A disturbingly increasing number of bodies have washed ashore, or have been discovered in sewers and manholes, all, apparently victims of summary executions. Some, bearing placards announcing their supposed crimes.  

Vigilantism is on the rise. Even the police are apparently less fastidious now about warning first, and firing as a last resort. Reports are more frequent now of suspected drug lords and habitués of drives and dens gunned down for supposedly fighting it out with arresting officers.  

Why should these things not happen considering that the the President-elect offers a bounty for the apprehension and even execution of drug lords, corrupt policemen and others he considers lowly by comparison to his tough, upright and unflappable self?

But what really floored me were posts on social media about Mayor Digong’s refusal to support a budgetary proposal for the construction of an execution chamber – as if that were not macabre enough.  

He is reported to have brushed aside lethal injection as being too kind on the condemned man. And very like Hitler, he would like the doomed man writhing on the gallows until life is snuffed from him.

This to me is just diabolic — to bring about the death of another human being, no matter how despicable a character he might be, in a manner calculated to be extremely agonizing and painfully lingering. 

What kind of perversity does it require to conjure that, after advocating the return of that barbarism that the death penalty is?

Alarming social media posts

But more portentous still is the reaction these posts get on social media. There are some who reject the proposal for what it is: state-sanctioned barbarism. But most others laud the the plan to execute the convicted by as frightening and as cruel a means as possible. 

Is this what we have come to, the supposedly only Christian nation in the Far East, standing tall because of all the steps it has thus far taken in the direction of upholding human rights? One lackey gleefully proposes the firing squad so that all may see – and be frightened. This is his vision of a progressive society: a frightened nation.

It is like all the cursing, the unbridled coarse language, the vulgarity, the direct and unabashed threat of death to those considered scum of society have let the lid off over a box of barbarism, primeval impulses of revenge – everything dark and sepulchral that centuries of Christianity and of maturation in the law, as well as a growing public awareness of the inalienability of human rights have managed to stash away, sealed it seems in a box.

But the present dispensation that has scant regard for decency, and for which, human rights refer to the rights of some humans to which some others are not entitled has managed to pry open!

Principal educator

Whether he accepts the role or not, Mayor Digong is the principal educator of the nation – and so far, his arrant use of shameful expletives, his coarse language and his often questionable demeanor have made many thoughtful parents ask whether their children should be listening to the President of the Republic. 

No, Mayor, it is not the nation that must adjust to you. It is you who must truly be President, not principally through the exercise of despotic powers but in speech, demeanor, deportment.  

And what it comes to categorizing low-life forms that can be disposed of without much ceremony, slit in the throat by vigilante groups, their deaths unlamented, not condemned by government, the business of consigning some to low-life category is tricky.

Many think that those who make of others’ lives easily disposable commodities are themselves of hardly any worth. One who perversely goes back on the laborious evolution of human consciousness that has made us more sensitive to the demands of human dignity, that has resulted in past methods of retribution that we now are convinced are clearly barbaric seem to be, for good reason, purveyors of retrogressive thinking, impediments towards a more humane society. Such people do not really lead. They are only feared.

But bullying can only go so far. From what we hope is only a temporary spate of lawlessness and the marginalizing of the Rule of Law, we still hope to have a leadership that responds to the indefeasible summons of the more noble values, that only a truly noble government of truly noble officials can bring to fruition. – Rappler.com

The author is Dean, Graduate School of Law, San Beda College.

Most of us love to hear success stories – stories about ordinary people who happily found their purpose in life.

But success is not always what it seems. It is like an iceberg. What we see on the outside is just the summit. Often times, we are blinded by awards and recognitions and we fail to see its biggest and most important part. But if we look closely, underneath the fame and glory are the hardships, struggles, and failures, and we will realize the climb to the summit of success is never easy.

I have always known what I wanted in life. But inevitable circumstances have made me realize that sometimes, the path I have laid out for myself is not the one meant for me. I was 14 when my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a progressive disorder of the nervous system. My mom couldn't take her medicines because of allergic reactions so her condition aggravated.

When I was in high school, I assisted her in every bath, I spoonfed her and I also learned how to insert a catheter. At 16, I was already brushing my mom’s teeth. A week after my 18th birthday, she passed away. On that day, I didn't just lose my mother, I also lost my purpose. But life is quite ironic because during the darkest times of our lives we have the biggest chance of seeing the light. I realized that we would never be strong if we're always happy and successful. Sometimes, our most painful experience will turn out to be our life's biggest lesson.

Think of life as a maze, yes, just like that one in The Maze Runner with all its twists and turns and dead-ends. From the moment we open our eyes until the day we close them for the last time, our main goal is to survive the maze and find the purpose of our existence. We came in this world with no instruction manual, which is exactly the reason why committing mistakes and experiencing failures are okay, and sometimes necessary. I'm not sure how to survive life without getting lost in the maze. But I am certain that life is bearable as long as we remember these three characteristics:

Be brave

First, be brave. Very familiar, right? These two words are easy to remember, but very difficult to live by. I know, because this is what I have been telling myself every day from the moment my mom passed away until today.

Think about your most painful experience – maybe you also lost a parent, or your parents separated, or your boyfriend/girlfriend cheated on you, or you are suffering from depression and self-doubt, or maybe your long-time crush in college turned out to be gay. At one point, agony wounded and left us with scars. Truth is, we can hate life all we want for all our failures and pains but life? Life goes on no matter how hurt we've been.

The words of our University founder, Dr Nicanor Reyes Sr is not exclusive to UAAP games. More than a chant and a statement shirt, "Be brave" is a reminder that giving up should never be an option. There are no success stories told without struggles and failures.

We do not have to see the entire way, we just have to be brave and have faith that there would be enough light for the next step.

Be great 

Second, be great.

Most of us equate greatness with academic excellence. I used to think so, too.

But excellence does not always mean being the best among the rest. Sometimes, it just means being a better you. I used to be an insecure freshman from Siargao who kept on comparing myself with other people. When my mom died, I was a hopeless mess.

I hated Parkinson's disease but instead of breaking down, I used my situation as an inspiration. I created a Facebook page called Parkinson’s Diaries for families and patients diagnosed with Parkinson's around the world to share their stories.

Time has healed my wounds and I used my scars to help other people heal by letting them know that they are not alone. I moved on from my hatred and tread the path of “greatness” by becoming a better person. We have our own stories and journeys. We have our own definitions of excellence and FEU has taught us to always be true to ourselves no matter what and who we encounter.

We should not unnecessarily compare our self with other people because our mazes have been designed to make us the better version of ourselves. We will bloom at our own time, at our own pace. We will become great and we can start it today by believing that we can be. 

Be good 

Lastly, be good.

Success and failure have the power to change a person. We have the tendency to be too proud and selfish when we reach the top and we might become bitter and desperate when we fall and reach the bottom. There was a point in my life when I didn't know what I believed in anymore but I didn't allow my pain to destroy me.

I remained true to my values and I did my best to do good. There will be trying times in our lives that will make us question our values. We will get hurt and we might compromise our beliefs because nothing is going according to plan.

But always remember that when we have nothing left, the more we should hold on to what we believe in. We will only survive life's biggest blows if we know what we are living for.

Be brave, be great, and be good. We do not know what we will encounter with each new turn, but we should not be afraid to take the next step, because we are not alone. Our journey in college has been fortified by the constant encouragement and support from the following people:

To all our friends: We comforted each other after every failing grade and celebrated when we passed our thesis defense. We made it through the years of hardships and stress because we chose to stay and be brave together.

To our teachers and mentors: We thank you because we have learned not just concepts but real-life experiences that made us the better version of our selves.

To our parents, guardians, and families: Thank you for all your sacrifices. What we have achieved today is our gift to you.

To our Creator: Thank you for Your constant guidance. We may not understand Your will all the time, but we know Your plans will always be better than ours.

To my Mama: Thank you for holding on until I became strong enough to let you go.

Class of 2016: Let us remember what FEU has taught us, what FEU means in each one of us. Fortitude: Be brave. Excellence: Be great. And Uprightness: Be good. There are new challenges that will test our courage and faith. We will get hurt and fresh wounds would appear.

Just like in the past, these wounds will once again turn to scars – scars that will remind us how strong we've been. I have come to realize that the scars we got from our bittersweet experiences have the power to heal ourselves and other people. We are beautiful for choosing to go on even when we have been broken.

The future is uncertain but when we are on the brink of giving up, we should always remember that those who fall down the hardest are also the ones who bounce back the highest.

Thank you very much. – Rappler.com 

Syrene Podadera graduated valedictorian from the Far Eastern University, batch 2016. 

I watched two of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte's press conferences where he received flak for saying that certain journalists deserve to die because they're sons of bitches (SOBs).

While the "framing" of his statement – "deserve to die" – is harsh and unfit, the context in which it was conveyed holds truth – that these journalists described as someone "who get too personal", "sinobrahan ang atake", (went to far with the attack) and "binaboy mo 'yung tao" (dehumanized the person). It also fits his third category of low life extortionists masquerading as journalists. 

And falling into such category has effectively made them "moving targets" or people whom the government can only do so much to protect. (READ: Duterte on media killings: 'What can I do?')

While Duterte didn't mention anything, it is clear after dropping the name of Jun Pala that his statements pertain to members of the local media or "community journalists." These are journalists who belong to smaller media companies and report on local politics, crime, etc.

In my opinion, it is fair to say that majority of the media in the provinces can be categorized as such.

Community journalism

I went back to my parents' hometown in northern Mindanao shortly after graduation to celebrate overcoming the last 4 years of college. Thinking of what to do next in my life, I tried working as a journalist for a community newspaper. In my brief but yet memorable stint as a journalist there, I did not receive complaints about my stories.

I have reported on a variety of issues that Manila-based media wouldn’t pay much attention to. I wrote about topics ranging from banal (a beautician nuisance candidate, Christmas lighting in the provincial capitol) to the exciting (2004 presidential campaign to be exact, and its aftermath) and the violent (NPA rebels attacking a hinterland resort). Not once did I get any death threats on these topics I had reported on.

However, it is unsurprising that my "hard hitting" counterparts – especially those belonging to the radio – experienced the opposite.  

Hard-hitters can sometimes be disparaging and uncouth towards their targets. In a province where patriarchy is still the prevailing social norm and power structure, I could just imagine how an accused could stand being harangued on a daily basis, becoming a laughingstock in a tight-knit probinsya in the process.

His manhood and ego bruised, settling scores like what they did in the wild west could’ve been the only option left.  

While it's an indelible right of the community to have access to mass media, listening to or reading these (mostly) unsubstantiated attacks have become unusual means of entertainment which seems like dwelling on conspiracy theories.

And as Duterte has said, politicians may be inured to it, but others are not. And this causes the subject of attack to send his own assassins out on a killing spree. Definitely not warranted by law, but the absence of responsible and respectable dissemination of opinion from these hard-hitters gave rise to it nonetheless.

Weak institution? 

Duterte's statements have exposed community journalism as a victim of a weak institution and it is an implicit perception shared by the community politicians in power. I, for one, was paid per story and this was not enough to fend for my needs. In one non-political event in a seaside town that I covered, I was asked straight up by a local politician: "Magkano po ba ang hinihingi nila?" (How much are you asking?)

This instance sent me back to reality and I began to realize why certain journalists have resorted to Attack Collect/Defend Collect (AC/DC) and "envelopmental journalism".  And if these rogue opinion makers didn’t get what they want (extortion money), they went back on air and continued censuring and castigating their subjects – that is, provided that they were still able to delay being a dead man walking.

If journalism was my only source of income back then, I could have offered my services as the politician’s "attack dog" against his enemies. In this brief stint of being a community journalist, I had come to accept that the risks involved outweigh whatever "benefits" I could’ve amassed just by using the deceptive power of the pen.

While the world has already condemned Duterte for his brash but truthful take on the state of journalism  – emphasis on community journalism – in the country, Duterte’s remarks about the harsh truth of the media serve as a warning that a pillar of our democracy is being threatened.

Journalism is unequivocally a noble profession, but like any practitioner of the craft part of a weak institution, this weakness provides an immense opportunity for "scalawag journalists" to proliferate and use this same institution for their own selfish ends. – Rappler.com 

Melchizedek Maquiso graduated from San Beda College and worked as a correspondent for the now-defunct Freeman Mindanao based in Cagayan de Oro City. Maquiso moved to Canada and obtained a diploma in photojournalism from Loyalist College and shortly went to freelance as a photojournalist for Reuters, Philippine Graphic, and Toronto Star during one of his return trips to the Philippines. He is now completing his Master in Public Policy (MPP) degree at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan also in Canada. 

In 1987 while walking around Avenida, I stumbled upon Tadhana. No, this was not the DVD version of today’s teen flick, That Thing Called Tadhana, starring Angelica Panganiban and JM de Guzman. This was the book Tadhana: The History of the Filipino People, penned by former president Ferdinand Marcos, and put out by the Marcos Foundation.

I found two volumes at a stall selling used books, thrust at the bottom of a book stack full of Mills and Boon novels. The vendor I bought the books from (P25 per hard bound copy) said these were part of the loot that was taken out of Malacañang when the dictator was ousted from power on February 25, 1986. 

“Destiny” was a project of the Marcos dictatorship. Its goal was to write a new history of the Filipino people dating from as far back as ca. 300 million BCE to the "present" (1986?). Only 3 volumes were completed.

These were Part 1 (published only in 1980!), which is a substantive examination of the “archipelagic genesis” of the islands “pre-historic” beginnings of the archipelago;  Volume 1 (1976): Devoted to the evolution of the Philippine “Island World”; Volume 2, Part 1 (1977): Covers the world in the 16^th century to the “early encounters” between Spanish and the people of the islands; and  Volume 2, Part 3: Runs from the Philippines “in an Age of Ferment” to the “Politics of Religion” under Spanish rule.

In 1976, a more compressed “volume” also came out with the title Tadhana: The Formation of the National Community (1565-1896).

The mishmash of Destiny’s dates of publication is not our concern at this moment. What is more germane here is to determine why Marcos “wrote” the books, and how the writing came about. The “author” never explicitly laid out Destiny’s rationale but it is safe to assume that the project was part the effort of “that martial law thingy” to prop up its legitimacy.

'Hackneyed excuse'

What was most interesting was Destiny’s authorship. While Marcos’ name is embossed on the volumes’ cover, in reality, it was a group of historians from the University of the Philippines that Marcos contracted (and offered hefty honoraria) to comb the archives for primary data, and write the texts.

Marcos would read the drafts, and if he approved them, they got published not under the name of its real authors, but under that of the dictator.

This issue came to light again, for me, as I got puzzled over the difficulties anti-Marcos forces faced in trying to oppose the efforts of Bongbong Marcos and his followers to distort history. Bongbong’s armor hardly dented, thanks in part to a professional PR machine he allowed to push back. And as icing on the cake, he often glibly invokes the overused phrase, “Let historians judge my father’s rule,” to silence his opponents.

It is this same hackneyed excuse that the historians used to explain why they willingly worked for the dictatorship. When criticized for being paid mercenaries of an autocratic regime, these historians have put up a vigorous defense, claiming that they took the blood money because of their love for the nation. Destiny may be a project aimed at legitimizing the dictatorship’s place in Philippine history, but it was also a worthy undertaking because it contributed to the quest for nationhood by tracing the pre-historic foundations on which the future nation would stand. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, it did not matter whether the Destiny was black or white, as long as it moved the “national History” forward. And only “History,” they claim, would judge whether what they did was mercenary or noble.

