http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hgwQ8MfOS2fuOym9WcK126G9-UQgD9G7MK600
Aquino proclaimed Philippines' 15th president
By OLIVER TEVES (AP)
06-09-2010
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Congress proclaimed Benigno Aquino III the country's new president Wednesday amid high hopes he will fulfill his campaign promise to eliminate corruption and poverty and restore trust in government.
A joint session by the Senate and House of Representatives voted to formalize the landslide victory of the son of the country's revered democracy icons — Benigno Aquino Jr. and former President Corazon Aquino — after the Philippines' first national automated elections last month.
Aquino will take his oath as the country's 15th president on June 30, succeeding Gloria Macapagal Arroyo whose nine-year rule has been wracked by four coup attempts by mutinous troops, and opposition impeachment bids over allegations of election fraud, corruption scandals and human rights abuses.
Aquino promised justice and "closure on so many issues."
"As president, we will be in a position to effect the necessary changes," he told reporters. "With the backing of the people, I don't think anything is impossible."
The official congressional count ended Tuesday showing Aquino defeating his eight rivals by more than 15 million votes — about 5.7 million ahead of his closest opponent, ousted leader Joseph Estrada.
Estrada's running mate, Jejomar Binay, the mayor of Manila's financial district Makati, will become vice president after defeating Aquino's candidate, Manuel Roxas II, in the separate race for the No. 2 position.
Supporters of Aquino and Binay in the House gallery erupted into loud cheers and applause after the announcements.
Ricardo Saludo, spokesman for Arroyo, who is visiting China, congratulated Aquino and Binay and called on Filipinos "to rally behind our new leaders as they assume the awesome responsibilities of their offices."
"Their election demonstrates that our democracy is vibrant, and our new electoral system is working for our people," Saludo said in a statement.
He pledged there would be a "smooth and orderly" transition to the new administration.
Estrada also congratulated his "good friend and worthy opponent" and said he joins Filipinos in extending "wholehearted support to the 15th president of the republic under whose leadership the country now looks to the future."
Aquino, a quiet legislator who served nine years as a congressman and three years as senator, will inherit a nation grappling with poverty and debilitated by decades-long Marxist and Muslim insurgencies, military unrest, corruption, violent crime and political strife.
Aquino said he felt "a little anxious, a little eager to start solving the problems that are still besetting our countrymen."
He said he will dismiss military chief of staff Gen. Delfin Bangit — who is close to Arroyo and had announced he would not step down when the new president takes office — but would likely retain the national police chief, Jesus Verzosa, who had offered his courtesy resignation.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Arnulfo Burgos said Bangit would obey orders "as a professional soldier."
Aquino, a 50-year-old bachelor, campaigned largely on his family name and promised to follow the legacy of his parents, who are regarded as heroes in the country's struggle against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
It was only after his mother died of cancer last August that he decided to run, spurred by a massive outpouring of national grief for the leader who helped oust Marcos in 1986.
Corazon Aquino inherited the mantle of her husband, an opposition senator gunned down by soldiers at Manila's airport in 1983 upon his return from U.S. exile to challenge Marcos.
Renato Reyes, secretary-general of the left-wing alliance Bayan, said his group "joins the collective aspiration of the Filipino people that the new government will be a departure from the failed regime of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo."
"There are high public expectations for the new administration to bring about necessary reforms in government," Reyes said in a statement.
Aquino has said he will form a commission to investigate allegations of corruption and other wrongdoing during Arroyo's administration. Arroyo has denied all accusations.
U.S. Ambassador Harry K. Thomas Jr. congratulated Aquino and Binay, saying he was looking forward to working with the new Philippine government "to advance our common goals."
Associated Press writer Jim Gomez contributed to this report.
Showing posts with label Philippines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philippines. Show all posts
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Philippines dragon-sized lizard is a new species
Philippines dragon-sized lizard is a new species
Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
Tue Apr 6, 2010
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A dragon-sized, fruit-eating lizard that lives in the trees on the northern Philippines island of Luzon has been confirmed as a new species, scientists reported on Tuesday.
Hunted for its tasty flesh, the brightly colored forest monitor lizard can grow to more than six feet in length but weighs only about 22 pounds (10 kg), said Rafe Brown of the University of Kansas, whose team confirmed the find.
"It lives up in trees, so it can't get as massive as the Komodo dragon, a huge thing that eats large amounts of fresh meat," Brown said by telephone. "This thing is a fruit-eater and it's only the third fruit-eating lizard in the world."
Discovering such a large vertebrate species is extremely rare, Brown said. The lizard, a new species of the genus Varanus, is skittish and able to hide from humans, its primary predators, which could explain why it has gone undetected by scientists for so long.
