Category: sotto

overkilling bikoy

i watched all five episodes of bikoy’s “Ang Totoong Narcolist” via facebook, and again all 5-in-1 via twitter.  i thought it was well-done, not a slapdash affair, at walang paligoy-ligoy.  i wondered, of course, how true the allegations were, are, and i hoped that, as promised in episode #5 late april, that he would come out soon, identify himself, and present his evidence in the proper venue.

now that he has, come out, the DDS “internet experts” have been, of course, on frenzied overdrive, first dissing his credibility, pointing out that he has a criminal record, we are crazy to believe his allegations against the duterte family and bong go et al, then insinuating that advincula isn’t really bikoy, but also that this is an old con by advincula, that once upon a time it was pNoy and co. that he was accusing of being drug lords or something like that, yet this time that it is the liberal party that’s behind bikoy, in a bid to discredit digong’s favored senator wannabe bong go, at kung anoano pa.

i have no problem with advincula having a criminal record.  ika nga ni boom buencamino sa twitter:

“Natural. Alanganin naman na seminarista ang magtatrabaho sa sindikato, di ba? Kaya nga kapanipaniwala ang sinabi niya na empleyado siya ng sindikato, di ba?

indeed.  kung hindi siya kriminal na nasangkot sa drug trade, paano niya malalaman, di umano, ang pasikot-sikot ng drug trade?

besides,  i’ve always wondered, like many others, why duterte’s drug war insists on targetting small-time pushers and users — the bottom of the pyramid —  and not the big-time suppliers and smugglers and druglords — the top of the pyramid.  wannabe-senator bato de la rosa in the last cnn debate tried to justify this, saying na grabe na kasi ang drug problem natin, kaya dapat ratsada na, tamaan na ang lahat, rich and poor, top and bottom.  but but but hindi naman iyan ang nangyayari.   we have yet to see one from the top suffer as thousands from the bottom have.

to no one’s surprise, IBP will have nothing to do with bikoy, and the senate investigation ping lacson promised aint gonna happen ’cause bikoy’s allegations are all nonsense daw, ’cause the senate prez says so.  read Man claiming to be ‘Bikoy’ tagged past admin’s execs to drugs, where sotto fleshes out the story hinted at by a DDS “internet expert” two nights ago on a facebook video.  meanwhile panelo fleshes out the theory by another DDS “internet expert” that advincula isn’t bikoy of the videos, complete with voice analysis chuchu.

but seriously.  speaking of credibility, how credible ba is tito sotto of #pepsipaloma and #antiRHplagiarism fame?  sal panelo himself says, you lie in one, you lie in all, LOL.  he would know, surely.

i would prefer to hear tito sotto’s story in a senate investigation where / when he is under oath to speak the truth and nothing but the truth, so help him god, the same as advincula.  level the playing field, guys!

but wait,  wala pang abogado si advincula.  takot bang lahat kay digong?  so paano na.  ganoon na lang?  case closed?  lusot na naman?  WHAT.A.SHAME!!!

pepsi paloma and the senate president

The Internet is like quicksand. The more aggressively you fight to remove yourself from it, the deeper you’re going to sink down into it.
— John Oliver 

… Essentially, what John means is that asking news companies and tech companies to remove articles about yourself makes you more famous for not only those articles which you want to be removed but also for the fact that you want to have them removed. In this case, Sotto wanted to remove articles about his involvement in the rape of Pepsi Paloma but, in doing so, he launched more articles into the Internet.

so, what was tito sotto thinking when he recently asked inquirer.net to take down articles on the pepsi paloma rape case?

I am writing in relation to my earlier request to remove from your news website all the published articles implicating me in the alleged rape of Pepsi Paloma, particularly on the withdrawal of her case, that happened several decades ago. I believe there was malicious imputation of a crime against me.

apparently the request was first made sometime 2016…

Sotto said he has been asking the Inquirer to remove the article for over two years.

he was running for another term in the senate when in march he spoke up, finally, about the pepsi paloma case in a teleradyo interview.

