At The Threshold

"But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive..." - 2 Timothy 3:1,2

Historical accounts would tell, today marks the first time New York City - the mega city that it is -is closed for a reason - a hurricane - unprecedented in magnitude that is expected to wreak havoc on the city. Airports have been shutdown,  public transit system halted, businesses that make the city the world's financial capital spontaneously stopped operation, and regrettably, the US Open which I have been earnestly waiting to watch live on television, understandably had to bow down to Irene the hurricane. Sixty five million people are said to be  living on the harm's way, with an unprecedented massive evacuation that has been taking place already.

While Irene takes landfall on North Carolina for her expected pummeling spree all over East Coast of the Atlantic, Mina on the other hand has already started her orgy of destruction on Northern Luzon. Landslides that caused deaths this early has been reported already and the death toll of course is expected to rise.

Yesterday,  Al Jazeera was beaming graphic images from Tripoli with the city literally chokes on stench coming from dead bodies that litter around the city. Dead bodies on top of another become a mundane scenario that serves as backdrop for fleeing little children gripping the hands of their parents in search for refuge as the city has turned into an apocalyptic war zone. Even a dying boy who lies unattended in a hospital bed for lack of medics and equipments, proudly displays a V-sign. Several other injured from the battle have managed to drag themselves into hospital corridors as blood splatter all over the aisle until they reached a doctor-less emergency room till rigor mortis sets in their bodies.

In Syria, tens if not scores are reported to be dead everyday due to a government-sanctioned killings of civilian protesters who have grown weary of a corrupt and repressive government of Bashar Assad. Hundreds of thousands have already been displaced to the neighboring Turkey in the north, some, even old men die of their injuries upon reaching the border as government soldiers go on their shooting spree of the fleeing civilians. Assad would not back down from his murderous rampage of the civilian population he labels as terrorists.

Just weeks ago, rioting took place in the cities of England where young men went on looting businesses and setting fire to establishments and offices, passersby even robbed and mugged for no reason at all. What makes it incomprehensible is that, this normally does not happen in rich and highly-civilized countries like the UK. No matter what prompted this unheard of violence, no rationale can ever justify this reprehensible act that has put the country's reputation in murky water. It was just that simple, thousands of rioters felt obligated to join the bandwagon of violence forgetting their basic humanity attributed with reason.

At the Horn of Africa, where aid agencies astoundingly announced that famine brought about by drought could cause millions of deaths especially children, aids of food and medicines are being routinely ransacked and plundered by Muslim militias so that they themselves benefit from them and the needy goes on to die from deprivation. International agencies feel crippled and helpless knowing that very little aid reaches the needy because of these Muslim militias that feel empowered and divinely ordained to rob at gunpoint the very basic needs intended for the needy.

Yesterday, Al Qaeda militants had bombed the UN building in Abuja, Nigeria initially killing 18 people. All fatalities were civilians who had spent most of their lives helping other people in need. UN Sec. Gen Ban Ki Moon said, the building housed 26 different aid agencies tasked to distribute aids and medicines to the unfortunate people of the continent. They just died that easy. 

A day before yesterday, 53 people were killed in a casino in the city of Monterrey in Mexico, when drug syndicates set fire to the building where the victims were trapped and  burned alive. The president of Mexico has decreed  four days of mourning for the victims. So many lives lost inexplicably when evil doers are on the prowl.

At a glance of the news, our reaction comes naturally - to cringe for wasted lives due to violence birthed by man's loss of rationality. But somehow we feel immune to the things that have become a way of life for  most of us. Hardly these things strike a surprise. Maybe this is how our planet concurs to Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory. Certainly, these do not stop us to go on with our lives, and understandably, some would even trivialize these as much as we treat it like things of the ordinary. But what if these were the precursor of greater/terrible things to come? What if these were warnings that we failed to heed?

