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A Peace Advocate's Fashion/Passion Statement |
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Friday, 26 June 2009 |
 Peace advocate Atty. Soliman "Sol" M. Santos, Jr. of Naga City, Camarines Sur in the Bicol region makes a fashion/passion statement with the design in the t-shirt he is wearing in the photo. It has to do with adding a crescent moon under the bottom star in an already popular Filipino nationalist design of the day, the sun and three stars like in the Philippine flag. Sol first made his modification on that Filipino nationalist design, adding the crescent moon under the bottom star, for a proposed mini-poster in support of the 1996 GRP-MNLF Final Peace Agreement. The crescent moon and star motif is found in both the MNLF and MILF flags. So, it was then an attempt to depict some kind of constitutional accommodation of Moro aspirations (like autonomy) in relation to the Philippine juridical entity -- in a way that would be more meaningful to Moros (because of the crescent moon's symbolism of Islam) than would be the adding of a ninth ray to the sun (in the first place, the Moro armed resistance to Spain was not part of the Philippine Revolution of 1896 starting with eight provinces in Luzon). Sol's design might also be said to be an attempt to combine Filipino nationalism and Moro nationalism, if that can be done at all, without a clash of nationalisms.
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Durian: Politicians and Moral Forces |
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Friday, 19 June 2009 |
By Amina Rasul
My friend Baby emailed a joke:
Five surgeons are discussing who are the best patients to operate on.
The first surgeon says, 'I like to see Accountants on my operating table because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.'
The second responds, 'Yeah, but you should try Electricians! Everything inside them is color-coded.'
The third surgeon says, 'No, I really think Librarians are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order.'
The fourth surgeon chimes in, 'You know I like Construction Workers. Those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over at the end, and when the job takes longer than you said it would.'
But the fifth surgeon shut them all up when he observed, 'You're all wrong. Pinoy politicians are the easiest to operate on. There's no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains, and no spine, and there are only two moving parts - the mouth and the ass**** - and they are interchangeable!’
What is wrong with this picture? The leaders, supposedly elected by the people, are also vilified by the people.
Chief Justice Reynato Puno, who is calling for a Moral Force, has stated: “We have no reason to celebrate our freedom if this is the situation in our country. A country that does not follow laws, a country whose morality is in tatters because of corruption, a country that is like a volcano that is on the brink of an explosion. The current structure of Philippine society was not made for a successful democracy because the few elite are in control of the country, the middle class is weak and there is a sea of poor people.”
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Ulama to Obama: get GRP-MILF back to nego table ASAP |
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Tuesday, 16 June 2009 |
Courtesy: Mindanews
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/07 June) -- The National Ulama Conference of the Philippines (NUCP) has written US President Barack Obama yet another letter, expressing its deep appreciation for his June 4 speech in Cairo where he sought “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world” as it also urged him to “vigorously support the peace process in Mindanao” and work to get the Philippine government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) back to the negotiating table “as soon as possible.”
In its letter dated June 5, the NUCP praised Obama for his “bold efforts to address the root cause of the problem in the Middle East by recognizing the right of the Palestinians to their homeland and a state of their own” as it reiterated what the group wrote when it congratulated his election as the first African-American President of the United States in a letter dated January 29.
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Aleemat and Women Leaders from Zamboanga City, Basilan, and Sulu Gather to Wage Peace |
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Monday, 15 June 2009 |
The continuing armed conflicts in southern Philippines exact a high toll on the women who bear the major load of taking care of the needs of the family and community when the men go to war. Moreover, some women become victims of intimidation, threats, rape and cases of disappearance. Thus the women are socially, economically, psychologically and physically abused with the resulting trauma further leading to more deprivable situations such as prostitution. It is for this reason that women in conflict areas have a lot of stake in resolving conflicts and as such should be able to participate in peace building and conflict resolution.
It is against this backdrop that 50 Muslim women religious scholars (Aleemat) and civil society women leaders from Zamboanga City, Basilan and Sulu gathered to discuss ways in which they can more meaningfully participate in transforming their communities in terms of conflict resolution, human rights, electoral reforms and livelihood and sustainable development. The forum, which is part of a project dubbed Empowering Women as Peace Advocates: The Role of Women in Conflict Prevention and Peace-building, was convened by the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy and the Magbassa Kita Foundation, Inc. (MKFI) with the support of the Charities Foundation of America (CAFAmerica) through the One Woman Initiative (OWI).
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