NEW YORK -- The world’s greatest shortage is not of oil, clean water, or food, but of moral leadership.
With a commitment to truth -- scientific, ethical, and personal -- a society can overcome the many crises of poverty, disease, hunger, and instability that confront us.
Yet power abhors truth, and battles it relentlessly. So let us pause to express gratitude to Vaclav Havel, who died this month, for enabling a generation to gain the chance to live in truth.
Havel was a pivotal leader of the revolutionary movements that culminated in freedom in Eastern Europe and the end, 20 years ago this month, of the Soviet Union. Havel’s plays, essays, and letters described the moral struggle of living honestly under Eastern Europe’s Communist dictatorships.
He risked everything to live in truth, as he called it -- honest to himself and heroically honest to the authoritarian power that repressed his society and crushed the freedoms of hundreds of millions. Read the of Jeffrey Sach's commentary here:
The Office of the Ombudsman on Dec. 28 filed a graft case at the Sandiganbayan against former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in connection with the scuttled National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with China, Philippine Daily Inquirer sources said. Read the rest here:
DUBAI: How do you free yourself when someone grabs you by the hair? You just go with the flow and throw your attacker off-balance.
That's one of the techniques Filipina housemaids in Dubai have picked up at free self-defence classes organised by non-government organisation SAMPII, a group of Filipino self-defence enthusiasts. "If you don't do this, you will end up getting hurt more," Ebrahim Robel Beltran, an aikido expert, tells his wards during a training session at Zabeel Park.
Gulf countries have become the second option for maids who prefer to work in other states on account of getting better perks and facilities.
The Minister of Labour, Jameel Humaidan, said in a written answer to a parliamentary question that maids prefer other countries far from the region because of privileges they are receiving there. He said that there are 93 licensed recruitment agencies in Bahrain and fees they are charging on clients depend on paperwork and procedures they have to complete.
Because of the high cost of recruitment agencies, families in Bahrain opt for illegal means to hire maids. After complete and partial ban of domestic workers by certain countries during unrest in March, recruitment agencies hiked their fees to around BD700 for maids from subcontinent states and around BD1,000 from Filipino and Indonesian maids. Most families couldn’t afford such hike and are either seeking unofficial recruitment agencies run mostly by expatriates or ask maids in the neighbourhoods to bring their relatives to Bahrain.
The official recruitment agencies defended the hike as the only option to protect their businesses. The profit from supplying each maid is much less than before as most of the amount goes for finalising paperwork in Bahrain and home country of the maid, medical checkup and air ticket.
Bahrain has high demand for maids. According to the Ministry of Labour, 16,203 visa applications for domestic workers were submitted from April to June, of which 13,709 were approved. Of total approved applications, 10,596 were submitted to hire maids while the ministry received 10,197 applications from January to March this year.
"Singapore. The controversial Maid Review section of a blog that allows employers to post and view alleged misdeeds of maids is no longer available for public viewing.
The move came after a migrant worker rights group complained that the site violated the rights and privacy of maids by revealing details such as their names, photographs, work permit and passport numbers. After The Straits Times reported on the site last week, at least four maids have left comments on the blog to defend themselves."
MANILA, Philippines – A brand-new queen-size bed awaits former President now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the presidential suite of the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC), where she will be detained pending her trial for electoral sabotage.
Arroyo will also have a newly-renovated bathroom with a new tub and water closet, and with wall-railings for her safety since she is suffering from a bone disease, VMMC director Nona Legaspi said on Thursday.
Legaspi said the suite was ready for Arroyo, who is expected to transfer to VMMC from St Luke’s Medical Center in TYaguig City on Friday, as ordered by Judge Jesus Mupas of the Pasay City regional trial.
Personally, I think this is almost criminal, since millions of poor Filipino families have yet to experience equal access to quality health care services.
The National Health Insurance Program covers only about half of Filipinos (52%). In fact, 60% of the P200 billion spent by Filipinos for health care comes out of their own pockets!
Most public hospitals still suffer from inadequate staff and facilities leading to the provision of low-quality care.
Filipinos have long practiced a do-it-yourself healthcare, and here we are granting so many comforts to GMA that so many Filipinos don't ever experience in their lives (who owns a queen size bed?), and allowing her to dictate the terms of her detention.
Amy, a Filipino nanny, says that when she worked for a family in Riyadh she fell in love with their little girl. “I was so attached to her. She called me mama the first time she ever spoke but I wished her mother took a little better care of her. We nannies come and go, but a child’s parent is for ever" she said.
"Police have arrested a Filipina housemaid for stabbing a Kuwaiti youth several times inside her sponsor’s home in Jaber Al-Ali, reports Al-Shahed daily."
The youth has been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital in the area. His condition has been described as critical.
During interrogation the maid admitted to stabbing the youth, reports said. She said she wanted to take revenge because the family was maltreating her.
Murder charges have been filed against the maid and she has been handed over to the public prosecutor's office.
Here's the fifth installment in a series that, taken together, make up what I like to call Great Living Filipino Thinkers, In Their Own Words.
Today's excerpts are from Filomeno Santa Ana III, an economist and coordinator for the Manila-based Action for Economic Reforms.
