THE WHO PANDEMIC TREATY MUST NOT SUCCEED! NEWS FROM THE PHILPPINES: PENDING POPULATION DECLINE MAKES NEIGHBORS UNEASY. SENATE RESUMES. AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY. DIGITALIZATION. DUTERTE & THE ICC.

Change of school year start under consideration. Charter change. Rich-poor Divide raised by President Helicopter ride. SWS Shows rising involuntary hunger.

THE WHO PANDEMIC TREATY MIGHT BE AT RISK? I HOPE SO!

Tedros is declaring the world will never forgive this generation if we do not allow the pandemic treaty to be put into place. No, the opposite is true! The world will never forgive us if we allow the WHO to succeed in their coup attempt to take over the world in the name of health. The WHO’s soft coup attempt must fail. The parties involved in this must be held to account. The call to exit the WHO, to strip them of dictatorial powers must proceed.

Commentary on the impacts of the WHO Pandemic Treaty. This is taken from the American context but applies equally to all other countries.

James Roguski is a key resource for all things pandemic treaty. Please see his and follow his substack.

It's Time To YELL At The U.S. Government

The people’s disapproval and opposition is having an effect! We must redouble our efforts.

PHILIPPINES POPULATION DECLINE MAKES HER NEIGHBORS UNEASY

Back to the Philippines. Excellent article discussing population trending in the Philippines from Economist Bienvenido Oplas. I have linked snippets from his article below. Please do read it in full! He also discusses population changes in Hong, Thailand, China, and Australia.

The net population increase in Table 1 hasn’t considered the Philippines export of people to the world as other countries recruit Filipinos to make up population shortfalls in their own nations. Commentators are already anticipating reduction in available personnel.

PHILIPPINES SENATE RESUMES SESSIONS ON 22ND JANUARY 2024

The Philippines Senate has resumed sessions after their Christmas break. With many bills for passage, the people need to keep watching and working with senators to ensure the good of the nation is always considered.

RICE IMPORTATION UNDERLINES THE IMPORTANCE OF RESTORING OF PHILIPPINES AGRICULTURE SECTOR

Rice is one of the most important staples in the Philippines. Many Filipinos feel a meal is incomplete if it did not contain rice. The Philippines is identified to remain the world’s largest rice importers in 2024. It is highly concerning that the Philippines, an agricultural country, is not food self-sufficient. Government needs to urgently address this issue for the future of the nation.

Causes have been identified to include limited agricultural land (I would point as well to management of agricultural land, including buy-up of such land by developers), government policy, small scale unsupported farming, lack of investment in training and infrastructure, trade tariffs working against domestic production, among many contributing factors.

SCHOOL START TO BE REVERTED TO JUNE TO MARCH?

This may take some time to settle. The purpose would appear to be to match the long summer holiday with the wet season, to minimize school disruptions due to weather.

I personally believe that the school schedule should match international school year schedules, thus allowing transferring and graduating students to access international school and university schedules without losing too much time.

The Australian school year starts at the beginning of each calendar year. The US School year starts in August - September (more of less matching the current Philippines calendar).

CHARTER CHANGE STILL MAKING HEADLINES

Modifications to the Philippines Constitution are heating up again, with advocates seeing this as a way to enhance Philippines ability to attract investment and participate on the world stage, and with opponents fearful that national sovereignty and rights of citizens will be trampled in the rush to globalize.

DUTERTE IN HOT WATER?

News about the ICC investigation on Duterte for crimes against humanity. The former president’s spokesperson denies that the ICC has jurisdiction to make any arrest, as the Philippines had already withdrawn from the ICC by the time they brought charges.

FOR ME BUT NOT FOR THEE - PRESIDENTIAL PRIVILEGE IS A STARK CONTRAST FOR THE NATION

Marcos has been slammed for taking his government paid helicopter to watch a Coldplay Concert. Security and time consideration were cited. While these reasons are understandable, it very much underlines that life for the elite in the Philippines, including many politicians and business leaders, is very different from the experience of regular folk, employees, and small business owners who struggle from dusk to dawn dealing with poverty, traffic, inefficiencies, bureaucracy. The regular folk who fund the elite!

HUNGER = POVERTY: THE LOT OF FILPINOS IS NOT YET IMPROVING

The December SWS poll reported that 12.6% of Filipinos went hungry due to lack of access to food compared to 9.8% in September 2023. Their definition of “involuntary hunger” is of not having access to food at least once in the past 3 months.

These are dire figures. 1 in 10 Filpinos went hungry in September vs. 1 in 8 in December. The annual hunger rate rose to 10.7%.

The cost of living has certainly risen. The cost and complexities of doing business are also continually increasing, in turn increasing costs of all commodities.

READY FOR DIGITALIZATION -DON’T FORGET BACKUP NON-DIGITAL SYSTEMS

Digitalization is also lagging in the Philippines. Digitalisation can be good (facilitating transactions and streamlining procedures) or it can be bad (my personal coloring) if it results in massive digital surveillance and loss of privacy.

It can also be problematic if there are no back-up systems as I experienced in Australia recently during brownouts when all systems went down. With no internet, there was no access to digital payments. No electronic transactions. Further, many shops, could not even accept cash when the internet was down because they could not access their digital inventory and thus could not sell physical items.

Digitalization can very problematic when systems are supposed to be online, but those systems do not work properly. This is often experienced by business owners and members in the Philippines trying to access government services such as PhilHealth, SSS etc. (personal experience here.

The Marcos administration certainly has its work cut out for it leading the Philippines to a brighter future. The best and the brightest from all sectors and all backgrounds are needed to work tirelessly, with eyes wide open to reality and practicality, to improve the state of the nation, the lot of her people, and her future!