CCP folds to terrorism :(

on teleradyo, karen davila and vic what’shisname are ignorance & arrogance personified.  speaking for an angry people daw, and telling us how to think and what to think.  hey you two, you’re back in the dark ages, along with the prez and some senators and congressmen, why am i not surprised, the bishops must oh so love you.  at the very least, please read this : rody alampay’s Democracy as Religion, and level up the thinking and talking naman!

Let us take it from the experience of Muslims. (Let us be honest to start, in other words: If there is any religion that truly reels from shallow and irresponsible discourse in the Western-media dominated modern world, it is Islam.) Just before 9/11, and even before some Danish cartoonist with balls started drawing Mohammed, Islamic nations led by Pakistan had begun calling annually for a non-binding UN resolution condemning “defamation of religion”. Every year from 2001 to 2010 the proposition received a majority vote from the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.

But every year, too, that majority vote had grown smaller and smaller, with previously fence-sitting members of the UNHRC one-by-one siding with the resolution’s steadfast critics: they who had warned that the broadly-worded resolution would likely be used by repressive governments to stifle any expression that can even remotely be tied to religious sensibilities. (The Catholic Church in the Philippines, for example, ties faith and decency to everything from the Reproductive Health debates to jueteng.)

The “religious defamation” lobby, in a strategic retreat, abandoned the annual campaign for a UN resolution against defamation of religion this year. Instead, it sought common ground with advocates for free expression, who were coming to every annual vote with an ever-growing list of reports and governments that had been proving their fears well-founded. The result: the UNHRC this year voted unanimously, no longer passing a resolution “combating defamation of religions”, but in its stead, one (with a deep breath) “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief.”

Two crucial shifts in the thinking. First, the focus goes from requiring governments to protect religion, to demanding that states protect individuals. Second, the emphasis is no longer on religion, but on tolerance.

The consensus no longer calls for restrictions on legitimate expression. Instead, it takes a more constructive and positive approach, emphasizing education, not prison and not violence, to weed out intolerance and bigotry (which, in any culture, is always seen as a symptom of maleducation, bad breeding, and an immature society.)

Tolerance will ultimately benefit all, the heretics as well as the faithful.

and to filipino artists out there.  i am dismayed that we are not united in protesting CCP’s surrender to CBCP’s censorship.  this is not about how worthy or unworthy mideo cruz’s art is.  this is about being forced to abide by values that blind and terrorize.  tinitimbang tayo nguni’t kulang :(

Let the artists be weird. They can only try to push the boundaries of thought and expression. That is why they are called the avant-garde. They are soldiers further in advance of the army itself, slashing and burning and clearing the path for whatever may follow. The boundaries must be expanded, but the artists themselves have no power to dictate where the rest of society will go.

For governments, on the other hand, as even the Organization of Islamic Conference effectively conceded, the reflex to empower itself, and to restrict rather than expand democratic space, is automatic. The notion that states can and should define and execute what is criminally insulting is an invitation to destroy all that a nation such as ours supposedly upholds: democracy as well as, ironically, faith itself.

Imelda Marcos, coming down on the side of the Inquirer, spoke of the Cultural Center of the Philippines as sanctuary for the Filipino soul. For all, she said more specifically, that is true, and good, and beautiful about this nation. She throws in the proposition that as a state institution, there is no place in the CCP for any thought that could insult any religion.

Actually, it is the other way around. As a state institution consecrated to the arts, the CCP should be agnostic to the notion of insult, and dogmatic to the possibility of expression, to the chance of happening upon art.

Art as Terrorism? Try Democracy as Religion. Where democracy is dogma, every expression is prayer, freedom is shared and miraculously multiplied to nourish the multitude – the idiots and even abusive among them. Abuse, of course, as in all religions, is a sin; but abuse of thought is also always indefinable, and so in the democratic theology, tolerance is the highest virtue. Democracy provides the only true environment where you can defend your faith, if you really have it, while also protecting the rights of others, if you really believe we all deserve it.

STAND FAST, CCP!

IF CATHOLIC clergymen had kept quiet, if Archbishop Oscar Cruz hadn’t called the exhibit “sickening,” if he hadn’t called the artist “sick,” if he hadn’t advised the artist to see a psychiatrist, if he hadn’t implied that the artist’s sexuality was abnormal, if Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez hadn’t called for a boycott, then Mideo Cruz’s Poleteismo could have gone unnoticed by the larger public.

