HIGHWAY ROBBERY

by Bernie Lopez

There are two types of highway robbery - stealing from highway travellers or stealing the highway itself. Rene Santiago, transport planning expert, referring to the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway, says. "The Japanese consultants tend to bloat and justify projects so they qualify for funding from JBIC (Japan Bank for International Cooperation)."

 

Rene, former President of the Transportation Science Society of the Philippines, is further quoted by Roel Landingin of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), "Once it gets funded by JBIC, a lot of Japanese construction companies are happy."

 

The $315 million phase one of the Expressway in question was funded by the Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA), which has a new meaning these days - assistance to the Japanese. The Filipinos are mere victims of 'development assistance'. And the Japan Bank for International Cooperation is a ‘cooperation’ among Japanese multinationals.

 

Rene claims the traffic forecasts for the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway Phase One were based on doubtful methods and assumptions. The Japanese study projected that the number of passenger car units (PCUs) would grow by 12.5% per year for the Subic-Clark section and 9% per year for the Clark-Tarlac section, all in a ten year period from 2005 to 2015. Rene argues that these growth rates are about twice the actual annual growth in traffic from 1996 to 2002 along the Olongapo‑Gapan road and McArthur Highway, which runs parallel to the expressway, and whose goal is to decongest it. The study, Rene adds, does not explain why the traffic growth rate would suddenly just be a double of historical data. Rene pursues his point. Makati took almost 20 years to develop into a central business district. Clark is an industrial zone, not a central business district, which means Clark would have less PCUs.

 

He argues, "Traffic usually grows by 3% to 5% a year which is based on the growth in vehicle volume. It may grow faster if there is a major property development but these developments take 15‑20 years to pan out."

Anticipating perhaps juicier projects in the future, the Japanese consultants quoted government figures that airports and seaports in the vicinity will also grow by leaps and bounds. The PCIJ article cited BCDA data reveal that Clark International Airport would have an increase of 300,000 to 40 million passengers and 50,000 to 1.2 million tons of cargo per year. Subic Seaport would have an increase in cargo container volume from 25,000 'twenty-foot equivalent units' (TEUs) to 100,000.

 

The Japanese consultants had wrongly predicted that Taiwan would revert back to China by 2007. Landingin wrote that they seemed to be well versed not only in traffic volume but also in geopolitics.

 

My friends in the Japanese media tell me infrastructure in Japan is the largest source of corruption, in the billions of dollars per year, a partnership of Japanese Inc. and the Japanese government. They say it is an open secret and everybody just looks away because it is a necessary factor in national development.

THE BEAR STEARNS AFFAIR

 

An article appeared in the BBC website reporting that the controlling shares of the Bear Stearn insiders were sold to JP Morgan Chase at $2.00 per share when the rest of the shares were trading at $36. <>

Also, the Bernanke boys assured JP Morgan of a $30 billion credit line. Why was the credit line not given to Bear Stearns? Finally, there is a lawsuit against Bear Stearns officials charged with misinformation for claiming a few days earlier that they had a liquid fund of $17 billion.

 

So a financial analyst says we should not feel bad that Filipinos are number one in corruption. At least, we deal with peanuts compared to the billions of dollars in the US where the media is portraying a triumvirate of giants in a corruption case - JP Morgan, Bear Stearns, and the Fed itself.

 

The US government feels that if it does not rescue Bear Stearns, it will lead to a deepening of recession. Recession, says the US experts, is not on its way. It is here with us now. The victims in events like the Bear Stearns Affair are ordinary investors, such as a British citizen who lost $1 billion. What is one man compared to an entire national economy?

AFTER RICE, NOW FISH

 

The shortage in rice is but the tip of the food iceberg. A fish shortage is expected to also emerge soon, says Kilusang Mangingisda, a nationwide conglomeration of 14 fishing federation. Chair Ruperto Aleroza cites the Comprehensive National Fishery Industry Development Plan (CNFIDP) showing forecast in food fish demand from 2.6 to 4.2 million metric tons by 2025. The CNFIDP is a strategic fisheries development plan of the government in partnership with the local fishery sector. Aleroza attributes this growing shortage to over-fishing. The CNFIDP study reveals that part of the food fish shortage is due to competition from the lucrative export-driven seaweed production.

 

To address the food fish deficit, Kilusang Mangingisda proposes tying up production to the maximum sustainable yield of 1.9 million metric tons, diverting commercial fishing into the Exclusive Economic Zone which is relatively unexploited and where Taiwanese and Chinese poachers proliferate, mandating environment-friendly aquaculture practices, and providing for adequate post‑harvest facilities to minimize spoilage.

 

I would add two more. One is plentiful easy-to-get credits for small fishermen who comprise 70% of fish production nationwide. Two is incentives to prioritize fish over seaweed production.

beteljuice7@gmail.com

AIRLINE TREMORS

by Bernie Lopez

After 911, the global airline industry went into a tailspin, and just as the dust was beginning to settle, a new tornado suddenly blew.

 

911 was the absolute catalyst. The day after 911, airports all over America and Europe were clogged up due to security reasons. At the Los Angeles airport, a Filipino balikbayan reported that he had to go down a few kilometers from the airport, walk with all his balikbayan boxes, only to have them stripped down to the toothbrush level, and only to find out he could not leave, not in the next few days, so he went home anyway and finished half a bottle of Black Label to calm his nerves down. In fear of terrorism, there was an obsession for over-security which left the airlines in shambles. Nothing was the same anymore in the commercial skies after the Twin Towers of Manhattan took the same fate as the twin towers of Babel two thousands years ago. The coincidence was biblically mind-boggling.

