What's education for?

What's education for?


Posted 11:01pm (Mla time) Jan 30, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the January 31, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


GILL Westaway, British Council executive director, had an interesting thing to say last week. The Philippines, he said, could be suffering from too many colleges and universities. "There could be an oversupply in some areas. In a country like the Philippines, where resources are scarce, it's better to have fewer universities with quality rather than allowing hundreds of universities that are diluting the overall quality." Westaway based his remarks on a one-year study made by the British Council with funding from the Asian Development Bank.

Well, if the point of education is merely to enable students to find jobs, then I agree with this wholeheartedly. A college or university education in this country is superfluous, even counterproductive. It is four or five years' waste of time and effort. A couple of months from now, thousands of college graduates will line up before their school officials to get their diplomas, and we will hear again, in editorials and various commentaries, about how so few of those hopeful faces will turn radiant in the next few years. Most of them will end up glum from unemployment. There are simply no jobs available for most of those commerce, accounting and communication graduates.

If the point is landing a job abroad, then the four or five years spent in colleges and universities are just as well a waste of time and effort. You won't be working as a doctor, lawyer, or media person in other countries anyway. They won't take you in those capacities simply because you have a degree in medicine, law, or communication from a Philippine university. Your employers are not entirely to blame, to go by the Newsweek ranking of colleges and universities some years ago, where Ateneo, UP and La Salle landed among the lower rungs of the ladder, a far cry from 30 years before when they were among the top 20 in Asia. You have a degree in medicine, law and communication from a Philippine university, you will work as a caregiver, a bank teller, or a fast-food attendant anyway.

If the point of education is to merely give students employment, here or abroad, we would be better off scrapping colleges and universities and putting up nursing and trade schools and schools that teach survival English across the country. Many colleges and universities are already doing it, opening up nursing departments in response to the demand for caregivers in the United States, Canada and elsewhere. And teaching functional English so the nurses and maids can communicate with their employers. I am not being entirely facetious when I say maybe we should also put up pop music schools. That's our main export to Asia-musicians and bands.

But if the point of education is more than just employing people, then the problem becomes a lot more complex, one that isn't solved simply by lessening the number of colleges or universities. The problem precisely lies in the fact that our whole educational system is now predicated on enabling students to find work. That is as narrow and unenlightened a view of education as you can get. The point of education is not just to enable students to work, it is to enable students to think. The point of education is not just to impart skills, it is to impart vision. The point of education is not just to prepare the youth to face the "outside world." The point of education is to educate.

I grant giving students the skills to find jobs is important as well, particularly for a country like ours. I found nothing short of heroic the efforts of my mechanic some years ago to see his son through dentistry and his daughter through nursing school. At the end of the day, he would pull himself up from underneath the car he had been fixing, grimy and sweaty, to greet his kids when they came home from school in their smart all-white uniforms. People like him have every right to expect his children's schools to give them a crack at a more secure future.

But that isn't all that schools can, or should, do. Certainly, that isn't all that colleges and universities can, or should, do. The business of colleges and universities is to bequeath to the world a generation that can think, that can aspire to know the what and the why and not just the how and the how-how-the-carabao. I remember again the irate letter-writer who demanded to know what I had against caregivers and maids-I had asked what we were doing turning ourselves into the toilet-bowl cleaners of the world-when both did completely respectable work. My answer then, and now, is that I have nothing against them, just as I have nothing against janitors and forklift operators. What I have against is the attitude that we can only exist in survival mode and that we can't be better. What I have against is an educational system that imagines its role in life to be to cater to the export labor market by producing standard entrants to it.

I remember again too the non-joke about Pinoy and Chinoy college graduates. When Pinoy graduates meet, they ask each other, "What job have you landed?" When Chinoy graduates meet, they ask each other, "What business have you opened?" We can say the same thing about the graduates of our colleges and universities and those of other Asian countries. When they meet, our graduates ask each other, "Which country do you want to go to?" When the graduates of other Asian colleges and universities meet, they ask each other, "Where do we want our country to go?" The first is called resignation, the second is called ambition. The first is called desperation, the second is called direction. The first is called getting by, the second is called getting ahead.

We just want the first, let's not bother reducing our colleges and universities. Let's scrap them altogether.

Postscript

Postscript


Posted 02:36am (Mla time) Jan 27, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 27, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


UNLIKE Time's "Person of the Year," the Inquirer's "Filipino of the Year" is based not just on the impact someone had on this country but on the positive impact someone had on this country. If it were just plain impact, my own vote (figuratively, since I am not one of the editors) would have gone to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She had the biggest impact on the country, dragging it to new depths, economically, politically and morally. The country was worse off last year than in 2002, and 2002 was a horrible year. Proof of it being that Ms Arroyo vowed not to run at the end of it, knowing she had brought it to that pass.

But I agree with the Inquirer editors, the Filipino of the Year is Fernando Poe Jr. Other figures did have a positive impact on this country, but none as huge as FPJ. Ironically, he did so in death more than in life.

Some observers say FPJ was simply romanticized in death, or invested with the heroic proportions he never had in life, other than in the movies. His detractors have pointed out that his widow, in particular, has no business complaining about other people stealing his dreams -- a reference to FPJ being cheated in the election -- as they themselves stole the dreams of Filipinos in the past. Both FPJ and Susan Roces, their detractors say, were Marcos supporters, and even had Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda as their chief sponsors during their wedding. And they, along with Joseph Estrada, campaigned for Marcos during the "snap election."

I agree that FPJ was romanticized in death and that he was a Marcos supporter. But those things show FPJ not just in the worst light but in the best as well. Marcos and Imelda did stand as their wedding sponsors, but that was way back 36 years ago last Christmas, when Marcos had a legitimate right to rule. It was Marcos' first term, after he beat Diosdado Macapagal in 1965.

More than that, though FPJ and Susan Roces did support Marcos and though they did appear with him onstage in January 1986, they were neither Malacañang cronies nor mendicants. There is no record of FPJ or Susan Roces soliciting favor from Marcos. In the same way that there is no record of FPJ soliciting favor from Estrada, his bosom friend. To Estrada's chagrin, who kept asking why he kept away and begging him to come see him. If FPJ was a supporter of Marcos and Estrada, then it was Marcos and Estrada who benefited from it rather than the way around. You can accuse him of not being very smart, or indeed of being politically naïve, but you cannot accuse him of being opportunistic.

I don't know that he would have made a good president, as I've repeatedly said. To this day, I have my misgivings. My friends from that camp have all tried to convince me he wasn't Estrada, he had never abused friendship and power, he had never practiced nepotism, he wasn't indebted to anyone, particularly the elite. But the downside is far more formidable. You saw it abundantly and physically in the people who sat in the front pew in his wake, among them Estrada and the various unsavory characters from the so-called opposition, who made Edsa People Power II not just possible but necessary. This was the company he kept, particularly during the last elections. That is where his political innocence looms large: He would have learned the ropes from these guys. I did write about it last December: Look at this crew, and weep.

But FPJ did make a positive impact on the country in a couple of ways.

The first is by probably winning the elections. Though shut out from ABS-CBN and other media, and though mugged from the start by the worst Commission on Elections since Marcos, he did enough to make Ms Arroyo's current occupation of Malacañang at least questionable. I do hope his widow pursues his protest, inside and outside of the courts. Frankly, I cannot imagine how Hilario Davide could have fallen from the heights he occupied during the impeachment trial, when he turned legalese into the language of cool, to the depths of presiding over a Supreme Court populated by kangaroos. Susan Roces would do well to take her case to the court of public opinion alongside the legal one. The first has been known to render fairer decisions, and sterner sanctions. Ms Arroyo should know. That was how she became president.

Second, and infinitely more positively, FPJ gave this country a touch of class. Unfortunately, that would be known only after he died. FPJ's head might not always have been in the right place, but his heart was. Having had to claw his way to the top (his father died and left his company in shambles; he started out in the movies as a stunt man), he never forgot his less fortunate brethren. Even more wonderfully, he did not keep reminding the world of it. He bade his friends to never talk about his acts of generosity, even shunning the thought during the campaign. Before he died, he had collected a cache of relief goods to give to the storm victims of Quezon. They were unmarked. They did not carry the sign, "Handog sa inyo ni Da King," or "Another project of Da King." It struck a contrast with the way an illusory President advertised her even more illusory generosity at every turn.

It isn't true, as Mark Anthony told the Roman mob, that only the evil that men do lives after them, the good is interred with their bones. The good that FPJ has done looks headed to stand time.

