WHY WE SHOULD GO NUCLEAR

The problem of high cost of power in the Philippines could be traced to the mothballing of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) in Morong, Bataan which was one of the major projects of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos. But because it would be putting the blame squarely on well-loved icons of popular uprising EDSA People Power that ousted a widely-hated dictator, we would not hazard to venture that far back in time, lest we commit “blasphemy”.

But here’s how: Upon ascension to power by the Cory government, one of the first acts was to stop the operation of the plant pointing to the inherent dangers in operating such a facility and alleged wide-scale corruption that attended its construction. Left out in the estimation was the fact that the BNPP was part of an overall long-term national energy plan inherited from the deposed regime. When the new government stepped in and decided the nuclear plant was a danger to national well-being instead, it had automatically created a huge gap in energy requirements that would take years to replace. Worse, lacking foresight, the new government did not bother to put in place any alternate plan to fill in for the deficit resulting from the mothballing of BNPP. Realization came only when eight-hour brownouts were already hitting the cities. You have such a situation, your economy runs to the ground— which it did.

Fidel Ramos was to have the unenviable responsibility of rescuing the situation upon the exit of Cory Aquino and his election to the presidency. Situation getting worse by the day, he had no choice but offer all the incentives and perks, including the stars and the moon, to woo investors to put in the money asap because each day of brownouts were causing untold ruin to the economy. Those incentives now we realize of late are penurious to consumers and industries.

Now, when the blame game gets going, we point our finger to Ramos. The old man, of course, gets mad each time but he can’t point his finger to Cory. Unthinkable it is to lay the blame on such a huge mess to one considered an icon of democracy.

So are we even reconsidering BNPP or another nuclear power plant, for that matter?

One obstacle could be this phobia for anything suggesting Marcos. What— prove that Marcos was correct! Not by a long shot.

In any case, here is one rabid anti-nuke explaining his 360-degree turnaround.

Dr. Patrick Moore was one of the five co-founders of Greenpeace in 1971. Greenpeace, an environmental group, was strongly opposed to nuclear energy.

He has since changed his mind and left Greenpeace. Today, he is one of the most prominent advocates of nuclear power.

He explains why:

The reason I changed my mind on nuclear energy is fairly simple and it started with the fact that our initial campaign at Greenpeace was against nuclear weapons testing and against the use of nuclear weapons in general and the fear of an all-out nuclear war. It was during the Cold War, in the late 1960’s, early 1970’s. It was also the height of the Vietnam war…

So we were totally focused on the weapons side… we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear were evil…

… of course, one of the other good uses of nuclear reactors is to produce electricity for peaceful purposes.

… there are lots of different technologies that can be used for good and evil. So if we had said, we’re not going to use fire because you could burn a city with it”, then we will be foregoing the many beneficial uses of fire…

He takes a “moral” position on the issue:

We have no right— it’s an ethical and moral issue for me— that here we enjoy the benefits of modern technology… and yet some people among us think it is their duty to prevent other people from having the very technologies which have made it possible for themselves to have good and long lives.

WHY A FORMER GREENPEACE LEADER SUPPORTS NUCLEAR ENERGY

And an essay by Moore:

GOING NUCLEAR: A GREEN MAKES THE CASE

GMA VS LOPEZ: REFLECTIONS ON A MIRROR

Lopez group wins first round in the fight for control of Meralco. Good.

It looks like GMA has found her match finally— a cold-blooded Machiavellian adversary, one as wily, deceitful, secretive, brazen, and arrogant like herself in the Lopezes.

Struggle for power seen from a distance is always an amusing spectacle. Just what is there in power that makes people lose all sense of proportion, you wonder, but who am I to judge or speculate about motivations that move men. If your ways in the battles you fight in this world were wrong or right, you will find out for yourself in due time. Just like in the game of basketball, if you play it rough, someone is bound sooner or later to play it rough on you too in exactly the same manner— or worse. The lesson will be singed on you afterwards, perhaps while recuperating from a cracked bone resulting from a tackle during a layup.

In politics, it’s all the same. You rough it up without mercy, taking serious heed of  Niccolo Machiavelli, you’ll receive your just due from someone who takes his daily counsel from the same source. You say that all is fair in love and politics to justify yourself, savor it while victorious. The wheel of life turns. You’ll have your turn on the low and the victorious of the day will say it to your face: all is fair in love and politics, in like mocking fashion. You play catch me if you can and use all the power of your office to foil your catcher, wait, your appropriate adversary will appear.

