America is in the mind

COULD “admiration” for America—given that most of the world hates it, according to a recent 18-nation survey—be a "rational" behavior? We think so, contrary to what many easily dismiss as a blatant show of slavish colonial mentality.

When asked how much do Filipinos trust the US to act responsibly in the world, 85 percent of Filipinos answered “a great deal/somewhat.” The Israelis practically answered the same. The rest of the world—specifically Argentina, Peru, Russia, France, Armenia, Indonesia, China and Thailand—has a negative view.

While most of the responding countries believe that the US is playing the role of the world policeman, 57 percent of Filipinos disagreed. While places like Argentina, Palestinian territory, France, China and Ukraine think Americans should have fewer bases, 60 percent of Filipinos think the US should have “about as many as now.”

In other words, we are the only ones—besides Israel—who admire the Americans while the rest of the world is suspicious of her motives.

Naturally, the country’s intellectual class is aghast (See discussions in Philippine Commentary, for instance). That only confirms Filipinos’ colonial mentality, says one. Says a blogger: “Filipinos’ faith in America is like their faith in the Catholic Church: unreasoning, uncritical, and unrequited.”

It’s purely an affair of the stomach, says another, referring to the fact that we receive billions of dollars of remittances from relatives in the US.

All these opinions have grains of truth. But we think there are deeper reasons. Well-informed, Filipinos are aware of the bumbling and fumbling that the Bush Administration had committed in the international scene and many Filipinos are critical of these actions. Yet, they generally have a positive idea about that country because they look at America more as an idea, as a model for an open and democratic society that we wish to emulate.

It’s a place where people complain about their corrupt and stupid politicians yet manage to achieve an economically and technologically advanced society through the exuberance of private initiative and individual freedom.

It’s a melting pot of all cultures, different creeds and colors, and different ways of doing things—yet Americans are always able to come together toward something with the simple idea that they are Americans.

It’s a place where citizens routinely complain about bad schools and universities and yet they always dominate the Nobel Prize in economics, medicine, physics and other fields. It’s a place of dropouts and iconoclasts who defy convention and yet are always able to produce new and exciting technologies that are transforming our lives for the better.

It’s a place where inequality is stark as manifested by the shocking view of the homeless in rags dragging carts, and yet it also has the most number of billionaires coughing up billions to save the world’s myriad problems, including malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, among many others.

It’s a nation of contradiction, but its contradiction doesn’t produce paralysis and stasis but change and progress. It’s topsy-turvy and chaotic but it’s a functioning and creative kind of chaos.

In other words, because of our own contradictions, we look at American society as a model for development.

In the last three decades, we have seen the rise of tiger and dragon economies in the Asia Pacific Region. Many are late industrializers guided by the authoritarian hand of the state. In the name of “Asian values,” many of these countries suppressed individual rights (freedom of the press and assembly, for instance) for the sake of social stability, economic growth and technological progress. Apparently, the approach worked for them and it seems that most of their citizens are happy. Many of these countries are now rich and prosperous, but Filipinos have rejected that model of development because it didn’t work for them.

Filipinos rejected the authoritarian model of development by toppling Marcos through “people power.” They rejected it by not supporting attempts by military adventurists like Gringo Honasan, and recently, the “version” of Antonio Trillanes IV, to grab power by the barrel of the gun.

Filipinos rejected that tendency when they denounced President Arroyo’s move to declare a “state of emergency” supposedly to foil military adventurists. And recently, Filipinos elected Honasan and Trillanes to the Senate when they turned to parliamentary struggle, knowing that by doing so they were sending these men the signal to fight their cause the “constitutional way” while spiting the dwellers in Malacañang whom they perceive as having lots of things to account for to the Filipino people.

Admittedly, the type of development path that Filipinos have taken is slow and frustrating compared to the frenetic pace of growth being achieved in China, Russia and Vietnam. But Filipinos know they are going to get there as well through a different mode knowing that progress—which should encompass economic, political and social choices and freedoms—is a doable project under democratic processes.

Filipinos are certain about that because others are already there and America is one of the best examples. This is a perfectly rational expectation.

Is the Filipino’s admiration for America uncritical? We don’t think so. When SWS asked Filipinos whether or not the US as a superpower should continue to be the preeminent world leader in solving international problems, 55 percent said, “The US should do its share in efforts to solve international problems together with other countries.”

It means Filipinos are critical of the unilateralist approach that President Bush and the neocons have taken so far and want reforms. That sentiment pretty much reflects global opinion about America’s role in international politics. We love America as an idea but we are not always comfortable vis-à-vis some of the nasty things that its leaders did. Now, that’s a very level-headed view.

