Sinag

May 28

[video]

May 24

The meeting was chaired by Nong Sakol, deputy secretary general of the ASEAN General Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

“The meeting was held to end internal discussions between ASEAN countries on significant components of the code of conduct for the South China Sea,” he said.

“We will present a draft to senior ASEAN officials for consideration before taking it to discuss with China.”

The code aims to expand cooperation while building and maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea and not referring to dispute resolution.

“The dispute in the South China Sea has to be resolved under international law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Nong Sakol said.

Read in full…

Finally, the ASEAN is trying to put its act together. I hope our neighbors would stand firm on their ground (or reefs?) in this dispute. Beijing needs to see that those rice stalks in the ASEAN logo are not just bound together there but also in this issue.

The Deeper Meanings of Lakbay and Bakla

biyuti:

a-bayani:

sinag:

biyuti:

a-bayani:

(via Baybayin Alive)

by Perla Daly

The insights that baybayin symbolism can give us can be quite deep and mind-bending. Here in this post is an example of that.

Bakla is defined in Filipino as third-sex or gay. In Philippine society, all types of bakla, gay men have been socially and economically accepted. In some families, having a gay child is an indication of good fortune. Effeminate men who dress like women are common in villages and cities and are not the victims of prejudice the way they are in other parts of the world. Gay people are considered an important part of the community make up in the Philippines. (Also see Wikipedia on Bakla).

[snipped]

Best thing I’ve read all day. This gives me life.

And I’m having some interesting connections and thoughts about how this fits into my own conception of being bakla.

Side-eyeing the bolded (bolding mine) so hard. I… I what?!? Does the original writer realize that it is still not safe to be bakla in many sectors of society? That the threat of exposure is very often used as blackmail in many political circles? That people still get kicked out of home, threatened, bullied, harassed, and attacked for being bakla?

Also, can I just link to the Philippine LGBT Hate Crime Watch? Where there’s a (partial, incomplete) list of the many ways in which bakla people have been murdered the past few years?

The symbol analysis is interesting and there’s a great deal to be taken from it but I really have to take issue with the OP implying that, you know, “not the victims of prejudice” or anything. I don’t know, I don’t think you can make that kind of general statement when in fact hate crimes against LGBT people are very much on the rise.

i also definitely side-eyed that and wasn’t sure how to address it in my post without sounding like i was imposing my experience as a pin@y in the U.S. who has not been to the philippines in almost 8 years now. so i just decided to copy/paste the whole thing as is & in hindsight shouldn’t have done so uncritically. thanks for pointing this out. i’ll edit to add a note at the top.

I focused more one the later stuff, which I found interesting.

But you are right to call out the bold. Especially considering the strong ties to being bakla and the sex tourist industry in the Philippines, in addition to all the stuff that sinag points out.

The Deeper Meanings of Lakbay and Bakla

biyuti:

a-bayani:

(via Baybayin Alive)

by Perla Daly

The insights that baybayin symbolism can give us can be quite deep and mind-bending. Here in this post is an example of that.

Bakla is defined in Filipino as third-sex or gay. In Philippine society, all types of bakla, gay men have been socially and economically accepted. In some families, having a gay child is an indication of good fortune. Effeminate men who dress like women are common in villages and cities and are not the victims of prejudice the way they are in other parts of the world. Gay people are considered an important part of the community make up in the Philippines. (Also see Wikipedia on Bakla).

Lakbay is the tagalog term for “journey” or “to take a trip”.

During the symposium retreat Decolonization and Indigenization as a Path to the Sacred, given by Center for Babaylan Studies in August 2011, Diwata Olympia wrote out the baybayin symbols for Lakbay and Bakla on a notebook and showed them to me quietly.

I was immediately struck by the fact that Diwata had written both these words using the same three symbols. I was also struck by the fact that they were in reverse order of each other.

Later on, after the retreat, I asked her online to explain what this meant for her and she answered me with this message:

I don’t know how else to explain it, but for me, the concepts of kapwa and wholeness (pagbubuo) are inextricable from each other.

