reliefPH.com

consolidated information from govt sites, gmanews7 / abs-cbn2 / abc5 / rappler, facebook and twitter, google (crowdsourced) docs, and the emergency broadcast of Jam 88.3 that happened from 6pm on august 7 to 6am on august 8.

organized by place, and then by need: relief goods, cash donations, help hospitals, contact, hotlines, etc etc.

click on a place to find out where you might volunteer, or bring relief goods, or cash donations. click on any of the tags for particular needs or concerns you might have, i.e., emergency numbers, hotlines, rescue, help hospitals, etc.

reliefPH.com

 

The ‘golden age’ and the little magazine

By Elmer Ordoñez

The post-war years were euphoric—being free again, going back to school, and meeting friends who had all become adults, and missing some, casualties of a brutal war.

They were also uneasy times because of the Huk rebellion with the rebels (as some said) knocking on the doors of Manila. In fact some were already around. In Diliman, Huk bands patrolled the campus from midnight and UP police were afraid to venture out. Students had to show their IDs at PC checkpoints. By 1950 the “in-politburo” was rounded up in Manila and scores of intellectuals and journalists were “invited” to army camps for interrogation.

Abroad the Cold War had begun to intensify with the Soviet blockade of the Allied zones of Berlin and C-47s flew in supplies for the beleaguered city. North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and drove the combined US and South Korean forces into a perimeter around the port of Pusan. The war was fought to a stalemate at Panmunjon to an uneasy truce up to now.

The Cold War created an anti-communist hysteria exploited by US Senator McCarthy who recklessly accused State Department officials of being communists. The House of Representatives through its committee on un-American activities (HUAC) also began its own witch-hunt for Reds in the academe, media, film industry (blacklisting directors, actors, writers like the Hollywood Ten), labor and other sectors. Carlos Bulosan was undeterred and wrote the editorial for the 1952 yearbook of the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen’s Union attacking McCarthyism. The UP campus would have its first taste of witch-hunting when names of four faculty members were revealed at a board of regents hearing as having been given by administration people to an MIS (Military Intelligence Service) officer.

In Manila most broadsheet journalists kept silent when some of their colleagues were “invited” to the army camps. A bookstore owner was himself “invited” and tortured along with other suspected media people. On campus the MIS agents were on the prowl. Ex-GI William Pomeroy, a classmate in our American lit class, left the campus in summer of 1950, to join his rebel wife Celia Mariano in the Sierra Madre. (cf. The Forest)

It was in this exciting period that the campus developed writers that would produce what Jose “Butch” Dalisay called “the golden age” of Philippine writing. How did this come about when visiting American writer Wallace Stegner asked in 1951 where was the writing about the times—the tensions in Manila and agrarian unrest in Central Luzon. It would seem that writers had turned inwards, writing about their angsts or the traumas of the last war. NVM Gonzalez himself wryly noted that a favorite of students was what he called the “Tennessee Waltz” theme. His workshop yielded stories of lost love, lost innocence, tales of you can’t go home again or goodbye to all that. There was actually a lot more than these.

A good index of the writing of the period would be the Literary Apprentice from its revival in 1948-49 to the rest of the 50s. The Apprentice was open to both beginners and established writers usually members of the UP Writers Club. The little magazine came out annually during the 50s, after which it was issued irregularly until 1993.

Editor Armando Manalo put out in the 1948-49 Apprentice a special section on Jose Garcia Villa (“to keep up with the cultural lag”), with Hernando Ocampo doing the cover with a Christ figure as a “common tao.” (H.R. would again do the cover of 1955 Apprentice (which I edited) rendering a recumbent proletarian figure in abstract form.) The Apprentice during the 30s were noted for colorful covers and this practice was followed by post-war editors. Reuben Canoy, one of three editors of the 1949-50 Apprentice (the two others SV Epistola and William Pomeroy), used the same humanistic motif for the cover. Raul R. Ingles, with Epistola, used Pegasus (drawn by Danny Aguila) for the 1951 cover, while Maro Santaromana, with Ray Ekern as co-editor, designed the 1952 cover himself, using the writer as thinker in blue on a black background. Amelia Lapena, one of three editors (Andres Cristobal Cruz and Tita Lacambra) did the typographic cover of the 1953 cover in white letters and velvet background. Rony Diaz’s story “The Centipede” and Andes Cristobal Cruz “The Quarrel” in this issue won top prizes in the newly opened Carlos Palanca memorial awards for literature.

The 1954 Apprentice edited by Rony V. Diaz, with Pacifico Aprieto and Lourdes Paez, had a striking yellow cover with a bright red lizard on it. Two of its stories “The Beads” by SV Epistola and “Death in a Sawmill” by Rony V. Diaz won top prizes in the Palanca contest.

As Maro Santaromana noted: “We are fortunate here in Diliman (for) the more than a dozen volumes of this yearbook, and in the general literary activity that one finds on the campus.” Maro believed that it was “the independence which writers as well as editors . . . have had as their principal platform for launching their creative work.”

