Plus ça change – it's only more of the same

La Presidenta came home from her travels early yesterday morning – suffering nothing more than jet lag, it seems, according to someone who spoke to her.

One newspaper asserted she had returned to find the country worse off than when she left it for her trip through Helsinki, Brussels, London, Havana and Honolulu. Whew. Even the enumeration of places where La GMA came and went is enough to exhaust this writer, and remember I used to travel a lot. We can only conclude that La Gloria’s energy is boundless.

But are we worse than when she left on her journey which spanned two continents and an island in the Pacific? We simply had more of the same – the same attacks from the opposition, the same snorts from the Senate about administration "people" snubbing its subpoenas, the same jokes about Joc-Joc Bolante, the same ululations of woe from us in the media, and the same predictions from our military of a timetable to crush the New People’s Army. For that matter, the statement by Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., that the armed forces would crush the NPA within four years made banner headlines only because it was a dull day, without very much "explosive" news to publish.

I’ve always wondered about those stupid government "deadlines." Wipe out jueteng in six months! Stamp out kidnapping in three months! Et cetera, ad infinitum and ad nauseam. Deadlines come and go – unnoticed. The media, of course, has lost interest in that particular subject, anyway, and gone off to focus on the next "scandal."

This is true of the global media as well. Remember all the furor about "bird flu" threatening to spread throughout Europe like wildfire and decimate entire populations? When the fuss over the North Korean missiles broke out, then the furor over Iran possibly manufacturing nuclear bombs, the bird flu scare vanished. It turned out, to risk an awful pun, to be for the birds. We know by now that when the television cameras are switched off on one crisis, then swivelled around to cover another outrage, the original crisis "dies" and the entire planet (meaning those with access to cable news and worldwide television) begins worrying about something else. Anyway, as I’ve always observed, ordinary flu kills more persons than bird flu – and is also "cured" by Tamiflu, so the governments which hysterically stockpiled that drug might do well to start releasing their reserves of the medicine to the general population.

And remember the 34-day war waged by Israel against the Hezbollah in Lebanon. (The place was wrecked in the process). For more than a month, the war in Iraq was practically forgotten, although more victims – civilian and military – were dying in Iraq daily than in Lebanon.

Now the wars in Iraq – and in Afghanistan – are back in the spotlight. There’s that report (quite silly in my book) that the Iraqi government plans to seal off the capital of Baghdad by ringing it with a series of trenches to control movement in and out of that violence-torn city of seven million.

Under the plan, cars moving towards the center of the city will be funneled through 28 checkpoints along the main arteries. Having covered a few wars myself, I’m dubious about a plan to "save" the capital at the cost of losing the rest of the countryside. What’s the point?

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The truth is that Iraqi civilians – both Shia and Sunni Muslims – are being killed daily "execution" style in "sectarian violence". In short, Shia militia and murder-squads are murdering Sunni Muslims, while Sunni Muslim militias and execution groups are doing the same to the Shiite Muslims.

Civil war? This escalation of "religious" killings is very uncivil. The morgue in Itan reports that at least 1,535 Iraqi civilians died violently in Baghdad alone in August. What more in the provinces? The two Muslim sects are slaughtering each other, with the Kurds (also Muslims) who hate them both watching from the sidelines, but ready to mix in if provoked or challenged.

Of course, the protagonists continue to kill American Marines and other military personnel, too, with ambushes and roadside bombs –or as merely "collateral damage" when each sect bombs the other.

The next-door Iranians, naturally, are backing the government of Al-Maliki, their Shia co-religionist, to the hilt – with more than money. Iraq may be breaking up (with the Americans caught in the middle of the collapse, still proclaiming the virtues and importance of "democracy.")

Plus ca change, as the French would say. "The more things change, the more they remain the same."

"La Presidenta would do well, when she shakes off her fatigue – and before she begins packing up again to go to China – to take a second look at the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) and this time tell its chairman, Camilo Sabio, and the PCGG Commissioners, to go explain themselves to the Senate, with her full permission. In fact, GMA and the Executive Branch might do better to beat the Senate to the punch by abolishing – or euphemistically "retiring" – the useless PCGG. For 20 years, PCGG officials and their nominees enjoyed themselves without sending any Marcos "crook" to jail. Indeed, even Imeldific couldn’t be "touched" by the PCGG – and may soon be running for Mayor of Manila.

Junk the PCGG, Madam President, before the Senators start the ball rolling to accomplish that felicitous outcome themselves.

In other fields, we’re not doing badly. It’s like the Guimaras oil spill. It was ruinous and unnecessary, and the environment in that area has been spoiled for years to come. However, even such a major setback won’t sink us. What will destroy us is if we don’t learn from it. Punishing the perpetrators, from Petron itself, to the carrier, to the reckless and irresponsible ship master of the crickety "Solar I," would be a good move. However, if we don’t learn from the man-made disaster, another even worse disaster is bound to happen.

As for pollution, we could start combatting it in Metro Manila. Whenever I’m on the road, I choke on billows of pollution from smoke-belchers (buses, jeepneys, taxicabs and private cars so obviously "guilty" without any MMDA traffic aide or "chocolate boy" traffic policeman spotting and nabbing them).

