Claro M. Recto - Biographies from the Internet

WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: Note: Bold and/or Underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked postings/articles. Forwarding the postings to relatives and friends, especially in the homeland, is greatly appreciated.

To write or read a comment, please go to http://www.thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/ and scroll down to the bottom of the current post (or another post you read and may want to respond) and click on "Comments."

Claro M. Recto (1890-1960) was a Philippine nationalist leader and president of the 1934 constitutional convention. He was one of the most vocal advocates of Philippine political and social autonomy.

Claro M. Recto was born in Tiaong, Tayabas, on Feb. 8, 1890. He worked for a bachelor of arts at the Ateneo de Manila and finished a master of laws degree at the University of Santo Tomas in 1914. From 1916 to 1919 he served as legal adviser to the Philippine Senate. In 1919 he was elected as representative of the third district of Batangas and served as House minority floor leader. He was reelected in 1922 and 1925.

Framing of the [1935] Constitution

In 1924 Recto went to the United States as a member of a parliamentary independence mission. In the same year he was admitted to the U.S. bar by the Supreme Court. In 1934 a constitutional convention was held in accordance with the provisions of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which required the drafting of a constitution as part of the steps leading to Philippine independence. Recto was elected president of the convention. It was due mainly to Recto's sagacity and intellectual acumen that the convention succeeded in framing and approving on Feb. 8, 1935, a constitution which would truly reflect the Filipinos' capacity to frame laws and principles that would govern their lives as free, responsible citizens in a democracy.

In 1931 Recto was elected to the Senate on the platform of the Democrata party. He acted as minority floor leader for 3 years. In 1934 he became majority floor leader and president pro tempore of the Senate. He subsequently resigned his Senate seat when President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him as associate justice of the Supreme Court. Recto left the Supreme Court in 1941 and was elected anew as senator. In 1949 he was reelected on the Nacionalista party ticket. In 1957 he ran for president but was defeated.

Apart from his numerous legal treatises and literary works in Spanish, Recto is noted for his staunch nationalist stand on questions regarding political sovereignty and economic independence.

World War II and Rehabilitation

Recto served in the wartime Cabinet of José Laurel during the Japanese occupation and was subsequently arrested and tried for collaboration. He wrote a defense and explanation of his position in Three Years of Enemy Occupation (1946), which convincingly presented the case of the "patriotic" conduct of the Filipino elite during World War II. Recto fought his legal battle in court and was acquitted.

On April 9, 1949, Recto opened his attack against the unfair impositions of the U.S. government as expressed in the Military Bases Agreement of March 14, 1947, and later in the Mutual Defense Treaty of Aug. 30, 1951, and especially the Tydings Rehabilitation Act, which required the enactment of the controversial parity-rights amendment to the constitution.

A Radical Gadfly

Recto's wit, irony, and sharp analytic powers exposed the duplicity of the diplomatic agreements with the United States and revealed the subservience of Filipino opportunists to the dictates of American policy makers. Recto opposed President Ramon Magsaysay on a number of fundamental issues, among them the Philippine relations with the Chiang Kai-shek regime in Taiwan, the Ohno-Garcia reparations deal, the grant of more bases to the United States, the American claim of ownership over these bases, the question of expanded parity rights for Americans under the Laurel-Langley Agreement, and the premature recognition of Ngo Dinh Diem's South Vietnam government. In all those issues, Recto's consistent stand in favor of Philippine sovereignty and security was proved right by the turn of events.

In perspective, Recto revived the tradition of the radical dissenter fighting against feudal backwardness, clericofascist authoritarianism, and neocolonial mentality and imperialism. He strove to reawaken the consciousness of the Filipinos to the greatness of their revolutionary heritage and emphasized the need to transform the character of the national life by reaffirming their solidarity as a sovereign, free people.

Recto was preparing to launch his Filipinist crusade in the tradition of the Propaganda Movement of the 1880s when he died of a heart ailment in Rome, Italy, on Oct. 2, 1960.

Further Reading

For Recto's ideas and attitudes see his own books, Three Years of Enemy Occupation: The Issue of Political Collaboration in the Philippines (1946); My Crusade (1955); and Recto Reader, edited by Renato Constantino (1965). The best biographical account from a nationalistic sociocultural point of view is Constantino's The Making of a Filipino: Story of Philippine Colonial Politics (1969). For other information about Recto's career consult Hernando J. Abaya, The Untold Philippine Story (1967). For a thoughtful appraisal of Recto's progressive tendencies by a young intellectual see José Maria Sison, Recto and the National Democratic Struggle (1969).

Additional Sources

Arcellana, Emerenciana Yuvienco, Recto, nationalist, Philippines: Claro M. Recto Memorial Foundation, 1988.

Arcellana, Emerenciana Yuvienco, The social and political thought of Claro Mayo Recto, Manila: National Research Council of the Philippines, 1981.

Claro M. Recto, 1890-1990: a centenary tribute of the Civil Liberties Union, Quezon City: Karrel, 1990?

