Do Me A Flavor

Hearthstone, Blizzard's online card game which receives way too much attention than it deserves, recently released its newest expansion pack, The Grand Tournament. It features all new cards with a jousting theme.

I dabble in Hearthstone a little. It's a distraction. While I can't say much about the cards and the current "meta", I will say I am sorely disappointed with the flavor text of these cards.

Flavor text is usually a bunch of extra lines card games put into their cards to add a little fluff, humor or even backstory to their cards. Magic: The Gathering, for example, frequently added flavor text. It ranged from snappy, one-line zingers to quotes from real or fictional people.

With Hearthstone, it's all garbage. Granted, it was never supposed to be serious stuff. It was all supposed to be tongue-in-cheek humor. Still, are these corny or what? With the new cards, they aren't even trying anymore and this from a company that's known for the Blizzard "polish".

I'm nitpicking, I know. Of all the things to complain about, flavor text is the bottom of the list but for God's sake, at least before they were trying to be funny. Now it's just cringe-inducing.

Yeah, it's a slow day.

William Ackerman - Anne's Song

The Bad Old Days

I was born after the People Power Revolution so I have no personal experience of that time period. It was no doubt, a tumultuous time. The repercussions of that episode in  our history echo to this day in the clashing narratives that beat in the public consciousness. There are some who say it wasn't so bad and that it was a time when the Philippines was at the cusp of achieving greatness as a nation while there are others with grim stories of torture and oppression, a Philippines sliding helplessly into totalitarianism.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know who and what to believe exactly. The stories of oppression are just too numerous and documented to be a lie. Yet, I don't believe that it's the entire picture of what happened in those days. I want to know the unfamiliar beginning up to the familiar end. 

Was Marcos completely evil? I think it's impossible for a person to be a hundred percent evil. Was it a matter of good intentions gone wrong? He was ambitious, of that there is no doubt. What plans did he have for the Philippines? Who were the devils on the devil's shoulder? Were our heroes really heroes or were they the right people at the right place and time?

I don't trust anyone to tell me the whole truth, that's just my nature. Everyone has an agenda to push. It is important however that lessons are learned and the big lesson, unanimously agreed upon to teach the kids, is that we should always be on guard for oppression and tyranny. A good lesson but a single dictator isn't the only one who can inflict such suffering on a people.

History is written by the winners. Nobody milks the People Power legacy more than our current President. His shameless exploitation of People Power sometimes borders on the absurd, as if it were he and his parents alone who made it happen. It is as if he has the exclusive, God-given moral authority to continue the struggle and judge for himself what is good and what is bad. But the President is just a child, a child of that revolution as we all are in a way. The people who lived through it, whether they like it or not, were baptized and brought into a new Philippines.

The Philippines today is a mess. There is a general feeling of hopelessness and a descent into our cultural tendency to fatalism and self-resignation or obsession with trivia and frivolity. Now there's regret; a feeling that maybe the old days weren't so bad and that maybe we can get a do-over and make the revolution right this time. No dice. 

What's done is done.

Foundling 2

Grace Poe's rivals have one last chance to torpedo her presidential ambitions and that is to question her citizenship. I've written about this topic before but as the days pass and the elections draw ever closer, they're gonna ramp this issue up. I'll do my best to simplify the issue.

Grace Poe is a foundling. The law is silent when it comes to foundlings whose parents are completely unknown. Since the citizenship of her parents cannot be determined, we cannot say she is a Filipino citizen since we follow the principle of blood ties, not the principle of place of birth.

The answer would have to come from International Law. The Philippines, through the doctrine of incorporation, considers the generally accepted principles of International Law as part of the law of the land. The UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness provides the answer and fills in the gaps of our laws. Said convention states that the foundling is presumed to have been born to parents who are citizens of the state where he or she was found. Grace Poe would thus be considered a Filipino citizen.

So no problem, right? Yes, problem. One of the qualifications for President is that one must be a natural born Filipino citizen. There are two kinds of Filipinos: those who are natural born and those who are naturalized. The constitution tells us who is a Filipino by birth but it says nothing of foundlings. The big question is if the list of people who are considered natural born, as stated in the constitution, is exclusive.

It's a tricky question, no doubt. An argument can be made that the list of those who are natural born Filipinos is exclusive and allowing International Law to modify this would be allowing foreign law to amend our constitution, as it were. On the other hand, our hypothetical foundling, whose parents are unknown, has no say in the matter. A foundling didn't commit any positive act to become a Filipino but was just born that way. So somebody else naturalized Poe for her? I think the former argument is more persuasive legally but law often gives way to the fickle temperament of the people who may become sympathetic to an "injustice" against her. If there's one thing I've learned in all my years living in this country, it's that politics trump law all the time.

