Over the past several days, the whole nation has been abuzz over the shift in the academic calendar of the University of the Philippines, from the June to March cycle to an August to May one. When I say the whole nation I don’t think I am exaggerating as this shift will have clear implications at that level, regardless of how hard some at the UP administration try to separate the University from the rest of the country.
It’s a whole range of our sensibilities that has been affected. Nothing is good enough for us without the quality of the foreign stuff. And in our effort to experience the sense of the foreign, or the ‘imported’ so called, we exult in the thought that we are able to have imitated the alien thing
A Tribute to Amado Guerrero
on his Birthday Anniversay
“Ngano man kahang gi-initan man gyud sa CHR ang atong Mayor, no? Imbestigahan daw tungod sa iyang pamahayag nga patyon ang dakong taeng smuggler sa bugas kun moanhi sa Davao!” [Why should our Mayor be the object of reproof by the CHR on account of his statement that he would kill the Number One rice smuggler if he comes to Davao?”]
My friend Lito rasps: “Ngano man kahang gi-initan man gyud sa CHR ang atong Mayor, no? Imbestigahan daw tungod sa iyang pamahayag nga patyon ang dakong taeng smuggler sa bugas kun moanhi sa Davao!” [Why should our Mayor be the object of reproof by the CHR on account of his statement that he would kill the Number One rice smuggler if he comes to Davao?”]
Women’s lives have been under scrutiny again in a national scene with the media hype on actor Vhong Navarro mauling for the last two weeks. Deniece Cornejo may represent a number of Filipino women designated with a “character.” Such designation troubles me both as a practitioner of social work and as a womanist or women human rights activist.
By DON PAGUSARA Prints & Traces The jubilant call can be heard from all corners in the youth activists’ memory…
(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.
