We beg to differ.
[The following is an article by Star columnist Don Pedero published in The Philippine Star 29 October 2000 and also featured in Get Real Philippines on the same year.] * * * Last July 23, I wrote about Nasty (short for Anastacio), a balikbayan from Los Angeles, who, while vacationing in Manila, had nothing to…
Read More “The #Philippines is a nation of starstruck ignoramuses” »
Some of us Get Real Post writers are often criticised about the way we generalise Filipinos. Indeed, to be fair, there are hundreds of articles here that explore from every angle and at every level of depth, the country’s renowned collective criminality, its petty anti-intellectual political discourse, the routine mediocrity of Filipinos’ undertakings, and the…
Read More “Law-abiding Filipinos are getting sick of law-breaking Filipinos” »
‘C’ is for “cyber”. Is World War C starting? It could be. A possible cyber-attack against North Korea may be in progress but the nature of the attack and who might be behind it remain shrouded in mystery at the moment. Various network infrastructure monitors have detected intermittent Internet access outages in North Korea over…
Read More “Cyber-attack on Sony Pictures changes the Internet business landscape” »
Down in Australia’s premiere banking district at the heart of Sydney last Monday, Man Haron Monis, a self-styled Islamic cleric took staff and customers of a Lindt cafe in Martin Place hostage and forced them to raise a black flag bearing an Arabic inscription in white that says “There is no god but Allah; Muhammad…
At first, I really didn’t understand what the big “shock” over the 5-star-hotel-like trappings laid out for “special” inmates in the Philippines’ main prison facility, the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City, Metro Manila was all about. Stories about the top-notch perks enjoyed by the country’s prison royalty have been the stuff of legend for…
Read More “5-star perks for VIP inmates bared in Philippine prison but top jail exec excused!” »
When I woke up this morning, I turned on the news and found out three people died at about 2 a.m. in a Martin Place cafe at the heart of Sydney’s Central Business District. Around 2 a.m. local time (1500 GMT on Monday), at least six people believed to have been held captive managed to…
Read More “3 dead at conclusion of Martin Place Siege in Sydney” »
A 525-page unclassified portion of a 6,000-page report compiled by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s Detention and Interrogation Program using enhanced interrogation techniques (a euphemism for torture) on detainees following the September 11 attacks in 2001 was released on December 9, 2014, after a presentation…
Read More “United States Senate report on CIA torture shocks the world!” »
Super Typhoon Hagupit (locally code-named “Ruby”) has come and gone, and many lessons have been learned. But the most important insight following this experience is quite tragic: that the thousands upon thousands of lives lost in previous years to typhoons were all preventable. The death toll in the aftermath of Hagupit’s visit to the most…