America reads Daily Guardian

By Alex P. Vidal

“Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.”— Henry Grunwald

A UNITED States Citizenship Immigration and Services (USCIS) officer in New York City told me five years ago the US Government was aware I have been a journalist from the Philippines for a long time.

“We have read your stories in the Daily Guardian,” the USCIS officer told me as I stepped into his office for a two-hour interview regarding my immigration status.

As I approached his table, I saw on the computer screen the website of the Daily Guardian, which “has revolutionized the newspaper industry in Western Visayas through fair and balanced news, exciting and edifying graphics and visuals, and views and opinions that matter to the lives of our readers.”

“Everything we learned about you (as a Filipino journalist in most recent years) we read in the Daily Guardian,” he added.

America, or the United States of America reads the Daily Guardian, I was informed.

I learned that everything that we write in the Daily Guardian is being “monitored” or read by the US Government, just like probably the other publications in the world.

Nothing escapes the radar of the freest country and the biggest democracy in the world, including our friend, Raul Abella’s A-1 cartoons.

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This year is my 36^th year in community journalism, which happens to be the Daily Guardian’s 23^rd anniversary, but I have been writing for Daily Guardian only for about 14 years (I am enormously and profoundly thankful to my long-time colleague and friend Founding Publisher Lemuel T. Fernandez, Publisher Lawrence Clark D. Fernandez, Vice President External Lcid Crescent D. Fernandez, and the globetrotter Editor-In-Chief Francis Allan L. Angelo).

I personally supplied to the USCIS the bulk of information about me as a community journalist that dated back two years after the 1986 EDSA Revolution, when a housewife, Corazon C. Aquino, was catapulted into power via “People Power” that kicked out the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr., father of the current President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

Thanks largely to the Daily Guardian that I was still “tracked down” and “ferreted out.”

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In the previous publications and other media outlets where I was connected, the information about me online was limited as the websites could not provide sufficient details and history.

I started my journalism career when Windows software was on primitive stage, or the fabled Microsoft Word wasn’t even conceptualized yet for formal use of regular writers like me.

I was part of the “typewriter journalism” era. One of my biggest regrets was I failed to keep important original copies of manuscripts and hand-written notes I prepared before typing my news.

We covered and wrote some stories that can’t be located by Google and even by the latest AI technology.

All that we have as a testament of our struggle and advocacy as “catalysts of change” (our favorite mantra in the good ol’ days of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines or CEGP) are the newspaper clippings, albums, and files that have been gathering cobwebs in the editorial storages and bodegas.

I congratulate the Daily Guardian family for adding another milestone to the publication’s storied and colorful history as precursor of free speech and expression in the written form.

God bless and more power for this great publication.

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RESTRUCTURING. To save the human race, we must reduce our number. The only way to do that is to restructure our entire socioeconomic system.

WE ARE STILL SUPERIOR. Human brains are smarter than creatures whose brains are larger than ours in absolute terms, such as the killer whales, as well as those animals whose brains are larger than ours in relative terms, such as shrews. Thus, the size alone does not explain the uniqueness of the human mind.

WE HAVE BEEN OBSERVING THIS RECENTLY. The greenhouse effect is a warming near the Earth’s surface that results when the Earth’s atmosphere traps the sun’s heat. The atmosphere acts much like the glass walls and rook of a greenhouse.

YES OR I DON’T KNOW? If we believe in God, we are called theists (no matter what particular conception of God we believe in). If we don’t, we are called atheists. If we say, “I don’t know,” we are called agnostics. Yes? No? Don’t know?

VERY IMPORTANT. Common sense is something I can’t live without. It is more important than my cellphone and other stuff; and I will never leave it even for a few moments inside my car.

ALL-POWERFUL GOD. The fact that God is omniscient or all-knowing is enough argument that science is part of His creation and by being omnipotent or all-powerful is enough evidence that God is in total control of the universe.

LONG HAIR. One in five women finds a man with long hair sexy. (GDP)

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)