Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

InSecurity Bank #bankingcrises

Across the holidays, and until now, we saw a rise in even more stories of OTPs being requested out of nowhere, and scams happening through and across our banking system. It seems important to finally talk about my own story from early 2023, one that I feel is important to serve a public that is generally at the losing end of problems like this one which, by the way, is not necessarily the subscriber’s fault. Note too that I had the privilege to have legal assistance, and my lawyer had quickly sent word to the bank to contest their decision not give me back the money I lost.

That bank being Security Bank.

For a bit of context, I hold accounts across BDO, BPI, Metrobank, and Security Bank. This is not a measure of how much cash there is (haha), as it is a measure of how much interbank transfers cost (a whooping P25 pesos, at least), which is huge if you get, say, P900 peso cheques for your writing.

Now let me start by saying that across all these four banks, for the longest time, it was Security Bank that was my favorite. I thought it was the most secure bank across all the others I had. They call you to tell you when your ATM’s been cut because of questionable activity, and then tell you when the new card’s ready for pick-up. I had family who believed in Security Bank’s, uh, security, and I even got insurance with them because of it. It was for that reason that I also had most of my savings there, and have had it there for years. It’s also important to point out that when friends started to experience unauthorized transactions from other banks pre-pandemic, none of it was happening with Security Bank. So it was easy to believe that, well, it was secure.

Until it wasn’t. Early in 2023, when other banks already had multiple cases of OTPs being asked for by mobile numbers not connected with the banks themselves, I received a phone call that talked about my Security Bank account. The person knew all my details with the bank, including the last four digits of my account, the last time I did an online transaction, the last time I did a face-to-face bank transaction, even who I talked to in the bank to get my insurance. There was no reason to think this person was not from Security Bank. But here was the clincher: when the person asked for an OTP, it was not sent to my mobile number through an unknown or regular mobile number — which would have made me suspicious. Instead the OTP was sent through the number of Security Bank. The same one that sends me confirmation of my online transactions, the same number that sends OTPs. (more…)

komentaryo

“Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world” #FreePalestine

Excerpt from Bethlehem Pastor Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac’s sermon, during the Church service, 23 December 2023*

Christ under the rubble.

We are angry. We are broken.

This would have been a time of joy.

Instead we are mourning. We are fearful.

More than 20,000 killed. Thousands are still under the rubble.

Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways.

Day after day. 1.9 million displaced. Hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed.

Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. This is a genocide.

The world is watching. Churces are watching. The people of Gaza are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares. But it goes on. (more…)

komentaryo

Ponder propaganda: Fueling the Duterte machine

If there’s anything that one has consistently been reminded about throughout 2023, it is that we still do not know how to deal with the propaganda landscape that the Duterte leadership had established for six years, and which, regardless of the Dutertes’s “lesser” position politically, is the game we are all stuck playing.

I speak of 2023 because in 2022, we were all just in a post-election haze, regardless of where we were / are on the political spectrum. If you were on the side of Marcos-Duterte, you were just on a high, doing the parties, enjoying the perks that come with having campaigned for the winner. If you were on the side of Robredo-Pangilinan, then you would fall under either of two groups: the ones who disengaged completely from politics and governance, maybe in disgust, probably as a by-product of despair; or the ones who tried to keep the anger going by carrying on as if nothing had changed — after all, a Duterte is still in power, and Duterte himself seemed to have set the stage for a Marcos win.

Presidential sister Imee has said it in so many words: President Duterte had eradicated their enemies.

But also, and this seems important to realize for all of us, Duterte had set the stage for this present, where the opposition, at best, has completely lost its footing, regardless of where we are on that spectrum that spans the Liberals and the Left. (more…)

kultura

Beauty and gold #CulturalCrisis

I watched with amusement the way that the controversy over Beauty Gonzales’s jewelry at the GMA Ball unraveled, with the call-out coming from a member of the academe, Marian Pastor Roces, angry and seemingly shooting-from-the-hip, done via a Facebook status. On the one hand, understandable, if one were living in the bubble of one’s algorithm, where such righteous indignation would get the expected likes and shares and comments of support. On the other, a real missed opportunity to engage in what could be a teaching moment, on a public platform, where a call-out could be phrased in a way that is calm and collected, an opening to a discussion instead of a door slammed shut on one.

Were there less anger about the gold Beauty was wearing, we could’ve started a discussion about the manner in which artefacts from our dead are excavated and brought into private hands. How does that even happen? Is it always about greed outweighing respect for collective heritage? Is it greed and the wilful disregard of the law? Or could it be an utter lack of knowledge about what exactly to do with artefacts of our past?

This was of course layered with the non-discussion on those artefacts being ear and eye covers for the dead. But at a time when we have been culturally changed by six years of a leadership that thought nothing of dead bodies, at a present where everyone with a modicum of power (including those in the arts and culture and heritage sectors) can be seen “flaunting excess”, don’t we know of more grotesque — “odious” — things? (more…)

komentaryo

(Middle Class) Crisis: Why rising from May 2022 has been difficult

It would be silly to talk about the present of politics in this country without acknowledging two, maybe three, things.

First, that we are at a standstill. From the ranks of our specific educated, middle to elite classes, generally woke and politicized, that campaigned hard for a Marcos-Duterte loss in May 2022 — there is little movement happening. Sure we went back to our old lives since May, we went back to the daily grind, but that is a movement that is about survival for majority of us — we have no choice given skyrocketing prices and the multifarious crises nation faces. We have no choice, and know no other way, but to go back to the lives we had pre-elections, no matter how frustrated, angry, sad we are. No matter how little we understand (or how much) of why things turned out the way it did.

Which brings us to two: here, where we are, a year after the 2022 elections, we have to admit the possibility that we have stood still all along — because that is what happens to movement when all it does is go around in circles, or repeat its own mistakes, or deny how big the enemy is and how the battlefield has changed.

It is what happens when we cannot get over ourselves, when we only listen to what we have to say, when we insist that we are the only ones who know what’s happening, who know what should be done, who have the answer to questions — because we lived through a past that was similar, because we are older, we are the fourth estate, which is replaceable with what’s unsaid: we are the gatekeepers, we are the bearers of truth, we are sacred cows, not to be questioned, not to be critiqued.

It is what happens when we refuse to see the possibility that maybe we should start with first asking the right questions, so that we get the productive answers, in dialogue with as large a group of people as possible, open to the probability that the ways we know, the perspectives we take, might not apply to the present anymore. (more…)