Forum on Violence Against Movements, Movements Against Violence

College of Social Sciences Student Council
Institute for Popular Democracy

12 September 2006, 1-5 pm, UP Recto Hall

Presentation by Miriam Coronel Ferrer
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of the
Philippines; Co-convener, Sulong CARHRIHL

For centuries, national security options of states straddled between two approaches: one based on power, the other based on peace. The first option, power, may be better said as "power over" or the principle of domination over the groups posing a challenge to the state - its policies, actions, and more fundamentally, its nature. "Power over," at the minimum, aims to neutralize, and at the maximum exterminate, eliminate, subjugate contending forces in the name of the state and its desired attributes - sovereignty, stability, survival. At a glance, this approach seems to be the only logical option for a weak state, whose very weakness forces it to make a show of being strong.

The second approach is peace - that is, to seek peace, peace as a precondition to and/or an outcome of security. This approach is founded on the core values of tolerance, pluralism, and dialogue, the exact opposite of the values in the first approach: intolerance, inclusivity, brute force and monologue. It involves state-building through much needed reforms. Its guiding principle is "do no (more) harm" to the situation as it is.

Collective impact measures

What we have been witnessing in the last years is an internal security approach founded on the state's attempt to dominate and subjugate critical socio-political forces (first option). Its guiding principle is precisely to "do harm".

It incorporates the usual military operations against communist guerillas operating in the countryside. Such an approach relies heavily on the Philippine army whose marching orders are to clear, hold and consolidate (the latter now entailing the participation of state welfare agencies in what effectively is a lopsided application of a "comprehensive approach").

Reports of de facto curfews, arbitrary searches, harassment, imposition of the cedula, mopping up operations, notably in Nueva Ecija, but also elsewhere reflect that the classic counter-insurgency approach of draining the fish of its water continues. To suffocate the fish, the water is contained, drained or rendered unable to resist military pressure.

These methods have been referred to as "collective impact measures." As we have seen, this type of measures intends to hurt the populace in order to render them submissive, not really to finish them off. A local resident who gets killed in the process is, well, seen as collateral damage to the intent.

Collective impact measures also function as "collective punishment". Residents are scolded, chided, threatened for acts deemed sympathetic to the enemy. Read the accounts of the general assemblies recently held in Central Luzon by the military under General Jovito Palparan. Residents are beseeched and courted, entertained with songs and sexy dancers in exchange
for their sympathies. They are urged to speak out despite the asymmetry in the situation: unarmed, poor farmers facing fully armed lieutenants, colonels and generals. And when they do speak out, and complain of abuses of government soldiers, they are reprimanded, accused of already being "influenced" if not themselves NPAs. They become the brunt of displaced aggression, the easy target of traumatized soldiers faced with elusive "enemies."

The unprecedented high number of killings of political activists associated with national democratic organizations (as well as other left-wing groups such as the KPD) in compressed time is part of this "collective punishment" frame. The extrajudicial killings we have seen share the same features of rural community-based counter-guerilla warfare: indiscriminate or dismissive of the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and clouded by "hate language" and demonization of the enemy. A slight difference is that the killings are somewhat disguised, they are not done by men in military uniform, and are individual or tandem acts, whereas the usual counter-insurgency is marked by troops descending in communities (although their name plates may be covered, and their truck plates missing) who seek security and cover in numbers.

The killings' desired impact is the same: fear, paralysis, scuttling of the organizational network, albeit not just in the local but the national sense. The goal is to break the political infrastructure of the movement whose good showing in the past election (under the party list system) and corresponding access to pork barrel funds and a public platform, were, from the point of view of the anti-communist state, alarming. National politics is after all the bigger pond where the fish swim. But here the instructions are straight to the point: kill the fish.

In this power-based approach manifested in collective punitive measures, victory is easy to measure. One is through body count: how many dead and wounded? Another is through weapons count: how many weapons seized? And finally, how many communities, organizations, people neutralized? (We can discuss later how the same tendency is shown by the armed left.)

As we should all know by now, collective impact measures create more problems due to the social tensions and resentment they generate in the communities, and the affected public. They erode the fabric of society, confuse its norms, polarize, and desensitize. They provide fodder to counter-violence, and diminish faith in the system and peaceful change. They are sure-fire formulas for greater violence. They are our own "low-tech" version of weapons of mass destruction which nonetheless leads to the same MAD-ness, or "mutually assured destruction." The victory they lay claim too is short-term, flaky, and one-sided.

Multi-Layered Contexts

Let us not lose sight of the multi-layered contexts of this intensified state violence against a certain social force, its various apparatuses, but ultimately, violence or assault on the citizen at large.

One context is the short term: GMA's political survival. I will not belabor this point since it is already fairly well-established and well-reasoned out.

The long and short of this context is the legitimacy question raised against the GMA administration. Here the national democratic left has played a major role, whether in the attempts at setting off an impeachment process (through its party list members in Congress pushing for it, not once, but twice), or in military coup-cum-street protests that will force GMA to step down (through its waltzing with the malcontents in the military, in a queasy utilitarian alliance between the left and the right). The natdem left has also put blocks (lodging cases in the Supreme Court, protest rallies) to moves to strengthen emergency powers or insulate the presidency from the checks powers in the hands of Congress and the citizens.

