#Filipino Soldiers

[maurenn234]

Somebody buy me a tablet

[kb1301]

I am… desperate? in need? wanting? to just make an OC to love König.

Very very desperate.

I’m no artist but I’m gonna fucking work it and make my guy smooch this lovably intimidating gentle giant.

How I feel right now with this situation.

Furthermore, I could set up poly relationships with said OC. ☺️ (Horangi maybe? Or Ghost?)

[silverwingwashere]

The NCO looks unhappy, what did you do?

[ellmeria]

What China is doing to my countrymen is barbaric and should never be tolerated.

Harassing a country that is way powerless and defenseless is a move only BULLIES make. And claiming something that does not belong to you is a true CRIMINAL behavior.

The West Philippine Sea is rightfully OURS. And it will remain that way for eternity. 🇵🇭

[thedalatribune]

© Paolo Dala

Sa Dagat At Bundok Na Simoy, At Sa Langit Mong Bughaw

I am a Filipino-inheritor of a glorious past, hostage to the uncertain future. As such I must prove equal to a two-fold task–the task of meeting my responsibility to the past, and the task of performing my obligation to the future.

I sprung from a hardy race, child many generations removed of ancient Malayan pioneers. Across the centuries the memory comes rushing back to me: of brown-skinned men putting out to sea in ships that were as frail as their hearts were stout. Over the sea I see them come, borne upon the billowing wave and the whistling wind, carried upon the mighty swell of hope-hope in the free abundance of new land that was to be their home and their children’s forever.

This is the land they sought and found. Every inch of shore that their eyes first set upon, every hill and mountain that beckoned to them with a green-and-purple invitation, every mile of rolling plain that their view encompassed, every river and lake that promised a plentiful living and the fruitfulness of commerce, is a hallowed spot to me.

By the strength of their hearts and hands, by every right of law, human and divine, this land and all the appurtenances thereof-the black and fertile soil, the seas and lakes and rivers teeming with fish, the forests with their inexhaustible wealth in wild life and timber, the mountains with their bowels swollen with minerals-the whole of this rich and happy land has been, for centuries without number, the land of my fathers. This land I received in trust from them and in trust will pass it to my children, and so on until the world is no more.

I am a Filipino. In my blood runs the immortal seed of heroes-seed that flowered down the centuries in deeds of courage and defiance. In my veins yet pulses the same hot blood that sent Lapulapu to battle against the first invader of this land, that nerved Lakandula in the combat against the alien foe, that drove Diego Silang and Dagohoy into rebellion against the foreign oppressor.

That seed is immortal. It is the self-same seed that flowered in the heart of Jose Rizal that morning in Bagumbayan when a volley of shots put an end to all that was mortal of him and made his spirit deathless forever, the same that flowered in the hearts of Bonifacio in Balintawak, of Gergorio del Pilar at Tirad Pass, of Antonio Luna at Calumpit; that bloomed in flowers of frustration in the sad heart of Emilio Aguinaldo at Palanan, and yet burst forth royally again in the proud heart of Manuel L. Quezon when he stood at last on the threshold of ancient Malacañan Palace, in the symbolic act of possession and racial vindication.

The seed I bear within me is an immortal seed. It is the mark of my manhood, the symbol of dignity as a human being. Like the seeds that were once buried in the tomb of Tutankhamen many thousand years ago, it shall grow and flower and bear fruit again. It is the insignia of my race, and my generation is but a stage in the unending search of my people for freedom and happiness.

I am a Filipino, child of the marriage of the East and the West. The East, with its languor and mysticism, its passivity and endurance, was my mother, and my sire was the West that came thundering across the seas with the Cross and Sword and the Machine. I am of the East, an eager participant in its spirit, and in its struggles for liberation from the imperialist yoke. But I also know that the East must awake from its centuried sleep, shake off the lethargy that has bound his limbs, and start moving where destiny awaits.

For I, too, am of the West, and the vigorous peoples of the West have destroyed forever the peace and quiet that once were ours. I can no longer live, a being apart from those whose world now trembles to the roar of bomb and cannon-shot. I cannot say of a matter of universal life-and-death, of freedom and slavery for all mankind, that it concerns me not. For no man and no nation is an island, but a part of the main, there is no longer any East and West–only individuals and nations making those momentous choices which are the hinges upon which history resolves.

At the vanguard of progress in this part of the world I stand–a forlorn figure in the eyes of some, but not one defeated and lost. For, through the thick, interlacing branches of habit and custom above me, I have seen the light of the sun, and I know that it is good. I have seen the light of justice and equality and freedom, my heart has been lifted by the vision of democracy, and I shall not rest until my land and my people shall have been blessed by these, beyond the power of any man or nation to subvert or destroy.

I am a Filipino, and this is my inheritance. What pledge shall I give that I may prove worthy of my inheritance? I shall give the pledge that has come ringing down the corridors of the centuries, and it shall be compounded of the joyous cries of my Malayan forebears when first they saw the contours of this land loom before their eyes, of the battle cries that have resounded in every field of combat from Mactan to Tirad Pass, of the voices of my people when they sing:

Land of the morning, Child of the sun returning– Ne’er shall invaders Trample thy sacred shore.

Out of the lush green of these seven thousand isles, out of the heartstrings of sixteen million people all vibrating to one song, I shall weave the mighty fabric of my pledge. Out of the songs of the farmers at sunrise when they go to labor in the fields, out of the sweat of the hard-bitten pioneers in Mal-lig and Koronadal, out of the silent endurance of stevedores at the piers and the ominous grumbling of peasants in Pampanga, out of the first cries of babies newly born and the lullabies that mothers sing, out of the crashing of gears and the whine of turbines in the factories, out of the crunch of plough-shares upturning the earth, out of the limitless patience of teachers in the classrooms and doctors in the clinics, out of the tramp of soldiers marching, I shall make the pattern of my pledge:

“I am a Filipino born to freedom, and I shall not rest until freedom shall have been added unto my inheritance-for myself and my children and my children’s children-forever.”

Carlos P. Romulo I am a Filipino

[aro-bird]

okay, I just can't believe that there's straight up what's basically reskinned Disney's Pocahontas now in the Philippines like???

this movie looks so bad and the plot is shit

nevermind the fact that it's historical revisionism and romanticizes colonizers too

[mavidin]

Dambana ng Kagitingan

Elevator doors

Altar of valor

Philippine flag

[scrunklyshinyguy]

im cracking the fuck up....filipino twitter fanfic writers are working OVERTIME with these damerina fics. im LIVINGGGG

[uss-edsall]

I read a very interesting article recently.

Hiroo Onoda is a famous name among WWII history buff circles. He was the soldier who disappeared into the Philippine jungle at the end of the war with three other soldiers, and ended up being the last to surrender after 29 years fighting a "guerilla war" until he surrendered in 1974. For at least twenty years he fought with one other, Kinshichi Kozuka; who was killed by police in 1972.

The article was about one woman named Mia Stewart, a Filipino-Australian, who's trying to get the funding to finish a documentary she's been working on for about 20 years.

The documentary she's making is trying to shed a little more light than the fascinating "lone samurai" legend that has been built up around Onoda. It very pointedly asks one thing -- what is this "guerilla war" he was fighting for 29 years? Who were his opponents? Who was he fighting?

Onoda (and Kozuka until his death) were killing, sometimes in very gruesome ways, almost exclusively Filipino civilians. Innocent people who were just living their normal lives -- who couldn't fight back. One of their victims was Mia Stewart's great uncle, when she was barely two years old.

The article essentially asks, "war hero or serial killer?"

Those civilians he stalked and killed or stole from for nearly thirty years weren't ever asked their opinion before the Filipino president gave a blanket pardon, Onoda was welcomed home a hero, and he gained worldwide fame. Their side of the story entirely forgotten as some nebulous force he was fighting "guerilla warfare" against.

It was genuinely kind of enlightening because even I have kind of looked at the Onoda story as a, "wow that's crazy" and never really gave it more thought of "who exactly was he fighting?" I figured he was shooting at cops, if anything. But no, it was nothing as simple as that.

The documentary is not out yet (she doesn't have the funding to finish it, the article was essentially one long ad to go "and if you can donate please do so") but there is a nine minute extended trailer from two years ago

On some level I think if I'd just given it any ounce of thought I'd have gone, "who was he fighting actually?" But instead I just assumed he spent nearly thirty years fighting cops… not doing what the IJA did best and mutilating helpless civilians. But I bought the popular narrative entirely and didn't give an ounce of a think at the question of who was he fighting in this 'guerilla war.'