 

Security procedures disrupted the flow of airline traffic. There were less flights, less passengers, less profits. The strategy of the airlines in order to recover was to downsize, rely on smaller planes with smaller volume of passengers. That way, they could match logistics against passenger volume, and reduce overhead on big airplanes half or a third full. It worked but there were repercussions.

 

For one, more planes, small and big, meant more pilots. There ensued a serious shortage of pilots worldwide. The best Filipino pilots suddenly disappeared, offered by Middle East and Asian airlines lucrative salaries three to ten times their current pay.

 

Philippine Airlines (PAL) felt the crunch and was going into a crisis level. You cannot fast track producing good pilots because it takes years of training and flying hours to mold these ace pilots. I told PAL there were Saudi investors I knew, whose pockets were overflowing with petro-dollars, and who might be interested in a joint venture to built an international pilot school in Clark. I was ignored.

 

And as the first tornado died down, a second one ensued quite recently, a triple-whammy. First whammy was spiralling oil prices hitting the century mark ($100 per barrel) pushing airfares up to unprecedented levels. Again, there were less passengers and less profits. Delta and United, local US airlines which were hardest hit, are now negotiating for a merger. This implies laying off thousands as a solution to mounting overheads.

 

Second whammy was a former employee of the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) testifying that there were massive safety anomalies in key local US airlines. As a result, 2,000 flights were delayed within two days in just two local US airports.

 

Third whammy was the announcement by key US economists saying that a US recession was not arriving but has arrived, partly triggered by the credit crunch due to the subprime mortgage crisis worldwide which resulted in a tailspin in global stock exchanges.

 

The airline mergers may see a reversal back to the bigger planes, which will result in a glut of unemployed pilots from the era of shortage. Whatever the tremors that rock the global airline industry, one thing is for sure, out of the rubble will emerge the survivors because this demand-driven industry will necessarily separate the airline sheep from the goats.

FOOD SECURITY STRATEGY

 

At the top of the list of measures to insure food security is to streamline the availability and easy access of credit to marginal fishermen and farmers who comprise the bulk of our food production.

 

Second is for the government to abolish taxes on oil and on food. The government cannot forever increase deficit spending and think all the ingenious tax revenue plans will solve its over-spending. Belt tightening is now a must for government if it wants food security to be properly addressed. The reason America is a superpower is it has one of the lowest cost of gasoline which fuels industrial and economic growth. Taxes inhibit economic growth and encourage government over-spending. Our price for gasoline is so high, almost double of that in the US at one time in the past.

 

Third, our agricultural agencies are infested with corruption. An anti-corruption drive, if that is possible, will definitely do well to attain food security. The Fair Trade Alliance (FTA) says our food crisis is man-made, not just a product of global shortages. We have the land resources to produce. What we do not have is credit for food producers and government incentives for more food production. We have an agricultural economy. Agriculture dominates our growth as a nation. Agriculture insures the survival of marginals who comprise more than half of the country. There is no excuse that we cannot produce our own food.

 

Fourth and last, we must stop giving agricultural lands to foreigners like the Chinese and we must prioritize food over non-food agricultural productions even if the latter bring in better profits.

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

U.S. GMO RICE ARRIVING?

by Bernie Lopez

 

Greenpeace has given a warning that the 'cheap US rice' GMA intends to import may be the genetically engineered (GE) variety that may be harmful to eat and may contaminate our current varieties irreversibly.

 

In fact, this GE or GMO (genetically modified organism) rice that is dreaded by environmentalists to reach Philippine shores may have arrived. Greenpeace reported on February 28 that "the rice that arrived from the US under the PL480 may be contaminated with GMOs."

 

Daniel Ocampo, Genetic Engineering Campaigner of Greenpeace further reports, "US long grain rice (specially from Texas and Arkansas) has been central in GMO contamination scandals since 2006 and traces of the GMO (Bayer LL601 and LL602, not approved for consumption in most countries in the EU and the Philippines, have not yet been completely eradicated from the US rice supply. The NFA says that the said rice is GMO-free, but we believe the US tests conducted are not reliable. Since January 2007, 23 US-tested GMO-free rice shipments were rejected in the EU because they tested positive for GMOs under EU standards. Greenpeace is challenging the NFA to conduct more stringent tests on the said US rice shipment.

 

"The current rice crisis shows how rice is an integral part of our lives. GMO contamination of our rice supply will also have serious consequences. GMOs harm the environment and farmers' livelihoods and have never been proven safe for human consumption."

 

Imports of US GMO rice is banned presently in Japan and the EU. The discovery by EU tests disproving US rice as GMO-free reveals the malice of US biotech multinationals, which have a powerful lobby group that influences the US-FDA to support them, to export it anyway. As a last resort, they will dump it into Third World countries, being unwanted in EU and Japan.

 

Sr. Aida Velasquez of Lingkod Tao Kalikasan (LTK) says the track record of our regulators is disturbing, having approved all GMO applications without exception. GMO rice will surely be approved. She cites approval of GMOs even though they have not been tested here, so that the multinationals can show other countries we approved them. We are the guinea pigs who will be the first to eat GMO rice. She says LTK, together with Greenpeace, Searice and Masipag gave questions on the conduct of tests about GMO rice to the Bureau of Plant Industries (BPI) two years ago, which have remained unanswered until now.

