Awake in the interregnum

Rather shocked, I must admit, when a dear friend made a sad comment on what she interpreted this blog to be: and end to “aimless blogging.” Made me momentarily stop and think. I suppose I had rather intended to be more professional about this vain little pasttime—it had struck me that the world wide web really is the worst place to lodge highly personal thoughts you feel silly about afterwards, especially because you allowed practically anyone to read them. And since the sinister Human Security Act and the even more sinister extra-legal machinations of the Arroyo regime, it’s been like walking on eggshells. It’s madness for anyone who ever vocally criticized the government to volunteer even the smallest nuggets of personal information for state agents to coldly pick from your babbles and neatly file away in secret dossiers that try to re-create you to eventually harm you. So for all intents and purposes, my friend is right, this blog is meant to be, well, an intensely purposeful one (hehe). And yet it is not enirely correct to say that I have left aimlessness behind. For how can one ever, as long as one is living in this city where the most meaningless things happen, where even the most dead-set objectives fall through endless cracks? So sometimes, like the irrepressible urge to dangle feet over some high ledge, I reckon thoughts would grope to shape themselves into words that would affirm the eternal usefulness of simply existing for wanderlust.

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Of late, my friends and colleagues have become Angel Locsin’s staunchest defenders. Hehe. Read Kenneth Guda’s Telenovela Killed the Film Star (Then Went On To Save Television) , on the feminist underpinnings of Angel’s move, as well as Teo Marasigan’s Pagtatanggol kay Angel Locsin, on why she is like Sartre (an amazing piece of stretch, but there’s more). Mine is just an observation culled from a one-time coverage and affirmed by her recent appearance at Deal or No Deal. That she sticks out from the rest of the female stars like a sore thumb because of, well, the unpolished (with shades of siga) way she talks and moves, like she wasn’t the bombshell (sorry for the term) that she is. As if she were simply some tough and happy twenty-something doing a job that incidentally made her famous. Don’t blame her if she couldn’t imagine herself doing that demeaning, gyrating MariMar thing that flashes on GMA-7 every so often. Heck, I can’t even imagine her in an Anne Curtis/Bea Alonzo role of doing nothing but sighing and crying and fighting over men. I hope that ABS-CBN does her justice. Hehe.

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Recently appeared on ANC in the presscon held to protest libel cases filed by big corporations against environmental defenders. Technically, I wasn’t an environmental defender, my father (who couldn’t make it) was—I was just the “environmental journalist” (Enteng thought of the description) who put his research into words nearly 7 years ago, hehe. (Read here about the pesticide poisoning issue that made us subject of an ongoing P5.5-M civil case filed by the agricultural company Lapanday) It was really weird being on the other end of the camera and on the receiving end of questions by scribbling colleagues, fretting about subjudice but at the same time immensely proud of being allowed to publicly speak up and align with NGOs who suffer the same problem, perhaps even worse. Center for Environment Concerns faces a P10-M libel suit by Lafayette, the Australian-owned mining company associated with toxic mine tailing spills in Rapu-Rapu, Albay. Almost every publication has written on the issue, and yet the company chose to punish only the most vocal NGO, based on a pamphlet distributed when CEC lobbied Lafayette’s financial stakeholders. Meanwhile, 24 indigenous leaders in Nueva Vizcaya are facing arrest after a successful people’s barricade against the mining company Oxiana Philippine Inc. Lucas Buay, an Ifugao leader who spoke in the presscon, said that they will continue defending their ancestral lands and the watershed despite cases such as “illegal occupancy of forest land” (imagine that!). Anyway, ABS-CBN didn’t use my sound byte for the story (our case wasn’t timely, I guess), but they did keep showing the clip of me talking to their reporter, gesturing how aerial spraying of pesticides is done. Hehe.

Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casino is looking to file a bill to prevent SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation). This definition from a US lawyer who helped us:

“Lawsuits that are intended exclusively to stifle criticism have become known among commentators, judges, and politicians as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation or SLAPPs.  SLAPPs have become a favorite response of corporations faced with criticism because the suit need not be successful to serve the purposes of the plaintiff corporations.  As one Canadian judge has noted, ‘[a] SLAPP suit is a claim for monetary damages against individuals who have dealt with a government body on an issue of public interest or concern.  It is a meritless action filed by a plaintiff whose primary goal is not to win the case but rather to silence or intimidate citizens who have participated in proceedings regarding public policy or public decision making.’ Cognizant of the profound chilling effect SLAPPs have on citizens exercising their rights, some countries, most notably the United States, have imposed restrictions on these lawsuits.”

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I have no updates on what had happened after the near massacre and fact-finding mission last July, but please sign the petition to save an organic rice farming community from being evicted from their lands. Also check out their bittersweet story, Braving Bullets: Central Mindanao University Farmers Struggle for Genuine Land Reform, about two decades of collective assertion of rights that enabled them to occupy a land now about to be leased by government to big businesses. Sadly, nowadays such threats are all-too-common. But these farmers’ brilliant history is something else, a red-tag equivalent of front page PDI, only it would not only mean news that is good, but also agitating.

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Since I wasn’t able to include it in my story, I just want to blog about the Malacanang employee (forced retiree) who still hasn’t received his benefits because of a pending case of “illegal use of fake ID.” Here’s what happened. The Office of the President, for an unclear (though it can only be heartless) reason, wanted to stop employees from pawning their ATMs. As you may know, pawning of ATMs—because workers have no other belonging other than the assurance of their next month’s salary—is quite a common practice in this harsh a life. So Malacanang unified their IDs and ATMs (back-to-back). An employee, whose wife is seriously ill, was forced by circumstance to pawn his ATM nonetheless. So when he was asked for his ID he gave the Presidential Security Group a xerox copy instead. This “violation” is now costing him his whole working life’s benefits. This man, whose tasks include carrying the President’s luggage, only sleeps around two hours a day because he has to man a sidecar at night and in the wee hours of the morning just to put food on the table. For the full story on the treachery of Palace employees by Pres. Arroyo and the true effects of the government’s rationalization program, read Dateline Malakanyang: ‘Tanggalan ng Masa’.