10.14.2011
the good life
OneRepublic - Good Life by VEVO
THE GOOD LIFE
One Republic
Woke up in London yesterday
Found myself in the city near Piccadilly
Don’t really know how I got here
I got some pictures on my phone
New names and numbers that I don’t know
Address to places like Abbey Road
Day turns to night, night turns to whatever we want
We’re young enough to say
[Chorus]
Oh this has gotta be the good life
This has gotta be the good life
This could really be a good life, good life
Say oh, got this feeling that you can’t fight
Like this city is on fire tonight
This could really be a good life
A good, good life
[Verse 2]
To my friends in New York, I say hello
My friends in L.A. they don’t know
Where I’ve been for the past few years or so
Paris to China to Col-or-ado
Sometimes there’s airplanes I can’ t jump out
Sometimes there’s bullshit that don’t work now
We are god of stories but please tell me-e-e-e
What there is to complain about
[Bridge 1]
When you’re happy like a fool
Let it take you over
When everything is out
You gotta take it in
[Chorus]
Oh this has gotta be the good life
This has gotta be the good life
This could really be a good life, good life
Say oh, got this feeling that you can’t fight
Like this city is on fire tonight
This could really be a good life
A good, good life
[Bridge 2]
Hopelessly
I feel like there might be something that I’ll miss
Hopelessly
I feel like the window closes oh so quick
Hopelessly
I’m taking a mental picture of you now
‘Cuz hopelessly
The hope is we have so much to feel good about
[Chorus]
Oh this has gotta be the good life
This has gotta be the good life
This could really be a good life, good life
Say oh, got this feeling that you can’t fight
Like this city is on fire tonight
This could really be a good life
A good, good life
Oh yeah...A good good life...
[Verse 2]
To my friends in New York, I say hello
My friends in L.A. they don’t know
Where I’ve been for the past few years or so
Paris to China to Col-or-ado
Sometimes there’s airplanes I can’ t jump out
Sometimes there’s bullshit that don’t work now
We are god of stories but please tell me-e-e-e
What there is to complain about
love the whistling part
..........
sarap mangarap
10.07.2011
surigao mine attacks
For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV
saksi ako segment which aired on saksi on october 4, 2011.
..........
lessons from Steve Jobs
image courtesy of jonathan mak
when i posted my last entry with steve jobs's 2005 commencement speech in stanford university, i had a strong feeling he won't last very long. i just saw a picture of him, frail in a scary way, posted on a website (a product of poor editorial judgment, i must say) and he looked as if he could go anytime soon.
less than a month after my last post, he is gone. steve jobs died on wednesday, peacefully and in the company of his family and friends, as the official statement said. he was 56, at the prime of his life. gone too soon perhaps, but not without leaving so much for humankind to cherish.
so thank you steve jobs, not just for revolutionizing the world through technology, but for leaving us lessons to learn from. your brilliance and ingenuity may never be matched in our lifetime and for generations to come.
here's a resolve that i will find what i love. perhaps not now but someday, i will.
..........
Thank you Steve Jobs, RIP. You will be missed but your legacy will live on.
9.14.2011
words of wisdom from steve jobs
just because i need these words right now...
'YOU'VE GOT TO FIND WHAT YOU LOVE,' JOBS SAYS
This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
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. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Source: Standford University
..........
si steve jobs na ang maysabi: stay hungry! walang diet-diet!
'YOU'VE GOT TO FIND WHAT YOU LOVE,' JOBS SAYS
This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
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. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Source: Standford University
..........
si steve jobs na ang maysabi: stay hungry! walang diet-diet!
9.11.2011
9/11
ten years ago, i woke up to a front page photo on the inquirer of two familiar towers burning. it was the twin towers in new york, arguably the united states' most iconic symbol of economic power and financial strength. the twin towers burning was a surreal sight, one i never thought i'd see. but 9/11 did happen and 10 years on, we are still feeling the effects of the attacks that defined this decade.
9/11 spawned the wars in afghanistan and iraq as the u.s. and its allies spearheaded the "war on terror." several other terrorist attacks took place all over the world, even as governments beefed up security and anti-terror policies. the manhunt for osama bin laden, the head of al qaeda who admitted to masterminding the attacks, dragged on for years until he was killed in a raid in pakistan on may 1, 2011. but osama's death is, by no means, the end of terrorism.
while the u.s. drew sympathy from the rest of the world for the sheer number of casualties (almost 3,000) and the destruction that the attacks caused, 9/11 conveyed the sense of hatred and resentment that some muslims and arabs feel towards the u.s. for its foreign policies in the arab region. to them, the u.s. was no longer the mediator in the israeli-palentine conflict; it had become the enemy.
that the attacks were carried out by muslims only highlighted the underlying suspicion, skepticism and fear towards muslims, particularly in the u.s. more and more muslims fell victim to profiling and the paranoia towards islam reached a point that a florida-based pastor oversaw the burning of quran early this year. and just last month, a norwegian launched a coordinated bombing and shooting spree which killed 92 people, as he called for "a christian war to defend europe against the threat of muslim domination."
incidentally, in response to a new york times article on the oslo attacks which i reposted on this blog, i received an email from elizabeth potter of unity productions. elizabeth and unity productions are initiating an online film and social media project that aims to "change the narrative – from muslims as the other, to muslims as our fellow americans." they're asking people of different backgrounds to pledge and share a real life story about a Muslim friend, neighbor, or colleague that they admire. watch their video below:
the film brilliantly puts together soundbites from evangelical preachers (or so they sound) and media commentators spewing out hatred against muslims and islam juxtaposed with images of what seemed like ordinary americans, who happen to be muslims, living an ordinary, peaceful life in the u.s. the message: you may not know it but your neighbor, who acts and lives like you, may be a muslim--far from the terrorist you imagine a muslim to be.
i may not be an american but the message holds true for the rest of the world. 9/11 was a terrorist attack plain and simple. but it was not carried out by islam and not all muslims took part in the attack.
my fellow american is a worthwhile project deserving our support. help promote this project if you share the same sentiments.
for more information, visit their website: My Fellow American
..........
no words will perhaps be able to capture the devastation caused by 9/11. what i cannot put into writing, i'll share through pictures. see the 25 most powerful photos of 9/11 that life and yahoo put together here.
9.06.2011
i need...
...a sense of mission, a sense of purpose, to keep me going.
coz i feel like a robot right now. or a zombie.
or maybe i just need some sleep.
..........
i'm coming home, i'm coming home, i know my kingdom awaits...
coz i feel like a robot right now. or a zombie.
or maybe i just need some sleep.
..........
i'm coming home, i'm coming home, i know my kingdom awaits...
7.24.2011
sick and disgusting
a bomb explosion rocked norway's capital on july 22, leaving 7 people dead. hours later, around 85 people were killed in a nearby island in a shooting rampage. all these were alleged to have been committed by one man. find out why.
OSLO SUSPECT WROTE OF FEAR OF ISLAM AND PLAN FOR WAR
By Steven Erlanger and Scott Shane
Published: July 23, 2011
OSLO — The Norwegian man charged Saturday with a pair of attacks in Oslo that killed at least 92 people left behind a detailed manifesto outlining his preparations and calling for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination, according to Norwegian and American officials familiar with the investigation.
As stunned Norwegians grappled with the deadliest attack in the country since World War II, a portrait began to emerge of the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, 32. The police identified him as a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, while acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.
“We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said at a televised news conference. “What we know is that he is right wing and a Christian fundamentalist.”
In the 1,500-page manifesto, posted on the Web hours before the attacks, Mr. Breivik recorded a day-by-day diary of months of planning for the attacks, and claimed to be part of a small group that intended to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”
He predicted a conflagration that would kill or injure more than a million people, adding, “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.”
The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former American government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Mr. Breivik’s work.
The manifesto, entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” equates liberalism and multiculturalism with “cultural Marxism,” which the document says is destroying European Christian civilization.
The document also describes a secret meeting in London in April 2002 to reconstitute the Knights Templar, a Crusader military order. It says the meeting was attended by nine representatives of eight European countries, evidently including Mr. Breivik, with an additional three members unable to attend, including a “European-American.”
The document does not name the attendees or say whether they were aware of Mr. Breivik’s planned attacks, though investigators presumably will now try to determine if the people exist and what their connection is to Mr. Breivik.
Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.
“It seems to be an attempt to mirror Al Qaeda, exactly in reverse,” Mr. Hegghammer said.
Mr. Breivik was also believed to have posted a video on Friday summarizing his arguments. In its closing moments, the video depicts Mr. Breivik in military uniform, holding assault weapons. Rarely has a mass murder suspect left so detailed an account of his activities. The manifesto describes in detail his purchase of chemicals, his sometimes ham-handed experiments making explosives and his first successful test detonation of a bomb in a remote location on June 13.
He intersperses the account of bomb-making with details of his television-watching, including the Eurovision music contest and the American police drama “The Shield.”
The manifesto ends with a chilling signoff: “I believe this will be my last entry. It is now Fri July 22nd, 12.51.”
Indeed, the operation appeared to have been extremely well planned.
According to the police, Mr. Breivik first drew security services to central Oslo when he exploded a car bomb outside a 17-story government office building, killing at least seven people.
Then he took a public ferry to Utoya Island, where he carried out a remarkably meticulous attack on Norway’s current and future political elite. Dressed as a police officer, he announced that he had come to check on the security of the young people who were attending a political summer camp there, many of them the children of members of the governing Labor Party.
He gathered the campers together and for some 90 hellish minutes he coolly and methodically shot them, hunting down those who fled. At least 85 people, some as young as 16, were killed.
The police said Saturday evening that they expected the death toll to climb. There were still bodies in the bombed government buildings in Oslo, and at least four people missing on Utoya.
The police also said that unexploded munitions were still in some downtown Oslo buildings, and they had not ruled out the possibility that Mr. Breivik had accomplices.
He was equipped, the police said, with an automatic rifle and a handgun; when the police finally got to the island — about 40 minutes after they were called, the police said — Mr. Breivik surrendered.
The police also said he had registered a farm in Rena, in eastern Norway, which allowed him to order a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an ingredient that can be used to make explosives. The authorities were investigating whether the chemical had been used in the bombing.
Besides the manifesto, Mr. Breivik left other hints of his motives.
A Facebook page and Twitter account were set up under his name days before the rampage. The Facebook page cites philosophers like Machiavelli, Kant and John Stuart Mill.
His lone Twitter post, while not calling for violence, paraphrased Mill — “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests” — suggesting what he saw as his ability to act.
Those postings, along with what was previously known about Mr. Breivik publicly, aligned with but hardly predicted the bloody rampage he would undertake on Friday.
Before then, he had been a member of the right-wing Progress Party, which began as an antitax protest and has been stridently anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim.
Joran Kallmyr, a member of the party who is now Oslo’s vice mayor for transportation, said he met Mr. Breivik several times in 2002 and 2003 at local party meetings. “He was very quiet, almost a little bit shy,” Mr. Kallmyr said. “But he was a normal person with good behavior. He never shared any extreme thoughts or speech with us. There was absolutely no reason to expect that he could do something like this. We’re very shocked.”
Mr. Breivik quit the party in 2006, apparently disappointed by the party’s move toward the center.
“He didn’t like our politics, I guess, and moved on,” Mr. Kallmyr said.
His Internet posts also indicated contempt for the Conservative Party, which he accused of having given up the battle against multiculturalism.
But on Friday he directed his firepower at the center-left Labor Party, which leads the coalition government.
“Breivik feels that multiculturalism is destroying the society and that the enforcing authority is the prime minister and the Labor Party, the lead party of contemporary Norwegian politics,” said Anders Romarheim, a fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.
But the attacks, along with what appear to have been years of preparation for them, raised questions about whether the Norwegian security authorities, concentrating on threats of Islamic terrorism, had overlooked the threat from the anti-Islamic right.
“This is the Norwegian equivalent to Timothy McVeigh,” the right-wing American who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, said Marcus Buck, a political scientist at the University of Tromso in northern Norway. “This is right-wing domestic terrorism, and the big question is to what extent Norwegian agencies have diverted their attention from what they knew decades ago was the biggest threat” to focus instead on Islamic militants.
The unclassified versions of the last three Norwegian Police Security Service reports assessing national threats all played down any threat by right-wing and nationalist extremists. Instead, the reports emphasized the dangers posed by radical Islam, groups opposed to Norway’s military involvement in Afghanistan and Libya, and others.
The 2011 report, released early this year, concluded that “the far-right and far-left extremist communities will not represent a serious threat to Norwegian society.”
Even after the attacks, that appeared to be the official position.
“Compared to other countries I wouldn’t say we have a big problem with right-wing extremists in Norway,” Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at a news conference on Saturday. “But we have had some groups, we have followed them before, and our police is aware that there are some right-wing groups.”
Even if the authorities had focused on right-wing groups, it was unlikely that they would have noticed Mr. Breivik.
Kari Helene Partapuoli, director of the Norwegian Center Against Racism, said Mr. Breivik did not belong to any violent neo-Nazi groups that she was aware of, and his Internet postings, before those of last week, did not espouse violence.
“The distance between the words spoken and the acts that he carried out is gigantic, because what he did is in a different league of what the debates have to do about,” she said.
Arild Groven, secretary general of the Norwegian Shooting Association, a sports group, confirmed that Mr. Breivik had belonged to Oslo Pistolklubb, one of the 520 clubs in the association.
“We all read and watch the news about the shootings in the United States,” Mr. Groven said. “But it doesn’t happen here.”
Kristian Ulrichsen, a researcher at the London School of Economics, said in some ways the homegrown nature of the attack made it harder for Norwegians to accept. “With 9/11 in America, people could ask, ‘Who are they?’ and could pour their rage out on someone else,” he said. “But we can’t disavow this person, he’s one of us.”
source: The New York Times
UPDATE: suspect admits responsibility but considers attacks "necessary."
more from the BBC News.
.........
if your religion/ideology, or fear of some other religion/ideology, pushes you to kill people, use your effing brain! more basic than any religion/ideology on this planet is respect for life.
what this guy did is just sick and disgusting. he doesn't deserve to live, but i'm no god to say this.
OSLO SUSPECT WROTE OF FEAR OF ISLAM AND PLAN FOR WAR
By Steven Erlanger and Scott Shane
Published: July 23, 2011
OSLO — The Norwegian man charged Saturday with a pair of attacks in Oslo that killed at least 92 people left behind a detailed manifesto outlining his preparations and calling for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination, according to Norwegian and American officials familiar with the investigation.
As stunned Norwegians grappled with the deadliest attack in the country since World War II, a portrait began to emerge of the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, 32. The police identified him as a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, while acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.
“We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said at a televised news conference. “What we know is that he is right wing and a Christian fundamentalist.”
In the 1,500-page manifesto, posted on the Web hours before the attacks, Mr. Breivik recorded a day-by-day diary of months of planning for the attacks, and claimed to be part of a small group that intended to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”
He predicted a conflagration that would kill or injure more than a million people, adding, “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.”
The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former American government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Mr. Breivik’s work.
The manifesto, entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” equates liberalism and multiculturalism with “cultural Marxism,” which the document says is destroying European Christian civilization.
The document also describes a secret meeting in London in April 2002 to reconstitute the Knights Templar, a Crusader military order. It says the meeting was attended by nine representatives of eight European countries, evidently including Mr. Breivik, with an additional three members unable to attend, including a “European-American.”
The document does not name the attendees or say whether they were aware of Mr. Breivik’s planned attacks, though investigators presumably will now try to determine if the people exist and what their connection is to Mr. Breivik.
Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.
“It seems to be an attempt to mirror Al Qaeda, exactly in reverse,” Mr. Hegghammer said.
Mr. Breivik was also believed to have posted a video on Friday summarizing his arguments. In its closing moments, the video depicts Mr. Breivik in military uniform, holding assault weapons. Rarely has a mass murder suspect left so detailed an account of his activities. The manifesto describes in detail his purchase of chemicals, his sometimes ham-handed experiments making explosives and his first successful test detonation of a bomb in a remote location on June 13.
