Thursday, December 18, 2014

CHRISTMAS. WARMTH. SHARING. COMPASSION. HOME.

 I remember way back 2006, I was in Leuven, Belgium for the 1st stop of my year-long Erasmus Mundus Master in Bioethics program. It was the first time in my whole life that I went abroad, at was also the first time I was also away from my family for a period longer than 2 weeks. And Christmas was approaching. And as the day of Christmas drew nearer, an unspeakable longing, or maybe even deep sadness was also growing in me. It was only then that I came to fully realize that,  I think I then have an idea of how OFWs felt too during such times. I was just blessed that out of nowhere, a very dear friend, Fr. K. Masong, invited myself and my 2 other Pinoy classmates to a blessing of a Pinay's house in Luxembourg on Christmas eve. Salva vida. Life saver. That indeed saved me from such deep sadness and longing. I've long forgotten her family name now, but the nickname of the owner of the house blest by Fr. K. was Ate Chari. Ate Chari and her family  shared with us their food, but most of all shared with us their warmth and treated us like family. It was just an overnight sojourn, but it provided me enough energy to eventually finish resolutely the remaining 7 more months of my program then. I'm home here now with my family in Davao. Very contented, feeling blest, on Christmas break from my Erasmus Mundus PhD program this time. And as such, it's my deepest and sincerest prayer that lost, longing, sad souls like I was before, will also find the warmth and welcome that people like Fr. K. and Ate Chari extended to me. Mga Kabayan, you may not realize it, but an overnight of kindness will tide our fellows towards an eternity of hopefulness and meaningfulness. I wish and pray everyone warmth, in the midst of possible coldness; sharing, in the midst of possible need; compassion, in the midst of possible sadness; a home, in the midst of strangers. Warmth. Sharing. Compassion. Home. Let us be, specially this Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone! God bless us all!

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

SELF-LOVE IN TIME OF EBOLA?


If OIC DOH Secretary Garin won't resign, she must at least, if she's a responsible public servant, have herself quarantined, and also those people who were with her (meaning Gen. Pio Catapang too) visiting the troops in Caballo Islands. AND, even those people who were exposed to them AFTER the Caballo visit must also be subjected to the quarantine protocols as prescribed by the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM). I don't think it's true that "the troops didn't show any symptoms". Remember, 1 of those soldiers DID SHOW EBOLA-LIKE/FLU-LIKE SYMPTOMS, days before GArin's and Catapang's visit. However, DOH people, giving the situation a twist (aka cavalier attitude) they're simply saying that it MIGHT simply be a case of Malaria. "Might" be, meaning also NOT totally RULING OUT EBOLA for that said soldier (and I sincerely hope that it really isn't the case). And the fact that the other members of the contingent were exposed to the said soldier, thus also make them possible carriers of Ebola infection. 
It's a no-brainer that if countries like the U.S., U.K., etc. are wary, or even leery, of the possibilities of Ebola infection, when they're much more equipped to handle Ebola, so much much more must we. And so much more must one be when she happens to be THE COUNTRY'S NUMBER 1 PUBLIC HEALTH AUTHORITY, the SECRETARY OF HEALTH (albeit, still OIC).
If Gen. Catapang, true to his family name, showed the bravery to own up to his lapse, and is willing to be quarantined, so must OIC DOH Sec. Garin, being herself a PHYSICIAN who must know the REAL DANGERS of EBOLA INFECTION and of the QUARANTINE PROTOCOLS, own up to her lapse, and  at the very least have herself quarantined for at least the next 21 days.
Sec. Garin, in the name of saving the lives of women valiantly stood for the RH Law. Now, not only for the sake of saving lives of women, BUT OF WOMEN, MEN, CHILDREN, EVERYONE, will she be valiant enough to own up to, be responsible for  her faux pas, re EBOLA VIRUS? Would she be willing to step down from her position (SUPPOSEDLY ONE OF PUBLIC TRUST), even just temporarily (for the whole length of quarantine), or maybe better, permanently? ALL FOR THE SAKE OF REAL LIFE-AND-DEATH MATTER of PUBLIC HEALTH & SAFETY.
Truth is, I sincerely hope and pray that indeed our troops in Caballo, OIC DOH Sec. Garin, Gen. Catapang, and all those others exposed to them will eventually be TOTALLY NEGATIVE of Ebola infection. For their sake, and for the country's sake. BUT, for the meantime, RESPONSIBILITY & ACCOUNTABILITY, and not self-love, must be paramount.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

GOT LOST IN PARIS, YET, HAD A GREAT DAY YESTERDAY.

It immediately started as almost a disaster. I left for my meeting with more than an hour of lead time. I leisurely walked to the Metro station thinking to easily take my ride to my school, L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). I ended up taking the wrong train. Luckily I realized it only after a station, and the station was still just near my hotel. So I went back first to my hotel to have a change of clothes and backpack as I was perspiring profusely, due to uncomfortable weight of my backpack's contents. I was laughing to myself, and also consoled myself with the thought that at least I got lost in Paris, and not just in Bankerohan Davao City. ha ha ha ! As my appointment was fast approaching, I decided to take the taxi, as based on Google map, and a paper map, it should only be max 15 minutes from where I was, even given the traffic. So, I took the cab. It was a bit late when I realized that the driver was taking me via a longer route. I immediately felt like I was being driven by some unscrupulous driver in le Manille. But I just kept my peace. Eventually, the driver, whether truly or just contrivingly, turned out not to also actually know where my school is. He eventually advised me to disembark right beside the Bibliotheque Nationale Francois Mitterand, given that it was supposedly the landmark shown to be beside my school in the paper map. I did get off, obligingly, as I was about to lose my patience. So I did some walk first, trying to make sense where I was. And, again, realized that I still am lost, for the second time! Yet, as they say, out of crooked lines, straight lines can emerge. According to some readings I've done about the people of Paris, Parisienes may come out aloof in first glance. BUT I personally found out the OPPOSITE! I approached for help (with my practiced and prepared "Bonjour! Parley-vous Anglais?" greeting), FIVE PEOPLE in all ( some in suits and others apparently in some other work attires). And much to my surprise, EVERYONE I APPROACHED NEVER TURNED ME DOWN, and even REALLY HELPED me figure out my destination with my paper map, AND EVEN WENT FURTHER AS THEY EVEN USED THE MAP THEY HAD ON THEIR PHONES. So, here I was in the city of Sartre, Hugo, Levinas, Foucault, lost, a total stranger, but not so lost and not so total a stranger at all. I ended up literally circling the Bibliotheque Nationale (which was really quite a distance). The last person I approached, in expensive Burberry coat and other clothes, even kindly walked me up to the foyer of L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). MY! Great things didn't end there. Having been informed by the porter, one of my Program's Professors, Prof. Luc Berlivet, even really went down to meet and bring me up to our Secretary's office. Our Secretary, Ms. Zeina Bechar, was also kindness incarnated. My two Program classmates, Maria Cristina Murano and Malgorzata Ryczer were also already in the office, and they were also relieved to see me, and helped guide me through the documentary requirements, as they've went through them earlier. Also, these four people, though they all speak French, obviously decided to speak in English the whole time I was with them so that I don't get excluded. Indeed, these people only showed me all kindness and consideration the whole time we were all together. After doing our administrative stuff and lunch, Prof. Berlivet, without me asking (neither implicitly nor explicitly) even really and literally went out of his way to deliver me to my hotel via the Metro. Thus also teaching me the way in the Metro (which actually was just as simple as taking the MRT/LRT in Manila). After bringing me home, Prof. Berlivet also told me that he'll pick me up again today (because I and my two other classmates are to have another appointment at another office somewhere in Paris). I actually would have wanted to go on my on to today's appointment. However, with all the generosity the kind Professor extended to me, the least I can also do is to also be generous and humble in my accepting his kindness. The day's greatness didn't end there. Due to all the perspiration (leading to electrolyte imbalance) for all that walking, and especially with the 9C temperature to which my body was still adjusting to, I went went through some bouts of painful cramps when I was already in my room. In the past, my immediate and very effective remedy was either a bottle of Gatorade or a packet of electrolyte dissolved in a glass of water. And none was available. Absent such, I decided to opt for a home remedy: ordinary table salt and some sugar mixed with water. So, I called the lady hotel owner over the intercom and requested for salt (as I have some sweets in my room which can sub for sugar) if she had any. AND, she just kindly obliged and even personally brought the salt to my room. WOW! So, to all and sundry, based on my direct and multiple experiences yesterday, the Parisienes aren't cold, nor aloof. They're very warm, kind, even to strangers. Merci beaucoup chers Parisiens! Today, my earlier misfortune simply fortunately led me to see the palpably better, kinder, more responsible (in the Levinasian manner) side of Paris. Indeed, yesterday was a BIG DAY, an IMPORTANT DAY, not only for all the necessary administrative requirements I attended to for my PhD program at EHESS, but most especially for all that responsible touch and gift of kindness and generosity most especially from strangers, who turned out to be no strangers at all. Through their magnanimous actions they showed that underneath the label of nationality, or even skin color, we all indeed are familiar, thus connected and not strangers, to each other, by way of our common humanity. Indeed, I GOT LOST IN PARIS, AND HAD A GREAT DAY YESTERDAY! God bless us all!

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

PLANNING OF MIGRATING TO NON-APPLE PRODUCTS

Thank you very much APPLE! iPhone6, iPhone6s, and i-Watch HAVE ALREADY COME OUT, YET MY REPLACEMENT UNIT FOR MY HARDWARE DEFECTIVE JURASSIC iPHONE 4 HASN'T YET ARRIVED. AS OF TODAY 10 SEPTEMBER, the unit hasn't even left Singapore, and I made the request WAY BACK 15 AUGUST 2014. I'm not anymore losing sleep over the thought of eventually MIGRATING to NON-Apple products, even if right now I've SEVERAL APPLE PRODUCTS. Bantay lang ka APPLE!

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

THE MAKATI PARKING BUILDING IS OVERPRICED. PERIOD.


The contractor the Makati Parking Building, HILMARC'S Construction, so as to parry the accusations that the said building is overpriced, cited the cost of other government buildings which cost no less than P61,000/sq.m. But such defense doesn't make the Makati Parking Building still any less OVERPRICED. It simply shows that some government buildings are OVERPRICED, and that includes the Makati Parking Building. That the PRACTICE OF OVERPRICING SEEMED TO BE NORM IN CONSTRUCTION OF GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, DOESN'T IN ANY WAY MAKE SUCH OVERPRICING LEGALLY, ETHICALLY, POLITICALLY ACCEPTABLE. Thus it simply shows that THERE'S SOMETHING REALLY REALLY WRONG in the pricing of GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS (AND WHO KNOWS EVEN OTHER GOVERNMENT CONSTRUCTIONS). Thus indeed the Senate is right in having this hearing IN AID OF LEGISLATION. LAWS MUST THUS BE CREATED SO AS TO PROHIBIT THE GLARING, REASON-DEFYING OVERPRICING of government constructions. Also, IT'S BUT LOGICAL AND ETHICAL THAT THOSE caught BREAKING THE LAW for such OVERPRICING MUST ALSO BE PROSECUTED, AND EVENTUALLY BE BROUGHT BEFORE AND BEHIND THE BARS OF JUSTICE.

