From mining to fishing – how blockchain is addressing different challenges of supply chain in Asia

12 May 2022

Authors: Yingli Wang, CU and Imtiaz Khan, CMU

International supply chains are lengthy, complex and face risks of disruption. There is also public pressure on firms and governments to ensure supply chains adhere to social and environmental standards. While supply chain resilience can be achieved by developing transparency and traceability capacity, establishing end-to-end (E2E) supply chain visibility is the holy grail of supply chain management — and it can be achieved through blockchain technology.

Cross-border supply chains are often ladened with paper documents. Although bills of lading are one of the most important documents issued from carriers to shippers, only 0.1 per cent of original bills are digitised. The handling and exchange of such paper documents is costly, error prone and time consuming. Supply chain finance transactions share the same problem and typically involve a complicated paper trail that can take as long as a month to be completed.

Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) — or blockchain technology — could address these legacy problems. DLT is a shared, distributed electronic ledger that can record transactions as they occur between parties in a tamper-resistant manner. Based on the access control and centralisation, blockchains can be categorised into three categories – public blockchain that allows anyone to participate in the network and consensus process, private or permissioned blockchain that allows a selected group with existing trust or business relationship to participate and hybrid blockchain which is a mixture of both. For supply chains, private or permissioned blockchains are generally used.

The dispersion of trust away from a centralised authority or dominant player to a decentralised peer-to-peer based architecture replaces traditional server–client data management and trusted third parties upon which supply chains traditionally depend. Peer-to-peer systems also safeguard against any form of asymmetric coercion or unethical practice within the consortium.

The deployment of blockchain technology to address frictions in cross-border trade finance and increase supply chain efficiency has recently gathered momentum. BHP Group and China Baowu completed their first iron ore trade on MineHub’s blockchain-based platform in April 2020. The transaction’s value was approximately 1 billion RMB (US$156 million).

BHP also piloted the use of blockchain to trace copper concentrate shipments with China Minmetals Non-Ferrous Metals in the second half of 2021. TradeLens, a supply chain platform powered by blockchain technology, saved 10 days of document processing time by enabling a paperless shipment of Agrichemical products from South Korea to Bangladesh.

Exploitation of labour is another important but often overlooked cross-border supply chain issue. This is largely due to a lack of supply chain transparency, shirking of corporate, social and governance responsibility and poor government regulations.

Asia Pacific fishing industries, for example, supply 60 per cent of the world’s tuna catch worth over US$22 billion. Yet the industry is so rife with modern slavery that the Australian parliament passed the Modern Slavery Act in 2018. Modern slavery is also rampant in the shrimp supply chain, where 90 per cent of migrant workers are vulnerable to being trafficked or ‘sold to the sea’. In 2015, the European Union imposed a ‘yellow card’ on Thailand to sanction its illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing framework.

Modern slavery issues in global supply chains have been addressed using different blockchain-based solutions. London-based NGO Provenance works with stakeholders— from Indonesian tuna fishermen to the restaurants in London — across the tuna supply chain. But its aim to capture labour related information (identity, wages and employment contracts) in conjunction with product-related information faces several challenges.

First, it is difficult to find information in an environment where IUU activities are rampant, impetus for regulations is weak and labour contracts are either verbal or clandestine. Second, it remains difficult to integrate legacy data management and IT systems with different Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The third challenge is that, once integrated, investigators need to establish data interoperability to analyse information gleaned from legacy systems and devices.

The growing availability of wearable devices and digitisation of national identity will make it easier to identify labour inputs in supply chains. Clandestine contracts can now be coded into smart contracts — contracts written in computer code that execute transactions through blockchain — and connected with payroll systems.

The World Food Building Blocks program enables refugees to receive assistance using their biometric signature. This blockchain based humanitarian solution addresses concerns about IUU because invoices from suppliers are cleared when time stamped biometric signatures from all labour sources are appropriately recorded on the blockchain.

Despite these advances, blockchain should not be treated as a silver bullet. A systematic approach is needed to address social and economic challenges, including through changes to business processes and stakeholder collaboration coupled with legal, policy and technological interventions.

Data security, privacy and integrity, as well as interoperability, are technical areas of concern. These integration and interoperability issues can be addressed by implementing blockchain-based solutions as a separate layer, which can be integrated with existing legacy systems through an application programming interface.

Enabled by blockchain technology, the information, cash and material flows for cross-border supply chains can be streamlined. Exemplar blockchain-based projects show that this technology provides much needed transparency, traceability and trust for all supply chain stakeholders. This helps organisations cope with increasing disruptions by establishing resilient and agile supply chain practices that are purpose-driven.

Yingli Wang is a Professor in logistics and operations management at Cardiff University.

