Nostalgic About the Berlin Wall 30 Years After the Fall

Volume 1, Issue No. 13

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . . . .

Our latest as of Saturday, November 23, 2019 

~ As a journalist I had to learn some basic information about Germany, the east and west then, and the reunified Germany now, since working for years with the major media network based in Hamburg. When I first visited in 1984, the Cold War was still on between the Soviet Union and its satellites, on the one hand, and the United States and its western allies, on the other. The tension began to weaken five years later, in 1989, with the fall of the much-reviled Berlin Wall. Berlin was one of the cities I toured and included Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Bonn, and of course, Hamburg.

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30 YEARS SINCE THE FALL

Nostalgic About the Berlin Wall

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ 

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

“It teaches us: No wall that keeps people out and restricts freedom is so high or so wide that it can’t be broken down.” - German Chancellor Angela Merkel 

TORONTO - The nostalgic memories of Germany, in particular Berlin, came flooding in as I was reading the news and watching film footage about the Berlin Wall, the concrete barrier that had physically separated the east and the west, essentially two competing ideologies, and the people caught in the maelstrom. On November 9, 1989, the wall came down. 

It's been 30 years since. On that date this year, over 100,000 people joined the festivities celebrating the fall, according to wire reports. Having been to Berlin, first in 1984, and then in September 2012, the joyous celebration was personally meaningful for me. (Videos at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1-sxiCtSOA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15KpuuYvqsI).

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, the Allied powers - the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union - occupied and divided Germany into four blocs. Berlin, the capital, happened to be in the Soviet bloc. 

As the seat of the governing body of the Four Powers was in Berlin, the city was subdivided into four. The part held by the Soviet Union became East Berlin and made capital of East Germany. The remaining three-fourths (the US, UK and France) evolved into West Berlin.

Five years prior, I had the rare chance to be in Berlin as a visiting journalist from the Philippines. I was among the dozen Asian journalists who were guests of Deutsche Welle or DW, the German state-owned public international broadcaster. Later. I left the group for Hamburg for the major phase of my visit.

The West German government through DW arranged our tour of Berlin. We boarded a bus and from the western sector, we crossed into East Berlin at the now-famous Checkpoint Charlie.

My trip was part of the on-the-job training at Deutsche Presse-Agentur, the German news agency based in Hamburg, that hired me as its foreign correspondent in Manila right after Senator Benigno Aquino was assassinated upon arrival from Taipei on August 21, 1983.

I was actually pirated from the Asahi Shimbun, the second-largest Japanese daily, where I found employment a few years after the declaration of martial law in September 1972.

I journeyed to other parts of Germany then - to Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Bonn (then the capital of West Germany) - within a span of four weeks, all-expenses-paid by DPA. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik0AXXyPXaE).

At the English desk in Hamburg, I was covering the trial of General Fabian Ver and other military personalities linked to the Aquino assassination, and writing news analysis of what might result from the proceedings presided by Judge Corazon Agrava.

When I came to Berlin in October 1984, nobody foresaw the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It had been erected in 1961 and became the physical symbol of the "Iron Curtain" during the Cold War. Its demolition paved the way for the reunification of East and West Germany.

Though I knew the historical significance of that visit, I wasn't really prepared to record it because I did not have the means. The only device I had was a cheap Instamatic camera, a bulky tape recorder, a notebook, and a pen.

I distinctly remember being brought by our guides to the iconic Brandenburg Gate (video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9EvFeMDY7c). It is majestic even then as the 12-feet high and barbed-wire topped wall in front of it provided a terrifying background. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_Gate).

My memory of Berlin and Hamburg remains to this day, more than three decades since I boarded a Lufthansa plane for Germany via Bangkok, Bombay (Mumbai), and Frankfurt. 

I left Manila on a borrowed luggage and dressed in summer clothes, a linen suit actually, unaware of the weather conditions in Germany in October, which was actually the middle of autumn. 

When I arrived in Hamburg (from Frankfurt), the first thing a friend in DPA did was to buy a fleece jacket and an overcoat for me. He said I would not be able to stand the cold, and he was correct. From Hamburg (where I stayed and worked), I took the plane to Berlin.

My lasting images of Germany were of the Berlin Wall, the Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, the DPA head office in Hamburg, the Olympic village in Munich, the Cathedral Church of St. Peter in Cologne, the Berlin Tempelhof Airport, and a few landmark places I don't remember now.

But it's the Berlin Wall, and its eventual collapse, that continues to live for its very symbolism with freedom. (Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved).

In a Decade, Toronto's Filipino Community Hasn't Changed Much

Volume 1, Issue No. 12

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . . . .

Our latest as of Friday, November 22, 2019 

~ "Water under the bridge," says the idiom to mean "that a lot of time has passed or a lot of things have happened since a bad experience". It's been over a decade and a year ago, but the role players are very much active in the local sphere and are still in the same old racket as before. Planting the seeds, manipulating the media, controlling outcomes - they're all evident in the events of 2008 in Toronto's Filipino community.

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SAME OLD, SAME OLD

A Peek at Toronto's Filipino Community in 2008

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ 

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

“Manipulation, fueled with good intent, can be a blessing. But when used wickedly, it is the beginning of a magician's karmic calamity.” ― T.F. Hodge

TORONTO - A friend recently handed me a bunch of Filipino tabloids that had been yellowed by age. I'm mildly surprised because high-quality newsprint does not deteriorate as quickly as the most common paper. I should know 'cause I still have good copies of my newspapers I published in 1998 in California.

The copies are dated August and September 2008, a full eleven years since they came out. The contents are very much readable, suggesting that my friend had taken a great deal of time to preserve them.

For a whole snowy morning on this eleventh day of the eleventh month, and pausing momentarily on the eleventh hour, I flicked through their pages, scrutinizing photographs, advertisements, and events as they were reported, and how. The contents were interesting, especially for a student of history like myself.

I was looking for meaningful happenings at that time. The year 2008 is an excellent period to look back to as it predates my move here from San Diego in 2010. In journalistic terms, the in-between years had many things to catch up with.

I know the information I gathered there may not be enough of a perspective but still, they afforded a glimpse of events of little or no importance during that phase but find relevance nowadays.

I see that then and now, the Filipino community is not much different. For example, the women role players are the same, and wonder of wonders, their physical appearance gets regenerated now by layers upon layers of makeup and fancy wigs, their youth almost made to look intact by assorted hues of hair dye.

An unsourced article, which was very likely a press release, in one of the tabloids that caught my attention was the reported meeting between then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Lauren, and "Filipino leaders," which was what the accompanying picture said in its caption.

I purposely put the quotation marks in "Filipino leaders" as a precaution because I do not agree with the generic phrase to categorize the three people in that meeting with the Harpers.

In the article, it appeared that Harper and his Multiculturalism Minister, Jason Kenney, merely invited a pro-Conservative Filipino couple and ANCOP president Ricky Cuenca who seemed to have the good sense to stay out of the photoshoot. 

Where were the "Filipino leaders"? I might ask. The article did not mention them; it's the photo caption that said it without showing or naming them.

News management was at play, that's obvious. The slant by which one person was being projected as a key role player in the community did not seem to have been noticed by readers.. Or was it ever, and merely ignored by the lame media?

Another story bannered by a left-leaning tabloid appeared to confirm my observation that somebody must be orchestrating the promotion of one of the "Filipino leaders". It was essentially PR work to market the person and package him as somebody in the community's totem pole.

The paper's headline reads: "Mabuhay festival attracts 15,000". Considering that there were only 162,600 Filipinos in Toronto in 2008, official statistics showed, it appeared quite impressive.

The lede says: "A record breaker of over 15,000 festival goers packed the Metro Toronto Convention Centre last July 19, 2008 x x x . From the moment everyone set their foot on the 100,000 square feet of festivities, they marvelled at the immensity of the hall . . . "

The given numbers are 15,000 and 100,000. I did some calculations myself but I decided to just rely on the internet for help. From what came out, the manipulation was very evident.

A space of 100,000 square feet would accommodate 35,000 people. So, even if organizers had billed the event as "a success", the 15,000 festival goers did not half-fill the room, as they amounted to only 42.86 percent. 

That's probably the basis for the sentence "they marvelled at the immensity of the hall . . . " It's not that the hall was unusually large, it was that the people were few and sparse.

Comparing the 2008 figure with current terms, the number would not merit a mention. Stack against the Taste of Manila Festival, for example, 15K is a drop in the bucket - a mere 3.75 percent of the estimated 400,000 people who hit the road to Little Manila in August.

Of course, the organizer of the 2008 event was the Philippine Independence Day Council. And sure enough, the pro-Conservative Filipino couple was at the helm of the organization.

I believe the seeds were being planted already at that time in cahoots with a self-declared media couple. As a matter of fact, their alliance surfaced only after the person being pushed for public office had asked his co-conspirator to change the password for their phony social media account.

Fast-forward to 2012, and my personal assessment is validated by events in the community. The seeds had grown and flowering. (Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved).

Why Is the Filipino Community Not Outraged?

