By SONNY AFRICA
The administration is hard-pressed to provide similar glowing accounts of sustainable development on the ground because there are still no such gains to speak of.
Perception Economics: Two years of the Aquino administration
Bulatlat Contributors
Two years under Aquino, abuses go unpunished as president reneges on promise — HRW
In the Philippines, there is still no successful prosecution of security forces for killings, ‘disappearances,’ despite Aquino’s campaign and inauguration promises for accountability.
Conditional Cash Transfers, from beneficiaries’ view
Stories from CCT communities give us a picture that is different from how government describes the positive impact of its anti-poverty program.
US drone strikes setting dangerous global precedent
By ISABELLE DE GRAVE, Inter Press Service Truthout United Nations — U.S. counterterrorism measures are under intense scrutiny from United Nations (U.N.) experts and civil rights groups declaring drone strikes illegal under current frameworks. During the 20th Session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva from Jun. 18 to Jul. 6, these experts declared…
Failure in Rio
by ALEXANDER COCKBURN CounterPunch The predictable word is in from Rio: failure. The conference twenty years on from the huge Earth Summit, Rio 92, has been unable to produce even the pretense of an energetic verbal commitment of the world’s community to “sustainable principles.” The reason? These conferences have always been pretty fraudulent affairs, lofted…
Green economy and the road to Rio
The proposed ‘Road to Rio’ still looks at nature, people and their products as capital that must be used in the most efficient manner for profit accumulation By ROSARIO BELLA GUZMAN IBON Features / Bulatlat.com IBON Features — Hundreds of heads of states are expected to attend the Earth Summit on June 20 to 22,…
Special relations: new pup, same collar
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld President Benigno Aquino III came to power in June 2010 with “special relations” – the Philippines serving as a neocolony of the US – already entrenched 64 years after the “grant” of independence. Before him, every administration had tried to outdo its predecessors in maintaining this unequal and unjust…
US sets another record on defense sales, already
By CAREY L. BIRON, Inter Press Service | Report Truthout June 17, 2012 The United States is set to far surpass previous records for defence sales this year, according to U.S. officials. “Despite the global economic strain, demand for U.S. defence products and services is stronger than ever,” Andrew J. Shapiro, an assistant secretary in…
Cheaper medicines law hasn’t served the poor
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Four years ago last June 6, the Cheaper Medicines Law (Republic Act 9502, the Universally Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicines Act of 2008) passed after contentious debates in the 14th Congress, was signed into law by President Gloria M. Arroyo. R.A. 9502 was intended…
Dunces and dupes
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld With the usual irony was June 12 marked this year in a country hardly aware of its history. Benigno Aquino III spoke at Barasoain Church in Malolos, Bulacan, where the First Philippine Republic was inaugurated on January 23, 1899, less than a year after Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed…
The big lie: special relations
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld It seems ironical that the much-heralded meeting between Philippine President Aquino and US President Obama would take place just a few days before the Philippines marks Independence Day. Here is the president of a poor and backward but supposedly independent country seeking and getting the requisite political pat-on-the-back from…