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15 Comments »

1. Joel Garduce Said,

   October 14, 2008 @ 11:20 am

   I’m offering my newest note on Facebook, featuring the newly-issued statement of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) on the US and Global Economic and Financial Crisis, as my humble contribution to today’s Blog Action Day focus on poverty. I posted the note since Monday, October 13. Kudos to your efforts on this!

2. Cry Poverty — With Style Said,

   October 14, 2008 @ 1:01 pm

   [...] in cooperation with Blog Action Day 2008 – Philippines Share This [...]

3. Fitz Said,

   October 14, 2008 @ 1:01 pm

   Posted!

4. C Militante Said,

   October 14, 2008 @ 5:48 pm

   Ang bailout na pinagkasunduan ng G7, sa pangunguna ng Estados Unidos, ay bailout para sa mga malalaking negosyante/kapitalista, upang harapin ang krisis ng kapitalismo. Hindi ito tunay at makatarungang pagharap at paglutas sa suliranin at hamon ng kahirapan, na mas marami ang nakakaranas.

   Maisama sana sa kampanya ang tunay na ‘bailout for poverty.’Para sa bansang tulad ng Pilipinas, ang mas malaking krisis para sa nakararami ay kawalan ng sapat na pagkain o kakayahan na magkaroon ng pagkain.

   Isang panawagan mula sa mga taga-Mindanao:

   Task Force Food Sovereignty (TFFS) position
   on increased subsidy for small farmers, and debt moratorium
   Submitted to the House of Representatives 09 October 2008

   We, members of the Task Force Food Sovereignty, urge our honorable members of the House of Representatives to increase state subsidy for agriculture and to suspend foreign debt service payments in the midst of global food, fuel and financial crises.

   In view of the ongoing deliberations on the 2009 national budget, we demand that substantial government funds be invested in economic services and activities that will generate more employment, increase farm productivity and enable the country to achieve food self-sufficiency in the near-term.

   The continuing rise in food and fuel prices will certainly increase the number of hungry Filipinos. The financial crisis is leading to a global economic recession where forecasts of factory closures including decreased trade will render more Filipinos jobless in the next few months. This may mean more hunger and impoverishment for an increasing percentage of our population.

   We believe that the 2009 national budget is an opportunity for Congress to confront squarely the “3F” crises, as Rep. Edcel Lagman puts it, and avert the damaging impacts on the economy especially on the welfare of the poor.

   Food self-sufficiency is of paramount importance for the Filipino people today. The country cannot rely on importing rice to meet the food needs of our people. First, the international supply is thin and prices are rising. Second, the financial crisis will result in a credit crunch that will constrain us from further borrowing in order to import rice. Third, as the global recession results in decreased volumes of traded goods, the Philippines will face the prospect of declining export revenues. With increasing import bills, our economy will stand on shaky grounds. Finally, hunger and food insecurity are the consequences of increasing import dependency.

   In order to achieve food sufficiency, we propose that Congress allocates additional P61 billion for agriculture. These allocations include: P16 billion for the improvement and repair of existing irrigations systems servicing 268,000 hectares of land; P45 billion to open and irrigate new areas totaling 150,000 hectares; and, P17 billion palay procurement fund. The proposed amount excludes the P17-billion irrigation budget already earmarked in the 2009 budget.

   The government should fully restore or repair National Irrigation Authority’s estimate of about 368,000 hectares of unproductive rice lands due to inoperative irrigation systems. According to Department of Agriculture, irrigation systems for the 100,000 of the 368,000 has. have been targeted already for 2008. Thus, for 2009, TFFS proposes that the remaining 268,000 hectares for irrigation improvement be targeted. This requires a total of P16 billion at an estimated investment of P60,000 per hectare cost of improvement and repair.

   Another P45 billion is needed to open and irrigate new areas totaling 150,000 hectares (about 10% only of the 1.5 million hectares potentially irrigable as of now). This is based on a conservative estimate of P300,000 per hectare investment for new irrigation systems.

   As a result of these public investments, we will have a total of 418,000 hectares of productive rice lands producing an average of 80 cavans of palay per cropping, at 60 percent recovery, this is translated to 40 million cavans of rice in one year (2 croppings) or 2,006,400 metric tons of rice per year. This will surely solve our deficit of more than 2 million metric tons of rice annually!

   However, with domestic rice trade manipulated by local traders and lenders to the detriment of small farmers who constantly face low farm gate prices particularly during harvest season, government may need also to shore up its funds for procuring palay during these times. TFFS proposes that NFA grants a price subsidy of P17.34 billion to enable the NFA to buy palay from farmers at P17 per kilogram. This will absorb or procure only about 6% of the total estimated annual palay production (based on 17 million metric tons rice output of 2008) – which is still considerably below even the de minimis of 10% for price support obligated by the WTO and even way below the support given by Thailand to its rice farmers. Over the last five years, NFA palay procurement has absorbed only less than 1% of the total palay production in the country. With these new funds, the government will have the opportunity to correct its long years of neglect of the rice sector.

