"THE PAINFUL TRUTH IS THAT I MARRIED AN ABUSER, A SCROOGE, AN INCORRIGIBLE PHILANDERER, AND WORSE - A PERVERT."
Susana Ortigas, the wife of Francisco Ortigas for 43 years, stated the above in an affidavit to the police.
IN YET ANOTHER CASE OF IMMORALITY AND CORRUPTION IN HIGH PLACES, FRANCISCO ORTIGAS HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH CONCUBINAGE. His wife of 43 years also accused him of frequent sex with a company employee and a maid. If convicted, Ortigas will be sentenced to from 6 months to 4 years imprisonment.
Especially in the month that Filipinos with true integrity celebrate their love on Valentine's Day, this story is a sad confirmation of the decadence and spoilt-brat mentality of so many rich and powerful Philippine families. As one of the Philippines' richest, Ortigas enjoys enormous inherited wealth, and can afford to pay vast sums to all the lawyers who represent him and attempt to defend his corruption and immorality.
But what he no longer has is any credibility with stockholders or leverage with SM's Henry Sy, who is negotiating the purchase of Ortigas Holdings Inc., owners and developers of prime Manila real estate. Corruption and immorality of existing management always undermines investor confidence, especially when evaluating a takeover bid.
This means that under Ortigas control the stocks will fall in value, and under SM control they will rise. Not a good legacy for any rich man to leave either his immediate family or his company's wider stockholders. And not a good reputation for any eminent citizen to bequeath as example to patriotic Filipinos who wish to believe in their country.
We applaud Susana Ortigas for standing up for her rights, and we encourage all Philippine wives - rich or poor - to do the same. Women are equal to men and should not be subjected to such humiliation and disgrace by arrogant, dishonorable, immoral, unfaithful husbands.
Every High School student, male or female, knows that Philippine Hero José Rizal warned us in El Filibusterismo of dangers that oppressed peoples must protect themselves against when seeking freedom from tyrannical foreign occupation. He asks: "Why independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?"
Now, after several decades of independence on the surface, layer upon layer of corruption below the surface have created more oppression in the Philippines than that of the Spanish in Rizal's time, camouflaged by the bribe-taking lawmakers and judges whose job is to stop it.
Too many former "slaves" have indeed become today's "tyrants", just as Rizal feared, making our nation a global laughing stock and undermining all the good works that genuine patriotic Filipinos are doing to build the Philippines into the shining light of Asia that it can become. - Angel Tugado
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Click on the above graphic to see the video of President Obama's 2012 State Of The Union Address on this page or click here to watch it on YouTube.
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Support the stand of Wikipedia, US President Obama, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Boing Boing, Reddit, Flickr, Cheezburger network, and many others against the
draconian bid by computer-illiterate American lawmakers to destroy the international freedom of the internet. To find out more click anywhere on the above graphic.
If you are an American citizen, even if you are traveling outside the country on business or vacation and even if you are currently living overseas, you can help
immediately by signing Google's petition to the US Congress. Please note the great urgency. Time is of the essence, because voting starts January 24, 2012.
Watch also the video below.
WHAT DOES A BILL LIKE PIPA/SOPA MEAN TO OUR SHAREABLE WORLD?Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto -- a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume. He believes that new technologies enabling loose collaboration and taking advantage of "spare" brainpower - will change the way society works.
Shirky's work focuses on the rising usefulness of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, wireless networks, social software and open-source development. New technologies are enabling new kinds of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done in business, science, the arts and elsewhere, as an alternative to centralized and institutional structures, which he sees as self-limiting.
In his writings and speeches he has argued that "a group is its own worst enemy". His clients have included Nokia, the Library of Congress and the BBC. Shirky is an adjunct professor in New York University's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he teaches a course named "Social Weather".
He's the author of "Here Comes Everybody", about the power of crowds, and "Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age". WIRED magazine said about him: "Shirky is one of the handful of people with justifiable claim to the digerati moniker. He's become a consistently prescient voice on networks, social software, and technology's effects on society."
(Video and write-up courtesy ofTED.)
Angel
Tugado's syndicated column on current and recent news.
(Editor's note: SRM respects the
universal right of free speech, and has the utmost respect for Angel
Tugado's personal talent and integrity. However, as SRM's Editor I have
an obligation to state the publishers' Official Disclaimer that
observations, commentaries, opinions and suggestions below are the
author's, not the publishers'.)
A leaked video uploaded to YouTube by UgaritNewsEnglish on Jan 22, 2012 shows Syrian soldiers beating and humiliating a captured protester because he demonstrated for freedom. It's a sample of daily beatings of unarmed civilians by Assad's armed forces, and there are wide reports of more severe atrocities. According to Human Rights Watch, about 650 civilians died under extreme torture in Syria since protests began in March 2011. Some YouTube videos show
soldiers randomly shooting unarmed civilians, and others show the shelling of poor residential districts in the city of Homs.
DUE TO VETO BY CHINA AND RUSSIA OF ANY HUMANITARIAN HELP FROM THE UNITED NATIONS, THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT MASSACRES HUNDREDS OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS WHILE THE REST OF THE WORLD LOOKS ON AND DOES NOTHING.
Vividly displayed on YouTube videos, systematic shelling of the city of Homs by the Syrian military is murdering babies, children, pregnant women, sick people, senior citizens, mothers, fathers and grandparents, people who are mostly poor and if not killed immediately by mortars or snipers will die slowly from inflicted wounds or enforced starvation. It's another tragic example of how a free and open internet is the only way that oppressed peoples can tell the world what's happening to them.
Cries from inside Syria for help are being received throughout the world. One simply pleads: "The UN abandoned us. Who's going to help us now, who's going to help us now?" The Arab League is doing nothing. Neighboring countries are doing nothing. Europe and the USA are doing nothing. Africa and Latin America are doing nothing. Non-Chinese Asia is doing nothing. Now their last hope, the United Nations, is shackled by the monstrous inhumanity of China and Russia. Now also, the UN is doing nothing. It's time for the rest of the world either to insist on rewriting the UN's constitution to abolish veto by the most powerful countries, or to create a totally new international organization that operates by majority vote and does not allow any country to veto its majority decisions. Meanwhile the only hope for the Syrian people is that Europe and the USA will arm and support the Free Army that's fighting back against the tyrannical oppressors. Without a shadow of a doubt, this revolution will eventually end like Libya's but with hundreds or maybe thousands more fatalities.
Top row left to right: Protesters in Tunisia, Germany, Senegal, USA, Switzerland.
Bottom row left to right: Protesters in Croatia, Indonesia, China, Syria, Egypt.
THERE IS HARDLY A COUNTRY LEFT IN THE WORLD THAT HASN'T EXPERIENCED PUBLIC PROTESTS AND DEMONSTRATIONS IN THE PAST 12 MONTHS.
People around the globe - even in the most dictatorial regimes such as Libya's - had finally had enough and decided to make their voices heard on the issues that impact their lives. The above photos show just a few of them.
Many unarmed protesters were beaten up and others, as in Syria, are still being murdered in cold blood by soldiers and riot police, but not all regimes are so ruthless. The City Mayor of New York, for example, said in a public statement: "People have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we'll be happy to make sure they have locations to do it." In NYC and other enlightened cities, the protests were made peacefully, with nobody injured or killed.
A minority of demonstrations expressed desperate national dissatisfaction and anger against their specific Arab and African governments, but the vast majority were protests caused by the prolonged world financial crisis and were intended to persuade all governments to take tough action against the continuing, still unregulated, remorselessly destructive, rampant greed and corruption of international banks and global corporations. The Philippine protests were in this second category, but experts have opined that if Gloria Arroyo had realized her dictatorial cha-cha ambitions and succeeded in corruptly manipulating our constitution to extend her term of office, we would undoubtedly have experienced a full-scale revolution here.
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE EVERYWHERE! In the very special Year Of The Dragon I hope and trust that all the problems of the world will take a magical turn for the better. Planet Earth provides us daily with so many free open-source positives to be grateful for and proud of. We cannot ever allow the negative acts of greedy politicians and businessmen to steal them from us. Graft, corruption, robbery and control are their stock in trade, but all their stock is past its use-by date.
Support the stand of Wikipedia, US President Obama, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Boing Boing, Reddit, Flickr, Cheezburger network, and many others against
the draconian bid by computer-illiterate American lawmakers to destroy the international freedom of the internet. Voting on the offensive proposed bills has now
been postponed pending further consultation, but to combat the continuous lobbying and bribing of congressmen and senators by lawless corporations we will
need to maintain our global pressure. To find out more and to stay updated on this issue just click anywhere on the above graphic.
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE OF ALL NATIONALITIES AROUND THE WORLD WHO EXPRESSED THEIR DISMAY AND PROTEST AT THE BILLS BEFORE THE US CONGRESS AND SENATE. I quote from a statement issued by the Senate Majority Leader (Democrat) on January 20, 2012: "In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday's vote on the Protect IP Act. There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks."
The House Judiciary Committee Chairman (Republican) also backed off, albeit temporarily, by putting the bill on hold. His statement said: "I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy. It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products."
A statement issued by the White House said a solution must not only deal with online piracy but also ensure continuation of a free and open Internet. Legitimately fighting piracy is one thing, but allowing American corporations to control and manipulate the world's internet is not legitimate, especially when so many American corporations are themselves engaged in clandestine tax evasion, money laundering, invasions of privacy such as secret phone tapping, bribery and corruption, and other unlawful activities around the globe adding up to considerably higher losses of corporate tax revenue to the US government than the total alleged, vastly exaggerated, business losses due provably and specifically to internet piracy. Open-source freeware, for example, is exactly what it says - open and free. Uploading and downloading it is not piracy.
Americans demonstrating in a public protest against proposed laws to hijack the internet and rob the world's people of their freedom.
IT BECOMES CLEARER TO THE WORLD BY THE DAY THAT THE US GOVERNMENT HAS FINALLY LOST IT. American lawmakers who now want to seize control of the internet, which has never belonged to the USA, are intent on a hostile act of bringing back slavery on a global scale that would alienate the people of every other country on the planet. Wasn't exacerbating poverty everywhere on earth by creating and maintaining the world financial crisis enough for them? What more do they want from us? What has happened to the America that fought for its own freedom on the basis that all people are created equal and won its own independence in a war sparked by colonial taxation without representation?
If the proposed laws are passed by the US Congress and Senate, they will dictatorially remove the freedom of millions of people all over the world to educate themselves via the internet, to communicate with their globally scattered families via the internet, to be inspired by other countries (including the USA) via the internet, to start new technology enterprises and services such as Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia and Facebook via the internet, to donate and come to the aid of other countries in rapid response to natural disasters via the internet, and more. This would be a tragic backward step for the world and for the American people. It would be remembered forever as the hostile swansong that marked the USA's rejection of freedom and equality before its final descent into a US-Euro New Third World.
Despite the threat of an aggressively hostile act of global terrorism by the USA to seize control of the internet, rob the world of freedom, and enslave the peoples of every other nation on the planet, there's no need to worry. This latest example of the USA's mindless decline and self-destruction will eventually be overcome by Asia, Latin America and Africa as we steadily continue to rise above oppression on our way to being the inevitable New First World. January 16, 2012 was Martin Luther King Day and his spirit lives on: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advocated civil disobedience and other non-violent protest, was the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and was assassinated in the USA for his tireless peaceful efforts to bring freedom, equality and prosperity to people of all races and skin colors. Posthumously, the third Monday of January each year was established as a US Federal Holiday in his memory, and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. His words "I Have A Dream" and "We Shall Overcome" are revived to this day by victims of US aggression wherever it occurs in the world. Today's American Congress and Senate evidently consider the words 'lawmaker' and 'lawbreaker' to be synonymous. Today's US congressmen and senators think it's right and just to ratify a law with one hand while continuing to break it with the other.
A FEW READERS HAVE TAKEN ME TO TASK FOR MY COMPLIMENTARY REMARKS ABOUT MEGAUPLOAD, which has since been shut down by the FBI. Just scroll down this page to see what I said if you haven't read it yourself.
All I can say in response to these critics is that like the people supporting Megaupload in its promotional video, I've never seen any evidence of the alleged criminal activities, and I don't know of any evidence that has been made public. The website was shut down before any trial, let alone conviction, of its so-called conspirators. Perhaps mistakenly, I thought that in American law the accused are presumed innocent until proved guilty. So I will leave my complimentary remarks unchanged until I see irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing and/or the accused are convicted after an open, public, fair trial. I sincerely hope that senators and congressmen in the USA will resist pressure from their lawless corporate paymasters to give the owners of Megaupload a sham trial similar to that given by a Spanish sham court martial to Philippine Hero José Rizal.
TAKE A GOOD LONG LOOK AT THE ABOVE AND BELOW DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM (DOT) ADS TO ATTRACT MORE VISITORS TO THE PHILIPPINES, and ask yourself if they look anything like Switzerland. Then seriously consider these two questions: 1) "Who are the people who continuously criticize every attempt - be it from government, business or individuals - to improve our global image and give our country a chance to throw off the humiliating mantle of 'Third World corruption' that deters so many foreigners and makes us lag so far behind most of Asia?" and 2) "What exactly are these same people trying to achieve by repeatedly putting us down and pushing us backwards every time we rise up to make some positive progress forwards?"
