Ka Bel, a revolutionary

This, a shock:

MANILA, Philippines -- Anakpawis Representative Crispin Beltran died Tuesday from brain injuries after falling from the rooftop of his home in Bulacan, according to reports culled byNQUIRER.net.

Dr. Arnold Corpus, emergency room doctor and attending physician to Beltran, said the former Kilusang Mayo Uno chairman died at exactly 11:48 a.m.

The doctor said he suffered a cut at the right side of the head and broken ribs.

Corpus said the head injuries proved fatal to the militant congressman. He was brought into the hospital at 9:42 a.m. Doctors tried to revive him for two hours and was resuscitated five times before the family decided to discontinue life support.

Beltran’s daughter, Ofelia Beltran-Balleta, announced his death to reporters.

Beltran lapsed into a coma at the hospital, after he developed a blood clot in the brain caused by the fall at around 6 a.m.

In a phone interview with INQUIRER.net, Balleta said Beltran went up to his roof from the mezzanine to fix a leak. While going down, the congressman suddenly lost balance and fell. She added that it was a 14-foot drop and Beltran fell face first.

Balleta said that when Beltran was brought to the hospital, he was still conscious and then suddenly went into cardiac arrest.

She also clarified that a heart attack did not cause Beltran’s fall. “The heart attack is just secondary but he died from hemorrhage that led to him being brain dead,” Balleta said.

Doctors told the family that Beltran was brain dead as of Tuesday morning, said Lualhati Roque, Beltran’s chief of staff.

Bayan Muna partylist Representative Satur Ocampo, who rushed to the hospital after learning of the accident, informed reporters before Beltran died that “only his heart and lungs were being revived. He's experiencing repeated heart seizures.''

Roque added that his family was informed that they had to make a decision whether to continue life support for the congressman. His doctor had explained to the family that his heart was only being kept alive by a drug being injected into his body.

His family said Beltran was really fond of fixing things in his house, an activity, which became a morning habit for him.

“He was physically active,” Balleta said.

“The whole family is grieving,” Mau Hermitanio, another staff of Beltran, told INQUIRER.net.

Beltran, 75, left a wife and 11 children.

Balleta also revealed that the family did not have a chance to talk to Beltran before he died.

“Walang chance kami nagkausap [We did not have the chance to talk],” she said.

Prior to Beltran’s accident and eventual death, Balleta said the family was busy preparing for the congressman’s privilege speech at Congress on Tuesday on power rates and the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Balleta said Beltran’s body would be initially transferred to the Funeraria Paz in Quezon City. After which, the family would bring Beltran to his hometown in Muson, Bulacan then to the University of the Philippines Chapel in Quezon City.

“We are thankful to those who extended their support and condolences. He died for the plight of the workers,” Balleta said.

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I've had the privilege of working with Ka Bel at the House of Representatives as part of a team of lawyers who put together three impeachment complaints against Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Years before that , as a journalist reporting on civil society issues, I had written articles about him and his labor rights advocacy. Ka Bel was what the Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci would call an "organic intellectual," or someone learned in the objective and material conditions of reality not through the halls of the academe but through his being himself, an active participant in the struggle to transform these very same conditions. Though I do not count myself as among those who fully subscribe to the political ideology for which he was a life-long provocateur, his commitment and dedication to his brand of political struggle was both humbling and awe-inspiring.

Religion in small doses?

Filipino evangelicals have concert-like worship services and "purpose-driven life seminars" to attract new members; Polish Catholics do it with even better style, as can be gleaned from this wire service story:

LUBLIN, Poland--A striking brunette sashayed down the catwalk, showing off her simple yet elegant white robe and black headgear to the enraptured audience.

Sister Lucja of the Order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus smiled as the crowd burst into applause.

Faced with a slump in the number of nuns, monks and seminarians in Europe's Roman Catholic heartland, the Church in Poland is trying to dust down its image.

The recent, somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion show in this city in southeast Poland was just the latest sign.