*************

Claro Mayo Recto (February 8, 1890 Tiáong, Tayabas - October 2, 1960 Rome, Italy) was a Filipino politician, jurist, poet and one of the foremost statesmen of his generation. He is remembered mainly for his nationalism, for "the impact of his patriotic convictions on modern political thought".^[1]

He was born in Tiáong, Tayabas (now known as Quezon province) of educated, upper middle-class parents, namely Claro Recto [Sr.] of Rosario, Batangas, and Marcela Mayo of Lipa, Batangas. He studied Latin at the Instituto de Rizal in Lipa, Batangas from 1900 to 1901. Further schooling was at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazón of Don Sebastián Virrey. He moved to Manila to study at the Ateneo de Manila where he consistently obtained outstanding scholastic grades, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree maxima cum laude. He received a Masters of Laws degree from the University of Santo Tomás.

Contents [hide] 1 Politician 2 Poet, playwright, essayist 3 The 'finest mind of his generation' 4 Criticism 5 Death 6 Speeches and writings 7 Further reading 8 Footnotes 9 External links

Politician

Claro M. Recto launched his political career as a legal adviser to the first Philippine Senate in 1916. In 1919, he was elected representative from the second district of Batangas. He served as minority floor leader for several years until 1925. His grasp of parliamentary procedures won him the accolades of friends and adversaries alike.

He traveled to the United States as a member of the Independence Mission, and was admitted to the American Bar in 1924. Upon his return he founded the Partido Democrata. In 1928, he temporarily retired from active politics and dedicated himself to the practice and teaching of law.

Recto found the world of academia restrictive and soporific. Although he still engaged in the practice of law, he resigned from his teaching job in 1931 and reentered politics when he ran and won a senate seat and was subsequently elected its majority floor leader in 1934.

He was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1935 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As a jurist he held his own in famous debates even against the U.S. Attorney General with whom he waged a war of words on the question of ownership of military bases in the Philippines.

He presided over the assembly that drafted the Philippine Constitution in 1934-35, which was in accordance with the provisions of the Tydings-McDuffie Act and a preliminary step to independence and self-governance after a 10-year transitional period. The Tydings-McDuffie Act was created in response to the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act which, through the urging of Quezon, was rejected by the Philippine Senate. The original bill would have allowed the indefinite retention of U.S. military and naval bases in the Philippines and the American imposition of high tariff and quotas on Philippine exports such as sugar and coconut oil. A few minor changes were made and the Tydings-McDuffie bill was passed and signed into law by President Roosevelt.

Together with then-Senate President Manuel L. Quezon (who eventually was elected first president of the commonwealth), Recto personally presented the Commonwealth Constitution to U.S. President Roosevelt. The consensus among many political scholars of today judges the 1935 Constitution as the best-written Philippine charter ever. Its author was mainly Claro M. Recto.

In the 1953 and 1955 elections, Recto denounced the influence and coercion of the Church on voters' decisions—the Philippines having a 90% Catholic majority at the time. In a 1958 article in "The Lawyer's Journal" he suggested that a constitutional amendment be passed to make the article on Separation of Church and State clearer and more definitive. He also rallied against the teaching of religion in public schools.

He served as Commissioner of Education (1942-43), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1943-44), and Cultural Envoy with the rank of Ambassador on a cultural mission to Europe and Latin America (1960). In 1941 he ran and reaped the highest number of votes among the 24 elected senators. He was re-elected in 1949 as a Nacionalista Party candidate and again in 1955 as a guest candidate of the Liberal Party.

Claro M. Recto is considered light-years ahead of his time. He foresaw the demands of a fast-moving global economy which his nation is incapable to meet even to this day. In a memorable speech on the eve of the 1957 presidential election where he raced against then Vice President Carlos Garcia, he petitioned all sectors of society, and like Rizal, implored the youth:

In his speech "Our Mendicant Foreign Policy", delivered before the 1951 graduates at the University of the Philippines, he implored an end to what he called the panhandling atittude of the Philippine government and emphasized the drive to self reliance. A mendicant policy, he declared, promotes "a dole-out mentality. A dependent nation cannot expect respect from other nations."

Recto was dubbed by the media as the "Radical Gadfly" and the "Great Dissenter". He was considered the nemesis of President Magsaysay's government, disputing him on a number of fundamental issues, including the Philippine relations with the Chiang Kai-shek government, the grant of more bases to the U.S., the American claim of ownership over these bases, and the expanded rights for Americans under the Laurel-Langley Agreement. He was President Garcia's harshest critic, vigorously opposing him on the Ohno-García (Japanese) reparations deal and the Philippine recognition of the American-supported regime of Ngo Dinh Diem.

During the Formosa crisis, the Philippine Congress, controlled by Magsaysay's party men, issued a resolution pledging support to the U.S. defense of Formosa upon threat of a communist invasion. Congress and the Old Guards of the Nationalista Party supported Magsaysay, and Magsaysay prevailed. Recto severely criticized Magsaysay's pro-American stance and forewarned that involvement in U.S. military intervention exposes the Philippines to imminent danger. Recto's consistent stand was proven right by history's turn of events.

