I suppose La Presidenta wanted to put an added spin on her administration’s freshly-declared "all-out war" on drugs. Of course, the NPA push drugs: Aside from the huge profits they derive from them, there’s the element of destabilizing our society and destroying our population – making a weakened, not strong republic, ripe for a takeover by anybody with a whip and gun powerful enough to seize the Big Enchilada.
Neither was the announcement by Defense Secretary Angelo T. Reyes any earth-shaking revelation – to wit, that NPA and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have forged an alliance.
Ever since the so-called National Democratic Front (NDF) was created by Joma Sison, past-Padre Luis Jalandoni, and, yes, Satur Ocampo, who’s now a party-list congressman, the "democratic front" label was intended to signal that the NPA-Moro National Liberation Front (of Joma pal, Nur Misuari) were fighting to overthrow the government in tandem. Since the MILF is the more aggressive off-shoot of the old MNLF, and Nur’s in jail, it was only logical that the NDF boys and girls would continue the team-up with Hashim Salamat, Eid Kabalu, and their Islamic-cum-mayhem bully gangs. Drugs? Kidnap for ransom? A few random beheadings just for kicks? So, what’s new?
During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong supplied China White and other forms of opium and heroin on the cheapo to the American G.I.’s, grunts, and other servicemen through the bar girls, so as to destroy US and ARVN morale and transform those unfortunates into a drug-crazed and addicted army of zombies. This ploy succeeded only too well. In turn, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also began running drugs, so as to raise funding for their Montagnard, Moi and among irregulars, as well as their own activities. Salamabit, everybody was doing it.
When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the biggest poppy-producing country in the world (known notoriously as the Muslim Crescent, in answer to Thailand-Burma-Lao’s Golden Triangle), the CIA and their mujahideen allies (no doubt including old Osama bin Laden’s jihadis) tried to subvert the occupying Russian forces with drugs, a copy-cat strategy taken from the V.C. and the North Vietnamese DRVN agents. And, of course, their Pakistani secret service partners were in on the racket.
Drugs proved so lucrative that long after the Soviets had packed it up and gone home, the Afghans, their Pakistan SIS intelligence partners, etc., not merely continued but escalated this destructive trade. 80 to 85 percent of all opium and heroin circulating in Europe comes from this source.
The biggest drug laboratories used to be located on the Afghan frontier in Pakistan’s fabled Khyber Pass (Landi Kotal) under the supervision of the wild Afridi Pushtuns – the same bunch supporting Osama, the Taleban’s Omar, and those other fugitive-terrorists. There’s a rising cottage industry, however, in the manufacture of chemical methamphetamines (shabu).
When GMA told her "narcs", PDEA agents, and other lawmen "to do a Thaksin", she knew that the Thai solution was to wipe out all-drug-pushing and manufacturing suspects, come what may. This has not happened. The role of law remains the last refuge of the outlaw, just as "patriotism" was once described as the last refuge of the scoundrel.
This information came from "a leaked Cabinet document", according to a front-page story in yesterday’s The Sunday Times (July 6). The article, by Political Editor David Cracknell, said, "The move will spark outrage from Britain’s civil liberties lobby, which has long campaigned against I.D. cards. It is also likely to provoke anger among voters, who will object to being forced to pay for a new arm of state control."
He added, though, that Blunkett – whose Cabinet post approximates our Secretary of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) – "wants to make an announcement to parliament this month and bring in legislation later this year. His decision follows a consultation exercise which found strong support for ID cards in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks."
In a letter to his fellow Cabinet ministers dated June 25, Blunkett had stated: "I believe that the case for introducing a national identity card in the U.K. is overwhelming."
He strongly asserted in the same letter: "The argument that identity cards will inhibit our freedoms is wrong. We are strengthened in our liberty if our identity is protected from theft; if we are able to access the services we are entitled to and if our community is better protected from terrorists and organized criminals."
Blunkett warned that "there is a highly organized minority who will campaign vocally against a scheme. However, the identity card I am proposing will not be used to store large amounts of personal data to which government departments or agencies will have unfettered access. There will be strict limits on what is held on the card… Privacy will be protected, as it is in other advanced democracies that have identity cards."
I firmly believe that Blunkett’s argument applies with even more urgency and validity to our country. We must have IDs, for the same reasons. Who are ashamed of their identities being revealed? Terrorists, subversives, criminals, tax evaders, and those engaged in subterfuge and nefarious activities. Or flying voters. Who else?
The ID is your guarantee of being recognized as a decent citizen, not one who hides behind a cloak of anonymity or fakery. By the way, theft of identity is already a multimillion-dollar or multibillion-peso racket. What happened to former Armed Forces Chief of Staff, now Postmaster General, retired General Diomedio Villanueva’s announced investigation of the Makati central post office? Many bank statements, credit cards or information regarding credit cards disappeared into the wrong hands there during the past few years.
Some of my foreign friends lost thousands of dollars from their overseas bank accounts, others, Filipinos included, had thousands of bucks worth of purchases and other payments fraudulently charged to their credit cards. Two whom I know had their identities "stolen" and misused for the withdrawal of funds and other monetary activities.
The government must crack down on such activities ruthlessly. Money-laundering and theft are utilized not just for criminal profit but for drug-running, terrorism, subversion, and other destabilization efforts.
We’re not alone. Other countries, including England, are plagued by such crimes. Here, on the other hand, they’ve begun fighting back. In the Philippines, we’re just talking, talking and talking.
Incidentally, who’s minding the store back home? I see congressmen and senators criss-crossing Europe and the Atlantic with their families in tow, like flocks of wild geese seeking warmer climes. Are we taxpayers paying the fare?
