Last Friday night I went with Chi to the Underground concert of Indie bands over at the Edge Bar in Lan Kwai Fong. It’s a mothly thing they have at the Edge, and last Friday the bands that played were Innisfallen (my instant favorite), Spermatic Chord (experimental, messy, blows your ears and mind away) , !Slash! Sakura (a solo artist who plays a mean acoustic guitar and he gan definitely give John Mayer and Jason Mraz a run for their recording contracts), Shepherds the Weak (mala-Linkin Park band of pure Pinoys who grew up in Hong Kong. They sounded like Americans in stark contradiction with every else who spoke British, clipped tones and all) and the, um, just-got-out-high-school-type band the Susan Convention (I don’t have have anything much to say about them but this: they have nice black shirts).
Between swallows of bitter and kinda boring Asahi Japanese beer (two bottles for $50, which is cheap, because beers in Fong usually cost $55), we lost ourselves in deafening guitar riffs and drum beats. Spermatic Chord has hippie, Indian influences, and while it must be said that their arrangements (they’re not really songs in the strictest definition of the term as the vocalists were ullulating or screaming most of the time) were messy, their music was still eye-catching. It’s like being harpooned through the ears and pinnioned to the wall. After their 30-minute set, the audience had dazed expressions, like they were put under a trance and were just waking up from it. Chi and I didn’t succumb, however– we were too busy guffawing at how…ridiculous the vocalist Arthur Arquiola was being (but I suppose it was all part of the performance. He’s no Jim Morisson, though).
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Cuba is such a thorn on the side of the US. Such a small country no more than 90 miles away, and yet it irks the US so much that it has imposed a trade and economic embargo that has lasted for no less than 40 years.
American newspapers such as the Miami Herald, the Washington Post and the New York Times are keenly and closely monitoring the developments in Cuba, particularly how Fidel Castro is recovering from this life-threatening operation.
Most of the articles are biased against Fidel, and they drone on and on about how Cuba is a ‘repressive society’ and how Fidel’s dictatorship can caused so much ‘misery to thousands.’
Hmmm.
One of my biggest dreams is to visit Cuba and find out for myself what it is like to live in a truly Socialist country. I am most interested in how its healthcare system works, because I have read so much about how there’s a doctor for every neighborhood block, and how one can get a heart-transplant for free. There have also been reports that the Cuban healthcare system has overtaken that of the US (in contrast, US healthcare is deterioriating because of budget cutbacks).
It’s said that in Cuba, everyone has a family doctor. The government is capable of sending new doctors to work in the rural areas. The profits from the small tourism industry directly goes to the national health care program.
An American tourist who went there in 1994 still wonders why is it that in the US, it’s always the funding for public social programs that are whittled down whenever there’s supposed budget shortage and need for austerity measures. He wonders, ‘Do they have family doctors in every town of El Salvador or Brazil, or Mississippi for that matter? We even have a higher infant mortality rate in our capital than theirs.’
Reports have it Cuba has a world class biomedical research and development facility. As of year 2000, it is said that the country’s entire population has been made well-aware of AIDS and they have a stable anti-AIDS health program. Cuba is the only polio free country in the world, and it has meningitis-B vaccine that Cuban scientists have discovered.
Most reports about Cuba that flood the mainstream media are negative—but they cannot genuinely substantiate their allegations with facts and figures (there’s also an information embargo — reports that depict Cuba in anything other than a positive light are highly unpopular in the mainstream American press). They attack Fidel’s dictatorship for the sake of attacking it; and reports cannot state any concrete reason as to why this dictatorship that Fidel represents is should be vilified.
Cuba and its people have survived the brutality and violence of the US government, and they continue to exist and prove to the world that socialism can succeed. Cuba has a higher literacy rate than the US, and unemployment is almost nil as everyone has access to education, jobs, pensions and healthcare.
It’s been said by Americans who have gone to Cuba and who have written about their experiences that the Cuban people have such an intense energy – pulsing with life and awareness of what they have achieved and what they continue to achieve as a nation. Everywhere, people talk freely about issues — everywhere you go in Cuba people talk about issues - the government, its policies, their views and reactions to these, complaints problems. There is a healthy political life and culture embedded in the communities. The people carry arms, not to protect themselves from their neighbors or antisocial elements, but from possible invasion or attack from outside forces such as the US.
There is poverty in Cuba, but it is a burdened shared by all. This is the kind of poverty that is inflicted not by a corrupt government or by self-serving ruling classes, but by the vicious embargoes imposed by the US and its allies who aim to crush the spirit that drives Cuba— that which defends a way of life that exploits and oppresses the majority. The people may be poor (but not starving, dying poor like the homeless of Manila, or India) but they are well aware of the roots and causes of their poverty; and they face this poverty with magnanimity and strength.
As for its government, Fidel has done all that he can in defense of revolutionary ideals. Such a small country, yet it has faced such brutal enemies hell-bent on destroying what the Cuban people have succeeded, against all odds, in building.
