Category Archive for: social media

komentaryo

Out of control

Someone should tell the President to stop talking, and for his communications team to take control. Because the crisis in Marawi has revealed that he is preconditioned, at the worst time, to say the worst things.

It doesn’t matter if he’s here to begin with, or he’s arriving from a foreign trip. It doesn’t even matter that he has heard the public outcry against the Martial Law declaration, the fears that have been in the newspapers, on social media, out on the streets. He says what he wants. No one stops him.

Right there is why he is the worst leader to have at a time like this. There is no sense of control. No sense of order. There is no sense that he knows what he’s doing. And it gets worse. (more…)

komentaryo

Demeaning human rights

It is clear that while we might laugh at the people behind Presidential Communications, and cannot even begin to imagine what it now becomes given the appointment of un-credentialed, anti-facts Mocha Uson; and while we might scoff at the social media army that are the ka-DDS – Duterte devotees – with an axe to grind against mainstream media, facts, data, and investigative journalism; here we are at a point when a Philippine representative – a Senator at that – can face the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and declare with a straight face that there is no new spate of killings under the Duterte administration, and that the international attention is all the fault of mainstream media’s coverage, that has bloated the number of dead, and has equated these killings with the drug war the President holds closest to his heart.  (more…)

komentaryo

Elitism in the time of Duterte

The upside to having a President like Rodrigo Duterte is that we are finally weeding out the elitists among us. And I don’t mean those who think that Duterte is so bastos, is so not a statesman, is so not President-material because not disente. No, this is beyond just some good ol’ Liberal Party campaign elitism. This is its more evil, less apologetic, more insidious twin. Elitists who even imagine themselves to be pro-poor, because they feel for them and wish to empower them, because they speak of the plight of the poor and the inequality in society.

Yet in this time of Duterte, they cannot for the life of them understand why the urban poor might deserve decent housing, and neither do they care to talk about farmers disenfranchised from their lands by big business and oligarchs. In the time of Duterte, they cannot agree to the end of contractualization, neither can they deal with the pro-people rhetoric and policies of the best and most rebellious in his Cabinet.

These are the same people who stand against the drug war because kawawa naman the poor!

Apparently one can care about the poor being killed, but not care at all about how they live. (more…)

komentaryo

Ressa, Mocha, Fake News

The Canada Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News website came out with an interesting piece about the state of discourse in the Philippines given mainstream media on the one hand, and the rise of fake news as propaganda on the other. Written by Senior Correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, it had as headline a quote from Rappler’s Maria Ressa, saying that “Democracy as we know it is dead,” which first made me imagine that the article was going to talk about the urgent concerns of summary executions on the streets and drug-related deaths, or the continued control by big business, oligarchs, and feudal lords over government despite a President who seems to stand squarely for the people (if / when his pronouncements hold and given his pro-people appointees), or even just the continued verbal assault against free speech from the President and his men.

Instead Ressa – and this article – were referring to the death of democracy … in relation to fake news and people like Mocha.

Yes, I’m as stunned as you are. (more…)

komentaryo

From neglected houses, to homes for the poor

It was on March 8 when I first heard of how members of urban poor organization Kadamay had taken over units of a government housing project in Pandi Bulacan. It seemed like the best way for our women (and men of course!) to celebrate International Women’s Day: to take over public housing units already overgrown with weeds and grass, neglected and idle for years, some dilapidated.

Here were people willing to take these structures for what they were, without electricity and water, some without doors and windows, all seemingly unfinished, with windows that make it look like these have a second level, but in fact it’s all just façade. These are one-room houses, approximately 12 feet by 9 feet, many without toilets (just holes in the ground). These are built in an area of Pandi that barely has any trees, and is far from town.

No one cared about these houses before members of the urban poor took these over. And when I say no one cared, I mean even beneficiaries refused to use these houses, given what these are.

Meanwhile the urban poor are happy enough, just to be able to call these houses their new homes. (more…)