By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld The second address to the nation about the Mamasapano incident by President B.S. Aquino last Friday was more of the same glib BS. To the fallen 44’s relatives, the self-proclaimed “Father of the Nation” said he feels for them just as if he had lost 44 of his “children”.…
Category: Commentary
US hand in SAF tragedy confirmed
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Indeed the Americans did it. They planned, funded, and closely monitored the execution of “Operation Wolverine/Exodus” carried out last Jan. 25 in Mamasapano, Maguindanao by the PNP Special Action Force they had trained and equipped. The objective was to arrest or kill Malaysian Zulkifli…
Bangsamoro after Mamasapano: Don’t muddy the issues of war and peace
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Some broadcast news reports were calling it “a massacre” hardly after the last shots had been fired. Not to be outdone, their colleagues in print said it was “a slaughter.” In the days that followed, the Philippine news media were engaged in a race for scoops, in…
Pissed Dove 2
Mamasapano 2: The Aquino presidency and the brewing storm
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat perspective What happened on February 6, 2015 was unprecedented. This is the first time that a president has made a nationwide address on the same issue twice. (Without saying anything substantial – but that is another matter). This shows that President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III is still reeling from the aftershock…
Epic fail in leadership, intelligence
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld It was a rout — massacre. On the early morning of Jan. 25, 44 out of close to 400 elite, US-trained Special Action Force (SAF) policemen were killed in a 12-hour firefight in a remote barrio in Mamasapano, Maguindanao — a known rebel stronghold of the Moro Islamic Liberation…
Deadlines
Government can’t hide poverty, but not for lack of trying
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld If, as Jordan Belfort (the real life anti-hero of the Martin Scorsese film The Wolf of Wall Street) declares, there is no nobility in poverty, neither is there any justification in hiding it. And we have it from an authoritative source — from no less than Corazon…
American role in the botched SAF operation
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star “Oplan Wolverine.” That’s the name given to the operational plan to arrest or “neutralize” (meaning, kill) Malaysian Zulkifli bir Hir, alias Marwan – for whose capture, dead or alive, the US government had offered a $6-million reward, he being in its list of “most…
The neoliberal bane and the 3Ps (Peace talks, People’s pope, People’s war)
BLOOD RUSH By SARAH RAYMUNDO The liberal tide that once set apart emergent capitalism from feudalism’s obsolescence is now a plague that threatens all living systems. Neoliberalism aims to prolong capitalism’s lease on lives and labor by converting what the latter identifies as last frontiers into its own likeness. And it does this through the…
Lessons from the Mamasapano fiasco
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat perspective The Mamasapano fiasco that killed 44 policemen, who came from its elite unit, has generated so much reaction from the public that it compelled President Aquino to explain how and why this blunder happened – although what he did was to merely blame somebody else. Let us not put the…