Great Men

India had Mahatma Gandhi. France had Voltaire. Germany had Nietzsche. Austria had Freud. China had Sun Yet Sen. England had Bertrand Russell. Italy had Galileo and Bruno. America had Tom Paine and Ingersoll. Cuba had Jose Marti and Fidel Castro. These were some of the great men who, with courage and intellect, put more sense into the minds of men and the hearts of women where nature has put only insane horrors. We could have had our own Jose Rizal. The greatest and rarest Filipino this country has ever produced. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church cut him down to size. Millions of Filipinos still have no inkling as to why Jose Rizal was one of mankind’s greatest heroes. Indeed, college professors, historians, biographers, newspaper editors, including his own descendants have been frightened by the Catholic Church authority to believe that Rizal was executed while repentant of his sins against God and regretful of his crimes against his own people. What brazen lies to tell about the greatest Filipino thinker who ever lived. The greatest Filipino who died sober and not drunk with sacred lies. In the meantime, pontifical fear and ecclesiastical ignorance are the recycled garbage dished out in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries. Especially those owned and managed by the Catholic Church and other religious organizations in the Philippines. Consider the average Filipino in this 21st century: he is more comfortable with childish prayer under a theology than he is at home with science and philosophy for the sake of our sense of humanity enjoying freedom and democracy under a sane and a healthy society. Indeed, science is what we know. Philosophy is what we do not know. Religion is pretending to know what we not know. In this past centuries, because Jose Rizal was more at home with the nature of science, philosophy, and the evils of religion, he was locally the pride of the Malay race; but today great men in the same intellectual level of a Jose Rizal globally is the pride of the human race. Poch Suzara Twitter# Facebook# Google#

Albert Einstein on Jose Rizal

“Great spirits have always found opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.” Indeed, Einstein had in his mind men like Jose Rizal when he wrote: “It keeps repeating itself in this world, so fine and honest: The parson alarms the populace, the genius is executed.” Poch Suzara

Bertrand Russell on Happy Men and Women

A man who has once perceived, however, temporarily and however briefly, what makes greatness of spirit, can no longer be happy if he allows himself to be petty, self-seeking, troubled by trivial misfortunes, dreading what fate may have in store for him. A man capable of greatness of spirit will open wide the windows of his mind, letting the winds blow freely upon it from every portion of the universe. He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness of human life, he will realize also that in individual minds is concentrated whatever of value the known universe contains. And he will see that the man whose mind mirrors the world becomes in a sense as great as the world, In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of being a happy man. Poch Suzara

Carl Sagan on Jose Rizal

“As a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our governments, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that while not ignoring the reptilian and mammalian parts of our being, enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies willing to invest resources in a variety of social, political, economic and cultural experiments, and prepared to sacrificed short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.” Poch Suzara

Sam Harris on Jose Rizal

“We are the final judges of what is good, just as we remain the final judges of what is logical. And on neither front has our conversation with one another reached an end. There need to be no scheme of rewards and punishments transcending this life to justify our moral intuitions or to render them effective in guiding our behavior in the world. The only angels we need to invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil\s masterpiece.” Poch Suzara

Richard Dawkins on Jose Rizal

Fraud, illusion, trickery, hallucination, honest mistake or outright lies – the combination adds up to such a probable alternative that I shall always doubt casual observations or second hand stories that seem to suggest the catastrophic overthrow of existing science. Existing science will undoubtedly be overthrown; not, however, by casual anecdotes or performances on television, (or by public execution of scientists like Rizal) but by rigorous research, repeated, dissected and repeated again.” Poch Suzara

TO JOSE RIZAL

Wherever you are, I have the highest respect for you as a man, and I have the deepest love for you as a Filipino. In this connection, I shall continue, to the end of my days, to struggle against those who had you, publicly, put to death. They are still existing, alive and kicking doing more harm, more damage, than ever. Indeed, in this 21st century, your enemies are still in control of our schools, colleges, and universities twisting the mind of the Filipino to remain spiritually poor as a people, and still distorting the heart of the Philippines to remain morally bankrupt as a nation!
Sir: in the God-forsaken country, you are about the one and only Filipino, with dignity and self-respect, worthy to be called Filipino! The rest are trying only to save themselves the trouble of having to think. As the Sick Man of Asia, we only love to believe. Thus, instead of appeals to principles and logic and philosophy, our public spirit is only aroused by personalities and celebrities. Indeed, instead of being the mature masters of our ideals and principles as a society, we only continue to be the childish victims of a foreign Jewish deity. Poch Suzara

Rizal’s Ultimo Adios

How do we summarize it? The poem was completed on Dec. 29, 1896 hours before he was executed. He was able to smuggle out the finished poem. He placed it inside a lamp and gave to his visitors, among whom was his sister and whispered to her: “look inside. There is something inside it.” He made an extra copy by putting it inside his shoe for insurance purpose.
The Ultimo Adios was Rizal’s last poetic defiance against those who continue to be childish believers instead of being intelligent thinkers. The Ultimo Adios is a strong message to the Filipino as a people: – to begin to think that we all share only one common enemy together. No, not the Spaniards or the Americans or the Japanese, or what have you, etc. But our enemy is stupid religion. Indeed, religion that encourages individual stupidity that culminates into social insanity. Poch Suzara

Mar Patalinjug

My great friend from New York wrote: Dear Poch: I think we should forget not only this generation of Filipinos but let us try forgetting a total of five generations. That's a period of more than 100 years. You and I won't be around by then. We will have long turned to dust! Mar
My response to Mar: I agree with you 100 per cent. Dust we are and unto dust we shall return. But we need not live as a farce just because we will end as a fertilizer. Let us, on the contrary, be involved and be like those rare thinking individuals who, throughout history, have had the courage to put sanity into this world where nature has only put insanity. In his NEW HOPES FOR A CHANGING WORLD, Bertrand Russell said it better: “Those who feel nobly, even if in their day they live obscurely, need not fear that they will have lived in vain. Something radiates from their lives, some light that shows the way to their friends, their neighbors, perhaps to long and future ages. I find many men nowadays oppressed with the feeling that in the vastness of modern societies there is nothing of importance that the individual can do. This is a mistake. The individual, if he is filled with love of mankind, with breadth of vision, with courage and with endurance, can do a great deal.” Poch Suzara

Three Kinds of Filipinos

There are only three kinds of Filipinos in the Philippines: Those who upgrade humanity; and, those who degrade humanity. And the rest who could not care less
as nothing matters to them except worshipping divinity. Poch Suzara

Tony Abaya

Wrote a great article in the Manila Standard Today on how we are as a nation of Idiots with idiot candidates and idiot voters.
Far more disastrous, however, than we are a nation of idiots, we are, indeed, a nation of sinners and criminals.
Our schools, colleges, and universities are places where they teach us to believe that there exists a higher power called “God” who will not only provide from out there, but will also forgive us of our idiotic sins and idiotic crimes down here. No doubt, ours is an idiotic system of education. But blaming our officials and voters for what is idiotic in the Philippine government will not do. After all these Filipinos are among the prestigious products of La Salle, Ateneo, University of the Philippines, University of Santo Tomas, Miriam college, Assumption college, Lyceum.
Letran, San Beda, Mapua, Sta. Escolastica, Santa Teresa, Don Bosco, etc. Not to mention products too of Asian Institute of Management (AIM) and our public school system.
As for me personally, if there is anything I am eternally proud as a Filipino, it was my great success at having engineered my own expulsion out of high school in De La Salle University some 50 years ago. It certainly opened the greatest opportunity for me to acquire genuine learning. I hit my strides by enrolling in the greatest of all universities: it is but a collection of books – a library of my own. Happily, I am still a faithful and an active student even in my old age. Learning, indeed, is a never-ending adventure. Poch Suzara

