Letter of Concern from Filipino Scholars in the US: On the Enforced Disappearance of James Balao (Cordillera People’s Alliance) We are alarmed and disturbed with the enforced disappearance of Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) member James M. Balao since September 17, 2008. His family has no information regarding his whereabouts up to this moment. We urgently…
Bulatlat Contributors
Sinking Deeper into Crisis
It is true that the financial crisis affecting the US and the other centers of capitalism, including Germany, UK and Japan, would not bring the country down into a recession and crisis. The Philippines is already in a state of crisis, in the first place. What it would do is to sink the country deeper…
KMU Leader, Lawyer Slam Tagging of Union as ‘Rebel Group’ in Textbook
The KMU is tagged as a “rebel group” in a high school textbook; one of its lawyers is slapped with criminal charges in connection with the burning of a cellsite; there was an attempt to break into their national office. All these, says one of the KMU’s leaders, have the objective of destroying the workers’…
Balao Family Files Amparo Petition
With members of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) and Cordillera Human Rights Alliance (CHRA), the family of missing activist James M. Balao, through counsel National Union of Peoples Lawyers (NUPL), filed a petition for a writ of amparo at the Benguet Regional Trial Court. BY KATHLEEN T. OKUBO Northern Dispatch Posted by Bulatlat HUMAN RIGHTS…
Swimming Lessons for Washington and Wall Street?The Predators’ Bailout
If I recall correctly, the very same US Congress that is considering bailing out the big financial corporations that got the economy into its current mess because of their greed and the government’s willingness to forgo any regulation of their doings (and the doings of their sister companies in the energy sector) made it almost…
Seven Years in Afghanistan: From “War on Terror” to “War of Terror”
What began as a “War on Terror” with waves of bombing attacks on Kandahar and Kabul October 7, 2001 has long since become a War of Terror, inflicted on the peoples of Southwest Asia, generating and strengthening resistance movements (“insurgencies”), enraging local allies and even alienating regimes of Washington’s own creation. The Canadians and Europeans…
Big Trouble in Detroit:How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself
This corporate Congress cannot be expected to issue serious demands, set tough conditions, or impose strict rules on the auto companies to ensure their workers receive fair pay and benefits, and prevent their fat-cat executives from making off big while leaving their companies in shambles. BY RALPH NADER Counterpunch INTERNATIONAL Posted by Bulatlat The Big…
Transport Leader Says Gov’t Should Go After ‘Legal Loot’ of Oil Companies
The militant Pagkakaisa ng mga Samahan ng mga Tsuper at Operators Nationwide (Piston or Unity of Drivers and Operators’ Associations Nationwide) said that the government should go after what it described as “legal looters” of motorists’ money – the giant oil companies. BY NOEL SALES BARCELONA Bulatlat The militant Pagkakaisa ng mga Samahan ng mga…
US ‘War on Terror,’ Intervention in Philippines to Intensify amid Global Economic Crisis – Analysts
Analysts of global economic developments deemed that the US-led ‘war on terror’ will intensify and escalate as a result of the US financial and economic crisis.
Army Moves to Evict Peasants From Land
By virtue of a 1991 Deed of Transfer between the DND and the DAR, some 6,000 peasants and other residents in a 3,100-hectare area within a military reservation in Nueva Ecija should have acquired ownership of the land they live on and till. But they have not, and now they face the possibility of being driven away from the area.
Contractualization in Gov’t Increasing
Based on the 2004 Inventory of Personnel by CSC, 10.81 percent of the 1.79 million government employees are working as “non-career personnel”. This is equivalent to 159,533 workers who, although doing the equivalent of regular work for the government, are not enjoying the full benefits of “real” government workers. BY NOEL SALES BARCELONA Bulatlat Mang…