Being a student of the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman is one thing; being a volunteer worker is another. In my case, being both doubled my emotional stress points and drew me into cyclical burnouts. Thankfully, this hasn’t prevented me from getting good grades or being pulled away from my work with the ROTC....
Category: Opinion
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We need to decolonize our understanding of teenage motherhood
There is a long umbilical cord that connects the contemporary framing of teenage motherhood in the Philippines and the country’s colonial experience. Teenage motherhood is currently framed as a developmental problem due to its impact on health and education, which are vital aspects of a country’s human capital. According to the narrative, teenage motherhood is...
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Marcos Jr.’s Sona and great expectations
As many as 23,000 cops are to be deployed for security during President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s State of the Nation Address on July 22. Maj. Gen. Jose Nartatez Jr., the chief of the National Capital Region Police Office, rejects criticisms of “overkill.” He mentions a number of protesters; it’s uncertain if the number includes those...
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Transcending borders: alternative approaches to territorial disputes
The rapidly unfolding reconfiguration of societies in the world today brings into question long-held systems of thought and action with respect to international relations, state-citizen interactions, concepts of national identity, territoriality, and national sovereignty. States are becoming less and less able to assert their notions of national sovereignty in the face of globalizing actors and...
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Asian Development Bank has a chance to get the ‘do no harm’ principle right
The board of directors of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is currently reviewing the draft of a proposed Environmental and Social Framework (ESF), which outlines new operational policies to better address environmental and social risks in the bank’s projects. This proposed framework seeks to update ADB’s 15-year-old Safeguard Policy Statement to ensure the relevance of...
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Sara Duterte’s breakaway
Vice President Sara Duterte telegraphed her imminent pullout from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s Cabinet on June 12 in as succinct a declaration as could be desired in response to reporters’ questions about the state of the UniTeam. In saying that their alliance was formed only for the 2022 elections and that they are no longer...
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Lines and limitations
Time was when lines were clear. Like the lines between right and wrong, man and woman, God and the Devil. But now it is all about ambiguity, gray zone tactics, the hybrid world of virtual and real reality combined. Where are the lines? Some are purely illusory, like the infamous 10-dash line drawn by halfwits...
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Spectacle at the Senate
It’s not as though such a spectacle hasn’t happened before, whether in the Senate or in the House of Representatives. But a week after the fact, bits and pieces of information regarding Juan Miguel Zubiri’s removal as Senate president by his peers continue to keep it grist for the mill, as well as to demonstrate...
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Time, through the looking glass
Before the advent of clocks and calendars, our mirror image was already a clever way to signify the passage of time. Our body is a stand-alone time-teller. True, it cannot show us the numbers on which the long hand and short hand fall. It cannot tell us how much time has passed, but it certainly...
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How to take back what’s ours
Surely many Filipinos were startled by footage shown on ANC last week of a Chinese Navy helicopter hovering perilously low over Sandy Cay last March 23. On the ground were Filipino marine scientists doing research on biodiversity and inspecting the apparently poor state of the corals at the sandbar about two nautical miles from the...