The Hidden God

According to TIME, “There is enough light for those who want to believe, and enough darkness for those who do not want.”
I ask: What good is God’s existence if he does not expose himself by creating more and heavier light into this world of darkness? What good is a hidden God where, in darkness, he stays hidden? Poch Suzara

God Admits

I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Exodus 3:6, Mark 12:26, Luke 20:37.
There is nothing written in the same holy bible where God also admits: I am the God of Juan de la Cruz, the God of Juan de la Tamad, or the God of Juan de la Sipul?
Again: I am God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Matt. 22:32
I ask: What have we living Filipinos got anything to do with the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? To think these bible characters were all born in some Jewish land, and have been long dead and buried in a foreign country since thousands of years ago. Poch Suzara

The Voice of the People

The Son of God Jesus, crucified on the cross, cried out: “Father, forgive them; for they know now what they do.” Luke 23:33
Well, if the Son of God Jesus clearly admitted that the people know not what they do, isn’t it rather childish to believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God? Poch Suzara

Mother Teresa

“…We cannot solve all of the problems of the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of all that is that is to destroy love. And this happens when we tell people to practice contraception.”
This is really another pontifical way of saying that nothing pleases God more than to see poor women here and poor children there and the propagation of poverty spreading everywhere. After all, Mother Teresa loved not only poor people here and there but loved even more poverty everywhere. Poch Suzara

Bishop Teodoro Bacani Jr.

wrote: “Somebody has remarked that if we offend God, God will forgive us if we repent. If we hurt our fellow humans, they will forgive us if we apologize. But if we destroy the Earth, it will not forgive us even if we ask for its forgiveness.”
Bishop Bacani ignores the biblical teachings of Christianity with its vested interests in poverty and misery: The bible clearly declares: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” John 2:15

Cardinal John Newman

wrote: “Conscience has rights because it has duties.” Indeed, it has: duties not to religious authority, not even to any other outside forces, but duties only to one’s self as a self-respecting man. Conscience should and must decide for itself what is good or evil. Revelation does not count. Revelation exposed “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Unfortunately, it has failed to reveal why such a silly tree had been created and planted by God to begin with! In the second place, no one knows where that tree is to be found anywhere in the world today.
In the meantime, Proverbs 28:26 states: “he who trusts in his own mind is a fool; but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” Is it any wonder that the faithful always end up walking mindless, if not always thoughtless as believers of bible wisdom? Poch Suzara

Archbishop Fulton Sheen

“Modern man . . . has long believed that right and wrong were only differences in point of view, but now when evil works itself out in practice he is paralyzed to do anything against it.”
I ask Archbishop Sheen: what about your own church from ancient days to modern times during these past 2,000 years? What exactly has your church done to diminish, nay, eliminate the evils in this world? What has happened to the power of God almighty always behind the power of your church? Poch Suzara

St. Augustine's Silly Philosophy

Wrote: “It is the mark of perfection to recognize one’s imperfections.” This is childish dishonesty with one’s self as far as I am concerned. I’d rather embrace Bertrand Russell’s sense of truthfulness: “No one is perfect and we should not be bothered by the fact that we are not.” Poch Suzara

Alvin Capino

Wrote in the Manila Standard Today: “There is no better expression of love than to help feed the hunger.”
Alvin, I totally disagree. There is no better expression of love than that of informing as well as encouraging would be mothers and fathers to seriously practice family planning and birth control. In this way, there will be less sick and hungry people to feed in our already sick and hungry society. Moreover, as we over-populate, nature will destroy us off with famine, disease, and environmental destruction. It is already a reality in so many parts of the fragile world. The alternative is family planning and birth control. In the meantime, every cause is a lost cause without population control. Poch Suzara

Emil Jurado

Wrote in the Manila Standard Today: “We all admire Pacquiao for his boxing skills. But I am afraid he’ll be a fish out of the water in Congress. What is pathetic about it is that he could win and kiss his boxing career goodbye. What happens if somebody in Congress challenges him to a debate? Will Pacman box him? Why can’t he just settle with the boxing career?
What happens, you asked, if somebody in Congress challenges Pacquiao to a debate? Well, what happens I ask, when Pacquiao challenges Congressmen to kneel down and make the sign of the cross before he starts punching everybody on the Congressional ring? Poch Suzara

G. K. Chesterton

Wrote: “The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing, it is that they thereafter believe in anything.”
I ask G.K. Chesterton: What happens when God stops believing in God? After all, God made it very clear in his first command: Thou shall have no other gods before me?” For Christ’s sake, who created those other gods? Where in hell do they come from? Poch Suzara

Miracles From Jesus

If Jesus performed feats of healing which were credited to him, is it not strange that during the days of his trial, or on his day of execution there was not one person who appeared and to protest because of his marvelous experience of being dead and resurrected back to life and restored back to health?
But then again even Jesus himself, dead on the cross, came back to life. I ask: Would a man who returned from the tomb fail to visit his mother? Only an extremely hard and thoughtless man could neglect his grieving mother. Also, how come there was no appearance to the idiots who had crucified him on the cross? Poch Suzara

Sigmund Freud

“The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.”
Gee, Mr. Freud, I regret to disagree with you. Years before I had a great opportunity to get know, understand, and love my father, my maternal grandfather, and my paternal grandfather – God had them expunged dead out of my life.
Happily, however, my mother is still very much alive. She is 94 years old. I am taking care of her. A devout Catholic that she is and despite her devotion to God all these past years, I love her more than I care to love Mary, the Mother of God, not to mention all the saints of God whom I have never met.
And to think that if the supernatural God and supernatural Devil have been in existence for more than 70 million years and we humans on the average exist only for some measly 70 years, why should we care about pleasing, or, as the case may be, care about displeasing supernatural beings out there? Poch Suzara

The Fools and God

Only a fool says there is no God. Why then did God create fools? Over a billion of them live in China. Perhaps, not all Chinese are atheists. But the Chinese have been irreligious since the 11th century. They do not believe that God is a Christian in general; or, that God is a Catholic in particular. Oh, the Chinese may not merit eternal salvation in heaven. At the rate, however, they are being created in the image and likeness of God (one out of every five people in this world today is a Chinaman) they will surely inherit the earth. Poch Suzara

John Blanchard

In his book: Has Science got Rid of God? Blanchard writes: “Atheism’s creed is clear and cruel: we began as a fluke, we live as a farce, and we end as a fertilizer.”
Obviously, like millions of Christians throughout the world, John Blanchard too is shamelessly ignorant of bible contents. Indeed, the creed of theism is just as clear and just as cruel too: “ For dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return.”
The difference between an atheist and a theist is that we atheists do not believe in childish fairy tales. You theists believe that there is a God out there who will reward you for being a believer or will punish you for being an unbeliever. We atheists have no need for either rewards or punishments to make sense of our beliefs or, for that matter - disbeliefs. Poch Suzara

Idiot Candidates

“There are no idiot candidates where there are no idiot voters.” Antonio C. Abaya
As a matter of deeper fact, if our system of education were purely based upon the scientific revolution of the mind, and not upon the apostolic revelation of the idiotic soul - our politicians need not arrive at high government office by having achieved a reputation in mediocrity. In the meantime, our democracy is shallow, meaningless, and thoughtless since the majority of our people live in misery and in poverty.
And to think that far more evil than the idiot candidates and the idiot voters are the idiot religious so-called leaders. They still preach that poor Filipinos must and should continue to multiply and replenish for themselves more misery and poverty in this God-forsaken only Christian country in Asia. Poch Suzara