Without his steerage of the Partida Democrata, the party experienced its eventual demise; he founded a second, the Nationalist Citizens Party which espoused neutrality in foreign relations and advocated economic independence from American interests. In that same 1957 election speech, he further said:^[2]

“

I call upon my countrymen to remember that we have not always been so low and so ignoble, that our nationalist revolution of 1896 was indeed the first blow struck against an imperialist power and that the words and deeds of Rizal, Bonifacio, Del Pilar and Mabini once stirred the hearts of liberty-loving men all over Asia. Our national salvation lies first in reasserting the ideals of our heroes in their fight for emancipation, and second in changing the course of our economic efforts by giving emphasis to nationalist industrialization.

”

Recto sponsored the Rizal bill together with fellow senator Jose Laurel. The bill would require all high schools and colleges to include in their curricula a course in the study of Rizal's literary works, mainly the Noli me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, to provide an in-depth study of nationalism and the shaping of national character invoked in these two novels. Although it met strong opposition from a contingent of Catholic groups because of the books' virulent attack on the Church and their perceived anti-clericalism, the bill was passed and approved on December 6, 1956 and became R.A. 1425 known as Rizal Law.^[3] Today there are many, especially among college and university students, who are calling for a repeal or revision of this law, questioning its essentiality to a high school and college diploma and its relevance to modern-day Filipino life.

Poet, playwright, essayist

The Spanish language was where he was reared and schooled. Alongside Tagalog, it was Recto's mother tongue, although he was equally adept in English. His initial fame was as a poet while a student at the University of Santo Tomás when he published a book Bajos Los Cocoteros (Under the Coconut Trees, 1911), a collection of his poems in Spanish. A staff writer of El Ideal, and later La Vanguardia, he wrote a daily column, Primares Cuartillas (First Sheets), under the nom de plume Aristeo Hilario. They were prose and numerous poems of satirical pieces. Some of his work still grace the classic poetry anthologies of the Hispanic world.

Among the plays that he authored were La Ruta de Damasco (The Route to Damascus, 1918), and Solo entre las Sombras (Alone among the Shadows, 1917), which were lauded not only in the Philippines, but also in Spain and Latin America. Both were produced and staged in Manila to critical acclaim in the mid 1950s.

In 1929, his article Monroismo Asiático (Asiatic Monroism) was published, validating his repute as a political satirist. In what was claimed as a commendable study in polemics, he proferred his arguments and defenses in a debate with Dean Máximo Kálaw of the University of the Philippines where Kálaw championed a version of the Monroe Doctrine with its application to the Asian continent, while Recto took the opposing side. The original Monroe doctrine (1823) was U.S. President Monroe's foreign policy of keeping the Americas off-limits to the influence of the Old World, and states that the United States, Mexico, and countries in South and Central America were no longer open to European colonization. Recto was passionately against its implementation in Asia, wary of Japan's preeminence and its aggressive stance towards its neighbors. In his deliberation he wrote about foreseeing the danger Japan posed to the Philippines and other Asian countries. His words proved prophetic when Japan invaded and colonized the region, including the Philippines from 1942-45.

His eloquence and facility with the Spanish language were recognized throughout the Hispanic world. The Enciclopedia Universal says of him: Recto, more than a politician and lawyer, is a Spanish writer, and that among those of his race (he is pure Tagalog on both sides), there is not and there has been no one who has surpassed him in the mastery of the language of his country's former sovereign.^[4]

The 'finest mind of his generation'

Claro M. Recto is considered the "finest mind of his generation".^[5] Through his speeches and writings, he was able to mold the mind of his Filipino contemporaries and succeeding generations, a skill "only excelled by Rizal's".^[5]

He left a mark on the patriotic climate of his time and a lasting legacy to those who succeeded him. Such icons of nationalism as Lorenzo Tanada, Jose Diokno, Renato Constantino, Jovito Salonga, refer to him as a mentor and forerunner.

Teodoro M. Locsín of the Philippines Free Press, defines Recto's genius, thus:^[5]

"Recto is not a good speaker, no. He will arouse no mob. But heaven help the one whose pretensions he chooses to demolish. His sentences march like ordered battalions against the inmost citadel of the man's arguments, and reduce them to rubble; meanwhile his reservations stand like armed sentries against the most silent approach and every attempt at encirclement by the adversary. The reduction to absurdity of Nacionalista senator Zulueta's conception of sound foreign policy was a shattering experience, the skill that goes into the cutting of a diamond went into the work of demolition. There was no slip of the hand, no flaw in the tool. All was delicately, perfectly done... Recto cannot defend the indefensible, but what can be defended, he will see to it that it will not be taken."

Criticism

His critics claim that Recto's brilliance is overshadowed by his inability to capture nationwide acceptance. He could have been an exceptional leader, perhaps a great president, but his appeal was limited to the intellectual elite and the nationalist minority of his time.

In the same article, political editorialist, Manuel L. Quezon III, laments this fact:

"Recto's leadership was the curious kind that only finds fulfillment from being at the periphery of power, and not from being its fulcrum. It was the best occupation suited to the satirist that he was. His success at the polls would be limited, his ability to mold the minds of his contemporaries was only excelled by Rizal's...But he was admired for his intellect and his dogged determination to never let the opposition be bereft of a champion, still his opposition was flawed. For it was one that never bothered to transform itself into an opposition capable of taking power."^[5]

However, one possible explanation as to why Recto was never able to capture full national acceptance was because he dared strongly oppose the national security interests of the United States in the Philippines, as when he campaigned against the US military bases in his country. During the 1957 presidential campaign, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted black propaganda operations to ensure his defeat, including the distribution of condoms with holes in them and marked with `Courtesy of Claro M. Recto' on the labels.^{[6] [7]}

Death

Claro M. Recto died of a heart attack in Rome, Italy, on October 2, 1960, while on a cultural mission, and en route to Spain, where he was to fulfill a series of speaking engagements.

