Our Lives Have Changed Since 9/1/2001
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Our security has changed the normal way we want to live our lives. No longer can we walk into an airport, check our bags and get on the plane. From now on we must adhere to what the government says we cannot carry on the plane. Afterall it is for our security and the airlines and their employees as well. Those same employees who will help you if there is a problem of some kind. There are other things we need to pay attention to, like our identification when we cross a border wether it be Mexico or Canada. How has it changed your life? Are other companies making your life harder when you try to do business with them because of fundamental changes in security, or new rules. Do you see more changes in world affairs of unfairness? |
This is our Change Page E-mail us and we will paste your replies, tell us your stories, your rants, complaints wether it is against the airlines, the government, or individual business'. From The Philippines 10-13-2006 Terrorists are Everywhere
even in Government Uniforms Witnesses to Fertilizer Scam: Killed,
Hunted For testifying against a
fund that never reached them, witnesses to the P728-million fertilizer
scam reportedly engineered by former Agriculture Undersecretary and
now U.S. immigration detainee Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante,
are now being chased by suspicious burly men believed to be military
and police agents. One of them, a 61-year old woman, has been silenced
to death. Farmer witnesses to the
P728-million fertilizer scam that had allegedly been used to fund
the presidential campaign of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo during the May
2004 elections are being hunted down by men believed to be military
and police forces. “Marked” after
TV appearance A source, who asked anonymity
for security reasons, told Bulatlat that Rodriguez’s family already
knew the military had “marked” their Nanay Perla after she
appeared on ABS-CBN’s TV public affairs show The Probe Team.
The show’s first telecast on Aug. 25, 2005 featured farmers who
testified that they did not receive fertilizer from the supposed fertilizer
fund released by the Department of Agriculture (DA). Joseph Canlas, chair of
the Central Luzon regional peasant alliance Alyansa ng mga Magbbubukid
sa Gitnang Luson (AMGL or Alliance of Peasants in Central Luzon),
said in a previous interview that Rodriguez had spearheaded the campaign
against the fertilizer scam in her village. She was the most vocal
in demanding that Bolante be made responsible for the scam, Canlas
said. Karapatan says it has written
testimonies by Rodriguez about alleged military harassment before
she was killed. The testimonies revealed she had been invited to go
to the Army detachment in their village for “questioning”
on Oct. 25 last year. During interrogation, 2Lt. John Paul Nicolas
of the 69th Infantry Battalion (IB) stationed in Barangay Divisoria,
pressured Rodriguez to admit she was a top-ranking leader of the New
People’s Army (NPA), the armed component of the Communist Party
of the Philippines (CPP). Karapatan also recorded
that an unidentified neighbor had approached Rodriguez to warn her
that the said neighbor had been ordered by Nicolas to kill her. The
neighbor refused the order, the rights group said. Another fertilizer scam
witness, Paul Simbulan, said he had been tailed by men believed to
be military elements after he was interviewed by broadcast journalist
Maki Pulido on GMA-7’s public affairs program “Imbestigador.” A week after his TV appearance,
Simbulan said, unidentified motorcycle-riding men began frequenting
his house in Porac, Pampanga. Although the situation sent shivers
to him and his family, Simbulan said he stayed at home and tended
his farm, “para may kainin kami” (so my family could eat). He said he even joined a
campaign against a demolition plan by the Bases Conversion and Development
Authority (BCDA) for the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway Project (SCTEP)
that destroyed their farms. While life for Simbulan
and his family was that of the farmers’ common hand-to-mouth
existence, it had never occurred to him that he would become a marked
man now that he is a year away from retirement. Two years later, Simbulan
joined some 200 farmers who cleared parts of Clark Airbase which was
carpeted with lahar or mudflows unleashed by Mt. Pinatubo. (The airbase,
the largest U.S. air facility in the Far East, had been abandoned
by the U.S. in 1992 following the Philippine Senate’s rejection
of a bases renewal treaty.) The farmers, including Simbulan, were
acknowledged as tenants of a 1,000-ha farm there. Ramos, as the principal
witness of the Senate inquiry on the fertilizer scam, has also been
a primary target of political persecution. In an interview, he said
police and military elements have been hounding him since March. Ramos said he has not returned
home since Feb. 26, a day after Macapagal-Arroyo declared Presidential
Proclamation 1017 placing the nation in a state of emergency. Even while away from home,
family and neighbors said several unidentified men have been looking
for him in their village in Malolos, the city capital of the province
of Bulacan (44 kms north of Manila). One of the men who have
been hunting him down is a policeman whom former Philippine National
Police (PNP) chief Arturo Lomibao acknowledged as an agent of the
Central Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG). Bolante is charged as the
“architect” and “brains” behind the scam in Senate
Resolution No. 327, filed by the Committee on Agriculture and Food
and the Blue Ribbon Committee on March 1, 2006. |