WritingThirty v5.0

Copyediting for the moderate prescriptivist

2011-01-17T00:03:00.007+08:00

The Pro Pinoy Project's Niña Terol-Zialcita asked me last night to give a Top 5 list of the best sites for writing, copyediting, and grammar tips.

I found the request a bit challenging, as I have a list of more than 10 websites I refer to when I am in doubt over the correct usage of words and phrases, as well as grammar and syntax norms recommended by moderate linguistic prescriptivists.

Here's a list of sites I highly recommend:

Style Guides

The Economist Style Guide

The Guardian Style Guide

Chicago Manual of Style Online Q&A

AP Stylebook FAQ

Resources

Copyediting.com

Journalists' Toolbox

American Copy Editors' Society

Copyeditors' Knowledge Base

Columbia Journalism Review's Language Corner

Testy Copy Editors

Editors' Blogs

John McIntyre

Editor Mark

The Subversive Copyeditor

What are your own favorite copyediting and journalism resources websites and blogs?

Got Tumblr?

2010-08-01T01:20:00.002+08:00

Meet The Copy Editor. His digital scrapbook, to be exact. He doesn't usually speak in third person.

A Call For Films

2010-06-13T21:31:00.008+08:00

pelikula@titusbrandsma is looking for short films, short documentaries, full-length of any genre to show in our 6th Pinoy Indies, anniversary presentation and monthly film dialogue sessions.

Deadline of submission for 6th Pinoy Indies: July 18, 2010

Submit a copy in DVD/VCD format to:

Titus Brandsma Center Media Program

3/F Theresa of Avila Bldg.

28 Acacia St. Barangay Mariana,

New Manila, Quezon City

Look for Ms. Joy Kialkial

Tel No. : (02) 723-0449 or 09184048502

Please enclose a sheet of paper that contains the following information:

Title

Director's Name

Running Time

Synopsis

Cast and Crew

Additional info: (Awards, Nominations, Festival screened)

Selection and programming of films will be decided by the pelikula@titusbrandsma core group.

Selected works will be a part of the TBCMP film library. Unselected works are to be returned to the filmmakers.

You can also submit your work and other requirements during our monthly film dialogue session at TBC.

If your film is selected and scheduled for showing, you are required to be present on the day it will be shown for the Q & A. (Metro Manila entries only)

If you're from the province, you may or may not be present during the showing provided that you submit a written article about your work covering all the aspects especially the content. For non-Tagalog films, please submit a copy with English subtitles.

Ancestral

2010-04-21T03:10:00.003+08:00

Dan Dizon, a UP classmate of Bencab, has immortalized the Malig clan's Bacolor ancestral home built in the 1750s. The old stone house still stands today in Cabambangan, a memory of past Iberian days.

From Toto Gonzalez's Remembrance of Things Awry:

Further down was the 1750s Malig mansion, certainly the oldest and the most atmospheric of the Old Bacolor residences.
The quaint, archaic architecture of the Malig mansion was not the splendid, classical 1850s “bahay na bato” of the great landowning families of Bacolor, Guagua, San Fernando, and Mexico towns. It was the affluent house of an earlier era, perhaps of the mid 18th century [ 1750s ]…
One entered an arched adobe portal to a small courtyard paved with “piedra china” granite slabs and hung with bougainvilleae before proceeding to a handsome, pedimented front door which was actually located at the “mirador” tower and not in the house proper [ the "mirador" tower was most probably a remnant of the days when the "Moros" would raid Pampanga towns --- notably Lubao, Guagua, and Bacolor --- and capture their inhabitants for slaves and for ransom, occurrences which lasted until the early 1800s ]. The dim entrance hall was laid with brilliantly colored Spanish “azulejos” tiles. To the left was parked the old piercework giltwood ”andas” / “carroza” processional carriage of the Malig Family’s ”Mater Dolorosa,” a very old image venerated by Bacolorenos during the traditional Good Friday Procession. One proceeded to the right, up a staircase with a small flight of steps to the house proper, to the ”caida” living area. There was, rather incongruously, a 19th century matrimonial bed with a beautiful, Chinese-inflected headboard of birds [ cranes / pheasants ], hung with a sheer mosquito net, in the center of the room. Hanging from the walls were the famous 1860s colored lithographs of Reina Isabel II and her consort, Principe Francisco de Borbon in equally old giltwood frames. If one observed the distressed walls closely, there were still the vestiges of geometric handpainted decoration, perhaps from the 1850s. Beside the staircase, to the right, was a smaller staircase that led up to the “mirador” tower.
So old was the Malig mansion, so atmospheric, with so incredible a “Stimmung,” that it was used convincingly as the house of the “Alferez” and his abusive wife Dona Consolacion in the 1961 movie version of ”Noli Me Tangere” by the national hero Jose Rizal directed by master filmmaker Gerry de Leon.

Rizal himself was apparently a guest at the family ancestral home:

In Bacolor, a sumptuous lunch was prepared for Dr. Rizal at the Malig family ancestral home near the San Guillermo Church where our hero must have met with Don Ceferino Joven, Don Francisco Joven, Dr. Francisco Liongson, and Don Valentin Ventura among others. This sudden Pampanga visit of Dr. Rizal created quite a stir among the populace in the province, especially among the enlightened illustrados, their relatives and their peasant farmers. [DOT]

Pamamahayag At Pangingibang-bayan: Isang Balik-Tanaw

2010-04-21T02:56:00.003+08:00

Noong 2005, nailimbag at nailabas ang aklat na "PHILIPPINE MIGRATION JOURNALISM: A Practical Handbook" sa pangangasiwa ng OFW Journalism Consortium [OFWJC], isang pribadong lipon ng mga mamamahayag na nakatuon ang pangunahing pansin sa migranteng lakas-paggawa.

Mula sa isang panukalang media advocacy ng Institute on Church and Social Issues na pinamumunuan ng mga paring Hesuwita, ang OFW Journalism Consortium ay naging isa samahang tumutulong sa migranteng maggagawang Pilipino tumugon sa mga napapanahong usapin sa pamamagitan ng malayang pamamahayag.

Naging katuwang ako sa OFWJC sa una nitong naging discussion workshop-exhibit sa University of Sto. Tomas noong Disyembre 2002. Sa nasabing pagpupulong ay naatasan akong talakayin ang usapin ng pamamahayag pangkomunidad at paglikas ng lakas-paggawa.

Ang aking sanaysay ay nakalimbag na sa aklat kasama ng anim pang paksang tinalakay ng ilang batikang mamamahayag mula sa telebisyon, radyo, dyaryo, Internet, at sa hanay ng mga naiwang pamilya ng migranteng manggagawa at mga pribadong organisasyon na tumutulong at umuugnay sa mga Pilipinong manggagawang nangingibang-bansa.

PHILIPPINE MIGRATION JOURNALISM: A Practical Handbook

This 200-paged book compiles articles on the history of overseas employment of Filipinos, the issues and the players in this industry, Philippine media’s coverage of the issues, and a list of government, non-government, private organizations, and other groups that work for or against these issues.

Media practitioners, overseas Filipino workers, and development workers will find this handbook useful as well as a light read on the international labor migration that Filipinos form part of.

The book costs P250 each in the Philippines, US$16 in North America, and 15 euros in the European Union. Prices include standard postage as well as handling of between 11 to 20 days.

Monograph One
Monograph One, on Migration Journalism in the Philippines, contains seven papers on how issues in migration are seen from several vantage points: from that of a daughter of an overseas Filipino worker in a community of OFW families in Batangas to the editor-in-chief of a daily newspaper; from a senior business reporter covering the money that flows from OFWs to a former media liaison officer of a migrant nongovernment group; from the chief executive of a booming Internet-based newspaper to the director of a radio program beaming news on OFWs and the Philippines via shortwave. These papers outlined the work of the OFW Journalism Consortium for the past three years when their authors presented their respective opus at the pontifical University of Santo Tomas on December 7, 2002.

Contents :

1. “Ano nga ba ang meron sa Italya?: Kuwento ng isang migranteng pamilya ni Aileen Peñas
2. Issues and Concerns on Labor Migration in the Philippines: Inputs for Media Reportage by Dennis D. Estopace
3. Economic Reportage of International Labor Migration: A Reportorial Perspective by Arnold S. Tenorio
4. Community Journalism and Human Capital Flight by Jojo Pasion Malig
5. Online Journalism and OFWs: The Inq7.net Experience By Javier Vicente d. Rufino
6. The Treatment and Packaging of OFW Stories by a Daily Newspaper: An Editorial Perspective By Lourdes Molina-Fernandez
7. The Reportage of OFW Issues on Radio By Tanny V. Rodriguez

Font You

2010-04-20T15:17:00.006+08:00

[ via julianhansen.com]

Looking For Writers

2010-04-16T19:55:00.005+08:00

Newswriters/Editors Wanted
Location: Makati City

Requirements:
• Degree in Mass Communication, Journalism, or other relevant course
• Excellent English communication and grammar skills
• High analytical and comprehension skills
• Top-notch news writing, editing, and proofreading skills
• PC and typing skills and ability to thrive amid deadline pressures
• Creativity, inquisitiveness, and willingness to go the extra mile to create an outstanding story
• Sports writing skill is an advantage. Knowledge of global geopolitical realities is a must.

E-mail introduction letter and resumé, including expected salary range, to:

Lito Dailisan
Editorial Coordinator
NewsLink Crewnews (Phils) Inc.
6th Floor State Condominium I
186 Salcedo St., Legaspi Village, Makati City

Email: j.dailisan@newslinkservices.com
newslinkservices.net | faceofshipping.com

Highlight for insider tip: The company pays way better than mainstream Philippine dailies and media firms. However, don't set your initial salary bar too high as the job openings are for entry-level positions.

Do It Now

2010-03-27T16:31:00.005+08:00

[via lifehacker]

Turning Back Time

2010-03-25T17:27:00.003+08:00

Post-birthday ruminations, courtesy of quantum physics. A decision made in the present can apparently influence the past. [Science, 2007]

Don't even start.

Writing 35

2010-03-22T16:08:00.004+08:00

A copy of Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" lies unread on my office desk alongside Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style." Pens blue, red, and black. A Korean language book. A Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf notebook. A motorcycle magazine. Coffee sachets. Folders. An uneaten chocolate lollipop. An alarm clock turned off. A calendar filled with Xs and check marks. Income tax documents saying I gave around PHP 50,000 to the crooks in government last year.

I turned 35 on Friday, with the day spent in Quiapo buying a new set of eyeglasses and having my teeth fixed. It's a cliche. Your eyes and your teeth are the first ones to go as you get older.

I got a new set of specs for PHP 500. The teeth set me back PHP 1,500. With extra cash on hand, I also found a spanking new set of motorcycle knee protectors for PHP 700.

Quiapo. Divisoria. Baclaran. Port Area.

These places are better than malls if want to do bargain-hunting. A lot of goods and services inside malls cost less than half in Quiapo.

But I digress.

Some people meet their birthdays with either joy or melancholy. I had neither. I was rather indifferent to turning a year older - just regretful of some of the really brash decisions I made when I was younger.

Live and let live. Men are like wine. We get better as we get older. I'm just hoping that Gabriel - who's going to have a brother/sister by August - will be wiser and less impulsive than his dad.

Here's to 30-odd more years, then.

Cinemaloco

2009-10-04T11:45:00.005+08:00

Instituto Cervantes de Manila, the usual suspect behind the Spanish poems that adorn LRT coaches, is hosting a month-long festival of Spanish movies in various venues across the country.

"Locos Por El Cine" (Adik sa Pelikula) features 41 films to be shown in three venues.

Greenbelt 3 cinemas are screening Spanish contemporary and award-winning films. Spanish and Filipino documentaries are being shown at the CCP, while eight classical Spanish movies and a selection of Latin-American indie productions are being shown at the College of Saint Benilde.

Here's today's sked over at Greenbelt 3:

2:00 pm: El sueño de una noche de San Juan

4:30 pm: Casual Day

7:00 pm: El nido vacío

9:30 pm: El truco del manco

Visit pelicula for the full schedule.

Lapdance

2009-09-02T10:40:00.003+08:00

Here's the newest member of my household.

Asus K50IN

Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 (2.1GHz) CPU

15.6" HD TFT (1366x768 Widescreen)

NVIDIA GeForce G102M (with 512MB dedicated graphics memory)

320GB (5400rpm)

4GB DDR2 800mhz RAM

Windows Vista Home Premium

DVD Super Multi Dual Layer optical drive

6-cell lithium ion battery

2 years global warranty

6 lbs.

Eiga Sai '09

2009-06-24T12:03:00.000+08:00

In celebration of Philippines-Japan Friendship Month, the Japan Foundation, Manila, in cooperation with the Japanese embassy, the Shangri-La Plaza Mall, and the UP Film Institute proudly presents a Japanese Contemporary Film Festival, titled "Eigasai '09" (which literally means 'film festival' in Japanese) that will serve as its kick-off activity on July 2, 2009 at Shang Cineplex Cinema 3 for the month-long celebration.

Here's the full sked >>>>>

Pay For Play

2009-06-24T11:58:00.006+08:00

U.S. radio stations are screwed. A proposed House bill, the Performance Rights Act, will turn payola on its head.

It will require radio stations to pay artists to play their music, instead of artists and labels paying off station managers to have their singles placed on playlists.

Music industry expert Celia Hirschman says:

For decades, the laws have favored a free license to play artists’ music on radio, This free pass no longer makes any sense, especially for commercial radio. A reasonable compulsory license fee for all radio, with lower rates to non-commercial is an equitable solution for artists and labels. Commercial radio stations earn their income by selling advertising because of their programming content. It’s only fair that the content providers are compensated.

Better grab some popcorn while watching the fireworks fly.

Removing The Clutter

2009-05-27T16:55:00.003+08:00

I was supposed to babysit a couple of trainees last Saturday - the single day of the working week when I serve as the senior editor at the office. In anticipation, I prepared instructional materials for the newbies. However, the training session did not push through because the two young ladies who passed the initial employment exams had cold feet.

In any case, the training materials I prepared did not entirely go to waste as I could use them in future sessions with other trainees. I also e-mailed copies to the junior editors who sometimes try to impress their audience with their verbosity. Here's one discussion material I wish to share here:

How readable is your copy?

Readability is defined as reading ease, especially as it results from a writing style. Extensive research has shown that easy-reading text improves comprehension, retention, reading speed, and reading persistence.

Since the 1930s, national literacy surveys have shown that the average adult in the U.S. reads at the 8th-grade level. Many students read "below grade level."

Nearly all of today's blockbuster writers write at the 7th-grade level, including John Grisham, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, and Dan Brown. Experts today recommend writing legal and health information at the 7th-grade level. Laws often require writing medical and safety information at the 5th-grade level.

High readability newspaper articles can be understood by a greater range of people with varying intellect. Shorter words, concise sentences that contain words with few syllables are generally easier to comprehend.

The readability of the newspaper does determine who reads the paper, broadsheets are probably read by people who can easily understand low readability articles, and tabloids are often read by people who find it difficult to read articles with a low readability and read high readability articles found in tabloid newspapers.

Keeping It Tight And Simple
To the unskilled reader, all of the physical elements of the written message are important. Words, sentences, and paragraphs should all work together to make reading easier, enjoyable, and more easily comprehended. Your goal is to keep the "story" or message moving so it does not get boring.

Try to keep sentences short. Use simple sentences, active voice.

Short sentences averaging 8-10 words are ideal. Longer ones tend to contain multiple ideas. They probably should be made into two sentences. To keep sentences short avoid unnecessary words, descriptive phrases and clauses, and parenthetical expressions (clarifying or explanatory remarks put in parenthesis).

Write generally in the active voice. Active sentences place "doers" before "action," clearly showing the "doer" doing the action. Active sentences present concise, logical, and more direct information to the readers, making a stronger statement than passive sentences.

Passive sentences have a form of the verb "to be" (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been) plus a main verb ending in "en" or "ed". Often passive sentences are wordy and roundabout.

Passive sentences have a form of the verb "to be" (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been) plus a main verb ending in "en" or "ed". Passive sentences are often wordy and roundabout.

Use short, simple, familiar words

Choose and use your words carefully. That does not necessarily mean using fewer words to explain an idea. Unskilled readers can become frustrated and disinterested in the material if they do not understand or relate to the words on a page.

Use short, non-technical words with two syllables or less. Avoid polysyllabic words.

Use live, active verbs and strong, concrete nouns to add strength and emphasis to sentences. Avoid adjectives and adverbs.

Avoid symbolic language (metaphors), jargon, complicated words. Make sure you are writing from your user’s point of view. Use their terminology instead of your own.

Tell readers only what they need to know. Excess information can be confusing and distracting.

Use correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

When In Rome

2009-05-24T13:30:00.002+08:00

Quando Quando Quannon

2009-05-24T13:16:00.005+08:00

Back in January, I browsed through Kymco's global web site to search for new bike models that could be released in the Philippines this year.

The Quannon 125 immediately caught my eye. I later sent an e-mail to Kymco's Philippine office, expressing my interest to buy a unit. There were also rumors that models not released locally can be ordered directly from the company's main Taiwan office.

However, a response from Kymco Philippines was not encouraging. The company, it seems, does not have immediate plans to sell it in the country and is instead focusing on its scooter models, particularly the Super 8.

My SYM Radar X 125 is still in tip-top shape but I am planning to get another ride soon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Quannon will be released in the country eventually.

An Invite

2009-02-13T21:51:00.006+08:00

I received this invitation from my org in the United States, the Committee of Concerned Journalists. It may be of interest to colleagues and organizations in the Philippine and Asian media who wish to broaden their horizons.

Committee of Concerned Journalists International Journalists-in-Residence Program (JIR)

The Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing journalists with the tools, research and inspiration they need to create journalism of the highest quality. CCJ has recently established an International Journalists-in-Residence program (JIR). The purpose of this program is to provide journalists from overseas with an opportunity to conduct on-the- ground reporting from the United States and gain a perspective on American politics, business, culture and media that cannot be fully examined or understood from abroad.

This newly launched initiative is designed for print, broadcast and online journalists from around the globe. Participants will have the opportunity to spend up to three months in Washington, D.C. gathering information and producing stories for their home media organization. Launch of this program coincides with the inauguration of President Barack Obama and his administration's efforts to tackle the global economic crisis and the many international conflicts across the globe. The JIR program will allow journalists from overseas to examine the impact of these policies on their home countries – by gathering information and insight on the ground in Washington, D.C. that they could not expect to gain otherwise.

As a journalist-in-residence, each participant will be provided with office space, telephone, computer and high-speed internet access in CCJ's Washington D.C. headquarters in the National Press Building. Located in the heart of the nation's capital, CCJ's office is two blocks from the White House and is convenient to the U.S. Capitol and most major government agencies. The National Press Building is home to the Foreign Press Center which assists foreign correspondents visiting the United States. The Committee of Concerned Journalists staff has an extensive network of media professionals, academics and government officials and is well-positioned to assist with arranging appointments and interviews, and scheduling visits to peer newsrooms and academic institutions. CCJ has a network of 150 newspapers and television stations nationwide, where members of the JIR program can reach out to get valuable insight into American opinion beyond Washington D.C.

Journalists-in-Residence will have access to the National Press Club (NPC) which hosts more than 70 luncheons and roundtable discussions each year and provides a national forum for Presidents, Prime Ministers, business and cultural leaders, members of the Cabinet and Congress. In addition, NPC has a state-of-the-art Broadcast Operations Center that includes studio space for audio and video projects as well post-production, editing, duplication and transmission facilities.

Since its founding in 1997 by Bill Kovach, one of the leading journalists in the United States, CCJ has conducted training programs for nearly 10,000 journalists. Serving as the core of its training is the book “The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect.” This highly-regarded resource researched and written by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, is printed in 38 languages and is used by journalists worldwide. A crucial component of the International Journalists-In-Residence Program will be seminars conducted by CCJ staff focusing on issues including “best practices” in American journalism, successful investigative reporting techniques, and how to create high-impact reporting across multiple platforms. CCJ staff will customize seminars to meet the unique needs of participants.

