Category: Development

The Philippines was a crisis waiting to happen even before COVID-19 struck

April 7, 2021April 7, 2021 Ilda 12 Comments

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed humankind’s long-ignored exposure to the risk of virulent diseases running wild and severely impacting the world order. It all but levelled the playing field. People from both rich and poor countries were not spared from the disease’s harmful, and in a lot of cases, deadly effects on the human body….

Development, Society

Philippines, the sick man of Asia “again”? No. It ALWAYS HAS been sick!

March 18, 2021 benign0 26 Comments

Certain “thought leaders” are issuing shrill commentary on the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdowns aimed to mitigate its effects. The fact is, most if not all countries are suffering from economic crises in varying degrees thanks to the brittle world order of intricately interdependent and interlinked economies created by “globalisation”….

Culture, Development, Economy

German Engineering, Japanese Precision and Filipino Pride

March 14, 2021 zaxx 70 Comments

Some racially-oriented collocations you may have stumbled across would include German engineering and Japanese precision. It gets amusing though when you see those words lined up with our very own Filipino Pride. Are you ready for a deep dive into the cultural DNA behind these either tech-generating or -consuming nations? Let’s go for a quick…

Culture, Development

Vietnam’s VinFast zooms past Philippine home-grown car brands

September 19, 2020 zaxx 9 Comments

Like my recent GRP piece on Charice’s “Self-destruct Mode” which got as far as the Tonight with Boy Abunda show, this article is another lamentation. This time it’s over the Pinoy struggle to get into the automotive industry game, with that sad feeling of being left behind. If you’ve heard of Vin Diesel of the…

Business, Development, Technology

Marcos Day represents the Filipino people’s moving on from a manufactured past

September 6, 2020September 6, 2020 benign0 15 Comments

When a small minority of “activists” continue to encourage Filipinos to latch on to the past and sustain a pathological anxiety about the future, you know there is something wrong. Even more wrong is when these shills conspire with Big Corporate Media to propagate their sick “cause”. Today’s Inquirer editorial, for example, cites, interestingly enough,…

Culture, Development, Politics

The Philippines is reverting back to an agrarian economy thanks to COVID-19

August 11, 2020 benign0 6 Comments

Nothing necessarily bad about agrarian societies though these get their bad rep from their association with the Third World and “underdevelopment”. Some “economists” would measure “modernisation” in terms of the proportion of the workforce employed in agriculture. As the thinking goes, a progressive shift in the workforce from farming to manufacturing and services and, therefore,…

Business, Development, Economy

The COVID-19 pandemic laid the foundation for modern public transport in the Philippines

May 20, 2020May 20, 2020 benign0 4 Comments

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a golden opportunity for tree-huggers and social justice warriors to walk their talk. A good proportion of Metro Manila residents who could afford cars and use them for their daily commutes to and from work under the old normal can work from home. The pandemic and the lockdown that aimed to…

Business, Development, Lifestyle

#ABSCBN taught Filipinos all the WRONG values

May 9, 2020May 9, 2020 benign0 28 Comments

The way Opposition partisans, specially those among them loyal to the Aquino-Cojuangco feudal clan (a.k.a. the Yellowtards) screech about the shutdown of ABS-CBN’s radio-based broadcasting operations, you’d think an institution essential to Filipino life had met its demise. Much of the brouhaha is centred around the testimonials of ABS-CBN talents themselves such as Pinoy Big…

Culture, Development