Obama's Challenge and the FilAm Response

Published Setp. 29, 2008
INQUIRER.net

One of the interesting moments in last Friday’s presidential debate was when Barack Obama blasted past American foreign policy of supporting allies who are undemocratic, even tyrannical leaders -- a policy in which Washington says, “He may be a dictator, but he is our dictator.”

It was clearly a play on how former US Secretary of State Cordell Hull described Rafael Trujillo when he was dictator of the Dominican Republic in the 1930s: “He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch."

On Friday, Obama was referring to the ousted Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a coup that deposed a democratically elected president, and whom Washington eventually supported and coddled.

He was essentially sending a strong message to leaders who would follow in the footsteps of Trujillo, Musharraf and even Marcos. And that convinced me even more that for the Philippines, a President Obama would usher in an exciting era in US-Philippine relations.

On the other hand, John McCain came across as John McCain: the former fighter pilot who is bold, daring to the point of being reckless and impetuous. That sometimes works in war. But it often doesn’t. And it surely can lead to disastrous results when dealing with more complex issues, such as a financial meltdown.

In the days leading up to the debate, McCain seemed to be blasting away without any clear target or objective. He said the fundamentals of the US economy were strong, then later tried to backtrack and even called for the firing of the highly respected head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Then he suddenly suspended his campaign, purportedly to help solve the crisis, and called for the debate to be postponed. But he ended up playing a bit role in the negotiations. And some lawmakers even said that his political stunt derailed the sensitive talks.

These were bold, daring, attention-grabbing moves. But what was the point?

As many people expected, McCain displayed a slight edge in foreign policy expertise during the debate. But as many pundits also stated, he needed to make up for three days of seeming incoherence and pointless impetuousness by clearly out-debating the newcomer on the U.S. political scene.

But that didn’t happen.

Obama showed himself to be intellectually engaged and politically pragmatic. He also was incredibly cool, a trait which will be critical for the next US president who will have to deal with two wars, a slowing economy and a financial system that’s rapidly falling apart.

The bad news is that the race is still tight, and presidential debates, historically, have not had much of an impact on the outcomes of elections. John Kerry outperformed George W. Bush four years ago, but that didn’t matter.Many reasons have been cited for why the race is so close, despite the clear unpopularity of the Republicans. Let’s go straight to a critical reason: Obama is only slightly ahead of McCain because of his race.

Sadly, race is an issue even for Filipino Americans. I already discussed my views on this issue in a previous column in February. And since then, I’ve only heard more examples of our own brand of racism and ignorance, of judging a leader’s potential based on skin color.

But there have also been signs of hope.

“It will now depend on ground operations in which Obama has an advantage,” Francis Calpotura, a veteran community organizer in Oakland who founded the League of Filipino Students-USA back in the 1980s, told me. “Para sa akin (to me), it will still boil down to this question: Would older (40-60 yrs) white voters in those swing states be ready to elect a black president?”

He added, “What would be good to see is what Filipinos in Nevada would do. That's why I'm going to Reno and hopefully reach out to the Filipinos there.”

Calpotura was among the leaders of a group of Filipino American activists who traveled to the battleground state of Nevada to pound the pavement for Obama

Then there’s Gayle Gatchalian who wrote to me about my earlier column, which asked, “Will Pinoys reject Obama because he’s black?”

“I just wanted to thank you for writing that,” she said. “My entire family hates Barack Obama and I can't have a decent conversation with them without a mention of Muslim, Hussein, evil etc. and the myriad other issues that have come out that proves he is a decent human being. I understand that it's because they have something against black people, and my black friends have tried to explain it to me.

“It’s hard to be post-racial and clearly, if America is going to move on from the 20th century, it needs someone who can take them there and the B-man is the best (and only) option on the table right now.”

Memo to Arroyo: Let McCain know you're from Asia

Published September 22, 2008
INQUIRER.net

President Gloria Arroyo may have had a top-level meeting with Republican presidential candidate John McCain during her last visit to the United States. But if he wins in November, she better hope he’ll remember that encounter -- and that he won’t confuse her, given her Hispanic surname, for one of those anti-American leaders in Latin America who are always irritating Washington.

Just ask Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the prime minister of Spain.

When asked in an interview with a Miami Spanish-language radio program if he would receive Zapatero in the White House, McCain said that he would “establish closer relationships with our friends, and I will stand up to those who want to harm the United States.”

