Archive for the ‘Development’ Category

Most Filipinos are anti-elitist. A good proportion of the Philippine population would prefer that they be seen as being one with the common tao rather than be seen as one of the elites. Indeed it is a land full of contradictions. This mentality is inconsistent with the behavior exhibited by a people who also routinely act like The Talented Mr Ripley (read: social climbers) ... Full story

What's up with President Noynoy Aquino doing his speeches in Tagalog? Does he want to get more "likes" on his Facebook fan page or something? This is a country where people use multiple dialects and languages and where foreign correspondents and dignitaries are present during events such as the Presidential Inauguration and the State of the Nation Address (SONA). It makes more sense for the ... Full story

According to a study conducted by the Brussels-based Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), the Philippines is Mother Nature's top whipping boy, trumping all other nations on the planet in a "list of countries that are most vulnerable to disasters". That kind of contradicts the "blessed" place in the heart of the Almighty that we constantly imagine ourselves to be in ... Full story

The word escapism, as defined in the Net, refers to a mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life. It can also be used as a term to define the actions people take to help relieve persisting feelings of depression or general sadness. Ironically, for a society that claims to be always ... Full story

Nobody who rests comfily within the bed of Establishment thinking seems to want to take a position on the debate around abortion. All of what the venerable Ellen Tordesillas can add to the debate, for example, is a wish of "good luck" to those bold enough to take a position and slug it out in what is otherwise a splendid arena that pits the ... Full story

Why is President Benigno "P.Noy" Aquino III smiling less nowadays? Perhaps it is because reality is starting to hit him -- the reality of the future and the reality that he, the President of the Philippines, is surrounded by morons. The problem with small moronic minds is that the people these inhabit lack a fundamental ability to take an imaginative step out of the ... Full story

Speculation is rife that the contestants in the reality show The Biggest Loser drink lots of fluids before the official weigh-in. This is so that they will weigh a lot heavier in the beginning of the show and consequently appear to have lost a lot of kilos dramatically at the succeeding or final weigh-in. In a show that manages to win audiences based on ... Full story

Water supply has always been a problem in the Philippines. Since time immemorial, many Metro Manila residents have even had to rely on electric booster pumps to suck out the essential juice from city's decrepit mains and store as much of it in privately-owned storage tanks. In many suburbs, there is an arms race of booster pumps among residents. Households possessing the most sucking power ... Full story

What's in a number? A lot actually. If you are starting to lose your religion, try doing the math and you will figure out what life is all about. Truth be told, if President Noynoy Aquino will be honest with himself, he should see his win as no more than a numbers game result, and not the outcome of some imagined divine intervention as his ... Full story

At the time of this writing, millions of people around the world are obsessing about the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa and the noise of the annoying Vuvuzela horn. From every continent, people speaking almost every language, coming from practically every race, creed, and color are excitedly watching the game called “Association ... Full story

Organised religion has a tradition of being averse to stepping up to a serious debate on a level field when its dogma is challenged. Certainly the Roman Catholic Church is not an exception to this tradition of intolerance to free inquiry. I wrote a while back how the Roman Catholic Church is really... an institution ... Full story

I don't understand what is so complicated about this whole English-versus-Tagalog "debate". For me, it is a simple return-on-investment calculation. Compare every peso of public funds spent on Tagalog-articulated instruction and every peso of public funds spent on English-articulated instruction. Which of those two pesos spent contributes more to opening more doors of opportunity for the average Filipino? As I wrote way back in ... Full story

Now that President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III and his Cabinet have "hit the ground running", it is time to examine the focal point around which spin the complex of platitudes and promises delivered to us over much of Noynoy's presidential campaign -- Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap (translated literally: "If no corruption THEN no poverty"). A few of my colleagues here have already made an ... Full story

In 1995, an American educator named Charles J. Sykes wrote a scathing criticism of the US education system entitled Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why America's Children Feel Good About Themselves but Can't Read, Write, or Add. In the book, Sykes gives a list of “rules for life” that ... Full story

The good news about corruption is that it makes for good campaign fodder for politicians who happen to be running at a time of widespread public frustration over its endemic prevalence. The bad news is that come the time for said politician to deliver we find that corruption is not exactly the tangible beast it is made out to be during the campaign.... Full story

What the 60 percent needs to know is the PLAN… THE GRAND PLAN FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT!!! Full story

Decent sex education in Philippine public schools. Long overdue. But then how can this become a reality with the Philippine Taliban making sure that "offensive" material is being kept off public school textbooks... Education officials insist that the bishops have nothing to worry about because the is open to deleting portions of the teaching modules that the Church finds offensive.... Full story

It is an indisputable reality that the weak are allowed to exist by the much-evolved decency of the powerful. It's a reality evident everywhere. Much of the world as we see it today was shaped by those victorious in battle. And much as we deny it, the independence granted to us on the 4th of July 1946 is a gift. And deny this reality arduously ... Full story

The Prime Minister of Japan, whatever his name is (there's just so many of them that have come and gone), resigned on the 2nd of June after breaking an election promise. Just eight months ago, he won a landslide victory to become the new Prime Minister. Unfortunately, he has been forced to resign because of mounting criticism prior to his resignation for his flip-flopping on ... Full story

Some people are very, very disappointing. I'm not just talking about Noynoy Aquino. I'm talking about some people who used to make a lot of sense and now they are talking non-sense. They have the nerve to tell other people to stop engaging in "reckless adventurism" whatever the heck that means because to them, engaging in such "may negate what fate and fortune has laid ... Full story

If I lower my guard and take the comfy view that I am fundamentally defined by where I was schooled, I'd call myself an "Atenean". When you are an Ateneo alumnus (and specially when you remain on as a faculty member), you usually come equipped with a lot of connections and the frame of mind to segue into "socially-oriented" projects if you wanna go down ... Full story

Did the photos of the giant sinkhole that suddenly appeared in Guatemala and swallowed a building two days ago remind you of something? Sounds like bad science fiction, but horrifically real. Something similar though a lot milder happened in Manila last year. So what does this have to do with Noynoy, who is holed up for the week at Hacienda ... Full story

One of my favorite books is Dune by Frank Herbert and in it was a passage that went:....animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct....the animal destroys and does not produce....Animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual....the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe....focused consciousness by ... Full story

After a couple of weekends huddling with fellow Pinoy expats in my side of town, the consensus was the same - "the Philippines is hopeless, we are just so happy that we are no longer Philippine citizens and don't have to put up with the foolish choices that Filipino voters make". Although they did ask me, who I voted for. I said, I didn't register ... Full story

The difference between “Presidential or Parliamentary” systems, which we discussed in Part One of this exploration of ways to improve the way the Philippines is governed, and “Unitary or Federal” systems is that the former are systems of government, while the latter are systems of administration. In other words, both a presidential ... Full story

It’s now the end of what has been in some respects a rather surreal week – the elections have, contrary to most expectations, been concluded more-or-less successfully, at least in form if not in substance, and there is a growing mood that it is time to move on and make the best of it. That ... Full story

Filipinos are a funny people. We want change but we are not sure whether to look forward or to look back. Not surprisingly, we are again the butt of jokes of the international community. Just recently, I heard that a foreign news commentator from Australia remarked that politics in the Philippines is just like a swapping of seats between the Aquino and the Marcos clan. ... Full story

First of all I'd like to express how proud I am of the Philippines' Commission on Elections (COMELEC). It overcame the hexes cast upon it by shamans in the Philippine Media and the parties they supported, and stepped up in the face of overwhelming disapproval. Amidst the descent to a primitivist government, the COMELEC stands tall as a lone beacon of modernism in our backward ... Full story

I've asserted many times in the past that the trouble with the Philippines does not lie in its politics but rather in a profound dysfunction in its society's character. It is a dysfuinction that is interlaced at the very fibres that make up the very fabric of our society. In taking this view, my over-arching argument has always been that politics are but a mere ... Full story