The Faith

The faith that does not doubt can only be the faith of the college educated men and women who are not the masters but the childish victims of the priesthood industry. Indeed, the faith that does not doubt can only thrive among those who were twisted emotionally, distorted mentally, impoverished spiritually, bankrupted morally, fooled politically, sickened religiously, and made insane socially. Poch Suzara

The US Social Security System

The Internal Revenue Service says Americans took tax exemptions for $88 BILLION in religious donations in 2004. Imagine that kind of donation in just 10 years. It would amount to $880 BILLION or almost a TRILLION DOLLARS. Imagine further that money, donated not to corrupt priests, greedy ministers, insane evangelists, and other religious charlatans, but donated to the pool of the Social Security system. Each and every one of SSS recipient could receive an average of $2,000 a month rather the measly $500 a month; not to mention even the hard working illegal aliens could receive social security as well upon retirement.
I wish we poor Americans would stop carping about the illegal aliens working hard to earn a living and trying to stay alive in America. After all, the only legal Americans are the Mexicans who owned the State of California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas in the past. And the Native Indians who owned the whole of the United States Continent until the White Race arrived. Indeed, they arrived greedy, selfish, stupid, and insane taking the land away from the native Indians and the Mexicans with the help of war, death, destruction and indeed with the inspiration from Christian values and beliefs. Poch Suzara

I Believe

The Filipino is good by nature. No doubt, there exist ills and evils in the Filipino social and political affairs. Such horrors, however, are to due to corrupt institutions such as schools, colleges, and universities as inspired by the rotten teachings of the Church. Such respectable institutions have made the Filipino good; specially good for the next life, if any; unfortunately, for this life in this country, good for nothing. Look at how we Filipinos are all loving of God up there by hating one another down here! Poch Suzara

Imagine

Imagine our great grandparents then praying daily to God to give us this day our daily bread and to lead us not into temptation. Imagine our great grandchildren will also be praying to God to give us this day our daily bread and to lead us not into temptation. That is hardly civilized progress in human affairs. Poch Suzara

Filipino Sociologists

Say that it would take more than 20 years of study to discover if we Filipinos were actually impoverished by a damaged culture. As a high-school expelled student, however, I say it should only take less than 20 days. Indeed, just visit the toilets facilities in any of our schools and universities, including our government buildings. One can easily deduce that Filipino culture has gone down the drain already severely damaged in this only Christian country in Asia today. In the meantime, take heed of the great Filipino historian Teodoro A. Agoncillo. He bravely wrote: “Self-deception is the worst tragedy of the Filipino as a people.” Poch Suzara

Healthy society

“Without the development of the whole society, economic growth cannot be possible.” Nguyen Tan Dung, Prime Minister of Vietnam
As a matter of fact, without the development of the whole human personality, it is not possible to create a sane and a healthy society. Poch Suzara

Faith and Reason

Faith is not wanting to know what is true. For my part, I would rather have more reason than have faith in lies. I want knowledge. I do not want faith. I reject the values of faith especially as it elevates thoughtlessness into sacred doctrines. Poch Suzara

Who is a Great Filipino

A great Filipino is one who has had the intellect and the courage to put beauty where the theologians and the politicians in cahoots together have only put nonsense for our sick society. In the 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines, only one rare Filipino had the courage and the intellect to stand up to be a great Filipino - Jose Rizal - a truth-seeker, a scientist, and a humanist. In order to keep the Filipino frightened of knowledge and wisdom, Rizal was executed in public by the Authority of the Catholic Church. Indeed, the same church that has vested interests in human misery and poverty in the Philippines. Poch Suzara

Truth and Lies and Liars

The truth hurts but lies can be far more damaging. Lies, especially ecclesiastical lies, - can last a thousand years. Take a good look at the priestly liars who, for centuries, with sacred lies have successfully kept the Filipino spiritually poor as a people and morally bankrupt as a nation! Poch Suzara

Rizal

After six months of stay, he left for Europe for the second time on February 3,1888 to pursue the task he had set for himself. His brief stay enabled him to judge the effect of his Noli Me Tangere. He knew he was a marked man for writing the book which not only shook the Spanish rule, but precisely rattled more the foundation of authority in the Philippines - the Catholic church and its teachings.
The military trial of Rizal was not meant to administer justice throughout the land. It was done purposely to execute him in public so that the Filipinos would be frightened to death and subsequently to stop dreaming of freedom under free thought. Thus, when the so-called Spanish rule was thrown out with the interference of the US naval forces, what stayed behind to continue controlling Filipino minds and dominating Filipino hearts was the Catholic Church. Via Catholic schools, colleges, and universities – Catholic teachings prevailed in the Philippines. Consider the average Filipino in this 21st century. He is more conversant about the fantastic life and times of Jesus Christ than he knows anything about the realistic life and times of Jose Rizal. And to think Jose Rizal was born in the Philippines - a Christian country. Jesus Christ was born, if at all, in Israel that is today not even a Christian country. It is a Jewish State.
Catholic friars claimed that before he was executed Rizal retracted and asked for the forgiveness of his sin against God and for the pardon of his crime against the Filipino people. These developments, however, are based upon religious hogwash. The Rizal retraction scandal was concocted by the religious cowards. Just as much as the religious cowards of our day – the Knights of Rizal - continue to be afraid to stand up to defend Rizal’s great intellectual capacity as a rare Filipino gifted with the capacity not only to think but even to die for a just and a decent cause. Poch Suzara

Helen Keller

A gifted blind-mute-deaf woman, Helen Keller was also a great intellectual with extraordinary social vision. She said: “Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature. . . Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Indeed, our planet earth is a speck of dust in this universe. It is most likely that we human beings are alone and insecure and doomed. There is no other way to meet life but only with courage especially in the pursuit of our ideals as inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Poch Suzara

Reality versus Fantasy

It makes more sense to face reality as we know something of it than be afraid of fantasy as we know nothing of it. Poch Suzara

A Sick Marriage

When the wife fears her husband because he is a psycho-ceramic; or worse, when the husband fears his wife because she is a crackpot – that to me is a sick marriage. I should know. I once experienced a sick marriage myself. My wife was always scolding me for something or another. Instead of correcting and learning from our mistakes, shortcomings, and imperfections, she would rather blame my parents, my sisters, in-laws and friends for what was sick about our marriage. I was on the verge of suicide. I decided, instead, to save my life. I abandoned her because I thought going back to my first and only real love – reading books - was a healthier kind of marriage for me than being married to an utterly thoughtless woman who loved her police dogs more than she loved me.
Do I ever feel guilty for having deserted my wife and children? Hardly. The constant message my wife always made me understand then was that our children will be raised and educated as good and faithful Christians. And that being a non-believer, even if I am the father of my children, I shall have no say whatsoever on the issue.
Well, Jesus Himself recommended deserting one’s family: “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” Matthew 19:29.
For the sake of my personal sanity, however, I abandoned my faith precisely due to the teaching of Jesus as written in the Bible. Jesus said, and never will I ever agree with him that: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. “Luke 14:26. Poch Suzara

Catholic Free Will

Catholic teachings say that true freedom is not choosing our way, but yielding to God’s way. In other words, free will is not choosing our way, but yielding to divinity via papal authority. Catholics may have the free will to choose leaders, but not parents. Indeed, Catholics with free will have yet to figure what got them to be Catholics to begin with. Of course, Catholics believe in free will. They have to. They have no choice.
With free will to choose, however, try getting any younger, or try not getting any older. Golly, we never even had the free will to choose to arrive into this world born not naked, how may we have the free will to choose to leave this world one day naked as well? We were cast into this world by accident of time and place; and we shall leave this world one day against our will. Free will is bunk.
Is free will truly God’s greatest gift to men? Take a good look at those morons gifted with a free will, and created in the image and likeness of God. Those morons who successfully got Jesus, the Son of God, crucified on the cross! And to think that this is the same Jesus, while crucified on the cross, cried out” “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Poch Suzara

