In an altered state of consciousness?

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Was he hexed, or did he have too much MSG?

President Duterte’s hosts in China must have been hot under the collar for his unabashed display of eagerness to offer alliance to a bullying nation, and to prove it by dumping—in so many words—a longtime Philippine ally, the United States. He was practically doing cartwheels.

The Philippines’ head of state, standing on the world stage, announced extemporaneously to what seemed like a fawning crowd: “I announce my separation from the United States, both in the military… not social, but economics also.”

That must have been quite discomfiting even to Chinese President Xi Jinping, the members of the Philippine delegation, and, most of all, to Mr. Duterte’s compatriots back home and those in the diaspora. And in the United States as well.

“Ano raw?” “Unsa kuno?” Exclamations of disbelief from the perplexed, bewildered and befuddled came fast and furious. The men at the Department of Interpretation and Reinterpretation must have been falling all over themselves (onomatopoeically in Filipino, nagkandarapa; in Ilonggo, nagkinarankaran) to find euphemisms for that bombshell of a foreign policy statement.

Well, what do you know, so many hours later the President said: “It was not severance of ties” with the United States. A “rebalancing” was more like it, said his spokespersons. So what was that sindak statement all about? But then what’s new? This happens all the time—the reinterpretation and the recalibration.

If you were the Chinese—not that they were overeager to hear such an avowal of friendship from a neighbor they bully and about a realignment of alliances—how would you view someone who flip-flops and blows hot and cold? The Chinese have not hinted that they felt slighted by Mr. Duterte’s backtracking, or that they felt they were being toyed with for the world to see, by a foul-mouthed leader who is adored by the 16 million or so Filipinos who voted for him.

The United States has sent a representative to find out what exactly this “separation” is all about. No word yet from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin who, Mr. Duterte said, he also hoped to woo. While Asean countries are circumspect, Mr. Duterte seems to want to ingratiate himself with communist-led undemocratic governments. China, Russia and the Philippines against the world, he said. Why not include North Korea, too?

Who wants to be a vassal of America? But who wants to be a lapdog of China and Russia?

Manuel Quezon III, who wrote a column in the Inquirer before he joined the Aquino administration, recently wrote an insightful piece on what it was like to be part of the entourage of a visiting Philippine head of state in China—how the Chinese pulled out all the stops and flaunted their bigness (the towering guards, the halls, the furniture, etc.), making one feel like a pygmy amidst giants. All that could have some kind of hypnotic effect. An Inquirer banner photo last week showed the Chinese presenting basketball giant Yao Ming to Mr. Duterte.

Hitler did something similar in Nazi Germany, through film and other massive and mesmerizing displays of power and strength. As Filipinos would say, dinadaan sa laki at lakas.

The Chinese leadership wowed the President and his party. Did they also throw him into an altered state of consciousness that made him behave and speak the way he did while he was there? Am I kidding? No. In graduate school we had exercises in altered states of consciousness, including hypnosis as a tool to alter behavior.

Years ago, I did a series on “budol-budol” operations in which the unsuspecting victims are thrown into an altered state of consciousness and made to hand over to con men, without resistance, their heirloom jewelry and their life savings in the bank.

If you’re feeling spooked by all these even before Halloween, find an exorcist.

Have a meaningful All Saints and All Souls week ahead. #

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Privately run prisons

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

 

Yes, there are privately-run prisons in the United States. They will soon see the end of their days. The idea has been tried, and it didn’t work. Might the idea have worked in the Philippines’ biggest, the New Bilibid Prisons, which the inmates practically run like it were their private fiefdom?

But I am getting ahead of myself.

 

Not quite as out-of-the-box as Bob Dylan’s 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature that sent the literati abuzz is the Nobel for economics that went to Oliver Hart, a Harvard economist, and Bengt Holmstrom of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The two were awarded because of their study of business contracts, a subject matter that seems so mundane it would make Dylan’s oeuvre sound so far out in the ocean. The two men’s research conclusions about privatization and its implications have brought to light the desirability or undesirability of such arrangements.

