Category: Development

Manufacturing can be a key to Filipinos enjoying a free and healthy life

April 25, 2012September 1, 2014 Ilda 42 Comments

Former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan defined a developed country as: “… one that allows all its citizens to enjoy a free and healthy life in a safe environment”. In theory, his statement is simple enough to understand but quite complicated to put into practice. Annan wasn’t specific about which country or…

Development, Economy, Government, Lifestyle

Repatriation of workers should match a repatriation of jobs

April 23, 2012 benign0 3 Comments

The lessons learnt from outsourcing was long in coming. “Cheap” manufacturing meant taking “cost” advantage of foreign exchange and purchasing power disparities between rich nations and poor ones. And the low costs that were outcomes of these arrangements were bandied as “efficiency gains” in the home market despite no real operating efficiencies being actually realised…

Development, Economy, Money Talks

A sense of nationalism: The Philippines has no such thing

April 23, 2012December 30, 2015 benign0 72 Comments

The Philippines is a country by colonial edict — much like the way the old Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were, as well as many African nations. They are meaningless hollow pin-up states cobbled together for the sheer pleasure, vanity, and mercantile ambitions of their former imperial architects. In the case of the Philippines, even the name…

Civics, Culture, Development, Society

The Philippines: a country governed by people who reflect the society that elected them

April 19, 2012October 12, 2013 benign0 44 Comments

Does the solution to the multitude of ills that plague the Philippines reside in politics? Is it really the quality of government that is behind the chronic failure that is the Philippine nation? Think again. [Photo courtesy Today in History.] Perhaps there was a time when there were lots of scapegoats that Filipinos can count…

Culture, Development, Government, Politics

The flaccid tantrum of the League of Filipino Students against the US Embassy in Manila

April 17, 2012April 30, 2014 benign0 38 Comments

What did League of Filipino Students (LFS) “activists” hope to accomplish by burning the American flag and defacing the United States embassy facade today (the 16th April)? Did they actually think that they could send whatever noble “message” they imagine their quaint movement to possess to the powers-that-be of what is still the planet’s mightiest…

Culture, Development, Government, Society

PNoy government approved the uprooting of pine trees in Baguio City

April 14, 2012February 1, 2014 Ilda 76 Comments

So I heard there was a 125-strong flash mob assembled at six locations to “occupy” SM Megamall last week. There could be more organized protests to come in the following days until the whole issue fizzles out and goes back into the Filipino people’s unconsciousness. I noticed that not only is rallying in vogue in…

Development, Environment, Government, Politics

Megamall flash mobs vs SM Baguio: still missing the point

April 14, 2012 benign0 13 Comments

There is something about the hoo-ha around pine trees being uprooted from SM property in Baguio City that kinda just bores me. Last I heard there were some “flash mobs” organised by some “activists” in one or the other SM mall in Metro Manila to protest this latest atrocity. Perhaps these “cause-oriented” groups derived some…

Development, Environment, Lifestyle, Society

The Philippines increasingly finds itself in situations that require military responses

April 12, 2012June 28, 2013 benign0 27 Comments

The Philippines is increasingly finding itself in the middle of military flash points across the Far East. Over at the West Philippine Sea, the country’s biggest warship, the BRP Gregorio del Pilar is engaged in a standoff with two Chinese surveillance vessels standing in the way of the arrest of Chinese fishermen caught allegedly poaching…

Development, Government, Politics