What is unfolding right now in California—with hundreds of Marines deployed domestically; thousands of National Guard troops federalized; and military weapons, tactics and equipment on full display—is intended to intimidate, distract and discourage us from pulling back the curtain on the reality of the self-serving corruption, grift, graft, overreach and abuse that have become synonymous with his Administration.

Don’t be distracted. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t be sidelined by the spectacle of a police state.

This is yet another manufactured crisis fomented by the Deep State.

When Trump issues a call to “BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!” explaining to reporters that he wants to have them “everywhere,” we should all be alarmed.

This is martial law without a formal declaration of war.

This heavy-handed, chest-thumping, politicized, militarized response to what is clearly a matter for local government is yet another example of Trump’s disregard for the Constitution and the limits of his power.

Political protests are protected by the First Amendment until they cross the line from non-violent to violent. Even when protests turn violent, constitutional protocols remain in place to safeguard communities: law and order must flow through local and state chains of command, not from federal muscle.

By breaking that chain of command, Trump is breaking the Constitution.

Deploying the military to deal with domestic matters that can—and should—be handled by civilian police, despite the objections of local and state leaders, crosses the line into authoritarianism.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

In the span of a single week, the Trump administration is providing the clearest glimpse yet of its unapologetic, uncompromising, corrupt allegiance to the authoritarian Deep State.

These two events—the federalization of the National Guard deployed to California in response to protests and the president’s lavish, taxpayer-funded military parade in the nation’s capital—bookend the administration’s unmistakable message: dissent will be crushed, and power will be performed.

Trump governs by force (military deployment), fear (ICE raids, militarized policing), and spectacle (the parade).

This is the spectacle of a police state. One side of the coin is militarized suppression. The other is theatrical dominance. Together, they constitute the language of force and authoritarian control.

Yet this is more than political theater; it is a constitutional crisis in motion.

As we have warned before, this tactic is a familiar one.

In times of political unrest, authoritarian regimes often invoke national emergencies as a pretext to impose military solutions. The result? The Constitution is suspended, civilian control is overrun, and the machinery of the state turns against its own people.

This is precisely what the Founders feared when they warned against standing armies on American soil: that one day, the military might be used not to defend the people, but to control them.

It is a textbook play from the authoritarian handbook, deployed with increasing frequency under Trump. The optics are meant to intimidate, broadcast control, and discourage resistance before it even begins.

Thus, deploying the National Guard in this manner is not just a political maneuver—it is a strategic act of fear-based governance designed to instill terror, particularly among vulnerable communities, and ensure compliance.

America is being transformed into a battlefield before our eyes.

Militarized police. Riot squads. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Stun grenades. Crowd control and intimidation tactics.

This is not the language of freedom. This is not even the language of law and order.

This is the language of force.

This transformation is not accidental—it’s strategic. The government now sees the public not as constituents to be served but as potential combatants to be surveilled, managed, and subdued. In this new paradigm, dissent is treated as insurrection, and constitutional rights are treated as threats to national security.

What we are witnessing today is also part of a broader setup: an excuse to use civil unrest as a pretext for militarized overreach.

We saw signs of this strategy in Charlottesville, Virginia, where police failed to de-escalate and at times exacerbated tensions during protests that should have remained peaceful. The resulting chaos gave authorities cover to crack down—not to protect the public, but to reframe protest as provocation and dissent as disorder.

Then and now, the objective wasn’t to preserve peace and protect the public. It was to delegitimize dissent and cast protest as provocation.

It’s all part of an elaborate setup by the architects of the Deep State. The government wants a reason to crack down, lock down, and bring in its biggest guns.

This is how it begins.

Trump’s use of the military against civilians violates the spirit—if not the letter—of the Posse Comitatus Act, which is meant to bar federal military involvement in domestic affairs. It also raises severe constitutional questions about the infringement of First Amendment rights to protest and Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless search and seizure.

Modern tools of repression compound the threat. AI-driven surveillance, predictive policing software, biometric databases, and fusion centers have made mass control seamless and silent. The state doesn’t just respond to dissent anymore; it predicts and preempts it.

While boots are on the ground in California, preparations are underway for a military spectacle in Washington, D.C.

At first glance, a military procession might seem like a patriotic display. But in this context, it is not a celebration of service; it is a declaration of supremacy. It is not about honoring troops; it is about reminding the populace who holds the power and who wields the guns.

This is how authoritarian regimes govern—through spectacle.

By sandwiching a military crackdown between a domestic troop deployment and a showy parade, Trump is sending a unified message: This is about raw, unchecked, theatrical power. And whether we, the people, will accept a government that rules not by consent, but by coercion.

The Constitution was not written to accommodate authoritarian pageantry. It was written to restrain it. It was never meant to sanctify conquest as a form of governance.

We are at a crossroads.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Strip away that consent, and all that remains is conquest through force, spectacle, and fear.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we allow the language of fear, the spectacle of dominance, and the machinery of militarized governance to become normalized, then we are no longer citizens of a republic—we are subjects of a police state.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.

Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.

First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and threatening to revoke media licenses to blacklisting law firms, threatening universities with funding cuts for not complying with the government’s ideological agenda, and detaining foreign students for their political views, Trump has treated constitutional protections not as guarantees, but as obstacles.

Second Amendment (right to bear arms): Trump has shown an inconsistent and, at times, authoritarian approach to gun rights, summed up in his infamous 2018 statement: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” At the same time, Trump has encouraged the militarization of domestic police forces, blurring the line between civilian law enforcement and standing armies—a contradiction that cuts against the very spirit of the amendment, which was rooted in distrust of centralized power and standing militaries.

Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures): Trump’s expansion of no-knock raids, endorsement of sweeping surveillance tactics, sanctioning of police brutality and greater immunity for police misconduct, and the use of masked, plainclothes federal agents to seize demonstrators off the streets have revived conversations about privacy, unlawful searches, and the right to be secure in one’s person and property.

Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments (due process and equal protection): Perhaps nowhere has Trump’s disregard been more dangerous than in his approach to due process and equal protection under the law. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that neither citizens nor non-citizens can be deprived of liberty without fair procedures. Yet Trump’s Administration has repeatedly floated or enacted policies that sidestep due process, from the suggestion that he could suspend habeas corpus to the indefinite detention of individuals without trial, and openly questioned whether non-citizens deserve any constitutional protections at all.

Even the Sixth (right to a fair and speedy trial) and Eighth Amendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) have found new urgency: Trump has promoted indefinite pretrial detention for protesters and immigrants alike, while presiding over family separations, inhumane detention centers, and support for enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump has also doubled down on his administration’s commitment to carrying out more executions, including a push to impose the death penalty for crimes other than murder.

Tenth Amendment (states’ rights): The Tenth Amendment, which preserves state sovereignty against federal overreach, has been tested by Trump’s threats to defund sanctuary cities, override state public health measures, and interfere in local policing and elections. His efforts to federalize domestic law enforcement have exposed the limits of decentralized power in the face of executive ambition.

Fourteenth Amendment (birthright citizenship): No clause has been more aggressively misunderstood by Trump than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His push to strip citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents (birthright citizenship) ignores over a century of legal precedent affirming that citizenship cannot be denied by executive whim.

Article I, Section 8 (commerce and tariffs): Trump’s use of tariff authority provides another example of executive power run amok. Although the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and used them as political leverage. These actions not only undermine the constitutional balance between the branches but also weaponize trade policy for political ends.

Article I, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause): Trump’s disregard for the Emoluments Clause—a safeguard against presidential profiteering—brought this obscure constitutional provision back into the public eye. Between continuing to profit from his private businesses while in office and his reported willingness to accept extravagant gifts, including a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government, he has raised urgent ethical and legal concerns about self-dealing, corruption and backdoor arrangements by which foreign and domestic governments can funnel money into Trump’s personal coffers.

Article I, Section 9 (power of the purse): Trump has trampled on Congress’s exclusive power over federal spending, attempting to redirect funds by executive fiat rather than operating within Congress’s approved budgetary plan. He has also threatened to withhold federal aid from states, cities, and universities deemed insufficiently loyal.

Article II (executive powers): At the heart of Trump’s governance is a dangerous misreading of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, to justify executive overreach and the concept of an all-powerful unitary executive. He has repeatedly claimed “total authority” over state matters, wielded executive orders like royal decrees in order to bypass Congress, and sought to bend the Department of Justice to his personal and political will.

Historical Emergency Powers and Legal Precedents: Trump has also breathed new life into archaic emergency powers. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify rounding up, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants without due process. He has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically in order to deal with civil unrest, raising the specter of martial law cloaked in patriotic language.

In routinely violating the Constitution and crossing legal lines that were once unthinkable, Trump is forcing Americans to confront what the Constitution truly protects, and what it doesn’t.

Still, what good is a knowledgeable citizenry if their elected officials are woefully ignorant about the Constitution or willfully disregard their sworn duty to uphold and protect it?

For starters, anyone taking public office, from the president on down, should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. And if they violate their contractual obligations to uphold and defend the Constitution, vote them out—throw them out—or impeach them.

“We the people” have power, but we must use it or lose it.

Trump may have contributed to this revival in constitutional awareness, but as we warn in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the challenge isn’t just knowing our rights—it’s defending them, before they’re gone for good.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.

Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.

First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and threatening to revoke media licenses to blacklisting law firms, threatening universities with funding cuts for not complying with the government’s ideological agenda, and detaining foreign students for their political views, Trump has treated constitutional protections not as guarantees, but as obstacles.

Second Amendment (right to bear arms): Trump has shown an inconsistent and, at times, authoritarian approach to gun rights, summed up in his infamous 2018 statement: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” At the same time, Trump has encouraged the militarization of domestic police forces, blurring the line between civilian law enforcement and standing armies—a contradiction that cuts against the very spirit of the amendment, which was rooted in distrust of centralized power and standing militaries.

Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures): Trump’s expansion of no-knock raids, endorsement of sweeping surveillance tactics, sanctioning of police brutality and greater immunity for police misconduct, and the use of masked, plainclothes federal agents to seize demonstrators off the streets have revived conversations about privacy, unlawful searches, and the right to be secure in one’s person and property.

Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments (due process and equal protection): Perhaps nowhere has Trump’s disregard been more dangerous than in his approach to due process and equal protection under the law. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that neither citizens nor non-citizens can be deprived of liberty without fair procedures. Yet Trump’s Administration has repeatedly floated or enacted policies that sidestep due process, from the suggestion that he could suspend habeas corpus to the indefinite detention of individuals without trial, and openly questioned whether non-citizens deserve any constitutional protections at all.

Even the Sixth (right to a fair and speedy trial) and Eighth Amendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) have found new urgency: Trump has promoted indefinite pretrial detention for protesters and immigrants alike, while presiding over family separations, inhumane detention centers, and support for enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump has also doubled down on his administration’s commitment to carrying out more executions, including a push to impose the death penalty for crimes other than murder.

Tenth Amendment (states’ rights): The Tenth Amendment, which preserves state sovereignty against federal overreach, has been tested by Trump’s threats to defund sanctuary cities, override state public health measures, and interfere in local policing and elections. His efforts to federalize domestic law enforcement have exposed the limits of decentralized power in the face of executive ambition.

Fourteenth Amendment (birthright citizenship): No clause has been more aggressively misunderstood by Trump than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His push to strip citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents (birthright citizenship) ignores over a century of legal precedent affirming that citizenship cannot be denied by executive whim.

Article I, Section 8 (commerce and tariffs): Trump’s use of tariff authority provides another example of executive power run amok. Although the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and used them as political leverage. These actions not only undermine the constitutional balance between the branches but also weaponize trade policy for political ends.

Article I, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause): Trump’s disregard for the Emoluments Clause—a safeguard against presidential profiteering—brought this obscure constitutional provision back into the public eye. Between continuing to profit from his private businesses while in office and his reported willingness to accept extravagant gifts, including a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government, he has raised urgent ethical and legal concerns about self-dealing, corruption and backdoor arrangements by which foreign and domestic governments can funnel money into Trump’s personal coffers.

Article I, Section 9 (power of the purse): Trump has trampled on Congress’s exclusive power over federal spending, attempting to redirect funds by executive fiat rather than operating within Congress’s approved budgetary plan. He has also threatened to withhold federal aid from states, cities, and universities deemed insufficiently loyal.

Article II (executive powers): At the heart of Trump’s governance is a dangerous misreading of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, to justify executive overreach and the concept of an all-powerful unitary executive. He has repeatedly claimed “total authority” over state matters, wielded executive orders like royal decrees in order to bypass Congress, and sought to bend the Department of Justice to his personal and political will.

Historical Emergency Powers and Legal Precedents: Trump has also breathed new life into archaic emergency powers. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify rounding up, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants without due process. He has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically in order to deal with civil unrest, raising the specter of martial law cloaked in patriotic language.

In routinely violating the Constitution and crossing legal lines that were once unthinkable, Trump is forcing Americans to confront what the Constitution truly protects, and what it doesn’t.

Still, what good is a knowledgeable citizenry if their elected officials are woefully ignorant about the Constitution or willfully disregard their sworn duty to uphold and protect it?

For starters, anyone taking public office, from the president on down, should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. And if they violate their contractual obligations to uphold and defend the Constitution, vote them out—throw them out—or impeach them.

“We the people” have power, but we must use it or lose it.

Trump may have contributed to this revival in constitutional awareness, but as we warn in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the challenge isn’t just knowing our rights—it’s defending them, before they’re gone for good.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”—James Madison

We are being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun. Or rather, hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.

Let’s not mince words: President Trump’s April 28 executive order is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook: martial law masquerading as law and order.

Officially titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” this order is a “heil Hitler” wrapped in the goosestepping, despotic trappings of national security.

Don’t be fooled by Trump’s tough-on-crime rhetoric, cloaked in patriotic language and the promise of safety.

This is the language of every strongman who’s ever ruled by force.

The White House claims the order will “empower state and local law enforcement to relentlessly pursue criminals and protect American communities.” But under this administration, “criminal” increasingly includes anyone who dares to exercise their constitutional rights.

The order doesn’t merely expand policing—it institutionalizes repression.

It sets us squarely on the road to martial law.

If allowed to stand, Trump’s executive order completes our shift from a nation of laws, where even the least among us had the right to due process, to a nation of enforcers: vigilantes with badges who treat “we the people” as suspects and subordinates.

Without invoking the Insurrection Act or deploying active-duty military forces, Trump has accelerated the transformation of domestic police into his own paramilitary force.

With the stroke of his presidential pen, he has laid the groundwork for a stealth version of martial law by:

• Expanding police powers and legal protections;
• Authorizing the DOJ to defend officers accused of civil rights violations;
• Increasing the transfer of military equipment to local police;
• Shielding law enforcement from judicial oversight;
• Prioritizing law enforcement protection over civil liberties;
• Embedding DHS and federal agents more deeply into local policing.

All of this has occurred without congressional debate, judicial review, or constitutional scrutiny.

For years, we have watched as the government transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military: outfitted with military hardware and trained in battlefield tactics.

However, this executive order goes one step further—it creates not just a de facto standing army but Trump’s own army: loyal not to the Constitution or the people but to the president.

This is the very danger the Founders feared: a militarized police force answerable to a powerful executive, operating outside the bounds of the law.

This is martial law without a declaration.

Today, law enforcement is equipped like the military, trained in battlefield tactics, and given broad discretion over who to target and how to respond. But these are not soldiers bound by the laws of war. They are civilian enforcers, wielding unchecked power with minimal oversight.

And they are everywhere.

Armored vehicles on neighborhood streets. Flashbang raids on family homes. Riot police in small towns. SWAT-style teams deployed by federal agencies. Drones overhead. Mass surveillance below.

We are fast approaching a reality where constitutional rights exist in name only.

In practice, we are ruled by a quasi-military bureaucracy empowered to:

• Detain without trial;
• Punish political dissent;
• Seize property under civil asset forfeiture;
• Classify critics as extremists or terrorists;
• Conduct mass surveillance on the populace;
• Raid homes in the name of “public safety”;
• Use deadly force at the slightest provocation.

In other words, we’ve got freedom in name only.

