Category: blogs

blogger blues

little more than a handful of pinoy bloggers on my required-reads list have been blogging (and only a handful of readers commenting) on israel’s wicked war in/on gaza, which is a shame because it betrays how insular we can get, as though we were an island complete unto ourselves, which we’re not.

the israel-palestine problem should concern us, at the very least because it involves the u.s. of a. (even if cnn and bbc don’t talk about the how and the why) with whom we are said to have “special relations.”   a must-read is anna de brux’s post, America should stop subsidising Israel’s war on Gaza to the tune of $2.4 billion a year in military aid.   iyan ang “special relations.”   iyong sa atin, a paltry $149 million, poor relations lang tayo, distant relations, even beggar relations, thanks to government policies, e.g. foreign policy, trade policy, debt policy, that keep us dependent on, subservient to, outside forces.

at the very least, next time gma or kristiekenney talks “special relations” because of our long history as allies, let us be aware that it has been a long time since it’s done us much good.

so what have pinoy bloggers been fretting about  instead all through the holidays til now?    the golf folderol (as djb puts it), what else.   now that the blogosphere’s kneejerk rush to judgement in reaction to bambee de la paz’s campaign for justice has been proven rash foolish unwise, many bloggers left twisting in the wind are making the best of a sorry situation, some by admitting outright that it was a mistake, some by posting the pangandaman side, some by utter silence so far, and some by editing their blogs perhaps to avoid libel suits.

must reads:

Final Cut: The Pangandaman-Dela Paz Feud
Bubuyog Tonite: De la Paz, di nagkasya sa payong …
Obliterated: An Anti Pangandaman Blog
Credibility in Blogging and the Libel Suit against Blogger Bambee de la Paz
It’s your blog
The Right to Bitch …

i can hear luis teodoro et al saying, i told you so:

the principles of journalism should apply . . . . there should be verification and fairness even if it’s an opinion piece.“

reading my strong negative reaction at the time, a long time ago, long before bambee, i cringe.   but no, i’m not editing out any of it.   a reminder to think twice before jumping into the next debate between mainstream media and the new media that’s admittedly going through birth pains, no, maybe teething pains, pinoy style.

blog ‘n’ brawl

well, we are certainly getting a taste of blogger power.   for sure nayanig ang pangandamans, father and sons, by the virulence and volume of the blogging community’s outrage over the alleged mauling of the de la paz father and son, as witnessed and blogged by daughter bambee.

not surprisingly the brawl has spread out to the blogosphere where some commenters — admittedly few, but consistent and persistent — dare rain on the parade of the many who are on “people power” mode and screaming for the heads, so to speak, of the dar secretary and his mayor son.

blogger brianb, commenting on a post in filipino voices, calls it “unprincipled advocacy”, the way that blogger friends of, and friends of friends who sympathize with, the de la pazes are so quick to jump on the bandwagon.

Concerned citizens cannot keep doing this, running to the aid of persons who get victimized by politicians. There’s no progress in this sort of unprincipled advocacy. The blogosphere shouldn’t be used as an extension of your family connections and friendship networks… not that I forbid people but in my thinking this can be a more powerful medium, something that will actually change policies and attitudes.

When the politicos were going after the poor, their lands and their rights, what did themiddle class do? Nothing. When the politicos went after the press, what did the middle class do? Nothing. Now they are starting to come at you and your previous apathy has made you as weak as (a) puking baby.”

oo nga naman.   besides, as he suggests in another comment, we still have to hear the side of the pangandamans.   not that he condones, nor do i, the violence allegedly perpetrated on the de la paz father and son, but he does question, as do i, the rush to judgement (as usual) before we get the whole story.

… I think the case is based on a few omissions of facts and rallying behind this ON A PERSONAL level is a total waste of our time. I doubt if the politicos were totally unprovoked and GMA reports there were a couple of older sons who went to aid the family with baseball bats, which is why the guns were pulled out. Moreover, a few brave souls may be bullied to take this to the next level, but then what? Will these bloggers go public with it? After the first bluster, wala na. Maybe they finally realized who they’re dealing with. So I don’t think you can trust these people who are very vocal now to commit.

My take is very simple: public servants with armed bodyguards should not physically engage the public. This is the larger ethical arc, of which this case should’ve been a good example.”

interesting though how personal blog(ger)s turned political just like that.   too bad it’s not sustainable.   yet.

audacious intervention

intervene – to become a party to a legal proceeding begun by others in order to protect an alleged interest in the subject matter of the proceeding [merriam-webster’s dictionary of law]

intervene – Law. to interpose and become a party to a suit pending between other parties  [dictionary.com_unabridged]

i’m not sure it will work, i’m not sure the house of representatives is capable of rising to the challenge posed by bloggers manuel l. quezon III, marck ronald rimorin, richard rivera, arbet w. bernardo, edwin lacierda, jeremy gatdula and maria abella jose et al, but yes the current impeachment complaint is certainly made more substantial by the inclusion of the MOA-AD.   unlike the rest of gma’s alleged impeachable crimes, the MOA-AD has already been found unconstitutional on multiple grounds by no less than the supreme court, and how can the house of representatives ignore that and remain credible in the eyes of the nation and the world.

i love the audacity and the creativity of the move — the bloggers are not “amending” but “intervening” — in the hope that a different attitude will beget a different response.  why not indeed!

of intellectual doldrums & filipino voices

in a speech on publishing in the regional languages that poet professor Ricky de Ungria delivered in cebu’s academic publishing fair last july, he dared point out, bully for him, what ails the intellectual life of the filipino, which i dare say is true for mainstream media and the blogosphere as well.

