Five stars out of five ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ or five jumping emojis out of five 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 for Tina Monson-Palma — Finally, a journalist in the APEC international media center did her job instead of acting like a member of the PR team of APEC — Tina Monson-Palma of ABS-CBN asked Canadian PM Trudeau what Canada would do about the 50 container vans of plastic, paper, kitchen, toilet, and hospital garbage that they (thru private firms) shipped to the Philippines a couple of years ago, still rotting at the Manila port.
Trudeau answered with non-committal generalities by saying they would review Canadian laws on the matter etc…. Tina Monson-Palma followed up by asking what particularly would the Canadian government do, and Trudeau repeated his generalities.
Tina succeeded in bringing to the world stage an urgent, important concern that affects the environment, health, and lives of people in developing countries, and which Canada has failed to address, by doing her job, that is — trying to get answers on substantive issues rather than swooning and sighing and storifying mindless fluff (#APEChottie) on the global stage —
trust the ABS-CBN female news anchors not to be mesmerized by world leaders with dreamy Matthey McConaughey eyes and dark Tom Cruise locks and to carry out the duty that viewers and readers look on to them to perform. Good job.
(the other half of the so-called #APEChottie, Mexican president Nieto, hurriedly headed home and boarded the plane before he could be asked tough questions about the murdered students and community organizers back home.)
on the 43 college students who were seized, killed, burned,
their bodies thrown into the San Juan River
and 15 community leaders who went in search of the murdered students, shot to death this August…
because we will be polite
(photo of the Mexican president rightclicked from Philippine Star used here non-commercially for academic purposes)
From Al Jazeera, Aug. 10, 2015: “At least 15 people were killed over the weekend in the troubled southwestern state of Guerrero, including an activist who helped lead efforts to find the 43 students who disappeared and were presumed murdered last year, according to Mexican officials.
“Ten of the murders took place in the resort city of Acapulco, which is packed with tourists visiting for their summer vacations, local police said.
“One of the victims, Miguel Ángel Jiménez, was a leader of a community police organization known as Upoeg (Unión de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Estado de Guerrero). Jiménez was found shot to death on Saturday inside the taxi he drove in the rural outskirts of Acapulco, according to local police.
“Jimenez, 45, who also founded a citizens’ self-defense group in Guerrero in 2013, led a group that searched for approximately 300 people who have disappeared in the state, helping uncover mass graves found around the city of Iguala, where 43 Mexican students went missing last year.
“The students were teachers-in-training at Ayotzinapa Normal School, in Tixtla, Guerrero — a school that caters to the rural poor and is known for political activism.
“Police reportedly opened fire on the students in Iguala at the behest of its mayor, and in the aftermath 43 students went missing. Classmates of the missing students say they were “disappeared” for speaking out against government policies.
“The government, in turn, has said the students were abducted by police and handed over to drug traffickers who allegedly killed the students and burned their bodies. Critics have questioned the government’s version of events.
“Frustrated with the Mexican government’s efforts to find the missing students, Jiménez led a group throughout Guerrero in search of the missing. Last December, Jiménez described the hills that surround Iguala as a cemetery, according to the BBC. So far the group has found 130 bodies and turned them over to authorities, according to several media outlets.
“Acapulco, a city of about 800,000, saw 404 homicides in the first six months of this year, compared to 281 in the same period of 2014. The murder rate still remains below the peak of 524 murders in the first half of 2012.
“Javier Morlet Macho, a community activist who sits on the citizens’ police advisory board in Acapulco, said the rise in killings suggests a new gang may be carrying out “a cleanup operation” to eradicate rivals as it moves into the territory.
“Guerrero state, which has one of the highest murder rates in Mexico, saw 1,514 homicides in 2014, according to federal statistics, which report 943 homicides this year through June.
“Decades of Mexico’s so-called Dirty War, and the heavily militarized “war on drugs” that followed, have led to the disappearance or deaths of thousands who opposed government policies. In Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest states, citizens’ self-defense groups have risen in reaction to drug-related violence.”
