Philippine Land Grab – disguised as eco-tourism
Jacques Cousteau the famous explorer and conservationist once described Palawan as the last frontier. For good reason. Here was an archipelago of outstanding natural beauty, and he, more than most, understood that protection was the legacy for future generations.
So how does big businesses, and big property developers, justify their mercenary exploitation of the unspoilt?
To them, natural beauty is a golf course waiting to happen, a resort complex, and an emporium squatted by retail multi-nationals selling designer goods.
They do it by dressing it up as sustainable eco-tourism. The catch all phrase. The tart with a heart. Conservationist capitalism. Mercenary magnanimity. Philippine Profitable Philanthropy.
Ayela Land Inc (ALI) intend to build (purely for altruistic motives of course) a “100-hectare development that shall feature hotels and resorts, tourism and commercial establishments and residential communities with world-class amenities that blend with the natural landscape.”
These are not Cinderella’s, but the ugly sisters which squeeze their feet into jewelled slippers. Convinced that any fit is better than none, and an ounce of blood is worth shedding – even if a scar is the result. After all surely any commercial enterprise which aids the economy is better than none? Right? Wrong!
100 hectares is a substantial chunk of real estate, the first 25 hectares is to become the Lio Beach Village “featuring bed and breakfasts, resorts, shops and dining establishments amid civic spaces” which will be developed by Ten Knots Development Corp, which just happens to be a subsidiary of Ayala Land Inc. (The parent. Keep it in the family!)
This has naturally been lauded and applauded by the Philippines Department of Tourism, whose secretary Ramon R. Jimenez Jr. describes it as “a new jewel of sustainable tourism in the Philippines.” Note the word sustainable – synonymous with ecology and conservation. These are the key words which mask the reality. Cousteau will be turning in his grave.
The problem with the Philippines however is that in a land with over 7000 islands it’s surprisingly difficult to find a free beach. Most pieces of beach, be it white sand, black sand, or volcanic sand is owned by someone, who charge money just for the privilege of sitting on one. A resort takes away the freedom, and more importantly removes the locals. Especially the fisherman, who will no doubt be expected to pay a premium just to sail out and sail in – with a catch or not!
That’s not progress, that is exploitation, and it is ruthless because it has the support of the government, whose raison d’etre is not sustainability or culture, but greed and the fast buck.
You see, resorts are victims of the global economy i.e. how many bangs for the buck! It’s a volatile and precarious business, and when a downturn happens the infrastructure suffers, people lose jobs (non jobs associated with service: rooms, restaurants, etc totally dependant on the number of visitors) and invariably when the bottom falls out, the land is sold on. It’s a downward spiral, which cuts into the very ecology which was promoted in the first place. The land has been raped and the agriculture such as coconut trees, bananas, and most indigenous farming and fishing are lost.
What the Philippines government should be doing, and is always decidedly incapable of, is investment in the people. Ensuring that they have proper sustainable employment, encouraging and maintaining the skills that have been garnered over a thousand years, and if necessary subsidising them, because investing in the people and caring for their greatest asset – the land and the seas around it – will ensure worth, value and ultimately self sufficiency with profits all round. Technology may be the future, but a reputation of being the call-centre capital of South East Asia doesn’t really cut the mustard. Like India it will only exist for cheap labour and the service industry.
UNESCO have been threatening for the past five years that the famed rice terraces of the Cordilleras are losing their integrity and will inevitably lose their status as a world heritage site. The terraces which are unique, have been farmed and maintained by skilled tribal people for over two thousand years. They argue that “the terraced landscape is highly vulnerable because the social equilibrium that existed in the rice terraces for the past two millennia has become profoundly threatened by technological and evolutionary changes. Rural-to-urban migration processes limit the necessary agricultural workforce to maintain the extensive area of terraces.”
In simple English this means that the young generation are not following in their fathers and forebears footprints and heading to Manila to seek their fortune. Between the lines it also says that this “migration” makes the land redundant, cannot be sustained, not fit for purpose and therefore prime targets for commercial land grabbers. If you want to know what that is and the horrors it produces, just go to the city in the sky: Baguio – where concrete is king.
A responsible government should be sustaining it’s heritage, not destroying it systematically for short term financial profit, nor pandering to wealthy developers whose hearts are purely mercenary, and leave a legacy of shame, exploitation and avarice.
