Category: marcos

“I would request for a clean bill of health” #NoToBNPP

DR. SALVADOR GONZALEZ

Professor of theoretical physics and the history of science
De La Salle University 

In physics, one of the first questions asked by man was, what ultimately is the material world made of? And the one who first answered it scientifically, although he did not have much of a mathematical background at the time (around 5 BC) was Democritus, a Greek. He said that ultimately all material things are made up of atoms and these are very small particles.

But that was forgotten for a while. After the Greek civilization came the Roman Empire with its soldiers and lawyers, people who weren’t interested in science. It wasn’t until 1910 in England that John Dalton, a chemist, remembered the early teaching of the Greeks and he was able to explain nicely the laws of chemistry by saying that chemical substances are made up of atomic elements joined together.

At Cambridge, John Thompson wanted to know more about these atoms. He bombarded some materials with electrons and came to the conclusion that atoms are made up of a positive core surrounded on the surface by small negative electrons.

Thompson had a brilliant student from New Zealand, Ernest Rutherford, who, like many brilliant students, didn’t just accept his professor’s words. He conducted his own experiments. He got very thin gold foil and he bombarded this with helium. He found that most of the helium particles went through the gold foil, some were deviated slightly, while others behaved like they encountered large positive charges  in the atom of the gold and were thus sent back. From which Rutherford concluded that the atom is made up of a nucleus, positively charged, surrounded by electrons, not on the surface, but away from the nucleus, and empty space between.

Rutherford, in turn, had a brilliant student, Niels Bohr, a Danish. Bohr continued the work and found that electrons go around the nucleus like planets go around the sun. That is the origin of our atomic picture.

In 1932 Chadwick of Cambridge discovered that in the nucleus there was not only the proton with positive charge, but also the neutron with zero charge. So now we picture the atom as having a nucleus with positive protons and neutral neutrons.

In 1935 a Japanese physicist said, ah yes, but why are they there? In other words, if the nucleus of the atom is made up only of positive charges, similar to each other, and neutral neutrons, what makes the positive neutrons stick together? Didn’t we learn in high school that opposite charges attract and similar charges repel? Why then are these protons with positive charges not repelling each other? So, he said, there must be another force inside the nucleus, greater than the electric force. This is the nuclear force.

In 1939 in Berlin two German chemists and an Austrian physicist stumbled upon nuclear fission. They were bombarding uranium ore with neutrons, hoping to make atoms bigger than uranium. (In the natural order of thins, uranium was the biggest atom, atomic number 92.) They thought that a uranium atom, if hit with a neutron, would become neptunium, and then plutonium, and lo and behold they’d be producing elements that are not found in nature. And while they were thus engaged in nuclear ballistics, they discovered that a certain type of uranium, about .7% of the uranium content of the ore, instead of getting bigger, fissions or splits.

And then Lisa Ratner, the Austrian physicist, had to run away from Berlin because she was a Jew. She fled to Copenhagen where she met with her nephew Otto Frisch, also a physicist, and together they performed the experiments, computed the results, then sent these to America, to Einstein and Fermi.

Einstein and Fermi again performed the experiments, again computed the results, and they agreed that indeed this was a tremendous amount of energy that could be produced and that this could become a weapon of war. And they knew that the Germans knew. Einstein then wrote to Roosevelt, suggested that the President see if a weapon could be produced ahead of the Germans. Fortunately the Germans never produced an atomic bomb. Heisenberg refused to give Hitler the knowledge he had (which is one of the nicest things about the German scientists of the time).

And so the war ended in Europe with Germany surrendering. But there was still Japan in the Pacific to tackle. The Americans had two bombs, a uranium-235 bomb and a plutonium-239 bomb. Whether wise or not, these two bombs were unloaded on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One killed 80,000, the other 100,000. After that, people became horrified. In 1945 the Atomic Energy for Peace movement began.

But reactors were built anyway. The first ones to produce more bombs, the next ones for research. In the 1950s we were offered a research reactor by the Americans, the reactor we have now in Diliman, first put into operation in 1963. It produces radioactive substances needed for medicine, agriculture, and so on.

Mind you, at the time there was also a lot of protests against the reactor. They said it would blow up like a bomb, that it would cause radiation and kill everybody in the U.P., and we said it would not and it didn’t.

Question: You’re not against the nuclear power plant then?

In principle, no. But I would request for a clean bill of health. Let’s make sure it’s safe within reasonable risk. Then let’s have public hearings. We cannot avoid it any longer. And if we cannot convince our people of the safety of the reactor, then the people’s wishes must be followed.