The US Central Intelligence Agency is suspected of involvement in his death. Recto, who had no known heart disease, met with two mysterious "Caucasians" wearing business suits before he died. US government documents later showed that a plan to murder Recto with a vial of poison was discussed by CIA Chief of Station Ralph Lovett and the US Ambassador to the Philippines Admiral Raymond Spruance years earlier.^[8][9]

Recto was married to Doña Aurora Reyes, with whom he had two sons. He had four children in his first marriage with Doña Angeles Silos.

Speeches and writings

• A realistic economic policy for the Philippines. Speech delivered at the Philippine Columbian Association, Sept. 26, 1956. ISBN B0007KCFEM
• On the Formosa Question, 1955 ISBN B0007JI5DI
• United States-Philippine Relations, 1935-1960. Alicia Benitez, ed. University of Hawaii, 1964.
• Three years of enemy occupation: The issue of political collaboration in the Philippines. Filipiniana series, 1985 Filipiana reprint. ISBN B0007K1JRG
• Our trade relations with the United States, 1954 ISBN B0007K8LS6
• The evil of religious test in a democracy, 1960 ISBN B0007K4Y8W
• Solo entre las sombres: Drama en un acto y en prosa, 1917; reprinted 1999 ISBN 971-555-306-0
• Asiatic monroeism and other essays: Articles of debate, 1930 ISBN B0008A5354
• The law of belligerent occupation and the effect of the change of sovereignty on the commonwealth treason law: With particular reference to the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, 1946
• Our lingering colonial complex, a speech before the Baguio Press Association, 1951

• The Quirino junket: an Objective Appraisal, 1949 ISBN B0007K4A7W
• The Philippine survival: Nationalist essays by Claro M. Recto, 1982
• Claro Recto on our Constitution, Constitutional Amendments and the Constitutional Convention of 1991
• Our mendicant foreign policy, a speech at the commencement exercises, University of the Philippines, 1951
• The Recto Valedictory, a collection of 10 never-delivered speeches, with English translations by Nick Joaquin, 1985
• ^{[1] [2]} Vintage Recto: Memorable speeches and writings, edited by Renato Constantino, 1986
• Recto Reader: Excerpts from the Speeches of Claro M. Recto. edited by Renato Constantino, 1965 ISBN B0006E72Z6
  
  
  

Further reading

• The relevant Recto, by Renato Constantino, 1986
• Dissent on Philippine Society; the Filipino elite; Recto's Second Demise, by Renato Constantino, 1972
• The Relevance of Recto Today: A review of Philippine-American and other relations, by Emerenciana Avellana
• Recto and the National Democratic Struggle: a re-appraisal, by Jose Sison, 1969
• Claro M. Recto, 1890-1990: A Centenary tribute of the Civil Liberties Union, 1990
• The Crisis of a Republic by Teodoro Agoncillo, University of the Philippines Press, Quezon City.
• White Love, Surveillance and Nationalist Resistance in the United States Colonization of the Philippines by Vince Rafael
• The Star-Entangled Banner: One Hundred Years of America in the Philippines by Sharon Delmondo, 2004
• Nationalism: a summons to greatness by Lorenzo M. Tañada; edited by Ileana Maramag, 1965
• Cory Aquino: Person of the Century by Manuel L. Quezon III, Philippines Free Press, December 30, 1999.
  
  
  

Footnotes

1. ^ The Manila Times Internet Edition (2006-02-10). Remembering Claro M. Recto. Press release. http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/feb/10/yehey/opinion/20060210opi5.html. Retrieved on 2007-08-29.
   
2. ^ Luzadas, Jose. "THE UNEXPLAINED: OKR's Failure to Support Recto and Laurel in Rizal Bill". Order of the Knights of Rizal. http://www.RizalCanada.org/Pages/PermanentPages/ArticleRizalBill.html. Retrieved on 2007-08-29
   
3. ^ ^{a b c d} Quezon, eManuel III (1999-12-30). "Cory Aquino: Person of the Century". Archives: Articles/Columns. Quezon.ph. http://www.quezon.ph/thecolumn.php?which=9. Retrieved on 2007-08-29.
4. ^ The Worst Book of 2002. Review of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, by Max Boot. 2003 Retrieved March 17, 2009, from http://www.main.nc.us/books/books.cgi?theworstbookof2002.
5. ^ Simbulan, Roland. Covert Operations and the CIA's Hidden History in the Philippines. 18 Aug. 2000. Retrieved March 17, 2009, from http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/filipinas/doc/cia.html.
6. ^ The Worst Book of 2002. Review of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, by Max Boot. 2003. Retrieved on March 17, 2009, from http://www.main.nc.us/books/books.cgi?theworstbookof2002.
7. ^ Simbulan, Roland. Covert Operations and the CIA's Hidden History in the Philippines. 18 August 2000. Retrieved on March 17, 2009, from http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/filipinas/doc/cia.html.
   
