Birthday Blues 2016

Four months on hiatus and now I find myself facing two weeks before my birthday. The ultra hectic schedule and an endless list of tasks, add to that the worsening holiday traffic, everything seems to be onthe wrong side.

And yesterday, news of the dictator Marcos' burial in Heroes' Cemetery made me anxious about the future of this country. People are not happy and rallies were organized in different places on short notice. I worry that this might cause a civil war. The AFP, represented by the acting chief of staff Lt. Gen. Glorioso Miranda, was shown to hand over the Philippine flag to Imelda during the funeral rites. It is not hard to see that AFP will be at the receiving end of the people's criticisms and discontent yet again. The Marcoses, desiring to keep the whole thing solemn and private, were described as "thieves of the night" this time just as they were "thieves in broad daylight" during the height of the Marcos era.

As a social scientist, I find it amazing how today's technology is able to mobilize a huge number of people into action in a moment's notice. Anyone is bound to remember the role social media played in bringing down Middle Eastern regimes perceived to be corrupt. Since last night, people have gathered at the People Power Monument, aming other places, to voice out their discontent. In social media, activists have been flooding the newsfeeds with posts on human rights, corruption, and revisionist history. The trending hashtag: #Marcosnotahero or variations of such.

On the other side, there are people who espouse moving on and forgiveness using religion as a tool to "promote peace", but it backfires. They are quick to be ridiculed as ignoramuses who are told to read more about the Marcos years. This is where our heavily flawed education system is manifested. Supposedly well-educated people, the likes who graduated from UST (thank God I haven't come across a UP graduate who is in favor of the honors bestowed on Marcos) even, are surprisingly lacking in critical thinking. Move on and forget? Yes, there are many more issues that demand our attention, but to bury a dictator in a place reserved for those who contributed positively to the general public? Or has the concept of "hero" changed for these people? The reason why this is a big deal is because it adds insult to injury. Our being Manila-centric is again showing. We know very little about the peripheries. Our understanding of the Muslim South is so pitifully small and full of misconceptions. How many people have heard of the massacres of innocent civilians? How many people have heard of the Jabidah massacre, the Malisbong massacre? Does the average person know that cultural genocide has been taking place here in our very own country?

I do not blame these people. I remember reading only the positive things Marcos did for PH when I was in elementary. I remember being awed that wow, he stayed in power for 20 years! Back then, I did not understand Martial Law. My parents both praise Marcos for it because they said it brought back discipline. It was only in college when I heard about stories of crimes against humanity. I began reading more, listening to more stories, asking more questions. At the end of the day, when these stories surface, the good and the bad, you can't help but be stuck. There were stories that Marcos was being defamed by the Americans because he suddenly shifted foreign policy to include communist/socialist states. And there are the arguments that the post-Marcos years were also rife with human rights injustices but why are we venerating the Aquinos?

Again, we see how people think in black and white. Criticize one and you're surely an ally of the other camp. Can't we be just mature citizens who are just being vigilant, who are just exercising democracy to ensure that the government is not oppressing the people???

And there are many more issues to this. My mind is tired. My heart is tired. Just as I was starting to trust D, this happens. Why are we so good at betraying trust? Why is credibility no longer important?

I go back to asking these same questions, how we have drifted far away from morality, how this world is consumed by materialism we no longer give importance to spirituality. I cannot help but think of the tragedies that occured in my personal life, how I wished so hard to just disappear from this world because I found it inhabitable, too cold, too dark, too cruel. The inner longing to go back to the point of origin is more intense than ever. I just want to dissociate myself from this world.

This year I lost my innocence. This year I lost my optimism. This year I lost the will to effectuate change. I lost it all, I lost my self, I lost my dreams. Last year was the beginning and this year things worsened. I wonder what's in store for me next year? But maybe it's not a bad thing altogether being exposed to the cruel sides of the world. I never knew how strong I was, or maybe it is just innate in me to perform well despite the misfortunes of life? That despite my shattered self, my brain still functions well, though admittedly not as well as before. Sad.

