Tuesday, September 29, 2009

catching up

No shows for a while huh, Well don’t worry we will set up a show this October. As of now I heard a lot of bands quite busy with the upcoming end of semester but the next show is on the works and definitely would be a blast being that we haven’t had one for a while..

Some good reads that I happen to read already but haven’t had the time to review it, again as I said if you are interested you could always borrow and re print my copies of zines that I featured here. Interest in zines lately here in the local diy community in dc is quite at a low point, unlike before as I could remember we would save our cigarette or recess money for school to pay for “Xerox” copies of zines ,both local and international. And it’s so fucking great, punk rock opened up a lot to me but when i read my first fanzine I was astounded. It opened up a whole new world to me and said this is how I want to write! It was even a local one, but man I remember the cut and paste art and remarkable article and views of everything I love and hated. Honestly straightforward, and brutally truthful. Unlike the books I read in school or magazines that my cousin have which doesn’t really say anything that meant to me. Best abour zines also is its all done for the love of it, totally nonprofit. You even tend to loose more than what you would earn but still the hell with it! Im writing this because I and a friend from the THINKING PERSONS LIBRARY here in Davao, is planning to make a zine convention or gathering or what ever the fuck you call it, just something to promote and reawaken a dying culture in Davao. So stay posted ayt? Again a show on October and a zine convention sometime after that!!

I remember Halloween 3rd issue

Got this from the writer it self Mr. Dane Cortes, and again always a winner. A japans inspired cover along with a lot of japans stuffs like interviews with Jap bands Completed Exposition, Dudman, Dread Eye and a Japan scene report. But as he said is not necessarily called a Japan issue coz it also features interview crux interview, an aussie hardcore punk outfit. AxNxS ,a straight edge thrashcore band is also interviewed along with local heroes Bystorm. And if it’s still not enough, tons of music and zine reviews and a Holland and Malaysia scene report! Extremely a lot in 1 package, and as always with all the IRH issues, its flawless!! Great lay out, great questions and a great effort!! Galling….keep it up!!
spinach lasagna from sbarros.great food , looking forward to make myself one.

ASAWHOLE would be playing a benefit show for the flood victims in luzon, this would be on Friday at 6pm to 9 pm at the Victory Chapel ( nice venue huh) as long as it is for a good cause…….

Be there and support the show or at least the cause, I think there is no entrance fee but donations such as rice, canned foods and noodles would be greatly appreciated.. so I guess that’s it! see you then..ciao
Currently listening to a lot of Verse, Killing the Dream, Blacklisted, Up Dharma Down (yes so what)

Monday, September 28, 2009

choices


The thought of being alone haunts us except maybe for some, as for me I want to experience it and it was pretty much what I did the time I was gone. The idea of goodbye disturbs me a lot. Mainly because I hate it and attachment is always so hard to break. Now question is how much people would you lose in a life time? I am in a stage of constant departure and all I get is a nod, Not that it’s not enough but don’t we miss the physical communication? Why is it more normal to say good morning in text messages rather than saying it right in front. He he exactly! That’s what I love about Hc shows that I don’t see in the street or at school or at home. In celebration of living I go to shows and organize some, sing in a band, write, travel and breathe. Time for our community to grow, and grow with us! Not to grow out of. Let’s keep this real and intimate. It saddens me to see friends from this community that are so cool that they suddenly have to play in shows that has corporate sponsorship where in they could be all that the status quo wants them to be, how long would it take you to understand that your words are not becoming dependable rather SELLable. Don’t get me wrong friends, there is nothing wrong with making an honest money out of playing shows but its sad to jump to the point were in you play your music to promote products or even names that is owned by people who don’t give a shit about you and your music and what your music has to say for that matter. This corporation has nothing in mind but to earn money and use every little resource they have to turn everything into profit. This is sad to think that generations before us that had been there to create a circle that for ones, never cared about how much money they are going to get. They would rather have a room of people gathered to create a voice that connects every single breathing human there is inside. It’s a chaotic approach to reality but it is REAL! You cannot hide the fact that the glass house of humanity that hides between proper and correct have failed to let us experience our lives first hand. We are the machinery of civilization aiming to prosper the luxurious world of the elite while we forget to play just to buy the cell phone we need to fit in and not get left behind, Classism justified! There is a marathon of technology that we will never win. But still humanity had been dumb and thinking for yourself had become radical and grass rooted. But still we play the game and we should play it right, coz we have a choice. This is not the choice you see between brand A or B but the choice of not choosing between the 2! The choice of living life and choking it with your own fist, not the choice you get in an election were you choose between elite suited jerks to rule you, that’s not a choice. It’s a cheap delusion of choice, role playing to tell you that the system works for you, well its not and it doesn’t and it will never will. In the books of human race we are NOTHING but numbers and statistics! So please let’s enjoy this community while it is still real, speak up and do something!! Live life, write a song, cut a class or simply cover your ears. Its real and intimate, think for your own and love life, coz if you don’t have a life to live, well you aint got love to give.
Keep hardcore away from greedy corporate business man and wanna be actors and keep it on the streets where it belongs!!
You don’t get it and buy it, you live it…….