   
   

External links

• http://www.quezon.ph/thecolumn.php?which=9
• http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=29698
• http://www.bookrags.com/biography/claro-m-recto/
• http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/feb/10/yehey/opinion/20060210opi5.html
• http://www.senate.gov.ph/senators/former_senators//claro_recto.htm
• http://www.mb.com.ph/issues/2006/03/14/OPED2006031458608.html
• http://www.RizalCanada.org/Pages/PermanentPages/ArticleRizalBill.html
• http://www.los-indios-bravos.com/english/eng_proj_10.html A note on Recto's play by Nick Joaquin
• http://www.magandamagazine.org/06/institutional5.html the institutional invisibility of American imperialism, the Philippines and Filipino Americans

Source: http://www.answers.com/topic/claro-m-recto

Our (Filipino) Indifference to a Rape

WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: Note: Bold and/or Underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked postings/articles. Forwarding the postings to relatives and friends, especially in the homeland, is greatly appreciated.

To write or read a comment, please go to http://www.thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/ and scroll down to the bottom of the current post (or another post you read and may want to respond) and click on "Comments."

The disrespect for us Filipinos and our homeland by the American military/government was again recently demonstrated by the Subic Rape Case. Even with the expiration of the American-imposed Bases Agreement, we Filipinos are still having the same problems with the US military. This time thanks to the VFA (which includes BIA and SOFA provisions) railroaded by our perennially subservient rulers.

In the original posting, I predicted --but hoped to be wrong-- that the Subic Rape Case will be a whitewash, as all crimes/offenses by US military personnel ended in the past decades. Now, after our court let go the other American servicemen who were active participants in the crime and has convicted only one, our homeland's rulers in a very anti-Filipino decision, acted to further please the Americans by returning (in the middle of the night) to the US military the convicted American soldier-rapist and thus not serving his sentence in our homeland (only a strong and bully nation can impose on willing native accomplices/rulers).

All these crimes, all these foreign insults and disrespect to native Filipinos in our own homeland will not stop until we study our nationalist history to learn and understand ourselves, to know the "how, what, when, and why" we have lost our Filipino nationalism. Thus our mendicancy and colonial mentality remain unchallenged, which have perpetually kept us without national dignity and sovereignty in our own homeland.

Our traitorous rulers allow them to occur because majority of us natives are mainly illiterate. It is only by knowing ourselves can we act to free our caged minds, to strongly require our rulers to fight for and recover our national dignity and sovereignty as a people. With knowledge and understanding, we native Filipinos can unite, demand and ensure that our rulers do their job, i.e. for the native Filipinos.

It is long overdue that we learn, realize and remember that our homeland and we the Filipino people do not count in the eyes of the American government and its military. Thus in the case of military rape and any other crime committed in our homeland by American servicemen, we will only be continually taken for granted and pressured to remain on our knees, with extended hand begging and being unquestioningly conditioned to be pro-American and anti-Filipino.

In my most recent posting Rape in the US Military, about rapes by American servicemen, it is instructive to know how difficult it is for American military women, regardless of military rank, to pursue their rape charges against fellow American military men. What more for a Filipina, civilian woman?

It is long overdue that we destroy our Americanized minds for the good of the native Filipino - maybe too late for our generation - but for the sake of the next generations of native Filipinos.

In below article, Fr. Shay Cullen (PREDA), who for decades has persistently spoken, exposed and fought against sexual exploitation in our homeland wonders why we natives have been quiet.

I wonder if we Filipinos are what we oftentimes are:"ningas kugon."

- Bert

"Those who profess to favor freedom
and yet deprecate agitation
are men who want crops without
plowing up the ground;
they want rain without thunder and
lightning.

They want the ocean without the
awful roar of its waters.
This struggle may be a moral one
or it may be a physical one
or it may be both moral and physical
but it must be a struggle.

Power concedes nothing without a
demand
It never did, and never will." – Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Lecturer, Author and Slave, 1817-1895)



*************

The Inconvenient Contradictions
(republishing, copying, no restrictions)
By: Father Shay Cullen

A portrait of U.S. marine Lance Corporal Daniel Smith displayed by protesters during a rally outside the U.S. embassy in Manila April 24, 2009 to condemn the acquittal of Smith.

The outpouring of public concern and outrage over the acquittal and overturning of a rape conviction and a life sentence by the Philippine Court of Appeals against US Navy Marine Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, was less than expected. The public had been conditioned by the affidavit of desistance of the victim made last 8 March 2009. Soon after that the young woman, Nicole (not her real name), departed to the United States with a special immigrant visa, if not a green card and a generous financial gratuity by way of compensation. A deal had been done. The complainant was neutralized and the court could proceed with the expected acquittal.

The Court of Appeals division 11 is composed of three female judges. They ruled that they had ignored the affidavit of Nicole, but that she was not an innocent provincial girl but a woman of “indecorous behavior”. More or less saying that the victim had asked for it and was to blame. The ruling said in effect that the lower court had been wrong in convicting Smith of rape because the evidence showed that it was a “spontaneous unplanned romantic episode”. Indeed!

