Category: sotto

sotto, the senate, the pits #RH

other than senator miriam, who is rather forgiving of sotto…

…this is not the academe where plagiarism is a mortal sin. We should give leeway in politics, as long as later on the source is acknowledged.

and senate president enrile, who started out agreeing with sotto that a blog can be copied, and is now saying that he does not know anything about blogging, but who is of course still defending his majority leader…

Ang sinabi ko, hindi ko alam kung totoo iyung akusasyon sa kaniya tungkol sa plagiarism, pero kung totoo man, marahil ang dapat nating isipin, totoo ba, tama ba iyung kaniyang sinabi upang suportahan ang kaniyang paninindigan tungkol sa panukalang batas (RH bill) na nakasalang sa ating Senado…

and senators pimentel and arroyo, whom sotto cited in an adlib (august 29 speech) to be in agreement with him on some technicality or other vis a vis plagiarism allegations — that makes 5 senators including sotto — there are 18 others in that august chamber who have been silent as mice on the issue.  hopefully it’s not because they’re as clueless about blogs and the internet and copyright as sotto and enrile, rather, that they know better and that the pro-RH among them, sponsors miriam and pia especially, are just biding their time, ready to pounce with a vengeance when it’s their turn to respond, before any talk of amendments.

i expect nothing less than the vigor and vitriol that miriam spewed out at the prosecutor-representatives in the impeachment trial of corona.  anything less would tell us that indeed the senate these days is nothing but an old boys club, and that it’s okay lang with all of them that sotto has pulled down senate discourse to the level of eat bulaga.  yuck.  that would be really really low, lower even than the lower house.

as for sotto’s and enrile’s claim that the we in blogosphere who have been attacking him for plagiarism have no answers to his assertions vs the RH bill, hmm.  this blog, for one, has responded to some of those points, but i guess i’m under the radar, ‘no?  maybe no one’s reading me, not even other bloggers or news websites, haha, how humbling (buti na lang i’m into weil’s gravity and grace, salamat kay jorge, and i’m happy to blog as much for readers as for the record).  but there’s also dr. alberto “quasi” romualdez, former doh chief, who has been quick to respond to every argument against the RH bill via his malaya column.  i suppose he’s under the radar, too?

anyway, lest sotto continue believing that his arguments are unassailable:

(1) says sotto, “the RH bill violates the constitution that protects the unborn child from the moment of conception.”  this is all about the question of when life begins, or when “conception” happens.  at the moment of fertilization ba or of implantation in the uterus?  try googling it and you will find that there are as many arguments for fertilization, as there are for implantation, as the beginning of human life.  quite weighty, to me, is the fact that only when the fertilized egg or zygote has implanted does a woman’s urine test positive for pregnancy. 

so who is to settle the debate?  sotto?  eat bulaga?  congress? the supreme court? the president?  science?  the church?  answer: NONE OF THE ABOVE.  i say, THE WOMAN DECIDES. 

(2) says sotto, contraceptives are “harmful to the health of the pregnant mother and the unborn child.”  sotto’s proof of the harm done to the mother is the gut dysbiosis theory of natasha campbell mcbride that he plagiarized from sarah pope’s blog.  he has ordered it stricken from senate records to resolve the plagiarism issue, he hopes, but it was a lame argument to begin with.  read sotto, guts, plagiarism #RH.  according to a doctor, an internist, who does a lot of research via the internet:

Googling, found an incredible dearth of studies linking oral contraceptives to gut dysbiosis, how long it takes to develop, how long it takes to resolve on discontinuance of pills. No comparative studies. Even searching studies on gut dysbiosis in infants and neonates; there’s no mention or an “also” mention of contraceptives as cause.

sotto’s proof of harm done by contraceptives on the unborn child is a report prepared for the Royal Commission on Population in Great Britain which found that the incidence of induced abortion as a percentage of all pregnancies was nine times higher for women using contraceptives than for women not using birth control. 

it was lifted from The Truth Of Contraceptives blog, which says:

In Great Britain, in 1949, a report prepared for the Royal Commission on Population found that the incidence of induced abortion as a percentage of all pregnancies was nine times higher for women using contraceptives than for women not using birth control. [emphasis mine]

wala pang pills noong 1949.  read sotto self-destructs, and find out what kind of contraceptives women were using then that were inducing abortions.

