The Wily Filipino

Killing Spree.

Thought I'd post an e-mail message from my student Jun, currently in the Philippines for the summer:

717 Extrajudicial Killings Under GMA: A Fil Am Exposurist Perspective

On July 31 at 12pm, our exposure team was scheduled to attend a presentation on the human rights situation in the Philippines. However, the presentation started much earlier that morning.

At 7:45am I received a text stating, "Rie Mon "Ambo" Guran, 21, League of Filipino Students, spokesperson of Aquinas University was shot dead today 6am in Bulan, Sorsogon. Justice for AMBO! End Arroyo's tyranny!

At 9:24am I received another text stating, "Dr. Chandu Claver (Bayan Muna Chair, and Cordillera Peoples Alliance [CPA] member in Kalinga) and his wife (Alice) were shot early this morning in Bulanao, Kalinga. Dr. Chandu is out of danger but his wife is in critical condition." The text did not include that, Sandy, their 11 year old daughter was also hurt in the incident.

At 11:30am, upon arriving at the location of the human rights presentation, I was informed that a news photographer was shot in my family's hometown of Malabon in Manila.

Finally at 1:30pm I received a text from a friend at CPA stating, "We are now in tears for the death of Alice Claver, Bayan Muna Kalinga."

Three people were murdered all in the span of a few hours this morning.Literally, I received several wake up calls to the horrid human rights situation in my homeland.The three deaths bring the extrajudicial killing total under the Arroyo administration to 717.120 of the murders occurred in the first eight months of this year.

One important question to ask is who is responsible for the seven hundred and seventeen extrajudicial killings.Many witnesses as well as organizers from the militant mass organizations such as Bayan Muna and League of Filipino Students point to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

In a documentary entitled "State of War" broadcasted on mainstream Philippine television last week, a reporter asked Major General Jovito Palparan of the AFP, if he was directly responsible for the long list of killings.Palparan replied with a smile, "Not directly, but maybe indirectly."Palparan explained that he trained his men to be agressive and that his training could encourage such killings. Furthermore, the major general openly commented that because the victims were associated with leftist militant organizations, the murders were good for the country.

Ultimately, it is the President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA), who is responsible for the spate of extrajudicial killings.She is either responsible for causing them or at the very least she is responsible for bringing the perpetrators to justice.

It is more likely that GMA is a cause behind the killings based on her open endorsement of Jovito Palparan in her State of the Nation Address (SONA) last week.At SONA, GMA stated, "Jovito Palparan has come to grips with the enemy. He will not let go until the communities in the long night of terror emerge into the light of law and freedom.Placing GMA behind the cause of the murders explains why the perpetrators of all 717 incidents were never brought to justice.

Even further beyond GMA, the United States government is also responsible for the horrid human rights situation in the Philippines.Each year the Philippine Government receives hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid as well as training from the U.S.

The hundreds of millions in military aid to the Philippines from the U.S. explains why GMA openly endorses Major General Jovito Palparan even though he may be "indirectly" responsible for the long list of unjust murders.

The clear target of all the murders are those associated with militant left organizations under the BAYAN or Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Patriotic Alliance) umbrella.BAYAN is a pro-people, national democratic alliance that opposes foreign domination and exploitation of the Philippines.

BAYAN believes the Philippines suffers from poverty because the government allows multi-national corporations (MNCs) such as Dole Pineapple and Nestle to use the land, resources, and people of this country at extremely low costs without appropriate compensation.The low operational costs generates super profit for the MNCs.In return, the MNCs payoff the government officials for allowing the practice to continue.The result is what we see in the Philippines today-a small rich elite 1% of the population with a majority living in extreme poverty.

The U.S. being home to many of the largest investors of the MNCs is highly supportive and extremely agressive in developing and maintaining such unjust economic practices with third world countries.That is whythe U.S. government allocates hundreds of millions in military aid to the AFP even though the Philippine military is engaged "indirectly" in murdering hundreds of innocent people.

It is also the millions in payoffs the MNCs give to corrupt government officials such as GMA that explains why the Philippine president would be behind the killing of BAYAN organizers.

For the last twenty years BAYAN has been educating, organizing, and mobilizing the Philippine masses against the corrupt government of the Philippines.It is the organizations under BAYAN that are primarily responsible for both People Power I and II.It is clear, based on the efforts of the governent to wipe out BAYAN and both people power uprisings, that the pro-people alliance poses a serious threat to the unjust order.

The Protracted Peoples War carried out by the National Democratic Front, Communist Party of the Philippines, and the New Peoples Army (NDF, CPP, NPA) is also a direct threat to corrupt Philippine government.The NDF, CPP, NPA have been the primary enemy of the AFP for the last forty years.

