American Buddhist Net

By Thomas Bell, South East Asia Correspondent
Last Updated: 10:40PM BST 22/06/2008

More than 800 passengers and crew are feared to have died when a ferry capsized during a storm off the Philippines.

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06/10/2008

...Voluntary simplicity makes good, practical sense. For one thing, it makes for less clutter, waste and pollution. Writer Carey Goldberg said that despite its philosophical underpinnings, voluntary simplicity is “a path of practical details and idiosyncratic choices.” Those who subscribe to it say: “Buy only what you need; don’t go shopping for entertainment. Buy what you can use, and wear things out before replacing them. Dump household clutter. Move to a smaller place.”

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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
By Bruce Wallace

MANILA, Philippines — Ask Josephine Gonzalez how many children a family should have, and the stick-figured 31-year-old mother answers without hesitation. "I only wanted three," she says, trying to soothe the naked baby boy who tugs at her ragged dress.

But Gonzalez is, in fact, a mother of six. Her sister, Angie Maquiran, two years older, has seven children. Together with the fathers, the pair are raising their families in a public park across the street from one of Manila's oldest Roman Catholic churches, sleeping on the ground, their possessions stuffed into a small cart that marks where home is.

Maquiran says the priests at the church tell her, "Children are riches, and the more you have, the more blessed you are." But health officials and some politicians here say that the Philippines has too many poor mouths to feed, an overpopulation problem that condemns millions of children to poverty.

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Wed Apr 23, 2008
By Manny Mogato

BANAUE, Philippines (Reuters) - As the Philippines grapples with its worst food crisis in years, many farmers in its cradle of rice cultivation are abandoning farming for more lucrative trades.

Lambuyong Burnag, a 70-year old tribal farmer, now poses for tourists' pictures in his multi-colored loincloth and plumed head-dress with the postcard-perfect Ifugao rice terraces in the northern Philippines as a scenic backdrop.

Instead of cultivating his own rice on the small patch of land he inherited, he uses the payment he receives from tourists to buy cheap rice distributed by the government to poor communities.

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Agence France-Presse
First Posted 15:20:00 04/02/2008

MANILA, Philippines -- Fifty rivers in the Philippines have been destroyed because people are using them to dump their rubbish, leaving some ecologically dead, Environment Secretary Joselito Atienza said Wednesday.

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Wednesday, March 05, 2008

ZAMBOANGA CITY - As public outrage against high-level corruption in government continues to snowball, different religious groups will hold a protest and prayer rally on Friday in Zamboanga City.

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By Luzi Ann Javier

Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Twenty years ago, Juan Diego fought wealthy Philippine landowners and the government for the rights to a one-hectare (2.5-acre) rice paddy north of Manila. Now he's worried the Chinese may take his farm.

Chinese companies last year agreed to lease 1.2 million hectares in the Philippines to grow rice, corn and sugar. While President Gloria Arroyo says the $5 billion deal will help increase food production for Filipinos, local farmers and lawmakers have stalled the deal.

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By LISA A. BACON
Published: February 22, 2008

RICHMOND, Va. — A retired Roman Catholic priest was sentenced Thursday to more than five years in prison for bilking two churches out of hundreds of thousands of dollars while he led a double life as a husband and father.

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Nov 29, 200
By Karen Lema and Raju Gopalakrishnan

MANILA, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Philippine military and police teams stormed a luxury hotel in Manila on Thursday to end a short-lived coup attempt by a small group of soldiers and others who had called on the army to mutiny.

Government forces fired teargas into the lobby of the Manila Peninsula Hotel and used an armoured personnel carrier (APC) to batter down its glass doors before storming in under cover of repeated bursts of fire in the air.

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By DJ Yap
Inquirer
Last updated 06:58pm (Mla time) 10/26/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- It was “flower power” in the ’60s, “people power” in the ’80s, and now, activists are pinning their hopes on “panty power.”

Women activists hurled thongs, red bikinis, even granny underwear at the Myanmar Embassy in Makati City Friday, in an odd but culturally relevant protest targeting the military junta’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in the reclusive nation.

Mirroring protests in Australia, the United Kingdom and Thailand, the “panty protest” held particular significance for members of the junta who believe any contact with women’s undergarments could sap their strength.

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Posted: 04 October 2007 1604 hrs

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia-led ceasefire monitors will stay in the southern Philippines for now but Kuala Lumpur wants progress in stalled peace talks between Manila and Muslim rebels, a report said Thursday.

"They (Malaysian troops) will be extended but their extension cannot be indefinite," Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak was quoted as saying by The Star newspaper.

"We want to see progress in the talks," he added.

Najib, who is also defence minister, did not give details on how long Malaysian troops will remain in the troubled region.

A foreign peace monitoring team landed in the southern Philippines in October 2004. But talks between the Philippine government and Muslim rebels stalled last September.

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By Margaux Ortiz
Inquirer
Last updated 10:31pm (Mla time) 09/07/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Agents of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) recently raided a Buddhist temple in Manila and apprehended six Taiwanese monks allegedly working without the required missionary visas.

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July 11, 2007
Agence France-Presse

Italian priest Father Giancarlo Bossi knew the dangers when he moved to his parish in the southern Philippines almost a decade ago.

In an area troubled by Muslim extremists, the tall mild-mannered 57-year-old Roman Catholic priest shared the hardships of both his Filipino parishioners and their Muslim neighbors.

