Neoliberalism and our multiple crises in the COVID era: Dare to struggle, dare to win

November 1, 2020

Features | We may survive the pandemic, but we are headed towards even greater downward pressure on wages and working conditions amid greater repression of organized labor. We are headed towards increasing compulsion of capitalists to seek rapid growth at all costs, including environmental and social costs.

Talking ‘bout a (bike) revolution

July 1, 2020

BIRD FEED

In Metro Manila, you have to be a warrior to assert more sustainable options for mobility, including simply being a pedestrian. You have to fight for a lane, a space, a green light, a minute. And as a female cyclist, you also have to fight for a little respect. On the road, we are the lowest form of life, along with the mass of public transport commuters who struggle everyday to get to their destinations. It’s a lonely road.

Part 2: The anomaly of transport modernization

June 27, 2020

FEATURES

The Duterte government can address the transport crisis in the time of COVID-19 and in fact can look at the pandemic as an opportunity to overhaul the system. The health protocols may be followed indeed if only the government recognizes and addresses the transport crisis in a scientific manner.

The anomaly of transport modernization

June 26, 2020

FEATURES

If there is anything that COVID-19 has emphasized, it is the fact that the Philippine transport sector is in its worst crisis – a reality that the Duterte administration had repeatedly denied before the pandemic. If the economy has to transition to a genuinely better shape, the government has to address the basic woes of the transport sector. Vice versa, if the mass transport system has to be more efficient, the economy has to be transitioned to a genuinely better one.

PH Debt: All’s well that swells

June 13, 2020

The finance department underscores the need for government to borrow from foreign sources to fund its economic recovery plan. Multilateral and country creditors have unsurprisingly exploited the situation and recycled funds to lend. But do we really need to borrow for COVID-19 response? How are we going to pay for all of these debts?

GCQ Reality Check

May 27, 2020

BIRD FEED | Rosario Guzman | Struggling with the dilemma for about a month now – caught between the lack of science and intense pressure from big business to continue profit-making – the Duterte government is about to decide to transition the country to a general community quarantine (GCQ).

Why can’t food self-sufficiency be our new normal?

May 8, 2020

FEATURES

From the outset of the Duterte government’s military lockdown as its response to the spread of the coronavirus, it has directed the continuous flow of food commodities, along with medicines and other essentials. Food is inarguably essential to people’s survival during a pandemic and in its socioeconomic aftermath.

In the time of COVID: Hello, Earth

April 22, 2020

Today marks the 50th year of the commemoration of Earth Day. Environmental activists vow that it will not just be a day but a movement. But in as much as we would want to manifest this human solidarity in a rally and mass gathering, we cannot – we are on our sixth week of a […]

Why do we keep on begging China for friendship?

April 21, 2020

BY ROSARIO GUZMAN

In the face of the Filipino people’s growing anxieties about COVID-19 and life after the lockdown, president Duterte keeps heaping praises on China.