We beg to differ.
On the occasion of “Fathers’ day”, while some dads are going to be receiving gifts or having dinners arranged for them, I opted to write my child an open letter that I hope she will read in the future. Here goes… Dear child, It is 2021. It has been quite a number of years since…
If you look at a map of the pre-Spanish “Philippines,” you would see that sultanates were the norm. The archipelago was heavily influenced by Islam which came by way of Indonesia and Malaysia. It was the Spaniards who introduced Christianity. One could argue that if the archipelago wasn’t colonized it would be composed today of…
Richard Javad Heydarian has a fondness for historical context in relation to present-day situations. In his Inquirer piece “Why do we love dictators?” he laments how, “across the postcolonial world, where the pandemic has been most devastating, it seems many people can’t still shake off their collective fascination with despots, even the most tragically disastrous…
Read More “35 years of democracy has not freed Filipinos from entrenched oligarchic feudal rule” »
It’s June already next week. The first half of the year went by like a snap of the fingers. The last half will be a race to December and before you know it, 2021 is over and marks out first full year in the pandemic. Meanwhile, an eminent sociologist appears to be having an existential…
Read More “A crisis of existentialism in a time of COVID-19 pandemic” »
So now journalists have to get their stories from Facebook posts. In her Inquirer report “Control of West PH Sea oil seen in takeover of Malampaya project”, Frances Mangosing uses a statement from a certain “security expert” named Jay Batongbacal as reference to highlight how a takeover of the Malampaya gas project by Dennis Uy’s…
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck the Philippines, “bayanihan” has been a mainstay of Filipino culture, especially in the provinces. As someone who spent my youth in the province, I am not surprised whenever the friendly neighbors come over to our place to offer some of their food during the fiesta or Noche Buena or…
Excellent read, this piece “A millennial considers the new German Problem after 30 years of peace”. Its author, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and German millennial Ulrike Franke, laments how her demographic “struggle to think in terms of interests, we struggle with the concept of geopolitical power, and we struggle…
A broken piece of ceramic material, specially one found in an archeological site. This is the definition of Sherds, which is also a novel by National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose. The novel is 12 chapters and short at 122 pages. It is really more a novelette. It has been a long time since…