In the end, he did give the “masa” [masses] something to hope for, which sublimely ironically was not that they could always be saved by a savior, which his movies tended to suggest. He gave them something to hope for in life by his life-and death. The real hope, it said, was how you lived and died. You could live dishonorably and die in shame, or you could live honestly and die with dignity. His admirers will probably think that qualifies him for man for all seasons.

I'd settle for Filipino of the Year.

No satisfaction

No satisfaction


Posted 11:22pm (Mla time) Jan 25, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 26, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


VON Hernandez of Greenpeace Philippines, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2003, gave the best advice last week during the Karangalan forum at the CCP: Don't imitate American consumerism. "The American way of life, whose model of over-consumption is romanticized in these parts as the American dream, has been correctly characterized by the environmental movement as unsustainable. An American consumes 22 times more than the average citizen from the developing world. If we are to sustain such a wasteful lifestyle, the earth might not be able to sustain our needs for the next 50 years. If everyone were to live like an American, we would need to consume at least six planets in order to survive. Perhaps this is why Nasa and the US government were overjoyed with the prospect of life on Mars."

I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly how the audience reacted. I'm just taking it from our report, which said Hernandez's remarks drew chuckles. Well, his last remark is doubtless meant to raise chuckles. But the rest of it is perfectly serious, and absolutely sound.

The North, which contains a fourth of the earth's population, consumes two-thirds of the earth's resources, the United States above all. Much of the US expenditure goes to arms: $950 billion yearly. The entire world has been spending only $13 billion for health and nutrition. There and then, you see not just the problem with over-consumption but with the kind of priorities over-consumption takes. The expenditure for arms is directly related to the average American citizen consuming 22 times more than his counterpart in the developing world. It's the only way to keep that "way of life," as George W. Bush puts it, from being threatened.

What makes Hernandez's advice even sounder is that we have been emulating the American predilection for inordinate consumption, and quite typically have even gone past Americans in that respect. I remember some years ago being with a group of Filipinos in the United States who were comparing possessions with no particular attempt at subtlety. One of the things they talked about was clothes. To a man or woman, they wore signature ones, and debated furiously where the best bargains were to be had. I said I noticed Americans did not particularly care to wear generic jeans, or indeed drive banged-up cars. Someone put it to me bluntly: "Kailangan e. Me kulay ka na nga, di ka pa magpopostura. (You can't afford not to. You're colored, you have to look your best)." I didn't realize being brown and not wearing Sunday clothes on Monday constituted double jeopardy.

The same is true right here at home. Malls aren't just a place where you can find what you need, or where you can go to in summer to escape the heat (they've got air conditioners going full blast), they are a status symbol, particularly in provincial towns. The opening of an SM represents more than convenience, it represents the encroachment of civilization. The same fetish for signature items riots, of course. The brand names are to be found in shop after shop, and enjoy no small amount of patronage. I can almost hear the paraphrase: "Mahirap ka na nga, di ka pa poporma (You're already poor, and you don't improve your looks)?" Never mind not being able to sign your name, just wear signature.

It's probably the worst legacy American colonialism has bequeathed to us. Enough for you to ask heaven why we didn't fall, like India, to the British and get in exchange for being entombed in the mines an appreciation for civil service, the railroad system and books. Our concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness lies only in owning guns and buying things, including votes.

What our efforts to emulate American consumerism do at the very least is warp values. We define success as possession or accumulation and encourage bottomless appetites, which are the fountainhead of corruption. The late Judge Martin Ocampo was right: We can never obliterate corruption if we ourselves prefer to get as ninongs and ninangs in our weddings and baptisms not honest men and women who have only a wealth of wisdom to impart but ungodly crooks who have only a cache of loot to dangle. Barry Gutierrez is right as well: Why should anyone imagine he should feel deprived by going back to UP as an assistant professor rather than seeking a lucrative job in the United States at the end of a scholarship, when he is in fact choosing the life of the mind to the life of the mindless?

At the very most, that pursuit of happiness is really the pursuit of fool's gold, also called unsustainable growth. Why do we have to raze more forests and dig more holes in the mountains just so we can have more luxury cars, more TV sets and more signature jeans? You'd think that if we had to make such great sacrifices, we'd use whatever we earned to get more food, more books, more classrooms, more hospitals and clinics, more roads and bridges.

Every time I hear government call for belt-tightening, I laugh because we have such a strange concept of belt-tightening. If belt-tightening means giving up our desperate craving for more and more creature comforts, then that's something we should be doing not just during hard times but during normal ones. At the very least because we are not a rich country pretending to be poor, as a foolish lawmaker said ages ago, we are a poor country believing we are rich. At the very most because even if we were rich, we won't find happiness at the end of that pursuit. The only thing that brings fulfillment when pursued relentlessly is the quest for knowledge. It's the only thing that ought to be unquenchable in life. All the other pursuit brings is, well, Mick Jaggers says it best: "I can't get no satisfaction."

Unthinking

Unthinking


Posted 11:19pm (Mla time) Jan 24, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 25, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


I THOUGHT I had seen rock bottom in this government's propensity to show dimwittedness, but it keeps adding new depths to it everyday. The latest, and by far the most horrendous, display of it is its plan to apply VAT on books. Or more specifically, to scrap the exemption currently enjoyed by books from VAT. You can't get more dimwitted than that.

Uniting to oppose the plan, the various organizations involved in book development and selling point out its faults. At the very least, they say, it is anti-education.

Government says having books covered by VAT will help it raise another P272 million, which should mean better support for education. Wrong, says the group. What the VAT on books will do is jack up the cost of education, which is costly enough as it is, by jacking up the prices of textbooks and books that fall under "required reading." It will drive many lower middle-class parents to pull their kids out of private schools and put them in public ones. That will limit access to quality education, currently being provided by private schools, to the elite or at best to middle-class families who are determined to make heroic sacrifices. In turn, it will add to the burdens of a public school system already groaning from lack of classrooms, textbooks and teachers.

Whatever revenue you generate from taxing books (and it's arguable if any of that will find its way to education) will be swept away like a village to the sea by a tsunami.

The plan moreover is plain anti-learning. The idea for exempting books from taxes comes from common sense in general and from the Florence Agreement of 1950 to which we are signatory. The agreement asserts the vital importance of the free flow of ideas, which is the sine qua non for learning, and calls for all possible support to be given to materials that promote learning. It even bids members to dismantle customs barriers (tax, currency, and trade) on imported books and audiovisual material. Such is the premium it puts on them.

As it is, the group says, the Philippines already lags behind other countries in the production of books. We only turn out 5,000 titles a year, compared to the US and Japan, which turn out 50,000 to 80,000 titles per year. A close neighbor, Malaysia, produces 14,000 titles a year. The reason for our meager output is not lack of talent or creativity-though the steep decline in educational standards over the last few decades is taking its toll there, too-it is the lack of an institutional framework to support book publishing. The high cost of paper, in great part because it is heavily taxed, shows so. India is the biggest exporter of books-and probably the most literate country-in Asia because book publishing has that kind of support.

And, finally, the group points out that the solution lies not in taxing everything in sight but in merely improving tax collection. The National Tax Research Center estimates that the loss to government from 1998 to 2002 from uncollected taxes and VAT was P127 billion a year. You just reclaim a fraction of that and you won't need to tax life's true treasures and pleasures, chief of them books.

I can only add to the tone of these arguments, by raising them a notch or two higher. At the very least, why should anyone in her right mind imagine that any tax to come from books will accrue to education? The dubious distinction of this country making it to the record books in corruption must show that taxes do not accrue to national priorities, they accrue to individual personalities. The national priority is not public education, it is private expropriation. The main beneficiary of taxes is not Juan de la Cruz, it is Jose Pidal. This is more than robbing the poor to give to the rich, this is robbing souls to give to the devil.

I recall that some years ago Asiaweek published the rankings of universities in Asia, and three Philippine universities, which used to be among the top 10 or 20 -- UP, Ateneo and La Salle -- had slipped to the 60s and 70s. Probably more now than then-this was many ago. One of the reasons for that was the low number of treatises and papers published by those universities in book form. That had greatly hurt the image of local universities, the reputation of scholars or academics being built on the question, "What books have you written?"

This country is illiterate enough as it is, as this newspaper should know, having campaigned vigorously, if often frustratingly, for spreading the habit of reading to Filipinos. Doubtless out of self-interest-no readers, no newspapers; but also out of a desire to get this country going-no books, no progress. Books remain humanity's greatest ally to enlightenment. With cable TV and video games dumbing the country's youth, you'd think government would give every incentive to books and reading. Such as build huge libraries everywhere or even giving books away. Not making books unreachable.

