The God Culture: You Do Not Live in a Third World Country

Ashamed American and Proud Filipino Timothy Jay Schwab of The God Culture has a profound message for his fellow kababayans. You do not live in a third world country.

10:53 Because He's gonna pour out His Spirit on all flesh. And we're gonna see prophecies and we're gonna see visions and dreams and we're gonna see people being moved and in this nation as the identity of the Philippines is restored we will see that more than in anywhere else on earth. Now, how do I know that? It all goes back to what I'm about to teach you. It all goes back to your identity. Who are you and what is this land?

You do not live in a third world country. I'm sorry, they can try to misdefine it all they want. They have more resources in this nation than practically any place on earth. In fact in all resources on earth the Philippines, the little Philippines, ranks number five in overall resources on all of the earth.    

https://www.facebook.com/sabbathbc.congregation/videos/460905962381641

So, let me get this straight. The Philippines is not a third world country because the nation has a lot of resources? And what are these resources? Untapped mineral reserves? There's gold in the earth and that makes the Philippines precious and its people special? The very notion is ridiculous.

First of all the term third world comes from the Cold War. It is not a derogatory term.

The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

So, Tim is dead wrong. The Philippines is indeed a third world nation in respect of that definition.

Second of all the term third world country has come to mean a developing nation.

A developing country is a sovereign state with a less developed industrial base and a low Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries.

Developing countries tend to have some characteristics in common often due to their histories or geographies. For example, with regards to health risks, they commonly have: low levels of access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene; energy poverty; high levels of pollution (e.g. air pollution, indoor air pollution, water pollution); high proportion of people with tropical and infectious diseases (neglected tropical diseases); a high number of road traffic accidents; and generally poor infrastructure. Often, there is also widespread poverty, high crime rates, low education levels, inadequate access to family planning services, many informal settlements, corruption at all government levels, and political instability. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country

Could there be a better description of the Philippines than the foregoing paragraph? Going by this definition Timothy Jay Schwab is, as always, wrong. The Philippines is certainly a third world country. Would a first world country be celebrating the fact no one is crapping outside?

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1171111

The Department of Health (DOH) has recognized the town of Bobon, Northern Samar for achieving Zero Open Defecation (ZOD) status.

The DOH announced on Thursday that the town met the criteria based on validation by a team from the regional office, local government units, and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (Unicef).

“This is to encourage more municipalities in the region to vie for this very noble and effective strategy to promote environmental sanitation and a healthy Eastern Visayas,” said DOH regional information officer Jelyn Lopez Malibago in a Facebook post.

Bobon is the second town in Northern Samar to earn such status. Last year, Mapanas was declared the first town in the province to achieve the status by the regional validation team. 

Mapanas received PHP200,000 from the provincial government for accomplishing the elimination of open defecation, improved and safe sanitation practices in the town.

The Provincial Board earlier allowed the granting of incentives to towns in Northern Samar that achieved ZOD status as declared by the Department of Health (DOH).

Under the ZOD campaign, the DOH is pushing that each house should have a basic toilet facility by 2025 to achieve universal health care.

As of 2019, only 11 percent of villages nationwide (4,625 out of 42,045) are certified ZOD, where people have abandoned the practice of open defecation, according to DOH, and families have learned to use a toilet and wash their hands after use.

Only 11% of the villages in the Philippines have achieved zero outside defecation? What's wrong with these people? Don't they know the Philippines is full of resources and that their true identity is that they are the Lost Tribes of Israel? Why don't they act like it?

You know what's a more important resource than gold? Food! In the Philippines that means rice. Sadly the Philippines does not produce enough rice to feed the nation so they are, along with China, the world's number one importer of rice.

https://business.inquirer.net/290438/ph-still-worlds-biggest-rice-importer

The Philippines is expected to remain the world’s biggest rice importer this year even with a slowdown in importation due to excessive supply and improved local production.

In a report published this week, the United States Department of Agriculture-Foreign Agricultural Services projected the country’s rice imports to reach 2.5 million metric tons (MT) by year-end—lower by 13.8 percent from last year, but still the highest globally.

China, with a population of 1.4 billion, is expected to remain the second biggest rice importer in the world with 2.3 million MT of imported rice.

The Philippines became the world’s biggest rice importer last year with a record 2.9 million MT after the government removed importation limits.