[Source: “A Primer on Nuclear Power.” Alternative Futures.  Vol II. No 1. 1985.  27-32]

even marcos was stopped by safety concerns #NoToBNPP

last night i caught the start of ANC’s square off debate on the bataan nuclear power plant (BNPP), the host opining that no one who had anything to do with it back in the 70s and 80s seems to be around any longer, so here we go with a student debate, and the pro-BNPP kids proceeded to make mincemeat of the anti-BNPP kids particularly on questions over the integrity of the structure and oh-what-a-waste of good money when nuclear energy is so clean compared to coal blah blah blah.

it was painful to watch, the anti-BNPP kids obviously not having done enough research to be convincing, and i didn’t stay.  but i returned at the end of the hour to hear the final verdict by three judges in robes (some 10, maybe 20 years older) who announced that the pro-BNPP kids were sooo galing, even they had been convinced by the arguments, hurray.

in aid of informed debate, my next three posts are on the BNPP, also known as the philippine nuclear power plant-1 (PNPP-1 — marcos had planned for two nuclear plants).  these are excerpts from “A Primer on Nuclear Power” based on transcripts of a panel discussion of experts that environmentalist maximo “junie” kalaw‘s philippine institute of alternative futures (PIAF) and physicist and geodetic engineer celso roque’s haribon gathered together in a public forum at the height of demonstrations for a nuclear-free philippines in 1985.

the first is by dr. salvador gonzalez, de la salle university professor of theoretical physics, who tells how mankind stumbled on nuclear energy; he is not against the nuclear power plant in principle but requests a clean bill of health.  the second is by dr. achilles del callar, nuclear engineer, dean of the college of science of adamson university, who tells of serious safety concerns, including leaking tubes, and the hopeless search for geologically stable sites for the storage of radioactive waste.  the third by dr. ruben umali, radiation biologist of UP, tells of the lack of research on how sensitive Philippine flora, fauna, and marine life are to radiation, and how we therefore have no way of detecting radioactive leakages.

even marcos, powerful and astig as he was, did not have the guts to shrug off concerns not just about whether the plant is structurally sound and capable of withstanding major earthquakes and/or eruptions of volcanos nearby, but also about the nuclear reactor’s technical defects that even westinghouse could not deny, and the huge problem of where to put the radioactive waste.  we would be very foolish, crazy, hare-brained to trust duterte’s energy sec alfonso cusi who is just another oligarch pala with the skimpiest science background but who dares tread where even marcos dared not.

so it’s not true that cory was just being vindictive when she ordered that the BNPP be mothballed.  if she had been truly vindictive she would not have ordered that the debts incurred be paid with public monies — she would have told the foreign banks to go make singil marcos and his cronies instead.

Outsize cost—and risks

Perhaps it’s appropriate that news of President Duterte’s green light for the rehabilitation of the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) came in the midst of the public outrage over the Supreme Court’s upholding of the planned burial of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ remains in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. If there is an enduring symbol, after all, of the staggering plunder that marked the Marcos regime, the concrete monstrosity sitting on 389 hectares of the coastline in Morong, Bataan, more than qualifies.

Read on…

marcos burial, duterte, history

There are certain things that are better left for history—not this Court—to adjudge. The Court could only do so much in accordance with the clearly established rules and principles. Beyond that, it is ultimately for the people themselves, as the sovereign, to decide, a task that may require the better perspective that the passage of time provides. In the meantime, the country must move on and let this issue rest.”

that’s from the SC ponencia dismissing the petitions against the burial of marcos in the libingan ng mga bayani.  and here’s president duterte in the wake of that:

“Now the question about the dictatorship of Marcos is something which cannot be determined at this time. It has to have history. Kasi ho, ‘yung nasaktan, and it was a contention really of a political fight initially that turned sour because of the power struggle of the ruling political families in this country, and almost it deteriorated into something almost like a revolution. That part of the sins of Marcos has yet to be proven by a competent court. ‘Yung sabihin lang ‘yan nawala ‘yung pera that is altogether another different issue. As far as the right or the privilege to be buried sa Libingan ng mga Bayani, I simply followed the law. Wala tayong magawa diyan. … He was a president and he was a soldier. I am limited to that issue.”

clearly we have a president and nine supreme court justices who think we’re still in the dark ages and history can be written only after some fifty years, when the participants in a life-changing event or period are either dead or suffering from alzheimers or dementia, that is, with faulty or no memories at all, and by then bongbong or imee or one of their kids would be back in the palace and martial law would be celebrated as a golden age and the four days of EDSA ’86 would come down as a 9/11 kind of disaster for nation, as in, you know, a false flag kind of ugly thingy that unjustly interrupted marcos rule.