As it is, even government's plan to increase the "sin" taxes, or the taxes on cigarettes and liquor, is unconscionable. Why make the poor, who are the biggest consumers of cigarettes and liquor, pay more just because government can't collect from the rich? That is idiotic, and mean. Quite apart from that, the basic principle of taxation, as Benjamin Franklin et al, inscribed on tablet in their first act of defiance against British rule, is: No taxation without representation. The fact that the GMA government borrowed more than the two previous governments, to be paid for by the next generations of Filipinos, and has only widespread hunger and deprivation to show for it must show there is no representation whatsoever in this country.

Tax books? GMA should be happy no one has yet called for a tax boycott.

Dangerous

Dangerous


Posted 11:24pm (Mla time) Jan 23, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the January 24, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


THE BBC merely confirms what most of the world has known since 9/11. George W. Bush is a dangerous man. He is not the nemesis of terror, he is the spreader of terror.

Only the Philippines, India, and Poland do not think so. On the average, across all countries, 58 percent of the people BBC interviewed believe Bush's reelection has made the world an unsafe place to live in. Unfortunately for Americans, the animosity is extending past Bush to them as well. The BBC sample, 21,000 of them in 21 countries, made no distinction between the American government and the American people, between Bush and his constituents. "Negative feelings about Bush are high and are generalizing to the American people who reelected him," said BBC.

I don't know about Poland, but I do know that the Philippines and India have one thing in common, which is the spectacular divide between the rich and poor. Which is pockets of opulence coexisting alongside unthinkable misery, which is mansions or palaces surrounded by high walls coexisting with hovels and cardboard dwellings tumbling out like flood. Which is a small caste of Brahmins coexisting with a mass of Untouchables, which is enlightenment and brilliance coexisting with ignorance and dimwittedness. It's not surprising many Indians see the world the same way as many Filipinos.

The difference, of course, is that India was colonized by the British and we were colonized by the Americans. Gandhi freed them from their yoke, not the least from the subjugated mind that went with it. Nobody did the same thing for us. To this day, we seem to think Bush is beloved by all the freedom-loving peoples of this earth.

Well, he's not. And unfortunately for us, our misimpressions about the world do not carry a small price. What particularly scares the hell out of me is the breathtaking idiocy with which we advertise our lackey-ness to the fellow before the world. That is patent with our recent acceptance of being chief enforcer of Bush's "anti-terrorist" campaign in this part of the world. Only a couple of weeks ago, and only less than a couple of years of our being thrust into the UN Security Council, we agreed to head a "super committee against terrorism," as Ambassador Lauro Baja proudly put it. Only a country that enjoys being humored, or being uto-uto, could possibly have grabbed a gift nobody wanted.

You would imagine that the abduction of three Filipinos in Iraq and Afghanistan would already have taught us lessons in prudence. Those three aren't the last, certainly not with this kind of posturing. And that is probably the least of our worries. If you saw the CNN and BBC interviews across the globe last year shortly before the US elections, you'd know that Arabs absolutely loathe Bush. It's a level of anger and resentment that makes for wars of attrition. They cannot feel very hospitable to a people who adore him, and who have a president that's anxious to do his bidding. It's not American aid that's keeping us afloat, it's the OFWs' dollar remittances. You want to make war on that?

But what's truly unfortunate, and alarming, is that the anger and resentment are spilling over to the American nation and not just to the American Caesar. It fuels the belief, spread by the Bush gang itself, that the anti-Bush sentiments around the globe are essentially anti-American sentiments. These things have a way of turning into vicious cycles, Americans turning more paranoid, agreeing to emergency measures-including "preemptive" ones-to defend themselves, and pissing off the world even more.

I've always thought America was rived between two worlds, between the worlds of slavery and anti-slavery, between the worlds of imperialism and anti-imperialism, between the worlds of Randolph Hearst, Joseph McCarthy, and George W. Bush, on one hand, and Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain and Martin Luther King, on the other. With the former often getting the upper hand and pushing back democracy as the American Founding Fathers knew it, apart from giving America a wretched image abroad. The notion of forcing "our way of life" down the throats of peoples across the world, which was the premise of William McKinley's imperial venture more than a century ago, is anathema to democracy. It is a contradiction in terms, the very spirit of democracy being freedom and choice. The 21,000 BBC interviewed are not terrorists. Neither do they approve of terrorism. That is why they do not approve of Bush, too.

I myself have always distinguished between the American government and the American people, between American policy and the American spirit. The second, which expresses itself in the ardent defense of rights and freedoms at home, and in spectacular achievements in science, literature and sports, is admirable. The first, which expresses itself in the piling up of weapons of mass destruction and the indifference to planetary concerns other than dreams of conquest, is detestable. The second is a beacon in a windswept sea, the first is the wind that blows over a field of death.

The American people in any case have been known to carry out their Edsas, if in less loud and cantankerous ways than their counterparts across the Pacific. They did rise to bury McCarthy and they did rise to impeach Nixon. They've already given their current president fair warning they do not believe in his war (55 percent of Americans told a Washington Post/ABC News survey the Iraq War wasn't worth fighting for) and he should not construe their votes as a mandate for it. But, well, they've got their work, or protest, cut out for them. There is so little time, the clock is ticking, the American image is being tattered everywhere by the minute.

All because they've put a caption under the American Eagle that reads: Dangerous.

Respite

Respite


Updated 06:20am (Mla time) Jan 20, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 20, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


I'M a little blurry-eyed from having spent last Monday watching Day One of the Australian Open. For those who don't know it yet, or care, this is the 100th anniversary of that event -- "100 Years In The Making" goes its title -- a milestone for tennis and for the country Down Under. It sort of makes up for that Bush clone, John Howard, or makes you forget he's Up Over.

Not too many surprises on opening day, except that fifth-ranked Carlos Moya got booted out by countryman Guillermo Garcia-Lopez in four sets. In the course of the match, Moya repeatedly did to his racket what he probably wanted to do with himself, if not his opponent, which was to fling it violently to the ground out of disgust. Also, Ai Sugiyama of Japan and Mary Pierce of France lost to their foes, but neither has really been playing well over the last few years, so their loss stoked more sadness than shock.

Otherwise, it was par for the course. The only drama was offered by Paradorn Srichaphan of Thailand who played woefully but still managed to subdue an energetic but temperamental Potito Starace of Italy. I rooted for Paradorn, of course, the first Southeast Asian to have gotten this far in tennis -- he's currently 28th in the world -- though his game has gone up and down over the last couple of years. He can change from brilliant to clumsy in the blink of an eye. He was in his usual erratic form last Monday (our time) committing one unforced error after another. But he emerged victorious anyway when the smoke cleared.

I know someone said (I forget now what sport he was referring to -- might have been billiards) that a champion's mettle isn't shown by how he wins with his best game but how he wins with his worst. That's the real test of character. But you wish some people would spend more time fighting their opponents than themselves.

My sentimental favorite Andre Agassi won in straight sets against German qualifier Dieter Kindlmann, showing he was none the worse for a hip injury that threatened to prevent him from joining his favorite Open: he's been champion there several times. The lopsided score, as the announcers pointed out throughout the match, did not reflect the long rallies and brilliant exchanges that marked it. Agassi by no means breezed through it, but he showed he was in fine form and still posed a threat to the junior citizens.

The ones who did breeze through and showed awesome form were Roger Federer and Marat Safin. Federer, in particular, by demolishing Fabrice Santoro 6-1, 6-1, 6-2. He's No. 1, and I think he'll be so for many years. He's only 23. I believed him when he said he was playing at another level right now and felt there was no one that could touch him. He was invincible last year, failing to add only the French Open to his Grand Slam bid. Neither Andy Roddick nor Lleyton Hewitt nor Safin, the second-, third- and fourth-ranked players respectively, gave him any trouble. He crushed Roddick and Hewitt a couple of times. Hewitt might have his countrymen smiling at him at the Australian Open, but Federer has the gods of Olympus doing so. His game is simply, well, at another level, the way Tiger Woods' and Michael Jordan's were. I personally think he'll surpass Pete Sampras before he fades into the sunset.

So I'll be a little more blurry-eyed in the next few days. I have cable TV to thank, or curse, for that. It's the only thing I'm keeping it for actually, apart from BBC and CNN. It's opened up new vistas on sports, including football. There's only one football, as one reader wrote me, which is the European one. "American football," which has little to do with the feet, is as much a misnomer as "Filipino restraint." But that's another story.

