DUTERTE'S POLITICS OF DISGUST?

We don't understand the President of the Philippines' politics of hate, anger, and, maybe, disgust against the United States, where a great number of Filipinos have immigrated and settled. The more he talks, the more he reveals he has little knowledge about the Americans.

President Duterte's inflammatory statements not only against the US, but also against the United Nations and the European Union are useless and disclose only his ignorance of the theory and practice of international diplomacy, not to say, the nuances and intricacies of geopolitics.

At least 100 village folks, at the blogger' prodding, voted for Mr. Duterte as President in the May elections because they believe he would make a difference. The presidents who came after Ferdinand Marcos--Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada who was ousted for economic plunder; Gloria Arroyo, and Benigno Simeon Aquino III--were all monumental failures.   Now, he has become disgusting.

Is he jeopardizing the Fil-Americans who, at 4 million individuals, comprise the second largest Asian Americans in the United States?

***
The Number one Ilokano Writer of His Generation

Poet, philosopher, teacher, the Ilokano icon is always in his elements writing exquisite lines and thoughts as if plumbing from an inexhaustible source of wisdom, nobility, spirituality.
        

BOB DYLAN AS 2016 Nobel Prize Winner

WHY HIM?

The answer, my friend,  is blowin' in the wind.

CROSSING THE RIVER TO FREEDOM

Freedom from what?

Freedom from fear so you can plan to achieve your goals in life. Freedom to swing your arms, but alert where the other person's nose begins.

Freedom from anything that you can do without as the years go on: beliefs, possessions?

What are these beliefs? Belief in the Almighty God? Belief in the sanctity of marriage? Belief in the karmic law?

What are these possessions that must be thrown away or given to others?

Books, old newspapers and magazines, old shirts, old brand jeans, old brand rubber shoes, diplomas hanging on the walls.

Do you need them when you cross the Great Divide?

Expand, expand. Ideas are not coming. Are they locked somewhere in the mind? Or the ideas are just not there in a corner of the old mind?

****

Quotations from great writers in fiction


"A writer is at his best only when writing within the character and range of deepest sympathies."--Willa Cather

"The job of the fiction writer is simply to make actual the mystery of our position on earth."--Flannery O'Connor

"The greatest poverty is not to live in a physical world, to feel that one's desire is to difficult to tell from despair."--Wallace Stevens

FILIPINO ADOLF HITLER?

     He must have used "Hitler" as hyperbole, or in a sarcastic manner, in describing how he would deal with his country's 3.3 million drug pushers and drug addicts--slaughter them as what Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany did to the 5.5 millions Jews who perished in the Holocaust.He touched a raw nerve and now he is reaping bitter reactions, nay censure, from not only Israel but from the US, the United Nations and Germany.

     He has since apologized to the Jews, not only in the Philippines, but all over the world.

     Nevertheless, somebody should tell President Duterte to moderate his language, especially in the presence of international media who sometimes distort his message in translation. His foul mouth is creating enemies not only for himself but for his country, the Philippines with more than 100 million population, most of whom are poor and living below the poverty line.

ON WRITING AND READING

"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation, They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life. They feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We re given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping with the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed it over and over again. It is like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together at that ship."--Anne Lamott

****

Why invest time and energy to an activity that exposes you to unnecessary scrutiny?

           Their arguments against the burial of a dead man have become irrelevant. Are they applying the doctrine of half-truths? 

           These discourses are heartless expletives, routinely parroted by like-minded individuals and speak of the kind of persons that they are--unreconstructed human impostors enslaved by time-bounded psychological thinking of simpletons whose minds are in their anuses.

DUA A DANIW A DI NAIRAMAN ITI "UMAYKA MNEN, GANGGANNAET/COME AGAIN, STRANGER"

panaas

Umarubayan dagiti laglagip
iti kasaor ti malem-sardam
idiay Laoag, ditoy Menifee
iti batog ti kidem a langit:
karkarsanna idi ti kadaratan
iti baet ti saraisi ti paraupo
alaenna ti buyuboy, kil-awanna
sana takuen ti litnaw a yallatiw
iti agar-arimasa a malabi. idi kuan,
ballasiwenna ti karayan, ti imnas
a nagduanig, umis-isem ken nagsusuon iti
nasam-it a danum ni ayat--
daytoy ti kaudian nga am-ammangaw,
alimbasag ken tarimbangon
dagiti palimed ken naliday a dandaniw
a mariing kadagiti ulila a parbangon.

***
dagiti saning-i ti sierra*
(para ken ni grace padaca iti pannakapilina a gobernadora ti isabela)

siasino ngamin ti makalagip
kadagitoy a bambanti? dakami
laeng a lingka ti daga,
dakami a mangyarado iti bagbagimi
iti agmatuon idinto nga agkatkatawa
dagiti mangituray iti imeng
dagiti palasioda iti tangatang
idiay manila idiay baguio
idiay tagaytay idiay ballasiw-taaw.
siasino ti makalagip kadaydi a nasipnget a rabii
idiay angadanan ken san isidro
idi rinumekda dagiti sagrado
a pangngeddengmi?
(ay, dagiti natadem a kawwet
ti basingkawel pinisangpisangda dagiti balota
iti atiddog a basilio ti bilegda!)
kasapulan nga agkantakami
ngem uray iti bantay
saan a mabilang dagiti maligsay
a tarumpingay ket alimbasagenkami
iti adu a dissuor dagiti barukongmi.
nalpasen dagiti ublag ken tirtiris
ta nasarakanmi dagiti timekmi
ket sangsangkamaysakami a nangyebkas
iti luksaw ken pungtotmi
kadagiti rabngis iti kalinteganmi.
(Uray no dagiti sayukmo ti rikna
ibatadna met ti kawaw a kararua,)
Ita, mablinmi a panawan dagiti balaymi,
dagiti agdan iti sanggir dagiti kawayan.
dayyengenmi ngarud ngarud ti duayya ti namnama
ken awyaway
ket ti balligim isu met ti kantami.


*naipablaak iti Bannawag, aglinawas a magasin dagiti Ilokano

WHY WASTE PRECIOUS TIME AND RHETORIC WITH YESTERDAY?

     For Riza Hontiveros, the newly-elected Philippine senator, who allegedly distributed books in the public schools in an attempt to educate young Filipinos on martial law and the "evils" of Ferdinand Marcos. Hontiveros, a beneficiary of the Yellow Cult like  
Senator Leila de Lima, and her like-minded supporters have allowed anger and hate to stifle
their true nature as professional human beings.

          "You may give them your love but not
       your thoughts,
          For they have their own thoughts.
          You may house their bodies but not
       their souls,
          For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
       which you can not visit, not even
       in your dreams.
          You may strive to be like them, but seek
       not to make them like you.
          For life goes not backward nor tarries
       with yesterday."--Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet, published in 1923 


     Hontiveros agitating young Filipinos to hate Ferdinand Marcos is no more than Palestinian radicals teaching young generation of Palestinians to become terrorists.