Tag: Greg B. Macabenta
On serving and dying for one’s country
Last Saturday, April 7, over two dozen surviving Filipino World War II veterans and the next of kin of those who had passed away...
Eddie Garcia should be a National Artist for Film
To be inducted into the Order of the National Artists of the Philippines (Pambansang Alagad ng Sining ng Pilipinas) is, doubtless, the apex of...
Unwitting Zuckers of Zuckerberg’s Facebook
George Orwell’s omnipresent Big Brother, which he predicted in his book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, written in 1949, may have already become a reality. And we...
Boracay is just the tip of the garbage dump
I’m one of the few who have never been to Boracay, so I won’t know what I will be missing if President Rodrigo R....
If Trump were President of the Philippines
At my favorite watering hole in Daly City, the guys are discussing the travails of President Donald Trump, some with sympathy, most with derision....
Fighting fake news with fake news
Communications Secretary Martin Andanar recently announced the launching of a satellite network, ostensibly to deliver the news directly to the far-flung barangays. The objective:...
The Wild, Wild West Wing
The West Wing of the White House is where the office of the president of the United States is located, along with other executive...
The travails of a presidential spokesperson
In a moment of pique, I recently posted on social media that I always thought Harry Roque, spokesman of President Rodrigo Duterte, was “marunong”...
US Congressional gold medal for Filipino WWII veterans
On April 7 at the historic Presidio in San Francisco, surviving Filipino World War II veterans or their next of kin living in Northern...
Squid tactics
Two parallel issues (call them controversies or scandals -- your choice) involving the occupants of the White House and Malacañang have been hogging the...
Muzzling the media
The shutdown of online media outfit, Rappler, reminds me of a sequence in the film, Walking Tall, the biopic about Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser....
Holding the citizenry hostage
As I write this, President Donald Trump has just signed a bill representing a continuing resolution that would end the shutdown of the US...
Are Filipinos racists like Trump?
According to critics, President Donald Trump is not just a racist, he is also a barefaced liar and a coward who doesn’t have the...
Mababaw ang kaligayahan
Mababaw ang kaligayahan loosely means easy to please. The recent Pulse Asia performance and trust ratings of President Rodrigo Duterte, which remain impressively high,...
An opportunity to modernize Parañaque
If EDSA has become known as “carmageddon” (or the Armageddon of cars) because of the horrible traffic, Sucat Road aka as Dr. A. Santos...
Of pushers, politicians, and presidents
A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook two anti-drug abuse ads that I created back in 1972. The headline of one read, “Is...
Preempting a looming power crisis
It is said that if hindsight is a perfect science, that makes scientists of our country’s national leaders and bureaucrats. In administration after administration,...
The browning of America
Advertising is one indicator of changes in lifestyle, social mores, fashion, and language. One such development that has become apparent in US television commercials...
Harsh practical political realities
If you were to read The Washington Post account of President Donald Trump’s recent trip to Asia, you would sense some exasperation between the...
Making an apple look like a banana
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s self-serving assertion that any unflattering media reports about him are “fake news,” CNN, which has been among...
Two investigations, two different prospects
It’s fascinating comparing the way the investigation of alleged wrong-doing by the Presidents of the Philippines and the United States, Rodrigo Duterte and Donald...
War won? Cancer gone?
We should all be grateful that the war in Marawi is over. We owe the AFP and the PNP a debt of gratitude for...
Learn to dance with the music
Paying a visit to relatives in a small provincial town is always an interesting experience if you are a columnist desperate to find a...
The post-Marcos, post-Martial law generation
Current developments in our country are bringing back the specter of martial law. President Rodrigo Duterte has given not-too-subtle hints about declaring it. And...
Mueller, Morales, Dotard, and Duterte
The similarities are too striking to ignore.
Both US President Donald Trump (whom North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un called a “dotard”) and President Rodrigo Duterte...
Welcome to the Age of Vulgarity
When then presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte called His Holiness Pope Francis, “putang ina ka,” because Duterte got stuck in traffic due to the Pope’s...
May angal, circa 2017?
I wrote a piece entitled “May Angal?” (meaning, Any Complaints) back in April, 2010 when the Filipino people felt they had enough of the...
Have the courts been displaced by the Senate and social media?
Time was, whenever a major corruption scandal or a heinous crime exploded in the public sphere, old timers like myself followed the developments in...
No way corruption in government can be stopped
I endured several hours of streaming video of the hearings being conducted by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, chaired by Sen. Dick Gordon, on...
Time for Pacquiao to retire?
Ad Lib
By Greg B. Macabenta
There is no doubt in my mind that Manny Pacquiao won against Australian Jeff Horn. The CompuBox statistics showed Pacquiao...