One week hence

Esta es mi promesa solemne.

Woman on Top: Liaena Hernández Martínez

Liaena Hernández Martínez

Member of Parliament
Republic of Cuba

• Born in 1990 in Manuel Tames, Cuba, in the country's Guantamo Province.
• Volunteered for active military service under the Servicio Militar Voluntario Femenino.
• Served for seven months in the Brigada de la Frontera, an all-female brigade guarding the border with America's Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
• Elected to the Cuban Parliament in March 2008 to represent her home town of Manuel Tames, making her the youngest member of parliament.
• Touted as the future of Cuba's communist revolution, representing women and youth empowerment. ¡A las armas, valientes, corred!
• Read more about her here (BBC), here, and here.
  

Manila, T minus 6 hours

Leaving for SFO in a few hours.  Taking NW this time, instead of my preferred airline CX.  I'm not particularly looking forward to NW's bad food and unpleasant stew... flight attendants.  But this year, for MNL-SFO-MNL tickets, NW is $162 cheaper than CX so I figured the savings was greater than the monetised value of better service.  I hope I won't regret this choice the next time I have to ask for water.

This is a time of great flux for me, so this trip is especially significant.  

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I'll miss you so much, Dear.  Take care and be safe.  사랑해.

Remembering the Battle of Manila

Just watched Remembering the Battle of Manila, a two-hour documentary on the 1945 battle produced by Japanese television network NHK and aired on the History Channel.

The documentary had a very objective tone-- no sentimentality or emotion.  There was a good amount of discussion on objectives and tactics but hardly any mention of politics or motives.  The overarching message, though, was that most of the 100,000 Filipino civilian casualties and the almost total destruction of Manila was a result of American bombardment.  Which is quite accurate-- most of the deaths and destruction in Manila in 1945 were indeed caused by the American forces' indiscriminate use of force.  There are a lot of interviews with people-- Filipino civilians, American and Japanese soldiers-- who witnessed the battle and one can get a good picture of the suffering it caused.  One stark image is the destruction of the Philippine General Hospital by American bombers, who attacked the building and its thousands of patients and refugees "despite red crosses painted on the roof".

However, what troubles me about this documentary is what it does not say.  While it makes an indictment of American conduct during the battle, Japanese actions are mostly portrayed as defensive maneouvres.  While it does mention Japanese "outrages" committed against civilians in the name of "anti-guerilla offensives", it makes no adequate description of the gravity or the cruelty of these atrocities.  At one point it mentions the "Japanese anti-guerilla offensive" and "Filipinos fighting Filipinos" (i.e., revenge attacks against the makapili) as reasons, apart from indiscriminate American bombing, for Filipino civilian deaths, without any mention of scale or context as if the two reasons carried equal weight.  

While I didn't expect this documentary-- or any historical documentary-- to be totally objective, I did expect factual proportion.  In terms of scale, American bombs indeed killed more Filipinos and demolished more buildings, but the Japanese are at least equally to blame for the carnage.  The Americans were indiscriminate and reckless in their use of force, but the Japanese were rabid and sadistic in their retaliation, ordering their troops to fight to the last man and "annihilate all guerillas", guerilla being understood by the interviewed Japanese soldiers to mean any Filipino man, woman, or child.  While there were many graphic pictures of the victims of American bombs (women and children in particular) and even video of Filipinos mobbing a makapili, the only pictures of Japanese atrocities were Filipino men executed with their hands tied behind their backs.

Most troubling about this documentary is that it's primarily meant for a Japanese audience, being translated into English after it was made.  If PBS made this documentary for an American audience it would be a soul-searching second look at America's actions in Manila deserving of a commendation.  But it's not.  The documentary was made by NHK for a Japanese audience, making it an exercise in washing their hands of guilt.  Far from just "remembering the battle of Manila", this looks and feels more like a jab at self-vindication, as if saying, "Hey, the Americans killed more Filipinos than we did; we were just defending ourselves."  To lay the blame for the destruction of Manila and the death of 100,000 civilians at the foot of the Americans with only passing mention of Japanese atrocities is, to say the least, dishonest.

That NHK gave an unbalanced account under the veneer of fact and objectivity makes this documentary unethical.  That Japan, unlike Germany, has not truly reconciled itself with its wartime conduct makes this documentary offensive.  That militarist and revisionist elements are gaining clout in Japan makes this documentary dangerous.