He intersperses the account of bomb-making with details of his television-watching, including the Eurovision music contest and the American police drama “The Shield.”
The manifesto ends with a chilling signoff: “I believe this will be my last entry. It is now Fri July 22nd, 12.51.”
Indeed, the operation appeared to have been extremely well planned.
According to the police, Mr. Breivik first drew security services to central Oslo when he exploded a car bomb outside a 17-story government office building, killing at least seven people.
Then he took a public ferry to Utoya Island, where he carried out a remarkably meticulous attack on Norway’s current and future political elite. Dressed as a police officer, he announced that he had come to check on the security of the young people who were attending a political summer camp there, many of them the children of members of the governing Labor Party.
He gathered the campers together and for some 90 hellish minutes he coolly and methodically shot them, hunting down those who fled. At least 85 people, some as young as 16, were killed.
The police said Saturday evening that they expected the death toll to climb. There were still bodies in the bombed government buildings in Oslo, and at least four people missing on Utoya.
The police also said that unexploded munitions were still in some downtown Oslo buildings, and they had not ruled out the possibility that Mr. Breivik had accomplices.
He was equipped, the police said, with an automatic rifle and a handgun; when the police finally got to the island — about 40 minutes after they were called, the police said — Mr. Breivik surrendered.
The police also said he had registered a farm in Rena, in eastern Norway, which allowed him to order a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an ingredient that can be used to make explosives. The authorities were investigating whether the chemical had been used in the bombing.
Besides the manifesto, Mr. Breivik left other hints of his motives.
A Facebook page and Twitter account were set up under his name days before the rampage. The Facebook page cites philosophers like Machiavelli, Kant and John Stuart Mill.
His lone Twitter post, while not calling for violence, paraphrased Mill — “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests” — suggesting what he saw as his ability to act.
Those postings, along with what was previously known about Mr. Breivik publicly, aligned with but hardly predicted the bloody rampage he would undertake on Friday.
Before then, he had been a member of the right-wing Progress Party, which began as an antitax protest and has been stridently anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim.
Joran Kallmyr, a member of the party who is now Oslo’s vice mayor for transportation, said he met Mr. Breivik several times in 2002 and 2003 at local party meetings. “He was very quiet, almost a little bit shy,” Mr. Kallmyr said. “But he was a normal person with good behavior. He never shared any extreme thoughts or speech with us. There was absolutely no reason to expect that he could do something like this. We’re very shocked.”
Mr. Breivik quit the party in 2006, apparently disappointed by the party’s move toward the center.
“He didn’t like our politics, I guess, and moved on,” Mr. Kallmyr said.
His Internet posts also indicated contempt for the Conservative Party, which he accused of having given up the battle against multiculturalism.
But on Friday he directed his firepower at the center-left Labor Party, which leads the coalition government.
“Breivik feels that multiculturalism is destroying the society and that the enforcing authority is the prime minister and the Labor Party, the lead party of contemporary Norwegian politics,” said Anders Romarheim, a fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.
But the attacks, along with what appear to have been years of preparation for them, raised questions about whether the Norwegian security authorities, concentrating on threats of Islamic terrorism, had overlooked the threat from the anti-Islamic right.
“This is the Norwegian equivalent to Timothy McVeigh,” the right-wing American who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, said Marcus Buck, a political scientist at the University of Tromso in northern Norway. “This is right-wing domestic terrorism, and the big question is to what extent Norwegian agencies have diverted their attention from what they knew decades ago was the biggest threat” to focus instead on Islamic militants.
The unclassified versions of the last three Norwegian Police Security Service reports assessing national threats all played down any threat by right-wing and nationalist extremists. Instead, the reports emphasized the dangers posed by radical Islam, groups opposed to Norway’s military involvement in Afghanistan and Libya, and others.
The 2011 report, released early this year, concluded that “the far-right and far-left extremist communities will not represent a serious threat to Norwegian society.”
Even after the attacks, that appeared to be the official position.
