BBC Adores Poverty

If there's one issue foreign media like to report about the Philippines, it is abject poverty. We're newsworthy only if it's about poverty. Just saw a short feature on BBC showing poor people frying chicken found in garbage dumps! I mean these British reporters come here with preconceived notions about the country and scour around depressed areas for a couple of days to take videos and pictures that would essentially confirm their biased assessment of the social conditions here-- the same conclusions they have already convinced themselves from the beginning-- making it appear as if we live in the stone age and climb trees for food.

Why single us out? Go to India, Africa, even the US and the Queen's own freaking backyard, and you'd find similar conditions. Poverty is a global condition, not just the Philippines'. OK some people forage food from garbage, and BBC reporters can take pictures and videos of them, especially if they wait long enough and do a stakeout in squalid areas and garbage dumps, much like the Nat Geo photographers hoping to get good shots of a rare Siberian tiger in the wild. But that's the exception rather than the rule. Hello, we don't do that.

Perhaps the BBC ran short of newsworthy features to air, so it trained its sights on the Philippines to do a report on "recycling," as in recycling food found in garbage dumps. I'm pretty sure it's going to shelve this "material" for future "recycling" when they run short of features again, and maybe transfer the locale to some African or Caribbean country. That's the kind of journalism BBC engages in. Pathetic.

I remember a Filipina newscaster in Bloomberg many years ago who was asked by her colleagues if her family back home were OK, because of reports about a huge garbage pile in Payatas that caved in and buried some people. Amazing. That's what happens when news media get too irresponsible by sensationalizing poverty.

To the BBC, OK we're poor, now get over it.

STRAVINSKY: Весна священная

Igor STRAVINSKY: Le Sacre du Printemps
London Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Pierre Boulez

Excerpts from Evocation des Ancetres, final section

Ranking among the most controversial works of the 20th century, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring ballet suite premiered in Paris in 1913, provoked such an explosion of disapproval, causing a riot in the audience. The vision of pagan ritual-- a young girl dancing herself to death-- resulted in a score filled with mountains of dissonance, and the brutality and strength expressed were unheard of.

Stravinsky's use of polytonality, or the simultaneous presentation of several keys unrelated to each other, resulted in a searing, extremely dissonant, harsh sound. Rhythm is the most significant element in the Rite of Spring, it shifts constantly--2/16, 3/16, 5/8-- and provides the music its elemental strength, bordering on the mechanical! Notice his use of ostinato, it has a peculiarly motoric (yes, like the chugging of a locomotive) and at the same time, soulless effect.

The instrumentation is an extraordinarily novel phenomenon, a famous topic of discussion among musicologists. Melody and harmony are left standing, with rhythm taking centre stage.

The music is scored for an unusually large orchestra, including rarely scored instruments in orchestral music as E♭ clarinet and Wagner tuba. Manipulating the upper and shrill registers of the wind instruments gives the music its strident, almost astringent quality.

The original Nijinksy choreography was equally controversial, a radical departure from classical ballet, with scenes depicting pagan Russia.

Here's a video from 1970, a Maurice Béjart choreography, with the Orchestre National de Belgique.

Budget Beauties

On our first trip to China via Macau in 2006, Jun quipped that the budget airline we took remained true to form: the hired stewardesses appeared like barrio lasses.

Facade

While everyone else is watching Dyesebel, my attention is focused on the news conference shown on BBC regarding the Austria incest and abuse case involving an imperious, domineering father who incarcerated his daughter in the cellar for 24 years and had seven children by her, three of which were brought upstairs and adopted as his own, one died at childbirth and burned in an oven, while three remained underground, not ever having seen the light of day. Josef Fritzl seemed to have fooled everyone, including his own family above ground. Really freaking unbelievable! Evil manifests itself in so many forms.

Cebu Scandal

I do not have the gumption to watch that rectal surgery scandal-- involving the removal of what appears like a hairspray canister from some guy's butt to the condescending cheers of a crowd consisting of doctors and nurses-- that continues to proliferate in cyberspace. I just can't. Ewww.

Seriously, the doctors and nurses violated their code of ethics and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

As for the Catholic priest in Cebu who laid the blame on the gay guy for engaging in homosexual acts, ummm, father, with all due respect, that is not the issue here.

The gay guy is pressing charges and he's likely to get justice.

So let's put this issue to rest, because it's starting to get annoying.

Triste

Muy triste. Vuelvo al Sur de Astor Piazzolla/Fernando Solas.

Food Security

The global food crisis is putting the limelight on the trade-off between food and energy requirements. Senator Miriam was right when she chided Migz Zubiri for pushing legislation for a Biofuels Act that could have adverse effects on food security.

Unabated population growth, growing affluence, crop failures due to climate change, grain production geared towards bio-fuel purposes, and hedge funds pouring into commodities-- the food crisis picture is now much clearer.

Countries around the world are rethinking their biofuel strategies, but then again, increasing crop production to meet growing consumption needs will remain on top of the agenda.

I think small, self-sufficient farms in the provinces are more resilient: they grow their own food. For example, my parents back home never run out of good quality rice (we harvest twice a year), we raise chickens, seafood is plentiful, there's plenty of land for vegetable plots, fruits abound. It is a bit sad that we see these long lines for NFA rice in Manila and other urban areas.