Category: Opinion

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Opinion | In defense of our red (tagged) comrades in the ivory tower!

These red (tagged) comrades were not responsible for the phasing out of jeepneys, for rampant violations of human rights, for the collapse of our agriculture. They took up arms precisely because they know that the peaceful means to achieve genuine social change is irresolvable in the current existing system. They realized that it was the existing system, which is unsustainable, that is utopian rather than the alternative future that they were willing to die for. They were not dreamers! They were realistic! Like the 1968 French student rebellion, they demanded the impossible!

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Opinion | Sonya Gregorio’s ‘I don’t care’ as subversion

That the explicitly murderous rhetoric of, and the culture of impunity bred by Duterte has enabled this atrocity, is a glaring fact of our current life. From injunctions like “… kaunting pagkakamali lang barilin mo na,” to promises that no policemen would ever go to jail, everything that Duterte has been saying and doing has provided the very conditions for these atrocities to emerge and fester.

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What is the weight of a monument?

Like the Bantayog ng mga Bayani memorial in Quezon City, dedicated to a wide segment of Martial Law martyrs from community leaders such as Dulag to fighters of the New People’s Army in resisting the Marcos dictatorship, or the 1933 Bonifacio Monument in Caloocan honoring revolutionary heroes of the Katipunan who fought for independence from Spanish rule, the Anti-Chico Dam Struggle monument represents a step foward in committing our histories of resistance to public memory in more permanent form. To demolish it would be a grave disrespect of cultural and social history at the very least.

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The social basis of Filipino conservatism

  By JUSTIN UMALI Bulatlat.com In the wake of Facebook’s recent shutdown of state-sponsored fake pages and accounts, it’s easy to overlook that there are other aspects aside from state fascism. Since Duterte signed Executive Order 70 in December 2018, the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) has busied itself…

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Hostaging The Dead: An emergent trend in the Philippine state terror and war profiteering under Duterte

  BY KOBI TOLENTINO  Bulatlat.com Under Rodrigo Duterte, the horrendous act of taking dead bodies as hostages seemed to have become part of the military and police’s standard operating protocol. It happens when they deny the remains of alleged armed leftists from claimant families unless the latter has been co-opted. Hunting for bounties in a…

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