so long, gloria? 2

that unscheduled, and failed, trip to washington tells me how desperate gloria is for a one-on-one with the u.s. president.   i suspect she was all set to request that obama order the world bank to back off, cease and desist from, releasing any more information re corrupt practices related to infrastructure projects of her government, especially the report that points to hubby mike arroyo’s involvement.

in return kaya for what?  what was gloria prepared to offer that president obama might not have been able to resist?  maybe the acquittal of rapist corporal daniel smith?  maybe charter change and the lifting of economic restrictions?  maybe charter change and federalism and the signing of the moa-a.d.?  maybe charter change and the return of u.s.military bases?

suddenly i’m beginning to think that there’s more to the rumor that the u.s. wants gloria out and noli in, sooner than later, the better to foil an erap return, and that the world bank report is a big part of the effort to discredit the arroyos and agitate the people.  after all, it is the u.s. that is the power behind the world bank.  writes george monbiot in The Age of Consent – A Manifesto for a New World Order, 2003, page 16:

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are supposed to assist impoverished nations to build and defend their economies, are run on the principle of one dollar, one vote. To pass a substantial resolution or to amend the way they operate requires an eighty-five per cent majority. The United States alone, which possesses more than fifteen per cent of the stock in both organizations, can block a resolution supported by every other member state. This means, in practice, that these two bodies will pursue only those policies in the developing world which are of benefit to the economy of the United States and the interest of financial speculators, even when these conflict directly with the needs of the poor.

besides, it’s not like the world bank to be so high-profile rather than behind-the-scenes in its dealings with government agencies.  maybe the u.s. has finally given up on the recalcitrant arroyos?  maybe they’ve already made a deal with vice president noli de castro?

but if so, the u.s. must be rethinking its options now that noli de castro has been tainted by the legacy scandal.   as it turns out, legacy owner and operator celso de los angeles financed pala noli’s 2004 vice-presidential campaign and noli returned the favor in no uncertain terms.  writes ducky paredes in malaya:

Can Vice President Noli de Castro’s friends in the Senate (where he was part of an influential group of senators before the 204 elections) keep his name out of the Legacy scandal? He has clear ties to Sto. Domingo, Albay Mayor Celso de los Angeles, the owner and operator of the bankrupt Legacy Group of Companies.

Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos lost hard-earned money in Legacy’s fraudulent investment firm and rural banks. Can they actually forgive Noli de Castro’s role in their worst-ever experience? These people lost their life savings to someone who campaigned for Noli and was rewarded with a high post in Noli’s housing programs.

Of course, the Vice President is now distancing himself from De los Angeles after the latter’s grilling by the Senate for the questionable operations of the Legacy group and his companies’ investigation by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But no matter how De Castro disowns Delos Angeles, the damage to his squeaky-clean image has been done.

Noli De Castro admits that Delos Angeles financed his 2004 vice presidential campaign, caused the printing of his campaign materials, and even bought a tabloid to help sell him to voters.

So, immediately after De Castro assumed the vice presidency, he promptly endorsed De los Angeles as head of the National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation (NHMFC).

By paying a political debt to De los Angeles, De Castro not only epitomized everything despicable about traditional politics. De Castro also helped De los Angeles lure more unsuspecting investors and depositors into putting their money in Legacy.

How does the Vice President connect to the Legacy mess by his acceptance of the 2004 election funding from Delos Angeles and his endorsement of the businessman to NHMFC?

Simple. When De Castro endorsed De los Angeles, he vouched for the latter’s integrity, leading people to conclude that De los Angeles and his Legacy Group must be clean for having been given a seal of approval by De Castro, no matter how indirectly.

In fact, although Noli had no qualms dropping De los Angeles like a hot potato, it may not have been because of complaints to Gloria Arroyo that Celso was the worst thing to happen to her housing program, we hear that the two friends had already reached a state of enmity over a pretty young thing. Of course, the TV talent chose the more powerful of the two (and refused to return the jewelry that the other gave her as gifts).

