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

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