(I)n the comforting process of tickling the “funny bone” of the masses, the social problem of poverty and other attendant problems are forgotten or laid aside. It’s like giving a sugared chocolate to a malnourished child in tatters. This is tyranny in its most noxious form, a masked expression of treachery.
And the State, quick to exploit these religious and semi-religious spectacles as tourist attractions, has soon color-coded them in their Tourism Calendar.
The media organizations under BUGKOS Media Action Group strongly condemn the killing of broadcaster Rogelio ‘Tata’ Butalid of Tagum City, and we join the insistent call for justice for all victims of media killings in our country. We demand no less than the most decisive state intervention to end the senseless murder of journalists and the blatant mockery of our nation’s democracy and justice system.
I fear that the captivity of physicist Kim Gargar that magnifies the threat to the lives and liberty of other people’s scientists would also cripple the efforts to investigate the dynamics of the recent disasters like typhoons Pablo and Yolanda.
…when Lee Kuan Yew saw how intelligent, creative, passionate, and hardworking the Filipinos were in Singapore, he was moved to say that , if only Filipino leaders will listen to the people, there’s nothing in the world that the Filipinos cannot do. I can’t agree more.
So when foreign aid now pours into our country, we are effusively thankful for their help was badly needed. But while others fear of ulterior motive, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alfredo del Rosario seemed to validate the doubt when he called for an increased US military presence in the country.
Kim’s fight is the fight of all Filipino professionals for the right to practice their vocations freely and safely, for the chance for them to open themselves to the wonderful fulfillment of serving others.
IT HAS BEEN four years since 58 individuals, including 32 journalists and media workers, were brutally killed in Ampatuan town,…
The swift netizen defense of alleged Yolanda looters establishes that violence is permissible in the name of survival. But, we have to ask, survival under what conditions? Survival according to whose standards?
The answer to the first seems to be that violence is permissible under conditions over which people have no control, such as natural disasters.
No one should expect someone like, say, Henry Sy to be in any real danger from any kind of typhoon. The more resources you have the greater your chances of surviving. So with this in mind, natural calamities are actually just another form of social injustice.
