Dr. Sally Satel in the Wall Street Journal is proposing that we pay for kidneys. She got hers from a friend, so she is aware of the problem of waiting for a kidney first hand.
However, when she laments that the Philippines is the latest country to “get tough” on organ transplants from paid donors, one […]

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Archbishop Cruz, an outspoken critic of those who exploit the poor and of those guilty of corruption, has himself been arrested for libel because of an article he wrote four years ago.
The Bishop claimed that women working for PAGCOR (Philippine Gaming Commission) were told to go to a birthday party for the first Gentleman, and […]

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I’ve had it up to here with the MSM, especially the NYTimes and it’s clone, the International Herald Tribune. Today’s IHT has an article on how reporters in India were aghast that Bush “Blamed” the rice shortage on Indians eating too much.
But of course, he never said such a thing, and shame to the IHT […]

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End Impunity in the Gambia- Editor MBai Presents Scary And Disturbing Piece To The Ghana Based Africa Legal Aid NGO!!!
End Impunity in the Gambia- Editor MBai Presents  Scary And Disturbing Piece To The Ghana Based Africa Legal Aid NGO!!!
 
The impoverished nation of The Gambia, is currently witnessing untold human rights, social and political crisis. Faced […]

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Way to go, fellahs.
After 104 years, some bureaucrat in the depths of the Vatican finally noticed that the LDS church was collecting baptismal records from far and wide for their geneology collection…And (gasp! Horrors!) once in awhile, a good member of the LDS church will undergo a ceremony to baptise his ancestors so that they […]

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Rice prices have skyrocketed from 18-25 pesos/kg to 24-32 p/kg at the local Palenke.
For farmers and workers who average 100 pesos a day (roughly two dollars), this puts a strain on their budget. So to prevent rice riots, the President is planning to allow poor people to buy subsidized food, and because of the worry […]

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We just delivered more rice from the “second harvest” to the rice mill for storage and milling later. We don’t worry about a shortage of rice: We grown our own, a gormet organically grown rice for the upscale Manila market.
But not everyone is so lucky.
Here in the Philippines there is a rice shortage.
It came on […]

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The usually staid Wall Street Journal has an AP article about how the Philippine government is planning to regulate a growing black market in buying kidneys from poor people in Manila. The headline reads:
Philippine Health Chief Orders Eradication of Kidney Black Market
Ah so. It’s already against the law, since it was made illegal by […]

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Here in the Philippines, it’s “Tag-init”, the hot season that lasts from now until the monsoon hits in May.
Since a lot of our power is hydroelectric, that means less power available at a time when everyone has their airconditioner on.  The result is loss of electricity. Brownouts are not uncommon here: The electricity has been […]

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Ah, the BBC is rewriting Christianity again, making Judas a good guy so we can “understand” him.
Frank Deasy…(said) “I’ve always had a problem with Judas in ‘Passion’ stories in that he suddenly and inexplicably betrays Jesus,” he said.”I was keen to develop a psychological reality to Judas’s portrayal.”
Nigel Stafford-Clark, who produced the BBC1 series, said […]

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My nieces, like many Filipina nurses, has worked in Saudi. On arrival, their luggage was searched and the inspector instructed them to throw away their rosaries.
I guess, like Dracula, he was afraid to touch the object for fear of contamination. So the women were ordered to throw the rosaries away themselves: an action which to […]

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This article is a second release of this musing. It was published last June, but should have another revisit by Catholic readers. In light of the recently listed “sins” that include those against the environment. HJMN
There are always ways that the Catholic Church can join in the environmental movement in small but yet effective ways. […]

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There is another scandal starting to rear it’s head here in the Philippines: The possibility that the Arroyo government exchanged claims of Philippine sovereignty to China in exchange for loans.
In a single word: Petroleum. The scattered Spratly island area of the South China Sea is claimed by VietNam, China and the Philippines.
[…]

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The Atlantic Magazine, which took a left turn after Michael Kelley was killed covering Iraq, has now hit the bonkers stage.
The right wing blogosphere is up in arms at their slander of American troops as sociopaths, a blogpost discussing an alleged rape of a Japanese woman by a Marine…
a reminder of one of the less […]

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Here, the case against President Arroyo continues to build slowly. The latest corruption story is about a contract with a Chinese company to supply broadband coverage here that was canceled last year after an outcry about kickbacks being involved in granting the contract.
Usually what happens at this point is that witnesses decide to take a […]

