By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld It is no secret that President Noynoy Aquino and the Liberal Party are the prime movers in the campaign to oust Chief Justice Corona from the Suprem Court either through his “voluntary” resignation ala former Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez or the more difficult route of a Senate impeachment trial. Now…
Category: Opinion
What if Justice Sereno testifies in Corona’s trial?
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star May we ever know if Supreme Court Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno can — or will — testify at the Senate impeachment trial to bolster the prosecution charge that Chief Justice Renato Corona had betrayed public trust by acting with partiality in favor of former…
Masters and servants
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld In 1633, the Inquisition declared Galileo guilty of writing a heretical book in which he supposedly favored the Copernican theory that the Sun rather than the Earth was at the center of the (then known) universe. The Catholic Church eventually admitted that he might have been right,…
Jose ‘Ka Pepe’ Diokno, quintessential nationalist
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Tomorrow marks the 90th birthday of Jose “Ka Pepe” Diokno: nationalist, human rights defender, progressive intellectual, and more. Had he lived as long as his colleague, Lorenzo “Ka Tanny” Tanada who, at 91, stood up from his wheelchair at the gallery to hail the…
US Special Forces want wider global operations
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Last Thursday I received an emailed letter from an Australian who was in Manila last February 4 and read my column piece that day, about the new US defense plan calling for expanded American role and military presence in the Philippines. Minus the compliments,…
EDSA hijacked
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Despite its failure to deliver on its promises, some Filipinos still hail the 1986 EDSA uprising as a model of how peacefully change can be achieved. The shift in Thailand from military rule to democracy in 1992, and the fall from power of Indonesia’s Suharto in 1998,…
Economic interests behind push for greater US military presence in the region
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat.com If US military presence overseas is about ensuring peace and stability, why did it invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and why is it now provoking Iran? If the US is really serious about pushing for human rights and democracy, why is it constricting civil liberties through the Patriot Act and why is…
Colonial and repressive
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld The administration of Benigno Aquino III must review Philippine libel law, decriminalize libel, and compensate a Filipino journalist for the time he was imprisoned for libel. These are the recommendations of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), which has expressed the view that the country’s libel…
Mark Twain on Phil-Am War, 113 years ago
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star February 4 marks the start of the Philippine-American war 113 years ago, instigated by supposedly friendly US troops who fired at Filipino soldiers of the nascent First Philippine Republic. Through superior armaments, brutal means and devious tactics, the US prevailed and thereafter established direct…
The strenuous joys of grandparenting
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Yesterday the younger of our two grandsons turned three. Weeks before he had been talking about his approaching birthday, excitement gleaming in his big expressive eyes. But more than that, he had been preparing himself to become, in March, the younger kuya to another…
Biting the bullet
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld The US-based, 30-year-old organization Human Rights Watch — the Asia Division of which, incidentally, former New York Times and International Herald Tribune freelance correspondent Carlos Conde is now the Philippine researcher — describes itself as “one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting…