MikeLigalig.com

It doesn’t seem like many people in neuroscience or philosophy of mind are thinking about fundamental physics. Do you think that’s been a stumbling block for those trying to understand consciousness?

I think it has been. Not only are they ignoring the progress in fundamental physics, they are often explicit about it. They’ll say openly that quantum physics is not relevant to the aspects of brain function that are causally involved in consciousness. They are certain that it’s got to be classical properties of neural activity, which exist independent of any observers â€" spiking rates, connection strengths at synapses, perhaps dynamical properties as well. These are all very classical notions under Newtonian physics, where time is absolute and objects exist absolutely. And then [neuroscientists] are mystified as to why they don’t make progress. They don’t avail themselves of the incredible insights and breakthroughs that physics has made. Those insights are out there for us to use, and yet my field says, “We’ll stick with Newton, thank you. We’ll stay 300 years behind in our physics.”

If it’s conscious agents all the way down, all first-person points of view, what happens to science? Science has always been a third-person description of the world.

The idea that what we’re doing is measuring publicly accessible objects, the idea that objectivity results from the fact that you and I can measure the same object in the exact same situation and get the same results â€" it’s very clear from quantum mechanics that that idea has to go. Physics tells us that there are no public physical objects. So what’s going on? Here’s how I think about it. I can talk to you about my headache and believe that I am communicating effectively with you, because you’ve had your own headaches. The same thing is true as apples and the moon and the sun and the universe. Just like you have your own headache, you have your own moon. But I assume it’s relevantly similar to mine. That’s an assumption that could be false, but that’s the source of my communication, and that’s the best we can do in terms of public physical objects and objective science.

http://nationalinterest.org/
Joshua W. Walker
Hidetoshi Azuma
June 8, 2016


This year’s G7 summit in Ise-shima, Japan was full of spectacles worthy of arresting headlines, including U.S. President Barack Obama’s historic embrace of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima on May 27th. Prime Minister Abe as host has enjoyed a considerable boost for his efforts as host and now is confidently heading into an upper house election on July 10th. Like most international summits, however, what lies beyond the headlines are the agreements made among leaders even if not declared in the moment. Much of what the G7 leaders was focused on was the creation of a joint approach to the global rise of revisionism led by China and Russia, who resent not being part of the gathering. The most consequential outcome of the two-day event on Japan’s idyllic island was the emergence of a new phase in the ongoing Sino-Japanese geoeconomic competition. It characterizes a global trend for the world’s leading liberal economies for years to come.

Nationalist-driven and aggressive foreign policy is ubiquitous among authoritarian regimes. China and Russia in particular have been challenging the status quo by displays of military force in Crimea and the South China Sea. Despite regional apprehension and American warnings, the Chinese representative at the recent Shangri-La Dialogue warned  that in the South China Sea, “We do not make trouble but we have no fear of trouble.” While divergent objectives guide such self-aggrandizing behavior, Beijing and Moscow make strange bedfellows under one common goal: to create a new geopolitical reality in opposition to the current liberal world order.

But if there’s a W, are you saying there is an external world?

Here’s the striking thing about that. I can pull the W out of the model and stick a conscious agent in its place and get a circuit of conscious agents. In fact, you can have whole networks of arbitrary complexity. And that’s the world.

The world is just other conscious agents?

I call it conscious realism: Objective reality is just conscious agents, just points of view. Interestingly, I can take two conscious agents and have them interact, and the mathematical structure of that interaction also satisfies the definition of a conscious agent. This mathematics is telling me something. I can take two minds, and they can generate a new, unified single mind. Here’s a concrete example. We have two hemispheres in our brain. But when you do a split-brain operation, a complete transection of the corpus callosum, you get clear evidence of two separate consciousnesses. Before that slicing happened, it seemed there was a single unified consciousness. So it’s not implausible that there is a single conscious agent. And yet it’s also the case that there are two conscious agents there, and you can see that when they’re split. I didn’t expect that, the mathematics forced me to recognize this. It suggests that I can take separate observers, put them together and create new observers, and keep doing this ad infinitum. It’s conscious agents all the way down.

A mathematical model of consciousness.

That’s right. My intuition was, there are conscious experiences. I have pains, tastes, smells, all my sensory experiences, moods, emotions and so forth. So I’m just going to say: One part of this consciousness structure is a set of all possible experiences. When I’m having an experience, based on that experience I may want to change what I’m doing. So I need to have a collection of possible actions I can take and a decision strategy that, given my experiences, allows me to change how I’m acting. That’s the basic idea of the whole thing. I have a space X of experiences, a space G of actions, and an algorithm D that lets me choose a new action given my experiences. Then I posited a W for a world, which is also a probability space. Somehow the world affects my perceptions, so there’s a perception map P from the world to my experiences, and when I act, I change the world, so there’s a map A from the space of actions to the world. That’s the entire structure. Six elements. The claim is: This is the structure of consciousness. I put that out there so people have something to shoot at.

How did you first become interested in these ideas?

As a teenager, I was very interested in the question “Are we machines?” My reading of the science suggested that we are. But my dad was a minister, and at church they were saying we’re not. So I decided I needed to figure it out for myself. It’s sort of an important personal question â€" if I’m a machine, I would like to find that out! And if I’m not, I’d like to know, what is that special magic beyond the machine? So eventually in the 1980s I went to the artificial intelligence lab at MIT and worked on machine perception. The field of vision research was enjoying a newfound success in developing mathematical models for specific visual abilities. I noticed that they seemed to share a common mathematical structure, so I thought it might be possible to write down a formal structure for observation that encompassed all of them, perhaps all possible modes of observation. I was inspired in part by Alan Turing. When he invented the Turing machine, he was trying to come up with a notion of computation, and instead of putting bells and whistles on it, he said, Let’s get the simplest, most pared down mathematical description that could possibly work. And that simple formalism is the foundation for the science of computation. So I wondered, could I provide a similarly simple formal foundation for the science of observation?

So everything we see is one big illusion?

