Piercing Pens

Ibon’s latest survey revealed that 77% of Filipinos consider themselves poor.

According to Ibon, 76.8% of respondents to the IBON July 2007 Survey said they thought of themselves as poor. This is an increase from 67.6% in January and 69.3% in the same period last year.

IBON executive editor Rosario Bella Guzman, said the survey results are not surprising considering that there are still insufficient livelihood opportunities in the country. (more…)

Piercing Pens is now at www.piercingpens.net. Kindly update your links and bookmarks.

We have been very busy at work that we were not able to blog for around a month. A group of Turkish hackers even defaced our homepage while we were on blog leave.

But since the the election has passed and we’re now just waiting for the results, our load at work returned to normal. We’re also expecting new Internet connection so we probably blog more often.

Our WordPress has been upgraded to 2.2, and we’ve started to categorize our entries.

We hope you will welcome us back as we continue to comment on local and foreign news and issues.

Just received a text message from Karapatan: Carlito Getrosa, 48, a Bayan Muna member in North Cotabato, was shot on the head by a masked assailant using .45 pistol last March 11, around 8:30PM at his residence in Midpapan. He was wearing a Bayan Muna shirt when he was shot in front of his relatives. The perpetrators fled.

(March 13, 2007 update: While blog-hopping, i found this March 7 entry by The Purple Phoenix, and I was amused to find we noticed the same things, except for the Gringo part which I missed.)

Some observations in connection with the latest SWS survey:

• Kiko Pangilinan benefitted from the publicity generated by his then unclear status in the so-called Genuine Opposition. And of course, he is Sharon Cuneta’s husband. (I can’t help wondering if James Yap–if he decides to run for the Senate–will also rank high because of Kris Aquino.)
• Alan Peter Cayetano is on the fourth place. The publicity generated by the First Gentleman’s attacks on him must have helped.
• Francis Escudero is on the 6th-7th place. If only he were able to get Bamboo as endorser…
• Michael Defensor is on the 15th place. Does this mean Boy Abunda isn’t an effective campaign ad director?
• Migs Zubiri ranked 17th. I thought Boom Tarat Tarat could land him a Senate post!
• Richard Gomez and Cesar Montano are outside the Magic 12. It seems like the people prefer to see them in the movies than in the Senate.
• Prospero Pichay and Antonio Trillanes IV are both in the 22 to 24th place. And to think you see Pichay’s face almost every ten minutes on TV! Partida pa yan because Trillanes is in prison.

(more…)