It is to the GMA presidency's interest to weaken the multiple machineries of the national democratic left through both judicial (arrest warrants, and actual arrests, e.g., of Crispin Beltran) and extra-judicial means, as well as of all those lined up against her (why stop at one when you can cast a wider net?). At the same time, it is to GMA's interest to feed the loyalty of key state players crucial to her political survival, notably, the military (give them their war, medals, promotions, a free hand), the police (give them their balato), the members of Congress (give them their pork). It is in her interest to join the "coalition of the willing" and the US-led global fight against terrorism in order to get the backing and material support of US President Bush. In this regard, the GMA administration actively lobbied for the inclusion of the CPP-NPA in the list of terrorist organizations of the US and European bodies - even though the CPP-NPA does not as a rule employ terrorist methods like bombings.

But beyond the GMA presidency is the state of affairs of the Philippine state - the more important, larger context. This is a question that will transcend GMA (even if she stays up to 2010), and is related to but distorted by the partisan peddling of charter change. I am referring to the specter of not just a weak state but a disintegrating, failing state, one where governance (led by whomever) increasingly becomes unstable and short-sighted, and reforms impossible.

The prospects of a failed state result from the features of the post-Marcos state that we have inherited, worse off in its fracturedness and the frankensteins that were born out of the Marcos period, -- and how our political elites have selfishly played their games in this situation. It is the bigger context where the wanton use of state violence by both civilian and political leaders, and the military's privileged role in national security and national politics have become even more ominous.

What is a failed state? Rotberg describes it as one marked by enduring violence, though not necessarily always of high level of intensity. It is tense, deeply conflicted, dangerous and contested bitterly by warring factions, with varieties of civil unrest and two or more insurgencies, different degrees of communal discontent and other forms of dissent directed against it and at groups within it. Parts of the territory, notably the peripheral regions, are not under its control. There is high level of physical insecurity among citizens, thus they are armed or they join rebel groups. The society endures a high level of criminal violence, and delivery of socio-economic goods is limited. Its institutions are flawed; its infrastructure, deteriorating or destroyed.

The more recent line from Palparan, said over one ANC program last week, is almost a tacit recognition of our situation as a failing state. Because only in such a state can his explanation for the killings make sense. According to Palparan, the killings are perpetuated by people taking vengeance on the NPA for the latter's abuses. Queried if these people include soldiers, he replied in the positive, saying such soldiers are probably taking revenge for the death of other soldiers. If the state were a viable state, the military with a chain of command, the President the chief executive and implementer of the laws of the land - can this kind of anarchy, can this lame excuse be palpable?

Anti-communism and anti-terrorism

The ideological foundation of and justification for the state's excessive use of violence remains, oddly anachronistic enough, anti-communism. The language of anti-terrorism adds a new more contemporary twist, and locates our domestic wars in the context of the post-9/11 world order.

The language of anti-communism remains effective, given a general antipathy to communism, and an increasing alienation of the citizenry to national politics. To those who have fallen for this anti-communist "rhetorical hysteria" (defined by Wole Soyinka, first African to win the Nobel prize for literature, as the one-dimensional approach to all faces of reality, however varied or internally contradictory) , the killings are not a case of "slaughter of innocents" given that these people are somehow allied with the CPP-NPA. They don't think much about the fact that slaughter remains slaughter; that the basic principle of respect for human life and human dignity is for everyone, including the enemy number one of the state, and yes, including terrorists; that there are rules even in war that must be followed, notably distinction between those who carry arms and those who do not. Meanwhile, businessmen and professionals may be morally aghast at the unabated killings of alleged communists, but are not motivated enough to put pressure to stop it, until somehow, it starts hurting their economic interests, or their immediate environment. The middle class will continue to fight for their own means of survival regardless of the course of Philippine politics.

However, class analysis alone cannot explain part of the lingering potency of anti-communism. Part of the effectiveness of the language of anti-communism and resultant alienation is also due to the CPP-NPA-NDF themselves - their excesses (revolutionary taxation of rich and poor, infliction of punishments) , own pandering of violence and machismo, their inclusivity and dogmatic framing of Philippine society and politics, and their counter-monologue to the state's anti-communist mantra. The purges, the CPP-NPA-NDF hopefully recognizes by now, cannot be simply forgotten without full retribution and honest accounting before former and present comrades and the greater public. The ghosts of murdered comrades will haunt the party forever. And though not particularly convincing to explain away the recent spate of political killings among those who study their politics, and revolting for the disrespect shown the dead lying in mass graves, the purges of the 80s and 90s will remain scraps (war material) to poke around with, in the AFP and police forces' psywar ops.

In all, taken in the context of an untransformed state and reform-resistant state elites, the language of anti-communism coupled with anti-terrorism is actually anti-left (because the communists do not alone make up the Philippine left), and even more broadly, anti anti-status quo. Thus while we have our differences with the communist left, and as human rights advocates, oppose terrorist methods, we cannot tolerate the rhetorical hysteria of anti-communism/ terrorism. We cannot be unconcerned with the killings of branded communists/terroris ts, because the label easily includes all of us unhappy with the status quo, and exercising our rights to express our beliefs.

