We beg to differ.
It is the all-too-familiar case of of the same results brought about by doing the same thing again and again. The Year 2011 ended with the usual bang — Filipino style. The Department of Health (DOH) put the casualty figure of the traditional end-of-year orgy of fire and explosives at 739 injured plus one dead…
Read More “The self-inflicted disasters of Philippine New Year celebrations” »
The type of films Filipino filmmakers make reflect the type of people most Filipinos are — people lacking in substance. Just looking at the list of entries for this year’s Manila Film Festival, you can already tell that not a lot of thinking was involved in the process of making them. Even the titles leave…
I read recently that we have another Filipino saint queued for canonisation by the Roman Catholic officialdom in the Vatican. Blessed Pedro Calungsod is a 17th Century Visayan martyr whose bid to be the second Filipino saint is “now a certainty” by virtue of a papal decree made last week according to an Inquirer.net report….
Read More “Pedro Calungsod – yet another Filipino saint Filipinos can look to for miracles” »
Philippine President Benigno Simeon Aquino wants to end 2011 right — or at least his handlers do. Just a few days before the end of the year, Malacañang’s official survey firm, Social Weather Stations (SWS), which is owned and operated by friends and family members of PNoy, concluded the year with another “very good” rating…
Read More “President Noynoy Aquino: Is he the new Filipino god?” »
A bill is currently being debated in the United States House of Representatives that seeks to implement measures that will enable the US Government to control Americans’ access to “foreign” Web sites. The bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has been criticised by big-name Internet business including the likes of Google, Twitter, and…
Read More “US Stop Online Piracy Act pits Silicon Valley vs mainstream media” »
A lot of people who have followed the investigation, apprehension, and building of a case against accused mass-murderer former Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr had made that topic the epicentre of everything about the Philippines that has to do with impunity. Ampatuan is accused of masterminding the massacre of 57 people in Maguindanao province,…
Read More “Template disasters, the backhoe and why Andal Ampatuan is like Typhoon Sendong” »
A spin-doctor is a person who publicizes favorable interpretations of the words and actions of a public figure, specially a politician. When another person has to speak on behalf of a public servant, it may be because the public servant is having a hard time responding to critics, which can also mean that whatever people…
Read More “PNoy wouldn’t need spin doctors if he took his job seriously” »
The Philippines has now become renowned for template disasters. These are disasters that are caused by systemic issues that are profoundly inherent to the country. They are templates and therefore, by design, are highly repeatable. They happen again and again. Here’s the template for the sort of tragedy unfolding in northern Mindanao today… Heavy rains…