Coming next, an Asian country dear to the Philippines (racial similitude), will totally crash around 2017.  That is if the Carrington event NASA predicted in 1963 to happen in 2012 and amended their forecast to 2013, does not happen and overtake that crisis of immense magnitude.

China is not about to give up its bullish growth trend in 2012, but even it too will be affected by world economic shortfalls next year. With Japan and the rest of Asia taking much of the brunt.

The predicted fall of our Asian neighbor is already happening, has been happening and right before our very eyes. Nobody cares to notice.

Perhaps, if you ask Filipinos now living in that place or those back here at home whose relatives have been mercilessly killed, maimed or victimized in one form or another by our neighbor state’s nationals or their transients, without any justice being served against the perpetrators, the instant reaction would be relief.

On the local front, the prognosis is not very bright. It will be a very difficult year, in the economic area for the Philippines. The government is not going to spend money for governance’s sake for reasons that it alone wants to be privy to. Its managers will have to compete with the needs of the taxpayers and contractors, service providers yet there will be very little to partake on.

The promises of funds to the government from outside sources must be actualized and move beyond the pledging sessions. Or they might as well have been mere campaign sloganeering for individuals who have absolutely no stake nor compassion for the country or concern for our collective welfare.

What then becomes of businesses that have suffered enormous losses in this year and in previous years that should have been behind us long ago?

Philippine Air Lines – PAL, for instance, might find it difficult to recover. While it is foolhardy to suggest that the country’s flag carrier file for bankruptcy, PAL will wind up as a basket case.

The hostile treatment by the Partido Manggagawa, Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino, Sanlakas sectoral party, Akbayan sectoral party, Alliance of Philippine Labor, Philippine Air Lines Employees’ Association, Flight Attendants and Stewards Association and many other quarters like Atty. Christian Monsod and Mrs. Winnie Monsod along with their ilk, that seek to drive a knife at Mr. Lucio Tan’s gut will compound matters further.

The PM, BMP, SANLAKAS, ALP, PALEA, FASAP crusade vs. PAL I can understand. But AKBAYAN, the Monsod couple, the silent group that are fighting PAL leaves me completely puzzled. What is in it for them?

Loss of face in the international aviation community after the last strike, the thousands of seat mile back logs of the airline and the continuing legal battle from inferior courts, the Department of Labor and Employment, the National Labor Relations Commission and other fora will greatly diminish the focus and resources of the company.

Our elders used to say, if you don’t succeed at the beginning, try and try again. If you don’t gamble, you do not win.

In all our cases, not to lose will be a miracle. So we lose anyhow and that is a foregone scenario. Yet no gain will come of it. All we have to do is brace ourselves for the impact and face the music.

Unless you have several millions or billions of dollars in your bank account.

Next year, 2012 will be very bad for everyone.  The Eurozone Crisis cannot make life easy for anyone. The United States’ recession, Japan’s post disaster environment, the closure due to flooding of major transnational industries like Honda, computer companies, many others manufacturing in Thailand, the setbacks in Greece that triggered EU’s headaches, and many other global scenarios.

All in all, it is best to enjoy the Christmas this year and New Year’s celebration up to Valentine’s Day! J

Our domestic economic performance is lackluster – to say the least – for the second quarter of 2011.  This is not going to improve next year.  Whatever the positive forecasts of rating organizations like Moody’s, Standard & Poor, etc., nothing can make the charts give a positive reading.

Recently, the national flag carrier experienced a serious setback.  It stands to lose hundreds of millions of pesos or more from the strike of Philippine Air Lines Employees’ Association or PALEA, and the losses will keep coming.  The Flight Attendants’ and Stewards’ Association of the Philippines -  FASAP case in the Supreme Court of the Philippines, appears to be favoring the adversaries of Mr. Lucio Tan and PAL.

When the recent Australian Qantas Air Line lockout happened, the airline naturally became the butt of criticism and its chief executive officer was lambasted in the media for taking such a militant action. In the end, who will win?  Will Qantas grant its three largest unions their demands?  Will the Australian courts award damages to the workers, once they win any case they might file with the courts in Sydney?

In Thailand, workers’ unions in sheer numbers forced an ally of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to resign. A victory for workers, certainly. But what happens thereafter? The sister herself of Thaksin, Ms. Yingluck (Yinglak) Shinawatra, took over the government by winning by a landslide during the elections that followed the forced resignation of former Prime Minister Samak Sundravej.

The solution to Philippine Air Lines troubles will not be forthcoming.  These problems of the airline will reflect the country’s situation in the long run. People taking action out of desperation instead of balanced reasoning. The masses losing their cool.

However, we are forewarned. It will be difficult to sit idly and merely contemplate what is going to happen next. At its worst, this will be allowing the country to sink deeper into the quagmire. The best tact for His Excellency Benigno Aquino III to take is to prepare the country for the onslaught of the economic crisis 2012. He has to visit my bookshop more and read more books instead of just listening to his favorite CDs, maddeningly tinkering with his play stations and toys, shooting paper or metal targets, dating girls — as if, and doing things not presidential. Of course, he’d been advised by others before me. But I’m saying it again nevertheless.

