CCP shows bad taste

BusinessWorld, August 10, 2011
Commentary — Minyong Ordoñez

The outspoken Archbishop Oscar Cruz has stirred a hornet’s nest again, declaring that the art exhibit “Poleteismo” at the Cultural Center of the Philippines is “sick and their art sickening.” The CCP is being threatened with a suit by several civic and religious leaders for allegedly violating a provision in the revised penal code covering “immoral doctrine, obscene publications and exhibitions, and indecent shows.”

The disdain of CCP’s pluralistic society liberals — whose idea of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s obscene and what’s descent is often confused — showed in their non-discernment of the intuitive decency and transcendental nobility of human beings. This was typified by Karen Flores, CCP head of visual arts, who justified the exhibit. To Christians who found the exhibit offensive, Ms. Flores’ bellicose and insensitive retort was: “I could call it a moralist hysteria. I would call it religious myopia!” What reckless thinking!

Morality is not hysteria. In fact, it’s focused on the clarity of absolute truth. Christianity is not myopic at all. It thrives on moral imagination, which makes it mind-blowing. Ms. Flores, please read Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton and find out why.

For ultimate irony, Ms. Flores lectured Christians. “You can have your faith and that can be respected.” (Eh, nasa CCP nga ang nanglalapastangan, eh!). But you must be able to tolerate and understand other people’s views (Agree! Pwera kababuyan!).

CCP intellectualized Poleteismo’s theme, thus: “Idolatry and deconstruction of neo deities.” Wow! What gobbledygook to insult the Christian culture of our people (90% of the population). Is Poleteismo fault-finding by dismantling the elements of the so-called neo deities (whatever that means)? Are deities dysfunctional or coherent? How does a deity become a neo? And what about idolatry? Should sacred objects be desecrated in the name of free speech? Which one is voodoo? Which one conforms to faith and reason? Poleteismo is too dumb to distinguish. All it does is inflict on Christians the narcissistic and egoistic persona of an artist who cannot discipline his thinking and his craft.

Poleteismo’s view of our society is convoluted and hackneyed. It’s a society riddled with colonial, racial, communal, and individual dysfunctions caused by decades of muddle-through democracy afflicted with systematic corruption. To execute the idea the artist plastered three walls, artsy-fartsy style, with a mish mash of kitschy posters, tear sheets, cutouts of heroes, villains, politicians, and entertainers interspersed with sacramentals such as gigantic Baguio rosaries and crucifixes.

The horrifying shocker is pictures of Christ’s countenance defiled by attaching to his mutilated nose a huge penis protruding like a bulbous, cancerous growth. Kawawa talaga ang mukha ni Jesus Christ. Binaboy ng todo-todo. The most horrendous blasphemy is a bizarre and rotten wood crucifix with a small mirror framed by a junked monstrance. Below it is a big, red, rubber, penis (again!) held by a spring so naughty men can play with it (tatawing-tawing). All over hang strings and scapulars. Beneath it are albulario and mangkukulam brews.

Poleteismo’s penis Christ and penis crucifix put to shame Celdran’s Damaso blasphemy hurled inside Manila Cathedral where mass was being celebrated.

In recent years, Filipino bashing became the no-brainer and expedient route upcoming film and visual artists took to generate content and expressions for their creativity: slum kids scavenging for garbage, teen prostitution, petty street crimes, physically abused maids, injustices in poor, remote village, etc. Shooting episodic scenes cinema verite style results in artsy, craftsy creations. Third world poverty and social dysfunctions move first world jurors in Cannes Film Festival. Of course, filth attracts voyeurs. High angst is built-in this genre called porn poverty, which brings us to a point: Do artists ask themselves whether showing filth, porn, or sacrilege is art? Is human degradation artistic or abomination? Is communicating tabloid fodder the artist’s task? Or is it an artist’s masochist delight?

Communicating realism and the right to free speech are the conventional excuse for rationalizing loutish art. Trash is trash and no amount of highfalutin gobbledygook can beautify trash. Art is appreciated, enjoyed, and uplifting, whether it’s Amorsolo’s sun-drenched pastorals or Joya’s subtle shapes and subdued colors.

Artists, as the gifted communicators and sharers of aesthetics and the sublime — rather than muckrakers and peddlers of indignities and aberrations — are tasked with uplifting people’s awareness of truth, beauty, and dignity. How dare they defame viewer’s beliefs and noble aspirations. Neither can they invoke creative chutzpah in obscuring the clear distinction between what’s right and what’s wrong.

Art often needs the musings of authentic art critics to guide viewers on the thematic subtitles and symbolisms in the arts. Poleteismo doesn’t need one. Any self-respecting Christian will see in Penis Christ and Penis Crucifix blatant sacrilege, and useless iconoclasm against his faith. Poleteismo is an obvious and odious attack, not only at the image but also at the reality of the gospel. Walang sagrado sa CCP.

Bad taste is the kindest description I can say about CCP’s licentiousness. The worst is sickening, said Archbishop Cruz.

