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Uphold the Right to Education: Fight for a Higher Budget for Social Services
All over the world, mass movements against worsening poverty, social inequality and government budget cuts for education and social services are unfolding daily. These popular uprisings have risen up...
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Memory and History
Memory is life, borne by living societies founded in its name. It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations,...
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The Filipino Youth and Social Transformation [1]
In these times of national crisis and global upheavals, there is a need for an active youth that can unite with the oppressed in struggle against injustice and tyranny. But if one looks at popular...
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The Philippine Educational System [1]
Education is generally described as “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction.”[2] It is a basic human right because it is considered one of the fundamental guarantees that enable an...
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Kababaihan, isabuhay ang diwa ng Marso 8! Makibaka para sa pambansang...
Mensahe ng Anakbayan para sa Pandaigdigang Araw ng Kababaihan Marso 2012 Isinilang ang Marso 8, Pandaigdigang Araw ng mga Kababaihan, ng militanteng paglaban ng mga kababaihang manggagawa sa panahon ng...
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Glimpses of Life in Auschwitz
For every person missing at the roll-call, ten would be shot. Transport The corporal saluted smartly and replied ‘Wieviel Stück’ The corporal saluted smartly and replied that there were six hundred and...
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My Father’s Notebook: Kader Abdolah’s Novel of 20th Century Iran
The English translation of My Father’s Notebook is the only book by Kader Abdolah that I’ve read. The novel is also my first and only encounter with the exiled Iranian writer who now lives in the...
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On the Contemporariness of Dante’s Inferno
This was recovered from some of my old notebooks when I was still a lousy student of literature in the University of the Philippines Visayas. 1. Dante Alighieri’s Inferno is often compared to...
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The Political Economy of Art in My Name is Red
A great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately, he succeeds in changing the landscape of our minds. The first chapter of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red is...
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A Brief History on How the Communist Manifesto was Published and Propagated
In the spring of 1847 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels agreed to join the so-called League of the Just [Bund der Gerechten], an offshoot of the earlier League of the Outlaws [Bund der Geächteten], a...
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The Real Score: Akbayan’s Opportunist Roots And Bogus Reformism
Left to Right: Etta Rosales (Former Akbayan Rep. and Present Commission on Human Rights Director), Mar Roxas (Department of Interior and Local Gov Director and Liberal Party Chief), Risa Hontiveros...
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Chakravyuh: A Flawed but Relevant Film on the Maoist Revolution in India
I was able to watch the film Chakravyuh, but minus the subtitles. Without the dialogue, I did not understand the minute details and nuances. But the scenes and the action were enough to give you an...
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Dead as a Dodo and The End of the World
Painting “The Dodo & Given”, by G. Edwards (1759) Today is said to be the end of world according to some interpretations of the ancient Mayan calendar. That we will be facing Armageddon today has...
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The Maoist Temptation and the 60s French Intellectuals
Despite several reservations—especially, my lack of blind faith in Mao’s China—I sympathize with the Maoists. They present themselves as revolutionary socialists, in opposition to the Soviet Union’s...
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A Rejoinder on Slavoj Žižek and Imperialism
Žižek’s idealistic political philosophy that apparently endorses revolutionary terror stands side by side with a generous use of counterrevolutionary clichés when discussing actual revolutionary...
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The End of the Vietnam War
Nguyen Van Thieu had constructed himself a worthy Presidential Palace set in the middle of a great park in the center of Saigon, with a vast ballroom, a swimming pool, game salons, a cinema, and a...
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Facebook Revolution? Social Media, the 2013 Elections, and the National...
Note: This is a talk I gave to campus journalists of the University of the Philippines system during a Conference of the UP Solidaridad in UP Visayas Miagao, Iloilo last May 16, 2013. When Pixel...
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What does nationalism mean today?
This is an essay I wrote for the Philippine Online Chronicles. Street children are once again selling little Philippine flags in busy downtown streets. The relatively well-off families display flaglets...
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Giap: Ang mga Saligang Usapin sa Ating Digma ng Pagpapalaya
Vo Nguyen Giap, “Ang Digma ng Pagpapalaya 1945-1954” Ang Sining Militar ng Digmang Bayan: Piling mga Akda ni Heneral Vo Nguyen Giap (2012) Ang digma ng pagpapalaya ng mamamayang Byetnames ay isang...
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Not Even a Needle! Pre-WW2 Colonial Economy Still True Today
We had absolutely no industry to speak of. We remained a completely agricultural economy, importing virtually all our requirements of finished goods, and paying for these with the export earnings of...
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