Category: Commentary
Mulling at the mall
Dam-n!
Minding the problem of monster traffic in Metro Manila
KALIBUTAN By CLEMENTE BAUTISTA Bulatlat.com Stuck for hours on the road from early morning to nearly midnight, Metro Manila commuters had a very frustrating experience September 5, when traffic stood at a standstill from Manila City to Bulacan province. With an hour of thunderstorm with heavy rains just this October 1, we saw yet another…
US has responsibility for Islamic State rise
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Trapped in a vicious circle. That’s how the US government has found itself since George W. Bush started a “war on terror” by invading Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, dragging US allies into a “coalition of the willing” that got mired in…
Student activism…
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld The brouhaha over the alleged “violent” protest on campus by University of the Philippines (UP) student activists against the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) and its principal architect and implementer, Budget Secretary Butch Abad, comes in the wake of the nation’s recollection of the martial law period. Invariably the role…
Why the PNP chief must go
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Reacting to demands that he fire Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Alan Purisima for, among other reasons, the involvement of policemen in robberies, extortion, kidnapping, even murder and other crimes, President Benigno Aquino III declared that “there have always been ‘scalawags’ in the police.” That statement implied…
The failed promises of privatization
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat perspective Privatization, by whatever name – Build-Operate-Transfer or Public-Private Partnerships – was touted to be the solution to the inefficient, monopolistic management by government of public utilities and services. It was supposed to be the opposite of how the dictator Marcos monopolized and profited from basic utilities such as electricity, water,…
US policy veers toward war, nuclear arms upgrade
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Just as the “daang matuwid” promised to us has been turning out to be a potholed, crooked one, it seems that Americans are finding out how much President Barack Obama has veered away from the policies he had set at the beginning of his…
Why this police lineup never happened
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld This Sept. 21 marks the 42nd anniversary of the imposition of martial law by President Ferdinand E. Marcos. It meant the beginning of mailed-fist dictatorial rule that brought ruin to the Philippine economy; hocked the future of generations to come to the multinational financial mafia; institutionalized plunder and cronyism…
How the media can help end the debate over martial law
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Forty- two years have passed since Ferdinand Marcos placed the entire country under martial law on Sept. 23, 1972 (he signed Presidential Proclamation 1081 on Sept. 21, implementing it only two days later). But some Filipinos still argue that things were better during the dictatorship, while others…