I wasn't always into sports. I hated Physical Education when I was a kid, thanks in no small way to being asthmatic and preferring the world of books to the world of exertion. I thought then, with no small help from my elders but not necessarily betters, that Cassius Clay was just a loudmouth who did not know his place. His place being what White America said it was. It was only later that I would realize how great a sportsman he was: when he became Muhammad Ali and became champion in a game far beyond boxing, which was the game of life. To this day, I get goose pimples when I recall him lighting the torch at the Atlanta Olympics, his hands trembling violently and his clothes flapping in the wind, while all the world's athletes stood still, some with tears streaming down their cheeks.

That was what got me into sports, the beauty, drama and transcendence of it. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's heaven for, as Robert Browning said, and nowhere does the striving seem mightier and purer than in sports. It's human beings tugging at the limits of the possible, straining to go beyond what their bodies allow. The horse is swifter, the elephant stronger and the tiger more agile, but it's the human being that has the capacity to go beyond himself, and grow. It's the human being whose effort to be swifter, stronger and more agile-or be better than what he is -- makes him, well, human.

I wasn't drawn to sports for the escape it offered, though heaven knows these days that can be reason enough. I was drawn to sports, if only largely as a spectator, for the hope it offered that human beings could be better. The final struggle isn't really between one athlete and another, it is between one athlete and himself. At its best, sports show not what humanity is but what it could be.

But that is getting too grand. Right now, all I want is some respite from work so I can spend nights watching that small ball whacked from side to side across the net by furious competitors. It helps, too, that the Russian belles add to the aesthetics....

What new dawn?

What new dawn?


Updated 03:41am (Mla time) Jan 19, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 19, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


HE'S lost his pounds, he's lost his waddle, he's lost his listlessness. And he may also have lost his mind.

Joseph Estrada flew home last weekend the picture of feistiness and defiance and said he would lead this country to a new dawn. He was "more determined than ever to restore the hope that has been lost, to fight for a better future, uphold the Constitution and restore the rule of law." He slammed "the unrestrained corruption in all branches and levels of government [which has produced] an administration largely without public support, discredited and distrusted not only by our people and our neighbors but also by the rest of the international community."

"I have returned to do what the Constitution tasked me to do in June 1998," he said.

Well, as I suggested the last time Erap spoke about the "rule of law," which was at FPJ's wake, when he (wrongly) compared his fate to that of his fallen buddy, he embodies the rule of law only as much as Mike Arroyo embodies the
sway of honesty. In fact, the only thing Erap embodies is the rule of lotto, or more accurately jueteng, which was the thing that felled him in the first place.

What he says about the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration is true. But he has only himself to blame for it. Every word he uses to indict the incumbent government comes back to him with equal force. The reason we got saddled with Arroyo was that we (Arroyo wasn't part of the struggle, she was just its beneficiary) were determined to restore the hope that had been lost to us, to fight for a better future, to uphold the Constitution and restore the rule of law. The unrestrained corruption in all branches and levels of the Erap administration (not least the Department of Education, where various illiterates were involved in textbook scams) produced an administration that lost public support and was discredited and distrusted not only by Filipinos but by the rest of the world.

What the Constitution tasked him to do in 1998 was to rule well. Or at least to the best of his abilities, limited as they were. Certainly it tasked him not to turn Malacañang into a beerhouse populated by thugs who met in the witching hours, guzzling Blue Label and partaking of the pleasures offered by Atong Ang, a veritable coven not unlike the den of the kontrabidas in suits in his old Ilang-Ilang movies. Previous presidents had stolen before him, but they had stolen only money. He stole the hope of this country. Never mind giving us back our hope. Just give us back your loot.

Contrary to what Erap thinks, he is not Arroyo's nemesis, he is her ally. Frankly, I cannot imagine Arroyo quaking in her boots from Erap's pronouncements, I can only imagine her applauding gratefully. The situation is not unlike Cory's occupation of Malacañang and the threats to her posed by the Marcos loyalists. Erap is a continuing reminder that the future of this country is not to be found in the opposition. There is no one in the opposition that has the power or credibility to rally the people against the administration. I do not like this administration, I do think Arroyo can, and should be, impeached--for more reasons than we impeached Erap. But I will not join any initiative led by Erap or Ping Lacson or Edgar Angara to "unite this country." They will not bring a new dawn, they will bring a swift sunset. The way out for this country is not to step back into the past, it is to plunge boldly into the future.

I repose my faith in two things here. The first is that I cannot believe that this country of 70 million souls is so bereft of honest and talented men and women, notwithstanding that 20 percent of the population wants to leave it, that it cannot produce alternatives to Erap and Arroyo. I do hope in particular civil society, which was pivotal in ousting Erap but which has been stricken blind under Arroyo, will pick up the pieces and rediscover its mission. Which is not to be a lackey (Malacañang is already full of them) but to be a genuine force for change. And of course there's the youth. Forget Kiko Pangilinan, youth was perfectly wasted on him even when he was young. But surely idealism hasn't been lost on the students and young professionals?

The second is that well beyond personalities, there is vision. This country has never had trouble uniting when the compelling need for it arises. The two Edsas, which were the two times we became one in heroic struggle, were not led by charismatic figures, they were led by a burning desire to end tyranny and reclaim the hope that had been stolen from us. The second Edsa, in particular, which had no one leader, even if the usual suspects, or Edsa I personalities, later tried to appropriate it. Ideas can be very powerful, even in a culture that values interpersonal relationships. Certainly, ideas can unite--and have united--Filipinos toward lofty goals.

No, this country has had no trouble uniting when the compelling need for it arises. And nothing can be more compelling than ending a reign of corruption and tyranny and reclaiming a lost future. What this country has always had trouble with is sustaining the initiative. We heave a sigh of relief at the end of a sudden burst of heroism and go back to where we were, leaving the field to carpet-bagging successors.

But whatever the case, I don't see how this country can keep together for very long. Government isn't just exploding, it's imploding from its own weight and turning into a black hole. We're being left behind by all our neighbors. If the tsunami that hit them showed anything, it is only that they had so much to lose. We don't. Disasters visit us with precious little to destroy.

The alternative to an atrocious present is not a discredited past. It is a decent future, or a crack at having one.

Impeachable

Impeachable


Updated 00:09am (Mla time) Jan 18, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the January 18, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


I AGREE with Jovito Salonga that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is impeachable. But I differ with him on the reasons for it.

Salonga says Arroyo betrayed the Constitution when she allowed Joseph Estrada to go abroad. Clearly, he says, she will do anything to cling to power, including flouting the law to appease her foes. "From the time she ascended to the presidency in January 2001, Arroyo has had no use for the rule of law. She has always wanted Estrada to go scot-free abroad."

I agree completely that it defeats the purpose of prosecuting Estrada to allow him to live regally in Hong Kong, on taxpayers' money in the form of past loot. An arthritic knee is not a life-threatening condition, and the exodus of local doctors to the US and Canada notwithstanding, there are still enough bone doctors in this country to patch him up.

But I myself lost all appetite for the prosecution of Estrada when assailed by the spectacle of the pot calling the kettle black. Why should I believe the Villaraza law firm will cleanse this earth of its dregs by convicting Estrada? I know two wrongs do not make a right, and our attitude should be that if our present officials are just as guilty of corruption, let us not forget about past sinners but only punish current ones as well. Or hound them with the same passion. But it lessens the urgency of "making an example" of Estrada. It is the wrong example. It does not say, "Don't steal," it says, "Don't get caught." It doesn't say, "Be honest," it says, "Be sly."

The Arroyo administration borrowed more than the last two combined and has only widespread hunger, skyrocketing prices, foreign investors and local residents flying away, and an impending economic crisis to show for it. Where did the money go? I never believed in "lifestyle audit" as a way to curb corruption because it doesn't curb corruption. All it curbs is ostentation. All it prevents is high-rolling crooks flaunting their loot by day, it doesn't prevent miserly ones from counting their hoard at night. I grant crooks who flaunt their loot add insult to injury. But better a humongous insult than a humongous injury. Sticks and stones can break bones, including those of the knees, but not so insults.

I agree that Arroyo is impeachable, but not because she allowed Estradap to go to Hong Kong. She is impeachable for the very reason Joker Arroyo gave in his speech at the beginning of Estrada's impeachment trial, which is the betrayal of public trust. There is no dearth of legal grounds to impeach Arroyo, but well beyond that (which is the true basis for impeaching presidents), there is the weight of the moral one as well. It is not just corruption of the body that calls for impeachment, it is the corruption of the soul.

