Category: america

BBL, mamasapano, MILF

With only three days left, Senate President Franklin Drilon conceded, saying there is no more time for Congress to pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), as the measure is already dead in the Senate.

Drilon attributed the slow death of the Aquino-backed proposal for a long-term peace program for Mindanao to the bloody January 25 clash last year that resulted in the death of 44 Special Action Force (SAF) troopers in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.

“The political environment has become very toxic. I think the BBL and the peace process of the BBL is the 45th victim in the Mamasapano (incident),” Drilon said in an ANC interview.

so, why couldn’t oplan exodus wait until the BBL was a done deal.  i mean, you know, if the BBL was so important, why jeopardize it in any way?  why couldn’t oplan exodus wait?

the answer, if memory serves, lies in alleged intelligence reports relayed to suspended pnp chief purisima by american operatives that marwan was showing signs of planning a change in location.  so there was a sense of urgency on the part of the americans, who must have demanded immediate action, knowing full well that napenas had a plan.  a time-on-target plan that the americans must have deemed doable.  the president may have been convinced that it could be kept secret and done quickly, in and out.  besides, what was the MILF doing, coddling terrorists.

in fact the MILF is as much to blame for mamasapano killing the BBL, and not only because they gave refuge to terrorists.  worse,  that the MILF could not prevent or stop the killings — a one-sided massacre — in territory they claimed to control certainly does not inspire confidence in its promise to eschew violence and embrace peace.

as for the americans, i wonder now what they thought of the BBL.  did they approve?  did they care?  maybe they cared more about getting marwan.

pia & the US bases

bakit di ko makuhang madismaya sa sagot ni bb. pilipinas ms. universe re the u.s. bases.  kasi hindi naman nakakagulat.  iyan naman mismo ang naghaharing pananaw, in no uncertain terms.  good to be reminded what we’re up against.

amazing obama

It may seem odd, decades after the civil-rights movement, to note that for a sitting President to say that the Confederacy fought for the institution of slavery—and that doing so was a moral wrong—is a radical statement. Yet it is, and shortly after making it the President fell silent. It appeared that perhaps he had lost his way, but then, in a remarkable moment, he began to sing “Amazing Grace,” a hymn that is at once a lament, a prayer, and a hope—written by John Newton, a onetime slave trader who became an abolitionist. Immediately after the speech, people began debating whether the song had been part of the prepared text or whether the President sang it out of an impromptu spiritual imperative. In either case, he was likely hoping to see in the national culture precisely the transformation that Newton had experienced in himself, one that facilitated his first truthful accounting of the evil of slavery. 

— JELANI COBB

charleston too quick to forgive

“We have no room for hate so we have to forgive.”

i couldn’t quite believe that the victims’ families were already talking forgiveness.  i can understand eschewing hate, but what about the hurt and the anger?  so soon after the massacre, i would still be too hurt and angry to forgive.  i’d need time to process the loss of a loved one in a house of god during bible study.  i’d need to know more about this killer — is it genetic, he has ku klux klan roots?  is he psychotic, completely out of touch with reality?  or is it racism, he simply hates american blacks the way hitler hated jews?  where did he learn this hate?  from a family member?  a friend?  a teacher?  the web?  all of the above?  i would want to know where he was coming from when he planned and carried out the killings.  to start a race war, he confessed.  as if a race war has not been going on in america like forever.  i guess he wanted to liven things up, he was bored?  i would need convincing that he did not know what he was doing before i can even begin to think forgiveness.