in fact, martial law pa lang, the martial law story, the unfolding, was already being documented by amnesty international and other human rights groups, and foreign observers were monitoring developments and taking notes, and soon after EDSA, testimonies of the tortured and the families of the salvaged were put on record, and then the books started coming out: primitivo mijares’s The Conjugal Dictatorship written in ’75, cecilio arillo’s Breakaway (1986), james fenton’s Snap Revolution (1986), raymond bonner’s Waltzing with a Dictator (1987), ninotchka rosca’s Endgame: The Fall of Marcos (1987), lewis simon’s Worth Dying For (1987), Dictatorship and Revolution: Roots of People Power edited by aurora javate de dios, petronilo bn. daroy, and lorna kalaw-tirol (1988), sterling seagrave’s The Marcos Dynasty (1988), stanley karnow’s In Our Image (1989), among many many publications into the ’90s, ricardo manapat’s Some Are Smarter Than Others (1991), mark thompson’s The Anti-Marcos Struggle (1996), paul hutchcroft’s Booty Capitalism (1998), alfred mccoy’s Closer Than Brothers (1999), to name a few, tracking not only the stories and numbers of human rights violations but also of the “rise” and fall of the economy, the ballooning of the foreign debt, the crony capitalism, the institutionalized looting, imelda’s jewels and mansions, the swiss accounts, atbpang kahindikhindik at kalunuslunos na mga kaganapan.

never has the marcos camp issued any categorical denials, issue by issue, with supporting documents — just a finger pointed at ver as the culprit in human rights violations, and another at the fabled yamashita treasure as the source of the marcos wealth.  deafening is the silence of FVR, honasan, and lacson on the stories of torture, murder, and disappearances.

president duterte insists that he is only following the law that imelda invokes, the one qualifying marcos, as former president and soldier, for burial in the libingan ng mga bayani, even as he and imelda et al. willfully ignore the exceptions laid down by the very same law.  read associate sc justice antonio carpio’s dissenting opinion:

AFPR G 161-375, which respondents rest on to justify the interment of Marcos at the LNMB, specifically provides that “personnel who were dishonorably separated / reverted/ discharged from the service” are not qualified to the interred at the LNMB. Marcos, who was forcibly ousted form the Presidency by the sovereign act of the Filipino people, falls under this disqualification.

In Marcos v. Manglapus (1989), the Court described Marcos as “a dictator forced out of office and into exile after causing twenty years of political, economic and social havoc in the country.” In short he was ousted by the Filipino people. Marcos was forcibly removed from the Presidency by what is now referred to as the People Power Revolution This is the strongest form of dishonorable discharge from office since it is meted out by the direct act of the sovereign people.

The fact of Marcos’ ouster is beyond judicial review. This Court has no power to review the legitimacy of the People Power Revolution as it was successfully carried out by the sovereign people who installed the revolutionary government of Corazon C. Aquino. The people have spoken by ratifying the 1987 Constitution, which was drafted under the Aquino government installed by the People Power Revolution. The Court has been steadfast in dismissing challenges to the legitimacy of the Aquino government, and has declared that its legitimacy is not a justiciable matter that can be acted upon by the Court.

As the removal of Marcos from the Presidency is no longer within the purview of judicial review, we must accept this as an incontrovertible fact which has become part of the history of the Philippines. This ouster, which was directly carried out by the sovereign act of the Filipino people, constitutes dishonorable removal from the service. Marcos was forcibly removed from the position as President and Commander-in-Chief by the Filipino people. In Estrada v. Desierto (2001), the Court reiterated the legitimacy of the removal of Marcos and the establishment of the Aquino government:

“No less than the Freedom Constitution declared that the Aquino government was installed through a direct exercise of the power of the Filipino people in defiance of the provisions of the 1973 Consyitution, as amended. It is familiar learning that the legitimacy of a government sired by a successful revolution by people power is beyond judicial scrutiny for that government automatically orbits out of the constitutional loop.”

The removal of Marcos from the Presidency, therefore, was a direct exercise of the sovereign act of the Fiipino people that is “beyond judicial scrutiny.” It cannot be said that this removal was an “honorable” one. Truly, there is nothing more dishonorable for a President than being forcibly removed from office by the direct sovereign act of the people. (pp3-4)

the cruelest and most condemnable cut of all is the way president duterte shrugs off EDSA ’86 as simply the culmination of a political fight between two families and nothing more, when in fact ninoy was mostly helplessly in jail, and then in exile, and then dead on the tarmac, while marcos’s people were mostly committing gross human rights violations with impunity, among other morally turpid stuff.  read marcos, kleptocracy, moral turpitude.

