in anxiety in the short.

The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity" -- and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.

Resty Odon, in comments to an earlier post, calls this position "fascistic." Opinions, anyone?

It was the deadliest terrorist attack on the Philippines since the December 30, 2000 Rizal Day Bombing of the LRT, (which a lot of people, especially in the Civil Society Media actually blamed on Erap and Ping.) But read how the Superferry 14 Bombing on Feb. 26, 2004, which took 116 lives, was blamed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on "pranksters."

A small item in PDI today carries the news that the US State Department's Rewards for Justice Program is rewarding two Filipinos with a cool $500,000 for information that led to the arrest last year of a key terror suspect in what still stands as the DEADLIEST terrorist attack on the Philippines since Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf have been in business -- Superferry 14 on February 26, 2004 which took 116 Filipino lives just weeks before the Madrid train bombings.

Hilarion del Rosario Santos III, the alleged head of the Rajah Solaiman Movement, a group of Christian converts to Islam that has been closely associated with Al Qaeda-linked militants, was arrested in southern Zamboanga city in October together with six other suspects. His group is believed to have links to Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf, which is operating in the southern Philippines, and was suspected in the February 2004 bombing of a ferry in Manila that killed 116 people and the simultaneous bombings in Manila and other cities a year later, which killed eight people. He also was connected to plots to attack the US Embassy in Manila and American citizens, the embassy said.

What has been completely forgotten in all of this is how Gloria Macapagal Arroyo treated this bombing, which had come inconveniently, just as the 2004 Election Campaign season started and she was busy plotting FPJ's defeat. Here is TIME Magazine's August 2004 condemnation of GMA:

The unassuming young man who bought a ticket for Berth 51 on the 1,747-passenger SuperFerry 14 sailing from Manila to Bacolod and Davao on Feb. 26 called himself Arnulfo Alvarado. If security officials in the Philippines checked ferry-passenger lists—they don't—the name would have set off deafening alarm bells. Arnulfo Alvarado, say Philippine officials, was the name of a member, now dead, of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group. Two other Abu Sayyaf operators have used Alvarado's name to carry out previous attacks, according to Philippine intelligence officers. This Alvarado, whose real name was Redondo Cain Dellosa, hauled on board a cardboard box containing a television set. The TV, according to investigators, was packed with 3.6 kg of TNT. Making his way to the cheapest passenger section in the bowels of the ship, Dellosa carefully placed the box on his seat and slipped away just before the ferry cast off. An hour after its 11 p.m. sailing, just off Corregidor Island, an explosion tore through SuperFerry 14, starting a fire that engulfed the ship and killed a hundred or more passengers (some likely victims are still unaccounted for and may be missing). According to investigators, Dellosa, who was apprehended four weeks later, confessed that the explosion was triggered by a timing device—and that he chose the cheap seats to maximize panic and loss of life.

Responsibility for the attack was immediately claimed by representatives of Abu Sayyaf, a group of Islamic separatists chiefly known for kidnapping for ransom in the southern Philippines. But just as rapidly, officials in Manila scoffed off the claim; President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo dismissed it as coming from "pranksters." Despite promises of a swift investigation into the attack, concrete conclusions about the cause of the explosion have yet to appear.

Amazingly, the Philippine government did not even announce what it already knew about the Superferry 14 bombing until October 2004, after the elections had been safely GARCIED.

The person at the center of the US investigation, the purported founder of the Rajah Solaiman Movement who was arrested with six others in Zamboanga last year, is also known as Ahmed Islam Santos, whose younger brother, Dawud Santos got involved with last year's still mysterious Julius Babao Affair. It's just another one of those things for which the Public may never be told the truth. But it's pretty clear that Mike Defensor and that jerk Jonathan Tiongco are both mixed up in all this.

The President's managing of that deadliest terrorist attack on the Philippines by denying it's true terrorist nature reveals what a heartless political animal she truly is. Since the Palace was enmeshed in that entirely shameful controversy over FPJ's citizenship and the orchestrating of a series of public opinion polls in preparation for Garci's prestidigitation, and with the election campaign having just gotten underway, GMA was not to be bothered by a bunch of drowned and bombed Filipinos in the cruel seas near Bataan and Corregidor. Better to just attribute it to pranksters, even if there was a clear claim by the Abu Sayyaf, just a day after the bombing that they had done it!

Just as in the Angelo de la Cruz affair, and in every situation where honor and duty to country has mattered, Gloria has been a stunning and shameful failure.

SENATOR EDGARDO ANGARA (LDP, Laban Ng Demokratikong Pilipino) just told ABSCBN News this evening that he is backing a two-stage agenda in support of Charter Change: (1) to tackle economic provisions of the 1987 Charter this year, possibly in time to synchronize a plebiscite on proposed revisions or amendments with the regularly scheduled 2007 national elections; and (2) to undertake the more complex structural and political reforms implied by a shift to parliamentary and federal systems, in the post-2007 period.

I think Sen. Angara makes a cogent case for Part 1 of the above Chacha agenda. I too support the removal of the so-called "nationalistic" provisions of the 1987 Charter, in particular the ban on foreign ownership of important economic entities, such as land and even Media. To support this position, Sen . Angara points to the singular fact that of the $80 billion US dollars in direct investment that annually flows into Asia, the Philippines gets about 0.2 per cent of the total. Why? Well, he's right. If you are an investor, looking to make multimillion dollar investments in Asian countries, would you do so only to buy into a minority stake in the company or economic enterprise you establish? Of course not. You go elsewhere, to countries where they are more hospitable to capital investments.

Angara's LDP fielded the late Fernando Poe Jr. against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the 2004 elections, along with Senator Loren Legarda for Vice President, against Noli de Castro. While FPJ's electoral protest was rendered moot and academic by his death in late 2004, Loren Legarda's own electoral protest is still alive -- and though it is getting long in the tooth, it is a sign of Angara's own consummate political chessmanship to have it still in play. Considering that most of the "Irreconcilable Opposition" to GMA are united in the belief that she basically cheated her way into office in 2004 -- the seemingly futile, shot-at-the-moon Legarda protest in the Supreme Court, can only draw implicit if not sympathetic support from the broader anti-GMA opposition. Unkind things have been said of Loren Legarda, mainly by anti-Erap civil-society types like Bhel Cunanan and PDI, as well as the Assumptionista high society fashistas, (her fellow Convent alumnae!) ever since she ran with FPJ against GMA-Noli. Including that she had sold out after being the "Crying Lady Senator Judge" of the Erap impeachment trial in 2001. But I don't think we've heard the last of Loren Legarda. She's one tough woman and will have something yet to contribute to the politics of the Philippines. I understand she may run in the 2007 elections for the Senate -- which she once took by storm in 1998, topping the race as a neophyte political candidate with a whopping 15,000,000 votes, a million more than Gloria Macapagal's own Senate-topping run in 1995.

I don't know if the LDP's backing of Chacha, even in the two-step form proposed by Sen. Angara, will help the overall "Arroyo-backed" choochoo train -- as the ABSCBN anchor pointedly put it for Sen. Angara this evening, who corrected him by saying there are others who support Charter change other than the President (and JDV-FVR).

But does Sen. Angara reflect a more broadly held view within the Senate? Although the Upper House is seen to be largely hostile to Chacha because JDV's unicameral Parliament essentially abolishes it, I don't believe the majority of Senators are against reforming those key economic provisions. There is a broad concensus which does exist across the political spectrum that certain economic provisions in the 1987 Constitution are disincentives to the kind of direct foreign investment the country needs, which no amount of protectionist fervor can fill.

Regarding process, an important clarification has emerged. The mode of charter change called a "constituent assembly" is not a specially assembled thing like a constitutional convention. Rather, the Congress, in its normal configuration as two co-equal Houses of the Legislative Branch of government, may, by votes of three-fourths of their members, and of course voting separately as with all laws passed by the Republic, pass amendments and revisions to the Constitution. All that nonsense about three fourths of the entire membership has fallen into the dustbin where it belongs.

The Congress can actually pass all the constitutional amendments it wants to now, but only in the normal manner of a bicameral legislature, and with the higher three-fourths voting requirement, and the people's approval by plebiscite.

FOR THE NEGATIVE, ON REPEAL OF THE MINING LAW may I suggest the following Speech at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club by author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) on Environmentalism as Religion in which I think the money quote is as follows:

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

I liked this speech so much that I recorded it for anyone who might like to listen to a rendition of it instead of reading the transcript. (MP3)

Now here comes an olde-fashioned BOOK-BURNING, just to complete the scene in Manila.

Manila Times Monday editorial, Fallout of Rapu-rapu takes up the current debate over the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, which has boiled over because of the government- appointed panel's recommendations regarding Lafayette Mining (via PDI) and the counter charges that the panel had pre-judged what it was tasked to factually investigate. Yet, this is only a minor skirmish in a wider debate that broke out after the Supreme Court reversed itself and declared that law constitutional in December 2004, thus re-energizing the Philippine mining industry.

The Manila Times lays out the situation:

The Arroyo administration had gone to great lengths in trying to revive the mining industry, which was being choked by socioeconomic, legal and environmental concerns. We cannot help but note the irony here, considering that the country’s vast natural resources remain largely untapped. We have the fifth-largest reserves of gold and copper in the world. Our gold reserves are estimated at 967,180,197 metric tons, and our copper reserves, 5,301,507,657 metric tons. We have nine million hectares of potential mining land, yet only 1.4 hectares are covered by mining permits. Nine years ago, 17 metallic mining firms were operating in the country. In 2002 the number dropped to 7. Mining companies employed a little over 100,000 workers. Thousands more toiled in small mining operations, concentrated mainly in Diwalwal. The industry was going nowhere.

Filipinos have long lamented with ill-concealed envy, the petroleum riches of countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. These are places where prosperity is literally being pumped out of the ground as a black liquid sold all around the world. Yet there has not been universal rejoicing in the Archipelago over the reports by the Mining and Geosciences Bureau of the Dept. of Enviroment and Natural Resources that we may have over 900 billion US dollars worth of gold, copper, nickel and other valuable minerals just waiting to be mined. An impressive array of forces, led by the Catholic Bishops, the local and international environmental movement, the liberal Press and Academe, as well as the Left in general are calling for REPEAL of the Mining law and seem unalterably opposed to mining as an economic activity. As a first foray into this vast topic, I have chosen the following Statement on the blog of CBCP's head as representative of these forces:

FOR THE AFFIRMATIVE: Archbishop Angel N. Lagdameo, President, Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines

A Statement on Mining Issues and Concerns:“Do not defile the land where you live and where I dwell”(Num. 35:34)

Sisters and Brothers in Christ:

We are Pastors. We listen to the voice of the flock and take care of them. In our task to care for them, we reiterate our concern for the Earth.

In 1998, we in the CBCP issued “A Statement of Concern on the Mining Act of 1995”. We declared that the government mining policy is offering our lands to foreigners with liberal conditions while our people continue to grow in poverty. We stated that the adverse social impact on the affected communities far outweigh the gains promised by mining Trans-National corporations (TNCs). In our statement we also forewarned that the “implementation of the Mining Act will certainly destroy environment and people and will lead to national unrest.”

We reaffirm our stand for the repeal of the Mining Act of 1995. We believe that the Mining Act destroys life. The right to life of people is inseparable from their right to sources of food and livelihood. Allowing the interests of big mining corporations to prevail over people’s right to these sources amounts to violating their right to life. Furthermore, mining threatens people’s health and environmental safety through the wanton dumping of waste and tailings in rivers and seas.

Our experiences of environmental tragedies and incidents with the mining transnational corporations belie all assurances of sustainable and responsible mining that the Arroyo administration is claiming. Increasing number of mining affected communities, Christians and non-Christians alike, are subjected to human rights violations and economic deprivations. We see no relief in sight.

President Arroyo’s “Mining Revitalization Program” is encouraging further the entry and operation of large-scale mining of TNCs. Alarmingly, the mining tenements granted through the program have encroached into seventeen (17) of important biodiversity areas, into thirty-five (35) of national conservation priority areas, and thirty-two (32) of national integrated protected areas. The promised economic benefits of mining by these transnational corporations are outweighed by the dislocation of communities especially among our indigenous brothers and sisters, the risks to health and livelihood and massive environmental damage. Mining areas remain among the poorest areas in the country such as the mining communities in CARAGA, Bicol and Cordillera Regions. The cultural fabric of indigenous peoples is also being destroyed by the entry of mining corporations.

Moreover, we are apprehensive that the proposed deletion of the nationalist provisions in the Constitution by the Constitutional Commission (CONCOM) can pave the way to the wholesale plunder of our National Patrimony, and undermine our Sovereignty.

· To support, unify and strengthen the struggle of the local Churches and their constituency against all mining projects, and raise the anti-mining campaign at the national level;
· To support the call of various sectors, especially the Indigenous Peoples, to stop the 24 Priority Mining Projects of the government, and the closure of large-scale mining projects, for example, the Rapu-rapu Polymetallic Project in Albay, HPP Project in Palauan, Didippio Gold-Copper Project in Albay, HPP Project in Palawan, Didippio Gold-Copper Project in Nueva Vizcaya, Tampakan Copper-gold Project in South Cotabato, Canatuan Gold Project in Zamboanga del Norte, and the San Antonio Copper Project in Marinduque, among others;
· To support the conduct of studies on the evil effects of mining in dioceses;
· To support all economic activities that are life-enhancing and poverty-alleviating.

As we have said in our 1998 statement, “even our best efforts will come to nothing without the help of God, our Creator. We invoke upon you the grace of the Holy Spirit who renews the face of the earth. With gratitude in our hearts we ask the intercession of Mary, the Mother of Jesus and our Mother, to obtain for us a renewed land and a converted people.”

