Distinguishing image from reality

BACKBENCHER

Rod P. Kapunan

1/19/2013

Manila Standard Today

President Benigno Simeon "PNoy" Aquino III is about to cross the halfway mark of his term, and the people who gave him the adulating mandate are still awaiting some tangible achievements. They have yet to see what that modern-day American philosopher Eric Hoffer said as the "promise of hope" translated to one called "matuwid na daan".

Of course, those who have been lording it over are expected to praise the 7.1 percent increase in gross domestic product as phenomenal. They would be quick to say he surpassed what their favorite whipping boy Ferdinand Marcos had achieved during his time, even outpacing the brisk economies of Singapore – 0.3 percent, Malaysia – 5.2 percent, and Thailand – 3.0 percent. The Philippines has even overtaken the accelerating economies of Indonesia – 6.2 percent and Vietnam – 4.7 percent.

Despite that much-vaunted feat, we remain at the bottom, listed no. 102 in the ranking of real growth rate with the rest of the world. As of 2011, we have a per capita income of $4,100, but remain way below, ranking at 162 in comparison with other countries of the world. Mr. Aquino's hooters also trumpet the low unemployment rate at 7 percent. However, they fail to explain that it is the result of the reclassification of the underemployed, part-time, seasonal workers as employed, while those who have been unemployed for more than a year excluded from the statistics.

The greatest ambivalence is that poverty continues to stalk most of our people at 26.5 percent as of 2009. In the latest survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations, as of the last quarter of 2012 about 16.3 percent or 3.3 million families suffer from hunger. If that figure is multiplied by five, which is the average number of persons per family, that would be equivalent to 16.5 million Filipinos out of a population of 103,775,002 million suffering from hunger.

In fact, there is much doubt in that analysis. The experience of not having to eat once in every three months cannot be termed as hunger, but one we could say a bad day for the family. Hunger is rooted on extreme poverty, and it is a daily occurrence to poor families. They have to hurdle daily to make sure they would have something to share together on the table to go on with life.

This explains why to this date, 54 percent or about 10.9 million families, or equivalent to 54.5 million Filipinos believe they remain poor. Even if we are to take it that this administration is pushing our GDP to such an unprecedented level, the per-capita income, foreign investments which are mostly portfolio investment or casino-like gambling, increase in exports, etc., belie that. The real ledger in measuring progress is when the majority of our people are affected by the transformation in terms of increased income and purchasing power, reduced poverty, and the elimination of hunger and the endemic diseases brought by it.

That now reduces to nothing the 7.1 percent increase in GDP because that contradicts the fact that we remain the highest from among the Asean member countries in terms of economic inequality, according to Xinhua in its August 6, 2011 issue. Moreover, according to the study conducted by the Stratbase Research Institute, the Philippines registered a Gini coefficient of 44 percent in 2010 higher than Thailand with 42.5 percent, Indonesia with 39.4 percent, Malaysia with 37.9 percent and Vietnam with 37.8 percent. According to Stratbase, "the huge disparity in income could breed social tension and political instability."

The prioritized legislation like the Reproductive Health Act, the passage of the so-called "Sin Tax," and the amendment strengthening the AMLA bear the visible markings of subservience to repay debt to those who made possible his election. The questionable agreement with the MILF stands as a sellout than an earnest effort to achieve peace in Mindanao. The manner in which the chief justice was removed and replaced by an unabashed minion was a miscarriage than a vindication of justice.

Even our foreign policy is now perceived as implementing the blueprint of Washington's grand design to contain China. This can be drawn by the routine port of call of US warships, increased joint military exercises with our soldiers living up to their role of scouts, and the senseless purchase in arms that could never tilt by half a degree the balance of power in the region.

The irony in PNoy's success is that it is not borne out of craftsmanship in government, but one prepared for him by his benefactors. Everybody knows that the P2.006 trillion national budget is not the residual result of increased income from production and business activities, but the result of increased and vigorous collection of taxes. The sad part is the small local entrepreneurs and the wage earners are always the ones affected.

Even the constructions being undertaken are mainly designed to complement and enhance foreign and elitist businesses, and not really to open new opportunities for our people to participate. This one can observe by the thrust of those projects, which is to attract tourism, to instill love for luxury, mire our people crass consumerism. Constructions are designed to pave the way for the building of new shopping malls, luxurious hotels, exclusive resorts and restaurants, and condominiums only a few could afford.

