She, Jeanne (poem)

Treacheries and writs: this choir
once sang the Maid to her pyre.
Later they—by stage and pen—
slew Jeanne all over again.

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And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. John 1:5.

Our new play I, Joan shows Joan as a legendary leader who uses the pronouns ‘they/them’. We are not the first to present Joan in this way, and we will not be the last. We can't wait to share this production with everyone and discover this cultural icon.https://t.co/19T7baWsRk pic.twitter.com/lrgOC59TvQ

— Shakespeare's Globe (@The_Globe) August 11, 2022

After 9 May

The Marcos-Duterte victory

Mr. Bongbong Marcos and his running mate Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio won the recent elections by a landslide, and are set to take office as President and Vice President of the Philippines, respectively. They weren’t my choice, I didn’t vote for them, but their victory is a bare fact.

Explaining their victory will fall to others far wiser and more intelligent than me. Instead, I wanted to reflect on some things I learned from their supporters.

Even before elections on 9 May, I’d already thought about likely scenarios. The most likely outcome, I thought at the time, was a landslide Marcos-Duterte victory. I made peace with it as a possibility. Now I’ll have to make peace with it as a fact.

Portrait In Yellow

By now, much has been said about the late former President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III since his passing. Hours of video and audio have been recorded, or spent making infographics or writing comments. Gallons of ink or saliva have been expended discussing the man and his presidency— a controversial topic at the best of times for any president, but in recent years, especially for him.

Much of it focused on his legacy: what his presidency accomplished, what it meant, what he left behind.

. . . What is a legacy?

It’s planting seeds seeds in a garden you never get to see

from the musical Hamilton

To the talking heads and swift-fingered graphic designers, it meant laws passed, erring officials charged or convicted, statistics, numbers. To his staff, it meant the moments they spent with him, their conversations. To his detractors, it was how they perceived him to have failed in his sworn duties.

To me, it means something else.

This isn’t sophisticated political analysis— not at all. This isn’t the lectern, but the peanut gallery, the cheap seats where democracy lives. And this is what I think “the Aquino legacy” means.

Foreign Affairs (poem)

Narrower, narrower grow the bars
of red and blue, while the moment’s stars
and their cohorts counting digits hour by hour
to name and number and measure their powers
just as they’ve done since yesterday
now flicker, and fade, and drift away.

Then I’ll turn off to a dimmer screen
in search of a smile and a friendly scene
here, in my dear, familiar clime,
in another place, in another time,
silent, and dark, and untouched as yet
by my faraway friend whom I’ve never met.

-4:18 a.m. Philippine Standard Time

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Description from DeviantArt:

Our relationship with the U.S. began with us sorta getting stabbed in the back. It’s fine now, though. Mostly 😀

Dear U.S.A, God send you well to keep.

-A.O.

Law Is Law

The recent news about the shutdown of prominent, and at this point, nearly legendary Philippine media company ABS-CBN because of its broadcasting franchise having expired (or, depending on who you ask, having been allowed to lapse) sparked a firestorm of controversy, with debates raging— mostly online, because of the COVID-19 quarantine— between those who supported the shutdown and those who opposed it.

As far as I can tell, at least on social media, those who support the network’s shutdown seem to coincide for the most part with those who support the current President Rodrigo Duterte and his administration. For quite some time now, they’d tagged the network as “ABias-CBN,” accusing it of unfair coverage, criticism, and “fake news” about the President.

On the other hand, those who oppose it seem to coincide largely with those who also oppose and criticize the President, viewing the shutdown as a dangerous and unconscionable assault on democracy and the freedom of the press.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll state very clearly, as I have from the start, that for the most part, I tend to fall on the side critical of the current President’s policies. However, this post isn’t about that.

As I kept an eye on the discussions, a certain phrase that the shutdown’s supporters kept repeating, with variations every now and then, stood out to me.

Just like our post on “build bridges, not walls,” this post won’t primarily be about the recent controversy, though it might touch on it indirectly. Instead, my primary aim is to offer a reflection on this interesting phrase (to me, at least) and its possible implications, and what it means for law to be law.

In the News: Robredo vs. Drugs

After being appointed co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Illegal Drugs (ICAD), Vice President Leni Robredo has assumed her new post and begun to put forward some proposals for the “war on drugs”— the centerpiece program of the Duterte administration. Being a member of the opposition and a vocal critic of the war on drugs, naturally her proposals have been met with derision and criticism in some quarters, though some have also expressed support and optimism for the direction she wants to take.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of this current administration, but I agree in principle that illegal drugs are a problem that need to be addressed. I’m just unsure about the exact scale of the problem and disagree with the tactics currently in place to address it. But having laid that on the table, I’d just like to put forward a few observations and opinions about this latest development in the war on drugs.

In the News: That Awful Mess at Reed Bank

I haven’t done one of these in a long time.

