MY EVERYDAY THOUGHTS. Discussion lead: Defund. ICE. Border Crossings. U.S. Crimes. And Stuff.

<>Defund! Passion. My "defund" wish: The U.S. military spending, $850 billion, which is almost 4x the budget of China’s “Defense.” Consider that the CCP/PLA had to “defend” (if ever) a population that is 4x larger than the U.S. 

       Meanwhile, a compelling lead to the “Defund!” discussion is Bill Clinton’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the largest crime bill in U.S. history. The budget was $30 billion ($65 billion in current money). In that year, the U.S. experienced 42.4 million criminal victimizations, 26 percent were violent or deadly. ☮️🗽☮️

<>Defund ICE? ICE's budget is around $10 billion, which is under Homeland Security’s (proposed) $66+ billion budget. Mr Trump proposed a double ($112.4 billion) in the onset of 2025. Federal and government budgets for migrant sheltering vary. Hint: NYC alone spent $1.7 billion in 2024. 

       Meanwhile, I view the “2 dead in Minnesota” as an immigration per se issue, more than it is a federal law enforcement program or a Left vs Right caterwaul. Please, continue reading. ☮️🗽☮️

<>Deaths are a daily fact among migrants crossing towards the U.S. border. In 1998, a record 8,000+ migrants died trying to cross. In recent years, the deadliest tally was 895 deaths in 2022 (surpassing 2021’s 560). 2025: At least 30 to 32 reported deaths, equaling the record set in 2004. 

       A significant stop to illegal border crossings would mean less migrant pursuit in U.S. soils. Less violence, less deaths. 2025: Crossings dropped to lowest levels in over 50 years. The U.S. Border Patrol recorded approximately 237,538 encounters with migrants in fiscal year 2025, a dramatic drop from over 1.5 million in 2024 and over 2.2 million in 2022. ☮️🗽☮️

<>Violent crime, border crossing, mass shootings. <>When Barack Obama deported a record number of migrants (4,000 average in his first term) and Joe Biden let in a record number of migrants (at times 4,000-6,000 a day, from 2021 to 2024), the Left was cool and quiet. 2025: Lowest number of U.S. mass shootings in 5 years. Peak: 2021 (689). 

       Also, the largest 1 year drop in U.S. homicides, 20 percent, was tallied in 2025. Major cities recorded a 21 percent drop in homicides compared to 2024 and a 44 percent decrease from the 2021 peak. Yes, that’s the reason why I am more scared of winter ice this year, and not Trump’s ICE. ☮️🗽☮️

MORE about “2 Dead in Minnesota.” Two Filipinos weigh in.

My response to a Friend's Facebook post.

MAYBE I am cold. As a grandfather-old Filipino who lived through 20 years of dictatorship, countless wasted or "salvaged," dozens fatally shot in protest rallies, not to mention countryside wars and coups that I covered (including February 1986) and then living in affluent America and 2 deaths in Minnesota? 

       Uhh. Two deaths around circumstances that are absurd (you may interpret "absurd")? I am baffled. I can somehow understand the magnificent drama among Americans but some Filipinos ride along??? 

       In the same week that the 2nd person was shot, 6,126 protestors in Iran were erased by the dreaded IRGC. That, that massacre is THE news to me. Closer to the horror of my experience. But 2 deaths in Minnesota are such a big deal that the other side of the eerie divide calls it Nazi-era or dictatorship? 2 deaths. 

       Meanwhile, talking about Minnesota? What I could relate with in anger? The state government's billion$ social services corruption is drowned out by the 2 deaths. Koraps! That would drive me to the streets to protest. 

       Another bizarre fact in the U.S. is, the Left's response to Minnesota mutes the collective response when another mass shooting occurs (mass shootings that exponentially spike since Columbine 1999). And look, they have a betting site called Polymarket. (Worse than Pinoy uziseros!) Bet if Trump will attack Iran or not. Many already won after Venezuela although it was a regime change, not invasion. (Many lost per Greenland.) Yup, that's how Americans "view" carnage or shootings as they cuddle their "120.5 guns per 100." 

       I have been living in the U.S. for years. What concerns me here is the mental crisis, which ushers in this kind of Minnesota distress. In some cold, cold way (snow outside my house), I'd say this gargantuan drama indeed aligns with "long covid" which earns a drama king and drama queen "paid work leave" or unemployment benefit. And lots of FB likes. 

       I am sort of glad that I am a Filipino so much so that when Asheville (where I live) was hit by a calamity in September 2024, I simply shrugged it off. I live/d and my rice was untouched by the hurricane. 