Sunday, September 6, 2009

MAHIRAP KA LANG BA? MAHIRAP LANG DIN AKO...( an old article)


i got to scan this old article i did a year ago,but still worth reading hehe
judt something to "update".. update this tomorrow!!!


Just last month i visited MAnila. Pretty excited to see long time friends, buy some shit that we dont have here in Mindanao like some lokal UG cds some cheap stuffs
and sweet papers. The last time I went there was 2 years ago. We went there through hitch hiking (yeah I know. its so punk rock!) That 3 day journey riding at least 20 different cargo trucks, 3 days of striking heat and cold nights
.so pretty much prepared to get to MANILA. But this December we rode a plane. So the changes were too soon. Like an hour and 45 min kind of soon. As I walk around Quiapo and other rural places I had a complete apparition of what poverty is. Don’t get me wrong, we are not rich but what I saw in Manila is a disturbing and sad portrait of a rotten society. And I know that sooner or later other places in my home town would also be reminiscent of that. And it scared the shit out of me.....
Visions like this only hardened my question about poverty; living in a 3rd world country must have at least shaken your senses about the question of where we are actually headed. Marketed society of unfulfilled dreams is usual scenery. Best export products of people had left us dumbfounded because the idea and eagerness to earn. Earning not to make our lives easier but rather, just to have enough money to buy the rice that we need for the day. Its surely is a long road out to prosperity.

Roughly 4.7 million Filipino families, comprising about 41% of the population, currently have annual incomes below the poverty line. That cut point is set at something around a dollar per person per day. Smaller than uncle sams nephews school allowance in 3rd grade... This makes us more valid to work for anything. Whether it’s hard or degrading, we oddly forget it. Which is pretty devastating coz we got the man power, we got the resources and we got the needs but we aint got the economic wealth.
There is tremendous geographic variation, ranging from 8% of the population in Metro Manila to 60% in some of the Muslim areas of Mindanao, from 11.6% in the province of Cavite to 79.5% in the province of Romblon.
We're not just talking about absolute poverty here; we're talking about relative poverty - and structural inequality. The bottom 40% of families account for only 13.7% of total family income, while the top 10% account for 35.5%. In economic lingo, the country has a Gini coefficient of 0.4507, which represents a high level of inequality indeed.
When discussing poverty in developing countries, it is essential to avoid the many pervasive stereotypes - the poor are lazy, the poor don't take advantage of opportunities, they just don't care, and on and on But the question is what do we have left? Are we still really so numbingly innocent to think that if we just try our best we will also be at the top. NO!! We will be working for all of this elites or capitalist monsters for the rest of our lives. Maybe we could save a bit but sooner or later the pattern or cycle of a world provided for them will bite you in the neck. One of us will get sick, be in an accident of some sort and will all go back to zero and come running back to them which are unfair because this elite empowered people are unsurprisingly the minority. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. And 20% of the population in the developed nations consumes 86% of the world’s goods and resources. This situation could also be compared to the rural places also in the Philippine provinces. In Negros Occidental, for example, over 85% of the people live below the poverty line. Most available land is devoted to sugar cane, which is not competitive on the global market and is often sold at very low price in the world market. Not to mention the wage payments which are abysmal and sharecropping is a brutal display of exploitation. Of course large “hacendero” families still own most of the lands. Land reform has obviously no hope for implementation. CHILDREN are starving to death!!!
This process actually is nothing new. As a matter of fact Globalization has been around Pinas for centuries. The famous explorer Mr. Magellan and his posse sponsored by the Spanish crew landed in Cebu, particularly Mactan for 2 main agenda. He saw our islands riches and sieze to colonize it to have easy income and easy wealth and to bless and evangelized the natives with the holy graces of Christianity with the one and only true faith of their catholic church. And the seed of present day situation was then planted. Not to mention (fast forward 3 centuries) when Admiral Dewey steamed into Manila Bay. About 80% of land in the Philippines was in the public domain. since then Filipino politicians was the one who determines how our land was to be exploited and by whom. Those few who has the right connections got the timbers and mining rights. This is our resources, Mother Nature at its best and yet the Philippine state has always encouraged the extraction of this resources. Even leasing large areas for exploitation at nominal fees and ensuring zero export taxes. Such depressive acts are done in exchange of free access or quotas in Uncle Sam’s market.
Also one example of this was x President Ramos administration, he lessen the restrictions on foreign investment by giving incentive bonanzas. Investors were given a 10-year tax holiday, capital tax exemptions and a lot more that I don’t know anymore.
The consequences of these land use policies have not been pretty. You could start by mentioning the ongoing marginalization of indigenous peoples, tremendous concentration of land ownership, and environmental degradation. The net result? Perpetuation of the semi-feudal, semi-capitalist, and neocolonial character of the Philippine economy and mass displacement of indigenous communities and upland farmers.
Then many of us end up in squatter areas.

To be continued

peter