Points of View & Perspectives

August, 2016

  • 14 August

    Heckling Duterte won’t work

    There seems to be an organized mass heckling campaign directed against President Duterte. It is being mainly played out in social media. It is obvious that it is being carried out by parties that have supported losing candidates in the last presidential elections.

  • 14 August

    One can never guess

    Who you meet could serve you a true story, which you had thought was but a tall tale. The setting: Broadway in New York’s Upper Westside, where you either flow with or against an incessant stream of people, scissoring the tunneled breeze, or sigh in relief from the oppressive heat into your window seat on the bus, on a midday …

  • 7 August

    The Philippine waste export industry

    We were seething when one North American economy had sealed its decaying hospital waste in huge metal containers and shipped them over to our pristine shores. Our emotions ranged from being insulted and branded an international dump to being the clueless recipient of toxic waste that absolutely had neither economic value nor any utility, save for spreading illnesses and deadly …

  • 7 August

    A secret illness

    Given my penchant for nostalgia, especially if progressed to its extreme, I would have been diagnosed with this malady had I lived in the 17th century—when longing for the past skidded beyond its reputation as romance into an identified illness. 

  • 7 August

    Cuba seen as model for Phl food security

    The Philippines can learn from Cuba on how to achieve food security through sustainable agriculture, coupled with an efficient healthcare system and genuine universal health coverage. 

July, 2016

  • 31 July

    Taxation as political weaponry

    One of the first acts initiated by the Duterte administration to address past flaws was the suspension of audits contained in an eleventh-hour issuance from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). 

  • 31 July

    What’s being happy

    Jean and I had dipped into the subject of happiness after an impassioned discussion regarding the gray state, where elderly women living alone, who worked in low-income jobs, end up. Summing up their perceived condition, she and I opined, “unhappy,” as the simplest but truest description of their seeming solitary lives, insulated by hue-less walls, where dinner would be but …

  • 31 July

    Challenge to real change

    IBON explains why the 10-point economic agenda President Duterte cited in his State-of-the-Nation Address (Sona) hangs like a dark cloud over his pro-people economics prospects and even his recently affirmed popularity.)

  • 24 July

    The REIT stuff

    The previous administration had not only gotten the real-estate investment trust (REIT) wrong, but also bungled it big time, virtually killing it as an investment vehicle that would have democratized massive revenues, brought heretofore unattainable investments in prime assets within the reach of investors, and provided the property sector substantial incremental capital to increase both asset sizes and value. Recently the REIT …

  • 24 July

    ‘So do you write it in English?’

    Still, Laurianne asked, even if we’ve known each other for sometime.