"Is Rappler inciting another Ukraine in the Philippines?"

The hysteria surrounding the Rappler-COMELEC partnership is out of control. Both columnist Rigoberto Tiglao and Solicitor General Jose Calida claim that with this partnership the USA will effectively rig the election for Robredo. Now Mario Ferdinand Paison claims that Rappler will lead the Philippines to war. 

https://www.manilatimes.net/2022/03/06/opinion/columns/is-rappler-inciting-another-ukraine-in-the-philippines/1835221

Mario Ferdinand Paison is the director of Phil-BRICS Strategic Studies which describes itself thusly:

The PHILIPPINE – BRICS STRATEGIC STUDIES (Phil-BRICS) is a registered non-profit organization dedicated to promoting global multi-polarity and Philippine leadership in global peace and prosperity advocacy. 

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are important new global actors that the Philippines must learn to deal with. They are both collaborators and competitors to the traditional center economies of the United States and Europe. They offer both possibilities and perils for the Philippines should its leadership opt to pursue strategic development and an independent foreign policy. This will be most challenging when it comes to China, the leading BRICS country. 

https://philbrics.com/about/

It would seem that whatever this group does they should have a basic understanding of the intricacies of geopolitics.  Let's take a look at this article and see if that is the case.

WE may well be headed for war in the Philippines. The Philippines is letting inciters of revolutions into the heart of our election process. Why are we letting Rappler, which receives some $150,000 a year from the National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, the known funder of antigovernment protest groups, including violent rioters, in the Arab and Ukraine revolutions and Hong Kong protests, the financial arm of the CIA as admitted by the former head of NED, Alan Weinsten, himself, be the official media partner of the Commission on Elections (Comelec)? During the height of the Hong Kong protests, Dr. Michael Pillsbury of Hudson Institute admitted that the NED also funded "millions of dollars of programs" in Hong Kong. Sen. Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan had glorified the rioters as freedom fighters yet did not report on the rioters receiving foreign funding and training. Why should the US be allowed to be the official observer in our elections?

How do they incite revolutions? Aside from funding, training and organizing parties, western and NED-supported media will block almost all news unfavorable to the US and its allies, and will magnify criticisms of non-allies and create anger, hatred and ridicule. Examples?

Right off the bat Mario claims that because Rappler receives NED grants that means the US will be admitted "into the heart of our election process." He then asks, "Why should the US be allowed to be the official observer in our elections?" How is the US an official observer in the Philippine elections? He gives absolutely no proof for this claim and merely assumes it because Rappler receives NED grants. Does Mario not know that many other organizations in the Philippines receive NED grants and that they receive much more money than Rappler?

The elected Ukraine government was overthrown with US support, including with US white supremacist-supported neo-Nazis, such as the Azov Battalion attacking and burning people and government buildings, using swastikas and similar symbols, marching with torches evenings in 2014, and honoring as hero Stepan Bandera, who had collaborated with the Germans including in the ethnic cleansing of the Poles and Jews.

The Ukraine war was warned against already years ago by Kissinger, historians and diplomats, building up for over a decade due to acts from the West's five waves of NATO aggression. The US and NATO promised not to recruit and arm the European countries but entered over a dozen countries to the very border of Russia and refused to sign an agreement not to arm Ukraine against Russia, refusing to even put it on the agenda.

These two paragraphs correctly explains what has been happening in Ukraine for the past 30 years and why Russia has decided to invade. The US wanted Ukraine in NATO and Russia did not want NATO on his border. This war was a long time coming and can be directly traced to US meddling. How does that situation remotely relate to the Philippines? The only likely candidate to invade the Philippines would be China as they continue to encroach on Philippine territory in the WPS.

Russia and China immediately sent emergency weapons and bullets for our soldiers in the Marawi Crisis, when President Duterte requested for assistance after the US and Europe initially blocked much-needed arms delivery.

What an incredible lie that is. DND Secretary Lorenzana can clear that up for Mario.

The US was assisting from the beginning. Not to mention the US has been giving military assistance to the Philippines since 1898. 

Another threat to our elections, US-funded Rappler, with a record of biased news or selective reporting and foreign support in millions of dollars, being given an official role in the National Elections by the Comelec, should be unacceptable to any self-respecting country or even to an organization with any integrity.

Earlier in this piece Mario said Rappler gets $150,000 per year from the NED. Surely Rappler's expenses are more that $150,000. Yet Mario insists that Rappler is US-funded. Does he not know that both the PCOO and the Philippine News Agency are partnered with and receive assistance from China?

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1064816

The Chinese Embassy is set to donate an additional PHP15 million worth of information technology equipment to the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) to help improve its services.

PCOO Secretary Martin Andanar bared this noting that his agency expects to receive the amount sometime in May or June.

This amount comes on top of the PHP140 million worth of radio and broadcasting equipment the Chinese Embassy previously donated to the agency.

Last month, Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua also led the turn-over ceremony of computers, camcorders, teleprompters to state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA) and Radyo Pilipinas of the Philippine Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Does this mean China is meddling in the affairs of the Philippines in an attempt to shape public opinion about them? Does Mario not know that the Philippines receives millions in aid each year from a variety of nations including the USA, the EU, and Australia? It is a complete double standard to claim that Rappler receiving a paltry $150,000 NED grant is US funded and to not claim the Philippines is US funded when the  government receives even more in foreign funding.

