Radical Islamism: Islam Gone Bad

This was a quote from former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Today, it applies not just to Israel and the Arabs, but to the world and the Radical Islamists as a whole.

I have to get this out of the way from the outset. I am not using the phrase ‘radical Islam.’ I am using ‘radical Islamism.’ I do not refer here to Islam, the religion. I refer to Islamism that is not essentially the same as Islam. If some people equate the two, it shall no longer be within the purview of what I intend to say.

Radical Islamism is the twisted bastard son of Islam.

First things first. There is a difference, even, between Muslim fundamentalism and radical Islamism.

Muslim fundamentalists believe that sacred scripture is considered the authentic and authoritative word of their religion’s god and no person has the right to change it or disagree with it. They restrict themselves to literal interpretations of their sacred texts, the Qur’an (central religious text of Islam) and Hadith (oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad). All Muslims (Sunni or Shia) use the same Qur’an.

For the Muslim fundamentalists, the problems of the world stem from secular influences. A Muslim fundamentalist can issue a fatwah such as “every Muslim who pleads for the suspension of the sharia is an apostate and can be killed.”

The killing of those apostates cannot be prosecuted under Islamic law just because this killing is “justified.” The command to slay is an invention of Islamic fundamentalists.

There’s only one thing Muslim fundamentalists hate more than infidels: traitors to the cause.

Muslim fundamentalism comes in conflict with some provisions of the internationally supported Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among these are: freedom from religious police, the equality between men and women, and the separation of religion and state. As to freedom of religion, Muslim fundamentalists believe that Muslims who leave Islam or criticize it “should be executed,” while the right of non-Muslims to convert to Islam should be celebrated.

Radical Islamism may be an entirely different banana.

A Muslim Fundamentalist is “a political individual” in search of a “more original Islam,” while the Islamist is pursuing a political agenda. Radical Islamism is Islam + Political Agenda.

Radical Islamism is a totalitarian movement that wants to establish a worldwide radical Islamist state. This envisioned state will support religious wars against non-Islamist Muslims and non-Muslim infidels worldwide. Jihad, or Holy War, is a religiously sanctioned call for individual and collective violence made by radical Islamists against “infidels” worldwide. Fatah, or military conquest, is the employment of Jihad for imperial expansion and colonization of non-Islamic lands. Radical Islamists believe that fatah is as legitimate today as when the concept gave rise to a series of invasions of countries outside Islam’s original birthplace in the Arabian Peninsula.

Radical Islamists want to establish the supremacy of their version of Islam over all other Faiths. This is what they call the “Global Jihad” (waged by Islamic radicals against the Western world). They believe that they will rule the world because of their conviction in the superiority of their religion.

The political ideology of Islamism calls for the replacement of state secular laws with Islamic Law. Islamists believe that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system. Others define it as “an Islamic militant, anti-democratic movement, bearing a holistic vision of Islam whose final aim is the restoration of the caliphate.”

Radical Islamists would like to impose Sharia law with a central government to rule the world. That’s their definition of survival of the Qur’an and of their group. On the other hand, the Western civilizations’ definition of survival of their group is democracy and general separation of church and state.

Here lies the difference in the survival moral of what should be the surviving moral.

The message of the Qur’an and the Hadith are clear. They are the text and oral tradition of the origins of the thought. They mean well as far as intentions go. They are the ideal. However, they are, too, subject to misinterpretation by those who practice them.

The misinterpretation of Islam is not done by the non-Muslim world. Twisting the religion is committed by Muslims themselves.

Radical Islamism is the bad egg in the egg basket. And we all know what bad eggs can do.

To say that radical Islamists are stubborn and arrogant is an understatement. They are murderers and looters, killers and common thieves. They are one religion’s bad reputation.

It is true that barbarism exists somewhere else. It is true that death in the hand of a common street mugger gone jittery is no less forgivable than the killing of a life in a womb. What makes radical Islamists different from the kidnap-for-ransom guy who kills his hostage and the abortionist who snuffs out life for a fee is that: radical Islamists shout “Allahu Akbar!” after they kill.

The phrase ‘Allahu Akbar’ is the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer. It is a slogan prescribed by the Prophet Muhamad to the mujahids of Islam. ‘Allahu Akbar’ is recited on many occasions such as in the beginning of prayer of Hazrat Bibi Fatimah, by the mujahids of Islam, and when animals are slaughtered.

What is more sickening than for killers of men to shout “God is the greatest!” before and after they kill?

I wonder how Allah would want to deal with his despicable creatures.