Other things conspired to make UP Diliman a center of literary activity. There were good teachers of creative writing like Prof. NVM Gonzalez, Dr. Leonard Casper, and Prof. Francisco Arcellana who focused on the craft of fiction and poetry. Inevitably they developed a group of young writers who were taken in the UP Writers Club that sustained the Apprentice through the years. Eight of them formed the original Ravens who also edited the Philippine Collegian, Collegian Folio, Philippinensian, and non-UP publications like Comment. In the late 50s a new radical breed of writers took over and put out independent little magazines like Signatures, Blast, and Diliman Observer.

(To be continued)

 

gloria & the archbishop vs. RH

i’m sorry gloria arroyo choked on that lemon, i mean, melon, not too long after she went back to congress to rally her troops against the RH bill.  sorry because it means she’s not likely to make it to the edsa shrine on saturday to join manila archbishop luis antonio tagle’s anti-RH rally.  it would have been quite a sight to see, gma joining hands with the church, or is it, the church joining hands with gma, vs. the ardent RH advocacy of 7 out of 10 pinoys.

actually, ok rin that gma has taken that unequivocal stand against RH, whether it’s because she doesn’t want to lose the supposed, tho perhaps mythical, catholic vote (if not for herself, then for her sons) that the church can allegedly, again possibly mythically, muster against recalcitrants, or whether it’s because she truly believes that artificial contraception is bad and she herself never indulged back in her fecund pre-menopause days.  whatever, i like it that she’s made this mistake of sucking up to the church rather than sucking up to us.  at the very least it has forced the president to be clearer about his support for whatever the majority of filipinos want. 

what if gloria had taken a pro-RH stand instead?  panalo na sigurado, kahit sa house of reps lang.  end of debate.  vote na, now na.  not that it would have endeared her to most of us in a heartbeat, but hey, it would have been great spin material in that future when she wants to flee again to save her neck and she would need all the sympathy and goodwill she can get.

as for the new archbishop of manila, well, he’s proving right what analysts predicted when he assumed the post:

Analysts on Church affairs said Tagle would be a potent weapon against proposals to legalize divorce in the Philippines and improve access to contraception through his close links with the Catholic middle class and civil society groups.

potent weapon, hmmm.  but going down that edsa-rally road isn’t very smart of him.  lalo na’t the church has not been engaged in any run-up action that we know of re the RH bill other than labelling it pro-abortion (which is a lie) AND making gapang the congressmen, and maybe the senators, and, who knows, maybe offering all kinds of goodies — the church is verrrry rich, let’s keep in mind — in exchange for the legislators’ NO votes when the time comes.

what if, instead, archbishop tagle had spearheaded, finally, a vigorous information campaign on natural family planning, one addressed to both women AND men, on when and how to make pigil their panggigigil (them celibates should know).  at least nasimulan na ang sex education.  again, great spin material, win or lose, and the bishops can even seriously pitch the joys, nay, the heavenly rewards, of abstinence and celibacy.

but the die is cast.  tomorrow’s rally should be interesting to see.  will the church make hakot students of catholic schools, nuns and priests, legions of mary, the catholic women’s league, couples for christ, the opus dei?  will gloria send elena da horn to represent her? will the senate send in da eat bulaga clown to sing “magkaisa”?

sana umulan.

instead of chacha, revoke automatic appropriation for debt service!

my first reaction upon hearing of senate president enrile’s and house speaker belmonte’s joint call for charter change soon after the impeachment and ouster of the chief justice, of which they were prime movers, was to wonder, ano ito, quid-pro-quo?  the president owes them for corona and this is what they want, okay, hope for, in exchange?  it’s a relief, of course, that the prez was quick to reply that chacha is not a priority of his administration, kahit na i don’t agree with the it-aint-broke-so-why-fix-it rhetoric.

this time the arguments for deleting, changing, whatever, the nationalist, protective economic provisions are old and new.  old is the one about attracting foreign investments that our economy direly needs daw.  new is the one about giving the military a bigger budget than education, the better to build an armed force capable of driving away the chinese from west philippine sea territory.

re foreign investments, as usual some agree, some disagree: economist calixto chikiamco and senator joker arroyo agree; economist solita “winnie” monsod and columnist conrado de quiros disagree.  re an improved military budget, however, i have yet to hear anyone agreeing.  the palace via lacierda says there are already efforts to upgrade the capability of the military for a minimum defense position.  senator trillanes prefers the more prudent alternative of a peacefully resolving our differences with china and reviving our relationship as economic partners.  and senator miriam thinks charter change to boost military strength is “just wrong”:

“We just don’t have enough resources to be a world or even a regional military force… What we need is a more effective Coast Guard, not the Navy itself,” she said.

She added that she finds nothing wrong in the Constitutional provision requiring the government to allocate most of its annual budget to education.

“The hierarchy of priorities should begin with the mind. If we are clever, we can outclass the Chinese,” she said.

philstar columnist ana marie pamintuan also objects to a bigger budget for defense than for education.

The Constitution stipulates that the state “shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education…” Enrile thinks this should be subject to change depending on the nation’s needs.

