“O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.”
–Saint Augustine
By Alex P. Vidal
AS a Catholic, I believe in the Holy Spirit. I also believe in the Divine Intervention.
But no one can predict when and how the Holy Spirit works; no one can tell if the Divine Intervention will come or not.
Before thousands more will be killed, let’s hope and pray that the Holy Spirit will touch the heart of Vladimir Putin and withdraw his troops from Ukraine as soon as possible.
God works in mysterious ways. Everything that is about totalitarianism, dictatorship, cruelty, subjugation, injustice is ungodly. Good will always triumph over evil.
People around the world, including those from the Philippines, who have rallied behind Ukraine in solidarity, will need to strengthen their faith more.
If this bloody invasion could happen in Ukraine, Europe’s second largest country, this could also happen in other countries, not only in Europe but also in Asia, Africa and even America.
Prayers are okay. Sanctions from the West are okay, too, and appear effective; but the greatest miracle is Putin changing his mind, halting the carnage in Ukraine, going back to the negotiating table, and embracing peace unconditionally. Impossible?
With God, nothing is impossible.
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For two consecutive Mondays (February 21 and 28), I dropped by in the United Nations (UN) headquarters in the morning on 1st Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.
My visit on February 28 was very significant: I wanted to see the flags of both the warring Russia and Ukraine among the 193 flags, including the Philippines’, flying outside the 73-year-old UN building.
Later in the day, two big stories came out from the U.N.: 1. The expulsion of 12 Russian diplomats based at Moscow’s U.N. mission here in New York for engaging in espionage activities; and 2. The revelation by Catherine Russell, the newly appointed Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), that the situation for boys and girls caught up in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict grew worse by the minute.
“The United States has informed the United Nations and the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations that we are beginning the process of expelling twelve intelligence operatives from the Russian Mission who have abused their privileges of residency in the United States by engaging in espionage activities that are adverse to our national security,” U.S. Mission to the United Nations spokesperson Olivia Dalton said in a statement.
“We are taking this action in accordance with the U.N. Headquarters Agreement. This action has been in development for several months.”
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters that the U.S. gave them until March 7 to leave the country.
He said that it is a “hostile action” by the U.S. government and violates Washington’s obligations as the host country of the United Nations.
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Nebenzia also called the order “sad news” and said the U.S., the host country, was showing “gross disrespect” to its commitments “both under U.N. Charter and the Host Country Agreement, and Vienna conventions.”
The Vienna Convention also applies to the treatment of diplomats.
“Children have been killed. Children have been wounded. And children are being profoundly traumatized by the violence all around them,” Russel said in a statement.
UNICEF has renewed a call on all parties to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure. Hospitals, schools, water and sanitation facilities, as well as orphanages, have come under fire, according to reports.
Explosive weapons in populated areas, along with explosive remnants of war, represent “real and present dangers” for children, said Russell.
She appealed for suspension of the ongoing military actions, which would facilitate humanitarian access to people who have been cut off after five days of intense airstrikes and ground fighting.
“It would also allow families in the worst affected areas to venture out to get food and water, to seek medical care, or to leave in search of safety,” she added.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
“Fortunately for serious minds, a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.”
—Benjamin Haydon
By Alex P. Vidal
I BEG to disagree with Philippine presidential debate panelist and University of the Philippines (UP) political science Prof. Clarita Carlos who posed this controversial question in a recent TV interview: “How long will the West push Putin until he takes the nuclear option?”
She rued that “the West just keeps on pushing and pushing him” insisting “it was really the west that created the Ukraine crisis.”
Prof. Carlos claimed the mercurial Putin “had been provoked” to attack Ukraine after the United States and the NATO “installed missiles in Poland” thus angering the disgraced Russian leader.
What news channel has Prof. Carlos been monitoring? What news website has she been reading? Who is coaching her on current events?
Where the hell did she get all these ridiculous and nauseating reports about the west (NATO and US) as the one that supposedly provoked Putin to kill Ukrainians?
Can’t Prof. Carlos see that the world, including many Russians right there in Moscow, is now united in solidarity against Putin?
That no one has sided with Kremlin’s evil intention to decapitate Kyiv out of its leader’s obsession to gain control over Ukraine and other former Soviet republics linguistically, culturally, politically, and militarily?
