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

Existence

Existence is all that there is. We must take existence as a starting point. We cannot step outside of existence. There is nothing outside or beyond existence. We cannot step outside time or space or step outside the universe. We are in it. It is not possible to know of anything that lives outside of existence. We cannot start with a God and then deduce existence. We know nothing of God as God is unknowable. We must first start with what we know, and deduce existence from the already existing universe. In the ultimate analysis, we can only conclude that there is no God to have created existence since existence has already been around way before God entered into the messy picture. Poch Suzara

Peace On Earth

The highest ambition of a Christian is not to go to heaven, but to expect the non-Christians to go to hell. Indeed, if peace on earth and goodwill to all men were to become a reality one day, men must begin to realize that organized religions have always been a disgrace, and not a grace to the whole of the human race. In the ultimate analysis, for the sake of peace in this world, far more precious than the freedom of religion is freedom from religion. Poch Suzara

Security for the Insecurity

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from being abusive to any one, especially young people. I was myself abused in school as a little boy both physically and emotionally. I found it then hard to accept the beauty of Christian values and beliefs. Happily, I managed to escape. I ended up to be a high-school dropout. I came to the conclusion that it is not only unproductive, but utterly destructive for religion to provide believers with emotional security after having been frightened to believe with the emotional insecurity that it creates.
For my part, I would rather have a developing mind clearly answerable to the here and the now. I have no need of a mediocre soul vaguely answerable later to some one vague called a God existing way out there. I’d rather stand with self-respect and look at my life here and now in this world.Poch Suzara

Reality

Philip K Dick wrote: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” How true. However, here is a ticklish problem: Science admits with all humility and honesty that it understands only 1 per cent of what actually constitutes reality. So, when it comes to reality, what is there really to believe? Poch Suzara

The Truth

The un-examined truth is not worth believing. In fact, in the ultimate analysis, there is no such thing as the truth. There is only the search of the truth. It is man’s greatest and most noble of professions.
Bertrand Russell said it all: “Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable. Poch Suzara

Freed Slaves

When it finally freed the slaves, the United States provided no meaningful compensation to the former slaves for the value of their labor, nor did it provide them with the economic assets needed to compete with the white community in the marketplace. It stand to reason that the transfer of wealth from those who benefited to those who still suffer because their ancestors were oppressed is the only way for a meaningful reconciliation. Indeed, until America’s white ruling class accepts the fact that the book never closes on massive unredressed social wrongs, we Americans can never claim that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Moreover, America can have no future as one people.
For further information, please read Randall Robinson’s recent book The Debt: What America Owes the Blacks – the enslavement of Blacks in America from 1619 to 1865 was “far and away the most heinous human rights crime visited upon any group of people in the world over the last five hundred years." He has explained in detail why we must look at the claims of the descendants of slaves as a form of property. Poch Suzara

To My Black American friends

As an Asian white American I stand by you in your struggles for the reparations due you as African Americans. This is a gigantic struggle. Please count me in as one individual in this part of the world rooting for you. I am totally on your side. I can hardly wait for the day when Black Americans will have tremendously decreased evils on American soil not with bombs, death and destruction, but with the power of logic, legal, and historical arguments advancing the brotherhood of man under peace on earth and goodwill to all men.
According to reputable American economists, the sum due for unpaid labor to the Black Americans by white Americans comes to about $1.7 TRILLION DOLLARS. A pittance comparatively.
Consider the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission meeting in Accra, Ghana, in 1993. Attorneys, economists, and social scientists issued the Accra Declaration, which calculated that enslavement, colonization, the appropriation of land, extraction of raw materials and mining minerals, for example, diamond, gold, silver, oil, mahogany, cocoa, etc, out of Africa by Europe and the United States cost the African continent $777 TRILLION DOLLARS. Poch Suzara

Belief Growing Obsolete

Terrence Mckenna wrote: "What blinds us, or makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness that our beliefs have grown obsolete and should be put aside.... This is I think much of the problem of the modern dilemma: Direct experience has been discounted, and in its place all kinds of belief systems have been erected.... If you believe something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite; which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to this belief." Now look for example at our committed belief on how great a man was Thomas Jefferson. The man who symbolizes freedom and liberty for all. As one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, he actually owned well over 100 slaves and freed only a handful at the time of his death – his own children. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson had sex with a slave girl and had sired several children. A man of enormous power and wealth had sex with his slave black servant Sally Hemings. She was fifteen years old. In most civilized societies, this is called rape. How is that for a committed belief? Care to believe the opposite? Poch Suzara