The PAL and PALEA and the customers of the national flag carrier may pray that with the economic catastrophes of 2012 and who knows when it will end(?), the airline will continue instead of die. Or the prayers of PALEA in its case will no longer be heard and granted. PAL can no longer hope for outsourcing and recovering its losses – which it should have done decades ago. The clientele of PAL will sorely miss their rides in the flag carrier.

This Christmas, PAL and PALEA as well as the PAL riding clientele can accommodate a touch of understanding inside their hearts, have more tolerance and not fan anger and negative sentiments further.  Let the Christmas Spirit sink in and perhaps a token here and there of compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, a sense of peace and friendship. Give each other a gift during the season and let’s see what comes next?

Merry Christmas PAL, PALEA and PAL riders!!!  Love to you all!!!

• The first one is 2010 Hazard Mapping and Environment Summit in Manila, on Apr 8-15, 2010.
  
• The other one is the brain child of Arch Angel’s friend, the One Festival, a Rock Concert for the benefit of the victims of Philippine typhoon, earthquakes and tsunami in the ASEAN Region in Rizal Park Grandstand, April 16, 2010.
  

Echoing the call of Arch Angel and friends, we urge the Philippine Government, Asian Governments, combines like the United Nations, ASEAN, financial institutions like World Bank, Asian Development Bank, to support this milestone activity the 2010 Hazard Mapping and Environmental Summit in Manila from the remainder of 2009 up to 2010. The actual date of the event is as mentioned above.

We also encourage everyone to support the One Festival
Live Manila 2010, to generate token financial resources to assist those that were victims to the recent Philippine floods, the tsunami and the earthquakes that rocked many nations in ASEAN just a few days ago.

THE ANNUAL ECOLOGY CRISIS CONFERENCE

Resource Recovery Movement holds the first 2010 Hazards Mapping and Environment Summit (Eco 2010 Summit) in Manila, Philippines. This is ultimately borne about by the tremendous changing of the Philippine landscape and those of other countries in the Pacific Rim in the last few decades. All efforts towards risk mapping in relation to calamities and disasters in the past should now take into consideration the great shifts and transformations in land mass, the enormous amount of rainfall brought about by Climate Change and many new factors that were heretofore not factored into national and sub-national planning by governments as well as even by business establishments and non-government organizations.

Click this link to sign up: Join Resource Recovery Movement HMES 2010!

The 2010 Hazard Mapping and Environmental Summit (HMES) is intended to develop better approaches to mapping risks and dangers to communities in the Philippines and other countries with tropical climates. It takes a cue from the recent experience in China, Indonesia and the Philippines, notwithstanding the previous experiences in Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan where scores of people died due to unforeseen occurrences during the incidence of a natural disaster: earthquake, typhoon, tsunami and other calamities. The databasing, mapping and full coordination of efforts towards use and sharing of a full function GIS on hazards, volcanoes, water, flood, forests in the Philippines and Asia, vulnerability areas, liquefaction potential, crisis and hot spots is long due because of the long-running phenomenon of Climate Change in the planet. This is also significant in that the Philippines, among other countries, lies in the Pacific Rim of Fire where a large number of earthquake faults lie.

The most important value of the conference is to determine the plan and the cost of implementing such a plan to make the Philippines and other participating nations safer from increasingly hazardous calamities.

Note: The organizers reserve the right to make minor changes in the Conference details prior to the actual Event.

HMES 2010 Organizers

ONE FESTIVAL LIVE MANILA 2010

These are the significant details of One Festival Live:

The Event was conceptualized as a music festival, with a Concert and some support activities. A side exhibit on ecology and related subjects is going to be put up by professional event managers for the organizers. As an added feature, separate exhibits for culture, performing arts, similar disciplines with a focus on the global ecology, the Philippine environment, and other side shows will also be part of the undertaking.

This festival, is the culminating Event of the 2010 Hazard Mapping and Environment Summit in Manila. The activity is a Music Festival intended to raise funds for the victims of man-made and natural calamities such as Philippine Typhoons, IDPs in hostilities in various areas in the Philippines, victims of the tsunami in the ASEAN-Pacific Regions, and to support the Private Sector Led database development and the creation of a full-functional integrated geographic information system that will include the ASEAN Flood GIS, Forest GIS, Water GIS, Volcanoes GIS, Earthquake GIS, Typhoon GIS, Political conflicts and hostilities GIS.

As Eliz says, come one and all!  You are all invited!!!

Click here to Join and Sign Up:  OFLM2010 Sign Up

Is the peace process dead? . . .

