PRESUMED GUILTY: We’re getting dizzy watching this topsy-turvy world.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front is being accused by the government of carrying out the March 4 bombing outside the Davao international airport that left 21 persons dead and more than a hundred wounded.

Instead of proving the serious charge, Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte is telling the MILF to prove its innocence! The dissident group apparently has been presumed guilty unless it can prove the opposite.

Not only that, Duterte wants MILF chairman Salamat Hashim (if his band was not behind the bombing) to produce the bombers! Salamat is being told to do the job of the government of catching the terror-bombers on pain of reaping the blame himself.

We don’t know who was behind that dastardly act. It could be the MILF, a clumsy terrorist trainee, some military operative, or someone else. But whoever the suspect is, he is still protected by the Bill of Rights and enjoys the presumption of innocence.

Duterte, whose gun-slinging style can work under certain circumstances, may want to listen to friendly reminders that we cannot solve a grievous wrong by committing another wrong.

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CARTER SPEAKS UP: Let’s pray that we can recover soon enough from this temporary confusion spawned and spread by the heightened war fever rampaging across the globe.

There is confusion even in the White House and the United Nations.

While the resolutions being heatedly debated in the UN Security Council are for the eliminating of any weapon of mass destruction in Iraq, President George W. Bush is talking of eliminating Saddam Hussein, his opposite number in Baghdad.

The basic error of one nation meddling in the affairs of another sovereign nation, and in fact preparing to invade it, has become so glaring that no less than former President Jimmy Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize awardee, has spoken against the imminent invasion of Iraq by the US and Great Britain acting on their own.

Writing in the New York Times, Carter called the unilateral attack on a sovereign country that has not committed any act of aggression against the US or the UK, an unjust war “almost unprecedented in the history of civilized nations.”

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BUSH WAR DRUMS: To keep alive the patriotic fervor of Americans, Bush keeps linking his invasion to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon at Arlington and the World Trade Center twin towers in New York.

But 9-11 was more than a year ago, too passé an incident to justify self-defense or hot pursuit. Besides, none of the perpetrators was an Iraqi (most of them were Saudi). In fact, the US posse dispatched by Bush galloped to Afghanistan, not to Iraq.

Even with opposition to war growing by the day, it is generally held that Bush has been so consumed by his own war rhetoric that there is no more holding him back.

We’re amazed that the US Congress, which is the sole authority that can declare war under the Constitution, has not moved to assert itself and raise a moderating voice amid the hysteria emanating from the White House.

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GMA AWAITS U.N. CUE: For a while there, we thought President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo would blindly wave the Philippine flag beside the fighting standards of America.

Upon watching on TV the UN presentation of State Secretary Colin Powell on what the US claimed was the smoking gun of Iraqi possession of WMD, President Arroyo initially announced she was convinced by the presentation.

Despite the US waving the stick for her to show the flag and offering the carrot of being received by Bush in a state visit in spring and coming home with a loaded shopping cart, President Arroyo has become cautious in her statements lately.

Notwithstanding hawkish American boys in the Cabinet, the word from Malacanang now is for the Philippine government to wait for the outcome of the voting in the UN Security Council. Fair enough.

Thinking ahead, the foreign office has authorized the remaining skeleton staff of our embassy in Baghdad to use their better judgment on the ground on when to run for the exit.

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PAX AMERICANA: It is interesting to watch the US probing and moving to create a security situation to justify its armed presence in the South. We see as its maximum objective its gaining operational access to a military base in Mindanao for projecting itself in the region.

So far it has been using diplomacy, aid, propaganda and all the subtle tricks of the trade to condition us into allowing its presence in Mindanao. At the moment, the line seems to be that we are caught in a volatile situation that requires their helping us.

But if it gets away with its invasion of Iraq and its hard-sell of its image as the globocop that can strike anywhere in the name of peace and democracy, it could just decide one day to move in under the cover of an expanded Pax Americana.

When (not if) it decides to do this — meaning to come to our rescue — we’re supposed to stand aside, swallow hard and mumble thank you.

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TESDA NEEDS FOCUS: They better listen to Sen. Edgardo J. Angara in his call for the removal from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) the authority to issue artist record books (ARB) for entertainers going abroad to work.

Having initiated the measure that created Tesda in 1994, Angara knows what he’s talking about. He said the labor department, to which Tesda is administratively attached, should refocus the agency’s functions to its original mandate.

The issuance of ARBs, a requirement of such labor-recipient countries as Japan, to outbound entertainers has raised talk of corruption in Tesda. Unqualified entertainers have been reportedly issued ARBs for P25,000 to P45,000 apiece under the table.

To clear the deck and stamp out the racket of corrupt personnel conniving with recruiters, Tesda Director General Dante Liban has ordered the transfer of the screening and certifying of entertainers to the private industry. For this, he has been denounced by those affected.

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TALENT, NOT SKILL: “But Tesda is not supposed to be certifying artistic talents like singing and dancing, only vocational and technical skills,” Angara said. “Singing and dancing are not technical skills.”

He said Tesda is a pre-university training center, with emphasis on vocational and technical certificates. “If you finish the training, you become a certified carpenter, welder, or electrician. These skills are in great demand in the world market,” the senator said.

We agree. Singers, dancers and such entertainers are talents and not skilled technicians. Tesda should have nothing to do with their training, screening and qualification.