AER is a policy advocacy group that promotes a development strategy for the country based on sustainable and equitable growth. Since its founding in 1996, AER has pushed for national tax reforms in order to mobilize domestic resources to finance development (and lessen dependence on foreign debt, an issue that cripples the country’s economic development ). Today, it is at the forefront of the advocacy to reform the excise tax on tobacco and alcohol products, as a critical first step to increase the tax effort significantly.
Men, as his colleagues and friends call him, is typically low-key, often relinquishing the limelight in favor of his many protégés. He is, after all and at his core, a mentor—and the country is truly a better place today because of the staunch nationalist activists and thinkers that he has, over the past 30 years, helped mold.
Men is a brilliant economist and communicator, and has been published in several volumes and journals.
Many of his writings published in the column, The Yellow Pad, illuminate the pressing issues of the day and use everyday language to make the rarefied field of economics understandable to ordinary Filipinos like you and me—the way economics should truly be. You can find many of these discussions here.
But for this blog, I am passing up Men’s more intellectual pieces for a heartfelt one that reveals his true genius both as a mentor and as a dispassionate and analytical thinker, able to identify workable solutions to problems even in the middle of a tragedy:
In Memory of Chit Estella
"Friday the 13th is but a normal day for me. I do not believe in superstitions. In fact the 13th of May 2011 should have been a happy day for me. It was my youngest sister’s birthday, and we had a lively family affair and delightful dinner at Chef’s Table."
"Then, in the course of the dinner, I received the tragic news through a text message from a journalist friend. The short message said: Chit Estella died in a vehicular accident near Philcoa."
"A speeding bus hit the taxi that Chit boarded. At Chit’s wake I learned that two buses, outracing each other, were involved in the manslaughter. The first bus sideswiped the taxi, and in a trice, the second bus rammed the taxi’s body."
"Chit’s death was senseless. Chit could have likewise died from an assassin’s bullet that befell many Filipino journalists. In her early life, she could have met a more heroic death."
"Chit joined the revolutionary anti-dictatorship movement at the height of martial law repression. In doing so, she was ready to die for the cause. The Marcos regime had no compunction in jailing, torturing, and “salvaging” activists, especially during the early years of martial law. Chit belonged to that risk-taking, fiercely independent, and assertive band of young women journalists just out of college, the likes of Sheila Coronel, Malou Mangahas, Rochit Tañedo, Chuchay Molina, Yvonne Chua, et al., whose mighty pens pierced the dictatorship and contributed to its downfall."
cd
"An unforgettable funny story during her college days is worth recalling. It was an incident in a party of the Philippine Collegian staff, involving Chit and Ronald Simbulan. Chit and Roland (they would later become husband and wife) felt ill during the gathering. Roland surmised that a Marcos agent could have poisoned the food that they ate. It turned out though that it was not a case of the food poisoning. What happened was that the party’s host baked brownies that he laced with marijuana."
"Of course, Roland’s fear was not without basis. Marcos’s agents were known to use dirty tricks to silence enemies. Marcos and the military wanted to crush the Collegian. Marcos jailed its two previous chief editors, namely Diwa Guinigundo (current Deputy Governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) and Ditto Sarmiento (a martyr). Protected by academic freedom, the Philippine Collegian, the official student newspaper of the University of the Philippines was then the only legal publication that consistently denounced the Marcos dictatorship."
cd
"The death of a brave and committed woman, a hero of our times, should not be in vain. We hope that she and the many faceless passengers who encountered the same death will obtain justice. This is not just about offering a reward of PhP100,000 for information that will lead to the arrest of the bus driver involved in the manslaughter. It is not simply about the order to “go after reckless drivers.”
It is high time authorities scrapped the “boundary system.” The “boundary system” requires the driver to give the vehicle owner a daily quota.The driver and his party earn the residual amount; that is, what is over and above the minimum quota. This is the kind of incentive that encourages bad driving habits."
cd
Even as we grieve over Chit’s death, we hope that her death will result in the prevention of similar deaths, which are a normal occurrence on the streets of Metro Manila. Changing the rules—specifically by removing the boundary system and replacing it with a wage system—will be the key.
Read the full piece here.
Remember this? Remember how we felt this way after the NBN-ZTE scandal?
Well, I have a gentler but more radical proposal for these people whose greed has gotten the better of them.
Rehabilitation.
After all, most progressives are at their very core, pro-life in the real sense of the word, and against cruel and inhuman punishment and the death penalty. So, too, is the Catholic Church.
Ergo, let's unite forces on this one (despite our differences over the Reproductive Health bill) and pray for the speedy and just resolution of all the cases filed against ex-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Let’s pray that the Holy Spirit or the spirits of our anitos—or ancestors—hover inside the (un)august halls of the Supreme Court, helping shine the light on what should have been the nation’s last bulwark of democracy.
AND JUST what do we have in mind for these people who have acted for so long with arrogance and impunity? Rehabilitate them. Yup, rehab not extrajudicial killing, as evil is the resort of the weak, the challenged and the cowardly.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Prosecute them, without impunity, in an impartial court. 2. Give them time in a jail.No special treatment for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. But no need to give her extra difficult treatment on the other hand. I mean, who believes in an eye for an eye? Just give her what is the normal treatment in our normal, overcrowded jails.
