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Admin
01-01-06, 02:00
Thread Starter.

CanContrib
06-17-06, 22:10
Thread Starter.
While likely not really the intended discussion, since no one else has much to say on the topic ...

Politics in the Phils are a very touch subject. Careful what you say! It's not uncommon for someone to ask me for my opinion. It may be just casual talk, or it may be to feel me out for possible allegiances, pro or con. Unless you are *absolutely* certain about the neutrality (is anyone neutral here?) of who you're talking to, be vague. Be very vague. Leave them guessing as to you opinion instead of giving them any opportunity to read personal leanings into your comments no matter how innocently intended.

Discounting insurgencies, there are basically two "sides" to politics in the Philippines, with party names that are about as rigid as water vapour, and it shifts all the time. In short and in current context, there's the Estrada (locked up)/FPJ-jr(deceased)/VP-wannabe (don't remember female name), etc group, and then of course there's PGMA/DeCastro, etc currently in power and under constant threat of impeachement and/or coup by the other side. Google if you want more background.

The point is that as a foreigner (that's likely you if you're reading this), you really don't want to get mixed up in this, it's likely not what you're in the Phils for and is certainly not good for your health.

I've seen fights over this. I've seen blood seeping from dead people over this. I know when to keep my mouth shut and be "somewhere else", so far. Wise foreigners will do the same. Wise locals do the same! Even if you LIVE here, unless you're born Pinoy you're a foreigner. Have a-political friends. Sure they have political alliances, but when you have personal friends on both sides it's hard to be accused of taking sides, especially when you're ultra careful not to say something stupid.

Example, a couple of years ago I was in a small, hole-in-the-wall bar in the province, and someone a little too well dressed starts wanting to be my friend and talking politics. He's obviously well armed (no check for firearms in this place). I politely and very vaguely converse with him, buy him a beer, and make great effort (he doesn't like me to bail) to get the hell away Real Fast. Time to be somewhere else! Haven't seen him since, but without doubt instinct served me well, again.

Yes, everyone isn't getting their fair share. If you have to explain it, point the conversation to global (meaning outside Phils) politics. Pinoys commiserate with being screwed by foreigners, so if you're all on the same side, It's not only much safer, it's true!

One thing I absolutely must agree with aking asawa about is "stay out of politics"! I've been asked many times to run for local office where we live, and I always just tell them "bawal ako". They say "bakit, walang problema dito ka", and my answer is just that my wife won't let me. Good excuse and they let me live, and we all share drinks on occasion and I vaguelly agree with everyone's bitching about life in general, and life goes on.

Cebu Local
06-18-06, 04:29
I am a"player"in Philippine politics because at a certain level you need the contacts,I was part of the Official Philippine Delegation to a travel show in Hong Kong recently.Since I was part of a delegation,I was given free space at the Philippine booth and the mini trade show that basically saved me a few thousand dollars.I know the Philippine Tourism Secretary and all the Undersecretaries on a personal basis.Ditto for the Governor of Cebu and Mayor and Vice Mayor of Cebu City.That being said,It is better not get involved unless you are a long term resident and NEED something from the Philippine Goverment.It can be dangerous to be on the LOSING side.But its nice to have contacts.CanContrib,Kaibigan ko Si Cong Boying Remulla at Vice Gov Johnvic.So you know I understand how bloody politics can be in your area.It is best you stay out of local politics there.To the monger populance at large.THE PHILIPPINE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH HAS CONCLUDED PHILIPPINE POLITICS IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH.My 2 Centavos opinion

CanContrib
06-19-06, 22:56
... CanContrib,Kaibigan ko Si Cong Boying Remulla at Vice Gov Johnvic.So you know I understand how bloody politics can be in your area.It is best you stay out of local politics there.To the monger populance at large.THE PHILIPPINE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH HAS CONCLUDED PHILIPPINE POLITICS IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH.My 2 Centavos opinion

Marunong sha!

Spam Hog
06-25-06, 08:16
If you are a foeigner, the dumbest, stupidest and no doubt the most dangerous thing you can do is discuss, support or get invovled in (kiss of death) influence Philippine politics.

When Filipinos start discussing such matters in my presence i find a (polite) reason to excuse myself. If they ask me my opinion, I shrug my shoulders and play dumb foreigner and say I've dont understand what is going on, its a great country and Filipinos treat me well and all the big bad old countries should stop picking on the poor RP because it has so many nice people who just need a break. I usually begin bitching about how corrupt and messed up US politicians are to divert their attention if they persist.

Any foreigner/visitor or expat should adopt the same attitude and probably some Filipinos as well. Much healthier in the long run

Spam Hog

CanContrib
06-25-06, 23:35
If you are a foeigner, the dumbest, stupidest and no doubt the most dangerous thing you can do is discuss, support or get invovled in (kiss of death) influence Philippine politics.Absolutely, even more dangerous than pretending to be dripping foreign currency, especially outside of Metro Manila.
When Filipinos start discussing such matters in my presence i find a (polite) reason to excuse myself. If they ask me my opinion, I shrug my shoulders and play dumb foreigner and say I've dont understand what is going on, its a great country and Filipinos treat me well and all the big bad old countries should stop picking on the poor RP because it has so many nice people who just need a break. I usually begin bitching about how corrupt and messed up US politicians are to divert their attention if they persist.Strange but now that you mention it that's exactly what I instinctively and truthfully start ranting about my own country of origin! You want to see mega-$ corruption, look WEST to where it's mostly legal!
Any foreigner/visitor or expat should adopt the same attitude and probably some Filipinos as well. Much healthier in the long run.Spam HogThe one thing (aside from politics, which are obviously fractional, so don't take sides where you have no right to take sides), is to [CodeWord140] (http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord140) off citizens with any *perceived* lack of respect for *their* country, no matter how messed up it may be. Locals feel much better knowing that life isn't the "Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow" they've been somewhat falsely led to believe by other locals trying to extract their money for vaugue and usually false promises.

Bottom line: citizens by virtue of birth have a native right to "BE RIGHT" and even naturalized residents don't share that same "right". Anyone wanting to try should FIRST get a Pinoy body-transplant, and even then might wish to consider how much Pinoy blood is shed almost daily over politics.

CanContrib
06-25-06, 23:58
I am a"player"in Philippine politics because at a certain level you need the contacts, ... I should comment on this. Yes, you can be a "player" if you have an over-riding need to be, but be careful and as much as possible low-key. Let the citizens take the credit for whatever you help them with and be happy with the benefits you derive by doing so. Obviously CebuLocal, you know that, so my comment is for the benefit of anyone who might not yet have figured that out.

Warbucks
12-13-08, 07:40
manila -- thousands of anti-charter change (cha-cha) protesters trooped to makati city friday, showing off a multi-sectoral opposition against moves to amend the 1987 constitution and possibly extend president gloria macapagal-arroyo's term.

threat of bad weather did not dampen the protesters composed of civil society groups such as the black and white movement, concerned citizen movement, united filipinos against cha-cha, and bangon filipino.

arroyo watch: sun.star blog on president arroyo



militant groups like bagong alyansang makabayan (bayan), partidong manggagawa, gabriela, courage, bukluran ng manggagawang pilipino, sanlakas, and akbayan also attended the rally.

they marched along paseo de roxas avenue to the foot of the ninoy aquino monument where the rally, which started about 4 p.m., was held.

not even the absence of ousted president joseph estrada, opposition titular head, could dampen the fervor of the rallyists who whooped every time a speaker mounted the makeshift stage to decry the move at the house of representatives to amend the charter.

senator jinggoy estrada told the crowd that his father could not come. "the doctor called and told us that my grandmother is in serious condition. i ask for your understanding," he said.

the former president had to attend to his ailing mother, 103-year-old doña mary, at the san juan medical center.

jinggoy added that even if his father is not physically present, he is one with the people in joining the opposition against any amendment to the constitution.

he criticized the administration congressmen for pursuing cha-cha.

former president estrada, though warned by the administration against taking part in any anti-government protest, earlier said he would join the protest to ensure that president arroyo could not deprive the filipino masses of their duly elected president for the third time.

"we cannot and will not allow mrs. arroyo or these power-hungry congressmen to stay in power beyond 2010 through charter change," he said.

the elder estrada stressed that rewriting the constitution should be done after the 2010 national elections.

senator mar roxas, who led the contingent from the liberal party along with senator rodolfo biazon, muntinlupa representative ruffy biazon and former senate president franklin drilon, also called on the people to unite against cha-cha.

"i hope we will be able to stop cha-cha since that would be like allowing the [CodeWord123] (http://isgprohibitedwords.info?CodeWord=CodeWord123) of our constitution," roxas said.

leading members of the former senior government officials (fsgo) in decrying corruption in the arroyo administration is former senator vicente paterno.

paterno branded the arroyo administration as the worst government, much worse than the late strongman ferdinand marcos.

"for 45 years since the time of former president diosdado macapagal, this is the most corrupt administration," he said.

civil society lawyer and university of the philippines (up) college of law professor harry roque joined the crowd in chanting "no to cha-cha lalo na kay gloria."

on the other hand, film producer armida siguioin-reyna delivered a revolutionary poem enjoining the people to walk from its long stupor and unite to uphold the interest of the country.

united opposition (uno) president and makati mayor jejomar binay called the cha-cha move as a "work of deception" and said the administration is mistaken in its belief that the opposition of the move is limited to them.

"we would not stop the fight against cha-cha no matter what happens," binay said.

other political and known personalities who joined the rally expressed the same sentiment.

bayan secretary general renato reyes accused the police of "harassment" and trying to "delay people from attending the protest," citing the alleged arrest in cubao, quezon city by highway patrol group policemen of activists from the muslim-christian alliance.

reyes said the activists were hauled off to camp crame.

he also said a contingent from cavite, whom police had reportedly prevented from going to metro manila, decided to commute to the rally.

the militant leader said a contingent from bataan, led by bishop socrates villegas, was also blocked by police at the north luzon expressway.

but national capital region police office (ncrpo) director leopoldo bataoil denied that authorities blocked or interfered with the protesters.

"we are just here to protect the people from any harm and criminal elements," said bataoil.

the police official, in media interviews, refused to give their estimate of the crowd. "i am leaving it to the rally organizers since we are not engaged in a numbers game here," he said.

"i will respect their crowd estimate. i will not argue on figures. anyway, the media saw it for themselves. i just want to assure the people that whether the crowd is big or small, the ncrpo will render its best to protect the people," bataoil added.

the ncrpo tactical operations center said they have not monitored any disturbance during the rally as of 7 p.m. (ah/sunnex)

for more philippine news, visit sun.star cagayan de oro.

(december 13, 2008 issue

Soapy Smith
12-13-08, 10:14
I appreciate DW’s efforts to share political current events in this thread of the forum. Advice from two years ago in this little used thread was probably appropriate: foreigners should avoid Philippine political debates and squabbles with any locals that you don’t already know very well. On the other hand, keeping abreast of current events is also prudent, even if only to avoid getting sucked into the latest “people power” protest or being able to recognize and avoid political hotheads. In keeping with the post that DW offered, here’s this morning’s latest version of the con-ass protest from The Philippine Daily Inquirer, an avowedly anti-establishment English language paper:

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20081213-177739/Rage-vs-Arroyo-Charter-change

What is con-ass? It’s short for Constitutional Assembly -- in a version that opponents have coined to be able to cast it in derisive terms. In the most far-reaching dreams of some the goal of con-ass is to replace the current presidentialist system with a parliamentary form of government. Doing this would require convening a constitutional assembly and making major changes to the constitution. In recent years Philippine government has been unable to act decisively, in part because the two houses of the Congress are controlled by opposing parties. The House is dominated by the party of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA), and the Senate is dominated by the opposition party, nominally under the leadership of the former deposed President, Joseph Estrada. GMA’s supporters are the principal advocates for charter reform.

Setting aside the various political ambitions of individuals, advocates argue that a Parlimentary form would help overcome the congressional stalemate. That is, in a unicameral parliament a majority party or coalition majority selects a prime minister so that there’s ostensible agreement between the chief executive and the ruling parliamentary party. The Parlimentary form has generally proven itself more successful: with the exception of the United States, all the major enduring democracies of the world have parliamentary systems. The Philippines is typical of most presidentialist systems in developing countries: real political progress is invariably stalemated by the many oppositional parties that emerge, and so political action occurs primarily only from a “strongman” (in this case “strongwoman”) who operates in various illegal ways, often with the blessing of and payoffs to a few powerful families, the military, police, and the Catholic Church.

