Another time bomb ticking before us in this COVID-19 pandemic is our food supply. There is looming hunger as our agricultural system remains unsustainable, with its being export-oriented and import-dependent.
We assail this brazen affront against the very core of our humanity, the freedom of the press, and our right to free expression. It is an attempt to maim us, to silence our protestations, our very right to seek redress from an administration that does not respect its own.
“An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795
The narrative that people with critical opinions on the inept government’s response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic wishes the government to fail is utterly wrong, absurd, and narrow. No one wishes the government to fail for the simplest reason – no one in his/her rightful mind wishes to die.
It has only been weeks yet it has already been weeks is how relative and subjective time was, is, and might be, due to uncertainties brought upon by the virus and the government’s public health response, or lack thereof. Every day seems like a slightly modified déjà vu, as nothing substantial seems to happen, yet there are ups and downs of heightening anxieties and grueling boredom
The message is clear: if one is critical of the administration whose shallow interpretation of democratic rights clearly show in their knee-jerk response to what they consider as “seditious”, one easily gets the ax.
The Corona Virus Disease 19 (Covid 19) can be considered as a litmus test for all of us. We witnessed how governments respond to such pandemic, and we as humans treat each other.
When I was in my elementary school days, I remember being asked about what are the basic needs of man. I recall being required to look for photos to be pasted on my notebook of these so-called “man’s basic needs.”
Before Women’s Month ends, I’d like to take up an important development in the struggle for the rights and welfare of women and girls in the Philippines. Early in March, Sen. Risa Hontiveros had filed Senate Bill 162, or a bill seeking to end child marriages.
I hope this essay will be taken as an appeal and not an attack by academics of a certain stature who tend to be uncritical and unscientific—attitudes uncalled for at all times, and more so, amid this pandemic. Elsewhere, I listed some contagious (viral?) ruling class ideas that feed on each other and endanger welfares and lives of the general population. Let’s focus on two prevalent ones among the supposed “thinking” class: “we’re the virus” variations (WTVs) and toxic positivity variants (T+Vs), both of which obscure the critical situation that we ought to overcome together.