We’ve been shaped to have perceptions that keep us alive, so we have to take them seriously. If I see something that I think of as a snake, I don’t pick it up. If I see a train, I don’t step in front of it. I’ve evolved these symbols to keep me alive, so I have to take them seriously. But it’s a logical flaw to think that if we have to take it seriously, we also have to take it literally.

If snakes aren’t snakes and trains aren’t trains, what are they?

Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features. The snake I see is a description created by my sensory system to inform me of the fitness consequences of my actions. Evolution shapes acceptable solutions, not optimal ones. A snake is an acceptable solution to the problem of telling me how to act in a situation. My snakes and trains are my mental representations; your snakes and trains are your mental representations.

But how can seeing a false reality be beneficial to an organism’s survival?

There’s a metaphor that’s only been available to us in the past 30 or 40 years, and that’s the desktop interface. Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop â€" does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not. But those are the only things that can be asserted about anything on the desktop â€" it has color, position and shape. Those are the only categories available to you, and yet none of them are true about the file itself or anything in the computer. They couldn’t possibly be true. That’s an interesting thing. You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you.

You’ve done computer simulations to show this. Can you give an example?

Suppose in reality there’s a resource, like water, and you can quantify how much of it there is in an objective order â€" very little water, medium amount of water, a lot of water. Now suppose your fitness function is linear, so a little water gives you a little fitness, medium water gives you medium fitness, and lots of water gives you lots of fitness â€" in that case, the organism that sees the truth about the water in the world can win, but only because the fitness function happens to align with the true structure in reality. Generically, in the real world, that will never be the case. Something much more natural is a bell curve  â€" say, too little water you die of thirst, but too much water you drown, and only somewhere in between is good for survival. Now the fitness function doesn’t match the structure in the real world. And that’s enough to send truth to extinction. For example, an organism tuned to fitness might see small and large quantities of some resource as, say, red, to indicate low fitness, whereas they might see intermediate quantities as green, to indicate high fitness. Its perceptions will be tuned to fitness, but not to truth. It won’t see any distinction between small and large â€" it only sees red â€" even though such a distinction exists in reality.

QUANTA MAGAZINE: People often use Darwinian evolution as an argument that our perceptions accurately reflect reality. They say, “Obviously we must be latching onto reality in some way because otherwise we would have been wiped out a long time ago. If I think I’m seeing a palm tree but it’s really a tiger, I’m in trouble.”

DONALD HOFFMAN: Right. The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions â€" mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.

On the other side are quantum physicists, marveling at the strange fact that quantum systems don’t seem to be definite objects localized in space until we come along to observe them â€" whether we are conscious humans or inanimate measuring devices. Experiment after experiment has shown â€" defying common sense â€" that if we assume that the particles that make up ordinary objects have an objective, observer-independent existence, we get the wrong answers. The central lesson of quantum physics is clear: There are no public objects sitting out there in some preexisting space. As the physicist John Wheeler put it, “Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.”

So while neuroscientists struggle to understand how there can be such a thing as a first-person reality, quantum physicists have to grapple with the mystery of how there can be anything but a first-person reality. In short, all roads lead back to the observer. And that’s where you can find Hoffman â€" straddling the boundaries, attempting a mathematical model of the observer, trying to get at the reality behind the illusion. Quanta Magazine caught up with him to find out more. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows.

Not so, says Donald D. Hoffman, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine. Hoffman has spent the past three decades studying perception, artificial intelligence, evolutionary game theory and the brain, and his conclusion is a dramatic one: The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality. What’s more, he says, we have evolution itself to thank for this magnificent illusion, as it maximizes evolutionary fitness by driving truth to extinction.

Getting at questions about the nature of reality, and disentangling the observer from the observed, is an endeavor that straddles the boundaries of neuroscience and fundamental physics. On one side you’ll find researchers scratching their chins raw trying to understand how a three-pound lump of gray matter obeying nothing more than the ordinary laws of physics can give rise to first-person conscious experience. This is the aptly named “hard problem.”

https://www.quantamagazine.org/
By Amanda Gefter
April 21, 2016


As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions â€" sights, sounds, textures, tastes â€" are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it â€" or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion â€" we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

BENGUET. The colorful art favela-inspired murals at Stone Hill along Km. 3 in La Trinidad, Benguet is now taking shape and expected to be another tourist attraction for the municipality. (Milo Brioso)

Pink pood...

Ni STEPHANIE V. BERGANIO


ANAA sa punerarya gidala ang usa ka security guard nga giingong napalgan nga walay kinabuhi kagahapon sa buntag duol sa Laguindingan Airport, lungsod sa Laguindingan Misamis Oriental.

Giila ang biktima nga si Francisco Samson Jr., hingkod ang edad, taga Kolambog-Capistrano St., dakbayan sa Cagayan de Oro ug nagtrabaho isip security guard sa Laguindingan Airport.

Gibutyag sa kabanay sa biktima nga dili sila kumbinsido sa sulti-sulti nga ang biktima giurom hinungdan nga nakabsan sa kinabuhi tungod kay sa pagkuha nila sa patay’ng lawas sulod sa giabangan nga boarding house niini sa dapit, adunay dugo sa ilong ug baba sa biktima.

Gawas pa nga nagkadugo kini dihang napalgan.

Gitouhang niadtong Sabado pa kini nakabsan sa kinabuhi tungod kay daw wala na kini naka duty niadtong tungora ug nanimaho na usab kini hinungdan nga gisusi sa tag-iya sa boarding house nga gipuy-an niini.

Gihulat sa pamilya ning panahona ang Scene of Crimes Operatives aron masusi ang biktima tungod kay dako ilang pagtoung adunay foul play sa kamatayon niini. (SVB)


Gipatik sa mantalaang Superbalita Cagayan de Oro Hunyo 07, 2016.

Ni KRIS C. SIALANA


HUMAN sa tibuok adlaw nga wala makita ang usa ka sekyu, giablihan na lang sa mga ka boardmates niini ang iyang lawak ug napalgan kining wala nay kinabuhi.

