Category: politics

jpepa na, cha-cha pa

what’s with the senate?!?

as if it weren’t bad enough that our “honorable” senators seem seriously bent on ratifying the jpepa, never mind that it violates our constitution, the terms are lopsided in favor of the japs at the expense of pinoys, and it would be the final nail on the coffin, burying forever any chance we have of getting out of the globalization trap, here comes a resolution signed by 12 senators calling for a con-ass to revise the constitution and establish a federal system of government. ano ba yan! would such a new constitution by any chance also serve to accommodate jpepa?

even if i were to concede na kailangan natin ng charter change, surely now is not the time, not while gma is still around, and surely not through a constitutent assembly but through a proper constitutional convention. i mean you know, congress is part of the problem, so why should we trust its members to amend the constitution?

the senators who jointly authored the resolution: aquilino pimentel, manny villar, ed angara, pia cayetano, johnny enrile, chiz escudero, jinggoy estrada, gringo honasan, ping lacson, kiko pangilinan, and bong revilla. and i thought that pimentel, villar, cayetano, escudero, estrada, lacson, and pangilinan were oppositionists!

that leaves noynoy aquino, joker arroyo, pong biazon, alan peter cayetano, miriam santiago, dick gordon, lito lapid, loren legarda, jamby madrigal, mar roxas, sonny trillanes, and migs zubiri. zubiri has already said he’s all for it, why am i not surprised. and if joker, miriam, dick, and lito lapid vote according to the wishes of the palace as usual, that would make 16, and we’re cooked.

for a change

so did cocoy really say anything new? manolo is right, the dream of a nontraditional political party that we all could support, thereby doing away with trapo incumbents and their family dynasties, lock stock and barrel, is not new. what’s new is the level of rage. he is so “fucking” angry. such passion. such youth.

interestingly enough, what set him off was the idea that nonviolent resistance isn’t futile, which is to say, don’t let up on this lying cheating stealing president. cocoy thinks this is divisive and crappy – gma is not the problem, the system is. and so he calls for “good people” to step up, form a political party, and run for election in 2010. how simple.

manolo’s right, resistance isn’t futile. not to show signs of resistance would send the message that we don’t care, it’s all right, go ahead and do what you want. in fact we do care, it’s not all right, stop whatever you’re doing. never mind that no one seems to be hearing it but us.

gma IS the problem. apart from the lying cheating and stealing, she could have fulfilled promises she made, such as good governance, but she didn’t. she it is who has the power to change the rotten system, but she does not. instead she makes the system stronger by the day. 2010 might be an illusion.

but let’s say 2010 is truly there for the taking. i’d say the call for “good people” is premature. first we need a sense of what’s “good” for our purposes. how much change do we want? will anti-corruption anti-cheating, population and information measures be enough because the economic and foreign policies are okay naman?

or do we want persons good enough to tackle the economy, and globalization, and rice, and power, and education, and garbage – the whole rotten system that is tied up with unregulated capitalism and unscrupulous foreign creditors?

these good people have to be really good, really brave, and adequately informed so they know what patterns they’re breaking from and what new patterns they’re creating for future generations.

and we the people have to be very clear what we want them to do in our name. i’d want them to have a bias for the filipino masses, and to stand up, rather than grovel, to mighty america, crafty china, and wily japan. for a change. sana kayo rin.

jun lozada, gma, and the rice crisis

jun lozada should rethink his campaign to expose gma’s involvement in the nbn-zte bribery scandal.

the rice crisis simply trumps all other issues and naturally we are distracted, not just by the implications for the very poor and the not-so-poor and the medyo-poor who have long been barely able to buy the cheapest rice, but also our minds are busy trying to make sense of the information offered by media about rice supply and demand, and government subsidies, and global shortages, the better to get a grasp of what’s really going on and why.

jun can’t blame us if we have stopped to watch gma do her thing, praying she can find ways to remedy the situation short-term and long-term, because this time really we don’t want her to fail, or we would be facing prospects of food riots.

it doesn’t mean that we don’t want her to resign or be ousted for her sins against the constitution and the seventh and eighth commandments, but until more nbn-zte whistleblowers come out jun would be wise to go with the flow, expand his rhetoric, get into the rice problem, explain it as a failure of policy, a consequence of gma’s blind embrace of globalization, which clearly indicates a lack of foresight and vision.

