A CRIME THAT CRIES OUT TO HEAVEN

A CRIME THAT CRIES OUT TO HEAVEN

To all People of Good Will:

Last Monday, 23 November 2009, the shocking news of a horrifying massacre began circulating through radio, text messages, and word of mouth. Twenty four hours later, there were still no complete and accurate reports on what really happened along the highway between Shariff Aguak and Kauran, Ampatuan, Maguindanao. The number of people massacred continues to rise even now, family-members, friends, legal advocates, journalists, and civilians who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

From the beginning there was no doubt that we were hearing or reading of a tragedy unprecedented in the history of the once empire province of Cotabato, unprecedented in its ferocity, brutality and brazenness.

People cry out to God and to one another, “How could this thing happen?” And as more and more bodies were unearthed from that now infamous “killing field,” the wailing and grieving of hundreds of families related to the victims as brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins, nephews and nieces, in laws or friends are turning into righteous rage and the natural desire for vendetta. For the sake of humanity we must not give in to this desire to seek vengeance that can so easily spiral into a cycle of violence.

From the depths of my soul as a religious leader, I condemn in the strongest possible way this barbaric act of massacre as a conscience-less crime that cries out to heaven.

As a citizen I demand that the government, without fear or favor, use all its powers and decisively act to identify and arrest the perpetrators and apply the full force of the law on them.

As a believer in the God of all, I pray for the souls of the victims and ask the Lord to console, comfort, and give strength to their families. I grieve with them and express my deepest sympathies.

Many politicians and non-politicians have quickly blamed others for this shocking tragedy. This is only partly right and conveniently absolves us from any culpability. My sense of history leads me to believe that somehow we all share the blame to a certain extent. A culture of impunity has, indeed, grown through the years. Political administrations and officials from all parties from the 1960s to the present have cultivated and exploited to their own advantage a social structure of traditional leadership that was meant to be for the good of the people. This was so with powerful political families in other parts of the country. We have not tried to change this culture of political convenience and thus allowed a culture of impunity to endure through successive administrations. Elections have not and will not change this situation. We simply get more of the same.

We need to change from the bottom-up, from individuals to families, from families to communities. We need to change our values that tolerate evil or choose the lesser evil. We need to learn new values that will transform our cultures from within. For Muslims the Koran, faithfully and correctly followed, will be a guide. For Christians, the Holy Bible, also faithfully and correctly interpreted, will provide direction for value transformation.

Beloved People of Good Will, yes, indeed, we must condemn. We must demand decisive action for justice. We must pray. But we also must begin to change. With the grace of God, we can.

+Orlando B. Quevedo, O.M.I.
Archbishop of Cotabato
November 26, 2009

PGMA orders arrest of Maguindanao killers

Tuesday, 24 November 2009
PGMA orders arrest of Maguindanao killers
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered today the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police to deploy units to conduct immediate pursuit of the perpetrators of the gruesome massacre of the members of Mangudadatu clan and media in Maguindanao.

“I order all units to pursue the perpetrators, to restore order and secure affected areas in Maguindanao,” the President said in a statement at the opening of today’s joint National Economic Development Authority-Cabinet meeting at the Aguinaldo State Dining Room in Malacanang.

The Cabinet meeting was originally scheduled in the world-famous Boracay Island. It was moved to Malacanang due to the Maguindanao incident.

Cabinet Secretary Silvestre Bello III had earlier said the President and her cabinet will study if there was need to declare a state of emergency in Maguindanao.

The chief executive ordered Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales and Lt. Gen. Rodrigo Maclang, acting AFP Chief of Staff, to personally oversee military action against the perpetrators of these dastardly acts that occurred yesterday.

She said “no effort will be spared to bring justice to the victims.”
The president also announced the establishment of checkpoints and chokepoints, with elements of Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade already in place to preserve peace and secure the area.

She appointed Presidential Adviser for Mindanao Jesus Dureza as the head of the Crisis Committee for Maguindanao.

The bodies of 22 kidnap victims, out of the 44 reported abducted, including the wife and relatives of Buluan town’s vice mayor Ismael Mangudadatu, a gubernatorial aspirant in Maguindanao, were recovered by the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade Monday afternoon.