“Hindi totoo ‘yan. Gimik yan ni Rey dela Cruz. (That wasn’t true. That was the gimmick of Rey dela Cruz.),” Sotto said

… Sotto, though he wasn’t involved in the alleged rape, was dragged into the controversy when he allegedly used his position in government to influence the court’s decision.

“It [alleged rape] happened in 1982. Eh 1988 ako naging Vice Mayor,” he told anchor Alvin Elchico on DZMM Teleradyo.

Sotto served as Vice Mayor of Quezon City before he was elected senator in 1992.

“In fact, Vic and Joey filed libel case against Rey dela Cruz. And there were reports in newspapers that time quoting Paloma and she said it’s not true,” Sotto said in Filipino.

“Kaya yang mga kumakalat sa Facebook, hindi totoo yan. Paninira lang mga yan. (Those [articles] circulating on Facebook, they’re false. They’re meant to malign me),” he added.

gimmick lang ng manager?  all just paninira?

he was re-elected, of course — eat bulaga! is a golden goose that lays golden eggs that the sotto brothers and joey de leon share generously with a gratefully adoring constituency who deliver the votes everytime: patronage politics, showbiz style.  two years later he sits as senate president, third highest post in the land, and he has asked inquirer, again, to take down the 3 articles.

To be specific, the following are the write-ups — with their corresponding publishing dates — I wish your company would delete:

The Rape of Pepsi Paloma by Rodel Rodis — March 05, 2014
Was Pepsi Paloma Murdered? By Rodel Rudis — March 15, 2014
Tito Sotto Denies Whitewashing Pepsi Paloma Rape Case by Totel V. de Jesus — March 03, 2016

These kinds of unverified articles have been negatively affecting my reputation for the longest time.  My efforts to clarify my side were somewhat ineffectual by reason of the afore-cited articles were shared by your readers to the social media, and those readers who knew nothing about the issue took them as version of truth considering that those reports came from a well-trusted company like Inquirer.net.

we might not even have heard about it — inquirer didn’t tell us the first time the request was made in 2016 — had not inquirer sent rodel rodis a copy of the senate prez’s may 29 letter that rodis posted on his facebook wall 15 june.

Sotto confirmed to Politiko that he has asked that the stories be removed because they were “libelous.”

“That issue was a rey dela cruz gimmick for soft drink beauties in 1982. I was not even involved. In fact i was not a public official then as alleged by the stories,” Sotto told Politiko in a text message.

june 19, rizal day, sotto sounded confident that inquirer would submit to his request and remove the articles.

That is the original fake news, so do not make a big deal out of it,” Sotto told reporters at the Senate on Monday.

Asked if he would file libel charges if Inquirer.net failed to remove the articles, he replied: “They will.”

Pressed to confirm if he meant the Inquirer would take down the stories, he reiterated that these were “fake news, it’s original fake news.”

so.  it would seem that the senate prez is denying all of it — no rape by vic joey and richie happened sometime july 1982, therefore there was nothing for him to make areglo, and he had nothing to do with pepsi’s death by hanging (some say by strangulation) 3 years after the rape that didn’t happen.  and he expects that inquirer will take down the articles just because he says it’s all fake news.

so.  we imagined it all?  including the public apology reported by the people’s journal on october 13?  but but but i have a “TV Junkie” column to show for it, published in Parade magazine (edited by fred marquez) soon after the apology:

Now that Pepsi has forgiven Vic, Joey, and Richie, it’s back to show business as usual for the three musketeers. How nice.

When the news of the rape case first broke… I expressed incredulity. I couldn’t believe that Vic and Joey were insane enough to jeopardize their careers for a momentary macho thrill.

On second thought I realized that Pepsi couldn’t have completely contrived the situation. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Obviously, at some point in time, Vic & Co. got together with Pepsi & Co. Who set the meeting up and what occurred, we don’t know. Among other things, Pepsi & Co. claimed it was rape; Vic & Co. claimed it was a photo session.

