Owner: (Mis)readings URL:http://karlomongaya.wordpress.com Join Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:48:28 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: a blog featuring counterobservations on events and texts from the vantage point of an eccentric, optically inconvenienced, and culturally dispossessed resident from the Southern Philippines. Site statistics:Click here
The case of Malru Fernandz: exorcizing a self-proclaimed diva 2007-08-19 09:42:22 A considerable buzz in the Pinoy blogging world has formed around the statements of Manila Standard high society columnist Malu Fernandez in her article “Are you a stinky linky? Or do you smell like a divine divalicious babe?” the most derogatory of which are as follows:
However I forgot that the hub was in Dubai and the majority of the OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) were stationed there. The duty-free shop was overrun with Filipino workers selling cell phones and perfume. Meanwhile, I wanted to slash my wrist at the thought of being trapped in a plane with all of them.
While I was on the plane (where the seats were so small I had bruises on my legs), my only consolation was the entertainment on the small flat screen in front of me. But it was busted, so I heaved a sigh, popped my sleeping pills and dozed off to the sounds of gum chewing and endless yelling of “HOY! Kumusta ka na? At taga sann ka? Domestic helper ka rin ba?” Translation: “Hey there? Where are you from? Are
2010 Elections: Mar Roxas for President? 2007-08-18 08:14:53 I learned about Senator Mar Roxas’ interview on ANC from Ricky Carandang’s blog last Wedneday and was thus able to see it in TV during the next day.
In the same blog, he wrote his impressions on the senator and his “grasp of issues and policy that the others just don’t have. He switched easily from fiscal policy to trade issues, and what for me is the most important issue the country faces today: the growing gap between the rich and poor.”
Indeed, Mar Roxas is now seen by most political analysts and commentators as one of the stronger contenders for the 2010 presidential elections. As early as now, Sen. Benigno Aquino III has already declared Roxas as the Liberal Party’s standard bearer and even LP chair emeritus Jovito Salonga has recently introduced him as “the next President
of the Philippine Republic.”
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Read more:Elections
U.S. involved in combat operations in Mindanao 2007-08-17 02:41:18 Fifteen years after the closing of two U.S. bases in Clark and Subic, and after half a decade of denial from both U.S. and local officials, we now have concrete evidence that U.S. troops are engaged in actual combat
operations in Mindanao.
Read today’s Inquirer editorial for a general background:
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Imelda, Ninoy and a bizarre love triangle 2007-08-23 04:45:34 Still on Ninoy Aquino, Kwentong Barbero insinuates that a love triangle
between Ninoy Aquino, Cory Aquino and Imelda
Marcos existed in Lessons from the Dead. First, he starts with the preliminary details:
Walang gaanong nakakaalam na minsang naging escort ni Imelda itong si Ninoy sa isang charity ball. Hot chick probinsiyana si Imelda noon. Inaamin naman ni Ninoy na nagka-crush siya kay Imelda. Pero kung bakit di sila nagkamabutihan, sinasabi lang ni Ninoy na “She’s too tall for me”. Pero kung si Imelda ang tatanungin, alam niya kung bakit di siya niligawan. Wala siyang maipagmamalaking breeding at wala din siyang pera…mas pinili nga ni Ninoy ang isang tagapagmana ng hacienda. Si Cory Aquino.
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Naga to become Cebu’s ninth city 2007-08-27 16:12:49 Naga is set to become a city after this Sunday’s plebiscite which will determine if the town’s residents approve of the first class municipality into a city. A positive outcome, which is the most likely result, will make Naga Cebu province’s ninth city and the third recently converted this year.
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A few changes; race for 2010 gains steam 2007-08-26 21:30:12 History is merely a list of surprises.
It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Before anything else, congratulations to all the passers of the Nursing Board Exam, particularly Beryl’s sister and future sister-in-law Kendi.
I’ve taken advantage of the extended holiday over the weekend to add a few changes
in Postcard Headlines. In particular, I added a new History Archive page under My Directories menu in the sidebar. The page will feature websites and online papers that will aid in the pursuit of my historical mania.
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Read more:gains
Good Morning, RP: No cut in US military aid 2007-08-26 02:42:35 The front page of the country’s leading national paper leads me to recall the classic film I watched a week ago. Good Morning
, Vietnam, now one of my favorite films, is starred by Robin Williams, who plays the role of a maverick and very funny deejay deployed to Saigon, Vietnam in 1965.
