Not even six battalions of PSG and other guards can protect a reckless GMA

Will La Presidenta stop making it tough for everybody by dashing all over the archipelago literally daring the NPA, Muslim insurgents, or any other crazies to assassinate her by plunging into crowds in hotspots like Compostela Valley, or holding a Cabinet meeting in Cotabato (instead of Davao City because her PSG considered that venue relatively more secure under the circumstances, etc.)?

Was Davao’s intrepid Mayor Rody Duterte insulted by this insinuation, or what?

The government doesn’t have to "discover" and advertise a big plot to "bomb" the Batasan when GMA delivers her "State of the Nation" (SONA) there next July 24. She can be shot anytime, anywhere by some idiot the way she travels.

Susmariosep, there’s a conspiracy a minute being "foiled" by heroic elements of either our armed forces or police. The six Magdalo rebel fugitives who were arrested Friday, according to government reports, had reportedly been planning to blow the House of Representatives to smithereens in connivance with the Communist New People’s Army. All that stuff about a rightist-leftist alliance makes your head spin. "Key targets" among government officials are being trumpeted to be in danger from hit squads. Sanamagan, I say! Everybody’s at risk in this dangerous country, where goons on motorbikes go putt-putting everywhere gunning down leftist militants, activists, officials, ordinary folk, and naturally journalists. Bullets are flying around addressed "to whom it may concern," what the heck.

When a big cache of TNT, identified as high explosive, plus hand grenades were uncovered by military and police raiders allegedly from the safehouse of the seized Magdalo "Oakwood" army officers, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, ever the master of hyperbole, boomed: "Imagine 15 kilos TNT recovered by our troops in the Fil-Invest raid: it’s enough to blow up a huge structure like the Batasan Complex!"

Who’s going to attend the SONA now, so they can punctuate La Presidenta’s speech with thunderous applause every two minutes?

All those dramatics, I think, are beginning to be counter-productive.

* * *

Of course, plots and conspiracies exist – as they do in many countries.

In short, if you watch CNN, BBC, and other international and even our local TV networks, the situation is much worse in many other countries.

By golly, the reason the world seems to be going to pieces is because bad news flashes all over the planet, thanks to instant replay, TV coverage "live," broadband, text, or whatever, in the wink of an eye. In centuries past, or even during World War I, millions dying on the battlefield in a single day, or month, or empires collapsing, nations evaporating, and so forth, were "news" unreported for weeks, months, or even a year. This is due to the fact that information travelled by sailing ship, or by horse, and, in the USA, by Pony Express (The latter was super-speed mail in those days). Nowadays, in minutes, the watching world knows the names of who were slain yesterday in Gaza, or Baghdad or Darfur, or the further reaches of Afghanistan, or gone to the bottom of the deep in the Baltic Sea or the Red Sea, or the Indian Ocean, or what vessel was hijacked by pirates in the Straits of Malacca.

Sometimes, in this light, ignorance is bliss.

Our breathless government reporting, and our on-the-spot media coverage, makes the Philippines look and sound like Armageddon, or Nineveh and Tyre being obliterated by God’s wrath.

Speaking of the wrath of the Godly, I think GMA, the Opposition, or you and I ought to stop worrying about what the Catholic Bishops’ Conference will say, or whether this or that Bishop is fuming against La Gloria. Let them speak out if they will, like everyone else they’re citizens and free speech is guaranteed. But I continue to be mystified at their version of their mission – to nag us all to death about what we should do in politics, or for the welfare of the poor and struggling masses, or expelling evil politicians (like election cheats). Even the devil can read scripture, as was said in irritation on the Mount of Temptation, so this sinner remembers that Jesus told Pontius Pilate, "My Kingdom is not of this world."

As for some of our Bishops, and assorted prelates, perhaps they ought to just enter politics and be elected Barangay captain, or Governor, or Congressman. Leave the prayer and meditation to the pious people in their congregation. Or follow Christ’s injunction to the rich young man who wanted to follow Him, and do the Lord’s bidding: "Sell all thou hast and give to the poor." During Sunday Mass, the poor instead give to the palimos or the collection box.

Don’t get me wrong. For all my life, I’ve been in awe of those who forsake the world’s pleasures and shun sin, by devoting their lives to the vocation of becoming priests of God. Or the nuns who become "brides of Christ," and devote their entire existence to prayer, devotion, meditation – ora et labora. They bombard heaven with prayers for our salvation.

But too many imagine themselves these days in the role of an outraged Jesus, taking a whip of rope and driving the money-changers and other traffickers from the Temple. Mind you, from the Temple – not from the marketplace or the crowded streets outside.

