2025
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Oil Price Shock: Market manipulation, not Middle East conflict, to blame — Piston
Piston strongly condemns the looming P5 per liter big-time oil price increase. The real culprit behind the relentless price shocks are market speculation and profiteering, not the Israel-Iran conflict as so often claimed. The truth is, global oil prices are being manipulated by traders and oil giants who exploit every hint of geopolitical tension to…
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Philippine Independence Day: A nation still in the passenger seat of US Imperialism
This June 12, as the Philippines commemorates its Independence Day from centuries of colonial control, we must confront a bitter reality: the country may have formally declared independence in 1898 and 1946, but political, economic, and military control by foreign powers, especially by the United States, never truly let go of the wheel. The legacy…
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Punitive cameras, broken system: How NCAP fails working class drivers
The No-Contact Apprehension Policy (NCAP) was introduced with the aim of enhancing road safety and curbing corruption in traffic enforcement. However, in practice, it has primarily served as a punitive mechanism, imposing excessive fines that disproportionately affect informal worker Public Utility Vehicle (PUV) drivers. These drivers, who typically earn Php300–Php500 per day, find themselves burdened…
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PISTON: System errors and red-tagging undermine election credibility, underscores need for manual count
Piston expresses deep concern over reports released by the Makabayan Coalition citing 29 incidents of automated counting machine (ACM) errors and 15 cases of red-tagging on election day, as of 10:00 AM, May 12. These reports include ballots being rejected or mishandled by ACM, smudged ballots, overvoting issues, manual ballot collection due to machine failure,…
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Piston on new DOTr order: Cosmetic ‘reopening’ of consolidation does not address livelihood threats
Piston denounces the newly issued DOTr Department Order No. 2025-009 (DO-2025-009), “Guidelines on the Reopening of Applications for Consolidation and Issuance of Provisional Authorities for Unconsolidated Individual Operators,” as yet another measure that places the burden squarely on the backs of small PUV drivers and operators. While DO-2025-009 purports to offer a “more equitable and…