Silly Religious Beliefs

Why should we care for our spouses and children, our friends and relatives and neighbors, and indeed the whole of mankind specially senior citizens? After all, our stupid religion has deeply impressed upon our minds and hearts to love only God up there even if it means social insecurity under hate for each other down here? Poch Suzara

Communism and Capitalism

After all these past precious decades of threats of war and real wars against each other, all that wasted resources destroying each other, it has finally turned out that both Communism and Capitalism are not enemies. In fact, they both function very well together. Look at the wealth, power, and glory of China today enjoying both Communism and Capitalism as partners in peace and growth and productivity together. The credit goes to the Chinese – a great people. Bertrand Russell said it better some 50 years ago: “I have come to realize that the white race isn’t as important as I used to think it was. If Europe and America kill themselves off in war it will not necessarily mean the destruction of the human species, nor even an end to civilization. There will still be a considerable number of Chinese left; and in many ways China is the greatest country I have ever seen. It is not only the greatest numerically and the greatest culturally, but it seems to me the greatest intellectually. I know of no other civilization where there is so much open-mindedness, such realism, such willingness to face the facts as they are, instead of trying to distort them into a particular pattern.” Poch Suzara

Thomas L. Friedman

In his recent book - The Lexus and the Olive Tree, author Mr. Friedman wrote: “Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire with his own global network, declared war on the United States in the late 1990s, and the US Air Force retaliated with a cruise missile attack on him (where he resided in Afghanistan) as though he were another nation-state. Think about it. The United States fired 75 cruise missiles, at $1 million dollars apiece, at a person! That was a superpower against a Super-empowered angry man.”
What Mr. Friedman neglected to articulate, however, is how the US economy is based mostly on war production materials and at global activities creating enemies of all sorts to facilitate the use of US made weapons even if drains the national wealth or the USA allying herself with right-wing tyrannies overseas. Poch Suzara

The Human Heart

The human heart is more prone to hate than to love. That is why bullets, guns, and bomb makers have been the most profitable of industries. Especially in the United States of America. In fact, the economy of the USA has been and still is based not upon a world at peace with goodwill to all men, but upon foreign countries at war or preparing for war against each other. Thus, the core of the US foreign policy has more to do with military greed. It has virtually nothing to do with human need.
In the meantime, the whole world today is in desperate need to wage a battle against ignorance. It does not need to wage a war against terrorism. Terrorism is just one product of ignorance as inspired by stupid religion. Poch Suzara

Cosmic Insignificance

Our entire world is one planet so small in that 1,000,000 planets the size of earth can fit inside the sun, Indeed, we are living on a speck of dust in a galaxy that contains 400 billion suns, and is itself only one of the several billion galaxies. According to science, however, our sun will grow cold, and life on this earth will come to an end. The universe, however, will continue to exist while utterly indifferent to human destiny. Poch Suzara

Childhood Impressions

One of the hardest things to achieve in life: throw off childhood impressions out the window. Early impressions have an immensely stronger hold upon us than those acquired in the later years. Thus, a child grows up to be a Catholic or a Jew or a Muslim because of nursery environment and early teachings. Sometimes, even a biologist devoted to the science of biology believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. As a child, said biologist had been frightened to believe that God had a virgin for a Mother. Poch Suzara

The Power of Philosophy

The power of philosophy lies not in the agreement, but in the disagreement among the philosophers. What is even more powerful, however, are the daughters of philosophy – the sciences – each in their respective field of endeavor discovering more and more scientific knowledge for the philosophers to disagree or agree with. Poch Suzara

It is the Same Thing

The pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of knowledge amount to the same thing. What is essential for the good, happy, and creative life is not deadly paralysis, but lively analysis. Bertrand Russell wrote it more gracefully: “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” Poch Suzara

Jesus Died On the Cross

It has been two thousand years since Jesus died on the cross to destroy the devil. Yet today millions of Christians still believe that their greatest enemy is not those lively little creatures found under a microscope, but the silly devil and his deadly influence found in their daily horoscope. Obviously, dying on the cross was a barbaric way to remedy social problems. It has not work in the past. Never will in the future. Poch Suzara

Jesus Baptized

Jesus, the Son of God, was born without sin. And yet John, the Baptist, the religious moron that he was, baptized Jesus to cleanse his presumably blackened soul due to the mess called original sin. Poch Suzara

Childhood Friends

My friends since childhood days have turned out to be not friends at all. They have never met Jesus personally. And yet in our old age my friends are peeved at me because they expect me to be more of a friend to Jesus than be a real friend to them. Well, I don’t know Jesus. I never met Jesus. Jesus and I never grew up together laughing, playing, studying, misbehaving, traveling, and chasing after girls together? In fact, Jesus was never here or there or everywhere with me at any time or place during my trials and tribulations! Why should I be a friend to some one who is not only a Jewish ancient mystery, but who was also never a living flesh and blood personality to me? Poch Suzara

Atheism

Do you believe in God? It is a meaningless question. What is more meaningful to ask, however, is whether God (if he exist) believes in you. After all, God has the kingdom, the power, and the glory. For my part, as I have nothing why should God give a hoot whether I believe in him or not?
Since the time of Jesus, more than ONE HUNDRED BILLION people have already lived and died on this earth. That God is so worried about the salvation of souls has got to be a sick joke concocted by the corrupt priesthood industry. Really, if God cares for souls, why create them to be in danger on this earth? Why not create souls happy in heaven? Or, better yet, why bother to create silly little souls to begin with? Poch Suzara

Lord Acton

“The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by the minorities.” Lord Acton
In the Philippines, however, despite the more than one million security guards from licensed private security agencies guarding our banks, government buildings, piers and airports, hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, restaurants, plush villages, condominium buildings, shopping malls, and indeed guarding even our churches and cathedrals, nobody but nobody enjoys security in our sick society.
One thing, however, stands out very clear. We have no need of security guards to guard our public libraries since there aren’t any existing that is worth visiting anywhere in the Philippines. Never mind guarding the existence of Science Museums throughout our country. No such creatures exist in the Philippines. Poch Suzara

Ignorant Religion

Imagine the harm that has come from ignorant religion. On the other hand, think of how much help has come from human intelligence, kindness, courage, and perseverance. Indeed, freedom of religion is important, but what is even far more important is freedom from religion.
We could never achieve the full potential as a human being if we remain not only religiously ignorant, but also remain ignorant religiously. Poch Suzara