Facebook Friend: “I have lived through, and struggled against, the same dictatorship, Pasckie. I have also suffered captivity and torture from rebels. I riled against willful killings, whether committed by soldiers or extremists.”

AS I already somehow reiterated above, “killings” in America aren't parallel with “dictatorship killings” in those years. We can't even compare EJKs or “salvagings” with mass shootings here. 

I am not saying the "2 dead in Minnesota" isn't tragic. Or should we compare ICE holding cells with the "torture from captivity from rebels" (that you experienced) or from soldiers (that I covered)? Migrant kids in foster homes or DOJ shelters have computers and flatscreen TV. I can't even compare those adult migrants held before deportation or asylum with Rikers Island but maybe in Guantanamo (what I read). 

       Yes, I can't parallel the events that led to the 2 shootings with how Marcos' soldiers snatched protestors then, then dumped somewhere. But the way media or social media project Minnesota to the world is even worse: Nazi Germany time? 2 deaths, video'ed and all, with thousands or millions burned in Sobibor? Is Trump is Hitler? ICE is Gestapo? 

       What scares me in America is not Trump or ICE but the 120.5 guns per 100 and the unabated spate of mass shootings due to hate and mental crisis. Today, there's one Louisiana shooting, 6 wounded. No one posted that per my Homepage. Thank God, no one is dead (as of the minute I read the news). But are we in a war or dictatorship in the U.S. right now as trumpeted by the media? No. 

       Minnesota is one of 50 states. Right now I am on Hulu watching a TV series and drinking beer. There's dangerous ice outside due to the snow. Not ICE. And if ever ICE comes to me, I will not kick and break the tail light of their van. Sheer common sense

Facebook Friend: “I’ll have to stop engaging here, Pasckie, because we’ll see no end to whataboutisms. You’re happy with how things are under D’rump, others are not, me included. Let’s leave it at that.”

I AM never happy with any POTUS as long as the military budget stays 4x higher than China. But then if I don't "hate" him as many seem bent to, I just look at his policies (vis a vis my own experience), yet I am automatically judged as "D'rump." 

       I disagreed big time with Barack Obama on immigration (as a Filipino) and foreign policy (as an anti-war activist) but since the passion isn't high on hate during his terms compared with Trump, I don't think my Barack criticisms were even heard (regardless that I published a newspaper here in Asheville). 

       There is no grown-up talk about Washington policies when Donald Trump is in the picture, I guess. I somehow expect to learn from you about Washington foreign policy but again, I am dismissed as "pro Trump." ☮️🗽☮️

Constitutional Rights. First Amendment and Second Amendment. Minnesota.

Responses to my Facebook post/s. First line, or highlighted quoted lines, are by commenters to my post.

<>“Constitutional rights and freedom of speech." Yes, but NOT in front of a gun. Even if a damn cartel sicario is the one pointing a gun at my face, yet he yells: "Stop" or motions for me to stop, sheer common sense tells me to stop. Repeat: Especially if there’s one or more people in my car, or I am around people (as in a mass of protestors). 

       If after the fact, I believe my “constitutional rights and freedom of speech” are violated, then there you go. That’s the job of civil rights attorneys and cause-oriented legal experts. 

<>“Right to bear arms is our 2nd amendment right.” In fact, let me stretch that: There is “gun carry” in Minnesota. Yet deductive reasoning or sense asks me, “Why would I carry my damn gun to where law enforcement, guns royale, are all over. And where protest adrenaline or rage are louder than thunder?” Would I calm down yet still head out to where the shoutings are and protest, legit and smarter.

       

<>“Exercise those rights and must bend the knee to not get murdered in our streets.” Compliance before a cop who told me to stop–as in driving the car on the shoulder of a road or oblige to frisking–are examples of police/civilian interactions. Would you go ahead and drive faster or wrestle a cop because it is a “civil right” to refuse frisking? Do you? 

       Next, what if all these happen, with your child in the car? Because there are people around with cellphone cams to record the “murder” and disrespect of your “constitutional right,” tell me. But you can be smarter than dramatic. Let `em and then sue; in fact you may win huge money and/or get donations via GoFund. But you need to be alive to enjoy those. You dig? 

       

<>“No longer living in the America that my forefathers fought to protect.” Actually, they did fight for those. Founding fathers. Democracy, civil rights, all the amendments. They fought a real revolution or war for those. But they didn’t say “abuse” or overstretch those. They drafted and ratified those rights for your protection as an American. 

