Justice and the second dictatorship
Analysis and Opinion
By Dean de la Paz
From the time that our first dictatorship was spawned, first in the guise of a two-term presidency, and later when statutory terms ended, all pretensions vanished and martial law was declared to perpetuate both power and plunder, it had taken us more than twenty years to shed its shroud.
Today, 35 years hence, justice has not yet been served and what democracy we won back has all but disappeared. Resurrected demons do not only haunt, they possess, not simply to again curse us in hell but to reduce us into a vassal state. Plunder, state criminality and terror, corruption and economic blight are back. This time in the hands not simply of a despot, but one without vision nor even basic decency.
Our rights of suffrage no longer offer hope given the barren landscape depleted of potent leadership alternatives. The International Criminal Court (ICC) however gives as a glimmer however distant.
Never mind Rodrigo Duterte’s combinations and permutations of escape routes to flee from justice and accountability. When his term ends, he loses all immunities and comes under the justice system, the failure of which highlights the ICC as a critical recourse.
While he might temporarily descend to the vice presidency and hold out in a virtual panic room, the constitutional immunity from suit is not applicable. Those are reserved only for the president. The Department of Justice has declared vice presidents can be sued. Unless he deliberately distorts the intent of the Constitution.
Here is where the aspect of a justice system that not only functions but is willing to prosecute crimes against humanity enters the equation through the ICC. Analyze recent ICC developments as they relate to Duterte’s gambitto derail the justice sought by the people.
Recently the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC received a 57-page request for a full investigation of possible crimes against humanity. Covering from 2011 to March 2019, it includes recorded public declarations and confessionscomplete with citations and footnotes from various sources.
Notable are recorded admonitions, orders, dictates and directives delivered publicly prior to and during his incumbency. Empowered with presidential authority, these include directives like, “Go ahead and kill them”,reinforced with “Don’t take this as a joke” as well as “my only sin is the extrajudicial killings.”
Especially when constantly repeated and reinforced, the Rules of Court and 1997 jurisprudence declare voluntary public confessions, when corroborated by the commission of a crime, as admissible evidence. Arrayed against an individual soon to lose personal presidential immunities and an election squarely within the ICC investigation period, we have a chance to forestall a second dictatorship.
Former ICC Justice Raul Pangalangan has said that there are no impediments to the ICC initiative despite our current non-membership.
“Impunity leaves a gap in our moral universe where persons can commit horrendous crimes and still move about casually, unchastised, and unpunished, as if they owed no debt to their victims and the world. ICC closes that gap.”
In 2022, let us close that gap.
____________
Dean de la Paz is a former investment banker. He is the Chairman of the Board of a renewable energy company and is a retired Business Policy, Finance and Mathematics professor.
Photograph is the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands, from Encyclopedia Britannica.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
The all over spread corruption and criminal attitudes of PNP representatives as well as all of the about 20 authorities I have had contact with during the last 2 and 1/2 years of stay here in the Philippines – has to be curbed AND the immoral and the mentally disturbed and criminal president Duterte has to ASAP be brought to the ICC for a sentence of a lifetime in prison for his many and severe crimes against humanity! All democratic nations in the world demand that to be done – or the Philippines as such or as a nation can not gain back any respect neither as a country or for its political system, parliament or government and authorities, courts or policiary and juridical system!
“All democratic nations in the world demand that to be done . . .” A strong sentiment, but I’m not hearing it from any nation. A few US congressmen have complained about Senator De Lima’s jailing. ASEAN seems to put up with Duterte or avoid him. Filipinos broadly seem to like the guy. So I’ll just read that as your personal view.
For benefit of our regular readers, to gather context, what nationality are you, where do you reside, and what is your interest in the Philippines? Thanks.
For your information – I am and have been for over 50 years an internationally active peace, pro-democracy HR’s and environmental etc full time worker beside my public-health and medical doctor profession!
I am a cosmopolite and co-operate with about a dozen NGO’s and International organisations within my field of activities.
Everything can be read and found out about me as I work openly and under my real identity; including all the manipulative lies on the internet and despite the Philippine fascist military generals and dutards false accusations against me and even making FB and Twitter close my previous both private ~10 year old account AND the “DUTERTE OUT OF OFFICE” informational account…!
