28% of young Filipinos think AIDS curable

wow. This is disturbing. Taken from here:

MANILA, Philippines—As many young Filipinos are misinformed about the fatal HIV and the full-blown AIDS, the Department of Education and Unicef have partnered to use a video to fight this ignorance, as well as the rising number of sexually transmitted infections (STI) cases.

The 2003 Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Survey (YAFSS) said that 28 percent of young Filipino adults thought that acquired immuno deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is curable while 73 percent thought that they are immune to human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV).

Recent findings of the Department of Health’s AIDS Registry also revealed that infections among 15- to 24-year-old Filipinos increased five-fold from 41 in 2007 to 218 in 2009. Overall prevalence of pre-marital sexual activity also increased from 18 to 23 percent between 1994 and 2002.

Recognizing children’s right to information at the right time to enable them to lead happy, healthy lives, DepEd and Unicef on Wednesday launched Power of You, an interactive video intended to help young people, particularly high school students, learn about risky behaviors, STI, HIV, and AIDS.

The video follows the story of Francis and Sara, typical teens who face big challenges every day. Being interactive, it allows users to choose the path that their characters will take, through decision points depicting drama and humor of a normal teenager’s life. It carries the message for young people to delay sexual debut and educate themselves and their peers about HIV and STIs.

“Today, young people learn things better if information is presented to them in a novel and exciting way, and Power of You does just that. It is designed to raise awareness on STI and HIV among young people in a fun and interactive light. It motivates them to choose life-saving actions and focuses on the power of individual choice to make their dreams and ambitions come true,” said Unicef Representative Vanessa Tobin at the launch of the video.

According to the Unicef briefer, the campaign will involve the conduct of learning sessions using the interactive video. In a learning session, a trained facilitator will guide high school students in “Choosing the Life” of a teenager.

The main characters in the video will experience significant situations which require critical decisions. The students will be asked to decide the fate of the main character. Each choice will result in a new situation. The facilitator will give appropriate information bits after each decision. The project will be rolled out and implemented by DepEd with assistance from Unicef within the year.

“The Department of Education signifies its commitment to a long-term, sustainable program targeting education and prevention. We are encouraging teachers to integrate programs like Power of You in their school improvement plans and foster an environment of openness wherein young people can talk about the problems that they typically encounter as they go about teenage life,” said DepEd’s Bureau of Secondary Education Director Dr. Lolita Andrada.

The Power of You campaign is initially piloted in 29 public schools in Metro Manila, the cities of Cebu, Davao, Zamboanga, and Olongapo, and Masbate. The campaign aims to reach at least 12,000 high school students in the first year of 2010.

The Philippines is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely signed international treaty safeguarding children’s rights.

What's your opinion on the RH Bill?

Here is an article by Patricia Evangelist published in the Inquirer on the topic of contraceptives:

Method To Madness
This is a condom ad 

By Patricia Evangelista
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:38:00 03/13/2010

Filed Under: Family planning, Advertising, Health, Population,Epidemic and Plague

Most Read

MANILA, Philippines—Welcome to 2010, where kids in the call centers screw themselves dead, women waddle to market towing Baby Number 8 with Baby Number 9 on the way, and teenage girls skewer out fetuses from their vaginas with bent plastic hangers. The Church said abstain or bear the consequences. That the consequences eventually starve on the streets of Manila singing Villar songs isn’t the state’s problem. Consequences don’t stand on pulpits to condemn candidates to damnation in a voting year, but the sons of the Church certainly can.

With the Reproductive Health bill in limbo as presidential candidates drop support in the face of rampaging friars, Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral found herself in the role of Hosea’s wife when she gave away condoms on Valentine’s Day. Not satisfied with howling for Cabral’s resignation on the grounds of lewdness and immorality, the Church went back to its favorite stomping ground and demanded a ban on condom advertising.