 

Sr. Aida adds that the threat of contaminating our local varieties will “reduce us to destitution” because not only is it not yet proven to be safe for human consumption, contamination is also irreversible. GMO rice has a potential deep effect on the lives of every Filipino. She says it is ‘sickening’ that the present crisis is being used by opportunists to dump their products here, which have been banned in Japan and the EU.

 

NFA earlier said BPI was tasked with testing GMO rice, which they either have not done or are keeping secret. But later on, NFA said the rice they have are GMO-free when they did not release any test results and that is BPI’s task, casting doubts on their claims.

 

Finally, Sr. Aida says the government is to blame for not being able to give much-needed credits to small farmers, which is the root cause of our lack of productivity and dependence on imports. Productivity is the long term solution, not imports, she says.

 

The effects of GMO rice is not known. Past negative effects of GMOs in general include rats fed with GMO soy flour dying, and with Monsanto's GM corn developing blood and kidney abnormalities. Higaonons blamed Monsanto's GMO BT-corn for deaths of those exposed to its pollen or who ate it. GMO papaya seeds in Thailand were found contaminated with a tetracyclin-resistant gene. The UNFAO-created Codex warned that people may develop immunity to tetracyclin antibiotic. The farm was burned to the ground (Bangkok Post, July 1, 2005).

REAL VS ARTIFICIAL RICE SHORTAGE

 

THERE IS NO IMMEDIATE RICE SHORTAGE, ONLY AN INCREASE IN PRICE. THERE IS NO NEED TO PANIC EXCEPT IN CATCHING HOARDERS AND PRODUCING MORE RICE IN THE LONG TERM. OUR PANIC ALSO CONTRIBUTES TO SHORTAGE BY OVER-BUYING.

 

NFA announced a slight price increase of its rice from its current P18.25 per kilo, which is still near double of commercial prices, to lessen the ballooning government subsidy of about P8 per kilo, or 5 million kilos or P40 million per day. The huge disparity between subsidized and commercial rice invites hoarding. Rice shortage is therefore two-fold - real and artificial, and no one knows the ratio between the two. When the biggest rice exporter, Thailand, reduced export by 30% to insure their local supply, that is real, not hoarding. It automatically translates into less rice available globally. But when, as a consequence, fuelled by media reports of shortage, traders hold on to their stocks to further increase the price before they sell, that is artificial and plain hoarding.

 

How much of our rice shortage is real and artificial? If the artificial is larger than the real, then we really have to lynch the hoarders to save the nation. If the real is larger, then the productivity programs so nicely articulated have to be implemented without corruption. The most critical solution is credit to small rice farmers who produce majority of our rice nationwide.

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

THE SAGGITARIUS SYNDROME

by Bernie Lopez

 

When the CPP declared responsibility for the NPA attack on the mine site of Saggitarius Mining Inc. in Tampakan, South Cotabato, which destroyed a staggering P12 million worth of buildings and equipment, many began asking why.

 

This article is based on data reported by Romer Sarmiento for the Business World (Jan 31, Feb 1). There are reasons on both the high level, namely global, and the low level, namely community for the NPA attack.

On the global level, all we can say is that there is a tremendous global force present in Tampakan. Underneath Tampakan is the largest known copper-gold resource in Southeast Asia, 2.2 billion tons of ore, broken down into 12.8 million tons of copper and 15.2 million tons of gold. These are new estimates, up 10% from a previous one in April 2006.

 

Thus, the foreign giants are drooling over this sleepy town. Saggitarius represents two Australian mining giants as partners and majority equity holders, Xstrata Copper and Indophil Resources. Places super-rich in resources, like Iraq, are always the scene of wars, the grapple for the huge pie. In Nigeria, the oil multinationals spawned insurgency because it extracted all the oil but left the populace in utter destitution. In the same way, the core issue in Tampakan is multinationlism trampling not just on nationalism but also on communalism.

 

On the community level, the CPP declaration implies the NPA initiative has blessings from the top, that it is not an independent isolated move. On the community level, the proximity of the homes of marginals in a quiet remote upland area to the sudden presence of steel monsters run be high-tech high-salary personnel, is mind boggling. Indeed, there is a trend in our crowded mountains today that mining firms are now being intertwined with village communities. There is an inherent threat to their tiny marginal world. How would you feel if you suddenly saw a bulldozer in your backyard? It is like being struck by a lightning bolt. The first reflex is two fold. First is to cower in fear. The second is to see if the situation could solve the hunger problem.

 

Sagittarius personnel, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted giving 'token support' to the rebels. Further research revealed that the 'taxes' began right after an encounter between the NPA and government forces back in 2003. Sagittarius claims that this practice was began by the former management and that the new management refused to pay taxes. This may be one of the reasons for the NPA attack.

 

The core issue is how to split the huge copper-gold pie. In the NPA perspective, they have a right to what they consider as 'just compensation' from an alien firm in Filipino soil, extracting our riches at will. In the Saggitarius perspective, rebels have no such rights, although they may have given taxes only to dissipate potential violence.

 

The second alleged reason for the NPA attack is disgruntled B'laan natives who complained that they were not given permanent jobs as residents within the mine site itself, and that non-residents were given preferences. Sarmiento reports that the tribal chieftain receives P10,000 a month, and an additional P7,000 as chair of the Salnaong B'laan Foundation. The council also gets P25,000 a month. Such remunerations naturally spawn jealousy and envy, splintering tribal cohesion.

