Woe is me
By Manuel Buencamino
“A political organization is a transferable commodity.
You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by
packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of
thieves is sure to find useful.”—John Jay Chapman
My palace mole came through again. He sold me another page
purloined from the queen’s diary.
Dear Diary:
I’m off to New York City once again. My press secretary
said, “President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has decided to
proceed with her planned visit to New York to attend the
high-level debate of the 63rd United Nations General
Assembly [UNGA] and for …

Worrisome omens
By Ellen Tordesillas
Let’s help Lorelei Fajardo, deputy presidential spokes-person, understand where the fear that Gloria Arroyo will ferociously hold on to power even after June 30, 2010 is coming from.
Fajardo said, “The President intends to vacate her office when her term ends in 2010, and does not know where such fear-mongering is coming from.”Let’s remind Fajardo that on Dec. 30, 2002, Arroyo pledged before the statue of Jose Rizal that she would not run in 2004. Ten months later, on Oct. 5, 2003, she said without blinking an eye, …

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Ronald Galang, from left, Narciso Nicdao and Romero Bonete leave an abandoned farmhouse in Elmvale after their rescue by Filipino embassy officials. The men say they came to Canada because they were promised good jobs but were kept incommunicado, forced to do menial labour for little pay. At least 800 workers are …

US Capitalism Implodes
By Antonio C. Abaya
The decision of the Bush administration to inject $700 billion into the credit and finance sectors of the US economy is a tacit admission that American capitalism, especially under the stewardship of the Republican Party, has imploded and unraveled, probably beyond repair.
The $700 billion bailout is meant to buy bad housing debts and thus prolong the service lives of banks, credit and finance houses and institutional holders of mortgages, the total collapse of which would no doubt lead to a Global Depression that would dwarf …

Landscape
Gemma Cruz Araneta
Zamora’s sacrifice
Those who remember (like Mayor Alfredo S. Lim) will celebrate the birthday of Padre Jacinto Zamora, who with Jose Burgos and Mariano Gomez championed the cause of secular priests during the 19th century. They believed it was a travesty and an injustice for religious priests, (called friars) to hold on to the parishes which most of them were using to wield political power and from where they relished socioeconomic privileges. GOMBURZA , a password of the Katipunan, is how we refer to the heroic triumvirate.
Although Padre Zamora …

Landscape
Gemma Cruz Araneta
Thomasites had a tough time
One wonders if the Thomasites were ever told that they were sent to the Philippines to teach English as part of the “policy of attraction” of the USA government. The Philippine-American War began a year before they arrived and neither Admiral Dewey nor President Mckinley imagined that Filipiino resistance could be so much more relentless than that in Puerto Rico and Cuba.
In fact, even before the Thomasites arrived on 21 August 1901, (aboard a converted cattle ship USS “Thomas”) the American soldiers ( who …

The Patriotism of Filipinos
GLIMPSES
Jose Ma. Montelibano
Disaster, after all, is not the exclusive experience of Filipinos, it is a growing nightmare in America as well. The collapse of giant business enterprises that symbolize American stability is sending a tremor in American society that is cracking its core confidence and occasional economic arrogance today. The panic of the public is not yet uncontrollable only because the government is the one who is panicking ahead of everyone and trying to save even what may be saved anymore.
When the Asian crisis in 1997 saw …

Mar Roxas can become president sans negative campaigning
AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR By William M. Esposo
I have three reasons for writing this column.
One — I want to see the dawn of a new type of political campaigning in the Philippines where candidates, especially presidential candidates, sell themselves to the voters on the basis of real values that they can offer.
What we want to remove from our political exercises is the destructive type of campaigning where a candidate wins because he succeeded in making his rival candidate appear less palatable — …

PerryScope
by Perry Diaz
The Palin Effect
When Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, a lot of people wondered if Palin was qualified to become Vice President of the United States. Having been a mayor of a small Alaska town of 9,000 residents and governor of Alaska with a population of 700,000 for less than two years, was Palin ready to take over the presidency should anything happen to 72-year old McCain if he were elected president?
McCain was criticized — particularly by the media — …

Who really wanted martial law in the Philippines in 1972?
AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR
By William M. Esposo
If once-upon-a-time dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos is to be believed, it was the United States who wanted martial law in the Philippines in 1972.
Now, likely you will think that the suggestion is absolutely preposterous and that Marcos — who is known to lie — was merely covering his tracks with that assertion.
However, in the light of established US track record in supporting dictatorships and the recent US intervention in Mindanao which could severely reshape …