Chapter 12: The End of the Beginning Manila awaited anxiously as the coast guard cutter Anemone, steaming at full speed from the Visayas, made its way to the capital. The two days of a nation deprived of a president were about to end. The man who thought he was in danger of succumbing to heart [...]
Chapter 2: The coming man (1892-1922) On the first of January 1892, in the town of Capiz in the province of the same name, a posthumous child was born. The child’s mother was Rosario Acuna vda. De Roxas, a widow only 22 years of age, her giving birth shrouded by two tragedies. Her husband, Gerardo, [...]
Chapter 1 The End of the Beginning IN the year of our lord 1948, in the hot summer month of July, the Philippines could look forward to celebrating its second birthday as an independent state. But that wasn’t what really interested people. Then, as now, what was on people’s minds was the coming election. It [...]
The Long View The Thais and us (1) By Manuel L. Quezon III Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 03:41:00 04/13/2009 Joe Studwell in “Asian Godfathers” wrote that in Southeast Asia, two countries stand out for the promiscuous attitudes of their politicians when it comes to party affiliation: the Philippines and Thailand. The question is, why? [...]
Recently, In two columns, God on trial and The inner light of a man, I mentioned the BBC film, God on Trial (this is different from Elie Wiesel’s play). The scene above is the culminating argument made by a rabbi, condemning God. The film is actually a series of powerful dialogues on faith. In Losing [...]
Let China sleep, for when she awakes, she will shake the world. -Napoleon The East is Red! -Mao Zedong (upon reaching the summit of Mount Taishan) If capitalism is restored in a big socialist country, it will inevitably become a superpower. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which has been carried out in China in recent [...]
The Long View Brains without bodies (2) By Manuel L. Quezon III Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 22:13:00 04/01/2009 When the late Eulogio “Amang” Rodriguez quipped, “Politics is addition,” he probably never thought that the day would come when politics, in this country, would be about subtraction and even division. Democracy, we are told, is [...]
