Which God

I am told that: “We inhabit a universe vaster than human comprehension, older than human wanderings, more wondrous than human conception. And in the face of that, we do the natural thing. We ask questions and seek answers. That's not a denial of God. It is evidence of Him.”
I entirely agree. However, I ask: evidence of which God? There are so many of them, not to mention a goddess! In the meantime, the whole of mankind is still in its diapers sucking on a security lollipop called God. For my part, I thank God I am an atheist. Poch Suzara

Believers in the USA

More than half of the American population believe Jesus is in heaven and that he will return to earth 50 years from now. This is a lesser tragedy. The greater tragedy, however, is that the candidates for the US Congress of both houses are derived mostly from these group of faithful believers in Jesus. They call themselves Republicans, or as the case may be - Democrats. Precisely the kind of people who need to believe. They do not care to find out or to know which is the exact opposite. Indeed, the kind of people who want a democracy, but do not care for the real values of liberty. Meanwhile, declare yourself liberated from theism and you could not land a job in the USA. Not even employed as a gofer in the White House. According to President George Bush senior, atheists are not patriots. Hell, they are not even citizens of the United States as America is one nation under God. Which God? Of course, the God known as the Almighty Dollar. Poch Suzara

White God

As a little boy at home and in school I was never taught to believe that God is black or brown or yellow or a red God. No, God is a white God. Jesus, the Son of God, is a white Son. Mary is the white Mother of God and Joseph the white husband of Mary. Even the inspired authors of the bible were all white men. As I alarmingly saw, however, how this world is getting more and more drunk with white supremacy, I slowly began to embrace the values of Atheism – its tranquility, its beauty, and its sanity. Poch Suzara

Jose Rizal

Think of it: If, just before he was executed by the order of Catholic Spanish friars, Rizal retracted from his series of attacks against the abuses of the church, Rizal could have been the first saint the Catholic Philippines ever canonized. After all, in the sainthood roster, virtually all of the saints of the church were first sinners, and then in the end found themselves kneeling down before the power of God, a.k.a. the Roman Catholic Church. For my part, after I am dead and I meet with God, this is what I will say: “God, when will you stop bragging about your supernatural power? Please go and visit the Philippines. Please God, see for yourself just exactly how, during these past five hundred years, Christianity has kept the Filipino mindless as a people still stuck under your divine wisdom; and has kept the Philippines heartless as a nation still stuck under your divine guidance.” In the meantime, we Filipinos could have been 500 years ahead of our time if it hadn't been for the Catholic Church dragging science and human dignity down the drain and executing our best thinkers by musketry like it did our Dr. Jose Rizal. A Filipino who wrote: “be careful, choose well, for this world is full of deceit, and deceivers” - cannot be anything but a great thinker. Rizal, indeed, was the greatest Filipino thinker. He had the courage to introduce social sanity in our society where the Catholic religion has only given birth to social stupidity. Poch Suzara

HISTORY

If we could only learn from history, it need not repeat itself. But since we do not even want to learn from the history of our own country, why should we want to learn from the history of the world? Before he died at the age of 98, struggling for human decency during most of long life, Bertrand Russell admonished: “One must care about the world one will never see.” Poch Suzara

What I love about America

In the present, I have the greatest love for all the cats and dogs in America. In a nuclear war, unfortunately, these house pets will all be reduced into cinders. And to think that no can accuse these animals of terrorism; or, for being a Republican or a Democrat creating not jobs for every American as the primary purpose of the US economy, but creating markets in foreign countries to buy “Made in America” weapons for war, death, and destruction. Only to prove that the USA is the one and only superpower among nations of the world.
Meanwhile, there is no greater crime than to scare mothers and fathers enough to send their sons off to war that need not be waged because there never was no real threat to begin with. To all you US soldiers fighting in Iraq today – you are all better off going home to your wives and children or to your mothers and fathers. Please stop fighting for and in behalf of the homicidal maniacs in charge of our government. It is no longer our government. It has already been stolen away from us – the American people – decades ago. Poch Suzara

