Even a well-fed sewer rat is still a sewer rat

he way I look at it, reminding Filipinos of the ruthlessness and corruption of the Marcos kleptocracy is like reminding people how cruel the Japanese Imperial soldiers were under the command of Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita during the Japanese occupation.

From first-person accounts of Filipinos who survived the entire Second World war (1939 to 1945) Japanese army regulars were some of the vilest, cruelest, most merciless and most remorseless of human rights violators—instantly beheading Filipino peasants or spilling their intestines right out of their stomachs with impaling swipes of their bayonets—at the slightest pretext and often none.

As their victims, clutching their intestines with their own hands, desperately begged for mercy, summoning their last ounce of strength to still try to do the proper greeting bow, the Japanese soldiers exploited their victims’ prostrate position to chop off their heads with a slinky samurai.

When they mishit, it sometimes took several blows. The Filipinos died a horrible agonizing death, writhing and screaming in unimaginable morbid pain, whispering their plaintive cry to God with their last fading breath of prayer. That’s the kind of cruelty our guerilla grandfathers suffered.

But today, even now, try reading what I just wrote to any average person you meet and they will shush you. The Japanese? Those polite, high-tech global ambassadors of peace and goodwill? Makers of the best cars and industrial machines, originators of the cutest, most benign ‘Hello Kitty’ and other cuddly animé characters? Biggest donors of development aid?

To today’s Gen X’ers, Gen Z’ers, millennials and Gen Next’ers—Japan is all about sashimi, sushi, bonsai, origami, ramen, the shinkansen bullet train, self-disciplinary karate, ethical sumo wrestling and delicious kikkoman soy sauce.

Japanese historical revisionists, over several decades, have cleaned up both their war record and postwar legacy real good.

So don’t even bother badmouthing the Japanese today. The people who suffered are no longer around. Those who are around did not experience anything they would want to remember. And, finally, those that were never there, those that have nothing to remember, those that do not know a thing are defiantly ignorant, even arrogantly counteroffensive.

That is exactly also the profile of the fake Marcos loyalist—loyal to a man they never knew, who was dictator when they weren’t even born yet.

What possible good can come from “reminding” them that Marcos was a thief? Marcos, a thief? You mean the one whose nice and softspoken son just handed me a hundred pesos a while back?

Martial law? What is that? Those that were never there, those that have nothing to remember, those that do not know a thing are defiantly ignorant, even arrogantly counteroffensive.

I lived through the Marcos years, throughout the entire martial law, and even I don’t have that much to remember PERSONALLY, for good or for bad. Just as no one can tell me what Marcos and martial law are all about, I can’t tell anyone either.

That’s why FACTS are important. Facts are independent of your experience and mine. In this day and age, we both have free and equal access to the facts. You can’t prevent me, and I can’t prevent you, from finding out the truth.

But instead of doing that—instead of urging you to research historical facts—I would rather just describe to you the present, the time in which you and I live, which is now.

We live in a rich country of poor people, where TWO PERCENT of the population control NINETY PERCENT of the nation’s wealth. Where’s my proof? It’s on your backpocket (or purse, if you’re a woman).

Go ahead, take out your wallet and see how much is in it. Is there enough in there to see you through to the end of the month? No? How about the end of the week? How about the end of the day?

Hold up your wallet, hold it up eyelevel so that you can see in the background the shiny new dark-tinted SUV parked across the street. You don’t own TWO of those, do you? Or one for you, another one for your wife, and another one for each of your children. Some people do. But NOT you.

You don’t belong go that upper TWO PERCENT crust. You live payday to payday—if you’re lucky to be employed. If not, then you are gifted with the patience, resiliency and imagination to come up with idea after idea on how to make money some way, any which way. Just to be able to bring food to the table, send your children to school or buy your life-sustaining maintenance medicine.

Don’t waste my time telling you the rest of YOUR experience. Do that on your own. You will realize how unequal the nation’s wealth has been distributed. You will also realize how unequal and different are the means that we get our share of that wealth. Some work for it, like you and me, some inherit it, some hit the lottery jackpot—and some get it the easiest of all ways: they just STOLE it.

Stole it from whom? From you and me. WHERE IS MY PROOF?

You see, that’s the beauty of it for these thieves. YOU are asking for proof, and I DON’T CARE to prove it to you. The thief gets away with it totally unscathed.

But let me prove it to you ANYWAY. You don’t have your just and fair share of the nation’s wealth—and the Marcoses stole theirs, several billions more than they neither earned nor deserve and the proof is how you are yearning for some of it right now—not all of it, but just what you think you have either earned or deserve.

In short you KNOW some of the Marcoses’ money is really yours and you want it back. You’ll do anything to see that happen, including making him president so that he can “make your life better.”

If you don’t think so, then God bless the Marcoses for being so lucky.

And you? You will remain a wretched beggar, swallowing your pride and dignity, lining up for morsels at every Marcos rally.

Some Climate Science basics everybody needs to know

rom now on, it is not just Odette but any typhoon that skims over the Pacific Ocean before hitting our shores will be packing winds always in excess of 100kph.