 

Saggitarius has appropriated P1.5 million a year as financial aid to each tribal council, which it said would be raised to P2.7 million. But Saggitarius admitted it is reluctant to pay cash for support for its project. The financial aid for the tribes and the taxes for the rebels are one and the same thing, the contribution of the alien firm to local 'development' or poverty alleviation, whichever you want to call it. The pie share of government is legal taxes.

 

Drooling over the potential windfall, any multinational is willing to pay these 'expenses' which are peanuts compared to the billions they will earn. The rebels and the tribes and the government want to get as much as they can, but admittedly, this is trickle-down economics, the crumbs at the bottom of the food chain. The purse holder is king.

 

The Sagittarius Syndrome is the core issue of equitable development, with the cases of Nigeria and Iraq echoing on the background. There are trends in the Sagittarius Syndrome we must address - mines fuelling insurgency, as in Nigeria; mines fuelling militarization, which in turn dislocates marginal communities on the pretext of insurgency. The pie is too big to ignore.

 

There are two large forces in contention - the vast marginals of upland communities with their tribes and the rebel groups at the bottom of the food chain, and the powerful multinational with their vast financial resources at the top of the food chain. The government is simply a fence sitter as long as it gets its share of the pie. In Tampakan, the situation is percolating into a head on collision of an immovable object with a irresistible force. In in all this, there is no longer economic development but war, carnage, and massacres.

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

GLOBAL PRAYER

by Bernie Lopez

 

Sister Raquel Reodica, RVM, of the Mother Ignacia Healing Ministry, is launching "Global Prayer Against Satan" through its website and in the Internet. We feature her prayer here, and request readers to join the campaign.

 

The entire prayer, which is given here (Pilipino version request be email) for people to print out and participate in, was precipitated by Sister Raquel's discernment during her many meditations in the last few months that the biblical battle between Jesus and Satan is intensifying and will continue to do so in the near future. She sites a bizarre incident in the healing center about two years ago where the statue of St. Michael the Archangel, arch-enemy of Satan, mysteriously fell from its perch. For her, this was an omen of the looming spiritual war.

 

Sr. Raquel feels that Mankind at this critical point needs to unite in a global prayer to rally to Jesus in this coming battle. The forces of Satan will use deceit, employing messengers who are 'wolves in sheep's clothing', as mentioned in the Bible. They will pose in the name of Jesus but are in reality followers of Satan. The enemy is formidable and wise.

 

The three-minute global prayer is set at a specific time twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays at ten o'clock in the morning, Phlippine time, when the congregation at the healing center will say the prayer. Everyone all over the planet, especially Filipinos, are asked to recite the prayer together at this specific time, from OFWs in the Middle East, to the many Filipino communities in New York, Chicago, California, Vancouver. You do not have to wake up at two a.m. to join the prayer, just do so upon waking up. If even just 10% of the seven-odd million OFWs or 700,000 were to join the prayer campaign, this will have made a dent on this spiritual battle.

 

The center is set to mass produce stampitas with the global prayer for distribution to the healing session congregation and to anyone requesting. You can request for the email version at the email address of this author at the end of this article, which will be given out as soon as it is ready.

 

So far, after it started on February 20, there have been many positive responses globally through the Internet about the importance of this prayer campaign. It is featured in the healing center's website www.motherignaciahealingministry.com . reuter ---- and request to 42 radio stations ---. A Youtube version will come out in March. Please help in the campaign by giving copies of the prayer to everyone you know.

GLOBAL PRAYER AGAINST SATAN

 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of Mary, Lord who reigns over the problems and crises besetting the world today, by the power of His blood, through the authority vested in me as a Christian and as God’s instrument for healing, I, Sister Raquel, together with all who pray with me at this moment, bind and reject satan and command him to depart from us. We seal our homes and all the members of our families, our relatives and possessions in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

I, Sister Raquel, bind and reject all evil spirits in the air, wind, fire, water, beneath the waters, in the netherworld, in all earthly elements. I bind and reject all satanic forces in nature, all spirits of confusion, of division, all spirits of disruption, all spirits of fear, worry and anxiety, all spirits of disbelief, all spirits of unforgiveness, resentment, and anger, all spirits of disobedience, of vengeance. I bind and reject all aspects and attributes of these evil spirits. I command that there will no communication with satan, that he departs quietly from our lives. Do not meddle with us.

 

In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, I, Sister Raquel, break and dissolve every curse, spell, and desire of these evil spirits, all satanic vows, satanic pacts, satanic sacrifices, voodoo practices, mind control, and other evil practices. Come O Holy Spirit and fill this world with Your love and grace. Saint Michael, Saint Gabriel, Saint Raphael and all the holy Archangels, all the angels of heaven, come and help us fight this battle against satan and his forces.

 

Lord Jesus Christ, please ask the Holy Spirit to encompass us and fill us with Your grace. Oh Holy Spirit, fill the empty spaces within us with Your peace, Your love, Your healing, Your joy. O Holy Spirit, I, Sister Raquel together with all who pray with me now ask for your gifts and powers, the gift of wisdom, of a clear understanding of the word, the gift of faith, the gift of inner healing, of prophecy, of discernment of your will, the gift of tongues, the gift of deliverance, the gift of teaching and evangelization, the gift of service, the gift of hope and encouragement, the gift of leadership, the gift of joy and laughter, that I may use these gifts cheerfully and enjoy the abundant life You have promised. Amen.