   We strongly believe that this proposal will not only ensure rice self-sufficiency for the country, but will also enable 4 million rice farmers and farm workers to realize fair price and reasonable income from rice farming and thus inject savings into the local economy and spur more value-adding economic activities such as processing and trading that could generate additional employment and strengthen our rural economies.

   Thus, for a total of P61 billion pesos, the Philippines may have the opportunity to solve its perennial rice crisis – funds which can be sourced from suspending our external debt payments for 2009!

5. Gabriel Bourne Said,

   October 14, 2008 @ 6:49 pm

   I’m offering a simple solution to the massive grinding poverty. A program so simple that it can be understood even by fifth graders and can be run by high school students. We have already discussed this to some top government leaders but was set aside maybe because we’re just nobody.
   The reason why we came to them is because they are influential leaders and they can lead group of people who will listen to them. We’ve already explained that what this program need are group of people, not some large sum of money to run the said program.
   Said formula was discovered by one of our constituents when he worked in the UN Office here in Manila and was later developed by our group to fit in the current social conditions.
   We need your attention so we can start the said program and help millions of us, Filipinos uplift our standard of living. Please send you email to gabriel.bourne@yahoo.com.
   Help us work this out, help every Filipino.

6. kouji haiku Said,

   October 14, 2008 @ 7:55 pm

   already posted my contribution to blog action day 2008: poverty.

7. Louie Jon Sanchez Said,

   October 14, 2008 @ 10:21 pm

   http://louiejonsanchez.blogspot.com/2008/10/memos-on-poverty-and-imagination.html

   Memos on Poverty and the Imagination
   Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 No Comments
   Labels: Arts

   In line with Blog Action Day 2008’s call on poverty alleviation and on discussions and stories about overcoming it, the Pilgrim is gives a “little lecture” on how poverty figures in the Filipino imagination, and how this same imagination reflects the current state of the nation.

   The first time I watched Lino Brocka’s Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon), an adaptation of Edgardo Reyes’ popular novel in Liwayway, I myself was fascinated by the bluntness of realities depicted by the film. The story is allegorical, and in fact very much in tune with its own days of disquiet (it is known to have added so many things, like the rallies against President Marcos, and many others not in the novel). You have there a woman, a beloved named Ligaya Paraiso, whose name carries everything we all yearn to achieve, or to be gifted with in the more Christian sense, towards the end of life’s journeys. But the surroundings, and the main character, Manila, shows the complete contrast of happiness and all things edenic. Ligaya, like many other barrio lasses in lots of Filipino stories, was forced to find a better future in Manila, only to be enslaved by a Chinese businessman who found and saved her from a sex den. Her barrio lover, Julio Madiaga, followed and sought her in the city, and was consequently caught in the urban quagmire, which first claimed the life of Ligaya, and in the last frame, his very own.

   The quietude of countryside, continuously portrayed as slow and unproductive, is the ideal and romantic space being deserted by the characters in search for better opportunities. This classic film however magnified the ironic darkness that is the city, by showing its decay, and how everything it touches dies. As a Third World testament, Maynila is not only allegory, but also an elegy to a country buried under poverty. The rawness of the film, the blood and gore, and the utter anguish and disillusionment of the characters which led to their deaths echo the cries for help of many Filipinos who could not save themselves from the shambles of being poor. Decades after, Maynila’s imagery could still be found all around us. And it seemed to have worsened. Literature, and more so, art, which are not mere reflections of life, but embodiments of life itself, has never gone wrong in imagining the realities. As if it had a vision of things to come, literature, in both Maynila the film and Maynila the novel, had shown us that the likes of Ligaya and Julio would never die. In Maynila’s time, poverty might have become an enterprise, and an entertainment idea that sells like hot cakes in international film festivals. But the subtle commentary says it all, and perhaps this is one reason why Clodualdo “Doy” del Mundo, Jr., the mind behind the Maynila screenplay decided to add a sequel, Aliwan Paradise, where Ligaya and Julio still lives and struggles, and are turned into objects of entertainment. Popular culture has perpetrated this attitude towards poverty through other media, most especially, in television, where feudalistic order is still persists, and where the likes of Marimar suffer in the hands of landlords only to be redeemed by deus ex machina and glamor. Remember that she also left her home, the beach, another face of the rural, in order to fulfill her destiny. These plots will keep on hunting us, unless we get to the root of the problem.

   Despite the Philippine government’s report that the country shares the economic health being enjoyed by the Asian region, in the face of an impending economic depression in the West, popular surveys still affirm that a big number of Filipinos feel that they are poor. With no where to turn to (the government is corrupt, the system is corrupt and moral values are corrupt), these people make both ends meet to survive. Some of them, like Ligaya and Julio, troop to the urban centers to try their luck. This diaspora has already crossed the borders of the local, with the continuous deployment of Filipino manpower in the global arena. They too have been lured by the city lights of urbanity which has taken different forms today. Day by day, people flock the offices of the Philippine Overseas Employment Authority, searching for the elusive but promising job abroad. Poverty is forcing thousands of Filipinos to leave behind their families to work away from home.

