Saludos--and weep for a homeland.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 30 JAN 2015. FRI. N5.
Saludos--and weep for a homeland. 

I WATCHED this film produced by the Philippine Air Force on the ceremony welcoming the flag-draped coffins of the 42 dead, and I could only weep.

Peoples of the Philippines: we all must weep for the remains of our dreams.

These are our dreams of and for peace based on justice, and never our dreams for opportunists like them dynasts of the land, them who think they have the right to be nostalgic about their families' sacrifices and pay only lip service to the sacrifices of others. 

Some of them have led good lives in Boston, and when they came back, the presidency was theirs, first the mother and wife, and now, this son who has no sensitivity to the grief of others unless otherwise he connects it with his own stories.

The last time we checked, ladies and gentlemen of the Philippines, PNoy is the commander in chief. 

Last time we checked, traditions of statesmanship calls for the courage to admit one's own iniquities, and say to the citizens of the land these words: "The buck stops with me. I am sorry to have failed you. And I failed you big time." 

But no. 

The real señorito that he is, this president does not make sense at all.

Now, watch this film, and please, please, please let us all weep with the widows, the fatherless children both born and unborn, and the grieving relatives.

And let us weep for this homeland of the callous and the cheats. 

HON/

Band-aid benefits, assuaging feelings, and charity of the medieval kind.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 30 JAN 2015. FRI. N4.
Band-aid benefits, assuaging feelings, and charity of the medieval kind. 

THIS COLOMA ANNOUNCEMENT is pathetic.

It is about a package of benefits for the 44 fallen in Mamasapano, these brave SAF policemen who answered the call of duty to serve. 

There is no problem in this promise, except that everything in this is a problem if these same benefits are not given to every member of the police force and the armed forces of the Philippines. 

We know for a fact that somewhere in between, budget for boots and for food get lost, and we remember what happened to the food budget for the police when Pope Francis came. 

Coloma's announcement, under the direction of who else but the president who was absent at the Villamor Air Base when the 42 coffins came, is band-aid, this must be said. 

What Coloma should do is confront his boss and tell him that apart from the 44 others who did the ultimate sacrifice, there are many others out there who, for one reason or another, live in the slums like the rest of 'em the great unwashed of the Philippines. 

I know so many police people and they do not live lives the way Coloma and the president must be imagining. 

I know so many soldiers and they do not live quality lives the way these Palace factotums know or pretend to know. 

Band-Aid? Bring 'em on. 

The problem, sirs, is deeper than what you naively think.

HON/

Mentally dishonest and an inutile president called PNoy.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 30 JAN 2015. FRI. N1.
Mentally dishonest and an inutile president called PNoy. 

FROM OUR OWN EARTH we have carved under the sun, we wake up to all the blessings of the universe and all the unceasing troubles of a homeland we know deep in our hearts. 

It is a homeland of a president who makes a statement about a massacre of his own police people four days after the event. 

It is a homeland of a president who never cares to attend, even if only for a show, the coming home of the 42 dead, 3 or 4 of them from Cagayan according to a friend, and 12, according to a latest report, from the Cordilleras, some of these known to friends I know. This makes the whole narrative of political and military stupidity the more irking, annoying, and vexing. 

It is a homeland of a president who looks at the presidency as his fiefdom, with all the troubles of this homeland reduced to his own personal narrative, and unable to get past what happened to his family during the dark days of the dictatorship. 

Jesus H. Christ! Many people suffered more, and we are to remind him, this megalomaniac of a president, so many lives were sacrificed and were never recognized as heroes, even given all the media hype he now is benefitting from, he and his sister Kris. What more does this president want? 

From those little sacrifices his family went through--we must remember that they benefitted from exile in Boston--they had all the elite history of the homeland to themselves, first with his mother, and now his. And his extended family too, with the whole clan holding on to the Hacienda Luisita which purpose was not for them to claim forever in the first place but whose corporatist nature protected by his mother. 

The flow of coffins draped with the tricolors of the land is not amusing, and this president does not care, permitting only Coloma to come up with flimsy excuses, and that other girl mouthing those empty words, alibis all to give more pogi points to their inutile boss. 

The trouble with the peoples of the Philippines is that they have remained not enraged by all these, allowing even the political elite to continue abusing them.

We never learn.

HON/

Skeletons of a dream of peace and justice for a homeland.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 30 JAN 2015. FRI. N3.
Skeletons of a dream of peace and justice for a homeland. 

I CHALLENGE THIS PNOY if he knows the meaning of being president in a homeland like the Philippines. 

I challenge him if he knows the fundamentals of a social contract, or if at all he read some political philosophy that should now teach him how to govern, how to rule, and how to act presidential with grace and poise, and with statesmanship. 

I challenge him if he knows that he is obligated to act as the leader of the 100M peoples of the Philippines, and not the leader of his four sisters, and his family who, the truth be told, suffered a lot during the Marcos dictatorship. 

But this must be said about their family's suffering. 

His family sacrificed a lot, his father's, but then that life is no more than the life of thousands who had to go through the same ordeal. 

His being an Aquino does not make him more, and the others' lives, being non-Aquinos, do not make these lesser. 

One death too many: that must be the condition of that social contract, with every life accounted for, with every family accounted, with every story accounted for, with every nostalgia like Aquino's accounted for.

No: the Aquinos and the Cojuangcos are never God-sent. 

In the building up of a nation, a homeland, a country, all lives must be accounted, and this must be told this lameduck president who does not know his leadership logic at all: each life is as precious as the other, and his father's sacrifice is not--never--more than the sacrifice of others. 

With his leadership, we have but the remains--the skeletons--of a dream of peace based on justice for all our peoples. 

What a waste, these six years given him to misrule over all of us.

Only Kris, with her popularity skyrocketing, benefitted. Kris, of course, promised to stop acting on television should her brother run for the presidency and win. 

She never fulfilled her promise. 

Ah, the remains of our dreams.

HON/

Hail to the fallen!

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 30 JAN 2015. FRI. N2.
Hail to the fallen! 

EVEN IF this president, who, by the vote of the stupid electorate became president, does not care much about the fallen, we must express our collective grief and thank those who gave that ultimate sacrifice to make sense of duty to a homeland and civics and citizenship. 

These are three things we now have to question as perhaps lacking or missing or insufficient in this sitting lameduck president. 

We look at these flag-draped coffins and we see him sneering, perhaps laughing at the Santa Rosa inauguration he attended even as these 42 coffins were being unloaded from the military planes. 

We check the images, and we continue to believe in our peoples, plural, and not our political elites. 

No one among them has some decency and self-respect, has no sense of civics and citizenship, has no sense of duty to the homeland. 

Everyone of them are political leeches, sucking blood from already blood-drained people, many of them well-meaning, but simply tontos and idiots and apathetic and afflicted with hero worship, idolotry, and Eat Bulaga sensibilities. 

We need to ask the hard questions.

We need to ask the difficult questions. 

We need to do a SWOT of what gives with this inutile president who always thinks, in a nostalgic way, of what happened to his family every instance he gets. Ladies and gentlemen: his presidency is all about himself!

Now, now: he must see these images of the fallen, and for real, he must now say, Hail, hail, hail to the fallen!

HON/

Skeletons of a dream of peace and justice for a homeland.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 30 JAN 2015. FRI. N3.
Skeletons of a dream of peace and justice for a homeland. 

I CHALLENGE THIS PNOY if he knows the meaning of being president in a homeland like the Philippines. 

I challenge him if he knows the fundamentals of a social contract, or if at all he read some political philosophy that should now teach him how to govern, how to rule, and how to act presidential with grace and poise, and with statesmanship. 

I challenge him if he knows that he is obligated to act as the leader of the 100M peoples of the Philippines, and not the leader of his four sisters, and his family who, the truth be told, suffered a lot during the Marcos dictatorship. 

But this must be said about their family's suffering. 

His family sacrificed a lot, his father's, but then that life is no more than the life of thousands who had to go through the same ordeal. 

His being an Aquino does not make him more, and the others' lives, being non-Aquinos, do not make these lesser. 

One death too many: that must be the condition of that social contract, with every life accounted for, with every family accounted, with every story accounted for, with every nostalgia like Aquino's accounted for.

No: the Aquinos and the Cojuangcos are never God-sent. 

In the building up of a nation, a homeland, a country, all lives must be accounted, and this must be told this lameduck president who does not know his leadership logic at all: each life is as precious as the other, and his father's sacrifice is not--never--more than the sacrifice of others. 

With his leadership, we have but the remains--the skeletons--of a dream of peace based on justice for all our peoples. 

What a waste, these six years given him to misrule over all of us.

Only Kris, with her popularity skyrocketing, benefitted. Kris, of course, promised to stop acting on television should her brother run for the presidency and win. 

She never fulfilled her promise. 

Ah, the remains of our dreams.

HON/

iLAING 2015

Dinky's stinky sense of good time for the poor and the oppressed: some days of camping and all the days of wretchedness.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 27 JAN 2015. TUE. N5.
Dinky's stinky sense of good time for the poor and the oppressed: some days of camping and all the days of wretchedness. 

SOLIMAN HAS IT ALL WRONG, this definition of social services and development. 

Any idiot would understand this sheer idiocy in Dinky Soliman, she who has come from the ranks of the Left but has since forgotten the narrative of deprivation, oppression, and social iniquity in da Filipins.

Well, she has had the power and the privilege, and many of those who are drunk with those aphrodisiacs of an unexamined life would be prone to more and more, more and more of material possibilities of wallowing in the largesse of big government and small, if not absent, social services. 

The way things have been going on, Soliman thinks she is Mother Theresa, except that she cannot afford to bathe the sick and the dying by the Tayuman area in the heart of poor, poor Manila, 

Now, it is coming out into the open: She has spent more than PhP38M--PhP38M, Dios mio!--just so she can come up with these camping sorties for the poor, the people on the streets, the people who have nothing but prayers to the blue heavens above. 

Dinky Soliman: if you are using your head at all, this amount of money could have gone to build homes for these homeless you are wining and dining, are bringing to luxury resorts so these could learn how to figure out what is a room, and what is a lock. 

God of mercy, God of heaven and the earth: if the peoples of the Philippines would just dismiss this as another one of those stupidities of this administration, I simply do not know what we come to know next. 

HON/

Police people as pawns, the president watching too much video games.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 28 JAN 2015. WED. N1.
Police people as pawns, the president watching too much video games. 

SOMEWHERE, it has been reported that PNoy the President likes to play war video games with his nephew, Joshua. 

That must be his way of removing the stresses of residing in the Palace by the murky river. 

We have a right to play war video games, and we have a right to do that even if we are the president of a land. 

But to extend the same logic to real people, real communities, real lives, and produce, as a result, a brutal reality that comes out of a massacre of people who have vowed to protect the community and its people is something else. 

This president must be held to account. He must come clean. 

All those involved must be held to account. They must all come clean. 

Let Purisima's name--most pure--be a proof of his innocence. Or he cannot. 

Purisima must be held to account, and he must come clean.

Those who are washing their hands like Pontius Pilate--all of 'em must be held to account and they all must come clean. 

Words are cheap for those who lie. 

Words are cheap for those who do not know how to rule.

Words are expensive for those who have honor. 

Words are expensive for those who have dignity and self-respect. 

Let us cut to the chase: these impossible leaders with their impossible abilities must all come clean.

This massacre ought to be the last. 

This loss of lives ought to be the last. 

HON/

Economic justice: that's what da Filipins needs, and that is one heck of a national language it needs so bad, not any other.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 27 JAN 2015. TUE.
Economic justice: that's what da Filipins needs, and that is one heck of a national language it needs so bad, not any other. 

WHEN A COUNTRY IS put up, erected for some kind of a greater good called the Summum Bonum, there is one thing clear here: that all the people must partake of the same goodness all the others are enjoying, like 'em Aquinos and Solimans and Binays and Roxases and Abads. 

The simple goal of nation-building is that that nation ought to guarantee that no man will live on the streets, that they have a bed to dream of the good life and enjoy it, that they have a job through which they could come together and celebrate what it means to live in a place where human dignity and self-respect are ingrained values. 

