No to Con-Ass

To care about a country like hours, despite the numerous faults displayed by the people that govern it, is kind of like being in an abusive relationship.  You stay there hoping that someday “they’ll change”.  The alternative is to shut yourself off and not give a damn, and let the chips fall where they may.  The repercussions of not giving a damn this time however, may be too much for us to bear, so I will make this one small effort to show our leaders that I, as a Filipino, am not pleased at what happened on June 2, 2009, and I hope any of you that I count as my friends will join me too.

Get yourself registered!

I do not take politics lightly, nor do I like enforcing my political views on people who’d rather ignore politics.  But I would encourage everyone to at least participate in next year’s  elections by registering, educating yourself and then voting for your chosen candidates.  The effects may not be immediate, but if you look at how far we’ve come since 1986 you’ll realize that things have gotten better.  We can accellerate the process by being a part of the democracy we prize so much.

On that note, I’d like to invite anyone in the Makati area in the evening to “Gusto kong magrehistro, gusto kong bumoto” An event that tackles the youths’ questions on registration and voting to be held at 6PM in the Asian Institute of Management.  I won’t be there myself as I’ve tons of work, but I’m already a convert anyway, and will be voting alongside millions of people come next year.

Dear Tzipi Livni

Note: I have tried to avoid socio-political commentary lately because a) I’m really no expert at it and b) it invites all sorts of stupid opinions that I’d rather live without.  However, the internet has provided a forum for armchair U.N. Secretary generals (aka blogs) so I’ll voice out my opinions in a snarky letter to the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni.

Dear Tzipi,

Despite the fact that you’re pretty hot for an Israeli Foreign Minister, I must say I have some issues with your recent CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour.

AMANPOUR: You say it will help the peace process. But every time Israel goes to war against — whether it’s Hezbollah or even whether it’s against Hamas, it does in fact end up helping those who are the victims or the targets of your war, particularly given how many civilians are being killed by your forces in Gaza.

LIVNI: I can understand that the reality — not only the pictures coming from Gaza, but the reality can provoke and can make demonstrations, and provoke demonstrations in different parts of the world, especially in the Arab world. I can understand the empathy that public and the public opinion in different parts toward the Palestinians. We are not fighting the Palestinians. We are fighting Hamas, a terrorist organization which controls Gaza strip.

Now, it is true, and you asked me, there are also civil casualties. But we are trying to avoid civil casualties, even though it’s not easy, while Hamas is targeting our civilians as a target. Now…

Yes, well, I can see how it can be difficult not to target civilians from so far away, in your jets and helicopters.  Oops, hit another market next to that supposed Hamas hideout!  Damn.  Well, you can’t win ‘em all!  Also, please don’t belittle the population of the world by saying you understand why your actions can provoke demonstrations for you to stop killing Palestinians (and let’s be clear, members of Hamas are Palestinian) because if you truly understood why people find your actions so abhorrent you’d stop immediately.

AMANPOUR: Mrs. Livni, all Israelis feel that’s a very, very bad thing, and everybody knows that — most people accept that it is Hamas who provoked the — your incursion. However, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed, many of them are children, many of them are women. More than 2,000 have been wounded, many of them children, many of them women and elderly men. There are a lot of civilians amongst the casualties. What are you going to do to avoid that, and can you in this case?

LIVNI: What we are doing is trying to avoid it. We are putting now our forces at risk because there are certain things that we didn’t want to do from the air in highly populated areas. This is what we are doing.

Wait wait wait, so to answer the question What are you going to do to avoid that, you say “What we are doing is trying to avoid it.”  Nice save there Tzipi.  Debate much? Glad to see you’re putting some of your forces at risk btw, I was afraid they’d get bored shooting people from a distance.  I mean, that IS their job right?  as soldiers?  To be in the line of fire?  As opposed to say, children.

AMANPOUR: The Palestinians leadership complain very bitterly about the disproportionate use of Israeli force. What is your view on the proportionality of your response?

LIVNI: I have to say that I can’t understand what is the nature of proportionality which is needed. I mean, they targeted last week a school in Beersheba, in Israel. Do you think that the proportionate action is to target a school?…

Whoops.