   Art has also imagined their “adventures” as new heroes (bagong bayani, Overseas Contract Workers, Overseas Filipino Workers, and most recently, expats) in different works of literature and yes, films. Vilma Santos’ Anak is one great testament to the challenges faced by domestic helpers in Hong Kong. Sharon Cuneta’s latest flick Caregiver talks about how life in the country forces even middle class individuals to undertake some necessary sacrifices and risks in First World Europe. And Before all these, we had Nora Aunor’s ‘Merika, and yes, her landmark in all OFW films, The Flor Contemplacion Story, where she portrayed the martyrdom of the Singapore domestic helper who was convicted of murdering a fellow Filipina. The fact that people are still away, or are looking forward to leaving for greener pastures is a reality that really bites. Art, and even most recent novels, like Alvin Yapan’s Ang Sandali ng Mga Mata, bravely discuss these stories because we seem to be still blinded by dollar remittances that surge during the holidays, or the bravery of Filipinos in hijacked ships at the tip of South Africa. We should never be proud that our countrymen are not here. We should be ever indignant, the way we usually do whenever we are ostracized in foreign TV dramas or comedies. Art will never stop exposing our poverty, and the presence of OFW films is not actually a good sign.

   Art sits in the realm of the imagination and it will always reveal what it sees. Its only politics is the politics of the truth, which in our plane is most of the time a bitter pill to take. When we stop to imagine, it dies. It’s a good thing that the Filipino imagination, as embodied by its art forms, are never impoverished. Poverty in itself makes it rather fertile and provides for artists a rich mine of material for works that could truly transform, and not only reiterate the complexity of human existence, and the many absurdities and estrangements it carries with it.

   Poverty as imagined must not only remain as a static object. It must transcend discussions of beauty and irony. It is imagined by art for us, to wake us up, to shake up our stasis. It is meant to move us, so that we may always strive to search for the common good. The imagination fails when it is not able to change, and it is very integral for any society, because it is the repository of the collective dreams and hopes of the people who share and participate in its creation. Benedict Anderson has already taught us the notion of the “imagined community” and how we are being ruminated as a nation in various texts and contexts. To answer poverty, I’m offering art, and the imagination to be the ghost in the machine. Art and artists must make use of the imagination to not only create but to begin the change. They must remain courageous and steadfast in saying the truth, no matter how painful it is, and wherever it brings them. Poverty is a result of the many lies the powerful and influential create, at the expense of the needy. Thus, We must never fail to imagine, nor let imagination fail. It is our only hope in fully being free from poverty.

8. Poverty Said,

   October 14, 2008 @ 11:29 pm

   i can`t grab some buttons.
   i am a poor boy

9. Jess Beltran Said,

   October 15, 2008 @ 2:20 am

   http://sportsalchemist.com/?p=6
   Poverty and boxing…

10. Sir Martin Said,

    October 15, 2008 @ 5:51 am

    Here’s my part:
    http://martinperez.asia/2008/10/15/the-prince-and-the-povert/

    And one of my students too:
    http://pisayvoices.com/2008/10/15/of-dota-and-poverty/

11. Bloggers Kapihan Leads Blog Action Day on Poverty in the Philippines | The Manila Blog Times Said,

    October 15, 2008 @ 8:52 am

    [...] said that the Blog Action Day 2008 is open to all bloggers, regardless of age, gender and creed. “We urge bloggers to take time [...]

12. Kaiser Fernandez Said,

    October 16, 2008 @ 12:59 am

    My part.

    http://kaiserfernandez.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/poverty-during-christmas/

    I attached the button I got from the international site.

13. ian Said,

    October 16, 2008 @ 1:00 am

    sharing what i posted for BAD 2008- Less for oneself, more for others, enough for all =]

14. Kaiser Fernandez Said,

    October 16, 2008 @ 1:04 am

    Poverty,

    You can just save the image to your computer. Upload an image in your post using that saved image.

    If you want, you can right-click on the button and click copy link location and attach it to your image in your post, so that it links back to http://blogactionday2008.bloggerskapihan.com/

15. Brandon Lee Said,

    October 16, 2008 @ 9:10 am

    In honor of all the real modern day heroes who are the modern day slaves, to Mr. James Balao, and in memory of Ka Bel…. We write with passion because we believe there is a better way to live a better system for life.

    Poverty is but a symptom of capitalism. We live in a sewer sort of like like Russia before the Revolution or Cuba before the revolution. This sewer is rampant with excess individualism, excess waste, promotion of a tourist mentality that promotes prostitution, and commercialism. We the people, are ready for change.

    Brandon

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