Fortunately, the solution is quite simple and I offer this solution for Grace Poe free of charge since I'm such a nice guy and I hate Mar. Find the parents. No really, put up a big cash bounty to find Poe's real parents or anyone closely related to them. A DNA test here and some paperwork there, and voila! Problem solved and no need for courtroom time-wasters. You can also milk it for some political mileage. It has potential to make for a nifty drama. Imagine the apologetic parents and Poe's "tearful reunion". It's a made to order TV drama for the emotional Filipino masses. 

It's perfect!

Billy Joel - We Didn't Start the Fire

The Best in German (Social) Engineering

About that migrant crisis, Germany wants the rest of the EU nations to take in their fair share of migrants.

All of the goings on in Europe seem insane to me, who normally takes the realist perspective in international affairs. The proposed solutions just raise more questions.

Just how will these quotas be determined? Is it based on some kind of metric like how much a nation can realistically hold or is it arbitrary amounts? Land size?

Supposing a nation is assigned a certain number of migrants, which migrants will it get? Are they going to shuffle the migrants that have already arrived around or is it new arrivals?

Suppose a migrant wants to stay in Germany but gets assigned in some other country, what's to stop that migrant from just packing up and leaving for his preferred country? Could the EU realistically force migrants to stay put in certain countries to meet a quota?

This is all very interesting. If only something like this happened when I was still in my Political Science days. Globalization was the trend back then and it got pretty stale.

We shall see.

A Human Wave

The migrant crisis in Europe is intriguing. The news stories are all focused on the scale of the human catastrophe; people fleeing and children drowning.

It's surprising that the Europeans are rather tolerant of all of this. You'd think that such a large number of people moving about through the continent would be a huge cause for concern but perhaps the use of force would look bad on TV. Nobody is talking of the consequences. It's naive to think that an event like this won't have grave socio-economic consequences in the future. 

Europe can commit suicide if it wants but it will be very interesting to watch it all unfold.

Church and State

They're still talking about that huge rally the Iglesia ni Cristo had in EDSA. The traffic jam was one for the ages. Traffic seems to be the only thing people in Manila ever talk about. From street traffic to foot traffic to congestion on the rail system...

Gotta hand it to the INC, they sure know how to twist the screws but how did it come to this?

To those not in the know, I'll summarize. The INC is a powerful homegrown religious sect known for its habit of bloc voting. Since the INC's members are very obedient to their church leaders, whoever courts the INC's favor is guaranteed a chunk of votes. As a result, the INC is powerful and government officials are reluctant to step on their toes.

Recently, certain problems within the INC's leadership became public. Some of its ministers were allegedly detained illegally. The facts are murky but from whatever little one can gather, it seems some of its leaders didn't agree with the group spending a large amount of money building some megachurch or something somewhere.

The government decided to investigate the alleged illegal detention and here we are. The INC is throwing a fit claiming that it's being unfairly targeted. The INC decided to hold a rally in one of the busiest thoroughfares of Manila, a move no doubt calculated to piss as many people off as possible.

It is quite ironic that one of the rallying cries of the INC was the call for the government to respect the "separation of church and state". It's quite hypocritical for a group that doesn't hesitate to use it's influence on the government, to champion such a principle. Anyway, separation of church and state... The constitution mentions it but doesn't explain exactly what it is. Case law explains that our understanding of separation of church and state comes from American jurisprudence. The details are lengthy, but it boils down to two things: the state cannot establish its own religion and the state cannot prohibit the free exercise thereof.

I fail to see the logic behind INC's complaints. How is the government investigating a crime a violation of church and state? Is it somehow depriving their free exercise of religion? Does that mean kidnapping is a sacred ritual for the INC?

Nah, it's simple. It's all political as usual. I'm disgusted at such a brazen show of force by the INC. Usually, their mass actions and political muscle flexing have a thin veneer of legitimacy to them such as celebrating the anniversary of their founding or some other significant event. What happened over the weekend was a naked power play; there was nothing noble about it. The INC claims it worked out a deal with the government. The government swiftly denied such claim but the whole thing stinks like a rotting rat corpse already. Nothing new here, just the government conspiring against the people as usual.

Glad I don't live in Manila.