“Compared to other countries I wouldn’t say we have a big problem with right-wing extremists in Norway,” Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at a news conference on Saturday. “But we have had some groups, we have followed them before, and our police is aware that there are some right-wing groups.”
Even if the authorities had focused on right-wing groups, it was unlikely that they would have noticed Mr. Breivik.
Kari Helene Partapuoli, director of the Norwegian Center Against Racism, said Mr. Breivik did not belong to any violent neo-Nazi groups that she was aware of, and his Internet postings, before those of last week, did not espouse violence.
“The distance between the words spoken and the acts that he carried out is gigantic, because what he did is in a different league of what the debates have to do about,” she said.
Arild Groven, secretary general of the Norwegian Shooting Association, a sports group, confirmed that Mr. Breivik had belonged to Oslo Pistolklubb, one of the 520 clubs in the association.
“We all read and watch the news about the shootings in the United States,” Mr. Groven said. “But it doesn’t happen here.”
Kristian Ulrichsen, a researcher at the London School of Economics, said in some ways the homegrown nature of the attack made it harder for Norwegians to accept. “With 9/11 in America, people could ask, ‘Who are they?’ and could pour their rage out on someone else,” he said. “But we can’t disavow this person, he’s one of us.”
source: The New York Times
UPDATE: suspect admits responsibility but considers attacks "necessary."
more from the BBC News.
.........
if your religion/ideology, or fear of some other religion/ideology, pushes you to kill people, use your effing brain! more basic than any religion/ideology on this planet is respect for life.
what this guy did is just sick and disgusting. he doesn't deserve to live, but i'm no god to say this.
7.21.2011
power corrupts
from conrado de quiros' column in the philippine daily inquirer.
this is exactly how i feel about the whole sara duterte-sheriff incident, except that de quiros manages, as he usually does, to phrase it so poetically and so brilliantly. he truly has the gift of words.
of course, he generalizes sometimes (if not most of the time). while some generalizations may not be fair, you're not reading de quiros for a point-by-point and comprehensive discussion of the issues. it's the impact of his columns that makes them worth reading. it's up to the reader if he falls for them hook, line, and sinker.
There's The Rub
POWER CORRUPTS
Conrado de Quiros
The guy is just out of control.
Lashing out at his critics last Monday, Rodrigo Duterte flashed a dirty finger at the cameras. And as with the case of his daughter beating up a local sheriff, he offered no apologies for it. In fact, when the local media told him that the Department of Human Rights wanted him sanctioned for it, he flashed the finger again. It was freedom of expression, he said. “It is a sign of anger, it is a sign of extreme disgust. It means galit ako sa iyo,” he said, and spat out expletives to go along with that explanation.
I haven’t written about the Sara Duterte incident simply because others have already done a good job of it. Our editorials especially, which have given a very good perspective on it. The mayor’s wrath was not unprovoked, but her response was thoroughly disproportionate. Beating up a sheriff because he was overeager to demolish shanties does not make things better, it makes them worse. A lot, lot worse.
It shows a public official who is judge, jury and executioner. Or judge, jury and thug.
And now, this.
I know that Sara Duterte’s tough-guy stance has met with a good deal of support in Davao. I know Rodrigo Duterte’s tougher-guy antics have met with a good deal of support in Davao. I know father and daughter are fairly popular in Davao. That has got nothing to do with it. Some things are not a matter for public acclamation. Some things may not be put to a vote. Some things are a matter of right and wrong. Burying Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani is one of them. Condoning behavior like this in a public official is another. It is wrong. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it.
At the very least, it is one thing to be irreverent, it is another to be crass. It is one thing to be tough, it is another to be abusive. You can’t see the difference between the two, you do not deserve public office, you deserve jail. Or time in a ladies’ polishing school.
Freedom of expression? How long do you think someone who flashes a dirty finger at Rodrigo Duterte in Davao City to suggest anger and extreme disgust at him will remain free? In fact how long do you think someone who flashes a dirty finger at Rodrigo Duterte in Davao City to say “galit ako sa ’yo,” will remain on this earth? That freedom is completely one-way. It is Rodrigo Duterte’s freedom to say, “F-k you,” to the world. It is not the world’s freedom to say, “F-k you,” to him.
