Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES

Despite a disappointing first year, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo still has a chance to be remembered as among our best presidents — but only if she can think of her present term as her last. She must reconcile herself to a future without Gloria, and work for a social vision that will make it easier for her … Read more

An artisan, squatting on the bare floor, pounds a sheet of aluminum into the shape of a leg and attaches it to the live stump of an amputee.  The patient looks at it, feels it, and smiles. Amputee and artisan work in perfect unison until they get it right.  The new limb is then covered … Read more

Rumors of impending coups and major crimes usually go together in our country.  They surface when the euphoria that greeted the entry of a new government begins to dissipate. This period is full of danger.  Where they have not been totally stripped of power, remnants of the old regime will threaten trouble from their followers … Read more

It is becoming clear that the purpose of the September 11 terrorist attacks was not so much to kill thousands of Americans as to shatter the very foundations of American society by permanently subjecting it to the threat of relentless terrorism. Far more injurious in the long term than the acts of terrorism that people … Read more

The U.S. government has been very careful to tell the world that the air strikes on Afghanistan are directed not on the Afghan nation itself but on a band of international terrorists led by Osama bin Laden and the tyrannical regime of the Taliban that shelters them.  Neither is this a war against Islam, America … Read more

Listening to Senator Panfilo Lacson’s expose of the alleged misuse of sweepstakes funds to subsidize the campaign of administration candidates in the last elections gives one the sick feeling that we’re back in the familiar track of Philippine political life.  The awesome events of this world are occurring elsewhere, while we seem fixated with the … Read more

The suicide hijackers’ ultimate dream may yet come true if and when America bombs Afghanistan.  Young warriors from all over the Islamic world will reverse their own governments’ involvement in the U.S.-led coalition, and join the international brigade that will defend the Arab homeland from “infidels.”  The result will be precisely the self-fulfillment of the … Read more

It is the most supreme of ironies – the world’s lone superpower, armed with the most sophisticated weapons, feels besieged by an enemy who lives and works in complete anonymity in middle class America, ready to attack and die at a signal.  His methods are modern, his beliefs medieval. For the longest time, Americans have … Read more

The civilized world is in shock over the magnitude and brazenness of last Tuesday’s suicidal terrorist attacks against the United States of America.  Nothing can justify the commission of atrocities of such a scale against innocent civilians in modern times.  The act is unspeakable in its cruelty and barbarism. That’s the way we look at … Read more

If Descartes were Singaporean, it would be enough for him to shop to confirm that he exists.  There is probably no country in the world that has more shops per person than this Southeast Asian city-state, a reality that has prompted one prominent Indian architect to liken Singapore to “one gigantic shopping bag.” I stopped … Read more