Minyong Ordoñez is a freelance journalist. He is currently a member of the Manila Overseas Press Club. Email: hgordonez@gmail.com

Fasten your seatbelts, there’s turbulence ahead

This will be an extraordinary century, says Oxford benefactor and futurologist Dr James Martin, because humanity is outgrowing this small planet.

Like the tension building in a suspense novel, the dangers from future climate change are ratcheting up year after year. The world’s media have become increasingly full of images of collapsing ice shelves, stranded polar bears, raging hurricanes, lands stricken by drought, fires sweeping across southern Australia and deserts spreading. The ice caps are melting in both the Arctic and Antarctic. But all this is only an overture to trouble on a much grander scale. The runaway transformation of the Earth’s climate may become the worst crisis of human history.

Meanwhile, technology will bring increased wealth, improved healthcare and entertainment, great creativity and brilliant media-assisted education. People will have more leisure time and use it better. Environments of very different design will be wonderful places to live. The future is a tapestry of immense problems and great improvements in society. To comprehend and improve this future needs research and understanding of the highest order, an area in which Oxford University is pre-eminent. The grim news is that humanity has been overspending the Earth’s resources for decades, like a wealthy family running up extreme debts at a bank that it could never repay. Earth scientists know we are in trouble. Too much carbon in the atmosphere is causing weird weather and a slow rise in the temperature of the Earth which, if not stopped, will lead to devastating consequences. Correcting this will need a massive effort to replace carbon energy sources and make rainforests absorb as much carbon as possible.

Detailed computer calculations make it clear that dangerous climate change can be prevented only if action is taken quickly. Procrastination incurs a heavy penalty but the world is procrastinating. The longer it does so, the more difficult the problem will become. Problems of runaway change can be prevented if humanity acts together, with powerful leadership, but this seems unlikely to be the case. Almost certainly, the average world temperature in the late 2030s will exceed 2° Celsius above the baseline that has existed since civilization began. If we don’t act strongly to stop it, it will keep climbing to 4° or higher. When the average temperature is 4° higher, some parts of the Earth will be much higher. The climate will be in danger of sliding into a new state hostile to humans. This is studied with very detailed computer models that divide the atmosphere into small blocks and show the gases and heat that flow from each block to adjacent ones. Unfortunately politicians and most of the public ignore the predictions of the models, like the crew of a ship happily sailing into a hurricane.

The Earth has vast, ancient underground reservoirs of water called aquifers, which are essential for agriculture. Independent of climate change, we are emptying many of the aquifers. The amount of water we are taking from them is over four hundred million tons a day more than is being replaced by rain. If that amount of water were carried in water trucks, it would need 25 million of them – a convoy 30 times the Earth’s diameter – every day without being replenished. This cannot go on much longer.

If you sail across the oceans, you can go for weeks without seeing another vessel. It’s incomprehensible that we’ve fished out 90% of the edible fish, and are building bigger fishing fleets. When I was a kid, the Earth had about 2 billion people, and humanity’s ecological footprint was well within a range that the Earth could support. It was a land of plenty. However, our consumption of its resources increased until, by the mid-1980s, we not only exceeded a consumption rate that was sustainable but went far beyond it. By 2030, we’ll need the equivalent of two Earths to keep up with our demands.
Solutions

There is a rich diversity of solutions to these problems. However, generally today, there is immense resistance to implementing or even understanding them. Small underground nuclear power units called ‘nuclear batteries’ will be ultra-safe and maintenance-free. New types of photovoltaics will make electricity from sunlight cheaper than that from coal. Changes in the monsoons will cause extreme flooding, as in Pakistan, and the water will be funnelled into aquifers. It amazes me that water-stressed areas today don’t capture their rainwater, which is easy to do. China may gain access to Lake Baikal, which contains about one-fifth of all the fresh water on Earth. There is also much research on improving food-growing productivity.

A particularly important concept is ‘eco-affluence’. It is possible to immensely improve our quality of life without increasing greenhouse gases or using up an unsustainable share of the planet’s resources. The term eco-affluence refers to a rich, enjoyable and sometimes complex way of life that does no ecological harm. The economy can grow in new ways without harmful consequences. Eco-affluence is one of the most important concepts for humankind’s future.

Slow global warming will make some places more pleasant. By 2030, Scotland may have the climate that Cornwall had. Many people will be buying homes in Finland. People will want to move from where the weather is hostile to where the weather is welcoming. This will occur at a time of radical redesign of cities with stunning new architecture. Instead of being dominated by the car and petroleum industries, new cities will be dominated by social interaction and beautiful environments. These may be called climatechange cities. Patagonia, perhaps the most beautiful place on Earth, will be covered in wildflowers and have climate-change cities. There will be a booming economy in the era of eco-affluence, nano-robotics and accelerating machine intelligence.