You want to impeach Arroyo, impeach her for the way she conducted the elections. Estrada at least had a clear electoral mandate, the only question was whether he betrayed it. Arroyo does not, the question to begin with is whether she has the right to rule or not. None of this includes her deceiving the public about her ambitions. There is no legal proscription against lying; if there were, this country's politicians would disappear from this earth faster than the victims of tsunami. Though the fact that she used Jose Rizal to mount her hoax must truly suggest her lack of scruples in clinging to power, as Salonga puts it.

Look at the number of violations she committed during the elections. The Constitution says the Commission on Elections should be populated by commissioners whose virtues rival Caesar's wife. She populated it with commissioners who fleeced the taxpayers of several billions by giving a fly-by-night computer company the contract to computerize canvassing. The scam was exposed and the computerization never happened, but the culprits, including those who approved the deal, were never punished. She rewarded them with more powers to supervise the counting through the old ballot box. And you want to run after Estrada?

The Constitution says an incumbent president may not run again. Though the Constitution also said Arroyo could run again by the fact that she did not finish four years, it did suggest that she could not run as an incumbent. Which meant she had to resign if she wanted to run. The reason for the ban was clear: so the incumbent would not waste taxpayers' money to seek reelection. She ran anyway as an incumbent. The fact that the Supreme Court upheld her on this does not settle the question, it only raises questions about the quality of mind, or state of soul, of the current justices.

She did go on to waste taxpayers' money to get reelected. That point can't be lost even on the blind. Well, a local saying does say the hardest person to wake up is the one pretending to be asleep. The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. TV ads about Arroyo that ran up to election day were legitimate government expense and not electioneering? The Arroyo posters that littered the highways from Aparri to Jolo were legitimate government expense and not electioneering? The sudden doles of this and that government office were legitimate government expense and not electioneering? The self-proclaimed watchdogs of society have much to answer for accepting this as a fact of life. It is a fact of death, or suicide.

I leave Susan Roces to make her case about the counting.

Any one of these can be ground for impeachment. Taken together, they constitute moral turpitude of the kind that Joker Arroyo talked about during Estrada's impeachment trial. No, this isn't just corruption of the body, this is corruption of the soul. This isn't just violating this and that legal provision, this is blotting out decency from the horizon. This isn't just pillaging the treasury, this is robbing a country of its future.

Salonga is right: Arroyo is impeachable. Question is: Who's going to do it?

Not so fast

Not so fast


Updated 11:38pm (Mla time) Jan 16, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the January 17, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


FIRST off, I am not unsympathetic to people complaining about having been victimized by the media. Variously by being depicted in a bad light out of spite, by being reported wrongly, or even by being ignored when they ought not to. That goes even for presidents, former and current. They have every reason to complain. They have every right to complain.

But to applaud the burning of an ABS-CBN van and say that it should serve as a warning to media to refrain from biased reporting, there I draw a very big line. That was how deposed President Joseph Estrada reacted last week to the atrocity. He complained as well about the Inquirer's biased reporting, particularly about his recent trip to Hong Kong.

I leave others to debate the biased reporting, but I confess I was bowled over to read our headline last Wednesday that said, "Estrada makes whoopee in HK." There is a difference between "whooping it up" and "making whoopee." The first means having fun, the second means having sex. At least, since Gus Kahn and Walter Davidson came up with their double entendre on the phrase with their 1927 song, "Makin' Whoopee." The phrase now connotes sexual dalliance.

The song's lyrics go: "Another bride, another June/ Another sunny honeymoon/ Another season, another reason/ For makin' whoopee.... He's washing dishes and baby clothes/ He's so ambitious he even sews/ But don't forget folks/ That's what you get folks, for makin' whoopee.... She sits alone, almost every night/ He doesn't phone; he doesn't write/ He says he's busy, but she says, 'Is he?'/ He's makin' whoopee."

I can imagine that Erap isn't loath to make whoopee in whatever condition he is in, post-operation or post-whatever. But that is not the point. The point is that there's little to suggest Erap was in the throes of it in Hong Kong. After seeing the headline, I scoured the article to find out whom he was making whoopee with. Turns out he was just whooping it up, very probably with carryover taxpayers' money.

I personally sympathized with Susan Roces when she launched a broadside against ABS-CBN last December. If the network believed in its coverage of FPJ during the elections-or non-coverage of him, it virtually shut him out-it should have stuck by its guns. It should have continued to ignore him in death as it did in life. Certainly, it should not have gone on to advertise its abiding friendship for, solidarity with, and faith in the man as he lay in his coffin in Sto. Domingo, laid low-if his loved ones were to be believed-by a dagger the giant network had plunged in his back. It was a little cheeky, and invited trouble.

But in her tirade, Roces did not drive the network away, saying it had no business covering the wake, it was an interloper come to trespass on the dignity of the dead. She did not ask her followers, or those of her husband, to boycott the network. She did not warn the station to shape up, or see things her way, or face the consequences of their refusal. She merely unburdened herself of her oppression after the network itself solicited her own views on life and death. Even in wrath, she looked, well, presidential.

There's nothing presidential in Erap's reaction. I made my position clear on this a long time ago when Erap put the muscle on the Manila Times and the Inquirer for railing at his misrule. The Times he managed to close, the Inquirer he managed to deprive of income from lost advertisement. I said then and I say now that none of the faults of the media may justify coercive action against them by the administration or the opposition, by public officials or various interest groups.

At the very least, that is so because if the media are biased, even more so are the public officials and various interest groups. They proceed from their own agenda. To make them the arbiter of what is fair or unfair in media is to open the floodgates to oppression. I remember that shortly after Erap crowed about what he did to the Manila Times and the Inquirer, several local officials said they too had been victims of the provincial media and were bent on taking similar actions against them. The reign of a bad press is worlds better than the reign of tyranny.

At the very most that is so because the abuse of press freedom is not solved by the removal of press freedom. The media's propensity to sensationalize and to trivialize is not solved by censorship, or worse terrorism. If the opposition can approve of an ABS-CBN van being gutted, on the ground that the network did them a bad turn, so can government, with respect to another media outfit, on the ground that it did them a bad turn. That should spell the end of a free press as we know it.

I agree that the media can often be abusive-I find my day wrecked each time I listen to some TV personalities-but terrorizing them into enlightenment is a cure worse than the disease. Their being led to the path of enlightenment doesn't happen that way. It only makes them more pliant to carrot and stick. Fortunately, the public isn't completely powerless to do anything about media's faults. The nice thing about a free press is that you have a choice. You can always choose to buy another newspaper or switch to another station. Or if you yourself have a burning thought you have to unburden yourself with, you can always unburden it on a newspaper or network that is more hospitable to it.

I've always thought media audiences have a capacity to grow and become more discerning. As evidenced by the way brainless media fare is losing out to more intelligent ones, whether in news or entertainment, in reportage or sitcom. But whether that is so or not, you don't solve abuse by committing a worse one.

You don't produce responsibility that way, you produce anarchy.

Words

Words


Updated 10:54pm (Mla time) Jan 10, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the January 11, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


"TODAY, I offer you a choice of life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life and then you and your descendants will live."

The words are from Deuteronomy, and they preface the Quezon clergy's indictment of government for the deaths in Quezon last December.

"While there was heavy rainfall," a statement signed by Bishop Rolando Tirona, his predecessor Julio Labayen and 24 priests said, "(the deaths) would not have happened if heavy logging had not taken place. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines and different groups had been campaigning against logging in the Sierra Madre for many years now. The government, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and local government officials did not listen.... We should no longer allow the irresponsible use of the environment for the gain of a few individuals and the so-called development agenda of the government and some private sectors."

The group called for the prosecution of the loggers and the government officials who approved their contracts.

I'm glad the Prelature of Infanta has spoken out on this. I was beginning to think it would go the route of other tragedies, things this country tends to accept without question as heaven-sent, with no small help from government which has a habit of unctuously cajoling the public to "move on" after tragedies occur. Or indeed after sandpapering the horrors with the language of damage control.

Chief of the words of that language is "natural." You affix the word "natural" to "disaster," and you're home free. The dead, or their kin, have no one to blame but God, fate, or bad luck, depending on their religious disposition, or lack of it. The three storms that visited Quezon province might have been wrought by Nature -- though even there, from the perspective of a messed-up global climate precipitated by global warming, they may not have been entirely so -- but their effects were wrought by human hand.

