Free Republic

THE United States is “America” to most people. But that word refers to the continent. When applied to the United States, it is better spelled with a “k,” as in “swastika.” It’s the country most Filipinos want to visit. But if you’ve ever been involved in any group or activity faintly progressive; if you have relatives or friends who have been there; or you’re from a country that its officials say harbors “terrorist groups,” you’d be tempting fate to go there. No matter how vague or past your involvement, it could earn you a strip search, an interrogation session with...

MANILA, Aug. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- The Abu Sayyaf group was the perpetrator of a blast which injured 30 people Sunday morning on a ferry in Basilan island, southern Philippines, said a Philippine official. The vice mayor of Lamitan town where the blast took place, Jimmy Andong, told local media that the blast was the handiwork ofAbu Sayyaf bandits, who were disguised as fishermen. Lamitan police also confirmed that a homemade bomb, instead of a gas tank as was earlier reported by the military, ripped through the kitchen portion of the M/V Dona Ramona around 07:00 a.m. local time Sunday morning....

"The Great Raid" was a very enjoyable, stirring, and patriotic movie about heroic Americans and Filipinos in WW II. It was the most successful raid of prisoners in our history. Some idiot at the end of the movie yelled out in the movie theatre -- "That's torture, Ted Kennedy; you shut the hell up!" Yes, that idiot would, of course, be yours truly. No wonder Mrs. DFU usually wants to avoid going to movie theatres with me and would rather rent them. I can't blame her. And during the last presidential campaign, she cringed when I demanded that the waitress...

Jakarta, 16 August (AKI/Jakarta Post) -Indonesian police are working together with their Philippine counterparts to hunt down two Indonesian members of the al-Qaeda linked Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) militant group who are believed to be undergoing military training at Camp Hubaidiyah in the autonomous Muslim region of Mindanao, in the southern Philippines. The two alleged Indonesian members of JI - blamed for the notorious 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali which killed 202 people, as well as other attacks - were identified as Ahmad and Abu Nida. The two had escaped from Indonesia to the Philippines, an Indonesian police spokesman said. The...

About 120,000 people have held a demonstration in Manila urging Philippine President Gloria Arroyo to stay in office. President Arroyo is facing allegations of election rigging and members of her family are accused of taking pay-offs from illegal gambling. With her presidency in peril, a large turn-out was crucial to Mrs Arroyo's chances of survival. Three days ago 30,000 demonstrators demanded the president's resignation. But on Saturday the president's supporters fought back with a rally of their own. Tens of thousands of people filled Rizal Park - a stretch of green in the heart of the Philippine capital. They waved...

By Scott D. Kahn Thirty-five year old Yonkers resident Fernando Sero pleaded guilty in federal court on Wednesday to illegally selling assault rifle parts to terrorists in the Philippines in March. The weapons were likely sold to communist guerillas, a Muslim seperatist group known as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and two terrorist groups with ties to al-Queda. The groups were based out of Mindanao Island, an ungovernable part of the Philippines that is overrun with terrorists and militants. Sero’s family owns a compound on the island. Sero had been under investigation by the U.S. government for allegedly shipping illicit...

Two men believed to be former soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army have been found on Mindanao Island in the southern Philippines, the Japanese Embassy in Manila reported Thursday. The embassy sent three officials to the southern Mindanao city of General Santos on Friday, who were to meet later in the day with the two men to determine whether they were Japanese stragglers. But the meeting was pushed back to Saturday at the earliest when the two men learned the meeting venue was ringed by about 30 members of the press. The embassy officials suggested a location out of the...

A militant Moro party-list group branded as a “prelude to an intensified military intervention” in southern Philippines the arrival in Sulu of 25 American military personnel. “We refused to believe that the US military is surveying Sulu for humanitarian reasons. The US government does not give away anything for free or charity. It gives because it wants to conquer and gain more profit for its war agenda in Mindanao,” said Cosain Naga, spokesperson for the Suara Bangsamoro Party-List. Naga stressed that the arrival of the US military personnel “is part of US plan to establish influence and forces to advance...

Manila (AsiaNews/C-Fam) -  One of the most populous Catholic countries in the world is set to significantly liberalize its laws on family planning and "reproductive health" services, stopping just short of outright legalization of abortion. The proposed legislation, which is likely to pass within months, sets in place a "comprehensive national policy" that discriminates against families with more than two children and requires the Catholic Church to provide sex education in schools and to pay for the sterilizations of its employees. House Bill 3773, entitled, "Responsible Parenthood and Population Management Act of 2005," says, "The State . . . guarantees...