Contradiction

It is this defense (excuse?) of their product that also explains the difficulty in writing a systematic critique of those dark years of repression. For some of the country’s top historians of the country will not participate in any collective effort to enlighten our people about the dictatorship because they believed in what they did. Some even see no contradiction between their alleged progressive sentiments and working for the dictatorship; in fact they hint that the two actually complemented each other.  

Take, for instance, Reynaldo Ileto’s April 5, 2016, lecture at Chiangmai University’s Center for ASEAN Studies conference on “Local Scholars in Southeast Asia” is illustrative (uploaded on YouTube).

In his intellectual talambuhay (biography), the author of Pasyon and Revolution explained his involvement in the Destiny project as something that he “had to do that because we were employed by the University of the Philippines….I was at the University of the Philippines History Department.” (25:27 minute; underscoring mine).

This formalist excuse (we work at the State University, so, part of our duty is to serve for the dictatorship) is not true. For despite the debilitating military repression, UP students and faculty fought back; some for political reasons – they were part of a rejuvenated communist underground network at UP – and others because they valued the State University’s long tradition of unrelenting defense of its autonomy and academic freedom.

True, there were professors and students who served Marcos or kept quiet. But there were also those who rose to the call of academic-activists like then Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Francisco Nemenzo to challenge the dictatorship, to not become mercenaries of Marcos, shun the offer of a higher pay, and thus live up to their role as mga Iskolar ng Bayang inaapi.  

One outcome of UP students and faculty being true to their vocation was the first massive protest staged in 1977 against the dictatorship’s decision to increase tuition fees. A recently returned Ileto, now working at the UP Department of History, did not even seem to notice this historic event. Why?

One can attribute this benightedness about UP’s hallowed traditions to location – Ileto, after all, was an Atenista who only came to UP after graduate school. But to claim that he belonged to an older generation that was famous for its scholarship and its activism sounds out of synch with his contribution to writing the dictator’s history. During those polarized times, UP knew what being an activist was and was not. A newcomer, say like a smart Ateneo graduate, could have easily noticed how much UP folks value this distinction.

'Creepy coldness'

The mystery behind this feigned unfamiliarity deepens when, in the 26^th minute of his talk, Ileto rationalizes: “We had to kinda…maneuver ourselves between different forces.” But which forces was he referring to? Forces within the state that they were “obliged” to serve, or the forces within and outside UP that were fighting Marcos? Moreover, if this was the case, why “maneuver” inside the state?

The answer came 25 minutes later when Ileto suggests that historians should look into the involvement of scholars in the nationalist project. He argues that even if a leader of a country is a dictator, “the fact is history writing had to go on [where scholars] have to negotiate to limit state power if they want or enhance the state.” Ileto, however, did not push this argument to its logical conclusion.  

His insistence that “history writing had to go on [and] scholars have to negotiate with state power” did not, in fact, limit state power. On the contrary, the research led to the production of knowledge establishing the historical foundations of a process whose acme is the national Utopia called the New Society. It was only because Marcos pulled the plug on the Destiny project in 1978 that prevented this historical revisionism from becoming a reality.

No way in Hell were these historians fighting (maneuvering against?) the regime. They were excusing it.

Finally, there is a creepy coldness to this position. A historian, according to Ileto, must continue with the task of “history writing” and be oblivious to the repression that is going on outside his cubicle or research desk. He must not be distracted by the torture, the massacres, the theft going on under “a leader of a country [who] is a dictator.” The idea of the “ivory tower” intellectual is pushed here to its most reactionary form, but also made more hideous because it comes from the imagination of one who proudly identifies with an “activist” generation. 

Ileto’s talk is the 2016 edition of a topic that he has repeatedly raised since 2003. We can, therefore, assume that he still sees nothing wrong with the Destiny project.  The consequences of this consistent position can be fatal. Those wanting to write the real story of martial law will not have Ileto’s “activist generation” on their side. And, to add insult to injury, younger scholars are doubly incapable of doing this project because they are  – as Ileto dismissively puts it in the video – “not interested in politics and the world” in the first place.  

This is, of course, another spurious and insulting claim. Young scholars have fought against the legatees of the Marcos dictatorship and they continue to oppose the conservative state the same way their elders had done. 

What is significant in this last statement is that it is a warning that no help will come, not even from someone who claims to “write history from below” and give peasants their voice, but forgets to mention that a large part of that voice is targeted at the oppression of the national state in the name of popular democracy. – Rappler.com

Patricio N. Abinales is an OFW.

I sat on the train from The Hague to Amsterdam Airport. I told myself, “This will be a long flight.”

After 9 months of studying in The Hague, I will be having a 20-day break from studying and will reconnect with family and friends in Manila, returning to the things I find comfort in – the familiar and the place I call home. 

Nine months have passed since moving to the International City of Peace and Justice – home to some of the UN organizations, international non-government organizations, academic institutions, development practitioners. It's regarded as a bastion of peace, human rights, and progressive thinking. 

In September last year, I left a country that was about to have elections – one touted to be the most contentious the country has ever had.

President-elect Rodrigo Duterte who ran on a platform of change resonated more than the messages of change which Grace Poe, Jejomar Binay, or even Miriam Defensor-Santiago offered. Clearly, people chose change over continuity, with Daang Matuwid’s Mar Roxas garnering only 9 million votes compared to Duterte’s 16 million votes.  

In a campaign period where the narrative of change dominated over the messages of continuity and stability, I got myself into thinking, how does change really happen?

As a development worker studying in a foreign country, figuring out how to do and effect change and progress, I can’t help but think about this question. Also, what does change really mean? 

The Netherlands: political will and astuteness 

I left Amsterdam looking to find the answer to this nagging question. Travelling for the past 9 months to different places in Europe, going back and forth to The Hague has provided me a more nuanced view of development and change.

In The Hague, I’ve met scholars, scholar-activists and development practitioners who offer various perspectives on what progress and change really mean, and how these things can be achieved. 

Settling in The Hague as a foreign student from the Global South seemed to be not an easy task at the beginning.

Back in my home country, I was used to inefficiencies of public service delivery, MRT train malfunctions, politicians hogging the limelight with their faces, and names emblazoned on public infrastructure. I've become all too familiar with reform laws like the Sin Tax Bill, RH law, or the two-decade National Land Use Bill failing to be passed into law, or passing through the hole of a needle before these policy measures are signed. 

In The Netherlands, biking is the main mode of transportation. People walk along the streets, confident they will not be robbed. Prostitution is legalized with a law safeguarding the rights of sex workers.

Marijuana is legal as long as “coffee shops” obey regulations. Living for 9 months in Amsterdam made me wonder how the Dutch could make these things possible. Is it political will? Is this the absence of too much meddling of the oligarchy and the Church in policy making? 

France: inspiring leadership and consensus-building

After almost 30 minutes of delay, our plane landed at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. It was my first time to land in one of the world’s busiest airports, for whenever I go to Paris I usually go by bus – cheaper and more environmentally friendly. 

My first time in Paris was during the terror attacks last November. It was my first time to travel alone outside Europe. I suddenly remembered the day when family and friends from the Philippines and my classmates in The Hague were all calling me, hoping that I was safe from the simultaneous bombings which happened in the tourist sites on the night of November 13. A few days after, I was able to roam around the City of Lights again amid the tight security in tourist sites. 

If there is one thing that was evident during the fateful night of November 13, it was the way how the French government led by President Francois Hollande handled the crisis. He addressed the country and assured the people that everything was under control. I personally witnessed effective security measures in crowded areas in the city. Three days after the bombings, tourist sites were already opened although partially. 

The month after, I returned to Paris for the historic UNFCCC climate negotiations which saw 198 countries forge a global climate deal after 20 years. You have to give it to the Conference of the Parties (COP) 21 president and France’s foreign affairs minister Laurent Fabius who oversaw the event, ensured that a historic climate agreement would be forged, and avoided a repeat of the failed Copenhagen climate talks in 2009.

Philippines: between continuity and change 

After an 11-hour flight from Paris, I arrived in Guangzhou, southern part of China. It was my first time in Guangzhou but I had lived for 5 months in Shanghai in 2010 for a fellowship in Chinese Language and Culture. A few hours in the Guangzhou Airport transported me to my life 6 years ago.

Around this time in 2010, I, together with 36 young Filipino professionals, also boarded a plane from Shanghai to Manila after 5 months of studying Mandarin and attending some sessions on how China achieved economic growth. 

Six years have passed and even though critics have reserved the lowest expectations for the then “student council” government of President Benigno Aquino III, we have made great strides in our economic performance. The Sin Tax Law and the Reproductive Health Law have been passed even if it meant the Aquino administration colliding directly with liquor companies owned by big business groups, and the relationship with the Church turning sour.

Fiscal measures like bottom-up budgeting and performance-based budgeting were introduced. However for every policy passed and credit upgrades earned from key credit-rating agencies, we had the debilitating Luneta hostage crisis, failed Mamasapano mission which led to the Bangsamoro Basic Law’s failure to become law, the MRT woes, and the seemingly burgeoning gap of inequality between social classes.

Going back to my initial question, how does change really happen?  

Maybe it takes leaders who have political will like what the Dutch government has mastered in pushing for laws that seemed to be unpopular at first. Or maybe it takes inspiring and decisive leadership like what French President Francois Hollande had provided in the aftermath of the terror attacks.

It's also good to be a realist so that when faced with deadlocks, you're able to balance various interests such as what was shown by the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius in orchestrating the Paris climate deal. 

I think change also happens when an informed, empowered and active citizenry are willing to do their share in nation-building. Clearly, we cannot rely on one man or woman alone. This was shown when the Dutch people won a landmark case last year after the Dutch court ordered the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2020.

This was shown in EDSA 1 and 2. Volunteers also fueled the campaigns of then Senator Noynoy Aquino III in 2010 and Vice President-elect Leni Robredo in this year’s elections. 

Lastly, I think that maybe change can also happen when development workers like us are self-aware and are open to self-criticism, learning from lessons of the Philippine Left. Thus, we must constantly reflect on our position vis-à-vis the people whom we are providing interventions with.

It is important that we are always conscious of our own position versus power structures or institutions we are working with and for. In our development projects, were we able to let the voices of the poor and the marginalized, those who are at the bottom and at the fringes, be heard? 

As our plane landed in Manila, I realized that I might not have been able to fully find the answers to my questions. But I am now confident about facing uncertainties much like the Philippines right now which is transitioning to a new regime. There is much hope and confidence. – Rappler.com 

Jed Alegado is a graduate student of Development Studies in the International Institue of Social Studies-Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague, Netherlands. A former community coordinator of Rappler's Agos-powered by eBayanihan, he also holds a master's degree in Public Management from the Ateneo School of Government (ASoG). 

Ever since I started to live in another city – first when I was getting my university degree in Zamboanga City, later on to live in another city for work – one thing that life taught me about survival was this: Spaces are negotiated, and the practice of my faith, constant amidst the daily demands of living in Islam, is a constant reminder of struggle.

 Living in a country where the majority are non-Muslims, Ramadan is always an opportunity for me to reflect on things that should matter most for a young professional Muslim living the city life. My relationships with family and friends, my faith in Islam, continually allow me to develop strategies to negotiate my spaces, and to eventually successfully practice my religious obligations, while blending seamlessly into my community – best described as diverse, but always inclusive without being violent.

The observance of the Holy Month of Ramadan is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the foundation of the Islamic faith practiced by Muslims around the world. During this month, we, Muslims, fast, pray, read the Qur’an, and reflect on deeds and sacrifices for Allah.   

Growing up in a Tausug Muslim family, it was easy for me to navigate through the traditional Islamic practices during Ramadan. Now, living separate from my family, I rely on my memories of childhood to always remind me of days waking up early in the morning for a suhur to begin a day-long abstinence from food and water. 

Suhur for me then was sabaw maymu, prepared by my parents and of course, coffee, an important drink for Muslims in the island-provinces. When I was young, everything was easy as long as I did it together with my family; I think it’s the same for all families including non-Muslims, say Christians during Christmas and New Year. 

Iftar, the breaking of the fast before twilight was always a delight for a young Muslim like me as my favorite varieties of food were on the table. Iftar then was a beautiful closure of a day done in the company of family members, an opportunity to express gratitude for what was to be opened the next day, for the suhur. Every day during Ramadan was a reminder that life was a paradox framed on what was always constant: fasting or abstinence, the thing that binds me and the rest of my family, and the Muslim world, to Allah.

My young adult life during Ramadan was about an expansion of spaces. Suhur and iftar were no longer exclusive to family members and close relatives. There were days when I had to join my classmates and barkadas to break the fast, move from one house to another for the tarawih (night prayer), and like the others who experienced the vitality of youth, I also enjoyed the company of friends outside of my clan. Cousins were the closest relatives that I formed a bond with, as fellow Muslims, during the month of Ramadan. It was then that Ramadan became the time for me to reflect on the sense of a bigger community Islam has given to us Muslims.

From high school until college, Ramadan was an opportunity for me to bond with other Muslims in the country. From Tausugs, Sama, Yakan of circles from when I was a child, I was able to forge brotherhood and lasting friendships with Meranaos, Maguindanaoans, Iranuns, Kagans, and other ethno-linguistic groups that comprise the Bangsamoro, balancing the political and religious baggage that came with this term. It was in the university and in other activities outside school that I met fellow Muslims from other ethno-linguistic groups. I surmised then that indeed, we were created differently and in diversity, and Ramadan was the gift of opportunity for us Muslims to understand each other in prayers and in fasting.

Adult life meant more responsibilities and demands from society. After college, I worked for various organizations so I needed to travel outside the Sulu archipelago, Zamboanga, Mindanao. I worked for various local and national organizations until I ended up in my current job.

My previous and current work demand that I expand my circle, explore new horizons, and eventually, dismantle all my walls. There is a need for me to work with non-Muslims, colleagues from outside Mindanao, expats working in the country, and even fellow Moros who do not practice the religious obligations during Ramadan as fastidiously as my family members and circle of close friends. 

I started to learn how to negotiate spaces, to adapt and articulate my own version of exclusivity in exchange for engagement. Adaptation and negotiation were necessary for me to practice my faith and at the same time, educate the people around me about Islam and its teachings. I learned not to demand, but to play it by ear, to use my intuition, to rationalize habits, to survive. 

In the end, Ramadan taught me that together with sacrifices and my faith, building relationships which were the foundation of a strong community should also be the primordial concern of a Muslim like me, living in a highly diversified society where I and others like me are a minority. That Islam, through Ramadan, is to build a world that stands on tolerance and on spaces that are being created and re-created so we can understand ourselves and others better. 

In the Philippines where Muslims are in the minority, the observance of Ramadan was more of a challenge for me, inherent to this feeling of being "othered," marginalized, and excluded by the rest. But I must admit that not once have I experienced attending birthday parties, or work-related meetings, or rendezvous with non-Muslim friends, where food was being served in the middle of the day during Ramadan. Life in the Philippines is secular without being adversarial to Muslims and other faiths – and I consider this more of an opportunity than a threat. 

While a majority of Filipinos think Ramadan is only for Muslims, for us Muslims, it is the month where we work together to create an environment for holy sacrifices, for silent prayers, and self-reflections. Here, the negotiation for spaces is already beyond family and community, but is rather an opportunity to reach out to the rest of the nation. Ramadan is no longer exclusive to Muslims and if this country is serious in building harmonious relationships in communities wherein tolerance and inclusivity are significant interventions, the Holy Month should be everybody’s business. 

