Archive for November 2014

MIRRORING THE PEOPLE’S WILL

        In 1986, when radio was the fastest means of communicaton, Cardinal Jaime Lachico Sin used Radio Veritas to call out freedom-loving Filipinos to topple the martial-law regime of President Ferdinand Marcos and to install Corazon Aquino as his successor. Later, he was again considered a charismatic leader of the Filipino people in the 2001 EDSA Revolution that ousted President Joseph Estrada.
        On January 17, 2001, during the impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, his loyalists in the Philippine Congress voted to set aside key evidence against him. Less than two hours after the decision, activists, with the help of forwarded text messages, were able to organize a protest at major crossroads in Manila. Over the next few days, over a million people responded. The public’s ability to coordinate such a massive and rapid response – close to seven million text messages were sent that week – so alarmed the country’s legislators that they reversed course and allowed the evidence to be presented. … The event marked the first time that social media had helped force out a national leader. On January 20, 2011, President Estrada resigned.
        The first widely recognized use of social media as a tool of political change occurred in Moldova in 2009. Activists used Facebook, LiveJournal (an electronic diary service/social network), and Twitter to organize protests and bring attention to the political unrest in the former Soviet republic.
        Results of past upheavals in the Arab world highlight the important role of social media.  Social media is less effective for political change in repressive regimes, but can be highly effective in countering the dictates of biased media blocks in democratic states.
   
Social Media’s Role
        Manuel Castells has conceptualized how new network configurations can lead to new political movements by allowing previously disconnected, undeveloped political identities to take shape and rise to a prominent position (Castells). This is particularly applicable to Arab countries where religions and ethnic divides previously prevented networking. “Many Arab regimes banned the creation of political parties and limited the right to associate or create civil rights groups. This meant that there was little space where religious, ethnic, and cultural groups could meet and interact. … But social media has helped such groups discover one another and break the psychological barrier of fear between them” (“Social Media Creating Social Awareness”).
        Political discussion in blogs presaged the turn of popular opinion in both Tunisia and Egypt. In Tunisia, conversations about liberty, democracy and revolution on blogs and on twitter often immediately preceded mass protests” (“New Study Quantifies”).
        Blogging is a way to give readers information – much better than putting up posters or relying on printed broadsheets. It also conveys to members the highly motivating realization that they have big numbers – people who know their pro-democracy Facebook group has 70,000 members will be much more excited and less fearful than people unaware they are part of a big group. And it is an efficient way to transfer skills and information” (Rosenberg).
        One of the leading social media movement proponents in the US is New York University professor Clay Shirky, author of 'Here Comes Everybody'. He believes that “the more promising way to think about social media is as long-term tools that can strengthen civil society and the public sphere” and “social media can compensate for the disadvantages of undisciplined groups by reducing the costs of coordination. Larger, looser groups can now take on some kinds of coordinated action, such as protest movements and public media campaigns that were previously reserved for formal organizations. For political movements, one of the main forms of coordination is what the military calls ‘shared awareness,’ the ability of each member of a group to not only understand the situation at hand, but also understand that everyone else does too. Social media increase shared awareness by propagating messages through social networks. Political culture heightens the conservative dilemma by providing cover for more political uses of social media. Tools specifically designed for dissident use are politically easy for the state to shut down, whereas tools in broad use become much harder to censor without risking politicizing the larger group of otherwise apolitical actors” (Shirky). Regime shutdowns, which technologically savvy protestors have proven to be fairly adept at subverting, alert the international community to problems within countries.
        “New media can have an impact by helping to transform individuals and give them new competencies that empower them in politics. This can be something as simple as taking a picture or a video with a smartphone, uploading that image of that footage to YouTube” A second impact is “the way that new media draws external attention from citizens and governments outside the country or the region to that country or region to the place that is experiencing protest or conflict”. In this sense, social media are a megaphone. “It is difficult to prove that communication via new media or social media is actually what brings people to the streets, especially in societies which have relatively low degrees of Internet penetration and Internet access. Perhaps the best illustration of the threat this information poses to authoritarian governments is their reaction to it, states that have made a number of efforts to rein in speech and Internet”.

Conclusion
        Before the advent of social media, traditional media played an important role in a democratic society. “The media is often referred to as the fourth estate, more or less on the same altitude as the classical democratic powers of the judiciary, the executive and the legislative.” Its role is supposed to enlighten and inform the citizens so that they are in the position to make reasonable political decisions.
        Columnist Paulynn Sicam aptly said, “The bad old days seem benign compared to what we see today. There is manipulation because there is a lot of money to be made.”
        For all that it does, social media is no “silver bullet” when it comes to political change. “The use of social media tools – text messaging, e-mail, photo-sharing, social network, blogging and the like – does not have a single preordained outcome. Therefore attempts to outline their effects on political action are too often reduced to dueling anecdotes”.  Factors that seem to impact its successful use include the size, ethnic diversity, and education levels of the population, the existence of a modern telecommunications infrastructure, and the amount of censorship used by existing regimes. Social media has limited impact at best on an important factor affecting nascent revolutions – a regime’s willingness to use force to squelch protests. Egyptian protests grew because the Army would not turn against citizens engaged in peaceful protest. Iranian protests petered out when leaders used force to crack down on those speaking out, both in public and in the cybersphere.

        Moving forward, the activities of social movements will gain influence only to the extent that they are able to expose the biased opinions of official media and prevent the manipulation of political processes by organized political groups. Social media should therefore be able to weed out the chaff from the grain among journalists. 

