Agriculture Secretary Manny Pinol is right: The think tank that warned that buying rice from local farmers during the peak harvest season would spike its prices is a paid hack.
Greedy businessmen paid the New York-based Global Source to come up with that opinion, according to the “small but terrible” agriculture chief.
Why should the government change its mind to buy rice from local farmers during the harvest season and instead import the staple just because a paid hack said so?
A paid hack is not worth listening to, no matter if it gave an “objective” and well-researched analysis.
A paid hack reports on the dictates of its patrons.
It was unfair of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to accuse an elderly couple—Constancio and Crisenta Petalco, both in their 60s—of coddling Abu Sayyaf bandits.
The couple were killed in the crossfire between government forces and the bandits in Inabanga, Bohol.
The accusation was apparently meant to cover up the stupid bungling of military and police forces.
The Petalcos were killed because they were too weak and old to run for cover.
The least the military and police could have done was to apologize for the couple’s death instead of saying they were “persons of interest.”
If the government forces were not bumbling idiots or were not caught sleeping on the job, how come three of them were killed in the firefight when they had mastery of the terrain while the bandits were strangers to the place?
It would have been excusable for the troops to suffer casualties—like if the firefight happened in the jungles of Sulu or Basilan—because the bandits had the run of the terrain; but the soldiers and the policemen are supposed to know every nook and cranny of the area since they’re from the place.
Why the hell did the government troops still suffer that many casualties, not to mention the number of wounded, when they had mastery of the terrain?
Unless the government doesn’t know how to count, three is a big number.
It’s time for the government troops to change tactics vis-a-vis the New People’s Army and Moro rebels because almost always they’re licked in firefights with the enemy.
At the rate soldiers and policemen are getting killed, there might not be any more troops left to fight.
Unless they have the misplaced optimism of a battalion commander during the Sulu campaign in the 1970s.
When informed that his men suffered heavy casualties during a battle, that battalion commander said: “Di bale, marami pang Ilocano sa Luzon (Never mind, there are still many Ilocanos in Luzon).