Mong Palatino is a blogger, activist, and former legislator. He can be reached via his email, mongpalatino@gmail.com.
Mong Palatino is a blogger, activist, and former legislator. He can be reached via his email, mongpalatino@gmail.com.
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com I’m an ex-con or ex-congressman. I was a two-termer (not two-timer) who represented the country’s first elected youth party. I was the third poorest solon and believe it or not I left the institution without getting...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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....
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com If there is a bigger calamity than super typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), it must be the Philippine government which has been notoriously inept in the wake of the devastation wrought by the storm in the Visayas. But aside...
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com 1. Did the Left support Gloria Arroyo in 2001 and 2004? The Left was part of Edsa Dos uprising and support for Arroyo was incidental since she was at that time the Vice President who stood to benefit from Estrada’s...
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com If journalism is history in a hurry, can we describe social media as the hurrying of history? Because of mobile Internet, events are ‘instantiated’ in our timelines and webpages. We constantly access the Internet not...
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com South Korea’s Tower Infinity will feature the world’s third highest observation deck. But the building’s main attraction cannot be seen, literally. Using an LED façade with optical cameras, the building will...
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...
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com I believe in America. This is the famous opening line of the Hollywood film The Godfather. Incidentally, I share the same sentiment and I’d like to believe that most of my activist friends have a similar high regard...
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com When Third Word dictators are ousted, many people celebrate the emergence of a democratic space in society. After years of repression, there is suddenly a micro explosion of multiple freedoms in the streets, in...
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com Aside from being sexual and social animals, we are also ‘helping’ beings. Giving aid to a neighbor in need is considered an ethical duty. Volunteering in charity houses, community shelters, and churches once in a while...
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