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If Prof. Carlos is a socialist, a Putin admirer, or anti-America, fine, I’ll understand; I’ll respect her position, but not after calling out that she’s patently and blatantly outdated and out of tune.
As an anti-war and pro-life advocate, I can not, in my conscience, allow Prof. Carlos to get away with her ludicrous assertion that “it was the west that provoked the Ukraine crisis.”
Let’s make this simple, Prof. Carlos. Putin declared war on Ukraine based on three outrageous lies: 1. That Ukraine does not have the right to exist separate from Russia; 2. That Ukraine is committing atrocities against Russian-speaking people; 3. And that the Russian military needs to “de-Nazify” Ukraine even if its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish.
I will again disagree when she compared the alleged installation by the US and NATO of missiles in Poland to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. There’s no comparison, madame.
Nikita Khrushchev had no respect from the very start for the “young” John F. Kennedy, and the Soviet Union secretly installed the nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores, with a purpose to launch attacks on American cities.
NATO and the U.S. never had plans to launch attacks on Russia as the move would contradict their values and the purpose why NATO was created.
It’s only in Putin’s diabolical thinking that Russia will be invaded. The truth is he is obsessed with nuclear weapon and he only wanted to up the nuclear ante as proven by his latest declaration when he failed to score a blitzkrieg after four days of heavy bombardment.
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Unless Prof. Carlos is feigning ignorance, it’s inconceivable for the brilliant professor not to be aware of what is going on in Europe given her stock of knowledge on foreign affairs and temerity to brag about her credentials as “a reader of history” in her appearances in at least two nationwide televised media interviews. I was waiting in vain for Prof. Carlos to express sympathy or, at least, mention something about the senseless murder of innocent civilians, children, women, and senior citizens caught in the crossfire when Russian soldiers swooped down on Ukraine and began shooting and bombing government and civilian buildings in an unprovoked, senseless, unjustified, and immoral attack for several days now.
Putin may have wrongly believed that the age of the American-led globalization was ending, that he chose to attack after the pandemic.
His biggest blunder was to underestimate the resolve of the courageous Ukrainians who refused to capitulate and have vowed to defend their land with their life.
Prof. Carlos could commit a terrible sin of misinformation if she continued to misread the sparks in Eastern Europe and ignored the sudden spasm of international outrage brought by Vladimir Putin’s skullduggery.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
—Desmond Tutu
By Alex P. Vidal
YOU don’t need to take sides to condemn the brutalities and atrocities in Ukraine.
Thus the “neutral” stand of Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in the ongoing slaughter by the Russian forces of the hapless and aggrieved Ukraine is hogwash.
Lajos Kossuth said, “Neutrality, as a lasting principle, is an evidence of weakness.”
And as Dante once said, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
If it is the official stand of the Philippine government, officials deserve one hot place in Lucifer’s habitat. What a shame.
You don’t play neutral when badly maimed bodies (military or civilians) stockpile in an independent territory being savaged by a superior military force.
You don’t play neutral when a mad and seemingly incoherent head of state is committing a bizarre act tantamount to a bloody crime against humanity and pushing the world to the brink of World War III.
You don’t play neutral in a situation where genocide is about to be committed.
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You don’t play neutral when the safety and welfare of innocent civilians, including women, children, and senior citizens, is at stake.
You don’t play neutral when a country is being ravaged by highly sophisticated weapons and its people, caught in crossfire, are murdered in horrific scale.
You don’t play neutral when human rights are flagrantly abused and wasted in an unprovoked invasion widely condemned all over the world for its serious threat to global security and consequences in geopolitics.
You don’t play neutral amid a potential upsurge of displaced refugees.
You don’t play neutral when international laws are openly violated despite efforts from peace-loving democratic states in America and Europe to appeal for sobriety and press for settlement of the conflict through diplomatic means.
The least you can do is denounce the violence and call for its immediate end without necessarily declaring support to one of the warring parties if you are “afraid to antagonize” China, among other Russian allies in the Asian region.
You don’t take a neutral stand when common sense, democracy and independence are at stake—unless you are guilty of cowardice and don’t have a backbone.
It’s difficult to accept Lorenzana’s shallow and harebrained neutrality.
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I learned over the weekend that in every 10 media practitioners in Iloilo, two were Bongbong Marcos “supporters” while eight were Leni Robredo “fans.”
