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CHASING THE WIND

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Time to go

by Felipe B. Miranda - September 9, 2004 - 12:00am

This is my last column for The Philippine STAR. In over four years of public reflection, I had written about mostly everything that is an urgent national concern. These essays tried to look into vital Philippine...

The examined life

by Felipe B. Miranda - September 2, 2004 - 12:00am

"The unexamined life is not worth living." This comment is attributed to a Greek who enjoyed and analyzed the Olympians of his time but apparently never excelled in any of their games. Across the...

Crisis, what crisis?

by Felipe B. Miranda - August 26, 2004 - 12:00am

Recently a team of UP economists went public with a report detailing the public debt and fiscal crisis of the country. In their analysis, the academics traced the historical and systemic character of the problem,...

Public intellectuals speaking out

by Felipe B. Miranda - August 24, 2004 - 12:00am

Eleven professors from the UP School of Economics have rendered signal public service. Putting their technical skills to good use, they analyze the country’s debt-and-deficit issue in a timely report as a structural...

Arrogance of power

by Felipe B. Miranda - August 19, 2004 - 12:00am

Those in power appears to have less use for wisdom, intelligence, fairness or justice. They evidently find arrogance more satisfying and thus haughtiness and lack of compassion are typical of most power-wielders...

A most taxing experience

by Felipe B. Miranda - August 17, 2004 - 12:00am

Most of the time, people forget the reason why something exists in the first place. If something has been around for sometime, persistence itself apparently becomes a sufficient justification for perpetuating...

A point of no return?

by Felipe B. Miranda - August 10, 2004 - 12:00am

Runaway population growth, massive unemployment, surging criminality, intensifying insurgency, unabated graft and corruption, worsening public finance, an economy surviving off the earnings of those forced to flee...

Victims

by Felipe B. Miranda - August 5, 2004 - 12:00am

Of course it was bound to happen. In many Philippine colleges, semi-literate students now clutter the classes, unable to hold or pursue a thought, much less to critically assess it. In practically any language,...

Institutional integrity

by Felipe B. Miranda - August 3, 2004 - 12:00am

In government, the competent and the conscientious probably still outnumber those who are not. Yet, in mostly every critical government agency that comes to mind, it is the minority who are incompetent and corrupt...

Temper of the times

by Felipe B. Miranda - July 29, 2004 - 12:00am

Can a year really make such a big difference? Between August 2003 and July 2004, could Filipinos – mostly a constitutionalist, exuberant and optimistic people – have started harboring uncharacteristically...

Hostaged

by Felipe B. Miranda - July 27, 2004 - 12:00am

Disoriented, a nation cannot progress. When some Filipinos jest that they would be better off hostaged to gain the material benefits that a celebrated hostage – Angelo de la Cruz – stand to receive...

Yet another SONA

by Felipe B. Miranda - July 22, 2004 - 12:00am

It is that time of year again. The authorities will craft yet another report on the state of the nation. Once more, Filipinos will be assured that while the country might have some problems, everything is under...

Pragmatism

by Felipe B. Miranda - July 20, 2004 - 12:00am

Pragmatism rationalizes or justifies an act primarily in terms of its results. While not necessarily opposed to principled action usually emphasizing the moral or ethical antecedents of an act rather than its consequences,...

Hunger stalks the land

by Felipe B. Miranda - July 15, 2004 - 12:00am

Two months after the May 2004 national elections, the most dramatic Philippine statistic might be the number of Filipinos who now worry about having enough to eat. Between January and June 2004, the proportion...

Gambling as a way of life

by Felipe B. Miranda - July 13, 2004 - 12:00am

People point to jueteng, sakla, tong-its and other popular games of chance as proof that Filipinos are inveterate gamblers. Across the decades, anti-gambling crusades have come and gone; the games, somehow, have...

A most prayerful nation

by Felipe B. Miranda - July 8, 2004 - 12:00am

In a 2000 study of cross-cultural values, Tanzania, the Philippines and Puerto Rico led all 48 surveyed societies in the number of people praying more than once a week outside of religious service. In these three...

Changing a nation’s constitution

by Felipe B. Miranda - July 6, 2004 - 12:00am

Changing the Philippine Constitution has become a popular topic again. Many people identified with the Arroyo administration are brokering a change from the present presidential system to a parliamentary one. ...

A glorious intervention?

by Felipe B. Miranda - July 1, 2004 - 12:00am

Another president is sworn into office. And one more speech is added to the vast archives of ceremonial rhetoric. This one, however, is mercifully short – just about 27 minutes – addressing all the...

More of the same

by Felipe B. Miranda - June 29, 2004 - 12:00am

No pomp, just the bare ceremony of being sworn into office is supposed to be the immediate concern of those who would govern for another six years. With election fever subsiding and the legislative canvass of presidential...

A job well done

by Felipe B. Miranda - June 24, 2004 - 12:00am

There is hardly anything that goes right in this country. The simplest things are confounded beyond understanding. The most straightforward tasks suffer systematic complications ensuring their habitual non-performance....

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