“If you speak a language a person can understand, that goes to his head, but if you speak his mother tongue, that goes to his heart.” — Nelson Mandela CHICAGO (JGL) – Pope Francis was not reinterpreting the message of Jesus that if someone slaps your cheek, you can offer the other cheek. I think what the 78-year-old… Read More »
CHICAGO (JGL) – When someone immigrates to the United States from a Third World country like the Philippines, his or her aspirations are usually set on default – to find a greener pasture in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. But in the case of my niece, Anna Melisa “Honey” L. Lasala, who came to the U.S. at… Read More »
CHICAGO (JGL) – Filipino voters should rejoice that they are being offered an alternative with the rising popularity of Sen. Grace Poe, who can pull even, if not get ahead of faltering Vice President Jojo Binay if the current trending continues. But the fickle-minded voters should also be reminded that a presidential election is not just a popularity… Read More »
CHICAGO (JGL) – If President Obama fulfills his promise to issue an executive order on Friday (Nov. 21), there is no more need for Filipino Americans to press for Temporary Protective Status (TPS) that would have authorized tens of thousands of undocumented Filipinos in the United States to obtain work permit and stop their deportation following the devastation… Read More »
CHICAGO (JGL) – If Filipinos would like to force the hands of Presidents Barack Obama and Noynoy Aquino to change the terms of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) as a result of the alleged murder of a Filipino Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude in the hands of a United States Marine Private First Class Joseph Scott Pemberton, they have to… Read More »
CHICAGO (JGL) – It was an unseasonably warm morning of February 4, 1985 when Tim M. Olivarez, correspondent of Tempo, a sister publication of Manila Bulletin, accompanied me in covering a murder case in Bulacan. On our way back to the Bulletin, Tim told me that he was going to see a smuggling lord, Jose “Don Pepe” Oyson,… Read More »
CHICAGO (JGL) – Philippine President Noynoy Aquino is against death penalty and yet he does not mind if journalists are killed if they are accused of committing transgressions outside the exercise of their profession. I could not think of any possible crime that journalists maybe accused of committing that could fall outside the line of their practice of… Read More »
CHICAGO (JGL) – The broad-daylight kidnapping preserved early this month by a cell phone camera along EDSA in Mandaluyong took a page from a similar abduction 14 years ago that nipped in the bud the young Joseph “Erap” Estrada presidency. While a witness to the abduction of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and Dacer’s driver, Emmanuel Corbito, only had… Read More »
CHICAGO (JGL) – If the Philippine corridors of power are populated by relatives by blood or affinity, it is not surprising. The pre-colonial Philippines was ruled by royalties and nobilities, like lakans, datus and mighty warriors, when laws of the jungle were supreme. The matter of succession was interrupted only by the arrivals of Spaniards and Americans. Despite… Read More »
CHICAGO (JGL) – The Philippine Supreme Court has a message to at least two senators, who were “unaware of the existence and implementation of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP)” during the impeachment proceedings of Chief Justice Renato Corona: speak now or forever hold your peace! In an obiter dictum, the unanimous Supreme Court ruling (Maria Carolina P. Araullo,… Read More »