I tried to follow the case closely but the major dailies treated it like backpage news. I had to be content with the skimpy reportage of afternoon tabloids.

There was mention of a missing Sulo waiter, a crucial witness, but no follow through. I wondered where he might be, what his story might be, and why we didn’t have snoopy reporters a la Lois Lane ferreting him out of hiding.

All through August and September the Sotto camp issued nothing but denials. Vic even had an alibi: he and brother Tito were at their mother’s house in Ermita at the time of the alleged rape.

And then the bomb. A letter of apology. An admission of guilt. Implicit. Unmistakable. “Dear Pepsi . . . We hope that you will not allow the error we have committed against you to stand as a stumbling block to that future which we all look forward to. We therefore ask you to find it in your heart to pardon us for the wrong which we have done against you. Sincerely…” (People’s Journal 13 October)

i even remember eat bulaga‘s post-apology special that was held in araneta coliseum.  it was supposed to be a test.  kung mapupuno nila ang coliseum, ibig sabihin ay napatawad sila ng madlang pipol.  and fill the big dome to the rafters they did.  the high point of the show was dina bonnevie’s surprise appearance, complete with a smack for hubby vic, to show the world that she too had forgiven him.  at least that’s the message i got.  

we didn’t really know much more about the rape case until 2004 when FPJ ran for president and hired tito sotto as campaign manager.  fundy soriano of People’s Tonight wrote in his “Talk Show” column:

HINDI nagkamali ang aktor na kandidatong pangulo na si FPJ sa pagkuha sa komedyanteng naging senador na si Tito Sotto bilang campaign manager dahil sanay na ito sa pag-areglo ng gusot na kinasangkutan ng mga taong malalapit sa kanya.

Hindi talaga nagkamali si Poe sa pagkuha kay Sotto dahil hasang-hasa na sa pagtatanggol at pagtutuwid ng mga sitwasyong baluktot.

Unang nasubukan ang galing ni Sotto noong Oct. 1982 nang pangunahan niya ang pag-areglo sa kasong rape na isinampa ng sexy stars na sina Pepsi Paloma at Guada Guarin laban sa kanyang kapatid na si Vic Sotto at mga kasamang sina Joey de Leon at Richie D’Horsie. Sa record ng kaso, nabulgar ang rape case nang lapitan ng ina ni Pepsi Paloma si Atty Rene Cayetano (ama ng senatorial candidate na si Pia Cayetano) para hingan ng tulong para makamtan ng kanyang anak ang katarungan na umanoy minolestiya ng tatlong host ng Eat Bulaga.

Nang nabatid na ikinakasa na ng naging senador na si Cayetano ang kaso sa piskalya ng QC, biglang naglaho ang tin-edyer na starlet na hindi nagtagal ay nabawi ng mga tauhan nina Col. Rolando Abadilla at Capt. Panfilo Lacson (yes, si Ping na kandidatong pangulo) ng MISG sa kamay ng kilalang hoodlum na si Ben Ulo. Umalingasaw ang pangalan ng mga Sotto nang aminin ni Ben Ulo na tauhan siya ng mga Castelo, maternal clan nina Tito at Vic.

Ayon kay Pepsi Paloma, umano’y mismong si Tito Sotto ang pumilit sa kanya na pirmahan ang affidavit of desistance para hindi matuloy ang kasong may parusang bitay. Tuluyang napigil ang pag-inog ng katarungan nang nagpakumbaba ang mga komedyante at naglabas ng public apology sa husgado kung saan inamin din ng mga ito ang nagawang krimen sa starlet na nagbigti ilang taon ang nakalipas dahil sa umano’y hindi pa rin nakalimutan ang kahalayang ginawa sa kanya ng mga artistang kabilang ngayon sa likod ng kandidatura ni Poe.  (May 8, 2004)

i found the above in an online exchange forum on the pepsi paloma rape case, posted by commenter no. 9.  i quoted it in enrile, sotto, pepsi #RH at the height of the RH debates in 2011.  the site has since been taken down, alas.  buti na lang na-copy-n-paste ko.  [it is also cited in former senator heherson alvarez’s blog]

i wonder if the senate prez really thinks he can erase all texts and images re the 1982 rape of pepsi paloma by the accused vic sotto joey de leon and richie d’horsie, as well as all the stories about how big brother tito, now the senate prez, made it all go away, how galing.  and he wasn’t even a vice-mayor, much less a senator, yet!