The era of sub-100kph typhoons is over. It’s been over for a long. time now. The seawater temperature is higher on average by about 2.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels globally. The warmer the seas, the more severe typhoons become.

I know some people who not only reject but are outright hostile towards climate science. When I tell them supertyphoons are caused by global warming, they demand an explanation, they want an illustration of the causal relationship.

I tell them to go to hell. They say to me, “you’re a hypocrite. You want me to believe that global warming is the cause of severe weather but you’re not willing to show me proof.”

I answer, “I’m the hypocrite? You don’t even believe in climate science, and you’re asking me for a scientific explanation of what you don’t believe.”

So the explanation I’m giving here is not for the benefit of people who don’t want to believe the reality of climate change. Even the truth will not set these people free from their elective ignorance.

This is for the benefit of those who FEEL the effects of climate change, who are not in denial of their experience but don’t understand why it’s happening.

As a child you must have played with pinwheels—those little paper fans that you stick on the rubber eraser end of a pencil with thumbtacks. To make the fan spin you can blow on it or make it face even the slightest air current.

But there’s a third way. Heat some water in a kettle that has a long spout, hold the pinwheel near the mouth of the spout and wait.

As the water heats up, the air in the kettle expands and rushes out of the spout, spinning your pinwheel. Slowly at first, then faster and faster as the water gets hotter and hotter. Finally, at some point, it is no longer just air that escapes from the kettle but air and superheated water—steam. If you do it long enough, all the water in the kettle will be gone—the inside of the kettle will undergo drought or la niña, sound familiar? But the outside of the kettle experiences a localized warming Sounds familiar also?

Now think of the water in the kettle as the sea, the pinwheel as the eye of a storm. The warmer the sea, the faster the storm spins around the eye because warm air is rising fast through the eye, sucking cold air all around the storm’s outer skirt, causing it to spin the whole typhoon faster and faster. The warmer it is at the core (the kettle spout) the faster the storm spins and therefore the higher the windspeeds will be near the center.

The math is fairly basic. Your pinwheel, of course, is only 10 centimeters across, but even with a radius of just 5 centimeters, the edge of your pinwheel covers a circumference of 31 centimeters (the formula is twice the radius times “pi” or 3.1416, in case you forgot). The edge of the pinwheel covers this distance in one-fourth second if your fan is spinning at a fairly low rate of 4 revolutions per second (or 240 revolutions per minute). This means in one hour (14,400 revs x 31 cm = 446,400 cms or 4.4 kms) the edge of your pinwheel is travelling at 4.46kph. Slow, huh?

But imagine if your “pinwheel” was 400 kms wide (Odette’s diameter), with a radius of 200 kms. The outer circle of your “pinwheel” would now be 1,256 kms which distance must be covered by the edgepoint at, let’s just say, one revolution per day. If you do the same math, that edgepoint should even be travelling at a higher speed than Odette’s topwinds—about 400kph!

Fortunately, no storm spins as fast as a pinwheel (240rpm) because if one did (meaning , the edge of the storm would be travelling at more than 18 million kilometers per hour) that would be Martian-storm grade and even the Himalayas would probably be levelled.

So just imagine what happens if you raise the seawater temperature JUST ONE DEGREE CELSIUS HIGHER?

Even though you will not feel that one degree celsius temperature rise, you will DEFINITELY feel the jump from 400 kph to 800 kph in the center winds of your once-benign “tropical depression” to your now-killer supertyphoon.

Scientists have been shouting themselves hoarse saying all these things for years. All it has gotten them is get labeled as techno-paranoids and alarmists.

The scientific community, it seems to me at least, has dropped it evangelistic mission. Scientist are no longer wasting time CONVINCING people about climate change and global warming. They’re now just keeping busy DOCUMENTING severe weather events, measuring their growing intensity, and presenting the data to the whole world. Now the whole world is asking—in fact, demanding—to know why this is all happening. So scientists are saying, “we told you this would happen, you wouldn’t believe us, remember?”

There’s a growing number of people, even in less-industrialized countries like the Philippines, who don’t need convincing. They just need informing. Tell anybody in central visayas today whose house was made of concrete, steel and other “permanent materials” that was blown off into smirhereens by typhoon Odette anyway, “you know global warming is the reason you don’t have a house now.” He’ll believe you this time.

The task now is to translate the newfound conviction into meaningful agenda and action. The only way to abate global warming (rolling it back is a pipe dream) is to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emission levels by realistic targets. That target is just ONE DEGREE CELSIUS by the end of this decade (2030). No one country can do it That’s why 200 countries agreed to do it together in the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.

We signed that agreement.

We are NOT doing anything to fulfill our commitment under that agreement, not as a country, not as a city. We have not set our net-zero emission level target (almost 150 cities all over the world have, setting 2050 as their target year for achieving net-zero emission levels).

Here in Baguio, we have not even determined what our current emission level is, so how can we set a target emission level moving forward?