Courtesy is not there simply because people invented it out of having nothing better to do, it is there to make communication possible. It is there to make dialogue possible. It is there to make reasonable argument possible. Courtesy from public officials is not demanded simply because polite society wants its pound of flesh, it is there to make public discourse possible. It is there to make public policy possible. It is there to make governance possible.
Rodrigo Duterte may no more flash a dirty finger at the world, or indeed the very thing the finger is supposed to represent, than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo may flash whatever she wants to flash at the world to propose that she is angry, disgusted, galit ako. Though in her case, it would be completely superfluous, her very rule was a metaphorical flashing of the dirty finger at her compatriots. The same can now be said of Duterte’s rule.
I grant a good deal of this country is ungovernable and you have to show machismo, or cojones as the Mexicans say, to tame the lawless places, if not indeed to merely get by. But the principle has always been, “Walk quietly and carry a big stick.” It has never been, “Walk noisily and carry a small dick.” The latter is the principle behind painting the doors of suspected drug pushers red, pushing the bodies of dead criminals into empty oil drums with signs that say “Huwag tularan” and dropping them into rivers, and making sigas and other lowlife disappear from the face of the earth. That doesn’t make things better, that makes things worse.
We know that from the long nightmare we’ve had in the not so distant past. Ferdinand Marcos also made crime disappear immediately after declaring martial law. Suddenly the students were no longer marching in the streets, suddenly the kids were coming home early and no longer smoking joints courtesy of a curfew and harsh anti-drug laws, suddenly the youth were no longer sporting long hair, the thing being punishable by an ROTC haircut and an overnight sojourn in Camp Aguinaldo cutting grass. Parents loved it and wondered how long martial law would last.
Suddenly, a Chinese drug pusher was lined up against a wall and shot to death as a warning to all criminals that this was the fate that awaited them if they defied martial law. Suddenly, the sirens were quiet in the night, wailing only in sudden spurts, the police cars probably chasing down an activist or two who hadn’t yet come to terms with the new world and was painting a protest sign on a wall. Suddenly the crime rate dropped to near-zero. The residents of the Greater Manila area loved it and wondered how long martial law would last.
Well, martial law lasted a decade and a half. With results so catastrophic the country is still reeling from them. And eventually crime came roaring back with a vengeance. There is another principle here, and a far more obdurate one:
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
To those in Davao City and elsewhere who say, “We don’t mind that Rodrigo Duterte is an SOB so long as he’s our SOB,” think again. The next time you extol the virtues of a Dirty Harry or a Dirty Rudy, mind that the last dirt you could see could be, like martial law, the one being shoveled up your ass, or face.
While you lie in your hole in the ground.
source: philippine daily inquirer
..........
i can't stand public officials like rudy or sara duterte, no matter how good they are to their constituents or how they governed davao city well. good thing i'm not in davao city.
this is exactly how i feel about the whole sara duterte-sheriff incident, except that de quiros manages, as he usually does, to phrase it so poetically and so brilliantly. he truly has the gift of words.
of course, he generalizes sometimes (if not most of the time). while some generalizations may not be fair, you're not reading de quiros for a point-by-point and comprehensive discussion of the issues. it's the impact of his columns that makes them worth reading. it's up to the reader if he falls for them hook, line, and sinker.
There's The Rub
POWER CORRUPTS
Conrado de Quiros
The guy is just out of control.
Lashing out at his critics last Monday, Rodrigo Duterte flashed a dirty finger at the cameras. And as with the case of his daughter beating up a local sheriff, he offered no apologies for it. In fact, when the local media told him that the Department of Human Rights wanted him sanctioned for it, he flashed the finger again. It was freedom of expression, he said. “It is a sign of anger, it is a sign of extreme disgust. It means galit ako sa iyo,” he said, and spat out expletives to go along with that explanation.
I haven’t written about the Sara Duterte incident simply because others have already done a good job of it. Our editorials especially, which have given a very good perspective on it. The mayor’s wrath was not unprovoked, but her response was thoroughly disproportionate. Beating up a sheriff because he was overeager to demolish shanties does not make things better, it makes them worse. A lot, lot worse.