Islam: Ruin From Within

For the past 30 years, radical Islamists have wanted to run and own southern Philippines. In spite of the long-drawn peace talks between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), numerous ceasefires and truces, as well as violations of ceasefires, the MILF will not settle for anything less than owning part of the Philippines.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is a militant rebel group that does not want to recognize the Philippines’ constitution and secular government. The MILF which has a long-term aim of creating a separate Islamic state in southern Philippines has not only become the country’s largest rebel group but a Muslim terrorist group. Operating openly across large areas of Mindanao, the MILF has set up checkpoints and even shadow governments in a number of towns and villages.

Southern Philippines has also become a microcosm of how radical Islamists have been destroying the Islam religion.

Islamism not just posits a political role for Islam, but also believes that the Islamist views merely reflect Islam. It asserts that Islam can never be apolitical. Islamists ask the question, “If Islam is a way of life, how can we say that those who want to live by its principles in legal, social, political, and economic spheres of life are not Muslims, but Islamists and believe in Islamism, not [just] Islam?”

The MILF, putting emphasis on its Islamic roots because many of its senior figures are clerics, has had broad popular support in rural areas where the lack of economic development has encouraged dissent.

The group has made it clear that it will not settle for anything less than self-rule for Muslims in Mindanao.

This has led to on-off negotiations with the Philippine government over a period of several years, popularly dubbed as the “peace process.” The MILF, however, has been violating on-off ceasefire agreements. Despite the truce, skirmishes continue between government troops and MILF militants.

Many of the MILF’s political leaders are former mujahideen or holy warriors. They volunteered to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, and had US backing to do it. Al Haj Murad, the MILF’s vice chairman for military affairs, met with Osama Bin Laden in the 1980s.

Both the US and Philippine governments suspect that members of the MILF have helped train Indonesians connected to Jema’ah Islamiah (JI), the group accused of carrying out the 2002 Bali bombing. The MILF does not deny that it has welcomed foreign visitors to its camps in the past, but its leaders say it has nothing to do with JI or al-Qaeda. These suspected links with foreign terrorist groups are what have been complicating the peace process.

In March 2007, the Philippine government offered to recognize the right of self-determination for the Muslims in Mindanao – something it had never done in over three decades of conflict and intermittent negotiations.

The Philippine government, however, has persisted to negotiate a peace deal with a group that does not like peace. Besides violating ceasefire agreements, the MILF has always refused to disarm its armies (estimated to be as high as 45,000 strong). The terrorist group has not closed down its paramilitary facilities (numbering at least 40 on the island of Mindanao alone). Before its main camp had fallen to Philippine military, Camp Abubakar was used as a training ground for combatants. It was a 10,000-hectare compound ran largely by Arabs that had trained 2,000 terrorists, many of them foreigners. Camp Abubakar’s course of study included lessons in assault weapons, stealth operations, hand-to-hand combat, and bomb-making.

On August 5, 2008, the Philippine government and the MILF were scheduled to sign a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) on the recognition of the ancestral domains of the MILF. However, the Supreme Court of the Philippines issued a Temporary Restraining Order against the signing when local government officials filed an injunction, claiming that they were not consulted on the drafting and execution of the MOA.

In the early dawn of August 18, 2008, elements of the MILF-Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces’ 102nd Base Command under Cmdr. Bravo Macapaar conducted swift, simultaneous raids on government and military installations in the coastal municipalities of Lanao del Norte. Passenger buses plying the highway were caught in the crossfire. Civilian casualties were incurred. Houses, buildings, and vehicles were torched. Civilian hostages were used as human shield when soldiers arrived. Thousands of civilian refugees, Muslims and Christians, fled their homes along the coast as battles raged between the Muslim mujahideen guerillas and reinforcing government forces.

The MILF calls the August 18 incidents as sending a clear message to the Philippine government and all Filipinos. The group has stated that it will not agree to revisit or renegotiate the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), even if it means the impasse of the peace talks indefinitely.

For 30 years, the Philippine government has been putting up with radical Islamists in the Philippines. The country has persisted to deal with this group peacefully and with reconciliation through a consistent peace process.

Islam is said to be a religion that advocates peace, with one of its teachings as ‘reconciliation is the best’ (4:128). The current resurgence of the Mindanao War is proof that radical Islamists do not like peace and reconciliation. They, therefore, slaughter the very religion they go by.

Radical Islamists do not tolerate democracy. It is a complete shame that it takes a democracy to tolerate them.