So the only measure that we are taking is to have them understand that this needs to be stopped. This is the expression of self-defense, the right of self-defense of a state.

And we tried — we tried a truce. We decided not to target at all. We decided not to retaliate at all. It didn’t help. So this time, we needed to say that, yes, maybe it is not according to — we are not answering one to one, one more to one missile to come from Israel. This needs to be stopped. So the question of proportionality I think is being misused against Israel.

I have to say that I can’t understand your inability to understand the nature of proportionality.  The bottom line is that the ratio of killed is maybe 600 to 6.  100:1. 100 Palestinian lives for one Israeli life.  OK, so maybe it’s not fair because, you know, Hamas is a terrorist organization, and Israel is a state, with every right to defend itself.  But even if we throw all those arguments out the door the ratio 100:1 only means one thing: You’re better killers than they are.

I think I’ll leave it at that.  Full interview transcript can be found here.

A Steampunk Sleigh, and some news

I love/hate the peer pressure that comes from viewing other artists’ work.  On the one hand it inspires me to make my work better and forces me to churn out those creative juices, but on the other hand there’s the inescapable feeling of smallness when you gaze upon talent that’s far superior to yours.  Still, at least I feel like I’m competing, and getting better, and that’s the point rally.  So I dithced my old idea of just straping rockets to a sleigh and calling it “Turbo”, and decking out a whole new design, the Steampunk Sleigh.  I’m quite pleased with it so far, but I’ll sleep on it and see if anyone comments on gameartisans before adding the pilot.  I’m keeping one of the characters from my former post, the one witht he aviator goggles.

I’ve also cleared out my deviantart account.  I’ve had a love/hate relationship with deviantart for a while, because it’s UI is just ridiculously outdated.  However there’s no denying its reach, and as much as I’ll hate taking 5 minutes to upload every single artwork, I’m hopeful that in the long run it’ll help provide me with a bigger crop of possible freelance clients.

Lastly, but probaby most importantly, Movement for Good Governance, a well…movement, that my girlfriend is heavily involved with, has made the front page of the Inquirer.  MGG is mostly about educating the Philippine populace years before the elections, allowing them to make better decisions come election time (I’m sure it’s about much more than that, but my tl:dr syndrome kicked in again).  I’m extremely proud of her and the work that she’s done, and I can only hope that I can devote more time in my later life to activities like this, that help to make this country a better place for everyone to live in.

On Reproductive Health

So I signed the online Reproductive Health Bill petition.  I have an aversion to online petitions, mostly because I loathe the fact that it allows a bunch of nerds to put up petitions for anything they want, like bringing back Hal Jordan.  However, as Reproductive Health is far more important than Hal Jordan, I went ahead and did it anyway.

I am not scholarly enough to know all the ins and outs of the debate, nor am I inclined to be (mostly becaue I’m lazy, but also because I hate arguing with fundamentalists).  However, there is one thing in particular that irks me about the anti reproductive health argument.  They argue that population control is not the soution to the country’s woes, and them cite the problems of countries like Japan and Singapore with regards to the effects of a population control system imposed by the government.

For the first argument, I hate how they paint it as if pro-rep (for the sake of abbreviation) people are fucking idiots.  We do NOT think this is the solution to our country’s woes. We have multiple problems that will take multiple solutions/miracles.  The Reproductive Health Bill addresses ONE of those problems, which is that our population is growing at an alarming speed, and our economic development cannot keep apace.

As for using Japan and Singapore as examples of why population control is not a good idea, I have just this to say: I’d rather have their problems than ours.

If you want the facts on the Bill, read my girlfriend’s blog, check out the links, and then sign the petition if you think it’s a good idea.

You’re deaf, not retarded.

So in England there is a debate about deaf embryos.  Essentially the government is saying that any embryos to be born using IVF (in vitro fertilization) should be genetically screened for defects such as deafness.  Some deaf people are up in arms about this, saying well what if we want deaf children?  Mr. famous deaf man, who I won’t name because I don’t want hordes of angry british deaf people pounding at my blog-gates, says that he doesn’t feel that deafness is a disability, and there is a rich deaf culture and that it’s tantamount to discrimination to force him to choose a non-deaf child, never mind the fact that most rational people would want their children to be better than they are.  To have all 5 senses instead of 4.