There is much, much more along this same vein among the international leftist and radical environmental groups which agree with Archbishop Lagdameo and the CBCP, at this Mines and Communities Website.

To Readers: I would appreciate links to articles and posts on either side of the debate.

STILL ON DA VINCI CODE AND THE GNOSTICS: A conversation with Dom Cimafranca of the Village Idiot Savant is ongoing with his most recent riposte Of Gospels and Apocrypha, here.

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ON-TOPIC UPDATE: Just saw the first working model of a $100 laptop from the Seven Countries Task Force meeting May 23, 2006. Here via Digg from Pete Barr Wilson and One Laptop Per Child. Those smart folks at M.I.T. engineered one devilishly simple looking computer, with horns! Check it out. Now all we need is cheap, universal access to a network that connects them all...>But what I really want is one of those new laptops with a SOLID STATE DISK...

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ENGLISH AND MULTICULTURALISM: Regarding the recent "cause celebre" involving the alleged "Filipino cultural trait" of eating with a fork and spoon and 7-year old Luc Cagadoc at Ecole Lalande school in Montreal, Canada it suddenly occurs to me how utterly nutty and mentally loose-sprung this business of multiculturalism is.

Take the case of language, for example. What could be more essentially a Filipino cultural trait than the native tongue, or tongues as is actually the case? Yet all the most eloquent attacks on those awful, reprehensible, racist ogres at Ecole Lalande were conducted not in Tagalog or Cebuano or Pampango or even French, but in English. Surely not a "Filipino cultural trait." Or is it?

Then, there is this Newsweek (May 29 edition) article authored by Marites Vitug "The Philippines: Lost in Translation" which considers the issue of English language proficiency in the context of the challenge to compete in such important industries as outsourcing and call-centers.

Ms. Vitug:"Now, to become more globally competitive, the government is scrambling to promote English to young people as the ticket to a good career. Three years ago the Department of Education reinstated English as the primary language of instruction in schools. Various business groups, including both the U.S. and European chambers of commerce, are sponsoring public-relations programs lauding the career benefits of English; one of the campaigns is called "English is cool" and is designed to break young people of their habit of speaking "Taglish"—a mix of English and Tagalog. In addition, Arroyo has promised to set aside $9.6 million to help put so-called near hires—an industry euphemism for applicants rejected due to a weak command of English—through a 100-hour English refresher course. The grant was made after an aggressive campaign by the industry lobby group, which was getting worried about call centers' losing business to countries like India."

Indeed, looking at the government's 2006 budget (just passed today by the Senate minus P31 billion in excess porkahydrates) for the Dept. of Education, I notice a P1.5 billion peso special fund for English instructional materials and teacher training.

It's no wonder, not only Luc Cagadoc and his mother, but 10% of the Filipino population is out about in the wide world earning a living as Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). They aren't sending back over US $1 billion to keep the archipelago afloat using their Filipino cultural traits alone, I reckon. It's their HUMAN traits that others surely appreciate in our over eight million countrymen working abroad.

I think the issue of language proficiency presents a challenge to ultranationalists and "multiculturalists" about just exactly what their position is on the matter of assimilation in one's work place, or new home. In fact, I'm glad l'affaire Cagadoc happened, because it certainly proves to me that there has to be a virtue that is greater than nationalism, just as nationalism was greater virtue than tribal or clan loyalty. Let us call this as yet unidentified virtue as Globalism or Humanism--the notion that membership in the human species ought to be considered as being above membership in any one nation or culture, just as being Filipino comes before being Ilocano or Pampango or Cebuano or lumad. Certainly above being a Catholic or Protestant or Muslim.

I think that the angry, defensive kind of multiculturalism displayed by most of the local Main Stream Media and huge parts of bloggerdom in the fork-and-spoon brouhaha is a retrograde ideology that belongs in history's dustbin. Along with Mao Tsetung and Renato Constantino!

ENVIRO-PIG VS. FRANKEN-PIG Well, it looks like my day to indulge Newsweek. Here is another article from the May 29 edition about Genetically Modified Organisms, specifically,

"...a pig that is more efficient at digesting phosphorus, which would cut back on a source of pollution, and whose flesh is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which would make ham as good for you as salmon. The "Enviro-pig," as Silver calls it, will most likely never be allowed because of a popular prejudice against anything that involves genetic manipulation. By contrast, Silver points out, organic food is seen as healthier and environmentally sound, even though organic farmers are allowed to spray their crops with chemicals and pesticides like pyrethrin and rotenone."

The article has an OPEN Comment line to participate in the ongoing debate with nay-sayers who say such a pig would be a "Franken-pig" and that the true agenda of the scientists is to start making designer human beings. (Think about it!) Here again, there are opposed forces of progress and reaction that have a great deal to do with whether we see humanity as essentially united and one, or forever "multicultural." The centripetal forces and iconoclastic ways of scientific discovery and economic progress powerfully interact with tradition and culture.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARY MAGDALENE: I think that Mary Magdalene is the most fascinating literary character (next to Jesus Himself ) to emerge from that apparently large genre of story-telling and gospel-writing which was written in Greek during the first centuries of the First Millennium, A.D. I suppose the endpoint of this period has to be at the Council of Nicea when the "Church Fathers" deemed a few these works of purported historical testimony or witness (namely, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) to be divinely inspired and produced the canonical New Testament's Four Gospels. By necessary implication, those same Church Fathers had declared the rest of the genre of writing as not divinely inspired, or apocryphal.

NEWSWEEK (May 29, 2006 edition) has the scoop on the logical and rhetorical continuation of the Da Vinci Code premise that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were man and wife, by focusing in this week's cover article on one of those apocryphal works: the alleged Gospel according to Mary Magdalene!

It's a worth a click over to Newsweek just to see this 15th century painting of Mary Magdalene and Mary the Blessed Mother, both at the crucifixion of Jesus. And the following paraphrase of the Gospel according John which places Mary Magdalene right at the very beginning of Christianity itself at the Resurrection -- then disappears completely! --

I have seen the Lord: such is the story of the Resurrection, as told in the Gospel of John. With it begins the history of Christianity, and with it ends the New Testament history of Mary Magdalene. Peter and Paul form the new church, Stephen dies a martyr's death, John the Divine envisions the End Times. But Mary Magdalene—a critical figure in his earthly circle—is neither seen nor heard from again.

Yet the Magdalene—that part of her name derives from Magdala, her hometown—lives on in another tradition that can be found in an obscure second-century text. Dubbed "The Gospel of Mary," it depicts Mary as a leader of Jesus' followers in the days after his resurrection. Written by Christians some 90 years after Jesus' death, Mary's is a "Gnostic gospel"; the Gnostics, a significant force in the early years of Christianity, stressed salvation through study and self-knowledge rather than simply through faith. The text was lost for centuries until found in fragments by a collector in Cairo in 1896. In its telling, Jesus rises and vanishes after instructing his disciples to "preach the good news about the Realm." The exhortation makes them uneasy: Christ had died preaching that gospel. What was to save them from a similar fate?

The plot thickens. I think Mary Magdalene's story will become a Hollywood blockbuster long before Judas does! Even the Gospel According to John paints a poignant image of Mary Magdalene, if you think about it. She's there at the Crucifixion of a man condemned by the Roman Pilate and the Jewish Sanhedrin; she's there to anoint his corpse a few days later; she is the first to see the risen Lord and to report it. Then she disappears from the narrative that goes through the Holy Roman Empire! Ah! Love!

ONE BISHOP BLOGGING: CBCP's head, Archbishop Angel N. Lagdameo has been blogging up a storm lately. But he doesn't get any comments inspite of the fact that I think he is the only one among the blogging bishops with an open Blogger Comment line.

Lots of people ask me why I am so hard on the Philippine Daily Inquirer when for eight years they dutifully and unfailingly published every weekly article I produced (for which they paid me a tiny pittance compared to the shock and awe value of my excommunicant ideas in religion and politics.) Am I a disgruntled former contributor of the newspaper? (Ha he hi ho hu!) Truth is, no one can ignore PDI. It is about the best one will find in the Philippines, as newspapers and media go, because it has published more than its share of the consequential writers and thinkers in the Archipelago (Naturally that is a biased and self serving view!). Also, PDI has a generally coherent (if leftist) editorial policy. Moreover, the paper has destabilized at least two previous Presidents and may be working on a third. Although threatened by the Manila Bulletin in reader popularity, PDI has far surpassed the crony newspaper, the Philippine Star (which isn't worth linking to as they don't understand, or utilize, the concept of permlinks.)

So I am hard on PDI because they are a cut above the rest in the Main Stream Media's demagagosphere, and therefore its memes exercise a vast influence on the blogosphere, even when they get things wrong! Especially when they get things wrong! As in the Art Bell fiasco.

I am hardest on PDI on three general occasions, all involving a form of rhetorical or moral inconsistency:

(1) when they engage in ideological victimology, such as in the so-called cause celebre over fork and spoon in Canada, and the Subic Bay Rape Case here and here.

(2) when they take inconsistent stands on important issues of principle and politics such as on the issue of the role of the Military and the Supreme Court in the matters of mutiny Mutiny, Judicial activism and Regime Change; and

(3) when they take paradoxical or inconsistent stands on religion and religious issues in the democratic sphere, such as in the Danish Mohammed Cartoon controversy and the present Da Vinci Code phenomenon.

On the Separation of Church and Press was my reaction last February to this PDI Editorial on the Mohammed Cartoons controversy, entitled Indivisible Freedoms, which you may wish to compare with today's Sunday Editorial, Da Vinci Decoded.

Both are thoughtful, complex essays, but here are two crystal clear examples in which blasphemy against a great world Religion is claimed by some of its most devout adherents in both Islam and Catholicism, yet PDI takes two very different positions.

In today's editorial on the Da Vinci Code (a film by Ron Howard starring Tom Hanks, as if you didn't know!) PDI gets it right (almost):

Let’s talk principles.

Religious freedom, in the modern context of our constitutional democracy, must mean not only the freedom to practice one’s religious beliefs, but also the freedom not to believe. It is a right that protects both the devotee and the skeptic, the orthodox as well as the heretical.

Thus, in a predominantly Christian nation like ours, religious freedom must include space even for those beliefs or practices that Christians will find blasphemous. If we were to hold otherwise, then the privileging of the Christian religion would violate both the letter and spirit of our Constitution. It would lead, again, to “an establishment of religion.”

Caveat: I say almost because the "privileging of the Christian religion" does not just "lead to" but IS an "establishment of Religion" in the well understood sense that Separation forbids the State from promoting "Religion" by law or policy, just as much as it forbids the State from prohibiting the free exercise of "thereof". One does not have to actually establish an Official State Religion, to violate this great principle in the bill of Rights:

Art III Section 5. No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights.

I otherwise agree with PDI's stance the Da Vinci Code controversy. But here are several passages from back in February regarding the Mohammed Cartoons:

Excesses such as rioting and complications such as some irresponsible provocateurs inserting two cartoons (the most offensive ones) among the real cartoons circulated among Muslims aside, the Islamic world has been adamant about its belief that the Western press crossed the line. Non-Muslims have also observed that what the Western media attempted to paint as purely a question of freedom of expression was not that at all; it was a question of secular contempt for religious conventions.

Caveat: The emphasis is mine, because this is a kind of coded message itself that tells the editorial reader (all 3 of us in the metropolis!), that this is PDI's own position and take on the matter. Who else could they be referring to as "non-Muslims" and "non-Western" journalists? PDI continues:

While the Philippines adheres to the principle of the separation of Church and State, and indeed, the Philippine media are heir to a tradition of anticlericalism dating to the Propaganda Movement, as a whole, Filipinos are profoundly respectful of religious conventions. Even the bigotry of certain Filipinos toward their Islamic countrymen does not extend to flagrantly heaping contempt on their faith. There are lines Filipinos do not cross, and rightly so (if only we did not cross more of them than we already do).

Caveat: Actually there is practically NO adherence to the Principle of Separation of Church and State in the Philippines, contrary to this amazing claim of the editorialist. Just ask any Muslim, lumad, Protestant, Buddhist, skeptic, atheist -- anyone who is not Romano Catolico cerrado. The claim that religious freedom reigns in the Philippines is utterly laughable when one thinks of the ostentatious display of Catholic religious idols, altars and sectarian symbols in government buildings and offices. We have already seen this risible claim contravened directly and its opposite amply demonstrated by the Executive Secretary, Ed Ermita calling for the banning of a Hollywood religious thriller and blockbuster in order to protect those of weak faith in "our predominantly Catholic country." Further proof that Spanish-style Talibanism is alive and well in 21st Century Philippines comes from the Manila City Council, which unanimously disgraced itself as no better than that provincial burg, Lucena City, which likewise 'banned' the film. Now it is not enough for me that these clumsy attempts at censorship have the entirely opposite effect on the movie's box office numbers. It is not after all, my goal to promote the film. But it should be the concern of all citizens, including the guardians of its opinions like PDI, to be sensitive to attacks on Democracy and culpable violations of the constitution, which these acts represent.

PDI concluded on the Danish Mohammed Cartoons as follows (but try reading this passage as if they were referring to Da Vinci Code film and novel!)

Islam and Christianity both pay the highest tribute to martyrs. Even secular societies consider martyrdom possible in defense of country or ideology. The question is whether any kind of creed, including secularism as understood in the West, calls for provocations that make it inevitable for people to become martyrs, whether unintentionally or by design. While we do not counsel self-censorship arising out of fear, we do believe that a proper recognition of the central role faith plays in the lives of millions would go far to avoid undue provocation against people who take their religion seriously. After all, since World War II, the world has rallied to defend the Four Freedoms: of speech and expression; of every person to worship God in his own way; from want; and from fear. They all go hand in hand, and to raise one over the other diminishes them all.