It will take political will. If we determined our current level and said we want to reduce it by half, say, by 2030 or 2035, then it means we shall have to limit the number of fossil fuel-burning cars running on our streets, or entering the city—definitely cutting into our tourism revenues. Electric cars—of which there is ZERO right now—would be unrestrictedly welcome, of course.

Now it also becomes clear why too many people just prefer to bury their head in the sand. Many still subscribe to that most idiotic and dangerous line of reasoning that what you don’t know (or care to learn about) is not going to hurt you.

No? When Earth storms start packing winds of 1,000kph+ and even steel condominium towers topple down like toothpicks, it will be too late to change your opinion.

Lessons from Typhoon Odette: Betrayal has its cost

he aftermath of supertyphoon Odette is probably the most under-reported news story in the Philippines today. All the major tabloids are based in Manila. Transportation to and from the Central Visayas is severely hampered, it’s not like reporters and photographers can just parachute into the calamity zone to bring back dramatic images and survivor accounts.

As a former newspaper editor myself, I can tell you nothing goes stale faster than yesterday’s headline. Manpower-wise, you’re just NOT going to send your chief photographer to some desolate but by now tranquil village in the Visayas to cover an event that is finished already. You risk missing a more important or “hotter” scoop that could break anytime IN Manila. So don’t expect coverage of Odette’s wake to improve much

Typhoon Odette, according to PAGASA, is second only to Typhoon Yolanda in terms of the damage it caused. The death toll may not be as high—an estimated 6,340 died in Yolanda—but, remember, more than half the deaths in Yolanda occurred in the aftermath and not during the raging storm itself.

The final death toll in Odette may not be known for sometime. With the election campaign period officially starting next month I expect all administration talking heads to tone down or even suppress gloom and doom reports altogether. So we may never really know the correct final tally.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of disaster aftermath reportage. Beyond slaking the morbid thirst for blood and gore, it is moving images of pain and suffering that triggers the better angels of our nature to spring into benevolent civic action. Coverage of the hellish conditions at the evacuation centers is what throws wide open the donor sluice gates. And THAT counts for more to the typhoon victims than all the empathy that sensational news coverage creates. To be sure, that empathy IS an effective springboard for more meaningful response, though.

Bringing the complete and flowing story of the human odyssey of resilience in the face of suffering to the awareness of a national audience was the specialty of ABS-CBN—that gungho news organization with maverick news crews and a cacophony of tireless opinionated motormouths who can nag your ears off and break open the tightest tightwad into donating.

First of all, I am NOT a rabid fan of ABS-CBN—I hate all the cheesiness, shallowness and banality of their noontime shows, I’d be a happy person if I never saw one more shrieking minute of Vice Ganda’s peacocky swagger. I don’t give a single solitary droplet of s**t if you troll me for saying it.

Second of all, I do own ABS-CBN shares (and you, troll, probably don’t), I’m saying it disclosure-wise here, so don’t waste your time thinking of ways to prove me a Kapamilya basher.

That said, the diminished presence of ABS-CBN in the news landscape of Typhoon Odette is more than unfortunate. With its 52 regional stations both in the AM and FM bands also silenced by the non-renewal of its free air franchise, the countryside rural folk lost their main source of up-to-the-minute weather information, rescue and relief coordination, their access to important general announcements, and overall ‘connectedness’ to the calamity situation.

Peasants do not all have mobile internet or even cellphones. Most of them just have small transistor radios that are not even sensitive enough to pick up broadcast signals transmitting from Manila. That’s where ABS-CBN’s widely-scattered relay and repeater stations fill a void in the national communication infrastructure that government simply could not fill.

Of course, it would be an elusive thing to express in some metrics how much of a deconstructive impact the loss of ABS-CBN’s coverage of Typhoon Odette is. But there is some kind of poetic justice—or injustice—about it too.

There were only eleven congressmen who voted to renew ABS-CBN’s franchise, and none of them comes from the congressional districts devastated by Odette. In other words, the one benevolent media institution with a proven track record of effectiveness in alleviating the kind of suffering Odette’s victims are experiencing was killed by congressmen THEY VOTED into office. Very likely, many of them might even win re-election to go by how dense many rural voters can be.

We can import a lesson from this to apply to our own situation here in Baguio City. At a crucial point of reckoning, when it mattered that city councilors take a principled stand and denounce a failed violent takeover attempt of BENECO, four members of the City Council wimped out: Fred Bagbagen, Benny Bomogao, Joel Alangsab and Vladimir Cayabas, the last one utterly wasting his vote (and opportunity to shine) with a useless abstention.

They can give their crappy justifications all they want—and they have. The beauty of freedom is I don’t have to believe any of them.

You vote, I vote. I don’t like how you voted, I don’t vote for you. It’s that simple. Now, multiply that sentiment 138,000 times--the certified number of active BENECO member-consumer-owners (MCO's) and it should be enough to send a chill down your spine.

What’s more, this lesson can be imported further into the national scene. Our economy is sick because our total outstanding foreign debt is 11.9 TRILLION Pesos—almost three times our national budget of just 4.5 TRILLION Pesos. If you owe in debt three times your salary, you are already spending in January what you will still earn in April. Who can live like THAT?