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We live fairly far up country, and rarely hear airplanes or helicopters, but in the past few days there has been several low flying planes or helicopters.
Since we are not that far from Fort Magsaysay, I looked it up and sure enough, the US has troops there, with the local Philippine Army teaching them “jungle […]

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The scandals have been perculating along for awhile, but things are starting to get more serious for President Arroyo.
The president is scoffing at a repeat of the “people power” revolutions, where peaceful demonstration caused a change in the government. She is probably right: only 10 thousand showed up for last weekend’s demonstration. Yet there are […]

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There is supposed to be more demonstrations in Manila today. Yesterday we didn’t see any demonstrations (we did see a couple dozen soldiers in Bulacan, in the town near the Northern expressway entrance…planning security?)
The usual suspects, i.e. the Catholic bishops and the left, are planning a big demonstration today, but it’s too early to see […]

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My husband Lolo was watching the news yesterday, but this time it wasn’t super Tuesday, or even Brittney Spears.
There was “Jun” Lozada, surrounded by nuns and priests, having a press conference.
And later that day, he was there again, being grilled by the Philippine Senate about a broadband agreement with China that was so full of […]

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Archbishop Cruz, the former head of the Philippine bishop’s conference, is always on a crusade. Last week he was in the news for preventing a flashy “priest healer” from performing miracles in his diocese. The week before, he was denouncing government corruption….well, actually, almost every week he is denouncing government corruption of one sort or […]

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(London, UK) The Autism Awareness Campaign UK is urging the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rt.Rev. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of York, Rt.Rev.Dr.John Sentamu, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormack Murphy O’Connor and other senior church leaders to speak out on the suffering of some parents, carers and people with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome on Autism Sunday […]

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Autism Campaigners around the world are appealing for greater support on Autism Sunday 2008 - the International Day of Prayer for Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome.
Churches of all denominations will be remembering over 60 million people worldwide who are on the autism spectrum, in prayer.Parents groups and charities have been calling for more support and better […]

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Lots of stuff in the news that might be terrorism.
An attack near the Israeli Embassy in the Mauritania kills three people sitting in a nearby restaurant. Nope, it’s not that they were the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, it was that those in the restaurant wouldn’t shoot back and it gave them time to run […]

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A friend of mine asked me to comment on a bill in the Philippine Congress that would have planned to implement a “two child per family” plan that mimics the policy in China.
The Responsible Parenthood and Popu­lation Management Act of 2005 (HB 3773) would officially enshrine two chil­dren as the proper family size in the […]

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My Yahoo headlines today proclaimed:
Manila courts issues new rules to stop killings
Ah, that’s nice.
Just a simple declaration and voila, no more murder.
Yet a lot of the murders here are done by rogue elements from both sides
It’s like the famous comic skit: Man puts on hat: “I’m A”…takes off hat: “I’m B”.
So if a policeman/soldier takes […]

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Kidnappers, presumably the Al Qaeda related Abu Sayyaf, kidnapped a priest in TawiTawi province in the southern Philippines, and when he resisted, killed him and took a teacher hostage to enable them to escape.
The Sun-Star reports:
Father Ramon Bernabe, OMI Provincial said Father Roda, who headed Notre Dame of Tabawan for the last 10 years, was […]

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Although the Philippines where I live is 85% Christian and 15% Muslim, in nearby Indonesia, the numbers are the opposite: Fifteen percent of their population is Non Muslim, and this includes both Chrstians and Hindus.
Traditionally, Indonesia converted to a syncratic and Sufi version of Islam, meaning that they added the idea of monotheism and a […]

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Tonite is New Year’s Eve, so that means the town square is full of fireworks and firecracker vendors. Since our Open Air Market burned down, the vendors have temporary shops along the side streets, so the fireworks vendors had to move their displays to the front and inside the city square, a little ways away […]

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One of the farmers who works our fields lost his wife on Christmas day. She was eight months pregnant and had no problems delivering her other children, so she didn’t bother to visit the village midwife until she suddenly felt sick, started to swell up, and had trouble breathing.
The midwife examined her, discovered her blood […]

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The headlines on the BBC report:
Millions celebrate Christmas Day 

People queued to enter the grotto under the Church of the Nativity

Scenes in Bethlehem

Millions of Christians around the world are marking Christmas Day - the traditional […]

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