Regardless what may be desirable, however, many groups suspect that the real reason for proposing a constitutional assembly is to make it possible for Gloria Arroyo to serve beyond the term she would otherwise complete in 2010. Under the current constitution the president is limited to a single term of six years, but GMA will have served nearly nine years, since, as Vice President under Estrada, she assumed the presidency when he was deposed in 2001 and then was elected in a controversial election of her own in 2004. Her presidency has been characterized by a succession of alleged corruption episodes and accusations of vote fixing in the 2004 election. Her popularity rating would be competitive with George Bush’s popularity.

So, set in this context, the recent 7 to 8,000 strong protest in Makati is the Filipinos’ way of trying to stimulate another people power protest like the ones that toppled Ferdinand Marcos in 1987 and Joseph Estrada in 2001.

Cunning Stunt
12-13-08, 11:00
Entire post ...

Appreciate your excellent summing-up of the factional cess pool that constitutes Philippine politics. Its not something that most mongers take an interest in and with good reason for it is in a foreigners best interests to keep as far from away from the local political arena as conceivably possible. I have opinions on the governance of the country and the connivance s and mismanagement of its leaders but I would not dream of sharing them with a local. When its comes to political matters I take on the role of the stupid, grinning, prevaricating foreigner (not hard for me I assure you!). It is safer that way. Polititic's in the Philippines is a profession only slightly safer than Journalism. The pension pool of both professions must be huge as I imagine very few in either profession make it safely to retirement. Would advise anyone here to be aware of the issues but never discuss them with a Filipino and NEVER EVER in any way become involved.

The Departed
12-13-08, 18:53
if it is best to stay away from politics, how do you explain the involvement of radical missionaries and others campaigning against angeles? how come those guys don't get a bullet or, at the least, a deportation order and a speedy one way ticket out of the country? i know ignorance is bliss but inquiring minds want to know.

these missionaries are players and are a right pain in the ass for those theyattack. so, how come no accidents and deportation orders?

Cunning Stunt
12-14-08, 06:34
if it is best to stay away from politics, how do you explain the involvement of radical missionaries and others campaigning against angeles? how come those guys don't get a bullet or, at the least, a deportation order and a speedy one way ticket out of the country? i know ignorance is bliss but inquiring minds want to know.

these missionaries are players and are a right pain in the ass for those theyattack. so, how come no accidents and deportation orders?

i was, of course, referring to individuals. however, i would be surprised if it was not the policy for any in-country ngo, to avoid, as far as possible, any involvement in philippine political processes.

is the group you refer to an ngo? what is their name? i certainly have not heard of such an organisation.

Pute Nut
12-14-08, 13:09
Is the group you refer to an NGO? What is their name? I certainly have not heard of such an organisation.

The Departed, who certainly has a point here, might be referring to NGO's such as PREDA.

While it's probably very beneficial for your health to stay out of local politics, there's IMHO no reason to act as you're scared shitless if asked your opinion by a filipino. Be sensible but be a man, not a chicken. There might be negative implications if somebody senses your weakness too.

Warbucks
12-14-08, 13:43
The Departed, who certainly has a point here, might be referring to NGO's such as PREDA.

While it's probably very beneficial for your health to stay out of local politics, there's IMHO no reason to act as you're scared shitless if asked your opinion by a filipino. Be sensible but be a man, not a chicken. There might be negative implications if somebody senses your weakness too.

Shit mayne, I will speak my mind on any subject to anyone that’s just me. As for Philippine politics, can't speak on that, even though I live here the government policies besides the foreigners can't own land bit don’t affect me much. Another thing I don’t know who is who in the political arena here.

Carmex
12-14-08, 13:49
Two topics I never (and I mean NEVER) discuss at a party are politics and religion. Sure fire way for things to turn ugly.

Non the less, (one word? ), I think it does all mongers and visitors well to have some intell on the political stability of a country we are visiting. Just my HO of course. I still like to know what is going on in a country as to be able to make informed, important decisions. Like which bar to avoid, et al.

Pute Nut
12-14-08, 16:52
But as for Philippine politics can't speak on that because even though I live here the government policies besides the foreigners can't own land bit doesn’t affect me much. Another thing I don’t know who is who in the land of politics here.

Yeah..While not exactly being a level field for porreigners, you can pretty much make your own rules as long as your ATM card is working. No need to dive into that cesspool more than necessary.

The Departed
12-14-08, 18:15
The Departed, who certainly has a point here, might be referring to NGO's such as PREDA.Preda is one such outfit that hogs publicity and donations. But I also saw a good Canadian documentary "exposing the evils" of Angeles, done from a secular viewpoint. My own take is most of these NGOs are mini hoods, each hustling away for their own piece of the pie.

The Preda bigwigs claim the Gordons of Olongapo and others were out to whack them. But if so, why were they not whacked? I believe this is a no Punch without Judy show. The sex industry welcomes all comers and not just those who come from their dicks. Outfits like Preda and many others publish no annual accounts and they get donatations from gullible suckers to fight the evil they owe their livelihoods too. Turkeys don't vote for Christmmas so why would these NGOs want their cash cows to run dry?

The Departed
12-15-08, 13:32
Further to the last report, here is a website asking if Preda is a con game.

http://www.preda-facts.info/

I read Donald Kirk's book Looted and it paints a bad light on both Gordon and Cullen of Preda. He cogently argues both are following ther own agendas and are egomaniacs. Flip sides of the same coin.

Here are links to a documentary on Angeles. No mention of Preda. i certainly don't like the local casas.

Mila works at Heaven, a little bar located in "blowjob alley", a notorious magnet for sex tourists in the Philippines. Like many young women forced into prostitution, Mila hopes that she'll be rescued from Heaven and taken to America for a better life. Narrated by actor Kiefer Sutherland, Selling Sex in Heaven is a heartbreaking documentary that examines the sex trade industry in the Philippines and how this nasty but lucrative business traps many young women.

Selling Sex in Heaven visits the social hygiene clinic where hundreds of young women line up daily for health checks. Following these visits, the women are issued passes certifying their good health. They wear badges around their necks or on their bikinis while dancing for Western men. In a more sobering scene, the film captures a dramatic rescue of 17 young girls (some as young as 10 years old) from a local brothel.

Told through the eyes of two female Canadian students and a male university professor from Nova Scotia now living in the Philippines, Selling Sex in Heaven captures two years of Mila's life and the people who befriend her. Witness the complexity of prostitution and the conflicting attitudes of people affected by this demeaning industry, including prostitutes, community workers and even clients.

Selling Sex in Heaven was produced and directed by Meredith Ralston of Ralston Productions (Halifax).

Hjsplit used to divide it up

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Soapy Smith
12-15-08, 21:24
the preda bigwigs claim the gordons of olongapo and others were out to whack them. but if so, why were they not whacked?

outfits like preda and many others publish no annual accounts and they get donatations from gullible suckers to fight the evil they owe their livelihoods too. turkeys don't vote for christmmas so why would these ngos want their cash cows to run dry?

my educated guess: there are two reasons preda and its leader have not been whacked. first, the nominal leader is an irish priest, and pinoys extend an exaggerated deference to catholic authorities. i believe the catholic church is actually a more deeply embedded and influential institution in the philippines than is government. even when he steps on toes, this priest is still a priest. groups of goons who take on hit jobs are made up of individuals who were raised in the catholic church. so the idea of whacking a priest might just give them pause. more important, the powers that be who have the authority, audacity, and system protection to be able to order hits with relative immunity may exercise caution about not bringing the wrath of the church down on themselves and their thug leadership peers.

(do you doubt that the church has this kind of influence? note that marcos' overthrow essentially needed the blessing of church leaders before the "people power" leaders like cory aquino and the coup plotters inside government, like fidel ramos, felt confident enough to move against marcos. similarly, a key player in the coalition of powerful groups that forced joseph estrada from the presidency in 2001 was cardinal jaime sin. sin essentially put his blessing on the illegal process by which estrada was forced out of office and replaced by gma. to this day, every time the impeachment train against gma gets up a head of steam, she invariably turns to conservative elements in the church to pass the wand of legitimacy and approval over her height-challenged head.)

a second reason may be that preda is simply not important enough to warrant a hit. in the same way the powers that be turn a blind eye to the sex industry, they probably do the same with preda. the canadian documentary claims the sex trade constitutes somewhere between 2% and 11% of the philippine economy. (this lack of precision speaks to the rigor of research accuracy on the part of the canadians who prepared the film and claim ties to some nova scotian university.) in any case, politicians know better than to cut off what might be 10% of their economy, but they're also caught in a bind in appearing to condone so much immoral sex. preda and others like them help to assuage the guilt of the political leaders. as long as they've got strong religious souls like those in preda to reclaim the lives of all those poor sinning women, it lifts some of the onus from the shoulders of the otherwise inert (or checkmated?) political leaders. in other words, as long as the individual turf of specific, influential politicians or families aren't encroached, the stance from leaders is often to live and let live. it is true that even a few priests have gotten whacked over the centuries of pi history, but i'll bet most of them just went too far, stepping too firmly onto the actual or metaphoric turf of powerful people.

ngos, or nonprofits, or voluntary associations, or whatever we want to call them are as varied as the participants in this forum. the motives that create them run the gamut from opportunistic and exploitive to largely altruistic. but in order to stay in business, they have to learn ways to pay the piper. those kinds of pressures sometimes cause good people to do bad things. also, except for the very tiniest of them, most of these organizations have lots of cross-currents, tensions, and conflicts among their ranks. i think it's generally not a good idea to paint all of them with an overly broad brush.

just my $.03.

The Departed
01-04-09, 15:36
Skip Kost, That was a very incisive report you gave. I have just returned from scuba diving in Olonogapo (and Apo and Camuin) and your analysis is spot on. Trawling around Ermita church in Malate is like SF's Capp St. It is totally the bottom of the barrel. I figure Preda and their type are now part of the party. They are now marketing a porno consoring IPod clone they claim to have made themselves. In Olongapo? Yeah, right.

The Philippines is good for scuba diving, if we ignore the cyanide and dynamite fishing. It is good for chicas if we fit them around our other leisure activities. For the rest, it is a lost cause.

Starchild2012
06-09-09, 16:04
Guys be carefull venturning out tommarrow, there is a Cha Cha protest, a big rally in Manila. Combined with rain and slow traffic it could be a nightmare.

Warbucks
11-25-09, 12:16
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20091125-238289/Arroyo-ally-top-suspect-in-massacrepolice

Its going to be interesting to see how Mrs. Arroyo navigates this mine field. If she goes after the guy she loses a political ally and maybe alienates future potential allys. If she lets the guys get away with multiple murders she embarrasses herself as a person and as leader, and brings more shame to her embattled nation.

As I live here I get comfortable and think things are similar to the States but then an incident such as this happens to remind me this is the third world.

Jambo
11-26-09, 01:37
Clearly they were expecting trouble. Why didn't they ask for an escort from Philippine National Police? If they asked, and it was refused, that a big problem with legitimacy. PNP and the Army and Marines travel wherever they want, especially in Sulu. If they allowed the creation of a fiefdom there, thats seriously screwed up.

Puerto La Cruz
11-26-09, 02:20
This story is already outside of the mainstream media in the USA. It evaporated this morning. WTF is going on there with Gloria?

She sends troops in and the only people speaking of this outrage are from "Sulu" area. WTF does Gloria have to say?

Maybe nobody politically cares about it other than the family and friends of those murdered. Apparently Gloria does not either. Shame shame shame on her.

Nvslim
11-26-09, 11:20
[url]

As I live here I get comfortable and think things are similar to the States but then an incident such as this happens to remind me this is the third world.



How arrogant are these people? Can they really murder nearly 50 people including journalist and get away with it? The newspapers should at least be raising holy hell.

Slim

Questor 55
01-15-10, 20:10
We are confused by geography to think of the Philippines as an Asian

Country. It's not. It's a Latin American country from the 1950's that happens to be located in Asia. It is owned by a small and predatory power elite who benefit enormously by keeping it trapped in a time warp.

"The more things change, the more they remain the same. "

Consider this, Cory Aquino was elected in a landslide of revulsion after the assassination of her reformist husband, returning from political exile.

Rejoicing in the streets, a new day dawns! So, what happened?

Nothing very much. Why not?

