Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Driver Earns P50 a Day to Feed his Family

INCREDIBLE BUT TRUE BECAUSE OF COVID-19

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

The economics’ stocks of these motorized trike drivers turned ugly after the pandemic’s Corona Virus Disease-19 continues to wreck havoc in and out of the country.

I bumped into Manuel “Amboy” Rivera, 35, the guy I interviewed for our newspaper weeks after the lock down in March, how he fared ferrying passengers near a university in Dagupan to any point of the city and her nearby towns’ Mangaldan, Calasiao, and Binmaley.

It's getting worse, sir” he told me in Pangasinan

 I asked him how much he pays for a day's “boundary” or rent to the owner of the trike, the gas money he spent, and what dough left him for his family’s expenses.

Say i-iter kod samay operator P150. Say gasolinak isakoy agew et P100. P50 labat lay atilak ed siak (I remitted P150 for the operator. My gasoline expenses for a day was P100. What left for me was P50),” he lamented in Pangasinan.

P50?! I reacted incredibly.

Yes sir P50 na lang,” he retorted.

SORRY DRIVERS. Author poses as motorized tricycle driver while flanked by drivers whose look did not betray them to earn a pathetic sum daily because of the scarcity of commuters in Dagupan City due to the bogey of the lethal Corona Virus Disease-19 that continues to rampage globally.


Another tricycle driver Rommel Lazona,4, a migrant from Mindanao, collaborated what Amboy narrated to me.

Totoo iyan sir. Sa akin P300 gross kita ko. P120 boundary ko sa amo ko pero sa gasolina P100 na may naiwan ako na P80 para sa pamilya ko”.

Doggone it! I could not imagine how the measly fifty or eighty pesos could buy a meal three times a day to feed a downtrodden nuclear family of five.

They said some if not many of their fellow tricycle drivers used to have – pre-COVID time - a net earning (after they deducted their P120- P150 boundary fee to the owner and P100 gas expenses) of P400 to P300 a day.

These fares' heydays ensued when students from Lyceum Northwestern University, Mother Goose (Special Science School), La Sallete, Dominican, La Maria, Edna School, and City National High School teemed by thousands in the streets where they had all the day's servicing them during those school days.

But all of them disappeared in thin air after the government mandated that schools do online and modular learning for their students to avoid being struck by the lethal pandemic.

Aside from the lethargic number of customers patronizing McDonalds - Tapuac and some food chains like the famous Nigerian owned Shawarma nearby, banks like BPI, China Bank and BDO, and money and cargo carriers' Palawan, Cebuana Lhuillier, and LBC the human traffic significantly dwarfed to the magnitude of people that appeared on the streets there before COVID-19 wrought havoc early this year.

They should be shifting their jobs like working in the construction,” my son Niko butted in when I told the deplorable story of these drivers to my wife Miles.

“But there are no construction jobs available in the city and the nearby towns. Even in Manila jobs are still scarce,” I told Nico.

But Hernan “Balong” Cabunot, 26, my other motorized trike - interviewee last March and May 2020 for our newspaper, told me that the income of each of the more than a dozen of his fellow drivers who parked their vehicles across McDonald fluctuated everyday.

Depende sa araw. Gaya sa akin P350 kada araw halos akin na lahat iyan kasi ako ang may ari ng tricycle”.

He said if he deducted the P150 a day gas because of the lenght of time picking up passengers. He has P200 a day without worrying about the day’s rent of the vehicle.

He said the lease of the tricycle is P150 to the operator if the driver brings it home after the dusk trip and P100 if he returned it to the owner after the 6 P.M service.

Manuel Amboy” Rivera and Davao Fruits' employee
Galman Torres in a huddle while both wait
for their customers.

Before the pandemic I can earn P500 a day net because there were students and other people in the periphery,” he told me in Tagalog.

He cited that some of his fellow trike drivers left the trade for construction sites work in the city and Pangasinan Province because the daily pay there is P400.

But it is a tough job because you have to labor under the scorching sun and you have to lift heavy loads”.

The drivers told me they envied the 43 years old Galman Torres – the all-around employee of Davao Fruits located just across McDonald.