"The name 'fashion show' is provocative. We want to show that we live simply, and that even if we sometimes dress in an old-fashioned way, our clothes are a reflection of our lifestyle," organiser Father Andrzej Batorski, a Jesuit, told AFP.

After Sister Lucja, other nuns, then Jesuits and Capuchin friars hit the red carpet to show off their cassocks in the main hall of the Catholic University of Lublin.

The 90-year-old university is a renowned center of religious and secular teaching and research in Poland, where more than 90 percent of the 38-million-strong population professes to be Roman Catholic.

Some two dozen orders took part in Batorski's fair, setting up their stalls to try to spread the word that taking religious vows isn't a thing of the past.

The stands boasted multimedia displays, leaflets, giveaway calendars and -- at the missionary orders' booths -- souvenirs from Africa and Asia.

Meanwhile, religious chants echoed from loudspeakers.

Under Poland's post-World War II communist regime, the Church played a dual role as both a religious institution and as a bulwark against the authorities.

While its clout has remained significant since the regime's demise in 1989, and is certainly far stronger than in most other European countries, it has been a victim of its own success in helping bring about political change.

In a democratic country where the free market has brought previously unimaginable opportunities for a new generation of Poles, drawing new recruits is becoming a headache.

The mainstream Church's image has also been tarnished by an ultra-Catholic fringe whose outbursts regularly grab headlines, turning off would-be recruits.

"Ten years ago, we had 25 novice nuns. Last year we only had six," said Agnieszka Kranz of the Servant Sisters of Debica, a small Polish order.

Such figures are a worry for the Polish Church, and even for Roman Catholicism beyond the country's borders.

Until recently, the Polish Church was training more than a quarter of Europe's priests, monks and nuns, and supplied them worldwide to fill gaps in other countries.

Last year, the number of Poles taking vows fell by around 25 percent.

For the 2007-2008 academic year, Poland's diocesan seminaries, which train priests, recruited 786 new students, down from 1,029 the year before.

The total number of trainee priests has fallen by 10 percent in one year, to 4,257.

The country's monastic orders are also feeling the pinch.

The number of novice nuns slumped from 728 in 1998 to 468 last year. The number of new monks fell by half to 797.

"For the Polish Church, this is ringing alarm bells," said Monsignor Wojciech Polak, who oversees recruitment.

Batorski said it is up to the Church to reach out to young people, speaking a language they understand.

"We wanted via the fair to enable people to meet those who have chosen a monastic life, to show that they are just regular individuals," he said.

"At the same time, we wanted to give a voice to people who have taken vows, allowing them to explain their chosen path and their faith," he added.

The Polish Church has also jumped headlong into cyberspace, and also turned to other planks of public relations.

Most orders have their own website -- and the Jesuits have even posted a video on YouTube. Others have tried television advertisement and the Franciscans even give their monks public speaking training.

At the Lublin fair, however, the impact seemed limited.

"I'd miss men, and nuns don't use make up or color their hair," said Dominika Pietron, an 18-year-old school student.

However, she said she appreciated her hour-long discussion with a nun there.

"Religion helps you take a look at yourself, and builds confidence. But it should only be taken in small doses," she said.

The Great Crash of the 21st Century?

I almost did not make it through my Economics 11 class under Ms. Solita Monsod. I'd like to think it was my singing that saved the day for me. Just before the Christmas break, she walked up the stage of the old auditorium at the UP School of Economics and started calling on students to sing her a Christmas song. I was sitting just a few rows from the dais, and Ms. Monsod, her signature coffee mug in one hand, zeroed in on who else but me. My 1-E blockmates from the College of Mass Communication ( I was the only mathematically-challenged bloke in a block of about 20 students in those days when students entered UP through the block system) erupted in wild applause as the star economics professor commanded me to make the last day of class before the Christmas break happy. I tried my best to do justice to the first Christmas song that came to mind -it must have been the old ditty Joy to the World -I can't remember for sure. But my crush was in that same lecture class, after all, and I wanted to make a good impression on her, who is now very much married, I gather, and living in a foreign city that used to be the foreign city of my dreams. When it was all over, wilder cheers erupted as Ms. Monsod announced she was not going to ruin any further our Christmas anticipations by keeping us in class any longer.