Without the slightest doubt, it's politically motivated. There are people who stand to lose by our nation's advancement and, just as in our southeast Asian neighbor Myanmar, those politicians obsessed with gaining personal wealth and power at the people's expense are ultimately doomed to failure. 2012 means bye bye corruption! I find it difficult to praise DOT highly enough for their new slogan: "It's more fun in the Philippines". The way it immediately became viral on the internet - in sheer spontaneity, with no organized movement behind it, and with so many Filipinos posting their own unique creations online - has proved above and beyond any feeble criticism that, in the collective opinion of the vast majority of Filipinos, DOT really really really has hit the spot.
WHAT
KIND OF PERSON TARGETS CHRISTMASTIME TO ROB FILIPINO
CHILDREN OF THEIR HAPPINESS? According
to the Philippine National Police, crime always increases
during the Christmas season. This is mainly petty crime,
but it can be significantly traumatic and damaging to
victims. If criminals are cruel enough to target ordinary
families in the season of goodwill, the affect on children
especially but also on parents is multiplied many times
over. Youth gangs causing trouble during Simbang Gabi,
pickpockets and bag snatchers in stores and malls, thievery
in churches, mugging and other thefts with violence
in city streets, burglary of family homes when the families
are Christmas shopping - all these and more are typical
of seasonal crime that turns Christmas into tragedy
for so many ordinary Filipinos.
Our legacy from corruption
and robbery of the people on a grand scale at the top
of the political hierarchy inevitably contaminates the
whole of Philippine society, and we all need to support
President Aquino's war against political corruption.
In the meantime we must also be alert to the everyday
activities of petty criminals who seek to emulate it.
It cannot
be overemphasized that corruption is a disease, an evil,
and a sin. It's highly contagious and destructive. It
needs to be totally eradicated. Once our society is freed from strangulation and robbery by corrupt politicians and public officials at every level, there will be no limit to what every Filipino as a unique individual and the Philippines as a unique nation can achieve. We have creativity, intelligence, moral and physical strength, and the work ethic to succeed in any field of human endeavor. This has been proved over and again by our breakthrough Filipino pioneers, and the time has come for us all to follow their lead.
All it takes now is the will to win against all the odds that corrupt politicians and officials have piled up to stop us, and we are already doing it! Corrupt politicians are on the run like scared dogs with their tails between their legs. They will all be caught, and every single one of them will be brought to justice for his or her crimes against the Philippine people.
NORMALLY
I'M A GREAT FAN OF GOOGLE, ITS VISION AND ITS PRODUCTS,
BUT I STRONGLY OBJECT WHEN THE WEB BROWSER GOOGLE CHROME
TRIES TO TAKE OVER MY COMPUTER AND MY LIFE JUST AS MICROSOFT'S
INTERNET EXPLORER DID PREVIOUSLY.
So goodbye Microsoft Internet Explorer, goodbye Google Chrome, and good riddance to both. If they so love to dominate others, all they need to do is agree a rota and screw each other in turn. The non-profit open-source Mozilla
Firefox is vastly preferable to either of them.
It does what I want it to do, not what the anonymous
grey executives of Microsoft and Google want to force
me to do.
MEGAUPLOAD
- A FREE, SIMPLE, AND GREAT WAY TO PUT YOUR VIDEOS ON
YOUTUBE - AND MUCH MORE BESIDES. You
must have seen in the news on Philippine TV some of
the onlookers' videos from Russia, China, India, Bahrain,
Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Libya, Syria, Egypt and
several other countries of citizens protesting against
unpopular governments, and of how those governments
responded with excessive military force, often killing
and injuring unarmed protesters including women and
children. Most of the videos had been posted on YouTube
in unspoken pleas for help from the rest of the world.
And most of the governments involved have attempted
to censor the internet and stop their citizens making
contact with the rest of the world. Below is the promotional
video from MegaUpload
which itself has been subjected to a censorship attempt
in the USA.
The
Marcos and Arroyo clans are rumored to be leading a
conspiracy to regain dictatorial control of the Philippines
by military coup, and it is important that we protect
our rights to express our views and keep access to the
internet available to every Philippine citizen. We are
fortunate in having a popular anti-corruption President
elected by a landslide, but this makes P'Noy the arch-enemy
of the Marcos and Arroyo clans. They are not interested
in our people or our votes. They are interested in seizing
power by any means, however unlawful, and they are interested
in self-enrichment at the people's expense because corruption
is the only way of life they understand. Every
Filipino with a cell phone can be an independent reporter.
Anyone who sees something wrong and takes on-the-spot
photos or videos of it can upload them to the internet
for the world to see also. This is the ultimate protection
of our personal freedom, our human rights, and our nation's
future.
IS
THERE NO END TO THE ARROYO CRONIES' HYPOCRISY?
To
start with, let's get our facts straight. Gloria Arroyo was
the most unpopular president in our history except for deposed
dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Right? Gloria Arroyo was acknowledged
and recognized throughout the Philippines, all of Asia, and
the entire world as the most corrupt Philippine president since
Ferdinand Marcos. Right? In a clandestine midnight appointment
immediately prior to stepping down, Gloria Arroyo made Renato
Corona our so-called Supreme Court Chief Justice. Right? Midnight
appointments by outgoing presidents are unconstitutional and
unlawful. Right? Philippine voters throughout our whole nation
in 2010 voted for Benigno Aquino by a landslide to become our
new President. Right? He promised to rid our country of political
corruption. Right? So who does Renato Corona think he is? How
many Filipinos voted for him to unlawfully block President Aquino
from doing what the people want and ridding our country of the
crimes of political corruption? Corona is himself corruption
personified.
Public protesters' placards outside the Supreme Court confirm the Philippine people's
distrust of Gloria Arroyo's unlawful midnight appointment of Chief Justice Corona
and their support for President Aquino's measures to curb his corruption.
Renato Corona was
appointed by Gloria Arroyo for one reason, and one reason
only: to prevent her arrest and prosecution as the criminal
traitor that she really is, and that her corrupt actions
already had proved over and again beyond reasonable
doubt. The midnight appointment of Corona was merely
one of her many corruptions.
In collusion with the Marcos
clan, Corona is now going so far in his attempt to block Arroyo's
prosecution that he and others like him have launched a gross
and laughable suggestion that P'Noy wants to create a dictatorship.
Former dictator Ferdinand Marcos plundered public coffers and
ordered the murder of Filipinos who opposed him, including Aquino's
father. Later he made a clandestine chicken run into exile to
escape prosecution following the successes of anti-dictator
People Power inspired and led by Cory Aquino, our current President's
mother. Gloria Arroyo's "rare bone disease" was a
scam to make a similar escape. P'Noy won the
presidential election fairly and squarely and is now doing what
the voters elected him to do: rid our nation of the evils of
legalized political corruption. It is the corrupt judges who
are at fault, not our popular President who has a landslide
mandate from the people to bring corrupt politicians to genuine
justice, not to a charade of justice faked by corrupt cronies
that Gloria Aquino set up in midnight appointments to save her
skin.
NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS CAN
BE SURPRISED BY THE UK'S REFUSAL TO ALLOW THEIR COUNTRY
TO BE DICTATED TO BY A PRESSURE GROUP OF DESPERATE SELF-INTERESTED
FOREIGN EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS.
Would
you want the Philippine government to be controlled
by foreign Asian governments such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan,
Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia
and Myanmar, not to mention China and India?
This is the UK's dilemma.
Despite being on the winning side in 2 World Wars, the once
invincible British Empire on which "the sun never set" rapidly
disintegrated as the UK's strained domestic economy could no
longer be stretched further to maintain its farflung global
outposts. One by one the former colonies of this small island
in the North Sea claimed and were all granted Independence.
To give credit where it's due on every side, this potentially
painful process was mutually agreed with very little violence.
Brits had learned their lesson, and there was no need for anyone
to emulate the American War of Independence.
Following creation of the
European Common Market, which the UK later joined, strong opposition
to it among British voters has never given up hope of reversing
the decision. After all, throughout history Europe has been
a hotbed of conflict and turmoil that surpasses any in Africa
or Asia. Since the birth of Christ, Britain has been occupied
for centuries by the Romans (Italians) and later the Normans
(French), and has fought in 2 world wars against the Germans.
In medieval times its arch enemy was Spain, and at various other
times it has been invaded by Vikings (Scandinavians), Saxons
(Germans) and many other Western Europeans. During the "Cold
War" it was under threat from the USSR (Soviet Union) which
then included most of Eastern Europe.
But
Britain is very different now. After decades of immigration
from all over its former Empire, it is now a truly multinational,
multiracial, multicultural society. The young people
now of voting age have their own fresh ideas, and no
longer support the old-style stuck-in-the-mud politicians.
They DO want to change Britain for the better, but they
DON'T believe the answer is to go to bed with the European
Union. They have peacefully revolutionized British society,
and they prefer close ties with Africa, Asia, Caribbean,
and wherever their ancestors came from in the developing
Third World.
Prime Minister David Cameron
has read the situation correctly, and it would be a mistake
of the most gargantuan proportions to surrender the UK's national
sovereignty to the European Union. Other countries are also
having very serious doubts. Among them are Ireland, the Netherlands,
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Sweden and Denmark.
Ask European economic
or political analysts and they will tell you that the
Agreement in question was created by Germany, with France
making minor amendments to jump on the bandwagon. Even
in Germany and France, the two countries whose leaders
Angela Merkel and Nikolas Sarkozy are pushing hardest
for Europe's total economic and political integration,
millions of their own voters strongly oppose it. After
all, they have the experience that Hitler failed to
take over Europe, as did Napoleon before him, both with
disastrous consequences - so why should the Germans
and French suffer further from the failures of their
current overambitious leaders to now take over Europe
in tandem? From
the point of view of every free, independent, self-governing
European nation, why should their taxpayers bail out
and refinance incompetence (and often corruption) of
foreign politicians and bankers whose continuously repeated
bad performances lead to bankruptcy? (Many thanks to
the OFW network.)
THERE'S A NEW LOVE IN MY LIFE - OR IN MY WIFE'S LIFE, TO BE MORE EXACT, BUT I CAN'T KEEP MY HANDS OFF IT EITHER! It's the cutting edge Asus N43SL Special Edition laptop produced in association with Taiwan's award winning singer-composer-actor-director Jay Chou. For readers outside of Asia or in parts of Asia not yet familiar with Jay Chou, both his parents are teachers, but his talents are natural. In other words they are not the result of advanced formal education in creative arts or anything else. His style is often a mixture of Asian and Western, making his music totally unique, and the culture shining through all of his creative work is fundamentally Chinese, yet its appeal expands on Eastern tastes to attract millions of fans in Europe and the USA. The laptop he designed for Asus - as well as a distinctive case that makes it look more like a work of art and a soft keyboard that makes it feel more like a musical instrument - has an amazing specification under the hood, with all the performance to match. Just take a quick look at this PDF - it will make your mouth water. And for much more info visit the Asus website.
Jay Chou has sold more than 30 million albums
and has won the World Music Award 4 times.
RING ALL THE CHURCH BELLS IN THE PHILIPPINES TO CELEBRATE EVERY VICTORY THAT GOD WINS FOR US AGAINST OUR PUBLIC ENEMY #1 -- THE GODLESS GREED OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION!!! What could be worse than a so-called president who got there by election rigging, who during her fraudulent term of office was totally and remorselessly corrupt, who brought our nation the deplorable worldwide ill-repute of being one of the most corrupt countries in the world, who set us back decades in regard to progress with improving our infrastructure and eliminating the abomination of mass poverty, and who gave every level of government the role model of corruption to be emulated with her official approval? The contaminations and infections of Gloria Arroyo's corruptions tainted all our lives. It is a great victory for good over evil that she has been charged, was arrested before escaping, and must now face justice in court.
THREE CHEERS FOR PRESIDENT AQUINO!!! He promised to take action against political corruption and he is doing just that. Gloria Arroyo is universally recognized as far the most corrupt president our country has ever had the misfortune to endure, except for Ferdinand Marcos. We must never be fooled by any mysterious fake rare disease that her cronies pretend has arrived by coincidence out of nowhere just in time to keep her out of court. Did any of the innocent people massacred by the Ampatuan army financed by Arroyo's administration get any sympathy from her? No! She shrugged off their deaths as a means to an end. An end to benefit herself. She deserves no sympathy from the Philippine people, and the court must not let her off lightly.
DON'T ALLOW HER TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY! Gloria Arroyo is playing out a pathetic charade to attract sympathy and give cronies appointed to the Supreme Court a plausible basis for defying our democratically elected President Aquino's directive to the Bureau of Immigration to prevent the Arroyos from leaving. What a fraud!
Why did she never wear these fashion accessories when she was in office? Why did her so-called rare disease suddenly manifest itself after revelations about her corruption began to appear in the media? Why is she is now in a panic to leave the country just as she is about to be charged and brought to justice? What a fraud! Leaks have already been spreading that the Arroyos are planning a coup d'etat from abroad enabling Gloria to return as a Dictator -- a female Marcos, and this is why she placed so many cronies in positions of power before leaving office. Proceeds of the Arroyos' corruptions have given them funds for it.
AS
THE SAYING GOES: "THE TRUTH WILL OUT". What better describes the deep dark hole that
Gloria Arroyo has dug herself into? I deliberately do not refer to her
as a former president because this would falsely imply that she
recognized, understood, and carried out the constitutional duties and
responsibilities of a President to the nation and its people. The truth
is, she took the oath and immediately ignored it.