(3) says sotto, “we don’t need it because the DOH is already doing what the RH bill wants to do.”  really?  where?  when?  how?  there’s no info campaign going on, and there are no pills and condoms and i.u.d.s available, for poor couples who might want to practice family planning once they know what their options are.

(4) says sotto,  “the RH bill will cost too much money that could be used for schools, hospitals, and medicines.”  aha.  read Mulat Pinoy, a population awareness initiative supported by the Probe Media Foundation, Inc. and the Philippine Center for Population and Development which i cited in fudging the facts: sotto’s anti-RH sob story 

Investing in family planning services will save several billion pesos, which can be used for critical social services.

The latest US and Philippine research show that governments annually spend a minimum of Php 5.5 billion in healthcare costs to address unintended pregnancies and their complications.

By contrast, only Php 2.0-3.5 billion annually is needed to fund a comprehensive range of voluntary family planning services for the entire country, which also results in a more sustainable population to provide for.

(5) says sotto, “it is not in accord with Filipino culture.”  LOL.  as if filipino culture were a fixed, static, thing that doesn’t evolve.  the … argument is a matter to be studied by sociologists and other experts in culture and social attitudes, says dr. romualdez.  besides, the surveys are consistent: an overwhelming number of filipinos, 7 out of 10, want the RH bill passed into law.

over dzmm teleradyo, the same afternoon of his aug 29 rant claiming that he is a victim of cyberbullying, i heard sotto in a phone interview with karen davila and vic de leon lima insisting that when he cried over his dead baby son, the issue was not that his son had died, but that helen had gotten pregnant despite taking pills.  my answer to that is here.  he went on to say that this is precisely the reason why he thinks pill-popping will lead to abortion: because daw women who get pregnant even when they’re taking pills would be more likely to resort to abortion.  teka, helen obviously did not.  surely he’s not saying that helen’s different from, better than, the rest of us?  obviously it’s just another fallacious eat-bulaga kind of argument.

as fallacious as calling us cyberbullies, we who blog and tweet and facebook and who have been calling him out on his plagiarizing and eat-bulaga ways.

Ako yata ang kauna-unahang senador ng Pilipinas na naging biktima ng cyber-bullying. Mula sa blogs, Facebook, at Twitter, ginawa akong sentro ng mga mapanira at malisyosong atake ng iba’t ibang tao, lalo pa ng mga sumusuporta sa RH Bill. Bahagi siguro ito ng kanilang istratehiya, lalo pa’t may milyun-milyon silang pondo. “If you can’t kill the message, kill the messenger”. Mukhang ganito ang ginagawa ng aking mga detractors. 

as usual, sotto’s reasoning is twisted and self-serving.

Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior manifested by the use of force or coercion to affect others, particularly when the behavior is habitual and involves an imbalance of power. It can include verbal harassment, physical assault or coercion and may be directed repeatedly towards particular victims, perhaps on grounds of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or ability.[2][3]The “imbalance of power” may be social power and/or physical power.

sotto is the one who’s being aggressive, lashing out at us from the senate on high, from a position of power.  sotto is the the one who is assaulting and harassing us verbally from that privileged podium, accusing us of malice and, even, of attacking him for the money, as in, may milyun-milyong pondo daw.  ganoon?  i certainly haven’t been offered any.  and, really, for certain may milyun-milyong pondo rin ang anti-RH.  can sotto be fighting the RH bill out of the goodness of his heart?  once upon a time he was all for family planning, along with his eat-bulaga pals.  was he doing it for the money then?  and what, who, changed his mind kaya?

