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.

By Carlos H. Conde
About the only thing that is different in the present war are the names of the military commanders running it. Everything else remains the same — the displaced civilians, the suffering children, the fragile peace process, and the ever-burning desire of the Moros to attain self-determination.

By Carl Baker
Any peace settlement in Mindanao will require a serious rethinking of sovereignty in the Philippines and a lot of creative thinking about how to accommodate the interests of all parties.

Wired magazine has the lowdown on how Google Chrome came to be. Titled “Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web,” the story offers an inside view of Chrome’s genesis and why Google has just re-ignited the browser wars.

Still watching the Repubs and feeling uncharacteristically drained of energy; something about the spectacle is deadening. I can’t even take seriously the debate about Sarah Palin, the shrill outcry of “sexism!” whenever her credentials as a politician and/or as a soccer mom are questioned. Seems to me that there’s sexism in here, all right, but everybody misses what it is, exactly.

All in all, Chrome is a very promising browser. The key to its success, I think, is the availability of plugins and add-ons that would extend its functionality. (Chrome was released only today so there aren’t any plugins or add-ons yet.) Google Chrome should give Firefox and IE a run for their money.

Reuters reported this afternoon that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front has threatened to altogether abandon the peace process if the Arroyo regime does not sign the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain.
“We’re not only disappointed and frustrated over government’s decision to turn its back on the ancestral domain deal, we’ve completely lost trust and [...]

“In honoring the plunderers of this nation and letting them off easy without any punishment (like Erap) we not only condone their infamy; other rapists of this nation will also feel redeemed, convinced that they did no wrong. Then, they pave the way for future criminals to do the same, sure that, like Imelda and her gang, they will not be punished and that after their foul deeds, they can even preen in the limelight before a people without memory.”

We Filipinos needed to re-calibrate our understanding of what’s usual or normal, the instant we began to move out into the world en masse. Unfortunately, that has been difficult, because of the re-feudalization accompanying migration, particularly for women.

Biglang naglaho ang tuwa ko nang malaman ko kinabukasan rin mismo na ang nasa likod pala ng konsyerto ay isang kumpanya ng sigarilyo. Kung gaano ako kasaya noong gabing nakaraan, ganun din ako kalungkot nang malaman ko kung sino ang sponsor. Ganun na lamang ang aking panlulumo nang malaman kong kakailanganin ko palang tangkilikin ang paninigarilyo para mapanood kong muli ang paborito kong banda of all time.

By Fr. Shay Cullen
While a young girl was recovering from a horrific life of sexual abuse and trafficking, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo gave the state-of-the-nation-address to the Philippine congress last week and list the many achievements of her government for the past year curtailing the trafficking of women and children is not among them. She is [...]

By Fr. Shay Cullen

The selfless commitment Christians of all denominations to live, risk their lives and suffer for the gospel values, human rights and to live out the mission of Jesus Christ to save the poor and the oppressed from pain and exploitation inflicted on them by the irresponsible rich and powerful, is at the [...]

Several years ago, I was able to get inside several highly secured jails for the first time. I was so shocked by what I saw I couldn’t sleep for nights after. The jail visits revealed children as young as ten were being held in detention with adults and many suffered degrading physical and sexual abuse, [...]

A pet shop at the Metrowalk mall in Ortigas uses an eye-catching name that can be offensive to some conservative Filipinos but, when you think about it, apropos. (Photo by Carlos Conde/pinoypress.net)

Many people with heart disease do not know the symptoms of a heart attack, even though their risk of suffering one is five to seven times higher than those with no such history, researchers reported on Monday. Read the full story here.