blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

I am a member of my college's Filipino language committee whose main goal is to promote the use of the National Language. Today the University of the Philippines just concluded the August National language month celebrations with a workshop on what has been done to promote Filipino. Almost all of the UP's colleges in Diliman sent in their progress reports. So far the main efforts were on 1) Translating the administrative and other bureaucratic forms from English to Filipino 2) Coming up with a Filipino language glossary for each discipline 3) Coming up with textbooks on the various Philippine languages. A textbook for elementary Ilocano was unveiled. 4) And coming up with many ways to make translation a less laborious endeavor. Speakers showed their on-line translators, search engines and a translator that makes translation from English to the major Philippine languages a breeze. Another is an on-line GIS of translators for the Philippine languages. Well I found out tha...

Hong Kong residents plan to have a huge indignation rally today on the bungled rescue of a tourist bus in Manila's Luneta park which resulted in the deaths of 8 hostages. This according to my good friend and UP Viasyas history professor Bruce Hall, is not really a cry for justice but to express sorrow cum outrage. Staging rallies like these are one of the few real liberties that HK citizens have. The China-UK treaty that ceded the territory back to Beijing in 1997 guaranteed that the capitalist system be maintained for 50 years. Take note of the word CAPITALIST. Capitalism in order to survive does not need DEMOCRACY. However DEMOCRACY in order to flourish requires CAPITALISM. Hong Kong citizens still cannot elect their Chief Executive (CE) directly. An election committee whose members come from HK's functional constituencies elect the CE who in the end is still a Beijing appointee. Limited direct democracy elects legislators but majority have to be vetted by Beijing. Althou...

In the wake of the hostage taking incident in Manila last August 23 which ended in tragedy, we have noticed things that Filipinos may pass on as humor and others as plain insanity. First of all are the jokes on what SWAT means. It supposed to mean Sorry wala akong training Sugod, wait, atras, takbo among other meanings Nonetheless while we Pinoys may use these as a coping mechanism, other cultures may think it's offensive. None was as offensive as a group of college students taking photos and smiling in front of ill fated bus. And worse the police officers posing for a group shot in front of the same bus! In both instances, they were smiling! These photos are all over the social media sites. The Philippines is now on the map for hostage tourism! It is good that there are still sane voices, almost all (or practically all!) of them came from the Chinese side. Take for example HK gigastar Jackie Chan's remarks which came out as the headline in the print edition of t...

Then Russian President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian Special Forces to use a top secret nerve gas to resolve the Moscow October 2002 Nord Ost theatre hostage crisis. Thrity-nine Chechen Islamist separatists (some of them women with strapped on bombs on their bodies) took hostage more than 700 theatre goers and performers during act 2 of the hit musical "Nord Ost". The separatists demanded that Russia withdraw its armed forces from Chechnya, if not the separatists would start killing hostages. The Russian government sent in negotiators and even allowed the media to interview the chief hostage taker so that his demands will be known. However the media was not allowed to spin the story. The Russians jammed broadcast signals near the theatre. As the demands were unacceptable to the Russians and the separatists refused concessions as being allowed to fly to a third country, President Putin ordered the storming of the theatre at dawn of October 26. The ...

The Philippine Daily Inquirer should be commended for reprinting Senator Benigno Aquino's essay "What's Wrong with the Philippines" for Ninoy Aquino's martyrdom anniversary today. Aquino must be tossin an turnin' in his Manila Memorial Park tomb. For the Presidency of his wife, Corazon is also one answer to his question. The barest summary of Ninoy's question is this. There is an acute need for redistribution and access to education is the major peaceful way this can happen. The Americans may have wanted to mold the Filipinos in their own image and thus their institution of public education which is now remotely being seen as a liberating force, having fallen for crass profiteering. This is also extremely true for the Roman Catholic Church and the schools it operates. Holy Mother Church cannot escape blame here. She must be put in the dock too for the ills of Philippine society and not hide forever from the separation of church and state curtain for which ...