From nature's fury to man-made disasters, every phenomenon seems to be an indicator that the world has reached  greater lengths ominously forewarned in the Bible. In Ephesians 6:12, the apostle Paul says that this world is ruled by wicked spiritual forces, they are the rulers of this dark age. And yes, many would scoff at the truth, just like in the days of Noah. But the Bible clearly warns, " But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God--having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them." (2Timothy 3:1-5)

Matthew 24: 3-14

As he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples approached him privately and said, "Tell us when will this happen, and what sign will there be of your coming, and of the end of the age?" Jesus said to them in reply, "See that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, saying, "I am the Messiah," and they will deceive many. You will hear of wars and report of wars; see that you are not alarmed, for these things must happen, but it will not yet be the end. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be famines and earthquakes from place to place. All these are the beginning of the labor pains. Then they will hand you over to persecution, and they will kill you. You will be hated by all nations because of my name. And then many will be led into sin; they will betray and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and deceive many; and because of the increase of evildoing, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.

Imelda, Gadhafi And Ahmadinejad Are Relatives?

"Ambitious or greedy rulers are tyrants. Instead of using authority to benefit their citizens, they covet more power and wealth, which leads to oppressive legislation and policies." - Proverbs 28:16

No, it's not a headline in one of the prestigious broadsheets nor a pop-up in your Yahoo homepage. Guess again.  Seems like a preposterous joke only jerks are able to weave out of disgust. Well, let's understand and put it in perspective how this supposed theory could generate facts that could establish a new gene pool of astronomical liars. Understandably, they have very similar reputation as big time liars. Ahmadinejad out of hatred for the Jews declared that Holocaust did not happen at all and it was an invention by the West. And the notoriety of this bearded sinister-looking man to change history had won him over the admiration of Imelda Marcos. She on the other hand, is of no lesser icon for her notoriety to twist and twirl the history. This twentieth century-reincarnation of Marie Antoinette whose extravagance would shame the latter's exploits have another to look up to as her model in Evita Peron. But history would prove that our diva from Leyte outsmarted and outshone them both in the 'greedy' category. She "loves all things of beauty" - of grandiose beauty cohesive with ostentatious display of excesses. That's her unchanging mantra only identifiable to her and her epitaph when the gods call it a day.

The vintage Imelda recently stole the limelight one more time with her unequivocal guiltless declaration that human rights abuses did not happen during the twenty-year rule of her husband. That having said a vintage liar only she personifies. Also recently, her son, senator Bongbong Marcos beamed to the world his take on EDSA that had it not happened the Philippines could have been another Singapore. What a shameless sarcastic affront to human intelligence only this magnificent tandem of liars can pull off! While the advent of social media has played a role in repressive regimes downfall one after another, one wonders why no one would ever dare to bust up the lies of this history-twisting family of plunderers. Why is it so? Because they are as equally as powerful as they were before. Their clout did not seem to erode. The  son elected to the senate overwhelmingly. The 'personification' of all greed elected to Congress unopposed in her district. The elder daughter as governor. That is despite a court's conviction of plunder, a world recognition as one of the greediest families ever in human history, of being champions of human rights abuses, among other titles and accolades appended to their resume.

Certainly it is noble to forgive much more to forget. But if you look too closely, nothing has been manifested that is worthy of forgiveness. The Filipinos have easily forgiven. In fact, they all suddenly fell into a deep amnesia. While it is hardly a bad thing, the pulse of a forgetful common man (read as stupid) has led to the revival of arrogance in the Marcoses. Instead of  faking out (at least) a show of remorse, they have been bluntly giving out a message of self-vindication and feeling sorry for the Filipino nation that the EDSA 1 episode had figured in history that according to them, it effectively  brought  the end the nation's opportunity to become the next Singapore. If some of the equally-twisted minds are happy to take that, then good for them. Their idols, instead of languishing in jail for their crimes against an entire nation, they are being glamorized and revered by a disgusting army of fanatics who are too delusional and blinded to be awakened from their idolatry. On the contrary, I do believe that we could have been another Singapore had this family of plunderers not invented corruption that became the norm in the government since their enthronement.