This is a
clear example of the legacy handed down by Dictator Ferdinand Marcos,
who believed that once elected he could do anything he wanted merely
for his own personal gain, with total disregard of his nation and
people, or even of basic human rights.
Revelations
of the Arroyo administration's corruptions go on and on, complete with
witnesses and documentary evidence. Sadly it doesn't stop there but
filters down through senate, congress, provincial and municipal
governments, barangay and SK officials. Her funding of the 2000-strong Ampatuan
private army in Mindanao amply demonstated this point, as did her appointment before leaving office in 2010 of so many cronies to positions of power, including justices placed in the Supreme Court to protect her from later prosecutions and convictions on charges of graft and corruption.
And now she claims to have
a rare bone disease and must leave the country to get medical
treatment. Come on! How often have we heard that one before?
It's a common cliche that corrupt politicians everywhere in
the world suddenly discover they have a rare virus or a rare
disease just in time to prevent their appearance in court and
enable them to escape into exile, knowing that their secret
Swiss bank accounts are overflowing with ill-gotten gains, and
that nearby corrupt Swiss doctors can be bought at any time to corroborate their
false claims. It is not a coincidence that Switzerland, the home of secret bank accounts, is also the home of secretive private clinics.
Rightly the government has rejected Gloria Arroyo's request for a waiver of her present travel ban. Despite the well-bribed bleatings of her Supreme Court cronies, the high standards of Philippine medical care attract thousands of foreigners to come here for treatment. Gloria Arroyo must not be allowed to evade justice. She must face trial. We have had more than enough of so-called unalterable Philippine corruption. I believe that People Power can and will not only alter it but eradicate it.
All it needs is vision and determination. It's so easy to see for ourselves
how much better our lives would be with honest transparent governance
at every level from national to local. The solution to corruption is in our own hands, not anyone else's. Our individual vote is the nation's most powerful weapon. That's why the Arroyos nationally, and in Sta. Rosa Laguna the despicable Manuel Manoy Alipon gang, have falsified past elections by a combination of diverse methods including bribery of officials, buying some voters, threatening other voters, and stealing the ballot boxes that they knew contained the majorities of votes for their opponents.
We need to
be constantly alert and aware. We need to know the truth about crooked
candidates in order to trash their deceitful lies and propaganda,
whether on printed flyers and tarpaulins or on Facebook or in newspaper and TV advertisements, or rammed down voters' throats in house to house election campaigns. Who did you vote for last time? What is your situation right now? Has it improved or got worse? Did your preferred candidate fulfill her or his election promises? If not, why not? And would another candidate have done better? Remember that no individual candidate can ever control every conceivable circumstance -- and that the losers are still doing their damnedest to sabotage in the background, sometimes funded by ill-gotten gains that they previously stole from public coffers. What you really need to be absolutely 110 percent sure of is that your candidate is honest, responsible and doing her or his utmost best to carry out transparently the sworn duties of public office.
A
RECENT SURVEY INDICATES THAT MANY PEOPLE STILL THINK PHILIPPINE
CORRUPTION CAN NEVER BE ELIMINATED BECAUSE ALREADY IT'S TOO ENTRENCHED
IN OUR CULTURE.
These doubts are understandable, because it's true
that corruption is entrenched, but what we all need to realize is that
ordinary people like us can change this situation ourselves if we
really want to.
Most of us
have lived at least part of our lives in a kind of apathy and lethargy
in the face of all the endless corruptions from public officials. In
the past we've all felt powerless to do anything about it and have just
accepted that it's unchangeably "the Philippine way".
But isn't
it time we questioned and updated our negative national mindset? Isn't
this mindset itself a big part of the corruption problem? It's what
keeps corruption going. Why not start by simply telling ourselves that
corruption can be eliminated and at last we now have the opportunity to
see it through?
Nothing is
impossible. Especially in the Philippines. Look at all the
extraordinary successes that individual Filipinos have achieved both
here and in the wider world against odds that most people thought were
impossible. There are so many for us to be inspired by and positive
about. Let's change ourselves first by giving ourselves a fresh new
mindset. Why should we allow past corruption to control our minds and
brainwash us? Wiping the slate clean is not impossible. Each
of us has the ability to create a fresh new mindset, and together we
have the ability to create a fresh new society in a fresh new culture.
All it takes is to start with one simple thought: "nothing is
impossible". Empowered by government-declared all-out war against
corruption, elimination will succeed.
WHAT
GOES AROUND COMES AROUND. This
popular saying, however trite and inconsequential its
description by critics, nevertheless returns perennially
to haunt everyone that it applies to.
Here in Santa Rosa
it includes the deposed criminal gangster vice mayor
Manuel Manoy Alipon whose bottomless corruptions backfired
on him to energize the massive Voter
Power that ousted him permanently from City Hall.
On a national level
it includes the ruthless Marcos clan and more recently
the nefarious Arroyo clan for innumerable corruptions
on a bigger scale. Without the popular efforts of People
Power these two criminal clans would both still
be dictating how others must obey the law whilst they
continually broke the law themselves for their own benefit
and profit.
The worst aspect
of all this is that it's so universal. Corruption is
not a Philippine phenomenon. Our corrupt politicians
and corporations are merely copying what's going on
in the rest of the world. This never makes it right,
but in their eyes it justifies their lack of ethics
and morals because they've been conditioned to believe
this is what will make them competitive and that competition
is what it's all about.
But is this true?
I for one don't believe that it is. I believe that their
ruthless cut-throat competitiveness is merely greed,
and that their greed is destroying our lives and our
planet.
I don't blame our
people individually. Our thoughts and actions have been
conditioned by our education and training. I blame government
institutions that created this false situation and continue
to sustain it despite all the many years' irrefutable
evidence of its abject failure. Consider
what's happening right now in the USA and Europe. Their
greed-based economies are in shambles. Their greed-based
banking systems are collapsing. Their greed-based societies
are falling apart. So in God's Holy Name why are we
in the Philippines attempting to copy them? Are we insane?
China is making mistakes, but at least China is attempting
to modify the extremes of communism and capitalism into
a new economic blend that might finally lead to harmony
and prosperity for all. No other country is trying to
find a new solution that might work.
P-NOY
IS RIGHT TO REJECT CALLS FOR ALL-OUT WAR VS MILF IN MINDANAO,
and
before you throw up your hands with exasperation, just take a little
time to browse the internet on this subject and try to imagine what
your feelings would be if you were living in Maguindanao instead of
Metro Manila.
These
people have been oppressed and kept in abject poverty for decades by
corrupt national, provincial, municipal and barangay administrations.
Whatever advances have been enjoyed elsewhere in the Philippines,
theirs is still our nation's poorest region.
How would
you feel if you could not find work and you could not feed or clothe or
shelter or educate your children? How would you feel if your kids got
sick and you had no money to pay for doctors' fees or for life-saving
medications?
How would
you feel if the community you were born into and grew up in was ravaged
by your local politicians who took under-the-table payments from
commercial and industrial interests, with callous disregard of the
people living there?
I do not
believe this is a question of conflicting religions, as many people
think. It's a basic matter of life and death. Decades of unceasing
corruption, suppression and oppression have understandably made these
people desperate, and the situation has been exploited by criminal
gangsters posing as Muslim rebel leaders. The rebel leaders are not
true Muslims. They are criminal gangsters taking advantage of a
downtrodden people. They are as corrupt as the criminal politicians who
have been taking advantage of the same people for decades. It is the
corrupt gangsters and the corrupt politicians who are responsible for
killing our soldiers in Mindanao. Just
imagine what it would take for you to sacrifice your own life as a
protest against the government. This vulnerable degree of desperation
would also make you open to exploitation by ruthlessly corrupt
gangsters and politicians who promise to improve the situation while
secretly making it worse.
All-out war
against the MILF would fail because it would target the wrong enemy.
What we really need is an all-out war against corruption, not only in
Mindanao but everywhere in the Philippines. Corruption is the true
public enemy no. 1 of the entire Philippine nation. We need stringent
new laws against corruption, with stringent new punishments, and we
need them fast.
SURPRISE,
SURPRISE, FERDINAND MARCOS JR. WISHES TO OVERTHROW THE AQUINO
ADMINISTRATION. His
exaggerated stories of plots and coup d'etat plans are devious ways of
describing his own desires, and it is rumored that he is secretly
financing troublemakers to stir up violence and attract media
attention. He should be closely watched. If money stolen from the
Philippine people by the late dictator Marcos is now being used to fund
criminal elements in a series of attempts to destabilize our
democratically elected government, it is a very serious matter indeed. This
demonstrates the urgency and importance of declaring all-out war
against corruption, which is the real killer behind the deaths of so
many of our soldiers and civilians. The AFP and the PNP need to be
redirected and re-energized with the clearly defined target of
eradicating corruption, the Philippine public enemy #1. Many people are
demanding the death penalty as a just punishment for politicians and
public officials convicted of graft and corruption.
IT'S
NEVER TOO LATE TO RECOVER PUBLIC FUNDS STOLEN IN PAST CORRUPTIONS AND
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO PUNISH CORRUPT DIPLOMATS, POLITICIANS OR OTHER
PUBLIC OFFICIALS FOR THEIR CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE THEY WERE THERE TO
REPRESENT.
To be more specific, former Ambassador Benjamin
"Kokoy" Romualdez, younger brother of former First Lady and current
Ilocos Norte Representative Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, and his wife face
a case before the Sandiganbayan over their Swiss bank deposits of
US$5.19 million at a time when his required statement of assets and
liabilities claimed they had a total net worth of PHP2,348,495.22.
Their
deposits at UBS-Geneva account no. CO-920.310.0 and Invested Trust
account No. CO-920.310.1 originated from Standard Chartered Bank-Zurich
account no. 7676, which was opened with an initial deposit of US$2
million transferred from the Philippine branch of Standard Chartered.
The
Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) states that
comparison of Benjamin Romualdez' reported net worth with his initial
Swiss bank deposit shows a huge disparity between his lawful income and
the secret Swiss bank accounts which he opened during his incumbency. President
Aquino has vowed to defend the Philippine Spratly Islands if any
attempt to seize them is made by China, the world's biggest nation. As
if this wasn't enough, we have Filipinos in our own country who seize
our national assets by corruption. PNoy has vowed to defend us against
them too, and we can help him and each other by resisting every
corruption, by voting out every corrupt politician, and by reporting
every corrupt public official.
Burning
his photo, taking the solid gold gun that he'd used for many murders,
and beating him with his own boots (the worst
possible insult in Libyan culture), the Libyan people finally
celelebrate Gadhafi's death after 42 years of ruthless dictatorship.
THE
MARCOS FAMILY IS STILL WHINING THAT THE EVIL PHILIPPINE DICTATOR
FERDINAND MARCOS, WHOSE MURDEROUS DISREGARD OF HUMAN RIGHTS WAS
RENOWNED THE WORLD OVER AND WHO TOOK CORRUPTION TO UNPRECEDENTED DEPTHS
BY DIVERTING BILLIONS OF PESOS FROM OUR PUBLIC COFFERS INTO HIS
PERSONAL SECRET SWISS BANK ACCOUNTS, SHOULD BE GIVEN AN OFFICIAL STATE
FUNERAL WITH FULL HONORS AT THE TAXPAYERS' EXPENSE.
Take a long hard look at the above pictures of what
the people of other countries do to dictators like Marcos. His wife and
family should be expressing gratitude to the Philippine people for
their restraint and mercy, instead of continuing to lie about him and
making fanatical demands on the Philippine people who were and still
are his victims.
The legacy
of Ferdinand Marcos is not only our failure to recover the billions
that he stole from us. It's also the millions of Philippine lives
destroyed by his ruthless cruelty. It's also the many millions of
Philippine lives ravaged by poverty because his corruption spread
downwards like a disease from Malacanang to the lowest levels of
officialdom, preventing reduction of poverty and increasing the numbers
of poor people in the country. It's also his methodical destruction for
profit of our environment and ecology that will take us decades to
recover from and restore.
What is
their bullshit about the country being united in wanting Marcos to have
a state funeral? In fact it's the opposite. The country is united in
supporting P-Noy's controlled politeness in deciding to decline the
Marcos family's ridiculous demands. The
longer the Marcos play acting goes on, the more the Philippine people
will wish they had treated him in the same way the Libyans treated
Gadhafi - forcing him to hide in a rat and trash infested drainage
pipe, dragging him out, taking videos of his cowardly pleas on the back
of a pickup truck, beating him with his own boots and his own favorite
handgun, then executing him like an animal in a slaughterhouse. Already
there are campaigns to apply the death penalty to corrupt Philippine
politicians because they cause so much suffering and so many premature
deaths. It could easily be argued that Gadhafi's treatment is how every
evil murderous corrupt dictator like Marcos should be treated. He got
off very lightly, and his family should be thankful. After all, they're
still wallowing in his ill-gotten gains.
WE
ARE NOW TOLD THAT MANILA IS THE WORST LOCATION IN ASIA FOR PROPERTY
INVESTMENT.
Why? Not
because of the property situation itself, but because the Philippines
in general has such a bad image that international investors don't even
rate it. And why does our nation have such a bad image in the world? Do
you really need to ask? It's our appalling record of political
corruption.