Imtiaz Khan is an Associate Professor of Data Science at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Herds of elephants in the room at the ASEAN–US Summit

11 May 2022

Author: Sharon Seah, ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute

In hindsight, perhaps ASEAN was too optimistic about the Biden presidency. Who could blame them? After four years of the Trump administration, the region was more than ready to return to deeper engagement with the United States. A survey of regional elites showed that confidence that the United States would increase its engagement jumped from 9.9 per cent in 2020 under Trump to 68.6 per cent under Biden.

That optimism has dissipated amid COVID-19, the Myanmar crisis, the Ukraine war, supply chain disruptions, fears of stagflation and increasing food and energy insecurity.

This is the context in which eight ASEAN leaders, with the exception of Myanmar’s Min Aung Hlaing and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, will meet President Joe Biden in a US–ASEAN Summit this week. This will only be ASEAN’s second in-person special summit with the United States since 2017 — and a symbolically important one, because its leaders met with Xi Jinping last year in a special 30th commemorative summit of ASEAN–China relations.

ASEAN countries’ divergent positions on Ukraine and Russia, Myanmar and the South China Sea (and by extension, China’s behaviour) will make for challenging conversations with their US host.

On Ukraine, it will be difficult for the summit to find language that expresses a common understanding of the problem. ASEAN is in a bind, unable to go beyond the two joint statements it issued in March 2022. As if they expected to face pressure during in Washington to disinvite Russia, the current chairs of ASEAN (Cambodia), the G20 (Indonesia) and APEC (Thailand) pre-emptively issued a tripartite statement stating their determination to ‘work with all’ on their shared agendas.

Then there’s the Myanmar crisis, where the lack of progress in the implementation of the Five-Point Consensus will be a pain point for ASEAN. The recent consultative meeting on humanitarian assistance to Myanmar (one element in the Consensus deal) will be followed by an impromptu meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers, called by Malaysia for the day before the White House summit. ASEAN Special Envoy Prak Sokhonn’s attempts to advance the other points of the Consensus, including repeated requests to meet detained National League for Democracy leaders, have been rejected by the military junta.

On the South China Sea, the spotlight is on sweeping and competing claims made by claimant states, the risks of armed confrontation and progress in the negotiations on a Code of Conduct. These issues are by now a permanent feature in ASEAN meetings, and the usual expressions of support for upholding international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the pursuit of peaceful resolution of disputes will likely form the key messages emerging from the summit on this issue.

Questions about ASEAN’s role in the US Indo-Pacific strategy and whether ASEAN (in part or in whole) will engage in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework hang over the meeting. The Biden administration’s success in more closely aligning its Indo-Pacific strategy with ASEAN’s Outlook on the Indo-Pacific will be critical to reassuring ASEAN of US respect for its centrality in the regional security architecture.

Meanwhile, US withdrawal from the CPTPP and its absence from RCEP has left a vacuum in the region. The hope is that the administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework will provide a counterweight to China’s growing economic influence, but the lack of political appetite in the United States to engage economically is certain to disadvantage it strategically. There is only moderate appeal in some pillars of the Framework on creating fair and resilient trade, improving supply chain resilience, driving infrastructure investment, assisting with decarbonisation and addressing tax and anticorruption, not all.

ASEAN countries are primarily looking for increased market access for exports — but the Biden administration has on more than one occasion said that its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework will not be designed in such a way that requires Congressional approval. This means that increased market access and commitments are off the table, but ASEAN should still exercise creativity in economic discussions by suggesting inclusive work-arounds in areas like digital trade.

With the summit coinciding with the 45th anniversary of ASEAN–US relations, the United States is expected to seek to elevate its current Strategic Partnership with ASEAN to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Such status was accorded to China and Australia in 2021, but it is unlikely that ASEAN will immediately accede to the upgrade for a number of reasons. First, a process of consultation had to be undertaken with China over two years and with Australia for over a year before that status was granted. The same process must be followed with the United States, at least for reasons of optical parity.

Second and more importantly, a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership cannot simply be old wine in new skins. An upgrade is expected to show greater strategic alignment between the two partners and intensified cooperation in new and emerging areas.

With complex and divergent positions, both within ASEAN, and between ASEAN and the United States — on China, on Russia, on Myanmar, on trade — such alignment appears elusive for now.

Sharon Seah is Coordinator of the ASEAN Studies Centre and the Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.

Obituary: Letizia Battaglia, photographer who depicted the murderous excesses of the Sicilian Mafia

Letizia Battaglia got to see her home city of Palermo enjoy a renaissance

May 15 2022 02:30 AM

Letizia Battaglia, who has died aged 87, was a Sicilian photographer whose unflinching photographs depicting the appalling crimes of the Mafia helped to combat its campaign of terror on the island during the 1970s and 1980s.