This administration can give all the crappy justifications all it wants—and it does. The beauty of freedom is I don’t have to believe them. You manage, I vote. You don’t manage the economy good, I don’t vote for you or your surrogates. It’s as simple as that.

I will not waste my one precious vote. Therefore I will give to Leni.

If you don’t want to go through the bitter and helpless regret that Odette’s victims are feeling right now, then LIST DOWN these names of returning ‘moon-and-stars’ promisers who betrayed us.

Don’t just campaign for the deserving.

Campaign AGAINST the undeserving until everybody remembers why they are in politics, in the first place.

They are there to literally suck up to the body politic. We, the VOTERS, are the supertyphoons they cannot control or tame.

We call the shots. Ⓒ 2021 Joel R. Dizon

Lessons from Supertyphoon Odette

he aftermath of supertyphoon Odette is probably the most under-reported news story in the Philippines today. All the major tabloids are based in Manila. Transportation to and from the Central Visayas is severely hampered, it’s not like reporters and photographers can just parachute into the calamity zone to bring back dramatic images and survivor accounts.

As a former newspaper editor myself, I can tell you nothing goes stale faster than yesterday’s headline. Manpower-wise, you’re just NOT going to send your chief photographer to some desolate but by now tranquil village in the Visayas to cover an event that is finished already. You risk missing a more important or “hotter” scoop that could break anytime IN Manila. So don’t expect coverage of Odette’s wake to improve much

Typhoon Odette, according to PAGASA, is second only to Typhoon Yolanda in terms of the damage it caused. The death toll may not be as high—an estimated 6,340 died in Yolanda—but, remember, more than half the deaths in Yolanda occurred in the aftermath and not during the raging storm itself.

The final death toll in Odette may not be known for sometime. With the election campaign period officially starting next month I expect all administration talking heads to tone down or even suppress gloom and doom reports altogether. So we may never really know the correct final tally.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of disaster aftermath reportage. Beyond slaking the morbid thirst for blood and gore, it is moving images of pain and suffering that triggers the better angels of our nature to spring into benevolent civic action. Coverage of the hellish conditions at the evacuation centers is what throws wide open the donor sluice gates. And THAT counts for more to the typhoon victims than all the empathy that sensational news coverage creates. To be sure, that empathy IS an effective springboard for more meaningful response, though.

Bringing the complete and flowing story of the human odyssey of resilience in the face of suffering to the awareness of a national audience was the specialty of ABS-CBN—that gungho news organization with maverick news crews and a cacophony of tireless opinionated motormouths who can nag your ears off and break open the tightest tightwad into donating.

First of all, I am NOT a rabid fan of ABS-CBN—I hate all the cheesiness, shallowness and banality of their noontime shows, I’d be a happy person if I never saw one more shrieking minute of Vice Ganda’s peacocky swagger. I don’t give a single solitary droplet of s**t if you troll me for saying it.

Second of all, I do own ABS-CBN shares (and you, troll, probably don’t), I’m saying it disclosure-wise here, so don’t waste your time thinking of ways to prove me a Kapamilya basher.

That said, the diminished presence of ABS-CBN in the news landscape of Typhoon Odette is more than unfortunate. With its 52 regional stations both in the AM and FM bands also silenced by the non-renewal of its free air franchise, the countryside rural folk lost their main source of up-to-the-minute weather information, rescue and relief coordination, their access to important general announcements, and overall ‘connectedness’ to the calamity situation.

Peasants do not all have mobile internet or even cellphones. Most of them just have small transistor radios that are not even sensitive enough to pick up broadcast signals transmitting from Manila. That’s where ABS-CBN’s widely-scattered relay and repeater stations fill a void in the national communication infrastructure that government simply could not fill.

Of course, it would be an elusive thing to express in some metrics how much of a deconstructive impact the loss of ABS-CBN’s coverage of Typhoon Odette is. But there is some kind of poetic justice—or injustice—about it too.

There were only eleven congressmen who voted to renew ABS-CBN’s franchise, and none of them comes from the congressional districts devastated by Odette. In other words, the one benevolent media institution with a proven track record of effectiveness in alleviating the kind of suffering Odette’s victims are experiencing was killed by congressmen THEY VOTED into office. Very likely, many of them might even win re-election to go by how dense many rural voters can be.

We can import a lesson from this to apply to our own situation here in Baguio City. At a crucial point of reckoning, when it mattered that city councilors take a principled stand and denounce a failed violent takeover attempt of BENECO, four members of the City Council wimped out: Fred Bagbagen, Benny Bomogao, Joel Alangsab and Vladimir Cayabas, the last one utterly wasting his vote (and opportunity to shine) with a useless abstention.

They can give their crappy justifications all they want—and they have. The beauty of freedom is I don’t have to believe any of them.

You vote, I vote. I don’t like how you voted, I don’t vote for you. It’s that simple. Now, multiply that sentiment 138,000 times--the certified number of active BENECO member-consumer-owners (MCO's) and it should be enough to send a chill down your spine.