"Actively fighting a war… against who?" is a question that just straight up never came to my mind.

[maurenn234]

naol naka 4 timer

rotoscoping meme cuz i cant draw shit

[vexwerewolf]

why is it that we only have like two licenses from any mech producer that’s a good guy? For a game where like there are clear good and bad guys (even if who you play isn’t necessarily linked to that) it seems strange to me that the only loot and XP you get is… more benefits from the bad guys

I can tell you the answer, but to do so, we're gonna have to talk about a completely different TTRPG.

If you've read @makapatag's truly excellent Filipino martial arts TTRPG Gubat Banwa (and if you haven't, here it is), you may notice that every single character class description (with one notable exception) ends with one of these babies:

I am not Makapatag, and I cannot write with quite as much grace and eloquence as he can, but I will try:

If you choose to become a Lancer, ask yourself why you mock the name of peace with these weapons of war. You call yourself a saviour, but your steed was forged from the murder of a world. You stride across the sky in a colossus built in your own image, so why are you too cowardly to give it your face? Why do you believe these machines of death can preserve life?

It is important to note that the admonitions in Gubat Banwa are not just there to make you feel bad; they are there as legitimate questions. The Sword Isles have seen so much blood, death and tragedy. Wars are not glorious and killing is not a game. So, knowing all of that, why have you taken up this discipline - no matter how noble and virtuous it might claim to be - to shed more blood, to bring more death, to write more tragedy? What could possibly drive you to this? What need is so great that you must kill?

The thing with Gubat Banwa is that there are legitimate answers to these questions! There are bad people doing bad things, and some of them will not be stopped with words or kindness. Sometimes, as sorrowful as it is, killing is the correct choice to prevent greater suffering and deeper tragedy - but adding less misery and death to the world is still adding some amount of it. Even the most necessary wars will drench the ground in the blood of the innocent.

A sword is a tool meant to kill humans; while it can be used for other things, it is not well-suited to anything other than this. A mech is, in its most basic essence, just a very complicated sword: it's usually used on things larger than a person, but it's still a tool built to kill.

So why have you taken up this path? Humanity was saved from the brink of extinction and has created wondrous technologies like printers, cold fusion and mind-machine interface, and yet you use them to play soldier in a giant metal man. Why do you choose to take up this machine of death, built by the greedy and pitiless? Why do you think these machines can ever make things right?

Because sometimes, despite everything, they can.

Warhammer 40K shows an awful world full of monsters and monstrosity, and in the darkest moments of its history, Lancer's world looked just as bleak, but Lancer's world differs in one crucial way. Warhammer's world has long given up trying to be better, but Lancer's world never did. Lancer's world kept insisting a better world is possible, and it used what tools it had to make it so.

Sometimes the correct choice, no matter how bitter it may seem, is to kill someone. When you need to do this, a sword is a perfectly good choice for the job.

If you find yourself discomforted by the fact that all the people you can buy mechs from are corrupt and immoral - good! You have correctly engaged with the text. You have understood that the sort of people who would make giant walking death machines and sell them for profit are not good people. But you still have a job to do, and you need the correct tools, and those people have them.

Lancer is not a game about a perfect world - it is a game about a deeply flawed and imperfect one that does not let its imperfection stop it from trying. You have to try to make a better world, even with imperfect tools made by unpleasant people.

[littlestpersimmon]

When ppl talk about the "banality of evil" its often about how boring the system that upholds imperialism is, but it's also how evil is commonplace, an ingredient to the cement that builds the foundation of the imperial core. You read about what the IOF is doing to Palestinians and yet fail to realize that American soldiers were doing the same things in the Philippines in 1902 during the american occupation, which is still not recognized as a genocide to this day. You think about Congo today but don't realize that a hundred years ago within the same land, the king of Belgium would cut off the hands of natives if they didn't collect and extract enough rubber, and its not much different when you replace"rubber" with "cobalt", "Belgian king" with "American oligarch".. the world immediately, utterly feels godless. One war seamlessly transitioning into another. How can there be so much grief for something as ordinary as a component to something I am literally holding in my hands right now. How can you make sense of that.

