A Business Graduate's Reviewing History Blog

The 40th anniversary of the 1986 EDSA Revolution came last month. Benigno Simeon "Ninoy" A. Aquino Jr. said these words: "According to Gandhi, the willing sacrifice of the innocent is the most powerful answer to insolent tyranny that has yet been conceived by God and man." Basically, EDSA 1986 can't claim to be all too unique. Ninoy had made Gandhi an inspiration. The dictatorship of the First Marcos Administration may be over . However, the Philippines is still stuck in another dictatorship called the dictatorship of the Filipino First Policy . It does sound stupid, but even without Marcos or foreign colonization (please stop mistaking foreign investment with foreign invasion ), there's still some oppression to fight. You can think about decades of overly high taxes and restrictions on foreign investments.  Now, we need to look at the historical context in which Gandhi's "tax evasion" occurred. According to a Jagran Josh   article written by ...

Flor Contemplacion has been dead for more than a decade. However, we still have had 30 years of Flor Contemplacion Crybabies spreading fake news about her "innocence" . The sentiment was pretty much that Flor was innocent, there was some hatred for Singapore going on, and the narrative was that Flor was a saint. I thought about this torture scene (not available in the free edition  on VIVA Films' YouTube channel), but it's available if you either rent or buy the film on YouTube Movies. It's probably because of the Terms and Conditions that YouTube allows for free-for-all movies. You can rent the movie for PHP 180.00 (SD) if you don't want to own the film, but want to see the uncut experience. It's still that clear despite being SD.  For some indicators, if you want to see the paid  movie vs. the free movie, here are some differences between the free movie from VIVA Films vs. the paid version: 1:27:01 timemark (free movie) is also found in 1:27:01--1:27:02 ...

  It's something that I read crybaby comments online where people are saying, "Making EDSA a special working day is making us forget the glory of EDSA." Please, let me remind people that even 10 years later , neither the late Lee Kuan Yew's birthday nor his death anniversary has become a national holiday in Singapore! Singapore simply honored LKY's birthday by working on that day. I was laughing at the toxic Facebook page called We Are Millennials. What truly made me think that these people are stuck in nostalgia is that EDSA 1986 would never have been possible if the Filipinos were stuck in nostalgia . I remember talks about how the first Marcos administration was built on these two pillars. The first pillar was information control . The other pillar was toxic positivity. I remember back in 1995 when the social studies teacher talked about how he thought that Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. was a "good president" due to the long holidays. However, the holidays ...

Would you still want to hate to follow rules? Well, it's time to think about the tragic loss of Kingston Ralph Ko Cheng , who lost his life because someone in the road didn't want to follow simple guidelines. It was two days ago when, suddenly, Kington's life was taken away from him. It was difficult for me to process what happened. I would like to share my thoughts of this reckless incident of what happens when laws are ignored. Either you become the victim (for not following rules) or you end up someone who follows rules (like what happened to Kingston). Here's something I found on Facebook : The Price of Paper Laws   Kingston Ralph Ko Cheng was 23. A Monash university graduate, a talented musician, and a café owner, he moved back to Cebu to build a life. That life ended on a pedestrian crossing near his home.   A speeding Toyota Innova hit him with such force it threw his body into a utility pole. The driver, 21-year-old Sean Andrew Pajarillo, had already hit a parke...

Let me get this straight, I'm not here to totally dismiss the good that the late Benigno Simeon "Ninoy" C. Aquino III did. I'll try to be least biased  when I'm writing this to "give a shock" to those who tend to treat his term as a "magical time". However, I'm going to have to warn people about the problem of looking for "another Messiah leader". Yesterday was the would've been 66th birthday of Noynoy if he were alive. One can talk good about Noynoy's legacy. However, we need to realize that relying on Noynoy's term is a violation of the Mahathir Mohamad principle of "Never stop learning."  We need to think that there's only one Noynoy and when he died, he died . TV-5 reveals that Rep. Edgar Erice, a long-time friend of the late leader, also said the following: Caloocan City 2nd District Rep. Edgar Erice made the remark in a social media post marking Aquino’s 66th birth anniversary.  In the post, he co...

It was in 2012 when the Chona Mae incident happened. I remember the panic when people were running the opposite direction while I was working at Downtown, Cebu. The traffic was bad. People were panikcing. But the real twist? It was actually a father looking for his daughter, whose identity we may never know.  The Cebu Daily News   said this last 2022, which was before entering the post-COVID world: CEBU CITY, Philippines — It has been a decade since the famous “Chona Mae” line was uttered by a father looking for her daughter after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck the island of Cebu, February 6, 2012 .  From what was a simple call of a father to his daughter turned out to be the biggest tsunami scare in Cebu City.  “Ang tubig naa na sa Colon!” ("The Water is already in Colon!") was the line that has gotten everyone running on the street of Cebu looking for shelters up in the mountain parts of Cebu.  Today, we remember that frightful yet somehow funny day that w...

It's easy to post an outrage on Facebook, whether it's on the Butthurt Philippines' Facebook page or Gerry Cacanindin's relatively open Facebook profile (except that only his friends can comment). I try to ignore the guy's page. I was wondering if Gerry has learned his lesson (that the Philippines badly needs a system upgrade) or if he still wants to believe that "It's just a matter if Leni Robredo or Vico Sotto." The latest Facebook post gives me something to think about: People often ask why some countries seem almost immune to corruption. As if their leaders are just magically more honest. But that’s not really it. The truth is actually simpler. These countries didn’t wait for good people. They built systems where doing something dirty is hard, risky, and usually not worth it. In the least corrupt countries, corruption isn’t just illegal but inconvenient. Paper trails are everywhere. Payments are digital. Contracts are public. Anyone can look up wh...

Today is Rizal Day . It was often the joke of peopel who passed through the Rizal Course that the easiest date to remember was December 30, 1896 (which would get a big anniversary next year). This history blog may just be a hobby . However, I thought about the need to study history not just from one historian but from many historians. I thought about this quote by Rizal that says ignorance leads to slavery. Ignorance may feel like bliss, but like drug addiction or overspending addiction , the bliss is only short-lived . Such bliss can result in destruction of one's appearance faster than natural aging or decay in the grave ever will. An old woman can still look pretty but a drug addict can look unnaturally ugly or even much older than their current age! Back in high school, somebody wrote a simplistic essay called "History: A Teacher". It's too bad that the person may not even have a copy anymore. I don't even have a soft copy of my high school essays as PCs requ...

  I was looking at the Mahal Ko Ang Pilipinas  (I Love the Philippines)  Facebook page, which made me laugh. This is what they wrote on their post saying that the Aquino Family isn't a political dynasty: THE AQUINO FAMILY IS NOT A POLITICAL DYNASTY 🇵🇭🎗 Pro-Duterte blogger Tio Moreno says that Bam Aquino is part of a political dynasty because the Aquino family is a political dynasty. But to me, this is not true. Why is it not true that the Aquino family is a political dynasty? 🤔 1. When Ninoy Aquino entered politics, none of his children joined him in his endeavors, and even his wife Cory did not join him in politics. 2. When Ninoy was assassinated in 1983, none of his children succeeded him in politics, not even his wife. But when the opposition and his supporters were looking to be the opposition's candidate for the presidency in the snap election called by Ferdie Marcos for 1986, his housewife Cory Cojuangco-Aquino was approached, encouraged or convinced by people t...