THERE is never a bloodless revolution that brought real change. Think Edsa Revolution. Three decades late, the oppression and corruption remained. And then there are the unseen ones that draw blood and shake the very foundations on which the old ways have been anchored.
Like now.
It's difficult when we are made to stare at what we have allowed ourselves to become, because, admit it, we have allowed ourselves to be the ugliest.
Let us not forget the extent of corruption that Janet Napoles was orchestrating among the senators and congressmen. Let us not forget that there is truth to the report that mayors, vice mayors, congressmen, and all types of government officials are into drugs.
Let us not forget how the whole government tried to protect the presidential discretionary fund, renaming it in order to continue to draw from it.
Let us not forget that until President Rodrigo Duterte became president, we only knew the Pagcor funds as something local governments and their allied charity foundations solicit from for special needs. It was never there to fund key concerns like health and the total amount was never publicly acknowledged.
Just two days ago, there were posts on social media about the people of Aleppo pleading for their lives and posting their goodbyes. There was one who said that tomorrow is too late. Everyone was again hashtagging, #prayforAleppo. We have long been told that terrorists have taken over Aleppo and Idlip in Syria and killing civilians there by the thousands.
Thus, it was jarring to see news coming from the field, outside the established corporate media saying that the US-funded terrorists were leaving Aleppo in buses and ambulances after a deal was hatched. It was, wh-ut?
Thus I searched and found how journalist Eva Bartlett, who has spent a number of months in Aleppo, pummeled down Norwegian journalist, Christopher Rothenberg, who challenged her claims that the Western media was lying. I couldn't stop playing and rewinding that video. I just rued the fact that the cameras did not return to Rothenberg as I wanted to see how his face transformed from the smugness that I saw there as he asked, "How can you justify calling all of us liars?"
Bartlett pointed out that the sources the mainstream media has been quoting were never on the ground including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which she said is based in Coventry, UK and only has one person manning it, getting their information from "compromised groups" like the White Helmets, which she described as organized by an British ex-military officer in 2013, funded $100-million by the US, UK, Europe and other states, that have been recycling videos to show they have been doing their job to help civilians in Aleppo and Idlip, but actually is not known to any one in Aleppo and Idlip.
"So your sources on the ground, you don't have them," she told Rothernberg. "As to your agenda, not your, but the agenda of some corporate media, it is the agenda of regime change. How can the New York Times, I was reading this morning... and how can Democracy Now, which I was reading the other day, maintain until this day that there is civil war in Syria? How can they maintain until this day that the protests were unarmed and non-violent until say 2012? That is absolutely not true."
"How can they maintain that the Syrian government is attacking civilians in Aleppo, when every person that's coming out of these areas occupied by terrorists is saying the opposite?" she asked.
She then pointed out that Syria had an election in 2014 where the people elected President Bashar al-Assad, whom the people overwhelmingly support.
"There are people that want change in the government. We're not pretending they don't want change. Everybody wants change. But in terms of support of the government, the point is they don't see president Assad as the problem," she said.
"So, I'm basing it on their choice in their leader and I'm basing it on my interactions from people in Syria," she added, in answering what is her basis for saying that mainstream media is lying.
New York Times, the agenda of the mainstream corporate media, the lies... for a while there I thought I was reading about the Philippines.
saestremera@yahoo.com