The bodies, recovered in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town, reportedly showed signs of mutilation.

Reports said Mangudadatu’s wife, Genalyn, his sister, some relatives and members of the media were on their way to file his certificate of candidacy for governor of Maguindanao province when a group of about 100 armed men abducted them. (PND)

http://www.op.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26930&Itemid=2

Creating Hunger – can it be stopped? – Charlie Avila

Disaster-Prone

We probably took it lightly then but it was a fact –the Philippines was the highest placed country in the Global Climate Risk Index

announced at the 2007 Bali UN Climate Change Conference. It was a way of recognizing that in those years extreme weather events already accounted for 3,000 deaths and widespread destruction by mudslides and typhoons in the Philippines.

Apart from extreme weather, there was concern that increasing temperature would affect agricultural yields and food security, even as rising sea levels threatened over 40 million people or that half of our total population who lived in coastal areas.

The prophets of global warming spoke clearly: warmer water in the top layer of the ocean drives more convection energy to fuelmore powerful typhoons and hurricanes in increased frequency. As water temperatures go up, wind velocity goes up, and so does storm moisture condensation.

Global warming would cause more of both floods and droughts. Also, it would suck more moisture out of the soil and, as a consequence, increase desertification, and diminish agricultural productivity. Oh, but such talk was only for scientists and social activists – until Ondoy, Pepeng, and Lupit Ramil decided to visit and linger a little while to teach us a few lessons.

Ondoy was particularly nasty for bringing down some extras – mud and garbage. The mud came from the mountains, washed down by rainwater that had free flow because no roots of trees were around to hold the soil together. The garbage, on the other hand, was added instructional bonus, coming as it did from the trash we so arrogantly threw around – clogging the waterways, making them so shallow and smelly and narrow and all-too-ready to overflow during heavy rains and to come back to haunt our houses and neighborhoods with old and new diseases for our endless discomfort.

Most important, however, would be – again – a looming food crisis arising from typhoon-related greatly diminished rice production and worse-affected food-price behaviors due to road-and-bridge destruction and heavy damage to pre-and-post-harvest facilities. Instead of this year’s hoped for 17.5 million metric tons of rice production, it is now accepted we would, indeed, be lucky if we could even reach 17 million MTs (metric tons) flat, thanks to the angry weather and our perpetual lack of disaster-proof civil infrastructure to deal with it.

A government report has already initially estimated rice losses to have reached 560,000 MTs or a monetary value of some 10-billion pesos. Record volumes of rice importation had reached 2.3 million MTs last year, enabling us to keep our dubious distinction of being the biggest rice importer in the world. The year before our violent guests came around we had already imported some 1.775 MMTs of rice. The plan was, by end-October, we would import a quarter of a million more from either one or some or all of the following countries – Thailand, Vietnam, China, Pakistan, Australia, USA, and India.

Given, however, the typhoon damage to the last quarter production whose estimates have not yet been completed, we may even have to import much more – on the uncertain premise that the world has enough of our staple to sell to us. Rice is thinly traded–only 27.5 million tons or 6.4 percent of world supply was traded last year.

At the same time, fortunately, some leaders saw that no harm could come from focusing on reconstruction of typhoon damaged infrastructure. The damage inventory and needs assessment may take about a month to complete but, already, the World Bank (WB) and other multilateral institutions said they will use their own damage assessments in considering Manila’s requests for realignment of some slow-moving loans already available to the Philippines.

Identified were some $400 million in previously approved program loans that could now support reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts of the instantaneously formed “Special National Public-Private Reconstruction Commission”. The need to “disaster-proof” government’s development policies, plans and programs became rather quickly the need of the hour. But is it that simple? When it comes to hunger and food insecurity, what is the bigger picture?

The bigger picture – the big land grab, the massive conversions

The United Nations has identified climate change, pollution, urban migration, poverty in rural areas and lack of sound agriculture policies by nations as the biggest threats to food security.

Declining agriculture labor force is also slowing down food production. More and more rural folk move to cities for better paying jobs. This is already happening in the Philippines where the exodus of rural folk to the cities has been unprecedented, lured by job prospects not only in local cities but also overseas, leaving their farms for more promising firms.

