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

Watching The Economy Crumble

August, 2005 Good News! Soon You'll No Longer Need an Expensive College Education to Work in the US. Watching the Economy Crumble By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS. The US continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July payroll jobs release. The media gives a bare bones jobs report that is misleading. The public heard that 207,000 jobs were created in July. If not a reassuring figure, at least it is not a disturbing one. On the surface things look to be pretty much OK. It is when you look into the composition of these jobs that the concern arises. Of the new jobs, 26,000 (about 13%) are tax-supported government jobs. That leaves 181,000 private sector jobs. Of these private sector jobs, 177,000, or 98%, are in the domestic service sector. Here is the breakdown of the major categories: 30,000 food servers and bar tenders; 28,000 health care and social assistance: 12,000 real estate; 6,000 credit intermediation; 8,000 transit and ground passenger transportation; 50,000 retail trade; and 8,000 wholesale trade. (There were 7,000 construction jobs, most of which were filled by Mexicans immigrants.) Not a single one of these jobs produces a tradable good or service that can be exported or serve as an import substitute to help reduce the massive and growing US trade deficit. The US economy is employing people to sell things, to move people around, and to serve them fast food and alcoholic beverages. The items may have an American brand name, but they are mainly made off shore. For example, 70% of Wal-Mart’s goods are made in China. Where are the jobs for the 65,000 engineers the US graduates each year? Where are the jobs for the physics, chemistry, and math majors? Who needs a university degree to wait tables and serve drinks, to build houses, to work as hospital orderlies, bus drivers, and sales clerks? In the 21st century job growth in the US economy has consistently reflected that of a Third World country--low productivity domestic services jobs. This goes on month after month and no one catches on--least of all the economists and the policymakers. Economists assume that every high productivity, high paying job that is shipped out of the country is a net gain for America. We are getting things cheaper, they say. Perhaps, for a while, until the dollar goes. What the cheaper goods argument overlooks are the reductions in the productivity and pay of employed Americans and in the manufacturing, technical, and scientific capability of the US economy. What is the point of higher education when the job opportunities in the economy do not require it? These questions are too difficult for economists, politicians, and newscasters. Instead, we hear that “last month the US economy created 207,000 jobs.” Television has an inexhaustible supply of optimistic economists. Last weekend CNN had John Rutledge (erroneously billed as the person who drafted President Reagan’s economic program) explaining that the strength of the US economy was “mom and pop businesses.” The college student with whom I was watching the program broke out laughing. What mom and pop businesses? Everything that used to be mom and pop businesses has been replaced with chains and discount retailers. Auto parts stores are chains, pharmacies are chains, restaurants are chains. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Lowes, have destroyed hardware stores, clothing stores, appliance stores, building supply stores, gardening shops, whatever--you name it. Just try starting a small business today. Most gasoline station/convenience stores seem to be the property of immigrant ethnic groups who acquired them with the aid of a taxpayer-financed US government loan. Today a mom and pop business is a cleaning service that employs Mexicans, a pool service, a lawn service, or a limo service. In recent years the US economy has been kept afloat by low interest rates. The low interest rates have fueled a real estate boom. As housing prices rise, people refinance their mortgages, take equity out of their homes and spend the money, thus keeping the consumer economy going. The massive American trade and budget deficits are covered by the willingness of Asian countries, principally Japan and China, to hold US government bonds and to continue to acquire ownership of America’s real assets in exchange for their penetration of US markets. This game will not go on forever. When it stops, what is left to drive the US economy? Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yaoo.com Dear Paul Craig Roberts: A great many thanks for your piece on WATCHING THE ECONOMY CRUMBLE I recently discovered in Google. Nowadays, it is next to impossible to find honest Americans dealing with so much American political lies and religious falsehoods. Either we just continue to kid ourselves or we just continue to believe that the USA will still be a superpower in the centuries to come. Perhaps, only with weapons of mass destruction, not weapons to install peace and goodwill to all men on this earth. Recently, I read A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It is first time I have come across an American historian so honest and truthful. I wish we had more and more Americans like you and like Howard Zinn. Please, dear Mr. Roberts, please keep up the good work and more power to you. It is precisely great men like you that may yet save the USA from totally falling apart as a nation as it is, indeed, crumbling for no reason at all except for local stupidity on the hand, and on the other hand for global insanity. With your kind permission, I am publishing your WATCHING THE ECONOMY CRUMBLE in my blog. With all good wishes, Poch Suzara, Bertrand Russell Society, Philippines. (PERMISSION GRANTED Dec. 29,2006)

Philippine-American War

Excerpt from A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn. Mindless and heartless Americans – read on:
“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.” Poch Suzara

Necessary Evil

The trouble with the concept of necessary evil is that it is often more evil than it is necessary. Take for example, killing people. It is an evil. But killing people in God’s name is not necessary; it is stupidity as inspired by religious insanity. Poch Suzara

Biblical Laws of Rape

If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her. Deuteronomy 22:28-29
What kind of a monster would command a rape victim marry her attacker? Answer: God. And to think that the Catholic Bishops of the Philippines, in this day and age, still insist that rape cases are mostly caused by women flaunting their bodies to men. Poch Suzara

Street children

Hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of street children exist under subhuman conditions in this only Christian country in Asia. They live off garbage and trash in the streets of our major cities. The religious morons continue to distribute the holy bible messages to these miserable pieces of humanity. As if the mothers and fathers of these street children ( who are also created in the image and likeness of God ) should still believe in the bible message that says on this earth God loves men, women and children and will provide for them. What a crock of biblical hogwash. In the meantime, we have religious clowns pretending to be economists who says that we can export some of our successful solutions to poverty, like the Gawad Kalinga of the Couples for Christ and Workers Cooperatives for contractual services like farm workers, security guards and retail workers. . . The Philippines should share its NGO solutions to the poverty problem with China.” As I have written before, WOW! Philippines. Poch Suzara

Terrible Sight To See

It is a terrible sight to see: - strong and healthy grown-up men and women falling on their knees praying to the Lord for the forgiveness of their sins and crimes. They take attention away from the Almighty who is also trying to listen to the prayers of hungry children, the weak and the poor, the sick and the dying, not to mention the mediocre victims of religious insanity in the Philippines. In the meantime, in God’s kingdom is the power of love. In the devil’s kingdom is the power of hate. In man’s kingdom, however, is the power of timidity. Combined the three kingdoms together and they each add up to the kingdom of universal stupidity. Poch Suzara

The War Against Poverty

The trouble with the war against poverty is that there seems to be no end to it. Human misery is never defeated. In fact, thanks to the pretentious drama of the rich Filipinos waging a so-called war against poverty – poor people throughout the Philippines are multiplying and replenishing at the rate of almost two million babies a year. Thanks to Catholic teachings in our schools, such as: “blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.” I said it before, I say it again: it is time, for the sake of the economy, and especially for the sake of social sanity, that we should, instead, wage a war not against poverty, but a war against the teachings that maintains the wealth, power, and glory of Christianity in the Philippines. Poch Suzara

The Formula

Here’s the best formula for human stupidity to last as long as infinity: always be satisfied with your opinion about anything. Always be proud of what you already know so dearly. Never change your mind. Do not bother to learn anything new. In other words, do not think! Do not read! Do not ask intelligent questions; just be contented with the stupid answers. Just continue to believe what your religious teachers frightened you to believe when you were a little boy or a little girl in school.Indeed, never mind intellectual honesty; just have faith in divinity. If, at your age today, you are still frightened by such sacred lies, then you might as well also admit that you are a religious as well as a superstitious - believer devoid of a precious mentality, if not bereft of human dignity. Poch Suzara

Courage

Courage is not needed in the struggle against non-existing entity like the one called Divine Grace. On the contrary, courage is precisely needed in the struggle to attain health and wealth and happiness, here and now, for the Human Race.Poch Suzara

Jesus Admonished

Sell all you have and distribute to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven. I ask: If what truly matters were only treasures in heaven, what do the poor gain from those who have given them? The misery of the poor is not due to the laws of nature. It is due to faith. Indeed, the silly faith that never ceases to preach: - blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God. In the meantime, both the rich and the poor alike all want to go to heaven. Nobody, however, wants to die. Poch Suzara

Filipino Education

What is wrong with our teachers in school and our professors in college? Don’t these professionals recognize the most urgent problems of our country – food, energy, population explosion, the filth and poverty, resources, ecology, climate, the problem of the aged, the backwardness of our cities and provinces, the need for productive, rewarding work – can never be resolved with the same recycled prayers said daily by our politicians in government? The same cheap politicians, like Marcos and his cronies then, who stole the Philippine government away from the Filipino people?
During Martial Law years, Marcos got to be a dictator. He was installed as our ruler. He was morally and financially supported by the military-industrial-university complex of the USA. Among the most prominent of his enemies were Max Soliven and Ninoy Aquino. Both jailed by Marcos, they nevertheless became famous for their anti-Marcos activities. To think that the enemies of Marcos were the same men and women who were products of the same system of education that Marcos himself enjoyed too during his academic years in the Philippines. The same system of education that is always maintained and sustained by the powers-that-be to keep our society stagnant under mediocrity rather than be developing with freedom under science and technology. Indeed, in this only Christian country in Asia, our leaders die not for love of country, but for love and faith in Jesus. The same Jesus who was born not in the Philippines, but supposedly born in a Jewish town in Israel some two thousand years ago that today is not even a Christian country. Poch Suzara

Merry Christmas

For this Christmas, I invite my relatives to please give not our children toys that are deadly and destructive. Instead, we should give them values to read; especially provocative ideas and beliefs that are both lively and constructive. In this way, our children will all grow up to celebrate the birth of social sanity, and no longer be celebrating the birth anniversary of a Jewish baby supposedly born in a Jewish town in Israel some 2,000 years ago that today is not even a Christian country.
In fact, for this Christmas, I highly recommend that you all read a great book: - WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE by Bishop John Shelby Spong. He clearly explained how religion today is tearing itself apart externally as it collapses internally.
As an atheist, I greatly admire Bishop John Spong; especially for his intellectual courage. Indeed, he had the courage to openly admit: “I have no interest in a system of rewards and punishments. I do not see the purpose of life after death to be that of motivating behavior in the here and now. I can live without sense of heaven as a place of reward or hell as a place of punishment.” Poch Suzara