41. When elephants fight through anonymous letters
It is still the grass that suffers and is left with nobody to blame
How long can the government hold a grudge? How many years after college can it use your time as a student activist against you?
In the case of a friend, the answer is more than two decades and the blowback was against his wife, who lost her government job because of an anonymous letter warning President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. against appointing certain people to the National Security Council.
The primary target of the letter attributed to unnamed “NSC employees” was Rommel Banlaoi of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, who was accused of being too close to China and of being a security risk.
READ: ‘NSC employees’ blackball academic from high intel post
Banlaoi can defend himself and has, at any rate, withdrawn from contention as deputy director-general of the NSC.
Another target, but really just collateral damage in a power play against National Security Adviser Clarita Carlos and her nominees to the NSC, was an assistant director general who was blackballed for allegedly lacking qualifications and because "her husband is a cadre of CPP-NPA [Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army]. "
Her husband, as it turns out, is someone I knew from my short stay in UP Los Baños and my even shorter stay in student activism.
He was a member of the League of Filipino Students in the months before and shortly after the ouster of Joseph Estrada. He left soon after Edsa Dos, as many of us did, and had been more involved in poetry and martial arts since then.
Even if he hadn’t left, being a member of LFS does not make one a cadre of the CPP-NPA no matter how firmly government insists that activism and “terrorism” are the same thing.
Not that the distinction really matters to the unnamed “NSC employees” and others in government who, for example, want state workers to disclose if they are related to anyone who is a “member of a terrorist organization [or] who is an affiliate of an org that seeks to overthrow the Republic of the Philippines.”
Nor, for that matter, to those now attacking Sen. Loren Legarda — a reservist colonel with a master’s degree in National Security Administration now being accused of being a communist all along — for saying that “believing in an ideology which may be different from the majority…that may be left of center, so to speak, does not make anyone subversive.”
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The distinction didn’t matter either to the National Telecommunications Commission, which blocked access to alternative news websites on that premise.
As worrisome as the vague accusations is how the unsigned NSC letter reached the press — packaged as a leaked document and passed along by sources in the diplomatic and security community.
“White papers” — unsigned, and with vague allegations that are difficult to verify — aren’t new and many of us have learned to ignore them.
When received from a source, though, bare allegations would tend to get more attention and would have some legitimacy — enough for some of us to see it as a lead worth reporting or at least pass on to colleagues and, in the process, legitimizing rumors spread by people who weren’t even brave enough to put their names to their accusations.
It was a power play, common in transitions between administrations and seen even in agencies like the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, and it worked, and I am sorry to for my part in it.
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Colleagues at Philstar.com have spent the past months looking into alt meat and plant-based proteins.
There has been increased interest in and consumption of alt meat since the pandemic started and wider adoption could help ease pressure caused by large-scale livestock agriculture.
Acceptance of alt meat is hampered by the cultural importance that meat has in most households but many Filipinos have been eating less or no meat out of circumstance or principles even before plant-based proteins became a growing industry.Meanwhile, an investment deal between ABS-CBN and TV5 has been terminated by mutual agreement helped along by pressure from members of the House and from the National Telecommunications Commission.
Bilyonaryo, quoting an anonymous source, TV5 boss (and also, in a way, my boss) Manny V. Pangilinan had been warned Congress “would give his group a tough time renewing the franchises of PLDT and Meralco” if the deal pushed through.
The announcement of the termination of the deal came a day after the second anniversary of layoffs at ABS-CBN because of the loss of its legislative franchise, and shortly after National Press Freedom Day in a country where, Inquirer.net notes, “speaking truth to power means eating death threats for breakfast and enduring relentless persecution from the most powerful forces in the land — while still being paid less and asked to do more — journalists find themselves between covering the story and being the story.”