As 2009 comes to a close and the promise of a new year begins, Dona Victorina wishes peace, prosperity and love to all of our readers in 2010Manigong Bagong Taon sa inyong lahat!
As 2009 comes to a close and the promise of a new year begins, Dona Victorina wishes peace, prosperity and love to all of our readers in 2010Manigong Bagong Taon sa inyong lahat!
The much coveted University of the
Manufactured by Adidas, these LIMITED EDITION jackets are made from CLIMACOOL fabric and are available in Small, Medium, Large & Extra Large sizes. (These are the standard Adidas Asian Men's sizes. I will be posting the Female Designs soon!)
The
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"The Fili, which is a deeper novel than the Noli, expresses how Rizal negatively viewed Simoun’s three failed attempts at revolution. Personal reasons (vengeance most of all), not purity of intention, tainted Simoun’s revolutionary policy. Simoun was using immoral means to achieve his goals. Simoun did not have God on his side—and only a revolution with God on its side would ever succeed."
Today is Dr. Jose Rizal’s 148th birthday. He is as relevant to us Filipinos today as he was when his Noli and Fili novels were contributing to the thinking of thoughtful Filipinos concerned about the future of their country.
Later, when these islands of mostly Christianized Malays became an American colony and then the Philippine Republic, Rizal’s writings continued to matter to Filipino intellectuals and decision-makers on matters educational.
His writings were even made required reading in schools.
His life and works are also being studied by scholars in Indonesia and Malaysia.
One of Rizal’s consistent teachings is for the Filipinos to strive for education. The education he wished for his countrymen includes history, and enough philosophy, social science, morals and religion, so that they would recognize what is right and wrong in the nation’s affairs and what is right and wrong in one’s personal life and relations.
Rizal’s outlook on education is today absent from the consideration of our country’s leaders, let alone the majority of the masses. Proof of this is that the education being fostered by the government and its school system is focused on turning young Filipinos into call center and business process outsourcing employees.
Some of Rizal’s biographers have written that, more than anyone else of his epoch, he awakened the Filipino people’s political consciousness, desire for independence from Spain and enthusiasm for revolution. Those results indeed happened. But it appears, from his letters and reported conversations, and most of all in the words of key characters in El Filibusterismo especially Padre Florentino, that independence from Spain and revolution were effects he did not wish to happen—just then.
Not just then because he would have wanted independence to come later—and to be won through revolution if necessary—but only if the revolutionary Filipino had the capability to defeat the colonizer and the wisdom and moral character to value his independence with his life.
War—revolutionary war too—can only be morally deemed “just” if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. For deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable. A revolution must therefore not be a sentimental one in which the fighters for the right and their families would only be decimated by the superior arms of the enemy. This is what, in effect, Dr. Rizal told Katipunan emissaries who wanted him to endorse the revolution.
To Pio Valenzuela, Rizal wrote that he did not approve of the revolutionary moves. “A revolution without arms should not be started against an armed nation. Its consequences will be fatal and disastrous to that country. The Filipinos will necessarily have to lose owing to lack of arms. The Spaniards, once conquerors, will annihilate the Filipinos who love their country, will employ all means to prevent the intellectual, moral and material progress of the conquered people who, sooner or later, will have to start a new revolution.” Rizal pointed to the unfortunate example of the Cuban revolution of 1868.
The Fili, which is a deeper novel than the Noli, expresses how Rizal negatively viewed Simoun’s three failed attempts at revolution. Personal reasons (vengeance most of all), not purity of intention, tainted Simoun’s revolutionary policy. Simoun was using immoral means to achieve his goals. Simoun did not have God on his side—and only a revolution with God on its side would ever succeed.
Blaming others
The kind and wise Fr. Florentino tells Simoun words that apply as much to us Filipinos today as they did during Rizal’s time:
“We are to blame for our own misfortunes; let us not put the blame on others. If Spain were to see us less complacent with tyranny and more disposed to fight and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us freedom, because when the fruit of conception reaches maturity, woe to the mother that wishes to strangle it!
