Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

The Lumad and mining #Eleksyon2016

If there is an issue that should be part of the decision to vote for anyone at all this coming elections, it is the Lumad killings, and the injustice that those who survive continue to live with. Thousands of Lumad are in evacuation centers, living off lugaw if there is food at all, away from the productivity of caring for their land, away from the schools that nurture their children, away from their homes.

The bigger picture we are looking at is that of mining, and how the next President must choose a side: the Lumad and their ancestral lands or the transnational mining firms and the business they bring in.

There is no in-betweens here. One cannot stand for one and not stand against the other.

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komentaryo

#Eleksyon2016: Rage

Walang paglagyan ang aking galit. At lungkot. At galit.

To my mind, there is no reason for farmers to have been killed on April 1. No reason for farmers to have been gunned down. No reason for the violent dispersal. Not today, not on any day.

On radio, some military official said soon after the news broke about the violent dispersal of farmers in Kidapawan: the rallyists started it. They are not real farmers. They are professional rallyists. They have done this before. They threw rocks at policemen, he said. And the police are the ones who are injured.

That the spin didn’t surprise me is telling of what we’ve had to deal with the past six years with matuwid-na-daan. (more…)

komentaryo

don’t believe those surveys #Eleksyon2016

Elsewhere in the world, election surveys are held against the light, and assessed based on where it is done, whose bailiwick(s) it chooses to survey, and how the survey is conducted.

In the Philippines, it is the media enterprises like ABS-CBN and Rappler that commission or do their own surveys, justifying the practice instead of questioning it.

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komentaryo

Social / media bias #Eleksyon2016

If I were the Liberal Party, I’d be congratulating myself. After five years they have successfully dumbed down public discourse, selling us the true, the good, the beautiful about matuwid­ na­ daan, making us believe that it is all we need, handling criticism and crises via spin, always using notions of anti­corruption and transparency to respond to anything at all. (more…)

kultura

#womensmonth2016: those darn shoes

notmyshoes

while elsewhere in the world the discussions for women’s day and women’s month 2016 have been on the level of celebrity women’s bodies and slutshaming, role models and raising our young girls, in the Philippines we have a government that cannot even pretend to know what women need, much less what we want. (more…)