One of my favorite portions of the film was the part when Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World begins to play amidst the background of both actual and acted war footages from the war.
In the scene, American GIs prepare to attack civilian villages which are suspected of being Viet Cong sympathizers. Napalm and howitzer fire hits the rice fields and jungle foliage. In reprisal, bombings are conducted by the Vietnamese fighters in American controlled Saigon. The slum dwellers are rounded off in saturated drives, executing suspected guerillas, and a student protest is violently dispersed.
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Read more:Good Morning
A week of war(fan)fare; Malu Fernandez resigns 2007-08-24 19:27:38 Fanfare brought about by the country’s political circus characterized the past week as the fighting continued in Sulu and Basilan. We witnessed the seemingly senseless deaths of our young soldiers from a series of military errors which started with the fateful beheading of 10 marines last July.
A suspected Abu Sayyaf bomber was intercepted in a Cebu port!
And the calls for peace in the country’s south remain unheeded. Despite the tragic debacles experiences by a demoralized armed force, “the operations will continue, unabated, unceasing,” Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro told reporters.
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Read more:Fernandez
Due process for Joma 2007-08-30 20:18:34 By now, much would have been said on the unexpected arrest of erstwhile Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Ma. Sison. Some of the initial responses, I have already mentioned in an earlier post.
In the meantime, the International Day of the Disappeared was commemorated yesterday. Also, Inday Nita Daluz, a popular martial law era radio host and anti-dictatorship icon in Cebu, died of heart and kidney illness.
At the moment, the Dutch envoy defends the arrest. The trial is already set. The military goes into red alert to prepare itself for possible reprisals from the NPA as the NDF affirms the fears expressed by Bayan the other day, saying the arrest would mean the end of peace talks.
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Stopping climate disaster from becoming reality 2007-08-29 17:02:00
Reflections on the film The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow takes us to one of the many possible future scenarios that faces our planet, the very real possibility of catastrophic man-made disaster. And although the scenes portrayed in the film were somewhat exaggerated, altogether, the film raises a point that is very relevant to every one of us.
The film essentially showed the perils resulting from human kind’s reckless abuse of nature, especially through the wasteful burning of harmful fossil fuels such as coal and other substances. This is directly related to the long standing issues of energy consumption and conservation in the poorer nations.
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Read more:reality
Joma arrested over Kintanar, Tabara killings 2007-08-28 19:17:53 Today, I received several e-mails from the yahoo groups of the NUSP, the largest student council alliance in the country. I am not a member of the group anymore and have ended my former vocation as a student activist to pursue a more normal life.
The messages tackled a surprising development overseas: Self-exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Founding Chairman Jose Maria Sison has been arrested
by Dutch Authorities in Utrecht, Netherlands on Tuesday. Check the TV coverage and another news report.
According to the Dutch officials, “The communist leader was suspected of giving orders, from the Netherlands, to murder his former political associates in the Philippines, Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara.”
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Read more:killings
The Decline of Written Media and the Crisis of Socialism 2007-09-21 23:32:58 This is a must read. I printed the following article from the New Left Review and read it while in bed (yes, I’m still sick but I think this viral infection is about to leave my body).
The paper explores the diminishing stature of the written media and the transition to a more audio-visual oriented culture as a much ignored factor in the present crisis facing the Left. The writer - Regis Debray - is a French intellectual, book writer, professor and journalist.
On a semi-related note, also check out MediaShift for an article on why we love (and hate) print publications. Debray’s paper can be read below in full:
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Read more:Crisis
, Decline
, Socialism
Bedridden on Martial Law commemoration day 2007-09-20 22:12:26 I am sick and will be returning to bed again in a while. Had really intermittent sleep, phlegm-related breathing difficulties, and all other symptoms of my abnormal condition.
Well, I used to plan and organize students for mass actions for today’s occasion. This year, I am bedridden. But even if I wasn’t, I still won’t attend the rallies scheduled for today. I now have to make a living and help our family cope with the economic difficulties of these days. And crisis times certainly means more work.
Argh! Didn’t finish writing a short reaction paper due for submission today. I was supposed to email it to Beryl so she can submit the write-up for me. Now I have to credit the really bad weather for all this bad luck.