Mabuti pa si Galman walang asawa tapos nag sasahod ng arawan ng P400 (Davao Fruits gives him his pay daily not monthly, higher than the P282 minimum wage of 1-9 workers’ business in Region-1, because he spends whatever money in his pocket to booze with friends after store closes at 5:30 P.M)".

 "Kami P80 a day lang ang kita may pamilya pa,” Rommel grudgingly admired Galman – known as perennial drunkard at dusk because of his alcoholism problem.

READ MY OTHER BLOG/COLUMN:

                Drivers Resort to Loan to Avoid Hunger

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)


Sunday, November 15, 2020

My Dad Wanna be Horatius at the Bridge

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

My dad almost became a Horatius at the Bridge during the Moro Secession War in the late of the 1970s in Cotabato.

Horatius at the Bridge, what is that?

Publius Horatius Cocles was an officer in the army of the early Roman Republic who famously defended the Pons Sublicius from the invading army of Etruscan King Lars Porsena of Clusium in the late 6th century BC, during the war between Rome and Clusium. By defending the narrow end of the bridge, he and his companions were able to hold off the attacking army long enough to allow other Romans to destroy the bridge behind him, blocking the Etruscans' advance and saving the city (Wikipedia).

War between Rome and Clusium. Horatius in the Bridge. Photo Credit: Alamy.com

Here’s the story why my dad wanna to be Horatius:

The first time I saw my military father ready to die for the motherland or probably for my mother, I was in Grade 5 in M’lang, Cotabato Province.

He was then on a soldier’s pass when he brought me and my kindergarten brother Gabriel to a rickety worn out wood walled barbershop which, I still remember, was owned by the father of my playmates Stephen and Toto Felipe.The latter, a rugged boy, had fisticuffs with me, but that’s another story.

When we were seating at the worn-out barber couch elevated by small wood boxes to raise our heads, some peasant women running and shouting with their lungs out that the Black Shirts (precursor of the Moro National Liberation Front) were already at the periphery of the Peñaranda Hospital.

The hospital was more than a kilometer away from us.

Immediately my father told the frail looking barber Mr.Felipe to forego our military white style wall haircut (that I detested because I envied the mop haired Beatles) because he had to secure us and promised to return with his weapon and later with us whose side of the heads were already shaved just like those plebes at the Philippine Military Academy where my siblings and I were born.


When we were at our salunggi (flat bamboo trunk panels) walled and nipa roofed house near the bank of the Mlang River in front of our school Southern Baptist College, I saw my father rushing from his room and running toward the hospital with two hand grenades firmly clasped by his hands that were Vietnam and Word War II vintages.

Don’t follow me or else I will “palo’ (spank)” you!” he shouted at me as I followed him running.

I stopped for five minutes deciding if I would acquiesce on his order, but I ran again to where he was going.

I wanted to see how he would throw those “frags” and how those Muslim rebels would shout like “fags” and explode to smithereens just like those Japanese soldiers I saw at the Sulo and Paraiso movie houses in the town.

Near the barbershop, I saw my father exasperated and embarrassed with amused matured men and my relative Alex Paulo, who was in Grade 5 then who later turned as ladies’ man, milling around him and looking curiously at his green and rusty colored grenades he held in his hands.

No, there were no Muslims. They did not attack the hospital but the next town Tulunan,” the long haired father of Alex, who was an RCPI Man, told him in the singsong Ilonggo vernacular.

 But despite that “Radio Puwak (False News, just like the Fake News online), I just realized lately that my father, a Korean War Veteran, was gungho.

With all his reckless bravery, I just realized lately that he could be mowed by the assault rifles of the bad guys as he attempted, son of a gun, to throw those grenades at them.

Where could you find a grenade man rushing to a company of armed trigger happy warriors ready with their rifles’ World War 1 Springfield and World War 2 Garand and Thomson Sub Machine Guns.

***

But my father’s courage could shame the anecdote of a police general who told us media men, over bottles of beer, in Pangasinan about his exploit, when he was a captain, with armed communist rebels in the Quezon Province.

