A Crime Against All Nations

Is it right to unjustly take from a man his liberty and to threaten his own family with his own life?

At any time and at any place, this crime is an evil which no nation can tolerate - let alone ours, let alone if this man is a guest of our Republic!

Our national prestige and the individual honor of our entire citizenry is burdened (again) by this crisis.

Is it right to unjustly take from a man his liberty and to threaten his own family with his own life?

This is what is happening right now to this man - Warren Richard Rodwell - and the nations of the world, friends - both familiar as well as unfamiliar alike, are watching and remembering it.

What happens here is important - how much value we place upon this issue is determined by how important we generally perceive this unfolding crisis to really and truly be.

Let us dwell with open hearts upon the plight of this guest of ours - selah.

Because what we do here is important - all of us are somehow involved in this - because there is no other Philippines with which other nations shall seek to know us than this one.

I implore all who are directly involved to concentrate and employ all available means to secure justice for this man, working toward his soonest and safest release, and to bind the evil that had perpetrated this crime in our midst with all our might as one Republic whole.

I want us to bear always in mind - kidnappers are bound with the same gaggle of criminals as slavers and human traffickers - theirs is but one spirit - an enemy of Mankind - hostis humani generis.

This is a crime against all nations.

And as we are a nation of Mankind - we can not tolerate this here.

My prayers go with Wocca, his family, and to Australia - may God see us all safely through this unwanted and unwelcome ordeal.

UPDATE: As of 20130323, Saturday, I came across an article in the news that Wocca has been freed by his captors. Bless the LORD for this day!

This is welcome news but still, the safe release of Mr. Rodwell doesn't override the fact that this criminal act should never have been done to him in the first place.

There never should have been a break in the liberty of his person nor threats issued against his God-given right to his own life.

At this time, Mr. Rodwell should immediately report to his embassy. If I know Australia, I know that whole nation is anxious to know that he is safe and sound.

I believe there are still hostages being held against their will - in this Country - by threats, criminal in their nature, that directly violate both their dignity and their rights and so the work continues... for it must.

---<--@

Go now and do what War does not expect;

in a million forms, in a million ways, serve -

Love your own and others like your own.

20101013

"A smile that is missing is a smile that is lost forever. If you have caused this, O Man, how shall you account for it in eternity?"

The IIRC Review

It is the first prerogative of Justice to restore dignity to the human person and this is most especially true in cases of murder.

We do not live in an ideal world. In this world, sickness, deterioration, and war, relentlessly drive against the striving of Man to build and advance the cause of human civilization. And this is true both in the temporal and the spiritual sense.

The hostage-taking incident last August 23 claimed the lives of eight Hong Kong tourists the youngest of whom is Jessie Leung Song-yi. She was only 14.





It's tragedy stems from the fact that we can never bring them back. From their families, friends, to their nation and their generations, to ours, their promise has now been forever withheld from the totality of all human community - at this time.

The just equality of all human beings under God is a chief concern of spiritual Justice. And this equality is built upon two foundations: Human Dignity (who we are) and Human Promise or potential for good (what we are). From this equality we all must begin and unto this equality we all must return. A society that is just will intrinsically recognize and uphold a just equality and her temporal Justice will stand in defense of this good. She will be thus guided.

It must now also be noted that the effects of the tragedy, centered on the deaths that resulted from the murder of the eight Hong Kong tourists, is now poised to claim the lives of other people but not in the same sense. We must be careful not to further damage what good there is that must be for our own sake's preserved. It is from this underlying consideration that I believe the IIRC review findings drew its principal mitigating logic.

Because what proceeds from the first prerogative of Justice is the preservation of the human promise. Notably not as a diminution of its first task but as a co-equal task.

It is a fact of this tragedy that the perpetrator of this crime has himself become a victim of his own evil intention.

It is also a fact of this tragedy that institutional weaknesses played a significant role in the undesired outcome of the rescue effort.

It is also a fact of this tragedy that anger and other unrelated motives still threaten the climate of objectivity in the bar of public opinion.

Evil must not be re-payed with evil. It must be repelled from the life of our common community. It must be deliberately excluded from our public peace.

And to do this, what good there is must be recognized, preserved and if necessary restored by the court of Justice, temporal and spiritual. And in this nation, this is the function of the juridical processes established across all the three independent branches of the Republic government - the executive, legislative and judiciary.

Therefore, that we all agree in quorum is crucial. Because it is very important for this Country of ours, my fellow Filipino compatriots, to move forward.



Personally speaking, and in defense of Mayor Lim, it must also be taken into consideration that the Mayor is an ex-cop and his service meritorious. He has accomplished a lot for the City of Manila as a member of the MPD. He has accomplished a lot more as Mayor.

That his sensitivity to the outfit and to the uniform might have reactively influenced his strategy can not be ruled out because the hostage-taker himself was an ex-cop albeit dishonorably discharged. If this is true, this weakness that in retrospect appear to be so might have appeared to many before the fact to be a strength.