It’s the same scenario nationwide: in big cities and small towns alike, militarized “warrior” cops—hyped up on power—ride roughshod over individual rights by exercising almost absolute discretion over who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

This nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence has already ensured that unarmed Americans—many of them mentally ill, elderly, disabled, or simply noncompliant—will continue to die at the hands of militarized police.

From individuals shot for holding garden hoses to those killed after calling 911 for help, these tragedies underscore a chilling truth: in a police state, the only truly “safe” person is one who offers no resistance at all.

These killings are the inevitable result of a system that rewards vigilante aggression by warrior cops and punishes accountability.

These so-called warrior cops, trained to act as judge, jury, and executioner, increasingly outnumber those who still honor their oath to uphold the Constitution and serve the public.

Now, under the cover of executive orders and nationalist rhetoric, that warrior mentality is being redirected toward a more dangerous mission: silencing political dissent.

Emboldened by Trump’s call to reopen Alcatraz and target so-called “homegrown” threats, these foot soldiers of the police state are no longer going to be tasked with enforcing the law—they will be deployed to enforce political obedience.

This is not a theory. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes.

We are living in a creeping state of undeclared martial law.

The militarization of police and federal agencies over recent decades has only accelerated the timeline toward authoritarianism.

This is how freedom ends—not with a loud decree, but with the quiet, calculated erosion of every principle we once held sacred.

We’ve come full circle—from resisting British redcoats to submitting to American forces with the same disdain for liberty.

Our constitutional foundation is crumbling, and with it, any illusion that those in power still serve the public good.

For its part, Congress has abdicated its role as a constitutional check on executive power, passing sweeping authorizations with little scrutiny and failing to rein in executive overreach. The courts, too, have in the past sanctioned many of these abuses in the name of national security, public order, or qualified immunity. Instead of acting as constitutional safeguards, these institutions have largely become rubber stamps.

Indeed, the president, Congress, the courts, and the police have come to embody the very abuse the Founders fought to resist. Only now are the courts beginning to show glimmers of allegiance to the Constitution.

This is not about partisanship. This is about power without restraint.

As tempting as it is to place full blame on Trump for this full-throttle shift into martial law, he is not the architect of this police state. He is its most shameless enabler—a useful frontman for the Deep State in its ongoing war on the American people.

As we warned in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.

We ignore these signs at our peril.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Morse Tan, a high ranking former US State Dept. official, recently let the cat out of the bag on the US ruling elite position on South Korea’s Martial Law.  He declared that “Yoon declared Martial Law to preserve South Korea’s Democracy.”  Having previously labeled South Korea a model democracy, this is a No-Scotsman-move taken to absurdity.

Now, Tan is not a current US government official, but he is an indicator of what the US national security state is thinking, in particular, what its neocon wing is thinking.  Tan also recently claimed that “the impeachment against Yoon is an insurrection” led by opposition party leader Lee Jae Myung “who wants to turn the country over to the Chinese communists”.

As absurd and conspiratorial as these allegations sound, these are actually finely-tuned and well-honed Washington-CPAC talking points about Chinese threats and interference in Korea, and they are echoed endlessly, if histrionically by US flag-waving foot soldiers at South Korean protests and on Youtube.  These anti-China messages were also repeated in German State TV ARD’s documentary “Staatskrise im Schatten von China und Nordkorea” (State Crisis in the Shadow of China and North Korea), released to its German public television website on Feb 25th. The documentary claimed that China had hacked South Korea’s legislative election to put the opposition DP party into power, who are now taking their orders from North Korea and China to impeach YoonThere is clearly a highly convergent and disciplined campaign of anti-China propaganda around the impeachment. ARD has removed its documentary, but the damage has clearly been done.

It’s impossible not to highlight the absurdity of Tan’s statement–“Yoon declared martial law (i.e. military dictatorship) to preserve democracy”.  And as a foreign national, Tan is breaking South Korean law by directly participating in domestic Korean politics.  But the free reign he is given, and the lack of disavowal or reprimand from the State Department–if only for his own safety–is very revealing.

Tan’s position in the state department was Ambassador at Large.  These are powerful, Viceroy-type postings: they represent US policy and US interests on a (grand) strategic level. Consider other Ambassadors-at-Large: Averell Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge,  Paul Nitze, Paul Bremer III, StrobeTalbott, Robert Gallucci. These are not individuals given to improvising and airing idiosyncratic personal opinions. As a former state Viceroy, with the enduring prestige and power of state connections, the platforms that Tan has been given to expound his views signal that he is expressing the direction of official doctrine, reflected both in Tan’s public statements, state media talking points, and the coordinated erasure of counterviewpoints.

Strategic Unambiguity: What the US wants

US policy on South Korea’s dictatorship/martial law is analogous to its policy on Taiwan: Strategic “ambiguity” in language, concrete support and escalation in actions. The “ambiguity” serves to pretextually mask war preparations against China. Of course, there is nothing ambiguous about the strategy, other than the desire for a fig leaf of plausible deniability.

What the US wants from Korea is that which is strategically most advantageous for the US: a right wing Korean client regime to do the bidding of the US: escalate and prepare for war with China. This is a war that it has been envisioning since the early 2000’s and which was institutionalized by Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”. In fact, the reason Yoon was selected, elected, and lionized as South Korea’s president is because he was a walking neocon fulfillment list for this war.

As these war preparations accelerate and intensify, a South Korean military dictatorship with the US in control of the South Korean military is the easiest and most advantageous configuration to enact these plans. The US will settle for a client-plutocratic democratic state, but dictatorship has actually been the historical norm since South Korea was created by the US.  Given the tight timelines involved, it is also possible for this configuration to be instituted again:  this project of war is urgent and time-bound–US natsec heavyweights have calendared 2025 and 2027 (“the Minihan” & “Davidson windows”) as the propitious date range to trigger war with China.

Easy-peasy political proxy

South Korea offers two key strategic advantages. First, geographically and historically, Korea has always been the on ramp and bridgehead for invasion into China. War with China has always started from the Korean peninsula or Taiwan island, usually as interlinked pairs. Second, South Korea has the world’s 3rd largest standing army–including reservists, 3.6 Million troops–,larger than the militaries of China and Russia combined. The US gets operational control over these troops immediately if there is war. War with China is thus most compatible and convenient with a South Korean dictatorship.

There is very strong circumstantial evidence that the US knew beforehand about Yoon’s Martial Law declaration, due to the length and intricacy of the preparation and the aggressive military nature of the operation-which would have required coordination and communication with US forces in Korea. At the very least, they would have been aware. And regardless, they would have benefitted, geostrategically.

Sworn testimony shows that Yoon’s gambit was to trigger war with North Korea (through drone attacks, missile attacks, shelling, false flag assassinations of opposition) to justify declaring Martial Law.  Only poor execution, North Korean forbearance, and rapid citizen mobilization prevented the seamless rollout of this military coup. Evidence has come out that Yoon was preparing repeated coups. Historically, all military coups on the southern peninsula have been greenlighted by the US.

On that point, Morse Tan is the Nancy Pelosi of Korea: he functions like a Track II US envoy–cheerleading for a right-wing South Korean military coup, with just the slightest hint of plausible deniability.

Note the dead radio silence out of Washington throughout this whole process: silence during the Martial Law declaration, silence after the rejection of Martial Law, silence after the impeachment, and silence throughout.  Not a word of critique or condemnation. Note also the deafening hush of the mainstream corporate media.

Meanwhile, the fissures in SK society are approaching civil war.

Institutional Civil War, Governmental chaos

There is already intergovernmental war: on March 22 the CIO (Corruption Investigation Office, similar to the US Inspector General) raided the Prosecutor’s Office (similar to the Attorney General) for corruption, just days after the Prosecutor’s Office raided the CIO for evidence of warrant shopping on Yoon’s impeachment. This would be like the Inspector General raiding the Attorney General after the Attorney General raided the Inspector General.

Yoon has been released from custody on a technicality (“counting hours, not days”) despite being indicted for insurrection. His co-conspirators are still incarcerated, but the ringleader is free, highlighting the absurdity of the ruling. The prosecutor’s office, ostensibly committed to prosecuting Yoon, did not even bother to file an appeal. The prosecutor’s office is considered to be Yoon’s private army–Yoon was the former prosecutor general of Korea, and he promised to create a “Republic of Prosecutors”.  That much he has been successful on.

The Return of the Zombie

Han Duck Soo, the impeached South Korean Prime minister (and former acting president) has just had his impeachment reversed yesterday, and is now acting president again.

The constitutional court found that Han had violated the constitution (by refusing to appoint already approved justices to the Constitutional Court to rule on the impeachment issue) but they reinstated him anyway.  Never mind the irony that the court could have lacked standing to try his case if he had been successful in disabling the court. Han had also been tasked with appointing an independent counsel to investigate Yoon (to avoid the conflicts of interest that have appeared with the prosecutor’s office), but he had declined, leading to the current debacle of suspect loyalties and suspicious/delayed/tampered/sabotaged legal processes. One Constitutional Court justice claimed that the current political chaos was directly related to Han’s malfeasance and non-cooperation in these matters and found for impeachment–but she was a tiny minority of one in the ruling.

The Constitutional Court’s ruling on Han Duck Soo was already problematic in that it was out of sequence. The fact that they ruled first before Yoon’s case, and ruled against impeachment is an ominous signal. Two other high officials, Kim Seong-hun, and Lee Kwang-woo (of the presidential security service), indicted for impeding Yoon’s arrest, have recently also had their arrest warrants rejected.  These are powerful figures who are now at large, with huge axes to grind. The trends are not in favor of impartial justice or peaceful resolution.

Washington’s Dirty Hand

The delayed impeachment ruling of Yoon itself is widely thought to be due to Washington’s pressure: it has been one month since the testimony was completed, but still there has been no ruling. This is abnormally long for what is an open-and-shut case: there is no doubt that Yoon declared Martial Law (he is on television declaring it!), and there is no doubt that he used extra-constitutional means–military force–to implement it and to try to prevent its rescission. But it’s widely considered that the ruling is delayed so that Lee Jae Myung’s appeal ruling (due on 3/26) will be decided before the Constitutional court’s ruling on Yoon is made public.

This is because Lee Jae Myung, the opposition DP party chair, would be the leading candidate for president if the impeachment of Yoon triggers a snap election (in 60 days). He is currently 20+ points ahead of any other potential candidate by polling. The presidency would be his to take under normal circumstances.

However, if Lee’s guilt is sustained by the appellate court, he would be stripped of all political rights for a decade, and the opposition DP would lose its strongest candidate.  Washington does not want Lee Jae Myung as president, because it’s understood that he would balance with China against the US, and de-escalate the coming war on China. Hence the delay. Opposition party representative Park Sun-won has verified that the US is exerting pressure through diplomatic channels to align the impeachment date as close to Lee Jae Myung’s sentencing as possible.

On the Brink of Explosion

South Korea is now a tinderbox on the brink.

One million protestors hit the streets over the weekend, demanding the Constitutional court deliver its verdict immediately. Some of these protestors had been previously protesting in the snow for weeks, demanding justice.  From the right, there has been open aggression by right wing counter-impeachment protesters, paid up or pumped up with “anti-communist” fervor by religious leaders and the ruling party, repeating ARD and CPAC tropes on “Chinese communist intervention”. These shock troops have destroyed and rampaged through Seoul’s Western District Courthouse, assaulted opposition party politicians, as well as attacked Chinese tourists as “spies”. The right have openly spoken of reconstituting the North West Youth league–the genocidal red-baiting death squads of the Korean war.

And so, it seems the American flag-waving beatings will continue until the anti-communist morale improves in the country.  Regardless of the rulings to come, South Korea’s destiny is precarious: more potential turbulence, more violence, even potential civil war. Certainly more twists and turns. If the constitutional court acquits Yoon, there will be mass popular protests in the millions: Yoon will be incapable of ruling and is likely to declare Martial Law again, if only to save his bacon (he is facing insurrection charges). Recent news has revealed that Yoon had plans to declare Martial Law multiple times.

On the other hand, if the constitutional court successfully impeaches Yoon, the ruling party and its followers will pull out all the stops: street violence and a Maidan-type insurrection by the right wing cannot be ruled out.  The quiet acquiescence of the right as was the case after the Park Geun Hye impeachment is unlikely, given the heated propaganda allegations and the polarized ideology.

So, South Korea is facing risky outcomes either way. The forces acting on this small country are immense. Whether Koreans get a clear diamond or spontaneous combustion from the immense pressure remains to be seen.

There is a tiny, narrow path that would relieve pressure and facilitate a more peaceful outcome. If the US removes its finger from the scale in South Korean affairs–and disavows the US-flag-waving right that it is stoking and supporting–a single word of reprimand would deflate the South Korean rightwing like a sharp pin to a blow up doll.

But that would take a geostrategic shift–a downshifting and downsizing dreams of US Hegemony, and a turn towards peace and win-win.

Is the US capable of this? Or will it continue its dangerous ways? The fate of the peninsula–and possibly the planet–lies in the balance.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by K.J. Noh.

A West Papuan leader has accused Indonesia of imposing a “martial law” on the Melanesian region in response to the kidnapping of a New Zealand pilot by rebels fighting Jakarta’s contested rule.

“It is clear that Indonesia is using the kidnap of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens as a pretext to strengthen their colonial hold on West Papua,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda.

Mehrtens was taken hostage on February 7 in the Papuan Highlands and has featured in video demands for independence.

• READ MORE:  Search for NZ pilot taken hostage by Papua rebels extended, says Indonesia
• Other West Papua reports

“[Indonesian security forces] are creating and exploiting violence to further depopulate our villages and create easier access to our resources through corporate developments like the Trans Papua Highway.

“This is all part of a 60-year colonial land grab,” claimed Wenda in a statement.

He has appealed for international aid agencies to be allowed to treat victims of forced displacement.

He said that in Intan Jaya, Puncak Jaya, and Nduga, Indonesian soldiers were “roaming the countryside, conducting arbitrary house searches, beating Papuan civilians, and even murdering women and children”.

Papuan shot dead
Wenda said that near Wamena, a Papuan named Stefanus Wilil was shot dead at random while crossing a road.

Last month, a 12-year-old boy, Enius Tabuni, was killed by soldiers who then “mockingly videoed his dead body”.

“Merely days ago, a woman walking back to her village with her husband was stopped, beaten, and then he was shot dead.

“Women and young girls have been raped, churches have been burnt by soldiers, and 16 villages in the Intan Jaya Regency have been abandoned by terrified inhabitants.

“My people are living in mortal fear of the next beating, the next murder, the next massacre.

“Everyone is a target: whether it is because they have a beard or Rasta culture, wearing dirty clothes, or carrying an axe or shovel to tend their gardens — every Papuan is under automatic suspicion.

“Hundreds have been forced to flee their homes by roving military bands acting with total impunity.”

Taking refuge
Wenda said they were taking refuge in the forests, where they lacked food, water, and “basic medical facilities”.

“But even there they are not safe, with armed police occupying every corner of the Papuan countryside, transforming the land into a hunting ground for Indonesian troops.”

Wenda, who lives in exile, said there were parallels with his own childhood experience.

“Seeing my people abused in this way brings up memories of 1977-1982, when I was a child living in hiding in the bush,” he said.

“The Highland operations during this time have been described by the Asian Human Rights Commission as a ‘neglected genocide’.

“Indonesia killed us with guns and bombs dropped from helicopters, but also with malnutrition and crop destruction.

“Even as a child I knew that my life was worthless to the colonial forces. The genocide and ethnic cleansing of West Papua is still neglected, as the massacre of 10 Papuans in Wamena in February proves.”

Up to 100,000 displaced
According to UN figures, between 60,000 and 100,000 West Papuans have been displaced over the past four years.

Wenda said his movement’s peaceful demands to Indonesia were:

• Allow aid agencies to treat victims of forced displacement;
• Allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights into West Papua, as had been demanded by more than 84 countries;
• Allow international journalists to report on the situation in West Papua;
• Draw back Indonesian troops to allow civilians to return to their lives; and
• Release all political prisoners — including 80 activists who had been arrested for handing out leaflets demanding political activist Victor Yeimo be freed, Victor Yeimo himself, and three students detained without charge last year.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

On January 6, the public comment period closed for a bill drafted by the Ministry of Justice in late 2022; when the ministry has evaluated those comments, it can decide whether to send the bill to parliament, according to news reports and local press freedom advocates who spoke with CPJ.