Not under Aquino's watch, the mother.

Not under Aquino's watch, the son. 

Not under Erap's watch, the plunderer who wants to run for president again in a declaration that is nothing but shamelessness. What does he think? That our Jericho march is one heck of a phantasm?

Not under Arroyo's watch, that fiefdom that is no better than her student's fiefdom. What social economics these two learned I do not know. What macroeconomics with social conscience they know is beyond imagining. 

Today, there is not any infrastructure for a conscience-informed economics in da Filipins. 

It is but a fair game of businessmen and cheats and plunderers and PPPs (think of the rails!) and their political partners. 

Da Filpins is a safari of goodness for those who are in power and let the powerless just stay on the streets, have some kind of a six-day training in a Nasugbu luxury resort so they learn what a room in a home means, and what a door locks means. 

Ah, Soliman and DSWD: YOU are the epitome of cruelty. 

Ronquillo of the Manila Times has summed all these dreams of justice and fairness and economics for the poor are all about: redistribution. 

Ah, but we all have been talking about these things a long time ago.

HON/

The tears of a cold-hearted, the weeping of the cold-blooded Soliman.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 27 JAN 2015. TUE. N2.
The tears of a cold-hearted, the weeping of the cold-blooded Soliman. 

OF COURSE, THIS IS one thing that must be said: DINKY SOLIMAN IS ONE OF THE LYING CABINET PEOPLE OF PNOY. 

First, she denied she had those homeless people rounded up like cattle sent to the gas chamber. The images of the Shindler's List comes to mind here. 

Second, she used another DSWD factotum to come up with all those nasty illogic of what they did to these people even if:

1. Father Shay Cullen himself said that he had evidence of these acts of rounding up the helpless homeless. 

2. The Daily Mail of London had published a feature story of this act of heartless woman and an equally heartless Social Services Agency of the the PNoy Maladministration called, incidentally, DSWD. 

Hell, yes: Isn't it that this same agency was responsible for the continuing re-Yolanda-icization of the people of Eastern Visayas, with the continuing greed of so many powerful people at the expense of the Yolando victims, with donated goods not going to these victims but instead sold in markets, and the donated goods replaced with 555 sardines and some kilos of rice to make it appear that these victims have been helped? 

How is that Soliman keeps on even cropping up as a cabinet woman? What magical, Houdini-like parapsychological and paranormal power does she have in both Arroyo's and now, PNoy's Maladministration? 

DSWD? Let this be its name: Department of a Stinking Woman (who) Deceives. 

Soliman: go kuput. Scram. 

HON/

Their numbers are increasing, oh guardian angels. Or how to read and reread the massacre of the elite SAF.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 27 JAN 2015. TUE. N3.
Their numbers are increasing, oh guardian angels.
Or how to read and reread the massacre of the elite SAF. 

THE PAPERS AND OTHER MEDIA outlets come up with a confusing count.

Some say 48, some say 60, some say more and some say in between.

Despite the number, dear guardian angels, one thing is certain: The numbers of the dead because massacred are increasing. 

We have here people whose faces have been blown off, their uniforms and clothes taken, their shoes removes, their mouth open stuffed with leaves. 

If there is a word to describe this, it is horror.

We thought this happens only in faraway lands where people no longer believe in civility and civilization, where people believe only in the reign of terror. 

We thought this would not happen under the watch of this PNoy man who can only recall what happened to his family during the dictatorship but cannot recall what happened to other families and many other individuals, many of them sacrificing life and limb to fight for democracy he and his family now fully--FULLY--enjoys. 

And now, the Palace is silent on this. There is deafening silence in the Palace and no word of comfort has come from his lips, this PNoy man. 

Roxas? What can he say? Isn't that he is supposed to be overseeing the police people? 

Some accounts has Purissima the sacked policeman is in the know about this. Was it because of the USD5M bounty to catch that terrorist hiding in the shadows in that one lonely of grief and the massacred? 

HON/

Read Purissima's undoing, Roxas' undoing, and PNoy's undoing--and then weep like Dinky the stinky Soliman.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 27 JAN 2015. TUE. N4.
Read Purissima's undoing, Roxas' undoing, and PNoy's undoing--and then weep like Dinky the stinky Soliman. 

THE REPORTS ARE COMING, and with the empowered capacity of people to do the right thing, we shall know what happened to the Massacre, and to the planned trophy awarding at Marwan. 

So: it sounded like a cheap, copycat, xerox act of the SEAL's taking down of Osama bin Laden, complete with plans for the formal awarding of the terrorist to the bald president who does not use so much of the grey matter between his ears. 

He was not kept in the real loop when the operation was going, reports say.

But reports say as well that he know what is going to happen, complete with plans and action plans as if these are steps to finding a solution to a problem. 

And they were there, the big shots of operations like this one: Purissima, Roxas, and PNoy.

But the trophy did not come. 

Instead, we have massacred SAF men, the most skilled of the art of war, the most skilled in bringing about results so that Purissima, Roxas, and PNoy would be so darn, darn, darn happy. 

Ah, dear Spirit: You hand over the nonwisdom of planning to Purissima and Roxas and you are don and over with.

So: Roxas, go away.

So: Dinky, go away.

So: PNoy, go away. 

So: Purissima, do not--ever--show your face again. You are a liability to your non-commander-in-chief. 

HON/

iLAING 2015. FLYER.

iLAING. 2015 & FOREVER. Logo, icon, brand.

Private property IS public deprivation.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 19 JAN 2015. MON. N3.

Private property IS public deprivation. 

THE NARRATIVE ABOUT the poor--the Philippine poor included and more so--is an abused one. 

It has been used as an alibi for people development that, from the framework of Manila-centric mindset, should be articulated in the Tagalog language of the center. It is like listening to the same old, almost archaic argument about the poor needing the rich, and the rich must be depended upon for the crumbs the poor need all the time. 

The forms of iniquities we have got, in the Philippines, in the United States and in other countries I have had the chance to go are the same: the rich hold all the resources and the legal instruments to protect these resources so that the rich will never, not at all, not ever, experience how to be poor. 