How to engage non-Muslim Filipinos to open up and learn about Islam is my duty as a Muslim. I am lucky to have Christian friends and colleagues who fast with me as gesture of solidarity, co-workers who are sensitive to my needs during the day of fasting, Filipinos within my circle who are always curious of our fastidiousness to the religious practice.

For Filipinos, as far as my circle is concerned, Ramadan is a month-long celebration of reinforcing my "being Muslim," a "fiesta" as how my closest Christian friends describe it; and it was always a challenge for me as a Muslim to create a language to engage my non-Muslim Filipino friends and colleagues in its traditions; a language that we can both speak; a language where negotiation of spaces is possible. 

This year’s Ramadan has started well for me. Like the rest of the Muslim world, I am still thankful for Allah that we have been given the life, another year as they say, for this opportunity for sacrifice, to worship Him this holy month.

From Muslims living in countries where there is peace and prosperity, and to those brothers and sisters who suffer in Syria, in Pakistan, and the Rohingyans in Burma – together for the whole month we will open and close the day with celebrations, sacrifices, and prayers while reaching out to the rest of the world, sending the message of Islam that is building a better world on peace and tolerance.– Rappler.com 

Amir Mawallil, 27, is a member of the Young Moro Professionals Network (YMPN), the country's biggest organization of Muslim professionals. 

The rise of Duterte cannot be understood without taking into consideration the impact of Davao City’s distinct political and economic history of as one of the country’s last frontier cities.  When the United States took over the Philippines from the Spanish, Americans described Davao as the extension of Western frontier and the “fertile spot on which to locate the Garden of Eden.” During colonial rule, Davao became an export enclave dominated by non-Filipino settlers (Americans, Japanese and some Spanish) entering into a contractual agreement with indigenous communities (the Americans limited non-Filipino ownership of agricultural lands). Filipino presence was minimal resulting from the lingering suspicion that Davao – like the rest of Mindanao – was a frontier teeming with “uncivilized” Muslim tribes.

Initially it was demobilized American soldiers who opened up hemp farms to respond to the growing need by Western maritime interests and the U.S. Navy for this twine necessary for berthing and transport operations. They were however edged out of business by a better-organized Japanese settler community that monopolized the industry until the eve of World War II. During the hemp years, Davao would be transformed from an undeveloped territory into one of more dynamic regions, responsible for providing one of the top export revenues of the colony. This economic heft enabled the Japanese elites and their Filipino allies to keep Davao away from the naturally prying hands of the central colonial state. The “district” contributed to state coffers but the state was notably absent in local affairs.

The post-war altered the frontier as forests lands were cleared almost overnight to satiate the demands for timber by Japanese reconstruction, and thousands to Mindanao moved from the central and the northern Philippines to escape poverty and hunger.  The American decision to deport the 18,000 Japanese residents in Davao resulted in the transfer of control over the hemp lands to their partners, making them overnight owners of agricultural estates. Mosaic disease, however, destroyed the hemp industry and bankrupting its titleholders. What saved the plantations was the entry of fruit multinationals seeking prime agriculture land to plant export crops. These firms would partner with a new Davao economic elite consisting of settler families that took over the hemp farms. The rise in Japanese demand for fruits, especially bananas, then provided the impetus for the banana industry to expand.

The converging point of all these mobile social forces was Davao City. Settler communities overlapped with each other and competed with each other for ownership and control of newly opened homestead lands; they would also become involved in conflict with indigenous communities bent in protecting their ancestral domain. The rise of export agriculture attracted more Manila-based and foreign corporations to set up businesses in Davao and join in the effort to turn the region into the country’s top source of export crops.  All these were happening spontaneously and in the case of the settlers, in a disorderly fashion, a condition that was aggravated by the local state’s weak infrastructure. While Dabawenos showed a marked preference for voting as a form of mobilization, violence was not far behind involving top political leaders of the city and the province.

Strongmen who did not hesitate to use both legal and illicit means to ensure peace and order were in fact the norm of leadership in what a Manila newspaper called the “Las Vegas” of the South.  Davao Governor Ricardo Miranda, for example, admitted that he won in the 1950 provincial elections because he “use[d] force against force to preserve the sanctity of the ballot.” The “Father of Davao,” Alejandro Almendras “challenged by fist or pistol” those who impugned his character. Luis Santos, the city’s chief of police who became mayor in 1969, was a former communist cadre who was part of an expansion team sent to Mindanao. He became an ally of Almendras and used the police force to harass the latter’s rivals. He later on abandoned his patron and ran for mayor, promising to rid Davao City of its “moral ills."

The expected “normalization” of political life once the frontier filled up and the increasing presence of the “modern” national state never happened because of martial law. The Marcos dictatorship may have ended to the local “anarchy of families,” but its aggressive promotion of the export crops sector displaced settlements, turning their inhabitants into potential recruits of a “re-established” Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)  then engaged in building its initial guerilla zones. By the 1980s, communists were already successfully mobilizing peasants and farm workers to protests against poor working conditions and low wages in the plantations and city industries.  

The dictatorship’s response was to send in more soldiers, but militarization only fostered more resistance and increased communist social capital. The CPP’s Mindanao regional committee eventually became the strongest and most daring its local organizations, and one of its projects was to expand the revolutionary war to the cities by defending the mini-mass uprising from the police and military. Davao City became a battleground between the army and the CPP’s armed city partisans. The fiercest of these confrontations happened in Agdao district, prompting locals to rename the area “Nicarag-dao, after a similar battle in Nicaragua that ended the Somoza dictatorship.

The hostilities that scarred the countryside and the cities allowed frontier-like conditions to survive and even made them more violent. The CPP, however, made a tactical mistake in 1986 when it opted not to get involved in the end game that ousted Marcos and restored constitutional democracy. One of the consequences was a growing factionalism inside the organization that then took a turn for the worse when party began a bloody internal to ferret alleged military spies among their ranks. The killings decimated the CPP, worsened the factional splits, and among a disgruntled of ex-cadres and guerrillas disgruntled and feeling dismayed by the Party turned against their vanguard. Alsa Masa joined in the war in Davao, turning into the most vicious of all the anti-communist militias Davao had ever spawned.

The Davao CPP collapsed in 1990 and Alsa Masa transformed itself from a vigilante group into a gang that harassed human rights groups, journalists, and other civil society advocates. Davao City’s volatility thus persisted convincing Dabawenos, who initially thought the return of democracy would bring peace to the city, that only another strongman could stop the deterioration. It was in the midst this instability that Rodrigo Duterte stepped in. He first weakened Alsa Masa, saving the remnants of the CPP, then went after the peddlers of immorality in the city – particularly the drug lords and criminal syndicates, which earned him the respect of the rest of the community. It was during this period that reports of extra-judicial killings began to come out of Davao. These worried human rights groups in Manila and elsewhere, but had little impact on Duterte’s constituents. Dabawenos expressed their gratitude by repeatedly voting him to office.  He remains, to this day, the most popular leader of the city and the region.

This was the setting in which Duterte was born into - a frontier setting that was constantly in a state of flux, where civility, respectability and a sense of community were either non-existent or still in their early form. His language and actions are simply reflections of this social mutability where a certain macho toughness that circumvents the law with ease “to get things done” is customary.  National politics, however, is an entirely different animal, and it will take a considerable amount of time and effort for the new President to learn the new rules of the game. Whether he will be successful or not will be determined in the months ahead. – Rappler.com

Patricio N. Abinales wrote Making Mindanao: Cotabato and Davao in the Formation of the Philippine Nation-State (Ateneo, 2000). This essay is based on the Davao chapters of the book.

NOTHING HAPPENS BY CHANCE. Things always happen for a reason. In the case of our Vice President Leni Robredo, there must be plausible reasons why she assumes her mandate as the people’s chosen second-in-command outside, or “on the fringes,” of the President’s official family, the Cabinet. She now literally occupies a rather unique place in our politics that may fit in well with an apt phrase coined in her campaign which we can paraphrase, “sa laylayan ng bagong pamahalaan (at the fringes of the new government)"

As we commemorate Independence Day 2016, it might be worth our while to reflect on the singular possibilities of a Leni Robredo vice-presidency: its singular direction and strategic thrusts, its focus on women in 5 basic sectors engaged in 5 strategic endeavors, identifying 5 support institutions or instances, and 5 other critical concerns.   

Given the current context of coalitions of convenience and the return of traditional power politics, our politics is characterized by a political phenomenon that has once again reared its head in our midst: that of the so-called “super-majority” syndrome. Out of 3 elected representatives, the speaker-anointed of the house has managed to cobble together an unprecedented number of supporters leading to the capture of the house leadership. 

The question thus remains: what will happen to independence and critical thinking, discussion and debate among our leaders? It is imperative therefore that among those who continue to lead are men and women imbued with character who will retain both independence and the capacity to take different positions on diverse issues, based on principles.  

Independence will be indispensable. Commitment to a cause, and, not so much to personal fortune, will be a rare and a much-sought after commodity. 

Focus on improving the lives of women

Given her life-long advocacy, her track record, her personal gifts and her passion for causes she holds dear, it would seem logical that Leni Robredo’s principal focus would be to help improve the lives of our people, particularly, the women folk whom she has supported unstintingly in her previous work as alternative legal defender, non-governmental worker, local government activist both as companion to the mayor of a provincial city and legislator representing a provincial district in the province of Bicol. 

What could this mean in the concrete? Catalyze the formation of a movement, not an organisation but rather inspire a direction, that would summon the better angels of our people toward promoting a critical citizens’ cause: improving the lives of women and girls in our midst, in rural and urban areas, who are more vulnerable; to listen and learn from them, and explore ways that they can take the initiative and chart paths towards their liberation and their betterment as well as the improvement of the lives of their families and communities.

In so doing, we will be forging the kind of character we need in our social and political life. Character in politics! (READ: Keys to Leni Robredo's improbable journey)

Convening citizens’ courage and concern 

Making such a call and convening such an effort – requiring both courage and concern – could be piloted in selected areas in the poorer regions of the country such as the ARRM or Eastern Visayas or Mindanao, and Bicol. These experiments in building empowered communities through the involvement of women could then shine like the light on the hill or the beacon that can keep our people’s hopes alive.  

This vision, I believe, can energize the formation of an empowering vehicle for self-sustaining communities where women and girls can play a central part. In so doing, and given adequate resources and support structures, they can thus make a real contribution to the well-being of an entire country.

In sum, the VP’s brief can be understood as the undertaking to unleash the energies of half a country – our womenfolk; and, their contribution is crucial as the country moves forward in the more competitive period of the ASEAN integration.  This process could take shape under the rubric of concerted but separate efforts striving towards a shared sense of purpose that will focus on improving the lives of women who are most vulnerable – “sa ika-uunlad ng mga kababaihan sa laylayan ng lipunan.”  

Focus on women involved in 5 basic sectors

The focus of the undertaking could initially be given to women and girls in at least five basic sectors of society:

• Rural women, particularly, those engaged in farms, working as farmers or related fields;
• Women workers, women working in factories, or in the retail or service industries;
• Urban poor women, women who as heads of households or partners who live in urban poor areas across different regions of the country;
• Women working as fisherfolk or in work related to the fishing industry;
• Indigenous peoples, women who belong to the indigenous peoples such as the lumads or those in Cordillera and Bangsamoro, and whose rights need to be promoted and protected.  

Focus on 5 strategic areas of endeavor

Focus could be given to five strategic areas of endeavor, in consultation with the women concerned, their groups and communities:

• Livelihood (providing opportunities and training for earning livelihoods that are meaningful, dignified and well-remunerated);
• Education (focusing on the girls and youth in education, as well as the teachers, trainors and mentors in society);
• Health (dealing with the mothers and those nurturing infants, the ill and those in need of medical care, and nutrition);
• Social Security (focusing on the elderly among them);
• Democratic Participation (addressing concerns of women by women who are able to participate socially and politically in the democratic project, assuming leadership roles in the community and engaged in the formulation of policies and in decision-making). 

Focus on 5 support institutions/instances/groups

Others sectors supporting these efforts could be mobilized, among them – initially and principally:

• Local Governments (relevant barangay, local, municipal and provincial units);
• Media (national and local, print, broadcast and visual media; as well as theatre, the arts, and employing social media);
• Business (engaging national, regional and local business organisations or aggrupations by  trade or industry),
• Schools (engaging the youth and the teachers);
• Churches (engaging religious leaders of different faiths and their agencies focused on social action and basic ecclesial communities).  

Five other areas of concern

Five other areas of concern, among others, can complement this thrust involving work in inter-related spheres:

• Peace (supporting the peace process in Bangsamoro where a Framework Peace Agreement has already been signed and now needs consolidation; as well as, the emerging peace process with the National Democratic Front/the CPP/the NPA);
• Human Rights (ensuring that the full respect for human rights and the rule of law be given prominence amidst calls for “rapid elimination of crime as well as criminals”);
• Women’s Rights (the promotion and protection of women’s rights and the dignity of women at all levels and in all aspects of life, ensuring that no disrespect is shown women in public and private);
• Environment (addressing concerns related to climate change, climate justice and linking our efforts to the recently-concluded Paris climate pact);
• Disaster-Preparedness (working at disaster-preparedness particularly in areas prone to flooding and other disasters either due to weather changes or disturbances and natural causes such as unbridled mining and unregulated extractive industries). 

Transform risks into opportunities

It is often said that the mark of a true leader is one who can transform risks into opportunities; who can read signs of hope in situations that for most only spell disaster; who can show resilient character in times of adversity.  

In the case of our vice president Leni Robredo, she is in fact given an unedited opportunity or, in a manner of speaking,  being handed a more or less blank slate where she can draw the lines – knowing that the main protagonists of the story are the women whose interests she has always had in her heart. The country indeed is blest that the candidate who has won the vice-presidency is a woman of integrity, of commitment and deep passion. That is a rare blessing indeed.  

Final blessing: Bring out our better angels

The fact that she will work outside the cabinet can be considered as another blessing – for it gives her brand of principled politics, one that is anchored on a brave way of doing politics from below, a real chance of working;  though it will certainly be challenged by the traditional politics of the day where “super-majorities” are formed as easily as one changes coats. 

Just as the people have elected a president who has run on a platform of law and order, pledging to dramatically stamp out crime and drugs in a brief span of time, by all means and measures, we have side by side elected someone it seems with a marathon mentality without the drama, one who has excelled in quiet work from below – and, hopefully, one who can bring out our country’s better angels. – Rappler.com

Professor Ed Garcia taught political science at the University of the Philippines and inter-disciplinary studies at the Ateneo de Manila University. He worked at Amnesty International and International Alert in London for over two decades. He served as a framer of the 1987 Constitution and now works as a consultant on formation at FEU Diliman.

You can talk to your kids about anything.

I’m a very firm believer that there is always a way to explain things to kids, no matter their age, that doesn’t involve lying, or sugarcoating, or The Stork. Our job as parents is just to figure out how to do the explaining — so they can navigate life instead of getting blindsided by it.

I work at a nonprofit, NoBox Philippines, where we deal with issues relating to drugs and drug policy, including drug education. Aside from the work, I’m also my mom’s daughter.