what sotto really wants is for all of us to shut up, stop ganging up on him.  lol.  if you can’t stand the heat, mr. sotto, get out of the kitchen.  to think that you are a grandson, and namesake, of the original senator vicente sotto (1877-1950).  your lolo was a revolutionary and a writer, and as senator he authored the Press Freedom Law aka Sotto Law, “aimed precisely to protect press freedom and keep irate politicians from intimidating journalists and their sources if they do not like what they read.”  how ironic, and sad for nation, that you have turned out to be one of those “irate politicians” who can’t take criticism and who’s too macho to admit that you’ve made one big mistake after another, and who seeks instead to cow and intimidate us into silence.  shame on you, mr. sotto.

Sotto’s scot-free (and why it’s our fault)

Katrina Stuart Santiago

Yes plagiarism might seem small and petty, it can seem like an academic thing, but it certainly isn’t moot, and I don’t know that making fun of Tito Sotto, in whatever way, will mean people taking this seriously. If at all, it reveals how we have inadvertently clouded the conversation on plagiarism with the fact of social class, i.e., pang-edukado naman ang issue na ‘yan, pang-kayo-kayo lang. Because really, who has spent time and effort talking about Sotto in light of this mistake? Who has started laughing at him, thinking jokes as weapons, too? Tayo-tayo nga.

Read on…

sotto, guts, plagiarism #RH bill

this is to respond to sotto’s claim echoing, nay, plagiarizing blogger sarah pope’s, that using birth control pills causes “severe gut dysbiosis,” that is, kills good bacteria in the gastro-intestinal tract.

According, to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD, the use of the pill also causes severe gut dysbiosis. What is worse, drug induced gut imbalance is especially intractable and resistant to treatment either with probiotics or diet change. Gut imbalance brought on through use of the pill negatively impacts the ability to digest food and absorb nutrients. As a result, even if a woman eats spectacularly well during pregnancy, if she has been taking oral contraceptives for a period of time beforehand, it is highly likely that she and her baby are not reaping the full benefits of all this healthy food as the lack of beneficial flora in her gut preclude this from occurring. Pathogenic, opportunistic flora that take hold in the gut when the pill is used constantly produce toxic substances which are the by-products of their metabolism. These toxins leak into the woman’s bloodstream and they have the potential to cross the placenta. Therefore, gut dysbiosis exposes the fetus to toxins. Not well known is also the fact that use of the pill depletes zinc in the body. Zinc is called “the intelligence mineral” as it is intimately involved in mental development. 

i sent pope’s link to doc butch, an internist, and this is what he emailed back:

Strange. Googling, found an incredible dearth of studies linking oral contraceptives to gut dysbiosis, how long it takes to develop, how long it takes to resolve on discontinuance of pills. No comparative studies. Even searching studies on gut dysbiosis in infants and neonates; there’s no mention or an “also” mention of contraceptives as cause.

Food additives, steroids, psychological and physical stress, antibiotics are the main cause of intestinal dysbiosis, not Pills. Antibiotics are the most common culprit. Women, pregnant or non-pregnant, are often prescribed antibiotics. In a review article on pediatric inflammatory bowel diseases, pneumonia before the age of five and consequent frequent use of antibiotics is implicated in the dysbiosis. No studies I found implicated birth control pills as primary cause or significant contributory cause for the development of pediatric gut dysbiosis.

And as I’m getting frustrated searching for studies, here’s a little math that snuck up. About 10 million women in the U.S. and 100 million women worldwide use combination oral contraceptive pills. I bet many of them are long-term users. And many probably eventually get pregnant. But we don’t read about an epidemic of intestinal dysbiosis among women and infants.

Another piece of math. Of those more than 100 million women, 95 to 98% of them successfully use birth control. Less deaths and diseases among them, no abortions, no unwanted pregnancies. Also, for some of the 2 to 5% who get pregnant despite conscientious use of the pills, antibiotics are often implicated for decreased effectiveness of birth control pills. The same antibiotics that are one of the most common causes of gut dysbiosis.

well, no wonder sotto’s staff had to settle for the blog of a “healthy economist.”  wala kasing medical studies supporting such a claim, not on the internet anyway, which should have raised warning signals.  this is not to disparage sarah pope, who’s clearly an advocate of natasha mcbride’s alternative health ek-ek (kanya-kanyang agenda), and who was clearly plagiarized, despite sotto’s chief of staff hector villacorta’s claim to the contrary.