We tend to deal with severe problems only after a catastrophe forces us to. A catastrophe-first pattern is observed in many different areas. Public indifference changes to shock or terror when a catastrophe happens. The catastrophe-first pattern is a not a good way to run the planet because the possible catastrophes will become much larger. To avoid a catastrophe-first pattern, politicians and the public must listen to scientists. Sooner or later, there will be large-scale panic about climate destruction. By then, it may be too late to lessen the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Catastrophes in our future will not be caused by malicious intent but by an endless babble of misinformation, the determination of executives to focus on stock prices, and politicians seeing only as far as the next election.
Our stolen future

A major conference in New York in March 2008 called ‘Global Warming is not a Crisis’ opened with the main speaker saying, “The science is settled. Climate change is not caused by human activity.” The conference concluded that because climate change is caused by natural forces there is nothing that humans can do to stop it. There are many climate deniers, some of them in high places. There is remarkable opposition in the US government to taking action about global warming. The public wants to avoid any form of carbon tax. We have reached a time when the understanding of science is vital for our existence. A major concern today is that powerful voices with no knowledge of science often make themselves heard much louder than scientists. Many scientists avoid the public stage. Most politicians haven’t a clue about science. This is a time on Earth when we desperately need to get our act together, but it is an age of dangerous misinformation. Highly skilled PR organisations earn a fortune by persuading the public of anything that will increase the profits of the corporations that hire them. Strong and urgent actions are needed to slow down climate destabilisation, but clean energy would lower the profits of the coal industry. Such PR ought to called ‘PM’ – Public Misinformation. PM copywriters are highly paid.
Long-range

Humanity’s behaviour today will have consequences a long time in the future. For example, climate change will cause many farms to close at a time when the population is reaching 9 billion and many developing countries are changing their diet from rice to meat. Newly affluent Chinese will want to eat like Americans. There will not be enough food-growing resources to cope with such a situation. A variety of catastrophes will come from the long-range consequences of our activities, possibly including gigafamine, cyberterrorism and global pandemics. There are many ways we could change course, but today we seem unlikely to do so because a long-range map of consequences is understood by only a few people.

It is interesting to ask whether board members of corporations that pay for misleading PR about the climate know that they are hoodwinking the public. They are highly intelligent people who should be aware of the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC), which states that top climate scientists are certain that emissions resulting from human activities are causing climate change. How many board members vote to increase the future value of their stock options, although it endangers their children’s future? Does a top US senator really believe it when he says that global warming is a hoax, and that all thousand top scientists in the IPCC are liars, and that they all tell the same, meticulously detailed lie?

Crunch

If we continue as now seems likely, a crunch is coming – in fact three crunches – our global footprint greatly exceeding what the Earth can support, climate destabilisation becoming severe, and fresh water becoming insufficient to feed the Earth’s large population. These crunches will not, by themselves, destroy humanity but they will cause a Darwinian situation; when the going gets tough there will be survival of the fittest. By mid-century, the Earth could be like a lifeboat that’s too small to save everyone.

To be politically correct, organisations don’t use the term ‘Darwinian’ or talk about ‘survival of the fittest’, but I am increasingly finding that at elite dinner parties there is already discussion of who the survivors will be. China has enormous fighting spirit and will soon be the world’s largest economy. In 2030 it will have 1.4 billion people. The average footprint of a Chinese person is a small fraction of an average American. The Chinese government does more detailed future planning than perhaps any other government and is determined that China will be one of the survivors. China has been buying the steel and resources it will need in the future. To the largest extent possible it has already cornered the market in rare Earth metals needed for high technology.

The USA combined with Canada will be a survivor, because it is economically powerful and resourceful, and with Canada it has a large amount of land, much of which will benefit from global warming – the breadbasket of the future. Europe, in my mind, is a question mark. Japan will struggle. It is a small country, short of farmland, and will have a seriously ageing population. Russia may muddle through with a massive consumption of vodka. It has a similar population size to Japan but its land area is 45 times larger. Much of its land will benefit from global warming and it has a large amount of fresh water.
A perfect storm

Later in this century a set of trends will coincide, like a perfect storm in the movie of that title, leading to a new era. For a long time technology will have raced like an out-of-control express train, past the situation called the Singularity. At the time of writing, the Chinese have the fastest computer; it executes 2.5 thousand trillion operations per second. By 2040, supercomputers will perform a trillion trillion operations per second. Narrowly focused machine intelligence will become millions of times faster than human intelligence. Quantum computers will become powerful and robust. Some applications running on them would take millions of years on conventional supercomputers. Society will be burnt out by diverse catastrophes and extreme technology.

Extreme reaction to mid-century traumas will bring a determination to make major changes. Much of society will want lifestyles of higher quality and often spirituality. Human longevity will increase and many young people with creative lives will expect to live to 120. Media-assisted education will spread to every nook and cranny of the planet. As robots become highly intelligent there will be a great increase in leisure time. The power of consumer marketing will make techniques for human enhancement widely accepted. There’ll be glossy websites of 24th-chromosome genepacks and we will expand people’s cognitive skills and enrich their emotional awareness.

