The Manila Times Opinion

19/07/2025

WE write to respectfully bring to your attention certain inaccuracies in The Manila Times editorial titled “Poor staff planning at ERC,” published on July 17, 2025.

19/07/2025

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut — Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, it has been virtually impossible to keep up with all the extreme measures, incendiary rhetoric, personnel changes, policy reversals, and breaches of rules and norms, from intelligence leaks to defiance of court orders. That is by design: like European fascists in the 20th century, Trump knows that it is far easier to manipulate and suppress an overwhelmed, divided and disoriented public than an informed, engaged and assured one.

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut — Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, it has been virtually impossible to keep up with all the extreme measures, incendiary rhetoric, personnel changes, policy reversals, and breaches of rules and norms, from intelligence leaks to defiance of court ord...

19/07/2025

Idioms

19/07/2025

OVER the past two weeks, the Philippines has been besieged by a barrage of controversies and crises, each more damning than the last. First, there’s the 20-percent tax on savings, a policy that punishes the modest aspirations of ordinary Filipinos under the guise of fiscal reform. Then came the revelation of Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr.’s alleged secret Maltese citizenship, an issue that raises red flags about national loyalty at the highest echelons of defense leadership. Simultaneously, the suspicious death of Paolo Tantoco, allegedly from a co***ne overdose, with whispered insinuations implicating the first lady, among others, has further fueled public distrust, especially in the eerie silence from Malacañang quarters.

OVER the past two weeks, the Philippines has been besieged by a barrage of controversies and crises, each more damning than the last. First, there’s the 20-percent tax on savings, a policy that punishes the modest aspirations of ordinary Filipinos under the guise of fiscal reform. Then came the re...

19/07/2025

Last of two parts

19/07/2025

I HAD already prepared my write-up for this column on Thursday morning, but I decided to change it at the last minute due to the unusually heavy traffic in the early evening of the same day — or should I say, the typically “usual” traffic we’ve come to expect?

19/07/2025

SO explosive is the last report of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, that she immediately became the only UN rapporteur to be sanctioned by a United States administration. At a meeting, Albanese was declared unfit for her office by the US permanent representative to the UN, and President Donald Trump himself wrote the UN secretary-general to fire her for being antisemitic and supportive of terrorists.

SO explosive is the last report of Francesca Albanese, the United Nations rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, that she immediately became the only UN rapporteur to be sanctioned by a United States administration. At a meeting, Albanese was declared unfi...

19/07/2025

I ONCE lived in an apartment in Cubao. It was near three bus stations. The first three floors were rented out to transients who would take the buses to the provinces. You’d see harried mothers, indifferent fathers and bawling children trudging up the stairs, dragging their pieces of luggage.

19/07/2025

First word

19/07/2025

NOTHING is more repulsive than a society that turns death into political po*******hy. The tragic passing of Paolo Tantoco has become nothing more than a cheap prop in the hands of opportunists who care little about the dead and everything about scoring political points. Leading this circus is the sudden emergence of an alleged police report from none other than the Beverly Hills Police Department (BHPD), supposedly naming the first lady of the Philippines as if she were part of some sinister plot.

NOTHING is more repulsive than a society that turns death into political po*******hy. The tragic passing of Paolo Tantoco has become nothing more than a cheap prop in the hands of opportunists who care little about the dead and everything about scoring political points. Leading this circus is the su...

18/07/2025

Trinity anniversary greeted by a world on the brink

18/07/2025

DOCTORED REPORT?