The cost of the program begins at $750 per week for a single reporter and $1,200 per week for two or more journalists from a single organization. The JIR is designed to meet the needs of journalism outlets seeking a base from which to conduct reporting or research projects. It is, in short, a flexible Washington D.C. bureau. All interested persons must be working journalists and be proficient in written and spoken English. Housing is not provided, but CCJ will assist in finding appropriate accommodations.

Journalist in Residence Program: Summary of Benefits
• Washington, D.C. office suite and state-of-the-art communications infrastructure;
• Access to a broad network of CCJ contacts in Washington, D.C. at a critical juncture in U.S. - International relations;
• Customized training, seminars and exposure to “best practices” in American journalism;
• Hands-on assistance creating new media applications;
• “Concierge” level service for facilitating reporting in Washington D.C.; and,
• Access to CCJ's network of 150 quality journalism organizations around the United States.

For additional information please contact Wally Dean at the Committee of Concerned Journalists by email at wdean@concernedjournalists.org and on 202.662.7157.

Quick Lessons In Procrastination

2009-02-13T13:08:00.011+08:00

After months of delay, I finally overhauled the blog's template. The old template, which I used for ages, was not being read well by blogger's new xml-based system. There are still a few dead links here, which I hope to correct in a few days if I have the time.

Meanwhile, we've also moved to a new office just a few blocks away from the old one at Valero. Somebody apparently threw a monkey wrench into the system and I find myself having to write and edit editions via an i-cafe as compared to the relative luxury of my workstation. The big bosses hope to solve the problem in a few days' time.

While you're here, why don't you visit the website of Escola Brasileira de Capoeira Philippines? As far as I know, they're the only school offering Brazilian capoeira lessons in the country.

I wanted to sign up for classes last December as a Christmas gift for myself but had to postpone it because of possible schedule conflicts at work. I hope to finally do so in March, as a birthday gift for myself.

You can head straight to any of the following training venues to sign up for regular lessons.

Manila Polo Club
Dojo Gym (The Dojo Gym is on the 2nd floor of the Family Activity Center across the Sports Lounge)
McKinley Road, Forbes Park, Makati City

Xavier School
#64 Xavier St., Greenhills, San Juan
Table Tennis / Aikido area of the Rafael Cortina SJ Sports Center

De La Salle University Manila
10th Floor, Enrique M. Razon Sports Center
2401 Taft Avenue, Manila

Ateneo de Manila University
College Covered Courts
Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City

Ateneo de Manila High School
MST Building Lobby
Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City

On Health

2008-11-27T16:55:00.000+08:00

The United States may have the best emergency care system in the world, but it is still in the Dark Ages in healthcare.

In fact, it is is the only industrialized nation that does not provide universal healthcare.

Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and TRICARE directly covers only 27.8% of the entire U.S. population.

Compare this to full coverage in Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom - to name a few. [OECD Health Data 2008]

Anti-universal healthcare advocates in the U.S. argue that health care is not a right - ergo, the government is not responsible for the well-being of its citizens.

They also cite other reasons, including the claim that people will have a better choice in paying for individual health insurance offered by private companies.

Free markets and the Austrian school of economics rule - anything else will be filthy socialism.

"Freedom is just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children, and our children's' children, about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free," the the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan explained in his opposition to Medicare.

Socialism, Liberalism, and Obama

2008-11-03T22:10:00.001+08:00

Members of the U.S. Republican Party need to return to school.

Their claim: Liberals (the Democratic Party and Obama) represent socialism.

Appropriate riposte: Modern American liberals are democratic capitalists, the late Steve Kangas explains. They believe that private capitalist individuals should own and control the means of production, as long as they operate within the democratic law. By contrast, socialists believe that everyone should own and control the means of production. Dictatorships are not socialist, because workers do not own or control anything when a ruling elite is telling them what to do. Thus, the former Soviet Union and North Korea are socialist countries. They represent a dictatorship over workers.

Liberals are neither communists, because communism calls for all property to be turned over to the government. There is also no such thing as a communist country, as such would have had no government at all, if we strictly adhere to communism's definition under Marxism.

Is socialism "evil?"

If it were, then we should balk at social security, which is designed to protect us against poverty, old age, disability, and unemployment.

If the Republican school of thought is correct, Americans should likewise raise hell over the Medicare program, which aims to provide health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over.

A planned economy is not yet socialism, Albert Einstein explained on why he prefers socialism to unbridled capitalism.

As for taxes, which the libertarian right is trying to use to scare off votes for Obama, Republicans should realize that they are part of the unwritten social contractthat they have with the government to avail of its goods and services.

If they refuse to pay taxes to the government, they should therefore live without having to use government-built roads, resort to barter trade without using the dollar bills that the Fed prints out, refuse police and military protection, reject the criminal justice system, refuse to avail of fire and paramedic protection, and avoid availing of various government services provided by agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control, the Cooperative Extension Service, National Biological Service, and National Weather Service.

Otherwise, they could leave the country altogether and head for tax havens, such as Andorra, which does not impose personal income tax on citizens.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, Jesus himself succintly explained. He is the same Jesus, the community organizer, who supported the redistribution of wealth:

"If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." (Matthew 19:21.)

"All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need." (Acts 2:44-45).

"All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had… There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need." (Acts 4:32,34,35)

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourself in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you." (James 5:1-6)

Surely, Jesus was not an evil socialist?

The Crash Of 2008 Meets John Forbes Nash

2008-10-23T13:46:00.006+08:00

I was reviewing the OpenCourseWare advisory that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sends to me regularly when I came upon MIT course 24.222, "Decisions, Games, and Rational Choice." The course (with a link where to download reading materials provided), discusses the the foundations and philosophical applications of decision theory, game theory, and theory of collective choice.

Insert serendipity here.

Since stock market crashes are driven by crowd behavior, it would be interesting for both a social psychologist and a stock market analyst to review game theory, particularly the Nash equilibrium (of the "A Beautiful Mind" fame) to assess the ongoing free-fall in the bourses around the world.

A play on Nash's equilibrium, replacing prisoners with stock market players.

The situation: A trader has two clients. He offers them the same deal. If one dumps all of his shares into the market and the other does not, the cxlient will not incur losses while the other loses 90% of all the value of his shares. If they both refuse to sell, they will each incur a 25% loss on the value of their respective shares. However, If both sell their shares, each will incur a 50% loss in the value of their shares.

If we assume that each player prefers to avoid incurring losses, the duo will both sell their shares.

That, I believe is what could be happening in stock markets around the world, amid the panic and the lack of confidence in the credit sector.

As for market regulations imposed by the government, they are actually beneficial - under the game theory - as they shape the options available to players so that the options they will likely choose lead to better outcomes.

The Scooter Diaries

2008-09-25T12:29:00.010+08:00

Three months ago, with spare cash to spend from a salary raise at work, I finally convinced my wife that I should buy a motorcycle to cut down on my travel expenses. The daily ten-kilometer commute to and from work in Makati had saw me taking the jeepney and bus, with taxis as an option if I were running late. With taxis also the safe mode of transport if had to come home late at night, my weekly travel expenses were quite steep.

I think it was in fact the wife who told me that I should get a motorcycle - no, a scooter - after she heard for the nth time the reason why I came home late.

Armed with a specific budget to work around with, I visited several motorcycle dealerships and surfed the Web to find an ideal ride.

Yamaha's Nuovo Z and Mio Soul seemed perfect, until I thought of the amount that I will have to pay for a less-than-ideal installment plan. The Kymco Super 8 had great reviews, until I gave up on trying to find a dealership that sold the scoot. I was never much into classic Italian scooters. The last Vespa I saw was being wrestled across Manila's traffic by a pizza delivery boy.

I was tempted to get an underbone-type ride, but the wife was adamant that she wanted a scooter. Heck, I will be the one who will use the bike, but like any other obedient husband who knows better than pushing his luck, I quietly told myself that the Suzuki Shogun will never really live up to its hype.

Two weeks after weighing the best value for money, I finally brought home a red SYM Radar X. Like any other 33-year-old scooter virgin, I looked silly grinning from ear-to-ear while cruising the entire length of F.B. Harrison.

The 125cc scoot - which is called SYM Cleo 125 in Italy, France, and the rest of Europe - was factory-fresh, had an insanely reliable and powerful GY6 engine that could go up to 110 kilometers per hour across Manila's streets, and was only setting me back by around PHP3,7000 every month for two years.

In between days, I made a few tweaks to personalize the scoot. The factory stickers were the first ones to go, replaced by decals that were more pleasing to the eye. The oversized stock side mirrors that I nearly clipped an SUV with were replaced by aftermarket mirrors that reduced the bike's overall width. The stock horn that sounded like a chipmunk on helium gave way to a relay-powered type that will most likely save my ass someday. Twin red neon lights were installed on the bike's underside near the rear wheel, making my ride more visible, particularly at night.

Here's to looking back at two months of owning Magilas.
I'm still waiting for the dealership to hand over my plate. I am told that the waiting period sometimes lasts for three months because of government red tape. The "For Registration" tag sticking out like a sore thumb on the scoot's posterior end has seen me hailed down thrice by police checkpoints. Only through the gentle art of feigning ignorance and persuasion - and a certification letter from SYM saying that the bike's papers are still being processed by the Land Transportation Office - did I escape traffic tickets and fines.

I have had two flat tires, no thanks to Metro Manila road potholes. I nearly rammed into a passenger jeepney that cut me off. I have waded twice through floods along Buendia.

On the other hand, I can't see myself returning to commuting.

Despite the soaring prices of fuel, I saw my travel expenses reduced to PHP 100 a week - with the gas mileage on a 4.5-liter full tank enough for two weeks' use.

The usual 45-minute ride from home to the office went down to just a little over 15 minutes, thanks to sidestreets and filtering Magilas through bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The wind carvorting across my cheeks as I rev through on a near-empty highway every Sunday morning reminds me of a 2,000km journey across North Luzon not too long ago. Someday, again, one day soon.

Do remind me to nag the dealership about my scooter's plate.

Ayala-speak

2008-04-28T18:12:00.003+08:00

Jollijeep (noun).

1. a mobile food kiosk usually located on sidewalks or parking spaces in Makati City, Philippines - named after Jollibee, a popular food chain store in the Philippines.

Invest in a Jollijeep - then find a place where there are a lot of office workers looking for cheap but home cooked food.

My Little Squirt

2008-03-10T21:50:00.006+08:00

Gabriel Justin at three months. More here and here.

Lost At Sea

2008-02-28T13:42:00.003+08:00

As you now know, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines has decided to take an argumentum ad temperantiam regarding calls for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to resign.

I would surmise that a sidelight to their ten-hour special meeting went on like this:

Mindanao bishop: Let's build a new headquarters in Jolo.
Visayas bishop: No, let's build it in Cebu.
Luzon bishop: No, let's build it in Pangasinan.

After much wrangling, they arrived at a compromise and agreed to build it in the middle of the sea between Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

Now you understand why we are all lost at sea.

In relation to the subject, I tried to verify it it was indeed Dante who once said that "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality."

I found out that it was not a direct quote, but rather, the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy's interpretation of one of the passages of the "Divine Comedy."

In the Inferno, Dante and his guide Virgil, on their way to Hell, pass by a group of dead souls outside the entrance to Hell. These individuals, when alive, remained neutral at a time of great moral decision. Virgil explains to Dante that these souls cannot enter either Heaven or Hell because they did not choose one side or another.

They are therefore worse than the greatest sinners in Hell because they are repugnant to both God and Satan alike, and have been left to mourn their fate as insignificant beings neither hailed nor cursed in life or death, endlessly travailing below Heaven but outside of Hell.

This scene occurs in the third canto of the Inferno:

Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries
were echoing across the starless air,
so that, as soon as I [Dante] set out, I wept.

Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,
accents of anger, words of suffering,
and voice shrill and faints, and beating hands -

All went to make a tumult that will whirl
forever through that turbid, timeless air,
like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.

And I - my head oppressed by horror - said:
"Master [Virgil], what is it that I hear? Who are
those people so defeated by their pain?"

And he to me: "This miserable way
is taken by the sorry souls of those
who lived without disgrace and without praise.

They now commingle with the coward angels,
the company of those who were not rebels
nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.

The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened,
have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them -
even the wicked cannot glory in them."

And I: "What is it, master, that oppresses
these souls, compelling them to wail so loud?"
He answered: "I shall tell you in few words.

Those who are here can place no hope in death,
and their blind life is so abject that they
are envious of every other fate.

The world will let no fame of theirs endure;
both justice and compassion must disdain them;
let us not talk of them, but look and pass."

And I, looking more closely, saw a banner
that, as it wheeled about, raced on - so quick
that any respite seemed unsuited to it.

Behind that banner trailed so long a file
of people - I should never have believed
that death could have unmade so many souls.

After I had identified a few,
I saw and recognized the shade of him
who made, through cowardice, the great refusal.

At once I understood with certaintly:
this company contrained the cowardly,
hateful to God and to His enemies.

These wretched ones, who never were alive,
went naked and were stung again, again
by horseflies and by wasps that circled them.

The insects streaked their faces with their blood,
which, mingled with their tears, fell at their feet,
where it was gathered up by sickening worms.

Our bishops can read the original work in a language that Dante called Italian, which was based on the regional languages of Tuscany, Sicilian, some elements of Latin, and other regional dialects. It was a break from previous standards of publishing in only the languages of clerical liturgy of either Latin or Greek.

Dante is credited with standardizing the Italian language and, with Tuscany dialect becoming the basis for what would become the official language of the entire country.

As for the neutral, I believe they are still languishing in Dante's Inferno.

The Military, Malacañang, And Nash Equilibrium

2008-02-25T21:10:00.002+08:00

Amid fresh coup rumors making rounds in the metro, Philippine National Police Director General Avelino Razon, Jr. and Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon led hundred of police officers and soldiers in staging a "unity walk" along EDSA today to show their support for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Political analysts are unsure on when and if the military and the police will abandon Arroyo. If push comes to shove, they will abandon the matron, some suggest. Meanwhile, the power plays that the Palace engage in with with the military and Congress remind me of the Nash equilibrium* formulated by Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash, Jr., the Princeton University mathematician whom we got acquainted with in the Russell Crowe film "A Beautiful Mind."

The game theory concept - placed within the context of the current status quo in the country - goes like this.

Malacañang, the military, the police, and Congress are locked in a Nash equilibrium as no one among them has the motivation to change the status quo by changing only his or her own strategy unilaterally. If one of them acts unilaterally, the move might constitute a loss instead of a gain. In fact you could even perhaps include Commission on Higher Education Chairman Romulo Neri and former Commissions on Elections chief Benjamin Abalos in the game. There are hints that Malacañang is willing to use Abalos as a sacrificial lamb in the ZTE scandal but remains hesitant to do so as the former Comelec chief knows far too much about the skeletons hidden inside Arroyo's closet.

Political scientist Robert Axelrod, in his 1984 book in "The Evolution of Cooperation," discusses the situation further. He arranged a tournament between computer programmes playing "Prisoners' Dilemma" style games that reward cooperation and punish betrayal. The computers would co-operate with one another and share a big pot. If one betrayed the other, the other can steal the pot. If both defected, they lost most of the pot.

How will the Nash equilibrium be ended?

Francis Fukuyama - whom ZTE deal star witness Jun Lozada says he has been reading of late - has this warning:

"There is a certain assumption that civil society, once having been damaged by the excessive ambition of government, will simply spring back to life like brine shrimp that have been freeze-dried, and now you add water to them and they become shrimp again. It is not something that you can take for granted."

Hello MIG-21?

2008-02-24T20:14:00.002+08:00

The Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism raised the issue of wiretapping anew in the wake of the recorded mobile phone conversations between the ZTE deal whistleblowers Jose "Joey" de Venecia III and Rodolfo Noel "Jun" Lozada.

A point of clarity - a rather long one.

The majority of software and hardware equipment of telcos’ infrastructures here are imported from overseas such as the United States and the equipment has been rendered wire-tap friendly to aid law enforcement in its effort to conduct surveillance of digital telephone networks.

In the past fifteen years, the United States government has led a worldwide effort to limit individual privacy and enhance the capability of its police and intelligence services to eavesdrop on personal conversations.

This campaign had two strategies. The first is to promote laws that make it mandatory for all companies that develop digital telephone switches, cellular and satellite phones and all developing communication technologies to build in surveillance capabilities; the second is to seek limits on the development and dissemination of products, both in hardware and software, that provide encryption, a technique that allows people to scramble their communications and files to prevent others from reading them.

Law enforcement agencies have traditionally worked closely with telecommunications companies to formulate arrangements that would make phone systems “wiretap friendly.” These agreements range from allowing police physical access to telephone exchanges, to installing equipment to automate the interception. Because most telecommunications operators were either monopolies or operated by government telecommunications agencies, this process was generally hidden from public view.

Following deregulation and new entries into telecommunications in the United States in the early 1990s, law enforcement agencies, led by the FBI, began demanding that all current and future telecommunications systems be designed to ensure that they would be able to conduct wiretaps. After several years of lobbying, the United States Congress approved the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) in 1994. The act sets out legal requirements for telecommunications providers and equipment manufacturers on the surveillance capabilities that must be built into all telephone systems used in the United States. In 1999, at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an order was issued under CALEA requiring carriers to make available the physical location of the antenna tower that a mobile phone uses to connect at the beginning and end of a call.

In Australia the Telecommunications Act 1997 places obligations on telecommunications operators to positively assist law enforcement in the performance of their duties and to provide an interception capability. The costs of these obligations are borne by the operators themselves.[194] Furthermore, the 2001 Cybercrime Act allows executing officers to require a “specified person” with “knowledge of a computer or a computer system” to provide assistance in accessing, copying or converting data held on or accessible from that computer. Failing to provide this assistance is an offence punishable by six months imprisonment.

In the United Kingdom the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 requires that telecommunications operators maintain a “reasonable interception capability” in their systems and be able to provide on notice certain “traffic data.” It also imposes on obligation on third parties to hand over encryption keys. These requirements were recently clarified in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Maintenance of Interception Capability) Order 2002.

In the Netherlands, a new Telecommunications Act was approved in December 1998 that required that Internet Service Providers have the capability by August 2000 to intercept all traffic with a court order and maintain users logs for three months. The law was enacted after XS4ALL, a Dutch ISP, refused to conduct a broad wiretap of electronic communications of one of its subscribers. In New Zealand, the Telecommunications (Residual Powers) Act 1987 requires network operators to assist in the operation of a call data warrant (equivalent to the United States trap and trace or pen register warrant). An obligation to assist in the operation of a full interception warrant is now also being considered in New Zealand. The Telecommunications (Interception Capabilities) Bill currently being drafted by the Government would require all Internet Service Providers and telephone companies to upgrade their systems so that they are able to assist the police and intelligence agencies intercept communications. It would also require a telecommunications operator to decrypt the communications of a customer if that operator had provided the encryption facility.

In January 2002, a new Law on the surveillance of mail and telecommunications entered into force in Switzerland, requiring ISPs to take all necessary measures to allow for interception. In contrast, the Austrian Federal Constitutional Court held, in a decision in February 2003, that the law compelling telecommunications service providers to implement wiretapping measures at their own expense is unconstitutional. Most recently, Poland and New Zealand have been reported as proposing and adopting new laws requiring ISPs to monitor and record communications transactions.

International cooperation played a significant role in the development of these standards.In 1993, the FBI began hosting meetings at its research facility in Quantico, Virginia called the “International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar” (ILETS).

The meetings included representatives from Canada, Hong Kong, Australia and the European Union. At these meetings, an international technical standard for surveillance, based on the FBI’s CALEA demands, was adopted as the “International Requirements for Interception.”

In January 1995, the Council of the European Union approved a secret resolution adopting the ILETS standards. Following this, many countries adopted the resolution into their domestic laws without revealing the role of the FBI in developing the standard. Following the adoption, the European Union and the United States offered a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for other countries to sign to commit to the standards. Several countries including Canada and Australia immediately signed the MOU. Others were encouraged to adopt the standards to ensure trade. International standards organizations, including the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the European Telecommunication Standardisation Institute (ETSI), were then successfully approached to adopt the standards.