Well, which is it folks? Secular contempt for religion or freedom of religion and expression? Do they mean to imply that Islmists "take their religion seriously" while "Catholicists" do not? Are religious liberty and freedom of expression to be made a hostage to the most serious fanatics in the world. More serious, more respect?

In The Responsible Journalism of Conrado de Quiros, the irony is lost on PDI column writer of note, when he says,

I join those who say this is not an issue of freedom of the press at all, it is one of basic decency and respect...

This of course is not Mr. de Quiros' take on the Da Vinci Code's blasphemous attack on the Catholic faith. Another case of inconsistency enforced by an anti-American ideology.

Of course, in the case of the rioting Islamic fanatics, the Danish Cartoons were a case of CAPITAL blasphemy against their religious proscription against idolatry. So it is a matter of some interest to many that there are apparently no Catholicist crowds burning down the American Embassy or calling for the beheading of Tom Hanks for apostasy and "disrespect" toward Jesus Christ. Strangely enough, in the Philippine archipelago, it is secular authorities who've acted most like the theocrats of the bygone times of the Spanish Taliban. No less than the Executive Secretary Ed Ermita called for banning the film, the Da Vinci Code. So did a unanimous resolution of the Manila City Council and another troglodyte mental barrio called Lucena City.

It is of course entirely possible that the level of CORPORAL MORTIFICATION will change among the ranks of the so-inclined. (Up or down, who's to tell?)

A sampler of the Mohammed Cartoons postings and great Reader Comments here at Philippine Commentary:

Freedom of Religion IS Freedom of Expression

Danish Cartoons Broke the Muslim Taboo On Idolatry

It's Capital Blasphemy Just To Describe the Cartoons

Democracy Saves Religions From Each Other

Bitter Herbs and Purple Flowers

The Manila City Council is acting a lot like the Spanish Frailocracy did in theocratic times... Glenn Omanio of Newsroom Barkada has today's lead story on that bizarre unanimous Resolution by the 35-member Manila City Council, banning the Hollywood blockbuster, The Da Vinci Code, from being shown in the Ever-loyal City of Manila and urging the Mayor, Lito Atienza, to "take drastic action" to enforce it. It is a move more Catholic than the Bishops of the CBCP, who've wisely decided not to give the heretical and apostatic film and novel an even bigger publicity boost. The overwhelmingly Catholic population has apparently ignored all warnings of eternal damnation due to a shaken faith, as over 100 movie theatres reportedly played to packed audiences.

I can think of no better recent example of a culpable violation of the Principle of Separation of Church and State than this Resolution by the Manila City Council banning the Da Vinci film and so it is worth a careful Commentary.

Perhaps the most widespread misconception about the Constitutional Principle of the Separation of Church and State, is that it refers to the actions of religious believers and their leaders. You find lots of otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable people claiming that this principle is violated when priests or bishops meddle in politics. The truth is, this principle is addressed entirely to the State, and like virtually the entire Constitution, it is a carefully calibrated set of double prohibitions on the government and its officials regarding what they may or may not do with respect to "Religion." Here it is in the Bill of Rights:

Art III Section 5. No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights.

It is crystal clear from the last line that in fact, the religious affiliation of any person engaged in the exercise of civil and political rights cannot be used as a test of whether such exercise is legitimate or not. For example, the Catholic Bishops may be seen to be meddling in political affairs far from their expertise, when they issue pastoral letters on burning issues of the day, but the Constitution does not forbid them from doing so. Indeed, I believe Catholic Archbishops may run for public office. Once elected however, as government officials, they may no longer pursue the full "freedom of religion."

What it does forbid is for the government to either promote or prohibit "Religion." Look at the first sentence, specifically at the two words "Religion" and "thereof." I think the key to really understanding the rhetorical heart of the Principle of Separation of Church and State, is to realize that these two words refer to one and exactly the same thing!

A law which is clearly unconstitutional because the State establishes or promotes religious acts, beliefs or expressions, would also be unconstitutional if the law were to forbid or prohibit such religious act or expression. For example, it would be unconstitutional for the State to require that all citizens worship as members of the El Shaddai. But it would be equally unconstitutional for the State to forbid people from joining El Shaddai.

No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

How compact and economical a principle!

Under this remarkable principle of neutrality, if some act or practice by the public is forbidden by the State, and we want to know if such policy is unconstitutional, we need only to ask whether we think that REQUIRING the public to undertake such acts or practices is unconstitutional. For if the answer is YES, then, almost certainly, forbidding that same act or practice would be unconstitutional by parity of reasoning in the first sentence of Section 5. For example, if the government passes a law requiring citizens to pray the Litany to the Virgin Mary whenever they visit Luneta Park, that would be unconstitutional if we think it would be unconstitutional to FORBID praying the Litany at Luneta Park.

Likewise, if the Manila City Council were to REQUIRE citizens to watch the Da Vinci Code movie, that would seem to be an unconstitutional requirement say on devout Catholics who might be disgusted with the movie and its premises that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children. Likewise, it would be unconstitutional to FORBID citizens from watching the Da Vinci Code movie on grounds that it might shake their faith. This is clearly a case of religious discrimination, since it applies to all citizens and not all citizens are Catholics. Moreover, it seeks to make showing the movie illegal on purely religious grounds, a case of the State protecting Religion from secular fantabulists like Dan Brown, Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, and Leonardo da Vinci.

As such, Manila's councilors are guilty of a culpable violation of the Constitution and ought to be so charged. But the Executive Secretary has also called for a banning of the movie, even if the Bishops haven't. I seem to recall that just a few months after seizing political power from Joseph Estrada in 2001, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo sided with the Bishops in calling for the X rating on a movie entitled Toro, by Joey Reyes. The Taliban control the Palace too, I see.

But the most amazing admission comes from Vice Mayor "Mullah Omar" Danilo Lacuna who claimed on ABSCBN New's noon time show that they were concerned we could have a situation like the Danish Mohammed Cartoon controversy. Well, I guess in fact we do have such a situation. Except that the Manila City Council is playing the role of rioting Islamist mobs decrying blasphemy and passing illegal, unconstitutional Resolutions.

If the Manila City Council is right, however, we should begin to see large demonic bacchanals as the previously devout members of the faith emerge from the hypnotic brainwashing in the cinema houses now believing that Jesus Christ was a -- gasp -- married man with children. I suppose priests and nuns will dispense with the their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, should they be so unfortunate as to transgress the Manila City Fathers' wise and prudent establishment of a ban on a clearly heretic and apostatic expression of unbelief in the Catholic Religion.

But no, I don't think we are going to see crazed excommunicated Catholics running around rioting and calling for the beheading of Tom Hanks. However, the City Council should get a cut of the resulting windfall from movie theatre owners.

Update: A must read from Ambeth Ocampo...on the connection between Tenzing Norgay, the sherpa who is credited along with Sir Edmund Hillary with the 1953 summit of Mt. Everest's peak. Seems the Nepalese mountain climber once sired a daughter, Nima Tenzing-Galang, who married a Filipino graphic artist!

A third Filipino climber, Romeo Garduce, has also reportedly summited the mountain today, for a 1-2-3 accomplishment that will be talked about, justifiably, for a long time to come.

Get all the latest info at the Mount Everest Philippine Expedition Website.

UPDATE: 0840 18 May: Live report from Mt. Everest Base Camp has it that a second Filipino mountaineer reached the summit at 5:30 AM GmT+8, just 12 hours after the first climber reached the peak yesterday. More at ExplorersWeb.

LEO ORACION, a champion Filipino adventure racer is reported to have just planted the first Philippine flag on the summit of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, according to sponsor ABSCBN Network. The official time was 17:30 GMT+8. A second member of the First Philippine Mt. Everest Expeditionary Team, Pastor Emata is said to be following a day or so behind; and a third climber, sponsored by rival GMA Network, Romy Garduce, is also on his way up and could make it a stunning 1-2-3 achievement for Filipino mountaineers this year. People should be warned at this point that getting to the top is only HALF the battle, since the descent from the summit, while less dramatic, remains the most dangerous part of such an epic trek.

Here is a link to a satellite image of the Mt. Everest region in Nepal (courtesy of Google Maps). The summit of Mt. Everest stands at 8848 meters above sea level. Also flag link.

Explorers Web has all the action covered on Mount Everest this week including a double amputee making it to the summit, along with the first Turkish woman to summit and a pair of Scandinavians who are skiing back down the mountain.

The British Army Team on Mt. Everest has a beautiful website with this page devoted to explaining the route up to the summit. The Brits are doing well although they had to ship their canine mascot, Shipton, back to the British Isles, after the dog ate THIRTY eggs belonging to the Sherpas with the team. I guess we Filipinos would know what to do with such uncouth and uncultured beasts...just don't tell the Canadians!

Sadly, at least six people have already died on the mountain this season, including four sherpas working on fixing ropes for various climbers, including some who are paying tourists.

Philippine Commentary proudly salutes all!
Above watercolor by Arnold Arre seems apropos on this occasion.

BACKGROUND on the members of the First Mt. Everest Philippine Expedition Team is contained in this Google Groups post by Ben Tumbling earlier this month.

Formidable free spirits, Filipinos all, with one goal -- to uplift the Pinoy spirit and empower them with an achievement the entire race can share. The Filipino assault on Mt. Everest in 2007 has been but a dream until the formation of this expert expedition team made up of the country's most passionate mountain climbers and adventure athletes. Together, they will ascend to the world's highest peak and shout from the mountaintops that indeed, the Filipino can!

Arturo T. Valdez expedition leader

His passion for mountain climbing gave birth to this First Philippine Mt. Everest Expedition. A master outdoorsman from Bacolod, he had wanted to assemble a team to assault the world's highest peak as far back as the 70's. By recruiting the members of this expedition, he is a step closer to making the Everest dream a reality for all Filipinos.

Ari Ben C. Sebastian

A corporate lawyer on weekdays, he's also a mountain warrior and extreme sports buff on the weekends. An accomplished scuba diver, skydiver and alpine climber, this former president of the Mountaineering Federation of the Philippines, Inc. (MFPI) was one of the first Pinoys to reach the Himalayas in the 80's.

Fred B. Jamili

His love affair with Mother Nature and mountain climbing stretches for nearly 30 years. This veteran has climbed most, if not all the known mountains in the Philippines, and some abroad. One of the expedition team's leaders, he is also an accomplished caver and adventure race setter.

Regie Pablo

One of the expedition's prime movers and team leaders, he is the current president of the MFPI on leave from his day job at Globe Telecom. A skilled mountaineer, he has conquered Razdelnaya Peak in Kyrgyzstan, Mts. Aylmenr and Cook in New Zealand among others.

Florentino 'Jong' Narciso

He is a physical education instructor in the International School. He is also and accomplished mountaineer, climbing gym instructor and adventure race setter.

Erwin Emata

Fondly called Pastor by the group, this Davaoeño's love for the outdoors is matched by his boundless, enthusiastic energy. The team's morale booster and resident comic, he is one of the best adventure racers in the country, having won numerous races such as the Carera Habagat, Survival Challenge in Guimaras, and Survival of the Fittest in Escalante, Negros.

Leo Oracion

Also one of the country's most prominent adventure racers, this Cebuano has also conquered international adventure races such as the AXN Challenges in various parts of Asia and the 10 day expedition racing in NZ.

Karina Davondon

One of the youngest and few women in the group, she is a formidable sport climber from Cagayan de Oro City. Recently, she joined the expedition to the peak of Mt. Muztagh Ata (7,546 meters or 24,758 feet) in China-Pakistan. This is the highest peak ever reached by a Filipino - or a Filipina!

Juan 'JB' Añonuevo

A freespirit who could not rein in his love for the outdoors, he quit his job in government and became a fulltime mountain guide in his native Mayon in Bicol. He is also a sought after race setter and winning adventure racer.

Levi Nahayangan

A climber from Lagaw, Ifugao province, he turned his passion for climbing into a thriving business, with Lagalag, a shop which supplies outdoor apparel to other mountaineers. He is also an accomplished mountain and rock climber and adventure racer.

Larry Honoridez

A mountaineer and adventure racer extraordinaire, he joined the expedition in order to bring pride to his family and country.

Janet Belarmino

A member of the University of the Philippines Mountaineers, she is also a fitness instructor for the Moro Lorenzo Fitness Gym in Ateneo. An excellent sport climber, lawn tennis coach and champion triathlete, she is also a consistent winner in the Philippine and HongKong legs of the AXN adventure races.

Ariel Ambayec

A mountaineer from Mandaluyong, this father of two has also been a participant of several adventure races.

Noelle Wenceslao

A prized member of the Dragonboat team, she (along with teammate Janet Belarmino) was also a winning fixture in the AXN races here and in Hong Kong. Noelle is also an expert biker and extreme adventure athlete and mountaineer while attending class as a Physical Education student.

Dr. Ted Esguerra

The team's physician is also from the Philippine Coast Guard. An accomplished mountaineer himself, he has conducted studies on the effect on high altitudes on climbers with the United States Air Force, making him an indispensable caretaker of the team's physical health on Everest.

John Tronco

The team's official video and photo documentor, his mastery of capturing nature's beauty on film is only matched by his passion for climbing.

Choi Aquino

This mountaineer, caver, and in-demand adventure racer lends his considerable strength and skill to help ensure the success of the Pinoy Everest ascent.

The wife of Expedition Leader Art Valdez reveals the plan for the entire Philippine Team to summit Mt. Everest by 2007, including the three women in the list above.