Lakbay is a journey you take away from your usual environment to understand yourself and your kapwa better. meeting new people opens your eyes to see yourself in other ways.

Bakla is the inward journey to wholeness where you find that you are complete within yourself, and this wholeness is what you share and bring as gifts to your kapwa.

Here is also what I noticed about the symbols for lakbay and bakla.

Both spellings with baybayin contain the symbols that represent male principle (LA) and female principle (BA).

KA is two wavy lines laid parellel with a line joining the two of them at their center.

To some ka represents two rivers (wavy lines) joined by a center line.

HA is the baybayin symbol that can represent breath, spirit and even soul. So to some others, KA can represent two spirits joined by a center line.

So when you know what the syllable of KA does within Filipino words, that is, creates a relation or connection ((kapatid(sibling), kasintahan(loved-one), kapwa(fellow), kalakbay(fellow journeyer). ka-klase(classmate)), and then you see the meaning of KA with its actual baybayin symbol, it seems immensely appropriate.

It’s interesting to me that “journey” is the joining of both male and female symbols.

Thus the baybayin symbols of lakbay here evokes the meaning of human life being a journey of creating and maintaining a balance within oneself and also staying at one’s center (Loob). These symbols then mean to me that lakbay is not just a travelling from point A to point B as a practical thing, but lakbay, because of its baybayin symbols means a Life task to be balanced or to live a balanced Life. It may also mean how the male principle within us is meant to join with the female principle within us and how that male and female principles are to be balanced with one another (like the balance of yin and yang).

And I agree with Diwata, that one’s life journey is to find “wholeness” (pagbubuo) or to make one’s being whole (magbubuo) or to be a whole person(mabubuong tao) and find ones nobility (kagandahang loob or beautiful Self)

The fact that bakla is the reverse of lakbay is intensely meaningful to me now.

The lakbay symbols now in reverse within bakla are symbolic to me of how my dearest gay friends and all gay people are born with deeper meaning of having the task of living Life with a reverse take on sexuality. I also believe that they have a cosmic task of turning upside-down our traditions and mores, impressed upon us by institutions, AND at the same time living life as noble, gifted human beings who have something to contribute to their families, communities and this Earth.

The fact too that BA comes before LA, in bakla, in reverse to lakbay’s LA before BA. Is quite evocative to me. And I invite you readers to share your own interpretations here.

I thank Diwata for her insights and presence in this world. I dedicate this Baybayin Alive blogpost to my dearest gay friends and colleagues whose souls and innate nobleness I cherish close to my Loob.

Best thing I’ve read all day. This gives me life.

And I’m having some interesting connections and thoughts about how this fits into my own conception of being bakla.

Side-eyeing the bolded (bolding mine) so hard. I… I what?!? Does the original writer realize that it is still not safe to be bakla in many sectors of society? That the threat of exposure is very often used as blackmail in many political circles? That people still get kicked out of home, threatened, bullied, harassed, and attacked for being bakla?

Also, can I just link to the Philippine LGBT Hate Crime Watch? Where there’s a (partial, incomplete) list of the many ways in which bakla people have been murdered the past few years?

The symbol analysis is interesting and there’s a great deal to be taken from it but I really have to take issue with the OP implying that, you know, “not the victims of prejudice” or anything. I don’t know, I don’t think you can make that kind of general statement when in fact hate crimes against LGBT people are very much on the rise.

Women of the Katipunan

Excerpts from Luis H. Francia’s book, A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos.

On women in the Katipunan:

That the Katipunan explicitly referred to how women should be treated reflected the fact that the vital social role of [sic] women had enjoyed prior to colonial rule had continually been under assault by the aggressive patriarchal attitudes and values espoused by the Spanish, most intensely and consistently by the religious orders. These men of the cloth, reflecting the ultra-masculine ethos of Roman Catholicism by way of Inquisitorial Spain, saw the essentially egalitarian relationships between the sexes as aberrations, if not abominations. For women such as the babaylan to be the mediators between the visible world and that of the spirit; to be perceived as healers; to be called upon as a villager lay dying; for them to have as much right to sexual pleasure as men— all these female prerogatives were anathema to the friars, and a threat to their primacy. Male authority had to reign supreme, whether in matrimony, government, or religion. By the time of the 1896 Revolution, the “good” Filipina was a paragon of modesty, keeper of repressed longings, and unswervingly faithful to the men in her life, whether to the husband, son, or Christ on the cross. With the Katipunan, there was a deliberate effort to do away with the restrictions on women’s roles. They may not have borne arms—at least not many did—but they participated otherwise as actively in the revolution as the men.