but rodis is right:

Rodel Rodis
16 June at 01:35 · The Inquirer.net announced that it has not yet made a decision on whether to accede to Senate President Sotto’s “request” to remove my March 2014 articles implicating him in the 1982 rape of then 14 year old Filipino American actress Pepsi Paloma and in her subsequent murder two years later. Stay tuned. If Sotto succeeds, then Jinggoy Estrada, Bongbong Marcos, Duterte and even China will make similar demands that my critical articles about them should also be removed from the Inquirer website.

ito naman ang sey ni fr. eliseo “jun” mercado on his facebook wall:

I, too, wonder what the Pepsi Paloma and Tito Sotto issue was all about. Unresolved rape case?

thanks to the revisionist attempts of the senate president himself, the pepsi paloma rape case has finally become a cause célèbre.  it even trended on twitter, LOL, and the senate should be concerned about its steadily deteriorating image.  i would think this calls for a senate investigation, no kidding.  some of the personalities mentioned, said to have known about the case, are still alive.  juan ponce enrile.  panfilo lacson.  guada guarin.  fundy soriano?

googled guada guarin and found this on pinoyparazzi.com by RK Villacorta who chanced upon her in late 2015:

Masama ang loob ni Guada sa ilang mga taga-media na inungkat pa ang na isinampa nila na kaso noon ni Pepsi almost 35 years ago. “Tapos na yun, nag-public apology na sila sa amin,” kuwento ni Guada na ngayon ay isang spa manager.

too bad cayetano and abadilla are no longer with us.  but i sure would like to hear from JPE and ping lacson.  just to see whose side they’re on.

waiting for cocoy, what about sotto, calling out grace

sometime during the senate hearing on fake news by the committee on public info and mass media last wednesday, i said on my facebook wall that i found the talk refreshing, it was good to see and hear edwin lacierda, abigail valte, and manolo quezon, nakaka-miss ang intelligent discourse. (public status. 13 likes.)  we kinda took it for granted back in pre-duterte days.

not that the trio said much, except to deny that they were responsible in any way for the anonymous dilawan blog silent no more or that its webmaster was once part of pNoy’s comms team — though cocoy dayao wasn’t around to confirm the denial, so correct me if i heard wrong — and to demand that rj nieto prove his allegations, produce evidence, that mar roxas was responsible for the nasaan-ang-pangulo anti-pNoy campaign in the time of mamasapano.  nag-buckle lang si lacierda on the question of whether he is part (or something like that) of silent no more, and justifiably, because does one become a part of silent no more when one “likes” and / or shares the link of any of its blog posts on facebook?

smart of cocoy dayao not to show up.  but he should show up next time or he might have to go into hiding and then be tracked down by the cops a la ronnie dayan, ewww.  that would be so uncool.  cool would be if he came to the next hearing with bells and whistles, including a hotshot IT lawyer.  i expect that he would refuse (even in an executive session) to name his clients, i.e., the writer/s and / or owners of silent no more (and other anonymous blogs under his admin) on grounds of confidentiality.  it would be a test case on a citizen’s right to anonymity and privacy.

