blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

Senator Antonio Trillanes and his Magdalo group's antics at the Manila Penininsula Hotel deserves condemnation. As does the panicky reaction of the Arroyo government that again reveals its tendency to tryst with fascism. Trillanes and company took over the hotel and had a sit in with a few weapons and demanded the Queen to abdicate from the palace. Of course our Glorious Queen wants to reign till 2010 and she won't do an Estrada and cross the political Styx . Trillanes and company may have been desperate to get their grievances across but to resort to a stunt like this can make one laugh or weep. We laugh because when asked by the media we get vacuous answers. Like General Lim's vacuous "lilitaw and papalit" (the leader will appear) when asked about who will succeed our Queen if she gets dethroned! Where will the vaunted Leader come from? From God in heaven?, Ex Nihilo? Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh must be roiling in laughter in Socialist Revolutionary Heaven! Perh...

For years or decades even wags have made fun of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) acronym. The parodies started really with GMA Channel 7 weatherman Amado Pineda's way of making the forecast in the late 1970s and Amanda Pineda (played by Tessie Tomas) was born in the comedy show Champoy a few years after. Incidentally, Tomas' Amanda Pineda character launched her career into the comedy galaxy. People always have said that PAGASA is really "walang PAGASA" (no hope) since the weather predictions come after the fact. The joke was or is or will be rain is forecast after the rain has fallen. But that was before the age of human induced climate change! But recently PAGASA's predictions have no longer sounded funny. Typhoon Mina (Mitag) was forecast to hit southern Luzon but days earlier international forecasts predicted that the howler will pass over northern Luzon. Apparently the storm did pass over northern Luzo...

Manila, Philippines - Busy areas of the city went underwater because of a steady rain due to a cold front. One of the worst hit are roads leading to the airport. I wonder how people who need to catch a flight managed. In Meteorology 101 we define a cold front as " the transition zone where a cold air mass is replacing a warmer air mass." Cooler air that wedges below the warm air mass causes that air to rise. This causes precipitation as the front passes. The precipitation is usually not as bad as a monsoon (which is guaranteed to sink Manila) but it seems that even a light steady rain is now able to sink the city under water! This should give our city authorities some pause for thought. In temperate climes the passage of a front is dramatic. The rains come and after a few hours when the front has passed the temperature can drop as much as 10 degrees celsius and bright sunny weather follows. Cold fronts are major rainmakers in these climates. Their effects can be dramatic in...

Fulbright alumni have to be congratulated for hosting the successful "People and the Planet" conference in Washington DC from Nov 1- 4, 2007. The gabfest attracted 300 academics, policymakers and government officials from the sciences, social sciences and to the humanities. All of the participants were Fulbright grantees. Rob Bradley of the World Resources Institute reviewed the science behind climate change science and discussed possible scenarios if mitigation is done or not done. What seems to be clear is that human induced climate change is real. The questions that we have to determine is how severe are the effects and at what time scale this will happen. Answers to such questions are needed for a climate intervention strategy. The USA and China are the number 1 CO2 emitters. Three fourths of all emissions come from industrialized countries with the Philippines now considered as a "moderate emitter".This is some support to Queen Gloriana's assertion that...

The airline magazine is perhaps the sanest thing one can have a hold on in order to endure a 14 hour flight. Inflight movies nowadays are not much better than those on cable TV. And if not for IPods, you will have to endure inflight music selections (you still have to turn the IPod off for takeoffs and landings!). The inflight magazine I read had an interesting article about nostalgia. There was a time in history when people really treated an airplane ride as a social event. And that was as recently as 40 years ago. Perhaps it was a backwash of cruise liner days when taking the slow boat was a social event and one has to be seen. (Those who saw "Titanic" would know what I mean and even when the ship was sinking Mr Guggenheim had to look his best!) People really dressed up for flight. The men were impeccable in their three piece suits and women wore their best jewels and pearls. The whole aircraft cabin was a smoking lounge. The meals were served in china with real silverware!...

