From more than 7,000 kilometers away, Filipino peace advocates expressed solidarity with the Iranian people and condemned the “illegal, unjust and unprovoked” US-Israeli attacks on their country. On Thursday, April 23, Filipino activists, union leaders, health workers, academics, artists, Christian clergy and Muslim religious leaders formalized a movement called Stop the US-Israel War in Iran...
Tag: United States
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A new gallery of rogue states
If Western mainstream media are to be believed, the likes of North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and, until recently, Venezuela are rogue states. They are considered “rogue” because they supposedly flout international law by “promoting terrorism,” seeking to develop or already having nuclear weapons, widely disregarding human rights, or engaging in the narcotics trade. As...
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War and the basic human imperatives
We are still cavemen. Clubbing each other over the head, noncompliant females included. Except that now, the clubs are missiles and drones and the targets are entire countries and peoples. The behavior has not changed. Only the technology. And consequently, the breadth and depth of the destruction. Why have we behaved this way since time...
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Diagnosing the ‘Maduro script’: institutional health as the Philippines’ sovereign defense
In global politics, the diagnostic frame used to interpret power shifts often dictates the response. During a recent small-group clinical colloquium in Manila, the discussion shifted from research breakthroughs to the United States’ capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. To observers, the US operation resembled a swift, invasive appendectomy that left the regional...
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Sovereignty under siege: Witnessing life and resistance in Venezuela
Caracas has long lived under the shadow of siege. Well before any single headline, the city learned to recognize the familiar signals: airspace violations recast as “exercises,” mercenary plots cloaked in deniability, economic strangulation sanitized as “sanctions,” and an unrelenting media narrative that treats regime change as inevitable. In recent days, these pressures converged once...
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Donald Trump’s brutal tariff assaults on Southeast Asia
As of Aug. 1, US President Donald Trump has finalized a sweeping set of new and brutal trade tariffs on Southeast Asian countries after a series of bilateral negotiations with the region’s leaders and trade representatives. These tariffs reflect an increasing trend toward protectionism and moving away from free trade principles and practices. The tariffs...
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Election parallels: Does a bad world need a bad guy?
The world is in shock, the headlines say, in reporting that Donald Trump has decisively won the US presidential election and defied the odds once more, this time in convincing fashion. As soon as the trend was clear, congratulatory messages from world leaders started coming in, in apparent relief that the result was unassailable and...
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Filipino fishers are called upon to sacrifice during PH-US Balikatan
Fishers in San Antonio, Zambales, may have to sacrifice days’ worth of catch as the Coast Guard enforces a three-day “no-sail zone policy” in the municipal waters during next week’s war games between Philippine and US troops, according to security analyst Chester Cabalza. The policy, which bans fishing within the municipal waters on May 6-9,...
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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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Edca puts Philippines on path to perdition
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s recent trip to South Korea and the Philippines and his meeting with Japan’s defense minister in January say much to validate the “war with China by 2025” prediction of US Gen. Mike Minihan, chief of the US Air Force’s Air Mobility Command. A media release issued by the US Department...