Part of humanity will survive the 21st-century catastrophes and be on a highway past the time when there was extreme poverty and destitute nations, past the many debates about genetic engineering and transhumanism, past the times when large-scale war was a viable option, into an era in which we consider how to avoid risks to our existence. It will be a time when conventional work is done by machines, and humans spend their time on things that are uniquely human. Higher levels of happiness will come from higher levels of creativity. Michelangelo’s words set the tone for his era: the greater danger for most of us lies, not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark. The cathedral building of the 12th century or the grand temple complexes at Angkor set their aim as high as possible. It will apply to our future.

An extraordinary type of thinking about our future is to reflect what civilizations are now becoming possible. What sort of lives could our grandchildren have? Homo sapiens, the extraordinary creature that took a billion years to evolve, is at a time when it is going to build its finest works and automate evolution itself. The world of our grandchildren could be magnificent. Whatever will civilizations be like in a thousand years’ time – a mere eye-blink in the history of evolution?

The Oxford Martin School was founded as the James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford in 2005 through the vision and generosity of Dr James Martin. It is a unique interdisciplinary research initiative tackling global future challenges, in accordance with Dr Martin’s vision for “a new era in academia, intended to greatly improve humanity’s future”. The mission of the Oxford Martin School is to foster innovative thinking, interdisciplinary scholarship and collaborative activity to address the most pressing risks and realise important opportunities in the 21st century. Today, the school has over 30 institutes and projects, more about which can be found at www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk.

Biography

James Martin (Keble, 1952) was born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, England. His undergraduate degree was in physics. He joined IBM in 1959, and after leaving IBM became a pre-eminent spokesman on the subject of computing. He fundamentally changed the way system developers work by making the processes of systems design and code generation rigorous and automating them. He donated $150 million towards the establishment of the Oxford ration School. Appropriately Martin’s fortune came from education. He has written more than 100 textbooks and had a very influential career as a public educator. Martin’s The Wired Society (1977) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, while The Meaning of the Twenty-First Century (2006) was turned into a film. Martin has honorary degrees from all six continents.

Source: https://www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk/page.aspx?pid=1131

OMG! LOL is in OED

BusinessWorld Online
Posted on April 05, 2011 08:37:33 PM
Commentary — By Winston A. Marbella

It’s official: the OED (Oxford English Dictionary), the venerable gatekeeper of the English language, has accepted OMG (oh my gosh) and LOL (laughing out loud). Now it is perfectly all right to say, OMG, my BFF and I are LOL over this latest decision of OED, IMHO (in my humble opinion). BTW, BRB (be right back).

Language reflects the subtle changes that happen in our lives — eventually. When it finally does we can be fairly sure the subtle changes have in fact become sea changes.

When word of mouth was the main way we transmitted news, we asked ourselves, “Have you heard the news today?” And this was reflected in the idiomatic expression that news passed from mouth to mouth, much like gossip.

Eventually radio became the chief carrier of news. But our language did not change. We still asked, “Have you heard the news today?”

Language reflected a sea change when newspapers became the main purveyor of news: “Have you read the news today?”

The invention of television radically transformed the news. Although TV was bred mainly as a medium of entertainment, its immediacy and intrusiveness (it sat in our living rooms and eventually our bedrooms, too) totally dominated our lives — and our culture. We were soon asking ourselves, “Have you seen the news tonight?”

History rewriten

Media historians say that if not for the daily carnage that prime-time news brought home, the American people would not have turned against the US involvement in Vietnam so violently as they did. The pioneering 24-hour news channel, CNN, brought us the Gulf War up close and personal. We watched in horror as the first massive terrorist attack brought down the towering symbols of the American century live from New York City on 9/11.

For some time, print journalism seemed on its way to dying. But it bounced back and thrived with television, although network news became its Big Brother in audience reach and impact. Print journalists, however, retained their influence over the elite audiences that shaped opinion, the movers and shakers of politics, the arts, and much of literati and glitterati.

Computers and the Internet soon introduced new technologies that would transform the communication landscape — not only how we got the news, but more importantly how we worked, played, and generally lived our lives. The lap top, cell phone, and now the highly portable tablet computers gave technology a mobile platform to keep us informed on the go.

It will not be long before all this technology will reshape also the way we keep abreast of the news. In fact, a technological threshold was breached last year with hardly anyone noticing it — for the first time in our habitation of this planet more people got the news on the Internet than in print.

Transformed, transported

This technological transformation was no less profound than when we first landed on the moon. In those days, the computers that made possible the first lunar landing were housed in buildings. Today we carry more computing power in our smart phones.

Things will surely begin to change more rapidly than we can blink an eye. Inevitably our language is beginning to reflect this sea change.

In launching the iPad2 early this year, the naturally effusive Steve Jobs was brief, even terse. He delivered his launch spiel in 229 words! Hear ye:

“I’ve said this before, but thought it was worth repeating: It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. That it’s technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing.