UPDATE: Hat Tip to the Econblogger for a comment that inspired a new plot of the data. I decided to look at a "High Series" projection of the population growth rate in the 2005-2040 time period in order to compare its fit to the widely publicized "Medium Series" from the National Statistics Coordination Board, who use a formula based on mortality, fertility and migration data. Here all I did was multiply NSCB's published projections by 110%, yielding a very curious and neat 1.0% at 2040 and plotted this against the NSCB's "Medium Series." I think my "High Series" projection "fits" better the "continuity and differentiability" criteria. (Click to Magnify)
THE SMOKING GUN: I dug up the historical data on Population Growth Rate up to year 2000 and graphed it along with the NSCB's recent projections. Mathematically speaking any reasonable "projection" of a time series like the total population of a country, or its first derivative, the growth rate, should display "continuity" and "smoothness" at the point where the historical data is joined to the projection. The plot below shows the two sets of data: First, in blue, are the population growth rates (in percent per year) based on actual census data collected at various times between 1903 and 2000 (the last census). The data comes from this October 2002 National Statistics Report. Second, in purple, are the recent PROJECTED population growth rates from 2005 to 2040 published here by the 2006 National Statistics Coordination Board (renamed from NSO).

Apart from the discontinuous and unsmooth fit of the projected data to the historical data at Year 2005, there is also a key piece of empirical data that is unknown: What was the total population of the Philippines in year 2005?? Without this data point, virtually any projection could be justified for the period following 2005. But I made this plot after wondering why the heavy use of tables of numbers by NSCB's supporting details, then just popping up this statement in the covering Press Release:

The population is projected to grow by 1.95 percent in the 2005-2010 period, from 85.3 million in 2005 to 94.0 million in 2010.

A picture -- or an accurately drawn graph -- is worth a thousand words and numerical tables. The graph of the historical data together with the NSCB's current projections, suggest to me a "discontinuous" and "unsmooth" joining of the empirical and the prospective. Remember that the three data points at 1990, 1995 and 2000 are derived from the census data. Looking at that part of the population growth rate plot above, one gets the distinct impression that in that decade of the 90s, the population growth rate was in a shallow plateau just below 2.4% and had turned upward (with a positive slope) between 1995 and 2000. Yet the entire set of projected data have negative slope. This is what I mean by the unsmooth joining of projected data to the historical data.

Therefore, I agree with Congressman Neric Acosta. What the NSCB and the government are doing here is intellectually dishonest. Data projections like this could be used to justify the government's inaction on population explosion. In fact I would add that these NSCB projections are likely to be mathematically dishonest, because as any freshman student in Calculus knows, you can spot such dishonesty with the naked eye of mathematical aesthetics. I also caught my old friend from Harvard, Dr. Cory Raymundo and Prof. Ernie Pernia both of the University of the Philippines, talking to Ces Drilon, Monday night about this projection and how unbelievable it is, considering the government has in fact abandoned the use of legally and medically accepted forms of contraception and birth control during the 2001-2010 period. Now, by comparing the historical trend as shown above, I can say with some certainty that there is something mighty peculiar about NSCB's projections. It's almsot as if they decided to ignore the results of the 1990, 1995 and 2000 census count and draw a straight line from the 80s all the way to middle of the 21st Century. It's pretty obvious that this lil bit of prestidigitation with the numbers, means that the Palace can now make a self-serving but dangerous assertion: that population growth rates are trending down despite abandoning its support for serious birth control methods and effective family planning programs, apart from Catholic Church approved natural methods such as "Vatican Roulette." If it has been fudged for that purpose, and is inexplicably discontinuous from the 10 to 15 year trend of a plateau near 2.3% or so, this will result in a serious understimation of how many citizens the government should plan for in the first half of this century. It would be insanely irresponsble if that were the case.

MY FEARFUL PROJECTION: Looking just at the historical data, especially the post WW2 era, one notes that in the 60s and 70s the population growth rate was near 3%. I think this boom in the 60s and 70s is producing an "echo" in the 90s and 00s as their progeny begin to have children of their own! We may already be seeing the beginning of that echo in the uptick between 1995 and 2000. Only the data point at year 2005 would settle which projection is closer to reality, mine or NSCB's. It is crucially important for fiscal and economic planning reasons that the projection be accurate and reliable. I actually wish NSCB were right and that the discontinuity is due to some other very special factors like changes in migration patterns. But I can't see it even in the supporting details at NSCB.

ERROR ANALYSIS: When Ces Drilon asked an NSCB Director Abejo what the "margin of error" was for the NSCB data she was at a loss to answer. The reason of course is that the set of historical data, while collected using surveys, does not rely on random sampling techniques like the SWS and Pulse Asia Surveys. They are calculated based on the change in population between census years (about every five years). Theoretically therefore, there is no "statistical sampling error" associated with population data, like the plus or minus 3% in a 1200 respondent SWS survey, because a census is meant to count every single member of the population. But there are certainly errors of other kinds, such as errors in counting and reporting how many people live in a given household; clerical errors; and the inadvertent overcounting, undercounting, even double counting or not counting that occurs during a census. These error quantities are unknown--they are unlike the statistcal error in an SWS survey (which of course also suffers from them!) which can be calculated from the random sample size. These are empirical errors. As for the Projected Data portion of my plot, it has its own statistical and systematic errors that have to be analysed in detail: errors associated with estimating the components of Population Growth, namely, fertility rates, mortality rates and mirgration patterns.

In the projected portion of the plot above, one will notice the nearly perfect linear character of the projected curve of population growth rate. This is the signature of an artificial process--the wishful thinking of Palace Spin Meisters, if you will. The slope and behavior of the curve depends entirely on the assumptions that have been made regarding the fertility, mortality and migration rates. Such projects should be continuously validated by actual census measurements, otherwise, a great historical disservice will have been done by statisticians to the nation's generations yet unborn.

For a scientific, sociological perspective on the problem of population growth, I still highly recommend to Philippine Commentary readers a careful and complete perusal of Garret Hardin's 1968 classic, The Tragedy of the Commons.

VICTIMOLOGY is that pernicious mental illness that flares up among Filipinos of a certain ideological predisposition from time to time, in which the main symptoms are an irate defensiveness followed by vituperative rants full of national or cultural pride after discovering supposed instances of discrimination, aggression, or prejudice against Filipinos or "Filipino cultural identity" -- where there may be none at all...A closely related ailment, RACISM, was pandemic in North America for many centuries, and is far from being rendered extinct, though Negro manumission and the end of slavery in the 19th century struck mighty blows, as have the civil rights movement and ongoing struggles for human equality and liberty since then.

After publishing the editorial Pigs in Canada, a week ago Sunday, the staunch defender of Philippine Cultural Identity in a Multicultural World, Philippine Daily Inquirer today devotes an entire printed page, their Monday Talk of the Town series, as a kind of big character manifesto on a supposed world wide cause celebre among Filipinos. Hat Tip to Dom Cimafranca, the Village Idiot Savant who pointed these out and produces his own deliciously wicked reductio ad absurdum of the multiculturalist manifestae, of which there were three:

The first, Multiculturalism and the Filipino is the "straw-man" that pretends to lay out the "facts" of the case, which, like the editorial which spawned it, is completely one-sided, presenting only the mother's version of conversations and events as reported by one news source in Montreal. PDI left out this statement from the School Commission (PDF) that oversees the Ecole Lalande school...

To Students, Parents and Citizens, The Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys – CSMB – is writing this letter in order to reinsure its 45,000 students, their parents, and all the citizens within its territory that the School Board fully respects the culture, the customs and the practices of all its constituents. In fact, the CSMB has representatives from no less than 197 different countries attending its 88 different schools.We are very proud of this diversity, which not only represents a source of awe, but also a challenge to ensure our harmonious cohabitation on a daily basis. The CSMB would also like to use this space to support the principal, the staff and the school team of Lalande primary school in Pierrefonds/ Roxboro, who have been overwhelmed in the last few weeks by the turmoil caused by the way an educational intervention involving a student during the noon lunch hour was handled. Both the staff and the principal of the school felt and feel that they have been directly challenged and are hurt by the comments and the intentions that have been imputed against them. The CSMB must also point out that the educational intervention in question was not aimed in any way at the practices of any cultural community. It was strictly limited to the way a child was consuming lunch on that particular day and had nothing to do with the way of eating or the utensils used. The CSMB has invited the parents of the pupil to enter a dialogue to clarify the facts, the misunderstandings and the interpretations. It has wishes to intervene thoughtfully and soberly on this issue. It must first and foremost be remembered that the disclosure of any information regarding the students that have been entrusted to its charge may constitute a breach of confidentiality. Its overriding concern is to preserve a respectful educational link with the child and openness to dialogue with the parents. We trust that this information will shed light on the issue and demonstrate to all our sincere concern.

I wonder why PDI did not mention any of this statement at all despite the fact that John Nery of Inq7.net on his Newsstand Blog links to it because he received it by email last Friday. Just like the editorial that kicked this all of at PDI, the Talk of the Town Series is written from a perspective that has not taken all the facts or versions of the matter into account.

Then there was this posting on a California Forum about a Filipino American who was so disturbed, probably by the PDI editorial that he simply picked up the phone and made a couple of phone calls to the Montreal newspaper and school and discovered what we may call the other side to this controversy... seems that the 7 year old Filipino, Luc Cagadoc may have been stuffing his mouth full of food, dribbling it all over himself, making the other children laugh, and that the cause for his troubles with his lunch monitor had NOTHING TO DO with Philippine culinary cultural traits -- such eating with a fork and spoon.

Originally written by Veritas1911

I didn't sleep well last night. As a father of a second grade boy myself, it disturbed me to hear how that little boy was treated. On the surface at least, this appears to be a blatant disrespect to the Filipino community. So, this morning, I cleared my meetings to make a few phone calls.

First, I called the Commission Scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoy, school board for the Quebec area, to talk to Brigitte Gauvreau who is the spokesman for the CSMB. Second, I called Ecole Lalande primary school to talk to Normand Bergeron who is the principal of the school. Last, I called The Chronicle to talk with Andy Blatchford the reporter of the article. In all cases, I only got voice mail. I left my contact information and let all know that the Filipino community around the world is watching this with great interest.

So I get a phone call back from the CSMB school board and talked at great length with France Pilon, Vice Director General for the CSMB. I suspect the principal called the CSMB spokesman and the spokesman called her boss when I left voicemail messages. I spoke freely and candidly about my concerns of what appeared to many the suppression of Filipino ethnic and cultural practices not to mention my concerns around the poor handling of this issue by the educators of the school.

She assured me that the accounts that were written in the newspaper are grossly inaccurate. The use of the word "Pig" was never used by the principal (according to him) but admits she was not there. The disciplinary action of separation from other students did happen by the monitor but was a result of the boy's behavior not the use of utensils in our Filipino way. According to her, the boy was in a hurry and was stuffing food in his mouth. Food was getting all over him, the floor and other students who were watching and laughing. She was quick to point out that the boy has been in this school for three years and in that time not once was he ever disciplined for how he used his spoon and fork. She also points out that the school system comprises of anywhere between 50-60% immigrants representing at least 30 countries and that the system respects all cultures.

In Ms. Pilon's belief, communication is partly to be blamed as well. On one hand we have a heavy French-speaking community (most I spoke with spoke to me in French first and later with not the best English). And on the other hand they have a newspaper that wants to sell. The mother speaks very little French I was told as well.

At this point, without speaking to the principal and the reporter and even the mother, I don't have a complete picture. I do question the media and at the same time I think the Vice Director General has to defend her board. Regardless, I think we need to all keep on our guard when there's even a hint of ethnic or cultural suppression in my humble opinion and question it aggressively and to hold others accountable to at least explain themselves.

I've yet to get a phone call back from the newspaper or the school. If I do, I'll let you know.

If you'd like to call to make some "noise," here are a few key numbers.

France Pilon - CSMB Vice Director General - 514-855-4500
Normand Bergeron - Ecole Lalande Principal - 514-855-4238
Andy Blatchford - The Chronicle Reporter - 514-685-4690

Both this post from Veritas1911 and the School Board Memo represent part of the "other side" of this controversy which I think PDI has irresponsibly ignored. Both are still on the first page of Google results for "Pigs in Canada Filipino."

Instead the paper gives rein to a full cavalry and infantry charge on the Straw Man of Canadian Racial Discrimination Against Filipino Cultural Identity. The first is by Dr. Michael Tan, who presents a thoroughly charming disquisition, Spoon Wars, on the history of eating utensils, with lots of sophisticated and ironic remarks that are nonetheless immaterial and irrelevant if it turns out that this was not about cultural transgression at all, but a legitimate, if perhaps exasperated tenth attempt to control young Luc Cagadoc in the lunchroom (oink!) in the exercise of the principle of in loco parentis.

The second piece of ideological victimhood is by Ms. De los Angeles Bautista, Benefits of the Anti Bias Environment, a cheerless rant as droll and tendentious as its title. She says of the Luc Cagadoc lunchroom incident, things like, "But when there is danger of an assault, or there is an act of aggression or exploitation against a member of our tribe, activity in the reptilian, territorial, part of our brain is triggered and we rise up to staunchly defend our kind and our cultural integrity."

The rest of her rant, you can already guess, is a thorough, righteous and stentorian demolition of the strawman set up in the "news article" in the Talk of the Town series. In the following passage she scolds the Canadians as ignorant...

Luc was a victim of a two-punch knock-out: the disastrous combination of the lunch monitor’s ignorance about essential features of Filipino and Asian cultures and the monitor’s ignorance about child development and implications for developmentally appropriate adult- child interaction. His mother was a victim of the principal’s own cultural illiteracy (which I must add is not typical of Canadian educators) and his ineptness in dealing with parents both as competent adults and in ways that more fully engage them and show respect for them as necessary partners in children’s care and education.