It ruled that semi-intoxicated Nicole, even though she was carried on the back of the marine to a van where the “spontaneous romantic episode” happened, gave her consent. Many have taken issue with this decision. But it was the only “political” decision possible.

For many Americans and Filipino officials and business leaders, it is unimaginable for a US marine to be imprisoned for life in a filthy, disease-ridden Philippine jail with criminals, rapists, rats and cockroaches. It would lead to unending protest rallies in the United States, and an end to all US investment and aid to the Philippines.

That was the reason the US government insisted on keeping Smith in the US Embassy and not in a Filipino jail. They were right, those jails are unfit for human habitation. They are still the abode of Filipino children and we wish many Filipinos would consider it unimaginable that children would be incarcerated with adult criminals and rats and rally to have them released.

But what a campaign it was for the activist groups during the past three years that saw rallies, marches and denunciations of US military rapists and women abusers. There were even calls by some opposition politicians for the Philippines to rescind the Visiting Forces Agreement(VFA) that allows US ships and planes to use the Philippines ports and airports and conduct military exercises. It was the widespread sexual exploitation of women and children by US servicemen and sex tourists in the honky-tonk bars of Olongapo and Angeles City and elsewhere that led to the campaign to close the bases and convert them to economic zones.

That was a ten year campaign that succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. It started the day in 1983, when I discovered 12 children, the youngest was 9 years-old, infected with venereal diseases and hidden away from the public and media in the Olongapo city general hospital by the mayor and US admiral. Not even the Red Cross came to save them. Exposing that nearly cost me my life.

The bases are closed since 1992 and hundreds of manufacturing enterprises, hotels, and family tourist resorts employ as many as 80,000 Filipinos with dignified work. While the bases went away, the sex industry did not completely die. It reemerged in 1996 run by the international sex mafia with thousands of European and Australian sex tourists and retired US servicemen enjoying the sexual exploitation of young women and children they once enjoyed.

Today, sex slavery is growing and thousands of women and children are trafficked into the sex clubs that proliferate across the land from the cities to the seaside resorts. Child rape, prostitution of children, forced abortions and every kind of sexual exploitation is rampant. There are no campaigns, rallies nor marches for them. Why not? Thousands of foreigners are doing this every day and night in sex bars, clubs and hotels across the land and it is just as evil and wrong and outrageous as what the marchers and protesters said Daniel Smith did to Nicole and there is not a placard of protest to be seen. END

Source: http://www.preda.org/archives/2009/r09042901.html

WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: Note: Bold and/or Underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked postings/articles. Forwarding the postings to relatives and friends, especially in the homeland, is greatly appreciated.

To write or read a comment, please go to http://www.thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/ and scroll down to the bottom of the current post (or another post you read and may want to respond) and click on "Comments."

"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain" - Thomas Jefferson, 1809

"People who are greedy have extraordinary capacities for waste - they must, they take in too much" - Norman Mailer, 1968

"You show me a capitalist, I'll show you a bloodsucker" - Malcolm X, 1965

"Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society" - Ayn Rand, 1961

"The chief business of America is business" - President Calvin Coolidge, 1925

***************************

Capitalist Fools

Behind the debate over remaking U.S. financial policy will be a debate over who’s to blame. It’s crucial to get the history right, writes a Nobel-laureate economist, identifying five key mistakes—under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II—and one national delusion.

by Joseph E. Stiglitz January 2009

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan bookend two decades of economic missteps. Photo illustration by Darrow.

There will come a moment when the most urgent threats posed by the credit crisis have eased and the larger task before us will be to chart a direction for the economic steps ahead. This will be a dangerous moment. Behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history—a debate over the causes of our current situation. The battle for the past will determine the battle for the present. So it’s crucial to get the history straight.

What were the critical decisions that led to the crisis? Mistakes were made at every fork in the road—we had what engineers call a “system failure,” when not a single decision but a cascade of decisions produce a tragic result. Let’s look at five key moments.

No. 1: Firing the Chairman

In 1987 the Reagan administration decided to remove Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and appoint Alan Greenspan in his place. Volcker had done what central bankers are supposed to do. On his watch, inflation had been brought down from more than 11 percent to under 4 percent. In the world of central banking, that should have earned him a grade of A+++ and assured his re-appointment. But Volcker also understood that financial markets need to be regulated. Reagan wanted someone who did not believe any such thing, and he found him in a devotee of the objectivist philosopher and free-market zealot Ayn Rand.

Greenspan played a double role. The Fed controls the money spigot, and in the early years of this decade, he turned it on full force. But the Fed is also a regulator. If you appoint an anti-regulator as your enforcer, you know what kind of enforcement you’ll get. A flood of liquidity combined with the failed levees of regulation proved disastrous.

How did we land in a recession? Visit our archive, “Charting the Road to Ruin.” Illustration by Edward Sorel.

