My latest treasure: ‘Iliad’s’ best translation

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” ― Homer, The Iliad

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY — Without hesitation, I admit that two of the best translations of “Iliad” were written by Caroline Alexander and Stanley Lombardo.
But the translation by Richard Lattimore with copywright 1951 by the University of Chicago is probably one of the best, easier to understand, very interesting and, most importantly, arguably the best collector’s item about the subject matter.

I am lucky to obtain this gem, a rare copy seldom displayed in major bookstores anywhere in the United States and in the Philippines.
William Arrowsmith of the Hudson Review calls Lattimore’s book as “the finest translation of Homer ever made into the English language.”
“The best modern Iliad is that of Richard Lattimore…Lattimore is as much a scholar as a poet,”writes Hugh Llyod-Jones.
“Certainly the best modern verse translation,” confirms Gilbert Highet.
Many books have been written about the Iliad and Odyssey.
Many translations from Homer’s original script have been submitted by different authors in antiquity and in the modern times.
In fact, many of us have already wrestled with this best of all the greatest ancient Greek epic poems ever written in history when we were in high school and college.

COMPOSITION

The ”Iliad” is a 15,000-line work that began as an oral composition in a preliterate culture; amplified and revised by the various bards who performed it over the centuries, the poem was probably set down in writing sometime during the eighth century B.C. and achieved its present form in Athens about two centuries later. Traces of its oral origins and multiple authorship remain, presenting the translator with particularly thorny problems. The frequently repeated stock lines and epithets — ”rosy-fingered dawn,” for example — which allowed the ancient composer-performer to fill in the metrical blanks while thinking ahead to his next line, are pointless in a written text. And there are syntactical anomalies and narrative inconsistencies that suggest unresolved competition between two or more earlier oral versions.
In her version, which came out on November 24, 2015, Alexander wanted to bring the epic down to earth.
Alexander said she wanted to break down that assumption for readers, as she translated the work.
“I felt it was so the opposite of that, and that there was a need to sort of give people, average readers with no classical background, the poem on its own terms,” she said. “I feel that the Iliad has been so appropriated by academia, that it has been made into this very different text that’s a sort of embodiment of high culture — the Everest of literature.”
She said, as a classic text, “The Iliad” has its “own charisma,” which has drawn readers for hundreds of years. Part of its appeal is that it deals with themes that are timeless — namely, war and mortality, she said. “It is actually saying something true about a dimension of our life that will always matter, and that dimension is mortality, and particularly mortality as it is most exposed, which is in times of war.”

CURATE

Lombardo, a classicist at the University of Kansas, makes no attempt to curate Homer, either by replicating his sinewy hexameter lines or by mimicking his craggily archaic diction, as Richmond Lattimore did in his 1951 translation (long popular among classicists, perhaps because it practically is Greek); nor does he try to reproduce the amplitude and momentum of the original, wonderfully captured in Robert Fagles’s excellent 1990 translation.
New York writer Daniel Mendelsohn, lecturer in classics at Princeton University, pointe dout that there are probably too many departures from the Greek text here, and too many blatantly ”contemporary” resonances, for this to become the standard Homer of university classrooms.
“But in a way,” he explained, “those departures, those ruptures with philological exactitude, may make this ‘Iliad’ an ideal vehicle for teaching the poetic tradition that we owe to its creator — the oldest, deadest, whitest European male.

 

Standing position

“I hate summer, to be honest. I hate dressing. I hate the heat. I hate sweaty people getting aggressively close to you when you’re walking down the street.”

— Johnny Weir

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY — When I take the 7 train from the 90th Station in Elmhurst going to the last station in the Flushing’s Main Street in Queens nowadays, I have to agonize in standing all the way to my final destination which is four stations away.
Once I got inside, only few seats were available in the 11-car train managed by the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) even for a short distance.
The culprit: US Open 2018.
The train was always packed with Caucasian passengers and tennis fans mostly from Europe who go to the Mets-Willets Point Station, located three stations away or 15 to 20 minutes by walk from where I stay.
Because it’s summer season and heat is extreme, I need to take the 7 train if I want to watch the matches; walking is only possible for me if it’s fall, spring or winter (Conditions were so intense August 28, Tuesday, that Novak Djokovic and his opponent used ice baths to cool down during their opening match. Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis retired due to a heat illness and Stefano Travaglia retired because of cramps, according to tournament referee Brian Earley. Leonardo Mayer of Argentina said he also retired from his match against Laslo Djere due to the heat, and he added that his blood pressure dropped and he was feeling dizzy).
Mets-Willets Point Station is where fans of the US Open 2018 disembark if they come from Manhattan or from the Main Street in Flushing.

