BusinessMirror August 29, 2021

ROTARY CLUB OF MANILA JOURNALISM AWARDS

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DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

2018 BANTOG MEDIA AWARDS

PHILIPPINE STATISTICS AUTHORITY

DATA CHAMPION

WATER WOES:

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Sunday, August 29, 2021 Vol. 16 No. 319

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WAIT NOT, WASTE NOT

THE Tinuy-an Falls in Surigao del Sur, dubbed as the Little Niagara Falls of the Philippines for its breathtaking beauty. It was proclaimed as one of the three protected areas in the Caraga region (along with Siargao Island and the Agusan Marsh) under the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System Act of 2018. ALEXEY KORNYLYEV | DREAMSTIME.COM

D

By Manuel T. Cayon

AVAO CITY—Water, or the scarcity of it, has long been predicted to be the source of a major crisis in the future. That crisis appears to be nearing now, even for countries with pronounced dry and wet seasons all year round.

Images of women on long hikes in the desert to fetch water have been poster images of famine-hit continents like Africa, but in countries like the Philippines, threats to sources of potable water are also increasingly reported by residents as land subsidence and mysterious sink holes appear, many of them ascribed to dried up underground water aquifers.

Intrusion of salt water into sources of fresh and potable water is also becoming commonplace in urban areas along the coasts, and points to the drying up of fresh water sources, allowing sea water to fill in the gap.

Mindanao is not spared of the threat, due to unbridled incursions in the forests despite local government prohibition and protection laws. The need for stable sources of water is much pronounced on this southern Philippine island because of the large agricultural need for it.

Database

THE Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) is now moving to put in place a database operation to track and monitor water and weather patterns. The move is anchored on stabilizing this prime agriculture need to keep production going, aside from managing disasters due to erratic and unpredictable climatic changes.

The agency, the government’s socioeconomic planning unit for Mindanao, will be initiating anew an upland production program for the Filipinos’ main food staple, rice, for wider-scale production to tap hilly areas and untilled slopes.

Upland rice production was done two decades ago with support from Europe, with promising results, but only in selected areas.

The catch is how to ensure

Heading into a crisis, MinDA avails itself of Israel’s expertise in managing scarce water resources in Mindanao for farm cultivation.

PIÑOL: “Israel has only four or five major rivers and rainfall of only 365 millimeters compared to the Philippines, which has hundreds of rivers and rainfall of up to 4,000 millimeters. Yet, Israel exports agricultural products while our country relies heavily on imports.”

a stable water source to irrigate these areas.

The idea of a Mindanao Weather and Water Database and Monitoring System (MinDA WWDMS) came about after the first lecture on “The Climate Crisis in the World, Southeast Asia and the Philippines” delivered by Dr. Amir Givati, chief scientific officer at Asgard Systems, the MinDA said.

Dr. Givati reiterated the frequently cited apocalyptic warnings of water crises, stressing that the unpredictability of the weather “in these times [should] emphasize [to] nations [the need to] possess accurate data on water and weather, to be more prepared to face the challenges of climate change.”

Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol, chief of the MinDA, said the agency was initiating the Upland Hybrid Rice Farm Technology and wanted to access Israeli water technology after Tel Aviv earlier lent its expertise through an online course in water conservation and management to local policy makers in Mindanao.

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 49.9030

SOLAR water facility in Taraka town, Lanao del Sur.

He said he wanted local chief executives, or their designated focus persons, to be involved in the creation of the MinDAWWDMS.

Israel model

PIÑOL said Israel’s arid weather might provide a good insight into water conservation, which has helped sustain its agricultural production despite harsh arid and desert conditions.

He noted that Israel has a land area of only 2.1 million hectares, “which is just about the size of the provinces of Bukidnon and Lanao del Sur, with only four or five major rivers and rainfall of only 365 millimeters, compared to the Philippines, which has hundreds of rivers and rainfall of up to 4,000 millimeters.”

“Yet, Israel exports agricultural products while our country relies heavily on imports,” Piñol pointed out.

Israel’s secret? Its leaders point to their advanced technology

MINDANAO DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY

5. Harvesting water from the air.

While Davao City has its own rainwater-catching ordinance, requiring new subdivisions and housing projects to install water tanks to store rainwater, many areas in Mindanao have relied mainly on potable water piped in by local water utilities. Rain water, meantime, flows incessantly onto water ways, overflowing river banks, flooding communities, flattening the crops in the farms and ends up unused down to the seas.

MinDA said a participant from South Cotabato in an earlier lecture on water conservation had raised the issue of access to accurate and location-specific weather and water data as one of the problems of her province.

“This gave me an idea on the need for a database and monitoring system for water and weather in Mindanao, which I presented right away to Ambassador Fluss as a possible area of technical cooperation between Israel and MinDA,” Piñol said.

The MinDAWWDMS is expected to provide up-to-date and accurate data on both water resources and weather to guide Mindanao leaders in decision making and support agriculture and fisheries stakeholders.

Continued on A2

in managing, conserving and recycling their water resources. The country’s technology-based strategies on sustainable agricultural production led to a successful program on creating wider economic opportunities for its people.

According to Israel’s information provided to MinDA, its water strategy comprises the following: 1. Water recycling. Eight percent of water in Israel is recycled.

Wastewater is filtered and reused in water plants, such as in Shafdan wastewater treatment plant in Rishon LeZion; 2. Drip irrigation. A technology to water agricultural crops by watering the roots of the plants and avoid evaporation

3. Desalination. Converts seawater to drinking water through establishing desalination plants 4. River rehabilitation. Cleaning the river with physical and chemical elements by filtering contamination

n JAPAN 0.4535 n UK 68.3821 n HK 6.4078 n CHINA 7.6993 n SINGAPORE 36.8533 n AUSTRALIA 36.0998 n EU 58.6710 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.3060

Source: BSP (August 27, 2021)

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, August 29, 2021

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How China’s ultra-loyal web army silences Beijing’s critics

C

By Bloomberg News

HINESE virologist Zhang Wenhong is among a slew of recent high-profile targets in a campaign by nationalist web users to harass anyone they deem critical of China’s government and pressure officials and websites to censor them.

They say Zhang undermined Beijing’s Covid-zero strategy by suggesting that China must learn to live with the virus. Internet users dug up his 20-year-old thesis and accused him of plagiarism. His alma mater, Fudan University in Shanghai, later said the allegation was false.

Zhang’s case shows the widening scope of China’s keyboard nationalists who scour the web for posts or individuals they deem unpatriotic or subject to foreign influence. Among their targets are celebrities, scientists, feminists and public figures, who can suffer censorship, blacklisting or loss of income. Frequently, the irate netizens are backed by government agencies that endorse the extrajudicial shaming.

“To some extent it is a cyberCultural Revolution—mass mobilization, abusive language, ‘conviction’ by the mob without any proper evidence or logic, canceling people’s right to speech just because they have been labeled by the mob as bad guys,” said Fang Kecheng, an assistant professor at

the school of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. But there’s also a commercial interest: “Many nationalistic social-media accounts gain traffic by participating in these kinds of attacks.”

As with Western platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, Chinese social media is very much polarized, but the nationalists are increasingly gaining the upper hand.

This Chinese take on cancel culture has been fueled by growing national pride—showcased this year as the Communist Party (CCP) celebrates its centennial—and by increasing hostility toward criticism from abroad, fueled by the pandemic and the trade war with the US. Yet it runs counter to President Xi Jinping’s stated aim that China should portray a “lovable and respectable” image abroad.

“Encouraging expressions of anti-foreign nationalism at home undercuts the CCP’s efforts to cultivate a benign international image,” said Kacie Kieko Miura, an assistant professor of political science and international relations at

A LIVE news broadcast of Xi Jinping at a ceremony marking the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party, taking place at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, in Shanghai, on July 1. QILAI SHEN/BLOOMBERG

the University of San Diego. “But the CCP doesn’t really have a choice.

Nationalism is a critical pillar of the CCP’s domestic legitimacy. On the other hand, stability in China’s foreign relations is essential to its continued rise.”

Negative views of China remain near record highs across the developed world, according to the latest Pew survey. That polarization is likely to get worse as nationalists in China marginalize individuals and organizations that are trying to find common ground.

“The CCP legitimates its policies by promising its population a strong China, and many national-

ists now demand hawkish foreign policy from their leaders as a consequence,” said Florian Schneider, senior lecturer in the politics of modern China and director of the Leiden Asia Centre. “Chinese officials cannot afford to look weak.”

Social-media platforms such as Weibo or WeChat have been quick to close accounts of those being criticized. Often the reasons for the censorship are unclear. Last month, WeChat shut accounts for LGBTQ associations at top universities including Tsinghua and Peking for violating unspecified rules. Web users praised the removals, suggesting the groups were being hijacked by foreign countries and were anti-China.

Like the anti-communist political witch hunt of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the US in the 1940s and ’50s, the underlying justification for many of the attacks is the broad allegation of being anti-China.

“We can easily understand why China would become more nationalistic as it succeeds economically,” said Frank Tsai, a lecturer at the Emlyon Business School’s Shanghai Campus and founder of Shanghai-based consulting firm China Crossroads. “The danger is

that China overreaches. China’s economy may end up suffering from the hubris of a regime that thinks it really can go it alone, when figures show that any economic bloc that China leads is still much smaller than the West’s.”

Foreign targets

FOREIGN celebrities like NBA general manager Daryl Morey and American actor John Cena, and businesses such as Dolce & Gabbana Srl and Hennes & Mauritz AB, are familiar with such “cyber expedition.” Increasingly, so are journalists.

After floods caused the deaths of more than 300 people in Henan province last month, the local Communist Youth League’s Weibo account encouraged viewers to record the behavior of a BBC journalist reporting on the event, and a correspondent for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle was confronted by a crowd of people for “smearing China.” But it’s China’s own citizens and organizations that are increasingly under the microscope.

Even Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the nationalist tabloid Global Times, and some of his subordinates were labeled “traitors” by

internet users after the paper criticized a photo comparing China’s rocket launch to funeral pyres in India. In other cases, even association with someone deemed unpatriotic is enough to start a tirade as the Beijing-based Center for China & Globalization (CCG) discovered.

Founded by Wang Huiyao, a former adviser to China’s cabinet, the CCG was set up to act as a bridge between China and the rest of the world, explaining Beijing’s position on everything from alleged forced labor in Xinjiang to the national security law for Hong Kong. But during a CCG forum in Beijing last month, Chu Yin, a professor at the University of International Relations, criticized Chinese scholars and diplomats for communication methods that might not be readily understood by an overseas audience.

Some online commentators targeted both Chu and the CCG. Soon, media posts related to the event began to disappear as well as from accounts of prominent commentators.

Wang said the “very extreme opinions” that appear online were the work of irrelevant small-time players. “We don’t want to amplify that. They are really too low to look at,” he said in an interview. “We get push-back in China saying we’re pro-Western, and push-back from some in the West.”

Sometimes the evidence used against a target is years old. China’s top anti-graft body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, criticized actor Zhang Zhehan this month for photographs taken years ago in front of Japan’s Yasukuni shrine, a symbol to the Chinese of Japan’s past military aggression.

The Ministry of Culture’s China Association of Performing Arts called for a boycott of the actor, dozens of brands said they would stop working with him and Weibo and ByteDance Ltd.’s Douyin erased his personal social-media accounts.

US hostility to China, made worse under the Trump administration, was partly to blame, Wang said. “There’s nationalism in the US that’s at an all-time high and that in turn has pushed Chinese nationalism, as well,” he said.

Water woes: Wait not, waste not Continued from A1

Israel agreed to impart technical knowledge of its water strategy through an initial five-session weekly online course on “Water Management and Conservation: The Israel Model.”

Israel’s Ambassador-designate to the Philippines, Ilan Fluss, has expressed support for MinDA’s proposal to have the database system in Mindanao to support its agriculture and prepare for disasters.

Fluss, who joined the opening last week of an online session for Mindanao governors, mayors and decision-makers, said he also supported technical cooperation between Israel and MinDA.

Piñol quoted Fluss as saying, technical cooperation between Israel and MinDA “is something which he is very excited to work on.”

Fluss is still in Tel Aviv and has yet to submit his credentials to President Duterte. He takes over the Philippine post from Ambassador Rafael Harpaz who, along with Deputy Chief of Mission Nir Balzam, had earlier worked with MinDA on the conduct of the online course on “Water Conservation and Management” for Mindanao decision-makers, especially governors and mayors.

“Ambassador Fluss said he would work on the technical cooperation agreement as soon as he arrives in Manila and after he has presented his credentials to the President,” Piñol said.

The first session, on August 24, had Uri Shor of the Israel Water Authority presenting “Water Conservation: From Awareness to Action—The Israeli Experience”; and Dr. Lior Asaf, MASHAV Water expert, who present-

ed “Sustainable Water Management for Agriculture.”

The two-hour five-session online short course features Israel’s experts in water conservation and management and is a joint project of the MASHAV Agriculture Training Center based in Tel Aviv.

“Mindanao governors and mayors and other participants who would be able to complete the course will receive certificates of completion and would be invited to visit Israel to actually see the water infrastructure of the leading country in water management,” Piñol said.

History made in Taraka

MEANWHILE in Lanao del Sur, Taraka town will make history as the first local government unit in the country to invest in six solar-powered irrigation systems (SPIS) and a solar-powered water system with a filtration facility for its 25,000 population, the MinDA said.

“Today, Taraka stands out as a model for other towns in the country, which had long been dependent on the national government for even the minor projects. Taraka is now a corporate local government unit,” Piñol said.

He said Taraka town accessed a loan of P215 million from the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), and implemented a program that included the procurement of road-building equipment and the establishment of six SPIS to irrigate 700 hectares and a modern water system.

All of these projects were placed under a newly organized Economic Enterprise Office that would collect fees for services rendered and pay back the loan.

‘Inspiring story of innovation’

PIÑOL said “the inspiring story of

innovation in local governance that would make Taraka a rural development model for the country started on December 6, 2019, when the Mindanao Water Supply Program, which aims to provide water for people in every village in Mindanao, was launched here.”

