Nassar surrounded by adults who enabled his predatory behavior
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Jan 16, 2018
John BarrDan Murphy
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This story contains strong language and mature subject matter.
This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Feb. 5 State of the Black Athlete Issue. Subscribe today!
JANE REMEMBERS THE linoleum floor in the bathroom of Larry Nassar's apartment. She remembers feeling strange as he walked in and handed her gymnastics magazines to read as she lay fully naked in his bathtub. She was 12 or 13; she can't recall exactly.
Nassar, no older than 30 and putting the finishing touches on his medical degree, had called Jane's mother days before, explaining he was doing research about gymnasts' flexibility and wanted her daughter's help. On the day Jane was to participate, her mother was out of town, so a neighbor dropped her off, alone, at Nassar's one-bedroom apartment a few blocks from the Michigan State University campus. Once inside, Nassar had Jane do splits on his living room floor while she wore a gymnastics leotard.
"He measured the flexibility, how far your crotch came off the floor when you did the splits," Jane, now 38, recalls.
After Nassar said she should take a hot bath as part of the study's metrics, Jane got dressed in her leotard and did splits a second time. Then, she says, Nassar gave her what he called "her reward." On a training table crammed between the living room and kitchenette, he gave her a full-body massage. Once again, she was naked. The encounter didn't strike her as threatening; to the contrary, she recalls, she "felt special." Other girls from Great Lakes Gymnastics Club had been invited to Nassar's apartment, perhaps five to seven, she says, and to be asked was to become part of the chosen few.
"Looking back now, I think that what Larry was trying to figure out was: Can I really get away with sexually abusing little girls?" says Jane, who had met Nassar at the gymnastics club in nearby Lansing, where she'd been training since age 5. The former gymnast, who spoke to Outside the Lines on the condition of anonymity to protect her family's privacy, agreed to be identified using only a pseudonym. She is one of the more than 150 women suing Nassar, his former employer Michigan State University, and other entities claiming she was sexually assaulted under the guise of medical treatment.
Starting Tuesday, many of those women will share their stories in a Michigan courtroom. Nassar, now 54, pleaded guilty in November to 10 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with victims as young as 6 years old. The presiding judge will allow dozens of women or their advocates to issue victim-impact statements before she will decide his prison sentence. That sentence could be added to the 60 years in prison he received last month after pleading guilty to federal child pornography charges.
Understanding how Nassar gained unfettered access to young girls and young women over the course of a quarter-century -- despite repeated warning signs -- means confronting an uncomfortable truth: He didn't gain that access alone. Nassar was surrounded by a collection of adults who enabled his predatory behavior -- a group that included coaches of club, collegiate and elite-level gymnasts, the USA Gymnastics organization, medical professionals, administrators and coaches at Michigan State University, and gymnasts' parents, whom he groomed just as effectively as those he violated. Now that so much of the Nassar tragedy has been exposed, a lingering question remains: Were each of those enablers complicit or simply conned by a man described as a master manipulator?
John Geddert, who coached the 2012 U.S. Olympics gymnastics team in London, spent more than two decades working alongside Nassar. Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports
JOHN GEDDERT, ONE of the nation's preeminent gymnastics coaches, was everything Larry Nassar was not.
"John was in his 30s, an extremely good-looking, fit guy, super charismatic. When John was in a good mood or playful or approved of you it was like a drug, you wanted more of it," Jane says about her training with him as a girl.
Nassar, by comparison, was socially awkward, even "nerdy," she says. But still, "like a Labrador puppy, the sweetest guy. Safe."
The two men were all but inseparable, professionally and socially. They worked together for more than 25 years, first at Great Lakes Gymnastics and, starting in 1996, at the gym Geddert owns now, Twistars USA Gymnastics Club near East Lansing. They worked the 2012 Olympics together. Geddert was in Nassar's wedding party when Nassar got married in East Lansing in 1996. They attended each other's house parties and traveled the country and, later, the world together at competitions. They vouched for each other when faced with career-threatening circumstances.
The two men were joined at Great Lakes Gymnastics by a mutual friend, Kathie Klages, who worked at the club for five years before leaving to become head coach of the women's gymnastics team at Michigan State University. Together, Klages and Geddert coached some of the area's best gymnasts, many of whom later competed in Spartan green. Nassar was there to treat them when their bodies broke down.
Geddert's coaching style was largely based on fear and intimidation, according to Jane and dozens of others who spoke with Outside the Lines over the past year, a group that includes current and former gymnasts, parents of gymnasts, coaches who have worked alongside Geddert, and other gym employees. Many of those contacted said they were reluctant to speak publicly about Geddert because they either have children involved in gymnastics in the Lansing area or careers in the sport and they are mindful of the power he wields.
Geddert joined Great Lakes as head coach in 1984 and helped build the gym into a national powerhouse. In the workout area, he frequently could be overheard screaming at his gymnasts, reducing many to tears. He threw things. He routinely denied gymnasts water until they performed exercises to his satisfaction, former gymnasts say.
"John's very good at emotional manipulation. He can make you feel like nothing very quickly," says a former office manager of Geddert's at Twistars, Priscilla Kintigh, who was coached by Geddert at Great Lakes in the mid-1980s and whose son trained at Twistars. "Larry was the one to calm the girls down when they had a practice with John. If I had a daughter, there's no way I would have taken her to Great Lakes or Twistars."
"You don't get someone like Larry Nassar, you don't get a pedophile who is able to abuse without there being a culture surrounding him in that place."
Rachael Denhollander, who reported that Nassar abused her when she was a youth
The sport demands a remarkable amount of time and commitment from those competing at its highest levels: four-and-a-half hour practices Monday through Friday; five-hour practices on Saturday. Injuries are commonplace. Parents were allowed to observe practices from the galleries at Great Lakes and later Twistars but, given the long hours, most preferred to drop their children off, entrusting them to Geddert and his fellow coaches.
In the hyper-competitive environment in which the fiery head coach lorded over the gym, Nassar's training room at Great Lakes offered an escape, former gymnasts told Outside the Lines. It was tucked behind the vault and balance beam, through a heavy metal door with a single small window that Nassar often covered with a sheet while treating gymnasts. A parent would have had to walk across the entire workout floor to get to the training room, and few ever did.
Jane, the former gymnast, remembers being alone with Nassar on multiple occasions, laying on his training-room table as he penetrated her rectum with his bare fingers, ostensibly to treat her injured back. She can't recall the precise dates of those sessions but said they occurred around the same time she visited his apartment, in 1992-93, when she was 12 or 13 years old. She never told her parents or anyone else at the time about what happened with Nassar, who wasn't yet a physician. He never sought parental consent.
"It wasn't even a thought of anything's wrong," she says now. Nassar, after all, was "the good cop" to Geddert's bad cop, the smiling trainer who helped gymnasts decompress from the pressure-cooker environment Geddert created outside of the training room door.
"John and Larry were like this perfect storm," Kintigh said. "You become so unapproachable that your own gymnasts don't feel comfortable telling you what's going on. There's no way any of the girls would have felt comfortable saying anything to John [about Larry]. Kids were terrified of him."
Nassar started working with Geddert at Great Lakes the same year he started medical school at Michigan State. By then, Nassar was an accomplished athletic trainer who had volunteered at the 1987 Pan American Games and 1988 Olympic gymnastics trials, treating members of the U.S. women's national team. Nassar volunteered at Great Lakes about 20 hours a week, a demanding schedule for a medical student. He once failed a biochemistry exam after he'd worked a weekend gymnastics competition. "After 2 semesters in medical school, I was kicked out," Nassar wrote in a September 2015 Facebook post about that time in his life.
With his future in doubt, it was Geddert who came to Nassar's aid, writing a letter to the dean of Michigan State's College of Osteopathic Medicine, saying he wouldn't allow Nassar back in his gym until he completed medical school. Nassar was ultimately readmitted at MSU and told he could complete his degree in five years rather than four.
His absence from Great Lakes lasted a month.
In the years that followed, Nassar and Geddert rose to greater prominence within the gymnastics world. In 1996, Nassar became national medical coordinator for the sport's governing body, USA Gymnastics, a position that made him part of an iconic Olympic moment that same year: He helped Team USA gymnast Kerri Strug to the bench in Atlanta after she was injured on the vault. He frequently impressed young gymnasts in and around Lansing with ribbons and posters he'd bring to them as gifts from his travels to international competitions.
Geddert would go on to become the most decorated women's gymnastics coach in state history, coaching more than 50 U.S. national team members, including his most accomplished athlete, Jordyn Wieber, a member of the famous "Fierce Five," the gold-medal-winning team from the 2012 London Olympics. Wieber did not respond to ESPN's requests for comment.
Geddert served as head coach of the women's team at the London Games. In recent months, three members of that team, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney and Gabby Douglas, have alleged that they, too, were sexually assaulted by Nassar under the guise of medical treatment. Maroney says Nassar abused her when he was alone with her in Texas and in Tokyo.
In the months before and after the London Olympics, Geddert's temper threatened his career. He was accused of assault and battery in two separate incidents at Twistars, according to police reports obtained by Outside the Lines.
In the first incident, reported in November 2011, the parent of a Twistars gymnast, who also worked at the club as a coach, told state police that during a heated argument after an evening practice, Geddert followed her into the parking lot and physically assaulted her by stepping on her foot and chest bumping her to prevent her from leaving. In the second incident, a year later, a gymnast told police Geddert "stepped on her toe, grabbed her arm and pushed her into the wall" to discipline her, according to a police report. Geddert, who told police the 11-year-old "got her ass chewed," denied the allegations of assault and did not face charges in either case.
Shortly after the second alleged incident, the girl's grandmother received a series of text messages from an unexpected source -- Larry Nassar. He pleaded with her not to file charges against Geddert.
"Just ask to drop it, if you are not 100% sure you want to close John's gym and have him banned from USAG for the rest of his life," Nassar texted the girl's grandmother. "If you are able to tell the PA [prosecuting attorney] that you want to drop the case it would go a long way for sure. Remember this is not just about John but also effects [sic] every family at the gym."