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Most of them stay in Manhattan hotels located 20 minutes away by train ride from the Queens, thus they need to travel by MTA train that passes through the sub way to the elevated railway.
Baseball fans also arrive in the same station (Mets-Willets Point) when they to to the Citi Field, a baseball park located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, located adjacent to the Arthur Ashe Stadium, where the US Open 2018 is being held.
Completed in 2009, the imposing Citi Field is the home field of the New York Mets of the National League division of Major League Baseball.
Meanwhile, all seven active former US Open men’s singles champions are participating this year.
There was an abundance of star power on tap for 2018 after the 2017 US Open went on without five of the ATP’s Top 11 men.
Although Rafael Nadal, the defending champion and world No. 1 has played only one hard-court event this summer, he made the most of it by winning his record-extending 33rd Masters 1000 title at the Rogers Cup in Montreal.

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The Spaniard heartthrob has collected five ATP titles in 2018, bringing his career total to 80, and now has an opportunity to complete a French Open-US Open double for the second consecutive year.
After winning five consecutive US Open titles from 2004-08, Roger Federer has not been able to reclaim the New York crown despite two final appearances and three semifinal runs.
Federer has only played one summer hard-court event like Nadal, reaching the final at the Cincinnati Masters. The two-time Swiss defending Australian Open champ has perfected the art of peaking at the right times at 37.
The in-form player of the summer, Novak Djokovic enters New York on the back of titles at both Wimbledon and the Cincinnati Masters.
His Cincinnati title completed a Career Golden Masters for the Serb, as he became the first man in history to win all nine Masters events.
Djokovic has a record of 19-2 in his past four tournaments, including an 8-1 record across two Masters events in the US Open Series, dating back to Queen’s Club in late June.
Matches are getting intense and hot as the weather as the Open progresses until September 9.

 

Trapped!

“The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.” -Lucretius

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY — We wouldn’t venture to speculate what exactly happened pre-dawn on August 15, 2018 at Barangay Atabay, San Jose, Antique in the Philippines when members of the Antique Provincial Mobile Force, 301st Brigade, San Jose PNP, 61st Infantry Battalion swooped down on an abandoned church and killed seven suspected members of the New People’s Army (NPA).
The Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) claimed the seven: Jayson Talibu, Jason Sanchez, Karen Ceralvo, Ildefenso Labinghisa, Peter Mecenas, Liezl Bandiola and Felix Salditos engaged the joint PNP-AFP teams in a firefight while they were serving a warrant of arrest.
In this version, the seven were killed in an encounter.

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Since no one among the bodies lined up and presented to media hours after the “encounter” had survived and no other “rebels” were captured alive, nobody can dispute the PNP-AFP version of a firefight.
Dead men tell no tales.
On the other hand, nobody can tell or corroborate if the government forces had also suffered casualties.
An encounter or firefight means both sides fired gunshots to and from various directions.
A thirty-minute (that’s the police version in their report) gun battle would have been messy, bloody and confusing.
There would have been stray bullets hitting the houses nearby or civilians caught in the middle of the deadly violence which happened when everyone in that village was already sleeping.
Police and military officials neither confirmed nor denied some of their men were also hit and wounded.
Media were just informed an “encounter” happened and the enemies were unlucky as shown by the body count. 

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Since human rights groups and families of the dead, now known as “Antique 7”, are claiming otherwise and have moved to file a complaint before the International Criminal Court (ICC) through the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL), some people are getting curious and confused.
They want a clearer picture of what exactly had happened.
Families and supporters of “Antique 7” insisted their loved ones were victims of a massacre.
They threw away to the dustbin the PNP-AFP version of encounter.
Ruth Salditos, Felix’s wife, claimed the victims suffered almost the same “fatal” gunshot wounds on the head, neck and stomach and appeared to be “sleeping” when attacked.
The National Democratic Front (NDF), which admitted the “Antique 7” were its members, claimed the seven were unarmed and were “cultural and educational warriors and non-combatants.”