Change for the Philippines

It has been suggested that the solution to the problems of our country is to change the Philippines and rename it the Republic of Maharlika. This suggestion, however, is so silly and childish. We have already changed the names of our streets. Nothing happened. In fact, our streets are as filthy and rotting as ever. Thanks to our reckless habits as drivers of imported motor vehicles. We have no respect for traffic rules and regulations that’s hardly enforced anyway. If there were hopes of redirecting the course of Philippines for growth and development as a nation, our women must first be spiritually educated. In this way, as well-informed and educated would-be mothers, they will produce children capable of mental growth and intellectual maturity, and therefore having children capable of developing as wholesome human beings of Asia. Consider Poverty. It is a symptom. Slavery is the disease. Women in the Philippines are not enslaved because they are poor, they are poor because they are enslaved. Indeed, our women suffer the worse kind of slavery – the slavery of the mind and heart. The men behind the church and government continue to have authority over our women’s life dictating to them even as to what to do with their own reproductive system. Our women therefore produce babies without regard to moral or intellectual capacity as to what makes a family happy and united blessed with wanted, needed, and loved children. Thus, the 1.5 million babies born yearly in this country are mostly the product of sexual activity, if not pleasurable debauchery, and not the result of decent family planning or decent birth control measures, Therefore, instead of enhancing social sanity, we only have the cycle of slavery via the population explosion generating perpetual poverty. In the meantime, after centuries of growing and developing, most Asian countries have already reached maturity. The Filipino, however, is still pretty much in its diapers. More in awe than ever with that infinite majesty more childishly known as the holy trinity. Indeed, this traditional business of loving white gods and white saints such as Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and loving other white bible characters such as Moses and David all have to be thrown out the window. Also, the business of believing that there is better white world to come after death in the hereafter is pure white hogwash. This is our country. The only country we have. Let us leave this country one day a better place than we found it. And if there is life with God in the hereafter, it should be our moral obligation to tell God that he should pay more attention to the dire social conditions of the Philippines - still poor and backward due to infantile beliefs in superstitious nonsense otherwise more popularly known as Judeo-Christian religion – the religion of the white race. Poch Suzara

Power of the US Government

If power of the US government were ever tamed, it could only mean peace not only in America, but peace in the world. The greatest contributor to the geo-political and military insanity worldwide has been and still is the US government. The same US government that has been hijacked away from the American people. Indeed, hijacked by the corporate criminals – the homicidal maniacs whose religion is called White Supremacy, and whose God is called the Almighty Dollar. Poch Suzara

War as Big Business

The U.S. government goes to war against foreign countries like in Iraq, and the US soldier faces adversaries with weapons or military technology that’s "Made in the USA." It was the same during the Vietnam War. The widening war on terrorism and accelerating weapons sales to coalition partners will only increase the likelihood of the boomerang effect that will continue to haunt us Americans at home and American citizens living abroad. Meanwhile, the weapons for the War against Terrorism like it was before called the War against Communism - have been and still are profitably “Made in the USA.”Indeed, God Bless America! Poch Suzara

Great Men of America

Jack Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X were tall and great leaders of the 20th century America. Each of these great men equally shared the same dream: To transform America into a real land of the free for African Americans; and, to transform America into a real home of the brave for all Americans. Under separate occasions, these great leaders were assassinated by homicidal maniacs working for the industrial-military-university complex. Indeed, the same complex that profits much from death and destruction. Its task is to inspire more hate and spread more violence everywhere to insure the growth and success of its war industry. Poch Suzara

First Refusal

In law, for the sake of fairness, and a matter of priority, there exist such a thing as the “right of the first refusal.”
In global affairs, however, when it comes to a government deciding to bomb other governments, the US government has “the right of the first refusal.” The US government loves war. It loves death and destruction, especially in foreign countries; and if need be, death and destruction right in American cities to justify the declaration of war against other countries in order to please the homicidal maniacs in charge of running the US government. Poch Suzara

Freethinkers

Freethinkers have the impression that stupidity in its infinity can only found in the subject of divinity. They refuse to freely think that stupidity can also be found in every other branch of knowledge, except perhaps in mathematics. Take, for instance, history. I have met freethinkers who take for granted that America is the greatest and wealthiest nation in the world in that people from all over the world want to migrate to America – the land of the free and a home of the brave; and, indeed, God’s country where the pot of gold is always boiling.