The ILETS group continued to meet. Several committees were formed and developed a more detailed standard extending the scope of the interception standards. The new standards were designed to apply to a wide range of communications technologies, including the Internet and satellite communications. It also set more detailed criteria for surveillance across all technologies. The result was a 42-page document called ENFOPOL 98 (the European Union designation for documents created by the European Uni Police Cooperation Working Group).

In 1998, the document became public and generated considerable criticism. The committees responded by removing most of the controversial details and putting them into a secret operations manual that has not been made publicly available. The new document, now called ENFOPOL 19, expanded the type of surveillance to include “IP address (electronic address assigned to a party connected to the Internet), credit card number and E-mail address.” In April 1999, the Council proposed the new draft council resolution to adopt the ENFOPOL 19 standards into law in the European Union. The Council of Ministers revised the document and, in June 2000, approved a resolution calling for countries: “to ensure that, in the development and implementation - in cooperation with communication service providers - of any measures which may have a bearing on the carrying out of legally authorised forms of interception of telecommunications, the law enforcement operational needs…are duly taken into account.”

The annex for the document sets out detailed guidelines for interception requirements for “all telecommunications services, circuit and packet-switched, fixed and mobile networks and services.” It expands the coverage of the original International User Requirements (IURs) to now include networking technologies, without acknowledging that technologies such as computer networking generate more and greater details of information including web browsing and mobile location information and thus applying traditional surveillance analogies result in more intrusive surveillance.

Yes, Sen. Rodolfo Biazon. Globe, Smart, and Sun are wire-tap friendly.

*MIG-21 (Military Intelligence Group-21) is the Intelligence Services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines' special unit that specifically handles electronic intelligence.

A Rich Country Of Poor People

2008-02-11T22:50:00.000+08:00

Echoing Nobel Prize for economics winner Joseph Stiglitz's analysis on the promise and reality of globalization, we ask President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo if her claim that the economy's performance will hide the premise that the Philippines will be a rich country of poor people.

The economy grew 7.3% last year, according to the government, but the same statistical data from the state say that the average unemployment rate of 11.3% under her watch (2001 to 2007) was highest recorded in the country's history.

Economists describe the phenomena as jobless growth, wherein a country recovers from a recession but does not reduce unemployment.

Meanwhile, even though the economy improved last year, the share of manufacturing to the gross domestic product was only 23% - the lowest since the 1960s.

If we use the real GDP per capita standard as as an indicator of the average standard of living of people in the country, we find out the the Philippines is in 117th place in a list of 179 countries - each Filipino only producing around USD 1,590, which is just a fraction from that of Botswana (USD 7,270), Lebanon (USD 6,398), Kazakhstan (USD 6,314), Turkmenistan (USD 5,055), Angola (USD 3,738), Thailand (USD 3,400), Morocco (USD 2,368), and the Republic of the Congo (USD 1,931).

If we use the GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita or the value of all goods and services produced by a country in a given year divided by the average population for the same year and the purchasing power of the peso for a given basket of goods compared to other currencies, the Philippines is 105th in the list of the International Monetary Fund, and 127th in the list made by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Again, other countries in Asia and Africa are ahead of the Philippines on the list.

The GDP growth also fails to consider inflation, wherein the purchasing power of the peso has decreased in different proportion to the cost of goods and services. The 2006 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) revealed that the average income for all families in real terms (at base year 2000) fell by PHP 20,400 from 2000 and 2006.

It likewise ignores income inequality, as the 2006 FIES revealed that share of the poorest 30% of the country's families comprised only around 8.6% of the total country's total income. In comparison the country's top 10% richest families counted for almost 36% of the national income. For every peso that the bottom 30% of poor families earn, the top 10% of the rich pocket PHP 7.53.

And what of the quality of life in the Philippines? Some 7% of Filipinos are not expected to survive past to age 40. Some 7.4% of adults are still illiterate, 15% do not have access to clean water, and nearly three in every ten children aged five years and below are underweight.

American economist Simon Smith Kuznets - a 1971 Nobel Prize winner in economics and acknowledged inventor of the GDP and the standardization of the measurement of the gross national product, told U.S. Congress, "The welfare of a nation [can] scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income."

He adds quite succintly:

Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between costs and returns, and between the short and long run. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.

Lessons In Logic Redux

2008-02-09T22:01:00.000+08:00

Gloria's False Dichotomy: President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's apologists have been presenting use with the false dilemma on the issue of who should replace her if she steps down from office. They frame the argument on the false dichotomy that the Filipino people do not have an alternative leader to replace Arroyo if she either resigns or hauled out of office ala Marcos and Estrada. The "no alternative to Gloria" assertion takes false dichotomy to its ultimate extreme, in which the alternatives are reduced to one, the proposal of the speaker. As wikipedia says:

Of course the speaker does not believe there are no alternatives otherwise he would not bother to argue the point; rather he opposes the alternatives and seeks to dismiss them by denying their existence.

In days of Martial Law past, the government tried to force people to rally behind President Ferdinand Marcos when it claimed that communists will run the country into ruin if Marcos is removed from office. In days of ZTE present, the government tries to reemploy the logical fallacies of appeal to fear and appeal to consequences when it says that the opposition bloc will run the country into ruin if Arroyo is removed from office.

Who then do we replace Gloria with? Vice-President Noli de Castro can lead a caretaker government until the 2010 polls when senators Mar Roxas III, Francis Pangilinan, and Manny Villar can contest the seat.

Ad Hominem Apostol: Presidential legal adviser Sergio Apostol acted like an illiterate old man spewing racist diatribes when he dubbed ZTE witness Rodolfo Lozada Jr. as "probinsiyanong Intsik" (Chinese from the province) who should be deported.

Wikipedia tells us:

Ad hominem abusive (also called argumentum ad personam) usually and most notoriously involves insulting or belittling one's opponent, but can also involve pointing out factual but ostensibly damning character flaws or actions which are irrelevant to the opponent's argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions. This tactic is frequently employed as a propaganda tool among politicians who are attempting to influence the voter base in their favor through an appeal to emotion rather than by logical means, especially when their own position is logically weaker than their opponent's.

I am taking Apostol's rant personally as I am married to Chinese-Filipina and we have a three-month old son. Does Apostol expect me to respect him or Malacañang for uttering racist comments that insult not only Lozada but the entire Filipino-Chinese community as well?

No apologies are needed. Can the old man repeat what he said in the presence of his boss alongside Lucio Tan, Henry Sy, and John Gokongwei?

Doing A Sadako

2008-02-08T22:07:00.000+08:00

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago tries to do a Sadako by poisoning the well regarding the spurious ZTE deal.

If someone attempts to give the lady senator a dose of her own medicine (i.e. her motive for defending the Arroyo administration), we should note that her husband, Narciso Yap Santiago Jr., is a Malacañang official, her brother, Benjamin Jr., was appointed by Arroyo as Armed Forces Chief of Staff and is currently an ambassador-at-large. Two of her cousins are congressmen. Her cousins, Quezon City Rep. Matias Defensor and Iloilo Rep. Arthur Defensor are Arroyo allies. Santiago's nephew, Michael Defensor, is a former presidential chief of staff who ran and lost in a Senate seat in the 2007 elections.

A wag at wikipedia says Santiago "has claimed to to have held a campus beauty title twice, despite not having actually won any beauty contest by any standard."

Lessons In Logic

2008-02-07T22:31:00.000+08:00

Arroyo's Cognitive Bias. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has ordered the Department of Justice to conduct a preliminary investigation on public officials who may be liable for violation of procurement and anti-graft laws in connection with the canceled $329-million national broadband network deal with China's ZTE Corp. Can you spot her cognitive bias on the subject and the directive's ambiguity?

Bunye's Appeal To Motive. Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye has maintained that the opposition's political ambitions are fueling the ongoing Senate inquiry on the ZTE scandal, which allegedly involves first gentleman Mike Arroyo. Using an ad hominem circumstantial argument ( or attacking senators instead of producing evidence to counter their claims), Bunye resorts to a hasty generalization claiming that lawmakers' probe into the ZTE mess will not result into the creation of any piece of legislation at all.

Abalos' Appeal To Ridicule. Benjamin Abalos Sr. has denied Rodolfo Lozada Jr.'s allegations that the cost of the ZTE deal balloned to USD 329 million because the former Commission on Elections chairman wanted a USD 130 billion kickback. Abalos tries to pull off a rhetorical tactic that mocks Lozada's statement and attempts to inspire an emotional reaction (making it a type of appeal to emotion) in the audience and to highlight the counter-intuitive aspects of that argument, making his USD 130-million kickback appear foolish and contrary to common sense. In a classic argumentum ex silentio, Abalos refuses to make a full statement on the matter, claiming that he has not yet heard Lozada's charges. Abalos also tries to pass off a red herring (an irrelevant thesis that diverts attention away from a fact in dispute rather than address it directly) when he tells people not to believe Lozada because it took him a year to speak up regarding the contract.

Neri's Wager. NEDA Secretary Romula Neri's refusal to appear before the Senate and his refusal to answer questions on the basis on executive privilege reminds me of Loki's Wager - a form of logical fallacy that unreasonably insists that a concept that cannot be defined cannot be discussed.

In Norse mythology, the trickster god Loki once made a bet with some dwarves. It was agreed that the price, should Loki lose the wager, would be his head. Loki lost the bet, and in due time the dwarves came to collect the head which had become rightfully theirs. Loki had no problem with giving up his head, but he insisted they had absolutely no right to take any part of his neck. Everyone concerned discussed the matter; and, one could suppose, they are discussing the matter still. Certain parts were obviously head, and certain parts were obviously neck, but neither side could agree exactly where the one ended and the other began. As a result, Loki keeps his head indefinitely.

Until when will Neri keep his head?

Presidents, Economies, and Congress

2008-02-05T11:33:00.000+08:00

A previous post relevant to the Philippines' 7.3% economic growth in 2007 and last night's coup in Congress.

When it comes to the economy, presidents are at the mercy of the business cycle. Often their fortune (or misfortune) with the economy depends on what happened in the previous administration. There are tools to influence the business cycle, but the President has almost no control over them. At least in economic terms, the most powerful person in the Philippines is the Governor of the Central Bank.

In all truth, presidents probably have the least control over the economy of any major government player. The belief that presidents deserve blame for recessions or credit for recoveries is an economic myth. A very popular myth, to be sure, but one that no mainstream economist takes seriously.

At the heart of the economy's performance lies the business cycle. For reasons which are still debated, the economy has a natural tendency to expand and contract - otherwise known as recoveries and recessions. This has been going on for centuries, at irregular intervals that economists cannot yet predict. However, one generalization about the business cycle is known. The economy grows in the long run, thanks to the growing population and rising productivity per worker. This means that expansions tend to be longer than contractions. Also, the deeper the recession, the steeper the recovery.

A president's "handling" of the economy is often a matter a sheer luck; any expansion experienced under his term in office is largely predetermined by the severity of the recession that preceded him or her.

This does not mean that the government does not have tools to influence the business cycle. It's just that presidents do not have access to most of them.

The most powerful person in the country, at least in economic terms, is the governor of the Central Bank. He controls the size of the nation's money supply (through interest rates and other methods), which has a profound influence on the business cycle. By contracting the money supply, he can create a recession, by removing the pesos that would normally cover the financial transactions between customers and businesses. This drives up unemployment, but it also has a positive effect: it reduces inflation, by causing businesses to lower their prices, and workers their wage demands, to stay working through tough times.

On the other hand, expanding the money supply helps expand the economy. Businesses have more money to hire workers, and customers have more money to spend on goods, so unemployment falls whenever the Central Bank pumps more money into the economy. However, there is also a negative effect: it tends to create inflation. Why? Suppose that the Central Bank expands the money supply by 5 percent a year. If no one changes their prices, then the nation's productivity should expand 5 percent a year -- the result of more financial transactions being made possible. But suppose that businesses come to expect the 5 percent monetary expansion every year. It's in their interest simply to raise their prices 5 percent -- that way they make the same amount of extra money without having to work for it. Thus, in order to expand productivity, the Central Bank has to expand the money supply by 10 percent the next year -- but eventually businesses come to expect that too. The result can be runaway inflation of 20, 100, 5,000 percent.

The role of the Central Bank, therefore, is to find the right balance. It seeks to expand the money supply just fast enough to avoid high unemployment, but not so fast as to create inflation. Often it's work is counter-cyclical, or in opposition to the business cycle. It expands the money supply during recessions, and contracts it during recoveries, to keep both unemployment and inflation in line.

The importance of the Central Bank cannot be understated. With a few phone calls, the governor can create a crushing recession or runaway inflation in a very short period of time.

The decisions of the Central Bank are called monetary policy. There is another way to influence the business cycle: fiscal policy, which is conducted by Congress and, superficially, the president. Much like the Central Bank, Congress can either pump money into the economy or take it out, by varying its level of borrowing and spending.

It should be stressed that fiscal policy only expands the economy when the government spends borrowed money. When Congress runs a balanced budget, it really doesn't matter how much it taxes and spends, at least from an expansionary viewpoint.

Fiscal policy is less effective than monetary policy for another reason as well. Whereas the Central Bank governor has only to make a few phone calls to turn the economy on a dime, the government must take long, slow and uncertain action.

Suppose Arroyo wants to pass a budget filled with deficit spending. First she has to campaign to get the nation behind it. Then she has to make deals and twist arms ( or lob a few pork loins) in Congress to win support for it. If either of these efforts fail, then her budget won't get passed at all. If she is lucky enough to win plausible support, then the budget must be debated in Congress. Members of Congress will make extensive and profound changes to his original budget proposal. Lobbyists will make further changes in conference committee. (The power of lobbyists is not to be underestimated -- their control over the budget is near absolute.) When the final budget is passed, it often bears little resemblance to what the president requested. Then the bill has to be put into effect; this happens in next fiscal year. Bids for government projects must be received and evaluated, contracts awarded, and implementation begun. The effects of fiscal spending may take years to have an effect on the economy.

In recent decades, the president has been relegated to an increasingly minor role in fiscal policy. If Congress is controlled by the other party, then he even becomes a mere figurehead.

What, exactly, can a president do to influence the economy? His or her role in determining monetary policy is limited to nominating the members of the Central Bank. His role in determining fiscal policy is limited to cheerleading budgets through Congress. Sometimes, presidents have promoted projects that have long-term economic impact. But again, the full effects of these programs will not be felt until well after the President leaves office.

When Summer Meets Youth

2008-01-24T16:55:00.000+08:00

Youth, like summer, has a short memory.

We yearn for the languid days of afternoons spent watching clouds quietly roll by in Pampanga. These days, we file and edit stories from Manila to Milan, Seoul to Shanghai, Geneva to Gaza.

In our youth we jumped at every opportunity to shoulder backpacks - a one week, 2,000 kilometer journey on the road across the expanse of North Luzon; endless cups of coffee on a riverside cafe; two years without seeing home - the enthusiasm masking the naivety.

"While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back," Alan Lightman writes. "Each person knows that somewhere is recorded the moment he was born, the moment he took his first step, the moment of his first passion, the moment he said goodbye to his parents."

I feel the heavy hand of time on my shoulder when I look at my first-born while he sleeps next to me at night. In the half-light, I see how much he has grown these past few months - the swaddling clothes no longer fit and are tucked away, his features bearing a strong resemblance to a young boy in a Polaroid snapshot trapped in time.

In his slumber, he shudders in response to a loud noise. A hand reaches out for his, a reassuring touch to let him know that his father is near him.

Gabriel will grow up in the city but will spend summers in Pampanga where he will learn his roots, speak and listen to his father's language, taste his grandmother's favorite dish, hear birds cavort under the shade of trees, feel a gentle breeze dance across his cheeks, catch the scent of a late afternoon rain, watch the setting sun in a mountain range in the distant horizon.

The years have passed us by like clouds in an endless waltz across azure skies and wide open plains.

The Language of Favoritism

2008-01-08T14:49:00.000+08:00

The culture of favoritism, which implies gaining a position either in the public or private sector because of personal ties with someone higher up in the pecking order, has a word in more than 30 languages, Italian author Giovanni Floris says in his new book, "Mal di Merito."

In Basque it is "gomentadu." In Estonian, "soovitama." In Maltese, "tirranga." In Italian, "raccomandare."

In Filipino, it is a toss-up between either "kapit" or "palakasan." The first word suggests a tight grip. The latter denotes a Kiplingian survival of the fittest between those who can pull the strongest string, or a literal Guaresian six degrees of separation between the haves and the have-nots.

Filipino politicians, I believe, reduce unemployment in the country through nepotism in all of its forms. After every elections, they pad local government labor plantillas with hundreds of their relatives, their relatives' nearest kin, their supporters' relatives' nearest of kin, and issue nondescript "job orders" for every Juan, Pedro, and Maria who supported their candidacy.

In the private sector, the practice of hiring new employees for their personal contacts over individual merit continues to occur, according to the International Labor Organization in Geneva.

"It presupposes that work is not a right but a concession of someone who is more powerful," Daniele Martini writes, "And, if you ask for a recommendation, you put yourself in the position of subject, rather than a citizen with rights."

"We are all raccomandati," the headline of a labor industry report published by Rome daily "La Repubblica" once raged.

Filipino newspapers should follow suit.

Complete, Utter, Useless Dimwit Awardee

2008-01-05T13:00:00.000+08:00

I usually keep my vile contempt for inutile people safely tucked away but AFP has named my top choice for this year's Complete, Utter, Useless Dimwit Award winner.

Lone trader caused 100 dollar price for oil

A lone trader out to win a little fame made the purchase that took oil prices to the historic 100 dollars a barrel level this week but he lost 600 dollars on the deal, analysts said.

The trader has been named by US and British media as Richard Arens who runs a one man oil brokerage, ABS.

"The magic figure was hit apparently on the back of a single trade, rumoured to be a local intent on fame," Sucden analysts wrote in a commentary Thursday on the record breaking deal.

Arens offered 100,000 dollars on the New York market on Wednesday for 1,000 barrels of oil, producing the much talked of 100 dollars per barrel which sparked anguish across the financial markets.

He later sold on the contract for slightly below 100 dollars, taking a 600 dollar loss.

"It was just for the form; he wanted to be the first in the world to buy oil at 100 dollars," said Antoine Heff, an analyst at NewEdge.

Stepping Inside An MIT Classroom

2007-12-30T21:02:00.000+08:00

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has opened its doors to people across the world. An initiative called OpenCourseWare makes virtually all the school's courses available online for free - lecture notes, readings, tests, and video lectures.

MIT's initiative is the largest, but the trend is spreading. More than 100 universities worldwide, including Johns Hopkins, Tufts and Notre Dame, have joined MIT in a consortium of schools promoting their own open courseware. You no longer need a Princeton ID to hear the prominent guests who speak regularly on campus, just an Internet connection. This month, Yale announced it would make material from seven popular courses available online, with 30 more to follow.

An MIT lecture note that I found interesting is "Does Corruption Produce Unsafe Drivers?" (Bertrand, Marianne, Simeon Djankov, Rema Hanna, and Sendhil Mullainathan, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2006), which is part of several papers in an Economics course that dissects poverty in developing countries.

Others may opt to browse through MIT's Writing and Humanistic Studies section.

Have a Happy New Year.

Breach Of Contract

2007-12-29T19:30:00.000+08:00

I blame Epicurus, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau for ending whatever sort of argument I may have against having to give the government more than PHP 50,000 in personal income tax this year.

Still, I apparently have an escape clause. The unwritten social contract that I have with the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo government is neither natural nor permanently fixed. Rather, the contract itself is the means towards an end — the benefit of all — and (according to some philosophers such as Locke or Rousseau), is only legitimate to the extent that it meets the general interest. Therefore, when one side violates in the contract - as in the case of Arroyo - Locke says that I can renegotiate to change the terms, using methods such as elections and legislature.

But with the elections a farce and Congress a haven of thieves, Locke believes in the right of rebellion in case of the contract leading to tyranny.