In the movie "Romero" narrating the activism of the El Salvador Catholic Church that led to the famous sacrifice of Bishop Romero, the facts are clear, and these facts are not different from the Philippines and in the USA: 25% of the rich control 75% of the country's resources, while 75% of the poor control only 25% of the country's resources. 

This situation is immoral, and we can only hope Pope Francis saw this ugly face social inequality in the Philippines. 

Tony Igcalinos, a scholar on Philippine public policy, has written of this succintly. He cites from a report, and I quote from that report as well. The report, in gist, is saying that this social equality is socially engineered. We all must now begin to take notice of this: 

"Very smartly, Oxfam International is raising such questions at the World Economic Forum at Davos, where the global elite gather to talk of big ideas and big money. Oxfam executive director, Winnie Byanyima, is arguing that this increasing concentration of wealth since the recession is “bad for growth and bad for governance”. What’s more, inequality is bad not just for the poor, but for the rich too. That’s why we have the likes of the IMF’s Christine Lagarde kicking off with warnings about rising inequality. Visceral inequality from foodbanks to empty luxury flats is still seen as somehow being in the eye of the beholder by the right – a narrative in which poverty is seen as an innate moral failure of the poor themselves has taken hold. This in turn sustains the idea that rich people deserve their incredible riches. Most wealth, though, is not earned: huge assets, often inherited, simply get bigger not because the individuals who own them are super talented, but because structures are in place to ensure this happens." [Source: https://www.facebook.com/tony.igcalinos?fref=ts. Retrieved 19 Jan 2015, as cited from http://www.theguardian.com/…/inequality-inevitable-1-per-ce….]

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How to murder the garlic farmers in broad daylight. Or, how the Department of Agriculture has become the Department of Bawang Importation.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 7 JAN 2014. WED. N4.
How to murder the garlic farmers in broad daylight. Or, how the Department of Agriculture has become the Department of Bawang Importation. 

THIS NEWS about the garlic importation courtesy of the agriculture secretary we are not going to name because he has proven to all that his name is useless, and this Barron guy who can be named because of his blatant abuse of his power, has become scandalous. 

Imagine the Ilokano garlic farmers laboring it out under the sun, and here we are, here we are leaving them with nothing but that one nasty dream of paying off farming debts that they cannot pay even right after harvest. 

For that is the situation down there, with the importation synchronized during harvest time, and flooding the market with the imported garlic so the garlic farmers will be forced to lower their produce. 

If this is not immoral, it is criminal. 

There are no Ilokano and other garlic farmers around not seeing this thing as murderous? Please!

Ladies and gentlemen: We have gone callous to all these things, and we like it so because we have evolved as masochists, with our leaders whipping us all the time with something as punitive as this unjust governmental act. 

This is murder, plain and simple.

HON/

In honor of my two former students in the seminary, Rev Fr Sam Cuarto and Rev Fr Aris Miranda: May the Sierra Leone road rise up to meet you!

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 7 JAN 2015. WED. N1.
In honor of my two former students in the seminary, Rev Fr Sam Cuarto and Rev Fr Aris Miranda: May the Sierra Leone road rise up to meet you!

SOON--or perhaps they are packing up now--two of my former students in the seminary are going to Sierra Leone, in one diocese there, Mekeni it is. 

Mekeni has been affected by the Ebola virus, and Rev Aris, the head of his order's apostolate, thought that it would be wise to have Camillian presence there, hence the assignment of Camillian religious in that area. 

These two priests were my exceptional students, both known for their humilty, their sense of mission, their independence, and their capacity to say No. 

But this time around, even if they want to continue serving the peoples of the Philippines, they are saying Yes to the challenge to go where the more challenging action is at this time. 

Their order, one of the oldest and established in 1582, takes service to the poorsick as its apostolate and charism. 

Known all over the world by the huge, red, and blazing cross on the chest of their sotana, the Ministers of the Infirm, also know more popularly as Camillians, has seen plagues and other epidemics.

This medieval order responded to the problems of health care in various countries, in various climes. It helped that the founder, Saint Camillus de Lellis, was a mercenary soldier at the service of whoever wanted to pay him, and that he had a wound on his leg that never healed.

That personal experience led to introspection, self awareness, and metanoia. He saw Rome, the empire that it was and its problems, and it dawned on him that a group of people should take care of the sick. 

In the Philippines, they are everywhere now even if they came in only in 1974, or two years after the declaration of Martial Law. 

At some point in their young ministry, the religious of the MI were working in a variety of institutions: the Children's Center, the Heart Center, the Kidney Center, the Lung Center, the Mental Health, the Home for the Dying, and the National Bilibid Prisons. 

In other places in the Philippines, they operate polyclinics that cater to the poorsick. 

These two priests have seen what it takes to be a real pastor of the faith, a shepherd of believers. 

Our prayer is this: May the Sierra Leone and its roads rise up to meet them both.

Blessing and grace and benediction to you.

HON/

Machinations of MRT, Lies of the LRT.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 7 JAN 2015. WED. N2.
Machinations of MRT, Lies of the LRT.

THE CHEATS WE CALL immoral businessmen--there is nothing wrong in business, truth to tell, but when it exacts the future of a people, that is something!--are laughing their way to the bank with this fare hike of both the MRT and the LRT lines. 

There is treachery in the fare hike in both concept and process. 

The PR materials of the government rationalizing what it does wrong are just that: PR materials.

In Ilokano, we have a name for this, and Secretary Coloma--with all the dignity of his office--should know this: PR is PUSKOL RUPA. 

Translated into English, it is the thick-faced Goebbelsian tactic that, per its roots, justified Nazism even if this was no longer justifiable. 

Ah, we are not learning at all.

Teddy Casino has listed six lies and fallacies of this Goebbelsian claim of the P-Noy (mal)administration, and it is worth reproducing the first two here. 