There is a necessary parallelism to be made here. In 2007, when the Marlboro man rode off into the red sunset for the last time, he took with him five decades of tobacco advertising dominance. The cigarette ad ban was a result of Congresses around the world going head to head with the big guns of the tobacco monopoly on the strength of a single damning medical conclusion: smoking kills. To ban cigarette advertising is to concede the definite, addictive and inevitable harms of tobacco. It is a statement that although the state recognizes your freedom to kill yourself slowly by way of a Winston Lights soft pack, it will not quietly allow the murderers to encourage your children via Edsa billboards. Unlike cigarette advertising, which if successful condemns the citizen to the grim promise of death by lung cancer, condom advertising, if successful, protects the citizen from a painful future with STDs—a future even the Church fears.

It is an interesting argument in the land of free speech and free enterprise, neon signs and presidents with mistresses, KTV bars and HIV. That most advertised products pose greater dangers than a condom does not seem to matter. Let the billboards peddle motorcycles and beer buckets and 24-hour cholesterol delivered to your doorstep. Let the grinning politicians pimp miracles; let Pagcor advertise the glory of gambling. All these are allowed because it is understood that individuals are free to make their own educated choices. Not every man gets drunk and beats up his wife, not every car owner runs pell-mell into school buses. It is abuse that is dangerous, not the cars or alcohol. It is why the government requires seatbelts and bans liquor sales past two in the morning. It is the same logic with sex, only the seatbelt is called a condom, nobody is forcing anyone to snap it on, and while the Church has every right to call it a ride to hell on a lubricated latex slide, the state is not permitted to do so.

According to a UNAIDS report, condoms have a 90 percent success rate against AIDS, and it’s not because one in 10 condoms is faulty. The failure is mostly due to human error and a lack of consistency. In a country where NGOs need to disabuse men of the notion that safe sex means a condom on a finger and not on a penis, we don’t need just condom ads, we need public service announcements from the national government ensuring that choices made are informed choices. If an individual chooses to abstain, chooses to have sex before marriage, chooses to be promiscuous, chooses not to have children when married, chooses natural methods, chooses to have threesomes at high noon with a jumbo pack of condoms and a hot pink leather, he/she has that right. It’s called a democracy. Judge him/her for it, if you will, but the government cannot. A ban on sexual intercourse has yet to be included in the Constitution.

After all, not everyone is Edu Manzano. “I’ve never used a condom.” It is also hoped that he no longer has sex.

This isn’t just about condom ads or that the existence of over-the-counter contraceptives like pills and injectables is kept quiet. It is about a government, with the exception of Cabral, that has buckled before the altar of Catholic righteousness in matters of reproductive health care. This is the same Church whose Fr. Melvin Castro told reporter Ricky Carandang that it is all right to vote for a crook for as long as that crook does not support modern family planning.

For the last eight years, the administration has bent over backwards for the Catholic Church, crowing about the success of natural family planning and failing to address the grim facts: 54 percent of all pregnancies are unintended, 1.9 million unintended pregnancies occurred in 2008 mostly among the country’s poorest 40 percent, 560,000 of these pregnancies resulted in induced abortion, 90,000 were hospitalized, 1,000 died from abortion complications and 1,600 women died in childbirth. AIDS cases have risen over 100 percent. So when every presidential candidate says he/she supports women’s choices to use artificial contraception but not the RH bill, it is necessary to ask just how legitimate women’s choices are. It can’t be a choice when a condom is an impossibility in a household earning only enough for a meal a day, when marital rape is a revolutionary notion, and sex education has come to a point that a student from the University of the Philippines can claim with all sincerity that he’s practicing safe sex because we all know a girl can’t get pregnant if she doesn’t get an orgasm.

The state already admitted the need to curb both a growing population and the rise of STDs; it already put out a budget for natural family planning. To deny the greater good and keep the public ignorant of choices that may well save their lives is not a policy decision, it is a moral argument from a single religion. The gods may damn the uneducated teenage girl in the slums for sleeping with her first boyfriend, but when government does it by consciously denying access and information, it’s discrimination.