it would be interesting to see how sotto, and other feeling-aggrieved senators, will deal with that.  sotto, in particular, who was tagged a rapist in the controversial seven-sens post (6,600 likes, 2066 shares, 780 comments) has reason to cry LIBEL!  but then that would mean opening himself up to questions re the pepsi paloma rape case back in 1982.  under oath he would be crazy to insist that no rape happened as he has claimed in recent years.  the rape hit the front pages just 35 years ago.  marami kaming adults na noon na buhay pa ngayon, and we remember what a scandal it was, and we still marvel at how they managed to get away with it, dared brazen it out, the show must go on, eat bulaga!  no fake news that.

and because dayao was a no-show, napagtuunan tuloy ng oras at pansin at puna si mocha uson, duterte’s social media muse (5 million followers), at si rj nieto aka thinking pinoy (700K followers) who is second only to mocha when it comes to bashing dilawans and others critical of duterte, imagining scenarios based on iffy data, yet whom committee chair grace poe couldn’t praise enough for his “neutrality” and “excellent research,” never mind the times that nieto has had to issue “errata” dahil nagkamali, tao lang daw.  argh.  i’ve been blogging 10 years now and i don’t remember ever having to issue an erratum.

anyway, the next morning, on my fb newsfeed, a u.p. prof was wishing for the likes of recto, laurel, salonga and santiago in the chamber; the discourse would have been so radically different daw. (for fb friends only. 142 likes and counting.)  hmm.  miriam too?  “I lied!” was one of her favorite punchlines.

pero recto, laurel, salonga, oo naman, except what’s the point in wishing for better, based on a romanticized past, when there’s work to do confronting what is, now, and looking to the future.  roby alampay, tony la viña, and florin hilbay were outstanding.

as for senator poe, she can redeem herself by pushing through with the committee’s promise to plug legal loopholes that allow bloggers earning undeclared income from advertisements to avoid payment of taxes.  and senator nancy binay is right, tax also the so-called “influencers” promoting products and services on their social media accounts, said to be an underground billion (peso) industry.  better late than never.

bad english and fake news, anonymity and discourse, in a time of trolls

this post started out lamenting the decline of our english-speaking skills…

Pinoy nurses recruited for jobs in UK fail English test
Fifty-two out of 59 nurses recruited in Manila for a job in Medway Maritime Hospital in the United Kingdom have failed an English language test, stalling their employment.

Medway Maritime Hospital in Kent said 52 out of the 59 candidates had failed one or more of the listening, reading, writing and speaking tests.

… that i meant to tie up with randy david’s column that begins with The president as purveyor of fake news and ends on the uphill battle against misinformation and disinformation on social media courtesy of trolls with bad grammar, and who seem to live in a different world.

So huge is the battle against fake news that it cannot be left to the mainstream media to fight it alone. Neither can we expect scholars, experts, and specialists to weigh in all the time and correct the misinformation and disinformation that clog social media. For, there is a public out there that has long harbored a resentment against experts, that trusts in the power of its own commonsense, and that is sustained in its comforting delusion by the bits of information it picks up from Wikipedia.

This fight ultimately has to be waged in the internet itself by digital activists who refuse to have their reality defined by trolls that can neither spell right nor write grammatically, that resort to exclamation points to call attention, and that, most importantly, paint a world we cannot recognize.

agit na agit, of course, ang mga ka-dds sa facebook, and not because david said the president purveys fake news (!) but because david dared call out the bad english of trolls in general.  offended na offended both the ones who feel alluded to and the ones who don’t feel alluded to, and this from dswd usec lorraine badoy is priceless:

There is an eloquence in the faulty grammar and badly spelled words of the unlettered. But it is the kind of eloquence you can only hear with your heart—if you care enough to listen to them and not default on denigration—this denigration they’ve had to bear all their lives—and in the hands of those who ought to know better.

eloquence.in.the.faulty.grammar.  wow.  on a fine day i might concede that it’s not unimaginable, but only if the faulty grammar were not a reflection of faulty reasoning (thinking) because based on slanted (inadequate) information, the kind that the ka-DDS cohort specializes in doling out.