“So, while the Filipino people do not have enough strength to proclaim, head held high and chest bared, their right to civic life and back this up with sacrifice, with their own blood; while we see our countrymen, privately feeling ashamed, hearing the voice of conscience roaring as it rebels and protests, and publicly saying nothing, joining in a chorus with the abuser to mock the abused; while we see them shut themselves up in their selfishness and praise with a forced smile the most iniquitous acts, begging in their eyes for a share in the booty, why give them freedom?
“With or without Spain they would always remain the same, and perhaps, perhaps be worse! What is the use of independence if the slaves of today become the tyrants of tomorrow? And they will, without a doubt, for whoever loves tyranny will submit to it! Señor Simoun, while our people are not prepared, while they go to battle deceived or forced to do so, without knowing clearly what they have to do, the most clever attempt will fail, because why give the bride to the bridegroom if he does not love her much, if he is not ready to die for her?” (M.Times)
Manny Pacquiao accused of using drugs?
Mayweather fight sacked?
Pacquiao denies ever using drugs but this controversy has spurred the debate if his 2010 fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. will push through or not.
With the hullabaloo behind Manny’s alleged affair with “Whapakman” co-star Krista Ranillo and his electoral bid as he runs for office next year, it looks like Pacquiao has alot to deal with this New Year.
* * * * *
FLOYD CAMP REJECTS ARUM FINAL OFFER
By Abac Cordero
MANILA Floyd Mayweather Jr, Philippines - Hopes of salvaging the megafight between Manny Pacquiao and. are slim after American promoter Bob Arum’s”final counter offer” was quickly turned down by Mayweather’s chief adviser, Leonard Ellerbe, and negotiator, Richard Schaefer.
Arum, main man of Top Rank, had given the Mayweather camp until Monday (today in Manila) to decide on his final proposal that both parties let the Nevada State Athletic Commission to make the final decision on the blood tests issue.
According to Yahoo! Sports, Arum suggested that both sides explain to the NSAC why their “preferred (blood) testing system” should be used or followed, and let the
Mayweather wanted an Olympic-style blood testing to be supervised by the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Under the set-up, both fighters should agree to as many as five blood and 12 urine tests - randomly.
Freddie Roach said it’s so random that that USADA can knock on your doors in the middle of the night to get blood or urine samples, in the weeks, days or just hours before the fight, and shortly afterwards.
Pacquiao’s camp said there’s no need for such, and has agreed to three blood tests (one on the first week of January, then 30 days before the match and another after the match, but was again unacceptable to Mayweather.
Arum made the offer of letting the NSAC to decide. And if the Mayweathers disagree, the Top Rank president said he could seal a Pacquiao fight with Paulie Malignaggi on March 13 “within an hour.”
Arum may find himself making the phone call when he wakes up Monday morning while vacationing in
“Random is random. We are all intelligent people and we know what random testing is. That is what we want and it has not changed,” said Ellerbe.
“It does not make sense for this to become a commission matter. This is a contractual matter. The commission did not decide the weights or the purse split or how the foreign television rights would be sold.
“If this is Bob’s final ultimatum, then that’s what it is. That is his decision if he wants to take that position. I very much hope this fight can be made, but the reason it is at a standstill is because of the way they have handled things,” Schaefer said.
Pacquiao is vacationing with his family in Gen. Santos City and his adviser, Mike Koncz, said the 31-year-old superstar doesn’t want to make any further comment on the matter.
The other day, Schaefer said Mayweather can do away with the USADA, and it’s just a matter of both camps agreeing on the dates of the blood tests just to make sure that they’re still effective.
But that was the other day.
“We are prepared to have this handled in a way that is not us deciding or them deciding,” said Arum. “The commission meets on Jan. 19. Mayweather’s people can say why they believe additional testing above what we agreed to as necessary and we can give our viewpoint.