According to Amnesty International, 3,249 were killed; 34,000 were tortured and 70,000 were imprisoned during the Marcos dictatorship. The Human Rights Victims Claims Board, meanwhile, has already received more than 75,000 applications for compensation. http://bulatlat.com/main/2016/11/10/led-political-comeback-marcoses/

and someone please tell the prez that the “something like a revolution” that successfully ousted marcos was not even endorsed by cory until the third day of EDSA, feb 24, when she finally made a brief appearance in front of the POEA, and only because the sovereign people who were in the throes of revolution gave her no choice but to reconcile and join hands with ninoy’s jailer enrile vs. marcos.

it bears repeating, too, as often as i have to, that also on day three, the dictator marcos ordered the bombing of camp crame where FVR and enrile were holed up.  fortunately for nation, the marines (who did not join the rebel forces and were poised to fire from camp aguinaldo) refused to follow marcos’s orders because hosts of unarmed civilians inside and outside the camp would have been hit, too.  please read my first chronology (1996) here and/or EDSA Uno the book (2013), both fully documented, the latter available at the UP press bookshop in diliman and f. sionil jose’s solidaridad in malate.  or i could send the president a hundred copies for family and friends, cabinet officials and other allies, FYI lang, in the spirit of FOI, just say the word.

i concede that marcos did some good, particularly when he got the U.S. to pay rent for the military bases in subic and clark in ’76, even if it was less than (just half of) the $1B kissinger first offered (that he foolishly turned down) for a period of 5 years.  but land reform?  it was selective, to put it mildly.  infrastructure?  that’s par for the course, isn’t it.  though imelda’s babies — the CCP, the heart, lung, and kidney centers — were / are winners, and so too was imee’s short-lived ECP.

i draw the line though at rice self-sufficiency which was also short-lived.

Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte during his presidential campaign kick off rally in Tondo, Manila on Tuesday said the late Ferdinand E. Marcos is the best president the country ever had. He said Marcos was a good president before he became a dictator, praising his Biyaya ng Dagat and Masagana 99 programs.

“On hindsight, kung balikan ko ang panahon, noon at ngayon, kung hindi lang siya tumagal ng pagka-presidente, kung hindi lang siya naging diktador na matagal, pinaka the best na presidente na dumaan, Marcos,” he said while the crowd cheered.

thing is, both masagana 99 and biyayang dagat were credit programs that failed, according to this article on AIM’s website:

In the early 1970s, the main challenge was providing credit to the poor; there were market imperfections most experts concluded. If the private service, particularly private banks, didn’t want to provide credit to the poor, could the government do it then? Thus, the government implemented many credit programs for the poor. Even government agencies that were not financial institutions were implementing credit programs to address what was perceived as market imperfections: there was Masagana 99 (Bountiful Harvest 99) which provided loans to help farmers harvest 99 canvas of rice per hectare; there was Biyayang Dagat (Ocean’s Gift), a credit program for the fisherfolks, and Tulong sa Tao (Help for the People), loans for livelihood projects. But all these government-managed credit programs experienced very low repayment rate among the borrowers, even if government agencies were offering subsidized credit programs with minimal or no interest rates. There was also the mindset among those borrowers that what the government agencies were offering were dole-outs. Government credit programs failed. Director Almario teased, “Masagana 99 became Masamang 99, and Biyayang Dagat became Buwayang Dagat.” 

and both were programs launched during martial law, not before.  i have praised president duterte for his sense of history, declaring the little lectures priceless, but only about the moro story and american imperialism.  about marcos, martial law, and EDSA, i dare say the president needs to read up, rethink, and reboot, and so do the nine justices of the supreme court.

it’s not too late, mr. president.  it doesn’t take rocket science, or a crystal ball, to see that a marcos burial in the libingan ng mga bayani will not bring healing, rather it is certain to deepen worsen exacerbate the wounds and divisions that already afflict nation.

i would address the same appeal to the marcos family, but a mutual friend, leslie bocobo, who cheered the SC decision of nov 8, has done me better with this facebook status of nov 12.

It is my personal opinion that after the Marcos family, led by former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos, VP Bongbong Marcos, Gov. Imee Marcos and Irene Marcos Araneta, acknowledge and thank the Supreme Court for finally giving its affirmative decision to allow a controversial remains a befitting final resting place in the LNMB, that the Marcoses, as a family, decide thereafter to bury FM in Ilocos Norte. There, a park-like shrine may rise so that the Filipino people may visit him without being interrupted by occasional vandals and rabid Marcos haters that I foresee may happen at the LNMB. The affirmative decision of the SC is enough. That makes it official and a sort of burying the issue (pun unintended) once and for all, thus granting Marcos the accolades and honors for a Filipino soldier. Burying him instead in Ilocos raises him to a higher level. After all, most of our past presidents are buried elsewhere. Rizal stands majestically alone in Bagumbayan. Let Marcos lie in peace in his hometown, but with a monument erected to perpetuate his memory where he too can stand alone – far away from those who hate him, but closest to all those who acknowledge him as a great leader.