"The Sovereign, having no force other than the legislative power, acts only by means of the laws; and the laws being solely the authentic acts of the general will, the Sovereign cannot act save when the people is assembled," says Rousseau. "Every law the people has not ratified in person is null and void — is, in fact, not a law. The legislative power belongs to the people, and can belong to it alone."

I think I need a lawyer.

On 'Sinauna Tagarug'

2007-12-26T19:10:00.000+08:00

Dr. Rudy Dar replies to the Sinauna Tagarug entry (the emphases are mine):

I ran into your blog on Tagarug by accident. It was Fr. Teodoro Llamzon and I who went up and did the initial couple of days of language data gathering for this language. I would like to give some light on the topic.

First, the subjects we talked to referred to their language as Tagarug, not Sinauna. The latter term was used by Fr. Llamzon to refer to the language because of the result of the way we had to get the people to give us the Tagarug terms for the Morris Swadesh list that we were eliciting from them. The respondents kept giving us Tagalog terms until Fr. Llamzon said (in Tagalog), "No. Tell us the word that the generations ahead of you [mga sinauna] would say." That's when the respondents realized that we were interested in the language they learned from their elders and still spoke among themselves. Fr. Llamzon and I were convinced, even before any lexicostatiscal analysis, that Tagarug was a distinct language and not a dialect of Tagalog. In his excitement, when we got back to the Linguistics Department of the Ateneo, Fr. Llamzon continued referring to the language as Sinauna.

Second, we elicited phrase and sentence patterns in addition to the Swadesh list. Sad to say I no longer have my copy of the data. I was busy getting ready to come back to the US at the time and I was planning to carry the minimum weight back. I have often wondered, however, whatever happened to all the artifacts and documents in the Linguistics Department when it was eliminated by the Ateneo. I suspect they went to the Anthropology Department; it was they who were working closely with the PANAMIN in the study of the Tasaday people deep in the Cotabato mounains. (BTW, Fr. Llamzon asked me to do some analysis of the data he had brought back from a Tasaday expedition. I noticed that the group's word for mountain was "daya". Thus, the name for the group translates to "People of the Mountain." Also, I had gone back to Ateneo earlier than planned because Fr. Llamzon had recommended that I go on the next expedition to the Tasadays. In the long run the group did not take me along. When the US-trained anthropologist asked me to analyze his data, I refused after noticing inaccurate phonetic transcriptions. For example, he didn't know the difference between a bilabial fricative and a labio-dental fricative.)

Pilar Santos, a classmate of mine in the Linguistics Dept., wrote the kind of thesis I had gone to the Philippines to write; I was steered toward a different topic by Fr. Llamzon. I have not seen the full thesis, but I wonder if she referred to an unpublished paper I shared with my classmates in the department, a lexicistatistical and a glottochronological study of Tagarug with languages around it: Tagalog, Bicol, Cebuano, Waray, several Dumagat languages, and several Agta languages. In that study I found that the percentage of cognates between Cebuano and Waray, Waray and Bicol, Bicol and Tagarug, and between Tagarug and Tagalog were similar. Without Tagarug in the picture the percentage of cognates between Bicol and Tagalog was much smaller than between Bicol and Waray. Tagarug was truly the link between Bicol and Tagalog.

Gabriel, Christmas Day

2007-12-25T14:14:00.000+08:00

It's Christmas Day and I spent my evening cradling Gabriel in my arms. He turned two months old today and we are still adjusting to having to wake up every now and then in the early hours of the morning to attend to his needs.

Frederick Buechner writes in Whistling in the Dark:

When a child is born, a father is born. A mother is born, too of course, but at least for her it's a gradual process. Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to what's happening. She becomes what's happening. But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once. On the other side of a plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time.

Even if he should decide to abandon it forever ten minutes later, the memory will nag him to the grave. He has seen the creation of the world. It has his mark on it. He has its mark on him. Both marks are, for better or for worse, indelible. All sons, like all daughters, are prodigals if they're smart.

Assuming the Old Man doesn't run out on them first, they will run out on him if they are to survive, and if he's smart he won't put up too much of a fuss. A wise father sees all this coming, and maybe that's why he keeps his distance from the start. He must survive too. Whether they ever find their way home again, none can say for sure, but it's the risk he must take if they're ever to find their way at all. In the meantime, the world tends to have a soft spot in its heart for lost children. Lost fathers have to fend for themselves.

Even as the father lays down the law, he knows that someday his children will break it as they need to break it if ever they're to find something better than law to replace it. Until and unless that happens, there's no telling the scrapes they will get into trying to lose him and find themselves.

Terrible blunders will be made – disappointments and failures, hurts and losses of every kind. And they'll keep making them even after they've found themselves too, of course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on. And every hard knock they ever get, knocks the father even harder still, if that's possible, and if and when they finally come through more or less in one piece at the end, there's maybe no rejoicing greater than his in all creation.

Formations And Permutations

2007-12-22T19:27:00.000+08:00

Like many armchair gaffers (or those who have spent an ungodly amount of time with the many editions of Total Club Manager), I am relishing the formations and permutations that Sir Alex Ferguson and Alain Perrin will use in the Champions League tie between Manchester United and Lyon.
Fergie prefers the defense-minded 4-2-3-1 to control the midfield and create spaces on the wings while Perrin has a knack for the attacking 4-1-2-3. The two formations have their pros and cons, as any would. United found it difficult shifting from first gear in the Premier League earlier this season when the 4-2-3-1 was used against teams such as Reading (0-0), Portsmouth (1-1), and Manchester City (0-1).

Meanwhile, Lyon lost to Marseille (1-2) and Caen (0-1) at home in Ligue 1 this season using the 4-1-2-3.

Yet the formations do work wonders on any given night. Who can forget the Red Devils' 7-1 demolition of Italian side AS Roma at Old Trafford on April 10 this year? And how about Lyon's stunning 3-0 away win over the Glasgow Rangers this month?

Lyon's formation, by the way, is a variation of the 4-3-3 formation. It was used by Jose Mourinho with Chelsea (often with Makelele/Essien/Lampard as the midfielders, and Drogba as the main striker). One of the midfielders is purely defensive, allowing the two other midfielders to play a more attacking role.

United's weapon of choice, meanwhile, uses two holding midfielders (Hargreaves/Carrick, Anderson/Scholes) not only to screen for defense, but also initiate attacks from rear midfield. It seeks to provide large spaces on the wings (Ronaldo, Giggs/Nani) for attacks.

If it would placate the French, the Zinedine Zidane-led Les Bleus defeated Brazil, 1-0, in the 2006 World Cup with a 4-2-3-1.

Malay?

2007-12-11T21:28:00.000+08:00

Not too long ago, House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. incurred the wrath of many anthropologists and ethnolinguists by proclaiming the Philippine national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, as a "pride of the Malay people."

Wikipedia explains his faux pas:

Filipinos are sometimes said to be part of a "Malay race"; however, modern anthropologists contend that the classification has little taxonomic validity. The Malay race was a term coined in 1795 by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach to refer to the brown-skinned inhabitants of the Indian (Malay) archipelago, Oceania, Melanesia, and Australia. It was one of five other categories which Blumenbach created for classifying humans, including what he called the black race and the yellow race. Since then, anthropologists have debunked this concept, citing the complexities of human races being unable to fit into a handful of oversimplified categories.

The term Malay is also considered misleading because it gives the impression that the route for the populating of the Philippines was via Malaysia. Current theory holds instead that the Malays who inhabit the rest of the Malay Archipelago and mainland Malaysia are the descendants of Austronesian-speaking immigrants who first went to the Philippines. Then those Austronesian-speaking immigrants ventured further south to what are now Malaysia, Indonesia, and East Timor, as well as to the other Pacific Islands.

As for the pesky google-bombing of this blog regarding "ten datus" and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's spurious claim of blood ties with the Brunei royal family:

A Stanford University study conducted during 2001 revealed that Y-chromosome Haplogroup O3-M122 (labeled as "Haplogroup L" in this study) predominates among Filipino males. This particular haplogroup is also predominant among Chinese and Korean males. That finding is consistent with the theory that people migrated from China south into the Philippines.

Another haplogroup, Haplogroup O1a-M119 (labeled as "Haplogroup H" in this study), is also found among Filipinos. The rates of Haplogroup O1a are highest among the Taiwanese Aborigines. Overall, the genetic frequencies found among Filipinos points to the Ami tribe of Taiwan as their nearest genetic relative.

A 2002 China Medical University study indicated that certain Filipinos shared a particular gene marker that is also found among Taiwanese aborigines and Indonesians.

A 2003 University of the Philippines study based on 50 participants each from the islands of Luzon and Cebu provided some insight into the various places of origin of early Filipinos. Some rare genetic markers were found which are shared by people from parts of Asia.

For clarity's sake, let me give you an insight into the subject on hand.

More discussions on our Taiwanese homeland in the next several posts.

Welcome To One-Kidney Island

2007-12-05T16:31:00.000+08:00

FEAR NO SCALPEL The men of Tondo's Baseco slum area - Manila's notorious "One-Kidney Island."

Encouraged perhaps by the government's Medical Tourism Program, a 43-year-old Welshman has flown all the way to Manila in search of a Filipino willing to part ways with a kidney in exchange for around GBP 40,000, or around PHP 1.7 million.

Mark Schofield, a resident of Porthcawl in South Wales, said he spent more than four years on a waiting list for a kidney transplant in Britain. He has found a surgeon in Manila, who is currently screening organ sellers in the Baseco slum in Tondo - notoriously known as "One Kidney Island" - where parents tell their children to sell a body part just to have a taste of the good life.

To welcome One Kidney Island's visitors, the Philippine Medical Tourism program has launched its official music video, which "celebrates our natural warmth as Filipinos, and our innate ability to be nurturing to others- a quality appreciated the world over."

The soundtrack of the "Saw" film series, "Hostel" or its sequel would have been better.

Bibliophilia

2007-12-04T17:46:00.000+08:00

Do remind me to search for these two gems the next time I visit Powerbooks - Alan Lightman's Dance for Two: Essays and Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings.

Makati Underground

2007-12-04T16:35:00.000+08:00

Like Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, and other financial centers around the world, Makati City tells you to take a hike instead of flagging down taxis zipping through one-way streets.

Andres, The Salesman

2007-11-27T21:51:00.000+08:00

While Filipinos (the left-of-the-center kind, at least) try to assess Andres Bonifacio's relevance to the national socioeconomic situation, a good read in between bedsheets on November 30 would be Glenn Anthony May's Inventing a Hero: The Posthumous Re-Creation of Andres Bonifacio, (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996).

Far from being a humble bodeguero that traditional history paints the hero is, May presents evidence to show that Bonifacio worked as a rich agent for a foreign trading company.

"In the end, the Bonifacio we have before us is mostly an illusion, the product of undocumented statements, unreliable, doctored, or otherwise spurious sources, and the collective imagination of several historians and a memoirist," May says.

Is Bonifacio a national hero? Of course, he is. The twist is that if he were alive today, the man would probabaly be a call center agent in Ortigas.

Spend It In Seoul-si

2007-11-26T21:02:00.000+08:00

If the cost of living vis-a-vis the wage levels in the Philippines offend your senses, here's something to ruminate on:

Seoul Named Asia's Most Expensive City
The South Korean capital of Seoul has been named as the most expensive city in Asia for expatriates. A survey conducted by human resources firm ECA International showed Seoul-si climb to seventh place on the list of cities worldwide. The Japanese capital of Tokyo placed second in the Asian list, followed by Yokohama, Kobe, Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, and Guangzhou. Manila placed 17th on the list. "In China, soaring food, oil and grain product prices along with the strengthening yuan against the U.S. dollar have meant that locations throughout China have pushed up through the ranking during this period," the survey said. Globally, Luanda in Angola was identified as the costliest city to live in.

A few months ago, with our first-born on the way, I was tempted to google my way for job opportunities in South Korea. The country is currently in dire need of English language teachers.

A mjority of the job openings around the country offer monthly salaries worth up to KRW 2.4 million (which translates to around USD 2,000 or PHP 85,000 a month).

There's one small catch, though. Most of your salary would probably go to paying for your daily expenses, as the cost of living in South Korea would make anyone's nose bleed.

A kilo of beef costs around USD 60 per kilo. Apartment fees? A USD 5,000 downpayment and a USD 400-monthly rent.

The only consolation would be spending just around USD 5 on getting soused to the gills with soju (including kimchi on the side plus a pack of cigaretes daily).

Sounds like mad, mad fun.

Tyranny Of The Majority

2007-11-26T14:14:00.000+08:00

I have returned to my home province of Pampanga only once this year, when I had to attend to family matters. The visit was uneventful, even as I found comfort in hearing and speaking my native tongue anew.

Pampanga remains a satellite province of imperial Manila, a suburbia of farmlands slowly being transformed into shopping malls and posh subdivisions.

Even as Kapampangans have found a new leader in Among Ed Panlilio, the more things change, the more they stay the same as the adage goes.

The priest-turned-governor is in a quandary over the lack of cooperation accorded to him by small-town politicians in the province. Even as he has managed to streamline and cleanse the province's mineral extraction taxation program, the provincial legislative body and the mayors' league want to revise the scheme to allow them to have more control of the multi-million peso trade.

A moment of clarity on quarry taxes. Panlilio has managed to collect in only 95 days what the father-and-son tandem of Lito and Mark Lapid managed to hand over to the province in three-and-a-half years.

From June 29 to November 8, Pampanga's mining tax revenues reached PHP 88.605 million. You can compare this to PHP 86.45 million collected by the two Lapids from January 2004 to June 28, 2007.

And yet, the eejits in Pampanga want Panlilio to relinquish control of the tax collection program.

Why fix something if it ain't broke?

For more than a decade, quarry tax funds have served as milking cows for many politicians in Pampanga. I have personally seen cheques being handed by a quarry kingpin (may his soul rest in peace) to someone who belongs to the powers-that-are. The money finances elections, builds mansions and haciendas, buys new cars, pays for vacations to the United States, keeps media spin doctors happy.

When the priest-politician booted the Lapids out of the Capitol, the largesse dried out like an arroyo in midsummer.

Would it take a rocket scientist to conclude, therefore, that the only way to gain access to the quarry taxes anew is to assume control of the whole collection system?

Pampanga Vice Gov. Joseller Guiao, Board Members Crisostomo Garbo, Catalina Bagasina, Tarcicio Halili, Ceferino Laus, Arthur Salalila, Edna David, Ricardo Yabut, Johhny Quiambao, Nelson Calara, and Nilo Caballa, in a Nietzschean tyranny of the majority, have passed an ordinance proposed by the Pampanga Mayors League that will give the local politicians greater police powers over the quarry program, higher revenue shares for towns and villages, and removal of the province's P150 administrative fee per truckload.

The priest-governor stands eerily alone.

"The moral authority of the majority is partly based on the notion that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of men united than a single individual, and that the number of legislators is more important that their quality," French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville once wrote, as he, too, described the despotism that occurs whenever the social conditions of a particular community hinder any prospect of hope among its members.

We can only surmise that would become of Pampanga when that hope is taken away.

Paper Tiger, Midget Dragon

2007-11-20T20:28:00.000+08:00

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed today two documents, the ten-member bloc's charter and an economic plan that hopes to transform Southeast Asia into a European Union-modeled economic community.

Another lesson on spotting bandwagoning, glittering generalities, causal oversimplification, and virtue words.

The two documents - which have yet to be ratified by the respective nations' lawmaking bodies - apparently turn a blind eye to criticisms that the ASEAN is nothing more than a paper tiger.

Although the charter agreed to "strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and the rule of law, and to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms," ASEAN remains rooted to a policy of non-interference in other members' affairs and continuation of decision-making by consensus.

The Financial Times, in describing the bloc's march towards irrelevance, says:

Among this year's failures, Asean made no headway in persuading Burma to end the junta's egregious human rights abuses.

The case of Burma illustrates everything that is wrong with the consensual, non-confrontational approach that south-east Asian diplomats call "the Asean way". Asean has no minimum standards for members and so far only the vaguest principles to which they must adhere. There are therefore no firm grounds for singling out the junta for its cruel and undemocratic behaviour. When faced with the need for action, south-east Asian governments are apt to resort to feeble excuses about not wanting to interfere in the affairs of others.

A scheduled speech by United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari during the summit was abruptly cancelled because of Myanmar's objection.

"Myanmar is a member of the ASEAN family," ASEAN chairman and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told The Straits Times. "No one wishes a family member ill."

A reality check is also needed as regards to the bloc's encompassing vision of an economic haven in the region, which only accounts for 6% of the world's total exports.

The proposed ASEAN Economic Community, set for 2015, faces a protracted delay because of the gap between the rich and poor countries under the bloc. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Brunei keen on regionwide trade liberalization by 2015 while Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, and Laos have refused to fasttrack its implementation because of the need to protect their domestic industries.

"These are very nice goals to stick up on the wall. Some are doable, but to achieve a single market is tough, unless all the countries are ready to open up," CIMB-GK Research regional economist Song Seng Wun says in an interview with the International Herald Tribune.

The Myanmar mess will also prevent the ASEAN from securing trade agreements with the United States and the European Union.

"ASEAN has special responsibility when it comes to the situation in Burma," U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab stressed. "The credibility and reputation of ASEAN as an organization has been called into question because of the situation in Burma. It can't just be business as usual."

The E.U., which the ASEAN wants to pattern itself after, agrees.

Just before the bloc's heads of states had their photographs taken for posterity, E.U. foreign ministers approved new sanctions against Myanmar, including an embargo on timber, gem and metal imports. The sanctions also added names to the list of Myanmarese leaders who are banned from travel and whose assets will be frozen.

Russian Foreign Minister pulled off a joke on the bloc last year when his skit at the bloc's annual dinner in Kuala Lumpur showed him being briefed by a Kremlin official on the demands being made by the ASEAN - the world's only superpower in a very improbable future.

Gil Puyat, Corner Paseo De Roxas

2007-11-19T18:15:00.000+08:00

The daily commute to and from the Makati central business district, where I work, often becomes a mother-of-all-battles with patience as rush-hour traffic jams along Sen. Gil Puyat Ave. (formerly Buendia) transform a 20-minute journey into an hour-long ride.

If there's one man to admire for his patience, it must be tycoon Lucio Tan, who seems to be biding his time on the development of a piece of prime property located at the corner of Gil Puyat and Paseo de Roxas. Eton Properties Phils. Inc., which Tan is a majority stock holder of, acquired the property from the then-government-owned Philippine National Bank (PNB).

The 8,000 square meter tract of real estate will be apparently transformed into a three-storey building to be leased out to food and beverage outlets. However, it will only be a temporary plan, as Tan apparently has other ideas in store for the piece of real estate, which passed hands like an old vinyl record.

Figuratively and literally.

A quick browse through the records of bankrupt.com and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism's archives tells us that that businessman-rocker Ramon "RJ" Jacinto's First Women's Credit Corp. (FWCC) bought the PNB-owned property for a record-breaking PHP460,000 per sqm (or PHP 3.68 billion) in 1996.

Here's the catch, though. The PNB, which owns the property, financed 80% of Jacinto's bid (which is akin to paying for something that you already own) through a PHP 2.9-billion loan.

FWCC later went belly-up and was seized by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after allegedly being sucked dry by loans given to other sister-firms under the Jacinto Group of Companies.

A Carlos J. Valdes & Co. audit in 1997 revealed that 15 RJ-owned firms owed FWCC P348 million. In a feat that would make a CPA's nose bleed, RJ sidestepped the FWCC debts by using his broadcast company as mortgage for the PHP 2.9-billion PNB loan.

He later transferred the rights to the Makati property to his realty firm, RJ Ventures and Realty Development Corp.

To make the long story short, RJ Ventures' clever venture failed and the PNB foreclosed the property. The PNB - and Filipino taxpayers - apparently lost around PHP 4 billion from the whole shebang. The bank was privatized in 1999, with Tan acquiring a majority stake.

Another government financial institution - the Land Bank of the Philippines - was also apparently left holding an empty basket as FWCC defaulted on a separate PHP 400 million loan.

