Commentary: Break the Silence, Stop Bullying!

AS I was trying to know more about the issue of bullying in schools, I came across a resolution from the Department of Education (DepEd) regarding Child Protection Policy, which seeks to defend students from any form of abuse and encourages the different stakeholders of the school – the administrators, parents, teachers and the community in general – to take an active part in promoting this policy.

One of the considered abuses in their provisions is bullying, which seems to be a topic that is seldom talked about but highly seen and experienced by many students.

Speak out: Soldier, farmer, peace builder

BALAY Mindanaw’s Belle Hernandez texted me three hours after her team had left Baganga yesterday. She must have been somewhere in Trento when she finally caught a signal.

She said our mutual friend LTC Kris Mortela had assumed as commander of the Incident Command Post (ICP) in Baganga.

Wenceslao: Government's fights versus terrorism

THE peace process does not stand alone. It is the key part of a complicated set of programs and actions designed to ultimately bring peace and prosperity to Mindanao.

One such program is the government's fight against terrorism. Unless terrorism is eradicated, the peace process alone cannot succeed.

Salgados: The one you love

BLEEDING accounts on Manny Pacquiao’s sensational defeat at the hands of Mexican great Juan Manuel Marquez varied from technical to superstitious and even religious belief.

Salgados: No more highway robbery for Marquez

IT MAY sound very “un-filipino,” but Juan Manuel Marquez’s dismantling of Filipino icon Manny Pacquaio with just one second left in the sixth round no longer surprised me anymore.

Yes, it shocked the whole world. But not the “neutral”, if not the “analytical” part in me.

Editorial: Lessons from ‘Sendong’ and ‘Pablo’

SUPER Typhoon “Pablo” came and battered several areas in Mindanao, including Cagayan de Oro. It left some barangays, houses and roads in the city flooded. It uprooted several trees and blown away some roofs of houses. It even toppled off the power lines of Cagayan Electric Power and Light Company causing a temporary blackout of the entire city. The production wells of the Cagayan de Oro Water District were not spared as the storm submerged them, causing a temporary cut off of water supply in some households.

Luczon: Breakfast over ‘evacuations’

WHEN typhoon “Pablo” is getting nearer by the second and the ominous red alert has been raised to initiate force evacuations and avoid casualties due to the natural calamity, just wait for it as breakfast has been served yet.

This was how acting police chief Sr. Supt. Antonio Montalba of the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office (Cocpo), respond when called up by a TV reporter as early as 7:00am Monday in a follow-up phone call on the supposed to be a “forced evacuation” operations in flood prone communities such as Tibasak and Cala-cala in Barangay Macasandig.

Vesagas: HIV/Aids - Does it have a social function?

THE first day of December is traditionally dubbed as the World AIDS day. It is created to bring people together from around the globe to raise awareness about HIV/Aids.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the theme for 2011 to 2015 will be “Getting to Zero: Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero Aids-related deaths.”

Editorial: Preparing for the worst

ALMOST a year after Cagayan de Oro City and other parts of Northern Mindanao was hit by Tropical Storm Sendong, residents are again bracing for yet another possible surge of heavy rain as the weather bureau expects Typhoon Pablo to make a landfall on Tuesday, possibly hitting northeastern parts of Mindanao.

In Cagayan de Oro, the City Government is reportedly looking at evacuating at least 15,000 families living in critical areas along the Cagayan de Oro River as Pablo is feared to be the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year, much stronger than last year’s “Sendong.”

Luczon: Facing the storm

TWELVE days short, more or less, until the first anniversary of that Tropical Storm “Sendong” had set its wrath over Northern Mindanao, and here we are anticipating yet another storm that is said to be much stronger than last year. I hope that the day this will be printed, it will change its course or will lessen its intensity, God Willing.

This storm whose name was internationally known as “Bopha,” and soon to be “Pablo” when it enters the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR), is said to become a “super typhoon” with a diameter of 400-500 kilometers and 500-millimeter rainfall measurement, dwarfing “Sendong” with at least a difference of 400 millimeters.

Vugt: Listen to your common sense

‘COMMON sense is the guide of all virtues’. The Carmelites have this as their motto in life. It is engraved in the Carmelite Rule.

But you don’t have to be a Carmelite to live this motto in your life. Every human being has a common sense, it is engraved in our soul. The Spirit of God has been incarnated in all human beings. As Christians we know that we have been created in God’s image. That means that we all are basically good, beautiful, truthful and just, provided we listen to what our common sense tells us. If not, then we get into trouble. This is so within our own small community where we live but also on a wider level in our society. We keep on quarrelling with each other in small or big things and we don’t stop until we seriously start listening to our common sense.

Emata: Observations in foreign lands

I HAVE gone to many countries some years ago and always I compared the Philippines to all the places I have gone to. Perhaps because the latter is so close to me it always comes out as the best of all the foreign countries I have seen. One thing that surprised me though, is the fact that in our country, so many people just roam around doing nothing while others sit down in parks, in sidewalks, in vacant lots, just talking with each other or discuss important issues about politics and religion.

Vugt: Christ the King

LAST Sunday we celebrated in the Catholic Church the Feast of Christ the King. It is the end of the liturgical year. Next Sunday is the beginning of the new year with the celebration of the First Sunday of Advent.

Education: A new weapon for liberation

AMONG the significant collateral advantage that is reaped from the signing of the Framework Agreement crafted by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government peace negotiators is that nations who had pledged to assist in the development of the conflict areas in the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao have started to fulfill what they had promised earlier.  