The legislators are either members of that power elite, or bought and paid for. The army and the police are really there to protect 'them' from the people. The judiciary is hopelessly compromised. The Catholic Church

Fulfills the role of legitimising the whole sorry show. Journalists who go a step too far, are routinely murdered.

Could be almost any of the 'banana republics' of the 1950's. Which reminds me of that quote of Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles,

"He may be a Son of a *****, but he's OUR son of a *****! "

Sad to say, revolution looks like the only way things will change.. Interested in waiting for a snowball in hell?

Questor 55
01-15-10, 20:21
Oh, by the way, Cory's 'People Power' movement?

Well, Cory was herself one of the land-owning aristocracy. Also a very devoutPhilippine-style Catholic.

Who's the odds on favourite presidential candidate?

Why it's Cory's son who's. (get the picture?)

Questor55
10-01-10, 19:25
Interesting and somewhat sad to read reports from several of our most renowned senior members re the ongoing political/cultural morass. Guys if you give up, how can we remain optimistic ?

Pnoy is already living down to his promise of benign ineptitude. I loved that piece suggesting that new rules and regulations are specifically formulated
to allow new opportunities for further corruption.

In the race to be the the lowest ranking economy in the Orient, the Philippines has to be the odds on favourite.

GoodEnough
10-02-10, 15:43
Interesting and somewhat sad to read reports from several of our most renowned senior members re the ongoing political/cultural morass. Guys if you give up, how can we remain optimistic ?

Pnoy is already living down to his promise of benign ineptitude. I loved that piece suggesting that new rules and regulations are specifically formulated
to allow new opportunities for further corruption.

In the race to be the the lowest ranking economy in the Orient, the Philippines has to be the odds on favourite.
It's going to be a close race to the finish between the PI and Burma I think, but my money is on the Philippines.

As to "remaining optimistic," it depends on where the focus of your attention is. I'm quite optimistic that the endless supply of what draws us all here will continue ad infinitum, and I'm optimistic that, for the foreseeable future, it will be entirely possible to sustain a nice lifestyle here far more cheaply than in the West.

GE

Questor55
10-02-10, 18:36
It's going to be a close race to the finish between the PI and Burma I think, but my money is on the Philippines.

As to "remaining optimistic," it depends on where the focus of your attention is. I'm quite optimistic that the endless supply of what draws us all here will continue ad infinitum, and I'm optimistic that, for the foreseeable future, it will be entirely possible to sustain a nice lifestyle here far more cheaply than in the West.

GEThanks for your perspective on 'optimism' GE. Of course, it is the very
morass of sustainable ineptitude and corruption that indeed keeps us
so well supplied with our nubile friends.

Btw. in northern Mindanao I've noticed government signs at bus stations and other busy places reminding people that corrupt practices are illegal and encouraging everyone to report such abuses. Being somewhat cynical, I wonder if this is some Stalinist ploy to get potential trouble makers to expose themselves.

Paul C
10-02-10, 19:28
As to "remaining optimistic," it depends on where the focus of your attention is. I'm quite optimistic that the endless supply of what draws us all here will continue ad infinitum, and I'm optimistic that, for the foreseeable future, it will be entirely possible to sustain a nice lifestyle here far more cheaply than in the West.Hundreds of foreigners are sustaining that nice lifestyle as we speak, and while a lot of us (including me) would like the government to implement certain policies, I honestly hope there aren't any major (or should I say, "major major") changes.

Every country has its issues, and I'm pretty happy with everything that the Philippines offers, good and bad.

Questor55
12-25-10, 19:32
We've discussed in the past how the Philippines has continued downward, as most of

Its neighbours are significantly improving. When I read the following quote today, I thought.

This just about sums things up.

"The media like to say it's sheer incompetence and mismanagement.

No, no, no. Someone thought this through very clearly and made.

The decision that good management was not in THEIR interests."

[Quote from 'Chaos Theory' referring to the Marion Barry administration in Washington, DC. ]

Soapy Smith
02-15-11, 07:48
http://newkatipunero.********.com/2011/02/root-of-rps-systemic-corruption.html

This tells part of the story. But taking bribes to fill the gap from low salaries for public officials is only part of the story. The big money is going to much fatter cats than these guys, and it's usually done through one of various forms of inside deals. A classic illustration was the broadband deal that almost became reality under Gloria Arroyo. Somebody in GMA's administration struck a deal by which the Chinese would give a multi-billion dollar loan to build a national broadband system in the RP. Only GMA's husband and friends were planning to rake a major piece off the top. The Chinese put far fewer strings on the loan than Western financial institutions (IMF, World Bank) usually do, perhaps because the Chinese assumed that Philippine default on the loan would give them powerful leverage for getting into the oil under the Spratly Islands. But on the eve of signing in Beijing, GMA rushed home under the guise of needing to be with her husband while he was hospitalized. Methinks the USA got wind of the deal and grabbed and twisted hard on a handful of Gloria's short curlies.

Corruption has been in these islands for centuries. Spanish rulers and their Catholic collaborators took care of themselves and paid off native elites who cooperated with them. Americans did it, and probably the British did it for the two years they were in charge. So the Filipinos come by it honestly. I can't imagine what kind of shock might push them over the hump into a principled set of practices that honor the rule of law and stable property ownership practices. But I can't imagine it happening from any kind of internal "reform." It's just too deeply embedded and socialized into everybody and everything.

Soapy Smith
02-15-11, 07:52
I'm sure somebody can tell me why the weblink doesn't work. I was trying to avoid a great long boring story, so here it is after all:

The root of RP's systemic corruption.

DIE HARD III.

Herman Tiu Laurel.

02/11/2011, THE DAILY TRIBUNE.

I checked the Chan Robles Internet law library and found Republic Act 9166 of June 2002 defining the lawful salary of a general of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) , under 'Section 2. Pay Schedule, ' as: General, P30, 000 (a month) ; Lieutenant General, P29, 000; Major General, P28, 000; Brigadier General, P27, 000; and so on.

An AFP officer confirmed these figures' continuing validity today. Thus, with a few extra compensation, such as combat pay, the total take would bring the general's legal income to only about P50, 000 a month. Given this, can any AFP general, commodore, or admiral expect to maintain a standard of living that befits a member of the top echelons of society?

That would be ridiculous to expect. Though some generals and navy brass do live on their meager incomes — which is why nothing irregular is heard of them — others find unseemly ways to attain what they believe they deserve.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) is another such case, where the directors generals' and various superintendents' official salaries will never be able to compete with those of Makati junior executives by any stretch. Hence, the necessity of underground activities such as jueteng becoming part of their regular unofficial payroll, from the national down to the local level.

Election upon election promises and threats of damnation from politicians and a long list of Catholic prelates alike have not stopped these jueteng operations from flourishing. Not even the much-vaunted Yellow saint Cory Aquino or her 'heirs' have been able to put a lid on the wellspring of jueteng payola going to the PNP and the DILG (Department of Interior and Local Government).

Why? An insight into this can be gleaned from an encounter between a scion of the oligarchy and the anti-jueteng crusader, Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz, where the former was said to have told the bishop to 'go easy on jueteng. ' My thesis is that the oligarchy consciously wants illicit money sources such as jueteng to thrive in order to contribute largely to the unofficial real income of police generals and government officials. Otherwise, these dogs may just bite their master's hands if he has nothing to feed them.

A president of the Philippines today officially earns P95, 000 a month, which wouldn't amount to, say, the cost of a brand new Porsche over a six-year term. Although that is 65 percent higher than the immediate predecessor's monthly pay of P57, 750 a month (with the increase signed by the predecessor just before the end of her term) , the fact is, it is still low. Since the President's pay is Salary Grade 33 in the official government pay schedule, the highest in government, all the rest necessarily have to be below that — except for institutions with special pay scales such as the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) , where janitors can get as much as AFP generals.

Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, whose son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong gets $2. 8 million today, once made a widely reported tongue-in-cheek comment about a Philippine president's salary being among the lowest in the world. Even so, a Philippine president can still rake in amounts that rival the highest incomes in the world — but from under-the-table 'proceeds. '

If one were to follow government corruption like a maze and work back to its starting point, one may well find this ridiculous government pay schedule as the root of it all. An AFP or PNP general, or even a Cabinet official, with just an official monthly salary that approximates the take home pay of a veteran call center agent doesn't make sense.

So it has become a way of life among those in government to accept these unofficial incomes as a natural part of the job — as natural as MWSS personnel getting their 30-month bonuses from water concessionaires Manila Water and Maynilad, as if they aren't supposed to regulate these firms; and as natural as the secretary of Finance cashing in on the CodeNGO deal with fat commissions! You see, it's not only the generals.

The entire government pay scale is designed to institutionalize dependency on the unofficial, underground and illegal to augment our officials' pauper-level pays. Whenever I suggest to politicians to do as Singapore does, I always find inexplicable their non-appreciation of the logic. Perhaps it's because it takes away their excuse for continuously promoting the graft?

After all, the situation is perfect for those who want unlimited graft revenues, where oligarchs control the political leadership through all sorts of bribes or blackmail (as carried out by their media outlets) , or even their influence over US-controlled anti-corruption watchdogs such as Transparency International.

Generals Garcia, Rabusa, Ligot, et al. ; the PNP and DILG jueteng roster; and lest we forget, regulatory bodies like the Energy Regulatory Commission and the MWSS, ad infinitum, are all controlled by the oligarchy and its foreign partner, the US (the one that really exposed Garcia) , through this system that's designed for corruption.

Understandably, the AFP is flogging itself for the mire of corruption it is in. But to continue doing so, without probing deeper, will just be unfair to the institution. Our AFP men and women should start aiming their sights on the real culprits — the oligarchy and the structure of corruption it has institutionalized through its politicians and media. Such is the root of systemic corruption in this land!

Vageterian
03-16-11, 21:57
Come to jakarta where generals live in 20 mil dollar homes and send their kids to stanford. Drive mercedes and have top of the line mistresses, run some of the hottest clubs in south east asia and recieve similar pay or a bit higher

Questor55
04-15-11, 04:08
Last week Philippine Vice President Binay attended a wake for three drug mules executed in China.

Questor55
04-15-11, 04:20
Last week Congress passed a resolution that Ferdinand Marcos be reinterred in the cemetary for.

The Heroes of the Philippines. Remember him? The dictator responsible for countless human rights abuses,

Looting the Philippines treasury of billions of dollars, introducing rampant corruption and plunging this country's economy from second richest in Asia to the bottom of the barrel. What are they thinking?

GoodEnough
04-15-11, 10:53
Last week Congress passed a resolution that Ferdinand Marcos be reinterred in the cemetary for.

The Heroes of the Philippines. Remember him? The dictator responsible for countless human rights abuses,

Looting the Philippines treasury of billions of dollars, introducing rampant corruption and plunging this country's economy from second richest in Asia to the bottom of the barrel. What are they thinking? They don't think, they just do drama. Everything here is a soap opera, with new acts that change every couple of days. There are about 14 true intellectuals in the country. The rest have all left for the US, Canada, Europe, Australia or anywhere but here. Hasn't anyone figured out yet that this is a country that is the truest triumph of empty form over substance?

Questor55
04-15-11, 13:37
They don't think, they just do drama. Everything here is a soap opera, with new acts that change every couple of days. There are about 14 true intellectuals in the country. The rest have all left for the US, Canada, Europe, Australia or anywhere but here. Hasn't anyone figured out yet that this is a country that is the truest triumph of empty form over substance?We should have an Emeritus Contributors designation for GoodEnough, KongKing, Greg London, David 33, Mortman,

Red Kilt, and several others who have given us so much intelligent insight into this fascinating and frustrating country.

Thanks guys for contributing so much in these forums.

GoodEnough
04-15-11, 23:31
We should have an Emeritus Contributors designation for GoodEnough, KongKing, Greg London, David 33, Mortman,

Red Kilt, and several others who have given us so much intelligent insight into this fascinating and frustrating country.

Thanks guys for contributing so much in these forums. Thanks for the nice words. I think most of the perceptions that Red Kilt and I share are those based on years of living here in the theater of the absurd. After a while it actually seems normal and expected. The absurdity of the country also provides endless grist for conversations over dinner and drinks, so it's not an entirely negative phenomenon. When you work here, and inevitably start to interact with various government agencies and institutions in business sectors, the whole situation becomes much clearer, and ever more inane.