Leave a comment

GOOD COUNTRY

        There are many surprising concepts that can be lifted from the results of Good Country Index of Arnold Anholt. Using a wide range of data from the U.N. and other international organisations, he started a very large-scale study that polls a very large sample of the world's population, a sample that represents about 70 percent of the planet's population, which answered a series of questions about how they perceive other countries. And this study over the years has grown to be a very, very large database of about 200 billion data points tracking what ordinary people think about other countries and why.

        The original idea of the Good Country Index is pretty simple: to measure what each country on earth contributes to the common good of humanity, and what it takes away. The findings are therefore based on the majority views of the citizens of only one superpower left on the planet and that is the seven billion people, the seven billion of us who cause all our problems, the same seven billion, by the way, who will resolve them all.

        The index pointed out Ireland as the “goodest country”.

        But to us Pinoys this is of little consequence. Our interest on the study should be on matters that made Ireland the “goodest”, so we can determine how we can the attract the world’s attention.

        If a country has a great, positive image, like Germany has or Sweden or Switzerland, everything is easy and everything is cheap. You get more tourists. You get more investors. You sell your products more expensively. If, on the other hand, you have a country with a very weak or a very negative image, everything is difficult and everything is expensive. So governments care desperately about the image of their country, because it makes a direct difference to how much money they can make, and that's what they've promised their populations they're going to deliver.

        This concept is also applicable to individuals. If someone has a very negative image, others will shy away from him/her. And this image can be built only by the individual, because one who looks inwards have a mind that microscopes- talks without listening. He/she does not have a mind that telescopes. A mind that telescopes considers others around him/her. And thus opens up a two-way street.

        Once citizens of a country radiate a good positive image, they can make demands on the choice of their leaders, on their employers, on society and on ourselves. It’s a long but attainable process.

        At any rate, our country placed 114th “goodest” country in the index. Syria is 113th, while Iran placed 115th. We got positive points due to our International students, Creative goods exports, Peacekeeping troops, Charity Giving, Biocapacity reserve (2009), Open trading, and Food aid. We are therefore presumed takers, not givers in the other fields.

        So, let’s work on ourselves first.


http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_anholt_which_country_does_the_most_good_for_the_world?language=en

Leave a comment

POST-PNOY SCENARIO

The article of Carmen Pedrosa entitled “Bongbong and the Marcos legacy of impunity” in Philippine Star this morning is a real eye-opener.

She says that the real test of how seriously Filipinos want to reform our country will come when Bongbong Marcos runs for president in 2016. She avers that currently the Marcoses are making a comeback stealthily and shrewdly, seriously threatening our common stand for reforms against corrupt politics that has been the bane of our continuous poverty and the backwardness of our nation.

The Binay-Roxas intramurals is but a smokescreen to the real battle between two possible third forces -— the return of the Marcoses or the triumph of Bayanko aimed at upholding the people’s sovereignty.
_____________________________________________________________________________

There is no mistaking that Bongbong has the logistics and funding of the Marcos hidden wealth.

Why does this impunity persist and continues unabated depriving us of better lives and a well-run country.  There are many but the most crucial is this: up to today, the Marcoses and other identified corruptors who came after them remain unpunished and the hidden billions from graft and corruption are largely unrecovered. The question is why? Because those in a position to dig up this mess would prefer the status quo in the hope of surreptitiously finding a way to get their hands on these treasures themselves. Greed is still at the forefront and the sooner we get over it the better our chances for a great nation commensurate to our potential.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Members of the emerging third force, Bayanko, a movement for moral ascendancy in governance and politics, calls on all Filipinos to get into the bandwagon of true reform as the only way forward. It is a collective authority with members working in different sectors. There is a core group of progressive bishops and the laity. The group has been meeting for a while  putting together ideas how the Philippines can achieve good governance by amending our constitution.

How are these alternatives possible? Let us consider the following numbers:

Leave a comment

COLD OR ALLERGY

        I don’t remember having allergies in my younger years. But as I get old, I seem to be starting to have an endless cold. Or I may be developing allergies of some kind or even asthma.
        I'm wondering if these "colds" are really dust allergies or some other allergies. How can I tell?
        
James M. Steckelberg, M.D. of Mayo Clinic comments.

        If you tend to get "colds" that develop suddenly and occur at the same time when the rains come, it's possible that you actually have seasonal allergies. Although colds and seasonal allergies may share some of the same symptoms, they are very different diseases and we need to respond in different ways.
        Common colds are caused by viruses, while allergies are immune system responses triggered by exposure to an allergen. Treatment of a common cold may include rest, pain relievers and over-the-counter cold remedies, such as decongestants. 
        Treatment of allergies however is a bit more complicated and may include over-the-counter or prescription antihistamines, nasal steroid sprays and decongestants, and avoidance of exposure to the particular allergen, if you already know.

Symptom check: Is it a cold or allergy?
Symptom
Cold
Allergy
Cough
Usually
Sometimes
General aches and pains
Sometimes
Never
Fatigue
Sometimes
Sometimes
Itchy eyes
Rarely
Usually
Sneezing
Usually
Usually
Sore throat
Usually
Sometimes
Runny nose
Usually
Usually
Stuffy nose
Usually
Usually
Fever
Rarely
Never
Skin rash and itching
Rarely
Usually

Adapted from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, 2008

Leave a comment

Search

Swedish Greys - a WordPress theme from Nordic Themepark. Converted by LiteThemes.com.