Monday, August 25, 2014

DEPED ERRS IN REMOVING "GOD-LOVING" IN ITS VISION STATEMENT WITHOUT PROPER PUBLIC CONSULTATION

HEEDING THE 99.02% OF THE CITIZENRY SIMPLY WHO BELIEVE IN A SUPREME BEING ISN’T THEOCRACY BUT DEMOCRACY. BELOW IS THE LATEST DATA FROM THE NATIONAL STATISTICS OFFICE ABOUT THE STATUS OF RELIGION IN THE PHILIPPINES. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines#Religion)
Religions in the Philippines
Roman Catholic 80.6%
Islam 5.6%
Protestants 4.35%
Evangelical Christians 2.7%
Iglesia ni Cristo 2.45%
Other Religions 4.29%
Atheists and Agnostics 0.08%
In 2014 Philippines in Figures by the National Statistics Office.

A group calling itself Filipino Freethinkers advocated for the removal of the word "God-loving" in Dep-ed's vision because the said group thinks that such is a "clear violation of the principle of secularism." Is this real democracy, or simply the tyranny of a minority, thus an Aristocracy or Autocracy? True, the Philippines is a secular society. Yet, even if it’s a secular society, it's one where 99.02% of its population still consider themselves to be believers of a Supreme Being. Being a secular state though doesn’t mean that the state must TOTALLY RID ITSELF of EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING RELATED TO RELIGION, and most specially if the citizens of the state are religious believers. Please let me cite a source that shows that where even states which are considered to be heavily secular also give official credence to religion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_state):

Not all legally secular states are completely secular in practice.
• In France for example, many Christian holy days are official holidays for the public administration, and teachers in Catholic schools are salaried by the state.[4] In some European states (Germany, Switzerland, Belgium) where secularism confronts monoculturalist philanthropy some of the main Christian sects and sects of other religions depend on the state for some of the financial resources for their religious charities.[5] It is common in Corporate law and Charity law to prohibit them from using those funds to organize religious worship in a separate place of worship or for conversion; the religious body itself must provide the religious content, educated clergy and lay-persons to exercise its own functions and may choose to afford part of their time to the separate charities. To that effect some of those charities establish secular organizations that manage part of or all of the donations from the main religion(s). Religious and atheist organizations can apply for equivalent funding from the government and receive subsidies either based on assessed social results where there is indirect religious state funding, sometimes that assessment is simply the number of beneficiaries of those organisations.[6] This resembles Charitable choice in the United States. Overt direct state funding of religions is on the whole doubtfully in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights though it would not yet appear to have been decided at supranational level in ECtHR case law stemming from the rights in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which mandates non-discrimination in affording its co-listed basic social rights; specifically, funding certain services would not accord with non-discriminatory state action.[7]


• In India, the government gives a subsidy in airfare for Muslims going on Haj pilgrimage (See Haj subsidy). In 2007, the government had to spend Rs. 47,454 per passenger.[8] After considerable pressure from Muslim groups and the Ministry of Minority Affairs, the Congress government in 2010 decided to begin phasing out the Haj subsidy that had been in operation since 1993. The Central Haj Committee of India will work through the Ministry of External Affairs to restructure the air fares so that the richer Hadjis will pay a premium for the poorer pilgrims. The entire restructuring is expected to take about seven years and be completed by 2017.[9] India is also the only non-Muslim/Christian majority country in the world where Muslims and Christians have separate laws.[10][11]


Many states that nowadays are secular in practice may have legal vestiges of an earlier established religion. Secularism also has various guises which may coincide with some degree of official religiosity. In the United Kingdom, the head of state is still required to take the 1688-enacted Coronation Oath swearing to maintain the Protestant Reformed religion in the United Kingdom and preserve the established Church of England.[12] The United Kingdom also maintains positions in the House of Lords for 26 senior clergymen of the Church of England known as the Lords Spiritual.[13] 


Sec. Armin Luistro must revisit this decision, not because he's a Catholic. But MOST SPECIALLY because 99.02% of the citizens of the Philippines are believers in a Supreme Being, and not non-believers. Heeding 99.02% of the citizenry doesn't violate the separation of church and state, nor makes our state a theocracy. Heeding the 99.02% of the citizenry simply is DEMOCRACY. Democracy demands that at least the majority of the citizens be heeded. Was there a PUBLIC CONSULTATION ABOUT THIS MATTER? Or was the said decision made only giving due consideration to one group, which doesn’t actually represent the MAJORITY of the citizenry? True, it’s quite discomfiting at times for a minority that it doesn’t always get what it wants. But that’s but part  of the process of political democracy. Majority rules. Majority wins. That's political democracy. Allowing a small cohort to IMPOSE ITSELF upon the majority, especially when it’s against the WILL of the MAJORITY, is ACTUALLY AGAINST secular or democratic principles. It’s simply a TYRANNY of a FEW: AUTOCRACY or ARISTOCRACY.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

A CAUTIONARY TALE: JOVITO PALPARAN

Retired Major General (AFP) Jovito Palparan was finally caught by a combined team of lawmen after around 3 years of being on the run. I can't help but shake my head when I saw how this person who once wielded the power of life and death over people (and if accusations are the be believed, more of death) looked so nondescript, rail-thin, unkempt, unshaven, miserable. Seemingly, the powers he is said to have used to haunt, hunt, and taunt people have turned on him themselves, turning him into a mere specter of what he once was.

Jovito. The said name comes from "Jove," the abbreviated version of "Jupiter,' the king of the Roman pantheon of deities, the Roman counterpart of the Greek Zeus. Jove, Jupiter is considered the god of thunder, and is symbolized by the eagle. The eagle thus became a powerful symbol among Romans as they showed in their insignias and battle gears. Jove, as combination of thunder and the eagle was thus considered a "sky god". And as a sky god, according to Wikipedia, he was considered "a divine witness to oaths, the sacred trust on which justice and good government depend." Jove, with all his power, used such power as a dispenser of justice and good governance. Jove, is also the word from which "jovial" or "happy" came from. And also where the word "juvenile," meaning "youthful," came from. Thus Jove/Jupiter is also known to be a god of a life of happiness, of life-giving energy.

But that was Jove, the Roman god. Jovito Palparan, based on the cases filed against him, also had power. But, again, based on the cases versus him, he instead used his power to become not a dispenser of justice and good governance, but as judge and executioner, thus "Berdugo" (executioner) they used to call him. Again, based on accusations against him, his justice was summary justice; his good was self-righteous; his governance was one of oppression; his happiness born of sadistic enjoyment; his juvenile energy one of dark delinquency.

But now, he has fallen. Whether contrived or real, what he showed was tameness. BUT, based on interviews he granted, we MUSN'T MISS THE FACT THAT he remained CALMLY REMAINED UNREPENTANT, CALMLY showed NO SIGN OF REMORSE of things he was/is accused of. In his own eyes, he remains innocent, as he "only did what he needed to do." And he actually isn't alone in his stance. Human history is replete with such very dark Joves.

Jovito Palparan has fallen, but he hasn't allowed himself to accept his defeat. And some people think such stance as heroic. Yet, such is but the opposite: tragically myopic. "Hell is when one becomes happy with one's own sadness," said one of the characters in one of the late Robin Williams' films (What Dreams May Come).

And so, for all his former power, influence, and still-persistent unrepentance, yet when one envisages Jovito Palparan's present state of being nondescript, rail-thin, unkempt, unshaven, and miserable, one can simply conclude that hell does exist even here on earth.

Monday, August 11, 2014

HUMAN RIGHTS AND ETTA ROSALES (CHAIR, COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS)

Obviously, there's no love lost between Etta Rosales, Commission of Human Rights honcho, and Mayor Rody Duterteof Davao. Rosales chided Duterte for commenting on the slapping incident involving Q.C. Mayor Herbert Bautista vis-a-vis a chinese national caught red-handed by police in possession of shabu worth millions of pesos. Bautista slapped twice the chinese drug dealer as it showed disrespect and cockiness to Bautista, especially in front of so many media people.

Mayor Duterte, when asked to comment to Bautista's actuations, said that Bautista was even too tame or kind ("mabait") according to Duterte. He quipped that he could have kicked and dropped the chinese drug dealer at the Davao Gulf to become food for starving fishes.

Etta Rosales, when interviewed on national TV about her reaction to Mayor Duterte's comments re the above slapping incident, categorically, and emphatically said that Duterte should have refrained from making any comments, and have just kept quiet so as not to make bad influence on less discerning minds.

I know where Etta Rosales is coming from in her said comments. However, I find the implications of her statements re Mayor Duterte's comments a bit off-tangent, specially coming from one who's the Chair of the Commision of Human Rights of this republic. Firstly, isn't someone's right to speak out one's mind or freedom of expression, just like what Mayor Duterte did, a basic human right too (of course things will have a different complexion if applied with the principle of "clear and present danger")?. Thus, didn't Ms. Rosales herself break Mayor Duterte's right to self-expression when she made those comments, specially when so done in front of national TV? Secondly, another basic human right is to have the freedom to think what one wants to think. But here, Ms. Rosales is in fact limiting people from POSSIBLY thinking what they may want to think. Also, unless, Ms. Rosales has clear-cut evidence that Mayor Duterte's comments COULD indeed be a bad influence on "less discerning minds," she has no right to claim that Mayor Duterte is INDEED a bad influence on "less discerming minds." Ms. Rosales is also guilty of the fallacy of NON-SEQUITUR. Also, isn't it quite CONDESCENDING of Ms. Rosales to say that Mayor Duterte is a bad influence on less discerning minds? Implying that those who agree with Mayor Duterte are "less discerning minds." Mme. Rosales, Chair of the Commission on Human Rights, may not agree with Mayor Duterte, but shouldn't she herself had defended his right to say his mind, and the right of those "less discerning minds" to think what they want to think?