The Filipinos fought a Revolution in the 19th century to free our nation from the tyranny of Spain’s colonial rule and the grip of the Friars of the Church who in their parishes were Lords Temporal as well as spiritual. Jose Rizal’s novels burn with this anti-Friar passion. I guess our Revolution was in vain.

The underpinning of our nation’s strength is that our people are devout. While even magnificent Cathedrals and ancient Churches are two-thirds empty in Western Europe in former bastions of Catholicism, our churches are full of worshippers from every walk of life. Our hearts and faces remain uplifted to God – even from among us prodigals. We hope in Him and His Compassion, and the blessings of the Lord. But I fear this will not last long if the priests of God and the Lord’s Bishops leave the Altar to go mucking about in the dirt and mud of politics, the noisy hurly-burly of political contention and conflict.

It was said of St. Ignatius, the former soldier who founded the Society of Jesus, after he was crippled at Pamplona by a cannonball and, in his recuperation, found God. Freed in spirit, he was described as "The lame man who looks at the stars."

May our prelates have their gaze fixed on what truly matters, then, the stars of heaven – and may they move mountains and change the world by prayer and faith – not by descending to mud wrestling in the material and selfish cesspool in which we live. In this way they will uplift us – sursum corda – not be demeaned by our infirmities.

* * *

I believe that United States President George W. Bush and Washington DC shouldn’t be bothered by the reluctance of China – and probably Russia – to back him up in making a tough response to North Korea’s missile tests timed to coincide with the fireworks of America’s celebration of the Fourth of July.

True enough, North Korea’s "Dear Leader" (his own preferred title) is nuttier than a fruitcake, and if he’s firing off missiles which could be fitted with nuclear warheads (Pyongyang’s got nuke capability since 2003) he’s a dangerous guy in any neighborhood.

He happens to be in our proximate neighborhood, but shucks. Who’ll waste a nuke on the Philippines – except if one missile gets here by accident or splashes in the sea of Japan.

Naturally, the Japanese are both alarmed and irritated. There’s no love lost between North Korea and Japan. After all, Kim Jong-il’s late father, the founder of that Communist Dynasty – described as the "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung – is placed on the highest pedestal as the man born of heroic lineage. "Conductor of miracles, single-handed liberator of Korea from Japanese occupation." Tokyo’s in a flap, its Self Defense Forces on alert, even ready perhaps to zap Pyongyang. Don’t discount the resurrected phlegm of the same Samurai who gave the world Pearl Harbor. Aging Samurai, of course, but still capable of Banzai and, if their youth can tear themselves from electronic Akihabara and Tokyo’s night life, perhaps capable of summoning up the Divine Wind of Kamikaze.

Yet, what did Mr. Bush – just turned 60, the last of the Baby Boomers – expect? Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung is kulang sa pansin. If North Korea did not nuclear-rattle – like the sabre-rattling of old – who would pay that impoverished country of 23 million people any heed? How, without continuing to be warlike, could Kim keep his 4,000 generals and marshals, and his one-million man Armed Forces happily employed, assured of salary and pensions, and in line? If he made peace, perhaps his disgruntled warriors might not find him so "Dear" ("chinae-haneum jidoja") any more.

The other year, I read a fascinating biography of Kim Il-sung: North Korea’s Dear Leader by Michael Breen, who had covered both North and South Korea for several newspapers. (Breen, who first went to South Korea in 1982 as a journalist, is by last report a management consultant on dealing with North Korea and lives in Seoul). His book published by John Wiley & Sons, 2004 spells it all out.

For instance, he wrote on page 13: "For their ability to run a twentieth-century state, North Korea’s leaders may as well be from outer space . . . And they have sealed their borders and turned off the landing lights so that prosecutors from their home planet can’t spot them."

The object of worship for the Nokors is, of course, Kim Jong-il the pudgy and reclusive son of the former dictator. In early 2003, North Korea became the first country to withdraw from the international Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. In sum, now anything goes.

As Breen puts it, what makes its nuclear role especially remarkable and worrisome is that the country has all but collapsed economically, and its people are so impoverished and malnourished that they are "on average, several inches shorter and many pounds lighter than people of the same age living across the demilitarized zone in rival South Korea."

Breen concludes: "Kim Jong-il is the one fat man in the whole country."

Yet, why should President Bush be so surprised at his conduct – defying everyone and threatening more missile "tests"? Did he not, in his first State of the Union address in 2002, put North Korea together with Iran and Iraq as "The Axis of Evil"?

There the situation lies: The Dear Leader of one of the Axis so demonized by Dubya running true to form.

As for this writer, I’ll lose no sleep over it. Who’s afraid of a North Korean nuke? We’re doing quite a good job of self-destruction, without nuclear threat, all by ourselves in this self-flagellating nation of ours.