“And nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.

“And a lot of folks in this tablet market are rushing in and they’re looking at this as the next PC. The hardware and the software are done by different companies. And they’re talking about speeds and feeds just like they did with PCs.

“And our experience and every bone in our body says that that is not the right approach to this. That these are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC. That need to be even more intuitive than a PC. And where the software and the hardware and the applications need to intertwine in an even more seamless way than they do on a PC.

“And we think we’re on the right track with this. We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon, but in the organization to build these kinds of products.

“And so I think we stand a pretty good chance of being pretty competitive in this market. And I hope that what you’ve seen today gives you a good feel for that.”

Gone in days

As usual loyal Apple fans stormed the stores and cleaned the shelves. We will have to wait for months to get ours.

Meanwhile, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch is doing fine with his digital newspaper. The New York Times, too, has started charging for its digital edition. .Many more will follow.

When we start asking ourselves, “Have you browsed the news today?” we know that the future is here.

Language eventually catches up — even if we have a lot of catching up to do on our … browsing, IMHO.

BTW, comments? E-mail Marbella International Business Consultancy: mibc2006@gmail.com. BRB

3-way fight @ telco corral

BusinessWorld Online
Posted on April 14, 2011 09:13:36 PM
Commentary — By Winston A. Marbella

Now that the dust is settling in the telco corral, we are beginning to see better how the three-way fight is shaping up:

It is full steam ahead for Globe President Ernest Cu (“We don’t run a business hoping our competition will soon crumble,” he pumped up his stockholders’ meeting). The new kid on the block, San Miguel Corp. President Ramon Ang, is raring to turn the industry on its head with NGE (New Generaton Ethernet) mobile broadband Internet, with much-improved services (“We have something they don’t,” Ang told an investors’ meeting). And PLDT/Smart is beginning to feel comfortable having erstwhile competitor Sun Cellular in its pocket.

Internally, the Ayala Group’s mobile phone company, Globe (ranked second in market share), viewed it as a positive step. Reacting to PLDT’s acquisition of majority control of Sun Cellular, the Gokongwei Group’s mobile phone company (ranked third), a Globe internal memo was circulated among employees after the megadeal was announced: “PLDT is seen to carry the cost of bringing rationality back to the market by paying for this acquisition and that Globe is seen to benefit from it as profitability remains in a more stable and consolidated market.”

That’s industry-speak for: “Thank you, PLDT, for buying this pesky little competitor that’s driving down profits with its unlimited text and call promos.”

Another Globe memo was more direct: “We might find ourselves competing in a more rational marketplace with better margins as the new opposition could decide to scale back on the unlimited propositions that undermine industry.”

Sun’s happy customers seemed to think so, too. They feared the P69.2-B PLDT/Sun share-swap deal would end their unlimited call and text heydays.

No such thing, said PLDT’s Chairman Manny Pangilinan and President Napoleon Nazareno. “That is not going to happen,” Nazareno said. “Our intention is to maintain Sun’s current services and further improve them.”

Perfect sense

PLDT’s post-acquisition strategy makes perfect sense. By maintaining Sun’s unlimited promotions, it keeps Globe trapped in low price/profit territory (or lose market share), thereby protecting Smart, their market-leading mobile phone company.

Sun had introduced unlimited call and text services for a fixed monthly fee, forcing Globe and Smart to offer similar services at reduced profits, reflected in their operations last year.

The Sun acquisition puts PLDT in control of 70% of the market. Said Jose Mari Lacson, research head of Campos Lanuza & Co.: “Selling Globe may be a possibility now if the Ayala Group wants to extract the remaining value of the company. They may also opt to fight it out, but that will require more resources, which they or their partner, Singapore Technologies, may not be willing to shell out just yet.”

Globe was unfazed. “We stand ready to compete, and to defend and grow our market share,” said Globe President Ernest Cu. “This industry has always been intensely competitive, and we have been a strong challenger to a dominant incumbent all this time.”

The Ayala Group has been known to sell out when profitability falls below corporate norms. It sold Purefoods to San Miguel Corp.

Aggressive entry

In fact, SMC has been itching to join the fray.

“SMC is now in full swing to build a new broadband network that will be robust and reliable,” said SMC President Ramon Ang. “Our network will address voice and data capacity, which we all know is very much congested, resulting in rampant dropped calls and slow data speeds.”

With that announcement, SMC signalled its market-entry strategy: They will go in where customers are looking for better service — broadband. This is also where the market is going with better products.

SMC’s partnership with Qatar Telecom gives it access to LTE, or long-term evolution, which aims to replace existing 3G technology altogether with 4G. SMC’s joint venture with Qatar Technology, Liberty, introduced the Wi-Tribe brand last year and now claims 40,000 subscribers.

4G is wireless, three times faster than 3G, and skips high cable costs. It doesn’t share traffic with voice or text. Thus it provides customers much faster connection speeds ideal for streaming high quality audio and video over the Internet and downloading larg data files, exactly what customers need now.

