MORE precisely its repair crew’s unbelievable incompetence, or negligence, did.

Here’s what happened. The other day, at about 6 p.m., right after a thunderstorm in our village, power conked out in our part of the area. It usually does as Meralco’s corporate philosophy is: don’t fix it if ain’t broke. Never mind if many of the transformers and fuses in the area are over 30 years old and get busted in a severe rain or rush of lightning.

The repair crew did arrive at around 7 p.m., and in fact I would have even written a column praising their efficient system for reporting outages and acting on these, which is even faster than those in the banks that I use.

I HOPE President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. was merely misquoted by CNN Philippines. Or perhaps with his busy schedule (he has to appoint over 1,000 important government posts, 3,000 minor ones), he hasn’t yet studied rigorously the South China Sea issue.

But his statement last May 25, as quoted by the local CNN, floored me: “We have a very important ruling in our favor. We will use it to continue to assert our territorial rights. It’s not a claim. It is already our territorial right, and that is what the arbitral ruling can do to help us.”

He was referring to the July 16 ruling by the dubious “arbitration panel” on the territorial and maritime-area claims of the Aquino regime against China with regard to the South China Sea.

I’m afraid BBM is totally misinformed here, and I strongly suggest he reads my book Debacle: The Aquino regime’s Scarborough fiasco and the South China Sea arbitration deception.* None of the pro-US, anti-China writers — including Antonio Carpio whom I have challenged on this issue — have questioned my assertions in that book.

GREED is really the engine of capitalism, global and local, as the current worldwide de facto oil crisis shows,  in which prices soared from $70 per barrel at the beginning of the year to last week’s $120. Everyone I know is shocked over the soaring, for instance, of the regular gasoline’s  price from P50 per liter in recent memory to P85 last week. 

What few people know is that while the country groans under the weight of fuel costs, the industry continues to making a killing. Its “industry take” – mostly net profits — account for 15 percent of diesel prices, 19 percent of gasoline, 22 percent of kerosene, and a scandalous 41 percent of LPG, the poor’s fuel,  according to a study of the Department of Energy. This is way above the 2.5 percent industry take in the US oil industry. (Taxes on the other hand (excise and the value-added taxes) account for 23 percent of gasoline prices, 15 percent for diesel, 17 percent for kerosene, and 14 percent for LPG.) \

No wonder that the newest players in the petroleum-distribution business, such as  Phoenix Petroleum owned by the Davao-based Dennis Uy have become unbelievably rich in just a few years. Ramon Ang’s Petron Corp., with the biggest market share of 26 percent  has generated profits way beyond the tycoon’s expectations. Dutch-owned Pilipinas Shell and Chevron Philippines (combined market share: 26 percent)  has been remitting hundreds of millions of dollars yearly to their headquarters.

IT’s sad that a few former classmates at the Ateneo [now a bastion of the Yellow/Pink ideology], ex-comrades from way back, a few friends and even relatives [including a young one so brainwashed by Assumption’s Red nuns] don’t even try to make the slightest effort to read my book Debunked, which took several years of my life — and my editor, my wife’s — to research and write. Allow me a bit of exaggeration; it took a part of my soul to draft and publish (I guess, until you’ve written a book, you will never realize how really difficult it is to write a book).

They know me, my background as bold or crazy enough (at least in my youth) to be an armed rebel and get jailed for it, my profession as a journalist, which means my job has been to research political and economic events — and therefore I have arguments and information to support my views.

FINALLY, a renowned historian, Dr. Reynaldo Ileto, has questioned the Red, Yellow (turned Pink during the election season) and Western narratives condemning the Marcos era and President Duterte’s administration.

Currently honorary professor at the School of Culture, History & Language of the Australian National University, Ileto is not just a much respected historian. Many historians and academics — even the narrow and/or small-minded ones so gullible over the Yellow narratives — think he is the country’s best historian bar none.

Pasyon and Revolution, his 1979 dissertation, now a classic history textbook, was pioneering in its original insights and in its rigorous employment of the historical method.

I’VE long been disgusted with these two US-domiciled* media persons since they had been mainly responsible for the country’s bad image abroad starting in 2016, just because they hate President Duterte.

Now they’ve really disgraced themselves and insulted our country by spitting on the recent elections, the purest demonstration of real people power in this country, that put Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. as our president and Sara Duterte-Caprio as vice president.

As if deranged that Leni Robredo, the candidate she and her US-funded site openly supported, lost by the first landslide ever in this country, a clear and total rejection of that fraud, Rappler CEO Maria Ressa went to town to get interviewed by as many foreign media as she could.