Washington DC- I'm in the Imperial Capital for the People and Planet conference. This necessitated a trip through US Customs and Border Protection before one is admitted to the United States. It is understandable that the US would institute increased security measures to counter terrorist threats to its people and government. But it has to do this without scaring away visitors who contribute a huge chunk of tourism revenues. There was a time when Japanese and other tourists from "visa waiver countries" (nations who are economically advanced and allied to the USA) are waved through US immigration without much questions. Now each and every visitor is asked questions. This slows down going through immigration and customs. If the United States were totally freaked out by foreign threats to its security, it could have followed Tokugawa Japan's example and shut off the country from the outside. But that is not possible given the open democratic tradition of the country. Thu...

The executive clemency given to convicted plunderer former Philippines President Erap Estrada has had op ed and blog writers airing their opinions. The grant of pardon is a prerogrative of the Sovereign as the fount of mercy. Kings and Queens have used this right rather sparingly. In a republic the people is sovereign but they are represented by the President who is supposed to represent the will of the people. Obviously our own Gloriana being the Queen of the State of the Nation got her cue from the First Gloriana who defeated the Armada, and is known as the Virgin Queen, who was never insecure (having inherited Henry VIII's bravado and good pragmatic sense) and gave pardons to her subjects but not to her treasonous lover, the Earl of Essex. While the nobles expected Gloriana to pardon Essex, she stiffened her resolved and signed his death warrant! Gloriana wanted to show to her subjects that she was a wise ruler as she faced the end of her reign. The Queen's reign ends with...

Guimaras, the island province in the central Philippines is an image of the perfect holiday spot. The massive oil spill in Guimaras province happened more than a year ago. While government agencies have declared the area already clean. The truth is what seems to be a recovered ecosystem is only on the surface. We circumnavigated the island's coastline on foot to see what has happened since then. Oil residues are still on the beach. Some of the Mangroves remain defoilated In the year since the spill, tourism, people's fishing livelihoods as well as the whole island economy has been affected. The black stuff on the sand are actually remains of oil residues that have percolated through the coral sand and remains in the unoxygenated layers of sediment

Iloilo City - I am in Iloilo for the 9th National meeting of the Philippine Association of Marine Science. So much has changed in this friendly city since the last time I was here about ten years ago. There are more buildings, malls and roadworks are everywhere and of course the traffic jams but the Ilonggo charm is still there. The province boasts of the first world class Iloilo International Airport in Santa Barbara town about 1.5 hours from the city center. The Iloilo airport is probably the most efficient airport in the whole Philippines. One can be out of the plane and onto ground transport in 15 minutes or less. It puts the Manila airport to shame! I felt that I landed in Cairns International in Australia. The Iloilo airport looks like the Australian one. But it seems that the infrastructure that should support airport business and functions are not yet there. In most airports in the world, if you plan to make changes to your flight plans you can easily change your bookings at th...

I have tried on-line bookings with Philippine Airlines (PAL) and its rival Cebu Pacific . We have been PAL loyalists all along until PAL's financial position crashed (oooops. pardon the pun!) and was forced to cut domestic and international routes. Cebu Pac took over some of the routes and I had no choice but to take that airline (which then had old DC 9s). On the way back to Australia in 1998 my PAL ticket took me nowhere since PAL shut down and I had to fly Singapore Airlines at an added cost. Now that PAL is out of receivership as its full page ads in the blurbs declare, we hope that the service does improve for the better. I believe PAL has new planes. But there is one problem with the on line booking. PAL's website generated a itinerary (IT) confirmation of my Manila-Iloilo return ticket but the IT receipt is the real electronic ticket (ET) and it took me 36 hours to get the ET in my email addy. Contrast this with my recent bookings to Dumaguete and Kuala Lumpur with r...