Greenspan presided over not one but two financial bubbles. After the high-tech bubble popped, in 2000–2001, he helped inflate the housing bubble. The first responsibility of a central bank should be to maintain the stability of the financial system. If banks lend on the basis of artificially high asset prices, the result can be a meltdown—as we are seeing now, and as Greenspan should have known. He had many of the tools he needed to cope with the situation. To deal with the high-tech bubble, he could have increased margin requirements (the amount of cash people need to put down to buy stock). To deflate the housing bubble, he could have curbed predatory lending to low-income households and prohibited other insidious practices (the no-documentation—or “liar”—loans, the interest-only loans, and so on). This would have gone a long way toward protecting us. If he didn’t have the tools, he could have gone to Congress and asked for them.

Of course, the current problems with our financial system are not solely the result of bad lending. The banks have made mega-bets with one another through complicated instruments such as derivatives, credit-default swaps, and so forth. With these, one party pays another if certain events happen—for instance, if Bear Stearns goes bankrupt, or if the dollar soars. These instruments were originally created to help manage risk—but they can also be used to gamble. Thus, if you felt confident that the dollar was going to fall, you could make a big bet accordingly, and if the dollar indeed fell, your profits would soar. The problem is that, with this complicated intertwining of bets of great magnitude, no one could be sure of the financial position of anyone else—or even of one’s own position. Not surprisingly, the credit markets froze.

Here too Greenspan played a role. When I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, during the Clinton administration, I served on a committee of all the major federal financial regulators, a group that included Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Even then, it was clear that derivatives posed a danger. We didn’t put it as memorably as Warren Buffett—who saw derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction”—but we took his point. And yet, for all the risk, the deregulators in charge of the financial system—at the Fed, at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and elsewhere—decided to do nothing, worried that any action might interfere with “innovation” in the financial system. But innovation, like “change,” has no inherent value. It can be bad (the “liar” loans are a good example) as well as good.

No. 2: Tearing Down the Walls

The deregulation philosophy would pay unwelcome dividends for years to come. In November 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act—the culmination of a $300 million lobbying effort by the banking and financial-services industries, and spearheaded in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm. Glass-Steagall had long separated commercial banks (which lend money) and investment banks (which organize the sale of bonds and equities); it had been enacted in the aftermath of the Great Depression and was meant to curb the excesses of that era, including grave conflicts of interest. For instance, without separation, if a company whose shares had been issued by an investment bank, with its strong endorsement, got into trouble, wouldn’t its commercial arm, if it had one, feel pressure to lend it money, perhaps unwisely? An ensuing spiral of bad judgment is not hard to foresee. I had opposed repeal of Glass-Steagall. The proponents said, in effect, Trust us: we will create Chinese walls to make sure that the problems of the past do not recur. As an economist, I certainly possessed a healthy degree of trust, trust in the power of economic incentives to bend human behavior toward self-interest—toward short-term self-interest, at any rate, rather than Tocqueville’s “self interest rightly understood.”

The most important consequence of the repeal of Glass-Steagall was indirect—it lay in the way repeal changed an entire culture. Commercial banks are not supposed to be high-risk ventures; they are supposed to manage other people’s money very conservatively. It is with this understanding that the government agrees to pick up the tab should they fail. Investment banks, on the other hand, have traditionally managed rich people’s money—people who can take bigger risks in order to get bigger returns. When repeal of Glass-Steagall brought investment and commercial banks together, the investment-bank culture came out on top. There was a demand for the kind of high returns that could be obtained only through high leverage and big risktaking.

There were other important steps down the deregulatory path. One was the decision in April 2004 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, at a meeting attended by virtually no one and largely overlooked at the time, to allow big investment banks to increase their debt-to-capital ratio (from 12:1 to 30:1, or higher) so that they could buy more mortgage-backed securities, inflating the housing bubble in the process. In agreeing to this measure, the S.E.C. argued for the virtues of self-regulation: the peculiar notion that banks can effectively police themselves. Self-regulation is preposterous, as even Alan Greenspan now concedes, and as a practical matter it can’t, in any case, identify systemic risks—the kinds of risks that arise when, for instance, the models used by each of the banks to manage their portfolios tell all the banks to sell some security all at once.

As we stripped back the old regulations, we did nothing to address the new challenges posed by 21st-century markets. The most important challenge was that posed by derivatives. In 1998 the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born, had called for such regulation—a concern that took on urgency after the Fed, in that same year, engineered the bailout of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund whose trillion-dollar-plus failure threatened global financial markets. But Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, his deputy, Larry Summers and Greenspan were adamant—and successful—in their opposition. Nothing was done.

No. 3: Applying the Leeches

Then along came the Bush tax cuts, enacted first on June 7, 2001, with a follow-on installment two years later. The president and his advisers seemed to believe that tax cuts, especially for upper-income Americans and corporations, were a cure-all for any economic disease—the modern-day equivalent of leeches. The tax cuts played a pivotal role in shaping the background conditions of the current crisis. Because they did very little to stimulate the economy, real stimulation was left to the Fed, which took up the task with unprecedented low-interest rates and liquidity. The war in Iraq made matters worse, because it led to soaring oil prices. With America so dependent on oil imports, we had to spend several hundred billion more to purchase oil—money that otherwise would have been spent on American goods. Normally this would have led to an economic slowdown, as it had in the 1970s. But the Fed met the challenge in the most myopic way imaginable. The flood of liquidity made money readily available in mortgage markets, even to those who would normally not be able to borrow. And, yes, this succeeded in forestalling an economic downturn; America’s household saving rate plummeted to zero. But it should have been clear that we were living on borrowed money and borrowed time.