 

Hart’s studies included prisons, education and even garbage collection. Are these services better or worse in government hands?  Are these better or worse if handled by private companies?

Several months ago the US Justice Department announced that it would phase out privately-owned and -run prisons for safety concerns. In our neck of the woods not many know that many US prisons are run by private parties; the common knowledge is that only the government runs the prisons. Whether badly or very badly there is no choice.

 

A US news report said stock prices for GEO Corp and Corrections Corporation of America, which are known to be “the largest publicly traded companies in the for-profit prison industry” are plummeting because of the justice department’s announcement that it would let its contracts with private prison companies expire.

 

The report also said the decision applies to federal prisons which account for a relatively small percentage of US prisoners. The majority of prisoners are in state-run prisons.

 

There have been exposés about these privately-run facilities described as a “private, for-profit prison racket.” Last year, Mother Jones magazine ran an article written by its reporter who worked as a guard at a private prison for four months. Read “The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery” by Vicky Pelaez for Global Research.

 

What is going on in Philippine prisons has been headline news these past weeks. Senate and House inquiries “in aid of legislation” (or “in aid of persecution,” as some say) have at least revealed—but only partly—the terrible rot in these facilities. The massive trade in illegal drugs, prostitution, wanton disregard for prison rules, powerful inmates lording it over and living luxurious lives in the facility—name it. Our jaws dropped when an inmate boasted at a House hearing about his five-star-hotel amenities, holding concerts, bringing in truckloads of beer, etc., making tons of money in the process.

 

Only after we had picked our jaws off the floor did we manage to ask: How long has this been going on? Of course we had seen the trailer of this sometime last year. But only recently did we get to see the full movie, so to speak, the plot more expanded, with blood and guts spilling outside prison walls even as we speak.

 

Privately-run prisons piqued my interest because these had to do with a Nobel laureate’s study of business contracts and also because the Nobel came at a time when the US Justice Department just announced that it was allowing its contracts with at least 13 private prisons to expire in the next five years. I could not help thinking about our own prisons which became “privately run” by the inmates while we were sleeping. Who were sleeping on the job?

 

In this era of privatized public services (water, for example) and having seen the difference between government-run and privately-run, give or take some downsides, privatizing prisons is an idea to try. Laugh me out of the room for saying it, but in this woebegone country where nothing (in prison) has worked, a failed scheme might.

 

Same for the vaunted new drug rehab facilities. Can the government run them well?

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Cursing our mothers

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

 

The current joke now is that the Philippines should also be known as the “Republic of P.I.” Not for Philippine Islands, as our country was called during the American colonial era, but for “p***** ina,” the favorite cuss words of President Duterte who cannot go without them in his rambling speeches.

 

Translated into English, the phrase means “child of a whore” or “son of a b****.” If you add the word “mo,” it means you are one, but in English you don’t really add “You are a” to SOB.  So with or without mo, your mother is insulted just the same.

 

I don’t know how it is said in other Philippine languages and dialects but I know that in Iloilo, it is said in Spanish—that is, “hijo de p***” or “yudep***.” It has been further contracted or sanitized as “deputa” or “depuga,” the last one used as an expression of awe or amazement, as in “Depuga gid.” Another variation is “yude”-to praise or compliment. With this, the original meaning has been completely erased because it is not even a cuss word.

 

But to inflict pain or insult, there is nothing like the complete expletive in Spanish, uttered harshly and deliberately to insult the other person and his or her mother.

I have never heard my parents utter cuss words when I was growing up, but walls are not impermeable especially in the province, so I got to hear “bad words” used on some people. I got to know the Ilonggo (Hiligaynon) words for whore. Like most towns, ours had a menagerie of peculiar characters, their names appended with their particular disabilities or dishonorable preoccupations. For example: “Manuel Buang,” “Amin Kurog” or Estrella Padót.

 

But why does cursing have to dishonor mothers? In Ilocano the equivalent of “P.I.” refers to the mother’s birth canal, to say it rather clinically. Not about what she is but about the offspring that passed through it. The ultimate insult.