In the draft version circulated for public comment in December, the bill empowered authorities under conditions of martial law to temporarily block websites, apps, and social media networks and “partially or completely” restrict internet access in the country. That draft did not specify any restrictions on authorities’ ability to take such actions or any way for affected parties to appeal the decisions.

The draft also authorized the government of Armenia—which is involved in a protracted conflict over disputed territory with neighboring Azerbaijan—to intervene in television and internet broadcasting to disseminate information and ensure that films and programs feature “exclusively military patriotic content.”

“The blanket powers of censorship in a bill drafted by Armenia’s Ministry of Justice grant the state far too much discretion to block websites, cut off the country’s internet, and censor news outlets,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Armenian authorities should revise this bill and conduct thorough consultations with media representatives before putting it forward in a new form.”

Artur Papyan, director of the Media Diversity Institute, and Ashot Melikyan, chair of the Committee to Protect Freedom of Speech, two local free speech groups, told CPJ by phone that Armenia’s ruling Civil Contract party has a large enough parliamentary majority to pass the bill, but hoped that the Ministry of Justice will consult with media advocacy groups and amend the disputed clauses.

Eleven local press freedom groups, including Papyan and Melikyan’s organizations, published a statement criticizing the draft bill on January 12. Media rights groups are concerned that once a mechanism for blocking websites and the internet is established, authorities will seek to gradually expand its use, Papyan told CPJ.

Papyan and Melikyan said that the broad, unrestricted powers the draft would give the government, coupled with the lack of transparency over decisions, could lead to politically motivated decisions. They said the bill is particularly worrying given the government’s intolerance of criticism during the war in 2020.

During the 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan war, a temporary government decree prohibited the publication of reports “criticizing” or “questioning the effectiveness” of state actions concerning the conflict, leading to the forced takedown of hundreds of articles and fines issued to more than a dozen news outlets. Authorities also blocked many websites with Azerbaijani and Turkish domain names and the social media app TikTok.

Papyan told CPJ that Armenian authorities struggled to legally justify these blocks at the time, and he believes the current draft law seeks to give them such a justification for the future.

Armenia’s existing martial law allows authorities to confiscate media outlets’ equipment, establish special procedures for journalists’ accreditation, and “restrict freedom of opinion in accordance with the law.”

In July 2022, Armenia’s prosecutor general proposed legislation that would empower the government to block websites, citing the need to censor harmful material such as instructions on committing suicide or selling drugs. The proposal was dropped following criticism by media organizations, Papyan said.

CPJ’s email to the Ministry of Justice did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Philippines Court of Appeals has denied the motion for reconsideration filed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and former Rappler researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. over their cyber libel case.

In a 16-page decision dated October 10, the court’s fourth division denied the appeal.

Associate Justices Roberto Quiroz, Ramon Bato Jr., and Germano Francisco Legaspi signed the ruling. They were the same justices who signed the court decision, which earlier affirmed the conviction of Ressa and Santos.

• READ MORE: Cybercrime, criminal libel and the media: From ‘e-martial law’ to the Magna Carta in the Philippines — David Robie and Del Abcede
• Philippine Nobel laureate Maria Ressa appeals to Supreme Court
• Other Maria Ressa and Rappler reports

According to the court, the arguments raised by Ressa and Santos were already resolved.

“A careful and meticulous review of the motion for reconsideration reveals that the matters raised by the accused-appellants had already been exhaustively resolved and discussed in the assailed Decision,” the court said.

The court also claimed Ressa’s and Santos’ conviction is not meant to curtail freedom of speech.

“In conclusion, it [is] worthy and relevant to point out that the conviction of the accused-appellants for the crime of cyberlibel punishable under the Cybercrime Law is not geared towards the curtailment of the freedom of speech, or to produce an unseemingly chilling effect on the users of cyberspace that would possibly hinder free speech.”

‘Safeguard’ for free speech
On the contrary, the court said, the purpose of the law is to “safeguard the right of free speech, and to curb, if not totally prevent, the reckless and unlawful use of the computer systems as a means of committing the traditional criminal offences…”

In a statement, Nobel Peace laureate Ressa said she was “disappointed” but not surprised by the ruling.

Rappler’s video report on YouTube.

“The ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation against me and Rappler continues, and the Philippines legal system is not doing enough to stop it. I am disappointed by today’s ruling but sadly not surprised,” Ressa said.

“This is a reminder of the importance of independent journalism holding power to account. Despite these sustained attacks from all sides, we continue to focus on what we do best — journalism.”

Santos, in a separate statement, said he still believed that the rule of law would prevail.

“The [Appeal Court’s] decision to deny our motion is not surprising, but it’s disheartening nevertheless. As we elevate our case to the SC, our fight against intimidation and suppression of freedom continues. We still believe that the rule of law will prevail.”

Theodore “Ted” Te, Rappler’s lawyer and former Supreme Court spokesperson, said they would now ask the Supreme Court to review and reverse Ressa’s conviction.

“The CA decision denying the MFR [motion for reconsideration] is disappointing. It ignored basic principles of constitutional and criminal law as well as the evidence presented. Maria and Rey will elevate these issues to the SC and we will ask the SC to review the decision and to reverse the decision,” Te said in a statement.

The decision
The Appeal Court also explained its findings on the arguments based on:

• Applications of the provisions of cyber libel under the cybercrime law
• Subject article should have been classified as qualifiedly privileged” in relation to Wilfredo Keng as a public figure

On the validity of the cybercrime law, the court cited a ruling which, according to them, decided the constitutionality of the law.

“We find it unnecessary to dwell on the issue raised by accused-appellants since the Supreme Court, in Jose Jesus M. Disini, Jr., et al., v. The Secretary of Justice, et al. (Disini Case), 5 had already ruled on its validity and constitutionality, with finality.”

The court also reiterated that the story in question was republished. The court said the argument that ex-post facto was applied on the theory that the correction of one letter is too unsubstantial and cannot be considered a republication is “unavailing.”

“As settled, the determination of republication is not hinged on whether the corrections made therein were substantial or not, as what matters is that the very exact libelous article was again published on a later date,” the appeals court said.

On the increase of penalty, the CA said the argument that Wilberto Tolentino v. People has no doctrinal value and cannot be used as a binding precedent as it was “an unsigned resolution, is misplaced.”

That case said the “prescriptive period for the crime of cyber libel is 15 years.”

Traditional, online publications
The appeals court also highlighted the difference between traditional and online publications: “As it is, in the instance of libel through traditional publication, the libelous article is only released and circulated once – which is on the day when it was published.”

Such was not the case for an online publication, the court said, where “the commission of such offence is continuous since such article remains therein in perpetuity unless taken down from all online platforms where it was published…”

On the argument about Keng, the CA said it was insufficient to consider him a public figure: “As previously settled, the claim that Wilfredo Keng is a renowned businessman, who was connected to several companies, is insufficient to classify him as a public figure.”

The term “public figure” in relation to libel refers more to a celebrity, it said, citing the Ciriaco “Boy” Guingguing v. Honorable Court of Appeals decision. The decision said a public figure is “anyone who has arrived at a position where public attention is focused upon him as a person.”

It also cited the Supreme Court decision on Alfonso Yuchengco v. The Manila Chronicle Publishing Corporation, et al., which resolved the argument whether a businessman can be considered a public figure. The court said that being a known businessman did not make Keng a public figure who had attained a position that gave the public “legitimate interest in his affairs and character.”

There was no proof, too, that “he voluntarily thrusted himself to the forefront of the particular public controversies that were raised in the defamatory article,” the CA added.

In 2020, Manila Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 46 convicted Ressa and Santos over cyber libel charges filed by Keng. The case tested the 8-year-old Philippine cybercrime law.

The Manila court interpreted the cyber libel law as having a 12-year proscription period, as opposed to only a year. The lower court also decided that republication was a separate offence.

Aside from affirming the Manila court’s ruling, the CA also imposed a longer prison sentence on Ressa and Santos, originally set for six months and one day as minimum to six years as maximum.

The appeals court added eight months and 20 days to the maximum imprisonment penalty.

Jairo Bolledo is a Rappler journalist. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Upon assuming the Philippines presidency on 30 June 2022, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr — the only son and namesake of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos — delivered an inaugural address that did not mention press freedom.

Press freedom also went unmentioned when he delivered his first State of the Nation Address before the joint Senate and House of Representatives on 25 July 2022.

His silence on the issue was notable given that the former press secretary Trixie Cruz-Angeles, who stepped down on 4 October 2022 due to health reasons, had stressed that press freedom would be guaranteed under the Marcos Jr administration and that the administration would “work closely” with news media.

• READ MORE: Other Philippine media freedom reports

But as he pledged to protect press freedom on the campaign trail, certain journalists were pushed for getting too physically close to Marcos Jr.

It also remains to be seen whether his representatives will continue to evade critical questions during press briefings or if Marcos Jr will be more accommodating of interview requests. The normalisation of these practices would be a death knell for press freedom in the Philippines.

Media restrictions and abuse under Marcos Jr evoke memories of the Philippine media’s dark history under former Philippines president and dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law from 1972–86.

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility identifies five similarities between the Marcos regime in the 1970s and the current Marcos Jr administration.

Distribution of propaganda
These are the distribution of propaganda through government agencies and social media, the ABS–CBN shutdown, attacks and threats against journalists, crony press and media selectivity and propaganda films.

There are chilling similarities between the two administrations despite Marcos Jr’s promise that he would not declare martial law.

For the current administration, “working closely” with journalists means putting them in touch with pro-Marcos Jr vloggers, content creators and influencers. Cruz-Angeles is prioritising the accreditation of pro-regime reporters to cover official functions.

But her claim that accreditation is open to those of all political beliefs rings untrue as pro-Marcos Jr vloggers recently established a new group (upon the suggestion of Cruz-Angeles herself) to help gain government accreditation.

Celebrity vlogger Toni Gonzaga was granted a one-on-one interview with Marcos Jr at the Malacañang Palace in September 2022, showing how the administration accommodates those who ask soft questions. That reminds many Filipinos of Marcos Jr’s non-participation in most presidential debates and interviews during the campaign, opting to accommodate events organised by his supporters.

During the 2022 election campaign, there were times when his handlers did not invite critical journalists, asking those invited to submit questions in advance to control the flow of press briefings.

By accrediting pro-administration, hyper-partisan non-journalists, the Marcos Jr administration gives them legitimacy as “truth seekers” even if there is evidence they proliferate disinformation. It is also a strategy to discredit critical journalists for peddling “fake news”.

Critical journalists harassed
Critical journalists and media organisations are harassed and intimidated under the Marcos Jr administration, just as they were under the 2016–2020 Duterte administration. Disinformation remains rampant even after the 2022 elections.

Red-tagging — the blacklisting of journalists and media outlets critical of the government — has continued.

Shortly after Marcos Jr assumed the presidency, the Court of Appeals upheld the “cyber libel” convictions of Nobel Prize laureate Maria Ressa and former Rappler writer Reynaldo Santos Jr.

While these convictions appeared to carry over the selective harassment and intimidation of the vengeful Duterte administration, the chilling effect on the media is real. Those targeted become grim reminders of what can happen if journalists and news media organisations incur the ire of the powers that be.

The date 21 September 2022 marked the 50 years since martial law was imposed. Marcos Jr repeatedly claims martial law was necessary to tackle communist and separatist threats, dismissing accusations that his father was a dictator.

Even the funding for the planned memorial for Martial Law victims was cut by 75 percent in the 2023 National Expenditure Programme.

Marcos Jr intends to rewrite history textbooks to include his family’s version of the truth. By silencing his critics, he can further engage in historical denialism. This is important not just to erase his father’s dictator image but to escape his family’s legal problems like the unpaid estate tax and his mother’s conviction for seven counts of graft.

Media repression ‘normalised’
Media repression continues to be normalised under the Marcos Jr regime. One of his allies in the House of Representatives blocked the return of ABS–CBN, whose franchise bid was denied in 2020. Rappler and its editorial staff, including Ressa, continue to face legal problems as well as the threat of closure.

The National Telecommunications Commission blocked 27 websites accused of having communist links in June 2022. It took a court order for the online publication Bulatlat Multimedia to be unblocked, while journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio remains in detention on questionable charges after being red-tagged and subjected to death threats.

The murder of broadcaster Percy Lapid on 3 October 2022 — the second journalist to be killed under the new administration — also reflects the dire state of press freedom in the Philippines.

That Marcos Jr did not mention press freedom in his inaugural speech and first State of the Nation Address reflects his disregard for critical journalism.

Although it is still early days, his efforts to whitewash the dictatorship’s dark past and continue his predecessor’s media repression indicate that his pre-election promise of a “free press” is long abandoned.

Danilo Arana Arao is associate professor at the Department of Journalism, the University of the Philippines Diliman, special lecturer at the Department of Journalism, the Polytechnic University of the Philippines Santa Mesa, associate editor at Bulatlat Multimedia and editor at Media Asia. This article was first published in East Asia Forum.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Karl Patrick Suyat, 19, has no personal experience of the tyrannical rule of late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos. But memories of the atrocities and human rights violations committed during those dark moments have transcended time.

The year 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of Marcos’ declaration of Martial Law. But this year also saw the return of the Marcoses to power — Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is now the President of the republic and spoke yesterday at the UN General Assembly.

Despite efforts of Martial Law survivors, human rights groups, and even academics to remind the Filipino people of the abuses of the Marcos family, Marcos Jr was still able to clinch the country’s top post.

• READ MORE: Networked propaganda: How the Marcoses are using social media to reclaim Malacañang
• Networked Propaganda: How the Marcoses are rewriting history
• Martial law brutality in ‘educational’ musical drama Katips touches raw nerve in NZ – David Robie
• Martial Law Day in the Philippines

Fueled by outrage and anguish, Suyat thought of a way to channel his energy and still fight back despite the Marcoses’ victory — he founded “Project Gunita” (remember) along with Josiah Quising and Sarah Gomez.

Project Gunita is a network of volunteers and members of various civil society organisations that aim to defend historical truth. They particularly push back against historical denialism and protect truths about the Martial Law years.

Through the project, the three founders and their members created a digital archive of all materials that contain information about Marcos’ Martial Law to preserve them.

Archiving is not new since other government offices and groups like the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation and the Human Rights Violations Victims’ Memorial Commission, under the Commission on Human Rights, have made efforts to preserve Martial Law materials.

But Project Gunita is born out of the spirit of volunteerism and nationalism among young Filipinos.

From old newspapers, magazines, and books — Project Gunita members seek and buy materials, and then scan them to be preserved in the archives. The project’s archiving started right after Marcos Jr’s victory.

“Having read through the history of dictatorships, from Benito Mussolini to Adolf Hitler to Ferdinand Marcos himself, lagi’t-laging ang unang hinahabol, ang unang-unang tinatarget ng mga diktador ay ‘yong mga silid-aklatan, libraries, at ‘yong mga arkibo – the archives (always, the ones being targeted first by dictators are libraries and archives),” Suyat told Rappler.

Suyat believes that the Marcoses won’t be content with just distorting and whitewashing the atrocities of the Marcos administration. They would eventually go after the archives to erase the truth, Suyat added.

“The only question is when, it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. And I don’t want to wait until that time happens before we start to scramble around to save the archives.

“Habang may panahon pa (while we still have time), while we can still do it, ‘di ba? (right?) Bakit hindi natin gagawin? (Why don’t we do it?).”

Even before Marcos Jr’s victory, journalists have pointed out that his family not only revises history, but also introduces an alternative history that favours them. The Marcoses also rode on various disinformation networks to disseminate falsehoods.

A two-part investigative story by Rappler showed how the Marcoses used social media to reclaim power and rewrite history to hide their wrongdoings.

Passing the torch
The personal experiences of Project Gunita founders fanned their desire to continue the fight of the generation who came before them. Suyat, who grew up in a family of Martial Law survivors, feels it is his responsibility to protect their stories.

“I cannot allow their stories, as well as the stories of people I had gotten acquainted with later in life who are Martial Law survivors to be erased by historical denialism, that we all know is being perpetrated by the Marcos family,” Suyat told Rappler in a mix of English and Filipino.

