blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

Driving along Gil Puyat Avenue a.k.a. Buendia Avenue, I came across a small group of leftist protesters opposed to increased Australian military assistance to the Philippines. One of the protest banners had the title of this blog post. This is an instance of wry irony and humour. There is nothing so antithetical to the Australian ethos as imperialism. Australia was once a colony of Britain and was part of the Empire and was not The Empire. The Brits from the Bondi tourists to the occasional visitor, Her Majesty are still the object of colonial angst. Australians were among the first to die in England's wars. Australia is much as a victim of imperialism as any other colony. The key difference with other colonies is that Terra Australis was colonised by whites (even if it was of the convict kind) and England defined the land as Terra Nullius even if there were people living there for over 40K years! When Britain cast off its colonies in the South Pacific, Australia naturally as a in...

The government of Her Excellency will have no choice but to read the writing on the wall. We are in a transition and our President PhD I think is smart enough to navigate what could be choppier waters for her. The 2007 Philippine midterm elections seems to show the failure of political machineries to deliver guaranteed winnings. The elections showed seems to have brought down the curtain on cinematocracy or celebritocracy, or what we can call government by illusion. Almost all of showbiz candidates lost. The most notable exception is Vilma Santos, who by the way had no longer been an actress but a politician. And as a pollie she has quite delivered to her constituents. Richard Gomez?.... He did fencing, rowing, taekwondo etc didn't win and the electorate saw through all of that. An example that you cannot govern a constituency by the illusion you can knock out foes is the sad tale of Manny Pacquiao. His electorate had tried to warn him beforehand. It does not surprise me why a Cat...

We birders are going to run in the next elections. First we try the partylist route. We call our party "Ang Bird" Our party president is the Great Tit, the treasurer is the Dollarbird and the Secretary is you guessed it The Secretary Bird. Our PRO is the Flowerpecker! Our platform is to make the Philippines a bird friendly place. We will ban slingshots and guns and bird cages. We support the right of citizens to flock together as long as they have the same feathers. Our youth wing is called "Ang maliit na Bird" We will support Pied Trillanes if he runs for Prez !

Geography The casting of ballots ended at 3:00 PM and now the antiquated way of counting the votes begin. Manolo Quezon blogs about the geography of cheating and electoral fraud. When I was enrolled in some higher statistics courses at the UP School of Statistics, I was enrolled in a probability course and the professor required us to listen to a lecture on vote irregularities and the probability of that happening. It was Gloria's time to be elected in her own right as queen regnant and not just as a heir to the throne who took over under constitutionally questionable circumstances. But as history unfolded Gloria Regina's crown of winning votes has "Hello Garci" written over it. Filipino citizens everywhere until this election are not convinced that she was truly elected as President. Thus the geography of cheating and probability of that happening was interesting to put it mildly. Yes there were areas that the probability of cheating was highest. But those were in...

Sometimes good intentions turn awry. The 1987 Philippine Constitution instituted the party list system to give chances for marginalized sectors to be represented in Congress. But years later, it seems that it has neither empowered the marginalized but gave a non-marginalized a cheap way to get elected! While the Left have always won their seats, without a wider (geographical) constituency they are condemned forever to say their time worn cliches in Congress. I don't know if the Leftists read their history. Of course they want to gain power, but they will never do that as a Party List party. If Weimar Germany had a party list system and the National Socialists limited themselves to that forum, it is unlikely that they would have seized power. Hitler was more sophisticated. He gained power through a parliamentary majority and Hindenburg had no choice but to appoint him as Chancellor. I am not espousing Nazi ideology. In fact Nazism has a lot of lessons to teach us. We should not all...

While Helen Mirren may have been able to essay her role and win an Oscar to boot, the real life role of Her Majesty Elizabeth II is definitely a hard one. After all there isn't any curtain closers and she can't get off the stage. It is hard to be a constitutional monarch. She can't express her private opinions except to her family, or perhaps to her Prime Minister and of course to her Royal Diary. There are still quite a few constitutional monarchs around but Elizabeth II is the best admired. She understands the need for reform and updating Britain's institution but she won't compromise her identity. While her relations in Scandinavia may have taken riding on bicycles, she still rides her limos and the occasional carriage when her duties require it. While she has done away with the royal jet (flying to the US to meet the Bush on a chartered BA jet), she makes sure that she represents her nation well. So when she met the President of the United States on the White Ho...

Manila, The Philippines I saw and heard the much talked about "gago" campaign ditty while jet lagged. I know politics involves muckraking but this takes the cake. In a democracy, the electorate shouldn't be taken for idiots. We know what this campaign ad will come to. The ditty has some catchy lyrics Gago, gago ang oposisyon Ang lider ay nagnakaw kaya nakakulong The opposition are all idiots, idiots Its leader did steal and that's why he's in jail. There is such a law called Karma for which one Indian religious scholar explained that the Law is like a credit card, it bills with much interest. Fate has the last laugh. Who knows those libeled now may be singing. Gago, gago ang _________. Ang lider nandaya kaya makukulong Dear blog readers please fill in the blank.