Ways Out

I have long been asking myself this rhetorical but really incisive question: what is the central political question of today? During the martial law regime and even during EDSA 2, the answer seemed simple enough: Marcos, in the case of the former, and Erap, in the case of the latter. Today, fortunately and unfortunately, we have to find the answers beyond Garci, Gloria and the two Gonzaleses in government.

The political killings is a problem with GMA - her leadership, her policy preferences, her questionable legitimacy based on her ascent to power (EDSA 2 and dubious elections) - but is also a problem that transcends her. Thus, removing GMA can be one short-term solution, but is not enough for the long haul. And neither is the long-haul solution contingent on removing her.

We must resolve how to deal with armed challenges faced by the state: resolution through conquest of power by a dominant force using force, or through sustainable, inclusive peace through peaceful means. The state has been pursuing the former, it's time to put more stake in the latter. But it will only do this if we achieve critical mass in forcing the state to take this direction.

We must work for a sustainable change founded on human rights and dignity - or a peace process alongside pursuit of specific reforms. There are key critical areas where state reforms are needed and where we should spread out and simultaneously intervene: reform of our electoral institutions and processes; reform of the security sector (cleansing and professionalization of the military and police); enhancing governance processes (depoliticization and upgrading of the bureaucracy) , strengthening of local governments leading to greater autonomy; and putting more resources in the educational system so that education is provided for all, and it is the kind of education where the values of human rights and peace are at the core.

Correspondingly, we cannot accept counter-violence as the better nor best way to fight state violence.

Our society is festering in a culture of violence -- violence that begets violence, that dehumanizes the victims and the perpetuators, reduces all fora to monologues, and elevates killing to the status of a national sport. We find in our midst self-righteous protagonists out to lay claim to their rights while blinded by their dogma and politics to the rights of others. There is much to untangle in the orthodoxy of class antagonism, of class struggle being necessarily violent, the state being the instrument of the ruling class, and the primacy of armed struggle in achieving political change. There is much to question about the soundness of the Maoist injunction to encircle the cities from the countryside as the route to revolutionary victory, the national democratic revolution as a stepping stone to a socialist revolution, etc. Certainly, we should discuss these, debate and challenge (but not kill) each other.

Let us have a national debate not to divide us further but in order for us -- state actors, counter-state forces, and ordinary citizens -- to reach some national consensus on how to best achieve social and political change. Without a shared norm or ground rules, and a consensual road map to start as off, we are doomed as a nation.

To conclude, the campaign against political killings of leftwing activists requires focused, case-specific response directed against the perpetrators and their chain of command. It also compels us to ask hard questions about the national security orientation and national security policies of the state and concerned agencies.

But our advocacy should be extended to become a campaign for a peace process; a movement against political violence as a whole, promoting human rights and extracting accountability from all parties (such as what Sulong CARHRIHL aims to do, using the CARHRIHL as framework); a dialogue for norms founded on life-affirming means and ends; a national quest for peace built on respect for human rights.

Human rights, peace, students, development and other groups should come together to work for new politics, the kind of politics that makes a firm stand against political violence.

References:
Buzan, Barry. 1983. People States & Fear, The National Security Problem
in International Relations. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Rotberg, Robert . 2004. When States Fail, Causes and Consequence.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Soyinka, Wole. 2004. Climate of Fear. London: Profile Books Ltd.
Stepanova, Ektarina. 2003. Anti-terrorism and Peace-building During and
After Conflict. Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute.

Oh The Delights of A Camera Phone :)

Sample the dessert delights on offer by Goldilocks.



This explains why I haven't been seeing any of the barangay tanods lately...



The vehicle with which LTO East Avenue tests an applicant's driving skills: moving 20 meters forward and backward.



A restaurant along Tomas Morato welcomes its patrons



Joyride



A full-page ad on the Philippine Star. Someone's half-million peso apology for all to see.

No Past, No Present, No Future

Reading Conrado de Quiros’ column today, I am reminded of a heart-breaking discussion in class lately. De Quiros laments that contrary to what certain Filipino taipans say, the Philippine educational system is heartily responding to demands of industry. Fly-by night institutions as well as established universities have put up countless Nursing schools in the past few years. The problem isn’t supply of skilled workers. The problem is where these workers want to work. We aren’t responding to demands of local industries, but to those of global labor markets. We make teachers, doctors, nurses, scientists and engineers for export.

Many of my students are also bent on gaining their degrees so they can finally migrate abroad in search of a better life. About 2/3 of them can afford their P25,000 per semester tuition because either or both parents are also migrant workers abroad. Yes, they and their parents have given up on this country, but they say they love the Philippines. They just can’t imagine making a decent living here. Yes they will go back when they are old and gray, to die in the embrace of their motherland once their productive years have been spent enriching other societies in other continents far, far away.

In our classes we take a virtual tour of the world, examining and picturing countries we most likely will never see in our lifetime. But always, always, the discussions lead to home as comparisons are inevitably made. We had been talking about the post-colonial obstacles to development and how some countries were more successful than others.

