(Continued on page 3)

By Pia Lee BragoWednesday, October 8, 2008

Despite the troubled ﬁnan-cial system, US Ambassador Kristie Kenney said yesterdayWashington will not cut its as-sistance to the Philippines.“I don’t think so because(of course) that has already been approved by the USCongress and there is a lot of interest in it,” Kenney said ina chance interview at the inau-guration and blessing of “Ba-hay Silungan sa Paliparan,” ahalfway house for victims of human trafﬁcking, at ChapelRoad, Ninoy Aquino Inter-national Airport (NAIA) inPasay City.The US is facing economiccrisis and reportedly headingfor recession.

US won’t cut aid to RP

Vintas, the traditional boats of the Badjaos in Mindanao, raceduring the Regatta de Zamboanga in Zamboanga City yesterday.The vertical colors on the vinta represent the culture and history of a Muslim community. CHARLIE SACEDA

Last in a series of four articles PhilStar

Ninoy’s optimism wasa revelation.For the treat-ment at thehands of hiscaptors hadgrown worseafter most of us had gone,not better. Bymarch 1973, Ninoy himself recounted it ina letter to “Monsignor” SocRodrigo, he was averaging1,200 Hail Mary’s a day. On

Max Soliven recalls Ninoy Aquino

Unbroken

Editor’s Note: This piece was written by the late MaxSoliven, founding chairman of People Asia, in homageto Ninoy on the latter’s 20th death anniversary in 2003.(Soliven died in 2006)

March 12, Ninoy was led toa blue Volkswagen Combiand saw Pepe Diokno al-ready seated inside. The twoof them were hustled aboarda blue andwhite heli-copter “witha presidentialseal,” blind-folded andhandcuffed.

The chopper

took off andlanded (asthey found outweeks later)in Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija. “When

The River of LIfe Church and it’s members. You are welcome toattend their service every Sunday from 10:30am to 12:00n. See story on page 18.

ABOUT SHOWBIZ Ni Nitz Miralles Philstar, September 3, 2008

Matagal na palang binasted ng isang sexy star ang nali-link sa kanyang businessman at kaya langsweet pa rin siya rito’y dahilnakikisama’t mabait anglalaki.Yun nga lang, na-mis-interpret nito ang pagigingmabait sa kanya ni SS atakala’y love rin siya nito. Nang may manligaw kaySS na bata, edukado at

Jolina takot magsuotng wedding gown

(Continued on page 9)

Jolina Magdangal

(Continued on page 12)

UK envoysummonedover ‘Harryand Paul’

By Paolo Romero Philstar, October 8, 2008

Manila lodged a diplo-matic protest yesterday withthe British government over a comedy skit shown on theBritish Broadcasting Co.(BBC) depicting a Filipinamaid as a lap-dancing sextease.

(Continued on page 8)

To our delight, we got the very last seven tickets for theshow, although we were seated at the very last row, withour back seat against the wall. It was okay, however, because with the two giant screens on each side of the stage,our companions, Ray and Louie , could see Ara Mina’s beautiful face in close up, as she swayed her body to themusic on stage.

Simeon G. Silverio, Jr.

Publisher & Editor

The San DiegoAsian Journal

See page 5

Watching the APO HikingSociety and Ara Minaperform in San Diego

Staff get ready for the re-opening of the popular noodle house located at the Old Schoolhouse Square on 8th Street in National City. See storyon page 12.

Church offersabsolutely free car wash!

Join the Grand Re-Openingof Vietnamese andChinese Noodle House

October 10 - 16, 2008

Msgr. Gutierrez

Miles Beauchamp

Entertainment

Sound effects

KC maganda ang facial expression

Come to thebanquet. RSVP.

Page 2October 10 - 16, 2008 Asian Journal - (619) 474-0588 Visit our website at http://www.asianjournalusa.com

EMOTIONAL WEATHER REPORT

By Jessica Zafra

Philstar

Everybody calls her Nanay. Edu-cators, writers, leaders of industry,the employees, suppliers, and clientsof National Book Store, the readersof this paper, in which her columnappears every week, and severalgenerations of schoolchildren — the“laking-National” (raised on Nation-al). In seven decades of business,Socorro Cancio Ramos, founder andgeneral manager of National Book Store, has won many awards and