Don't blame
me for plugging away on this subject. If you've purchased or leased a
property or are thinking of doing so, you and your wallet and your bank
account and your lifestyle are all directly affected if the value of
your property is steadily declining instead of increasing.
Why should
you or any of us suffer personal financial losses because people
claiming they want to be public servants immediately switch to serving
themselves if they're elected? Is it not long overdue that all
politicians are made transparently accountable by law for every public
peso they spend? This is certainly not the case at present.
Have you
ever seen a poor Barangay Captain or Municipal Mayor or Provincial
Governor or Congressman or Senator? A surprising number of them have
come from poor or middle class backgrounds, and the riches they've
acquired in public service are far in excess of normal public service
salaries and expenses. Where does their disproportionate wealth come
from?
It comes
from you and your wallet and your salary and your bank account and your
lifestyle and your property. It's stolen from taxpayers like you. It's
your money they're lining their pockets with. Work it out for yourself.
If you have
your own business or plan to start one, the situation is worse yet.
Being an entrepreneur is never easy with so many economic factors to
contend with, like inflation for example, that are outside your
control. You need dedication, skill, hard work and determination to
succeed. What you don't need is corrupt politicians and public
officials who handicap and rob you at every turn. These blood-sucking
parasites pretending to be public servants undermine our national
economy and are a menace that threatens every facet of Pinoy society.
Thank God that President Aquino is beginning to take action against
them. BIR
rightly clamps down on tax evaders, so why not give BIR powers to clamp
down -- at every level from top to bottom -- on every politician and
every public official who in any way misuses the taxes after BIR has
collected them?
PARENTS BEWARE! YOU MAY THINK YOUR CHILD'S ONLINE GAMING IS A WASTE OF
BOTH STUDY TIME AND SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS, BUT ONCE AGAIN THE GLOBAL
GAMING COMMUNITY HAS PROVED THAT YOU ARE OUT OF TOUCH.
Professor Anders Ynnerman received a Ph.D. in
Physics from Gothenburg University. During the early 90s he was doing
research at Oxford University and Vanderbilt University. In 1996 he
started the Swedish National Graduate School in Scientific Computing,
which he directed until 1999. From 1997 to 2002 he directed the Swedish
National Supercomputer Centre and from 2002 to 2006 he directed the
Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC).
Since 1999
he is holding a chair in scientific visualization at Linköping
University and in 2000 he founded the Norrköping Visualization and
Interaction Studio (NVIS). NVIS currently constitutes one of the main
focal points for research and education in computer graphics and
visualization in the Nordic region. Ynnerman is currently heading the
build-up of a large scale center for Visualization in Norrköping.
In a
description of his work, Ynnerman says: "And this is a bit of science
fiction now ... So in this particular situation, it's a scan of a
living person. I have this pen, and I look at the data, and I move the
pen towards the head ... And then I can feel the brain inside ... Now
we're going even further into science fiction ... He's seeing his own
brain."
And
Ynnerman has no doubts about the value of gaming. "This is my
daughter," he says with great fatherly pride. "She's playing a computer
game. She's only two years old, and she's having a blast. So she's
really the driving force behind the development of graphics processing
units. As long as kids are playing computer games, graphics is getting
better and better and better. So please go back home, tell your kids to
play more games, because that's what I need." INGENUITY
OF GAMERS LED TO MAJOR MEDICAL DISCOVERY THAT DEFEATED THE WORLD'S TOP
SCIENTISTS. In
September 2011 it was no surprise to Ynnerman that online gamers had
deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that some
of the world's top scientists had struggled unsuccessfully to decipher
for a decade. In a a fun-for-purpose video game developed by the
University of Washington, gamers were divided into competing groups to
unfold chains of amino acids, which are the building blocks of
proteins. To scientists' great astonishment, the gamers produced an
accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.
It's the
first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific
problem. "We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where
automated methods had failed," said Washington University's Firas
Khatib. His
next statement was the most perceptive I've ever heard on the subject:
"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly
directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."
TRY
TO GET YOUR HEADS ROUND THIS ONE. YOU'D EXPECT SENIOR CAREER DIPLOMATS
FROM MAJOR DEVELOPED COUNTRIES TO BE DIPLOMATIC IF NOTHING ELSE, RIGHT?
Yet
after the last US Ambassador to the Philippines, Kristie Kenney,
slagged off the most popular and revered Phippine President of all
time, the late Cory Aquino, the United States Foreign Service dumped
another arrogant ignoramus on us.
Harry
Thomas is the replacement Ambassador from Washington. After studying
the Benigno Aquino government's efforts to grow our tourism industry,
with special focus on expanding the eco- and cultural tours which are
our strengths, Thomas slagged off Philippine tourism by stating that it
was based on sex.
How much
less diplomatic can US Ambassadors possibly get? Are they on dope, or
insane? Just compare their performance with that of Australian
Ambassador, Rod Smith, who leads an environmental cleanup drive and
physically helped to clear garbage from the polluted creek at Taguig,
or that of British Ambassador Stephen Lillie who speaks tagalog and
makes videos helping attract European investors and tourists to the
Philippines.
Has Harry
Thomas ever visited Cebu or any of the other places with a large number
of American expatriates? Following approximately 50 years' occupation
of the Philippines, then maintaining its huge US Air Force base at
Clark and huge US Navy base at Subic for a further 50 years, is it
surprising that so many American servicemen met up with Filipinas and
after being posted to the USA came back to visit and marry their
Philippine girlfriends?
I have a
personal friend who did this. He and his Filipina wife lived first in
the States and are now living here, still happily married after 28
years. No doubt Harry Thomas would have described my friend as a sex
tourist, but he revisited the Philippines for love, not sex. This made
him a love tourist, not a sex tourist.
No doubt
Harry Thomas would describe as sex tourists all the men who come here
for scuba diving or swimming with dolphins. What does he call the women
who accompany them and enjoy the same activities? Does he think they
all have sex with the dolphins? He may like to try it himself one day,
but our dolphins prefer the Germans, Australians, French, New
Zealanders, English, Swedes, Canadians, Japanese and Koreans. They're
not so crazy about Americans, due to all the American dynamite fishing
years ago that destroyed so many of our coral reefs and other coastal
ecological systems. Anyways,
American men have no need to come here for sex. They can get as much
sex as they want in the red light district of Washington DC, where so
many US diplomats get theirs. Rumor has it that in the cocktail circles
of foreign diplomats posted to Manila, there's now a special corner
reserved for US Ambassadors complete with a child's wooden stool and a
dunce's cap.
"EAST
IS EAST AND WEST IS WEST, AND NE'ER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET"
commented the American writer/philosopher Mark Twain after a brief
visit to British occupied India, which at that time included Pakistan
and Bangladesh, and "THE
TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING" was a wider comment of the popular 60s American
singer/songwriter Bob Dylan long after Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi
independence. Is there any connection between them? Do these quotes
have any significance in a modern world, or are both nothing more than
narrow-minded trite observations expressed during their creators'
limited personal life experiences in the remote past?
An
interesting illustration of what's happening today is the Russian
(Eastern) authorities' attempt to improve the food supplies to their
armed forces that even their poorest citizens consider to be
disgustingly inedible. Meanwhile American (Western) authorities are
shocked and are seeking to restrain the wasteful and extravagant
spending of their -- proven by evidence to be unjust -- Justice
Department, which paid 16 US Dollars for each muffin eaten by its
delegates at an official seminar.
In case you
might think that at least the two authorities are aware of what's going
on and are trying their best to rectify their respective situations,
take a look at two more:
Spain
(West) is famous for its culture of bull fighting which has long been
subject to criticism for cruelty to animals. Spanish authorities are
finally starting to ban their tradition. India (East) on the other hand
regards the cow as sacred and accordingly permits cows to freely create
total havoc in towns and cities, regardless of any damage to people or
property from traffic accidents and injuries directly caused by them.
Indian authorities are taking no action to prevent tragic consequences
to humans of their tradition concerning cows.
Here the
difference between East and West remains. Spain does, albeit belatedly,
respond to the pressure of changing times, whereas India remains
solidly stuck in the mud of outdated customs despite the fact that
gently guiding cows into safe zones would not in any way detract from
their religious sacredness. East
is West and West is East may not be desirable to anyone anywhere
anyway, but signs are appearing that each can learn to appreciate the
other's identity and value without the slightest detriment to their
own. The same thing, although at a less advanced stage, is definitely
happening between Africa and the more developed continents. However
long it takes and however many past mindsets need updating, this bodes
well for the future of our planet.
THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
in July 2011 described the Philippine outlook as
favorable and praised the Aquino administration for its reforms,
particularly those that will bring faster economic growth and
alleviation of poverty. High marks both for
their observation and for our performance.
But in
September 2011 the IMF criticized China's economy because it's
controlled by government. It seems to me that the IMF in this case is
simply wallowing in Capitalist economy conventional wisdom, which is
falling apart in the West. I can't claim to be an economist with a
capital "E", but I have eyes, and without asking any experts I can see
for myself in the present world financial crisis that the USA and
Europe have got things terribly wrong.
China is
thinking outside the box. It's clearing a new path that no country has
ever trod before. It's combining Capitalism with Communism in a unique
way that the USA and the USSR in their long and futile "Cold War" never
ever considered. Zero marks for IMF's lack of
perception and high marks for China's performance.
BANKS ACT VERY HIGH AND MIGHTY WHEN
ANYONE APPLIES FOR A LOAN. They talk to individuals, corporations and even
governments as if they (bankers) are the only people on the planet who
know how to handle money. They demand household income and expenditure
plans, business income and expenditure plans, government income and
expenditure plans. They demand collateral and guarantors. They want to
control your life down to the last peso, as if they are appointed by
God as the ultimate arbiters of how money should be managed.
How then
can "rogue traders" operating within these banks' own internal
management and accounting systems lose billions of dollars of clients'
money?
Sari-sari
store owners know at the end of the day if they're 20 pesos short. If
it was 200 pesos, they'd be tearing their hair out. If it was 2000
pesos they'd be in deep shock and rushed to hospital. Yet right under
the noses of his bosses at UBS, one of the biggest Swiss banks, a
"rogue trader" has apparently lost not 2000 pesos, not 200,000 pesos,
not 2,000,000 pesos, not 2,000,000,000, but 2 billion United States
Dollars (more than 80 billion pesos)!
Are we to
believe that nobody anywhere in UBS management knew what was happening?
Are we to believe that nothing anywhere in the giant UBS computerized
accountancy control systems picked up the slightest hint of anything
going amiss? I
DO NOT BELIEVE IT. I don’t believe there is such a thing as "rogue
trading". I believe that "rogue traders" are the fall guys who take the
rap for their managers who condone and approve every trade, and I
believe that computerized accounting control systems record every
detail of every trade and issue warnings in programmed reports that
managements knowingly and deliberately override.
THE UBS DEBACLE IS NOT THE FIRST
GLOBAL FRAUD OF SUCH MAGNITUDE BY THE SWISS, WHOSE SQUEAKY CLEAN IMAGE
IS TOTAL HYPOCRISY. Another giant Swiss Bank, Credit Suisse, was
recently reported to be aggressively soliciting business from American
and other countries' tax evaders, as was UBS.
Branches of
Credit Suisse in 13 German cities were raided as part a probe of 1,100
clients and bank staff suspected of hiding funds from German tax
officials after a computer disc from Credit Suisse was purchased with
information on wealthy Germans linked to the official investigation.
The Swiss
conglomerate Nestle, which has multiple operations in the Philippines,
was once notorious for profitably flooding the Third World with baby
format milk that had been banned by Western governments as dangerous to
infants' health.
Sadder yet
than this, the murky past of Swiss immorality goes all the way back to
when its government decided to declare the country officially neutral
and to give government backing and legal protection to the infamous
secret Swiss bank accounts, offered as a safe haven for deposits from
either winners or losers in any war so that Switzerland would profit
from both.
As the
famous saying goes, "the rest is history". These secret Swiss bank
accounts guaranteed and protected by its supposedly neutral government
were in fact open invitations not only to warmongering dictators like
Hitler and followers like his Nazis, but also to criminal gangs like
the Sicilian Mafia and their American cousins, and also to every other
criminal and corrupt politician everywhere in the world -- including a
very large number of corrupt Philippine politicians and public
officials.
Any
criminal could deposit ill-gotten gains in Switzerland with no
questions ever asked about the source. It was an immediate recipe for
success. The government protected Swiss banks made enormous profits
that soon made Switzerland the richest nation per capita in the world.
And the most corrupt from the top down.
The fact
that the Swiss formula for gaining national wealth was based on murder,
robbery, kidnapping, torture, extortion and every conceivable evil and
corruption in other countries did not deter the Swiss for a single
second. On the contrary, they gleefully congratulated and rewarded
themselves.
They
developed a national arrogance and aloofness in the misguided belief
that their crime-based wealth made them superior to people in countries
with higher standards of ethics and morals, even though Switzerland
would have been rapidly crushed and occupied by the Nazis if people of
other countries had not sacrificed their lives to fight for freedom and
defeat Hitler's ruthless attempt to conquer and oppress the world under
his tyrannical dictatorship. If
you ever buy Swiss cheese, you'll see it has holes in it as if mice and
maggots have got there first. The Swiss response to criticism is the
same. Their feigned declarations of purity and innocence are as full of
holes as their cheese.