Instead, ad hominem attacks against the artist — “supposed artist,” according to a member of the Catholic laity — have roused the curiosity of individuals, who are now buzzing about the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) looking for the piece that was branded “controversial” and “sacrilegious.”

talaga naman, what are the bishops up to?  stirring things up on the side to distract us from what?  the suvs?  but the senators have absolved them and the media have moved on to more current and sensational developments, i.e., whistleblowers on the cheating in the 2004 elections, the tandem illnesses of gma and her fg, the resignation of zubiri, the dbp suicide, the prez and the milf, at kung anoano pa.  can the bishops be trying to distract us from all THAT? but why on earth?

because really, why call attention to an “offensive” installation that the larger public was completely unaware of until their attention was called to it?  it’s not as if the installation’s out in the streets, like, you know, billboards?  and it’s not as if it’s the first time that religiously offensive art has been exhibited in the cultural center: Jose Legaspi’s installation in the Small Gallery, for example, which included a modified Pieta showing the Virgin Mother vomiting on the dead Christ.

but, okay, benefit of the doubt.  say the intention was not to distract, rather na-offend lang sila talaga nang grabe sa poleteismo ni mideo cruz, they were just so super scandalized by erect penises next to christ and crucifix.  kabastusan at kalaswaan, blasphemy and sacrilege daw.

on one free-standing wall hangs a life-size crucifix festooned with scapulars and rosaries, as well as a red phallus. Cruz shrugs off the outrage over the phalluses.

“It’s symbolic for patriarchy, a symbol of power. There are those who worship power, who put their faith in men who wield power even if the power is used against women, or against the whole of society. The fight for sexual and gender equality continues, doesn’t it? But the balance continues to be tipped in favor of the phallus. Is this good or bad? You decide,” he said.

(For some, the phalluses could very well represent the leadership of the Catholic Church in the Philippines – a group of grown men deciding on how women in the country do not have the right to control their own reproduction process, much less their sexuality. Currently the Catholic Church is hard at work campaigning against proposals for a reproductive health law. It has also come to a head against calls of the Lesbian, Gay ,Bisexual and Transsexual or LGBT community to allow same-sex marriages in the country.)

i would like to think that the bishops are aware of what the phallus symbolizes, especially as it applies to the church as a dominant power.  but certainly it is not to their advantage to allow the discourse to level up.  basta, they don’t want any talk of sex, much less any sight of the penis.  off with the penis!  yes to vandalism!  in effect demonstrating the truth of the message.

meanwhile the CCP is sounding somewhat conciliatory, correct me if i’m wrong. says ccp president raul sunico:

We have received many letters and texts coming from both sides. We just came from an emergency meeting of the CCP Board. It’s also divided about this. After this forum, we will continue to meet. In the end the decision must be beneficial to the majority.

the board is divided too?  that’s scary.  people who agree with the bishops on this matter have no business being on the CCP board.

STAND FAST, CCP!

Rizal and socialism

By Elmer Ordonez

In the wake of recent conferences/lectures on Jose Rizal, one theme about Rizal is worth revisiting—his encounter with socialism in all its hues in Europe and how he used it in his novels.

Two dominant strains of socialism vied for allegiance of intellectuals in late 19th century Europe—Marxist socialism and Bakuninian anarchism. It appears that the latter made more inroads and influenced the ilustrados including Rizal. As early as the 1872 Cavite Mutiny, Spanish authorities worried about radical ideas among leaders of the revolt –for which a whole generation of ilustrados were arrested, executed, and exiled abroad.  Click here for the rest

Revolutionary Routes…

… Five stories of incarceration, exile, murder, and betrayal in Tayabas Province, 1891-1980 is the title of the book i’ve been working on for the last 5 years (10 years if i count the encoding and editing of my mother’s translation) that i’m self-publishing and launching on august 20, come rain or come shine :)

it’s based on the memoirs of my lola concha (1886-1980) that she started writing in 1974-76 at age 88 (!) all in spanish, 894 pages typewritten double-space, bound into three volumes.

much of it is very personal and mundane and everyday, growing up in sariaya, tayabas (now quezon province), recounting the early history of her parents and grandparents, and then her pagdadalaga and being swept off her feet by a former revolutionary soldier who had fought side by side with miguel malvar, and how the family acquired land through sariling sikap, and developed these into coconut and rice plantations.

but parts of it, through the decades, are highly political — close encounters with the powers-that-be — in the time of the friars, of the 1896 revolution, of the fil-am war, of the american regime in the time of quezon, of the japanese occupation, and post-war in the time of magsaysay’s anti-huk campaign.

stuff i thought were eminently worth sharing asap (while waiting for a publisher of the entire work), especially because none of the five stories has made it to our history books.