Gemma Cruz Araneta | LANDSCAPE Just when I was beginning to feel like Scrooge of Charles Dicken’s “Christmas Carol, a group of young people sent me an email asking if they could serenade me with the season’s well-loved songs. Humbug! Scrooge would have screamed, but I am not like him, I am always interested in what young people are up … Read more
Frankly, I am surprised that the institutions of the United States of America have remained immutable through the course of centuries. I thought their judiciary system was going to crumble at the face of the well-planned onslaught of now former president, Donald J. Trump. He himself must have been unpleasantly surprised that the judges, prosecutors, … Read more
The 75th Post Master General of the USA, Mr. Louis Dejoy, is M.I.A! In May 2020, the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service appointed him to that strategic post, not exactly to everyone’s surprise. Although he was an outsider, Mr. Dejoy is a successful businessman who was once described as a “Trump … Read more
I am writing about Jim Toolen to show you that this world is filled with people who are interconnected without their knowing it, who made lasting impressions on each other without suspecting it, who are unaware that their lives have mingled like sand and water. Meeting someone again after the course of decades is like … Read more
In my secret book, there are a select few who should have been and should be immortal; whom the Almighty should have frozen in time but in the pink of health and at the cusp of their creativity. These are (or were) the people who can live forever and should have lived forever, never bothered … Read more
For us Asians, the 19 th century was pivotal because total and absolute colonization was achieved by the European powers that invaded our region with superior fire power and technology. Our ancestors did not only lose ancestral lands and waterways, they were demolished by the battle for “knowledge production” and the “genealogy of ideas”. Not … Read more
Honorable ladies and gentlemen, many of you do not know me because you were not yet in office when I was working for the late Mayor Alfredo S. Lim. If memory serves, some of you I already know like Councilors Josie Siscar, Lou Veloso, Roberto Asilo, Uno Lim, Joel Chua, DJ Bagatsing, Mon Yupangco, Pablo … Read more
It is cheaper to kill them in a plane crash, a private plane crash, he said, rather cavalierly with a half smirk. There is no evidence, no smoking gun because the plane crashes, that is your smoking gun. He is John Perkins, retired Chief Economic Adviser and his interviewer, Patrick Bet-David, host of Valuetainment Episodes … Read more
From a distance, I am watching how you are restoring Manila’s historical contours, deftly melding the past with the present, to assure a brighter future for the city of our birth ( we are both Manila-born). Behind the City Hall, the Bonifacio monument with the decalogue inscribed on its back wall is no longer a … Read more
Sometime in 2018, the Office of the President issued Executive Order 55 which had a rather quirky title: “…constituting a steering committee for the commemoration of the Quincentennial of the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in the Philippines, the victory of Lapu Lapu in the Battle of Mactan and other historic events that happened from 1519 … Read more