Now the Philippine government and the AFP have changed its primary target.It is no longer aiming primarily at the NDF, CPP, NPA.The Philippine government and AFP's number one enemy is now the unarmed civilian mass movement led by BAYAN.The government and its military is making the allegation that BAYAN is a front for the NDF, CPP, NPA and therefore is no longer distinguishing between armed combatants and unarmed civilians.Under the Oplan Bantay Laya, the government aims to wipe out all opposition to its corrupt practices by taking away the most basic human right, the right to life.

This statement comes from one of the members of the League of Filipino Students and babae San Francisco Philippine Exposure team. Both organizations are members of BAYAN-USA. For more information on BAYAN USA go to http://www.bayanusa.org.
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Below are the inq7.net articles on the incidents:

Militant student leader slain in Sorsogon
By Bobby Labalan, Thea Alberto
Inquirer, INQ7.net
Last updated 04:38pm (Mla time) 07/31/2006
SORSOGON CITY -- (2ND UPDATE) A student leader and member of a left-leaning student group was shot and killed early Monday by two unidentified suspects as he was waiting at a bus terminal here, police said.
Rei Mon Guran, not Reymond or Rie Mon Guran as posted earlier on the website, 21, spokesman of the League of Filipino Students (LFS) and a student of Aquinas University in Legazpi City, succumbed to four gunshot wounds -- two in the head, one in the body, and another in the hand, said Senior Police Officer 3 Eugenio Magno, officer-in-charge of the Bulan Municipal Police Office.
Investigation showed that Guran was at a bus station in Zone 2, Bulan in Sorsogon when his assailants on board a motorcycle fired at him at about 6 a.m., Magno said.
The victim was dead on arrival at the Sorsogon Doctors Hospital, Magno said.
In Manila, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Movement of Filipino Farmers, KMP) spokesman Carl Ala said Guran was a second year political science student at the Aquinas University.
The victim was on his way to school when he was shot, said Renato Reyes, Bayan secretary general.
The militant groups slammed anew the spate of political killings.
Ala said Duran was the 715th militant slain since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001.
Reyes believed that the killings were done by the military, and were tolerated by Arroyo.
However, police said they had yet to determine whether the killing was politically motivated, said Superintendent Elciar Bron, Region 5 police spokesman.
With a report from Luige Del Puerto, Inquirer
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Bayan Muna official killed in Kalinga, husband critical
By Villamor Visaya
Inquirer
Last updated 01:36pm (Mla time) 07/31/2006
(UPDATE) QUEZON, Isabela -- A Bayan Muna official in Kalinga was killed while her husband and child were wounded when masked armed men aboard a black van ambushed them early Monday along the national highway in Barangay (village) Bulanao in the town of Tabuk, in the province, police said.
Superintendent Pedro Ramos, Kalinga police director, said Bayan Muna-Kalinga chairman Dr. Constancio Chandu Claver, his wife Alice, Bayan Muna coordinator, and Sandy, 11, were attacked at 7 a.m. by two men armed with an Armalite and caliber .45 guns in front of the Saint Toni's College.
They were brought to the Kalinga Provincial Hospital, according to Inquirer reports.
The same reports said that contrary to a statement by Ramos earlier on Monday that Alice was declared dead on arrival, the Bayan Muna coordinator was still alive when she was brought to the hospital where she died at 12:45 p.m.
Gkachay Claver, a cousin of the Dr. Claver, gave a similar report to INQ7.net following the shooting.
Constancio is in critical condition while Sandy has sustained a minor injury, the Inquirer reports said.
Ramos said the suspects alighted from their black van, without a plate number, and shot the Clavers.
With a report from Thea Alberto; Inquirer Northern Luzon Bureau
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Tabloid photographer gunned down in Malabon
By Nancy C. Carvajal
Inquirer
Last updated 11:19am (Mla time) 07/31/2006
(UPDATE) A NEWS photographer was killed in front of his house at around 8:45 a.m. Monday at the Gozun Compound, Letre in Malabon, police reported.
Initial investigation showed that three unidentified gunmen shot dead Vic Melendres, a photographer for the tabloid newspaper Tanod (Watchman), said Northern Police District chief Chief Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil.
The photographer died on the spot with two gunshot wounds in the body, Bataoil said.
Bataoil said the victim was a cousin of photojournalist Alberto Orsolino for the tabloid Saksi (Witness) who was slain on May 16 this year.
Police are still looking for a motive for the killing of Melendres, Bataoil said.
Thea Alberto, INQ7.net

Om / Asunder, Bottom of the Hill, SF, 7/29/06.