Why are former associate justice Antonio Carpio, former Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario, UP professor Jay Batongbacal, DLSU professor Renato de Castro, et al. quiet on direct US meddling in our elections but raise a howl on unproven, "possibilities" of a "Manchurian Candidate"? Why have Rappler, Inquirer and ABS-CBS not reported on the US embassy lobbying in Comelec to have an official poll watchers role in our elections — when the US involved itself in Egyptian, Venezuelan, Iraqi, Ukrainian and other elections; when these nations saw coups, color revolutions, "Arab springs," "Ukrainian springs," and eventually collapse.

Is Mario unaware that foreign observers during an election is not a new thing? In 2016 their presence prevented voter fraud at some polling stations.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/785340/foreign-observers-report-incidents-of-vote-buying-violence

Besides several reports of vote-buying and violence in polling precincts, a group of foreign observers on Thursday concluded that the 2016 Philippine election was “generally orderly and peaceful.”

The Compact for Peaceful and Democratic Elections—International Observers Mission (Compact-IOM) detailed during a press conference in Manila the experience of 15 foreign delegates who were deployed to monitor 91 precincts in Cotabato, Maguindanao, Bohol, Dinagat Islands and Santiago in Isabela.

Coordinator Arnold Tarrobago said Compact-IOM has been organizing observation missions since 2004 to bring “positive influences on the election process.”

Citing people on the ground, he said, “The presence of election observers in their area prevented or helped prevent incidences of fraud and violence that they were expecting to happen.”

Despite this, the delegates observed crowded precincts where other people could easily see the ballots of people voting.

The group in Cotabato also received reports from the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) that their poll watchers were pulled out from six precincts after  “threatening men came into the voting rooms, instructed them to take off their PPCRV identifying t-shirts then proceeded to order them out of the room.”

Batongbacal quoted the local PPCRV as saying that the men “took over the voting rooms and vote counting machine (VCM) machines. And they started shading and feeding ballots into the machine.”

They also visited a city hall and an elementary school in Maguindanao that were bombed before the elections.

In Bohol, German national Dominik Hammann said that most precincts were well-organized. It was mostly peaceful, he said, although there were claims of vote-buying, including threats to cut off  the beneficiaries’ access to the government’s conditional cash transfer program.

Were these delegates from the USA, Germany, Sweden, and Japan meddling with the election? No. In fact their presence was a good thing. 

"Rappler is the 'least trusted' media entity in the country. This is like a 'free-pass' on Rappler to mold public opinion. And given their known bias toward other candidates, their participation can only heighten the public's apprehension that the coming election would not be fair, credible and transparent," argued National Press Club President Paul Gutierrez. How was the spokesman for Comelec James Jimenez able to get the Comelec Acting Chairman Socorro Inting to sign the memorandum of agreement with Rappler?

How the heck would Rappler mold public opinion if they are the least trusted media entity in the country? That makes no sense and it is this ability to craft the news and shape public opinion that Mario is claiming will lead to war. But apparently no one believes them. So, how will it work? It won't.

After Ukraine, the Philippines is next. We should avoid becoming the Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen of Asia.

What a conclusion.  What a baseless and ridiculous conclusion. Mario did not offer a shred of proof for his claim that the Philippines may be headed for war because of the Rappler/COMELEC partnership. The Philippines is a strategic ally of the United States. Why in the world would they want to turn it into a battle zone? The only country marching towards war in this region of the world is China. North Korea is too but they do not pose the same threat to the Philippines as China does and there are many in this country who would let them have their way. 

This opinion piece is stupid. Mario is entitled to his opinion but since it is not rooted in reality it is best to toss it in the garbage.

Let's look at another article about the Rappler/COMELEC partnership which is more grounded than the gibberish Mario has pulled out of his hat.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2022/03/06/opinion/columns/the-disturbing-comelec-rappler-partnership/1835223

IS there a plot to get the presidential elections in May declared a failure if survey-topping candidate Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. looks set to win?

This column will address a related and crucial question: Will the nation and the world, especially the tens of millions voting for Marcos, assuming he wins, accept the claim of election failure?

After all, in a Marcos victory, especially a landslide, there would probably be far more Filipinos disputing claims of poll irregularities than supporting them. How can their collective voices be countered or silenced?

In this column Ricardo Saludo assumes that in the event Bongbong Marcos Jr wins the election Rappler will declare that the election was a failure claiming Bongbong did not legitimately win. He then looks at a few ways how those who would dispute any declared failure of elections would be silenced.

First, the Comelec partnership projects Rappler as an impartial, expert election news and information source, despite its widely perceived leanings against the Duterte administration and the Marcos family, and in favor of the opposition, especially Vice President Maria Leonor "Leni" Robredo.

Second, Rappler has the most powerful ally in projecting and propagating its reports and views as valid, fair and true, especially on the biggest and most influential social media platform wielding immense sway across the Philippines and the planet: Facebook.