Confident that developing nations will continue to produce food for them, highly developed countries also convert lands to urban and industrial zones with the enticement of profits much greater than what agriculture can offer.

Or, alternatively, they go for the big land grab. More than 20 million hectares of farmland in the Third World countries of Africa, Latin America and Asia are now held by foreign governments and companies. Rich countries with not enough land think they could always buy their way into their poor neighbor’s properties.

Earlier this year, for instance, President Arroyo warmly announced that China was interested in leasing 1.2 million hectares of land in our country! She had also said late last year that her government would explore the idea of leasing at least 100,000 hectares of agricultural land to the emirate in Qatar. The Philippine Agricultural Development and Commercial Corp. (PADCC), a government corporation attached to the Department of Agriculture, has been tasked with identifying suitable lands for agribusiness development and assisting prospective investors who are keen on forging “the right deals” with local groups and companies.

Thus, only lately there were reports that a company from South Korea had leased 94,000 hectares of farmland in Mindoro for 25 years to grow 10,000 tons of corn a year for feed production and another 60,000 hectares were given over to the Pacific Bio-Fields Corp. of Japan.

One can’t blame farmer leaders who say that before we know it, we may already have been taken over by other nations. These leaders may have heard the recent public announcement by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) that over 20 agribusiness firms had met with nearly 200 Philippine companies to form partnerships and joint ventures in fisheries, biofuels, processed goods, meat and poultry, dairy products, etc.

In the wake of recent typhoons, it is these farmer leaders who feel more urgently the need to ensure adequate land for food production, and to slow down on setting aside more hectares of agricultural land for use of foreign agro-corporations. Anyway, this kind of practice might be quite illegal in the first place.

The DAR and similar agencies can’t even be sure, conveniently, how many thousands upon thousands of hectares have been converted over the past 22 years for uses other than food production. Since the 1990s, farm area planted to palay shrunk by more than 87,000 hectares while that of corn was reduced by almost 300,000 hectares. Can anyone deny that such decrease in farm area had to spell both massive displacement of Filipino farmers and dramatic decline in domestic food production?

The violent typhoons that recently hit us had the tendency also for going after Vietnam and Thailand, where we import most of our rice. One could not help but ask: how greatly was those countries’ rice harvest reduced? Can they still sell us rice, and at what steep price? To which another countered: what about a widespread El Nino, which, for all we know, is just lurking around, waiting for the typhoons to leave? If it hits Vietnam and Thailand and the Philippines, all at the same time, which is not at all unlikely, where do we buy rice and at what steep price?

Food prices

Food costs in developing countries now seem more expensive – 24% higher in real terms by the end of 2008 compared to 2006. As a new crisis of rising food prices takes hold following recent natural disasters, food-importing governments will find it more difficult to cope. Engulfed within a vortex of energy shortage, price inflation and climate change, food security will remain the most intractable challenge for those who criminally neglected to focus on food self-reliance and food self-sufficiency. They may begin to realize at last – or did they know it all along – that “free” trade rules have a way of undermining domestic food production when we engage in the global market game without first strengthening our own domestic players.

It may soon become harder and harder to deny that authoritarian Philippines followed a more patriotic line on food policy than subsequent liberal democratic administrations. Of many accusations hurled against the authoritarian regime, one thing it could not be accused of is starving the agricultural sector. If only to head off peasant discontent, the authoritarian regime provided farmers with subsidized fertilizer and seeds, launched credit plans and built rural infrastructure. Following the common sense policy of rice self-sufficiency, it did not have to import rice; it even achieved surpluses for export and in 1986 when the regime came to an end there were 900,000 metric tons of rice in government warehouses.

Liberal democratic Philippines chose to follow a “debt-service payments first” rather than a
“food first” policy. The World Bank and its Philippine think-tanks assured government and people that State belt-tightening would motivate the private sector to make the countryside prosperous with their hoped-for investments.

