Tuesday, November 25, 2003

A LOOK AT CHINA'S FUTURE

It was all over the papers this morning, which of course went well with the coffee.

We had entered the 4,000-MW coal plant of CLP (China Light and Power) at Tap Shek Kok yesterday. Hung and unfurled between the smokestacks a huge banner almost the size of two double-deck buses. Rebranded CLP as “China’s Leading Polluter” and spoiled the release of the CLP executives preparing their annual glossy financial report.

Happy. Tired as well. Going home; miss my wife and our kids; thankfully oblivious of whatever the political squall of the week was in the Philippines.

The ride to Hong Kong international airport was a fitful one, the dull growl of the bus’s engine calming but of little help. Sleep was a slippery slope competing with restless glances at the window, at dissolving images of past days.

Shantou City, east Guangdong, November 14. The roll-on-roll-off ferry to Nan Ao had already left by the time our bus arrived and the next ferry was scheduled to arrive after two hours.

It was windy and cold and good friend Jean Francois suggested we have some breakfast. We sat down in one of the stalls and the Belgian, being a Belgian, bought some cereal -- a large bottle of Zhujiang beer, which was somehow edifying at 8:30 a.m. with salty olives.

Tonya from the US and Xiao Qing and Yen from Guangzhou later joined our table and ordered kung fu tea.

We went to the great Dan Nan wind farm of Nan Ao that day. A farm of towering white 600-kW tubular wind turbines planted along the ridges. Tall as buildings yet so graceful, effortlessly powerful and essential like Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets.More wind farms were visible near the point of Hou Garden (which of course reminded Jean Francois and I of Hoegaarden; the Belgian preferred Rochefort). A few with old lattice-work towers; most fitted with modern tubes. We knew we were looking at the future of China that day. One of its possible futures, at least, since the great majority of China’s power comes from coal, much of it fi nanced -- and will continue to be financed -- by the likes of the World Bank and the ADB, the leading emitters of environmental rhetoric.

On the way to Shantou, we were reminded of China’s mortal struggle with an icon of the past as we passed a small town surrounded by residential buildings and framed almost perfectly by an amphitheater of small ascending hills. In the middle of the town was a monstrous fat smokestack fifteen times higher than the buildings -- like a gigantic smoking missile that struck the ground but which never exploded.

Then Sunday, while still in the Mainland, a text message informing me of Joe Burgos’s death. I remember I had to sit down.

I was 13 years old and working as a copy boy for Malaya when I first met Joe Burgos, the fiery editor, publisher and icon of the Mosquito Press, which operated under constant intimidation from the despotic Marcos regime.

For virtually every storm that the dictator Marcos threw at the Philippine Republic, Burgos and his obstinate team hurled back their own typhoons.

Burgos was named one of the 50 Press Freedom Heroes by the International Press Institute in 2000, but he’s been a personal hero for some time.

I remember lighting bolts emanating from the man. Malaya was still on West Avenue then, a smoky dusty labyrinth of belligerence, dark humor and high purpose.

At least that was how it appeared to a 13-year-old who went to work daily on a BMX bike with a lunch box in his backpack who, after punching in his time card, would ferry dispatches, pencils and notes and memos from desk to desk to desk, in total fascination of the universe of the newsroom.

I grew up quickly and stayed young in Malaya, tolerated by pugnacious reporters and charmed by the warm companionship of its support staff. My wonder years. The truth is, excluding my name and date of birth, the only item that has remained constant on my résumé is -- Copy Boy, Malaya, 1983-84.”

I received the news of the death of Joe Burgos with a squint and a deep, deep sigh. A sense of foreboding stains the country each day. Who but a fool would deny that we live in troubled times?

While in Guangdong, I encountered again the Chinese saying which reminds us that the best time for planting trees is yesterday, and that the next best time is today. And I think of Burgos and his team, who planted their trees years ago, and wonder if enough saplings will be planted today to weather the coming storms.