Since 2018, Rappler has been FB's fact-checking partner in the country. Hence, in social media jousts between Rappler and groups disputing its accounts, no prizes for guessing which of them FB's fact-checking partner would likely disparage as dubious or even block altogether.

The third and perhaps biggest factor in propagating Rappler's perspective on the elections is the West's agenda for the Philippines, which is now dominated by the geopolitical rivalry between America and China.

While American Embassy charges d'affaires Heather Variava maintains that the United States can work with whoever becomes the next Philippine President, it much prefers a leader who would fully implement the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), allowing massive rotations of US forces in the country with access to our military bases, starting with those in Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Cebu, Puerto Princesa and Cagayan de Oro.

Will Western media and tech giants go along with the West's agenda and affirm claims of election failure in the Philippines? Well, that same media adopted as gospel truth one untruth disseminated by Rappler for years: the false report that the Philippine National Police (PNP) had killed tens of thousands of people in President Duterte's anti-narcotics campaign.

Now, if the West decides that voiding a Marcos victory and supporting a power grab by a losing candidate willing to implement EDCA is in its geopolitical interest, then we may see Rappler's claims of election anomalies played up across the world, while contrary reports and opinions are silenced, just like perspectives supporting Russia or opposing mass Covid vaccination.

At that point, the only question remaining is whether the Armed Forces of the Philippines, with its decades of close relations with the US military, would back another "people power" uprising, fueled by claims of election fraud.

In such a scenario, which would hopefully never happen, Philippine democracy and independence may well be lost.

This scenario is at least more thoughtful and realistic than the one given by Mario of the Philippines turning into another Ukraine. Though it's not very plausible. Ricardo says because Rappler has a partnership with Facebook and Western media that means any reporting of election failure would be amplified around the world and seen as truthful and any contrary report as being fake news. He uses the example of Rappler's reporting the number of drug deaths by the PNP being in the tens of thousands which was believed by Western media despite it being wrong. But this is exactly what the PNP reported.

https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2019/07/how-many-people-have-died-as-result-of.html

No reasonable reading of this report would lead one to believe that the 16,355 HCUIs are anything but related to the drug war. The numbers are on a page titled "Fighting Illegal Drugs." If people are confused about the #RealNumbers the PNP have themselves to blame for appending the dubious label "Deaths Under Investigation" to unsolved homicides and including those numbers in the drug war data.

Ricardo Saludo's scenario ends with the AFP having to decide if they will back another "people power" which would be fueled by reports of election failure. But how exactly would it escalate to that point? Rappler does not control all the media in the Philippines. There are many media organizations such as GMA, ABS-CBN, PNA, Philstar, and The Manila Times. If Rappler is the least trusted news organization and is reporting something provably false and everyone else is contradicting them how could a claim of election failure rise to the level of a new "people power" involving the AFP? Why would the AFP forcibly oust Marcos if they knew Rappler was lying and he legitimately won?

Not to mention that the US envoy said the US would work with whoever is elected. So, why would the US incite actions to remove Marcos if he wins? There are also ten candidates on the ballot. Which one would the US pick to be the winner? Why does it have to be Robredo? What if Pacquiao wins? Will this scenario kick into high gear in order to get Robredo in the Palace?

This article is a lot more sober than the first one warning that Rappler is turning the Philippines into another Ukraine which will inevitably result in war. It is not any less paranoid and ridiculous.

US Has Become A Failed State, Irrelevant Now to the Philippines?

Has the US become a failed state, irrelevant now to the Philippines? That's what Manila Times muckraker Rigoberto Tiglao claims. 

https://www.manilatimes.net/2020/10/14/opinion/columnists/topanalysis/us-has-become-a-failed-state-irrelevant-now-to-the-philippines/780284/

THIS year is historic for us not just because of the unprecedented devastation to the world economy and humankind brought about by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. This year is historic to us in a more specific, or unique, way: Since our liberation in 1946, the United States of America — big brother to our elites — has become irrelevant to us.

This year is the start of our total liberation from the American eagle. This is partly due to President Rodrigo Duterte’s audacious pivot towards an independent foreign policy that drew us closer to America’s rivals, China and Russia.

This is also partly due to the demise of the Yellow Cult, whose founders Benigno Aquino Jr. and his late widow Corazon Aquino after all owed much to US sponsorship, providing the former with his Harvard refuge and the latter with the might of US diplomacy and propaganda apparatus to grab power in 1986.

But it is also partly due to the fact that the US has unraveled, nearly imploding this year, with its institutions which our intellectuals and politicians had looked up to for decades proving to be so flawed.

Whether the pandemic overwhelms the US and triggers its fragmentation, whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden wins, and even, I dare say, its economy collapses or not, would not be as relevant now as it was just 10 years ago. Japan, China, Asean, the Middle East and now even Russia will fill the vacuum and become our main economic partners. Only forever-US-fans like Albert del Rosario and Antonio Carpio insist that we needthe US Navy to prevent the Chinese from invading us.

This is unbelievably baseless propaganda. Does Tiglao know that Marcos was supported by the US government and found refuge in Hawaii? Does he know that every single president of the Philippines has enjoyed the support of the USA in one form or another? 