GMA’s decision to pick a fight with the Lopezes to score points from the public reeling from high power rates would be popular, but for her own past sins, it calls attention to herself. Like a mirror, it reflects. Take the issue of transparency. When Malacañang seconded Winston Garcia’s call for the Meralco management to be transparent with its records and transactions, it got sneered at instead: “look who’s talking?”. Look, indeed, who’s talking? The many scandals that have become her government’s trademark are known not just for their gravity but also for the groundbreaking lessons in naked cover ups and stonewalling that followed each. When Meralco management points its finger to ERC to justify corporate practices that at first glance appear unethical and immoral saying “hey guys, it’s legal says ERC”, you are at once reminded of the legalistic barrage popularized by Malacañang mostly by the frequency of their employment: “Respect the institutions!” “Go to the courts!” When the Lopez group went after proxy votes in a manner seemingly dubious, the Palace could have raised a howl in the name of fairness and goodness but how, without calling back to memory “Hello, Garci” and all the parallel backroom operations during the heat of her own series of crises.

She’s looking at a mirror; it’s herself she sees and it is ugly. Question is: is there any chance she’ll recognize the reflection?

As for the Lopezes, what’s the stuff this family made of exactly? Thanks to this ongoing power struggle, they’re out in the open finally for all to see, while being undressed. This family had successfully parlayed its “good guy” image as a victim of “bad guy” Marcos to earn sympathy and to get into the good side of society.  It paid well; the Lopezes got their business empire back free, a compensation for the wrong done to the family by a “rapacious” dictator, supposedly. But now, it’s all coming back and people want to see documents to crosscheck with their claims of grieveous wrongs and if indeed sympathies were well-placed. Because if the Lopezes were/are indeed the “good guys”, some things here are in serious disconnect. Good guys don’t get this sneaky on people and their costumers.  Good guys do not behave this way!

Want a hint? See how the younger generation behaves. They say the younger generation is always an improvement of the previous. If this is how “good” the Lopezes are now, need we wonder how “good” the older Lopezes were?

THE UNFATHOMABLE MR. ROMULO NERI

Transcript of the exchange between Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio and lawyer Paul Lentejas, the latter representing former NEDA Chief Romulo Neri in the Neri’s petition to invoke executive privilege in the Senate investigation into the NBN-ZTE scandal:

Carpio: Going to the first question … whether the President followed up the NBN project, is there anything wrong if the President follows up with NEDA the status of projects in government … is there anything morally and legally wrong with that?

Lentejas: There is nothing wrong, Your Honor, because…

Carpio: That’s normal.

Lentejas: That’s normal, because the President is the Chairman of the NEDA Board, Your Honor.

Carpio: Yes, so there is nothing wrong. So why is Mr. Neri afraid to be asked this question?

Lentejas: I just cannot…

Carpio: You cannot fathom?

Lentejas: Yes, Your Honor.

Carpio: You cannot fathom. The second question, were you dictated to prioritize the ZTE [contract], is it the function of NEDA to prioritize specific contract[s] with private parties? No, yes?

Lentejas: the prioritization, Your Honor, is in the…

Carpio: Project?

Lentejas: In the procurement of financing from abroad, Your Honor.

Carpio: Yes. The NEDA will prioritize a project, housing project, NBN project, the dam project, but never a specific contract, correct?

Lentejas: Not a contract, Your Honor.

Carpio: This question that Secretary Neri is afraid to be asked by the Senate, he can easily answer this, that NEDA does not prioritize contract[s], is that correct?

Lentejas: It is the project, Your Honor.

Carpio: So why is he afraid to be asked this question?

Lentejas: I cannot, I cannot fathom, Your Honor.

Carpio: You cannot fathom also?

Lentejas: Yes, Your Honor.

Carpio: But is there anything wrong if the President will tell the NEDA Director General, you prioritize this project, is there anything legally or morally wrong with that?

Lentejas: There is nothing wrong with that, Your Honor.

Carpio: There is nothing [wrong]. It happens all the time?

Lentejas: The NEDA Board, the Chairman of the NEDA Board, yes she can.

Carpio: [S]he can always tell that?

Lentejas: Yes, Your Honor.

Carpio: Okay. Let’s go to the third question, whether the President said to go ahead and approve the project after being told about the alleged bribe. Now … it is not the NEDA Director General that approves the project, correct?

Lentejas: No, no, Your Honor.

Carpio: It is the…

Lentejas: It is the NEDA Board, Your Honor.

Carpio: The NEDA Board headed by the President.