“I refer not only to the appalling lack of criticism or critical frameworks by which standards of quality, excellence in craftsmanship, good judgment and taste are defined and observed in the production and appreciation of works.

. . . . for good or ill, our country appears to be a place where everybody is or wants to be an artist and no one wants to be a critic. A good ninety percent or more of the literary books published are creative works; the rest, on a good year, would be critical work.

. . . . this is an unhappy situation: for without the rigor and passion of critical thought that puts up certain standards of excellence in literary productions and points at directions that our many literatures could take, all we will have would be back-patting and mutually admiring literary coteries producing more of the same year after year, contest after contest.

. . . . the fact that of the total number of higher academic institutions wehave in the country, only three or four regularly make it to the lower rungs of the top universities in the world should tell us something about the state of affairs in our education sector.

Would it be too much to conclude from these that there is no viable intellectual or artistic climate in our country where ideas come freely and are grist for the mill of the mind- except for the political that passes off as an activity of the mind?

Would it be too much to put down as a corollary that we don’t have an intellectual climate, nor can we bear to support one simply because we have lost the passion for truth because truth has turned out to be manipulable and changeable and undependable?

Or perhaps because we have not shaken off our feudal cast of mind and psyche that inhibits us from critiquing the ideas of the “elder statesmen” in our fields as a result of a kind misplaced measure of deference or respect for elders, and that allows us to accept conveniently their word as “law” so we don’t have to bother with it anymore as we go on quietly with our own desperate lives?

. . . . year after year, we hold conferences and workshops on the state of this or that industry in the country, and we end up hearing more or less the same old things being said as if anew.

. . . . There being no such thing as an intellectual climate in the country, there is little knowledge production going on at all. If we can’t even get our facts down pat, how do we even presume to advance to the next step of knowledge creation?

When we debate, we debate with persons and not ideas. Disagreements take on the unhappy form of personal affronts and become desultory and, in some instances, life-threatening. Then again, how can we be assured that the knowledge produced so far is legitimate, given that much of the valuable information about us is in the hands and shelves of foreign funding agencies and foreign scholars?

. . . . If, as with the fate of colonized countries, the colonial language remains the main means of intellectual discourse and knowledge creation, …in our particular case there still appears to be no decent intellectual discourse and knowledge creation in English, or our version of it, even in Manila, and still lesser, though emergent (the word “inchoate” came to mind) discourse has come about in Filipino. . . .”

CUT to the blogosphere’s filipino voices, a political group blog offering news, politics, and social commentary, that’s been getting raves from a circle of political bloggers and their followers/commenters but where the discourse is quite, well, “inchoate” comes to mind, just because freedom of expression is the only value and critical thinking stops short of seriously discussing and crafting options and solutions that could contribute to knowledge production and nation-building.

to my mind fv is just an extension of manolo quezon’s blog, featuring as it does mostly bloggers cited now and then by mlq3 in his daily dose, but nothing more: no unifying thread, no consensus on anything, no attempt at synthesis to sift the grain from the chaff, writer blogger as well as reader/commenter left on his/her own, sink or swim, ang pikon, talo. good job :-(

in a recent manifesto (better late than never?) founder Nick cites James Surowiecki‘s “Wisdom of the Crowds” to justify fv’s free-wheeling style:

Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, is about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group.

The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology. The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton’s surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox’s true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts).

The book relates to diverse collections of independently-deciding individuals, rather than crowd psychology as traditionally understood. Its central thesis, that a diverse collection of independently-deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts, draws many parallels with statistical sampling, but there is little overt discussion of statistics in the book.”

interesting nga, if it’s true.  and if it applies to all kinds of decision-making.  and if it works in the third world as well.  and if it actually applies to filipino voices, where no one is keeping track of anything, no one is doing any “averaging” of any opinions on any issues, so how can anyone, writer blogger or reader/commenter, know that/what the group is contributing to anyone’s decision-making, if any?

but wait, here’s more from nick himself:

Here is something, if even on the concept alone, that can help us understand the usefulness of how groups can contribute to a better understanding and a better result in terms of decision making, and in our case, maybe in terms of our views and analysis on issues of great importance.

The wisdom of the crowd can only work, if each individual contributes independently of one another. To rely, solely on others’ views and opinions can not only turn this theory upside-down, but can inevitably lead to what could be termed as “The Stupidity of The crowd”. The stupidity of the crowd, in my opinion lies when individuals cease to think independently of one another. If we can isolate the views and opinions of individuals, then we have a better shot at arriving at a better outcome.”

oh my.  ano daw?  independent thinking and endless debate lead to wisdom? relying on the views of others leads to stupidity?  clearly fv’s nick needs a crash course on dialectics.

In classical philosophy, dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική) is controversy: the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments respectively advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions(antitheses). The outcome of the exercise might not simply be the refutation of one of the relevant points of view, but a synthesis or combination of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue.”

keywords: “qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue.”  until he gets it, he should stop with the intellectual pretensions muna because, really, buking na buking that he’s in way over his head.