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The PNP, particularly the Regional Police Office-6 (PRO-6) led by Director John Bulalacao, accused the seven of engaging in extortion activities.
Some of the items seized in the vicinity after the “encounter” were reportedly extortion letters and several high-powered firearms, ammunition, grenades and cash.
Human rights group Karapatan-Panay and families of slain communist rebels and Bulalacao have been swapping heated accusations in media.
The word war is expected to escalate as the families and other cause-oriented groups demand justice for the killing of the “Antique 7” while the PNP and the AFP stand by their claim of a “legitimate encounter” and appeared unperturbed.
Massacre or encounter, we have one description of what happened to the “Antique 7”: trapped.

 

Teresita’s face

“The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY — Even if she is very qualified to sit as the new Supreme Court chief justice, Teresita Leonardo-De Castro has the “misfortune” of carrying a face only her mother can appreciate, thus critics are not so kind when they ripped her apart as they continued to question her ascension as President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s choice to replace ousted Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno.
She was chosen, of course, based on her seniority and qualifications despite her “Medusa-like face” which is immaterial and inconsequential.
It is not De Castro’s fault if she was “born in the league of Charybdis”, the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia who flooded lands for her father’s underwater kingdom until Zeus turned her into a monster and had her suck in and out of water three times a day.
But some of the critics’ disdain of De Castro probably has cultural and historical basis.
It can be traced to the Filipinos’ traumatic experiences with their colonizers.

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The faces of the doñas (Spanish for Mrs) mostly portrayed in the movies to be despicable, mata pobre, maldita and sadistic are still very much etched in the memory of the Filipinos, brutalized and oppressed by Spanish colonizers for 300 years, until today.
Filipinos always have this uncanny penchant of viewing the image of a powerful woman (sometimes wearing the boots and riding on a horse in her hacienda) to be an oppressor orcontrabida (villain) who wields a latigo (whip) while berating and questioning the culture of a Pinay muchacha (domestic helper).
This explains why revolutionary heroes like Andres Bonifacio literally bar-b-qued the fat and mestizo Spanish friars (the “demons” in Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere) they caught during the guerrilla offensives (this did not sit well with Emilio Aguinaldo and this “brutality” reportedly was one the sources of their lingering feud.)
Wonder why some Filipinos hated Jose Pidal a.k.a “Spanish mestizo” Mike Arroyo?
Again, we repeat that it is not the newly installed woman chief magistrate’s fault if “she carries the face that resembles monster Scylla’s partner” in a cave on the Sicilian side of the Strait Messina that threatens Odysseus and the passing ships.
Some Filipinos are really cruel when it comes to judging their leaders by how they look rather than how they govern.

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I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing the contemporary and friend of the late Arizona Senator John McCain in the United States Air Force (USAF) in Springfield, Virginia only last month.
Retired Col. Lester Marlon Romine, 81, confirmed McCain’s heroism as immortalized in the US media today by the late senator’s colleagues and people who honor McCain’s “larger-than-life” military accomplishments.
Unlike McCain who became a politician and was twice defeated in the presidential race in as many attempts, Romine became a spiritual leader.
He gave me a book of his biography and we prayed together with other friends.
The Office of Senator John McCain, meanwhile, released this statement hours after he passed away: “Senator John Sidney McCain III died at 4:28pm on August 25, 2018. With the Senator when he passed were his wife Cindy and their family. At his death, he had served the United States of America faithfully for sixty years.”

 

‘Investigate’ is a wrong choice of word

“The largest challenge that we face, from my perspective, is the ability to continue moving forward so the agency will have a single mission: that is, to provide decent, safe, and affordable housing.”

–Alphonso Jackson

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY — We doubt absolutely if the National Housing Authority (NHA) will ever succumb to any resolution the Iloilo Provincial Board might pass asking the NHA to award to government employees some of the NHA’s unoccupied housing units in Barangay Cruz, Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo in the Philippines.
The Iloilo Provincial Board, in the first place, has no jurisdiction over the NHA, thus it’s a wrong choice of word to “investigate” NHA’s P4.2 billion housing project in that municipality–unless the project was tainted with anomaly.
If the project reeks with anomaly, let the Congress do the yeoman’s task of grilling the concerned agency officials in the national level “in aid of legislation.”
If the intention of the Iloilo legislature is only to ask a favor, the proper word should be “request” and not “investigate.”
Local legislative bodies don’t investigate government-owned and controlled corporations under the Office of the President mainly because they have not completed the turning over of certain projects to their intended beneficiaries.

