HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSE RIZAL

HAPPY BIRTHDAY - JOSE RIZAL ( OUR UNREAD AND UNLOVED NATIONAL HERO ) You gave your life for our country's intellectual development. Indeed, for us Filipinos to be free-minded individuals so that we too may love our country. So, on the anniversary of your birth on June 19, I should wish to report to you what's happening to our people and to our country. Sadly there is little progress on both fronts since your church-orchestrated death; including the deathbed extraction or faking of your alleged retraction. Our country is still stuck in Third World mentality. Its now horribly bloated 100 million inhabitants ( 7 million in your time) still score comparatively low in world rankings in science and technology achievements. This goes for last year also. What is a sin for our women is contraception. And what, however, is still a virtue is self-deception. It is still inspired by divine revelation. Thanks to our corrupt system of education. In the recent impeachment trial the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,a Filipino more devoted not to love of country, but love only divinity under Christianity - Mass, daily prayer, and money - this God-fearing Filipino, was found guilty of violating public trust and culpable violation of the constitution. He has been removed from office. This development, the removal of one top government official, is, however, just the tip of the corrupt iceberg. There is still so much fraud, farce, ceremony, and thieving at all levels of our sick society. Corrupt government officials usually operate like a gang of hoodlums. They defend and protect each other inside or outside the court of Law. It is otherwise more known as the "due process of the law." Oh yes, your old and powerful enemy who had you falsely arrested, incarcerated, publicly executed are still here reigning in authority. They are still in control of the minds and hearts of our people; especially our women - the molded products of schools, colleges, and universities, owned and controlled or influenced by them. They still indoctrinate our youth in wasteful religious studies and rituals, especially in how to pray ever harder for divine miracles. Never mind concentrating on the facts and analyzing them in order to creatively solve real problems. Imagine the absurdity of inculcating habits of reaching out to fantasy solutions to solve real problems. Such faith-filled training orients our youth to downplay life on this earth in wasted preference and preparations for an imaginary better life to come after death. The Catholic charity activities in our country is active as ever . The results are more of the same this year as it was during the previous years. The charity recipients are getting poorer and poorer; while the charity organizations are getting richer and richer. In the meantime, just in Metro Manila alone - hundreds of thousands of Filipino families live off garbage in garbage dumps. They salvage what is sellable materials off dirty rivers, clogged esteros, and polluted lakes. No one in the government or in the church - cares. We are all reminded that God will provide for them! If not on this earth, in God's kingdom in the next world. In the meantime, politics and religion in our country are still not separated, but illicitly happy integrated together. The results too are more of the same old economic story: no prosperity, but only more of the same poverty spreading misery in our insane society. In the meantime, the sinners and criminals in our country are always reminded that no matter what sins or crimes they commit, there is always available from God, at any time, the forgiveness of sin and the pardon of crime! Yes sir, as it was during your time, it is still the same at this time: The only kind of salvation we Filipinos need is the salvation from fear and ignorance! Both evils are the curse and the cause of all our endless problems as a people, and our endless troubles as a nation! Our editors and columnists in the print media would readily write on the evils of politics; but would hardly write as well on the greater evils of religion. Indeed, stupid religion that is keeping us Filipinos intellectually impoverished as a people, and keeping the Philippines economically malnourished as a nation. Yes sir, we Filipinos continue to be the victims of indoctrination you had exposed and denounced. We are not the masters of education. We are still stuck into the Third World religious way of believing. We have yet to progress into the thorough scientific way of thinking that you emphatically favored and championed in your writings. Imagine: most educated Filipinos still do not care to read serious books. In fact I and close friends have not yet met a Filipino student or graduate who has seriously read your works. Remember your most critical satire on God, Jesus, Mary, Friars and Filipinos? Practically no one until now has even heard of it. Likewise, hardly anyone has even heard of that e-book talked about in the Internet that has proven the falsehood of your alleged retraction. It's as if no one cares to emulate your great personality and its depths. We have yet to allow science and clear thinking to transform ourselves into becoming dignified men and self-respecting women. We have yet to be capable of solving our problems not with infantile faith, but with the power of reason and science-oriented investigations. It is very painful to admit that millions of us Filipinos continue to contribute daily to keeping our own country poor, backward, unloved in effect. Nevertheless rich only in blind faith to carry on our traditional defects. Especially as we hardly reflect. We are only inspired to genuflect. You wrote a lot about these issues, which you called "lamentable nurtured defects and predispositions". But hardly any Filipino learns this from you, ironically their number one national hero. The mislabeled "pro-life" believers running and over-populating our sick society continue to insist that we have no population problem in our country today. They insist that there is enough to provide Filipinos with adequate food, housing, and schooling, even if our population reaches 200 million Filipinos. Even if that would wipe out many animal and plant species and much of our protective ecology. After all, we are still told - God loves us. There is always Jesus - our Savior. And so, in the Philippines today, an average of 3 babies are born every minute of the day or 1.8 million yearly. When they grow up, if at all, such children are also taught in schools to refer to Jesus in the bible for the moral guidance. Thus, we continue to be infamous as the Sick Man of Asia. Or, better said, we're getting more famous as the Sick Children of Asia. Instead of evolution to redefine our culture, we only have more of the same ancient revelation to further damage our institutions. Indeed, "It's More Fun in the Philippines." Our population growth is forcing a fantastic rise in malnutrition and illiteracy keeping us entertained as a people and faithfully wayward as a nation. Sir, again this year, as it was during the previous years, the faith-soaked politicians in government 'serve' our country not by telling the bitter truth, but by telling seductive sweeter lies. Like the official inflation and unemployment rates, which are always much understated and sugar-coated. Ours continue to be a government of the corrupt, by the corrupt, and for the corrupt. And we inhabitants as members of our respected churches are nurtured to always vote them into their high offices. Such horrors come nurtured from our schools, colleges, and universities. Millions of our college educated men and women are working not for our national growth and maturity, but are employed in foreign countries. Such Filipino emigrants enjoy the wealth of real education in such foreign countries. The kind of wealth that comes from science which is all about the courage to think, to question, to change, to grow, and to develop under a fearless, self-correcting enterprise. Indeed, science that shows people how to live the good life - how to be inspired by love and guided by the power of knowledge. My dear Sir, you were certainly a real hero during your century. Today, in our own century, instead of heroes in our God-fearing country we only have God-fearing politicians indoctrinated to have more faith in our blind Christian faith. They neither read enough for today's necessary quantum of knowledge nor make use of its power and diffusion. None of them, I dare to say, reads your works seriously and heeds them, which makes me wonder how you became our number one national hero. Our politicians would readily pray to a foreign divinity to remedy the traditional ills of our sick society. They do not pay any serious attention to remedy the rotten core that pretty much generate our corrupt system of education - the root cause of our daily way of confusion as a people and yearly delusion as a nation deprived of any critical science-guided sense of direction. Dearest Sir, Happy Birthday! I respect you. I admire you. I love you! Yes Sir, thanks to you, a few of us have managed to see and think through the evils of your enemy--reason-deadening faith in Christian values and beliefs. Especially the theocratic Catholic kind you fought and got killed you. Through reading your church-critical works and essays, we know what it means to love our country and to always be on the side of our fellow-countrymen, not for what we Filipinos are today, but for the free-minded reading Filipinos we can become tomorrow. Alas, you also repeatedly said something like that in your church-condemned and religiously suppressed writings. But better late than never. May we, the people, discover more of ourselves via discovering you as the most courageous Filipino thinker this world has ever produced. Yours sincerely, Poch Suzara