The popularity of PNoy is more of an image itched into the ignorant mind of many, and that is precisely designed to generate a bandwagon for which his candidates hope would work. The promise of illusory democracy and freedom is a dead platform. What will be decisive is the question on what they have accomplished, and not on their credentials of being the supporters of the ideology of vengeance. It is not even about the GDP for which many of them could hardly understand. As one cynic would put it, "Yan ba ay nakakain?"

(rpkapunan@gmail.com)

Marx was for the abolition of the wage system

BACKBENCHER

Rod P. Kapunan

1/12/2013

Manila Standard Today

It was David Ricardo who first dissected the concept of wage in relation to labor and commodity. He advanced the economic formula that, "If the quantity of labor realized in commodities regulate their exchangeable value, every increase in the quantity of labor must augment the value of that commodity on which it exercised as every diminution must lower it."

The problem with that formula, as rightly observed by Karl Marx, is that commodity, when sold in the market, was wholly left to the discretion of the producers and/or sellers where labor was undoubtedly added to enhance its value. That was made inseparable to the sanctification of property rights led by John Stuart Mills. That "epochal recognition", as Marx called it, marked the beginning of the exploitative wage system that created a wedge between the owners of the commodity, the value of which was enhanced by the workers who could only sell their labor for value.

The excess value for which the commodity was sold, in the words of Marx, was "pocketed by the capitalists." They had no remorse for that practice because they rightly accepted profit as belonging to them by virtue of their property ownership. However, instead of referring to it as profit, Marx opted to call it "surplus value" because the value for which the commodity was sold in relation to the amount of labor spent far exceeded the amount for which the workers were paid. It was on that huge disparity that compelled him to urge for the abolition of the wage system. He made that clear in his immortal work, The Communist Manifesto.

Unfortunately, many ideologues are ignorant about that stand of Marx. On the contrary, present day communists and progressives are the ones defending the mechanism that made possible the exploitation of the workers. As some political and economic analysts would put it, the unity between the progressive Left and the neoliberals on the issue of wage has become repugnant, with the Left committing sacrilege to Marxism.

To begin with, the system of wage is a euphemistic term for the system of regulated wage. It has no other purpose except to peg the cost of labor to a miserable level. Although property ownership legalized the pocketing of the surplus value, it was wage that institutionalized the pegging in the cost of labor bare human existence.

As historically traced by Marx, wage was first observed by the craftsmen and artisans during the feudal era. Being few and valued for their craftsmanship, they formed their own guilds, specific to every type of industry, to maintain the cost of their labor. The advent of the Industrial Revolution saw the capitalists replacing them with their machines for mass production. As plain workers, they were detached from the commodity for which they work, and invariably in valuing the cost of their labor. It was in that relationship that the concept of wage was formalized.

Thus, from pre-capitalism to the early stage of capitalism, the costing of labor was wholly a private affair between the workers and the owners of the industry. It was a lopsided relationship much that it was the owner or the capitalist that dictated the cost of labor. The surplus of unemployed under that system of laissez faire gave life to profit borne out of scarcity. The small amount of fixed wage given to the workers, as observed by Marx, was a substitute to their emancipation from slavery as when the blacks were freed during the American Civil War.

The master was not obligated to pay his slaves the wage they need, but must provide them the most basic needs—in food, clothing and shelter. The wage system as substitute to their freedom did nothing to alleviate them of poverty. Rather, their condition worsened, for it turned out the pillars for human survival given by the slave-owners, at times including medication, were much greater than the pittance wage they received.

The clamor for higher wages plus the specter of communist revolution carried in the name of the workers forced the government to nationalize the system of wage, meaning that the determination of the amount of wage could no longer be left in the hands of the private employers. The State has to intervene by imposing the landmark "minimum wage law", and other labor laws pertaining to overtime, holiday pay, etc. that made significant adjustments on the cost of wage. The State made uniform the increase in the amount of wage by virtue of an edict.

But through the years, as inflation continues to erode the value of their earnings, viz., the reduction in their purchasing power, the system of regulated wage was no longer working in their favor. The nationalization of the wage system thought by many would work for their welfare is now the same instrument used by the capitalists to push back the cost of wage to a bare subsistence level. This is amplified today by the rampant practice of labor-only contracting or "contractualization". Others call it the revival of a new shade of slavery.

