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Marcos Martial Law: Never Again is a finalist in the 2017 National Book Awards

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Hi Guys,

I’d like to share with you all the good news.

On the eve of the late Dictator President Ferdinand Marcos’ birthday, the National Book Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle announced that our book on torture and atrocity under Marcos’ New Society is a finalist in two categories:

Best Book of Non-Fiction Prose in English

Best Book Design

Many people worked hard to get this book published.

I can never thank them enough.

And even if we don’t win, our work has been judged by Manila’s finest critics as “NON-FICTION”!

 

Here’s the link to the complete list of finalists. 

Comments

  1. KUNG BAKIT BUMOTO SI CONGRESSMAN NG P 1000.00 CHR BUDGET AT NAG FIST BUMP PA!

    1. Kasi Malacanang pa rin ang may hawak ng susi sa kaban ng bayan.

    2. Kasi maliit lang talaga ang pag-iisip ko dahil maliit na tribo lang ang pinagmulan ko: (put name of province/district here)

    3. Kasi mas madali yung sumunod na lang sa agos kaysa mag-isip at manindigan, gamit ang prinsipyo.

    4. Kasi payag akong pumunta sa impiyerno para lang makatikim ng langit sa lupa. hi hi hi

    5. Kasi alam kung mali itong ginagawa ko pero alam ko papatawarin naman ako sa dulo e hi hi hi

    Reply

    • from gmanewwsonline ito ang sagot ni sotto:

      Sotto said he understands the basis of the decision of the House of Representatives, pointing out that the CHR has repeatedly criticized the Duterte administration’s campaign against illegal drugs, one of the main policies of the government.

      “Sinuswelduhan ka ng gobyerno, ng taongbayan, tapos kontra ka nang kontra sa sinasabi. Hindi bale yung kontra eh pero pinipintasan mo pa, hindi maganda talaga yun,” Sotto said in an interview.

      “Ako nga, simple lang sinasabi ko, kasi naman, dapat naman kasi, ikaw, nagta-trabaho ka sa isang gobyerno, hindi mo gusto yung mga polisiya nung mga namumuno, eh ‘di umalis ka, diba?” he added.

      Reply

      • EAT BULAGA SONG

        Mula Aparri hanggang Jolo
        Saan ka man ay marami tayo
        \
        Isang kahig isang tuka
        Buong bansa… Eat Bulaga

        Sina Koko, Dick at Manny
        Kasama pati si Rody
        Silang lahat ay nagbibigay
        Perwisyo sa ating buhay

        Buong bansa ay nagkakaisa
        Labanan na ang papasista
        Isang kahig isang tuka
        Buong bansa… Eat Bulaga!

        Reply

      • sinusweldohan daw ng govt ang chr, pero where did the govt got its money kundi sa taxpayers? hindi galing yong pera sa mga pockets nina sotto et all, galing yan sa taumbayan.

        chr today, what will it be tomorrow, which org will be out of budget, the judiciary perhaps? chr is just test run, other org at agencies will soon be targeted, already yong hospital budget was also slashed to barest minimum. and ubial is still smiling, her pay is secure, her benefits as well. god knows if public hospitals are now dispensing medicines out of date, maybe washing bed linens once a week instead of daily, patients getting sicker instead of better.

        as well, govt can barely afford free tertiary education to students, cant keep up with monetary aid to chicken farmers sangkot sa bird flu.

        ang govt na ito is out of pera yata, the country is being bled dry, may kwarisma sa treasury. gastador kasi masyado si digong, spending too much money on kapolisan in the war against drug, also spending too much money for arms and ammunition sa gyera in marawi, and the military is never ending in asking for more and yet more money, the war in marawi is a cash cow.

        and still digong is keeping two offices, staff and entourage traveling to the south with him, their expenses palaki ng palaki.

        Reply

    • and seconded by pakyaw:

      …but Senator Manny Pacquiao, a close ally of the President, echoed the sentiment of Sotto.