The painful truth was that spending on agriculture fell by more than half – resulting in quickly diminished agricultural capacity, stagnation of irrigation, and generally anemic crop yields with the average rice yield way below those in China, Vietnam and Thailand, where governments actively promoted rural production, more often than not using Philippine-generated rice technologies.

Deprived of funding for support services, agrarian reform focused not on appropriate land use but on so-called “land acquisition and distribution” schemes that were quite often merely cover for a massive land-conversion program. After all, the objective eye cannot argue with the results especially in Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog whose peasant struggles made it possible to have “land reform” legislation in the first place.

Even before the floods, one no longer saw as much farms and farmers in those places as before but subdivisions and tracts of lands lying fallow, thanks to the actions of speculators precisely made possible by unintelligent “agrarian reforms”. If agrarian reform were such a big success, why did we become so shamefully the biggest rice importer on the face of the earth? Or are we ready to say we became No. 1 rice importer precisely because of the roaring success of our agrarian reform program?

It can no longer be denied: Filipino peasants distrusted the liberal democratic state even more because of its full-scale retreat as provider of comprehensive support – a factor that was found key to the successful reforms in Taiwan and South Korea. In the matter alone of market roadwork paved, both Thailand and Malaysia beat the Philippines hands down or an eight-to-one ratio.

On A Global Scale

The very first question in the FAQ of the United Nations’ World Food Program is: “(1) Is there a food shortage in he world?” And their blunt answer is: “There is enough food in the world today for everyone to have the nourishment necessary for a healthy and productive life.” Yes, indeed, enough food can be produced but it still must be bought. And if people are too poor to buy food at unaffordable prices, it will follow that they will also be hungry.

But, then, they also say in Number (3) that “despite the impression you often get from the media, emergencies account for less than eight percent of hunger’s victims. Few people realize that there are over 1 billion hungry people in the world who don’t make the headlines. Number (4): Of the total number of over 1 billion chronically hungry people, over half are in Asia and the Pacificand a quarter is in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Does this include the Philippines?

In their Global Hunger Index (GHI) report released a couple of weeks back, the hunger problem in the Philippines was categorized as “serious” and the country ranked 34th among 84 countries in the Index.

In the SWS studies, for whatever they are worth, just before the three strong typhoons visited us, the proportion of families experiencing involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months had eased a little bit – down to 17.5 per cent or about 3.2 million families, from 20.3 per cent or 3.7 million families in the previous quarter. Hunger, however, has consistently been in double-digits for five years, since June 2004, the SWS said.

In SWS lingo, the overall average of 12.6 percent is a rough measure of the “hunger climate” from 1998 to the present. The quarterly and year-to-year percentages, on the other hand, refer to the “hunger weather.”

On the world level, one billion hungry people – is a first in human history. If anyone asks whether it is within our power and not beyond our expertise to consign this suffering to history, we must welcome the query warmly, immediately, with a clear resolve that we have to do what we can.

With the global financial crisis not going away soon enough, hunger is likely to increase as the purchasing power of the poor diminishes due to reduced incomes and higher unemployment. It is simply not fair but the fact is that the poor, who were least responsible for setting the financial crisis in motion, are now the least protected from its negative impact.

While more than one billion people experience the hardship that hunger imposes, the obvious may easily escape us, namely that the cost of alleviating world hunger is negligible compared to the trillion dollar rescue packages designed to save financial institutions and stimulate economies in the imperial world.

In the longer term, investment in agricultural development in food-insecure countries is essential. As FAO’s Mr. Diouf said, “”Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome poverty and hunger and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth.”

Agriculture will need to double food production in 40 years but in a way that reduces its big environmental impacts on a changing climate.

We have doubled production before but in ways that use more water, more land, and more fertilizer. Agriculture hasn’t always been as soft on the environment as we will need to be in the future. From hereon, ecological agriculture is key. We must never think of operating apart from but always as part of nature.

WHAT IS A FOOD SECURE ECONOMY?

First of all it is one that is engaged in agricultural transformation.

What is meant by agricultural transformation?

It is the shift from subsistence-oriented production, no matter how seemingly modernized in

tools, to market-oriented production, i.e. to secure systems of exchange (e.g. long-term contracts), no matter how less advanced in field technology.