"Will we ever be raised, drydocked, repaired and made to sail smoothly again? "
Twice we again have tragic proofs of the Philippines as a failed state—one where laws and rules are not enforced causing the death of our fellow Filipinos. Within 48 hours, two ferry disasters happened whose combined death toll will most likely be more than 50.
On Thursday, Christmas Eve, Catalyn B, a wooden ferry collided with a fishing vessel and sank in Manila Bay. The Philippine Coast Guard said that deep-sea divers had found 12 bodies on Sunday inside Catalyn B. These were in addition to four earlier confirmed dead. Eleven passengers were still missing on Monday afternoon. Up to 27 people may be confirmed dead from this disaster.
The Sinking Philippine State!
Just before midnight on Saturday, a small inter-island ro-ro ferry, the MV Baleno 9, sank off the coast of Batangas. On Monday afternoon, 23 people were unaccounted for. There was no collision or any unusual episode. Survivors said the ship just listed and lay on its side and went down in seconds. They said many did not get out. Marina officials believe there must be many bodies trapped inside.By Monday noon, the official death toll in the MV Baleno 9 tragedy was only six. But 60 other passengers were rescued by the coast guard and other ferry ships that went to the area near Batangas City.
The MV Baleno 9 sank without making any SOS signals or reporting any problems. This confirms the sudden and unexpected sinking of the vessel survivors described.There are suspicions that Baleno-9 had too much more passengers than it was authorized to carry.
Disasters like these two happen too frequently in our country. Most of the time, the ships and boats involved are old and poorly maintained—and sailing overloaded with passengers and cargo. Some tragedies involved ships that were not authorized to carry passengers at all.But shipping companies seem incapable of containing their greed, especially during the Christmas season when millions take ships to spend the holidays with their families in the provinces or vice versa.
As in previous disasters, officials say they would have these two tragedies investigated. And the operations of the shipping lines that own the vessels involved have been suspended. President Gloria M. Arroyo has ordered the government agencies concerned "to conduct an audit" of the safety and seaworthiness of all commercial ships.What makes these two tragedies proofs of our Republic being a failed state is that these disasters happen over and over again.We have won the top prize in our shipping lines having the highest number of sinkings and disasters. We are notorious for the world’s deadliest peacetime maritime disaster. This was on December 20, 1987 when the MV Doña Paz sank after colliding with the MT Vector. At least 4,375 people perished.
Corruption, negligence, the culture of impunity among others are the reasons our laws and regulations governing the shipping and maritime industry are not being enforced properly.In its many failures—to improve the peace and order situation, the traffic disorder, the rampant smuggling that is killing our local producers, the floods caused by waterways clogged with garbage and squatters, the grinding poverty of scores of millions, the deterioration of our schools, the destruction of our agriculture, the recidivism of shipping companies, among others—ours seems to have become the sunken ship of a failed state.
Will we ever be raised, drydocked, repaired and made to sail smoothly again?
(Manila Times)
NEW LEVEL OF BLOGGING (http://utakpugita.blogspot.com/)... Blogging has gone to a new level. With everyone looking for ways to stir thought and/pr procure a good chuckle… employing their tongue-in-cheek talents for humorous writren critiques and Photoshopping images off of the World Wide Web, a new brand of political satire has been birthed… all thanks to the blogoshpere. From the talented vastness of an online ocean, a crafty creature has risen from the depths, tentacles writhing in satirical protest… Utak Pugita... kapatid ni Utak Tilapia is born!
With Christmas around the corner, it is easy to gain weight during the season. With all the parties, social gatherings, food and drinks, it's the season when people put some pounds in their bellies. It doesn't help that the weather enables you to hide the weight gain but nevertheless, there is a tendency to be tardy in your exercise and diet during the season.