Angry young rioters looting shops in the poorer
parts of London are clearly of different races acting together.
THE
RECENT LONDON RIOTS caused
quite a stir in the West and hardly a ripple in the Third World. Yet
photos of the rioting and looting, like the two above, clearly show
young people of African and Asian descent actively participating
alongside the white Anglo-Europeans that we would expect to see. When
all the various races are taking part together, this rules out any
possibility of the riots being caused by different races acting against
each other. There's something going on here that the Third World,
including the Philippines, can learn from. Sifting through the many
theories put forward in the West, some deadly serious and some crazy
beyond a joke, it seems to me that these young people finally reached
the end of their tether and broke out in explosive anger at exactly the
same things that we complain about.
Yes, you've guessed
it, political corruption at every level of government from national to
county (province) and all the way down to city and borough (barangay).
The culture is different, the style is different, and the cover-ups are
more sophisticated, but political corruption undoubtedly exists just
the same.
It would be a big
mistake to imagine that rioting could never happen here. It's happening
in Libya, Syria, Thailand, parts of India and China, and in other
places with totally different cultures and circumstances. What they
have in common is grievances causing ordinary people to riot against
their governments. Rioting in the East tends to be directly targeted
against specific leaders or specific issues. In London it was more like
a wildly destructive expression of frustration, helplessness and
finally anger at what several decades of different governments have
done to the people and society.
Not every grievance
that people have is due to corruption; nothing is ever that simple. But
the majority of them are. And even normally peaceful, law-abiding,
God-fearing Filipinos could reach the end of their tether and break out
into explosive rioting if political corruption is allowed to continue
destroying our lives, our environment and our nation. Retired Chief
Justice Reynato S. Puno coined the term "social volcano" to describe
this possibilty, and he founded the Moral Force Movement to help
prevent it from ever erupting. They
don't have natural volcanoes in England, but with global warming they
might in the future. What they do seem to have is a social volcano
erupting right now, just as Mr. Puno said might happen here in the
future.
Looters left fabric behind for Fashion designers to
work on but models felt cold in half the material.
RIOTING
LOOTERS FAILED TO STOP THIS MONTH'S LONDON FASHION WEEK.
Top
fashion designers burst into blossom with inspired ingenuity at times
of crisis, and enough material remained after the recent rioting and
looting in London for the likes of Bora Aksu, Jena Theo and Emilia
Wickstead to create eyecatching visions of confident femininity in time
for the catwalk.
But as you can see
from the examples above, London's weather as winter approaches is
unsuited to such uninhibited creations. What I suggest to these
wonderful designers and their elegant models is bring your talents to
the Philippines next summer. Whether in a Makati ballroom or on the
beach at Boracay, your designs would be a resounding success here
because our weather is so perfect for them. There
could also be a few other reasons for these designs to be popular in
the Philippines. Probably several million appreciative young Filipinos
would adore seeing them worn by beautiful young Filipinas -- purely for
reasons of haute couture and theoretical aesthetics!
SOME FOREIGN CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE in Manila, led by the USA, have applauded Aquino's
anti-corruption reforms just one year into his administration but
demanded assurances that laws and policies will remain stable and not
be abruptly changed after his 6-year term.
What I'd
like to ask these foreign chambers of commerce is: whose negligent laws
and policies caused the 3-year-old and still ongoing world financial
crisis, ours or theirs? IT WAS THEIRS!
And now,
after bailing out (rewarding) instead of imprisoning (penalizing) the
culpable executives in banking and financial services, thereby not only
failing to induce recovery but driving their countries deeper into
recession, what assurances can the chambers of commerce give us that
their countries' laws and policies will remain stable and not be
abruptly changed as more and more of them follow Portugal, Greece,
Spain and Italy into national bankruptcy?
President
Obama himself has given public warnings of imminent deeper American
recession. So, when our Monetary Board points out that the Philippine
peso is at a 3-year high against the US dollar and foreign portfolio
investments in Philippine stocks and securities have doubled to $9.1
billion in the past 6 months, why should we listen to chambers of
commerce who still think they're expert enough to tell us what to do? AFTER
GETTING THEIR OWN ECONOMIES SO WRONG?? AND GETTING THE WHOLE WESTERN
WORLD INTO ITS PRESENT FINANCIAL CRISIS??? This time it's zero marks for their flawed
observation, and high marks for our economic performance despite their
own countries' appalling lack of it. When they get their
own acts together, they can dish out advice to others, but not before.
THE WORLD BANK, in its latest update, praised Aquino and the
Philippines for reducing corruption, upgrading infrastructure, opening
up aviation to foreign competition and for robust and steady growth
despite the world financial crisis. Top marks
again for their observation and our performance. It's sad that foreign
chambers of commerce in Manila stick their heads in the sand and
disregard both.
TOGETHER
WITH MILLIONS OF PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD I HUMBLY ADD MY SINCERE
CONDOLENCES TO FAMILY, FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES OF STEVE JOBS, WHO DIED
ON OCTOBER 5.
The life
story and life achievements of Apple Inc's co-founder abound on the
internet, so I will just make a couple of observations about his
creative genius from my personal experience.
Way back in
time when Microsoft's Windows operating system was dominating the
personal computer market and when it was a joke -- a serious joke --
among corporate executives that they would never be fired for
recommending or purchasing the Microsoft Office suite of software, it
was very noticeable that in movie making, television production,
magazine publishing and the pop music industry Apple computers not only
retained the loyalty of existing owners but increased their sales with
every year's batch of new graduates majoring in media subjects and
seeking careers in the media.
The reason
for this was Steve Jobs. Whilst Bill Gates was focused (very
successfully) on making businesses and their office work more
efficient, the creativity of Steve Jobs and Apple introduced
typesetting, photo editing, illustrating, music production and video
production. The Windows pc was a tool for office work, Apple was a tool
for creative work. Steve Jobs' innovations enabled, stimulated and
empowered every aspect of creativity.
And there
was more. Microsoft's concentration on software made it possible for
mass production of cheap IBM clones that flooded the world and helped
millions of people to become computer literate. But Apple computers,
though more expensive, were more user-friendly and better designed.
As software
differences narrowed, with versions becoming available for both Windows
and Apple operating systems, it was Apple's elegant and innovative
hardware designs that maintained the appeal to media users like me.
Looking at them makes me feel good, and they make my work a pure joy.
They make the spirit soar. So
I thank Steve Jobs with all my heart for what he created in his
lifetime, and for the difference it made to my life. I pray that after
his long and painful battle with cancer, his soul will now rest in
peace. May God bless him forever.
Steve
Jobs, creative genius, 1955-2011. R.I.P.
THE OFFICIAL CHINESE NEWS AGENCY
XINHUA has strengthened my views with its own comments:
"The only way the Americans have come up with to improve economic
growth has been to take on new loans to repay the old ones. ... To eat
May's grain in April, however, will never be a permanent solution to a
problem. ... The United States has long been maintaining economic
growth and excessive consumption by means of debt financing, hence
masses of economic bubbles, which eventually triggered the financial
crisis. ... The current bailouts offered by international bodies such
as the European Union are in a sense, to 'rob Peter to pay Paul'. ...
Only by introducing reform can they save themselves; only with a sound
economic structure can they assume responsibility for the world
economy." Xinhua has echoed my comments above and it has far
greater resources than I have to research and study the domino effects
of international economics. In this case the Chinese
have got it right that Americans have made a series of world-record
almighty cockups, which Europeans seem blindly determined to emulate --
resulting in their pandemic of national bankruptcies.
THE
USA HAS LOST ITS AAA CREDIT RATING AFTER BEING DOWNGRADED BY STANDARD
AND POORS. The
international ratings agency also declared that the USA's economic
outlook is negative, due mainly to political deadlock between Democrats
and Republicans possibly causing the country to default on its foreign
debts.
This says
it all, and I sincerely hope the foreign chambers of commerce in Manila
take further note and support the great strides that Filipinos are now
making to achieve business-and-investment-friendly stability, rule of
law, growth, opportunity and prosperity for all in the Philippines.
We need
their help -- and they need ours! We at least are taking action to rid
our country of corruption that starts at the top with Presidents,
because it's so high profile and contagious, and it establishes the
model and sets the standards all the way down to the bottom. What
are the USA and other Western governments doing to rid their countries
of corruption that starts at the top with Presidents and Prime
Ministers and Royal Families? Zilch!
CONGRATULATIONS
TO PNOY FOR HIS EXEMPLARY DIPLOMACY IN CHINA.
In his
5-day visit, not only did he convert previous heated communications
over the Spratly Islands to calm discussions under the ASEAN
Declaration of Conduct, but also he successfully negotiated bilateral
trade and cooperation agreements which resulted in billions of dollars
to be invested by China in the Philippines, including implementation of
a Philippine-China Year of Friendly Exchanges in 2012-2013 that will
greatly boost tourism between the two countries.
Upon his return to
the Philippines Saturday night, PNoy repeated how important it is that
Filipinos do not allow corruption to sabotage our government's efforts
to attract foreign investors. He said: "We must not demonstrate a
wang-wang mentality that smacks of corruption. We want them to hear
only good news about the Philippines. We are trying to set up a country
that's open for business, ready to compete with and help other
countries." Western
chambers of commerce in Manila, please take note.
FORMER
US AMBASSADOR TO THE PHILIPPINES KRISTIE KENNEY MADE A FOOL OF HERSELF
IN LEAKED SECRET CABLES. So what? Why is anyone in the least surprised at a
time when American public officials from top to bottom levels are at
their lowest ever ebb of international credibility? It's nothing more
than one more example of how out-of-touch the US government is at every
level in the modern world and particularly in Asia.
Kenney
described PNoy as "diffident" in the context of an insulting criticism
of our President, showing herself to be abysmally unperceptive. The
word "diffident" has many variables in meaning that Kenney obviously
lacked the subtlety to be aware of. President Aquino's qualities of
humility and self restraint are integral parts of the essence of his
appeal to the Philippine people.
Kenney was
also quoted as making typically bitchy remarks that although the late
Cory Aquino is eternally beloved by Filipinos as a Philippine Heroine
for uniting our nation under People Power to rid us of the corrupt
Dictator Marcos, she had a "weak leadership style." Evidently this
arrogant bullshitting American nobody called Kristie Kenney -- pardon
my French -- doesn't even know her ass from a hole in the ground.
PNoy's
retort, more polite than mine, was that Kenney's assessments were "far
from the truth." The
USA has since withdrawn Kenney from the Philippines and callously
inflicted her incompetence on the good people of Thailand. We have had
more than enough loud-mouthed, fraudulent, self-glorifying politicians
thank you, Kristie. If that's what you still mistakenly idolize in the
USA, you deserve your decline as a world power. Your kind of
politicians have turned the American Dream into a nightmare that's
driving more and more American citizens out of the USA to seek a better
life in other countries, including both the Philippines and Thailand.
A
LOT OF AMERICANS ARE SAYING THAT THINGS HAVE GONE TOO FAR IN THE USA,
and a
book called "Third World America" has become a US bestseller in
hardback and pocketbook.
Authored by
Arianna Huffington, a self-made multi-millionaire, it finishes on a
hopeful positive note but in getting there paints a sad picture of
what's now happening to the declining nation the rest of the world
(except for Communist countries) looked up to for more than half a
century.
If
corrective action isn't taken quickly enough, the real threat to
America's future is a serious one: that it will become, as the book's
title suggests, a Third World country. Is
this American decline good for the Philippines? Definitely not. The
same lethal drug cocktail -- uncontrolled inhumane eco-destructive
greed in big business mixed with the absence of public service or
ethics or morals in self-aggrandizing politics -- has been our way of
life for several decades taken for granted on a daily basis. Luckily
some of our businesses and some of our politicians resisted this drug
addiction, and they are our true leaders now.
Exacerbated
by corrupt collusion between business and politics over the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan and America's gift to the world of our current
financial crisis, this cocktail of toxic substances has been forced
down the throats of US citizens in excess of overdose level and is
paralyzing the whole country with shock and horror of epidemic
proportions.
But we've
at last overcome our own previous paralysis and want to escape from the
rut we've been stuck in for so long. It won't help to see our former
icon of success collapse and drag Europe down with it into the same rut
that we are now just beginning to climb out of. Asia is well on the way
to taking over the roles of the USA and Europe, but we need more time.
We're not ready yet.
TO
SHOW I'M NOT ALONE IN MY VIEWS AND ANYWAY THEY ARE NOT AS EXTREME AS
YOU MIGHT THINK, HERE'S A QUOTE FROM ANOTHER WRITER:
"Never
let anyone tell you it was the Philippine national character that
moulded our country into a stagnant quagmire fit only for breeding
Third World criminals and mosquitoes. Our shameful degrading situation
was imposed upon us by contagious corrupt regimes like former President
Arroyo's administration in Manila, which infected every level of
national and local government all the way down to remote provincial
Barangay, SK and Purok.
In reality
it was the Filipino national mentality that enabled us to rise above it
with creativity, humor and a humble willingness to do menial work
overseas for the sake of our families back home, while our so-called
leaders basked in the hypocritical glories and luxuries of their
ill-gotten gains.
Times have
changed, and the 21st century is steadily and surely being taken over
by People Power. This is not the same as Communism, which collapsed in
the USSR and all Eastern Europe and is being transformed by China into
a modern mixed economy.
