I DON'T think this paper, which has emerged as the most respected, thinking broadsheet in the past decade, is a dirty wall somewhere where angry, brainless slogans are painted in the guise of headlines for inane opinion columns.

I am referring to a column the other day, with the headline: 'Sinicization of PH: On becoming China's 24th province.' I was rather shocked as the last time I read that kind of crap declaring us as 'China's province' was on a tarpaulin that apparently the deliriously Duterte-basher, the blogger Jover Claudio, hung two years ago on a pedestrian walkway, which was quickly torn down. A Times columnist echoing a crude blogger?