FAT LOSS THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON
You can lose weight during the Christmas season. It is possible if you have the will and determination to not only maintain your figure but lose weight during this winter celebration. What is this top fat loss secret? Actually, it's nothing new but here are some things that you can do to lose the weight during the Christmas season:
- Go on a liquid diet to prevent yourself from eating during parties and gatherings. There are many liquid diets which you can do during the Christmas season. You can go on a liquid vegetable diet using carrots, cabbages or lettuce which you juice up and feed during the day. This type of diet enables you to lose fat and weight easily but it may also weaken you as well. The best thing you can also do during this time is to time this liquid diet when you are at home. A week of following this liquid diet may lead you to lose at least 10 to 15 pounds. And when you feel tired, take a nap.
- Workout on the gym during the holiday season. Its contrarian thinking but the gym would be the least busy place during the holidays. Instead of spending your time hitting the pillows and blankets taking a nap, go and get a good workout. There will be gym guides who will be there to help you out and most probably have more time to pay attention to your workout.
- No Sugar for the holidays. If it seems impossible to do, it isn't. Do other things than eat sweets. You can do stretching exercises like yoga, pilates and the like in your own room. Go out for a brisk walk for an hour. Go on the treadmill or get out of the house so as not to be tempted to eat desserts.
These are but some of the top fat loss secrets that aren't really secrets. The ideas are all there. Implementation, well that's the problem. The secret to losing weight is to want to lose weight and be willing to do whatever it takes for you to lose weight. By Steven Magill
Our elite of power and wealth are extremely diverse. Their members range from the genteel remnants of the colonial hacendero families to the grossest polit
ical-warlord clans such as the Ampatuans of Maguindanao, who are accused of slaughtering 57 people in just one morning.
ical-warlord clans such as the Ampatuans of Maguindanao, who are accused of slaughtering 57 people in just one morning. In between are the political kingmakers who “bet” on a likely candidate and then collect on their investment in business favors once the candidate wins an influential office. Their paragon is the Chinese-Filipino entrepreneur Lucio Tan, who apparently put up 70 percent of presidential candidate Joseph Estrada’s campaign funds in 1998.
The only thing our elite families have in common is that they still get the most of what there is to get. The Ampatuan godfather is reputed to have kept a nest egg of P400 million in an industrial-strength vault in one of his mansions.
Noblesse oblige
The time is long gone when the rich and powerful took fatherly care of their serfs and tenants, in return for their submission and respect. And the decay of this traditional consensus has made the lives of our poorest families less and less secure.
The social contract that had morally obliged the rich to protect the poor’s right to subsistence has been repealed. Whenever this right to live was threatened, as in Central Luzon beginning in the 1930s, the peasants took up arms, but “less often to destroy elites than to compel them to meet their moral obligations.”
WHO ARE THE ELITE?
Such unrest has widened, as the spread of the cash economy compelled patrons to turn their backs on their customary rights and duties. Besides, people no longer believe inequality to be divinely ordained, or that power is put to the service of society and its values.
Even the usual markers of elite status have been erased, among them the inferred responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged.
Landowning, or “not having to buy the rice you eat,” no longer brings social prestige. In Central Luzon, two successive insurgencies have driven away the sugar and rice hacenderos.
Meanwhile, many of the landowning families who have switched to manufacturing have lost out to Filipino-Chinese arrivistes. Having lost their power to monopolize markets, they proved too greedy, too nepotistic, too authoritarian, to survive global competition.
Rich and poor are separating, as in Disraeli’s England in the 1850s, into “two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy . . . ”
The Jesuit sociologist John J. Carroll believes that coercion has become the “operating theory” of our social relationships. Naked power has become the main mediator between rich and poor and power is used heedlessly to accumulate wealth and prestige for the power holders.
Gross inequality
One result is that income inequality has been rising, and at the expense of the lower-income groups. The historian Carlos Quirino estimated that in the 1970s, the country was “in the grip of about 50 leading families.” Even now, family ownership of the Philippine corporate sector is the most highly concentrated in East Asia.