Maybe I am just reaping what I sowed. I wasn't able to fully show my love to the Light of my life. That guilt made me go the extra mile in loving a new person in my life, afraid that I might make the same mistake of losing a person without showing the depth and breadth of my love. Yet it was still a mistake. So I am back to slowly building my own shell, which shattered to a million pieces those times I chose to love fiercely without hesitation, without limits. Maybe I loved the wrong person. Or maybe the time is not right. Who are we to know? I only know that if I believe in something, I will really do everything, that I will take great pains to protect something I hold sacred and dear. Except it might just be grasping for the wind, leaving me frozen in the same exact spot where I was left hanging.

I'm just too old-fashioned. I am not meant to live in today's world marked by a hyperconsumerist culture. I cannot compare. I cannot compete. I cannot thrive. Authenticity is too strong that everyone else is overwhelmed. I must relearn the art of solitude. 

Against Corporate Greed

I am reposting a news article I read last night in the papers regarding mass rallies all over the world against corporate greed. Lately I have been thinking of writing about it. The article came out at an opportune moment. This will be the beginning of a series of global rallies against increasing greed and against neoimperialism. This is the start of the mob's cry for reforms and for upholding the dignity of every human being.

Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/77345/rallies-vs-corporate-greed-sweep-world

Rallies vs corporate greed sweep world

Widening rich-poor gap stokes protests

Agence France-Presse, Associated Press 1:31 am | Monday, October 17th, 2011 
Buoyed by the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City, protests swept across Asia, the Americas and Europe on Saturday, with hundreds and in some cases tens of thousands expressing discontent at corporate greed and rising unemployment.

In Rome, small groups of restive young people turned a largely peaceful protest into a riot, setting fire to at least one building and a police van and clashing with police officers, who responded with water cannons and tear gas. The police estimated that dozens of protesters had been injured, along with 26 security officials; 12 people were arrested.

At least 88 people were arrested in New York, including 24 accused of trespassing in a Greenwich Village branch of Citibank and 45 during a raucous rally of thousands of people in and around Times Square.
More than 1,000 people filled Washington Square Park at night, but almost all of them left after dozens of police officers with batons and helmets streamed through the arch and warned that they would be enforcing a midnight curfew. Fourteen were arrested for remaining in the park.

Other than Rome’s, the demonstrations across Europe were largely peaceful, with thousands of people marching past ancient monuments and gathering in front of capitalist symbols like the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

Similar scenes unfolded across cities on several continents, including in Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Toronto, Chicago and Los Angeles, where several thousand people marched to City Hall as passing drivers honked their support.

But just as the rallies in New York have represented a variety of messages—signs have been held in opposition to US President Barack Obama yards away from signs in support of him—so did Saturday’s protests contain a grab bag of sentiments, opposing nuclear power, political corruption and the privatization of water.

Widening gap

Yet despite the difference in language, landscape and scale, the protests were united in frustration with the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

GREEK TRAGEDY Greek activists, inspired by the Spanish Indignants, cover their ears, mouths or eyes in Athens’ Syntagma Square in front of the Greek parliament. AFP

“I have no problem with capitalism,” Herbert Haberl, 51, said in Berlin. “But I find the way the financial system is functioning deeply unethical. We shouldn’t bail out the banks. We should bail out the people.”
In New York, where the occupation of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan was moving into its second month, a large crowd marched north early on Saturday afternoon to Washington Square Park, where it was joined by several hundred college students who decried, among other things, student debt and unemployment.

“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” protesters chanted from within police barricades.

In late afternoon, the crowds marched up Avenue of the Americas toward a heavily barricaded Times Square, beseeching onlookers to join in with cries of “You are the 99 percent.” For the protesters, marching on Times Square held almost as much significance as did protesting against Wall Street.

“Times Square represents business as usual—buy, buy, buy in this economic climate, watch the latest show,” said Elias Holtz, 29, a Web designer who lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn. “But the crisis is everywhere.”

