Friday, March 30, 2007

Human Security Act Needs A Prank Terrorism Provision

TEDDY BOY LOCSIN on Korina Today (ABSCBN ANC) reveals how opponents of the Anti Terrorism Bill in the House and Senate were able to delete an important provision in the legislation punishing PRANK TERRORISM with ten years in jail. This provision was intended to prevent incidents at airports in which someone jokingly or idiotically claims to have a bomb or weapon. Such a provision would certainly apply to the Manila Hostage Crisis this past week, so Teddy Boy says he will file an amendment to the Human Security Act when Congress reconvenes. He says that even if those were wooden grenades and blank ammo in the possession of Jun Ducat and his fellow hostage takers, the police had no way of knowing that and might have opened fire or taken some other drastic action resulting in disaster. I agree. And while they're at it, those other big LOOPHOLES in the Anti Terrorism Law ought to be closed and its grievous deficiencies alleviated. The removal of the prank terrorism provision in the original version of the law was only one of dozens of amendments accomplished by so called "human rights defenders" among the honorable senators and congressmen which have in fact substantially weakened the law and inutilized it for the purpose of preventing the use of terrorist tactics and activities. What the Jun Ducat incident teaches us is that PRANK TERRORISM is really now a new form of PROTEST ACTION that could start a whole new destructive fashion among militants and so-called reformers.

Now for disturbing speculation about the Manila Hostage Crisis:

WERE PARENTS IN ON DUCAT HOSTAGE TAKING? One of the most puzzling and intriguing aspects of this story is how the parents of the 26 hostaged day-care kids (average age 5) have apparently declared no intention to file charges against Jun Ducat and his accomplices. It strikes me as most unnatural and suspicious that some of those parents who immediately made themselves available for Mass Media interviews following the end of the 10 hour hostage drama were actually supporting Jun Ducat, calling him a philanthropist, a hero, and calling for his release! Almost as if they were in cahoots with the hostage takers, they are behaving or talking not like the parents of kids kidnapped and detained in a school bus with grenades and Uzis being brandished by three men, but almost as co-conspirators. I suppose the fact that two big names (Bong Revilla and Amable Aguiluz) have acceded to the hostage taker's demand that they be given free lifetime education and even land titles also constitutes they're motive. Perhaps, as Teddy Boy suggests they also should be investigated for conspiracy to extortion!

MASS MEDIA RUN AMUCK: Mass Media in the Philippines plays a unique role which I can only describe as that of QUASI GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS. Newspapers, TV and Radio networks have become far more than objective recorders and observers of the local and national scene. Having many times tasted of social and political power potent enough to effect social changes big and small all the way to regime change at the highests levels, the Mass Media stands toe-to-toe with militant mass organizations, NGOs, and Government itself as a wielder of information, influence and power. This situation is self-congrulatingly described by some media folks as the "power of press freedom". But an irreversible consequence for reporters, journalists, broadcasters, editors, commentators anchor persons who partake of this power is that they have indeed become PUBLIC FIGURES who just happen to work in the Mass Media and can hardly claim the old title of JOURNALIST.

12 comments:

Deany Bocobo said...

You are right MB. Causing such a panic in a crowded theatre was the situation contemplated in the original provision, but that only covers causing a panic or a stir, not when it is complexed with economic (land title) and political demands (free education for the children he was holding guns and grenades to). That's why it makes every sense in the world to make the amendment to the law--the anti terrorism law.

Btw, I know you will probably bring it up again, so let me give you an answer already! It is possible to be prosecuted for crimes under the Human Security Act WITHOUT being put on a special Terrorist List or Order of Battle under the same law.

I know you don't think it is necessary for you to DEFINE terrorism, but lil by lil you are going to have to define what is NOT terrorism. haha!

Deany Bocobo said...

Mental, physical, or just prank torture?

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Deany Bocobo said...

Torture under certain circumstances?

Yes.

But I doubt such circumstances would ever arise that could not be adequately be addressed with a good shot of sodium pentathol.

How about you MB? Are there any limits to the Right of Privacy that can not be breached by the Right of the Public to Know?

Yes or no?

Deany Bocobo said...

The Right of Privacy extends to a person's entire being, his body, his mind, his very person. The right of the Public to Know is the very right which can justify the use of torture to breach a terrorist's right of privacy. So it is quite germane to your own question. Now...

"Torture is not permissible under any circumstances." -- Manuel Buencamino

Suppose there is a nuclear bomb set to go off in the middle of the City in six hours. A million people will die instantly and 10 times as many more slowly and painfully. The police arrest two men in a speedboat leaving the Philippines, one of them a missing nuclear physicist who was kidnapped along with his wife who is being tortured by the terrorists and was forced to rig the Bomb. But he doesn't know where they put it. However the other man apparently installed it and knows exactly where it is. The nearest sodium pentathol is 7 hours away.

Now answer my question, YES or NO:

Are there any limits to the Right of Privacy that can not be breached by the Right of the Public to Know?

There is an important eternal moral principle that is involved. What is it?

Deany Bocobo said...

MB,
There is stronger stuff than sodium pentathol, but it's really beside the point.

But I see your answer to my question is NO.

Which reminds me very much of a similar question asked of Michael Dukakis during the 1988 Presidential race in which he was asked whether he would allow to go on furlough a rapist that had raped his own wife and Gov. Dukakis missed the point of the question and started talking about his dedication to law and order...

It would be a pretty dedicated (or merely argumentative) civil libertarian who insists he would rather let 11 million innocent people die than to do whatever is necessary to get the information that would save them.

NO to Torture!??? Radiation burns for 10 million people is not torture to the Civil Libertarian? Even if it means both he and the Terrorist would perish in a blinding fireball together with the 11 million to uphold the principle: NO to Torture??

Here, pull my other leg, it hurts from slap-laughing!

Deany Bocobo said...

MB--Like Dukakis, your are still inhuman if you insist on that answer to the original question. Paleoliberally correct. But inhuman.

Deany Bocobo said...

MB,
First you ask me if torture is EVER justifiable. After I give a perfectly good instance of one, you make fun of it as fiction. Well of course it's fiction, but my answer is still perfectly logical by presenting an example in which most reasonable human beings would agree, torture would be a lesser evil than the incineration of 11 million human beings.

You cannot establish the opposite--that torture is NEVER justifiable--by then bringing up the acknowledged fact that most instances of torture in the world today are in fact unjustified and illegal.

You are being fallacious by a very inept use of CASUISTRY.

But you see it is like taking a human life. Is killing another person EVER justified?

Sure it is! It is called SELF-DEFENSE.

Yet what you are doing in respect to torture is like arguing that Killing is NEVER justified just because there are murderers who commit that crime, sometimes in multiples!

I know you can come up with far better logic and arguments than these lame fish in a barrel.

Unknown said...

Dean, just read the Inquirer article on blogs awards night, you won.

Congratulations.

Jego said...

Congratulations, rizalist.

Jego said...

Is costa rica insinuating something about you, rizalist? :-D

Deany Bocobo said...

No Jego. If you check out costa rica's site you will realize it is nothing personal, just a spambug. I've already reported the "blog" to blogger as an inappropriate site. Don't touch it. Toxic!