The economist Arsenio Balisacan, whose field is poverty studies, notes that things have got really worse in the last six to seven years.
Academics from the University of the Philippines estimate that 35 percent of Filipinos live below the official poverty line. Our middle class has been shrinking. In 2006, the National Statistics Office placed it at 19.1 percent of all our people, down from 22.7 percent in 2000.
Gross inequality seems to be distorting even the conventional economic outcomes. In East Asia, because of egalitarian public policies, a percentage increase in GDP growth typically reduces poverty incidence by 2 percent. (Globally, a percentage increase in GDP reduces poverty by 1.6 percent.) GDP is the total value of goods and services produced in a country in a year.
But in the Philippines, a 1-percent increase in economic growth may in fact be accompanied by a 0.3-percent increase in the number of the poor. This is because economic growth is so highly concentrated: 65 percent of GDP is generated in Metro Manila and its satellite regions, Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog.
Power to the excluded
Inequality is notable not only in people’s incomes and status. What is worse, inequality is built into social and political structures that, in Father Carroll’s view, enable “certain groups or classes of people systematically [to] enjoy more than others the benefits which society can provide.”
Unequal institutions and legal systems affect the entire structure of national society and the way it apportions 
wealth and power. Systematic inequality pervades public policy, starting from a tax structure that falls on the poor more heavily than on the rich; to regulatory agencies unable to protect people against monopolies and cartels; through the steady decline in the budget share of social services; and public investments that favor the rich regions against the poor ones.
In the end, these elitist social structures can be moved only by some exertion of power from those excluded from them. Hence, the easing of inequality must await the time the Filipino poor are able to develop forms of autonomous organizations that will give them some leverage in dealing with people in authority. BY JUAN T. GATBONTON
Rain Barnido @ RainB @ Reynaldo Barnido continue on with his web of lies as shown in his latest letter (on the left) sent to Victorina. He has wittingly evaded the subpoena of the National Beaureu of Investigation (with Rain Barbido's case, the NBI miserably failed). He has also tried to whitewash his co-horts of any wrong-doings via mailed letters. Any information of his whereabouts would be greatly appreciated!
WANTED: The NBI’s Top Cases
All year round, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the Department of Justice’s (DOJs) arresting arm, actively and competently did its work. It’s most prominent cases in 2009 were: • The Maguidanao 
massacre,
• The sex videos, shown on the Internet, of surgeon Hayden Kho with celebrities,
• The encounter with and end of the Alvin Flores armed-robbery group,
• The shooting to death of Undersecretary Renato Ebarle’s son over a traffic altercation,
• The taking into custody of Cesar Mancao and Glen Dumlao,
• The probe on the death of Ted Failon’s wife,
• The arrest of and extradition of Graham Lim, BAP’s former secretary general,
• The monitoring of prices at the height and in the aftermath of typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng,
• The recent arrest of a suspected al-Qaeda member.
Alvin Flores gang
One of the biggest accomplishments of the bureau was the liquidation of notorious Alvin Flores and three of his armed-robbery group members. On October 29 in an encounter in their hideout in Dodong’s Resort,
Barangay Estaca, Compostela,
The operation was carried out after NBI Director Nestor Mantaring ordered a manhunt against Flores and his group following the daring Rolex store heist in
The bureau has yet to arrest
The encounter gave the much needed impression that law enforcement is still functioning in the country and that we can still trust government’s power and its ability to enforce the rule of law.
Steamy sex videos
The NBI has yet to identify the person who first uploaded the video into the Internet. The bureau is still waiting for the information from the United States (US) counterpart in uncovering Internet protocol (IP).
