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Palparan’s flee attempt indicates guilt – mothers of 2 missing UP students

Monday, December 19, 2011

Palparan’s flee attempt indicates guilt – mothers of 2 missing UP students


“He [Palparan] should be imprisoned immediately, along with GMA, Abalos, all of them who are shameless. They all should spend Christmas in jail.” – Mrs. Concepcion Empeño
By RONALYN V. OLEA
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – The mothers of the two missing students of the University of the Philippines (UP) are enraged over the attempt of retired Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr. to leave the country this morning.

Exactly four days ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a resolution implicating Palparan, then commanding officer of the 7th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army and three of his men into the disappearance of UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño.

According to reports, Palparan tried to go to Singapore around 7:30 a.m. on board a Seair flight but was prevented by immigration officials.

“Why would he escape? This only proves all the more that he is guilty of many crimes,” Mrs. Concepcion Empeño, mother of Karen, told Bulatlat.com in a phone interview..... MORE

SourceBulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/12/19/palparan%E2%80%99s-flee-attempt-indicates-guilt-%E2%80%93-mothers-of-2-missing-up-students/

Half of America is officially poor


Half of America is officially poor

While it’s no surprise that nearly 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, new statistics from the US Census show that almost 100 million others are counted as low-income citizens, making half of the population of America officially poor.

The latest figures out of the US Census Bureau show that in addition to the 49.1 million Americans who fall below the official poverty line, those that rake in enough to be between that level and the income equitable to double it fall into a new “low-income” category, which counts an additional 97.3 million people. Altogether, that clump of nearly 150 million Americans living in dire economic standing accounts for around 48 percent of the US population..... MORE

SourceRT.com

URL: http://rt.com/usa/news/half-poor-america-poverty-909/

Carnivorous plant doubles as bat hotel

Carnivorous plant doubles as bat hotel

 A rare meat-eating pitcher plant has re-made its insect traps into night shelters for tiny bats to have their feces as reward.

The nepenthes rafflesiana elongate, a variety of the species also known as Raffles' pitcher plant, grows in Brunei’s muggy peat forests. It is remarkably poor at catching insects, unlike its many cousins, capturing about one seventh as many..... MORE
SourceRT.com

URL: http://rt.com/news/sci-tech/plant-bat-hotel-pitcher/

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dies (w/ Video)



 North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dies

North Korea's veteran leader Kim Jong-il has died at the age of 69. A tearful announcer at North Korea’s state television, dressed in black, said on Monday the “Dear Leader” had died on Saturday morning of fatigue and over-work.

Kim Jong-il had been battling ailing health in recent years. It is believed he suffered a stroke in 2008.

The news has apparently shocked the people of North Korea. Kim Jong-il had ruled the country since the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. Kim Jong-il's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, who is in his late 20s, has officially been named as his father’s successor – that is according to Reuters, who cite the country’s Central Telegraph Agency..... MORE

SourceRT.com

URL: http://rt.com/news/north-korea-jong-il-dies-111/

Forty-year roller coaster for Bangladeshi Hindus focus 12/18/2011

Forty-year roller coaster for Bangladeshi Hindus

focus

12/18/2011
DHAKA — When Bangladesh became an independent nation after a bloody nine month battle with Pakistan that ended 40 years ago Friday, Narayan Chandra Das, a Bengali Hindu, had high hopes for his new country.

As a Hindu, Das had been branded an “agent of India” during the war and fled when the Pakistani army burned his village in the eastern district of Comilla to the ground.

But when the war ended on Dec. 16, he came straight home to the new Muslim-majority nation.

Forty years after independence, creeping Islamization, discriminatory policies and a series of violent attacks on Hindus, have, he says, made him wonder whether it was the right choice..... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20111218com3.html

Pursue rights violation cases vs GMA, minions

Pursue rights violation cases vs GMA, minions

By Satur C. Ocampo
At Ground Level | The Philippine Star
“Our gathering this morning is an opportunity to further assess the strengths and weaknesses of the present criminal justice system, and to come up with new and timely initiatives concerning the delivery of justice… Your decisions and the steps you take have implications integral to our democracy.”

That’s how President Aquino defined the objective of the First National Criminal Justice Summit, a laudable initiative by the Department of Justice, which he addressed last Monday at the Manila Hotel. We missed being informed of the summit’s output because the media coverage focused on P-Noy’s frontal tirades against the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Nonetheless, the President raised a point highly relevant to today’s observance of Human Rights Day: the injustice inflicted by Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law regime upon his father, Ninoy Aquino, the opposition leader who was later assassinated and now regarded as a hero.

Ninoy and Jose W. Diokno, then both senators, were arrested and held for two years in isolated military detention. Whereas Diokno was freed without being charged with any offense, Ninoy was dragooned into trial and conviction by court martial on trumped-up murder and related common criminal charges.

P-Noy summed up that ignoble procedure thus: “The dictatorship exerted all efforts to skew justice and run roughshod over my father’s human rights.”

With that flashback, P-Noy emphasized that he had sworn “to do justice to every man” in executing the laws and “to make certain that what transpired during martial law does not happen again, and ensuring that anyone who so much as attempts to repeat the same offenses is held accountable.”


Fast-forward to the plight of 356 political prisoners all over the country, who have been on a week-long fast/hunger strike to press for their immediate release. They have been charged, like Ninoy, with trumped-up common criminal offenses. The reality is that they were arrested for holding political beliefs different from those approved by those in power..... MORE

SourceBulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/12/16/pursue-rights-violation-cases-vs-gma-minions/

Manipulating the system TABLETS OF STONE Larry Faraon, OP 12/18/2011

Manipulating the system

TABLETS OF STONE
Larry Faraon, OP
12/18/2011
Not even a democratic system is impeccable either from the mechanics or dynamics itself of the same or from given human intransigence and imperfections operating within that system. The tragedy lies in that there is no escape except the destruction of the system itself and the demise of those who wheels the inherent cyclical pattern within.

Our so called democracy has always metamorphose into a “democrazy” especially when the sub-institutions within the democratic system clash and mash against each other necessarily or unnecessarily. And we, the ordinary people, become helpless observers from below while the observers from above are helping themselves in taking advantage of the distractions and diversions as they freely “mind their own businesses.”.... MORE

SourceThe Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20111218com6.html

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