To catch increasing demand for high-quality audio and video, Sony recently introduced Internet TV. High-definition and 3D television require broadband. Like Sony, SMC and PLDT-Smart are targeting the future.

Untapped demand for Internet access is estimated at 15 million connections. The Philippines has the smallest Internet penetration among comparable countries in the region, where access to the World Wide Web is considered both a tool and measure of development.

Smart leads the market in Internet access. It said it served 8.3 million customers last year through its broadband and cellular phone networks.

Exciting future

Foreshadowing Sony’s Internet TV, PLDT/Smart introduced early last year a device that enabled regular TV sets to connect to the Web. Packing a one-two punch, PLDT then reinvented the landline before the year was over: It offered a 7-inch tablet computer bundled with landlines and Internet connections in one package.

With SMC’s entry into the market, and Ramon Ang’s aggressive strategy, predicting the next wave and catching its crest will be the name of the game.

The author is chief executive of a think tank specializing in transforming social, political and technological trends into business strategy: Marbella International Business Consultancy, email mibc2006@gmail.com.

Public Lives : The Flor Contemplacion syndrome

By Randy David
Columnist
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: March 30, 2011

MANY REASONABLE people do not understand why the resources of the entire Filipino nation have been mobilized to persuade China to spare the lives of the three Filipinos who were executed on Wednesday for the heinous crime of drug trafficking. They ask: Why are we spending precious diplomatic capital to plead for the lives of three convicted criminal offenders? Are we not being selfish in thinking only of our own nationals? Can we not also sympathize with the nameless individuals whose lives have been ruined by the drugs regularly brought into China by drug mules?

There is no way of answering these questions except by referring to the obligations of solidarity.

Among us Filipinos, it is difficult to imagine anything more compelling and more important than the family ties that bind us. It is for family that our workers venture abroad in search of work, uprooting themselves from everything that has nurtured them. Only the thought of an early return eases the pain of separation. In the meantime, they try to keep relationships intact by the steady flow of remittances and balikbayan boxes.

Yet we all know what our OFWs must give up throughout the long absence. They take care not to dwell on this lest they break down. They have to be strong for the family. But no matter how well they repress it, it surfaces as guilt. They feel guilty for leaving their loved ones behind. And their loved ones, in turn, feel guilty for allowing them to go and for letting them carry the whole burden of keeping the family alive.

In other words, they recognize each other’s pain, and, more than that, they share one another’s guilt. That is the essence of solidarity. These are not contractual obligations. They are not voluntary, and do not arise simply from the need to repay the good that is done to us. Such are family obligations. They have a moral claim on us even when a parent or a child or a spouse has been wayward.

Indeed the obligations of solidarity go beyond the family. They make their presence felt in the special affinities we feel for members of our community, our ethnic group, our nation, and our people. Thus, to the extent that we Filipinos imagine ourselves as one big family whose members, by force of circumstances, have found themselves drifting to all four corners of the world, we are commanded by a sense of solidarity to care about what happens to them. To be indifferent is to exclude oneself from the community. That is why the need to manifest solidarity is felt most strongly by those who are presumed to represent us: our religious leaders, government officials, politicians and the mass media.

The failure of the nation’s leaders to recognize and to identify with this communal obligation can trigger explosions of collective resentment sometimes bordering on irrationality. Still etched on the nation’s collective memory is the figure of Flor Contemplacion, a domestic helper, whose conviction for murder culminated in her execution by the Singaporean government in 1995.

The public anger over the failure of the Philippine government to get the Singaporeans to delay her execution and to re-open her case caused a crisis in the presidency of Fidel V. Ramos. He had to recall the ambassador to Singapore, and fire the secretary of labor and the foreign secretary in order to appease the anger in the streets. A few months later, the Contemplacion syndrome gripped the nation all over again when Sarah Balabagan, a young Filipino Muslim girl working as a domestic helper in the United Arab Emirates, was sentenced to death for the killing of her employer who tried to rape her. The government, chastened by the virulence of this syndrome, did everything to save Balabagan from execution, and this time its efforts paid off.

The Contemplacion case became a watershed in our nation’s history as a labor-exporting country. Every succeeding administration found itself haunted by the same syndrome. It created a special sensitivity about OFW matters that made it an undeclared state policy to do everything humanly possible wherever and whenever the lives of OFWs are in danger. This policy led to the withdrawal of Filipino troops from Iraq in order to save a Filipino worker from his Iraqi abductors. It is this same policy that today commits the government to respond decisively to any OFW request for immediate repatriation from crisis-stricken areas like Libya and Japan. It is what prompts the Aquino government’s spokesmen to choose their words very carefully when they try to explain what the government did to save Ramon Credo, Sally Villanueva and Elizabeth Batain from execution. Of course, one wishes we were not merely reacting to crises but actively re-structuring our economy and re-orienting our culture so that our people would no longer find it necessary to go abroad just to earn a living.

