By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star They’re vexed, and justly they protest. After President Aquino warned of a clash between the executive and the judiciary— vehemently defending his Disbursement Acceleration Program and assailing the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling declaring it unconstitutional — court employees publicly protested to defend judicial independence.…
Category: Commentary
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: no more!
KALIBUTAN By CLEMENTE BAUTISTA Bulatlat.com It was the 69th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings last August 6 and 9, respectively. Decades hence, the world continues to be a dangerous place to live in amidst wars and conflicts. In the Asia-Pacific region, the challenge to the military dominance of the United States by…
Banks rule 2
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat perspective Last week, this writer wrote about the implications of the law signed by President Aquino liberalizing the banking sector. The article dealt with how multinational banks would be able to control local business activity and the economy as a whole once they begin dominating the banking and finance sector. Actually,…
What Aquino didn’t say …said it all
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld Among the supposed accomplishments he crowed about were the decline in the crime rate and the improved peace and order situation — claims that are at least as outlandish as the allegation that economic growth and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) have benefitted the poor. On the…
Israel, US complicit in spurring Gaza war
By Satur C. Ocampo At Ground Level | The Philippine Star Now on its 26th day, the Israeli war against the Hamas militants in Gaza — the third since Hamas won the 2006 elections in that densely-populated strip of Palestinian territory along the Mediterranean Sea coast — has gravely affected the civilian population, pushing them…
SONA: The (sorry) State of NoyNoy’s Administration
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld The President delivers his State of the Nation address (SONA) today besieged from all sides. Benigno S. Aquino III (BSA) is facing the worst political crisis in his career — and it appears, from the way he is scrambling to do damage control, he didn’t even see it coming.…
Banks rule
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat perspective A week before his 5th State of the Nation Address, Pres. Benigno Aquino III signed into law Republic Act (RA) 10641 or “An Act Allowing the Full Entry of Foreign Banks in the Philippines.” This superseded RA 7721, “An Act Liberalizing the Entry and Scope of Operations of Foreign Banks…
The Sona speeches of Macapagal and Marcos that will take you back to the future
QUESTION EVERYTHING Mong Palatino Bulatlat.com The annual state of the nation address is a must read for all citizens who are eager to know the president’s self-rated accomplishment report and priority programs. It is also relevant for what it fails to mention or what the president refuses to acknowledge. It is both a historical document…
Vivos Voco*: Necropolitics and Liberalism’s Rhetoric of Redemption
BLOOD RUSH By SARAH RAYMUNDO Bulatlat.com Where autocrats rule, they call on the living. How do contemporary forms of subjugation operate? For over two decades, the (Focauldian) critique of biopolitics has gained currency in explaining modern forms of subjugation. Biopolitics involves the control of an entire population through subjection of bodies under disciplinary apparatuses in…
The point of no return for Mr. ‘Straight Path’
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo Streetwise | BusinessWorld President Benigno S. Aquino III’s bullheaded and combative speech televised nationwide last Monday has turned the tide against Malacaang in its defense of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). It revealed Mr. Aquino’s dark side. Rather than be introspective, if not a bit humbled, by the majority Supreme Court decision,…
Bad leadership leads to ruin, take it from Mabini
By LUIS V. TEODORO Vantage Point | BusinessWorld The peasant-born Apolinario Mabini, whose 150th birth anniversary passed last Wednesday with few being even aware of it, was one of the two greatest intellectuals produced by the reform and revolutionary periods in Philippine history. Mabini, who by dint of hard work became a lawyer by the…