‘A horror’: French president vows ‘pitiless’ counterattack after terrorists kill 149 in Paris
Dozens are dead, the country’s borders are closed and the city of Paris has been flooded with soldiers after an “unprecedented” string of terrorist attacks struck the capital Friday night – the worst to hit France since the Second World War.
“If the ‘matuwid na daan’ continues, in a generation’s time we’ll be a First World country,” an emotional President Aquino said in his final State of the Nation Address last July. More of the same rhetoric on our “great leap forward” to modernity will surely make it to the airwaves as the Aquino administration hosts the Economic Leaders Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) in Manila on Nov. 18-19.
unwitting court jesters of the world, filipinos are, the philippine government, even religious leaders, included. we’re always good for a laugh or two, laglag bala being only the latest gaffe that has the world laughing in exasperation if not in pain, for us. as for the looming summit, we won’t even need stand-up comics to entertain putin and obama atbp. happily shutting down this third world economy so world leaders can safely party for their economic gains is already too tragic-comic for words anyway. esp because the palace doesn’t get it. joke’s on us.
i thought it was white noise that would go away fast — something the aquino admin would quickly resolve the most painless and graceful way possible, seeing as the APEC summit looms, and the idea is to put our best foot forward, kunwari walang traffic in the air and on land, walang vagrants and beggars, everything’s perfect, lalo na (dapat) sa notorious NAIA.
so i don’t get it. that it’s gotten to the point when travelers are wrapping up their bags and suitcases in plastic, what a hassle, and what a spectacle! yet the palace does not mind? the palace does not see it as too embarrassing, too mortifying, for words — this only-in-the-philippines moment, LOL — and can’t see a way to simply decriminalize possession of a bullet or two? or confiscate it but let the traveller go? after all, really, what’s a bullet without a gun? am i missiing something here?
otherwise, it would seem to be a show of due process kuno to spare who-knows-who. or, wait, is this in aid of distracting from the lumad who are now in liwasang bonifacio and whose presence in manila and the rightness of whose cause the palace has yet to acknowledge? someone please say it isn’t so.