Assistant regional Director Vicente de Guzman 3rd, Anti-Fraud and Computer Crimes Division (AFCCD) chief, said the bureau had already uncovered the administrator of the website and charges had been filed against them. But the person who gave the sex video to the website remains unknown. The person uses a G-mail account and G-mail is US-based. So the Department of Justice requested the
Meanwhile, actress Katrina Halili’s counsel said that besides Kho, cosmetic surgeon Dr. Victoria Belo-Henares, Erick Johnston Chua, Dr. Mark Herbert Rosario and Princess Marie Velasco, the DOJ must also asked the NBI to investigate four more personalities—Cris Arenas, Cedric Lee, Manuel Villaroman and Joey Umandap to uncover those persons behind the uploading and distribution of sex videos and to determine if they have some participation with the case.
Trina Etong case
On May 21, after around a month investigations, NBI issued their final findings on the case of Trinidad Etong, wife of radio and TV personality Ted Failon, saying that she had committed suicide, clearing all cloud of doubts and speculations that surrounded the case.
NBI director Nestor Mantaring said “after careful perusal of the testimonial evidence and conscientious evaluation of the results, recommendations and conclusions of the Criminalistics, working as a team, as regards their investigative, technical scientific, medical and psychiatric analyses, concludes that Etong indeed committed suicide.”
Mantaring said that the NBI, supported by all its findings and investigative leads, “has now established and concludes that no other person was present, or was with Trina inside the bathroom the moment the trigger was pulled and that the victim has the capability, motive and means of doing such acts.”
NBI-National Capital Region head Lawyer Edward Villarta also revealed that Etong suffered “major depressive disorder” that led to the incident on April 15 inside a bathroom in the couple’s house in Tierra Pura Homes, Tandang Sora,
BAP former official sacked
On December 7, NBI operatives nabbed Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP) Secretary General Graham Lim, acting on the declaration that he is an alien by the Supreme Court. He was arrested by agents of the NBI-Interpol Division who served the warrant of deportation on Lim around 2:30 p.m. at
However, up to the last moment, Lim insisted on his being a Filipino citizen.
Lim had been a high-profile sports-world figure.
Custodians of Mancao and Dumlao
Following the 2000 Salvador Dacer-Emmanuel Corbito double murder, the bureau has kept secured former police Senior Supt. Glenn Dumlao and former police Senior Supt. Cezar Mancao 2nd, making the two witnesses attend court proceedings.
The two had kept on tagging former deposed President Joseph Estrada and Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who headed the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime task Force.
Young Ebarle’s death
The NBI has sought the assistance of the International Police (Interpol) to arrest Jason Ivler who was tagged the shooter-murderer of Renato Victor Ebarle Jr., son of a Malacañang official, Undersecretary Renato Victor Ebarle Sr., over a traffic altercation on November 18 in
The immigration officials earlier announced that there were no records that Ivler went out of the country.
Monitoring of prices during typhoons
Amid reports that some businessmen overpriced basic commodities following the declaration of a national calamity as a result of typhoons, the NBI together with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) closely monitored the prices of commodities and arrested violators, by tapping all units in the Intelligence Services to conduct strict monitoring on traders.
NBI-Intelligence Services personnel have been deployed to join DTI personnel to arrest businessmen who are overpricing goods.
They also subpoenaed big-time supermarkets to answer charges of alleged overpricing.
Representatives and counsels of Save More Drug Store, Robinson’s Supermarket Inc., Plaza Fair Supermarket, PARCO, SM Group of Companies (Hypermarket) and Mightee Mart appeared at the NBI main office to air their respective positions.
Maguindanao massacre
The National Bureau of Investigation has secured high-profile character, Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. of Datu Unsay town within bureau premises. Ampatuan Jr. is the principal accused in the Maguindanao massacre of at least 57 persons, including 30 journalists.
The bureau, along with the Philippine National Police, has already filed charges before courts based on the
evidence gathered.
All these were capped of by having year-round raids, apprehensions and other operations against criminals. These operations were stopped at the start of the Christmas season so that these are not seen to be suspected of being the operative’s means of getting “gifts” from criminals.
The bureau has indeed made a good impression this year, and hopefully, in the following years to come. BY RUBEN D. MANAHAN 4th REPORTER