Time for people to rise

Two dozen people were arrested at a Citibank branch on LaGuardia Place on trespassing charges. Citibank, in a statement, said the protesters “were very disruptive and refused to leave after being repeatedly asked, causing our staff to call 911.”

In Washington, several hundred people marched through downtown, beginning in the early morning, passing by several banks. Escorted by the police, the marchers also demonstrated in front of the White House and the treasury department before moving on to a rally on National Mall, where they were joined by representatives of unions and other supporters.

The protests were inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States and the Indignants in Spain, targeting 951 cities in more than 80 countries around the globe.

It was the biggest show of power yet by a movement born on May 15 when a rally in Madrid’s central Puerta del Sol square sparked a worldwide campaign focused on anger over unemployment and opposition to the financial elite.

This weekend, the global protest effort came as finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 industrialized nations meet in Paris to discuss economic issues, including ways to tackle Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

“I think it is very moving that the movement that was born here has extended throughout the world. It was about time for people to rise up,” 24-year-old Carmen Martin said as she marched toward Puerta del Sol.

Only the beginning

In Rome, which saw the worst violence of the day, the march quickly degenerated into running street battles between groups of hooded protesters and riot police who fired tear gas and water jets into the crowd.

“Today is only the beginning. We hope to move forward with a global movement. There are many of us and we want the same things,” said Andrea Muraro, 24, an engineering student from Padua.

“Only One Solution: Revolution!” read a placard. One group carried a cardboard coffin with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s name on it.

Berlusconi later condemned the “incredible level of violence” at the march, which took place amid a security lockdown.

The Vatican condemned an attack by protesters on the 18th century church of Santi Marcellino and Pietro near St. John Lateran Square, where much of Saturday’s violence occurred.

“When I came down, I saw the entrance door had been smashed in,” the church’s parish priest, Fr. Giuseppe Ciucci, was quoted by Italian media as saying.

“The Virgin Mary’s statue which was at the entrance had been taken away and I saw it had been thrown into the street and smashed,” he said.

Tens of thousands of protesters assembled in Madrid on Saturday evening, when chants mingled with live music, including a rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” lending the downtown area an upbeat feel on an unusually balmy fall afternoon.

‘Culmination of dream’

VIOLENT TURN Protesters attack a police vehicle during a demonstration in Rome. Others set fire to a government office. AFP

Brief clashes were reported in London, where the police were out in force with dozens of riot vans, canine units and hundreds of officers.

But the gathering, attended by people of all ages, was largely peaceful, with a picnic atmosphere and people streaming in and out of a nearby Starbucks.

WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, made an appearance when a crowd assembled in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. To loud cheers, Assange called the protest movement “the culmination of a dream.”

Around 250 protesters set up camp outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in the heart of London on Sunday, promising to occupy the site indefinitely to show their anger at bankers and politicians over the global economic crisis.
In the Portuguese capital, where some 50,000 rallied, Mathieu Rego, 25, said: “We are victims of financial speculation and this austerity program is going to ruin us. We have to change this rotten system.”

The European Union also became a target for anger as the eurozone debt crisis continues, with some 9,000 protesters marching to its headquarters in Brussels and rallying outside the European Central Bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt.

Unfolding revolution

More than 10,000 Canadians blew bubbles, strummed guitars and chanted anticorporate slogans at peaceful protests in cities across the country.

VENDETTA MASKS Inspired by the film “V for Vendetta,” protesters wear masks in Barcelona, Spain. AFP

“I believe a revolution is happening,” said 30-year-old Annabell Chapa, who brought her year-old son Jaydn along in a stroller to Toronto’s Saint James Park.

In Mexico, Peru and Chile, thousands marched to protest what they slammed as an unfair financial system and stagnant unemployment.

As the day began, around 500 people gathered in the heart of Hong Kong’s financial district to vent their anger. About 100 demonstrators in Tokyo also voiced fury at the Fukushima nuclear accident.
Another 600 demonstrators in Sydney set up camp outside Australia’s central bank, where the plight of refugees and Aboriginal Australians was added to the financial concerns.

With reports from New York Times News Service and Reuters