Socorro Ramos: Nanay, SuperTindera, and everyone’sminister of education

Socorro Ramos

titles, but “Nanay” (Mother) is theone she likes best. In our matriar-chal Filipino society it’s a term of endearment; in the highly competi-tive business environment it’s an

honorific, or even an expression of surrender (Nanay!). It just fits.At the NBS head office, I only

have to say “Nanay” and I amimmediately ushered into a smallconference room lined with book-shelves. One of the managers asksme what I’d like to drink. It’s a

large, bustling ofﬁce with stacks of

books everywhere, but it lacks the

air of formal efﬁciency that most

corporate headquarters aspire to.This one has a friendly, homey feel,kind of like a faculty lounge at a

grade school: you half-expect small

children to come running downthe hallways. Books are crammedwilly-nilly into the shelves — clas-sics, best sellers, coloring books, art books, coffee-table books.Five minutes later, Nanay slowlywalks into the room with her arm ina sling. “Andito na pala siya, bakithindi ako tinawag?” (Why didn’tsomeone call me earlier?) she gentlyadmonishes her staff. Her grand-daughter Trina Alindogan hands her a cup of hydrite — Nanay’s stomachhas been acting up all day. Most people with a broken arm and a bumstomach would probably take theday off. Here we have a demonstra-tion of one not-so-secret secret of her success: Nothing can stop her from going to work.“It happened during the typhoon,”she sighs. “I was inspecting thewarehouse when I slipped and fell.”Her arm was broken in two places.Doctors said they could surgicallyrepair the bone, but it would take a

maximum of two hours to operate,

and require nine screws in her arm.She declined; she has better thingsto do, and the arm will heal in time.For now she signs documents withher other hand. “Pakialamera kasi!”(That’s what happens to busybod-ies!) she laughs. “Habit na, eh. Paghindi ko nakita ang bodega, paraakong nawawala.” (When I don’tvisit the warehouse, I feel lost.)She nods at her assistant, who presents me with three books thesize of coffee tables: a thesaurus,a 2008 almanac, and a Bible Atlas.I am silently skipping with glee.“Ano ba yan?” She indicates theBible Atlas. “Hindi ko maintindihan,tiningnan ko lang yung pictures.” (Idon’t understand it; I only looked atthe pictures.) Either Nanay is psy-chic or somebody did her research, because how could she know that atage 10, my hobbies were reading theOld Testament for accounts of warsand apocalypses, and memorizingthe capitals of countries?Which brings us to another of Nanay’s winning secrets: She makesyou feel important. She’s down-to-earth and genuinely curiousabout people and their interests.And anyone who assumes from her ingenuous air that she’s a softie isin for a tough time. Socorro Ramosis legendary for her skills as anegotiator; she has made captainsof industry squeal like little girls.Let’s not forget that the woman built National Book Store from scratch, beginning just before World War II.Today National is the undisputedmarket leader, with 103 branches allover the country.Put it another way: There wereother bookstores while I was grow-ing up, but today National is theone left standing. By default, weare all “laking-National.” A former competitor, Lory Tan of Bookmark,notes: “Mrs. Ramos is a master of loss-leader pricing, and knew that if you have the scale, you should useit in every way possible — whether it meant obtaining better discountsfrom publishing houses, more favor-able terms of payment, or pricingdown (even at a loss) to neutralizecompetition and eventually gainmarket dominance for a new book line.”Or, as Nanay herself puts it:“Magaling lang akong tumawad.”(I’m just good at haggling.) Inci-dentally, she has been to every oneof their 103 branches. Recently shevisited the newest store in Marikina,and spoke to the manager aboutdisplaying books on tables to makethem more appetizing.I ask her if she’d ever imagined

that the ﬁve-square-meter stall she

opened in Escolta in 1939 would become this retail giant. She shakesher head. “Mapaaral ko lang angmga anak ko, at kumain kami ngtatlong beses isang araw, tama na. Noong Japanese time, mabuhay kalang, okay na.” (It was enough thatI could send my children to schooland we could have three meals aday. During the war, it was enoughto just survive.)Two years after she opened her little bookshop, World War II broke

out in the Paciﬁc and the Japanese

invaded the Philippines. All bookshad to be submitted to Japanesecensors, who cut out any mentionof America. All their stocks weremutilated. “What will we sell?”Socorro asked her husband, Jose.The answer: Anything and every-thing the customers needed. Theysold candy, school supplies, ciga-rettes. She found a maker of tsinelas