We talked about Japan’s developmental model, copied by many East-Asian tigers; Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea. These countries were proverbial backwaters at the end of the Second World War while the Philippines was second only to Japan in the Asian region. South Korea was ravaged by the civil war in the early 50s, made the war grounds of Cold War rivals the US and the Soviet Union. South Korea is now a successful peripheral state which has made the transition to “late-late” industrialization. And they were able to do it in thirty years. Today, we see how the “good life” has been achieved in countless Koreanovelas on Philippine TV while we are where we are still.

On the surface the Philippines and South Korea share similarities difficult to ignore. Both experienced significant colonial intermediation, although the Philippines has had a much longer colonial history. The two countries were put under hard authoritarian regimes in the 70’s. Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972. General Park Chung-Hee coincidentally followed suit less than a month later on October 17. Both countries then “transitioned” to democracy in the mid-80s. Both had similar GDP per capita after the 2nd World War. They also had comparable political institutions installed by the US, particularly a strong executive in a universally elected representative government. Culturally, both exhibit strong familial ties.

I have always wondered why South Korea was able to take advantage of their neocolonial arrangements with the United States. Why it was able to bargain hard for American foreign investment, technology transfers and economic aid. The two largest American bases outside of the US mainland were located here, why couldn’t we do the same as the Koreans? Why weren’t we smart and wily enough to want more?

I had varied answers from my students. Some said maybe we were thankful for having such a benevolent new colonial master. Compared to three centuries of Spanish cruelty and ineptitude, the Yanks were heaven-sent. They educated us, taught us English and gave us the “gift” of democracy even though we were nowhere near ready to run a democratic government.

Some said maybe we were just plain stupid, so enamored of these whites, so convinced of their superiority and of our own inferiority. They had to know what was best for us, their little brown brothers, their poor carbon copies.

Some said maybe we lacked ambition, content with what we had, surviving every day. Happy to be alive and letting God take care of the rest. We had no cause to want more to be more to achieve more. We suffered and suffer still from low expectations. Low expectations from our government, our officials, our country and ourselves.

And so we leave in the tens of thousands each year, expecting nothing, wanting nothing, demanding nothin from our native soil. We take our chances out there, in some obscure corner of the planet, in search of seemingly limitless opportunities. We leave and will continue to do so, repatratriating our hard-earned income to those we leave behind, keeping families afloat, keeping this government afloat, keeping the system afloat.

There is desperation in the air, especially in the last year or so. Since the Hello Garci tapes. Some are so desperate as to peddle cheating on board exams. Some are so desperate as to brave the bullets of Lebanese and Israeli arms. Anything to fulfill our dreams elsewhere. To want more, to be more, to achieve more in an adopted home, in an alien land always far, far away.

Justice Cruz just doesn't know when to quit

Ours is a culture that reveres the old. We used to do this unquestioningly; the young must always give way to the superior knowledge of those who have been around longer. We presume they have experienced more and therefore must have learned more. But cultures change. Now we recognize that wisdom doesn't always come with age.

Based on his most recent column today on the Inquirer, I suppose Justice Isagani Cruz must have been deluged by an outraged "mob" incensed with his "opinions" about what is proper and improper decorum of homosexuals. In the past few weeks the Inquirer has published some of these letters. Many more reactions have certainly been expressed in the Pinoy blogosphere. Many took their cue from Manolo, outing himself unwittingly to the general public. Well, at least to those who do not regularly read his blog (read his "outing" post here).

The heated exchanges between these two Inquirer columnists quieted down a little as more important matters of state had to be critiqued and wrote about. It was quite exciting for a while, people duking it out on the web is always stimulating – readers immediately take sides and participate in the debate. But on a major broadsheet? The stimulating and coolness factor is multiplied.

The Inquirer expressed its own opinion on the issue in an editorial, signaling a cease-fire of sorts between Justice Cruz and Manolo's columns. I thought they let the matter rest. Until today’s column. Oh, Justice Cruz, why don’t you know when to quit???

First, he compares his “daring” to critique to progressives in American history. He mentions the bravery of the press in the Watergate scandal as well as the conviction of a certain Susan B. Anthony who campaigned for the right of women to vote. He then goes on to compare himself to a man who started teaching the theory of evolution in conservative states where the thought of humans evolving from apes was unthinkable. He should have stopped at identifying himself with Joseph McCarthy in his Communist witch-hunt. Because Justice Cruz has no business making comparisons between himself and the progressives he mentioned. These were people who advanced notions of social change and social progress while he advocates a reactionary, regressive view on homosexuality in particular and gender in general. He says he only voices the opinion of the "silent majority" and so he must not be derided for his efforts and should instead be lauded!

In the past weeks, this former justice of our high courts, a singularly erudite man who has (presumably) defended the laws of this land with as much gusto and passion as he has displayed in defending his opinions, has revealed to us that he is a man whose values have remained stuck in the fifties. I feel sorry for older folks who may be perceived in the same light. His own values are not a reflection of older people, but a reflection of who he is.