 

It is the opposite of what a woman said to Jesus as recounted in the Bible: “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the paps that gave you suck.”  The ultimate compliment.

 

Another variation of the mother-son insult is the “M.F.” cuss words which are of American origin. This time it is directed to the good-for-nothing son, but the mother is still in the picture. And both of them are being called sexual perverts.

 

Speaking of “M.F.,” there is an old joke about a Filipino family in America having a good time in a park. When the toddler began running, the concerned parents yelled, “Madapa ka (You might stumble)! Immediately, dagger looks were thrown their way.

 

Seriously now, the “P.I.” cuss has become so commonplace, popularized by no less than the President whose vocabulary is littered with it. Some of his defenders argue that it is just his manner of speaking, a verbal expression. One can even say that eventually, it will lose its original meaning and that it will just be a set of nonsense syllables that can add color to one’s limited vocabulary. I don’t think so. I shudder when I think that an insult to mothers will soon be as commonplace as “OMG” or “LOL.”

 

Some time ago someone posted on Facebook a cartoon which showed kids exclaiming “P.I.” enclosed in so many dialogue balloons.

 

Last Sunday the Catholic Church in the Philippines celebrated Indigenous Peoples (IP) Sunday. I could not help thinking whether in their pristine state in the forest primeval our IP communities had an equivalent of “P.I.” Did they deliver insults by referring to their enemies’ mothers? Did it get into their vocabulary?

 

The Old Testament has lots of stories about fornication and people committing sexual taboos, but later, in the new dispensation, didn’t Jesus save the woman caught in adultery from being stoned to death? (Emphasis on caught.) As the story goes, the woman was caught in flagrante delicto. She was not merely being falsely accused.

 

Last year while he was on the plane to (or from?) the Philippines, Pope Francis was asked about violence. He began by saying: “Curse my mother and expect a punch.” During the presidential campaign, Mr. Duterte did throw a “P.I” at the Pope for the traffic his visit had caused.#

 

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/98152/cursing-our-mothers#ixzz4OSipNukG 
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No to a house of pervs

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

 

Let me inaugurate our new format with the statement of the Women Writers in Media Now (Women), titled “Slut-shaming is an assault on all women” and issued on Oct. 1. Our statement came out in the Inquirer’s Letters section on Oct. 3, but it merits being read again and again. Last I looked, it was “trending” in social media.

 

Thank you to those who identified with the cause and offered signatures. We did not post the statement in a petition site where the public could sign. Plain sharing or writing about it is good enough. We are very, very grateful.

 

Our group, or sisterhood—Women—has been in existence since 1981. It stirred to life during the dark days of Ferdinand Marcos’ tyrannical rule, a voice raging against the dying of the light. So suffice it to say that we were not born yesterday, that we had fought long and hard, harkened to voices in the wilderness, and stuck to each other through many storms. Soon we will be coming out with the resurrected “Press Freedom Under Siege: Reportage that Challenged the Marcos Dictatorship” (University of the Philippines Press).

We do not want to see women debased by a house of perverts.

 

We, the Women Writers in Media Now, are outraged.

 

The intent of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, supported by the Secretary of Justice, to show during a House hearing the video, purportedly of a woman senator having sex, is vile, sexist, if not outright misogynistic. It is meant to defile a human being, who is, by right, entitled to respect, privacy, and dignity.

 

This behavior of our national leaders is a disgrace. It violates the right of every person—female or male, whistleblower or lackey, young or old, ordinary citizen or senator—to the guarantees of dignity and respect by our Constitution. It is, for us, a source of anguish and anger that the leaders of the House and the Executive show no trepidation or qualm about violating these guarantees, with malice towards one.

 

We are incensed by this cavalier threat by the Speaker and the Secretary of Justice to expose the sexual proclivities, real or imagined, of any person. This is an abuse of power. It effectively defiles a person who has not been proven to be in the right or in the wrong. And, even if the person were eventually found to be in the wrong, what can that person’s sex life have to do with the case under investigation, other than to shame the accused, titillate the public, and herald the powers of a speaker and a justice secretary?

 

As journalists and as women, we are enraged by this virtual rape of Senator Leila De Lima by our lawmakers. We are scandalized by this attack on her basic constitutional right to dignity and privacy.

 

Slut-shaming is cruel, despicable, and in this case, un-parliamentary. It is, at its core, an assault on all women.  Yes, on all of us. Your very own wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins, and friends.

 

All of you who smack your lips with delight at the thought of exhibiting a sex video to the world to shame a woman, are you not descending to the level of perverts? Yes, perverts.

A man, no matter how crass, is not made to undergo such a punishment.  But, under a misogynistic government, women are fair game. When a woman rails against the powers to express outrage, she is dismissed as hysterical; when a man hurls personal insults in anger, he is lauded as decisive. When a woman is sexually active, she is shamed; when a man has multiple sex partners, he is extolled.

 

These vestiges of a double standard have no place in our society in the 21st century. We demand the respect due us who hold up half the sky. We demand to be treated as coequal partners in building our nation.

 

We must put an end to this ugly voyeurism that has publicly debased a woman senator without regard for her personhood. We call out our legislators’ impaired thought processes. We want the return of respect, dignity, and due process for all. We insist, as citizens, to be treated right.

 

We still, after all, live under a democracy, last we looked?#

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STATEMENT OF WOMEN WRITERS IN MEDIA NOW (WOMEN)

SLUT-SHAMING IS AN ASSAULT ON ALL WOMEN

   We, the WOMEN WRITERS IN MEDIA NOW, are outraged.

   The intent of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, supported by the Secretary of Justice, to show during a House hearing the video, purportedly of a woman senator having sex, is vile, sexist, if not outright misogynistic. It is meant to defile a human being, who is, by right, entitled to respect, privacy, and dignity.

  This behavior of our national leaders is a disgrace. It violates the right of every person—female or male, whistleblower or lackey, young or old, ordinary citizen or senator—to the guarantees of dignity and respect by our Constitution. It is, for us, a source of anguish and anger that the leaders of the House and the Executive show no trepidation or qualm about violating these guarantees, with malice towards one.

  We are incensed by this cavalier threat by the Speaker and the Secretary of Justice to expose the sexual proclivities, real or imagined, of any person. This is an abuse of power. It effectively defiles a person who has not been proven to be in the right or in the wrong. And, even if the person were eventually found to be in the wrong, what can that person’s sex life have to do with the case under investigation, other than to shame the accused, titillate the public, and herald the powers of a speaker and a justice secretary?

  As journalists and as women, we are enraged by this virtual rape of Senator Leila De Lima by our lawmakers. We are scandalized by this attack on her basic constitutional right to dignity and privacy. Slut-shaming is cruel, despicable, and in this case, un-parliamentary. It is, at its core, an assault on all women. Yes, on all of us. Your very own wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins, and friends.

  All of you who smack your lips with delight at the thought of exhibiting a sex video to the world to shame a woman, are you not descending to the level of perverts? Yes, perverts.

  A man, no matter how crass, is not made to undergo such a punishment. But, under a misogynistic government, women are fair game. When a woman rails against the powers to express outrage, she is dismissed as hysterical; when a man hurls personal insults in anger, he is lauded as decisive. When a woman is sexually active, she is shamed; when a man has multiple sex partners, he is extolled.

   These vestiges of a double-standard have no place in our society in the 21st century. We demand the respect due us who hold up half the sky. We demand to be treated as co-equal partners in building our nation. We must put an end to this ugly voyeurism that has publicly debased a woman senator without regard for her personhood. We call out our legislators' impaired thought processes.

  We want the return of respect, dignity, and due process for all. We insist, as citizens, to be treated right.

  We still, after all, live under a democracy, last we looked.●

Signed October 1, 2016

Neni Sta. Romana Cruz
Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Fanny Garcia
Mila Astorga Garcia
Sol Juvida
Fe Panaligan Koons
Sylvia L. Mayuga
Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon
Gemma Nemenzo
Paulynn Paredes Sicam
Rochit I. Tañedo
Marites D. Vitug
Criselda Yabes
Karina Africa Bolasco
Elvira Mata

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