I was wrong

I thought America will fail the world yet again.  I was wrong.

I thought negative campaigns and insinuations will form most opinions.  I was wrong.

I thought refreshing high-road politics will be drowned out by the old, dirty tricks.  I was wrong.

I thought the Republican political machine will delay the results with lawsuits and technicalities.  I was wrong.

I thought fear and ignorance will drown out reason and nuanced thinking in the electoral debate.  I was wrong.

I thought hundreds of years of hate and racism will prevail over hope and change.  I was wrong.

I thought America would not, could not, elect Barack Obama.  I was wrong.

I've never been so glad to be wrong.

Poll Dancing

My $1 tip on the ups, downs, spins, and gyrations of slippery polls. 

If you've been following the US presidential elections (you really should even if you're not American, because the US president affects you so much as your own president) you'd be constantly bombarded with opinion polls, most of them saying that Obama has a lead over McCain.  Some will say that Obama has a "commanding" or "clear" lead, while others will insist that McCain is in a tie with his opponent.  So what is it, really?

Without going into technical detail, let us interpret for ourselves what the polls mean without the spin.  Take this table from Real Clear Politics (as of 29 October 2008, 2300H Pacific Time), which convenietly summarises the major US election polls (click for a clearer image):

First of all, see that top line with the RCP Average?  Forget it exists.  It means absolutely nothing.  It makes no sense to get the average of different surveys taken on different dates with different questionnaires and different samples and different methodologies.  And to show how sensless it is they even highlighted it in yellow.

The first thing you should look for in any survey is the margin of error (MoE in the table), which, assuming the survey is methodologically sound, depends solely on the sample size.  Say the Rasmussen Reports, with a sample size of 3,000 likely voters and MoE = 2.0 (it should really be 1.79), finds that 50% of their sample supports Obama.  The MoE imples that overall support for Obama in the population (i.e., all American voters) is probably somewhere between 48% and 52%.  Likewise, McCain's 47% support in the survey implies that support in the population is probably somewhere between 45% and 49%.

So, is Obama's 3-percentage-point lead "clear", or "dead even"?  As a rule of thumb (i.e., without having to use a calculator), a difference can be reported as significant if it is greater than or equal to (MoE x 2) + 1.  Using this formula, for MoE = 2 the difference should be at least 5 percentage points for us to say that Obama has a significant lead over McCain (i.e., beyond the margins); thus, Obama's 3-point lead in the Rasmussen Reports is actually a statistical tie.

Looking at the table, then, we can see that the only surveys where Obama has a significant lead over McCain are Gallup (Expanded), ABC News/Wash Post, and Pew Research.  All the other surveys have Obama and McCain in a statistical tie.  That said, all the polls put Obama in a marginal, if not significant, lead.  Either Obama leads by a small amount or he leads by a sizeable margin.  So, going by the polls, I'd have to say that Obama is the frontrunner in this election.  Overall, assuming the surveys were conducted scientifically, the elections are still Obama's to lose and McCain has an uphill battle ahead.

However, this being America and Obama being not white, I actually think McCain is still the candidate to beat.  Obama has to run a perfect campaign 100% of the time, while McCain only needs one innuendo that sticks to grab the election.  Whether he relishes it or not, McCain has hundreds of years of racism, prejudice, and cynicism on his side.  Never underestimate the power of hate, fear, and ignorance in America.

I sure hope I'll be proven wrong next week.

McCain fighting for America!

Finally, McCain is taking it to Obama, and taking it hard.  First the terrorism link and now calling Obama a socialist for wanting to "spread the wealth around" (Obama's words).  Yeah, who the $#%@ wants that?  Who the $#%@ cares about the poor during an economic crisis?  McCain's plan is so much better-- don't give the poor tax breaks so the rich won't have to be taxed more.  Trickle-down economics has been working so well anyway.

So McCain slipped up by saying Obama is a decent family man, but we now have the McCain-Palin we've always wanted-- name calling and fear mongering.

Obama is just so wrong for America.  Obama, that madrassah-studying, terrorist-palling, income-redistributing, Jeremiah-Wright-following, smooth-talking closet Muslim/Arab poser for the US presidency.  It's true, I heard it on Fox News.  Only fair and balanced facts from Sean Hannity.

I'm so glad McCain is taking it to Obama.  Really nothing like hate, fear, and ignorance to get him back up in the polls.