Borgy for Mayor!

You really gotta love the Marcoses' audacity. They probably feel like they can do anything they want. Including having 23 year-old model Borgy Manotoc as mayor of Manila. His mother, Representative Imee Marcos was still non-committal on TV last night. Asked what her son could possibly know about politics, she said something like, he's been surrounded by politicos all his life, and so he must've learned something..."like osmosis."

They're probably testing the public's reaction to this news, gauging whether they have support or not. Well, this particular public's reaction is: BLEEEECCCCHHH.

I know people swoon all over him and think he's quite attractive. Don't get me wrong, I think he's pretty good at what he does; pose, pout and look pretty. But what the does he know about anything?!?

Since I know next to nothing about him other than his infamous last name (and all that signifies), I know this for sure. He absolutely refuses to speak Tagalog (at least publicly). So one can conclude that he's either he's too stupid to fit more than one language in his head or; he refuses to speak the language of the people he purports to serve.

Bonus Question in Final Exams

What is the most important thing (if any) you have learned in the class of Political & Economic Geography?

My students' earnest, at times hilarious responses:

Christian: The needs of the elites in the society and the exploitation of peasantry in the world now and back then is very similar...without the suppression and exploitation we might not have changes in...the economy.

(I am seriously worried that this student of mine is a fascist-totalitarian in the making. He's brilliant but scary.)

Glaiza: ...explanation of how countries (became) rich and why others are poor became clear.

Nikko: I learned a lot from this very interesting class...I will admit that this subject is really a pain in the ass! But heck! It is good to be a part of it. The very important thing I've learned in this experience is the value of hard work, how important working hard is! I hope that some day I will learn to work hard!

Rosa: Equality - I mean, our opinion is always considered.

Rodelyn: Yung determinasyong mag-aral kahit suko na 'ko. He he he. Ang kagustuhang matuto kahit mahirap.

Crisanta: The single most important thing that I learned in clas was reading a lot. If you do not read then you will answer nothing. Reading three times the chapter would make us understand more the topic. It is hard to read but you should do it.

Raj: The most important thing I learned in this class is striving hard and exerting effort. I was used being "Happy-go-lucky" but it did not work in this class.

Maria: I must admit that this subject was really a tough one. Maybe because I'm not used to answering questions which I need to connect to the real world...how to analyze things/issues and be able to relate it with what is really happening in our world today.

Anna: The most important thing I have learned in class is about American hegemony...It is only now that I have learned that once upon a time the United States was an agricultural country as well. All along I thought that the US has (always been) industrialized from the start...I am also amazed that the US immediately (put together) all the ingredients to industrialize. And they were able to do it in avery short period of time.

Arlie: Devote more time on reading your text...criticize the information you have read...don't be afraid to ask questions...don't be content with what you've just heard!

Loraine: The location of a state is always a factor in its development.

Sherwin: I have learned the significance of political and economic history from the very beginning of the world up to this moment, even the possible future of many states.

(Well, we didn't exactly begin from the Big Bang...more like 5,000 years ago when people started living together in large numbers.)

Maricor: I learned that everything has a connection, from how war starts, how does war affect countries, functions of governmnt and so on.

Krisanta: In order to be able to compete and achieve economic development, underdeveloped and poor countries should not be contented with what they are receiving.

(And my favorite):

Daisy: I believe that there is no such thing as a superior race...I have learned that Europeans are not better than Asians. Asians are brighter than Europeans because in the 12th century the Chinese already developed medicine and paper-making. And I believe that Europeans overtook the Chinese because the Chinese were not greedy enough to conquer the world.

(Well, not yet. But in twenty, thirty years? Who knows?)

Interesting articles of note #2

Does your choice of reading material reaffirm what you already believe? Do we "submit" to the text or do we "examine" it? Are we "moved" by the author, convinced of the truth s/he peddles? When you read, do you do it "critically" or "uncritically?"

If obesity is a disease then Americans have an epidemic. Big Pharma cashes in and invents the thin pill.

Angelina Jolie has set a trend. Madonna gets herself an African baby too.

Uncle Sam recruits Latinos to die in Iraq. The Department of Defense's Joint Advertising and Marketing Research and Studies program (JAMRS) decides Hispanics use their right brain, and so tend to be emotional and non-logical. How can one be "emotionally compelled" to serve in the military?

South Korean Ban Ki-moon is the United Nation's new Secretary General. Will he do a better job than Kofi Annan?