Rita Rudner

“Someday,” said Rita Rudner, “I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be.” See Manila Standard Today ( Sept. 27, 2006 ).
My dear Rita, you don’t have to be rich to lose your self-respect and sense of dignity. It is the easiest thing to do. Besides, why do you want to emulate the lives of our rich Ivy League-educated dummies in the US Senate? Considering from among them will most likely be, again, the next president of the USA. Poch Suzara

Organized Religions

Organized religions provide the peace for the troubles in our world that they themselves create. They then make sure that peace is not long lasting. It is in this way that the Christians, Muslims, and Jews have always been indoctrinated to hate and to kill each other. In the meantime, the munition makers are in it for the money. Indeed, big profits are made in war and in the aftermath especially as the seeds for future wars are planted especially by those in the military-industrial-university complex.Poch Suzara

War

A Kikiyu proverb goes: “It is they who have not died in war, that start it.” Indeed, the rich munition makers in control of the stupid politicians in the government of rich countries are among those who are never killed in any war. In fact, they grow to become not only livelier but also richer. Poch Suzara

Open Letter To Americans

When President Bush attacked Iraq in 1991, claiming that he was acting to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, a group of native Americans in Oregon distributed this biting and ironic thought-provoking Open Letter: “Dear President Bush. Please send your assistance in freeing our small nation from occupation. This foreign force occupied our lands to steal our rich resources. They used biological warfare and deceit, killing thousands of elders, children and women in the process. As they overwhelmed our land, they deposed our leaders and people of our government, and in its place, they installed their own government system that yet today control our daily lives in many ways. As in your own words, the occupation and overthrow of one small nation . . . is one too many. Sincerely, An American Indian.” For further reading, I highly recommend Howard Zinn’s: The People’s History of the United States. It is closer to the truth version of American history. It includes all sides of the story. Left and right. Front and back. Top and below. Triumph and tragedy. Joy and pain. Successes and failures. Rich and poor. White Americans and Black Africans. The native Indians and the Asian-Latin Americans. Masters and slaves. The victorious and defeated in war. The conquered and the conqueror. Indeed, not only his story, but also her story of American history. Poch Suzara

American Presidents

In 1947, Truman ordered 74,000 tons of military equipment to the right-wing government in Athens, including artillery, dive bombers, and stock of napalm. Weapons for death and destruction manufactured and stockpiled in the United States since World War 2.

In 1971 Nixon ordered the US Air Force to drop 800,000 tons of bombs on Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Weapons for death and destruction worth in the Billions of Dollars.

When the Vietnam war ended, Jimmy Carter declined to give aid to Vietnam for reconstruction, despite the fact that the land had been devastated by American bombing. Asked about this at a press meeting, Carter replied that there was no special obligation on the United States to do this because “the destruction was mutual.” As if the United States did not have to cross half the globe with an enormous fleet of bombers and 2 million American soldiers, and after eight years of mission not accomplished, left a tiny nation with over three million dead and its land in ruins.

Bill Clinton continued to supply arms to nations all over the world. While he enjoyed converting the Oval Office into his Oral Office with the consent of a tuti frutie employee in the White House.

By the way, this is the same White House constructed in 1792 that required the influx of African slaves to lay its foundation. The same Africans in slavery and poverty that enriched not only the treasury of the US government at the local, state, and federal levels, but also responsible for the wealth and privilege of quite a few powerful US corporations that manufacture weapons for war, death and destruction in foreign countries.

As the Commander in chief of the US military, President George W Bush has nuclear subs at his disposal. These subs are loaded to the hatches with nuclear warheads that can be targeted to within a centimeter of Osama Bin Ladin’s nose. And yet, with all of that sophisticated technology, the US government, since 2001, could not, with any precision, find Osama Bin Ladin hiding in the mountain caves of Afghanistan for his so-called crime against the destruction of the World Trade Center. And to think that this is the same Osama Bin Ladin who had millions of dollars deposited in various banks in the United States.

The social critic, H. L. Mencken, wrote: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” By frightening the American people to the attention of certain governments like Iraq, Iran, Korea, Cuba, or by inventing or exaggerating how dangerous these governments are – the failures of the US government itself could remain hidden or un-exposed. In the meantime, I ask: what value has the utility of freedom if lies and other falsehoods were more politically useful than the simple truth? Poch Suzara

Insane

Ignots Pistachio wrote: "If you want to know if you're insane, ask yourself if you have an unwavering belief, one that you could never disavow no matter what. If you answered yes, then you're insane.” Bertrand Russell himself did recognize that we all have a little corner of insanity inside our brain. For my part, I too am insane. I have an unwavering belief that the greatest threat to the peace of the world is the U.S. government. Look how our high government officials have unwavering beliefs too. Look how they continue to believe that freedom and democracy can be installed in foreign countries such as Vietnam in the past and Iraq in the present with bombs, death, and destruction! Poch Suzara