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NHA is classified under the Infrastructure Utilities Group and operates under the administrative supervision of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council.
Board Member Domingo Oso Jr., vice chair of the committee on infrastructure, was reported to be contemplating on passing a resolution asking the NHA to give to government employees some of the 1,050 NHA housing units intended for members of the police and the military if no takers were interested to occupy them.
Oso, who is from Barotac Nuevo, was quoted in media as saying: “Until now, the area is not occupied and in my personal observation, the facilities, as required in accordance with the requirements, are not properly installed and put up by the developer.”
He added: “We are planning to pass a resolution that if there are no takers, we will give (the unit) to government employees so that it would be used rather than wasted.”

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Rhodora Lim, NHA-6 estate supervisor, has disclosed that 743 of the housing units have been occupied and the remaining units have been reserved for soldiers now assigned in Marawi City.
Lim explained that the housing project has been purposely earmarked for members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for a unit cost of P260,000 acquired through amortization and salary deduction for 30 years.
We admire Oso’s intention, but the Iloilo Provincial Board can only request for the list of the project beneficiaries; it can’t compel the NHA to award the remaining reserved lots to any Tom, Dick, and Harry in government service except for the members of the PNP and the AFP.

 

Ilonggo lawyer’s murder alarming

“If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.”

–Bayard Rustin

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY — We’re curious, worried and alarmed.
Are lawyers who defend in court those accused in cases involving illegal drugs also being targeted for summary execution in the Philippines?
Does lawyering for the society’s “bad elements” constitute a sin punishable by death?
Does defending the rights of the accused in narcotics cases also make lawyers enemies of the state?
Our curiosity aroused early this year when a prominent lawyer in Cebu City, Jonah John Ungab, was gunned down while driving his car in broad daylight along S. Osmena Street in Cebu City on February 19, 2018.
Ungab was the lawyer of wanted suspected drug lord Kerwin Espinosa.
Also in Cebu City on July 2, 2018, another lawyer, Salvador Solima, known for handling high profile drug cases, was killed inside his house at Singson Compound in Barangay Guadalupe.

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On Thursday morning in Bacolod City, prominent lawyer Rafael Atutubo, 62, who handled drug-related cases, was gunned down by motorcycle-riding assailants while sitting outside his house on Galo Street, Barangay 20.
The manner the crime was executed was intriguing.
The same pattern and method.
The same purpose and reason?
Just like the recent spate of murders involving Catholic priests highly critical against the police’s operations and their alleged summarily killings of street-level drug suspects, it appears there is a trend in the killing of lawyers handling narcotics cases in the Philippines.
We hope and pray all these incidents weren’t state-sponsored and those involved in the attacks weren’t members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) like in numerous cases recently of foiled ambush attempts on drug personalities where some of the slain triggermen were organic PNP members.

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The escalation of violence involving the campaign against illegal drugs has gone too far.
Lawyers, priests, cops, mayors, village chiefs, and journalists have been waylaid violently like stray dogs all in the name of “all out war” against illegal drugs.
And only few people are angry and willing to denounce violence, which has become the trademark of the Philippines since President Rodrigo Roa Duterte launched an aggressive campaign against illegal drugs.
We’re not saying that the police have allowed themselves to be used as “berdugos” (executioners) or tools to eliminate suspected drug dealers and drug addicts and their defenders, but they should be our protectors, not our killers.
Atutubo’s grisly murder was too much to bear for the peace-loving Filipinos who are now starting to realize that the war against illegal drugs can’t and will never be won overnight through violence.
We demand justice for all victims of extra-judicial killings; we demand the immediate end of violence in the name of war against narcotics.

 

Itik de Asis rattles Guimaras’ ‘three Stooges’

“Anything you strike, anything you shake or rattle, or just anything that can be picked up, and you can create a sound.” 

— Evelyn Glennie

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY — In their psywar game, former Guimaras vice governor Vicente “Itik” de Asis recently made a mincemeat of the island province’s so-called “Three Stooges”– Governor Samuel Gumarin, Vice Governor John Edward Gando, and former Rep. JC Rahman Nava.
They panicked when a certain Rodrigo Gabales, purportedly a “resident” of Guimaras, allegedly filed a plunder and technical malversation complaint against them for the “release” of P264 million in public funds days before the May 2016 elections.
If proven, the three could face jail terms, ouster, and disqualification from holding a public office for violation of the election ban on disbursement of funds during the campaign period.
They suspected De Asis to be behind “Rodrigo Gabales” whose real identity wasn’t immediately established with absolute certainty as of this writing.
What if the alleged plunder and malversation raps were a dud?