It is an odd notion to claim it is necessary to see a condom advertisement for a teenager to want sex. God and puberty take care of that. Keeping an entire generation in the dark because of their “delicate conscience” is insane preparation for a universe where they will walk into multiple beliefs that collide at a street corner where Angelica Panganiban shows off her Bench panties in a four-story billboard. You want people to abstain; you offer a foundation that demands it and convictions that stand up to it. You don’t ask it from a government responsible for the protection of the varying convictions of 80 million people. If all it takes to “weaken the moral fiber” of a teenage girl is an ad that Frenzy condoms are now available in banana flavors, maybe it has less to do with the condoms and more to do with morals whose strength rests on a bishop’s wagging finger.

The biggest, little man

So there's another Manny Pacquiao fight today. Guess there'll be no traffic or crimes in the metro. So in celebration you might want to read the article below. It's one of the most insightful articles I've read about Manny. It's funny too. 

HE IS IN THE CAR. I AM IN THE CAR. Physically we are, both of us, in the car. Still, I wonder.

It's now January. In December, I spent a week traversing the Philippine archipelago in a vain attempt to speak with this man. Though it is difficult to arrive at an exact number, it is safe to say that during that week, slightly less than half the national population of 90 million people assured me with a wink that they would get me "in the car" with Manny Pacquiao. But there had been no car. No Manny Pacquiao. (Pronounced like a comic-book sound effect: pack-ee-ow!) I did spend the afternoon of the man's thirty-first birthday in his living room, playing a series of increasingly aggressive Christmas carols on his Yamaha grand piano in a last-ditch effort to flush him from his bedroom. (It was five in the afternoon. He had risen for the day an hour earlier.) But there was no Manny. At 6 p.m., in a single brisk movement, he descended from the balcony—eerily reminiscent of the one on which Al Pacino dies after screaming, "Say hello to my lee-tle frien'!" in Scarface—and out to a waiting caravan. He brushed my shoulder without looking at me as he passed. Or did he? Later, I could not shake my suspicion that the shoulder brush, the whole trip, was a dream. Avivid dream, of a place where every soul and every thing was lit from within by the still, small voice of Manny Pacquiao—Manny… Emmanuel…Hebrew for "God is with us"— but where Manny Pacquiao himself was nowhere to be seen.

But now, at a promotional event in Texas, the first boxer ever to win seven world titles in as many weight divisions, the first athlete ever to appear on a Philippine postage stamp, a man who in 2008 portrayed the Philippine warrior Lapu-Lapu, whose forces killed Magellan and repelled his conquistadores, in a reenactment of the 1521 Battle of Mactan, a man who often survives on three hours' sleep and is said to possess a photographic memory, is "in the car." As am I.

"Manny," I begin, "one of the many reasons GQ wants to feature you is that we want to explain why your appeal in the United States extends far beyond the sport of boxing. Do you have a theory about this?"

The members of his posse, encircling him at ten, two, three, four, six, eight, and nine o'clock, lean in and look. Nothing about the man moves. He remains perfectly postured, eyes forward, arms crossed, the vertical of his chassis aligned with, determining, the center of the SUV's bench seat and of the vehicle itself. Time passes.

"Manny," I begin again, "are you aware that millions of people in this country who don't follow boxing follow you?" I can see myself reflected in his oversize mirrored Oakleys. I look ridiculous.

After a time, the tiniest parting of the lips, just a sliver of a shadow between them, and a low exhalation:

"Yaaah."

Then Manny Pacquiao tilts his head back several degrees to indicate the departure of his presence.

It is then, at long last, that a phrase Pacquiao's people use to explain his mysterious ways—which isn't an explanation at all but a surrender—begins to seem adequate.

Because he is Pacquiao.

After the car ride, we all fly to New York on his promoter's plane. There is great consternation in the hangar prior to departure. Five men huddle over a small package. They look ashen, cancer-stricken. A decision is reached. The tallest of them, a Canadian named Michael Koncz, takes the package and marches, as if toward his own death, onto the airplane.

After takeoff, Koncz opens the package. It's Manny's dinner. Koncz presents the dish to Pacquiao and, in a tone born more in sorrow than in anger, announces that something has gone terribly wrong; instead of rice, the chef has accompanied Manny's meat with mashed potatoes. Manny nods. "I'm so sorry, Manny," Koncz says as he begins to cut Pacquiao's steak and season his cooked vegetables for him. "The bread is very soft, though." Manny prays, eats. After, he reposes on a couch. As one member of Team Pacquiao begins to massage his feet, calves, and thighs, Koncz drapes him in a blanket, methodically but gently tucking its edges in.