 

Come, O God the Holy Spirit, and by the love of the eternal Father, vanquish all evil influences in our lives. Free us O Holy Spirit from all sicknesses, sicknesses of soul and body, especially cancer. Amen. Amen. Amen. Sister Raquel Reodica, RVM

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

SAVING LIVES BEFORE TREES

by Bernie Lopez

 

If we kill people in order to save trees, we are more anti-heroes than heroes. We become inhuman environmentalists. We must save both people and trees all at once. And if there is a conflict, we must save people first.

 

If we are to fight environmental crimes, we have to begin with alternative livelihood, otherwise all our efforts are for naught. Food and survival for marginals is the sine qua non of a successful environmental advocacy which should not dislocate them.

 

Although it has tapered somewhat recently, there are about 60 ten-wheeler trucks leaving Dingalan per month, two per day, carrying 900 20-kilo sacks of wood coal per truck . This is a total of about P1.08 million per month. This translates theoretically to a staggering three hectares of forest destroyed per month, the value of which is immeasurable. What Mother Nature has built in a millennium Man, in his hunger and poverty, can wipe out in the blink of an eye.

 

When inventor Jun Catan gave a talk about his revolutionary 'green charcoal', people from the Ugnayan ng mga Mamayan sa Lungsod at Nayon (UMALUN) in Dingalan in Aurora who attended sought him out, seeing the potential to veer away from destructive wood coal-making through Catan's innovative technology. They the invited him and this author to Dingalan to help form a strategy around the green charcoal phenomenon. UMALUN has 727 farmer members, most of whom do wood coal-making off and on.

 

Catan's green charcoal is nothing but garden and agricultural waste made into organic coal, using a microbe to speed up composting. In his demo, Dingalan folks were surprised that Catan first dipped in water the dark-greenish elongated finger-thick coal. The magic of green charcoal is in drawing the energy not just from organic coal but also from the hydrogen from water through a catalyst, which doubles its energy content. I call it 'wet organic coal'.

 

Surprisingly, I discovered, wood coal-making is not a 'crime' in Dingalan legally, although it is environmentally. It is allowed by the DENR. UMALUN has permission to clear forests under DENR's Certificate of Land Ownership Agreement (CLOA) assigning three hectares per member. They have been cutting the forest for coal for eleven years now and the members say they will run out of alloted forest in about six years.

 

UMALUN clarifies that wood coal-making is a terribly hard task and they do it only when they are extremely hungry. More important to them is planting fruit trees, coconut interspersed with coffee or cacao or papaya, for cash crops in the forest cleared after coal-making. Ownership under the CLOA is the key. A farmer will clear the forest only if he knows he will own it as his future tree farm. Replacing the forest with fruit trees thus becomes less of a crime by responding to poverty alleviation. Of course, the die hards will say, the coal is fossil fuel that catalyzes global warming and climate change. But this is a tiny fraction of the massive fossil fuel being burnt by cars and LPG stoves all over the country, which is ten times in the US.

 

In the UMALUN-Catan scheme, trees are pruned rather than cut, composted and fed into the green charcoal making machine, a Hi-Ace motor running on green charcoal itself. The product is an organic hydrogen-driven coal rather than wood coal. You do not have to destroy the trees. When I saw the ample plant waste in the coconut fields near the people's backyards, I told them that they do not have to go to the forest to make green charcoal. Right there a stone's throw away is the gold. There is money in agricultural waste.

 

A woman said it was unfortunate that they have been burning these coconut fronds and cacao and coffee husks in their backyards since they were small kids. When I told them they have been burning money when they are so poor, they all laughed. But they knew what I was saying was true and not a joke. Dingalan is one of the poorest places in Luzon due to its remoteness.

 

UMALUN, with the help of Catan, have a lot of hurdles, but they are not impossible to overcome - collection, complex logistics, cooperative labor. Marketing is no problem. Catan is their ready market who will buy everything, whether under option 1, the agri-wastes in trucks transported to Catan's green charcoal plant in Alaminos, or option 2, Catan builds a new plant in Dingalan. UMALUN must be tightly organized into people in total cooperation, both farmers and wives, in order to make the dream a reality. Financing may be a critical hurdle. I told the UMALUN people the Land Bank has ample of agricultural loans to give to such pioneering ventures. In the scheme, UMALUN and Catan will form a corporate partnership.

 

Catan believes the demand for green charcoal will increase rapidly due to spiralling cost of oil and LPG. Green charcoal-fed stoves at home or boilers in small chicken-dressing plants reduce energy cost by half. Presently, Catan gets agri-waste of Robina's C-2 plant as input for his Alaminos plant. If only to help the people of Dingalan and stop deforestation, he is not afraid to expand to Dingalan because it has immense agri-waste and he knows the immense market potential of green charcoal is growing rapidly. The impact of green charcoal may reduce deforestation in Dingalan by a third or a quarter, if the UMALUN model gets off the ground. Let us cross our fingers and wait.

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

CORRUPTION INCORPORATED

by Bernie Lopez

Here are some of the corruption trends in our government, so people will understand how far we have gone, and how blatantly brave people have become in being corrupt. If you want to get angry, read this.

 

First of all, it is very odd that one from the highest places accused of corruption will suddenly launch an anti-corruption drive, and even visit a far away place where one is given flowers by people who received some meagre government support for their project. It is a way of diverting the issue but such PR strategies do not work.

