THE GREAT UNFAIRNESS

 

“There is a video of you having sex on the internet. You do not remember being with this person because it never happened. Others are watching the video online, too.

“The video is unfamiliar because it is a deepfake – an 'ultrarealistic fake video' where your face is superimposed onto another person’s body through the use of artificial intelligence software. And someone has published it online for the world to see. This is not science fiction.

“All one needs is a computer, a decent graphics card, the FakeApp program, hundreds of pictures of the desired person, and a few hours. A tutorial is easily accessible online.

“Deepfakes are not only going to be used for self-gratification, but also have the potential to be used to extort, humiliate, harass, and blackmail victims.” (Deepfakes: False Pornography Is Here And The Law Cannot Protect You by Douglas Harris)

DEEPFAKE SEX VIDEO

The latest victim is Ms. Aika Robredo, the daughter of VP Leni. The restorative words of Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas to Ms. Robredo were what she emotionally needed in the wake of such a traumatic experience.

“You are going to be a stronger woman of character after all these have faded away. Lies and liars die in time. Only Truth is forever. For the moment you suffer, but this suffering can only make you better.”

For Rana Ayyub, investigative journalist and writer, a victim of the same deepfake, it was suffering like no other which she narrated in Huffington Post:

“I met a friend for coffee…a source… sent me a message to say, ‘Something is circulating around WhatsApp, I’m going to send to you but promise me you won’t feel upset.’

“What he sent me was a porn video, and the woman in it was me. When I first opened it, I was shocked to see my face, but I could tell it wasn’t actually me…I started throwing up. I just didn’t know what to do. In a country like India, I knew this was a big deal. I didn’t know how to react, I just started crying.

“I asked him why it was circulating within political circles and he told me people within the party had been passing it on. Before I could even gather myself, my phone started beeping and I saw I had more than 100 Twitter notifications, all sharing the video.

“My friend told me to delete Twitter but I couldn’t, I didn’t want people to think this was actually me. I went to Facebook and I had been inundated with messages there too. They were trying to derail me, every other person was harassing me with comments like: “I never knew you had such a stunning body.”

“I deleted my Facebook, I just couldn’t take it. But on Instagram, under every single one of my posts, the comments were filling with screenshots of the video…The video was shared 40,000 more times. It ended up on almost every phone in India.

"It was devastating. I just couldn’t show my face. You can call yourself a journalist, you can call yourself a feminist but in that moment, I just couldn’t see through the humiliation.”

WHAT HAVE I DONE TO YOU?

I could only imagine VP Leni, as a mother, screaming deep in her heart, to the dark world of haters of her family. ”What have I done to you?” “What have I offended you?”

Those same questions Jesus could have screamed deep in his heart while being nailed on the cross.

“What more should I have done, and did not do?

I led you out of the land of Egypt, and you prepared a cross for me.

I opened the Red Sea before you, and you opened my side with a lance.

I gave you a royal scepter, and you gave me a crown of thorns.

With great power I lifted you up, and you hung me upon a cross.

My people, what have I done to you? What have I offended you?

Answer me.” (From the Reproaches of Good Friday)

Senator Leila de Lima said Aika’s deepfake is “so 2016.” That year, coming at the height of the hearing of her illegal drug-related charges, de Lima also fell victim to an accusation of having a sex video with her security aide. She stressed:

“Demonizing women has been a go-to, and desperate political strategy in the past 6 years. Galawang sindikato talaga. Matitigil lang yan kapag natanggalan na ng sungay ang mga nagtatangkang bumalik sa kapangyarihan at yung mga nagtatangkang manatili. (It’s what the syndicates do. It will only stop once we remove the horns of those who want to return to and maintain their power.)

DISINFORMATION

The election disinformation has targeted mainly VP Leni receiving negative messaging while Marcos Jr. earning positive branding according to Tsek.ph study, a fact-finding collaboration of 34 academe, media, and civil society partners.

“Robredo’s quotes have been mangled, twisted, [or] fabricated to make her look like she is spouting nonsense. She has been called, rather harshly, Madumb, lutang, tanga, utal-utal.” (Yvonne Chua, journalism professor, and Tsek.ph’s project leader)

Disinformation “is really priming the audience to rationalize [the Marcos] lies and distortions,” asserted Fatima Gaw, assistant professor of communication research at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, asserted that in the face of the real powers that dominate us, only an equally real power can offer help. If Disinformation is such a dominating power, what is the equally real power that can help us?

The Press? Nobel laureate Maria Reesa said a mouthful about the state of our Fourth Estate today.

“I think this moment, this once in a century moment, not only because of Corona virus, everything has been turned upside-down. The biggest challenge for professional journalists is to realize that we no longer have the power. We’re not the gatekeepers anymore. We have lost that power. We lost that a long time ago. Maybe, as early as 2014…The power is in Tech, it is in social media. Facebook is the largest distributor of news today…E.O. Wilson [biologist, naturalist, and writer] said that our greatest problem is Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.”

MARCOS JR AND HIS GOD-LIKE TECHNOLOGY

I have brought up a lot of times in my past ATABAY articles this following sticky expose to stir minds as to the toxic role this particular mischief has played in the Disinformation that has been turning everything “upside down” as Maria Reesa asserted.  For the nth time, let me say, if truth be told, the “embryo” of this Disinformation was first spawned in 2014 as exposed by whistleblower Brittany Kaiser of the infamous Cambridge Analytica:

“When I joined Cambridge Analytica in 2014 we had already worked in the Philippines. There was a national campaign where my former company had gone in and undertaken national research to figure out what was the type of persona that would resonate best with voters…

“We had a request straight from Bongbong Marcos to do a FAMILY REBRANDING. This was brought in through internal staff at Cambridge Analytica and was debated. Some people didn’t want to touch it and there were others like our CEO Alexander Nix that saw it as a massive financial opportunity and asked us to write the proposal anyway. So, as you call it: HISTORICAL REVISIONISM.” (Underscoring mine)

Just as Jesus came to grips with the “great unfairness” during His incarnation, so too VP Leni has been coming up against this seeming “great unfairness” seeping through this election process. This hymn excerpt by William Cowper is transcendent:

“God moves in a mysterious way,

His wonders to perform,

He plants his footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm.”

That reminds me of a VP Leni’s FB viral meme: “They whispered to her ‘you cannot withstand the storm.’ ‘I am the storm’ she whispered back.”

In the same way as what came upon Jesus after His crucifixion, would the crucial 9^th of May -- VP Leni’s Easter Sunday?

Happy Easter!