Again, it must be pointed out that the effect of the person of Mayor Lim on the undesired outcome of the operation was only exacerbated by institutional failings that have been the cumulative effect of years of national decline.

The best way to reverse this is to move forward on all fronts. And I believe this is what the present Aquino administration is trying to get us all to do - and by example.

As regards to this tragedy in particular, I believe the best way to move forward is to learn from it and to become better prepared to defend the common good specifically in the effective rescue of hostages and to do this on behalf of all those innocents whose promise we are now left without.

We shall honor their deaths by restoring the dignity of their lives.

Because to remember them well, we should work to become better for their loss and not worse and work to preserve the memory of their promise for our own good sake in remembrance of their lives.
---<--@

People Power and Proclamation 50

I am carrying this post over from All to my All -

REVOLUTION, how must we understand it, O my nation?

LET US FIRST SEEK to know what revolution is not: Certain.

Time itself being so much fraught with uncertainty, like a chasm the depth of which no one knows, revolution yawns beneath the feet of those who seek to be defined by it.

It is like a throw of dice, entered only when the need is such that one must by destiny heed the call of random chance. And this need must be such great a need as to be placed upon its time by purposes that must transcend it, lest the will of the fight soon falter and fail, the faith of the people must burn that brightly, to set itself completely against the test.

This is why the People Power revolution of 1986 was such a great wonder.

It is a miracle of grace; our timeless pulling together for God and Country, and the measure of the quality of our people.

So let us remember People Power not as a falling apart but as a gathering together, in our hearts, in our lives, and in our times together as a one whole Filipino nation.

Let us not forget, my honorable compatriots, that to willingly surrender to chance is to court the Devil that we may from People Power learn to remember always the measure of our resolve to advance the cause of our one Republic, and to tempt never the Providence of the one Divine under Whose singular Standard of Truth the oppressed is liberated.
---<--@



I support Proclamation 50. I support this Amnesty because I am of a firm belief that we stand to become better unified as a Country through it.

I have always thought that the Magdalo group had in its heart the betterment of the nation specifically, the Filipino soldiery and the nobility of the Philippine profession of arms.

But not unlike our current Secretary of National Defense, Voltaire Gazmin, I am more personally inclined to err on the side of loyalty and disagree only with their method. I do not and never will support instability in all its forms including military adventurism.

In view of this, I believe we can all commonly draw our lessons from EDSA 1986, shed away the past, and become better as a nation for our coming together this time.

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.



We must begin today
what no other generation can.
We must quicken to truths
that no lie can ever deny.
We must open doors
that lead to new horizons.
And we must shut the gates
so that no one may be left behind.

20100906

Service Honor Justice

Our PNP is left demoralized at the wake of the hostage taking incident last August 23. It seems that now in the quest for answers, the whole outfit is taking a beating. I've heard a lot of negative feedback leveled at our police service as a whole.

Apparently, people are finding it convenient to blame the uniform and as a result of this, our own police service itself might quite easily identify itself with ideals that should in no-wise belong to it and this should not be the case.

I've heard it said, O my nation, that our first responders - in this case, our cops - are only too well remembered when they are called for and all the times they are called for are those times we would rather soon forget.

With the current climate of our Republic not fair-going at this time, it shall behoove this nation to exercise more prudence and discernment in the passing of judgments like these. It would not be right for any of us to forget that in the courts of public opinion, we should always take into our best regard the disinterested, anonymous service of many of our nameless first responders.

Why?

First of all, it is impossible for any nation to exist were it not for the common decency of its own people. The very marrow of Country lies in the strength of its prevailing sense of morality.

And in the sphere of community policing, if there were no decent cops left in the nation to uphold the public peace, civil society would soon begin to implode under the sheer weight of the forces of crime and anarchy.

But since we are still very much here, I think it is reasonably safe to say that not all of our police officers who are serving in the PNP are either corrupted or misled.

There must be more than a few people in our national civilian police service who know what they are doing and who they are serving and try as hard and as best they can to live up to their ideals of Service Honor Justice.

True there is much to improve upon at the wake of this incident, and the on-going investigations spearheaded by Secretary de Lima of the DOJ, and the political commitment of our President, PNoy, ascertain for us that these improvements are sure to be forthcoming.

But these are improvements still that have to be built upon the enduring ideals of Philippine community policing.

The guilty should never be punished with the innocent.

Lastly, there was a recent news article about a successful handling in Silver Spring, Maryland of a hostage-taking incident at the Discovery Channel last September 1. It was the talk some days ago. Again, there was much despairing: Why were the U.S. cops successful and why were our cops not? It's useless...

No it's not.

We should not try to compare ourselves with other nations just to be reminded of how less and less we are of ourselves. We must never compare ourselves to other, more mature endeavors of Country only to see how spectacularly we are able to fall short of who we are supposed to be. This is being bitter.

We have our own path to tread as a nation - our own arcs in the sky. When we do compare, we should measure the distance by the light of our longing for a better Philippines. This way we are apt to become more empowered to be who we are supposed to be - ourselves - a nation distinct from all the other nations of the one family of the nations of Mankind. This is being faithful.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.