Monthly Archives: January 2010

Senior citizen activists

A 20-year old student activist in 1970 is now 60 years old. The First Quarter Stormers are now senior citizens. What makes them special? They belong to a generation that defied a dictator. They were young revolutionaries who wanted to change the world. Many of them went underground after the declaration of martial law. The […]

Posted in reds | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Remembering Edsa Dos

Written in 2001 during Edsa Dos for the e-groups of the university. (Hindi pa uso ang blogging noon). First published by UP Forum, official publication of the UP administration…. Apat na araw sa lansangan: mga tala ng isang estudyante Myerkules, 17 Enero 2001 – Sa loob lamang ng isang araw ay nakapagpalabas tayo ng mahigit […]

Posted in youth | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Road Politics. Road Economics

“The only legacy of my favorite President (Cory Aquino) about which I have serious doubts are the flyovers, eyesores that cater only to car owners and do not solve the gargantuan traffic problems of a 21st century metropolis.” – John Vissers, Dutch News Correspondent, 1992 “Before the construction of the flyovers, one of the more […]

Posted in places | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Online and offline activism

In 1995 I joined a protest action to condemn the decision of the French government to conduct nuclear tests in the Pacific. I was only a high school student at that time. We relied on mainstream journalists to document and report the rally. In 2001 I was part of the historic Edsa Dos uprising which […]

Posted in youth | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

The story of Prita Mulyasari

Prita Mulyasari is a 32-year-old mother of two from Indonesia who was recently acquitted of defamation charges filed by the management of a private hospital. The defamation suit was a reaction to an e-mail complaint sent by Prita to her friends and relatives about the bad service she received at Omni International Hospital in Tangerang. […]

Posted in east asia | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Misunderestimating The Philippine Left

There are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ leftists. ‘Good’ leftists must belong to a partylist group. They demand the inclusion of civil society groups in government transactions. They participate in tripartite meetings, they attend UN conferences, they hate Joma Sison, and they endorse the candidacies of Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas. The ‘bad left’ is always wrong. […]

Posted in reds | Tagged , , | 42 Comments