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Read more:Martial
The AB ZTE FG alphabet and other echoes from the Marcos era 2007-09-19 19:10:09 Just a month after triumphantly attributing a 7.5% growth in the economy to her own efforts, its crisis mode for President Arroyo and her seemingly perpetually besieged administration again. No wonder why crude but desperate full-page ads headlined “Good News” highlighting the economy’s 7.5% growth in the 2nd Quarter suddenly sprouted in papers in the middle of the week!
But before continuing to the crisis that has threatened to change the alphabet from the usual ABC to AB ZTE FG, let us first remember two events and two equally significant historical figures.
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Read more:Marcos
Fun with a European map 2007-09-17 15:34:54 It’s press freedom week! I’ll try to get more materials on this soon, but I think one thing that makes the Cebu local media stand out every time we commemorate this event is the unusually high level of festivities during the week.
Meanwhile, let’s have some fun things too for a change. Check out this website. It has a game that asks you to enumerate all the countries in Europe in 10 minutes.
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Read more:European
A few announcements 2007-09-16 04:32:09
I will not be able to update Postcard Headlines as regularly as before in the coming days due to the nearing of our examinations week this October.
Shifted to a new WordPress theme so as to avail of the 3 columns feature for more widget space - something unavailable in the previous theme.
And I have started to list down the books I have at home in AkoLibro a new blog I made last night. ■
Saramago’s latest book plot: why it won’t happen in the Philippines 2007-09-16 01:57:01 It’s been raining here Metro Cebu straight every afternoon since Wednesday. Are the heavens crying for Erap? I hope not. Maybe, for GMA then - especially now that the controversies concerning her administration’s shady National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with ZTE are slowly unfolding.
No surprise that civil society groups are now training their attacks against the present dispensation after the conviction of former president Estrada. Even the mainstream Left has joined the bandwagon. With Sison’s release, it can now reserve more efforts to pursue other matters.
And indeed, in a very classic move, it is now drumming various sectoral concerns and national issues in preparation for a bigger show of force which would most likely fall on September 21, the 35th commemoration of the declaration of Martial Law.
Jose Saramago’s Seeing
But the rains are not about all that, I know. But it does remind me of the introductory passages of one of the books that I am now readi Read more:Philippines
Agrarian reform still relevant 2007-09-14 17:08:44 Last week, organized peasant groups stormed the main building of the Department of Agrarian Reform. The setting was one of anger and desperation as protesting farmers and farm workers rushed to the office of DAR secretary Nasser Pangandaman in the 4th floor before they were violently dispersed.
Unruly, rowdy, and disruptive are the words that would most likely come into the mind for a good number of text-addict, blog-hopping, cable news-watching middle class Filipinos (and another reason to pack up and head for other shores). But before making hasty conclusions, let us first ponder on a few things.
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Erap Conviction Hangover 2007-09-13 11:26:31 I am posting this entry to celebrate the return of DSL at home! (But not before two weeks of daily badgering of the Globe people in their 173 hotline and a subsequent promise of a technical support onsite visit which never happened anyway.)
I was about to move on from commenting about Erap if not for this: this morning I was able to pass by and sit down for a while in a lecture-forum on Trillanes with Dr. Dodong Nemenzo as speaker. In the open forum, he mentioned quite a bit about the Erap conviction - echoing the line pursued by the camp of his old friend.
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Read more:Conviction
After Estrada: ZTE 2007-09-12 19:39:41 The Arroyo administration has started to peddle its usual line of opportunistically seeking for national reconciliation and unity in the light of yesterday’s historic occasion. And with the baggage that is former president Joseph Estrada done away with after his conviction, the call for us to move on is a correct one.
But to put a blind eye on the Arroyo administration’s own monkey business would only serve to kindle the wounds left in the supporters of the popular former president. Erap may have been convicted, but the verdicts on other equally corrupt personages linked to the present administration still very far from being served.
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Why Erap will be convicted 2007-09-11 21:13:17 The verdict on former president Joseph Estrada’s plunder case will be decided by the court today. (Update: Estrada was found guilty beyond reasonable doubt and has been sentenced to life imprisonment.) My father’s Monday column reiterates the official consensus over the dining table at home:
…an acquittal is out of the question. I don’t think the courts will risk overturning the basis for this administration’s emergence with Edsa 2 in 2001.