Tandang Sora:

The untimely discovery [of the Katipunan’s papers by the Spanish friars] forced the Katipunan to proclaim the need for revolution on August 23, 1896 at a place called Pugad Lawin (Hawk’s Nest), at the home of Melchora Aquino, a self-taught eighty-four-year-old widow who fed, housed, and otherwise took care of the Katipuneros when fighting broke out. The grand dame of the revolution, she was known affectionately as Tandang Sora (Old Sora). Subsequently imprisoned by the Spanish and interrogated as to Katipunan activities, the octogenarian wouldn’t talk. She was exiled to the Marianas and allowed to return once the United States of America had taken over the country. Still, she refused to pledge allegiance to the United States, and died in 1919 at the age of 107, with American colonial rule firmly in place.

Gregoria de Jesus:

…On May 10, 1897, the Bonifacio brothers were executed in the woods of Mt. Buntis. The Supremo’s widow, Gregoria de Jesus, evaded capture and returned to Manila, where she married Julio Nakpil, a Katipunan officer loyal to Bonifacio and active in the revolution against Spain. She resumed revolutionary activities, primarily deciphering messages sent in code by members of the Katipunan in the field. She also knew how to ride and use firearms, and took part in a number of encounters.

2nd US warship sold to Philippines also stripped of guns

Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - Washington has turned down Manila’s request to retain the entire weapons system in the second US Coast Guard cutter the Philippines is acquiring from the United States.

Top Filipino military officials flew to the US last weekend for the ceremonial turnover on May 23 of the 378-ft USCG Dallas in North Charleston, South Carolina.

According to Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, the second cutter will also have most of its weapons removed as happened with the first cutter acquired from the US by the Philippine Navy last year.

In the case of what is now the BRP Gregorio del Pilar, all its weapons were removed except for a 76-mm Oto Melara automatic cannon.

In a meeting in Washington on April 30, Gazmin personally asked his counterpart, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, to keep the USCG Dallas in its original state and to restore the weapons that were removed from its sister ship, the Gregorio del Pilar.

The Gregorio del Pilar is currently the biggest and most modern warship in the Philippine Navy fleet which still relies on World War II-vintage vessels.

Dona Z. Pazzibugan in Manila/Philippine Daily Inquirer

I am somehow not surprised. Resigned frustration, how familiar you are!

biyuti:

proto-flake:

biyuti:

(I know I’m not supposed to post from work…but…)

The absurdity of decrying the conditional/relative privilege that Asians have while simultaneously pointing out one of the biggest… just. Gets me.

Because how does your brain process something so absurd?

For all the problems that Asians do have and experience, the fact that we are not criminalized for existing, that police don’t harass, stalk, and attack us, that we aren’t put into prisons, means that we clearly enjoy a certain level of privilege that Black and/or Latin@ and/or Indigenous people don’t.

Because for all that I don’t trust the police in their function as a tool of white supremacy, I have never, ever feared for my life because of them. I will not be shot for walking while Asian, even if my hand is near my waistband. I wouldn’t even be stopped and frisked, if I lived in New York.

If this is not a privilege, I’m not really sure the word as meaning anymore. 　

My experience and what I witnessed may not be the norm, but what is said above just isn’t true for where I grew up.

Here in California pre-Vietnam, we already had a huge population of Filipinos who basically were imported for decades to join Mexicans, South Americans, and American Indians in the Ag fields, still, much how it is today. These groups of people were not differentiated or distinguished between by cops or community. They were all “dirty” they were all “wet backs” they were all “insects” they were all “alien”. I know this because my father’s parents worked those fields as did my father & his brothers.