It is on this score any attempt to justify the wage system is to openly admit ignorance of what Marx advocated more than 150 years ago. The system of regulated wage only worsened the problem of unemployment. Maybe the transfer of the wage system from a private to a public concern is no different from the clamor to nationalize the industries that made the State the sole employer. That supposition did not solve the problem because the State as the sole employer failed to deliver what the wage earners thought as their liberation from the yoke of capitalist exploitation.

As it turned out, the State was perceived as the exploiter of its own people because it promised many things only heaven could provide. This now explains why many socialist states collapsed, not because they failed, but because they carried on the role of the private employers in pegging the cost of wage.

(rpkapunan@gmail.com)

Close the PCGG permanently

BACKBENCHER

Rod P. Kapunan

1/5/2013

Manila Standard Today

It is not a question of closing down the biggest money-making agency of the government. Rather, the Presidential Commission on Good Government should never have been created by the so-called "God-sent" hypocritical government. Maybe there was a noble motive, which was to run after the fabled $10 billion loot of former President Ferdinand Marcos, his wife Imelda, and so-called cronies.

Although it managed to recover about P164 billion or $4 billion of the so-called "stashed loot" consisting of prime real estate property, jewelry, paintings, and bank deposits, the agency has yet to convict a single accused despite claims of overwhelming evidence. This in the 26 years of its existence with all the plenary powers vested unto it.

It is this paradox of having recovered portions of the alleged ill-gotten wealth and the failure to convict that has led our people to wonder. They wonder because the rudiment of due process taught them that sequestration could only proceed once the accused has been convicted. Their conviction is the ligament that will serve to resolve the status of those sequestered properties as either stolen or ill-gotten wealth. Without it, they ought to be returned to the owners. They can never be declared res nullius nor can be summarily classified as "ill-gotten".

But in its inability to convict the accused, the court proceeded instead to convict the property and the money just for the PCGG to get hold of them without having to prove anything. That resulted in the denial of due process to all the accused. PCGG chairman, Andres Bautista, despite his extraordinary powers even inverting the time-honored principle that the burden of proving the guilt of the accused is on the accuser, now admits that it is next to impossibility to convict the accused.

Even if there was prima facie evidence to justify the temporary confiscation of those properties pending the final outcome of the case, not one of those accused has been convicted. Yet, many of those items that were arbitrarily taken from them have been either been sold, dissipated or simply bubbled out into thin air. This uncanny circumstance now leads many to suspect that the hypocritically honest government was only after the money.

Despite the fact that those cases have been dragging on for two decades and six years, the possibility of convicting anyone is nowhere in sight. Suffice it to say that the body of the crime or the corpus delicti—the sequestered properties—have long evaporated. Yet, the presidential good-for-nothing commission persists in prosecuting the accused, knowing that the property in question is no longer in their custody and could no longer be presented in court.

Cocky as ever, the government— with the collaboration of the courts— proceeded instead to convict the money and the property, thereby allowing the PCGG to justify its continued sequestration.

For instance, to make sure the Marcoses would not be able to have a legal standing in the very court where they were charged; for them to rebut all the allegations, the court made mandatory the imposition of docket fees to party-litigants without qualification. Failing to cough up that huge amount for them to contest the move of the corrupt Arroyo government to withdraw the $687-million escrow deposit made by the Swiss government with the PNB, the court promptly declared them in default.

The clever scheme thus converted the trial to one of a circus called summary proceedings with the court given a free hand to render a summary judgment on the basis of ex parte proceedings. That in effect resulted in the absurd conviction of the money, and not of the accused. In the end, the corrupt Arroyo government was able to circumvent the condition of the escrow agreement that demanded a final criminal conviction of the accused for their release.

While nobody would want to argue on the rules set by the Supreme Court, the people at the least want those rules to be logical. This they insist because what they perceive as just and equitable must reconcile with logic or should not run counter to common sense. This they say for how could the court demand from the Marcoses the docket fee when it was obligatory for them, as accused, to answer the petition? Yet, for failing to pay the docket fee, they were denied of their right to appear and testify by declaring them in default.

It did not even seep into the crevices of their skull that they were appearing in court essentially as respondents. The issue of ownership has, at the outset, been resolved by the condition in the escrow agreement, viz that failure to secure a criminal conviction against the Marcoses by final judgment meant that the deposit should be returned to their rightful owners/depositors. The Marcoses, on their part, were not asking for the release of the deposits, or were demanding damages, but merely arguing on their defense as accused/respondents, they having made to answer.