When the two leading presidential candidates held a grand political rally in Iloilo one after the other on February 24 and 25, respectively, the situation was so tense in the ground and in the social media.
Even if they didn’t have to do it, some of them engaged in unnecessary debates and name-calling; they allowed politics, or election issues, to put a blemish on their friendship and camaraderie.
We expect the animosity to simmer down or end when the new president has been elected on May 9, 2022.
I didn’t want to add fire to conflagration, so I chose to tackle other subject matters in that period and didn’t write about the rallies of both Vice President Robredo and former Senator Marcos Jr.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
By Alex P. Vidal
A RESPECTED Ilonggo diplomat, our friend and fellow chess player, has sharply reacted to Kremlin’s ongoing invasion of Kyiv: “Praying they’ll have their shit and eat it too, and not impart it on us.”
He was saying that if war was inevitable in Europe now that Vladimir Putin has stubbornly shown willingness to take on all NATO-allied countries siding with Ukraine, we should be spared from whatever consequences—political and economic—in the event violence would escalate into horrific proportions.
By “we” means the Philippines in particular, and Asia in general.
We absolutely have nothing to do whatsoever with Putin’s war against the former Soviet-nation Ukraine, except that we can only offer prayers as suggested in the social media by those who love freedom and detest war and violence.
“Pray for Ukraine” must now be the most popular outcry all over the world both in the social media and in the churches and other houses of worship.
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Many of us in the Christian world who believe in the power and miracle of prayers actually have begun asking for the Divine Intervention weeks back, even when Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, a comedian-turned-politician and now the Ukraine president, didn’t believe Russia would attack the second largest country in Europe.
Militarily the Filipinos can never be involved since the Philippines basically isn’t a NATO member and Europe is oceans apart even if they share the same diplomatic sentiments with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and other NATO members.
While we’re safe from Putin’s bombs and tanks, economically, the Russia-Ukraine tumult may have far-reaching effects in the life of Juan dela Cruz as a resident of the Third World country.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will definitely have geopolitical and humanitarian consequences aside from economic ones.
One indicator suggested about the economic impact Americans might feel, especially at the gas pump, a concern aired by former President Barrack Obama.
The second would be another supply-chain breakdown. And the final indicator sheds light on why the Russian economy is able to punch above its weight.
Filipinos are luckier for having only a president who disparages and incarcerates women dissidents but doesn’t pick up a fight against Goliath China.
Unlike the Russians whose president doesn’t care if his unpopular acts would trigger the bloodiest and most destructive war in the European history.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
Just as diplomats at a last-minute United Nations Security Council meeting were pleading for peace, Russian fire began raining down on Ukraine.
AS feared by many people following the developments in the Russia-Ukraine tiff these past weeks, Russia invaded Ukraine, reports from various sources have confirmed.
The invasion came more than a week after we reported here that “there would be no war” even if US President Jose Biden had been declaring he feared the Russian hostility toward Ukraine would result in war, an invasion, which finally beckoned.
Below is the analysis by Stephen Collinson of CNN: On a haunting night, marked by an address from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that felt like a eulogy for a democracy, decades of peace between nations on the European landmass ended with loud blasts in multiple Ukrainian cities.
Within hours, livestream video showed a column of military vehicles streaming into the country from Belarus, where Russian troops had been massed. And thunderous explosions soon boomed over the capital Kyiv, as air raid sirens wailed, heralding a dangerous new crisis for a world already rocked by turmoil.
Biden condemns ‘Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine’
President Vladimir Putin’s long-feared assault will reverberate far beyond Russia and its democratic neighbor. It will bring consequences including painful spikes in already high gas prices for Americans struggling to navigate out of a once-in-a-century pandemic.
And it may rekindle a Cold War that had once seemed a relic of history, creating a precarious new standoff between the US and Russia, the world’s largest nuclear powers.
President Joe Biden will unveil the most punishing set of sanctions ever imposed against Russia when he addresses the nation later Thursday.
“(The) invasion has begun,” Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, told reporters, describing missile strikes on airfields and military headquarters in Kyiv, as CNN teams on the ground witnessed blasts and artillery fire elsewhere at the start of a conflict the US has warned could cost thousands of civilian lives.
