An International Dread of Iron Fist

Two years and two decades ago a human barricade in flowers and prayers, marching along the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Manila, toppled down a mad man who pathologically ruled the Philippines for 20 years. The strategy was noted to be far effective than any saliva, ink, blood, torches and effigies scrambled in in earlier attempts to break through the trigger-addicted, money-driven, terror-friendly regime. The human barricade succeeded since its soul was not just among those elbow-linking thousands in the capital but extended to the million freedom seekers in every habitable island in the archipelago which seemed to be every Filipino except Ferdinand Marcos, his family, cronies and worshipers. That spirit of solidarity under the wings of freedom from an Iron Fist gave birth to the world's first ever People Power Revolution.

Each member of this global society recognizes some years of living dangerously which often fell between the span of mid 30's to mid 90's which was characterized by Soviet ventriloquisted communist Europe, Che-Guevara-inspired Latin rebellion, post- colonial African republics' wrong concept of democracy, and Asian economic rape and strangulation. Iron fists themselves came in variety internationally such as: open absolute controllers (Agusto Pinochet, Francisco Nguema) or lurking political manipulators (Ne Win, Antonin Novotny, Anastasio Samoza, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Josip Tito, Vulko Chervenkov); justifying oppressors (Mao Zedong) or benevolent kleptocrats (Juan Peron, Kenneth Kaunda, Anwar Sadat, Omar Torrijos, Fidel Castro); genocide gods (Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Muhammad Soeharto, Pol Pot, Nicolae Ceausesco) or opponent vindicators (Benito Mussolini, Jorge Ubico, Nur Muhammad Taraki, Mengistu Mariamu, Luis Tejada, Zine Ben Ali); and freaked warriors (Gustavo Pinilla, Ho Chi Minh, Moammar al-Qadhafi, Sani Abacha) or dreaming megalomaniacs (Joseph Stalin, Antonio Salazar, Manuel Obria, Idi Amin, Manuel Noriega, Sadam Husein). The unique cultic ideology which spun around the brains of these notorious persona ran down their nerve endings and crossed skins to create a prolonged hair raising sensation in every contingent of their nations. Their eras were marked by changes from maps to marital statuses, from fellowships to food allocation, from culture to concept of truth. Hoodlums come from the government, from people in black robes, from men in uniform, all spreading terror. Every opposition was a rebel, every rebel was executed, every execution was concealed. Companies grabbed from the elite, and soul sipped from the marginalized. The knowledgeables bled, the innocents sweat. Grand projects proposed, started and fell while IMF dept rose. Nearly everyone lost someone or something. Too ghastly to recall, yet too vivid to be forgotten.

To understand it all, Iron Fists were also humans perverted by psychological stresses reaching values critical enough for them to cause such social-politico-economic problem. Such social problem requires only one type of solution – human solution – such as the people power revolution. The success then of depends on the critical mass of individuals (mostly the oppressed) in dread of iron fist who are willing to participate in recollecting the national soul and reviving its people, its government , its economy and its culture and redirecting its destiny.