My immediate superior in a Manila university is a former ambassador in the twilight of his years. Despite the ageing of his body, his mind is as sharp as anyone else’s from our faculty. A few short weeks back, he and I had a heated yet entirely civil argument about whether to include Feminist philosophy in a course syllabus. He did not think there was a need. He thought why should we change what God has made? Why is there a need to teach Feminism? Aren’t Filipinas free to do what they want today? I said women are where they are today because of advances in Feminist political thought in the last century and a half. Women in the past have fought for the rights women enjoy today. There is a need to teach this because not all women in the world enjoy the same privileges we do here. There is a need to include this in our syllabus to show that what it means to be a woman changes. We are no longer “naturally” relegated to hearth and home “naturally” taking care of a gaggle of babies while the men are off to pursue their dreams of greatness. Women are no longer “naturally” perceived inferior.

He understood, he of the old generation. He of the old values where men were manly men and women were of the “fainting” kind. He listened to me, a woman forty years his junior and he understood. And so we have feminist theories in our course syllabus. I credit this to who he is as a human being rather than to his age. He understood that cultures change, that perceptions change, that what it means to be human changes.

Now Justice Cruz? You can e-mail and pester him all you like my friends. That is a lost cause. That is man whose arrogance stems not from his advanced years but from his singular lack of humility that what he knows and believes can’t always possibly be right.

A "God-fearing" People

In all my 9 years in UP, I don't believe I've ever heard, seen or read the term God-fearing." My classmates and acquaintances never used it and certainly not the professors. Surprisingly, in my 4 years of teaching in the Jesuit university right across, I've never heard the term used either.

This morning I asked my students and they don't recall having been taught that God should be feared, not even in their Theology class. But then Jesuits have traditionally been very liberal, especially when it comes to academic freedoms.

So, imagine the extent to which my eyes rolled over and over and over when I kept seeing this term, "God-fearing," used in another university in Intramuros, where I commenced teaching this semester. In one essay quiz after the next, my students kept mentioning "God-fearing" in answer to questions about politics in general and Philippine society in particular. Although I received a Catholic education during my elementary and secondary years, my university years were the most formative when it came to my view of religion. When we talked of God or the Church, it was almost always in a pejorative light. God was the instrument of colonial oppression. God is the opium dealer of the doped - and so tamed - masses. And so you can imagine my hackles raise when I encountered "God-fearing" in this Intramuros school, where students come from middle to lower-middle class backgrounds. Although the premier state university welcomes young people of various socio-economic classes, I now realize it is also the "breeding ground" of not only "destablizers and naked runners" (see post below) but also of a particular intellectual elite, whose basic values and norms are VASTLY different from the majority of the Filipino.

And so, in this Intramuros university, I met the ordinary Filipino, and I found that she fears her God. Regardless of my own ambiguous thoughts on deities, one wonders why this is so. Perhaps it reflects the ordinary Filipino's relationship with things unseen, with fate, with the cosmos. If God is to be feared then it pays to be obedient under his constant surveillance. If God is to be feared then he probably metes out punishment for those who fail to conform to his wishes. If God is to be feared then one must be wary of his capricious will. If he decides to make life hard for you, then you've no choice but to accept your fate, or maybe pray harder.

You gotta love 'em senile cabinet members

Gonzalez: UP breeds destabilizers, naked runners
By Armand Nocum
Inquirer
Last updated 02:25am (Mla time) 08/27/2006

Published on page A5 of the August 27, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

THIS time Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez has picked on the University of the Philippines school system, saying it mainly produces militant protesters and fraternity men and women who run around the campus naked.

"That school breeds the destabilizers that haunt the country year after year. They are acting as if they are the only ones who know how to run the country," Gonzalez told the Inquirer yesterday.

He made it clear, however, that he was not assailing the entire university population because "there are many students there who are bright and good."

Interviewed by phone while he was with President Macapagal-Arroyo in Guimaras, Gonzalez pointed to the Oblation run of the APO fraternity as another indication of the kind of students that came from UP.

"I doff my hat to them because they initiate the running of naked people... That's also one kind of culture that they develop there," he said, noting that women had begun to join the naked run as well which is held in December.

"Maybe we are going in that direction... there are now women running naked. I will not be surprised if they will go to school with only their books, nothing more," he said.

Gonzalez made the statements while lamenting that UP was the site of numerous protest rallies and symposia calling for the resignation of President Arroyo.

"In every storm that takes place, UP students are in the forefront,"he said. "As a matter of fact, our history will show that since the martial law years, students from UP were the ones who went underground and fought the government. In fact, many of them went to China and never came back."

Bomb-making in labs

Gonzalez said he came to see the militant activism of UP students first-hand during the First Quarter Storm of 1970 when then Sen. Genaro Magsaysay formed a panel to look into the violent protests there and he saw pillbox bombs being assembled in the school laboratories.

He said this was not the way the students should repay the government for giving them a world-class education. "They should consider the fact that the state is the one paying for their schooling. Why fight the state? Why try to bring it down. I think some degree of gratitude should be there also," he said.

He noted that UP had always been known as a "cradle of leadership" but he was worried that with the way some students there were acting, some serious questions would be raised about the "kind of leaders we will have in the future."

But he said he was "not degrading UP per se," but was only questioning the kind of students that came from it.

`I am well-behaved'

He said the matter of the high "tolerance to education freedom" should be raised to UP officials and teachers during the annual budget hearing for the school.

