A bit of good news.

I’ve written before on how the University of the Philippines (U.P.) centennial celebration has brought to the fore the problems plaguing the country’s premier institution of higher learning, the most critical being its perennial lack of funds.

There are many reasons for this sorry state of affairs, including the usual bureaucratic inefficiencies. But the main cause is that the outdated U.P. Charter curtailed the university’s fiscal autonomy, limited its ability to manage its own administrative and financial affairs and kept it hostage to political interests.

Finally, with little fanfare, President Arroyo, herself a U.P. alumna, signed a new charter for the country’s foremost university that now puts it on equal footing with its international counterparts by, among other things, allowing it to significantly raise the salaries of its faculty, improve its facilities and enhance its research capabilities. Read the rest of this entry »

President Arroyo has gained the most from the present rice crisis, which, it terms of her political survival, has been more a boon than a bane for her so far. Despite the obvious threat to her presidency of the rice and other food-related issues, she has managed to put a spin into it that has served her one overriding goal: to stay in power. I have previously written of how it has diverted public attention away from the ZTE broadband corruption scandal and has thrown cold water on opposition efforts to oust her. She has also used it to showcase her supposed crisis management skills and has gone on a media blitz to highlight her so-called hands-on style of leadership. Witness how she has been seen on television inspecting grain storage facilities and supervising the distribution of NFA rice. She even stayed for two hours at the Bureau of Customs just to watch, like a stern schoolmarm, a minor bureau official type out a criminal complaint against an alleged smuggler and hoarder.

But the problem remains, at the core, a political one. Read the rest of this entry »

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday won Pennsylvania’s presidential primary, giving new life to her fading presidential bid. Although polls predicted her victory, she would have to win by a sizable margin for her campaign to regain momentum. The hugely working-class state is representative of middle-America and the traditional Democratic base. Did race and gender play a role in PA ? It would seem so, as Pennsylvania’s Democratic voters were overwhelmingly white and –as usual in Democratic contests — there were more women than men. With nearly all the precincts reporting, Clinton led by 55 percent to 45 percent, although Obama still holds a sizable lead in delegates going into the Indiana primary.

The Hillary camp’s selling point, though, is that the Pennsylvania win confirmed her appeal in the biggest battleground states, like California, Ohio, Texas, Michigan and Florida and that these are the states that will count in the general election against John McCain.

The Clinton campaign is raising doubts about Obama’s abilty to win come November, as they claim the trend shows that Barack is the less electable of the two remaining Democratic candidates. Why so ? Read the rest of this entry »

The “rectum surgery scandal” in Cebu has been getting a lot of attention, and rightfully so, as the doctors behaved abominably in making fun of the man who had to have a long, cylindrical metal object surgically removed from his nether regions following a night of passion with a stranger. Seems that Mr. “X” hooked up with a dude who shoved a body spray container up his anal orifice, maybe with or maybe without consent, it’s not actually clear. This by itself was a bad enough situation.

Problem was, some wise guy took a video and uploaded the procedure in YouTube, including the apparently spontaneous celebration of the surgical team after the successful removal of the foreign object. The sight of the doctors and nurses whooping it up was disgusting, with the head surgeon apparently spraying the contents of the canister all around to show that, contrary to earlier speculations, it was not empty.

Public outrage, as reported in the Inquirer, led Congresswoman Riza Hontiveros-Baraquel to file House Resolution 524 asking for a probe (ooops!) and : Read the rest of this entry »

Or so they say.

I need a break from all the depressing news about the food crisis, corruption scandals and all the other distressing events during these most interesting of times, and want to write about something of little relevance but has fascinated me for years.

While surfing the web for a recent post on Bataan Day, I came across the Wikipedia page of Henry L. Stimson, U.S. Secretary of War during the second world war and former Governor-General of the Philippines. It says that Stimson was a member of Skull and Bones, a Yale University secret society that is reputed to be the most wealthy and influential band of brothers (and since 1992, sisters) in the U.S.

This is the delicious stuff of conspiracy theories, and I’ve had an avid interest in secret brotherhoods and fraternities for decades. Few stories are more compelling than that of Skull and Bones.

The secret society, in a small and indirect way, is also intertwined with our history. Two American Governor-Generals, Stimson (1927-1929) and the popular William Howard Taft (1901-1903), were Bonesmen. Stimson, an unapologetic hawk and colonialist, was a strong opponent of granting independence to the Philippines, finding Fliipinos “not fitted for the responsibilities that go with independence and still less fitted for popular self-government” . On hindsight, he was not far off the mark.

And in as much as the direction of U.S. foreign policy is determined by the occupants of the White House, we are all affected in ways big and small by S & B members who became American Presidents, from William Howard Taft to George W. Bush. Read the rest of this entry »