Let’s get this straight.  Deafness is a disability.  It is a physical handicap.  It’s not an imagined inferiority like being black or gay, it’s the fact that you can’t us one of your 5 basic senses and is entirely different from having a cock and wanting more cock and being a darker shade of brown. I don’t pity or condescend towards deaf people, nor do I openly evangelize the beauty of deafness.  It is good to integrate deaf people into society, it is good to treat them as regular people with regular jobs and regular lives.  I’ve heard that people with disabilities have better sex because their lack of one sense makes the other senses richer.  But you cannot impose deafness on an unborn child just because you feel that it’s your right to do so.  It’s the same as choosing a non-deaf child.  It’s discrimination to a higher degree because you’re selecting a specific trait, ie deafness, to impose on your child.

I mean seriously, if I was going to pick some shit to endow my child with, I’d go for long schlong or sculpted chin, not fucking deafness. In the end, couple going for IVF should have the same chances as a regular couple, just pick a random embryo and deal with the result, whatever it may be.  Shit I almost hope that deaf dude gets a blind kid, see how that works out for him.

No actually, you’re the ones who don’t seem to understand

This rant was brought about by my annoyance at some Israeli kid telling the BBC “What people don’t understand is that kids 14 years old, 15 years old, 16 years old, high school…kids…died here yesterday…very hard, I saw my friends die, yesterday evening…” after 8 students were shot in a Jerusalem school.   Afterwards, their headmistress lambasted the Islamic religion, saying their commandments are all about killing and killing everyone they can, while the torah encourages them to do good things for other people.

I guess someone needs to tell the Israeli military to go read their Torahs then, since their continuing attacks on Palestininans which kill men, women, and children as young as a year old indiscriminately make the body count of the school attack pale in comparison.  They say it is their right, because they are protecting the Israeli nation, to kill as many people as they can to get to a handful of terrorists.  And all the while they forget they are merely sowing the seeds of another terrorist cell, as children who watch their families die resolve to take up arms against the perpetrators of the crime visited upon them.

I’m not saying what that man did was right.  I understand the shock of an incident like this can cause people to say stupid things.  But if the Israeli nation refuses to acknowledge its sins, then there will never be a bridge towards reconciliation, and the war will never end.

On Language

Found this tidbit while reading Lee Kuan Yew’s entry in Wikipedia:

Designating official languages

Lee continued the colonial legacy of imposing English as the language of the workplace and the common language among the different races, while recognising Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and Tamil as the other three official languages. All state schools use English as the medium of instruction, although there are also lessons for their respective mother tongues.

Like I said before, that’s what we should do.  Have English as the language that bridges the communication gap.  Have it as the medium instruction and shore up the little advantage we have over other southeast asian nations.  At the same time cultural groups that speak a certain dialect can freely use it amongst themselves and keep it alive in their land.  It shouldn’t be the government’s fucking job to keep your language alive, it should be yours.

Guiltily Pleased

I’m sure this is something that every OFW or Filipino earning in dollars must have felt at least once.  That strange feeling when you see that the peso is weakening due to turmoil in the government.  On the one hand, you’re pleased because your dollars are worth more but on the other hand you’re saddened by the fact that this is only due to the fact that corruption is once again becoming rampant and obvious, and investors are being driven away, which will be worse for the country in the long run.

I’ve found myself watching the news and waiting to see if the Peso weakens further before selling my dollars, and while I know I’m simply being practical, a little part of me is disgusted with what I’m doing.

Our senators need to learn the art of brevity

It is frustrating to watch the senate hearings sometimes, or at least watch senators grilling Jun Lozada with novella-like questions that could very easily be said in a few words.  I feel almost as frustrated as Lozada looks when trying to comprehend why our senators choose to speak in long winded roundabout ways when simply coming straight to the point is much more efficient.  I’m looking at you, Dick Gordon and Loren Legarda.