Free trade bad for Asean, warns solon

Philippine Daily Inquirer/News/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

“ALL OUR FEARS have come true,” said Akbayan party-list Rep. Walden Bello, reacting to the launch of the world’s biggest free trade area comprising China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) on Jan. 1

The China-Asean Free Trade Agreement (Cafta), lauded by governments as a spur to intraregional trade and investments, cuts import tariffs on about 90 percent of products and offers members access to a combined market of 1.7 billion consumers. Cafta is bigger than the European Union and the North American FTA in terms of trade value and population involved. But it has its detractors.

“We have warned against the detrimental effects of free trade agreements with strong economic powers like China, Japan, the US and Europe,” said Bello. “Unfortunately, all our fears have come true.

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A gift of story

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

DURING A QUIET MOMENT this Christmas week, I pulled out from the shelf and read again the tiny book “The Gift of Story: A wise tale about what is enough” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It looked so small beside the big, thick “Women Who Run with the Wolves,” a groundbreaking book also by Estes. On the same shelf level was my first children’s book—“Toby Runs Away”—that my mother read to me when I was little. I don’t remember how it got there.

Estes’ “The Gift of Story” is all of 32 pages. Its big drop letters at the beginning of every section go with exquisite illustrations that look like wood cut designs. Many years ago I bought two copies of the book and gave the other copy to a friend whose friend was very ill.

I read the book again because I have just come up with a little story book myself. My and Jess Abrera’s book miraculously made it to the National Bookstores in Metro Manila the day before Christmas and it was selling. Some branches had to have their supply replenished. I thought, it was when the book was out there that I was pondering what the story might mean. Or if I did it right. That is, from Estes’ Jungian perspective.

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Can heaven and nature sing?

Philippind Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
HAVE A QUIET and truly meaningful celebration of Christmas. And please pause and remember those who cannot celebrate because they are in deep pain and sorrow.

Yesterday, two days before Christmas Day, journalists led a nationwide candle vigil for justice to mark the first month of the unspeakable crime that gave the Philippines the infamous reputation as the most dangerous place on earth for journalists. That now sounds cliché. But unspeakable grief is never cliché.

Here in Metro Manila vigils were held in media offices, the Inquirer among them, and at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City.

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Global editorial on climate change

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

LAST WEEK, one day before the Copenhagen summit (Dec. 7-18) on climate change opened, 56 major newspapers in 45 countries spoke with one voice. They came out with a common global editorial written in 20 languages on climate change.

I was hoping that Philippine newspapers would join major newspapers all over the world and carry the global editorial that London’s The Guardian had initiated. But last week the Philippine media were just too caught up in the brutality without compare that visited our ranks. News about the mass murder in Maguindanao of 30 media practitioners plus 27 non-media persons, and the public unraveling of the unspeakable evil that had long stalked that Mindanao wasteland could hardly give way to anything else. The pages of Philippine newspapers have been soaking in blood since Nov. 23.

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Journalists rage: Stop the killing

Philippine Daily Inquirer/News/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

ENRAGED JOURNALISTS clad in black, both local and foreign, took to the streets of Manila Wednesday, becoming newsmakers themselves by denouncing the massacre of at least 30 media workers and 27 others on Nov. 23 in Ampatuan, Maguindanao.

At the same time in Maguindanao, journalists briefly took a break from covering military operations and trekked to the massacre site in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman to light candles in honor of their colleagues killed in the country’s worst case of election-related violence.

Protest rallies in different parts of the country and the world were also held to coincide with Wednesday’s “Black Day” march, Nestor Burgos of the National Union of Journalists (NUJP) said.

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How they love one another

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

WISHING YOU ALL a meaningful Human Rights Day. It’s been 62 years since the International Declaration of Human Rights was signed and adopted by nations the world over. And where are we?

Last week’s Time magazine cover story was about “The Decade from Hell”. Indeed, in the past 10 years, terrorist attacks, wars, financial melt-downs, natural and man-made disasters, viruses, diseases, hunger and all kinds of violence have visited this planet and sent humanity running for cover. Humanity continues to be under attack.

We are now ending this decade and entering the next. Christians are observing the Advent season and ushering in Christmas. Muslims have just ended their own yearly observance of Eid ul Adha or feast of sacrifice. All these as we Filipinos remain shocked beyond words by the Nov. 23 massacre of more than 60 human beings, 30 journalists among them, in the Ampatuan fiefdom in Maguindanao.

