Writer Nelson Navarro and I were happy to get "good buys." With 20 to 30 percent discounts, it made for a satisfying afternoon.

Nelson was able to find a rare copy of Eusebius Julius Halsema's biography published by New Day Publishing. Yes, he is the Halsema of the highway going to Baguio City. An engineer, Halsema was the pre-war mayor of Baguio City.

I got several items from Anvil that covered the whole political spectrum from "Right" to "Left". One is a slim (155 pages) book that tackles a heavy topic: "Before Gringo: History of the Philippine Military (1830 to 1972)" by Honolulu-based Donald Berlin, who worked for many years at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington D.C.

The foreword by Patricio N. Abinales said Berlin's book takes issue with the popular concept that the politicization of the military began only under Marcos.

"Combining a meticulous analysis of archival data, newspaper reports, and dissertations, Berlin tracks the history of civilian-military relations since independence, showing the extent to which the AFP, or at least its senior staff, played partisan politics to lobby, defend, and promote the institution's interests. The AFP had been in and out of the barracks as early as the first decade of the New Republic, and what Marcos did was simply to continue the practice of using it as an active collaborator. Gringo et. al. were therefore not the original but mere heirs to an earlier process," Abinales said.

A recent publication of Anvil is Raul E. Segovia's political memoir, "Inside the Mass Movement." As education reporter, I had the privilege of covering Segovia in the mid 80's, who was then with the Alliance for Concerned Teachers.

Browsing through Segovia's memoir, the stuff looks heavy. Elmer Ordoñez, who wrote the foreword, said Segovia "does not mince words about breakthroughs and shortcomings of the mass movements; he tries to grapple with the so-called split in the Left, particularly in its effects on the NGOs and the people's organizations he was involved with in the open mass movement.

"The ideological, political and organizational schisms of the Left have not affected him as much as it has a few others who already have come out with books that appear to have axes to grind. Raul has remained whole from the experience beginning with his active involvement and leadership in the mass movement during the martial law period, starting with the formation of the Citizens Alliance for Consumer Protection that spawned scores of other groups in struggles continuing the present."

Having seen the power of "mass movements" in 1986 and 2001 and frustrated why despite the widespread discontent with Gloria Arroyo, there is no gathering of a "critical mass" to stop her destruction of the country and its democratic institutions, I was curious how Segovia sees mass movement in the age of modern technology.

He only says: "The spread of the modern information technology has indeed revolutionized the mass movement." He also says IT is an effective tool in globalizing popular issues. "It directly connects deeper causes of local problems to their structural roots in dominant economies to the west. The Filipino activist who reads and plays with his PC is expert in linking with foreign sources."

He observes that "it is usually the young militant activist who is nimble in the use of the IT in the service of the mass movement more than his carping, captious elders who could only dream recklessly of the revolution when angered by the government."

He ends with the same question that is in everybody's mind: "While the youth sends his political text, his elders could only wonder: What next?"