#philppines

April 27, 2025 - Ka Dahlia (also known as Ka Daisy), an NPA guerrilla and trans woman, was martyred after a confrontation with security forces in Barangay Tapi, the Philippines.

She was known for teaching literacy and math to members of her squad who were uneducated and always carrying a make-up kit in her guerilla supplies. May she rest in power. [video]/[video]

"As an LGBT youth our role is important in advancing the revolution. To change society's views we must change society herself"

Ka Nancy (comrade Nancy) and Ka Guillen (comrade Guillen) walk before New People's Army (NPA) guerrillas during their wedding ceremony in the remote hinterlands of Provincia Montañosa, Philippines, April 2, 2017.

How all of our female heroes are limited to helping the revolution or fighting(not that I'm invalidating female heroes, mabuhay ang kababaihan!) yet we have such a diverse collection of male heroes who use pens or swords.

How we don't really get that much perspective from women during the times in which they're one of the most exploited in. I dont know maybe I am just really uneducated about female-written philippine stories but even if there is, the fact that it's not taught in schools and is "less popular" says a lot already.

And how all of our insights (that are taught in schools) regarding the Philippines' women's history is through the lenses of a man and not a woman is diabolical.

I really am just thinking of how many Jose Rizal we could have had if women aren't restricted by social expectations/gender roles. Actually even having Jose Rizal as the bar is excruciating because we might have had someone who was far greater than him if we just treated our girls right.

Staff Sergeant Frank Shoemaker and Private First Class Robert Chamberlin inspect an eight-barrelled Japanese machine gun which was captured on the perimeter of the Kobayashi Line southeast of Manila, Philippines. March 18, 1945.

When you're fighting the Americans and Godzilla you can never be too prepared

With the help of three citizen scientists, an unknown Cryptocoryne population was found in one of the streams of Zamboanga del Norte province, Philippines, in March 2023. After careful morphological studies and literature review, researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators confirmed the unknown species was distinctive and new to science. The new species was named Cryptocoryne zamboangaensis to refer to Zamboanga Peninsula where this species was discovered. The study was published in the Nordic Journal of Botany on Oct. 17. Cryptocoryne zamboangaensis is a perennial, amphibious, large herb. It is similar to Cryptocoryne aponogetifolia for very long leaves and a long spathe tube, but recognized by a narrowly ovate, about 2 cm broad, densely verrucose bright purple spathe limb with a distinct narrow collar.

(Long post but this is important so please read)

For those living outside of the Philippines and are currently unaware of the ongoing situation in my country, we just had our elections yesterday on May 9 (Monday) and results have been coming in since last night. Bong Bong Marcos, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos is in the lead for president while his VP candidate Sara Duterte, daughter of the current president, also in the lead. And this is bad. REALLY BAD.

I can't give a complete and comprehensive summary of Ferdinand Marcos' rule in a single post but this is all you need to know. A lot of people were killed, tortured, and raped during his time, and those were only the ones who were found and accounted for. We still have so many missing victims until now that we call them the Los Desaparecidos or The Disappeared. The Marcos family also stole about billions from the country and her people. They literally lavished in their homes while children were dying from starvation.

Already foreign investors are pulling out which can mean really bad things for our economy which not many of us can afford right now.

And as for Sara Duterte if you've heard of her father and the War on Drugs then you'd understand why we're so apprehensive of having another Duterte have a seat of power in the national government.

As of now there are already allegations of the elections being rigged. Some might think it's a wild conspiracy theory but with the history of these political dynasties and the corrupt system of our government I can't help but agree that something's wrong.

Because before elections even officially closed there have already been reports of about 1800 faulty Vote Counting Machines (VCM) , the highest number in election history with VCMs rejecting ballots or malfunctioning effectively delaying the voting process by hours which resulted with registered voters being turned away by COMELEC because they didn't make the cut-off of 7 p.m.

And speaking of COMELEC (they're basically the committee in charge of handling the elections) their handling of the whole elections is just downright incompetent and shady. There have been allegations of ballots being manipulated and only a few hours has passed since the tallying of votes has begun and somehow they've covered more than 85 % of the precincts just not all over the country but also overseas. Which is questionable considering that about 50% of the country's VCMs are broken.

There is also a noticeable trend with how Leni Robredo, Marcos' most serious opposition who beat him for the position of VP in the 2016 elections, always has 47% of the total transmitted votes for Marcos during every election update.

(tl;dr)