Josiah Quising, a co-founder of Project Gunita and a lawyer, believes that these stories should be preserved because true justice for Martial Law victims has yet to be attained.

“It’s very frustrating ‘yong justice system sa Pilipinas and how, for decades, ay wala pa ring totoong hustisya sa mga nangyari during the Martial Law era,” Quising told Rappler. (It’s very frustrating, the justice system in the Philippines, and how, for decades, there has been no true justice for everything that happened during the Martial Law era.)

On the inauguration of Marcos Jr, Martial Law survivors led by playwright Boni Ilagan pledged to continue guarding against tyranny.

In the same event, they had a ceremonial passing of the torch, which symbolized the passing of hope and responsibility from Martial Law survivors to the younger generation.

Suyat and Quising believe that their generation is equally responsible for guarding the country’s freedom — at least in their own way. They strongly believe that since the government is now being led by the dictator’s son, they cannot expect it to preserve the memories of Martial Law, so they have to step in.

Preserving truths from generation to generation

“Wala ka namang naririnig.
‘Di ka naman nakikinig
Parang kuliling sa pandinig
Kayong nagtataka
Ha? Inosente lang ang nagtataka,”
Inosente lang ang nagtataka by Bobby Balingit

(You hear nothing. But you are not listening. Like a chime to the ear. You who wonder. What? Only the innocent wonder.)

This song comes to Kris Lanot Lacaba’s mind whenever he hears people deny the atrocities of Martial Law. His father, Pete Lacaba, a poet and journalist, was tortured and arrested under the Marcos regime.

As a son of a Martial Law survivor, Lacaba has heard stories of torture and violence straight from the victims themselves. He recalled that it was on the pavements of Camp Crame, where his father was imprisoned, that he learned how to walk.

Even though decades have passed since those dark periods, he still vividly remembers how his father became a victim of Marcos’ oppressive rule.

“Ang ginagawa ro’n, may dalawang kama tapos pinapahiga ‘yong tatay ko, ‘yong ulo niya sa isang kama, ‘yong paa niya sa isang kama. At ‘pag nahulog ‘yong kama niya ro’n eh gugulpihin pa siya lalo (What they did to my father was, there were two beds and they would tell my father to lie down, his head on one bed, and the other, on the other bed. If he fell, he would be beaten further),” Lacaba told Rappler.

Aside from his father, his uncles Eman Lacaba and Leo Alto were both killed during Martial Law. It is extremely hard for Lacaba to respond to people who deny that human rights violations happened under Martial Law.

Now that he has his own children, Lacaba passes on the stories of Martial Law to them so the memories would be preserved.

“Mahirap eh, bilang magulang. Paano ba natin ikukuwento ito? Pa’no ba natin ipapamahagi ‘yong karanasan ng magulang nila at ng mga lolo’t lola nila?” Lacaba said. (It’s hard as a parent. How do we tell this story to the kids? How do we tell the kids about the experiences of their parents and grandparents?)

He even thinks of ways to make the stories appropriate to his children.

“So kinukuwento namin sa mga bata, ‘no? Hinahanapan namin ng paraan na maging appropriate sa age din nila ‘yong mga kuwento.” (So we tell the stories to my children. We find ways to make the stories appropriate to their age.)

Aside from his kids, Lacaba says he would always accept invitations by schools and universities to share the Martial Law story of his family. He believes that in this way, he will not only share the truths he learned from his father, but get to listen to other stories, too.

After all, Lacaba believes, conversation about Martial Law should reach everyone.

Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Seven weeks ago the Philippines truth-telling martial law film Katips was basking in the limelight in the country’s national FAMAS academy movie awards, winning best picture and a total of six other awards.

Last week it began a four month “world tour” of 10 countries starting in the Middle East followed by Aotearoa New Zealand today – hosted simultaneously at AUT South campus and in Wellington and Christchurch.

The screening of Vincent Tañada’s harrowing – especially the graphic torture scenes – yet also joyful and poignant musical drama touched a raw nerve among many in the audience who shared tears and their experiences of living in fear, or in hiding, during the hate-filled Marcos dictatorship.

• READ MORE: Two films duel for last word on brutal Marcos dictatorship in Philippines

The martial law denunciations, arbitrary arrests, desaparecidos (“disappeared”), brutal tortures and murders by state assassins in the 1970s made the McCarthy era red-baiting witchhunts in the US seem like Sunday School picnics.

Amnesty International says more than 3200 people were killed, 35,000 tortured and 70,000 detained during the martial law period.

Tañada has brushed off claims that the film has a political objective in an attempt to sabotage the leadership of the dictator’s son, Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr, who won the presidency in a landslide victory in the May elections to return the Marcos family to the Malacañang.

He has insisted in many interviews — and he repeated this in a live exchange with the audiences in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch — that the film is educational and his intention is to counter disinformation and to ensure history is remembered.

Telling youth about atrocities
Tañada, from one of the Philippines’ great political and legal families and grandson of former Senator Lorenzo Tañada, a celebrated human rights lawyer, says he wanted to tell the youth about the atrocities that happened during the imposition of martial law under Marcos.

He wanted to tell history to those who had forgotten and those who aren’t yet aware.

The Katips movie trailer.

“You know, as an artist it is also our objective not just to entertain people but more important than that, we are here to educate,” he says.

“We also want to educate the young people about the atrocities – the reality of martial law.

“History is slowly being forgotten. We have forgotten it during the last elections and I guess we also have the responsibility to educate and let the youth know what happened during those times.”

It is rare that such brutal torture scenes are seen on the big screen, and before the main screening at AUT the organisers — Banyuhay Aotearoa, Migrante Aotearoa and Auckland Philippine Solidarity — showed two shorts made by the University of the Philippines and Santo Tomas University of Manila featuring martial law survivors describing their horrifying treatment  during the Marcos years to contemporary students.

Some of the students broke down in tears while others, surprisingly, remained impassive, sometimes with an air of disbelief.

The film evolved from the 2016 stage musical Katips: Mga Bagong Katipunero – Katips: The New Freedom Fighters, which won Aliw Awards for best musical performance that year.

Freedom fighter love story
In a nutshell, Katips tells the love story of Greg, a medical student and leader of the National Unions of Students in the Philippines (NUSP), who with other freedom fighting protesters stage a demonstration against martial law on a mountainside called Mendiola.

His professor is abducted by the state Metropol police, murdered and his body dumped in a remote location.

The protesters begin a vigil and the police brutally suppress the protest and arrest and kidnap other freedom fighters. They are subjected to atrocious torture and their bodies dumped.

A safehouse branded “Katips House” takes in Lara, a New York actress and the daughter of the murdered professor who is visiting Manila but doesn’t yet know about the fate of her father. Lara and Greg form an unlikely relationship and their lives are thrown into upheaval when the safehouse “mother” Alet is abducted and tortured to death.

Greg and another protester, Ka Panyong, a writer for the underground newspaper Ang Bayan, are forced to flee into the jungle for the safety and become rebels. Both get shot while on the run, but manage to survive.

When Greg returns to Lara at the “Katips House” during the Edsa Revolution in 1986, he finds he has a son.

The film has a stirring end featuring the Bantayog ng mga Bayani, a memorial wall to the fallen heroes struggling against martial law– a fitting antidote to the Marcoses and their crass attempts to rewrite Philippine history.

Ironically, the same month that Katips was released in public cinemas, another film, the self-serving Maid of Malaçanang, was launched in a bid to perpetuate the Marcos myths.

• Katips – The Movie, director Vincent Tañada (2022)

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by David Robie.

The Philippine media described him as “Steady Eddie,” a warrior and survivor, and an accidental hero of the world-renowned People Power revolution who later became probably the country’s best president.

But Fidel V. Ramos, or FVR, was also a study of contradictions.

Also called Eddie by his friends, Ramos died on the last day of July, a month after the namesake son of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was ousted in the popular uprising in 1986 that Ramos led, took his oath as the new president in what observers believed was an election that was far from fair due to voting and election irregularities.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the Philippine elections

The former armed forces chief died at 94 from a heart condition and dementia, unimaginable to his admirers who saw him as “cool,” “steady,” athletic, maintaining his military bearing until his old age.

He was also a multi-tasking workaholic who played golf and jogged regularly while briefing journalists or preparing for his next travel to the communities under a rigorous schedule.

He succeeded Corazon “Cory” Aquino as president of the Philippines from 1992 to 1998 and was instrumental in boosting the Southeast Asian developing country’s growth through economic policies of deregulation, liberalisation and foreign investment, his Social Reform Agenda that reduced poverty and an anti-oligarch and anti-monopoly stance.

The only Protestant president of the predominantly Roman Catholic country was also known for his transition from a military general who fought leftist and right-wing dissidents and entering into peace agreements with Islamic separatist groups and Communist insurgents.

Contrast to ruthless military chief
His commendable turn as president after Aquino was a contrast to his past as a hardline, ruthless Marcos military commander who led a security force that rounded up dissidents and violated human rights.

His leadership also saw the harassment, incarceration and exile of Aquino’s husband Benigno, who was assassinated on his return to the country in 1983.

The confluence of events in the years that followed, until the 1986 uprising, was marked by Ramos’ decision to break away from Marcos and to support Aquino, who was cheated massively in the elections.

He and his military comrades, along with Catholic bishops, called on Filipinos to mount a peaceful revolution, making him a people power hero.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Filipino journalist Manny Mogato, who covered Ramos when he headed the Defence Department and the military, said in a social media post that the late president was “a man of action… he even (did) push-ups with 300 soldiers who took part in an attempt to overthrow Cory Aquino”.

Ramos neutralised rogue soldiers who attempted multiple coups against Aquino during her presidency.

Ramos attended the US military academy at West Point, fought in the Korean War in the 1950s as a platoon leader and led the Philippine contingent in the late 1960s in the Vietnam War.

‘Best president ever’
“Ramos was the best president the country ever had, guarded democracy, broke monopolies and made peace, ending right-wing rebellion, half finishing the Muslim secessionist war and almost reaching a peace deal with Maoist-led rebels,” Mogato said.

“FVR left behind a legacy of peace, stability and prosperity Filipinos now enjoy.”

Anastacio Corpuz, an 80-year-old war veteran, said he was saddened by Ramos’ passing, saying that he should have continued as a vocal authority and statesman.

“Through the years, he was always vocal against corruption in government and abuses by the political elite — including the new government under the dictator’s son,” he lamented.

“He will be greatly missed.”

Diana G. Mendoza filed this report for Pacific Island Times in Guam. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

On social media, Ferdinand Marcos Jr needed to have all pieces in place to stage a Malacañang comeback: he had a network of propagandist assets, popular myths that justified his family’s obscene wealth, and narratives that distorted the horrors of his father’s rule.

He had even asked Cambridge Analytica to rebrand his family’s image.

The living component among these pieces was Rodrigo Duterte — an ally who, when elected president, normalised Marcos’ machinery, painting over a picture of murders and plunder to show glory and heroism instead.

• READ MORE: New war: How the propaganda network shifted from targeting ‘addicts’ to activists
• Pro-Marcos, Duterte accounts step up attacks on journalists as 2022 polls near
• Networked propaganda: How the Marcoses are rewriting history
• Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

“I think that really, if we are to make a metaphor [to] describe the role of Duterte to Marcos’ win, it’s really Duterte being the sponsor or a ninong to Marcos Jr…. I think Duterte ultimately is the godfather of this all,” said Fatima Gaw, assistant professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman.

The alliance
Marcos’ disinformation machinery that was years in the making was complemented by his longtime ties to the Duterte family. Before “Uniteam,” there was “AlDub” or Alyansang Duterte-Bongbong.

Marcos courted Rodrigo Duterte in 2015, but Duterte chose Alan Peter Cayetano to be his running mate. Even then, calls for a Duterte-Marcos tandem persisted.

Gaw said Duterte played a part in driving interest for Marcos-related social media content and making it profitable. The first milestone for this interest, according to Gaw, was when Marcos filed his certificate of candidacy for vice-president in 2015.

They saw an influx of search demand for Marcos history on Google.

“There’s interest already back then but it was amplified and magnified by the alliance with Duterte. So every time there’s a pronouncement from Duterte about, for example, the burial of Marcos Sr. in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, that also spiked interest, and that interest is actually cumulative, it’s not like it’s a one-off thing,” Gaw said in a June interview with Rappler.

Using CrowdTangle, Rappler scanned posts in 2016 with the keyword “Marcos,” yielding over 62,000 results from pages with admins based in the Philippines. Spikes can be seen during key events like the EDSA anniversary, the Pilipinas 2016 debate, election day, and instances after Duterte’s moves to bury the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

On February 19, 2016, Duterte said that if elected president, he would allow the burial of the late dictator at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. On August 7, 2016, Duterte said that Marcos deserved to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani for being a soldier and a former president.

The burial pushed through on November 18, 2016 and became a major event that allowed the massive whitewashing of the Martial Law period.

Made with flourish
Related content would then gain views, prompting platforms to recommend them and make them more visible, Gaw said. In a research she conducted in 2021 with De La Salle University (DLSU) communication professor Cheryll Soriano, they found that when searching “Marcos history” on YouTube, videos made by amateur content creators or people unaffiliated with professional groups were recommended more than news, institutional, and academic sources.

“A big part of Marcos’ success online and spreading his message and propaganda is because he leveraged both his political alliances with [the] Dutertes, as the front-facing tandem and political partnership. And on the backend, whatever ecosystem that the Duterte administration has established, is something that Marcos already can tap,” Gaw said.

In an upcoming study on social media and disinformation narratives authored by Aries Arugay and Justin Baquisal, they identified four thematic disinformation narratives in the last election campaign — authoritarian nostalgia/fantasy, conspiracy theories (Tallano gold, Yamashita treasure), “strongman”, and democratic disillusionment.

Arugay, a political science professor at UP Diliman, said these four narratives were the “raw materials” for further polarisation in the country.

“Para sa mga kabataan, ’yung mga 18-24, fantasy siya. Kasi naririnig natin ‘yun, ah kaya ko binoto si Bongbong Marcos kasi gusto kong maexperience ‘yung Martial Law,” Arugay said in an interview with Rappler in June.

(For the youth, those aged 18-24, it’s a fantasy. We hear that reasoning, that they voted for Bongbong Marcos because they want to experience Martial Law.)

Arugay described this as “unthinkable,” but pervasive false narratives that the Martial Law era was the golden age of Philippine economy, that no Filipino was poor during that time, that the Philippines was the richest country next to Japan, among many other claims, allowed for such a fantasy to thrive.

Institutionalising disinformation
While traditional propaganda required money and machinery, usually from a top-down system, Gaw said Duterte co-opted and hijacked the existing systems to manipulate the news cycle and online discourse to make a name for himself.

“I think what Duterte has done…is to institutionalise disinformation at the state level,” she said.

This meant that the amplification of Duterte’s messaging became incorporated in activities of the government, perpetuated by the Presidential Communications Operations Office, the Philippine National Police, and the government’s anti-communist task force or the NTF-ELCAC, among others.

Early on, Duterte’s administration legitimized partisan vloggers by hiring some of them in government. Other vloggers served as crisis managers for the PCOO, monitoring social media, alerting the agency about sentiments that were critical of the administration, and spreading positive news about the government.

Bloggers were organized by Pebbles Duque, niece of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, who himself was criticised over the government’s pandemic response.

Mocha Uson, one of the most infamous pro-Duterte disinformation peddlers, was appointed PCOO assistant secretary earlier in his term. (She ended up campaigning for Isko Moreno in the last election.)

Now, we’re seeing a similar turn of events — Marcos appointed pro-Duterte vlogger Trixie Cruz-Angeles as his press secretary. Under Duterte’s administration, Angeles had been a social media strategist of the PCOO.

Following the Duterte administration’s lead, they are again eyeing the accreditation of vloggers to let them cover Malacañang briefings or press conferences.

“So in the Duterte campaign, of course there were donors, supporters paying for the disinformation actors and workers. Now it’s actually us, the Filipino people, funding disinformation, because it’s now part of the state. So I think that’s the legacy of the Duterte administration and what Marcos has done, is actually to just leverage on that,” Gaw said.