Enough of this Ma'am Etta. May I please instead call on you to do something about the plight of MINDANAWON MARCOS MARTIAL LAW VICTIMS (WEREN'T YOU A MARTIAL LAW VICTIM YOURSELF) just like those who up till now are still having a hard, if not HORRIBLE time, making their claims. May I please invite you Ma'am Etta Rosales, Chair fo the Commission of Human Rights to PLEASE PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to what a claimant, Bro. Karl Gaspar (CSSR), said about his HORRIFIC ORDEAL when he came over to the CHR-APPOINTED VENUE to formally make a claim as a Martial Law Victim:
Karl Gaspar
5 August
VICTIMIZING THE VICTIMS TWICE OVER (PART II)
I was furious… as in really, really FURIOUS; I felt like a volcano ready the erupt anytime. The susunod na kabanata turned out to be – literally – nakakasuka. As I underwent another frustrating day waiting in line to file my documents as a Human Rights Violations’ Victim (the term used to label us by the Human Rights Claimants Board or HRCB in conjunction with the Commission on Human Rights), I felt my blood rising to a dangerous level.
If not for the maintenance medicine I take every morning, I could have collapsed while lining up again this morning. At various moments, I felt like vomiting while waiting for my turn to have my documents processed. There were similar complaints I heard from claimants who were senior citizens like me who were at the Almendras gym today.
This was how today turned out. After the harrowing day yesterday, I returned to the Almendras gym at 7:20 a.m. There was a huge crowd already lining up. Those of us issued numbers the previous day positioned ourselves near the entrance as we were promised to be the first ones to be allowed entry to the gym. A quarter before 8:00 one of the staff of the HRCB announced that only those issued numbers on Monday would be entertained today, as 600 were given numbers. Based on what they were able to accomplish on Monday with only 300+ claimants; documents processed, only 300 more could be processed today Tuesday.
She then announced that those who were from Davao Oriental and Norte as well as Compostela Valley should go home and wait for instructions as to when they will go to Tagum City sometime in September for their turn to have their documents processed. Only those from Davao City would be given numbers today but will need to return tomorrow. However, my guess was that there would be more than 500 from Davao City who have no numbers. So can all of them be covered on the last day of this 3-day marathon? (Apparently, yesterday afternoon, all those who came from Cotabato were entertained so they could all return home. As for those coming from Davao del Sur, there was no instruction as to when will their turn be.)
With that announcement, a good number left the compound but there were new arrivals so the crowd still jampacked the front of the gym. Meanwhile, we thought the gates would open at 8 a.m. so that proceedings would begin. For whatever was the reason, the gates opened only by 9 a.m., an hour late. We patiently waited for instructions what was going to happen next. I was beside Kalay Montera from Mandug, wife of Doming, who was my co-detainee. (Doming died last May so Kalay, as widow, came to file the claims). Those of us with assigned numbers (mine was 446, not 445 as I wrote earlier) were now given a new set of numbers as we lined up. I had No. 36. Kalay was not feeling well, so we managed to find chairs to sit on while we waited for our turn to be called.
Meanwhile, one could see that given the circumstances, there were those who just arrived today who found ways to find someone they knew among the gatekeepers so they didn’t have to stand in line and be allowed entry even ahead of us. That made me furious even more as I saw a few of them being able to enjoy the privilege. I wanted to object openly but didn’t have the energy to do so anymore. At this point, I was going to conserve whatever energy was left in my body so I could finish and go home as early as possible.
I thought that since I had my number, I just had to patiently wait for my turn, submit my documents, sign whatever is to be signed, finish all that needed to be done and then go home to finally be rid of this nuisance. It was not meant to be; I was to be subjected to more horrors (which, of course, did not only happen to me). Something has been really terribly wrong about the procedures followed by the HRCB in conjunction with the CHR. There were no clear instructions that we could access, not even in the websites as to exactly what documents were required and what procedures would be followed in the actual site like the one held here at the Almendras gym.
In the absence of an office set up by the HRCB/CHR in Davao City, there was no place we could check on these details before 4-6 August. We thought that since the Ateneo Legal Center (APILA) had gotten into the act – as a voluntary agency to assist claimants – we all assumed that the advice of the staff of APILA was enough. I had been to the APILA office enough times to be able to check out what exactly were the documents I should bring and their instructions I thought were sufficient enough. This, however, was not the case. Neither did the HRCB/CHR put up signs at the venue - with all the details especially in terms of documents to be brought - for us to check before falling in line. And there was no one at the site who could give us the right information before we lined up. So we lined up, waited and waited and when we finally reach the tables where our documents were processed, that was the only time we knew if we had all the documents required.
In the inner sanctum, we had to report to three tables. In each table there was a staff person (or volunteer) who would check the documents. It turned out that it was not necessary to go through the 3 tables, as they did practically the same thing, namely to find out if all documents were on hand. But each table had its own interpretation regarding the documents; one table insisted on the true copies, another was OK just with the Xerox, another did not need IDs issued by government agencies, another was OK with ID of private school.
All three however indicated that the final arbiter was the fourth table where the lawyers were who would finally decide if all documents were in order. I didn’t want to waste more time, so I asked the one in the third table to just tell me straight what were the final documents required so I did not have to go to the final table of the lawyers to be told to still collect more documents. I was told to make sure the certified true copies of documents were available and IDs issued by government agencies.
So off I went, got out of the gym, walk under the heat of the sun, find a taxi and went home so I could collect all all that I still needed. (As it turned out, Murphy’s law was in full force once more today; not only did it take time to find a taxi along that busy road but the traffic was terrible). To make the story short, I was back inside the gym 30 minutes later. I got the OK of the third table and was ushered to the final table, where we took again the circle seats to wait for our turn. Lo and behold, the guys at the table didn’t look like lawyers at all; they looked like they were college freshmen!!!
And when my turn came, I faced this very young man named Bernard Laguindino who told me later that he was a college student from Manila hired by the HRCB to come to Davao for this event. He certainly was no lawyer, he was not even a law student. So why did the staff at the three tables referred to them as lawyers? Perhaps the only reason he got hired was because he could operate the gadgets. I wondered what he knew about the Marcos dictatorship and if he cared to know about human rights violations. He hardly looked at my papers and didn’t care if I had certified true copies or Xerox copies. He then asked me to sign my signature on a pad and then took my photo. Two minutes later, I had my blue paper labelled Acknowledgment Receipt and My Docket No. was 2014-11-00396.
And that was it. I was done and I was told to take the exit. It was a pyric victory of sort. I won in the end, but I didn’t feel victorious at all.
Going out by the side door and reaching the part where hundreds were still waiting for their numbers, I spotted a few of those with whom I spent time in prison. They were still waiting for their numbers. I shared with them what my experiences were and warned them what to expect when it was their turn to enter the inner sanctum. One of them finally blurted out: Mora man tag gitorture na sab ani oy! (It is as if we are undergoing torture once again!)
It was 11:45 a.m. when I left the comrades at the site of our new experience of torture and went home, feeling very tired but also feeling very sorry for the hundreds who remained there. I walked to the circle where I could find a jeepney to bring me home. There stood the statue of Andres Bonifacio and I thought of a line from his poem: Aling pag-ibig pa ang hihigit kaya sa pagkadalisay at pagkadakila, tulad ng pag-ibig sa tinubuang lupa!
And with a sense of bitterness, I could not help but think: oh what some of us of our generation did for the love of this country; but having undergone a recent eight-hour ordeal (five hours on Monday and three hours today), was it all worth it?
(Below is foto of my ACKNOWLEDGEMENT RECEIPT, received only afrer the 8-hour "torture" sessions).
Photo: VICTIMIZING THE VICTIMS TWICE OVER (PART II) I was furious… as in really, really FURIOUS; I felt like a volcano ready the erupt anytime. The susunod na kabanata turned out to be – literally – nakakasuka. As I underwent another frustrating day waiting in line to file my documents as a Human Rights Violations’ Victim (the term used to label us by the Human Rights Claimants Board or HRCB in conjunction with the Commission on Human Rights), I felt my blood rising to a dangerous level. If not for the maintenance medicine I take every morning, I could have collapsed while lining up again this morning. At various moments, I felt like vomiting while waiting for my turn to have my documents processed. There were similar complaints I heard from claimants who were senior citizens like me who were at the Almendras gym today. This was how today turned out. After the harrowing day yesterday, I returned to the Almendras gym at 7:20 a.m. There was a huge crowd already lining up. Those of us issued numbers the previous day positioned ourselves near the entrance as we were promised to be the first ones to be allowed entry to the gym. A quarter before 8:00 one of the staff of the HRCB announced that only those issued numbers on Monday would be entertained today, as 600 were given numbers. Based on what they were able to accomplish on Monday with only 300+ claimants; documents processed, only 300 more could be processed today Tuesday. She then announced that those who were from Davao Oriental and Norte as well as Compostela Valley should go home and wait for instructions as to when they will go to Tagum City sometime in September for their turn to have their documents processed. Only those from Davao City would be given numbers today but will need to return tomorrow. However, my guess was that there would be more than 500 from Davao City who have no numbers. So can all of them be covered on the last day of this 3-day marathon? (Apparently, yesterday afternoon, all those who came from Cotabato were entertained so they could all return home. As for those coming from Davao del Sur, there was no instruction as to when will their turn be.) With that announcement, a good number left the compound but there were new arrivals so the crowd still jampacked the front of the gym. Meanwhile, we thought the gates would open at 8 a.m. so that proceedings would begin. For whatever was the reason, the gates opened only by 9 a.m., an hour late. We patiently waited for instructions what was going to happen next. I was beside Kalay Montera from Mandug, wife of Doming, who was my co-detainee. (Doming died last May so Kalay, as widow, came to file the claims). Those of us with assigned numbers (mine was 446, not 445 as I wrote earlier) were now given a new set of numbers as we lined up. I had No. 36. Kalay was not feeling well, so we managed to find chairs to sit on while we waited for our turn to be called. Meanwhile, one could see that given the circumstances, there were those who just arrived today who found ways to find someone they knew among the gatekeepers so they didn’t have to stand in line and be allowed entry even ahead of us. That made me furious even more as I saw a few of them being able to enjoy the privilege. I wanted to object openly but didn’t have the energy to do so anymore. At this point, I was going to conserve whatever energy was left in my body so I could finish and go home as early as possible. I thought that since I had my number, I just had to patiently wait for my turn, submit my documents, sign whatever is to be signed, finish all that needed to be done and then go home to finally be rid of this nuisance. It was not meant to be; I was to be subjected to more horrors (which, of course, did not only happen to me). Something has been really terribly wrong about the procedures followed by the HRCB in conjunction with the CHR. There were no clear instructions that we could access, not even in the websites as to exactly what documents were required and what procedures would be followed in the actual site like the one held here at the Almendras gym. In the absence of an office set up by the HRCB/CHR in Davao City, there was no place we could check on these details before 4-6 August. We thought that since the Ateneo Legal Center (APILA) had gotten into the act – as a voluntary agency to assist claimants – we all assumed that the advice of the staff of APILA was enough. I had been to the APILA office enough times to be able to check out what exactly were the documents I should bring and their instructions I thought were sufficient enough. This, however, was not the case. Neither did the HRCB/CHR put up signs at the venue - with all the details especially in terms of documents to be brought - for us to check before falling in line. And there was no one at the site who could give us the right information before we lined up. So we lined up, waited and waited and when we finally reach the tables where our documents were processed, that was the only time we knew if we had all the documents required. In the inner sanctum, we had to report to three tables. In each table there was a staff person (or volunteer) who would check the documents. It turned out that it was not necessary to go through the 3 tables, as they did practically the same thing, namely to find out if all documents were on hand. But each table had its own interpretation regarding the documents; one table insisted on the true copies, another was OK just with the Xerox, another did not need IDs issued by government agencies, another was OK with ID of private school. All three however indicated that the final arbiter was the fourth table where the lawyers were who would finally decide if all documents were in order. I didn’t want to waste more time, so I asked the one in the third table to just tell me straight what were the final documents required so I did not have to go to the final table of the lawyers to be told to still collect more documents. I was told to make sure the certified true copies of documents were available and IDs issued by government agencies. So off I went, got out of the gym, walk under the heat of the sun, find a taxi and went home so I could collect all all that I still needed. (As it turned out, Murphy’s law was in full force once more today; not only did it take time to find a taxi along that busy road but the traffic was terrible). To make the story short, I was back inside the gym 30 minutes later. I got the OK of the third table and was ushered to the final table, where we took again the circle seats to wait for our turn. Lo and behold, the guys at the table didn’t look like lawyers at all; they looked like they were college freshmen!!! And when my turn came, I faced this very young man named Bernard Laguindino who told me later that he was a college student from Manila hired by the HRCB to come to Davao for this event. He certainly was no lawyer, he was not even a law student. So why did the staff at the three tables referred to them as lawyers? Perhaps the only reason he got hired was because he could operate the gadgets. I wondered what he knew about the Marcos dictatorship and if he cared to know about human rights violations. He hardly looked at my papers and didn’t care if I had certified true copies or Xerox copies. He then asked me to sign my signature on a pad and then took my photo. Two minutes later, I had my blue paper labelled Acknowledgment Receipt and My Docket No. was 2014-11-00396. And that was it. I was done and I was told to take the exit. It was a pyric victory of sort. I won in the end, but I didn’t feel victorious at all. Going out by the side door and reaching the part where hundreds were still waiting for their numbers, I spotted a few of those with whom I spent time in prison. They were still waiting for their numbers. I shared with them what my experiences were and warned them what to expect when it was their turn to enter the inner sanctum. One of them finally blurted out: Mora man tag gitorture na sab ani oy! (It is as if we are undergoing torture once again!) It was 11:45 a.m. when I left the comrades at the site of our new experience of torture and went home, feeling very tired but also feeling very sorry for the hundreds who remained there. I walked to the circle where I could find a jeepney to bring me home. There stood the statue of Andres Bonifacio and I thought of a line from his poem: Aling pag-ibig pa ang hihigit kaya sa pagkadalisay at pagkadakila, tulad ng pag-ibig sa tinubuang lupa! And with a sense of bitterness, I could not help but think: oh what some of us of our generation did for the love of this country; but having undergone a recent eight-hour ordeal (five hours on Monday and three hours today), was it all worth it? (Below is foto of my ACKNOWLEDGEMENT RECEIPT, received only after the 8-hour "torture" sessions). https://www.facebook.com/karl.gaspar?fref=ts

