Saturday, July 28, 2018

How To Play The Game of Thrones

Saturday Stories
July 28, 2018

Game of Thrones - Logo Poster

Once upon a time in the continent of Westeros, the Seven Kingdoms was ruled by King Robert Baratheon. He had taken the throne from King Aerys Targaryen, known as The Mad King, in a rebellion he led with Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark of Winterfell.

It all began when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen took Ned's sister, Lady Lyanna Stark – the woman whom Robert loved. Their brother, Lord Brandon Stark, rose in protest – and was killed by the King himself along with their father Rickard Stark.

Ned and Robert went up against the mighty forces of the Targaryens. They grew up together as wards of Lord Jon Arryn of the Vale, and they were like brothers, and Jon Arryn was like a father to them. Arryn had chosen to go to war than hand over the boys to The Mad King.

But Lyanna died – and Robert killed Rhaegar.

Aerys was killed by Jamie Lannister, a young knight in the Kingsguard, who stabbed in him the back. Jamie is famous for his swordsmanship, but hence became known as "The Kingslayer."

The House Lannister is the wealthiest in all the Seven Kingdoms. Robert had to marry Lady Cersei, the twin sister of Jamie and the only daughter of the formidable Lord Twyin Lannister of Casterly Rock, to consolidate his power. Cersei would present him with three children: Joffrey, Myrcella and Tommen.
 
One day, Jon Arryn, who was Hand of The King, the Royal advisor and the second most powerful man in the realm, died. His death came in an instant and was shrouded in mystery.

One of the main story threads of "Game of Thrones," the first in George R.R. Martin's spectacular and magnificent nine-novel epic "A Song of Fire and Ice" (which inspired the HBO saga "Game of Thrones") begins when Robert went to Ned's home in Winterfell to ask him to be the new Hand of The King.

"You have not changed at all," Robert tells him.

But in the TV series, he says: "You've grown fat!" and they laughed.

My second favorite GoT character is Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf, who arrived in Winterfell with the King's entourage. But in the TV series, he had taken a detour to a whorehouse. Ned's youngest daughter, Arya (who would later meet my first favorite GoT character, Jaqen) asked: "Where's the Imp?"

Robert also wanted to wed his fourteen-year old son and heir Joffrey to Ned's thirteen-year old daughter Sansa. Ned was hesitant, but the girl was already in love with the golden-haired crown prince.

Ned didn't want to be Hand. He hated politics, and he thinks of King's Landing, the capital and seat of the throne, is a snakepit. But he also knew there was no man that the King trusted more.

Yet if he refuse, Robert would have no choice but to name Tywin Lannister, who was the Hand of The King for twenty years as Aerys spiralled down into insanity. There is bad blood between the Starks and the Lannisters. Ned sees Twyin as a viper.

Such was Ned's dilemma when his wife Lady Catelyn got a secret message from her sister, Lysa, the widow of Jon Arryn. Lysa and her young son Robin had taken refuge at the Eyrie, the impregnable mountain castle of the House of Arryn.

The King's Hand did not succumb to fever, warned Lysa. Jon Arryn was murdered – and there is a plot against the King's life.

Game of Thrones


Photo courtesy of EuroPosters.eu



Saturday, July 21, 2018

Pax Vobiscum

Saturday Stories
July 21, 2018


My poem "Pax Vobiscum," Latin for "Peace Be With You," is originally an essay I wrote in the early 2000s. It shows the literary style of the journalism icon Teodoro M. Locsin Sr., the late publisher and editor of "The Philippines Free Press" and one of my greatest influences as a writer.

I created the poetry version of "Pax Vobiscum" last year. It was included in A Evening of Poetry 2018, an international literary event on March 24, 2018 at the Moberly Arts and Cultural Center in Vancouver, Canada. The poems were featured on the WIN-UNESCO Wall, in celebration of the UNESCO World Poetry Month. The event was initiated by Ashok Bhargava, president of Writers International Network (WIN) Canada.

It also appears on the third edition of "Muse for World Peace Anthology," a collection of poetry about peace from writers all around the world. The author and speaker Timileyin Gabriel Olajuwon, who was also featured on the WIN-UNESCO Wall, is the managing editor. This is a project of the Muse For Peace Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Nigeria that promotes world peace and solidarity. It was published by Global Fraternity of Poets of India, and it is now available on their website and on Amazon.

Yesterday it also got published at Destiny Poets, the literary site of the poet and workshop leader Louis Kasatkin, in partnership with Destiny Church of Yorkshire, England. 