Patay na dihang nadiskobrehan si Dennis Elivera, 36, minyo ug lumulupyo sa Jasaan, Misamis Oriental kinsa nag-abang lamang og usa ka lawak sa Barangay Tablon, dakbayan sa Cagayan de Oro.

Giingong nagtrabaho si Elivera isip usa ka guwardiya sa maong dapit.

Giingong tibuok adlaw nga wala makagawas ang guwardiya hinungdan nga giablihan sa mga boardmates niini ang lawak ug napalgan na lamang kini nga wala nay kinabuhi kinsa gituohang giurom.


Gipatik sa mantalaang Superbalita Cagayan de Oro Hunyo 04, 2016.

Agence France-Presse |  Updated: Jun 06, 2016 10:09 IST


MANILA: The Philippine-president elect Rodrigo Duterte urged people to join his anti-crime crackdown, offering people huge bounties for killing drug dealers.

His announcement late on Saturday came as other officials began paying bounties for slain suspected criminals in an apparent attempt to ride on Duterte’s success.

Duterte won the presidential election last month, running on a platform of a ruthless anti-crime campaign.

After previously saying he would unleash the military and police on criminals, Duterte said the public could go after them as well. “If they are there in your neighbourhood, feel free to call us, the police or do it yourself if you have the gun. You have my support,” he told his cheering followers.

“If he fights and fights to the death, you can kill him,” he said, adding: “I will give you a medal.”

He stressed that drug addicts could not be rehabilitated and warned, “if you are involved in drugs, I will kill you. You son of a whore, I will really kill you.”

Duterte reiterated that his anti-crime campaign would be “a bloody war,” as he offered money for slain drug lords. “I will pay, for a drug lord: five million (pesos)($107,000) if he is dead. If he is alive, only 4.999 million,” he laughed.

Duterte, who takes office on June 30 and is the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao, also offered smaller amounts for lower-ranked figures involved in the drug trade.

He did not say how a private citizen could identify suspects.

Duterte has previously been linked with vigilante “death squads” that have killed scores of people in Davao and has vowed to widen his campaign when he becomes president.

Ni KRIS C. SIALANA


GIHAPAK og botelya ug gidunggab sa kaugalingong higala ang biktima human nga nalango na sa ilimnong makahubog samtang anaa nag-vigil niadtong miaging adlaw diha sa Balingasag, Misamis Oriental.

Samad sa ulo ug aping lakip na dinunggaban sa kilid ang naangkon sa biktima nga nailang si Joven, 39, ug residente sa nahisgutang dapit human gidunggab sa suspetsado nga giilang si Dodong, kinsa barkada ra usab niini.

Base sa impormasyong sa Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC) ning siyudad sa Cagayan de Oro, diin gidala ang biktima, nasayran nga gikan nag-vigil ang duha ka silingan ug nagtagay-tagay sa ilimnong makahubog.

Nag-estorya pa kini sila apan sa dihang napa-ilawman na sa impluwensiya sa maong ilimnon miresulta kini sa panaglalis nga misangpot sa maong insidente.

Wala makabantay si Joven nga kalit nga nagkuha og botelya si Ramos ug gihapak sa ulo ug wala pa nakuntento gidunggab pa kini ginamit ang maon buak nga botelya.

Misuway og sukol ang biktima aron sukmagon kini apan giingong midagan.

Sa pagsulat niini nga balita, padayon pa nga nagpaalim sa NMMC ning siyudad ang biktimang si Joven.


Gipatik sa mantalaang Superbalita Cagayan de Oro Hunyo 06, 2016.

Ni KRIS C. SIALANA


GIHIMAKAK sa ulitawo ang alegasiyon kalabot sa pagpangawat og saging nga mokabat sa 50 ka kilo niadtong Martes mga alas 3:30 sa hapon sa Cogon Market, dakbayan sa Cagayan de Oro.

Ang nagpatala naila nga si Gloria Menisteryo, 60, minyo ug residente sa Bueno Oro, Macasandig ning dakbayan samtang ang suspek si Jimboy Ello, 19, ulitawo nga taga Mambatangan, Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon ug kasamtangang nanimuyo sa Justo-Ramonal, Barangay 32.

Sa nahipos nga report gikan sa Police Station 2 (PS2) sa Cogon, nasayran nga nagpatala si Menisteryo sa kapolisan human nga nasapon niya sa akto ang suspek nga gihakot ang saging nga lakatan niya hinungdan nga gisikop kini sa mga anaa sa maong dapit ug gidala sa presinto.

Samtang sa pakighinabi sa Sun.Star SuperBalita, gipanghimakak ni Ello ang alegasiyon ug giingong wala kini kasayoran nganong gipasanginlan.

“Igo lang man ko nag-internet dayon gidakop lang dayon ko, gipasanginlan ra ko gaingon pa gale sila nga nagbahad pa daw ko nga dunggabon nako sila bisan wala gayud na nako gibuhat,” ang hugtanong paghimakak sa suspek.

Gidugang pa niini nga nakurat na lamang kini ug gani gitabangan pa og kulata sa mga nagdakop kaniya.

Sa pagsulat niini nga balita, ang insidente ang nakatala sa buhatan sa kapolisan sa PS2.


Gipatik sa mantalaang Superbalita Cagayan de Oro Hunyo 02, 2016.

Ni KRIS C. SIALANA


MILANDIG sa Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC), dakbayan sa Cagayan de Oro, ang usa ka ulitawo human naligsan sa usa ka hubog nga babaye niadtong Martes mga alas 3:00 sa hapon sa Libona, Bukidnon.

Nagpaalim sa NMMC ang biktima nga si Alfredo Bonggo, 24, ulitawo ug lumulupyo sa Kinawe, Bukidnon.

Sa nahipos nga impormasiyon gikan sa NMMC, nasayran nga sa saysay sa igsoon nga si Marilyn nga samtang nag-estambay sa dapit si Bonggo kalit lamang kining napunggitan sa naghaguros nga motorsiklo.

Gikabutyag nga ang wala mailang babaye kinsa lango sah ilimnong makahubog ang nagmaneho sa motorsiklo nga nakapunggit ni Bonggo.