It Takes a Village to Raise a Thief

A society’s criminal justice system punishes crimes. In many cases, however, the system misses the target. Many crimes go unreported. The victims are unwilling to cooperate with authorities, leaving law enforcers with cases that are not legally offensive for the courts of law to chew on. Often, the criminal justice system is prejudiced.

These reasons make criminals continue to prosper in their nefarious affairs. Petty criminals such as those that commit street crimes persist to roam and proliferate. The common thief is one such that enjoys a lucrative career when the criminal justice system fails to haul malefactors of its kind to court.

The thief has become a stereotype – a product of a criminal justice system that is biased. If you’re a thief and you look impoverished, bedraggled, and generally unkempt, you have a higher chance of being arrested, convicted, and sentenced in court. That’s because, being shabby and scruffy, you are most likely more apparent to the police and citizens who may complain to them. Biased law enforcers blindly blame crimes on certain demographics as people of color, lower-class out-of-school youth, or desperate unemployed.

Theft, however, knows no social or economic classification. It’s as pandemic as flu. You can meet a well-clad thief right down the street corner, or somewhere in the august halls of congress.

Theft, after all, simply means the felonious taking of private property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. Simply put, it’s taking another person’s property without permission.

So, a stereotypical thief is caught and caged in prison for some time. The relatives come to post bail (family is family, no matter what). They will believe the thief’s explanation, no matter how flimsy, that will point to either him being framed up or was in the wrong place at the wrong time (family is family, no matter what). Defendants who pay their bail are more likely to be acquitted than those who do not. So, the thief is free. He goes back to his usual ways, will get caught again, brought behind bars again, bailed out by condoning relatives again, and so on and so forth.

Prisons ideally serve to rehabilitate criminals into productive citizens who no longer commit crimes. Programs within prisons designed to rehabilitate prisoners include education, personal counseling, and vocational training to prepare them for eventual release and parole. Prisons are successful in punishing and isolating inmates, but they seem to be less successful at rehabilitating inmates and deterring future crimes.

It is the community that can best address crime prevention at the sociocultural root of crime. At the very least, it’s the citizens who can watch over their locale, observe any dubious activities they sense, and report posthaste to law enforcers.

The community, however, has gone docile on thieves. Some people do not care to report a thief if they’re not the ones being thieved. Concern for others is slowly waning. If they do report, they lose interest during the investigation process and quit the complaint. Too much hassle on their schedules! It’s only a thief! Somebody else can do the complaining! Still, some are afraid of the reprisal that can befall them upon reporting a criminal.

A thief is bred. Most children have a basic concept of “mine” and “not mine.” So, if a child takes somebody else’s crayons without permission, he should be told that what he did was stealing right from the start (thereby introducing him to the broader concept of something that is utterly wrong). If the child is just told, “Don’t take Jaiyant’s crayons, that’s bad,” he will believe that only taking Jaiyant’s crayons is wrong, while taking Graeme’s crayons or Celso’s cookie is okay.

However, a true understanding of the harmful nature of stealing does not begin to develop until about age five to seven. Internal motivations of conscience and guilt do not develop until the middle childhood years. Once the recognition of property boundaries develops, stealing becomes an intentional act that must be addressed more deliberately.

Double talk, therefore, will not teach the child what is right and wrong at the soonest possible time and the quickest possible chance. The phrase, “That’s bad,” is so generic that you will only confuse the child and will not meet your objective.

Double talk, heaps of insular attitude, and fear make for some healthy ground that gives life to the unhealthy. Something grows in the soil that’s right for it.

Now, take this scenario on the world stage and let your imagination soar. Think global and you will glean the allegory.

We breed the thief. We let him go. We let him be.

Death of a Metaphor

Feminists argue that women are not their own barriers to advancement. They blame the situation of women not being competitively active in the traditional workforce to the concept of “glass ceiling,” a metaphor that represents the gender biased condition where the workplace is more conducive to men and unwelcoming to women.

According to feminists, to “break the glass ceiling,” and thereby find upward mobility in the workplace, women have to overcome the codes and models of traditional workplaces that were fashioned for men’s needs, without input from women.

Traditional employment implies that employers don’t always look first at women when hiring or promoting because women want different things from their jobs. While men are driven to look at salary and chances for advancement, women look more often for meaning, satisfaction, flexibility and personal development – putting money and promotions further down the list of priorities.

The ‘glass ceiling’ came into being because of the traditional implication that women, in general, lack the “hunger” for promotion, making them less competitive, thereby not useful for corporate advancement.

