Lawyer Alan F. Paguia argues that the justices of the Supreme Court made a mistake on January 20, 2003 when they permitted Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to succeed to the presidency. There was no vacancy in the presidency, he insists, because the incumbent president, Joseph Ejercito Estrada, never resigned. The Supreme Court abused its authority. … Read more
“In a time of crisis,” President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo told United States President George W. Bush, “friends do not ask why, they ask how.” That about sums up Philippine policy toward the US today, crisis or no crisis. We trust America implicitly, we will not inquire into its behavior and motives; we support it automatically in … Read more
Within a week after I wrote my column about the dangerous situation brought about by the ongoing rehabilitation of the North Luzon Expressway, small but essential changes in the management of the traffic on this highway began to be instituted. These timely measures have saved many lives. The first thing one notices is the deployment … Read more
There are things about our mothers we may never understand. Sometimes they act and manifest values so contrary to good sense that we wonder if we know them at all. In their ripe age, they may continue to be haunted by the insecurities of their time, wrapping leftover food in old newspaper and stuffing it … Read more
Last Saturday, April 26, at about 2 p.m., a Philippine Rabbit passenger bus headed for Baguio was cruising on the northbound lane of the North Luzon Expressway. Since January this year, when the road widening activities began, motorists have seen long stretches of bumper-to-bumper traffic on sections of this highway. Either the bus driver was … Read more
Because of jet travel and mass migration, the world has become quite literally a melting pot of microbes. But because of global communication, it has also accelerated the transmission of a panic more lethal in its consequences than microbes. The unprecedented movement of large numbers of people across continents has multiplied the risk of transferring … Read more
It would be a gross misrepresentation of the character and long history of the Iraqi people, I think, if our portrait of them were summed up only by images of a nation that marked its freedom by unbridled looting and lawlessness. There is surely more to Saddam’s Iraq than a people kept docile by a … Read more
That the United States would eventually subdue Iraq has never been in question. This was not a war; this was a mugging. Of the three countries that George W. Bush named as the Axis of Evil, Iraq had the weakest and most exhausted army. The 1991 Gulf War and the economic sanctions imposed by the … Read more
Of the real motives that prompted the US-led invasion of Iraq, economic gain and political control are at the top of the list of many analysts. These motives are not legitimate reasons for going to war. The reasons that nations usually give for going to war have to do with self-defense and self-image. Fictitious and … Read more
Knowledge is power, it is often said. But power also begets knowledge. Thus a new logic has come into being appropriate to America’s status as the world’s lone superpower. It is important for the rest of us who are weak to learn how and when to break these axioms of the powerful if we are … Read more