Some time early during Om's set, Al Cisneros stepped on an effects pedal for his bass, and the sky cracked open, showering slabs of cosmic concrete from the vaults of space on the headbanging masses below, momentarily revealing the yawning black hole of consciousness with blind mutant creatures gibbering in the Ur-language. Om's recipe for its resinated rock is simple: take the thickest, mud-encrusted Sabbath bass riff imaginable; pair it with relentless, exhausting drumming from Chris Hakius; repeat the serpentine riff for 20-odd minutes (make it about 60, for the length of the set); deliver the fractured poetry of your vision-afflicted lyrics in a bizarre chanting monotone (think of Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine," only less tunefully); and channel the entire steaming sonic sludge through a wall of Green amps set up so loud to make your teeth chatter. On record, Om is intense, but necessarily muted; heard live, the Om experience -- the annoying distraction of couples making out and the constant flicker of lighters as flame is touched to weed notwithstanding -- is absolute, both within you and without you.

The opening band, Asunder, was worrisome at first: despite the fantastic gut-quivering bass rumble that preceded the musicians, the ultra-slow drum beat and chanting for the first couple of minutes just wasn't what I wanted to hear. But then the pace picked up, the deathgrowl vocals (from the drummer) began, the downtuned guitar chords crashed in, and what you had was doom metal, distilled to a simple purity.

Animotion / When In Rome, Red Devil Lounge, SF, 7/21/06.

So I'm a little jealous that my brother Bulletproof Vest met and chatted with David Sedaris. David Sedaris!

However, I did get to meet some celebs of my own over the weekend; I'll skip the best for last.

The risk one runs when watching a one-hit wonder band -- in this case, When In Rome -- is that you spend the entire set waiting for that song to be played, and of course it comes at the very end. (Yes, "Heaven Knows" wasn't a terrible song, and "Wide Wide Sea" could have been a follow-up single, but still...) That was, of course, "The Promise" (one of the hands-down best singles of the late '80s), but it doesn't bode well when your last song -- a cover of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" -- gets the quarter-full club more excited than it had been for the previous seven songs.

Animotion, however, was a different story (why they played first I'm not sure), as they had a long string of great songs: "I Engineer" (which I was yelling for), "Let Him Go" (a fantastic version of which opened the set), "I Want You," and of course, "Obsession" (surely one of the era's defining moments, period). The band simply rocked, despite a misbehaving Mac; by the end of the concert, I (and the band) was grinning from ear to ear, particularly after creative use of the big pole almost in the middle of the stage.

And then I met two of the band members! (Full disclosure: I wouldn't have been able to meet Bill Wadhams if it weren't for the mindblowing fact that the V-Monster's SO is his brother.) Plus Astrid Plane came and signed stuff at our table upstairs!

Pictures of the concert are at my Flickr "concerts" set.

No Theme.

There's no real theme to the mix uploaded on my radio to the right -- just songs I've seen performed live in the last six months. (I'll keep them there until I get messages from my provider about excessive bandwidth.)

Higher Power.

From Manohla Dargis's review of M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, in the New York Times:

Apparently those who live in the water now roam the earth trying to make us listen, though initially it’s rather foggy as to what precisely we are supposed to hear — the crash of the waves, the songs of the sirens, the voice of God — until we realize that of course we’re meant to cup our ear to an even higher power: Mr. Shyamalan.

I still want to see the film -- I always subscribe to the motto that I'd probably enjoy a film I've been wanting to see despite colossally bad reviews -- but Ms. Dargis! I wrote it first! =)

Dengue Fever, The Independent, SF, 7/15/06.

Why I can't seem to successfully drag anyone with me to see the coolest band in America in concert I can't understand. Either people are about to pass out, or watching Pearl Jam instead, or, as J-Lu once said after seeing an excerpt of the "Sni Bong" video, "That made my ears bleed."

Anyhow, Dengue Fever was fantastic, with a set that began with --- er, one of the slower songs -- and ended with "I'm Sixteen" in the encore (complete with an extended sax solo from David Ralicke in the coda that was just perfect). In between, they played "Sni Bong," "Lost in Laos," "Flowers," "Tip My Canoe," "Hold My Hips" (this might have been when they pulled up audience members onto stage to dance), an awesome "One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula," "A Go Go," "Doo Wop" (both of which they should really record in the studio at some point), and what sounded like three other new songs (though they may have been covers, I don't know).

The band was in excellent form: one song had a show-stopping a cappella introduction by Chhom Nimol -- a reminder, as if it was necessary, of her classical training. Senon Williams and Zac Holtzman were totally goofing around all night -- jumping in unison, falling on the ground, messing with Ethan Holtzman's Farfisa solos. (I should also mention that Dengue Fever not only sound cool, they also look great on stage.)

Openers Elephone and Scrabbel were well worth seeing too -- lots of downloadable mp3s from the latter's website.

No Irony Here.