Human sa insidente, misibat dayon ang babaye ug gibiyaan nga nagbuy-od lamang si Bonggo sa kalsada hinungdan nga dali kining gidala sa mga nagpakabanang katawhan sa tambalanan.

Sa pagsulat niini nga balita, pabilin pa nga nagpaalim sa NMMC ang biktima samtang pabiling gawasnon ang responsable sa panghitabo.


Gipatik sa mantalaang Superbalita Cagayan de Oro Hunyo 02, 2016.

Currency concerns

Another drag on growth is the weaker renminbi. Hengan nearly tripled its foreign exchange loss to HK$429m, but it is airlines in particular, which hold substantial dollar-denominated debt to cover aircraft purchases and other expenses, that took a hit from the Chinese currency’s depreciation.

China’s big three state-owned airlines logged a combined foreign exchange loss of nearly $3bn last year.

Flag carrier Air China, which booked an 83 per cent rise in net profit to Rmb7.1bn, hopes to lower its dollar debt ratio to about 60 per cent this year. Guangzhou-based China Southern Airlines, whose net profit almost doubled to Rmb3.7bn, intends to lower its ratio to half. Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines cut its ratio of dollar debt to 50 per cent as of the end of March, down from 81 per cent in 2014.

With the weaker renminbi eating into gains from plunging oil prices, all three see an urgent need to change their liability structure. Unlike overseas rivals such as Singapore Airlines and Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific, China’s carriers do not typically hedge against fluctuations in fuel prices.

Yee Man Chin, director at Fitch Ratings, said changing consumer tastes in the much more competitive food market in China, along with a sharp increase in food imports, are posing immense challenges to traditional local players such as Want Want. “Chinese consumers, especially the middle class, tend to upgrade their spending and look for alternatives,” Mr Chin said.

Other local players are in the same boat. China Mengniu Dairy, the largest dairy manufacturer by market share, is suffering as domestic formula milk loses out to imports. The company saw its net profit last year grow only 0.7 per cent to Rmb23.6bn, while revenue slipped 2 per cent to Rmb490bn.

“Of the existing 4,000 milk formula brands in China, I’m afraid 75 per cent will eventually go out of business,” Lu Minfang, chief executive of Yashili International, told reporters in Hong Kong. Mr Lu put this down to price wars as well as the changing preferences of Chinese consumers.

The sluggish economy and intense competition have hurt beer sales as well. China Resources Beer, the leader by market share, is counting on the premium segment to boost margins as its revenue growth slowed to 1 per cent at HK$34.8bn (US$4.5bn) last year, and sales volume contracted 1.3 per cent.

Hengan International, the number one diaper and sanitary napkin maker, is also aiming upmarket. The company’s full-year net profit rose 3.4 per cent to HK$4.05bn, on revenue growth of 2.6 per cent to HK$24.5bn.

Xu Shui Shen, chief operating officer and deputy CEO, said the group will focus more on mid to high-end diaper sales, which rose 22 per cent despite the slowing domestic economy. Meanwhile, sales of low-end diapers fell 23 per cent due to fierce competition.

“China’s living standards have improved. It is now time to turn around and go upmarket,” said Mr Xu, adding that the end of China’s one-child policy, announced last October, will boost demand for quality child care products.

Home appliance makers have also become mired in price wars, the result of their failure to produce innovative, recognisable brands.

Chinese home appliance makers have grown on the back of rapid urbanisation and government subsidies to promote their products in rural villages. But the so-called population bonus is running dry as the nation’s working-age population begins to peak and the pace of migration to cities slows. TV maker TCL, air-conditioner maker Gree Electric Appliances and white goods producer Qingdao Haier booked double-digit falls in net profit in 2015.

“Chinese companies, ours included, still face a considerable innovation gap when compared with those in advanced economies,” Li Dongsheng, TCL’s chairman and chief executive, told The Nikkei in March.
Other consumer goods markets are also becoming increasingly saturated and diverse. Tingyi Holding, the biggest maker of instant noodles in China, logged a 36 per cent fall in net profit to $256m in 2015. While the company’s beef-flavoured noodles have been a bestseller in China for more than a decade, urban consumers have become less loyal recently because the ingredients and flavour have changed little.

Another Hong Kong-listed, Taiwan-based food company in China, Want Want China Holdings, reported its earnings fell for the second consecutive year, declining 12.6 per cent to $542m in 2015. Revenue declined more than 9 per cent on the year to $3.43bn, as sales of dairy products, which make up more than half of its total revenue, fell 13.6 per cent.

China’s steel industry, dominated by state-owned enterprises, is a typical example of the chronic overcapacity plaguing the country.

Under Premier Li Keqiang, the central government vowed to trim capacity by between 100m and 150m tonnes, or 10 per cent, by 2020, and shut down “zombie” companies, which continue operating only thanks to injections of government cash.

According to the OECD, the world’s excess steel capacity is more than 700m tonnes, equivalent to more than 30 per cent of total global capacity in 2015. About 430m tonnes, or roughly 60 per cent, of this excess is attributable to China, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute.

“Unless China starts to take timely and concrete actions to reduce its excess production and capacity in industries including steel, and works with others to ensure that future government actions do not once again contribute to excess capacity, the fundamental structural problems in the industry will remain,” US commerce secretary Penny Pritzker and US trade representative Michael Froman said in a joint statement last month.

With steelmakers’ earnings and employment taking a hit around the world, affected governments “will have no alternatives other than trade action”.

Stricken steel

Some of the worst performances came in the steel industry. Shanghai-based industry leader Baoshan Iron & Steel saw its net profit plunge 83 per cent last year to Rmb1bn. Of the 34 listed steelmakers in mainland China, only 14 were profitable.

Wuhan Iron & Steel incurred a net loss of Rmb7.5bn. With the equity-capital ratio of Chongqing Iron and Steel falling to a little more than 10 per cent on a net loss of Rmb5.9bn, the municipal government has begun to study measures to bail it out. Dai Zhihao, Baoshan’s president, said the industry has entered an “ice age.”