Lentejas: Yes, Your Honor.

Carpio: So this question is not correct also … whether the President said to Secretary Neri to go ahead and approve the project? Secretary Neri does not approve the project, correct?

Lentejas: He’s just the Vice Chairman, Your Honor.

Carpio: So why is he afraid to be asked this question?

Lentejas: I cannot tell you, Your Honor.

Carpio: You cannot fathom also.

Lentejas: Yes, Your Honor.

Copy-pasted from GOTCHA by Jarius Bondoc

WHO OWNS THE MOON?

It seems too far-fetched a problem to be of any human interest now or anytime soon but without much of humanity knowing, it is already a property rights issue, and, what do you know, the discussions have begun quite  a long time ago, in the 50s yet.

So, …

The moon has been in plain view for all of human history, but it’s only within the past few decades that it’s been possible to travel there. And for just about as long as the moon has been within reach, people have been arguing about lunar property rights: Can astronauts claim the moon for king and country, as in the Age of Discovery? Are corporations allowed to expropriate its natural resources, and individuals to own its real estate?

Read more.

WHO SAYS PLASTICS ARE NOT BIODEGRADABLE?

A 16-year old kid has found a way to decompose plastics.

Getting ordinary plastic bags to rot away like banana peels would be an environmental dream come true.

After all, we produce 500 billion a year worldwide and they take up to 1,000 years to decompose. They take up space in landfills, litter our streets and parks, pollute the oceans and kill the animals that eat them.

Now a Waterloo teenager has found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster — in three months, he figures.

Daniel Burd’s project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. He came back with a long list of awards, including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment.

Daniel, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, got the idea for his project from everyday life.

“Almost every week I have to do chores and when I open the closet door, I have this avalanche of plastic bags falling on top of me,” he said. “One day, I got tired of it and I wanted to know what other people are doing with these plastic bags.”

The answer: not much. So he decided to do something himself.

He knew plastic does eventually degrade, and figured microorganisms must be behind it. His goal was to isolate the microorganisms that can break down plastic — not an easy task because they don’t exist in high numbers in nature.

Read on.

HIGH SEATS

Scene near a public market. Baggage boys at rest waiting for customers.

Snap shot taken with Samsung SGH-U100. Bought the thing last Friday, May 16, after a lot of hesitation.

Will be posting some cellphone photography on my art blog. Photoshop comes in handy. Right now, there are three new postings. Will be working on other photos when I could.

SMALL CHANGE: CORRUPTION FROM ANOTHER ANGLE

A reader named Tony Serquina left this comment on Ducky Paredes’ column:

At the risk of sounding like I am defending Meralco (which I am not), 72 million kWh is really not that much. If you divide 72 million by 3600 (your annual electricity consumption), it comes to 20,000. Which means 20,000 households, with each household consuming 3,600 kWh per year, will consume a total of 72 million kWh. That’s probably the population of a small city…

Tony Serquina is referring to the private electricity consumption of Meralco that it charges on its customers.

It’s a cold-blooded mathematical computation. Small change, really, or so he suggests, this object of dispute.

It strikes me cold that perhaps this is the same frame of mind possessing most bureaucrats and politicians or anyone who has access to the public treasury. What’s P1M spread over approximately 90 million Filipinos? Quickly, a measly 1.11 centavos! Go get your calculator and check. A corrupt one sees it that way, it’s suddenly easy on the conscience, the misdeed suddenly shrunk into so negligible, even petty, an issue. What’s to even ask heavenly pardon for on Sundays? If we go down the totem pole, there’s the lowly clerk who pockets, say, ten thousand a week for a cool forty thousand a month or P480,000 a year– it’s a modest house or a very nice car for him. But that would be equivalent to just a fraction of a centavo– 0.53 centavo! Did this ever occur to anyone in the anti-corruption movements?

Now, if I were the President and I want P2B for all my efforts leading this godforsaken land, why, that’s just P22.22 from each! So measly, it could not even buy a kilo of nice rice or a medium pack of powdered milk. Would it be asking too much?

Huh, see, there are ways of looking at things and be merrier for it!

Mr. Serquina, you’re a genius!

DID MARCOS STEAL MERALCO?

Below was an open letter written by now Senator Juan Ponce Enrile to Oscar Lopez of Meralco dated September 25, 2002.  Here I reprint in toto for my future reference as I am as interested to know the answer to the question: Did Marcos steal Meralco?

