Many Filipinos overseas yearn for Christmas in the motherland, and in my years working abroad, I’ve had to forgo that simple pleasure. But December 1993 was probably my best, celebrating it with five parties in three countries which are not even Christian. Although our work in Thailand was winding up, we went to Laos, across...
Author: Romeo S. Aquino (Romeo Aquino)
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A layman’s look at some legal maxims with religious roots
The recent release on bail of former senator Leila de Lima after more than six years of imprisonment shows the uneven application of laws based on legal maxims that are not facts or proven theories. De Lima was jailed on the presumption of guilt, not innocence, by the powers that be, based mainly on the...
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The crisis in Philippine education began 120 years ago
In the results of the 2022 Pisa study on the state of learning and equity in education worldwide released last Dec. 5, the average scores of Filipino 15-year-old students were about the same as those in 2018. There was no significant change in the rankings of students scoring below a baseline level of proficiency (Level...
The Beatles: (From left) John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison —JOOINN.COM PHOTO
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The Beatles, now and then
The Beatles never broke up; they’ve always been together in the collective memory of diehard fans like me. I’m now 71 and I still spend my weekends watching their videos or singing what’s appropriate for the moment with a guitar (the ’60s on Sundays and the ’70s on Saturdays). Sixty years ago, I was a...
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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ‘promised land’
Both the western and local media are generally pro-Israel in their reporting on the Israeli-Hamas war. That should be the Israeli-Palestinian war because both sides don’t care about civilian casualties, including children and infants. On the other hand, there is a Palestinian bias in Arab/Muslim countries although admittedly, my main source is Al Jazeera and...