Volume 1, Issue No. 11

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . . . .

Our latest as of Monday, November 11, 2019 

~ Public service has its limits. When people pay no heed to what is happening within their community, the effort to inform, enlighten and rouse its members from indifference triggers questions. Is advocating for the community already passé? Would the community rather commit to frivolous ventures that happen year in and year out and just turn a blind eye to the many improprieties around them?

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SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, SPEAK NO EVIL

Toronto's Got Its Three Wise Monkeys

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ 

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

"I'm tired of doing the impossible for the ungrateful. I now have more practical concerns". - Roman J. Israel, Esq.

TORONTO - The quote is from Roman J. Israel, Esq., the lawyer in the film of the same title played by Denzel Washington. I just saw it on Netflix.

I thought the line, and not exactly the movie's, fully articulates my own misgivings about the community.

Some people may not agree, and some may doubt too, but I've endeavoured to serve the community voluntarily the best way I know without expectation of anything.

I need not be a member of any organization, nor do I want to belong either, to pursue the goals I've set up for myself as a journalist. That gives me the freedom to voice out my advocacies without constraints.

My medium is totally different. I don't fund-raise. I don't solicit support. I lay down the bare facts and let people decide. In some cases, I just tell what the news is and interpret the unstated meaning.

 In the beginning, it was print (newspapers, magazines, etc.). At the onset of the digital age, I migrated to social media (Youtube, Vimeo, Tweet, blogs) - my preferred platforms now because of their immediacy. I'm still not convinced to do it on Facebook for many reasons.

I've shifted my attention from news and feature writing to investigative journalism and news analysis after hearing and uncovering corrupt and bogus initiatives by respected members of the community so-called and the organizations they represent and which tolerate them. 

I wish I could just stick to what most Filipino newspapers in Toronto do - and this is to stay nonchalant, post innumerable pictures of all manner of socials to fill up spaces, and ignore the many wrongdoings taking place around.

And this reminds me of the three wise monkeys of Japanese lore. The three monkeys, according to Wikipedia, are Mizaru, covering his eyes, who sees no evil; Kikazaru, covering his ears, who hears no evil; and Iwazaru, covering his mouth, who speaks no evil.

The three monkeys can be found in the Filipino community in different forms, shapes, and sizes. Either they're structured as individuals or organizations, or both.

I hold the personal belief that Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru inhabit the Filipino Centre Toronto, among several organizations. There are also Mizarus, Kikazarus, and Iwazarus dwelling in our community tabloids.

That situation appears to be the perfect recipe for the three monkeys to thrive. In that sense, ours is one impeccable community, a utopia where sinners are nowhere and everybody is a saint.

I expect to be criticized for singling out the Filipino Centre Toronto . . . for now. Fine with me. But there are others similarly situated.

Everyone knows, except perhaps its officers, that the wealthy (by $4-million) Filipino Centre Toronto is under siege by its own members who are rightfully demanding clarity from officials about its financial state. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZFXKzvQqYY).

The reassuring but hollow words of its chairman, Efren de Villa, have not dampened members' increasingly vociferous calls for transparency. 

In March 2019, he declared before federal, provincial and local officials and other guests that "we (FCT) are transparent, our finances are properly and we do that religiously . . . " It was nice to hear. In reality, however, those were empty soundbites designed to please the ear.

From that time on, or eight months later, looking through FCT financial statements and scrutinizing monetary outlays from three years ago remain in the realm of wishful thinking.

I truly can not fathom why the general membership of FCT is not outraged by such stonewalling by its leadership. I do not know why they would seem content in not being responded to by FCT officials. I do not know why the Filipino community appears indifferent.

The whistleblowers within FCT are tirelessly demanding transparency only to be given the cold shoulder. Why is that so?

Well, if I can venture a guess . . . Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru have found a comfortable home there. (Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved).

A Special Affinity with California

Volume 1, Issue No. 10

OPINION/COMMENTARY

/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /

. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . . . .

Our latest as of Wednesday, November 6, 2019 

~ From the cruise ship's top deck, California beckons with its magical sunrise and golden waters. After an overnight sailing from Astoria, Oregon, the distinctive mountainous features of the Pacific coast are slowly taking shape, highlighted by the rising sun. I could feel the hot temperature and the salty air. This is San Francisco. The next day, it would be Los Angeles. And from there, the drive to my hometown San Diego is just a matter of two hours.

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BUT IT'S FALL IN THE WEST

San Diego's Endless Summer

By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ 

Editor, The Filipino Web Channel

“And how deeply, the passing moods of weather affected our own.” ― Meeta Ahluwalia

SAN DIEGO - The very moment the morning sun kissed my face and the ocean breeze caressed my whole body one clear day this October, I knew I was in California.