The day Joe Burgos passed away marks the first birthday too of my sweet daughter, Yla Luna, named after her beautiful mother. Apart from roots and wings, we hope to leave with Luna the moral compass of Filipinos such as Joe Burgos in order that she may find her way when she grows up.

Hoping that she too may plant her trees one day.

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Comments welcome at xioi@excite.com
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Tuesday, November 11, 2003

TODAY ON NOVEMBER 10
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO, TODAY
What other wonders will this day reveal 10, 20, 30 years from now? In 1940, November 10 was reportedly the day when Walt Disney started as a secret informer for the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So. Mickey Mouse was a rat.


In his speech on November 10, 2001, US President Bush reminded the UN General Assembly of the founding principles of the United Nations without of course being aware of the implications of his words two years later. “We affirmed that some crimes are so terrible they offend humanity,” said Bush in his UN speech in 2001. “[W]e resolved that the aggressions and ambitions of the wicked must be opposed early, decisively, and collectively, before they threaten us all. That evil has returned.”

Indeed. It has returned.

“Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research,” said Malcolm X on November 10, 1963. “All you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. Once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight.” Malcolm X in 1963 was speaking about the black revolution in the US, the Cuban revolution and the revolutions in Asia against imperialism. The same year “Busted” by Ray Charles was given the Grammy for Best Rhythm and Blues and “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Peter, Paul and Mary the Grammy for Best Performance by a Vocal Group.

A year later, on November 10, 1964, US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara held a news conference where he said that everything was under control and that the United States had no plans to send combat troops to Vietnam.

By 1969, more than 500,000 American troops were in South Vietnam.

It brings to mind the unlamented demise today of the Bush administration’s “cake-walk” triumphalism. In lieu of the cake, US troops are being served presently with bombs, bullets and landmines.American troops are being attacked at least 35 times each day in the Baghdad area alone and Washington insists it has no intention of adding American troops in Iraq because of the happy progress that the US occupying army continues to make.

One single day and yet replete with so much to ponder on.

Like oil and dispossession.

November 10, 1975 -- the day the UN General Assembly approved a Resolution 3379 which equated Zionism with racism. A resolution which, by the way, recalled another UN measure -- passed on November 10, 1959, and directed at the regime in South Africa -- which condemned racial discrimination wherever it occurred.

Remember November 10, 1995 -- the day the Nigerian writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged by the brutal military dictatorship of Gen. Sani Abacha?

Saro-Wiwa was hanged along with eight other activists from the indigenous Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People for speaking out against the Abacha regime and the repugnant Dutch transnational oil company Shell, which had devastated the land of the Ogoni people because of its oil operations.

Shell Oil never intervened or denounced the hanging of Saro-Wiwa (may the world never forget its complicity) while US oil companies such as Chevron Texaco lobbied Washington intensively to maintain good relations with the Abacha regime despite the hanging.

A brochure from Mobil (now ExxonMobil) explaining the company’s tolerance of the human rights abuses of the Abacha dictatorship proclaims passionately “[W]e do not believe that cutting off relations or instituting trade sanctions or boycotts will achieve the desired result. In fact, such actions could cause Nigerians to resist and resent what may be seen as unfair meddling in the country’s political development by outsiders.”

So much disdain for meddling; so much concern for the political sensitivity of Nigerians.

Perhaps because Nigeria is the 7th largest producer of crude oil in the world and Abacha was America’s good buddy?

But November 10 need not remind us only of bad things.

Here’s a glowing one. The very first broadcast of Sesame Street, the children’s educational show, was on November 10th, 1969. In the show, Jim Henson’s fun-loving muppets, people, animals and imaginary friends lived together in a community that helped teach young children about numbers, letters and social values. Such a shame that by the time Sesame Street was first broadcast, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were already grown-up bullies.

Who knows, maybe the world would be a little less bad today if only these leaders grew up with Sesame Street.

Maybe George, Dick and Donald would have learned something.

Or maybe that’s asking too much of Big Bird, Ernie and Grover?