Friday, August 8, 2014

BANGSAMORO BASIC LAW NEGOTIATIONS AREN'T IN THE DOLDRUMS NOR DOOMED TO FAIL. BUT WE ALL MUST WORK HARD TO MAKE THINGS WORK!


The negotiations between between the government and the MILF on the Bangsamoro Basic Law has admittedly hit a snag. But I do believe that it's not as stark as some ulteriorly-interested quarters would want to paint. Thus, I think WE ALL MUST have to work for THE SUCCESSFUL PASSAGE of the Bangsamoro Basic Law. And as this indeed is a NEW CREATION, I believe that Everyone, I repeat, EVERYONE, must learn to think out-of-the-box, be willing to be uncomfortable at certain points. No short-cuts. The road to meaningful and more lasting peace is always the road less taken. Only those who have the patience, lasting goodwill, intelligence, and courage can really meaningfully traverse such path. And all these we owe to those who have endlessly toiled, suffered, and even perished in times passed; presently to one and all who are longing for meaningful peace in this Mindanao we inhabit and have learned to love; and to those our progeny who will be facing that yet-to-come future which they never asked of us but we actually brought on them. God bless us all!

Monday, August 4, 2014

ABS-CBN: PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH CHILDREN'S HEART AND MIND

I'd like ABS-CBN to be VERY CAREFUL in using CHILDREN in their TV shows. In tonight's episode of teleserye "Ikaw Lamang", there was a scene where the character of Franco (played by Jake Cuenca) was DEMONICALLY HARASSING (NANLILISIK ANG MGA MATA; SINISIGAWAN NG BUONG LAKAS AT GALIT ANG BATA HABANG TUMATALSIK ANG LAWAY; HABANG MAHIGPIT NA HINAHAWAKAN ANG BRASO NG PASLIT) the character of the LITTLE GIRL -MAYBE AROUND 3-4 YEARS OLD- (supposedly, according to the story, accused by Franco as his wife's -Kim Chiu/Isabel- daughter with his wife's lover Samuel -played by Coco Martin-). And the LITTLE GIRL, subsequently CRIED. And I'm very sure that I saw in the Little Girl's face REAL FEAR (not just make-believe fear), REAL FEAR, as she WAS CRYING TERRIFIED OF THE DEMONIC-LOOKING and -ACTING FRANCO (played by Jake Cuenca). Maybe Jake Cuenca can simply say that he's simply doing what his Director required him; the Director in turn can say as it simply was asked by the STORY. But the BUCK has to stop SOMEWHERE! Yes, it's great to see great acting (if it actually is), to watch a nice (hopefully so), TV show. BUT, CAN ALL THESE JUSTIFY PUTTING A LITTLE GIRL (3-4 YEARS), A MINOR, in PSYCHOLOGICAL HARM'S WAY. ISN'T IT ABOUT TIME FOR ABS-CBN TO REMIND ITSELF of what VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN (VAWC) MEANS; ABOUT WHAT THE RIGHTS OF A CHILD MEAN. SHOULDN'T MTRCB LOOK THIS UP? SHOULDN'T CHR LOOK THIS UP?

Thursday, July 31, 2014

FROM NAIA 1 TO NAIA 3, BOON OR BANE?


The transfer of the international flights of 5 big international airlines to NAIA 3 is surely a big plus to the  traveling public. However, the physical upgrade MUST ALSO be combined with the PERSONNEL UPGRADE. Are there  KOTONG/MULCTING, DISRESPECTFUL, RUDE, TARDY, LAZY, INDIFFERENT, ARROGANT, CORRUPT personnel from NAIA 1 JUST SIMPLY transferred to NAIA 3? If so, they may simply INFECT the already-existing better-performing NAIA 3 personnel, and thus simply make NAIA 3 A NEWER VERSION OF WORST-AIRPORT-IN-THE-WORLD-NAIA-1. LET IT BE NOTED, that even as early a YESTERDAY, THE VERY FIRST DAY OF THE TRANSFER, PASSENGERS ARE ALREADY COMPLAINING ABOUT ERSTWHILE NAIA-1-PERSONNEL-NOW-ASSIGNED-IN-NAIA3 TO BE LATE IN REPORTING TO WORK, AND THUS LATE IN SERVING THE PASSENGERS. CALLING DOTC SECRETARY!

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

MEDICAL WASTE DUMPED INTO DAVAO CITY BEACH AREA.


Some unscrupulous individuals dumped discarded I.V. needles and bottles into a relatively secluded beachfront in Davao City. No one has come forward, or has been yet identified to have done the unconscionable deed. This is so because no one seems to have actually witnessed the dumping. I think the waste themselves can eventually lead to the culprits with some diligent sleuthing on the part of Davao City's City Health Office, or whatever responsible agency. The needles and bottles surely have names of manufacturers on them, plus the batch numbers, etc. What pertinent authorities can do is contact the manufacturers, either here in the Philippines or abroad. Surely, the company who bought them in Manila can be traced, then the ones who bought or brought them here in/to Davao City can subsequently be traced too, then the health care facility which used them can be traced too, and eventually those who actually dumped them can be traced too. RESPONSIBILITY. Responsibility must be required of the culprits who showed no compunction in putting our community at risk for such hazardous medical wastes.

Monday, July 14, 2014

Pnoy, by his stance vs. SC in his speech today, is sowing the wind. He may reap the whirlwind.

14 July 2014.
Pnoy is obviously irate, or maybe even furious, about the SC decision. Maybe, he also can't believe that his own appointees decided to put the truth, justice, and country first, above any "utang na loob" towards him. But I don't think his hackle-raising will do the country, nor him, any good. I pray that he wakes up that his warring stance will indeed be towards the "Tuwid na daan," but not of salvation, but damnation. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

THE BURDEN OF EDUCATION (CALLING BRO. ARMIN LUISTRO, DEPED SECRETARY!)

I arrived from Manila last night with a 10 kilo hand-carried luggage (as measured by the NAIA weighing scale). I didn't find it particularly heavy. Then on the the way home, my wife and I fetched our son from our in-laws' home. As usual, I was the one who carried our son's school bag into the cab. Upon picking up my son's bag, I immediately realized that it was FAR HEAVIER than the 10kilogram luggage I brought in from Manila, twice, or at least heavier by around 5-8 KILOS! My! That's 15-18 kilos that my son has to lug around in school daily. Let's just say his school bag with all the contents just weighs  15 KILOS, converted to pounds, the bag weighs 33 POUNDS. Studies made by Pediatric Orthopedics say that the ideal weight a child must carry MUST ONLY be a maximum of 10% of his/her body weight. Let's just say my son weighs around 85 pounds, then, his max carrying load must only be around 8.5 POUNDS. But, NOW with his SCHOOL BAG AND BOOKS weighing 33 POUNDS, he's carrying around 4 TIMES that maximum ideal load!  And, just like other parents, such keeps me perennially worried for my son's (and other children's) well-being, not only now, but even in the future because of the ORTHOPEDIC HAVOC all these HEAVY BURDENS he (and also the other children) has to carry.

Please let me share with you some articles what damage these humungous burdens can cause to our children:

1. Heavy school bags can damage your kids
A school highlights a guideline that suggests children should not carry bags weighing over 10% of their body weight
By Sneha May Francis (http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/heavy-school-bags-can-damage-your-kids-2013-08-29-1.519163)

Published Thursday, August 29, 2013

It’s that time of the year again, when schools re-open and children end up helplessly lugging heavy bags.

Some that could possibly end up as a health risk for these youngsters.

Especially when they pack in nearly 15-kilos or more and balance it on their fragile shoulders day in and day out.

Despite health experts and educationists warning against the risks and lobbying for a ban on bags, there is still no rule yet.

Some experts even cited that children who end up carrying bags that weigh over 15 per cent of their body weight will damage their body.

In fact, a school in Dubai citied a new guideline, suggesting that “a schoolbag "should weigh no more than 10 percent of the child’s bodyweight and should be worn over both shoulders so the weight is distributed correctly”.

Parents, however, complain that there are way too many things to pack in.

“There’s the schoolbooks, assignments, and various food boxes, juice and water. Some days there’s PE kit as well,” described a mother of a student who attends an Indian school in the emirate.

“When you put everything in, the bag should easily weigh more than 17-kilos. It’s shocking, but that’s how it is.”

While some might argue that trolley bags might help reduce the impact, many schools ban it citing “health risks”.

A British school in Al Nahda, rated ‘good’ by the DSIB, recently e-mailed parents and extensively detailed why trolley bags can harm children.

“Heavy trolley bags are causing children to twist their backs for extended periods with their shoulder and arm stretched behind them just to manage the trolley bags,” it read.

“This potentially causes serious skeletal and shoulder problems.

“Children tend to use their trolley bags as a weapon intentionally knocking against others causing them to trip or fall down.”

The school further reasoned that “book bags” must be light and children must carry only books that are needed for that day. Most children end up carrying all their books even though they have been instructed to use the school lockers, they added.

Dubai’s education regulatory authority advised schools must involve parents in choosing the right bag.

“Students are not compelled to choose a specific type of bag. Schools must engage with the parents to select a bag which is suitable for the child’s age group and safe for them to carry,” said Mohammed Darwish, Chief of Regulations and Permits Commission at Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA).

“Safety of the children is our primary concern and we are confident that private schools in Dubai also put children’s safety first.”

While there are two schools of thought regarding the use of trolley bags or not, there’s a third that believes there should be no bags at all.

“Children should be given tablets, and school work should be online. That’s the future and we must equip the young kids for that. And, it won’t stress their backs,” detailed Suad Alhalwachi, an educationist working as director of Education Zone company.

“It will also eliminate paper and save the environment.”

She highlighted how children must not carry any bag, adding how every year many books are discarded. “This can be avoided if the focus shifted online.”