“I personally designed the program and sought the support of the Department of the Interior and Local Government since MinDA does not have the funds to implement it.

It was during the launching when the mayor of Taraka, Nashiba Gandarma Sumagayan, a former professor at the Mindanao State University in Marawi, approached MinDA and asked that Taraka be the first enrollee in the program,” Piñol recalled.

“I jumped off from Kidapawan City leading a six-vehicle convoy en route to the poor town of Taraka, Lanao del Sur, located in the periphery of the 34,000-hectare Lanao del Sur. Taraka is unique in so many ways as it is overlooking Lake Lanao, but its rice farms do not have sufficient water. Most of all, it is situated between the town of Butig, known as the base of the Maute terror group, and the City of Marawi, which in May 2017 was reduced to rubbles as soldiers fought the Maute group,” he said.

Soon began a long, difficult and challenging journey marred by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“With the planning staff of MinDA supporting Taraka, a master plan for development was crafted and a digital database for its residents was established,” Piñol said.

The rest is history unfolding for a poor town seeking economic relief for its poverty-stricken people, which all started with the proper utilization of its primary resource—water.

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Angel R. Calso

The World

Explainer: How dangerous is Afghanistan’s Islamic State?

By Kathy Gannon & Ellen Knickmeyer The Associated Press

T

he Islamic State offshoot that Americans blame for Thursday’s deadly suicide attacks outside the Kabul airport coalesced in eastern Afghanistan six years ago, and rapidly grew into one of the more dangerous terror threats globally.

Despite years of military targeting by the US-led coalition, the group known as Islamic State Khorasan has survived to launch a massive new assault as the United States and other NATO partners withdraw from Afghanistan, and as the Taliban return to power.

President Joe Biden cited the threat of Islamic State attacks in sticking with a Tuesday deadline for pulling US forces out of Afghanistan. Biden blamed the group for Thursday’s attacks, which included a suicide bomber who slipped into the crowds of Afghans outside airport gates controlled by US service members.

The group has built a record of highly lethal attacks in the face of its own heavy losses. A look at a deadly group influencing the course of the Kabul airlifts and US actions:

What is Islamic State Khorasan?

The Islamic State’s Central Asia affiliate sprang up in the months after the group’s core fighters swept across Syria and Iraq, carving out a self-styled caliphate, or Islamic empire, in the summer of 2014. In Syria and Iraq, it took local and international forces five years of subsequent fighting to roll back the caliphate.

The Afghanistan affiliate takes its name from the Khorasan Province, a region that covered much of Afghanistan, Iran and central Asia in the Middle Ages.

The group is also known as ISK, or ISIS K.

Who are the Islamic State Khorasan’s fighters?

The group started as several hundred Pakistani Taliban fighters, who took refuge across the border in Afghanistan after military operations drove them out of their home country. Other, likeminded extremists joined them there, including disgruntled Afghan Taliban fighters unhappy with what they—unlike the West—saw as the Taliban’s overly moderate and peaceful ways.

As the Taliban pursued peace talks with the United States in recent years, discontented Taliban increasingly moved to the more extremist Islamic State, swelling its numbers. Most were frustrated that the Taliban was pursuing negotiations with the US at a time when they thought the movement was on the march to a military win.

The group also has attracted a significant cadre from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, from a neighboring country; fighters from Iran’s only Sunni Muslim majority province; and members of the Turkistan Islamic Party comprising Uighurs from China’s northeast.

Many were attracted to the Islamic State’s violent and extreme ideology, including promises of a caliphate to unite the Islamic world, a goal never espoused by the Taliban.

What makes them a leading threat?

While the Taliban have confined their struggle to Afghanistan, the Islamic State group in Afghanistan and Pakistan has embraced the Islamic State’s call for a worldwide jihad against non-Muslims.

The Center for International and Strategic Studies counts dozens of attacks that Islamic State fighters have launched against civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including minority Shiite Muslims, as well as hundreds of clashes with Afghan, Pakistani and US-led coalition forces since January 2017. Though the group has yet to conduct attacks against the US homeland, the US government believes it represents a chronic threat to US and allied interests in South and Central Asia.

What is their role with the Taliban?

They are enemies. While intelligence officials believe al-Qaida fighters are integrated among the Taliban, the Taliban, by contrast, have waged major, coordinated offensives against the Islamic State group in Afghanistan. Taliban insurgents at times joined with both the US and US-backed Afghan government forces to rout the Islamic State from parts of Afghanistan’s northeast.

A US Defense Department official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was working covertly, said previously that the Trump administration had sought its 2020 withdrawal deal with the Taliban partly in hopes of joining forces with them against the Islamic State affiliate. The administration saw that group as the real threat to the American homeland.

What is the risk now?

Even when the United States had combat troops, aircraft and armed drones stationed on the ground in Afghanistan to monitor and strike the Islamic State, Islamic State militants were able to keep up attacks despite suffering thousands of casualties, Amira Jadoon and Andrew Mines note in a report for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.

The withdrawal is depriving the United States of its on-theground strike capacity in Afghanistan, and threatens to weaken its ability to track the Islamic State and its attack planning as well. Biden officials say the Islamic State group is only one of many terror threats it is dealing with globally. They insist they can manage it with so-called over-the-horizon military and intelligence assets, based in Gulf states, on aircraft carriers, or other more distant sites.

One of the United States’ greatest fears about pulling out its combat forces after two decades is that Afghanistan under Taliban rule again becomes a magnet and base for extremists plotting attacks on the West.

That threat, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN last weekend, was something “we’re focused on, with every tool in our arsenal.”

Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City and Gannon from Islamabad.

BusinessMirror

Sunday, August 29, 2021

A3

From 9/11’s ashes, a new world took shape. It did not last long

By Calvin Woodward, Ellen Knickmeyer & David Rising

I

The Associated Press

n the ghastly rubble of Ground Zero’s fallen towers 20 years ago, Hour Zero arrived, a chance to start anew.

World affairs reordered abruptly on that morning of blue skies, black ash, fire and death.

In Iran, chants of “death to America” quickly gave way to candlelight vigils to mourn the American dead. Vladimir Putin weighed in with substantive help as the US prepared to go to war in Russia’s region of influence.

Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, a murderous dictator with a poetic streak, spoke of the “human duty” to be with Americans after “these horrifying and awesome events, which are bound to awaken human conscience.”

From the first terrible moments, America’s longstanding allies were joined by longtime enemies in that singularly galvanizing instant. No nation with global standing was cheering the stateless terrorists vowing to conquer capitalism and democracy. How rare is that?

Too rare to last, it turned out.

Civilizations have their allegories for rebirth in times of devastation. A global favorite is that of the phoenix, a magical and magnificent bird, rising from ashes.

In the hellscape of Germany at the end of World War II, it was the concept of Hour Zero, or Stunde Null, that offered the opportunity to start anew.

For the US, the zero hour of September 11, 2001 meant a chance to reshape its place in the post-Cold War world from a high perch of influence and goodwill as it entered the new millennium.

This was only a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union left America with both the moral authority and the financial and military muscle to be unquestionably the lone superpower.

Those advantages were soon squandered. Instead of a new order, 9/11 fueled 20 years of war abroad. In the US, it gave rise to the angry, aggrieved, self-proclaimed patriot, and heightened surveillance and suspicion in the name of common defense.

It opened an era of deference to the armed forces as lawmakers pulled back on oversight and let presidents give primacy to the military over law enforcement in the fight against terrorism. And it sparked anti-immigrant sentiment, primarily directed at Muslim countries, that lingers today.

A war of necessity—in the eyes of most of the world—in Afghanistan was followed two years later by a war of choice as the US invaded Iraq on false claims that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil.”

Thus opened the deep, deadly mineshaft of “forever wars.” There were conv ulsions throughout the Middle East, and US foreign policy—for half a century a force for ballast—instead gave way to a head-snapping change in approaches in foreign policy from Bush to Obama to Trump. With that came waning trust in America’s leadership and reliability.

Other parts of the world were not immune. Far-right populist movements coursed through Europe. Britain voted to break away from the European Union. And China steadily ascended in the

global pecking order.

President Joe Biden is trying to restore trust in the belief of a steady hand from the US but there is no easy path. He is ending war, but what comes next?

In Afghanistan in August, the Taliban seized control with menacing swiftness as the Afghan government and security forces that the United States and its allies had spent two decades trying to build collapsed. No steady hand was evident from the US in the harried, disorganized evacuation of Afghans desperately trying to flee the country in the first weeks of the Taliban’s re-established rule.

Allies whose troops had fought and died in the US-led war in Afghanistan expressed dismay at Biden’s management of the US withdrawal, under a deal President Donald Trump had struck with the Taliban.

t r a n s p or t at io n s y s t e m t h at killed more than 50, hardened attitudes in Europe as well.

By 2015, as the Islamic State group captured wide areas of Iraq and pushed deep into Syria, the number of refugees increased dramatically, with more than 1 million migrants, primarily from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, entering Europe that year alone.

The year was bracketed by attacks in France on the Charlie Hebdo magazine staff in January after it published cartoons of the Prophet Muhamad, and on the Bataclan Theater and other Paris locations in November, reinforcing the angst then gripping the continent.

Already growing in support, far-right parties were able to capitalize on the fears to establish themselves as part of the European mainstream. They remain represented in many European parliaments, even as the flow of immigrants has slowed dramatically and most concerns have proved unfounded.

The unraveling

In the United States, the September 11 attacks set loose a torrent of rage.

In shock from the assault, a swath of American society embraced the us vs. them binary outlook articulated by Bush—“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”—and has never let go of it.

You could hear it in the country songs and talk radio, and during presidential campaigns, offering the balm of a bloodlust cry for revenge. “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way,” Toby Keith promised America’s enemies in one of the most popular of those songs in 2002.

Americans stuck flags in yards and on the back of trucks. Factionalism hardened inside America, in school board fights, on Facebook posts, and in national politics, so that opposing views were treated as propaganda from mortal enemies. The concept of enemy also evolved, from not simply the terrorist but also to the immigrant, or the conflation of the terrorist as immigrant trying to cross the border.

The patriot under threat became a personal and political identity in the United States. Fifteen years later, Trump harnessed it to help him win the presidency.

Dozens of countries joined or endorsed the NATO coalition fighting in Afghanistan. Russia acquiesced to NATO troops in Central Asia for the first time and provided logistical support. Never before had NATO invoked Article 5 of its charter that an attack against one member was an attack against all.

But in 2003, the US and Britain were practically alone in prosecuting the Iraq war. This time, millions worldwide marched in protest in the run-up to the invasion.

World opinion of the United States turned sharply negative.

In June 2003, after the invasion had swiftly ousted Saddam and dismantled the Iraqi army and security forces, a Pew Research poll found a widening rift between Americans and Western Europeans and reported that “the bottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim world.” Most South Koreans, half of Brazilians and plenty more people outside the Islamic world agreed.

And this was when the war was going well, before the world saw cruel images from Abu Ghraib prison, learned all that it knows now about CIA black op sites, waterboarding, years of Guantanamo Bay detention without charges or trials—and before the rise of the brutal Islamic State.

By 2007, when the US set up the Africa Command to counter terrorism and the rising influence of China and Russia on the continent, African countries did not want to host it. It operates from Stuttgart, Germany.

The othering

The successes

The ‘Homeland’

In the week after the attacks, Bush demanded of Americans that they know “Islam is peace” and that the attacks were a perversion of that religion. He told the country that American Muslims are us, not them, even as mosques came under surveillance and Arabs coming to the US to take their kids to Disneyland or go to school risked being detained for questioning.

For Trump, in contrast, everything was always about them, the outsiders.

In the birther lie Trump promoted before his presidency, Barack Obama was an outsider. In Trump’s campaigns and administration, Muslims and immigrants were outsiders. The “China virus” was a foreign interloper, too.

Overseas, deadly attacks by Isl a m ic e x t rem i st s, l i ke t he 2004 bombing of Madrid trains that killed nearly 200 people and the 2005 attack on London’s

Over the two decades, a succession of US presidents scored important achievements in shoring up security, and so far US territory has remained safe from more international terrorism anywhere on the scale of 9/11.

Globally, US-led forces weakened al-Qaida, which has failed to launch a major attack on the West since 2005. The Iraq invasion rid that country and region of a murderous dictator in Saddam.

Yet strategically, eliminating him did just what Arab leaders warned Bush it would do: It strengthened Saddam’s main rival, Iran, threatening US objectives and partners.

Deadly chaos soon followed in Iraq. The Bush administration, in its nation-building haste, failed to plan for keeping order, leaving Islamist extremists and rival militias to fight for dominance in the security vacuum.

T he over t hrow of Sadd am served both to inspire and limit public support for Arab Spring uprisings a few years later. For if the US showed people in the Middle East that strongmen can be toppled, the insurgency demonstrated that what comes next may not be a season of renewal.

Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East pointed to the postSaddam era as an argument for their own survival.

The US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq killed more than 7,000 American military men and women, more than 1,000 from the allied forces, many tens of thousands of members of Afghan and Iraqi security forces, and many hundreds of thousands of civilians, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. Costs, including tending the wars’ unusually high number of disabled vets, are expected to top $6 trillion.

For t he US, t he presidencies since Bush’s wars have been marked by an effort—not always consistent, not always successful—to pull back the military from the conflicts of the Middle East and Central Asia.

The perception of a US retreat has allowed Russia and China to gain influence in the regions, and left US allies struggling to understand Washington’s place in the world. The notion that 9/11 would create an enduring unity of interest to combat terrorism collided with rising nationalism and a US president, Trump, who spoke disdainfully of the NATO allies that in 2001 had rallied to America’s cause.

Even before Trump, Obama surprised allies and enemies alike when he stepped back abruptly from the US role of world cop.

Obama geared up for, then called off, a strike on Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons against his people.

“Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong,” Obama said on September 11, 2013.

The newish order

The legacies of 9/11 ripple both in obvious and unusual ways.