Targeting critics
What pieces of disinformation are Filipinos inadvertently funding? Gaw said that police pages are some of the most popular pages to spread disinformation on Facebook, and that they don’t necessarily talk about police work but instead the various agenda of the state, such as demonising communist groups, activist groups, and other progressive movements.

Emboldened by their chief Duterte, who would launch tirades against his critics during his speeches and insult, curse, and red-tag them, police pages and accounts spread false or misleading content that target activists and critics. They do this by posting them directly or by sharing them from dubious, anonymously-managed pages, a Rappler investigation found.

Facebook later took down a Philippine network that was linked to the military or police, for violating policies on coordinated inauthentic behavior.

The platform has also previously suspended Communications Undersecretary and NTF-ELCAC spokesperson Lorraine Badoy who has long been targeting and brazenly red-tagging individuals and organizations that are critical of the government. She faces several complaints before the Office of the Ombudsman accusing her of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act and the Code of Conduct for public officials.

“PCOO as an office before wasn’t really a big office, they’re not popular, but all of a sudden they become so salient and so visible in media because they’re able to understand that half of the battle of governance is not just doing the operations of it but also the PR side of it,” Gaw said.

Facebook users recirculated a post Badoy made in January 2016, wherein she talked about the murders of Boyet and Primitivo Mijares under Martial Law. In that post, just six years ago, Badoy called Bongbong an “idiot, talentless son of the dead dickhead dictator.”

Badoy has since disowned such views. In a post on May 2022, Badoy said she only “believed all those lies I was taught in UP” and quoted Joseph Meynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind.”

Angeles also said the same in June 2022 when netizens surfaced her old tweets criticising the Marcos family. She said, “I changed my mind about it, aren’t we entitled to change our minds?”

But the facts haven’t changed. A 2003 Supreme Court decision declared $658 million worth of Marcos Swiss deposits as ill-gotten. Imelda Marcos’ motion for reconsideration was “denied with finality”.

According to Amnesty International, 70,000 were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240 were killed under Martial Law.

The rise of alternative news sources
Outside government channels, Badoy co-hosts an SMNI programme named “Laban Kasama ng Bayan” with Jeffrey “Ka Eric” Celiz — who is supposedly a former rebel — where they talk about the communist movement. SMNI is the broadcasting arm of embattled preacher Apollo Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ church.

SMNI has been found to be at the core of the network of online assets who red-tag government critics and attack the media. The content that vloggers and influencers produce to defend Duterte’s administration now bleeds into newscasts by organisations with franchises granted by the government.

The first report of the Digital Public Pulse, a project co-led by Gaw, found that on YouTube, leading politician and government channels, including that of Marcos, directly reach their audiences without the mediation of the media.

“This shift to subscribing to influencers and vloggers as sources of news and information, and now subscribing to nontraditional or non-mainstream sources of information that are [still considered institutional] because they have franchises and they have licences to operate, it’s part of the trend of the growing distrust in mainstream media,” Gaw said.

She said that given the patronage relationship that religious organisations have with politicians, alternative news sources like SMNI and NET25 don’t necessarily practice objective, accountable, or responsible journalism because their interest is different from the usual journalistic organisation.

“I think that in general these two are politically tied and economically incentivised to perform the role that the administration and the incoming presidency of Marcos want them to play, and exactly, serving as an alternative source of information,” she said.

A day after he was proclaimed, Marcos held a press conference with only three reporters, who belonged to SMNI, GMA News, and NET25.

Rappler reviewed NET25’s Facebook posts and found that it has a history of attacking the press, Vice-President Leni Robredo, and her supporters. The network had also released inaccurate reports that put Robredo in a bad light.

Gaw said because these alternative news channels owned by religious institutions have a mutually-benefiting relationship with the government, they are given access to government officials and to stories that other journalists might not have access to. There is thus no incentive for them to report critically and perform the role of providing checks and balances.

“They would essentially be an extension of state propaganda,” Gaw said.

For Arugay, the Marcos campaign was able to take advantage of how the state influenced the standards of journalism.

“Part [of their strategy] is least exposure to unfriendlies, particularly media that’s critical. I think at the end they saw the power of critical media. And once they were able to get an opportunity, they wanted to turn things around. And this is where democracy suffers,” Arugay said.

Under Duterte, journalists and news organisations faced a slew of attacks that threatened their livelihood and freedom. Rappler was banned from covering Malacañang, faced trumped-up charges, then witnessed its CEO Maria Ressa being convicted of cyber libel.

Broadcasting giant ABS-CBN was shut down. Journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio is in her second year in jail.

While the international community lauds the courageous and critical reporting of Philippine journalists, Filipinos are shutting them out.

All bases covered
While Duterte mostly used a Facebook strategy to win the election, Marcos went all out in 2022 — and it paid off.

“[The] strategy of the Marcos Jr. campaign became very complicated [compared with] the Duterte campaign because back then they were really, they just invested on Facebook. [That’s not the case here]…. No social media tech or platform was disregarded,” Arugay said.

At one point in 2021, YouTube became the most popular social media platform in the Philippines, beating Facebook. Whereas Facebook at least has a third-party fact-checking programme, YouTube barely has any strong policies against disinformation.

“I think with the Marcos campaign, they knew Facebook was a battleground, they deployed all their efforts there as well, but they knew they had to win YouTube. Because that’s where we can build more sophisticated lies and convoluted narratives than on Facebook,” Gaw said.

YouTube’s unclear policies allow lies to thrive
A study by FEU technical consultant Justin Muyot found that Marcos had the highest number of estimated “alternative videos” — those produced by content creators — on YouTube. These videos aimed to shame candidates critical of Marcos and his supporters, endear Marcos to the public, and sow discord between the other presidential candidates.

YouTube is also where hyperpartisan channels thrive by posing as news channels. These were found to be in one major community that includes SMNI and the People’s Television Network.

This legitimises them as a “surrogate to journalistic reporting”.

“That’s why you’re able to sell historical disinformation, you’re able to [have] false narratives about the achievements of the Marcoses, or Bongbong Marcos in particular. You’re able to launch counterattacks to criticisms of Marcos in a very coherent and coordinated way because you’re able to have that space, time, and the immersion required to buy into these narratives,” Gaw said.

Apart from YouTube, Gaw said that Marcos had a “more clear understanding of a cross-platform strategy” across social media.

On Twitter, freshly-made accounts were set up to trend pro-Marcos hashtags. The platform later suspended over 300 accounts from the Marcos supporter base for violating its platform manipulation and spam policy.

Ruining Robredo was a ‘coordinated effort’
Duterte and Marcos had a common target over the years: Robredo. She is another female who was constantly undermined by Duterte, along with Leila de Lima, a victim of character assassination who continues to suffer jail time because of it.

“It has been a coordinated effort of Duterte and Marcos to really undermine her, reap or cultivate hatred against her for whatever reason and to actually attach her to people and parties or groups who have political baggage, for example LP (Liberal Party) even if she’s not running for LP,” Gaw said.

The meta-partisan “news” ecosystem on YouTube, studied by researchers of the Philippine Media Monitoring Laboratory, was found to deliver propaganda using audio-visual and textual cues traditionally associated with broadcast news media.

They revealed patterns of “extreme bias and fabricated information,” repeating falsehoods that, among others, enforce negative views on Robredo’s ties with the Liberal Party and those that make her seem stupid.

Rappler found that the top misogynistic attack words used against Robredo on Facebook posts are “bobo,” “tanga,” “boba,” and “madumb,” all labeling her as stupid.

Fact-checking initiative Tsek.PH also found Robredo to be the top victim of disinformation based on their fact checks done in January 2022.

“By building years and years of lies and basically giving her, manufacturing her political baggage along the way, that made her campaign in [2022] very hard to win, very hard to convert new people because there’s already ambivalence against her,” Gaw said.

Arugay and Gaw both said that the media, academe, and civil society failed to act until it was too late. “The election result and [and where the] political landscape is at now is a product of that neglect,” Gaw said.

There is still a lack of a systemic approach on how to engage with disinformation, said Gaw, since much of it is still untraceable and underground. To add, Arugay said tech companies are to blame for their nature of prioritising profit.

“Just like in 2016, the disinformation network and architecture responsible for the 2022 electoral victory of Marcos Jr. will not die down. They will not fade.

“They will not wither away. They will just transition because the point is no longer to get him elected, the point is for him to govern or make sure that he is protected while in power,” Arugay said.

When the new administration comes in, it will be the public’s responsibility to hold elected officials accountable. But if this strategy — instilled by Duterte’s administration and continued by Marcos — continues, crucifying critics on social media and in real life, blaming past administrations and the opposition for the poor state of the country, and concocting narratives to fool Filipinos, what will reality in the Philippines look like down the line?

Loreben Tuquero is a journalist for Rappler. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Migrants and overseas Filipinos in Aotearoa New Zealand today called on the governments of both Australia and New Zealand to halt all military and security aid to the Philippines in protest over last month’s “fraudulent” general election.

At simultaneous meetings in Auckland and Wellington, a new broad coalition of social justice and community campaigners endorsed a statement pledging: “Never forget, never again martial law!”

“Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr, was elected President in a landslide ballot on May 9 and will take office at the end of this month.

• READ MORE: How Marcos could control hunt for his family’s wealth as president
• Marcos Jr’s camp still evades issue of unpaid estate tax
• Robredo is number one victim of red-tagging, says ex-AFP spokesperson
• Other Philippine election reports

His father ruled the Philippines with draconian leadership — including 14 years of martial law — between 1965 and 1986 until he was ousted by a People Power uprising.

Marcos Jr – along with his mother Imelda – has long tried to thwart efforts to recover billions of dollars plundered during his father’s autocratic rule.

“Police and military forces should be investigated for their participation in red-tagging, illegal arrests on trumped up charges, extrajudicial killings, and all forms of human rights abuses,” the statement said.

“We call on the International Criminal Court to pursue investigation and trial of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte for massive human rights breaches in its drug war and systematic attacks against political activists, human rights advocates and anti-corruption crusaders.”

Call for ‘transparent government’
The statement called for “transparent government” and for all public funds to be accounted for.

“We specifically call for realignment of the national budget in favour of covid aid, public health and social services instead of wasting billions for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and other government machineries that aim to suppress critics of its corruption and human rights abuses.”

The statement urged the “dismantling” of NTF-ELCAC.

The Supreme Court of the Philippines was called on to “act on the petitions lodged by various persons and groups regarding the disqualification of Ferdinand Marcos Jr to run for office due to his conviction” for tax evasion.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue has confirmed that the court-ordered Marcos family’s tax bill remains unpaid and news reports say this is estimated to now total about 23 billion pesos (NZ$670 million).

The statement called on the Department of Justice and Supreme Court to provide for immediate and unconditional release of the unjustly jailed Senator Leila de Lima — an outspoken critic of Duterte — “following the recantation of the testimonies of three key witnesses”, and also freedom for more than 700 political prisoners “languishing in jail on trumped-up charges”.

The gathered Filipino community also sought an official Day of Remembrance and Tribute for all the victims of Marcos dictatorship to mark the 50th year commemoration of the declaration of martial law on 21 September 2022.

‘Truth army’ to monitor social media
“We call on all Filipinos to remain vigilant as a truth army, to tirelessly monitor and report social media platforms in serious breach of community standards, and to push for stronger laws in place for disinformation to be punished,” the statement said.

Filipinos in the two cities — Auckland and Wellington — pledged support for the Angat Buhay cause of defending Philippines “history, truth and democracy”.

Speakers included Filipino trade unionist Dennis Maga; Mikee Santos of Migrante Aotearoa; an unsuccessful Filipino Labour candidate in the 2020 NZ elections, Romy Udanga; Faye Bañares of AtinAngBukas; and speaking by Zoom from Manila, Senate candidate Luke Espiritu, who said the new Marcos regime would be able to achieve virtual “martial law” without declaring it.

“All Marcos needs to do is suppress dissent, and he has all the sophisticated technology available to do this that his father never had,” Espiritu said.

Northland Kakampink coordinator Faye Bañares said the new Angat Buhay NGO should not take over the responsibility of providing for the poor in the community, although the aim is to help them.

“The NGO should push the Philippine government to face their responsibility and be transparent about what they do,” she said.

Many speakers told how shocked they were in the general election over a “massive breakdown of vote counting machines and voter disenfranchisement” and the “incredibly rapid count of COMELEC transparency servers” to award the “unbelievable final tally” of 31 million votes in favour of Ferdinand Marcos Jr as president and Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter Sara as vice-president.

Social media troll farms
Denouncing the social media troll farms, the meeting critics said “all the worst lies, disinformation and red-tagging were committed against [outgoing vice-president] Leni Robredo, opposition candidates and parties who stood up against [Rodrigo] Duterte and the Marcos-Duterte tandem.”

In November 2021, the Philippines and New Zealand agreed to boost maritime security cooperation during the 6th Philippines-New Zealand Foreign Ministry Consultations hosted by the Philippines.

Both sides acknowledged the growing breadth and depth of Philippines-New Zealand bilateral cooperation, particularly in the areas of defence and security, health, trade and investments, development cooperation, people-to-people and cultural engagements.

Trade between both countries is worth about trade in goods and services is worth about NZ$1.15 billion.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by David Robie.

Former political prisoner Cristina Bawagan still has the dress she wore the day she was arrested, tortured and sexually abused by soldiers during the late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s brutal era of martial law.

Bawagan fears the horrors of Marcos’s rule would be diminished if his namesake son wins the presidency in Monday’s election, a victory that would cap a three-decade political fightback for a family driven out in a 1986 “people power” uprising.

Also known as “Bongbong”, Marcos Jr has benefited from what some political analysts describe as a decades-long public relations effort to alter perceptions of his family, accused of living lavishly at the helm of one of Asia’s most notorious kleptocracies.

• READ MORE: Other Philippines election reports
• More pictures from the NZ Kakampink rally for democracy today

As Philippine president, Marcos could control hunt for his family’s wealth

Rivals of the family say the presidential run is an attempt to rewrite history, and change a narrative of corruption and authoritarianism associated with his father’s era.

“This election is not just a fight for elected positions. It is also a fight against disinformation, fake news, and historical revisionism,” Vice-President Leni Robredo, Marcos’s main rival in the presidential race, told supporters in March.

TSEK.PH, a fact-checking initiative for the May 9 vote, reported that it had debunked scores of martial law-related disinformation it said was used to rehabilitate, erase or burnish the discreditable record of Marcos Sr.

No reply to questions
Marcos Jr.’s camp did not reply to written requests for comment on Bawagan’s story.

Marcos Jr., who last week called his late father a “political genius”, has previously denied claims of spreading misinformation and his spokesperson has said Marcos does not engage in negative campaigning.

Bawagan, 67, said martial law victims like her needed to share their stories to counter the portrayal of the elder Marcos’s regime as a peaceful, golden age for the Southeast Asian country.

“It is very important they see primary evidence that it really happened,” said Bawagan while showing the printed dress which had a tear below the neckline where her torturer passed a blade across her chest and fondled her breasts.

The elder Marcos ruled for two decades from 1965, almost half of it under martial law.

During that time, 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3240 were killed, according to figures from Amnesty International — figures which Marcos Jr. questioned in a January interview.

Bawagan, an activist, was arrested on 27 May 1981 by soldiers in the province of Nueva Ecija for alleged subversion and brought to a “safehouse” where she was beaten as they tried to extract a confession from her.

“I would receive slaps on my face every time they were not satisfied with my answers and that was all the time,” Bawagan said. “They hit strongly at my thighs and clapped my ears. They tore my duster (dress) and fondled my breasts.”

“The hardest thing was when they put an object in my vagina. That was the worst part of it and all throughout I was screaming. No one seemed to hear,” said Bawagan, a mother of two.

‘No arrests’
In a conversation with Marcos Jr. that appeared on YouTube in 2018, Juan Ponce Enrile, who served as the late dictator’s defence minister, said not one person was arrested for their political and religious views, or for criticising the elder Marcos.

However, more than 11,000 victims of state brutality during Martial Law later received reparations using millions from Marcos’s Swiss bank deposits, part of the billions the family siphoned off from the country’s coffers that were recovered by the Philippine government.