What’s more, this lesson can be imported further into the national scene. Our economy is sick because our total outstanding foreign debt is 11.9 TRILLION Pesos—almost three times our national budget of just 4.5 TRILLION Pesos. If you owe in debt three times your salary, you are already spending in January what you will still earn in April. Who can live like THAT?

This administration can give all the crappy justifications all it wants—and it does. The beauty of freedom is I don’t have to believe them. You manage, I vote. You don’t manage the economy good, I don’t vote for you or your surrogates. It’s as simple as that.

I will not waste my one precious vote. Therefore I will give to Leni.

If you don’t want to go through the bitter and helpless regret that Odette’s victims are feeling right now, then LIST DOWN these names of returning ‘moon-and-stars’ promisers who betrayed us.

Don’t just campaign for the deserving.

Campaign AGAINST the undeserving until everybody remembers why they are in politics, in the first place.

They are there to literally suck up to the body politic. We, the VOTERS, are the supertyphoons they cannot control or tame.

We call the shots.

Umheeded warnings of global science continue to exact their toll

ven under the best circumstances, hardly anyone is still paying any attention to climate issues in Baguio City. The campaign fever in the runup to the May 2022 election seems to NOT have changed that situation.

To me, it shows two things: (1) elections have remained personality contests rather than a battle for the soundest policy agenda, and (2) government at all levels is still failing to communicate the relevance of climate science and the urgency of what it is compelling us to do.

The Philippines is a signatory to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. We signed it on April 22, 2016, ratified by our Senate a year later on March 23, 2017. It binds us to reduce our greenhouse gas emission levels by a humble 0.34%--that’s less than one percent—as our contribution to keep global temperature increase to below 2-degrees Celsius above

pre-industrial level by the end of THIS century, with a further objective to reduce it to 1.5 degrees.

Talk to anyone on the street today and NOBODY knows about this—and nobody should. How could they? Nobody is telling them anything.

Despite numerous studies showing the direct causal relationship between global warming and severe weather events, reinforced by our actually experiencing those weather events, many people in Baguio still demonstrate a pitiful lack of, if not outright hostility, towards climate science.

Someone has to spell out in explicit terms how global warming is affecting the lives of Baguio people—and it’s very difficult to do that on cold mornings of 10 or 11 degrees Celsius.

So let me say it: the effect of global warming is NOT something you can feel on your skin. It’s something you can feel on your wallet.

An increase in global temperature by just ONE-HALF degree Celsius melts about 2.5% of all the world’s sea ice. That’s about six trillion gallons of water added back to the ocean, raising sea levels by as much as EIGHTEEN INCHES—a foot and a half—above the high water mark at LOW TIDE.

Multiply that five times during high tide and you’ll understand why the government is bracing for the need to permanently evacuate around eight coastal barangays in Cavite alone, six in Bulacan, four in Zambales and Bataan and three in Pangasinan.

Where will people living in these places go? Remember, in coastal communities if you lose your house you lose your livelihood too. You can’t fish from too far inland. So where will these suddenly-jobless people go?

Why, to the CITIES, of course, where else. There you can find jobs that are not affected by sea level rises, mostly in the manpower sector, some in trading or maybe the support industries around tourism. When the sea turns menacing and the temperature gets unbearable, guess where tourists run to: BAGUIO.

Ergo you have traffic jams, a housing boom, accelerated urbanization (read, massive tree-cutting and land-clearing), congestion, pollution, solid waste glut, faltering water supply, strained availability and coverage of utility services (Baguio has one of the slowest internet speeds in the country)—all of which translates to higher costs in order to compensate or counter these effects.

But that’s not all. Complaints of “Why is it raining jn December?!” are not as innocent as they sound. Changing climates is radically altering seasonal patterns, something EVERYBODY have begun to notice in recent years: there is no clearly delineated “rainy season” or “summers” anymore.

Have you ever tried sleeping regularly in the daytime? Your circadian cycle fights it. The disruption of seasons is nothing to ignore. PLANTS are fighting it. The unpredictable rain pattern has eliminated the bio-agricultural difference between planting, growing and harvesting seasons. That's why crops have been consistently failing, resulting in plummeting farm yields. Don’t look know, but were importing RICE again, something the Philippines has never done since 1980 “just” 40 years ago. Not only rice, but now were beginning to import garlic, onions, potatoes, tomatoes--all upland crops growing in Cordilleran farms increasingly affected by severe weather on both ends: dessicating droughts and leaf-bursting frosts.

But what is Baguio’s response—to traffic, for example? We widened our roads, increasing our capacity to accomodate higher vehicular loads, inviting more cars into the city—and generally contributing to increased car-buying sentiment among consumers.

In short, instead of raising our sights and gunning for net-zero emission levels within our lifetime, we are violating our commitment under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement! We are working hard to INCREASE greenhouse emission levels in Baguio. I have not seen a single electric car in Baguio—not counting golf carts—not even one. Why would there be, there’s not a single charging station, nor any plan or even a mere forward-looking study to prepare for an electric future.