There's very little that I retained of that class (to begin with, there was very little that I understood of it, supply and demand dynamics and all of that). If there's anything that made a deep impression on me on how volatile markets could make life terrible for everyone, it's John Kenneth Galbraith's book on the Great Crash of 1929 that brought the first big era of Depression in modern times as well as stirred the great dust bowls of North America, not to mention paved the way for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. In fact, it's a book I first read when I was in high school. (A good companion read would be James Agee and Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, ironically originally made for that great symbol of crass capitalism, Fortune magazine).


And now it seems the world is headed for another recession. Or may be the world is finally coming to Hegel's End of History. And do you know who's laughing his way to the bank in the middle of it all? It's George Soros, the prophet of doom whose prognostications on the coming collapse of the US market because of a bad real estate mortgage policy very few people believed. He just made US$ 4 billion by hedging on the miseries of others. Of course, not many people remember fondly how he made his fortune, for instance, by betting on a weak British Pound in 1992, and yes, an even weaker Thai Baht in the throes of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. I'm sure he's made others happy too, through his multi-billion dollar charities and advocacies, built on the libertarian Open Society philosophy of Karl Popper, who was his professor at the London School of Economics. Read here on why the Hungarian Jew still commands little respect from economists, despite his multi-billion dollar successes.

Poem No. 2 for Poetry Month from the Dame of Polish Poetry

Her late compatriot Czeslaw Milosz called Julia Hartwig "the grande dame of Polish poetry." Knopf's poetry series for Poetry Month has more to say: Hartwig, now in her late eighties, belongs to the same generation of Polish poets as Zbigniew Herbert and Wislawa Szymborska. Her voice was shaped by the events of the Second World War and Solidarity, in which she played an active role. Her poems have all the gravitas of the history she has lived through—she tells of the husbands who returned silent from war, of watching regiments with red stars enter her home city of Lublin. But she is also a poet of joy and light, one who craves what is best in both nature and culture and celebrates the small miracles of understanding and happiness, when they come. Hartwig's work is translated by the distinguished translators from the Polish, John and Bogdana Carpenter.

I must admit I have a thing for Polish poetry, having been introduced to the works of Milosz and Adam Zagajewski. But this is my first time to come across a poem by Hartwig:


Tell Me Why This Hurry

The lindens are blossoming the lindens have lost their blossoms
and this flowery procession moves without any restraint
Where are you hurrying lilies of the valley jasmines
petunias lilacs irises roses and peonies
Mondays and Tuesdays Wednesdays and Fridays
nasturtiums and gladioli zinnias and lobelias
yarrow dill goldenrod and grasses
flowery Mays and Junes and Julys and Augusts
lakes of flowers seas of flowers meadows
holy fires of fern one-day grails
Tell me why this hurry where are you rushing
in a cherry blizzard a deluge of greenness
all with the wind racing in one direction only
crowns proud yesterday today fallen into sand
eternal desires passions mistresses of destruction

Poetry Month is upon us all


And I almost forgot everything about it. Knopf's month-long tribute to that sublime art opened on April Fool's Day with a poem from Mary Jo Salter writing about a time that's now forgotten by, if not far-removed from, creatures of the present-day used to email, internet, SMS, DVD and satellite technology:


A Phone Call to the Future


1.
Who says science fiction
is only set in the future?
After a while, the story that looks least
believable is the past.
The console television with three channels.
Black-and-white picture. Manual controls:
the dial clicks when you turn it, like the oven.
You have to get up and walk somewhere to change things.
You have to leave the house to mail a letter.


Waiting for letters. The phone rings: you're not there.
You'll never know. The phone rings, and you are,
there's only one, you have to stand or sit
plugged into it, a cord
confines you to the room where everyone
is also having dinner.
Hang up the phone. The family's having dinner.