Biologists first saw photographs of the big, skinny lizard in 2001, when those surveying the area passed hunters carrying the lizards' colorful carcasses, but the species at that point had never been given a scientific identification.
In the next few years, Brown said, ethnobiologists kept hearing stories "about these two kinds of lizard that everyone liked to eat because their flesh tasted better than the ones that lived on the ground; this thing was described as bigger and more brightly colored."
The two kinds of lizard described by the local people were two names for the same animal, Brown said.
CLAW SCRATCHES ON TREES
In 2009, graduate students at the end of a two-month expedition kept seeing signs of the big lizard. There were claw-scratches on trees and clumps of pandanus trees, whose fruit the lizard prefers.
The clumps indicated that the lizards had eaten pandanus fruit and then excreted the seeds in clusters.
"It was literally in the last couple days of the expedition, we were running out of money and food and this was the payoff: they finally got this gigantic animal," Brown said.
Hunters who had heard of the team's interest brought a barely-alive adult male lizard to their camp. The team euthanized the animal and did genetic tests that confirmed it as a unique species, Brown said.
DNA analysis showed there was a deep genetic divergence between the new lizard and its closest relative, Gray's monitor lizard, which is also a fruit-eater but lives on the southern end of Luzon, rather than the northern end where the forest monitor lizard lives.
"They are extremely secretive," Brown said of the new species. "I think that centuries of humans hunting them have made the existing populations ... very skittish and wary and we never see them. They see and hear us before we have a chance to see them, they scamper up trees before we have a chance to come around."
These findings were published in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters, with additional work by scientists in the Philippines and the Netherlands.
(Editing by Sandra Maler)
Friday, August 7, 2009
The passing of Aquino, the rigging of elections...
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4977.shtml
The passing of Aquino, the rigging of elections and the need for people power
By Bob Fitrakis
Online Journal Guest Writer
Aug 4, 2009
The death of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino on August 1, 2009 should be remembered for many reasons: not just because she led the People Power revolution in the Philippines that stood for peace and human rights, and not just because she did it after the brutal Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos had her husband assassinated, but most importantly, she stood up to one of the first documented stolen elections.
While the American mainstream media steadfastly refuses to recognize the use of both computer hardware and software in modern election manipulation, President Ronald Reagan’s good buddy Marcos immediately knew the score with the new technology and blatantly used mainframe computers to rig his 1986 election. With the support of the Reagan administration, Marcos simply had the vote count shut down until “new tapes” were brought in that reversed Aquino’s victory.
All of this was captured on the nightly news, and more tellingly, in Hedrick Smith’s book, The Power Game, and the video he did called “The Power Game: The President.” The video documents the role of Senator Richard Lugar complaining to the world that somebody was cooking the numbers on the election computers. Fortunately for Aquino, most of the election workers walked out rather than accept the rigged election.
Not the case in Ohio in 2004. And coincidentally, August 2 marks the fourth anniversary of the death of the Reverend Bill Moss. He was the lead plaintiff who sued to overturn the 2004 Ohio presidential election. A key difference between the people of the Philippines and most of those in the U.S. is that the Philippine people took to the street in a general strike after the election was stolen.
The corruption of the Marcos regime was well established, including the bullet to the back of Corazon’s husband Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr.’s head when he returned from exile in the U.S. to ask for a democratic election. Recall Marcos had him assassinated right on the tarmac at the airport.
Yet, were the dealings of the Bush administration any less blatantly corrupt? You had the coup in Florida in the 2000 election, followed by the illegal occupation of Iraq, and the blatant embracing of torture and other violations of human rights before the eyes of the world. So, when Bush crony J. Kenneth Blackwell privatized the 2004 Ohio election bringing in private companies like Triad, Diebold, New Media, and Smartech, and the exit polls all indicated unprecedented vote theft -- it was Moss who led the charge.
The election integrity movement remains to evolve into a real people power movement that will wrest control of the computer software and hardware from the private vendors with direct ties to the Republican Party and the CIA-connected Bush family.
This weekend we should honor our election integrity heroes who have passed. The wondrous “ordinary housewife” Corazon Aquino who became the 11th president of the Philippines and beat back Reagan’s version of the U.S. as an evil empire, and Bill Moss, the man behind the Moss V. Bush lawsuit in Ohio that resulted in the first challenge to a state’s entire electoral college slate in U.S. history.
There is much work to be done. But much inspiration is the legacy of Aquino and Moss.
Bob Fitrakis is the freepress.org editor and was one of the four attorneys in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit.
The passing of Aquino, the rigging of elections and the need for people power
By Bob Fitrakis
Online Journal Guest Writer
Aug 4, 2009
The death of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino on August 1, 2009 should be remembered for many reasons: not just because she led the People Power revolution in the Philippines that stood for peace and human rights, and not just because she did it after the brutal Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos had her husband assassinated, but most importantly, she stood up to one of the first documented stolen elections.