To create milestones toward consensus, the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church met and formed joint resolutions with leaders of MILF. It was obviously not a mere grand standing act similar to that of mayors, congressmen, governors, vice governors, and all the other shitheads that the entire ecological system is suddenly teeming with. It was a true-to-form reaching out to blaze trails to peace, to refuse to accept the certitude of the defeat of the peace process. Puno and his gang’s blocking notwithstanding, the senators and other malicious trolls’ railroading of an all-out war, regardless. More about this post here…

Speaking of trivia and trivializing…

Blogger Corrimhao apparently does not like Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno. However I learned a new expression that is absolutely unblasphemous, courtesy of dearest corrimhao: susmaryopaze!

Corrimhao’s susmaryopaze Posts:

Peaceful travel in North Cotabato

I like to eat Erap ( excuse me )

Let Us all join hands to

Help Our Muslim Tribes Now!

Not everything is going well at this time in Mindanao. In a recent encounter in Barangay Culambog, Pikit, North Cotabato, one government trooper died and fifteen MILF elements were killed. A lot have things have to be put right. The current troubles in Mindanao must stop. Blogger Girbaudz says:

Portent of War in Mindanao

I shall not venture to give any substantial number of facts except point to some vignettes from the past, existing and current events, statements and discussions about the issue of the government’s peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Click to the linked page here…

On the other hand, the suffering members of tribes in Mindanao (in our own syndicate, we prefer calling our brother and sister Muslims by the sobriquet, Muslim Tribes, instead of just Muslims, to differentiate them from other Islamic communities around the world — some of which consist of the majority population in Islamic states) are not going to get happier. The brief news article below really hit my gut:

Roxas hit for allegedly fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment

By Perseus Echeminada

The Philippine Star

Monday, August 11, 2008 A former Commission on Human Rights (CHR) commissioner hit Sen. Manuel Roxas II over the weekend for allegedly fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment when he announced that Christians in Panay Island are now raising funds to arm their brothers in Mindanao and oppose the creation of an expanded Muslim autonomous region.

Lawyer Nasser Marohomsalic told reporters during the weekly Kapihan sa Sulo Hotel forum in Quezon City last Saturday that high-ranking government officials particularly senators, are unnecessarily raising alarm over the proposed memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain between government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

He said Roxas, who is among the strong advocates against the supposed agreement, is practically agitating anti-Muslim sentiments, an allegation that Roxas vehemently denied, stressing he is for peace in Mindanao.

“The statement of Senator Roxas has created strong anti-Muslim sentiments,” Marohomsalic said.

`

He said the controversy over the ancestral domain issue in Mindanao has practically diverted the attention of the people from the economic crisis facing the country, including the high prices of commodities and oil.

The former CHR commissioner said the ongoing peace negotiations with the MILF are just a repeat of the peace negotiation of the government with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which resulted to the creation of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Marohomsalic said the proposed memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain only aims to expand the coverage of the present ARMM but the area is actually lesser compared to the original accord forged with the MNLF.

Roxas, for his part, said he is for peace in Mindanao, but not for  an unconstitutional agreement like the GRP-MILF agreement on ancestral domain.

Roxas said that peace won’t be achieved through force and threats just like what he claims is advocated by former AFP chief and Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Hermogenes Esperon Jr. and the Arroyo government. – With Aurea Calica

Whatever your faith is, I implore you to pray for the swift resolution of the troubles in Mindanao. I ask you to be involved and to concerned. Howsoever lowly our station in life, let us all pitch in what little we can offer to not let those that are sabotaging the effort towards peace in Mindanao succeed.

The road ahead is long and tricky, savage and could be violent. Are we prepared to let our future generations be hostage to the whims and caprices of a few people in the Supreme Court? Will we just allow our ethnic communities be forever at the receiving end of oppression? Will we let the Supreme Court continually make rulings that are inimical to the interest of the country? Will the Filipinos not want to stand up and make history? Will people like Governor Jesus Sacdalan, Vice Governor Emmanuel Piñol, Rep. Isabel Climaco, Mayor Celso Lobregat, Rep. Erico Fabian, Sen. Mar Roxas, Rep. Rufino Biazon, Sen. Ping Lacson, Sen. Loren Legarda, be more precious to all of us than the Maguindanao Tribe Maranao Tribe Tausug Tribe, Sama Tribe, Yakkan Tribe, Badyao Tribe, the original people of Mindanao notwithstanding the other Tribes in the area, who used to be a sovereign, very proud and highly cultured people? Are these idiots and nincompoops combined any better than the Tribes’ long-standing relations with the Brunei Royalty — authentic and non-authentic — as well the regular Bruneians, the Indonesian Royalty and their subjects, the Malaysian Royalty and the commoner Malays? Let us remember that we have a very rich link both in blood and interchanges with our literal relatives in those countries. The sooner that we realize how to harness these relations, the faster we will realize that those who think they are as powerful as their saboteur acts and subterfuge, and malevolent determination to divide this already crippled country of ours, are just as the Chinese, Indonesian and Malaysian progressive thinkers, call the pseudo politicians: paper tigers.

Paper tigers? As for me, I would neither want them inside my book shop nor even an inch near it.