Hmm...according to the memo from the School Board they've been successfully handling 45,000 students from 197 countries in their 88 schools, and they stand firmly behind Ecole Lalande as meeting their standards.

I wonder what experience Ms. Delos Angeles Bautista has in multicultural education as head of the "Learners Foundation" of the Philippines? How many nationalities, schools and students does she practice her expertise upon?

It seems to me that PDI has barked up the wrong tree again...just like with Art Bell. This time however, it seems the provocateur may be Luc's mother and her friend on the staff of the West Island Chronicle newspaper, a struggling English language paper in a French-dominated part of Canada.

Multiculturalism and assimilation are big, important issues all over the world. Trivializing them in this one sided way does not serve the readers of PDI.

MAN is a story-telling animal. It is a big part of the secret to our success as a species on this Earth. At the center of this secret is language itself, and all the technologies that serve it, which, in a very deep and little understood way, are also wrapped up in the phenomena of memory and history that other life forms we know of, seem to have not or exceedingly little. An important aspect of our "strategy" as a species has to do with the following fact: no other form of life on earth spends such a large fraction of the normal lifespan of its members on nurturing and educating its young. Which probably accounts for the notion that animals do everything by instincts that are in-born and carried right in their DNA. But for Man, the storyteller, that long period spent on training and educating the young, which in fact never quite ends, the strategy is crucial. Man has found a way -- through stories told orally at first, but later with writing and printing and the entire mechanism of culture-- to vastly accelerate the glacial pace of evolutionary development, which before him, could only proceed by the aeons-long process of natural selection and genetic inheritance. Our species is unique in that the most important things that one generation of men discovers, invents, or creates, is directly transmitted to the next generation for them to use and benefit from without having to--literally--"reinvent the wheel!"

Stories come in two general categories: fact and fiction. Here I am concerned mainly with the latter. Of course, most of what is called Fiction is harmless candy for our mental sweet teeth, and deserve the often derisory or dismissive putdown, "It's only fiction." Which naturally chafes against the armies of scriveners -- novelists, story-tellers and fiction writers of all kinds -- who never give up on the dream that one day, one day, they shall rise to their own self-built promontory on that landscape dominated by blockbusters towering among the stones and pebbles of more mundane achievements. But those who say "It's only fiction!" are ever at peril of being embarassed by some huge blockbuster or just some dime novel, that actually transforms themselves, if not quite the world.

But on any scale, from personal to global, one must never underestimate the power of fiction. The Spanish Taliban in the Philippines once did, but their particular brand of theocracy died as a result, partly because two novels, the Noli Me Tangere and the El Filibusterismo. José Rizál established a foundation for the Nation now called the Philippines, by proclaiming and demonstrating in fiction, the humanity of the "Filipinos" -- the insulares (Spaniards born and raised in the Archipelago); the native indios; and chinos; and exposing the oh-so-human persons under the divine cloak of the Frailocracy (Apolinario Mabini's term) that I prefer to call the Spanish Taliban, which until that time, resisted and impeded even the progress in Madre España herself from coming to the faraway Archipelago.

Now there is also great literature, and art, and history, and philosophy at the heart and foundation of perhaps the greatest story ever told -- that of Jesus Christ and the Church that became the Roman Catholic Church, which still comprises more than half of what is called Christianity. The New Testament, the Gospels or Good News of Jesus Christ, also proclaimed the humanity of downtrodden men, tribes and nations, and exposed the inhumanity of Empire and Italian imperialists. The King of the Jews was -- much more than José Rizál or George Washington or Mahatma Gandhi -- the greatest Destabilizer of all time, true God and true Man!

2006 has been a remarkable year for the Story of Christianity. During the Christian Holy Week at the end of Lent, the National Geographic Society released its years long project on the Gospel of Judas. This week, The Da Vinci Code, a movie directed by Ron Howard and starring Oscar champion Tom Hanks, will debut globally to a stupendous worldwide controversy, at least within the precincts of Christendom. Based on the novel of the same name by author Dan Brown (as if you didn't know) the pre-release publicity swirling around the movie has already been making waves in the Philippine Archipelago along with Tropical Storm Caloy this week.

Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales of Our Ever-Loyal City of Manila has called for its outright ban, together with Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita. Both however are very likely disappointed that the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines would rather not give the film any more of a boost by announcing a boycott. The CBCP refuses to piss in the wind as Señor Ed Ermita and Fray Rosales have.

As for the Opus Dei, they are likely to get a BIG BOOST in recruitments along with the brickbats as a sadomasochistic cult devoted to corporal self-mortification as a means to holiness. Kind of like Medieval, scholarly monks who work out at fashionable physical fitness gyms while maintaining respectable, above average jobs in modern society. Some of my friends are numeraries and supernumeraries. So are yours, or didn't you know?

Ultimately, I hope that book and film brings about a real catharsis in Catholicism over the following related issues:

(1) women's status within the Church, including the all-male priesthood;
(2) priestly celibacy and married priests;
(3) male supremacism or male chauvinism in the Roman Catholic Church.

The novel itself has the power to do this, in my most humble opinion. Here, for example is the very ending of the novel by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, which happens where it begins, in the Louvre Museum in Paris

Tremulous, Langdon walked to the edge and peered down into the Louvre's sprawling underground complex, aglow with amber light. His eye was trained not just on the massive inverted pyramid, but on what lay directly beneath it. There, on the floor of the chamber below, stood the tiniest of structures... a structure Langdon had mentioned in his manuscript. Langdon felt himself awaken fully now to the thrill of unthinkable possibility. Raising his eyes again to the Louvre, he sensed the huge wings of the museum enveloping him... hallways that burgeoned with the world's finest art. Da Vinci... Botticelli... Adorned in masters' loving art, She lies. Alive with wonder, he stared once again downward through the glass at the tiny structure below. I must go down there! Stepping out of the circle, he hurried across the courtyard back toward the towering pyramid entrance of the Louvre. The day's last visitors were trickling out of the museum. Pushing through the revolving door, Langdon descended the curved staircase into the pyramid. He could feel the air grow cooler. When he reached the bottom, he entered the long tunnel that stretched beneath the Louvre's courtyard, back toward La Pyramide Inversée. At the end of the tunnel, he emerged into a large chamber. Directly before him, hanging down from above, gleamed the inverted pyramid—a breathtaking V-shaped contour of glass. The Chalice. Langdon's eyes traced its narrowing form downward to its tip, suspended only six feet above the floor. There, directly beneath it, stood the tiny structure. A miniature pyramid. Only three feet tall. The only structure in this colossal complex that had been built on a small scale. Langdon's manuscript, while discussing the Louvre's elaborate collection of goddess art, had made passing note of this modest pyramid. "The miniature structure itself protrudes up through the floor as though it were the tip of an iceberg—the apex, of an enormous, pyramidical vault, submerged below like a hidden chamber." Illuminated in the soft lights of the deserted entresol, the two pyramids pointed at one another, their bodies perfectly aligned, their tips almost touching. The Chalice above. The Blade below. The blade and chalice guarding o'er Her gates. Langdon heard Marie Chauvel's words. One day it will dawn on you. He was standing beneath the ancient Rose Line, surrounded by the work of masters. What better place for Saunière to keep watch? Now at last, he sensed he understood the true meaning of the Grand Master's verse. Raising his eyes to heaven, he gazed upward through the glass to a glorious, star-filled night. She rests at last beneath the starry skies. Like the murmurs of spirits in the darkness, forgotten words echoed. The quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one. With a sudden upwelling of reverence, Robert Langdon fell to his knees. For a moment, he thought he heard a woman's voice... the wisdom of the ages... whispering up from the chasms of the earth.

We need a catharsis in Catholicism about women and marriage. These works of fiction, both book and movie, make the concept of a Jesus Christ in love, and of a married Christ, with wife and kids, a reasonable and plausible one, at least as plausible and reasonable as the official picture of a bachelor, without actually destroying Christian morality or values. They also seem to elevate the Feminine Mystique (to hijack a term from the Sixties) to that of the Divine, as much perhaps as His Manhood has been worshipped and upheld for emulation for the last 2000 years.

With the most severe labor shortage in the clergy since the apostles got their tongues, the next 2000 may go easier with re-enforcements from the tribe of Eve, who own half the Heavens.

GLORIA MACAPAGAL ARROYO is on a roll. Last month, at the height of growing opposition to the people's initiative and chacha, she commuted the sentences of Philippine death row convicts to life in prison without the legally required premises for the exercise of the Presidential power of clemency. This she did in order to give a sop to the Catholic Bishops and the anti-capital punishment crowd, who are naturally titillated by her sudden dangling of such an ideological prize.

It paid off big time with this duly sycophantic editorial from PDI, which today is full of hosannas for the liberator of Saudi Arabia's biggest Filipino headaches: several hundred Filipino Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs) who are in Saudi jails for a variety of alleged crimes. Now I am sure not all these people were in jail for just causes, but I also doubt that out of the millions of Filipinos working the Middle East, that they were the best behaved. PDI says,

Still, the President was received by the new Saudi king. She got to meet and greet Filipino workers, and following her home was the first batch among hundreds of Filipinos languishing in Saudi jails. On that score alone, her trip was worth it, and deserves the nation’s appreciation. Still, the President’s efforts placed a spotlight on the tragic side of the overseas Filipino worker (OFW) experience. And the question is what sort of follow-through there will be.

I have no admiration whatsoever for the Saudi system of justice, but it seems to me the Saudis just emptied out their jails of certain Filipinos that are now suddenly back here on the people's peso, courtesy of the triumphantly returning liberator. How many of these OFWs actually deserve to have their hands or heads cut-off under Saudi justice and yet are now magically free? Are they all the rape victims of evil Saudi predators unjustly accused of stealing the Maharani's jewels to escape? Some likely are. As many, likely are not. I suppose the President will now present these returning OFWs as the trophies of her magnificent conquest of the Saudi Prince, heroes of the Great Filipino Diaspora and give them all house-and-lot packages as she did Angelo de la Cruz? But the only "follow-through" we can expect is for the people to pay for GMA's publicity coup.

PDI also likes this turn of events because, as the voice of political correctness in the Philippines, it has been their contention that the OFW phenomenon does not really benefit the country. Note the phrase the "tragic side of the OFW experience" -- by which they really mean a characterization often seen in those paper's pages: "OFWs are just the toilet-bowl cleaners of the world."

Reporting to her Cabinet about her voyage to Arabia in glowing terms aimed straight at the camera, and with her cronies arranging for the warm hosannas of the Press, Mrs. Arroyo also announced how admiring the Saudi royalty is of her "political will" -- a thing about which their own tenacity is legendarily infamous. So admiring that the Saudi Prince was said to have promised her "his first investment in Philippine tourism." What? Another seaside tropical brothel far from the prying eyes of Muslim chastity for Arab potentates with a taste for the sultry pulchritude first glimpsed in an imported FilipiNA or FilipiNO domestic helper?

As for the purported real objective of the visit, to lobby for a seat on the Organization of Islamic Conference and to secure "guarantees" on the price of oil from Saudi Arabia, -- ha ha! -- we can only guess at the polite response, from the utter silence of the President on that score, and her ballyhooing, preening and smiling at herself on winning the release of not 80, not 100, not even 200 OFWs "languishing in Saudi jails." So they sent her home with a bunch of her countrymen and women, saved themselves a great expense in food, shelter and clothing for their Filipino headaches, and won themselves some brownie points.

What does the Philippines get? Look at the title.

I like far better, the consolations of Pablo Neruda, such as --

The Beggars

By the cathedrals, clotting
the walls they deploy
with their bundles, their black looks, their limbs,
ripped tins of provender,
the livid increase of the gargoyles;
beyond on the obdurate
unction of stone
they nurture a gutter-flower
of legitimized plague, in migrations.

The park has its paupers
like its trees of extortionate
foliage and root forms:
at the garden's margin, the slave,
like a sink at the verge of humanity,
content with his tainted disymmetry
supine by the broom of his dying.

Though charity bury them
in the pit of their pestilence,
they suffice for the human condition: they prefigure us.
Our wisdom is this: to trample them under,
to harry the breed in the sties of contempt,
servility's creatures, wearing servility's livery--
we may show them our bootsoles
or interpret their lack in the order of nature.
American panhandlers, '48's offsprings,
grandsons of church doors,
I do not commend you.
I will not invest you with ivory usages,
the rhetorist's figure, monarchical beards,
or explain you away with a book, like the others.

I efface you, and hope--
who never will enter my discipline's love,
neither you nor your pieties, nor pass to my pity.
I exile your dust from the earth
and those who contrived you to soil
a contemptible image--
till metals remake you
and you issue and blaze like a blade!

UPDATE: The Hillblogger, a Filipino based in Belgium, has many interesting comments on this, the Aragoncillo matter, and the great battle of the Fork and Spoon in Canada. She is fresh from a voyage into Eastern Europe and adds a valuable voice to the discourses on many, many blogs in the Philippine blogosphere, including Philippine Commentary. I am sure we all appreciate her substantive and incisive comments. Her blog is a regular read for me. It should be yours too!

Glenn Omanio of Newsroom Barkada has a post describing the profile of the returning, Filipinos, for whom, according to the report, the Saudi King paid "blood money" to give them freedom.

Jon Mariano at the Hong Kong Big Mind has a nice take on Ed Ermita wearing a cilice on his head, oops, I mean getting into Yahoo!News for his remarks (also an obvious sop to the Catholic Bishops) suggesting that the movie, The Da Vinci Code be banned in the Philippines. Well Mr. Ermita apparently has the Lucena City Board agreeing with him, with many more to follow in an irresistable two-step that will demonstrate how devout and holy Their Honors truly are. The commentary of Jester-in-Exile: "And I thought the Inquisition ended all those years ago. Apparently it's still ongoing here in Timog Katagalugan."

