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...
Tag: opinion
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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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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...
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War between wars
My parents were shaped by World War II (my father became a young guerrilla and my mother had to flee with her family to their mountain farm), followed soon after by the Korean War (which has not officially ended), and then the Vietnam War, in all of which the Philippines was directly involved. We so-called...
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‘Economic Cha-cha’ is sweeping the political dance floor
The plot thickens with the Senate announcing full participation in the planned activity of the moment: the amendment of the Constitution. Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri’s surprise filing on Jan. 15 of Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) No. 6 proposing the amendment of certain economic provisions represents a stronger than usual push for Charter change....
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Challenge to Congress: Easing of bank secrecy is necessary for economic Charter change
With calls for Charter change (Cha-cha) once more gaining traction, the Foundation for Economic Freedom issued this statement last Jan. 4: “Economic Cha-cha is necessary but not enough. Other conditions, such as rule of law, good infrastructure and ease of doing business, among others, must be present to compete with other countries in attracting foreign...
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Music and lyrics from the 2024 budget
An interesting way to understand the 2024 budget is to look at it as a menagerie of songs. For the President, it is the song “I Did It My Way.” The 2024 budget stands at ₱5.768 trillion, which is equivalent to what he proposed to Congress in June. This amount is ₱1.5 trillion higher than the revenues...
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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...
