The land that gave us Silent Night also gave us Hitler

I can’t blame jet lag for yesterday’s booboo. I interchanged "All Souls' Day", which fell yesterday, for "All Saints Day" (Todos los Santos), last Tuesday – an unforgivable lapse for a former altar boy and choir boy. Oh well, may be the saints forgave this Saluyot sinner. We went to Paco Church anyway, Tuesday and Wednesday, to visit mama and papa in their crypt, and didn’t receive a disproving "correction" from either of them.

Mea maxima culpa. But no harm done, I hope. The only harm being done is by our nation’s politicians who can’t seem to stop quarreling, scheming, conspiring, double-crossing each other, and playing political fun and games while the nation is mired in poverty and the time-warp of helplessness in a world of economic suffering and change. We’ve dropped off the radar screen of any sensible foreign investor. And since our grandstanding, much-raking senators started harassing and bedevilling the Chinese government’s loan in the NorthRail project, the Chinese have cancelled a plan to put up a multi-million dollar glass factory in Subic, or to put US$1 billion in investment into our mining industry.

Acting Foreign Affairs Secretary Edsel Custodio summoned the second highest ranking official in the US Embassy, Charge d’Affaires Paul Jones to demand a clarification of alleged US "classified" documents "leaked" to two newspapers (not The STAR) and Jones merely shrugged and told Custodio in effect, but in more diplomatic terminology, that the alleged reports were bullshit. Gee whiz. You know how diplomats compile reports: usually they pick them up from the local newspapers. Even the dreaded KGB, the Soviet spook agency, did much the same thing. The KGB or the Komitet Gosudartvennoi Bezopasnosti – from whom Russia’s president Vladimir Putin graduated, which is why he sent his mortal enemy, the imprisoned Russian Yukos oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the Gulag in Siberia to serve his eight-year sentence for "tax evasion" in the frozen wastes, some 6,000 kilometers from Moscow, in the same way the Dictator Josef Stalin did – did a great deal of humint (human intelligence), bribing of CIA and FBI officials to betray their own secrets and agents, but they were also a newspaper monitoring and clipping bureau.

Years ago, when the KGB tried to recruit me in Singapore, through my Russian cronies in TASS ("we’ll pay you in dollars, silly boy, not rubles"), they were amused when I asked them in curiosity whether they expected me to spy on the Americans in the Philippines, like on their bases and their diplomatic files. My KGB friend chortled and almost choked on his own sense of humor: "We don’t have to spy on the Americans. All we have to do is read their newspapers and magazines. Those stupid people publish all their secrets. They call this ‘investigative reporting’!"

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The recent scandal in which Vice-President Dick Cheney’s righthand-man, his chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is accused of having obstructed justice about his having "leaked" the name of a CIA woman agent to the press (endangering her life, not just her career) just proves this point. Incidentally, Aragoncillo also came from the Cheney stable – before migrating from the White House to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. What’s with Dicky’s dicks? Their top-A security clearances turned into top leaks!

Anyway, who cares about truth? There’s an old KGB joke, quoted in the Peter Truscott biography of the "enigmatic" Russian President, Putin’s Progress (Simon & Schuster, London, New York, Sydney, Toronto, Dublin, 2004) which goes: "How do you find a lion in the desert? You find a cat and beat it until it says it’s a lion."

The Senate is beating its subpoenaed witnesses, it seems, until they admit they’re lions, instead of kittens.

As for La Gloria, the President’s hints about holding early parliamentary elections, and the possibility that while serving out her term until 2010, she might do so with diminished powers, are being regarded as phoney baloney. GMA mustn’t be surprised that her assertions are not believed by many. Remember she lied – no other word will suffice – when she announced she would not run for reelection. I was one of the people who believed her then. Did I say "few people"? Perhaps so. In the end, she ran for reelection anyway.

Did she cheat? She vows "no." The same reaction.

However, the elections are long over, public interest in protest has long faded, her opponent FPJ died, most people seem tired of sturm und drang – so how can GMA be ousted except through constitutional means? By a kudeta? By a People’s Court? (Who among our people empowered such a "court" which is even less valid than La Glorietta?) By an EDSA People Power which can’t mobilize enough people? By the assaults of a radio-TV network? By the attacks of columnists and editorials in newspapers? After impeachment failed, there is no process fair or foul by which a sitting President can be evicted, except through brute force.

Oh well. The four freedoms you already know. The fifth freedom is the freedom to make fools of ourselves. The trouble is that the nation suffers, the economy stagnates, the country is gridlocked and cannot move forward – or backwards. If this is democracy, then there must be a better way.

