Champions
We congratulate our group of six boxers for demonstrating once again that our country is a force to be reckoned with in the lower weight classes of international boxing by winning the Boxing World Cup.Together with the string of victories that Manny Pacquiao has been enjoying, the triumph of the Filipino boxers can be expected to trigger greater interest in boxing both as a professional and an amateur sport. Many impoverished youths will see boxing as a ticket out of the mire of poverty.
But the development of boxing should not be made at the expense of other sports in which Filipinos could excel. Baseball was one sport in which Filipinos excelled before World War II. But after Liberation, because of the heavy American influence, basketball became the most popular sport among the masses. Filipinos seem to forget that because they are a race of short people, they cannot excel at basketball, in which Caucasian giants enjoy a natural advantage. In the recent Fiba Asia Championships, for instance, not even the addition of tall Filipino-Americans to the Philippine team could win it a slot in the finals.
Soccer, the truly international sport, is another game at which Filipinos, with their speed, natural agility and balletic grace, can excel. But it is played mostly only in the provinces and as a spectator sport it draws big crowds to movie houses and sports restaurants only during the biennial World Cup. Perhaps big corporations can help popularize soccer, and revive interest in baseball by sponsoring teams.
Boxing, often called “the manly art of self-defense,” will always be seen as the poor man’s ticket to riches. Because of its violent nature (many boxers have died as a result of ring injuries) and its identification with gambling, boxing has had a controversial history. There have been periodic calls for outlawing the sport, but especially in a poor country like the Philippines, such calls cannot succeed. Meanwhile, the best that can be done would be to ensure that boxers are given enough protection in the ring and that those who are retired are assured of some means of livelihood. Many boxers have been a source of national pride but some of them have been reduced to pathetic figures by penury. They should be accorded recognition not only when they bring honor to the country, but also given support in their twilight years.
Extreme weather
The world appears to be in for a long period of extreme weather, if recent reports are to be our gauge. More than 25 million people have been affected across South Asia by massive flooding. Since the start of the monsoon in June, at least 1,120 people have been killed and 18 million affected in India. In Bangladesh, abut 250 have been killed and around 8 million stranded or displaced.
Heavy rains have doused southern China, and landslides have killed 120 people and floods have displaced 14 million people. England and Wales had their wettest May and June since 1776 and suffered $6 billion in damage from extensive flooding. Germany suffered its driest April and its wettest May since 1901. All over the world—Mozambique, Uruguay, the reports are the same: extreme weather events have been taking place.
In the Philippines we are witness to the same phenomenon of weather being turned upside down, of having a wet dry season and a dry rainy season. At one point, the situation became so alarming that the Catholic Church called for what could be the modern-day equivalent of the tribal “rain dance”: the Oratio Imperata ad Petendam Pluvium (an obligatory prayer pleading for rain). And then a storm or two brushed the northern tip of the country, bringing much needed rains that raised the water levels in dams that supply much of the water for Luzon.
While most scientists believe extreme weather events will be more frequent as heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions cause world temperatures to rise, the World Meteorological Organization says it is impossible to say with certainty what the second half of 2007 will bring. But it is best to be prepared for extreme weather occurrences. We cannot let our guard down; for instance, we still have to conserve water and prepare for the possibility that the rivers and lakes will dry up. And as a long-term measure, carry out in earnest, among other things, a project to plant 20 million trees that will help retain water and at the same time produce more life-giving oxygen.