Among them was Felix Dalisay, who was detained for 17 months from August 1973 after he was beaten and tortured by soldiers trying to force him to inform on other activists, causing him to suffer hearing loss.

“They kicked me even before I boarded the military jeep so I fell and hit my face on the ground,” Dalisay said, showing a scar on his right eye as he recounted the day he was arrested.

When they reached the military headquarters, Dalisay said he was brought to an interrogation room, where soldiers repeatedly clapped his ears, kicked and hit him, sometimes with a butt of a rifle, during questioning.

“They started by inserting bullets used in a .45 calibre gun between my fingers and they would squeeze my hand. That really hurt. If they were not satisfied with my answers, they would hit me,” Dalisay pointing to different parts of his body.

The return of a Marcos to the country’s seat of power is unthinkable for Dalisay, who turned 70 this month.

“Our blood is boiling at that thought,” said Dalisay.

“Marcos Sr declared martial law then they will say nobody was arrested, and tortured? We are here speaking while we are still alive.”

Republished with permission from Rappler.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The military’s brutality is a daily reality for all the people of Myanmar. As Myanmar’s army prepares to deploy and reinforce its bases with hundreds of extra troops, the country’s media workers remain exposed to Covid-19 and under extreme threat, writes Phil Thornton.

Myanmar’s military leaders used its armed forces to launch its coup and take control of the country from its elected government on 1 February 2021. In protest, millions of people took to the streets.

The military responded to these protests by sending armed soldiers and police into residential areas to arrest defiant civilians, workers, students, doctors and nurses.

In March, martial law was enforced in Yangon, snipers were used, and protesters were shot on sight.

• READ MORE: Other Myanmar coup articles

To restrict news coverage of their crimes and to impede the organisatiojn of protests, the military ordered telecommunication companies to restrict internet and mobile phone coverage. Independent media outlets had their licences withdrawn, offices were raided and trashed.

Journalists were targeted and hunted by soldiers and police. Obscure laws were added to the penal code and used to restrict freedom of speech and expression. State-controlled media published pages of arrest warrants and photographs of the wanted, including journalists.

To avoid arrest, independent journalists went underground or sought refuge with border based ethnic armed organisations.

Myanmar journalists are well aware that being “arrested” and held in detention by the military doesn’t come with respect for their legal or human rights. The military uses a wide range of obscure laws, some dating back to colonial times, to detain, intimidate and silence its critics — academics, medics, journalists, students and workers.

95 journalists arrested
Independent website, Reporting ASEAN, recorded that, as of August 18, 95 journalists had been arrested and 42 were being held in detention.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) estimated by August 29 that the military has now killed at least 1026 people, arrested 7627, issued warrants for 1984 and are still holding 6025 in detention.

They want names
Those arrested are taken to interrogation centres and held indefinitely without contact with family or legal representation. Torture is used to extort names and contacts from the detained to be added to the military’s long list of those to be hunted down and suppressed into silence.

One of those names on the military’s wanted list is that of journalist Nyan Linn Htet, now in hiding, after a warrant under Section 505 (a) was issued for his arrest.

Nyan Linn Htet, managing editor of Mekong News, in an interview with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) explains the impact of being hunted has had on both him and his family.

“If I’m arrested it means I lose everything. When we had to run and go into hiding, we lost our home and our possessions. You lose your income. Your equipment. You never feel safe when hiding. Living like this affects all of us. If the military does not find me, they will pressure and threaten my family with arrest.”

Nyan Linn Htet said he is still working despite the risk of arrest.

“Losing a journalist is a big loss for our struggle for democracy. We’re only doing our job as reporters, but our news coverage exposes the military and its abuses – this is why we’re the enemy.”

Despite the danger to him and his family, Nyan Linn Htet worries about the safety of those who helped him avoid arrest.

‘Caught in hiding’
“If I’m caught in hiding, the SAC (military-appointed State Administration Council) will persecute the people who gave me a place to live. I’m afraid they [the military] will arrest those who helped me.”

His fears are well founded.

Journalist and political analyst Sithu Aung Myint was high on the military’s wanted list for his political commentary and published opposition to the coup.

On Sunday, August 15, the military raided the home of his colleague, BBC freelance producer, Htet Htet Khine, and arrested both of them.

A week later, in its Sunday, August 21, edition, the military-run newspaper, Global New Light of Myanmar, said Sithu Aung Myint had been charged with sedition, spreading “fake news” and being critical of the military coup leaders and its State Administration Council under Sections 505 (a) and 124 (a) of the Penal Code.

He could be sentenced to life in jail under Section 124 (a) of the penal code.

Htet Htet Khine was arrested for giving shelter to Sithu Aung Myint, and charged under section 17(1) of the Unlawful Association Act for working with the recently formed National Union Government’s radio station, Federal FM.

Held in interrogation centre
Friends and colleagues of Sithu Aung Myint and Htet Htet Khine told IFJ they are concerned both journalists were held at an interrogation centre for more than a week before having access to either legal help or contact with colleagues or family.

Nyan Linn Htet told IFJ he is aware his legal and human rights will not be respected if he is arrested.

“They will not let us get legal help until they’ve got what they want from us. The military amended 505 (a) of the Penal Code to prevent giving us bail. We know they will jail us even if we have legal representation.

“We know SAC is torturing journalists because of the work we do.”

Reports by local and international humanitarian groups have detailed the severe beatings — hours of maintaining stressed positions, use of sexual violence — and killing of people while held in detention.

Nyan Linn Htet said if arrested, he knows it will come with beatings. He admits that the thought of being tortured keeps him awake at night.

“They will jail me, but only after they torture me. I will not be released until I sign a statement that I will never criticise them. I’m not afraid of being arrested, but torture scares me. There are nights when I’m too afraid to sleep.”

International media drop Myanmar
He and other local journalists told the IFJ it was disappointing that international media has dropped Myanmar from its news agenda and moved on to cover other stories.

Nyan Linn Htets said despite access difficulties, the international media can use local reporters who are willing to help.

“We know the difficulties media has getting ground access to Myanmar. Covid-19 restrictions also make it impossible to legally cross borders from neighboring countries, but we are already here in the country and are capable of doing the job.”

Despite the fear of arrest and torture, he is still reporting and urged local journalists to keep doing the same.

“It’s important we use what we can to still work and report news events of interest to people. People are accessing news and information in many different ways now.”

The military, while trashing local and international laws and ignoring its constitution, is quick to use and amend laws to jail its opponents for being critical of the coup and for reporting military violence, abuse and corruption.

We have no rights
Nan Paw Gay, editor-in-chief at the Karen Information Center, says the military council has no respect for journalists or their right to publish information in the public interest.

“There is no freedom of the press. If journalists try to report news or seek information from the military’s opponents — CRPH, NUG, CDM, G-Z and PDF — the State Administration Council prosecutes them under Section 17/1 of the Illegal Association Act.

“Since the military launched its coup, sources we use have had their freedom of speech and expression made illegal and they now risk arrest for talking to us and… we can be arrested for speaking with them.

“Independent media groups have been outlawed and totally lost their right to speak freely or write about news events.”

Nan Paw Gay points out if journalists are “critical of the military, its appointed State Administration Council or its lack of a public health plan to tackle the covid-19 pandemic now ravaging the country, section 505 (a) is used to arrest journalists for spreading false news.”

Essentially torture is used to terrorise journalists, he says.

“When the military council arrests and detains journalists, the torture is both physical and psychological. Even before being detained threats are issued and then during the arrest the violence becomes real – shootings, people being kicked and dragged from homes by their hair and beaten.”

Women journalists tortured
Nan Paw Gay says women journalists are more likely to be “tortured using psychological abuse – kept in a dark room and constantly told that they will be killed tomorrow – to mess and generate fear with their thoughts. You can see the effects of the tortured on some journalists when they appear in court – shaking hands and body spasms.”

Military brutality is a daily reality for Myanmar’s people. At the time of writing, the army is preparing to deploy and reinforce its bases with hundreds of extra troops into areas of the Karen National Union-controlled territory and where anti-coup protesters, striking doctors and politicians have been offered refuge and safety.

A senior ethnic Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) soldier told the IFJ that army drones and helicopters have been surveying the area in recent months.

“We know they’ve sent munitions and large troop numbers to our area… last time we had drones flying over our area, they later attacked villages and our positions with airstrikes. They’re already fighting in our Brigade 5 and 1 and have started in 6 and 2.”

Since the military launched its coup on February 1, there has been at least 500 armed battles between the KNU and the military regime and 70,000 Karen civilians have been displaced and are hiding in makeshift camps as a direct result of these attacks.

Fighter jets have flown into Karen National Union-controlled areas 27 times and dropped at least 47 bombs, killing 14 civilians and wounding 28.

Naw K’nyaw Paw, general secretary of the Karen Women Organisation, in an interview with Karen News, said villagers displaced by the Myanmar Army attacks are now in desperate need of humanitarian aid.

‘Shoot at villagers’
“They shoot at villagers if they see them on their farms, burning down their rice barns and killing the livestock left behind. The Burma Army also arrests people when they see them and use them as human shields to protect them when attacked by Karen soldiers.”

Naw K’nyaw Paw said accessing the displaced villagers is difficult, especially during the wet season.

“The only accessible way in is on foot, supplies have to be carried through jungle. Given the restrictions due to covid-19 as well as the increasing Burma Army military operations, villagers are unable to return to their homes and they will need food, clothing and medicine, especially the young and old.”

Nan Paw Gay says the military’s strategy to muzzle the media is a familiar tactic that has been used before.

“Stop international media getting access to conflict areas, shut down independent media, hunt local journalists and when there’s no one to left to report, launch attacks in ethnic regions, displacing thousands of villagers.”

Phil Thornton is a journalist and senior adviser to the International Federation of Journalists in South East Asia. This article was first published by the IFJ Asia-Pacific blog and is republished with the author’s permission. Thornton is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

We are now firmly in a time of fear – not only of the virus, but of each other. Fear destroys solidarity. Fear forces us to turn inwards to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Fear refuses to understand or identify with the concerns of others.

In fear societies, basic rights become a luxury. They are viewed as a threat, as recklessness, as a distraction that cannot be afforded in this moment of crisis.

Once fear takes hold, populations risk agreeing to hand back rights, won over decades or centuries, that were the sole, meagre limit on the power of elites to ransack the common wealth. In calculations based on fear, freedoms must make way for other priorities: being responsible, keeping safe, averting danger.

Worse, rights are surrendered with our consent because we are persuaded that the rights themselves are a threat to social solidarity, to security, to our health.

Too noisy’ protests

It is therefore far from surprising that the UK’s draconian new Police and Crime Bill – concentrating yet more powers in the police – has arrived at this moment. It means that the police can prevent non-violent protest that is likely to be too noisy or might create “unease” in bystanders. Protesters risk being charged with a crime if they cause “nuisance” or set up protest encampments in public places, as the Occupy movement did a decade ago.

And damaging memorials – totems especially prized in a time of fear for their power to ward off danger – could land protesters, like those who toppled a statue to notorious slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol last summer, a 10-year jail sentence.

Police & Crime Bill allows for:-

• Gypsy & Traveller vehicles to be seized;
• 3 months jail or £2.5k fine for a nomadic life without a travellers passport;
• Banning of “disruptive” protests;
• Up to 10 years jail for damage to a statue;

Dangerous, totalitarian legislation.

— Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) March 15, 2021

In other words, this is a bill designed to outlaw the right to conduct any demonstration beyond the most feeble and ineffective kind. It makes permanent current, supposedly extraordinary limitations on protest that were designed, or so it was said, to protect the public from the immediate threat of disease.

Protest that demands meaningful change is always noisy and disruptive. Would the suffragettes have won women the vote without causing inconvenience and without offending vested interests that wanted them silent?

What constitutes too much noise or public nuisance? In a time of permanent pandemic, it is whatever detracts from the all-consuming effort to extinguish our fear and insecurity. When we are afraid, why should the police not be able to snatch someone off the street for causing “unease”?

The UK bill is far from unusual. Similar legislation – against noisy, inconvenient and disruptive protest – is being passed in states across the United States. Just as free speech is being shut down on the grounds that we must not offend, so protest is being shut down on the grounds that we must not disturb.

From the outbreak of the virus, there were those who warned that the pandemic would soon serve as a pretext to take away basic rights and make our societies less free. Those warnings soon got submerged in, or drowned out by, much wilder claims, such as that the virus was a hoax or that it was similar to flu, or by the libertarian clamour against lockdowns and mask-wearing.

Binary choices

What was notable was the readiness of the political and media establishments to intentionally conflate and confuse reasonable and unreasonable arguments to discredit all dissent and lay the groundwork for legislation of this kind.

The purpose has been to force on us unwelcome binary choices. We are either in favour of all lockdowns or indifferent to the virus’ unchecked spread. We are either supporters of enforced vaccinations or insensitive to the threat the virus poses to the vulnerable. We are either responsible citizens upholding the rules without question or selfish oafs who are putting everyone else at risk.

A central fracture line has opened up – in part a generational one – between those who are most afraid of the virus and those who are most afraid of losing their jobs, of isolation and loneliness, of the damage being done to their children’s development, of the end of a way of life they valued, or of the erasure of rights they hold inviolable.

The establishment has been sticking its crowbar into that split, trying to prise it open and turn us against each other.

‘Kill the Bill’

Where this leads was only too visible in the UK at the weekend when protesters took to the streets of major cities. They did so – in another illustration of binary choices that now dominate our lives – in violation of emergency Covid regulations banning protests. There was a large march through central London, while another demonstration ended in clashes between protesters and police in Bristol.

What are the protesters – most peaceful, a few not – trying to achieve? In the media, all protest at the moment is misleadingly lumped together as “anti-lockdown”, appealing to the wider public’s fear of contagion spread. But that is more misdirection: in the current, ever-more repressive climate, all protest must first be “anti-lockdown” before it can be protest.

The truth is that the demonstrators are out on the streets for a wide variety of reasons, including to protest against the oppressive new Police and Crime Bill, under the slogan “Kill the Bill”.

There are lots of well-founded reasons for people to be angry or worried at the moment. But the threat to that most cherished of all social freedoms – the right to protest – deserves to be at the top of the list.

If free speech ensures we have some agency over our own minds, protest allows us to mobilise collectively once we have been persuaded of the need and urgency to act. Protest is the chance we have to alert others to the strength of our feelings and arguments, to challenge a consensus that may exist only because it has been manufactured by political and media elites, and to bring attention to neglected or intentionally obscured issues.

Speech and protest are intimately connected. Free speech in one’s own home – like free speech in a prison cell – is a very stunted kind of freedom. It is not enough simply to know that something is unjust. In democratic societies, we must have the right to do our best to fix injustice.

Cast out as heretics

Not so long ago, none of this would have needed stating. It would have been blindingly obvious. No longer. Large sections of the population are happy to see speech rights stripped from those they don’t like or fear. They are equally fine, it seems, with locking up people who cause a “nuisance” or are “too noisy” in advancing a cause with which they have no sympathy – especially so long as fear of the pandemic takes precedence.

My latest: Trump is not the cause of US political woes, he is one obnoxious symptom. For that reason, banning him from Twitter will not heal the US political divide, it will deepen and inflame it https://t.co/Qe5FYwSICN

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 11, 2021

That is how fear works. The establishment has been using fear to keep us divided and weak since time immemorial. The source of our fear can be endlessly manipulated: black men, feminists, Jews, hippies, travellers, loony lefties, libertarians. The only limitation is that the object of our fear must be identifiable and distinguishable from those who think of themselves as responsible, upstanding citizens.

In a time of pandemic, those who are to be feared can encompass anyone who does not quietly submit to those in authority. Until recently there had been waning public trust in traditional elites such as politicians, journalists and economists. But that trend has been reversed by a new source of authority – the medical establishment. Because today’s mantra is “follow the science”, anyone who demurs from or questions that science – even when the dissenters are other scientists – can be cast out as a heretic. The political logic of this is rarely discussed, even though it is profoundly dangerous.

Political certainty

Politicians have much to gain from basking in the reflected authority of science. And when politics and science are merged, as is happening now, dissent can be easily reformulated as either derangement or criminal intent. On this view, to be against lockdown or to be opposed to taking a vaccine is not just wrong but as insane as denying the laws of gravity. It is proof of one’s irrationality, of the menace one poses to the collective.

