Impulses
Paradigm-becloud
Once, I received an e-mail message from a USA-based Japanese blogger. He said "Filipinos make me puke... Filipinos have begun to infest the United States like some sort of disease."
He further stated the following premises:
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"The Philippines is a Third World country. Nothing respectable has ever been created by Filipino people during our entire human history." All in us, he said, are "imitations."
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Playing with our Asian origins, he said that "it's even funnier that, in Japan (a fellow Asian), Filipinos are heavily discriminated against. The only Filipinos that can live successfully abroad are the Filipino prostitutes.
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After listing a number of reasons, mostly cyber- and technology-related concerns, he asked, "do the parents of these young Filipinos know what's going on? Would they accept this? I believe that they would and do."
He further said, "This is the natural 'trash' element in Filipinos manifesting itself. Nothing good has ever come from the Phillippines and I don't believe anything good ever will.
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Not contented, he said, "Filipinos, please 'recognize your roots.' Your country is a disgusting filthy place. Most people there live in poverty! Your culture has much more Spanish influence than Chinese, and absolutely no Japanese influence whatsoever."
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"Your culture and technological advancement do not even come close to what others have done in the past and at present. You have no concept of culture... no concept of Asian ideas or Asian philosophy.
"I understand that you are trying to create an identity for yourselves as young people... but it is not related to Asia. Your identity is Filipino. That's all you are. Just Filipino. Think about what that means..."
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Perhaps this Japanese blogger has had some very bad experience during his childhood. Perhaps this American-based whiner is a anti-Filipino psycho trying to live a life full of hatred, discrimination, indifference, and objectifications. Perhaps he lacks the mental capacity to see and synthesize things to arrive at clear cut, objective conclusions.
But one thing is sure clear. We all hate what he have said. We all would like to believe that he is telling lies and sowing terribly wrong generalizations. We feel insulted and we want to get back on him.
We want to tell him that Filipinos are creative, smart, "cultured," efficient, talented, and trustworthy.
Right?!
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Three reasons why Sigaw ng Bayan's petition for Charter Change through People's Initiative is wrong
1) the absence of a substantive enabling law on the people's initiative;
2) a fatally defective signature-gathering process, accompanied by a subsequent defective signature-verification procedure; and
3) a highly adverse environmental consequences to and detrimental practical effects upon the body politic depriving the sovereign people of their ultimate democratic weapon to directly elect their leaders.
Amen.
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GMA blootlickers are now having back door talks with the Opposition. Well, politics in the present system knows no permanent allies.
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I believe that Charter Change should be fast-tracked via Constitutional Convention, and not through Constituent Assembly or People's Initiative. That is assuming that electoral reforms should be made before we vote for our ConCon members and hold the Referendum thereafter.
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Clearly, the pro-Con Ass and "pro-People's Initiative" are the new core of drumbeaters for GMA. And their tack is as clear as day – let GMA fast-track the shift to parliamentary federalism, and blame all of the political and social malaise on the system, and in so doing exonerate GMA from her excesses and fraud.
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Borrowing BMP head Ka Rene Magtubo's position, we call this "paradigm-becloud" because these ‘chacharol' tugs simply want to paint the political system all black to rationalize for GMA's malgovernance.
He's right. These members of the political oligarch would want us to forget the decisive role of dominant financial and industrial powers in Northern countries and the contingent subservience of the domestic elite and successive governments for the current dilemma faced by Filipinos.
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They want us to forget IMF-World Bank-imposed policies of liberalization, privatization and deregulation as the main culprits in the Philippines' unequal exchange and transfer of surplus to the Northern powers, with the canine complicity of the domestic elite, which altogether have resulted to our stagnant agriculture and our country's failure to industrialize.
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They want us to forget all about our financial, technological and political dependency to foreign countries. They also want us to forget all about GMA and her profligate spending, the unprecedented levels of graft and corruption in her regime, and the continuing budget deficits.
Not only have all these resulted in our debt crisis; these also explain our country's lack of infrastructure and social services, which foster grave inequalities and widespread alienation.
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But most importantly, they want us to trust GMA. They want us to forget juetenggate and the Hello Garci tapes, and the fraud during the last elections. Which, alongside the trapos' unexplained wealth and questionable lifestyles, have dramatically eroded our nation's morality and ethics.
They want us to forget that we are living in the Philippines. They want us to imagine we are living in another country. And now they want to open up our lands to ownership by foreigners!
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These breed of GMA apologists want us to forget the need for debt and trade justice, for democratizing the whole political-economic infrastructure, which, otherwise, constitute the fundamental root why the Philippines has continued to be subservient to foreign interests.
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And why we remain poor?
They want us to forget that the easiest way to address these issues is by ousting the GMA regime and aligning government with the side of the people.
They want to substitute their brand of parliamentary federalism for the people's demand for a genuine political and economic reforms so that the power elite can continue to rule.
(Engr. Herman Lagon may be reached through h_lagon@yahoo.com.)