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In a joint press conference August 22 in Jordan town, the three bewailed the “erroneous” report published in a local newspaper about the amount involved in the supposed plunder and technical malversation raps.
They also cried “political harassment.”
But if the “Three Stooges” were using their common sense, there was no need for them to act like they were next in line to Leo Echegaray in the death chamber.
If they did not touch with malicious intent a single centavo of the amount being floated by “Rodrigo Gabales”, there was no need for them to summon the spirits in the River Styx to look pristine and unalloyed.
If they did not have yet the copy of the supposed formal complaint, there was no basis for them to belie something that could only exist in “Rodrigo Gabales’” fertile imagination.
They could have just shrugged off the issue if they believed it did not have any iota of validity.
Fear of the unknown is tantamount to dousing gasoline to a warehouse being swallowed by conflagration.
It’s the “Three Stooges’” irrational fear that makes them look vanquished, humiliated, and deserted by their vainglory.

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And De Asis as the convenient whipping boy and suspected culprit, again?
De Asis does not even belong to a big political party with massive wherewithal enough to submerge the Nava-Gumaren submarine.
And they rattled like they were surrounded by scarecrows in the middle of a dark cornfield?
If it was De Asis, their perennial political punching bag, behind the ersatz gobbledygook, he must now be laughing from ear to ear watching his political nemesis reduced to political pygmies by their over reactions.
Political war is a mind game, too; it’s a battle of gimmickry and how to make your opponents mad while they look like scoundrels and circus performers.
If De Asis was the Real McCoy, he just scored a triple whammy!

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THE New York State Department of Labor gave justice to my complaint against a Jewish community leader in Brooklyn in a quick verdict handed an hour after I lodged the complaint in their office on Canal-Varick Streets in Lower Manhattan at 1:30 o’clock in the afternoon August 22, 2018.
Arbiter Mokarram Ahmed first perused the complaint sheet I signed; and buckled down to investigation. After hearing both sides of the coin, the arbiter scribbled his evaluation while I was waiting on tenterhooks.
“Quick justice,” I exclaimed silently when arbiter Ahmed handed to me a machine copy of the verdict and intoned, “good luck.”

 

What is so special with those arrested lawyers?

“Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.”

–Lao Tzu

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY — From the Iloilo Provincial Capitol where the trial courts were located before the construction of the Iloilo Hall of Justice on Bonifacio Drive, City Proper sometime in August 1990, a human rights lawyer from San Joaquin, Iloilo requested me to escort him to his office located in the YMCA building on Iznart St. which is five minutes away by walk.
The human rights lawyer, tagged as a sympathizer of the New People’s Army (NPA), was aware they were being targeted for kidnapping and summary execution during the Aquino administration or several months after the the late dictator Marcos was deposed in a bloodless EDSA People Power revolution.
Some of his colleagues have been kidnapped and murdered even after democracy was installed in the Philippines following Marcos’ ouster.
The Ilonggo human rights lawyer held my hand tightly as we crossed the street.
His eyes were alert as night owls.
I did not leave him until we reached the YMCA.
God bless the soul of that human rights lawyer who once surprised his colleagues in the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP)-Iloilo Chapter when he delivered a prayer in their oath-taking ceremony at Hotel Del Rio despite being tagged by the military as “communist”.

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The Ilonggo human rights lawyer, who died of natural death in the early 90s, would have been a great lawmaker had he won against Rep. Oscar “Oca” Garin Sr. in the congressional contest.
And if he were still alive today and became congressman, he would have opposed the House Resolution 2086 filed on August 23, 2018 by Assistant Majority Leader and 1-Ang Edukasyon Rep. Salvador Belaro, Jr. and Oriental Mindoro 1st District Rep. Doy Leachon directing the House committees on justice and good government and public accountability to probe the arrest of three lawyers amid an anti-drug operation at a bar in Makati City last week.
The Ilonggo human rights lawyer used to tell us lawyers like him “are not above the law.”
“If there are good lawyers, there are also bad lawyers,” the Ilonggo human rights lawyer intoned. “We are not above the law. If we violate the law we must also be punished like ordinary citizens.”
The Ilonggo human rights lawyer was against any special treatment to be accorded the officers of the court who commit a malfeasance or a crime punishable under the penal code.