 

2. Children are still damaging their spines by carrying school bags that are too heavy
Despite government reminders to parents and students, children are still carrying school bags that are too heavy for them, leading to serious spinal damage
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 17 September, 2013, 12:00am
UPDATED : Friday, 27 September, 2013, 8:27pm
(http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1310896/children-are-still-damaging-their-spines-carrying-school)
Vivian Chiu life@scmp.com
Most Popular
Children are carrying school bags that are too heavy for them

It took sixth-former Sandra five years before she could stop wearing a back brace. Sandra, who prefers not to disclose her real name, is a casualty of the enduring problem of Hong Kong students lugging overly heavy bags.

Signs of trouble were already surfacing in Primary Four, when she would cart thick history and grammar texts between home and school daily to complete her class assignments. "The teacher might not finish covering material from the textbook during the term, but we still had to bring the whole book.
My back hurt from carrying the heavy load to school every day
Sandra, scoliosis sufferer

"My back began to hurt from carrying the heavy load to school every day. At first, the pain wasn't so serious. My mum would just massage my shoulders," Sandra says.

By the time she was in Primary Six, Sandra was diagnosed with scoliosis - a deformity in the spine curvature that particularly affects teenagers. Physicians at a government orthopaedic clinic issued her with a back brace, which she has had to wear all through secondary school.

On a typical school day, Sandra's backpack continues to be stuffed with textbooks, notepads, and files. Then there's her trumpet, her running shoes, and a water bottle on the two days when she has PE class and music practice.

Thankfully, the distortion of her spinal curve is now under control, and she no longer needs to wear a brace. But to ensure the condition does not worsen, Sandra regularly visits a chiropractor to stretch her muscles and elongate her spine.

Surveys have repeatedly associated shoulder, neck and back pain with carrying heavy school bags. But the problem persists despite annual reminders from the Education Bureau to parents and students that school bags should not exceed 15 per cent of the child's body weight.

Four to five out of 1,000 Hong Kong students suffer scoliosis, according to the department of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Hong Kong medical school.

Diagnosed using an X-ray, the condition shows how increasing loads on the back flattens the "S" curve of the spine and reduce its capacity to reposition itself.

Scoliosis, which is six times more common in girls, happens most rapidly during the spurt of bone growth in puberty. The child does not feel pain at first, and mild conditions can be effectively controlled by wearing a brace. But if untreated, the deformity may restrict heart and lung function, and require corrective surgery.

A poor sitting posture, like slumping, or playing sports that always use one side of the body, can contribute to scoliosis, experts say.

Students are advised to use lightweight bags, and pack just what they require for the day's classes, eliminating unnecessary items such as comic books, or a water bottle when the school has drinking fountains. Children are advised to use lockers to store items such as art supplies, sweater, umbrella or dictionaries when not in use.

"Studies indicate that 96 per cent of students carry school bags which are heavier than 15 per cent of their weight," says Dr Grace Szeto Pui-yuk, an associate professor at the Polytechnic University's department of rehabilitation sciences.

That may be due to the wide range of subjects students must now tackle in the more technologically advanced and information-rich society of today, she suggests. With each new subject comes more textbooks and study material.

The shoulder bag and the backpack are the two types of bags most favoured by Hong Kong students, and each presents a different set of problems. "While it may look cool for students to sling their shoulder bag across their chest, one shoulder has to constantly bear the load. Over time, their spinal curvature may be affected because of the asymmetric weight on the shoulders," Szeto says.

Backpacks are preferable to shoulder bags because the load is balanced across the back. But backpacks also bring problems. The head automatically leans forward, and this shifts the centre of gravity towards the neck to counterbalance the weight on the back.

According to Keith Wong Hon-wing, a registered chiropractor at the Hong Kong Chiropractic Healthcare Centre, this unnatural posture could be a cause of neck and back aches, as well as stiffness, numbness and a tingling that extends from the shoulders to the hands.

In severe cases, the child may develop a hunch back as the body is pulled backward against natural forces. A healthy "straight" posture, Wong says, is when the person's ear is aligned with his shoulder, hip, knee and ankle, when viewed from the side.

When children start complaining of neck, shoulder, and back aches, parents should immediately send them for checkups to prevent further deterioration of their spine, experts say.

Students should learn the correct way to carry school bags while they are still growing. "Kids carrying backpacks like to let the load hang down their back, which actually makes it harder to carry. They should shorten the shoulder strap, so that the load is ideally positioned between the shoulder and the middle of the back," Szeto says.

Wong recommends choosing backpacks with chest and waist straps. When both straps are buckled, the weight is evenly distributed across the body.

The adoption of electronic textbooks (e-books), which is encouraged by the Education Bureau as part of e-learning programmes, might help reduce the weight on young shoulders, but that's not always feasible.

Secondary school teacher Mo Kin-ping says her school considered using e-books. "But we found out they were more expensive than the actual hardcopies, and students may not be able to afford them."

Friday, June 20, 2014

TALE OF TWO FILIPINOS ON 20 JUNE 2014

Yesterday, 20 June 2014, two Filipino men were in the news. The first one, 1st Lieutenant Roger Flores, a graduate of the Philippine Military Academy, was killed in action in a battle versus Abu Sayyaf elements who outnumbered him and his men. The second one, is a senator of the Philippines, Ramon "Bong" Revilla, Jr., one of those accused in the Napole-PDAF scandal. Below I'd like to enumerate a Tale of the Tape of these two men of the Philippines. This is also a tribute for
1st Lieutenant  Roger Flores, Real-life Philippine Hero.
TALE OF THE TAPE.
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Philippine Military Academy
BONG REVILLA: Senator of the Philippines
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Philippine Marine Corps
BONG REVILLA: Philippine PDAF Scam
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Minor Media Coverage
BONG REVILLA: Full Media Coverage
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Fought vs. alleged Abu Sayyaf
BONG REVILLA: Fighting vs. Ombudsman
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Top 10 Outstanding Students of Philippines, 2009
BONG REVILLA: Top 3 accused in PDAF Scam
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Born of Poverty
BONG REVILLA: Born of Privilege
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Top Graduate US Marine Corps
BONG REVILLA: Top 3 PDAF Scam list
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Lived in spartan conditions
BONG REVILLA: Lived in mansion
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Last located in battlefield
BONG REVILLA: Last located in detention cell
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: No complain in heat of battle
BONG REVILLA: Complains of heat in special detention cell
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Real-life Hero
BONG REVILLA: Make-believe hero, Panday
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Almost legendary real-life
BONG REVILLA: Kap's Amazing Stories
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Famous
BONG REVILLA: Notorious
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Gone too soon
BONG REVILLA: Bad damo die hard?
1ST LT. ROGER FLORES: Died a real Hero
BONG REVILLA: Dying to be called a hero?

Monday, April 21, 2014

SOWING WHAT ONE REAPS

I'D LIKE TO SHARE AN INSPIRING STORY:
Today I pay special tribute to Ate Fely (ADDU Philosophy Division's eternal Secretary) and Manong Eping Calumba. Their second eldest daughter, Krizza Faye (Lalay, an ADDU Alumnus from pre- to High School) is graduating at U.P. Mindanao. Lalay is graduating as THE U.P. Min's Chancellor's Awardee, Class Valedictorian of her batch, and Magna Cum Laude. Ate Fely, Mrs. Felicita Calumba, will be the one who'll give the Parent's Response at U.P. MIN'S graduation. One reaps what one sows. And this day Ate Fely and Manong Eping simply show that they did sow greatly! KUDOS ATE FELY! KUDOS MANONG EPING! KUDOS LALAY! Take a bow! GOD BLESS ALWAYS! :)

Thursday, April 10, 2014

REMEMBERING MY LOLO PIDIO THIS ARAW NG KAGITINGAN (Day of Heroism)

Though it may be a day late, I'd like to pay remembrance to my Lolo Pidio, Capt. Elpidio Bermejo, WWII veteran, survivor of the Death March of Bataan. Lolo Pidio was my Mom's stepfather (as her father died when she was still a child), and the doting grandfather I grew up with. Lolo Pidio, despite being a warrior wasn't the loquacious, garrulous type. As young as I was (around 5 years old), up till now, his unintrusive, gentle, hardworking, inclusive character really made a mark on me. For such, it wasn't surprising that people in our community in Old Sagay, Negros Occidental then gravitated around him as a de facto community leader (though he never ran, nor assumed any elective office). Up till now, I still am amazed by the mark Lolo Pidio left on me. As Lolo Pidio's body was laid on the coffin, and my Mom lifted me to view him, I still candidly remember myself turning away, not not wanting to look at him. And it wasn't because I was afraid of a cadaver, but because, in my very young mind, a sudden and deep sadness made me do so. It was a silent but overwhelming sadness. And truth be told, from that time on, till I was already a seminarian, around 19 years old, I always avoided viewing dead people inside coffins. Only those inside coffins, as I never had any queasiness looking at the dead not inside coffins in any form. It was only after some processing in the seminary then that I was able to eventually let go of that sadness, and thus I was able to look again on people in the coffins.
Lolo Pidio died of lung cancer. But I think, the cancer was just a result of a bigger, deeper cause: WAR. My Lola Conching would tell me when I was already grown up that Lolo Pidio had nightmares EVERY NIGHT. Yes, every night. And it was all about the horrendous experiences he had specially during the infamous Death March. When I was growing up with them, I remember Lolo Pidio ALWAYS inebriated EVERY afternoon. Albeit, Lolo wasn't one who'd make trouble, and would just simply silently eventually go to sleep after his alcohol dose. And I also remember him to be a very heavy tobacco smoker. TOBACCO, not cigarets. Dried tobacco leaves that he'll buy fresh in the market, and he'll roll them himself. Indeed, alcohol and nicotine dependence. Classic signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which just in recent years have been clinically known to plague, yes, soldiers. The more horrific the experience, logically the deeper trauma. And the deeper the trauma, consequently, the deeper the dependencies which the undiagnosed and untreated PTSD drove its victims into. Thus Lolo Pidio, though not directly killed by the Death March of Bataan, but it still still egged him on to his march of death, via alcohol and nicotine dependence, and eventually via lung cancer.
While it's worthwhile to remember the heroism of our WWII dead and veterans every 9th of April, however, I think we musn't also forget that these dead and veterans also bled, suffered, died in more ways we can ever fathom and imagine. Thus, we shouldn't only honor the memory of their heroism, but also learn from the horrors they went through. And thus, as we remember them, we musn't also forget that war is never a palatable option despite its attendant glories. Victors, vanquished, heroes, villains. All of us lose in war. All of us. In memoriam, Capt. Elpidio "Lolo Pidio" Bermejo, Sr.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Philippine Military Academy HONOR CODE vis-a-vis PMA HONOR COMMITTEE

My problems about the Cudia controversy. The PMA Honor Committee which tried Aldrin Jeff Cudia, despite all the plaudits, protection, greatness attributed to it by PMA alumni and other parties gave me pause to ask several questions:
1. From where did the Honor Committee derive its authority to SUMMARILY try a Cadet?;
2. By item No. 1, is the Honor Committee a formal extension of the AFP's Military Tribunal?;
3. If the Honor Committee is a formal extension of the AFP's Military Tribunal, shouldn't the said body also need to have transparent and democratic judicial processes? Thus wasn't the Cudia trial, and all those that went before it without any legal nor judicial basis?;
4. Based on item 3, can't we thus say that the PMA Honor Committee, despite its being part of tradition is an EXTRA-JUDICIAL body, being such, thus all its proceedings being EXTRA-JUDICIAL also ILLEGAL, outside the law?;
5. As PMA cadets are publicly-funded, thus shouldn't the Cudia controversy be a matter of public interest, contrary to what some quarters claim that the Cudia controversy is an internal PMA problem?.
I've a strong inkling that though the Honor Code must still be a paramount component of the PMA, however I also am very doubtful that a body like the Honor Committee should at all be its implementor given its customary ABSOLUTE, SECRETIVE proceedings. Ours is a society which claims that transparency, fairness, and rights are among its basic hallmarks. Thus one can't help but chagrin that supposed guardians of our democratic society, our PMAers, are still ruled by an obviously medieval artifact. Though traditions may die hard, or may have served their purpose, I think it's about time that our republic should take a long, hard look into this Honor Committee of the PMA, as to whether it can really weather a democratic society's fundamental standards of transparency, rule of law, fairness, respect for rights, and constitutional probity.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Beware of digital addiction among kids


By Queena N. Lee-Chua
Philippine Daily Inquirer
8:04 pm | Monday, January 27th, 2014
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/570149/beware-of-digital-addiction-among-kids

Students should learn to use digital technology wisely. They should be the master of technology and not let it control them.

