Philippines

I find it so frustrating that our parents pay income tax and what remains of the money after tax is taxed yet again by the VAT. Which by the way is among the highest in Southeast Asia, and disproportionately affects people with lower income (as their income has to be spent more on consumption). Instead of doing anything that would justify the taxes our politicians are negligent and even outright corrupt. Just look at the current scandals and open secrets nowadays! The DepEd scandal, the Flood Control scandal, and it's basically an open secret that BIR and Customs have shady shit going on...

And despite that, it is a common experience in public schools and universities that we have to "amot". Basically every one of us have to raise money to fund something because apparently the school """didn't have the budget""" for it. Whether the school itself is corrupt or it's because the school legitimately doesn't have funds, it still points to the fact that our taxes are not properly implemented at all. And the poorer the school is, the more likely they have to amot. Isn't this backwards? Instead of taxes being used as a distributive mechanism it's being centralised...

https://x.com/ABSCBNNews/status/2001487534812266546

Sinibak sa puwesto ang 16 mga pulis ng Dolores Municipal Police Station sa Eastern Samar, matapos umanong mag-inuman sa loob ng himpilan habang ginaganap ang kanilang Christmas party noong December 15.

We're watching closely, but this could be possibly the most wild turn of a clan normally known for literally institutionalizing corruption, cronyism and nepotism, as he's likely wanting it so that he could shut down his opponents in the name of virtue.

Villagers say they don’t blame Marcos directly. Their anger is aimed squarely at the contractors and politicians who allegedly stole the funds.

Does one exist?

I wonder if there's one present, with the amount of doomposting and "it's so joever" posts you see in Filipino communities. Whether it was in 2025 or 2015, or 2005, a lot of the complaints stay the same (corruption, economy, public safety, etc.).

I was not alive at the time, could the economic downturn between Ninoy's death and 1986 have caused generational trauma sa mga Pinoy? I read virtually naging pariah state ang Pilipinas in those years. It's as if we are extra sensitive that national-level mistakes could result in a repeat of the 1983-1986 conditions.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/54747289

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6989708

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/12502

In a village in Palawan, those who fight for their rights end up accused in court.

Asserting their rights to ancestral lands, 282 Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents of Sitio Marihangin in Bugsuk, Palawan received court summons from the Palawan Regional Trial Court Branch 165. The summons stem from a complaint filed by nine individuals claiming ownership of the land.

“Right now, we remain anxious about what will happen to us in the coming days; almost all of us have received court summons,” said Baby Esnica Isa Moraco, a 31-year-old Molbog Indigenous resident of Sitio Marihangin, in Filipino.

Moraco told Bulatlat that they were served the documents on December 9 at around 10 a.m. Many residents were shocked, and some even fainted upon receiving the summons. Her entire family—including her four minor children—also received summons.

She has lived in Sitio Marihangin her whole life. “This is where I was born, and this is where I built my family.”

Residents also received a letter ordering them to vacate the island within 30 days. The letter was signed by Atty. Caesar Ortega, representative of the nine alleged landowners and former officer-in-charge executive director of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).

The complaint has progressed into a civil case (accion reivindicatoria) with a Temporary Restraining Order and is scheduled for hearing on December 11, 2025. An accion reivindicatoria is a legal action to “recover ownership.”

Photo by Sambilog – Balik Bugsuk Movement

In a statement of residents and supporters released by Sambilog-Balik Bugsuk Movement, they said, “We will not leave Marihangin. This is where we grew up, where our ancestors are buried. This is where our generation planted our crops and fished.”

Bulatlat reported the series of legal cases faced by the residents since last year, including the case of community leader Eusebio Pelayo who was accused of “grave coercion” on December 4, 2024.

In May 2025, 10 indigenous and non-indigenous community leaders were also arrested over charges of “grave coercion” filed by Ortega. Molbog youth leader Angelica Nasiron also had to surrender to Puerto Princesa City police on July 28, 2025, for two separate counts of cyberlibel filed by Balabac Indigenous Peoples Mandatory Representative Chieftain Hamidon Monsarapa.