The main reason Chinese steelmakers remain in the doldrums is overcapacity. According to the World Steel Association, capacity is over 1.1bn tonnes a year, while annual demand in China is less than 700m tonnes.
With a supply glut fuelling intense price cutting, steel is cheaper than Chinese cabbage. That is no overstatement â€" steel products for construction go for less than Rmb2,000 a tonne, while cabbage is available for a little over Rmb1 for 500 grams.

Another factor, however, is the rapid rise of popular smartphone voice messaging app WeChat by internet services company Tencent Holdings. State-owned telecoms carriers claim their profitability has suffered as more and more local mobile users communicate via WeChat instead of the carriers’ voice services.

While China Telecom’s net profit rose 13.4 per cent to Rmb20bn, market leader China Mobile’s dipped 1 per cent to Rmb108.5bn and China Unicom’s fell 12.4 per cent.

The overall profit contraction dragged on into the first quarter.

PetroChina’s net profit dipped to Rmb35.5bn, the lowest since its listing in 2000. The company took a hit from the slump in the global oil market and worsening profitability at the Daqing oilfield, China’s largest. With earnings also reeling at Cnooc and China Petroleum & Chemical (Sinopec), the trio saw their combined net profit sink to the lowest level since 2002.

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This profit decline has forced them to cut investment. After slashing spending on pipelines, plant expansion and drilling rights by 30 per cent in 2015, PetroChina has decided on a further 10 per cent cut this year. Sinopec and Cnooc also plan to reduce capital outlays. These cutbacks will deal a blow to oil production service companies and other related businesses, such as plant engineering, steel and machinery outfits.
The country’s three largest telecoms carriers â€" China Mobile, China Unicom (Hong Kong) and China Telecom â€" are also cutting back on their capital spending this year. Their combined investment is expected to be Rmb358.2bn, down 18.3 per cent from last year. This is partly because they have made substantial progress in building up their 4G mobile networks.

Earnings fall betrays shaky state of China’s economy
NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW June 1, 2016 2:00 am
Yusho Cho, Nikkei staff writer, and Kenji Kawase, Nikkei deputy editor
©Getty


In early May, Chinese heavy machinery maker Sany Heavy Industry was on the receiving end of some pointed public criticism. A local securities newspaper implied the company was not moving quickly enough to streamline its operations, alluding to US competitor Caterpillar’s announcement of plans to close five plants in the US and cut 820 jobs.

Although Sany is the world’s biggest producer of concrete mixers and number one in loading shovels in China, it booked a net profit of just over Rmb100m ($15m) in 2015, down sharply from Rmb2.9bn in 2013 and plunging nearly 80 per cent in each of the past two years.

During the first quarter of 2016, the company registered Rmb90.1m in net profit, comparable to the whole of 2015, but this was the result of an asset liquidation, without which the company would have fallen into the red.

Sany is not the only one suffering. Half of its local peers saw their net profit either fall or sink into the red in 2015. And for China Inc as a whole, the news was even worse.

Pain all around

Earnings data compiled by research company Dazhihui showed that the total net profit of mainland-listed Chinese companies fell 1.1 per cent to Rmb 2.47tn in 2015. This was the first contraction since 2008.

At non-financial companies, aggregate net profit in 2015 declined 15.7 per cent. The big three oil companies, all state-owned, contributed significantly to the decline. Their combined net profit tumbled 60 per cent to Rmb88bn in 2015, wiping off over Rmb130bn from 2014.

Basta nahuli sa pajag, hala gajud! 

                                             

                                       


                           
                                                                       

TAGBILARAN CITY â€" Positibo ang panglantaw ni Bohol Gob. Edgar Chatto ubos ning bag-ong administrasyon.

Nag-awhag si Chatto sa mga Boholano sa pagsuporta sa bag-ong ad­ministrasyon ubos sa panguna sa bag-ong giproklamar nga si Pre­sident-elect Rodrigo Du­terte ug Vice Presi­dent-elect Leni Robredo diin maoy modumala sa nasod sud sa umaabot nga unom ka tuig.

Bag-uhay lang nga giprokalamar ang duha sa National Board of Canvassers (NBOC) diin nag-una sila si Duterte ug Robredo sa mga boto sa mga Boholano batok sa tagsa-tagsa nila ka mga kaatbang.

Ang pakig-alayon ug pakighiusa maoy importante nga lamas sa pagpadayon sa kaugmaran ug kalamboan ilabina sa probinsya sa Bohol, matod ni Chatto.

Sa iyang 35 ka tuig nga pagpanerbisyo sa pro­­bin­siya, di na bag-o ka­niya ang mga negatibong komento gikan sa uban.

Apan di kini maoy babag aron sa paghunong sa pagkab-ot sa iyang u­­­ban pang mga plano a­­­lang sa probinsiya.

Nitataw ang goberna­dor nga ang maayong re­lasyon ug pagsuporta tali sa probinsya ngadto sa nasyonal nga kagamha­nan adunay dakong ta­bang sa sayon nga pag-asenso sa Bohol. (LTB)


Gipatik sa mantalaang Superbalita Cebu Hunyo 01, 2016.

Duterte, who was a guest at an event sponsored by Federal Movement for a Better Philippines in Cebu City, has been pushing for federalism as one of the solutions to the problems besetting Mindanao.

Evasco was quick to say Duterte’s push for federalism doesn’t have anything to do with a campaign to push the Davao City mayor to run for president in 2016.

“Those are two different things,” Evasco said, adding that Duterte had consistently rejected calls for him to run for president.

Although the federalism issue crops up only when the election season draws near as a side issue of politics, Evasco said the federal form of government would be more effective in dealing with problems peculiar to Mindanao compared with a centralized form of government.

In the Cebu forum, Duterte raised the possibility of creating a federal state, called the BangsaTausug, to appease the group of Moro National Liberation Front chair Nur Misuari.

Misuari, according to Duterte, does not see eye to eye with the other Mindanao ethnic groups that would govern the Bangsamoro entity if it was passed by Congress under a peace agreement between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Aquino administration.