Mom has been in the harm reduction and drugs field for two solid decades, which means that when 10-year-old-me asked her what marijuana was and what it did, her answer was, “I have a book on that. Here you go.”

Now it’s my turn.

I have a son who just turned 5, and I promised myself that, as his mother, I would not go The Way of the Stork.

He was 4 years old when NoBox brought Dr Andrew Tatarsky to the Philippines. My son got scared – “He’s a doctor, will he give me a checkup?” – but I assured him that no, he’s just here to talk about drugs.

Which, of course, led to:

“Mommy, what’s ‘drugs’?”

To answer that, here are some things I’ve found that worked, whether it’s drugs, or sex, or rock and roll:

Staying calm

As a parent, I want my kid to be able to talk to me about anything. As somebody’s kid myself, I’m not coming up to anyone if I know they’re just going to freak out.

Getting a little panicky is completely natural, but it’s also something kids pick up on very, very easily. It takes a bit of practice to not get flustered, but it’s worth it. I want to encourage questions from him, and acting like it’s "A Bad Thing" might only end up punishing his curiosity.

Science!

I find that framing answers to questions this way helps with a number of things:

1. It makes the conversation less awkward – Sometimes I get flustered, but I realized it’s only awkward if I make it awkward. But science just says, here: it is what it is. Framing it this way allows for a bit of detachment that doesn’t leave room for my embarrassment, or worse, his secondhand embarrassment.
2. It usually answers what the kids are curious about in the first place – There’s no malice, I believe, until and unless we adults put it in. So when I clarify my son’s questions, they’re mostly just “what is this, and how does it work?” which a science-framed explanation answers.
3. It’s neutral – i.e. without value judgment, which I so strongly feel is extremely important. Wanting to know how something works doesn’t mean wanting to run out the door and do it now. But if the first reaction to a question is “Bad ‘yan!” guess who’s going to get their information elsewhere?

I think kids deserve a little more credit. Giving him this information allows him to make his own decisions for himself, guilt- and stigma-free. I told him coffee keeps people awake, and now when I jokingly offer, he says no thank you, he’d like to be able to sleep early tonight!

I’d like this vibe to carry on whether I’m talking about coffee or marijuana, and more importantly, when he talks to other people about the same things.

I don’t know + let’s find out

Sometimes being truthful means having to say “I don’t know,” and this is exponentially more responsible than making something up. But I never let the phrase stand on its own. With us at home, it’s always, “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

Distilling

I feel like the key to the “you can talk to kids about anything” part is translating the science into something a preschooler can understand, instead of creating a whole new (and ultimately confusing) euphemism because they’re “too young to get it.”

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” 

- Albert Einstein

…Which also means it’s my responsibility to really, really know what I’m talking about.

Starting young

The advantage of talking to my kid about such fundamental concepts early on in life is that it’s easy to build up on them as the concepts get more and more complex.

We started talking about sperm cells and egg cells when he saw them in a book, which led us to watching videos on fertilization, which led him to asking how the sperm gets anywhere near the egg in the first place, which led to us talking about how putting the penis in the vagina is one way of getting the cells to meet, and that penis-in-vagina is one example of what people call sex.

So when he asked me what porn was one day because he overheard someone say it, it was easy to say, “Usually videos or pictures of people having sex.”

It’s not a one-off “The Talk.” It’s multiple conversations, every day and any day. When he has more questions, I encourage him to ask. When I learn something new, I call his eagerness over. It’s a pretty nice arrangement that’s been working extremely well for us so far.

And I don’t think his innocence — or childlike view of the world — has disappeared. In fact, I can only feel it infecting me!

Talking about anything

The principles carry over to almost any topic, and not just drugs or sex.

Like when we were watching TV, and he asked me whether Green Arrow, a vigilante, was a bad guy or good guy. That day we learned not all bad guys look like bad guys, not all good guys look like good guys, and for some people, it’s hard to tell whether they’re bad guys or good guys, but “what do you think?”

Or when he learned a few curse words, or words, I said, that make other people feel uncomfortable (I was careful not to say “bad words”). We talked about when and where it is appropriate to say them (“If you’re just with me or we’re at home”) and when it isn’t (“But probably not with other kids or adults, and not if it will hurt someone”).

I want to be realistic: I don’t want to and cannot shield him from the world. What I can try to do, though, is equip him with the tools he needs so he can get through life in a way that is smart, and healthy, and kind.

So what’s ‘drugs’? Here’s what I ended up saying to my 4-year-old:

“Drugs are things you take into your body that change how you’re feeling. Sometimes it changes your mood, sometimes it affects your body.”

“Like what?”

“Like, for example, coffee makes people feel awake, that’s why I drink it in the morning when I’m sleepy, but not at night when it’s bedtime. Or like alcohol: a little bit makes people feel kind of dizzy, and some people like that while some people don’t. But when you drink too much and the body can’t handle it, sometimes people throw up! Medicine is also a drug, and when you’re sick, it helps your body feel better, but only if you take the amount that the doctor says to take.”

…To which he replied, “Oh cool!” then promptly went back to playing. – Rappler.com

Mikli believes in the power of funny, and that the world could always use a few more laughs. She also believes in Real Talk for kids, that psychology is everywhere, and that afternoon naps are the best, bar none. She lives at home with her son and 5 cats, and lives online at http://stesha.org.

In 2 weeks, President Benigno Aquino III steps down. By June 30, he would have served the country 6 years as our Constitution allows only a single term of office. 

Aquino leaves a mixed legacy. The positives include:

• steady economic growth, making the Philippines the fastest growing economy in the region, ahead of China;
• robust strides in universal health care;
• an anti-poverty program that has started to improves the lives of the poorest of the poor;
• transparency and reforms in the budget and public works departments; and
• the passage of major laws such as on reproductive health, fair competition  and sin taxes      

On the downside, we saw:

• friendships trump institutions;
• weak crisis management from the Hong Kong hostages to Mamasapano; and
• incompetence in the delivery of frontline services and performance of duties, the most visible of which were the inefficiencies in the international airports and the breakdown of commuter trains.

In a recent interview with Rappler, Aquino explained that he kept his ally, Transport Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya, despite his epic lapses because he is “not corrupt.” (Watch the Aquino interview here)

This is a key lesson for incoming President-elect Rodrigo Duterte: building and strengthening institutions, not ties to friends, is central to effective governance.

Aquino’s and Duterte’s rhetoric on this subject is similar. “Friendship stops when the country’s interest is at stake,” Aquino told Rappler.

Duterte phrased it this way: “My loyalty to you as a friend ends where my loyalty to my country begins.” He was addressing his decades-old friend and benefactor Pastor Apollo Quiboloy who was miffed that he wasn’t apparently consulted on early appointments to the cabinet. 

In Aquino’s case, loyalty to his friends remained a weakness during his term. We are witnessing the same with Duterte who hasn’t even assumed office yet. 

The most vivid example is his avowed friendship with defeated vice-presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. This is the reason he seems bent on marginalizing Vice-President elect Leni Robredo, she who has a popular mandate.

He has not given her the courtesy of a meeting – which he already did with Marcos. He is not tapping her for a cabinet post despite her pronounced advocacies to help uplift the poor – a campaign promise Duterte made.

The president-elect’s “loyalty to the country” versus sustaining friendships with members of his cabinet and other appointees will be tested in the coming years. How will Duterte decide when his friends are caught in conflict-of-interest situations? perform poorly? are corrupt? 

The lesson from the Aquino years is as clear as day.– Rappler.com

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference," Reinhold Niebuhr once famously penned in prayers. Unalloyed by self-righteousness, and cognizant of man’s darkest instincts, Niebuhr’s works are widely considered as a refreshing dose of spirituality as well as a “realist” appraisal of politics in our sinful, material world.

His works should serve also as a perfect guide for foreign policy in the 21st century. No less than the American President Barack Obama, the “leader of the free world”, has embraced the theologian’s call for contemplative, self-critical yet audacious leadership. In my opinion, any thoughtful leader should take Niebuhr’s prayers to heart, especially in the realm of foreign policy, which is filled with uncertainties and a dazzling array of instantaneous challenges.

In light of the festering disputes in the West Philippine Sea, with the Philippines’ arbitration case against China expected to bear fruit in coming weeks, foreign policy issues will figure dominantly in coming weeks and months. With the Philippines set to welcome its new president, Rodrigo Duterte, I found it appropriate to analyze, in more specific terms, about the prospects for and contours of Philippine foreign policy, my primary area of specialization.

Over the past few years, I have written more than 500 (academic and popular) articles for the world’s leading publications and think tanks, in addition to several books on geopolitics and geo-economics in West and East Asia. I also had the chance to visit 5 continents, meeting heads of states, defense and foreign ministers, and a whole host of pundits and prominent academics, who have devoted their lifetime to understanding the physics of power in the international realm.

My main takeaway throughout these engagements was that even the smallest of nations could shape their destiny, regardless of size and wealth, provided they have the right kind of leadership, mindset and foreign policy bureaucracy acumen. Having raised expectations to stratospheric levels, the incoming Duterte administration will have to adopt an optimal cocktail of domestic and foreign policy in order to achieve its ambitious vision for the country.

So far, we have heard more about President-elect Duterte’s domestic plans, particularly his intention to launch a comprehensive fight against organized crime and address the country’s massive infrastructure bottlenecks, yet foreign policy is something that needs equally ferocious attention and investment.

As I have indicated in a series of articles for global think tanks such as Brookings, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), President-elect Duterte, so far, has exhibited a relatively sophisticated understanding of geopolitics, which should – ceteris paribus – signal a favorable trajectory for the country’s foreign policy. For this reason, I have called him a "realist". But what is the relevance of foreign policy? What are the key principles to keep in mind, especially in our globalized world? What would an optimal Philippine foreign policy look like?

Why foreign policy matters

Foreign policy is the conscious effort of a nation-state to pursue, preserve, and augment its national interest in a competitive international system, where dynamics of cooperation and conflict are mediated by balance of power calculations, international law and norms, and a plethora of regional and global regimes built around the pursuit of specialized goals.

As a scholar of comparative politics, one would realize how crucial foreign policy is for late-developing countries and/or those who are caught in the midst of superpowers. In the case of Prussia/Germany, for instance, we saw how Frederick the Great (1714-1786) and Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) played a critical role in ensuring not only the survival of their middle-sized nation-state, but also its prosperity and rapid consolidation in periods of tremendous uncertainty in a continent dominated by Imperial France, Russia, Austria and Britain.

Not only did these leaders invest in their country’s military capabilities and national bureaucracy, but also astutely utilized diplomacy in order to fend off enemies, charm potential allies, and play one superpower against the other. As for Japan, we saw how the Meiji oligarchy, having dispensed with the feudal Tokugawa shogunate in the mid-19th century, embarked on a conscious and systematic overhaul of a largely agrarian society in order to rescue its dignity and secure its liberty from the creeping invasion of Western powers. Meiji Japan used foreign policy to build up its military-industrial capacity, secure its territorial integrity, and import best practices from like-minded powers such as Prussia (Pyle 2007).

Prussia/Germany, Japan and all other major late-developing countries, which were able to catch up with the Anglo-Saxon West, were not students of Adam Smith, as unschooled pundits claim, but instead Georg Friedrich List, the founder of the historical school of economics, which provided a tailored-fit blueprint for national development strategy in an era of competitive capitalism. Contrary to contemporary neo-liberal discourse, it were List, the Prussian bureaucratic principles, and the Meiji Restoration that served as the true inspiration for Park Chung-hee, Lee Kuan Yew, Chiang Kai-shek, and Deng Xiaoping and other visionary Asian leaders, who managed to steer their nation from destitute to opulence within a single generation (Bernhard 2011; Studwell 2013; Mishra 2012).

In economic terms, as the experience of newly-industrialized countries demonstrates, strategic utilization of trade and industrial policy was crucial to the establishment of an increasingly competitive export-oriented manufacturing sector in places like South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, which not long ago were also impoverished, agrarian societies. And a fierce sense of independence and measured self-confidence undergirded their pursuit of eventual parity with status quo powers of the West.

No country is a self-sufficient island. Literally island nations, in particular, tend to be highly trade-dependent and vulnerable to external predation, as the case of the Philippines poignantly shows. Foreign policy, therefore, is the instrument by which a country can protect its interests, pursue favorable relations, and avoid unnecessary conflicts.

But let’s be clear: Foreign policy is not an instrument to primarily impress friends, charm the world, and alienate neighbors, but instead it’s about discovering friends and allies depending on the issue at hand. No permanent friends, neither permanent enemies, but only permanent pursuit of national interest, which, it self, will shift depending on the imperatives of national development and the overall dynamics of the international system.

International relations and comparative politics theories show that change in government tends to bring about more of continuity rather than change, but leading scholars such as Princeton University’s Andrew Moravcsik have shown that domestic leadership still matters. This is especially the case when one talks about strong-willed and visionary leaders. And to many, Duterte indubitably falls into that category. But what should a Duterte administration foreign policy look like?

21st century foreign policy

There are 5 key foreign principles to bear in mind. First and foremost is independence, not as a matter of semantics and aspiration, which tends to be the status quo, but as a matter of core strategic interest. Gladly, Duterte himself has signaled his willingness to pursue a more independent foreign policy. But what will it mean in actuality?

Independence doesn’t mean that you are on your own entirely. Autarky isn’t an option. It instead means that you don’t put all your strategic faith in one partner alone. After all, each (reasonable) country is ultimately out there for its own interest, although recent history shows that ‘self interest’, as Robert Gilpin argues in the case of post-war America, could also mean keeping the world safe for democracy and trade.

As far as small nations are concerned, history shows that it is best for them to maintain an equilateral balancing strategy towards major powers. This has been more or less the strategy of successful Southeast Asian nations such as Singapore and, more recently, Vietnam. In essence, it means that instead of siding with one giant against the other, it is better to maintain functional relations with all of them depending on the issue at hand.

As legendary renaissance thinker Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli cautioned Italian princes, siding with powerful neighbor (e.g., France) against another (e.g., Spain) runs the clear and present risk of ending up as part of an eventual grand bargain between the two. In less extreme cases, the smaller country will be taken for granted by its more powerful ally, since the latter knows its indispensability to the former.  

Second principle is calibrated audacity. No matter how cunning and nimble a prince is, one can’t underestimate the ingenuity and statecraft of established powers. But a totally risk-averse prince runs the equal risk of missing the train of opportunities. As Machiavelli or Sun Tzu would advice, one should keep his friends close, but rivals even closer. The idea to keep in mind is that diplomacy is not only about reaching out to friends, but also understanding and outsmarting your enemies and rivals.

Above all, when one talks about serious disputes with neighboring countries, direct engagement is indispensable. You need direct diplomatic engagement in order to manage the conflict and, if conditions are right, negotiate a mutually-satisfactory solution. It is for the above reason that, for instance, I believe in the indispensability of bilateral engagement to deal with the West Philippine Sea disputes. But it is extremely important for the Duterte administration to not give up on any leverage point, especially the ongoing arbitration case at The Hague. And the incoming government should have no illusions about the intentions of Beijing in adjacent waters. As President Reagan cautioned: ‘trust but verify’.

Third principle is capacity-building and consultation. Foreign policy is a time-consuming and labor-intensive work. It demands constant research, policy re-adjustment and rapid response. Throughout the years, I had the privilege of meeting and exchanging views with (retired and serving) Filipino diplomats and folks at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). I have nothing but deep respect for their hard work and dedication, not to mention world-class professionalism.

