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Meanwhile, the BPO call center global industry, fifty percent of which the Philippines hosts, employing nearly a million workers, was at a standstill. Tourism was down. South Korean business was quietly closing its tent, following a case of extortion and murder of one of its managers in an incident designed to evoke the utmost repulsion: the policemen not only killed him but had the body cremated and the ashes flushed down the toilet. Nihilism creates its own unbearable cruelty. And the responding anger is equally unbearable.

Pact

Hoping to make a friend of him, you danced— Knock-kneed, pot-bellied and nostrils-flaring— With Death. Hoping to stave off your own expiration date Giving him instead The toddler The girl The boy The young man The father And a pregnant mother Or two.
Death laughs with bloodstained teeth Sending its most ferocious of worms To feed on their anguish, pain and tears So each worm will spend days In orgiastic delight When they all turn to your flesh.

NOTES

1 ABS-CBN News report, citing Digital Global Overview, January 25, 2017.

2 “Murder Rate Highest in Davao City—PNP,” citing Philippine National Police statistics, Philippine Star, April 2, 2016.

3 Taped interview with Senator Antonio Trillanes, by author, New York City, July 20, 2017.

4 Confidential conversation with a journalist who has covered Duterte’s political career. Duterte later made the claim himself while speaking to a Filipino expatriate group in Vietnam, on November 10, 2017.

5 “Philippines’ Duterte Likens Himself to Hitler, Wants to Kill Millions of Drug Users,” Reuters News, September 29, 2016.

6 “The Kill List,” Philippine Inquirer, July 7, 2016.

7 “How a Secretive Police Squad Racked up Kills in Duterte’s Anti-Drug War,” Reuters Special Report, December 19, 2017.

8 Isagani E. Medina, “A Historical Reconstruction of the Juramentado/ Sablallah Ritual,” Anuaryo/Annales: Journal of History, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1993.

9 “How The PNP’s One-Time, Big-Time Operations Work,” Rappler, August 27, 2017.

10 “Trillanes: ‘Dragon-like’ Tattoo Links Paolo Duterte to ‘Triad’,” Philippine Inquirer, September 7, 2017.

11 “Ombudsman Insists on Constitutional Duty to Probe Duterte,” Rappler, October 1, 2017.

12 “Resignation Never an Option for SC Chief Sereno,” Rappler, October 1, 2017.

13 “Capitalist Villar Is Communist Party’s Bet for 2010,” GMA Network News, December 24, 2009.

14 Delfin Mallari Jr. and Jodee A. Agoncillo, “NPA: 15 Dead in Batangas Were Ours,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 4, 2017.

15 Zea Io Ming Capistrano, “Reds Vow to Overthrow Duterte,” Davao Today, December 19, 2017.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Vijay Prashad is the executive director of Tricontinentaclass="underline" Institute for Social Research. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Darker Nations: A Biography of the Short-Lived Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. His most recent book is Red Star Over the Third World. He writes regularly for Frontline, The Hindu, Alternet, and BirGun.

Eve Ensler is the Tony Award-winning playwright, activist, and author of the theatrical Obie Award-winning phenomenon The Vagina Monologues, published in forty-eight languages and performed in over 140 countries. Ensler is founder of V-Day, the twenty-year-old global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. Her play The Fruit Trilogy opened in 2018 with the Abingdon Theatre Company at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Danish Husain is an actor, poet, storyteller, and theater director. He has appeared in a number of films, including Peepli Live (2010), AnkhonDekhi (2013), Newton (2017).

Burhan Sönmez is a novelist, editor, and the translator of William Blake into Turkish. In 2018 he was awarded the first European Bank Prize for Literature for his novel Istanbul Istanbul (OR Books). A board member of PEN International, he won the Disturbing the Peace Award from the Václav Havel Library Foundation in 2017.

Lara Vapnyar came to the United States from Russia in 1994. She is the author of the novels Scent of Pine (Simon and Schuster), Memoirs of a Muse (Pantheon), and Still Here (Hogarth) and two collections of short stories. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, Harper’s, and The New Republic.

Ninotchka Rosca is a novelist and journalist. Her two novels—State of War (1988) and Twice Blessed (1992)—are considered classics of modern Philippine literature. She co-wrote José María Sison’s At Home in the World, a book about the founding chairman of the re-established Communist Party of the Philippines.

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