Category: Development

Dismantling of the EDSA busway would have been an astounding injustice

February 9, 2025 benign0 9 Comments

It is laughable how, at a time when the decades-long insanity of car-centric design of urban spaces is finally losing steam across much of the sane world, some moron chucked another quintessentially-Filipino brainwave to have the EDSA bus lane removed. The lane on the famously clogged highway blocked for exclusive use by public buses was…

Development, Government

Is Rappler a beneficiary of USAID?

February 7, 2025 benign0 4 Comments

One would think so. Over just the last seven days, Rappler and its hipster “journalists” seem to be all-hands-on-deck kicking up a media frenzy over the gutting of a renowned global ATM machine; the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Philippines, after all, is dependent on an umbilical cord that delivers cash from…

Development

Do Filipino brains lack an engineering chip?

January 4, 2025 benign0 16 Comments

Everywhere you look — physically or conceptually — in the Philippines and you find systems and solutions that cannot scale. The most famous of these is the jeepney. The jeepney “system” (if you can even call it a system) is a public transport solution that requires more labour input with every unit of capacity expansion….

Culture, Development

Flooding in Manila following Typhoon Gaemi: Déjà vu all over again!

July 24, 2024 benign0 6 Comments

Journalists “reporting” on the devastation wrought by the passing of Typhoon Gaemi (along with southwest monsoon rains) may as well be copy-and-paste jobs. After all, there is a trove of past news reports on typhoons (and even minor weather disturbances) hitting the Philippines and causing disproportionate devastation. Indeed, what stands out is the embarrassing sameness…

Development, Environment

US propaganda continues to be parroted by Rappler “thought leaders”

July 21, 2024July 21, 2024 Ramon Ortoll 11 Comments

It’s important to the Americans that the Duterte brand in Philippine politics be destroyed since it advocates for an independent foreign policy. Witness how we have become the outlier in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) community. Among the original founding members, we are only ahead of Cambodia and Laos while Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia,…

Development, Politics

An entire generation of young Filipinos are growing up to be liabilities

June 29, 2024 benign0 7 Comments

Certain “activists” take exception to a country’s people being referred to as “capital” to “invest in” in order to “get returns from”. This is in reference to the recently-published World Bank Philippines Human Capital Review report where some pretty damning facts about the collective ability of the Filipino people to compete in a rapidly-evolving world…

Development, Education

50% of Filipinos stunted at childhood in the 1980s could be why the Philippines is so intellectually-bankrupt today!

June 25, 2024 benign0 3 Comments

For many of the world’s richest — or even emerging — economies, the biggest threat to continued prosperity is a rapidly aging and, in the worst cases, declining populations. The effect of wealth and better education on fertility has long been known. As people get better-educated, enjoy a greater variety of lifestyle options, and gain…

Development, Economy, Education

The Philippines needs to reevaluate its blind allegiance to the West

June 22, 2024 benign0 3 Comments

Perhaps it is time for the Philippines — and the rest of the “free world” — to reevaluate their regard for Western European civilisation’s presumed leadership in all that is supposedly “good”. Recent events have seen a growing rot within the core of these former crusaders. The “tolerance” towards deviant ideas that they packaged as…

Development, Society