“Even the gods cannot help those who do not seize opportunities.” This Asian proverb resonates in post-typhoon “Yolanda” efforts. They range from rehabilitation “czar” Panfilo Lacon skidding into his old cop role to buttressing coastal forests like mangroves, beyond Leyte Gulf, throughout the country.
Mad is he?” King George II once snarled about one of his aides. “Then, I hope he’ll bite some of my generals.” It would also be daft if any official here tried to confiscate Korans from Filipino Muslims. Both law and practice buttress liberty of faith. The exact opposite unreels in Malaysia. The Islamic Religious [...]
The new year enables all of us to push back the press of current issues and try to glimpse the farther horizons.
Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools.” Writer Og Mandino’s line came to mind on New Year’s Eve as we ripped down down the 2013 calendar. Where did those 522,600 minutes go? We wondered when tacking up the 2014 edition. We walked through San Francisco’s financial district afternoon of New Year’s Eve many [...]
Editorial and TV desks are swamped, on December 28, by features on practical jokes. The one fooled is ribbed Na-Niños Innocentes ka. That jab refers to the feast of “The Holy Innocents.”
“Raul” tops our Christmas Eve checklist. He’s a 55-year-old who collects empty bottles and scrap for a living. He looks 80 from having had one altanghap too many. That’s jargon for breakfast (almusal), lunch (tanghalian) and dinner (hapunan) crammed into one.
Inquirer’s headline summed the festering issue: “Some journalists had it coming, probers say.” They referred to the December killings of three Mindanao–No, not journalists – but “block-timers”. “(He) berated targets like they were the worst animals on earth, cocked his gun on the air, challenging (them) to a gunfight.” Who did? Probers wouldn’t say. But [...]
The traditional “Misa de Gallo” starts day after tomorrow and ends Christmas Eve. And once again, the features of a grime-streaked beggar who wouldn’t budge from the church door will haunt us. “Simbang Gabi” had just ended when this hobo blocked my exit. If delayed, I’d miss that Bangkok flight. As a “martial law refugee,” [...]
They call it the– what? “The Green Wall,” our banker friend said. He oversees banks in the Visayas. Mangroves in Eastern Samar buffered the storm surge that killed thousands elsewhere, his clients stated. That’s correct, wrote Neil Chatterjee, writing for Bloomberg. In Southeast Asia, replanted mangroves are getting credit for protecting against tsunamis and typhoons [...]
Reports on officials “sick, sick, sick” from gorging at the pork barrel straddle headlines and newscasts. These smudged reports on the passing last week of a soldier who wrote about how guerrillas seized the “Koga Papers”. That radically altered World War II’s liberation battle for the Philippines.
Reports on officials “sick, sick, sick” from gorging at the pork barrel straddle headlines and newscasts. These smudged reports on the passing last week of a soldier who wrote about how guerrillas seized the “Koga Papers”. That radically altered World War II’s liberation battle for the Philippines.
Aslew of comments, from caustic to enthusiastic, flooded in as Inquirer readers reacted to the Nov. 30 column: “Slow Suicide.” This “Viewpoint” essay tried to place Pope Francis’ letter “The Joy of the Gospel” in the Philippine context. “We do not live better when we refuse to share, cushioned by our our comforts,” Francis wrote [...]
A church “bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets” is preferable to a church jittery about “going astray,” Pope Francis warns in “The Joy of the Gospel,” published Tuesday. Fear instead being locked within rules that make us “comfortable but harsh judges.”