China's
current teething troubles may well evolve into an economic model the
rest of the world will follow, because the USA's unnecessary financial
crisis imposed on us all is clear evidence that American Capitalism has
now also failed despite its inane imitation by Eurozone countries.
Nevertheless, there are very serious issues of Human Rights that still
need to be addressed by China before it can receive approval of the
world as its next leader. At
the same time, in my view, the West is equally guilty. Does not the
West's heavy-handed enforcement of endless escalating taxation combined
with corruptly squandering these enforced tax revenues on bailing out
unethical greed-obsessed bankers without any public referendum also
contravene Human Rights? I sincerely believe it does, and it has wiped
out all my previous respect for the USA and the European Union in one
stroke. They are trampling on the basic God-given rights of real people
in real distress, just as Western history and literature inform us the
rich have been doing to the poor for centuries. There are still
millions of people living in destitution and poverty in the West that
the USA and EU don't want us to know about because instead of helping
their existing poor, Western governments are Hell-bent on making their
existing middle class also poor in order to further enrich their
existing rich.
With access
to much more information, mostly on the internet but also from TV,
radio, newspapers, magazines, books, text messages, phone calls and
even the snail mail, the Filipino national mentality has matured and is
no longer seeking leadership from the USA or Europe or China. Filipinos
and Filipinas are now collectively and actively demanding political,
economic, educational, social and religious reforms that will eradicate
poverty and benefit our country's entire population.
It wiil be
a struggle, but we know we are right. We are on the straight path, and
we are in it for the long haul. Our time has come. We positively know
without even the slightest tiniest doubt that we shall overcome
whatever obstacles are placed in our path. GOD is on our side, People
Power is here to stay, and no corrupt politician's private army can
ever stop the inevitable. As the Scriptures foretell, our dedicated,
determined and relentless progress will achieve GOD'S KINGDOM here on
Earth, and it won't be in America." - Pacifico Dagsi Balagtas (writing for Filipino
Feelgood Factor and reproduced with permission)
SO
LET'S TAKE A BREAK FROM PHILIPPINE CORRUPTION AND TAKE A TIMELY CLOSER
LOOK AT THE RICHEST AND MOST POWERFUL NATION ON EARTH.
It's
now 10 years since the tragic event referred to as 9/11 when the two
towers of New York's World Trade center were struck by hijacked
passenger aircraft and subsequently collapsed. Blaming this as an act
of war against the USA by Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist
movement, it was used by President Bush to justify war on Iraq, in
conjunction with claims that Saddam Hussein was both financially
backing al Qaeda and developing weapons of mass destruction for further
attacks on the USA. No evidence of either Iraqi involvement with al
Qaeda or Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were ever found, and Bush
escalated his war to invade Afghanistan as another threat to the USA.
At over 6200 the number of Americans killed in these two wars is more
than double the 2976 Americans killed in 9/11. The total Iraqis and
Afghans killed in these two wars amounts to hundreds of thousands.
Whilst our thoughts
and condolences on the 10th anniversary were with the families and
friends of innocent civilians massacred in 9/11, it must be added that
for their families and friends ever to have final closure there are too
many official cover-ups, evasions and unanswered questions about it.
After watching videos
of the event, expert engineers all over the world stated categorically
that from aircraft impact at high level the buildings could not
possibly have collapsed into piles of dust and rubble within their own
footprint the way they did, implying that explosives must have been
planted and triggered at low level.
Reinforcing these
suspicions was the fact that a third skyscraper building there also
collapsed the same day in the same way and was officially blamed on the
heat from a fire inside it causing some office furniture to burn.
Again engineers the
world over confirmed this could not possibly cause a modern building to
collapse totally and at speed within its own footprint, and that all
three buildings must have been subject to planned demolition by
explosives calculated to achieve exactly what happened. Evidence was
removed and destroyed, witnesses were silenced, a CIA whistle blower
was arrested and jailed. For
internal and foreign suspicions to be resolved, America and the whole
world need to know the actual truth about what happened on that fateful
day and why. Just take 15 minutes to watch the YouTube video below, and
you'll see exactly what I mean.
ANOTHER
BLACK MARK AGAINST THE ARROYOS. It has been confirmed in secret files revealed by WikiLeaks that the
Ampatuans had a 2000-strong private army in Cotabato that was better
armed and equipped than the military and the police, who were
astonished by the size of its arms caches and the power of its weaponry.
The files state that
the Ampatuans were allied with President Gloria Arroyo, who turned a
blind eye to their private army because it helped her to control Muslim
rebels. Even with ill-gotten gains from local corruption, an ordinary
Mayor in the poorest region of the Philippines could never have
afforded to maintain such a large and well-equipped private army unless
the Arroyo administration in Manila was providing him with ample funds
to do so -- either directly or indirectly. We
can expect a lot more Arroyo secrets to be revealed about this case
during the progress of ongoing criminal investigations into Ampatuan
activities.
BE
THANKFUL FOR ALL OUR BLESSINGS IN SANTA ROSA,
which
include having one of the best City Mayors in the country. Critics
point out that she's a member of Gloria Arroyo's political party Lakas Kampi CMD,
but everyone knows that what matters most in Philippine politics is the
individual not the party.
Arlene B. Arcillas is
not tainted with the brush of Gloria Arroyo, whose former presidency is
now under such intense public scrutiny. Reinforcing this statement is
the irrefutable fact that Mayor Arlene was recently a semi finalist in
the Civil Service Commission search for the Outstanding Public Official
or Employee to receive the Presidential Lingkod Bayan Award that's
conferred for exceptional contributions resulting from an idea or
performance with nationwide impact on public interest.
As you can see from
the photo below, only 3 City Mayors made it through to the semi-finals,
making Arlene one of the top 3 in the entire nation. We know that she
really cares about the people of Sta. Rosa and she is incredibly hard
working on our behalf. It would be a mistake to imagine she was in any
way similar to former President Arroyo, who evidently worked on
nobody's behalf but her own. Political
parties in the Philippines are meaningless, as demonstrated by the way
politicians keep switching from one to another. My respect for our City
Mayor Arlene B. Arcillas is as an individual, regardless of whatever
party she's a member of either now or in the future.
Santa Rosa City Mayor Arlene B. Arcillas was one of
only 3 mayors in the whole nation to reach the Semi Finals!
FOLLOWING
NEWS THAT HP (Hewlett Packard) is for
strategic reasons to consider discontinuing manufacture of computers,
pundits are now declaring the PC era finally over after 66 years.
66 years? That's right. The first commercially produced PC, called
GENIAC (Genius Almost-Automatic Computer) was introduced in the USA by
Edmund C. Berkeley in 1955, after inventing it in 1949 and publishing
DIY plans in 1950 and 1951 for enthusiasts to build their own.
Believe it
or not, the term "personal computer" was first used to describe a
desktop machine introduced in 1968 by none other than Hewlett Packard itself,
who went on to produce the first ever desktop computer complete with
display and keyboard, the HP 9830, in 1972.
Then Apple brought out the
first user-friendly PC with simple interactive graphics in 1977,
followed by IBM's
DOS computer in 1981 which set the industry standard.
But it was
the business acumen of Bill Gates and his company Microsoft
who later generated the PC's worldwide popularity and immense
commercial success, with a supply of skillfully marketed and rapidly
developing mass-produced operating systems and other bundled end-user
software to unlimited manufacturers of much cheaper "IBM-clone"
machines. Has
it all now come to an end? No, it hasn't. What's happening now is
organic evolution. The old-fashioned desktop PC is being absorbed and
transformed into a multitude of different products -- laptops,
netbooks, cellphones and televisions among them -- that can do
everything the desktop computer could, plus a great deal more. For
innovation, elegant design, ease of use, and sheer desirability, Apple is leading the
mobile industry with its brilliant range of MacBook, iPod, iPhone and
iPad.
THE
32 MAIN EUROZONE BANKS WERE REPORTED TO HAVE NOSE-DIVED 33% TO A TOTAL
VALUE OF US$340 BILLION. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
What it means is that the current market
capitalization of Apple
Inc. alone is equal to all the euro banks combined. And also
most of the other global high-tech corporations like Google
and Microsoft
have continued to grow and prosper, based on innovation and providing
customers with what they need and want, not to mention global giants in
energy and commodities that are reaping record profits.
All this is
despite creation by American banking and financial sectors of the
ongoing economic crisis which gobbled up the USA, then sucked in
Europe, and is now seeking other parts of the world to swallow -
including much of Asia.
What does
this tell us about Western commercial banks? And what does it tell us
about the Western governments who failed to regulate them in the first
place, and then bailed them out when they screwed up?
Only a
century or so ago Western governments would execute an uneducated
jobless poor man for stealing a piece of bread to feed his starving
kids. These banks have stolen billions from the tax paying public, and
their governments have responded by giving them more taxpayers' money
to squander! Every
Chief Executive, every Board of Directors and every Senior Manager of
every one of the banking and financial services corporations
responsible for creating this crisis should have been convicted and
jailed. Furthermore every government that bailed them out should now be
convicted and jailed en masse. Don't these countries have
constitutions, or are all their lawyers and judges on permanent
vacation?
SHARP SHOOTING, FIERCE DEFENDING, AND
TACTICAL BRILLIANCE took our football players through for the first
time in Philippine history to the second qualifying round of the next
World Cup when the Philippine Askals scattered the Sri Lankan team to
the four winds with a 4-0 thrashing.
Subsequently
losing to Kuwait, who now go through to the third round, was a
disappointment but they played well and were defeated by a more
experienced team. The Askals' German coach wisely reminded us that we
are at a very early stage of soccer development in this country and can
hardly expect our national squad to regularly beat the best of Asia
yet, not to mention the best of Europe and South America.
What we can
expect is steady strong improvement with full government support. For
much too long the development of soccer in the Philippines has lacked
sufficient government funding. Hopefully the popularity and success of
the Askals will prompt President NoyNoy to do a lot more than deliver
speeches drawn up in advance by government speechwriters that fail to
convey real interest in the sport, only in how the government might
jump on its bandwagon as it continues to gain popularity.
On hearing
the President's SONA speech earlier this year, I would say he doesn't
need to jump on any bandwagons. I think the reverse will happen - he
will gain popularity for his
political performance and an avalanche of people will join his
bandwagon, which can only be good for the country. At
last we can see the bright and inspiring light at the end of the long
and dark destructive tunnel of past corruption. What PNoy has already
achieved in just one year borders on the miraculous, and wiping out
corruption will lead to a wonderful new era for the Philippines.
THE ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
declared that Philippine business is still badly
handicapped by bureaucratic red tape and unreliable rule of law. This
is true, we do need more action to cut out red tape and enforce the
rule of law. Every Filipino knows it, because we all suffer abominably
from these perennial failings in our society. High
marks again for their observation, but it's low marks for our lack of
performance on these two specific issues.
WHY
IS MIKE ARROYO SHOOTING HIMSELF IN THE FOOT?
Hurling
abusives at President Aquino is no way for a Former First Gentleman to
behave in public, and describing the President as dictatorial was
ridiculous. PNoy won by a landslide and he is supported by the vast
majority of the Filipino people as the standard bearer of People
Power.
In reality it is
Philippine Law that's dictatorial, because that tells us what's right
and what's wrong, and the husband of a Former President is not exempted
from its stipulations.
If previous ownership
of 10 year old helicopters purchased at brand new prices by the Arroyo
administration is now in dispute, this in itself proves that the Arroyo
administration did not practice transparent governance. It proves that
accurate accounting records were not made available on computer or
paper for independent audit and public examination.
If proper detailed
itemized transparent accounting procedures had been followed in the
first place, disputes like this would never arise. The answer to every
question would be there for any inspection openly on public record for
public scrutiny.
Suing the
helicopters' sales broker for perjury is tantamount to public admission
by Mike Arroyo that the previous administration failed to record some
of this contract's most essential details, which inevitably raises
further questions of why its accounting records were so selective, and
of how many other government contracts were made by the Arroyo
administration with similar selective omissions? Whatever
the result of the perjury case, Mike Arroyo's action in itself
discredits the administration of Former President Gloria Arroyo.
Transparent and thorough investigations are required to answer these
questions and satisfy the Filipino people that if politicians elected
to serve them at any level prove to be corrupt in public office, then
those politicians will be brought to justice without immunity or
leniency.
ARROYO
HELICOPTER SCANDAL - WHAT AN UNGODLY SHAMBLES!
The
latest allegation in the ongoing Arroyo helicopter scandal is that Iggy
Arroyo has been busy falsifying documents to rescue his brother Mike.
And not for the first time, because he stands accused of doing the same
thing with the infamous Pidal accounts and California properties. What
an unholy, underhand, undisciplined, unprincipled bunch of arrogant,
pretentious, shambolic, talentless, disreputable so-called public
representatives the whole Arroyo clan appears to be. The
sooner that PNoy takes action against them, the better it will be for
all honest Filipinos everywhere. He needs to be strong and make an
example of them as a demonstration to all believers in People Power
that such blatant political corruption will never be tolerated in
future.
ON THE RUN OR GONE TO GROUND local falsifiers of previous elections, including
notorious Santa Rosa City gangster and fraudster Manuel Manoy Alipon,
whose unfaithful and disloyal betrayal of wife and supporters led to
his expulsion from the office of vice mayor when voter-power backlash
strongly booted him out, are reported to be regrouping and attempting
to rip off other financial backers for the next election by further
falsifications.