      “Yung CHR, may sumusobra lang yung ginagawa nila. Yung minsan kasi may mga pangyayari na nabibintang agad doon sa ating administrasyon na wala namang kinalaman, yung mga ganun,” Pacquiao said.

      While he believes that the CHR should not be abolished, Pacquiao said the agency should not be used for political purposes.

      Reply

      • in short, chr is given marching order. staff will just have to resign and be out of work, and they could all lose benefits too. if they take class action and take govt to court just so they can get their severance pay, well, well, that’s another big expenses for govt to cough up.

        Reply

  4. Hi Raissa,

    Were it not for this book, I think, current generation will not have any idea of the extent of Marcos’s “pagkagahaman” sa salapi at power.

    Salamat for the determination to finish this book.
    It will always be special for me and my family, and the next generation..

    Reply

  5. Finally, we can now say that Primitivo Mijares and his son did not die in vain and they will now live forever in every Filipino’s heart and mind who read your book and as for the villain and most hated Filipino family their lineage will be forever condemned in Philippine Politics and History! Thanks to both of you and Congratulation’s Raissa and Allan!

    Reply

    • sorry po, walking on eggs around a mad man, for me, is not the way to go. mad man has to know that if he uses ml, he’ll get the equivalent, the consequences of his action. the consequences of having people hostage to his whims could well be dire for him and his family. when people has nothing more to lose, they’ll fight back, hit back and get back what dignity they have lost.

      already, patay na ang pretend ‘cousin’ niyang si arnaiz, who’s next po? two edged sword yang martial law, it will not only hurt people but also the one wielding it, at may lasting effect pa yan, mad man could well be reviled for generations to come, his family reviled as well, the children of his children too.

      martial law does not make people obedient, only resentful and vengeful. and resentful and revengeful people dont make good subjects. mad man is badly mistaken to think martial law will solve all his problems. instead of imposing martial law, mad man should make friends not make enemies of people, rich and poor alike.

      anyway, it will only be formality if martial law is declared, dahil, already it is here! people are being harvested in their homes and off the streets. the polis quasi grim reapers na!

      Reply

      • Same here, I was expecting tunay na pagbabago instead tunay na panggagago ang nararamdaman ko. But what can we do? Unless we all come together as one, our voice will remain a voice in the wilderness

        Reply

        • darl, I learn long ago that coming ‘together as one’ sounds good in songs, poems, and in creative writing. but in real life, you just need majority and you’re off to a good start. if you got the support of 7 out of 10, you’re there. know what I mean?

          but what can we do? sa akin lang po, I’ll fight fake news, keep watchful eyes on my nebors, be truthful witness, and not be like wigguirre, or gordon, or pakyaw, or sotto, or jv, etc. I’ll stand for the truth, fight injustice, etc, etc. sounds boring? that’s me. I drink, but dont do drugs. a voice in the wilderness, that’s me too. I’ll holler, howl, complain and complain, and my barangay cap is getting tired of hearing me. still, I complain about all the injustices, and howling louder. and god has a sense of humor, never had I laryngitis! and never had I lost my voice. and my fingers are betting better and faster at typing. so long, I mean solong!

          Reply

  7. This is the right time for Sen Trillanes to pressure Pdutz and presidential sons to sign their own bank secrecy waiver para magkaalaman na. Mas mainam ‘to kesa sa wild west style na mungkahi nya. Dapat kaliwaan!

    Reply

    • I just watched the press con of Trillanes on TV where he showed and stated that he already gave to the AMLAC and the DOJ (?) his SIGNED waivers allowing these 2 agencies to open and verify the aforementioned accounts Dutz said belonged to the senator. He also dared Dutz and his family to execute similar waivers.

      He also said that 2 of the banks where he has accounts were fake. I also googled these 2 banks and found that he was correct:
      1. There is no Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (where he supposedly had an account) but there is a Hong Kong And Shanghai Banking Corporation.
      2. No Nova Scotia Bank (again, where his purported account was) but there is a The Bank of Nova Scotia.

      As we all know, names of banks are sacred and distinct and must be correct. It’s as if we’re saying that you or I have an account in “Philippine Bank.” Cheers!