The clearly confused interviewer politely asked the question three more times. After all, Spain is a member of NATO and a US ally, and McCain or any other US politician surely wouldn't suggest that Spain could be among those “who would harm the United States.” The interviewer even clarified that she was referring to the country in Europe. But McCain simply repeated his response.

That prompted speculation that either McCain didn't know who Zapatero was, thought Spain is in Latin America, or simply got confused. Did he perhaps think that Zapatero was another troublemaker south of the US border? Maybe he thought he was being asked about the Zapatista rebels in Mexico, or about Emiliano Zapata, the legendary, but long dead, Mexican rebel leader.

It may be understandable how McCain would get confused since the question about Zapatero followed others about not-so-friendly leaders in America's backyard: Raul Castro of Cuba, Evo Morales of Bolivia and the highly-controversial Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

But as the Washington Post noted, “Lumping Zapatero in with the Latin American bad guys like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is ironic because Zapatero and Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, were protagonists in one of the most public anti-Chavez moments.”

The newspaper was referring to the Ibero-American summit meeting earlier this year in Chile, when Chavez criticized Zapatero's predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar, a close Bush ally, for sending Spanish troops to Iraq. Zapatero politely rejected Chavez's argument, but when the Venezuelan pressed on, the Spanish king snapped at him, “Why don't you just shut up?”

To be sure, McCain's gaffe was not as bad as former Vice President Dan Quayle's jaw-dropping observation that people in Latin America don't speak Latin. Or President George W. Bush's surprising question to the president of Brazil: “Do you have blacks too?”

Still, McCain's response raises doubts about his claim to be a foreign policy expert, especially since he has made other baffling remarks on foreign affairs during the campaign. Once he appeared to get mixed up about the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Then he explained the crisis in Afghanistan to journalist Diane Sawyer by saying, “We have a lot of work to do and I'm afraid it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.”

Such a border does not exist, of course. Nor does the republic of Czechoslovakia, which broke up into two nations in the early 90s, but that didn't stop McCain from referring to the defunct entity.

McCain's campaign spokesman Randy Sheunemann later clarified that his candidate meant what he said that he would not commit to a meeting with Spain’s Zapatero. That prompted columnist Robert Schlesinger to write: “Memo to Randy Sheunemann: Your candidate can do worse things than get confused. Like he could imply that a NATO ally might mean us harm.”

Bottom line for the Philippine leadership: Gear up for an education campaign to reintroduce yourself to a President McCain. Perhaps the Department of Foreign Affairs should send a briefing paper to the McCain campaign explaining that the US military has pulled out of Subic and Clark, just in case he gets confused about why there is now a Visiting Forces Agreement between the US and the Philippines. Or, maybe it should issue a high-level memo reminding McCain that the Philippines is no longer an American colony, and that Arroyo should be called "president," not "governor-general."

But then again, perhaps there's nothing to worry about . After all, if McCain wins, he'll have a highly capable vice president in Sarah Palin. How can you beat a would-be-president who became an expert on Russia because she can see that country from her home state of Alaska?

But just to be sure, it may be wise for Arroyo, or whoever takes her place in 2010, to consider a special gift to the McCain-Palin administration if they do take over come January: A very powerful telescope so she can see the Babuyan Islands from downtown Anchorage.

Farewell to Two FilAm Activists

Published Sept. 10, 2008
INQUIRER.net

San Francisco, CA- In the Bay Area, with its huge and vibrant Pinoy community, FilAm activism is pretty much a family affair.

Whether it’s fighting against dictatorship, or for civil liberties, or for equal benefits for World War II veterans, or even for funds for a new library, mothers and fathers get involved with their sons and daughters, with their grandchildren and even with their great-grandchildren.

Over the past months, a lolo (grandpa) and a lola (grandma) of the FilAm activist family -- one from the Pinoy enclave of Daly City, and the other from the famous activist city of Berkeley -- passed away.

Fittingly, they have been honored for their roles in the community’s history of fighting for those who are weak and oppressed, in the Philippines, in America and beyond.

Pete Marasigan was perhaps best known as the better half of Violeta Marasigan, the late veteran activist and feminist who was fondly called Bullet by friends and colleagues here and in the Philippines.

