@MsLeaSalonga’s famous june 12 tweet 

Our country is not yet debt-free, poverty-free, crime-free, or corruption-free. So what are we free from exactly and why do we celebrate it?  

it’s a good question – even a trick question, sort of – and would take a clear sense of history and politics and some soul-searching to answer.  simply impossible in 140 characters.

what are we free from?

certainly not from debt, poverty, crime, or corruption — lea’s right.   but also certainly not from “colonizers” – lea’s bashers are wrong.

our last colonizer is still very much around in a neo kind of way – not openly or overtly, rather, underhandedly and covertly, with our leaders acting as witting, some unwitting, dummies, or puppets, sort of.

we like to think we are free to shape a sovereign future for nation, but we are not, really.  think EDCA.   think “free” trade.   think mamasapano.  think english.

all we are really free from is the sight of americans mismo in positions of power.  all we are really free from is a clear sense of the ever-steady grip of the american hand on our economic and political and military  affairs.

but that – being not really free – is not what we celebrate.

i grew up with parents who would religiously bring out the family’s philippine flag and hang it in front of the house every time june 12 came around.  but i also had an aunt nearby who would always quietly snort at the ritual, once whispering to me, we’re not free, there’s nothing to celebrate.  so i’ve always been of two minds about it.

just the same i hang out my philippine flag june 12 to july 4, year after year.  once i forgot, back when gloria moved the holiday to the nearest monday, or was it friday, in aid of “holiday economics.”  i was surprised to feel so awful about forgetting, like i had failed my parents, my lolos and lolas, all the way back to rizal and bonifacio and, sige na nga, aguinaldo na rin, in the struggle to keep the flame of freedom alive.

tricky times

medyo di ako makapaniwala na maaaring hindi si mar roxas ang i-annoint ni presidente aquino na kandidato ng liberal party sa 2016.  parang walang-utang-na-loob ang dating nito sa akin.  kahit pa sabihing mar had no choice but to put off his own plans of running for president given the clamor for noynoy in 2009 in the wake of cory’s demise.  because mar could have handled it differently, he could have resisted some, he could have tried to convince cory’s kids, and nation, na maigi kung mag-VP muna si noynoy, get into the groove, ika nga.

hindi naman kaila sa ating mga beterano sa bantay-pulitika na noynoy was kind of a non-performer in congress during his three terms in the lower house and half-term in the senate.  ang tsismis pa nga e kung hindi siya ipinangampanya ni cory at ni kris nuong 1998, 2001, 2004, at 2007 ay wala siyang panalo.

my favorite anecdote about his days in the lower house was told by no less than bff butch abad in some tv show after cory’s death but before he, noynoy, became a candidate for president.

say ni butch abad, a close friend of the family, nagkasabay sila ni noynoy sa house of reps (malamang nuong panahon ni gloria kung kailan usong uso ang televised debates and hearings).  kung minsan daw, tinatawagan siya ni cory, na nanonood pala, at itinatanong kung nasaan si noynoy, bakit wala si noynoy, and butch would daw say, baka ho natutulog pa.  or something to that effect.  of course such stories stopped the moment he decided to run.

bentang-benta kay noynoy noon, just as bentang-benta kay grace ngayon, ang notion na it’s now or never.  run while the clamor is insane.  but imagine if noynoy had run for VP muna and campaigned like hell for mar — tiyak, tumba pa rin si erap.  then he could have asked president mar for the mindanao portfolio, since napaka-dear-to-his-heart pala ang bangsamoro, and used the 6 years to quietly do his homework, due diligence ika nga.  what a powerpacked 2016 inaugural it could have been if he had surprised the nation with a report on his meetings with ALL factions in the autonomous region and he would be certifying as urgent his own draft proposal for a revitalized ARMM.

i know.  pipe dream.  water under the bridge.  right now, the question is, what is all this panliligaw kay grace poe all about?  is he seriously considering sidelining, instead of throwing all his support behind, mar roxas?  the more the prez keeps the nation hanging, the more i wonder if he might do a cory, who did not feel obliged to honor any promises made to doy laurel when he gave way to her and slid down to VP back in ’85-’86.

what intrigues me most though is that grace seems most receptive to the president’s advances — kilig to the bones? — even as she has started to echo the yellow army’s anti-binay sentiments.  what i really want to know is where she stands on chacha, especially proposed amendments to economic provisions.  or maybe we should be asking chiz.  argh.

The Geopolitics of American Global Decline

Washington Versus China in the Twenty-First Century
By Alfred W. McCoy

For even the greatest of empires, geography is often destiny. You wouldn’t know it in Washington, though. America’s political, national security, and foreign policy elites continue to ignore the basics of geopolitics that have shaped the fate of world empires for the past 500 years. Consequently, they have missed the significance of the rapid global changes in Eurasia that are in the process of undermining the grand strategy for world dominion that Washington has pursued these past seven decades.

Read on…

Must we repeat the errors of history?

There are many parallelisms we see in the Quezon posture with the way Manila governs Mindanao today. As it excluded the B’laan and the Moro people from its reservation plans, so too does the Malacañang of today uses exclusion to push for a new autonomous law for Moro Mindanao. The personalities may have changed, but certainly the approach remains as culturally medieval as it was in Quezon’s 1939.

— Dr. Antonio Montalvan II