RJ is back to spinning CDs. Well, he still has his former brother-in-law, First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, and their mutual friend Chavit Singson to call, if he has any other money-making business ideas in mind.*

As for tycoon Tan, a bad pun. He must be laughing his way to the bank right at this very moment.

Update: RJ has been appointed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as one of the government's new representatives on the board of the sequestered Philcomsat Holdings Corp. (PHC).. The PNB-FWCC-Jacinto Group of Companies mess notwithstanding, President Arroyo is apparently confident that RJ will uphold the interests of the Filipino people in the cash-rich firm. Previous Malacañang nominees to the Philcomsat board allegedly squeezed the company dry, according to a Senate report.

Yaya Fatherhood

2007-11-18T23:28:00.000+08:00

The little squirt, redux. He explains my long absence from the blog. He has his mom's eyes, quite naturally.

Gabriel Meets World

2007-11-01T12:26:00.000+08:00

Say hi to my firstborn, Gabriel Justin. My wife, Abbey, gave birth to him via a caesarian operation at the Chinese General Hospital in Manila last October 25.

Clear And Present Danger

2007-07-02T17:56:00.000+08:00

Nearly one-third of all Europeans believe that that United States' threats on global security and economic stability are larger than those posed by Iran and North Korea.

The Financial Times survey said that 32% of more than 5,000 respondents in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain see the U.S. as the greatest global threat.

China placed second with 19%, followed by Iraq (11%), North Korea (9%), and Russia (5%).

Meanwhile, respondents in the U.S. tagged North Korea (25%) as the greatest global threat.

Some 11% of Americans believe that their country is the No. 1 threat to world stability.

Meanwhile, former World Bank senior vice-president and chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics, believes that it should be the U.S. and not Asia, which should learn from the lessons of the financial crisis that hit the region exactly ten years ago.

I was doing a client's masteral thesis for the Asian Institute of Management a few years ago when Stiglitz was in town for a lecture.

He has this to say on the tenth anniversary of the Asian financial crisis:

(The) two most important lessons of the crisis have not been absorbed. The first is that capital market liberalization -- opening up developing countries' financial markets to surges in short-term "hot" money -- is dangerous. It was not an accident that the only two major developing countries to be spared a crisis were India and China. Both resisted capital market liberalization. Yet today, both are under pressure to liberalize.

The second lesson is that in a highly integrated world, there is a need for a credible international financial institution to design the rules of the road in ways that enhance global stability and promote economic growth in developing countries. With the IMF so dominated by the U.S. (it is the only country with a veto) and Europe (which, by custom, appoints its head), the Fund was long seen as representing the interests of international creditors. Its failures in the 1997 crisis further undermined its credibility, and its failure to do anything about massive global financial imbalances posing the main threat to global financial stability today, have underscored its limitations.

When Schadenfreude Meets Infotainment

2007-07-01T22:36:00.001+08:00

Canadian author Douglas Coupland introduced us to the German catchword schadenfreude in his 1991 novel, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture.

Since then, the word has made its way - or should I say - described the popular cultural phenomenon of people's obsessive interest on the downfall of the rich and famous.

MSNBC newsreader Mika Brzezinski had an emotional ketchup burst* - another Couplandesque verbiage - when she refused to lead her program with a story about Paris Hilton, arguing she was fed up with media attention given to the controversial Hollywood socialite.

She tore her script to pieces on the air and then put another one through a shredder Friday morning when she was asked by her editors on MSNBC cable channel to lead the newscast with an item about Hilton.

"Listen, I just don't believe in covering that story, especially not as the lead story in a newscast when you have a day like today," Brzezinski said.

Our company chief executive, an American, was previously exasperated at the extent of coverage that "Larry King Live" has accorded Hilton.

Methinks that Paris Hilton coverage incident is not merely a subject of celebrity schadenfreude but of the larger issue of infotainment dominating the news and public affairs industry.

"There is even doubt about the meaning of news, doubt evident when serious journalistic organizations drift toward opinion, infotainment and sensation out of balance with the news," says the Washington-based Committee of Concerned Journalists, a group that I have been part of since 2001.

Maybe we should start asking this question again, does infotainment even count as journalism?

"What is good for democracy, is also good for the press, " Harvard University Prof. Thomas Patterson said in Doing well and doing good: How soft news and critical journalism are shrinking the news audience and weakening democracy. (The Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics, & Public Policy at Harvard University, 2001). "In the long run, the best way to build an audience for news is through balanced public affairs reporting. To believe otherwise is to assume that people follow the news for its entertainment or shock value….A news habit takes years to create and takes years to diminish but, once diminished, is not easily restored."

*emotional ketchup burst - the bottling up of opinions and emotions inside oneself so that they explosively burst forth at at once, shocking and confusing employers and friends - most of whom thought things were fine.

A Call For Papers

2007-06-30T17:33:00.000+08:00

The Anthropological Association of the Philippines is seeking the submission of academic papers focusing on the subject of governance ahead of its 49th annual conference at the Ateneo de Zamboanga University from October 25 to 27.

Governance issues are typically regarded as falling within the purview of political science, economics, sociology, and public administration.

Without diminishing the contributions of these disciplines in the development of perspectives to understand and explain the administration of access to and provision of rights, services, and goods, anthropology looks at the interactions of state and non-state organizations.

These include the way these interactions are shaped and redefined by strategies and subjectivities of agents pursuing various interests and agenda, including their intended and unintended consequences.

At the same time, anthropology views regimes of governance as mediated by culturally and historically constituted (trans)local processes of ordering and regulating all areas of contemporary social life. Accordingly, UGAT welcomes papers from anthropologists and related professionals on the following themes:

- conflict resolution and peace-building
- customary justice system
- asserting citizenship and entitlements
- culture of corruption (with audit and performance)
- urban governance
- heritage (tangible, intangible, natural)
- ethnography of state violence
- governance and the regulation of kinship, gender and family
- eco-governance

Guidelines for abstracts
1. Abstracts should be no more than 350 words briefly discussing the topic, rationale, major findings and methodology of the study.
2. Key words or concepts used in their study/paper must be indicated.
3. Submissions should also indicate the author’s name, institutional affiliation and contact information (mailing address, telephone no., mobile phone no., e-mail address)
4. Abstracts should be sent to UGAT Office, Philippine Social Science Bldg., Commonwealth Ave., Quezon City or to ugat_aap@yahoo. com by July 16, 2007.

Abstracts may be considered for either paper presentation or poster presentation.

Pee-Dee-Ef, Kuya?

2007-06-26T21:01:00.000+08:00

Since books cost an arm and a better part of a leg these days, here are a couple of Quiapoese PDF brain food from a few of my favorite authors. Be advised, however, that I have bought copies of the following books and I do not, in anyway, encourage intellectual piracy. Well, sort of.

Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs and Steel
Collapse - How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed

Thomas Friedman
The World Is Flat

Peter Drucker
Managing Oneself

Eve Ensler
The Vagina Mologues

Alan Lightman
Einstein's Dreams

Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubnet
Freakonomics

Jose Saramago
Blindness

Miyamoto Musashi
The Book of Five Rings

Stephen Hawking
Does God Play Dice

Malcolm Gladwell
Blink
The Tipping Point

Dork Alert: U.N. Special Advisor Jeffrey Sachs waxes lyrical on aquaculture in the latest edition of the Scientific American. Meanwhile, Harvard University and Harvard Business School Prof. Alvin E. Roth triggers a rather good debate when he tells the nerds at The Economist that yes, economics is a science. Did you see that one coming?

Going Color-Blind

2007-06-23T21:32:00.000+08:00

BP, the oil giant previously known as British Petroleum, has failed in its bid to own the exclusive right to the green Pantone color 348C in Australia. The firm apparently wanted to register the color as its trademark.

BP's barrister, David Shavin filed an appeal before the High Court of Australia to overturn a lower court's decision that the company can't trademark the colour.

However, Justice William Gummow asked: "It might be inherently adapted to mislead, might it not? ... What is (natural) and healthy about the production or consumption of petroleum products?"

BP's Shavin asserted, "To the consumer in the context of oil, your Honour, green indicates BP, not environmental friendliness." Justice Michael Kirby commented that "it was a clever colour to have chosen so many years ago because it is now very much associated with the environmental movement."

The high court rejected BP's application and awarded costs against the company. However, BP has managed to register the color green in more than 20 countries.

Going Japanese

2007-06-21T13:47:00.000+08:00

The Japan Foundation-Manila, in cooperation with the Shangri-La Plaza Mall, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and the UP Film Institute, proudly presents slices of Japanese life as seen through the eyes of contemporary Japanese directors of “Eiga Sai 2007” - a showcase of modern film genre at the Shang Cineplex, UP Film Institute and CCP Dream Theater. [Screening schedule here]

The films to be featured include Kamikaze Girls (Shimotsuma Monogatari, 2004, directed by Tetsuya Nakashima), Harmful Insect (Gaichu, 2002, directed by Akihiko Shiota), Hotel Hibiscus (Hotel Hibiscus, 2002, directed by Yuji Nakae), No One’s Ark (Baka no Hakobune, 2002, directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita), Inochi (Inochi, 2002, directed by Tetsuo Shinohara), Out of this World (Kono Yo no Sotoe-Club Shinchu Gun, 2003, directed by Junji Sakamoto), The Stars Converge (Chirusoku no Natsu, 2003, directed by Kiyoshi Sasabe), Blue (Blue, 2001, directed by Hiroshi Ando), Blue Spring (Aoi Haru, 2001, directed by Toshiaki Toyoda) and Shangri-la (Togenkyo No Hitobito, 2002, directed by Takashi Miike).

The Eiga Sai (literally, "film festival" in Japanese) opened yesterday at the Shangri-la Plaza Mall with light comedy “Kamikaze Girls” (2004, 103 minutes, Color), written by Novala Takemoto and directed by Nakashima Tetsuya. It tells the story of two very different teenagers who become best friends, even though neither will admit it. J-Pop star Kyoko Fukada stars as Momoko, a 17-year-old girl so obsessed with everything rococo that she wears old-fashioned frilly white clothing and carries a parasol. After Momoko’s mother leaves her small time crook husband, her young daughter grows up on the farm, 60 miles from Tokyo, with her ex Yakuza father who sells fake Versace merchandise and grandmother, a woman with an extraordinary ability to catch flies in mid air. Desperate for money, Momoko starts selling the remainder of her father's counterfeit clothing, but her only customer is a tough-talking young biker chick, Ichigo (Anna Tsuchiya), who belongs to an all-girl gang. Their lives exemplify some of the fascinating intricacies of Japanese youth culture in a feel good film with art direction creatively designed to blow your socks off. The movie garnered critical acclaim and won numerous awards in Japan and abroad.

All films will be shown with English subtitles. Screening venues are at the Cinema 3, Shangri-La Plaza Mall (June 20-26), UP Film Institute (July 2-5), and CCP Dream Theater (July 4-8). Admission is free. For detailed screening schedules and inquiries, please check the Japan Foundation-Manila website or call the JFM telephone numbers 811-6155 to 58.

Waiting For Gabriel

2007-06-18T21:25:00.000+08:00

Father's Day quietly made its way across the office yesterday, with text messages and greetings from fellow editors and writers popping every now and then in my workstation.

The little squirt will arrive in November.

What will he look like? Will he have his mother's almond eyes? These thoughts sometimes keep me awake late at night. There are neither shortcuts nor cheatsheets during these days when my wife and I wait for our baby.

Work prevents me from being at her side during the day and it doesn't help a bit that she is not having an easy pregnancy.

Frederick Buechner writes in Whistling in the Dark:

When a child is born, a father is born. A mother is born, too of course, but at least for her it's a gradual process. Body and soul, she has nine months to get used to what's happening. She becomes what's happening. But for even the best-prepared father, it happens all at once. On the other side of a plate-glass window, a nurse is holding up something roughly the size of a loaf of bread for him to see for the first time.

Even if he should decide to abandon it forever ten minutes later, the memory will nag him to the grave. He has seen the creation of the world. It has his mark on it. He has its mark on him. Both marks are, for better or for worse, indelible. All sons, like all daughters, are prodigals if they're smart.

Assuming the Old Man doesn't run out on them first, they will run out on him if they are to survive, and if he's smart he won't put up too much of a fuss. A wise father sees all this coming, and maybe that's why he keeps his distance from the start. He must survive too. Whether they ever find their way home again, none can say for sure, but it's the risk he must take if they're ever to find their way at all. In the meantime, the world tends to have a soft spot in its heart for lost children. Lost fathers have to fend for themselves. Even as the father lays down the law, he knows that someday his children will break it as they need to break it if ever they're to find something better than law to replace it. Until and unless that happens, there's no telling the scrapes they will get into trying to lose him and find themselves. Terrible blunders will be made – disappointments and failures, hurts and losses of every kind. And they'll keep making them even after they've found themselves too, of course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on. And every hard knock they ever get, knocks the father even harder still, if that's possible, and if and when they finally come through more or less in one piece at the end, there's maybe no rejoicing greater than his in all creation.

Somewhere in between news stories from Seoul and Washington, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo and Jakarta, my thoughts wander off to the child I'll hold someday in my arms.

I pray not for who I want my son to be but that I be a father that he will want me to be.

Money Matters

2007-06-18T20:12:00.000+08:00

Experts Fear New Asian Currency Crisis

Economists and financial experts believe that the current financial policies of governments in Asia could trigger another crippling regional currency crisis.

New York University's Stern School of Business Prof. Nouriel Roubini said the policy solutions that ended the financial crisis in the 1990s may have only changed the type of risks involved in causing another major financial meltdown in Asia.

He added that artificially low national currencies, record-high foreign exchange reserves, and export-dependent economies pose danger to both the regional and global economies.

"The next crisis is never the same as the last. By fixating on the problems that foreshadowed the last crisis, the risk is Asia gets blindsided by another problem," former International Monetary Fund chief economist Kenneth Rogoff stressed.

Should the Philippines worry? After all, the only significant exports we send to other countries are people.

Forked Tongues

2007-06-17T17:06:00.001+08:00

Ambrose Bierce provides a humorously cynical interpretation of the post-industrial culture in The Devil's Dictionary, which made its run in American weekly newspapers from 1881 until 1906. Its book version was published in 1911.

Bierce reminds us of the near-alchemical aspect of the profession and the task of being both judge, jury, and executioner of the grammar and the syntax-challenged when he defines an editor as such:

EDITOR, n. A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star. Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos.

Project Gutenberg has a plain text version of the book.

Kidnapped Verbs, Arrested Caps

2007-06-16T20:24:00.000+08:00

China's state Xinhua News Agency says:

S. Korean man to let go from NZ
WELLINGTON, June 15 (Xinhua) -- A South Korean man at the center of kidnapping allegations is to be deported from New Zealand, said the local Police Friday.

Bad, bad Chinglish. "Let go" is usually used to refer to romantic relationships, material possessions, or habits. The adposition "of" - and not "from" - is used as the succeeding element after the phrase "let go" to indicate how it should be interpreted in the surrounding context.

There are tons of better and more direct heads. We likewise do not capitalize the word "police" if we want to collectively refer to a country's law enforcement agencies.

Recast, please.

Now Showing @ Titus Brandsma

2007-06-16T18:15:00.000+08:00

The Carmelite Media Ministry's pelikula@titus brandsma project is screening several excellent indie flicks at its New Manila center this month.

The movies lined up for its Saturday afternoon screenings until the end of June are:

Loving Annabelle
Katherien Brooks, USA, 2005.
76 minutes.

Annabelle (Erin Kelly) is a 17 year old Catholic schoolgirl who falls in love with her teacher Simone Bradley. The pushy teenager pursues her until the 30-something year old falls equally in love with Annabelle. Not long after they give in to their lusts their relationship is discovered and Simone is arrested.

Cast:Diane Gaidry, Erin Kelly, Laura Breckenridge, Jennie Floyd, John Farley

Winner, 2006 Atlanta Film Festival – Audience Award; Winner, 2006 Fort Worth Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival – Q Award Narrative Feature; Winner, 2006 L.A. Outfest – Audience Award, Grand Jury Award, Best Actress (Diane Gaidry); Winner, 2006 Long Island Film Festival – Audience Choice Award Narrative Feature; Winner, 2006 Paris Cinema Festival – Jury Award

Babae (Woman)
Written and Directed by Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo, Philippines, 2005.
20 minutes.

Babae (Woman) is a coming of age story of two women set in the city slum community beside railroad tracks. They became bestfriends, shared dreams and eventually started a family when a child accidentally entered their lives. Inserts of Real stories of women and a man gives color to this black and white film. a mixture of drama, comedy, musical and fantasy that will surely touch your heart.

Cast: Gadge Gunn, Raye Baquirin

Awards: Winner, 2005 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival Short film category – Best Director; Winner, 2005 Festival Internazionale di Cinema Gaylesbico e Queer Culture di Milano – Best Short Film; Cinemalaya Top 6 Finalists in the Short Film Category, Philippines; Nominated, 2066 GAWAD URIAN – Best short film category, Philippines

Official Selection and Screenings: 2005 New York Independent Film and Video Festival, New York, USA; 19th Singapore International Film Festival 2006; New Fest , New York U.S.A., June 2005; New York Filipino Film Festival, New York, USA, June 2005; Courtisane International Festival for Short Film Video and New Media festival; Second Naossea International Short Film and Video Film Festival , Greece May 2005; 2006 Pesaro Film Festival 2006; Pink Apple Schwullesbisches Film Festival Zurich Switzerland 2005; Winner, 19th Festival Internazionale Di Cinema Gaylesbico e Queer Culture Di Milano ; 2006 Imageout Rochester Lesbian, Gay and video Film Festival; 2005 Frameline29 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival; 2005 Feminale Taiwan, Asian, lesbian film and video festival; 29th San Francisco International LG Film Festival , USA June 2005; Assean Lesbian Film and Video Festival Taipei , Taiwan August 2005; Ex Cinema GayLesbic Barcelona Spain , October 2005; Verzauben International Queer Film Festival , Germany , November 2005; Budapest LGBT Festival 2005; 2005 Indianapolis LGBT Film Festival 2005; Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival , Philippines July 2005; GABRIELA women’s group Philippines 2006; Pink Film Festival Philippines , June 2005

Glowing Eyes / Porn Theater / La Chatte à deux têtes
Jacques Nolot, France, 2002
90 minutes.
(Strictly for mature audience only)

A tale set in a decaying Parisian porn theatre, where within its dark confines, male patrons—soldiers, transvestites, married men—regularly engage in anonymous sex acts. In the ticket booth of the theatre, a wise Italian woman serves as benevolent gatekeeper, observing—but never judging—the proceedings occurring under her watchful eyes. One day, one of her regulars engages her in a conversation that leads to an unusual friendship, as these two worldly souls share their common experiences.

Cast: Arben Bajraktaraj, Djemel Barek, Gérard Bezaud, Jean-Louis Coquery, Dominique Daguier

Awards: Winner, 2003 L.A. Outfest – Grand Jury Award Outstanding International Narrative Feature; Winner, 2003 Torino International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival – Best Feature Film; Winner, 2002 Valencia Festival of Mediterranean Cinema – Golden Palm

The Mad Cage 2 / Birds of a Feather 2 / La Cage aux folles II
Edouard Molinaro, France, 1980
101 minutes.

Sequel to La Cage aux folles has homosexual nightclub owner Renato and his transvesitite companion/lover Albin becoming involved with the local cops and foreign spies when Albin unwittingly gets his hands on a role of stolen microfilm. The gay couple then hide out in Renato’s native Italy, but find little peace there with their frequent bickering among themselves.

Awards: Nominated, 1981 César Awards, France – Best Actor (Michel Serrault)

By the way, Alliance Francaise de Manille's 2007 French Film Festival ends its ten-day run in Manila tomorrow. Film aficionados in Cebu can catch its provincial leg from June 22 to 24.

Between Yes And No

2007-06-14T19:59:00.000+08:00

Do answer the following questions with simple yes or no.

- If economic globalization is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.

- I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.

- There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.

- Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.

