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“We are in a very crucial time, and our pork producers are in such vulnerable state, if the DA and the Duterte regime rely too much on importation now to unreliably lower prices, millions of small hog raisers are bound to go bankrupt and close permanently. Only increased local production can sustainably lower pork prices."
Under EO No. 124, the price ceiling for a kilogram of pork liempo is at P300, a kilogram of pork kasim at P270, and a kilogram of dressed chicken at P160.
For almost 30 years, I was granted the privilege of being issued a permanent resident VISA. I have been living my mission in the Philippines and I have no further desire than to continue my mission among the oppressed workers.
“Artists know that their freedom to create the art that they wish to is premised on the freedom of expression. When this freedom is taken away, so is their freedom to create art. And they create art to serve the basic sectors, because we basically owe everything to farmers and workers—what we eat, the things that we use everyday. When they are suppressed, then everything else is rendered meaningless.”
Carinderia vendors and consumers considerably lean on each other to combat the threat of food insecurity, but several vendors also stressed that they can’t hold on long enough and hope to receive subsidies from the government.
The stories in Sitio Compra and Sitio Buntog share many sad parallels. They are both stories of land-use conversion and violence against the nation’s dwindling agricultural communities. While peasants clamor for land reform, the Philippine government has deemed land-use conversion by large corporations as an acceptable substitute.
It was then that I knew that alternative news agencies like Bulatlat are instrumental in speaking truth to power. Without the shackles of corporate interest that filters and distorts news agenda, independent media is what is grounds us and directs us to reality.
"It contradicts the proper protocols of handling children. Supposedly they should have been brought to a social welfare facility and not in an undisclosed place."
On the third oral argument, petitioners against the Philippine terror law raised before the Supreme Court the longer period of detention without charges under Anti-Terrorism Act.
The Supreme Court junked the electoral protest filed by former Senator Bongbong Marcos against Vice President Leni Robredo on Tuesday, Feb. 16.
“We are but ants to these businessmen, ants they can crush,” Tatay Ricky would later on tell me of their struggle for their homes. “The government should be focusing on us.”
Due to the COVID-19 lockdown imposed last year, students were not able to return to their communities. But with the government's easing of travel restrictions, the university said plans have been made for their return. Four of the delegates, in fact, have already returned to their respective communities.
“If human rights defenders are not brutally murdered, they are thrown behind bars over absurd criminal charges based on perjured testimonies and planted evidence, all to concoct the lie that human rights defenders are terrorists or criminals.”
Government workers held a protest today, Feb. 15 against the rising prices of staple goods and services, decrying that their salaries have remained low.
“Across the planet, the majority of front line workers, health care workers, home care workers, domestic workers, and farmworkers are women. Like the Earth, they are the least valued and protected,”
The case filed by a barangay chair in Nueva Ecija against a local community radio station over an alleged violation of Republic Act 11469 or the “Bayanihan to Heal as One Act” has been dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Media groups reiterated their demand for the immediate release of Filipino journalist Lady Ann Salem as she remains behind bars more than a week since a Mandaluyong court dismissed the charges against her.
The soft cry fades away into
the core of a clenched fist
to shout out as
a cry of protest,
a cry for freedom.
On this feast of a martyr for God, let us remember the love of mothers who lost their sons and daughters to this nonsensical war on drugs, those healthcare workers serving the frontlines risking their lives out of love and care for Covid patients, the homeless, hungry and needy, the children suffering in desperate conditions, the women and children victims of domestic violence whose numbers have risen in the advent of the lockdown, the rising number of out-of-school youth and adults, the LGBTQ community pushed to the margins of society, and many more who suffer a martyrdom, a loss of the sense of self, a loss of a sense of hope.
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