In many ways, the moral responsibility we feel for our OFWs, including those who have been convicted for crimes abroad, is our way of making amends for our shortcomings as a people. A modern liberal and individualist account of obligations will not understand that. It will merely highlight the fact that going abroad to work is voluntary, and that every person must take responsibility for what he consents to do. But, solidarity is different. The obligations it creates, says the philosopher Michael J. Sandel, arise “from understanding ourselves as the particular persons we are—as members of this family or nation or people; as bearers of that history; as citizens of this republic.”

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Japan’s finest hour

By Winston A. Marbella

The heroic efforts of the Japanese people, and the international community that has come to their aid, are giving us stirring examples of nobility of purpose in the face of adversity and real-life stories of courage and heroism that are worth remembering in times of trial, first to inspire, and then to emulate, in the national effort to rebuild after traumatic devastation. They also offer us precious lessons in crisis management and the vital role leadership plays.

The most vibrant discussions in management class often occur during that part when students analyze the subtle distinctions between management and leadership. Both are essential to the effective and efficient functioning of organizations, social, political, or economic. The most animated discussions occur when this proposition is laid before the class: Organizations can exist for some time without management, but they cannot exist for long without leadership.

In the aftermath of the bungled and fatal rescue attempt during the hostage-taking of a busload of tourists from Hong Kong last year, many opinions were presented over whether President Aquino should have taken a more direct hand in resolving the crisis. Lost in the furor was the fact that he was indeed on-site (at a Chinese restaurant in front of the US Embassy), discussing options with Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim and other officials.

In recounting the event on national television later, Mr. Aquino confided that he had allowed the officers on the ground to make the operational decisions as prescribed by operating manuals concerning such events. That’s good management practice.

Perhaps what people missed was the presence of his leadership in the whole episode. He would appear on television at midnight hours after the incident had ended. His seeming absence during the crisis was worsened by the ensuing complaints from the governor of Hong Kong that he had frantically wanted to reach Mr. Aquino by phone, but was told he was in meetings the whole day, which in fact he understandably was.

Similar but different

The ongoing emergency in Japan is instructive in clarifying the distinctions between the similar but differing concepts of leadership and management. Those of us who were riveted to the televised news have probably seen these events unfold, which we shall now try to review for their instructional value using the prisms of leadership and management.

Immediately after the earthquake and more devastating tsunami, the Japanese prime minister mobilized the government’s rescue operations, including the deployment of some 50,000 home defense forces (a third of the total) to the national effort. That was good management response.

Soon an impending nuclear calamity unfolded, and we witnessed the emergency responses of scientists and technical workers who struggled to juggle fail-safe and redundant procedures to contain the nuclear fires threatening to burn out of control in several reactors in the power plant damaged by the earthquake. This was impressive operational response. In spite of the leakage of limited amounts of radioactive material, a massive nuclear meltdown appears to have been averted.

And then we saw the Emperor of Japan go on national television to rally his people to persevere in the face of the crisis and to help each other endure. This is leadership,

Multiple roles

In modern democracies, the functions of leadership and management are often reposed in one man: the President (or Prime Minister, in the case of parliamentary forms of government) exercises both managerial and leadership functions in varying degrees, according to law, custom, and tradition.

A sterling example was the one played by Winston Churchill during the Second World War, for he was acutely aware of his multiple roles as Prime Minister of Great Britain and leader of the war effort. Thus in this speech to the British people, delivered in Parliament, he sought to address all roles:

“The Battle of Britain is about to begin…. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us…. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour!’”

Crises demand inspirational as well as management roles from leaders. Men like Churchill can fill all roles with ease. Still, men of lesser stuff, when thrust in leadership roles of historical proportions, must make do with what they have and seek to divide the roles among themselves.

The best scenario is when the people themselves are made of such stuff that they can take on the challenges by themselves.

When the earthquake and tsunami struck, Muntinlupa Mayor Aldrin San Pedro was in Fujisawa City on the outskirts of Tokyo to accept a donation of a ladderized fire truck. He recalls:

“The amazing thing about the experience was that I did not see people panicking in the streets when authorities sounded the tsunami alarm.

“They were very disciplined, very organized during the evacuation, and their rescue personnel responded quickly, with most if not all of them knowing each of their roles.”

When the tsunami warning was lifted, San Pedro said the people lined up properly for the distribution of relief goods.

The Japanese are simply awesome.

The author is chief executive of a think tank specializing in transforming social and political trends into public policy and business strategy. Comments are welcome at Marbella International Business Consultancy, e-mail: mibc2006@gmail.com.

Source: http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?title=Japan%E2%80%99s%20finest%20hour&id=28360

How do I love thee?

By Minyong Ordoñez
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 06:02:00 02/11/2011

“I ONLY saw her passing by and I loved her ’til I die.”

Sounds ridiculous? There’s a grain of truth to it.

When I was 16, my eyes caught the pretty face of a girl dressed in a colorful gypsy costume for her school’s festivities. I was stupefied. Tongue-tied, I just looked and looked at her, stalked and stalked her. Nothing happened.

