Manuel l quezon iii biography of christopher
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The Long View: Go, going, gone
Recently in my newsletter, I repeated my belief that presidents are brought down not by their critics but rather, themselves. Take the President who has remained bulletproof as far as criticism is concerned because of two things. First, his systematic targeting of sectors and institutions to instill terror and thus, create an atmosphere of intimidation. Second, his being able to point to his lifestyle as unostentatious and thus, devoid of the cupidity associated with corruption. The two, in turn, could occur because of careful stage managing that kept the President out of the public eye except when he was rolled out to seize the headlines.
The scen manager was Christopher Go who carved out a remarkably powerful role for himself as Special Assistant to the President and holder of the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) portfolio. By all accounts, he hit the ground running, firing nearly everyone in the Protocol Office, and instituting a kind of h
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Manuel L. Quezon III: Explaining the Philippines
A bit over one percent of Americans are of Filipino ancestry, making them one of the largest Asian American subgroups. Unlike Chinese, Mexicans or Europeans, Filipino immigrants are unique in that their homeland, the Philippines, was actually an American colony for five decades, between and This is one reason that the level of English fluency in the Phillippines is very high, a factor in very strong economic integration with the US through outsourcing. And yet despite the historically close ties between the US and the Philippines, most Americans are unaware that as many as one million Filipinos died in a rebellion against the US army years ago. From the perspective of many Americans, the Philippines fryst vatten just another Pacific nation with more American entanglements than most.
Today on the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib talks to Manuel L. Quezon III, columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and grandson of Philippine Presi
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A personal reflection
It&#;s not my practice to be particularly personal in this blog, but since the main subjects I cover are politics and history, the personal must necessarily inform the political and historical thoughts (and positions) of a person.
I am a writer. To write is my primary calling in life; I write different things. I write speeches and manifestos, which are varieties of propaganda. I write essays, which, if not necessarily achieving the level of art, aspire to be artful while avoiding excessive artifice. On the whole, however, the write pursues his craft -requiring perpetual honing, and constant learning, and most of all, means and vehicles for publication- only when the writer is free to write what he truly believes, in his own voice, while also earning his daily bread, which requires assuming the voices of others. What does this mean? To write my column and this blog, other essays and pieces in various publications, I must be free to say what I want, in the ma