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Myanmar: military junta’s forces open fire at protesters 2007-09-27 09:00:49 Alarming news: “Burmese troops today opened fire on pro-democracy protesters leaving several people dead, as the violent military clampdown escalates.”
The military junta’s brutal crackdown started yesterday and continues today. The Guardian newsblog has updates since Wednesday until 12:45 today. More recent updates from The Irrawaddy:
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Hilarious Zay-T-E hearing 2007-09-26 05:08:23 I’m still watching the hilarious hearing on the ZTE controversy on TV! Abalos has a funny accent. He pronounces the controversial Chinese company as “Zay-T-E.” So the moment everybody’s waiting for is finally here. As expected, it’s Neri and Abalos’ turn to get grilled today.
Mar Roxas’ turn to ask questions now. LIVE transcript of the hearing by Manuel Quezon III plus a few comments in Inquirer Current Blog. And it’s confirmed, Abalos bribed Neri as disclosed by Newsbreak a week ago. The transcripts from Inquirer Current’s live blog around 10 today:
N[eri]: Let me give you facts. Chairman Abalos came to visit me at Neda, I forgot the dates, looked at calendar. Sometime last last year, early this year… I cannot recall what we discussed, frankly, I have poor memory… But I believe we had lunch meeting arranged by Chinese embassy, one or two Chinese officials of embassy and of ZTE, Abalos there with us. I left meeting before desse
Myanmar: military regime’s ouster just around the corner 2007-09-24 19:25:22 Everybody’s waiting for tomorrow’s Senate hearings on the ZTE deal for a possible explosive testimony from Romulo Neri and the possible immediate consequences. Manuel Quezon III follows recent developments on the controversy in I’m leaving on a jet plane…Not! What moves will the JDV and GMA camps follow in this heated intra-elite confrontation? Let’s keep a close watch on events.
Meanwhile, another interesting happening to watch out for is the snowballing of various anti-military junta marches and demonstrations in several towns and cities of the formerly silent country of Myanmar.
What started as a few disparate rallies against oil price increases has now escalated with over 100,000 peacefully marching in the streets of the military-ruled nation’s capital last Monday.
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Read more:regime
, corner
A head for figures 2007-09-24 10:08:35 What do you know, I actually got higher than average results from my last Management Accounting Long Exam. For someone really bad at numbers (3 in College Algebra and Trigonometry, 2.75 in Calculus, 2.5 for Basic Accounting A and B…), this is, well, something to be proud of. (clap, clap, clap)
I’ll make Mao Tse Tung proud too, hehehe. I have finally put one of the his teachings into practice. I’m beginning to “have a head for figures” - ironically - months after my stint as a national democratic student activist fighting for a nationalist, scientific, and mass-oriented education!
Speaking about learning, Beryl wrote something about the real importance of education. It was published today in The Freeman, the Cebu-based sister publication of The Philippine Star. I reposted the whole thing below. Also wrote something along the same lines last July. Read what I wrote here.
Update: A scanned copy of Beryl’s Freeman feature was posted by Kendi!
(more&he
Invectives against Desperate Houswives? 2007-10-03 09:56:24 As I mentioned in my September 16 announcement, the posting of entries in Postcard Headlines these days will be very minimal. It’s already time for final examinations and academic requirement deadlines in my college.
There’s been a lot of developments in national politics this week which I have not been able to monitor anymore and which [...]
Read more:against
, Desperate
Nothing will be the same again 2007-10-01 08:45:44 “What kind of world is this
that can send machines to Mars
and does nothing to stop
the killing of a human being?” – Jose Saramago
For those following the historic instance in Myanmar Burma some will most likely conclude, albeit prematurely, that the situation for the country’s people is now hopeless.
Read more:Nothing
Seeing 2007-09-30 01:44:20 The stunning images of the Burmese peoples’ popular uprising flowing to the rest of the world through the internet (before the military regime started blocking information) brings to mind the passages of a book I read earlier this month.
When I started reading Seeing
, I commented that Jose Saramago’s plot, where disillusioned voters from the fictional [...]
$US3 trillion in abandoned trunk a boon for Arroyo administration? 2007-10-14 07:23:40 Breaking news! Last Friday, a bronze trunk (which looked much like a pirate treasure chest) containing US$3 trillion worth of bonds was found amidst bananas trees in a grove along the highway of the southern Cebu town of Argao.
According to news reports, a seal of the United States was engraved on the trunk. It was [...]
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