puwede rin namang i-level up ang discourse, aminin na we do have language problems (from english to tagalog) as a nation and let’s do something about it.  after all, badoy herself belongs to the smart educated class and if her heart is in the right place, she would want to do something about it?  smart-shaming denigrating david does not help the cause of the “unlettered.”

anyway, that got quickly overtaken and overwhelmed when ka-DDS heavyweights declared virtual war on anonymous dilawan blogs like silent no more that tagged as “malacanang dogs” seven senators who did not sign kiko pangilinan’s resolution asking the president to stop the killing of minors.  senator sotto, one of alleged “dogs” is so angry, “pakakain ko sa kanila computer nila hindi lang yung words nila.”

sino sila?  sass et al. have managed to identify the webmaster, but did he write that particular blogpost?  is he obliged to identify who wrote the post?  i’m not sure anymore.  anonymity has its uses.  one is braver, i think, when one is writing anonymously, but also maybe prone to errors because, you know, hindi nakataya ang pangalan?

it was careless of silent no more, tagging tito sotto a rapist when in fact the 1982 pepsi paloma rape case was vs vic, joey, and richie.  a little googling and some reading would make such a difference.  pero walang oras, ano?  nagmamadali kasi, para makarami, kaya bara-bara na lang.  this latest post on silent no more‘s fb wall says it all:

SNMph says
We have deliberately left the door open for the TROLLS to earn a living. Thank you for the valued engagements.  #SNMph have just hit the 10m engagements mark because of them. Those familiar with how FB algorithm works knows that we have just hit the jackpot! Salamat po!

pera pera lang talaga, ano?  trabaho lang, ika nga, but this time with walang patumanggang personalan at bastusan.   a new low in pinoy discourse.  to think that in 2008 i was complaining about intellectual doldrums and filipino voices, the group blog.  as it turns out, those were good times for the blogosphere; it never got any better than that.

by 2012 i was blogging in the wind, lamenting the loss of filipino voices, and feeling my way into facebook.  a completely different world meant to promote freedom of expression in aid of democracy but which has now evolved into a weapon for destructive propaganda worldwide.  so now, on top of everything that’s wrong with the world, we have to contend with fake news.  read Why Fake News Spreads So Fast on Facebook and Social media and democracy: optimism fades as fears rise.

Oxford University researchers said in a June report that social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which were intended to be a platform for free expression, “have also become tools for social control” in many countries.

Governments employ large numbers of people “to generate content, direct opinion and engage with both foreign and domestic audiences,” said the report by the university’s Project on Computational Propaganda.

The researchers, who studied social media in 28 countries, concluded that “every authoritarian regime has social media campaigns targeting their own populations.”

… Zeynep Tufekci, a North Carolina University sociologist who studies social networks and activist movements, said the platforms which helped enable the Arab Spring are now being used against dissenters.

“This is not necessarily Orwell’s 1984,” she writes in her 2017 book, “Twitter and Tear Gas: How Social Media Changed Protest Forever.”

“Rather than a complete totalitarianism based on fear and the blocking of information, the newer methods include demonizing online media and mobilizing armies of supporters or paid employees who muddy the online waters with misinformation, information overload, doubt, confusion, harassment, and distraction.”

the senate hearing on wednesday should be interesting.  the ka-dds camp is siccing senator sotto on LP senators kiko pangilinan and bam aquino who are allegedly behind the well-organized and well-funded propaganda machine run by cocoy dayao et al of silent no more.  of course it’s not as if these ka-dds aren’t part, too, of a well-organized and well-funded propaganda machine with matching anonymous questionable-news sites na sino kaya ang nagpopondo.  ayon kay kit tatad:

The regime has begun to unravel. Ninety-five percent of the social media trolls that used to support everything DU30 said or did are gone, only 48 pro-DU30 troll sites remain, according to IT experts familiar with the subject.

if true, this could be why the ka-dds vs dilawan war on facebook seems to be escalating.  maybe the dilawans are smelling victory and the ka-dds are feeling threatened?  or is it the other way around.  revolutionary government, anyone?  we will know soon enough, i guess.