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Month: April 2019

Ipe Salvosa and Bobi Tiglao

Published by Ellen on April 28, 2019

As long as we have journalists like Felipe Salvosa II, the likes of Bobi Tiglao don’t matter.

Salvosa provided a much-needed silver lining last week at the time when dark clouds of lies threatened to overwhelm the public pre-occupied with the business of surviving.

Until last week, Salvosa was Manila Times managing editor. He was fired for voicing his reservations about the story his newspaper was putting out.

Salvosa’s tweet that cost him his Manila Times’ job

I’m using the word “fired” because he himself admitted that he was asked to resign by management over his tweet posted early afternoon of April 22 which said: “A diagram is by no means an evidence of ‘destabilization’ or an ‘ouster plot.’ It is a very huge stretch for anyone to accuse PCIJ, Vera Files and Rappler of actively plotting to unseat the President. I know people there and they are not coup plotters.”

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A conference on how disinformation erodes democracy

Published by Ellen on April 21, 2019

Almost every day, from my place of work to my residence is almost three-hour energy-sappy travel, one way.

In those three hours, I witness scenes that re-affirm my admiration to the suffering Filipinos — from the kilometer-long queues for a ride to the sardine-like situation in the MRT and many more.

In the three years of the country under Rodrigo Duterte, 27,000 have been reported killed in drug-related incidents, more than 4,000 of them during police operations, most of them small-time drug runners. None of the big-time suppliers have been arrested.

Until last week, when more than 300 Chinese vessels surrounded Philippine –occupied Pag-asa Island, the government didn’t complain about China’s aggressive activities in the disputed areas in South China Sea.

Every day we read about misgovernance, incompetence and mis-use of funds.

Yet, the Filipinos are satisfied with him as leader.

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Duterte regains upper hand in the battle of Narco Lists

Published by Ellen on April 16, 2019

After Bong Go, President Duterte’s former special assistant who is now one of the frontrunners in the senatorial race, did the humiliating act of undressing in front of the media and under the glare of TV cameras, to show his tattoo-less back, the question of those who were initially impressed with the first three episodes of “Ang totoong Narco list” is, what’s Bikoy going to say about this?

Bong Go undresses to show his back without a tattoo.

Bikoy, for those who did not follow his video series, claims to be a former member of a drug syndicate operating in Southern Luzon and Visayas region. He said he was involved in the recording of transactions and showed copies of the documents in the video where he appeared as hooded figure.

For many days after Go debunked his claim about having personally seen a tattoo with dragon figure on the back of Duterte’s aide, he was silent which was not surprising. As Terry Ridon, former urban poor chief of the Duterte administration, in his opinion piece in the Philippine Daily Inquirer said, “ Wala na, finish na.”
The title of Ridon’s article was “The ‘Bikoy’ who cried wolf”

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Battle of Narco lists

Published by Ellen on April 5, 2019

This is a classic case of Duterte getting a dose of his own medicine.

Two weeks after he released the initial list local officials allegedly involved in drug trafficking, two videos implicating the President’s son, former Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte and now candidate for Representative of Davao City’s first district, were uploaded on You Tube and Facebook account of “Metro Balita”, which lists itself as “media/news company.”

Titled “Ang Totoong Narcolist” , Episode 1 is 6 minutes and 50 seconds long. Episode 2 is three minutes and 30 seconds.

The videos look professionally done. So is the annotation.

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Nic Gabunada’s amazing social media network

Published by Ellen on April 1, 2019
From https://medium.com

In his briefing on the latest takedown of accounts in Facebook and Instagram in the Philippines found to be engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Facebook Cybersecurity Policy, underscored that the reason was not the posted content.

He said it was because “the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves.” That’s “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

It so happened, however, that tracing the trail of the 67 Pages, 68 Facebook accounts, 40 Groups and 25 Instagram accounts that were taken down, led Gleicher and his team to Nic Gabunada, head of Rodrigo Duterte’s social media during the 2016 presidential campaign.

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