Tag Archives: anti-left rhetoric

komentaryo

anti-activism, anti-freedom of assembly: who survives?

Ces Drilon is who. And the policeman she featured on I Survived on May 13 (early morning May 14, 1t’s 12:56 am on my clock). It is also GMA who survives in this, even the next president, or every other person who says that rallies are mob rules and should be dispersed or else, forgetting that the freedom of assembly IS A RIGHT.

In the end it is all just lazy research and documentation, and irresponsible journalism.

So in the course of the show, you are made to find out that this policeman was victimized by the crowd during EDSA Tres. You find out that he was injured and all that, that he risked life and limb to fulfil his duty as policeman. Sige na nga.

But. This doesn’t excuse the fact that anti-riot policemen are alwaysthe ones on the offensive. They’re the ones with truncheons and shields. They’re the ones who are pasugod at any given point. Even this policeman Ces was interviewing and who survived said that he was victimized by the tear gas that they threw into the crowd because the wind went in the policemen’s direction. He also said that in the end, what was used against him were the things that he and his team had used against the rallyists. What does that really say about who is oppressed in a rally situation?

Obviously Ces hasn’t been part of a rally in a long time, the kind that’s about rallyists riskinglife and limb to fight for their rights? Obviously she hasn’t been on the receiving end of the police’s/military’s unjust anger.

Obviously Ces and whoever her writers are for this show, were so intent on showing the violence of EDSA Tres that they just decided to interweave videos with no dates, no indication of when and where things happened.  In fact, footage of the police’s preparations for EDSA Dos and EDSA Tres were exactly the same. Footage of rallyists were messed up. When Ces and the policeman were talking about EDSA Dos and EDSA Tres, footage showed the PMP (partido ng masang pilipino) flags that went to EDSA after Erap was impeached, yes, but this was interwoven with an organized rally that had flags of legal and valid leftist groups that are now partylist organizations, including Anakpawis and Bayan Muna.

So these leftist partylist organizations are now considered part of the mob rule, Ces Drilon? You actually are saying that these organizations, which were in fact in EDSA Dos, even on stage in those days, are a mere minority, the kind that was out to kill policemen?

How horrible this portrayal to begin with of rallies and rallyists across the board. How horrid that given the kind of military and police power that GMA has used against the people during her term, here’s a show that says, these policemen/military officers are oppressed by the people, too.  AS IF the dynamics of power between the military/police and the people, rallyists and otherwise, have ever changed.

I wonder if they realize that in the process of featuring this policeman injured during EDSA Tres, and showing undated/unverified footage that cuts across rallies by both valid leftist groups and the political organizations like PMP, that it LOOKS VERY PRO-PRES-ELECT-NOYNOY (and Kris, I dare say given the money she brings into the network). How can ABS-CBN 2’s news and public affairs even begin to say they are responsible and not for any candidate? Come on, this episode of I Survived in fact reeked of the whole Aquino discourse of the left as a noisy minority. So lump them together with the mass mob rule of EDSA Tres, and tadah! you prepare the nation for no rallies, no assemblies, don’t do that because kawawa naman ang pulis.

WTF Ces Drilon. WTF ABS-CBN’s news and public affairs. for people who insist on responsibility and being worthy of our attention, talaga naman, sometimes you just failus. In this case, you fail the freedom(s) you should be fighting for. The freedom(s) in fact upon which you stand. Ang galing. Congratulations.

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.

komentaryo

palparan, benigno, bencard: alin alin ang naiba?

what i’ve hated aboutmuch that has been blogged re Melissa Roxas via Filipino Voices is that it dissolves the issue of the abduction and torture of activists into anti-left rhetoric. and this happens, not just because of the bloggers themselves, but the comments that are allowed to take over the discussions.

so far, it is benigno who takes the cake. true, he insists we have become desensitized to extrajudicial disappearances and killings because it has become part and parcel of our everyday existence. but in the process of saying this, what he questions is Roxas’ choice of activist affiliation: why Bayan-USA? which he cleanly and easily equates with Bayan Muna Partylist, and then with the Communist Movement in the country.

benigno then asserts that Bayan Muna is the “satellite organisation fronting for a movement whose singular mission is the destruction of everything that we currently consider to be legitimate” — an ultimately dangerous accusation that puts the lives of real people in danger: and no, this isn’t just about the lives of Bayan Muna congressmen, but also the lives of Bayan Muna members.

of course benigno is not alone, other than many of those who have commented on his entry, some on jester-in-exile‘s are also quick to judge Roxas character and intelligence. Bencardsays Roxas is a “misguided alien political activist who chose to immersed herself in another country’s domestic strife <…> by her voluntary action, she has assumed the risk of being treated as an ‘enemy’.”

what this fails to consider is why Roxas can even be considered as enemy AT ALL. she was legally in the country, going about her research as an academic and as a member of an activist organization, and that IS NOT a violation of the law.

in the end, what is telling about all these critiques of and suspicionsabout Roxas’ case, is that they fail to consider their role in the bigger scheme of things, in the truth that as they label Roxas “communist” they are red-baiting too, and giving the GMA government and military more reason to believe that what they are doing to activists are justified.

they become no better than Palaparan, who today insisted that Roxas is a member of the NPA — and they had her alias as proof! — as if this justifies AT ALL that she be abducted and tortured, as if this allows the military to take the law into their own hands, just because they’ve been allowed to imagine that they are the dictators of democracy, freedom and liberation.

no thanks to benigno and his ilk.