Putin, in an unscheduled televised address dripping with false claims about genocide perpetrated against ethnic Russians in eastern regions of Ukraine, declared an operation to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.”
His malfeasance recalled the dark maneuvers of dictators in the 1930s that pitched the world into war. His reference to Nazis raised the idea of political purges and suggested a mindset seemingly verging on paranoia.
It was the surreal moment when a leader traumatized and obsessed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he witnessed as a rank-and-file KGB officer in former East Germany, launched a battle to avenge forces of history and erase the freedoms and democracy of a people of an independent, sovereign nation.
Ukraine is a former Soviet republic that went its own way after the collapse of communism — and gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for now-violated security guarantees from Moscow.
It yearns for a future in the West, but Putin sees its quest for democracy as a threat to his own autocratic rule and wants to ensure the country never attains its dream of membership in NATO.
America suddenly faces a dangerous new crisis
Apart from the challenge to the US-led world order and what was once known as the free world, Americans will pay a price for this attack, though they are not, like the people of Ukraine, coming under fire.
Higher gas prices and inflation are certain. Oil raced above $100 a barrel almost as soon as the Russian assault started.
And since Putin had been demanding pullbacks from NATO in ex-Soviet satellite states that had joined the organization, this is America’s crisis too. The United States will not send troops to fight Russia directly in Ukraine, given that as a non-NATO member, Ukraine does not enjoy the alliance’s mutual defense guarantees.
But it is almost certain that Washington will have to send troops back to bolster its European allies and to bases they began to leave 30 years ago.
The Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia look suddenly vulnerable and, unlike Ukraine, are NATO members the US is treaty bound to defend. There is also the possibility of a US-funded insurgency in Ukraine, raising the risky prospect of a new proxy war between Washington and Moscow.
More broadly, Putin’s attack on Ukraine is another challenge to America’s global power and the concept of a free and democratic world that multiplies its influence.
Liberal democracy now faces a fearsome challenge, not just from a revanchist Russia but from a rising, authoritarian super power in China. And unlike during the Cold War, when all parties stood firm in the face of a 40-year struggle against communism, America’s own democracy is reeling, threatened by a former President who tried to cling to power.
In a sign of the shattered fabric of US national unity, ex-President Donald Trump, fresh from declaring Putin a “genius” on Tuesday, quickly called into Fox and lied that a “rigged election” in the US saddled Americans with an illegitimate President and emboldened the Russian leader — over whom he himself always fawned.
A poignant address
The true nature of the Russian assault, and its significance for the rest of the world, shone through a poignant address by Zelensky, who said he had called Putin earlier and got only silence on the line.
Pleading with the people of Russia in their own language, Zelensky said: “You are being told this fire will free the Ukrainian people. But Ukrainian people are free.”
The Ukrainian President, a former comedian now charged with narrating a national tragedy, told Russians, “We want to determine our history by ourselves. In peace, calm and honesty.” And in a chilling aside, hours before guns again rang out over a continent stained with the blood of millions lost in tyrants’ wars, Zelensky noted the lesson that localized battles rarely stay that way in a region cursed by history — a point underscored by the tens of thousands of US graves in Europe from two world wars. “This step can become a beginning of a great war at the European continent,” he said.
Former US Defense Secretary William Cohen, speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, made a similar point. “Starting a war in a dry place, so to speak, can set off a wild fire,” he said.
A risk for Putin
The extent and duration of the operation led by tens of thousands of Russian troops massed around Ukraine is not yet certain. But its purpose is clear.
One autocratic Russian leader has made the choice to deprive millions of Ukrainians of their right to make their own decisions about their country and its future. Their obvious preference is not to be ruled by Russia.
A senior US official familiar with the latest US intelligence said that the early assessment was that this was the start of the full Russian invasion long predicted by the United States.
Putin has long chafed against what he sees as disrespect from America following the Cold War and NATO’s eastern expansion to encompass ex-Soviet allies like Poland, Romania and Hungary. This explains why the conflict might be located in Ukraine, but it’s also a broader challenge to Washington.
In the early fog of war, it is too early to tell the extent of resistance the Russians would face, if they would topple the government in Ukraine, or if the illegal invasion could cause an insurgency that could kill Russian troops and create conditions that could challenge Putin’s regime.
One Russia expert, former senior CIA officer Paul Kolbe, said that the invasion of a nation that is larger than France or Germany could eventually create an unsustainable situation for the Russians and was an enormous gamble.