Check it out, ladies and gentlemen:

1. The fare hike is needed to rehabilitate and upgrade the LRT and MRT train systems.

This is a lie. In fact, the 2015 budget recently signed by Pres. Aquino already includes a P7.4-billion allocation for the rehabilitation of the MRT, and another P4.65 billion for its subsidy. Aside from this, a 2014 supplemental budget was approved last month containing a P1.2-billion allocation for MRT rehabilitation and capacity extension, and P727.6 million for the rehabilitation of LRT lines 1 and 2.

In other words, the LRT and MRT have already secured enough funds from government for 2014 and 2015 to pursue its planned rehabilitation and upgrading plans. The sad thing is, the fare hike will now being used to justify a P2.1 billion reduction in subsidies for the train lines.

2. The fare hike will benefit commuters.

This is a lie. Proceeds from the fare hike will be used to pay the private creditors of the train lines and fatten the pockets of its private concessionaires including the MRT 3’s Sobrepeña group and LRT 1’s Metro Pacific-Ayala consortium.

In fact, DOTC Secretary Joseph Abaya admitted that the estimated P1 billion additional income from the MRT fare hike will go to an escrow account for the payment of the government’s monthly dues to the MRT Corporation. This is due to the onerous contract entered into by the Ramos government where the Sobrepeña-led company was granted, among many sweeteners, a guaranteed 15% annual rate of return for 25 years.

As to the LRT 1, which was recently taken over by the Light Rail Manila Consortium of the Metro Pacific, Ayala and Macquarie groups, the increased revenue is needed to improve its financial standing which would allow the private concessionaire to raise funds for their LRT-1 extension project. The fare hike is actually part of the guarantees given by the Aquino government to the consortium under the P65 billion LRT-1 privatization contract.

HON/

Art, sensibilities, satirists, and cartoons. Or, religion and the power of words. Or, a first report on the terrorist attack in France on January 7.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 7 JAN 2014. WED. N3.
Art, sensibilities, satirists, and cartoons. Or, religion and the power of words.
Or, a first report on the terrorist attack in France on January 7. 

SOME NINE HOURS AGO AS of this wring, 11 or 12 satirists and writers (including two policeman) died in a terrorist attack on a satirical paper, Charlie Hebdo. The total number of dead have yet to be finally determined. 

Art in all its form is a double-edged sword. 

It can be used by Goebbels for propaganda purposes, in much the same way the Cendeña National Media Production Center produced all those goody-goody things for us to accept in toto the truths of the New Society. 

Some Ilokano writers and magazines and newspapers played this role to the hilt, but now, we have forgotten. Or, praise those who connived to make this happen.

Kit Tatad, now a changed man, was one of them, of course, his face a permanent presence on TV in the early days of Martial Law. 

I teach Pop Culture, and one module of this course is dedicated to this problem of how pop art could be manipulated, but how pop art could be used for redemptive reasons. 

The redemptive directions comes only with a price: a resistance, a sustained resistance to the received dogmas and doctrines of our time.

This, to me, is the context why lives have been sacrificed at this terrorist attach in France some nine hours ago.

HON/

Gratefulness is the memory of a thankful heart.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 5 JAN 2015. MON. N4.
Gratefulness is the memory of a thankful heart. 

SOMEONE HAS said that gratefulness is the memory of a thankful heart. 

I am thankful, my heart is.

This is the reason why I am grateful to a writer-poet colleague who has served his adoptive homeland as a navy person for decades and now enjoying his walks while Virginia's leaves and landscape become a portrait of the prismatic, the still life in his part of the country not still at all but alive, kicking, ever-changing, ever-surprising us with its pastels of grace and beauty and rainbow.

I am referring to my good friend Cris, Fernando Quilpa.

As soon as my books were out, he wrote to me expressing interest in having his own copy, and having me sign each copy. 

I am always nervous, unsteady, feeling insecure and feeling inferior before good and dedicated and brilliant writers. That is the truth. How can you carry a conversation with people who have sensitivity to human language, who have that incessant ability to make the words magical, surprising, delightful, those who can make words turn into worlds, words that tell us, yes, that life is worth living?

It took me sometime to be able to fulfill his request to send him the books. So many thing stood in the way, like that brief sojourn as visiting professor at UP Baguio, and other things that came in between.

And then the end-of-semester affairs came, and then the holidays, and then the temptations of the mind to simply read books and imagine one can write a poem. 

I did all those, until I was able to muster enough energy to go to the post office and send him the books. 

He waited patiently, my dear friend. But between us is the Pacific Ocean, and from there, thousands of miles of land transit going to his East Coast. It is not enough that I am from the islands in the middle of that ocean. It is also worth nothing that he is somewhere where the Atlantic Ocean is just a spitting distance away.

But my friend Cris the poet waiting, and I can only thank him profusely for having the enduring power of Job. 

To you, Cris, mahalo nui loa. Agyamanak unay-unay.

HON/

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 5. JAN 2015. MON. N3.
Betrayal and its many shades of non-meaning. 

BEEN reading Samuel Brunk's book on Emilio Zapata, "Emilio Zapata! Revolution and Betrayal in Mexico." [U of New Mexico: 1995]. 

The book is a gift from my favorite son, Ie Agcaoili. He knows my non-revoluationary heart, its shades, contours, nuances, and its own fifty shades of nonsense. So, each time he sees all those books that have something to do with the big "R" or something to do with anything 'post-', he gets them for me, sometimes giving them to me for free.

But sometimes, like the small capitalist that he is, like his good friend Kez Rivas Evangelista who is now into entrepreneurship and into justifying profits from a philosophical and ethical and moral sense, he uses these books as baits in my inquiring mind, and sells them to me at cost.

No, there is no profit here, but plain at cost, shipping cost included.

And so, one Christmas morning, while he was singing those Christmas songs acapella, he told me: "This Zapata book is yours. You do not have to pay for it."

I said: "Gracias. Muchas gracias."

He responds: "De nada."

And then he takes that acapella concert a la Straight No Chaser, and the house is filled with his tenor, and the beat and rhythm got to be Christmassy, indeed. It is good that the older sister, unable to tolerate his tenor thing, is away, spending the holidays in the homeland. The youngest is in dreamland, so all is well in the home front.