An enormous
well-prepared, and ever-increasing number of honest, honorable,
powerful, energetic and more than mega-financed opponents are ready,
willing, able and eager to beat the pants off them.
With the
21st century now already into its second decade, a new wave of young,
qualified, able, competent, professional politicians all around the
Philippines has begun the process of cleaning up the ungodly mess that
far too many years of CORRUPT TRADITIONAL
SELF-AGGRANDIZING AND SELF-ENRICHING POLITICIANS
like Manuel Manoy Alipon collectively made of our previously clean and
pleasant communities and our previously beautiful and great country. After
trashing all corrupt trapos, our new wave of patriotic, confident,
talented, determined and energetic Filipinos will rebuild our nation to
future greatness - surpassing anything in its history.
THREE YEARS AFTER THE US-INDUCED
GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS, China and India continue their unstoppable
progress, and other Southeast Asian economies have remained intact,
vibrant and resilient. Since the election of Benigno Aquino as
President, the Philippines has achieved economic improvement and growth
that are the envy of the world.
The USA and
Europe have not yet recovered from the World Financial Crisis. Greece,
Spain and Italy are almost bankrupt, and others like France and Germany
are also near to breaking point. Thanks mainly to our OFW
heroes, the Philippines are economically stable and strong.
To my mind the only publicly demonstrated real appreciation of OFWs is
from Henry Sy with special centers for them at his SM supermalls and
from the great value OFW promo offers at Enchanted Kingdom.
A BUDGET OF 3 MILLION PESOS has been allocated by the Department of Education
specifically for Filipino Muslims, which is to be followed with an
Arabic Language and Islamic Values Education curriculum in Mindanao.
I fully
support the government's policies on this and similar projects which
reinforce the principle that all Filipinos are equal, regardless of
age, gender, race, family name, skin color, ethnic culture, economic
status, religious belief or political persuasion. BUT
OUT OF THE DEPED'S MULTI-BILLION PESO BUDGET, WHAT A PATHETIC PALTRY
SUM TO ALLOCATE FOR SOMETHING SO VERY VERY IMPORTANT!
However
much we abhor the kidnappings, murders, bombings and other acts of
terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, non-Muslims who know the
Muslims in their communities also know that they also abhor terrorism.
It's often Muslims who are killed by these criminal acts. The key word
here is not terrorist but criminal. Gangs who call themselves Muslim
activists are mostly plain criminals acting in their own interests. In
fact they're absolutely identical to the unlawful private armies of
non-Muslim corrupt politicians who conduct their own acts of terrorism
and only too often get away with it. So why do we automatically condemn
all the ordinary Muslim citizens, however innocent, and automatically
whitewash all the non-Muslim politicians, however guilty?
Everyone
knows that Mindanao contains some of the poorest regions of the
Philippines, where Muslims and non-Muslims alike have long been
alienated, abused and ripped off by a succession of corrupt politicians
who have never been brought to justice or made to pay for their crimes. Yet
when an honest politician in Davao angrily protects the poor, what
happens? Immediately she is jumped upon by our unjust legal system and
prosecuted! Do the poor ever get any justice? Ha ha ha! Are you
kidding? Our legal system has nothing to do with justice. It's there to
protect the rich, because it's the rich who created it, and riddled it
with corruption to benefit themselves! But the times they are
a-changing, and the fat cats are getting worried. As they should.
Back to the
paltry sum of 3 million pesos allocated by DepEd to make Muslims feel
they are not neglected. How far will this go to help people who have
inadequate housing, inadequate nutrition, no money to buy uniforms or
books or project materials for their kids? What planet is DepEd living
on? I
support a true democratic meritocracy in which all Filipinos have equal
opportunity to achieve their life ambitions without harm to anyone
else. To achieve this we must do much more to help the Filipinos who
are in most need, not the rich who need nothing more. Our system has
robbed the poor to make them poorer, and given to the rich to make them
richer, but now at last we have a President determined to change it. DepEd
doesn't yet seem to have got the full message and regrettably fails to
achieve the pass mark in this exam.
HARRY POTTER'S ECCENTRIC ENGLISH
WIZARDRY has broken all box office records in the USA
despite the fact that its creator J.K. Rowling turned down offers from
the mega-successful Hollywood producer/director Steven Spielberg to
Americanize her stories with US settings and characters, and despite
the fact that Spielberg had already been awarded an extremely rare
honorary knighthood by the Queen of England for his own brilliant
achievements.
Rowling's
integrity to herself and her stories paid off when her novels were
translated into movies that multiplied her reading fans many times
over, as moviegoers around the world became addicted to the eccentric
Englishness of her Harry Potter films.
A lesson we
can all learn from this is that no matter where we were born or are now
located, if we create a good story and characters which appeal to
people in other countries as well as our own, then national boundaries
become meaningless. The possibilities have been proved beyond any doubt
by J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter. So
let's encourage and give more support to Filipino writers...
THIS IS A FANTASTIC TIME TO BE
FILIPINO. Our new modern heroes will be people's heroes, not
military or political leaders like those who freed us from Spanish,
American and Japanese occupation in the past. They will be a brand new
breed of Filipino hero and heroine: recognized and acclaimed for their
various good works individually, locally, nationally and
internationally. They will come from every province, from every
cultural background, and they will include every kind of work and skill.
There will
be no limit to individual achievements and no limit to personal success
- be it in sports, business, entertainment, medicine, environmental
improvement, teaching, science, advertising, public relations, design,
computing, poverty prevention, emergency services, art, cookery, law,
philosophy, farming, fishing, meteorology, handicrafts, construction,
social work, childcare, crimefighting, media, or any other chosen
vocation, including but not exclusive to politics and armed forces. Could
you be a future national hero? YES! In a truly democratic meritocracy
EVERYONE will get equal opportunity on a level playing field, freed
from all corrupt manipulations.
PROOF
ALREADY EXISTS THAT FILIPINOS CAN AND DO BEAT THE BEST IN THE WORLD. If this statement immediately makes you think of
Manny Pacquiao and Charice Pempengco or others whose sporting or
singing performances have brought them championship wins or platinum
records, of course you're right. But I was thinking in terms of
creativity -- writing, composing, film-making and the like. Browsing
the web to search for examples, I was astonished to find so many
Filipino successes that I wasn't aware of before -- not only in
creative arts but in every field of human endeavor.
Stories
were scattered around everywhere, and all my searches were hard work
until I discovered one particular website, which was easily the best
source for Filipino success stories and is now one of my Top Five
all-time favorite websites because visiting it always makes me happy
for the future of our nation when I see the unbounded variety of world
class achievements by gifted and persevering Filipinos all around the
globe.
It's Good News Pilipinas.
Among the many examples of creativity I found at GNP were two highly
acclaimed Filipina novelists, a whole bunch of International Festival
wins by talented young Filipino film-makers, and special awards to both
ABS-CBN and GMA for their excellent TV productions. Take
a look at GNP yourselves, and I guarantee you'll feel proud to be
Filipino.
-
Angel "I don't care what Mama don't allow" Tugado
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Its flights from Clark offer the warmth and comfort of home from origin to destination and return. Website: Spirit Of Manila Airlines.
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Bank of the Philippine Islands (Europe) Plc is of great service to OFWs in the UK and the European Union.
Please visit: BPI Europe.
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Join IBM's search for the innovators and drivers of a better economy and a better world at: facebook.com/midmarketibm.
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Mobile internet access is getting faster and faster. Check out Wi-Tribe's Tri-Speed Stick.
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AUSSIES ARE TAKING THE LEAD IN HELPING TO ERADICATE PHILIPPINE POVERTY
THE AUSTRALIAN AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (AusAID) recently developed a television series called "Changing Lives", paying testament to the work of dedicated Australians doing extraordinary jobs around the world.
One episode features Mark Daniels, the Aussie Director of Opportunity East Asia (see above video). Mark and his family moved to the Philippines more than two years ago to support Opportunity's microfinance programs in the Philippines.
You can find out more by visiting the Opportunity website, and go to our Home Page to see the Australian Ambassador doing more for our environment than all other foreign ambassadors put together.
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PURSUING
PEACE THROUGH EDUCATION
During
the Martial Law years, only a few dare to pass Datu Paglas, Maguindanao.
Datu
Ibrahim "Toto" Pendatun Paglas III was among the countless victims of
violence that rocked the small town of Datu Paglas
in the 1970s. Battle-scarred due to decades of war launched by the Moro
National Liberation Front (MNLF) and later on by the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF), he and the other residents have no other desire
but to achieve peace in their hometown.
This desire
to pursue peace and seek economic growth had a leap when Datu Toto was
elected to public office in 1998. As mayor, he rallied with his people
and worked to regain what was lost from the hostilities. Datu Toto also
became one of the founding members of the Philippine Business for
Social Progress in Mindanao.
At his
passing, the establishment of Datu
Ibrahim Paglas Memorial College (DIPMC) strengthened the
people's resolve to constantly seek peace and prosperity through
education.
"He really
desires that people in Datu Paglas will be given equal opportunities
like the rest in the country and he believes that it is through
education that common good will be achieved," recalled Mrs. Badria
Talembo, volunteer and college dean at DIPMC.
Operating a
community college like DIMPC is not easy as Talembo disclosed. "We
survive from the minimal fee paid by our students. The spirit of
volunteerism is very prominent but the need is still big," she said.
An
elementary teacher only receives 3,000 pesos a month as honorarium
while a college instructor gets 65 pesos per hour. According to
Talembo, another concern is the internet connection. Students
conducting internet research still have to travel to Tulunan,
North Cotabato (about 10 kilometers away from Datu Paglas)
just to access the web.
DIMPC hopes
that the mission which Datu Toto had started will gain more support
from concerned individuals and organizations.
- Grace Muncada and Danny Escabarte
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SRM
FULLY SUPPORTS GOVERNOR
JEORGE "ER" EJERCITO ESTREGAN'S
INSPIRING INITIATIVES ON
ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION
AND SAVING LAGUNA LAKE
WE
ARE ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTED OUR VISIONARY NEW GOVERNOR OF LAGUNA HAS IN
HIS FIRST YEAR SENT OUT SUCH STRONG MESSAGES TO THE PROVINCE, THE
NATION AND THE WORLD THAT HE IS GIVING HIGH PRIORITY TO CLEANING UP OUR
ENVIRONMENT AND CREATING A FUTURE
IN HARMONY WITH NATURE, ESPECIALLY WITH REGARD TO SAVING LAGUNA LAKE.
Most people are familiar with the saying that a
picture speaks a thousand words, so just spend the next 4 minutes and
15 seconds -- courtesy of YouTube and the Provincial Government --
watching the mindboggling video below:
In fact the above video is doubly mindboggling,
first by showing so clearly the distressing state that many years of
neglect and abuse have inflicted on Laguna de Bay, and second by
showing some wonderfully uplifting scenes of how Filipinos would
benefit from the same lake if it was clean and healthy and properly
managed.
Ensuring
eco-friendly development of lakes, coasts and countryside is a
no-brainer and should have been implemented long ago. Now at last we
have enlightened politicians like "ER" around the Philippines who have
the ability, imagination and power to do something about it. We are
blessed with one of the most stunning natural environments on our
planet, yet we are internationally known for its destruction not its
protection. This is a national and local disgrace that every one of us
can help to change. Let's all do our bit in helping our Governor to
save Laguna Lake.
There are a
lot of good things coming from our Provincial Government now, its
Medical Mission for example, but I'm focusing on environment at the
moment and the other project in this category that merits special
acclaim is known as ClifER, which stands for Computer and Internet
Literacy for Environmental Restoration. This "encourages Laguneños to
protect, conserve, and restore the province’s natural resources" by
providing free related computer trainings. It's another visionary
project worthy of support, and its success will have far-reaching
effects that will improve our own lives and the lives of our children
and grandchildren.
To find out
more about both these initiatives, visit their respective official web
pages at Save
Laguna Lake and ClifER Project.
On the same
theme, Santa Rosa Rosa Magazine extends a very warm welcome to Hon.
Juan Romeo Nereus Olaivar Acosta, the new General Manager of the Laguna Lake Development
Authority.
General
Manager Neric Acosta (center) and staff of the Laguna Lake Development
Authority. (Photo courtesy of LLDA.)
His full name is a bit of a mouthful, but luckily
for us he's more widely known as Neric Acosta, and we can hardly be
worried by a mouthful when his new job is much much more than a
handful...
To see what
I mean, read the frightening GMA Online September 24 news report: Why
Laguna Lake water isn’t safe for people or fish, describing
exactly how horrific the lake's pollution levels are, and how
underequipped and underfunded the LLDA was allowed to become during the
Arroyo administration.
Neric
Acosta has a daunting task ahead of him and we wish him every success.
It's good to know that he will have an ally in Governor Estregan, who
so strongly shares his views and goals.
Our lake is
worse than a national disgrace. It's a very serious threat to the
health and life of everyone here whose skin ever touches the water, and
who ever eats fish from the fish farms in it, or pork from the many
piggeries whose pigs drink it. - Sarina Fernandez, SRM Editor.
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BEWARE!!!
BEWARE!!! BEWARE!!!
