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Seeing foreign direct investment, cash handouts, and subsidies as the silver bullet that will cure chronic Filipino poverty? Think again. Lots of lessons are to be learned in what former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad said in a speech at the Harvard Club of Malaysia dinner on 29 July 2002 about how the presence...
Pac-woman Ms Jinkee Pacquiao reportedly turned down an invitation to guest in The Ellen Degeneres Show recently “because she feared she would be criticized for her lack of fluency in English.” Specifically she was afraid of making a mistake on live television… “Sabi ko ayoko ‘yong live (I said I didn’t want it live),”...
The Iranian experience in implementing a successful population management program has become a model for many countries that seek to overcome the debilitating burden overpopulation presents to development aspirations. The most remarkable aspect of Iran’s program is in how what was once a religious directive to go forth and multiply had been repealed by...
I cannot say in absolute terms that I am a strong advocate of the proposed Reproductive Health bill (RH Bill). In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to introduce such legislation. But we do not live in a perfect world and if one’s intention is to seek flaws in the proposed bill, one will...
Unfortunately, the much-promoted “debate” between boxing champ Manny Pacquiao and House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman — billed “PacMAN vs LagMAN” — aired on ABS-CBN’s Harapan (literally “face-off”) was inaccessible from Australia. But it does not really take a genius to imagine how such a spectacle might have transpired. Blogger Joe America in a recent...
Everytime I hear this and that initiative to “attract” foreign investment to the country and then see these touted as “solutions” aimed at uplifting Filipinos from the clutches of poverty and the setting of our economy on a “firm” path to prosperity, I find my eyes rolling up to the high heavens as if...
Do Filipinos like talking about sex? Answering that question is a journey in itself, and the journey begins with a concept I coined a while back — the Filipino’s tradition-religion complex. The tradition-religion complex represents a narrow framework in which a person finds moral clarity. In the case of the Filipino, it encompasses a...
In her article “Between Sensationalism and Censure” (Philippine Journalism Review, April 2002, pages 35-37), Diana Mendoza observed how the bizarreness of Filipinos’ regard for sexuality is reflected in Philippine cinema. Her observations are gleaned from among others, comments made by sociology professor Michael Tan of the University of the Philippines in the Sixth International...
Willie Revillame is on the defense. And like a cornered mad dog, he is lashing out snarling with bared teeth. Revillame cited several celebrities as, in his opinion, being guilty of “prejudging” him. Some headlines count them among people that Revillame intends to sue for libel. An Inquirer.net report, lists the following celebs as...
Joblessness is indeed a big problem in the Philippines. It is Third World labour supply on steroids — an exceedingly pathetic situation that sees the economic value of Filipino labour utterly flattened under the sheer weight of the vast numbers of warm bodies out on the streets in jeepney- and bus-loads looking for jobs....