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Comments are welcome at xioi@excite.com

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

TIME TO LISTEN TO AMERICANS


"We can see only a career of slaughter, of devastation and of decay; murder and rapine abroad, and disturbances and misery at home. Such has ever been the bloody course of empire,¡¨ wrote the Washington Anti-Imperialist League prophetically in the Washington Sentinel on November 3, 1900, almost two years after America annexed the fledgling Philippine Republic.

On the same day that the address of its Washington branch was published, Josephine Shaw Lowell, the first woman to be elected as an officer of the Anti-Imperialist League, stated the basis by which the fate of America and those of the peoples she subjugates are forcibly entwined: “When the people of the United States consent to deprive another people of its rights and liberties, they strike a terrific blow at the foundations upon which stand their own rights and liberties."

It gives you pause and makes you wonder.

So much shared history with America. And yet because so little of it seems to guide our Filipino leaders today, only the counsel of America’s warmongers is heard while the wisdom emanating from the unlikeliest of sources is neglected.

Like unheralded Americans. The common folks who see no need to wrap themselves with stars and stripes yet who, by their deeds, have become more star-spangled than all the thugs of Washington could ever hope to be.

Like Faith Fippinger, retired teacher for the blind: At 62 years of age, nearing the twilight of her years, Faith decided to live in the grounds of an aging oil refinery in Baghdad as a human shield in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. For doing this the US treasury has threatened her with 12 years of prison and up to $1 million in fines.Yet Faith said she will not pay, “having made the decision to go there out of caring for human life, and then once there having to deal with the dead children from cluster bombs, and also seeing the young American military being killed."

Like John Titus, father of 28- year-old Alicia who was killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks:

“I yearn for release from the pain ... [from] the heartache that I feel each moment of each day since Alicia¡¦s death Forgiveness is a letting go of those feelings that long to consume you with a twisted grief filled with hate and revenge ... [but] that is not who I am and it would not bring my Alicia back ... must learn to forgive those responsible or the anger would consume me like a cancer ... Working for peace and justice in a world that seems so inept in both has given new meaning to my life. For this is what my dear Alicia was all about 'an old soul' because of her deep wisdom and constant search for truth to direct the course of her love ... The needless killing of my daughter and the other 3,000 victims of September 11th, along with the subsequent killing of the innocent children of Afghanistan and Iraq must cease!”

Like Wright Salisbury, the father-in-law of Ted Hennessey who was killed when American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into a World Trade Center tower:


“[O]ur own government, and commercial interests that supported our government, had precipitated this attack as much as the vicious mentalities of the attackers. ... We must remember that the enemy does not live halfway around the globe, but in our own hearts, and that only with love of our fellow man will the hatreds of the world be ended once and for all.”

Like Amber Amundson, whose husband, Craig Scott Amundson, was killed in the attack on the Pentagon:

“I have heard angry rhetoric by some Americans, including many of our nation’s leaders, who advise a heavy dose of revenge and punishment. To those leaders, I would like to make it clear that my family and I take no comfort in your words of rage. If you choose to respond to this incomprehensible brutality by perpetuating violence against other innocent human beings, you may not do so in the name of justice for my husband.”

Like Peaceful Tomorrows, an organization founded by the families of those who perished in the September 11 attacks, which said on the second anniversary of 9/11 that America¡¦s military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq merely ¡§created more bereaved families like ours.”

“Ordinary Afghans killed by US bombs … the Iraqi dead … we hold them in our hearts today as another set of victims created by the tragedy of 9/11 ... While September 11 stands as a unique tragedy in the American experience, the sad reality is that people in other countries have been experiencing their own September 11 with much less fanfare all the time ... We are honored to stand with our brothers and sisters around the world who know that we the people must find another way to live together on this planet ... We owe it to the dead, we need it for the living and we must do it for the generations to follow.”

The greatest wealth in the world we stand to gain just by clasping the hands of those who truly embrace America’s ideals. Because these are our ideals, too. Peace. Solidarity. Respect.

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Comments are welcome at xioi@excite.com
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