Waiting for dinner. You bake things in the oven.
Or Mother does. That's how it always is.
She sets the temperature: it takes an hour.


The patience of the past.
The typewriter forgives its own mistakes.
You type on top sheet, carbon, onion skin.
The third is yours, a record of typeovers,
clotted and homemade-looking, like the seams
on dresses cut out on the dining table.
The sewing machine. The wanting to look nice.
Girls who made their dresses for the dance.


2.
This was the Fifties: as far back as I go.
Some of it lasted decades.
That's why I remember it so clearly.

Also because, as I lie in a motel room
sometime in 2004, scrolling
through seventy-seven channels on my back
(there ought to be more—this is a cheap motel room),
I can revisit evidence, hear it ringing.
My life is movies, and tells itself in phones.


The rotary phone, so dangerously languid
and loud when the invalid must dial the police.
The killer coming up the stairs can hear it.
The detective ducks into a handy phone booth
to call his sidekick. Now at least there's touch tone.
But wait, the killer's waiting in the booth
to try to strangle him with the handy cord.
The cordless phone, first noted in the crook
of the neck of the secretary
as she pulls life-saving files.
Files come in drawers, not in the computer.
Then funny computers, big and slow as ovens.
Now the reporter's running with a cell phone
larger than his head,
if you count the antenna.


They're Martians, all of these people,
perhaps the strangest being the most recent.
I bought that phone. I thought it was so modern.
Phones shrinking year by year, as stealthily
as children growing.


3.
It's the end of the world.
Or people are managing, after the conflagration.
After the epidemic. The global thaw.
Everyone's stunned. Nobody combs his hair.
Or it's a century later, and although
New York is gone, and love, and everyone
is a robot or a clone, or some combination,


you have to admire the technology of the future.
When you want to call somebody, you just think it.
Your dreams are filmed. Without a camera.
You can scroll through the actual things that happened,
and nobody disagrees. No memory.
No point of view. None of it necessary.


Past the time when the standard thing to say
is that, no matter what, the human endures.
That whatever humans make of themselves
is therefore human.
Past the transitional time
when humanity as we know it was there to say that.
Past the time we meant well but were wrong.
It's less than that, not anymore a concept.
Past the time when mourning was a concept.


Of course, such a projection,
however much I believe it, is sentimental—
belief being sentimental.
The thought of a woman born
in the fictional Fifties.


That's what I mean. We were Martians. Nothing's stranger
than our patience, our humanity, inhumanity.
Our worrying about robots. Earplug cell phones
that make us seem to be walking about like loonies
talking to ourselves. Perhaps we are.


All of it was so quaint. And I was there.
Poetry was there; we tried to write it.

Between books and love


A good friend of mine introduced me to the world of book-banditry -- and my life has never been the same again. I recall his girlfriend complainining -- good-naturedly of course -- how my friend and I never seemed to run out of stories to tell to each other about our life-long weakness for the printed page. I could only hope she didn't mean she simply disappeared in the background the moment her boyfriend and I started chattering happily about a beloved vice.

As economists would say, ceteris paribus, could books indeed get in the way of love? A recent essay in the New York Times takes stock of the situation and comes away with a conclusion that for most, it's really up to the parties to make an act of will and say otherwise.


In my friend's case, it didn't seem to be the case. His girlfriend supported his interests, and took the effort to survey the lay of the land, so to speak. They may have differing tastes as far as books were were concerned, but early on in the relationship, they decided together that love was far more important than literary taste. And there is no greater proof to that commitment to love, I think, than the fact that they later tied the knot, for better or for worse, books or no books. Alas, love conquers all, including the allure of books.

Just off the press

The venerable Philippine Law Journal has just published a long essay of mine with the title: Rethinking the Foundations: Sovereignty, Community and the International Legal Order from a Social Pluralist Perspective.

