BY JUN VELASCO
UNLIKE in the unlamented past, say, 20 to 30 years back or earlier, we in our present world are now aware of what’s happening around , and in a graphic if not intimate manner.
Like the gory crime that snatched the life of our lady kababayan from Iloilo who was an overseas worker in Kuwait, Joanna Demafelis, whose decomposing body was found in a freezer one year after the commission of the crime.
It’s of little comfort that the Kuwait authorities were able to track the culprit who was sentenced to death! Swift justice, we say, but no matter. The price of human life is without human parameter!
But we are getting ahead of the story. Our article in this issue is to underscore an exciting fact that we, people around the globe, are now closely linked, whether we like it or not, thanks to the advances in media communications and topped by the internet!
Who was the philosopher who articulated that “no man is an island, for he is part of the main?”
John Donne!
By the way, it was not a walk in the park for Donne, Galileo Galilei, and America’s discoverer Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan — the fabled Philippine Islands’ discoverer — to report to the people including their governments what they found in those days of “isolation.”
Galileo was persecuted until his tormentor bigots found out the truth. Such, anyway, was the price of being ahead of the times.
Joan of Arc, in case you forgot, was literally burned by the French authorities when she forewarned of things to come to save France.
We need not go far. Our own national hero, Dr. Jose P. Rizal, was condemned to die by the Spanish colonizers for opening the eyes of his countrymen.
There is always a high price for knowing ahead of the pack and, in our case as journalists, for reporting the truth.
Such is the story of mankind anyway! The Israelites were kept in bondage by the Egyptians until God, who was tired of their inhuman acts, intervened by sending Moses to free His people from bondage!
That was more than 2, 000 years ago and the vestiges of inhuman attempts to conceal the truth are hard to erase.
Why? Because there are those who are benefitting from it — the concealing of the truth and promoting lies, such as the diabolical act of bigots — keeping people in the dark, being made too busy to just mind their own business and immediate concerns and promoting ignorance — are still at it.
Now, we hear of the fake news phenomenon which is, as we all know, an attempt to confuse and hide the truth.
Fake news promoters are no different from the Pharisees and Sadducees of the Old Testament.
They will soon be exposed by their own contradictions because the truth — the unvarnished truth — will soon be out in glorious splendor.
Promoters of lies and bigotry will delight in keeping the public uninformed to allow them do their dastardly thing unmolested. But communications, journalism, education and the light of truth that God is promoting will erase the reign of darkness and keep His children and creations well informed.
As we put the final dash in this column, our subdivision association president, Ms. Ann Tadeo, just reported that the city government of Dagupan has put its foot down on the age-old move to direct the flow of used or dirty water to the Lingayen Gulf!
Dapat lang, we said, with our thought riveted to Boracay’s destruction.
Let’s protect and save Mother Earth by being God’s good children. (juanitomvelasco@yahoo.com/PN)