Ask, however, the indigenous peoples and the African Americans in America if they will agree with you. As a matter of historical fact, The United States of America was founded and established on two holocausts, that of the indigenous people slaughtered and their land grabbed away from them, and the millions of African people captured and enslaved and robbed of their time and energy to labor for free on such stolen properties eventually called the United States of America. Poch Suzara

American Values

It is a sad reflection of American values when the majority of American citizens do not object to countless billions of dollars spent on strategic air missile defense system that may or not work and even more billions spent on studies that examine why they fail in protecting us from an enemy – who may or may not exist. Yet, many college-educated Americans vehemently object to a study of reparations – something that could specifically identity the injustices heaped upon Black Americans as slaves in these United States for more than 250 years and its after effects for more than 130 years.
In the meantime, the dumbstruck in America, especially those ignorant of what exactly the US government is doing to foreign countries like in Iraq in the present, or in Vietnam in the past, asked: “What has America done to deserve a 9/11? Poch Suzara

Revenge

More than 3,000,000 people, especially women and children, not to mention old men and old women were killed in the Vietnam War. Killed by the French colonizers, then the Japanese invaders, and then the American intruders. After some 30 years of bloody fighting for love of country and love of fellow-citizens, the Vietnamese people finally defeated and threw all invaders, colonizers, and intruders out of Vietnamese soil.
After the Vietnamese people cleaned up the mess created by long years of war, did the Vietnamese government ever called for revenge? To liberate and to start bombing France, Japan, and the United States of America responsible for death and destruction in Vietnam? As a matter of fact, the Vietnamese people are among the most decent and most civilized people on this earth. As an American citizen, I salute the Vietnamese people. They have much to teach the world on how to live as a nation with self-respect and dignity right in their own land and why a people must work for love of country and must work for the sake of its own good future.
In the meantime, intellectual pigmies continue to ask: What has America done to deserve 9/11? They have yet to ask a deeper question: what has Vietnam done to deserve the death and destruction by the US Air Force – bombing not only their farms and schools and hospitals but also destroying Vietnamese cities day after day for years? Indeed, more “Made in America” bombs were dropped in Vietnam than during the entire Second World War bombings in Europe and Southeast Asia put together. It is the same American horror happening today in Iraq while we Americans continue to insist that America is God’s country. Poch Suzara

Open Letter To President Bush

Dear Mr. President

Wars in the past have been waged to end all wars – to make the world “safe for democracy.” Nothing happened except the seeds of hatred and violence only replanted for future wars. In this century of modern weapons for wholesale slaughter, the choice is either Man stops the future of war or war stops the future of Man.

In the past, many people of Vietnam, especially women and children, were killed over nothing. In the present, many people of Iraq, especially women and children, are killed over nothing. Yesterday, it was called war against Communism. Today, it is called war against Terrorism. What’s the difference? Communism and Terrorism are both the black sheep children of Capitalism! Indeed, thanks to Capitalism rich nations get richer, and poor nations get poorer. Meanwhile, If war must be declared against terror, why not fight those terrorists hiding not in Iraq or elsewhere under a periscope, but only those more deadly ones found under a microscope?

The United Nations should help Iraq solve its own problems. The Iraqis should choose for themselves the kind of government that suits them. Iraqis don’t want a Christian democracy. They want a Muslim theocracy. So leave them alone to grow up to confront the evils of their own religion. We too, in America, must also grow up to confront the evils of our own religion. Indeed, no other belief has spread more terror to humanity than the belief that religion comes from divinity. The Christians, Jews, and the Muslims have not ceased hating and cutting each other’s throat in God’s name. Meanwhile, the US government is wasting billions of dollars yearly for its military growth and expansion. To prevent not future violence and degradation, but only to frighten other nations into getting more involved in the welter of organized hatreds and threats of mutual extermination. North Korea recently proved that a nuclear bomb is easy to make and exciting to test. North Korea is now a new member of the family of nuclear-armed States. In the years to come, other nations will also manufacture their own weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, the United Nations and its Peacekeeping Forces have yet to dismiss the paradoxical theory that nations can only remain alive and united by preparing to bomb each other.

Sir, as the head of our government, perhaps you could, instead, look into the injustices of freedom and the tragedy of democracy in American history. Your high office should fully support the already established commission to examine the institution of slavery, and subsequently the racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of that discrimination on living African-Americans. Millions of slaves involved may all be dead; however, legal persons remain alive, particularly governments and corporations including universities that benefited from slavery. Despite the passage of time, these beneficiaries of slavery are still among us and should face legal complicity. The US government and other institutions benefited from crimes against humanity. They should be held responsible for damages. The reparation due to Black Americans is not about charity. It is about justice and social sanity. It is about freedom and democracy. It is about human dignity.

I refer you to Raymond A. Winbush’s, editor of: SHOULD AMERICA PAY? Quote: - “Black Africa sacrificed 40 to 100 million men, women, and children to the slave trade; 15 to 25 million survived. Indeed, there is little recorded in human history to compare with the sheer horror of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Human beings were chained together, and then piled on top of each other, where they had to lie and sleep in their own waste as well as that of the person next to them for weeks on end. A vicious cycle of disease ensued as African people huddled together crying, screaming, vomiting, and defecating uncontrollably. Along this human chain of misery, some were dead and some alive, the waft of rotting bodies adding to the stench. There was no escape from disease. The captives suffered from dysentery, diarrhea, eye infections, malaria, malnutrition, scurvy, worms, yaws, and typhoid fever. Slaves also suffered from friction sores, ulcers, injuries and wounds resulting from accidents, fights, and whippings . . . The longer the journey, the more the human cargo was to die in route. One can only imagine the state of mental health for those trapped in this living nightmare. Panic, anxiety, hysteria prevailed. Pure rage alternated with a deep collective depression, manifesting in mutiny and onboard rebellions. For various reasons – too much cargo, too little food, to eliminate evidence of being a slave ship African people were oftentimes thrown out by the crew into shark-infested waters. Long line of chained captives sometimes jumped overboard together, committing group suicide, and mothers threw their babies overboard. The three hundred years of Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade amounted to a system of death and destruction beyond human comprehension and convention unparalleled in the annals of history. Imagine, if not already separated, families were torn apart – husbands from wives, children from their parents and siblings. It was common practice for them to be sold to different plantations in different states, never to be reunited again…It destroyed the lives of millions of innocent black Africans.” Unquote. Of course, nobody called this evil “capitalism.” Instead, everybody called it “freedom and democracy.”

Mr. President, please stop wasting our precious tax dollars to promote the evils of hate and poverty. Your foreign policies are only giving birth to more terrorism to haunt us in the future. The budget for the US military should be reduced considerably for humanitarian purposes. Such as for education and health programs for the African-Americans and millions of other Americans, specially the senior citizens with social security income surviving from hand to mouth existence. The U.S. military adventures overseas contribute nothing to our national security or prosperity or even to global sanity. Bertrand Russell wrote: “You can bomb the world into pieces, but you can’t bomb the world into peace.” Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has manufactured, sold, exported, or given away armaments worth more than a trillion dollars to foreign countries. The Philippines as one recipient country of such armaments got energized not with the science of life and reconstruction, but only with the religion of death and destruction. Meanwhile, for the sake of the Philippine-American friendship, most Filipinos living in hate and in poverty continue to justify the killings of fellow-Filipinos with weapons “Made in America.”

Sir, please give world peace a chance. Please retool and transform our destructive war economy into a constructive peace economy. As the president of the most powerful nation in the world, you can make the sanity and the beauty of peace shine not only throughout the world but also make it brilliantly visible in the hearts and minds of every Black, White, Yellow, Brown, and Red American. As a consequence, we, the American people, should and must be able to utter these words without shame: - “In America, we have justice for all. In America, no one is deprived of life, liberty, security and prosperity. Indeed, in America, without exception, we all enjoy the colorful norms of human dignity.
Yours faithfully
Poch Suzara
Bertrand Russell Society, Philippines
San Lorenzo Village, Makati City
October 22, 2006