Asked what school he graduated from, Gonzalez replied: "University of Sto. Tomas... that's why I am well-behaved."

Gonzalez is known for speaking his mind on most issues and creating controversy.

Earlier, when he was asked if he was going to arrest the widow of the late residential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. for inciting to sedition when she spoke out against President Arroyo, he said she was too pretty to be arrested.

Another time when it was revealed that he was undergoing dialysis for kidney stones, he said that was not what made him launch verbal tirades against critics of Ms Arroyo.

"What does [having the] balls [to say things] got to do with that?" he said when he was asked if the painful passing of stones in his urine was the reason he was grouchy to critics and media people.

Ils (They) Film Review

Unlike many pompously self-important French films, Ils (They) has a surprisingly sparse script. Full of one-liners like Qu-est-ce que tu fais? (What are you doing) or Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? (Whats the matter) repeated over and over and over, my beginner's French students would love this film. The simplicity of the characters' dialogue pretty much mirrors the simplicity of the production - set in a huge old house in the woods, and the story - two French expats in Romania victimized by an unseen force bent on doing them harm. There are no big budget special effects and only about a couple of ounces of blood shed shown on screen, but this film nevertheless delivers the goods.

Directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud opt to make the film look like a documentary. Supposedly "inspired by true events" Ils opens with an especially tense scene of a mother and daughter stranded on the side of a dark, empty road. After almost hitting something or someone, the car swerves wildly and hits a post. Thankfully mother and daughter are unharmed...but only for a few minutes. Mom pops open the hood and checks the engine while Daughter stays in the car. A clicking sound is heard from the woods nearby. And Mom is gone. Daughter gets off the car, calling for her mysteriously disappeared mother. This scene is so scary I couldn't believe there wasn't anything actually happening on screen! Just this girl looking around the car, framed by the dark road/woods calling out "Mama" with some swooshing, clicking sounds in the background. Brilliant.


Spoiler starts here....


I can't say the ending was a total shock to me, halfway through I figured out "they" weren't exactly supernatural. Its a bunch of kids who hunt and kill people for sport, for fun. If this film was actually based on true events then it seems to be go right along a filmmaking trend portraying countries in Central and Eastern Europe as morally bankrupt. Tarantino's The Hostel showed Bratislava, Slovakia to be some run-down city full of abandoned factories where absolutely anything - including the joys of torturing backpackers - can be had for a price.

Rationally, there could be some truth to these stories. The collapse of communism and the dominance of Russia over these countries left a "moral vacuum" of sorts. Communism banned religion, a mechanism to make people "behave." Order was enforced by completely human, secular laws. And so you have roughly two generations of former Soviets who don't have an all-seeing God to censor their actions. Couple this with the kind of poverty this region has had to battle as it adjusts to the rest of the capitalist world, then you've got the perfect social conditions which would render events depicted in these films entirely feasible.

Cinemalaya 2006

The Cinemalaya Film Festival is in UP Film Center in Diliman from July 31 to August 3.
3pm, 5pm and 7.30pm screenings. Try to catch them!

ANG HULING ARAW NG LINGGO
(The Last Day)
by: Nick Joseph Olanka
Finalist, Full Length Films Category

Ang Huling Araw ng Linggo spans a week in a life of seven individuals with interconnected narratives. The film illustrates the interconnectedness of our lives, a cycle of random events in which the decisions we make are as important as the choices we didn't take.

BATAD, SA PAANG PALAY
(Batad)
by: Benji Garcia, Vic Acedillo, Jr.
Finalist, Full Length Films Category

A 14-year old Batad Boy, a high school dropout, is forced to sell produce in the Banawe market to augment the family income while his father pursues the philantrophic mission of repairing the rice terraces of adjoining Ifugao villages. Exposed to Western modernization in Banawe, the boy obsesses with owning a pair of rubber shoes that he does not really need. Upon possessing the long-desired rubber shoes, he attempts to leave his Ifugao roots and chase big city dreams.

DONSOL
by: Adolfo B. Alix Jr.
Finalist, Full Length Films Category

Daniel, a Butanding Interaction Officer who accompanies tourists on whale watching expeditions and assists them in interacting with the sharks, is a broken hearted man who meets an older woman, Teresa, a widow fighting breast cancer. The two share their miseries and discover that they like being together. Will their newfound bond be strong or will it be blown along with the amihan wind which signals the end of the butanding migratory visit to the small town?

IN DA RED KORNER
( In The Red Corner)
by: Dado C. Lumibao and Bong Ramos
Finalist, Full Length Films Category

Doring is a 24-year old girl who is engaged in a sport that is not common to Filipino women—boxing. This in her desire to alleviate her family from poverty which is slowly devouring them. Desperate and tired of living a miserable life and working in a palengke, Doring enters into amateur boxing in the hope of being discovered and go big time in the professional level. This is not just a fight for her dream but a battle of survival for her family.

MUDRAKS
(Mother)
by: Arah Jell G. Badayos and Margaret G. Guzman
Finalist, Full Length Films Category

Inside the Fernando house, nobody talks. Lives are kept to themselves; problems are not shared; questions are not entertained. The people living inside it have become used to leaving everything unstirred especially Margaret, the mother of the home. To get to know her family, she snoops around - entering rooms, opening cabinets, reading journals she is not supposed to read.

