By Ernesto Herrera Manila Times 23 February 2010 After seeing their priorities not given full attention in the legislature in recent years, the labor movement and its supporters are hoping their fortunes will change in 2010, with the election of a genuine labor representative in the Senate in the person of Susan “Toots” Ople. Toots Ople is of course the youngest daughter of my best friend, the late Senator and Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas F. Ople. She’s also a former undersecretary in the Labor department, who holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. I am happy that Toots, who always accompanied Ka Blas, helped him in his work and continued his advocacies after he died, is now prepared to rise to the challenge of national leadership, as a vanguard of labor and OFWs. Her passion for helping OFWs is something that she undoubtedly inherited from her father, who authored the Labor Code and is the recognized father of OF...

LODESTAR By Danton Remoto (The Philippine Star) February 22, 2010 12:00 AM Ex eunt is the third part of Carmen Guerrero Nakpil’s trilogy of memoirs. In stage direction, “exeunt” indicates that a character is about to leave the stage. And the sense of finality, of elegiac beauty, is found in this book. Mrs. Nakpil’s two earlier books are titled Myself, Elsewhere and Legends & Adventures. The first brought back to us genteel Ermita before World War II, while the second showed the author’s colorful life from 1946 until the assassination of Ninoy Aquino in 1986. Both won the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle. As befits a book called Exeunt, the last part of the trilogy is also the thinnest volume, like the books of Samuel Beckett, which became thinner and thinner as he became older. But the signature wit and wisdom are still there, as when she deftly answered questions for four hours from a dour Hong Kong immigration officer, who mistook her for the mistress of General...

REMOTE CONTROL | DANTON REMOTO | 02/09/2010 8:19 AM Views and analysis www.abs-cbnnews.com The Book That Changed My Life, subtitled “71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them”, is the kind of work you can dip into during a languid weekend and feel you have learned something. Edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen, the book features mostly American writers talking about the book that led them round the bend — out of boredom, out of loneliness — into a brave, new world. In The Art of Possibility, Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander write that reading books “is about rearranging us, creating surprising juxtapositions, emotional openings, startling presences, flight paths to the eternal.” The notion of books as a form of transport — as a way of freeing us from the prison of the room, of our own skin — lies at the heart of this book. Small-town Carolina girl and National Book Award-winning author Dorothy Allison sees a parallel between herself a...

by Roger B Rueda The Ladlad series is one of my much loved books. For one, the books have been with me in my formative years as a writer. They have made me sensitive of my orientation and understand myself. Ladlad 1 and 2 were bought for me by my father in SM Fairviewk, without his knowledge. The money I bought for the books was my father’s very last money in his wallet, but since he really did not know what I was going to pay the money for, he gave his two crisp one-thousand-peso bills. Perhaps, he thought that I was going to buy books I would need come June. I was excited that summer of 1997 because I thought that I would not borrow my roommate’s copy of Ladlad any more. Then certainly when I arrived in Iloilo City, I was the first person to have a copy of Ladlad 2, with its beautiful crimson cover. Many of my friends borrowed my books, especially the two books of Ladlad. I covered them with plastic and took care of them not so they wouldn't be soiled or crumpled. But my books we...

Well, I did not file an appeal when Comelec disqualified me for running as senator because I am an independent candidate. The three old men of the Second Division does not like me. As simple and as unequivocal as that. As for Ladlad, we filed a well-written and well-documented appeal with the Supreme Court, and had Ladlad reinstated in the list of party list candidates, pending final decision of the SC which I hopoe would be soon. Am in Cebu not to eat lechon but to attend a writers' festival and to talk to the many many members of the LGBT community here, in the City of Queens in the South. ### There's The Rub A few good men By Conrado de Quiros Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 22:33:00 02/10/2010 THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT NICKY PERLAS, Danton Remoto and Danny Lim are running again. Or are being allowed to run again. They are the three people I wrote about last December, who had been dropped from the official roster by the Comelec on the grounds that they were nuisance candi...

By Reynaldo Santos Jr. Friday, 05 February 2010 Newsbreak Magazine Comelec rules on pol ads take effect Feb.9 MANILA, Philippines--Candidates for national candidates in the May elections will have to start taking down their advertisements that don't follow prescribed guidelines before February 9, the start of the campaign period. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has released its set of campaign guidelines for 2010, which takes into consideration the new modalities of campaigning that are not specifically address by current laws. Most national candidates have started promoting themselves since 2008, although the campaign period officially starts February 9 yet for national positions and March 26 for local positions. The campaign period ends May 8. Politicians have been advertising on billboards and busses, which violate the rules on the size and placement of advertisements. However, the Supreme Court ruled that advertisements produced and released before the campaign period ...