3. While in jail, give them time to review Philippine history, the Philippine Constitution, the Civil Service Code. For a few weeks, put them under a regimented schedule that includes lots of prayer, study time (topics above), and for leisure, watching movies like this:
Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro (30 November 1863 – 10 May 1897) was a Filipino nationalist and revolutionary. He was a founder and later Supremo ("supreme leader") of the Katipunan movement which sought Philippine independence from Spanish colonial rule and began the Philippine Revolution.He is considered a de facto national hero of the Philippines.
Macario Sakay y de León was a Filipino general in the
Philippine Revolution against Spain and in the Philippine-American War. He continued resistance against the United States following
the official American declaration of the war's end in 1902 and in the following
year became president of the Tagalog Republic.
Sakay was conned by the Americans into coming down from the
mountains on promise of amnesty for him and his officials—on top of the
formation of Philippine Assembly composed of Filipinos to serve as the gate of
freedom. He was invited to receptions and banquets, one of which was a colonial
trap where Sakay and his principal lieutenants were disarmed and arrested while
the party was in progress. He was accused of banditry and hanged.
5. Remember, rehabilitation means: "To restore to useful life, as through therapy and education or to restore to good condition, operation, or capacity." The assumption of rehabilitation is that people are not natively criminal and that it is possible to restore a criminal to a useful life, to a life in which they contribute to themselves and to society. Rather than punishing the harm out of a criminal, rehabilitation would seek, by means of education or therapy, to bring a criminal into a more normal state of mind, or into an attitude which would be helpful to society, rather than be harmful to society. Because we recognize that these people who act with impunity are simply not in good mental condition, we also suggest psychotherapy? Try accupuncture. Perhaps there is an acupuncture spot that lessens greed? 6. Part of their rehabilitation should also include:
a. Labor. Oh, no, not hard labor. Just the usual labor that 2/3 of our compatriots are forced to do everyday. Even better , the kind that many Filipino children have to undertake:
http://www.yidff.jp/97/cat051/97c083-e.html
b. Separation from family. For years, please. In the same manner that thousands of Filipinos are forced by a collapsing economy and a dysfunctional government to separate from their families and go abroad. We also suggest a six-month stint, at least, as a maid in Singapore. Read: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4165088.stm
c. Six months living in one of Metro Manila’s slums, where 40 percent of Manila denizens now live. I suggest Payatas or Baseco, Tondo, where generations after generations of Filipino families have lived without hope.
Don't forget the daily fare of Lucky Me, Lucky Me and ore Lucky Me!Oh, for rehabilitation to be effective, we have to take away some things: No more breakfasts here:
No more limousine rides with a whole barangay of policemen with wang-wangs (sirens) blazing.Instead, more rides here: You know, Zen and the art of tricycle riding? Oh, and please, don’t forget the exercise:
AT THE END OF IT ALL, I am sure those once arrogant, greedy and power hungry will see the light.
Wow, a whole website dedicated to the Filipina maid.
"Filipina Maid uses natural cleaning techniques plus traditional Asian methods of good housekeeping."
What? "traditional Asian methods of good housekeeping" Pagbubunot ba iyon? Harhar. http://filipinamaid.com/
'via Blog this'
All Filipina maid Cherry Pie Antaban wants is a simple job as a domestic helper in Singapore, but training for her new role sometimes feels like sweating through an engineering degree.
Like all women in the Philippines wanting to work overseas as maids, Antaban has to go through a government-mandated crash course in domestic duties that can be bewildering, daunting and occasionally humiliating.
Just a short
break from all those serious, goodness.how.cerebral.can.you.get!? pieces.
Here's a post about a really hot
Filipina -- the hilarious Petra Mahalimuyak (Fragrant Petra)-- whose really hot,
hyperbolized Filipina accent and super hot Filipino humor make her sooo
endearing.
Frankly, when I see my fellow
Filipinas, I often have this defiant, wicked, un-feminist thought cross my mind: That--power
issues and poverty aside--one of the reasons why the Philippines isthechoice source of mail-order brides is
because, well, we Filipinas are so sexy and pretty and fun to be
around, after all. We’re the world’s topnotch trophy wives! Ha!
I mean, how often do you see get to
see an ugly Filipina, anyway? Come on, be honest. It’s kinda rare, ano?
Filipinas are among the world's most delectable women, I say.
And where else can you
get a pretty woman who will "lovingly clean your toenails with a
toothbrush?" – That’s what YES
editor-in-chief Jo-ann Q. Maglipon said in one of her 1980s articles (published
in the book Primed) on Filipina mail order brides, then just an emerging problem.
Before you accuse her of 'objectifying' women, note that before
Maglipon became the entertainment editor that she is today (and consequently, one
of the country's highest-paid editors), she was an underground activist who
fought against the Marcos dictatorship and wrote articles on slain doctor-to-the-barrioDr. Bobby de la Paz, like this:
So her toothbrush-for-toenails
comment was truly just an accurate portrayal of life as it really is: complex and
difficult, astonishing and ugly, joyful and awful, comic and tragic, trivial
and sublime—sometimes all at the same time—and always multifaceted, resisting the
black-and-white labels the religious and the righteous would like to confine
it with.