While the American mainstream media steadfastly refuses to recognize the use of both computer hardware and software in modern election manipulation, President Ronald Reagan’s good buddy Marcos immediately knew the score with the new technology and blatantly used mainframe computers to rig his 1986 election. With the support of the Reagan administration, Marcos simply had the vote count shut down until “new tapes” were brought in that reversed Aquino’s victory.
All of this was captured on the nightly news, and more tellingly, in Hedrick Smith’s book, The Power Game, and the video he did called “The Power Game: The President.” The video documents the role of Senator Richard Lugar complaining to the world that somebody was cooking the numbers on the election computers. Fortunately for Aquino, most of the election workers walked out rather than accept the rigged election.
Not the case in Ohio in 2004. And coincidentally, August 2 marks the fourth anniversary of the death of the Reverend Bill Moss. He was the lead plaintiff who sued to overturn the 2004 Ohio presidential election. A key difference between the people of the Philippines and most of those in the U.S. is that the Philippine people took to the street in a general strike after the election was stolen.
The corruption of the Marcos regime was well established, including the bullet to the back of Corazon’s husband Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr.’s head when he returned from exile in the U.S. to ask for a democratic election. Recall Marcos had him assassinated right on the tarmac at the airport.
Yet, were the dealings of the Bush administration any less blatantly corrupt? You had the coup in Florida in the 2000 election, followed by the illegal occupation of Iraq, and the blatant embracing of torture and other violations of human rights before the eyes of the world. So, when Bush crony J. Kenneth Blackwell privatized the 2004 Ohio election bringing in private companies like Triad, Diebold, New Media, and Smartech, and the exit polls all indicated unprecedented vote theft -- it was Moss who led the charge.
The election integrity movement remains to evolve into a real people power movement that will wrest control of the computer software and hardware from the private vendors with direct ties to the Republican Party and the CIA-connected Bush family.
This weekend we should honor our election integrity heroes who have passed. The wondrous “ordinary housewife” Corazon Aquino who became the 11th president of the Philippines and beat back Reagan’s version of the U.S. as an evil empire, and Bill Moss, the man behind the Moss V. Bush lawsuit in Ohio that resulted in the first challenge to a state’s entire electoral college slate in U.S. history.
There is much work to be done. But much inspiration is the legacy of Aquino and Moss.
Bob Fitrakis is the freepress.org editor and was one of the four attorneys in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit.
Housewife to People Power, Aquino kept faith
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/01/MNEN18J3TM.DTLHousewife to People Power, Aquino kept faith
Phil Bronstein, Chronicle Editor at Large
Saturday, August 1, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO -- In August 1984, a middle-age woman who had been a full-time housewife and mother walked tentatively at the head of a parade of demonstrators through thedrenched streets of old Manila. She called for justice in a society where there had been none for decades.
Corazon Cojuangco Aquino still looked half-dazed from the murder of her politician husband, Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., the year before. In becoming a public figure herself, she was unsure and reluctant, not used to public protest, a grieving widow with large, owlish glasses and perpetual squint. Neither her convent and private school education nor her serving coffee to political heavyweights who planned strategies with her spouse had prepared her for her improbable future.
A few days before, she had greeted us at a modest, makeshift museum dedicated to the assassinated Ninoy. She was polite, even deferential, her voice small, high and soft. Her kids were gathered around her, the shadow of the family's loss still reflected in their young faces. They seemed isolated, and no one was sure where all this would lead.
Crowd of 1 million
Less than two years later, in 1986, she stood center stage at the capital's massive Luneta grandstand days before the national election that would make her president, confident and smiling, draped in her signature luminescent canary yellow dress and surrounded by powerful supporters as a million frenzied Filipinos shouted the opening stanza to her presidency. Only the visit of Pope John Paul II to the predominantly Catholic country could draw a crowd to match this one.
She was exactly the right person at precisely the right time in history to defeat the shrewd and tenacious totalitarian ruler, Ferdinand Marcos.
"Though unarmed," she said from the podium, in scripted language meant to invoke the religious fervor of her campaign, "I feel like the young boy David about to face the giant Goliath. If Goliath refuses to yield, we will dig into our nonviolent bag of weapons. God is with us. May God stay on our side in what we are about to do."
Privately, revealing the high-society side of her personal history, she marveled at the ailing Marcos' "fantastic will power." And, she said of his flamboyant wife, Imelda, "Let her say what she wants about me."
But some saw vanity where others saw poise. "Did she mention me by name?" she asked of Imelda. "Because (Marcos) won't." As president, she banned photos of herself eating.