It’s the OPPOSITE, in fact.

There’s an active effort to grab BENECO, Baguio and Benguet’s one and only electric utility—the one that will play the most crucial role in securing Baguio’s clean energy future.

But besides passing a non-binding resolution declaring the purveyors of the failed invasion persona non grata, the political leadership has NOT regarded the issue enough as nothing short of what it is: an EXISTENTIAL THREAT to the very existence and welfare of future generations of Baguio City residents.

They have not directly and officially castigated NEA. They have not summoned leaders of the banking sector to demand for valid answers why they are enabling the active sabotage effort against BENECO. These banks are all doing business under the tolerance, regulation and permission of the local government. If they act as enablers to an effort that is subversive of the public interest, shouldn't they be held accountable? Some of these banks PREVENT your electric cooperative from accessing the money YOU paid and you do NOTHING?

Climate affects the environment, affecting economic activity, motivating greed, breeding corruption--the dots are NOT that hard to connect, really.

The problem is all on the mentality Climate issue? Sigh. It’s too complicated to understand, let alone translate into an action plan.

“So let’s just sweep it under the rug for now, shall we?”

Millennial "techies" are runnng the socmed show

egardless of who you are campaigning for, you have to realize that there are certain people who—for deeply ideological or narrowly personal reasons—you will NEVER WIN OVER no matter what you do.

They are the greatest drain on your energy, time and sanity that if you don’t wisen up and just leave them alone, you’ll get sucked into a counterproductive one-on-one with them that renders you practically useless to your candidate’s more important general campaign by keeping you away from more receptive audiences elsewhere.

You have to realize that trolls do not only thrive on the internet. There are real life trolls also whose “modus operandi” is to provoke you into an egoistic pissing contest that would take as long as it takes for you to realize that when an irresistible force meets an immovable object BOTH remain unchanged, impact after impact, ad nauseaum.

Even if you manage to demolish one of your opponent’s reasoning, there are rows of variations of the same reasoning that take its place, mimicking a shark’s teeth that keep moving forward like on a conveyor belt as you knock off the front row. It’s a pathetic effort that can be likened to trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon.

A biased mind will only see what it is all capable of seeing only.

One doctor was trying to demonstrate the ill effects of alcohol drinking on the body to a group of alcoholics. So he dropped a worm in a glass of water and another worm in a glass of alcohol. The worm in the glass of water simply crawled out. But the worm in the glass of alcohol was instantly killed.

“What’s the moral?” the doctor asked.

One alcoholic said, “Well, doctor, I see that if I keep drinking alcohol, I’ll never have worms!”

This is why even though I believe in raiding the enemy camp rather than preaching to the choir, I also have a hairtrigger-sensitive “abort button” in my brain. As soon as I realize that I’m talking to an inconvertible, I smash that “abort button” immediately, and just walk away after we exchange condescending parting shots.

“O, Joel, saan ka pupunta? Suko ka na?”

“Oo, eh, punta muna ako dyan sa kanto, bibili ng kausap na matino!”

These inconvertibles, I observe, always belong to the oldest (not just older) generations. It’s what makes them UNBEATABLE because they have unmatchable punchlines like “tubig ka pa lang hijo nung maging tao ako” or “papunta ka pa lang pabalik na ako” (I usually retort, “e pano kasi naligaw kayo ng landas!” or “ay, bakit ho? Hindi kayo nakarating sa inyong patutunguhan sana?”).

At one point, I got so exasperated at hearing these traditional rhetorical copouts that I even wrote down and collected my own comebacks for ready reference at the appropriate times.

So I knew how to handle, “maniniwala ako pagputi ng uwak, pag-itim ng tagak” (“pareho ho pong extinct na yung dalawang ibon na yan!”), or push back properly against, “yang sinabi mo tulak ng bibig, kabig ng dibdib” (“e yung sa inyo kasi singhot ng ilong utot ng tumbong!”), and really do a slamdunk against “huli man daw at magaling, nakakahabol din” (“nauna ka ngang tumayo sa harapan, nakatalikod ka naman!”)

When I tangle with aged incorrigibles like this, I can’t help but feel the desperation of seeing dystopia creep into my vision. I try my best to snap out of it, reminding myself of what former US President Barak Obama once said: that apathy is the recourse of cowards.

I can’t give up on the Philippines. I just can’t.

I take comfort in thinking of the youth. If you can just pull them away from their GameStations and XBoxes for a minute, they are so full of promise and potential, I know the Philippines is in their good hands in the future.

This is especially true in this coming 2022 elections. They have the most at stake and I know they will step up to the plate and hit homeruns all day, no matter what manipulative curveball pitches these geriatric “trapos” throw at them.

I know the youth are not pushovers--“uto-uto.” Critical thinking is not their virtue, it’s their nature. They have seen how if you let the deplorables have a free run at the reins of power, these power hungry oligarchs never let go.

The youth know that everything WRONG about the Philippines can be traced to the feudal mentality of analog-brained politicians--"techno-bobos"-- doing their worst to keep the Philippines from marching right into the digital 21st century where they are now archaic and irrelevant.