As I write this, there are hundreds of thousands of Filipina maids
deployed all over the world. Many of them will be beaten, raped. Some
will be killed. Most of them suffer milder forms of abuse, but abuse
nonetheless. But life does not stop dead because these terrible things happen.
And the spirit of the archetypical Filipina lives on, resilient, as
lighthearted and bubbly and hopeful as ever.
Here's the fourth installment in a series that, taken together, make up what I like to call Great Living Filipino Thinkers, In Their Own Words.
Today's excerpts are from Sylvia "Guy" Estrada-Claudio, the current director of the UP Center for Women's Studies.
Dr. Claudio, a Professor at the Department of Women and Development Studies, University of the Philippines Diliman College of Social Work and Community Development, is both a doctor of medicine and of psychology.
She is a much traveled resource speaker on activism, feminism, reproductive rights and sexuality, who began her life of activism in high school when she organized students against the dictatorship of former President Ferdinand Marcos.
After completing her medical studies at the University of the Philippines, she formed the Medical Action Group to organize health missions to treat injuries and psychological trauma in communities torn by counterinsurgency operations.
Together with Dr. Junice Melgar she founded Likhaan, an organization working with grassroots women on issues of reproductive health and rights. She is also Chairwoman of the board of the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights.
Her book Rape, Love and Sexuality: The Construction of Women in Discourse was published by the University of the Philippines Press as part of the UP Press "Read Up!" Campaign. These excerpts are from her blog, Pleasure and Subversion, from a post titled The Psychology of Moral Certainty.
"As a teacher, a nerd and a psychologist, I feel only frustration and concern. Yet another person who thinks that, 'because my God (or my Marx) says so,' is an acceptable form of engagement in democratic and secular society.
I am treading carefully here. Not all Marxists or religious people resort to this argument. Not everyone who has a religious or political belief finds it necessary to cling to the idea that his or her belief is the right one, regardless. I am not also certain that the young woman who had an exchange with me is one of these. I wish she kept engaging me, perhaps I could have known for sure.
But I am certain that the psychology of the ideologue permeates the views of the religious right that has gone all-out against the RH bill. This is also why, I get hate mail and hate tweets after each televised debate. The comments can be quite mean, making me wonder what it is that I have said, no matter how scandalous, would make them feel so threatened that they would lash out with such anger.
I have been challenged often too about my agnosticism. Even the nicest ones seem to think that being uncertain is some kind of a defect.
But there is to me, a spiritual gain to be had by accepting ambivalence, ambiguity and uncertainty. For one thing, that is how things are. The truth about what those who believe in a God call “creation” is that it is ever-changing, immense and un-graspable.
Perhaps there is a Truth (yes, with a capital T) out there. But it is not something, little-old-me can ascertain. I remain humble about the presence and laws of what a horoscope writer I follow calls, “the Divine wow”. God is not my FB friend. I ask Her often enough if She is out there and She does not answer. When I die I may dissolve and lose the consciousness that will say that the atheists are correct . If I am wrong and I awake---ooohlala---I will have more questions than a curious 5-year-old.
But for now, I have no need for grand answers in order to lead a harmless, happy and hopefully meaningful life. It is a comfort to me that I do not need ultimate guarantees. I am not a high maintenance child of the universe. I have a brain and enough energy to keep on figuring things out as the need arises. I plod along and get by not having yet committed things like abuse, theft or murder. On really good days, the idea that no one can know for sure when human life begins really makes me ecstatic.
The psychology of moral certainty is the psychology of fear and/or laziness. Maybe when they were growing up, the parents who nurtured those who are morally-certain-Dr. Claudio-is-wrong-on-RH (and therefore we will never yield her a point, besides she is a lackey of the big pharmaceuticals and the imperialist population controllers) laid down the law about what to do, what is right and what is wrong. That can be comforting when one is little.
Simple and unquestionable rules can be comforting while parents can control the external environment against the views of those who disagree or the harm brought by those who are mean or criminal. Perhaps the very young ones need not be asked for the courage to face the immense unknowable.
But those of us who are hoping to live happy lives in a just society must find it in us to face our limitations. Parents must change the parameters of what they teach as a child matures morally and intellectually. Children must be taught not to be afraid of heterogeniety, diversity and uncertainty. They cannot be afraid of difference. Fundamental differences.
If we are afraid to be unsure, to accept that perhaps we and our family, religion, tribe, institutions, science, political party can be wrong, then we will be unable to accept when we are defeated on twitter or we will lash out in anger against people we only see on television.
And I am frightened indeed by the man who is so angry at me because of what I have said on television that he takes the time to tweet me venom. My heart goes out the woman who cannot find the grace to end a debate she started with some decorum.
Perhaps someday, we will raise all our children with enough moral courage so that they can face profound uncertainty with good cheer. At least we can rejoice that there are enough brave and moral people out there such that the scientific surveys show that the RH bill has wide support."
In electing her to receive the award, the RMAF board of trustees recognized her for “leading a groundbreaking collaborative effort to develop investigative journalism as a critical component of democratic discourse in the Philippines.”
Since 2006, she is also the inaugural director of The Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, and a professor at the Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/profile/31-sheila-coronel/10
In a 2006 feature, Columbia Magazine described her as “one of the most tenacious reporters in the politically turbulent Philippines” (of the 1980s).