Symptoms of the widening gap between the rich and poor in Brazil- the rich opting to use their helicopters for safety and organized crime lording it over government.

Andrew Potter suggests Pope Benedict XVI, in that infamous speech, likens Christians to atheists. "Because atheists and Christians have reconciled themselves to the primacy of reason, while Muslims cling to a conception of God as completely outside (and unanswerable to) human understanding."

Despite what some may think, humans are still animals. So why are we still threatened to discover we share certain traits with other "inferior" species.

Good news for those always on the go, scientists say skipping breakfast isn't necessarily bad for your health.

The Personal is Political

In my adult life I have found that very few people like to talk politics. They say they stay away from politics because it is dirty, illogical and depressing. If it can be avoided, people do not talk politics. It is something they think can be set aside, excluded from their conciousness like some dirty secret best left forgotten. Of course there are always exceptions, there are some who view politics quite passionately, but not quite personally. They frame politics as something that happens in government - in public institutions concerning only public officials. When they turn on the news and read the papers they see politics. But very few people see politics in their private lives.

In the Jesuit university I do not often find the occasion to talk politics because there I teach a foreign language. I am sometimes able to address certain pressing issues especially if they are of national import, such as the February state of the nation emergency. In any case, it is difficult to engage students in discussion, I believe it is because if your family circumstances has afforded you to grow up relatively insulated from ordinary Philippine social life, then why should it concern you? If you do not want of anything, then why shouldn't you sit content where things are? If you are rich then you can afford to be apolitical.

Imagine then my complete and utter suprise when upon commencing to teach in the Intramuros university, I find that students there are as equally apolitical, if not more so. I realize it is because they have little to lose and so care the least. These are young Filipinos who hail from middle to lower-middle class families, those with at least one parent working abroad. They who make up the majority do not care at all to be political. All they are concerned with is gaining their diploma so they may all leave this blighted country and realize their dreams in another social, political and economic space. They have given up the idea that they will ever strike it rich in this country, that they will ever see here the good life. They have their parents', friends' and neighbors' examples to follow.

And so if the elite do not care, and the masses don't either, then who are we left with? Those who are able to mount a formidable election machine to gain public office and then, like rabid vampires, cannibalize precious little State resources. And those who are so wretchedly poor and uneducated that they willingly cash in on such election machines in exchange for their democratic power to scribble names on a piece of paper. In the mean time, those of us in the middle dwindle in numbers as we all plot to jump ship, if not now then in the near future.

My dear friends, are we not well and trully fucked?

Contrary to what is taught in Pol Sci 11, politics is not a struggle that merely occurs in the public domain. Sure, what happens in the Batasang Pambansa is politics. The shenanigans in Malacanang is politics. The arduous/tortuous signature gathering in la Bureaucratie is politics. But what happens in your everyday lives is politics.

To illustrate:

I paid a princely sum of P7,000 ++ to take an exam on May 31. The TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) was a requirement for my scholarship application (see below). Although they have a local testing center here (Prometric), only the ETS based in Princeton, New Jersey may release the test results to both the examinee and her chosen institutions. By July my recipients in Australia had already received my test scores. And there I was, checking our mailbox day after day waiting for my own copy. July came and went. Then August. Then September. No ETS envelope ever made it to my mailbox. This is my personal life, my personal dreams and the Philippine Postal Service is so absymal it cannot even effectively serve its purpose, i.e., deliver mail from point A to point B.

Then last June I had to register my car as well as renew my driver's license and again our public institutions have soiled me, extorted money and stolen from me precious hours I can never again retrieve. I spent a total of 4 hours (excluding lunch hour) registering the blighted car and another 3 for my driver's license. I spent P300 of my hard-earned money on a urine test whose veracity may well be in question, P50 on a "medical exam" which comprised of the cursory blood pressure reading and peering at letters on the wall to "test" my eyesight. Some P300 yet again on an emission test. You wonder why people run for public office on so dismal a salary? It is precisely for the opportunity to seek "rents" only public institutions such as the LTO may dole out. Officials may augment their salaries or their patrons' income by replacing services these public institutions should otherwise provide for FREE.

Most recently all our lives ground to a halt when a relatively strong typhoon (by no means a 300kph monster such as...was it Unsang or Dading?) tore our public infrastructure to bits. Some have had to endure having no power or water for days. Many were inconvenienced or worse, killed, by fallen billboards. Do we blame our government's incompetence? Yes. But who elected government? If our taxes make us customers, then shouldn't we demand satisfaction?