For that, the court brazenly short-circuited their right to defend themselves, to confront he witnesses against them, and to present evidence in their defense. Many were shaking their heads because it was an obligation set by the court itself; that failure to answer could result in their being declared in default.

Moreover, the PCGG should have been disbanded upon the ratification of the Constitution in 1987. Section 26, Article XVIII provides that "The authority to issue sequestration or freeze orders under Proclamation No. 3 dated March 25, 1986 in relation to the recovery of ill-gotten wealth shall remain operative for not more than eighteen months after the ratification of this Constitution. However, in the national interest, as certified by the President, the Congress may extend said period." In addition, "the sequestration or freeze order is deemed automatically lifted if no judicial action or proceeding is commenced as herein provided."

Instead of observing that constitutional mandate, the Cory-appointed constitutional commissioners drafted a provision giving President Aquino the authority to certify to the reconstituted Congress to pass a resolution extending the life of the PCGG. That provision repeated the idiocy in having to prohibit political dynasties, but conditional to a law which Congress has yet to enact.

(rpkapunan@gmail.com)

Politics by accommodation

BACKBENCHER

Rod P. Kapunan

12/29/2012

Manila Standard Today

Today's practice among politicians to vaingloriously accommodate all their constituents has greatly weakened, if not distorted altogether, the whole concept of governance. This, we categorically state for even if governance has to adjust to the so-called "wishes of the majority", it must be calibrated so as not to affect the order of society, which is primordial to any system of government. Such is given because our democratic process of electing our leaders means that they have to balance between the wishes of each sector or class from that of balancing those demands by the exercise of authority given them.

However, when our elected political leaders succumb to the parochial demands of every sector, the system of governance is reduced to one of "politics by accommodation". Instead of governing society, they tend to accommodate every demand which is plainly in pursuit of that sector's interest. Invariably, they all end up in the clash of interests for what is beneficial to one could be detrimental to the others. Thus, instead of enforcing laws and ordinances of general application, they are compromised just to give way to the demands of the few. No sooner, the process develops to one of contradictions that at times turn to one of violent conflict.

It is through this misplaced practice that "politics by accommodation" creates a serious imbalance in our system of governance. Once that becomes deeply rooted, no sooner will it develop to one of corruption that through the years is accepted as part of the "system." Having become endemic and pervasive, elected political leaders now fear to translate their mandate to one of authority. The paradigm, upon which the mandate to govern is based is thus radically altered. Politicians now govern to please those whom they can accommodate, and not one based on the common good or summum bonum. They become puppets to every blackmailing constituent. Coupled by the licentious interpretation of freedom, they refuse to exercise their legitimate authority for fear of being accused of authoritarianism.

As a result, political leaders take power without any qualification, and it becomes their channel to commit corruption. Only the more powerful groups who have access to the "politics by accommodation" or at times called "cronies" are benefited. Such is the case but always at the expense of the many groups also seeking to be accommodated. On the whole, it is not the people in general that is benefited, but only the handful few. As the people acquiesce in to this practice, the government is unable to function on what it is supposed to do until society descends to one of anarchy. The mantra of discipline has wrongly been given the meaning of authoritarianism.

This now explains why in the course of time many of our laws have been tailored-fit to accommodate every form, type and class interest, self-serving and is heavily soaked with that political vice called "epalism." The primordial concern of promoting and protecting the interest of the people and society has now been substituted by the habit of promoting a system of compartmentalized interest. The more powerful and influential have even become bold to demand the abrogation of existing laws, which were originally meant to benefit all the people or designed to put order to society, just to give way to their demands. Such is symptomatic of a society about to break up.

One good instance of politics by accommodation is a case here in Quezon City. City officials, in their bid to secure the votes of the vendors and their local brokers, illegally appropriated the side walk along Commonwealth Avenue near Tandang Sora St. and a portion of the national highway in Barangay Commonwealth also along Commonwealth Avenue. Ostensibly, their motive is to give our nomadic vendors and hawkers a chance to earn during the holiday season. But behind that gesture is their motive to generate more revenues, irrespective of whether that would partake of an extortion considering that the permit given is patently illegal.