Yes, she has done all that, is all that, and more.
(Find our where you can borrow a copy of the book, Coups, Cults and Cannibals, here)
Of all her works, however, Forging a New Social Contract, her speech before the University of the Philippines School of Economics graduating class of 2006, is the piece I love the most because I feel it says--in the most straightforward manner--just about everything that has to be said about this country. It also makes clear, to many of us Filipinos, the reasons why we should still believe in struggling, every single day, to live well and do right--even if, despite. Here are excerpts from that speech:
"LET me take a break from all these economists talking and let me tell you about the face that haunts me when I cannot sleep at night. It is the face of Christian Alvarez, a frisky five-year old I met on the streets.
Christian lives in Plaza Miranda. He and his family sleep on milk cartons near the Mercury Drugstore in Quiapo. Plaza Miranda is his playground. That is also where he and his family eat breakfast everyday: a bowl of lugaw (rice porridge) given free by the feeding center run by a Catholic charity in Quiapo church.
Christian’s parents, Rowena and Lawrence Alvarez, are street vendors who make P150 to P200 a day. They have eight children, three of whom — all boys — live on the plaza. Three others are in the care of relatives and friends because their parents do not earn enough to feed and house them. Another was entrusted to the care of an orphanage. The last one, a girl, then aged two, disappeared on the plaza one night when Lawrence left her to fetch water from the Jolibee outlet near Quiapo church.
Christian is at the Quiapo church feeding center with his entire family three times a day.
The day I went there, after the noon feeding, the boy shared with his parents and brothers their only real meal that day: three cups of rice bought for P5 each and pinakbet sold for P10 at the Quiapo market. So at 6 pm, Christian lined up again at the Quiapo church, for another bowl of steaming hot lugaw that will at least ensure that he will not go to sleep on an empty stomach.
Unless the situation of the Alvarez family is much improved, the future that awaits Christian is a life on the streets. Like his two other brothers, he will most likely go through two or three years of schooling at the elementary school nearby. He will likely drop out before the third or fourth grade — in fact, nearly 30 percent of all Filipino school children drop out before finishing sixth grade. After that, Christian will scrounge for a living on the streets — scavenging for recyclables, perhaps, or selling cigarettes and candies like his father, perhaps the occasional petty crime.
I wish I could say that the Alvarez family is a particularly special case. But it is not. In 2000, the proportion of the population not reaching the food threshold was 21 percent. One in every five Filipinos cannot afford to meet his minimum food needs. In current numbers, that’s 16 million people.
The numbers, if we look at them, are dismal. Over 30 million Filipinos live below poverty, earning less than the estimated P200 a day needed to keep a family of six clothed, fed, and housed. That is why many families now eat only one full meal — meaning rice and cooked food — a day.
As marketing expert Ned Roberto found out in his study on the consumption patterns of the poor, ulam for many families in the lowest income strata these days are: patis, soy sauce, pork oil, sugar and even Pepsi. Many of these families can eat real food only once a week.
Let me give you more numbers.
In the 1990s, we (PCIJ) wrote about the PEA-Amari case, billed as the “grandmother of all scams,” where close to P3 billion were paid in bribes and commissions to businessmen and officials — including, it was alleged at that time, the Speaker of the House and the Senate President.
In 2001, the Office of the Ombudsman alleged that Joseph Estrada accumulated up to P20 billion in cash and real estate in two-and-half years in Malacañang. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were believed to have amassed up to $10 billion in the 20 years they were in power.
Recently, it has been alleged that P1 billion recovered from the Marcos wealth by the Arroyo government was used to bankroll the president’s 2004 election campaign.
To me, the scandal lies not so much in the scale of the thievery. The real scandal is that while all these officials were helping themselves to the national treasury, the country was going to ruin and families like those of Christian Alvarez’s were going homeless and hungry.
When hunger stalks millions not because there is a lack of food, but because the social system impoverishes the multitudes while enriching a privileged few, then there is something that is terribly wrong. We are not the Sudan, where millions go hungry in deserts ravaged by war and disease. We are a middle-income country rich in natural resources."
Read the of the speech rest here
More about Sheila here and here.
So you think the word ‘Filipina’ means maid? Well, think again. For all of you who reached this blog looking for bargain Filipinas –whether Filipina maids or hot Filipina bodies at bargain basement prices — well, this is for you! You should also know that Filipinas/Filipinos are also among the world’s most efficient people — on the energy from eating really small pieces of fish and a cup of rice, we can spew out great thoughts! Ha!
Speaking of fish, here's this personal piece, the next installment of a series that, taken together, make up what I like to call Great Living Filipino Thinkers, In Their Own Words.
Today's piece is from Leandro Romero, who lectures on Geography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His own personal journey to get there is the quintessential tale of the Filipino diaspora-- poignant, bittersweet and riveting. And in his case, written in installments, like this one:
The Oblation is a concrete statue by Filipino artist Guillermo E. Tolentino which serves as the iconic symbol of the University of the Philippines. It depicts a man facing upward with arms outstretched, symbolizing selfless offering of oneself to his country."
Time Travel on the Cheap
"Tuesday night I traveled back in time to 1989 or thereabouts.
