Tag Archives: Martial Law

kultura

Toni, Bongbong, history and #Halalan2022

Here’s the thing about Toni Gonzaga: she is a symptom as she is the condition itself, a very critical condition of lies, falsity, and disinformation at a time when murderers are condoned and the corrupt are shameless, when the plunder of resources has been normalized, as has the violation of basic rights, at a time when algorithms run our social media lives which, given this pandemic, is pretty much the life that we live.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: this is ALL on her. She—as with other content creators, celebrities, influencers, you and me who do social media—is making decisions about what content to put out into the world, and SHE is solely responsible for those decisions. There is no one else she can blame for what is put on her accounts and her channels, there is no network to hide behind, no producer or manager to point a finger at.

At this point, we are seeing these personalities for who and what they are. And as Toni said: she’s got nothing to hide. And to some extent she’s never hidden that she is a Marcos loyalist—she’s just more shameless now, right on the month of Martial Law commemoration, in utter disregard for the thousands killed, the thousands more who live with its trauma, and the millions plundered by the Marcoses that all of us have suffered for.

Maybe this is the pandemic effect on her: I got nothing to hide, I got nothing to prove. Here, see me as a Marcos loyalist! I don’t give a flying f*ck. You only live once.

Here’s the thing with Toni Gonzaga: she knows, she has seen, how she will not be held accountable. (more…)

komentaryo

Why say #NoToMartialLaw in Mindanao

It is beyond me how Congress can turn a blind eye to the human rights violations that have happened, and which continue happening, in Mindanao, even as Martial Law has been declared over the region the past eight months.

As with Duterte’s Drug War, there is very little rationale here, and even less reason to continue it for all of 2018. In fact, all we’ve got is a flattened Marawi, a rehabilitation process that will cradle corruption, and communities militarized, thousands displaced, and thousands of dead bodies.

Here, culled from the mapping of impunity of Karapatan. State violence in Mindanao DURING Martial Law.  (more…)

komentaryo

The Senate disappoints #MartialLaw

Lost all of Tuesday this week to the Senate.

The day started with news of Senate Resolution 388 affirming and supporting Martial Law as declared in all of Mindanao by President Duterte. What we knew was that 15 Senators were signing the resolution, excluding the Senate minority of five people – Bam Aquino, Franklin Drilon, Risa Hontiveros, Kiko Pangilinan, and Antonio Trillanes – and Grace Poe and Chiz Escudero whose names weren’t on the released copy of the resolution.    (more…)

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

Protest culture VS troll discourse

When otherwise intelligent individuals become trolls, putting down the protests that have been happening from Luneta to the People Power Monument, Manila to Quezon City, and across the county, I tell anyone who asks me about these put-downs: well, we must be doing something right, yeah?

Because imagine the amount of time these people waste. They have to look for photos that will prove what they want to say about a rally they did not attend. They cull from the hundreds of photos of the rally, the ones that will prove what they want to say: these kids know not what they’re doing, Mocha apologizes. Duterte devotees are suddenly dependent on mainstream media which they’ve lambasted all this time, using it as source for who was at the rally, and what happened there.

Imagine the identity crisis these trolls go through: shifting from being pro-Duterte to being pro-Marcos and back, wondering how exactly those who are pro-Duterte could be anti-Duterte-alliance-with-the-Marcoses, and just unable to grapple with the fact that the discourse of pro- and anti- does not capture at all what is a more complex task of learning and engagement, within and outside these protests (more…)