It is "politics by accommodation" because greedy and corrupt politicians in Quezon City knew it is illegal for them to appropriate a road, even for temporary use, and convert them for a different purpose like converting that into a public market. It is doubly illegal because that road belongs to the National Government. The fees or rent which the city government collects cannot even be classified as illegal but an outright extortion because they are collected on a piece of property not belonging to them.

While the general public acknowledges it as the duty of the national, as well as the local government, to build public markets for the vendors to sell their produce and wares, the process of giving them the opportunity to earn must follow certain rules and regulations if we want to maintain order in our society. To deviate from that responsibility is to create chaos because unregulated public markets eventually become public nuisance. The place could even become a breeding ground for criminality, a hazard to public health and safety where stench, pollution and traffic combined, cause untold inconvenience to the general public.

The Quezon City government headed by Mayor Herbert Bautista, Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte and those petty bureaucrats committed the meanest form of graft and corruption that need not be explained and need no evidence to show proof to justify their being thrown to jail. In fact, many wonder why the Ombudsman has not acted to numerous complaints of roads being appropriated as public market, converted to makeshift funeral parlors, or a place to hold public meetings. It is "politics by accommodation" at its worst because corrupt politicians give way to every demand just to be assured of votes, while milking the people dry to at every opportunity to fund their already bloated pork barrel.

The unique American dilemma

BACKBENCHER

Rod P. Kapunan

12/22/2012

Manila Standard Today

On December 14, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza started indiscriminately shooting 28 people, including his own mother. This is the latest massacre that took place in the US. Twenty of those killed were below 11 years old. The incident serves to highlight anew the danger posed by unrestrained freedom, in this particular instance amplified by the usual invocation by the Americans of the Second Amendment of the Constitution giving them the "right to bear arms."

Despite the numerous incidence of senseless killings carried out by psychotic individuals, Americans, to this day, continue to debate on whether or not to strictly limit gun control.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 has done little to restrict the sale of guns. On the contrary, it loosened the sale and acquisition of automatic firearms or assault rifles. This, despite the fact that the US now ranks as among the highest in the incidence of senseless killings, claiming 11 out of the 20 worst mass shootings over the last half century, according to Newsweek. The debate is not on how many more lives would be snuffed out by bullets fired by roaming homicidal maniacs, but on their fear that restricting them would violate their Constitutional right. Some even interpret that as an infringement of their right to property.

As posted by Think Progress Justice, a US-based nongovernmental organization which has for its advocacy gun control, it states, that people killed in the US by the use of guns is 19.5 times higher than similar high-income countries in the world. In the last 30 years since 1982, America has mourned at least 61 mass murders.

Citing a few:

1. September 27, 2012, Andrew Engeldinger shot to death 5 at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis. Engeldinger ultimately killed himself;

2. August 5, 2012 US Army veteran Wade Michaela Page killed 6 Sikh temple members at gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page killed himself later;

3. July 20, 2012, during the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, James Holmes killed 12 wounded 58;

4. April 2, 2012, One L. Goh killed 7 at Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, CA.;

5. October 14, 2011, Scott Evans Dekraai killed eight in Seal Beach, CA.; 10) September 6, 2011, Eduardo Sencion shot 12 people in a restaurant in Carson City. 5 died, including 3 National Guard members;

6. August 3, 2010, Omar S. Thornton gunned down Hartford Beer Distributor in Manchester, CT. 9 were killed, including Thornton;

7. November 5, 2009, Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan at the Fort Hood army base in Texas killed 13;

8. April 3, 2009. Jiverly Wong opened fire at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York before committing suicide. He killed 13;

9. March 29, 2009, eight died in a shooting at the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home in Carthage, NC.;

10. February 14, 2008. Steven Kazmierczak opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing 6 including himself;

11. December 5, 2007, Robert Hawkins, shot up a department store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, NE. Hawkins killed 9 before killing himself;

12. April 16, 2007. Virginia Tech became the deadliest school shooting in US history when Seung-Hui Choi, gunned down 32;

13. October 2, 2006, an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, PA was gunned down by Charles Carl Roberts. 5 young girls died, while Roberts committed suicide afterward;

14. March 21, 2005 Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather's girlfriend before opening fire on Red Lake Senior High School, killing 9 on campus. Weise killed himself;

15. March 12, 2005 church member Terry Michael Ratzmann killed himself after executing the pastor, the pastor's 16-year-old son, and 7 others;

16. July 29, 1999, Mark Orrin Barton murdered his wife and 2 children with a hammer before shooting up 2 Atlanta Day Trading firms. He killed 12 including his family before killing himself;

17. April 20, 1999, teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Kiebold shot up Columbine High School in Littleton, Co. They killed 13 and later killed themselves.

Despite such horrors, the National Rifle Association of the US that was headed for a long time by famous American actor Charlton Heston has been consistent in opposing gun control laws. They have succeeded in placing at a higher pedestal the right to bear arms than the value of life itself. Maybe it was on this assumption why the US Supreme Court has consistently upheld their stand.

Many Americans would seldom give it a second thought that their appreciation of freedom is only as good as when they continue to live, nor would care to think that freedom is worthless when those who are supposed to enjoy it are no longer around. Such is the belief that now prevails because anti-gun controls lobbyists have instilled the idea that disarming the citizens is tantamount to depriving them of their defense and protection without them ever thinking that behind that right is the billions of dollars raked in by gun manufacturers.

They have even forgotten that what their founding fathers had in mind was the right of the citizens to defend themselves against their colonial oppressors, the British redcoats. The right to bear arms was for the purpose of safeguarding their individual liberty and the independence of the breakaway colonies. Certainly, they would not have conceded to the idea of using guns that would result in the senseless bloodletting of their own people. More so today that the US has become so powerful. It is no longer a case where they would fear losing their independence, but the hubris of wanting to impose their will on other states by the naked use of arms and violence.

(rpkapunan@gmail.com)

'Sheep justice' vs cyber freedom

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

1/18/2012

Daily Tribune

While the battle over the Cybercrime Law rages on in the Supreme Court (SC), with Internet freedom hanging in the balance, the first global martyr for information freedom has emerged. On Jan. 11, 2013, as the world was still basking in the afterglow of New Year revelries, Aaron Swartz died by hanging in his New York apartment after two years of struggle against the US Department of Justice's persecution over his core advocacies. As to whether or not it was a suicide is still in question. Twenty-six-year-old Swartz was a prolific American computer programmer and Internet activist, co-founding Internet systems such as the Rich Site Summary or RSS (which allows users to retrieve select news updates without having to visit many sites), Reddit and Infogami, aside from joining the Harvard University Center for Ethics and co-founding Demand Progress (which campaigns against the Stop Online Piracy Act).

Over two years ago, on Jan. 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by federal authorities for systematically downloading millions of articles from Journal Storage (JSTOR)'s library of academic journals and charged with violating federal hacking laws. JSTOR's practice of compensating corporate publishers, instead of authors, out of the fees it charges for access to such works was, to Swartz, an undue limitation on public access to academic materials produced at American colleges and universities that taxpayers pay for anyway. For doing something that writer Stephen Lendman likens to merely "checking out too many library books at the same time," Swartz was charged with "unauthorized (computer) access" under the Computer and Abuse Act.

The authorities claimed Aaron intended "to distribute material on peer-to-peer networks," which was something that he never did. In July 2011, a Massachusetts grand jury indicted him and was later arraigned in a Boston District Court. With Swartz pleading not guilty to all charges, he was freed on a $100,000 unsecured bond. He faced up to 35 years in prison and a $1-million fine if convicted.

To learn more about Aaron Swartz, let's read some of his own words in his Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, where he begins by saying, "Information is power… But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves…
"The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier. There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it…

"Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable. 'I agree,' many say, 'But what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights. They make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal — there's nothing we can do to stop them.' But there is something we can, something that's already being done: We can fight back. Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world…

"Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends. But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.

"There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture. We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerrilla Open Access. With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?" What a stirring clarion call, indeed! But will the Philippine SC heed it?

Sadly, the sanctimonious "Sheep Justice" still quibbles over the alleged need "to regulate certain freedoms that have the potential to inflict harm on others, or infringe on other people's rights" while her fellow sheep justices "baa-baa" about "Internet bullying," when all the harm and bullying are being committed by the oligopolistic corporations and tyrannically corrupt politicians they cavort with!

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch GNN's HTL show, GNN Channel 8, Saturdays, 8:15 pto 9 p.m., 11:15 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m., and over at www.gnntv-asia.com, with this week's topic, "City and National Reform Movements;" also visit http://newkatipunan.blogspot.com)