I digress.

With this new found attention, quite naturally, misconceptions, fear, uncertainty and doubt come into the fray. People are naturally afraid of things they’ve no understanding of. The last time there was an explosion of content was when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press.

New Media— the entirety of digital communications from blogs to podcasts and everything in between has transformed every single person to be a vector of creativity and information. All made possible by the coming of the Internet. The bar to become published has been put so low that everyone can say, do and publish anything to their hearts content and open to a global audience. Limited only of course by their ability to go online.

Yes, that includes that Sex video you have stashed, which may already be on your friendly neighborhood porn site and makes the US$5 Billion dollar bailout the Porn Industry “wants” quite humorous.

The new world order has changed everything. Comments on a blog for example can affect and even change a blogger’s opinion. It can shape opinion as much as a blogger’s. Comments can facilitate a meeting of the minds too. The rapid response is meant to open communication and debate.

That’s part of the game.

YOU can dispute the blogger, just as freely HE or SHE can refute you. Your work, both blogger’s and comment’s is exposed to the world and they can all equally call on you for being stupid or hail you as a genius. All in a matter of minutes, probably both.

The zen part is that there is no control and everyone is in control. In a word: Laissez-faire.

One good post came from Bencard recently in his Thoughts On The Gaza Crisis and The Mindanao Conflict. And I’m sure Sparks is fuming somewhere, ready to argue.

Are you afraid now? Governments and others too timid or too scared to be without the old generally accepted rule book, they naturally fight this new order.

On the other hand this whole Golf affair is a birth pain for bloggers. How do we interact with a low tech universe? How do we converse with the Real World when seemingly we both are talking different things and naturally both are misunderstood? How do we make them understand, that on the Interwebs, Credibility is the Coin by which we converse?

Ding over at midfield makes an excellent point:

My own sources inside VGCC now tell me that not a few Club members feel the Dela Pazes, while “being fast on the draw to report their side in the blogosphere, and thus gained immediate public sympathy cannot now escape the reality of their own provocative misbehaviour.”

Truth does always emerge and the Pangandamans may really have “acted in self defense.”
The question that the courts will now have to decide IS how valid the self defense argument really is and when such action became excessive to the point of how gravely Bino Dela Paz and his 56-year-old father were mauled.

One past president of VGCC told me: “Nakatagpo sila ng katapat (They found their match).”

Perhaps.

Secretary Pangandaman found it necessary to directly appeal to bloggers to stop condemning him and his sons, even intimating that his own aging father “was upset by the scandal.”
This writer grants the Pangandamans their bruised feelings, if not anger at bloggers.

But such is the public arena, the Filipino public in particular, that personages of rank in the government serving are expected to hold to higher standard of proper conduct in due respect to their exalted stations.

Let hatchets be buried with everyone drawing the necessary lessons in that basic school subject called Good Manners and Right Conduct.

[update-2: fixed link to Ding's Midfield. My apologies, just noticed it.]

There has been a LOT of “I told you so” comments on this whole golf issue. Maybe they haven’t heard of Sun Tzu who wrote a military treatise and argued that “Therefore one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful.”

Anybody can raise an issue and anybody can respond appropriately for or against that issue. Anybody can discern crap. A blogger’s post can readily be judged wrong or hailed right. Inevitably, facts come out as the issue is discussed and the reader can easily discern the right from the wrong. The aggrieved party is already given justice if he proves the other party wrong.

People do this all the time.

A few days ago, on Big Mango, I sarcastically blogged against a silly little issue that Panay Times posted saying, “Congress should regulate Use of the Internet”. @sofimi in a comment to that post, was of course correct. We shouldn’t waste brain power on stuff like that. I’d like to share the video that @sofimi directed to my attention to:

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

And you know what? Blogs and New Media calls for good old fashioned thinking, reasoning and reading. That’s another power of New Media. It requires people to think and to discern.

updated added link to above cartoon: xkcd’s “duty calls“.

Most apt, wouldn’t you say?

If you’ve gotten this far, I’m sure you’ve read ”Ilustrados Bravos!“ from DJB that came out a few days back, he wrote:

We are the carriers of mental virii. The kind that infect the brains of readers and listeners such that they cannot but think the thing their own and gladly, if secretly, surrender to the logic of being convinced, of being inspired and energized to act, to think, to feel. Or to violently disagree. But do it well, Blogger. Do it beautifully! For there is precious little bandwidth here for the trivial, the banal, the boring, the vain, the boorish, the abusive, the automatic. It is the fittest meme that will inherit the earth. Make yours so, give us your best, as we all plunge back into the common dream…

Most elegant and spot on, wouldn’t you say?

If you want more good stuff, go on to Smoke, (if you haven’t already), Rom wrote “It’s Your Blog” and makes a very good point on what makes this whole blogging scene so much smarter and so much better.

