FROM THE FRINGES: Retrospection, July 2026

FROM THE FRINGES:  Retrospection, July 2026

By Jerome Aning  | July 31, 2026

As part of our arrangement with this news website’s publisher, the fourth column of every month will be a retrospection of the three previous columns. We will be looking back at my previous pieces and devote space for updates, addenda, and epilogues, as well as feedback or comments from readers, clarifications and corrections.  If there’s enough space, new topics may also be introduced or previewed, and briefly discussed, with a fuller treatment to be provided in the next column.

Stamp-collecting, a hobby still evolving.  A friend on Facebook, a young parent, asked if it’s not too late to start a stamp collection, and perhaps, entice his teenage son to such an indoor hobby.  My advice to a starting collector is to first determine what kind of stamps one desires to collect and where to source them.  This would all depend on what interests the collector.  A history and geography buff like me started with three categories:  people, events and places (PEP) depicted on Philippine stamps through the years.  For those starting from scratch, latest stamps in mint condition may be acquired in local post offices or at the stamp shop at the Manila Central Post Office.  Last year the Philippine Postal Corp. issued around 90 individuals stamps, some sold in souvenir sheets or in first-day covers. There are plenty of used and cancelled-to-order stamps, both local and foreign, being sold or exchanged online but based on my experience, their number is dwindling as fewer and fewer people are sending snail mail and less stamps are being printed.

For a PEP stamp collector, one may narrow down to a particular era, maybe for his or her birth year up to the current year. The PEP categories can also be expanded, depending on the collector’s available time and resources. For example, one may collect for the “persons” portion only those depicting national heroes, sports figures, politicians or artists, but later on he or she can expand to include those depicted on foreign stamps as well.  There are more than 200 or so countries and territories one can choose from to concentrate.  Since stamp collecting is a recreation, acquiring stamps should be not stressful and expensive.  Stamps from the post-Edsa period generally easier to acquire, expect those with limited printing.  Those from the martial law era, the Third Republic or the Commonwealth or pre-war period are more challenging to find and acquire.  Aside from PEP stamps, other thematic or topical stamps can also be collected, and this, as I’ve written earlier, seems to be more interesting to the younger generations nowadays and are more available.  Collecting foreign and local stamps depicting flora, fauna or cultural and art objects can be fun.  I admire collectors who found the time to search for and acquire stamps related to their particular interest.  There are collectors specializing in stamps from the 19th century, those issued by “dead countries”, or even cinderella and illegal stamps.  The quickest way to acquire stamps, aside from acquiring them from the post office, is buying them online.. Thanks to online selling platforms, Filipino collectors have greater access to sellers from Southeast and East Asia, many of them selling at cheaper prices.  The collector, like any other consumer, is reminded of the Latin adage, “caveat emptor.”  There are many scammers and fraudsters, and even legitimate stamp dealers, some full-time, others part-time, have unreasonable prices and purchasing rules that one does not always agree with. 

USA@250.  Hearing President Donald Trump refer to the United States as an “Empire of Liberty” in his speech during the sesquicentennial celebration of the US Declaration of Independence led me to recall one of the books I read during the pandemic, “The Empire of Reason:  How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment” (1977) by the late historian Henry Steele Commager.  The author’s main thesis was that ideas of the pioneers and stalwarts of the Enlightenment in Europe, what he called “philosophes”, were ultimately and successfully implemented in the North American colonies that broke away from Great Britain in 1776.  Guided by the ideas spread by Voltaire, Rosseau, Locke, Montesquieu and other thinkers, America’s Founding Fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and the authors of The Federalist Papers worked to create a body politic pursuing what would later be known as the American Dream, where every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life, and where protection against government abuses and tyranny is guaranteed through a written constitution.  Of course, the new nation was tainted with African slavery, Native American genocide and discrimination against women, but the concepts stated in the Declaration that “all men are created equal” and have an inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” evolved into the US that we know today and inspired independence and reform movements around the world.