Pandora's Box

Was Pandora’s Box opened when Pope John Paul 11 issued a sweeping apology on March 12, 2000, for the errors of the Roman Catholic Church during the previous two thousand years, acknowledging intolerance and injustice towards Jews, women, indigenous peoples, immigrants, and the poor? What about in 1993 when the United States apologized for the participation by its military and diplomats in the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893? The United States also apologized for the internment of Japanese American citizens in Arizona during World War 11? What about in 1999, Australia acknowledged the “most blemished chapter in our national history,” and expressed its “deep and sincere regret that indigenous Australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations, and for the hurt and trauma that many indigenous people continue to feel?
Since some 40 years already, why it is that calls by African Americans for apology and repayment for the years of unpaid labor as slaves and underpaid labor for generations and continuing to this day have been pushed aside? Yet, the reaction of most white Americans is that there was nothing beastly or inhuman when the United States legalized slavery from 1619 to 1865 which was followed by another century of legalized racial discrimination! What white historical nonsense is this? We have yet to ask: What would the United States Constitution look like if it had been drafted to meet the needs of the enslaved Africans and their descendants?
Consider African nations are given loans by Western governments, banks, and international institutions, with no recognition that the wealth that allows the latter to make those loans is partly built on wealth removed from the former during centuries of slavery and colonialism. Indeed, African labor and looted African wealth built strong Western economies. Look at Africa as a continent today! Look are its people – specially its women and children!
Slavery was not romantic; it was evil, ferocious, brutal, and corrupting in all aspects. Within a period of 350 years, it was developed in its greatest degree of degradation in the United States of America responsible for the greatest crime in world history - the Tansatlantic Slave Trade.
For further information, please read one of the greatest books published in the history of book publishing: SHOULD AMERICA PAY? edited by Raymond A. Winbush, Ph.D. Poch Suzara

Nicole

She said: “There is no justice in the Philippines, and it’s the reason criminals are running the place.” The victim of rape by a US Marine while fellow-Marines cheered him at his job, Nicole further said: “The justice department is the top criminal.”
It seems Nicole’s team of prosecutors in court are more on the side of the rapist than on the victim. ( See Manila Standard Today ( Oct. 11, 2006 ).
For my part, I have the greatest respect and admiration for Nicole. What a rarity of a Filipina. She is so courageous and so principled. If only more Filipinos had a mother like a Nicole; had a wife like a Nicole; had a sister like a Nicole; had a daughter like a Nicole; had a niece like a Nicole, and indeed had a teacher in school like a Nicole – the Philippines would be the most decent and the most developed country in Asia today.And to think that most Filipinos, specially those with college education in this country have other more important values and beliefs. Such as in this God-forsaken country, these college educated dummies would rather be waiting for the Second coming of Jesus Christ, if not looking forward to a better life to come in the hereafter after death in the Kingdom of God. Poch Suzara

Slavery in America

It’s an American horror based upon historical facts. White slave owners created wealth using Black slaves, who were, of course, forbidden from creating any wealth themselves. The economic differential that resulted from slavery continues today. Slaves, for the most part, were forbidden from establishing stable families, and the legacy from that deprivation is still seen in African American communities today. . . How does one calculate the cost of inner-city ghettos, of poor education, of the stigma of perceived racial inferiority? The severity of slavery’s injury is far more profound than any cash transfer will be able to reverse.
To my Black American friends, both living and dead, who received no justice for being captured, enslaved, colonized, and discriminated against, your struggles and sufferings will never be forgotten. As a white Asian-American myself, I will never cease to remind my white American friends and relatives of these historical American horror. Poch Suzara

Capitalism

In 1919, twenty years after the invention of the automobile, there were 108 automobile manufacturers in the United States. Ten years later the number had whittled down to the 44 U.S. auto companies. By the end of the fifties it had dropped to 8, and then down to 2 U.S. car makers. Today, the stocks of the biggest and the only 2 American car makers are owned mostly by foreigners. That is the beauty of Capitalism according the U.S. government and its guidelines for the car manufacturing industry. In other words, never mind the jobs lost as long as somebody, anybody, even those who are not American citizens make tons of money.
For further information, please read Michael Moore’s DUDE, WHERE'S MY COUNTRY?
Poch Suzara

The Bible and Astronomy

The bible was written at a time when people believed that the sun moved around a flat earth, and that the earth was located at the center of the universe.
The science of astronomy discovered that earth is round, and it is just one mote of dust, an insignificant particle floating aimlessly in space. The earth is just one of the 400 million planets and stars that comprise the Milky Way galaxy of which is just one of the hundreds of billions of galaxies existing in space and in time called the Cosmos.
It is time to throw your holy bible out the window. It was written by inspired authors who were neither useful nor truthful. Only fearful and dreadful and faithful. Poch Suzara