Wilfredo G. Villanueva
Cha Coronel Datu
Juana Pilipinas
Karl Garcia
giancarloangulo
Irineo B. R. Salazar
JPilipinas
karlgarcia
JoeAmWhen Doctors Leave, Quacks Arrive:
Free Healthcare Promises, System Failure, and the Rise of Informal Medicine in the Philippines By Karl Garcia Quack doctors, fake healers, religious cults, and indigenous ritual practitioners persist in the Philippines not because Filipinos are irrational or anti-science, but because the formal healthcare system is absent, episodic, unsafe, and unreliable. Where doctors are consistently present, … Continue reading
Let Us Do This Again: Securing the Future of Philippine Land
Karl Garcia Having written extensively on space governance and the careful balance between exploration, resource use, and long-term sustainability, I approach the issue of Philippine land management with the same lens: the stakes are high, the resources finite, and the governance choices we make today will shape the possibilities of tomorrow. This reflection is not … Continue reading
Rotting Abundance: What Coconuts, Onions, and Durian Teach Us—and What ASEAN Got Right (and Wrong)
By Karl Garcia Fruits and vegetables once built civilizations. In the Philippines, they built export booms, funded regimes, and shaped rural life—only to expose, again and again, a familiar failure: abundance without governance eventually rots. From coconuts before Marcos, to bananas and pineapples under Dole and Del Monte, to mangoes, onions, and now durian, the … Continue reading
Why the Philippines Was Never Going to Become Singapore—No Matter Who Promised It
By Karl Garcia Rodrigo Duterte was not the first Filipino leader to invoke Singapore as a model, and he will not be the last. Long before his 2016 campaign promise to “make the Philippines like Singapore,” the aspiration already existed across the political spectrum. Ironically, many of Duterte’s strongest critics also want the Philippines to … Continue reading
Navigating the Philippine Seas: Why Hypothetical IRRs Matter for Maritime Governance
By Karl Garcia The Philippines is a nation defined by water. With over 7,600 islands and a maritime territory spanning roughly 2.2 million square kilometers, the sea is our highway, supermarket, and strategic frontier all at once. Yet, despite its centrality to our economy, security, and environment, maritime governance in the Philippines remains fragmented. Multiple … Continue reading
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The Society of Honor by Joe America 