(Found the link at MLQ3’s blog)

Dear Oskie,

I read with amusement your reply to my statement regarding the Benpres-Meralco Foundation transaction as reported in the media. While this may now appear as a running debate between the Harvard Law School and the Harvard Business School, it is really for the benefit of the public to know the truth behind the Meralco story.

You are of course entitled to your own version of the events and facts. However, I would like to ask you, if you care to answer me, the following questions:

1. Was your letter addressed to your “Dearest Tatay and Nanay” also forced on you by Marcos?
2. Was the memorandum of your father, Eugenio Lopez, Sr., to Mr. Alfredo Montelibano dated March 4, 1973, dictated and forced by Marcos on your father, Eugenio Lopez?
3. I have a letter of Eugenio Lopez, Sr. to Mr. Emilio Abello dated October 6, 1973.
   Was this letter also dictated and forced by Marcos on your father, Eugenio Lopez, Sr.?
4. I also have the letter of Mr. Alfredo Montelibano, Chairman of the Board of Meralco Securities Corporation to Alejandro Melchor, Chairman of the Power Development Council, dated April 10, 1973.Was that letter also dictated and forced by Marcos on Mr. Montelibano?
5. I also have the letter of Emilio Abello, dated September 14, 1973 to Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Co. of Chicago, 231 So. La Salle Street, Chicago, Illinois 60690.
   Was this letter also invented, dictated and forced by Marcos to Mr. Abello?
6. I also have the memorandum of Mr. Alfredo Montelibano, Senior Vice President of Manila Electric, dated June 13, 1973 to Mr. Eugenio Lopez, President, “Re: Manila Electric Co.”
   Was this memorandum also an invention of Marcos and dictated and forced on Mr. Montelibano?

I have more documents but this is enough for now.

I earnestly request you, Oskie, to please inform the people about the above documents. Since these letters and documents were exchanges written by you, members of your family and your associates, perhaps you honestly think that you are the ultimate authority to speak on the matter. I just hope you do not begrudge me for laying all of these out in the open for the public to make their own judgement – IN THE INTEREST OF TRUTH.

SIGNED BY JPE (9-25-02)

ANOTHER BOMB

Here is another bomb against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo: a new witness surfaces to say GMA met with NBN-ZTE executives in a clandestine meeting in ZTE’s headquarters five months before the signing of the deal that has now become one of the most explosive of the many scandals in her administration.  All along she was claiming she had nothing to do with this multibillion dollar telecom transaction.

… the trip to the ZTE headquarters was so secret that not even Chinese government officials knew about it.

… the Chinese guards at the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border were surprised to learn that it was the Philippine president in a white van crossing over from Hong Kong.

Meantime, the President’s satisfaction rating plunges even more deeply at -74. She’s breaking the limits.  She may yet hit the -90’s.

On Meralco, the Lopez-controlled power firm now on the eye of the storm, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile insists the rightful owner of Meralco is the government. He denies that Marcos ever coerced the Lopezes to give up the firm.

… Eugenio Lopez and his brother, former Vice President Fernando Lopez, went to then-President Ferdinand Marcos in 1973 because Meralco Securities Co. that they had owned was in precarious condition with about P101 million in principal and interest that was past due.

“That’s why the Lopezes were hard put in looking for somebody who could bail them out,” Enrile explained.

He added that the Lopez brothers had written a letter to Marcos offering to sell Meralco to a cooperative composed of its employees, end-users and the government. Enrile, however, could not say how much the Lopezes were paid for their share, but he cited a P200-million loan secured by the new owners, Meralco Foundation, from the Development Bank of the Philippines for payment.

“At the start, the customers had participation certificates that entitled them to Meralco dividends. When Cory [ex-President Aquino’s nickname] gave Meralco to the Lopezes, these certificates were forgotten,” he said.

Senator Joker Arroyo believes to this day the Lopezes were forced by Marcos to yield.  And so, to correct a supposed injustice, the firm was handed back over to them without as much a scrutiny over the claim.  He was then the Executive Secretary of the new government that ousted Marcos.

One thing about this brawl is that it could develop into a major inconvenience to a lot of people.    In this case, if it turns out that Meralco was indeed sold properly, something here would be very wrong: that which should have been going to the national treasury had been flowing into somebody’s private treasury all this time.

And it would absolve Marcos and indict the heroes of EDSA People Power and that, my friend,  would be blasphemy.   So, hey, who’s telling the truth?

A HEROINE OF THE HOLOCAUST

She is credited for saving 2,500 Jewish children from certain death in the hands of Hitler’s soldiers. She’s dead at 98.  Her name: Irena Sendler.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE PHILIPPINES?