Far from being irrelevant the USA remains the Philippines' number one financier as this latest report from USAID shows.

US COVID-19 Assistance to the Philippines

Since March 2020, the United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Department of Defense, and State Department, has invested more than Php1 billion ($22.6 million) to the Philippines' COVID-19 response. Additionally, many of USAID's ongoing development projects valued at more than Php5 billion ($100 million) a year across the health, economic development, governance, education, and environment sectors have mobilized to address the impacts of the virus. The assistance builds upon the longstanding U.S.-Philippines development partnership in the Philippines. Over the past 20 years, the United States — the world's largest provider of bilateral assistance in health — has invested nearly Php29.6 billion ($582 million) in the Philippine health sector,and has provided nearly Php228.8 billion ($4.5 billion) in total assistance to advance the country’sdevelopment goals.

One could cite the many millions of dollars worth of military training and equipment as well as the various social programs supported by the USA to refute this stupid assertion that the US has now become irrelevant to the Philippines. However nothing in his column seeks to prove that the US is irrelevant to the Philippines. Instead Tiglao focuses on the USA being a failed state.

He cites two articles, one from Salon and one from The Nation in his defense that the USA is a failed state. The article from The Nation is basically an anti-Trump harangue. Only the article from Salon offers any insightful critiques about America's demise.

"The American economic system has waltzed itself into a network of problems in large part because it really lived a charmed life," said Dr. Richard D. Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "But the charmed life ended around the 1970s, after which it went on a kind of extended life support." 

Americans have maintained the illusion of prosperity by accruing massive debt, Wolff told Salon, comparing the nation's situation to that of "a patient who has had a really bad cancer or a heart attack, and is now kept alive with tubes and chemicals and all the rest of it. He is not dead, but is in deep trouble. That problem is compounded, Wolff said, "by the fact that this is a society cannot, to this day, face what I just said."

https://www.salon.com/2020/08/05/is-the-us-a-failed-state-in-2020-experts-answers-range-from-maybe-to-hell-yes/ 

At this point one could go all Ron Paul and launch into a speech about the Federal Reserve, private banks, and debt-based fiat currency. Since Tiglao does not go there, indeed hardly anyone goes there, it is not necessary. One wonders if he is as ignorant as most people are about who controls the economy and how they do it which is through debt. Probably.

Tiglao's thesis is that the USA's status as a failed state is evidenced by their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guess what, the US is the nation worst hit by Covid-19, by any measure: 8 million cases, 3 million active cases and 220,000 deaths. We have just 343,000 cases, 43,0000 active cases and 6.000 deaths. Thailand, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and many other countries that are listed as states worse off than the US in the failed-state department are all doing much, much better than the US.

The proof of the pudding is certainly in the eating. What better measure of a failed state than its performance in addressing the pandemic?

The US has become a failed state. With all the institutions it has been boasting about, it has failed its citizens big-time.

Tiglao opines that democracy is the root of the problem. It is democracy that has caused the pandemic to spread and it is democracy which has failed to confront the pandemic. 

It has failed to confront the pandemic not because of any inherent natural weaknesses of its people nor its environment but because of institutions which it had been claiming since World War 2 as its strength that other countries should follow .

Foremost of these is its set of institutions called “democracy.” Democracy was invented largely for small communities, most of whose members could inter-react among themselves, and in which there was no “mediator,” no interpreter for their views. But there is now that powerful prism for people’s views — media.

Democratic theory that people have the right and wisdom to choose their leaders cannot take into account the power of media to mold how people see things, and how the owners of that media can choose what kind of views the masses would hold.

Donald Trump became, to use that phrase Americans are fond of saying, the “leader of the free world” because of his hugely successful reality TV show “The Apprentice.” Americans were fooled tinto thinking that the tough, all-knowing chief executive pfficer that was Trump’s role in the show could become the tough, all-knowing CEO of the US of A. Exactly in the same way Filipinos voted for Fernando Poe Jr. thinking he was the movie hero “Panday.”

Note that he says it was "institutions" which the USA claimed "as its strength" that contributed to the failure. But he never tells what those institutions are. Instead he focuses on the abstract concept of democracy. Democracy is not an American institution. It is an idea which is Greek in origin. His origin story for democracy is bizarre to say the least. 

Democratic theory is not "that people have the right and wisdom to choose their leaders." Democratic theory is that the people are the rulers. Demos meaning people and arche meaning rule. Tiglao is under the mistaken impression that the USA is a democracy when it is in fact a constitutional republic. It has never been and never will be a democracy. Same as the Republic of the Philippines. I encourage Tiglao and all my readers to read Plato's Republic where democracy is touted as the worst form of government just above tyranny.

As for why Donald Trump was elected...surely it is more than his TV show that put him the White House. He was saying things the other candidates were not. Then when he was the last man standing and his opponent was Hillary Clinton...well perhaps Tiglao is not so informed as to how corrupt she really is. To be fair basically every American presidential election is an exercise in an appeal to the lowest common denominator but what election isn't? Philippines included. Why was Bato elected to the Senate? Not because he is a wise statesman.

Tiglao further betrays a misunderstanding of what democracy is by confusing it with federalism.