Wired societies are currently struggling with the ill effects of technology addiction among the youth. Let’s take three examples: South Korea, Japan and the United States.

South Korea

As the world’s most digitally connected society, nearly two-thirds of the population of South Korea own a smartphone and 98 percent of households have broadband Internet.

A government survey showed that about 2.55 million people are addicted to smartphones, using the device for eight or more hours per day.

South Korea National Information Agency reports that about 160,000 children aged 5 to 9 are addicted to the Internet, accessed through smartphones, tablets or personal computers.

Associated Press technology writer Youkyung Lee describes how the digital lifestyle has taken its toll on kids. She says a typical 11-year-old girl “sleeps with her android smartphone instead of a teddy bear.”

The first thing that the youngster’s eyes latch on when she wakes up is her smartphone. Her first task for the day is managing messages from friends.

The gadget has become a semipermanent appendage of her hand as it goes with her to the streets, the school and even the bathroom. Catastrophe means not having wireless Internet connection and a phone battery that is less than 20 percent full.

Kim Jun-hee, a kindergarten teacher for 10 years, carried out an eight-month survey on Internet addiction among preschool children. Early exposure to high-tech gadgets, she says, has made kids as young as 4 and 5 indifferent, fidgety and impulsive.

Kim teaches her students to take tech breaks such as resting the eyes and stretching. She tells them stories about Internet addiction and encourages them to play nondigital games.

According to Kim, parent cooperation is vital, and the best way to teach the kids is for adults to set a good example.

Treatment

Several South Korean medical practitioners have chosen to treat digital addiction more as an illness rather than just a social problem. Lee Hae-koo, a psychiatry professor at Catholic University of Korea’s College of Medicine, says the country, along with Taiwan and China, is actively researching whether

Internet addiction should truly be diagnosed as a mental illness.

In 2010, the unsettling story of a

3-month-old baby girl who died from neglect stirred the hearts of South Koreans. The parents were avid gamers who were so engrossed with marathon online gaming that they fed their baby only once a day.

Some teachers in Seoul require students to surrender their gadgets when they get to school. The gadgets are returned to them at the end of classes.

The South Korean government intends to take proactive measures and now provides counselors for young people who are obsessed with online gaming or Internet use.

The Ministry of Public Administration and Security is studying the issue of compulsory instruction on the dangers of Internet addiction starting from preschool, with kids as young as 3.

Japan

Japan and the United States are following suit. More than half a million kids aged 12 to 18 in Japan are believed to be Internet addicts, so Japan’s Ministry of Education plans to create “fasting camps” where kids will have no access to computers, smartphones, gaming devices or the Internet.

“We want to get them out of the virtual world and to encourage them to have real communication with other children and adults,” ministry spokesperson Akifumi Sekine tells The Telegraph.

Children will be encouraged to do outdoor activities and, should the transition prove traumatic, they will have access to psychiatrists and psychotherapists.

US

In September, the Behavioral Health Services at Bradford Regional Medical Center in Pennsylvania opened the first Internet addiction clinic in the United States.

The voluntary, inpatient program lasts for 10 days. Patients refrain from using phones, tablets or the Net for at least three days. Therapy and educational sessions help them control their compulsion.

According to the program’s founder, US psychologist Kimberly Young, typical addicts are young, male, intelligent, “struggle socially” and have low self-esteem. Most are obsessed with games such as World of Warcraft.

“Like any other addiction, we look at whether it has jeopardized their career, whether they lie about their usage or whether it interferes with relationships,” Young tells “Good Morning, America.”

The program costs $14,000, which is not covered by insurance. Patients are trained to return eventually to computer use, but in a healthy way. The goal is not to completely turn away from computers (which is impossible in today’s wired world), but to use them wisely.

Many Filipinos, particularly the youth, are also digital addicts. Parents, teachers and our government should address this problem before the majority of our youth fall into the gadget trap like their South Korean and Japanese counterparts.

E-mail the author at blessbook@yahoo.com.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Texas judge orders removal of pregnant Marlise Munoz life support

Erick Munoz arrived at a Fort Worth, Texas, court on 24 January 2014 Erick Munoz had filed suit to end his pregnant wife's life support, arguing she was legally deceased
A Texas judge has ordered a hospital to remove the life support of a brain-dead woman being kept alive because she is pregnant.
Judge RH Wallace gave John Peter Smith Hospital until Monday evening to cease life-saving measures for Marlise Munoz.
Mrs Munoz, 33, was 14 weeks pregnant when she fell unconscious in November. It is believed she had a blood clot.
The hospital had argued that a state law prohibits denying life-saving treatment to pregnant patients.
'Legally dead' Mrs Munoz's husband, Erick, filed suit against the hospital on 14 January, arguing that life-support efforts go against her wishes as a paramedic familiar with end-of-life issues.
"Marlise Munoz is legally dead, and to further conduct surgical procedures on a deceased body is nothing short of outrageous," he claimed in court documents.
The court filing also stipulated that, as Mrs Munoz is technically deceased, "she cannot possibly be a 'pregnant patient'" under Texas health and safety codes.
Mrs Munoz, 33, has remained unconscious since her husband discovered her on the kitchen floor on 26 November while pregnant with the couple's second child.
A blood clot has been listed as a possible cause.
Mr Munoz's lawyers subsequently revealed that Mrs Munoz's foetus - believed to be at 22 weeks gestation and to have been without oxygen for some time before medical intervention in November - was "distinctly abnormal", according to hospital medical records.
On Friday, Judge Wallace ruled the Fort Worth hospital must remove Mrs Munoz's life support by 17:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Monday.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

3 MYTHS THAT BLOCK PROGRESS FOR THE POOR

2014 GATES ANNUAL LETTER
http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/?cid=MG_FB_LL3_012220%2F#section=home

3 MYTHS THAT BLOCK PROGRESS FOR THE POOR

By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been. People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient. You might think that such striking progress would be widely celebrated, but in fact, Melinda and I are struck by how many people think the world is getting worse. The belief that the world can’t solve extreme poverty and disease isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful. That’s why in this year’s letter we take apart some of the myths that slow down the work. The next time you hear these myths, we hope you will do the same.
- Bill Gates

Myth One

POOR COUNTRIES ARE DOOMED TO STAY POOR

by Bill Gates
I’ve heard this myth stated about lots of places, but most often about Africa. A quick Web search will turn up dozens of headlines and book titles such as 'How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor.'
Thankfully these books are not bestsellers, because the basic premise is false. The fact is, incomes and other measures of human welfare are rising almost everywhere, including in Africa.
So why is this myth so deeply ingrained?
I’ll get to Africa in a moment, but first let’s look at the broader trend around the world, going back a half-century. Fifty years ago, the world was divided in three: the United States and our Western allies; the Soviet Union and its allies; and everyone else. I was born in 1955 and grew up learning that the so-called First World was well off or “developed.” Most everyone in the First World went to school, and we lived long lives. We weren't sure what life was like behind the Iron Curtain, but it sounded like a scary place. Then there was the so-called Third World—basically everyone else. As far as we knew, it was filled with people who were poor, didn't go to school much, and died young. Worse, they were trapped in poverty, with no hope of moving up.
The statistics bear out these impressions. In 1960, almost all of the global economy was in the West. Per capita income in the United States was about $15,000 a year.1 (That’s income per person, so $60,000 a year for a family of four.) Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, incomes per person were far lower. Brazil: $1,982. China: $928. Botswana: $383. And so on.
Years later, I would see this disparity myself when I traveled. Melinda and I visited Mexico City in 1987 and were surprised by the poverty we witnessed. There was no running water in most homes, so we saw people trekking long distances by bike or on foot to fill up water jugs. It reminded us of scenes we had seen in rural Africa. The guy who ran Microsoft’s Mexico City office would send his kids back to the United States for checkups to make sure the smog wasn’t making them sick.
Today, the city is mind-blowingly different. Its air is as clean as Los Angeles’ (which isn’t great, but certainly an improvement from 1987). There are high-rise buildings, new roads, and modern bridges. There are still slums and pockets of poverty, but by and large when I visit there now I think, “Wow, most people who live here are middle-class. What a miracle.”
Look at the photo of Mexico City from 1986, and compare it to one from 2011.
©Corbis, Owen Franken
^ Mexico City 1986, 2011
©Corbis, Keith Dannemiller
You can see a similar transformation in these before-and-after photos of Nairobi and Shanghai.
©Corbis, Nigel Pavitt
©Getty Images National Geographic


