Neth Daño, the representative to the Philippines of Third World Network wrote:

As per radio reports on DZRH just now, the ill-fated M/V Princess of the
Stars was carrying a container-full of Endosulfan (manufacturer: Bayer CropScience) - a neurotoxic organochlorine insecticide, one of the "Dirty Dozen" banned for some years now in many countries, including ours. If you will recall, Endosulfan was banned in the Philippines in 1994.

If the pesticide cargo is owned by Del Monte, then it will not be used in Cebu, but most likely in Bukidnon in Northern Mindanao where their thousands of hectares of pineapple plantations are located. The M/V Princess of the Stars disaster has now exposed that a "reputable corporation" like Del Monte is using tons of a banned pesticides (if radio report were true that it is indeed Endosulfan - and we can expect massive cover ups) on their pineapples meant for export.

Radio interview with divers say that they have difficulty breathing underwater from the first time they started the search-and-rescue operations early this week, which made it very hard to recover bodies inside the upside-down ship.

Tragic to think about the long-term effects of such a highly toxic and endocrine-disruptin g pesticide on corals, water and the entire marine ecosystem off Sibuyan Island and adjacent water bodies...

(;-)Neth

Bless me Father for I love my sins.

For how can I be blamed when I knew, the moment my back pressed the soft bed, that warm body thawing the distance between us, that drought will soon be over. Let it be the mother of all my sins, and I confess that it remains in my words and lingers all the more in my thoughts; that I love what I have done--what we did--and with tomorrow coming, I try not to fail doing it again.






And so I thank Mother that I no longer am a virgin; I abhor not a hint of regret for the body--that body--was like that of an angel. And a saint. Nevermind if he was a cousin. Or a cousin's cousin. I am happy, though, that he was not a brother.


So bless me Father for I love my sins.

Athan, whose real name I am so tempted to disclosing here but I think I will not--thank you better days, thank you respect--recently pissed me off. Like, big time.

I was so pissed off that a little snap would have been enough for me to give him loads of problems, just as what he was asking for, after describing me as someone who is congenitally problematic. You see, I don’t really mind sharing to others my problems and I think he wanted some.

Well, he did not use the word congenitally, but the way he said it, he was hinting that he sees me as someone congenitally problematic. Probably he did not use the word because he did not know what it really meant. And had he known what it meant, he would have used it and perhaps, he’s a cold ass by now.

(Mandaya said I am so Mr Bitter Ocampo. Fuckness! Hahahah…)

Well, he also called me ugly. But I did not mind that because I know, in my heart, that the new beau is uglier, if I am ugly. But I am not ugly, hello, and yet, the new beau is still ugly. I am not in denial or something, I want you to believe that, and ask me and I will tell you that the new beau, as I was told by my cousin Daniel, is really ugly.

And my cousin, for the hotness of him, said I am not ugly. And he was not saying it because we were cousins and I believe him for saying that, you know, not because we were cousins but because he was hot. Like, really hot—imagine all those carved muscles and all but not really grossly carved. He was just perfectly, well almost perfectly, toned. Wait, I am not suggesting something like I am entertaining incest here, please, no matter how he asked me to wrap him around my arms while he was deprecating Athan and the ugly beau.

(Ang gulo ano? Hahahaha…nakakaloka)

Had it not been for my threatening flails—hints of it he so slowly realized—I bet he would have not given up his little game until now. Wait, we are back to Athan now. I am done with my cousin—the hot cousin. So Athan, everytime he pisses me off, I bet, is getting a huge hard-on.

I know in my heart that he tries to engage me into intellectual exchanges because he’s not getting any from the new beau—the uglier beau. But Athan’s shots were so lame, really, that I felt like I so wanted to puke on myself everytime I read his messages on my friendster account that he tracked down. And so I had to tell Athan that we better stop the exchanges because the process was so one-way street—he was getting a hard-on while it did not even warrant any desire from me to initiate a foreplay.

And so I had to insist that we better stop it before I forget that I am nice. He knows it that I am a nice person. And my being nice gives him a little protection. But I am not all nice, and he, too, knows that most of me is a bitch. You see, I don't mind outing people in public. Or beat someone to it.

God, I am writing this while Elton John’s voice was rising to almost a beautiful falsetto as he breathed life into his tiny dancer. And Penny Lane’s image was impossibly etched into my mind like the color of the fallen flowers of the fire trees I saw several post-summer months ago in Sarangani Province.

After Celso Pojas, chair of the peasant group Farmers Association of Davao City (FADC) and spokesperson of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas in Southern Mindanao, woke up early morning of Thursday, he quickly readied himself to leave for Compostela town in Compostela Valley Province to check on the situation of the lumad displaced by the military’s massive anti-insurgency campaign.

He, however, never made it there. He was stopped by three bullets of caliber .45 pistol few minutes after he bought sticks of cigarette from a sari-sari store in Barangay Maa here, just about 30 meters away from their office.

The bullets of the two unidentified persons, onboard a motorcycle, pierced through the right torso of Pojas and crushed the bones of his left arm. Medics from 911 declared him dead on the spot few minutes after he was attacked at around 6:00 am.

His colleagues at FADC said they were preparing to leave for Compostela town and were discussing recent developments concerning the lumad evacuees—particularly the sudden appearance of soldiers that caused the evacuees in the town gymnasim to panic—over coffee when Pojas excused himself to buy cigarette.

Few minutes after he went out of the office, people from FADC heard gunshots and learned later that Pojas has been attacked. He died right by the red gate of their office which is located just by the main road.

Pojas, 45, was the first militant leader in Davao City in recent years who has fallen victim of the strings of extrajudicial killings being blamed to the government. He also the first casualty since the leadership of Armed Forces of the Philippines was bequeathed to Gen. Alexander Yano. In Southern Mindanao , Pojas is victim number 79 while across the country, he was marked as victim number 903.

The military has denied any involvement in the killing. Militants groups and the human rights group Karapatan believe otherwise.

"Ang bango mo naman...sarap mong romansahen..."
--sabi ng isang cute na lalaki sa akin




"Salamat..."---Bulong ko kay Denenes