Thanks to a rigorous recruitment process, the DFA employs the best and brightest of the country. Yet, a cursory look at the available resources of the DFA and their humongous menu of responsibilities, including the protection of millions of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), underscores the glaring underinvestment in the country’s foreign policy apparatus.

The Duterte administration, however, will not have to only invest more in the capacity of the DFA, but also harness the country’s collective assets, including the long list of cutting-edge strategic thinkers in the academe and media, who have developed distinct specializations in the realm of foreign policy and could serve as an precious source of advice bereft of bureaucratic interests.

Fourth principle is ideological heterodoxy, or, in layman terms, policy pragmatism. The key to success in today’s world is not following orthodox neoliberal economic policies. A cursory look at almost all successful late-developing countries shows that hardly anyone of them followed ahistorical, one-size-fits-all policy prescriptions of neo-classical economists and leading International Financial Institutions (IFIs). In One Economics, Many Recipes, Harvard University’s Dani Rodrik convincingly demonstrates how economic success in today’s globalized world demands constant fine-tuning and tailored-fit economic policies for developing countries.

The implications for our foreign policy are clear. We should develop a strategic and industrial policy that befits our special needs. Instead of mindlessly jumping into every major trade agreement out there, whether it is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) or the Comprehensive Economic Partnership for East Asia (CEPEA) or Free Trade Area for the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP),we should carefully evaluate their consequences for our national welfare, particularly our most vulnerable sectors. After 3 decades of neo-liberal reforms, the Philippines is still suffering from massive poverty, unemployment and food security. This must change. As Albert Einstein would tell us: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different outcomes.

Nonetheless, in certain areas, economic liberalization may be more sensible. For instance, the Philippines clearly needs to bring in more Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) in order to break the vicious grip of domestic conglomerates in the utility, transportation and telecommunication sectors. As much as we should be critical about the legacy of Multinational Companies (MNCs) around the world, we should also bear in mind that domestic oligarchs need to face stiffer competition if they are to grow up. Heterodoxy, rather than orthodoxy, is the way forward when it comes to our trade and economic diplomacy.

Finally, grasp of the zeitgeist. As we enter a post-American, multipolar world, it is important for the Duterte administration to enhance relations with emerging powers of the world and appreciate the tectonic shift in the global balance of power. While the United States is expected to remain as a cultural superpower for the foreseeable future, its economic hegemony is now seriously contested. Yes, America enjoys tremendous military edge, but rivals are catching up very rapidly. China, for instance, has two operational fifth-generation fighters, while Russia is working on a sixth-generation fighter.

American-dominated IFIs are also facing growing competition from newly-established financial institutions such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) or the New Development Bank (NDB). The West will maintain supremacy in the financial realm in the coming decade or so, but no Filipino government can take this for granted, as a whole host of South-to-South arrangements (e.g., currency-swaps) reshape the global financial architecture. In short, the Duterte administration will, more than any of its predecessors, feel the reverberations of and will have to respond to this fundamental shift in the global balance of power.

There are even more urgent issues at hand. With the collapse in the price of oil, many petro-states in the Middle East are facing the prospect of recession. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is already in the midst of a historic belt-tightening. The rise of extremist groups in the region and persistent inter-state conflict among regional powers combined with an economic downturn doesn’t bode well medium-to-long-term employment opportunities as well as stability in a region that has hosted millions of OFWs in the past four decades.

So it is important for the Duterte administration to realize that our decades-long labor export policy, especially in the Middle East, is increasingly unsustainable. And this is precisely why there should be necessary contingency plans and remedial mechanisms in place. Crucially, this should go along more long-term efforts at building employment opportunities at home, which takes us back to economic diplomacy as a key component of our foreign policy.

By combining independence, cautious audacity, capacity-building and consultation, ideological heterodoxy, and grasp of the spirit of the times, the Duterte administration can usher in a golden age of Philippine foreign relations.– Rappler.com

Richard J. Heydarian teaches political science at De La Salle University and is a regular contributor to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC. His latest book is "Asia's New Battlefield: US, China, and the Struggle for Western Pacific" (Zed, London).

Philippine government officials repeat two tired catchphrases to justify the imposition of K to 12: “global competitiveness” and labor export.

It must be reiterated that in the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) Report 2014, there are actually 70 countries poorer than our republic. Only two of those 70 countries – Angola and Djibouti – are non-K to 12 countries. 

In his last State of the Nation Address (2015), President Benigno Aquino III claimed, “The credentials of our countrymen working overseas are already being questioned; there are also some who have been demoted because our diplomas are supposedly not proof of sufficient knowledge.”

Filipinos are in demand everywhere

Reality is against the government’s claim.

For example, even without K to 12, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) actively recruits Filipino nurses, with UK agents directly going to the Philippines to seek nursing graduates that will fill in around 24,000 vacancies as of 2016. Government-approved London nursing vacancies accept any nursing graduate with just a year of work experience. No mention of a senior high school diploma!

A Singaporean newspaper reports (2013) that “Filipino professionals head to Singapore as tourists to seek jobs,” and do land good-paying jobs – a monthly salary of $2,000 way above the average salary of a college graduate in the Philippines ($400) – even without K to 12 diplomas.

A cursory check of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) website yields thousands of still active job vacancies (posted from 2013 to 2016) for Filipino engineers, teachers/professors, chemists, social workers, architects, agriculturists, dentists, foresters, geologists, guidance counselors, interior designers, librarians, master plumbers, medical technologists, doctors, midwives, nutritionists, optometrists, pharmacists, therapists, psychologists, radiologists, and veterinarians – professions regulated by the Philippines’ Professional Regulatory Commission.  

Hence, even without K to 12, Filipino workers/professionals are in demand everywhere. The number of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) deployed by the POEA soared to 1,832,668 in 2014 (roughly 5,000 deployed daily) from 1,470,826 in 2010 (roughly 4,000 deployed daily).

Even prior to the implementation of the K to 12 scheme, the Philippines was Southeast Asia’s biggest remittance receiver – second only to China in the Asia-Pacific region. From 1962-2012, the Philippines also ranked worst in Southeast Asia with regard to net migration – more people leaving than entering the country. Every country in these regions is K to 12-compliant.

Considering that K to 12 and labor export complement each other, the country’s economy will be further reliant on remittances from OFWs once this educational scheme is fully implemented. 

Will K to 12 resolve unemployment?

Historically, except for a few years between 1991 and 2013, the Philippines has ranked first in Southeast Asia in terms of unemployment. However, some K to 12-compliant countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Timor Leste, and Laos have more vulnerable workers (“unpaid family workers and own-account workers”) than the Philippines.

As K to 12 is meant to further encourage Filipinos to go abroad, we ask: is labor export a good policy? The article “Pambansang Salbabida at Kadena ng Dependensiya: Isang Kritikal na Pagsusuri sa Labor Export Policy (LEP) ng Pilipinas”/ National Lifesaver and Chains of Dependence: A Critical Review of the Philippine Labor Export Policy (LEP) tackles this. 

Why exporting more OFWs is bad

As per World Bank data, the Philippine manufacturing sector contributed only 21% to the GDP from 2010 to 2012 and in 2014, and a percentage point lower in 2013, compared with an average of 25.2% from 1980 to 1984, a few years after the Labor Export Policy was adopted.

According to World Bank data, remittances’ contribution to the GDP averaged 10.14% from 2010 to 2014 – a certain leap from an average of 2.52% from 1980 to 1984. During much of the same period (1999-2014), the Philippines’ balance of payments was consistently negative (more imports than exports).

In other words, as Prod Laquian, professor emeritus of human settlements planning at the University of British Columbia, eloquently puts it: “The most serious negative effect of labour export policies has been the neglect of domestic production and poor investments in infrastructure, agriculture, mining, export promotion, and social development because of the easy availability of funds from remittances.... For the government, the easy money from foreign remittances is a major cause of its inability to pursue sound economic development programs.” 

Comparable with the Philippine context is Nepal’s remittance-driven economy, in contrast with the economies of a number of industrialized or semi-industrialized countries in Asia (South Korea, Malaysia, China). Like the Philippines, Nepal’s manufacturing sector is also weak, while that of South Korea, Malaysia, and China is robust.

Industrialization: Alternative to labor export

Resource-rich countries like the Philippines can’t develop or achieve high levels of progress if they don’t industrialize as by Ha-Joon Chang’s “Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism” and Alejandro Lichauco’s “Nationalist Economics: History, Theory, and Practice.” The Philippine government’s decision to add two more years of high school to further expand Labor Export Policy – rather than align the education system with the goal to industrialize the country and strive for economic self-reliance as much as possible – is bad. 

Labor export = brain drain. A UK research concluded that brain drain holds back economic growth in the country. The Philippines’ brain drain problem is more acute in the Science and Technology sector, leading a top Department of Science and Technology official to say “We need more of our S&T (Science and Technology) R&D (Research and Development) professionals to be here in our country to provide the lifeline of our research and development agenda. Our country currently stands at 165 R&D personnel per million Filipinos, which is way below the UNESCO recommendation of 380 needed for economic development.” 

Even supporters of the K to 12 program – such as Masayoshi Okabe of the Japan-based Institute of Developing Economies – admit that enhancement of secondary education “alone could very well further the brain drain (or worse still, lead to further “brain waste [Spring 2009: 188-190)].” Hence, “along with improving education, the government needs to encourage industrial development and growth of domestic industries that can provide employment for higher educated school graduates.”

Jose Maria Sison notes: “A K-12 program, properly oriented, planned, and managed, could lead to genuine reforms that will truly benefit the Filipino people and youth in the realm of education. A truly patriotic, mass-oriented, and scientific educational system will be able to train millions of youth, help empower the people and build their nation through heightened social consciousness, scientific knowledge and technical skills.”

Unless K to 12’s framework is reoriented toward the objective of developing the country, rather than expanding labor export, it is clear that K to 12 will just be another failure. 

Practical alternative to K to 12

In the only quantitative research on the issue of length of the school cycle and quality of education, professors Abraham Felipe and Carolina Porio point out a practical alternative: “There is no clear empirical basis in TIMSS to justify a proposal for the Philippines to lengthen its education cycle.... There is no basis to expect that lengthening the educational cycle calendar-wise will improve the quality of education.... The value of the 12-year cycle is ultimately a matter of weighing the large and certain costs against the uncertain gains in lengthening the education cycle.... The government could help those interested in foreign studies and work placement by supporting an appropriate system of assessment, rather than tinker with the whole cycle length. This solution addresses the alleged problem in a more focused way and does not indiscriminately impose on every Filipino the costs of meeting the needs of a few.” 

With regard to foreign studies, even without K to 12, Filipinos are able to gain acceptance in prestigious scholarships abroad such as the European Union’s Erasmus Mundus Programme. According to the European Union, from 2004 to 2014, “more than 200 students and lecturers [from the Philippines] benefitted from the programme.” Yearly, dozens of Filipinos also benefit from the United States-based Fulbright program. 

Immediate socio-economic reforms needed

The additional budget that would be allotted to the K to 12 scheme will be better spent on improving the current 11-year Basic Education cycle first. Measures to improve the old basic education cycle should include:

• Salary hikes for teachers and staff (teachers’ salaries in the Philippines are so low that teachers resort to exploitative and, at times, murderous loan sharks to make both ends meet)
• Modernization of all facilities (the K to 12 curriculum – in many subjects – talks about technology, blogs, internet, etc, but a visit to the typical public will immediately make you realize K to 12 fails on its own standards)
• Wiping out of all backlogs in personnel, facilities, and instructional materials (go visit the nearest public school, ask a public school teacher, check the Facebook page of teachers’ organizations like the Alliance of Concerned Teachers and ACT Teachers’ Partylist)
• Full-blast teacher training (considering that even a number of our teachers lack sufficient English, Math, and Science skills)

Debates on whether to add two more years in high school should start once the 11-year Basic Education cycle from Kindergarten to Grade 10 is perfected.

Additional investments in the tertiary level and R&D are also important. The Philippines lags behind many countries when it comes to R&D expenditures, hence the country is also weak in innovation and modernization of technologies in education and other fields.

Additional budget for the tertiary level is important in ensuring that more students will finish their schooling. It has been proven that the “rate of return” of investment in studying in college and beyond is huge. Moreover, as a World Bank study points out, “tertiary education is to a large extent a prerequisite for highly-paid occupations.”

We reiterate that job opportunities within the country must be broadened through implementing a comprehensive economic plan that focuses on self-reliance or self-dependence. This can be done through national industrialization, agrarian reform, and modernization of agriculture – policies which have been tackled and discussed in detail by many Filipino thinkers and social movements throughout the country’s recent history (Recto, c.1959; Hernandez, 1982; Lichauco, 1986 and 2005; Constantino, 1995; Salgado, 1997; Sison, 1998; Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas/KMP, 2009; Bagong Alyansang Makabayan/BAYAN, 2011).

Agrarian reform will strengthen the financial capability of the country’s peasant majority, and consequently expand the domestic market while supplying it with basic raw materials too. Thus, agrarian reform will complement any industrialization endeavor.

The role of the education system in transforming the country into a developed archipelago should be obvious by now: innovations in agriculture and industry – expectedly accelerated by schools, universities, and research centers aligned with the country’s development objectives – will enable the country to swiftly achieve national and sustainable development, based on the common good rather than corporate profit.

The requisite perfection of K to 10, and the revival of vital subjects abolished by K to 12 – such as Philippine History in high school, and Filipino, Literature and Philippine Government and Constitution in college – should at least be pursued, if a national development-oriented education system will be achieved. These programs are anchored on the Philippines’ capability to utilize its resources for its own citizens’ progress, and not  merely as exports to other countries. – Rappler.com

A Brunei-born Filipino citizen, David Michael San Juan serves as associate professor at De La Salle University-Manila. 

Bago pa maglaho ang interes sa trahedyang naganap sa CloseUp Forever Summer concert noong Mayo 22, dapat alamin ng publiko ang ligtas na pag-inom ng anumang gamot. Sana hindi na ito maulit pa.

Bago ang lahat, nakikiramay ako sa mga naulila. Anumang pagpapaalala ang gagawin ko tungkol sa ligtas na paggamit ng gamot, malinaw na walang kasalanan o pagkukulang ang mga yumao. Anoman ang ikinilos nila nang gabing iyon, sila ay mga inosenteng biktima.

War on drugs

Hindi madaling baguhin ang kultura ng paglalasing at paggamit ng droga na naging dahilan ng trahedya. At hindi ako naniniwala sa paraan ng papasok na administrasyon para mabago ito. Ang pag-aabuso sa gamot, sigarilyo, akolhol, at ang adiksyon ay hindi masusugpo ng dahas ng pulisya at militar. Problema itong dapat sugpuin sa pangunguna ng mga mangagawang pangkalusugan. Sa madaling salita, ang Department of Health, hindi ang Philippine Nation Police, ang dapat manguna.

Ito ang konklusyon ng gobyerno ng United States na nanguna sa tinaguriang “War on Drugs,” kung saan limpak-limpak na salapi ang ginugol sa loob ng ilang dekada upang hulihin at sugpuin ang mga user, pusher, at sindikato. Ayon sa kanila, lumala ang problema, napuno lamang ang kanilang mga preso, at lumakas ang mga sindikato. Sa halip na bumaba ang bilang ng mga adik, dumami ito.