She was perhaps an unlikely thorn in the side of organised crime. Her photographic career began in the early 1970s, when, divorced and a single mother of three daughters, she joined the staff of the Sicilian daily left-wing newspaper L’Ora. The paper had itself been the target of a Mafia bombing campaign. Over two decades, she produced more than half a million images covering all aspects of Sicilian life, from children playing mobsters in the piazzas to lovers kissing in the countryside. But it was her images of the havoc caused by the Sicilian Mafia, known as the Cosa Nostra, that made her name.

Weaving through the streets of Palermo on her Vespa, armed only with a Leica, she captured the aftermath of shootings, with figures slumped in cars and on pavements, and bomb attacks on galleries and churches. At arrests, she got as close as possible to culprits to show them in handcuffs. She photographed hundreds of bodies — executed judges, prosecutors and witnesses as well as those killed in feuds — along with the trauma of families caught up in the mayhem.

In a country where political and criminal cliques interweave, often with murderous results, her pictures provided an important record. One of her shots, showing Giulio Andreotti, a former prime minister of Italy, in the company of Mafia associate Nino Salvo, was to prove pivotal in Andreotti’s corruption trial in 1993. Another, from 1980, showed Sergio Mattarella, president of Italy, holding the body of his brother Piersanti, at the time the president of Sicily. She once described her pictures as “indictments”.

With its fearless viewpoint and heavy monochrome, her work echoed the approach of the post-war Neo-realist movement, in which the poetic folded into the brutal. One of her most famous photographs was of the corpse of Giuseppe Lo Baido, shot in a Palermo alley in 1977. The victim is in the foreground, face down, with the alley rising to a high horizon line.

It is as striking in its composition as it is ghastly in its subject. What is remarkable is the proximity and immediacy of Battaglia’s frame, as if she had got to the scene before the Carabinieri. The blood is still wet.

Letizia Battaglia was born on March 5, 1935 in Palermo. Aged 16, she eloped and married Ignazio Stagnitta, an older man. The couple divorced in 1971 and Letizia moved to Milan to begin a career in journalism, initially as a writer. There she met her long-term partner, Franco Zecchin.

Together they moved to Palermo, where she took her first professional photographs just as she was turning 40. In 1979 she put herself in the firing line when she showed monumental prints of Mafia victims in the central square in Corleone, the town made famous by Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather. By the time L’Ora closed in 1990, Letizia
Battaglia was the paper’s veteran photo editor. By then she had also entered the political fray; she represented the Green Party on the city council and the Sicilian regional assembly. Her photobooks include Passion, Justice, Freedom — Photographs of Sicily (2003) and The Duty to Report (2006). She made a cameo appearance as a photographer in Wim Wenders’s drama Shooting Palermo (2008) and in 2019 a feature-length documentary, Shooting the Mafia, was made about her.

With thousands of Mafiosi put behind bars, in recent years she got to see her once violent city enjoy a renaissance. In 2018, Palermo was made the Italian capital of culture.

She is survived by her daughters, one of whom is Shobha Battaglia, herself a successful photographer.

Should the CCP target China’s richest 1 per cent?

17 May 2022

Author: Yvette To, CityU

Pursuing ‘common prosperity’ is one of the latest strategic goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This new initiative aims to reduce social inequality through primary income distribution, government-led redistribution efforts such as regulation, and social philanthropy. While the concept is not new, some of the necessary policies are.

Responding to an increasing urban–rural gap, former president Jiang Zemin emphasised the need to ‘raise the proportion of the middle-income group and increase the income of the low-income group’ to achieve common prosperity back in 2002. President Xi Jinping reinvoked the concept of common prosperity in August 2021. Some see the idea of common prosperity as embedded in China’s socialist ideology — but from a governance perspective, the new policy direction is considered timely and pragmatic as income and wealth gaps in China have worsened due to the pandemic.

So far, the CCP’s new initiative of reducing wealth gaps has put Chinese tech giants under the spotlight. These companies have become some of the fastest growing in China, with their founders among China’s richest.

When Xi stressed the need to ‘reasonably regulate excessively high incomes’ to narrow social inequality, China’s tech billionaires, one by one, pledged additional corporate and personal donations to common prosperity programmes. Alibaba and Tencent each pledged 100 billion RMB (US$15.5 billion) towards various social programmes. They were followed by Pinduoduo with a 10 billion RMB (US$1.5 billion) donation to help rural residents in China. Zhang Yiming, founder of Bytedance, donated 500 million RMB (US$77 million) to set up an education fund in his home city. Wang Xing, founder of Meituan, also donated US$370 million through his own charitable foundation.