THE "FUN TOUR" PROMOS
OF CEBU PACIFIC AIR
CEBU PACIFIC'S ONLINE CHEAP FLIGHT
PROMOS ARE GENERALLY FINE BUT IF YOU BOOK A "FUN TOUR" PACKAGE TO
INCLUDE A HOTEL STAY, YOUR TRIP CAN BECOME A NIGHTMARE.
Some friends of mine booked a 5 day 4 night "Fun
Tour" with Cebu Pacific and paid in full online 3 months in advance
including the 4 night stay at a hotel chosen from the recommended list
on the Cebu Pacific website.
Before
their trip, on searching for the hotel's website to print out a
location map, they discovered to their astonishment that the hotel had
closed down almost 2 weeks previously, yet no word of this had been
communicated to them by Cebu Pacific.
Then came
the serious problem with CP's online bookings: contacting anyone about
them is almost impossible. Their website gives no email address. Just
"Hotline" telephone numbers in Manila and Cebu that are permanently
busy.
My friends
spent nearly a whole day repeatedly dialling before at last getting
through. But these "Hotlines" are not to Cebu Pacific. They are to a
Call Center with the function of filtering, taking notes, and passing
queries to a supervisor who decides whether or not to pass them on to
Cebu Pacific. It's a slow, laborious, frustrating, inconvenient, costly
(you're paying for phone call) process.
In this
case my friends' message was considered serious enough to pass on, and
some hours later they received a call from Cebu Pacific saying they had
contacted the destination hotel which informed them it had only been
closed for a single day and there was no problem with it.
My friends
questioned this because it contradicted the notice on the hotel's own
official website, and were asked to hold while Cebu Pacific
double-checked. The caller, who gave no name or direct line for future
contact, returned to say the hotel had confirmed it was open and there
would be no problem. "Just go there." So they did.
"Fun
Tour" was Nightmare Trip for vacationers who booked Cebu Pacific online
promo.
Upon late
night arrival at the destination airport and clearance through
immigration and customs, they encountered another regular difficulty
with "Fun Tour" promos. No transportation to hotel is included. After
trying unsuccessfully to find a bus going in the right direction, they
were finally forced to take a taxi, which cost them as much as a night
at the hotel, which they reached at about 2am.
When they
got there, the door was open but the reception desk was unattended.
Calling out and knocking on the counter a few times eventually resulted
in the appearance of someone clearly irritated at being disturbed. She
looked at the reservation details on the Cebu Pacific e-ticket, brought
a man out from inside and told my friends to follow him.
The man,
whose manner was equally disinterested and offhand, made no attempt to
help carry their baggage and walked out of the hotel into the street,
where it had started to rain. Carrying their own baggage and struggling
to keep up, my friends followed him in the rain through narrow dimly
lit streets, then up some stairs, through an empty building, down the
stairs on the other side and further along another dark and wet street
to end up at a different hotel.
This hotel was part
of the same group of budget hotels, but it was not the one my friends
had chosen and did not provide the same room facilities. The hotel
receptionist was aggressively rude on being questioned about the one
they had booked, confirming that it had permanently closed and adding
that if my friends did not like this one they could get out and go
somewhere else.
They
pointed out that they had paid for 4 nights in advance, had already
lost half of the first night, and asked if they could get their money
back. The receptionist replied that they had paid the owner, not him,
and there would be no refund if they did not stay there. He then
demanded a substantial deposit for the room key, although no such
deposit was mentioned on the Cebu Pacific website.
The
Cebu Pacific e-ticket shows 4 nights' stay with checkout on Friday
September 30.
By then it
was too late and my friends were too tired to search for another hotel,
and without refund they did not have enough spare cash to pay another
hotel for the same 4 nights they had already paid Cebu Pacific for.
Reluctantly they paid the room key deposit and stayed there 4 nights.
On the
positive side, next morning their included American breakfast was fine,
and the hotel's eatery staff were efficient and friendly. When they
wandered out to walk around, they found that the location was in a
tourist area largely frequented by backpackers so there was plenty of
cheap local transportation for sightseeing and a pickup point nearby
for the airport shuttle bus.
However, my
friends' "Fun Tour" package vacation nightmare was by no means over.
The worst part was yet to come...
- Edu Garcia (Story of Cebu Pacific
customers' ongoing nightmare to be continued.)
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WHY ARE BILL AND MELINDA GATES
SALMAN KHAN'S GREATEST FANS?
(Because they know his online
tutorials make world-class math education free to anyone anywhere.)
PHILIPPINE STUDENTS CURRENTLY
REBELLING AGAINST HIKES IN TUITION AND OTHER FEES may
take heart in the fact that rich and powerful people in other countries
are doing a lot to assist them. The Khan Academy (www.khanacademy.org)
is a a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing FREE WORLD-CLASS EDUCATION TO ANYONE
ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD VIA THE INTERNET. It started with math and over 30 million lessons
have been delivered to-date. More than 2000 free online video tutorials
cover everything from basic addition to advanced calculus, physics,
chemistry and biology. The founder, Salman Khan, holds an MBA from
Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu),
an M.Eng and B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science from
MIT (web.mit.edu),
and a B.S. in mathematics from MIT. Bill Gates
in the above video describes what Salman Khan is doing as "the start of
a revolution". The Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation (www.gatesfoundation.org)
is now helping to fund Khan Academy's expansion to embrace other
subjects than math, and to develop analytical software that will be an
enormous boon to students and teachers alike. The Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation is also helping to fund other empowering educational
work such as The Big History Project (www.bighistoryproject.com),
which has already proved to be of tremendous benefit to high school and
university students. Read and view more on our
special Education
Revolution page.
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"WHAT WE HAVE IS A
PLANETARY EMERGENCY.
WHAT WE NEED IS A
GENERATION OF HEROES.
A hero generation brought democracy
to the planet. Another hero generation ended slavery. Another hero
generation brought women the right to vote.
We now need a generation of heroes
with a generational mission to save our planet. If we had just one
week's worth of what the USA spends on the Iraq war, we would be well
on the way to doing this."
In the above TED
video, Al
Gore presents evidence that the speed of climate change is much faster
than previously predicted, and he warns of the urgency to act NOW.
Once the US Vice President, then star of "An
Inconvenient Truth", now Nobel Peace Prize winner, Gore found a way to
focus the world's attention on climate change. In doing so, he invented
a new medium -- the Keynote movie -- and reinvented himself. Unlike
most people in public office, Gore always intended to get things done
and, since leaving Washington in 2000, he's still at it. His campaign
for alerting the world to the dangers of climate change is gaining
momentum. His Oscar-winning "An
Inconvenient Truth" is the third most successful documentary
ever released at the box office. It is being used by governments around
the world to inform the local public, and the UK government even sent a
copy of the film to every high school in England, Wales and Scotland.
Gore's famed PowerPoint presentation, with its meticulously researched
content and lucid style, has energized rapidly increasing numbers of
worldwide activists -- both young and old. Meanwhile, Gore has
transformed his image as a communicator. The once 'wooden' style has
given way to a warmth and humor that reveal the depth of his experience
as a soldier, congressman, senator, Vice President, TV executive,
teacher and author. Arguably, he is better positioned today than ever
before to affect the future of our environment and world. Along with
the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2007 he was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize "for efforts to build up and disseminate greater
knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for
the measures that are needed to counteract such change". Rolling Stone
magazine has commented: "The only Vice President ever to mock his own
stiff image by imitating a wax-museum figure, Gore turns out to be the
best professor that you never had -- easygoing, knowledgeable and
funny." To find out how you can get involved, visit The Climate Project
official website. Al Gore has written an article published in the June
22, 2011, issue of Rolling Stone that you may read
online. Also read the report in USA
Today's online edition of June 22 confirming that
"97 percent of scientific
experts agree that climate change is very likely caused mainly by human
activity" based on Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences, and USA Today includes
an excellent interactive
graphic that explains clearly how global warming occurs.
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FILIPINA IS DECLARED HERO
BY HILLARY CLINTON
Darlene Pajarito from Zamboanga
receives the 2011 Hero Acting to End Modern Day Slavery Award.
CONGRATULATIONS TO DARLENE PAJARITO
ON HER AWARD from the US Secretary of State, and congratulations
to everyone else in the Philippines and Singapore whose dedication,
hard work and persistence resulted in the removal of both nations from
the American blacklist of countries most heavily involved with human
trafficking. They
are all heroes too, and it is more heroes like them that we now need to
save all Asia from the scourge of political corruption, and our entire
planet from the ravages of man-made climate change (for which
paradoxically the worst offender by far is the USA.)
To provide
our viewers with more information about the human trafficking in Asia,
below is the video of a talk given by Somaly Mam. She is Cambodian, was
sold into sexual slavery as a child, and during her several years of
captivity was repeatedly tortured and raped every day before eventually
managing to make her escape.
For women
in other countries who have never experienced anything remotely similar
themselves, such a situation is extremely difficult to imagine. But for
girls abruptly caught up in human trafficking as innocent young
children, the trauma is soul-destroying and its effects last a lifetime.
Which makes
it all the more amazing that Mam later set up AFESIP (Agir Pour les
Femmes en Situation Précaire - English translation: Acting for Women in
Distressing Circumstances), a nonprofit non-government organization
that rescues, rehabilitates and reintegrates victims of human
trafficking, and that she still works tirelessly to increase awareness
and support in the rest of the world.
She has
received innumerable international accolades for her work, including
being named one of the world's most influential women by Time magazine.
Visit the AFESIP
official website
to find out
more. (Courtesy
of DLDwomen.)
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WHAT IS THE GLOBAL SUMMIT
OF WOMEN?
IRENE NATIVIDAD,
President of the Washington USA based Global Summit of Women,
explains what the Summit is all about to Daljit Dhaliwal on PBS'
Foreign Exchange.
An
acclaimed participant in southeast Asia is the Women, Family and
Community Development Minister of Malaysia, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil. This
week, after the Malaysian corporate sector was given a five-year
transitional period to increase the number of women in high positions
or on the board of directors of companies, she said this was because
many women had the qualifications, potential, talent and experience
needed to be at the decision-making level. "Based on studies done by
other countries which practise the same policy, having women on the
board of directors or as chairmen has been found to have raised
productivity of the companies," she announced. "It also does not
threaten the security market, the corporate field or businesses in
Malaysia. In fact, we've seen growth in the companies." Shahrizat added
that her ministry would soon start a training program to prepare women
with the potential to sit on boards of directors. "Women represent half
of the nation's population and we are a critical consumer mass, so I
don't see why women should be left out in the decision-making process,"
she said. Why
does the Philippines lag so far behind? Is it because there are no
successful Filipina corporate leaders? No. There are many. Is it
because there are no successful Filipinas already running their own
established businesses? No. There are many. Is it because there are no
talented and ambitious Filipina entrepreneurs eager to create their own
new startups? No. There are many.
In our
situation, which stems from all kinds of historical factors, SRM cannot
and does not apportion blame. What we say is that the time has come for
change. It is our considered belief that Philippine women must be fully
recognized, appreciated and rewarded for their contribution not only to
family but to society. For too long their contribution has been taken
for granted and continuously neglected.
Forget the negative attitudes of stick-in-the-mud critics and do a Google search to see the creativity of Filipinos who have posted on the internet their own versions of DOT's inspiring
new tourism slogan. Who cares what the Swiss did in 1951? They didn't invent the English
language and they didn't coin the "it's more fun" phrase. Positive-thinking Filipinos like the
new slogan and are having lots of fun proving the truth in it. DOT deserves congratulations!
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US FIRST LADY SHARES WITH THE WORLD HER ADVICE FOR CHILD NUTRITION
First Lady Michelle Obama joins students for a "Let's Move!" Salad Bars to Schools launch event at Riverside Elementary School
in Miami, Florida, USA. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
PARENTS, BUSINESSES, EDUCATORS, ELECTED OFFICIALS, MEMBERS OF THE MILITARY, CHEFS, PHYSICIANS, ATHLETES, CHILDCARE PROVIDERS, COMMUNITY AND FAITH LEADERS, AND KIDS THEMSELVES have made substantial commitments to improve the health of American children.
Through working together with Let's Move!, these groups have provided children in the USA with healthy food, physical activities in schools and communities, helped get families the information they need to make healthier decisions, supported a healthy start in early childhood, and have worked to ensure that the poorest people - especially their children - have access to healthy, affordable food.
As with every country around the globe, direct government assistance can only be provided to each independent nation's own citizens and communities, but the difference with the USA is that its general advice to parents for the health of their children is made available to even the poorest countries of the world by means of the free and open internet.
If this global freedom of information was blocked by those who wish to make the internet exclusive to a privileged few, the increase in world poverty and disease would be exponential. President Obama, we are happy to say, opposed the draconian bids of the US Congress and Senate to censor and control the internet, and make it impossible for not-for-profit organizations like Wikipedia to operate globally.
Michelle Obama should be applauded, congratulated and honored for her work in this respect. While her husband, the US President, is fighting daily battles at the highest level of government, the First Lady brings compassionate, personal and inspirational assistance to those in US society who need it most. And she openly shares lifesaving advice with the rest of the world. Thanks Ma'am, we appreciate it.
Eduardo Garcia (Photo courtesy of the White House.)
Santa Rosa City Laguna Philippines -
attracting investors from all over Asia and the world.
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