Kaya ang panawagan ng maraming grupo ngayon – kasama na ang ilang mga pulis, FBI, at huwes – ay gawing legal ang mga ipinagbabawal na gamot upang higit na mapangasiwaan ang paggamit nito. Kung hindi kailangang magtago ng mga adik, mabibigyan sila ng tulong-medikal at mapapalaya sila sa adiksyon.

Hindi ibig sabihin nito ay hindi dapat hanapin, litisin, at parusahan ang sinumang nagbigay ng mga inuming iyon na naging dahilan ng pagkamatay ng mga kabataan sa CloseUp Forever Summer concert. May papel pa rin naman ang pagpapatupad ng batas sa labang ito. Nguni't ang batas ay ginagamit lamang sa mga natatanging sitwasyon tulad nito. Hindi ito solusyon sa paglaganap ng ilegal na droga at adiksyon.

Maaaring magulat kayong marami sa mga gamot na ipinagbabawal ay pareho lamang ng mga gamot na nirereseta ng mga doktor sa mga ospital araw-araw. Halimbawa mayroon pa ring tamang gamit ang metamphetamine (na siyang laman ng shabu) para sa ilang sakit. Ganoon din ang morhpine na pansugpo sa matinding kirot o hapdi ngunit kinahihiligan din ng mga drug user. Ngunit lahat ng gamot ay may side effects; samakatuwid, lahat ng gamot ay mapanganib kung hindi ginagamit nang tama.

Humingi ng reseta

Kahit hindi ko kinukunsinti ang ilegal na paggamit ng gamot (kasama na rito kayong mga bumibili ng antibiotics na walang reseta ng doktor, at iyong mga pharmacy na nagbebenta), narito pa rin ang ilang paalala para maiwasan ang pinsala.

Una, ang nabanggit ko na: kung kailangang may reseta ang gamot, tulad ng antibiotics, huwag gagamit nito kahit pa pumapayag ang mga drug store na bentahan kayo nang walang reseta. 

Bakit ba mahalaga ang reseta para sa antibiotics at karamihan ng mga gamot?

Marami sa mga sakit na ginagamitan ng antibiotics ng ating mga kababayan – tulad ng ng ubo at sipon – ay gumagaling nang kusa. Akala lang ng marami, antibiotics ang nakakagaling sa kanila kasi umiinom sila nito at gumagaling sila. Ang totoo, uminom man sila o hindi, gagaling naman sila.

Hindi lang gastos ang perwisyong dala ng maling paggamit ng antibiotics. Madalas, lumalala ang sakit dahil pinapatay ng antibiotics ang normal na bakterya na nabubuhay sa katawan ng tao. Kapag namatay ang mga ito, madaling dapuan ang indibidwal ng mga di-normal at mapanganib na bakterya na siyang magdadala ng malubhang sakit. Dagdag pa, kung mali ang paggamit ng antibiotics, natututo ang mga bakterya na labanan ang bisa nito. Sa kalaunan ay hindi na epektibo ang antibiotics. Ito ang dahilan ng pagkakaroon ng mga impeksyon na hindi na nasusugpo ng kahit anong antibiotic na dati-rati ay epektibo. 

Kaya ganoon na lamang ang pakiusap naming mga doktor na huwag kayong uminom ng antibiotics na walang reseta. Kung kami ang inyong hukbo laban sa sakit, tinatangglan ninyo kami ng armas. Pakiusap namin na kung kailangan ng reseta para sa anomang gamot, huwag ninyong bilhin o inumin ito nang walang reseta. At huwag po kayong mag-recycle ng reseta dahil ang resetang hawak na ninyo ay para lamang sa partilular na sakit na iyon at para sa partikular na panahon o gamutang iyon.

Tamang regulasyon

Pangalawa, huwag iinom ng gamot nang hindi ninyo alam ang sangkap, epekto, dosage, at pinanggalingan nito. Ang buong sistema ng paggawa, pag-distribute, pag-imbak, pagreseta, pagbenta, at pagpapainom ng gamot ay dapat na mahigpit na kinokontrol ng gobyerno.

Mahigpit ang mga pamantayan o regulasyon tungkol dito dahil ang kaunting pagkakamali ay nagdadala ng malaking pinsala. Halimbawa, kung kulang sa dose o di epektibo ang ilabas ng manufacturer ng gamot, maaari itong ikamatay ng maraming pasyente. Inaasahan siyempre ng pasyente at ng kanyang doktor na epektibo ang gamot. Nguni't kung kulang o walang bisa ang inireseta, lalala lamang ang sakit. Kung sobra naman ang inilagay na sangkap, maaaring mamatay din ang pasyente sa overdose. Kung may ibang nakakalasong sangkap na naisama o isinama sa pormulasyon, mapanganib din ito. Ayon sa mga balita, ito daw ang naging sanhi ng pagkamatay sa CloseUp concert– mayroong kemikal na hindi naman dapat gamitin sa tao pero inihalo sa inumin.

Ang pagseguro ng kalidad ng gamot na inaangkat o ginagawa sa Pilipinas ay responsibilidad ng Department of Health, partikular ang Food and Drug Administration. At kung nais ninyong makatulong sa dakilang gawain ng pagmomonitor, kung kayo ay may reklamo, maaaring ipaalam sa kanila.

May mga dapat ding pangalagaan sa distribusyon ng mga gamot mula sa pabrika. May ilang gamot, halimbawa, na nawawalan ng bisa kung hindi tama ang temperaturang kinalalagyan. Kaya nga ang ilang bakuna ay dapat iangkat mula sa pagawaan na gamit ang refrigerated van.

Responsibiladng mga pharmacy na ilagay ang mga gamot sa tamang imbakan – refrigerated kung kailangan, hindi naiinitan kung kailangan, hindi malalapitan ng daga, ipis, at anomang hayop.

Kung nais pa ninyong alamin ang matitinding regulasyon ng mga ospital, pharmacy, health workers para makarating sa inyo ang epektibo at ligtas na gamot, heto ang isang sanggunian.

Tamang pag-inom

Nagbabala man akong alamin ninyo ang sangkap, epekto, dosage, at pinanggalingan ng mga gamot, hindi naman sa inyo ang responsibilidad na siguraduhin ang tamang manupaktura, distribusyon, pag-imbak, pagbenta. 

Nguni't responsibilidad ng bawa't isa ang tamang pag-inom. Heto ang ilang praktikal na payo:

• Sundin ang payo ng mga pharmacist tungkol sa pagtatago ng gamot. Dapat ang mga ito'y di naiinatan, naarawan, o nababasa.
• Itapon ang lahat ng expired na gamot. Minsan ay nanghihinayang tayo, lalo na't mamahalin ang mga ito. Ngunit kaya may expiry date ay dahil nawawala sa katagalan ang bisa ng gamot, at hindi makakabuti sa inyong uminom ng di epektibong gamot. Huwag na ring i-donate ang mga ito.
• Kung may gamot na natanggal ang label o packaging, huwag hulaan kung ano ito kahit sa inyong palagay ay kabisado ninyo ang porma, kulay, at anyo ng gamot na iyon. Alalahaning ang kahit isang maliit na pagkakamali ay maaaring magdulot ng malaking pinsala. Itapon ang gamot.
• Kung may ibang nagpapainom sa inyo ng gamot – sabihin nating sa ospital – maging makulit kung hindi sila makulit. Alamin ang bawat ipapainom sa inyo o isasaksak sa suero ninyo, kung ano iyon at para saan. Mahal na mahal ko ang mga nars kapag sinasabihan ako sa ospital habang pinaiinom ako ng gamot, “Ito po, paracetamol, 500 mg, 3 times a day, para po sa headache ninyo. Ito naman po ay 500 mg ng antibiotic X para sa impeksyon. Ito naman ang gamot X, 10mg para sa hypertension.”
• Kung ikaw naman ang nagpapainom sa sarili o sa inaalagaan sa bahay, alamin ang lahat ng pangalan at dose ng gamot na ininom.
• Huwag kalimutang dalhin ang gamot kung maglalakbay. Mainam na ang gamot na binili mo sa kilala mong tindahan sa halip na bumili sa tindahang hindi mo suki.
• Marami sa mga gamot o inumin ay may nakasulat na “Do not accept if seal is broken.”  Sundin po ninyo iyon. Kung hindi selyado ang bote ng tubig (soft drink, kape, alkohol) huwag nang inuman – malay mo kung nabuksan na iyon at kung ano ang inilagay? Kahit ibang tubig lang ang ipinalit, malay ninyo kung sa toliet kinuha ang tubig?
• Kahit wala nang nararamdaman at tila magaling ka na, ubusin ang iniresetang gamot. Sa kabilang banda, huwag damihan ang iniinom na gamot o pahabain ang panahon ng pag-inom kung sa iyong palagay ay hindi ito epektibo. Sumangguni ulit sa duktor.
• Kung may masamang epekto sa iyo ang gamot, maaaring itigil mo ito, ngunit sumangguni kaagad sa doktor.
• Ilayo ang lahat ng gamot sa mga bata at alagang hayop.
• Huwag ibigay ang gamot mo sa iba.

Sa konsert

Hindi ko kinukunsinti ang maling paggamit ng gamot, sigarilyo, o alkohol. Uulitin ko: huwag ninyong aabusuhin! (BASAHIN: Music, drugs, alcohol: Do young Filipinos party to get high?)

Ngunit sa susunod na konsert, nawa'y isipin ng mga dadalo ang mga tip na angkop sa sitwasyon nila. Halimbawa, huwag mag-overdose. Maraming tao ang namamatay dahil sa overdose ng alkohol o dahil sa mga peligrosong gawain, tulad ng pagmamaneho habang lasing. Huwag uminom ng anumang tableta o likido na hindi mo alam ang pangalan, sangkap, o kung kanino ito galing. Huwag uminom ng tubig o alkohol mula sa boteng nabuksan na at hindi mo sigurado kung sino ang nagbigay. Huwag makisalo sa dalang gamot, sigarilyo, alkohol ng iba kung hindi mo matalik na kaibigan o kaanak. Huwag bumili ng sigarilyo, alkohol, gamot, pagkain sa mga taong hindi mo kilala o sa tindahang hindi pinahintulutan ng organizers.

Uulitin kong hindi ko kinukunsinti ang maling paggamit ng gamot. Ngunit kung ipagpipilitan ninuman, tratuhin na lamang ang konsert na isang porma ng paglalakbay. Pansinin, kung ganoon, ang isa pang tip ko sa itaas: kung kailangan mong uminom o humitit ng anuman habang naglalakbay sa konsert, bring your own and do not share. – Rappler.com 

When the US confronts China in the South China Sea by having its warships sail within miles of military bases built on reefs or rocky outcrops by Beijing, the principle the US invokes first and above all others is freedom of navigation.

Most people have a rough idea what it means in its literal sense. But freedom of navigation is a cardinal principle of the US and it is the key reason why Washington would fight for the idea in the South China Sea or anywhere else in the world’s oceans.

Rules governing conduct in international waters first came about in the 14th century under the Catalan Consulate of the Sea which makes neutral ships inviolable in international waters.

This was then refined by the Dutch in the 17th century in negotiating bilateral treaties with other powers. The Dutch became the biggest trading power at that time, eventually seizing Indonesia from the Portuguese, so they found it ideal to be able to trade with everyone without their ships being caught in the crossfire between belligerent powers.

Essentially, the concept means “free ship, free goods” in that enemy goods cannot be violated when they are transported on neutral ships, unless they are war contraband.

This principle was summarized in the book Mare Liberum (The Freedom of the Seas) written by the Dutch jurist and philosopher Hugo Grotius in 1609.

“Every nation is free to travel to every other nation, and to trade with it,” Grotius wrote, adding this freedom to travel and to trade means the right of innocent passage over land and the same right over the sea.  

He compared the oceans to the air in that “it is not susceptible of occupation, and second its common use is destined for all men.”

“For the same reason the sea is common to all, because it is so limitless that it cannot become a possession of any one, and because it is adopted for the use of all, whether we consider it from the point of view of navigation or of fisheries.”

The concept was opposed by coastal powers and this opposition seems to have found its way into the current dispute in the South China Sea.

Freedom of navigation is intricately woven though into the DNA of a trading power.

In 1856, the British eventually signed on to the principle and as the biggest naval and trading power of its day, freedom of navigation and the trade it brings into the coffers of the empire became a lynchpin of their system of colonies stretching from London to Hong Kong.

The United States, on the other hand, has long advocated the principle of free ship, free goods. The US did this in treaties it forged with France in 1778 and with the Dutch in 1782. Both were concluded within 6 years of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

The navy played a critical role in the emergence of Britain as a major power. The same is true with the United States.

For the US, this naval tradition harks back to the War of 1812 with Britain.

“The Navy preserves its memories in the names of its ships; names of aircraft carriers made famous in World War II came down from the days of 1812,” wrote Eric Larrabee in his book Commander in Chief, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and their War.

Then you wed the concept of freedom of navigation with the ideas of Alfred Thayer Mahan in his seminal book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, and one could glean an understanding of the principles followed by the US in international waters such as the South China Sea or the Persian Gulf.

“The history of sea power is largely, though by no means solely, a narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war. The profound influence of sea commerce upon the wealth and strength of countries was clearly seen long before the true principles which governed its growth and prosperity were detected,” Mahan declared.  

He preached the primacy of control of the seas through a country’s navy and for trading powers like Britain and the US; a powerful navy became essential to their rise and preeminence as great powers.

Freedom of navigation is an integral part of US policy.

“US policy since 1983 provides that the United States will exercise and assert its navigation and overflight rights and freedoms on a worldwide basis in a manner that is consistent with the balance of interests reflected in the Law of the Sea (LOS) Convention,” the US State Department said in its Freedom of Navigation program.

“The United States will not, however, acquiesce in unilateral acts of other states designed to restrict the rights and freedoms of the international community in navigation and overflight and other related high seas uses.”

Given its long history as a core principle of the US, the policy pursued by Washington to reject any attempt by China to dominate what it sees as vital trade routes in international waters will never be accepted by Washington.

It does not clearly matter if the US has access to the bases it wants to use in the Philippines. The US will find a way to assert the sanctity of freedom of navigation. This can only be bolstered if the United Nations rules in favor of Manila in its arbitration case against China this month.

“The FON Program since 1979 has highlighted the navigation provisions of the LOS Convention to further the recognition of the vital national need to protect maritime rights throughout the world.”

“The FON Program operates on a triple track, involving not only diplomatic representations and operational assertions by US military units, but also bilateral and multilateral consultations with other governments in an effort to promote maritime stability and consistency with international law, stressing the need for and obligation of all States to adhere to the customary international law rules and practices reflected in the LOS Convention,” the State Department concluded. – Rappler.com

Rene Pastor is a journalist in the New York metropolitan area who writes about agriculture, politics and regional security. He was, for many years, a senior commodities journalist for Reuters. He founded the Southeast Asia Commodity Digest, which is an affiliate of Informa Economics research and consulting.

Sure, Finding Nemo was an awesome movie, inspiring a generation of people to love clownfish, now colloquially called "Nemos." Its intended message was to keep fish in the sea, where they belong.

But did you know that after the movie, millions of clownfish were plucked from coral reefs and plunged into aquaria? Everyone wanted to keep Nemo!

Global clownfish sales jumped 40% and many reefs were left without the happily-dancing orange fish. Sadly, many died at the hands of well-meaning but inexperienced aquarists – because those pretty marine fish are also pretty hard to keep.