Oh well, as in past attempts to impose the Official Morality in a country where the Evil Reality is easily ignored by the sanctimonious paragons in Media and Govt, such a ban and boycott led by the Opus Dei is sure to generate a huge box office for the heresies of historical fiction.

But here is the Director of the movie, Ron Howard with his own remarks about the movie to be released on 18 May, starring Tom Hanks.

Update: ED ERMITA SHOULD WEAR A CILICE ON HIS HEAD AND THROAT I just realized that the statements of Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita on the movie, The Da Vinci Code, are an excellent opportunity to explain the principle of the Separation of Church and State, or Religious Liberty, because what he is calling for is a culpable violation of that cherished Constitutional principle--

"I think we should do everything not to allow it to be shown," he said. "I don’t see how we as a Catholic nation or as practicing Catholics would tolerate such a plot to be propagated in the name of freedom of expression."

This is a clear violation of the following provision in the Constitution:

Section 5. No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights.

Most people are mistaken when they apply the Principle to the actions of Church men, which this provision does not limit in any way. Separation of church and state addresses itself to the government and the State itself, enjoining it from either promoting Religion or prohibiting it.

But Ermita claims we are "a Catholic Nation." It's like when Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban exposed his own religious bigotry when he claimed the Philippines is Monotheistic Republic. Both men are amazingly oblivious to their transgression. Or are they?

ZAMBOANGA JOURNAL has this wrenching story about a little girl kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf. Grrrr!

WHY did the confessed Filipino-American spy, Danilo Aragoncillo, come to Manila on 10 June 2005, a scant four days after Ignacio Bunye revealed the existence of the Garci Recordings to the Malacanang Press Corps? Why did he stay until 3 July 2005? If he was indeed delivering a "blueprint for a coup d'etat" and allegedly conspiring with Erap, Ping and other opposition politicians in a plot to overthrow President GMA, did that blueprint or ingredients of it come from US intelligence information he came into possession of? Our best information says that Erap started handing out copies of the Garci Recordings to selected individuals, as early as April, 2005, according to testimony before the Five Congress Committees investigating the matter last year. Who made the original recordings that became the Garci Tapes? What does it mean that the US Government has sent notices to Erap, Ping and JV Ejercito that their telephones and/or emails were intercepted and surveilled under US Court Order last year?

Since neither the Philippine nor US government is likely to ever be completly forthcoming about what they know of the PROVENANCE of so destructive and poisonous a mystery and conundrum as the Garci Recordings represent, we in the Public Domain ought to feel completely unbound to ask such questions and continue the quest to discover the answers to them.

PING'S THE BIG LOSER: I hope this results in the resolution of the five year old double murder case of a top public relations operator, Bubby Dacer and his driver, Danny Corbito, five years ago. Two persons closely associated with Sen. Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, Michael Ray Aquino and Cesar Mancao are wanted in connection with those murders. Also, the Senator has numerous legal woes in the United States in connection with various cases filed against him in California Court involving a multimillion dollar deal to purchase handcuffs over which he has been sued. However, it is an enduring mystery why the Philippine government has never quite moved for the extradition of these men back to the Philippines. It may have something to do with the fact that no one quite knows who actually rubbed out Dacer and his driver. There was much talk at that time that Bubby Dacer was "canoing on two rivers" -- some think he was killed by both sides.

Counter Intelligence Center has the Leandro Aragoncillo AND Michael Ray Aquino story covered with a comprehensive set of links, including a Time Line of the case and Court Records including this Final Indictment (PDF) by a New Jersey State Grand Jury. News of his guilty plea and the bargain that avoids a capital punishment case are carried by the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

WHO IS LEANDRO ARAGONCILLO: FBI Intelligence Analyst at Fort Monmouth, NJ in the FBI's Information Technology Center. Hired July 2004, suspended 12 Sept 2005. Retired US Marine Gunnery Sergeant with 21 years service, 1983-2004.

Stationed in Japan, Guantanamo Bay, Quantico, VA and White House.

Assignment to the White House between 1999 and 2002 as "administration chief" of the security detail assigned to the Vice President (Gore and then Cheney).

Held Top Secret clearance.

Six Good Conduct Medals and a Humanitarian Service Medal

Looking over his curriculum vitae, Aragoncillo was clearly not a janitor rummaging in the trash. He was clearly a highly trusted person within both Democratic and Republican administrations, serving both Gore and the present Veep Dick Cheney. Look at his assignments too: Japan, Gitmo, Quantico, the White House!

Also, the CIC time line shows that it was alert Immigration officials last year who actually ended up exposing Aragoncillo's illegal activities, when, as an FBI agent he approaced US Immigration officials on behalf of Michael Ray Aquino, who'd been arrested for overstaying his visa. Not CIA, not homeland security, not the NSA.

There are a number of rather intriguing facts revealed in the timeline too. It seems that Leandro Aragoncillo was in Manila on 10 June 2005 until 3 July 2005. He arrived just four days after Ignacio Bunye inadvertendly ignited the Gloriagate scandal on 6 June 2005 and was here throughout the first heady month of Gloriagate when the Garci Recordings were being reproduced by bloggers and mass media. Hmmm, I wonder what he was doing here and if this was coincidence. It was claimed by Atty. Alan Paguia in Congress testimony last year, that it was former President Joseph Estrada who, sometime in April, 2005, gave him two analog casette tapes containing the Garci Conversations which he then edited to include only the conversation with the alleged voice of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Virgilio Garcillano, before presenting them to the five House C0mmittees investigating the Garci Tapes. But how did Erap get the Garci Tapes?

The matter of the provenance of the Garci Tapes has never been explained to anybody's satisfaction. WHO made the original wiretappings that produced the recordings is as much a mystery today as on Day One. Although the reigning theory in the Public domain is that the Intelligence Services of the AFP made those wiretappings under orders from the Palace, because the First Gentleman (who was at the heart of the election operations) allegedly just did not trust Garcillano with what General Francisco Gudani described in Senate hearings as P500 million for Mindanao election operations.

The Isafp certainly could have done it, since it is public knowledge that the US had donated high tech monitoring equipment to the Philippine government, and provide technical training after the sensational escape of the Indonesian terrorist bomber (Rizal Day, 30 December 2000), Fathur Rohman al Ghozi from the Isapf High Security jail facility in Manila. Moreover, the simple fact is that Isafp T/Sgt Vidal Doble's voice is the one heard introducing most of the taped Garci conversations.

DID THE GARCI TAPES COME FROM US INTEL: The Aragoncillo spy case has dredged up a lot of new material and now I am not so sure that Isafp was the true and original source of the the Garci conversations! I think it is time to revisit the old, original theory that the Garci Tapes came from US Intelligence.

One reason this theory has become viable to my mind, is the revelation of the existence of a massive US wiretapping and data mining operation on domestic and foreign individuals and organizations undertaken by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The best summary of these events for our purposes happens to be a my favorite BLAWG site, the Volokh Conspiracy where we find this set of links on the matter:

1. Congressional Research Service Report on NSA Surveillance:
2. Data-Mining, FISA, and the NSA Surveillance Program:
3. New Risen Book Sheds Light on NSA Surveillance Program:...
10. Legal Analysis of the NSA Domestic Surveillance Program:
11. Deputy Attorney General Stepping Down:
12. Staffing the Justice Department:

Here is an excerpt from the December 2005 James Risen book, that people here may find interesting: it shows that the overwhelming majority of the data acquisition and data mining operation conducted by the NSA since 911 has been targetted at foreign sources:

According to Risen, the key to the new program is a shift in telecommunications technology in recent decades that has made U.S. networks the carriers of lots of international telephone and e-mail traffic.

In addition to handling telephone calls from, say, Los Angeles to New York, the switches also act as gateways into and out of the United States for international telecommunications. A large volume of purely international telephone calls — calls that do not begin or end in America — also now travel through switches based in the United States. Telephone calls from Asia to Europe, for example, may go through the United States-based switches. This so-called transit traffic has dramatically increased in recent years as the telephone network has become increasingly globalized. Computerized systems determine the most efficient routes for digital "packets" of electronic communications depending on the speed and congestion on the networks, not necessarily on the shortest line between two points. Such random global route selection means that the switches carrying calls from Cleveland to Chicago, for example, may also be carrying calls from Islamabad to Jakarta. In fact, it is now difficult to tell where the domestic telephone system ends and the international network begins.
In the years before 9/11, the NSA apparently recognized that the remarkable growth in transit traffic was becoming a major issue that had never been addressed by FISA or the other 1970s-era rules and regulations governing the U.S. intelligence community. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches that were physically on American soil, eavesdropping on those calls might be a violation of the regulations and laws restricting the NSA from spying inside the United States.
But transit traffic also presented a major opportunity. If the NSA could gain access to the American switches, it could easily monitor millions of foreign telephone calls, and do so much more consistently and effectively than it could overseas, where it had to rely on spy satellites and listening stations to try to vacuum up telecommunications signals as they bounced through the air.

I think what this means is that the Garci conversations could've been just one of thousands upon thousands of intel data captures that the NSA program found in its telecomm+email nets.

Indeed, one of the links on the CIC website is this article (PDI, Mar 17): "US Bugged Estrada, son JV and Ping"

The United States, starting from an unprecedented spying scandal in the White House allegedly involving Filipino-American Leandro Aragoncillo, had bugged former President Joseph Estrada and his son, Mayor Joseph Victor (JV) Ejercito of San Juan town in Metro Manila, official sources said. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case, said Sen. Panfilo Lacson had also been subjected to wiretapping.The US Embassy sent a diplomatic note dated Feb. 1 to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) transmitting "legal Notices of Interception of wire and/or electronic communications for Joseph Estrada and JV Ejercito."

Although there has never been any doubt that the United States has a very active intelligence gathering operation in the Philippines, the fact that local politicians have been a subject of a Court-warranted WIRETAPPING and email bugging operation is quite revealing. It is presently inconceivable to me that the NSA surveillance operation DID NOT include surveillance of ALL Philippine officials, probably since 911, given the nature of the program and what we now know of its technological capabilities and its reach in foreign lands, far away from the strictures of US law and civil liberties.

It is entirely possible then that US Intelligence has the goods on Gloriagate. It is even possible that the existence of the Isapf wiretapping operation was originally revealed to Joseph Estrada by Leandro Aragoncillo because of his rooting around FBI files on Ping's behalf. The most intriguing possibility -- one that I will continue to examine for veracity -- is that the Garci Recordings themselves were somehow sourced from US intelligence data captures from the Philippines.

PIGS IN CANADA? PIGS IN THE PHILIPPINES? I didn't know that eating with a fork and spoon had already been elevated to being an element of Philippine culture, rather than the historical replacement for eating with nothing at all but bare hands and fingers. The latter practice would seem to be a far more traditional and still widespread practice in the Philippine Archipelago. So I suppose that both the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Department of Foreign Affairs should be praised and adulated for their perspicacious efforts at preserving and promoting Philippine culture. In their Sunday editorial PDI says:

PDI (Sunday Editorial): We are glad to note that the Philippine Embassy in Canada has supported the boy's mother in her complaint filed with the local school board. "The embassy considers this an affront to Philippine culture and continues to vigorously support any action that will validate a conclusion of racial discrimination," Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Gilbert Asuque said the other day.

I'm foursquare against racisml, but I truly wonder if that is what this is all about. I caught a short video of mother and son on ABSCBN News and got the distinct impression that I wouldn't want to be this boy's lunch monitor either. Not because of his fork and spoon cultural trait, but because, as some of the reporting de-emphasized, young master Cagadoc was causing an uproar among his classmates and his impish behavior drew laughs and derision from other kids. I thought I caught him making a face at the camera man in that snippet I saw. Anybody else notice that?

REMEMBER ART BELL! It's as if PDI and those kneejerk defenders of Filipino cultural and racial honor have already forgotten the Art Bell Fiasco of 2001. To be absolutely consistent with their fervor burning for Filipino culture, such heroes ought really to call for an abrogation of the principle of in loco parentis when it comes to public and private schooling, demand that eating with hands and/or feet be legitimized as part of cultural integrity.

LOG IN OUR EYE: How dare those nasty Canadians renege on "multicultural diversity", PDI and the nationalist lynch mobs cry. I wonder how much of such a wondrous virtue can be said to exist in the Philippines. How much tolerance is there in Manila compared to Montreal, Basilan or Payatas compared to Roxbury, any Filipino public school and Ecole Lalande...??

Pigs in Canada? Pigs in the Philippines! And yeah, contrary to their own Journalists Code of Ethics, they never really got the other side before launching another idiotic bit of their ideological VICTIMOLOGY.

FACT: Not a single real person was found GUILTY of any crime in the three recent Supreme Court Decisions on EO464, CPR and PP1017, even though numerous laws and statutes are said to have been brazenly violated by acts deemed illegal and unconstitutional. I'm sure this verity is covered by the usual presumptions of regularity.

FICTION: There are no episodes of Perry Mason where the verdict was partially innocent or partially guilty. At least Hollywood understands the common man's expectation of the appropriate climax to a courtroom drama.

QUESTIONS: In what sense can it actually be said that Petitioners won and Respondents lost anything but some controversy long moot by subsequent events, and is only endlessly academic now? How enforceable is the Court's resolve that future constitutional aberrations be averted by its mere Decision-making?

