Category Archives: National Affairs

Lozada in Baguio

From gmanews.tv

BAGUIO CITY – Celebrated ZTE whistleblower Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada is finally coming to the North, and his visit would be capped by a series of dialogues with religious leaders here from April 15 to 16.

Chie Galvez of the Baguio-based Inter-Faith Gathering for Truth and Accountability said Friday Lozada would be accompanied by the Association of Major Religious Superiors in his talk in the afternoon of April 15 at the Saint Louis University Social Hall.

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In the News: Dana Batnag

Remember Dana Batnag? We first blogged about her here and here. In our first post about her, we mentioned that Dana, then only 13 years old, won an international song writing contest sponsored by the UNICEF. You’re wondering about the song she wrote? It’s that very popular song, I Am But a Small Voice, which you sang every time you celebrated United Nations Day.

Anyways, Dana now works as a foreign correspondent with Jiji Press, a Japanese news agency. She’s in the news today because she is suspected of helping alleged coup plotter Capt. Nicanor Faeldon escape during the Manila Penn incident. Dana, whose dad comes from Besao, Mt. Province, denied the accusation and has received the support of her fellow journalists.

Here’s a news report from GMA News on this latest effort of the administration to scare members of the media:

So the RPN video footage in this report is supposed to be the evidence that points to our kailiyan as the suspected journalist who aided an alleged coup plotter? It looks to me like they are just talking. She is a reporter for Christ’s sake. She can interview any news source which Captain Faeldon definitely is. Besides if she is going to commit the crime of aiding an alleged coup plotter, would she do it in a room full of people and cameras?

I also don’t get the story that Faeldon was able to escape because he had a press identification card which Dana supposedly gave him? Really? You have probably the most wanted man in the country for the past five years and he was able to escape because of some silly identification card? So were police authorities too busy looking at ID cards such that they forgot to look at the faces of people they are inspecting? How dumb is that? No wonder Captain Faeldon has been eluding authorities for years. If an ID card is all it takes to escape from hundreds of police and military men who are purposely looking for you, I wonder what a simple wig will do?
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The Sumilao Farmers’ March for Justice

Is there hope for this country? Of course, but you won’t find it in our “leaders” or in our politicians.

Instead, you will find it in ordinary people like the Higaonon farmers of Sumilao, Bukidnon who walked (and are walking) from Mindanao to Manila.

Why are they doing this? Are they crazy? Of course not. They are doing this historic walk to ask the government to give them titles to their land. Under the agrarian reform law, this land should have been awarded to them years ago.

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Ellen at Manila Penn

I was commenting at Ellen’s blog when it suddenly shut down. I don’t know what the problem is. I’m not sure if its the traffic to her blog that shut it down, or whether she shut it down herself, or whether someone got into her blog to shut it down. No matter the reason, I hope she is doing okay. She’s one of the very few journalists I admire because of her truthtelling.

Here’s her last post before her blog shut down:

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