The Best Alternatives Campaign estimates that in the Philippines, about 9 out of 10 wild-caught marine aquarium fish die within a year of capture. Only the hardiest fish, or those lucky enough to be bought by experienced aquarists, survive.

With the release of Finding Dory on June 17, a global spike in marine aquarium fish demand is expected. The Philippines and Indonesia are the world’s top exporters of wild-caught marine fish, supplying 85% of the trade, so Pinoy fishers will soon be scouring reefs for Nemo, Dory, and all their finned friends. What can we do to protect them?  

1. Choose freshwater fish 

Goldfish, guppies, tetras and many freshwater fish are bred by the billions and are well-adapted to aquarium life. Farm-raised fish are cheaper, hardier and environmentally-sound options to marine fish. Since raising aquarium fish can be 250 times more profitable than raising tilapia, it can be a sunrise industry for the Philippines.

Freshwater fish are our best alternatives to marine fish because only 10% of them are still caught from the wild, like African Rift Lake cichlids or angelfish from the Amazon River. Innovations in breeding might soon end the need to catch them in rivers and lakes while still supplying aquarists with the living jewels they love.

2. Choose tough marine fish

Marine fish are hard to keep because 95% of them are taken from the most stable environment on Earth – the ocean. Most can’t adapt to life in the average home aquarium, where water parameters fluctuate daily. Many are still caught with cyanide, which stuns hard-to-catch fish but kills up to 75% of them. Popular fish like angelfish, butterflyfish, and Moorish idols are specialized feeders which feed on coral, sponges, and other tasty treats the average hobbyist probably won’t be able to provide. This is why so few fish survive beyond a year.

Still, a few marine fish species can be kept in aquaria. Hardy and brightly-colored damselfish, gobies, and blennies are good choices. Clownfish are the most popular, accounting for 40% of the trade. There are actually 30 clownfish species and Nemo is a Common Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris). Clownfish are relatively hardy and can be commercially-bred – but 75% of them still come from the wild.

Dory is another story. First, she’s not related to the Cream Dory we love to eat. Second, she’s very, very hard to keep. Dory’s a Regal Tang (Paracanthus hepatus) and feeds almost exclusively on algae and seaweed. She’s prone to parasites and gets sick easily.

Most importantly, the technology to breed her kind is still years off – so every single Dory you’ll see will have been plucked from the sea! If you really want to keep marine fish, then consult veteran hobbyists and forums like the Philippine Marine and Reef Aquarium Society (PMRAS), which encourages responsible fishkeeping. Get fish from reputable dealers like RVS Fishworld, which only sells cyanide-free fish caught by hand nets.

3. See them in the wild where they belong

Fortunately, the Philippines is part of the Coral Triangle and is among the richest countries in terms of marine life (this is why we export so much marine fish anyway). Diving or snorkelling here is way cheaper than in any other country. Wherever you are, there’ll be a reef nearby: Manila has the rich reefs of Anilao in Batangas, Cebu has Moalboal, Davao has Samal Island – even mountainous Baguio has La Union!

So what might happen if we don’t heed these 3 steps? Let’s look at another marine fish, the Banggai cardinalfish (Pterapogon kauderni), found only in Indonesia. According to conservation group Fondation Franz Weber and scientist Dr Alejandro Vagelli, from a global population of about 20 million in 1995, only about 1.4 million of them are left. Up to 500,000 are still caught annually to supply the aquarium trade.

This means that without immediate conservation measures, they’ll be functionally extinct in just a few years. The European Union has now submitted a proposal to control the trade in the species. A hobby should cultivate love – and fish enthusiasts would be the last to want to lose beauties like the Banggai cardinalfish.

To spread the word on the web, Best Alternatives is launching the #DefendDory campaign by calling on netizens to change their profile photos from now to July. Instead of wanting to possess fish, let Finding Dory inspire us all to see them in their home – the big blue, where Nemo, Dory, and all their friends belong. – Rappler.com

Pinoy environmentalist Gregg Yan leads the Best Alternatives Campaign, which works with allies to gradually transform the seafood, aquarium, and curio trades by offering sustainable and profitable alternatives to endangered seafood, aquarium fish, corals, and sea shells. 

Netizens who want to show their love for Dory can change their profile pictures for the #DefendDory campaign – which asks people to see Dory in her home instead of wanting to own her in an aquarium. Logo design by Bates CHI & Partners Manila.

Best Alternatives aims to help transform the seafood, aquarium, and curio trades by offering more sustainable (and ultimately more profitable) alternatives to endangered seafood, aquarium fish, corals, and sea shells. For more information, please contact Gregg Yan on Facebook or email BestAlternativesCampaign@gmail.com. Logo design by Bates CHI & Partners Manila.

The old adage “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” proves to be obsolete as President-elect Rodrigo Duterte readies himself to take on the most sought-after position in this country.

Weeks ago, the Davao mayor ran his mouth once more on national television, wolf-whistling of the respected Mariz Umali. At the same time, Duterte brought to light his encounters with corrupt media practitioners, effectively blaming a journalist’s dishonesty for his murder.

The president’s behavior did not sit well with the press.

It was but natural of Duterte to take offensive approach rather than a defensive approach, in a situation that leaves him with no chance at being the bigger man. He challenges the press’ authority to scrutinize his actions, and reiterates his need for leg room while he hasn’t taken up the position. In the crudest manner, he looks directly into the camera lens, and tells the press not to mess with him.

Just recently, Duterte started his own boycott of the Philippine press, allowing no access to any local new station to his Thanksgiving parties (save for PTV4, a government-controlled station), and denying any interview or press conference until the end of his term.

It was within his rights as a citizen to react to what was published. Duterte is allowed to challenge the statement of the press, however crude and inappropriate his defense may seem. Legally speaking, he is allowed to refuse interviews and press conferences. The president is a public figure whose privacy is still valued. It is an option, and whether or not his option is ethical or not can be debated by the people.

I, however, find this move of Duterte a particularly dangerous one — and not just for the president or the press.

The bigger issue

The situation forces the president and the press at a stale mate. The media cannot report on what it does not know, and while there are other informants available, there is no denying how crucial it is to hear the executive perspective. This is a serious matter the media is facing.

However, there is another issue — equally disturbing and urgent — that many fail to recognize. Duterte has manipulated the psychology of the Philippine people by turning the reputation of the press into a villainous one.

For years, Filipino journalists and media practitioners have received backlash from its audience. At best, they lose their stamp of credibility from their viewers; and at worst, a whole lot of them are murdered and raped for exposing a risqué story.

The way Duterte handled the grilling of the journalists only heightened the public’s general distrust of their watchdogs. His words make a neutral party look like his biased predators.

And where does it leave students like me?

Future journalists 

There are still many young, aspiring hopefuls who want to become the future of the Philippine press. Entering the mass communication college of prestigious universities has effectively brainwashed students like me into believing that diving into journalism gives them a higher purpose.

There are people I know who are willing to die for a story, in hopes that such story will shake the status quo. Journalism is a calling and it is a calling that is being attacked by the future of Malacañang.

I have been dissuaded by the people around me to pursue the opportunity to work for the Philippine press. Their arguments are all clear. The president-elect does not sit well with journalists, and the president-elect is a trigger-happy, gun-slinger.

Within the next 6 years, journalists will slowly be pulled out of their profession each time they keep a watchful eye on the president. Some would go as far as to call his ways Marcosian. Censorship looms at the corner of every newsroom.

At best, people tell me that I will be part of the problem. If I choose to play by the rules of Duterte’s school of journalism, I will be recycling blank sheets of paper as my daily column. At worst, I won’t be in business the day after I print something that’s not in his favor.

They say that this is just the beginning.

Six years down the line

For me, this involves the reevaluation of a chosen career path. Perhaps I was simply not born with the iron will of a good journalist, but because of Duterte, I will never be able to try.

When a president takes the press a little too personally, things go wrong for future media practitioners. We become discouraged to act and speak critically, because then we become critics of the president.

If continued, this will inevitably lead to a bleak future for media practitioners. The press is driven by the passion of those who stay in spite of the jeers of the people, but its credibility still lies with the people. The Philippines is currently being led to believe that the entire press is against the man who fights for change, when really, it isn’t.

Where will this lead us 6 years down the line? Where will students like me be 6 years down the line?

To be honest, I do not see this as a time to set up a solid defence against the president. The press should not waste anymore time saving face. They have spoken up, and delivered their memoranda. While many attack them, many still defend them. They no longer have time to be scorned by Duterte.

What can we do? 

Instead, it’s time for the press and the future press to continue doing their job. There has been a very discouraging hurdle thrown in front of them and it is up to them to work around it.

For the respected press, continue to be critical of the president and his cabinet. Report every move that affects good governance and public safety. Question and probe when necessary, and investigate when no one seems to be helping. Let your determination to get the story rule your heart, but keep your media ethics lingering on your mind.

Just like the president, you’re currently under fire. One step out of line could cost the credibility of the entire profession to tumble down. We salute you for your bravery, and wish you luck as you lay the foundation of democracy for the next 6 years.

As for my fellow students who are studying to be a part of the press, always remain vigilant. If this is what you were called to do, then stand by it. Heed the warnings of your family and friends, but maintain the delusion that what you are going to do will still matter. You will be at risk. Don’t risk your life for the sake of a story — but don’t pass up the opportunity to tell it.

We can show the president-elect that we can be good sports, in the moments that he cannot.

Together, let us suffer under the consequences of his words for the sake of the people. They may hate us, but there will be people who will still rely on us. Let us do our jobs.

If we end up changing the Philippines in the process, well then, we’ll deserve a good old coffee break after everything. – Rappler.com 

Angelica "Ica" de Leon is an aspiring journalist taking up BA Broadcast Communication at UP Diliman. She is currently in her second year. She is a student jock for Monster Radio's Radio One show and writes short essays and stories from time to time. 

During the latest edition of Shangri-La Dialogue, which gathers defense ministers and leading experts from around the world in Singapore annually, I couldn’t but not notice that the Philippines’ arbitration case against China was a major theme in formal and informal exchanges among participants.

Though we got among the weakest armed forces in Southeast Asia, and feature among the poorer nations in the world, the Aquino administration’s decision to take China to international court has put the country in the international spotlight. Seldom do mid-sized nations gain so much global attention and sympathy. The arbitration case, which is expected to finalize in coming weeks and produce a largely unfavorable outcome for China, is viewed as a classic ‘David vs. Goliath’ showdown by much of the international community.

By skillfully repackaging our case as one of sovereign rights and maritime entitlement claims – rather than sovereign claims, which transcends the mandate of the UNCLOS – we have, thankfully, overcome both jurisdictional and admissibility hurdles. Through our arbitration case, we have rallied the international community to our cause. But this is more than just a moral issue and empty rhetoric. There are significant strategic implications too.

The arbitration case, as I explained in an earlier piece, provides a tangible, concrete legal basis for major global powers to push back against China’s purported plans to turn the West Philippine Sea into their blue “national soil”. No less than Japan, Asia’s sleeping giant, is looking forward to a favorable arbitration verdict that may provide the legal green light to deploy Maritime Self Dense Forces – Asia’s most advanced naval force – to join American-led Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the West Philippine Sea.

Other major powers, from France to India and Britain, may also follow suit. Over the past year, a growing number of countries have come to support the Philippines’ arbitration case. All the members of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized powers, Australia, and almost all relevant players in the region have openly or indirectly expressed their support.

In fact, Indonesia and Vietnam, which are observers at the Philippine-initiated arbitration proceedings, have even gone so far as threatening a similar action against China, which has stepped up its fishing activities and para-military patrols far into Vietnamese, Malaysia, and Indonesian waters. In short, the Philippines is not alone. Others are following us, not the other way around.

Some would even go so far as stating that we are now the de facto leaders of an emerging coalition to pressure China into following prevailing international law and question the validity of its expansive claims, which are based on dubious historical arguments. No wonder then, China is in a state of panic, and is calling on the incoming Duterte administration to drop the case as a precondition for bilateral engagement.

A panicked China has lashed out at the arbitration proceedings and in a comically desperate fashion has sought to undermine the legitimacy of the arbitration body by setting up its own international courts and rallying up to 40 countries – mostly poor and many landlocked – to question the Philippines’ arbitration maneuver. The arbitration case is the Philippines’ best leverage to exact concessions from China. Without the arbitration case, there is little reason for China to make any reasonable compromise. This is the geopolitical reality.

21st Century Revisionism

"We were not isolated in the past, we are not isolated and we will not be isolated," Chinese Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army, exclaimed during the recently-concluded Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. It was a direct riposte to US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s earlier speech at the same event, where he warned China against “self-isolation” due to its aggressive maneuver in adjacent waters.

Not short of bravado, the Chinese admiral went so far as stating Beijing does not "make or fear trouble" against the "provocations of certain countries for their own selfish interests." The speech coincided with reports of China’s back-to-back (unsafe) interception of American surveillance missions in the South China Sea.

Four centuries after the publication of British jurist John Selden’s "The Closed Sea," which argued for exclusive sovereign control of international waters, China is inching closer to transforming the South China Sea – the world’s most important waterway, which handles up to a third of global maritime commerce, 4 times as much energy transport as the Suez canal, and more than a tenth of global fisheries stock – into a virtual domestic lake.

China’s control of the Paracel chain of islands is a fait accompli, while the Pratas chain of islands are under the administration of what Beijing considers as a renegade province, Taiwan, which will be eventually re-incorporated into a Greater China. In the last two years or so, China has reclaimed 3200 acres (1,295 hectares) of land to build gigantic artificial islands in Spratly chain of islands, giving birth to a sprawling network of civilian and military installations across the disputed waters. Soon, China may be in a position to establish an ‘exclusion zone’ in the area, imperiling freedom of overflight and navigation for regional and external military forces in the area.

Standing next to a top Vietnamese defense official, Deputy Minister of Defense Nguyen Chi Vinh, he warned that “some countries are expanding their invasion of the South China Sea” – most likely in reference to allegations that Vietnam has also engaged in, albeit on a far smaller scale, its own reclamation activities in the area in recent years. Admiral Sun, however, reserved his most pugnacious rhetoric for one Southeast Asian country, the Philippines, which has dared to take its giant neighbor to international court over the maritime disputes.

Starting off on a relatively conciliatory note, where he proudly enumerated China’s numerous contributions to global security and development, the Chinese admiral suddenly shifted to a high-pitch, lambasting Manila for supposedly breaching bilateral agreements with China and denying its rights in the disputed waters. I couldn’t but feel shocked and perturbed by these statements, sitting not too far from the podium.

He warned the Philippines and other likeminded countries that “Chinese people believe in truth, not heresy” and that “belligerence doesn’t make peace”. Quite astonishingly, he accused the Philippines of becoming “the first country to invade the South China Sea”, recounting how he internalized this humiliating event during his younger years as a serviceman.

Admiral Sung was also adamant that from the perspective of (Chinese) history, the South China Sea belongs to Beijing. And that this is a self-evident truth. It was a speech that was both disconcerting and surreal, especially when one takes a close look at actual realities on the ground. The sheer scale, speech and technological sophistication of China’s reclamation activities, the ever-larger deployment of Chinese fishermen-cum-militia forces, the augmentation of Chinese submarine and naval presence in the area, not to mention an uptick in Chinese aerial interception of foreign reconnaissance aircrafts in the South China Sea – they all underscore Beijing’s intent on dominating what it describes as its blue “national soil”.

