Of bums, beauty queens and Everest

Last week, my friends from UPDRT and I had a reunion, a girls' night out if you may. It's been quite some time since we all got together in one place to catch up. I think it's been eight years already.

So there we were, at Chocolate Kiss for dinner (of course some of us were late) and it's amazing how things have changed for many of us (i say many because, one of my friends would still want to continue her profession of bumness). During college, we were all dependent bums. We all had our issues and hangups. Some of us have liked the same guy at one point or another, some of us fought for reasons that we have forgotten now, some of us just didn't want to leave college, but unanimously, our 'batch' was the best among all batches. There was a former Mutya ng Pilipinas Runner-Up ("Beauty Queen ako, bakit ba..." her favorite funny, bitchy, witty, snappy line for that night), a daughter of a former Member of Congress, two MRR students, a former housemate, a new mother and moi.

So there we were talking about what's been happening lately. The former beauty queen is now a mom, on of the MRR student finally finished college after ten years and will now be working with Star Cruise (of course, if it were up to her, she'd bum some more by watching the regatta in bora, then work -- priorities, priorities), the other MRR student is the first woman to ever travers Mt. Everest (interesting stories by the way) and is now back to rowing, the former housemate is now a great triathlete in the making, sharing the same passion i have for work, and the other two are mothers, when before they were the 'bunso' to somebody.

It was fun. It was great. After dinner, we went to my place to get socially buzzed (of course Ms. former Beauty Queen just had to be following the wrong car, ending up at the other side of the world from where i live), exchanging stories, asking and getting autographs, comparing billboards (at least i get to say i'm in a billboard while it remains to be the dream of others), reminiscing about old times, and last, but not the least, bullying Ms. Star Cruise who never seems to get angry, but always seems to be in a different planet somewhere.

Although i promised Ms. Everest to blog about her adventures during her climb -- which was very funny and entertaining -- i think i'll leave that for later... or maybe for a book that she can make (aside from the coffee table book that they're promoting now) as the first woman to traverse Mt. Everest, who had no inkling that she was already dying and who totally became a victim of the question "Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?"

Okay, Bleach has finished downloaded now, i can go back to watching...

Grocery and Bleach

So here i am in my room, where i was stuck most of the day since i called in sick from work. i haven't been feeling well lately. it's difficult for me to wake up in the morning, and by the time afternoon rolls in, my body will be aching, as if i have a fever without the temperature. then i'll be feeling so tired i just want to sleep. i've been feeling this way since i came back from CDO where i got a terrible case of allergies.

In my lazy, tired, semi-weird state, i decided i really needed to go to the grocery. i haven't done it for a month i think, and my supplies were running low. As it was, i didn't have dinner last night (i felt i was gonna barf any moment) and didn't have breakfast this morning (didn't have the appetite either), so by the time i finally did get to go to the grocery around ten this morning (good thing too since i completely forgot that my car was banned), i just grabbed everything left and right.

Doing the groceries has always been very relaxing for me. it relaxes me. so what i'll do is walk down the isle, one by one, as if strolling in the park, deciding what i would want to cook (wanting and actually doing it are two different things, mind you) and grabbing whatever. So there i was, hungry, thinking of my friends who will be staying over the weekend, and completely ignoring the fact that the fridge at home was cut down in half, and that most that i was grabbing from the shelves were either perishable or junk.

so what did i buy? I bought chicken breast fillet, chicken nuggets, chicken liver, and chicken soup parts. I also got two kinds of bacon, CDO and Monterey (it was almost half the price of CDO but almost the same weight so i decided to try it out). I got lean ground pork and a kilo of spare ribs. I figured i'd cook canton noodles, so with the chicken liver and some shitake mushrooms, beans, carrots, etc., i'll cook it on Thursday (even if i have to be in Makati Shangrila tomorrow and Thursday). Then i'll just have bacon and eggs with toast tomorrow. Maybe have a mango salad for dinner. Then over the weekend, i can make some sinigang or spicy spare ribs for my friend (for that i bought a McCormick mix). Then i also bought some sauces for pasta. OF course there's the usual supply of canned goods and hotdogs. The rest was just junk, i.e., a bag of ruffles and cheetos, a box of chocolover keebler cookies, oishi pan pesto thingy, eaji, nagaraya, 6 bottles of gatorade, 3 packs of yakult, one box of cereals, 4 tetrapacks of milk, one box of mango juice, one tray of eggs, etc. etc. Funny thing is, when i was done shopping and spending a scary amount on the groceries (i was forced to buy a container for my junk since i wanted the bad things out and the freshness in), i was too tired to cook anything and decided to drive thru McDonalds instead, where i bought a cheeseburger meal.