Tito Pete, as he was known, died June 18 in Manila of heart failure, at 73.

He was born in Dapitan, Sampaloc in Manila where he helped manage his family’s general merchandise business. He moved to the United States in 1957 to study business management at the University of San Francisco. He got involved in the youth movement and became active in the struggle against the demolition of the International Hotel, the historic residential building in downtown San Francisco that was home to dozens of Filipino and Chinese seniors.

The hotel was eventually demolished, but the struggle turned into one of the most dramatic events in California history, highlighting the growing influence of the Filipino American activist movement and the problem of housing and homelessness in America. Today, FilAms still talk about the great struggle to save the I-Hotel, and there is now a FilAm community center where it once stood near Chinatown in the heart of San Francisco.

It was during the I-Hotel campaign that Pete Marasigan met Bullet. They were later married and had four daughters, Marielle, Marlette, Marnelle and Violeta II, who also became activists.

In 1971, the couple moved back to the Philippines and joined the fight against the Marcos dictatorship. Bullet helped found Gabriela, the feminist organization, and a center that assisted sex workers at the former U.S. naval base in Subic. In 1982, she was arrested and charged with subversion and spent a year at Camp Crame. After her release, she and Pete continued to be active in the fight against the regime.

After the fall of Marcos, the Marasigans resettled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Bullet became a respected community activist. When she was killed in a freak car accident in 2000, respected San Francisco political and community leaders publicly mourned her death. San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano, a friend and ally, called her “bigger than life.'' “Her energy was just amazing,'' Ammiano said. “She had that quality of heart, along with being a fighter.'' State legislator Leland Yee, one of the most prominent Asian American politicians in California, spoke of feeling a deep sadness over the loss of an important ally in the fight for community rights.

After Bullet’s death, Tito Pete continued to be involved with many Filipino American organizations, including the West Bay Center and the Filipino American Arts Exposition, or Pistahan, in which he once served as grand marshal. He was also a staunch supporter of Leland Yee.

I remember him as a man who was committed to his family, community and homeland. That is also how I remember Mary Bonzo Suzuki.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Mary and her husband Lewis, longtime residents of Berkeley in the East Bay, were beloved as active members of the movement against the Marcos regime. Mary died on May 11 after a long illness at 76. One recent Sunday, former activists came to pay respect to a Filipino American woman who was known for her courage, devotion to social justice and generosity.

At the height of the fight against Marcos, the Suzukis were known as staunch supporters of the Bay Area movement. Activists frequently met at their home where Mary was known for almost always asking first, “Have you eaten.” For Mary, good food was an important part of the struggle against tyranny.

Theirs was a fascinating love story, beautifully told in a January 2005 article in the Berkeley Planet, a community newspaper.

She was the daughter of a Dutch-Irish-Welsh American woman, and of a Filipino immigrant. Laws barring Filipinos from marrying white women forced them to leave Nebraska. In a sad twist, Mary’s grandfather cut his ties with his daughter, while her grandmother remained supportive.

The hostile environment eventually forced the young couple to return to the Philippines with their two children. “My father had been beaten up repeatedly. He said if he had to deal with violence, he could handle it better in his home country,” Mary said in an interview with the Berkeley Planet.

Lewis Suzuki was born in the US to Japanese immigrants. After his father died, he and his mother returned to Japan, but he returned to America amid the rising tide of militarism.

Eventually, World War II took its toll on both Mary and Lewis. Mary and her family were in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation. Her father was tortured by the Japanese military and both her parents joined the resistance.

Meanwhile, Lewis found himself treated like an enemy in the country of his birth when, after World War II, the US government detained tens of thousands of Japanese Americans. Lewis joined the US Army and worked as a translator.

The war was a painful time for their families, but it also affirmed their sense of humanity. One day, Mary recalled in the Berkeley Planet article, Lewis’ brother who was visiting them apologized to her for what the Japanese military had done in the Philippines. Lewis’ brother himself witnessed kindness and humanity amid cruelty and suffering while serving with the Japanese army in its brutal occupation of China. Mary recalled how, as the war was ending in China, and Chinese civilians were hunting down Japanese soldiers to kill them, a Chinese family gave shelter to Lewis’ brother.