 

According to sources inside the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA), you can pay P150,000 with an official receipt or P100,000 without receipt for a license for your product to be approved for commercialization. This has been going on for a decade now but no one seems able to stop the practice. The best way to prove this is to get the list of products approved and go to the companies that own them and ask for the official receipt. Many will of course say the receipts are lost.

 

According to the same FPA source, there were 1,049 products approved by the FPA for 2006. If we assume only 10% are stupid enough to pay P150,000 instead of P100,000, we can say that about 900 products do not have receipts. Multiply this with P100,000 and we get a cool P90 million which goes to the pockets of FPA officials every year. In a decade, that is almost a billion.

 

This is how multinationals are able to get a license and sell products which are banned in other countries. The P100,000 is nothing compared to the huge profits in selling banned chemicals. This type of corruption translates into people getting sick or dying from exposure to such toxic chemicals. It is easy to find out what are the banned chemicals. Get the list of approved products from the FPA and send it to the US FPA and its European counterpart to find out which are banned there but freely sold here and with license.

 

Corruption has filtered down to the lowest level of local government. According to a local source in Nueva Ecija, a barangay captain was demanding an Isuzu van for a barangay construction permit for a big mall. He got the idea from the governor who was earlier demanding P100,000. The same source said that even the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) is learning the ropes of corruption at an early age.

 

According to a seaweed farmer, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) had a program to build seaweed farms in scattered areas. The cost of the farm is P20,000 but they bloated it to P100,000. If there were 20 such farms, we are talking here of P2 million. Although this amount may be relatively small, it is a 500% increase, which is beyond the 'permissible corruption' Jun Lozada talks about.

 

According to an inside source in the Philippine Coconut Authority (PHILCOA), officials were asking for P5 million out of a P15 million project for the eradication of coconut pests in order to approve it. That is a meager 30% and will pass Lozada's standards of good governance.

 

According to an inside source at the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), an LRTA director once demanded a million pesos from a Japanese multinational in order for him to release check payments. Since the checks run into millions of dollars, a million pesos will again pass Lozada's standards. The problem was, the courier for the one million peso cash bribe, an assistant of the director who suddenly disappeared with the money.

 

This was a standard practice at the LRTA for any kind of disbursements, whether the small expenses for security or the big ones for rail management and operations. At one time, security guards at LRT/MRT stations wanted to go on strike because they were not being paid or their salaries were delayed because the bribes had to be paid first before the salaries.

 

According to sources at the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA), a particular practice is not really corruption because it is legal. The LLDA exacts an 'environment fee' from the hundreds of firms polluting the lake from their shoreline operations. This adds up to millions per year. As long as you pay, it does not matter if you pollute. Nobody will look into your operations, unless a particular LLDA official pinpoints a victim for additional income.

 

Everybody is happy. The LLDA gets its income to stay afloat and operate. The companies get their income. It is not surprising that a recent study reveals the presence of about 300 or so heavy metals in Laguna Lake.

These corruption stories are the tip of the iceberg. There are many more corruption stories but no one wants to tell them because they do not want to get involved.

 

They say a third of our trillion-pesos-a-year budget goes to corruption. That is very believable. We are one of the most corrupt nation in the world not for nothing. It is ingrained in our culture. It is institutionalized, and at times, like the LLDA case, legalized. Jun Lozada's 'acceptable' level of corruption or 'controlled greed' of 20% is a scary statement not just because it is happening, but it is starting to be accepted. There are no acceptable levels of corruption, Jun. Corruption is corruption. 

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

JATHROPA VERSUS MALUNGGAY

by Bernie Lopez

Many do not see that the current intense publicity to plant Jathropa in thousands of hectares nationwide is orchestrated by the Chinese industry and their Filipino counterparts which sell the expensive oil-extracting machineries. Many do not see that Jathropa, in fact, will dislocate marginal farmers and agricultural productivity.

 

If you place this side by side with GMA promising millions of hectares to the Chinese for the products they will buy from us, you begin to see that the great Chinese Bear may be our scourge and source of impoverishment more than the American Eagle or the Japanese Ninja.

 

That Jathropa will be a source of poverty rather than wealth is hard to discern for an eye which sees economics rather than socio-economics. The intense publicity for Jathropa begins with numbers, pushing figures on how much you can earn per hectare. On paper, if you make a computation, you can see the windfall you can earn. And without further investigation, you embark on a venture whose future is questionable.

 

Jathropa is first of all land-intensive. They talk of thousands of hectares before they can put up the expensive oil-extracting plant. If you do not achieve critical mass, the processing plant will never come and the Jathropa fruits you sell will rot in one warehouse, if it is uneconomical to transport to a distant plant. True, you are paid right away for your produce, but in the long term, if that critical mass is not achieved, the entire effort will grind to a halt.

 

So take the example of a drive by a Jathropa NGO, talking to the barangay captains, farmers, fishermen. You can actually plant it anywhere, even in salty shoreline soil. Jathropa, like the lowly Malunggay is a survivor. You can make a Jathropa fence in your backyard. And so Mang Juan the small farmer, convinced to make extra money, begins to plant it all over the place. The barangay captain gets more farmers to plant them. The agents will buy your produce but remember that it will take a few years before you can harvest from mature trees. They want to achieve critical mass, but will it come?