The merciless heat and the balmy salt air are the inextricable weather twins that distinguish my old hometown, San Diego, from the current one, Toronto, the lakeside city I've resided in for almost a decade now.

It's fall (actually mid-autumn now) in all Western countries, I know, but this one place in the United States, San Diego, seems oblivious to the changing seasons as if it's permanently trapped in summer. The summery weather all-year-round makes it a delightful place to settle in.

On Monday, October 21, 2019, San Diego had its hottest day of the year with the temperature soaring to a high of 88 degrees Fahrenheit (or 31.11 degrees Celsius). It's San Diego's "endless summer," the regional newspaper San Diego Union-Tribune reported a day later.

The climate of San Diego is classified as a Mediterranean climate, according to Wikipedia. The basic climate features hot, sunny, and dry summers, and cooler, wetter winters. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk-2dCAzGps).

As I was finishing this essay in Toronto, news reports showed some areas in California ablaze due mostly to the hot weather. Santa Ana winds made the situation worse.

Though now living in Canada, the fact is I still hanker for California, especially the southern part, not because I had stayed there longer, actually 16 years, but due to the many challenges I had faced, and overcome. They were personal and professional successes, if I may boast.

But I am not to celebrate those. My cause for celebration is in being in California again, for the third time actually since I left in 2010. This latest visit had given me time to do a little exploration of the cities of Monterey, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

I had spent time in those places before, notably in San Francisco and Los Angeles, mainly because of the writing job I had done for a number of Filipino publications there.

Los Angeles, for example, was and still continues to be, a big market for community journalism. The city had one of the largest Filipino communities in Southern California. LA County accounts for over 374,285 Filipinos, according to official statistics.

The most contentious community characters, Filipinos or Filipino-Americans, of course, lived and worked in Los Angeles. I knew that for a fact even if I was based in San Diego, which is at least a two-hour drive by the Interstate 5 freeway, only because I exposed and wrote about them in my newspapers, the now-defunct Diario Veritas and the Philippine Village Voice.

That's quite a long time ago. Recalling the experience now just adds to the spice of life of the journalist in me. I should say my San Diego experience was more colorful, stimulating, livelier, and audacious than my almost two decades reporting for two international news networks. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik0AXXyPXaE).

That is because writing about the community has a different face, actually more personal and intimate since it involves friends, neighbours, relatives, people in the same village, etc. than reporting on the national and international levels. 

My exposure to community journalism took shape in California. There, I met and interacted with the best and brightest Filipinos around; same way I reached out to the worst of them - the crooks, the scammers, the fakers, and their ilk.

In practice, community journalism may look benign if one's reportage is limited to social events and day-to-day happenings. But once one engages in its investigative aspects as I still do, the difficulties are greater and the risks to life and limb considerable. I know. I've been there, done that in San Diego. 

I had my first break in community journalism in San Diego in 1993, thanks to Simeon Silverio, publisher and editor of Asian Journal. (I actually called on him in his office but he wasn't there). Several months later, I moved to the Filipino Press where the late Ernie Flores, publisher and editor, hired me as an associate editor. 

Then, the real break came when I was offered the position of editor-in-chief of Philippine Mabuhay News, then owned by the couple Danny and Nette Bungay. I accepted on the condition that I would have full management control of the editorial department.

Some years later, I had to quit. My principals had refused to publish my story about how the Philippine hero Jose Rizal was, in my view, being disrespected by erecting his bust monument in front of a supermarket, which was the paper's major advertiser. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf8TM-Ff_iI). 

My resignation led me to put up my own broadsheet paper which I named Diario Veritas. Its first banner story was an exposé about the Rizal bust and how it ended up in a market through the connivance of the Filipino community's foremost organization.

So being in California is like reconnecting with both my professional and personal roots. Admittedly, my affinity has grown wide and apart. San Diego is my second home after Manila, and after San Diego, it's Toronto now. Except that I can't relate much to this city as I do with San Diego. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be5lXUvHUl4).

There as in Toronto, there are friends and there were friends. I had wicked, mean, and abusive friends; former friends who believe they can buy their way into one's mind and character.

There as in Toronto, I lent my friendship to a few, but my selectiveness did not spare me from being taken advantage of. The few people who I had thought would stand by me are the very same ones who stabbed me behind my back.

Perhaps this is the reason Toronto has lost its appeal to me. Some people are so engrossed with money, influence, and prestige that they tend to forget that it's human relations that matter after all. (Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved).