Women peasant group Amihan called on the government to aid Typhoon Maring-hit farming and fishing communities in Northern Luzon provinces that have been battling very low farm gate prices due to massive importation.
“The Department of Agriculture never learns. Every time there is an alleged shortage, the default solution is to flood our market with imported fish. Yet this measure never addresses and resolves the crisis in our fisheries production that happens on a yearly basis.”
“Substantial revenues can be raised by taxing the country’s super-rich who can well afford to contribute much more to COVID-19 response and other needs. This is aside from how the administration can realign funds from bloated infrastructure, military and police, and debt servicing items in the proposed 2022 budget.”
“The current regime is set to leave a more food-insecure Philippines. Duterte is the biggest typhoon, the worst pest for a Filipino farmer. One in four food products in the country is imported.”
Advocates of food sovereignty, peasant rights and the enviroment held their own Global People’s Summit (GPS) on Food Systems as a way to counter the “global corporate food empire.”
Regional and international people’s organizations and advocates led by the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS) recently held the Global People’s Summit (GPS) on Food Systems through various online and on-ground activities.
Following the controversial online interview of the son and namesake of the late dictator, Bulatlat revisited the YouTube vlog of former Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his apparent attempts of whitewashing the horrors of martial law.
Today, the 49th year since the imposition of the Marcos dictator, Bulatlat is providing facts and context to these claims.
Farmers group said the proposed P30.46 billion budget for the government’s counterinsurgency arm should instead be used to subsidize food production.
Pamalakaya said the government is temporarily halting the implementation. The fisherfolk group attributed this to the strong public outcry, as livelihoods and income of thousands of small fisherfolk and coastal residents from Noveleta, Kawit, Cavite City, and Bacoor City are threatened.
A group of human rights lawyers in the Philippines said that the “overwhelming support” that the International Criminal Court received from approximately 1,530 individual victims and 1,050 families who fell victims of the government’s “war on drugs” may lead to a formal investigation.
In light of the COA report, Bulatlat is revisiting the ridiculous spending of the Duterte administration when it should be pouring its attention to defeating this pandemic.