He told us that when a police substation were peppered with bullets by the New People Army and killed those cops assigned there, somebody frantically flagged his owner-type jeep.

His driver immediately revved the jeep for 100 kilometers per hour (KPH) speed so they could catch and shoot those rebels.

But the captain, a graduate of the elite Philippine Military Academy, was not amused by the bravado of the sergeant.

I chided him. I told my driver to drive 40 KPH.

When the driver posed why 40 and not 100 where the latter speed could overtake the rebels on their dilapidated jeep, the captain explained to him:

The 100 KPH would surely make us catch them. But we would surely die there because we are two and they are superior in number”.

Do you want to die?” he barked at his sergeant.

No sir!,”the sergeant shouted back and saluted, that nearly made the jeep bumped a huge acacia tree, with gratitude and with a new found wisdom called “common sense”.

(Send comments to totomortz@yahoo.com)

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THE GENERAL WHO SAVED MINDANAO

Friday, November 13, 2020

General Who Saved France Had War Exploits in Mindanao

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Salamabit, if I got a three-day journey in a lorry from Mindanao to Quezon City in my four months’ lock down due to the lethal pandemic and where Truck Czar Jun Alba whisked me out from his truck yard of ten-wheeler trucks in the city thru his fast and slick Ford Raptor’s Pick-Up to Dagupan City in just two-hour, here’s Max Soliven on a General who was whisked out from Mindanao to save France:

"One of the gallant Frenchmen who joined General George Washington in America’s fight for liberty was the Marquis de Lafayette – dare I say the Galeries Lafayette super-department store was named after him, or from the boulevard that bears his name? In any event, the Americans returned the favor by sending hundreds of thousands of men to defend France and roll back the Germans in World War I. The charming legend is that when the leader of the American Expeditionary Forces, General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing of Mindanao, arrived with his troopship, he went straight to the French Marquis’ grave to lay a wreath before sending his soldiers to help in the succor of France. Pershing said: "Lafayette, we are here!" "


The Americans' Moro War in Mindanao, Philippines. Photo Credit: UNC-Endeavor

HERE’S Your struggling columnist, who moonlights too as Mindanao fruits’ seller in the once great Kingdom of Princess Urduja (hey, the lady ain’t got a first name!), and his then blog/column’s Ph Town Fêtes its West Pointer on General Pershing Mindanao’s campaign in early 1900s:

In Jolo the Yanks .38 caliber pistols and the .30-40 Krag rifle could not knock out the rampaging Moros who were impervious with the barbed wires that slice their skins.

For these “Jurumentados”, who tied some parts of their body, the most important thing was to decapitate with their Kris the heads of these infidels who wanted to impose a civil service style of governance vice their obeisance to their revered datus.

The Moro hero of this war against the Yankees, er, the .38 caliber and the Krag was Panglima Hassan in the Hassan Uprising who fought to the death the Americans who shot him dozens of times with their useless weapons but the sannamagan would not easily die.

 Because of the inefficiency of that guns, the Colt Corporation invented the double-action with a lethal stopping power .45 caliber against the Tausogs that included some women who fought to the death using only kris, kampilan, arrows and some musket rifles where some they wield with bayonets.

Because of the sheer number of the Muslims who came to the succor of the fleeing comrade-in-arm who entered the kuta or fortress, the Americans during the governorship of Generals Wood and Bliss resorted to a crude but funny method of psychological warfare that the pale faced big eye, as what the Indians described the Yanks in the Indian Wars in 1600s, used with success.

According to Daniel Mannix in his book The Old Navy, the Americans used to outwit the Moros by exploiting their religious vulnerability.

 Rear Admiral Mannix, who fought the Moros as a young lieutenant from 1907–1908, said that the Americans exploited Muslim taboos by wrapping dead Moros in pig's skin and "stuffing [their] mouth[s] with pork", thereby deterring the Moros from continuing with their suicide attacks.