Mary’s family returned to America after the war. She became fascinated with events in China, and it was during a visit to the Asian nation that she and Lewis met. They married in 1953, had two children and built their individual careers. She became an educator, and he, a respected painter. But they also devoted much time and energy to activism, and the fight against the Marcos regime and other causes.

Her commitment to justice and peace remained strong through her last years. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Mary wrote a poem titled “Peace and War.”

A line read:

“War voices are loud as the sun blazes and flickers
A new moon rises, smiling, as a portent of peace
Come, walk down to the sea with me….”

McCain Para sa Mahirap?

Published August 25, 2008
INQUIRER.net

Joseph Estrada's famous political battle cry will probably not work for John McCain, not with this Republican presidential nominee's definition of rich as someone who earns at least $5 million a year. But in a way, McCain faces a dilemma similar to the one that got Erap in political hot water – home ownership.

When the online news site, Politico, asked McCain how many houses he owned, his answer was puzzling: "I think – I'll have my staff get to you. It's condominiums where… I'll have them get to you."

It was not exactly a response to inspire confidence among Americans, many of whom are on the verge of losing their homes or have already lost them. Then there's McCain's idea of a rich person. In Philippine terms, being middle class or poor to McCain means someone who makes less than 18 million pesos a month (which could exclude many residents of Ayala Alabang.)

I'm sure many of us would want to have McCain's problem -- to have so much money, and so much property, that you've lost track of how many houses you have. Remember Dely Ataytayan's famous role as Dolphy's super-rich mother-in-law in 'John en Marsha' and how, whenever she needed money, she would ask her maid Matutina to sweep around the house for cash scattered throughout her mansion?

Suddenly, in a presidential race in which race had played a prominent role, class has become an important issue. This is not surprising as many Americans reel from rising gas and food prices, eroding home values and a cloudy economic future.

To be sure, the two men vying to be the next American president are both millionaires. But while Barack Obama is pushing to impose higher taxes on the rich, defined by his campaign as those earning roughly $150,000 a year – or 565,000 pesos a month – McCain has been for maintaining the current administration's tax cuts which many consider unfair to middle class and poor families.

Filipinos are, of course, familiar with the way issues affluence and poverty are used in politics. You’ve heard of the senator from a prominent and very rich political family portraying himself as Mr. Palengke. The current president even once embraced the supposedly insulting monicker, Gloria Labandera.

And an election season is simply not complete without politicos, most of whom live in Manila's exclusive communities, trying to portray themselves as men or women of the masses by belting out the latest pop tunes or dancing like fools on a makeshift stage.

Joseph Estrada topped them all, of course, with his “Erap para sa mahirap” slogan despite the fact that he is actually a man of means. He eventually found himself in trouble when the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism reported that he owned more than a dozen real estate properties, including some palatial homes.

It’s unclear if McCain's own housing dilemma will have an impact on what has been a glaring irony in American politics.

The Republicans have been known historically as the party of America's elite, who are more likely to push policies meant to protect big business and the affluent. But over the past two decades they have actually won sizeable support from the poor and working class, especially whites. And they did this by portraying the Democrats, who have traditionally enjoyed the support of unions, minorities and the poor, as being out-of-touch, intellectually arrogant and elitist with all their talk about equality, diversity and justice.

Obama's own slip-ups during the campaign served to reinforce this perception. There was his infamous remark describing some working class Americans as being so bitter that they cling to guns and religion. Then, in a hilarious campaign misstep, Obama once asked a group of Iowa farmers, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff." Now, that would be like a Pinoy politician asking voters in Payatas what they think of the price of baguettes at Greenbelt.

But the Obama campaign pounced swiftly and strong on McCain's so-called "personal housing crisis." And expect the Democrats to highlight other major differences between the two. After all, while they are both rich, McCain's links to Richistan are deeper and longer. So deep that he apparently thinks someone who makes just $1 million a year – or five times less than the threshold he set – must be facing serious economic difficulties.

On the other hand, Obama became rich only recently, mainly from writing two bestselling books. He grew up in a lower middle class household, raised by a single mother who struggled to support her family. Then, as I mentioned in a previous column, Obama also has had intense encounters with the faces of extreme poverty in Indonesia and Kenya, and even in the inner city communities of Chicago -- places where not knowing how many houses one owns would be considered a form of extreme cluelessness.

