High-quality English language analysis and editorial writing on the news.
Here in Asia, we have a society where the family is the basis for welfare: in disasters, you seek family to help you.. Many people are getting out of poverty because they have family members who support the rest of their family by working overseas and sending back money to pay for school fees, decent […]
A friend once told me about living through the California North Ridge earthquakes: they had nothing, were camping out on the streets. But one thing impressed her: They had access to a small supply of drinking water that they had stored in their back yard, because the state had impressed on residents the need to […]
When the big supertyphoon hit south of where I live in the Philippines, and all my friends and relatives were emailing me if I was okay. Why, yes, I answered: The Signal 4 super-typhoon hit south of us. But we were badly hit by an ordinary Signal 3 typhoon a few weeks earlier, which destroyed […]
Some American news papers are taking quotes by Pope Francis out of context to criticize those few bishops who dare to say abortion is murder, or for supporting the idea of traditional marriage that have been around for a few millenia. Like most of what the pope says, this is cherry picking quotes out of […]
MariaElena at Fountain of Elias reminds us that Sept 24 is the (pre Vatican II) feast of Our Lady of Ransom. This feast was one of the church’s way of reminding folks of the many captured by various pirates and to raise money to ransom them. The origins of the Feast can be found in […]
Don’t pay attention to the quotes taken out of context and spun to make Pope Francis seem to the left of the trendier than thou Episcopal church. Go and read what he actually said, and what he has said in the past, and you will find nuances that don’t fit into sound bites. The Catholic […]
Back when the people of Iran were busy protesting their election being stolen, I found out about a program called “TOR”. Webpage here. The Tor software is a program you can run on your computer that helps keep you safe on the Internet. Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of […]
It’s Holy Week here in the Philippines, which means lots of church going and Manila is emptying out for folks to go home for the Easter Holidays. First Things magazine discusses how Americans should view the crucifixion: not as an event to be watched, but as the result of our sins. They even quote Luther […]
Well, today we Filipinos woke up and found we wouldn’t be losing Cardinal Tagle to Rome: Apparently an Argentinian bishop was picked for the next Pope. But choosing a name usually is a hint on what the Pope plans to do when in office, and it is interesting that Cardinal Bergloglino chose the name of […]
This week we Catholics celebrate Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. A lot of good Catholics were slightly hung over from too much Mardi Gras on Tuesday, but never mind: The idea is that “there is a time to party and a time to fast”, and now the time to fast has arrived. Traditionally, at […]
The latest reports is that our beloved President has breathlessly announced to Davos that he has eliminated corruption here since taking office, so come and invest your money here! From a headline in the Manila Bulletin: Aquino: PH Corruption Over With the days of corruption and mismanagement of the past administration finally over, the Philippines […]
I love when elites at green sites put guilt trips on ordinary folks. Yes, these types of articles are needed to educate citified yuppies who love organic food and green living but are blithely unaware that these practices were routine in the days of their grandparents and remain routine in poorer areas of the country […]
 Here in the Philippines, guns were confiscated under Marcos, and although one can get a permit, the average person doesn’t have permission to carry a gun. That is not to say that the average person doesn’t have a gun: most middle class folks have one or two guns or rifles illegally stashed in their homes, […]
Part one discussed the way the Philippines went along with American pressure to pass a US style family planning program whose aim (denied by the president) is to limit population control. Reality check: every “discussion” of the bill by the Manila elites includes lamentations about the high population growth, and even a few politicians have […]
Neocolonialism anyone? The Philippines passed an RH bill, a “Reproductive Health Bill” that requires medical personnel to push birth control on their patients, and all the US newspapers are rejoicing. The bill had the opposition of the powerful Catholic church, but in a country where the average number of kids per woman has fell from […]