"And now," Manny Pacquiao says to me with a lovely smile, "you talk."

*****

YOU'RE NOT A boxing fan? Doesn't matter. We're all fans of the strange, hardwired to seek and behold it—and Manny Pacquiao is the most beautifully strange human being to befall boxing, and perhaps even all of sport, in a generation.

Beautiful and strange to the eye, of course. That speed! The coil and float. The spooky slowing of time. The suspicion he creates in you that your naked eye only partially apprehends him—that what he does in the ring exceeds your spectrum.

And beautifully strange on paper. At the elite level, a boxer's optimal fighting weight involves a trade-off of speed and power. Particularly in the lighter weight classes, a boxer who enters the ring thirty-two ounces over or under his natural fighting weight is often too slowed or weakened to win. Despite such parameters, Pacquiao has won divisions ranging from flyweight, a belt he won in 1998 as a 112-pound 19-year-old, to welterweight, a division that tops out at 147 pounds, in November 2009. (He began his career in 1995, as a 16-year-old, 106-pound light flyweight.) On March 13, he'll defend his welterweight belt against the Ghanaian fighter Joshua Clottey. According to every metric, Pacquiao…can't be. Which is why, over the past fifteen years, the expert nay-saying has come even from his own corner. "I would think that Manny can fight at 140. But I think going past 140 would be a mistake," Pacquiao's promoter, Bob Arum, told ESPN in December 2008. "Every time I think of Manny in a ring with [Puerto Rican welterweight] Miguel Cotto… it begins to look a little ludicrous." In other words, even Pacquiao's supernatural speed wouldn't matter. A natural welterweight like Cotto would register the punches as love taps; Pacquiao, in turn, would be crushed.

read the rest of the article here

vandalism

I found these at the Overheard in Ateneo de Manila University group page. These are some of the best vandalism written on classroom desks. I used to spend half of the class looking over these shiz and sometimes contributing to them. haha.

Awwww! I can relate. There are just some days when you're so down, when you feel so fat, so ugly, so useless that you're unlovable. Whoops, hello emoness, I missed you.
The Beatles! I love the stunned look on Ringo and George. John Paul? haha.
Tell me why you cry at night. hehe. I like number 13, 16 and 2. haha.

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

– i carry your heart by e.e. cummings

(this post is inspired by another friend's post)

Juday is pregnant

This is a little too embarassing to admit, but what the heck. I've had the biggest crush on Judy Ann Santos ever since her Mara Clara days. I don't know if it's the chubby cheeks or the martyr image, but I liked her, I still do. 

I wanted to marry her when I was a kid, but still I'm happy for her and Ryan.
Juday is pregnant—husband 

By Bayani San Diego Jr.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 12:35:00 03/12/2010

Filed Under: Entertainment (general), Celebrities, Family

MANILA, Philippines – (UPDATE 2) Judy Ann Santos is pregnant, according to her jubilant husband Ryan Agoncillo who made the announcement Friday on GMA Network’s noontime show “Eat Bulaga.”

The actress is two months and four days pregnant, Agoncillo said, showing the ultrasound image of the baby to an ecstatic studio audience.

“Magiging tatay na ako [I will soon become a father], said Agoncillo after making the announcement.

In a short phone patch interview, Santos expressed elation over her condition and said it was something they had waited for.

Asked by the show’s hosts whether she preferred a boy or girl, Santos said it wouldn’t matter as long as the baby would be healthy.

Agoncillo added that what was also important was their adopted child Johann would have a sibling.

The couple had only waited for the results of the final ultrasound test, according to a source close to the actress but who was not authorized to talk to media.

In a previous interview, Santos told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that she was planning to “slow down” should she get pregnant.

She said that she had been undergoing a series of “workup treatments” to aid the pregnancy.