There is no doubt that a unanimous or nearly unanimous Decision by any Court gives it a certain moral force. But when the thing over which the Court finds such strong agreement upon leads to a verdict that reads "WHEREFORE, the Petitions are granted in part...", ordinary citizens are naturally confused because we expect that a Decision handed down by the final arbiter of the Constitution, the very Court of Last Resort, ought to result in a definitive verdict like GUILTY or NOT GUILTY. It doesn't seem to do justice in the real world to have a decision which does not make a decisive evaluation of that kind. It doesn't seem, in other words, that the Court was trying the human beings accused of awful crimes against other persons and against the Law itself in these Decisions, but rather it was analyzing and ruling upon disembodied pieces of paper with decrees and orders and proclamations written on them. In these Decisions, the Supreme Court does not give the impression of judging real villains in the real world, but of noticing the undotted I's and uncrossed T's of certain only partially unconstitutional prose, striking down here and there the most egregiously violative passages, described by Justice-Columnist Isagani Cruz as "a spanking with a felt slipper."

Indeed, WHO has actually suffered any censure or pain when the Court strikes down (in 16 point Times New Roman Bold) Section 2b of some executive order? What does it actually mean for the common sense of just retribution and the rule of Law that no one at all is to be punished even if the Decisions all rise to stentorian timbre in their condemnation of unconstitutional and illegal acts?

It is a remarkable shock for as many of her supporters as her detractors to discover that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo cannot seem to be stopped or even slowed down, not even by the Supreme Court! The Palaces is remorseless, despite three progressively more strident and negative Supreme Court Decisions against her policies and actions since Gloriagate got going, all in the space of the last few weeks: Senate v. Ermita (on the EO464 Gag Rule); Bayan v. Ermita (on CPR/BP880) and Randy David v. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (PP1017).

These unanimous or nearly unanimous Decisions have not produced any apparent remorse or repentance on the part of Malacanang Palace and the President's men I think because their Solomonic disposative portions weaken the moral force of the Decisions by a quintessential ambivalence and equivocation. It is not the kind of Decision one expects: Guilty or Not Guilty. Go Free or Go To Jail. Instead, these Decisions leave wiggle room for continuing strife and disagreement about fine legal and constitutional issues.

Among those who have until today continued to express optimism and hope, (if never quite complete confidence), in the Supreme Court, I can think of no one more eloquent in his chagrin at the evolving turn of events since the Decisions were handed down, than Dean Raul Pangalangan of the University of the Philippines College of Law, who smolders in his PDI column today...(perhaps sensing the inherent futility of mere Decisions from the "weakest branch of govt" against a supernally determined Chief Executive.)...

Trifling With Constitutional Sanctities (PDI Dean Raul Pangalangan): As I have written earlier in this space, I am a partisan in this case, having argued before the Court (together with professor Harry Roque) in behalf of Randy David, Akbayan president Ronald Llamas and Rep. Lorenzo Tañada III. I disagree with the Court that all these civil rights violations can be separated from PP 1017. Can we thus insulate President Arroyo from all responsibility?

Both the majority and the dissent confirm that those who violate civil liberties must be punished. The President took an oath "to preserve and defend [the] Constitution [and] execute [our] laws." The Constitution says that she "shall ensure that the laws be faithfully executed." Has she called the erring military officers to answer for violations, or has she in fact promoted or rewarded them?

The Court has thrice rebuffed the President's faulty legal measures: EO 464 and the stifling of the congressional power of inquiry; the calibrated preemptive response relied upon to unleash anti-riot police upon civilians; and now, PP 1017. Has she actually disclaimed, disowned, disavowed any of the acts chastised by the Court?

When she signed PP 1017, her Cabinet secretaries declared that this would authorize warrant-less arrests and the seizure of private businesses. Under the "alter ego" theory, acts by the Cabinet secretaries are acts by the President. Is she really that distant from the civil rights violations? Since February 24, the day a national emergency was declared, has she taken a single step to correct those who had erred? Or has she embraced their acts as her own?

Felix Frankfurter said: "The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from ... unchecked disregard of the [laws] that fence in [state power]." Elsewhere, US courts have cautioned: "[I]llegitimate ... practices get their first footing ... by silent approaches and slight deviations .... It is the duty of the courts to [guard] against [such] stealthy encroachments."

Stealthly encroachments upon Constitutional sanctities indeed! Considering the transcendental nature of the issues that came before it in the 2006 PGMA cases, others have noted the Supreme Court's deficiency in the timing of its Decisions, which indeed have come months after the subsequent events had already rendered even a most academically learned and rhetorically strident Supreme Court Decision, moot and academic. Here for example is today's PDI Editorial:

Delayed Relief (PDI) It is for the public to demand that there be accountability on the part of the executive branch which has been declared three times in a row to have gratuitously and dangerously exceeded its authority. But it is for the judiciary to intervene sooner, so that what is wrong can be set right, and not merely declared improper after all the improper objectives of the authorities have been achieved, and thus made irreversible.

Thus despite the Court's claim in David v. GMA, that it would not evade the substantive issues involving PP1017 by declaring the issue moot and academic by virtue of PP1021, their long DELAY in deciding the cases has already brought about that effect!

UNANIMOUS OR NEAR UNANIMOUS, BUT AMBIGUOUS AND SOLOMONIC The fact of the Decisions being unanimous or near unanimous leaves me cold. In fact, the 11-3 Decision on PP1017, David v. GMA at least produced an interesting "exchange" between Justice Dante Tinga who led the three dissenting judges, and Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban who filed a reply to the dissent by way of concurring with the majority. (Also covered in Dean Pangalangan's piece). Yet in every case, there is countervailing facet of the Decisions: all of the them grant the petitions only in part, creating the impression of them as being "Solomonic."

The exact nature of this equivocation will lead now to the usual endless commentaries and debates (of which we are ineluctably a part) over WHAT the Decisions ultimately mean in the real world and for future Decisions.

But considering the transcendental nature of the issues involved in these cases, I think this ambiguity or Solomonic equivocation, real or not, diminishes the moral force of the Decisions by giving the Palace enough "wiggle room" to rationalize its past actions, and continue in its aberrant ways, while the rest of us stew in the outrage and frustration not only at that Justice has already been delayed, but also that Justice is continuing to be denied by the Palace, fatuously and disdainfully.

Because I belong to the tribe of human beings called Physicists (we built the Core of the Internet and invented the World Wide Web!) I am proud to say that the laws of nature and mathematics with which we must work, appear to be in far better shape than the kind of Laws that Supreme Courts write long complicated decisions about. But that may only be because people are a lot more complicated and unpredictable than molecules and neutron stars, especially when Presidents, full of hubris and heedlessness, wantonly violate the Law, and the rest of us can't seem to do anything about it. Not even the Supreme Court!

Yes, despite many revolutionary and wonderful things going on in the world of science and technology, this weblog has been mainly preoccupied in its first few months of life, with politics and the Law, with religions and constitutions, with terror and war, perhaps because there ARE more urgent things for even scientists to care and blog about. Things like freedom of information, speech and assembly, things like freedom of the press, and the right of the public to know what their government has been doing. Things that are the essential ingredients of a free and open democratic society. Without such a society, we cannot even hope to engage in the quintessentially human endeavours like science and education, art and music and poetry and religion, and the other tasks involved in nation building. Most of all, without a fundamental framework of justice and liberty for all, there cannot be peace or stability in any society.

Because of the particular political situation that has arisen in the Philippines under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Constitutional issues have assumed central importance, as the Chief Executive has displayed a willingness to test the limits of Constitutional government in the name of personal political survival. After a year of devastating strife between the President and a determined democratic Opposition composed largely of the President's erstwhile allies and supporters in civil and political society, the President's chickens are coming home to roost, as the Supreme Court chips away at three big bricks of the Palace's stonewall.

Now, the Philippine Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, has been in session in the cool aerie of Baguio City, the Summer Capital. The High Court has displayed an admirable productivity while in the High Country, perhaps by virture of escaping the lowland oven of heat-misery that the Archipelago turns into at this time of the year (which the inhabitants rightly call "summer"--though it is asynchronous with a similar season in the temperate parts of the earth.) But the Panganiban Court during the last month or so has treated the nation to a rare trio of evidently momentous Decisions on three highly controversial matters, two of them six months old but we shall let that pass.

Writing Supreme Court decisions is hard work, Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban told reporters with evident sincerity during a break in the Court's deliberations, "because they must also write with authority."

As writers, webloggers have gotta sympathize with that. CJ Panganiban is probably referring to all the Footnotes that represent the citations and quotations in the bodies of these decisions, from Philippine and other jurisprudence, especially American. But take a look at some statistics about the three recent Supreme Court Decisions:

109 Footnotes in the EO464 Decision (16,405 words)
26 Footnotes in the CPR/BP880 Decision (12,369 words)
158 Footnotes for the PP1017 Decision. (24,625 words)

(For comparison purposes, a typical Op/Ed column in a broadsheet like the Inquirer or Manila Times runs between 500 and 1000 words, shorter at the Manila Bulletin, unbearably longer at the Philippine Star.

One has to marvel too, at the high quality of the writing in the three recent cases decided by the Supreme Court. Statements and arguments in the body of the decision are amply supported by authorities and quotations in the Footnotes. In many ways this is like any well-written weblog, which usually has content backed up by links to material that supports or illustrates the points being made.

Non lawyers should really not be intimidated by Supreme Court Decisions, for they are but a genre of English Composition called rhetorical writing that bloggers are very familiar with.

One thing I have noticed about authorship in the Decisions is that although a single Justice writes the Decision, the work of many hands is quite obvious to people like editors who easily detect changes in the style and tone of the judicial prose from paragraph to paragraph.

It helps to know about the various "rules of construction" that ponentes and justices adhere to, in order to follow many lines of argument and reasoning about precedents and other jurisprudence. There is in some sense, very little that is truly creative or original in any given Supreme Court decision. The tradition in the Philippine Court is apparently that enunciated in Javellana -- to rely heavily on precedent and not to disturb what has been previously decided. Each successive decision must build on the whole superstructure that has already been erected before it in Constitutions, statutes and precedents.

Morphologically speaking, a Supreme Court decision is actually less complicated than a modern weblog! There is a kind of "header" that presents the Petitioners versus the respondents -- a kind of Title and Dramatis Personae Listing as one often finds in plays and other such divertissements. Then there a lengthy Statement of the Facts of the case which ends in a succinct statement of WHAT the issues are exactly, that the rest of the decision will attempt to decide. Then begins a long careful review of laws and previous decisions, and how they apply to the Facts. After weighing and balancing the various rights, privileges, interests and positions of the petitioners and respondents, the Decision comes to its Disposative portion, where judgment is rendered. Their value as additions to the edifice of the Law will be debated for years to come.

But I am happy just to read these Decisions as freshly written essays by intelligent men and women on timely issues of the day, and not have to run into grammatical or spelling errors. Indeed, there is downright fine prose in some of these. We must give the Justices of the Philippine Supreme Court that much. I guess my favorite of the three is Justice Conchita Carpio Morales in Senate v. Ermita.

The Supreme Court Website has done a good job of immediately posting these Decisions of the Court as soon as they are promulgated. Although the Court Administrator Ishmael Kahn usually beats their webmaster to it by contacting mass media with a summary of the decisions, there is still nothing like the text of the decision in toto -- otherwise one falls into the spin cycle, which is furiously active these days.

I took the liberty of referring to these decisions according to the customary practice of calling a decision "A versus B" where A is the first petitioner and B is the respondent. Lo and behold, the resulting case names neatly reflect the substance of the issue at bar in the three recent cases before the Court involving EO464, CPR-BP880 and PP 1017:

(1) SENATE VERSUS ERMITA (EO464) Separation of Powers is the underlying theme of Senate versus Ermita, the unanimous decision (14-0) partially striking down Executive Order No. 464, which was a gag rule on executive department heads in Pres. Arroyo's Cabinet. Executive Privilege and the Legislative Power of Inquiry and Oversight are the separate powers in antagonism. Weighed in the balance are the rights and duties of the Chief Executive to control privileged information known to public and private persons against the "Right of the Public to Know when in Congress assembled." The term "Solomonic Decision" recently made an appearance in the current lexicon because of Senate v. Ermita. I certainly thought King Solomon Cut the Baby In Half. The term "Solomonic Decision" is applicable as follows. Recall that King Solomon proposed to cut an infant in half to settle a dispute between two women claiming it as her child. Seeing that one of them would rather give up her claim than agree to kill the baby, King Solomon awards it to her, reasoning she must be its true mother! In this case, however, the Supreme Court as King Solomon actually does cut the baby right between the (2a) and the (2b). Notice that Senate v. Ermita strikes down Sections 2b and 3 of EO464 thereby declaring as illegal the a priori prohibition on attendance at Congress hearings of virtually all Executive Dept. employees below the level of department heads, but upholds the "President's opinion" on Executive Privilege expressed in Sections 1 and 2a. To the Senate goes the booby prize that they can go ahead a summon all the lower level officials they want to, but Department Heads are now given a negotiating point with which to possibly stymie any call to testify before Congress: Is your hearing, Mr. Senator or Mr. Congressman, in aid-of-legislation or for oversight? So what's the baby? Why the Power of Inquiry itself, which has just been abridged, in my humble opinion, by Senate v. Ermita. And should they be subpoenaed or shanghaied to attend, there is still the whole plethora and rich armamentarium of judicial instruction just rendered to invoke almighty Executive Privilege! Hey, and if they can't agree, they can always go back to Court. Six months of gridlock later ... (you see how this works?). By the way, in the United States jurisdiction, the distinction involving the question hour does not even seem to exist, as power to make laws is seen as being ONE with the power of inquiry, and the power of inquiry as ONE with the power of oversight. (Someone please enlighten us on this...). It seems to make sense that since Executive Privilege covers only privileged information, that privileged information could easily reside in the person of someone in the Section 2b category. Therefore I believe Executive Privilege can potentially cover such persons' testimonies before Congress. Consequently, there should also be no limit to the Congress' power to summon any executive department official to any House or Senate hearing, except for the President. Also, any executive department official, wanting to communicate directly with the House or Senate, should not need the President's permission if it involves personal knowledge of violations of law. Such officials are covered in the US jurisdiction by many so called anti-gag and Whistleblower Protection Laws.