ROTONDA
by: Ron Bryant
Finalist, Full Length Films Category

Beginning at the break of dawn and ending the next morning, the story, set around a rugged city intersection, follows the path of a marked one-thousand-peso bill as it transfers from one character to another, returning to its originator in the end, blood-tainted. The money leads us to each of the five offbeat characters, all in desperate need of their soul’s redemption.

SAAN NAGTATAGO SI HAPPINESS?
(Where is Happiness?)
by: Florida Bautista and Real S. Florido
Finalist, Full Length Films Category

Finding happiness isn’t part of Tikyo’s everyday plan. For him, at the age of 50, nothing is as simple as selling sorbetes, his only source of living. Everything’s just perfectly fine. Until, breaking news comes—his mother, whom he believed, for so long, was already in heaven, is still alive.

TULAD NG DATI
( Just Like Before)
by: Michael Sandejas
Finalist, Full Length Films Category

Tulad ng Dati starts in 2006. It revolves around the character of Jett Pangan who is nearing his forties. Jett has lost his passion for music and life and entertains thoughts of retiring from the band. On a fateful night, Jett is assaulted by a burglar and goes into a coma. He wakes up with no memory of his life after 1988. He remembers that he is 20 years old and is at the peak of his career with The Dawn. Not satisfied with how things turned out with his life, he tries to change everything back to to the way it used to be. The path he takes while finding his place in this strange new world proves itself to be a tough, emotional, and sometimes hilarious journey—accompanied by the celebrated music of The Dawn, both past and present.

I missed the SONA...

....because I had more important things to do than watch the un-real spectacle of the Chief of State spouting lies about the nation. Manuel gives a humorous blow-by-blow account of the events. I should've seen it, if only for entertainment value.

Break Time is Over

Some people spend an enormous amount of time gossiping about other people's faults and little gaffes. Sometimes in an entertaining and humorous manner, other times in a way that can only be described as malicious. Maybe they do so to escape their own personal demons. But me, I tend to brawl with my demons in a UFC no-holds-barred arena. I find that it takes all of my energies to fight myself, to right myself, to put myself on my own right path, once I identify it. Sometimes I wonder how the hell I got here. My boyfriend tells me, give yourself a break. But I have been given all the breaks one could want or need. So break-time is fucking over. Yeah? Yeah.

Top 10 Signs Y ou've Been Watching Too Much House MD

1. You come to believe that hyperintelligence is cool and hyperintelligent assholes cooler.

2. You philosophize about life more than usual. Little quips like "Truth begins in lies" begin to make sense.

3. You know that people lie in general, but you never really dwell too much about it 'til the end of Season 2.

4. You now know that bodily fluids are expelled from your oral cavity in three ways: it sprays if its from the stomach, you cough if its from your lungs and it oozes if its from your bowels. Vomit-laced feces. Yum.

5. You start thinking doctors are cool. And you wonder why you didn't become one. Then you remember you were the very last person in your sophomore class to prick your finger for that microscope experiment. You didn't even actually do it yourself, you had your groupmate do it for you.

6. Dr. House starts to remind you of your genius but highly flawed rockstar politics professor. You are drawn to how brightly they shine but remember how badly they burn.

7. You think David Shore must be God and Hugh Laurie Jesus.

8. You now know you can die from teeny tiny microbes or virus or bacteria or parasites or toxic and irradiated materials. You can die from almost any harmless-looking thing and increasingly become paranoid about what you touch, what you eat and drink, where you breathe, who you speak with...

9. You know what an MRI and a CT Scan are. You know what intubation, lumbar puncture and biopsy procedures look like even though you've never spent more than a total of 24 hours (tops) in a hospital in your lifetime.

10. You love having soon-to-be-doctors friends who are just a text away for geeky medical trivia.

Free Internet Connection

I would like to thank our Barangay captain for having a cellsite in his backyard. Also, thank you to one of my neighbors for having a wifi connection and(unknowingly) providing me free internet access. And lastly, I would like to thank my boyfriend for discovering said connection and getting me a card asap. Ahhh...the best things in life... :)

France, Football and Re-mapping Nationalism

I ask my class of 40 or so students, if given a chance, how many of you will you give up your Filipino citizenship? All but a couple raise their hands. Nationalism is something we Filipinos hardly ever relate to pride of place, or people or home. "Nationalism" is hardly ever something we exhibit overtly, not unless some of us reach a degree of popularity abroad, for, say, winning boxing matches or beauty pageants. Nationalism in this day and age seems passé. I think so too. But that doesn't mean Nationalism doesn't serve a very important function. It generates duties and obligations to a piece of land and space. It’s important in raising capital by way of taxes. It can make you commit absolutely illogical acts such as dying for you country.

I ask my students, now ok, so what nationality do you want to be? They want to be British or Canadians. Many want to be French. Now those seem to be a proud people. And they are. Or, they market themselves as such. The French are a proud people. But what most of us don't realize is that this pride has taken hundreds of years in the making.

