Migration, Sir Duncan, Instant Spouses and Inflight Barry Manilow: Final Impressions of the Philippines
As always after an intense ‘immersion’ in our programme work, I left the Philippines with my head buzzing. Here are some impressions, memories and ideas that don’t fit into a more structured blogpost:
Migration: One in 9 Filipinos are outside the country, constituting a major export sector (the government deliberately trains more nurses than the country needs, to encourage outmigration). On the way in from Qatar, I sat next to a Filipino gold miner, working for an Australian/Filipino company in Tanzania, 2 months on, 1 month off. OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers – this country loves acronyms) even have their own immigration channels at the airport (see pic).
In less than 3 weeks, 
A while back, I wrote about some amazing 
Last week I visited 
The world has been witnessing a scary new political communication/mobilization phenomenon: the routine deployment of the politics of outrage by tiny groups of individuals...but with epic consequences. And what is amazing is how stunningly easy it is to get this going. Consider, if you will, the emerging structure of the phenomenon:
A few months ago, there was an interesting news story on 
A reader's response to the blog post 
“So we come out of the Rushdie affair with one thing in common: democratic life together is a hard bargain. Each of us, Muslim believer and secular liberal, wishes the other were different. But we are not, and living together requires us to accept what we cannot change.”
Last week, the 
Social Accountability is getting more and more innovative these days. A recent event organized by 
Do you know these people who always only hear what they want to hear? Who interpret everything in a way that fits their own views? Yes? Deal with them every day? Well, chances are, you’re one of them. Biased information processing is a common phenomenon. It happens when the information we receive is out of sync with what we believe to be true, or want to be true, or when the information is inconvenient for us. This obviously has huge implications for communication campaigns in development.
“Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they’re arguing.”
Following on my review of Robert Chambers’ new(ish) book, 
During the latest round of the global 
Diferentemente do filme Feitiço do Rio (1984), que atribuiu o romance vulgar entre um homem de meia-idade (vivido por Michael Caine) e uma adolescente às vibrações sensuais da Cidade Maravilhosa, a recente conferência Rio+20 serviu para mostrar outra cara do Rio de Janeiro: a de líder global ambiental. A cidade não só mantém as duas maiores florestas urbanas do mundo, a da Pedra Branca e a da Tijuca (na foto), mas também concluiu um moderno centro de tratamento de resíduos, que permitirá uma redução de 8% nas emissões de gases causadores de efeito estufa, e está construindo 300km de ciclovias. Para o Banco Mundial, a cidade tem sido o cenário para uma improvável melhoria nas relações entre o próprio Banco e organizações ambientais não-governamentais (ONGs) nos últimos 20 anos.