She noted that she would only continue the commitments she had begun like the ABS-CBN soap opera “Habang May Buhay” and the Unitel drama “Ikaw ang Pag-Ibig,” which co-stars Agoncillo and directed by Marilou Diaz-Abaya.

The Agoncillos, who were married in ultra-secret ceremonies in April last year, are planning to fly to Europe next month for a much-delayed honeymoon.

Facial Hair

I've been trying to grow facial hair for several months now, in the belief that it will make me look more mature and carefree. Alas, I can only do a Butler. I'd also like to have a shadow, but I guess I'm not meztizo enough for that. hehe.

Nakamamatay

Too bad for Bayani. He will never win this election because he has angered so many people with the changes he'd made in the metro. While I'm not really fond of living in a pink city, I do appreciate his many efforts to actually solve traffic problems in Manila. While some of his ideas are a bit crazy - remember when he encouraged public transportation drivers to wear deodorant - it's good that we get to try new ways of doing systems.

He seems to have a good grasp of what works for the Filipino psyche. I particularly like his signs discouraging people from jay walking : Bawal Tumawid, Nakamamatay. Written in big, bold letters.

I would have wanted him to stay on as MMDA chief and see what else he might do. Oh well. 

Every Gulp Counts

711 has this new gimmick. When you buy their gulp, you can chooose from any of these cups depending on who you're voting for. What's even cooler is that they get to tally the results, as in a survey,when they punch in your order since there's a unique code for each candidate. 

I think that this is a great way to get younger people more involved in the election. Good job 711!

The 5 year rule according to Fr. D

Fr. Dacanay was also my Theo teacher back in college. He's brilliant. And I agree, to a certain extent, that 5 years should be enough for you to decide to marry or break up. Buti na lang, I don't have that problem no?

Zanna Don't

Last year BlueRep showed Bare, a musical that tackles the topic of being gay in a conservative high school community.

This year they gave us Zanna, Don't a musical that tackles the topic of being heterosexual in a conservative, predominantly gay high school community.

The story is pretty straightforward and hardly subtle. In this world  homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuality is taboo. Girls date girls, boys kiss boys. It makes us ask a lot of questions about ourselves, about the norms of our society, about what's right and what's wrong. What does it mean to be a man. In Heartsville high, boy stuff includes shopping and baking. In this world the chess player is the sex symbol and the football player can't fit in. The message is clear and pounded on the audience repeatedly. How can anything done out of love bring you harm, Zanna asks.

But what sets aside Zanna, Don't from plays I've seen so far are 1.) the talented, energetic cast and 2.) the music. 

The music is fun and memorable. But more than the songs, it's the actors which brings this whole production to life. They dance, sing and run around the stage so un-forcedly tat the audience can't help but have fun with them. The punchlines are delivered with great comedic timing, "We're going to San Francisco, I heard there might be straight people there."

Too bad Zanna, Don't has ended its run. I hope it gets extended or is shown by some other group. 

I have to say this again, I have a newfound respect for BlueRep and I'm sure those kids will go far if they choose to stick with performing arts.

Iphone to the Imat

Hahaha. The next logical step.

Movie Review: Alice in Wonderland

The other day in KFC I overheard a couple of girls talking:

Girl A: Hey! Let's watch Alice and the Wonderland.

Girl B: Alice in Wonderland.

Girl A: Alice in the Wonderland?

I'm not sure if they did go to watch Alice in Wonderland, but lucky me, I did and in all of its IMAX glory. 

I'm sure that a lot of people will have issues with Burton's reimagining of this classic tale based on Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. You don't mess with the classics, someone is bound to be offended.

Story-wise the movie could have gone farther. There is so much more to learn about the characters, particularly Alice. We know she has all these dreams and she's a visionary like her father, a little crazy as all the best people are. We know she's being forced to marry a snooty, ill-mannered Englishman. But we don't know how she mustered enough strength, towards the end of the movie, to be the Alice that Wonderland needed.

In general the story is a bit disjointed and has some holes that need filling up.