It will get worse before it gets better – but time is running out, and it will have probably ran out before the people of the Philippines wake up – perpetually somnambulist – perpetually sleepwalking – and whilst they sleep, the politicians, the investment bankers, the fund managers and the speculators are wide awake – singing, celebrating and dancing obscenely on the land!
The Great War – A Right Royal War…..
In this centenial decade of WWI, revisionist theorists and historians are keen to highlight the sheer stupidity of it, and argue that it was the crowned heads of Europe who played it out to their own designs.
Others say it was necessary to enter the war to prevent an aggressive Prussian Empire from gaining more power. Both are right – but neither argument makes it right.
My own simplistic view, having read extensively about Queen Victoria is that had she not been such a bunny boiler (as far as her husband Albert was concerned), she wouldn’t have born so many children which she was hell bent to distribute throughout Europe and marry them off.
A consequence was her eldest grandson Willelm II, aka Kaiser Bill, King of Prussia whose bellicose, bombastic impetuousness triggered the bloody war in the first place.
Yes, we all know that the firework was lit by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, but that was an opportunity not to be missed by Bill.
His mother was Victoria’s eldest daughter, Victoria, the Princess Royal. She was married off to his father Prince Frederick William of Prussia who later became German Emperor Frederick III. She became engaged to him when she was 14 years old in 1855 and married him two years later.
For Queen Victoria this was dynastic planning. This planning may have resulted in the deaths of millions.
It’s difficult to track the connections, but take for example that Kaiser Bill’s first cousin was King George V (grandson of V&A and son of Edward VII, Victoria’s eldest son; and his second cousin was Tsar Nicholas II whose wife Alexandra was a granddaughter of…yes you’ve guessed it..Victoria. Her mother, Princess Alice was the second daughter of V&A who married her off to Duke Louis IV of Hesse.
Queen Victoria, rightly or wrongly believed that her children would be instrumental in unifying the European Crown States, and create stability. Today we still have this anachronistic legacy.
The King of Spain, Juan Carlos I is a direct descendent of Victoria. His grandmother was Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg who was..here we go again…a granddaughter of Victoria through her fifth daughter Princess Beartrice. Not only was Eugenie Queen of Spain through marriage to Alfonso XIII, but also first cousin of King George V of the United Kingdom, Queen Maud of Norway, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia (the aforementioned wife of Tsar Nicholas), Queen Marie of Romania, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany (yes, that bloke), Queen Louise of Sweden, and Queen Sophia of Greece. Is it any wonder Europe is in such a mess?
What baffles me about all this, purely from a layman’s perspective, is that back in 1649 during the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell chopped the head off Charles I as a direct reproof of the notion of the divine right of kings. The parliamentarians really didn’t like him waltzing into the House of Commons swanking away. How then, a mere one hundred years ago, did the United Kingdom find itself embroiled in a war which without doubt was a direct result of royalist manipulation and chess playing?
Even today our House of Windsor (formerly known as the house of Saxe-Coburg and changed because of anti-German sentiment in 1917) is directly descended from the matriarch who, having married off her brood, lived the remainder of her life in mourning, was rarely seen, but nevertheless gave her name to an era of extraordinary and unprecedented social change and industrial achievement.
The Great War – the war to end all wars was without question directly or indirectly related to the Royal Families of Europe. The brave men who fought (mine and your relatives in living memory) believed they were fighting for freedom. They will be remembered and never forgotten – but did they really know what they were fighting for? Do we know? Even now? Will we ever?
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Tree Slaughter – More Fun in the Philippines……
“Mile after mile, trees have been felled, and mile after mile those still standing have been marked with the executioners axe – a strip of bark sliced from the trunk – the condemned waiting for death.”
Along the MacArthur Highway, over 2000 Acacia and Mango trees have been destroyed, many more than 100 years old. It is an unprecedented act of vandalism in the name of progress. The Philippines government decreed that the highway needed widening and with ruthless abandon they embarked on a cultural assault, devoid of any regard to heritage.