      Reply

      • mali na naman ang communication group ni digong! will they ever get things right, this lot! kay laki-laki pa naman ng mga sahod nila at sangkatutak pa ang mga benefits tapos, shoddy ang gawa: walang kwenta. they not only got the wrong dole logo, they once also inverted the presidential seal too, made it upside down. com group has no eye for details, daig pa ang mga dyslexics.

        dapat, com group is diligent, went to said banks and deposited money, see if the account is current at valid at sa pangalan ni trillanes. kaso, nakasanayan na kasi nitong palpak na com group to make short cuts, too incompetent to check for details, too much in a hurry to publish fake news. and just because news comes from presidential com group, does not mean the news is truthful. cheers.

        Reply

        • speaking of the communication group .. yan si Andanar is saying again na hack daw ang PNA website and na captured daw ng “Dashboard” yon ip address

          Alam naman natin ang Dashboard ng Cpanel shows the IP of the visitor but it does not records activities of the visitor.

          Its his incompetent staff the cause the errors. Including himself .. dapat nag proof reading muna sila bago i post online. Andanar please stop blaming or pointing fingers to other people.. you point one finger but four fingers points back to you

          Reply

          • sayang, andanar has eyes big like goldfish, pero no eye for details! maybe his big eyes are mainly for ogling mocha girls, he, he, he. napaka-incompetent at computer illeterate yata ang mamang ito. best advice is for him to smash computer using fisted salute! there, hackers killed.

            speaking of proof reading, I bet, the edjets dont know what to look for, at saka dont know how to maneobra windows and its many functions, he, he, he. roughly one year into the job and still the edjets have yet to found their feet and hit the floor running – in thier high heels! news, is they wont be able to wear high heels soon, bawal yang high heels. dapat tsinelas.

            andanar can surely apply martial law in his office, and quarantine it! bawal labas pasok, bawal sleeping on the job, and he should not be too trustful of the people around him, they’re probly more incompetent than him.

            Reply

  8. Congratulations Raissa, I’m honored & humbled (& a little embarrassed) to have made the same shortlist. ‘Marcos Martial Law Never Again’ is a marvelous work that will serve the country for many years to come!

    Reply

  9. I chanced upon this post at Inquirer…

    JUST SO YOU KNOW – Lest We Forget

    by kip poughkeepsie

    http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/929224/rodrigo-duterte-ilocos-norte-holiday-ferdinand-marcos-birth-anniversary

    IF d’mrcosas simply buried the estimated $10 Billion loot (conservative estimate i’d say) under the ground and didn”t do anything else except made sure it did not get retired out of circulation, that money would now be worth $58.6 Billion (₱3Trillion+). hindi siya lumago, hindi siya kumita dumami lang pero ganoon din ang halaga noon at ngayon. if you check the US Inflation Calculator that $1.00 in 1972 (when d’marcos declared ML) would now be worth $5.86.

    why conservative? the country owed $27Bln in 1986 when they fled that we did not owe in 1966 when he took office. back then the country’s debt stood at $1Bln, $800Million of which came from the Bell Trade Act that the Americans gave the Philippines for reconstruction after WW2 and basically is in exchange for amending our Constitution to allow the Americans, “PARITY RIGHTS” later under the Laurel-Langley Agreement after they gave us independence. the deal was not ideal but it was the only game in town and proved propitious as we had a succession of decent and honorable presidents to lead the reconstruction from the war’s devastation for the next 20 years and turned it into a burgeoning economy until d’marcos came along.

    unless you can convince me that any of his infrastructure projects or edifices built one each year spread out over 20 years costs $7.83 Billion or ₱399 Billion ea.

    $27Bln X 5.8X [inflation 1972-2017] = $156.6 Bln today;
    $156.6/20 yrs. = $7.83 Bln/per yr.
    $7.83 X ₱51 = ₱399.33Bln/per yr., THEN clearly, they stole all that money.