GE

Soapy Smith
04-17-11, 10:25
They don't think, they just do drama. Everything here is a soap opera, with new acts that change every couple of days. Hasn't anyone figured out yet that this is a country that is the truest triumph of empty form over substance?I think the theater metaphor is on the mark, but I'm not convinced it ends at the Philippines' water's edge. (My apologies in advance for this long, seemingly off topic post – but it does come full circle back to the Philippines.)

In November Florida voters elected a Governor, Rick Scott, who served as CEO of Columbia / HCA, the world's largest health care company at the time, when it agreed to a $1.7B fine for Medicare fraud committed under Scott's watch. The amount of actual fraud was presumably much higher, but the two sides agreed to the $1.7B payment, and the agreement curtailed further public disclosure of the facts. It is the largest medical fraud payment ever made in the United States. Scott later pleaded the 5th Amendment 75 times when he was deposed in a civil case by private parties trying to recoup their losses from the fraud. He had also been indicted by the State of Florida for insider trading in Columbia / HCA stocks, but the case stalled and essentially died.

Scott reportedly spent $100M of his own money and ran a campaign based on running government more like a business. He got about 51% of the vote. Three months into office his approval rating is about 20%. His budget proposes to fill a substantial deficit by firing thousands of public servants, cutting the remaining employees' pay and benefits by about 10% (state employee pay in Florida was already next to lowest of the 50 states), while also reducing corporate tax rates from 5.5% to 3%. He proposes eliminating all corporate income taxes within seven years. He quietly tried to kill off an anti-fraud database that tracks fraudulent distribution of prescription drugs, until law enforcement and federal drug policy people sounded the alarm. He also proposes making all public employees undergo regular drug testing – on their own dime. But wait; it just so happens he owns one of the largest medical clinic chains in the state, and his clinics are among the largest providers of drug test lab work.

Republican Party leaders were appalled when he beat the party insiders' favorite in the primary, calling him unethical and unfit and unqualified to serve. They held their noses during the Fall campaign, but when he won the election they quickly embraced him. Now there's a happy chorus line that refers to this assortment of budget and policy priorities as 'logical, ' 'rational, ' 'forward thinking, ' 'the only way to get the economy going again, ' and so on. Many people who voted against him continue to ask, 'what were people thinking'? And nobody among the 31% who apparently once approved of him but no longer do seems to recall voting for him. 'Thinking' is not the operative activity here: theatrics is. It's about successfully creating a political spectacle for an audience that is easily led, or misled.

In my view the only difference between the Philippine and U.S. scene is that political theater directors in the U.S. spend more money and time on props, scripts, scenery, and rehearsals. They make it look halfway credible. In the Philippines they're less skillful and spend less money on the production. In both countries the directors understand that they're engaged in theater, but most of the audience in both settings is successfully duped, even if the American audience is more discerning about the quality of production.

I would argue that form is triumphing over substance in most of the world, and the beauty of the Philippines is that it's all played out in such an unadorned, adolescent way that it's simply more transparent than in the more industrialized countries.

Red Kilt
04-17-11, 11:24
Thanks for the nice words. I think most of the perceptions that Red Kilt and I share are those based on years of living here in the theater of the absurd. After a while it actually seems normal and expected. The absurdity of the country also provides endless grist for conversations over dinner and drinks, so it's not an entirely negative phenomenon. When you work here, and inevitably start to interact with various government agencies and institutions in business sectors, the whole situation becomes much clearer, and ever more inane.

GEThanks Questor for the complimentary pat on the back. Apart from a momentary lapse a few weeks ago when I got a bit cheesed off over someone's comment I think those of us who actually live here and work with filipinos strive to stay calm and balanced about most things and we try to give helpful advice based on our experiences. As Good Enough says, without that equanimity we would go slightly crazy.

GE and I often meet and share absurdities but, in the final analysis, the pluses outweigh the negatives or else we wouldn't live here. We are not that masochistic.

The analogy of theatre is apt and accurate. Even the highly intelligent and diligent locals occasionally do or say something that has me shaking my head and muttering some "WTFs" as I try to make sense of it.

Mc Don
04-17-11, 15:09
I am with you on most things, and you make a sound point but you are wrong on one thing. Campaign in phils is much better and more organized then you think. Politicians are ROCK STARS even bar girls and street working girls line up and scream for them as if they have just seen Elvis. The Makati mayor is loved because he gave every dwelling a 500 or was it a 1000 peso SM voucher. Talk about buying votes. In QC hookers were blowing cunts working on the election for free and saw that as doing their bit. Now you tell me if another place in the world has better organized campaigns then them.


I think the theater metaphor is on the mark, but I'm not convinced it ends at the Philippines' water's edge. (My apologies in advance for this long, seemingly off topic post – but it does come full circle back to the Philippines.)

In November Florida voters elected a Governor, Rick Scott, who served as CEO of Columbia / HCA, the world's largest health care company at the time, when it agreed to a $1. 7B fine for Medicare fraud committed under Scott's watch. The amount of actual fraud was presumably much higher, but the two sides agreed to the $1. 7B payment, and the agreement curtailed further public disclosure of the facts. It is the largest medical fraud payment ever made in the United States. Scott later pleaded the 5th Amendment 75 times when he was deposed in a civil case by private parties trying to recoup their losses from the fraud. He had also been indicted by the State of Florida for insider trading in Columbia / HCA stocks, but the case stalled and essentially died.

Scott reportedly spent $100M of his own money and ran a campaign based on running government more like a business. He got about 51% of the vote. Three months into office his approval rating is about 20. His budget proposes to fill a substantial deficit by firing thousands of public servants, cutting the remaining employees' pay and benefits by about 10% (state employee pay in Florida was already next to lowest of the 50 states) , while also reducing corporate tax rates from 5. 5% to 3. He proposes eliminating all corporate income taxes within seven years. He quietly tried to kill off an anti-fraud database that tracks fraudulent distribution of prescription drugs, until law enforcement and federal drug policy people sounded the alarm. He also proposes making all public employees undergo regular drug testing – on their own dime. But wait; it just so happens he owns one of the largest medical clinic chains in the state, and his clinics are among the largest providers of drug test lab work.

Republican Party leaders were appalled when he beat the party insiders' favorite in the primary, calling him unethical and unfit and unqualified to serve. They held their noses during the Fall campaign, but when he won the election they quickly embraced him. Now there's a happy chorus line that refers to this assortment of budget and policy priorities as 'logical, ' 'rational, ' 'forward thinking, ' 'the only way to get the economy going again, ' and so on. Many people who voted against him continue to ask, 'what were people thinking'? And nobody among the 31% who apparently once approved of him but no longer do seems to recall voting for him. 'Thinking' is not the operative activity here: theatrics is. It's about successfully creating a political spectacle for an audience that is easily led, or misled.

In my view the only difference between the Philippine and USA scene is that political theater directors in the USA spend more money and time on props, scripts, scenery, and rehearsals. They make it look halfway credible. In the Philippines they're less skillful and spend less money on the production. In both countries the directors understand that they're engaged in theater, but most of the audience in both settings is successfully duped, even if the American audience is more discerning about the quality of production.

I would argue that form is triumphing over substance in most of the world, and the beauty of the Philippines is that it's all played out in such an unadorned, adolescent way that it's simply more transparent than in the more industrialized countries.

GoodEnough
04-17-11, 16:35
Granted that US politics become more absurd and less substantive every year. One great difference though is that most likely the schmuck in Florida will get voted out, and won't be able to "give" the office to his wife, his daughter, his mother, his uncle or his pet snake. In the Philippines offices are passed around the family like a divine right, so that the same dynasty winds up controlling an office and a territory for years, milking it dry like a personal fiefdom.

The international NGO Transparency International comes out with corruption ratings, done fairly objectively, every year, as does the Hong Kong- based PERC. Typically, the US ranks somewhere in the top 20 out of 133 countries in terms of "clean" government, while the Philippines is right down there with the African countries near the bottom. The fact is, that while corruption may be endemic to any political system, the system in the Philippines is rotten to it's very core and at every level of government, and there is no functional system of justice.

Soapy Smith
04-17-11, 16:45
Campaign in phils is much better and more organized then you think. Politicians are ROCK STARS even bar girls and street working girls line up and scream for them as if they have just seen Elvis. The Makati mayor is loved because he gave every dwelling a 500 or was it a 1000 peso SM voucher. Talk about buying votes. In QC hookers were blowing cunts working on the election for free and saw that as doing their bit. Now you tell me if another place in the world has better organized campaigns then them.I understand that Philippine campaigning is extremely colorful and expensive, but my point is that they're not very subtle. They also sometimes beat their opponents by killing them. The Ampatuan massacre is one case in point, and the guys who shot and distributed film of Joseph Estrada gambling at the Hilton Casino ended up packed into 55-gallon drums in the bottom of a Batangas river after Estrada became President. There are other such stories in every election cycle, and even occasional murders of the teachers who run the polls because they won't play along with one or another candidate.

And of course there are the outright voting bribes: there are witnesses who attest to having seen Mike Arroyo, husband of the former President, open up a suitcase and distribute millions of pesos to military generals in Mindanao. Why? Because the military are responsible to transport uncounted ballots from outlying areas to Manila in military aircraft. There's also the late night telephone calls in the 2004 election between GMA and "Garci," Chairman of the Commission on Elections. And in exchange for all this blatant vote-buying the elected leaders then expect to be able to rake in the bribes and appoint cronies to office to make it all worthwhile. In GE's terms, they are conspicuous in putting style before substance.

The USA model is much slicker. It happens in corporate board rooms, and especially the corporate offices of major Wall Street banks. Note that a single bank, Goldman Sachs, has provided the most influential economic advisers to every president, Republican and Democratic, since Ronald Reagan. One of the most important theater performance venues is the Wall Street Journal, a paper written for the people throughout the world who really matter.

Enlisting hookers and SM vouchers is much less subtle by comparison. Although admittedly expensive and requiring organization. One set of activities, the more polished and less accessible to most of us, is at the center of influence for what happens in the world. The Philippine charades are, by comparison, pretty much at the periphery of world events. What they have in common is a necessity to quell the masses through various forms of grand theater. The Philippine theater seems to be much more entertaining simply because it's more transparent.

Irony Monger
04-17-11, 17:34
I understand that Philippine campaigning is extremely colorful and expensive, but my point is that they're not very subtle. They also sometimes beat their opponents by killing them.
And this is restricted to the Philippines? I know of a few dead Kennedys who might disagree with you, if they were still around to speak.

Soapy Smith
04-17-11, 19:18
And this is restricted to the Philippines? I know of a few dead Kennedys who might disagree with you, if they were still around to speak.I agree with your point, but these things are more pervasive and ongoing in the Philippines.

Soapy Smith
04-17-11, 19:30
the international ngo transparency international comes out with corruption ratings, done fairly objectively, every year, as does the hong kong- based perc. typically, the us ranks somewhere in the top 20 out of 133 countries in terms of "clean" government, while the philippines is right down there with the african countries near the bottom. the fact is, that while corruption may be endemic to any political system, the system in the philippines is rotten to it's very core and at every level of government, and there is no functional system of justice.i agree with your assessment of philippine politics and justice, and i'm familiar with transparency international. i think its rankings are based on surveys that tap the perceptions of business leaders and journalists about various countries' corruption, openness of government to honest interaction, and so on. so presumably there's some "objective" reality behind these individuals' perceptions. but i'm not so sure about the precision of the instrument. how would average business people and journalists assess the transparency of what goes on in the board room of a wall street bank, and between wall street bankers and top administration officials in washington? i realize that what i'm implying is not about blatant corruption, as you're describing, but it does raise important questions about whether we have transparent access to decision making that has the most powerful effects on the world's population – and occurs in countries that are ostensibly among the 20 most transparent. (then, of course, there are the decisions made in saudi arabia, dubai, kuwait, china.)

i find corruption in the philippines both laughable and sad. but i also have some understanding of its historical roots, and spain, the united states, and especially the catholic church were major players in that history.

ge, i know you work in the development field, so i presume you're familiar with the structural adjustment policies that the bretton woods institutions (world bank, imf) imposed on loan recipient countries through the 1980s and into the 1990s. the underlying ideology assumed that we could remake developing countries in the image of the industrialized west by getting them to cut back their bloated bureaucracies and open themselves up to market forces. unfortunately, the saps failed in most settings to create institutional changes and greatly exacerbated the problems of poverty in many countries. so they were largely abandoned in favor of new programs aimed at 'good governance, ' whatever that is.

when i look at the history of aid between donor and developing countries it causes me to wonder sometimes whose interests are really being served. increasingly, and sadly, i find myself asking whether some of the continuous institutional dysfunction in developing countries reflects their relative and ongoing powerlessness in the grand scheme of economics and politics in the world. i think many of the most powerful actors in the world are interested in an economics in which profits matter, whereas others cling, probably naively, to the notion that economics and societies can be run as though people matter. most of the significant – and often laughable -- actors in the philippines seem as though they're much too far out on the dog's tail to be able to wag the international dog for whom profits matter most.

obviously there are examples of countries that picked themselves up from military dictatorships or colonial powers and set their houses in some kind of order. but in the case of the philippines, a country of 170 odd languages and dialects, cultural and aboriginal groups too numerous to count, rep001tered across 7, 000 islands, and whose imposed identity came from the name of the king of spain, i think it's a little disingenuous to not also reflect on our past and present role in their state of affairs.