The place: Balara behind UP Diliman, near the Narra Residence Hall, then UP's most liberal dorm for men (and coincidentally, the most dilapidated and the cheapest).
The time: between midnight and three a.m.
Activity: eating ginisang sardinas at the all-night counter frequented by jitney and cab drivers and other vampires prowling the city in those unholy hours.
It is a college night like most nights I had back then: interminable, humid and expectant. Like you are waiting for something important to happen, some epiphany to strike you, some Big Truth to slap you in the face with its simplicity and elegance.
Meanwhile, the night is surprisingly busy in this corner of the university. Cabbies are just going off duty; still others are just about to take over. There is the stink of vehicle exhaust and cigarette smoke and rotting vegetables and the delicious aroma of street food. Some of the carinderia women have begun to prepare the ingredients for next day's lunches. Kids are selling cigarettes, balut, sampaguita flower leis.
On such nights, you have finished carousing with your friends in one of those infrequent binges where you indulge in your favorite fermented drink and hope other baser instincts follow suit. Or, you have been obliged to stay and babysit some textbooks and notes, write term papers or solve sample problems, and you just need a quick pick-me-up. Or, you just made a connection with some other lonely collegiate soul and you just want to savor the strangeness of the Other, chew on the purity and innocence of it, before morning comes and shines on it the ridiculous light of day.
I assume that this night could have been any of the three, and alternate between options. Obviously, I am sober enough to bring myself this far on public transportation with no major damage to life, limb or property, so it's all good. Whatever awaits me back at the dorm—math or physics or engineering
texts—they would wait patiently. There is no hurry, and I am where I need to be at this moment.
Meanwhile, the smell of fragrant frying garlic tempts my nostrils and my stomach growls a greeting in return.
The chopped onions and tomatoes follow shortly, and soon I am witness to tomatoes melting in the pan, sizzling and bubbling until you are certain that they have aggregately achieved Tomato Nirvana—that is, being one with the pan, the oil, the onions, the garlic and the Universe.
The hot sardines make their grand entrance and are allowed a brief honeymoon with the fulfilled tomatoes. Meanwhile, the flame is switched off, and a raw egg, quiet and content until now, jumps in and joins the fun. The bored cook deftly mixes it in with the other ingredients and in a while, serves it in front of
me, hot, with fried rice.
As soon as the sardines cross my lips, I forget that Physics is my Achilles heel, that women (even those in college) are creatures with expectations and demands that have to be dealt with in the morning, or that in a few short hours, it would be time to join the elaborate waltzes and tangos of university life once again. The combination touches off several centers of taste on my tongue and palate, and my brain registers an explosion of flavor.
I prolong each mouthful into a slow, sticky sojourn into my own personal paradise.
Minutes later it seems, but really more than a dozen years hence, I look up from my plate and find myself alone in a house in Sparks, Nevada, with no girls or physics texts waiting for me in the morning.
Yesterday, I tried it again with some soto ayam (Indonesian spicy chicken-and-vegetable soup) and I was brought back to Jakarta in 1990 (I think). But that is another story for another day."
So you think the word 'Filipina' means maid? Well, think again. For all of you who reached this blog looking for bargain Filipinas --whether Filipina maids or hot Filipina bodies at bargain basement prices -- well, this is for you! You should also know that Filipinas/Filipinos are also among the world's most efficient people -- on the energy from eating really small pieces of fish and a cup of rice, we can spew out great thoughts! Ha!
As proof, starting today I am going to splice into my blog short pieces that together make what I like to call Great Living Filipino Thinkers, In Their Own Words. These are excerpts from, and links to, the personal blogs of Filipino thinkers who are living today.
Today's thoughts are those of Romel Regalado Bagares, the Executive Director for the Manila-based Center for International Law, a non-profit engaged in strategic human rights litigation. Bagares is one of the lawyers representing the families of 14 journalists who perished in the Ampatuan Massacre, said to be the worst single attack on press freedom in recorded history. The anniversary of the massacre will be commemorated on Nov. 23. Bagares also lectures on international law at the Lyceum Philippines University College of Law. Romel’s personal blog is at http://sanpedrostreet.wordpress.com/
"But perhaps, I digress. After all, we’re talking of bargain books here.
Still I think just as well of the famed library at the ancient city of
Alexandria which, in the grandeur of its time, was the scale against which
the intellectual wealth of other nations and races was measured. One legend
- almost surely false, notes Harvard Professor Stephen Jay Gould in his book
Eight Little Piggies: Reflections on Natural History (P215) – that the
library was still intact when Muslim invaders captured the city in the
seventh century. The library, built by descendants of Alexander the Great
about 2,000 years ago, housed the largest collection of books in the ancient
world – more than 700,000 volumes – including the works of Homer and the
library of Aristotle. Historians tell us that Euclid and Archimedes studied
there, as did Eratosthenes, the first mathematician to calculate the
diameter of the earth."
"Or am I just taking my reading habits too seriously? There are times when,
having finished a book, I fling it to the floor, feeling exhausted and used
up. A certain guilt overwhelms me, indeed, a “complete distaste for words,”
all at the thought that in the end, knowledge becomes puffed up and the
wisdom of this world is mere vanity, “a chasing after the wind,” in the
words of Ecclesiastes."
