ON 1 APRIL 1889, Graciano Lopez Jaena of Jaro, Iloilo founded the freemason Lodge Revolucion in Barcelona, Spain which counts among its members Jose Rizal, Mariano Ponce, Marcelo H. Del Pilar, Jose Alejandrino, Antonio and Juan Luna and Pedro Serrano Laktaw. Later renamed Lodge Solidaridad, it is composed of intellectuals who petitioned the Spanish Parliament for the restoration of Philippine Parliamentary representation.
In honor of Dith Pran, one of those who showed the world the value of journalism… IloiloViews.com
By Douglas Martin
The New York Times
30 March 2008
DITH PRAN, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died on Sunday at a hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, N.J.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, which had spread, said his friend Sydney H. Schanberg.
Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation. His credo: Make no move unless there was a 50-50 chance of not being killed.
<Visit The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project website> Continue reading »
RECENTLY, there was a news item that said, Filipinos are not good in preparing for their retirement. That’s true!
They do not prepare to be independent. Retirement pay, with increasing prices, is not enough to keep body and soul together. Especially if there is no other source of income.
But a bigger problem is our senior citizens do not plan to remain active in retirement. They should remain active.
WHEN I TURNED on the radio yesterday, the first news I heard from an excited newscaster sounded good: Finally, after three straight weeks of dry draws, the six to 49 lotto draw of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) last Sunday presented one jackpot winner of P249-million pesos. Somebody from northern Luzon, the newscaster intoned obviously with no idea on winner’s identity – is very, very, very lucky!
Whether or not there’s a real winner, such a rare phenomenon only amplifies our earlier observation that it would be harder to guess a bank vault’s combination lock number than guess the lucky six number combination from one to 49. In the entire month of March, some 15 million lotto tickets must have been sold out before producing a single winner.
THE EUROPEAN UNION commended the Philippines last week in less than ecstatic terms for the “substantial” gross domestic product (GDP) growth it achieved in 2007.
Speaking at a public forum, EU Ambassador Alistair MacDonald acknowledged the 7.3-percent growth in 2007, saying, “We recognize that this is the best macroeconomic performance in some 50 years.”
However, MacDonald immediately discounted the acknowledgment by promptly pointing to the more glaring downsides of the growth. He said: “You have seen the recent data that came from the National Statistical Coordinating Board (NSCB) that the rate of poverty in the Philippines as a proportion of the population living on less than a dollar a day has in fact increased from 30 percent to 33 percent notwithstanding the improved economic performance overall.”
A BIG MISTAKE!
That’s the first thing that came to mind after reading reports that a member of the Cabinet had threatened to send tax examiners to private companies following the Makati Business Club’s (MBC) statement calling for the resignation of officials in connection with the controversial national broadband network (NBN)-ZTE contract. And, very quickly, an officer of the MBC responded: “Bring them [the tax men] on!”
My apprehension was confirmed when the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP), one of the most respected business groups in the country, also issued a formal response to the alleged threat.
THE OPPOSITION is insisting that the country is undergoing a rice crisis and that the administration is to blame for the rising prices of the different varieties of rice.
If one presidentiable is to be believed, it seems that the government has not done a thing to address the many problems plaguing the agricultural sector, especially the rice farmers.
Let’s take another look at the present rice “crisis.” In Asia, many rice-producing countries are having problems with rice stocks due to calamities and the rapid expansion of cities which encroach on rice lands.
CONGRATULATIONS to the new lawyers, especially the two topnothcers, Jennifer T. Ong of U.P. and Yvanna Maalat of Ateneo, second and third placers, respectively, both from Bacolod.
Ong’s maternal grandaunt, Lily Valencia was also No. 2 in a bar exam years ago. Maalat is the daughter of lawyer Jack and Carissa Maalat, granddaughter of Mrs. Nena de Leon.
SOME BUSINESSMEN are just so conscienceless. Give them a reason, even the slightest reason to speculate, like the recent reckless talks on rice shortage, and they would jack up the prices of their commodities without the least sympathetic thought for the buyers, many of whom could now hardly eat three times a day.
I was at a supermarket last Saturday to make my weekly purchases and I was shocked to learn that the price of rice I would always buy had gone up. From the previous week’s P29.40 a kilo to P33.40 a kilo! That’s an increase in price of over 13 percent!
ILOILO HAS BEEN known as the “Food Basket and Rice Granary of the Philippines.” We wonder if we still are because now, we see many of our people consuming National Food Authority (NFA) rice. About 50 percent of more than 4,700 square kilometers of our land is devoted to agriculture, with rice as its main product.
We have 204,385 hectares in Iloilo devoted to rice farming, of which 106,934 hectares are irrigated and 97,451 hectares rain-fed. There are 146,187 farmers engaged in rice production.
 | Subscribe Now For Updates! |