- "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a fundamentally good idea.

- It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.

- Governments should penalise businesses that mislead the public.

- The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.

- There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.

- Our civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of counter-terrorism.

- Although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, only wrongdoers need to be worried.

Easy as 1-2-3? A few years ago, I undertook an online political compass test, which described my leanings on various social, political, and economic concerns.

The test explains that the old one-dimensional categories of "right" and "left," established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape.

For example, who are the "conservatives" in the Philippine government today? Are they the opposition lawmakers who rose from the ranks of landowners? Or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?

On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them that the old categories on their own can't explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as "right-wingers," yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook.

For example, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, and Pol Pot, with their commitment to a totally controlled economy, are on the hard left. Socialists like Mahatma Gandhi would occupy a less extreme leftist position. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would be well over to the right, but further right still would be someone like that ultimate free marketeer, General Pinochet.

That deals with economics, but the social dimension is also important in politics. That's the one that the mere left-right scale doesn't adequately address. So there's also teh social dimension, ranging in positions from extreme authoritarian to extreme libertarian.

Both an economic dimension and a social dimension are important factors for a proper political analysis. By adding the social dimension you can show that Stalin was an authoritarian leftist (ie the state is more important than the individual) and that Gandhi, believing in the supreme value of each individual, is a liberal leftist. You can also put Pinochet, who was prepared to sanction mass killing for the sake of the free market, on the far right as well as in a hardcore authoritarian position. On the non-socialist side you can distinguish someone like Milton Friedman, who is anti-state for fiscal rather than social reasons, from Hitler, who wanted to make the state stronger, even if he wiped out half of humanity in the process.

The chart also makes clear that, despite popular perceptions, the opposite of fascism is not communism but liberal socialism, and that the opposite of communism ( i.e. an entirely state-planned economy) is neo-liberalism (i.e. extreme deregulated economy)

The usual understanding of liberal socialism as a left wing ideology does not take into account the neo-liberal "anarchism" championed by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and America's Libertarian Party, which couples law of the jungle right-wing economics with liberal positions on most social issues. Often their libertarian impulses stop short of opposition to strong law and order positions, and are more economic in substance (ie no taxes) so they are not as extremely libertarian as they are extremely right wing. On the other hand, the classical libertarian collectivism of anarcho-syndicalism (libertarian socialism) belongs in the bottom left hand corner.

Meanwhile, U.S. neo-conservatives, with their commitment to high military spending and the global assertion of national values, tend to be more authoritarian than hard right. By contrast, neo-liberals, opposed to such moral leadership and, more especially, the ensuing demands on the tax payer, belong to a further right but less authoritarian region. Paradoxically, the "free market," in neo-con parlance, also allows for the large-scale subsidy of the military-industrial complex, a considerable degree of corporate welfare, and protectionism when deemed in the national interest. These are viewed by neo-libs as impediments to the unfettered market forces that they champion.

In the test, you're asked to choose the response that best describes your feeling: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree or Strongly Agree to statements. At the end of the test, you'll be given the compass, with your own special position on it.

The test is entirely anonymous. None of your personal details are required, and nothing about your result is recorded or logged in any way. The answers are only used to calculate your reading, and cannot be accessed by anyone, ever.

The idea was developed by a political journalist with a university counselling background, assisted by a professor of social history. A new generation in particular will get a better idea of where they stand politically - and the sort of political company they keep.

Remember that there's no right, wrong or ideal response. It's simply a measure of attitudes and inevitable human contradictions to provide a more integrated definition of where people and parties are really at. [Click here to start]

My political compass: Economic Left-Social libertarian [Liberal socialist]
Economic Left/Right: -6.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.64
Political Compass closest to Nelson Mandela and The Dalai Lama

A Survey On The Diaspora

2007-06-14T15:57:00.000+08:00

Fellow hifi ex-housemate and NU 107 newsreader Leelock and her co AusAid scholar Elah Abangan sent me an e-mailed survey request on the subject of Filipino migrants' connectedness with the homeland.

I am publishing the questionnaire in full. Do feel free to answer the survey and send it back to the research authors at filipinodiaspora(at)gmail.com.

Measures of the Filipino Diaspora’s Connectedness with the Philippines

General Instruction: Please put an X after your corresponding answer, where appropriate.

I – Demographics

1. Male _____________ Female _______________

2. Where are you currently residing and working? ______________________

3. Are you a:

 Contract worker? __________
 Permanent resident of your host country? __________
 Citizen of your host country? __________
 Political asylum seeker or refugee? __________
 Others (please specify) __________

4. How long have you been staying in your host country?

 Less than 1 year __________
 1 to 3 years __________
 4 to 7 years __________
 8 to 10 years __________
 More than 10 years __________

5. Age

 17 years old and below __________
 18 to 21 years old __________
 22 to 35 years old __________
 36 to 50 years old __________
 51 years old and above __________

6. Civil Status

 Single ___________ Divorced/Separated ___________
 Married ___________ Widow/Widower ___________
Is your spouse with you in your host country? ________

7. Nature of work

 Health ___________ Construction (engineer, architect…) _______
 Entertainment ___________ Information Technology _______
 Hospitality ___________ Others (please specify) _______

8. When did you leave the Philippines? _______________

For overseas contract workers, when did you first leave the Philippines?

 1970 - 1975 ___________ 1976 – 1980 ___________
 1981 – 1985 ___________ 1986 – 1990 ___________
 1991 – 1995 ___________ 1996 – 2000 ___________
 2001 – 2007 ___________ Others ___________

II – Family Ties

1. Do you have family members with you in your host country? Yes _________ No ________

2. What are your means of communication with family and friends in the Philippines?

 Email ___________ Snail Mail (post office) ____________
 Phone ___________ Skype/YM/MSN ____________
 Others ___________

III – Remittances

1. Who in your family benefit from your remittances?

 Immediate family (children and spouse) ________ Parents ________
 Siblings ________ Siblings ________
 Nieces and nephews ________ Cousins ________
 Friends ________ Others ________

2. Purpose(s) of remitting money

 Acquiring properties ________ Education ________
 Daily subsistence ________ Investments ________
 Medicines of sick relatives ________

3. Frequency of remittance

 Monthly ________ Quarterly ________
 As needed ________ Others ________

4. How do you send money to the Philippines?

 Money transfer companies ________ Bank ________
 Balikbayan friends/family members ________ Others ________

5. What percentage of your monthly income do you send home?

 Less than 25% ________
 25% to 50% ________
 50% or more ________

IV – Purpose for Migrating

1. Reasons for migrating / working overseas

 Job / Employment ________
 Marriage ________
 Political reason (asylum seekers, etc) ________
 To join family abroad ________
 To seek better living conditions ________

2. Did you hold a stable job before leaving the Philippines?

 Yes ___________ No ___________

3. Do you feel your life has been better since you left? Please explain.

______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________.

V – Feelings of attachment to the home country

1. Have you changed citizenship? Yes __________ No ___________

2. What do you think are the positive and negative implications of changing citizenship?
Please explain.

3. Are you a member of Filipino organization in your community? Yes ________ No ________
If yes, what are those organizations?

_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________

4. Have you gone back to the Philippines since you left? Yes ________ No _________
If yes, how often?

 Once a year ___________ Every 2 years ______________
 Every 5 years ___________ As needed ______________

For what purpose?

 Vacation ___________ Family emergency ___________
 Business ___________

5. News and Events

Do you subscribe to the The Filipino Channel (TFC) or other Filipino cable networks/channels?

Yes _______________ No _____________

Do you keep up with current events in the Philippines? Yes __________ No ____________

If yes, how so?

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

6. Do you plan on going back to the Philippines? Please explain.

_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________

7. Do you feel that you are still contributing to the economic progress and development of the
Philippines even if you are residing / working overseas? Please explain.

__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________

Income, Labor, And The Free Market

2007-06-12T21:42:00.000+08:00

The New York Times' Daniel Gross and U.N. economist Dani Rodrik separately provide empirical evidence on the thesis that the rise of workers' salaries isn't simply a product of the wonders of the free market and good-hearted employers.

Gross said that aside from standard corporate compensation policies, government policies have played a significant role in contributing to the growth of income inequality.

He cited the landmark work penned by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professors Frank Levy and Peter Temin for the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Gross says:

What are the political — and policy — implications of this rethinking of the roots of income inequality? Too often, economists have argued that the government can’t — and shouldn’t — do much to reverse the growth of income inequality, beyond exhorting workers to get more skills and education. But given the institutional factors at work, that may be a cop-out.

Meanwhile, Rodrik reveals that while workers' productivity has been steadily on the rise, their average salaries have stagnated.

Another argument in favor of the need for a government's direct role in ensuring that its citizens are given just salaries and wages in direct relation to their abilities, productivity, and needs.

'Me, Filthy Rich. You, Marry Daughter'

2007-06-11T19:33:00.000+08:00

Chaebol Boss Seeks Husband For Daughter
A rich South Korean businessman, who reportedly has more than USD 100 million in assets, has hired online matchmaking agency Sunoo to find a husband for his 38-year-old daughter.

The multi-millionaire, whose identity was withheld, said his future son-in-law should be financially secure himself, have a "decent appearance, in good health, and with the same religious beliefs" as their family.

"My daughter studied (in the U.S.) and now is a professional. Her own property exceeds USD 2 million. The only shortcomings are that she is a little bit old and short," the businessman said.

Sunoo chief executive Lee Ung-jin said more than 90 men have filed applications in reply to the chaebol boss' plea.

Arroyo's 13

2007-06-09T16:43:00.000+08:00

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo prides herself in her 13-member International Board of Advisers that includes Maarten van den Berg, chairman of Lloyds Group; Minoru Makihara, chairman of the Mitsubishi Corporation; Junichiro Miyazu, president of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation; former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating; Victor Fung, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Li and Fung; Anthony Burgmans, chairman of Unilever, and Marce Fuller, chief executive of Mirant Corporation (the first corporation to privatize the Philippines' power industry).

Could Malacañang pray tell if former American International Group (AIG) chairman Maurice "Hank" Greenberg is still heading The Matron's advisory board? The last time we checked, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye was trying to defend Greenberg, who stepped down as AIG chairman amid an ongoing probe into whether the company had manipulated its books to mislead investors.

A few days before he resigned, Greenberg transferred more than USD 2 billion worth of company shares to his wife as a gift, according to a regulatory filing.

The Wall Street Journal also reported in November 2004 that Greenberg was also the target of a federal investigation for allegedly manipulating AIG's stock prices in 2001.

In February last year, AIG paid USD 1.64 billion to settle allegations over its accounting practices but that settlement did not cover Greenberg, who is still facing four civil charges filed by former New York Attorney General and now Gov. Eliot Spitzer, for Enron-like "deceptive accounting" and "misleading investors on AIG's profitability and its skill at underwriting."

Sounds Arrovonomics to me.

Chaebol (Mis)Chief Cinco

2007-06-08T19:38:00.000+08:00

South Korean prosecutors raid police stations, golf courses

South Korean government prosecutors investigating a gangland-style kidnapping and mauling case involving Hanwha Group chairman Kim Seung-youn have raided the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency office, two district police stations, and three golf clubs near the capital.

The authorities seized documents, computer hard drives, and other records from the police offices and the golf establishments in a bid to gather more evidence against several high-ranking officers allegedly involved in a failed cover-up of the case against Kim.

The Seoul police chief and several senior officers were earlier sacked and placed under investigation for allegedly trying to whitewash the case.

Meanwhile, National Police Agency chief Lee Taek-soon is accused of having played golf with a Hanwha executive who allegedly tried to seek leniency for his boss.

Kim, who belongs to South Korea's ten wealthiest men, was formally indicted earlier this week for the abduction and mauling of nightclub workers who allegedly had an argument with his son last March.

Ang Mga Nawawala

2007-06-06T22:37:00.000+08:00

Jose F. Lacaba

Isang araw sila’y
nawala na lang at sukat.
May hindi pumasok sa opisina,
hindi sumipot sa apoyntment,
nang-indiyan ng kadeyt.
May hindi umuwi ng bahay
at hindi nakasalo
ng pamilya sa hapunan,
hindi nakasiping ng kabiyak.
Ang inihaing ulam ay ligalig,
at ang inilatag na banig
ay ayaw dalawin ng antok.
Nang hanapin sila’y
walang masabi
ang kamag-anak at kaibigan,
walang ulat ang pulisya,
walang malay ang militar.
Kung mayroon mang nakakita
nang sila’y sunggaban
ng malalaking lalaki
at isakay sa dyip o kotse,
pabulong-bulong ang saksi,
palinga-linga,
at kung pakikiusapang
tumestigo sa korte,
baka ito’y tumanggi.
Pagkaraan ng ilang araw,
o linggo, o buwan, o taon,
pagkaraan ng maraming
maghapon at magdamag,
pagkaraang ang agam-agam
ay magparoo’t parito
sa mga manhid na pasilyo
at ang pag-aasam-asam
ay mapanis sa mga tanggapan,
pagkaraan ng luha’t tiyaga,
ang ilan sa kanila’y
muling lumitaw.
Lumitaw sila
sa bilangguan, sa bartolina,
sa kubling bahay na imbakan
ng ungol, tili at panaghoy,
himpilan ng mga berdugong
eksperto sa sanlibo’t isang
istilo ng pagpapahirap.
Lumitaw silang
bali ang buto o sira ang bait.
O kaya’y lumitaw silang
lumulutang sa mabahong ilog,
o nakahandusay sa pampang,
o umaalingasaw
sa mga libingang mababaw
na hinukay ng mga asong gala.
Lumitaw silang
may gapos ang kamay at paa
na wala nang pintig, o watak-
watak ang kamay, paa, ulo,
o tadtad ng butas ang bangkay,
likha ng bala o balaraw.
Ang iba’y hindi na lumitaw,
hindi na kailanman lumitaw,
nawala na lang at sukat,
walang labí, walang bangkay,
hindi malaman kung
buhay o patay,
hindi mapaghandugan
ng lamayan, pasiyam, luksa,
hindi maipagbabang-luksa,
hindi maipagtirik ng kandila
kung Todos los Santos.
Nakaposas pa ba sila
sa paa ng kinakalawang na kama
sa loob ng kuwartong may tanod,
busog sa bugbog,
binabagabag ng bangungot,
sumisipol kung nag-iisa
ng “Saan Ka Man Naroroon,”
iniisip kung ano ang iniisip
ng magulang at anak,
kasintahan o kabiyak?
O sila ba’y
umayaw na sa pakikibaka
at nagbalik sa dating buhay,
o nagtaksil sa simulain
at nagtatago sa takot,
o nag-asawang muli
at nangibang-bayan,
o tinamaan ng amnisya
at lalaboy-laboy sa lansangan,
o lihim na namundok
at nag-iba ng pangalan?
O sila ba’y
pinagpapasasaan na ng uod?
Nag-ugat na ba ang talahib
sa mga mata ng kanilang bungo?
Bahagi na ba sila
ng kanilang lupang tinubuan,
ang lupang kanilang ipinaglaban?
Sinusulat ko ito
para sa mga kakilalang
hanggang ngayon ay nawawala,
para kina Charlie del Rosario
at Caloy Tayag
at Manny Yap
at Henry Romero
at Jun Flores,
at Rudy Romano
sila na kahit hindi ko
nakilala nang husto
ay alam kong naglingkod
sa api at hikahos.
Buhay man sila o patay,
sa aking alaala’y
mananatili silang buhay.

Si Jose F. “Pete” Lacaba ay premyadong manunulat at mamamahayag. Kabilang sa kanyang mga sinulat ang Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage , koleksiyon ng mga sanaysay hinggil sa First Quarter Storm of 1970.

Gray Matter

2007-05-26T21:55:00.000+08:00

I hardly find time to cozy up to a book nowadays, given the 10am to 10pm need to meet deadlines here in office.

Meanwhile, Chris Dillow reminds us why we get paid for working, Dani Rodrik asks if neoclassical economics is a mafia, Street Light compares the income inequality in different countries, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland explains why we need money, and Jane Galt discusses writers' language ideosyncracies and tics (akin to Malcolm Gladwell's World War II-era German radio operators).

A series of undercard bouts ahead of an essay on social contract and the recently-held Philippine midterm elections if time permits me to discuss the matter tomorrow.

A Crouching (Paper) Tiger

2007-05-24T22:31:00.000+08:00

Despite the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) billed as a paper tiger, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo launched a one-woman campaign at the Nikkei Conference in Tokyo today calling on all East Asian Nations to form a bloc similar to the European Union.

Replete with bandwagoning rhetorics peppered with glittering generalities, oversimplification, virtue words, and sloganeering, Arroyo turns a blind eye to ASEAN's irrelevance as described by the Financial Times last year:

An organisation of 10 countries, with a population of 500m and the economic weight to match, is in danger of becoming a diplomatic irrelevance as it approaches the 40th anniversary of its founding next year.

Yet Asean remains less than the sum of its disparate parts - its members include democratic, Muslim Indonesia; the fast-growing economy of Vietnam; and the wealthy city-state of Singapore; as well as Burma, the Brunei sultanate, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Among this year's failures, Asean made no headway in persuading Burma to end the junta's egregious human rights abuses. Nor did the ARF, known from its acronym and its inactivity as "the dog that doesn't bark", seriously rebuke North Korea for its recent missile launches orits nuclear weapons programmes.

Even in seeking to liberalise regional trade and investment in goods and services, Asean seems to have run out of steam. The once tigerish economies of Malaysia and Thailand are growing at less than 6 per cent a year - slower than those of Ghana and Botswana.

It has been uncomfortable for nations that were the toast of bankers and investors in the 1990s to find themselves so quickly eclipsed by China and India. If they want to keep attracting performances from the Lavrovs and Rices of this world and simultaneously engage in the serious business of regional diplomacy, Asean leaders need to develop a clear idea of how they see the world and how they want to improve it.

Plans of a single ASEAN-North East Asian market are also in the doldrums as the Philippines and several members of the bloc have yet to ratify a free-trade agreement with South Korea.

The proposed ASEAN Economic Community also faces a protracted delay because of the gap between the rich and poor countries under the bloc. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Brunei keen on regionwide trade liberalization by 2015 while Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma and Laos have refused to fasttrack its implementation because of the need to protect their domestic industries.

Which is prudent, given the Oxfam report warning that finds that rich countries are using regional and bilateral trade deals to attain "enormous irreversible concessions" from poor countries, making these agreements far more damaging to development than anything proposed under World Trade Organization negotiations.

Instead of harping about paper tigers and signing away the country's future through unequal treaties that rich countries can't obtain at the World Trade Organization, shouldn't the Malacañang matron instead call for trade rules that recognize the rights of developing countries?

EO 608 and the Right To Information

2007-05-24T18:44:00.000+08:00

On 30 March 2007 President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Executive Order No. 608 (EO 608), establishing a national security clearance system for government personnel with access to "classified matters". Under this system, personnel who have access to classified matters are required to undergo a "comprehensive background investigation" before he or she is issued an "Interim Security Clearance" by the head of the department, agency or office concerned. Such interim clearance is subject to review by the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), and to final approval by the National Security Adviser/Office of the National Security Director (ONSA/ONSD). The investigatory records of all personnel granted the Interim Security Clearance shall be maintained by each department, agency or office in a Security Investigation Index. These personnel may not disclose, share, publish or use classified matter in any way that violates the clearance, or without proper authority. EO 608 considers any violation of the security clearance a grave offense under the civil service rules, without precluding criminal or civil liability.

By itself EO 608 appears innocuous. However, the deviousness of EO 608 becomes plain when consider Memorandum Circular No. 78 (MC 78), to which it refers. A close look at MC 78 reveals clear incompatibility with the constitutional guarantee of access to information of public concern, and its application will result in the actual violation of the guarantee.