How ironic that they were both working in the Pag-ibig program. Ang pag-ibig nga naman!

With the discovery of the dubious operations of the Legacy Group, shouldn’t the Senate do what it should have done a long time ago – investigate De los Angeles’ stint as head of NHMFC to uncover possible anomalies? In fact, isn’t it about time that they take a hard look at their former colleague’s work at Pag-Ibig and the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council?

Are they afraid that they may find that the foundation of our Housing Program is infested with termites like Celso and other Noli friends?

and then, again, what if mababaw (sort of) ang kaligayahan ng mga kano?  what if their attitude is, anyone but gloria?  what if, as jeg suggests, the u.s. has the goods on noli, too, and whatever gloria offers, noli promises, too?

well, at least it will be interesting to watch, whatever happens, or doesn’t happen.

korek si gary, mali ang gma

in gary granada’s place, magagalit din ako, at hindi lang sa gma kapuso foundation, kundi pati sa “composer” na “lumikha” ng piyesang inaprub.  on both counts, the lyrics and the musical structure, gary deserves credit and compensation.

oo nga’t hindi si gary ang sumulat ng original lyrics.  pero in-edit niya ito to fit the melody that he was hearing in his mind, which makes the edited version gary’s version.

oo nga rin at naiba ang melody at dating ng naaprub na version, pero medyo lang, kaunti lang ang pagkakaiba.  korek si gary, obviously nakatungtong ito sa komposisyon niya.  why else does it fit neatly precisely perfectly into gary’s minus-one?  indeed the chance of another composer coming up, out of the blue, with the same melodic structure, bars and chords, as gary’s is one in many millions.

kung totoong hindi natipuhan ng gma kapuso ang komposisyon ni gary, okay lang, it happens.  i’m sure gary was disappointed but i’m also sure that he didn’t feel it was a total waste of time — he could easily come up with his own lyrics, develop the study into a love song, maybe, or a tibak song.   pero dahil ginamit na ng gma7 ang musical structure na iyon, papaano pa niya pakikinabangan?  baka kung gamitin niya ay siya pa mismo ang mapagbintangangang pirata.  hassle.

unethical ang ginawa ng gma kapuso foundation, which sits on the board of filscap that’s supposed to protect the rights of composers and lyricists.  since binitawan nila si gary, dapat ay binitiwan din nila completely ang komposisyon ni gary.  dapat ay original lyrics ang ibinigay sa bagong composer at hinayaan siyang lumikha ng sariling melodic structure without any influence from gary’s work.

unethical din ang ginawa ng bagong “composer”.  inalam kaya niya kung kanino ang original music?  okay lang sa kanya na pagsamantalahan at pakialaman ang komposisyon ng may komposisyon?  member din kaya siya ng filscap?  if yes, yes, yes, it doesn’t reflect well on his integrity as an artist, kung sino man siya.

marck, edel, benignO

over @ the collective filipino voices, young blogger marck ronald rimorin laments:

When are people going to write for the poor, the downtrodden, the laid-off, the fired, the underpaid, the hungry, the sick, the ill… those people who are as sickened about everything as we are, yet don’t have the benefit of blogs or computers to do what they can of it, no matter how small?

radical u.p. intellectual edel garcellano, “sir” edel to many generations of comparative lit students, has this comment on bloggers post-bambi that might explain why it aint gonna happen, marck.

The ANC journalists find blogging the most competitive for mainstream media. Now anyone can infiltrate the public sphere when once in the pre-cyber years only the favored & the ideologically acceptable icons could smugly perorate.

Bloggers of varied IQ & credentials can deliver their daily spiel in cyberspace. Let a hundred flowers bloom? There are, of course, the attendant risks of libel & other judicial threats in a feudal environment, but the current scenario simply exemplifies that the huge energy of counter-discourse is being tapped to mount an offensive against the canonical satraps of state apparati.