I’m not sure switching to parliamentary form, or a Federal form, will save us – in fact, it may discombobulate and divide us even further. The only gain would be that it would abolish the Senate. The Senate seems to exist only for television. What we need is a unicameral National Assembly, which we had before the war – and it had worked splendidly. Just reminds you of the adage: "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." Now comes Joe de V. and the parliamentary gang, promising to fix things with the parliamentary system. This time, our democracy is "broke," both literally and figuratively. Is a quick fix the solution? In the case of Bird Flu, the panic is proving to be worse than the anticipated pandemic. In our political dilemma, the cure could be worse than the disease. With a parliament holding a Prime Minister to ransom, by the MPs constantly threatening to topple the government by a "no confidence" vote (or else?), we might end up with the fall of a government every year or two – and an expensive new election. As for "Federalism." we might find our archipelago breaking up into Autonomous Regions paddling their canoes in different directions.

In short, not every change is either good or salubrious. Given the present state of anarchy and despair, alas, any change at all is beginning to look attractive.

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They’re playing Christmas Carols on the radio and in all our stores already, and it’s only the first days of November. I’m not against the idea of inducing happy feelings in this season of EVAT uncertainty, and economic pain. Indeed, listening to that Christmas music is more meaningful to me since I’ve just come from the country, most people forget, which gave the world its most beloved and reverent carol, Silent Night.

Now that it’s little Austria, not the center of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world little remembers what it owes to Austria. In 1818, in the small Salzburg village of Oberndorf, a village schoolmaster composed, Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht – which translates into the universally adored and sung hymn, "Silent Night, Holy Night … All is calm, all is bright!"

Sus, it’s not just what the Herald Angels sang – the German national anthem, Deutschland Uber Alles (Germany Above All) was stolen from Austria’s composer Haydn. It used to be the anthem called Lange Liebe Franz der Kaiser (Long Live Franz, the Emperor) when Franz Joseph was Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

But after all, Nazi Germany’s supreme Fuehrer, the man who led goose-stepping Germans (and Austrians) to the conquest of Europe, blitzed England across the Channel, attacked Soviet Russia in Operation Barbarossa, was Austrian – not German. Adolf Hitler had been born in Braunau, Austria. In fact, when he was running for leadership in Germany, which ended up in his becoming Germany’s Kanzler (Chancellor) it was discovered by his supporters that Hitler had acquired German citizenship! This was two weeks before the crucial election. They "fixed" it immediately. When Germans say we Filipinos are crooks and fixers, kindly remind them of Hitler, Ade Polenland, and Helmut Kohl.

I stayed in the Imperial Hotel this trip (as I did some years ago on a previous visit). For me, it is the best hotel in Vienna, on a par with another hotel in which my family and I once stayed, the Sacher Hotel nearby, home of the delicious Sacher Torte.

Hitler thought the Imperial Hotel was the best, too. He chose it as his "home" and headquarters when he annexed Austria in the Anschluss. As usual, I asked the management to book me in the "Hitler Suite" – suite 124 in which Der Fuehrer had stayed in those historic days. As always it was occupied by previous booking. You have to book the "Hitler Suite" months in advance, so many people want to stay there – possibly to commune with Adolf’s ghost, or learn his leadership secrets (in consolation the Imperial gave me Suite 120 instead, two doors down).

Tours going through the hotel by respectful "appointment" pause in front of that Suite, which is unnamed as Hitler’s – the Imperial is embarrassed by the connection, but secretly thrives on it.

If you read the fascinating book about its history as one of "The Most Famous Hotels in the World," namely "HOTEL IMPERIAL", Vienna, by Andreas Augustin (2003/4), you find no photograph of Hitler – and they mention him almost in fine print on page 115.

The chapter says: "On 18 March 1938 the Wiener Tagblatt (Viennese Daily) proudly reported: ‘Just as the Fuhrer made the Hotel Kaiserhof (in Berlin) his political headquarters, during his first visit to Vienna, he has now raised an enterprise of equally high standing and reputation in the Vienna headquarters of the state and party." This was the Hotel Imperial. Himmler and Ribbentrop also lodged at the Imperial . . . Hitler stayed without pomp, in an apartment on the first floor. He never succumbed to the Viennese culinary temptations, preferring to keep to his vegetarian menu. Only once was he unable to resist the sight of a meal, a Schonbrunner Omelette. Did he, after all, have a penchant for things imperial?"

". . . The house was so immodestly bedecked with flags, that one could barely see the facade in a slight breeze . . ."

Not only Adolf but the Allies liked the hotel apparently. ". . . At the end . . . Vienna itself was the scene of bloody battles, and finally, heavy bombardments by the Allied forces," the book recounted.

‘"The commanders in chief, it seems, had given clear orders. When everything was over, they wanted accommodations in Vienna befitting their rank. Thus the Imperial, Grand and Sacher hotels were spared the bombings, while the Europa and Ambassador on Karntner Strasse were hit."

The English officers occupied the Imperial, the Americans the Bristol, the Soviet High Commission also moved into the Imperial, while the Soviet Staff were quartered in the Grand Hotel.

To the victors belonged the spoils – and the hotels.

That’s the story of Vienna.