QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Outsourcing may be a popular business innovation but when applied to politics it becomes an atrocious aberration. Political participation is reduced into voting since we expect mainstream parties to oversee and dominate the bureaucratic political processes. Meanwhile, more and more people are shunning political association as they opt for the…
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com At the risk of oversimplifying the definition of revolution, I dare say it involves three dynamics: critique and destruction of the existing social order, building a new world, and the continuous reinvention of the self. Of the three, the most familiar is the first – activists denouncing the bankrupt society…
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Is the military already acceding that the communist New People’s Army is the modern-day Katipunan? Because why would an army general tag Benito Tiamzon as NPA supremo when the government is adamantly insisting that the rebel group is neither revolutionary nor belligerent. In Philippine history, the only other notable supremo…
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com For the longest time the military has bombarded the public with the propaganda that it is Joma Sison who is leading and controlling the Philippine revolution from his base in Western Europe. This reasoning was accepted without question by many anti-Left intellectuals and they used it to malign natdem activists…
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Public opinion has many uses but it should neither stand for truth nor should it be equated with political standpoint. Sometimes it is overrated despite its ephemerality. Consider the examples below: – Senator Miriam Santiago is the darling of the press and social media superstar who entertains the public with…
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com The government is always claiming that the number of poor is decreasing but it cannot deny the phenomenal growth of informal settlers across the country, especially in Metro Manila, in the past decade. According to a study cited by the government-funded Philippine Institute for Development Studies, about 5 percent of…
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Waray, which refers to both the lingua franca and the people of Samar and Leyte, literally means nothing. It is interesting and also quite strange that this term is also used to signify nothingness. But can there be something out of nothing? Can nothing produce something? Today, the word Waray…
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Despite its high Gross Domestic Product in recent years, the Philippines has remained a backward nation. Poverty numbers didn’t change although wealth disparity has worsened especially between the rural and the urban. It’s clear that the GDP is an inaccurate and inadequate measure of the real state of the economy.…
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Last part of four series First part | 13 natural and man-made disasters of 2013 Second part | ‘We Should Legalize Everything’ and Other Shocking Sound Bites of 2013 Third part | ‘Wrecking Ball’ and other objects that made news in 2013 Despite the calamities that brought unprecedented devastation in…
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Second of four-part series First part | 13 natural and man-made disasters of 2013 Third part | Wrecking Ball and other Objects that Made News in 2013 2013 was a calamitous year for the Philippines – earthquakes, strong typhoons, bus crashes, corruption scandals. The reactions of various newsmakers to these…
QUESTION EVERYTHING? Mong Palatino? Bulatlat.com First of four-part series Second part | ‘We Should Legalize Everything’ and Other Shocking Sound Bites of 2013 Third part | Wrecking Ball and other Objects that Made News in 2013 1. Taiwan-Philippines diplomatic row. The crisis was triggered by the tragic killing of a 65-year-old Taiwanese fisherman by members…