The fighting in Sulu has so far claimed 70 casualties among the combatants, and displaced some 2,000 residents of the municipalities affected. There are only two ways the fighting can go, given the tenacity of the MNLF guerillas and the determination of the AFP leadership to crush them. Either it escalates into another major conflict, [...]
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Volatile Sulu
Posted in General on February 15, 2005 | Leave a Comment »
The Undiscovered Country
Posted in General on December 3, 2004 | 1 Comment »
The Undiscovered Country Stories by Luis V. Teodoro Year Published: 2004 Specifications: 6×9; PB/BP No. of Pages: 148pp ISBN: 971-542-405-8 Price: PhP 300.00 Writing in the sixties, “Luis Teodoro … stood apart from his generation in going back to the tradition represented by journalist-artists of the early twentieth century,” not to mention Rizal and the [...]
Not a bang, but a whimper
Posted in General on November 2, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
Speaking for the last time as Armed Forces Chief of Staff last October 29, Narciso Abaya had critical words for the media, the politicians and the civilian government. He was correct on all counts–but incorrect in making the AFP seem like the hapless victim of both in the making of the scandals that have rocked [...]
A coup of their own
Posted in General on October 30, 2004 | 1 Comment »
Add the possibility of a coup to the two most popular arguments currently being advanced by generals, former generals, certain congressmen, and the usual media hacks to stop the House hearings on military corruption. The first argument, repeated so often its imbecility is beginning to sound like words of wisdom to the unthinking, is that [...]
Poisoned fruit
Posted in General on October 26, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
Because Francisco Tatad fancies himself a writer–as he is indeed fancied by others who think that all anyone needs to be one is the capacity to put words on paper–one must assume that he chooses his metaphors carefully. If Tatad was quoted accurately last week, we may thus assume that his description of the Arroyo [...]
The last to know
Posted in General on October 23, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
The corruption in and of the Arroyo government is by now fairly well-established, and so is its ineptness. But it is also rapidly outranking the Estrada administration in stupidity. The most recent signs of that distinction were supposed to have been exercises in a cunning attempt to defuse the developing crisis of confidence in her [...]
Prescription for regime change
Posted in General on October 19, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
Founded in 1973 with an initial funding of over a million dollars from some of the most extreme right-wingers in US politics (among its first funders was beer brewer Joseph Coors, who has been described as “anti-labor, racist and homophobic”), the Heritage Foundation is probably the most influential policy research organization in the world. The [...]
Blaming U.P.
Posted in General on October 18, 2004 | 3 Comments »
The University of the Philippines is in the middle of choosing its next president. If you’re the kind of newspaper reader who reads everything from the op-ed pages to the lifestyles sections, you might have noticed those “column feeds” and “personality sketches” extolling one of the women candidates that have suddenly materialized in the pages [...]
Missing in MTPDP obectives: “compliant media”
Posted in General on October 18, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
Amending the Constitution to allow foreign ownership of the mass media has been proposed since the Fidel V. Ramos administration. It was again suggested during the Estrada presidency, when it went into the back burner because of the furor created by the Estrada impeachment trial, EDSA 2, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s assumption of the presidency. It [...]
World-class all the way
Posted in General on October 9, 2004 | Leave a Comment »
In the aftermath of the Oakwood mutiny last year, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Narciso Abaya admitted that there was indeed corruption in the military. While military corruption is no longer news, and the admission did not surprise anyone, General Abaya did say as well that the corruption was “not only at the highest levels [...]