GoodEnough
04-17-11, 23:56
Skip, I agree with most, perhaps all of what you've said. There's no doubt that the hubris of the Western democracies-and Japan as well-have contributed to many of the problems by trying to remake poorer countries into those with systems and institutions that resemble our own. And I agree as well that the "transparency indices" are probably not terribly accurate when it comes to assessing hidden, less accessible corruption such as the boardroom collusion you mention. Conversely, most of the international corruption rankings are (I think) based on more overt types of behavior such as the demands for bribes by government officials.

However, the mistakes, or distorted vision of the Bretton Woods institutions, and their successors such as the ADB, probably don't account for the fact that the Philippines falls ever further behind its neighbors in terms of economic growth and the eradication or alleviation of poverty. Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, for example, were victims of the same distorted policies from multilateral lenders as were the Philippines and all have managed, over the last three decades, to streak past this country, which now attracts the second lowest amount of direct foreign investment in all of ASEAN; only Brunei ranks lower for example, as a likely target of investment.

Indonesia, which has twice the number of islands as the Philippines passed this country economically several years ago, and appears to have a serious commitment to reducing the corruption for which it is widely known. Thirty years ago, tiny Singapore had a per capita GDP that was half that of the Philippines, and now has a per capita GDP that's slightly larger than that of the United States. I think this may illustrate that with enough will and political vision, not all countries become hopelessly ensnarled in the roots of historical misfortune.

There's a very recent ADB study on the Philippines that concludes this is the only country in ASEAN in which poverty has actually grown in the last decade, and that virtually all other ASEAN countries have managed to drastically lower the percentage of their populations living in poverty.

There's something, I think, that's clearly "different" about this country; something that helps it sustain it's momentum during its race to the bottom of the pile. While the fact that it's an archipelago and the fact that its comprised of multiple linguistic and ethnic groups are contributing factors, as is its colonial past, the fact is that other countries in the region-with similar conditions-have begun to overcome these forces and have begun at least to build real institutions and pluralistic democracies.

As to bilateral aid and the history of donor involvement here, I don't think there's any question as to whose interests are being served: those of the donor countries. Development is merely an extension of foreign policy for most countries-with Norway perhaps being the exception-that have their own agendas in the country and the region. This injection of real politik however shouldn't discount the fact that without the donors, much of the larger infrastructure here wouldn't exist, and the fact that donor assistance probably does make life marginally better for small, targeted groups of people. That is, serving the interest of the donor community and making a difference in the lives of some groups of people are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

GE

Red Kilt
04-18-11, 03:43
Great analyses by Skip Kost and GoodEnough about the dilemmas of development assistance offered to worthy countries.

I won't try to get into the depth these 2 guys have managed to do, but I think it is noteworthy that Jose Rizal (the Filipino martyr and hero) wrote in 1887 in "Noli Me Tangere" about filipinos being dependent on "handouts" from anyone, be it the local landlord or another country. He urged his countrymen to break out of this mindset. 124 years later and nothing much has changed.

Another worthwhile quote about foreign aid:

"It is a mechanism for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries".

We would all like to think that our own countries have structures in place to guard against such a thing happening, but, at the end of the day, it is very difficult to make sure all aid gets to the right people.

Soapy Smith
04-18-11, 09:32
Another worthwhile quote about foreign aid:

"It is a mechanism for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries". I enjoy the exchange GE. I can see you've thought a lot about these things -- and perhaps deal with them every day. I deal with them only a few hours every week. I sometimes worry that guys like you that have to sustain emotional energy for the goals of development run a real risk of burning yourselves down to despair. Especially in the seemingly hopeless morass called the Philippines. I have heard thoughtful Filipinos -- perhaps even a couple from among the 14 "true intellectuals" -- ask in bewilderment "so what happened to us"? First the Little Asian Tigers passed them by, then Thailand and Vietnam, and now Indonesia. For decades people from all over the developing world have been coming to the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos to learn how to make their countries rice self-sufficient. Many have succeeded. Yet the Philippines remains a net rice importer. Even the 14 true Filipino intellectuals do not know the answer to what happened to them. Description is one thing: everybody can describe what's happening, but I've not met anybody yet who has figured out the plug for stopping the bleeding. Let me know if you discover it.

Red Kilt
04-18-11, 10:58
Skip Kost.

The quote came from Peter Thomas Bauer.

He died in 2002 and attracted lots of tributes. He is referred to as a "dissident economist", and is well-known as a champion of the poor and his vehement opposition to corruption in government.

If you google Lord Peter Bauer you will get lots of stuff.

If you google "development aid" you will see his quote somewhere on the Wikipedia page under "Effectiveness".

BTW. I am NOT an economist but I also work in the development assistance area.

DriveAllNight
04-18-11, 11:59
I'm trained as public policy analyst, and thoroughly enjoying this thread. Nice to have something on ISG besides t-back questions and arguments over tipping practices. (You know, just for a change.)

Thanks to all.

GoodEnough
04-18-11, 13:13
I'm enjoying this as well, and it is a pleasure to read material in here that actually requires thinking. I think that RK would agree with me that it's easy to fall into the pit of despair. However, if you can accept the fact that neither you nor all the smart consultants nor all the donor money in the world will help to resolve the structural, or ethical stasis of the country, and limit your expectations to making a small impact on a relatively small group of people, the cloud dissipates somewhat. That is, it's necessary to accept that no outsider can affect the macro-level problems of this country, only (unlikely) political will, vision and determination might accomplish that. However, working with the right local organizations (carefully chosen) and defining a relatively circumscribed area (geographical and technical) on which to focus assistance, I do believe that donor programs can make the lives of a small number of people better.

GE

Soapy Smith
04-19-11, 12:38
I'm trained as public policy analyst, and thoroughly enjoying this thread. Nice to have something on ISG besides t-back questions and arguments over tipping practices. (You know, just for a change.)

Thanks to all. Some of these individual intersections are not so surprising when you consider how many Westerners come to the Philippines specifically for development-related work. But I confess I get into some hilarious conversations in airports in the Phils and on the way to the Phils with evangelicals bent on saving the Philippines from their Catholicism. I'm always polite while carefully withholding a belly laugh. If they only knew my other pastime in the Philippines. (I say this assuming GE is not, in fact, Bob Tebow. I'm pretty sure RK is not.)

I presume I sometimes advocate for treating Filipinas gently because I can only justify my mongering if I regard it as a form of economics in which people matter. I also admit to being hopelessly addicted to brown-skinned women. I've been exercising more and even given up coffee and alcohol in order to make my end of the experience hold up better.

Soapy Smith
04-19-11, 12:57
However, working with the right local organizations (carefully chosen) and defining a relatively circumscribed area (geographical and technical) on which to focus assistance, I do believe that donor programs can make the lives of a small number of people better. GEThis reinforces my conviction. I also occasionally meet a handful of leaders in local initiatives who know the real situation in the community and have the ability to articulate their concerns to get local government leaders and occasionally national leaders to make some modest changes. So community development that pushes upward is sometimes doable; real system change is a different story.

GoodEnough
04-19-11, 16:35
Some of these individual intersections are not so surprising when you consider how many Westerners come to the Philippines specifically for development-related work. But I confess I get into some hilarious conversations in airports in the Phils and on the way to the Phils with evangelicals bent on saving the Philippines from their Catholicism. I'm always polite while carefully withholding a belly laugh. If they only knew my other pastime in the Philippines. (I say this assuming GE is not, in fact, Bob Tebow. I'm pretty sure RK is not.)

I presume I sometimes advocate for treating Filipinas gently because I can only justify my mongering if I regard it as a form of economics in which people matter. I also admit to being hopelessly addicted to brown-skinned women. I've been exercising more and even given up coffee and alcohol in order to make my end of the experience hold up better. Skip, I can assure you that I am not Bob Tebow, and I can give you further assurance that RK has no evangelical predispositions. I had a drink with RK tonight and both of us commented on how much we enjoy this discussion. I think you make an excellent point about the number of people-mostly men-who come here for development work. However most of those whom I know are not members of this forum, at least I'm reasonably sure they're not. I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the efficacy of mongering as a grassroots income redistribution scheme. If not, perhaps someone should.

GE

Soapy Smith
04-20-11, 08:51
I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the efficacy of mongering as a grassroots income redistribution scheme. If not, perhaps someone should. GEIt's a great idea. Without doing a search I'd guess there might be people who have attempted to do some sort of extrapolation of the economics of sex tourism, but I don't trust that kind of "clean models" research. It's all so removed from what actually happens on the ground. Models can be hugely inaccurate if the assumptions that are built in are not correct. And the only results are likely to be about the macro-level consequences, like extrapolating from hotel and bar revenues in red light districts to estimate the total infusion of money into Thailand's economy.

There's also a study that came out a couple years ago about prostitution in Angeles. It was done by two people from a small university in the Canadian Maritimes. Apparently there's also a short film made about it also. From what I've seen I think it's very shoddy research. They were committed to the cause of stamping out all those gross Western mongers exploiting poor Filipinas, and they ended up telling a story about trafficking. I've gotten to know a few women well enough, and read enough stories in this forum, including lies and distortions, to know that there's a wide variety of dynamics in the lives of Pinays who do pfp. Most that I have known chose to start doing pfp because they had mouths to feed and they did not have economic alternatives. Some of the women I've been with were never married, never pregnant; but most had children and had been dumped by the Pinoys that impregnated them. Some on the forum suggest that some of the women actually have steady Pinoy boyfriends who spend up all the money the women bring home from tricks. I haven't seen it, but it may be so. I tend to believe it. Some steadfastly hide it from their families; others do not. Many are ashamed they have to do it, but some take it in stride, and some admit to enjoying the sex. But that story doesn't sell because it contains a lot of inconvenient truths.

And of course sex trafficking as a theme does sell, because people want to believe it, even if the research behind it is sloppy and dishonest. What is sloppy and dishonest in that study is that they found a salacious story, just like investigative journalists do, and they sought it out exclusively, at the expense of stories that do not fit the mold. And then when some Angeles woman tells them she's turned tricks for 200 pesos (with Pinoys maybe, but doubtful with Westerners) , that then becomes the going price in their story. Unfortunately, nobody can call them on it. I know it's bullshit, but I can't afford to put my credentials on the line to go public in confronting them without giving away my own pastime, which I never practice in my own zipcode.

What's needed is "dirty hands" research where investigators talk to pfp women and to mongers about the nitty gritty of their interactions, I. E, the money, where it comes from, and where and how it gets spent.

You could fairly easily build a sample of women by snowballing. Gain the confidence of one or two, interview them to see what they will tell you, and then get them to introduce you to others they know, and so on. You would also have to get them to tell you about the nooks and crannies of p4p that we don't often think about, like the casas, the bars that Westerners don't dare go into, street hustlers, and so on. In terms of what men are paying, I would much sooner trust the women than to hope to get truthful answers from the men.

In terms of the redistribution it would be important to consider multiplier effects as the women take the money back home and spread it out to family members, neighbors, sari-sari stores, and so on. I suspect the women would fairly honestly tell you what they do with the money. You could then probably find some thoughtful Filipino economists to suggest typical multiplier rates for the kinds of communities in which the women live. That means you'd have to get the women to tell you about the communities they're living in. I've spent some time in squatter settlements in Metro Manila, which is where I suspect a lot of these women live, but I don't think I have a real sense of the economics of those places.