Plus that I have been the victim of several illegal arrests and an assassination attempt and many refusals by PNP and NAPOLCOM, etc authorities to make swift and proper investigations and file cases etc!
If there is anything more you want/need to know – please feel free to contact me/write me on: roger.sperrling@gmail.com
I have been in the Philippines now since over 2 and1/2 years and have been staying several places – but now since some months back reside in Manila to continue try to find out why this almost complete corruption is present and why the Pinoys do repeatedly vote for fascistoid idiots as presidents and why they do not report and complain about the massive corruption!?
Btw…..who are you – and what is your asset towards eliminating the corruption and fascism etc in the Philippine’s minds, authorities and police as well as juridical system etc?
Thanks for the introduction. I’m Joe, and I publish this blog and its discussion threads, rich with information and ideas and all you need to know about me. You are in my house, as it were, and are welcome to read and participate, following the guidelines of the editor which limit our expressions to ideas, not uprising, and civility, not its opposite.
Well. Not anymore. Since he dunked on the Marcos’s ill-gotten wealth.
Nice to read Dean Dela Paz here.
We will close that gap by not voting for the wrong candidates for President and VP.
Filipino Voices reunion!! haha
Oh Yes! haha
Right on! Justice be done!
Hi Karl.
Glad to see you here.
here’s hoping we do a better job of picking the right people this time.
Hi Dean.It has been more than a decade since I last saw your articles at Filipino voices.
But I read some your articles at Get Real and Daily Tribune and maybe somewhere else (was it here?)
We will do a better job in 2022. Here’s to hoping that we will close the gap.
@Dean, I might be mistaken on eading your articles in the Get Real site, when I googled all I could find is one author linking to your May article.(DOTr related)
But I found your old inquirer opeds.
I’m thinking the ICC only indicts Africans and Arabs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the_International_Criminal_Court
And of those they actually capture (I’m not sure who does the capturing, is there an ICC Police force?), many actually get acquitted and dismissed.
Man, if BLM gets ahold of this info, they’ll have protests in the Hague!!! Systemic racism!!!
p.s. — On another note, specific to karl but also becuz of Mr. Paz’s expertise at the bottom of his article, please check out this blog: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ (read the conversation , but I wanted you to click on that first link which is a FREE textbook on environment and energy, your cup of tea)
from the blog,
After-Dinner Contemplations
The evening’s after-dinner keynote speech began, so we had to shelve the conversation. Reflecting on it, I kept thinking, “This should not have happened. A prominent economist should not have to walk back statements about the fundamental nature of growth when talking to a scientist with no formal economics training.” But as the evening progressed, the original space in which the economist roamed got painted smaller and smaller.
First, he had to acknowledge that energy may see physical limits. I don’t think that was part of his initial virtual mansion.
Next, the efficiency argument had to shift away from straight-up improvements to transformational technologies. Virtual reality played a prominent role in this line of argument.
Finally, even having accepted the limits to energy growth, he initially believed this would prove to be of little consequence to the greater economy. But he had to ultimately admit to a floor on energy price and therefore an end to traditional growth in GDP—against a backdrop fixed energy.
I got the sense that this economist’s view on growth met some serious challenges during the course of the meal. Maybe he was not putting forth the most coherent arguments that he could have made. But he was very sharp and by all measures seemed to be at the top of his game. I choose to interpret the episode as illuminating a blind spot in traditional economic thinking. There is too little acknowledgement of physical limits, and even the non-compliant nature of humans, who may make choices we might think to be irrational—just to remain independent and unencumbered.
I recently was motivated to read a real economics textbook: one written by people who understand and respect physical limitations. The book, called Ecological Economics, by Herman Daly and Joshua Farley, states in its Note to Instructors:
…we do not share the view of many of our economics colleagues that growth will solve the economic problem, that narrow self-interest is the only dependable human motive, that technology will always find a substitute for any depleted resource, that the market can efficiently allocate all types of goods, that free markets always lead to an equilibrium balancing supply and demand, or that the laws of thermodynamics are irrelevant to economics.
This is a book for me!
Great provocations! I was just reading this article this morning, another take on the limits of greed: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/neuroscientists-confirm-that-steve-jobs-was-decades-ahead-of-his-time.html
Good point on the ICC Police force. Having none, the ICC needs the cooperation of the countries involved. With no cooperation, there is little chance of progress.