Social philanthropy aids wealth distribution by encouraging the rich to return more to society. Over the past few years, social philanthropy in China had been led by domestic tech giants even before the latest government pressure set in. In addition to establishing dedicated charitable funds, internet companies offer their platforms for mass charitable events such as Tencent’s annual ‘99 Giving Day’. Jack Ma of Alibaba, Ma Huateng of Tencent and Zhang Yiming of ByteDance were among the top five philanthropists in China in 2011.

By international standards, Chinese tech companies do not trail their foreign counterparts in philanthropy efforts. Take their response to COVID-19 as an example. Statistics from Foundation Maps show that Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, is second only to Alphabet/Google in philanthropic contributions to COVID-19 relief. In fact, Bytedance contributed a higher percentage (0.47 per cent) of company revenues during 2020–2021, compared with Alphabet/Google at 0.32 per cent. Alibaba, with combined revenues amounting to just one-third of Amazon’s, committed US$90 million more than Amazon to global programmes relating to the pandemic.

Now, under a new political environment, Chinese tech billionaires are pledging even more funds to alleviate poverty in China. For the CCP, putting pressure on tech companies and entrepreneurs to scale up donations is a convenient tactic for the time being, but this should not divert policymakers’ attention from other important measures that are critical to improving social equality.

What China needs is more than just a continuous flow of donations, but effective programmes that target new causes of wealth gaps.

For example, given that children in China are entitled to nine years of free education, access to primary education is less a problem now than access to quality education in rural areas. Poor resource allocation and management often hinders the delivery of quality education in villages. In this respect, Jack Ma’s Rural Teacher Award and Rural Principal Award — launched in 2015 and 2016 respectively — have contributed to reducing urban–rural inequality. The awards recognise outstanding teaching and school management in villages and provide funding to support ongoing professional development of rural teachers.

The proliferation of corporate-led common prosperity funds — in part a response to political pressure — is welcome. After all, it is the implementation of dedicated projects and an efficient allocation of funds to tackle real causes of inequality that will promise effective outcomes for poverty alleviation.

Still, relying on the goodwill of the wealthy will only partially contribute to social equality. Previous scandals of government-organised non-governmental organisations have, to some extent, undermined public confidence in charitable organisations. Increasing the transparency of these organisations to reduce public scepticism of social philanthropy is needed.

In the long run, China should address the fundamental causes of urban–rural disparities and wealth gaps. In addition to redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, policies that target primary income distribution, reform the tax system and broaden social benefits available to migrant workers will be necessary.

The 300 million migrant workers in China constitute a sizeable population of low-income individuals who are deprived of adequate social benefits. Reforming hukou — the Chinese household registration system — will have positive impacts on their social mobility. Extending the property tax scheme for luxury properties (a pilot scheme that is running in Shanghai and Chongqing) and introducing an inheritance tax (which is common in many advanced economies) will be further steps to reduce wealth gaps.

Yvette To is a Postdoc in the Department of Asian and International Studies at the City University of Hong Kong.

 Marcos victory in the Philippines reflects a new arc of old politics in Southeast Asia

16 May 2022

Author: Editorial Board, ANU

The last time a Marcos claimed victory in a Philippine presidential election, it was on the back of a victory so tainted by fraud it sparked a democratic revolution. Thirty-six years later, voters in Southeast Asia’s second-biggest democracy have delivered Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr to the presidential palace from which he fled along with his father into exile. Those who fought for democracy in the 1986 ‘people power’ revolution, and who fought to protect the achievements of the movement since then, are understandably shellshocked.

In our first lead article this week, Ronald Holmes writes that ‘Bongbong’s victory testifies to an effective rebranding of his persona’ that ‘glorified martial law and refuted narratives about [his] family’s ill-gotten wealth’. As Ferdinand Sr’s dictatorship recedes into history, many voters seem to have bought Ferdinand Jr’s line that it was a golden era of progress and stability.

Polls showed a pro-Marcos wave across the Philippines’ yawning social divides, with clear majorities of both rich and poor voters backing him.  Bongbong will be the first post-‘people power’ president to win with an outright majority of votes, meaning that ‘he takes on the presidency with an unequivocal mandate that even outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte did not have’, says Holmes.

Indeed, the result is also a vote for extending the Duterte agenda. Voters overwhelmingly told pollsters that they wanted continuity. With Duterte’s estranged vice president Leni Robredo the only viable vehicle for change, and former ally and boxing champ Manny Pacquiao having fallen out with the president’s camp, Marcos was the default choice for Duterte supporters.