(rubber slippers), bought six pairs,

discovered that the Japanese wantedtsinelas, and was soon selling hun-dreds of pairs. National Book Storemight very well have been NationalTsinelas.She found a supplier of Easter- brook fountain pens and went fromdoor to door in the Japanese bazaarsto sell them. She got yelled at acouple of times and burst into tears, but eventually made a sale. “Tellme what you need,” she told her client. He ordered 3,000 reams of typewriting paper for the Japanesemilitary. “Hindi ako nagpahalatangdi ko kaya!” (I didn’t let on thatI couldn’t handle the order!) shegleefully recalls. Somehow, in themiddle of a war and all its restric-tions, she found the 3,000 reams of paper. Gas was strictly rationed, soshe delivered the stock by karetela(horse-drawn cart).So we have another cornerstoneof Nanay’s business philosophy:

Find out exactly what your custom-

ers need, and sell it to them. Knowyour market inside and out. Do your research.In 1944, the young business-woman gave birth prematurely toher twin sons, Alfredo and Benja-min. Socorro and Jose were ridinghome in a karetela when the horse backed up into a creek. The other passengers jumped out, but the pregnant Socorro couldn’t. Joseheld on to her, letting go of the basket of “Mickey Mouse” money

(hyper-inﬂated Japanese Occupa-

tion currency) they had earned thatday. Fortunately neither of them washurt, and the basket of money wasrecovered from under the horse’s belly. Soon afterwards Socorrowent into labor and was taken tothe Philippine General Hospital.“The hospital was full, but theyfound room for me in the eclampsiaroom,” Nanay remembers.The twins, born at seven months,weighed 3.2 pounds each and their chances of survival were slight. She breastfed them and they graduallyachieved normal weight. “We had

six chickens that we raised in our window box, and the eggs that they

laid fed the boys,” Nanay says.When the Liberation began, shekept a bag of emergency suppliesready in case they had to evacuate.The bag contained baby clothes, a

mosquito net, some expired antibiot-ics, and three cans of expired baby

formula.Just before the Americans returnedto the Philippines, one of her clientsunloaded an entire warehouse of whiskey. “I knew that when theAmericans arrived, they would wantwhiskey,” she says. She couldn’tafford her client’s asking price, buthe didn’t want to lose his stocks tolooters. So Nanay ended up witha whole lot of whiskey, which shestored in her mother’s house. Duringthe Liberation, Escolta was de-

stroyed by bombs and ﬁre. Her little

bookshop and its stocks were razedto the ground, but her mother’shouse was safe.Jose and Socorro sold the whiskeyin a barong-barong (shack) on thecorner of Soler and Avenida. Themerchandise was laid out on a ping- pong table that also served as a door every night. The American soldiers paid in dollars.That whiskey keptthe Ramoses’ business going untilthe couple could rebuild their book-store.The Nanay book of business says:Be alert to opportunity, and grab it.After the war, National Book Store reopened in a small rentedspace in Avenue Theatre. In Super Salesgirl, Nick Joaquin’s short biog-raphy of Socorro Ramos, he writesthat “National opened in time for the

ﬁrst postwar school year: one of the

few places in ruined Manila where

you could get textbooks, notebooks,

pad paper, pencils, and so forth.”“Then Typhoon Gene struck in1948, ripped off the roof of our store, and ruined all our stocks,” Nanay says. “We were back tozero.” The Ramoses had to startall over again. Their stratagem for dealing with adversity: Work harder.They slept just three hours a day,and spent all their waking hours atthe store. Nanay’s business rulebook says:Don’t let anything get you down.Work, work, work.In 1955 they acquired a prime piece of property on Soler Street,the future site of their nine-story building. The bookstore was doingwell, thanks to Nanay’s brilliantidea: they started producing greetingcards and postcards with Philippineviews. By then, their youngest child,Cecilia, had been born and the twinswere enrolled at the Ateneo. “As Itutored my boys, they would oftencorrect my pronunciation and wereeventually teaching me many thingsI did not know. So I felt we wereall attending the Ateneo together,” Nanay said when she accepted her honorary Doctor of Humanitiesdegree from the Ateneo de Manilain 2006.

National Book Store expanded

steadily from the 1970s onwards.We all know the rest — who doesn’thave that red-and-white plastic bagin the house? (Incidentally, Nationalnow encourages shoppers to carrytheir reusable cloth bags instead of plastic.)“Mrs. Ramos is the perfectentrepreneur — hands-on, steadilyfocused on the business, alwaysalert for opportunities, unfail-ingly sensitive to market needs,”writes banker, former Minister of Education, and former chair of the National Commission on Cultureand the Arts, Jaime Laya. “She isconservative, opting for slow and

steady expansion ﬁnanced by earn-

ings reinvestment. This allowed her to manage the company personallywhile her children were growing up.As soon as the children were ableto play a greater role, then National began opening more branches, add-ing to its product line.” Nanay’s achievements as an en-trepreneur have been recognized byinstitutions such as the Ateneo andSGV & Co, which named her En-trepreneur of the Year in 2005. Theaward is “bestowed to an individualthat best embodies entrepreneurial

spirit, ﬁnancial performance, stra-

tegic direction, community/globalimpact, innovation, and personal

integrity/inﬂuence.” The honorary

degree was given by the Ateneo “inrecognition of her outstanding con-tribution to building literacy amongthe Filipinos and her total commit-ment to helping make educationaffordable, especially to those whohave little in life.”“I was born to a poor family andonly completed high school,” Nanaysaid in her brief acceptance speech.“Unable to attend college, I onlyhad one dream in my life, an impos-

sible dream, to ﬁnish school and get

my degree.” Although she succeed-

ed in business without the beneﬁt of

a college degree, she always stressesthe importance of education. “I wantFilipinos to remember that NationalBook Store has always been thereand will always be there to providethem books and supplies at low prices,” she told Laya. “I understand

their plight and know how difﬁcult

it can be because once upon a time,I was in their shoes. Books aresources of wisdom, knowledge andtruth and should be priced so that persons with average and below-average income s can afford to buy.“Gusto kong makasilbi sa mgaestudyante (I want to serve thestudents),” she says. She remembersattending Soler Elementary School,then Arellano High School, with no baon, no money for snacks or schoolsupplies. To save up for notebooks,she would work in a factory everysummer, where she earned 50centavos a day. “At the time, a kiloof pork cost 45 centavos, so youcould actually feed a small familyon that.” There isn’t a smidgen of bitterness or regret when she talks

about the difﬁcult times she and

her husband (he died in 1992) wentthrough — the scrimping, saving,and hard labor. On the contrary, shelooks back with fondness on thosetough times.“The advantage of starting small,”she declares, “is that you know allthe problems that can arise. You candeal with them one by one.”I suspect that she looks forwardto facing the little day-to-day crisesand solving them. Beneath the child-like curiosity and sense of wonder is a steely businesswoman, a toughnegotiator, a survivor. Nanay hasworked every day of her life since

she was ﬁve. You think she’ll let up

just because the going is great?

Page 3 Asian Journal - (619) 474-0588 Visit our website at http://www.asianjournalusa.comOctober 10 - 16, 2008

FROM THE HEART

By Gina Lopez

Philstar

Relationships are the bond thatcements together human society. Weenter relationships because of reso-nance. We exit the relationship whenthe resonance peters out. I havenoted that it is much easier to get onwith life when one keeps an openheart space. My mother once said,“If you get angry — and stay angry — you are the one that suffers, evenif you have beenwronged.” Words of wisdom. I can attestto it. Anger hurts. Itis uncomfortable. Itis so much easier tolet go. The key is to

ﬁnd another way to

look at the relation-ship that has exited.

To ﬁnd another way

to look at the per-son. There are manyways to look at people. One way may bring us immense pain and anger.Another way can bring understanding.The second way iseasier on the heart.It’s also easier onthe people around you. It is not easy because the default mechanism isone of anger. But if one can manageto see the heaviness that it brings,it makes sense to make the effort toshift.This doesn’t mean letting go of principles, or not acting as the givensituation may require. It just meansmaking sure one is coming froma position of integrity — not fromnegativity. Then it’s light; then onecan go on with life.Then beautiful things can unfold. Ihave an ex-husband, Sona, who was

When exesbecome friends

my boss in Ananda Marga. We splitabout 12 years ago. We continue to be friends. It’s great. When I leavethe country, he takes care of thekids. He stands by me in the deci-sions I make. It’s amusing becausethe two times he has decided to getinto a relationship — he got myadvice. Funny, I feel like the FirstWife of African tradition. I like the person he is with now. She has comeand eaten at our home. And it feelslike she sincerely cares for him. AndI am happy that he is happy.There are countless relationshipslike this. My mother and Susan. MyTita Prescy feels that Tito Steve’s

