Four dogs
These
are our four dogs - Poofy (dog of my life and mom of the other doggies her
e), Funnyboy, Galliard, and Milkpot. My life would be less happy without them,especially Poofy who h
as been with me since 1999.
Am 
at the office , waiting for Congress to abuse its authority yet again and unilaterally declare itself a constituent assembly. I can think of 2,000 better things to do than amend the Constitution, but it’s evident that not one of them will ever be considered by these rabid Constitution-changers.
——
It’s being reported that Typhoon Reming’s victims now number around 1,000. Many of the residents are still missing and won’t likely be found any time soon as they’ve been buried under mud. Reading the news about the rescue and relief operations makes me feel so sad and weak.
Now GMA has flown to Bicol to distribute goods. Good grief, Charlie Brown! She’s going to feign kindness and compassion again, time to take out the sick bags.
In any case, millions of dollars are now coming in from foreign governments and sympathetic institutions. Let’s all cross our fingers and toes that every single cent of that amount goes towards helping the survivors get back on their feet, and the rehabilitation of the devastated communities.
I wonder if the day will ever come when the Philippines will have a credible and reliable early preparedness system against natural calamities. It isn’t as if we haven’t been visited by super typhoons before.
Philvolcs and the DPWH are blaming the residents that they were warned long before the typhoon came but the residents refused to budge and evacuate. I suppose that’s valid, but the question is this: where could the residents have evacuated to? Where would they have moved and how would they have done so? Without money, without resources, without access to immediate even if temporary shelter?
It’s a horrible, vicious cycle. People live in poverty and want, the typhoons come, everything is destroyed, relief drives are implemented, and after the communities have been cleared of the debris and the water/mudflow has subsided, life resumes and returns to what passes for normal and the government goes on to resume its neglect of the devastated regions.
Then the typhoons come again.
It’s so frustrating that people’s lives are so…expendable. Life is so worthless under such a government, under such a system where the survival, welfare and hopes for improvement and development of ordinary people are considered but barely, and only in the most token terms.
Sigh. In Africa, there’s an ongoing campaign of genocide, and millions of people are being driven away from them homes, forced to starve slowly. In Columbia, labor leaders continue to be harassed, arrested, murdered in the dead of night or forced to go into exile, never against to return to their families and friends.
This is why I love my dogs. I need to hug their furry bodies and kiss their wet noses and wrestle with them and for a few moments I feel that the world isn’t such a bad place to be.
————
How do I feel about the guilty verdict against US Marine Daniel Smith?
I feel sorry for him. He’s only 21 years old, and with a 40-year sentence, he will be 61 years old by the time he gets out.
Do I believe that he raped Nicole?
I think he made a very stupid mistake.
In the last few months it’s been hard for me to not think that he might, after all, be innocent. That he did have sex with Nicole, but he didn’t intend for it to be rape, that at the time, he thought what was happening was consensual. Stupid stupid stupid.For him it was consensual, that he didn’t force himself on her; but for her it was rape. Because she didn’t want it.
I don’t consider Smith to be a symbol of a US imperialism- I view him more as a young American who made horribly stupid decisions that are now destroying his life. I see him as someone’s son; someone’s friend, a young man who had his life ahead of him, a good looking kid who did stupid, wrong things because he was young and didn’t know any better.
And what makes it worse is that he’s been ordered to pay a pathetic a $2,000 in damages to Nicole. Yun lang pala ang katumbas sa monetary value ng kanyang nagawang krimen. An insultingly small sum. An insult against Nicole, on the one hand; and a infuriatingly measly amount that Smith could say he could just pay to be let off the hook on the other.
Aaargh.Ifeel bad for these two kids (I am, after all, older than both of them) and what they’ve both gone through this entire year. This entire ordeal has been politicized and this could never have been avoided because of what both their governments do and what kind of relations these two governments have: master and slave; the former the oppressor and the latter a willing accomplice to its own victimization.
—–
Four hours later
So I told my husband how I felt about the Subic Rape case and its resolution, that I felt bad about Smith (wasted youth), and Kim blew his top.
‘He’s a rapist and you feel sorry for him?!!!’
I said that I feel sorry because he’s so young but his life is essentially over.
"But he’s a rapist!"
I said that may be so, but I still can’t help but feel sad that someone so young will now spend the prime years of his life behind bars (and rightly so, and to hell with what the US government says about the provisions in the Visiting Forces Agreement).
I just feel bad about how people’s lives turn out sometimes.