^ Nairobi 1969, 2009
©Corbis, John Heaton
©Corbis, Dean Conger


^ Shanghai 1978, 2012
These photos illustrate a powerful story: The global picture of poverty has been completely redrawn in my lifetime. Per-person incomes in Turkey and Chile are where the United States level was in 1960. Malaysia is nearly there, as is Gabon. And that no-man’s-land between rich and poor countries has been filled in by China, India, Brazil, and others. Since 1960, China’s real income per person has gone up eightfold. India’s has quadrupled, Brazil’s has almost quintupled, and the small country of Botswana, with shrewd management of its mineral resources, has seen a thirty-fold increase. There is a class of nations in the middle that barely existed 50 years ago, and it includes more than half of the world’s population.
Here’s another way to see the transition: by counting people instead of countries:
So the easiest way to respond to the myth that poor countries are doomed to stay poor is to point to one fact: They haven’t stayed poor. Many—though by no means all—of the countries we used to call poor now have thriving economies. And the percentage of very poor people has dropped by more than half since 1990.
That still leaves more than one billion people in extreme poverty, so it’s not time to celebrate. But it is fair to say that the world has changed so much that the terms “developing countries” and “developed countries” have outlived their usefulness.
Any category that lumps China and the Democratic Republic of Congo together confuses more than it clarifies. Some so-called developing countries have come so far that it’s fair to say they have developed. A handful of failed states are hardly developing at all. Most countries are somewhere in the middle. That’s why it’s more instructive to think about countries as low-, middle-, or high-income. (Some experts even divide middle-income into two sub-categories: lower-middle and upper-middle.)
Most poor countries that received aid 20 years ago are doing better than before.
With that in mind, I’ll turn back to the more specific and pernicious version of this myth: “Sure, the Asian tigers are doing fine, but life in Africa never gets better, and it never will.”
First, don’t let anyone tell you that Africa is worse off today than it was 50 years ago. Income per person has in fact risen in sub-Saharan Africa over that time, and quite a bit in a few countries. After plummeting during the debt crisis of the 1980s, it has climbed by two thirds since 1998, to nearly $2,200 from just over $1,300. Today, more and more countries are turning toward strong sustained development, and more will follow. Seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies of the past half-decade are in Africa.
Africa has also made big strides in health and education. Since 1960, the life span for women in sub-Saharan Africa has gone up from 41 to 57 years, despite the HIV epidemic. Without HIV it would be 61 years. The percentage of children in school has gone from the low 40s to over 75 percent since 1970. Fewer people are hungry, and more people have good nutrition. If getting enough to eat, going to school, and living longer are measures of a good life, then life is definitely getting better there. These improvements are not the end of the story; they’re the foundation for more progress.
A growing number of countries in Africa are building community health systems, which are extremely cost-effective (Accra, Ghana, 2013).
Of course, these regional averages obscure big differences among countries. In Ethiopia, income is only $800 a year per person. In Botswana it’s nearly $12,000. You see this huge variation within countries too: Life in a major urban area like Nairobi looks nothing like life in a rural Kenyan village. You should look skeptically at anyone who treats an entire continent as an undifferentiated mass of poverty and disease.
The bottom line: Poor countries are not doomed to stay poor. Some of the so-called developing nations have already developed. Many more are on their way. The nations that are still finding their way are not trying to do something unprecedented. They have good examples to learn from.
I am optimistic enough about this that I am willing to make a prediction. By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. (I mean by our current definition of poor.)2 Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer. Countries will learn from their most productive neighbors and benefit from innovations like new vaccines, better seeds, and the digital revolution. Their labor forces, buoyed by expanded education, will attract new investments.
A few countries will be held back by war, politics (North Korea, barring a big change there), or geography (landlocked nations in central Africa). And inequality will still be a problem: There will be poor people in every region.
But most of them will live in countries that are self-sufficient. Every nation in South America, Asia, and Central America (with the possible exception of Haiti), and most in coastal Africa, will have joined the ranks of today’s middle-income nations. More than 70 percent of countries will have a higher per-person income than China does today. Nearly 90 percent will have a higher income than India does today.
It will be a remarkable achievement. When I was born, most countries in the world were poor. In the next two decades, desperately poor countries will become the exception rather than the rule. Billions of people will have been lifted out of extreme poverty. The idea that this will happen within my lifetime is simply amazing to me.
Some people will say that helping almost every country develop to middle-income status will not solve all the world’s problems and will even exacerbate some. It is true that we’ll need to develop cheaper, cleaner sources of energy to keep all this growth from making the climate and environment worse. We will also need to solve the problems that come with affluence, like higher rates of diabetes. However, as more people are educated, they will contribute to solving these problems. Bringing the development agenda near to completion will do more to improve human lives than anything else we do.
Myth Two

FOREIGN AID IS A BIG WASTE

by Bill Gates
You may have read news articles about foreign aid that are filled with big generalizations based on small examples. They tend to cite anecdotes about waste in some program and suggest that foreign aid is a waste. If you hear enough of these stories, it’s easy to get the impression that aid just doesn’t work. It’s no wonder that one British newspaper claimed last year that more than half of voters want cuts in overseas aid.
These articles give you a distorted picture of what is happening in countries that get aid. Since Melinda and I started the foundation 14 years ago, we’ve been lucky enough to go see the impact of programs funded by the foundation and donor governments. What we see over time is people living longer, getting healthier, and escaping poverty, partly because of services that aid helped develop and deliver.
I worry about the myth that aid doesn’t work. It gives political leaders an excuse to try to cut back on it—and that would mean fewer lives are saved, and more time before countries can become self-sufficient.
So I want to take on a few of the criticisms you may have read.3 I should acknowledge up front that no program is perfect, and there are ways that aid can be made more effective. And aid is only one of the tools for fighting poverty and disease: Wealthy countries also need to make policy changes, like opening their markets and cutting agricultural subsidies, and poor countries need to spend more on health and development for their own people.
But broadly speaking, aid is a fantastic investment, and we should be doing more. It saves and improves lives very effectively, laying the groundwork for the kind of long-term economic progress I described in myth #1 (which in turn helps countries stop depending on aid). It is ironic that the foundation has a reputation for a hard-nosed focus on results, and yet many people are cynical about the government aid programs we partner with. The foundation does a lot to help these programs be more efficient and measure their progress.
Foreign aid helps refugees like Nikuze Aziza feed their families and stay healthy (Kiziba Camp, Rwanda, 2011).
The Amount of Aid
Many people think that development aid is a large part of rich countries’ budgets, which would mean a lot can be saved by cutting back. When pollsters ask Americans what share of the budget goes to aid, the average response is “25 percent.” When asked how much the government should spend, people tend to say “10 percent.” I suspect you would get similar results in the United Kingdom, Germany, and elsewhere.
Here are the actual numbers. For Norway, the most generous nation in the world, it’s less than 3 percent. For the United States, it’s less than 1 percent.
One percent of the U.S. budget is about $30 billion a year. Of that, roughly $11 billion is spent on health: vaccines, bed nets, family planning, drugs to keep people with HIV alive, and so on. (The other $19 billion goes to things like building schools, roads, and irrigation systems.)
I think foreign aid is important.
I don’t want to imply that $11 billion a year isn’t a lot of money. But to put it in perspective, it’s about $30 for every American. Imagine that the income tax form asked, “Can we use $30 of the taxes you’re already paying to protect 120 children from measles?”4  Would you check yes or no?
It also helps to look at the overall impact this spending has. To get a rough figure, I added up all the money spent by donors on health-related aid since 1980. Then I divided by the number of children’s deaths that have been prevented in that same time. It comes to less than $5,000 per child saved (and that doesn’t include the improvements in health that go beyond saving the lives of young children).5 $5,000 may sound expensive, but keep in mind that U.S. government agencies typically value the life of an American at several million dollars.
Also remember that healthy children do more than merely survive. They go to school and eventually work, and over time they make their countries more self-sufficient. This is why I say aid is such a bargain.
This graphic shows you a few of the programs supported by aid from the United States and other donors. As you can see, the impact is quite impressive.
The U.S. government spends more than twice as much on farm subsidies as on health aid. It spends more than 60 times as much on the military. The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.
Corruption
One of the most common stories about aid is that some of it gets wasted on corruption. It is true that when health aid is stolen or wasted, it costs lives. We need to root out fraud and squeeze more out of every dollar.
But we should also remember the relative size of the problem. Small-scale corruption, such as a government official who puts in for phony travel expenses, is an inefficiency that amounts to a tax on aid. While we should try to reduce it, there’s no way to eliminate it, any more than we could eliminate waste from every government program—or from every business, for that matter. Suppose small-scale corruption amounts to a 2 percent tax on the cost of saving a life. We should try to reduce that. But if we can’t, should we stop trying to save lives?
You may have heard about a scandal in Cambodia last year involving a bed net program run by The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Cambodian officials were caught taking six-figure kickbacks from contractors. Editorial writers trotted out headlines like “How to waste foreign aid money.” One article mentioned me as someone whose money was being wasted.
I appreciate the concern, and it’s a good thing when the press holds institutions accountable. But the press didn’t uncover this scheme. The Global Fund did, during an internal audit. In finding and fixing the problem, The Global Fund did exactly what it should be doing. It would be odd to demand that they root out corruption and then punish them for tracking down the small percentage that gets misused.
There is a double standard at work here. I’ve heard people calling on the government to shut down some aid program if one dollar of corruption is found. On the other hand, four of the past seven governors of Illinois have gone to prison for corruption, and to my knowledge no one has demanded that Illinois schools be shut down or its highways closed.
Melinda and I would not be supporting The Global Fund, or any other program, if the money were being misused in a large-scale way. Malaria deaths have dropped 80 percent in Cambodia since The Global Fund started working there in 2003. The horror stories you hear about—where aid just helps a dictator build a new palace—mostly come from a time when a lot of aid was designed to win allies for the Cold War rather than to improve people’s lives. Since that time, all of the actors have gotten much better at measurement. Particularly in health and agriculture, we can validate the outcomes and know the value we’re getting per dollar spent.
Since 2000, a global effort against malaria has saved 3.3 million lives (Phnom Dambang village, Cambodia, 2011).
More and more, technology will help in the fight against corruption. The Internet is making it easier for citizens to know what their government should be delivering—like how much money their health clinic should get—so they can hold officials accountable. As public knowledge goes up, corruption goes down, and more money goes where it’s supposed to.
Aid Dependence
Another argument from critics is that aid holds back normal economic development, keeping countries dependent on generosity from outsiders.
This argument makes several mistakes. First, it lumps different kinds of aid together. It doesn’t differentiate aid that is sent directly to governments from funding that is used for research into new tools like vaccines and seeds. The money America spent in the 1960s to develop more productive crops made Asian and Latin American countries less dependent on us, not more. The money we spend today on a Green Revolution for Africa is helping countries grow more food, making them less dependent as well. Aid is a crucial funding source for these “global public goods” that are key for health and economic growth. That’s why our foundation spends over a third of our grants on developing new tools.
Second, the “aid breeds dependency” argument misses all the countries that have graduated from being aid recipients, and focuses only on the most difficult remaining cases. Here is a quick list of former major recipients that have grown so much that they receive hardly any aid today: Botswana, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Thailand, Mauritius, Singapore, and Malaysia. South Korea received enormous amounts of aid after the Korean War, and is now a net donor. China is also a net aid donor and funds a lot of science to help developing countries. India receives 0.09 percent of its GDP in aid, down from 1 percent in 1991.
Even in sub-Saharan Africa, the share of the economy that comes from aid is a third lower now than it was 20 years ago, while the total amount of aid to the region has doubled. There are a few countries like Ethiopia that depend on aid, and while we all—especially Ethiopians themselves—want to get to a point where that is no longer true, I don’t know of any compelling argument that says Ethiopia would be better off with a lot less aid today.
Critics are right to say there is no definitive proof that aid drives economic growth. But you could say the same thing about almost any other factor in the economy. It is very hard to know exactly which investments will spark economic growth, especially in the near term. However, we do know that aid drives improvements in health, agriculture, and infrastructure that correlate strongly with growth in the long run. Health aid saves lives and allows children to develop mentally and physically, which will pay off within a generation. Studies show that these children become healthier adults who work more productively. If you’re arguing against that kind of aid, you’ve got to argue that saving lives doesn’t matter to economic growth, or that saving lives simply doesn’t matter.
Explainer: How Does Foreign Aid Work?
The lifesaving power of aid is so obvious that even aid critics acknowledge it. In the middle of his book White Man’s Burden, William Easterly (one of the best-known aid critics) lists several global health successes that were funded by aid. Here are a few highlights:
  • “A vaccination campaign in southern Africa virtually eliminated measles as a killer of children.”
  • “An international effort eradicated smallpox worldwide.”
  • “A program to control tuberculosis in China cut the number of cases by 40 percent between 1990 and 2000.”
  • “A regional program to eliminate polio in Latin America after 1985 has eliminated it as a public health threat in the Americas.”
The last point is worth expanding on. Today there are only three countries left that have never been polio-free: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Last year the global health community adopted a comprehensive plan aimed at getting the world polio-free by 2018, and dozens of donors stepped up to fund it. Once we get rid of polio, the world will save about $2 billion a year that it now spends fighting the disease.
Aid helps save people’s lives.
The bottom line: Health aid is a phenomenal investment. When I look at how many fewer children are dying than 30 years ago, and how many people are living longer and healthier lives, I get quite optimistic about the future. The foundation worked with a group of eminent economists and global health experts to look at what’s possible in the years ahead. As they wrote last month in the medical journal The Lancet, with the right investments and changes in policies, by 2035, every country will have child-mortality rates that are as low as the rate in America or the U.K. in 1980. 6
You can see here just how dramatic this convergence will be:
Let’s put this achievement in historical perspective. A baby born in 1960 had an 18 percent chance of dying before her fifth birthday. For a child born today, the odds are less than 5 percent. In 2035, they will be 1.6 percent. I can’t think of any other 75-year improvement in human welfare that would even come close.
To get there, the world will need to unite around this goal, from scientists and health workers to donors and recipient countries. If this vision is reflected in the next round of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, it will help get everyone working on this milestone.
Many low- and middle-income countries will develop enough to pay for this convergence themselves. Others will need continued generosity from donors, including investments in health-related R&D. Governments will also have to set the right policies. For example middle-income countries should look at taxing tobacco, and at cutting fossil-fuel subsidies to free up funding for health.
Above all, I hope we can stop discussing whether aid works, and spend more time talking about how it can work better. This is especially important as you move from upstream research on global public goods into the downstream effort of delivering these innovations. Are the recipient countries in charge of figuring out where health clinics should be built and training the workers? Are donors helping local teams build up the expertise they need to put the Western experts out of business? Are the best performers sharing the lessons they’ve learned so other countries can follow suit? This has been a big area of learning for the foundation.
I have believed for a long time that disparities in health are some of the worst inequities in the world—that it is unjust and unacceptable that millions of children die every year from causes that we can prevent or treat. I don’t think a child’s fate should be left to what Warren Buffett calls the “ovarian lottery.” If we hit this goal of convergence, the ovarian lottery for health outcomes will be closed for good.
Myth Three