But medicine – the grey area between the science and art of human health – is not governed by laws in the way gravity is. That should be obvious the moment we consider the infinitely varied ways Covid has affected us as individuals.The complex interplay between mind and body means reactions to the virus, and the drugs to treat it, are all but impossible to predict with any certainty. Which is why there are 90-year-olds who have comfortably shaken off the virus and youths who have been felled by it.

But a politics of “follow the science” implies that issues relating to the virus and how we respond to it – or how we weigh the social and economic consequences of those responses – are purely scientific. That leaves no room for debate, for disagreement. And authoritarianism is always lurking behind the façade of political certainty.

Public coffers raided

In a world where politicians, journalists and medical elites are largely insulated from the concerns of ordinary people – precisely the world we live in – protest is the main way to hold these elites accountable, to publicly test their political and “scientific” priorities against our social and economic priorities.

That is a principle our ancestors fought for. You don’t have to agree with what Piers Corbyn says to understand the importance that he and others be allowed to say it – and not just in their living rooms, and not months or years hence, if and when the pandemic is declared over.

The right to protest must be championed even through a health crisis –most especially during a health crisis, when our rights are most vulnerable to erasure. The right to protest needs to be supported even by those who back lockdowns, even by those who fear that protests during Covid are a threat to public health. And for reasons that again should not need stating.

Politicians and the police must not be the ones to define what protests are justified, what protests are safe, what protests are responsible.

Because otherwise, those in power who took advantage of the pandemic to raid the public coffers and waste billions of pounds on schemes whose main purpose was to enrich their friends have every reason to dismiss anyone who protests against their cupidity and incompetence as endangering public health.

At what point does the UK officially become a banana republic? At the point when its health secretary awards a massive contract for medical supplies to his former neighbour and pub landlord? https://t.co/9DPlVXj5DB

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 27, 2020

Because otherwise, leaders who want to crush protests against their their current, and future, criminal negligence with extraordinary new police powers have every incentive to characterise their critics as anti-lockdown, or anti-vaccine, or anti-public order, or anti-science – or whatever other pretext they think will play best with the “responsible” public as they seek to cling to power.

And because otherwise, the government may decide it is in its interests to stretch out the pandemic – and the emergency regulations supposedly needed to deal with it – for as long as possible.

Selective freedoms

Quite how mercurial are the current arguments for and against protest was highlighted by widespread anger at the crushing by the Metropolitan Police this month of a vigil following the murder of Sarah Everard in London. A Met police officer has been charged with kidnapping and murdering her.

A reactionary police force full of white men picked chiefly for their physical attributes is not only inherently violent, institutionally racist and hostile towards political protest but also anti-women. Now who would have guessed that? https://t.co/PfCYwwmF1N

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 15, 2021

This article was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2021 at 8:55am and is filed under Activism, Authoritarianism, Censorship, Civil Disobedience, Civil Liberties, COVID-19, Fearmongering, Freedom of Expression/Speech, Lockdown, Martial Law, Police, Politics, Propaganda, Propagandists, Protests, Repression, Resistance, UK Hypocrisy, United Kingdom, United States, Vaccines.

Teachers and students in the Philippines are angry over the decision to allow military forces to enter the top state university. The 1989 deal was put in place to protect students from the warrantless arrests and constant surveillance by police and military forces that were common during the 1970s era of martial law. Mel Sta Maria at Rappler analyses the crisis.

ANALYSIS: By Mel Sta Maria in Manila

Because of the controversy resulting from the unilateral termination by the Defence Department (DND) of the University of the Philippines (UP) and the DND’s accord limiting the entry of security personnel inside UP, Commission of Higher Education (CHED) chair J. Prospero de Vera was quoted in news reports as saying a “panel of education experts will define the meaning of academic freedom and the role of security forces in the protection of academic freedom and the welfare of students.”

CHED or a “panel of experts” will define academic freedom for the University of the Philippines?

This is the most intrusive, gross, and unconstitutional governmental action that can ever be done in regard to education.

No governmental agency should define how academic freedom should be operationalised in UP and, for that matter, in any educational institution, like Ateneo de Manila University, Far Eastern University, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, De La Salle University, Mindanao State University, University of San Carlos, University of Sto. Tomas, and others.

The 1987 Constitution provides that “academic freedom shall be enjoyed in all institutions of higher learning” (Article 14 Section 5[2]). The operative verb is “shall” – not may, could, or any other discretionary word.

“Shall” is a command which all must observe unqualifiedly. No exact definition was made for a very fundamental reason.

From the constitutional deliberations, Commissioner Adolf Azcuna (who later became a Supreme Court associate justice) said: “Since academic freedom is a dynamic concept, we want to expand the frontiers of freedom, especially in education, therefore, we shall leave it to the court to develop further the parameters of academic freedom.”

The intent of the framers
The intent of the framers was not for the executive department, especially the CHED, to come up with an academic freedom “definition”. The task has been exclusively and particularly given to the Supreme Court “to develop further parameters of academic freedom”.

The reason is so obvious. The executive and Congress are political departments often imbued by temporal, erratic, and slanted motivations. Education cannot be left to these people.

And the Supreme Court did its job by enunciating the pillars of academic freedom. All institutions of higher learning have exclusively the constitutional right to decide on the following:

1. who may teach;
2. what may be taught;
3. how it shall be taught; and who may be admitted to study. (Ateneo de Manila vs. Capulong et. al., GR No. 99327 May 27, 1993).

Significantly, the Supreme Court did not provide any specific definition but only enumerated these 4 pillars so that academic freedom shall truly be expansive and free pursuant to the spirit and aspiration of the constitutional mandate.

For the CHED or any “panel of experts” to make a definition and impose it on UP or other schools will “straightjacket” or constrict academic freedom, opening it up to further so-called qualifications in the future.

If that happens, it will usher in the beginning of more, though gradual, intrusions. I dread the day when the CHED and the DND, on the pretext of “security” reasons, will give outlines or syllabus to teachers for them to teach students – worst, for the CHED or the police to sit in in a class to monitor whether the “right” “patriotic” lessons are properly taught.

State indoctrination
This is state indoctrination. An atmosphere of prior restraint will be created – a repugnant situation.

The Supreme Court’s parameters are enough guidance. There is no need to add anything. Neither is clarification necessary. Let us leave it at that. Let the institutions of higher learning principally decide what kind of atmosphere their education will have.

Justice Frankfurter, the most revered US Supreme Court magistrate on the subject of academic freedom, said: “It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculations, experiment, and creation.”

And the University of the Philippines, to show fidelity to that “business of a university” to provide the right educational atmosphere to its professors and students, entered into the accord with the DND.

UP grounds are public places which can be entered into by anybody. But, if they can be freely roamed by state agents with ulterior motives to monitor, overtly or clandestinely, UP’s academic community, education will be inhibited. That is not acceptable. The exclusionary nature of the accord therefore was important.

Without it, there will be an atmosphere where professors and students may exhibit uncalled for reservations in their discussions and research, talking and investigating less freely lest they may be mistaken as seditionist or terrorist by state agents roaming around the campus.

This undue self-restraint will destroy that “marketplace of ideas” which an educational institution should be.

What about ‘mistaken incitement’?
What if law or political science professors engage their students to research, debate, defend, or debunk the propriety or the pros and cons of socialism, Marxism, or even liberation theology, and roaming state agents, not experts in these topics, hear the discussions?

It is possible that, mistakenly, these professors may be suspected of inciting students to commit terrorism and then apprehended.

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

That quote is from Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest United States presidents.

“A revolution, woven in the dim light of mystery, has kept me from you. Another revolution will return me to your arms, bring me back to life.”

This is one of the memorable quotes in El Filibusterismo, written by Jose Rizal.

What if a theatrical play created, written, produced, and directed by students were staged revolving around those statements? State agents without expertise on these matters may suspect these students of fomenting radical ideas and arrest them. The mere thought of such possibilities can restrain free expression, discussion, and analysis.

Accord termination ominous
The termination of the UP-DND accord is ominous especially in the light of the Anti-Terror-Law (ATL), where mere suspicion is the threshold for an arrest based on the vague provisions of the law.

Professors and students can be victimised by the ATL. For instance, government surveillance can be made on any suspected person except that “surveillance, interception, and recording of communications between lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, journalists and their sources, and confidential business correspondence shall not be authorized” (Section 16 of the ATL).

Professors and students are not exempted. Also, while “confidential business correspondence” is exempted, confidential educational correspondence between professors and students are not. These omissions portentously tell volumes on the vulnerability of professors and students.

With the UP-DND accord’s termination and the ATL’s implementation, the lure to control the conscience, the thought process, the learning, the outlook, the discernment of students, may just be too great for unscrupulous state officials to resist. This is disturbing.

Government officials should not tinker with academic freedom. Many Filipinos benefitted from its unadulterated concept. Many more have served the country well, performed their civic duties consistently, and gave hope to future generations.

A definition by a “panel of experts” will not only define for educational institutions what academic freedom is; more dangerously, it will effectively dictate to them what academic freedom is not; what it no longer means. That is destructive and constitutionally abhorrent.

Dr Mel Sta Maria is dean of the Far Eastern University (FEU) Institute of Law in the Philippines. He teaches law at FEU and the Ateneo School of Law, hosts shows on both radio and YouTube, and has authored several books on law, politics, and current events.

Barbara Lee: I’m very terrified with regard to what we see taking place. And the signs are there. When you talk about shutting down the media, putting out their alternative facts, banning dissent and opposition, criticizing people who are exercising their First Amendment rights; trying to get people to believe, really, the distortions that they’re putting out there. That, to me, is very scary. It’s very dangerous. And you see also the corporate and military consolidation of the public sector. You see efforts to privatize schools. When you just look at the nominees, you see very few people with experience in the public sector. And so when you have the corporate sector merging with the military sectors, and when you have cabinet officials who have historically said they want to dismantle the cabinets and the agencies that they’re running, that I’m very terrified that we are beginning to see an erosion of our democratic values and an erosion of the public sector.

The new normal is of course abnormal, antithetical to being a human being, or at least a being that is Homo Sapiens before say, errr, the industrial revolution, or in the new parlance, before the Fourth  Industrial Revolution, or before the internet of all things . . . .

Schooling was bad, for decades, for sure, but redeemable in some sense. Things like educational systems are fixable, or they were before the Zoom Doom decade has begun to unfold. Face to face discourse was always discordant, yet the only way for some sort of consensus or arbitrated whole, but now, with Zoom Doom, etc., and especially now that many western (whites) people want to isolate, stay at home glued to this evil screen, as if glued to some sordid 6-hour daily soap opera, really  want to do things on line, do things sheltered, well, the new species of Western (white) Adam and Eve is, well, not the people I want in my trench if the revolution ever happens . . . .

Which will not unfold, this “revolution,” if this generation and the next one is bred to take a $1000 a month UBI, takes the pink and blue pills/vaccines, and continues to listen to the putridity that is commercialism-retail-PR-spin mixed in with the noise of the day, the propaganda of them all – 2,700 billionaires pointing their antennae in all the right directions for more and more control, overlording and alas gouging the economic and socio-economic and political power from the super majority, us.

So many people I talk with, gentrified with a bit of a retirement, or at-home income, plus the house paid off, more or less, and fairly good health, they are blaming the victims, blaming the poor, blaming the kids who got the wrong degrees and who are now in debt.

The divide and conquer is subtle with democratic voters, and overt with MAGA mutts.

This is the scam of capitalism – the people who have “made it” have done so on the backs of people, and many in capitalism make money on people who are struggling, who are lower income, who are not part of the 20 percent. Divide and conquer. Classify us. Put us on a spectrum. On a scale. Rate us. Give us a score, some detailed credit report, educational report, health report, activity report. Google and the other gulag thinkers, they have the tools to put us all on dashboards, even as I type out this screed, the data and the nanoseconds of my moves will be recorded.

Making money on fines, penalties, arrests, convictions, probation, and then all those middle-middle-middlemen making money on turning this financial screw or flipping this toggle or that investing switch to exact more and more economic pain, more and more generalized anxiety disorder pain. You can’t just do things without added-on layer after layer of people and systems taking a penny here, a dime there, a dollar over there, and a 20 percent or more cut there and there.

The reality is this country is threadbare, and county governments do not have the resources for that D-minus nationwide infrastructure that needs tending to. Counties and states do not have the money for sustaining public health, safety and well-being. We are in a system of money that banks have “loaned” communities putting them into bankruptcy. The loan sharks are large and sophisticated, repo experts of the highest order, foreclosure kings on a grand scale.

Imagine the concept of no clinics in communities, no diabetes clinics, public school nurses and counselors doled out like rare truffles (like one nurse per five schools, one counselor per 400 kids!). Imagine now in Oregon, the current college enrollment is down 20 percent. Think. Where does that go, where do we make up the work people have at community colleges? How do those worthy students move forward? Fulfillment centers? Two college degrees and working in a warehouse at $15 an hour (if you are lucky to be in a few states with that minimum wage) and praying for a universal basic/bumbling income?

And that discourse of a UBI is insane, no? No talk about public ownership of utilities, pharmaceuticals, medicine, hospitals, clinics, state banks, guaranteed housing, food security, and public transportation that can only be imagined by Phillip K. Dick. And I am not talking flying taxis, but clean trollies and constant schedules. Imagine, the end of the car for many people – that internal combustion disease maker, the thing that sits 90 percent of the time in a driveway or parking space. Imagine.

Nope. It’s the transfer of $1,200 a month basic income to the rich and the richest. A basic income in super predatory capitalism. Imagine. That is the paradigm. Sort of the same insanity of a Bill McKibben or Liz Warren saying a cleaner military – one running on biodiesel and one that recycles missile parts, on that repurposes medical waste and builds global bases at a net zero waste LEED Platinum level. Solar panel-wind turbine air force drone bases. All ships and carriers running on forever fuel, nuclear energy. Imagine that insanity. From the greenies.

The democrats and republicans are vicious, are psychopaths, and Americans on both sides of that manure pile who believe this is an exceptionalist society will believe anything to hold up their version of reality. They will wrap themselves up in the red, white and blue in varying ways. Voting is their emancipation from actually doing and acting.

Listen to this freak of a man, Trump, and watch the media just flatten down. Think about how impotent ” rel=”noopener nofollow ” target=”_blank”>mainline media is:

AMY GOODMAN: So, by April 2017, just three months into his presidency, Trump launched a Tomahawk missile attack on Syria in retaliation for an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians. Jeremy, you say in your series, “Like Pavlov’s dogs, the bipartisan war machine responded accordingly.” Let’s go to some of the media coverage of Trump’s attack on Syria. This is MSNBC anchor Brian Williams referring to a Pentagon video of U.S. missiles fired at Syria as “beautiful” three times in 30 seconds.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Go into greater detail. We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean. I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: “I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons.” And they are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them a brief flight over to this airfield. What did they hit?

AMY GOODMAN: That was MSNBC’s Brian Williams. And this is CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

FAREED ZAKARIA: I think Donald Trump became president of the United States. I think this was actually a big moment, because candidate Trump had said that he would never get involved in the Syrian civil war. He told President Obama, “You cannot do this without the authorization of Congress.” He seemed unconcerned with global norms. President Trump recognized that the president of the United States does have to act to enforce international norms, does have to have this broader moral and political purpose.

And yet, this country is waxing poetic about the “clear skies over our cities,” and how the lockdown has “given me space to think, to reflect, to evolve,” and “we are really getting closer to our roots” THANKS to Covid-19.

Dangerous-dangerous thinking. This is it, though … as more and more people (sic) who can work from home (not real work) accept permanent correspondence school-work-medicine-business. No big questioning of the motivations of the tech world, the billionaires, the pigs of AI and Surveillance. No bigger demands for this shit-hole country. No demands for holding all corporations accountable. No pitchforks and tar and feathers for the politicians, the cops, the multimillionaires, the billionaires and their evil seeds.

It is a passive culture, a giant joystick, operation, a couch potato citizenry. The Covid-19 plan-demic fit the narrative so-so well.

