QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Rallies are sometimes caricatured as noisy and irrelevant street spectacles. Dismissed as futile ranting of a mob obsessed and afflicted with negativity. They offer only problems not solutions. They are contrasted with other political acts that focus on providing so-called practical alternatives to everyday evils. A responsible protester is someone…
Category: Commentary
The fat thickens: from a scandal to a mess
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat Perspective What started out as a corruption scandal allegedly involving five senators and 23 legislators from the House of Representatives, together with Janet Lim-Napoles, covering the period 2007-2009, has now erupted into a full-blown mess affecting the Aquino government. First came the Commission on Audit report, which revealed irregularities in the…
The Politician Versus the Collective (a critique of the pork barrel system in the Philippines)
It has been a long way since from the culture of the Katipunan to the present pork barrel system in the Philippines, a legacy of colonial US to the country to make its political protégées follow its bidding.
Read also Second Part: Participative democracy: substitute to the pork barrel system
Participative democracy: substitute to the pork barrel system
The collectivism of the Katipunan has been drowned out by the noise and hurly-burly of self-centered modern living and the pursuit of unbridled political ambitions by some, which have wrought havoc among our people.
Bragging Rights: Eight Exceptional(ly Dumb) American achievements of the 21st century
By Tom Engelhardt Tomdispatch.com “But when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gassed to death, and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That’s what makes America different. That’s what makes us exceptional. With humility, but with resolve, let us never lose…
Status of the resistance movement: growing, deepening, succeeding
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers Truthout So much has been accomplished by Occupy and other social justice movements in the past two years that it is incredible the corporate media and their pundits do not report on what is happening around them. Despite the lack of corporate media coverage, the movement is deepening, creating…
The poet is a guerrilla
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld The guerrilla is like a poet Keen to the rustle of leaves The break of twigs The ripples of the river The smell of fire And the ashes of departure. — Jose Maria Sison, 1968 Sari and Kiri Dalena’s ground-breaking film, The Guerilla is a Poet, takes its inspiration…
“The authoritarian gene”
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Filipinos hailed the fall of the Marcos dictatorship 27 years ago, 14 years after the imposition of martial law on Sept. 21, 1972, as marking the end of a historical anomaly. Prior to Presidential Proclamation 1081, had not the Philippines been a democracy, and was it not…
Was Jinggoy Estrada’s much-awaited ‘bombshell’ a dud? Not quite
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat Perspective Sen. Jinggoy Estrada did not confront head on the issue of his involvement in the pork barrel scam, instead, he slammed the “selective justice” of the Aquino administration, mentioned questionable transactions involving the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel funds of some administration allies, revealed how the Aquino…
Clueless in Zamboanga
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld As of this writing (Sept. 19), the President of the Philippines, Benigno Simeon Aquino III, had been five days in Zamboanga, where, according to Palace sources, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces he was “directing military operations” against the minute force of the Moro National Liberation Front…
41 years after
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Today marks the 41st year when then President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law and imposed a dictatorship to perpetuate himself in power. In 1986 a peaceful popular uprising ended his despotic rule. Marcos’ 14-year dictatorship ruthlessly repressed or tried to repress all those…