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Wed Apr 18, 9:47 AM ET

MANILA (Reuters) - Dozens of men who whipped and cut their backs for a gory Good Friday ceremony in the Philippines risk contracting rabies after a fellow flagellant died of the virus earlier this month.
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The men shared a blade to rip their skin before flaying it to a pulp with a bamboo whip in the northern province of Pampanga. The ritual, which also involves voluntary crucifixions, is meant to mark the suffering of Jesus Christ.

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The Associated Press
Wednesday, April 18, 2007; 12:03 AM

MANILA, Philippines -- Philippine authorities on Wednesday found a body they believe to be that of a missing American Peace Corps volunteer in a northern mountain town where she disappeared during a hike more than a week ago, an army general said.

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By Karen Lema | April 6, 2007

CUTUD, Philippines (Reuters) - More than a dozen Filipinos were nailed to crosses and scores more whipped their backs into a bloody pulp on Friday in a gory ritual to mark the death of Jesus Christ.

The voluntary crucifixions in the northern Philippines were the most extreme displays of religious devotion in this mainly Catholic country, where millions are praying and fasting ahead of the Easter weekend.

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By CHRISTOPHER HUDSON
Last updated at 23:50pm on 2nd March 2007

After more than 60 years of silence, World War II's most enduring and horrible secret is being nudged into the light of day. One by one the participants, white-haired and mildmannered, line up to tell their dreadful stories before they die.

Akira Makino is a frail widower living near Osaka in Japan. His only unusual habit is to regularly visit an obscure little town in the southern Philippines, where he gives clothes to poor children and has set up war memorials.

Mr Makino was stationed there during the war. What he never told anybody, including his wife, was that during the four months before Japan's defeat in March 1945, he dissected ten Filipino prisoners of war, including two teenage girls. He cut out their livers, kidneys and wombs while they were still alive. Only when he cut open their hearts did they finally perish.

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February 25, 2007
Richard Lloyd Parry in Hirakata, Japan

For 62 years, Akira Makino spoke not a word of what he’d done, but to those who knew him well it must have been obvious that he was a man with a tortured conscience. Why else would he have returned so often to the obscure, mosquito-blown town in the southern Philippines where he had experience such misery during the Second World War?

He set up war memorials, gave clothes to poor children, and bought an entire set of uniforms for a local baseball team. Last year, at the age of 83, he embarked on a gruelling pilgrimage to 88 Buddhist temples in Japan - after number 40 he collapsed from heat exhaustion, having permanently injured his knees. “My wife didn’t like me going back to the Philippines, she called me ’war crazy’,” said Mr Makino, a frailold man who lives alone in Hirakata near Osaka. “But she let me go anyway. Right up until she died three years ago, I never told her. But over time I think she realised.” Only in the twilight of his life, has Mr Makino begun to talk about the secret which he had carried.

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Wednesday, February 21, 2007
By Edgardo B. Espiritu

I HAD been asked to speak in a forum in a noted university town in the United Kingdom, but I had to beg off since the event coincides with an important meeting at the office in Manila. But the topic I had been assigned to speak on really got me thinking hard. It was, “what image is the Philippines strategically striving to achieve in the world.” Certainly, image is important and it can have a profound impact even in the economic sphere. It can, for instance, influence the flow of foreign investment and of tourists into our country and also the demand for our workers abroad.

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February 08, 2007
By Karen de Sta. Rita

ONE of the reasons I so enjoy digging for old recipes is the joy I derive out of discovering new tastes. Or should I say old tastes that are so new to me, the child of the convenience food generation. One of the old-new dishes that I have had recently is cooked out of the whole garlic plant (Allium sativum).

I didn't realize young garlic bulbs were cooked until my mother brought home a huge bunch from the marketplace and said we were having something my grandmother cooked often.

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1/10/07

Three bombs went off in a span of five hours in Mindanao Wednesday night ahead of the gathering of diplomats and leaders for the 12th Association of Southeast Asian Summit in Cebu.

As of posting time, seven people have been reported dead while at least 28 others were injured in the blasts that took place in General Santos City, Kidapawan City in Cotabato province and Cotabato City.

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12 July 2006
Six fugitive army officers arrested last week in the Philippines were plotting an attack on parliament, army officials said.

The group planned to seize control of the House of Representatives and take lawmakers hostage, army spokesman Lt-Col Bartolome Baccaro said.

They wanted to introduce a new revolutionary regime, other military officials told the AFP news agency.

The six men were detained on Friday over a failed mutiny in 2003.

Friday, 7 July 2006
Six fugitive army officers allegedly linked to a failed mutiny against Philippine President Gloria Arroyo have been arrested in a dawn raid.

The officers were seized at a house in Manila, and weapons and explosives were found at the scene, police said.

The officers are accused of leading hundreds of soldiers who occupied buildings in Manila's Makati financial district in 2003.

By : Carol Pagaduan-Araullo | BusinessWorld
12 June 2006 | 11:25 AM

The bastardization of democratic processes in this country is epitomized by the current hullabaloo over changing the basic law of the land, what is more commonly referred to as Charter change or Cha-cha.

The de facto President, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has hyped the revision of the Constitution as the magic pill that will transform Philippine politics from a decrepit, rotten and completely anachronistic system to one that is more suited to her vision of an “enchanted kingdom” for the country. She arrogantly used the metaphor of an unstoppable express train to underscore her administration’s unbreakable will to see though Cha-cha regardless of the very real legal and political obstacles that she must overturn in the process.

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