What’s wrong with this country? It’s the hot topic these days; let me join the fray.

One word: MONOPOLY.

Five percent of families owning eighty-five percent of the entire country– that is monopoly. When you have the remainder, 95%, fighting over the crumbs, 15%– that explains the rest of the problem.

So, what is wrong with monopoly? Everything— let alone the matter about this terrible social inequity. The arguments are long but essentially it is this: In a monopoly, you lose all your concern for things like efficiency, merit, quality, productivity, good governance, integrity, and the like. And why not? You are secure; you have no competition from within; you can do whatever you want. Remember PLDT, the giant, before the deregulation of telecom? Or Meralco now? Or Napocor? That is so in business enterprises, that is so in any other organizations; that is so in all its macrocosms: monopoly behaves the same way it does wherever it appears in nature or in political or economic systems and inflicts the same afflictions in corresponding manner.

In the discussion about another but connected issue, Federalism, on a comment thread over at MLQ3, I wrote the following:

Federalism is a bad bad idea.

Federal governments were first independent states before they agreed to form a federation. The direction is from separate units to one whole; tendency is towards integration Pimentel and company are proposing to create states from one small nation. The direction is reverse: from one whole to separate units; tendency is toward disintegration.

Tongue’s Wrath has a term: reverse engineering.

You see, Filipinos are in a perpetual quarrel about so many things; now they think putting them in separate states like they do squabbling siblings in separate rooms will do the trick. Wrong. I said:

Break up the monopoly of the oligarchs to multiply economic opportunities not break up the republic to multiply political opportunities. In the absence of widespread economic opportunities, there is disunity as people quarrel of the little that is left. He who would be a manager/supervisor of a business firm sees opportunity in becoming a mayor instead…. Who is otherwise a CEO of a conglomerate, he would be a state official sucking the blood out of the national coffer.

In political oratories, you often hear speakers extolling Filipinos “we are one family”. The analogy is correct, if a cliche. Trouble is we often see only the romantic and convenient outward parallelisms. You wonder why the more important correspondence a nation has to a family are easily overlooked.

In a dining table, when one sibling takes the choice cuts and the other siblings get the bones and the father just looks on, you know what sort of trouble will follow. The same thing in society: you take 85% of the resources for the few of you and leave the rest of the crumbs for the multitude, why the hell you wonder why there is so much grumbling?

The one sibling who got the bone, packed his bags and left home in a huff, suffocated, is the diaspora of OFWs who saw breathing space and opportunity elsewhere far far away.

The sibling who cornered the choice cuts and who always grabs the most in everything because he is big and packs a deadly wallop when frustrated is the oligarchic interest and the choice cuts are the resources and properties it now monopolizes.

The rebel son who stayed behind, the black sheep who always comes home drunk, who breaks the glasses, who steals his mother’s jewelries, sells furnitures, wipes off his dirty shoes on the carpet, who slams the door—he is the undisciplined drivers, the pot-bellied cops, the swindlers in the market, the uninspired teachers, the conniving politicians, the corrupt bureaucrats, the poor who reproduce like pigs, and so on and so forth, they who populate the land.

And this thing called federalism?— they are rooms the father intends to build for his quareling sons because he would or could do nothing to correct the inequity in his home.

WHY DRIVE? FLY!

You are late for a life-defining meeting or a date. You are somewhere in Manila and the encounter should be in Cubao. But there are huge rallies in the major avenues so a horrendous traffic is standing in the way of your bright future. But you say, ” please, just ten minutes”. You strap on yourself a strange gadget with a propeller like that of a helicopter, and off you go!

This isn’t James Bond. If things go right, a strap-on helicopter would be customary like a car.

A LOOK AT THE GLOBAL WORLD

Fareed Zakaria says the rest of the world is rising;  USA is on the way down– from her peak– to share starring role with emerging power centers.  The world is growing thanks to globalization and more people are becoming richer while poverty is going down.   The rise in commodity prices is an indication of growing affluence.  There are new dangers but generally the world is stable.

The Rise of the Rest

It’s true China is booming, Russia is growing more assertive, terrorism is a threat. But if America is losing the ability to dictate to this new world, it has not lost the ability to lead…

A HUMAN CHIMP?

We don’t know that a human sperm could fertilize a chimp’s egg. It could. Science has the tools. So the pealing of the alarm bell:

Exclusive: Half man, half chimp – should we beware the apeman’s coming?