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...
Category: Opinion
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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...
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Is the American empire unraveling?
We are not witnessing the last days of the American empire. Its crisis is real, but its trajectory of decline is likely to be protracted and uneven. After the fall of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s, the United States stood at the apex of the unipolar world, unrivalled both politically and economically. Some...
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Guns snuff out lives and hinder national development
Civilians will now be allowed to own semiautomatic rifles as a result of the amendment of the implementing rules and regulations of Republic Act No. 10591 (or the Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act), the Philippine National Police has announced. According to Britain’s The Guardian in 2012, citing data from the United Nations Office on...
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Are we related to Donald Trump?
The human genome is very close to those of other creatures like the rat or the dog even if they look very different from us. We humans also belong to different races although we all sprang from one source (Africa). Learning these, you appreciate and feel more deeply the connectedness among all the earth’s peoples...
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Raised fists, tied hands, deferred hopes: ‘GomBurZa’ and the darkness of our time
The film “GomBurZa” teaches us much about Philippine history, but it should also be appreciated as an expression of, and response to, our bleak political predicament. It is as much about 2022 as 1872. Just as 1872 saw the Spanish colonial state crack down on liberalism in the Philippines, so did 2022 witness the lopsided...