Piercing Pens

As the proposed 2-child policy heats up debates in the House of Representatives, health centers, which provide free training for family planning, are now threatened to lose their free and low-priced contraceptives. These contraceptives are being donated by international groups who out of their good will and advocacy provide us with free condoms. But without the government’s clear support on the family planning program, couples without means may have to content themselves with the calendar method or the more popular yet incorrect “withdrawal method.”

The National Statistics Office (NSO) projects our population to 82.7M this year. Filipinos are being sexually active at a younger age but the government seems to be blinded by the fact, tied down by the conservative faction more popularly known as the Catholic Church and several ignoramuses who still believe that sex is done only within the constraints of marriage. (more…)

“Two journalists slain in five days; four killed in 2004,” the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines reports in a statement.

Last Saturday, Roger Mariano, a DZJC-Akyson radio anchor in Laoag was shot dead while on his way home. Yesterday, Arnel Manalo, Batangas correspondent of Bulgar tabloid and the radio station DZRH, suffered the same fate.

“The one factor visibly missing in the Philippines is public indignation widespread and compelling enough to make it politically advantageous for the Philippine government to rigorously go after the killers,” writes Philippine Journalism Review editor Luis Teodoro. (more…)

The governments of United States and Australia, among other countries, have been criticizing the Philippines for pulling out its troops in Iraq to save Angelo de la Cruz.

The Filipino Youth for Peace issued this open letter to Australian Prime Minister John Howard in response to his government’s verbal attacks against us. The group said:

Mr. Howard, you accuse the Filipino people of weakness for the way they responded to the hostage crisis. May we take the liberty to tell you that it is those who see no course for themselves other than to unflinchingly hug the tails of imperial mass murderers who are the real weaklings. It is they who, above all, risk the lives of their countrymen for a war that is not worth the life of even a louse, much less that of an innocent human being.

You need not look to the Philippines to find weakness, Mr. Howard. You need only look in the mirror.