I start to read him, this Emilio Zapata guy, and I am in this Mexican world of revolutionary ideals, of the dream of land for the landless, liberty for all those deprived of it, food for the foodless, and justice for those who have been denied of its in all the centuries of colonization and post-colonization.

And then I hit the last page when Zapata, still dreaming of his actualization of a free Mexico, falls into the trap of the traitor, and Brunk, quoting historical sources, described the betrayal for us:

"the guard appeared ready to do him the honors. The bugle sounded three times, the call of honor, and when the last note fell silent, as the General arrived at the threshold, in a manner most treacherous, most cowardly, most villainous, at point-blank range. without giving him time to even clutch his pistols, the soldiers who were presenting arms fired their rifles twice, and our general Zapata fell never to rise again." [cited by Brunk, p. 225]

I am watching him now in film, El Seño de Heroe, and I feel for Mexico the poor country right across the US the superrich country, and I feel for my soul-land, the Philippines, some 7000 miles of blue water away from me.

Da Filipins is as poor a Mexico, and there are many traitors among its leaders.

In the past, until today. The betrayal continues.

HON/

The not-so-great train robbery in Imperial Manila.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 5 JAN 2015. MON. N2.
The not-so-great train robbery in Imperial Manila. 

LET ME BE honest about one thing: the Metro Trains--three lines--encircling the blighted Metro Manila is one mode of public transportation that has spelled convenience to some of us who live there.

Life has been less of a hassle because of these trains, especially when they were coming on time, were efficient, and were affordable. 

But things are getting harder and harder nowadays, and politicians are kowtowing to the whims and caprice of the government's foreign partners, and the government has awarded a monthly maintenance contract to APL Global in the millions ((PhP 59M per month), but these trains are never maintained, the tracks more so. 

The findings of the Hong Kong consulting firm are the same things we already know--that these trains are in bad condition, and the whole facilities more so. 

One of the efficient ways of management is include the cost of maintenance, and project what is needed in the years, including cost for improvement. Failing to do that, the management vision is plain stupidity. 

DO NOT pass that stupidity to the commuters. These are already saddled with the high cost of living this blighted metropolis, and transferring the cost of these management stupidities to them is plain nonsense. 

Hence, the militants are right in calling this The Great Train Robbery. 

Except that the trains are not great, and their owners are greedy. 

P-Noy and Abaya and Coloma are saying there are only a few people objecting to the fare hike? Come on, be honest, people!

There are 1.3M commuters using the trains daily. You are looking at them as your milking cow. 

Indeed, it is. This PPP thing re the trains is one case of robbery. 

HON/

Ocho-ocho. Or, how phallic symbols get the better of us sometimes.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 5 JAN 2015. MON. N1.
Ocho-ocho. Or, how phallic symbols get the better of us sometimes. 

THIS idea of the gun as a--the--phallic symbol is not something strange, as those towers of commerce and unrestrained and immoral capitalism such us big buildings and skyscrapers are exhibits of phallic success and phallic greed and phallic abuse for those who have everything to prove as males, whether these males are in New York City, London, the Vatican, Ayala or elsewhere. 

For those males unable to put two and two together about the male mind--and thus the resort to booze and to the bang-bang-bang of a 'paltik' gun from Danao, registered or unregistered--the law and its rationality never gets into their hollowed heads. 

No, there is nothing in there, in their heads. 

Yes, their heads have but air. Angin, in Ilokano. 

Holes. Useless holes. These are the eight males for you, the ocho-ocho males afflicted with machismo in the wrong places, their freakin' fingers and crotch area included. 

The erect penis--and never mind those that would be harmed--is that matters. 

In the video, we see their arrogant and mindless banter. 

Ah, males and dubious manhood and phallic symbols. 

So we have their names, according to GMA News Network. 

Eight people were involved, and pronto, they took out their FB accounts to hide the proof of their stupidity, but some people were more brilliant, and so we have screen grabs of these, and the video was safely saved elsewhere, away from their phallic minds with no phallic possibilities at all.

Ah, there are people who are not worthy of that appellation, not at all.

Trigger-happy, these males. 

They should better be sent elsewhere, say, in the places of the Boko Haram, so they can help rescue the missing girls. 

The evidence of their stupidity is embedded in the GMA story below.

HON/

The sacred and the human on Skid Row, Los Angeles.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 3 JAN 2014. SAT. N4.
The sacred and the human on Skid Row, Los Angeles.

MORE THAN THREE years of living in Los Angeles, yes, that is Southern California for you, gave me that rare opportunity to study up close what the United States could offer me. 

For many years before that, I entertained leaving the Philippines for good, as every disappointed person in the Philippines felt in those years of living dangerously during the atrocious Marcos Regime and right after. 

Only those who were in a better position to suck up all the goods of the earth were able to stand up each morning and still could convince themselves to stay. 

I took part in the latest of the masquerade--this charade of a People's Revolution we call EDSA People Power 2--and then my disappointments turned to despair. 

The people's revolution was a failure not because of the people. 

it was a failure because of the fact that those who benefitted from the sacrifices of the masses forgot to return the favor given them by the people: the favor (and the opportunity) to lead, and to lead the masses to redemption, not perdition. 

In 2003, right after turning in my grades for the second semester of the school year, I packed my bag, and hit the skies to Los Angeles. 

That was to be the beginning of my journey into the heart of America, that journey bringing me to Skid Row. 

No, I did not live on Skid Row. 

Skid Row was the place I would love to go to to make me remember for always that I am an immigrant seeking for a life better than what I have found in my own home country. 

On Skid Row are the stories of the exact opposite of justice and fairness and and success, and by being there, I would always remember where I came from.

On this strip of earth right in the middle of opulence, abundance, and wealth is wretchedness, misery, failure. 

You want to understand social inequity, go to Skid Row.

You want to understand social injustice, go to Skid Row. 

And there, in the Los Angeles leg of my American journey, Skid Row reminded me how to live.

Read this account by CNN, and please, please weep for these wretches far worse that our own wretchedness. 

HON/

Hakuna matata, no more worries.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 3 JAN 2014. SAT. N3.
Hakuna matata, no more worries. 