This is something I got from an essay on Cuba by a philosophy teacher:
“Why do we hear about every person who decides to emigrate to the U.S., but never about those who give up on us and go home? Why do we hear about a few individuals in rafts, but never that they are sneaking-into the U.S. not in violation of Cuban law, but in violation of our law? Why do we hear about so-called political prisoners, but never that these people where imprisoned just after the revolution for waging war against people?
I can’t help but wonder: if a small, poor country like Cuba can do all that for its people with so little, why can’t we - with all our wealth - provide basic medical services to every American? "
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I stayed away from the internet the entire weekend and wrecked my eyes and gave myself a pounding headache watching DVDs on my laptop while lying down, so I missed a spectacularly offensive essay written by Isagani Cruz last Sunday. One of the egroups I’m in posted it, and as I read the lines I grew increasingly shocked and appalled.
How the heck did this piece get printed in the Inquirer?!
And holy gee, Isagani Cruz thinks this way?!!
Talk about losing in in public. This will hound him for the rest of his writing life. Was he drunk when he wrote this? Was he adbucted by aliens and given a lobotomy? What the hell was he thinking?!!
‘Don we
now our gay apparel’
Isagani Cruz
Page A10 of the August 12, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily
Inquirer
HOMOSEXUALS before were mocked and derided, but now they are regarded with new-found respect and, in many cases, even treated as celebrities. Only recently, the more impressionable among our people wildly welcomed a group of entertainers whose main proud advertisement was that they were "queer."
It seems that the present society has developed a new sense of values that have rejected our religious people’s traditional ideas of propriety and morality on the pretext of being "modern" and "broad-minded."
The observations I will here make against homosexuals in general do not include the members of their group who have conducted themselves decorously, with proper regard not only for their own persons but also for the gay population in general. A number of our local couturiers, to take but one example, are less than manly but they have behaved in a reserved and discreet manner unlike the vulgar members of the gay community who have degraded and scandalized it. I offer abject apologies to those blameless people I may unintentionally include in my not inclusive criticisms. They have my admiration and respect.
The change in the popular attitude toward homosexuals is not particular to the Philippines. It has become an international trend even in the so-called sophisticated regions with more liberal concepts than in our comparatively conservative society. Gay marriages have been legally recognized in a number of European countries and in some parts of the United States. Queer people — that’s the sarcastic term for them — have come out of the closet where before they carefully concealed their condition. The permissive belief now is that homosexuals belong to a separate third sex with equal rights as male and female persons instead of just an illicit in-between gender that is neither here nor there.
When I was studying in the Legarda Elementary School in Manila during the last 1930s, the big student population had only one, just one, homosexual. His name was Jose but we all called him Josefa. He was a quiet and friendly boy whom everybody liked to josh but not offensively. In the whole district of Sampaloc where I lived, there was only one homosexual who roamed the streets peddling "kalamay" and "puto" and other treats for snacks. He provided diversion to his genial customers and did not mind their familiar amiable teasing. I think he actually enjoyed being a "binabae" [effeminate].
The change came, I think, when an association of homos dirtied the beautiful tradition of the Santa Cruz de Mayo by parading their kind as the "sagalas" instead of the comely young maidens who should have been chosen to grace the procession. Instead of being outraged by the blasphemy, the watchers were amused and, I suppose, indirectly encouraged the fairies to project themselves. It must have been then that they realized that they were what they were, whether they liked it or not, and that the time for hiding their condition was over.
Now homosexuals are everywhere, coming at first in timorous and eventually alarming and audacious number. Beauty salons now are served mostly by gay attendants including effeminate bearded hairdressers to whom male barbers have lost many of their macho customers. Local shows have their share of "siyoke" [gay men], including actors like the one rejected by a beautiful wife in favor of a more masculine if less handsome partner. And, of course, there are lady-like directors who are probably the reason why every movie and TV drama must have the off-color "bading" [gay] or two to cheapen the proceedings.
And the schools are now fertile ground for the gay invasion. Walking along the University belt one day, I passed by a group of boys chattering among themselves, with one of them exclaiming seriously, "Aalis na ako. Magpapasuso pa ako!" ["I'm leaving. I still have to breastfeed!"] That pansy would have been mauled in the school where my five sons (all machos) studied during the ’70s when all the students were certifiably masculine. Now many of its pupils are gay, and I don’t mean happy. I suppose they have been influenced by such shows as "Brokeback Mountain," our own "Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros" (both of which won awards), "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," and that talk program of Ellen Degeneres, an admitted lesbian.
Is our population getting to be predominantly pansy? Must we allow homosexuality to march unobstructed until we are converted into a nation of sexless persons without the virility of males and the grace of females but only an insipid mix of these diluted virtues? Let us be warned against the gay population, which is per se a compromise between the strong and the weak and therefore only somewhat and not the absolute of either of the two qualities. Be alert lest the Philippine flag be made of delicate lace and adorned with embroidered frills.
Initial DZMM reports said gunmen shot dead Julie Velasquez, an official of the provincial chapter of the left-wing Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, while attending a wake in Barangay Culong around 9:45 p.m.