Open Letter to the Knights of Rizal

Open Letter to the Knights of Rizal As the Knights of Rizal, you people should have already settled the issue of the Rizal retraction scandal. The shameful damaging controversy has been going on for more than 111 years now. Rizal was condemned to death as an infidel. He was framed with the crime of rebellion to kill him for brilliantly attacking the Catholic establishment as even the 2005 published Opus Dei book admits. Down Through the years, you Knights of Rizal, historians, biographers, and even a famous lady columnist wrote that it does not matter whether Rizal retracted or not because it is a non-issue. I ask: are you people really that frightened of the truth? And to think that some of you are lawyers by profession. You were trained in the art of cross-examination precisely to ferret out the truth. When has the truth ever been a non-issue in human tragedy? We Filipinos have yet to acknowledge that our hero, Rizal, died truthful to his principles and humanitarian ideals. Indeed, he met his death intellectually sober and not drunk with religious lies. Clearly, the Catholic church in authority found it necessary to put Rizal to death. After all, it is easier to destroy the reputation of a dead man than it is to destroy his truthful writings, especially if he remains alive doing more truthful writings. Rizal advocated the rational way of life and he therefore got to be the notorious enemy of Catholicism. Rizal wanted us to grow up and to stop living in fear and in guilt. Moreover, to stop wasting our time falling on our knees praying daily to a Supreme Being out there to give us this day our daily bread and to lead us not into temptation down here. The Catholic could never allow Rizal’s teachings to revolutionize the Filipino way of thinking: it is always better to think than it is to believe. Unfortunately, faith condemns people not to think. And sadly, with faith, millions believe that Rizal died as a penitent Catholic totally rejecting Rizal‘s message: “Be careful, choose well, for this world is full of deceits and deceivers.” And to think that after he was executed Rizal was not even granted a Catholic burial. It only proves that the Rizal retraction story was pure gimcrackery. It was concocted by the priesthood industry to protect the Catholic church with its vested interest in human misery. In this 21st century, we poor Filipinos are still searching for our identity and prosperity and social sanity which Rizal struggled and gave his precious life for. Oh, you Knights of Rizal, wake up! Rizal is still a vague hero to millions of Filipinos! Only the few know Rizal as a brilliant thinker who was executed for being too brilliant a thinker who catered not to the authority of the church, but served instead his people and the future welfare of his own country! Indeed, thanks to the courage of great thinkers in the stature of a Rizal, the Catholic church today is tearing itself apart externally as it is collapsing internally. I accuse you Knights of Rizal of both errancy and complicity in the second assassination of Rizal’s character and reputation. It is worthless to ignore those who maliciously invented Rizal’s retraction document hours before he was executed. It is more crucial to defend Rizal’s loyalty to veracity, profound sense of common human decency, and unquestionable level of scientific honesty. If we, the Filipino people, continue to suffer under the failure of our social values and religious beliefs, it is simply due to the historical success of Catholicism in the Philippines. Indeed, as products of our Catholic schools, colleges, and universities we have yet to be taught how to emulate our great hero - the rare and brave thinking Filipino that he was - who struggled against those made wealth, power, and glory selling nothing but the gospel of sacred lies and biblical falsehoods in this country since the 16th century. Gentlemen, our chief hero was put to death for being humanistic, scientific, and a heretic. Indeed, the same Rizal, the sane and rational man that he was, with dignity and self-respect - refused to fall on his knees in blind obedience to anything fantastic be it ecclesiastic, apostolic, pontific, or even theologic. Yours in Rizal, Poch Suzara

The Truth Hurts

The Truth hurts. The most stupid thing, however, is when one prefers getting hurt like a coward than facing the truth with courage. Poch Suzara

Senate Minority Leader

Aquilino Pimentel Jr. cautioned the executive branch of government against pressuring the Court of Appeals on the US Marine rapist custody issue.
Pimentel said the Philippine government was “well within its right” to voice its position on the case in view of the cancellation of the Balikatan 2007. But he said the issue “should be taken within the ambit of the case,” now pending before the court.
To allow the executive branch to bamboozle the court, that is something else,” the Senator told the Daily Inquirer.
Pimentel also advised the appellate court not to yield to “external pressure” and “to decide on the case on its legal merits.” “Only in that way will the issue be laid to rest,” he said, adding:
“Like extrajudicial killings, extrajudicial pressure is divisive.” Pimental also said the Philippine government had no reason to complain if the US government cancelled the war games and, eventually, stopped giving aid to the country.
“If the United States, the only superpower in the world, believes that the Balikatan exercises are not that vital for its security and ours, who are we to complain?” he said.
For my part, I admire Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. He is a rare Filipino politician in the Philippine government. He has not only the intellect but also the courage to assert self-respect and dignity for his people where a US Marine rapist and his spiritual adviser – Fr. James Reuter have only made a mockery of the status of the women citizens of the Republic of the Philippines.
In the meantime, we have yet to hear from the Visiting Forces Agreement Commanders on the US military proceedings to discharge dishonorably that criminal who raped Nicole in her own land. And to think that the job of the US Marines is to protect and defend those who are unable to defend and protect themselves. Poch Suzara

The Iraqi War

The Iraqi war has done much damage to the capability of the US military. The US government has been spending $9 billion a month and have spent over $300 billion total on this war thus far. The potential antagonists of the USA, including Iran, North Korea, Russia and China, “want and need America in Iraq” because the war is “depleting American financial and human resources.” Imagine $300 Billion dollars. Imagine what that money can do to rebuild communities that have been falling apart in American cities since the end of the Vietnam war in 1975.
Imagine $300 Billion dollars wasted on war and not for peace and global stability. That kind of money can tremendously help America catch up with other advanced European nations, not to mention Japan, New Zealand, Iceland, Australia, and Canada ahead in: adult literacy, health care quality, student reading ability, student mathematics ability, student science ability, women’s rights, infant mortality rate, life expectancy, qualify of life survey, overall currency strength, human development index. In brief, ahead in social and political and economic sanity.
For my part, as an American citizen, I no longer feel free or even proud singing: God Bless America! Poch Suzara

If Atheism were a Religion

If atheism were a religion, then it is the oldest of all religions. Consider the angels who rebelled against God in heaven eons ago even before the days of Adam and Eve on earth. Those angels did not follow God. They did not believe in God. They were atheists, weren’t they? If God, however, was really all that great, all that fair and wonderful, and all that lovable – why would any of his angels in heaven and men on earth disobey or rebel against him? It makes no supernatural sense at all! Poch Suzara

Poor Philippines

We are such a poor country. We neither have a history nor a culture or values to live by. We do not even have national heroes to emulate. Our national heroes have turned out to be not heroes but faithful believers. Before they died or were executed, according to our priests and nuns, they retracted while embracing the teachings of the Catholic Church. One such great Filipino was Jose Rizal. He is now more of a saint of God than he is a hero of the Filipino people. Thus, in this only Christian country in Asia, we continue to experience poverty of the worse kind – the poverty of the mind and heart. We have no great leaders, and no great heroes. We have more bishops down here and more saints up there to love, worship, and adore. In fact, we Filipinos love only Mary, the Virgin Mother of God more than we love our own mother because our mothers have lost their virginity to our fathers. Poch Suzara Twitter# Facebook# Google#

According to Science

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies all were made in the interior of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.
God did not create the universe. To begin with, the creation of the universe is beyond the scope of human understanding. We created God to justify our ignorance and fear. We even made such jusification appear like it is something unquestionably sacred, if not biblically holy. Poch Suzara

Bishop Oscar Cruz

The famous Nicole Rape case got her US Marine rapist sentenced to 40 years in jail. (PDI December 8,2006). Bishop Oscar Cruz stated: “Women, most especially, should be taught that womanhood is precious and noble, so it is not right for them to be flaunting it around . . . they should not make themselves appear cheap and practically inviting to be violated by men.” Wow! One can imagine during her days just how sexually attractive must have been the Virgin Mary flaunting her carnal desires all over the place. God almighty existing here, existing there, and existing everywhere, could not control himself. He was seduced and aroused. He got Mary deflowered and impregnated her with a baby. We do, however, have to give God some credit. He wasn’t really all that sexually reckless. He was responsible enough to practiced family planning and birth control. He had begotten only one Son, didn’t He? Poch Suzara

You are an Atheist too

You say I am an atheist because I do not believe in the existence of your God. Well, you are an atheist too because you do not believe in the existence of my God. Now, who gave you the right to define for me which God I should believe in? In the meantime, if your God were always omni-absent as a nothing, never omni-present as a something, what does it really matter whether I believe or do not believe in the existence of such a supernatural nothing? Poch Suzara