"I open my Bible to the New Testament. “Where is the
wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age,” asks
the apostle Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthian Christians. “Has not
God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”
"A certain mawkishness. The computer’s thesaurus lists the following
synonyms: sentimental drivel, mush, sentimentalism, maudlin act, gush,
affectation, exaggerated sentiment, excessive sentiment.
But no sooner had I promised myself not to indulge in yet another buying
spree than I’d find myself inside yet another Booksale outlet, poring over
the books it has to offer, wishing I have all the money in the world to
satisfy my cravings for words. It’s as if my day by day struggle with words
as a newspaper reporter wasn't enough!"
Visiting United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday faced a grilling from Filipino students, as the United States scrambles to counterbalance China's growing power in Asia.
I thought this made it a good time to republish this piece by radical nationalist Joel P Garduce, as background.
KEEP THE FIRE by Joel P. Garduce
(published in Cebu's The Voice, February 5, 2010, page 6)
Yesterday, February 4, marked the 111th anniversary of the beginning of what still stands as the bloodiest war in the history of the Filipino people. On that day in 1899, open hostilities broke out between invading U.S. troops and soldiers of the first republic in Asia.
. Uncle Sam at the turn of the 20th century
The war came to be known in history classes and textbooks as the Filipino-American War. It's a misnomer, really. Calling the war this way invokes an image no different from a boxing fight, where protagonists do battle as an end in itself, where there are no aggressors to speak of and no justice to be had. Which is obviously not the case with this war.
It would be more accurate and honest to call it the First Great Patriotic War of the Filipino People. For indeed, it was the first war waged by a newly born nation, the first patriotic war in Asia in fact to defend a republic against an invading army of 20,000 imperial troops (that eventually ballooned to 120,000 throughout the war) intent on taking out so soon a people's freedom freshly gained from centuries-long colonial rule.
It was a war that was as ugly as it could get, a signal tragedy where both the peoples of the Philippines and the US lost their respective republics. On the Filipino side, more than a million Filipinos were killed to regain colonial oppression, most as victims of the barbaric “scorched-earth” policy of the U.S. armed occupation, employed via torture, hamletting, food blockades, and massacres of entire towns, including children.
Wounded granny during the Philippine-American war
On the American side, the victorious U.S. subjugation of a new foreign race consolidated the vicious rule of the robber barons, at a cost of 8,000 American lives and racism, workplace abuse, corruption and oppression running rampant in the homeland. Through systematic indoctrination of succeeding generations, this war, "among the cruelest conflicts in the annals of Western imperialism" as one American author put it, would be gutted out of the historical memory of both Americans and Filipinos.
Filipino civilians being interrogated at the start of American colonial rule.
Well, almost. Were it not for the effort—among others—of Americans of conscience like historian Howard Zinn, who died last week, the outstanding war crimes against the Filipino people may well have been entirely forgotten. Thanks to him and his most popular book, “A People's History of the United States”, arguably the biggest-selling book on the full U.S. history, today's generation in the U.S. has been made aware of a bloody and disdainful history of U.S. empire, and of the continuing epochal class struggle of the American people against it.
“A People's History” was hugely successful. By the time Zinn collapsed fatally from a heart attack last January 27, it had already sold two million copies and gone through six editions since it was first published in 1980 with only 5,000 copies.
A 2008 graphic adaptation he co-authored with Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle, called “A People's History of American Empire”, would go further and boldly parallel the U.S. atrocities against our forefathers more than a hundred years ago to the human rights outrages that attended the U.S.-led war of terrorism ongoing since 9/11.
A 2009 TV docu titled "The People Speak" and based on Zinn's book brought his views to a far-wider audience. Narrated by actor and his former neighbor Matt Damon, it featured readings and performances by various U.S. celebrities, like Viggo Mortensen of the “Lord of the Rings” fame, black actors Morgan Freeman and Danny Glover, Oscar winner Marisa Tomei, and musicians Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan, Pink, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, and John Legend. That a nontraditional take of U.S. history would gain much mainstream acceptance and admiration proves that the time for Zinn's progressive standpoint and viewpoint has clearly come.
Zinn's work complements efforts by select Filipino historians to speak historical truth to power. Half a decade before “A People's History” first came out, anti-imperialist author Renato Constantino had already made the case for a people's perspective in writing history with his acclaimed twin history volumes “The Philippines: A Past Revisited” and “The Philippines: The Continuing Past”.
Then there's the seminal “Philippine Society and Revolution” (PSR) written by Professor Jose Maria Sison using his nom de guerre Amado Guerrero. What may well be the most well-known history book in the Philippines, specially among the majority who remain downtrodden, PSR came out a full decade before “A People's History”. (This year marks the 40th year since its publication.) In it, Sison tersely outlined Philippine history and society from a standpoint of an oppressed people daring to make history and change society.
A picture of a “water detail,” reportedly taken in May, 1901, in Sual, the Philippines. “It is a terrible torture,” one soldier wrote. Picture found in “The Water Cure”, Paul Kramer, newyorker.com, Feb 25 2008. Original photograph attributed to Corporal George J. Vennage c/o Ohio State University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library.