Luczon: Heads roll towards Christmas

BEFORE anything else, I would like to thank the “avid” readers of this paper and those who surprisingly follow this section, especially for being “chismoso” who liked my once-in-a-while blind items, just like this fresh catch:

Vesagas: More on Smoking, Drinking, Health Care and Sin Tax Bill

HOUSE Bill 5727 or the Sin Tax Bill is perhaps one of the most sensationalized issues concerning our country in terms of revenue, business and health.

Vugt: Christian attitude towards wordly riches

An interpretation of the article of Ernesto R. Mondoñedo

Mondoñedo discusses in this article how we have to deal as Christians with our worldly possessions, material and spiritual as well. In the first place, we should realize that whatever we have, it has been given to us by God. And second, we know that we have been created by God in his image. To make this image become true in our life we must, like God, share everything that we have with our fellowmen, and especially with those who are in need among us.

Van Vugt: The economy – a communal affair

PRESIDENT Aquino is blamed that he has not done enough to improve our economy. That may be true, but we should not forget that he inherited an economy that lay in ruins from a President who was an economist by profession.

One reason that our economy was in ruin was a corruption of government officials and so many other people in business. Aquino has attacked this evil head on. But the economy is not only an affair of the President and government officials. The economy is a communal affair.

Equal rights and opportunities in Mindanao?

WHO stands to gain most if the peace negotiation between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government will finally come to a happy ending?

What many Filipino Muslims may not have realized is that contrary to their general perception that they have been marginalized, the screaming fact is that Muslim communities are actually supposed to be recipients of unimaginably large amounts of aid and donations from the national government and foreign donors.

Editorial: Yet another blow to CdeO police

MORE than a month after a bomb exploded near a hotel in Cagayan de Oro, another explosion rocked the city on Wednesday, injuring at least eight civilians.

Speak Out: The ‘Trial of the century’ may end up ‘The farce of the century’

NOW on its third year, justice still remains elusive for the families and friends of the victims of the Ampatuan massacre, the most brutal carnage in recent history.

Under the Aquino government, the court case against the Ampatuan clan has become even more tortuous and is turning into a farce.

Vugt: Where is God – how is He present in this world?

IN THE tragedies that befall us, we oftentimes ask this question: where is God in all this? The mass murder that happened in our City recently, where four members of one family were killed by a drug addict and buried in a septic tank, we wonder how can someone in his right mind do such a thing? Does God allow that? All those poor people who were duped by the Aman Futures investments scam and lost all their hard-earned savings, how can people be so malicious, and how can God allow this to happen to the poor people? But also in natural calamities like Sendong where so many people got killed by illegally cut logs or just got drowned in the flood waters, how can God allow this to happen to innocent people? Where is God in all this?

Luczon: Three years

IT WILL be three full years this coming November 23, since it happened in 2009 that reshaped the course of Philippine media history and electoral culture.

Luczon: Love according to Economy Class

THERE’S this TV/mainstream movie director claiming to be behind the success of trash soap operas and mainstream Tagalog movies, saying in a way that he "hates" independent (art) films because "it's hard to understand and appreciated."

This he said in a "media seminar," recently organized by a known communication service provider of cellular phones, for the students in various schools in Cagayan de Oro. Oh well, people these days, being an idiot is not that hard.

Van Vugt: Sustaining the spirit of Christ’s mission (An article by Ernesto R. Mondoñedo)

IN this article, Mondoñedo speaks about the role the Holy Spirit plays in salvation history: first in the life of Jesus of Nazareth himself and second in our individual lives as followers of Christ.

“The Holy Spirit, the Third Person in God, is the sustaining spirit of Christ’s mission. He is the spirit of divine love and is the source or fountainhead of the Holy Trinity’s will to share its divine knowledge, wisdom, power and goodness of all creation. It was through the action of the Holy Spirit that the Word of God (Jn. 1:3) shared a portion, as it were, of his infinite being so that things were created where and when they previously did not exist. It was also through the Holy Spirit that the Word of God, as Creator and Redeemer, sustains the natural existence of created things and the life of God in people.

Emata: Improve agricultural venture

THE country has been importing rice from Vietnam or Thailand and other Asian countries for many years. There was only one moment in our history when we did not import this item and that was during the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos. But it was only for a few moments and the same buying of this staple during the same administration went on normally. Of the past administration, it was only Marcos who worked hard to develop the country’s agriculture.

I cannot understand why we have to import rice. What is ironic is that we used to brag of vast land for agriculture, new technology, new farming equipment and aggressive farmers to work from sunrise to sundown in the open fields. With these graces from heaven, we import rice and other foodstuff from neighboring countries.

Editorial: Stopping the problem

THE problem on illegal drugs in Northern Mindanao seems to have been taken out of hand.

Vugt: The new age (An article by Ernest R. Mondoñedo)

MY friend Mondoñedo gives in this article an overview of salvation history. It covers four millennia, 2,000 years before Christ and 2,000 years after Christ’s Ascension into Heaven and the coming down of the Holy Spirit at the first Pentecost.

Luczon: The Strategist: A poetry in media mileage

A BUSINESSMAN whose company unknown, Or parents who want their son be recognized; Perhaps a service of power and water in the homes, Everything that needs, and must be publicized.

Motoomull: Blessed is to give and receive

WE often equate giving with being generous and spiritual, and receiving with being selfish and greedy.

When we are giving, we are in control in a way that we are not when receiving.