Saving lives leads to overpopulation

by Melinda Gates
We see comments like this all the time on the Gates Foundation’s blog, Facebook page, and Twitter feed. It makes sense that people are concerned about whether the planet can continue to sustain the human race, especially in the age of climate change. But this kind of thinking has gotten the world into a lot of trouble. Anxiety about the size of the world population has a dangerous tendency to override concern for the human beings who make up that population.
Going back at least to Thomas Malthus, who published his An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, people have worried about doomsday scenarios in which food supply can’t keep up with population growth. As recently as the Cold War, American foreign policy experts theorized that famine would make poor countries susceptible to Communism. Controlling the population of the poor countries labeled the Third World became an official policy in the so-called First World. In the worst cases, this meant trying to force women not to get pregnant. Gradually, the global family planning community moved away from this single-minded focus on limiting reproduction and started thinking about how to help women seize control of their own lives. This was a welcome change. We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
The fact is that a laissez faire approach to development—letting children die now so they don’t starve later—doesn’t actually work, thank goodness. It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most deaths have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in these countries tend to have the most births, too. Scholars debate the precise reasons why, but the correlation between child death and birth rates is strong.
Take Afghanistan, where child mortality—the number of children who die before turning five years old—is very high. Afghan women have an average of 6.2 children.7 As a result, even though more than 10 percent of Afghan children don’t survive, the country’s population is projected to grow from 30 million today to 55 million by 2050. Clearly, high death rates don’t prevent population growth (not to mention the fact that Afghanistan is nobody’s idea of a model for a prosperous future).
Overpopulation can be prevented by saving children’s lives.
When children survive in greater numbers, parents decide to have smaller families. Consider Thailand. Around 1960, child mortality started going down. Then, around 1970, after the government invested in a strong family planning program, birth rates started to drop. In the course of just two decades, Thai women went from having an average of six children to an average of two. Today, child mortality in Thailand is almost as low as it is in the United States, and Thai women have an average of 1.6 children.
If you look at the graph below of Brazil, you’ll see the same thing: As the child mortality rate declined, so did the birth rate. I’ve also charted the population growth rate, to show that the country’s population grew more slowly as more children survived. If you graphed most South American countries, the lines would look similar.
This pattern of falling death rates followed by falling birth rates applies for the vast majority of the world. Demographers have written a lot about this phenomenon. The French were the first to start this transition, toward the end of the 18th century. In France, average family size went down every decade for 150 years in a row. In Germany, women started having fewer children in the 1880s, and in just 50 years family size had mostly stabilized again. In Southeast Asia and Latin America, average fertility dropped from six or seven children per woman to two or three in a single generation, thanks in large measure to the modern contraceptives available by the 1960s.
Because most countries—with exceptions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia—have now gone through this transition, the global population is growing more slowly every year. As Hans Rosling, a professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and one of my favorite data geeks, said, “The amount of children in the world today is probably the most there will be! We are entering into the age of the Peak Child!”
Given all the evidence, my view of a sustainable future is much more optimistic than the Malthusians’ view. The planet does not thrive when the sickest are allowed to die off, but rather when they are able to improve their lives. Human beings are not machines. We don’t reproduce mindlessly. We make decisions based on the circumstances we face.
Here’s an example: Mothers in Mozambique are 80 times more likely to lose a child than mothers in Portugal, the country that ruled Mozambique until 1975. This appalling aggregate statistic represents a grim reality that individual Mozambican women must confront; they can never be confident their children will live. I’ve spoken to mothers who gave birth to many babies and lost most of them. They tell me all their mourning was worth it, so they could end up with the number of surviving children they wanted.
When children are well-nourished, fully vaccinated, and treated for common illnesses like diarrhea, malaria, and pneumonia, the future gets a lot more predictable. Parents start making decisions based on the reasonable expectation that their children will live.
Death rates are just one of many factors that affect birth rates. For example, women’s empowerment, as measured by age of marriage and level of education, matters a great deal. Girls who marry in their mid-teens tend to start getting pregnant earlier and therefore have more children. They usually drop out of school, which limits their opportunities to learn about their bodies, sex, and reproduction—and to gain other kinds of knowledge that helps them improve their lives. And it’s typically very difficult for adolescent brides to speak up in their marriages about their desire to plan their families. I just traveled to Ethiopia, where I had a long conversation with young brides, most of whom were married at 11 years old. They all talked about wanting a different future for their children, but the information they had about contraceptives was spotty at best, and they knew that when they were forced to leave school their best pathway to opportunity was closed off.
In fact, when girls delay marriage and stay in school, everything changes. In a recent study of 30 developing countries, women with no schooling had three more children on average than women who attended high school. When women are empowered with knowledge and skills, they start to change their minds about the kind of future they want.
I recently spent an afternoon with a woman named Sadi Seyni, who scratches out a living for five children on an arid farm in a desert region of Niger. She didn’t know about contraceptives when she got married as a teenager. Now she knows, and she’s spacing her pregnancies several years apart, to protect her health and the health of her newborns. I visited the place where she learned about family planning: her village’s well, where women go to talk. And talk. And talk. While we were telling stories, a young bride came to get water. Through a translator, this girl told me that her pregnancies were “God’s will” and therefore out of her control. Sadi suggested that as long as this girl keeps coming to the well and listening, she’ll change her view over time. Even the informal education that happens when a little knowledge spreads among friends transforms the way people think about what’s possible.
Like millions of women in sub-Saharan Africa, Sadi didn’t know about contraceptives when she got married (Talle, Niger, 2012).
It is important to note that the desire to plan is only part of the equation; women need access to contraceptives to follow through on their plan. Sadi lives a stone’s throw away from a health clinic, but it doesn’t carry the contraceptive injections she prefers. She has to walk 10 miles every three months to get her shots. Sadi is incensed, as she should be, about how difficult it is for her to care for her family. Many women like Sadi have no information about planning their pregnancies in a healthy way—and no access to contraceptives. More than 200 million women say they don’t want to be pregnant but aren’t using contraceptives. These women are being robbed of opportunities to decide how to raise their families. And because they can’t determine how many children to have or when to have them, they also have a harder time feeding them, paying for medical care, or sending them to school. It’s a vicious cycle of poverty.
With access to a range of contraceptives and information about birth spacing, women like Sharmila Devi are able to raise healthier families (Dedaur village, India, 2013).
On the other hand, the virtuous cycle that starts with basic health and empowerment ends not only with a better life for women and their families, but with significant economic growth at the country level. In fact, one reason for the so-called Asian economic miracle of the 1980s was the fact that fertility across Southeast Asia declined so rapidly. Experts call this phenomenon the demographic dividend.8 As fewer children die and fewer are born, the age structure of the population gradually changes, as you can see in the graphic below.
Eventually, there’s a bulge of people in their prime working years. This means more of the population is in the workforce and generating economic growth. At the same time, since the number of young children is relatively smaller, the government and parents are able to invest more in each child’s education and health care, which can lead to more economic growth over the long term.
These changes don’t just happen by themselves. Governments need to set policies to help countries take advantage of the opportunity created by demographic transitions. With help from donors, they need to invest in health and education, prioritize family planning, and create jobs. But if leaders set the right strategic priorities, the prospect of a virtuous cycle of development that transforms whole societies is very real.
The virtuous cycle is not just development jargon. It’s a phenomenon that millions of poor people understand very well, and it guides their decisions from day to day. I have the privilege of meeting women and men in poor countries who commit the small acts of love and optimism—like going without so they can pay their children’s school fees—that propel this cycle forward. The future they hope for and work hard for is the future I believe in.
Children who have a healthy start in life kick off a virtuous cycle of development (Dakar, Senegal, 2013).
In this version of the future, currently poor countries are healthier, richer, and more equal—and growing sustainably. The alternate vision summed up by the Malthusian myth—a world where sustainability depends on permanent misery for some—is a misreading of the evidence and a failure of imagination.
Saving lives doesn’t lead to overpopulation. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity, fundamental equality, and access to contraceptives is the only way to secure a sustainable world. We will build a better future for everyone by giving people the freedom and the power to build a better future for themselves and their families.

Looking Ahead

If you read the news every day, it’s easy to get the impression that the world is getting worse. There is nothing inherently wrong with focusing on bad news, of course—as long as you get it in context. Melinda and I are disgusted by the fact that more than six million children died last year. But we are motivated by the fact that this number is the lowest ever recorded. We want to make sure it keeps going down.
We hope you will help get the word out on all these myths. Help your friends put the bad news in context. Tell political leaders that you care about saving lives and that you support foreign aid. If you’re looking to donate a few dollars, you should know that organizations working in health and development offer a phenomenal return on your money. The next time you’re in an online forum and someone claims that saving children causes overpopulation, you can explain the facts. You can help bring about a new global belief that every life has equal value.
We all have the chance to create a world where extreme poverty is the exception rather than the rule, and where all children have the same chance to thrive, no matter where they’re born. For those of us who believe in the value of every human life, there isn’t any more inspiring work under way in the world today.
Help our partners #stopthemyth
Bill and Melinda Gates
Co-chairs, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
January 2014
Continue the conversation