To put it in simpler terms, the corporate rat race to the top mostly has male rats because the female rats are usually impeded by the proverbial glass ceiling that they first have to break if they are so predisposed to join the male rats in the rat race.

I will surely earn the ire of the feminists out there, but will nonetheless say that if women are interested in a career, they won’t have time for children; and if they’re bent on rearing children, they won’t have the time, effort, and imagination for getting to the top of a career. The notion that domestic engineering is a career in itself is purposely not used here. By career, I mean the work that a woman does outside of home management.

Hence, it is the female instinct to be more interested in having a family rather than join the competitive workforce that’s really the reason why we don’t see many women at the top of traditional careers. The biological calling supersedes any gender biased constrictions of the workplace as being the reason why women do not advance to the hilt in their careers. Sooner or later, most women will opt out of the workplace, or slacken on the workplace ambition, to raise a family.

This harks back to the question as to why women didn’t create civilizations. While men marched on to conquer territory and widen empires, as well as slew to guard the ramparts, women were left at home to take care of the brood and the flock. The argument that women did not establish civilizations is as debatable as the one about men unable to learn how to change diapers. Without homes, brood, and flock, the men wouldn’t have had a civilization to build on.

Superwoman must be single. And she chose to stay that way.

Had she decided to have kids, then she might claim to be a Superwoman as Mom. But, as we all know by now, this one will not keep her Superwoman title for long. Being a SuperMom and getting to the top of a career (as we traditionally know careers to be) do not mix.

Thus, the metaphor of the “glass ceiling” is dead.

And a dead metaphor is moot.

The glass ceiling metaphor was created and written by utterly ambitious men who did not want more participants in the rat race. That’s all there is to it. And, of course, (as usual) it’s been propagated by male-bashing feminists who are really men in drag.

An Egg Story

If your gasoline expenses are busting your budget and the oil price hike is getting to you, take it out first on the eggs. This story will tell you how.

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. Since a dozen eggs won’t last a week, he normally buys two dozens at a time. One day while buying eggs, he notices that the price has gone up. The next time he buys, the price has risen even more. When asked to explain the price of eggs, the store owner says, “The price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly.” This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day.

He checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business. The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on.

As the man kept buying eggs, the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there. He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily.

Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.

Then, on the week before Christmas, the price of eggs shot up even higher. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, “Cakes and baking for the holidays!” The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. The man says, “There must be something we can do about the price of eggs.”

He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. But this didn’t work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need. He ate two eggs a day. On the way home from work, he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs on stock. He told the distributor that he didn’t need any eggs. Maybe wouldn’t need any all week. The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn’t have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs! To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that he could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, “I don’t have the room for the f*%$&^*&%* eggs even if they were free!”

The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner said, “I don’t have room for more eggs. The customers are only buying 2 or 3 eggs at a time. Now, if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozens again.” The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers, but the egg farmers liked the price they were getting for their eggs. Unfortunately, the chickens just kept on laying!

Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs, though only slightly. The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, “When the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen.”

Slowly, the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn’t buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for. They had full warehouses and wouldn’t need eggs for quite a while. And those chickens kept on laying! Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn’t sell. The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price. And the customers started buying by the dozens again.

Now, change the eggs to gasoline.

What if everyone only bought enough gasoline needed for a period of time, each time they pulled up to the pump? The dealer’s tanks would stay semi-full all the time. The dealers wouldn’t have room for the gas coming from the huge tanks. The tank depots wouldn’t have room for the petrol coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn’t have room for the oil being off-loaded from the huge tankers coming from the oil fields.

So, the moral of this egg tale is: don’t fill up the tank of your car! You may have to stop for gas thrice a week, but the price should come down. Think about it!

Consumers must learn that they have power in numbers. If we want to cripple those who fleece us of our hard-earned money, we must do it together.

But what this long story about eggs really wants to convince you on is for you not to lessen your consumption of eggs but to cut as much gasoline as you can from your life.

The Magic Hour

We always walk – more at night than during the day. The magic hour at sunset is our time to rest our aching bodies.

Night and day, we move onward to where land takes us. Almost always, we move to whatever direction – so long as we get farther and farther away from the sound of gunfire.

We have no permanent homes, and no property. We have all lost our farms and animals. The only things we have are the few plastic bags that we can manage to carry as we walk interminably.

Since strife began here, natives of this land have been displaced within their homeland. It’s been a war between those who want to claim their land back and a government that has always supported landgrabbers. The main contention is called ‘ancestral domain.’ It’s the title of the peace process where even foreign countries had come into the scene as a negotiating go-between.

We, the natives, owned our land till the landgrabbers from outside, as well as foreign multinationals, took our lands from us and drove us farther up the mountains.

It’s what this war is all about, really – a war about people wanting their homeland back.

Some of us have taken up arms to fight back. What else can a people do when left with no choice? The government can’t seem to make us stop fighting back. So, they proclaimed a bigger war, and chose to call it jihad. The word gives an excuse for soldiers to kill our people. You see, jihad has been made to mean a violent revolt. Calling it jihad gives the military a random order to quell the revolt.

We die for the sake of a convenient choice of word.

The problem here in Mindanao has nothing to do with religion that we, Muslims, are being killed in the name of. It has become a religious issue only because the government has conveniently called it jihad.

The real problem here is economic, not religious. Our people have become very poor – poor because the landgrabbers have taken our land and farms and livelihood, while driving us farther and farther up the mountains.

And because the fighting happens more in the jungles, the more jihad it is.

And it’s been interminable walking since. To where? We ourselves don’t know. The government has always used force, and what better and faster way to send us walking on and on than having the sound of gunfire at our heels.

We fought back even more. So, they offered peace. But the negotiating table is as much a sham as the government’s intention to give us peace. How can outsiders who have made obscene earnings from our land suddenly decide to give our lands back to us? They probably don’t even know what ancestral domain really means. As landgrabbers, it is their nature to settle upon a land that is not theirs.

The peace negotiations are a futile effort. The peace process is total hypocrisy.

And now the fighting is back – once more. And we shall walk once more – farther and farther away from the sound of gunfire.

Besides war and walking, we’ve also known very well the hours of the day. We walk more at night, hidden by the dark. We sometimes walk during the day, too, but that poses much risk. Noon is harsh, and the heat is too much. The stark daylight exposes us too much. Soldiers do not really discern very well who they fire at. We are innocent civilians. We are families, and women, and children, and elders. But because there’s a jihad, anyone but anyone is a rebel.

My particular favorite is called the magic hour. It is one specific hour of sunlight during the day when everything is bathed with a golden glow, and the world is softer and warmer. This is the time when the sun is so close to the horizon. There are long shadows during the magic hour, but they are not harsh.

The magic hour for us is that short and fleeting moment when we know that we should rest our weary bodies to prepare for another long walk in the dark – to somewhere.

It’s like a lull in the peace process that’s been going on interminably between our people and the government that should really protect our interest since we still belong to this nation, though driven from our ancestral lands.

In our quest for the elusive peace in our land, we experience the golden hour – short, fleeting, and temporary – till time gives way to night where the bursts of gunfire are the only light in the dark.

Shadows are longer during the magic hour. It is also the time when we see the shadows of enemies as much as they see ours.

Internal displacement and internal migration have not given us, natives of Mindanao, a normal life. The story of Mindanao in the Philippines is a story about endless walking.

It’s also a story of short, fleeting and temporary magic hours that happen between the lulls in an interminable peace process and the never-ending struggle with a recurring war in the dark.

The magic hour is just an hour, and it comes back over and over again.

The endless military clashes known as the Mindanao War in Southern Philippines have reached genocidal proportions for nearly 40 years. It has also been under an interminable peace process or negotiation between the Philippine government and the Muslims of Mindanao who have been fighting to reclaim their ancestral domain and form an autonomous region. Malaysia and some Arab countries had been brokering the deal but gave up and abandoned their participation. This war has figured in headlines lately because the peace negotiations have bogged down once again, and war has resumed – once again.

The Greatest Male Perks of All Time

It is said that men have these privileges but tend to be unaware of them. Perhaps because these privileges are givens in our society that males don’t even recognize their extraordinary edge.

As a child, chances are he was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than his sisters. He got more attention from the teachers in class than the girls who raised their hands just as often. When he glanced at the front page of a newspaper, he saw more pictures of people of his sex.

His grooming routine is expected to be cheap and quick, but will still produce dashing results. If he drives badly, it has nothing to do with his sex. If he screws up his finances, his sex won’t be blamed. If he sleeps around, he will not be labeled a ‘slut’ (there’s no male counterpart of slut-bashing). He can be loud or aggressive and will be called assertive (his counterpart will be called a bitch).

In everyday language, he will hear and read about his sex most of the time (e.g., chairman, freshman, hitman, etc.) In fact, if a sentence refers to any person, the chosen sex will likely be referring to his, down to the pronouns ‘he,’ ‘him,’ ‘his.’

In practically all media, we can find images of scantily-clad women intended to sexually appeal to him. Advertising to sell most products that are not of baseline necessity has him in mind, because he has the bigger purchasing power due to bigger expendable incomes.

At the office, his officemates won’t think that he got the job because of his sex (even if it was the case). If he competed for the post against female applicants, his chances were already tilted to his favor. The higher the job rank, the bigger his chances were. If he is not promoted, it’s not because of his sex, either. If he fails at his job, his sex won’t be blamed. If he did a particular task along with a female, chances are people will think he did a better job.

If he chooses to be childless, his masculinity will not be questioned. If he opts to have children along with a career, no one will think he’s selfish if he’s not home all the time. If he has children, he will be praised as an extraordinary parent if he takes time out to take care of the kids. He and his wife will both assume that she will have to sacrifice her career to raise the kids.

Every major religion in the world is led primarily by people of his own sex. Even God, in most major religions, belongs to the category. Most major religions state that he should be the head of the household, while his wife and children should be subservient to him.

By and large, people who belong to his sex make more money, and occupy the major positions in government and corporations.

With privileges, however, come expectations. He is also expected to work more to earn more. The provider will simply have to provide. The sexist society that bestowed him perks also puts him under tremendous pressure.

There are more chances he’ll meet harm while walking on dark streets because, unlike his female counterpart, he was not really warned as much and as often about the perils of being alone outside in the dark. He was probably bullied in school and will, most likely, be the soldier who will die in a war. The sexist society that gave him his privilege also gives him harm.

The Brute Shall Inherit The Earth

A Catholic growing up in a patriarchal society that still, to this day, smells the heavy wafts of religious colonialism, would have been made to believe that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” A diet of beatitudes is common fare.

However, as we come to locate the ‘meek’ in the grand scheme of things, we see that they are really nowhere in the struggle to inherit the earth. A struggle would have to involve assumedly opposing forces. The ‘meek,’ by their nature, do not oppose.

If the meek do not so much as put in effort to play the struggle game over the ownership of this earth, then it is easy to assume that the meek will not win the price and will never inherit the earth. So much for that beatitude, then. It can be decimated in a single line of thought.

But look closely.

There really is no power struggle between the mild and the fierce, or between the weak and the strong. The power struggle has always been between the harsh and the harsh. Besides, power struggle connotes some sort of a level playing field.

Hence, we only have a no-struggle between the cannot-win-the-struggle-at-all and the will-do-everything-to-quash-any-struggle.

Those that we see manning the barricades, the picket lines, the protest, and revolutions cannot really be considered mild. And, chances are, they don’t have a stronghold in the real battle between strong opposing forces.

Look even closer.

The strong ones in the power struggle are really all living in fear. Fear of the competitor, in pursuit of the earth.

They get paranoid as they advance. They build higher walls and wider, deeper moats to protect them. They stack up arsenals. They concoct anthrax and other biological warfare. They build weapons of mass destruction (as if their presence in their subordinate nations isn’t massively destructive in itself).

The ones in competition suffer from dread.

Burma’s junta relocated its seat of government in a jungle that it can protect and seal. Iraq had to see 5 (maybe, even more) surges to guarantee oil for one nation. Russia and China are fiercely protecting their business interests in Africa. War on terror had to be waged. Islamophobia had to rise. The European Union has expanded to more than 30 members that are assured of oil and gas from North Africa.

It used to be just social Darwinism that implies competition among all individuals, groups, nations or ideas. Then, it became eugenics that is necessary for the improvement of human hereditary traits towards dominance and superiority via such interventions as birth control, in vitro fertilization, sperm banking, and genetic engineering.

Both these social philosophies had been considered immoral in their time. And who had been the moral arbiter, thereby the one that holds the baton of orchestration? It’s the emerging most powerful that have acquired some degree of consent from their subordinate conquests.

It used to be just imperialism when a nation’s ego was measured through territorial conquest with the use of economic and political powers. But imperialism has given way to the dominance of hegemony where a few powers can dictate the policies of all other inferior powers.

To say that it’s all about power is both a cliché and an understatement. The power struggle will not end until hegemony is the order of the day.

Those with the darkest fears become the most powerful.

And the ultimate hegemon is the one most paranoid.

I wish I have the foresight to enable me to tell you that everything will be okay and that happiness is for free. And that the world will reverse climate change. Or Iraq is assured that it has seen the last battle on its grounds. Or that Afghanistan will stop farming poppy so heroin addiction will be totally eliminated from that land. Or that Mugabe will, by some voice of an angel or enlightenment from the Holy Spirit, step down from his throne. Or that all the desaparecidos in this world will come out and reveal themselves to be just fine.

But I merely chronicle and synthesize what I see, hear, and learn. And what I see, just like you do, is ugly.

As for the world-is-hopeful, man-will-overcome-distress, and man-will-outgrow-his-evil-ways, I leave those to others. They probably mean to pacify.

I definitely hope to agitate – from my own little corner of the earth that the brute will surely inherit.

Happiness Ain't Free, Dude!

C’mon!Happiness comes at a cost.

Unless you want to starve or go au naturel in the streets or sleep under the trees. Or unless you’re willing to walk 8 kilometers to the nearest river to wash yourself (if there’s no body of water near you besides the stagnant one in the gutter where dengue mosquitoes breed). Or worse, you can’t drink the water near you.

I bet you won’t be happy if your stomach grumbles (you’ll soon wear out your taste for free berries in the woods). I bet you won’t be happy if you shudder from the cold with no clothes on your back (leaves can be itchy on most parts of the skin, according to research). I bet you would be nasty when mosquitoes make you their breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks while you snooze under the vast cosmos. (Come to think of it, I don’t think you can sleep at all if insects partake of your blood.)

So, is happiness free?

You got to be kidding!

If you say happiness is free to a Zimbabwean mother who tries to buy a loaf of bread on the current Zimbabwean dollar, I bet she’ll look at you the same way as when you tell her Mugabe will live till 120 years old.

If you say happiness is free to a Mexican illegal immigrant in the US who cannot get health care insurance because he is undocumented in the Land of Milk and Honey, he will guffaw his belly off.

Go try saying ‘happiness is free’ to the people of that slum in Haiti who eat mud.

This ‘happiness is free’ biz is yet the most dazed statement we have ever heard. Even vapidness comes at a ridiculously steep price. What’s more, even figurative language can cost by way of fooling people.

If I may offer a revision of a Catholic epithet: You owe it to yourself to take care of yourself. God will appreciate the little load off His back. We have been overworking Him.

Thank God, I get my epiphany from a cup of good latte (which comes at a cost, too, tsk tsk tsk).

By the way, even the Tibetan monks have to buy underarm deodorant sometime.

DESAPARECIDOS

I thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to face you today to tell my story. Your microphones, voice recorders, and cameras make me realize that this story will not be forgotten after today. You will continue to tell this tale over and over again, until many people realize that I am but one with this kind of story.

You probably don’t realize how thankful I really am to stand before you today, because there are many like me who have not been able to do this, and many more that will not have a chance to face you.

My daughter is everything to me. The only treasure I have left in this life devoid of possessions. If her father were alive, he would be more inconsolable than I am right now. Her father passed away when she was just a child of six. And I raised her on my own from then on. I was able to send her to the university on my retirement pension.

I don’t know who taught my daughter to be fearless – me or the university. While the education she received there made her think independently and critical of our society, she probably saw how fearless I was making a life for the two of us. I did what I could since I was faced with no choice to make.

My daughter grew up thinking that if one runs out of choices, one has to do what he or she has to do – fearlessly.

Fear was something I didn’t pay much attention to in my day, as I tackled head on a life for me and my daughter. She grew up seeing this – and many more, I’m sure.

I probably raised a person who is so fearless that she is bound to disappear one day.

I don’t know which is more painful – to finally find my child by knowing she’s dead or not finding her at all.

The long wait is the most excruciating part.

I light a candle at dusk everyday to remind me of two things: One, that there’s no greater tragedy than having to outlive your child. And two, that if my daughter is gone from this life, I would rather that she died for being fearless than to have lived not doing anything about a fearful world.

Desaparecidos means missing (literally) or enforced disappearances (figuratively). These people have disappeared due to political causes (involuntary disappearances, summary executions, or extra-judicial killings).

Pigs and Pearls

My Social and Political Thought professor back in college used to reiterate a single statement over and over again till the words appeared as pigs in my nightmares. He said, “If you don’t know A, you will not ask about A.”

I encountered this again in another class by the following semester, but this time, I mostly yawned, doodled, and gazed out the classroom window in this Logic class. I think the statement above falls under Tautology (or something) in Propositional Logic. You can refute me, of course, if you majored in Philosophy. My knowledge of Propositional Logic now is as fuzzy as it was many rainy seasons and flash floods ago. All I remember is that there were alphabets, mostly As, Bs, Ss, and Ps (and it matters if the letters were caps or lower), and funny looking brackets and other quaint formulaic symbols. So, as far as I was concerned, I only knew that if you want to P, you go to the CR.