Fearing bears and feeling small in Yosemite Valley

Published August 11, 2008
INQUIRER.net

As we started our hike up to the camp, I couldn’t help but worry about whether we had removed every little bit of food from the car. Did I miss a stick of French fry stuck beneath one of the seats? Or was there a piece of candy one of my sons had hidden in a backseat pocket?

It was odd to worry about such things in one of the most beautiful places in the world. A Berkeley friend of mine had called Yosemite Valley “God’s home.” My kumpadre Persi is so impressed with the wilderness park, located about three hours away from the San Francisco Bay Area, that he goes back country camping there several times a year.

I’ve never been the roughing it up type, but when he asked me to join him recently for a weekend backpacking trip to the valley, I immediately said yes. It didn’t take much effort to invite two other friends – my brother-in-law Alex and our good friend Richard – to join us.

It wasn’t exactly the ideal time for a Yosemite trip. There was a fire raging west of the valley. But it was far enough not to be a real concern. It was also the middle of the tourist season, which meant hundreds of camera-toting visitors in cars. But we weren’t going to the tourist spots. We were headed for the wild, not that deep, mind you, but deep enough to be away from the tourists and their cars -- and also deep enough to run the risk of encountering Yosemite’s longtime residents: bears.

A Yosemite park ranger emphasized this point to us, as he stressed a basic rule: Don’t ever, ever, leave any food or any drink, or a cooler even if it’s empty, or any scented items such as hand lotion in the car. Or else, a curious and probably hungry bear will smash your car window.

Stricter precautions must be taken in camp. We had to rent a black container the size of a watermelon, called a bear can. That’s where you are supposed to put your food, such items as toothpaste and lotions, and even food waste. You then lock the can and hide it in a spot away from the camp -- where a bear may later find it, try to open it and, having failed, simply walk away.

Bears generally stay away from, and are even afraid of, people, we were told. But they’re drawn to food, so it’s best to make sure to not be close to anything edible out in Yosemite, especially at night.

I was thinking of that as we settled in for the night in our tents at the camp at May Lake.

We had spent the day admiring the beauty of the lake at the foot of one of Yosemite’s many massive rock formations. We had hiked around the lake, stepping carefully on giant boulders and logs, and even took a quick swim in the cold water. After dinner by camp fire, we turned in.

It was then that I started to worry about unwanted visitors. I suspected the others did too. After all we were Manila-bred Pinoys spending the night in a beautiful, but strange, place where hungry animals were hiding deep in the woods and the massive rock mountain.

But we heard only each other’s snores that night. Alex later said he had heard a rustling sound at one point. But we couldn’t be sure if the bears had paid us a visit.

When I woke up that morning, I felt relieved but also somewhat disappointed. An encounter with a bear would have made the trip more exciting. But as the sun rose and its rays turned the massive rock into a mountain of gold, its reflection glowing magnificently in the still water of May Lake, my disappointment quickly dissipated.

“Gumagaan ang loob ko pag andito ako (I feel at ease when I’m out here.),” Alex said. I agreed. Persi kind of explained where that calm comes from. “Parang pakiramdam mo maliit ka lang dito, ano (You feel small out there, don’t you)?” he said.

Among gargantuan mountains of rock in Yosemite Valley, one does feel insignificant, but in a good way. You are reminded that you are but a small part of a bigger whole, and that whole is magnificent.

A Silicon Valley CEO I wrote about five years ago had told me about a similar experience. To find renewed strength and perspective in running a software company in a highly competitive industry, Radha Basu sometimes turned to a place where she felt small and humble: The Himalayas.
"It's you and the mountains," she told me before her trip in 2003. "Oh, man, you feel so humble. … Nature is big and you are small. You can plan all you want, and nature decides there's going to be a blizzard -- man, there is not a whole lot you can do. You really do learn about the smallness of what you are -- that you are part of a much larger picture."

Sometimes, that feeling doesn’t just come from being in the wilderness.

This month, we remember the 25th anniversary of Ninoy Aquino’s assassination which was followed by a historic funeral march when a million Filipinos paid him tribute and spoke out against dictatorship. I remember that day, when I was but a speck in a mass of humanity, sending a powerful message to a tyrant and the world.

The hike down the mountain in Yosemite Valley was easier and, having consumed our food our packs, a bit a lighter.

When we reached my car, I had another reason to feel relieved. The windows were intact.

