Pushing the envelope
News today:
Cha-Cha proponents claim victory in GenSan, SouthCot (MindaNews)
Chief Justice believes death penalty unconstitutional (Inquirer): can he say that?
Ex-Philippine president named in spy plot (San Jose Mercury News, through AP): see Coffee with Amee’s commentary.
People Power in Nepal hailed: A democratic triumph in Nepal says Thailand’s Nation in its editorial, This Is No Rah-Rah Revolt writes Tariq Ali in The Guardian (via the Arab News).
The Inquirer editorial examines the President’s hostility towards the Philippine Senate; the Daily Business Mirror editorializes on the reexamination of gasoline VAT policy sending the wrong message. Go Figure has some challenging thoughts questioning the wisdom of arguments made in favor of official intervention in gas prices.
The Supreme Court’s decision (SC rules Palace ban on rallies is illegal: Decision is unanimous: 13-0) on the policy of “Calibrated, Pre-emptive, Response (with yet another decision, this time on the proclamation of a state of national emergency expected very soon) results in official defiance: Police will still disperse illegal street protests–PNP.
The PCIJ blog has a roundup of the decision, reactions, and what led to the policy. Edwin Lacierda says the decision raises some troubling questions, including, what happens to those arrested and charged due to invoking a policy that’s now declared unconstitutional?
My view is that while the Supreme Court’s decisions are pretty comforting, they do lay out the possibility for conflicting interpretations that will require more cases. Yet the most troubling question which will never be answered is, why did resolving the cases take so long? Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to look up how long it took other landmark cases to be resolved, though my suspicion is, it didn’t take six to seven months as in these cases involving EO 464 and CPR. The aggressiveness with which the decisions have been met by officials in the Executive Branch, also suggests that the administration will continue pushing the envelope -just as its opponents will, too.
After All is exasperated over Red Tide alerts -and non-alerts. Now What, Cat? is infuriated (and rightly so) over ordinary people being bilked by their higher-ups, and how such behavior can be contagious and even held by people you’d normally consider unlikely to give employees the shaft.
caffeine-sparks on bilingualism, the dominance of one language in intellectual discourse, and language prejudice. Taking off from recent cases over agonizing over language, baratillo books cinema @ cubao eloquently explains why he reads (and alas, why is it too few do).
A series of highly interesting entries on blogging: big mango with an overview, an analysis, and a summation, on the purposes served by blogs in public and political discourse in the Philippines: specifically, their role in constructing solutions for a troubled country (ours). Via Barako Cafe: from BuzzMachine, Guilt by association (continuing newspaper hostility to blogs) and Press in peace (do we need newspapers? Specifically, newspapers on paper?); and kottke.org on there being two kinds of bloggers: “referential and experiential” -
The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth — extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes — but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.
The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply narrative, not reference it.
Or we can both! One thing’s sure: everyone is, by nature, a Linnaeus. We like to categorize, organize, define, the world to make sense of it.
And from Slate: This Is My Last Entry: Why I shut down my blog.
My Arab News column for this week is Will the Philippines Be Able to Use Ethanol? History Suggests Not.
Technorati Tags: constitution, journalism, people power, people’s initiative, Philippines, politics