But combined with the amazing visuals with the Burton trademark of dark surrealness and this movie goes up a notch higher in my book. The red queen's home is an elaborate castle decorated with hearts. Even her most trusted general has a heart for an eyepatch. The red queen's soldiers have armors designed like playing cards. She rests her aching feet on a pig belly.  Alice, played by a model, goes through several wonderful costume changes, it's like watching a fashion show. Then there are the action sequences: Alice running through wonderland, fighting huge, frightening creatures, shrinking and growing and meeting all kinds of character - from the cheshire cat to the hare.  Imagine all these in 3D.

Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter as the red queen shine best in this movie. The actor who plays Alice isn't given much material to work with, given the lack in character development, but she does try. And can I just say, she's one hot Alice.

Alice in Wonderland is not a life-changing movie. But it's an experience one should not miss.

My grade for Alice:  B+

Back

I'm sorry if I haven't been able to blog for the longest time. I've been swamped with reports and letters to write that I've been too lazy to write anything substantial in this blog.

But I'm okay now. Back to regular programming.

The Presidency is not for Sale

JPE TO VILLAR: GORDON IS NOT FOR SALE

I commend Senator Gordon for unmasking the real character of Senator and presidential candidate Manuel B. Villar as a man who thinks he can buy his way to the highest position in the land with his billions of money.

I understand Senator Gordon has come out to tell the public about the bribe attempt made by Senator Villar through an "emissary" and a "mutual friend." I confirm that such attempt actually happened and I have no doubt about its veracity because Sen. Gordon told me about it immediately.

My recollection is that when I filed the report of the Committee of the Whole on the Ethics complaint involving the C5 controversy, having been signed by 11 Senators with myself as the author acting as Chairman, my Chief of Staff relayed to me by phone that another Senator, who Villar was supporting to replace me as Senate President, had approached Sen. Gordon to join the plot to oust me and install a new leadership in the Senate.

The approach, which came with an offer for a position of Sen. Gordon's choice under a "Villar Administration" was turned down outright by Sen. Gordon saying "I cannot, in conscience, do such a thing, especially not to Senator Enrile who I regard as a father."

On that same day, upon seeing Sen. Gordon arrive at the Senate session, I embraced him and whispered "Thank you, Dick. I know what happened." At that time, he seemed surprised at my gesture and just hugged me back.

Several days after, when we were about to take up the report on the Floor, I got another report that Sen. Gordon was offered, on top of the first offer for a position if Sen. Villar makes it to the presidency, was likewise offered a huge amount of money to withdraw his signature from my report. I was appalled by this report and felt it was my duty to tell Sen. Gordon that such news was circulating. I called Sen. Gordon and informed him that I will never believe that he will succumb to such a brazen act of bribery.

Sen. Gordon privately confirmed to me that such offer was indeed made and that he felt furious and insulted by the temerity and gall of Villar to think that he can be intimidated by money, much less lured by an offer for a position of power. He immediately said NO to this offer.

Later, I learned that it went even beyond that; that Sen. Villar offered "reimbursement for what Sen. Gordon had so far spent for his presidential bid with an added premium just to convince him to withdraw from the presidential race.

I have known Sen. Gordon from his younger days, and one thing I can say is that this man cannot be bought. Sen. Villar is dead wrong about Sen. Gordon. You do not put a price tag on everyone, especially not Dick Gordon. GORDON.

Actually, I knew about the plan to oust me since last December. On the last day of our sessions before the Christmas break, Sen. Allan Peter Cayetano, on orders of his master, Sen. Villar, in no uncertain terms, delivered the threat to my Chief of Staff that if I make a move to gather enough votes in support of my Committee Report, Sen. Villar wants me to know that he will have no other choice but to take the Senate Presidency either for himself or for another Senator of his choice.

As things developed and the co-perpetrators of the coup plot against me began to show their real colors, I surmised that the "emissary" to Sen. Gordon and Sen. Villar's nominee could be no other than Senator Edgardo J. Angara.

Sen. Angara later feigned ignorance about the plot and professed his loyalty to me. Of course! After all, it did not succeed. But I know first hand that from the Senators themselves who signed the resolution to remove me that he was Villar's nominee as my replacement.

