We beg to differ.
Upholding ‘rule of law’ in the Philippines is a complicated, labour-intensive exercise. Take the tony enclave of Rockwell in Makati City. It’s got expensive zebra-striped pedestrian lanes painted across most of where its nicely-paved streets intersect. These markings give the impression to someone who does not know of the way things are in the Philippines…
President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino will be delivering his fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday, July 22, 2013. It has been three years since majority of Filipino voters elected the son of so-called “heroes” into the highest office in the land. Little did those voters know that after he banished the use…
Sad milestone for a once glorious city and a former citadel of American industrial power. Detroit, Michigan — the city itself and its surrounding metropolitan area home to the United States’ “Big Three” car manufacturers, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler — yesterday filed for bankruptcy following a decades-long decline the sharpest of which was felt…
Looking back at the debate over the monstrous squatting plague that is ravaging the Philippines’ major cities that has raged across social media like a wildfire, it is difficult not to be a nostalgic of a time when squatters where a relatively small problem. Perhaps back in a time when squatter colonies were more an…
On the wayside of an outrage fiesta over Metro Manila’s teeming population of squatters, people seem to have missed a gaily colored solution piñata: public transportation. After people have salved their poverty butthurt and middle-class angst, perhaps it would be a good idea to revisit a column in Manila Standard called “Happy Hour” where it…
Read More “Philippine Public Transportation and Metro Manila’s Squatters” »
One wonders what else Kabataan party-list Rep. Terry Ridon wants to discuss with Bianca Gonzalez in a “dialogue” he is reportedly seeking with the famous model-turned-TV-personality. I suppose the question to Ridon is quite simple: What part of Gonzalez’s tweet that “So many people working hard to save to buy a house on prime land…
Read More “Party-List politicians seek audience with Anti-Squatter postergirl Bianca Gonzalez” »
Just when you think squatters and the waste they dump in Manila’s storm drains have already been discussed to death enough, suddenly another risk posed to health and safety by the proliferation of “informal settlers” all over the Philippines’ premier metropolis has emerged: fire. This was highlighted in a huge blaze that erupted next to…
The tweet of Bianca Gonzalaez @iamsuperbianca seems to be the focus of a lot of Pinoy outrage. Bianca tweeted: “Ang dami nating nagtatrabaho para makaipon para sa prime lot at bahay plus buwis pa. Bakit nga ba bine-baby ang mga informal settlers?” (Translation: “So many people working hard to save to buy a house on prime land…