kids with his ﬁrst wife are just as

much hers. And I can go on and onabout people I have met who have been able to establish a circle of heartness — with relationships pastand present. It’s healthy. It’s goodfor the kids. It’s good for humanity’sweb of life. All love is good. Alllove makes a difference. You don’tneed to rescue children or reforestthe La Mesa watershed; just liveyour life decently, and with love,seeing your negativity as it is, andrising above it. This makes a differ-ence. The difference to people livingaround you — especially to children — is direct. It is your legacy.When people use their childrento hit against their ex spouses, or feed their children with negative perceptions — real or perceived — it leaves imprints that will lasta lifetime. Why let anger rule your space? Let go, and get on with life.I actually love it when I seehalf-brothers, half-sisters, every-one getting along. It feels allembracing.Hmm… It’s similar, per-haps, to the way sticking toa relationship which drainsus and drags us down, just because of social structures,ignores the fact that each per-son has a responsibility to hisor herself — to seek love and joy — and this is much moreimportant than what peoplewill say, or what any institu-tion says. The non-negotiable principle is to be true to your-self. Sticking to something.Just as living behind a facadeis living a lie.There are no hard and fastrules. I believe in DivineGuidance. Deciding onanything through a circle of thinking, thinking, thinking is notthe way to go about making lifedecisions. Life has a wisdom toit. Be still: listen. Take a walk in aforest... by the beach... breathe freshair. Don’t think. Take a swim. Don’tthink. Just feel the beauty aroundyou. In the stillness, wisdom revealsitself. It’s not a rational process.Wisdom is a gift of your Higher Self.That is what should rule your life.That is what should rule relation-ships.

Max Soliven recalls Ninoy Aquino

Unbroken

the blindfold was ﬁnally re-

moved,” Ninoy recalled, “I foundmyself inside a newly painted

room, roughly four by ﬁve meters

with barred windows, the outsideof which was boarded with ply-wood panels.” Only a six-inch gap between the panels provided air andlight. A bright neon-tube burned dayand night. There were no electricswitches, the door room was bareexcept for a steel bed without mat-tress. No chairs, tables, nothing. Ninoy was stripped naked, hiswedding ring, watch, eye-glasses,shoes, clothes, taken away. A guard brought in a bedpan and said that hewould be allowed to go to the bath-room only once daily in the morn-ing to shower, brush his teeth andwash his clothes. He was issued two jockey briefs and two T-shirts andinstructed to wash one set everyday.Diokno apparently occupied the ad- joining “box” but they were warnednot to try to communicate with eachother.The cruel part of this punish-ment (Ninoy was never informedwhat they were being punished for)was that all his belongings — ring,watch, glasses, were given to hiswife, Cory, without explanation.

For a horriﬁed period of time, his

mother and his brothers and sisters,and Cory and the children, couldonly despair that Ninoy was dead.Eventually they located him, butthey were powerless to do anything. Ninoy and Pepe endured 30 days

in their stiﬂing boxes — during the

hottest time of the year. It was atransparent attempt to break Aqui-no’s and Diokno’s will.On Aug. 27, 1973, back in Boni-facio, Ninoy was brought before

a Military Tribunal, speciﬁcally

Military Commission No. 2 chaired by Brigadier Gen. Jose G. Syjuco. Ninoy was charged with allegedviolations of Republic Act No. 1700,the Anti-Subversion Law, with four separate charges and a total of nine

speciﬁcations including murder,subversion, illegal possession of ﬁre-

arms. He refused to take part in sucha farce of a trial, asserting that mili-

tary ofﬁcers should not be allowed

to try him since their commander-in-chief, President Marcos, had alreadydeclared him “guilty” in his public pronouncements. Moreover, sen-tence by a military tribunal did not permit him an appeal to the SupremeCourt. “I will not participate,” he

stated, “You can dispose of my ﬂesh,

but I cannot yield to you my spiritand conscience.”

Aquino’s deﬁance led to the

suspensions of hearings for a year and a half, but on March 31, 1975,his objections were brushed aside by