The deaths in Quezon Province were not just caused by Nature, they were caused by loggers. It wasn't the winds that howled and the rains that fell in a torrent on Infanta and environs that killed hundreds of their residents, it was the logs that rumbled down the mountain and buried them in the mud. The prelature has every reason to be furious. Those logs claimed the life of one of their own, Fr. Charlito Colendres.

I had been wondering for some time when the outrage would come. Have we gotten so inured to death, even those so blatantly wreaked by people, that we agree so easily to let go and build on the bleached bones of the dead? Have we gotten so used to the sight of pain and suffering, particularly when assailed by one tragedy happening on top of the other, we console ourselves so easily we are not alone to have deaths in the family -- others are worse off than we? Have we gotten so weak and resigned and voiceless that we surrender ourselves so easily to the narcotic of platitude and forgetfulness?

The deaths in Infanta are not just a catastrophe, they are a crime. Catastrophes are solved by relief, crimes are resolved by justice.

By speaking out against the crime, the prelature corrects yet another word that has been so widely bandied about, whose effect is to bury the dead in the mud twice over. That is the word "illegal," especially as affixed to "logging." By harping on "illegal" logging, government has exculpated, or tried mightily to, the true criminals in this case, which are the legal loggers, made so by the documents they carry from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Can anything be more idiotic than attributing the tons of logs that fell down the mountains and washed up to the sea to the nefarious activities of "illegal" loggers? Can anything be more idiotic than suggesting that the solution to that is to add more checkpoints to catch the “kainginero” [slash-and-burn farmers] and indigenous folk who operate on the fringes of the logging routes -- and often feed on them-and punish them "to the full extent of the law"?

The evidence is plain for all to see. The only thing worse than injury is insult added to it. The only thing worse than death is murder. The only thing worse than murder is the murderer getting away.

And finally, I am glad the prelature has spoken out because of yet another word that government has been using to bury the crime, along with the dead, in an unmarked grave. That word is "growth," or as the prelature calls it, "development agenda." All government has had to do in the past to excuse crimes like this is invoke growth, or survival (amid crushing) poverty, and everything is made all right. Tragedies like this are the price we pay to grow, develop or indeed survive as a community, people and nation.

Well, they are an unacceptable price to pay. Or the wrong people are paying it. The death of a single child is an unacceptable price to pay for that kind of growth and development. The death of an entire community is a devil's bargain. I say this in particular because barely had the last earth been shoveled on to the dead of Quezon than government began talking of the wonders of opening mining to foreign capital. I said it before: that is all very well, but first let Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Mike Defensor and their cabal put their money where their mouths are, or their lives where their words are, and let their children live and breathe the air of the thing they call safe. Otherwise it's just some people's fortunes growing and developing on the contraction and deterioration of the sources of life of the rest of the nation.

There are words and there are words, some words being more worth heeding than others. Deuteronomy's are one of the latter. Choose life, and you and your descendants will live. Choose death, and, well, just make sure the right people end up in that state.

Disaster

Disaster


Updated 11:44pm (Mla time) Jan 09, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the January 10, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


A COUPLE of days before the crisis summit of world leaders in Indonesia, George W. Bush announced he was in the thick of a campaign to raise aid for the tsunami victims. Toward that end, he said, he had appointed the last two former presidents, his father George Bush and immediate predecessor Bill Clinton, to lead the effort to collect private donations. Bush urged Americans to help. "In this situation, cash donations are most useful, and I've asked the former presidents to solicit contributions both large and small."

Clinton added: "Between public and private commitments now, we're up to about $3 billion."

Well, it's good that the United States has joined the world in trying to defuse what the United Nations calls the worst humanitarian crisis ever in modern times. The magnitude of the devastation is mind-boggling, and so is the scale of relief work that needs to be done to overcome it. Better late than never. But Bush's strenuous effort to raise funds for the victims of the disaster merely draws attention to the things he can easily do-to help not just the current victims but the future ones as well; the latter, by making sure they do not become so at all.

The first, and most obvious, is to cut down on arms spending. Nothing more shows the epic scale of human folly than that hunger and deprivation persist amid the wanton waste of precious resources, which is deliberately done simply to increase the destructive capabilities of nations, America's above all. The human species is the most intelligent among the species ever to walk this earth, yet it is at the same time the dumbest. Some members of the species more than others, the current US president chief among the latter.

Compare the $3 billion three American presidents together have so far raised from public and private American sources with this: the world spends the most for arms, currently $950 billion per year. The figures for seven years ago, 1998, show the kind of skewed priorities we have. That year, the world spent $780 billion for arms and $13 billion for basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world. The lowest item in the rung was basic education for everyone in the world, which was only $6 billion. Americans and Europeans spent more to feed their pets-$17 billion-than they did to give water to the thirsty; expenditure for water and sanitation for everyone in the world was only $9 billion.

The United States accounts for close to one-half of the world's arms expenditure.

The US military request for 2005 is $420.7 billion. Last year, its budget was $399.1 billion and the year before that, $396.1 billion. It is 29 times bigger than the combined spending for arms of all the "rogue countries" (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria), which is $14.4 billion. That is certainly more than 29 times bigger than the combined spending of the UN and all its agencies, which is $10 billion. All this while the UN faced a financial crisis over the past decade and was forced to cut back on its humanitarian work because members have not paid their dues, the United States chief of them: it owes the UN $762 million, nearly half (48 percent) of standing dues ($1.6 billion).

Last year in a televised speech, Bush said he was seeking $87 billion for Iraq, a sum to be used to put down all resistance to the most brazen act of occupation to have taken place in postcolonial times.

He wants to help? Easy. Get out of Iraq and cut back on arms.

The second is just as easy. At least from a rational perspective, which is, however, the perspective that George W seems resolved to fight to the bitter end. That is for him to sign the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol puts into action the recommendations of the Rio Summit of 1992, notably the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to levels 5 percent below 1990. The industrialized countries, chiefly the United States, account for 55 percent of those emissions. Last November, Russia, one of the last holdouts, signed the Protocol, leaving only the United States and Australia out in the cold. The greenhouse gas emissions are believed to be the single biggest cause of global warming over the last couple of decades. Scientists predict that as global warming worsens, we will see tsunamis regularly engulfing various parts of the world.

In 1992, George W's father rejected the Rio Summit. Ten years later, in 2002, George W not only did not attend the Johannesburg meeting, he tried to block the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Mark Townsend explains why: "An estimated 5,000 pro-business lobbyists, led by US interests, chorused the message that the status quo is adequate. A leaked letter to President George Bush, signed by 31 groups, including Republican Party lobbyists, some of them linked to oil giant Exxon Mobil, warned that such issues could prove destructive to domestic interests."

At Johannesburg, the US delegation also fought the European proposal to generate energy from renewable sources such as the sun, sea and wind. According to the UN, the US consumption of energy has jumped 21 percent and its greenhouse gas emissions have gone up 13 percent in the last 10 years.

Bush wants to help? Easy. Sign the Kyoto Protocol and join the rest of the world in saving the planet. That way, there won't be many more victims of tsunamis to help.

Some years ago, I recall someone complaining that the youth of today were crazy to latch on to the word of rock stars rather than public officials. Well, when rock stars unite to raise money for victims of natural disasters, they manage to make waves. When public officials gather to decide the fate of the world, they manage only to make tsunamis. No, the youth are perfectly sane. Amid the cacophony or racket or rock and rap, they can still tell music from noise.

Go plant camote

Go plant camote


Updated 02:15am (Mla time) Jan 06, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 6, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


SOMEONE was saying at a table last week: Why do the local fast-food chains insist on serving French fries? Why don't they serve instead "Filipino fries," made from camote, or sweet yam, rather than potatoes? Why do we insist on growing potatoes on huge tracts of land, which are better for growing other things like rice and corn and, yes, camote? Indeed, why do we insist on importing potatoes when local substitutes are easily there? Camote is far more plentiful and possibly more nutritious. It certainly is not inferior taste-wise. It blends well with the hamburgers and chicken they serve at fast-food joints, such as you can even talk of gastronomic harmony among the gooey (and fattening) stuff to be found there.

Well, I do know that the French are befuddled at how so atrocious an invention as strips of potatoes dipped, or drowned, in containers of boiling cooking oil can be attributed to them. It is typically American, they say, both the invention of the food and the invention of its provenance. The French rather like to think of themselves as having more culinary imagination, or daring, the latter to be found in the pride of place escargot occupies in their menus. That, for the fast-food legions, means snails, or our very own kuhol.