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Journalists and women as safety shield

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
IF I COULD GET HOLD of even only one of the perpetrators of the Nov. 23 broad daylight mass murder/massacre of 57 human beings, 30 of them from the media, I would ask only one question. (And I shudder to think that I know the answer to my own question.) My question would be: What or who made you think or believe that you could commit this evil deed and get away with it?

I cry out, de profundis: President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, how have we come to this? For the 21st century or for just this decade, the Philippines can now claim a day of horror, a day of evil of its own to remember: 11/23.

People used to say the name of the month and day to be remembered, such as Sept. 21 or 
Aug. 21, or invoke numbers to never forget, such as P.D. 1081, to conjure up images of blood and terror. Or they use them to remember some significant event, like Nueve de Febrero (name of a street) and Mayo Uno (Labor Day).

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Cory Aquino, nun, 4 activists join Bantayog heroes

Philippine Daily Inquirer/News

FORMER PRESIDENT Corazon C. Aquino leads this year’s batch of heroes and martyrs whose names will be inscribed on the Wall of Remembrance of the Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Monument of Heroes).

Besides Aquino, the latest additions to the roster are Sr. Asuncion Martinez, ICM, and activists Antonio G. Ariado, Melito T. Glor, Alfredo L. Malicay and Ronald Jan F. Quimpo.

The yearly Bantayog rites are held either on Nov. 30, Bonifacio Day, or Dec. 10, Human Rights Day.

Both Aquino and Martinez have been classified as heroes. They died of natural causes at a late age—Aquino at 76 on Aug. 1 and Martinez at 84 in 1994. The four young men, who all died in their 20s in the 1970s, are considered martyrs.

This year’s honorees bring to 179 the number of names etched on the black granite Wall of Remembrance near the 45-foot bronze monument by renowned sculptor Eduardo Castrillo that depicts a defiant mother holding a fallen son.

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Mangyans, mining and betrayal

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
COURAGE, HUMILITY AND COMPASSION. These, Bishop Broderick Pabillo prayed, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Lito Atienza would have so that he would correct his mistake.

Pabillo is chair of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ Commission on Social Action, Justice and Peace and auxiliary bishop of Manila. He was one of the hunger strikers who joined the Mangyans and priests of Mindoro to oppose large-scale mining in watershed and ancestral domain areas.

Two days into the hunger strike, the anti-mining protestors thought they had triumphed. They had earlier met with Atienza to urge him to cancel the environmental compliance certificate (ECC) that his office had issued to Intex Resources, a Norwegian mining company, last Oct. 14 despite strong and valid opposition from the community, the local government and the Catholic Church.

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The Pope at the hunger summit

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
AROUND 1.02 BILLION people are suffering chronic hunger today, said a report released last week by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme. This sharp rise in hunger triggered by the global economic crisis has hit the poorest people in developing countries hardest, revealing a fragile world food system in urgent need of reform, the report added.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf warned: “The silent hunger crisis affecting one-sixth of all humanity poses a serious risk for world peace and security.” He called the 1.02 billion “our tragic achievement in these modern days.” Watch Diouf’s shocking six-second video message in www.1billionhungry.org.

Before I say more, let me say that the Philippines is among the 31 countries listed as suffering from “severe localized food insecurity.”

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Remembering Berlin

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
I OWN A PIECE or pieces of the Berlin Wall. A friend who went to Berlin shortly after the fall of the wall in 1989 brought home a piece for me.

Two years later, in 1991, I and several journalists were in Germany for a two-week cross-country tour—courtesy of a German press association, Germany’s department of tourism and Lufthansa. This was my second time in Germany. Berlin was one of the places we visited. We were there for the first anniversary of the reunification of West and East Germany which happened on Oct. 3, 1990.

Of course, I got pieces of the wall, but that time they came as part of a brooch which young artists made and sold near the wall area. I bought a beautiful molded face of a woman with one cheek covered with tiny pieces of the wall. I still have it and wear it now and then.

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Reflections on kidnappings past and present

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Opinion/by Ma. Ceres P.Doyo
AS IRISH COLUMBAN missionary Fr. Michael Sinnott enters his 24th day of captivity, people from all walks of life continue to pray that his kidnappers would have compassion and free him soon. That is, without ransom being paid. His kidnappers have asked for a $2-million ransom.

Fr. Pat O’Donoghue, regional director of the Missionary Society of St. Columban, has insisted again and again that Sinnott would not want that money be the reason for his release. The no-ransom policy stands.

As O’Donoghue stressed, paying ransom would “just add to everyone else’s vulnerability.” They are missionaries, “not commodities,” he added. For more than two decades these bandits/terrorists have been treating the religious as commodities.

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