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The House Resolution came in the heels of the detention of three lawyers on August 9, 2018 by the police for allegedly interfering in the implementation of a search warrant at the Time in Manila bar, where the police earlier reportedly found illegal drugs.
The lawyers, who were released after 24 hours, allegedly tried to interfere in the serving of a search warrant.
We are not saying that the lawyers have been treated as “sacred cows” by the the two lawmakers when they filed the House Resolution.
Police chief Director General Oscar Albayalde, meanwhile, defended the arrest, saying the police would not spare anyone who violates the law.
The lawmakers claimed the arrest was “highly irregular considering that the ones arrested are lawyers who are officers of the court and who are only at the scene of the raid to perform their duties as counsel of the said establishment.”
Belaro and Leachon also insisted there might be a need for a new legislation, or amend an existing legislation, or come up with new administrative rules to prevent the recurrence of the same.

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Belaro advised the three lawyers to file charges before the National Police Commission (Napolcom), the Makati Regional Trial Court and the Bar Confidant.
He said: “For administrative sanctions against those Makati City police officers, administrative cases can be filed before the National Police Commission or the People’s Law Enforcement Board. I believe the NAPOLCOM is the better option.”
The three lawyers must cite, among others, the violations of specific provisions of the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) own operations manual and standard operating procedures on crime scene investigations and criminal procedure, added the lawmaker.
Belaro further said: “Lawyers are also deemed as persons in authority and thus, the possibility of a criminal charge for direct assault and other applicable crimes may also be explored plus suits for damages against the Makati City police. The aggrieved lawyers can file counter-charges before the Makati City regional trial court.”
Belaro demanded a “suspension or disbarment cases could also be filed against them before the Office of the Bar Confidant” if any of the involved Makati City PNP personnel were lawyers.
If those arrested and detained by the cops weren’t their colleagues in the IBP, would Reps. Belaro and Leachon file those House Resolution?
What is so special with those three lawyers, by the way?

 

Over acting Grace Poe

“When politics is no longer a mission but a profession, politicians become more self-serving than public servants.” — Emmanuel Macron

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY –– We don’t see anything wrong if Jeck Conlu, head of Iloilo City’s Public Safety and Transportation Management Office (PSTMO), will seek an elective position in the May 2019 elections.
As a matter of fact, Conlu, a decent and very professional guy, isn’t hard to sell.
He is currently one of the most active and diligent department chiefs Iloilo City can always be proud of.
If Conlu has become a trailblazer in the PSTMO, imagine what more can this public servant do if he is a city councilor or vice mayor.
Here is one public servant who is always visible in public, always available when the taxpayers seek his assistance, and always accessible to mass media.
This could only mean one thing: Conlu is not suplado(snobbish) and is a typical public servant worth the taxpayers’ money in the mold of former Mayor Mansueto Malabor and former Councilor Benjie Gengos.
If Jeck Conlu’s name will be included in the surveys, only fools will forget to put the dotted lines on his name in the choices for the top five city councilors in the survey sheet.
Iloilo City Mayor Jose “Joe III” Espinosa III and Iloilo City lone district Rep. Geronimo “Jerry” Treñas should start wooing Jeck Conlu, a real asset in the legislative branch.

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Our country will further slow down if we continue to have OA (over acting) public leaders like Senator Grace Poe.
This woman senator has done nothing except to hold unproductive and useless “Senate committee investigations” these past years.
Each time there was a controversy ripe for publicity, Poe would call for a “committee investigation” where she would pretend to be sympathetic in a certain cause and deliver a melodrama spiel ala movie script of her foster mother, Susan Roces.
After garnering a huge publicity for her failed 2016 presidential bid in the Senate committee on public order and illegal drugs hearing on the November 27, 2015 foiled raid by a group of thugs led by the late drug lord Melvin “Boyet” Odicta Sr. on Aksyon Radyo station in Iloilo City, Poe’s committee has done nothing concretely.