Fr. James Reuter and Our Women

Fr. James Reuter, the spiritual adviser of the American Marines in the Philippines, keeps insisting that Nicole’s US Marine rapist had been innocent all along. It was a matter of consensual sex. Our women, he says, are always flaunting carnal desires each time men are around, especially wearing military uniform.
May I suggest to Fr. Reuter that he attend to more serious troubles of the Catholic Church? More than 75 per cent of all Catholic priests worldwide are gays. These spiritually starved men of the Lord are not only sexually active, they also victimize young boys and girls who have no knowledge of what consensual sex means. Fr. James Reuter, isn’t time for you to enrich the spiritual life of the US marines visiting the Philippines? Golly, if they are here to train the Filipino to kill fellow-Filipinos more efficiently with weapons MADE IN AMERICA, they are here to insult our women! Poch Suzara

How the Gods Bless America

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. In the sick and destructive American society, however, even the gods envy the sick politicians in charge of the US government. They are very efficient at being mad at each other. Even the gods envy the way these filthy-rich morons otherwise more known as Republicans or Democrats have been destroying America - a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. Poch Suzara

Ignorance

We wonder at the ignorance of our grandparents and great-grandparents of things so plain and simple. Well, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will wonder too at our own ignorance of things so plain and simple. This, in brief, is the evolution of knowledge via the results of the never-ending search of the truth.
To think that in this generation, we, the religiously dumbstruck, do not wonder also what those ignorant and superstitious primitives recorded in the silly bible more than 2,000 years or 80 generations ago. Golly, a great many believers do not even bother to read the bible. We atheists do read the bible and have already submitted reports to the theists about incredible bible contents. Poch Suzara

Tree of Genesis

There is written in Genesis about the existence of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Notice the billions of trees existing everywhere on this earth. Except the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. No one knows where that fantastic Tree is located today. Oh well, according to the same bible, God himself was once a Burning Bush. That Burning Bush, however, has not totally vanished. It evolved and got to be elected president of the United States of America. Poch Suzara

Silly Theologians

The theologians are getting sillier. They are now declaring that atheists too can go to heaven. Excuse me! We atheists don’t care to go to heaven. We do not care to go anywhere after we are dead. We atheists are quite familiar with the silly concept of immortality: it is the condition of a dead man who refuses to believe that he is already dead! Golly, with theologians around, isn’t enough to be fools in this life? Must we also be fools in the next life? And to think there isn’t even any! Poch Suzara

Worthless La Salle Education

In this 21st century, I am not surprised to receive childish, if not infantile email messages from grown-up men and women. Especially from those who have had the benefit of college education in the Philippines or even in the United States. Each time, however, I receive meaningless messages from such college educated individuals, I can’t help but be proud of the fact that some 65 years ago, I managed, somehow, to get myself expelled out of La Salle high school. As a high-school expelled student, I think then as I still do think today that a college education in this country or in the USA represent something like that of a Cathedral: it is a monument to human stupidity. Look at the stupid mess of our world getting messier with each passing year. Look at the world leaders who are all proud of their college education. To think as faithful believers in God and His son Jesus these are the leaders of our rotten and corrupt and insane world. Poch Suzara Twitter# facebook# Google#

Weekdays and Sundays

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays – I am an agnostic. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – I am an atheist. Now what about Sundays? Well, on Sundays, I am a heretic in the morning; an infidel in the afternoon; and, an unbeliever of the faith in the evening. During the 365 days or twelve months of the year, however, I am a devout humanist. I am always on the side of the human race. I have made it into a habit to struggle daily against the evils of divine disgrace. Poch Suzara

Painful

It is, indeed, painful for me to see the lives of many individuals largely determined not by what is in between their ears, but by what is in between their legs. Devoid of intellect, they fail to see the values of developing the human mind with knowledge and cultivating the human heart with wisdom. Most of these individuals, many of whom are college-educated friends and relatives, would rather enjoy first sexual orgasm. They belittle knowledge, as if it were a sin or a crime to experience intellectual protoplasm. They do not want to know. They only want to believe. In the meantime, there is far more beauty in thinking before believing than there is value in believing without thinking. Poch Suzara

Domestics

“More than 70,000 Filipinos live and work in oil-rich Kuwait, many of them domestics.” Manila Standard Today, Dec. 25, 2006.
Kuwait is not a Christian country. The Kuwaitis are Muslims. They do not believe in the holy bible. They have their own holy Quran – the Word of Allah. And to think the teachers and professors of our schools, colleges, and universities are so proud of each other. Most of the domestic helpers in Kuwait are college-educated men and women from the Philippines.
In the meantime, more than 15 million Filipinos today are living and working in some 150 countries around the world. The officials of our government are so proud of each other as these Overseas Contract Workers remit more than $10 Billion dollars back home yearly to help keep afloat the sinking economy of the Philippines. Indeed, the failure of our values under the Success of Christianity in the Philippines. Poch Suzara

People Who love People

‘People who love people are the luckiest people in the world.’ Unfortunately, people cannot love people unless they love first and foremost - themselves. In America, we do not love each other as a people. We love only the almighty dollar and our government sees to it that we also love our guns, bullets, and bombs. Why not? More people throughout the world hate us more than they love us. It is called terrorism and we have to defend ourselves. Poch Suzara

More Hate in America

Here is a great example of more hate in America. In the History of Jim Crow, author Jerold M. Packard wrote: “Though for decades white supremacists would defend lynching as a safeguard against unpunished rape of white women by black men, rape was not in reality the usual motivation for the lynching. Of the 3,811 African-American men lynched between 1889 and 1941, no more than 641 – 17 per cent – had actually been accused of rape, either attempted or committed. Numerically, other offenses vastly outranked rape. Some of the imagined or real transgressions by African-Americans ending in lynching included attempts to sue a white employer, demanding to be allowed to vote, participating in union activities, exhibiting disrespect to a white or disputing a white, or simply for no reason that ever came to light – the latter perhaps a case of “sassing” or giving a white a “fresh” look (what was in the South sometimes called “reckless eyeballing”) or, most shocking of all, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time when an “example” was thought by murderous whites to be needed to keep a black community in its “place.” Furthermore, it wasn’t only black males who were lynched. Most black women were murdered, too, including Mary Turner, who was killed by a mob in Chicago while nearly at the point of giving birth to her child, her killers hanging her and setting her body ablaze because she had threatened to disclose the names of the men who had earlier lynched her husband.”
Such is hate in America – the land of the free and the home of the brave. Poch Suzara

Science and Religion

Religion is dying. It is certainty without evidence. Science is growing. It is evidence without certainty. The belief that science and religion can reconcile one day is pure nonsense. To begin with, religion cannot even reconcile with other religions, why would science bother to reconcile with evils more known as silly religions of this world? Poch Suzara

What We Need

What we need is not a new President, but a new form of government. Indeed, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. What we need is a government to please the Filipino people, not to please the US government and its people specially those who are in the US military. Poch Suzara

It is the Same Old Story

For the New Year’s Eve. We waste about a Billions pesos worth of fireworks. To think the nation has a foreign debt of about a Trillion pesos. We are, indeed, a nation of educated morons, if not fire-cracking idiots. Our economists are silent. They have yet to figure out, however, what a billion pesos worth of fireworks for the new year’s eve celebration got anything to do with progress of the nation. To me, in my simplicity, a billion pesos could buy about 1,000 low cost houses to benefit poor families comprising about 50,000 Filipino men, women, and children. But then again, why should we bother? Why should we care? We have been taught by religious stupid morons that there is always God who will provide! Poch Suzara

What If the Lord

What if the Lord were at best a heretic; or, at worst an atheist who does not believe in any of man's religions? Genesis, 6:6 reads: "It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." Well, what if the Lord has ceased to believe in himself? Poch Suzara

It is truly Incredible

Millions of Americans still believe that there is a difference between the Republicans and Democrats in US politics. As if either party does not belong to the same party called “greed party.” As if the US government were truly free and democratic and not under the total control of the richest US corporations manufacturing goods not for world peace but for world war to destroy the enemies of Capitalism. Poch Suzara