       We enjoy all these privileges of Democracy and the First Amendment so much that we overdo them. Challenge the Constitution while crossing the thin line between “legal” and “illegal,” yeah? Insult the head of state and law enforcement because it is your First A? Unleash your rage versus the “New Hitler,” yeah? 

       Other nations don’t have these privileges. Look at current Iran. Soldiers don’t yell at you to stop. Soldiers don’t wrestle you to the ground to handcuff you. They just shoot you, in front of people. I experienced those. Hey, go cuss at a head of state, the bodyguard will kick you right there or snatch you, toss you in a black SUV, and drive you to your death. Those are real life elsewhere. 

       Sure, it is your right to cuss at anybody, right? So what if someone in the streets, someone who doesn’t like you, throws all imaginable Samuel L. Jackson “f” words in your face? Smile and say, “Yes, okay. That is your Freedom of Speech.” So cuss back I guess? Is that what the Founding Founders taught us? 

       So you are telling me that we in America could be “losing” the sublimity of democracy that John Adams (and the Founding Fathers) fought for. First of all, those were the 1700s, these are the 2020s. Life has evolved and so the words Democracy and the “right to bear arms” must not be interpreted per 1788. 

       If Thomas Jefferson or James Madison are alive now, I sure know what they’re gonna say. Yet those words will be taken as truths or “constitutional” per Left or Right. You reckon? ☮️🗽☮️

STUFF. Security. NATO. Greenland. And Donald Trump.

Response to a Friend’s Facebook page/post. 

I AM a bit bothered by the word "security" these days but I do recognize leadership SOPs. Yet per Mr Trump's playbook, his trade tact outweighs his balancing act in regards to doves/hawks in his foreign affairs agenda. Clearly, he is not a fan of NATO (he already lowered U.S. share in 2019). He doesn't favor too much military expenditures yet we know that the Pentagon's Defense budget keeps on spiking. That is an American fact, regardless that China's military budget is 4x less. 

       President Trump's major issue with the EU isn't Greenland (as media narrates). It is Ukraine. The EU still backs up Kyiv with military aid, irrelevant of Europe's economic murk. 

       Ergo, while Don keeps the hawks in Washington calm, he also issues his dovish agenda. That is tough. The reason why he sold new arms in Asia and Saudi Arabia yet he pursued peace. 

BEFORE Joe Biden, and while Angela Merkel was in power, the EU was cool with Russia. Europe needs Moscow's oil and gas; Norway isn't enough. The reason the economy stays below 1 percent is they lost that fuel (although some EU members continue to buy from Moscow/Gazprom actually; some via India). 

       Regardless of the war, Russia is still #1 natural gas exporter and #2 in oil (exports). Per Trump, the only way to deal with Ukraine is to end the war. Let the disputed (secessionist) Donbas region decide for themselves. Then talk about Ukraine’s rare earth and wasted natural resources. That is the issue anyway, going back to Euromaidan in 2014. The EU wanted these resources. They believe a war will do that as though we are in the 17th century still when the West could easily impose, via military aggression.

THE fact of the (current) world is, when a country purchases a territory, that is a corporate budget and the upkeep is shared with the government, and so on and so forth. So if Denmark sells Greenland, that'd be the lowdown.

       You see, China has been “quietly” buying lands globally since the Deng Xiaoping years, after Mao Zedong's death. But they don’t do it a-la America or Europe. You know I mean? They don’t like drama. While the world busies itself from all-Trump, China’s BRI, or Belt and Road Initiative, or trade expansionism carries on. ☮️☮️☮️

I WROTE this poem, I think, 15 years ago. It mirrors my break from the Left that started in the Philippines in the mid-1990s onto my grim experience with their comrades in New York City, which pushed me to move to Asheville NC in 2000 to seek “peace” and heal, and why I organized/produced “Bonfires for Peace” in public parks.

My response to newspaper interviews: “The Bonfires (for Peace) is not politics. This is a community convergence, whoever you are.” And then my frustration after covering the Occupy protest in Wall Street in 2011: “No leaders, no followers.” Today’s Left is fighting their own shadow, an enemy that is ushered by their “romanticized, idealized fear” of what may happen in a dystopian future, unable to see the horror in the gutters–ignoring the writings on the wall from Day 1 of the 21st century’s Great American Divide. Two dead in Minnesota blurring the dead in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran. And still, the Left believes the “war” is here, within and not without, far from our beloved “Democracy.” ☮️🗽☮️

Just So You Know

Just so you know

I am not coming to the party

I will not be in the drum circle

I won't be marching with the crowd

I will not be there. I am not going

I will not be present. I am gone.