I RAISED TWO CHILDREN, both full grown now, on the 'hakuna matata' principle most of the time. 

No more worries, it is, this principle, even if deep within, to put food on the table for two growing children with their growing needs was not that easy in blighted Manila at the time Cory the yellow president promised a lot of nonsense and then the presidents after her. 

Of course, Lion King came, and those Betamax/VHS stores--what are the names now--that lent those films for a fee, the lending for something like two days, and that one must return them, or else.

When the kids were growing, we had to keep on borrowing Lion King until one day I decided: Let us buy it! 

Two films come to mind now: Lion King and the Sound of Music. 

Between these, the Lion King, with the two children playing out the roles of these animal characters, their child's singing filling up our Marikina home. 

There was much 'positive thinking' in the film, and Norman Vincent Peale ('The Power of Positive Thinking'), God bless him--yes, that guru of the 70s that made us get away from the terrors of Martial Law, reminded us: there is power in positive thinking.

Writers, of course, are a different lot.

Writers are lonely people, and thus, are prone to the opposite of joy even as they try to save the world by thinking and writing for others. 

That is the messianic complex in them, and I know that many writers are like this: afflicted with the vision that the world ought to be better, and that, therefore, they all must write about its ugliness so it becomes a good place to live in. 

In between this malady called writer's loneliness and the Liong King film is this sense of resolve to muster all my energy to hope like, what else, but the Liong King. 

And there, in the vicissitudes of our post-Marcos Philippine life, we had that film to run to, its songs reminding us to be human and to be hopeful. 

And then I stumbled onto this singing of the Liong King, the singing by Israeli police persons, their joy from ear to ear. 

There is so much to hope for in this world, indeed. 

HON/

Encounters sacred and magical. For Sir Lõuiè Pangilinan Lanaja.

ORDINARY TEACHER'S NOTES. 3 JAN 2014. SAT. N2.
Encounters sacred and magical. For Sir Lõuiè Pangilinan Lanaja.

MORE THAN two years ago, now going on three, I had to get away from all the distractions of the big Philippine city one summer day. 

I had a deadline to finish the Gramatika ti Kontemporaneo nga Ilokano--a grammar book on the Ilokano language written in Ilokano. Simply put, I wanted to explain the structure of the Ilokano language in nothing else but the Ilokano language. That was fair. 

Manila was such a distraction, and my corner of Starbucks in SM Marikina did not help. People would see me there, crouching in one corner, and lo and behold, the writing would end up in hours of talking. Which was bad for my writing health.

I knew that Rizal started to write something about Tagalog grammar, and he did that while he was exiled in Dapitan, yes, that beautiful place overlooking a vast sea.

I have never been there. I have been to other places in the Zamboanga area but not Dapitan. I know Zambo City. I know Dipolog nearby. 

I remembered the beautiful sunset of Dipolog, and pronto, I found myself buying an airplane ticket. 

For several days, I savored the Dipolog sundown, but Dapitan, an hour away, was calling me. 

And I went there, tracing Rizal's disembarkation point, and imagining walking the same small steps he made toward the prison house/prison court on the left front part of the Dapitan church built by the Jesuits. 

In one of these journeys of my mind, I met a young policeman and a female buddy, also training to become a police person. The lady trained to become a teacher, but there was no item for teachers despite the call of the 'praise release' of Deped that they need more teachers. 

They do, but if you have no 'pull' and if you cannot give bribe money, no one will hire you at Deped, she told me. 

That was where I met a rookie person of the law. I call him now my captain Louie. 

I have told of his story long before. Now, I have to thank him for keeping his part of da Filipins a better place to live in.

HON/

Writing is a sweet, sweet curse.

ORDINARY TEACHER'S NOTES. 3 JAN 2014. SAT. N1.
Writing is a sweet, sweet curse. 

WRITING IS A SWEET, sweet curse. 

If there is a day I am unable to jot something--from the Song of Songs-like texture of language to something mundane and banal, I am not happy. 

Not at all.

It is enough that I am able to write something on my FB wall, aside from that one hope that every sweetly-cursed writer has: that he is writing other things on the side. 

But when you are a lowly classroom teacher, such a dream of becoming a writer ends up in reading other people's writing/s, your students' better-written essays included. 

I think of the opening of the Spring Term, and I think of classes to teach, and I think of more essays to read, and I think of more writing days to be waylaid, because, well, yes, one has to teach. 

Sweetly-cursed writers should not do anything but write. 

Many of those successful writers--the big name ones--in the Philippines married into rich families (that, my dear friends, is the secret in da Filipins: you are a cursed writer, you have to marry into a rich family!) and therefore, they did not have to run after money to put food on the table. 

In the US, either you write or you bust. 

I have seen so many writers--sweetly-cursed--who are struggling with the needs of the mortal life and I have seen them just slide, slide, slide. 

I had a friend, also a professor in the seminary who was sweetly-cursed, and thought he was a poet, until one day, he ran away from himself. Today, I do not know where he is. Internet? No: it does not tell us everything. You Google some people, and Google, for all its brilliance, is also unknowing sometimes. 

For 2015, I still keep on hoping that I shall be able to write something sweet. 

Let that happen. If not, I am stuck on my FB wall writing gibberish like this one. 

HON/

A son's gift for the new year. For Ie Agcaoili.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 2 JAN 2014. FRI. N4.
A son's gift for the new year. For Ie Agcaoili.

I HAVE ASKED my kids not to give me anything for the holidays. 

I have reached a point where I do not think I need anything, and even if I did, I have found ways to be liberated from these things. The only exception are books, coffee, and tea. 

Not my cup of tea now, this gift-giving that only reinforces the conspiracy between capitalism and the holidays. 

They did not give me anything--and they did too! 

I have always asked them one thing: just a letter, or a Christmas card. I thought this was a better way of making memories, of arresting the passing of time. I would bring out their letter when they were younger, and their innocence would flood me, the years of my absence in their young life filling my heart with a longing that has no name. 

Must have been the sentimental me, preferring words to objects, choosing poetry anytime over anything that pretty soon finds its way to the shelf, or the stockroom. 