Nassar went on to say in the texts, which were reviewed by Outside the Lines: "John just sent a policy out that from now on all staff members are not to be allowed to be with a gymnast alone and not allowed to be in any room without the door being open."
Whether such a policy ever existed at Twistars is unclear, but, if it did, it didn't apply to Nassar. Just as he had years earlier at Great Lakes Gymnastics, Nassar saw hundreds of girls on his training table in a back room at Twistars, alone. Parents would sign up their children to see Nassar on Monday evenings and often wait more than two hours for a chance to be treated by him. Dozens of former Twistars gymnasts now say Nassar sexually abused them during those medical exams.
In the spring and summer of 2014, USA Gymnastics paid Don Brooks, a Lansing private detective, to investigate the history of complaints against Geddert. Among others, Brooks interviewed the former Twistars gymnast who alleged Geddert assaulted her in the locker room, the girl's grandmother said. When reached by phone, Brooks declined to comment about his findings, which he turned over to USA Gymnastics in September 2014. It's unclear what happened to the investigation; USA Gymnastics declined to comment.
Nassar was well aware of the way Geddert worked with gymnasts. What's not clear, even today, is how much Geddert knew about Nassar's serial sexual abuse. On at least one occasion, Geddert walked into the back room of Twistars while Nassar was digitally penetrating a young gymnast, according to the woman's court testimony: "All I remember is him [Nassar] doing the treatment on me with his fingers in my vagina, massaging my back with a towel over my butt, and John walking in and making a joke that I guess my back really did hurt."
Jane, the gymnast who took the bath at Nassar's apartment and trained at Great Lakes, says the dynamic in Geddert's gym had led her to conclude that "part of what enabled this is John broke little girls' spirits and bodies, and Larry was there to fix them."
Geddert declined to comment. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
Two former Michigan State gymnasts say they told ex-MSU coach Kathie Klages, pictured, in 1997 that Nassar had improperly touched them during medical treatments. Emily Nagle/The State News/AP Photo
SEVERAL OF THE current and former gymnasts who have accused Nassar of abuse have spoken about how they initially felt privileged to see him, given his status as the doctor for Team USA. But Nassar was arguably one of the most accessible doctors in and around East Lansing, too. He saw patients at the sports medicine clinic on the Michigan State University campus, where he worked full time, as a volunteer at Great Lakes Gymnastics and later Twistars, and at Holt High School, not far from his home. He saw girls after hours, at his home, to accommodate parents' schedules. He followed many of the girls he saw as patients on social media, often commenting on their posts.
In the fall of 1997, Nassar treated young gymnasts in the basement of Michigan State's Jenison Fieldhouse. That's where he met Larissa Boyce.
Back then, Boyce was a 16-year-old gymnast training with Spartan Youth Gymnastics, a program for promising East Lansing-area gymnasts run by Michigan State's head gymnastics coach, Kathie Klages, Nassar's former colleague from Great Lakes Gymnastics. Nassar also treated MSU gymnasts and other athletes.
Boyce told Outside the Lines that Nassar penetrated her dozens of times, explaining the first time he did the procedure that he needed to massage her pelvic muscles in order to treat her injured back. During one such visit, he removed his belt, dimmed the lights and appeared to become sexually aroused, Boyce says.
A second Spartan Youth gymnast, 14 at the time, said she also had been digitally penetrated by Nassar over the course of several appointments. She and Boyce say that in late 1997, they told Klages what was happening during their sessions with Nassar.
"I said that he was putting his fingers inside of me ... and that it was uncomfortable, and at that point she just said she couldn't believe that was happening ... that was somebody she trusted and knew for years," Boyce says when asked about her meeting with Klages.
Says the second former gymnast: "I thought I was gonna have someone to help me. And it wasn't that sense at all of getting help. It was more a sense of, 'Who have you told so far?' and, 'Let's not talk about this anymore.'" She spoke only on the condition of anonymity, to protect her family's privacy.
Boyce and the second former gymnast say Klages never informed their parents about what they had told her. Klages and her attorney declined to comment for this story.
"I spoke to her [Klages] about what Lindsey had said and she goes, 'You know, Christy, this is a legal medical procedure.'"
Christy Lemke-Akeo, on talking with Michigan State coach Kathie Klages the day before her daughter reported being abused to police
"I was silenced. I just wasn't going to say anything else," Boyce says.
"They just kept it quiet, and that is what's so hard -- knowing that if adults were to make the right decision and do the right thing at the right time, that the abuse could have stopped," the second gymnast says.
Under Michigan law, certain individuals are required to alert law enforcement authorities of suspected abuse. School and university administrators and teachers are among those required to report. Coaches are not named as mandatory reporters in the law, but some attorneys who represent gymnasts believe they fall into the "teacher" category and are obligated to alert authorities.
Boyce and the second former gymnast are two of four athletes Outside the Lines has interviewed who say they told Michigan State coaches or trainers in the late 1990s about Nassar's invasive methods.
Tiffany Thomas Lopez, a softball player on full scholarship, says she complained about Nassar to three athletic trainers in 1998, a year after Boyce and the second gymnast met with Klages to reveal their alleged abuse.
"I felt like they thought I was a liar," Thomas Lopez says. She eventually met with Destiny Teachnor-Hauk, an athletic training supervisor. "She brushed me off, and made it seem like I was crazy. She made me feel like I was crazy."
Teachnor-Hauk, who remains employed by Michigan State, declined comment. An MSU spokesman said he could not comment due to pending litigation.
A fourth MSU athlete, Christie Achenbach, says she told a Michigan State coach in 1999 details of what happened to her during an appointment with Nassar that year -- a year after Thomas Lopez had complained to trainers about Nassar. Achenbach told Outside the Lines her coach assured her Nassar was a respected physician.
It is unclear whether the athletic trainers and coaches at Michigan State were guided by indifference or blind loyalty to Nassar. Even when multiple women came forward in late 2016, alleging abuse by Nassar during medical exams, Klages continued to defend her former colleague. Lindsey Lemke, a senior on the Spartans' gymnastics team, says Klages circulated a card during a team meeting in late September, shortly after Nassar was fired by the university, asking gymnasts to sign it as a show of support for him.
Lemke alleges in a lawsuit against Nassar and Michigan State that she was sexually assaulted hundreds of times, digitally penetrated by Nassar when she was as young as 12. Her mother, Christy Lemke-Akeo, remembers a conversation she had with Klages the day before she and her daughter reported the abuse to police.
"I spoke to her [Klages] about what Lindsey had said and she goes, 'You know, Christy, this is a legal medical procedure,'" Lemke-Akeo says.
Doctors interviewed by Outside the Lines say intravaginal and intrarectal treatments have been used for decades to treat medical problems such as pelvic floor dysfunction, which can occur when muscles on the pelvic floor become weak or tight. The treatments can also be used for interstitial cystitis, a painful bladder syndrome. But those same doctors say the procedures are never performed without gloves, a chaperone in the room and, in the case of a minor, parental consent.
Lemke-Akeo says she explained to Klages that Nassar never sought parental consent, that he touched her daughter without gloves and without someone else in the room. She says she told Klages that "in my mind, that makes it illegal." But Klages, she says, was steadfast in her support of Nassar.
In February of last year, as the allegations of sexual abuse mounted, Michigan State suspended Klages for her outspoken support of Nassar. A day after being suspended, Klages resigned.
Shortly after, Klages ended up back with Geddert at his gym, Twistars. She left in August after local media reported her presence there.
Michigan State's improper handling of abuse complaints against Nassar has led to protests as information has become public. Four former MSU athletes say they told MSU coaches or trainers in the late 1990s about Nassar's invasive methods. Dale G Young/Detroit News/AP Photo
ON A MONDAY morning last March, a pair of detectives -- one from the FBI the other from the university's police department -- climbed the short flight of steps outside East Fee Hall, home of Michigan State's College of Osteopathic Medicine. They were there to speak with Dr. William Strampel, the college's dean. Three weeks after Nassar had been charged with 22 felony counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, the detectives were investigating whether anyone else might have broken the law by failing to stop or report Nassar's abuses sooner.
Strampel explained that his role as dean put him at the top of Nassar's reporting chain. He told the two detectives that other than signing off on Nassar's travel requests to attend Olympic Games and other international gymnastics competitions, he and the doctor had no interaction with each other during Strampel's first 15 years in East Lansing.
That changed on a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 2014. Strampel was at home when he received a call telling him that a student had accused Nassar of assaulting her, massaging her breasts and vaginal area when she visited him for a hip injury. The day of her one and only appointment with Nassar, the woman told a receptionist and another doctor at the sports medicine clinic she "felt violated." Strampel told the detectives he suspended Nassar from seeing patients indefinitely the following afternoon and let law enforcement and the school's Title IX office take over from there.
The university's police department opened a criminal investigation. The university's Title IX department interviewed four experts to evaluate the complaint, all of whom had ties to Nassar.
Among the four was Dr. Brooke Lemmen, a fellow physician who was viewed by colleagues as a close friend and "protégé" of Nassar's. She told the Title IX investigators in the spring of 2014 there was nothing sexual about the treatment Nassar administered. The other three experts agreed with her opinion and decided that the complainant didn't understand the "nuanced difference" between the medical procedure and assault.
Lemmen resigned under pressure last January. She faced allegations that she had failed to tell her bosses that Nassar had told her -- in 2015 -- he was being investigated by USA Gymnastics for suspected abuse, according to her personnel file first obtained by the Lansing State Journal. She also was accused of removing some of Nassar's patient files from the sports clinic after he was fired by MSU in 2016. In a letter sent by Strampel to Lemmen before she resigned, Strampel told her that had the school known about the 2015 USAG allegations, it could have taken steps to review Nassar's conduct earlier.
Yet Strampel told the detectives he interpreted the 2014 Title IX ruling then to mean Nassar was "exonerated" and "cleared of all charges." Nassar returned to the clinic with the police investigation still active. Strampel sent Nassar an email on July 30, 2014, that said he was "happy that this has resolved to some extend [sic]" and recapped basic guidelines for what Nassar had to do while treating patients in sensitive areas in the future.
Nassar saw patients for another 16 months while he remained under criminal investigation. The county prosecutor decided in December 2015 that there was not enough evidence to charge him with a crime. Instead, the prosecutor instructed a police officer to tell Nassar that he should have a witness present whenever he performed an intravaginal treatment and to explain it fully before doing it.
Nassar told the officer that he had been doing those things since he started seeing patients again the previous summer. He told Strampel upon returning to work that the impact of the Title IX investigation "will forever affect me."
At least a dozen young women and girls have reported to police that Nassar assaulted them after he was allowed to return to work. Former Olympian Aly Raisman and former U.S. national team member Maggie Nichols, who have reported being sexually assaulted by Nassar to the FBI, say their abuse continued after July 2014. Several of the women who saw Nassar during that period said he didn't have a chaperone in the examination room on Michigan State's campus and that he touched them without wearing gloves, clear violations of the protocols he agreed to follow after the Title IX investigation.
The day after the detectives' visit with Strampel last March, they met with Dr. Douglas Dietzel, Nassar's immediate supervisor. Dietzel told them that, in 2016, when a new wave of allegations arrived -- ones that would eventually open the floodgates of complaints and land Nassar in prison -- Strampel visited the clinic and said Nassar would be suspended again. Strampel said the suspension was due in part because Nassar did not follow the guidelines they agreed upon after his 2014 investigation. This surprised Dietzel. He told the police that, up until that conversation in 2016, he had no idea that Nassar had any extra guidelines he needed to follow.
"How do we enforce those things when we didn't even know about them?" Dietzel asked the detectives.
Strampel, whose attorney declined comment on his behalf, told the detectives he saw no need to let others in the clinic know about Nassar's guidelines or to set up any system that would make sure he was following them. Having someone else in the room when treating a sensitive area is "healthcare 101," Strampel said. Despite the fact Nassar was under a police investigation, Strampel told the detectives that he just had not seen a need to follow up.
Despite Nassar's track record, Strampel, who stepped down from his position as dean and took a medical leave in December, did not appear to approach Nassar with a different degree of skepticism over time: When Nassar emailed Strampel in September 2016 to let him know that reporters from The Indianapolis Star wanted to ask him questions about new sexual abuse allegations, Strampel wished Nassar luck and wrote: "I am on your side."
In 1996, Nassar became national medical coordinator for the sport's governing body, USA Gymnastics, a position that made him part of an iconic Olympic moment: He helped gymnast Kerri Strug to the bench in Atlanta after she was injured on the vault. Daniel Garcia/Getty Images
IN THE LATE spring of 2015, inside the Karolyi Ranch -- the Team USA gymnastics training center just north of Houston run by coaches Bela and Martha Karolyi -- visiting coach Sarah Jantzi overheard a troubling conversation. Maggie Nichols, Jantzi's star gymnast who, at 14, made the U.S. women's national team, was speaking with Aly Raisman, captain of the 2012 and 2016 gold medal-winning Olympic teams.
Nichols described to Raisman treatment sessions she had had with Nassar, Raisman told Outside the Lines. Jantzi became so concerned about what she overheard that she notified Nichols' mother and USA Gymnastics officials.
Maggie Nichols says that Nassar started sexually abusing her during medical exams at the Karolyi Ranch when she was 15 while being treated for severe back pain. Raisman says Nassar started abusing her when she was 15. She says he would give her desserts as treats, which were forbidden at the ranch, where the Karolyis closely monitored what the gymnasts ate. "He was grooming me so he could molest me," Raisman says.
In a victim-impact statement, McKayla Maroney also described in detail how Nassar began abusing her when she was also 13 at the Karolyi Ranch. Several other national team gymnasts have alleged Nassar sexually abused them there, including Mattie Larson, a Team USA member from 2005-10, who was one of the first to sue Nassar, USAG and the Karolyis.
Parents were not allowed to stay with their children at the ranch or during international competitions.
After Jantzi reported to USA Gymnastics what she had overheard, USAG officials hired a workplace harassment investigator, who interviewed Nichols, Raisman and Maroney before USA Gymnastics reported the suspected abuse -- a month later -- to federal authorities, according to the gymnasts' attorney, John Manly. USA Gymnastics officials initially publicly said they reported the allegations "immediately" to law enforcement. Later, USAG officials acknowledged the delayed timeline but that "USA Gymnastics never attempted to hide Nassar's misconduct."
Nichols' case is believed to mark the first time USA Gymnastics officials received a report about suspected abuse by Nassar. A day after Jantzi's report about what she had overheard, Nichols' mother, Gina, received a phone call. It was from Steve Penny, the president and CEO of USA Gymnastics, who started the conversation by saying: "I understand Maggie has some concerns," Gina Nichols says.
"He never once said, 'Is Maggie OK?'" Instead, she says, Penny told her, "We need to keep this quiet. It's very sensitive. We don't want this to get out."
It was the year before the Rio Olympics.
Nassar didn't leave his position as national medical coordinator for USA Gymnastics until months after the organization had been first informed of his suspected abuse. He posted a lengthy farewell message on his Facebook page on Sept. 27, 2015, saying, "it has come time for me to retire" from USA Gymnastics. At the time, the organization didn't refute that Nassar was voluntarily stepping down, but a year later said it had cut ties with him and reported him to law enforcement officers in the summer of 2015 due to "athlete concerns."
USA GYMNASTICS STATEMENT
USA Gymnastics officials declined to answer specific questions from Outside the Lines but issued the following statement:
"USA Gymnastics admires and supports the young women who have courageously stepped forward to share their stories of abuse, especially those who have been abused by Larry Nassar. This week is about justice for those women, giving them opportunity to speak directly to their predator and share with the judge the impact of his crimes. We urge the judge to levy the most severe penalty on Nassar for the reprehensible crimes he committed.
"We are sorry that any athlete was harmed during her gymnastics career. USA Gymnastics is committed to and focused on further developing a culture of empowerment that has safe sport as a top priority throughout the organization. This includes promoting an environment that empowers everyone to be observant, to have the courage to question and speak up about difficult topics, especially abuse."
It does not appear USA Gymnastics made any attempt to share those concerns with officials from Michigan State University -- where Nassar continued to see patients -- or the state medical board. Michigan State, likewise, did not inform USAG when it was investigating Nassar in 2014.
Gina Nichols says Penny repeated his initial request for discretion in several conversations over the ensuing months, requests that struck her, an operating room nurse, and her husband John, a physician, as odd. Penny, Gina Nichols says, put them in an impossible situation and "was in a position of authority over me and my husband. Our whole family gave up everything so we could put [Maggie] on this road."
As medical professionals, the Nichols are both required by law to immediately report suspected child sex abuse to authorities, but, out of concern they would could hurt their daughter's future in the sport -- and because they had been told Nassar had already been reported and any action on their part might jeopardize the investigation -- they remained silent.
USA Gymnastics officials have said they kept the matter confidential overall because of "the FBI's directive not to interfere with the investigation." But in mid-June 2015, when Penny made his initial phone call to Gina Nichols, nobody from USA Gymnastics had spoken with the FBI.
Nichols says it wasn't until July 2016, just before the Olympic trials, that she and her daughter received their first phone calls from an FBI agent investigating the case.
In the months before Gina Nichols spoke with the FBI, she says Penny assured her the case was being "taken care of." At that point, Maggie was widely regarded as a lock to make the 2016 Olympic team; she was ranked second in the nation behind Simone Biles until a meniscus tear kept her off the team that would go on to win gold at the Rio Olympics.
Raisman told Outside the Lines that she and her mother, Lynn, had similar interactions with Penny in the months after she initially reported Nassar's abuse to the investigator hired by USA Gymnastics. "Steve Penny was trying to control when I was going to be interviewed by the FBI," Aly Raisman says. "He was trying to control every part of it. The biggest priority was to make sure I kept it quiet so they'd have a good Olympics. It's disgusting."
Because of Penny's assurances the investigation was being handled, Raisman says she did not meet with the FBI until Sept. 9, 2016, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a month after serving as captain on Team USA's gold-medal-winning team in Rio. Penny flew in for the interview, she says. She says she wouldn't allow him to be in the room when she spoke to the FBI agent investigating the case.
On Monday afternoon, Biles, the all-around gold medalist in Rio, issued a statement saying she, too, had been abused by Nassar: "For too long I've asked myself, 'Was I too naive? Was it my fault?' I now know the answer to those questions. No. No, it was not my fault. No, I will not and should not carry the guilt that belongs to Larry Nassar, USAG, and others."
In March, Penny resigned from USA Gymnastics. At the time, Penny not only faced widespread criticism for the way he had handled complaints against Nassar, but an investigation by The Indianapolis Star revealed USA Gymnastics had a pattern of ignoring or mishandling complaints of sexual abuse by dozens of coaches.
Penny and his attorney both declined to comment.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Penny received a $1 million severance package.
"I really think there needs to be an independent investigation to figure out who knew what and when [at USAG]," Lynn Raisman told Outside the Lines. "What USAG and MSU did, it magnifies the pain."
Former MSU softball player Tiffany Thomas Lopez says she was sexually assaulted by Nassar and told an athletic department official about it. The official brushed her off, Thomas Lopez says. Outside the Lines
THE FIRST WOMAN to testify in Michigan state court about Nassar's abuse is named Kyle Stephens. She says she was about 6 years old when he first exposed himself to her. It took her roughly six more years to realize that she was being sexually abused and to gather the courage to tell her parents. And it would take another six years before her father believed her.
Stephens, who initially spoke to Outside the Lines on the condition of anonymity but identified herself publicly Tuesday during Nassar's sentencing hearing, says she frequently spent her childhood weekend afternoons and evenings at Nassar's split-level home in Holt, Michigan. Her parents were close friends with Nassar and his wife, Stefanie, and they often cooked together on Sundays.
She and her older brother sometimes played hide-and-seek with Nassar in the basement while the other adults remained upstairs. She says she'd often hide in his boiler room, tucked between a furnace and a sink. On several occasions, she says, Nassar entered the room and, pretending not to see her, masturbated in front of her. He stashed a bottle of lotion in the room.
"I still know that [lotion's] smell," she said in her first court appearance. "The smell still makes me sick."
Over the course of the next several years, Nassar grew bolder. She says that he would sit next to her on a basement couch while she and her brother watched television and rubbed her feet against his crotch. He progressed to putting a blanket over himself and her feet, and she says he pulled out his genitals and rubbed them against her feet. Eventually, and on multiple occasions, he put his finger inside her. The woman says she didn't understand the nature of what was happening to her until a friend described an abusive encounter of her own while they rode the bus together in sixth grade. She realized similar things had happened to her, and that she needed to tell her parents.
"Mom," Stephens says she told her mother one night in her bedroom during the summer after she completed sixth grade, "when Larry rubs my feet, he uses his penis."
Her mother went gaunt. She had her daughter repeat the story to her father. The parents decided they would consult a psychologist. They took her to Dr. Gary Stollak, who was then a Michigan State professor and a clinical psychologist. Stollak organized a meeting with the woman's parents and Nassar to discuss her accusations. Stephens, then a young teenager, was not at the meeting, and Nassar denied any wrongdoing. She says she visited Stollak's office roughly eight times, sometimes by herself and sometimes with her parents. She doesn't recall the doctor ever asking her questions about the abuse when her parents were absent or trying to determine whether her side of the story was true. She described their session as more akin to "uncomfortable" sex education lessons.
Stollak retired from Michigan State in 2010. He testified in court that he suffered a stroke after retirement that has significantly impaired his memory. He also said he disposed of the notes he kept on his clients when he retired. There is no record that Stollak, who was bound by state law to report suspected abuse, talked with anyone else at the university or to police about the alleged abuse. He told the court that he did not recall seeing the woman as a patient.
After the meeting with Nassar and Stollak, Stephens says her parents brought her back to Nassar's home and told her to apologize to him. She refused and stuck to her story for the following year. Her relationship with her father became "volatile" during that time. He routinely pressured her to admit that what she had told them about Nassar was a lie. About a year later, when she was 13 years old, her father made it clear his patience had run out.
"If you don't tell the truth," he told her, "I'm going to make your life a living hell."
Stephens says the look on his face that day made her believe him, "and if I wasn't already in a living hell, I was unprepared to endure one." She says she decided it would be easier to concede to the story he wanted to believe.
Several parents who spoke to Outside the Lines say Nassar was as effective in grooming them as he was in grooming his victims. Tony Guerrero says he beamed with pride the first time he brought his daughter to Nassar's office on Michigan State's campus in 2014. The walls of the two rooms where Nassar saw patients were plastered with autographed photos and memorabilia from Olympic gymnasts and figure skaters. He says it all made him feel like he was providing his daughter -- at the time a 12-year-old aspiring to be an elite gymnast -- an opportunity to receive world-class care.
Nassar gave her a floor pass from the Olympic Games signed by gold medalist Nastia Liukin and allowed Guerrero to sit in the room throughout the treatment. He was in the room each time his daughter saw Nassar. He says Nassar used his body to block Guerrero's view and talked casually as Nassar touched his daughter.
"He was a professional at what he did. Not a doctor -- a professional predator," Guerrero says. "He positioned himself in places where I couldn't see where his hands were, and he would be doing what he wanted. The whole time she's thinking it's normal because I'm sitting there with her, and he's doing stuff he shouldn't be doing."
Others trusted Nassar enough to drop off their daughters at his house for treatment, often late at night. He was an in-demand doctor who was willing to find time after hours to help their family. Lindsey Lemke, the Michigan State gymnast who grew up in the same town as Nassar, says he gained her family's trust because he would do "anything for anybody at any time of day that you asked."
Christy Lemke-Akeo, Lindsey's mother, socialized with Nassar and considered him a family friend. They exchanged Christmas gifts. She didn't hesitate to run errands while Lindsey was at Nassar's office or in his home at night.
"How could we have missed this?" Lemke-Akeo says. "I was on my kid's back 24/7 about Facebook and Twitter. I would follow them on their phones to see where they went every night. I thought I had everything under control. ... It was a terrible feeling as a parent because you do feel like you've dropped the ball."
Lemke-Akeo says she asked her daughter several times in the fall of 2016 if Nassar had ever abused her, and Lindsey shook her off. Both women had trouble coming to grips with their shattered reality. It wasn't until he was charged for child pornography possession -- authorities found more than 37,000 images -- that they fully believed Nassar had ill intentions when treating her.
Stephens, whose father did not believe that she had been abused, says the fact she refused to apologize to Nassar was a constant subject in what had become a contentious relationship with her father. She says he branded her as a liar. Her father suffered from chronic debilitating physical pain throughout much of her life, and she says the cocktail of drugs he was prescribed to manage that affected his mental well-being.
A month before she left for college in 2010, she decided it was time to try again to tell her father that Nassar had assaulted her.
"I wasn't lying," she remembers telling him, before his hand shot out and pinned her neck to the chair where she was sitting. "Then he said -- well, he growled, 'What did you say?' I gasped, 'I wasn't lying.' He said it again. I was basically choking, and I said, 'I. Was. Not. Lying.' He just crumpled. You could see his face just completely shatter, like, 'Holy shit, this 18-year-old doesn't have any reason to stick to that story at this point.' He just sat on the couch and just stared into space for a while."
On March 30, 2016, he died by suicide.
Stephens says she reached a level of peace with her father in the years that followed that altercation. He told her he was wracked with guilt for believing Nassar, especially because he worked for many years as a caretaker in a home for abused children. She says she thinks the chronic pain with no hope of relief was the main reason her father took his life, but the guilt he felt in those final years "really broke his spirit and his belief that he was worth keeping alive."
Less than six months after his death, a 32-year-old lawyer and mother of three named Rachael Denhollander filed a police report alleging that Nassar had abused her when she was a teenage gymnast. She became the first person to publicly accuse Nassar of assault, in an article published in The Indianapolis Star in September 2016.
Denhollander's story convinced dozens of other women and girls to come forward. This week, many of them will detail their tragic encounters with Nassar in a Michigan courtroom. The stories that have existed in isolation for a quarter-century will be for the first time told in a common setting as Nassar and a judge who will decide his prison sentence listen.
The trusted reputation he built as a shield and the gaps of communication in which he preyed upon young girls and women for decades will be gone. For Denhollander and the many other women like her, only a portion of the justice they seek will be done. The questions and fallout from Nassar's action will linger for them and for all who surrounded Nassar for so many years.
"The culture of enabling is absolutely vital to why pedophiles flourish," Denhollander said when Nassar pleaded guilty to abusing her and nine others in November. "You don't get someone like Larry Nassar, you don't get a pedophile who is able to abuse without there being a culture surrounding him in that place. Until we deal with the enablers, this is going to continue to happen."
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The Rise of Syndicated Environmental Advocacies
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fighting for a causeNope, this won’t be another 2,000 word entry just about Saving Manila Bay or Saving Baguio Pine Trees, I think people have had enough of that for now.
It’s a Saturday morning in the Philippines. Â The sky is bright baby blue, the air is cool, birds are chirping in the yard, one of my house help is sweeping the huge front yard, and the other is cooking bacon, eggs, and hotcakes on the iron griddle I bought from a neighbor’s yard sale.
I am sitting here behind my desk in my home office wondering about how the words “paid hack” or “paid cyber hack” could in any way be a proper response to the arguments I’ve put forward against the causes or advocacies I’ve encountered lately.
Project Save 182 up in Baguio City, protesting the balling of 182 pine trees on Luneta Hill for about a year now, is encumbered by so many inconsistencies which they haven’t answered or responded to appropriately. Â Why protest just the balling of trees in Baguio and why protest the growing conversion of entire mountains into vegetable farms (pesticide laden, fertilizer soaked, and GMO laced)? Â Why only the balling of Luneta Hill pine trees and not the one of Goshen or St. Louis’ University? Â Why make it seem that SM Baguio is entirely responsible for all the environmental damage happening in Baguio City?
When I first brought these issues up, I was accused of throwing them a “red herring” and then this progressed to being called a “paid hack”, the second accusation really doesn’t answer the issues raised against their cause but rather ungraciously sidestep them.
The only thing I can say about being accused of being a paid hack is that an unpaid hack might be worse and a hack that has to pay to hack is even more pathetic. Â Recently, it seems I’ve been promoted and been called a paid “cyber hack” — which I assume to be the same as a “hack”, only more “techie”.
Personally, I would prefer to be called a troll.
george carline never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groupsGoing back , unlike mining or building construction, vegetable farming is virtually unregulated in Benguet. Â I doubt if the Department of Agriculture sends field personnel to check if upland vegetable farms are over-saturating the soil with fertilizers or over-spraying it with insecticides/fungicides. Â I doubt if the government still checks whether or not slash and burn practices have really been stopped.
The truth is, vegetable farming in Benguet accounts for the loss of hundreds if not thousands of hectares of Benguet Pine forests. Moreover, scientific studies have already pointed out, time and again, that fertilizer/pesticide intensive farming produces more green house gases than mining or building construction. Â Never mind, too, that the primary cause of water run off during the rainy season is caused by the decimation of “water sheds”.
Funny thing is that it seems SM’s development on Luneta Hill, being just a small portion of the entire Baguio City, is being blamed for a whole gamut of “environmental evils”.
Considering these two things, SM possibly killing a few dozen trees in the process of balling them up and thousands of farmers creating tons of green house gases/causing water run off every year, which do you think ought to be stopped first? Â Which of the two should cause greater uproar?
I’d say it would have to be unsustainable vegetable farming, but that’s just me. Â I don’t know if you’ve really thought that the salad or vegetable dish you’re about to eat is actually causes more Climate Change than a mall’s parking lot.
camp john hay tree killerOh! And just to just show sincere and well thought out Project Save 182 is as an environmental conservation movement, just consider that Karlo Altomonte (a prime mover for Save 182) actually held another concert at Camp John Hay — a real tree killer corporation, worse than SM Baguio.
(I wonder if Karlo is related to former Advertising Big Boss Emily Altomonte Abrera, a key figure at the head of the “Save Manila Bay” movement?)
In fact, it was the tree balling in Camp John Hay that Michael Bengwayan, another Save 182 proponent, cited in the court case to prove that balling has a tendency to kill trees.
Here’s an excerpt from Sunstar Baguio announcing Karlo Altomonte’s Open Space 2013 event in Camp John Hay:
“Open Spaces 2013 – The 3rd Baguio Music Festival†promises to be an exciting showcase of musical talents. And as in the previous festivals, this year’s four-day event will take audiences on a diverse musical journey highlighting the richness of the local music scene in various venues at Camp John Hay.
“What are the events lined up this year? Maybe we can jam, just like before,†Abby Clutario of Manila-based group, Fuseboxx asked Open Spaces Executive Director Karlo Marko Altomonte.
The group performed during the 2011 launch and is returning again this time as one of the featured bands at the festival’s finale.
On February 14, “Open Spaces†2013 opens with a Valentine’s Day concert at the Bell Amphitheater, Camp John Hay entitled, “Arias,†which features some of the city’s foremost classical and musical theater vocalists.
The thing is Camp John Hay that managed by John Hay Management Corp. (JHMC)Â Operations Group Manager Frank Daytec, the brother of Lawyer Cheryl Daytec Yangot — a prime mover of Save 182. Â Daytec-Yangot is the wife of Acting Baguio Vice Mayor/Councilor Leandro Yangot, a JHMC board member and mother of Councilor Karrmin Yangot.
It seems that Altomonte, Abrera, and the Yangots are somewhat connected, whether loosely or tightly I have no way of knowing right now. Â Not that it really matters at all, even if you factor in that a common personality involved in Save 182 and Save Manila Bay is Jim Libiran.
Rounding up the gang of people involved in the “Save” brand of movements on the internet are Lory Tan (CEO of WWF), Paulo Alcazaren (Columnist, Architect), Bobby Capco (former Arroyo Undersecretary now PR guy), Sylvia Mayuga, Ninotcha Rosca, and others of the somewhat “social set”.
If at all something links them as a common denominator, it may be something that George Carlin touched on in his often quoted “Save The Earth” spiel.
“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.†And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day.
“I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos.
Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
Which probably why Jim Libiran’s tweet the other day on why he opposes a reclamation project on Manila Bay seems to underscore what Carlin said a few years ago.
jim libiran
Now, if you are asking why I am taking issue with these “causes” and their big name “proponents”, it is basically because I am a blogger and not a journalist. Â Perhaps someone who explained best the blogger’s role in the universe of media and critical discussion is Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic.
…before the blogosphere, reporters and columnists were largely shielded from this kind of direct hazing. Yes, letters to the editor would arrive in due course and subscriptions would be canceled. But reporters and columnists tended to operate in a relative sanctuary, answerable mainly to their editors, not readers. For a long time, columns were essentially monologues published to applause, muffled murmurs, silence, or a distant heckle….
…Unlike newspapers, which would eventually publish corrections in a box of printed spinach far from the original error, bloggers had to walk the walk of self-correction in the same space and in the same format as the original screwup. The form was more accountable, not less, because there is nothing more conducive to professionalism than being publicly humiliated for sloppiness.
…In an era when the traditional media found itself beset by scandals as disparate as Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Dan Rather, bloggers survived the first assault on their worth.
In time, in fact, the high standards expected of well-trafficked bloggers spilled over into greater accountability, transparency, and punctiliousness among the media powers that were. Even New York Times columnists were forced to admit when they had been wrong.”
Nowhere else is this kind of journalistic accountability more pronounced than in Get Real Philippines — as even its webmaster’s views is subjected to an acid bath of criticism. Â This is perhaps why its readership base has expanded to 10,000 and why its community of more than 3,000 people on Facebook is so divergent, taking the phrase “Beg To Differ” quite seriously.
SAVE BRAND OF ENVIRONMENTALISM
It takes a lot of guts and brains to write for this blog, especially if you consider that the webmaster is one of the most popular political and social blogging critics since before the blogosphere.
If at all there is anything false, misleading or illogical in any of the writings on this blog, it will get found out and it will get bashed to bits.
We don’t rely on credibility based on our last names, degrees, or titles. We rely merely on our ability to dissect issues and present it without the hype or appeals to emotion.
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About Paul Farol
Try not to take me too seriously.
Pia Ranada’s Article on Andanar’s Foreign Trips Exemplifies Rappler’s Brand of Lazy Journalism - January 15, 2018
Your Tito’s Car: The Ford Ecosport - December 12, 2017
Preview of Part Three of “The Real Enemies and Traitors of the Fourth Estate” - December 4, 2017
On The Real Enemies and Traitors Of The Fourth Estate (Part Two: Syndicates) - December 1, 2017
On The Real Enemies and Traitors of the Fourth Estate - November 30, 2017
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One Year On: Why I Believe both SM and Save 182 have Failed Baguio City in 2012
One Year On: Why I Believe both SM and Save 182 have Failed Baguio City in 2012
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Court Dismisses Save 182's Case Against SM Baguio
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December 14, 2012
In "Environment"
Categories: Development, Economy, Environment / 22 Responses / by Paul Farol
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22 Comments on "The Rise of Syndicated Environmental Advocacies"
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Trosp
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Trosp
@Farol
A well researched post.
Kudos!
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Paul Farol
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Paul Farol
Thanks man.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
FallenAngel
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FallenAngel
Amen, Paul.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
ChinoF
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ChinoF
Based on the associations made here, I can only suspect that “environmental causes” are actually PR tools for two purposes here. One, to build up popularity for someone running in the elections. Two, as a probable tool to destroy a competitor (I suspect competitors are trying to ruin SM’s reputation, idea brought up by the presence of a well-known advertising personality in the Baguio movement).
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
RF Garcia
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RF Garcia
You are right about Benguet farmers over-spraying the soil with pesticides.These chemicals kill not only the pests but also the beneficial organisms in the soil as well as the humans who eat the vegetables. But do not include the fertilizers in the category of harmful chemicals which you say are ‘over-saturating’ the soil. Fertilizers contain nutrients that nourish and sustain plant life. There is no such thing as over-saturating the soil with nutrients. Farmers may appear to apply too much but vegetables have naturally high demand for fertilizers.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
OnesimusUnbound
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OnesimusUnbound
for quite off topic, when I was in high school, my teacher asked us how would I know if the vegetable has no pesticide applied on.
Answer: If I see caterpillar crawling on it, it’s guaranteed to be pesticide-free.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Trident
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Trident
I totally agree with you regarding fertilizer use. I have a corn farm in Batangas and I personally conduct soil testing for NPK and various micro nutrients regularly to check soil quality and condition. Scientifically speaking all the applied “synthetic” fertilizers gets consumed by plants including the salt residues from the fertilizer compound, it doesn’t get washed or seeps into water deposits like most would say (exaggeration). The applied fertilizer is mostly retained on the first 4″ of soil where the plants/trees would readily consume it. People need to learn simple chemistry to know how this things work and stop… Read more »
0 REPLY3 years 7 months ago
vince
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vince
one possibility is that its more exciting and more newsworthy to challenge a mall tycoon for a small environmental benefit versus challenging a poor farmer for large environmental benefit. No one wants to be seen as oppressing the poor while every one loves a david vs goliath story
there’s really no need to bring up conspiracies. These things happen naturally, just like viral videos
I believe in the judge dredd solution versus the solomonic solution. Judge dredd would shoot them both. i.e. solve both problems. Stop both the poor farmers and SM from destroying the environment
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Paul Farol
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Paul Farol
It’s not a conspiracy but a concerted effort among a small group of like minded people.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Perry
Guest
Perry
People should be held accountable for what they say. The people mentioned in the article seem like self-serving, loathable types and the picture of the one woman seems about right to put her up there with the loathsome bunch (imagine waking up next to that, WHOA!). But most of the authors here on GRP are anonymous, so how do they get held accountable? Someone, somewhere, somehow knows who Benigno is or who Ilda is or who Gogs is and I hope no one finds out who the Virtual Vigilante is ( I really like that guy!) BUT besides bashing the… Read more »
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
MidwayHaven
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MidwayHaven
In my last GRP article I included my real name in the final sentence. It’s a risk, but a risk I’m willing to take to say what I believe needs to be said. In a reversal of who’s what in Baguio, it seems that Save 182 has been doing activities left and right which only seek to drum up environmental awareness–that’s it. As for environmental activities themselves, there’s pretty much nothing. Meanwhile, SM City Baguio is aiming true on their promise of planting 50,000 pine trees by the end of this year (an article in the Baguio Midland Courier dated… Read more »
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
ChinoF
Member
ChinoF
I like to be known for my views. I am who I am, I don’t pretend to be somebody else.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Perry
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Perry
Is your statement a reply to my comment about anonymity? If it is then your given name, the one on your gov’t. issued I.D., is ‘ChinoF’? Not that I want to know, because I do not, but that name seems like it would be difficult to pronounce.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
ChinoF
Member
ChinoF
My handle here is my nickname and my surname’s first letter. I share the same surname with MidwayHaven even if we’re not related.
Not that I believe everybody with a false name actually pretends to be somebody else. I know some pseudonyms are very much themselves. The other GRP bloggers, for instance.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Trosp
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Trosp
@ChinoF
I don’t care if somebody is expressing his/her point of view without disclosing his/her identity. However, there are times when views require one to reveal his/her identity. One can’t just make a claim that can be verifiable only through his/her true identity.
In my case, I used the handle Trosp because it might result to conflict of interest with the company I was working with if it’ll be known I’m their employee.
When I left my employer, I’ve made it a point that my identity is known to every comment readers here.
For accountability.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
coolass
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coolass
very well 🙂
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Perry
Guest
Perry
I have done some accidental research and it seems that GRP is getting quite the bit of attention from the people who run the country. EXAMPLE: one of Ms.Santiago’s staff has been replying/defending her boss rather vigorously lately, Mary Grace Sanchez Plena, whew that is a long one, is screaming at people here about her boss’s merits, HA!!! What a load of rubbish. Stinking as the day is long BIOYA, Sanchez!!! I do not blame anyone here for not disclosing their real names. I actually wondered if anyone in the gov’t. would actually care what anyone says here, WELL they… Read more »
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Paul Farol
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Paul Farol
Not only Miriam but Dick Gordon and Koko Pimentel.
But apart from politicians, members of the establishment press also read GRP.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Hyden Toro
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Hyden Toro
Vegetable farming, benefits many people.While SM is owned by Sy, a business monopoly. Destroying the environment to make the rich , more rich is absurd…SM employs people, at low pays…Hacienda Luisita Plantation economics…
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
Paul Farol
Guest
Paul Farol
Hyden, the wage for an agricultural laborer is lower than the wage for an SM clerk. An agricultural laborer gets exposed to fertilizers and pesticides while working under the sun.
Moreover, the farmer/capitalist uses up more land than SM while producing more green house gases as well as uses up more water.
0 REPLY4 years 11 months ago
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Why Baguio Is Dying | Get Real Post
[…] my widely read post, “The Rise of Syndicated Environmentalist Causes”, I noted that Project Save 182 mover Karlo Altomonte’s Open Spaces was holding a […]
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
monk
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monk
Carlin actually had a misanthropic and fatalistic view concerning life, the environment, and many other things, including consumer spending and capitalists.
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
Why Baguio Is Dying
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mukhang peraThe truth is: SM Baguio is just a scapegoat of Pseudo Environmentalists, because they’re politicians who can’t go against the REAL CAUSES of ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION in Benguet and Baguio City: MINING CORPORATIONS who advertise in newspapers and give PR money to columnists, VEGETABLE FARMERS who fund political campaigns, and informal settlers who vote for them.
In my widely read post, “The Rise of Syndicated Environmentalist Causes”, I noted that Project Save 182 mover Karlo Altomonte’s Open Spaces was holding a Valentine’s Day performance at Camp John Hay — an organization which Dr. Michael Bengwayan accused of killing trees a few years ago. I also pointed out that Former John Hay Management Corp. (JHMC) Operations Group Manager Frank Daytec is the brother of Lawyer Cheryl Daytec Yangot” another prime mover of Save 182. Daytec-Yangot is the wife of Acting Baguio Vice Mayor/Councilor Leandro Yangot, a JHMC board member and mother of Councilor Karrmin Yangot.
The mention of how all these movers are somewhat connected to Camp John Hay and Baguio City Politics is somewhat indicative of why the group seems to be targeting one business in particular rather than going after the larger cause of environmental degradation in Benguet — poorly regulated agriculture that displaced hundreds of hectares of pine tree forests.
Politicians like Daytec and Yangot can’t afford to go head to head against farmers, some of whom may actually be political campaign financiers.
Another group of people that Daytecs and Yangots can’t afford to get angry are the residents and “informal settlers” of Baguio City itself. I pointed out in one of my first posts in Pinoy Buzz on the Save 182 Movement way back in April 2012 that the unplanned conversion of surrounding forests into residential areas was the bigger reason for all the environmental ills experienced in Baguio City:
From the top of the steps leading to the Baguio Cathedral, one could see thousands of pine trees surrounding the city and that was what really justified the city’s other moniker which is “the City of Pines”.
Perhaps the value of the pines that are inside the city itself is perhaps more ornamental or aesthetic than ecologically functional. It filled up the open spaces which were in the design made by Daniel Burnham for the city and somewhat made the city feel more like a part of its surrounding wooded areas.
Now, over the decades, the wooded areas surrounding Baguio City gave way to the sprawl of houses and buildings. This happened in such an unplanned way that it destroyed the vistas that once made Baguio City really remarkable.
Recently, I found a Baguio Resident’s publicly posted pictures on Facebook of the hill of houses surrounding Baguio and it underscores my point that it is not really SM that is killing Baguio City — IT IS THE RESIDENTS THEMSELVES.
31936_10151376375594585_1760859311_n
As a preface to JB Baylon’s album, he wrote:
The city of Baguio began as a mining town…and in the days of my youth was a great place to head to when summer came…cool breeze, the scent of pine, a perfect getaway.
Today it is dying. And mining is not the culprit…unplanned urban expansion is. When Baguio’s hills are deforested to give way to houses, houses that are wantonly built, allegedly by informal settlers who someone get permits from – or are tolerated by – the authorities – then I fear we have not only an environmental or ecological disaster but also a natural calamity-induced disaster-in-the-making!
It might be best to ask geologists, but it seems to me that Baguio’s hills are not solid as rock but more like clay soil in nature…so I have been asking myself through the years as I notice how the hillsides get slowly covered by houses: will the hillsides hold?
Okay, girls and boys, can you say Cherry Hills landslide? What has Acting Vice Mayor/Slash Councilor Yangot done to ensure these houses will not slide off the hills?
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About Paul Farol
Try not to take me too seriously.
Pia Ranada’s Article on Andanar’s Foreign Trips Exemplifies Rappler’s Brand of Lazy Journalism - January 15, 2018
Your Tito’s Car: The Ford Ecosport - December 12, 2017
Preview of Part Three of “The Real Enemies and Traitors of the Fourth Estate” - December 4, 2017
On The Real Enemies and Traitors Of The Fourth Estate (Part Two: Syndicates) - December 1, 2017
On The Real Enemies and Traitors of the Fourth Estate - November 30, 2017
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The Rise of Syndicated Environmental Advocacies
The Rise of Syndicated Environmental Advocacies
February 16, 2013
In "Development"
File Under Oddities: Project Save 182 Misleads Sting into Changing Concert Venue
File Under Oddities: Project Save 182 Misleads Sting into Changing Concert Venue
October 20, 2012
In "Environment"
Project Save 182 Adrift in Ennui After SM Baguio Revises Its Expansion Plan
The most recent word about SM Baguio City is that has revised its expansion plans and this will result in a lower number of pine trees affected. Apparently, just like the way they harked to Olivier Ochanine's petition to save the Philamlife Theatre, SM seems to be showing that it…
September 19, 2013
In "Development"
Categories: Development, Environment / 46 Responses / by Paul Farol
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46 Comments on "Why Baguio Is Dying"
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grace bandoy
Guest
grace bandoy
Leandro Yangot is not with the local government anymore. He used to be the ABC (Association of Barangay Councils) President automatically making him a councilor of this city. last 2010 elections he ran for congressman but lost. he is again running for councilor this 2013…. it is true that it is all these one million people here that’s killing baguio i personally blame the universities here and the call centers for attracting all these gazillions of people to come here and reside why dont all these universities and call centers build their institutions in pangasinan, la union, tarlac or ilocos?… Read more »
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
da cow
Guest
da cow
I think you shouldn’t blame schools for setting up in baguio. SLU is a very old university and it wouldn’t make sense for them to build their annex school far away from the main university. I blame the government and the informal settlers for the condition of baguio right now.SLU is known for being the light of the north and i would want to keep it that way.
0 REPLY3 years 1 month ago
Libertas
Guest
Libertas
the truth is that in the 3rd world things inevitably reduce to the lowest common denominator. heritage, style and culture are subservient to short term greed without any conception of long term integrated planning. baguio is not the only victim, now or in the future.
irrespective of playing a blame game, the underlying rationale is the community culture, aided and abetted by local politics, which always has a grubby and greedy finger in the pie.
a case of the blind leading the blind.
a corrupt mayor adding fuel to the fire
and somewhere of beauty becoming a cess-pit
long live korea
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
MidwayHaven
Guest
MidwayHaven
There are no real environmental groups in Baguio; just groups of people with their own vested interests.
It is arrogant for people to destroy Nature, but it is equally as arrogant for people to save Nature.
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
Analyn
Guest
Analyn
I couldn’t agree more.
0 REPLY1 year 11 months ago
guy aliping
Guest
guy aliping
baguio did not began as a mining town….it was the americans who planned,designed and created baguio as their R&R with a capacity of a quarter of a million people.
baguio is not dying. it is developing like any other beautiful cities in the world. sm came in adding more beauty to baguio.
population is the one destroying facade of baguio.
blaming the yangot and daytec is a sign of ignorance.
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
OnesimusUnbound
Guest
OnesimusUnbound
The picture of Baguio in the article doesn’t look like a beautiful place.
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
MidwayHaven
Guest
MidwayHaven
On the contrary, SM made Baguio a worse place than it is today. Sure, Baguio was already bad before the Sy’s purchased the land where SM now stands, but SM brought the Pinoy shopping mall culture to a city that quite frankly never needed it. The Yangots and the Daytecs are definitely to blame on a large part. If you’ve been reading previous articles and evidences presented by commenters on GRP, you’d find out that the Daytecs have always supported (and will again support the re-election of) the incumbent Baguio mayor Mauricio Domogan, who welcomed SM with open arms. It… Read more »
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
Alvin
Guest
Alvin
You are in denial. I have been to Baguio almost twice a year as a child in the 90s. It was beautiful then. I went there last 2009, 2010, 2011, big parts of it are just crap now.
0 REPLY4 years 3 months ago
sancho alconce
Guest
sancho alconce
Baguio does not have the monopoly of a city dying from its own inhabitants. Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Bacolod, Davao City, Gensan, Iloilo and Butuan are now showing advanced symptoms.
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
ChinoF
Member
ChinoF
Was is it here or in the Facebook group that someone posted, life has become so hard and expensive in the rural areas that instead of buying LPG, they just chop every tree in sight for firewood. Now think of this situation for the squatters in Baguio. That may explain one big cause of Baguio’s degradation as a tourist site.
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
Paul Farol
Guest
Paul Farol
Chino, using wood as cooking fuel has long been a practice in the provinces. The next fuel of choice is kerosene. People in the provinces are usually the ones who have access to the “bayan” or town — it’s pretty hard to bring LPG from the bayan to a remote rural area.
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
FALCO DINGAL
Guest
FALCO DINGAL
PAUL FAROL- I SUGGEST YOU ALSO INCLUDE IN THIS WRITE UP THE EFFECTS OF THE TITLED ANCESTRAL LAND CLAIMS TO THE DETERIORATION OF BAGUIO.. RECENTLY, MANY PORTIONS OF LAND ARE ANCESTRALLY CLAIMED.. EVEN THE PRESIDENTIAL RESIDENCE HERE IS ANCESTRALLY CLAIMED..
0 REPLY3 years 11 months ago
Analyn
Guest
Analyn
What’s wrong with reclaiming what is meant to be owned? Are you sure that reclaiming ancestral lands leads to deforestation and deterioration of the city? If so, what an accusation you have there against the IPs of Baguio. Do your research first.The Ibalois did not build buildings, condominiums, malls, or mansions in their lands.
P.S. Granting a CALT is not as easy as serving you your order in a restaurant.There’s a process involved.There are legit titles and there are questionable ones.
0 REPLY1 year 11 months ago
monk
Guest
monk
If residents are the problem, then that doesn’t help mall owners who rely on the same as customers.
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
Myrna Crowther
Guest
Myrna Crowther
I left Baguio City in 1980’s to come to live in the US and the last time I went to visit this beautiful Baguio City, was in 2011. I once thought that Baguio was one of the best places to live, but not anymore. It pains me to realize that it is too crowded, polluted, and God forbid, it could be considered as a dangerous place/ not the safest place to live, in terms of crime rates. I was/ and still am so disappointed and saddened how crowded and polluted the place is now a days. And noticing at how… Read more »
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
benign0
Admin
benign0
Pinoys have a reverse-Midas Touch. Everything they touch turns into crap.
0 REPLY4 years 10 months ago
Carl Van Hoven
Guest
Carl Van Hoven
I completely agree and I’ve often wondered why.But that’s like opening a big can of worms.
0 REPLY3 years 1 month ago
Baltazar Dioquino
Guest
Baltazar Dioquino
How can you have intelligent analysis if ‘the facts’ on which it is based is false? Yangot is not the Vice-Mayor of Baguio City. He was the no.1 Councilor for a time and became acting vice-mayor but is no longer in the City Government.
Responsible blogger? Hmmmm….
0 REPLY4 years 8 months ago
roly
Guest
roly
quote: “On the contrary, SM made Baguio a worse place than it is today. Sure, Baguio was already bad before the Sy’s purchased the land where SM now stands, but SM brought the Pinoy shopping mall culture to a city that quite frankly never needed it.”
seriously? why sm only?? center mall and cooyeesan were here first. think back…what have you done for baguio??
anyway i do agree with what you have posted earlier….”just groups of people with their own vested interests”
0 REPLY4 years 7 months ago
MidwayHaven
Guest
MidwayHaven
SM, Center Mall, and Coo Yee San have ALL destroyed Baguio. Add to that the vegetable farmers, so-called “ancestral land” claimants, and also ALL of the residents who choose to have individual houses all over the City. All these people destroyed Baguio. Worse, even the hypocritical pseudo-environmentalists like Save 182 are contributing to its destruction by claiming to have a monopoly on “environmental awareness” and “green activism.” And why should I mention what I have done to save Baguio? I promise you I have done my part in making the City a better place, but I would rather not brag… Read more »
0 REPLY4 years 7 months ago
abner
Guest
abner
last time i was in baguio was in 2005 and even then the urban planning and pollution in the city proper made me not want to come back ever
0 REPLY4 years 6 months ago
Violet Bolwer
Guest
Violet Bolwer
The last time my family went there was in December 2010. Expecting Baguio to be like what they were when they were still small, my children all grown up, and me and my husband, were all disappointed. Pollution and traffic is terrible in the central city. Good thing we’re booked at Hotel Elizabeth which is a little far from the central so less pollution and no traffic. What happened to Baguio? It even stinks. Long time ago when you go to Baguio you will really smell the fresh air and the scent of the pine trees. Now? It’s replaced by… Read more »
0 REPLY4 years 6 months ago
Ron
Guest
Ron
Sad ending to a beautiful article. Sad for the environment, but more sad for the author for failing to maintain focus on the main issue. The main issue of the article, and more importantly Baguio City, and the Philippines in large is not land-slide! The main issue here is deforestation, extinction, destruction first-hand, not second-hand! Land-slide is the lesser of the two evils! This article was supposed to focus on the destruction of nature, but suddenly half way through it turns its back on the real problem and starts getting populistic by suddenly crying out the cause of the deforesters,… Read more »
0 REPLY3 years 11 months ago
MidwayHaven
Guest
MidwayHaven
Um, if you read closely, the article only mentions landslides in passing, and as an effect of ecological collapse. The focus on the article is still focused on Baguio’s decay.
0 REPLY3 years 11 months ago
Alex A
Guest
Alex A
It is not only the local politicians who can not go against the real causes of environmental degradation in Baguio and Benguet, but there are also government bureaucrats who have tremendous responsibilities in keeping our environment good. Both do nothing effective except some press releases to deodorize their image.
0 REPLY3 years 8 months ago
Alex A
Guest
Alex A
The failure of the local government is evident in its inability to implement a land use plan. If anyone can construct a house in any place, then you can always have a unsightly and unsafe hill as shown in this article. But who cares about unsightly and unsafe dwellings? what is important is that they (squatters, miners, vegetable growers, LGUs) benefit from it. So this will likely grow and continue, until nature acts and stops it all, in a grand fashion, a disaster that can kill many. Well, history repeats itself…until we learn our lesson.
0 REPLY3 years 8 months ago
allan
Guest
allan
Corruption- that’s what makes baguio today.
0 REPLY3 years 8 months ago
Ronaldo
Guest
Ronaldo
I Love Baguio very much, but I saw Baguio’s transformation from “Good to Worse” condition. When you get to the proper city it says “The Cleanest and Peaceful City in the Philippines, but to my dismay due to the facts that everywhere you go now there’s garbage’s all over not to mention the “Graffiti” on Street Signs and Government walls etc., a clear act of Vandalism that nobody knows if the Mayor of Baguio is getting its attention or just keeping a eye blinder. Then there’s the uncontrollable muslim vendors who doesn’t respect the culture and cleanliness of the Local… Read more »
0 REPLY3 years 7 months ago
MidwayHaven
Guest
MidwayHaven
I’d like to think that too much love killed Baguio.
0 REPLY3 years 7 months ago
purplejacket
Guest
purplejacket
Di po lokal ng baguio ang mga Ifugaos. The Ibalois are. Igorots/Cordillerans are the general term to refer to the original inhabitants of the Cordilleras.
Back to the topic, I don’t think that the destruction of Baguio is caused by Muslims or Koreans or lowlanders alone. Not even just by Yangot and Daytec (who, by the way, is a human rights activist). It’s a collaboration of many things, centered on greed. I very much miss my old Baguio too and I am not sure if we will ever get it back.
0 REPLY2 years 1 month ago
johnny bangloy
Guest
johnny bangloy
hindi na po maibabalik ang mga bundok na pinatag nila. mga punong kahoy pwede pa..,pero ang mgagandang kabundukan na madalas namin puntahan nuon ay wala na
0 REPLY1 year 11 months ago
Aeta
Guest
Aeta
That is the sad fact about Failipinos; they are willing to sacrifice the natural beauty of their country, at a chance to make a profit and to appear “world class” material to the rest of the world.
0 REPLY1 year 11 months ago
Ronaldo
Guest
Ronaldo
You can Love with Respect and not Love with Destructive Intent.
0 REPLY3 years 7 months ago
marie
Guest
marie
Just when I thought Baguio is sold to Korea. How come that there are so many korean establishments lately? I think the blame should not be put SM alone or to SLU either. Baguio can never be Baguio without SLU because the institution produced one of the finest graduates in the Philippines. And it has been there since Baguio started. The call centers are government projects to increase employment and corruption also. How come the government installed fly over in BGH and La Trinidad? Fly overs are suppose to connect two or more areas that will make the travel time… Read more »
0 REPLY3 years 7 months ago
Greg
Guest
Greg
Its too late, we can no longer bring back the trees. Maybe we have to exert more effort in planting more trees rather than bashing SM and the politicians. Its always been a conspiracy.
0 REPLY2 years 11 months ago
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THIS is what I think Baguio should look like. Take out all the effing buildings, houses, and shanties.
I’ve been told by one or two people from Baguio that PS182 does NOT reflect the sentiments of most of the people in Baguio City — their sentiments being far more expansive than the narrow focus on 182 trees, one mall chain, and an obvious agenda.
Conversations with residents of Baguio City like Lisa Araneta, Grace Bandoy, and Allison Gundram, as well as conversations with Benguet natives like Louis Pawid, tend to give a more authentic view of the situation and issues in Baguio.
Lisa and Grace have been very vocal about the performance of certain Baguio City and Benguet officials.
I’ve met Lisa personally once or twice and in our long conversation over Alfredo’s famous hamburger, she gave me a three hour briefing on a vast array of political issues involving  Baguio City and the rest of the Cordillera Autonomous Region .  It gave me more reason to respect Philippine northern cultures and how for the most part, they tend to solve their problems by themselves — I suspect, this is because of a deeply ingrained trait of self-sufficiency.  They’re not like some cultures in the Southern Philippines whose leaders have exploited the use of armed groups and secession as a leverage to ask for government funds which they fail to account for later.
Grace has is more vocal about the corruption in Baguio City Hall, pointing out city projects and policy decisions that may have been used by certain officials to make money in the form of kick-backs or unwarranted commissions.
Louis Pawid, a colleague and good friend for many years, immersed me in Benguet culture for a number of months in 2011 and it was in my incursions into the heart of his province that I became aware of the extent of his province’s ecological situation.  I have a feeling that Louis may lecture me later when I point out that the unimpeded spread of agriculture in Benguet — where entire mountains are planted with cabbage, broccoli, string beans and sayote — is probably ruining the ecology of the uplands.
Next to agriculture, the other avenues for development in Benguet are mining and tourism — both of which have their own challenges as far as sustainability are concerned.
So, from Louis’ standpoint, charting the development for Benguet is a tricky problem. Â But I wouldn’t worry too much about it, because, as I have said, our northern Philippine cultures have an ingrained trait of self-sufficiency. Â I have faith that they’ll sort out their problems.
Is Project Save 182 really an environmental group?  Some of the things I’ve seen them doing  and the people who are vocally supporting them online make me a bit suspicious.
Sure, “saving the trees” can easily be lumped together with all other environmental causes and look like one, until you get a whiff of what’s really happening over in most of Benguet — where Baguio is just a small part of.
I have my doubts about Project Save 182 because instead of connecting the ‘earth balling issue’ as an eye-opener to the bigger issue of entire pine forests being replaced by vegetable farms, rice fields, subdivisions, and squatter colonies, it seems they’ve spun off into an attack on the entire SM brand.
Anonymous blogger admits PS182 is just an anti-SM group.
Now, some people who support the group are now also ranting about SM’s labor policies. Â Contractualization, they say, is another ‘evil’ that SM is doing — in response to which, I would probably point out that joblessness and informal labor arrangements are worse and more prevalent.
For sure, people allied with Project Save 182 will make sure other issues will crop up against SM as they wear out or retire their ‘environmentalist’ veneer.
In the meantime, well, people will still be going to the mall — if not SM’s mall, then Rustans or Robinsons or what-have-you.
In fact, All Souls Day is coming up and I am sure, all the people that PS182 and Boycott SM wants to keep away from the mall chain will definitely turn up in the hundreds of thousands with plastic pumpkin trick or treat pails and cheap costumes.
I suppose PS182 will raise a holler and it will be drowned out by the sounds of cash registers beeping and sales girls greeting everyone “mamser”.
The Boycott SM Facebook Page or Group doesn’t have to bother with me, I am no fan of SM.
I used to like going to the mall, but over the years I began hating going to the mall, any mall. Â I don’t like the crowds in it, I don’t like breathing recycled air even if it is cool, I don’t like the garish displays, I don’t like the being constantly prodded to buy stuff I do not need, having been a trained salesman in my early adulthood I hate sales people who don’t know enough about what they are selling, and I don’t like the intense commercialism of these places — as if we aren’t bombarded enough by commercials, it has to come in the form of a poorly paid girl or guy hawking a brochure or begging you to try out free samples.
Whenever I want to spend time outside my house, I spend it at the Marikina Sports Plaza with my kid and we have a lot of fun running around the place. Â It is far healthier than breathing recycled air while gobbling up what passes for food in food courts or walking around looking at all the cheap stuff Made In China.
And before I end this fourth piece on PS182, let me just point out that it’s absolute stupidity for PS182 to crow about Sting’s decision to change concert venues as a victory for their online campaign.
For one, as I have mentioned in a previous post, the new venue will be in a place that is TRAFFIC ridden on ordinary days. Â Just imagine how it would be like when Sting stages his concert there! OMG! Â Is that at all a triumph for Captain Planet? I don’t think so.
Concerts aren’t exactly environmentally friendly, U2′s 44 concerts is equal to carbon created by the four band members traveling the (34) million miles from Earth to Mars in a passenger plane.
Another is that online campaigning uses the INTERNET, which accounts for 300 million tonnes of CO2 – as much as all the coal, oil and gas burned in Turkey or Poland in one year, or more than half of those burned in the UK.  Moreover, all the gadgets and equipment used by online campaigners come from MINING — which not only involves the destruction of forests but also pollutes the earth and water.
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About Paul Farol
Try not to take me too seriously.
Pia Ranada’s Article on Andanar’s Foreign Trips Exemplifies Rappler’s Brand of Lazy Journalism - January 15, 2018
Your Tito’s Car: The Ford Ecosport - December 12, 2017
Preview of Part Three of “The Real Enemies and Traitors of the Fourth Estate” - December 4, 2017
On The Real Enemies and Traitors Of The Fourth Estate (Part Two: Syndicates) - December 1, 2017
On The Real Enemies and Traitors of the Fourth Estate - November 30, 2017
Spread it!
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Categories: Environment, Society / 50 Responses / by Paul Farol
Leave a Reply
50 Comments on "Self Righteous, Pseudo Cause Oriented Groups Do More Damage Than ‘Greedy Corporations’"
THIS is what I think Baguio should look like. Take out all the effing buildings, houses, and shanties.
I’ve been told by one or two people from Baguio that PS182 does NOT reflect the sentiments of most of the people in Baguio City — their sentiments being far more expansive than the narrow focus on 182 trees, one mall chain, and an obvious agenda.
Conversations with residents of Baguio City like Lisa Araneta, Grace Bandoy, and Allison Gundram, as well as conversations with Benguet natives like Louis Pawid, tend to give a more authentic view of the situation and issues in Baguio.
Lisa and Grace have been very vocal about the performance of certain Baguio City and Benguet officials.
I’ve met Lisa personally once or twice and in our long conversation over Alfredo’s famous hamburger, she gave me a three hour briefing on a vast array of political issues involving  Baguio City and the rest of the Cordillera Autonomous Region .  It gave me more reason to respect Philippine northern cultures and how for the most part, they tend to solve their problems by themselves — I suspect, this is because of a deeply ingrained trait of self-sufficiency.  They’re not like some cultures in the Southern Philippines whose leaders have exploited the use of armed groups and secession as a leverage to ask for government funds which they fail to account for later.
Grace has is more vocal about the corruption in Baguio City Hall, pointing out city projects and policy decisions that may have been used by certain officials to make money in the form of kick-backs or unwarranted commissions.
Louis Pawid, a colleague and good friend for many years, immersed me in Benguet culture for a number of months in 2011 and it was in my incursions into the heart of his province that I became aware of the extent of his province’s ecological situation.  I have a feeling that Louis may lecture me later when I point out that the unimpeded spread of agriculture in Benguet — where entire mountains are planted with cabbage, broccoli, string beans and sayote — is probably ruining the ecology of the uplands.
Next to agriculture, the other avenues for development in Benguet are mining and tourism — both of which have their own challenges as far as sustainability are concerned.
So, from Louis’ standpoint, charting the development for Benguet is a tricky problem. Â But I wouldn’t worry too much about it, because, as I have said, our northern Philippine cultures have an ingrained trait of self-sufficiency. Â I have faith that they’ll sort out their problems.
Is Project Save 182 really an environmental group?  Some of the things I’ve seen them doing  and the people who are vocally supporting them online make me a bit suspicious.
Sure, “saving the trees” can easily be lumped together with all other environmental causes and look like one, until you get a whiff of what’s really happening over in most of Benguet — where Baguio is just a small part of.
I have my doubts about Project Save 182 because instead of connecting the ‘earth balling issue’ as an eye-opener to the bigger issue of entire pine forests being replaced by vegetable farms, rice fields, subdivisions, and squatter colonies, it seems they’ve spun off into an attack on the entire SM brand.
Anonymous blogger admits PS182 is just an anti-SM group.
Now, some people who support the group are now also ranting about SM’s labor policies. Â Contractualization, they say, is another ‘evil’ that SM is doing — in response to which, I would probably point out that joblessness and informal labor arrangements are worse and more prevalent.
For sure, people allied with Project Save 182 will make sure other issues will crop up against SM as they wear out or retire their ‘environmentalist’ veneer.
In the meantime, well, people will still be going to the mall — if not SM’s mall, then Rustans or Robinsons or what-have-you.
In fact, All Souls Day is coming up and I am sure, all the people that PS182 and Boycott SM wants to keep away from the mall chain will definitely turn up in the hundreds of thousands with plastic pumpkin trick or treat pails and cheap costumes.
I suppose PS182 will raise a holler and it will be drowned out by the sounds of cash registers beeping and sales girls greeting everyone “mamser”.
The Boycott SM Facebook Page or Group doesn’t have to bother with me, I am no fan of SM.
I used to like going to the mall, but over the years I began hating going to the mall, any mall. Â I don’t like the crowds in it, I don’t like breathing recycled air even if it is cool, I don’t like the garish displays, I don’t like the being constantly prodded to buy stuff I do not need, having been a trained salesman in my early adulthood I hate sales people who don’t know enough about what they are selling, and I don’t like the intense commercialism of these places — as if we aren’t bombarded enough by commercials, it has to come in the form of a poorly paid girl or guy hawking a brochure or begging you to try out free samples.
Whenever I want to spend time outside my house, I spend it at the Marikina Sports Plaza with my kid and we have a lot of fun running around the place. Â It is far healthier than breathing recycled air while gobbling up what passes for food in food courts or walking around looking at all the cheap stuff Made In China.
And before I end this fourth piece on PS182, let me just point out that it’s absolute stupidity for PS182 to crow about Sting’s decision to change concert venues as a victory for their online campaign.
For one, as I have mentioned in a previous post, the new venue will be in a place that is TRAFFIC ridden on ordinary days. Â Just imagine how it would be like when Sting stages his concert there! OMG! Â Is that at all a triumph for Captain Planet? I don’t think so.
Concerts aren’t exactly environmentally friendly, U2′s 44 concerts is equal to carbon created by the four band members traveling the (34) million miles from Earth to Mars in a passenger plane.
Another is that online campaigning uses the INTERNET, which accounts for 300 million tonnes of CO2 – as much as all the coal, oil and gas burned in Turkey or Poland in one year, or more than half of those burned in the UK.  Moreover, all the gadgets and equipment used by online campaigners come from MINING — which not only involves the destruction of forests but also pollutes the earth and water.
print
About Paul Farol
Try not to take me too seriously.
Pia Ranada’s Article on Andanar’s Foreign Trips Exemplifies Rappler’s Brand of Lazy Journalism - January 15, 2018
Your Tito’s Car: The Ford Ecosport - December 12, 2017
Preview of Part Three of “The Real Enemies and Traitors of the Fourth Estate” - December 4, 2017
On The Real Enemies and Traitors Of The Fourth Estate (Part Two: Syndicates) - December 1, 2017
On The Real Enemies and Traitors of the Fourth Estate - November 30, 2017
Spread it!
More
Related
Why Baguio Is Dying
Why Baguio Is Dying
March 2, 2013
In "Development"
Organic Farms and
Organic Farms and "Eco-Parks" are Ruining Baguio's Mountainsides
June 5, 2014
In "Culture"
The Rise of Syndicated Environmental Advocacies
The Rise of Syndicated Environmental Advocacies
February 16, 2013
In "Development"
Categories: Environment, Society / 50 Responses / by Paul Farol
Leave a Reply
50 Comments on "Self Righteous, Pseudo Cause Oriented Groups Do More Damage Than ‘Greedy Corporations’"