The red wine that drenched beaten chests

in drunken celebration of our victories are all gone

spent, consumed, drained. The bottles broken

shards and splinters scattered on the pavement.

There's no more wine in the cellar of my searching.

The drums that I used to pound with strong hands

of coal and fire to usher thunders of rage among

bugles and brass have lost their rhythm.

I couldn't follow the beat anymore. My feet

and legs are worn out from all the marches

and hikes. Tired, blistered, bones twisted

my boots are punctured, with holes wide

as the hollow in my monsoon fed lungs. 

Just so you know. I won't be there.

But carry on and start the bonfire

without me. Let the heat surge

and illuminate the dusk of these

burning avenues and highways.

Dawn in the mountain reveals

columns of broken piano keys that

I couldn't follow. A drunken sky

of black pigeons splash in

the putrid waters but I couldn't

recognize them. The wolf's cry

that once woke me up from

stupor has a voice that I couldn't

understand. I couldn't hear the call

of crows or the tapping of ravens

anymore. Just so you know

I won't be there. You don't need me

in the next convergence to calm

the tempest that pummels the glade.

Just so you know why I am not

joining the din of jungles anymore.

I lost my armour along this journey.

Roads that once screamed the pain

time has covered my moss.

The bolsheviks of academias

and the revolutionaries on the rostrum

are drowned out by the discourse

in the plaza of our minds. The factory

is compressed in a tiny box and the farm

is littered with embers that click

out in midday sun. The songs

that warmed the trenches of Bastonne

aren't sung anymore. The wind

that pushed boats in Dunkirk

have gone elsewhere, and the poems

that lit the rubble of war from Waterloo

to Cajamarca, Yorktown to the Mekong Delta.

All gone.

The virulent force of my hands

that held torches on winter's nights

that I passed onto sweaty hands

of car workers in Macomb County

have fizzled out. The grease on gloves

of coalminers in Welch and steel

workers in Steelton are washed away

by invisible rains. Yet I can still recall

the cadence of lostness while young men

and women fight and die in Raqqa.

I can still smell the stench of dead camels

in oil fields in Riyadh. I hear the howl

of babies fed with toxic fear in Medellin

and Pyongyang. In my dreams

at night, I see electric eels along

the breakwaters in the South China Sea.

The foul aroma of gunpowder

in a Chicago sidestreet that devour

the scent of magnolias in the park.

The memories are still alive in me.

Skeletons of buffalos in Tahlequah

and murk of dumpsters, lost

keystones to violated treaties

in the plains and pueblos. Memories live.

But memories belong to the past.

Yet the agony remains unattended.

I want to come out and continue

the trek to freedom but I lost my way

as I lost my strength. I don't know how

to get to the plaza anymore. I am lost

in the far lefts of the north

and the alt rights of the west, and centers

of the east, and the left and right

of the south. I don't even know anymore

what kind of voice speaks of freedom

and justice. I will not be

welcomed to the gathering. I am misplaced.

I don't belong to anyone's polar extreme.

But those who go out early know

that there will be no dahlias that bloom and die:

they will all live yet mired in numbers and laws

in games of death, in loud anger.

Imprisoned in a shipwreck of blood.

I just couldn't navigate the plaza anymore.

So I will not be there.

Yet despite the fact that I lost my armour

my boots, my flag, my drums, my megaphone

my pen, my guitar, and my car and all the

tools that took me to the road, I still have one

last possession that I know will one day

bring us all together again.

My heart. ☮️🗽☮️

–Pasckie Pascua, from “Sweat! Poems of Grease and Mud.” 

Peace in America? Cracks in the Streets. Days of Disquiet.

LET me inhale-exhale first and place my (outside looking in) objectivity to crush whatever subjective drama that I harbor in me. <>I am not new to deaths in the streets where police (military, riot cops) confront protesters or civilians. I am a veteran of dictatorship-days tempests, both as a journalist and activist. Philippines, 1980s-1990s. These happened before my eyes, even. <>But I am new to this kind of street violence or public shootings, in America. From 1999 Columbine to this recent incident in Minneapolis, perpetrated by civilians or law enforcement. So I’d tackle this in a different but related context.