The juramentado attacks were materially reduced in number by a practice the army had already adopted, one that the Muhammadans held in abhorrence. General John J. Pershing (USMA 1886), the soldiers’ soldier if you asked generals and West Point’s alumni with a surname like Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and MacArthur and even my town mate Eli Eichenberger, in his autobiography wrote that cadavers were publicly buried in the same grave with a dead pig. It was not pleasant to have to take such measures but the prospect of going to hell instead of heaven sometimes deterred the would-be assassins, the general, where West Point’s cadets  contemptuously called him Nigger Jack because of his strictness as instructor, said.

The only president of the Philippines that wanted to emulate this piggy war's stunt was President Joseph Estrada through his soldiers brought lechons and truckloads of beers and drank them inside the Mosque after they drove away the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s soldiers, according to MILF vice-chairman for political Affairs Ghadzali Jaafar.

Jaafar told ABS-CBN’ ANC that then President Estrada decided to attack the MILF's Camp Abubakar in Maguindanao in March 2000 "brought one truckload of beer, started drinking there and then brought lechon and ate pork inside a mosque."

Before the start of my one-on-one interview with then President Joseph Estrada in one of the towns in Pangasinan. At right is the "Eraption" Man Friday's Actor Rez Cortez. I forgot to ask the president if he indeed brought roasted pigs and truckloads of beers and drank them with Christian soldiers inside the Mosque after they drove away the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s rebels in Central Mindanao.


(You can read my selected columns at mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Patuloy ang Libring Pamamahagi ng Face Masks, Face Shields

 

By Cong. Toff de Venecia

Sa pagpapatuloy na health protocols sa pagresponde natin sa pandemya, tayo'y namahagi ng facemasks at face shields sa Barangays Binday, Colisao, Ambalangan Dalin, at Palapad upang magamit ng ating mga kabaleyan sa kanilang pang araw-araw na pangangailangan.

Lagi nating tandaan na magsuot ng face mask at shield para maproteksyunan ang ating pamilya at mga kasamahan sa trabaho at komunidad.

Tuloy tuloy ang #SerbisyonSubokNa para sa ating mga kabaleyan. Ingat po tayo!

THE RECIPIENTS of the generosity of Pangasinan Fourth District Representative Christopher “Toff” de Venecia (speaking right side) of the free face masks and face shields in one of the five villages in San Fabian, Pangasinan.


Mga ka – Padayon maraming tumutok dito sa Facebook noong alas tres ng hapon ng November 11 sa Panayam Segment ko tungkol sa tinataguyod kong Sining at Kultura sa Kongreso. Tinalakay natin ang mga hakbang na ginagawa natin sa Arts and Culture and Creative Industries Block o ACCIB sa Kongreso.

Tamang kaalaman tungo sa malayang kaisipan. Ang kultura ay susi sa kadakilaan. Isang oras lang ang kailangan.

Sulong na!

Xxx

Sa panahon ng pandemya at distance learning, isa sa mga pagsubok na kinahaharap ng ating mga eskwelahan at guro ang paggawa at pag-distribute ng mga modules.

Kaya naman kasama natin ang Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation, Inc. na namahagi ng mga papel at photocopy machine upang makadagdag sa mga susunod na nilang pag print sa mga modules para sa kanilang mga mag-aaral.

Maraming Salamat sa Jaime V. Ongpin Foundation, Inc. sa kanilang donasyon para sa ating distrito. Tuluy- tuloy ang #SerbisyongSubokNa na hatid ng inyong lingkod para sa ating mga mag aaral, mga guro, at mga magulang na nagpupursigi para sa edukasyon ng atin mga estudyanteng kabaleyan!

Monday, November 9, 2020

P'GASINAN MEDIA MAN SLAIN

 What: Shooting Incident

When: November 10, 2020/6:45 Where: Sitio Licsab, Brgy San Blas, Villasis, Pangasinan Who: Virgilio Maganes, legal age, single, media man, a resident of Brgy San Blas, Villasis, Pangasinan How: Victim about to enter into the compound the two suspects on board Yamaha Nmax shot him in six successive shot that cause his instantenious death. Suspect fled heading towards south bound direction of said road. Motive of the case is still undetermined. IOC PSMS Lorene G Osias 09175588880.
KILLED. Northern Watch Newspaper's Columnist Vir Maganes lying prostrate in Sitio Licsab, Brgy San Blas, Villasis, Pangasinan where he was treacherously shot- to- death by two assassins who absconded immediately by riding a motorcycle 6:30 A.m today. PHOTO CREDIT: GMA-7 TV