Copyright 2008 by Benjamin Pimentel

Distorted lessons from the Philippine-American War

Published July 25, 2008
INQUIRER.net

Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama was touring the Middle East when a well-known columnist for a major US newspaper tried to point the way out of the mess in Iraq by citing lessons from another American military misadventure more than a century ago – in the Philippines.

Unfortunately, conservative commentator Michael Medved's piece for USA Today, "Filipino war's lesson for Iraq," draws distorted, even dangerous, lessons from the tragedy in our homeland.

He begins by drawing parallels between the current presidential race and the 1900 contest between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley. Medved describes Bryan as the "handsome young Democratic nominee" known as "the most spellbinding orator of his generation" who promised "dramatic change to correct economic injustice" and an end to the American occupation of the Philippines. He was up against the older McKinley, a Civil War veteran and avid supporter of the occupation whom Medved portrayed as the "tough, fight-it-out Republican" and "a hero in his youth (three decades earlier) in the Civil War."

Echoes of Obama versus McCain indeed.

But McCain probably would not appreciate being too closely compared to McKinley, given that US president's bizarre, even creepy, account of how he came to realize that America must occupy the Philippines. In one of the oddest anecdotes in the history of the US presidency, McKinley recalled how he "went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance," which made him see that "there was nothing left for us to do but … to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them."

(Apparently, McKinley did not get a memo telling him that the Philippines was then a staunchly Catholic nation -- another reason for McCain to balk at any close identification with the former president, given his own foreign affairs faux pas like mixing up Sunnis and Shiites and referring to a non-existent Iraq-Pakistan border.)

Still, it's not surprising that Medved and other conservatives are hoping for a repeat of that chapter in US history: After all, the older, more hawkish Republican McKinley won that election against the "inexperienced but charismatic anti-imperialist Democrat."

But Filipinos and Filipino Americans should find Medved's version of the Philippine-American War troubling. "This nearly forgotten conflict deserves renewed attention today since the parallels with our present predicament count as both eerie and illuminating," he writes.

True enough.

But then Medved recasts the bloody conflict as a war that the United States "stumbled into" but from which emerged a free and happy nation ever so grateful for American generosity and compassion. He cites former President Manuel L. Quezon's famous quote, "Damn the Americans! Why don't they tyrannize us more?"

Medved essentially is asking: Now why in the world can't we do that again in Iraq?

"Our failure to 'tyrannize' our Iraqi allies could similarly destroy the chances of the Islamist terrorists who oppose us," he writes. "The outcome in today's Middle East remains uncertain, but our painful Philippine experience a century ago suggests that a positive result is still possible through a combination of public patience, battlefield brilliance and compassionate determination to provide better lives and freedom to the far-away people who became the war's chief victims."

I nearly choked when I read this for while Medved made a passing reference to water cure, the notorious torture technique the US military used against Filipino independence forces (and used in Iraq under the name "water boarding"), and while he noted that at least 200,000 Filipinos died in the conflict (other historians cite a higher figure), he downplayed the more sordid chapters of the Philippine-American War: the massacres, the brutal military campaigns, the suppression of basic Filipino civil and human rights.

Medved writes that "for the most part, America's volunteer troops maintained high morale, resenting anti-war activists back home because they understood this agitation encouraged the enemy." I suspect "high morale" had nothing to do with what happened in the town of Balangiga, Samar when General Jake Smith told his men to turn the island into a "howling wilderness" so that "even birds could not live there."

"Kill and burn! The more you kill and burn, the better you will please me,"' he ordered. Asked to clarify who the troops' targets were among the population, the general replied: "Everything over 10."

Medved also ignores the blatant racism of US political leaders led by President William Howard Taft, who served as governor-general of the islands, and who called Filipinos "our little brown brothers.''

Then there was the former U.S. superintendent who helped set up an American-style public school system in the Philippines who argued that the Filipinos "are children, and childlike, do not know what is best for them. . . By the very fact of our superiority of civilization and our greater capacity for industrial activity, we are bound to exercise over them a profound social influence.''

Medved's piece reminded me of the now despicable concept of the “white man's burden,” that famous exhortation to Western domination. The phrase was actually coined by British poet Rudyard Kipling during this period in support of the American colonization of the Philippines and other former Spanish colonies. Reading just a part of the poem today would make one cringe.

"Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child..."

The great American writer Mark Twain was so horrified by US atrocities in our homeland that he called the $20 million the United States paid for the Philippines an "entrance fee into society -- the Society of Sceptered Thieves."

"The White Man's Burden has been sung,"' Twain wrote. "Who will sing the Brown Man's?"

Twain also once said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." In his bid to justify an unpopular war in Iraq, Medved came up with a mangled account of a dark chapter in our history that has neither rhyme nor reason.

Copyright 2008 by Benjamin Pimentel

Bay Area journalist Benjamin Pimentel can be reached at www.bpimentel.blogspot.com

Two Pinoy presidents, both extras in the Obama-McCain Duel

Published June 10, 2008
INQUIRER.net

While the duel between Barack Obama and John McCain features such supporting players as Hillary and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the contest also has led to surprising bit roles for two Philippine political figures.

The most recent one involved President Gloria Arroyo whose bid for a photo op with America's newest political superstar ended in disappointment, another sorry example of a Pinoy politico desperately seeking attention from Washington that the Inquirer editorial board aptly summed up with the word "embarrassing."

She did get an apology from the Obama camp for their aborted meeting and who knows, Arroyo may still get another chance later on if the presumptive Democratic nominee prevails in November. There was no wail of protest from the FilAm community over the cancellation of the meeting, however, a sign perhaps of how Arroyo is regarded out here. But to the credit of her handlers, they simply let go and did not raise a stink, just glad for the ‘I'm sorry’ letter.
After all, the last thing Arroyo needs now is to behave the way another former prominent Pinoy politico did four decades ago over a perceived snub from yet another Western superstar, this time a legendary rock and roll band.

Although granted, it's hard to imagine Arroyo's cohort sending goons to harass Obama in Washington DC the way Imelda Marcos's supporters did when the Beatles were a no-show for the Malacanang party she hosted in their honor in 1966. For John, Paul, George and Ringo, Beatlemania Pinoy-style meant an angry mob literally chasing them out of Manila.

Not surprisingly, the fiasco over the aborted Arroyo-Obama meeting did not even register a blip on the radar screen of the highly-active US political scene -- unlike the case of another Pinoy politico who also became an extra in the US presidential drama.
Even more striking, this politician is dead.

It's unclear if McCain ever met Ferdinand Marcos. He stopped at Clark Air Base after his release from a North Vietnamese prison sometime in 1973 as Marcos was setting up one of the most brutal dictatorships in Southeast Asia with the blessing and aid of the United States. McCain was already a Republican member of the US Congress when Marcos's longtime friend and ally, President Ronald Reagan, welcomed the dictator to Washington during a state visit in 1982, calling him a "respected voice for reason and moderation in international forums."

I found no record of McCain speaking out against the now repulsive idea of America endorsing a tyrant like Marcos, but in a speech in 2006 -- 20 years after his downfall – Senator McCain spoke of the importance of promoting human rights abroad, recalling how in 1986, "the United States condemned Ferdinand Marcos' sham reelection, we earned the abiding gratitude of the Philippine people, who promptly threw out the dictator."

That's not exactly the complete story as he conveniently left out the part about Reagan and the Washington establishment praising and bankrolling the Marcos regime even as it rigged elections, threw opponents in jail, tortured them and looted the Philippine treasury. (And how could he forget Imelda's shoes and shopping sprees?)

Nearly 20 years after Marcos died in Hawaii, however, McCain has unexpectedly had to deal with the despised dictator's ghost.

In an embarrassing twist, it turned out that Charlie Black, one of McCain's closest advisers, once ran a lobbying firm that represented brutal dictators, including Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and – you guessed it – Ferdinand Marcos. Black resigned from the firm, BKSH & Associates, and is still with McCain (although he got him in trouble again recently by saying that another terrorist attack against the US would surely help boost his candidate’s chances in November.)

McCain's Macoy connection created a stir earlier in the race, but it probably won't be decisive in a campaign more focused on such issues as the Iraq War, rising gas prices and the US mortgage meltdown.

Still, isn't it amazing that nearly two decades after his death, one of the most infamous figures in Philippine and world history continues to rattle the nerves of the living, especially those of his former allies, sponsors and friends in Washington?Perhaps the late dictator was right after all when he declared, "I do not intend to die."