Contemporary grievances and partisan loyalties explain the result as much as historical memories. But there is nonetheless an immense symbolism in the return of the Marcos family to the presidency in the Philippines, one that chimes with a politics of nostalgia — or perhaps amnesia — that’s bubbling up in other parts of Southeast Asia.

As Francis Hutchinson writes in our second lead article this week, while ‘long characterised by “stability” and excessive concentration of power, Malaysia’s politics have become fluid and unpredictable’ in the aftermath of the defeat of Najib Razak’s government amid a massive corruption scandal in 2018, and the collapse of the reformist Pakatan Harapan government that replaced it. ‘Political institutions have since been in flux’, says Hutchinson, and the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) — in which former prime minister Najib remains influential — ‘is hell-bent on returning to what it sees as its rightful position at the apex of national power’.

As Hutchinson sees it, Malaysia’s ‘grand old party is selling its old formula — Malay dominance and traditional patronage politics’. Mounting hip pocket concerns and weariness of elite infighting are embedding  a yearning among some voters for the stability and largesse of Najib’s leadership. The result is that the former prime minister, who’s appealing a conviction for corruption offences, is enjoying a resurgence in popularity.

In this there are echoes of the situation in Indonesia, where nostalgia for the Soeharto era — when corruption was kept out of sight, and policy mistakes were easier to paper over — is endemic though certainly not universal. That nostalgia has found an electoral outlet in the serial candidacies of Prabowo Subianto, who as a former army general defended his then-father in law’s regime to the bitter end, and who has appealed explicitly to disaffection with democracy. Prabowo remains a leading candidate in the upcoming race to succeed President Joko Widodo, who himself has subordinated human rights and institutional reform to stability and development.

A broad-brush analysis of these trends in Southeast Asia’s ‘big three’ electoral regimes suggests that the benign technocracy of a previous generation of leaders — exemplified by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Benigno Aquino III and Abdullah Ahmad Badawi — is firmly out of fashion. In its place there is the growing prestige of what the sociologist Marco Garrido, writing about the Duterte-era Philippines, has called the ‘disciplinary state’, in which elected leaders honour the principle of electoral competition while ‘“disciplin[ing]” democracy by circumscribing its scope with respect to certain freedoms’.

In some ways this represents the rehabilitation of the Cold War-era bargain in which political freedom was foregone, or ostensibly delayed, for the sake of nation-building and economic growth. The difference now is that this ‘deal’ is not presented to a disenfranchised public as a fait accompli — it’s receiving endorsement at the ballot box and in opinion polls.

The principle of legitimation through free and fair elections has been entrenched. But it is increasingly decoupled from anti-corruption policy agendas (as voters shrug at the graft incidental to delivering the public goods they demand) and regard for the liberal rights that form the ‘soft tissue’ of democracy (as these instead come to be seen as vectors for the illegitimate influence of special interests).

By leaving institutional reforms unaddressed, this kind of politics contains the seeds of its own future crisis. In the Philippines, strengthening the central government’s capacity to deliver public goods, at the expense of local powerbrokers’ ability to direct state resources for their own political ends, is a critical development challenge. Indonesia’s endemic corruption is a major barrier to achieving the growth required to create jobs for the young people entering the workforce. And Malaysia will underachieve economically until it winds back the system of race-based affirmative action that politicians use as a conduit for clientelist politics.

In any case, Western leaders who have invested heavily in the rhetoric of democracy as a plank of the ‘rules-based order’ need to have a plan for dealing with the growing crop of leaders in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the Asia Pacific, who don’t fit neatly into the categories of dictator or democrat.

The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.

Despite huge victory, Bongbong underwhelms

15 May 2022

Author: Ronald D Holmes, De La Salle University

A Philippine commentator described Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr’s victory as overwhelming. This is apt based on the current vote count. Bongbong will be the first president after the 1986 political transition to be elected by a majority of voters in a plurality electoral system. He takes on the presidency with an unequivocal mandate that even outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte did not have.

Bongbong’s victory testifies to an effective rebranding of his persona. The rebranding was actively prosecuted on social media and started with stories in various social media platforms that glorified martial law and refuted narratives about the family’s ill-gotten wealth. The rebranding was abetted by Duterte’s decision to bury Bongbong’s father — the late dictator — in the National Heroes’ Cemetery. This affirmed the imagined heroism of the dead despot, a historical distortion Marcos Sr peddled in the early 1960s as he prepared to vie for the presidency in 1965.

Bongbong successfully projected himself as an anti-populist with his oft-repeated message of unity that inspired hope among a public that hankered for a recovery after a debilitating pandemic.

