media & the moneyed

The Luisita issue aside, the real problem these days is that PR men have so much clout in media that they can always get their lies told in the guise of news. That, I think, is, in large measure, a function of a generally uncritical attitude among media practitioners toward the rich, famous, and powerful. In interviews, whether for print or broadcast media, such rich, famous, and powerful personalities are lobbed powder-puff questions by reporters or talk show hosts, and their answers, however self-serving, inane, or mind-boggling, are accepted without question or critical rejoinder.

This reflects either media’s inferiority complex when in the presence of the rich, famous, and powerful or the simple recognition (and acceptance) of who actually butters media’s bread. In either case, the country and the people are worse off for this.

that’s from rene azurin‘s “News, lies, and videotape” on media’s spin re luisita distribution.  glowing legacy, my foot!

The world is not flat

By Christian Ryan Maboloc

Thomas Friedman is wrong to say in his celebrated book, “The World is Flat,” that the world is always within one’s reach, or just a click away with the use of a mouse. Think, for instance, of people who live in the poorest provinces of the Philippines or workers who earn below the minimum wage, and one will realize that the Internet is not readily available to all. This is for the simple reason that the flat-world economy that Mr. Friedman is talking about is no more than the egocentric forces of capitalism that continue to hound the poor masses and keep them in oblivion and disease, ignored by their fellow human beings.

The forces that have flattened the world, notably the computer, Netscape, the World Wide Web, outsourcing, in-sourcing, in-forming, the search engines, the microchip, and others are not things that you can buy in a wet market. As noble as they are, these things are instruments of business and enterprise. Still, a flat-world economy is run by money and greed, and more than the convergence that it seeks to achieve, the bottom line is profit and more profit.

The fact of the matter is that while the Philippines has been able to corner a share of business process outsourcing, the reality is that this will not change the status quo. Ultimately, people are reduced to mere instruments of a western lifestyle that simply seek to find comfort and reduce the inconvenience of having to prepare and file income taxes at home. The basic issues of economic injustice, inequality, human rights abuses, and global poverty remain ripe because the concentration of world power remains and stays in the global north. The global south is still suffering from dictatorial regimes, manipulative economic systems, and the hegemony of a western culture.

Of course, without taking anything from the glory of a globalized economy that has resulted in the creation of vast wealth for many peoples and societies, the Third World remains aground and is unable to step up to the plate. Global resources remain wildly and unjustly distributed. Consider, for instance the cost of an F-117 fighter jet at $140 million, and imagine the possibility of saving thousands of lives by buying vaccines for children at $10 dollars per child instead of building expensive weaponry and venturing into outer space.

Indeed, China has become a global power and many of the world’s biggest economies are on the lookout. It is flexing muscle toward its neighbors but has been unable to control internal corruption and environmental damage caused by its local factories. Massive bailouts of $800 billion in the United States and 110 billion euros for Greece last year mean that there is money available for financial systems but nothing in terms of fighting global poverty, hunger and ethnic violence.

The recession of the US economy due to poisonous and toxic subprime debts—an “inside job,” if we are to take the word of a documentary of the same title—is no more than a symptom that development is a myth. Even in America, the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” has remained wide. Life, indeed, begins with murder. Consider the hundreds of millions of sperm cells competing for a lone ovum in order to create human life. The same is true for every country on the planet. It is never about what we feel or what we think or what we believe. It is all about what we are seeing, and we see that there is so much evil in the world.

The world is not flat. It remains unreachable to millions of poor children, and many of them may not even see the beauty and wonder of life for they have been forced into becoming expendable slaves of a hegemonic value system that puts premium on money and achievement but neglect the basic humanity of each individual.