This is what the valley golf brawl has uncovered: the rise of cyber critics, who responsible or not, middling or talented, tilt the balance in favor of the unarticulated response, the publicly repressed, the individually marginalized. The personal-& the quotidian, the everyday-has assumed the political: & militarist mentors are hard put to clamp the irreverent folks in jail, much less stem the textual avalanche. In the techno-terrain, words transform, mutilate.

Of course, bloggers must necessarily be middle-class, professional. No informal settlers would figure in the equation, even if OFWs infest their fold. The discourse therefore is basically extension/amplification of capitalist production, some internal resistance that however falls within the ambit of reformist negotiation. The very idea therefore of a radical dialogue isfar-fetched.

It might even cultivate the impression that freedomflourishes in a fascist state. For which a Maoist revolution is old hat, impractical, naïve, discredited.

yes, the discourse is reformist rather than radical.  most if not all bloggers are middle-class and the middle-class is, at best, reformist — we want changes, an end to corruption (which we think will solve poverty) but nothing too drastic, nothing that would rock the boat or upset the status quo.  in contrast, “radical” is associated (and outlawed) with the communist left and means drastic deep-seated changes in the way wealth and resources are distributed and how we do business with each other as a people.  the kind of discourse that threatens and shakes the status quo, indeed the kind of discourse (in filipino) that can be found elsewhere in the blogosphere, but not in sosyal fv.

HOWEVER, fv is not entirely without substance.  i hate to disagree with practically everyone who has ever dissed and continues to diss marck’s co-blogger benignO.  i’ve just been to his blog getrealphilippines — i visited once long ago to check out his ebook but was turned off, i don’t remember why now, senior moment ;) — the book’s gone, in its place a brief analysis of and solutions to the poverty and backwardness of the filipino that is the best stuff i’ve read so far on the subject from a filipino (okay, filipino-australian), who is obviously influenced by third wave thinkers and informed by the filipino experience, and whose context of solutions is actually another way of redistributing the wealth and doing business with each other as a people.  his current post substance matters in an economic crisis is also worth cross-posting @fv.

Decades of dependence on foreign employment (and a lack of appreciation of its social costs), sustained prostitution of the economy at the altar of the gods of “foreign direct investment”, and a consumer market opened to a flood of non-durable imports has rendered Philippine society one that utterly lacks substance — one that could now be providing a safety net for workers once hailed as “heroes” of the Republic now returning to become its burden.

it’s a pity that rather than flesh out, test, develop further his ideas @  fv — the perfect venue, i’d say — mostly benigno heckles and baits and asks hard questions, the latest of which is:  what does “the filipino” stand for?

Even as we struggle with the low bar of defining an identity, the aim for a stand – the higher bar – I realise seems a virtual impossibility for a people such as ours based on what I’ve seen so far.

What does the “Filipino” stand for?

The question remains unanswered; not that it ever will be convincingly.

Then again isn’t conquest of perceived impossibility the very essence of achievement? Maybe not so if you are a Filipino. And that kind of regard for achievement is probably what defines us.

what does “the filipino” stand for?  right now “the filipino” (collective, as opposed to the individual) does not stand for anything, much like fv, which does not stand for any one thing that the group as a whole can agree on — if there is, it has yet to be articulated.  in the case of the nation, the possibility of standing for something, the capacity to stand for something, has yet to be grasped, thanks to mainstream media that continue to fail the people.

so long, gloria?

maybe it’s just talk, so take this with a grain of salt (and pepper, why not), but it’s the juiciest tsismis yet from the coffeeshop circuit.  to wit, that the americans intend to foil erap’s dream of capturing the presidency, take two.  how?  by supporting  vice president noli de castro all the way, which is to say, not just in the campaign for 2010 but much earlier on, by forcing gma to resign — it is said that the americans have the goods on her — which means noli ascends to power and will be impossible to beat as the incumbent in 2010.

what if gloria refuses to step down?  then i suppose the americans would release the incriminating information to media and watch gleefully as people power strikes again, oh wow!

neat plot, ‘no?  totoo kaya?  yes, they can?  or is it just wishful thinking on the part of the anti-erap opposition?  we’ll know soon enough.  abangan…