How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

by Maria Ressa

“non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good.”

Yes

Every development that happens in my country eventually happens in the rest of the world—if not tomorrow, then a year or two later.

That’s what I lay out in this book: an exploration into the values and principles not just of journalism and technology but of the collective action we need to take to win this battle for facts.

whoever won the election would determine not just our future but also our past.

Foucault: power produces reality and knowledge

Meaning is not something you stumble across or what someone gives you; you build it through every choice you make, the commitments you choose, the people you love, and the values you hold dear.

Thats a very existential approach isnt it

a seeming competition that often forced me to take a side, which I refused to do.

Thats not so easy youre so string minded!

“Americans neglected to establish an effective and impartial administration . . . so Filipinos turned to politicians instead of the bureaucracy for assistance, a practice that fostered patronage and corruption.”

Huh

A few months after I had settled in, my teacher whom I idolized, Miss Ugland,5 asked me if I would consider moving to another classroom: the school wanted to push me a grade higher. I was just starting to feel comfortable, and the potential change scared me. That was when she told me, “Maria, don’t be afraid. Always push to learn; you have nothing more to learn in my classroom.”

Wow thats so different than china

Then Sharon took my hand, grabbed my bag, and led me to the house. “You can go inside and change,” she said while I wiped my eyes and waved to my parents. Good thing I’d packed extra clothes.

Thats so nice better than ppl from our department accordijng to celia lol. And of course i agree with her

silence is complicity.

Here’s what I learned about popularity: people like you if you give them what they want. The question is: Is it what you want?

books were what explained everything to me that people couldn’t—or answered questions I couldn’t ask.

Lol yep

I saw how the rules of science, of physics, were philosophical, like the laws of thermodynamics: how everything moves to maximum entropy or chaos, and how it takes energy to maintain order.

Lol

for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Omg lmm start singing in my head =_=||

Who said religion and science don’t go hand in hand?

I say....

I learned the most from theater,

Woww all thizs physics nd theatre talk i think im in love w you lol

For the next two weeks of my junior year, I couldn’t control my anger, which kept erupting in strange flashes.

Ah... Yes

“They do well, even excellently, in everything they undertake; they are admired and envied; they are successful whenever they care to be,” Miller wrote, “. . . but behind all this lurks depression, a feeling of emptiness and self-alienation, and a sense that their life has no meaning.”

set myself a twofold challenge: how to understand the world and my place in it, and how to build my confidence while controlling my ego.

Hahahaha let's hear it

wanted to achieve an “empty mirror,”3 a concept I took from a book about a Buddhist monastery: to stand in front of a mirror and see the world without my image obstructing the view. I wanted to know myself to such a degree that I could take myself out of the equation when approaching the world around me and responding to it. That is clarity—the ability to remove your self and your ego.

?

Many expected that the military would open fire on the crowd. Instead, the soldiers defied Marcos’s order to shoot their own people.

O-O

Brechtian framework,

Dialetical?

A few months later, we opened my play at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland.

Poggers man

Everything adjusted in the present moment of the past.

Now I understand this a tad better. I remember we had a huge beautiful crystal statue in rice liquor thing when we were little, but looking at it when I was older made me realize it's neither as pretty or as big as I remembered

in journalism, I might contribute more to the evolution and health of the country than in anything else.

We were inevitably caught in the middle of some of the coup attempts because, as I soon learned, during a military takeover one of the first things rebellious soldiers do is seize the government radio or television station to control information.

That time in my life showed me it was possible to live my ideals—to successfully bridge the gaps between the way you choose to live and the realities of a stratified, class-conscious, feudalistic Filipino society. Cheche and Del taught me that you can succeed without compromising your ideals. It was a choice; so choose to be better.

Colonel Rafael Galvez, the rebel commander, granted us an interview, his first for international viewers.

Unthinkable..... From a chinese perspective .... Ccp would have gotten rid of ppl for much smaller conflicts

The most important choice you make is the person you will spend your life with. That person’s values and choices will sway you as you create yourself, as you make the most important decisions about who you are.