Evasco said that with Duterte pushing for the federal form of government, he hoped that the proposal would catch fire.

“We all know that Mindanao produces as much as 60 percent of the gross domestic product but only about 40 percent returns to it in terms of services,” Evasco said. Germelina Lacorte, Inquirer Mindanao

Argument for federalism: Manila steals funds
@inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer
09:30 AM October 10th, 2014

 

DAVAO City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte speaks in Cebu City about federalism. LITO TECSON/CEBU DAILY NEWS


DAVAO CITY, Philippinesâ€"The argument for federalism has not changedâ€"a centralized form of government leads to neglect of areas far from the seat of power.

This was stressed through a question by Leoncio Evasco, mayor of Maribojoc town, Bohol province, who supports the move to federalism now being espoused by his friend, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

“Have you ever been to Don Marcelino town, Davao del Sur, at the height of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) and Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scandal?”

Evasco raised the question to stress the need to shift to a federal form of government. He answered it himself.

“If only you’ve been to the national highway of Don Marcelino town on the way to Jose Abad Santos town at the height of the discussions of the DAP, then you’d understand why Mindanao leaders are pushing for the federal form of government,” said Evasco, also a former aide of Duterte.

“The roads are so difficult and yet in Manila, you keep hearing about the DAP and the PDAF,” said Evasco.

“They are stealing all the money and then you ask: What are they doing with all the money when we still have a national road like this?” Evasco said.

The Countries With The Most People Living In Slavery
http://www.forbes.com/
MAY 31, 2016 @ 08:20 AM
Niall McCarthy, CONTRIBUTOR


Modern slavery is a brutal reality around the world. The 2016 Global Slavery Index published by the Walk Free Foundation estimates that 45.8 million people are in some form of slavery in 167 countries. 58 percent of people in slavery are living in just five countries: India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan. The report estimates that North Korea has the world’s highest prevalence of slavery at 4.4 percent of its population, followed by Uzbekistan (4.0 percent) and Cambodia (1.6 percent).

Slavery is most prevalent in countries producing consumer goods through low-cost labour. When it comes to the sheer number of people living in slavery, no country comes close to matching India. There are an estimated 18.4 million slaves in India, compared to 3.4 million in China and 2.1 million in Pakistan. Politically stable countries with high levels of economic wealth have few people living in slavery with low rates recorded in Canada, Germany, Singapore and the United States.

Under China's system of internal passports, or hukou, migrants in search of better jobs in urban areas leave behind the public services they are entitled to as residents of their home towns and villages. Losing such privileges discourages many from leaving in the first place.

"If China's urbanization was growing at its planned rate there would not be any (housing) oversupply. The main bottleneck for China's urbanization is the issue of hukou," said Alan Chiang, managing director of Shenzhen-based real estate consultancy DTZ.

Newcomers to a city are less likely to spend money if they do not have the social safety net that hukou brings, such as providing access to medical insurance and basic education, analysts say. On a more practical level, hukou is needed if a person wishes to marry or open a bank account.

While Beijing is encouraging cities to provide more hukou, local governments place a cap on them to avoid a drain on local resources.

Economists estimate China can meet its migration goals, but they say cities are falling behind in providing hukou to migrants. By 2020, China wants 45 percent of the people living in an urban setting to have hukou, compared with 36 percent in 2013.

"Hukou and high property prices are two overlapping issues; hukou is actually the first hurdle. You want to have a hukou, but in order to get a hukou, you have to have a substantial investment in a certain place," said Siah Hwee Ang, who covers China affairs as a professor of the School of Marketing & International Business at Victoria University of Wellington.

"But it's not as if a lot of money will solve your problems. So housing is actually the second problem, rather than the first."


(Reporting by Brenda Goh in Wenzhou and Clare Jim in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Kevin Yao in Beijing, Pete Sweeney in Shanghai, Stella Tsang in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai Newsrooms; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Neil Fullick)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016.

Government data shows that the number of migrant workers in 2015 reached close to 169 million. But that was up just 0.4 percent from 2014 - the weakest rise since the global financial crisis in 2009. The number of migrants searching for jobs outside of their home province dropped 1.5 percent â€" the first decline in six years.

The government wants 60 percent of its population of almost 1.4 billion to be urban residents by 2020, up from 56.1 percent in 2015.

Analysts say China's massive stock of unsold homes is evidence that the urbanization drive is faltering as migrants struggle to build a future away from their villages or towns. Despite some signs that house prices are recovering from a downturn, official data shows that the inventory of unsold homes in China rose in the year to April by 4.5 percent to 450 million sq meters.

The National Development and Reform Commission, the state planning agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Housing built in many third-and fourth-tier cities was initially designed to absorb demand from the government's urbanization drive. But a lack of job prospects and access to social services has meant migrants continue to take their chances in China's biggest and most expensive urban centers â€" or head back home.

"Urbanization should be based around human beings, and not just driven by man-made cities," said Wang Jun, a senior economist at China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a Beijing-based think-tank.

However, some industry watchers said the main impediment to migrants buying homes and settling in other cities is a lack of access to local services, such as free schooling for their children and healthcare.

One of the biggest trends in China is slowing down â€" and its a bad sign for the economy
Brenda Goh and Clare Jim


WENZHOU, China/HONG KONG (Reuters) - After two decades trying to make a life in China's entrepreneurial city of Wenzhou, Ji Shouquan and his brother Shoufang are ready to head home.

They say they have no hope of stepping onto the city's housing ladder and it is getting more difficult to earn a decent wage.

China is relying on millions of internal migrants taking up jobs in cities to boost the urban population and consumption. It hopes this will fuel more sustainable long-term economic growth and reduce the country's reliance on big industry and exports that powered the country's rise in the last three decades.

But migration is slowing down and workers are more reluctant to travel across the country to find jobs, trends that could undermine these efforts.

"It's really tough to make money," said Shouquan, who earns about 5,000 yuan ($767) a month as a sound technician in a karaoke lounge. "Of the six or seven friends who used to work at the KTV, only two of us are still holding on. Most have gone home."

