Please don’t wrap the bread, we’re Filipinos

With all the talk on global warming, I have become more conscious of environmental concerns in my daily life. What can a single individual do in this massive campaign to save the earth? Plenty. Indeed, it is people, the collective bunch of individuals that are said to be most responsible for the environmental degradation.

Consider, for instance buying bread. I used not to care about how it is wrapped until lately. At one of the chains of fashionable French bread stores, the baguettes I bought were wrapped three times, once with a tissue paper, then into a paper bag with the firm’s logo and finally into a plastic bag also with the firm’s logo. Why the waste when in Paris from where the bread was copied, the Frenchmen just buy the bread and tuck it across their underarm and voila they have their baguette. That gives them enough maneuvering space to ride the bicycle home.

In London the giant chain of supermarkets ASDA is to remove packaging from fruits and vegetables completely. This developed after The Independent Newspaper launched a campaign against waste. It urged retailers and the public to reduce packaging, which squanders resources and swells landfill sites.

But ASDA will remove packaging only as a trial balloon and watch how the public reacts. If the public resists it then they will go back to plastic wrapping. That shows you the importance of the public role in environmental concerns. Indeed it should start from the public with the help of media as it did in the UK.

This means a return to old-fashioned retailing methods. ASDA is the first to take such a step on a huge scale. It hopes to change the way people shopped. The return to old fashioned shopping will have a huge impact on the amount of rubbish that go into landfills. Fortunately, most Filipinos have not reached that sophistication although more and more middle class Filipinos go to supermarkets where produce are triple-wrapped. But the majority still shop in the markets where fruits and vegetables are wrapped in old newspapers as you buy them or not at all. It just shows you that while the Londoners are going back to old ways of shopping, we may not have to do that. We are still in the time of lumang diaryo and bayong. So who is being modern now?

But seriously, there is a real need to worry. These days I wake up thinking I am back in London because of the unusual cold. Environmentalists do have a point even if the issue is still being furiously debated. At about the same time last year, Ambassador Al Yuchengco invited Mr. Environment himself, former US presidential candidate Al Gore who delivered an impassioned lecture on global warming with all the props to keep you awake to ensure that everyone in that hall understood his message. His message: "Don’t think the disaster is something that will happen tomorrow" he said, "It is already with us. There is very little time to tarry."

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The rising star of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. It may be true that Khalifa held office with a Libyan in Malate in a recent front page story but before both are lumped together as terrorists in the Filipino mind, it is fair to consider the changes happening in Libya today. The most important of these is the rising star of western-educated Saif al-Islam Gaddafi who recently announced that the Bulgarian nurses will not be executed because of the deaths of HIV infected infants in a Libyan hospital. He promised a fair trial for the nurses and compensation for the families of the infants. This is just one example of the brave forays of the Libyan leader’s son as he pushes to modernize and return Libya to the mainstream of moderate politics. Those who know him well speak of the great strides he has made with his foundation, the Saif al-Islam Gaddafi Development Foundation which is dedicated to uplifting the lives of fellow Muslims around the world. He feels strongly that it is poverty that is driving Muslims to terrorism. When there is no food in the cupboard, Muslim or non-Muslim is tempted to take the gun, more especially if it is given to him. Unfortunately most of the dirt poor are Muslims.

So the Gaddafi son needs support from moderates and centrists in his efforts. I hear that some of the old guards who still surround his father in Tripoli are alarmed at the speed with which Saif wants to modernize Libya. He has had to go on exile for a while to take the heat off in the struggle for power in his country.

Just before he left Tripoli to take on a banking job in London or Paris, he met with visiting Indian leaders to discuss IT and computer training/ education to the Libyan school children and how Indians could assist in this program. He hopes to provide all Libyan students with a laptop and web access. This project which pledges 1.2 million machines is how he aims to put up the first e-democracy. The scheme is supported by the UN Development Program.

But as usual we are late in the news of just what Libya is about these days. The Khalifa and the Libyan story misses the point. When the announcement came from the Gaddafi son that the Bulgarian nurses will not be executed guess who condemned it first – an Al-Qaeda member. My Libyan friends tell me that the Philippines is special to the Leader and he has passed on that fondness to his son. Both father and son were instrumental for the first peace agreement between the MNLF and the Philippine government. It would be a pity if these historical ties are not used to nudge them for help with the development of Muslim Mindanao.

I know that there is a special effort to change the image of Libya and that Saif al-Islam is at its center. He wants to remove the notion that his country is still a global pariah. It may have been true before but no longer. No less than the English National Opera recently commissioned a work about Gaddafi: A Living Myth. That is a long way from the 1970s and 1980s, when the Leader was widely regarded as, to use Ronald Reagan’s phrase, "the mad dog of the Middle East". All that changed when Libya formally accepted responsibility for the blowing up of a Pan Am plane in the Scottish town of Lockerbie. Compensation of about $2.7 billion to the families of victims was the bill.

Now Libya in the person of heir-apparent, Saif Al -Islam Gaddafi wants to put all that behind. Indeed he got into trouble when he publicly called Libya’s political and economic elite a "mafia" of "crooks and agents", demanding human rights and democratic reforms, promoting foreign capital and privatization. He has called for an end of the revolutionary state. He gets away with it because Saif al-Islam Al Gaddafi is the son of Libya’s Great Leader.

Expectedly the old elite struck back and that’s where we are now – Saif in exile – where he will pursue even more assiduously the new Libya so that it can find its place in the international community.

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