komentaryo

#33 and #37 on your ballots

choosing senators that are pro-RH.

but here are the two I trust with my life.

The Feminist: Liza Maza

Liza Maza is the only feminist candidate for the Senate in 2010. As congresswoman of Gabriela Women’s Party for nine years, Liza authored crucial pro-woman laws like the Anti-Violence Against Women Act, Anti-Trafficking of Persons Act, and Magna Carta for Women, and is co-author of the RH Bill. Liza’s has been the one voice we can count on when it comes to women and human rights violations, be it as activist or politician. She is unafraid to battle it out in the halls of government to the streets with the women she represents. In the face of Liza’s personal convictions and her political track record it’s difficult to imagine any other female candidate as pro-woman. Liza’s number 33 on your ballots and is online at lizamaza.com.

The Revolutionary: Satur Ocampo

Satur Ocampo is the one senatoriable who can claim to be nationalist and prove it. He was journalist before he became activist, representing the poor and marginalized from the streets to congress halls. As congressman of Bayan Muna Partylist for nine years, he has been integral to the creation of pro-people laws, including laws for woman (Anti-Violence Against Women and Children Act) and workers (Tax Relief for Minimum Wage Earners). He is the crucial force in the struggle for real change in society, where every man, woman and child will have their rights protected, and their lives valued. More on Satur, number 33 on your ballots, at Satur4Senator.

kultura

Art thinks highly of itself in “The Death of Death”

A version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 19 2010, in the Arts and Books section.

There was nothing exciting about the façade of the space where “The Death of Death (is alive and kicking”) (SM Art Center, 4th FL, SM Megamall) was being exhibited. On one side was a black tarp with the list of participating artists, on the other was a cartoon-like rendition of a skull. Between the dark colors and skull, this told me not to expect much, which directly contradicts curator Igan D’ Bayan’s “non-curatorial statement.” I began reading the note after I had slept on this exhibit longer than I would any other, still not finding some crux from which to begin analysis. The curatorial note, while no god, might give me a sense of the project’s notions of itself, a good starting point for understanding the exhibit. Of course sometimes, as with “The Death of Death”, the curatorial note fails as well.

No limitations equal clichés

There were too many skulls for one thing, and this wouldn’t have been a problem if these renderings didn’t look like things we’ve seen in popular culture before. Kiko Escora’s “Bungi” was funny with its hot pink background and its rendering of a skull with missing teeth, but it’s something we’ve seen in the local comedy films before.  D’ Bayan’s “Armageddon Boogie”, the steel installation that greets you when you enter the space, also looks like something you’ve seen and killed in video games before. (more…)

komentaryo

20 days to go!

“Ninoy’s Testament From A Prison Cell and other writings might enlighten Noynoy a little about the Left. if there were no poverty and oppression, there would be no Left; snubbing and demonizing the Left (instead of finding a way for Left and Right to work together for the good of the whole) would not have been Ninoy’s way, is no way to honor Ninoy’s legacy, in fact it dishonors Ninoy’s legacy.”

And while Stuart Santiago seems to have decided, I have yet to decide on a president. in fact, i’m almost voting for that one who will categorically say yes to the Reproductive Health Bill in this final stretch, but in this godforsaken country,really, everyone’s more afraid of the Church than the wrath of all womanhood.

so heck, maybe Jamby. I would ratherthat Frenchman in Malacanang than Kris Aquino or Willie Revillame.

kultura

the sadness of here in Ypil’s highest hiding place

a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 14 2010.

Lawrence Lacambra Ypil’s first books of poems has many things going against it, including the fact that it is poetry and that it is in English, both of which limit it to a particular audience. More importantly, it comes at a time when the kind of Philippine poetry in English that’s celebrated – if publication and recent award-winning collections are any indication – has been about going beyond the person and the personal in the poem, almost a poem-for-and-of-the-world, where the nation is missed/missing/ disappeared, the text existing beyond the page and into a realm of learnedness and influences that it requires the reader to inhabit. This, at a time when people continue to think poetry too difficult, and Filipino poetry too removed from the conditions that are real to us. In this sense, the debate has become too simple: the easy/ confessional/personal poem, or the difficult/conceptual/landless poem?

The Highest Hiding Place (Ateneo de Manila Press, 2009) by Ypil lands right smack in the middle of this debate, not falling clearly on either side of it. There is a refusal to be easily about personal confessions here, even as these poems seem to refuse difficulty. It experiments with forms, yes, and necessarily does with content too, but it does both without refusing the reader entry into the poem. (more…)

kultura

hypocrisy, plagiarism, and four (not just three) plagiarized speeches from MVP’s speechwriters

Jessica Zafra posted this in her blog, thank goodness for her, as I had been putting it off, even when it has been in my public Facebook account since yesterday morning.

here is the list of three speeches and their sources that’s been going around, with an additional one — the first one — which hasn’t been posted before.

1. at the ateneo family congress, 2009 — MVP’s speech, original 1, original 2

2. at the opening of the new Ateneo lib, 2010 — MVP speech, original

3. post-Ondoy speech on corporate social responsibility, 2009 — MVP speech, original 1, http://www.google.com.ph/search?hl=tl&source=hp&q=These+trials+also+remind+us+that+we+are+tied+together+in+this+life,+in+this+nation+%E2%80%93+that+the+despair+of+one+touches+us+all.+&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=”>original 2, original 3

4. commencement speech in Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan, 2007 — MVP speech, original 1, original 2, original 3

why did i think twice about posting it here? i didn’t, still don’t, want it to seem like 1) i’m out to do MVP in and 2) i’m being a hypocrite here.

the hypocrisy, I’m told, comes from my own personal knowledge of how plagiarism happens all the time, in the academe in particular, maybe within the walls of the institutions that I have served as student/researcher/writer in U.P. Diliman, and teacher/writer in the AdMU. hypocrisy has to do with this: to make MVP resign, tell him at this point to leave Ateneo, is to pretend that we — the academic community — are clean.

I beg to disagree. I don’t understand why we can’t work from the big fish that’s caught and let the smaller fish freak out and come out, of their own volition, about their own intellectual dishonesties.

i do not doubt this truth: the moment MVP’s plagiarized speeches are proven to matter because the academe kicks him out despite all his money, then every other academic and scholar will be scared shitless about his or her own intellectual dishonesties. MVP himself says it:

The challenge of leadership precisely is to create an environment where honesty is paramount, where integrity emanates from the top and builds success from the ground.

i think at this point, what would be hypocritical is to deny that money is talking pretty loudly in this case of plagiarism versus MVP. and please, read these speeches, read the originals. you will find that it isn’t true that what he was reading/saying was essentially about him. some of the more emotional/personal/beautiful lines weren’t his at all.

and now for other lessons in citing your sources, Abs-cbnnews.com, when your source quotes another source, then please revert to the primary source, i.e., me. Jessica had the grace to say that her source about the MVP speeches was my public FB note. the least you could’ve done was to cite me the way she did, diba? if not find that original site where the information first appeared.

as with MVP’s plagiarized speeches, all you needed to do was Google me.