The South China Sea Arbitration: Reading between the lines.  Perhaps because of its busy schedule preparing and hosting the ASEAN Ministerial Meetings and the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers Meeting, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) was only able to issue on July 23 a statement regarding the July 20 incident at Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal involving Philippine Navy servicemen stationed on BRP Sierra Madre and Chinese Coast Guard personnel.  The DFA, among other things, reaffirmed that Ayungin forms part of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf of the Philippines, as provided for by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and settled by the 2016 Arbitral Award. The DFA reiterated that under UNCLOS, a low-tide elevation such as Ayungin generates no maritime entitlement of its own and cannot be claimed by any other state. The statement puts more emphasis on Philippine claim to exercise of sovereign rights over Ayungin, rather than the shoal being an integral part of Philippine territory, as I pointed out my July 24 column.  Several readers asked that if Ayungin, as part of the Kalayaan municipality of Palawan province, is Philippine territory, then shouldn’t foreigners, civilian or otherwise, intruding there without permission be rounded up and charged for violating our immigration laws?  There are those who warn that such an act could lead to war but the government, especially the agencies dealing with the West Philippine Sea (WPS) disputes, should at the very least, explain to the public whether or not this action is worth pursuing.  I argue that this is very important because Chinese actions in the WPS are evidently based on their claims of sovereignty, citing both historic rights as well as UNCLOS.  Nevertheless, China, the Philippines and other claimant countries should continue to exercise self-restraint and avoid escalations and, through a code of conduct currently being negotiated, pursue peaceful resolution of the dispute, maintain regional stability and promote sustainable development in the South China Sea.

The 10th anniversary of the Arbitral Award was marred by the depiction of the Filipinos as monkeys by a Chinese state-controlled media outlet in an AI-generated op-ed video posted on its social media page. Government and non-government entities, and individual persons protested against the demeaning, dehumanizing, and racist depiction but the message of the video—that the Philippines is seemingly being egged on by the US and Japan to challenge Chinese claims in the WPS—should have also been strenuously protested as well.  To me, the video appears to be a start of a series but the widespread objection led to its pullout.  Maybe if the video was done humorously, it would have been tolerable a bit.  As I watched the video, I recalled, from my childhood years. the comics series Planet Opdi Eyps by Roni Santiago which parodied Filipinos in a self-deprecating but funny way.  I was also expecting that astute content creators among those deeply offended or insulted by the video would come out with a funny counterpart or retort.  Maybe the “Filipino monkey” could return as a mischievous imp that would pester the intruders, or defend Philippine territory from transforming into a monkey deity similar to Hanuman in the Hindu epic Ramayana, the Taoist “monkey king” Sun Wukong, the gorilla god Ngi of Cameroon, or the baboon-headed god Babi of Ancient Egyptian mythology who devours the souls of the sinful.

This thought also reminded me about the nobles of Spanish-ruled Netherlands in the 16th century who were trying meet the regent to present a petition of grievances.  A government adviser told the alarmed regent that there was nothing to fear as the petitioners were “only beggars.”  The rebellious patriots set up an alliance called The Beggars.  Years later, a group of privateers, calling themselves “Sea Beggars”, assembled a fleet of warships that were instrumental in driving out the Spaniards from the Netherlands and securing Dutch independence.  A similar and more recent example is the “Cockroach People’s Party”, a satirical political movement of Indian youths founded last May. The group gained popularity on social media and led protests last month against irregularities in the entrance examinations for undergraduate medical students.  This eventually led to the resignation of the Indian education minister last July 25. The group’s name was attributed to the Chief Justice of India who. during an oral argument, supposedly likened unemployed youth to “cockroaches” and “parasites.” He, however, later clarified that he was referring to persons with fake professional degrees and not the nation’s youth.

Through linguistic reappropriation, the pejorative terms such as beggar, cockroach or monkey can be used with pride by the very people called that way.

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