Recently, the alleged maritime incident involving a Filipino and a Chinese vessel at Reed Bank (referred to as “Recto Bank” in the Philippines) has been a topic of conversation and controversy on social media and in real life, with people demanding a full investigation and, if necessary, punishments meted out to those responsible.

Reading through the news reports (multiple sources, pick any) right now, this seems to be the generally accepted version of events. On the night of 9 June 2019, the F/B Gem-vir 1, a Filipino fishing vessel commanded by Captain Jun Insigne with 22 crew members onboard, was anchored at Reed Bank northeast of the disputed Spratlys archipelago when it was allegedly rammed by a Chinese vessel. The Chinese vessel turned on its lights and then sailed away, leaving the Gem-Vir 1 damaged and sinking, its captain and crew clinging on to their boat for dear life.

Thankfully two of its crew members managed to reach a Vietnamese vessel identified by the Saigon Times as a fishing vessel owned by one Ngo Van Theng and commanded by Captain Nguyen Thanh Tam, which rescued the crew of the Gem-Vir 1 and gave them food and water until they could be picked up the BRP Ramon Alcaraz, a Philippine Navy offshore patrol vessel, with one crew member staying behind to oversee the towing of the wreckage of their fishing boat.

As this is very much a developing story, it’s possible my mind might change about certain things as more facts come to light. Since I’m a citizen of one of the two countries involved, I might also have some biases that way. Nonetheless, my purpose here is to talk about the controversies and my impressions on how people on Filipino social media reacted, and then to offer a few of my own thoughts at the time of writing (18 June 2019).

The News from Paris (poem)

The tributes pile high from page to page
to her, glorious in every age—
and yet she lies silent, in ruin still
after fire and flame had eaten their fill.

The censures ring out line by line
crying punishment levied by God or time—
yet love and faith live on as best they could
amid rubble, glass, charred stone and wood.

Now Notre-Dame stands, as if for the sake
of half-remembered lessons and cold hot takes
in twisted litanies and internet games
where noble and commoner once loved her name.

~~~~~

Also on DeviantArt.

Notre-Dame de Paris—burned April 2019.

Some years back, my parents were able to attend Christmas Eve Mass at Notre-Dame Cathedral 🙂 I hope to see it someday still.

Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

 

That Free Press Thing

Disclosure: I don’t consider myself a supporter of Rappler (even if I do enjoy some of their content) or Mr. Duterte, but I do sympathize with a lot of GamerGate’s ideals.

In a recent decision, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cancelled news/media site Rappler’s license for allegedly violating the Constitution (multiple sources, pick any!). As the site had published criticism of President Duterte and his regime in the past, critics fired back, alleging that the ruling violated free speech and the freedom of the press.

And in the discussions on charter change making way for federalism in the Philippines, one proposed amendment to the 1987 Constitution changes the wording of the provision on free speech and freedom of the press to say that the state would not infringe on “the responsible exercise” of these rights, causing no small amount of trepidation over what this might imply.

My first reaction to these news stories was worry. These are fundamental rights, after all. In some ways free speech and a free press keep a democratic society actually democratic, in a society which purports to have and to work through a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” An accusation of violating the Constitution— of violating natural human rights— is a very serious charge. But when I realized what I was feeling, I asked myself, “Why am I worrying? What’s there to worry about?”

Several things, maybe.

The Concealed Word and the Sought-Out Speech

After taking a bit of a break from her Youtube channel, Laci Green, one of the most prominent faces of feminism on the Internet, uploaded a video entitled “TAKING THE RED PILL?” It caused a bit of a stir.

She talked a little about herself, and about how, despite her ascended status as a feminist meme, she wasn’t quite the ideologue that people made her out to be, and mentioned that she’d been “down the rabbit hole” looking into arguments from critics of feminism and social justice ideology and even found herself agreeing with some of them. She also spoke about her willingness to engage the “other side” in debates and discussions and, using the controversy over an article published in the philosophy journal Hypatia to illustrate, criticized the silencing of discussion and dissent in some circles of the feminist/social justice movement.

For her video, she received both (guarded) praise and criticism. On “her side” she was criticized for giving a voice and lending legitimacy to anti-feminists, while some critics of feminism and social justice ideology floated the theory of a disingenuous and cynical cash-grab.

Personally, I’d like to see what happens next, because thinking and ideas can be “dangerous” and infectious, especially for someone sincere in stepping into unfamiliar shoes and seeing with unfamiliar eyes 🙂 But her video and the dramatic response to it interested me, living in a country where a vocal supporter of the current administration who’d previously questioned and attacked the value of fundamental rights was given an important government post. In her video, Ms. Green had alluded to free speech and inquiry, so I wanted to look into the purpose of free speech, and why some people might think that certain ideas don’t deserve a voice and ought to be suppressed.