Moreover, according to a source who asked for anonymity, Maganes was seen buying a soap in a retail store nearby his house in Villasis when the gun men garbed in black jackets pounced on him when he was going back to his abode.
Villasis Chief of Police and Major Christian Alucod told a radio reporter that the incident happened at around 6:30 A.m on Tuesday.
Alucod said Maganes suffered a successive shots in the head and other parts of the body that caused his instantaneous death.
The seasoned columnist of Northern Watch Newspaper and a radio bloc timer survived an assassination attempt in a dawn of November 7, 2016 by motorcycle riding in tandem while he was bound to Dagupan City for his morning radio program.
Maganes, a former manager of Bombo Radyo- La Union and government employee, celebrated his sixty second birthday last November 7 (Saturday).
"I don't go out during my birthday because of the traumatic experience I had on that date," he told lately a reporter-friend.

The Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF) I.D of Vir Maganes that he should be getting at the house of fellow Northern Watch Newspaper's columnist Mortz C. Ortigoza when the Public Information Agency of Pangasinan furnished the former last April his identification card. Ortigoza reminded him last Saturday, his birthday, about his I.D. Maganes said he would get it soon when he goes to Dagupan City. "We'll play your guitar and jam with our favorite songs as usual in my visit at your house," he told Ortigoza.


FIRST ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT: Radio commentator wounded in Pangasinan shooting



A radio commentator in Pangasinan was wounded after unidentified gunmen on board a motorcycle shot him before dawn Tuesday.

The victim was identified as Virgilio Maganes, 59, commentator of DWPR radio station in Dagupan City.

Supt. Jack Candelario, public information officer of the Pangasinan Provincial Police Office, said the incident happened about 5:40 a.m. along Villasis-Asingan Road in Poblacion 1.

He said the victim, a resident of Brgy. San Blas in Villasis, was on his way to work onboard a tricycle when he was shot several times by the unidentified suspects.

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Bad, Good News sa Ekonomiya ng Pinas

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Stupid Reporter Has the Last Laugh

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

The problem with some if not many reporters they have all the hubris but they ain’t got the intellect to back them. In the vernacular: Puro yabang hindi naman matalino.

Who said that idiom? Still waters run deep while shallow water runs noisily.

That one about "shallow water" applies to many members of the Fourth Estate who thought sporting that huge identification card with a bold red letter printed and called MEDIA is their pass for being treated as a sui generis (something that is unique) by the society.

I felt sorry for a broadcaster who told me that the phantom Corona Virus Disease -19 pandemic dealt him a twin hard blows economically after he was yanked out in his radio and television programs.

Photo Credit: Google.com
The last post was traumatic for him since he was paid more or less P9,000 monthly there.

His fault? He corrected a co-host about how he pronounced words in English.

Mantakin mo ba naman pare ang “Pennsylvania” tawag niya “ Penicillinvania” ang “Excise Tax” “Exit Tax”, he confided to me those boo boos.

At least hindi niya ni mention iyong Transylvania ang birth place ni Count Dracula. O baka may tulo ang lover niya kaya na mention niya ang “Penicillin-vania” hahahaha!” I guffawed upon hearing them.

Penicillin is a group of antibiotics while Pennsylvania is the state that could make and unmake Republican Donald Trump after his U.S Presidential rival Democrats Sleepy Joe Biden clinched this morning the 16 Electoral College Votes (ECV) of the State of Michigan that would make his pursuit of the White House only short of six votes to make to the Magic 270 ECV.

Penicillinvynia, er, Pennsylvania has 20 ECVs.

But his amusement was short lived. He regretted his propensity to correct his partner who pronounced the SACHET of a shampoo as SAKI instead of saˈSHā or SASHAY hahahaha!

The co-host is the confidant of the owner of the station.

The following day the poor media man, who became poorer because of this call, received a phone ring (that would haunt him for the rest of his life) from his shallow minded partner:

Sabi ni XYZ huwag ka na daw mag report sa program bukas,” a call he heard from the other side of the line that gave him cold chills.