First, let us be clear that “Nationalism" is a concept that traces its origins in a particular time and context. Nations have only been in existence for the last 350 years. The very first nations, as we know them today, were born in Western Europe and exported to the rest of the world through colonization and imperialism. The creation of a nation was a prerequisite to the creation of a State. States are the most successful political organization in modern history. After all, it is the construct with which all 6.3 billion of us frame our political, social, economic and cultural lives.

Nation and State are concepts that are often conflated, used interchangeably by many. But a nation is not necessarily a state. And a state is not necessarily a nation. A State is a distinct territory (land) with sovereignty (self-rule), a government and a people, recognized by the rest of the world as such. A Nation is a grouping of people who consider themselves a member of more or less the same socio-cultural unit. To illustrate, Israel is both a nation and a state. Palestine is a nation, but it is not a State because it neither has a territory to call its own, and neither is it recognized by the international community as such. There can be many nations within a State.

Obviously, not all nationalisms are created equal. After all, some nations are much older than others. Some nations have had the advantage of having been created in much longer span of time and were the results of perfectly natural social processes. France is an old nation. It created a single language, a single religion and even a single standard of measuring weight and length and such. France has had to eliminate all other differences within its territory. Maim, kill, suppress. After a while your people will feel they share a single destiny because they speak the same language in telling their stories. This "feeling" is strengthened as you wage wars that will further distinguish your people from others. If you are able to create empires that span the globe, then you've got to start believing you're something special.

Some nations are created out of thin air, proclaimed a “nation” on a piece of paper. Some nations were made on the whims of European cartographers divvying up the globe.

In this age of global migration, people, carrying with them pieces of their own nations can now uproot and settle in other countries. This is where “nationalism” becomes problematic. When you change nationalities, it is assumed you are now a firm believer of a new ideology, the set of values your new country holds dear. Carrying a new passport doesn’t automatically discard your old values, the ones you learned from birth. Like they say, you can take the Filipino out of the Philippines, but not the Philippines out of the Filipino. Even doubly problematic is when your allegiance to your new country comes into conflict with the old one, especially if these two share a troubled colonial past.

The World Cup is certainly one of those arenas where nationalisms are proudly worn on the sleeve. France recently placed second in the World Cup finals, playing with a starting line-up of mostly dark-skinned players, sons of migrants from North and West Africa as well as the Caribbean. I say this can only be a leap forward to harmonizing France's race relations. French nationalism has been undergoing a sort of overhaul in the last decade. The tensions probably reached an all-record high in the riots of August last year, when disenfranchised black and Arab youths set France's cities on fire. For a couple of hundred years, French nationalism was exclusively white and exclusively Christian. Now it must accommodate non-whites and non-Christians.

But just because France sends a “rainbow-colored” football team and small African countries such as Ghana reach the quarterfinals doesn’t mean there isn’t ignorance still. The ugly speculations (see below) regarding Zinedine Zidane’s expulsion at the nth hour Sunday night point towards the kind of crisis conflicting nationalisms and identities place on a globe in flux. Is he Algerian? Is he French? Is he French-Algerian? Is he French-Algerian whose family was a traitor to Algerian freedom fighters during the struggle for independence? Which makes him....more French and less Algerian? It is a conundrum.

Now imagine all those hyphenated Filipinos populating the globe. Heck, imagine yourself, right here, right now. Nationalism?!? Wuzat?

That Hard-headed Zizou

Wow. That was probably one of the most dramatic World Cup finals in recent history. We all witnessed that incomprehensible headbutt Zidane landed on Materazzi's muscled chest. People are wondering why in the world a seasoned footballer would succumb to his baser emotions and do such thing. Was it exhaustion? Was it frustration? Or was it something the Italian said? There are nasty rumors that Materazzi called Zidane a "harki," a term used for Algerians who fought for France against fellow Algerians during the colonial occupation. Yikes.

On a lighter note, Slate has an excellent dissection of what makes a perfect headbutt in football.

Super! Bulge :)

So. It takes a simmering sex god in azure tights and crimson undershorts to finally rouse me from my blogging stupor.

Over the last several weeks there have certainly been plenty of things to blog about; horrific and exciting personal experiences in abundance - including 3 harrowing LTO encounters, and certainly tons of bizaare political shenanigans. But a yummy 6'4 eye (nose, teeth, lips....) candy encased in blue wrapping has finally woken me up to blogging again. Sigh.

If you haven't seen or have no plans to see Superman Returns featuring a brand-new (and dare I say much HOTTTTTER) lead, I say go and indulge in this entirely "alien" sensual experience. The opening credits thunder the trade-mark taaan-ta-ta-ta-taaaaan....tan-tan-tan....taaan-ta-ta-ta-taaaaan. TAN-TA-TAAAAN and everyone in the cinema visibly settles down. They know they are in for a treat. Oh, and what a treat it is.

I don't really want to write a review ok? I just want to gush and moan about Brandon Routh. Sigh. Because there have been rumors that his "package" was digitally reduced, I paid an especially close attention to his crotch. But alas! His bulge was nothing if not modest throughout the film. I say, they fixed it not only to keep the audience from being unduly "distracted,"but more importantly, to keep all the females (and some males) from spontaneous combustion.