UPDATE-3: Click here to download this post in PDF format.

But woefully little has been said about what really took place.

I humbly submit that we must not lose sight of the fact that at the minimum the Dela Pazes could indeed have precipitated the melee through the act of public alarm scandal if the Pangandamans were showered with bigotry-laden expletives accompanied by the supposed golf umbrella poking incident.

In an effort to find succor and “appeal to Filipino bloggers to stop their unfair tirades,” Secretary Pangandaman was the special yesterday of President Noli De Castro on nationwide (and even worldwide radio and TV), using the entire DZMM radio time slot of De Castro to claim that even his 8-year-old grandson “ was traumatized” by the incident.

But as he was telling his version of events Secretary Pangandaman surprisingly did not clarify how the Dela Pazes ended up bloodied while he did nothing to stop to pacify the protagonists.

What did the ‘honorable’ Cabinet member and presidential alter-ago failed to clear uo was why he not step in as the cooler head?

I’ve just sought the opinion of a former UP College of Law who told me that “at the minimum, Secretary Pangandaman’s inaction constituted misconduct unworthy of a high ranking public official.”

As for the Mayor of Masiu, Lanao Del Sur, Nasser Junior, “it was an apparent display of abuse of power,” my source said.

I am eager to see the results of both the in-house probe of Valley Golf plus thar of the Antipolo Police and the National Bureau of Investigation.

At the end of this soap opera, the conduct of the Pangandaman, the rank injustice and physical injuries inflicted on the Dela Plazes, even as they themselves are not blameless, are emblematic of our society’s state of affairs: power to the powerful, arrogance of the rich, and unmitigated paucity of good manners and right conduct in Philippine Society.

The accused father and son golfing buddies were on nationwide radio and TV today to profess their innocence and claiming self defense with the ‘honorable’ 27-year-old mayor of a little known town in Lanao accusing a junior golfer 13 years his junior of having wielded an angry fist first as the young man’s 56-year-ild father peppered him with invectives and the man’s daughter poking him with an umbrella.

Not content, one of the Dela Pazes also allegedly whipped Nasser Pangandaman Jr with steel golf club that fractured his left hand’s little finger.

Well ahead of the Pangandamans’ belated ‘story of grief’ the Dela Pazes had come out with their version of how Mr. Delfin Dela Paz and his son were mauled last Friday in Antipolo’s Valley Golf and Country Club.

So in a society where hunger is deepening and corruption is in the upper reaches of government we are now treated to a show of the comportment of those of power and pelf when quarreling over golf etiquette.

The courts will eventually decide who’s telling the truth in this damnable Yuletide episode.

How about the rest of society which has been needlessly scandalized?

What of the sitting president and how a member of her official family has managed to further erode whatever is left of presumed public esteem of her administration?

]]> http://filipinovoices.com/scandalizing-the-suffering-the-pangandaman-dela-paz-melee/feed 304 http://filipinovoices.com/on-a-nightmare-at-a-golf-course-a-cynical-worldview http://filipinovoices.com/on-a-nightmare-at-a-golf-course-a-cynical-worldview#comments Sun, 28 Dec 2008 04:42:57 +0000 cocoy http://www.filipinovoices.com/?p=1225

“The world has gone crazy. Two politicians beat up a defenseless 56-year-old father and his 14-year-old son. At a golf course. I swear to God, I thought golfers were decent people. You would think politicians were decent people. I guess not. I guess they gang up on 56-year-old men and beat up pleading 14-year-old kids.”

The worst day for Bambee dela Paz is a defining moment of her life, just as 9/11 was a defining moment for George W. Bush. Her family’s tragedy happened on a golf course and for many of us their experience must be surreal, and none of us can imagine how her world has been turned upside down. Innocence lost.

Who can imagine such barbarism? The explosion of anger at what was done to her father and her 14 year old brother is a shot that has gone around the world and continues to rage. Sparks’ Impunity and Golf, Ding’s Of Thuggery and Courtesy Resignations, to misteryosa’s on politicians beat up defenseless dad, 56, and son, 14, over golf, to momblogger’s Mayor Nasser Pangandaman Jr Mauled A Father and Son at Valley Golf and Country Club, which has many more links to news and posts on this.

This story has made its way to digg. So go ahead and digg it, I’ll wait.

Done? great.

update: MLQ3 in Impunity asks, Are we confusing the forest for the trees?

The danger is to confuse the forest for the trees. We are susceptible to doing this: shrieking over Estrada’s threatening to run for office, while overlooking the President who cynically released him with a pardon; twisting Cory Aquino’s comments out of all recognition while overlooking how truly mistaken everyone was, to think the President would be a stateswoman and not a thug in skirts; wringing our hands over Mar Roxas’s cussing when no government since martial law has so thoroughly justified cussing because of it’s crossing every line, written or not, expected of officialdom; placing traffic and corporate premiums over public demonstrations of outrage; venomously scorning Jun Lozada while overlooking the officials who wanted him rubbed out and who very nearly managed to do it.