But right under the Christmas tree, there were gifts for me. 

My son wanted me to open the wrapped box he placed there on Christmas Day, but I told him I wanted to open it on New Year's Day. 

That day came. 

And there in that box were a mug that said "Number 1 Dad," a can of the best green tea in town, and a book of poetry that talks about the gift of life and the existential question of its meaning. 

He is a French guy, the poet. 

And there in the labyrinthine ways of creating images and birthing symbols, I understood what is it to have a son who understood what is it be a poet who has never made money out of his poetry. 

There was one thing that we all know in the family: that our simple home in the homeland is now devoid of books. 

We eventually had to part with all our books when we decided to leave the homeland, the books benefitting at least four libraries: two in Metro Manila and two in the provinces. 

You want to figure out what we read, check the Marikina Public Library, the Roosevelt College Library, the Apayao State College Library, and the Mariano Marcos Library. 

Each time we make a swing back home, we have to scour for books we read because there is no longer anything left on the shelf except the skeletons of a memory that somewhere on the shelves there was once a Neruda, or a Paz, or Dostoevsky. Or a de Chardin. Or a de Foucauld. 

And then I got my son's holiday card deep inside the beribboned box. 

I opened the card. 

In his familiar handwriting, he says: "I hope that one day, pop, I can build your library again. That will be my gift." 

Now, I know the definition of a grateful heart. 

HON/

The problem with Father Zerrudo.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES 2 JAN 2015. FRI. N4.
The problem with Father Zerrudo. 

THE PROBLEM WITH Father Zerrudo is his age-old Dark Ages mentality. 

Until now, he has not escaped from this Europecentric thinking that made it possible for his Catholic Church to become one of the many instruments of the loss of peoples of their sense of self.

The self-centered, megalomaniacal position he holds onto does not even recognize the callousness of the bishops and priests presiding over a royal blessing for a royal wedding in his Diocese of Cubao while Typhoon Seniang was battering another part of the country. 

Include, of course, Zerrudo's president, and all those visitors grinning from ear-to-ear while so many people in impoverished, typhoon-ravaged places lay dead, the others wretches scrambling to presumed safer places. 

Avoid fung shui, he says.

Fung shui attracts the devil, he adds.

I do not where this priest studied his oriental philosophy, if at all he did.

Of, if he took up some elementary cultural studies such as anthropology 101. 

The likes of Zerrudo, who sports the 'reverend father' before his esteemed name is one species of ministers of the cloth who does not deserve to be given the pulpit. 

Like Padre Damaso he pronounces those unscientific statements that only suggests to us he never heard, or refuses to hear, the chi or the ying-and-yang or the prana. 

He does not know of multiverse?

He believes only in the singularity of his universe, with him at the top of the echelon of power, and the guardian of human knowledge, human epistemologies, and practices of the meaningful because these make sense?

Gardemet!

HON/

Opulence defined.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 2 JAN 2015. FRI. N3.
Opulence defined. 

I CHECKED THE GMA News and anything not worthy of seeing is this excessive production of visual images on what is being touted--it is not yet done and over with, this media hype--of the royal wedding between one Ding and another Marian.

You try checking that site, and you realize that even this supposedly more intellectual GMA 7 has gone less visceral what with its deployment of this opulence of that wedding, the opulence, as in all kinds of opulence, in the wrong place and time. 

A wedding gown at 3 million pesos which is the equivalent of 10 years of labor at the SM Malls of 30 salesladies for a year!

A wedding cake of 7 million pesos which is equivalent to 10 years of labor of 35 salesmen at Robinson's Galleria. 

And that 'yabang' big bike--what is its name again so he can prove he is the knight in shining armor, this Dingdong guy making dingdong of these opulent images of excess?--that brings him to the Immaculate Conception Church where there, with the blessings of a number of bishops and priests, these two will live happily ever after. 

GMA 7 calculated all these moves.

It is a wedding produced by this TV station, and the intent is clear: for these images and the story behind them to be sold to the public hungry for images they will never have, images they never be part of, images that remain part of the fantastic in their politically and aesthetically-challenged heads.

We now must be big in context. Failing to be big in context means that we will only end up as consumers of all these things, and thus, rendering us mindless and morons, mutatis mutandis.

Now, let us see this context I got from another site, Tangina This. 

Let us see.

And let us weep even as we remember the Zambo siege and the Zambo people living in tents, and the Eastern Visayas people still trying to makes sense of their Yolanda-ized lives. 

HON/

Opulence defined.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 2 JAN 2015. FRI. N3.
Opulence defined. 

I CHECKED THE GMA News and anything not worthy of seeing is this excessive production of visual images on what is being touted--it is not yet done and over with, this media hype--of the royal wedding between one Ding and another Marian.

You try checking that site, and you realize that even this supposedly more intellectual GMA 7 has gone less visceral what with its deployment of this opulence of that wedding, the opulence, as in all kinds of opulence, in the wrong place and time. 

A wedding gown at 3 million pesos which is the equivalent of 10 years of labor at the SM Malls of 30 salesladies for a year!

A wedding cake of 7 million pesos which is equivalent to 10 years of labor of 35 salesmen at Robinson's Galleria. 

And that 'yabang' big bike--what is its name again so he can prove he is the knight in shining armor, this Dingdong guy making dingdong of these opulent images of excess?--that brings him to the Immaculate Conception Church where there, with the blessings of a number of bishops and priests, these two will live happily ever after. 

GMA 7 calculated all these moves.

It is a wedding produced by this TV station, and the intent is clear: for these images and the story behind them to be sold to the public hungry for images they will never have, images they never be part of, images that remain part of the fantastic in their politically and aesthetically-challenged heads.

We now must be big in context. Failing to be big in context means that we will only end up as consumers of all these things, and thus, rendering us mindless and morons, mutatis mutandis.

Now, let us see this context I got from another site, Tangina This. 

Let us see.

And let us weep even as we remember the Zambo siege and the Zambo people living in tents, and the Eastern Visayas people still trying to makes sense of their Yolanda-ized lives. 

HON/