'So much to do'
In office only days after elections corrupted by Marcos and a nearly inconceivable popular and military uprising, she said to me in her new quarters at the presidential compound, "I tell my family there is so much to do. I was the only one who could have made it possible for the country to do it."
President Aquino had a deep well of self-righteousness based in her Catholic piety and an internal discipline that helped her face the threat of violence and seemingly insurmountable odds. She also had strong ties to the community of nearly 400,000 Bay Area Filipinos - including her husband's family - where she enjoyed ardent support and visited as president and private citizen.
Cory - which everyone called her despite her own sense of reserve and formality - would go on to be a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and the founding figurehead of "people power" uprisings in Burma and Seoul, Tiananmen Square and Tehran. But it was her personal transformation in the lead-up to the 1986 Philippine presidential elections that informed her place in history.
Her family - the Cojuangcos - was among the nation's most elite and privileged. But her love for her high-octane husband, Ninoy, gave her a taste of the street fight that was Philippine politics. In 1972, opposing Marcos, Ninoy, then a senator, was jailed and sentenced to death along with other opposition leaders.
'Tremendous handicaps'
"I'm not that fazed," she said as she began her campaign 14 years later. "After all, this is how my life has been since martial law was declared (in '72). Ninoy and I have always lived under tremendous handicaps."
But she was still unused to the spotlight role, and uncomfortable in it. "I psyched myself into thinking I will manage very well," she said then. "I'm going to see this through." President Aquino, however, nursed grave doubts and admitted she began "on the defensive." She only shook those doubts when a godson, Jeremias de Jesus, and a campaign worker were murdered in the family province of Tarlac.
"When they killed Jerry," she told me soon after, "that had such an impact on me I went on the offensive."
She began giving speeches, calling Marcos "a coward, a liar and a thief."
"Normally I don't like attacking people," she said. "It's not my nature."
But she relished it and so did the growing crowds.
Politically timid businessmen showed up at rallies, along with priests and nuns. People touched her feet as they did the statues of saints. In Cavite Province, farmers and their families pounded on her van, squealing like movie fans catching a glimpse of their favorite star. Bands played. Confetti poured down from rooftops. She came back from these events "a completely new Cory."
She was a little naive at times, saying once that Jesse Jackson had told her he "was praying for me and said he'd talk with the Reagan administration" about her cause. Ronald Reagan backed Marcos until the Philippine strongman's bald attempt to steal the election and the subsequent "people power" rebellion.
She stood firm
But she still stood firm in the face of Marcos' bristling power. During four days of rebellion, when government tanks and soldiers faced off against citizens and uniformed insurgents, she calmly took refuge in a convent in the central Philippines, where the United States offered her a boat to return to Manila. She refused and flew back, despite warnings about her safety.
The uprising she sparked turned out to be about political change more than social change. After taking office, she fended off a series of coup attempts and catty charges that she was more interested in mahjong and designer clothing than she was in land reform or justice. More than 70 percent of Filipinos remain below the poverty level and corruption never seriously diminished.
"Campaigning was a breeze" compared with the presidency, she said as she faced the daily challenges. She liked the "cordon sanitaire" around her. "Definitely I'm not a saint, but at the same time I'd like some respect given to me. I believe in being friendly but I also believe in a certain amount of distance," she said.
She remained active
But she remained devoted to her children and active in the political life of her country, headlining People Power anniversaries and helping to unseat a presidential successor accused of corruption.
In the end, forever infused with the great sadness of her husband's bloody death, Cory Aquino was a towering representation of hope and faith.
"My philosophy of life is not to worry about things I have no control over," she once told me. "I just do what I can and leave the rest to God."
Editor's note
Phil Bronstein, then a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, covered the fall of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and the rise of Corazon Aquino.
E-mail Phil Bronstein at pbronstein@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Food crisis being felt around world
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=412984
Food crisis being felt around world
Market Chaos, Riots
Peter Goodspeed, National Post
Published: Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Sharply rising prices have triggered food riots in recent weeks in Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Mauritania and Yemen, and aid agencies around the world worry they may be unable to feed the poorest of the poor.
In the Philippines, officials are raiding warehouses in Manila looking for unscrupulous traders hoarding rice, while in South Korea, panicked housewives recently stripped grocery-store shelves of food when the cost of ramen, an instant noodle made from wheat, suddenly rose.
The shadow of "a new hunger" that has made food too expensive for millions is the result of a sudden and dramatic surge in food prices around the world.
Rising prices for all the world's crucial cereal crops and growing fears of scarcity are careening through international markets, creating turmoil.
Last Thursday, as world rice prices soared by as much as 30% in one day, Egypt decided to suspend rice exports for six months to meet domestic demand and to try to limit price increases.