Anyway, so there i was, the whole day, aside from shopping for groceries, i just watched Bleach which my two close friends have been raving about. Last night, i was actually computing how long it would take me to finish the whole 6 seasons plus the OVA. With 137 episodes, and let's say that i'll be watching a couple of episodes a day, then that'll take me about two months...but having that obsessive character, especially when i like something (in other words, low EQ), i have decided to finish season 1 tonight, which is about 25 episodes. Yup, from episode 1, i am now in episode 24 and i am just waiting for the damn thing to download. i've been shifting sites where i can download it, because some are faster than the others, but depending on the episode.

So that's what i did on my sick leave...oh, but at least i got to cook some fried chicken for dinner...at least that's less space in my otherwise cramped fridge.

Aha, download is almost complete...can't wait to finish the last two episodes so i can take my sleep. it's already past my bedtime as it is...

Human (IN)Security Act

For Immediate Release

July 17, 2007

LRC-KSK Statement on the Human Security Act of 2007 or Republic Act (RA) 9372

Human Security Act of 2007: A Draconian Measure

of Insecurity and Terror

It is the height of irony and insult to the Filipino people that a recently passed and newly implemented law–is named the Human Security Act (HSA) of 2007 or Republic Act (RA) 9372. The HSA, which took effect on July 15, 2007--stands accused of promoting insecurity and fear.

Flawed to its core and hated like the regime that produced it, the HSA is the Arroyo government’s belligerent response to the growing popular resistance to its misrule. Also known as the (anti) terrorism law, the HSA is being deplored as the regime’s latest and most comprehensive legal measure of repression and curtailment of our fundamental rights and basic freedoms.

The Human Security Act of 2007 is riddled with grave infirmities and loopholes and breaches the Constitution, the international human rights as well as international humanitarian laws and principles. Its growing number of critics are calling for its outright repeal.

A key issue against this law is the dangerously vague, encompassing and overarching notion of “terrorism” that draws no distinction between “acts of terror” and legitimate exercise of dissent and social protest. The fundamental principle of due process is seriously violated in this regard. Anyone can be accused of the crime of “terrorism” that is not precisely and legally defined. By criminalizing dissent and by drawing no distinction between legitimate acts of protests and political actions versus common crimes---the HSA is a draconian measure of insecurity and terror.

The HSA comes at a time, when the legitimacy of the Arroyo government is seriously being challenged and a prevailing climate of impunity has come to characterize the regime’s brazen disregard for human rights and its gruesome record of atrocities committed against its staunchest critics—the social activists, human rights defenders and the left movement. We have witnessed for instance, how the likes of Jonas Burgos , son of a press freedom and anti-Martial Law icon could be abducted in broad daylight by suspected agents of the state and be made to disappear until today. We have known that tens to hundreds of suspected leftist activists were shot dead by hooded assailants astride their motorcycles.

Against this national backdrop of lawlessness and a climate of fear and terror, the Human Security Act of 2007 or RA 9372 will open the floodgates for the wholesale violations of human rights and civil liberties.

The Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan/Friends of the Earth-Philippines (LRC-KsK/FOE-Phils.) joins the growing voices of indignation against the HSA and the louder clamor for its repeal. Such highly infirm law has no place in a supposedly democratic society and political system supposedly governed by the rule of law.

Given the regime’s track record of mounting atrocities and human rights abuse, the unreformed military and the police forces, the national security-mindset of the HSA’s architects and implementors and the red-baiting and labeling of groups , organizations and individuals critical of the government’s policies and actions---we have all the reasons to doubt the so-called safeguards that the HSA contain against arbitrary acts and abuse.