(Continued from page 1)

the tribunal which proceeded, after afew — and starts to “reinvestigate”witnesses against him Huk Com-manders Melody, Ligaya and Pusa,Tarlac politician Max Llorente, andothers. Ninoy put up no defense for the trial that was launched in 1973

and ﬁnally concluded in 1977. He

simply expresses his innocence.On April 4, 1975, he announcedthat he was starting a fast to thedeath to protest the injustice of hismilitary tribunal. Ten days after the “fast” began, he instructed hislawyer to withdraw all motions hehad submitted to the Supreme Court.As weeks went by, he took no food,only salt tablets, sodium bicar- bonate, and amino acids and twoglasses of water a day. Even as hegrew weaker, undergoing chills andcramps, the soldiers forcibly draggedhim to the military tribunal’s ses-sion. His family and hundreds of friends heard Mass nightly at theSantuario de San Jose in Green-hills, praying that he would notdie. Near the end, Aquino’s weighthad dropped from 160 to only 120 pounds, and he could not neither stand nor sit. On March 13, 1975,on the 40th day of his fast, he notedthat it was the Feast of Our Ladyof Fatima. His family and several priests and friends, begged him tostop his fast, pointing out that evenour Lord had only fasted 40 daysand nights. “I want to die today,” he prayed to God, “but if You do notallow me to die, I’ll take it You wantme to continue my work. Your will be done.”He survived. He had made his

gesture. Offered his sacriﬁce up

to God. But at 10:25 a.m. on Nov.27,1977, Military Commission No.2 sentenced Aquino and his twoco-accused, Bernabe Buscayno(Commander Dante) and Lt. Victor

Corpuz, to death by ﬁring squad.

Ninoy called the act an “indecentand immoral rush to judgment.” Butas he said, “a time comes in a man’slife when he must take a stand andmake a painful decision: to willinglydie for his principles or surrender. Ihave opted to die for my principles because my cause transcends myindividual self and freedom.”

‘LABAN’

However, the ofﬁcial ﬁring squad

was denied Ninoy Aquino. In 1978,from his prison cell, he was even al-lowed to “take part” in the electionsfor an Interim Batasang Pambansa(Parliament). Although his friendsformer Sen. Gerry Roxas andJovito Salonga preferred “boycott,”Aquino urged his supporters andallies “outside” to organize to run 21candidates in Metro Manila. Thushis political party, dubbed “Lakasng Bayan” (People’s Power) was

born, with a ﬁghting acronym that

was more than appropriate: “LA-BAN.” Ninoy was allowed one“television” interview from his cellon Face the Nation and proved to astartled and impressed populace thatimprisonment had neither dulled hisrapier-like tongue nor dampened his

ﬁghting spirit.

Foreign correspondents and diplo-mats asked us what would happen tothe LABAN ticket. All were agreedthat LABAN would win on Fridayelection day, but lose the next day.On Thursday night, at 9 p.m., a mas-sive noise rally transformed MetroManila into a festival of jubilant and

deﬁant protest. The “noise rally”

was supposed to last for only 15minutes, but everybody seemed to be out in the streets, car and jeepneyhorns honking, banging at pots and pans, blowing whistles and shoot-

ing off ﬁrecrackers. A few arrests

were made, but the police and PCsoon gave up and the tumult wenton in many areas till midnight. For

instance, ﬁretrucks in the end had

to be dispatched to Cubao, Que-zon City to hose the demonstratorsdown.Malacañang was shaken by whathad transpired, former Press Secre-tary Francisco “Kit” Tatad revealed(after he had quit the Cabinet). Hesaid the military had been placedon “red alert.” It was feared that a“coup” might be in progress. But,looking back, the very success of thealmost spontaneous noise rally (nobody, even in LABAN’s top coun-

cils, could pinpoint who had ﬁrst

spread the word about it) was theOpposition’s undoing. The metrop-olis-wide phenomenon had alertedthe President and his KBL that theOpposition was strong enough totopple their 21-member slate (led byImelda) in Metro Manila.Following the emotional upsurgeof the LABAN campaign and theletdown of “defeat” on April 7,1978, Ninoy’s life in his Fort Boni-facio cell reverted to drudgery. Thesentence of “death by musketry”remained posed, Damoclesian-style, over Aquino’s head, but thereseemed to be no move to implement

it. Word ﬁltered in to Ninoy that

American President Jimmy Carter,in his international campaign for hu-man rights, had warned Mr. Marcosthat if anything happened to Aquino,there would be an immediate “chill”in relations between WashingtonD.C. and Manila. Was this rumor or fact? Nobody would admit to it.But Ninoy continued to stand pat onthe challenge he had hurled at theMilitary Commission: “If Marcosthinks I am guilty, let him shoot metomorrow.” As he had said on April7, 1975, during his protest “hunger strike” – “There comes a time in aman’s life when he must prefer ameaningful death to a meaninglesslife.” In his prison routine, asidefrom daily prayer, Ninoy had takento reading the Bible. The word of