It is now rubber-necking to the tenth power. Almost everyone in the United Snakes of BlackRock and then those fleas on the tail of that US dog, Canada, UK, and Australia, is generally looking like a giant cast in a Jerry Springer outtake. The celebrity culture, the thugs of politics, the billionaire lizard class, the entire mauling media, the incompetence of the general population who self-identify as MAGA deplorables and/or middling liberals who believe in Manifest Destiny and Exceptionalism with a little bit of LGBTQA spin, it is the seeding of more and more weeks, months and years of stupidity. To mask or not to mask, to listen to this group of scientists, or that swath of virologists, that is the question.

No deep discussion about how broken the system(s) was/were way back when, and then this rewritten history covering up the bulldozing through the Regan years and up to now. Gutting rights, gutting checks and balances for Wall Street, Banking, Real Estate, oligarchs, polluters, thieves in suits, and the thuggery of cops and troops. Shock and awe, with this crappy media and amusing ourselves not to death but to neutering and spaying glee.

Imagine over 200 rural hospitals shut down just since 2006. Imagine simple compound fracture medical bill of $80,000. Just imagine, brand new aircraft carriers and supersonic jets, football stadiums filled with shiny bullets, and entire shipping ports filled with drones and bombs. This country has no checks and balances to demand human and township/city/state assistance during fires, hurricanes, floods and flu pandemics. No safety nets, no massive shut downs of the perpetrators of fire, poison, imprisonment, shock and awe on the streets by the murdering cops.

Then, we argue how much the thieves are hiding, ripping us off for, and on and on, the broken system.

Some of the most despicable people now are on mainstream media and in the odd-ball media, and the academicians are scurrying like the careerists they are, and then the homegrown extremists, the pussy Trump (not a man’s man or a woman’s man), the murder incorporated men and women on the thin blue line, and on and on. We make those old “banana republic” epithets against our brethren south of the border seem tame. We are a thug nation, a new gilded age society of 18-carrat 5,000 square foot bathrooms for the Botox, and a 1988 Chevy van for the fulfillment worker families parked in an alley.

It all seems like a giant mental anguish experiment.

The news-news-news is a constant drone of national and international frayed stories, and in the eye of the storm, we have community after community in the USA broken, breaking apart, sliding and of course it never was meant to be a system that is for, by, with, because of the people.

This all brings me to the deplorables, the across-the-street neighbors, whose boys decided my 12 by 14 inch sign that states we believe in a woman’s right to choose and black lives matter, etc., should not only be stolen, but that my car’s window bashed in because of that sign.

Yeah, two deputy sheriff calls, two citations, and then two separate no trespassing citations, and then more and more of my time spent on tracking these cases. So many moments of my mental state thrown into the criminal injustice system. How many phone calls from county courts folk and victims rights folk telling me in their 20 or 30 or 40 years they have never seen such a backlog, a cluster fuck.

Oregon’s lockdown measures, and now property crimes – this putrid 39-year-old boy-man, all 6’5” of him, caught by a neighbor throwing a 10 pound paving stone in my car window and then prancing around the street with hands up and juking as if he just made a dunk.

Then my spouse and I start digging into this “family,” this upstanding MAGA family, and lo and behold, the mother has been evicted from two homes, and she and her current husband filed for bankruptcy in CA more than five times. The perpetrator of the criminal mischievous also has a fine white boy, blued eye semi-man rap sheet – DUIs in CA, and felony charges for, err, animal abuse, AKA cock fighting. This guy’s CA record shows he failed to appear, failed to do court-mandate classes in animal abuse. Charges dropped.

As you peel back layer after layer in America – the blond mother, prancing around the neighborhood telling anyone who will listen how upstanding she and her breed are – the dirty laundry comes flying in your face.

So these anti-Chinese, pro-MAGA mutts, they have some ridiculous business of beach footwear (whatever that is) and they stamp a sea turtle on them, and on their web site, they say “from every purchase we support the sea turtles.” Imagine that, no sea turtle environmental group listed, and alas, these anti-Chinese/China MAGA get those loafers and flipflops from, well, you guessed it – China.

The court systems are super blogged. The property crimes are going unpunished. Cases are being tossed out. Retraining orders are not being followed up on. And this is just one small slice of the angle in America where things are falling apart. Under lockdown. Before lockdown. Beyond lockdown.

Too much on the American mindset’s bandwidth. Again, the mess of crap that comes into Facebook, on Twitter, on those hate channels, on MSNBC, Fox, et al. The paraded queens of stupidity, and the kings of crime, every minute of the day, dragging any attention span left in the American collective intellect/consciousness, pulled out.

This is America. I have former colleagues who are retired, who have their little house on the gentrified hill in this or that town. They believe in this shit-hole country. They think Trump is aberration. They think that all he’s done will go on in perpetuity (lifetime appointments of judges). They believe in this shit-hole system, just putting a few new lipstick shades on the predatory-parasitic-disaster pig that is capitalism left of center, center or right.

You get a chunk of cement thrown into your car window, and you are thrown into the morass that is/was/will be the dead pool of America. All systems no-go. All entertainment zones displaying all those sacrifice zones. All those Netflix documentaries, all those mini-series, all those years and years of drama and soap operas. It’s here, the lobotomy, the collective lobotomy.

A nation of 160 million and counting developing one or more  chronic diseases. One out of five (easily) with recurring depression. A middle manager class and intellectual class stuck in the inertia of cynicism. The gilded age that pushes more and more people into poverty and learned helplessness. This is the country of proud to be stupid . . . proud to be overweight, diabetic, hypertensive and yet, “lock them up . . . give ‘em a good beating . . . shoot them on Pennsylvania Avenue . . . give them a good dump into the east bay with a sack of cement.”

This wimp of a human (bully of that species), Trump, and his suits and ties that are warped (every single GOP before, during and after his death) and who  hold up the violence and extrajudicial beatings and murders this un-man Trump and his un-man Stephen Miller and his Sessions and Barr, putrid puffer fish in Florsheims, demand, we are there, man.

Chris Hedges: We’ve personalized the problem in Trump without realizing that Trump is the product of a failed democracy. Trump is what rises up from the bowels of a decayed and degenerate system. And you can get rid of Trump, but you’re not going to get rid of what the sociologist Émile Durkheim called that “anomie” that propels societies to engage in deeply self-destructive behavior.

Thanks to Mr. Fish and his incredible mind and drawings/art! Watch his documentary — https://www.mrfishmovie.com/

This article was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2020 at 10:23pm and is filed under Courts and Judges, Disinformation, Hate Speech, History, Hypocrisy, Identity Politics, Impeachment, Imperialism, Justice, Martial Law, Media, Militarism, Murder, Nationalism, Neo-Nazis, Populism, Poverty, Protests, Racism, Resistance, Right Wing Jerks, Riots, Ruling Elite, Terrorism (state and retail), Violence.

The people who own the United States and their allies around the world have a plan.  It is so simple that it is extremely devious.  Their plan has been in operation for many years.  It has most people bamboozled because it is Janus-faced by design, overt one day, covert the next, but both faces operate under one controlling head.  Some call this head the Deep-State. Even the Deep-State calls itself the Deep-State in a double fake. It is meant to make people schizoid, which it has.

The so called Deep-State has been given many names over the years.  I will not bore you with them, except to say that it was once called the power elite.  They are the upper classes, the super wealthy who control the financial institutions, Wall Street, the intelligence agencies, the corporate media, the internet, the military, and the politicians. They are multinational.

They are the wealthy nihilists who care not one jot for the rest of the world. They operate in secret, yet also run above-ground organizations such as the World Bank (WB), the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), etc. Their bloodstream runs on war, the preparations for war, and economic exploitation of the world.  All wealthy people are not party to their machinations, but they are almost always complicit in profiting from their crimes, unless they are very stupid.  Or play stupid.  Since I am talking about a great confidence game, that is quite common.

Other people, all other classes, the poor, middle-classes, even a portion of the upper middle classes mean nothing to the power elite unless they can serve their interests.  They are always waging class warfare to maintain their domination and control. Their recent version of this class war is underway in the United States and in many other countries. As of today, they are using race fears to create chaos and outrage to disguise their class warfare that is leading to the imposition of martial law.  Soon they will shift back to the coronavirus fraud. Back and forth, in and out, now you see it, now you don’t.

By shutting down the world’s economy, they have destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people and are creating poverty on a vast scale. Much famine and death will follow.  In the United States alone, 40-45 million people have applied for unemployment insurance and job loss is the greatest since the Great Depression. The reason:  a massive propaganda campaign created around Covid-19 fear porn.

This class war is not new, but it is conducted today at warp speed since these people control the technology that has allowed them vastly increased power. In the U.S.A., it is conducted as usual under the guise of Republicans versus Democrats, the two representative political factions that are the faces of the controlled “opposition,” who are actually allies in the larger confidence game.  Keeping “hope” alive is central to their strategy.  Mind control is what they do.  Speed is their greatest ally.  Race is central to their game plan.  They always say they are protecting us.

It is all a lie.  A show.  Nothing but a spectacle for the gullible.  A shadow play.

The current president, Donald Trump, is the choice of one faction of these psychopaths.  This year, Joseph Biden, is the shaky presumptive choice of the other. Both are deranged puppets.  Regular people fight over who is better or worse because they are living inside what Jim Garrison, the former District Attorney of New Orleans and the only person to ever bring a trial in the assassination of President Kennedy, long ago called “the doll’s house.”

It is a place where illusions and delusions replace reality.  It is 24/7 propaganda. It keeps people engaged. It gives them something to argue about, one team to root for.  It’s a sport. It is similar to Plato’s Cave.  Fire has been replaced with electronic lighting and screens, but little has changed.

The sick system of exploitation is oiled and greased with the tantalizing bait of hope dangled for the masses.  Shit slogans like “We are all in this together.”

But there is no hope for this system.

But when the propaganda is so slick that it creates a double-bind, people grasp at any neurotic “solution” out of frustration.  As I write, huge angry crowds are out in the streets protesting the sick murder of a black man, George Floyd, by a white cop. Police infiltrators have started violent looting.  Chaos reigns, as planned. Such killings are routine, but someone turned a switch for this one when just yesterday operation corona lockdown with its fear and fake statistics had everyone cowering behind masks at home as the economic lives of vast numbers were destroyed in a flash.  For today, the masquerade is in the streets. Many good people are caught up in it.  In a few days the scene will shift and we can expect another “bombshell.”  These surprises will keep happening one after another for the foreseeable future.  Shock and Awe for the home crowd.  The war come home.  The controllers know you can’t wage war against the rest of the world unless you do so at home as well.

When one group within the deep-state won the internecine battle in 2016 and “shocked” the country with the election of the comical Trump, the other deep-state group called the Democrats, immediately set in motion a plan to try to oust him or to make it seem as if they were trying to do so. The naïve thought this may happen, and their deluded yearning has been stretched until the 2020 presidential election, although some probably think Trump might go before then.  He won’t.

So many people have destroyed their minds and relationships because they can’t see through the fraud.

Early in 2017, as the outgoing front man for the CIA/warfare/Wall St. state, Barack Obama, left his time bombs for the future. The pink pussy hats were sent out marching to open the show.  Russia-gate was launched; eventually impeachment was tried. The Democrats. with their media allies, went on a non-stop attack. It was all so obvious, so shallow in its intent, as it was meant to be. But millions who were in the doll house were outraged, obsessed, frantic with rage.  They bought the con-game. Both those who hate Trump and those that love him have spent almost four years foaming at the mouth, breathless.

Trump was cast as the personification of evil.  A relentless attack on Trump began and has continued all this time. It is pure theater. Trump remains at the helm, as planned, holding the Bible aloft in a style reminiscent of a Bible thumping Klansman from The Birth of a Nation. Only the ignorant thought it might have been different.  He knows how to perform his role. He is a fine actor.  He outrages, spews idiocies, as he is supposed to do. That Mussolini style stance, that absurd hair, the pout.  Just perfect for an arch-villain. It’s so obvious that it isn’t. Herein lies the trick.

And who profits from his policies?  The super-rich, of course, the power-elite.  Who just stole 6-10 trillion dollars of public money under the hilariously named Cares Act?  The super-rich, of course, the deep-state.  It was a bi-partisan bank robbery from the public treasury carried out under the shadow of Covid-19, whose phony hyped up numbers were used to frighten the populace into lockdown mode as the Republican and Democratic bank robbers smiled in unison and announced forcefully, “We care!”  We are here to protect you.

Remember how Barack Obama “saved” us by bailing out Wall St. and the big banks to the tune of trillions in early 2009.  Then waged unending wars. Left black Americans bereft.  He cared, too, didn’t he?  Our leaders always care.

Obama was the black guy in the white hat. Trump is the white guy in the black hat. Hollywood on the Potomac, as Gary Wills called it when Ronald Reagan was the acting-president.  Now Obama’s war-loving side-kick, the pale-faced, twisted talking Biden is seriously offered as an alternative to the Elvis impersonator in the White House.  This is the false left/right dichotomy that has the residents of the doll’s house in its grip.

If you can’t see what’s coming, you might want to break out of the house, take off your mask, go for a walk, and take some deep breaths.  The walls are closing in.

Knees will be on everyone’s necks in the months ahead.

This article was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2020 at 1:17pm and is filed under 2008 Financial Collapse, Barack Obama, COVID-19 (coronavirus), Deep State, Democrats, Donald Trump, Elections, Exploitation, Fearmongering, Federal Reserve, Joe Biden, Lockdown, Martial Law, Media, Militarism, Opinion, Police brutality, Politics, Propaganda, Protests, Republicans, Surveillance, United States, World Health Organization (WHO).

The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) has strongly condemned the shoot-to-kill order by President Rodrigo Duterte this week as a ‘dangerous’ opening to target and kill anyone in a public space.

“We are raising the alarm in the international community on President Duterte’s directive to kill unruly violators of the coronavirus quarantine,” said coalition president Peter Murphy.

“This pronouncement is a dangerous order that allows authorities to target and kill anyone in a public space.

READ MORE: ‘Shoot them dead’ – Duterte orders troops to kill quarantine violators

“It is also a complete violation of the fundamental rights of Filipinos especially in this time of global pandemic.”

President Duterte addressed the nation hours after incidents of unrest and people massing up for food and relief in the country’s capital.

– Partner –

In his televised speech, his tirade of violent threats included: “I will not hesitate. My orders are sa pulis pati military…na pagka ginulo at nagkaroon ng okasyon na lumaban at ang buhay ninyo ay nalagay sa alanganin—shoot them dead,” (I will not hesitate. My orders to the police and military…if they caused any disorder, and they fight back and your lives are on the line—shoot them dead).

The same day, 21 citizens were arrested for going out of their homes and demanding the relief promised by the national government.

Residents rally for food, aid
Residents of an urban community in the biggest city in Metro Manila staged a rally asking for food and aid amid the government’s lockdown to contain the coronavirus, which in turn has left millions of Filipinos jobless and hungry.

“Our support goes to the poor Filipinos whose only crime is to be hungry and demand what is rightfully theirs,” said Murphy in a statement.

“The right to food and basic social services should be ensured especially in times like these. A video circulating in the social media shows citizens demanding food being violently dispersed by authorities.

“Naintindihan ninyo? Patay. Eh kaysa mag-gulo kayo diyan, eh ‘di ilibing ko na kayo (Do you understand? Dead. Instead of causing trouble, I’ll send you to the grave),” Duterte added in his recorded address.

Recently, the president was given special powers to distribute P200 billion (US$3.9 billion) to more than 18 million poor households. But after a week the aid remains unreleased.

“President Duterte’s criminal negligence coupled with brutal measures to address the pandemic is taking its toll on Filipinos. Millions of informal workers have been displaced and right abuses have been rampant all over the country,” said Murphy.

Enforcing social distancing
“The police and military who have been deployed to enforce social distancing are not trained for this task and have been the very perpetrators of human rights violations,” ICHRP stated.

The authorities have been detaining homeless people, putting curfew violators in cages and using torture methods to punish them, and even arresting citizens over “provoking” posts on social media.

Netizens showed their anger online over the president’s pronouncement to “shoot them dead” and called for him to be ousted. The #OustDuterte hashtag has been trending in the Philippines for two days now.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that “measures that limit individual rights and civil liberties must be necessary, reasonable, proportional, equitable, non-discriminatory, and in full compliance with national and international laws.”