Not production, but post-production defines agricultural modernization.

This means integrating agriculture with other sectors of the economy – such as transportation, education, construction – ironically making the economy relatively less agriculturally oriented but with a food system that grows in an absolute sense and generates important growth linkages.

This outlook takes into account in agriculture and food both on-farm and off-farm elements, both production and post-production or even pre-next-production processes.

The idea is to help both producer and consumer develop low-costs means of exchange, thus ensuring the miracle of increased productivity AND decreases in the real price of food to consumers.

A disorderly, “chamba-chamba” system of food production and distribution is the real cause of food insecurity.

We have traditionally focused almost all our efforts on better farm-level technologies. We brag about Los Banos. We are proud of all our graduates teaching Asia Pacific to produce. This is an undeniable fact.

But to attain food security, that is not enough. What is needed is increased productivity throughout the food system; that is, improved marketing with increased access to knowledge systems of the wider world than just the immediate subsistence ambit; improved storage and processing, and input delivery technologies and institutions.

In sum:

What we should establish is a food system that helps people help themselves, true enough, either directly or through income generation (jobs creation).

The food system must produce affordable new products and services in response to urbanization and income growth. Over-investment in any one item may lead to high costs and thus slow down economic growth that in turn leads to decreased incomes and chronic hunger.

Chronic hunger is a problem of low real incomes, in both rural and urban areas. Thus we need to increase real incomes and expand employment. This is best done through a structural transformation of the economy integrating agriculture with other sectors. Crucial to this transformation is awareness, knowledge, information – the AMS (or Agricultural Marketing Service).

How will the AMS function? What should be its programs? It will have to focus on activities that make marketing more orderly and efficient, competitive and fair. As the process of moving food and farm products from producer to consumer becomes complex, the producer’s knowledge of the consumer’s demand must become simply accurate and up-to-date.

The producer must be informed ahead – what to plant, how much to plant, where, on what soil, when, what prices to expect, where to bring his produce fast. Thus, the AMS pays attention to who needs what and how much; provides risk management information and analysis, price outlook information, farm financial analysis – the like.

And because information is tendentious to action, the AMS produces: not just an electronic daily, or a weekly magazine, a monthly review or an annual report but also and even an hourly bulletin and up-to-the-minute flash reports.

Additionally, it intervenes in market linkages, mobilizing both government and private entities to that purpose.

The USA, the PRC, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, ROC Taiwan and all of the EU – to mention a few – all have organized their food systems with an AMS for a “pituitary gland”, i.e. providing the mechanism for feedback, to regulate, to monitor, to link the various levels of activity in the total organism – in short to create a food system that can, because all the stakeholders are aware and take part.

The Philippines is the SMS or TEXT capital of the planet. There is simply no excuse for ignorance. On the contrary, the CARP, the AFMA, what have you – there are enough excuses to succeed if clear thinking can be attained by that newly announced government-private initiative that can map out what needs to be done, and done quickly – with the purest of intentions, and therefore, too, with the real power of serious intent.

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Palace defends Gonzales’ DND appointment

Malacañang today said the track record and government service of National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales will serve him well as the acting Secretary of National Defense.

In a radio interview over DZRB Radyo ng Bayan, Presidential Spokesperson for Economic Affairs Gary Olivar said Gonzales will assume the post effective tomorrow to allow Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. to focus on his campaign for the 2010 presidential elections.

He added the Armed Forces of the Philippines looks forward to working with Gonzales.

Olivar also defended Gonzales from critics who claim the new defense chief is involved in human rights-related cases.

Olivar said there is no case involving Gonzales among the 253 extra-judicial killings being handled by the Department of Justice.

This is not the first time Gonzales holds the top defense post.

In 2007, before Teodoro was appointed to the post, he was designated officer-in-charge of the Department of National Defense. (PND)

NSA Gonzales to take Gibo’s place in DND

Malacañang has tapped National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales to replace Gilberto Teodoro Jr. as head of the Department of National Defense effective this coming Monday.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said Teodoro, the administration presidential bet for 2010, will formally turn over his DND post to Gonzales at simple rites Monday.