It matters because it’s not just about trees. It’s about heritage. It’s about a country which shouts loudly about culture, yet is prepared to abandon it in the name of progress. It’s about a country which has a superficial regard to it’s history, and whose slogan to attract the tourist is suffixed with…”it’s more fun in the Philippines”. “Beaches are more fun in the Philippines”, “Shopping is more fun in the Philippines”, “Food is more fun in the Philippines”, Scuba Diving, Bird watching, trekking…they are all “more fun in the Philippines”. “Tree slaughter is more fun in the Philippines!”
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Oyster – the World of Transport for London
I took the car to the garage to have it's exhaust replaced, left it there and returned home by bus.
Upon entering I asked the driver (as I produced some strange metal objects from my pocket) how much to get to my stop?
He looked at me as if I'd just landed from Mars. "Are you paying cash?" he said astonished. I affirmed it. "That's £2.40" he replied, in what was clearly a state of shock. So I gave him £2.50. "Haven't you got the right money?" he grumbled.
"I only want 10p change" I said (I mean it wasn't as if I was giving him a fiver, which he would probably have rejected anyway). So he fumbled around in a little box and produced my 10 pence coin. I asked him if he'd ever heard of the concept of loose change. "Nobody pays by cash any more" he muttered. "Well, I don't get out much" I replied.
Game of Thrones
As usual I have arrived late to the party.
In this instance the "Game of Thrones" which is aired on Sky Atlantic.
I must admit I shy away from mythological fantasy, especially if penned by such questionable luminaries as J R R Tolkien, C S Lewis, and dare I say, J K Rowling. (Notice how each author initialises their moniker!)
So not being a Sky subscriber I was ignorant not only of the TV production but also the author who inspired it – George R R Martin (two initials in that one – must be a winning formula) from his collection of epic novels entitled "A Song of Ice and Fire".
Dan Brown – Inferno
A restaurant chain in the Philippines has reacted with a marketing coup in response to Dan Brown's new novel "Inferno".
Unlike the humourless Francis Tolentino, Chairman of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), who has taken great umbrance to one of the book's characters describing his city as "The Gates of Hell".
Tolentino is upset that a fictional character, in a fictional book, views Manila with such disgust and a place where the traffic jams last for six hours, and where prostitution is rife etc etc.
He has even accessed records from the Philippines Bureau of Immigration and discovered that Brown has never even visited the Philippines.
Spoof Time Magazine Covers fool the Philippines twice in three weeks!
Recently the Philippines Daily Inquirer fell foul of a hoax "Time" magazine cover naming President Aquino as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
They duly tucked their tail between their legs and apologised for being duped.
Yesterday that didn't prevent a plethora of journalists, bloggers, and correspondents failing to learn the same lesson and were duped by a another fake "Time" magazine cover stating that the Philippines was the "most stupid country for electing a 20-year old as a Senator" in the recent mid-term elections.
Mount Mayon erupts – with fatal consequences………
"Mayon volcano is an enigmatic personality. The more she
does this, the more they will come. The more the danger, the more the
tourists."So says Albay Governor Joey Salceda, after Mount Mayon gave a 73-second explosion killing five climbers on 7th May 2013.
The state seismologist said the explosion was triggered when the
rainwater made contact with hot ash deposits on the crater mouth. That makes
sense - a bit like adding water to a sizzling frying pan.
It's rather unfortunate that Governor Salceda couldn't have
chosen his words more appropriately. eg "This is a terrible tragedy. My
sympathies go out to the victims and their families. We will do everything to
learn from this, and investigate how this appalling accident occurred." Ok
– it's a stock response, in the files of
every person in a high position of public service – but not in Salceda's. No, to him it
will bring more tourists. If that’s not what he meant it’s certainly how it
sounded.
Prince Philip in hot water over the Philippines
Prince Philip has hit the headlines again in his own
inimitable style, with what some consider another of his famous gaffes.
Renowned
for his jokey persona he tends to dispel the restrictions of diplomatic speak
and just pops up with the first thing which enters his head.
And why not? He's 91 years old with a great sense of humour.
Some perceive his words as racist or insulting (not normally by those on the receiving end) and it's the media who run with them trying to make
a story out of nothing.
Philip is reported as saying to a Filipina nurse that he
thinks her country must be half empty as most are over here in the UK running the NHS (note he said "running"). I suspect he meant it as a compliment – after all, he spent a lot
of time in hospital since the Queen's Jubilee Pageant on the Thames where he
was getting soaked to the skin and having his royal bollocks frozen off, so he
probably saw first-hand the various nationalities employed as health care
staff, and clearly they made an impression on him.
