Deadly playgrounds, cold numbers

I had looked into their eyes. I had watched some of them cock their rifles and aim at an imaginary enemy lurking behind the trees. I had aimed my camera at them and captured the resoluteness in their gait as they carried the heavy weight on their frail bodies. I saw these so-called child soldiers for the first time in the 1980s in a rebel training camp in the mountain fastness of Samar. In Bicol I also saw a young girl, maybe all of 16, carrying a rifle. My body ached after that journalistic foray in the jungle but I did come up with a long...

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Rape a violent crime of conquest

Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times. From the prehistoric times to the present, rape has played a critical function. It is a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear. -Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will Stereotypical rape scenes as depicted in movies and komiks do happen in real life. Ginahasa sa cogonan (raped amid tall grass) or ginahasa sa sagingan (raped in a banana grove) aren't imaginary...

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Women’s letter to rape victim

``We believe in you. We do not have to behold your face or know your name in order to say this.’’ Thus began the short but moving letter of 28 women’s groups and their allies to the 22-year-old victim of rape allegedly committed by five US servicemen last Nov. 1 in Subic. The letter, expressed profoundly in Filipino, offered solace and solidarity with the woman from Mindanao who met her tragic fate while visiting Subic. Some members of the women’s groups that sent the letter are rape survivors themselves. ``We are with you while you weep,...

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VCO as bird flu remedy?

News flash. If coconut oil proved effective for HIV-AIDS cases, it might also be good as a H5N1 (bird flu) remedy. Studies must now be made on the oil’s efficacy against this new disease that threatens to become a worldwide epidemic. This urgent proposal came from Dr. Conrado S. Dayrit who helped make virgin coconut oil (VCO) a popular dietary supplement and medicine here and abroad and helped remove it from the ``bad oil’’ list. Dayrit, hale and active at 86, is a known pharmacologist, cardiologist, internist, science researcher author and...

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