The alliance between the Dutertes and the Marcoses could also be credited for the Bongbong landslide. While Duterte called Bongbong a weak leader and spoiled child in November 2016, the scathing critique did not dent Bongbong’s voting support as he was already paired up at the time with his running mate Sara Duterte, Rodrigo’s daughter. Bongbong’s pre-election support reached majority in December 2021.

Bongbong’s support significantly increased across all sub-national areas, but the largest increase was in the major island that is regarded as Duterte country — Mindanao. From 8 per cent of Mindanawon voters expressing support for him in September 2021; that soared to 64 per cent in December 2021. Bongbong’s partnership with Sara proved extremely beneficial, as he was able to sustain such level of support in Mindanao until election day, and even in the Bisayan-speaking Central Visayas region where the Duterte name continues to draw substantial support.

Bongbong and Sara’s victory can be attributed to the weakness of the opposition. The weakness of the opposition, and Bongbong’s main challenger outgoing vice president Leni Robredo, were partly Duterte’s doing. The populist Duterte constantly hit on the alleged deficiencies and abuses of the immediate past administration of the late president, Benigno S Aquino III. Duterte called Robredo incompetent and unfit to be president. Robredo herself has been the main target of disinformation across her term and in the months leading up to the election.

The unwillingness of the opposition to counter false narratives contributed to the decline in the support for it. Robredo’s approval and trust ratings incrementally declined within her term due to the attacks from Duterte and his legion of social media influencers. Robredo admitted this herself first in 2019, and most recently when she said: ‘When I started my term, I was too naive about how powerful social media was or how powerful social media was going to be, that I did not do enough’.

But the biggest failure of the mainstream opposition was its inability to pass institutional reforms when they had the chance, in particular under Aquino III. Such reforms include the legislation of a freedom of information act, the political party development act and the decriminalisation of libel.

Several days after the 9 May 2022 elections, attention has focused on the decisions that the presumptive president, Bongbong will take. So far, he has announced that his running mate Sara has accepted the education portfolio, even though she preferred to be appointed defence secretary.

In his conversation with US President Joe Biden, Bongbong assured him that the Philippines would always hold the United States in ‘high regard as friend, an ally and a partner’. While the congratulatory message of Chinese president Xi Jinping was hand-delivered by the Chinese ambassador, Bongbong has yet to respond publicly.

Unlike his running mate Sara, who has urged her supporters to reach out to those who backed her opponents, Bongbong has not uttered a word that affirms his commitment to fulfill his campaign message of unity. The delay in constituting his cabinet and in issuing key policy pronouncements reflects how unprepared Bongbong is to lead the country. Despite an overwhelming victory, Bongbong underwhelms.

Ronald D Holmes is Professor of Political Science and Development Studies at De La Salle University and President of Pulse Asia Research Inc. The views expressed in this article are solely the views of the author and the author alone.

UFOs: US Congress to hold first public hearing into phenomena in decades

14 May, 2022 06:00 PM

UFO sightings have for many decades been dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists and crackpots. Photo / Getty Images

Daily Telegraph UK

By Nick Allen

Congress is to hold the first public hearing in decades into UFO sightings next week in the latest serious attempt by the US government to establish the origins of the phenomena.

Pentagon intelligence officials will be grilled on what they know in the first session of its kind in more than half a century.

Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said: "This will give the public an opportunity to hear directly from subject matter experts, and leaders in the intelligence community, on one of the greatest mysteries of our time."

He said the UFO hearing would "break the cycle of excessive secrecy and speculation with truth and transparency".

Last year, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence who oversees President Joe Biden's daily intelligence briefing, released a much-anticipated report into UFOs.

It examined 144 instances of "unidentified aerial phenomena" since 2004, some reported by US military pilots, but could only explain one of them with confidence. The report did not rule out the potential that China or Russia had developed super-advanced technology or extraterrestrial origins. It did confirm that the sightings were not linked to clandestine US military tests.

UFO sightings have for many decades been dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists and crackpots.

But the issue is being taken increasingly seriously by politicians and the Pentagon, particularly in relation to sightings by military personnel, and near training bases.

In 2017 it was revealed that the Pentagon had been running a secret UFO unit, funded with US$22 million (NZ$35 million) in "black ops money" from Congress. At the time, Luis Elizondo, the intelligence officer who ran it, told The Sunday Telegraph: "It's pretty clear this is not us [the US]."

In the wake of last year's inconclusive report, the Pentagon has now established a new team called the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronisation Group (AOIMSG).

The witnesses at the hearing will include the intelligence official overseeing the new task force, Ronald Moultrie, who is Biden's Under Secretary of Defence for Intelligence and Security.

Also giving evidence will be Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence.

They will be questioned by the House intelligence committee's subcommittee on counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and counterproliferation.