Post Vietnam Stockton got a big influx of populations from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.These peoples were not made to feel welcome at all.

As I sit here and think about this it is very weird for me to recollect that my community came together in a horrible kind of way when it came to our South East Asian populations of immigrants. Everyone hated on them. Everyone. Even established Filipino peoples went out of their way to make sure that they were not lumped in with the “FOBs” or “gooks”, something they were typically labeled as.For many years these people weren’t seen as people.Cops use to routinely raid their neighborhoods, ripping out front yard gardens full of vegetables whose seeds they had brought from home. My second grade teacher made no qualms about calling the Southeast Asian kids insects and squatters and this was not an isolated occurrence nor was it just one person.

Even my father, who is Filipino and Yaqui, to this day DESPISES anyone who looks Vietnamese to him because of his experience and his perceptions of Vietnamese people. We had a huge community of Vietnam Vets who felt this way and feel this way to this day.

In my home town Southeast Asians were targeted by police, they were targeted by the community at large, especially by other minority groups. Shit, there was even a good span of time where Southeast Asian businesses were being set on fire and bombed. I could go on and on here. And I am absolutely positive that many of these people feared for their lives and this is why:

When I was around them or in their neighborhoods I feared for mine. This was not because I had a bad interaction with anyone, this was not because I had ever seen them harm anyone, this was because of how my community interacted with them. They were “other” to ALL of us. They became the “parasites” leaching off the government and not giving anything in return, they became the “dirty, smelly” people who ruined everything. And these are things the rest of us who were not part of their communities came to agree upon.

Shit, even in high school we had two main parking lots that came to be known, one as the “Senior Parking Lot” the other as the “Asian Parking Lot”, their was even an “Asian” side of the school! And no one ever ventured there. It was considered dangerous.

And then there was this crazy motherfucker Vietnam vet Patrick Purdy who hated the Vietnamese so much he unloaded on a elementary school yard during recess in one of the schools that had a large number of Southeast Asian children and killed 5 children.

I have to get ready to go to school but Mike just walked in a few minutes ago and I started telling him about this debate that is happening on here and he started sharing his experience and perspective (we grew up in the same area) and he brought up a SHIT TON more stuff that I failed to remember that I might want to expand upon later…

Maybe it’s just dependent on where you live, I don’t know, but where I come from Southeast Asians not only did not and do not have privilege, they tend to be the most marginalized, segregated from the rest of the population at large, and despised. More so than any other racial group. Maybe that’s just in the Valley, but it is a big fucking valley and in one of the most “liberal” and “open-minded” states in the Union. I think that says a lot.

Don’t expand later, please.

You’ve so utterly missed the point of why this conversation is even happening, that I’ve been sitting here trying to think up ways to engage anything you’ve written here.

I can’t. I don’t have time.

But before you waste anymore time either thinking or writing about this, please spend some time reflecting on the context of this ‘debate.’

Because until you demonstrate a greater willingness to be more nuanced in your approach, to understand the context, and also understand how what you wrote is derailing and has the stench of anti-Blackness, I don’t think I or anyone else will be interested in engaging you.

@proto-flake Please stop using Filipino immigrant experiences to derail this conversation. Nahihiya ako para sa ‘yo. Tama na.

May 23

selchieproductions:

TW: Rape, racism, genocide

Tribal girl raped and murdered in Chittagong Hill Tracts as repression continues
© Survival International

An eleven-year old girl from the Chakma tribe in Bangladesh has been raped and murdered by a settler.

Sujata Chakma and her younger brother were grazing cows near their village when she was attacked on 9 May.

A suspect has been arrested, but local indigenous people have little faith he will be brought to justice.

Between January and May this year, at least six Jumma girls and women have been raped. Rina Dewan of the Hill Women’s Federation says, ‘The setters continue to commit rape with impunity; not a single rapist has ever been brought to justice, and this is the single greatest factor contributing to the recurrence of this heinous crime.’

