We beg to differ.
A lot of controversy continues to hound the recent acquisition of weapons for the Philippine military, such as the FA-50 Golden Eagle trainer-light fighters for the Philippine Air Force, Hamilton-Class cutters, Tarlac-class landing platform dock and others for national defense. Of course, some call this a positive legacy of then-president BS Aquino III. If Marcos…
A girl in the US who was assisting her mother cook the Thanksgiving turkey was quite puzzled when she noticed her mother slice off the two ends of the turkey before placing it in the oven. Wondering why such choice portions had to be removed seemingly unnecessarily, she asked her mother the reason. The mother…
Read More “Customs and Traditions Filipinos Should Start to Stop” »
One of the retorts against us GRP bloggers is, “why don’t you run for office?” This is of course based on the assumption that you can only reform Philippine society through the government, and you have to be a part of the system to make it work. It has the sense of, “if you can’t…
In 2002, Time magazine published an article calling Rodrigo Duterte “The Punisher”(1). He gained popularity with the people of Davao, a huge city in Mindanao at the time beleaguered by two groups of insurgents, diehard communists and Muslim radicals, due to his “zero tolerance” for criminality and corruption. He was very successful in cleaning up…
It’s amazing how the dysfunctional mindset of Filipinos permeates the entire society, and that it’s not just the monopoly of the poor and uneducated. You will encounter a supposedly professional licensed civil engineer making excuses for being late in his building project because they have a barrio fiesta, or a supposedly U.P. graduate squandering a…
Read More “Should Proper Parenting, Spending, and Scheduling Be Taught in Philippine Schools?” »
Recently, Martial Law became the topic because of my alma mater, Ateneo, coming out with a statement claiming that vice-presidentiable Bongbong Marcos is revising history. My question is, what historical revisionism is being done? All Marcos said in effect is, let people decide for themselves what they want to believe. There’s no revisionism in that….
Read More “Martial Law Fixation Distracts us from the Real Issues” »
My fellow writers here in GRP have explained that someone iron-handed like Rody Duterte has become popular for the wrong reasons (or maybe the right reasons, but in the wrong way). Duterte is seen as a figure like Ferdinand Marcos, who is thought to have enforced order through harshness in Martial Law. There are people…
After my post on the gun culture of the United States, I realized I was missing one key factoid to my argument: the “culture of honor” in the American South. In short, this culture, mostly attributed to the Southern (or Confederate) culture of the U.S. and related to the pro-gun culture, dictates that people should…