AS the Vatican prepared to select a successor to Pope John Paul II, church leaders in the Philippines, Asia's largest Roman Catholic nation, urged the College of Cardinals not to elect a "liberal" pontiff. The Filipino church said that the leader of the world's more than one billion Roman Catholics must uphold church doctrine on such issues as marriage, abortion, birth control, and priesthood for women. The Philippines is one of few countries in the world where the majority Catholics are in broad agreement with the Vatican in its opposition to abortion, artificial contraceptives, and the ordination of women priests,...

The United States topples an unsavory regime in relatively brief military action, suffering a few hundred fatalities. America then finds itself having to administer a country unaccustomed to democratic self-rule. Caught unawares by an unexpectedly robust insurgency, the United States struggles to develop and implement an effective counterinsurgency strategy. The ongoing US presidential campaign serves as a catalyst to polarize public opinion, as the insurrectionists step up their offensive in an unsuccessful attempt to unseat the incumbent Republican President. These events—from a century ago—share a number of striking parallels with the events of 2003 and 2004. The Philippine Insurrection of...

Mayor Tomas Osmena yesterday admitted there is no guarantee the series of bomb attacks in three Philippine cities that left at least 12 people dead and 145 others injured last Valentine’s Day is not going to happen in Cebu City. “ I’m not saying we are in a better position. We just can’t guarantee that it won’t happen because there are some extreme radical groups that might implement it, “ Osmena said. The bombings that rocked Makati, Davao and General Santos were claimed by the Abu Sayyaf Muslim terrorist group allied with the Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian arm of...

SO WHERE'S the Marcos loot? Anakpawis party-list Representative Rafael Mariano posed this question as he challenged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to show proof that the $683 million in recovered assets of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was still intact. "The multimillion-dollar question is: 'Is the ill-gotten wealth still intact? Where is it?'" Mariano asked. In a statement, Mariano said the President was turning the victims of Marcos atrocities into treasure hunters "looking and waiting for luck." He said part of the money might have been used for the campaign of Ms Arroyo in the 2004 presidential election. "We will not stoop to...

They thought becoming mail-order brides to South Koreans was their ticket to an affluent and comfortable life. The video shown to them by the broker featured smiling Filipino-Korean couples on their wedding day and ostensibly living in marital bliss in South Korea. But little did they know that a few months after the lavish weddings, the women would be divorced and forced to work in nightclubs or factories just to survive. 'It's sexual exploitation and they are using the marriage, which turns out to be fake, to exploit our women,' said Mr Romulo Asis, head of the National Bureau of...

MEXICO CITY — About 100,000 Asian slaves were brought to Mexico by the Manila galleons through the centuries, a dark side of the trade that has not been explored by historians. The slaves were captured by Spanish and Portuguese traders in India, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Mindanao, loaded on the galleons in Manila and transported to Acapulco. *** One such slave was a Filipino by the name of Nicolas Tolentino, who ended up in Chihuahua in northern Mexico, birthplace of the revolutionary hero Pancho Villa. Because the Spanish king had orders that Filipinos were not to be enslaved, Tolentino...

You can call him Al.Rosabelle Hamann did, back when she painted his portrait in the jungles of New Guinea. That was 1944, when she was a Red Cross volunteer. Al was a soldier recuperating from -- well, that part's not clear. Wounds from the Philippines campaign? Jungle rot? Probably both. In her painting, she caught the blue-gray eyes, the brown, curly hair, the hint of a smile. ``Sgt. Al Blackman,'' she wrote at the bottom. ``S.F. Phy. Cult. -- Swell guy.'' ``Phy. Cult.'' is probably a reference to physical culture or body-building; ``Swell guy'' needs no explanation. Blackman was one...

HELICOPTER gunships blasted Muslim rebel positions in the southern Philippines today after guerillas attacked an army outpost violating a two-year-old ceasefire. Fighting broke out late yesterday when about 100 guerillas of the Muslim separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) attacked soldiers on the outskirts of Mamasapano town in central Mindanao. They used mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles, spokesmen for the military and MILF said. Fighting continued throughout the night and into today and two MG520 helicopters were called in to attack MILF positions. Extra troops were also deployed to prevent the rebels from overrunning the outpost, military spokesman Colonel...

MANILA -- Two men suspected in the bombings that killed 42 people in Davao City last year have been arrested. Authorities claimed Thursday the two were linked to the al-Qaida-allied Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah. They are suspected of planting a bomb outside Davao airport terminal in March 2003, which killed 23 people including an American missionary and wounded 127 others, and another bomb a month later, at the southern city's busy wharf that killed 19 and wounded 39.

"Mr. President, today as we hear much rhetoric in the U.S. Senate about the spread of communism throughout the world and the need of the United States to make efforts to try to respond to that so-called threat." He said this in the context of supporting his resolution to pressure Marcos and the Phillipines for democratic reform. He may have been right on some aspects, but once again his rhetoric was naive and dangerous.

First reports. No info on damage in Manila.