Thou Art Dust

The bible says: “From dust thou art, and from dust thou shall return.”
Well, if we came from dust, and unto dust we shall return, and God made man in his own image and likeness, then God must be made of dust too. No wonder, God is everywhere, just like dust is everywhere too. In the meantime, isn’t it rather foolish to pray to a piece of dust for the salvation of dusty souls made of dust
too? Poch Suzara

More Civilization

What worth is there in gaining heavenly salvation by leaving this world in desperate need for more earthly civilization? Poch Suzara

We Pray

We pray for the spirit of the dead. We also pray for the spirit of the living. We do not know the answer to our prayer for the spirit of the dead individually. But for the spirit of the living collectively, the answer seems to be social insanity under our sick society. Poch Suzara

Atheists are Arrogant

Because atheists, they say, ignore the fact that religion is extremely beneficial to society. What a crock of bull. Listen to this famous philosopher, a great mathematician, a logician who gave birth to modern logic, a thinker imprisoned for his pacifist beliefs, and indeed, a publicly declared atheist – Bertrand Russell. He wrote: “If a majority in every civilized country so desired, we could, within 20 years, abolish all abject poverty, quite half the illness in the world, the whole economic slavery which binds down nine tenths of our population; we could fill the world with beauty and joy, and secure the reign of universal peace.”
I, myself, am a proud and a happy atheist; and if you, my dear readers, were shallow-minded enough to believe that I am an arrogant person – thank you. In facing life’s horrors, would you rather I’d be like most people - timid cowards? Poch Suzara

Stupid Sense of Moral Values

Imagine helping the poor not out of concern for suffering people, but doing so because you have been frightened to believe the creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it or will punish you for not doing it? What kind of a creator is that who is stupid enough to have created poor and suffering people? Poch Suzara

A Biographical Tidbit

I have no problem with drugs. I have no problem with alcohol. I have no problem with gambling. I have no problem with women. Most amazing of all, however, is that I have no problem with the greatest evil of all - boredom. Indeed, not to be involved and not to exist amount to the same thing. If I am not busy physically, I am busy intellectually. I have developed the habit of questioning everything. I am therefore always thinking a lot. Thinking helps me to recognize the depths of my own ignorance and in facing such evils I am able to be intellectually honest with myself. I walk a mile each morning around the area where I lived. After breakfast, I write and re-write. After lunch, I take a little nap. Then I go to my blog, facebook, gmail, and Google. These are the little things that make me happy; but my happiness is more based on the fact that I no longer carry a religious burden on my back. I have thrown my superstitious beliefs out the window. I am an atheist. I no longer waste precious time, like millions do, praying daily to a silly God to “give us this day our daily bread,” and to “lead us not into temptation. Things being equal, what’s my problem in life? A lot of my dumbstruck friends and relatives are very disappointed with me. They would rather see me in trouble with a spouse or drunk every night with alcohol or gambling in the casino or even busy womanizing. They think of me as some sort of a weird fellow as I only love to read a lot and write a lot. To enjoy not only the freedom of thought, but also the freedom of expression. Those who are afraid to die are afraid to live. I am not afraid to live. At any rate, if I must die, I am sure to die sober, and not drunk with lies. In the meantime, happiness is not what a man has, but what a man is. Indeed, I do not want millions. I want answers to my questions. I care much for this life as it is the only life I know. I do not care for the next life as I know nothing about the existence of a next life. How can there ever be a hereafter after death when there never was, for any of us, before birth - a herebefore? Poch Suzara

Astronomy

According to the science of astronomy, there are more than 400 billion stars and planets that comprise the Milky Way Galaxy. But there are more than a trillion of such galaxies comprising the cosmos. In this light, the planet earth is like a grain of sand, and we, the people, are like parasites living on the surface of the earth.
According to theology, however, we must pride ourselves into believing that God made man in his own image and likeness. Poch Suzara

Nicole

Unless our women learn from Nicole’s rape case, they will continue to be third class citizens qualified only to be employed in the baby factory of the Philippines. Indeed, we have 1.8 million babies born yearly in our country. Most of them are un-wanted, un-loved, and un-needed even by the morons otherwise more known of the papa of these abandoned children. Poch Suzara

The Greatest Mystery

The greatest mystery, if not also the best kept secret in the world is the Revealed Truth. After all, it has yet to be revealed. Poch Suzara

A Whole Person

My teachers at De La Salle University impressed upon me when I was a grade school student that I was half animal and half man. When I became an atheist, however, I deeply felt the joys of being a whole person. Indeed, I became an atheist when I realized how silly of God to have made me half man and half animal in his own image and likeness. Poch Suzara

Junk Prayers

On earth we get junk mail. In heaven God gets junk prayers. Indeed, on earth as it is in heaven. Poch Suzara

Live Without God

Man cannot live without God? As a matter of fact men have not ceased hating and killing each other because they cannot agree as to which God to believe in, and cannot tolerate each other’s God to live for. Man cannot live without God? Which man? The man who is a speck of dust crawling helplessly on a small and insignificant planet as seen by the astronomers? Or, man as a heap of chemicals put together in some cunning way as seen by the physicists? Perhaps, man as he appears to Hamlet, noble in reason, infinite in faculty? For my part, as an atheist, I have, indeed, been living without a God. As a matter of self-respect, I don't need a God. I admit, however, that I would rather live with the goddess I love, worship, and adore. Her very presence fills my world with so much light and beauty and sanity. She never ceases to remind me of my duty and responsibility to humanity. Poch Suzara

In a Debate

The agreement or disagreement in any debate is a trivial matter compared to the conclusion from either side: what is far more important at the end of any debate is the never-ending search of the truth via our sense of curiosity, if not the promotion of a lively inquiry.
Bertrand Russell was more lucid: “It is recognized quite freely by Socrates that the sum total of what a man knows is vanishing small. What seems in the end more important is that one should pursue knowledge.” Poch Suzara

The Teachings of Jesus

Was Jesus really a kind and a lovable character? Please read Lloyd Graham, author of Deceptions and Myths of the Bible. He wrote:
“Instead of revealing to us our purpose in Creation and responsibility for our world conditions, He tells us to “take no thought” for anything, for your heavenly father knoweth your need before ye ask him” – a perfect example of that “false security” under which we lived. The statement has no literal significance whatsoever. Refuse to take thought for your own welfare and this “heavenly father” will let you starve. Take no thought for health and hygiene and you die of this “heavenly father’s” – murderous parasites. Take no thought for economic justice and you become an industrial slave. Take no thought for political justice and you have a world at war. Caring for these things is precisely our business, and in the present state of the world we see the result of leaving them to God – prayers for peace and incessant wars; wrong on the throne and right on the cross; the virtuous impoverished, the vicious enriched; our benefactors toiling alone, while the wealthy parasites loaf and play – this is “divine providence.” What we need is a little human providence: knowledge and intelligence to right these God-ordained wrongs, and a sense of values that will help our benefactors help us. In these things, God is helpless, and God’s extremity is man’s opportunity.” Poch Suzara

A Muslim and A Christian

Between a Muslim and a Christian, there is only the Muslim who sincerely believes in the existence of Allah and honestly believes in the existence of the hereafter. A Muslim could wrap dynamite around his tummy to blow himself up to kill the infidels around him. He has faith enough to believe that as a dead man, he will immediately proceed to a Muslim heaven where 72 young virgins will be waiting for him.
Oh well, why would a Christian be eager to blow himself up with dynamite to kill the unbelievers too? There is not enough incentive for him to do so. In the Christian heaven, there is only one old Virgin Mary waiting for him? Poch Suzara