Too bad for them the youth are lording it over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other social media. These trapos’ slick-dressed old school “p-r” operators with their glib tongues and greasy hair pomade are dinosaurs whose last-used skillset involved operating the mimeograph machine.

The youth know—because they saw what happened to ABS-CBN and what ALMOST happened, or could still happen, to BENECO—that protecting their patrimony and posterity is going to take CONTROLLING CONGRESS and LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

Achieving this requires an engaged citizenry--especially the youth--that is willing to do whatever it takes to VOTE INTO OFFICE people who stand for their values, and to VOTE OUT OF OFFICE all those that stubbornly refuse to take the right side of issues.

I hope all youth realize this. If they don’t, they have A LOT OF YEARS ahead of them to suffer the effects of their own mistake in preserving the political idiocy of a by-gone era of old school politics.

Confessions of a "Martial law baby"

was in Grade 2 when martial law was declared in 1972. At age 8, I had no idea what it meant. What little I could glean about politics, I got from observing what the adults did and listening to what they talked about.

These are mainly my parents and substitute parents, teachers, community elders and such. Our ‘capitan del barrio’ in Barangay Upper Rock Quarry and Lower Lourdes then was ‘Ka Vidal’ Fonseca. He was a kind old man who spoke puritanical Tagalog and served as a deacon for the Iglesia ni Kristo, lokal ng Magsaysay Avenue.

He was all praises for President Ferdinand Marcos. Because of his moral ascendancy, others in the barangay who didn’t really have any opinion about Marcos and martial law were content enough to just copy his.

He had a son, Moises, who was my contemporary and street playmate. He and I soon learned the lyrics of the martial law theme song “Bagong Lipunan” and took pride in that we had memorized the song, and could sing it in any key, even in two-part harmony that we made up ourselves as toothy 8-year-olds.

In school, we were systematically indoctrinated to regard Marcos as a national hero--at par with Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, Gregorio del Pilar and all the other ‘Avengers’ circa 1898.

In fact, we were taught that the Marcos gene was uniquely adapted to embody Filipino greatness: his mother Josefa Edralin was like a fairy-godmother of some kind, his father Mariano was the precursor of Obi Wan Kenobi, his brother and sister—they were all gods and goddesses in the pantheon of superheroes headquartered somewhere in Sarrat, Laoag, Ilocos Norte. And his wife Imelda—ooooh, she was like the Philippines’ answer to Cleopatra, or the counterpart of America’s Jacqueline Kennedy. We memorized all these details to get a perfect score in a daily “know the Philippines” quiz during Social Studies, which was the subject immediately preceding recess.

In short, we were literally martial law babies, spoon-fed a daily diet of Marcos greatness, force-inoculated with mega-calories of Imeldific megalomania. Winning over the hearts and minds of generations raised this way is going to take a whole lot more than just insulting them and calling them all manner of morons.

I’m always in awe and great envy of people who are just my age today who act and talk like they always knew the horror martial law was right from Day One. Either they were REALLY mature eight-year-olds, or went from Grade 2 to graduating from UP Diliman in the same year.

I had to do it the ‘hard way’--living a childhood framed in “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan” and bathed by the fake glow of the ‘golden age’ that the Philippines supposedly lived through. It was probably just out of laziness to explain, but when we asked adults what it meant to be “anti-Marcos” they simply pointed to the long-haired, smelly and unkempt marijuana-smoking hippies of the 70s and said, “THAT is what lack of discipline will make you to be if you’re stubborn and disobedient.”

The Philippine Constabulary (PC) was raiding “pot sessions” being held in houses all over the city every night and hauling these hippies in their platform shoes and bell-bottomed pants by the truckload. So we thought of being “anti-Marcos” as criminal and decadent.

Whatever ultimate truths I know about Marcos and martial law today, l had to spend the latter half of my life discovering and re-learning by myself. So all my conclusions about the true draconian character of the Marcoses, and the profound social, cultural and economic damage that was wrought upon Philippine society by martial law no one can disabuse me of, or even challenge on the grounds of “You don’t know what you’re talking about” or “You should also know the other half of the martial law story.”

No, no, no—I LIVED that “other half of the story” that you’re talking about. In fact, it’s what completes the big picture for me. The Marcoses were only able to rob this country blind BECAUSE they conditioned us blindly first to look away as they did the robbing in broad daylight.

Marcos stole 98 centavos out of every one peso—and with all those unstolen two centavos put together, he built the Philippine Heart Center, the Cultural Center of the Philippines for the rich and well-heeled elite, the Folks Arts Theater for the slipper-clad masses, the Manila International Film Center for the families of the construction workers buried underneath it who can’t afford to have a mausoleum built in their honor so the Center just had to be IT, the Manila International Airport, the National Kidney Institute so we now have ONE kidney dialysis machine for every SEVEN MILLION Filipinos, and the San Juanico Bridge that cannot take trucks with a gross vehicular weight above five tons. We celebrate these infrastructure milestones because we were conditioned to focus on those two unstolen centavos, and to forget the 98 stolen ones.

The only real Marcos legacy there is that even long after Marcos is gone, that is STILL how our present elected officials steal our money and throw us back some crumbs.

If there’s any Marcos legacy there, it’s that we now accept as totally normal our duty to venerate our congressmen and senators—whose job it is NOT to build infrastructures—for all the “public works projects” they build, funded with our own unstolen two centavos.

If there’s any Marcos legacy he left behind, it’s how we now toast to the success of political dynasties and political families, and regularly check our checklist for each political family: are all the children in office already? How about the wife? The son-in-law? Not yet? What’s wrong with these people??

I cannot “un-live” what I lived through and experienced under martial law. I cannot renounce all the little things I did, from childhood through even much of adulthood before reaching the age of reason, to unwittingly participate in the making of the environment that made martial law tolerable, even benign.

I know the truth now, as do millions of others who will honestly admit with me of knowing only much too late.

I don’t want to lambast any morons out there for not knowing any better. I was a moron like them.

No one can undo what Marcos did. Marcos did not just do an act. He planted a mentality. His ultimate strategy was inception. That mentality still drives many people today who were NOT even martial law babies. They just picked up and read Marcos' textbook on thievery from cover to cover. They even know how to condemn Marcos convincingly--at least at some point in their life of lofty principles before they served as press secretary and such other positions.

Not everybody is Marcos. Most everybody just wants to be and, in true Marcos tradition, without making the unsuspecting people make out anything.

I don't trust any of them. We cannot have a fresh start with old bread. We must go back to a national tabbularazza. I don’t want anything from the past to despoil anything in the future of my country.

That’s why I want LENI ROBREDO to be the next President.

If you believe as I do, I’m happy for you, and I hope you don’t allow anybody to steal that joy. Don’t talk to any Leni Robredo campaigner, they have a job to do and they’re busy enough. Don’t let anyone have to convince you.

Forget that you are a martial law baby. You don't have to renounce that, you don't have to do anything. You are a good person in and of yourself no matter what president you grew up with. You don't have to convince anyone that you have seen the light and repented and such other crap.

You can make the decision to vote for Leni Robredo ALL BY YOURSELF.

To the Youth: Cyberspace is yours to lose

rolls still don’t get it.

When I write an article, it’s because I hold a certain perspective. Impliedly, I do NOT subscribe to the contrary perspective. So why would I waste any time writing about THAT, too? So that I can do your thinking FOR YOU? Thaw your frozen brain, shake off the atrophy and do your own thinking.

I’ve said it several times, I don’t “bite” troll baits like “If you’re really smart, then comment on this” or “If you don’t want to be called this and that, then write about this and that.”

I write what I want to write and accept no obligation to “balance” myself. I am an advocate. Of course I am biased. If you want neutral then read “Pepe and Pilar.” Find a Grade 2 kid and borrow his copy.

In the freemarket of ideas, ideators exchange views, not wrestle with one another. So the rule is, whatever idea you come across, take it or leave it. The best idea DOESN’T win, it just attracts more believers which you need to win away from it with a better idea. If you can’t handle that challenge because you lack the capability to compose your own thoughts, then do everybody a favor and get off the internet.

My law students are the most challenging interactors, they can almost “borderline manipulate” me because they ask such intelligent questions, demanding no answers—and when I don’t answer them, they can PROVE they have even better answers than mine. Unfortunately, we do our exchange in class so you miss all this world-class exchange! If you follow Facebook school of law, occasionally they pop up in the comments section.

In contrast, troll bait is so pedantic and yokellish—while comically attempting to sound profound—that reading them for pure amusement almost rises to the level of a legitimate thing to do. But I still won’t waste any time engaging them. Aren’t I doing that right now? NO, because I did not answer the troll on the wall for his personal delight. I addressed him in a post for mine.

I write mostly to inspire the youth. I want them to know that as someone with less days in front of me than behind me now, I’m trying to “hand off” to them the responsibility to keep the intelligent national debate going.

I wish all the youth were like my fictional student Deema, but it should encourage them that the real life Deema is only just younger than me (a little) and she’s actually doing the same thing I’m doing, empowering the youth—especially young women. Same thing with Kata, Cabo, Hannah, Juan and Jack.

Even so, don’t let anyone--including us--give you a role model. Choose one for yourself. Then just study his or her template of thinking, but design your own. The internet is the new intellectual playground, and trolls the new playground bully. So like me don’t let bullies push you off the swing or seesaw. Waste no time engaging them.

Waste no time posting silly things, too. Apply your mammalian brain, not your primitive reptilian one. Mind your post content--compose it yourself--don't just borrow somebody else's cheap idea. Learn how to make thought-provoking memes, invest time learning graphic apps so you can make attractive pubmats to enhance your message and help you grab readership. Bottomline: ALWAYS MAKE AN EFFORT. Never settle for the path of least resistance. You are young, you have the talent, the intelligence and tons of time.

Trolls don’t hold a candle to you..