Many people think only to endure or escape. But are enduring and escaping the only choices? If it sucks to be Filipino then whose fault is it? If it sucks to live in the Philippines whose fault is it?

The personal is political. Those who fail to grasp this concept unknowling perpetuate political apathy and consequently, this Republic of Ineptitude and Corruption.

I tell my Intramuros students, you want to fly away to some far corner of the globe? You think to escape your roots? I think not. You may not physically be here but you will leave family behind. You will remit billions of dollars a year, and as economic conditions worsen, you will remit even more. Even then your country bleeds you. You will keep this Republic afloat and you will unwittingly keep the very Government you fled, that amoral monster of a cannibal, alive and well and fed. I say kill it. And if you want to slay it, then you stay.

Australian Leadership Awards 2007

I suppose many of us experience self-doubt. Just when I was questioning whether I was on the right path, God throws me for a loop. Or is making sure I stay this course. Or is fucking with me like always.

Anyway, it says in this e-mail I got from AusAID that I won a scholarship from the Australian Leadership Awards. The ALAs are "are awarded to professionals who are already leaders or have a potential to assume leadership roles that can influence social and economic policy reform and development outcomes, both in their own countries and in the Asia and Pacific region." It pays to love your country.

30 slots for PhD candidates and as many as 150 for Masters were open to 34 countries in the Asia-Pacific including the Philippines. And China, India and Indonesia. That's 1/3 of the world's population right there.

I wanted this scholarship so badly I had dragons in my stomach when I first learned about it. When I took the damn TOEFL, when I learned I had been accepted to the only university I applied to (Bond). And so I still can't believe it. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop because this is just too good to be true. They sent me the e-mail by mistake? Or I'll die in the next 2 weeks before I receive my written letter of offer from Canberra. Or said written letter won't make it to Philippine shores because...because....the cargo plane drops from the sky. Or the the AusAID will go bankrupt in the next few months. Or the Australian continent will sink in the ocean. Or I'll wake up.

This has been a long journey, one which started on my first trip abroad when I was not quite 17. I came home full of questions about why this country was the way it was. And then I went to UP, that "breeder of destablizers and naked runners." Against all logic, this university has brainwashed me to love my country.

And now I am here, poised for flight. This is where the cosmos is leading me. I only pray that I am able to fulfill my potential. To stay the course. To follow. To lead.

Interesting articles of note #1

Because either Sideblog no longer works or has deleted by account, I will start a weekly survey of interesting articles on the web. Click and enjoy :)

On the evolutionary front...

While it is clear what evolutionary functions are served by human urges for food and sex, what makes us hard-wired to create and appreciate music? Experts say, its all about sex baby.

What separates our species from the rest is our ability to create meaning. During eclipses, the sun doesn't merely disappear; it was swallowed, it was stolen, it was banished by some monster or god for various reasons - anger, jealousy, hate, passion. But in this day and age of the scientific method and rational thinking, why do superstitious beliefs persist? Apparently, its adaptive and de-stressing.

Contrary to what some might believe, new research say humans use both emotions and reason to make moral decisions.

You have a heart of steel if you didn't feel for Nemo finding his father. But do fish feel pain?

In this era of the postmodern, of disjunctive and mediated relations, of ubiquitous pornography, are human beings masturbating more? Not necessarily, but attitudes towards "self-love" have been changing. Frank Furedi writes:

In an era when passionate relationships come with a health warning, there is considerable scope for endowing solo pleasure with meaning. As a result, masturbation is no longer something you do for pragmatic reasons; rather, it is celebrated as something profound. It is frequently discussed as an activity through which you can discover your sexuality and your identity – the real you. It is portrayed as a unique source of uncomplicated intense pleasure. People are told that knowing how to love yourself comes both chronologically and logically before having relationships with others. ‘My needs come before anything else’ is the slogan that best embodies today’s worship of self-obsession. Sadly, the affirmation of self-love resonates with a powerful mood of alienation from the experience of intimate relations with others.

Around the world in eight clicks...

The world's most aggressive exporter of their own brand of democracy fails to educate citizens equipped to make their model work in their own backyard. How's that for irony?

Here's another reason for us to invest in education; the global economy of the past 10 years is increasingly powered by knowledge, innovation and creativity. In the United States "at the present rate of increase, creative jobs alone will soon eclipse the total number of jobs in all of manufacturing. Already, more than 40 million Americans work in the creative sector, which has grown by 20 million jobs since the 1980s. It accounts for more than $2 trillion USD—or nearly half—of all wages and salaries paid in the U.S."