Other facets of US “democracy “proved to be obstacles to that country’s response to the pandemic. States asserted their independence from the central government and from each other — resulting in a chaotic response to the pandemic. States at the start of the pandemic even tried to outbid each other and the federal government itself to secure masks and other medical equipment needed for the pandemic.

One state would enforce lockdown restrictions. But residents could move from one state to another freely — resulting in such a super-spreader event as a motorcyclists’ festival in South Dakota.

Aside from being a constitutional republic the USA is also a federation. Sovereign states entered into an agreement to form a federal government to assist with issues like defense. While the overriding supremacy of states rights has largely deteriorated since the Civil War each state continues to possess its own sovereignty and expresses that through their own laws. Gun laws, drug laws, driving laws, these and other laws differ from state to state. 

The Philippines is not a federation but has a national government. Each province and town can enact their own laws of course but decrees from the Palace and laws from the Congress trump them. That is why the IATF can dictate what is happening around the country. 

It's ironic that Tiglao would mistakenly criticize federalism when he has advocated for a federal system in the Philippines. A true federal system would be almost impossible in the Philippines because rather than disparate states uniting to form a more perfect union the nation would first have to be divided up into sections. Then a degree of sovereignty would have to be imparted into whatever districts or states were formed so such a system could be implemented. That would mean each district enacting its own laws and not following a national top down system. Does Tiglao even know what federalism is? It seems he does not.

As for Sturigs being a super spreader event, it's always best to get a second opinion in medical matters. Johns Hopkins says the study which attributed 260,000 COVID-19 cases to Sturgis was not peer reviewed, used questionable methods, and ought to be interpreted cautiously.

https://ncrc.jhsph.edu/research/the-contagion-externality-of-a-superspreading-event-the-sturgis-motorcycle-rally-and-covid-19/

This study, which was available as a preprint and thus had not yet been peer reviewed, uses county-level SARS-CoV-2 testing data to show that the Sturgis motorcycle rally likely led to substantial increases in cases in the local community where the rally took place. However, there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the broader, national impact of the rally and its associated costs given limitations in the methodological approaches used. Results from this study should be interpreted cautiously. 

Next he confuses democracy with personal liberty.

And of course, the democracy dogma was so ingrained among Americans that they claimed it was their right to wear or not wear a mask, the scientifically proven first and necessary step in containing the virus.

The fact is the government has no right to dictate how you live your life. If you want to engage in certain activities, like driving a car, then you have to follow the rules of course because that involves other people and not just the mere existence of the individual. But just existing should not include any laws one has to follow such as wearing a mask. Incidentally there is a great degree of personal liberty in the Philippines when it comes to operating a motor vehicle of any kind. That is because driving laws are hardly enforced.

As for face masks being scientifically proven to contain the virus let's see what the U.S Surgeon General and the CDC said back in February.

https://twitter.com/surgeon_general/status/1233725785283932160?lang=en

Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!  

They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk! 

https://twitter.com/CDCgov/status/1233134710638825473

CDC does not currently recommend the use of facemasks to help prevent novel coronavirus. Take everyday preventive actions, like staying home when you are sick and washing hands with soap and water, to help slow the spread of respiratory illness.

So what happened that they changed their mind? Science or politics? Here is a May 2020 article from the New England Journal of Medicine.

We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmp2006372

That is science. Masks are ineffective at preventing infection. Want some more science proving the ineffectiveness of masks?  Then click this link: https://cv19.fr/eng/english/

Next Tiglao confuses democracy with political infighting

That American democracy is such a huge obstacle to securing the welfare of its people was demonstrated recently by the fact that the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives cannot agree with the Republican-controlled Senate to enact a law to address the pandemic. The term for it — stimulus bill — hides the sad fact that without it, at least a million Americans thrown out of jobs by the pandemic (or the lockdowns) won’t have food on their table.

Partisanship is simply a fact of political life. That is not how the founders envisioned America but that is how it has become even in the 19th century when Senator Charles Sumner was attacked by Senator Preston Brooks who beat him with his cane in the Senate chamber! Even the Philippines is divided along ideological and party lines. That is why Tiglao refers so derisively to the Liberal party as the Yellow Cult! 

Finally Tiglao closes by praising the communist government of China and saying that its present success in battling COVID-19 and allegedly lifting 850 million people out of poverty makes up for its past failures.

China’s authoritarian system has certainly exacted a huge cost in lives. Its Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962, Mao Zedong’s ill-conceived program for his country to rapidly industrialize is estimated to have resulted in 30 million to 55 million Chinese deaths from the resulting famine. That kind of disastrous policy would never have been maintained in a democratic system.

But the question is valid: Would China’s success in lifting out of poverty 850 million Chinese between 1981 to 2015 (going by the World Bank’s studies) make up for its past mistakes, even if horrific, that it is a better system of government?

Using the pandemic as the litmus test, the answer to that is certainly yes. It is unquestionably spectacular that from 85,600 cases in February, China has now just 228 cases; deaths peaked at 4,600 in April, and none since then.

Now be honest: If no vaccine after all is invented and the pandemic becomes worse than the Spanish flu pandemic that killed more than 100 million, which country would you prefer to live in – the US or China?