President Barack Hussein Obama was reported by the US media to support the establishment of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, New York City. He cites the religious liberty rights of Americans. The construction of a mosque near Ground Zero [not ON Ground Zero as thought by some] has generated much heated debate. Some Christians have likened this to a conquering Islamic army establishing Mosques as a sign of victory. Surely such imagery does not help a dispassionate discussion of the matter. While the 9/11 attacks were instigated by Islamic militants, this should not be made to disparage the rest of the world's Muslims who sincerely follow the call of their faith to peace. The problem with tacking any denominational religious meaning to the Ground Zero site is that not only Christians were killed there. There were Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, non-believers, believers of smaller faith traditions and Muslims too. No religious tradition can appropriate the site which...

SIYENTISTA NG MASA ! This is the what friends from the media and communication departments of some colleges told me. Thanks to the media, unassuming and inoffensive weatherman Dr Prisco Nilo has become not just a government scientist but the scientist of the masses! Now the tibak profs of the UP College of Science could only dream of this "canonization" on their heads. :-) We have nothing to thank but P-Noy for sacking him and making him a "martyr"! It all started when ABS CBN described his dwelling as "payak" or poor and humble. This is quite archaic Tagalog and is rarely used outside the context of priestly sermons and the St Luke's Gospel narrative during the Christmas Eve Mass. Ang sabsaban ni Jesus ay payak! Remember? Cardinal Dency Rosales of Manila is fond of using the word. My Mom who is a true blue Tagala says that the word means more than poor but downtrodden and oppressed like how Joseph and Mary were by Herod and the Romans. And since s...

The Philippine science community is surely pissed off by the decision of President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino's decision to relieve Dr Prisco Nilo of his directorship of PAGASA. Mr Aquino axed Dr Nilo for wrongly forecasting tropical storm Basyang's path. However, Mother Nature cannot be made to obey the bureaucracy nor political whim. She has no accountability! This is something that Mr Aquino [or at least his science advisors] never got the wind about. [Pun intended!] Weather forecasting is simply that a forecast. It is subject to uncertainty. Weather and climate information are provided by weather stations and the hundreds of ships and planes that ply the world's trade routes. The information is included in forecast models and synoptic models. The book shown in the photo is written in English that is geared for grade 6 -7 students and tell how meteorologists do their science. It was written in the days before global warming and yet the authors hinted then it WILL...

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has publicly expressed its desire to bring back the ROTC as a required college subject for males. Well I don't agree. It should be a required subject for females also! :-) Seriously, I don't agree with the proposal making ROTC mandatory at all. This for the following three reasons. 1) The national security environment has changed . The Republic has different threats to its security as compared to that 40 years ago. (My example to fellow ROTC alums is that before our "enemy" were the Commies across the China Sea now it is natural and man made disasters give or take a few terrorists!) 2) The AFP will have to have a more responsive training strategy and program for citizen soldiers given this new security environment. 3) The AFP is ILL EQUIPPED to train an effective citizen army more so with ROTC cadets that serve because they are required to do so. Making ROTC mandatory defeats the whole purpose of having an effective and re...

The allegation that a justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines plagiarized articles published in legal journals is very serious matter not just for the court but for Filipino society as well. Plagiarism is simply closely imitating (copying) ideas of others and passing them as your own without due reference to the author. In academe, this is considered as The Sin as it represents dishonesty of the highest degree. Students, professors and researchers caught doing so face expulsion or termination of employment. In journalism, it is considered as a breach of journalist's ethics and may warrant a suspension and dismissal from the media outfit. The University of the Philippines in Diliman (UP) proposes in its code of student conduct penalties for plagiarism. For the first offense, suspension for a semester and for the second expulsion. These penalties are stiffer than previous ones when the length of the penalty of suspension was determined by the student disciplinary tribunal....