Most directly, millions of people in the US and Europe go about their public business under the constant gaze of security cameras while other surveillance tools scoop up private communications.

The government layered post-9/11 bureaucracies on to law enforcement to support the expansive security apparatus.

Militarization is more evident now, from large cities to small towns that now own military vehicles and weapons that seem well out of proportion to any terrorist threat. Government offices have become fortifications and airports a security maze.

But as profound an event as 9/11 was, its immediate effect on how the world has been ordered was temporary and largely undone by domestic political forces, a global economic downturn and now a lethal pandemic.

The awakening of human conscience predicted by Gadhafi didn’t last. Gadhafi didn’t last.

Osama bin Laden has been dead for a decade. Saddam was hanged in 2006. The forever wars—the Afghanistan one being the longest in US history—now are over or ending. The days of Russia tactically enabling the US, and China not standing in the way, petered out. Only the phoenix lasts.

Rising reported from Bangkok; Knickmeyer and Woodward from Washington.

AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.

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The World BusinessMirror

Sunday, August 29, 2021

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Sackler immunity and Texas 2-step could tilt bankruptcy scales away from victims

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he billionaire owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and lumber giant Georgia-Pacific are in high-stakes legal battles to shed billions of dollars of liabilities in bankruptcy—the first over their company’s alleged role in America’s opioid crisis and the second for 64,000 asbestos claims.

I f t he y a re s ucce s s f u l , it threatens to reduce the bargaining power of alleged v ictims of corporate abuse for years to come. The outcome could also benef it Johnson & Johnson, which is fighting tens of thousands of health-related lawsuits.

In New York, US Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain could rule as early as Thursday on whether to grant the Sackler family broad immunity to all current and future lawsuits related to the addictive painkiller. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Georgia-Pacific is trying to use a strategy nicknamed the “Texas Two-Step” to rid itself of lawsuits related to asbestos, an industrial product that causes lung cancer, by siphoning them off to a unit.

The two cases could tip bankruptcy rules in favor of companies and away from people trying to sue, Adam J. Levitin, a research professor

3 arrested, 1 at large in alleged $150-million credit-card fraud

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OSTON—Federal investigators arrested three individuals on Thursday on charges of conspiring to deceive banks into allegedly processing more than $150 million in credit and debit card payments on behalf of merchants involved in prohibited and high-risk businesses, including online gaming, debt collection, debt relief, online pharmaceuticals and payday lending. A fourth individual remains at large.

Two of the individuals—Ahmad “Andy” Khawaja, 49, of Los Angeles and Thomas Wells, 74, of Martin County, Florida—were charged with wire fraud conspiracy.

Two others—Mohammad “Moe” Diab, 45, of Glendale, California, and Amy Ringler Rountree, 38, of Logan, Utah—were charged with wire fraud conspiracy and bank fraud conspiracy.

Diab, Rountree and Wells were arrested Thursday and will appear in federal court in Boston at a later date, investigators said. Khawaja was charged in a December 2019 indictment with campaign finance violations and obstruction of justice.

He remains a fugitive.

A 2018 investigation by The A ssociated Press showed K hawaja’s company helped pornographers, shady debt col lectors and offshore gamblers access the inter nationa l bank ing system, often by using dummy foreign corporations and fake web sites to disguise the underlying business.

The reporting was based on thousands of internal company records obtained by the AP. Khawaja was the owner and chief executive officer of Allied Wallet Inc., a payment processing company headquartered in Los Angeles that served merchants doing business over the Internet. Diab served as chief operating officer and Rountree was the vice president of operations, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts. AP

at Georgetown University Law Center, said in an interview.

“They are trying to get the benefits of bankruptcy on the cheap,” he said.

Companies have been using bankruptcy courts to consolidate their liabilities since the 1980s, applying the restructuring process to wipe out tens of thousands of lawsuits for less than the cost of litigating the claims individually in court. The recent cases threaten to set a precedent that other company owners could use as a legal hammer against victims during negotiations.

“The company is going to say, ‘Here is the offer we’re going to give you.

If you don’t play nice we are going to use the bankruptcy process to, at the very least, drag this on for years.’

Now we all know how that will go.

It’s going to mean lower recoveries for tort victims,” Levitin said.

Purdue is asking a federal

court to approve a landmark settlement that would hand all of its assets—along with more than $4 billion from the Sacklers—to cities, states and counties fighting the US opioid crisis. To get the family on board, the court must agree to permanently insulate the owners from opioid lawsuits.

In a written declaration to the court, David Sackler made clear that his family won’t support the plan or pay the settlement amount “unless all civil claims against us for Purdue’s Opioid-Related Activities are fully, finally and permanently released.”

Even after Purdue narrowed the legal releases sought by the Sacklers this week, the US Trustee, a federal watchdog for corporate bankruptcies, continued to oppose the legal immunity, arguing it is too broad and vague.

Representatives for members of the Sackler family either declined to comment or didn’t reply to requests for comment. The family has previously denied wrongdoing.

Texas Two-Step

In asbestos cases, a strateg y popped up a few years ago that came to be known as the Texas Two-Step. In step one, GeorgiaPacific, which is owned by Koch Industries Inc., incorporated in Texas, according to court documents. There, a business-friendly law lets a company conduct a socalled divisive merger to break itself into two parts.

In one entity, Georgia-Pacific kept its most valuable assets, including its operating businesses.

The other part was saddled with 64,000 asbestos claims and assets worth about $177 million, and then put into bankruptcy, according to court records.

The restructuring left the new, smaller company, Bestwall LLC, “a hollow shell, with no employees, no operations, no ongoing business,” creditors who have attacked the maneuver said in a filing. The $177 million is “a nearly inconsequential asset value when compared with what old GP would owe.”

Georgia-Pacific disputed the idea that its strategy would make it harder for asbestos victims to hold corporations accountable.

The company has agreed to make up any shortfall if Bestwall is unable to pay alleged asbestos victims, Georgia-Pacific representative Greg Guest said in an e-mail. Also, Bestwall has proposed paying $1 billion into a trust for victims, he said.

“Bestwall filed for bankruptcy to fairly and permanently resolve current and future asbestos claims,” Guest said. “Bestwall has been working and will continue to work with representatives of current and future claimants—who are appointed by the court—to reach agreement on a global resolution that will pay legitimate asbestos claims in full.”

The case is months away from resolution as lawyers for asbestos

victims and the company battle over arcane points of law.

Meanwhile, asbestos victims who blame the talc in baby powder made by J&J were so concerned about the Texas Two-Step that they preemptively asked a federal judge to block the consumer products giant from doing it. J&J faces potentially billions in lawsuits from people claiming they developed ovarian cancer from baby powder tainted with asbestos.

J&J shouldn’t be blocked from using any legal strategy it believes will benefit it, company attorney Theodore E. Tsekerides said during a court hearing on Tuesday.

Victim lawyers are wrongly assuming J&J will somehow hurt them with whatever tactics it chooses to employ in the future. “ They are prejudging their fight,” Tsekerides told a judge in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday.

“They are saying whatever we do is harm.”

US Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein said she would decide in the coming days whether to temporarily bar J&J from using the strategy.

“Johnson & Johnson hasn’t really denied that this is a possibility,” Silverstein said in court.

“There has been no denying that a Texas Two-Step…is within the realm of possibility.”

The company has won more than a half a dozen such cases at trial outside of bankruptcy court in recent years, but it’s also lost

Winners, losers in China’s private-sector crackdown M

some, including a $2.1-billion award in 2018 to 20 women who sued in St. Louis.

Cramdown provisions

When David Sackler took the stand in Purdue’s bankruptcy trial last week, he testified that his family could only free itself of all its legal woes related to the OxyContin maker if they get sweeping immunity as part of the case.

“I don’t know of any other forum that would allow this kind of global solution,” he said in court.

Indeed, the linchpin of trying to win relief from future lawsuits in bankruptcy often comes down to so-called third-party releases, which raises the stakes for precedent-setting cases that risk tilting the scales against victims.

These releases carry the ability to force a settlement onto holdouts. Once 75 percent of creditors who participate in a vote agree to back a deal, everyone else can be dragged along if the judge greenlights it. Outside of bankruptcy, there’s no way to force someone to settle a case if they demand to go to trial.

“It’s the only forum that can compel future demand holders to accept the payments,” said former bankruptcy judge Judith K. Fitzgerald, who oversaw the reorganization of specialty chemical maker W.R. Grace & Co., one of the longest running asbestos-related bankruptcy case in history.

Bloomberg News

Outbreak, debt, politics to test Malaysia’s finance minister

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eijing’s agenda to curb the rampant expansion of some private enterprises has sent stocks plunging in sectors ranging from gaming to after-school tutoring and health care to liquor.

Behind the crackdown is the Communist Party’s drive to narrow China’s wealth gap and keep in check the expansion of capital, as reflected in President Xi Jinping’s increasingly vocal call for “common prosperity.”

Meanwhile, industries seen crucial for promoting the country’s ambition to be a self-reliant manufacturing superpower and achieving carbon-neutral goals, such as semiconductors and renewable energy, are taking on a new shine for investors.

Here are some charts showing how the regulatory shock has played out for various industries:

Losing favor

Since July, China has published draft rules banning unfair online competition and vowed to better protect the rights of gig-economy workers, while state-run media have ratcheted up rhetoric regarding tighter oversight of online drug sales. The barrage of new regulations has especially squeezed the MSCI China Index subgauges for communications services, consumer discretionary and health care, with each plummeting 21 percent since June 30.

Internet bellwether Tencent Holdings Ltd. is set for its worst quarter in a decade, with a 19-percent loss. Regulators in July ordered the company to give up exclusive music rights and rejected a merger of two game-streaming firms it has stakes in. Sentiment took another blow this month after state media blasted digital games

as “spiritual opium” and urged “zero tolerance” for “vulgar” content on live-streaming platforms.

The selloffs in e-commerce stocks and pr ivate-education firms were even more brutal.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has tumbled to record lows in Hong Kong while Meituan has sunk 29 percent. TAL Education Group is worth just a quarter of what it was a month ago after a plethora of regulations prohibiting tutoring firms from making profits. The move underscores efforts by authorities to eradicate an inequality factor in China’s competitive college-entrance examination.

Shares of pharmaceutical companies and online medical-service providers have also been dumped on fears of narrower profit margins. The health-care sector is believed to be a target of the Communist Party for squeezing livelihoods, widening the wealth-andservices gap and deterring people from starting families.

“We believe uncertainty will remain high across the Internet and other related sectors,” said Vincent Mortier, deputy group chief investment officer at Amundi SA. “Education and health care are the other two sectors exposed to regulatory risks, and in particular the latter.”

Bright spots

Investors have piled into industries seen benefiting from China’s determination to meet its green goals and maintain its edge in electric vehicles, pushing the materials subgauge up by 11 percent quarter to date. Battery makers such as Ganfeng Lithium Co. have soared, while large steel mills have rallied partly because product prices have risen after the

government imposed output curbs to reduce emissions.

The utilities subgauge was propelled by power-generation firms, whose prospects are buoyed by a shift to cleaner energy and their participation in the nation’s nascent carbon-trading market.

Banks and industrials are probably “the safest” in the short term, said Louis Lau, director of investments at Brandes Investment Partners. But “if I’m looking to double or triple my money in the next five years, it’ll probably have to come back to the areas of greatest pressure,” he said.

Hardcore innovation

While Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Tech Index, with a heavy concentration of Chinese consumerInternet stocks, has plunged 25 percent so far this year, Shanghai’s Star 50 Index, which is loaded with semiconductor, renewable-energy and high-end manufacturing companies, has risen 7.5 percent.

The disparity shows just how hardware tech—or innovation in chips, EV and high-end manufacturing—is now favored by investors over software tech, which is seen as more geared toward marketing and fund-raising. As such, Shanghai Bright Power Semiconductor Co. has surged 162 percent this year, while Trina Solar Co. has jumped about 130 percent.

“We are focusing on strategic sectors where government policy is a clear tail wind rather than a headwind,” said Mortier of Amundi. “China’s transition to a green economy has immense implications and opportunities for investors. This is one of the reasons why we are constructive on the green economy and the new advanced materials industry.” Bloomberg News

alaysian F i n a n c e Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz, who retained the post in the new government announced Friday by Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, has his work cut out for him.

In October, Zafrul is set to unveil the 2022 federal budget to what may be the most divided parliament in Malaysia’s history.

The spending plan will need to address an economy weakened by protracted lockdowns and a raging Covid outbreak, amid steep financial constraints and a deficit target that was already revised higher twice this year.

At stake is the fate of the days-old administration he just joined: Per convention, Ismail must resign if the budget fails to get majority support in parliament. At the same time, ratings companies will be watching keenly for any departure from the country’s fiscal consolidation path.

The decision to retain Zafrul as finance minister “should be welcomed by the market,” said Wellian Wiranto, an economist at Oversea Chinese Banking Corp.

“He is known as a technocrat by and large, and his reappointment signals continuity in his role in carrying out the ongoing fiscal plans and to shepherd the new budget through the parliament.”

The ringgit was up 0.1 percent to 4.1915 per dollar as of 1:30 p.m. on Thursday. The yield on the benchmark 10-year government bond dropped two basis points to 3.24 percent, while the main stock index was up 0.3 percent at the midday break.

Zafrul, 48, has more than a year’s experience as finance minister in the previous government. The decision to bring him back points to policy continuity from the Muhyiddin Yassin administration.

“You need somebody who is already quite well-versed with the

ministry” to prepare the budget by the October deadline, said Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. However, it’s not clear if the choice will inspire investor confidence.

“This is a cabinet that retains largely the same faces, and they had policies which obviously failed during the last administration,” Oh said. “Why would they be able to formulate new policies that would succeed in tackling the pandemic and reviving the economy?”