It shows a public official who is judge, jury and executioner. Or judge, jury and thug.
And now, this.
I know that Sara Duterte’s tough-guy stance has met with a good deal of support in Davao. I know Rodrigo Duterte’s tougher-guy antics have met with a good deal of support in Davao. I know father and daughter are fairly popular in Davao. That has got nothing to do with it. Some things are not a matter for public acclamation. Some things may not be put to a vote. Some things are a matter of right and wrong. Burying Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani is one of them. Condoning behavior like this in a public official is another. It is wrong. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it.
At the very least, it is one thing to be irreverent, it is another to be crass. It is one thing to be tough, it is another to be abusive. You can’t see the difference between the two, you do not deserve public office, you deserve jail. Or time in a ladies’ polishing school.
Freedom of expression? How long do you think someone who flashes a dirty finger at Rodrigo Duterte in Davao City to suggest anger and extreme disgust at him will remain free? In fact how long do you think someone who flashes a dirty finger at Rodrigo Duterte in Davao City to say “galit ako sa ’yo,” will remain on this earth? That freedom is completely one-way. It is Rodrigo Duterte’s freedom to say, “F-k you,” to the world. It is not the world’s freedom to say, “F-k you,” to him.
Courtesy is not there simply because people invented it out of having nothing better to do, it is there to make communication possible. It is there to make dialogue possible. It is there to make reasonable argument possible. Courtesy from public officials is not demanded simply because polite society wants its pound of flesh, it is there to make public discourse possible. It is there to make public policy possible. It is there to make governance possible.
Rodrigo Duterte may no more flash a dirty finger at the world, or indeed the very thing the finger is supposed to represent, than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo may flash whatever she wants to flash at the world to propose that she is angry, disgusted, galit ako. Though in her case, it would be completely superfluous, her very rule was a metaphorical flashing of the dirty finger at her compatriots. The same can now be said of Duterte’s rule.
I grant a good deal of this country is ungovernable and you have to show machismo, or cojones as the Mexicans say, to tame the lawless places, if not indeed to merely get by. But the principle has always been, “Walk quietly and carry a big stick.” It has never been, “Walk noisily and carry a small dick.” The latter is the principle behind painting the doors of suspected drug pushers red, pushing the bodies of dead criminals into empty oil drums with signs that say “Huwag tularan” and dropping them into rivers, and making sigas and other lowlife disappear from the face of the earth. That doesn’t make things better, that makes things worse.
We know that from the long nightmare we’ve had in the not so distant past. Ferdinand Marcos also made crime disappear immediately after declaring martial law. Suddenly the students were no longer marching in the streets, suddenly the kids were coming home early and no longer smoking joints courtesy of a curfew and harsh anti-drug laws, suddenly the youth were no longer sporting long hair, the thing being punishable by an ROTC haircut and an overnight sojourn in Camp Aguinaldo cutting grass. Parents loved it and wondered how long martial law would last.
Suddenly, a Chinese drug pusher was lined up against a wall and shot to death as a warning to all criminals that this was the fate that awaited them if they defied martial law. Suddenly, the sirens were quiet in the night, wailing only in sudden spurts, the police cars probably chasing down an activist or two who hadn’t yet come to terms with the new world and was painting a protest sign on a wall. Suddenly the crime rate dropped to near-zero. The residents of the Greater Manila area loved it and wondered how long martial law would last.
Well, martial law lasted a decade and a half. With results so catastrophic the country is still reeling from them. And eventually crime came roaring back with a vengeance. There is another principle here, and a far more obdurate one:
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
To those in Davao City and elsewhere who say, “We don’t mind that Rodrigo Duterte is an SOB so long as he’s our SOB,” think again. The next time you extol the virtues of a Dirty Harry or a Dirty Rudy, mind that the last dirt you could see could be, like martial law, the one being shoveled up your ass, or face.
While you lie in your hole in the ground.
source: philippine daily inquirer
..........
i can't stand public officials like rudy or sara duterte, no matter how good they are to their constituents or how they governed davao city well. good thing i'm not in davao city.
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