Angry Maude Reports: Invasion of the Philippines

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Philippines Invaded!

Special Report Filed by Angry Maude

The Philippines suffered a stealth invasion overnight. Well, the invasion did not exactly take place overnight, but the Nation awoke and discovered itself invaded.

Rather like a woman awaking, rolling over, and finding herself face to face with some naked unwanted stranger, scruffy of beard, smelly of breath, and loud of snore right there on the pillow next to hers. Kinda makes you want to check out the body parts and wonder about the dream , you know?

But no matter how it happened, it was clear over the morning coffee, reading the morning blog, that the Philippines has been invaded. It is now occupied. Officially. Without question. Fo sho . . .

Strangers are in charge.

Normally we think of invaders as being from a different planet, or different country. A different place of geography.

But that is just a limitation in our thinking, rather like our thinking that history is a stepwise progression in time rather than a warp of space.  History is taking place instantaneously but on a magnificent spacial quantum twist of cohesion that we can only grasp iteratively. And if you can figure that sentence out, please send me a note, because I have no idea what I just said. Michael Crichton gets it, though, I'm confident.

Occupiers are distinguished, not by the land from which they emerged, but the by the control they exercise over the native man. Or woman. We are not gender biased here, no matter what my sisters think. We are occasionally inclined to use gender shortcuts, for the quickest point between two ideas is often a short word.

But I digress . . .

Christ this blog will never get written if my typewriter keeps running off at the lip . . .

We are occupied.

The invader

The invaders are the pampered patrons of dynastic privilege backed by the moneyed industrialists. This is a well-defined set of people, a unity, a community, a nation unto itself.

These creatures are chameleons of the body and public presentation  and are able to mold themselves into our likeness like a Roddenberry shape-shifter from Planet Xon. They look like us. Dress the same. Have the same language. And they talk the good word in that language, appealing to our historical pride in their father's deeds. Or mother's. Or great grand-aunt's, as long as the name is distinguished enough.

They are handsome or pretty, charming and intelligent. They smile and tell us of their good deeds. They get their 15 minutes of fame, generally once or twice a week.

But then they step away from the public podium of gracious bearing and they get down and dirty, down and privileged, down and powerful. They wave the law in front of our faces and say "obey" whilst running off to do as they please, where as they please means engorging their stomachs and wallets off the fat of a very thin nation. Nay, a starving nation.

Make no mistake. They are different. They are unified. And they are raping and pillaging.

You can tell they have something to hide because that's what they spend most of their time doing. They hide their money in secret bank accounts. They hide their deeds in public records kept from the public.  Getting SALN's out of them is like pulling teeth from a gorilla. They get their educations in foreign lands at strange places named Harvard and London School of Economics. They live behind gated walls with maids and servants and polished fast cars that haul them about while the rest of the nation is stuffed like crushed sardines in the back of a noisy, dirty, diesel-puffing jeepney.

They step ambitiously and assuredly upward along the path to fame, riches and power whilst the rest of the nation sticks in one place for a lifetime, monotonously jamming rice into the mud.

No, no. We are occupied.

Those people are "those people". They are different. They are not us.

They make the rules, and the rules favor them. The rules do not favor us.

If we open our yaps, the dungeon awaits. Senator Sotto represents the dark knight, a vivid  caricature, a hyper-sensitive ego engaged in sly, silky religious posturing that morphs into master and lord. He only lacks a horse and cape and "cue sound" for his thunderous, ominous approach, waving shouts of "libel!" as his mace. Like the armies of huns and mongols and invading turks, "suppression!" is his battle cry.

He seriously believes he has the correct definition of freedom of speech, and it is a lot more confined and confining than ours. Like, we get confined for 12 years if we open our yaps about the stench that emanates from the brains of the privileged.

The only thing that keeps the occupiers from hauling our bloomer bedecked derrieres off and flaying them is the internet and the knowledge that the entire world is watching. And they are trying to worm their way around that.

Two citizens visiting the Senate chambers . . .

Cybercrime Act my overlarge backside.

Citizen Oppression Act, libel enforcement of the internet built on the masterful illusion of caring for kids who are peddled for sex.

Clearly, legislators have learned from the Catholic Church. They've learned how to wield guilt and righteousness whilst avoiding the stigma attached to responsibility. Like responsibility for all the death and sickness and starvation in a nation the Church caretakes as moral custodians and the Legislature caretakes as legal custodians.

Who did it, I want to know. If not them, who?

The government recently hauled a 62 year old woman off to jail because she complained that miners were destroying the land and she ripped into the Mayor of her berg. The Sotto mentality got her. "Criticize the Mayor and learn your place, Woman!"

From the inside of a stinking cell.

They allow extra-judicial murderers to lie in wait like the biggest ugliest crocodile you can imagine. They don't cage the beast. They WANT it out there as a stark dark reminder to the common people that "you best not get out of line".

Fear is palpable in the Philippines. It is there every day. Lying, lurking. The knowledge that there are mean bastards with power here, and they know no limits. The alien monsters are drooling and snarling and they are in charge of this nation.

U-tube is the only thing keeping the Philippines from regressing directly back to the dark ages.

The soul of the occupiers is akin to that of Darth Vader. On some days you can hear the heavy breathing and swear it is enhanced by a borg machine behind the curtains pumping life and wisdom into a lifeless apparatus called Senate . . ..

Have you ever seen such a body of highly schooled people getting nothing done so magnificently? No RH Bill, no FOI Bill, no Divorce Bill, sitting on their SALN's. In the real world, among the commoners, they would call such achievement incompetence.

Here, it is just another day.

Because the Philippines is occupied.

And the occupiers play by their own rules. And they really don't give a box of bon bons about the natives. Except as to how they can be used to best advantage.

The proof is in their putrid, non-performing pudding, and their choice of acts that suppress over acts that open the government up to forthright inspection by the natives.

The Inquirer won't print the headline.

But you know, and I know, the nation is occupied.