A paper penned by Atty. Nepomuceno Malaluan (Action for Economic Reforms), Dr. Florangel Rosario-Braid (Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication), Prof. Luis Teodoro (Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility), Adelina Alvarez (Center for Community Journalism and Development), Atty. Tanya Lat (Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services), Rowena Paraan (National Union of Journalists of the Philippines), Bartholome Guingona (pagbabago@pilipinas), Jaileen Jimeno (Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism), and Vincent Lazatin (Transparency and Accountability Network) explains:

Raising the Dead
MC 78 is a 14 August 1964 issuance, that is, it was issued during the presidency of President Macapagal-Arroyo’s father. EO 608 establishes the clearance system for access to classified matters, while MC 78 provides the system for determining what will be classified matter. It provides for the authority to classify certain information into four categories: top secret, secret, confidential, and restricted. The availability of classified information is then restricted only to persons properly cleared under EO 608. Thus, classified matter will not be available to the general public, not even to government personnel who are without clearance.

MC 78 was amended by the insertion of a section (Section XII. Communication Security) on 19 July 1968. The next time it was referred to in an executive issuance was through Letter of Instructions No. 1420 (LoI 1420) dated 3 September 1984. LoI 1420 reiterated the prohibition for the disclosure of classified matter to unauthorized persons, the media or the general public; centralized clearance for publication to the Office of the President; enjoined the strict enforcement of MC 78; and reiterated the threat of disciplinary action or criminal prosecution for any violation. No doubt LoI 1420 was a measure to further constrict the flow of information at a time when the challenge to the Marcos dictatorship was gaining momentum.

After the fall of the Marcos government, MC 78 dropped into obscurity in most government agencies, except perhaps in the defense and intelligence establishment, until EO 608 resurrected it. The obscurity of MC 78 was such that President Macapagal-Arroyo and her Executive Secretary, General Eduardo Ermita, wrongly cited in EO 608 its year of issuance as 1978 instead of 1964 .

Constitutional Question
The obscurity and disuse of MC 78 was not the result of a mere shift in policy; it has constitutional basis. It cannot now be reinstated without impinging on the constitutional right of the people to information on matters of public concern. Section 7 of the Bill of Rights of the 1987 Constitution reads, "The right of the people to information on matters of public concern shall be recognized. Access to official records, and to documents and papers pertaining to official acts, transactions, or decisions, as well as to government research data used as basis for policy development, shall be afforded the citizen, subject to such limitations as may be provided by law."

It may be said that the right to information has been recognized as early as the 1973 Constitution, and this fact did not stop the strict implementation of MC 78. However, it is common knowledge that the violation of most constitutional guarantees had been pervasive during the Marcos regime, and a comparison will be relevant only insofar as the Macapagal-Arroyo administration is behaving rather similarly.

But even more importantly, since the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, there has been a succession of cases that have laid down key principles in applying the right to information. Among these is the principle that government agencies are without discretion in refusing access to information of public concern. Only the manner of examining records may be reasonably regulated, for instance, by prescribing the manner and hours of examination so as to ensure the preservation of the documents as well as to properly manage the time of the record custodian. But the performance of the duty to disclose the information cannot depend upon the discretion of the agency; otherwise the right will be rendered worthless.

MC 78 indubitably clashes with such principle. It authorizes practically all public officers to classify documents. While authority to classify information as top secret or secret rests with the head of the department, this may be delegated. For confidential and restricted matter, any officer is authorized to assign such classifications. While jurisprudence recognizes certain governmental privileges against public disclosure, the classes of information that may be classified under MC 78 is so broad as to be practically unlimited. For instance, top secret matter may include major governmental projects; confidential matter need not involve matters of national security, and may include such matters as would cause administrative embarrassment; and restricted matter can include matters as vaguely defined as “requiring special protection”. In short, MC 78 gives government officers unlimited discretion in withholding information from the public by the simple expedient of categorizing it as classified matter. This renders worthless the constitutional guarantee of access to information of public concern, as well as the jurisprudence that agencies are without discretion in granting access.

Pattern of Unconstitutional Actions
Executive Order 608 follows a pattern of presidential issuances and executive pronouncements of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration containing provisions that are of highly doubtful constitutional or legal basis. The Supreme Court has passed upon some of these issuances, and declared them partly or entirely unconstitutional or illegal:

- Sometime in September 2005 Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita announced the adoption of the “calibrated preemptive response” policy in lieu of the maximum tolerance policy in the handling of public assemblies. Despite the Executive Secretary’s attempt to withdraw the policy when it was questioned before the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court proceeded to strike down the policy as “having no place in our legal firmament” and as “a darkness that shrouds freedom”, adding that it “merely confuses our people and is used by some police agents to justify abuses”.
On 28 September 2005 President Macapagal-Arroyo issued Executive Order No. 464 (EO 464) providing guidelines for the appearance of executive officials in legislative inquiries. The Supreme Court held that the EO is invalid insofar as it severely frustrates the power of inquiry of Congress for allowing executive officials to claim executive privilege without stating any specific basis of such claim, and for allowing subordinate officials to exercise executive privilege, otherwise reserved only for the President, without the President’s explicit authority.

- On 24 February 2006 President Macapagal-Arroyo issued Proclamation 1017 declaring a state of national emergency. Under the proclamation President Macapagal-Arroyo commanded the Armed Forces of the Philippines “to maintain law and order throughout the Philippines, prevent or suppress all forms of lawless violence as well any act of insurrection or rebellion and to enforce obedience to all the laws and to all decrees, orders and regulations” promulgated by her personally or upon her direction; and declared a State of National Emergency “as provided in Section 17, Article 12 of the Constitution”. While the Supreme Court sustained the proclamation insofar as it the exercise of the president’s calling-out power for the armed forces to assist her in preventing or suppressing lawless violence, it declared the proclamation unconstitutional insofar as: (1) it commands the enforcement of all decrees, orders and regulations promulgated by her personally or upon her direction, and (2) it presumes presidential authority to exercise the emergency powers of taking over or directing the operation of any privately-owned public utility or business affected with public interest. On the first point the Supreme Court said that the clause, which was lifted from President Marcos’s Proclamation 1081 declaring a state of Martial Law, is unconstitutional for granting President Macapagal-Arroyo the authority to promulgate decrees, which is a legislative power peculiarly vested with the Legislature. On the second point, the Supreme Court emphasized that under the constitution the exercise of emergency powers requires a delegation from Congress.

Unfortunately for us ordinary citizens, until an unconstitutional initiative is declared void by the Supreme Court, we suffer the injury of its application. The CPR has been used as basis for violent dispersals of peaceful assemblies, in violation of the right to peaceably assemble. EO 464 has been used to avoid the appearance by executive officials in legislative inquiry, depriving the public of their right to information. As the court stated, “to the extent that investigations in aid of legislation are generally conducted in public, any executive issuance tending to unduly limit disclosures of information in such investigations necessarily deprives the people of information which, being presumed to be in aid of legislation, is presumed to be a matter of public concern”. Also, on the basis of Proclamation 1017, illegal warrantless arrests of individuals such as Prof. Randy David, and an illegal warrantless search of the Tribune office and seizure of materials therein, were committed.

Our fate under EO 608 will be no different. Until and unless EO 608 is struck down by the courts or withdrawn by President Macapagal-Arroyo, it will bolster her ongoing efforts to arbitrarily withhold information from the Filipino people, in violation of our right to information on matters of public concern.

Bull Runs and Rep. Palparan

2007-05-22T21:00:00.000+08:00

Bulls and Bears. Lest the usual suspects in Malacañang claim glory for the bullish Philippine stock market and the strong Philippine peso, may we remind them that the phenomenon is region-wide and that the Malacañang matron is at the mercy of the business cycle?

Congressman Palparan: According to the latest official count of the Commission on Elections, retired Army Gen. Jovito Palparan, whom the Melo Commission tagged for extrajudicial killings in various rural communities nationwide, will be a lawmaker. His True Marcos Loyalist partylist, also known as Bantay, would get at least one seat in Congress after garnering more than 2.85% of total votes cast in the May 14 elections.

Do run along now.

Church and State

2007-05-22T13:05:00.000+08:00

If only to humor nuisance candidate Ely "Spikeboy" Pamatong and the "news and information" propagandista programs of a RJ Jacinto-owned television station, the constitutional doctrine of the separation of church and state is specifically aimed at protecting the free exercise of religion from government control and/or regulation.

Point two. Fr. Ed Panlilio, who has taken a leave from his priestly duties since he ran and won the Pampanga gubernatorial race, is a Church worker, but is not the Church in its entirely.

Of course, Church Canon Law and several encyclicals penned by popes throughout the centuries prohibit active priests from direct political involvement in state affairs.

Panlilio explains:

"Social transformation is largely the realm of the laity. We priests are not cut out for political life. I only agreed to run on the clamor of the laity when no one was ready to challenge the Lapids and the Pinedas. So I have to advocate within the structure of government."

I hear liberation theology's echoing voice, which argues that church's mission should not solely be the "quantitative" notion of saving numbers of souls but rather, to protest against injustice, to challenge what is inhuman, to side with the poor and the oppressed.

Panlilio himself outlined in his social justice agenda when he assumes the Capitol seat next month, "Liberation from poverty brings back dignity to the person and enables him/her to be a good person to his/her family, community and society."

It is for the Church to decide whether to accept Among Gob back to its fold after his three-year term ends.

Meanwhile, the people of Pampanga need him most today.

Gloria's Lolo Lakandula

2007-05-21T22:25:00.000+08:00

Statcounter data on this blog's visitors within the week showed a couple of interesting search engine keywords that led here.

One Internet user apparently keyed in the phrase "relatives of Lakandula."

For the uninitiated, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo claims direct decendancy from the lakan.

Malacañang has even created the Order of Lakandula medal of merit after the President's forefather, which awardees include boxer Manny Pacquiao, billiards champion Ronato Alcano, Broadway singer Lea Salonga, Mount Everest conquerors Leo Oracion and Erwin Emata, and a host of Filipinos and foreign nationals whom Arroyo has deemed to have done service for the country.

It is gut-wrenching to discover, however, that President Arroyo's forefather was not only a coward in the face of danger but was a traitor to his own people during the Spanish invasion and destruction of Manila in 1571.

After watching Spanish forces slaughter Manila's defenders led by Tarik Sulayman of Macabebe, Gloria's great-great-great lolo merged his troops with the invaders and aided them in their full conquest of Luzon.

Jose Rizal says in his edition of Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas por el Doctor Antonio de Morga (Paris, 1890):

One thousand five hundred friendly Indians from the islands of Zebu, Bohol, Leyte, and Panay, besides the many other Indians of service, for use as pioneers and boat-crews, accompanied the Spaniards. Lacandola and his sons and relatives, besides two hundred Bissayans and many other Indians who were enrolled in Pangasinan, aided them.

Ah, the Macapagals.

Mallrats As Economic Indicators?

2007-05-21T20:39:00.000+08:00

Here's our spin of the day. Presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye, quoting National Economic and Development Authority official Dennis Arroyo, engages in a logical sleight of hand when he explains an ongoing boom in the Philippine real estate industy.

To wit he says:

"The boom is fueled by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) buying condo units, call centers demanding office space, and the malls that keep on multiplying. The proliferation of malls is evidence of an expanding middle class, in turn due to the OFW phenomenon."

A rude awakening for Malacañang. Millions of Filipinos are working abroad not because of plans to purchase multimillion-peso condominium units but becuase they can't frigging find decent work back home. Whatever employment opportunities are available here can't feed a family.

Call centers are locating in the Philippines because of the availability of cheap and English-speaking manpower. A simple business process of driving down production costs.

As for Henry Sy's success, US-PBS Frontline explains in "The Persuaders" the twin concepts marketing and consumerism.

Media critic Mark Crispin Miller, who previously discussed the dynamics of marketing popular culture for teenagers in Merchants of Cool, says:

Citizens and consumers are two entirely different things. They have nothing in common. I mean, we happen to be citizens, and we happen to be consumers. But citizens are participants in government. Citizens are equals. Citizens are the equals of politicians. Citizens have to be taken seriously because they theoretically have the power in a democracy. Consumers are feeders. All consumers do is consume. All they do is munch grass. They're like sheep or lambs. They are not equal to the politicians. They're not equal to the politicians' handlers. They're being manipulated necessarily. They're being manipulated to think only about the grass that they're chewing and nothing else, and manipulated into thinking about ways to get more grass.

Dante's Flicks

2007-05-21T20:00:00.000+08:00

Kapampangan filmmaker Filipino filmmaker Brillante "Dante" Mendoza, who directed the Brocka-ish "Kaleldo" (Summer Heat), is apparently making his mark at the Cannes film festival.

The Elections As Social Scholarship

2007-05-19T14:46:00.000+08:00

The recent midterm Philippine elections have yet to draw to a close. While the majority of winners in local government seats have already been declared, the Commission on Elections is still canvassing votes for the 12 senatorial positions.

The defeat of Pacquiao, Garcillano, Lapid, et. al., the archetypal victory of Panlilio, and the expected win of the majority number of Senate seats by opposition and independent candidates offer a glimmer of hope that the Filipino voter may have grown tired of the status quo. However, the alleged continuous poll cheating in Muslim Mindanao will retard whatever inroads the May 14 elections have achieved.

What have we learned in the recent political exercise then, if we should see the elections as a subject of social scholarship?

We can look at it through the perspective of a social psychologist and see how science of influence, persuasion, and compliance made people choose certain candidates and shun the others. Or we can take a page out of Thomas Ferguson's Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems and see the role big money plays in defining elections.

Ferguson says that although elections do not simply go to the highest bidder, only access to money from "investors" makes a real campaign possible. Since politicians need money to get elected, they can't take positions unpopular with moneyed interests, though those positions would win in the "perfectly informed voters" world of William Mitchell (Economic Theories of Interest Groups: An Introductory Survey, 1991). Mitchell claims that if voters are well informed and bribery is illegal, money has no function, and can therefore have no effect.

Another Ferguson - Adam - (1723–1816) a philosopher-historian contemporary of Adam Smith, said in Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769) and Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792) that the accumulation of wealth, from whatever source, creates a demand for perpetuation of privilege. Wealth also affords a disproportionate influence over government policy. People with money share interests with the other wealthy, and recognize the need to use their power to make sure those interests are protected.

MIT Linguistics professor Noam Chomsky asserts that a country is only democratic to the degree that government policy reflects informed public opinion - i.e. the electorate are educated enough to choose a candidate because of his abilities, agendas, ideas, platforms, and goals instead of the superficial image we are made to see up front.

He explains:

The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it’s intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one. Same when they run elections.

For many years, election campaigns here have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. Quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information—and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method.

The Philippines has formal democratic structures, albeit dysfunctional.

Except for a few cases, traditional politics normally do not allow the rise to power of someone who is not beholden to vested interests or to the rural and urban oligarch.

Those from the outside (such as former leftwing activists-turned-Malacañang apologists Mike Defensor and Rigoberto Tiglao) usually secure a foothold within the corridors of power because of their willingness to serve the same vested interests they once fought against in the parliament of the streets.

The party-list system we have in the country, which is almost similar to Brazil's, allows representation of the marginalized and mass organizations. However, recent trends - such as alleged Malacañang-funded groups entering the party-list race and the likes of Palparan aiming to secure a Congressional seat through the same system - show that the idea is ripe for abuse likewise.

As always, the escape clause is to accept a visit to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's rhetorical museum, where we are told to enjoy the frames and ignore the pictures.

Priest and Governor

2007-05-18T19:41:00.000+08:00

We're all awaiting for confimation from the Commission on Elections, but it seems like Catholic priest Fr. Ed Panlilio has won the gubernatorial polls in Pampanga.

GMANews.tv: Priest topples Pineda, Lapid in Pampanga polls

ABS-CBN News: Panlilio set to be proclaimed governor in Pampanga

Inquirer.net: Catholic priest elected Pampanga governor

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From GMANews.TV

A Heavenly Upset?

2007-05-18T13:16:00.000+08:00

Catholic priest Fr. Ed Panlilio, who stepped down from the pulpit seeking to rid Pampanga province of illegal gambling and quarrying syndicates, has maintained his slim lead over Bong Pineda's wife, Lilia Pineda, and Sen. Lito Lapid's son, incumbent Gov. Mark Lapid, in the latest Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting-National Movement for Free Elections (PPCRV-NAMFREL) gubernatorial race tally.

With 98.85% of all 762,448 votes tallied, Panlilio's lead over Pineda stands at just a little over 2,000 votes.

As of 12:25pm today, the priest has 218,571 votes while Pineda has 216,274. Lapid is a distand third with 206,789.

Pineda was leading in the official Commission on Elections tally last night.

Thrilla In Pampanga

2007-05-17T18:39:00.000+08:00

The lack of updated information on latest count in the gubernatorial battle in Pampanga has left me scouring the Web.

Official tally figures from the Commision on Elections are as nonexistent as the growth spurts of the province's ~~most notorious~~ daughter-that-be, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

However, someone from the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) is apparently keeping tabs on the latest National Movement for Free Elections tallies in the province.

The latest tally from the PPCRV NAMFREL Pampanga blog as of 5:24pm today is as follows:

Governor
1 PANLILIO, EDDIE T. 196,947 (17.51%)
2 PINEDA, LILIA G. 189,922 (16.89%)
3 LAPID, MARK T. 182,498 (16.23%)

Total No. of Voters 1,124,612
Total Voters who Voted 545,337 (48.49%)
Total Precincts Tabulated 3,938 (69.34%)
Total Precincts Not Tabulated 1,741 (30.66%)

As Pampanga is Gloria country (even though she has trouble speaking the language), seven pro-administration candidates are ~~jueteng-~~lording it in the Magic 12. However, indie candidate Francis Pangilinan (whose family hails from my hometown, Sto. Tomas) is topping the list. The Genuine Opposition bets favored by Kapampangans seem to be Manuel Villar Jr., Loren Legarda, Francis Escudero, and Noynoy Aquino.

Update: The 9:43pm update saw Fr. Ed's lead over Pineda whittled to just over 2,000 votes with 78.86% of all precincts tabulated. You can bet (bad pun there) that the Malacañang matron won't have any problems with her townmate and partymate Pineda winning the Pampanga polls. They're kumares, after all.

Our Midterm Votes

2007-05-13T20:11:00.000+08:00

Sans any fanfare (as I still have the Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, and Philippine editions to take care of today), here are my chosen 12, plus the party-list weapon of choice, for tomorrow's national midterm elections.

Senators
1. Francis Pangilinan
2. Francis Escudero
3. Joker Arroyo
4. Loren Legarda
5. Aquilino Pimentel III
6. Sonia Roco
7. Panfilo "Ping" Lacson
8. Manuel B. Villar, Jr.
9. Zosimo Paredes II
10. Adrian Sison
11. Martin Bautista
12. Antonio Trillanes IV

Party List
Akbayan

Are You All Right, Sir?

2007-05-11T20:22:00.000+08:00

An unexpected e-mail message from right-wing rebel group Magdalo sent to my old hotmail account unveils the details of "Oplan Mercury Rising," which allegedly seeks to rig the Philippine midterm elections in favor of pro-administration senatorial candidates.

A grand scheme that would make even the grizzled Garci blush reportedly seeks to implement massive election fraud in the provinces of Ilocos Sur, Pampanga, Camarines Norte, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Eastern Samar, Lanao del Norte, Davao del Sur, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, and Sharif Kabunsuan, and Regions VI, XI, CARAGA, and the ARMM.

Therefore, the Magdalo group asks the following men in uniform - Col. Ortiz, PA; Lt. Col. Baclayon, PAF; Capt. Lopez, PA; Gen. Romeo Tolentino; Major Musngi, CG PA; Major Masa, CG PA; Major Nicholas, ISG; Major Sison, G2/ISG; Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, AFP chief of staff; Lt. Col Gapay, Army; Col. Ardo; Col. Lucero, CS AFP; Gen. Villanueva; Lt. Col Lactao, CS AFP; Lt. Gen. Roy Kyamko, PTF Anti Environment Crimes; Brig. Gen Quevedo; Rear Adm. Ernesto De Leon; Maj. Gen. Arugay, 9th Div Cmdr.; Col. Pangilinan, Deputy Chief, ISAFP; Col. Segovia Brigade Cmdr, Laguna; Col. Gupana, AFP CIGg; Alleged Garci wiretappers Col. Sumaylo, Col. Capuyan, Maj. Teofilo, Lt. SG Sage; DND Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane; Brig. Gen. Nelson Allaga, Philippine Marines acting commandant; Brig. Gen. Nehemias Pajarito; Maj. Gen. Gabriel Habacon; Marine Lt. Col. Fred Pelonia; Marine Lt. Col. Elmer Estopin; Army Col. Rey Ardo; Army Col. Aminkandra Undug; Lt. Col. Pereno; and Capt. Perez: Are you all right, sir?

