Piercing Pens

Bayan Muna Representative Teddy Casino voted “no” on House Bill 3174 which seeks to increase the excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco products. He claims to proposed law is “not serious” in its aim to increase tax revenues and prevent tobacco and alcohol use. He suspects his colleagues were pressured by the big players in the tobacco and alcohol industries intro railroading a kinder version of the proposed law. Because of this he was also unable to introduce an amendment that would seek to earmark for health and social services proceeds from the tax measure.

Here is his explanation: (more…)

Journalist death toll reaches eight in the Philippines

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the global organisation representing over 500,000 journalists worldwide, has today called for the Philippines Government to investigate the murder of journalist Eldy Gabinales and to halt the growing journalist death toll.

According to information provided by the IFJ affiliate, the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP), radio commentator Eldy Gabinales, also known as Eldy Sablas, was killed today, 19 October 2004 in Tandag, Surigao del Sur. (more…)

After a long, strenuous week, I find myself looking forward to this weekend ahead of me. I have just gone through an ineptly talented artist some claim to be Filipino, corrupt generals, a number of dead fetuses and a handful of captured birds. I want so much to treat myself to a simple vacation, perhaps a long overdue trip to Baguio but my finances won’t allow me to do that now, not after paying all those bills, whew!

Which somehow gets me thinking, why is it that to become rich (as in overflowing with money) in this country, you only either have to be a corrupt official or become a famous artista sans talent or in Jasmine Trias’ case, she only had to be American. (more…)

I just joined SpreadFirefox.com, a community for Netizens who help spread the news about Mozilla Firefox, the browser that you can trust.

Here are Firefox’s features that would hopefully convice you to switch: (more…)

Here is the CNN report on the passing away of Christopher Reeves:

(Image from http://www.chrisreevehomepage.com/images/superman/i-stndback.jpg)