TheSaturday’s Inquirer editorial pointed out why the executive was wrong and where Philippine courts have been rather wimpy; the editorial quotes the Court of Appeals which said the VFA is not a “legal shield” for American troops, it is protection for the Philippines from foreign troops; though this is not how most people would understand it or even how the Senate understood it when it ratified the agreement.Iloilo City Boy has a fascinating entry on public support for the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Senate debates on it prior to its ratification….  As the editorial put it,As Undersecretary Zosimo Paredes, the often-criticized official responsible for overseeing the Philippine-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), correctly said yesterday: The Palace took the law into its own hands….  By effecting the transfer, stealthily and without a court order, the executive violated the law it was sworn to serve.TheThe Bunker Chronicles proposes a price rollback instead of a wage hike.

THE LONG VIEW Out of touch    By Manuel L. Quezon III Inquirer First Posted 01:05am (Mla time) 01/08/2007   THE JOKE FROM THE PINK PANTHER SHOULD be familiar. Inspector Clouseau sits beside a man and a dog. Clouseau smiles at the man and the dog. “Does your dog bite?” Clouseau asks the man. The [...]

James Seng explains how submarine cables are fixed and looks at Singapore’s cable situation.A blog entry from last week at eeetsie’s world points out how irrelevant the Philippines seems in the disruption caused by the earthquake….  Not to mention this appeal:TM Malaysia Business chief executive officer (CEO), Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa said: “This episode has clearly pointed out how dependent the Asian countries are on these links and it has certainly persuaded many providers, TM included, to rethink our respective business continuity strategies for the future in view of the Pacific basin’s susceptibility to natural disasters.”“This recent disruption of our Internet services has also highlighted to us the sheer number of local sites that are not hosted locally in the country.  Malaysia has more than sufficient capacity for web hosting services and it would be timely for us to collectively have a change of mindset with regards to our local capabilities in hosting Malaysian content,” he added.“I would like to encourage all organizations and individuals to host their websites locally not only to leverage on the country’s strong infrastructure for hosting services but also to be more self-reliant to ensure that disasters like this do not have such impact on them.”This directly fits in with the purpose of having the recently launched Malaysian Internet Exchange (MyIX) for improving domestic traffic and keeping it within the country.”Now the layman probably knows everything to know about Singapore and Malaysia’s situation but for a Filipino, there seems precious little information coming from any source.

The year is off to a very bad, tiring, and frustrating start for anyone in an www-dependent line of work.Plan A (2007 edition): Another People’s Initiative, with attention paid to dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.Plan B (2007 edition): A Senate Slate.  According to RG Cruz, the administration slate tentatively includes:Presidential chief of staff Mike Defensor, Congressmen Robert Ace Barbers, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Majority Leader Prospero Nograles, Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya, prospero pichay, ace durano, angelo reyes, mike enriquez and korina sanchez and Finance Secretary Margarito Teves.  However othe reliable administration sources said 6 slots are reserved for some opposition politicians who are lobbying to be part of the slate, as well as members of the Senate’s Wednesday group, Senators Joker Arroyo, Ralph Recto, Francis Pangilinan, and Senate President Manuel Villar.There are two election-related blog entries of note: Mongster’s Nest suggests the point of unity for the opposition shouldn’t be a crude dislike of the President, but instead, a positive coming-together against hunger, which would emphasize the trickle-down assumptions of the administration.

In previous years, the President’s setting up camp was accompanied by little more than sycophantic banners in the Country Club and the obvious presence of officials in the city.  This year, the President seems to have taken a large chunk of the armed forces with her.For all I know, the same number of troops accompanied her in the past, but they were quite obvious this time around, particularly at the back of the Mansion House property, where APC’s lurked behind the trees and the roadside featured clusters of soldiers in full battle gear posted at regular intervals, complete with tents.  Baguio during the holidays is a pretty laid back place, but there was nothing laid back about these security precautions.