Lowered forecast

Two weeks ago Zafrul affirmed the central bank ’s 2021 growth forecast for Malaysia at 3 percent-4 percent, the second downward revision as the countr y grapples with protracted lockdowns and virus flare-ups. The outlook is expected to improve in the fourth quarter as more sectors reopen and the vaccination program advances, he said in the August 13 statement. “ The government’s current priority is to protect lives from the threat of Covid-19 and ensure the country’s economic growth prospects remain strong in the medium to longer term,” Zafrul said at the time. Government efforts will be guided by the National Recovery Plan—an evolving blueprint to exit the pandemic—underpinned by prudent financial management, he added.

“Ismail Sabri Yaakob was sworn in Saturday as the third prime minister in 18 months. The immediate economic outlook is probably beyond his control—hinging on the extent of damage from Covid-19.

With the domestic outbreak yet to crest and more trading partners combating their own outbreaks, another contraction in GDP this quarter remains likely,” Bloomberg economists said. Bloomberg News

Faith www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Sunday

Cardinal Tagle offers way to cope with pandemic stress

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hen life is not exactly as we want it to be during this pandemic, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle recently said it can be helpful for people to turn themselves toward “acceptance.”

He noted that while people want to go back to normal, acceptance of the current reality is a key way to cope.

“While we are here, let’s accept the situation and limitations, the fears and doubts of the situation today,” Tagle said over the “The Jesuit Hour,” an online talk show of the Jesuit Communications.

“If we accept even the inconveniences of all these in faith, we could get out of this as a better humanity,” he said.

The cardinal was responding to a question about his advice for people who feel more anxious,

stressed and depressed due to the Covid-19 crisis.

According to him, denial of the pandemic does not solve the emotional problems that many people are facing.

“As long as we don’t accept it, we can’t face it. As long as we don’t accept that this is really the situation now, we will not be able to see where the hand of God is,” Tagle said.

“And in that acceptance, light will come,” he added. “But if we refuse to accept and we resist even the hardships of this situation, we will just return to the old normal

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle (right) with Pope Francis (left) during the latter’s arrival in Philippines in January 2015. Wikimedia Commons

and be even a worse humanity.”

The cardinal once tested positive for Covid-19 when he visited Manila in September last year.

Although asymptomatic, he recalled suffering anxiety during his two-week quarantine.

He said that while all the medical assistance is provided for

symptomatic patients, those asymptomatic also need “emotional and spiritual first aid.”

The prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples has been in the country for almost a month now for a vacation. He is set to go back to Rome next week. CBCPNews

Sunday, August 29, 2021

CBCP backs petition for ‘healthy planet, people’

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he Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has added its support to a petition urging global leaders to take action and support a “healthy planet and healthy people.”

Launched in May this year by Laudato Si Movement, the petition will be delivered to world leaders at two different UN meetings—the UN Biodiversity Conference in October and the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties 26 (COP26) in November.

The petition specifically tells global leaders how they should care for “our common home.”

Among the calls is for them to “explicitly recognize humaninduced climate change and biodiversity as part of one and the same crisis.”

It also wants them to “acknowledge the need for ambitious, integrated, and transformative action that responds to both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.”

World leaders are also urged to “urgently affirm the Parish Agreement to limit warming to 1.5 degrees celsius, and to a new biodiversity global goal of 50 percent conservation of lands and waters, and restoration and sustainable management of all the rest of land and water bodies to ensure no more

biodiversity loss.”

In a pastoral message released on August 23, the CBCP asked Catholics and other institutions to sign the petition that will ask world leaders to establish meaningful agreements to protect the Earth.

“Our common home is on the brink of catastrophe. Urgent actions are needed,” said its president, Archbishop Romulo Valles of Davao.

“We hope that this Season of Creation would lead us to renew our commitment to action to ensure that all creation will have a safe and healthy home to flourish and participate in renewing the Oikos of God,” he added.

As the Church will celebrate next month the Season of Creation, Valles also asked the faithful to participate in the activities organized by the CBCP National Laudato Si Program.

The annual celebration will start on September 1, the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, and ends on October 4, the feast of St. Francis, the patron saint of ecology.

In the Philippines, the Church has extended its Season of Creation by a week to October 10, the Indigenous Peoples Sunday.

Patricia Julianne Escaño/CBCP News

Warrior, servant, mother, unifier

Virgin Mary played many roles through the centuries I n a recent article in the “Religion News Service,” aut ho r W h it n e y B au c k pointed out that the Virgin Mary has become “an icon for pop stars and social justice warriors.”

Visitors to the web site of d e s i g ne r B re nd a E q u i hu a , for example, will find outerwear with a colorful image of Mary displayed on the back.

These coats feature prominently in the closets of numerous celebrities.

The Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny wears one in his “Cuidao por Ahí” music video,“ and rappers Lil Nas X and Shelley FK A DR A M, among others, have likewise been spotted wearing theirs in various settings.

Equihua keeps a full list of such appearances on her website.

While Mary may be enjoying renewed popularity as of late, this is not the first time she has been “in the spotlight.” In fact, because of the enormous and consistent impact that she has had on both Christians and some non-Christians for nearly 2,000 years, it’s difficult to conceive of a time in which Mary wasn’t a prominent figure.

As a scholar of early Christian literature who has done extensive research on traditions about Mary, I argue that the early interest in Mary came from her role as mother of Jesus, and that ancient authors transformed her into a sort of mythological figure by putting special emphasis on her virginity.

But others also came to emphasize Mary as an important character in her own right. For nearly 2,000 years, different Christian groups have understood Mary in various ways: as a servant, a warrior, an advocate, a leader, an exemplar, or as some combination of these.

Mary the mother

T he f o u r N e w Te s t a m e nt

G o s p e l s — M a t t h e w, M a r k , Luke and John—are the earliest sources that mention Mary.

She is a minor character in Matthew, and never speaks, even at the time of Jesus’ birth.

She has a slightly more pronounced role in Luke, which is the only other New Testament Gospel that mentions the birth of Jesus.

In Luke, she talks with an angel, visits a family member and speaks words of prophecy.

She also visits Jerusalem on two occasions: once for a purification ritual in the temple, and a second time to celebrate Passover.

In Mark, she seeks out Jesus while he is preaching, and she is also mentioned in passing by people in Jesus’ hometown.

The first of these scenes also appears in Matthew and Luke.

Finally, she appears twice in the Gospel of John. The first is at a wedding where the wine has run out, and the second is at Jesus’ crucifixion, where she stands nearby while he dies.

Apart from one fleeting reference to her in the Book of Acts, Mary appears nowhere else in the New Testament.

Because Jesus is the chief focus of the New Testament Gospels, it is not surprising that they contain so few biographical details about Mary.

She is present as a supporting character because she was integral to how these ancient aut hors t hought about her son. The fact that Jesus has a mother, for example, reminds readers that Jesus was, at a basic level, a human being.

Mary the virgin

The Gospel authors also use Mar y to stress that Jesus was a p a r t i c u l a r l y not e w or t h y person.

Mat t hew a nd Lu ke accomplish this by “my thologizing” t he stor y of H i s bi r t h , by

The image of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Mount Carmel at the altar at the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in New Manila, Quezon City. Screenshot from Basilica’s novena

emphasizing that Mar y was a virgin when He was conceived, and that her pregnancy was of divine origin rather than the result of human sexual activity.

T he t heme of t he v irg in mother impregnated by a god is not uncommon in the ancient world, and early readers of Matthew and Luke would have understood Mary’s pregnancy in the context of other wellknown stories of “divine children” born to virgin mothers.

The Roman poet Ovid, for example, writes that the mythical hero Perseus was born from a divine-human relationship between the god Zeus and Perseus’s mother Danaë.

T he Greek historian Plutarch makes a similar claim about Romulus and Remus, the legendary twins whose virgin mother R hea Silvia insisted that her pregnancy was the result of divine intercourse with Ares, the god of war.

Because Matthew and Luke use Mary’s purported virginity in order to make claims about what they see as the importance of her offspring, this detail is only important for them until

Jesus is born.

Matthew, for example, alludes to the consummation of Mary and Joseph’s marriage after Jesus’ birth when he writes that “[Joseph] had no marital relations with [Mary] until she had borne a son.”

By cont ra st , some l ater, Christian authors highlight Mary’s virginity as something that defines her even after Jesus’ birth.

In the late-second century, for example, an anonymous Christian author wrote an influential collection of stories about Mary’s birth and early life. This text is known to scholars today as the “Proto-Gospel of James,” and in it, Mary remains a virgin even after Jesus is born.

The Proto-Gospel is important for how scholars understand Mary for a number of reasons. Not least of those is that it evidences an early fascination with Mary not only as the mother of Jesus, but as an important character in her own right.

Jesus is a character in this text, but He is a relatively minor one, appearing only toward

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the end. The author’s primary focus is the life of the Virgin.

Mary the mirror

Like so many biblical characters, the way that a group understands Mary has much to do with how that group understands itself.

On one level, this plays out clearly in artistic representations of Mary. In the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, for example, fifth-century mosaics portray Mary as a noble woman dressed in Roman imperial clothing, which reflects the historical context in which these mosaics were made.

On the other side of the world, in Mexico City, is the famous 16th-century icon of Mary known as Our Lady of Guadalupe.

According to legend, Mary appeared in 1531 to an Aztec man named Juan Diego, and she left this image of her imprinted on his cloak.

Visitors to Our Lady of Guadalupe will note Mary’s darker complexion, which is indicative of the icon’s Spanish-Mexican context. Historically, it has been a powerful and unifying

symbol of Mexican identity.

A more recent example is the artist Ben Wildflower and his popular woodcut of Mary, in which she clenches her raised fist and stomps on a serpent while surrounded by the words “Fill the hungry. Lift the lowly.

Cast down the mighty. Send the rich away.”

When asked about Mary’s presence in his art, Wildflower commented: “Mary is who I want to be in the world.”

This phenomenon is at work a lso in the va lues that are imposed on Mary, and which sometimes seem at odds with one another.

Mary has been upheld both as an exemplar for motherhood, for example, but also as a model for a more strictly ascetic, virginal life.

Her temperament is another detail that frequently shifts according to context.

M a r y i s h a i le d b y some Catholics as “Queen of Peace” a nd is f requent ly upheld as a pa ragon of f ree submission to t he d iv ine w i l l.

Yet, there are also medieval manuscript illustrations that show her in a more active and perhaps even violent role, punching and wrestling with demons.

Drawing from this image of the seemingly “violent” virgin, some online retailers have begun to sell merchandise featuring the slogan “Hail Mary, full of grace, punch the devil in the face.”

A s C h r i s t i a n s a nd non Christians encounter Mary in various media and settings, they may do well to recall the myriad ways that she has been used to unite and comfort, but also to divide and convict. As I see it, she will no doubt continue to fascinate in both new and familiar ways for years to come. Eric M. Vanden Eykel, Ferrum College/The Conversation (CC)

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www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug

SMC to start 80-hectare mangrove plantation in Paombong, Bulacan

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an Miguel Corporation (SMC) is looking to start a mangrove plantation on an 80-hectare site in Paombong, Bulacan as part of its nationwide reforestation initiatives that includes expanding the Bulakan Mangrove Ecopark at Barangay Taliptip where SMC is set to build the New Manila International Airport project.

The initiative also includes the planting of 7 million trees in at least seven provinces nationwide.

The company is in the initial stages of developing the first 20 hectares of what will be the San Miguel-Paombong Mangrove Plantation & Sanctuary near the coastline of Barangay Masukol.

It will be undertaken together with the local government unit (LGU) of Paombong, headed by Mayor Maryanne Marcos, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR).

“Our team is in the process of putting together the development plan for the mangrove plantation, and after submitting this to the Paombong LGU, we hope to immediately proceed with the signing of the memorandum of agreement [MOA]. We thank the local government of Paombong for agreeing to host this mangrove plantation site and sanctuary that will be the biggest in Bulacan. It will also be a key component of improved sustainability and flood mitigation efforts for the province,” SMC President Ramon S. Ang said.

“We initially identified 20 hectares for this project and we are carefully studying the site in consultation with a mangrove expert to ensure that we will address potential challenges and ensure the mangroves’ long-term growth, so they can benefit both current and future generations,” he added.

With an estimated 2,500 mangrove

propagules to be planted per hectare, the San Miguel-Paombong Plantation & Sanctuary can host as many as 200,000 mangrove trees. This is more than the 190,000 mangroves that the company initially targeted last year at the start of its mangrove planting activities in Bulacan.

Next month, Ang said, SMC employee volunteers are also set to plant 10,000 mangroves at the Bulakan Mangrove Ecopark. The Bulakan Mangrove Ecopark, a 24.5-hectare mangrove area located at Sitio Wawang Capiz in Barangay Taliptip, is jointly maintained by the local government of Bulakan and SMC. The planting activity will bring to 16,000 the new mangroves being grown

by SMC at the Bulakan Ecopark site.

This is in addition to 13,000 already in place in the coastal areas of Hagonoy and Obando.

“Planting is just the first step. Making sure that these mangroves grow to adulthood is the bigger challenge and will involve the community, especially those that will benefit from it. In combination with our upcoming river dredging and cleanup projects in Bulacan and further emphasis on proper waste disposal, we can both safeguard the marine environment and address flooding in the province,”Ang said.

“We are confident that we can get this done with the help of local and national government partners. We will also be drawing from the experience of our various SMC businesses that have implemented similar major sustainability initiatives nationwide,” he said.

Ang cited as example the project of its power unit, SMC Global Power Holdings Corp. (SMCGP), to plant 7 million upland trees and mangroves over 4,000 hectares of land in at least seven provinces.

BusinessMirror

Since the project started in 2019, SMCGP’s volunteers, along with some 24 local farmer and fisherfolk organizations, have already planted, and are caring for a total of 3,027,302 seedlings and propagules as of August 15 this year.

This project covers Zambales, Davao Occidental, Bataan, Negros Occidental, Pangasinan, Albay, Quezon, and Bulacan.

Ang said that the fisherfolk and farmers’ organizations helped in identifying indigenous tree varieties for planting and are nurturing the young trees to ensure high survival rates at 89 and 91 percent for upland trees and mangrove propagules, respectively.