Phil-American War

Excerpt from A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn:
“The fighting with the rebels began, McKinley said, when the insurrectos attacked American forces. But later, American soldiers testified that the United States had fired the first shot. After the war, an army officer speaking in Boston’s Faneuil Hall said his colonel had given him orders to provoke a conflict with the insurgents.”
“In February 1899, they rose in revolt against American rule, as they had rebelled several times against the Spanish. Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader, who had earlier been brought back from China by U.S. warships to lead soldiers against Spain, now became a leader of the insurrectos fighting the United States. He proposed Filipino independence within a U.S. protection, but this was rejected.
It took the United States three years to crush the rebellion, using 70,000 troops – four times as many as were landed in Cuba. It was a harsh war. For the Filipinos the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease. . . .
William James, the Harvard philosopher, wrote a letter to the Boston Tanscript about “the cold pot grease of McKingley’s cant at the recent Boston banquet” and said the Philippines operation “reeked of the infernal adroitness of the great department store, which has reached perfect expertness in the art of killing silently, and with no public squalling or commotion, the neighboring small concerns.”
James was part of a movement of prominent American businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals who formed the Anti—Imperialist League in 1898 and carried on a long campaign to educate the American public about the horrors of the Philippine war and the evils of imperialism. It was an odd group (Andrew Carnegie belonged), including anti-labor aristocrats and scholars, united in a common moral courage at what was being done to the Filipino in the name of freedom. Whatever their differences on other matters, they would all agree with William James’s angry statement: “ God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippines Isles.” Unquote.
Today in the Philippines, we have famous columnists, such as Emil Jurado of the Manila Standard, who wrote: “Can our government ever modernize the military without American aid? Can we fight terrorism alone? Even now, US soldiers are helping the Armed Forces go against the Abu Sayyaf terrorists. So don’t give us that baloney that we can do without the Americans?”Wow!
Imagine the Filipino in this 21st century still killing fellow-Filipinos and we need the Visiting Forces Agreement to help us do the job with modern weapons Made In America! Poch Suzara

Fidel Castro

I have always admired this great man - a leader of decent men, decent women, and decent children. A rare breed, indeed, among world leaders. Castro never cared for expensive suits and neckties or expensive shoes. Never cared for expensive watch around his wrist or a diamond-studded gold chain around his neck. Never cared for silly daily shave. Never cared for wine, women, and song. Never lived in a palace. Never owned a Roll Royce or a Mercedes Benz. His security men to protect and defend his life were his own people. Far more than being an optimist or a pessimist, he was always a meliorist – one who believes words tend to become better by human action. He never amassed billions of dollars deposited in some secret account in some foreign bank. In fact, Castro cared more for knowledge and education as he was an avid reader, a deep thinker, a profound speaker, and in science and technology – he was a researcher. In religion, Castro was never devoted to the saints of God for the sake of that pie in the sky, by and by; but devoted only to his country and its people for the here and now. With much political sense, Castro reminded the world that the poor countries the US government liberated have only ended up poorer stuck in poverty rather than enjoying the legacy of prosperity. Under America for some 50 years, the Philippines is one great example of what it means to have been liberated by the US military-industrial complex. In 1946 an American president declared: “maintaining and building our preparations for war will be big business in the United States for at least a considerable period ahead.” Castro had the courage to speak out against the imbalance of world trade. He declared: “Never before has humankind had such formidable scientific and technological potential, such extraordinary capacity to produce riches and well-being, but never before have disparity and inequality been so profound in the world. The world economic order works for 20% of the population but leaves out, demeans and degrades the remaining 80%.” Castro echoed the sentiments of a bipolar world where developing countries spend $13 on debt repayment for $1 they receive in grants; have 2.7 billion people living on less than $2 a day; and 800 million people going to bed hungry. Indeed, the freedom of rich countries to get richer, and the democracy of poor countries to get poorer.Plans to kill Castro have often been organized by the CIA with blessings from the White House. They all failed as Castro enjoyed total protection from his own loved ones – the Cuban people. Thus, Castro has outlived 10 US presidents who tried to expunge his world image as a great leader of men, women, and children. To Fidel Castro: we shall never forget you. In the centuries to come, decent people everywhere will continue to have the greatest admiration for you as a great man - one who has had the courage to put beauty into Cuban affairs where the US government has only put the horrors of political creed as inspired by industrial greed. We, decent people throughout the world, salute you con amor y besos y abrazos. Poch Suzara Poch

The Bible Says

Love not this world, neither the things that are in the world. John 2:15. For heaven's sake where else do we find neighbors to love as also commanded in the same bible? Obviously, there is little love in our world because we have more passion for divinity than we have compassion for humanity. Poch Suzara

US 'Could be Going Bankrupt'

US 'could be going bankrupt'
By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor
(Filed: 14/07/2006)


The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country's central bank.

A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.

Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. "To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors," he asked.

According to his central analysis, "the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds''.

The budget deficit in the US is not massive. The Bush administration this week cut its forecasts for the fiscal shortfall this year by almost a third, saying it will come in at 2.3pc of gross domestic product. This is smaller than most European countries - including the UK - which have deficits north of 3pc of GDP.

Prof Kotlikoff, who teaches at Boston University, says: "The proper way to consider a country's solvency is to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens facing current and future generations. If these burdens exceed the resources of those generations, get close to doing so, or simply get so high as to preclude their full collection, the country's policy will be unsustainable and can constitute or lead to national bankruptcy.

"Does the United States fit this bill? No one knows for sure, but there are strong reasons to believe the United States may be going broke."

Experts have calculated that the country's long-term "fiscal gap" between all future government spending and all future receipts will widen immensely as the Baby Boomer generation retires, and as the amount the state will have to spend on healthcare and pensions soars. The total fiscal gap could be an almost incomprehensible $65.9 trillion, according to a study by Professors Gokhale and Smetters.

The figure is massive because President George W Bush has made major tax cuts in recent years, and because the bill for Medicare, which provides health insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid, which does likewise for the poor, will increase greatly due to demographics.

Prof Kotlikoff said: "This figure is more than five times US GDP and almost twice the size of national wealth. One way to wrap one's head around $65.9trillion is to ask what fiscal adjustments are needed to eliminate this red hole. The answers are terrifying. One solution is an immediate and permanent doubling of personal and corporate income taxes. Another is an immediate and permanent two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits. A third alternative, were it feasible, would be to immediately and permanently cut all federal discretionary spending by 143pc."

The scenario has serious implications for the dollar. If investors lose confidence in the US's future, and suspect the country may at some point allow inflation to erode away its debts, they may reduce their holdings of US Treasury bonds.

Prof Kotlikoff said: "The United States has experienced high rates of inflation in the past and appears to be running the same type of fiscal policies that engendered hyperinflations in 20 countries over the past century."

Paul Ashworth, of Capital Economics, was more sanguine about the coming retirement of the Baby Boomer generation. "For a start, the expected deterioration in the Federal budget owes more to rising per capita spending on health care than to changing demographics," he said.

"This can be contained if the political will is there. Similarly, the expected increase in social security spending can be controlled by reducing the growth rate of benefits. Expecting a fix now is probably asking too much of short-sighted politicians who have no incentives to do so. But a fix, or at least a succession of patches, will come when the problem becomes more pressing."

Comment: It looks like the terrorists in America are succeeding. It is frightening to realize, however, the terrorists are home-grown. These morons otherwise more know as Republicans and Democrats have been installed in our government since 50 years to destroy the United States of America. Poch Suzara

Western Civilization

The values of Western civilization have always been conceptually beautiful; except for the ugly historical fact that rich countries of the Western civilization always enjoyed the freedom to become richer; and poor countries of the Western civilization always enjoyed the democracy to become poorer. Poch Suzara