Under the HSA, “terrorist acts” include political offenses and actions such as rebellion and insurrection, thus criminalizing political dissent and actions. Suspected offenders under the law are subject to surveillance and wiretapping, and their assets frozen. Organizations, particularly those critical of the regime, can easily be proscribed as “terrorists” and their members prosecuted. Thus , the new law provides for the legal justification for state and security forces to go after the “enemies of the state” it will now call “terrorists”, and this time, replete with legal guarantees and all-out impunity.

This early, the law’s architects and implementors are itching to wield the full force of RA 9372 to weigh down anyone it will conveniently call “communists” and “terrorists”. This includes even legal organizations and elected public officials that are among the most strident critics of the regime and its harmful policies and actions.

Assault against the legitimate right to self-determination

The LRC-KsK expresses particular concern about the RA 9372’s impact on the Indigenous peoples and other vulnerable sectors whose sources of subsistence and even their whole way of life—stand seriously threatened by the adverse impact of the GMA government’s frenzied drive to attract large-scale investors into the extractive industries such as mining, logging and plantations.

For instance, given the regime’s policy of attracting huge mining investments in resource-rich areas all over the country , where many indigenous peoples and rural producers reside—and given the deeply flawed legal and justice system that has largely failed to give redress to the aggrieved poor—it is not hard to believe that the full weight of the law may well be used --in the guise of targeting “terrorists” and “threats to national security”---in order to pacify and silence affected communities and indigenous peoples resisting incursion of large-scale mining into their ancestral domains.

The enforcement of the HSA runs ominously parallel with the government’s announcement to develop 23 priority mining investments areas all over the Philippines and to attract around $7 to $10B worth of large-scale mining investments in the country by 2010—the last year of the GMA’s remaining presidential term. The HSA can indeed help ensure that large-scale mining incursions will successfully bulldoze their way over the indigenous peoples’ sacred and ancestral lands.

Who can stop the regime’s minions and their allies in the mining industry from subjecting anti-mining protesters, non-government organizations and church organizations to surveillance, witch hunt, harassment—and when all else fail, proscribing them as “terrorist” organizations or “communist fronts”?

When indigenous peoples will put up barricades to stop huge mining equipment from bulldozing their way into the their sacred lands and ancestral domains—what will stop the regime’s local minions, in complicity with mining companies—to label these acts of protests as “economic sabotage” and “terrorist acts”?

The HSA 2007 can thus, be used against the indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and just struggles of local communities to assert their right, and to defend the country’s national patrimony.

May we then ask: who is terrorizing whom? Who is responsible for and promoting the insecurity of our people? It is the height of absurdity that the very regime that has caused the people’s continued misery and sufferings, and has thus continued to fan the flames of discontent, has now proclaimed to save the people from threats of “terrorism” and threats to their security.

The Arroyo government is afraid of its own shadows and has no one to blame but itself for the increasing national restiveness against its governance. It has allowed its own security and survival to take precedence over the people’s security and well-being, basic rights and fundamental freedoms.

We say no to the Arroyo government’s HSA that is passed in our name. We refuse to accept that the Arroyo regime’s need for security and survival is also our own. Instead, we call for the repeal of the HSA and for the reversal of anti-people policies and programs that are at the roots of armed conflicts, terrorist threats and national unrest that continue to besiege our country and society.

It is increasingly clear to more and more people that the Human Security Act of 2007—far from providing the Filipino people the security from fear and want---is an illegal, unjust and anti-people legislation aimed at instilling fear and paralyzing people into inaction.

The Arroyo regime should remember too well the lessons from its predecessors and from their ill-fated policies and actions: injustice and repression begets resistance. And, nothing can subdue the power of a united and determined people struggling for justice and defending their rights and hard-won freedoms.

From the women and men of

The Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-

Kasama sa Kalikasan/Friends of the Earth-Philippines

(LRC-KSK/FOE-Phils.)

For questions and additional information, please contact Sammy Gamboa at sammybkk05@gmail.com.