Debt payments in fact have always eaten up the largest chunk of the annual national appropriation. Maybe Budget Secretary Butch Abad can devise a similar creative way of going around the constitutional provision to finance the achievement of the administration’s goal of minimum defense capability.

… As it is, education (and health, for that matter) are still pitifully lacking in funding. So if defense spending will be increased, it will have to be taken from other budgetary items.

indeed.  it’s not as if education’s budget is anywhere close to enough.  the dismal lack of classrooms and textbooks and toilets and running water for our public schools is public knowledge.  so is the low low pay of our teachers — no wonder they opt to work as domestic help abroad as a matter of survival.  so is the poor quality of public education hereabouts — k-12 won’t make a significant difference, promise!  not without money for teacher and curriculum upgrades.

so really, it’s a major major puzzlement how the senate president can even think of making bawas from that pitifully inadequate budget just to make dagdag to the defense budget.  yes, china is a problem.  yes, we need billions, even just for minimum defense, much more for the wishlist of jetfighters, mini-submarines, well-armed frigates, corvette-size combat vessels and minesweepers.  but changing the charter to take money away from education to fund any of that is simply daft, when we could, should, as pamintuan suggests, be looking instead at annual debt payments that eat up the biggest chunk of the budget.

pamintuan, however, is mistaken in thinking that the automatic appropriation for debt service is provided for in the constitution.  read the freedom from debt coalition (FDC)”s Briefer on the Automatic Debt Servicing Provision

It was during the Martial Law in the Philippines that automatic appropriation for debt service was first codified, in Section 31(B) of Presidential Decree 1177 (Budget Reform Decree of 1977). In consonance with her “honor-all-debts” policy, Aquino signed into law the Administrative code of 1987, copying en toto Section 31(B) of PD1177 into Section 26(B) of the code. Section 31(B) of PD1177 also serves as its legal basis.

read this explanatory note to House Bill 1962 authored by kabataan partylist rep mong palatino proposing the repeal of the automatic appropriation for debt service:

Because the government willingly binds itself to a law enacted not through the legislature, but by the decree of a dictator during the dark days of Martial Law to automatically spend more than a third of its annual budget on debt service, its spending on social services, from education to health care has always been grossly insufficient …

so there.  THAT deserves to be repealed, amended, undone.  THAT should be the priority of congress, not charter change.  i’m not saying let’s not pay our debts, i’m saying let’s pay in amounts we can afford.  what the senate and the house of reps should be wanting to change is not the constitution but this odious marcos decree that cory copied in full, unconditionally, without reservation, and which the fernan supreme court upheld :(

here’s senator angara, who also wants the policy changed:

Angara, vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said that debt servicing eats up a significant portion of the national budget, depriving the poor of their right to social services. He said that at least 40 percent of the country’s budget goes to servicing of interest payments and principal amortization of debts.

During the interpellation for Senate Bill No. 2857, “An Act Institutionalizing the Participation of Civil Society Organizations (CSOS) in the Preparation and Authorization Process of the Annual National Budget, Providing Effective Mechanisms Therefore, and for Other Purposes”, Angara stressed that the policy on automatic appropriations on debt service further encourages reckless borrowing and spending as it guarantees payment without legislative intervention and without going through a thorough screening.

“The power to realign the budget and savings and the automatic debt appropriations make for a deadly combination as it allows the manipulation of the National Budget. As long as these loopholes exist, the temptation will always be present. We must therefore revisit and propose amendments to the budget laws to ensure fiscal discipline,” he proposed.

so, really, when i read this in the news today:

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said he did not have in mind doing away completely with the 60-40 ratio favoring Filipino investors over foreigners.

“Just that we need to give ourselves the flexibility by authorizing Congress to change the ratio when there is a need for it. But (the idea is) always to protect the interest of the Filipino people in controlling the economy,” Enrile explained in a radio interview over dzBB radio Sunday.

… my reaction was, OMG, invoking the interest of the filipino people in controlling the economy!  does he think we’re morons?  if the interest of the people were truly the guiding principle of congress, matagal na dapat na-undo ‘yang automatic appropriation for debt service na ‘yan.

read walden bello’s In the shadow of debt: the sad but true tale behind a quarter century of stagnation that i blogged about in may 2008, when gloria’s congress was pushing for con-ass.  i was against chacha then as i am against chacha now.

hindi charter change ang dapat nating pinag-uusapan.  not at all.  ang dapat nating pinag-uusapan ay ang pagbabago ng debt policy natin.  we spend on the average half of the budget on bayad-utang and bayad-interes para lang makautang uli.  ano ba yan.  enough na please of the model debtor strategy that has only made a basket case of our economy.

and in the comment section, TonGuE-tWisTeD wondered,

Do these big lenders give the president of a country incentives or commissions for paying early? Gloria says we need to take advantage of the strong peso by retiring most of our debts earlier. Fishy, no?

and president aquino has been doing exactly the same thing, sabay pahiram ng one billion dollars sa IMF, sabay gloat that we are no longer a debtor country but a creditor na daw.  LOL!  read Govt debt hits P5.147 trillion and weep.