It's the ol' bait and switch! The headline claims that the US is a failed state and is irrelevant to the Philippines. This article is really about the greatness of China. Tiglao's argument for the US being a failed state is that it has not handled the COVID-19 pandemic in a timely manner. But China has. Thus China is superior. In fact anyone with a lick of sense would rather live in China. 

Actually no one with any sense would want to live in China. China's encroachment on Hong Kong and her people's liberties is why there has been so much protesting there over the past few years. China may look sleek and clean but with its system of social credit designed to control everyone it is a nightmare. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4

The Chinese state is setting up a vast ranking system that will monitor the behavior of its enormous population, and rank them all based on their "social credit."   

The program is due to be fully operational nationwide by 2020, but is being piloted for millions of people across the country already. The scheme will be mandatory. 

Like private credit scores, a person's social score can move up and down depending on their behavior. The exact methodology is a secret — but examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online. 

1. Banning you from flying or getting the train. 

2. Throttling your internet speeds. 

3. Banning you — or your kids — from the best schools. 

4. Stopping you getting the best jobs. 

5. Keeping you out of the best hotels. 

6. Getting your dog taken away.

7. Being publicly named as a bad citizen.

Is Tiglao even aware that this program exists and seeks to control every aspect of a person's life? It is clear from his article that Tiglao does not value personal freedom above all which is an important facet of America's founding ideology and should be held dear by any healthy and sane individual. Who wants to be a slave to a totalitarian dictatorship like the Chinese Communist Party? Who wants to live in a country where one can be punished for thoughtcrimes and wrongthink?

This man has written many columns condemning the CPP-NPA (who are Maoists), accusing Globe and PLDT of paying NPA extortion fees (which Globe emphatically denies), accusing Benigno Aquino of being in league with the Reds, and now he wants to praise communist China as having a better system of government that the USA because they have a lower number of COVID-19 cases? How much more hypocritical and ill-informed can Rigoberto Tiglao possibly be?

The fact is China lied to the entire world about COVID-19 and it is because of these lies that the world is now under lockdowns of various degrees.

https://nypost.com/2020/09/21/congressional-report-reveals-how-china-could-have-prevented-covid-19/

The coronavirus pandemic might have been prevented if not for Chinese cover-ups in the early days of the outbreak and the World Health Organization “parroting” Beijing propaganda, according to a damning audit from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 

The 96-page report — obtained by The Post ahead of its planned Monday release — says the Chinese Communist Party destroyed evidence and buried troubling data, while nationalizing the supply chains and limiting exports of US companies 3M and General Motors, keeping key goods in the country. 

“It is beyond doubt that the CCP actively engaged in a cover-up designed to obfuscate data, hide relevant public health information, and suppress doctors and journalists who attempted to warn the world,” reads the report, authored by Republican members of the Democrat-held committee. 

Had China been more transparent and proactive when the first signs of the burgeoning health crisis emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, the outbreak could have been largely contained — potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide, the pols wrote. 

“Research shows the CCP could have reduced the number of cases in China by up to 95 percent had it fulfilled its obligations under international law and responded to the outbreak in a manner consistent with best practices,” the report said, citing a study on Medrxiv, a Yale University-linked online clearinghouse for medical manuscripts. 

“It is highly likely the ongoing pandemic could have been prevented,” the report said. 

Instead, on Jan. 1, CCP officials ordered that the Wuhan wet market from which the contagion is believed to have sprung “be closed and sanitized, destroying forensic evidence that may have provided insight into the origins of the outbreak,” the report said.

On Jan. 2, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology completed a full genetic sequence of COVID-19 which indicated that it was likely highly contagious, but did not immediately share that data with the WHO.

This is a such a stupid and deceptive article from a ridiculous man and all those in the comment section thinking it is great and awesome spewing out so many hard truths have been hoodwinked because they are ill-informed. Why did Tiglao really write this article? Sure the Manila Times pays him but who else has him on their payroll?

If Tiglao wants to talk about COVID-19 response as a litmus test for failed states well the Philippines has the longest lockdown in the world! Where else in the world are people required to wear face shields? Where else are there age restrictions on who can leave their house? Of course there are more measures of a failed state than just COVID-19 response and the Philippines fails at most of them which is why this nation remains high on the index of failed states.

Manila PNP Portrayed in American TV Show Kidding

Jim Carrey's new TV show Kidding is a surreal look at a man who hosts a kids show very reminiscent of Mister Roger's Neighborhood called Mr. Pickles' Puppet Time. Along the way he has to battle his personal problems and uses the show as a sort of therapy outlet for himself. In season 2 Carrey, Mr. Pickles, is dealing with a divorce and says to his audience, "Divorce is for the best." 

Over in Manila the PNP enter a sari sari store and begin stealing snacks. On the TV a localized version of the show Mr. Pickle's Puppet Time is playing. They hear the local presenter repeat the line, "Divorce is for the best," and immediately raid the studios because divorce in the Philippines is illegal. They then toss the man off a roof.

The producers of this show could have chosen any country in the world for this scenario but they chose the Philippines. This is how the world sees the Philippine National Police. As thieves and killers. Now why would that be? Surely it's just black propaganda and not based on any reality right?