I do know as well that the Brits call "French fries" chips. That's what you get when you order fish and chips, the chips there being "French fries." I used to think the chips meant potato chips in the sense of Lay's or Jack 'n Jill potato chips, but that wasn't so at all. If you order the fish and chips in the banketa, such as their simpler food stores can be called that, they wrap the chips in newspaper, and the sheer quantity of the thing will curb your appetite for potatoes. I used to like "French fries" until I got a surfeit of it in London. "Easy on the stuff," I'd tell the vendor. He'd say yes, and still shovel the thing into a whole newspaper page twisted into a cone.

Well, if the Brits are known for culinary enterprise, only they know about it. Our hosts used to take us to Indian restaurants when they wanted to treat. But that is another story.

To go back to "French fries," I myself suggested that banana strips might be a good substitute, if not better. I love bananas, particularly the kind we call "saba." I don't know how that's called in English, I've never been much good at agriculture, and can't even distinguish trees, to my eternal shame. To this day, I love fried bananas, or "maruya," and devour quantities of them wherever I can find them. I remember that when I was a kid our place had a version of it, which was banana strips mixed in batter and fried. We called it kalingking, if my 53-year-old memory serves. There were itinerant vendors aplenty in our street who hawked the stuff, and I do not romanticize when I say that they did not have to walk far to empty their baskets. It was paradise that sold for a song.

I don't know that fast-foods, which have had the most unsavory effect of killing the thriving kakanin industry (you find kakanin now largely in specialty stores, often in fancy wrapping) shouldn't make amends for that crime by introducing some of them in their fare. It should give a new generation of Filipinos quite literally a taste of their past.

But there's the rub. A great deal of "colonial mentality"--a complete misnomer, but one that has managed to survive the years: colonial mentality means imperialist mentality; what we really mean is colonized mentality--underlies our attitudes there. I remember how, when we were kids, our teachers would say when we couldn't answer questions, "Why don't you go home and plant camote?" The suggestion was also a derisive put-down of farmers, who were regarded as country bumpkins, the kind that descended on the city during fiestas, loud and uncouth.

I don't know that today's teachers still say, "Why don't you go home and plant camote?" to their unenlightened or befuddled wards, but I do know the low opinion about camote persists. It has slipped into the local lexicon surreptitiously, and quite insidiously, as when people say "nangamote sa test," in the case of students, or "nangamote sa interview," in the case of people applying for a job. Nobody has thought to say, "namansanas sa report" or "nangapple sa panliligaw."

The same is true of the banana, which is the pejorative adjective affixed to a republic that is going to the dogs (my apologies to dogs). We do not call it a cherry republic or an orange republic or a grape republic, we call it a banana republic. Which is no small irony, considering that what made many South American republics banana republics was the United Fruit Co. which turned vast tracts of land into plantations producing--what else?--bananas. But that is also another story.

If you can add spaghetti to local fast-food fare (I don't know if they still tell the joke about Filipinos in the United States ordering spaghetti at McDonald's), why on earth can you not add camote and banana to it as well? Why apple pie rather than guava pie?

I'm not fond of fast food to begin with, and cannot for the life of me imagine why many folks from the provinces announce with much pride that they now have a Jollibee or McDonald's as though that were the surest sign of the encroachment of civilization. But if a fast-food joint can offer camote and banana strips or indeed the whole gamut of local fruits, which are our pride and joy, in lieu of potatoes, I could be tempted to patronize it. In these days particularly, when money is so hard to come by and the dollar is battering the peso to a bloody pulp the way Manny Pacquiao did Fahsan 3K Battery in four rounds, I should think the advice would be:

Be wise: Do go home and plant camote.

Cancer is growth, too

Cancer is growth, too


Updated 09:28pm (Mla time) Jan 04, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 5, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


IN 2001, a United Nations panel of hundreds of scientists released two reports on global warming. The first is the Working Group 1 Report on the scientific basis of climate change. That is no longer debatable, it says. "Emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activities continue to alter the atmosphere in ways that are expected to affect the climate." This has caused sea levels and sea temperatures to rise and reduced the planet's ice cover. "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." The report predicts that the earth's temperature could rise by 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, the most rapid heating in 10 millennia.

The second report, "Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" looks at the effects of global warming. The rising temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels, it says, could precipitate irreversible climate changes, including altered ocean currents, slowed circulation of warm water in the North Atlantic, and the crumbling of the mountain glaciers and Greenland ice sheet. The results are savage floods, disrupted water supplies, droughts, violent storms and the spread of cholera and malaria. The poor countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America will bear the brunt of these changes, which would further widen the gap between the world's rich and poor. "Most of the earth's people will be on the losing side."

Over the last century, the earth's temperature has risen by 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit, faster than the last 1,000 years combined. The 1990s were the hottest decade in those same 1,000 years. If temperatures should rise over this century to the extent the UN experts warn, all life on this planet would be threatened.

You look at the "natural" disasters that have hit the globe last year, including four hurricanes in Florida, in addition to the floods, droughts, extreme cold and snow in some countries, cyclones, earthquakes, landslides and tsunami that I mentioned last Monday, and you would be hard put not to believe it. In fact, since scientists like to say things with caution, they may be a little late in their timetable. Doubtless, it remains arguable if the earthquake and tsunami that hit Indonesia and several Southeast Asian and South Asian countries are directly related to global warming, but the collective mayhem over the last year culminating in that must give us pause and wonder if our sojourn in this planet has not become a lot more tenuous these days.

I do not know why Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should say the tsunami that engulfed several Asian countries should make us more attractive as a tourist destination. It is not only a coarse thing to say, it is also a ridiculous one. Why should Boracay and the other beaches of this country be safer? If global warming causes the polar ice caps to melt and the sea levels to rise, no beach anywhere in the world will be safe. Indeed, archipelagos should be even worse off than others.

Fortunately, the UN studies say that there is still time to halt the earth's rapid decline. But it requires political will, the kind that at the very least sees the economic and social costs of environmental degradation. Those costs have never figured in the reckoning of various countries as they plunge headlong into growth, or economic survival. The deaths of 5,000 or so Filipinos in Ormoc have never greatly mattered in economic calculation. Neither have the deaths of Indians, Sri Lankans, Indonesians from forest denudation and the poisoning of the air and sea.

At least until last December. If the earthquake and tsunami have served any useful purpose, despite their grimness, it is to sound a wake-up call to all humanity about the unacceptable costs of killing the earth to live. It is a contradiction in terms.

Closer to home, I don't know why the storms of last December shouldn't compel us to re-evaluate the wisdom of murdering Nature to survive. What made the effects of those storms particularly harsh was the logging out of the forests in those areas, made perfectly legal by the timber licenses the DENR gave to logging companies. People died for the most part because logs and not just mud tumbled on to them. To this day, I don't know why we keep blaming "illegal logging" for the mayhem, and refuse to punish the culprits.

Indeed, to this day, I don't know why we're not taking to the streets to protest the Supreme Court's decision to open mining to foreign investors. That is shooting ourselves in the head, given the devastating effects of mining-open-pit mining in particular-on local communities since the days of Marcopper. "But we have to grow" is the argument used to justify it; we are a poor country. Well, poverty is not an excuse to commit suicide. That growth carries with it a very steep price in terms of human lives and the welfare of communities, and in terms of the continuing livability of the various places of this country. I am tempted to suggest that we allow mining companies-as well as logging firms-to operate with impunity only on condition that their owners and managers and their families live in the very areas they operate on.

Cancer is growth, too, in case we forget. It is runaway growth of cells in one part of the body, causing the entire body to degenerate. And the owner of the body to experience excruciating pain. The way this country and the globe are reeling from the impact of "natural disasters," you wonder if the kind of growth we have been pursuing is not of the cancerous variety.

The UN studies remain hopeful we can still do something to halt our march to apocalypse, but it also says one other thing: That's not something we can put off for tomorrow, that is something we must do today.

Demons

Demons


Updated 11:26pm (Mla time) Jan 03, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the January 4, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


I NEVER much like exploding firecrackers on New Year's Eve. My apologies to the victims, but I've never sympathized with those who find themselves in hospitals screaming in pain from missing fingers or even hands in the worst cases from fooling around with the more dangerous varieties. It's completely self-inflicted. Indeed, unlike suicide, which harms only oneself, the injury is acquired in the course of posing harm to others.

For some reason, some people like to explode firecrackers days before New Year in places that are calculated to annoy others, and cause high blood pressure, if not heart attacks, among the elderly. Just for the fun of it.