Farewell Louisiana. I hope to be able come back and visit. There is probably no state in the whole of the United States where I felt almost completely at home. The hospitality of your resilient people, and their warmth are what makes you weather the storms. Of course I'll miss everything Southern. But it is likely we'll meet again sometime. English again.... Now that I am in Memphis airport, Tennessee I just read about the trade of barbs between Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay and Senator Lito Lapid. And the whole thing is about English competency. Binay says that being poor isn't an excuse for not being able to express oneself. Binay is may be correct. Lapid belongs to the 'silent committee" in the Senate. Well, a senator can express anything in the senate in any language! Have we heard anything from Lito Lapid? We'll if he can't say much in the Senate. I don't think he can say much in Filipino.

What's my Sunday routine? I wake up a bit late at 7:30 AM After eating brekkie and the requisite glass of orange juice, I walk about a 2.64 km route (a mile!) to CTK (Christ the King Catholic Church) which is inside campus. It takes me about 20 minutes to travel the distance by foot. On the way, I get to see the spring flowers. But in winter, I got to see the bare trees. Mass On my last Sunday here, the Mass was for vocations. Appropriately, the Mass caps the academic year. Exams are due to be held and those who are candidates for graduation are busy wrapping up their school work. I know a few of these students. Also appropriately, the Mass caps the process of receiving new Catholics into the Church. We followed the process as a congregation, from the time the candidates were presented and when they were dismissed as catechumens. Later they were baptized and confirmed and then received communion. Some of the new Catholics decided to be one as adults. They answered a call. The homi...

The latest salvo in the Philippine language wars was fired early this week when a group of academics and cultural leaders petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent the President from implementing her executive order mandating English as a medium of instruction in science and math. The petitioners believe that this is unconstitutional. Manolo Quezon has given the sides why it is un(constitutional). Nonetheless Quezon's post has garnered more than a hundred responses. Obviously for the lively respondent blogger, the question of whether we should dump English or not was not the issue. The issue is whether school children should use Filipino to learn the basics of science and math, or to use English. Scientific studies in psychology, basic education and science education seem to suggest that numeracy and scientific thinking is more effective in the first language of the speaker. Only when the child has attained a more mature level of cognitive skills can English be introduced. In man...

Every year, on New Year's Day Lake Superior State University comes out with a list of words that should forever be "banished" from the English language. As the university would have it these words are banished for "for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness" Since I arrived in the US in December when I read the papers, I perused over the 2007 list. Some of the words are "Gitmo" combined celebrity names like "Brangelina" "Now playing in Theaters" "Awesome" "Undocumented alien" and my pet peeve "Ask your doctor" Well, Gitmo is army slang for "Guantanamo". During the Cold War, hearing the word "Gitmo" probably irritated only GIs assigned to that hardship post. Now civilians who are against George W Bush's policies are irritated too. I need not comment on "Brangelina" but "Now Playing in Theaters" was the subject of a comment from a lady "How often are...

U of Michigan Psychology Prof Richard Nisbett in 2003 wrote an intriguing book entitled "The Geography of Thought". This book says that the differences between Asians and Westerners are not mere cultural but cognitive. In short Asians and Westerners view the world differently due to different ecologies, culture and philosophy. In other words Asians and Westerners think differently. The conventional wisdom in psychology is that all people think the same, we can peel the cultural onion to find that at the center things are the same whether you are Japanese or German. Looks like Nisbett has cast doubt on this paradigm. He lists the probable reasons why Chinese excel in algebra and arithmetics but bomb out in geometry. (The first Jesuits in China noted that the Chinese had not much use for geometry (aside from surveying) as compared to the Greeks who used it to derive aesthetic principles). He also says that Asians find it so hard to remove an object from its context. The reverse...

The Philippine Daily Inquirer's on-line presence has become a veritable forum for interaction through its blogs. Mikaela On the science blog, a discussion was about the a 2007 physics graduate of the University of the Philippines, Mikaela Irene D. Fudolig. Physics graduates are not really newsworthy, but Mikaela is just 16 (an age when most UP students are freshies), a young woman, and best of all Summa Cum Laude. She enrolled in the university via a special program that recognizes giftedness. She had no high school diploma and did not take the UP College Admissions Test required of all aspiring freshies. She isn't the first. When I was a freshie in 1984, one of my fellow freshies was 12 yr old Perry Esguerra, a physics major. He is now a PhD in physics. The reactions range from unbelievability, to puzzlement, to the usual "honor grads don't know how the real world is". Many commented about her age (understandable) but many commented about whether she got assist...