His taxi-driver brother, Shoufang, said that's what they'll probably end up doing too.

Both have scrimped enough to buy property in their home town of Fuyang in the largely agricultural province of Anhui in eastern China, where home prices are about a fifth of the cost of Wenzhou, which is in the neighboring province of Zhejiang.

"It's unrealistic for migrant workers like us to buy in Wenzhou, unless you've got your own business," Shoufang said.

-- http://www.bloomberg.com/

With Japan’s economic growth anemic and the nation’s population aging and declining, companies have been searching for growth opportunities elsewhere in Asia.

“Asean markets are attractive from the Japanese perspective,”’ said Ma Tieying, an economist at DBS Group Holdings in Singapore. “Many economies have great potential to grow, thanks to relatively low per-capita incomes and a young population profile.”

The openness of markets in the region along with labor costs that are lower than in China also is attracting Japanese investment, he said.

Of manufacturers responding to a 2015 survey on investment intentions, about 48 percent said they intended to strengthen or expand businesses in China, versus 73 percent in 2011.

The poll by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation found that about 56 percent of the companies want to expand investment in the five key nations of Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The other five members of Asean are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

by Keiko Ujikane
May 31, 2016 â€" 3:00 AM BDT


Japanese investment in Southeast Asia continues to grow, owing to the region’s potential and low labor costs, amid simmering tensions that reduce the appeal of China for some Japanese businesses.

For a third straight year, in 2015 the amount of foreign direct investment from Japan to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations exceeded such investment in China and Hong Kong, according to figures compiled by the Japan External Trade Organization.

The pace has been accelerating -- the outstanding amount of Japanese investment to Asean nations almost tripled from five years ago to 20.1 trillion yen ($180.9 billion) at the end of last year, according to Bank of Japan data.

Japanese investment growth to China slowed after protests there intensified in 2012 following a territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea, prompting Japanese companies to diversify investment risks.

Dihang ilabay na unta kini sa dagat, kalit nibuto ang dinamita hinungdan nga naputol ang walang kam0t sa biktima ug daghang samad ang ubang bahin sa lawas.

Sila si Bensig ug Avila nahulog sa dagat.

Ang ubang mananagat nga nakamatikod sa pagbuto gikan sa layo mao ang ningtabang sa duha ug gidali sa pagdala sa Ricardo Maningo District Hospital sa San Francisco, diin si Bensig gideklarar nga dead-on-arrival sa doktor.

Si Avila gibalhin sa ospital dinhi sa dakbayan sa Sugbo tungod sa grabe nga naangkong samad niini.

Ang insidente gitaho sa police station sa alas 6:30 sa hapon, upat ka oras human sa hitabo.

Si Florentino nagkanayon nga ang ilegal nga mananagat mao lang ang naghimo sa dinamita gamit ang gipalit nga kemikal.

Ang pagpanagat gamit ang dinamita gidili na sa ilang dapit, dili sama niadtong 1980s, sumala ni Florentino.

Apan dunay pipila nga nihimo niini alang sa kasayon sa pagkuha sa isda.

“Ang ilang rason ra gyod kay pamugas daw,” dugang ni Florentino. (Sun.Star Cebu)


Gipatik sa mantalaang Superbalita Cebu Mayo 30, 2016.

LEKSIYON alang sa ilegal nga mananagat.

Usa ka 31-anyos nga mananagat ang namatay dihang nibuto sa iyang walang kamot ang dinamita ug wa niya malabay sa dagat sa Barangay Sonog, lungsod sa San Francisco, isla sa Camotes.

Giila sa kapulisan sa San Francisco ang namatay nga si Dionisio Gomez Bensig Jr., 31, molupyo sa samang barangay ug wa pa matino sa kapulisan kon minyo kini.

Samtang, ang kauban sa biktima nga si Lito Avila nakaangkon og seryusong samad sa nagkalainlaing bahin sa lawas ug nagpaalim sa iyang mga samad sulod sa usa ka ospital.

Si PO3 Jose Florentino, imbestigador sa kapulisan, niingon nga si Bensig bag-o lang nanagat gamit ang dinamita.

“Bag-o ra daw to nagpraktis, dili to siya beterano,” matod ni Florentino nga nahinabi sa Sun.Star Cebu.
“Ang mga beterano gipangbantayan na man sa taga barangay," dason niya.

Matod sa kapulisan, walay laing mga mananagat sa dapit atol sa hitabo ug nasayran na lang kini sa uban dihang nakabati sa kusog nga pagbuto sa dinamita.

Si Florentino nagkanayon nga ang fuse sa dinamita ni Bensig posible nga na-short hinungdan sa iyang daling pagbuto.

Sa imbestigasyon, nagpakita nga sila si Avila ug Bensig nanagat sa kadagatan sa Sonog gamit lang ang sakayan niadtong Biyernes, alas 2:30 sa hapon.

Si Bensig maoy nidagkot sa dinamita.

Eating time!

Remember when we said that death was the great leveler except where car accidents are involved? Turns out that’s not quite true. Although life expectancy is rising overall, this shift masks a worrisome trend: Life expectancy for the richest now far outstrips life expectancy for the poorest.

For US men born in 1930, being in the bottom 20 percent of income meant having a life expectancy of 76.6 years when they hit age 50 in 1980. For men born in 1960, it was essentially the same. By the time they hit their 50th birthdays in 2010, they could expect to live a total of 76.1 years. This doesn’t seem so bad until you compare it with those in the top 20 percent of income. In that same time period, their life expectancy leaped from 81.7 to 88.8 years.

That means that America’s richest can now comfortably expect 12 more years of life than their poorest counterparts, up from the extra five years that they would have enjoyed 35 years ago. It’s not just the US that’s seeing this trend, either.

In Britain, inhabitants of wealthy Chelsea can already expect to live six years longer than those in struggling Tower Hamlets less than 2 kilometers (1 mi) away. That’s the same as the difference between the UK’s average life expectancy and Vietnam’s. Looks like death is a sucker for inequality. -- http://listverse.com/

Ni KRIS C. SIALANA


MAAYONG pagkabalintong sa usa ka babaye human gilabnihan sa riding-in-tandem mga alas 4:00 sa hapon niadtong milabay nga adlaw sa Rizal-Chavez Streets ning siyudad sa Cagayan de Oro.