The Philippine Daily Inquirer's (PDI) editorial for today is entitled "Holy Innocent" in which the blurb suggests that Reverend Ed Panlilio return the money to the Palace. As I have earlier made clear Panlilio made himself walk a spaghetti thin moral tightrope when he accepted the money. So the legal step to be taken is to return the money. I would agree but as usual the Inquirer editorial has serious logical flaws and non-sequiturs! First the PDI assumes that the priest is trained to be obedient. Possibly. But is Panlilio obedient to his bishop now that he is governor? I doubt it if he were he should have obeyed the Pope and not run for office. Thus we cannot really assume that Father Panlilio and Governor Panlilio are the same men now. Also read this "A pastor is bound by divine law. The politician’s actions, on the other hand, are permanently circumscribed by secular law. When the politician tries to be a pastor, the law becomes an obstacle to the higher purpose,...

It is really a matter of conscience. The bribe giver believes that conscience has a price and the bribe taker agrees that conscience can be sold. This makes me recall two interesting bribery scenes dished out by Hollywood in the movies. Incidentally these two scenes come from two of my favourite movies that got the Oscar best picture award (and best actor awards for the leading cast). The first one is a scene from Robert Bolt's "Man for all Seasons" when Thomas More was at the height of his powers and favour from King Henry VIII. While coming out of Cardinal Wolsey's Hampton Court Palace, he received a silver cup from Averil Machin, woman with a request from the court of requests of which More was the presiding judge. More also received gifts of candied apples to which More replied "ah to sweeten my judgement. I'll give your son the judgement as if he were my own, a fair one." He did not accept the apples but accepted Machin's cup. In a later scene, ...

As I am going on another trip to Washington DC (to attend the People and the Planet gab), I had to apply for a new visitor's visa. My old one was replaced by a J1 visa when I was an exchange prof at Louisiana State University( and this expired when my appointment at the university was over). So I needed to pay the 100 dollar fee and set an appointment which was originally scheduled for 12 October, a Friday. But since that day was declared the Eid al Fitri holiday, the embassy scheduled a new time for me at 2:30 PM the following Monday. The procedures are largely the same the last time around except they have streamlined the finger scanning procedure. (cellphones, digicams, laptops and all sorts of gadgets are not allowed) Since the appointment numbers are chosen at random before one sees the consul, one can't read a book whilst waiting for your turn. (I was planning to lug along my new translation of Don Quixote. Cervantes' opus is apropro for this kind of situation!) So t...

Environment practitioners and environmentalists must be overjoyed that the Nobel committee has given this year's peace prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Gore who will go down in history as the environmentalist president the USA never had, is now a household name for the Oscar winning docu "An Inconvenient Truth". Such is Gore's campaign to inform the public that the film is required viewing in countless high schools and colleges all over the world. The film is also seen by Pinoys in many barangays. In one coastal barangay I visited recently, the whole village viewed the movie (pirated version!) in the local videoke bar. In my environmental science institute, we require students to watch "Inconvenient Truth" after we have had studied the various theories in environmental science and climate change. However we also require students to watch the alternate take on the issue "Global Warming Swindle" before we wr...

This brouhaha about "Desperate Housewives" and discrimination of Pinoy healthcare professionals in the USA has reached rather ridiculous proportions. The unflattering references to the quality of medical education in the Philippines of course deserves comment and condemnation but so far the Pinoy op ed columnists have largely missed the point. Some Americans (especially those in Hollywood) are rather discriminating on whom to discriminate and cast racial slurs. True that these TV series and the parodies on the networks have a field day hitting at Dubya Bush, Hillary, Barack, Dick and all sorts of characters and viewers are inured to these. Besides this parodying is actually protected by the First Amendment. Barack,Hillary, Dick and Dubya aren't discriminated in the parody. Hollywood may at times hit at blacks and sometimes this raises some comment. But Hollywood won't even dare cast slurs on gays and lesbians. That would kill the networks. So we won't see any Terr...