I know it's tradition, and tradition says making that kind of racket on New Year's Eve helps to drive demons away. And no demons are worth more driving away than the ones that bedeviled not just this country but this whole planet last year. For reasons known only to them, they appeared to have chosen 2004 as the year to hold their plenary meeting in. The disasters last year, personal and social, minor and cataclysmic, were just too mind-boggling. I'm not particularly given to horoscopes and astrology, I know calendars are a human invention to measure time, but boy am I glad we're out of that year. Maybe the new one will bring better news.

But as I was saying, I know it is tradition, but traditions are always made to be broken, or changed. Something the resolutely tradition-bound Tevye of "Fiddler on the Roof" himself discovered. Traditions are only as good as the reasons for them remain alive and vital. Not so when they are dead and inert. Well before an apocalyptic earthquake/tsunami hit Sumatra and several Southeast and South Asian countries a week ago, I already wanted to write a column urging this country, particularly Metro Manila, to not explode firecrackers at the end of the year.

The reason for it was patent. The eastern seaboard of Luzon, particularly the Quezon part of it, had just been pummeled by three powerful storms coming one after the other. They left a world in shambles, mud covering houses, churches and fields; logs and the bodies of humans and animals washed up to shore, by themselves an obdurate statement about cause and effect; and whole communities robbed of their hopes and dreams, apart from families their loved ones. The folks there were dying from lack of food and water, and the first trucks loaded with relief goods that rumbled onto the place had to be protected by soldiers from riots. Dogs had gotten rabid.

Officials were saying it would take at least six months to merely start to rehabilitate the place. You saw the photographs, and you knew it was so.

Fr. Boy Makabenta, parish priest of Infanta, would tell me later Infanta was like a ghost town last Christmas. Most of the residents left for Manila to join their relatives and forget about their problems for a while. But the folks from the barrio trekked there full force to attend the Misa de Gallo and fall on their knees in thanksgiving for having been spared. For the first time, said Father Boy, they didn't have to wait for the parishioners to come to church on time. They were there at crack of dawn, filling the church to the rafters.

I couldn't imagine in light of this how any Filipino could wish to make merry by exploding firecrackers on New Year's Eve. Or indeed could wish to drive demons away in this way. There was a very real demon among us, which was Hunger or Deprivation, or whatever other names he goes by, and the only way he was going to be exorcised was for people to pitch in and lend a helping hand. It was almost criminal to see how we could allow money that could be spent to ease the plight of our brothers and sisters in Quezon to quite literally go up in smoke.

Then came the catastrophic events of a week ago, an earthquake of exceptional violence hitting Sumatra and sending the sea heaving onto the shores of several countries. The spectacle of grief and misery was there for everyone to see, in the grim images that flashed on TV screens from Banda Aceh, from Phuket, from the Maldives. I remember that Jamie Foxx's character in "Collateral" had a picture of Maldives on his taxi, his reminder that there was a paradise on earth. There was little left of paradise after the tsunami.

I was completely embarrassed when BBC reported on how the world celebrated New Year's Eve, which was that most of it did not celebrate it at all. On one hand, it showed Filipinos dancing in Ayala and exploding firecrackers in their homes. On the other it showed Indonesians, Thais, Sri Lankans, and even the peoples of countries who had not fallen victim to the earthquake and tsunami holding candles or prostrating themselves in temples in supplication or silent prayer for the dead. Sweden cancelled all traditional festivities and declared its intention to donate whatever money it could raise from it to the victims.

Tradition arises from common sense, it does not take the place of common sense. Are we so given to partying and having a good time we cannot forego it in the face of wretched tragedy? I am not saying we should lapse into depression, or joylessness, on New Year's Eve. I am saying we should be more sensitive to the sensibilities of others. There are ways to celebrate life or express thanksgiving without rubbing salt on other people's wounds. The only happy note last Friday was that the din wasn't as loud and as long as in previous New Year's Eves. But you still wonder how much rice and canned goods could have been bought by the money that went to that racket. Which doesn't drive demons away anyway, for one good reason:

The demons are not outside of us. They're right inside us.

Sooner than we think

Sooner than we think


Updated 01:34am (Mla time) Jan 03, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A10 of the January 3, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


THE IMAGES are mind-boggling: cars perched on rooftops, buildings torn down, beams jutting out of the earth like angry recriminations, rows and rows of bodies strewn on the ground. And wails and lamentation everywhere, some people having lost entire families. "Catastrophe" doesn't come close to describing the swath of destruction left behind by the earthquake that shook Indonesia and the tsunami that engulfed the shores of several countries before the year was out.

As of this writing, the death toll had climbed to 150,000. It wasn't just bridges and buildings that disappeared, whole villages did. The whole place was flattened to the ground, as if a giant scythe had swept across it.

The effects of the tidal wave were no less horrific. A family, now safe back home in the United States, told of the horror they went through. They were vacationing in Phuket, and it was a lovely day, when suddenly to everyone's surprise the sea started receding. It was a scene straight out of a sci-fi movie, the water retreating and leaving behind the slew of stuff that had embedded on the sea floor. Then minutes later, the water began to heave back at the shore.

They saw it from a distance, the sea turning into a "wall of water." That phrase would be used again and again. Most of the bathers were frozen in their tracks, watching in fascinated horror as the water drew near. Some others began screaming and running away. The family that survived did. The father grabbed his two daughters and along with his wife started running toward high ground. They could hear explosions behind them. They managed to reach a restaurant in the shape of a boat before the water burst on them. They clung to whatever they could and for a while lay submerged in water. They thought it was the end until they managed to put their heads up and saw the raging sea tumbling past them.

The aftermath was a nightmare. It's one that has seen the aid institutions of the world rushing to distribute relief goods to the millions of survivors. Indeed, that has seen the Bush administration indicted for foot-dragging when so many American lives were lost on the beaches of Thailand and other countries, in contrast to its rush to go to war in Iraq where only so many oilfields lay untapped by American companies.

I myself have wondered however why so little attention has been given to the environmental sources and implications of the earthquake and tsunami. Reuters is one of the few media organizations that have done so. It has featured stories linking global warming and the environmental mayhem that have been taking place across the planet in recent years. Environmental correspondent Alister Doyle wrote for example: "Scientists say a build-up of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from human burning of fossil fuels threatens to trigger more powerful storms and raise sea levels, exposing coasts to more erosion... Island nations like the Maldives, swamped by the tsunami, could literally disappear beneath the waves if seas rise."

Well, right now Maldives is hard put to keep its head above water-literally. Last November, I was tempted to write a column on this after having read a news item about a group of scientists warning that global warming was closer than we thought and criticizing the American government for refusing to sign the Rio Accord, one that would limit the emission of industrial wastes into the air. The United States is the No. 1 culprit there. The United States, particularly under Bush, has adamantly refused to agree to it on the ground that it would cripple its industrial production and growth. Well, the recent catastrophe to hit Asia must hint at the global costs, at least for other countries, of that growth.

Of course, there is no direct evidence linking the water that fell on the Sri Lankans, Indians, Thais, Maldivians and Indonesians to global warming. The evidence points to the earthquake that hit Sumatra as the thing that rocked the sea violently, causing it to tumble into different shores. But the sheer plenitude and ferocity of the natural disasters that visited the globe last year alone must suggest that those natural disasters might not owe to completely natural causes.

Here are just some of them: floods in Afghanistan (July), Bosnia and Herzegovina (April), Dominican Republic (May), India (July), Namibia (April), Nepal (July), Macedonia (June), Philippines (December); landslides in Kyrgyzstan (April), Nepal (July), Nicaragua (July), Philippines (December); hurricanes in Caribbean (August), Cuba (August and September), Grenada (September), Jamaica (September); cyclones in Madagascar (February), Samoa (January), Slovakia (November), Vanuatu (February); earthquakes in Indonesia (one in February, two in November, one in December), Japan (October), Morocco (February), Pakistan (February); tsunami in various countries of Asia and Africa (December); floods/drought/frost in Peru in February and extreme cold and snowstorms (July).If these things don't scare the hell out of you, you're already dead. You take them individually and you'll always be able to regard them as freaks of nature. You take them collectively, you'll have to factor in the freakish folly of the human species. It's enough to remind you of the movie, "The Day After Tomorrow," with scientists warning about an impending Ice Age and governments-particularly the one to be found in North America-refusing to heed it. The climate is badly messed up, and the biggest disaster of all is man himself.

Again, take it from your rearview mirror: The vehicles you see gaining on you are closer than you think.