not everyone loves jun lozada. still there is no denying that he has the ear of the nation. if he would polish his act and upgrade his message, he would do the nation a great service.

rice and sex

writes fr. ranhilio callangan aquino, dean of the san beda graduate school of law, on the rice shortage and the folly of blaming the catholic church:

Let this be clear: The Church is all for family planning. It has relentlessly urged couples to decide under the direction of properly formed consciences how many children they should have and what the gaps should be between them. Given the facts of reproductive physiology, this in effect means that the Church has urged couples to live disciplined lives. The conjugal act should be a matter neither of whim nor of fun-which is not the same thing as the Church forbidding couples from having fun. Animals copulate when they are in heat. The Church expects her sons and daughters to engage in the most intimate of human encounters only when they are fully cognizant of its consequences and ready to accept these with love and responsibility. Is this too much to ask?”

the good father in his convoluted way is in effect saying that our increasing population problem is not the church’s fault; the church is for family planning. the problem is that we sons and daughters of god lack the discipline to practice natural family planning, instead engaging in sex for fun, or like animals in heat, never mind that we might get pregnant and aren’t prepared to feed extra mouths.

the good father is right. natural family planning, the only kind that the church allows, takes a lot of discipline. it means keeping track of a woman’s menstrual cycle and abstaining from sex some two to three weeks every month when the woman might be fertile and indulging only during “safe” days, which is (for women with a regular 28-day cycle) about three, maybe four, five days from the onset of menstruation and another three, maybe four, five, days before the onset of the next. how hard!

worse, not only does the church’s prescribed method of pagpipigil ng panggigigil require a lot of discipline, it’s also not fail safe, you can still get pregnant, just because a woman could ovulate earlier or later than expected, depending on many variables, including emotional state. besides, male sperm that makes it to the cervix or uterus might live 3, maybe 5, even 7 days, long enough to fertilize an early egg.

artificial methods of contraception are infinitely more reliable, with 99 percent guarantees against pregnancy. but it’s all anathema to the church. for the longest time, the principal argument was that pills, iuds, and the condom were abortifacients because they abort life. a faulty argument because pills, iuds and the condom do not abort life or kill fetuses, they prevent lifeor fetuses from being created in the first place, so there is nothing to abort.

so now the church has come up with a different argument against modern birth control methods. writes fr. aquino:

Fundamentally, the Church’s rejection of artificial means of contraception is consequent upon its rejection of the manipulation of the human person. Take the pill. It effects physiological changes so that one can have sex when one wills. This is putting it as directly as the argument necessitates. If we are so averse to other forms of manipulation, so insistent-often to the point of absurdity-about politically correct and gender-balanced speech, why can we be so tolerant of manipulation of this kind? Natural family planning for its part makes use of the cycles of fertility and infertility that nature itself provides. The conjugal act during a period of infertility does not result in a pregnancy. No one is re-engineered in the process. One merely goes by nature’s own cycles. It is nature itself that provides for a period of infertility.”

forgive me, father, but the church should be the last to talk of manipulation. the church manipulates us, too, in more ways than one, with promises of heaven when we follow the ten commandments and threats of hellfire and damnation when we do not. clearly the church has long been manipulating government, too, or we would have a population control policy by now.

besides, please, what’s so natural about the natural family planning method that the church advocates? is it natural to abstain from sex three weeks a month? it takes much less for some men to climb walls. is it natural for women to have sex when they don’t feel like it? fr. aquino, being celibate and forbidden to think and read “impure” stuff, may not know that women are horniest during ovulation. which means the church wants women to have sex when they least want it. that’s natural? that’s oppressive and patriarchal!

wait. it could also be that the church supports the incumbent notion that there’s nothing wrong with an increasing population because this is our source of ofws whose dollar remittances will continue to keep the economy artificially alive. if so, well, the church, and gma, deserve all the brickbats thrown at them for not anticipating the rice shortage. the buck stops with them. the inexhaustible labor supply is their responsibility. let them eat rice, not noodles, cake, or kamote.