“Putin is going to try to swallow a porcupine here and it is going to be hard for the Russian bear to digest it,” Kolbe told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
“This is a conflict that is going to extend over months and years whether the invasion goes well for Putin or not. He is going to change the shape of Europe and is going to set enduring lines of conflict within Ukraine and on the borders of Ukraine with the West,” he added.
Moments before the assault started, diplomats had gathered in the UN Security Council chamber for a meeting chaired, in a bitter quirk of the world body’s schedule, by the Russian ambassador.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres made a last-ditch plea for invasion orders to be countermanded.
“I have only one thing to say from the bottom of my heart. President Putin, stop your troops from attacking Ukraine. Give peace a chance. Too many people have already died.”
“I don’t think there’s ever a winner in a feud. It’s about emotional pain and an inability to conquer the pain.”
—Ryan Murphy
By Alex P. Vidal
IF I were a paid political strategist, I would ask my client or clients running against former Senator Bongbong Marcos to disregard the suggestion made by another former Senator Serge Osmeña to “hit” Bongbong’s father, the late former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. instead of the candidate son.
“Hit the father and the son will fall,” was the 78-year-old Cebuano politician’s uncanny suggestion in a recent nationwide televised interview with ANC News’ anchor Christian Esquerra.
I watched the interview on Youtube and was intrigued by Osmeña’s eerie display of antagonism and antipathy toward the dead Marcos.
I thought, with his stature, he would exhort all the presidential candidates and their supporters to level up and do away with gutter campaign and character assassination.
I thought he would act as a paragon of harmony and calmness by urging the candidates to highlight only during the campaign period their platforms of government and concrete plans for the future of the 109.6 million Filipinos.
“Hit the father” means quarrel, bickering and disunity.
The Bible tells us to “love thy enemy”, but Osmeña was fomenting hatred and altercation.
Soliciting hostility and coaxing the people to attack the dead can be tantamount to desecrating the late dictator’s memory and may be considered sacrilegious.
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Osmeña believes it is less effective to lambast survey frontrunner Bongbong, who is Team Unity’s standard bearer, as the voters appear to be unperturbed by the negative issues leveled against the only son of the late dictator, deposed from power in the 1986 EDSA revolution.
If Bongbong’s rivals and critics will hit the father, who became infamous for declaring Martial Law in the Philippines from 1972 to 1981, many young voters, especially those who have no knowledge about the atrocities committed by the Marcos regime during the military rule, “will open their eyes” and reject Bongbong, Osmeña theorized.
The retired Cebuano politician, who was incarcerated during the Martial Law, said many of those who are 55 years old and below today don’t have sufficient knowledge about Martial Law.
He admitted that some of Bongbong’s admirers and probably voters on May 9, 2022 are younger Filipinos.
He wants them to study history, especially how the nation reportedly suffered under the “dark years” of the Marcos regime.
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Osmeña is only one of the many victims of Martial Law still alive today who harbor a lifetime grudge against Bongbong’s father or the entire Marcos family for that matter.
It’s understandable why he has ax to grind against the Marcos family.
He was probably one of those tortured by the Philippine Constabulary Metropolitan Command (Metrcom) during his stint inside the jail as a political detainee.
As a son of Marcos’ political rival, Osmeña was imprisoned in 1972 and embarked on a hunger strike along with his cellmate, Eugenio “Geny” Lopez, Jr., to protest the unjust detention of thousands of innocent Filipinos in November 1974.
The hunger strike resulted in the release of 1,022 political prisoners in December 1974. Osmeña and Lopez escaped from their maximum security prison cell in Fort Bonifacio on September 30, 1977 and their exploit was enacted in the 1995 movie, Eskapo.
Let’s hope Osmeña will realize his rather wrong choice of words in trying to make the Filipinos avoid or hate Bongbong and the Marcoses and correct it while the issue is still fresh in the minds of those who saw the interview.
If he thinks Vice President Leni Robredo will win as what many Ilonggos and Cebuanos, including this writer, believe, there’s no need to slander the dead who had nothing to do with the son’s candidacy.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
“I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.”