You'd also probably need to interview the men to figure out where the money is coming from. Problem is, if you ask them straight up about their income, they will lie. So you'd have to put it together by asking them more indirectly, like finding out where they live, what they do professionally, how long they've been doing it, and so on. Then you could refer to secondary data that show how much people in particular professions in particular countries, states, provinces get paid. You could ask them, and then compare their lies to your estimates derived from secondary data. That way you could begin to build up some typical assessments of income. I suspect you could get more honest answers to questions about how much the men spend for hotels, meals, taxis, incidentals, and so on. Or you could intentionally bound the inquiry so that you're only looking at the redistribution that occurs in the direct exchange between monger and prostitute. Perhaps the redistribution through hotels and so on is essentially the same as what's already well known for tourism in general in the Philippines.

The difficulty in doing this kind of research, aside from being time consuming and costly, is that it would probably be stigmatizing for the career of anybody who took it on, especially for men. Possibly a team, particularly if some women were involved, could safely pull it off. Or possibly some members of the team could be protected by using pseudonyms. I've got too much on my plate to get into this, and I can't even believe I just spent this much time laying this out. But if I ever run dry, I'll get back in touch and recruit you all as co-investigators.

One other little problem: who the hell would pay you to do such a study? Lilly pharmaceuticals? Trojan condoms? K-Y? Owners of favorite mongering haunts?

BTW, a great illustration of doing this sort of research is Elisabeth Pisani's **The Wisdom of Wh---s**. She does a very thoughtful study, focused mostly in Indonesia, on the actual incidences of HIV / AIDS. It's excellent dirty hands research in which she snowballed her way into prostitution circles, male and female, drug users, and so on. She is not judgmental in the least, and she shows why the typical demographic studies of HIV / AIDS are wildly inaccurate. She's also very crusty in her language and depictions. An interesting read and a good illustration of this kind of study.

GoodEnough
04-20-11, 09:46
You have done an excellent job of outlining the basic approach. I'm more interested in the direct and indirect impacts of the income redustrubution that is the nexus of the monger / povider relationship and I'm not sure if any extant econometric models would yield accurate conclusions. As you say, it's all in the assumptions and we could start by collecting some preliminary data on the validity of our initial assumptions.

There's a female sociiologist at Ateneo in Manila-I forget her name-who did some prelminiary work on a related topic and published a journal article about it several years ago. She was looking then at primary cause or causes prompting the entry of women into the P4P market, and her sample was restricted to women working in bars. Her conslusion, unsurprisingly, was that most had done so reluctantly, either because the father of their babies had deserted them and / or because they had siblings and parents to support. Our study would look less at cause and would focus more on the effects of the money that changes hands-on the women, their families, their overall quality of life, their communities, etc.

If we ever got funding for this, I know several decent local social anthropologists and sociologists who would help with the research. Of course, I have no idea who would fund it-maybe Hugh Hefner has a foundation that would be interested. I'd be happy to do the study as I'm nearing the end of my career anyway and care less about the implications for reputations. It sounds to me though like a perfectly acceptable subject of inquiry.

Well done Skip! If I can ever find a funding source, you're the first one I'll call.

GE

Irony Monger
04-20-11, 16:15
The difficulty in doing this kind of research, aside from being time consuming and costly, is that it would probably be stigmatizing for the career of anybody who took it on, especially for men. Possibly a team, particularly if some women were involved, could safely pull it off. Or possibly some members of the team could be protected by using pseudonyms. I've got too much on my plate to get into this, and I can't even believe I just spent this much time laying this out. But if I ever run dry, I'll get back in touch and recruit you all as co-investigators.There are some female prostitution activists who could probably get away with this. You can find them in places like Vancouver (Canada) or around San Francisco. I'd have to do some more googling to find names, but I've heard some of them speak in snippets from court cases, etc. And they were very articulate, well educated, etc. All they would need is some funding. Maybe we need to institute a voluntary monger sales tax :).

GoodEnough
04-20-11, 18:07
There are some female prostitution activists who could probably get away with this. You can find them in places like Vancouver (Canada) or around San Francisco. I'd have to do some more googling to find names, but I've heard some of them speak in snippets from court cases, etc. And they were very articulate, well educated, etc. All they would need is some funding. Maybe we need to institute a voluntary monger sales tax :).Perfect! All we need now is a snazzy acronym, registration as a non-profit research institute and we can start applying for grants! Who wants to design the web page?

GE

Irony Monger
04-20-11, 18:13
Perfect! All we need now is a snazzy acronym, registration as a non-profit research institute and we can start applying for grants! Who wants to design the web page?

GEMONGER: Ministry of naughty girl employment & research

I'll sign up to be a field investigator ;)

Devils 1
04-20-11, 18:14
Skip / GE, well written and fascinating stuff to ponder. It really makes me think about some of these girls I have come to know well. I think if you generalize it, and you have to in order to make sense of the huge numbers we are talking about here. The typical profile of the girl is definitely of the young, uneducated, neglected by the family variety. This is the only person the media wants to hear about because it makes mongers into evil men and makes for a sensational story to sell.

To me the far more interesting profile is of the woman who has far more going for her and still chooses to be in this business. When I think of the number of women I have known who have other jobs making very good money, that are well educated and have some serious money in the bank. It puts all of these stereotypes to shame. I once knew a girl with a masters degree who was the high level manager of a call center. She made in the neighborhood of 60, 000 php per month. I also knew a girl who was 21, no education, had been on the game for 3 yrs and had a bank account just from p4p with some thing like 500, 000 php in it.

A good example that most Americans will know is the girl that brought down Elliot Spitzer. She had a masters degree, was extremely beautiful and was a p4p girl in new york. Granted she was very high end, but clearly she could of had a decent job making a nice living.

I guess my point is there is something very sexy to these women about getting paid to have sex by men that a lot of them would screw for free. It just goes back to Frank Sinatras saying, you don't pay them to screw, you pay them to leave afterwards!

Jambo
04-20-11, 20:25
Hmm. An interesting film would trace the path of a 1000 pesos a monger paid a girl in Angeles. Where the money traveled from there, who it fed, clothed.

Or maybe it just buys the girl a new cell phone LOL.

Soapy Smith
04-21-11, 05:41
There are some female prostitution activists who could probably get away with this. You can find them in places like Vancouver (Canada) or around San Francisco. I'd have to do some more googling to find names, but I've heard some of them speak in snippets from court cases, etc. And they were very articulate, well educated, etc. All they would need is some funding. Maybe we need to institute a voluntary monger sales tax :).Amazon has a book listed from about 2006 that is written from this perspective. Their argument is that they do exercise choice and that to depict them always as powerless victims misrepresents them and has the effect of denying their very real empowerment. It would be interesting to know if there is any such movement in the Phils.

Soapy Smith
04-21-11, 05:44
Or maybe it just buys the girl a new cell phone LOL.So this is either redistribution thwarted and funneled back to local well-to-do merchants and the Chinese who manufactured the phone, or it's a reinvestment in tools of the trade.

GoodEnough
04-21-11, 05:58
If you can believe even a small percentage of the endless stories you hear, at least some percentage of the money goes back to the family where presumably, it's spent within the local mercantile community. It can't all go for cell phones, but I digress. We need a name for the movie. I could see Al Pacino playing the world weary, cynical monger who has intermittent outbursts of kindness. Lea Salonga is too old for the female lead so we will need a fresh face or faces.

GE

Soapy Smith
04-21-11, 06:04
i'll sign up to be a field investigator ;)there are several types of field research that will be needed. one is to put in long hours in the bars counting mongers and women coming and going. this would need to be done at various days of the week, times of day, and different types of bars in order to create representative sampling. this is needed to establish a baseline of the volume of trade. the budget for the grant would need to allow for a few drinks so that you pass as a covert participant observer who, in passing up so many women, looks to others like a guy whose libido is shot.

the other major kind of field work is interviewing. one school of thought is to interview them in their natural environment; and for most of them being in the bar takes up more of their time in natural environment than does lying on their backs. the other school of thought is that peer pressure will inhibit honest answers if their girlfriends are all hanging around, and of course loud music will cause the interviewer to misunderstand a lot of what the woman says. so the second school of thought would be to get them alone into an environment that encourages them to bare their souls.

counting trade volume will probably require at least twice as many hours of field work as the interviewing, so the typical field assignment would put you in field observation for two hours for every hour spent interviewing.

Soapy Smith
04-21-11, 06:17
Many field researchers advise doing the field observation first, and using these observations to identify "key informants" to interview, that is, individuals who seem to be most knowledgeable or most experienced in the setting under observation. But I think we might have a built in sampling bias, in that, anticipating the actual soul-baring interview situation, many of us might employ criteria other than most knowledgeable and most experienced in choosing key informants for interviewing.

Red Kilt
04-21-11, 08:44
Many field researchers advise doing the field observation first, and using these observations to identify "key informants" to interview, that is, individuals who seem to be most knowledgeable or most experienced in the setting under observation. But I think we might have a built in sampling bias, in that, anticipating the actual soul-baring interview situation, many of us might employ criteria other than most knowledgeable and most experienced in choosing key informants for interviewing.I am sure Skip, GE and others must have had great difficulty eating breakfast and lunch today because their tongues must be so firmly buried in their cheeks that they look rather odd to an observer.

I thought this was a light-hearted joke, but then a lot of energy was invested in a few posts describing a serious research "proposal" with a broad framework so I started to wonder. Now I am really bemused.

Please tell me you guys are having a really slow day and that tomorrow things will be back to normal? Please?

LOL.

GoodEnough
04-21-11, 12:01
I think the only way for us to identify an appropriate number of effective key informants is to spend a long time in various bars, carefully observing candidates,"testing them," engaging-during post coital languor-in probing questions, and then making a selection. Of course, focus group discussions are another possibility, and it would take even more time to identify women who work well together in small groups.

We would need, I think, at least 6 months to winnow the sample to an appropriate mix. Of course, we would have to estimate the size of the universe to compute a rough sample size, and that would take even more work. Since we want a robust sample and and a believable confidence interval we'd probably need a fairly large sample, which means we would need a lot of guys helping out with the field research.

How cool is this?

GE

Irony Monger
04-21-11, 16:25
I could see Al Pacino playing the world weary, cynical monger who has intermittent outbursts of kindness.I hear Charlie Sheen is looking for work. He could be the world weary monger's incoherent wingman / foil who has intermittent bursts of lucidity.

Soapy Smith
04-23-11, 04:22
I could see Al Pacino playing the world weary, cynical monger who has intermittent outbursts of kindness. GEAnd since he once played a blind man in a movie, he could really relate to some of the "special needs" women, like the deaf mute with great reputation for bjs who was a fixture at LA Cafe for three or four years.

Soapy Smith
04-23-11, 04:44
Of course, focus group discussions are another possibility, and it would take even more time to identify women who work well together in small groups.

We would need a lot of guys helping out with the field research. GEI've just come off a period of about 36 hours of very busy work, RK, but I am now back to a slow day.

Conventional wisdom for focus groups is that a heterogeneous group of participants is likely to provide greater variety of perspectives, and the diversity can actually draw out opposing points of view. But we might need to make some cultural adjustments. First, we do not want to draw out really starkly opposing viewpoints in a group of working girls unless we want all hell to break loose. And if we post too much Jerry Springer type muscle around the group, it will definitely inhibit spontaneous participation. Second, a heterogeneous group and conflicting points of view, especially in a culture that avoids losing face and causing others to lose face, will end in group silence if it doesn't end up in violence. So, setting aside conventional wisdom, we will probably have to settle for a homogeneous group of participants and lots of dull agreement among the participants.

GE, I agree with your strategy to drive statistical significance with a large sample, but assuming a limited budget, we might need to train a lot of these guys to be unpaid volunteer interviewers.

GoodEnough
04-23-11, 10:56
Skip, I wasn't aware that heterogeneity among bar girls was possible, but I'm always willing to learn. My assumption though would be there would not be a broad diversity of points of view.

Yes, the large sample size is a problem, since we probably couldn't pay for an adequate number of field interviewers. I'm guessing though that we could attract a reasonable number of volunteers by pitching this among mongers as a study that will expand the frontiers of economic theory as we know it. I'm thinking Paul Krugman might even feature us in a New York Times column if we couch the hypothesis in strictly social science terms.

GE

Soapy Smith
04-24-11, 11:20
My assumption though would be there would not be a broad diversity of points of view.