Back in my grad student days when we used to have house parties at 103 Spring Lane, Madonna was always on the dance mix tapes -- that's right, tapes -- that my housemate Big J would make. (We had generally sedate parties back then; one of the few times the cops came to bust us was when the Comp Lit folks came with their own mix tape -- a party no-no, if you ask me -- and cranked up Neneh Cherry's "Buffalo Stance" really loud.) Madonna remained a party staple even after the house changed from its early halcyon life as a predominantly interdisciplinary Southeast Asianist pad (two historians, an anthropologist (that's me), and the lone Comp Lit person) to a full-blown German Studies house. (At that point I was the only holdout, my German limited to the kind spoken in Jim Abrahams and David Zucker's Top Secret!)

During one of our dance parties, "Into the Groove" came on. People rushed to the floor (mostly the Government people -- they always crashed parties). My German Studies housemate, not necessarily in between vogueing moves, came up to me while we were dancing. "The great thing about Madonna," he confided, "is that you can dance to her with a sense of irony." I laughed, told him that I genuinely enjoyed the song, and repeated it to my anthropologist classmate at my side, who was quite offended at the suggestion. "I love Madonna!" she said.

"Even the Erotica album?" I asked skeptically.

"I love the Erotica album!" she said, in between vogueing moves now that "Vogue" had come on.

Thinking about it now, I'm interpreting my housemate's words about dancing to Madonna with a sense of irony to be a particularly early-'90s statement -- back when Seinfeld and Letterman were at the height of their ironic powers -- about cultural production in the '80s. But back then I crudely concluded that our exchange represented the difference between anthropology and comparative literature: praxis versus theory, gratification versus deferment, a joyful participation in sweaty physicality versus a constipated detachment.

Anyhow, I digress -- all this was merely an unconnected excuse to present the most insane site, clothes and haircuts and production values in varying degrees of quality:
1500 videos from the '80s (looks like they're actually hosted on YouTube), where I threw my productivity down the toilet for an hour and gleefully watched the Eurogliders and Climie Fisher and Fiction Factory and Cyndi Lauper and the vine-swinging in Haircut 100's "Love Plus One" and that fake telephone that John Waite smashes in "Missing You" and the Vegemite sandwich from Men At Work's "Down Under" back to back. And without the slightest smidgen of irony.

Betas.

This week I've been fiddling with some betas -- Microsoft Office 12, for release in 2007, was unleashed recently, and it's surprisingly, amazingly, stable. Word, for one, has been rock-solid so far, with a more intuitive tabbed interface (no more of those horrible movable bars), faster loading, live previews in case you want to change formatting, and so on. Outlook is even better, though shortcut keys to implement GTD (which is what I did in Thunderbird) would be quite helpful. (The best thing about Word, though -- the ability to publish straight to pdf -- will apparently be dropped in the final release, but there are various workarounds, including printer driver downloads, on the net.) OneNote is the best improvement of all, finally letting you create different notebooks.

There are a few bugs, of course: something happens to mapi32.dll which makes Outlook 2003 -- and by extension, my Palm Desktop -- unusable, unless you want to use Outlook 2007 from now on. The workaround was to uninstall Office 2003 completely, and also to download the latest version of Chapura's PocketMirror.

The other bug -- granted, I have very few requirements for my documents and email, so I don't have to deal with graphics and tables and so forth -- has to do with Office 12's insistence that I download their Windows Desktop Search software. (Google Desktop works excellently for me already.) The problem is that the applications remind me of this everytime I load them up, which is quite annoying. But otherwise I'm upgrading to the basic suite once it comes out.

The other beta I've been playing with is Last.fm's beta site, right now for subscribers only.

I love the way the artist images show up next to your playlists now; the charts (not pictured above) also give you the option of easily looking at rolling charts (3 months / 6 months / 1 year).

The Pillows, Slim's, SF, 6/28/06.

After being elbowed, pushed, trampled, and subjected to clammy sweat, armpit odor, and bad breath, I can still happily say that the experience of seeing The Pillows -- plus about two hours of waiting outside the venue with my friends J-Lu and Rinna (we were about sixth in line) -- was well worth it. The band tore through most of the FLCL soundtrack: "Beautiful Morning With You," "Little Busters," "Ride on Shooting Star," "Crazy Sunshine" (the first song of the encore), "I Think I Can" early in the set, "Sleepy Head" (this may have opened the set), "Funny Bunny," and a fantastic jump-up-and-down-like-crazy "Hybrid Rainbow" just before the encore, with the crowd screaming the chorus at the top of their lungs. Plus a Nirvana cover ("Breed") -- nothing like a surprise cover snuck into the middle of a set.

And other random thoughts:

1. That might be my last all-ages show in a while though; too many kids shoving, plus I found myself pushed from the second row to the sixth or so.

2. And dammit, bring some breath mints, folks!

3. Note to self: do not sing along loudly to Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Cities in Dust," especially when it seems that only you and the opening band (Secret Secret) are singing it.

4. The signatures on my FLCL booklet are from the meet-and-greet -- all ten minutes of it, really -- at Kinokuniya Bookstore earlier that afternoon. Whee!