Philippine Media Death Photo Comparison

We all know in the Philippines that when you are die you run the risk of having your corpse splashed all over the front pages of the local media. But not all media is created equal. That is to say not all media will display your corpse in the same way. Just take a look at the way these photos of two assassinated village councilors were published.

First the Inquirer.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1217756/its-politics-police-say-of-killing-of-2-village-councilors-shot-as-they-were-to-attend-session-in-bukidnon-town

Next Sunstar

https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1840920

Last of all Bombo Radyo

https://www.bomboradyo.com/cdo/read-dalawang-barangay-kagawad-na-pinatay-sa-talakag-bukidnon-nadamay-lang-umano-sa-land-dispute/

These photos are all from the same crime scene. The first two photos were provided by the Bukidon police. I am not sure who provided the third photograph but probably the police.  

You can clearly see how each picture is presented. The Inquirer barley hides the body with a little pixelation, Sunstar blurs the whole corpse, and Bombo Radyo doesn't even bother to attempt to cover up the body though the full pic is hidden under the text on the page so it can't be seen anyway unless you do a Google image search for the name of the deceased. 

It's interesting to see the editorial decisions made between each media outlet. If there is one thing they can agree on it is that a picture of the deceased must be published. It is only the presentation which differs.

The Gory Philippine Media

God bless the Philippine media. I mean it. Really. The Philippine media does not sugarcoat reality. No, no. They show you just how it is.  Take this motorcycle accident.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1085373

It's just a regular motorcycle accident so who cares about the story? We have heard it all before. The picture of these two fools who did not wear helmets speaks a thousand million billion words.  Let me enlarge it for you.

The lesson, which no one is going to learn, is WEAR A HELMET!!! These guys might be alive if they had worn a helmet. Maybe not. A van sideswiped them sending them to their doom so the lesson also is STAY IN YOUR LANE!! 

Everyone in the Philippines is a bad driver. Everyone except Roland Quitevus who was given a medal by the Queen of England for his work as a chauffeur for the British Embassy. The baddest of all the bad drivers are the motorcyclists. They zoom in and out of traffic and into oncoming lanes and sometimes whole families with infants included are seeing riding together. Will seeing a photo like this help tame those morons? Of course not.

But it sure is a messed up and gory photo which no Western outlet would ever print!

Asian Representation in the Media and Identity Politics

I finally saw the movie Rich Crazy Asians recently.

After all the hype it turns out this movie is just a typical rom-com with an all Asian cast which is the big selling point of the film. "Come watch a film set in contemporary times with an all Asian cast." This movie has been compared to Black Panther which had a mostly all-black cast and crew and was also sold to the public as an empowering shot at accurate and full representation in Hollywood after years of marginalisation.

The author of the book on which this film is based also wrote the novel with the same goal in mind, representation.

Kwan stated that his intention in writing the novel was to "introduce a contemporary Asia to a North American audience"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Rich_Asians

Set in Singapore all the characters are supposed to be ethnic Chinese but not all the actors cast are ethnic Chinese prompting many to proclaim this film as not being Asian enough.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/world/asia/crazy-rich-asians-cast-singapore.html

A primary worry is that the Warner Bros. film focuses on Singapore’s Chinese, the dominant ethnic majority, at the expense of Malays, Indians and other ethnic minorities who collectively account for about a quarter of Singapore’s 5.6 million people. 

“Part of the way that this movie is being sold to everyone is as this big win for diversity, as this representative juggernaut, as this great Asian hope,” said Sangeetha Thanapal, a Singaporean Indian writer and activist who is researching a doctoral dissertation on the concept of Chinese privilege in Singapore. 

“I think that’s really problematic because if you’re going to sell yourself as that, then you bloody better actually have actual representation” of Singaporean minorities, she said.

You can't please everybody especially when you are trying to do just that. One of the actresses in this film is Filipina celebrity Kris Aquino. What is her role?

• Kris Aquino as Princess Intan, a Malay princess

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Rich_Asians_(film)

Kris Aquino, a Filipina, plays the role of a Malaysian princess! How ironic in a movie that is touted as a "big win for diversity" and representation. Why not cast an actual Malaysian in that role instead of a Filipina?

There is much that could be said about this film and its sociological implications regarding identity politics but that is not the purpose of this blog or this post. Instead I want to callback to a previous blog post about the two Fil-Ams who "pranked" McDonald's by hanging a photo of themselves inside the store.

“If you haven’t noticed, there isn’t a lot of Asians represented in media,” Maravilla said in a YouTube video titled, “How to Become McDonalds Poster Models.” 

“And hopefully one day I could see someone like me on the big screen,” he added, alongside another Photoshopped picture of himself on the movie poster of the latest blockbuster hit “Crazy Rich Asians.” 

https://philippinefails.blogspot.com/2018/09/fil-ams-give-free-publicity-to.html

Both of these men were invited on Ellen where they told their story.

"We looked around and we saw these other posters on there and we saw that there's different ethnicities and we saw they were all these people having fun so we decided to, like, represent ourselves as Asians to be up there as well." 