Pax Vobiscum
By Jonathan Aquino

I

As I write this, somebody somewhere in the world is laughing,
crying, hoping, suffering. At this moment, a woman is giving birth.
At this moment, surrounded by friends and family, somebody is dying.
At this moment, somebody is achieving his loftiest ambition,
and somewhere also, somebody is healing wounds of humiliation.
Somebody is staring at a photograph, a memento of youth.
Somebody is gazing at the sea, searching for the truth

II

There are moments, when, unbidden, I felt at one with the universe.
I am blessed, as I became witness, when a deeper layer manifests,
in intellect and spirit, in heart and soul, as I soar to a higher existence .

III

There is peace in moments of serendipity:
a kiss from a child, a perfect shell on a beach, a glorious sunrise.
Beautiful moments I have known, and have known well,
perhaps unlike my shadow, unlike a constant companion,
but like a bird on the window, to alight, to sing, to delight,
but only for a moment – then she soars once more in flight.

IV

Peace I have found, brief moments in time, they glimmer
like fireflies on a moonlit night. But to Man, grasping for hope,
a morsel, alas, is not enough. There is more to this world,
in our lives, than Mammon’s lot; there is to be found
the nature of angels – joy, serenity, peace and love.

V

Not the peace of the desert; there is solitude, but only wilderness,
not to commune with nature, but to fight for your soul for eternity.
Not the peace of the grave; hollowed ground, but filled with emptiness,
for our time on earth is but a spark, a glint, in the blinding light of infinity.

VI

To have peace, some say, is to call for war,
for only in eternal vigilance can peace, like freedom, be defended.
Yet for peace to grow, like a lovely flower,  the soil needs not 
the blood of a martyr; the altar of peace needs not
the lives of the brave, the righteous and the just.
The cries of widows and orphans shall pass,
as all things pass, but a peacemaker, he who lights our path, is forever.

VII

There is finally, divine peace, for, at the moment of our death,
a vision opens the eyes of the soul, an awakening beyond understanding,
and that, my friend, is real peace, and peace be with you.

Photo courtesy of MusePeace.wordpress.com

See also: 




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Saturday, July 14, 2018

Who Was Carlos The Jackal?

Saturday Stories 
July 14, 2018

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On September 5, 1972 in Munich, Germany during the Summer Olympic Games, eleven athletes from Israel were murdered by the Palestinian group Black September. The leader was said to be the terrorist Carlos The Jackal.

It was a chilling eye-opener to read "To The Ends of The Earth: The Hunt For The Jackal" by the award-winning investigative journalist David Yallop. It took him ten years, from 1983 to 1993, to finish the book. One of his contacts from the French intelligence community told him to contact a man in Paris, who told him to contact a man in Milan, who told him to contact a man in Algiers, who told him to contact a man in Beirut – who took him to Carlos.

"To place my story in your hands is not much," said Carlos as they finally came face to face on May 1975 in Lebanon. "You are placing your life in mine."

For a man whose exploits and notoriety are legendary, I find it almost appropriate that I first knew about him from two fiction novels I've read when I was a teenager.

I first heard of Carlos The Jackal in "The Bourne Ultimatum" by Robert Ludlum. Carlos was also in "The Bourne Identity," the first story, but I read the sequel first.

In another classic thriller, Frederick Forsyth's "The Day of The Jackal," there is another assassin named Jackal, whose target was French President Charles de Gaulle. But this Jackal was an Englishman.

The real Carlos The Jackal is from Venezuela, born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez on October 12, 1949 in Caracas. This was Ludlum's Jackal – and of course, he wasn't killed by Jason Bourne.

And the havoc wrought by Carlos were also real. Fighting for Palestine, his attacks against Israel was relentless. Carlos was was the mastermind of the mass shooting at the Lod Airport near Tel Aviv on May 30, 1972.

Yet some of his actions had nothing to do with the Palestine cause, like when he abducted and held hostage five OPEC ministers in Vienna on December 1975.

He has assassinated, to name just a few, the dictator Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua on September 1980, and the vice consul of Yugoslavia on March 1974, and the military attache of Uruguay on December of the same year.

He was behind the foiled assassination attempts against United States President Ronald Reagan and Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov. He has been linked with the Libyan Prime Minister Moammar Gadhafi, the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran. 

On June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 139 was hijacked by four men from the Palestinian group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the German group Revolutionäre Zellen. The flight from Tel Aviv, Israel to Paris, France carried 248 passengers, almost all of them Jewish – and all held hostage.