(2) BAYAN VERSUS ERMITA (CPR-BP880) Here the valuable early observation is from Dean Raul Pangalangan of the University of the Philippines Law School, who notes the use of a complex injunction by the Court to force the creation of Freedom Parks in all towns and municipalities. Though the vote was also unanimous (13-0), I think this Decision was big win for Manila Capitol Region chief of police, Dir. Vidal Querol, who revealed on Dong Puno Live on ABSCBN ANC last night thbat it was he who resurrected Batas Pambansa BP880, the Public Assembly Law and used it as the guiding legislation of his mass rally control policy since before the eruption of the Gloriagate scandal last year. That the Court has upheld its Constitutionality was something Chief Querol could justifiably rejoice about and hold up as proof that this Decision went to the Police. The "Calibrated Pre-emptive Response" policy, which was indeed struck down in the decision, was a convenient bone to throw to petitioners, since it was in the final analysis, merely a label used in a Press Release. In the deftest escape of a Supreme Court strikedown ever seen, the Palace has blithely claimed that CPR is really just Maximum Tolerance by another name and that it is BP880 that is important anyway. The Police were able to keep May Day at bay with this Decision firmly on their side. To the extent that leftist mass organizations have adopted a fairly sophisticated system of planning, propagandizing and holding marches and demonstrations as part of their "legal urban struggle" on every issue they engage, they serve as canaries in the mine shaft for the civil liberties of all citizens vis-a-vis police tactics and practice. Given the objectives of the Left in their use of "People Power" --a bus they've several times missed or been thrown off of--I doubt that even the establishment of Freedom Parks will stop them from using peaceful assembly as a weapon against the State in aid of Joma's Maoist revolution.

(3) DAVID VERSUS GLORIA MACAPAGAL ARROYO (PP 1017)
UP Profs. Raul Pangalangan and Harry Roque of the Law School were on tv last night discussing the 11-3 Supreme Court decision on Proclamation 1017. They are both happier about this decision I think, than either of the two above. Here, about the only thing the President is cut some slack on by the Court is her accurate quotation of the Commander-in-chief provision of the 1987 Constitution vesting her with the power to call out the Armed Forces in order to quell lawless violence and only lawless violence as the Court emphasizes. But as Dean Pangalangan points out, in each of the wherefores and howevers that follow, the Supreme Court strikes down as unconstitutional and illegal a whole series of acts and pronouncements allegedly done in obedience to PP 1017, the February 24 presidential proclamation declaring a state of national emergency and recalling Marcos' martial law era behavior. In fact a I learned a new term to describe such Constitutional aberrations: ULTRA VIRES which translates to BAD GURRLL! BAADD GURRLLL!

Under the calling-out power, the President may summon the armed forces to aid him in suppressing lawless violence, invasion and rebellion. This involves ordinary police action. But every act that goes beyond the President’s calling-out power is considered illegal or ultra vires. For this reason, a President must be careful in the exercise of his powers. He cannot invoke a greater power when he wishes to act under a lesser power. There lies the wisdom of our Constitution, the greater the power, the greater are the limitations.

We had to wait months for this? Heck the bloggers covered most of this ground way back in February. Here's where we were in early March when I predicted Proclamation 1017 would be rendered moot and academic not by the FIAT of the Supreme Court, but by their long delay before deciding such a "transcendental issue." Although the Court says at the beginning of its summation that

In sum, the lifting of PP 1017 through the issuance of PP 1021 – a supervening event – would have normally rendered this case moot and academic. However, while PP 1017 was still operative, illegal acts were committed allegedly in pursuance thereof. Besides, there is no guarantee that PP 1017, or one similar to it, may not again be issued. Already, there have been media reports on April 30, 2006 that allegedly PP 1017 would be reimposed “if the May 1 rallies” become “unruly and violent.” Consequently, the transcendental issues raised by the parties should not be “evaded;” they must now be resolved to prevent future constitutional aberration.

I would be happy to admit that my prediction was off, and happily rejoice with Raul and Harry, except for the way that Rick Saludo seemed to be sneering at everybody during his interview on ABSCBN ANC last night and the generally remorseless tone of Bunye, Gonzalez, Ermita and the rest of the unrepentant President's men. Yesterday the newspaper headlines carried the Palace's show of open defiance to the EO464 ruling, as three Cabinet officers snubbed a Senate hearing in aid of legislation.

As if nothing's happened and they haven't been slammed by the Supreme Court for screwing the pooch all along.

As for the Supreme Court, it's still got a long, long way to go before Moral Authority sets in to back up its Decisions and makes them effective in the world of molecules and human beings.

THAT is not automatic you know!

UPDATE: The Supreme Court has just published its decision on Proclamation 1017. I haven't gotten much past the title: Prof. Randolf David versus President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

How time does fly! May, June, July...it's almost time for that expected second impeachment attempt on President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo based on the Five Congress Committee's investigation of the so-called Garci Tapes -- and subsequent transgressions. But if I'm sitting in the Palace's command and control room, any time now would be just the right time for another unanimous Supreme Court decision...(In this post I am trying to "skate to where the puck will be," as they say in hockey, a sport one can truly appreciate in the summer heat of the Philippine Archipelago...]
Late last year, after five months of guilty flight as a fugitive from Justice, with a warrant for his arrest for contempt of Congress, ex-Comelec Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano emerged from a secret hiding hole that the combined forces of the NBI, the Police, the Army and the entire government never discovered. Garci immediately filed two petitions with the Supreme Court. The first Garci Petition, which was immediately rejected by the Court, asked that the House warrants for his Arrest be set aside, a matter that became moot and academic anyway after the House investigating committees offered to withdraw the warrant in exchange for Garci's testimony in Congress, which turned out, in retrospect, to have been a long continuous, but unstated taking of the Fifth Amendment by Garcillano.

But the Second Garci Petition at the Supreme Court, now seemingly forgotten in the perhaps higher profile cases of CPR, EO464 and Proclamation 1017, contains the following Prayer:

WHEREFORE, premises considered, it is most respectfully prayed that this Honorable Court issue a Resolution:

(a) ordering the immediate issuance of a Temporary Restraining Order and/or Writ of Preliminary Injunction restraining and preventing the House of Representatives Committees on Public Information, Public Order and Safety, National Defense and Security, Information Communications Technology, and Suffrage and Electoral Reforms from making use of the sound recording of the illegally obtained wiretapped conversations in their Report for the inquiries conducted relative thereto, or from otherwise making use of said recordings for any purpose; and,

(b) Granting the issuance of a Writ of Prohibition by commanding the Respondent Committees to strike off the record of the proceedings any and all references to the illegally obtained wiretapped recordings, and to desist from further using the sound recordings of the illegally obtained wiretapped conversations in any of its proceedings.

Other reliefs, just and equitable under the premises are likewise prayed for.

SIGNED (22 November 2005) EDDIE U. TAMONDONG (Counsel for Petitioner) and VIRGILIO O. GARCILLANO (Petitioner).

DIVERSIONARY CHACHA I would say that a Supreme Court ruling on the Second Petition of Virgilio Garcillano at this time would have a transcendental effect on that second impeachment attempt. Just like a hidden left hook, it could be the knockout punch that all the chacha brouhaha is meant to disguise and hide from view. I am not convinced that chacha has the full backing of the Palace. I think the whole game now is focussed on this very dangerous possibility of the one-third rule coming into play. But the chacha choo-choo train has a strictly limited run, limited primarily by the unwritten rule obeyed by all the political classes that it takes about a year to get ready for national elections, due in May, 2007 under the 1987 Constitution. I think that the Parliament in the Sky that JDV is getting everyone mad about is a diversionary tactic for what he's really got cooking in the Lower House, and what the Supreme Court may be getting ready to do.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING If there is one thing we ought to learn from the recent Supreme Court Decisions it is this. Timing is everything. I think that the two decisions on EO464 and CPR were timed for May Day, in which they can now be seen to fit like a hand in the glove of the Palace. A pusillanimous Court can be unanimously pusillanimous. WHEN they render a decision is almost as important as WHAT they decide, which can be disputed and debated and ultimately ignored anyway since the Philippine Supreme Court has not exactly built up a reputation good enough to command moral authority. But when it is convenient to wield that authority, it can easily be arranged and the Court's authority used as a cloak for more sinister purposes by the Executive.

UNANYMITY IS AS UNANIMITY DOES Unanimous decisions of the Supreme Court are regarded by spectators much as "slam dunks" are in basketball. As such, who really won in a given decision is an important question to answer. In both of the recent Decisions Senate v. Ermita (on EO 464) and Bayan v. Ermita (on BP 880) a unanimous Supreme Court voted to grant the petitions only in part, and in my opinion, the part granted to the petitioners in both cases was what is colloquially referred to as "the shaft." The truth of this accusation was attested to today by the non-appearance of several Cabinet officials at a Senate hearing in aid of legislation headed by Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile. And of course, the police rejoiced at the ruling on BP 880. But here is how a former Supreme Court Justice Isagani A. Cruz described Senate v. Ermita in his PDI column last Sunday --

Utang na Loob: "For being excessively deferential to Ms Arroyo, the Supreme Court withheld the judicial indignation it should have exhibited, as the conscience of the government, against the serious constitutional affront. Instead of serving as a stern warning against further presidential audacities, the ponencia merely made the timid motion of a slap on the wrist. It was like spanking a pampered child with a felt slipper."

Any punitive effect on the President was nil, even if the prose of Justice Conchita Carpio Morales contains many plausibly and defensibly "indignant" passages. The decision was so finely balanced, so well-reasoned that it succeeded in doing nothing more than perfect EO 464 for a future assertion of executive privilege. If one wants to understand how the rule of construction is applied such that government issuances are read as much as possible as to render them Constitutional, this is the Decision to study. In Senate v. Ermita (EO464) -- anyone who has truly read it carefully several times will admit --the Supreme Court bends over backward like a pretzel to do so.

Yesterday, Fr. Joaquin Bernas -- "the guru of destabilization" as Justice Sec. Raul Gonzalez has dubbed him -- asks of the decision in his PDI column yesterday: Who Really Won?

Bernas: "Thus, the fact that the Court has upheld the existence of executive privilege in jurisprudence does not mean that the Court has upheld the privileged nature of the claims so far made by the government. For instance, the decision did not mean that the information Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani was prevented from communicating was privileged in nature. What Gudani knows might just be information which the public has every right to know. This can be verified in a closed door hearing of the Court. Hence, again, the claim of government victory in the tribunal's decision on EO 464 is premature, to say the least."

Who really won then? It sounds as if Fr. Bernas really isn't sure either. His answer is: "It remains to be seen!" He seems to accept the general principles laid out by the Court, but is conscious that the decision basically preserves the status quo. Perhaps the new decision is just another brick in the stone wall of Gloriagate. After all, it provides explicit instructions to the Executive about how to do it right the next time -- with no penalty for the recent transgressions!

(1) The power of inquiry of Congress is fundamental to its task of continuously making new laws and perfecting old ones. As a rule, Congress has a right to all information that is of public interest, subject only to its own rules of procedure and the constitutional rights of private citizens and public officials that it may see fit to hail before its committees to testify to things of their personal knowledge and expertise -- in aid of legislation and as part of legislative oversight.

(2) Executive privilege is apparently the right of the executive branch of government, inherent in the principle of the separation of powers, to declare specific EXCEPTIONS to the above rule, in cases involving public safety and security, diplomatic, military and state secrets, and such other bodies of information deemed by the Chief Executive to be so sensitive as to necessitate the suppression of its entering into the public domain or public knowledge. However, even in these cases, the power of inquiry of Congress may not be thwarted, as such information may still be learned by Congress in executive session.

READINGS IN THE US CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT MANUAL

The U.S. Congressional Research Service publishes and continuously updates above document, which is a valuable resource on this topic in the US jurisdiction. Given the similarity of the Philippines system of separation of powers into Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government, it is no wonder that similar questions and issues have arisen around the concepts of executive privilege, the power of inquiry of Congress, and the power of judicial review.

President Woodrow Wilson the first American scholar to use the term “oversight” to refer to the review and investigation of the executive branch: "Quite as important as legislation is vigilant oversight of administration. It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents. The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislativefunction. "

John Stuart Mill, British utilitarian philosopher: ". . . the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government; to throw the light of publicity on its acts; to compel a full expositionand justification of all of them which any one considers questionable . . ."

Expanding on its holding in McGrain, the Court declared

, “To be a valid legislative inquiry there need be no predictable end result.”

1912 Anti-Gag Legislation and Whistleblower Protection Laws for
Federal Employees.

a. The 1912 act countered executive orders, issued by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, which prohibited civil service employees from communicating directly with Congress.

b. It also guaranteed that “the right of any persons employed in the civil service . . . to petition Congress, or any Member thereof, or to furnish informaion to either House of Congress, or to any committee or member thereof, shall not be denied or interfered with.” 37 Stat. 555 (1912) codified at 5 U.S.C. 7211 (1994).

c. The Whistleblowers Protection Act of 1978, as amended, makes it a prohibited personnel practice for an agency employee to take (or not take) any action against an employee that is in retaliation for disclosure of information that the employee believes relates toviolation of law, rule or regulation or which evidences gross mismanagement, waste, fraud or abuse of authority (5 U.S.C. 2302 (b) (8)). The prohibition is explicitly intended to protect disclosures to Congress: “This subsection shall not be construed to authorize the withholding of information from the Congress or the taking of any CRS-7 personnel action against an employee who disclosures information to the Congress.”