The wanton killings by the police and their surrogate assassins that are the main, in fact the only, component of the brutal and misdirected “war” on drugs that’s targeting the poor while the drug lords are treated with kid gloves and evade prosecution began almost as soon as Rodrigo Duterte assumed the Presidency last year.…
Category: Vantage Point
Assault on the future
Does anyone still believe that every government bureaucrat, or, for that matter, everyone in the private sector, or your average gossip-prone neighbor, can keep a secret — that they can keep in confidence information such as who has tested positive or has simply been tested for illegal drug use? Or that some, among them the…
What’s Left in the Cabinet
Without any proof and by merely attributing it to his sources in the military establishment, Senator Antonio Trillanes IV has been saying that the presence of left-wing personalities in the Duterte administration has enabled “hundreds of CPP-NPA (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army) cadres” to be employed in the Department of Social Welfare and…
Tolling the bells
President Rodrigo Duterte is absolutely right. The Balangiga bells, seized by United States Army soldiers from the Catholic church of Balangiga town, Samar in 1902, “are part of our national heritage,” and should be returned to the Philippines. Mr. Duterte made the demand in the presence of the US Ambassador to the Philippines during his…
Imminent danger
Never mind the 2017 Duterte State of the Nation Address, which was replete with profanities, self-serving claims of current and future progress on various fronts, among them the regime’s brutal and failing war on drugs, and justifications for the use of unaccountable State violence. Take his so-called assurance that he won’t place the entire country…
Time of reckoning
“There is a time of reckoning” for everyone, said President Rodrigo Duterte’s chief legal counsel, Salvador Panelo. “Sooner or later,” he intoned, “the law will catch up on (sic) those who use power or wealth to shield themselves from the majesty of the law.” Panelo followed that up with the usual Latin phrases and legalese…
The military in command
Since the collapse of the Marcos terror regime in 1986, only two post-EDSA presidents have dared invoke the martial law provisions of the 1987 Constitution and to awaken justifiable fears of a return to the abuses and violence of fascist rule. The first president to do so was Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo; the second is Rodrigo Roa…
The quick-fix presidency
The latest rants from the perplexing region of Duterte Land have understandably provoked the same outrage, anger and exasperation as most of their antecedents have been doing during the last 12 months. One of them was an open threat to imprison the critics of the declaration of martial law in Mindanao. Despite claims to the…
On the front lines of a bigger war
The attack was political and primarily directed against the wife, other relatives, lawyers, and supporters of candidate Esmael Magundadatu, who incidentally did win the post in the 2010 elections. But the journalists were killed as well because the perpetrators knew that for even one them to survive would mean exposure in the media. The trial…
Worse than the disease
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) and the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) have launched an online means of identifying and guarding against the spread of fake news. They’re using Fakeblok, the Google Chrome plug-in which flags fake news on Facebook. This enterprise is in addition to efforts by some…
Winning hearts and minds
Some critics of United States global policy say that the US not only supports the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS); it also created it (see, for example, www.global research.ca). Although that claim was hooted down as part of his disinformation campaign, Donald Trump said the same thing during the US presidential elections last…