The book-length essay, a revised version of my master's thesis, came out on issue 1 of Vol. 82 -- the PLJ's international law issue (pp. 68-237). I have the happy privilege of having this article of mine published in the law journal's volume marking the University of the Philippines' centenary.

I haven't seen my complimentary copy yet but the editors sent me a PDF file of the article's pre-publication final draft. When I was negotiating with the editors for the possible publication of the piece in the pages of the journal, my first concern was that they'll instead require a shortened version; I didn't want it published in abridged form. In the end, they agreed that the essay should be published in full, all 170 pages of it. Perhaps, it helped that I used to be an editor of the PLJ and that I sent them the piece with a note that it is in fact a work-in-progress that will be printed in book form in Amsterdam.

Losing my Religion, Part II


Finally, a reply by Franky Schaeffer to Os Guinness' review of his book Crazy for God, an unflattering look at his father, the late evangelical thinker Francis Schaeffer.

In the same pages of Books & Culture, we also find a rejoinder by Guinness.

Losing my religion


As I often tell others, the works of the late evangelical thinker Francis Schaeffer steered me towards an intense study of the intellectual integrity of biblical Christianity in my university years.There I was, struggling with the proposition that faith has become irrelevant, when a friend of mine mentioned Schaeffer to me. Reading his works and getting acquainted with the L'Abri community he had founded, I became convinced that evangelicalism still has something important to say to world. I have since transcended Schaeffer's approach to philosophy but I owe him a great debt of gratitude for steering me to stay on course. Hence it would come as a surprise to me when I learned later that his beloved son Franky had converted to the Orthodox faith, decrying all that his father had stood for as a big fraud. Recently, Franky would publish his memoirs of his family's life in L'Abri, aptly entitled ( or is it derisively entitled ?) Crazy for God. OS Guinness, who knew the Schaeffers well as a partner in the ministry (and would later on part ways with Francis over a disagreement on the issue of ministry direction) writes a well-considered review of Franky's book, disputing the caricature the son had reduced the father into in the book. With many others, I hope Franky would write a riposte to the Guinness piece.

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John Marks , a well-known media personality in the US, is another self-confessed former evangelical. He has written a book accounting for how he got saved and was lost again. Read here a thoughtful review of the book by an evangelical who stayed in the faith, as found in the pages of Books and Culture.

Out of Touch


Like the majority in the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), our leaders in the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC) have been out of touch with reality. The PCEC recently issued a statement on the ZTE-FG Broadband scandal, occasioned by Jun Lozada's damning testimony linking the First Gentleman to the multi-million dollar scam. This is the PCEC's statement:


The emotional testimony of Jun Lozada before the Senate has been the favorite topic in many discussions in all levels of our society. However one views his words and actions, his revelations on the ZTE and other projects deserve greater attention and further investigation.

We appreciate the Senate for starting this investigation and bringing this to the attention of the Filipino people. But before the whole issue is muddled up with too much politicking, let us get to the bottom of it, fast. Let the truth be known, let culpability be determined and punishment be meted to those who will be found guilty.

We call on the Senate, Congress, and the President to form an independent, non-partisan, credible body to investigate the case and look at any legislative and/or executive remedy to
hasten the filing, prosecution, and punishment of those who are guilty. Time is of the essence here. Our people have long been subjected to accusations and charges that are left hanging. The whole system of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—is being eroded.

We affirm the President’s legitimacy as our leader. We are asking those who are planning to replace her using extra constitutional means to be prudent. Our nation can no longer bear any political upheaval. Let’s just wait for the 2010 elections.

We call on all Filipinos who are called by God’s Name, whether in government or in private sector, to go on a more serious reflection and prayerful self examination… How come
that the figures and percentage on bribes are getting higher? How much is needed to satisfy “moderate greed”? Since when have we embraced “permissible zone” as part of our ethics? Why have we become so good at being so bad? Have we forgotten the reason for our disgrace?

Moreover, we call on God’s people to pray—to ask God to “bestow the blessings of Deuteronomy 28” upon our godly leaders and to “rain down the curses” upon our leaders who persist in violating His laws.

“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people”
(Proverbs 14:34).

We plead with you to listen to this warning: “… But unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:3). It is in turning away from sin and seeking God can we hope for healing for this beloved land.

PCEC Board of Directors

14 February 2008

For more information, please call
Bishop Efraim M. Tendero at tel. no.
913-1658; fax nos. 913-1655 to 57
(local 601); or email us at
info@pceconline.org.

(emphasis supplied)


The PCEC has been turning a blind eye to the truth that all this goes all the way back to the one who has been illegitimately occupying the Office of the President, to the one who cheated her way to office, to the one who herself, presided over the signing of the graft-ridden ZTE broadband contract in China. One only needs to go over the PCEC's previous statements on the same, long-running problem named Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and see how blinded they have become to the truth. They just don't get it. I therefore call on our PCEC leaders to repent from their obstinate refusal to see the truth for what it is. The Inquirer's editorial on the failure of the CBCP to the same is apropos.

The Christian thing to do is to hold Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to account for her failure to abide by her oath of office and to ask her to resign.

Sadness on Valentines' Day

A poem by April Bernard (New York Review of Books, Nov. 2, 2006 issue)


ROMANCE


I pine. There is an obstacle to our love.

Every time I hear the postman, I think: At last, the letter!
He has overcome the obstacle --

(It is a large obstacle, an actual alp, with a tree line
and sheer rock face streaked with snow even in July)

-- for love of me! For three years, nine decades, and one century
or so, there has been no letter. I still wait for the letter.

But lately I wonder if my predicament is outside the human,
neither noble nor farcical; if my heart courts pain

because it aims for immortality, something grander
than I can imagine. Most of what I imagine,

what I want, is small: Hands with mine in the sink, washing dishes,
the smell of wool, feet tangling mine in bed. I know

the gods punish the proud, but I do not yet know
why they punish the humble. Although after all

it is not humble to ask, every minute or so, for happiness.


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On the way to work this morning, the breaking news from friends: two people whom we knew held so much promise, perished in a car crash as they were driving to work. A bus lost its brakes and plowed into the path of other vehicles, and rammed into their car.

On Valentines Day, Pastor Kevin Alamag and his wife Belle left behind two little ones.

I remember Kuya Kevin and his improbable life story -- a son of a desaparecido, he grew up and was educated in the Catholic convent in the days of revolutionary ferment in the mountains of Abra; At a young age, he joined the communist guerillas to fight the government. But he met a miracle in the battlefield: one of his commanders, who had become a Christian, shared to him the Good News of Jesus Christ. It would change his life forever


His journey from the mountain jungles of Abra to the fastness of Diliman is itself quite a story. After receiving a notice that he had been accepted into the state university, he hitched a ride on a logging truck, not quite knowing how to get to Quezon City. But get there he did, with only a few clothes and a few pesos to see him through. His first week at UP, he slept at the Sunken Garden, because he had no money to pay for a room in a student's dormitory. A kindly dormitory manager at the now defunct Narra Residence Hall would eventually take pity on him, giving him a room and a job.


After earning a communications degree at UP, he worked as a writer/researcher for ABS-CBN, but soon, he found the pull of ministry irresistible. He went to seminary and it was there where he met Ate Belle.

I came to know Kuya Kevin when he became associate pastor at our small student-led church. I remember his first fumbling, if very bookish, sermon. And I remember how little by little he grew into a well-loved preacher. With a growing family (Ate Belle, after graduation, worked at seminary as registrar, until recently) he eventually moved to a big and a very challenging assignment, outside the familiar comforts of our denomination -- to UP's old Protestant church. An evangelical in a mainline church, Kuya Kevin's mettle as a pastor was severely tested. But I can say he acquitted himself well there, with a preaching ministry that drew people to the church. He tried hard to bring the church back to its evangelical roots and I believe by the time he transferred to the Greenhills Christian Fellowship, he had made many in the congregation realize how far they've pulled themselves away from the vitality of faith, from that Old Time religion, as the hymn says.


