WHAT will they think of next?
The gall of this phantom entity that calls itself the “Ateneo Martial Law Museum” to claim that TV host Toni Gonzaga was not doing her job for not interrogating Ferdinand Marcos Jr. fiercely enough in her one-on-one interview with him.
In the first place, the “open letter” was unsigned, a sure sign that the author does not have the balls to be identified and is hiding behind this entity that carries the lofty name of Ateneo.
Those who set up this entity and named it such are either ignorant of the term “museum” or are devious propagandists. For Christ’s sake, check any dictionary, and it will tell you a museum is “a building in which objects of historical, scientific, artistic or cultural interest are stored and exhibited.”
Britannica even emphasizes: “The museum differs markedly from the library, with which it has often been compared, for the items housed in a museum are mainly unique and constitute the raw material of study and research.” An entire library can be demolished and its books converted to a digital library. This can’t be done for a museum.
There are no “virtual museums” as you can’t keep, say, a medieval sword, an ancient vase or even Rizal’s first edition of Noli Me Tangere in cyberspace. These idiots behind this Ateneo martial law museum confuse virtual tours or website representations of museums (like the Louvre or the Museum of Modern Art) with “virtual museums,” which cannot exist if there’s no museum that they are representing.
Art Gallery
The only museum I know of in Ateneo is The Art Gallery and when I was in high school there, a small science museum at the Manila Observatory housing old scientific instruments.
So, what is this “Ateneo Martial Law Museum”? Check it out yourself at https://martiallawmuseum.ph where it solely exists, nowhere else. The website doesn’t even identify who’s running it, although – hilariously – it lists the names of the “illustrators.”
The expert on martial law: The site’s executive director.
It is simply a website, an amateurish one at that, that contains articles criticizing, very crudely, the dictator Marcos and Martial Law. Its section “Martial Law in Data” totally relies on a 1993 article by an American left-wing scholar and on a rather inane opinion piece in Rappler. Most of the articles in this website are those which circulated immediately before or after EDSA 2, which the Yellows vigorously disseminated in their myth-making campaign at that time.
It is far from being a “museum” whose most important feature is that it houses primary source artifacts. It is simply a Yellow propaganda website and an amateurish one at that. It reveals, though, that one of its “partners” is The Knowledge Channel, which is owned through ABS-CBN by the Lopez oligarch. No wonder one of its prominent articles is entitled “The Second ABS-CBN shutdown,” which says that Congress’ refusal to extend its franchise in 2020 was a replay of its first shutdown by Marcos right at the start of martial law.
Rivera
While the website doesn’t even show who’s running it, it appears that he’s an entry-level faculty member Miguel Paolo P. Rivera, who a former colleague of his says was an assistant of the Aquino 3rd administration’s communications official Ricky Carandang.
I emailed him last Friday to get his answers on the issues I raised. He hasn’t replied. Only the Ateneo’s marketing and communications director, Matec Villanueva, replied, mouthing such corny but useless statements like, the Ateneo “envisions a community that fosters truth-tellers and advocates of democracy.” Truth tellers who present only one side of an issue? Villanueva didn’t reply to my queries on who runs the website and who are its staff. From what I gathered, it is solely this Rivera who’s running it.
What does this guy know of martial law? He looks like he’s in his 30s with only a master’s degree in political science and hasn’t written anything at all on martial law. Even if we concede his website is a museum, heads of museums with the lofty title of “Curator,” are supposed to be experts in their field and must have a PhD.
He seems to very well-connected to the Yellow network though. I opened by Facebook account in 2010 and was never suspended for posting things there. Yet, a day after I posted a query asking about the qualifications of Rivera for evaluating martial law, Facebook suspended me for 24 hours! Now, I believe those rumors that the Yellows have a network within Facebook.
So, why are these Yellow Cultists calling their website the “Ateneo Martial Law Museum”? Obviously to give it credibility which, going by the present quality of its articles, it will never have. Although the university has shamelessly become a center for the Yellow viewpoint, the name “Ateneo” is still identified with rigorous academic standards.
Furthermore, a “museum,” of course, implies a building where there is incontestable proof of something such as the prisoners’ uniform, photos of executions, lists of prisoners in the Holocaust museums in the United States and Israel.
The idiots who called the website Ateneo Martial Law Museum must have also read that a P500-million “martial law museum” will be constructed at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman campus. Either jealous of that or trying to get attention so the government would give Ateneo funding to set up a similar museum, these morons trumpeted their “Ateneo Martial Law Museum” even if it is a mere website. But the UP one is an actual museum, although I can’t imagine what artifacts it will be housing. This UP museum itself is an abomination, in reality a monument to the “martyrs” of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
Marcos certainly wasn’t a saint. But neither was he the devil. Thirty-five years since he fell and his nemesis the Lopez oligarchy also has, it is time to come up with a balanced history of the martial law regime.
The leadership of the Ateneo isn’t doing its job for allowing this amateurish propaganda outfit to use the name of the Ateneo, with its 162 of years of academic tradition, or else we would not understand ourselves as a nation.
Every program undertaken within the Ateneo, in fact, must be approved by a committee consisting of the experts in the field that program is involved in. Obviously, in the case of the Ateneo Martial Law Museum, there was no such approval and therefore it is not in the official directory of the university. Yet, it’s gone to town portraying falsely to the country that the Ateneo de Manila University has a “museum” devoted to exposing the evils of martial law.
As an Atenean and as a Filipino, I vehemently protest this abomination to the university.
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
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Right you are, the Ateneo Martial Law Museum is run by some Martial Arts (MA) Instructor supported by fossil-brained self-proclaimed self-righteous feeling brilliant idiots who feel they are best and the brightest in the world. These Lilliputians in IQs always make believe that the Filipinos are like them. Saddest and worst of all, most of them are supported by taxpayers who pay for their scholarships, school expenses, while many are churches, religious foundations, etc. who make a lot of business requiring their “members” and “parishioners” to give tithes, offerings, donations, so they can work their way against the government. Wow, these people never had it so good!
You always amaze me Sir. There are a lot of University idiots claiming as if they are the knowledgeables. I would say, they are the most egotistical who would not open their minds just to cater what would engross themselves
I had been with the academe both in the private and state university aside from guest instructorship to different private/government entities and I never in taught with clever ruse just to espouse personal and insane advocacies….SHAME on you all academians who teaches insanity.