PRESS FREEDOM   By Carlos H. Conde |  A Right of Reply law will undermine the Bill of Rights. It will intimidate journalists and prevent them from performing their watchdog functions because the potential cost of doing their job is rather high – fine, imprisonment or closure.

HUMAN RIGHTS  By Fr. Shay Cullen |  A stronger, better-armed UN force is urgently needed to protect the hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children and youth in the Eastern Congo. Five millions have died over the past several years and the world hardly noticed.

POLITICS   By Benjie Oliveros |  What do the Senate coup, the fertilizer and Euro generals scams, and the continuing extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and filing of trumped up charges against activists have in common? These show the rottenness of politics in the Philippines.

HEALTH | BUSINESS  By Carlos H. Conde |  What convinced me that aspartame is not safe are not just the studies that have found its link to cancer but also the efforts of Donald Rumsfield and the biotech giant Monsanto in ramming this product down our throats.

POLITICS   By Ninotchka Rosca |  Semantical analysis will show it’s all driven by fear of a strong intelligent woman. Will she take orders? Whose foreign policy will it be – hers or Obama? Will she be working for him or for her own political interests? Blah, blah, blah.

POLITICS   By Carlos H. Conde  |  Ignorance, or not being in the loop, has become a requisite for the job. Plausible deniability is a key part of the press secretary’s job. As such, he should be the least informed, not to mention the least loquacious, member of the cabinet.

RELIGION   By Fr. Shay Cullen |  Columbanus was one of those missionary Irish Monks who traveled to the Continent to bring the Gospel back to those who had lost it due to the barbarian invasions and the fall of Rome, and also to take the Good News of Christ to pagan Europe.

ISLAMIC SEPARATISM   By Rohaniza Sumndad  |  Some 500,000 people in Mindanao, especially children, have been displaced from their homes and live in fear due to continued armed conflict. There is a great need to heal and rebuild communities that have been traumatized by violence.

By Carlos H. Conde |  Perhaps with the exception of the mosquito press during the martial-law years, the Philippine press has never quite shown us why it deserves to be called the “fourth estate.”

by Alphonse F. La Porta
Alphonse F. La Porta (a_laporta@yahoo.com) is a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer, who has served as ambassador to Mongolia and in Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asia is an essential component of Asia’s economic and political ascendance that broadly impacts on United States interests in this increasingly integrated world. Energizing U.S. relations with [...]

By Fr. Shay Cullen

Since the historic victory of Barack Obama, the first African-American to be elected to the most powerful presidency in the world, world opinion has turned more favorable towards the American people. It recognizes and cheers the fact that they have come to their senses and turned out to vote for change - [...]

By Alphonse F. La Porta | 
Indonesia, surprisingly to many observers, is a successful Muslim-majority democracy that would resist a return to autocracy. As we approach the turn of administrations in Washington, effective United States approaches to the Muslim world and Asian regionalism call for a deeper relationship with Indonesia.
Indonesia, too often overlooked in the panoply [...]

By Carlos H. Conde  |  If the US military can have its way in countries that are less friendly to Washington – Pakistan, for instance – how much more in the Philippines where Americans are given far greater access, whose people bestow on them a tremendous amount of trust that they probably will not find elsewhere?

By Center for People Empowerment in Governance (Cenpeg)  |  The more the economy is stagnant, the less its ability to create jobs, the more dependent government becomes on overseas labor deployment.

By By Ralph A. Cossa  |  The first bit of more general advice is to remember that the United States only has one president at a time and, like it or not, that president is George W. Bush until Jan 20, 2009. I start with this reminder since many experts are already talking about things that President-elect Obama should be doing now to hit the ground running. But the most important thing he can do between now and January 20 is to do nothing that undermines the incumbent president’s ability to conduct foreign policy.

By Mike G. Kulat  |  The recent squabbles within the government and the deplorable conditions of over half a million refugees brought about by the aborted signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain can be considered one of the greatest dramas in the annals of Philippine history.

By Fr. Shay Cullen
If somebody is offering you as beach front home for give away prices it will be because of global warming and climate changes or the crash of the world property and housing markets. Both are man made and greed driven. Both are catastrophic events for the poor who are least able to [...]

By Ninotchka Rosca |  In my New York neighborhood, a 20-block run takes you to Argentina, Chile, Columbia, India, Pakistan, Philippines; 30 blocks and you’re in Africa, Jamaica and other places whose names escape even a geography fan.