A little while back, Rodel Rodis posted the full contents of his Philippine News column as comments to my previous entry (you can see Rodis's column at that link), and I wasn't sure how to respond -- primarily because its contents were pretty much the opposite of what our source (whom the SFSU Pinoy faculty tried to protect) told us directly.
Rodis's column made us, well, look like fools, and I think I would have appreciated it if he gave my colleagues a little benefit of the doubt; surely Rodis himself has been placed on "non-existent" government blacklists both before and after his immigration to the U.S.!
But now our previously unnamed source has stepped forward demanding a retraction from him; to make a long story short, Emil Guillermo's latest
article has excerpts from Lorraine Mallare's long letter, rebutting Rodis's points.
It's the "Secret Service list" part that's quite scary; since Vice Consul Antony Mandap has already pooh-poohed the suggestion that a list came from "a Philippine Secret Service" because "there's no such entity" (and therefore the list could not exist), we can perhaps assume that:
a) Of course there's some sort of a Philippine Secret Service, and Vice Consul Mandap may simply be playing with semantics here; or
b) that the non-existent Philippine Secret Service may have compiled the list with help from their American counterparts, which may mean
c) that this now non-existent list may have came from the U.S. Secret Service itself (who after all were protecting a visiting head of state), and was handed directly to the Philippine Consulate.
We academics like to joke that the government must have files on us somewhere, but it's frightening when my colleagues are smacked directly with it.
(I'll be flying to the Philippines in a few weeks; wish me luck.)
Sunny, don't flatter yourself. Nothing will happen to you when you go back to my country. I think the military and the intelligence services have more important concern than one balikbayan academic who signed a petition protesting the ineptitudes of the consulate in San Francisco. So no reason to ask for people to wish you luck.
Posted by: Jojo on December 2, 2004 01:41 AMTrue -- it's returning to the US that worries me though. One government is more paranoid than the other...
So the more appropriate statement should be, "wish me luck when I come back home" not "will by flying to the Philippines..."
Posted by: Jojo on December 2, 2004 09:31 PMThe thing that bothers me is that the WILY PINOY is not on this barred list. Surely, as a once and future king of soc.culture.filipino, WILY has earned the right to be banned.
Holy carp! That Filipino secret service is not very good at keeping things secret and researching things.
Posted by: TatangREtong on December 16, 2004 05:32 PMAlas, WILY is small fry. Unless, of course, he joins Ka Roger and his Maoist Musketeers in Mt. Banahaw and announces his intentions in his website. Then he might deserve a place in the immigration list at NAIA airport as an "unwelcomee American guest." Otherwise his only problem will be the horrible traffic just outside NAIA airport, extending out to the South Express Way as well as C5...
Posted by: Jojo on December 16, 2004 09:34 PMJojo will be quite a catch, pero baka iba humuli sa kanya. =)
Sira ka, Rhett: yung pagkakalat ko sa SCF is hardly worth mentioning. The simple reason I'm not on the blacklist is that I never asked for a pass in the first place.
But Jojo is right: my closest brush with the left was meeting Ka Roger once in the '80s as a writer -- possibly the most burgis they ever had -- for the UPLB Perspective.
But even if anything happens, I wouldn't be "an unwelcome American guest" -- as a citizen of the Republic of the Philippines, I am not entitled to any protection from the American state...
Ah...din your political capital in the eyes of the American secret service just went up as a Pinoy with green card signing petition condemning the second rate economist for banning colleagues. This puts you smack in the middle of American domesitc politics and can be charged with "foreign interference" by the Kanos.
It also reconfirms what I wrote earlier: to wish you luck not in going into Pinas but upon leaving it for San Fran to renew permanent residency...On this our thoughts are with you....Meri Krismas, Wily.
Posted by: Jojo on December 17, 2004 12:09 AM