Despite being an agricultural country and with the Department of Agriculture (DA) devoting a bulk of its budget to improve local production, the Philippines’ rice imports have nearly quadrupled in the last three years.

The rice problem continues to grow and there is no end in sight to importing the nation's staple food. I have written at length about the rice problems elsewhere. But why can't the rice farmers realize that the Philippines has lots of resources and that their true identity is that they are the Lost Tribes of Israel? Surely once the know that then domestic rice production will soar, right?

But let's go back to the untapped mineral resources that, according to Kuya Timothy Jay Schwab, make the Philippines not a third world country. Why do they remain untapped after thousands of years?

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2074698/whats-stopping-philippines-mining-its-riches

When mining investors talk of the Philippines, they often boast of its wealth of untapped mineral reserves. But as one political controversy after another rocks the industry, miners are beginning to worry that’s all they will ever be: untapped.

In one fell swoop, the Philippines Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) shut down more than half of all operating mines last month. According to Secretary Gina Lopez, its audit found “serious environmental violations” in 23 of the country’s 41 mines. The department also cancelled contracts for 75 mining projects still in their exploration stages. The projects are located in watersheds; Lopez said they never should have been approved to begin with.

The country has been marred by many mining disasters, from toxic leaks to mudslides, land-grabbing to smuggling. For many Filipinos, it’s refreshing to see a strong figure standing up against the miners.

The last few years have been difficult for the Philippine mining industry. In 2012, the government decided to overhaul the entire mining tax system, placing a moratorium on all new investment until a new tax law was passed. Five years on, there has been little progress and the moratorium still stands.

“Quite obviously, no foreign investor is going to risk putting money in the Philippines at this point,” Wallace said. “Mining companies are used to dealing with high-risk countries. But there is a limit to what they will take. And where the government can capriciously implement bans and closures… they’re not going to take that chance.”

Mining has a marginal contribution to the Philippine economy. It accounted for just 0.6 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 0.6 per cent of total employment in 2015. But the numbers can be read both ways. The country is getting little out of the mineral reserves it has at hand.

The answer is the government. The Philippines sits on a treasure trove of resources and government regulations are keeping them from being mined.

https://www.bworldonline.com/the-mining-industry-can-save-the-economy/

Our cache of minerals amounts to well over a trillion US dollars, according to the Chamber of Mines. Our estimated levels of metallic and non-metallic minerals was at 7 billion metric tons and 50 billion metric tons, respectively, as per the last comprehensive audit conducted in 1994.

Gold deposits in the Philippines are among the largest in the world with reserves estimated at 101.6 million metric tons. Iron ore reserves are at 298 million metric tons. Among non-metallic minerals, limestone reserves are approximately 19.5 billion tons while marble reserves are at 14.5 billion tons. The Philippines leads the world in chromite resources too.

Despite our enormous mineral resources, the contribution of the mining industry to the economy remains minuscule. As of last year, the share of the mining output to GDP was a mere .06%. It contributed only 1.2% to national tax collection, and comprised only 6.3% of exports. In terms of jobs, it employed less than .04% of the workforce. In contrast, the mining sector in Indonesia accounts for 21% of exports and 7% of GDP.

The reason for the underwhelming performance is the moratorium imposed on new mining permits back in 2012 and the ban on open pit mining in 2017.

I am not going to sit here and type a long article listing everything that is wrong with the Philippines. From thousands of people dying every year due to diarrhea because they don't have access to clean water to fires razing the homes of hundreds of people because they are stacked on top of each other to government corruption I have written about it all on this blog. Documenting the facts about the Philippines no one wants to accept is what this blog is all about. 

If you come to this nation like Kuya Timothy Jay Schwab with blinders on your eyes or your head shoved into a place so that you cannot see what is happening then you're gonna have a bad time. You will be living in a world of lies and you will be, like Tim, telling those lies to others. Sure there's good things about this nation. Boracay is beautiful and there are a lot of untapped resources in the earth. But not everybody lives in Boracay. Many people live in shacks with corrugated tin roofs without proper access to clean running water or electricity. The untapped resources of this nation aren't helping them. Even if those resources were dug out of the earth they would not be helping those people. It's past time for Timothy Jay Schwab to stop lying to Filipinos about who they are and about the reality of this nation.