Talk about coffee gone stale, and some of our friends still keep drinking it...

Although it sends shivers in our collective spine, I can only have a grudging admiration for the Administrative Reform Council of Thailand Gen Ruangroj Mahasaranon and Army Commander-in-Chief Gen Sonthi Boonyaratglin.  Now of course, they call themselves the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM) and have been gathering Thai’s creme de la creme to comply with their promise of putting up a civilian government in the next two weeks.  Tall order, that!

The coup plotters even announced that their exercise was not a coup.  It was “political change”.  My!  My!

My apologies of course, to Excellencies Pres. GMA and Madame Kristie Kenney who have both criticized Sonthi and Ruangroj.  (Surprisingly, they do not criticize the King, no?)  However, I don’t share the views of the ex-Ambassador of UK that is in support of the coup and very anti-Thaksin.  Frankly, I really am not a fan of either side -- Thaksin’s or the coup plotters and their King.

But what is this that some ex-girls and ex-men are saying?  Dengky Soliman, Ana Leah Sarabia, Teresita Deles and company, keep publicizing that the Philippines needs a Sonthi Boonyaratglin and Ruangroj Mahasaranon to emerge in our midst and do a coup here?  Drats.  Or imitate the advocates of the Oust Prime Minister Ferenc GYURCSÁNY movement in Budapest, Hungary --- who as of the last time we hear have halted their demonstrations in that part of the world.

The coffee brewing matching the conditions for the Thai coup and the Hungarian protests are much too different from that which produced the stale coffee our friends are drinking, to say the least.  The economic situation in Thailand could not even match the Philippines’ record in the late ‘90s during the Asian currency crash.  The baht went down the drain like the Korean won, the Indonesian rupeeh and the Malaysian dollar, together with still many other currencies.

Thailand was among the worst hit.  It was already suffering from tremendously soaring inflation and a real estate glut prior to the ASEAN confab in 1996 in Manila and it had nowhere to go but down.  Corruption in Thailand is tremendously dissimilar to that which we have in the country and we could say that we should be thankful for that.  Thailand rivals Indonesia and to some extent, Brunei and Malaysia, as well as Korea in excessive graft and corrupt practice in the bureaucracy, in the business and even in their supposedly religious sectors.

Certainly, the Philippines is the whipping boy of Transparency International and other local anti-graft organizations, but that is because these groups are either pro-Estrada or plainly anti-government.  Atty. Verzola of Transparency International Philippine Chapter is an all-out Estrada girl.  Her gang at the Integrated Bar of the Philippines where she used to be Prexy, are all pro-Estrada too.  Surely, there are pro-government lawyers too, in the IBP but unfortunately, Atty. Verzola and her bunch are the ones that are in TI Philippines.  That is why we keep getting these low ratings in so-called international corruption indexes -- TI being one of the main sources of the information and Verzola and company supplying the propaganda.  It’s all plain bullshit, of course, but the coffee, the stale coffee, that is the culprit.

In terms of corruption, we are very much way, way behind Thailand, Indonesia, etc.  Even Korea, China and Japan, that are traditionally multi-layered societies where secret enclaves freely commit corruption and on many occasions encroach into the formal and aboveground sections, make our own record in graft and corruption pale in comparison.  Look at the late 1980s CIDG record of seajacking, hijacking of container vans over land, kidnappings for ransom?  Those were perpetrated by secret societies and pretenders to secret society membership.  And they were not Filipinos!  Who got arrested by PNP AID SOTF and PDEA during the largest drug busts in this administration?  Not Filipino masterminds. Foreigners all.

That my friends, is real corruption.

The sad thing about it is, the evidence is out in the street cafés and gimikan areas where drugs are openly being sold and ingested or injected, whatever.  Even simple basketball games of the UAAP at Araneta Center, makes the parking lot and other drab corners, a place for brisk business exchange of the commodity.

(Oh, for spoiling the fun of it, but all these events, according to my favorite driver, are actually preparing our country for a wild spin.  Suddenly we’ll wake up to different masters we hardly know the language of, my favorite driver says.  As for me, I’m hardly a polyglot like Rizal but I do know a little of this or that other tongue, but damned if I’d like to be under any one other than a Pinoy!)

Thus, the ex-girls and ex-men are wrong in proselytizing that we need Sonthi and Ruangroj badly to launch a coup in this our corner in Asia.  We simply don’t.  They have overstepped the bounds this time.  They know it, but are too incorrigible to succumb to a little conformity.

The country needs a boost in the arm, but not through an armed mutiny.  We need instead to strengthen and give a motivation to our troops, without placing them on the spot as King Bhumibol in Thailand did by allowing them to take over the reins of government.  We need them to defend us from the onslaught of saboteurs who are out to make us converts into a strange religion worshipped by secret societies like those in the Golden Triangle, Latin America and other Godforsaken places.

Like Thailand, our society and our government is tainted.  In Bangkok, Thaksin experimented with ways to curb drug trafficking and its attendant criminal practices.  To such an extent, he was successful, but he earned enemies left and right.  In the Philippines, National Security Council top executives during informal lunches and dinners, kept saying during the time of Gen. Anselmo Avenido as Director General, that if PDEA does not start hiring its own organic personnel, the drug trafficking syndicates will devour PDEA in five years.  And that was in 2002, we are now in 2006, yet PDEA still hasn’t gone into full scale hiring of its own organic personnel.  See the effect in the recent theft of seven (7) big Ks of methamp hydrochlo?  That’s what our friends in the NSC were talking about.  Its happening now.

