Conceptual Stunt Double

So I'm off to Ortigas on Monday, portfolio in hand, with the purpose of selling myself, this time as an editor. What I'm going to edit, I don't know yet, but I'll find out on Monday. I'm forever swearing off customer service after my two-month stint as Technical Support Engineer, a fancy name for someone solving software-related problems mostly for people who are either too busy or too lazy to consult user manuals or search for solutions on the Internet. However, dissatisfaction with the nature of my current job isn't the major reason for leaving it.

Beginning October, I'm going back to school for Masters studies. Finally, I'm enrolling in UP's Women and Development program, and I'm really excited about attending classes again. I'm looking forward to burying my nose in piles of xeroxed academic essays. Yey! To study well, I need time and working in Pasong Tamo just won't cut it. Travel alone takes more than three hours round-trip. The shift is nine and a half hours. Devoting almost all my waking hours to work and going to work seems a waste. The solution is to find an office closer to Quezon City. Ortigas will do in so far as my shift should end before five, to give me enough time to whisk my worker self to UP. I've made up my mind about this: I'm a student first and worker second. The job will just be for survival and tuition, nothing fancier. 

I feel bad posting an update on my life like who cares when there's turmoil in the counrty. The Dutch government has arrested one of the Philippines's foremost Leftist leader for allegedly ordering murders in the Philippines. This was done, I believe, not only at the encouragement of the Philippine government, but more important, but with the interest of the US-led war on terrorism in mind. As a friend pointed out, the Philippines doesn't seem influential enough to pull that off. A larger force is at work.

I know the widow of one of the the men Jose Ma. Sison had supposedly ordered killed has admitted to filing the murder charge. But it would be shortsightedness not to consider how what is happening is an example of several interests aligning together. Different actors have come together to weave this political drama. The grieving widow seeking justice, with the help of an indignant Philippine government lays her case before the Dutch authorities. The Dutch authorities, following the law, come to her aid. The plot seems tight, logical, but what are we missing here?

A major attack against the Philippine Left is being folded, corralled, into a personal quest for justice, pushing back what is blatantly political. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her military officials have time and again stated that they will crush the Leftist rebellion. As the numbers of activists killed or abducted and harrassed show, the President and her military officials are making good on their word, using the war on terrorism as justification. The Communist Party of the Philippines, of which Sison is the popularly acknowledged leader, and the New People's Army are included in the US's and EU's lists of terrorists. The Philippine government, a member of the Coalition of the Willing, has thus taken it upon itself to persecute the members and whom they think are members or supporters of the movement, never mind that there are peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front, and these negotiations although stalled have not ended. The US, of course, would love to see the rebels exterminated. The Philippines, after all, would be freer wihtout these rebels. Freer for US corporations to dump capital in. Yeah, the image of the Philippines as capital compost rings true -- just look at the mining and BPO sectors.

Sison's arrest is just one step to a goal: the extermination of the Philippine marxist movement, enemy of monopoly capitalist imperialism and the Philippine neoliberal state. It is an end whose means include harrassment, abduction, torture, murder, and yes, taking advantage of the grief of people like Rolly Kintanar's widow. I'm not the best person to expound on what the New People's Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines call "revolutionary justice" and its dynamics, but there's certainly more to the story of Kintanar's and Tabara's deaths than the narrative of struggle between factions and ex-comrades offing each other, the narrative purveyed in the media.

The Philippine government has just declared war on its stongest adversary. Declared it this time, after years of low intensity conflict. Sison's arrest is just one battle. It feels like a portent. I follow the news with bated breath. Things have speeded up, and I'm feeling the bumps. Oh, well, who said history was going to be a smooth ride?

Having these things happening around us must be one of the reasons I could not put down Jose Saramago's book Seeing. I read it in the train, even if I'm standing up, flanks and limbs pushing against other flanks and limbs, swaying with the train's motion. Not to say the book's merits are confined to its resonance with today's political situation, because Saramago's novel is funny and poetic. But thinking about what's happening in the Philippines and the world while reading the book does add to its allure. 

I don't read it before going to bed, though. Those moments are reserved for Tegan and Sara videos on YouTube. The overall situation may be grim, but, you know, i still got to have fun -- listen to catchy music and enjoy the sight of supercute girls.  

(This post was meant to be a segue for another post solely related to Jose Ma. Sison's arrest, but it appears I have said what I've been itching to say.)