On your other note.
Great lessons on disagreement, and not seeing eye to eye.
But in reality, you come from different backgrounds, like here in this blog, but at least we try to get where one is coming from.
I googled a specific disconnect between thermodynamics and economics and that is entropy
.
From science Direct.
Here are the Highlights.
Entropy cannot be used as a measure of economic scarcity.
•
There is no anthropogenic entropy separate from the entropy produced naturally.
•
Inutility of industrial waste is not connected with its thermodynamic entropy.
•
Industrially generated entropy may or may not be accumulated in industrial waste.
•
Recyclability is more important than thermodynamic entropy of a product.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544216001018#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20entropy%20is%20'produced‘,entropy%20energy%20is%20more%20useful.&text=This%20makes%20entropy%20a%20seemingly,of%20entropy%20in%20ecological%20economics.
entropy
/ˈɛntrəpi/
noun: entropy; plural noun: entropies; symbol: S
1.
PHYSICS
a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.
“the second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases with time”
2.
lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.
“a marketplace where entropy reigns supreme”
Thanks Joe.
OT, I’ll just drop this here. Rand Paul is busy pushing a conspiracy theory. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1417797781775847426?s=21
Paul accused Fauci of lying before congress insisting that he funded the gain of function research (enhancing a virus then test it in the real world) and it boomeranged.
Paul is a lowlife.
This whole Paul vs. Fauci argument was widely covered last nite.
My main take away was that I remembered Fauci i believe it was a 60 Minutes interview , saying something like , Its safer to do this research in China than over here; then yesterday he kept on saying , This is not gain of function research , a bunch of scientist say so!!!
Which begs the question what was this research that was so dangerous that it was better done in China?
I dunno, its all semantics now, but what exactly was the nature of said research.
Now I’m not gonna attribute conspiracy where science can be sufficient reason, or a screw up, or a cover up, can be equally sufficient. But i don’t think Rand Paul is necessarily a lowlife he’s asking questions, albeit grandstanding too, as befits his office,
but I want these questions asked myself. Just want more clarification on the research. And why it was deemed necessary, science when done without ethical considerations and/or common sense have happened before, so its a good line of questioning.
He is a lowlife for attacking the science community and making accusations rather than asking, listening, and then asking deeper questions. He is angering people, misleading them, confusing them – not giving them assistance. It is the indignant attack mode that is so unnecessary and destructive. The nerve of that attack on Fauci, calling him a liar.
Here are good neutral resources on the issue. It’s complex and even the scientists have differing ideas. But none thinks the NIH grant had anything to do with our covid crisis. The disputes seem to be: (1) what is gain of function, and did the US fund any of the stuff, and (2) where did covid come from, lab or natural. It did not come from US research funding. The research is needed to know enough to STOP viruses. Paul shuld read this stuff rather than showboat, and he should try to build something rather than tear it down. You can like him, that’s fine. In my opinion, he is a lowlife for being the problem, not the solution.
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/06/scicheck-the-facts-and-gaps-on-the-origin-of-the-coronavirus/
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/05/the-wuhan-lab-and-the-gain-of-function-disagreement/
Joe,
If he was being a nice guy, we’d not be talking about this very subject. His showboating, got people interested, i just had my coffee and watching morning news, and yup they are still talking about the Paul vs. Fauci exchange.
Me and chempo already covered this awhile back. My assessment was that we’ll never know if COVID was lab leaked or from bats given how viruses mutate, but for yesterdays debate lets at least define this thing.
And scientists themselves are in disagreement.
It isn’t a model of nice versus tough, but building versus tearing down, respect versus disrespect, learning versus imposing, giving rather than taking. The starting point is to recognize where there are agreements, then carve out the disagreements for attention. Negotiating 1A. Not win or disparage. Every meeting should start with the pledge of allegiance, like school children, until these clowns can walk into a meeting like soldiers out to protect the people.
Republican Rep Liz Cheney understands.
“Republican Rep Liz Cheney understands.”
Joe, other Republicans call her “RINO” (Republican-In-Name-Only).
btw, regarding the June 10 opinion article by Mike Broomhead on the Arizona election audit, he seems to be a RINO, too.
