‘United 93’

The way "talking heads" – from labor leaders, activist, and lawyers, to PNP spokesmen – were blabbering over television last night – we might as well brace ourselves for trouble tomorrow. The usual threats are being made by the radical left to march on Malacañang in an attempt to make Mendiola another "May 1" battleground.

You can be sure any march which tries to push to the Palace and break out of the approved "freedom" zones will be met by a wall of police and military steel. Some activists will be out to provoke this.

Incidentally, where are the top brass of the Philippine National Police? Many of them were in Cebu yesterday – long after La Presidenta came to and left her favorite city. She had gone there to inaugurate Metrobank George Ty’s new hotel, the 5-star Marco Polo (on the hillside site of the former Cebu Plaza Hotel). Many of the PNP brass, would you believe, stayed behind to attend a Masonic congress in Cebu – particularly since former PNP Chief, retired General Jun Ebdane is the Grand Master of that Order. If quite a number of prominent businessmen and civic leaders are members of the Opus Dei, a surprise number of police officers and military men are Masons, you’d be interested to note. The Opus Dei was assailed by Dan Brown’s bestselling and very controversial novel, The Da Vince Code, which sold 40 million copies worldwide in 44 languages. It was announced last year that the same Dan Brown is completing a novel about Masonic "conspiracy."

Gee whiz. The Masons ought to be just a bit concerned over that threatened new sortie of the Brown Wrecker Machine.

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The question of the hour is whether, if trouble erupts tomorrow, GMA will risk reimposing Proclamation 1017. She and her Palace group are in a bind. Will they do so and risk "provoking" the Justices of the Supreme Court?

By unhappy coincidence for the Chief Executive, the High Court is scheduled to discuss en banc next Tuesday (May 2), and perhaps vote on the "constitutionality" of Proclamation 1017 which she issued last February 24 in anticipation of a coup d’etat attempt. The Court will discuss as well the controversial actions committed pursuant to 1017.

La Gloria has already been rebuffed by the Supreme Court, voting unanimously en banc, in two landmark decisions in a row. The Court invalidated Executive Order 464, then, in rapid succession, the case of Calibrated Preemptive Response (CRP).

Now, speculation focuses on Proclamation 1017. Will the Court uphold Proclamation 1017 – or declare it, or parts of it, "unconstitutional"? Will the Justices now holding their sessions in Baguio City vote unanimously, as they did in the two previouses cases? If this were baseball, not political hardball, would it turn out to be Strike Three and you’re out?

Cynics used to say that GMA’s executive orders and proclamations would almost certainly be upheld by the Supreme Court because 10 of its members plus the Chief Justice (His Honor, Artemio V. Panganiban) are GMA appointees. This has already been disproved by the two previous landmark decisions.

The two rulings carry on the tradition that the Supreme Court is above "utang na loob" – as was manifested by rebuffs of the Presidency – even by presidential appointees – during the regimes of Elpidio Quirino, Carlos P. Garcia, Diosdado Macapagal, Ferdinand Marcos, Corazon C. Aquino, Fidel V. Ramos, and now GMA.

Although there were a couple of cockeyed Supreme Court decisions in the past, we must be grateful we have an independent High Court, which is the essential cornerstone of a democratic nation.

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On the "Larry King Live" program on CNN yesterday, I learned that Universal Pictures has made a movie called UNITED 93 which is now showing in the United States. Not having seen the motion picture, which hasn’t reached Philippine screens, I can’t comment on it, but from the interviews conducted by Larry King, it appears to be a dramatization of what occurred aboard United Airlines Flight 93 on the same day, September 11, 2001, that two airliners hijacked by terrorists plowed into the Twin Towers in New York City, and another hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon.

In the case of United Airlines flight 93, some brave passengers rushed the terrorists who were heading their Boeing 757 towards Washington DC (to crash into the White House?) and wrested control of the plane from them. Despite their courageous effort, the airplane smashed into the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and all on board were killed.

I don’t know how this movie will impact on the American public in particular, and worldwide audiences as well, but from what Larry King, two of the lead actors, and some relatives of the dead passenger-heroes were saying, it promises to be a testimonial to the American spirit.

As for myself, I’m surprised that such a sensitive subject should be "exploited" in a movie so soon after the tragedy, but that’s my personal opinion.

In any event, it brought stark memories back. For this writer was in San Francisco that very day, preparing to fly to Newark, New Jersey, to get a medical "second opinion" from specialists in the well-known Morristown (NJ) Memorial Hospital which had been arranged by my friend, the wonderful Dr. Norman San Agustin.

