A “radical” who chooses to close his eyes to prevailing social conditions is only delusional. A “radical” who proves incapable of arriving at the roots of the fundamental problem is a charlatan. But a “radical” who markets utopian fantasies and reactionary fallacies as revolutionary is a dangerous demagogue.[1] In the US-based online forum Kasama Project …
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is not only a criticism of present-day capitalism by way of science fiction but also a description of what an alternative system could look like. In the novel’s universe, there are the two worlds Urras and Anarres. Urras is bountiful but this wealth is concentrated in the hands of …
The petition filed by youth activist group Anakbayan at the Commission on Elections against Akbayan! Citizen’s Action Party’s participation in the party-list elections and the series of spectacles arising therefrom has helped much to place Akbayan’s so-called progressive credentials into public scrutiny. Anakbayan asserts that Akbayan should be disqualified from the party-list race because several of its …
I changed the blog layout two weeks ago ago and found out that the blog name After the Dinner Party needed to be replaced too. The old title was too long. It occupied too much space in the blog header of the new layout design. So I came up with an even better name: Hello …
A great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately, he succeeds in changing the landscape of our minds. The first chapter of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red is entitled “I Am A Corpse” and begins with the dead man talking about how he was murdered and thrown to the …
From Cairo to Manhattan, Manila to Athens, Quebec to Santiago the worsening crisis of the world capitalist system is pushing thousands to rise up against rising hunger, deteriorating living conditions, and intensifying poverty and inequality on a global scale. Not since the youthful Chinese Red Guards the raised the rallying call, “To Rebel is Justified” …
A feature article about me came out in the Iloilo-based daily The News Today the other week. This is the text. SOCIAL CHANGE Karlo Mongaya says ‘start young’ By Kathy M. Villalon The Philippines’ cultural, economic and political systems that don’t work continue to happen because of apathy. It is a state wherein despite poverty …
Last week, my good friend Daryl wrote a poem that he dubbed as a rejoinder to a silly piece of verse that I penned five years ago, when I was still residing in Cebu. This is his poem: To a dear friend, now, even with two eyes sleeping, no more mists and stars in my …
Education is generally described as “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction.”[2] It is a basic human right because it is considered one of the fundamental guarantees that enable an individual to live his full potential as a human being. Various international agreements entered into by the Philippines, including the 1948 Universal Declaration of …
The changing of my blog’s name from (Mis)readings to After the Dinner Party on the other hand has more at stake than mere whim or impulse. This may come as a surprise for some readers. After all, I’ve been using the name (Mis)readings since I started publishing the blog for exactly two years already since August 2008.
There are two main reasons for the change. The first has to do with vanity. The second is perhaps more significant and for that reason more circuitous.
Much of writing by Filipinos have been limited by our local writers’ enchantment with “colonial, Western modes of visioning reality,” their being “caught up in a borrowed language,” their being “restricted by our social formation,” and their having been “fed the tepid versions of history and tradition that have been handed down.”[1] Philippine fiction has …
What if everybody goes blind all of a sudden? What would happen? Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning writer Jose Saramago follows the repercussions of such a speculative scenario in his 1995 novel, Blindness. The novel starts with a government in panic rounding up “all the people who had turned blind, as well as those who had been …
Well, but with sorcery, as everyone knows, once it starts, there’s no stopping it. p. 103 Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult masterpiece, The Master and Margarita, one of the finest classics of 20th Century Russian literature, has not more than once been publicized as a criticism of Stalin’s soviet republic. The fact that it was published not …
Reblogged from Teddy Casiño: I would like to thank all those who voted for me during last week’s elections. Salamat po sa inyong tiwala sa akin at sa progresibo at makabayang pulitika na aking isinusulong. Bagamat hindi tayo nagwagi, hindi nasayang ang inyong boto. Malaking ambag ito sa patuloy na pagsisikap nating magkaroon ng pagbabago … Continue reading »
Note: This is a talk I gave to campus journalists of the University of the Philippines system during a Conference of the UP Solidaridad in UP Visayas Miagao, Iloilo last May 16, 2013. When Pixel Offensive posted a status update discouraging his readers from blaming the masses for disappointing election results, the Facebook meme page … Continue reading »
Mayo 2013 Inihanda ng Public Information Committee ng Pambansang Himpilan ng ANAKBAYAN Tulad ng inaasahan, ang eleksyon 2013 ay walang pakinabang sa mamamayang Pilipino na naghahangad ng tunay na pagbabago. Ito ay naging paliksahan lamang ng mga magkakalabang paksyon ng mga naghahari sa ating bayan para sa mga pwesto, at paghahanda para sa eleksyon sa … Continue reading »
Reblogged from AES Watch: May 18, 2013 press statement By committing more errors than those recorded in 2010, by making arbitrary and highly-irregular decisions during canvassing, and proclaiming presumed winning candidates prematurely the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has turned the second automated elections from bad to worse – a technology and political disaster. Aside from … Continue reading »
By Bernard D’Mello You are far away from the sterile atmosphere of much of academia with its politically correct but spineless professors. You are miles away from intellectuals who detest both the Indian state and those who live by the revolutionary ideal. Just as well to be nowhere near those who run with the hare … Continue reading »
Formulaic By Edel Garcellano This summer is a repetition: boys with books upraised to hide their pimples; girls with sunglasses perched on noses like Hepburn. But they will not say anything so anti-climactic, so dangerous: they subscribe to time-worn protocol, & pretend everything’s damned cool. There is no need for arguments, they destabilize novatos & … Continue reading »
Reblogged from STALIN'S MOUSTACHE: More for my study called Saint Joseph: The Man of Steel and Religion: In the city of Yakutsk, a sub-arctic city, major port on the Lena River, and capital of the Sakha Republic in Russia, a new statue of Stalin has been unveiled. Despite opposition from those dreadful anti-Stalinists, the local and … Continue reading »
