By Elson T. Elizaga
IF you support Duterte’s EJK and you want to see Hollywood and Area 51, if you participate in the bullying and imprisonment of Sen. Leila de Lima, then quick delete your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Gmail, Yahoo, and Skype. If you still have Friendster and MiRC, delete those, too. Just keep Wordstar. The US has a new regulation that bans DDS. They will reject your visa.
The world is watching, the world that protects democracy and human rights. Today the US. Tomorrow could be Europe, then Canada, Japan, Australia, and the not-so-Great Britain because of Brexit. Okay, the US obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki so the US is Satanic and not worth a visit. But some Filipino families have children studying in the best Satanic universities there.
The good news is North Korea. You can go to Korea, but a Korean visa is hard to find. North Koreans hate travel. North Koreans prefer to stay home. They are contented with their neat little kingdom. They love Kim; they have no need for visas. Your options are Pakistan and Antarctica.
Seriously, the ban is only for Philippine officials who sent de Lima to jail. Thank you, US Sen. Dick Durbin (Illinois) for your Twitter post on Sept. 27, 2019: “Good to see the Senate Appropriations Committee pass my amendment with @SenatorLeahy today to prohibit entry to any Philippine Government Officials involved in the politically motivated imprisonment of Filipina Senator Leila de Lima in 2017. We must #FreeLeilaNow.”
But the ban could reach private citizens. A Facebooker claimed his DDS relative was denied entry. Her papers were complete and immaculate and she was not a government official. Why was she rejected?
We know for a couple of years now: Government and business firms extract data from our social media accounts. Our printed resume is only part of what the embassy wants to know. We are living in a dengue-infested nook of Asia, our streets are blood-soaked, but 24 hours on the other side of this warming planet are neat copies of our online chats, more reliable than print certificates.
The US has its own problems, too. One is the relentless shootings in schools. CNN reports on Nov. 11, 2019, that “in 46 weeks this year, there have been 45 school shootings. That’s nearly an average of one school shooting a week.” Wikipedia has a higher number using different criteria: “As of December 12, 2019, 409 mass shootings have occurred in 2019.”
The other troubles are Donald Trump, the white supremacists, and Russian spies. US officials must be twits if they welcome DDS Filipinos who want Maria Ressa gang-raped because they love Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ.
(Elson T. Elizaga is a lightwriter and babysitter. He comes from her mother and got married on a hill. He seeks tension in language and images. When struck by lightning, he prays. Otherwise, he is a secular humanist who writes for elson.elizaga.net.)
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