(Note: Originally drafted as editorial for BusinessMirror, 28 June 2007).

Globalizing Pinoy's manners

THE Philippine economy is highly globalized whether we like it or not. The next thing we should do is “globalize” our Pinoy habits, traits and manners as well, if only to improve our image abroad as a people.

Close to 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product—the value of goods and services traded within the country’s borders—are accounted for by the country’s merchandise exports and dollar remittances from overseas workers. And close to 70 percent of the country’s exports is electronics, proof that we have become an important player in the world’s production of trade of electronics and semiconductors. Of course, the top generator of jobs these days are call centers and other outsourcing industries, globalization’s latest and the most tangible metamorphosis.

Anybody who watches CNN or BBC each day would notice that for all the world’s misfortunes and mishaps (e.g., hostage-taking in an oil rig in Nigeria, bombing in Indonesia, tsunami in Thailand, war in Lebanon, a shipwreck in Korea), at least a Filipino is always involved. Yes, that’s how the Philippines has become so globalized.

Right now there are more than 8 million Filipinos working and living abroad. Every day, close to 3,000 Filipinos are leaving the country for foreign jobs. And each year, they send back home at least US$12 billion that translate to spending on food, education, cellular phones, and the building and repairs of houses. That in turn has buoyed the country’s factories, banks, restaurants, school, and shopping malls. And that trend will continue for as long as the country’s domestic productive capacity remains constrained by ruinous politics, sloppy governance and slow growth.

With all these adventures abroad, Filipinos have developed quite a reputation as good finance managers in Indonesia, smart technical guys in Vietnam, efficient nurses in Florida and California, and hard-working engineers and technicians in oil rigs and oil platforms in Nigeria and Gulf States, and “courageous” mercenaries in Iraq. The flipside of this, however, is the negative perception of us Filipinos because of some bad habits that some of our countrymen bring with them when they work abroad. There are only a few of them but it takes one rotten tomato to spoil the entire basket.

We hear embarrassing stories of some Pinoys in the Gulf States using the peso coins to take cans of softdrinks off the dispensing machines. We often hear about some Pinoys bringing with them bath towels from hotels as well as head sets from airlines as “souvenirs.” Don’t be surprised if some of the headsets you see your fellow passengers at those FX taxis bear the tag “Cathay Airways” or some such airline—probably the man or woman beside you brought home the headset that’s issued during all flights.

Some of our countrymen probably think these acts are harmless and innocent, but this is the type of behavior that puts the Filipino nation in a negative light. Surely, those Arabs who felt cheated upon opening their soda- dispensing machines full of Pinoy peso coins must have thought Filipinos are a bunch of thieves.

In the last three years, tourist arrivals in the country have been growing at double-digit rates, thanks to the successful efforts by the Department of Tourism to attract East Asians, particularly Koreans. We also have lots of foreigners coming in, many of them investors and top managers for the blooming outsourcing companies here in the Philippines. They may have come here in the country with the thought that we Filipinos are gracious and hospitable.

As a people Filipinos are indeed gracious. But many of us still have a lot of things to learn, especially when it comes to living in an urban context. Surely, lots of our foreign visitors are shocked to see Pinoys pissing against a wall and throwing garbage in the streets. Worse, Filipino drivers, both rich and poor, behave like rascals behind the wheels. One recalls a very innocent question that an 8-year-old Filipino-Aussie boy asked his mother barely 10 minutes after they hit the road from the international airport: “Mom, don’t they have lanes here?” To which the irrepressible mother replied, “No, they make their own.” Imagine what went on in the mind of a boy so used to Sydney’s strict traffic rules.

In places like Brunei, Malaysia, New York, and Washington DC, drivers immediately slow down upon seeing pedestrians attempting to cross the streets. In the Philippines, drivers would even harass the pedestrians by stepping on the gas pedal upon seeing them trying to cross the street. Such barbarian behavior should have no place in the country’s “globalizing cities.”

Such behavior signals one thing—that most Filipinos are nothing but hillbillies trapped in the urban setting. This is not to denigrate rural dwellers but to highlight the fact that the pattern of human settlements and disparity in population density means the rules of human behavior are different in rural and urban, nay globalized, settings. For instance, waste in rural areas is largely organic; disposing them straight to the environment is even “sustainable.” In the rural setting, settlements are sparse; letting the animals run wild is romantic. In urban, globalized settings, people who now ride cars and jeepneys must learn to respect those who walk the streets. And those who walk the streets should learn to appreciate the fine and manly art of going to toilets to relieve themselves. And everybody should learn the value of proper waste disposal.