The Japanese had a chance to be welcomed to the Philippines, as they were in many other parts of Asia, as liberating heroes, except they proceeded to slap Filipinos who refused to bow to them; and so, resistance was immediately sparked, even among those disillusioned with the Allied cause. Again, I’m not saying this appalling incident will accomplish anything more than inspire horrified tut-tutting over how tasteless, and ungentlemanly, the President’s official family is. But you never know.

My answer is yes, we are. We have been.

The truth is, these things happen quite often. Not in the exact same thing, most certainly, but the arrogance of power is here and continues to grow unchecked. How many missing are there is this country? How many crimes go unpunished? How many tragedies have shattered innocence?

Let me play the cynic.

This is how Bambee’s and her family’s life will go, now that Old Media has gotten hold of it. The noise it’ll generate will run its news cycle.

The news cycle will assure that a case can be filed in court. And Mayor Pangandaman Jr’s people will be hard at work to get him a get out of jail free card. He will be treated most assuredly like a leaper. If Arroyo had any good sense then Secretary Nasser Pangandaman’s “courtesy” resignation will be accepted.

That’s a huge IF.

Most assuredly these people, complete and secure in their arrogance are hard at work securing their jobs and position. They will be calling in every favor and promising their very soul to get out of jail— and maybe keep the cabinet position their family has been favored with.

Ms. dela Paz’s family is neither rich, nor political. And trial in the Philippines is an expensive process: financially, politically and an exhausting one for the soul. Two years— maybe three years later, Mayor Pangandaman, Jr. will be sentenced. That’s if the dela Paz Family is lucky and steadfast and determined to see it through.

It is not unimaginable that this could drag on for more than that.

We need only look at what is happening to former Governor Antonio Leviste, a “distinguished gentleman” and many others before.

If the dela Paz family is lucky, they’ll get a guilty verdict. Pangandaman will enjoy his vacation in jail, pending of course an appeal and make no mistake this will go to the Supreme Court may years from now. Unless of course something happens in between and many things can happen. We’re not even talking here about dirty tricks Pangandaman’s camp may use. Who do these people need to pay off? What happens if evidence gets lost?

Always in motion the future is.

Life has thrown Bambee dela Paz and her family a curve ball.

If you mistake this blog post as saying, the dela Paz Family should give up— then you are most assuredly wrong. The road that they will take is most certainly a long, dangerous, and all consuming path. They should fight back.

This is their life now.

Their life is next in a long line of atrocities that has been committed in the Philippines by “distinguished gentlemen” and people with power, position and wealth in general. If you are religious, Bambee and her family need your prayers. If you are a friend, then they need friends to stand by them now and going forward—for the long run. They need good people to guide them on what to do, and what steps to take.

Yes, Bambee and her family deserve justice! Will they get it?

Abangan*.

Bambee’s blog post The World Has Gone Crazy is mirrored here on Filipino Voices.

*roughly translated from Filipino: “Time will tell”.

Well if our lady president cares to make a meaningful gesture, she can start the Year of the Ox by making an example of Secretary Nasser Pangandaman in the wake of the widely reported display of thuggery by the official in question, ‘ably assisted’ by his namesake, Nasser, Jr.

The mauling of a 14 year-old allegedly by the father and son at Antipolo’s Valley Golf and Counry Club, in full view of other golfers, surely merits summary action without prejudice to criminal charges being filed by the victim.

The sacking of the agrarian reform chief presents a conundrum for GMA we are sure given how Pangandaman is the only Muslim in her Cabinet, not to mention geing her alter-ego in the checkered implementation of the 20-year-long comprehensive agrarian reform program.

GMA can actually hit two birds with the proverbial single stone here by getting rid of a thug while also finding a better administrator for DAR, and CARP.

It’s another story but if people care to look more closely at how CARP has been run, they will find that the billions spent have mainly gone to buying up land and distributing them but without adequate resources allocated for support services for farmer beneficiaries who are left to ‘manage’ disaggregated land holdings without proper training and at the mercy of usurious financiers.

The farmer beneficiaries mostly end up mortgaging their land and becoming lowly paid laborers all over again with the rest of CARP funds each year going to the huge and inefficient DAR bureaucracy

Update:

On ABS-CBN radio today one report quoted Sec. Pangandaman as saying he himself was not involved in the maulng incident, that they were the ones provoked and that they themselves may sue the Dela Paz’s.

Big deal really and even granting the elder Pangandaman himself did not join in the melee he could be charged as principal co-accused by inducement.

Let’s see where this goes.