Zinn, Constantino and Sison all firmly believe the authentic heroes of history are the unlettered masses and that we ought to champion their hopes and aspirations if we intend to usher in a world of justice and social progress. We are honored to have them remind us all the need to intensely study history to reexamine seemingly unwanted but terribly vital memories, and unearth its lessons pregnant with guidance towards a bright future bereft of ugly and unjust wars, empires of greed, widespread misery and shackled freedoms—a bright future Filipinos, Americans and humankind at large truly deserve. ##
Joel Garduce is with the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP). This and previous contributions can be viewed online here.
View these historical photos:
http://jibrael.blogspot.com/2007/09/philippine-american-war-of-1899-1902.html
Watch this:
(for the footages, but ignore some parts of the commentary, which can be wrong)
A few days ago, news linking Dominique Strauss-Kahn to a high-profile probe of an alleged prostitution ring at a luxury hotel in Lille broke, causing the story of how a New York hotel maid had accused him earlier this year of rape to resurface.
Charges have since been dropped, even as DSK was forced to quit as head of the IMF and to shelve his aspirations to become the next French president. But the story of DSK's accuser — called just that until the moment she came out, or alternately, "the DSK maid" — reminds us of how Filipina maids are at all times vulnerable to all forms of abuse — emotional, physical and sexual.
I thought I'd republish excerpts of this history article here as a way to contribute to the better understanding of the lot of thousands of Filipina maids in foreign lands.
By doing so, I hope to shed light on the power relations between females in subservient levels of society and their "masters" -- something that many of my British friends seem to forget, as they are now accustomed to thinking of maids as Filipinas. Watch this episode of BBC's Harry and Paul:
For me, it's clearly an issue of power: Not much has changed between then and now; only the nationalities of the maids and their masters involved have changed.
Title: "A Maidservant's Lot in Early Modern England"
Publisher: History Today
Date: Volume: 60, Issue: 2
Pages: 25-31
"The life of a maidservant in early modern England was one fraught with perils with young girls often prey to the advances of their masters. In 1693 the London newspaper The Athenian Mercury carried the story of a manservant who, with his employer's active encouragement, married a maidservant in the same household, only to discover that she was already pregnant with the master's child. The employer said he was grateful to have 'such cracked ware [taken] off his hands' and gave financial compensation to the couple. Most maids made pregnant by their employers were not so fortunate.
"Servant-keeping was a ubiquitous and defining feature of society in the 16th to 18th centuries — around 60 to 70 per cent of 15 to 24-year-olds, the majority of them female, were employed in domestic service even in poor households as pauper servants. Most of them lived, worked and slept in close proximity to their employers, sometimes in the same room. Privacy even in great houses with features such as corridors and backstairs was often impossible to achieve. Poverty was an endemic aspect of life in service. There were many like the 'poor maid' in a 1567 Canterbury court case who possessed 'nothing but her personal apparel and 16 shillings a year wages and no other goods.'
"Maidservants therefore were often precariously positioned both physically and economically. This made them sexually vulnerable to the whims of their masters and other men of the house as well as to lodgers, guests, manservants, and apprentices. Some would-be maidservants newly arrived in London were procured by pimps or by patrons of disreputable labor exchanges almost as soon as they set foot in the capital.
"There were maidservants too who exploited their sexuality to gain advantage. An early 17th-century Somerset maid giving evidence in a court case unwittingly revealed she was flattered when she attracted the advances of her employer and 'did not tell her dame because her master promised her new clothes.' Much later in the following century Jonathan Swift in his satirical Advice to Servants (Dublin 1745) advised housemaids on how to strike the best bargain when their sexual favors were solicited by their masters. At all costs, Swift urged the eldest son of the house should be avoided 'since you will get nothing from him but a big belly or a clap and probably both together.' In 1763, Mary Brown a maidservant in Glamorganshire, was still blackmailing Dr Morgan, her former employer, who had fathered her illegitimate child six or seven years previously.
"Church court records are filled with cases involving illicit sexual relations between master and servant. At the beginning of the 17th century, Edward Glascocke from Enfield, Middlesex found himself in court since he had been discovered in bed with his maidservant as well as his wife. In the same period church wardens in Stoke St. Mary, Somerset were scandalized by disclosures of an employer's open preference for his maidservant over his wife. When they went to work in the fields the maid rode on horseback, while the humbled wife was made to walk. The master and maidservant slept in the same bedroom while the mistress of the house was consigned to another.
In Glamorganshire in 1763, the death of a master produced revelations about his 'vile life' in keeping a maidservant as his concubine 'to the great disturbance of his house and to the great grief and vexation of his loving wife.' A London moralist J. Moir warned parents in 1787: 'You had better turn your daughter into the street at once than place her out to service. For ten to one her master shall seduce her or she shall be made the confidante of her mistress's intrigues.'
"Masters would often consider it their right to molest their maids. It was made clear to a London maidservant in 1605 that providing sexual favors to the master on demand was simply part of her job. She was told: 'Thou art my servant and I may do with thee as I please.' "
And check out this blog on how Lebanese employers perceive the sexuality of Filipina maids, which reads:
Filipina women, compared to their Ethiopian and Sri Lankan counterparts, are seen as fairer, sexually more attractive, and promiscuous. These images of Filipina women legitimate employers’ tight control of their bodies and persons...Just in case you’ve been wondering why some families lock the doors on their maids when they leave home.