That was bad news for its main rice customers -- Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Egypt's move was matched by Vietnam, the world's second-largest rice exporter after Thailand, which cut exports by 25% and ordered officials not to sign any more export contracts this year.
India and Cambodia also rushed to curb their exports in order to have enough supplies to feed their own people.
With crude oil soaring above US$100 a barrel, higher fuel prices have driven up the cost of production and increased transportation costs for all foods.
Pests in Southeast Asia, a 10-year drought in Australia and a 45-day cold snap in China have combined to aggravate the situation.
At the same time, millions of people in China and India have suddenly become relatively wealthy and are changing their eating habits, consuming more meat and chicken, which places a huge demand on cereal stocks.
In China, per-capita meat consumption has increased 150% since the 1980s. But producing more meat requires more feed to raise more animals.
"You simply feed less people on maize [corn] via cattle than you do in maize direct," said John Powell, the UN World Food Program's (WFP) deputy director of external programs in Rome.
Also influencing the food crisis is the move in North America and Europe to biofuel in an effort to ease global warming and reduce reliance on imported energy.
A surge in demand for biofuel has resulted in a sharp decline in agricultural land planted for food crops. About 16% of U.S. agricultural land formerly planted with soybeans and wheat is now growing corn for biofuel.
"For the first time in history, there is a clear link between the price of fuel and the price of food," Mr. Powell said.
"If there were a miraculous 20% increase in the quantity of food production, we would not know what would go toward increased food consumption and what would go to biofuels.
"Where it would go is where the prices are best."
Rice is a staple food for half the world's population. But the sudden surge in prices and restrictions on exports come at a time when stockpiles of rice are at their lowest level in decades.
At the moment, world rice inventories are said to stand at a mere 72 million metric tonnes -- about 17% of what the world consumes annually.
The low stockpiles create a market in which any supply disruption will result in radical price swings.
They also complicate delivering foreign aid to those most in need.
The WPF, which feeds 73 million of the world's most destitute each year, says its costs have increased 55% since June. Unless it gets US$500-million in emergency funding, it may soon have to reduce feeding programs.
Experts predict world food markets will be locked into an inflationary spiral for at least four years, but some say the crisis could linger for a decade or more.
"There is pretty much a sense that what we are seeing is a step change or a structural change and not a peak to be followed by a trough," Mr. Powell said.
"In other words, we are into an era of high food prices. It's not just volatility, it's a step increase."
Food crisis being felt around world
Market Chaos, Riots
Peter Goodspeed, National Post
Published: Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Sharply rising prices have triggered food riots in recent weeks in Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Mauritania and Yemen, and aid agencies around the world worry they may be unable to feed the poorest of the poor.
In the Philippines, officials are raiding warehouses in Manila looking for unscrupulous traders hoarding rice, while in South Korea, panicked housewives recently stripped grocery-store shelves of food when the cost of ramen, an instant noodle made from wheat, suddenly rose.
The shadow of "a new hunger" that has made food too expensive for millions is the result of a sudden and dramatic surge in food prices around the world.
Rising prices for all the world's crucial cereal crops and growing fears of scarcity are careening through international markets, creating turmoil.
Last Thursday, as world rice prices soared by as much as 30% in one day, Egypt decided to suspend rice exports for six months to meet domestic demand and to try to limit price increases.
That was bad news for its main rice customers -- Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Egypt's move was matched by Vietnam, the world's second-largest rice exporter after Thailand, which cut exports by 25% and ordered officials not to sign any more export contracts this year.
India and Cambodia also rushed to curb their exports in order to have enough supplies to feed their own people.
With crude oil soaring above US$100 a barrel, higher fuel prices have driven up the cost of production and increased transportation costs for all foods.
Pests in Southeast Asia, a 10-year drought in Australia and a 45-day cold snap in China have combined to aggravate the situation.
At the same time, millions of people in China and India have suddenly become relatively wealthy and are changing their eating habits, consuming more meat and chicken, which places a huge demand on cereal stocks.
In China, per-capita meat consumption has increased 150% since the 1980s. But producing more meat requires more feed to raise more animals.
"You simply feed less people on maize [corn] via cattle than you do in maize direct," said John Powell, the UN World Food Program's (WFP) deputy director of external programs in Rome.
Also influencing the food crisis is the move in North America and Europe to biofuel in an effort to ease global warming and reduce reliance on imported energy.
A surge in demand for biofuel has resulted in a sharp decline in agricultural land planted for food crops. About 16% of U.S. agricultural land formerly planted with soybeans and wheat is now growing corn for biofuel.
"For the first time in history, there is a clear link between the price of fuel and the price of food," Mr. Powell said.
"If there were a miraculous 20% increase in the quantity of food production, we would not know what would go toward increased food consumption and what would go to biofuels.