"Crazy Rich Asians was a really big influence on me it really pushed me over cus I watched the movie three times it's insane." 

"So we wanted to be like Crazy Middle-Class Asians." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctw_8596i38 

So you see this movie was a motivator for them. For Jevh Maravilla anyway who saw the movie three times. It's funny he says they wanted to represent themselves as Asians and not specifically as Filipinos since Kris Aquino, who is Asian, did not play a Filipina role but a Malaysian role. I assume any Asian will do when it comes to Hollywood.

Now here's the thing. These two Fil-Ams live in the USA and are wishing there was more Asian representation in the media. But the USA is not a majority Asian country so why the heck would there be a lot of Asian representation in media in the USA? However in Asia one would expect to see a lot of Asians represented in the media. Is Jevh and his friend familiar with the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean film industries, not to mention Bollywood. Worldwide Asians are hardly underrepresented on the big screen or in the media. His assertions about lack of Asian representation are based on his limited perspective.

To prove how ridiculous this whole notion of a need for accurate cultural and ethnic representation is I decided to do an experiment. Actually I decided to take pictures of what I knew to be the truth: there is not a lot of Asian, Filipino, representation in the models plastered all over the walls of the mall. I wanted to take pics at McDonald's but sadly there are no pictures of families or anyone else hanging on the walls inside any of the local McDonald's so taking a few pictures of models in the mall was the only other option. These pictures were taken at random and in a hurry. Security does not take kindly to people snapping photos in the mall. And for good reason.

That is just a tiny sampling of the type of models and manikins seen at the mall here in the Philippines. Note that practically none of them are Filipinos or Asians of any kind. Or maybe they are but they are certainly not a dark-skinned and distinctly Filipino or even Asian looking type. They are light skinned and almost hapa looking. That is not to say there are no Filipino or Asian models. There are but they are few and far between and most of them are TV celebrities who are plastered on large billboards hawking canned tuna and corned beef.

Has anyone noticed this? Are there outcries about this lack of Filipino representation in mall advertisements? Where are the outraged and the protestors if such a thing as representation matters? Duterte seems to be fine posing with a faceless white manikin in Hong Kong.

What does this mean about representation and identity politics?

It means identity politics is a particularly Western idea that has not found a home in the Philippines. This toxic ideology lends itself to a completely bankrupt worldview and philosophy which causes people to focus on differences to such a degree that has only served to further bifurcate or socially balkanise the West, especially the USA. Instead of seeing themselves as social beings who are part of the larger picture of society, people begin to see themselves as pure individuals identified solely by their sexual preferences or ethnicity or some other trait. Groups of like minded individuals band together and exclude those who are unlike them. When these groups to look the media and do not see themselves looking back cries of racism and oppression are raised. It is a twisted mishmash of neo-marxist Critical Theory straight out of the Frankfurt School and post-modern thought all rolled into one.

When groups feel threatened, they retreat into tribalism. When groups feel mistreated and disrespected, they close ranks and become more insular, more defensive, more punitive, more us-versus-them.

In America today, every group feels this way to some extent. Whites and blacks, Latinos and Asians, men and women, Christians, Jews, and Muslims, straight people and gay people, liberals and conservatives – all feel their groups are being attacked, bullied, persecuted, discriminated against. 

Of course, one group’s claims to feeling threatened and voiceless are often met by another group’s derision because it discounts their own feelings of persecution – but such is political tribalism.

But in recent years, whether because of growing strength or growing frustration with the lack of progress, the Left has upped the ante. A shift in tone, rhetoric, and logic has moved identity politics away from inclusion – which had always been the Left’s watchword – toward exclusion and division. As a result, many on the left have turned against universalist rhetoric (for example, All Lives Matter), viewing it as an attempt to erase the specificity of the experience and oppression of historically marginalized minorities. 

The new exclusivity is partly epistemological, claiming that out-group members cannot share in the knowledge possessed by in-group members (“You can’t understand X because you are white”; “You can’t understand Y because you’re not a woman”; “You can’t speak about Z because you’re not queer”). The idea of “cultural appropriation” insists, among other things, “These are our group’s symbols, traditions, patrimony, and out-group members have no right to them.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/01/how-americas-identity-politics-went-from-inclusion-to-division

Jevh Maravilla and his friend have drunk the kool-aid of this ahistorical and isolating modern leftist ideology.

In the Philippines there is none of that nonsense. There is however a more pernicious sort of identity politics and political tribalism which is what has lead to the corrupt political dynasties of the Binays, Aquinos, Estradas, and Marcoses.

In many ways this kind identity politics is more destructive.

The tradition of political corruption and cronyism, the extremes of wealth and poverty, the tribal fragmentation, the local elite’s willingness to make a separate profitable peace with colonial powers—all reflect a feeble sense of nationalism and a contempt for the public good. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1987/11/a-damaged-culture/505178/

When one reads about the antics of the politicians in the paper, all the us-versus-them shenanigans and all the corruption and graft and killing and raping by those who are supposed to protect the people (the PNP), one cannot help but agree that there is a "contempt for the public good."

But at least people aren't worried about whose face is staring back at them on the big screen.