Shirky would get confused I guess, since Philippine media at that time, kept reporting that the Philippines was the "text capital of the world" during those years and kept attributing Estrada's downfall to our text-happy countrymen.

Fall from power isn't the only goal. People benefit from the transparency of government brought by additional info. Election is influenced by the amount of data the people get. What uncensored Internet brought the Philippines is that additional information—the things often omitted by news reports once Malacañang gets wind of it.

All that noise and attention brought by Social Media pushed favor away from people even slightly related to Gloria Arroyo. From the onset, her party's candidate Gibo Teodoro was really low in the ranks until he slowly distanced himself from her. Manny Villar's multi-million Peso campaign was derailed after Twitter reports came in that he received money from Gloria's side.

Aquino won this previous election more or less because of the noisy Filipinos on social networks. Well, I mean other than the death of his mother.

Though if they finally resolve the issue of making a proper multiplayer game with a definite ending, I might actually bite. There are a group of people (myself included), who still prefer, single player games with a definite ending.

Speaking as a Filipino, I know most of the country's been brainwashed thoroughly by American propaganda. The entire "We're the heroes" illusion is well received here. Until relatively recently, most people still think the Americans really demolished the Spanish in the local Spanish-American war, instead of an act to hide the Treaty of Paris.

Japan's goal in WWII was basically a unification of Asia so it could be independent of Western "superiority". Also anecdotal evidence (mostly from my grandparents) says that the Japanese themselves weren't the ones raping and killing the captured population, just the Koreans who worked for them.

Taga pilipinas ka ba talaga? Parang di ka pa nakotongan ng pulis a?

For one thing, there's this place called Greenhills where you can get network unblocked phones for usually lower than what the carriers offer.

Considering his being a policeman, it could be that some other policeman friend of his could've just sold him a unit confiscated from a snatcher in Cubao.

Or it could be a more bland explanation, like being in the pay of someone. Corruption here in the Philippines is pretty in-your-face. If it surprises you that a low-income government employee can get expensive things, you might not be really from around here.

I got the font from the SarcMark's site and it turns out, SarcMark uses U+03A9 Greek Capital Letter Omega dressed up with a font.

Makes sense because no one uses that character for any application. Ever.