Wouldn't it be great if there was an election every year? The six year term given to the incumbent president is too long in my opinion. Just think about it. Every six years, the Philippines goes into fiesta mode during the campaign period and every politician switches into "sip-sip" gear in an effort to reach out ... Full story

I wrote MANY TIMES IN THE PAST. There is no comparing the 1986 Edsa "revolution" to ANY of the subsequent "people power" "revolutions" that followed. NO COMPARING. Y'all know why? It's because, no one bozo instigated the 1986 version. And now here we have the son of of an Aquino PRESUMING to engineer one artifiicially LOOONG before there ... Full story

Blogger Ben Kritz in his Four Principles for Improving the Philippine Economy highlights some key areas where the potentially hardest hitting solutions lie as far as our economic aspirations go. They point to aspects of our economic landscape where flawed thinking has for so many decades prevailed and where the interests of the handful of ... Full story

Earlier this week I wrote about the recent blacklisting of Philippine airlines from the EU on my own blog, wherein I made the following observation: “The implications of the international restrictions cut across the entire Philippine economy, and the problem will require significant investment and sustained decisive action ... Full story

AP would like to thank AP commenter boombox, for mentioning the book "Greed And Betrayal" by Cecilio Arilio. As the election draws closer, we really need to think seriously about allowing the same incompetent people of "Tita Cory" back into the Presidency come 2010. From that starting point, we read Qtbabe's ... Full story

Recently we the authors and contributors at AntiPinoy.com have turned our guns away from the moronisms of Filipino election politics and pointed them at the moronism of Filipino "ethnic pride" exhibiting itself as a result of the Adam Carolla brouhaha. Some argue that it was an unproductive distraction. Perhaps it was considering that we got into it in the middle of the ramp ... Full story

Philippine politics is like the same badly-written script being played by different actors every year. An actor could play different roles over a number of runs. Different roles could put an actor at different vantage points and require him or her to apply a different internalisation routine to play the part well. The trouble with being ... Full story

I was scanning the INQUIRER today and came across another piece of from favorite economist from the "progressive left". What I read tempted me to post an "In the News" article. But, I figured, this is much too delicious to treat like a news story. Ok, 'nuff said. The good news - Walden Bello agrees with AP that fighting corruption is ... Full story

Who cares if Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo runs for congressman in Pampanga after she leaves Malacanang this May? Let her. Specifically, let the voters of the fair province of Pampanga (or rather whatever the hell district Arroyo will represent) decide. So what's up with Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros filing a "disqualification case" against Arroyo ... Full story

I. BSN Minsay ay nagkakatuwaan ang mga visitor ng AntiPinoy.com na mag usap usap sa shoutbox at may nabanggit si BongV na katagang natawa ang lahat. Ito ay ang katagang "BSN". Hindi po Bachelors of Science in Nursing ang ibig sabihi nito kundi "Binuhi Sa Nurse" (sa Bisaya or more accurately, Cebuano) o sa Tagalog, Binubuhay ng ... Full story

This is a continuation of my previous post on the beasts of burden - the OFWs.  We look at the current practices, and how we can improve it to bring about a positive bottom line - not just for OFWs but for the overall economic well being of the Philippines as well. Benigno demystifies the myth of OFW remittances contribution to the economy. In ... Full story

I read recently that our honourable presidential candidates are now scrambling to pander to the so-called "heroes" of the flaccid Philippine economy -- our overseas foreign workers (OFWs). Various quaint ideas are being thrown around -- a provident fund for OFWs, free repatriation services for OFWs in legal binds overseas, and some nebulously-worded measures to ensure ... Full story

There has been an orgy of blaming, bashing, and threatening those who are not in the Philippines anymore for speaking their minds about the flawed cultural traits the Filipinos possess. More often than not, they would make remarks like "Just because you're now in a first-world country doesn't give you the right to talk ill about ... Full story

A word or a sentence from someone can dramatically change our life; that is, if we are strong enough to take it in stride. Let's take a slice from history and use Alexander the Great as an example. His tutor was no less than the famous philosopher, Aristotle. Surely what Alexander got from one of mankind's ... Full story