Exeter was enchanting, and well worth the three-and-a-half-hour drive on Britain’s two excellent motorways, the M-4, turning into the M-5. I suggest, on the other hand, the more scenic and historical route — meandering off the M-4 and M-5 into the ancient Roman city of Bath (where the Romans, who ruled England for two and a half centuries) established their healing mineral baths, hence the name. As I’ve remarked, the Romans spent so much time in their Baths that I’m surprised they had occasion to exercise their Legions in more warlike pursuits. But they did so. The Legionaries did their martial arts exercises with armor, spear, swords and shields weighing each man down, with discipline and regularity every day.
After more than two thousand years in Britain, worn out by their endeavors and incessant "wars" to keep the barbarian tribesmen out, they simply left.
Since the Romans had forbidden their subject "British" peoples from learning how to fight or possess weapons, the abandoned townsfolk were beset by Vikings, Picts, and other more puissant warrior-raiders. This brings us to the story of King Arthur, who drew the magic sword from the stone which made him King. Further down the road from Bath is where the ruins of the monastery of Glastonbury can be found. In the graveyard there, legend says, the bodies of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere were recovered by Benedictine monks and spirited off who knows where. You can visit those ruins, their verdant gardens, and breathe in the romance and the mystique.
I crossed the street to a shop named "Myths, Men and Magick" and bought an entire set of King Arthur, and his Knights of the Round Table, plus the Round Table itself. The figures were nobly painted and carved from resin – very authentic. You could almost imagine the golden trumpets of Camelot calling from the dusk. When the shopkeeper boxed my treasured set, the box said: "Made in China." (Sanamagan, will our Chinese brethren never stop? They even hi-jacked – or Shanghai-ed our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. They’ve a museum I visited in Fujian, in Jing Jiang (my brod, Sammy Chan drove me there from Xiamen a few years ago, an hour’s drive) which said that JPR’s great-grandfather was David Lamco from there.
Next, leaving Glastonbury’s medieval wonders, you come upon a town named Street – yes, Street. It is the Marikina or the shoe-making capital of southern England. The famous shoes "Clarks" are made there, and there was an ongoing super-sale at the warehouse outlet, two for one, or even 70 percent down.
Not far from the pharmacy on High Street you’ll find remnants of the great Roman Wall which once stretched thousands of miles to keep the northern attackers out. (They call it nowadays, Hadrian’s Wall after the last Emperor who ruled them here.) Contrary to misconception, the Romans didn’t use forced or slave labor; they built that immense wall themselves, quarrying from local stone. Over the centuries, the wall was pillaged for stones and blocks for the building of subsequent cathedrals, churches, monasteries, castles, etc. (Why, in England, you can even buy ukay-ukay clothes in each pretty town, so what’s new).
You can have a beer in the local pub, just off the fantastic Exeter Cathedral (housing the 1484 Peter bell in its north St. Paul’s Tower), on narrow St. Martin’s Lane. This is the "Ship Inn", reputed to have been a favorite watering hole of local boy, Sir Francis Drake, when he was home from seizing Spanish treasures and looting the Manila Galleons in Acapulco, or raiding Spanish ships on the Spanish Main in the Caribbean. Other privateers and . . . uh "pirates" of Drake’s time (the backbone of the Royal Navy which defeated the great Spanish Armada in the sea not far away) met here, and also in the nearby Mol’s Coffee House dating back to 1596.
You’ve seen those familiar names in the buccaneer chronicles – Frobisher, Greville, Hawkins. Harry Potter’s ancestors, perhaps? Anyway, Drake and these stout fellows routed the Spanish Armada (using attacking "fireships", their equivalent of the Muslim suicide-bomber, to spread fire and destruction among the thousand bunched-together Spanish Warships). Their feat occurred off nearby Plymouth in 1588, and Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I. (The wealth he looted from our Manila-Acapulco galleons, naturally, helped finance Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.)
Plymouth, incidentally, was the port from which the Pilgrim Fathers of America sailed to the New World – and when their ship, the "Mayflower" landed there, they labeled the place, Plymouth Rock.
This is an area suffused with history, as well as ghosts, goblins, wizards, witches, and "the house that moved". Need we say more about where J.K. Rowling got her inspiration?
There are only 120,000 people actually living in that charming university town, but half a million can be found there in the daytime.
Admittedly, Rowling wrote her first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in Edinburgh, Scotland – where, if you want to know, the edifice known as Hogwarts (the school of magic) was filmed by the movie-makers. She even got a grant from the Scottish Arts Council to finish the book.
Now, Harry’s the hottest commodity in publishing. The Bloomsbury publishers have already sold close to seven million copies of the new book, just a million and a half less than its original printing. By this writing, every book may be on the verge of being sold out – even in Paris, which means French kids and parents are reading about Harry in English, since no French translation will be available for the next three weeks. Sacré bleu! What a blow to the Academie Francaise!
In England, they used to sell 200 Potter books every minute in the first two weeks of its launching last month. In the US, Barnes and Noble reported selling 80 books of the new edition every minute. Today, the rate has slowed down. You can see Potter books on display in every show window from London to Exeter – and eager buyers are still flocking in. There’s even a big sale on boxed kits on "how to become a magician" or "how to become a wizard".
After all, England is the sceptered isle of magical things, the homeland of fairy tales (and, alas, "fairies" of the other sex as well). Didn’t they give us "Peter Pan", "Mary Poppins (and her flying umbrella)", "Alice in Wonderland", "King Arthur" and his noble knights’ guest for the Holy Grail," leprechauns and flying ghosts and shrieking banshees, Merlin the Magician, Morgana la Fey the sorceress and temptress, the witch’s uniform and broomstick (from Wales), and other cults like the Druids of Stonehenge as well?
There’s nothing malign or evil about Harry Potter, as some puritans insist. Good triumphs over Evil. All’s well with the world. Us Muggles are happy, thanks to him!