Of course, Francis Fukuyama’s assertion that liberal democracy is the end of history remains highly debatable. One can simply take note of the violence in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. As of late, one can pursue and consider the fact that if systems are put in place, then the efficient and effective disposition of power can commence. But an ideal political theory has never been possible in a pluralistic world. Freedom has remained a precious commodity and the people of Oriental cultures have remained loyal to tradition and their own value systems. The Jasmine Revolution has launched a new wave of hope across the Arab land, but the end result of it is still unclear. For ultimately, the end that we seek is the happiness of people, their well-being, and unless we untie this notion from a highly economized value system, the world will be as difficult for many as it has been.

Thus, it is not about “How does one live a good life?” but rather “Is the good life still possible?” The good life as defined by Mr. Friedman is not the life that we intend to live. While such a life offers great comfort and convenience, for all intents and purposes, life is beyond any economic meaning and can never be reduced to whatever it is that you find in Google.

Christopher Ryan Maboloc is a member of Ateneo de Davao University’s philosophy faculty.

hacienda luisita: 1,527 hectares still owned by cojuangcos

everyone was expecting pained remarks from the aquino-cojuangco camp after the supreme court ruled that compensation is to be based on 1989 valuations.  but, nothing.  i wondered if maybe because they had read alex magno’s “Hacienda” where he says The price for the blood-soaked land is probably ridiculously low. That might be what social justice requires. 

Recall that the agreement in the fifties, in exchange for government financing acquisition of the hacienda, was for the landowners to distribute the land to the farmers by 1968. Since that time, the matter was tied up in litigation.

It will probably take at least a year for the land to be actually redistributed. That means that all of 45 years was lost to the farmers fighting this case in the courts.

Any day added to the waiting and any peso added to the price of the land will be an injustice. A more militant position on this issue might have pegged land prices at their 1968 levels — the year the land was supposed to have been redistributed.

In addition, a portion of Luisita land was sold earlier by its owners to a private company. The farmers, who have been stockholders in the meantime, demand a share of the proceeds from that sale. Hacienda Luisita claims the money made from the sale have all been expended. But if the farmers deserve a share of that, the amount due them might be discounted from what they have to amortize from here on.

or maybe they read solita collas-monsod’s “Screwed coming and going” where she points out that in 1989 the cojuangcos used that same 40,000 per hectare valuation which gave the family absolute control of the new corporation, Hacienda Luisita Inc., and the farmers only one-third ownership.

which is really some kind of poetic justice, no?  but wait.  tila unfinished, incomplete, ang justice, after all.  read mareng winnie’s punchline.

Remember: The total land area of Hacienda Luisita that should have been subjected to agrarian reform was 6,443 hectares, but the actual area reformed was 4,916 hectares. Which means that the owners of Tadeco, with the approval of the DAR, were allowed to keep for themselves 1,527 hectares of land.

That’s a heck of a lot of land. Even if one deducts 66 hectares that supposedly comprise the sugar mill land, 263 hectares supposedly unfit for agriculture, 266 hectares of roads and creeks, and 121 hectares “given” to the farmers for home lots, there would still be 811 hectares of land left for the owners of Tadeco.

Eight hundred eleven hectares of land is larger than most of the other sugar plantations in the country.

Which leads to the question: Shouldn’t the DAR reform that land, too? The original decision of the Supreme Court gives it the authority to do so. I sincerely hope that Agrarian Reform Secretary Gil de los Reyes is made of stern stuff.

wow.  ang coconut and rice lands, someone correct me if i’m wrong, 7 hectares lang ang puwedeng i-retain ng landowner.  ano ba yan, iba pang kaso?  talaga naman.  pahirapan.  state of the nation.

Thanks for the memory

By Elmer Ordonez

Then it came to me – the pre-war song “Thanks for the Memory” sung by Bob Hope with another, a favorite which Elenita (Tita) and I included in our CD album of songs of remembrance, our giveaway at our golden anniversary in 2006.

I first heard the song on radio in 1937 ( I was seven then) and it became a theme song of Bob Hope — the first strains of which signaled his entrance in performances on TV and in overseas appearances before homesick GIs in three wars (WWII, Korean, and Vietnam). He was hilarious with his one-liners and his skits with crooner Bing Crosby.