If I am voting against the President, it is not racism but because he is going out of his way to persecute the Catholic church: The problem? The week after taking office, the President removed conscience rights regulations from the federal regulations. This means that the only thing standing between Catholics and Muslims from being […]
Ninety-five years ago, a bunch of ignorant hoi polloi went out into the fields of a small rural town to see a predicted miracle, and the big city MSM was there to laugh at them and to record how the fools would respond when they found nothing happened. Whoops: (photo Via Tea at Trianon) Yes, […]
The headline in today’s Manila Bulletn is that hackers have taken down some government websites to protest the new “cyberlaw”. The cyberlaw is supposed to protect folks against having their email and facebook sites hacked, and to stop hackers from stealing your identity, but it also includes laws against libel: Basically, the group claimed, the […]
In today’s news we read about multicity protests that burned flags and had to be broken up by police using water cannons. So where were these demonstration? Cairo? Beruit? Karachi? No, they were in China. The UK Telegraph has a story about these “spontaneous” demonstrations: China seized by second day of violent anti-Japan protests More […]
This morning I rose and read the “sermon of the day” before I went to church, and sure enough, another highfalutin sermon on the Good Samaritan. For those who are not Christian, this is one of Jesus’ stories about a man beaten by robbers who was helped by a passerby who belonged to a rival […]
This report from an Iranian blog on Global Voices, says they have such a chicken shortage the price of .chickens have soared. So someone decided to censor films and TV programs that show…chickens (!) Against a backdrop of lengthening food queues, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, the head of Iran’s law enforcement forces, has warned that films depicting […]
The greens in the Philippines are fighting all GM food, which is good in some ways and bad in other ways. I mean, we are in the “organic rice” business, and use locally developed hybrids, so cheap, abundant “Genetically modified” rice imports from China are not in our best interest. But the search for new […]
GMA and ESPN are now promoting hate speech against Catholics under the guise of accusing Filipine boxer Pacquiao of homophobia. From “An Open Letter to Manny Pacquiao From a Gay Filipina American,” …your parents give you Catholicism as a kind of heavy gift. A centuries-old guide for every life transition a human can go through. […]
No, the Catholics here in the Philippines are not boycotting Lady Gaga: these are Protestant protests. Old leftie Bishop Cruz is blasting about corruption, the RH Bill and the plans of the elites to legalize divorce on his website, but not Gaga. The Catholic bishop’s website is worried about the ecology and corruption, but not […]
Heh. The Honorable Senator Emmanuel D, Pacquiao, Aka the world champion boxer Manny Pacquiao, aka Pacman, who recently found religion, is now under attack. Why? Well, it s seems that he has made a remark against gay marriage, and his website has some Biblical phrases that imply promiscuous gay sex is wrong. Since Pacman has […]
Most Americans know about the “Asian Tiger” economies (and if PNoy keeps hitting at corruption, the Filipinos may join that group). But did you know that other areas of the world are similarly expanding their economies? A day or two ago, I ran into an article that those “undocumented” immigrants in the US are now […]
I see the anti Asian mafia have a new scalp on their belts, with the conviction of an Indian born student for a “hate crime” and invasion of privacy. But lost in the homophobia meme of the politically correct is a question: Do students have the right to privacy in one dorm’s room? Because in […]
I noticed two of my grandchildren and a niece had shared the “Invisible children” film on my facebook site. This was a bit surprising, because one is a church going, volunteering teenager, the second is a sophisticated student in the UK, and the third one is a heavy metal music loving Goth. But all are […]
Check this out: Natural Gas,via TPMBarnett’s webpage: natural gas deals are proceeding internationally: the flow out of North America alters things, regionalizing flows more as Japan and Germany move off nukes and seek to ramp up their use of gas to generate electricity, and as emerging markets in general ramp up their gas use… (cheap […]
Here in the Philippines, thanks to Wikileaks, we know that not only American money is behind our “Reproductive Health Bill”, but that the American State Department is pressuring our president to pass the bill. Heaven knows that the Philippines does need access to cheaper Birth control, but it’s not as if it’s not available: they […]
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