It was either that my Logic professor was utterly boring and ugly or that he wasn’t as nightmarishly redundant as my Social and Political Thought teacher a semester earlier. That, again, or the fact that the only thing I remember from my Logic class was “to know P, you must know not P” and that, if you look closely, is nowhere near “if you don’t know A, you will not ask about A.”

Well, so much for Logic, I majored in communication so the first three paragraphs are just to ‘reach out to you.’

In rhetoric, however (and that’s more up my alley), a tautology is an unnecessary (maybe, unintentional) repetition of meaning by using different words. It is nothing but saying the same thing twice.

Let me give some examples.

If someone can’t teach me (that which he thinks should be taught to me), he must have been teaching the wrong person.

If someone fails to educate me (that which he thinks he should educate me on), he must have been using an ineffective strategy by which to educate me.

If someone fails to convince me right away (that which he is convinced he should convince me on), he is wasting his time.

If someone shares his ideas to what he thinks is an uneducated audience (and the audience is unappreciative), he is wasting his time as well.

If someone shares something that he thinks is of value to somebody else (and the somebody else does not appreciate it), he is casting his pearls to swine.

Pearls and swine don’t mix. Pigs cannot appreciate pearls. Though that sounds derogatory, the thrower of pearls would do well to realize that it’s a huge waste of effort.

There is no such thing as universal audience. Already, there are at least two kinds of audiences: the captive and the captured.

There’s no universal message, either. There are only home truths – such as love, hate, peace, war. But even these are debatable as to the level of discomforting they render just so they can be acknowledged.

That is why epithets, platitudes, grandstanding motherhood statements, as well as rote dogma are just quotable quotes because often they are not immediately verifiable on the ground, and suffer the handicap of the audience variable.

Which goes without saying that pigs and pearls may not mix because pigs have no way of knowing that pearls are the precious calcification of oyster saliva which remains deposited in concentric layers over a period of time – and all that jazz.

So, if a pig does not know pearl, it will not ask about pearl.

I, Vigilante

The body’s still warm. Damn boys. Turned it into a mushy pulp. Welts and bruises, too much. The boys went a bit too far with that. The color has become that of a sick eggplant. And the body is still warm. No visible puncture wounds nor traces of bullet entry, though. Good. No blood. Good. My boys learn fast. Blood happens when the head is hit, so that area is generally avoided.

Hands not bound. Neither are the feet. Good. Bound, hah! That happens only in movies. Fingers and toes, though, are obviously broken from the way each digit points to a different direction. The right kneecap has grown to thrice its size. That looks broken, too. Or smashed, whichever came first. One can’t tell really which came first if things happen fast.

And that’s the whole point. Fast.

The face is noticeably intact. No black eye. No broken nose. No busted lip. No blood. Good. Except for the faint trace of a grimace, as if in disturbed sleep.

Another one today and it isn’t even 3 a.m. The one last night was done at the crack of dawn. And the one the day before that had to be finished by midnight.

The boys have become ingenious at this. Yes, there are creative ways to do it. But those guys really hit the jackpot with the idea of taping a piece of paper on the bodies, saying “I am a thief, don’t do what I do or you’ll end up this way, too.” The boys change the script from time to time. There was a “I’m a highway robber. I get on a bus and hostage all the passengers till I get everything I can and jump off. Please don’t copy me or this is how you’ll end up.”

Maybe next time, the boys will have to put the bodies in boxes before leaving them on the streets. This is why commuters and pedestrians that pass this way are safer now. No more pickpockets. No more snatchers. No more holduppers. All done away with. For now, at least. There will always be new ones. Always. Those bastards! They make society sicker than it already is.

Now, crime rate has gone down 48 percent. And the figures are accurate, too. I use the word figure, not statistics. Because stats are doctored lies. They only make one look good. I don’t need statistics. I’m not after looking good with PowerPoint presentations at conferences.

I’m only concerned with the people. They thank me, of course, for safer streets – night and day. That is what counts. Safety. Public safety.

Me and the boys, we do what we have to do. Because if we don’t, the criminals we nab, the courts just let go. Can’t keep on doing that over and over again. What do they think of us? Not busy? We have tons of work to do!

That police station commander of the year award is surely mine this year.