The "war" between the Mangudadatu and Ampatuan clans that led to the massacre of at least 57 people in Ampatuan town left me speechless.

Early reports had the convoy of the Mangudadatu women, wife and relatives of Buluan town mayor Toto, accompanied by female lawyers and followed by the cars of journalists were stopped at Ampatuan town in Maguindanao.

The convoy was reportedly "kidnapped" by about 100 armed men. Then other reports filtered in about how the "kidnapped victims" were raped, beheaded, killed, then dumped into a pit in a remote village.

When the people in the convoy were found later, buried in a newly dug hole by the mountainside of Sitio Masalay, Barangay Saman, Ampatuan town, investigators excavated about 60 bodies. Included in the count were 30 journalists who accompanied the Mangudadatu party on their way to file the certificate of candidacy of Toto Mangudadatu for the gubernatorial position.

Other victims of the massacre included passengers in two vehicles that were not part of the convoy.

All the victims were brutally murdered and then buried, allegedly some were still alive, in a pit earlier dug up -- indicating that the execution had been planned.

The brutality of these crimes left me wondering if the Philippines was caught in a time warp and was back in the days when warlords ruled with impunity. And when the gruesome details of how the victims were killed began to filter in, I couldn't imagine how the individual among those armed group could have committed such crimes. Was it mob rule, or were they all hardened killers following the specific orders of their leader, or were they a pack of Himmlers?

Steven Pinker talks about violence in his Ted.com talk on "The Myth of Violence":
While Pinker provides a rather controversial take on the decrease of violence through time, what is interesting for me is how he proposes -- and at the end of his talk when he answers a question raised by the host -- how a more globalized information network allow human beings to imagine how the Other lives.

It is apparently in this ability to imagine the Other that allows each one of us -- to one degree or another -- to demystify the Other and to realize how the Other is really like us. And in this imagining, we are able to rise above our "barbaric" behavior and to live harmoniously with our neighbors.

As Pinker points out, throughout the centuries our standards for "civilized" life has outstripped our anarchic behavior. And that explains how we are appalled at the savagery that every now and then assaults us in the news.
 
Sex Pistols 11/14/2009
 
Imagine this: nerdy academics in a conference hall singing along to a YouTube video of Sex Pistol's "No Fun."

That must have been a sight to see, what C witnessed at the Digital Labor conference on "The Internet as Playground and Factory" at the Eugene Lang College, New School, this Nov. 12-14, 2009. 

Here's a YouTube video of the Sex Pistols, perhaps you'll be singing along too.

 
 
What do you do in this time of climate change?

Watching what the Carteret islanders are going through might give you some ideas. This short documentary featured in the Media that Matters Film Festival was an eye-opener for me.


Thank you, Lina, for alerting me to this site.
 
 
Corinne and Pearl, my thesis advisees this term, are both working on how images create meanings. Corinne is doing a study of how photographs were used in the Philippine Daily Inquirer to portray the failed MOA signing and the intensification of the conflict between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Pearl, on the other hand, is investigating how the Filipino female is shown through images in the top 10 websites for the keyword "Filipina."

Which reminded me of how media really manipulates how we think through the images and texts we consume. Here's a docu on Noam Chomsky and his book, Manufacturing Consent (1988).

 
Consider this 10/19/2009
 
Consider these statistics the next time you tweet or post something online. Or send an SMS, or watch something on YouTube, and so on. And ask yourself, would you have been able to do the same thing a few years back?

And you'll be amazed at how fast media technology has evolved. But perhaps you'll be more amazed at how your way of communicating has also changed with the technology.


This video will come in handy when I teach Media Arts 101 next semester. No, I will not give a quiz on the stats shown in the video. By that time, the figures will have grown by leaps and bounds. Or new technology may have changed the landscape again.

 
Money = Life? 10/17/2009
 
Is this true? Is life really governed by money? That is what Douglas Rushkoff propounds in his Life Inc. (the book and the 9 min. movie).

That's how it felt when I got my first credit card. Suddenly, I was somebody who carried around a tiny plastic card that identified me as a consumer. And in the consumerist world that we live in, that card is really your life.

Here's Rushkoff to explain how this scheme came to be, and ways to subvert this system:
What is ironic though is that while he talks about ways of getting around the system, running at the bottom of the screen are trading figures from Wall Street. So you might as well ask, is there really such an escape? Can you really get your life back?