To be specific, I was in the Grand Hyatt Union Square Hotel together with Dr. Richard Pascasio who had accompanied me from Manila. My secretary rang me up to urge me to turn on my hotel television set and tune in to Fox News, CNN, or any local channel, because an airplane had just smashed into one of the Twin Towers – the World Trade Center (which had been bombed years earlier, if you’ll recall, by al-Qaeda terrorist Ramzi Yousef).

I dismissed this alert as just a re-run of some old Hollywood movie, but minutes later, struck by curiosity, I turned in to Fox News just in time, to my horror, to see the footage of a second commercial airliner crashing full-tilt into Twin Tower 2!

Shortly afterwards came another flash report! At 9:39 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, slammed into the Pentagon.

Later came another flash, United Airlines Flight 93, which had taken off from Newark, New Jersey, headed for San Francisco, had crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Watching TV, I blinked. I rang up Dick Pascasio who was in his room in an upper floor: "Richard," I exclaimed. "We won’t be flying tomorrow to Newark – I just heard that our plane UA 93, which we’re supposed to take at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow, has just crashed in Pennsylvania!"

Indeed, that very same Boeing 757, coded United Airlines Flight 94 on the return journey to the eastern seaboard, was supposed to be our flight.

What a shocking day 9/11 was for all of us.

In truth, no flights could take off that day or land. The US government locked everything down. All incoming international flights were waved away and compelled to return to where they had emanated, or land elsewhere outside the United States. All flights, domestic or international, were prohibited from taking off or landing anywhere in the USA – in fear that other teams of Islamic terrorists might have seized the controls.

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Only much later were we to learn that the reason UA 93 had crashed in Shanksville instead of being diverted to explode into another target in Washington DC was thanks to some of the passengers who had decided to "do or die" in an effort to recapture control of the aircraft from the hijackers. Their attempt ended in death – but they had saved possibly hundreds if not thousands of others and foiled the fourth team of terrorists.

The irony of it is that the personal computer of Ramzi Yousef, the bomb-expert whom Osama bin Laden had sent to the Philippines to train the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan in bomb-making techniques in 1994.,

Much later, Yousef exploded a bomb on a Philippine Airlines plane bound from Cebu to Narita (the pilot managed to bring the bombed aircraft to a landing in Japan with the loss of one life, the unfortunate Japanese passenger who had been sitting top the bomb), had contained details of what was called "The Bojinka Plot."

Yousef’s PC had been seized by Manila policemen when his apartment in Ermita caught fire just as he was mixing explosive chemicals with an assistant. The terrorist had been planning to assassinate the Pope who was due to visit the Philippines.

Ramzi managed to skip town and take refuge in Pakistan, but he was soon nabbed there by a joint American-Pakistani operation, then speeded to the US where he was sentenced to 240 years in prison. In his captured computer, Yousef had detailed a chilling future scenario – the hijacking of American airliners crossing the Pacific. It detailed how an airplane loaded with explosives could be used to crash into major targets in the mainland United States. By golly, in 9/11, his successors had discovered the perfect flying bomb: a Boeng 757 fully loaded with gasoline, no need for additional explosives.

On February 26, 1993, the same Ramiz Yousef had exploded a bomb in the same Twin Towers which created much damaged but managed to kill only six persons and injure more than 1,000. Afterwards, Yousef had told his FBI captors, that the next time they would use a much bigger bomb. This is what they utilized – two commercial airliners with panicked, death-bound passengers creaming on board. The death toll came to almost 3,000.

We were stranded in San Francisco for five days. Almost every day, even in the Virgin store off Market street, there was a bomb alert – probably called in by some prankster.

When we finally managed to get one of the first flight out, this time a United Airlines flight to JFK airport in New York City via Los Angeles. It was still smouldering and smoking, the smell of death lingering all over Ground Zero.

Those were patriotic weeks in the United States. At every gathering, including Mass, the people would break into the song, God Bless America.

How the world turns. Today, they’re cursing President George W. Bush, their Commander-at-War for having sent American troops to Afghanistan, and to fight and die in Iraq.

Somehow I miss that spirit of a nation united in both grief and comradeship. It’s now being denigrated as paranoia.

For one brief moment it wasn’t Camelot, but it was God bless our nation!

Someday, I pray that we can sing "God Bless the Philippines" with equal sincerity and fervor. Oh yes. Irving Berlin, the same immigrant who had composed God Bless America had composed another tun, sung during World War II in commemoration of the bravery of Bataan and Corregidor, called God Bless the Philippines. It has long been forgotten.

Someday, with new inspired lyrics to it, hopefully it will be sung again.