—Soren Kierkegaard
By Alex P. Vidal
FROM the point of view of chess enthusiasts, including this writer, the recent upset win of 16-year-old Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa against reigning FIDE world champion Magnus Carlsen in their faced off in an online tournament that had featured 16 elite players, was a shocker.
We haven’t heard in the news Carlsen attributing the loss in his recent match to Covid-19.
Those who follow the world chess are aware that our super GM Wesley So, who used to represent the Philippines before becoming a US citizen, has beaten Carlsen on several occasions.
But So, 28, used to be No. 2 in the world and fans have been familiar with his successive conquests of Carlsen that they were not anymore shocked.
A grandmaster from India who is commonly referred to simply as “Pragg,” Praggnanandhaa’s victory came while Carlsen was on his long reign as world champion, thus his win became a sensation and was even given a prominent space in CNN.
The chess prodigy said after the game he was glad to improve on his play from the tournament’s first day and to avoid a draw in his game against Carlsen, which included 39 moves.
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“I’m just really happy,” he said in an interview from Chennai, India.
Pragg is the youngest person to defeat Carlsen since he became world champion—a streak that extends back to 2013, as World Chess notes.
Many chess enthusiasts think it was another disappointing game in a tournament that has seen him make uncharacteristic blunders for Carlsen.
The Norwegian said he was feeling the effects of COVID-19, after testing positive for the coronavirus before the tournament.
“It’s been pretty bad. I played a couple of decent games, but the rest of them have been poor. I need to do a lot better than that,” Carlsen said, according to the International Chess Federation (FIDE) website.
“It’s been a little bit better today,” Carlsen said February 21, “but the first couple of days I was feeling like I’m OK, but I didn’t have the energy, which made it hard to focus because every time I tried to think I blundered. It was a little bit better today, but still pretty bad.”
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Carlsen had notched three straight wins before running into Pragg, showing signs of returning to form after a rough start.
In contrast, Pragg was bouncing back from three losses.
The teenager was required to stay up late at night to face the world’s best chess players because of the time difference involved in playing the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour 2022 online tournament,
Pragg was asked whether he would get some rest or take time to celebrate with a nice dinner after his win.
“It’s about just going to bed, because I don’t think I will have dinner at 2:30 in the morning,” he said.
We expect more teenagers to be inspired by Pragg’s success, especially from the Philippines, where chess is making a Renaissance.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.”
—William Arthur Ward
By Alex P. Vidal
THIS is just a game of imagination. What if the results of the May 9, 2022 election in the national level would be: President Isko “That’s Entertainment” Moreno; Vice President Tito “Iskul Bukol” Sotto; new senators led by Robin “Bad Boy” Padilla, Monsour “Karatedo” del Rosario, Herbert “Bestik” Bautista, Raffy “Idol” Tulfo, Francis Leo “Mayaman Challenge” Marcos, Larry “Fakyo” Gadon, among other showbiz and entertainment characters?
Since election is a “free-for-all” selection process by the voters (comprised of 75 percent “masa”) before and during the day of reckoning, this “imagination” can be possible.
Just like some lotto bettors who scrambled the numbers before placing a bet in the game of luck. Not everyone is a winner, but there will always be lucky gambling patrons.
Can they lift the Philippines from economic doldrums?
Can they restore the faith of the Filipinos who felt betrayed when graft and corruption was never totally eradicated as promised by their leaders who won in the 2016 election?
Can they bring back the confidence and respect of the international community stymied and enfeebled by reports of extra-judicial killings and political persecution, among other infamies of the state?
Can they be our role models in bringing back decency and morality in civil service?
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Have we ever read a book that begins at the end?
It might seem strange to start a story with an ending, but all things are also beginnings; we just don’t know it at the time, writes Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie, in his 2003 follow-up book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
This long-awaited enchanting, beautifully crafted novel by Albom “explores a mystery only heaven can unfold.”
Albom starts with a narration of Eddie’s last hour of life spent at Ruby Pier, an amusement park by a great gray ocean.
The park had the usual attractions, a boardwalk, a Ferris wheel, roller coasters, bumper cars, a taffy stand, and an arcade where, as Albom describes, anybody “could shoot streams of water into a clown’s mouth.”
It also had a big new ride called Freddy’s Free Fall, and this would be where Eddie would be killed, in an accident that would make a headline story in the newspapers around the state.