Filipinos never had an industrial revolution; thus, most of us have not experienced working and living under the strict rules of compact, organized, regimented and rules-based existence. Many of us, rich and poor, simply came to the “city” and went straight to working mostly in the formal and informal services sector, bringing with us obsolete values, traits, and habits. In other countries that experienced a similar path of development, the State through its instrumentalities—city ordinance, traffic rules, educational system, local government units, zoning, among others—played an important role in changing people’s behaviors.

In the Philippines, the state failed in this job. But it’s not too late to work on this one. Maybe the private sector could help. It’s time we brought the Pinoy’s habits, traits and behavior up to “global standards.”

End of Pinoy bloggers' age of innocence?

Oh how bloggers love their blogs! It’s no brainer why: it’s the only kind of “media” where the writer is also the editor, the cost of “publishing” is nil, where one’s chip on the shoulder is a virtue, and where the writer could pour out venom as much as his or her sense of decency—or lack or it—would allow. In the blogosphere, the Queensberry rule is off as bloggers believe laws on libel and defamation don’t apply to their spontaneous and free-spirit world.

Or so they thought.

But increasingly, lots of bloggers are getting lawsuits and penalized in the United States and the UK for calling people “lard brain” or “sex offender” or “Nazi.” Recently, members of the Yuchengo group of companies filed a libel charge against a group of plan holders, raising fears that the age of innocence for Filipino bloggers has ended.

Is freedom of expression by ordinary citizens in its barest, rawest form made possible by new technology now under threat? Are we seeing the end of the blog as we know it?

According to legal experts say that in the Philippines libel and defamation suits against bloggers are still a long shot. The statute books on libel and defamation were done when long ago when blogging was unheard of. Lawyer Jose Bernas (Bernas Law Office) says the law usually plays catch up to technology so bloggers are still safe. It takes a lot more for the blogger doing his thing beside the water dispenser to get the calaboose—at least for now.

More than just the dirty words
“Libel is not committed simply because a derogatory statement is made,” says Bernas. “There are other elements to be ascertained. One of them is publication or circulation. It is not clear that blogs meet the current definition of publication since actually blogs are static and readers ‘visit’ the blogs website instead of blogs circulating or publishing their journals. Technically therefore, it will be an effort to prove publication.”

For libel to succeed, Bernas say, the plaintiff or the accuser has to prove malice, or the desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to an offended party. He said that statements made to a private audience, however, are qualified privilege and are not considered public circulation.

“So the intended audience of the blogger is also to be evaluated,” said Bernas. “If the statement was made only for the association, it may be protected by privilege and may not be considered libelous.”

Are blogs private or public means of communication? This is a dilemma because blogs emerged in a specific cultural context where the private and the public spheres are getting blurred because of technological change.

At the surface, it looks public because anybody who knows the blogs’ URL (uniform resource locator) could access, read, and post comments in them. Quoting Clay Calvert, author of Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy and Peering in Modern Culture, Caroline Miller of the University of North Carolina State University say that blogs serve four basic purposes including self clarification (who am I?), self validation (how do my views fit within society’s sets of values?), relationship development (building an online community), and social control (influencing other people’s views through the blogger’s revelations). The first two purposes necessary reflect blogs as private activity while the last two portray blogs as intended for public audience.

“Blogs are part of World Wide Web, the most accessible protocol of the Internet which is also called the new media,” says Danilo Arao, assistant professor of University of the Philippines’ Department of Journalism. “The World Wide Web by itself is acknowledged to have websites that are publicly accessible. These are channels used for ‘mass communication’ due to their wide reach and anonymous audiences. Blogs are part of publicly accessible websites and as channels for mass communication so they can be termed ‘mass media.’ For as along as the content of blogs are publicly available, they are classified as mass media.”

Not established
Bernas, however, thinks otherwise. The rules on mass media, he said, are evolving and have not been established. Blogs, he said, is neither part of electronic media because it doesn’t use the air waves which are a public resource. It’s not a newspaper either because it doesn’t circulate like one.

“I would not consider it mass media at this time because the degree of deliberateness or intent possessed by the blogger, and the blogger’s ability to carry out the circulation himself does not approximate those that you see in mass media,” he said. “The blogger simply allows his site to be visited while the producer of mass media makes an effort to bring to the ‘masses’ his content.”

In his paper entitled Libel in the Blogosphere: Some Preliminary Thoughts, Glenn Harland Reynolds, professor of law at the University of Tennessee, and blogger behind the Instapundit.com says that bloggers usually are not likely to put defamatory content on their own blogs but rather their readers through comments, and emails. Under American law, bloggers are immune from liability for these contents as they are protected by Article 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In the Philippines, there is no equivalent statute but Bernas says bloggers’ protection lies in the question whether or not the blogger is a “publisher.”