First, there were basic questions I had to ask: How do you dress for a date? A suit or a dress and stockings? Or jeans and a shirt? Lipstick or not? What do you do with gender roles? It was like being a teenager again.

I remember those days lol do not regret discovering my bisexuality

It’s confusing when you throw away gender signals ingrained since birth. They are far more basic than cultural standards; they are embedded into your identity, affecting the way you present yourself to the world—the way you dress, the way you speak, the way you act. Did I need to fundamentally change?

Questioning heteronormativity already!

how well you cook (I can’t),

Slow down that counts toward attractiveness as well?

to how well you obey (huh?).

这个huh就很有灵性 lol

We are all on a sexual spectrum. I was attracted to passion and intellect, energy and empathy; whether in a man or a woman, I loved connecting with people at a deeper level to share that inspirational spark. At some point, I stopped looking through the binary lenses of straight or gay and just accepted what is.

I do too! Bisexuality is the best!

Two things happened when I chose a woman as my partner: my parents refused to let her come home with me, and I felt Cheche—my mentor, my friend, the person who to a large degree had made me a journalist—pull away.

:(

The only thing you can control in the world is you.

Yes! Omg ive been telling myself the same shit since forever !

I was with CNN when we were “Chicken Noodle News,”

Lol where that came from

companies like CNN and the BBC got to determine what was newsworthy, filtered through their cultural lenses.

That didn’t stop the then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, from declaring that the “baby milk plant” was a front for a secret laboratory producing biological agents such as toxins, bacteria, and viruses to use as weapons of mass destruction. White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater began calling Peter “a conduit for Iraqi disinformation.”

also meant that a reporter like me had less time to learn, and it minimized our time to explore and discover stories. Whatever was thrilling, faster, easier also seemed to diminish the depth of our coverage; somehow technology both saved us time and stole it from us.

Yes! Thats how i feel watching cnn breaking news couple years back anchors just sitting in front of the camera and blabbing

1996, the Jakarta Megawati riots, triggered by a woman’s political challenge to Suharto;

Look at women in these countries!

Interviewing leaders showed me how their weaknesses were embedded in the cultures of the people they led.

Oh and ccp knows how to exploit em

That top-down oppressive, controlling political system took its toll on the people. Their leaders’ biggest sin was that they failed to educate their people.

愚民之术

When I taught at the University of the Philippines in the years I was with Probe, I wanted to understand what—and how—students were learning. What were their values? What I saw being rewarded was respect for authority: knowing your place, rote learning, the ability to memorize and mimic answers back; neatness and punctuality; and above all, submission to their teachers and their views. They rarely articulated what they really thought.

So true

understanding the way a large group behaves is very different from dealing with and understanding individuals.

This reminded me, I need to read the crowd

Suharto was called the “puppet master,” a dalang, who, in an Indonesian wayang performance, manipulates from the shadows the puppets projected onto a screen.

皮影戏 across so many asian cultures lol

The scenes I witnessed of senseless killings and beheadings made me realize how Suharto’s oppression had acted like a pressure cooker, how covering up violence only led to more violence.

The answer I always got was that it was “the people from outside; it wasn’t us.” That was always the answer when violence broke out.

Difference Making machinery

A reporter is only as good as his or her sources; that’s the difference between press conferences and independent investigation. Honesty, delineating lines clearly and asking for permission for what you want to reveal publicly are essential to cultivating sources. I never broadcast a sensitive story until I let all sources know so they could protect themselves from vengeful or autocratic leaders. As you build your sources and the sophistication of your reporting, you build public trust. Over time, you and your sources learn each other’s values, and you may even fight the battles of integrity and justice together.

Another part of me thought of the God of Noah’s ark, teaching a deadly lesson to mankind.

That was a lesson? I thought it was just wiping out and starting over. Stories are stories only human interpretation can bend it every which way