We beg to differ.
The imbroglio Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte suddenly finds herself in after she punched court sheriff Abe Andres on the face in front of TV cameras is becoming complicated. It is complicated by her family’s uncoordinated public relations approach as evident in the belligerent stance her father, now acting Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, exhibited when he…
Recently the Japanese pop group AKB48, an “idol” theatre group composed of young girls, created a sensation after a computer-generated “composite” character “joined” the group to appear in a candy commercial. The character, named Aimi Eguchi, became a hit with AKB48 fans who at the time did not know she only existed in a computer….
Read More “AKB48: Computer-generated pop stars and next-gen pop entertainment” »
The alleged assault against court sheriff Abe Andres by Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte is now turning into a media circus. But one good thing that came out of this recent dragging of the premier city of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao into the limelight is the renewed interest in the spotty human rights…
Read More “Davao Death Squads – do they deliver results or just more problems?” »
While much Media airtime is given to the abuse of domestic workers employed in foreign countries, not much interest seems to go the way of domestic workers employed by households in the Philippines. Faded star of the 1980s Maricel Soriano provides the most recent of cases that highlight the plight of domestic workers employed by…
Read More “Maricel Soriano’s alleged abuse of domestic workers reflects Filipino society” »
But of course. Perhaps there is some merit in what a “human rights regional official” and the “officers of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines” assert in siding with Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte on the grounds that taking “the humanitarian point of view” is called for in this situation. This situation, relates to Duterte’s…
What exactly needs to be “clarified” between the governments of Saudi Arabia and the Philippines in the aftermath of a shutdown on any further granting of work permits to Filipino domestic workers? The announcement was reportedly made after a failure “to agree on hiring conditions imposed” by the Philippines. The stakes, as far as Filipinos…
Read More “Saudi Arabia shuts its doors to Filipino domestics” »
So we want more foreign investment, do we? Stop to think. How much of it have we already received? Look around and take stock of what exactly it is about “the Philippines” that is of any consequence to anyone that is indigenous in origin. Indeed, the Philippines is one big foreign investment. Much if not…
Read More “The Philippines is one big SQUANDERED foreign investment” »
The grand-daddy of our culture-as-root-cause thesis, the late great Teddy Benigno, in his classic 2002 Star article Why investors avoid us: The trust factor highlighted what, at the time, was a very conservative forecast regarding China’s fortunes made in a Nomura Research Institute (NRI) study that foresaw a China that could “burgeon into the world’s…
Read More “Without operational excellence, capital is squandered” »