Safeguarding the Commons

"The Sea, by the Law of Nature or Nations, is not common to all men, but capable of private Dominion or proprietie as well as the Land," Selden wrote in the The Closed Sea (Mare clausum) in 1635. It was a direct rebuttal of Dutch Jurist Hugo Grotius’ influential book, The Free Sea (Mare Liberum), which served as the foundation of modern international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). For Grotius, high seas are global commons that, by their very nature, should be accessible to the entire humankind on a non-exclusive basis.  

Over the next two centuries, America introduced the Monroe Doctrine as a justification for domination of the Americas, to be followed by Alfred Thayer Mahan’s call for American domination of adjacent waters, beginning with the Caribbean. America’s quest for naval domination would extend, over the next decades, across much of the Pacific Ocean, culminating in the occupation of the Spanish-controlled Philippines during the twilight years of the 19th century. The West, in short, was the greatest opponent of Grotius’ doctrine of global maritime commons.

Over the past 7 decades, however, America has served as a largely benign naval behemoth, serving as the anchor of the regional liberal order, which has undergirded a robust free trade regime that has lifted one Asian country after the other, including former adversaries like China, from the depths of poverty to the heights of unprecedented wealth. But all of this could change, thanks to China’s embrace of Seldenean notion of ‘Closed Sea’ and Mahanian doctrine of dominating adjacent waters. No less than the South and East China Sea have, as I argue in my latest book, turned into “Asia’s new battlefield” for domination.

As the President Xi Jinping bluntly put it, in their view, all the “islands and reefs in the South China Sea are Chinese territory since ancient times.” Leaving little doubt as to China’s determination to assert its historical claims in the South China Sea, Xi warned, “Chinese people will not allow anyone to infringe on China’s sovereignty and related rights and interests in the South China Sea.”

But the election of Rodrigo Duterte has raised certain questions, especially among our allies. The incoming President Duterte has openly called for direct engagement with China and, if conditions permit, expressed his willingness to negotiate a joint development agreement in disputed waters. For him, what matters more is reviving long-frayed bilateral ties and welcoming more Chinese investments in the country. For this reason I consider him a pragmatic realist in international affairs.

A Duterte administration may mean improved bilateral relations with China, and that is desirable. It is important for the Philippines and China to not allow their bilateral differences to define their overall relationship. But at what cost? Reopening communication channels with China may lead to demands for certain Filipino concessions on the arbitration case as well as security agreements with allied nations. So the Duterte administration should be very careful in any prospective bilateral negotiation in the future, which is indispensable but should be unconditional. As Machiavelli would put it, keep your friends close, but your rivals even closer. Even the UNCLOS encourages parties with overlapping claims to consider bilateral negotiations, assuming they can bear fruit.

Obviously, as the Chinese occupation of Scarborough Shoal and our succeeding exchanges demonstrate, bilateral talks are useless when you got no leverage, precisely what the arbitration case provides us. So we should stick with the arbitration case and fully leverage any prospective favorable outcome to have a stronger hand in any direct dealings with China. And I am confident that the Duterte administration will do its utmost to protect our national interest in line with prevailing international law. – Rappler.com

Richard J. Heydarian teaches political science at De La Salle University and is a regular contributor to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC. His latest book is Asia's New Battlefield: US, China, and the Struggle for Western Pacific (Zed, London), now available at National Bookstore and Powerbooks. This piece was partly based on an earlier essay for The National Interest.

The first time I entered a gay nightclub in my early 20s, I wore a cap and shades – which was stupid, because it was dark – to hide my face. I was no longer in the closet then, but I felt uncomfortable being seen in a place like that. The shame I had associated with being gay, which made me hate myself for the most part of my teenage years, was still with me.

As the club lights flashed and the music grew louder, I stayed in a corner, looking at each face in the crowd to make sure nobody knows me and mentally preparing my excuse should someone I know see me there.

But a few drinks and the friendly atmosphere helped ease my apprehension, and soon I was already on the dance floor with my friends even if I couldn't dance. I clinked glasses with strangers, sang along to Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," and made new friends.

I removed my cap and shades. I found myself enjoying every minute I was there, so much so that going to O Bar, Bed, and other gay clubs in Manila became a weekly habit.

More than the music and drinks, I enjoy being in the company of people who are just like me, in places where we can all be ourselves without being judged. For me, gay clubs represent the exact opposite of the shame I used to feel about being gay. Those are places where I can be proud and free, forget my problems even for a few hours, and celebrate who I am. Places where everyone is a friend and no one is a stranger. Places that always gave me a sense of acceptance and belonging. 

The community's struggle

Outside the Philippines, in almost every city I visit, I would make sure to go to the gay clubs: Heaven and Ku Bar in London; Taboo in Amsterdam; DJ Station in Bangkok; Propaganda in Hong Kong; Destination, Funky, and Adam's in Beijing; etc. Had I had the chance to visit Orlando, I would have partied at Pulse, too. Being in those places would make me feel that I belong to a community wherever I am in the world.

This is why the massacre at Pulse club in Orlando affected me deeply. It hit so close to home. I may not personally know the victims, but they are like the people I encounter almost every weekend in gay clubs. I have never been to Pulse, but it is similar to the places where I often unwind after a week's work. I can imagine myself being there: what happened to them could happen to me and many other LGBTs as long as there are homophobic people on the planet. 

The LGBT rights movement, particularly in the West, has made huge strides in recent years. Yet homophobia still exists. The Orlando massacre was just the worst manifestation of the homophobia we see everywhere in daily life. It comes in many forms, some more glaring than others: people using "bakla (gay)" as an insult, families disowning their LGBT members, gay students being bullied, gay employees getting fired because of their sexual orientation, transwomen and transmen being denied entry to establishments, a government official like Manny Pacquiao saying gay people are worse than animals and should be put to death.

Culture of hate

They may not be as deadly as killing 49 people in a club, but they encourage and perpetuate the same culture of hate and intolerance that likely motivated Omar Mateen to go on a shooting spree at Pulse. It's precisely that culture that members of the LGBT community try to escape from, albeit momentarily, through the dazzling lights and deafening music of nightclubs. 

When I was still a TV reporter in the Philippines, a friend once asked me if I was concerned being seen in a gay club would affect my "image". Not at all, I said, because there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with being gay, so what's wrong with being in an establishment full of gay people? 

"It's my happy place," I said. And it probably was as well for the people killed and injured during last Sunday's attack. That makes the incident all the more revolting and tragic. They were mercilessly attacked inside a place that made them feel happy and safe, a sanctuary that freed them from the shame and guilt many of them grew up believing was part of being who they are. 

But the LGBT community is made up of fighters and survivors, we often tell ourselves. We are used to facing prejudice and rising above adversity. What happened in Orlando may have sent chills down our spines, but it will never silence the community. The party will go on. – Rappler.com 

Ryan Chua is a journalist currently based in Beijing, China. Previously, he was a political correspondent at ABS-CBN. He has a master's degree in international journalism from City University London, where he studied as a British Chevening scholar and graduated with distinction. He advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights.

You cannot kill us. Even if our bodies are scattered in a dark and silenced club after a coward opened fire at our happy and proud selves, you will never kill all of us.

You don't scare us. Even if there are cheers of support for taking 49 of our lives at one time. You will not stop us from being who we are because you decided to beat us, gun us down, or burn 28 of us in a club without regard for who we will leave behind.

We're not "just gays." We're not just two men kissing. We're not just two women in love. We're not just trans men or trans women who were brave enough to fight for who we are. We're not just bayots. We are not animals or mindless beasts, no matter what sexual acts you've reduced our existence to so you can focus on your disgust for us.

Like it or not, we are your loved ones. We are your brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. We are your coworkers, bosses, subordinates, and friends. We are your doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, waitresses, psychologists, and truck drivers. To snuff us from this world does not kill those you call faggots, dykes and trannies, but only eliminates the ones who care for you and the ones you love. We are you, whether or not you know it or admit it. Who we love or how we act cannot change the fact that we are part of your lives.

A lifetime of threats

How can we be stopped when we've lived our entire lives with this threat? "I'd rather have a dead son than a gay son," our own parents said. We've been banished from our homes. We've lost our jobs and our friends, yet we still flourished - not because we "insisted" on being gay, but because there is no other way to live than to be ourselves.

We've sat through your lectures and "well-meaning" advice. That being gay will lead to lonely and meaningless lives. That we will be hated, scorned, beaten and killed, and then burn in hell afterwards. Nobody will love us, no one will marry us, and we can never have children, so therefore it's better if we just die, right?

We've sat through your "harmless" comments calling those who lack courage bakla, how you equate femininity with weakness without regard for the women in your lives. We didn't flinch when you said, "Magpakalalake ka (Be a man)," even if it was accompanied by a slap. We tried to rein in our swagger when you yelled, "Magpakababae ka nga! Ipa-rape kaya kita? (Be a woman! Want me to have you raped?)"

We turned our heads when you agreed with a senator who claimed gays are worse than animals. Never mind that this kind of hateful language legitimizes our murders and condones the endangerment our lives. Never mind that you'd rather change us than change the horrors that want us gone. Never mind that the religion whose select rules you follow make you think it's okay to abandon your own daughters and sons.

See, you will never kill us, precisely because you keep making us. How easily we forget that gay people are created by straight people and we were born with all that you despise. We came into this world with traits and spirits that trigger in you a hate that makes you hurt your own children or want to eliminate someone else's.

We are born who we are, loving who we do, fabulous and beautiful the way we were meant to. We mind our own business yet it becomes our problem when our nature stirs in you a desire to see us die.

This hate makes you cheer when an angry lunatic decides to spray a hundred of us with bullets from his machine gun. Worse, it makes you turn a blind eye, shrug your shoulders, and claim we had it coming because gays are annoying and the shooter didn't like to see boys in love. Remove the word "gay" from that club. Pretend your children were there or in a party with the sole intention of having fun. No matter what they are doing or whom they are loving, does anyone deserve to die?

The problem is that gay clubs aren't just for parties. They are safe spaces where people like us believe we can be ourselves when elsewhere the world may disagree. It doesn't occur to many outside our community that our daily lives are always tainted with fear. I cannot just hold my spouse's hand in public even if our marriage is recognized by law. 

You don't know this because you don't see. You don't listen to how we've had to exist in a world that hates us. You claim we're accepted because some of us make you laugh on TV and we haven't been killed in front of your eyes. But you do nothing when a gay or transgender man is tortured, killed, wrapped in packing tape, and thrown into the street with a sign that says "tulisan." 

You say nothing

You say nothing when powerful people say we are worse than animals, that we deserve death, or that we don't deserve the rights that you all have. You don't correct your son for bullying an effeminate boy in school or for forcing himself on a young lesbian. You let your husband spew homophobic slurs at the dinner table while you tell your own kids that he's just following God. You pray at night that hopefully your son remains "a real man." You let your children laugh at the transgender woman passing by.

In your actions and inaction you allow violence against your LGBTQ friends and relatives when you tolerate hateful language about us.

This is not news to us. We are used to this as the reality of our lives. If you took a second and spent it in our shoes then you might have noticed the permanence of our disappointment and the scars of your judgment in our eyes.

But don't you worry. Just go on living your godly, moral, and sinless normal lives. You can beat us, banish us, and you can kill us, but trust that our beautiful lives and the special ways we love will never ever die. – Rappler.com 

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – You would think that a sexual reproductive health conference would be like a big sex education class where words like pleasure, orgasms – all things sexual and sensual – would be openly discussed.  

The reality is that when public health experts talk about sex, it is mostly from the perspective of disease prevention. Discussions are filled with polite euphemisms and scientific jargon and are generally, very antiseptic.

Anne Philpott still remembers an HIV and AIDS conference she went to, years ago, where a speaker talked about “an insertive probe entering the receptive cavity.” It  took her awhile to realize that the speaker was referring to sexual intercourse.

“I think the fact that sex can feel good is something that we should all be told and should be talked about in an open way. The primary reason most people in the world have sex is for pleasure and the public health world has really missed pleasure out, it’s a huge gap,” said Philpott in an interview with the UK’s Guardian.

It was this pleasure gap that pushed Philpott and Arushi Singh to set up The Pleasure Project in 2004.

“Our mission is to ensure that people include pleasure in sex education messages. We want to bridge the pleasure world and the world of public health,” said Philpott.

“Sex is used to market practically everything from your next holiday to ice cream. Why can’t it be used to market and promote safer sex and quality sex education?” she added.

Sexual illiteracy

Currently, there are an estimated 1.8 million adolescents around the world. The largest generation of young people in history are about to enter their reproductive years, and many of them are unprepared to make informed decisions about their sexual health.  

The need for comprehensive sex education that is accessible and appealing to young people is a public health imperative.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reports that young people between the ages of 15-24 are having more sex than ever before, but have limited access to adequate sex education and contraceptive services. In some countries, minors and unmarried individuals are prohibited from getting contraceptives and HIV testing/STI treatment without parental consent.

The Lancet released a report identifying unsafe sex as the “fastest-growing risk factor for ill-health” in young people aged 10-24 years. Maternal disorders were the leading cause of death in young women in 2013, killing an estimated 11.5% in girls aged 15-19. In Africa, AIDS-related complications is a major cause of death among adolescent girls.

Studies indicate that young people exposed to sex education that includes abstinence and contraception as options are more likely to delay their first sexual encounter and to consistently use condoms.

Closing the pleasure gap

Philpott and Arushi have been relentless in their effort to marry pleasure and sex education in public health conferences all over the world.

When the two self-proclaimed pleasure propagandists started The Pleasure Project in 2004, “we were almost considered frivolous,” said Singh.

They used guerrilla girl activism, splattering posters about pleasurable safe sex in conference venues, and whenever possible, put together panel discussions on how to build safe sex conversations around pleasure.

“Since then there are many more organizations and individuals talking about sexy safe sex!” said Singh.

The growing number of pleasure advocates is plotted out in The Pleasure Project’s Global Mapping of Pleasure, a global heat map of different organizations around the world who are incorporating pleasure into the discussion of sexual health.  

At the Women Deliver conference last month, the Pleasure Project launched the expanded pleasure map.

The Pleasure Project had various panels at the maternal health conference where, together with public health experts, they expanded the scope of the sexual health discussion to cover politics, human rights and always with pleasure as a cornerstone.

In one session, Singh set the Twitter verse on fire with her provocative female condom demo. [Watch the session, “The Politics of Pleasure, Sexuality, and Human Rights” here.]

I had the privilege of being part of a Pleasure Project sponsored panel on “Sex and Sustainable Development Goals: Using Pleasure to Promote Protection” at the WD2016 conference. We were all pleasantly surprised to see that the session encouraged the audience to share their personal experiences.

“I was a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) when I was 18. After having children, I had my first orgasm when I was 21-years old. There is life and pleasure after FGM!” said one woman who flew in from Africa to attend the conference.

Another woman who went from having sex with only men to having sex with women shared her realizations about the empowerment that comes from championing your sexual pleasure.

It seemed like the start of open, candid, authentic, and deeply personal discussions about sex and pleasure, and the “good sex ed” the Pleasure Project had always envisioned.

“We are aiming to make our website truly the pleasure portal for the world – so anyone who wants to marry pleasure and safer sex comes to our website and connects with the pleasure community,” said Philpott.

“Our job will be done when it's automatic to talk pleasure in sex ed and sexy safer sex in porn and erotica,” she concluded. – Rappler.com