You keep me up with your silence

You take me down with your quiet
Of all the weapons you fight with
Your silence is the most violent

– Tell Me How, Paramore 

* * * * * *

I used to think that people were so lucky to have friends to spend time with (because I hardly have any) but lately I’ve noticed that even for people with many friends, their relationships have become more and more fragile and fragmented. It’s so easy to cancel a date, so easy to keep messaging “Let’s get together sometime,” telling yourself that you’re doing your part to maintain the relationship, and just never actually show up.

I have no idea what we’re all supposed to do about this. I do know that this is very, very bad news for all of us, and probably the main contributor to anxiety and depression. Uncertainty = anxiety. When the world is telling you that your generation is a failure, when the job market is telling you that your hard-earned skills are useless, when advertising is shitting on your values and repackaging your most precious emotional experiences to sell you laundry powder, what truth and worth is left in life except the love and trust that we have in our relationships? And how are we supposed to feel when it turns out that we can’t trust each other to be there when we say we will? How many of us can honestly say that love exists in our relationships – even in the ones where it did exist before?

the fucking laundry powder

I’m tired of getting over it
And starting something new again
I’m getting sick of the beginnings

By the way – it should go without saying that I rely on my girlfriend for human company and that I’d be totally isolated without her.

I think this is why having a significant other has become virtually a necessity in our social landscape. It’s evident simply from the sheer number of articles discussing why you don’t need a significant other – why must you deny it if the pressure wasn’t so strong to begin with? – and if it affected you so, it must be something you feel internally, too. I’d even go so far as to say that the pressure to have a significant other is a personal desire that is projected onto others as an external, societal pressure, so that you don’t have to face the fact that it is something you desperately want. Nobody shames people for not having a boyfriend or a girlfriend – that just isn’t a thing that happens.

SO’s are a necessity now because the monogamous romantic relationship has become the only type of relationship wherein one person can be reasonably expected to reliably be there for the other; it is the only relationship wherein it is acceptable to demand to be a priority, to demand that the other keep his or her commitments and not make excuses. This is something that most people seem to have become uncomfortable in asking even from close friends and family members. There is the fear of being labeled “clingy,” the shame experienced in the perception of having fallen down the list of another person’s priorities, and the pride involved in the unwillingness to admit that you value their presence enough that your feelings were hurt by their absence – if it is apparent that they don’t feel the same about you, how could you admit to the way you feel?

I can’t call you a stranger
But I can’t call you
I know you think that I erased you
You forgot me but I can’t forget you
And I won’t replace you

There is this need to keep up the illusion that our own lives are filled with exciting experiences and opportunities. Our real relationships are sacrificed at the altar of the illusion. Why should you feel bad about someone failing to show up at your apartment for a quiet night in, when you could just as easily go over to four clubs in one night and meet a dozen hot strangers? Maybe: because you and your friend missed an important conversation about your problems, your fears, and your plans, and instead you wrecked your liver with shots, your lungs with cigarette smoke and your eardrums with a hundred decibels of awful DJ’ing; and you met a dozen strangers who will never mean anything to you, and that you will never see again apart from the next nights of irresponsibility and running away from the pain of disconnection (if that).

I feel like I may have asked too many rhetorical questions in the course of writing this.

I’m procrastinating about my paper right now. I know this is the only ticket to getting out of here. And even then it’s more like standby booking than sure seating. But still…

When I think about this disconnection, I think about you. It makes no difference in the grand scheme of things, and the things I’ve described are true even if I had never met you… but the truth is that I think about this because of you and the hope you gave me that things could be different. For a short while, they were. It was all the difference in the world.

And now you’re gone. Yes, you’re still around. But your face is like a bolted door. And you don’t smile anymore. How do you do that? How do you close yourself off so completely? How did you learn not to need anyone (except your girlfriend, I suppose – though I suspect you could get by without her just fine if you had to)? I want to know, because sometimes this pain is almost more than I can bear.

The truth is that need you in my life. And this is as absurd as any ridiculous crush I’ve ever had, even if I now only want you as a friend. Even more absurd – a crush people can understand, but to want a friend so desperately? How much of a loser can you be?