Veteran reporter did not allow that treatment sitting down. He mulled to file a law suit against XYZ to the Department of Labor for compensation and moral damages because he worked for decades in the station and the employer did not give him due process for his separation.

Threatened by the actuation of the complainant, XYZ, a politician who eyes to make an electoral comeback in the 2022 Election, told an emissary to explain to poor reporter that XYZ did not know his being fired from the station.

Una inaayos ako with a pittance ayaw ko pumayag. Barya.Tapos pinababalik ako sa station kasi hindi naman daw ako tinanggal,” he remarked to me.

Xxx

In this pandemic, many of our brothers and sisters in the media profession especially those in the lower rung have been the hardest hit.

COVID-19 protocol through the  Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) did not allow convergence of people like those bettors of Peryahan or Fair where drop-ball sa pula o puti betting game is being played.

Many media men go to the operator of these peryas where the latter without qualm automatically shelled out to each of them P300 to P500 bills. Rookies could show their station I.D or newspapers so they could get their share of the dough. They visit the fair once or twice a month in every town. Pangasinan has 44 towns and 4 cities and some local government units have up to four peryahan each especially the cities.

These bribes not to expose the presence of these illegal activities have been a source of livelihood for media men and family members whom the former tow shamelessly in their "extortion". 

Some even hailed in Pampanga seeing how lucrative the peryas, protected by the cops and the mayors, in the mammoth Pangasinan province

Here’s a mayor who told me the millions of pesos the operator shelled out to her to allow the illegal operation of the peryas that fronts as a gambling den that baited even school children to bet their school monies.

 Lady Mayor depended on the payolas given to her by a syndicate.

ME: Mayora bakit iyong peryahan na may drop ball at pula puti (betting games) na pati mga bata ay nagsusugal ay nasa gitna lang ng simbahan at munisipyo?

MAYORA: Pabayaan mo na sila. Iyong payola diyan ay binibigay ko sa mga namamatayan at mga mahihirap na pumupunta dito lalo na wala ng jueteng na nakakatulong.

XXX

Payola from operator of the peryahan to the mayors vary from three hundred thousand pesos to four million of pesos to each of them.

The illegal gambling games offered by the faire were part of the paid illegal amusement there like tupada (illegal cockfight).

The games patronized by the great unwashed were version of the rich men’s casinos in Clark in Pampanga and Heritage Hotel in Pasay City.

I used that P350,000 to pay for the orchestra and other expenses for our fiesta,” another mayor in Pangasinan told some media men he considered his closed pals.

So how much you will give to a poor man whose loved ones die,” I posed to hizzoner (his honor).

It depends, if he is my supporter I give P3000 to P5000. If he was an avid supporter of my rival, I chide him first and then give him a small amount”.

***

Aside from the Perya, illegal number game's jueteng stopped its operation in the province that saw many print and radio reporters lose their monthly allowances that run to P10,000 each from elected politicians who received weekly payolas from the operators of the betting game.

The absence of the payola makes media men not only in my province but to other provinces and independent cities in the country reel on financial strait.

I remembered a rich publisher and printing press owner telling me that national reporters ABC and DEF were intelligent but he was not impressed by them because they loved to free ride with his generosity every time they go to the bar and restaurants to imbibe beers and expensive liquours.

Matalino nga sila pero hindi nila kayang e convert ang talino nila sa pera,” he grieved in telling me about the sad reality not only of the duo but many members  in the print and broadcast professions.

And we are not yet talking about the female members who became moneyed because they sold their souls to the devil.

Iyong isang kasama ninyong babae na naka shade, lagi pumapasok doon sa loob ng hotel room ni Director,” a former body guard of a regional director, a Lothario, of a corrupt government's agency told me when I bumped into him years ago in the agency’s national office in Quezon City.

 Many media men, some of them intelligent editor-in-chief and radio commentators, died in penury where some politician friends answered financially for their hospital bills and pay for their funeral expenses including their coffins.

So who wants to be in the media profession?

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)

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Blamethe Catholic Church too for our Poverty