Of the catch, 40 percent is non-commercial (endangered sea lions, seals, and species unknown) amounting to 3.7 million tons/year. It would be ecologically beneficial if this catch of no commercial value, especially the endangered species, were returned alive to the ocean that the marine life may continue to live and propagate.

Unfortunately, it’s a dead catch, crashed by the tons hauled in. There is no longer that option to return live endangered species back into the ocean. The catch of no commercial value is therefore ground-up and thrown back into the ocean to become feed for whatever is left alive in the ocean.

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To my May 9 column Ay, Meralco! Elpi Cuna, VP for corporate communications, sent the following: "We would like to express our gratitude for your assistance in helping our company apprehend power thieves. We would like to assure you that the identity of our informants will remain anonymous outside the confines of the concerned offices handling cases of electricity pilferage....I am looking forward to meeting you personally so we can discuss your concerns. I hope we can both find the time to do this after all these issues confronting Meralco subside. Please accept my apology if I offended you in any way. Again, thank you very much. Your efforts have been a big help to our company. We are hoping that through your column, you will continue to help us in our campaign to curb the crime of electricity theft."

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A reader comments on my May 14 promotion of Barack Obama and what she felt was too much attention to American elections. "Why are you pushing American politics on Filipinos?" she asked. Because, policies in America spill over and are felt the rest of the world. Whatever good or bad in the Philippines are partly effects of leadership dictates in the USA.

How great to have a leader in the USA with social consciousness. Benevolent and honest American politicians cause positive ripple effects in the TW (Two-thirds World) in general, and the Philippines in particular. My promotion of Barack Obama is not unlike my promotion for Brother Eddie Villanueva; a track record of civility, benevolence, and hoped-for change from the trapos. Hillary represents same ole, same ole. I don’t want anymore of the same which does not seem to be working. An extreme change might bring the hoped-for relief to the disenfranchised.

I wrote the writer that I get paid for my opinion, and even people like her obviously spend time reading my opinion. My column gets read globally and most of those readers are among the millions of Fil-Ams who are citizens and voters in America.

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On my column on the restoration of the death penalty,

www.malaya.com.ph/may21/eddahli.htm: From the NYT editorial, "Roughly 15 death row prisoners are scheduled to be put to death in America between now and October...with the deeply flowed system that exists today, many defendants lack adequate legal representation at their trials. Race distorts who is sentenced to death for what crimes, and juries are "death qualified" – jurors with moral objections to the death penalty are removed. As the recent rash of DNA exonerations has shown, judges and juries too often sentence innocent people to death."