Sixty years later, I still remember that pretty face and how fast my heartbeat was when I saw her. I never got to know who she was. She never knew I existed. Ah … love, thy name is folly!

Pulchritude, when it was a fixation, as in the case of Paris, changed the course of history of ancient Greece. Paris abducted the beauteous Helen of Troy, trophy wife of power-tripper King Agamemnon.

Agamemnon, turned curmudgeon, waged a bloody naval war to retrieve Helen, whose legendary beauty historians described as “the face that launched a thousand ships.” The love of Paris was sheer madness like Helen’s cheating heart going bonkers over a young handsome hulk.

Love is defiant to the point of self-destruction, the way William Shakespeare portrayed it in the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.

Victims of their family’s feud, Romeo and Juliet risked all. Their daredevil romance and feverish wooing made their love suicide-bound, a taboo in the doctrinaire culture of Christianity in the middle ages.

All cultures and tribes of the world know the audacious love that possessed Paris and Romeo. Tagalog literature of love comes from our poet laureate, Francisco Balagtas. Wrote he in “Florante at Laura”: “Pag ang pag-ibig ay pumasok sa puso nino man, hahamakin ang lahat matupad lamang.” (When the heart falls in love, it will risk all to be fulfilled.)

Jose Rizal, our national hero, played the transitional model in liberalizing the Filipino sense of romance. Rizal’s young love began with the sensitive conservatism of Leonor Rivera’s subliminal love style, the mode in old Tarlac. Rizal ended up with a pro-active and open-minded love of Josephine Bracken, a worldly English woman from Hong Kong.

Rizal is our poster boy for machismo. Barako siya! He was a world traveler (with a girl in every port), a literary genius and a dashing patriot with impeccable political sense. He had the one-upmanship to face his martyrdom with poetry in his heart (“Adios Patria Adorada”).

My late Tatay Godong (1906-1936) courted Inay Aurea for 10 long years. He wrote hundreds of love letters which Inay Aurea (1908-1996) kept in shoe boxes. Thrilled, I read them all. Inay Aurea personified Filipina modesty. But then as the saying goes, “Walang matimtimang birhen sa matiyagang manalangin.” (There’s no such thing as a hard-to-get virgin to someone who pleads incessantly.)

During my pre-teen years (1945-1950), I wrote love letters on pink linen papers to several pretty faces in town that caught my fancy. My letters were suffused with dreamy metaphors and littered with pent-up concupiscence. The pretty faces I wrote to were visibly embarrassed. They didn’t know how to handle my angst. My indirectness revealed my insecurity. I was mortally afraid of being spurned.

Three years ago, I had a long distance phone call with one pretty face, a childhood neighbor and a recipient of my silly love notes. She was 68 years old, twice married, a US citizen living in Los Angeles. Suddenly, she blurted out that she was in love with me during our pre-teen years.

I was dumbfounded. Sayang!

Communicating love today has been commercialized by Hallmark greeting cards, abbreviated without grammar by texting (Lv U 2day, 2mro 2…) and cheapened by motel Valentine’s promos offering 50 percent off for short time use.

Sexually liberated or not, condoms or no condoms, our women have not totally shaken off their instinctive modesty. They cover their face with newspaper as the taxi dashes out of the motel driveway exit.

Matrimonial love is the most holistic of all. It’s a unity of mind and heart, body and soul. It’s a love in evolution, driven by passions of procreative sexuality, disciplined by fidelity and enriched by charity.

Matrimony is developmental. It explores the fullest potential of man as husband, woman as wife. Both become the nurturer of children and builder of family values forged by virtues of spirituality, selflessness, respect and love within and outside a happy home.

The greatest love of all looks vintage and accomplished. It belongs to quintessential lolo and lola (aged 70 to 80), parents of five to eight successfully married children and doting to 10 to 20 grandchildren. They are seen sharing a bowl of Chowking halo-halo or sitting on a park bench, telling funny stories. They snuggle close and smile a lot. They radiate wisdom, gracefulness, and fidelity. Theirs is wagas na pag-ibig (everlasting love), the anti-thesis of Kris Aquino’s love for James Yap, which in turn is the anti-thesis of Vicki Belo’s love for Hayden Kho.

Fantastic is Fr. Rocky Evangelista’s love for the thousands of street children who found refuge, home, faith and love at Tuloy Sa Don Bosco Foundation. Father Rocky is teaching the world the beauty and power of Samaritan love or agape.

For those who want to love the agape way, St. Paul tells us how:

“Charity is kind; charity feels no envy. Charity is never perverse or proud, never insolent; does not claim its rights, cannot be provoked, does not brood over injury, takes no pleasure in wrongdoing but rejoices in the victory of truth.”

(Minyong Ordoñez, 75, is a freelance journalist and a member of the Manila Overseas Press Club. Minyong is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Pinoy Pilgrim Global Foundation Inc. Email: hgordonez@gmail.com).