In the Philippines, there is a legend that says that the sturdiest, strongest buildings are constructed using the blood of a thousand children. The most prominent structure to remember this legend by, was a bridge called "Tulay ng San Juanico", built by none other than Philippine Dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who is renowned to this day by his record of unfathomable human rights abuse. San Juanico Bridge stands, used for commute in the daily lives of filipino civilians under the shadow of the empire, in an all consuming, impenetrable and unbearable mundanity. You can find 20, 45, a hundred, a million people who are kind, but at the same time I think about how so many of these kind people walk this earth without thought or personal responsibility, completely and totally unwilling to lose an iota of comfort and convenience, without once stopping to think, what do they owe the next coming generation, the ones that are still here, and the ones nameless and buried in this world's wreckage, in the necessity of its evil.

[morbidology]

A Filipino survivor of the Manila massacre. The indent on his neck is from where a Japanese officer tried to behead him.

Occurring between February 3 and March 3, 1945, the massacre saw the indiscriminate killing of tens of thousands of Filipino civilians by Japanese forces during the Battle of Manila. It unfolded over a month, characterized by systematic atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against Filipino civilians.

The killings were indiscriminate and horrific, with reports of bayoneting, shooting, beheading, and burning people alive. Men, women, and children were not spared; entire families were massacred in their homes, schools, hospitals, and churches.

The most infamous site of the massacre was the Manila's Intramuros district, where hundreds of civilians seeking refuge in churches and schools were slaughtered. Another horrific incident occurred at the University of Santo Tomas, which had been turned into an internment camp. As the Japanese forces retreated, they killed numerous internees.

Estimates of the death toll vary, but it is widely accepted that between 100,000 and 240,000 Filipino civilians lost their lives during the massacre.

[datura-tea]

still thinking about filipinos in the fallout wasteland, but now in the context of my headcanon that fallout america annexed the philippines in 1946 instead of granting the nation its independence.

what made me think of this headcanon? the timeline between our world and the fallout world splits at about that period, and, well, there's precedent for the annexation: in real life, there were 50 years of american occupation, and there's ongoing american intereference in our politics, economy, and culture (essentially making the philippines an american neo-colony, but i digress), and considering how fallout america is just america turned up to 11, these things will just be magnified, and so: the philippine annexation of 1946.

now, there's nothing in fallout canon about the philippines except for a brief off-hand comment from the newscaster at the beginning of fallout 4 about american troops in mambajao (an island in camiguin) but this already tells me that, by 2077, if american military presence in the philippines has managed to reach that part of mindanao, the american occupation has intensified.

that little nugget already paints such a vivid picture of what's happening in fallout philippines - an american military base in mindanao tells me that more indigenous communities were displaced (real life example: the aeta and ibaloi communities in luzon, who still, to this day, cannot return to their ancestral lands), that sexual exploitation of women and children was rampant (irl: the sex industry in angeles city, among other areas), that american soldiers were free to enact violence on filipinos without facing any consequences (irl: jennifer laude's murder at the hands of joseph pemberton), that american imperialism is thriving in the archipelago, and that the sino-american war is serious and ramping up.

but let's see what the newscaster actually says:

"It would also appear our troops stationed overseas are experiencing some unusual weather, as well. On the Island of Mambajao the nights are cold. Unseasonably so for Southeast Asia. But for the 5th Infantry, that's as comfortable as an Autumn jamboree. All the easier for our mechanized hellcats to drive any screaming Commie meanies right into the Bohol Sea."

"screaming commie meanies" tells me that there's a significant communist presence in the philippines, which i am taking to mean that the communist party of the philippines and the new people's army are alive and well and fighting against the american occupation. i really don't think there'd be many chinese communist spies in the philippines at this time since filipino communists are against chinese imperialism as well, but tbh this part isn't solidified in my brain as much... anyway

essentially, fallout philippines has the problems of current, real life philippines, just amplified. american occupation on one hand, chinese imperialism on the other, unusual cold weather (which tells me that climate change was also a problem in the fallout universe), the threat of nuclear war... all with ordinary filipinos in the middle. would it be a stretch to say that a lot of them fled to america and established their own communities there? that those communities would have thrived and retained our creativity and sense of community/pagkakapwa abroad? that those communities would have survived the bombs and banded together and kept themselves and their culture alive, in the apocalypse?