Considering that there are many pipelines of drugs in the country, one of course that was exposed in the Senate Hearings since 2001 to be passing through the national police, it is possible that there is a pipeline that passes through the other uniformed services.  There lies the danger then if we allow our armed forces to go into the same adventure that the Thai people got sacrificed for.

Without a King Bhumibol in the Philippines, it is difficult to stage a coup, unless the intention is merely to put the country into an irreparable morass out of which it can no longer redeem itself.

Madame Kuri, Dengky and company should stop telling the armed forces to go into coup mode and endanger our country and our people.  Somebody has to go and stop them.  If they are too determined enough not to listen to advise, someone ought to put them in jail already.  They’re too dangerous to our collective tranquility going out in the streets telling uniformed and other people to engage the government in a bloody, shooting match.  Knowing them well enough, the things that they are capable of doing to their victims, Kuri, Dengky and company should stop dreaming about the income and the hidden wealth they will accumulate again once they are back in power and start living more quiet lives as well as let us all live in peace as well.  And stop contemplating about the people they’d like to maim and kill who had wronged them in the past.

The cumulative noise the group of Kuri, Dengky, Deles, Fr. Vic (Enteng) Romano, Chito Gascon, Frances Escudero, Cayetano, Pink Lacson, Dory Casiño and his factotum BF Tonto Cruz, Lito Maza, Ocampo, Guingona, Drilon, renegade Archbishops Cruz, Tobias, Yñiquez, Drona, Labayen, Bacani and their ilk have produced is enough to pollute more than the entire planet and its surrounding solar system.  This destabilization is more than hell!  As if my calorie and cholesterol problems are not huge enough!!!  Humpph!!!  Stop your shitty tantrums and your superlative attention deficient behavior!!!

Nothing seems to calm these people down.  Perhaps some one should really give them a lifetime supply of really very good Ganno coffee and lots of diapers, for a good change.

Ha!  That’d be the day!

Yeheheheheeeeey!!!

  "I am not even sure where I stand now."  Warrior friend says.  But he did mention that he would rather be in a situation where he could help the King (or the Queen), remove the SMALL MEN  that are creating trouble and bring back order in the Kingdom.  Hmmm....

Indeed, there are those like myself who do not wish to be in a --- what'dwecallit --- feel-bad situation though, and end up getting to be towed around by the SMALL MEN.  But I guess it won't feel nice, it doesn't have a beautiful ring to it --- being pulled any which way by little people / midgets (the way I picture the villains in my friend's post.)

"But back when the mustachioed idiot was being bashed at every turn, I even tried to court sympathy for the bastard.  Until I realized that it was clearly difficult, even if I was under the employ of the Government, to be on the side of the SMALL MEN."

For heaven’s sake, my Warrior friend says, "to make things easier for me to swallow, they even offered me to be an Undersecretary even at that my age during that time (although by then I was already of qualifying age, by Civil Service and uniformed service standards)!"

 But Warrior friend says, he refused!  Even as the SMALL MEN  were very adamant about the offer, he stood his ground, says Warrior friend.  They raised their voices, showed contempt for him, still he refused.

And I imagine he would probably have also been enticed --- told that someday, the post of Undersecretary of the Cabinet could be improved at a latter date and the one sitting on that post might just easily become Secretary.  If that happened, and fortunately, it did not, he would still have refused.  Knowing Warrior friend from head to toe, I know he surely would have refused.

And so in the succeeding year after that, Warrior friend says:

  "It was war.  War against the  SMALL MEN.   War against everything they stood for.  War against them for placing our country in the pits.  In the quagmire.  The  SMALL MEN   had by then become the instant  Overlord  of the men and women behind dangerous drugs and substances, the Kuratong Balelengs, the illegal gambling geniuses like Atong Ang, illegal loggers and kidnapping for ransom gangs, among so many other criminal  minded  groups.

 "A  classic  representative  of  the  SMALL MEN  was  a lady who up to now is happily moving in the high circles.  She is also a familiar face at a University on Taft Ave.  During the reign of the SMALL MEN   she claimed she was extremely close to the mustachioed leader that she could go his bedrom anytime -- even when he was asleep.  Lady says, she could wake the leader if the amount of collections she was offering was worth it.  She was obviously not only the dinner conference, weddings, baptism, etc. facilitator but also the collections facilitator of the leader.

 "She waited on a pretty lady and her beau for the sake of leader.  Lady and beau kept an office in a plush subdivision.  But beau, only happened to be one of the most wanted, most notorious men in Malaysia.  Moreover, the pretty miss and her beau were expectant parents of huge construction projects to be awarded by the leader to them.  Still, on the side, under the cool shade of their construction company, they managed to grab a young girl in Ilocos named Jacky and managed to kill her by accident or intent.  So now  you understand why it had to be War.

 "Even if you had to brush elbows with thieves whom you would see ascend to the Palace gaily participating in the insane contest for the spoils of War…"

 Yes, we may say another season
May say goodbye and find the reason
But love decides how things must be
For love is stronger far than we ...

Love is stronger far than we.

 That is why, whatever they say now, it will be the words of the  SMALL MEN   against those of the GREAT MEN.  And Warrior friend says, "I shall gladly defend the latter.  To the death. . . "

 As for me, I tell him, I’ll cling to my erstwhile lady boss' metal and stone monument.   Whatever the winds that blow, but by the grace of God, why can’t therefore I be as steadfast as greatness manifest, that I hold dearly on to?

 
Yes, Love is stronger

far than we.