For years the planet was just considered an inanimate rock on which we live. In fact it once was considered flat until people began traveling longer distances over the ocean, when it became apparent that it was round, more accurately an oblate spheroid. Now people think the planet is alive and James Lovelock has given her a name, Gaia that allows people to identify with her more easily. But now that we realize Gaia is alive, it is becoming very apparent the she is ill with a rising temperature. Climatologists have estimated that the planet's temperature has risen by 0.6 C (a conservative estimate) to as much as 0.75 C in the last 150 years. Approximately 0.2-0.3 C rise happened within the last 25 years (when advanced technology for remote sensing satellites were first developed). So when I was in high school, and punk rock was the craze, the world was a cooler place and I was much younger too. In some places, the temperature rise is even much greater than the global average. PAGASA...

I learned about the news that an American Peace Corps volunteer, Julia Campbell was missing after I returned to Baton Rouge from a spring break trip to snowy Cleveland right after Easter. The confirmation that she was dead came in the same week when 32 students and professors were massacred at Virginia Tech. The circumstances of their deaths are different but in some aspects the same. Their deaths were senseless and we are are left with the painful and unanswerable question "What more good could they have done, had they lived?" In my career, I have worked with ex-Peace Corps people, as well as ex-Australian Volunteers (the Aussie counterpart of the US Peace Corps) on matters relating to marine conservation. Volunteerism is an ethos that continues in these people long after their official volunteer days were over. While some people may consider these programs as "imperialist" and that the volunteers are really spies (an unfounded stereotype), reading Julia's b...

American universities have always been seen by the public as safe havens of free speech and tolerance. At times, expression within campus is somewhat dissonant from that outside of the university to the extent that townspeople at times don't get what the fuss is all about. Universities are not immune to senseless violence. The deadly shooting of 32 students and their professors at Virginia Tech has completely shaken every campus and town across the nation, if not all over the world. Students have been shot dead on campus such as what happened at Kent State in Ohio at the height of the Vietnam War protest. The fact that this happened on a college campus and not on a city street is what shocked America. Now everyone needs to take a close look at what really went wrong in the mind of 23 year old English major Cho Seung-Hui. While the gun control debate is expected to flare up, I hope the debate goes beyond guns. Issues like student safety on campus is of highest importance. How wil...

The senseless shooting that led to the death of 32 Virginia Tech students yesterday has reopened the usual debates that follow these tragic events. Gun control, race, immigration and social isolation are major concerns of American society. The alleged shooter Cho Seung-Hui, a 23 year old English major and Korean permanent resident was described as a loner, with much angst and anger who wrote "disturbing" plays. In fact some of his classmates suspected that he would eventually follow the path of the Columbine high school shooters in 1998. One of Cho's creative writing professors was concerned enough to approach university police and counseling. Nothing ever came out from this. College professors are usually advised to refer students with psychological problems to counseling. However a prof cannot drag a student to the counseling center. A student has to go on his/her own volition. Thus looking for the reasons why Cho did this horrible act which also led to his suicide is ...

With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel! Let us be brothers and travel this country together I ‘ve got the US Constitution here in my bag So we bought some McDonalds And my friend a magazine And we walked off to worship America Crikey! I said as we boarded the plane in New Orleans Louisiana seems like a dream to me now It took me 12 hours to standby for flights into the capital I’ve come to worship America Laughing in the lounge playing games with the colored faces He said the Arab looking man was really Osama Bin Laden I said be careful you may become racially profiled! Toss me an orange there's one in my carry on I ate the last one two hours ago! So I looked at the scenery, my friend his magazine And the Capitol rose over the suburban fields Crikey! I’m lost I said I don’t know what liberty really means now I’m empty and unfree and I don’t know why Counting the tourists at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial They've all come to look for America A...

The latest news to hit the on-line blurbs is the hostage taking of 26 day care kids and their teachers who were to go to Tagaytay for a field trip. These kids come from a Parola, Tondo Day Care in one of the more poorer districts of Manila. The hostage taker actually runs the day care. Armando Ducat, Jr and an accomplice took the bus they were riding hostage. The two men were armed with an Uzi and grenades. Ducat according to the press has been involved in publicity stunts before. Now one wonders if Ducat was mad His demands about corruption in government and government's neglect of the poor's welfare seem decent enough. In fact I myself have the same demands. But I would never take a bus full of 5-6 yr olds hostage. Obviously an event like this would create international headlines. It was in Latin America where this piece of news really made the region's headlines. What stumped readers all over the world is the reaction of the Pinoy public. The public considers Ducat a s...

The Lithuanian parliament recently refused accreditation to Mr Liutauras Ulevicius who writes a blog about Lithuanian politics. Without accreditation, Mr Ulevicius won't be able to attend press conferences or be able to cover parliament's business. The Parliament says that bloggers don't meet the legal definition of journalists. Mr Ulevicius plans to contest this ruling in court since he believes his right to free expression has been curtailed. This is just one instance by which the law has failed to catch up with the information revolution. Blogs may beat the presses for the news. Blogs may give balanced and timely news and commentary. And anyone can be a blogger. One need not go to journalism school. And this is probably why the Lithuanian parliament won't accredit bloggers. Lithuania's Media Law says "The Media Law describes a journalist as a person who collects, disseminates and provides information to the media, based on a contract with the media, or who...