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Wala sa lugar ni kakayahan ng NTF-ELCAC na magsuri ng mga akda. Kung gustong magsulat nila Badoy at Celiz ng literaturang “di subersibo,” magsulat sila. Ngunit malaking insulto sa utak nating mga Pilipino na diktahan ng isang “task force” para sugpuin ang rebolusyonaryong kilusan ang ating sensibilidad, panlasa at kakayahang magproseso ng nababasa at bumuo ng sariling kritika.
If indeed the Marcos II administration intends to bring back the past by, among other means, making ROTC mandatory again, 21 years after it was made an NTSP elective, it could start by first instituting the needed reforms in the program to prevent or at least reduce the corruption, abuses and violence that many associate with it.
But, the greatest preparation of them all is this, are we ready to accept and claim the comprehensive notion of salvation (economic, political, cultural, spiritual and environmental) that only comes from God? Are we ready to follow the way, the truth and the life who is Jesus Christ? We know we will die sometime, but we do not know exactly when. Did we address the things that truly matters, like love, forgiveness and reconciliation before we die?
“Withdrawal from the Rome Statute does not discharge a state party from the obligations it has incurred as a member. Consequently, liability for the alleged summary killings and other atrocities committed in the course of the war on drugs [during the Duterte administration] is not nullified or negated.”
The US aggressive military postures toward China entails a maximized implementation of the VFA and EDCA as well as a more extensive presence of US military troops and facilities through US military largesse swapped with local oligarchic fealty to US military and economic interests.
We don't owe the Joint Hague Declaration solely to FVR. But that he enabled that part of our history, which, to my mind is our march toward just peace, is a legacy that each president of the Philippines after FVR must be measured against.
Marcos Jr.'s priority is to ensure that the neoliberal policies that his predecessor President Rodrigo Duterte passed are maximized to create the most favorable environment for big businesses, including foreign capital. To become an investment destination, the administration will provide massive tax breaks to corporations through the CREATE Law and provide foreign companies more profit-making opportunities with the amended laws on public services and foreign investments.
Mula kay Marcos at ngayon, balik kay Marcos, hindi tumigil ang karahasan ng estado.
Priests and Levites were the good guys. They were models of society in word and deed. They were expected to help the wounded: their fellow Jew, on that “bloody way” connecting Jerusalem to Jericho. But they did not.
A replication of mindless conformity and blind obedience is in process in the Philippines, where the power elite and its minions regard dissent and the diversity of views necessary in a democracy as a vice rather than virtue. Instead of unity in diversity, what the oligarchy wants is unity in conformity.
In his first Cabinet meeting last Tuesday, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced that economic recovery takes precedence over all concerns under his administration and that his economic managers would set the “central policy.”
Today we also are called to draw closer to Jesus and his mission of bringing about a new reign of justice, peace and love. As disciples, we know from experience the path is not easy. Moving into a new Government, we need to heed the advice of Jesus to his talmidim to be alert, especially as we see hungry farmers still being arrested for planting food crops, false charges against progressive people and organizations continuing, ecological defenders harassed and killed and indigenous peoples displaced.
Together with, and partly as a result of, its attacks on the press, it is leaving behind it neither change nor development, but more of the same rule of the few, even worse poverty, and, as it kept reminding us, the use of State violence and terror against anyone who dared exercise the freedoms the Constitution protects.
Deafeningly silent, however, was Marcos Jr. on national security management and its criminal consequences: foremost of which is the impunity enjoyed by state security forces in perpetrating massive human rights violations, under all administrations beginning with the Marcos dictatorship.
Ironically, DENR failed on its supposed promise of genuine rehabilitation and protection of Manila Bay that should also benefit the surrounding dependent communities, along with the concern of viewing Manila Bay as a dispensable experiment for its programs and initiatives that are not true to conservation initiatives and much worse, are not in line with science-based applications...
The fall of socialist regimes and the restoration of capitalism in many countries in the 1990s provoked the view that the current stage of history is also its last. The adherents of the theory that liberal democracy is the pinnacle of political evolution are correct: individual freedom and self-rule are the prerogatives of all of humanity. But democracy has never been as imperiled as it is today by the tyrants who rule in its name. Despite the economic and social crises that afflict not only the poorest countries of the world but also the wealthiest, no alternative seems to be available, the only prospect being more of the same.
“We call on all the concerned sectors to stand together against the continuing wave of red-tagging and terrorist-labelling and to vigorously defend freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of association and the right to peaceably assemble.”
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