Yes, the large sample size is a problem, since we probably couldn't pay for an adequate number of field interviewers. I'm guessing though that we could attract a reasonable number of volunteers by pitching this among mongers as a study that will expand the frontiers of economic theory as we know it. I'm thinking Paul Krugman might even feature us in a New York Times column if we couch the hypothesis in strictly social science terms. GEI agree there's unlikely to be many diverse viewpoints regarding what happens in the two basic exchanges, money and bodily fluids. But I think there might be a variety of living arrangements among the girls. In Manila, for example, there are some who are essentially locals, others who ride buses or jeepneys in from nearby provinces, and still others from more distant provinces who camp out with some of the local girls or share a small, squalid room in which they take turns sleeping. Occasionally we even hear of a coed who decides to turn a trick or two to tide herself over in lean times. So, as a working hypothesis, I think there might be a number of different redistribution and multiplier patterns among the working girls. There's also the unique set of converse redistribution dynamics that occur when the girl ends up with a bun in the oven or a disease as a result of the non-monetary exchange.

My hunch is that few of those who already have a familiarity with our field sites would be readers of Paul Krugman's columns or anything else in the Times. And if we aim for ESPN, Outdoor Life, or Penthouse / Hustler kinds of outlets to recruit volunteers, it will be difficult to build any semblance of scientific aura around our study. (Although I had thought of Larry Flynt as a possible anonymous funding source.) Perhaps a middle ground would be some of the cable "so called" news channels. There's a development economist named Jeffrey Sachs who has been getting a lot of air time lately, and the broadcast people probably like him because he's a prettier face than Paul Krugman. I think that Sachs is the sort of "popular press" intellectual that politicians like to hang out with, so he brings the potential for connection to influence networks in addition to media exposure.

GoodEnough
04-24-11, 12:04
Well, if we're going to control for variability in living arrangements, then we've got to consider those as one of our stratification variables. The we'll need to add type of employment status: full or part-time; bar, street, KTV, massage parlor, escort service, etc. Through in mothers and not-yet-mothers, and we've got two more, and then I guess, to be fair, we should also stratify by age category. This will drive our sample size still higher, but what the hell it's our fantasy and we can do whatever we want with it.

If Krugman doesn't have sufficient cachet in the mongering community, Sachs might be a good alternative, though many may not have heard of him either and I'm not sure that Popular Mechanics or Guns and' Ammo have staff economists.

Siince we cannot possibly ennumerate all of the multiplier patterns, much less the reverse distribution patterns and sequences, we'll probably have to be content with a short hierarchy of possibilities while noting we haven't captured the universe. Sad, but every study has limitations.

We may have taken this as far as we can prior to writing the grant proposal and identifying potential funding sources. Wonder if the Gates Foundation would be interested, given that the results will probably be generalizable to lots of poor countries with similar socio-economic indicators.

GE

Mc Don
04-24-11, 14:10
U can always try the Soros Institute for new economic thinking. If you go ahead with it I want in.

http://ineteconomics.org/initiatives/grants

He Institute for New Economic Thinking awards individual research grants for original work that can't get sponsored elsewhere, and funds a series of Task Forces focused on critical issues that demand sustained work by many people over time.

INET releases two cycles of grants every year, and each individual grant will support significant work that could last more than a year. The process is open to anyone with a big idea that could help move the field of economics, though most awards will go to those working in academia.

The first grants were awarded in the fall of 2010 to a diverse range of recipients focused on a wide range of topics. You can read about the Inaugural Grants projects here.

Currently, INET is reviewing applications for its second grants cycle. Please note that the deadline for applications has passed for this round of grants.

Generally, INET is interested in funding work that breaks new ground in one or more of the following fields:

* Sources and remedies of financial instability.

* Institutional design for radical (Knightian) uncertainty.

* Political economy of the state and public goods provision.

* Political economy of income and wealth distribution.

* Corporate governance in an age of economic globalization.

* Human capability and economic development.

We understand that new economic thinking can come from anywhere and so we remain open to grant proposals outside these fields and from people outside academia, though the awards will primarily go to individuals or teams affiliated with academic institutions, think tanks and other research centers.

For more information, please click here.


Well, if we're going to control for variability in living arrangements, then we've got to consider those as one of our stratification variables. The we'll need to add type of employment status: full or part-time; bar, street, KTV, massage parlor, escort service, etc. Through in mothers and not-yet-mothers, and we've got two more, and then I guess, to be fair, we should also stratify by age category. This will drive our sample size still higher, but what the hell it's our fantasy and we can do whatever we want with it.

If Krugman doesn't have sufficient cachet in the mongering community, Sachs might be a good alternative, though many may not have heard of him either and I'm not sure that Popular Mechanics or Guns and' Ammo have staff economists.

Siince we cannot possibly ennumerate all of the multiplier patterns, much less the reverse distribution patterns and sequences, we'll probably have to be content with a short hierarchy of possibilities while noting we haven't captured the universe. Sad, but every study has limitations.

We may have taken this as far as we can prior to writing the grant proposal and identifying potential funding sources. Wonder if the Gates Foundation would be interested, given that the results will probably be generalizable to lots of poor countries with similar socio-economic indicators.

GE

Soapy Smith
04-25-11, 06:32
U can always try the Soros Institute for new economic thinking. If you go ahead with it I want in.

http://ineteconomics.org/initiatives/grantsConsidering the the cross-section of proposals they probably get to review, this one would blow their minds. I'd love to be a fly on the wall to hear their reaction to this one.

Soapy Smith
04-25-11, 06:34
We may have taken this as far as we can GEI know we have to consider stratified sampling, but my inclination is that we need a more inductive, exploratory approach initially to figure out what these major stratifying factors are. But I'm in my 60s, and I know there's danger in an inductive approach – of wandering off on some tangent and forgetting why in hell we're doing it or just simply losing our staying power. As far as I know they don't make any little blue or yellow pills for sustaining research projects or any kind of work that depends on memory and rapidly firing synapses. (Some forms of rapid firing just seem to attract more attention when it comes to pharmaceutical research.) Every study has its limitations, but this could be downright fatal.

I'm not foreseeing too many slow days over the next week, and so I've been sort of looking for the bottom line. I think you may have hit it.

Red Kilt
04-25-11, 10:27
I'm not foreseeing too many slow days over the next week, and so I've been sort of looking for the bottom line. I think you may have hit it.Whew I was hoping for that Skip, GE et al.

Normal business can now resume.

GoodEnough
04-25-11, 10:46
Whew I was hoping for that Skip, GE et al.

Normal business can now resume. Ah but it was fun while it lasted. I'm in my 60's as well Skip, sand searching for the synaptic equivalent of Viagra. Thanks to all who participated.

GE

Soapy Smith
10-17-11, 16:14
I'm in my 60's as well Skip, sand searching for the synaptic equivalent of Viagra. GEIn my case, it's about memory loss, but also attention deficit disorder. The signposts of my ADD are all over ISG Philippine board in the form of long-winded social commentaries that sometimes go far afield of the pussy-chasing that most guys come here to read about.

In any case, I'm putting this observation here-since the thread has been dormant since April and because here it's less likely to annoy some of our more single-minded brethren.

GE observed in a recent post in the General Info thread that Filipinos are generally afraid to take on the Church in public. He noted Conrado de Quiros, the Inquirer columnist, as a rare exception. I have sometimes enjoyed reading Conrado's columns but have found him lately a little too romantically attached to Noynoy. I feel that by casting Philippine social dynamics in terms of good guys (Noynoy) and bad guys (GMA and associates) , he loses the ability to probe the social context for its influence on political actors' "good" and "bad" actions. I also wish Conrado would post a current photo that shows him for the 70ish man he is. He and his wife are major players in the cooperative that created the Conspiracy nightclub on Visayas Avenue in Quezon City. He's frequently there early in the evening if anybody wants to meet him. Just look for a guy with a long gray ponytail and a face about 40 years older than his photo in the Inquirer.

I personally prefer the columns of Randy David, which appear only on Saturdays. He is similarly unafraid to take on hallowed Philippine institutions, although he does so in a way that's a little less confrontational than de Quiros. David's writing is invariably strongly rooted in historical analysis. He comes by it honestly. His wife, Karina Constantino-David, is the daughter of Renato and Letizia Constantino, who wrote two well-regarded books that present a Filipino-centered history of the Philippines-as opposed to histories written by Jesuits, Spaniards, and Americans. Their books are not afraid to tell the brutal aspects of the Church's history in the Philippines. For a quick read-that unfortunately romanticizes the role of the Church-check out Jose Arcilla's *An Introduction to Philippine History. For a much more detailed and critical account, read the Constantinos' books: *The Philippines: A Past Revisited* and *The Philippines: The Continuing Past. BTW, Randy David does look like his Inquirer photo.

Red Kilt
10-18-11, 08:57
. He noted Conrado de Quiros, the Inquirer columnist, as a rare exception. I have sometimes enjoyed reading Conrado's columns but have found him lately a little too romantically attached to Noynoy. I feel that by casting Philippine social dynamics in terms of good guys (Noynoy) and bad guys (GMA and associates) , he loses the ability to probe the social context for its influence on political actors' "good" and "bad" actions. I also wish Conrado would post a current photo that shows him for the 70ish man he is. He and his wife are major players in the cooperative that created the Conspiracy nightclub on Visayas Avenue in Quezon City. He's frequently there early in the evening if anybody wants to meet him. Just look for a guy with a long gray ponytail and a face about 40 years older than his photo in the Inquirer.Nobody takes much notice of anything poor old Conrad says these days, especially the movers and shakers.

He has let his passion for doing good get in the way of good journalism, and he is now seen as indulging in his all too regular "rants" against GMA, the Church and assorted protagonists from his past days as a student activist during martial law days with very little data of substance to back them up.

He used to be much better.

Most of the other journalists do some good detective work and ferret out some data. It is rare to read any research in Conrado's articles these days. I also find his journaistic "style" irritating, and his columns over the past 2 or 3 years have become very disjointed.

Soapy Smith
10-18-11, 14:29
Most of the other journalists do some good detective work and ferret out some data. It is rare to read any research in Conrado's articles these days. I also find his journaistic "style" irritating, and his columns over the past 2 or 3 years have become very disjointed.See what we've got to look forward to? Sorta makes you not want to grow old. I find his recent columns predictable. Not much new stuff these days.

GoodEnough
10-18-11, 19:42
I guess I like old Conrad because he's such a reliable left wing liberal, though I agree that his rather endless polemics get tiresome and somewhat predictable. I also quite like Randy David who is, I think a Sociologist by training, and who does tend to write rather more analytically than Conrad does. On the other hand, David lacks the passion, the firebreathing of de Quiros, and lacks the sometimes tortured sentence structures as well. In the case of both columnists however, it's refreshing to find two local columnists who write well.

GE

Soapy Smith
10-19-11, 05:09
I also quite like Randy David who is, I think a Sociologist by training, and who does tend to write rather more analytically than Conrad does. On the other hand, David lacks the passion, the firebreathing of de Quiros, and lacks the sometimes tortured sentence structures as well. In the case of both columnists however, it's refreshing to find two local columnists who write well. GERandy is in the sociology department at UP. I have been told his classes attract students from all over the university. Somebody told me that he had at one time been in a graduate program at Oxford or Cambridge but quit before finishing a terminal degree. I agree that his Inquirer columns are fairly dispassionate by nature. He seems to be devoted to the work of the late German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann. I don't know Luhmann's work intimately, so my interpretation may be suspect. But he seems to cast the world in a grand theory sort of perspective, assuming a view from 60, 000 feet that can explain everything as part of one fantastic social system. This sort of grand theory depiction is not such a new idea. Think Karl Marx, or Georg Hegel, or Talcott Parsons (hopefully you were never forced to read any of Parsons' work). So this perspective means rejecting both optimistic humanists and critical realists as being too micro-focused. From that vantage point individual events and passionate actions all look like miniature pieces of flotsam bobbing along under a Pasig River bridge. And if Randy really does buy into this view, it could explain the distance from the human subject that seems to pervade his columns.

But I have seen some occasional exceptions in Randy's columns. One column in particular from about 2007 (maybe 2008) sticks in my memory. He started telling the story about a young student leader at some university in the Bicol region. The young man had attracted a lot of attention from university administration and even local political leaders for his ideas and his ability to rally students into protest. He also was apparently a gifted student with grades near the top in all his classes. One night he stayed late on campus for some meeting, and having no other way home, accepted a ride home on the back of a motorcycle with one of his professors. As they traveled toward the student's home some unknown person shot the student in the back, and he died soon thereafter. These stories repeat themselves regularly in the Philippines, as Maguindanao and countless smaller scale events show us, but Randy grasped the special significance of this story. And I recall his alarm at the snuffing out of the kind of young person who held real potential to make true and desirable social change in the Philippines-and at the apparent self-serving lack of concern of police and political leaders to find the murderer. We can hold out hope that Randy might more frequently write stories like this that touch down on earth.