       In Martial Law Philippines or during my coverage of the countryside war in Asia, my primal response to a person (police, soldier, Communist rebel, civilian) with a gun pointed at me and who yelled: “Stop!” I’d stop. Common sense. Even in actual war, when a combatant who drew the gun first yelled “Stop!” to the enemy combatant, the latter stopped and raised his/her hand in surrender. (Of course, per mass shootings in America, the shooter doesn’t yell stop, so you better run or hide or whatever. Save your life.) 

       In many cases or videos of “cop shoots civilian” (or takes down, choke-holds, a civilian) in the U.S. that I saw, the victims were resisting or “moving/running,” regardless of the cop's weapon/s drawn (or holstered). I didn’t really see these police-resistance or outright defiance in “military ruled” Philippines. Yet many soldiers in dictatorship Philippines went on mowing down protesters, in full view of the public and the media. More tragic.  

       So my question on impulse, in the Minneapolis shooting: Why didn’t the victim stop? Clearly, the cherry-picked video (always edited as in others) tells me, the ICE operatives were telling the driver to stop. Or by sheer instinct, when law enforcement approaches you, you gotta stop moving. Checkpoints, random traffic stops etcetera. Of course, given the heat of the moment as fueled by the eerie divide or hate-Trump howl in the current-day U.S., cops or ICE or law enforcers are told to exercise “maximum tolerance.” 

       But “maximum tolerance,” many times, flies away as adrenaline gets the better of the police. Yet I can’t really judge that since I am not a cop or a rebel combatant or a soldier (I don’t even own a gun). With rage and anger thrown all over ICE faces wherever they go, as they attend to their job, that “maximum tolerance” mojo is really tough to comply with. (A major reason why I don’t own a gun is–I have a short fuse.) 

       Anyhow, a full-investigation (of the Minneapolis tragedy) is warranted. If I am Defense or Prosecution, or whatever, I’d like to see the full, unedited video that led to the ICE operatives approaching the SUV and then firing. I won’t use the videos that are splashed all over social media but I’d enjoin the public to come forward in case they have a full, longer video. Then, the obligatories: The ICE agent’s mental state etc etcetera. 

       In a calmer voice, I’d like to say, an ICE agent–not President Trump–shot an American in America. That matters a lot per public perception of an individual crime or particular police-public engagement. Meanwhile, although that isn’t as simple-linear as the typical mass shooting here by a disturbed person, the mental placement of a law enforcer matters, especially in these days of hate and disquiet. Of course, there’s “command responsibility” as in careful deployment of ICE agents in “hot areas.” (Minnesota is currently hot, also because of the corruption probe, not just because of the unpopularity of ICE to this side of the divide.) What I am saying is internal affairs (IA) investigates their own, too. 

       Looking in from the outside again, my overall take on this is exactly what my dad used to scold me about when I insisted on going out as protests burned the streets of Manila in those years: “Don’t go out. Stay at home. Don’t get shot.” ☮️🗽☮️

On the subject of the ICE agent’s shooting of a civilian. 

Response to an FB friend’s question.

MY reflex then (in front of soldiers in Manila's Martial Law) and my instinct these days in America (when caught amidst an intense street protest, cops all over): Comply and heed once told to stop by law enforcement with a gun.  I was in fact told to freeze and pinned to the ground by cops in 1999's Battle of Seattle and LA protests in Obama days, though I was there as a journalist, not a protester. Same with the Occupy days in NYC in 2011. Cops stopped me and asked for an ID. I complied. Why would I run? Be shot? They have a gun! 

       As a protest organizer in the past, I was vehemently against engaging riot police and part of our duty as dissent leaders (as well as the police) was to advise the public to avoid the ruckus or noise where we are (something untoward may happen). As protesters, we had medics and first-aid people. My strong words to protesters who were my responsibility: "Don't dare the cops. Yield. We'll deal with circumstances later but don't challenge the man with the gun." 

       Based on the Minneapolis videos that I saw, the ICE agents approached the black SUV. By sheer reflex, if I was the driver, I'd stop. Same with being flagged down, just stay put. The shooting was uncalled for but given all the wayward adrenaline of the situation, people yelling and stuff, and a black van whose driver refused to comply, the ICE guy shot. As I said, uncalled for. But what if? These happen a lot, of course. 

       There was even one that I covered when a cop shot a teenager (a boy) who brandished a toy gun, mentally-bothered victims who posed danger to bystanders, victims who died resisting arrest. This ICE guy will surely lose his job or be sent to jail, I expect, for the quickie response or lack of maximum tolerance. But this case isn't a linear "cop shot civilian" case. ☮️🗽☮️