Albom reminds readers at the time of Eddie’s death, he was a squat, white-haired old man, with a short neck, a barrel chest, thick forearms, and a faded army tattoo on his right shoulder.
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“His legs were thin and veined now, and his left knee, wounded in the war, was ruined by arthritis. He used a cane to get around,” Albom narrates.
“His face was broad and craggy from the sun, with sultry whiskers and a lower jaw that protruded slightly, making him look prouder than he felt. He kept a cigarette behind his left ear and a ring of keys hooked to his belt. He wore rubber-sold shoes. He wore an old linen cap. His pale brown uniform suggested a workingman, and a workingman he was.”
Albom continues: In Eddie’s final moments, he seemed to hear the whole world: distant screaming, waves, music, a rush of wind, a low, loud, ugly sound that he realized was his own voice blasting through his chest.
The little girl raised her arms. Eddie lunged. His bad leg buckled. He half flew, half stumbled toward her, landing on the metal platform, which ripped through his shirt and split open his skin, just beneath the patch that read Eddie and Maintenance. He feels two hands in his own, two small hands.
A stunning impact. A blinding flash of light. And then, nothing.
Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart.
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With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his–and then nothing.
He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush
Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it.
“These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever,” Albom stresses.
One by one, Eddie’s five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life.
As the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success or a devastating failure?
The answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse of heaven itself, promises the book.
Let’s listen to the late Apple genius Steve Jobs: “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
“I know that in life there will be sickness, devastation, disappointments, heartache – it’s a given. What’s not a given is the way you choose to get through it all. If you look hard enough, you can always find the bright side.”
—Rashida Jones
By Alex P. Vidal
I TOLD a friend from Manila last Saturday I would try my best to locate the medical clinic or hospital in New York City if ever Philippine celebrity Kris Aquino, who was scheduled to fly to the United States for medical treatment over the weekend, would arrive in the Big Apple.
The problem is, nobody knew whether Ms Aquino, 51, was bound for Los Angeles or New York.
Details of her reported trip weren’t available and are probably confidential.
If reports from Manila were to be believed, Ms Aquino, who reportedly brought her two sons in the trip, was already in the United States on February 20.
The friend said they were interested to know the latest about Ms. Aquino’s medical treatment as they suspected “she was suffering from a serious ailment that was not truly revealed in public.” She didn’t elaborate.
The press had reported that The Queen of All Media has been suffering from autoimmune thyroiditis, which includes a protrusion of one of her eyeballs.
Another problem I told my friend from Manila was, even if I got lucky to locate the showbiz VIP’s whereabouts (granting she’s in New York), there’s no assurance she would allow any interview from the press.
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For sure, she would try her best to make her trip and medical treatment strictly confidential as possible.
Another reason why I became interested in Ms Aquino’s case is that, in the past, so many VIPs—political, sports and entertainment personalities—who surreptitiously left the Philippines to seek medical treatment abroad, didn’t really disclose their real ailment until after they have died when medical authorities confirmed the truth.
No one knew if they were dying or their conditions could still be remedied even if they availed the most advanced and sophisticated medical attention in the US, London, Japan, and Canada.
Like the popular Filipino singer who died of AIDS or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome a long time ago.
We are referring to the case of Rodel Naval, who died in Toronto, Canada on June 11, 1995, at the age of 42.
His real ailment had been concealed because of his celebrity status and he was initially reported to be suffering from pneumocystis pneumonia.
But a year later on a Filipino television show hosted by the late Inday Badiday, his family confessed that his death was the result of complications related to AIDS.
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THANK YOU VITAMIN D. Even before it was reported that vitamin D “has role in the prevention of the spread of COVID-19”, I was already a fan of this vitamin for more than 10 years now.
When I ran out of this vitamin end of January, I immediately rushed to the nearest pharmacy, Walgreen, located five minutes away by walk from my apartment in Queens.
Lately, it was reported that Vitamin D’s effectivity against the deadly virus has been long contested by many experts since the pandemic began, fueled by early chatter of alternative treatment methods back in 2020.
But a new piece of research has once again reignited the public’s interest in these supplements, as scientists highlight a possible association between vitamin D levels and the immune system’s ability to fend off severe COVID-19 symptoms, particularly associated with the Omicron variant.
The small-scale study, which was organized by researchers in Israel and is based on data collected between April 2020 and February 2021, was recently published in PLOS ONE and presents a case that researchers say is “equally relevant” for Omicron spread as well.