Janine Tugonon brings the House down!
As if the Philippines House of Representatives didn’t have enough to discuss, they found time recently to suspend business in order to honour Janine Tugonon.
What has the 23 year old achieved in order to earn this prestigious commendation?
Did she win the Nobel Peace Prize? Is she in the vanguard to alleviate poverty? Does she head up a charity to fight world hunger? Has she discovered a cure for malaria? Has she devoted half of her life to campaign on the environment? is she a UNICEF Ambassador?
Sadly none of these things – she has in fact achieved something much more worthwhile, she was the first runner up in the Miss Universe pageant.
Note the term “first runner up” – a euphemism for coming second. Yes, she didn’t even win it!
Ms Tugonon’s claim to fame is that she is a beauty queen.
So beautiful in fact that House Representative Lani Mercado-Revilla of Bacoor City introduced a resolution to honour her, which was easily passed by the lower chamber, resulting in the lawmakers suspending their
sessions in order to meet and applaud her. Apparently her achievement has “earned the admiration of Filipinos around the world”.
What, one wonders, would have happened had she won? No doubt a public holiday would ensue, preceded by President Aquino pinning a medal to her ample bosom.
The proposer (Mrs Mercado-Revilla), other than being a member of the House of Representatives, is also an actress, married to fellow actor and senator Bong Revilla.
Her recent exposure was last December when she became embroiled in the Reproductive Health Bill; appealing for “sobriety to avoid making reckless actions” during one of the proceedings of the Bill (no 4244).
It was notable because she asked for certain portions of the transcript to be removed. She took particular umbrage to the remarks of a fellow representative (Rodante Marcoleta) who said that her husband “is so
fertile that just passing him by can make you pregnant”.
Every Bong is good for a Bang presumably.
Anyway, her emotional dramatic performance didn’t wash with the deputy speaker Lorenzo Tanada III, whom she accused of being arrogant (too bad there isn’t a TV Channel for all this), who was heard to say “I don’t
care if she gets angry, she must learn to follow the rules”.
Since then Marcoleta has apologised for Bong bashing, and Tanada also apologised saying he didn’t mean to hurt Lani’s feelings.
The deputy speaker implied that he was rather tired – having presided for two consecutive days on the RH Bill, “which may have made his tone condescending”.
Since then of course, Lani has popped up again, this time proposing a very important cause – ie recognising the fact that Miss Philippines came second in Donald Trump’s Miss Universe competition (which incidentally was won by Miss USA) in Las Vegas.
(If you are exhausted reading this, I admire your constitution for getting this far, but spare a thought for your humble author who chose to write this stuff.)
What does it all mean? Before I answer that, it’s important to know that I am an advocate for the Filipino people, that I am a concerned observer, and that I care deeply about that country.
But as an intelligent and fair critic, modest and without malice, I fear for the nation because it is led by people who are at best naive or ignorant, and at worst just downright self-serving.
Senators are more likely to be personalities from television and film, or the sporting arena, who rely on the electorate to vote for them because of the image, and not the substance.
There are major issues confronting the Philippines. Corruption, over population, poverty, conservation, exploitation, health care, unemployment, deforestation, marine destruction, deprivation, slums, housing,
terrorism, infrastructure, territorial disputes, and an exported workforce doing menial tasks around the world who are not protected by their government and used and abused, yet still expected to pay their dues to the
state.
The Philippines Tourist Agency proclaims the country as the place to visit, yet fails to mention that there is not one direct flight from Europe, and the last (KLM/Air France – Amsterdam to Manila) has suspended
its service.
It fails to mention that Philippine Airlines (PAL) is not permitted by the European Union to operate in it’s airspace. It fails to mention that PAL is controlled by the huge conglomerate San Miguel Corp.
A brewery controlling the national airline! It’s enough to drive you to drink!
In the meantime that seat of state, with all its incumbency suspends it’s activity to ogle and reward a beauty queen.
It’s as if the Philippine Islands are a mere playground for the elite.
It is in fact the world’s largest and best golf club. Full of privilege for the wealthy and the rest merely wander aimlessly around it seeking the lost balls.
Update: PAL finally met EU status in November 2013 and are now flying direct non stop from London Heathrow to Manila twice a week.
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