    1. BNPP – no way that cost $7.8Bln. (originally offered at $500M ($2.7bln today, by contractor W-est-inghouse after it made sulot to G-E, for 2 reactors of 620MW ea. ended up at $2.2Bln. for (1) reactor with half the power in 1986 and was not even operational still. (it was not up to standards according to his own wonder boy protégé judge Ricardo Puno) who he later appointed Justice Secretary.

    2. North Diversion Rd. (No. Express Way) & So. Express Way – the project was started out by his predecessor as a (Free)way and was underway when marcos took office in Jan 1966. the project was completed in Aug 1968 and changed it into a TOLL way . he could not have conceptualized the project, done a feasibility study, enacted pertinent laws, did the bidding, financing, expropriated the land it sits on, and constructed and finish it all in 2 years 8 months flat in Aug 1968. he stole all the credit for those big projects (when he 1st introduced the concept of EPAL). there’s no way those cost $7.8B.

    3. San Juanico Bridge – that’s no packing Golden Gate Suspension Bridge just a pathetic 2 lane TRUSS bridge. (funny how the loyalists would have multiple-orgasms when talking about it :)

    4. One a year for Heart Center, Lung Center, Kidney Center, Cultural Center, Convention Center and on and on. if you rebuilt even all that put together, its not going to cost you $7.83Bln today. d’marcoses stole and stole BIG and clearly they stole all that money. and that does not include the gold hoard (central bank gold) the Roger Roxas Golden Buddha and maybe the Yamashita gold, all the profits from the companies he stole, and the kotongs and payolas all went to these secret accounts all over the globe. however, the taliano tale is as fake as the marcos’ 27 war medals and a product of the family’s propaganda machinery. it doesn’t mean anything, it only means if you believed it then their loot becomes legitimate.

    you have to remember that marcos, having murdered his dad’s political opponent Julio Nalundasan, just a few days past his 18th birthday was into the rackets early in his life as he crossed the threshold into a life of crime. he is on record making a claim soon after the war for thousands of cattle he purportedly loaned to the US military during the war that was denied. after getting away with murder i suppose a fraud here there and everywhere ;) would be a cake walk.

    BACK TO THE LOOT

    so when imeldific said they practically owned the Philippines, that was no boast. they took over so many companies including those American owned (esp. mining cos.) under the parity rights at the conclusion of the Laurel Langley Agreement in 1974 so you can imagine, no one dared buyout the Americans without d’marcos’ authorization and if so was at fire sale, and put them under cronies names who signed him back “a deed transferring ownership of most of the business – usually 60% – but would leave a blank space for the name. d’marcos would hold the deed and leave the space blank. there was no “evidence” that he owned the 60%.” pls google “The $10bn question: what happened to the D’marcos millions?” – by the guardian. and all those profits ended up in their secret foreign accounts.

    Let’s pretend they had the money invested but their wealth managers weren’t spectacular and simply tracked the Dow Jones, that money would now be:

    a) $210 Billion ($10Bln x 21x – Dow’s growth since 1972).
    b) real estate performed only slightly better by 1% during this time & as we know ma’am liked those too.
    c) but if their money managers were any good AS THEY SHOULD BE, as many of them became billionaires in their own right after they set up their own hedge funds, they could have invested in funds that did much better than the Dow, like warren buffet whose berkshire hathaway that became BRK-A grew 958X (fr $275/sh. at close on 04/01/80 to $263,600.00 as of (9/8/17). it would not have been so difficult for them to have put in say $50M on this fund and that would have been another $50bln easy for them today. money was easy for them then as i recall distinctly seeing a copy of Time or NewsWeek magazine (Asia Edition) with d’marcos face on the cover page captioned “Asia’s Richest Man”, and this was before martial law.

    nobody really knows how much is the true value of that loot today, you can only make an educated guess and see it in the tens of millions of Filipinos impoverished and living in squalor, myriad have come and gone never enjoying a day of a decent life. d’marcoses stole all that money and hid it out of the country. it would not have been so bad had they kept it at home and the money would have built plants, factories and businesses that created full employment that created new industries in a healthy economic cycle that brings it to a TAKEOFF to industrialization and afforded for a highly educated population but they weren’t going to risk that lest they be discovered more easily.