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None of the personalities identified in the raid was arrested or hauled to court as a result of that terrifying attempt to intimidate employees of that radio station.
Odicta was only “neutralized” after President Rodrigo R. Duterte was elected and fulfilled his campaign promise to eliminate illegal drugs and kill the drug lords.
In her latest publicity stunt, Poe sought for a “full blown” Senate investigation in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) runaway incident when thousands of passengers got stranded and flights were cancelled after a Chinese airline recently veered off.
Poe blamed the airport’s “seeming broken systems of regulations” saying it was a “jolting wake-up call” that caused an “airport paralysis.”
“The slow actions on the issue is something perverse about an absent administration by inefficiency, lack of compassion for citizens and people, and anathema to the country’s quest in good public services, tourism, investments, human resources, and similar sectors,” the lady senator bewailed.
She has scheduled an inquiry into the issue on August 29.

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Is there a need for the Senate to join the fray even after Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade has taken over the management of the investigation of the incident and called it an “eye-opener” for airport authorities?

Tugade said the incident was “a reminder for us to take a second look at the processes, procedures, and protocols of concerned agencies, as well as airlines, so that we may all improve in the future.

“I am sorry. We did our very best to address the situation,” added the secretary after the NAIA has been ordered closed temporarily.

It seems that a Senate hearing at this time is too premature and unnecessary when NAIA authorities are still scrambling to remedy the situation and put everything into order.

Politicians like Poe should at least wait and give Tugade, et al ample time to solve the problem in their own capacity before grandstanding politicians like Poe will dip their fingers and earn pogi points at the expense of other fellow public servants.

 

Pinoys destroy each other in immigration business?

“Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.”

–Aesop

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY — Was Carl Benito a victim of the dreaded Pinoy crab mentality?
Immigration consultancy business must now be thriving that those in the industry are reportedly the ones destroying each other by tipping off authorities with false allegations.
Benito was only one of the latest foreign-based Filipino immigration consultants who fell in disgrace after being accused of committing fraudulent deals involving workers and immigrants intending to live permanently in Canada, an accusation not yet proven with absolute truth in a competent court.
In other parts of Canada and in the United States, a similar misfortune befell other Filipinos engaged in the business of immigration consultancy.
If they don’t “pirate” applicants, they reportedly accuse one another of charging exorbitant fees and operating without license and authority in order to discourage prospective clients.
One of them is a Filipino-Canadian immigration consultant in British Columbia in Canada who is now being investigated by the consulate and immigration authorities after he suspected that a fellow Filipino-Canadian immigration consultant “destroyed my reputation.”

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He requested strict anonymity pending the results of an “important meeting this week” where he made an appeal to be heard on the controversy he was implicated.
“It’s a plain and simple crab mentality,” sobbed the embattled Fil-Can immigration consultant. “Once your business is doing good somebody (in the same industry) will feel bad about it and invent intrigues to destroy you,” he added.
The Fil-Can immigration consultant swore his business is legal and his agency is duly-licensed.
“In fact, I have helped a lot of clients who are now permanent residents in Canada,” he disclosed.
Meanwhile, Benito is a former Alberta Progressive Conservative Member of the Legislative Assembly who’s home and office were raided on August 16, 2018 by Canada’s immigration authorities on suspicion of immigration fraud schemes.
Seized by the Canada Border Services Agency during the raid were more than $250,000 in cash, mostly in bundles of $100 bills.

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Benito has been accused of counseling dozens of Filipino immigrants on how to fraudulently extend their stay in Alberta through bogus applications for study and devious work-extension permits.
As an immigration counselor, Benito was also accused of illegally employing at least one and possibly several fellow Filipino immigrants since Sept. 16, 2016.
Border Services officials had been reportedly tipped off Benito has been conducting fraudulent immigration schemes since Nov. 11, 2015.
However, it was reported that no charges have been filed in court yet against Benito and none of the allegations in the documents have been proven in court.
Some of his supporters suspect “his jealous business rivals could have fed authorities with half-truths and false information in a bid to sabotage his good business.”
Benito has not made any official statement about the raid as of this writing.

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Even if they suspect that some immigration consultancy firms operate in dubious manners, many desperate Filipinos continue to play deaf and blind thinking they can still nevertheless enter in Canada, US, Australia, and New Zealand and other highly developed western countries to escape poverty in the Philippines.
This is being exploited by some unscrupulous “immigration consultants” who take advantage of the clients’ “bahala na”attitude.
And this explains why “immigration consultancy” agencies have mushroomed in the Philippines these past years.
There are still many legal and prestigious immigration consultancy agencies that are actually helping facilitate and fast track the papers of their clients and have never been tainted with shady transactions.