"Where it would go is where the prices are best."
Rice is a staple food for half the world's population. But the sudden surge in prices and restrictions on exports come at a time when stockpiles of rice are at their lowest level in decades.
At the moment, world rice inventories are said to stand at a mere 72 million metric tonnes -- about 17% of what the world consumes annually.
The low stockpiles create a market in which any supply disruption will result in radical price swings.
They also complicate delivering foreign aid to those most in need.
The WPF, which feeds 73 million of the world's most destitute each year, says its costs have increased 55% since June. Unless it gets US$500-million in emergency funding, it may soon have to reduce feeding programs.
Experts predict world food markets will be locked into an inflationary spiral for at least four years, but some say the crisis could linger for a decade or more.
"There is pretty much a sense that what we are seeing is a step change or a structural change and not a peak to be followed by a trough," Mr. Powell said.
"In other words, we are into an era of high food prices. It's not just volatility, it's a step increase."
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Philippine Ex-President Estrada Freed
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h8dj1vAZYXxwoa9B6m82cCRVAa7QD8SH3KN82
Philippine Ex-President Estrada Freed
By PAUL ALEXANDER
10-26-7
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Free for the first time in 6 1/2 years, ousted President Joseph Estrada thanked his successor for pardoning him and vowed Friday to stay out of "dirty politics" while dedicating the rest of his life to helping the poor.
The former action star's first hours of freedom played out live in national television like a scene from one of his old films, which won him legions of fans for his portrayals of underdog heroes.
Estrada's joyous release from house arrest was followed by a speech to thousands of cheering supporters in Manila's San Juan district, where he once served as mayor, then a bedside visit to his ailing 102-year-old mother and a dinner of his favorite foods. His wife said she was making rice cake and paella.
The question is: Will the man who won the biggest election landslide in Philippine history be able to avoid the temptation of being drafted back into politics by a disjointed opposition desperate for someone popular to rally around?
For a day at least, Estrada was happy to bask in adulation and follow the lead of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has shrugged off allegations of political opportunism and touted the pardon as a move toward reconciliation that was in the public's best interests.
"There is no substitute for freedom," the 70-year-old Estrada said before leaving his villa east of Manila, where he has spent most of his time in detention since his arrest three months after being forced out by the country's second "people power" revolt in January 2001.
Estrada was convicted last month on graft charges and given a life sentence. Arroyo pardoned him Thursday.
The pardon was greeted with a heavy dose of cynicism because of the timing — Arroyo is fighting a third impeachment attempt and calls for her resignation. State prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio said the pardon, especially so soon after the hard-fought conviction, amounted to a license to break the law.
Estrada, who has been one of Arroyo's chief critics over the past six years, sounded conciliatory for the first time since his ouster.
He thanked Arroyo, reiterated his wish to live the life of a "plain citizen" and, in a turnaround from previous attacks on the administration, urged his supporters to back Arroyo's programs to combat poverty and hunger.
"I am aware of the agonizing times and tough choices that Mrs. Arroyo has had to wade through before arriving at this executive decision," Estrada said.
Arroyo admitted that her decision was controversial, but said the pardon was aimed at ending "the single most significant cause of political noise and controversy" during her tumultuous time in office. She cited the pardons of former U.S. and South Korean presidents as precedents.
"In the end, we had to make a decision that was bound to please and displease, impress and confound, unite and divide," Arroyo said in a speech to businessmen.
Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said the pardon restored Estrada's civil and political rights. However, a court ruling that confiscated Estrada's villa and more than $15.5 million in savings remained in effect.
More than 2,000 supporters, family and friends prepared a fiesta for Estrada's homecoming. Balloons and ribbons in orange — Estrada's campaign color — festooned the route of his lengthy motorcade, and he was mobbed as he got out of his vehicle.
While he admitted he made mistakes in office, Estrada denied corruption was among them. He claimed he twice turned down offers that he could avoid being charged if he left the country. Despite his conviction in court, he said he felt he had been acquitted by public opinion.
"I have no plan to rejoin dirty politics," he told the crowd chanting his name. "My remaining time will be offered in the service of our people."
Associated Press writers Oliver Teves, Teresa Cerojano, Jim Gomez and Hrvoje Hranjski contributed to this report.
Philippine Ex-President Estrada Freed
By PAUL ALEXANDER
10-26-7
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Free for the first time in 6 1/2 years, ousted President Joseph Estrada thanked his successor for pardoning him and vowed Friday to stay out of "dirty politics" while dedicating the rest of his life to helping the poor.
The former action star's first hours of freedom played out live in national television like a scene from one of his old films, which won him legions of fans for his portrayals of underdog heroes.