Upland plantation varieties are Narra, Molave, White Lauan, Palosapis, Agoho, Batino, Igang, and Malabayabas, while mangrove varieties include Bakawan Babae, Bakawan Lalaki, Bungalon, and Api-Api. Meanwhile, San Miguel Brewery Inc. has planted an estimated 1 million trees under the Trees Brew Life program for the last 10 years in areas that include Bacolod City, Tagoloan City in Misamis Oriental, Sta. Rosa in Laguna, and Mandaue City.

Company volunteers from Ginebra San Miguel Inc., together with community stakeholders, are taking care of 40,000 full grown trees across 12 hectares of land in Bago City, Negros Occidental, where its Distileria Bago Inc. is also undertaking a 2-hectare expansion of the forest.

Petron Corporation also eyes to plant at least 50,000 seedlings as part of its proposed 10-year biodiversity conservation efforts for the Sarangani Bay Protected Seascape.

In support of the government’s National Greening Program, Petron has planted over 1 million trees and mangroves nationwide since 2000, The company has also adopted a total of 30 hectares of mangrove reforestation areas in Tacloban City, Leyte and Roxas City, Capiz under its Puno ng Buhay program.

Sunday, August 29, 2021 A13

Xendit expects more SMEs onboarding its platform amid e-commerce growth

By Tyrone Jasper C. Piad

X

endit Philippines is eyeing to onboard more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on its platform amid growing interest from start-ups and individual sellers, as well as the increased adoption of e-commerce amid the pandemic.

The payment solutions provider started its focus on the SME market at the beginning of the year, Xendit Philippines Chief Operating Officer Christian Reyes said at an event hosted by the BusinessMirror on Friday.

“Admittedly, it was a slow start at the beginning, but we’ve actually started gaining momentum and traction. We are already in the hundreds of SMEs onboarded and we think there’s a lot of growth that you can see there,” he said.

“As we onboard more SMEs, we are creating relationships, we’re listening to what their pinpoints are and learning from that experience,” Reyes said, noting that doing so will help the company improve its product offerings.

With the anticipated growth, the Xendit official said they have been investing in machine reading technology to support the processing of SME applications. The technology, he explained, can help in examining the documents and streamlining the identification system.

Reyes explained that it is a

BM Freshly Brewed live forum with Xendit Philippines COO Christian Reyes.

must to streamline the processes for merchant onboarding as the company grows.

“As we continue to grow and scale up, as we actually get more and more SMEs signing up, we don’t just want to hire more people to actually facilitate those applications,” he said.

What sets Xendit apart from ewallet services—which has become a popular payment method—is its “comprehensive” offering of services for the SMEs, Reyes said.

He identified the company’s services: direct debits, credit cards, over-the-counter payments, e-wallets and buy-now-pay-later schemes.

“We were able to consolidate all of that so you don’t have to go to three different pages, track your payments to see if this person has

already paid the invoice,” he said.

W h i le e -w a l let s a re one of t he f a s t e s t - g ro w i n g p ay me nt schemes, Reyes noted there are still other pay ment options that need to be provided. This will help the merchant to reach out to more customers, he said.

The payment solutions provider launched in June payment gateway services to individual business owners amid the growing number of sellers using social media to sell their goods.

Through its platform, Xendit said, customers can make direct pay ments to certain banks, ewallets and other financial institutions. The sole proprietors, cor porations and partnerships, meanwhi le, can a lso process credit-card pay ments.

Science

BusinessMirror

A14 Sunday, August 29, 2021

Sunday

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion • www.businessmirror.com.ph

Nestlé continues its food, packaging innovations through stronger R&D P

Biosafety lab to be launched in prep for the creation of PHL vaccine insti

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By Rory Visco

s it marks the 40th anniversary of its research and development (R&D) facilities in Singapore, Nestlé said it will continue playing a key role in developing innovative products and technologies, including more sustainable packaging, for Southeast Asia and beyond for both its retail and out-of-home business.

Using in-house expertise, Nestlé scientists would like to ensure that products are tailored to local consumer preferences, taste and nutritional requirements, the company's officials said in a webinar on Tuesday.

The R&D center sits in the heart of a vibrant innovation ecosystem, which enables strong collaborations with partners, research institutions and start-ups across the region.

CEO Chris Johnson for Nestlé's Zone Asia, Oceania and Sub-Saharan Africa said all food is local. If people want to be successful in their business, they need a good understanding of the flavors that people love, the dishes they want to serve to their families, and the food trends they want to try.

“That’s why it’s so important to have a research and development team in Singapore, here in the heart of Southeast Asia, a center of excellence driving innovation and product development in Asia, for Asia,” Johnson said.

To further strengthen the center’s innovation capabilities, Nestlé upgraded its R&D facilities to feature state-of-the-art labs, experimental kitchens, consumer testing, sensory evaluations rooms, open working

spaces, as well as its fundamental research hub.

This move will help enable faster translation of breakthrough science into nutritious, great-tasting products for people across all life stages.

Besides upgraded facilities, the center will also include a new regional R&D Accelerator, which is part of Nestlé’s global R&D Accelerator network.

It provides a world-class platform for start-ups, graduate or undergraduate students, who may have new and fresh ideas, and Nestlé employees in the region to be able to develop and test novel concepts in under six months.

They will have access to Nestlé’s R&D expertise, co-working spaces, and small- to medium-scale production equipment to facilitate the rapid upscaling of products for a test launch in real market conditions.

Thomas Hauser, head of Global Product and Technology Development for Nestlé, said the R&D center in Singapore has a long history of developing innovative products for Southeast Asia that are inspired by the cultural diversity and different local cuisines.

“Upgrading the center with state-

Project Marayum: Breaking the PHL language barrier via a web dictionary

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hat is “thank you” in Asi, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a or other Filipino languages?

You may get the answer and learn more Filipino words from the web-based dictionary platform that was developed by a team of computer scientists and linguists who are motivated by a mission to preserve and save endangered Filipino languages.

Project Marayum was led

by Assistant Professor Mario Carreon of the Department of Computer Science at the University of the Philippines Diliman, the DOST-PCIEERD said in a news release.

The project sought to produce an online language dictionary which can be modified by registered members of a specific community who mainly uses the language.

During its initial development, the first uploaded was the Asi-English language dictionary. Asi is a Visayan language spoken in the province of Romblon.

Revisions to the dictionary are allowed only to registered Asi language speakers with entries reviewed by a group of assigned language experts.

Project Marayum was built through a collaborative effort of different communities.

The Marayum website is currently available online at https://marayum.ph. It has an initial layout of four dictionaries: Asi-English, Cebuano-English, HiligaynonEnglish, and Kinaray-aEnglish.

Other dictionaries are currently being collated using Marayum which include BikolBuhi’non, Bikol-Central, Bikol-Rinconada, Masbatenyo, Kapampangan, Chavacano, Gaddang, Inakyeanon, Waray, and Ilocano with corresponding English translations.

All the dictionaries are being managed by their communities and assigned linguists.

As an online dictionary platform for Philippine languages, it aims to empower native language speakers to create and curate an online dictionary of their language without needing to have technical expertise in website design, implementation, and maintenance.

The project is funded by the Department of Science and Technology and monitored by the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOSTPCIEERD).

DOST-PCIEERD Executive Director Dr. Enrico Paringit expressed support to the project which paved the way for further communication through innovative solutions.

He underscored the project’s importance in celebration of Buwan ng Wika.

“The national language is as symbolic as the country’s own freedom, giving it its unique identity as a sovereign nation. This Buwan ng Wika, we can also celebrate other local languages in the country through this project,” Paringit said.

A Nestlé researcher making innovations on Milo Nestlé photo of-the-art facilities, including the new R&D Accelerator, is proof of our longterm commitment to the region. We will also be able to respond to food and beverage trends and challenges more quickly and efficiently,” Hauser said.

With years of experience, the R&D center has greatly contributed to the innovation of many products among its brands, such as coffee mixes, powdered beverages, such as Milo, culinary products, plant-based foods and beverages and ice cream.

The Milo products, for example, in Australia use plant-based ingredients but still retains Milo’s signature taste.

Using its expertise in coffee creamers innovation, local experts developed a range of great-tasting, creamy Nescafé Gold nondairy lattes in only eight months, which are now available in over 20 countries.

This expertise was also leveraged for the launch of Starbucks plantbased Silky Soy Latte and Toasted Oat Lattes.

R&D experts in Singapore also support the development of plantbased meal solutions for both retail and out-of-home for the local Harvest Gourmet brand. Products are adapted for Asian consumers, using local cuisine applications, such as dumplings,

stir fry, braising, katsudon, and more.

Nestlé assures that even if the plant-based food category is growing, it will still continue to develop dairybased food products in order to give consumers the option to choose based on their food preference, whether meat/dairy or plant-based products.

Besides food innovations, the R&D center is aggressively conducting tests on packaging to help eliminate the use of single-use plastics and instead use recyclable containers. Nescafé products currently use recyclabled paper, including paper-based packaging for KitKat in Thailand.

These packaging innovations are part of Nestlé’s commitment to use less plastic by year 2025 and transition to using recyclable or reusable packaging that will help the company reduce by one-third its use of virgin plastic materials and go for more paper-based packaging.

Nestlé's R&D center in Singapore is part of the company's global R&D organization which consists of 23 locations around the world. By strengthening the center’s capabilities, it can better accelerate the innovation of sciencebased products across life stages, in a way that's good for the people and the planet.

reparations are currently being made by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) for the establishment of the Virology and Vaccine Institute of the Philippines (VIP) with the launching of a new biosafety level 2+ (BSL-2+) Laboratory in October.

This came as the DOST is optimistic that the bill creating the VIP will soon be signed into law after the House of Representatives passed on third and final reading on July 28 House Bill 9559, proposing the creation of the VIP. The institute is envisioned to become "the premier research and development institute in the field of virology, encompassing all areas in viruses and viral diseases in humans, plants and animals.”

The VIP will also be tasked to conduct product research for diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.

A BSL-2+ Laboratory works on microorganisms that pose moderate hazards to laboratory staff and the environment. The biological material used in a BSL-2 Laboratory consists of bacteria, viruses and organisms associated with human diseases.

To be established in the Environment and Biotechnology Division of the DOST-Industrial Technology Development Institute, the new of more than P5.097 million laboratory will be adhering to the appropriate biosafety and biosecurity protocols as mandated by international standards.

With this new BSL-2 laboratory, the initial projects of the VIP program will be implemented safely and securely.

In his last State of the Nation Address on July 26, President Duterte endorsed the passage of a law creating the Philippines' Center for Disease Prevention and Control, and the Virology and Vaccine Institute of the Philippines.

“We hope to pursue the creation of public entities dedicated to managing emerging and re-emerging diseases,” the President was quoted in a Philippines News Agency (PNA) news report.

Duterte said the Philippines has been getting the Covid-19 vaccines from abroad, since it was not able to make one.

"I think the Filipino people, if given the proper support and the things, the equipment they have to use, I am sure the Filipino brain can also process or make vaccines in the future,” Duterte said.

Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña said he is very happy that the president urged Congress to enact a law creating the VIP. De la Peña said the proposed VIP "can do it" with the local experts who were scholars and products of trainings of the department, and with the help of Balik Scientists and international partners.

De la Peña earlier said the Philippines does not have the capability to develop a vaccine due to the lack of facility, prompting him to propose the establishment of the VIP. He said the VIP will not only address Covid-19, but the other viral diseases as well.

"We can work on vaccines even for infectious diseases caused by nonvirus organisms," de la Peña said.

He said the vaccine the VIP would develop would include those for children, for measles, dengue, typhoid fever, among others.

"Maybe we could also develop these, but we would prioritize vaccines for pandemics, as well as diseases of animals and plants caused by viruses," he added.

The DOST plans to start the VIP building construction next year, and to finish the building by 2023. The VIP gets P284 million fund for 2021.

DOST Undersecretar y Rowena Cristina L. Guevara, for Research and Development, earlier said the research projects that have been approved would focus on the Zika virus from mosquitos, African swine flu for pig and kadangkadang disease for coconut.

Guevara said the creation of the VIP would undergo two phases. The first is to organize the Filipino researchers who have been doing virolog y on humans, animals, and plants. The second is the establishment of the building or research facility that will take around two years to complete. Rosemarie C. Señora/ S&T Media Services and PNA

345 NCR families benefit from DOST’s urban gardening proj

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total of 345 families from 19 communities from the Nat ion a l C apit a l R eg ion (NCR) benefitted from Gulayan sa Pamayanan, an urban gardening project that is led and organized by two Department of Science and Technology (DOST) agencies, the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (DOSTPC A ARRD) and DOST-NCR. The project distributed urban gardening materials and trained residents in Metro Manila on two tec h nolog ies —Enr ic hed Pot t i ng Preparation (EPP) and Simple Nutrient Addition Program (SNAP) Hydroponics.

This was announced during the Gulayan sa Pamayanan online news conference themed, “Urban Gardening: Sharing of Experiences and Impacts from the Beneficiaries,” on August 25 that was streamed on DOST-PC A ARRD’s Facebook page.

Dr. Eduardo P. Paningbatan Jr., retired professor from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, developed the EPP, while Dr. Primitivo Jose A. Santos and Dr. Eureka Teresa M. Ocampo of UPLB-Institute of Plant Breeding (IPB) developed SNAP Hydroponics.

EPP is a technolog y that requires recyclable soft drink bottles as plant pots, a potting medium, coco coir and the compost soil extract (CSE), which is formulated by Paningbatan.

CSE provides nutrients to herbs, vegetables and ornamental plants that are planted using EPP. SNAP Hydroponics uses recycled Styrofoam boxes, styro cups, growing media composed of coco peat, carbonized rice hull, saw dust, and fine sand, plus the SNAP A and B nutrient solutions, which similar to CSE, provide nutrients to the plants.

According to DOST-PC A ARRD Executive Director Reynaldo V. Ebora, the project beneficiaries were selected based on the Community Empowerment through Science and Technology program of the DOST, which hopes to provide livelihood and a llev iate povert y in remote communities. “ T he Gu l ay a n sa Pa m ay a n a n project was initially identified to assist seven communities. However, this number ballooned to 19 communities, which is still aligned with our goal to increase vegetable availability in Metropolitan areas,” Ebora said.

T he 19 communities are Muntaparlas (Brgy. C A A, Las Piñas; Brgy. BF Homes, Phase 3, Parañaque City; Don Bosco, Parañaque Cit y; Doña Rosar io Heights and Paradise Garden group of Sucat, Muntinlupa City; and GAD, MCTI, Putatan, Muntinlupa City), Pamamazon (Brgy. 412, Sampaloc, Manila; Claro M. Recto High School; Brgy.

412, Sampaloc, Manila; and Brgy.

Pildera, Pasay City), Pamamarisan (Brgy. Nangka, Brgy. Concepcion, THAI, Brgy. Concepcion Uno, Fortune, and CEMO of Marikina City), and Camanava (Brgy. Pasolo, Brgy.

Balangkas, Brgy. Tanza 1, and Brgy.

Tanza 2, Navotas City.

Food security in the community

A total of 3,950 EPP kits and 2,350 SNAP kits were distributed to the communities.

Moreover, 180 bags of compost, 55 pieces of tower/vertical garden with EPP vessels, eight coco coir net greenhouse, 1,000 liters of CSE, 100 sets of SNAP A and B Solutions, and 10 packs of plastic lining were distributed to 345 families.

To i nc re a se t he s ucces s of t he proje c t , t he b e ne f ic i a r ies we re t r a i ne d o n t he E PP a nd S N A P

Hyd roponics technolog ies, including seed ling propagation a nd pre pa r at ion . A tot a l of 250 b e ne f ic i a r ies we re t r a i ne d .

The beneficiaries shared the benefits they gained from the Gulayan sa Pamayanan project.

Brgy. 412 Chairman Filomena G. Cinco, also the leader of “Nagkakaisang Mamamayan ng Legarda,” shared that they were interested in livelihood projects because their constituents were displaced and lost their livelihood dur ing the pandemic.

“Residents of Barangay 412 no longer go out of the community because the source of their livelihood are already here. Most importantly, Gulayan sa Pamayanan was a big help because we could eat many food and could still share to others.

Our residents became healthier and their resistance is stronger. We give away and donate our extra harvest,” Cinco said in Fiipino.

Meanwhile, Anita Pascual, president of Win Mother Community Group in Brgy. Balangkas, Valenzuela Cit y, shared that through the Gulayan sa Pamayanan project, they were able to organize several communities composed of women, solo parents, youth and men who had assigned garden plots.

Their group was able to secure a compost bioreactor from DOST that helped them to hasten compost-making.

Prior to using the bioreactor, Pascual said that compost-making was labor-intensive and can only produce a limited number of sacks of compost.

With the bioreactor, she said that compost production increased tenfold. Pascual added that she is grateful for the assistance and the knowledge they gained from the project.

Arlyn Godinez, community leader of Paradise Garden in Brgy. Sucat, Muntinlupa City, shared that their 43 members who are all beneficiaries of the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) were able to obtain materials as well as knowledge in gardening.

“W hen you plant, you can bring home vegetables for your family.

T he vegetables are safe because they are not sprayed with pesticide. We can sell vegetables at the City Hall which increased our income. We earn P5,000 per cycle of SNAP Hydroponics,” Godinez said in Filipino.

According to Chairman Raffy Sevilla of Barangay Sucat, the project provided the community an alternative food source, especially during pandemic.

He said that through the facilitation of DOST, they were able to secure seedlings of different vegetables, which they distributed to the community.

“We benefitted so much from the DOST, not only from the equipment, but most specially from the transfer of technology— from ideas,” he said.

Arlu Cabañero, a teacher at Pasolo Elementary School, said that farming was not new to him because his parents were both farmers. As the focal person, he wanted to create awareness among his Grade 6 pupils regarding agriculture and food production.

He was also able to gain knowled ge on t he d i f ferent met hod s and techniques of urban gardening, which he also shared with his community during this time of pandemic.

“I am thankful to DOST-NCR and DOST-PCA ARRD in trusting us because not all are given this kind of opportunity,” he said.

Rose Anne M. Aya/S&T Media Services

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Sunday, August 29, 2021 A15

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Combating ocean plastic pollution

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By Jonathan L. Mayuga

She said that a lot of the products and materials that enter the Philippines come from Western countries like the United States.

“So we really want to create more materials that we can relate to and specific to the Philippine audience,” she said.

cean plastic pollution has reached an alarming level that environmental groups have started a global brand audit, targeting manufacturers whose products’ packaging materials end up in rivers and oceans.

The clamor is to hold the manufacturers accountable for their plastic packaging materials, particularly single-use plastics, which scientists say end up not only polluting the oceans.

As plastics are non-biodegradable, the longer they stay in the oceans, they become deadlier when they breakdown into smaller pieces and become microplastics and become part of the food chain, contaminating food and eventually threatening human health and survival.

Mismanaged plastic The “World Bank Group 2021 Market Study for the Philippines: Plastics Circularity Opportunities and Barriers. East Asia and Pacific Region Marine Plastics Series” revealed that mismanaged plastic waste has growing economic and environmental consequences.

The study says that $80 billion to $120 billion worth of plastic packaging is lost from the global economy each year due to lack of recycling and suboptimal value creation where recycling exists.

The study revealed that globally, between 4.8 million to 12.7 million tons of plastic leak into the oceans each year with Asia contributing over 80 percent.

“The Philippines is the thirdlargest contributor with an estimated 0.75 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic entering the ocean every year,” the study said.

The World Bank Group also revealed that the Department of En-

vironment and Natural Resources (DENR), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme, is finalizing the National Plan of Action for Marine Litter.

Ban ‘problematic’ plastic Last month, environmental groups have filed a petition in Congress seeking to immediately regulate, if not ban, the “problematic single-use plastic packaging and products” in the Philippines.

The groups are the Break Free From Plastic, EcoWaste Coalition, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Greenpeace Philippines, Health Care Without Harm Asia, Mother Earth Foundation, Oceana Philippines International, Interfacing Development Interventions for Sustainability, Philippine Movement for Climate Justice.

Project Mar i k nows, War on Waste Negros Oriental, Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines, Sea and Terrestrial Environment Protectors, Freedom from Debt Coalition Cebu, Sanlakas Cebu, Kabataan Party-list, Panalipdan Youth Davao, Philippine Earth Justice Center, and 350.org Pilipinas More than 57,000 indiv iduals signed the petition which the proponents said “ref lect on the citizens’ clamor for the passage of a comprehensive law banning single-use plastics.”

The groups are calling for an immediate timeline for the phasing out of single-use plastic products consistent with Republic Act (RA)

Plastic ban a bane?

Plastic waste

PHOTO FROM BFFP/ECOWASTE COALITION

9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2001, and RA 8749, or Clean Air Act. They said it should focus on sustainable systems and reusability of products, and mandate producers to cut-back on the use of single-use plastic.

Different perspective One organization, however, is looking at the ocean plastic pollution problem from a different perspective.

The Save Philippine Seas (SPS), a movement that help protect the country’s coastal and marine resources, is embarking on a nationwide campaign to help change the negative perception on plastic, and focus on the issue of poor solid waste management.

Together with snacks company Mondelez Philippines, SPS aims to shed light on the issues around solid waste management and advocating for accountability from all relevant stakeholders.

“In the case of marine plastic pollution, we see the reasons behind it are improper waste management and unsustainable consumption patterns,” said SPS Executive Director Ana Oposa said in a statement announcing the partnership with Mondelez Philippines.

“Simply put, plastics are not being disposed of and collected properly, leading them to end up in nature.

When they are collected, they are

not recycled enough, which leads them to stay in landfills and end up in bodies of water too. Lastly, we need to treat plastic as a resource...

Plastic can and should be re-used to reduce the production of virgin plastic, reduce the waste in our landfills, and eliminate the plastics in our environment,” Oposa said.

SPS developed a white paper on the issue surrounding the plastic problem and the poor solid waste management in the country. It urged to promote plastic circularity and educate various stakeholders, including consumers and policymakers, on the complex issue at hand.

A complex issue Interviewed by the BusinessMirror via Zoom on August 19, Oposa, also known as SPS’s “Chief Mermaid,” said that plastic is a complex issue. There are a lot of problems.

“A lot of packaging we use right now are not recyclable and not being collected,” she said, even if there’s a law, RA 9003, that was passed 21 years ago.

“We need to work to ensure that the law is implemented,” according to Oposa, adding that even among nongovernment organizations the education and knowledge on solid waste management remain wanting.

“Even me, when I buy a product, where will I throw this [packaging], especially if they are [made of] mixed materials?” she asked.

SPS’s white paper on Promoting Plastic Circularity in the Philippines casts doubt on the wisdom of banning plastic which several local government units have adapted.

According to SPS, banning a material without sustainable alternatives can bring a different set of problems.

She cited that the use of paper is more resource-intensive than disposable bags, and would require more land use from growing trees, water and more carbon dioxide emissions.

SPS cited a study by Denmark’s Ministry of Environment and Food that found that a paper bag must be reused 43 times and an organic cotton bag 20,000 times to be equal or less than the per-use environment impact of a disposable plastic bag.

Fundamental shift The white paper requires a fundamental shift in production and consumption—from a linear economy to a circular economy that will require behavioral change.

SPS said it is committed to embark on an inclusive education campaign that promotes behavioral change, in, among others, waste segregation and recyclability of different material types.

The document talked about implementing the garbage law, which is anchored on segregation at source, and no-segregation, no-collection policy, which will hopefully enable better compliance of the provisions of the law.

Moreover, the paper underscored the need to strengthen the recycling industry in the Philippines.

Recycle-ready packaging According to Joseph R. Fabul,

Mondelez Ph i l ippines cou nt r y manager, said the company aims to make recycle-ready all of the company’s packaging materials by 2025.

“Right now, we are 94 percent recycle-ready,” he said.

According to Fabul, plastic per se is not bad. “It only becomes bad if it is not recyclable and if it is not being collected, recycled, or processed. That is what we are trying to avoid. We are avoiding this bad plastic going to the sea,” he said.

He said the company is investing in infrastructure, he said, because there are consumer plastic waste that are already collected, but still end up in water bodies.

Information dissemination Mondelez, a member of the Philippine Alliance for Recycling Materials Sustainability, boasts of a plan for the campaign’s success.

“We have a target of zero waste to nature by 2030. So by 2030, no waste will end up in our oceans and nature. Throughout this timeline, we plan to execute several key interventions, and one is through education,” Fabul said.

He said that with the help of SPS, infographics will be circulated internally, and then through social media. “ So t he k id s c a n ea si ly lea r n f rom it. It is at t rac t ive for t he k id s —t he good h abit of rec yc l i ng a nd k nowledge t h at t h is pl a st ic wa ste c a n end up i n ou r ocea ns… Soc i a l med i a is suc h a power f u l tool a nd t he sl ides a re desig ned for soc i a l med i a, suc h a s Inst ag ra m,” he sa id.

According to Fabul, the company has earlier planned to print the materials for distribution, but this move was made difficult by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nevertheless, he said the policy paper is for a wide range of audience, including members of Congress and other government agencies.

“This is also to disseminate information about the real problem,” he said.

Invasive alien fishes cause the extinction of native fishes A

fter the recent monsoon rains, dozens of people were trying their luck at fishing in Marikina River. When heavy rains wash over the mountains of the Sierra Madre, the water push the fishes from the floating farms of Laguna Lake that make many escape and swim down the Marikina and Pasig Rivers.

This is the best time to fish, so people flock to the rivers. One used a sudsud, a V-framed scissor net usually used in coastal areas to catch bottom dwellers. Others used fishing rods to pull out knifefish and cream dory, some as heavy as 20 pounds!

Twenty years ago, the Marikina River still had bottom-dwelling gobies called biya, spear-shaped halfbeaks called kasuswit, climbing perch called martiniko, which can briefly crawl on land to reach the next muddy pool, colorful gouramis and a host of other fish.

Invasive fishes

Today, invasive fishes have taken over the river. Hailing mostly from Africa, South America and Indochina, they have successfully adapted to Philippine waterways—which is bad news for our native fish.

After the recent monsoon rains, local fishers caught black chin tilapia (called Gloria or Arroyo because like the former President, the fish have little moles on their faces), Nile tilapia, African catfish, janitor fish, pangasius or cream dory, plus smaller fishes like guppies and mollies which eat mosquito larvae.

These fishes are not native to the Philippines. The only native fish caught that day were several kanduli, brackish water catfish usually caught in Manila Bay.

Native fishes disappearing

The Philippines’ native fishes are slowly disappearing—which seems to be the norm and not the exception for many of the rivers and lakes.

Even protected biodiversity bastions like Taal Lake with its unique freshwater sardines called tawilis and trevally called maliputo, have not been spared from the introduction of exotics, which are imported for two reasons.

The first, of course, is for food. The pressing need to feed the increasing number of the population has given rise to tilapia farms all over the archipelago. So successful are tilapia at colonizing waterways that most Filipinos now think the ubiquitous fish is native to the country.

Newcomers to the country’s aquaculture industry include pangasius, a giant catfish from Indochina, which are marketed as «cream dory» to make the bland fish sound a bit more delicious.

The aquarium trade is the second entry point for invasive fish. It is best exemplified by the janitor fish, which is becoming more common in the country’s rivers. Many of the fish are sold when they are young, cute and still colorful.

As the fish mature, they lose their bright color and grow larger than most

Cream dory or pangasius, which are native to Indochina, are among the most sought-after fish in the Marikina River. Adults can easily breach 20 pounds in weight. Photo by Gregg Yan

fish keepers think. Unwilling to kill the grown fish, aquarists sometimes release them in local waterways—not knowing that the fish which come from similar climates as the Philippines can survive and even breed in the country’s waters.

The country’s rivers and lakes are now host to giant knifefish and snakeheads from Indochina, janitor fish from the meandering rivers of the Amazon, plus territorial cichlids from Africa.

Proven disastrous in Africa

What can happen if the invasive fishes continue to swim amok in the country’s rivers?

In East Africa’s Lake Victoria, the introduction of Nile perch has proven disastrous. In an attempt to “boost fisheries productivity,” the predatory fish was introduced to the lake in the 1950s.

Growing over six feet long, it soon preyed on over 100 other fish species, practically wiping out 60 percent of the lake’s native cichlids in what may be the largest vertebrate extinction of the 20th century.

As you read this, thousands of brightly colored cichlids (one species alone is worth P2,000 apiece, compared to Nile perch which sells for P200 per kilogram) are being eaten hourly.

15 fish species in Lake Lanao declared extinct

The Philippines has already experienced a similar phenomenon, with at least 15 fish species declared extinct in Lake Lanao.

“This is not the first time we are witnessing the impacts of invasive alien species, which eat or outcompete native species,” said Dr. Theresa Mundita Lim, executive director for

the Asean Centre for Biodiversity, an intergovernmental body which protects and conserves Asean’s biological diversity.

“While the introduction of invasive alien species like tilapia or pangasius may be perceived as valuable for livelihoods, food production or pest control, science-based assessments should be undertaken to determine if it leads to adverse impacts on the environment and biodiversity,” Lim said.

“We should ensure that this will not bring more harm in the long run.

The extinction of native and edible fish species affects nutrition, food security and dietary diversity. This leads to numerous local, national and regional implications,” she added.

According to the Asean Biodiversity Outlook 2, Asean member states have identified 112 invasive alien species affecting forests, agriculture and aquatic ecosystems.

“Given that we have all these introduced species already being considered as economically important and are being used in aquaculture, it is imperative that we focus our research and technology development on the breeding, propagation and culture of our native species like ayungin, tawilis, maliputo, igat and native hito, both for conservation and sustainable aquaculture,” explained Dr. Ma. Rowena Eguia, a geneticist from Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center/Aquaculture Department (Seafdec/AQD), an international body which promotes sustainable fisheries development in Southeast Asia.

Benefits of farming native fishes Best Alternatives, a nongovernment organization based in the Philippines, and VB Consultancy, a research firm based in Europe, are working to highlight the dangers of farming invasive species.

Instead of farming potentially invasive foreign fish, the two groups are working to convince governments and private institutions to farm native species instead. “ I n add it ion to con ser v i ng genet ic d iversit y, far ming native fish has many benefits,” explained Jonah van Beijnen, head of VB Consultancy.

“They are often best suited to local climates, giving them better chances of surviving adverse weather effects like storms or droughts,” van Bejinen added. “Local species can better resist both disease and parasites. Lastly, they are typically in demand and fetch better prices than invasive fish.”

Institutions like Seafdec/AQD, Department of Agriculture (DA)Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, DA-National Fisheries Research and Development Institute, and the University of the Philippines are already doing studies on the rearing and farming of ayungin, tawilis, maliputo and other native fish.

This is a vital step in protecting and sustainable managing the populations of native fishes still thriving in the country’s rivers and lakes, and initiating their return in Marikina River.

Gregg Yan/Best Alternatives

Sports BusinessMirror

A16 | S

unday, August 29, 2021 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

Djokovic’s bid for record 21st major crown starts vs qualifier

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OVAK DJOKOVIC will begin his bid to win the US Open for a men’s-record 21st major tennis championship and to complete a calendar-year Grand Slam by facing a player who comes through qualifying.

Win that, and Djokovic’s potential path—as determined by Thursday’s draw—could include 2014 finalist Kei Nishikori in the third round, No. 6 seed Matteo Berrettini in the quarterfinals in a rematch of last month’s Wimbledon final and No. 4 Alexander Zverev, the 2020 runner-up in New York, in the semifinals.

Naomi Osaka’s first Grand Slam action since she withdrew from the French Open following a first-round victory to take a mental health break will come against Marie Bouzkova, a 23-year-old from the Czech Republic who is ranked 86th and has a 1-10 career record at the majors, including 0-3 at Flushing Meadows. Osaka won their only previous encounter in straight sets at last year’s Australian Open.

Looking past that, Osaka could face 17-year-old American Coco Gauff—whom she beat in New York in 2019 and lost to at Melbourne Park in 2020—or three-time major champion Angelique Kerber in the fourth round. Osaka, seeded No. 3, is the reigning champion at the US Open, one of her four major titles, which all have come on hard courts.

The possible women’s quarterfinal pairings by seeding are No. 1 Ash Barty, the Wimbledon

champion, against No. 7 Iga Swiatek, No. 4 Karolina Pliskova against No. 6 Bianca Andreescu, Osaka against No. 5 Elina Svitolina, and No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka against No. 8 Barbora Krejcikova.

Main draw play starts Monday with spectators allowed at full capacity, a year after all fans were banned because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The No. 1-seeded Djokovic is the first man to head to Flushing Meadows after having won a season’s first three major titles since Rod Laver went 4 for 4 at the Slams in 1969. That was Laver’s second true Grand Slam, after 1962; Don Budge in 1938 is the only other man to win all four majors in a single year. Steffi Graf in 1988 was the last woman to do it.

The other potential men’s quarterfinal matchups are Zverev vs. No. 7 Denis Shapovalov, No. 2 Daniil Medvedev vs. No. 8 Casper Ruud, and No. 3 Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. No. 5 Andrey Rublev.

In the first round, Tsitsipas will meet Andy Murray, whose three Grand Slam titles include the 2012 US Open.

Djokovic, Murray and No. 30 Marin Cilic, who beat Nishikori at Arthur Ashe Stadium in the final seven years ago, are the only players in the 128-player men’s bracket who already have won a Grand Slam trophy in singles.

Medvedev, Tsitsipas and Berrettini all were finalists at majors this year and lost to Djokovic.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal—who currently share the men’s mark of 20 Slam titles with Djokovic—are both injured and done for the season. Last year’s US Open champion, Dominic Thiem, also withdrew, citing a bad wrist, and the 2016 winner, Stan Wawrinka, is out after foot surgery.

Serena and Venus Williams, owners of a combined 30 Grand Slam singles trophies that include eight from the US Open, pulled out of the field Wednesday because of leg injuries.

Fifth-ranked Sofia Kenin pulled out of the US Open because

she recently tested positive for Covid-19, even though she said she has received a vaccine.

Kenin announced what she called “disappointing news” on social media.

She is a 22-year-old American who won the 2020 Australian Open and was the runner-up at the French Open later last year. Her best showing at the US Open is a fourth-round finish last year.

“Fortunately I am vaccinated and thus my symptoms have been fairly mild,” Kenin wrote. “However I have continued to test positive and thus will not be able to compete at the US Open next week.”

The year’s last Grand Slam tennis tournament starts Monday in New York, with spectators allowed at 100 percent capacity after no fans could attend last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I plan to spend the next several weeks getting healthy and preparing to play well this fall,” Kenin posted Wednesday. “Thank you all for supporting me.”

Hampered by a foot injury, Kenin has not played since a second-round loss at Wimbledon on June 30.

She joins a lengthy list of past major champions who have withdrawn from the US Open.

Earlier Wednesday, sisters Serena and Venus Williams said they would not be able to play in the tournament because of leg injuries. Serena owns 23 Grand Slam singles titles; Venus has seven.

Roger Federer (right knee)

AFGHAN Paralympic wheelchair basketball player Nilofar Bayat (center) and her husband Ramish Naik Zai arrive at the Torrejon military base just outside Madrid. AP

AFGHAN ATHLETES GET NEW HOMES

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ADRID—The captain of Afghanistan’s wheelchair basketball team has found a new home—and a new club—in Spain’s Basque Country.

Nilofar Bayat, who fled Afghanistan with the help of the

NOVAK DJOKOVIC’S in harness for the year’s last major tournament. AP

and Rafael Nadal (left foot)—who each has won 20 majors—already had said they were done for the season.

Stan Wawrinka (foot surgery) and reigning men’s champion Dominic Thiem (right wrist) are among the others who will be sitting out the competition on the hard courts in Flushing Meadows.

Milos Raonic, the runner-up at Wimbledon in 2016, also withdrew from the US Open on Wednesday, citing an injured right leg.

The brackets for the singles draws are scheduled to be released on Thursday. Kenin, Raonic and the Williams sisters will be replaced in the fields by players who lose in qualifying rounds this week, the US Tennis Association said. AP

Spanish government after the Taliban took over this month, will be living and playing in the city of Bilbao.

The Bidaideak Bilbao club said Thursday that Bayat and her husband, Ramish Naik Zai, who is also a player, are expected to start practicing with the rest of the squad next month. The club, the current Spanish champion, is waiting for their paperwork to be taken care of so it can register them with the local federation.

Bidaideak Bilbao is also trying to help other wheelchair players who were left behind in Afghanistan, including Latifa Sakhizadeh, who contacted the club after hearing news that it had welcomed Bayat. Sakhizadeh is still trying to get to the airport in Kabul to leave Afghanistan, the club said.

Bayat was a young girl when her family’s home in Kabul was hit by a rocket during the Taliban regime, injuring her spinal cord and killing her brother. Bayat started playing wheelchair basketball and eventually made it to the national team. Since, she had been active advocating for women’s rights and the rights of women with disabilities, which increased her fears of retaliation by the Taliban back home.

“The Taliban destroyed all the things that I worked hard [for] in these last years,” she said in a news conference after arriving in Spain last week. “They destroyed just in one day all of my achievement, all of my hard work.”

The Taliban promised to return Afghanistan to security and

Isolated from family, Hawaii Little Leaguers keep racking up wins

HONOLULU’S Kaikea Patoc-Young (9) scores on a wild pitch by Taylor’s (Michigan) Ethan Van Belle during the first inning of their game. AP

pledged they won’t seek revenge on those who opposed them or defended human rights in the past, though many Afghans remain skeptical.

Bayat and her husband were among the more than 800 Afghans that the Spanish government evacuated from Kabul since the Taliban regime took over the capital.

Bayat’s story attracted attention after she talked about her fears to a Spanish journalist whom she had befriended years ago. Antonio Pampliega posted her story on Twitter, prompting an outpouring of support.

The Spanish government and the Spanish basketball federation got involved and the couple was eventually included in the list of evacuees being helped by Spain.

Bayat was “happy to be alive” and glad to be in a position “to start a new life” with her husband in Spain, but she said she wouldn’t forget her country.

“I’m just one. The others are still there in the country,” she said. “I want the United Nations, all the countries, to please help Afghanistan. Do not let them be alone, because the Taliban are the same as they were 20 years ago.

Now they have all the control.”

Players from Afghanistan women’s national soccer team had an “important victory” when they were among a group of more than 75 people evacuated on a flight from Kabul.

Global soccer players’ union FIFPRO thanked the Australian government for making the evacuation of players, team

S

OUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pennsylvania—Hawaii second baseman Zack Bagoyo knows he’s lucky.

While it took skill and Zack’s entire 4-foot-8 frame to make two leaping catches in his team’s 2-0 victory over Michigan on Wednesday night at the Little League World Series, his good fortune extends to having his father, Kevin, on the coaching staff as an assistant.

Until they’re eliminated, all 16 teams at the tournament have been isolated to protect them from the coronavirus, living in the dormitories onsite in South Williamsport because the players are ages 10 to 12 and not eligible for vaccinations. While most players haven’t had close contact with their families during the tournament, the two Bagoyos have been together every step of the way.

“Obviously, it’s a little easier for me having my dad as a coach in the dorm to help me out,” Zack said. “A negative [of being in a Covid bubble] is not getting to interact with our

officials and family members possible, with work continuing to help more leave Afghanistan.

“These young women, both as athletes and activists, have been in a position of danger and on behalf of their peers around the world we thank the international community for coming to their aid,” the union said in a statement.

The Afghan team was created in 2007 in a country where women playing sport was seen as a political act of defiance against the Taliban.

Players had been advised this month to delete social-media posts and photographs of them with the team to help avoid reprisals since the United States-backed Afghanistan government fell.

“The last few days have been extremely stressful but today we have achieved an important victory,” former team captain Khalida Popal said.

Popal is among a team of FIFPRO lawyers and advisors who have worked with authorities in six countries, including Australia, the US and United Kingdom, to get athletes and their families on to evacuation lists and flights to safety.

“The women footballers have been brave and strong in a moment of crisis and we hope they will have a better life outside Afghanistan,” Popal said.

FIFPRO general secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffmann said evacuations had been “an incredibly complex process.”

“Our hearts go out to all the others who remain stranded in the country against their will,” he said. AP

parents and our supporters.”

Hawaii’s players and coaches have been quarantined from their families since August 6, just before the start of the West regional tournament in San Bernardino, California.

But for some families, the time apart has been greater than a few weeks. Kirk Nakama, father of utility player Cade Nakama, hasn’t hugged his son in nearly two months while the boy has played ball.

“It’s been tough. We’ve all got to do our part to keep our bubble tight,” Kirk said. “But we’re going to love to get the kids into our arms again.”

On the mound Wednesday night, pitcher Ryan Keanu was nearly perfect, allowing only a fifth inning single to Chauncey Adkins. He got some big help in the field, both from Zack at second and Kaikea Patoc-Young, who robbed Cameron Thorning of a home run over the wall in center field in the fourth inning.

When Keanu completed his 60-pitch shutout, he briefly celebrated with his teammates before looking toward the stands. AP

BusinessMirror

August 29, 2021

How a video game is turning the pandemic jobless into Crypto, NFT traders

2

BusinessMirror AUGUST 29, 2021 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

ON CHANGING GENRES Philip ‘Paga’ Manikan on his calling as a musician

A

RGUABLY every millennial- and a good chunk of zoomers- grew up with the songs of alt rock band Mayonnaise. When hits like ‘Synesthesia’ and ‘Jopay’ take over the airwaves, we are caught in a surge of nostalgia that takes us back to much simpler times of our not so distant childhood.

Behind the signature guitar melodies that seArve among the hallmark soundtracks of the local music scene is Philip ‘Paga’ Manikan, best known as the lead guitarist of Mayonnaise from 2004 up to 2013.

Publisher

: T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor-In-Chief

: Lourdes M. Fernandez

Concept

: Aldwin M. Tolosa

Y2Z Editor

: Jt Nisay

SoundStrip Editor

: Edwin P. Sallan

Group Creative Director : Eduardo A. Davad Graphic Designers Contributing Writers

Columnists

: Niggel Figueroa Anabelle O. Flores : Tony M. Maghirang, Rick Olivares, Darwin Fernandez, Leony Garcia, Stephanie Joy Ching Pauline Joy M. Gutierrez : Kaye VillagomezLosorata Annie S. Alejo

Photographers

: Bernard P. Testa

Paga has always referred to music as his ‘safe place,’ as playing the guitar has become second nature to him. This is evident in the way he lends his musicality to the sound without attempting to dominate the track- instead, Paga demonstrates one of the most important, yet underrated qualities of a great guitarist: knowing when to play, and when to give way.

Alongside the band’s commercial success, Paga found purpose in his work and sought ways to further improve his craft.

From the stage to the mixing booth

A DEEP seated passion for music as a complex craft brought Paga on a journey to rediscovering the more technical side of the music industry. As a music production undergraduate from the College of St. Benilde, he dove into music production equipped with the foundational knowledge and skills that audio

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PHILIP ‘Paga’ Manikan

engineering demanded. However, it was his keen understanding of the performative musician’s perspective that allowed him to thrive and work his magic behind the scenes. In the studio control room, Paga cultivated trust among the independent musicians he produced.

Outside of the music scene, some notable projects that Paga took on as an audio engineer span a wide range of areas, allowing him to collaborate with experts across different fields of specialty.

Some of his work include awardwinning real estate agents Bernice Ross’ and Byron Van Arsdale’s Real Estate Coach podcast, spiritual intuitive influencer Heather Hoffman’s Activation Vibration YouTube channel, Extra Mile Productions’ Know Your North docuseries funded by Victory Liner, and The Awakened Mind App developed by mindfulness leader Michael Bunting.

Following both his passion and opportunity, Paga went on to work for his Filmmaker sister’s documentary, ‘Dreaming in the Red Light.’ The film premiered at the Dokyu Film Festival in 2019 and was selected to screen at the DMZ Documentary Film Festival in Goyang-si, Korea, and eventually in France and Germany.

Rediscovering passion

WHEN Paga left the band Mayonnaise in 2014, he moved to the US to focus on his family. He pursued different pastures as he grew into a family man. Despite leaving the band and moving towards the more technical facet of music, Paga never really stopped playing. On the side, he established his own band ‘Banat Boys,’ which focused on punk, a genre very much close to his heart.

While keen on continuing his work with other artists in the industry, Paga is also looking forward to extending his audio production expertise to other professions outside of music. It is in helping others in the pursuit of improving their craft that he has unexpectedly found an added sense of fulfillment.

At the onset of the pandemic, Paga sought refuge in music to ease anxiety and entertain his young daughter. He has begun writing again with the sharpened perspective of a more mature musician shaped by holistic experience in the industry. In these unprecedented times, Paga puts an emphasis on pursuing passion that feeds the soul.

IC

soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | AUGUST 29, 2021

BUSINESS

SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

IT’S ONLY ROCK N’ ROLL

But Charlie Watts always loved playing it

C

HARLIE WATTS, revered drummer of the Rolling Stones, joined the immortals on August 24, Tuesday in a London hospital .

He passed away at 80 years old leaving behind not just a life fully lived but also an enduring legacy that will outlast and outshine all the musical shifts and movements that have sprouted in the past 50 years.

To rock fans, Charlie epitomized the time-honored tradition of working discreetly behind flamboyant frontmen, which in the case of the Stones are Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Along with bassist Bill Wyman, Watts was for the longest time driving the band’s music while staying in the proverbial shadows.

Unlike his fellow bandmates, Charlie didn’t grab headlines at all. He never got arrested for possession of illegal substances.

Mick and Keith pursued models and Hollywood stars, and Charlie quietly married his girlfriend, the former Shirley Ann Shepherd, his wife of 57 years now. While the rest of the Stones set fashion trends, he adopted the cool neatlypressed attire of working jazzmen.

Where Keith would say he smoked his dad’s ashes and Mick would sometimes flash his immense wealth, little is known about Watt’s domestic affairs except that he and his wife raise horses. During the recurring disputes between The Stones Glimmer twins, he would take it upon himself to mend things as quickly as possible. It was not always about keeping the moneymaking machine online but more of the fact that he’s the levelheaded older brother to two prima donnas. It’s just the way he is.

Rock and roll would transition to the bold and strident bashing of hard rock then on to the fury of punk and the brainy rhythm of post-punk but Charlie would remain true to the unadorned drumming he inherited from the

jazz greats he loved as a young aspiring musician. He simply wasn’t loud.

Yet despite his unobtrusive persona, Charlie Watts practically cast the greatest influence on what is probably the most important band in modern rock.

In his almost 60 years with the Rolling Stones, he provided focus and dynamic momentum to many of the band’s direct yet nuanced outputs.

A number of songs easily come to mind. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, The Stones’ most memorable song, is unforgettable due mainly to the explosive guitar intro and its continuing vitality through the decades comes from Watt’s steady unmistakable beat.

It’s this trademark steadfast beat that also delivers balance to “Gimme Shelter” which, without the sturdy drum pulse, could have gone helter skelter as an edgy protest anthem of a generation.

Watts would continue to exemplify his brilliance in the band’s later albums particularly in the bluesy track “Beast of Burden” which typified how his ‘simple’ timekeeping could adjust to any kind of music whether disco, country or straight-ahead rock.

Speaking of flexibility, “Time Waits for No One” is a magnum opus courtesy mainly of Mick Taylor’s extended guitar work but having the gorgeous riffs in the pocket must be credited to the jazzy backbeat unwound by the Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman tandem.

In his time off from the

CHARLIE Watts (AP File Photo)

ROLLING Stones (AP File Photo) Rolling Stones juggernaut, Watts continued to indulge in his love of jazz. He played with the Stones’ long-time keyboardist Ian Stewart in a jazz group named Rocket 88.

In the 1980s, with the Stones on downtime, he formed the Charlie Watts Orchestra. A decade later, he led the Charlie Watts Quintet to some success as a live act.

One of Watts’ last jazz releases was “Charlie Watts Meets The Danish Radio Big Band” in 2017.

The all-instrumental album reinterpreted Stones’ classics like “Satisfaction” in Latin mode and “Paint It Black” as a slow Goth-

streaked ballad. Five-star reviews glowingly reported Watt’s supreme adaptability in blending with large as well as small ensembles.

Watts has been a member of the Rolling Stones since 1963.

He has played in all Stones performances from the start.

Earlier this month, the Rolling Stones organization announced that Watts would not be joining the band on its upcoming tour. He also underwent an undisclosed medical procedure this month.

He passed away peacefully in a London hospital surrounded by family.

3

How a video game is turning the pandemic jobless into crypto, NFT traders

By Kristine Servando and Ian Sayson

W

Bloomberg

hen Vincent Gallarte was laid off in July, the Manila IT analyst found an unusual financial lifeline: an online game that rewards players in cryptocurrency.

In his first two weeks of Pokémon-like questing and battling, Gallarte earned more than 37,000 pesos ($732), three times what he would have made at his “real job.”

Like a lot of newcomers to so-called playto-earn games, the 25-year-old Gallarte hadn’t had any particular interest in the world of Bitcoin, Ether and other cryptocurrencies. Now he imagines a lucrative sidehustle. “I started playing Axie the same day my employer terminated my contract,” he said. “I’m so grateful.”

Axie Infinity is among the biggest—and most polarizing—of these new games, which allow players to accumulate tradeable crypto coins. To investors like billionaire Mark Cuban and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, who were part of a $7.5-million funding round for Vietnamese game-maker Sky Mavis in May, it’s a gateway to crypto for people around the world. Others look at the buy-in cost, now more than $600, and the influx of newbies “working” for low-value tokens and see evidence the Axie Infinity model is unsustainable.

‘Some people say we’re like the Fed’ Axie Infinity’s daily active users swelled from 30,000 in April this year to more than 1 million in August, with most logging on from developing countries hit hard by Covid, including the Philippines, Brazil and Venezuela.

Originally built on the Ethereum blockchain, Axie recorded around $30 million worth of Ether transfers a day over the past month, according to Etherscan. That’s not much in the $2.2 trillion universe of cryptocurrencies, but meaningful for players—and governments—in poorer countries. On Monday, the Philippines’s Department of Finance and the Bureau of Internal Revenue reminded players that their Axie Infinity profits are subject to income tax, local reports said.

Sky Mavis Chief Operating Officer and cofounder Aleksander Leonard Larsen says they take their responsibility seriously, monitoring the in-game currencies and tweaking the market as needed.

“Some people say we’re like the Fed,” he said in an interview. “We are ultimately the creators of this universe and are responsible

In Axie Infinity’s virtual world, players steer creatures called Axies—based on a Mexican walking fish called axolotl—to acquire coins. Source: Sky Mavis via Bloomberg for making sure that it lasts. We are always tracking the economy to make sure it stays at a healthy level.”

Axies of Lunacia In Axie Infinity’s virtual world of Lunacia, players steer colorful, blob-like creatures called Axies to acquire two kinds of coins.

Smooth Love Potions (SLP) are awarded for successful battles and can be cashed out or used in the game to breed new Axies. Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) can be earned in seasonal tournaments or for selling Axies in the game’s marketplace. AXS can be cashed out too, but like other governance tokens, they’re designed to function like shares: Sky Mavis says holders will eventually be able to vote on new game features or corporate spending proposals.

Gallarte heard about the game from a cousin. But players need three Axies to get started, at a minimum of around $200 apiece. That was far too much for the newly unemployed Gallarte. He sought out a sponsor, someone who lends his Axies to new players in exchange for a percentage of their in-game takings, sometimes as much as 90 percent. Anything a player earns with a borrowed Axie accrues to its owner, who is then supposed to wire the player his cut.

Gallarte appealed through Facebook to the Real Deal Guild, a group of Filipinos who now sponsor hundreds of players. They agreed to let him play their creatures for a small haircut: the guild would keep 30 percent of his earnings.

The boom has been a windfall for Sky Mavis, which takes a cut every time an Axie changes hands and collects a fee when players breed new, non-fungible token creatures.

Players have created more than 2 million of the digital monsters, and the Axie trade has generated more than $1 billion in transactions, the first NFT platform to do so, according to CryptoSlam, which tracks NFT marketplaces.

Axie Infinity generated just $21 million in revenue for Sky Mavis from its 2018 inception through July 1. Since then, it’s brought in $485 million.

Virtual goods with real-world value have

4 BusinessMirror

been a staple of gaming for years now. The difference between Axie and most other big in-game markets is that Axie encourages players to cash out and gives them the tools and transparency to do so. Instead of a semi-sanctioned peer-to-peer exchange on an unauthorized third-party marketplace, Axie players can take their SLP and AXS directly to a major crypto exchange and sell for whatever’s on offer. Recent demand from the Philippines was high enough for Binance to offer an SLP-peso trade, as does Manilabased BloomX.

ing his earnings tenfold. He ended his relationship with his sponsor and built his own stable of contract players, lending Axies to 15 people including friends and relatives. He keeps 30 percent of their earnings.

In March, he bought two apartments south of Manila for his parents. He also bought insurance plans and is contemplating investing in stocks. “The value of Axie could fall, but I’m not worried,” Ramos said.

“I must still have physical assets so that I am in a more secure position.”

Some of the risks for Axie Infinity players

“I started playing Axie the same day my employer terminated my contract,” said 25-year-old Vincent Gallarte. In just two weeks of playing, he earned more than three times his usual salary.

Fundamentally unhealthy and unstable?

But the Axie frenzy has also bred criticism that the platform is propped up by new money drawn to a get-rich-quick premise.

Vanessa Cao, founder of venture-capital firm BTX Capital, said the Axie model is “fundamentally unhealthy and unsustainable.” “Players need to spend hundreds of dollars upfront just to play,” she said. “It’s a wrongful concept. You can’t ask people to pay before even having any idea what the game is about.”

Cao offered Dream Card, from BTX portfolio company X World Games, as a counterpoint. It’s free to get started; its almost 560,000 users customize character cards and trade them. X World Games doesn’t give a “misleading impression that Santa Claus is coming to town,” she said.

Would-be Axie players are active on Telegram and Discord, looking for sponsors help them get started. That’s how John Aaron Ramos, a 22-year-old university student in the Philippines, says he connected to a Venezuelan gamer in November, months before the game boomed. At the beginning, he earned up to 300 pesos ($6) a day.

Over the next four months, he bred new Axies and the price of Ether went up, increas-

AUGUST 29, 2021

and investors are in line with the rest of the crypto world, where massive drawdowns are common. Cuban himself took a bath in June, when a coin he liked went from around $60 to 0 in a single day. “The investment wasn’t so big I felt the need to dot every I and cross every T,” he told Bloomberg. “I took a flyer and lost.”

‘More social network than game’ If AXS and SLP tank, as predicted by traders taking short positions against the coins, players may not be able to cut their losses.

The game only allows them to cash out SLP every 14 days, a constraint that, like all lockups, chafes a lot more when asset values are falling. As it is, there’s evidence new players may not fully understand how to protect their gains. Larsen, the Sky Mavis COO, says users seeking customer service help have emailed their crypto wallet passwords to the company.

He adds, however, that the game has lasting appeal, whatever happens to the currencies.

“We see it as more of a social network than a game,” Larsen said. “People come in because it’s such a new opportunity, then they fall in love with the community and the game that we’ve been building over time.”

ON THE COVER: Photo by Anna Nekrashevich from Pexels