The government of Bangladesh has moved hundreds of thousands of settlers into the Chittagong Hill Tracts, home to eleven tribes, known collectively as Jummas.

The settlers have displaced many of the indigenous Jummas, who have also been subjected to violent repression by the army. Jumma women and young girls are especially vulnerable to violent sexual attacks.

Whilst this violence continues unabated and with seemingly little attempt by the authorities to prosecute the perpetrators, evidence has emerged of further attempts to undermine the rights of the indigenous Jumma people.

A confidential circular, from the political wing of Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs, has recently emerged. The document was distributed to government officials last year in the run up to the UN International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9th.

It warned government officials not to contradict the official government policy that there are no indigenous people in Bangladesh – only ‘tribal people’ and ‘small ethnic groups’.

It went on to recommend that no government support should be given during Indigenous Peoples’ Day and that steps should be taken to publicise that ‘there are no indigenous people in Bangladesh’.

This circular comes in the wake of amendments to the constitution in June 2011, which controversially failed to recognize the estimated 50-60 indigenous peoples living in Bangladesh as ‘indigenous peoples’, in line with the United Nations understanding of the term.

Instead, it describes them as, ‘tribes, ethnic groups, ethnic sects and communities’. The government of Bangladesh has since announced that it will remove all references to ‘indigenous’ and ‘Adivasi’ from government documents, laws and even school textbooks.

The government’s attack on the term ‘indigenous’ and on the celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day is even more surprising given that in previous years the Prime Minister herself sent messages of support to the country’s indigenous peoples on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Her party’s election manifesto also contained the term indigenous (Adivasi) several times.

Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry said today, ‘Instead of worrying about whether ministers might accidently use the term ‘indigenous’, the government of Bangladesh should be ensuring that Jumma women and young girls are safe from rape and murder. The record of prosecuting those responsible for these atrocities is scandalous – it’s high time that the government put its priorities in order and respected the rights of the Jummas’.

Note to Editors:

The original document is available to read here

(via biyuti)

“I want to write rage but all that comes is sadness. We have been sad long enough to make this earth either weep or grow fertile. I am an anachronism, a sport, like the bee that was never meant to fly. Science said so. I am not supposed to exist. I carry death around in my body like a condemnation. But I do live. The bee flies. There must be some way to integrate death into living, neither ignoring it nor giving in to it.” —

Audre Lorde. 1980. The Cancer Journals. Aunt Lute Books: p. 13. (via james-bliss)

For Popca (and me)

(via fleursdartifice)

Really? When were PoC in this country benefiting from Imperialism?

lavienoire:

biyuti:

hamburgerjack:

Was it the “jobs” we got working on the railroads funded by slavery, overseas exploitation, and Native genocide?

Maybe we were allowed to go to those institutions of higher learning that were funded by the same thing?

Maybe we were allowed to invest or fund some of the companies doing “exploration”

…

Yeah, no we weren’t.

Why they were exploiting PoC overseas, the machine for that shit over here never stopped.

In fact, they wouldn’t have been able to do half as much if they weren’t slaving and stealing and killing us over here.

I’m not surprised that some people would be on that fucking drink.

I’m never surprised.

Oh, hi, true facts, I missed you.

…. Dude. Intersectionality. You may be oppressed in your country, and you definitely will experience racism in Third World countries, but if you are middle-classed living in a Fist World Country, heck, if you are middle-classed living in US? You benefit from Imperialism. I had this discussion in the past, and I will have it now.

I remember seeing years ago this set of dozens of pictures in NYT (I think?) about the War on Terrorism, a very aesthetic set. And there were POC soldiers who HAD NAMES and were referred with their ranks these pretty pictures. None of the people from Afghan and Iraq had names in that set. No one.

Your industries, universities and schools; your big economy had a lot to do with big Corporations overseas. Make of that whatever you want. (And yes, you will not enjoy them the way white people enjoy them, and a lot of that were definitely constructed around your backs, but you will have access to food, health and education systems that people in Third Word countries cannot even dream about thanks to an economy also built of exploitation of these countries. And you don’t even know it.)

Thanks for saying it, Vie.