Today is the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Animals, Ecologists, Environment, Environmental Scientists, Pets, Pet lovers, birds, wolves, worms, fish, frogs, snakes San Francisco, CA, Frisco Del Monte QC and all Kikos on the Planet. Francis is really the Saint of Nature. Allow me to greet you a hearty "Happy World Animal Day!" It is apt that today is also World Animal Day in honour of the Saint. One big issue that faces all animal lovers and keepers is whether it is morally right to have zoos. The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) organization wants the Manila Zoo shut and the animals released into the wild. The Mayor of Manila diasgrees. The zoo is the only wildlife park that is accessible and affordable to the masses. Yes there are other zoos in the Philippines most are privately owned and charge a higher ticket price than what Manila Zoo charges. The question now brought before us is whether it is humane to see animals kept in enclosures....

While I find Michael Tan's op ed column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer interesting reading,I found his latest column Wanted:Female nothing but plain stereotyping of heterosexual males and their mothers! Awful! While it is true that some mums do spoil their bratty boys, I don't think that all mums do spoil their kids. Also many boys do household chores though there are still some gender division of labour on the kind of chores done. If boys do chores, will they be as bratty as Mike Tan thinks they are? I know classmates from elementary school who come from a family of all boys and they do chores. Now no one doubts their masculinity. I also know a classmate who comes from a family of all girls. Now she had to do boy things like help dad fix the car. No one in his/her right mind would say she isn't feminine. And what's wrong with "Diskarte"? Females also practise their own kind of "diskarte"? And what's wrong with "pare"talk? If the me...

This should make Papa Ratzi and the Tridentine Mass fans extremely happy. Wikipedia is now in Latin ! This should make fans get to know Latin usage beyond what the Old Missal has. Proponents of the Latin Vicipaedia version of the free encyclopaedia say that "Latin isn't dead but just smells funny!" Latin isn't dead at all. It lives on in the Romance Languages. It lives on in the vision of Benedict XVI who has given permission for the wider use of the Latin Mass. Latin fans finally have their intelligible own home in the web. They say Ecce nostra Taberna et Legatio. Which translates as Here is our beerhouse and embassy! (In Philippine English) Behold our pub and embassy! (In the Queen's English) In which case we might end up in ebrium. And recall that in Pompeii in the last day before the volcano spewed its Plinian column of ash, civis Romanum bibit Vesuvinum which is the first known marketing pun ever. But my Latin has got rusty. I had to learn Latin when I was d...

The two Burmese colleagues I have worked with in academe are both exiles. They have got their PhDs but can't return to their country. One studied at the Australian National University but before then he was a tutor in one of my tutorials when I was doing my own PhD. The other worked on his science PhD in UP and taught for a time at my department after graduation. When his some in his (including children I was told) were imprisoned by the despotic regime in Rangoon, he went home to pick up his kids but was eventually able to escape and live in Scotland since he had British citizenship. In an email from a Scottish university, he wrote that he did not decide to come back to democratic Philippines since according to him we are to "friendly" to the generals. To which I replied it isn't us but the current Malacanang tenant! The other Burmese friend of mine is now in India where his family (related to Aung San Suu Kyi) has been in exile for 25 years, where he was born. His ...

I really have no windows to how Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago's mind operates. My eyes do not function as a PET scanner. But her latest and most famous tirade about China "inventing corruption" is some fodder for comment. Rightly the Chinese Embassy and the Chinoy community were outraged. But some Chinoy businesspeople I think went overboard when one Chinoy bigwig emphatically stated that in China corrupt people get executed! Now we respect a country's legal system when it determines what penalty to match a crime. But there is a really big question on the fairness of the Chinese legal system. That's why the Hong Kong SAR citizens of China always have the shivers! Unlike when she broke her word to jump off a plane without a parachute, Miriam Santiago has apologized to China and to the Chinoy community. In an interview with a TV network, she admitted that she was emotional and had "chronic fatigue syndrome". I think this apology isn't enough. Whi...