 

In Dumaguete, there is an intense war between farmers and the Jathropa missionaries of the DENR and the Philippine Forest Corporation. The DAR awarded the land to the farmers. Everything was fine until the Jathropa missionaries arrived. Seeing the potential for Jathropa production, the missionaries succeeded in reversing the DAR award. They will convert the farmer's land into a huge Jathropa hacienda. In Filipino, we call it 'lastiko', meaning, changing your mind midstream. Now, there is an angry mob of farmers seeking justice.

 

In other words, Jathropa will dislocate, first, farmers from their lands, and second, food production, and eventually, food security, because you plant a non-food cash crop, replacing food cash and subsistence crops. Non-food cash crops on a contract growing scheme has no socio-economic value for two reasons. First, most contract growing schemes are contractor-dependent and often one-sided in their favor. This is true for coffee, cacao, pineapple, whether the contractor is a multinational like Dole or a local like San Miguel. The problem is, as a contract grower, you are completely dependent on the contractor to whom you sell all your produce, no one else. They can command their own price and you are helpless.

 

Second, subsistence farming is the most critical source of survival for marginals because it yields food for the dinner table even if one does not have cash. If you have a kamote patch in your backyard, you have cheap nutrient vegetables everyday even if you are unemployed. Cash crops cannot match the socio-economic value of subsistence crops on the level of the marginals, the poorest of the poor. In the Philippines, about 70% are below the poverty threshold, and about 70% rely on agri/aquaculture for survival. Therefore, subsistence farming is very critical for us.

 

Jathropa, because it is land-intensive, will dislocate subsistence farming if employed on a massive scale. They argue that you can plant food crops in between the Jathropa. Theoretically yes, but if you consider the Dumaguete affair, such massive farming to justify the extracting machine, the reality is Jathropa will take over not only the land which they will convert it into Jathropa haciendas, but also over the farmers who will be employed as minimum-wage farm hands without subsistence crops.

 

The people pushing for Jathropa, Filipinos and Chinese, will benefit and the contract growers will get the crumbs from the pie. The Jathropa missionares are the government. like the DENR and the Philippine Forest Corporation, and the private sector like big land-owning agri-entrepreneurs controlling many contractors. In other words, Jathropa has the potential make the poor poorer.

 

But if we make our backyard fence with the lowly Malunggay rather than the alien Jathropa, we can see the social impact right away. I remember years ago going to a seminar attended by 300 people in Dimataling, a remote municipality in the Baganian Peninsula in Zamboanga del Sur. The seminar was poorly funded. We had nothing to eat. So the coordinators talked to some farmers in a huddle. Suddenly, they all shouted and dispersed. They felled a giant Malunggay tree and cooked two tons of this nutrient vegetable. We were all very full and very happy. Subsistence food is critical for the poor. Tomorrow, the malunggay magic.

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

 

IRAQ - THE ENEMY WITHIN

by Bernie Lopez

A US general in Iraq recently admitted in a CNN interview that they are helpless to control the worsening civil war in Iraq because the split in loyalty for Sunnis and Shiites has led to Iraqi soldiers fighting Iraqi soldiers.

 

After questioning several Iraqi policemen and soldiers, American forces have discovered that the splinter among Sunnis and Shiites is so deep that it has infected the entire hierarchy of the Iraqi police and army, from the lowly foot soldiers to the top echelons. This is a very dangerous situation that invites a never-ending conflict, a civil war which may have no solution except protracted carnage or partitioning. It is understandable if the conflict is among soldiers versus rebels. But once it becomes soldiers versus soldiers, the enemy within invites total anarchy.

 

Historically, the Sunnis were the minority elite ruling group even before the rise of Saddam Hussein. Hussein strengthened the Sunni role even farther under the Baath Party. The majority Shiites were always suppressed and massacred, that is why they hated Hussein. When Hussein was executed, it was the Shiites in the judiciary and police force who fast-tracked his execution in fear that some Sunni force from within the government might pre-empt the decision.

 

The arrival of the Americans and the fall of Hussein led to the weakening of the Sunnis and the rise of the Shiites. The US occupation forces campaigned to install a new Iraqi government through a democratic election, and create a corresponding police and army forces which will eventually take over when US troops withdraw. The minority Sunnis, with lingering loyalty to Saddam Hussein even after his death, were reluctant to join a government and share power with the majority Shiite. And so the Shiites took the majority of positions in both government and police-army forces.

 

The blunder really came from the Americans, not so much for creating a Sunni power vacuum with the fall of Hussein, and the consequent Shiite power group, but more for installing a 'democracy' that became the very catalyst to the further polarization of the looming Sunni-Shiite conflict. They were in fact, by the very essence of occupation, inadvertently cooking up the civil war. The American premise that democracy would integrate was wrong all the while.

 

This was further exacerbated by the obvious pro-Sunni stance of US troops, only because they feared the Iran-backed Shiites who were reciliently anti-American. In fact, most recent US-British military initiatives in Basra and Falujah, were against the Shiites. And so the Shiites in the army and police forces, the enemy within, had no choice but to react to the situation. The collution and intelligence coordination among Shiites rebels and soldiers has led to the killing of about a hundred Iraqi policemen in such a short time.

 

About 600 Iranian-backed Shiite militias suddenly vanished in an obvious guerrilla retreat against advancing US-Iraq conventional forces. In frustration, the US-Iraq forces arrested 500 suspects, but they caught innocent Shiite civilians loyal to Sadr but unarmed non-rebels. The rebels had gone. What will they do with these large number of ‘suspects’, jail them forever, since they cannot prove innocence or guilt? It is a dilemma worse than the invisible Vietcongs.