You don’t have to tell me
If you ever think of me
You don’t have to tell me, I can still believe

Where Pedophilia Comes From

I. ANECDOTE TO LEGITIMIZE MY OPINIONS / MAKE YOU FEEL SORRY FOR ME

My [redacted] and [redacted] both made sexual advances for me around the same time when I was a kid (about 9-10 years old). I had nightmares while that was going on. In the most vivid one, I dreamed that I was on a bed and struggling against [redacted]’s grasp; my nails were dug into the skin of his arm as I pushed him away from me. I woke up suddenly and my actual nails were dug into my twisted sheets.

It was years and years before I told my [redacted]. Out of curiosity, I asked her what she thought would have happened if I had told her when I was still a kid. She said, “Your [redacted] might have murdered him.” I said, “Yeah, I thought something like that might happen.”

II. CHILDREN ARE IRRESISTIBLE

Once you begin to see people, really see people, it’s impossible not to love most children. They’re helpless, cute, eager to please. Like dogs. I can’t resist dogs. Most people can’t either. Even though dogs will slobber on you and steal your shoes and pee on your things.

But it’s a “thing” to love dogs – it’s not a thing to love children. You don’t accuse a person of bestiality when they say they’re in love with a dog; but the automatic assumption when you say you’re in love with a child is that you’re a pedophile.

“Well, I can say that you look pretty. You turn my legs into spaghetti. You set my heart on fire.” – Dillon, Thirteen Thirtyfive 

“Take me down to the bridge, where you know that I’ve always loved you… You look so beautiful it hurts me.” – Eisley, Golly Sandra 

The context of these lyrics is a parent-child relationship. But in your mind it doesn’t fit, does it? Because you don’t think an adult could ever feel intensely for a child unless it was pedophilia. There are boxes in your mind: all things INTENSE go into the box labeled SEXUAL. There isn’t any box for INTENSE NON-SEXUAL FEELINGS, aka LOVE, because no one taught you all about love, you know so very little when there is so much to know about it…

III. THEY REPRESS IT UNTIL THEY CAN’T REPRESS IT ANYMORE 

One of the results of this lack of knowledge about love is pedophilia. A parent – a father, about 99.9% of the time, I’d estimate – feels strongly for their child, and they don’t know where to put that feeling. They don’t recognize what they’re really feeling and how to express it, and so a natural, healthy affection becomes perverted into a pathological sexual desire.

They feel intensely, and because society says they can’t feel that way for a child, they repress it. Until they can’t repress it anymore.

IV. SUBLIMATION

It’s not wrong to feel that way for a child, but there are so many different ways to express it, to channel that energy, and sex is NOT one of those ways.

“What are the ways, then, for a parent?” Stop drinking so much. Do your work more efficiently so that you can come home early and check her homework. Buy her a guitar. Improve your relationship with her mother. Start working out. Become a better person. It’s hard work. Now you have your motivation.

There are so many things you can do. Just, for God’s sake, don’t try to have sex with her.

Deardevils

I. So today my girlfriend and I went on a date and we both almost died. Almost. We weren’t REALLY going to, but it was a possibility under the circumstances. I mean, “NOW WE HAVE TO MOVE REALLY FAST OR SOMEONE IS GOING TO HIT US!” and “DUCK!” aren’t things you typically have to tell someone during a nice date.

II. I told off an MMDA guy on a sketchy road. He thought I wouldn’t get out of the car, but I did. My mom told me to never to do that again. I think she thought I didn’t know it was dangerous. Fuck, of course I knew it was fucking dangerous. I wouldn’t be able to do a lot of the things I do if I wasn’t so big, because I move rather slowly. (The alternative to being big and strong, by the way, is to be small and fast, when it comes to escaping physical danger.)

III. Someone said that Duterte said that he said that the following conversation took place before the number 911 became Davao’s emergency number:

D: Henceforth, I want 911 to be the emergency number. 

Phone networks: But that’ll be expensive.

D: How expensive would it be for you if I blew up your cell towers?

Of course, he wasn’t really going to blow them up. Duterte’s not into terrorism. It’s an expression of how fucking INSANE it is to say that it’s an unnecessary expense to want to save people’s lives. This is the fucking result  when emergency cases aren’t routed to the best available medical facilities. All fucking right?

IV. I stopped listening to anything that anyone from Ateneo had to say after Bianca Reyes died and NO ONE, but NO ONE, from there had anything useful to say about it. Her [redacted] is headed down the same road. Does anyone care? Of course fucking not. Filipinos are only interested in mourning loudly for their dead, not in preventing people from dying.

V. Since I think American / Filipino marketing is stupid bullshit, this puts me decidedly at odds with some of my professors.

A few terms ago, I got into a pretty bad confrontation with a professor during a presentation. To the point where I began slouching against the wall in disdain and she had to tell me, “Stand up straight.” I thought I was doing a good job of keeping my cool, but later one of my friends in the class told me that it was a patently hostile exchange, and my rage was obvious to everyone in the room. I told myself I’d never let it happen again… which is why I didn’t go to class yesterday. Nothing like that has happened again yet, but I felt like it was a possibility, so I pre-empted it.

Marketing and Multiculturalism

I.

It’s a predominantly American thing to want to manipulate reality instead of adapting to it (for examples: turning up the heat indoors instead of putting on more clothes, killing inconvenient wild animals instead of learning to avoid them, massacring natives instead of negotiating fair terms of land ownership). And since Filipino culture is mostly derivative of American culture, we buy into that shit too, wholesale.

Australians don’t massacre the frankly terrifying creatures in their land, but fatalities from animal attacks there are fairly rare – certainly much more rare than American fatalities from their fucking insane citizens who are constantly shooting each other en masse.

 

Bedouin tribes in the Saharan desert survive the oven temperatures sans airconditioning because of the design of their clothing. Black and white people can mix without making a huge deal of it in British society. The tendency to be uncomfortable with the unfamiliar / different, and the unwillingness to adapt and coexist without conflict, is a very American thing. I’m of course not saying they are the only culture like that (Bonjour, France!) but American culture is the most infectious of all.

II.

This tendency is the whole basis of marketing as we know it. They openly admit it in one of the definitions: To manipulate demand. Manipulate. Not to understand demand and therefore meet it in ways most advantageous to both supplier and consumer. Not to know the truth, but to force what you want to be true.

You don’t need a fucking iPhone to be happy, but they’ve made you believe it. I walked down the seaside boulevard once without a bra and no one grabbed my fucking tits (I think they will do that in Bombay or Calcutta, though). I look tired without makeup? I am, your girlfriend kept me up all night.

Heh.

III.

They talked about the best thesis. “They were so passionate! The panel asked them why they chose a bear for packaging and they had the research on hand to prove that bear shapes hypnotize people into buying cookies…” You think you can run a business on passion and trivia? Show up to  the SEC with a briefcase full of passion, fill out your tax returns with the trivia you memorized? Your product will sell, or it won’t. That’s it.

IV.

The problem now isn’t not enough goods manufactured, but not enough goods sold. Do you realize what a GREAT problem that is to have? That we humans have made production so efficient that supply far outweighs demand? The role of marketing is supposed to be the efficient distribution of goods – to make sure everyone can have what they need and nothing’s wasted – but now we use it to sell people stupid shit. We have people spending thousands on concert tickets, clothes, movies and dinners out,  when their houses are so dirty and poorly maintained, they eat fucking garbage all the time, they’re at work all day, then stuck in traffic, they never see their children anymore. Because they’re so convinced they NEED those things that they don’t, at the expense of things that they do.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a lot luxuries are nice to have. But it is absolutely fucking insane to neglect one’s basic needs to attain the nice non essentials.  And that’s exactly what marketing now seeks to make people do. So fuck them. I’m in this field and I know its purpose. I am different. I will do things differently.

Sociobiological Factors of Addiction (Or, Why You’ll Never Be Truly Happy) pt. 1

Modern society is built to facilitate addictions, because people who aren’t addicted to anything are hard to control. On the other hand, it’s extremely easy to control a person, or a group of people, who are addicted to something: simply offer them more of the thing they’re addicted to, or threaten to withhold that thing from them. This method of manipulation is currently the basis of most human interaction these days, between everyone; between individuals, institutions, citizens and governments, even between nations.

Examples:

“If you do your homework, I’ll give you a cookie.”

“If you fix the garage door, I’ll give you a blowjob.”

“Stop cutting classes or I’ll downgrade your phone plan from LTE to cans on a string.”

“If we don’t go to war against mostly innocent people, we’re going to lose our oil supply.”

“Sign over your national resources for foreign exploitation or we’ll stop sending you Nutella and overpriced pop stars.”

Addiction is the most powerful method of manipulation, bar none. This is because people who are addicted seem like they are doing it all themselves, of their own personal choice.

Examples:

“I’m going to do my homework because cookies are delicious, not because I am an obese pre-diabetic child and my blood sugar is either always super way up, making me hyper, or super way down, making me sluggish and irritable.”

“I’m going to fix the garage door because I love you and I love having sex with you, not because you would never give me a blowjob otherwise.”

“I’ll stop cutting classes because I want to be a good student and eventually a productive member of society, not because losing access to Twitter for more than an hour at a time causes me to palpitate with anxiety.”

“I’m gonna go to war to defend my country, not because I can’t stand the idea that we might have to start using trains for long-distance travel like those barbaric Europeans with their international high-speed rails.” 

“I’m going to support APEC to facilitate economic progress and trade relations within Asia, not because I believe everything that white people in suits tell me.”

Filipinos Don’t Give a Shit About Each Other pt. 3

I.

“Trinity, are you a communist?” Fuck no. Communist countries perform like shit. Citizens who escape from countries like that think that capitalism is the best thing ever.

 The beliefs of communism center on the idea that inequality and suffering result from capitalism. Under capitalism, private business people and corporations own all the factories, equipment and other resources called “the means of production.” These owners can then exploit workers.

 

Communism differs from socialism, though the two have similarities. Both philosophies advocate economic equality and state ownership of various goods and services. However, socialism usually works through the existing democratic structures of capitalist countries. Almost all capitalist countries have some socialist characteristics, like the public schools and Social Security program in the United States.

In contrast, communists state that capitalist economic and political systems must be completely overthrown through revolution.

Historically, such communist revolutions have never yielded their intended utopias of equality.

– Michael Dahr for LiveScience

The intention of communism was to eliminate human suffering through equal distribution of resources – whether or not somebody worked for those resources. The rich take care of the poor. Sounds great, right? Why doesn’t it ever really work? Because taking care of others requires creative solutions for their problems, and compassion for their plight. Creativity and compassion are things that are impossible to force out of people. You can force people to give up their money for others, but you can’t make them care about those others. Sooner or later they’ll revolt.

II.

This is why Scandinavian countries almost never experience dissent despite the enormous tax rates necessary to fuel social services: because the citizens actually want to take care of each other. Nearly half of their income is taken away from them – they don’t mind because they know it’s all used to take care of other people, who in turn will take care of them. It’s used for the medical services that will care for them when they’re sick; for the educational system that cares for their children; for the welfare programs that care for the people who are down on their luck; for the retirement programs that will care for them when they’re old.

In this environment, nobody needs to be selfish; nobody needs to commit crimes. To the point where their prisons are better than luxury condos in the Philippines.

Imagine yourself in a prison that commands a view from a tourist brochure. Your cell phone lies on a shelf, next to a TV and CD player, inside a prison that lets you go to paid work or study. There is no perimeter wall. Prison staff will help you with free-world social services to cover a missed month’s rent on your family’s apartment. Another will help you look for work, or for the next stage of education. Imagine yourself a prisoner who knows he is in prison for what he did, not because of his color or class, or because he lacked proper legal defense. 

Nothing here feels unfair or unreasonable. You have, after all, committed a crime serious enough to make a range of other remedies untenable. Nothing you can see or touch or smell or taste, and no interaction with staff gives you anything to blame or resent about the system that brought you here. Everything is being done to help and prepare you to clear this secret and live again like others.

– Doran Larson for The Atlantic 

 

via theguardian.com

This is a cell in a maximum-security prison in Sweden. This is the conversation that I’m almost 100% sure took place before the creation of this prison:

Swedish official 1: Guys, apparently there are these things called “prisons,” and we should probably build some. All other governments have them. 

Swedish official 2: What are prisons?

Swedish official 3: I think they’re places where you put people who steal and kill and things like that. 

Swedish official 2: But nobody really does that here…? 

Swedish official 1: Nevertheless, we should probably have some. 

Swedish official 2: So, like, they’re buildings, and we keep people inside them? 

Swedish official 3: Yeah. 

Swedish official 2: Like apartments? 

Swedish official 1: Yeah, I guess. 

III.

All kidding aside: Why are they like this? What makes them so different from us? Why can’t we be like that?

“Because we don’t have enough money…”

The government bought a fleet of 200 BMW’s  used for A FEW FUCKING DAYS during the APEC summit. Those BMW’s cost an average of P6M each, and were sold to the public for around P1M each afterwards. That means they cost the government an average of P5M each. Here, I did the math for you: 200 x 5,000,000 is P1,000,000,000.

(How do I know how much they sold the BMW’s to the public for? Because I know one of the guys who bought one. And of course I’m not going to tell you who he is.)

In case those zeros are making you cross-eyed, that’s one billion pesos. One billion spent on fucking BMWs.

(Hmm, I wonder where that one billion slashed from the RH budget went? )

So no, it’s not that we don’t have enough money. Try again.

“Because our politicians suck?”

Our politicians are Filipinos. Filipinos lie, cheat and steal at every opportunity. It’s what we do. We were raised not to care for each other. What percentage of your income goes to charity? If you’re in school, do you ever intend to use your course to help take care of other people?”

“I have NSTP…” Where you walk around trying not to breathe and take selfies with the kids. You ever follow up the next year to see if those kids are getting good grades at school?

Don’t fool yourself. You don’t provide for others or defend others in any meaningful way. All you know is to say a lot of shit and to bring down people who are doing the hard, thankless work of taking care of other people. You do this because you were raised this way. You’re a Filipino.

Filipinos Don’t Give a Shit About Each Other pt. 2

Not a year goes by without some tale of ‘orrible murder on the news at the hands of taxicab drivers. Usually a murder-rape. I’m not sure how to crunch the numbers, but it’s pretty clear that a Filipino girl has a high chance of dying at the hands of a taxicab driver. Certainly much higher than anybody’s chances of dying from a pulmonary embolism on a long flight.

 

Besides murder-rapes, absolutely everybody has something bad to say about taxicabs. They won’t take you where you need to go. They do their best to rip you off. Etc. etc.

AND YET! There has been no huge backlash against the taxi industry. No effectual public outcry to regulate these cretins more tightly. No #PrayforTaxiCrimeVictims hashtag on Twitter, nobody pasting a fucking Philippine flag over their Facebook profile picture. Wonder why? Let’s see:

 

 

 

 

See the problem? Of course you don’t, no one taught you how to see these things.

Here it is: all the victims are poor. 

Call center agent. A man and his son who live in Project 4. A young student. Look at their last names: Arradza, Abelido, Sual. Google these things, tell me if you’ll ever find an Ayala, an Arnaiz, a Mapa, an Abalos (I’m just listing the people I went to school with).

These people are poor, of course nobody gives a shit. If a Sy girl got hurt by a taxi driver, those things would be outlawed in the entire country the next day.

“But Sy’s don’t ride taxis…” Exactly.

“You’re saying rich people should ride taxis?” Not unless they want to get raped and murdered, or kidnapped for ransom. I’m saying that it’s rich people’s job to take care of poor people. In any society, the people who have the means should take care of the people who don’t. 

“She posted her experience on social media to warn the public.” How adorable.  There are still taxis. People still ride them. The drivers will keep raping and killing. The girls will keep dying.

They can’t do anything about it, but rich people can. The government can. But they won’t. Why would they? It’s not their daughters who are getting killed.

That’s how it is here in the Philippines. No one takes care of anyone unless there’s an incentive or a threat. No one’s responsible for anyone. Everyone is SO FUCKING SELFISH.

Filipinos Don’t Give a Shit About Each Other pt. 1

I heard that the Swiss government requires its citizens to take anticoagulants (blood thinners) before long-haul flights. This is because even though the possibility of randomly dying from a blood clot during a long-haul flight is relatively small, the Swiss government doesn’t like it when their citizens die for no reason. 

As a Filipino citizen, such an anecdote was just fucking mind-blowing to me. “Government” is practically a dirty word here. A person would never go to a government hospital or hire a government lawyer if they could at all afford a private one. Filipino citizens are used to the government in its present form: this massive, disgusting hulk of nepotism, red tape, smarmy politicians, etc., that takes a lot of money and gives very little back in the form of services, or anything at all. Kind of like a huge fat slob who sits in your living room and eats through P5000 worth of chips and soda every day, and pays you back in farts and blocked toilets.

Unbeknownst to this wretched population, the concept of government is actually a rather beautiful one. This is how it works, listen carefully: the citizens give the government money, and the government takes care of the citizens. Mind-blowing. I never would’ve imagined.

(time for class. tbc)

Roles People Play

I.

The question this generation is struggling (and mostly failing) to answer is “Who am I?” – the question of identity. This is because a strong identity is built on only two aspects of a person’s life: their work (the things they accomplish) and their relationships (the people they love and care for). Since most “work” taken up by people these days is useless. and their relationships are weak and shallow, they desperately seek for other things to define them: their favorite music, favorite writers, job title (from doing useless work), clothes, hair, school, social network, etc.

II.

Last week, [redacted] was losing her mind over the stress of planning an org event. Is it an accomplishment to pull off a successful event? Sure. Is it one significant enough to build your identity on? Not unless “event planner” is one of your lifelong goals. That’s perfectly valid. What’s insane is when you want to be “event planner,” and “yoga guru,” and “person who gets the most drunk at every party,” and “dean’s lister.” If you try to be all of those, you’re going to be none of those (except maybe the drunk person).

If pulling off a successful event isn’t a significant enough accomplishment to base your identity upon, then not being able to pull it off shouldn’t be a significant enough failure to undermine your self-perception. If it matters to you that much, then devote your time and effort to it. If you want a reputation as a successful event planner, then actually, you know, plan the event; allot time and delegate tasks. Don’t leave it all to chance then run around at the last minute screaming at people. (Also, don’t commit to planning an event without the assurance that you’ll have all the resources you need. If it’s miraculously successful no one will know or care what you went through to make it happen, and if it’s a failure you’ll look like an incompetent fool).

III.

After her birthday party, which we had thrown at unspeakably tremendous expense, [redacted] called in tears. She had overheard her friends telling each other that another blockmate’s party was way more fun because they had a lot more alcohol. These are her friends – the people she sees every day, tells everything to, spends all her time with. In other words, significant factors of her identity.

Look at their relationships: their pleasure in each other’s company is such that they need to be intoxicated out of their minds to find each other funny / sexy / exciting / not boring as hell. And she trusts them so little that a comment like that could deeply hurt her instead of just annoying her a bit or whatever.

 

IV.

One of the barriers to developing a strong identity is the unwillingness to play roles. This is what people usually mean when they say, “I won’t change who I am,” in response to a circumstance that requires them to do things that they normally wouldn’t do (for example, a guy who refuses to shave his beard to apply for jobs). They are saying, “I refuse to play a different role from what I am comfortable with playing.”

What’s wrong with this viewpoint of identity is that the human character is not made up of one aspect – one “face” – but is a complex conglomeration of many different aspects, each suited for playing a different role. Playing a role does NOT mean you’re “not being yourself”; you are displaying an aspect of yourself – like turning a particular facet of a gem towards the light – that is appropriate for the situation.

V.

If a military sergeant yells her recruits out of their bunks at 5AM, and yells at them all day in field exercises, then goes home and plays pretty pretty princess with her daughter, was she necessarily not being herself at one point or another? What’s the “real” her – the one who forces a recruit to do 50 pushups for an unmade med, or the one who sings “Let It Go” in a fluffy pink tutu?

Answer: They’re both her, because neither of those aspects are incongruous with the other. Like different facets of a single gem, she carries both these attitudes as different aspects of a person who is essentially a responsible one. She’s being responsible for the performance of her recruits. She’s being responsible for the happiness of her daughter. She’s not always going to be a sergeant, and she’s not always going to be the mother of a toddler, but this responsibility for others is who she is, and it will manifest itself in whatever form it needs to take.

(some clarifications to follow, I think)

When the hand that feeds you also beats you

I. FATHERLESS KIDS WITH WHITE SKIN

His schoolmates could tell just by looking at his face that his mother was a prostitute and his father had abandoned him. Emmanuel Drewery, a tall and thin young man, has skin a pinch lighter than his neighbors. He was born twenty-six years ago in Olongapo, a city in northwestern Philippines.

His mother had a beautiful voice, and was fifteen years old when she sang as a sidekick to strip acts. But music was not what soldiers were looking for. “Customers didn’t want only a music band, there had to be nude shows or they got bored,” he says. Drewery’s mother couldn’t make a living from singing, so she became a prostitute. 

According to the People’s Recovery Empowerment Development Assistance (PREDA), a local NGO, by the end of the 1980s there were some 500 brothels and 15,000 prostitutes in Olongapo to meet the high demand of the naval base. Clark Air Base, some thirty miles east of Olongapo, was even bigger, covering 230 square miles near the city of Angeles. Olongapo and Angeles were known by American soldiers as the “twin sin cities” of the Philippines: Sodom and Gomorrah in Southeast Asia.

– Javier Sauras and Felix Lill

Do you understand that? Listening to a teenager sing wasn’t entertaining enough, they had to fuck her to get their money’s worth.

II. NO ONE GIVES A SHIT 

I used photos of Vietnamese Amerasians because nobody even gives enough of a shit about Filipino Amerasians to take compelling photographs of them.

III. THE PHILIPPINES (THINKS IT) DOESN’T HAVE ANY MONEY 

85% of women who leave an abusive relationship return. A significant proportion of women who return to the relationship attribute their inability to deal with their finances as a major contributing factor, which is often enhanced by the fact that the abuser often has all of the economic and social standing and complete control over the family finances.

These women’s options are further limited by the fact that many who leave often face additional barriers including having at least one dependent child, not being employed outside of the home, possessing no property that is solely theirs, and lacking access to bank accounts. It is very likely that many of these women would experience a decline in living standards and security of life for themselves and their children if they were to leave their partner.

As a result of all of these combined factors, many survivors of domestic violence who summon the courage to leave the abusive relationship eventually return. 

IV. FIRING WATER CANNONS AT YOUR OWN FUCKING CITIZENS 

Anti-globalisation protesters were calling for APEC to be dismantled, accusing the trade bloc of taking advantage of poorer countries.

A protest leader, Renato Reyes, told the Associated Press news agency: “Apec and imperialist globalisation have only benefited the rich countries while further impoverishing developing countries like the Philippines.”

Tens of thousands of soldiers and policemen are already in place in the sprawling city to guard against disruptions and potential terrorist attacks. Hundreds of police with batons, truncheons and shields are blocking the protesters from getting near the venue.

Trucks with water cannons are poised to disperse the crowds. Police are currently holding their ground against protesters.

They are also playing loud dance music to drown out the unified voices of the protesters. – BBC News

Many protesters from the second anti-APEC group were left injured after they clashed with the police. 

P/Supt. Wilben Mayor insisted that the PNP is implementing the highest degree of tolerance to allow them to express their opinions. “Better to be overprepared than caught flat footed and unprepared,” he said.

To address the injuries sustained by the protesters, he said that firing water cannons is less lethal and has minimal pressure. “It can even cool them. Palamig po muna tayo,” he added. – CNN Philippines

I hope I don’t have to tell you how irresponsible and insultingly flippant this guy is about hurting the people he’s supposed to protect.

A long time ago, [redacted] wrote a paper on non-injurious methods of crowd dispersion. I thought it was boring then. I wish I read it now. Wilben Mayor sure didn’t. Piece of shit.