Estrada's joyous release from house arrest was followed by a speech to thousands of cheering supporters in Manila's San Juan district, where he once served as mayor, then a bedside visit to his ailing 102-year-old mother and a dinner of his favorite foods. His wife said she was making rice cake and paella.
The question is: Will the man who won the biggest election landslide in Philippine history be able to avoid the temptation of being drafted back into politics by a disjointed opposition desperate for someone popular to rally around?
For a day at least, Estrada was happy to bask in adulation and follow the lead of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has shrugged off allegations of political opportunism and touted the pardon as a move toward reconciliation that was in the public's best interests.
"There is no substitute for freedom," the 70-year-old Estrada said before leaving his villa east of Manila, where he has spent most of his time in detention since his arrest three months after being forced out by the country's second "people power" revolt in January 2001.
Estrada was convicted last month on graft charges and given a life sentence. Arroyo pardoned him Thursday.
The pardon was greeted with a heavy dose of cynicism because of the timing — Arroyo is fighting a third impeachment attempt and calls for her resignation. State prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio said the pardon, especially so soon after the hard-fought conviction, amounted to a license to break the law.
Estrada, who has been one of Arroyo's chief critics over the past six years, sounded conciliatory for the first time since his ouster.
He thanked Arroyo, reiterated his wish to live the life of a "plain citizen" and, in a turnaround from previous attacks on the administration, urged his supporters to back Arroyo's programs to combat poverty and hunger.
"I am aware of the agonizing times and tough choices that Mrs. Arroyo has had to wade through before arriving at this executive decision," Estrada said.
Arroyo admitted that her decision was controversial, but said the pardon was aimed at ending "the single most significant cause of political noise and controversy" during her tumultuous time in office. She cited the pardons of former U.S. and South Korean presidents as precedents.
"In the end, we had to make a decision that was bound to please and displease, impress and confound, unite and divide," Arroyo said in a speech to businessmen.
Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said the pardon restored Estrada's civil and political rights. However, a court ruling that confiscated Estrada's villa and more than $15.5 million in savings remained in effect.
More than 2,000 supporters, family and friends prepared a fiesta for Estrada's homecoming. Balloons and ribbons in orange — Estrada's campaign color — festooned the route of his lengthy motorcade, and he was mobbed as he got out of his vehicle.
While he admitted he made mistakes in office, Estrada denied corruption was among them. He claimed he twice turned down offers that he could avoid being charged if he left the country. Despite his conviction in court, he said he felt he had been acquitted by public opinion.
"I have no plan to rejoin dirty politics," he told the crowd chanting his name. "My remaining time will be offered in the service of our people."
Associated Press writers Oliver Teves, Teresa Cerojano, Jim Gomez and Hrvoje Hranjski contributed to this report.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
From movie-star glamour to lonely life in detention
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/asiapacific/news/article_1354768.php
Asia-Pacific News
PROFILE: Estrada: From movie-star glamour to lonely life in detention
By John Grafilo
Sep 12, 2007
Manila - Ousted Philippine president Joseph Estrada waved and smiled to the media Wednesday as he was whisked out of a court building after being convicted of corruption and sentenced to life in prison.
The scene was different, however, inside one of the holding rooms for the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court when a grim-faced Estrada met with his tearful wife, daughter and other family members after the conviction.
'The whole family was crying,' said Congressman Rufus Rodriguez, a close ally of the 70-year-old former president. 'It felt like a wake inside.'
After spending most of his life in the limelight, having been a popular action-movie star before entering politics in the late 1960s, Estrada now faces a lonely life in jail, devoid of the glamour and glitter he has been so used to.
Despite being a high-school dropout and a self-confessed womanizer, gambler and drinker, Estrada was elected president in 1998 with the largest victory margin in the country's political history.
He credited his win to millions of impoverished Filipinos who idolized him for often portraying a poor underdog hero in his movies and for promising to lift them out of poverty.
Estrada's undiminished love affair with the Philippines' poor dates back to his early childhood when he would pilfer bread from his house in Manila's San Juan town and give it to his playmates in the slum area a few blocks away.
Born on April 19, 1937, Estrada is the eighth among 10 children from an upper middle-class family. Considered a black sheep by his relatives, he dropped out of school and pursued a career in films.
Throughout his awards-rich movie career, Estrada starred in films that were mostly about the struggle of the poor against the elite or the rise of an underdog.
Estrada's first foray into politics was in 1967 when he ran for mayor in his hometown of San Juan and lost, but he contested the results, and in 1969, the Supreme Court ruled he was the true winner in the race.
For the next 17 years, he held the post of mayor, winning re-elections and turning the town into a first-class municipality.
Estrada's political star shone brighter in 1987 when he ran and won a senatorial race, becoming one of only two opposition politicians who made it into the administration-dominated Senate.