Much as Europe would like to exorcise their culture and belief systems of everything that is "Other", it cannot deny that it has been shaped by its interactions with the Muslim and Arab world in the past millenium. The Renaissance was powered by exchanges with the East, thanks to waves of soldiers, tradesmen and clergy carrying back with them new knowledge and practices from the "Levant" during the Crusades. It is because of this erroneous and arrogant notion that Europe is unique, that it is has somehow developed all on its own to become the most powerful civilization in the world, that it has trouble dealing with Islam today. In a world post 9/11, Martin Walker surveys Europe's "mosque hysteria."

Brendan O'Neill wonders why Iraqi insurgents seem more interested in committing exhibitionist suicide than articulating clear political actions to establish a new political order. He proposes that these series of seemingly primal and apolitical actions are symptomatic of a crisis in the international order itself - of the crisis of the legitimacy of the nation-state as a viable shell within which people might organize their social, cultural and economic lives.

Long acknowledged as one of the first icons of globalization, McDonald's provides a "postmodern sanctum" to travelers all around the globe - a pitstop where anyone at home and familiar with this fastfood giant may rest to take a respite from the alien culture they are immersed in. Americans in Paris flock to the Golden Arches not so much for the food but because "it creates a smoothly standardized absence of place and culture — a neutral environment that allows travelers to take a psychic time-out from the din of their real surroundings." Rolf Potts writes.

On UNDP development surveys, we're considered a middle-income country if you can believe it. Thanks to some 50 African states in much worse condition than us. Now relegated to the "Fourth World," the dark continent is apparently awash in some $300 billion worth of aid. Despite Bono's and various do-gooders' efforts, Africa is still headed for a downward spiral. You've got to wonder why.

Who's afraid of China's waking dragon? Not the Americans, and not the rest of Asia.

Surprise surprise, Egypt's sex-ed TV program. If this conservative Muslim country can do it, why can't we?

Other news...

Ever wonder why the Bible has so many prostitutes?

Speaking of prostitutes, welcome Pink TV, the porn equivalent of HBO. Oh goody.

Typhoon Milenyo Rips Through Manila

Manila's most powerful typhoon in the last 10 years went by fast and hard, leaving much destruction and debris in its wake. Cars and trucks upturned, roof and concrete walls collapsed, electric posts, trees and those damn billboards falling on electric wires, cars, buildings, houses and people. Those "killer" billboards really have to go.

So far there are 11 dead and 34 missing. Not to mention the damage done to infrastructure.

The morning was relatively peaceful, but winds started picking up by noon. At around 2pm the wind was howling so hard it felt like a horror movie set. There wasn't much rain early on but the 160 kph winds were so fierce our house shook every time a particularly strong gust of wind hit it. I kept looking out, checking on our 20-year old mango tree, I was afraid it would fall over! Electricty went out around 2:15, but mercifully came back on before dark at around 6pm.

Thankfully my neighborhood survived relatively unscathed save for fallen branches, leaves and the occasional gutter strewn about. The rest of the Metro is in much worse shape. You've got to wonder how much of the damage was completely out of our hands and how much of it could've been prevented.


I hear Mayor Atienza's Manila was hardest hit, being directly along the coast of the bay. But really, I'm in Intramuros 4 times a week and I've personally been on a nightmarish drive home where my 9-year old car doubled as an amphibious vehicle. It took only 30 minutes of strong downpour and the streets all around the Manila city hall were about a feet deep in water. And about 2 feet along the streets near the flower market (near Dangwa transco). On that 90 minute drive home I kept thinking, we live in a country that annually welcomes around 20-30 typhoons. Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas and the Manila area have perenially been susceptible to floods. Really, couldn't have we done something in the past 20 years to prevent such floods from happening? Aren't there advances in engineering to solve such problems? Can't Manila afford a new sewage system? I'm sure the answer is yes to all of the above. But again, you've got to wonder where your taxes go. You've got to wonder if they've been spent on some official or other's new toys and possessions rather than improving the capital's infrastructure and making life easier for all 12 million of its inhabitants.

El Presidente Bush es El Diablo!

Addressing the General Assembly, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called George Bush "The Devil." In the hallowed halls of the United Nations, where diplomats are careful to speak mostly Diplomatese, his speech was anything but diplomatic.

Some choice words:

And the devil came here yesterday (crosses himself),

(APPLAUSE)

Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: "The Devil's Recipe."

Read the rest of his speech here.

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.