 

It seems that, from recent turn of events and US military actuations, it is better if the US leave right away because their presence is further worsening the Sunni-Shiite civil war. American presence is ironically splintering and destroying Iraq, not unifying it, and prolonging the war, not ending it. They have an illusion that the 'surge' is working to justify US presence to the anti-war activists back home. It is like using a cup to place the ocean into a beach hole. It seems the only solution to the Iraqi civil war is the last resort, namely, partitioning of Sunnis and Shiites, who are historically beyond integration. The other choice is a protracted civil war, as in Serbia, where more and more civilians from both sides will die.

 

Partitioning is the ‘last resort’ incision to contain terminal cancer of unending ethnic rivalry. It was used to solve the never ending war between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, between Muslim Kosovo and non-Muslim Serbia as the only way towards long term peace. It may be the only solution in Iraq.

 

A UN peace keeping force in Iraq will be useless. If you recall UN personnel were bombed by rebel Iraqis, so they left Iraq. A UN initiative begins with a total withdrawal of US forces, then a UN contingent not of soldiers but of diplomats to oversee the process of partitioning.

 

The Sunnis will resist this partition just as the Indians and the Serbs, as the dominant groups, did, because it means the loss of their domination. A partition would be along the lines of population density. The majority Shiites are in the north where the oil fields are, and the barren south is left for the Sunnis. Damn if we partition, and damn if we don't.

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

THE SPRATLY POKER GAME

By Bernie Lopez

There are five people on the poker table – Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, China and the U.S. All are holding hands the others cannot see and will not see until the betting is over. And it won’t be over soon, give or take a decade.

Let us see how they play their hands. The Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia do not have a lot of chips. They can play their hands only so far and they know it. They are not in a position to bluff as China will call it anytime. Vietnam and Malaysia are minor players. They are in for the ride. But the Philippines is a major stakeholder only because the Spratly is within its 200-kilometer zone and we have an age-old claim. But, still, we do not have a lot of poker chips, which is the name of the game.

The Philippines, Vietnam and China signed a Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JSMU) in 2004. No one complained then. Why was there a complaint recently? Simple, the fourth guy in the game, the U.S., who is standing behind the scene looking innocent, but is not really, raised the ante by coming out with an article in the Far East Economic Review. The article made the Filipino a scapegoat by saying we ‘sold out’ against our ASEAN partners in favor of China. We were the traitors, says the articles. This later became an accusation of treason against GMA in the Philippine press. The US adopted the Barack-Hillary mud-slinging frenzy against both China and the Philippines.

It was the apple of discord and its intent was to throw a monkey wrench in the JSMU before they truly indeed find some oil. The predator Eagle is just as interested as the predator Bear in any oil that can be found in the area. If you understand this geopolitical backdrop, you begin to understand the actuations of the players and how they play their hands. Phase one is the two big players out to step on or use the three small players for their own end. Phase two is the two big players out for a big showdown when the underlings are dealt with. That China and/or the US will use the Philippines to finally get the oil in the Spratly is a foregone conclusion. They are willing to give us the crumbs and the trickles, but only if we ‘behave’ according to their game plan.

But remember the JSMU is not exclusive. We have an option of making our poker hand better by asking a third party to explore at terms less oppressive than those offered by US and China oil firms. The most obvious third hand is Russia. The US will do everything in its power to prevent a Russian foothold in the Philippines. Shell will surely cringe from Gazprom in Philippine waters.

The way Shell treated the Philippine government in Malampaya is the way the US will treat the Philippines as landowner in Spratly, namely – give them the crumbs. That is, if we are indeed proven to be the real landowner. We are still far from that. Shell Malampaya is the example of the modus operandi of all oil multinationals worldwide. That is why US oil giants Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil are being thrown out of Kazakhstan in favor of Russian pipelines. They are also losing ground in the Caspian sea. At the emergence of a global energy crisis, there is a worldwide trend for oil-rich nations to ‘nationalize’ oil fields controlled by Western giant oil firms which give trickles to the host nation only because they foot the large development bill.

 

China’s JSMU ploy was ingenious. It pre-empted both US and ASEAN initiatives in the Spratly which were not moving anyway. There are two opposing Filipino views on the JSMU. One says we are selling our patrimony, the way the US wants us to think. The other says JSMU on the contrary is an ADMISSION of our patrimony and territorial rights. It implies they have to deal with us if there is any oil found. This makes some sense. But of course, we go back to square one. Even if we are indeed the landowner, if China, which has a lot of chips, raises the pot to develop the oil wells, they still get the lion share. Whether we get a Chinese or an American oil giant as partner, it is the same banana offering crumbs. It’s the Malampaya syndrome all over again. Damn if we do own it, damn if we don’t. We get the crumbs. That is the way the poker game goes for small players. They always lose in the end.

The US can rock the boat before the JSMU can hit pay dirt by talking to the Philippines, covert or overt, about its own exploration initiatives. So there may be two coinciding explorations all at once out there. Shell, which has nearby Malampaya, is the most obvious oil explorer. Even if the JSMU hits pay dirt, the US can still continue exploring nearby areas. But getting a third party to explore on better terms will make our poker hand better.

For us Filipinos, the Spratly is about politics and a bit of the crumbs. For the US and China, it is about millions of barrels in oil, nothing else. We have to play our hand well, even if we have very little chips because we need the crumbs badly.

beteljuice7@gmail.com