blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

IT WILL KNOCK THE NOGGINS OF THE BISHOPS AND THE CELDRANITES ON  WHY THERE IS A NEED TO THINK ABOUT DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITIONS AND FATES At the rate things are going, Noynoy Aquino cannot afford the accelerating downward trend in his approval ratings so he cannot afford to lose his liberal constituency. Except for the most doctrinaire everyone from the Catholics to the non-believers agree that we need to manage our population. The question is what method to use? The Philippines is probably between the late stages 2 and the very early of 3 of the demographic transition but it appears that this transition is rather slow. The country is not closed to the outside world and exchange of ideas and commodities, so the question is why this is slow? The Roman Catholic Church opposes the use of artificial methods of fertility regulation on moral grounds. The idea of natural law is central to Catholic theological understanding. I will not dwell on this issue but it is testament to the  c...

The 1970s may be what some 40yish-50yish Pinoys would consider as their "Wonder Years". In a Marcosian age, where things were politically hushed up (and there was practically no entertainment whatsoever), Holy Week for us kids meant going to church (more accurately churches) in our sturdy, tank-like Vauxhall (you see we had a Brit car then). This also meant doing the Stations of the Cross.  Our grandparents who remembered the 13 Churches of Old Manila would regale us with tales of how they spent their Holy Week. On Good Friday, we all went to Pasig (which was a town then) and watch the Roman Catholic procession. If it were not proper Roman Catholic catechism from my mom, I would think those Catholic icons were straight out from a Dracula movie! Nonetheless, I always, until now, think parading those giant nails by which Jesus was pinned to the cross is too much for me. But that is Roman Catholic piety! My family is not 100% Catholic since some family members were Anglicans, ...

Japan just had it's cherry blossom ( Sakura ) viewing season or hanami. In the depths of winter the trees are bare but almost suddenly the flowers burst out but only for a while. The flowers are nice to behold but they are just for a week or so, after which they fall and there lies poignant beauty. This year's hanami is even made more meaningful for the Japanese since it happened just a month or so after the tragic Tohoku earthquake. A thing of beauty is always temporary if it is in a material sense. Human beauty fades no matter how much Vicky Belo promotes her wonders via Jinkee Pacquiao! But what lasts is hidden and immaterial. And the cherry blossoms seem to help people reach out to what is hidden, immaterial and can be seen only by the soul at its dead centre, the heart! In tropical Philippines where all is green even during the driest seasons, we don't notice the transience of flowers but we do have the Palawan cherry which burst into bloom at almost the same time th...

A hero is always a genuine hero to his/her fans. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Marcos are heroes. It is a fact that the following people just named were dictators who dreamed that their countries will be the number one of them all. Unfortunately they all became redundant in one way another. Lenin's Soviet state is history and deserves to be in the dustbin. Stalin inspires no one save for the party in North Korea and the Filipino cabal in Utrecht. Mao's portrait still hangs in Tiananmen but presides over a hypercapitalist wonderland. Hitler is fodder for hundreds of best selling books still mostly printed in England, but only the insane would think the English are big fans of der Fuhrer! The English are fascinated by the Nazis because they want to know how their democracy was able to defeat totalitarianism. With the sole of exception of China, all the countries of once led by these dictators are all democracies. Russia is a democracy but is on the way to becoming a functionin...