On the claim of Ms. Pope that the senator plagiarized her blog in his “turno en contra’’ speech last Wednesday to stress his objection to the RH bill, Villacorta said he called the office of the IPO which stated that there is no such crime as plagiarism of a blog.

‘’There is no such thing. Blogs are public domain and government can use any information if it is for the common good,’’ Villacorta told the Manila Bulletin after checking with the IPO.

our intellectual property office should clear this up, ASAP.  surely our laws are no different from US copyright laws?

As things stand, US copyright law prohibits reuse without explicit permission for creative works until they enter the public domain – 70 years after the death of the author or 120 years after publication date if the date of death of the author is unknown.

read,too, Copyright and Public Domain.

sotto self-destructs #RH bill

the senate should shut sotto up.  he has become a national embarrassment.  not only does he plagiarize bloggers and in the next breath disparage their work, his discourse vs. the RH bill also takes the low low ground, thanks to his incompetent staff, whose asinine research (include bad writing na rin) he takes for, and peddles as, gospel truth.  and this is the last straw: the punchline kumbaga, of his turno en contra part II:

Also in a report prepared for the Royal Commission on Population in Great Britain found that the incidence of induced abortion as a percentage of all pregnancies was nine times higher for women using contraceptives than for women not using birth control.

here is the original material from The Truth Of Contraceptives blog:

In Great Britain, in 1949, a report prepared for the Royal Commission on Population found that the incidence of induced abortion as a percentage of all pregnancies was nine times higher for women using contraceptives than for women not using birth control. [emphasis mine]

note that sotto’s press release does not enclose in quotes or attribute most of the sentence that is clearly lifted, copied, from the blog.  note, too, that “in 1949” was deleted, omitted, deliberately i would think, because it would have dated the “nine times higher” stats.  but using that data at all to convince pro-RH senators that contraceptives induce abortion was the most monstrous mistake of all.

the Pill was approved only in 1960.  what contraceptives were being used in 1949?  i googled “history of birth control” (which he or his staff should have done, too) and found this blog: MedicineNet.com.

Before the Industrial Revolution, birth control devices in America relied largely on condoms for men — fashioned from linen or from animal intestines — and on douches made for and by women from common household ingredients. Abortion-inducing herbs such as savin and pennyroyal also were used, as were pessaries — substances or devices inserted into the vagina to block or kill sperm.

The invention of rubber vulcanization in 1839 soon led to the beginnings of a U.S. contraceptive industry producing condoms (now often called “rubbers”), intrauterine devices or IUDs, douching syringes, vaginal sponges, diaphragms and cervical caps (then called “womb veils”), and “male caps” that covered only the tip of the penis. British playwright and essayist George Bernard Shaw called the rubber condom the “greatest invention of the 19th century.”

When these devices were declared illegal, the flourishing trade simply began selling them as “hygiene” products. For example, vaginal sponges were sold to protect women from “germs” instead of sperm. This led to misleading if not downright fraudulent advertising. From 1930 until 1960, the most popular female contraceptive was Lysol disinfectant — advertised as a feminine hygiene product in ads featuring testimonials from prominent European “doctors.” Later investigation by the American Medical Association showed that these experts did not exist.

so there.  hindi lang outdated ang stats, ni hindi birth control pills ang salarin.  what a howler of a screw-up, mr. sotto.  on the senate floor yet.  enough is enough, mr. senators, your time is up.  pass the RH bill, now na!

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read, too, manuel buencamino’s Sen. Sotto busted for serial plagiarism 
and sarah pope’s On Plagiarism, the Pill, and Presumptuousness