Songs become touchstones of time and place and occasion. Elenita and I have at least fifty of them in our anniversary album – each one marking a period or moment in our lives that conjoined since 1956. “Thanks for the Memory” with lyrics memorable to Hope evokes in listeners memories from their own repertoire of shared experiences.

Ours include stints abroad, four years in Madison, Wisconsin, two one-year teaching assignments in New York, a year in Oxford, England, a year and a half in Malaysia, and twelve years in Montreal. We lived abroad for a total of 20 years before settling down in the “old country”, as expats say, to teach 15 more years before retirement in Imus.

The Hope song catalogues incidents, moments, details, impressions. I should be writing my own lyrics to the song. Not being a lyricist, I will do it in prose. Not quite the same though.

We treasured the seasons in Madison, like autumn when we first arrived. From our first apartment in what Eddie Reyes called “Dickensian”, we could see the autumn leaves from our window with our eight-month old Mo, the radio playing “Tammy” by Debbie Reynolds.

We had our first snow in Eagle Heights, a new housing for graduate students and their families, and made halo halo from the newly fallen white flakes. Autumn almost over, we walked through the woods to Picnic Point, and trod on the thick carpet of fallen leaves. We felt the chill in our bones, thinking a sweater would do in the open.

We had our first blizzard December that year, thankful that our apartment was well insulated, and we had just done our groceries so our small fridge was well stocked. We bought only the cheap cuts of meat good for soups and stews. Our only treat was at McDonald’s once a month.

I hated waiting for the school bus in winter when five minutes in the bus stop was an eternity. Good thing we got warm coats from the Salvation Army. I envied your staying home with Mo, reading Dr. Spock to her or letting her watch on TV the Mickey Mouse show or the Friendly Giant while you kept house. I was grateful for the hot beef stew or chicken soup you prepared when I got home from the campus. .

In Potsdam, New York, we would drive on weekends to see the St. Lawrence Seaway locks where at the viewing deck we could chat briefly with Filipino seamen on ships going to the Great Lakes. In the Adirondacks we visited Saranac Lake where Quezon was remembered as El Presidente.

We had no central heating in Cowley, Oxford, and made do with coal in the fireplace and electric fires in the bedrooms. We had to wear our overcoats inside theaters and endure the cigarette smoke. Good thing we had no asthma then but we stank after every show. On weekends we toured the English countryside with a Minor 1000 that still used a crank to start a stalled engine. .

In May 1967 we began our “grand tour” of western Europe with three kids and Minda. From the start the car handle broke and I had to secure it with a string so it wouldn’t fall off. The camp ground atop the cliffs of Dover was still frozen and we all slept in our tent with our winter coats on.

Camping grounds in northern France had not yet opened and we stayed in a small hotel with a full view of Amiens cathedral. Our “petit dejeuner” was a pitcher of warm fresh milk and a big bowl of croissants. The children still talk about it. And the juiciest weiners in Munich.

British soldiers in lorries waved at us in the Minor 1000 with its roof rack fully packed with our things. We guessed ours was the only Minor 1000 they had seen on the road in Europe. .

In southern France we checked in a camp site and wondered about the caravans with curtained windows and the big American cars which should have told us they belonged to gypsies. They became friendly when you talked to them in Spanish.

We crossed the Pyrenees to Spain late afternoon and had to check in an auberge at the border. We woke up that morning to see our Minor 1000 covered with snow. In sunny Zaragoza you marveled at tent sites, each canopied with roses. We did see the sky in Toledo as El Greco saw it.

Two more weeks we toured Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Belgium where we took the ferry back to Dover just as the Six-Day War began. We vowed to revisit Spain and Italy later on, and we did. A flood of memories of other places, other times. Thank you, Elenita, thank you so much.

(A memorial gathering for Elenita, 79, will be held tomorrow morning at 10, at the Island Cove, Binakayan, Kawit, Cavite.)

eaordonez2000@yahoo.com