It’s time for draconian measures to be imposed.

And then there are the jaywalkers who dart out of nowhere to cross the motorists’ path. The Marcos martial law regime had one good slogan which ought to be dusted off and re-implemented with ferocity: "Sa ikauunlad ng Bayan, Disiplina ang kailangan" (For the progress of our country, discipline is needed). It was a slogan short, if not sweet. We’re an entire undisciplined nation. The "laws" and "regulations," too many Pinoys and Pinays argue for "others," not for them. Sheepishly, I observe, many of us in the media (in the old days we more humbly called ourselves the "Press") are prone to that mentality.

No wonder some consider the issuance of I.D. cards a violation of individual "freedom and "human rights." My only answer to that is: If you’re reluctant to identify yourself (or ashamed of being identified), you must be concealing something – or up to no good.

Then there’s the anti-terrorism law which is stalled in the Senate. How could, as the proposed law defines it, such an anti-terrorism measure be "misused" to harass opposition individuals and critics of the government. Terrorists hide behind human rights, while destroying the right of peaceful civilians to life.

If some Senators continue to play political football with that anti-terrorism bill, the next bomb might land in their laps.

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Revisiting the Islamic, now increasingly violent outrage over the remarks in Germany of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, I’d like first to make some good housekeeping corrections. In the rush to deadline, a number of places were misspelled. The Pope had made the remarks which provoked Islamic anger on Tuesday last week at the university of Regensburg, where he himself had been a Theology professor in the late 1960s. The second computer-misspelling was the Bhosporus, the waterway, incidentally, that passes through Istanbul (the former Constantinople) in Turkey and goes all the way to the Black Sea in Abkhazia, which used to be part of the old Soviet Union.

It was through the Bosphorus, in fact, in the mists of mythology that the Greek hero Jason and his warriors, called the Argonauts after the name of the ship on which they sailed, the Argus, sailed to get to Abkhazia where they found the fabled "Golden Fleece." When this writer flew to the Tbilisi, in Christian Georgia, in 1970, then went by land to neighboring Abkhazia (a Muslim area), I found the local inhabitants smoking a cigarette papyros) labelled Golden Fleece. My host, the local Communist party leader confirmed that, indeed, it was in their province that Jason seized the miraculous Golden Fleece, and run off with it, taking along with him the local princess, the daughter of the king.

My final mistake was to call the mother of the Emperor Constantine, who had converted from paganism to Christianity and founded Constantinople, "Sta. Monica." This is erroneous. Sta. Monica was the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo, whose prayers saved him from a life of profligacy and debauchery. Augustine became a saint, and is famous for his book, The Confessions of St. Augustine which we were all tasked to study by our political philosophy professors when we were studying for a Master’s in Fordham University, so we could understand the differences between the City of God and the City of Man.

The mother of the Emperor Constantine, the lady who discovered shards of the "true cross" in Jerusalem, was St. Helena. This is why we have "Sta. Elena" along with "Constantino" in our annual Santa Cruz de Mayo processions. How dumb I was to have made that mistake – lapsus manus, I plead, not lapsus mentis.

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The Holy Father has already "apologized" at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence, but Islamic rage still escalates. A Catholic nun has been murdered in the Muslim country – where she had devoted her life to helping the people. In Jakarta, angry mobs are assailing the Pope and Christians in general, and even Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has snapped at the Holy Father for his speech having been "unwise."

Egypt and Morocco have withdrawn their ambassadors from the Vatican. In Cairo, the Moslem Brotherhood has been staging anti-Pope marches. In Nablus, in the Palestinian West Bank, assailants threw molotov cocktails at two Catholic churches last Sunday. Grenades are being hurled at churches across the Muslim world. In Pakistan, marches of outrage are being held. "War" against Crusaders (as they call Christians in the Osama bin Laden "dictionary") has been inflamed.

I think it’s time to simmer down.

Of course, the Holy Father, as I’ve already noted, should have been more careful in his choice of anecdotes and quotations. He had quoted a conversation between the Christian Emperor of Byzantium, Manuel Paleologos II, and a Persian scholar, in which the Emperor had derided jihad or Holy War, saying (and I quote, quote the Holy Father): "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Tsk, tsk, Your Holiness. Stay away, please, from such quotations – leave them to us sinners and irreverent types.

As for the Holy Father’s planned visit to Turkey (the Turks are also furious) let him cancel it. He had intended to visit Istanbul in November.

He must remember that the would-be assassin who almost killed his predecessor, the late Pope John Paul II, on May 13, 1981, right in St. Peter’s Square, was a Turk – Mehmet Ali Agca (named after Sultan Mehmet II, the Ottoman Turk who had conquered Constantinople and put the Christian Emperor and all his Christian citizens to the sword – thus justifying Emperor Manuel Paleologos II’s worst fears.

Two of the bullets fired from pointblank range by his Muslim assailant’s Browning 9mm automatic had struck the Holy Father, one of them only a few millimeters from the aorta of his heart. It was almost fatal – but miraculously he survived.