We should get out of the IPU
I was watching President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte making his speech when he conferred to the nation seven new national artists. In his speech he once more defended his war against drugs saying: “Did you watch Netflix?” At that point, I would like to believe that the president spent some time watching the “Narcos” series on the beginning and the eventual rise of the greatest drug lord in the world, Pablo Escobar. I too watched this series and believe that the Philippines would have become a narco state had President Duterte not given his all to fight the war against drugs.
After that speech, ABS-CBN gave a talk by the head of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) that they are going to probe the alleged political persecution against senators Antonio Trillanes and Leila de Lima. If you heard that black man accusing us of imprisoning former DOJ secretary de Lima you would say that the IPU is trying to interfere with our justice system. According to presidential spokesman and chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo, the IPU’s move is an affront to the local legal process and an intervention in the country’s domestic affairs.
IPU is a global organization of national parliaments. Come now, what did the IPU do when former president and now House Speaker Gloria MacapagalArroyo was imprisoned by former president PNoy Aquino III and de Lima? I’m very glad Arroyo criticized the IPU for alleged interference in judicial processes in the Philippines. This is why GMA sought the help of renowned international lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney to argue that Aquino and de Lima, who used her power to get herself elected into office, were violating her human rights in detention.
But what did the IPU do? Nothing. And the only time Arroyo was released was when Mayor Duterte took over as the new president. Shame on the IPU for taking the sides of the yellowtards controlled by Aquino and his gang. This is why I’m in full support of leaving the IPU because they have not helped us Filipinos but only lousy politicians like Trillanes or de Lima.
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I don’t have to tell you that Facebook has announced that it would do something about the proliferation of fake news being spread in their pages. So I wasn’t a bit surprised to read last Wednesday that Facebook had said that it had taken down scores of pages and accounts in the Philippines, including those linked to President Duterte and Imee Marcos, daughter of the late president Ferdinand Marcos, for violating its spam and authentication policies.
Facebook added that a total of 95 pages and 39 accounts were “encouraging people to visit low quality websites that contain little substantive content and are full of disruptive ads. These pages ranged from political to entertainment content, but all were sharing links to the same advertising click farms off Facebook.” Facebook also added that at least one of the pages had 4.8 million followers. Were they referring to Mocha Uson who recently resigned from her government position and is seeking to run for an elective office? Perhaps! Malacañang said it respected Facebook’s decision, adding that there were other avenues on the internet for supporters of the president to express their admiration for his administration
Facebook also revealed that it used reports from the social media community, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to detect bad behavior and take action more quickly. The pages include names like Duterte Media, Duterte sa Pagbabago BUKAS, DDS, Duterte Phenomenon and DU30 Trending News. According to Facebook, “This is some of the most important work being done at Facebook. This takedown is a small step in the right direction, and we will continue working to find and remove more bad content.”
At this point we thank Facebook for taking these steps especially here in the Philippines which is considered one of the biggest nations that uses Facebook. More so that we are entering the 2019 midterm elections year next year and that’s the time when fake reports or messages about our candidates would emerge and people would be confused whether to believe it or not. Thanks again, Facebook.
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