“Sa ngayon ang maaring ilagay na kapalit ni Sec. Teodoro si Norberto Gonzales, na national security adviser (We have appointed Gonzales, who is national security adviser, as the replacement for Secretary Teodoro),” Ermita said in an interview on dzRH radio.

For his part, Teodoro made the rounds of military camps in Mindanao early Saturday, bidding farewell to government troops there.

A report on government-run dzRB radio said Teodoro personally flew a C-130 cargo plane from Manila to Zamboanga where he visited the Western Mindanao Command (WesMinCom).

“We cannot call ourselves a country if we cannot enforce the law,” he told the troops.

The dzRB report said Teodoro was to proceed to a military camp in Cebu after his WesMinCom visit.

Ermita, in explaining the Palace’s choice of Gonzales, said the national security adviser had acted as officer-in-charge of the DND until Teodoro’s appointment in August 2007.

“’Di siya baguhan sa position na yan at malawak ang karunungan ni Sec. Gonzales sa defense matters, kaya siya ang matatalaga na Secretary of National Defense sa Lunes (Gonzales is no stranger to the post. He is also knowledgeable about defense matters so he will head the department),” he said.

Ermita, who is party president of the administration Lakas-Kampi-CMD, also said he will officiate the turnover rites at the DND on Monday.

Last week, Teodoro said he will resign from his post November 16 so he can concentrate on his stint as administration standard bearer.

Defending Edu

Meanwhile, Ermita defended the administration party’s choice of Teodoro’s running mate Eduardo “Edu” Manzano, who he said is no stranger to public service.

He said Manzano, who was proclaimed as the administration’s vice presidential bet Friday, boasts of a record in public service aside from his stint as an actor and television host.

“Pag tayo pumili ng tatakbo sa mataas na position kailangan ang taong alam nating may kakayahan, katangian at intelligence at track record na di baguhan (When we select candidates for high office, we know the candidate has to have talent and intelligence and a track record),” he said.

Ermita said Manzano had served as vice mayor of Makati City and as chairman of the Optical Media Board.

But he also pointed out Manzano has “winnability” because of voters’ awareness of him.

He also said Manzano will have no problem in his campaign, as he will have the full support of the Lakas-Kampi-CMD.

“Di siya iiwanan, tutulungan talaga, makakasiguro si Edu di siya pababayaan ng administration party (We will not abandon him. Edu can be assured of the administration party’s support),” he said. – GMANews.TV

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/176941/nsa-gonzales-to-take-gibos-place-in-dnd#

Teodoro defends incoming DND chief Gonzales

Outgoing Defense chief Gilberto Teodoro Jr. on Sunday assured that protecting human rights would remain the utmost priority of the department even under its newly appointed head, Norberto Gonzales.

Teodoro, who will be turning over the post to Gonzales on Monday, was reacting to the detractors of the incoming Defense chief, most of them party-list leaders wary of extra-judicial killings allegedly perpetrated by the military.

“We have human rights programs and enforcement. I think that will not change,” Teodoro said.

The Department of National Defense (DND) has supervisory powers over the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), which militant organizations have linked to numerous abductions and summary executions in the past.

Party-list group group Bayan Muna believes that with Gonzales as Defense chief, the military will be “given more leeway to continue this murderous policy.”

In a statement, Bayan Muna noted Gonzales’ knack of lumping legal mass organizations with the communist movement “and making its leaders and members targets for extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.”

Among those being blamed in the military are the disappearance of peasant leader Jonas Burgos in April 2007, and the abduction and torture of Filipino-American activist Melissa Roxas last May 19.

The military has denied involvement in abductions and summary executions.

Gabriela party-list Rep. Liza Maza said Gonzales’ appointment may pave the way for the military involvement in cheating in next year’s presidential elections. “His appointment six months before the elections is a foreboding sign,” she said.

But Teodoro, who quit the Defense post to prepare for his presidential bid in the 2010 elections, urged Gonzales’ detractors to give him a chance.

“He is the choice of the President. He had served as DND secretary before, a civilian. That is the choice of the President and we must support her choice,” he said.

Prior to his reappointment as DND chief, Gonzales has been President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s national security adviser. – GMANews.TV