Increase our faith, O Lord, in our moments of doubt. Be our comfort in our times of grief.

Madeleine L'Engle
1918–2007.

Madeleine L'Engle was a self-confessed Christian who sought to infuse her work as a writer with what she believed to be true. In this she did not in any way sacrifice her gift of creativity (though she had her own share of controversies in the often-contentious world of Christian publishing). I write in the past tense because I just discovered, after reading a tribute from her long-time friend and collaborator, the Christian poet Luci Shaw, that L'Engle had passed away. Reading Shaw's memories of L'Engle somehow reminded me of Dorothy Sayers, another Christian writer (and British dame) who also answered to the description Shaw has of her departed friend, compatriot and literary hero: "a powerful woman, large-hearted, fearless, quixotic, profoundly imaginative, unwilling to settle for mediocrity."

The Comedy of Corruption

Filipinos are among the happiest people in the world. They know how to get a good laugh out of the worst situations. They simply grin and bear it. Just consider how they get back at corrupt public officials -- through countless jokes passed around by SMS. The Erap jokes come to mind. But can they match the Italians in the game of making humor an effective anti-corruption measure?

In connection with the raging brouhaha over the "ZTE-FG" Broadband Scandal, methinks Filipinos can learn a thing or two from an Italian comedian -- on how to take humor farther and use it to fight corruption, literally. Beppe Grillo is a national celebrity in his home country for doing just that, not only using political satire as a tool to shame corrupt public officials but also as a tool of some sort to prosecute them. New Yorker correspondent Tom Mueller writes how Grillo became a comedian of corruption, and how his brand of humor has led to the public undoing -- and prosecution -- of many a corrupt Italian politician and corporation. Click here . (Warning to the faint of heart : this excellent essay is punctuated by adult language).

Remembered Random Thoughts on the Lion City


Singapore is a glorified Glorietta Mall, I say. My boss says it's a huge UP Campus -- with modern buildings and huge swaths of green to boot. Yet it's hotter than Manila, being closer to the equator (which explains its many malls linked to one another by air-conditioned covered walks. Singapore's taxis, though on the expensive side, are a joy to ride, because drivers don't ask you to pay extra and won't refuse passengers, the cars are mostly equipped with techno-gadgets that tell you up-to-date information on traffic, the weather, etc., and everything in the city's only 30 minutes away. I remember reading somewhere that Singapore is so small sometimes its air force has to rent air space from the Philippines for defense training. (Oh, they do have what in Manila are called colorum taxis, as we found as soon as we stepped out of Changi international airport, perhaps one of the best air ports in the world). Yes, the food scene is something to crow about. Newton's Park is where there's so much of it.

It's Supreme Court building is impressive, high technology contraptions and all, but justice and the rule of law is what government says they mean (more accurately, what Lee Kuan Yew says they mean). That is as far as politics is concerned. There is both no freedom of speech and no freedom to spit, which are relatively abundant in Manila. But Singapore can proudly point to a legal system that is business-friendly. That's why it's an international center for arbitration.

The National University of Singapore is on the list of top 20 universities in the world -- even edging out the Australian National University, but I wonder if it has the academic freedom that UP has. Singapore should have plenty of bike lanes, like Amsterdam, because it has the latter's infrastructure and financial capabilities, as well as iron-clad traffic discipline, to make it work. On second thought, who wants to bike in a hot and humid city?

It is a rich city alright, but in many ways it is also poor. For exciting art, for example, Singapore finds itself looking to its poorer neighbor, the Philippines. And what would life be for the rich Singaporeans without their Filipina maids? I hope we win our arbitration case against the snooty Spaniards. Our managing partner says that while cross-examining the Spaniards' principal witness, he thought he was defending Jose Rizal. And so it becomes thus: the colony beats the colonizer at its own game. Sana nga!

But no doubt about it, our case's sole arbitrator --a London-Paris trained Brit -- is very impressive. Bless the Queen and the British Isles!