AfAsia
04-25-12, 09:29
Press TV is reporting an attack in the Tinoc region. I checked the map. Of real concern, Tinoc appears to be north of Baguio City, Luzon. CNN and BBC have no such news. Interesting!

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/237997.html

Wicked Roger
04-25-12, 13:57
Press TV is reporting an attack in the Tinoc region. I checked the map. Of real concern, Tinoc appears to be north of Baguio City, Luzon. CNN and BBC have no such news. Interesting!

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/237997.htmlYou mean this, had been there 2 hours

Gives a map and say it was a small isolated town Ifugao.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17837179

AfAsia
05-09-12, 18:18
This thread is not seeing any activity, may as well put it to use. Anybody been following the the ongoing Island standoff between Philippines and China? Scarborough is allegedly rich in Oil and Gas deposits. Perhaps the fishing boats anchored there are not fishing boats, LOL.

Also interestingly, the oddly named Maoist, New Peoples Army? It would appear China has a far greater goal than just Scarborough Island, LOL.

Soapy Smith
05-10-12, 07:40
This thread is not seeing any activity, may as well put it to use. Anybody been following the the ongoing Island standoff between Philippines and China? Scarborough is allegedly rich in Oil and Gas deposits. Perhaps the fishing boats anchored there are not fishing boats, LOL.Scarborough is just one of many disputed islands in the South China Sea. The Spratly Islands (British name for them) dispute has probably been more broadly publicized. Six countries lay claim to some or all of the islands: Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Some of these countries have people on the islands. The PRC has troops and naval vessels at some of the islands, occupying more than any of the other countries, although they insist their installations are civilian only. Yeah, right! Concrete landing strips have been poured on a few islands. Some of the landing strips are accessible only at low tide. There are also fishing vessels that ply the waters around many of the islands. Various soundings have established that significant petroleum reserves lie under many of the atolls. In '98 or '99 President Estrada supposedly convinced the various ASEAN countries, and presumably PRC and Taiwan, to agree to hold off on further claims and incursions, but clearly all of the countries have violated the truce. In fact, the Philippines and PRC actually collaborated in some geologic soundings a few years ago. So the disputes are colored by various countries historical and outer continental shelf claims, but there's also some strange backroom intrigue as well.

Part of the islands intrigue connects to the broadband corruption proceedings in which President Aquino and his allies have been attempting to nail the former President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. During her administration the Chinese had made an offer of a big chunk of money to finance a national broadband system in the Phils. The offer was odd for a couple of reasons. First, the loan amount was much larger than the Phils Congress had originally projected the cost. Second, the Chinese appeared to attach very few strings to the loan, unlike what all the other bilateral aid and international financial institutions would have required. So GMA was in China to sign the deal, but on the eve of the signing she suddenly returned to the Phils, claiming she needed to be with her husband, who had been hospitalized.

But the Senate starting looking into it, and they found some guy who'd been part of the deal-making hiding out in Japan or some such place. They brought him back and forced him to testify. He started to spill the beans on the Arroyos, the Elections Commission Chair and some of their other buddies. The story that unfolded was that the amount was much larger than the projected cost because the Arroyo cabal was planning to rake a huge amount off the top of the loan. Then some journalists started to question why there were so few strings attached. Some suggested that the Chinese knew all about the Arroyos' skimming plan, and they actually anticipated that the Phils would default on the loan. But the Chinese liked that, according to some journalists, because they believed it would give them substantial leverage over the Phils regarding claims to the oil reserves under the Spratlys and other islands.

That GMA backed out on the loan a few hours before she was supposed to sign has been explained in a couple different ways. One is GMA's story that she needed to be with her husband. Another, suggested by some journalists, is that somebody Warned GMA that her political opponents had caught wind of the scam and were laying a trap for her. I suspected the USA State Department caught wind of the deal and the likelihood of the Chinese gaining greater influence over the oil reserves, and they grabbed her by her short curly hairs and told her to get her ass back to the Philippines.

I stopped following the story of the efforts to convict her and her cronies, as it seemed its resolution would be about as conclusive as the prosecution of Estrada ten years earlier. But that's a story for another day-that could only happen in the Philippines.

Questor55
06-04-12, 02:36
USA Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has just announced that the US Navy's proportional 50/50 deployment between East and West coasts will undergo a significant shift to the Pacific Theatre in coming years. Look for the navy to be eyeing former bases in both Vietnam (Cam Ranh Bay) and Philippines (Subic) as top of their wish list. Is this 'Deja Vu' or 'Back To The Future'?

Soapy Smith
06-05-12, 05:54
USA Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has just announced that the US Navy's proportional 50/50 deployment between East and West coasts will undergo a significant shift to the Pacific Theatre in coming years. Look for the navy to be eyeing former bases in both Vietnam (Cam Ranh Bay) and Philippines (Subic) as top of their wish list. Is this 'Deja Vu' or 'Back To The Future'?News reports say Panetta met with the Vietnamese at Cam Ranh Bay, and General Dempsey, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Philippine military leaders in Manila over the weekend also. Dempsey's pitch was reportedly to have the navy do more "friendship visits" to various Philippine ports. Both had attended a major meeting with ASEAN and other leaders in Singapore a few days ago.

The Chinese are not happy with this new American plan and with the addition of American marines in Australia. Of course this is about putting a geo-strategic check on Chinese military expansion, but Panetta has tried to emphasize that he wants to help ASEAN create stable maritime practices for the South China Sea. The volume of trade that flows through the South China Sea is extremely important to the Chinese and to others. The Philippines has made overtures to the U.S. over the aggressive Chinese posturing over island holdings throughout the South China Sea, and so they probably welcome American involvement. But American military presence in the Philippines is not popular among some groups in the Philippines, so this puts Noynoy in a ticklish situation.

Too much American navy could also raise the price of mongering in the Phils.

Member #4351
06-05-12, 13:35
Too much American navy could also raise the price of mongering in the Phils.That is the important point!

AfAsia
08-30-12, 00:53
Saw this while eating, Angeles City.

Jp Slicky
08-30-12, 03:23
Noddy, thanks for the photos of history, that was Interesting reading.

Soapy Smith
05-01-13, 16:09
My Philippine news usually comes from sources other than the Manila Bulletin, but I saw this story in RK's link (Manila Thread) to the Bulletin for an article about hot weather.

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/philippine-rebels-rake-vote-extortion-official-075005237.html

Most weak interest groups in the Phils are the pols' best friends in the run-up to May 10th. The principal dynamic is the pols buying their votes with cash and promises. But come July 1st, all bets are off. The weak groups are at the mercy of the electoral winners, who have made bigger promises to the well-heeled interests that really matter. The NPA's influence is different. Because they're armed and organized, their influence, whatever it is, presumably remains constant.

The recent gunfight between NPA and a mayoral candidate's security in Northern Mindanao is a telling story.

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/aquino-wants-rebel-checkpoints-crushed-042002925.html

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/npa--sorry--to-guingona--says-it-was-not-ambush-084250455.html

So the NPA controls movement in some parts with checkpoints on the highways. And campaigning candidates are at their mercy? But the President claims they're going to wipe out the checkpoints. Right. The NPA has been operating like this, extracting protection money from businesses, mining operations, and politicians for more than 30 years. And they were birthed from the Huks, who formed during World War II as insurgents against Japanese occupation. After the war their leftist activities persisted, and the Philippine army, even with CIA and American military assistance couldn't eliminate them. The Huks, in turn, were descended from the Communist Party of the Philippines, which dates to the early 1930s, when Americans were in charge. So what has changed that makes Noynoy think he's going to eliminate something that has existed for more than 80 years? Noynoy: put your money into your economy and your institutions, not into your army.

At times the NPA looks like little more than a gang of protection racketeers. But they play for keeps. My squeeze has told me about hiding from the NPA as an 8-year old girl in her rural village in Southern Leyte. Seems like a local woman was known to have joined the NPA. But at some point the woman quit the NPA and came back to her family in the village. A warning went out that the NPA was coming to the village looking for the woman. Like many others in the village, squeeze and her Lola burrowed into a hiding place under their home and hoped for the best. They were scared shitless, and squeeze will never wipe out the memory. They heard gunshots, and then an extended period of quiet. After several hours people began to crawl out from hiding. They found the dead bodies of the woman and her family in their home. A warning to others? Probably. But more important, perhaps a necessity from the standpoint of the NPA because of their need to protect identities and plans.

This attack on the mayor of Gingoog City is in the same province as Cagayan de Oro, only 60 km away as the Tikling flies. Many reports in the forum about CdO as a safe mongering city, but this raises the prospect that hostile Muslims are not the only threat in Mindanao. I will leave it to expats who know the area to describe the situation, but from a distance it appears the reality of urban Mindanao is very different than rural Mindanao. One of our expats described Compostela Valley Province, not far from Davao, as being similarly hostile, even after devastation from a December typhoon.

But this news account tells much more than a story about the NPA. The mayor, about to be term-limited out, is the 78-year old wife of a former Philippine Vice President. Her son is a Senator. Her daughter is campaigning for the mayoral seat she is vacating. This story is repeated in locales throughout the Philippines. And Noynoy wonders that the NPA won't give up their guns and their extortion.

GoodEnough
05-02-13, 00:34
One of the more bizarre aspects of all of the varous insurgent campaigns-those of the NPA, the Abu Sayyaf, the MILF-is the relative freedom with which they operate. They all have press spokesman, for example, fairly well established bases, give extensive interviews to the press, move relatively unfettered throughout their demarked territories, and don't appear overly concerned about clashes with the military. The individuals in leadership positions within these groups are well known, and often cited by journalists. All of the aforementioned makes me wonder just how serious the national government is here about the elimination of these groups.

As far as I know, the current incarnation of the NPA is that of a group of thugs who make a living by demanding (and receiving) protection money from the larger corporations operating in the region, and from the ransoms related to kidnappings. Regarding the latter, it's often rumored that kidnappings take place with the knowledge and cooperation of local politicians who, presumably, share in the spoils of the efforts.

GE

Soapy Smith
05-02-13, 16:48
One of the more bizarre aspects of all of the varous insurgent campaigns-those of the NPA, the Abu Sayyaf, the MILF-is the relative freedom with which they operate. They all have press spokesman, for example, fairly well established bases, give extensive interviews to the press, move relatively unfettered throughout their demarked territories, and don't appear overly concerned about clashes with the military. The individuals in leadership positions within these groups are well known, and often cited by journalists. All of the aforementioned makes me wonder just how serious the national government is here about the elimination of these groups.

As far as I know, the current incarnation of the NPA is that of a group of thugs who make a living by demanding (and receiving) protection money from the larger corporations operating in the region, and from the ransoms related to kidnappings. Regarding the latter, it's often rumored that kidnappings take place with the knowledge and cooperation of local politicians who, presumably, share in the spoils of the efforts. GEThe Misamis Oriental episode is obviously not an isolated event. Another recent gunfight over political campaigning left 13 dead in another part of Mindanao:

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/12-dead-philippines-political-ambush-ahead-vote-034404598.html

An interesting note here: the opponents of the group that was attacked are endorsed by President Aquino. So Noynoy is in bed (politically speaking) with the group that presumably carried out this attack. Similarly, the Ampatuan clan, which is alleged to have carried out the Maguindanao massacre a few years ago, were politically aligned with the former President, Gloria Arroyo. In that little foray a mixed group of family members and journalists (nearly 60 people) were massacred enroute to filing for candidacy for an opposition candidate for Governor. Some investigative reporters say that part of the connection between the Ampatuans and Gloria was that the national government had provided them with weapons. Their hope was that the Ampatuans could help hold off Abu Sayyaf, the MILF, and other militants. Never mind that this then exacerbates longstanding hostilities between various clans. All of this reinforces GE's point about lack of sincerity on the part of the national government.

So the differences between Syria and the Philippines are that the latter has at least a veneer of government supported by most citizens, and they're much more tolerant in letting outsiders fuck their young women, since it fuels the informal economy. On the other hand, various of the states in the U.S. have current initiatives to arm school teachers with guns as a preventative against future massacres of school children.