Read: Arrest of 10 indigenous peoples, community leaders in Palawan: unjust use of legal tactics

Read: Molbog youth leader charged with cyberlibel amid land dispute

The statement also called for the intervention of the local government of Palawan, Commission on Human Rights, Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), the legislative branch, and even NCIP. Last year, community leaders of Sitio Marihangin went to Manila to conduct a nine-day hunger strike outside DAR’s main headquarters. However, the DAR Secretary did not face the striking residents.

In 2023, DAR revoked the Notice of Coverage (NOC) of the 10,821 hectares of land of the indigenous peoples in Bugsuk, Palawan under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) which was issued in 2014. This decision allegedly came from DAR Secretary Conrado Estrela III.

Revoking the NOC, residents said, resulted in further harassment and intimidation at their community in Sitio Mariahangin. During the hunger strike in Manila, the remaining residents of Sitio Mariahangin reported attempts of outsiders to enter their community.

Read: Molbog IPs stage 9-day hunger strike, DAR secretary no show

Photo by Baby Esnica Isa Moraco

Meanwhile, the application for Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) of the Sitio Marihangin residents remained in limbo for two decades. Molbog residents submitted their application to NCIP in 2005. NCIP confirmed their application, together with four other applications for ancestral domains in Bugsuk, Palawan.

The application of Mariahangin residents remains stuck in the first out of eight phases to secure the CADT. The overall procedures are stated in the NCIP’s administrative order, covering 60 sections, and additional 50 sections for the other processes (e.g., accreditation of geodetic engineers).

What made the residents’ claims more challenging is the access to basic legal documents. Ten of their elders have already died waiting in vain.

Moreover, San Miguel Corporation (SMC) denied involvement in the Sitio Marihangin, despite the confirmation of 7,000 hectares of titled properties on Bugsuk Island, a separate island from Marihangin. But in the same year, residents exposed the SMC’s resettlement program offered to them which caused division in their community.

Read: Residents expose resettlement program offered by SMC amid denial of involvement

Over 200 residents built a barricade, taking turns guarding their island from violent entry of private goons for almost 400 days.

“We are called squatters and informal settlers by unknown people who never set foot in our own lands, with their names registered as owners in the land titles,” the residents said. “The recent case is only one of the newest forms of harassment to displace us from our own land. This is not only about our lands. This is about our lives, homes, and the dignity of our community.” (DAA)

The post Close to 300 Palawan residents accused of squatting on their ancestral lands appeared first on Bulatlat.

From Bulatlat via This RSS Feed.

Hizzoner also imposes restrictions on Christmas parties, curfew on youth.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/51302681

Bombshell new reporting from 404 Media found that Flock, which has its cameras in thousands of US communities, has been outsourcing its AI to gig workers located in the Philippines.

After accessing a cache of exposed data, 404 found documents related to annotating Flock footage, a process sometimes called “AI training.” Workers were tasked with jobs include categorizing vehicles by color, make, and model, transcribing license plates, and labeling various audio clips from car wrecks.

In US towns and cities, Flock cameras maintained by local businesses and municipal agencies form centralized surveillance networks for local police. They constantly scan for car license plates, as well as pedestrians, who are categorized based on their clothing, and possibly by factors like gender and race.

In a growing number of cases, local police are using Flock to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surveil minority communities.

It isn’t clear where all the Flock annotation footage came from, but screenshots included in the documents for data annotators showed license plates from New York, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, and California.

Flock joins the ranks of other fast-moving AI companies that have resorted to low-paid international labor to bring their product to market. Amazon’s cashier-free “just walk out” stores, for example, were really just gig workers watching American shoppers from India. The AI startup Engineer.ai, which purported to make developing code for apps “as easy as ordering a pizza,” was found out to be selling passing human-written code as AI generated.

The difference with those examples is that those services were voluntary — powered by the exploitation of workers in the global south, yes, but with a choice to opt out on the front-end. That isn’t the case with Flock, as you don’t have to consent to end up in the panopticon. In other words, for a growing number of Americans, a for-profit company is deciding who gets watched, and who does the watching — a system built on exploitation at either end.

Reaping what he sow.

Source

Decided to mirror a copy in the fediverse because Instagram reels can't be archived in the usual way.