Through Hell Or High Water

2007-05-11T18:10:00.000+08:00

Red Devils' Asia Tour To Push Through

English Premiership champions Manchester United are expected to push through with their planned visit to South Korea, Japan, and China in July despite difficulties in finalizing the final leg of the team's Asian tour in Malaysia.

ProEvents Management Ltd. chairman Paul Kam said the Red Devils' pre-season friendlies with the K-League's FC Seoul, the J-League's Urawa Red Diamonds, and the Chinese Super League's Shenzhen FC will be held as scheduled.

Asian Football Confederation (AFC) chairman Mohammed bin Hammam earlier pressured the Football Association of Malaysia to cancel the Red Devils' visit as it coincides with the Asian Coup tournament. He accused United of competing with the AFC for financial earnings in the region.

Meanwhile, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi defied the AFC by expressing support for United's match against the country's national XI.

"We want the team to come to Malaysia. This is the desire of the government," he stressed. Abdullah reiterated that the visit would commemorate the country's 50th anniversary of independence from Britain.

Towelhead Syndrome Anonymous

2007-05-07T21:45:00.000+08:00

The following statement comes from the head of a football association that picked horrendously unknown players from local clubs in Qatar and Saudi Arabia as Asian Footballers of the Year ahead of top-caliber players such as Celtic's Shunsuke Nakamura, Manchester United's Park Ji-sung, and Bayern Munich's Ali Karimi for two straight years because of the simple reason that they could not attend the awarding ceremonies as they have matches in Europe. I have toned down the story but you should listen to his other rant criticizing European football's "colonial" influence.

Manchester United Tour Riles Asian Football Boss
Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam has expressed fears that Manchester United's Asian Tour this year might affect the Asian Cup competition.

"The Manchester United tour dates clash with the AFC Asian Cup and we don't want any competitions to be promoted or organized during the month of July," he said.

The Red Devils will hold friendlies with the Malaysia XI and professional teams from the K-League, the J-League, and the Chinese Super League in late July.

However, Football Association of Malaysia president Tengku Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah has assured that the English Premiership champions' tour will not clash with the Asian Cup tournament.

"The Manchester United tour is part of Visit Malaysia Year and Malaysia's 50th year of independence," he explained.

Makati Midsummer

2007-05-06T14:14:00.000+08:00

The city of Makati on a cloudy, lazy, midsummer's day.

Laboring Over Wages

2007-05-01T17:34:00.000+08:00

Chief executive officers (CEOs) of South Korean companies are the highest earners in the Asia-Pacific, an international survey has revealed.

The study, undertaken by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, said that CEOs in the country receive an annual base salary of USD 384,123.

The amount reaches USD 568,502 if bonuses and other cash benefits are added. Hong Kong chief executives placed second in the survey while Indians CEOs occupied the bottom rank.

Filipino CEOs fared near the bottom, receiving a base annual salary of about USD 44,000 to USD 51,000.

Indonesian CEOs receive twice as much as their Filipino counterparts, according to the survey, which covered 237 companies in Asia-Pacific region.

Meanwhile, Ibon Foundation said that average wage levels in the Philippines posted their lowest increase under the watch of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Arroyo supportedly only the increase of a total of a little over a dollar (PHP 50) in salary hikes since she assumed power in January 2001.

The National Wages and Productivity Commission said that a family of six needs a minimum of USD 15 (PHP 715) daily in order to survive. The amount is more than twice the current daily minimum wage of USD 7.38 (PHP 350) in Metro Manila.

My Favorite Keyboard Command

2007-04-30T21:55:00.000+08:00

A self-explanatory Windows keyboard command.

The Great Language Debate

2007-04-27T16:33:00.000+08:00

The Philippine government's pursuit of English as the primary mode of instruction in schools can be attributed to its direction of molding a workforce for the global economy.

The more English-proficient overseas Filipino workers the government can send out and the larger number of call center agents that universities can churn out, the better it would be for an economy driven by human capital.

As in the case of every misplaced priority, the policy runs counter to research studies showing that children, whose early education is in the language of their home, tend to do better in the later years of their education. (Thomas and Collier, George Mason University, 1997)

It also completely ignores a World Bank study (Dutcher and Tucker, 1994) that says:

-Individuals most easily develop literacy skills in a familiar language.

- Individuals most easily develop cognitive skills and master content material when they are taught in a familiar language.

- Cognitive/academic language skills, once developed, and content subject material, once acquired, transfer readily from one language to another.

- The best predictor of cognitive/academic language development in a second language is the level of development of cognitive/academic language proficiency in the first language.

- If the goal is to help the student ultimately develop the highest possible degree of content mastery and second language proficiency, time spent instructing the child in a familiar language is a wise investment.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization believes that it is the basic right of a child to be taught in his or her mother tongue.

Beyond the preachy rhetorics, other studies on bilingual and multi-lingual methods of education across the world also show that students do better in school if they are taught in their mother tongue instead of an English-only medium of instruction.

If there is indeed a need for students to learn English, University of Southern California's Stephen Krashen (1999) believes that giving a child good education in the primary language allows English input to be more comprehensible.

Why is Malacañang then so petulant on insisting an English-homogenized medium of instruction in schools?

Update: Retired Supreme Court justice Isagani Cruz led a group of educators who filed a case before the High Court today to nullify a Malacañang executive order and subsequent Department of Education rules and regulations requiring the use of English as the principal medium of instruction in schools.

Lost In Translation

2007-04-26T21:11:00.000+08:00

Manuel L. Quezon III, Dean Jorge Bocobo, U.P. professor Randy David, and Conrado De Quiros are engaged in a debate on the use of either Filipino or English as the standard medium of instruction in Philippine schools.

What I find rather absurd is that the inquirer.net can't even distinguish the differences between languages and dialects.

A bilingual, or even a multi-lingual medium of education (including a child's native tongue partnered with Filipino and English) remains the most viable solution, as Philippine communities remain linguistically diverse.

If it should pacify our language guerreros, American educators and civil rights activists have been pushing for a bilingual and non-homogeneous medium of education in U.S. schools for decades.

Suprised?

Mikaela's Graduation Speech

2007-04-26T20:33:00.000+08:00

Here's the graduation speech of 16-year-old University of the Philippines BS Physics summa cum laude Mikaela Irene Fudolig on April 22. It reminds of Ricky Lee's parable in his classic scriptwriting manual A Trip To Quiapo:

Take not the road less traveled

One of the things that strike me as being very “UP Diliman” is the way UPD students can’t seem to stay on the pavement. From every street corner that bounds an unpaved piece of land, one will espy a narrow trail that cuts the corner, or leads from it. Every lawn around the buildings sports at least one of these paths, starting from a point nearest to the IKOT stop and ending at the nearest entry to the building. The trails are beaten on the grass by many pairs of feet wanting to save a fraction of a meter of traveling, no matter that doing so will exact some cost to the shoes, or, to the ubiquitous slippers, especially when the trails are new.

What do these paths say about us, UP students?

One could say that the UP student is enamored with Mathematics and Pythagoras, hence these triangles formed by the pavement and the path. Many among you would disagree.

Others could say that the UP student is naturally countercultural. And the refusal to use the pavement is just one of the myriads of ways to show his defiance of the order of things. This time, many would agree.

Still, others will say that the UP student is the model of today’s youth: they want everything easier, faster, now. The walkable paths appeal to them because they get to their destination faster, and presumably, with less effort. Now that is only partly true, and totally unfair.

These trails weren’t always walkable. No doubt they started as patches of grass, perhaps overgrown. Those who first walked them must have soiled their shoes, stubbed their toes, or had insects biting their legs, all in the immovable belief that the nearest distance between two points is a straight line. They might even have seen snakes cross their paths. But the soiled footwear, sore toes, and itchy legs started to conquer the grass. Other people, seeing the yet faint trail, followed. And as more and more walked the path, the grass gave in and stopped growing altogether, making the path more and more visible, more and more walkable.

The persistence of the paths pays tribute to those UP students who walked them first – the pioneers of the unbeaten tracks: the defiant and curious few who refuse the familiar and comfortable; the out-of-the-box thinkers who solve problems instead of fretting about them; the brave who dare do things differently, and open new opportunities to those who follow.

They say how one behaved in the past would determine how he behaves in the future. And as we leave the University, temporarily or for good, let us call on the pioneering, defiant, and brave spirit that built the paths to guide us in this next phase of our life.

We have been warned time and again. Our new world that they call “adulthood” is one that’s full of compromises, where success is determined more by the ability to belong than by the ability to think, where it is much easier to do as everyone else does. Daily we are bombarded with so much news of despair about the state of our nation, and the apparent, perverse sense of satisfaction our politicians get from vilifying our state of affairs. It is fashionable to migrate to other countries to work in deceptively high-paying jobs like nursing and teaching, forgetting that even at their favored work destinations, nurses and teachers are some of the lowest paid professionals. The lure of high and immediate monetary benefits in some low-end outsourcing jobs has drawn even some of the brightest UP students away from both industry and university teaching to which they would have been better suited.

Like the sidewalks and pavement, these paths are the easiest to take.

But, like the sidewalks and pavement, these paths take longer to traverse, just as individual successes do not always make for national progress. The unceasing critic could get elected, but not get the job done. The immigrant could get his visa, but disappear from our brainpower pool. The highly paid employee would be underutilized for his skills, and pine to get the job he truly wants, but is now out of his reach. And the country, and we, are poorer because of these.

Today, the nation needs brave, defiant pioneers to reverse our nation’s slide to despair. Today, we must call upon the spirit that beat the tracks. Today, we must present an alternative way of doing things.

Do NOT just take courage, for courage is not enough. Instead, be BRAVE! It will take bravery to go against popular wisdom, against the clichéd expectations of family and friends. It will take bravery to gamble your future by staying in the country and try to make a prosperous life here. It might help if for a start, we try to see why our Korean friends are flocking to our country. Why, as many of us line up for immigrant visas in various embassies, they get themselves naturalized and settle here. Do they know something we don’t?

Do NOT just be strong in your convictions, for strength is not enough. Instead, DEFY the pressure to lead a comfortable, but middling life. Let us lead this country from the despair of mediocrity. Let us not seek to do well, but strive to EXCEL in everything that we do. This, so others will see us as a nation of brains of the highest quality, not just of brawn that could be had for cheap.

Take NOT the road less traveled. Rather, MAKE new roads, BLAZE new trails, FIND new routes to your dreams. Unlike the track-beaters in campus who see where they’re going, we may not know how far we can go. But if we are brave, defiant searchers of excellence, we will go far. Explore possibilities, that others may get a similar chance. I have tried it myself. And I’m speaking to you now.

But talk is cheap, they say. And so I put my money where my mouth is. Today, I place myself in the service of the University, if it will have me. I would like to teach, to share knowledge, and perhaps to be an example to new UP students in thinking and striving beyond the limits of the possible. This may only be a small disturbance in the grass. But I hope you’ll come with me, and trample a new path.

Good evening, everyone.

Malaysia's Online Unrest

2007-04-26T18:08:00.000+08:00

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has stood up to defend bloggers critical of the federal government.

He said that a news blackout imposed on sensitive issues has encouraged Malaysians to turn to blogs for their information needs.

"If you suppress news, alternate news will be given credence. Attempts to control bloggers are bound to fail," he said at a media forum at the Perdana Leadership Foundation.

The federal government earlier launched an unofficial crackdown on bloggers critical of corrupt practices under the administration of current Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

The renegade bloggers include former journalists and Mahathir's daughter, Datin Paduka Marina.

Tyranny Of The Masses?

2007-04-25T08:21:00.000+08:00

SELF-proclaimed social theorist Manuel "benign0" Gallego III proposes a new voting system designed to temper the “tyranny of the masses”.

To wit, he proposes:

- college degree holder up – 1 whole vote

- 2 year associate degree holder – 1/2 of a vote

- high school graduate – 1/4 of a vote

- elementary level – 1/10th of a vote

Gallego claims:

"Members of the Philippine Legislature are expected to be reserved, at the very least, about the Proposed Voting System. After all, it is the majority of their constituents today (i.e., the Uneducated) whose votes will be diminished under the Proposed Voting System. However, the Philippine Legislature also has a higher calling, which is to exercise foresight and leadership for the betterment of the Nation—even if the manifestation of such leadership may be unpopular with the Uneducated majority."

MIT Lingistics Prof. Noam Chomsky, in Media Control, explains quite clearly why some “intellectuals” often air a need to “recreate democracy.”

One concept of democracy has it that a democratic society is one in which the public has the means to participate in some meaningful way in the management of their own affairs and the means of information are open and free.

An alternative concept is spectator democracy – wherein the public must be barred from managing of their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled. That may sound like an odd conception of democracy, but it is the prevailing conception.

Gallego isn’t exactly original. Neoconservative Walter Lippman – the dean of American journalists – once put forth the thesis that “no amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make democracy out of an illiterate people.”

Lippman did not end there.

He has argued for he called a “revolution in the art of democracy,” that could be used to “manufacture consent,” that is, to bring about agreement on the part of the public for things that they didn’t want by the new techniques of propaganda.

Lippman argued that in a properly-functioning democracy there are classes of citizens. There is first of all the class of citizens who have to take some active role in running general affairs. That’s the specialized class.

They are the people who analyze, execute, make decisions, and run things in the political, economic, and ideological systems. That’s a small percentage of the population.

Those others, who are out of the small group, the big majority of the population, they are what lippman called “the bewildered herd.”

We have to protect ourselves from the trampling and rage of the bewildered herd, he once said.

So Lippman believes a need to tame the bewildered herd, and that something is this new revolution in the art of democracy: the “manufacture of consent.”

The people with real power are the ones who own the society, which is a pretty narrow group. If the specialized class can come along and say, I can serve your interests, then they’ll be part of the executive group. you’ve got to keep that quiet.

That means they have to have instilled in them the beliefs and doctrines that will serve the interests of private power. Unless they can master that skill, they’re not part of the specialized class. They have to be deeply indoctrinated in the values and interests of private power and the state-corporate nexus that represents it. If they can get through that, then they can be part of the specialized class. The rest of the bewildered herd just have to be basically distracted. Turn their attention to something else.

In totalitarian states, it’s easy. You just hold a bludgeon over their heads, and if they get out of line you smash them over the head. but as society has become more free and democratic, you lose that capacity.

Nowadays, the bludgeon has been replaced by spin doctors and cheesy advertisements urging us to plant a veggie in the Senate.

Bobby's Mindanao Redux

2007-04-23T21:44:00.000+08:00

Sunset at Arakan Valley, North Cotabato. Visit journalist Bobby Timonera's Mindanao.

Those Left Behind

2007-04-23T21:25:00.000+08:00

Children, widows of slain journalists join summer workshop

Families of slain Filipino journalists joined a three-day workshop of sharing, healing and learning organized by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) held at the Subic Bay Freeport last April 21 and 22.

The 2007 Saranggola Summer workshop, consisting of field trips and psychosocial sessions, was joined by over 40 children and wives and a mother of journalists slain from 1987 onwards. All are beneficiaries of a scholarship program managed by the NUJP, jointly with the British-based Bevil Mabey Study Foundation and the Makati-based Kasangga sa Kaunlaran Inc.

The workshop culminated in a lunch with the scholarship sponsors and members of the media.

British ambassador Peter Beckingham, in a message to the participants, said that "my heart, and that of everyone in the embassy, goes out to the relatives, especially the spouses and children, of journalists killed in the Philippines. He added that "the appalling loss of life, and the suffering which follows, is something no one should have to endure."

More inspiring words were shared by NUJP vice general-secretary Nonoy Espina, Mabey and Johnson Philippines General Manager David Watson and Kasangga president Jose Tumbokon.

Most participants expressed their appreciation for the activity. "I made new friends and they laugh at my jokes," said John Kelvin Binungcal, 12-year old son of Remate correspondent Romy Binungcal, killed in Bataan in 2004.

"It made me even even more determined to pursue journalism as a career," said Princess Mae Palo, 18-year-old daughter of radio broadcaster Leo Palo, killed in Davao in 1987.

"Now I realize that I am not alone," said Cecil Ramos, mother of two children and widow of reporter Robert Ramos who was killed in November 2005.

Several of the widows demanded that the government authorities move decisively to investigate and prosecute the killings of journalists.

"The government has to act. We don't want anymore journalists killed," said Elvie Sanchez, widow of reporter Romeo Sanchez, killed in Baguio City in 2005.

This is the second Saranggola summer workshop held by the NUJP for the beneficiaries of its scholarship program, with main sponsor as the Bevil Mabey Study Foundation. This year's activity was hosted by the NUJP chapter in Subic and Olongapo. The Children's Rehabilitation Center, a non-government agency accredited with the Department of Social Welfare and Administration, prepared the modules and facilitated the workshops.

Dialects And Languages

2007-04-23T17:14:00.000+08:00

Inquirer.net says:

"Filipino scholar translates Koran into Maguindanaoan dialect"

Pray tell, a dialect of what language?

It may be dismissed as a simple editorial error of fact because Maguindanaoan is a language and is not "just" a dialect.

However, the problem here is that ethnocentric Tagalogs and those taught under its aegis believe that the country's lone languages are Tagalog and Filipino and the rest are dialects.

A reality check. There are over 170 languages in the Philippines belonging to the Austronesian language family.

Cebuano is a language. Ditto with Ilokano, Hiligaynon, Bikol, Waray-Waray, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Maranao, Kinaray-a, Tausug, and yes, Maguindanaoan.

A dialect is a regional variant of a language. If you wish to speak of dialects, you can refer to the dialects of standard (Manila) Tagalog spoken in Batangas, Tayabas, Marinduque, Nueva Ecija, and Bulacan.

A Summa Cum Laude Grad At 16

2007-04-22T21:05:00.000+08:00

A 16-year-old girl will graduate summa cum laude with a Physics degree in the Philippines' premier university today.

Mikaela Irene Fudolig - who had gotten tired of answering the question "Ilang taon ka na? (How old are you?)" when she was still in college - will also be given the Best Bachelor of Science in Physics Student award and the Dean's Medallion for Excellence in Undergraduate Studies.

She entered college when she was just 11 years old. Fudolig was part of an experimental government program being hosted by the University of the Philippines. University officials said the program kept her away from the media spotlight.

Aside from gaining her Bachelor of Science in Physics diploma, Fudolig also completed two courses in music and took language lessons.

Her professor, Dr. Jose Perico Esguerra, enrolled at the U.P. College of Science when he was just 13.

Fudolig also plans to teach at the university while taking up her master's degree at the same time.

*Meanwhile, other twentysomething graduates plan to work in the U.S. or gain employment in call centers.

Not Your Usual Suspect

2007-04-20T17:16:00.000+08:00

ABS-CBN provides an example of redundancy (or how to get away with lexical murder):

"Superintendent Joseph Adnol, spokesman of the Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR) police office, said policemen in Banaue municipality are closely monitoring the suspected location of the suspect."

Can you count how many times the word "suspect" is used in the story?

Man U Vs. AC Milan

2007-04-19T23:14:00.000+08:00

My early Wednesday mornings are made of these. ~~I'm looking at a 5-2 aggregate win in favor of the Red Devils.~~

With the way United played against Pompey and Boro, Ferguson's penchance to pick Richardson, and the overrated Ferdinand, Milan will win on a 4-1 aggregate.

Liverpool will win the Champion's League anew and Chelsea will overtake United's slim lead in the Premiership and carve out a Treble - the Carling Cup, the FA Cup, and the Premiership title.

United is choking under the pressure, as usual. A.S. Roma's 7-1 thrashing was a fluke.