I think I need to follow local news more closely.
here is a nice intro to the MOA between the MILF Rebels and The Government Representatives.
I think the MOA is unconstitutional and may be there for two reasons.
The current government is trying to railroad a Charter Change, I pray they don’t succeed.
Why Can’t We Have A Better Class Of Politicians?
Riz Khan Interview About Liberian Women Combatants
I especially like the question on what one of the women whose family was killed and was raped by a soldier would do if she faced that very same man. She said that life must go on and that doing anything would not bring her family back. The kicker is that she said she sees the man day and night because that man is involved with an NGO. Wow!
Oppressed Mentality
thanks to brad delong from his excerpt here:
Though via a paradox: the greater their power, the more they felt oppressed. When the people who felt like losers united around their shared psychological sense of grievance, their enemies felt somehow more overwhelming, not less; even if the Franklins weren’t always really so powerful at all, Franklin “power” often being merely a self-perpetuating effect of an Orthogonian sense of victimization. Martyrs who were not really martyrs, oppressors who were not really oppressors: a class politics for the white middle class. The keynote of the new, Nixonian politics…though we are getting ahead of ourselves. For first we must send Richard Nixon to law school, where he was a monk….
I see this with a lot of my countrymen and women. its like so many people feel that they are so special as to believe that everyone is trying to oppress them. Damn. We are all special that’s why Nobody is special.
What I’d be honest enough to admit is what I continuously see. People are so caught up (except those people whom I know to have so much as to be ble to give so much of themselves, I wouldn’t name names so the few people who read this end up thinking I am referring to them) in the little drama of their own lives that most of the time your boss doesn’t hate you. The jeepney driver who gave you the wrong change didn’t actually try to cheat you. The lady who slightly nudged you while getting off the MRT(like the BART) didn’t really intend to shove you. Get Over Your Cult Of ME!
Counter Hegemonic
hope we can start something like this in the Philippines where there seems to be extreme void in intelligent discourse !
from here:
(Counter)-hegemonic memes
Although the left invented the concept of cultural hegemony, they (we) have been pretty bad at practicing it. In many ways, it is the right’s preconceptions that are still hegemonic – for example, its use of “middle class” to mean rich, or its stigmatizing of single parents, welfare claimants, trades unionists or public sector workers.
Which raises the question. Shouldn’t we try to start an alternative hegemony?
This would not consist in more than just challenging the above preconceptions. Indeed, merely to challenge them is to lend them credence. To say “welfare claimants are not scroungers” is like a man saying “I don’t beat my wife.” It doesn‘t establish his innocence, but draws attention to suspicions.
No. What we need is something bolder, alternative memes. I’ll get you started with three quick ‘uns:
….
I offer this as a mere start. We can never tell which memes will take and which won’t, so it’s best to spread a load of them and see what grows.
The point of these, though, is not to be explicitly “radical“ or “transgressive.” Instead, it‘s to claim that we should take for granted certain things, which only idiots or extremists would challenge; this is how the right regards the above-mentioned claims.
And don’t be hung up by the “truth.” After all, the right wasn’t when it began those successful hegemonic memes.
The point about hegemonic memes is not that they are “true“: no simple statement about people or society is ever wholly true, a fact which usually only the most fatuous pedant points out. Instead, they act as default positions – things that are believed as a matter of course by many people, and whose challengers are regarded as marginal or eccentric.
So, what will be the new hegemonic positions?
Which raises the question. Shouldn’t we try to start an alternative hegemony?
This would not consist in more than just challenging the above preconceptions. Indeed, merely to challenge them is to lend them credence. To say “welfare claimants are not scroungers” is like a man saying “I don’t beat my wife.” It doesn‘t establish his innocence, but draws attention to suspicions.
No. What we need is something bolder, alternative memes. I’ll get you started with three quick ‘uns:
….
I offer this as a mere start. We can never tell which memes will take and which won’t, so it’s best to spread a load of them and see what grows.
The point of these, though, is not to be explicitly “radical“ or “transgressive.” Instead, it‘s to claim that we should take for granted certain things, which only idiots or extremists would challenge; this is how the right regards the above-mentioned claims.
And don’t be hung up by the “truth.” After all, the right wasn’t when it began those successful hegemonic memes.
The point about hegemonic memes is not that they are “true“: no simple statement about people or society is ever wholly true, a fact which usually only the most fatuous pedant points out. Instead, they act as default positions – things that are believed as a matter of course by many people, and whose challengers are regarded as marginal or eccentric.
So, what will be the new hegemonic positions?
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Probably One Of The Reasons Neri Would Not Leave GMA!
If you are a President who gets bullied easily , shamed easily and a lot of things etc. you would not get to do a lot of development wor policies. You need to be a “siga” /bully to actually do your work effectively. With the unCivilized Society and lots of special interest having their own agenda.
from the World Bank link here:
pro-development policies are comparatively rare in the developing world less because of the moral fiber of politicians (though that surely matters) than because good politicians typically lack the room for maneuver needed to make desired reforms. This lack of maneuverability is a product of insufficient social cohesion and weak institutions.
And we continually see this happening with most presidents. Whereas Erap wouldn’t let his supporters fight the Edsa 2 mob vacating office , GMA is enough of a badass to probably not care that she is probably the most hated President our republic has had thus far. I am not condoning her , though I admire her balls. The fact is if any one is going to change our country I’s going to probably be someone who
has two big steel ones.
Which leaves us with good people always trying to choose the lesser evil.