Bloody bank heist at the University of the Philippines

Yesterday the Philippine Veterans Bank branch at the Bahay ng Alumni (Alumni House) of the University of the Philippines in Diliman was robbed. Two security guards were killed and also the roving bank teller as the armoured van transferring cash was riddled with automatic fire. The criminals' getaway van was left abandoned 400 meters away near the Department of Military Science and Tactics.

The mayor of Quezon City lbemoanded the policy that unless with authorization from the Chancellor, the Philippine National Police can't enter the campus. By previous agreement, the UP Diliman Police handles all investigation and police work in campus.

Sounds good in theory but the campus community especially the students think the campus police is inutile to deal with crime, petty or otherwise. One professor whose faculty office was ransacked during a busy lunch break complained that it took more than one month for the campus police to produce the needed police investigation report.

The UP Diliman administration should wake up and smell the blood. The Diliman campus isn't safe and students have been mugged, raped and murdered. But still there hasn't been much change in policy except the campus has "security service brigades" or SSB and closure of points of ingress in the campus (I will deal with this later). While these provide some degree of security presence, it remains to be seen how these are effective in deterring crime.

During the term of Dr Jose Abueva as president 20 years ago, the UP consulted security experts and they recommended ASAP the erection of high fences along campus perimeters. This should deter criminals and informal settlers from entering the campus. But as one security expert told me,the petrified ideologues in UP considered it "anti-democratic"! WTF! Nonetheless since then huge tracts of the campus has been invaded by squatters, not a few students have been knifed, raped and mugged. One prominent leftist was assassinated on the other side of the Alumni hall.

The security situation in campus has become bad that even the local Catholic parish church had to put gates contrary to its architectural concept of being open. UP has made things worse by a security budget cut.

I hope the Chancellor begins to look seriously at the security situation.

Simoun's lamp has been lit, finally.. not by one but by the many!

"So often have we been haunted by the spectre of subversion which, with some fostering, has come to be a positive and real being, whose very name steals our serenity and makes us commit the greatest blunders... If before the reality, instead of changing the fear of one is increased, and the confusion of the other is exacerbated, then they must be left in the hands of time..." Dr Jose Rizal "To the Filipino People and their Government" Jose Rizal dominates the Luneta, which is sacred to the Philippine nation as a place of martyrdom. And many perhaps all of those executed in the Luneta, with the exception of the three Filipino secular priests martyred in 1872, have read Rizal's El Filibusterismo . Dr Rizal's second novel is a darker and more sinister one that its prequel but has much significance across the century and more after it was published for it preaches the need for revolution with caveats, which are when the time is right and who will in...

Kung bakit dapat maging wikang pambansa din ang Ingles

Isang kakatwang eksena ang nasaksihan ko sa isang pribabdong opisina kamakailan lang. Dalawang empleyado ang inatasang bigyan ng solusyon ang isang isyu tungkol sa logistics. Ang isa ang tubong Davao at ang isa ay taga Iloilo. Ang unang wika nila ay Cebuano (Bisaya) at Hiligaynon (Ilonggo). Ang dalawang wika ay halos pareho ngunit may mga katagang iba ang kahulugan sa isa't isang wika. Ginamit nila ang wika nilang kinalakihan at hindi sila nagkaintindihan. Ang nangyari tuloy ay gumamit na lang sila ng wikang Ingles! Yung na nga rin ang sabi ko. Mag-English na lang kaya kayo! At bakit di wikang Filipino ang ginamit nila? Sa totoo lang, marami pa rin ang hindi bihasa sa Filipino upang gamitin ito sa mga larangan tulad ng logistics. At hindi lamang sa mga larangang teknikal, sa mga biyahe ko sa ibat-ibat lugar sa Pilipinas, ang mga naka-paskel sa mga CR o palikuran tungkol sa pagtitipid ng tubig ay naka sulat sa 1)Wika ng rehiyon 2) Wikang Ingles 3) at minsa'y sa wikang Filipino S...

Leonard Co (1953-2010), Filipino botanist

With much sadness and shock I learned from WWF chair Lory Tan that internationally renowned botanist Leonard Co was killed together with a guide and a forest ranger last Monday, 15 November in a firefight in Leyte between Armed Forces of the Philippines soldiers and Communist guerrillas. As the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports it , Co and his researchers were surveying a forest plot of the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) for native Philippine trees and plants especially those that are in danger of extinction, like this Rafflesia flower (the picture I got from Dr Julie Barcelona's blog . Thank you Julie) The 41 year old Communist insurgency has again claimed another life of the best and brightest of the Philippines. In Leonard Co's case, a bright life that cannot be replaced. For he was one of if not the last of the classically trained botanists in plant taxonomy and systematics in the Philippines. While one can learn the basics of these disciplines i...

blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

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