http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/revolting-local-bird-massacre-website
If it flies, it dies’
By Juan Mercado
Cebu Daily News
First Posted 15:25:00 01/15/2008
Filed Under: Crime, Law & Justice
That’s the macho slogan of a hunters’ website. Some members of the Philippine National Shooting Team scrambled to shutter this web’s photo section. Why?
As in Bacolod’s Air Rifle Hunting website, photos show members flaunting near-extinct Philippine ducks and mallards blasted out of the sky. The “Red List of Threatened Birds of the World” includes these species.
Photo scrubbing intensified after GMA-7’s Jessica Soho aired a documentary Saturday, showing that the “kill” included Philippine ducks found nowhere else in the world. Only 5,000 to 10,000 of these birds are left. These issues were stressed by earlier Inquirer and Cebu Daily News columns: “Avian pit stops” (September 18), “Slaughter of the birds” (December 13) and “Postmortem evidence” (December 18).
An “unknown group” swiped those photos from a spoof website, team members Jade and Mike de Guzman, plus Tet Lara, claimed in a convoluted denial. In a “poor judgment call,” they posed with birds somebody else shot. They apologized for “bad taste in photos.”
“Denial ain’t a river in Egypt,” Mark Twain once snorted. Joseph Estrada learned that in his pathetic spin that crony Jaime Dichavez owned the P1.1-billion Jose Velarde account. So did TV host Willie Revillame, who ladled P8,000 in taxes for a P30-million 2006 Ferrari he claimed he didn’t own.
But “mere possession of these species, evidenced by their very own pictures, on their very own websites, is punishable” under Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act, emailed Wild Bird Club of the Philippines’s Michael Lu. RA 9147 mandates two-year jail terms and P300,000 fines for those who live by the slogan “If it flies, it dies.”
“We fail to see how defiance of the law qualifies sports hunters as conservationists,” Lu said. “It’s time to step back and consider our common impact on the planet.”
“Inquirer and Cebu Daily News article ‘Few closures’ (January 3) caught my eye as I settled back for the flight to Manila. And when my plane landed, text messages flooded in on the article regarding our son Phillip,” emailed Jose Pestaño.
Phillip Pestaño was a 24-year-old ensign when shot aboard RPS Bacolod. Within 24 hours, the Navy ruled it was a “suicide.” Nonsense, said the Senate after a painstaking investigation. The Ateneo and PMA graduate was murdered, Senate Report 800 declared. Pestaño bucked the loading of illegal lumber and shabu on the boat. “Kawawa ang bayan,” he told his parents, aware of threats.
A spineless Military Ombudsman finally started to ask Navy officials implicated to give their side – 12 years after the murder. Pestaño’s PMA and Ateneo classmates, and groups abroad, are pressing for justice.
“I’m confident these protests will not go unnoticed with Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro,” the father wrote. “He is still on the crossroad as to whether or not they (DND) will pursue a high-level reinvestigation of Phillip’s case.”
Is Teodoro made of sterner stuff, rather than just an administration poster boy? Then, he’d give long-denied justice to a straight-arrow officer whose blood-stained shoes many Navy officers are not fit to polish.
The director of the Asian Bond Market Forum in Hong Kong, Marshall Mays, commented on “Poisoned wells” (Inquirer and CDN, January 3). Water in the Philippines, the column said, morphed from life-giver to serial killer due to massive pollution and weak governance.
“I am worried by how easy it is for politicians to dip from the well, then dump their dregs in afterward. (But) this battle will be won or lost with the middle class. They are the ones fooled into thinking that lower water tariffs are good. And they are the ones most capable (if motivated) of forcing changes in policy. No city’s or country’s policies begin to work until the middle class is roused to action.
“Shift from the ADB’s emotive generalities to specific, near-term consequences for the man-in-the-street. A bomb in your neighbor’s yard is not as scary as a gun at your own head.”
Cebu City officials built themselves a P132-million council building, noted “Frugality’s shame” (Inquirer and CDN, January 1 ). But two, sometimes three, sick kids were jammed into one bed in a decrepit pediatric charity ward, always short of medicine.
“We have the same situation in Iligan City hospital,” Winze Balangao wrote. But Makati’s Tony Elicano wishes he learned to speak Cebuano, “(So) I could say ‘mga walang hiya’ in Cebuano.”
“Comparison of Cebu City Medical Center conditions vs. the shameful monument to wanton megalomania in City Hall is evidence of incredibly distorted value,” Elicano added. “Aren’t we Filipinos to blame? We continue to reelect these trapos. Is this plain stupidity? Or are we just a nation of masochists?”
David R of the United States wrote: “Such ridiculous behavior is not unknown here. Members of our Congress spent thousands of taxpayer dollars to add fireplaces to their offices.
“But in the USA, there is decent medical care available to all. And public and private programs insure that there is no starvation. A politician who can spend money on a private bathroom, while children die from inadequate nutrition or inadequate medical care, displays a lack of humanity that defies belief.
“How Filipinos who have so much (not only politicians) can spend all their time and energy trying to acquire more material wealth than they can even use is scary. Sooner or later, Filipinos will realize that things must change. I hope I live long enough to see it.”
More reading at- http://onlovinganimals.blogspot.com/2008/01/members-of-philippine-shooting-team.html
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