simbang gabi RH blues

to get in the christmas mood, for a change, nagsisimbang gabi kami ni katrina.   the first dawn we went to st. francis church along shaw blvd., a three-minute drive from the house.   the big church was full, all seats taken, standing room only for many late-comers.

to our dismay, merong pre-mass video about RH, complete with a hillary clinton clip equating RH with abortion.   the audio was bad, and i was glad.  (i wondered if this was regular sunday fare too.)

worse, during the looooong sermon, mga kalahating oras yata yon, at least five maybe ten minutes were devoted to the evils of RH na, sabi daw mismo ni first lady hillary clinton, is the same thing as abortion,  all in the context of na contrary to isaiah the prophet’s admonition to “observe what is right, and do what is just”.

nagpanting ang tenga ko.   naalaala ko tuloy si carlos celdran.   sayang wala akong placard saying, it’s a lie!   as if.   di ko naman type na umeksena.   thought of walking out instead but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do.   we wanted to finish the mass more than to make a statement.

over breakfast we wondered if we should find another church.   a friend said it might be the same in all parish churches, on order of the bishops.   we decided to give st. francis another chance, maybe it would be another priest, maybe it would be another kind of sermon.

hayy.   no such luck.   same priest.   again, this time in the context of joseph’s genealogy, the long string of “begats” tracing his ancestry to abraham, ipinasok na naman ang RH=abortion.   this time naalala ko my parents, regular churchgoers all their lives.   they would have been so shocked and scandalized to hear such talk in a church, during mass.   my ears shut down, my mind wandered, wondering where to next.

day 3 we tried christ the king in green meadows.   smaller church, sosyal neighborhood, a 10-15 minute drive away.   hallelujah.   no pre-mass RH=abortion video.   no talk of RH=abortion in the sermon which took 10 minutes or so.   on the story of joseph agonizing over what to do when he found out that the virgin mary was pregnant with a child not his, until he was visited in a dream by an angel who told him that the child had been conceived through the holy spirit and to call him jesus.   the sermon likened joseph’s travails to what we all go through in life, both dark times and good times, and the choices we all have to make, na naikonekt rin niya sa poverty and ofws.   good job.

i can only imagine how the st.francis priest used joseph’s story to again push the RH=abortion line lie.   i’m glad i wasn’t there to hear it.   thank god for christ the king!

cancer & laetrile

G. Edward Griffin marshals the evidence that – like scurvy or pellagra – aggravated by the lack of an essential food compound in modern man’s diet. That substance is vitamin B17. In its purified form developed for cancer therapy, it is known as Laetrile.

the good news is, laetrile is available in the philippines.

surreal justice

UPDATE:  stats for revisiting hubert webb spiked like mad, through the ceiling, the day he was acquitted.   which is good. people are googling and reading up on the case.   read, too, katrina’s piece on pinky and press ethics.   i love pinky webb.   what a class act.   (krissy leaky, take note.)

***

i cheered 10 years ago when hubert webb et al were found guilty of the vizconde massacre by the paranaque regional trial court.   i cheered yesterday when hubert webb et al were acquitted by the supreme court.

i hate to admit it but yes all through the 90s it was easy to be swept up in the trial by publicity that projected hubert and the gang as rich boys getting away with murder and that clamored for their heads a la jaime jose et al who raped maggie de la riva in 1967 and were electrocuted in 1972.

but there was a lot i didn’t know then that i learned over the years, thanks mostly to winnie monsod who kept track of the case and never faltered in her belief that hubert was innocent.   i also didn’t learn until recently that alfaro was an nbi asset.   and the loss of the semen sample from carmela was just too suspicious…

so it’s back to square one , with just six months to go before it’s too late.   i suggest that a million bucks be offered for information re the true killers.   surely someone out there knows something s/he’s not telling.

“…the Philippines without science cannot be saved.”

a new book Reforming Philippine Science by Dr. Raul Suarez and Dr. Flor Lacanilao, published by the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center Aquaculture Department (SEAFDEC/AQD), has a graph on its cover that compares the number of scientific publications yearly of several Asian countries:

The Philippines sits at the bottom below Vietnam and Indonesia; all three are left in the dust by Thailand and Malaysia (in Chapter 3, readers can see the meteoric performance of Singapore and Taiwan).

… Lacanilao uses quantitative data to show that most Philippine universities fail to contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Readers learn that doing science properly involves publishing results in peer-reviewed journals, especially ones listed by the ISI-Web of Science. Publication in such international journals ensures that a mechanism of quality control has been applied and that verification of the results is possible.

Contrary to this internationally-accepted practice, many Filipino scientists do not publish their findings at all or publish them in journals that do not implement a process of expert peer review. Lacanilao explains that this is not the way to do proper science, that the absence of expert peer-review results in published work of questionable validity, that this wastes government funds while contributing nothing to national development. A culture has developed whereinsuch improper scientific practices are accepted as the norm: the Department of Science and Technology awards grants to non-publishing scientists and does not expect peer-reviewed publications from them; the National Academy of Science and Technology bestows honors upon unpublished or poorly-published scientists. Across the country, science faculty generally get hired, tenured and promoted on the basis of teaching, not research. Without significant track-records in research and proper publication, they train future scientists, are given professorial chairs and become science administrators. The authors point out that there are notable exceptions, individuals who have done world-class research despite adverse conditions or departments and institutes in which research and proper publication have become part of the cultural norm. Although they acknowledge that such individuals and institutions should be given proper recognition, to Suarez and Lacanilao, it is not a triumph but a tragedy that they are so few.

“Whereas science alone cannot save the Philippines, the Philippines without science cannot be saved.”