“The heart of that issue has to do whether the communications are ‘private’ in the sense that these are not circulated to the masses like mass media,” stresses Bernas. “If these are private, and are not ‘circulated’ to third parties, it will be difficult to prosecute a case of libel as defined presently. The reality is that laws always play catch up to technology.”

Freedom incomplete
So does it mean that bloggers has the completed freedom from lawsuits? Does it mean that they could just malign anybody they fancy to attack? Not really. Bernas said offended parties could always resort to civil action.

“A civil action need not measure up to the strict definitions of criminal libel,” said Bernas. “If you can prove actual damage to your reputation that can be quantified then you can sue for damages. However our courts do not usually award large amounts for damages. That would depend on the reputation of the complainant to begin with and whether that reputation was actually damaged.”

He adds that in other countries, damages need not be proved when certain defamatory statements like attacks on chastity, professional work or reputation are uttered. “The court can award nominal damages because it is assumed that such damage was suffered.”

That’s what exactly is happening in West lately. In January this year, the court in Forsyth country (US) ordered David Milum, an internet muckraker and political activist, to pay lawyer Rafe Banks $50,000 for accusing him of “delivering bribes for drug dealers” to a judge. In March (2006), the court in the United Kingdom slapped a Yahoo user £17,200 fine for calling a politician “lard brain” and “Nazi.” In the US, there is currently a growing list of lawsuits against bloggers for various charges ranging from publication of trade secrets to a fraudulent acquisition of a sex.com domain.

In general, Reynolds says that it’s unlikely that bloggers are going to be swamped with lawsuits because of certain factors, one of them the ease with which to correct factual errors. “When errors of fact are pointed out, most bloggers correct them immediately and generally do so with the same degree of prominence as the original error,” he said. “This practice makes libel suits less likely, and would arguably serve as evidence of absence of malice.”

“The ideal defendant, from a libel plaintiff’s standpoint, would be a rich blogger who has done significant original factual reporting as opposed to merely posting opinion or links to and quotes from other sites,” he said in his paper. “Such individuals are quite rare, at present. Most bloggers focus on opinion and most bloggers are not wealthy. This may change, however, as the blogosphere matures.”

Blogs evolving
And maturing fast they are. Five years ago, blogs are purely diaries of individuals who write about their angst, pets, failed relationships, and their rose gardens. These days blogs, social networking platforms, and websites are fast taking on business models, carrying advertisements and syndicated posts to make money. Global blogging networks have also emerged, carrying blogs on specific gadgets and technologies written by writers all over the world, mimicking how news wires work. Because of these recent trends in blogging, Justin Levine, a lawyer and blogger who writes for a law blog calblog.com expects a “legal superstorm against bloggers” as the social impact of blogging rises.

“It won’t just be libel (though that will certainly be a strong weapon in the anti-blogging arsenal), it will also be the recent convergence of copyright, trademark, publicity rights, and trade secret claims that have converged in recent years to make free speech an ephemeral notion,” Levin said.

The libel case filed by the Yuchengco group against the plan of Pacific Plans who are not media practitioners therefore is the first in the Philippines. (The first one was filed by a certain Jonathan Tiongco against the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism). Whatever the outcome of the legal action against that group of bloggers would set a precedent in Philippine jurisprudence.

But how would mainstream media react to this possible ‘super storm’ of lawsuits against bloggers would be interesting. Blogging, because of the absence of editorial control and the gravitas of organized media, is still considered “low-trust culture.” Some professional journalists, especially those who are not into it, see blogging as dangerous as it grants ordinary citizens without formal journalistic training with more or the same power to influence public opinion. There are views that blogging should eventually have certain professional standards and code of ethics to follow.

Arao, however, dispute this view stressing that the practice of the media profession, and blogging should never be legislated.

“Theoretically, bloggers should maintain the same discipline and ethical standards as journalists from the so-called traditional forms of mass media,” said Arao. “However, not all bloggers are journalists, as in the case of those who mainly write about fluff and existential angst. I can even say that not all bloggers are good writers. I think self-regulation is the key.”

“I don’t think you can apply the same standards because the infrastructures are different, say Bernas. “Additionally, it will not be cost effective to maintain the same standards. Again, one must not forget that people still think that the essence of the internet is its unregulated state. No law can change what people think overnight so until people view the Internet differently and begin to think that it should be regulated, no law in that regard will be passed or, if passed, can be enforced.”