Sen. Angara is a man whose career I helped to start, and nurture: first, as a young lawyer, placing him no less than as the lead and founding partner of the law firm I established (the ACCRA or Angara, Concepcion, Cruz, Regala & Abello Law Offices), and later as President of the University of the Philippines by recommending him to former President Marcos.

Sen. Angara now says that it was the late former President Corazon C. Aquino who launched his career in government. So be it. I don't anymore care to claim credit for his career nor his success in weaving his way into the corridors of power over the years. I would rather associate myself with more honorable men.

This attempt of Villar is similar to the offer made by another "emissary" to former President Estrada, our standard bearer in the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino- "reimbursement in exchange for withdrawal." President Estrada rightly turned down this indecent proposal. President Estrada's candidacy is NOT FOR SALE.

I had earlier revealed that Sen. Villar himself tried to bribe me into not proceeding with the investigation by the Committee of the Whole, offering me "help" for whatever it was I needed. As I said, I replied to him that I can only advice him to participate in the hearings and introduce evidence to counter the charges and evidence against him, and that I am giving him that advice for free, without any consideration. I wish to reiterate to Sen. Villar: I AM NOT FOR SALE.

If you tie all these things up with Sen. Villar's unprecedented campaign spending for advertisements, cash give-aways to local officials and supporters, his media budget and sum it all up, then you have a complete picture of the man who is now presenting himself as the "best" alternative for the presidency.

Sen. Villar is a pretender posturing as a pleasant and decent person and using his poverty during his childhood days to project himself as pro-poor. It is as if having been once poor was equivalent to really having the heart for the poor.

Villar has to answer what he has done for the poor since he became a multi-billionaire and in his long career as a politician apart from his expensive "give-aways", helping OFW's, giving livelihood, building homes for the poor by shelling out money ALL FOR PROPAGANDA.

Sen. Villar must be asked what he did for the poor that he did not make sure was covered by media so he can use it for his campaign propaganda. He should be asked what social cause he has really championed as a legislator, not an ordinary one, by the way, for he served as no less than Speaker of the House and Senate President.

He should he asked how he victimized the poor and the taxpayers of this country with his financial schemes in the housing business, and about the collapse of his own bank, Capitol Bank, mysteriously leaving him richer, not poorer.

Amongst all who are now running for President, Villar stands out, indeed, as the RICHEST and one who thinks that everyone can be bought: the people through his misleading advertisements, some media people who are obviously in his "payola", political leaders who are vulnerable to his offer to partake of his financial largesse, and all his attempts to bribe even his colleagues and fellow aspirants to the Presidency.

Sen. Villar may have succeeded to a large extent in deploying the huge fortune he acquired, perhaps some by honest means, but definitely, a large part, by the immoral use of his political position, power and clout to advance his own business interests as borne out by the evidence in Senate Ethics case and, much earlier, by the shenanigans exposed on the Floor of the Lower House by Sen. Joker Arroyo.

But on May 10, he must be taught a hard and painful lesson by no less than the electorate. He must be unmasked and rejected as a fake leader in order for the nation to redeem itself. We must clearly send the strongest message to Senator Manuel "Manny" B. Villar, as Senator Richard J. Gordon has said, that THE PRESIDENCY OF THIS NATION, THE FILIPINO PEOPLE, AND THE PHILIPPINES ARE NOT FOR SALE.

from here

for my smoker friends

We all know what happens when you smoke, but what happens when you quit smoking:

*In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.
* In 8 hours the carbon monoxide (a toxic gas) levels in your blood stream will drop by half, and oxygen levels will return to normal.
* In 48 hours your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.
* In 72 hours your bronchial tubes will relax, and your energy levels will increase.
* In 2 weeks your circulation will increase, and it will continue to improve for the next 10 weeks.
* In three to nine months coughs, wheezing and breathing problems will dissipate as your lung capacity improves by 10%.
* In 1 year your risk of having a heart attack will have dropped by half.
* In 5 years your risk of having a stroke returns to that of a non-smoker.
* In 10 years your risk of lung cancer will have returned to that of a non-smoker.
* In 15 years your risk of heart attack will have returned to that of a non-smoker.

from here