Naila ang biktima nga mao si Marjury (bansagon gipatago), 35, minyo ug lumolupyo sa Adelfa Extension, Carmen ning siyudad.

Sa impormasiyon gikan sa Police Station 1 (PS1) sa Divisoria nasayran nga samtang anaa sa maong dapit ang biktima kalit lamang kining gilabnihan sa mga suspetsado nga nakamotorsiklo.

Nabitad ang shoulder bag sa biktima hinungdan nga maayong pagkatumba niini ug gumikan sa kakusog sa impak sa pagkahagsa hinungdan sa pagkaumod sa dagway sa maong babaye nga miresulta sa bun-og ug samad sa iyang nawong.

Dali usab nga nakasibat ang mga wala mailang suspek dala ang bag sa biktima samtang ang biktima ang gidala sa city hospital.

Sa pagsulat niini nga balita ang maong babaye ang pabilin pa nga anaa sa nahisgutang balay tambalanan samtang ang maong insidente ang giduso na sa operatiba sa kapolisan sa PS1.


Gipatik sa mantalaang Superbalita Cagayan de Oro Mayo 29, 2016.

Getting at questions about the nature of reality, and disentangling the observer from the observed, is an endeavor that straddles the boundaries of neuroscience and fundamental physics. On one side you’ll find researchers scratching their chins raw trying to understand how a three-pound lump of gray matter obeying nothing more than the ordinary laws of physics can give rise to first-person conscious experience. This is the aptly named “hard problem.”

On the other side are quantum physicists, marveling at the strange fact that quantum systems don’t seem to be definite objects localized in space until we come along to observe them â€" whether we are conscious humans or inanimate measuring devices. Experiment after experiment has shown â€" defying common sense â€" that if we assume that the particles that make up ordinary objects have an objective, observer-independent existence, we get the wrong answers. The central lesson of quantum physics is clear: There are no public objects sitting out there in some preexisting space. As the physicist John Wheeler put it, “Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.”

So while neuroscientists struggle to understand how there can be such a thing as a first-person reality, quantum physicists have to grapple with the mystery of how there can be anything but a first-person reality. In short, all roads lead back to the observer. And that’s where you can find Hoffman â€" straddling the boundaries, attempting a mathematical model of the observer, trying to get at the reality behind the illusion.


More at: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality-2016-5

This cognitive scientist says the world as we know it is an illusion
Amanda Gefter, Quanta Magazine


As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions â€" sights, sounds, textures, tastes â€" are an accurate portrayal of the real world.

Sure, when we stop and think about it â€" or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion â€" we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality.

Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

Not so, says Donald D. Hoffman, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine. Hoffman has spent the past three decades studying perception, artificial intelligence, evolutionary game theory and the brain, and his conclusion is a dramatic one: The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality. What’s more, he says, we have evolution itself to thank for this magnificent illusion, as it maximizes evolutionary fitness by driving truth to extinction.

In fact, Hunt said Marcos was the leader of nothing more than a “Paper Army.”

“My frank opinion today is that Marcos did get around the islands, and he did do some recruiting, but he didn’t manage to get arms,” he said according to a Los Angeles report. “ So we call that a paper army.”

And there are even questions on which side Marcos’ “paper army” was fighting for.

For there’s evidence that Marcos and his alleged guerrillas weren’t even on our side.

The U.S. Veterans Administration found that some of the guerrillas who claimed to be members of Marcos’ group became notorious for committing atrocities against Filipino civilians, not fighting the Japanese occupation forces, according to a 1989 UPI report.

And Marcos’ men were even found to have engaged in “nefarious activity,” such as selling contraband to the Japanese.

That’s the kind of soldier Duterte thinks is worthy of a hero’s burial?

And it’s not like the president-elect doesn’t have an idea of heroism. He had one in his family: his mother.

Soledad Duterte was a prominent, fearless leader in the movement against the Marcos regime in Davao in the 1980s.

She was 95 when she died four years ago. This was how a Gabriela activist, Luz Ilagan, remembered her:

“She was already a woman activist long before the term was coined. She showed us through example how to be committed and be strong in the face of adversities. Davao was heavily militarized, we had no resources, we had our own families to raise, we were still learning the ropes in alliance work; and there she was, a teacher, a fundraiser, an organizer, an inspirational model and a friend, not to mention, ‘inahan sa kanunay nga panabang’ â€" a “mother of perpetual help.”

That’s the standard of heroism Duterte should follow.

By: Boying Pimentel
@inquirerdotnet
INQUIRER.net US Bureau
01:57 AM May 28th, 2016
 

What’s supposed to be a sacred resting place for the nation’s heroes may have to be given another name: “Libingan ng Mga Bayani at Isang Diktador.”

What’s noteworthy is, in reaffirming his plan to allow the Marcos family to bury Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani, even President-elect Duterte is now admitting that the late dictator, considered the second most corrupt ruler in recent history, is no hero.

He is allowing the late dictator to be buried at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani “not because he (was) a hero, but because he was a Filipino soldier.”

But Duterte sure is choosing to honor the worst kind of Filipino soldier. And in doing so, he’s disrespecting the truly honorable Filipino soldiers, especially those buried at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani.

It’s a safe bet many of the soldiers buried there did not make up tall tales about what they did during the war.

That’s not the case with Marcos, the most notorious fake hero in Philippine history.

“’This is not true, no. Holy cow. All of this is a complete fabrication. It’s a cock-and-bull story.”

That was the famous reaction of former US Army Captain Ray Hunt, who commanded Filipino guerrillas during World War II, when he was told of Marcos’ claims that he was the leader of impressive guerrilla force that wreaked havoc on enemy forces during the war.

“Marcos was never the leader of a large guerrilla organization, no way,” Hunt told the New York Times.