Pinoy in Singapore

Hope you were able to catch it yesterday.  One of History Channel’s feature for this month of July is Mark Bowden’s (author of Black Hawk Down) Stalking Jihad.

History Channel is one of my favorite channels along with National Geographic and Discovery.  Since I’ve been a bum, I’ve been educating myself, ironically, through the idiot box.

We’ve set the alarm for this show on our cable box days before so we won’t miss it. (Sorry, forgot to blog about it :P)   I think it’s very interesting to know how the events of the kidnapping of missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham among others at Dos Palmas by the Abu Sayaf last 2001 (a few months before the Al Qaeda struck terror on 9-11) is told from a 3rd party point of view.  Third party, in the sense that the story didn’t come from the local media or the government.

It was very interesting and very informative, specially since I never really followed current events when I was in the Philippines.  (Yes, it’s a sad thing to be indifferent but it’s also less frustrating.)  I didn’t even realize that the film was 2 hours.   One thing to note from the film is it doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the Philippine Army.  And President GMA’s image consultant should really do something about that smile of hers. It’s really just plain annoying more than anything.  She has such a forced smile.

It also mentioned in the film that the US gov’t paid ransom for the Burnham’s but only a fraction reached the Abu Sayaf.  It’s pretty much the same as what happened to Ces Drilon’s kidnapping.  I’m starting to think some government officials actually rejoice at the news of somebody getting kidnapped and their eyes immeidately turn into dollar signs like slot machines.

But like everything else, I doubt if absolute truth really does exist.  Specially in complicated events like these, there are only sides to a story, and maybe a compilation of different versions of the truth.  Everyone probably has a different motive and that will always taint how a story is presented.