Congressman Andre Carson, the Democrat chairman of the subcommittee, said: "The American people expect and deserve their leaders in government and intelligence to seriously evaluate and respond to any potential national security risks, especially those we do not fully understand."

It will be the first congressional hearing on UFOs since 1969 when the "Project Blue Book" investigation into the phenomena ended.

John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said it was a "very important matter" and added: "We are absolutely committed to being as transparent as we can with the American people."

He said: "We're going to try to make sure we have a better process for identifying these phenomena, analysing that information in a more proactive, coordinated way than it's been done in the past.

"And we also are doing what we need to do to mitigate any safety issues, as many of these phenomena have been sighted in training ranges and in training environments. And so, we're very much concerned about safety of flight."

He added: "It's been sort of ad hoc in the past, in terms of a pilot here and a pilot there seeing something, and the reporting procedures haven't been consistent. So, what we're trying to do with this group [AOIMSG] is get together a process here."

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When dolphins played with a snake

Why were Bolivian river dolphins swimming around with a large predatory snake in their mouths? 'There are so many questions,' one researcher said


PUBLISHED : 15 MAY 2022 
NEWSPAPER SECTION: SUNDAY SPOTLIGHT
WRITER: CAROLYN  WILKE

A photo of Bolivian river dolphins toying with a Beni anaconda in August 2021. 

OMAR M. ENTIAUSPE NETO et al viA NYT

In August 2021, a research team was documenting biodiversity near the Tijamuchi River in Bolivia when they saw some animals that are typically difficult to observe: Bolivian river dolphins.

Just seeing them with their heads above the river was extraordinary, said Steffen Reichle, a biologist at the Noel Kempff Mercado Museum of Natural History in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, and a member of the team. Researchers knew something was up and started snapping photos.

Only after scrolling through the images the team captured did the researchers realise the dolphins were dangling an anaconda around as they swam.

The researchers described what they saw in the journal Ecology last month. While dolphins in captivity and the wild are known for being playful, the surprising behaviour of the Bolivian cetaceans seems like a new frontier in frolicking among the aquatic mammals, and some scientists still aren't sure what to think about what the team observed.

Mr Reichle said Bolivian river dolphins usually swim below the surface, and sightings often catch only a fin or a tail. But some of the six animals they saw kept their heads above the turbid water for an unusually long time.

At one point, two male dolphins seemingly swam in sync, a snake held by the animals' mouths. Anacondas are semiaquatic and can hold their breaths for some time. But because the snake was handled for at least seven minutes, much of this submerged, it probably perished.

"I don't think that the snake had a very good time," Mr Reichle said.

Because of how long this interaction went on, the team suspects play -- not predation. Bolivia's native Beni anacondas are apex predators. Other than a single case of cannibalism, researchers haven't documented the serpents being eaten. In this case, the team did not see where the snake ended up.

With how lively dolphins are, "playing seems like a pretty good answer", said Omar Entiauspe-Neto, one of the paper's authors and a taxonomist at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

Some of the dolphins gathered were juveniles, which could suggest another dimension of the interaction: The adults may have been teaching the youngsters about anacondas or showing them a hunting technique.

But Sonja Wild, a behavioural ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Germany, who was not part of the study, was sceptical that the interaction was purposely instructive. It's more plausible the juveniles were observing because they were curious, she said.

And because anacondas are strong, Ms Wild wondered if the snake was injured or dead before the dolphins got to it. Of all the things one could pick up, "this seems a little extraordinary", she said.

"This is the first time I've heard of dolphins playing with a large snake," added Ms Wild, who has observed bottlenose dolphins using shells as tools.

Something else from the photos was notable -- the male dolphins' erect penises.

"It could have been sexually stimulating for them," said Diana Reiss, a marine mammal scientist and cognitive psychologist at Hunter College in New York who was not involved with the study. "It could have been something to rub on."

The aroused males could have been having a sexual romp with each other before the snake became entangled.

Researchers who study dolphins are well aware of the animals' sexual proclivities, such as rubbing their genitals on toys or inserting their penises into objects, animate and inanimate. They often use their penises for tactile interactions, Prof Reiss said. She has even observed male bottlenose dolphins trying to penetrate the blowhole of a rescued pilot whale in an aquarium. It's possible, she added, that the males tried to insert their penises into the snake.

"There are so many questions," Mr Entiauspe-Neto said.

A lot more is known about ocean-dwelling dolphins than riverine ones, in part because it's harder to see what's going on when river water is muddy. Even though they're limited in nature, "these observations are always valuable", Prof Reiss said. "It's giving us another glimpse of the lives of these animals, particularly in the wild."

Whatever happened in this animal encounter, it's not the stuff of children's storybooks.