The plane refueled at Libya under the protection of Gadhafi who was anti-Israel.

The next day, June 28, at 3:15 p.m., the terrorists landed the plane at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, under the protection of President Idi Amin who was also anti-Israel.

Then on July 4, the spectacular rescue mission by the Israel Defense Forces galvanized the entire globe.

The rescuers were all alive except one, the unit commander Lieutenant Coronel Jonathan Netanyahu.

The terrorists were all dead except one – the mastermind Carlos The Jackal.

Those are the stories, and Yallop shows the truth behind the stories

Yet Yallop's highly detailed and meticulously researched investigative masterpiece goes beyond any man. The Jackal may be the central character of his narrative, but it is in the context of the Palestinian issue and the age-old Middle East conflict. Yallop has no partisan agenda because he was neither Arab nor Jew – and that is why he can see things beyond the perspective of both.

Here is where I found one of the most powerful passages in the thousands of books I've read, and one to which I fully agree:

"My commitment in this issue is to the ordinary Palestinian and the ordinary Israeli," says Yallop. "Both deserve peace. Israel is the country of Jews; it is also the homeland of the Palestinians. That the talent and genius of both races have not been harnessed for mutual benefit for these past one hundred years will stand for eternity as an example of mankind's stupidity."

Photo of Edgar Ramírez in a scene from the TV series "Carlos" courtesy of TheVoid99.blogspot.com

Saturday, July 07, 2018

Way Back Home

Saturday Stories
July 7, 2018


The bear cub wrestled the bloodied dog to the ground. His claws came out for the final kill.

Then, something almost blinded him. A Siamese cat had leapt at him and began scratching his eyes. His wails were heard by his mother.

Suddenly, a huge grizzly was there, roaring. She came towards the semi-conscious dog and the defiant cat.

As if out of nowhere, another dog appeared, growling ferociously – ready for battle.
 
I just had to read Shiela Burnford's 1961 classic The Incredible Journey because I love the second movie version. 

So I'm happy to find Archive.org, an online library where people can borrow books for free. It seems you are turning the pages when you tap or click the screen. So cool.

This is the unforgettable story of an old English bull terrier named Bodger, a young Labrador named Luath, and a Siamese named Tao, as they made their long and dangerous journey through the northern Ontario wilderness to get back home.

They live with Jim Hunter, a school teacher in Canada, but Tao really belongs to his nine-year old daughter Elizabeth, and Bodger's master is his eleven-year old son Peter. But Luath "belonged," writes Burnford, "in every sense of the word, heart and soul to their father."

One day, Jim got an invitation to do a series a lectures at Oxford, which means staying in England for a couple of months.

His friend John Longridge, a reclusive writer who lives two hundred and fifty miles away, offered to take Bodger, Luath and Tao until Jim and the children return.

So it was arranged, although it is heartbraking to see them so lonely and homesick.

Then came duck hunting season, and John had to go to his brother's cabin beside Heron Lake as he does every year. He couldn't take them because he and his brother would be going on a canoe, so he asked his housekeeper, Mrs. Oakes, to drop by his house and take care of them.

Bodger, Luath and Tao stood in the driveway as John drove off. Mrs. Oakes was still on the way. For twenty minutes, everything seemed normal.

Luath was the first to move. Bodger followed, then Tao. "Presently," writes Burnford, "all three disapeared from sight down the dusty road, trotting briskly and with purpose."

The first movie version, The Incredible Journey, came out in 1963, narrated by the famous cowboy Rex Allen.   

The second version came out in 1993 and also from Walt Disney, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, the one I've seen and enjoyed so much when a friend gave me a BluRay copy a month ago. There was even a sequel in 1996, Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco.

This version is a lot different -- they talk. Their wise leader is Shadow, a Golden Retriever voiced by Don Ameche, and the cat is a Himalayan named Sassy voiced by Sally Field .

And the narrator is a free-spirited and happy-go-lucky  American Bulldog with a traumatic past named Chance, voiced by Michael J. Fox.

Chance was the first to appear in the yard from the woods when they finally found their way home. The family was so overjoyed.

Then came Sassy.

Peter waited for Shadow to appear. Waited. And waited. His parents tried to console him. He began to walk away.

All of a sudden, he felt the urge to look back.

And he saw Shadow coming out of the trees.

"As he had never run before," goes the book, "as though he would outdistance time, Peter was running towards his dog."
 
Photo courtesy of Amazon.ca