    but rather than let dtrte mortgage our future to xi jinping and see another chinese invasion that will further marginalize the Filipinos in their own country, we need to get d’marcosas to return that money to the Filipinos since they will have difficulty spending it with ever tightening banking and money laundering laws one could easily get afoul.

    it’s conceivable their control over those billions is waning since the bankers and trustee appointees knows its source and would try to steal it from the thieves themselves. so before that happens they should fully identify all those accounts for which they would get a pass and legislate against those they would refuse to identify and see that the two do not co-mingle and work with international regulators that will encourage full disclosure on the part of d’marcosas.

    let us not “cut off our nose to spite our face” in working out a “deal”, it’s going to be tough but the PCGG should probably have some idea of its magnitude that should put to shame the wealth of the sy’s. and there’ll be resistance from many sides, chief among whom will be from the bankers, managers, the trustees and their lawyers, politicians unless there’s something in it for them. and there will be those who would push for it for personal gain of course and they’ll all be coming out of the woodwork. its just so unfortunate things have deteriorated so badly but that’s reality and we just have to make the most of it. we should work out the deal openly as they do in a senate resolution and not in closed doors with politicians who voted to removed themselves from those covered by Penalty Of Death For Plunder.

    Peace.

    Reply

    • peace, rolly. thanks for the article. tama po kayo, bankers could well be in the uptake, stealing and siphoning money from the bulk of marcoses stash and then resigning rather than being caught flat out. easy money, thief stealing from thief, conning the thief in mad business ventures, investing money in dubious and non existing portfolios. by the time the deed is discovered, the money is already done.

      the marcoses barely have recourse dahil it will come out na talagang may secret stash sila. if conned, the marcoses would just have to bear and grin, and bear and grin time and again. if things continue on this way, baka maubusan sila ng pera. god knows how terribly greedy some bankers are.

      it’s time the marcoses return stolen wealth, else it will be stolen from them. for digong to be negotiating the return, may not be good idea. he is too close to the marcoses, his judgement could be impaired, his clarity obscured. baka yariin lang siya nina imelda’t imee, their smiles and numerous bola 2nd to none, their hospitality deadly. best to let others not awed by the marcoses do the negotiating, digong on the sideline observing and biting his fingernails.

      Reply

  11. Congratulations Ms Raissa – and equally to your husband Alan! It is a recognition and honor well deserved.

    Thank you for writing MARCOS Martial Law: Never Again

    Reply

      • I am very proud of your book Raissa that I gave it as a gift to my spiritual Elite friend. He’s been reading it. He has everything but he seems delighted with it.

        Thank you. I am glad you write one that is written with great care , informative, credible and historical. The events in the story cannot be deleted but is firmly engraved to the mind and heart of the reader.

        All my best wishes to the warrior with a pen! Never give up, that is your legacy.

        Reply

  12. Maligayang Bati Po sa inyong magkabiyak. Marami pong salamat aa sakripisyo ninyo mamulat lang kaming mga kaakunti ang kaalaman ng rehimeng Marcos.

    Para na rin po kayong nagwagi. Patnubayan po kayo ng Dios.

    Reply

  13. Congratulations Raissa and Allan!
    You never fail to make us proud of your tandem.
    Keep that fire in you and upon us burning so we can enlighten those who were blinded by the deceitful family.

    Reply

  14. Wow! Tour book certainly deserves it. Kudos to you and hubby! Really great work, not only in literature but for the whole Filipino people!

    Reply

      • Yes… the coffee table edition was given as a gift
        and I bought 2 reader-version.
        One is now in circulation with a “borrower’s list” on the back page

        that’s how much I treasure this book.
        the coffee table edition made my daughter sit down with me
        and asked how was it really during those times…

        God bless you Raissa and Allan… we keep you always in our prayers
        especially during these dangerous times in our country.

        Reply

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