It was informational campaign in the most dangerous, difficult and highly contested political and social national environment. At the start of the Duterte administration, in mid-2022, talks and media coverage about then President Duterte’s threats, or campaign pledge, of a pivot-to-China shift in the Philippine’s foreign policy, dominated all other issues except the most controversial campaign pledge long before he won the May 2022 elections, of slaughtering a 100,000 or so addicts.
If you think topics in my Facebook and website posts were somewhat primitive and info-graphics simplistic, you have to keep in mind these were composed and published, posted at a time period when there was mainstream ignorance of geopolitical realities, parochial thinking evident in both public and private pronouncements of national officials too. It could also be in the landscape of social media and even simply Facebook then, susceptible to influence and propaganda campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party of China’s (among other state and non-state actors) cyber warfare machineries, these were so pervasive until a few years ago. Not only did these nefarious acts organized, coordinated and controlled by the likes of the CCP-China and the PLA and all their relevant and other agencies, these were at scale that inundated the social media and other online platforms.
On top of it all, in the time period of mid-2016 to 2022 and even before the May 2016 elections that Duterte won for his 6-year term, CCP-China’s propaganda machineries boosted pro-regime posts that drowned sensible and sane voices, facts and accurate info in the social media platforms where the vast majority of Filipinos would form as basis for gossips and opinions. To this day, but to a much lesser extent, the Chinese mighty propaganda machinery across the cyber realms can and still do hijack narratives to support its agendas in the relevant countyry and population.
In the later part of 2000s, I handed former President Duterte, , then mayor of Davao City, my materials about organized crime operations in the country making a mockery of the country’s anti-drug programs.
A report about my campaign also attracted regional TV coverage, the 2nd longest in Davao City in a TV news broadcast. Yes, I and we then lived in Davao City and region on and off for some years. In 1 stretch of time, next to the City Hall. I felt safe there, then, I thought at least from non-organized common criminals. In our short meeting, I cited data and reports from the U.S. State Department, the United Nations ODC and other sources. That was in my highly successful nationwide campaign against the problem of seized-drugs recycling, of tens of billions of mostly “meth”. He had it in his hands, papers he must have read being in private moment with no work to do for the next 1 1/2 hours. I’m not sure who he was also meeting with, among police officials before we talked. I sometimes obscure or omit details that are not necessary, due to possible unintended consequences of my revelations or pronouncements.
When years later he rose to the presidency, Duterte said this: “”Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now, there is three million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them” adding “At least Germany had Hitler. The Philippines wouldn’t.” He also publicly called then President Obama, “son of a whore” over worries that the latter might raise human rights issues if they get to meet in an ASEAN event. Same curse he once used against the Pope when he got stuck in traffic in Metro Manila during Pope Francis’ visit. A BBC page says “Describing the EU as hypocrites, Mr Duterte said member countries like the UK and France had ‘the gall to condemn me’ despite their colonial ancestors killing ‘thousands of Arabs'”. He called Donald Trump a “bigot”. He said he wanted to go to Russia “tell him [Vladimir Putin] that there are three of us against the world — China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way” that after declaring “separation” of the Philippines from the United States.
In August of 2020, he said “Filipino forces can fight insurgents and Muslim extremists without American military help, in a defense of his recent decision to terminate a U.S. security pact. He asked, “Do we need … the might and power of the military of the United States to fight our rebellion here and the terrorists down south and control drugs?”
In the early part of Duterte’s rule starting in mid-2016, he tapped for his Cabinet at least 3 personalities whose ideology and stand on issues were far more hard core leftist or “communist” if qualified in the standards of his key officials and propagandists that caused the labeling (called “red-tagging” in mainstream media in the Philippines) of rights-activists or even non-activists who simply made pronouncements about concerns on human rights issues. The illegal communist movement in the country was ecstatic on this. Indeed, the communist movement, waging a violent insurgency for decades, with its mighty propaganda machinery on and offline, so loud in any and all social issues in all of the decades, somewhat seemed to only so barely raise a voice in the initial period when thousands were allegedly being murdered in the so-called “drugs war”. The CPP-NPA, armed wing of the communist movement, is tagged as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and almost all Western powers, including by Japan.
There are components of our campaigns that were discreet, and we can’t easily disclose these in a public post. To give the reader an idea, we knew the academic environments and even overall intellectual landscapes where some major officials of this country got educated, where their world views were shaped or distorted, whether or not it’s mostly parochial and simplistic, and where they got informed or misinformed about global issues and macro-level situations. To profilers, these are utterly important in diving into the minds and mindsets, the inner brain workings of public officials, to understand them better and to make relevant decisions about. To have ventured into this topic in this paragraph is not comfortable for me. In all, just like in every successful businessman, trade secrets are important. To have sparked mainstream conversations — on the Filipinos’ values and religiosity, democratic ideals, and sensitivity to rights issues and enjoyment of fundamental freedoms, utterly incompatible and totally in clash with how it is in communist China with its murderous (against its own peoples, the Han supermajority being racist too) policies — is one of our great success stories these done in the most cost-effective of approaches.
Wait, am I using any LLM or AI tools in the composition of articles in this site?
Please take note that I mostly type from memory, and never dictated by AI or inputs not defined by AI except in double-checking of simple facts. I am deliberate in my efforts, and inclination for my naturally creative and innovative or unique kinds of thinking to not be curtailed, dulled and defined by AI tools. AI tools can check my past work before the advent of accessibility and widespread use of LLMs and compare to my present articles, posts or even reports. I am conscious on not allowing AI to erode my ability for critical thinking, to incorporate and capture new wisdom, use of intuition, and not allow my mindsets and opinions to be substantially influenced by either the so-called wisdom or craziness of the crowd especially in this early age of AI. Moreover, I can’t afford the more advanced LLM offerings and maybe it’s a blessing in disguise for the aforementioned reasons. I have directly observed some otherwise bright young people getting excellent academic ratings but overwhelmed by AI inputs in their thinking and developing dependence on it, and their learning not manifesting in their kind of reasoning and thinking.
Well, to be old school on this, and to be conservative in adoption of new transformational technologies, I wish I’d be an experiment or subject of a study. Some people are so gifted in their natural pattern-recognition capabilities, critical and analytical thinking, that I speculate, that they would not be so welcoming of anything disruptive in their above-average problem solving skills.
Why the kinds of posts, and simple info-graphics, I made on Facebook?
Because I had in mind as target readers from simple people in the rural areas to those who influence those who give inputs to top national officials, and key officials too, my Facebook posts in the past years reflect this. I had a wide range of reasons for posting, but each info-graphic or post would be intended for specific types, kinds and level of formal and informal education of each individual or group of target readers. Some were also nonsense to almost all readers, indeed these were simply some forms of expressions in our private and guarded lives. Some served dual purpose, based on our circumstances or immediate environment at the time of composition, and for reasons some of which I can’t make public. We lived hard, painfully difficult lives to pursue our causes, advocacies and life missions. I composed mainly in branded but cheap low-end tablets and phones, some of it created in cheapest branded laptop computers. My pronouncements here as to our work environments are limited by some preacutions we still need to take, tackling big issues in our society.
Standing (making a stand) when it’s most difficult and even very dangerous to do so, and remaining steadfast, in all of those many many years, having taken these initiatives to advance our causes, the great causes of humanity, as independent individuals, not partnering with any group because we were keen on avoiding the dilution of our campaigns with that of traditional activist or cause-oriented groups so many were also corrupted (in our severely corrupt society) and with leaders having gone fanatical in sustaining their ideology and kinds of traditional associations that limited or constrained them only in bureaucratic approaches they got so accustomed to.