Healthcare Unions Must Take Up the Fight for Abortion Rights

Healthcare unions must take up the fight to make sure everyone has a right to free, safe, legal abortion on demand. Abortion is healthcare and healthcare is a human right.

Mike Pappas May 12, 2022
Luigi Morris

The recent leak of a draft Supreme Court decision confirmed what many have expected for some time: the Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Democrats, meanwhile, have proven time and time again they will not protect the right to abortion. As a healthcare worker who previously worked in a primary care clinic providing abortion care, I know that abortion care is life-saving health care, and it should be available to all as a human right.

The only way to protect this right is by mobilizing in the streets and in our workplaces. Healthcare worker unions throughout the country must mobilize their members to fight back against this decision.

As we have written,


This monumental decision will make abortion illegal or all but illegal in dozens of states across the country as soon as it is announced, making access to an abortion almost impossible for tens of millions of people overnight. This decision is an attack on all people who can get pregnant; in many states they will be forced into illegal and unsafe abortions, expensive trips out of state, or be forced to give birth. Working people, working people of color, and poor people in particular, who often do not have the means to travel several hundred miles to reach a clinic willing to perform an abortion will be most affected.

“Abortion is healthcare and healthcare is a human right!” This refrain, chanted in the streets just last week, cannot be more accurate. As healthcare workers who strive to protect the heath of our patients, a threat to abortion rights is a threat to patient health, especially to the health of the poor and oppressed.

However, while some unions, like Starbucks Workers United, have put out statements condemning the leaked decision, healthcare worker unions — many of whom literally provide abortions — have been silent. Unions like National Nurses United (NNU) — the largest nurses union in the nation — or the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — the largest union of healthcare workers — have been silent on this issue. The union I was previously part of, the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), which represents thousands of resident physicians around the country, has also been largely silent. There has not been so much as a statement condemning the recently leaked decision — just a single retweet from the SEIU account — and certainly not even close to any call for members of these unions to act.

It is absolutely inexcusable that the largest healthcare unions in the U.S. have been completely absent. High school students are walking out of classrooms and actions are being called by various organizations because they all understand the threat that overturning Roe v. Wade poses. So why have the major institutions of labor in healthcare not come to the same conclusion?

While unions in the U.S. have historically focused on issues restricted to their workplaces, such as increased wages, shorter work hours, or improved working conditions, labor organizations have helped to win the right to abortion internationally. Polish workers went on strike in 2016 pressuring the government to vote down an abortion ban. Unions in Ireland launched a coalition in 2016 to help win the right to abortion and same-sex marriage in 2019. Rank-and-file union members organized actions as part of the “green wave” in Argentina to help win the right to abortion in 2020. Workers organizations have been at the forefront internationally to win these rights. We should be seeing similar mobilizations in the U.S.

As Left Voice member Olivia Wood wrote in October,


Because of its controversial nature, the bureaucrats in union leadership are unlikely to take up this fight without pressure from the rank and file, and even then, they will likely work to contain the militancy of their members. This makes it even more important for workers to take matters into their own hands, remember that we are the union, and stick up for our fellow workers, both in our own workplaces and across the country. “Workers of the world unite” is not simply a slogan: it’s a call to action and a strategic imperative.

Since the leaderships of the healthcare unions clearly won’t take these steps, rank-and-file healthcare workers should force their unions to mobilize. To be clear, unions using their power to fight for the right to abortion would not mean giving a donation here or there toward a “pro-choice” politician’s campaign or calling members to “vote next cycle.” It means using the vast resources these unions possess to actually mobilize and support members who take action.

It also means workers potentially calling for work actions or strikes to protect the right to abortion, and healthcare workers organizing workplace committees to discuss how to protect abortion rights. For example, each healthcare center could have committees discussing and organizing around how healthcare workers could take tangible steps to defend the right to abortion. In states where abortion would be immediately outlawed as a result of this decision, it would also mean healthcare workers actively defying abortion ban laws and keeping clinics open. It would be crucial for healthcare worker unions to support and back these efforts in whatever ways possible.

Mobilizations obviously should not be limited to healthcare sectors. Healthcare worker unions should fight across labor sectors with, for example, teachers’ unions and other labor unions. As workers, we make the world run and our power lies in our workplaces and our power to shut shit down. This is how fighting labor institutions could take a role in tangibly interevening to protect the right to abortion — as part of a mass movement to protect abortion rights.

Winning the right to safe, legal abortion on demand will come from the streets and workplaces — not the offices of capitalist politicians. Healthcare labor institutions have so far been quiet, but they should take up this fight head on today.



Mike Pappas is an activist and medical doctor working in New York City.