IN a move as shocking as it is anomalous, Solicitor General Marlene Berberabe asked the Supreme Court on March 6 to reverse the 2020 conviction by the Manila Regional Trial Court — affirmed unanimously by the three-man Court of Appeals in 2022 — of Rappler CEO Maria Ressa for cyberlibel in a suit filed by a businessman in 2017.

Ressa and her accomplice, Reynaldo Santos Jr., were found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime of cyberlibel, ordered jailed for six months to six years and to pay the complainant P400,000. The two, however, asked the Supreme Court in July 2022 to reverse the courts’ conviction. Both are out on bail.

SolGen Berberabe shocked the legal community when she asked the court to acquit Ressa, claiming the one-year prescription for the crime had lapsed, pointing to an October 2023 decision by the Supreme Court. She conveniently ignored an earlier 2018 court ruling in Tolentino v. People (GR 24031, Aug. 6, 2018) that the prescription period is 15 years.

WHEN the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran earlier this year, the first reaction was not only on the battlefield. It was on Wall Street. Within hours of the attack, shares of America’s largest weapons manufacturers began climbing. Investors immediately understood the signal: Conflict means rising military spending, and rising military spending means profits for the companies that build the machinery of war, even push for such conflicts that kill millions of humans.

This reaction was not surprising. War has long been good business for the American defense industry, the euphemism for war-weapons firms. The surge in defense stocks after the Iran strike offered a revealing glimpse into the economic engine that former US president Dwight Eisenhower warned about more than six decades ago: the military-industrial complex.

Eisenhower knew what he was talking about. Before entering politics, he had commanded Allied forces during World War II, overseeing one of the largest military campaigns in history. In his farewell address in 1961, he cautioned Americans that the US had created something unprecedented: a permanent alliance between a massive military establishment and a powerful arms industry. This system, he warned, possessed the potential to acquire “unwarranted influence” over national policy.

THERE is an alarming fact about the Philippine economy that rarely enters public debate: If global oil imports suddenly stopped, the country would likely begin running out of fuel in three to four weeks. That fact has now moved from theoretical vulnerability to urgent reality.

China — which has the second-biggest oil reserves (strategic petroleum reserves) in the world with 1 billion barrels — could have supplied us with some oil, but it’s likely they won’t, thanks to the Ferdinand Marcos Jr. regime’s belligerent stance against the superpower, with defense officials even declaring it as the biggest threat to the country.

As part of its retaliation for the brutal joint US-Israeli strikes on its territory, Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow maritime corridor through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil normally flows, allowing only tankers from countries that are not helping the US-Israeli aggression.

Shipping companies have halted transits, with many of their tankers now anchored just outside the Strait. Insurance coverage for vessels entering the Gulf has evaporated. President Trump had earlier boasted that US warships will escort oil tankers through the strait. That has proven to be an empty threat: Trump’s warships dare not, as they’d likely go down with the tankers.

THE picture that reality paints about water supply in Muntinlupa inside the concession area of Maynilad is one of stark contrast.

On one hand, residents agonize over the often utter absence of water in their taps, grappling for answers that jargon dished out by Maynilad intentionally fails to provide.

On the other, profit numbers are glowing in the dark for the company that revels in praise releases claiming good service on paper.

AS dreadful as the adverse impact on our nation of corruption on a gargantuan scale — dirty money in suitcases — is the utter incompetence in governance of this regime. We will be suffering from it if the US-Israeli war against Iran escalates.

I certainly hope US President Trump — after talking to Russian leader Putin — was telling the truth when he said just the other day that the American-Israeli war vs Iran will end “very soon.” Even as the shock wave of that war — mainly through oil prices — hasn’t really hit us yet, our supposed leader has demonstrated that he just lacks the mettle and the fire-in-the-belly to lead nation through a crisis.

Probably fed up with the pressure to address the coming crisis, President Marcos Jr. with his wife flew the other day to New York, purportedly because he needed to address the yearly meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and to lobby for the Philippines to get a seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2027-2028. Those are flimsy excuses for another New York junket. He should have used, as netizens cried out in social media, the over P100 million he is spending for his trip to evacuate our OFWs in the Middle East.

THE cyberlibel case brought by mutineer and former senator Antonio Trillanes against 18 Marines who revealed to the nation that they were ordered to be mules for the physical delivery of billions of pesos in graft money to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his cousin Martin Romualdez, and two dozen other elected officials and bureaucrats, is such a shameless attempt at a cover-up, to silence patriots who are risking their lives to expose this regime’s corruption at an unprecedented scale.  I argued in my column a week ago that mainstream media is now under Marcos’ full control, so that our democracy,  one of whose major pillars is a free press, is in danger because it totally ignored the explosive exposé. With media bannering the Trillanes’ denial of the allegations, I rest my case. 

Eighteen Marines in a signed, notarized affidavit said they had been employed by Romualdez’s top operator, former congressman Zaldy Co, as his security personnel.  They disclosed that Co or his staff ordered them to deliver many suitcases filled with billions of pesos in cash to the residences or offices of Marcos, Romualdez, and two dozen other officials. They provided dates, photos, names of individuals that prepare the money. Yet mainstream media did not report these allegations, not even in below-the-fold inside pages, in order not to draw attention to the claims. 

In contrast, former Ilocos Sur governor Chavit Singson alleged in 2001 that he delivered jueteng money and funds from the tobacco excise taxes to President Joseph Estrada. Even if Singson didn’t provide photos of such delivery, his allegations became headline news for weeks, and with media’s persistence in following up on these, Estrada was eventually impeached by Congress, forcing him to abdicate his presidency. 

IN less than a week, the US and Israel’s war against Iran may have turned the tide — with thetwo most warlike states in the world now on the defensive,…

THE explosive exposé of 18 Marines, that they were ordered to act as mules to deliver P805 billion of graft money in cash to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his cousin, the former House speaker Martin Romualdez, and two dozen of their officials and allies in Congress has revealed the utter depravity of this regime.

More than that, it has torn down the illusion that we have a robust and free press that is a pillar of democracy.

Nearly all mainstream media, especially the broadsheets, did not publish the allegations the day after they were made. They didn’t even bury the story in the inside pages. The Philippine Star’s banner headline for that day “BBM: Talks under way for possible successor”; and the Philippine Daily Inquirer: “ICC tackles drug war role DU30 officials” — stories of no consequence at all.