We hate Con-Ass because we hate the people associated with it, and the person they in turn are associated with: Gloria. We hate Cha-cha because we hate Gloria.
The thing with Cha-cha is Gloria.
A few years ago, voters in Iran drummed up a popular victory in favor of the reactionary Ahmadinejad, who was said to have participated in the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1980. The Western media, for the most part, expected nothing less from what they deemed was a radically anti-Western country too controlled by the government to ponder democracy. Iran’s people may be critical of the West and its policies, but it certainly was not in a mood of conservatism by the time of the recent elections.
Another victory was declared for Ahmadinejad, and outside the country many did not expect any better; but the supporters of his rival Mousavi took to the streets, and to Twitter when the SMS began to fail in the region. The police took to mobile warfare, using motorbikes to deploy themselves quickly in hotspots.
But the circumstances were eerily familiar:
Anomalies (Unexplained SMS shutdown) at the time when the votes were being counted, and the resistance turned to Twitter, where the Tibetans of a few years ago turned to Youtube and the web to post the crackdowns of China,
Religious leaders calling on sobriety and calm, where much of the country is getting geared for a showdown,
Popular opposition leader decrying massive election fraud;
General antipathy from the major media outlets as CNN, until the very last moment, and criticisms heaped at them online;
The mob fighting back, and driving off police for the better part;
Resignations from populist figures;
There’s no Garcillano in Iran yet; I don’t think they’d need to. Tehran is in a ferment similar as to when we were itching for popular rising in 2005-2006. And their CBCP is calling on the mob to calm down. That’s possibly why the government may be keeping an eye on this one: how Ahmadinejad handles the crackdown could provide our administration a blueprint on elections (or lack of it) in 2010. And Ahmadinejad has the edge: there’s been a growing trend of successful government crackdowns against popular rebellions (those non-military sponsored): the Saffron Rebellion in Myanmar, the Tibet risings in China, our own EDSA Tres and Magdalo rebellions; Tehran may be taking a page from these crackdowns themselves,
Though there wouldn’t be crackdowns all over the world if not for the growing trend of populist unrest; there has been a continuing see-saw between governments on one hand and mobs on the other. In all these situations, so long as they have firm grip on the larger military element, strong censorship or at least media support, the government almost always has the upper hand.
They came from everywhere… from all walks of life. Youth converged on one area, as if magnetized by an irresistible force. They came, picketed, and listened to the music of their generation. In a moment that lasted for forever, they raised their hands and their voices in one simultaneous expression of their lives. Read the rest of this entry »
They may not understand us, yet they persecute us. They persecute us, because they fear us. For in our pen, we control the destinies of Men…
“Your soul is not created, is not shaped by the music. It is as if saying that darkness was borne from light. No, it is your soul that forms the music. It is your soul that tears at it, hews it, shapes it, gives substance to it. It is your soul that makes the music.”
“Now, open your eyes.”
A vision
A tree hangs against the sky
Branches stretch to oblivion
Dead, dead
Leaves red-gold float harmlessly
Across the air
The ground is filled with them
There are no green, no earth
It is covered
By these dry, dead leaves
As if suspended,
As if Time stood still,
As if the world waited
With bated breath,
The leaves flutter harmlessly,
Slowly,
To the ground
The mind can only take you to the farthest reaches of its cognition; but the soul, immortal, effervescent, can ascend to the loftiest heights, from the judgment of Heaven to the deepest abyss of Hell.
The scientists claw at the deepest corners of the brain to piece out the inner workings of the world. They live in logic, the summation of knowledge that has been discovered, agreed upon by consensus, or realized up to that point. They try to envision as much of the formulae and the algorithms of the world as their brains can take. Yet at the very end, the sadness takes them, and the conclusion grips them that even the seemingly limitless horizon of reason has an end, and beyond that plateau, only faith can carry him further.
The artists have a deeper, more anguished hunger. They do not see with their eyes, or their mind; they perceive through their souls. They pour in ink or easel, in scale and notation their very hearts, and the very reflection of their selves. For they, have a more sublime exploration: one deep within. Joseph Conrad found its horror in The Heart of Darkness; Vincent van Gogh fought depression in his art and the clamoring of his spirit, till the madness overtook him; and the great genius, Wolfgang Beethoven, stricken deaf finally in old age, screamed the loudest, in the movements of his later symphonies, and the pastorals to God, till he too broke, and must have muttered, “ah God, I can go no further.”
Or “Ah, God, no more.”
The artist understands that there is a larger, more complex world out there, and that he is one small speck in the midst of infinitesimal celestial bodies. He sees no measure in time; in fact knows that each measure merely proves that one repeats the other, and that we are trapped in an endless cycle of shuffling through the world, trying to expand our thoughts and minds, but never truly going beyond the limits of our existence. Not even beyond a city, a province, a country, a continent. He looks finally inward, and finds both meaning and a constant emptiness in the exploration of his soul. If he is not careful he loses purpose in life, for what value does anything have, before the scale of God’s universe?
We wonder at the grand paintings of Michelangelo and the thundering of Wagner, but these are mere futile attempts of the artist to break from the prison of this mortal, tangible world, into the supernatural, the external realm where the Heavens dwell, and where the angels shine in such terrifying radiance that is beyond the limits of the largest star. And even they are mere reflections to the the irresistible, all-Powerful, existence and presence of God. Can we not see the plight of the artists, trying to fit these magnificent bodies to paper and ink, or throwing their souls through stentorian orchestra to reach these heights, only to fall so humiliatingly short?
Let these words carry through the reader, to his own musings: picture the world from afar, and dots spiking to lines trying desperately to break through the atmosphere to space; these are the multitude of men, trying in their vain, hope-ridden hearts, to touch God.
There were dozens, but here’s a funny moment:
In 1942, a conspirator decided to blow himself up together with Hitler and his entourage. At the last minute, he must have had problems with nerves and found himself pissing in the bathroom.
He got locked in.
So, furiously, he tried to defuse the bomb he made before it blew off (it was already activated).
Caffeine Sparks has a recent post about the nitty and gritty of the slums that she passed by; on a side-note, I remembered seeing something similar some years ago while walking on Katipunan at late-night. A street kid was standing over a beaten up opponent, while behind him were fellow kids watching. Bereft of any form of education or rules, what else is there but the rule of might is right?
But Sparks gives poetry to an otherwise dark, vulgar event; A stark portrayal that will linger on the edge of our minds for a long time. A Kuko ng Liwanag post, a must-read.
Beating Hatton is comparable to gazing across the Indus, to the great expanse of India, as the Macedonian Alexander did. How did he get there? Mexico must venerate him the way the Persians did of Alexander, and now he’s begun to get the attention of the rest of the world. But how further can he really go? Read the rest of this entry »
Alanis does get some lines right… Read the rest of this entry »
Looking through the drafts that had been left unpublished, I came across this article that I had begun I would think sometime on March 2008, but never quite posted. Here it is in full: Read the rest of this entry »