Despite being derided for his 'carabao' English, or ungrammatical use of the language, Estrada continued his meteoric rise in politics when the man popularly known by the nickname 'Erap,' the Filipino word for friend spelled backward, was elected vice president in 1992.
In 1998, Estrada won election as president despite opposition from the influential Catholic Church, business groups and the country's political elite. He is the only elected Philippine president in recent times who was not accused of vote rigging.
During his presidency, which he called 'the greatest performance' of his life, Estrada did not hide his vices and was even known to hold 'midnight' meetings with advisers and friends, most of whom had shady backgrounds.
One of those friends, however, turned his back on Estrada and accused him of receiving millions of dollars in payoffs from illegal gambling operators and pocketing public funds.
The allegations led to Estrada's impeachment and later to his removal from office by a military-backed mass uprising in January 2001.
On Wednesday, the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court found Estrada guilty of plunder and sentenced him to life in prison for amassing about 4 billion pesos (87 million dollars) in illegal wealth.
With the conviction, Estrada is now barred from holding public office again.
Despite the verdict, the former president identified as among the most corrupt former leaders in the world insisted on his innocence.
'I am innocent of all the charges,' he said in a statement issued after the verdict. 'The prosecution miserably failed to prove its case. I am at peace with myself, notwithstanding the guilty verdict, because you my beloved countrymen have overwhelmingly acquitted me.'
Asia-Pacific News
PROFILE: Estrada: From movie-star glamour to lonely life in detention
By John Grafilo
Sep 12, 2007
Manila - Ousted Philippine president Joseph Estrada waved and smiled to the media Wednesday as he was whisked out of a court building after being convicted of corruption and sentenced to life in prison.
The scene was different, however, inside one of the holding rooms for the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court when a grim-faced Estrada met with his tearful wife, daughter and other family members after the conviction.
'The whole family was crying,' said Congressman Rufus Rodriguez, a close ally of the 70-year-old former president. 'It felt like a wake inside.'
After spending most of his life in the limelight, having been a popular action-movie star before entering politics in the late 1960s, Estrada now faces a lonely life in jail, devoid of the glamour and glitter he has been so used to.
Despite being a high-school dropout and a self-confessed womanizer, gambler and drinker, Estrada was elected president in 1998 with the largest victory margin in the country's political history.
He credited his win to millions of impoverished Filipinos who idolized him for often portraying a poor underdog hero in his movies and for promising to lift them out of poverty.
Estrada's undiminished love affair with the Philippines' poor dates back to his early childhood when he would pilfer bread from his house in Manila's San Juan town and give it to his playmates in the slum area a few blocks away.
Born on April 19, 1937, Estrada is the eighth among 10 children from an upper middle-class family. Considered a black sheep by his relatives, he dropped out of school and pursued a career in films.
Throughout his awards-rich movie career, Estrada starred in films that were mostly about the struggle of the poor against the elite or the rise of an underdog.
Estrada's first foray into politics was in 1967 when he ran for mayor in his hometown of San Juan and lost, but he contested the results, and in 1969, the Supreme Court ruled he was the true winner in the race.
For the next 17 years, he held the post of mayor, winning re-elections and turning the town into a first-class municipality.
Estrada's political star shone brighter in 1987 when he ran and won a senatorial race, becoming one of only two opposition politicians who made it into the administration-dominated Senate.
Despite being derided for his 'carabao' English, or ungrammatical use of the language, Estrada continued his meteoric rise in politics when the man popularly known by the nickname 'Erap,' the Filipino word for friend spelled backward, was elected vice president in 1992.
In 1998, Estrada won election as president despite opposition from the influential Catholic Church, business groups and the country's political elite. He is the only elected Philippine president in recent times who was not accused of vote rigging.
During his presidency, which he called 'the greatest performance' of his life, Estrada did not hide his vices and was even known to hold 'midnight' meetings with advisers and friends, most of whom had shady backgrounds.
One of those friends, however, turned his back on Estrada and accused him of receiving millions of dollars in payoffs from illegal gambling operators and pocketing public funds.
The allegations led to Estrada's impeachment and later to his removal from office by a military-backed mass uprising in January 2001.
On Wednesday, the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court found Estrada guilty of plunder and sentenced him to life in prison for amassing about 4 billion pesos (87 million dollars) in illegal wealth.
With the conviction, Estrada is now barred from holding public office again.
Despite the verdict, the former president identified as among the most corrupt former leaders in the world insisted on his innocence.
'I am innocent of all the charges,' he said in a statement issued after the verdict. 'The prosecution miserably failed to prove its case. I am at peace with myself, notwithstanding the guilty verdict, because you my beloved countrymen have overwhelmingly acquitted me.'
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