In all her glamour and splendor, Imelda simply has no tendency to cave at a psychological warfare vis-a-vis historical facts, much less retreat to her turf a wounded beast. Not even a scar from a plunder conviction could deter her from shouting to the world that the Marcoses are innocent. Her world is full of ironies that she made herself believe that they are being oppressed and disrespected by the EDSA architects, namely the millions of Filipinos from all walks of life, who felt the need to drive an evil regime out of the country that has produced countless of heroes for the sake of its people yet reigned over by perverts. The Filipinos were wrong she would assert, that they had driven out a great leader for twenty years in Marcos. Wrong because there were still rooms for billions of dollars worth of gold bullions in Swiss banks reserved for the Marcoses on top of the billions of dollars of cash already stolen from the typical hand-to-mouth Filipino family. That is where Imelda sees beauty that she's preaching to spread. There is beauty in plundering the whole nation that resulted to the advent of communist insurgency.  And there is beauty in possessing thousands of pairs of expensive, some diamond-encrusted shoes, and jaw-dropping hundreds of millions of dollars worth of jewelry that even Queen Elizabeth II would salivate in envy. And these discoveries were made a world spectacle attributed to  Imelda era that helped made the Philippines a famous country on the planet, apart from its reputation of being a Spanish colony for over 300 years. Such fame was undeniable that gave claimants of original English language a jolt and warns that one's lexical knowledge would be incomplete without adopting the word Imeldific to its fold. Well, pretty much the coined word says everything about Imelda.

This brutal battle of what and who decides who is right and who is wrong surely will not end, even history refuses to decide. Those human rights victims by the Marcos regime who have recently been awarded compensation  believe that it is a classic affirmation of good triumphing over evil; that the courts of law have proven that the evil regime had done terrible acts to its people and therefore it must own up to its abuses. While the world applauds this supposed victory, Imelda on the contrary is buzzing with her rhetorics screaming on top of her lungs that there was never a so-called human rights abuses during their reign and that the succeeding regime of democracy icon Cory Aquino had committed more human rights violations. And that is what we aptly call a brand of Imelda Logic. Good news though, she's not expected to be alone in her stratospheric schizophrenia. She has recently invited Gadhafi of Libya to join her into her world of fantasy where they can be each other's shoulder to cry on when the rest of the world does not believe in what they are fighting for. And together they join hands in fending off the infidels in their ululation of victory with the tune of "You And Me Against The World". They very much agree on a certain degree because unconsciously they agree on the saying "misery loves company". Of course, Mr Gadhafi is a multi-billionaire virtually 'owning' a country that sits on one of the world's largest oil reserves. And he claims all Libyans love him, the people of which a third of them subsist on a two-dollar a day, and the very same people that he swears to annihilate till there remains a soul that opposes him. After more than forty years in power and his  subjects wallowing in poverty in a supposed rich country, the Libyan citizens Gadhafi claims love him. There is no violence happening in his country despite the thousands dead bombed and fired at by his troops -  he still claims -  the troublemakers are those clueless foreign elements.

Let's not forget that our Lady Protagonist had once bonded with Gadhafi, and now that he is in trouble, being a friend to him she did not come short  of showing her support and sympathy for him when the US decided to freeze his assets, obviously for a familiar reason she finds affinity with. Yes, for her it still hurts that some of her assets, ill-gotten at that, were returned to the Philippine government because all of those 'rightfully' belong to Imelda. The paradox here surfaces of the peculiar similarity of mindset and behavior of the greedy. And a school of thought may emerge inevitably in the future that Gadhafi and Imelda might be of compatible genes that would put  Ahmadinejad whose denial of Holocaust dwarfs any single biggest insult in the history of mankind -  a first class liar but of inferior genes by virtue of his lesser appetite for  wealth and extravagance entrenched in the Imelda-Gadhafi personas. Just a thought - greed is the only other thing that does not change apart from the word change itself -  at least for this dispensation. It's scary to think that the world is full of greedy people as observed by Bernard Madoff in his defiance to world's condemnation of him  asserting that he is only one of the many. Another barbers' tale validated in a world of coincidences that "birds of the same feathers are indeed the same birds". :-)