The data was collected from 253 people who were admitted to hospitals for treatment (at a time before vaccines were available) and was used to conclude that those who had a vitamin D deficiency were more likely to develop a severe or critical case of COVID-19, as compared to patients who had sufficient vitamin D levels within blood samples taken at the time of hospitalization. About half of those in the study were deficient in the vitamin.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
“Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.”
—Jean de la Bruyere
By Alex P. Vidal
MY sympathies will always be for colleagues or former colleagues in the mass media when it comes to controversies involving libel or cyberlibel cases regardless of who the complainant is.
I have been there; I mean, I know how it felt to be harassed through libel cases by onion-skinned and crybabies who pretend to be elected public servants.
Politicians who easily get pissed off by a slight criticism from any member of the Fourth Estate don’t deserve a minute longer in public office.
They are worse than Omicron because their actuations are tantamount to muzzling the freedom of press and expression in a democratic society.
No journalist will criticize a public official with intention to destroy the public official’s reputation unless the journalist is “double-edged” or a person working as a media practitioner and at the same time dyed in the wool extortionist (we acknowledge that in every paradise there is serpent and in every forest there is snake.).
So, if a politician receives criticism from a working journalist (newspaperman or broadcaster) it should be job-related or constructive criticism meant to call the politician’s attention for his shortcomings and transgressions, not because the journalist harbors a personal grudge and wants to get even by inventing lies and hitting the politician below the belt out of spite and retribution.
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The arrest of Iloilo City mayoral aspirant Salvador “Jun” Capulot by operatives of the Iloilo City Police Station 3 (ICPS3) Captain Eduardo Siacon, Jr. at the parking area of a building along B. Aquino Ave. in Mandurriao, Iloilo City on February 17 made him more popular and like a whipping boy.
In the eyes of his fans and political supporters, the former radioman from Bacolod City, who is running for mayor against incumbent Iloilo City Mayor Geronimo “Jerry” Treñas, was a victim of persecution.
Seeing Capulot in handcuffs made them think he looked like underdog and someone being made to suffer from injustices for being a small fry.
And Ilonggos always loved the underdog, especially that Capulot appears to personify the image of a poor man with brown complexion and who looks like an ordinary servant and victim of oppression.
Fans and political supporters won’t give a damn about the cases that made members of ICPS3, Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG)-Iloilo City Field Unit, and the Iloilo City Mobile Force Company collar Capulot especially if they see him act like a normal person being arrested and manacled by a group of numerically superior lawmen for stealing a bread to feed his starving family.
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Incidentally, Capulot’s arrest came at a time when he was candidate for city mayor.
This made critics of Treñas, as well as Capulot’s political backers, to link the arrest to the former broadcaster’s political career. Enemies of Treñas have found a good opportunity to lash him for “persecuting” Capulot.
If you hate Treñas, the issue is swashbuckling; it’s a perfect time to finally unleash the molotovs against a “vindictive” mayor, who has been receiving heavy criticisms from Capulot himself, who still maintains a radio “blocktime” program and a hard-hitting Facebook account even after he has “left” the broadcast industry as employee to focus on his new-found career.
But if we look beyond the trees and examine the entire forest, blaming Juan for Pedro’s actions would be illogical and unpalatable, to say the least.
Capulot’s warrant of arrest for six counts of alleged violation of Republic Act 10175 (Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012) docketed as Criminal Case Nos. 22-3519 to 22-3524 was issued Judge Rosario Abigail Magay Dris-Villanueva of the Regional Trial Court Branch 65 in Jordan, Guimaras on Feb. 15, 2022.
And the cases were filed by former Guimaras lone district representative and 2022 gubernatorial candidate JC Rahman Nava.
Guimaras is not only a separate congressional district, it’s also an island province with separate courts and jurisdiction.
Some whip smarts asserted that because Nava belongs to the National Unity Party, where Treñas is a member, ergo, the city mayor could be behind the arrest.
Why would Treñas “flex” his muscle that far for an opponent he can easily beat? And what power does he wield against the court?
Why would the court allow itself to be influenced by a politician if the cases had merits?
The link is totally preposterous if not right away freakish.
(The author, who is no based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
ALEX P. VIDAL'S BLOG 