HUMAN RIGHTS  By Perla Aragon-Choudhury |  What happens when women are too poor to pay for their own contraceptive supplies and long for the government to step in an offer simple support for an operation that would stop their unwanted pregnancies and enable them to take control of their lives?

POLITICS   By Sweet Mary J. Cawicaan |  Nationally speaking, the First Time Voters Network said roughly 60 percent of the 2010 electorate will come from the age bracket of 18 to 40 years old.

LABOR   By Chit Estella  |  Vera Files |  If the heroism of the Olalias and other laborers could not be doubted, then why are they not remembered as heroes by the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation?

HUMAN RIGHTS   The Philippine government should investigate alleged “death squads” responsible for hundreds of targeted killings in Davao City and other in Mindanao, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Clarita Alia, whose four sons were murdered by the Davao Death Squad, joins the Human Rights Watch in a press briefing today about extrajudicial killings in Mindanao. (File photo by Carlos H. Conde)

Related story: Inside the Davao Death Squad

PRESS FREEDOM   At least 24 journalist murders have gone unsolved in the last decade. This pervasive climate of impunity has led to repeated attacks on the press, with renewed levels of violence recorded in 2008. Impunity Index Rating: 0.273 unsolved journalist murders per 1 million inhabitants. Last year: Ranked 6th with a rating of 0.289.

Read the full story

Related: Impunity in the Philippines: No exaggeration

HUMAN RIGHTS   By Keith Bacongco  |  The brutal murder of Rebelyn Pitao, the noncombatant daughter of New People’s Army commander Leoncio Pitao, has people up in arms and put the military on the defensive.   A Special Report

A Killing Too Far. Rebelyn Pitao, a grade school teacher, was abducted, tortured, raped, killed and dumped in a watery ditch in Carmen, Davao del Norte. (Photo by Barry Ohaylan)

Related: Why Is the Military Being Blamed for Rebelyn’s Death?

The Philippines government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) should focus on reaching a ceasefire in central Mindanao, especially as a broader settlement of the conflict seems out of reach during the remaining tenure of the Arroyo administration.
The Philippines: Running in Place in Mindanao, the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, argues that the government’s effort to resume talks will be futile unless the factors that led to the collapse of negotiations last August are addressed.

By Antonio Calipjo Go
E-mail: sickbooks_togo@yahoo.com
The following items are among the more than five hundred (500) items of a similar nature that may be found in the just-released public school textbook (copyright 2008) in Reading for Grade 6 titled “English For You and Me,” written by Elodie A. Cada, published by Book Wise Publishing House, [...]

Twenty-two years after the Mendiola Massacre that resulted in the death of 13 farmers, Filipino farmers are still fighting for a genuine agrarian reform program.

Today, Jan. 26, is the 39th anniversary of the so-called “First Quarter Storm,” the series of demonstrations and protests against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Jose F. Lacaba, then a 24-year-old staff writer of the Philippines Free Press, wrote the most definitive eyewitness accounts of that period, stories that later became the book “Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage.” With his permission, we are reprinting one of his stories, “The January 26 Confrontation: A Highly Personal Account.”

EDWIN ESPEJO  The military claims the NPA in Mindanao is no longer the ideological force it once was and is today dependent instead upon attracting restless and rootless young unemployed to its ranks. Yet according to the rebels, they have rebounded from their bloody past to re-establish a presence in “more than 2,000 barrios (villages) in 200 municipalities in 19 provinces in the island.”

As lawmakers debate on the fate of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) before the session in Congress ends this year, farmers believe — and have proven – that owning and having control of a piece of land and the means to cultivate it is their way out of hunger and poverty.

PRESS FREEDOM  | Two Philippine radio journalists, Dennis Cuesta and Martin Roxas, were slain in 2008 after reporting on local controversies. CPJ research over 17 years shows that the Philippines and Russia have been among the deadliest nations for the press—and among the worst in solving the murders.

HUMAN RIGHTS  By Alan Davis |  Is the recent spate of activist killings in Southern Mindanao an unfortunate series of coincidences or are they somehow related to the Philippine military’s counter-insurgency program Oplan Bantay Laya 2?

HUMAN RIGHTS  By Alan Davis and Ma. Cecilia L. Rodriguez  |  In his radio broadcasts, Aresio Padrigao attacked city hall, the local government and, too, the local police and the local Department of Environment and Natural Resources office for what he saw was a failure to catch illegal loggers. On Nov. 17, he was shot dead.