The cut in the tax rate on capital gains contributed to the crisis in another way. It was a decision that turned on values: those who speculated (read: gambled) and won were taxed more lightly than wage earners who simply worked hard. But more than that, the decision encouraged leveraging, because interest was tax-deductible. If, for instance, you borrowed a million to buy a home or took a $100,000 home-equity loan to buy stock, the interest would be fully deductible every year. Any capital gains you made were taxed lightly—and at some possibly remote day in the future. The Bush administration was providing an open invitation to excessive borrowing and lending—not that American consumers needed any more encouragement.

No. 4: Faking the Numbers

Meanwhile, on July 30, 2002, in the wake of a series of major scandals—notably the collapse of WorldCom and Enron—Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The scandals had involved every major American accounting firm, most of our banks, and some of our premier companies, and made it clear that we had serious problems with our accounting system. Accounting is a sleep-inducing topic for most people, but if you can’t have faith in a company’s numbers, then you can’t have faith in anything about a company at all. Unfortunately, in the negotiations over what became Sarbanes-Oxley a decision was made not to deal with what many, including the respected former head of the S.E.C. Arthur Levitt, believed to be a fundamental underlying problem: stock options. Stock options have been defended as providing healthy incentives toward good management, but in fact they are “incentive pay” in name only. If a company does well, the C.E.O. gets great rewards in the form of stock options; if a company does poorly, the compensation is almost as substantial but is bestowed in other ways. This is bad enough. But a collateral problem with stock options is that they provide incentives for bad accounting: top management has every incentive to provide distorted information in order to pump up share prices.

The incentive structure of the rating agencies also proved perverse. Agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s are paid by the very people they are supposed to grade. As a result, they’ve had every reason to give companies high ratings, in a financial version of what college professors know as grade inflation. The rating agencies, like the investment banks that were paying them, believed in financial alchemy—that F-rated toxic mortgages could be converted into products that were safe enough to be held by commercial banks and pension funds. We had seen this same failure of the rating agencies during the East Asia crisis of the 1990s: high ratings facilitated a rush of money into the region, and then a sudden reversal in the ratings brought devastation. But the financial overseers paid no attention.

No. 5: Letting It Bleed

The final turning point came with the passage of a bailout package on October 3, 2008—that is, with the administration’s response to the crisis itself. We will be feeling the consequences for years to come. Both the administration and the Fed had long been driven by wishful thinking, hoping that the bad news was just a blip, and that a return to growth was just around the corner. As America’s banks faced collapse, the administration veered from one course of action to another. Some institutions (Bear Stearns, A.I.G., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) were bailed out. Lehman Brothers was not. Some shareholders got something back. Others did not.

The original proposal by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a three-page document that would have provided $700 billion for the secretary to spend at his sole discretion, without oversight or judicial review, was an act of extraordinary arrogance. He sold the program as necessary to restore confidence. But it didn’t address the underlying reasons for the loss of confidence. The banks had made too many bad loans. There were big holes in their balance sheets. No one knew what was truth and what was fiction. The bailout package was like a massive transfusion to a patient suffering from internal bleeding—and nothing was being done about the source of the problem, namely all those foreclosures. Valuable time was wasted as Paulson pushed his own plan, “cash for trash,” buying up the bad assets and putting the risk onto American taxpayers. When he finally abandoned it, providing banks with money they needed, he did it in a way that not only cheated America’s taxpayers but failed to ensure that the banks would use the money to re-start lending. He even allowed the banks to pour out money to their shareholders as taxpayers were pouring money into the banks.

The other problem not addressed involved the looming weaknesses in the economy. The economy had been sustained by excessive borrowing. That game was up. As consumption contracted, exports kept the economy going, but with the dollar strengthening and Europe and the rest of the world declining, it was hard to see how that could continue. Meanwhile, states faced massive drop-offs in revenues—they would have to cut back on expenditures. Without quick action by government, the economy faced a downturn. And even if banks had lent wisely—which they hadn’t—the downturn was sure to mean an increase in bad debts, further weakening the struggling financial sector.

The administration talked about confidence building, but what it delivered was actually a confidence trick. If the administration had really wanted to restore confidence in the financial system, it would have begun by addressing the underlying problems—the flawed incentive structures and the inadequate regulatory system.

Was there any single decision which, had it been reversed, would have changed the course of history? Every decision—including decisions not to do something, as many of our bad economic decisions have been—is a consequence of prior decisions, an interlinked web stretching from the distant past into the future. You’ll hear some on the right point to certain actions by the government itself—such as the Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to make mortgage money available in low-income neighborhoods. (Defaults on C.R.A. lending were actually much lower than on other lending.) There has been much finger-pointing at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two huge mortgage lenders, which were originally government-owned. But in fact they came late to the subprime game, and their problem was similar to that of the private sector: their C.E.O.’s had the same perverse incentive to indulge in gambling.

The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, “I have found a flaw.”

Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working.” “Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan said. The embrace by America—and much of the rest of the world—of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, is a professor at Columbia University.

Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/stiglitz200901