This is the latest I could find on the audit and on Liz Cheney: [post deleted by editor]
Broomhead is not mentioned, I think. I have not seen anything significant about him elsewhere either.
FYI, I am an Independent, not a Republican.
I will not go down the rabbit hole of spammed messages so have deleted the link. I can’t preview all that and so will not post it here. You are free to use your words to explain what the point of all those episodes is, or points are, and relevance to the Philippines.
What, in your mind, is the difference between a RINO and Republican? Is a RINO bad? Do you think Cheney’s allegiance to the Constitution over party is disloyal to Republicans?
Of course you’re correct , Joe. I like Liz Cheney too, though her sister might not.
I’m simply saying theres a time for a light touch and there’s a time for good prime time coverage, and this gain of function needs to be discussed publicly with the same amount of passion Fauci and Paul exhibited. I mean this research is nuts!
I can understand how scientist s would wanna play God, but not on taxpayers dime i hope. That CS Monitor article hinted on how divided scientists too are on this. So lets clarify our position re gain of function, figure out what is the function of this research.
Nice picture. Never go hunting with a Cheney.
Frankly, I have no idea why big-brained people with wee little scissors want to see if they can snip itty bitty bugs to make them jump into humans and make them sick or kill them off. But I do understand why they examine viruses to figure out how they can kill them or stop them from entering the human body. If the US is doing snipping for warfare purposes, someone should set the Hague on Biden. Same for Xi.
But scientists say it’s important for their community to take the lead so that the science is not left to Congress.
“You can’t expect a legislative aide in the middle of the night to define the technical features of the kinds of risks we’re talking about here,” says David Relman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University.
“I’m worried that if we scientists – together with the NIH – don’t get out ahead of this, we’re going to have this legislated for us,” he adds. “The bottom line for me is that we haven’t pursued this sufficiently. Now would be a pretty good time to do this.”
In 2011, an NIH-funded researcher in the Netherlands set off alarm bells with a paper describing how he had made, in his words, “probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make” by enhancing an avian flu virus in a way that made it more transmissible to mammals. Together with a similar NIH-funded study in Wisconsin, it triggered a debate about the risks of conducting such experiments and what could happen if that knowledge got into the wrong hands.
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0625/How-risky-is-gain-of-function-research-Congress-scrutinizes-China
__________________________________________________
But then again, gain of function research maybe our only chance to avert global warming. More deadly viruses please!
This research is the edge of God’s territory. China has little respect for God so US scientists have to be smart enough to put out the fires that China starts. Or that her own mistakes start. Either way. Scientists need to talk to one another, too, not debate through press releases.
Scientists do need to talk to one another about this gain of function research. They say it has produced Zero vaccines when it was supposed to be for vaccine research.
Thanks, karl.
I was just more interested on the notion that Economics as a field of study doesn’t account for finite resources. I know the concept of Biblical manna is usually the starting out point in Economics, infinite resources.
But with all the floods, and heat wave (for example for the past two months, I’ve not turned off my AC this year, I usually do , there doesn’t seem an ebb and flow this year just 100 degrees give or take), maybe we studied Economics wrongly.
And I just thought a financial banker slash energy guy can shed light, is the author going to chime in? or is this one of those write article and move on to the next one blogs? Usually, the author stays to frolic in the commentary.
Lance, who says that economics espouses unlimited resources?
You base your decisions on scarciity or limited resources.
==
Manna was not unlimited, or else it would still be raining manna until now in that place in the desert.
On another extreme there are
the loaves and fish.
They both are offer is good while supply lasts examples.
Even MMT is not about unlimited resources.
Bottomline is to forget the notion that economics does not account for finite resources.
@LCX,
“Talking past each other(to you)” Sorry man, it happened a lot between you and me. I did it again.
karl,
I’m coming from the perspective that misunderstandings create clarity. So no need to apologize, brother. Like bumper cars, i just want you to promise to bump me harder. Whiplash is the goal, IMHO.
Sounds like a realist perspective, partly. As to the other parts … 🙂
Btw,the author of the article already replied to you.
“… a specific disconnect between thermodynamics and economics and that is entropy …”
I definitely but vaguely recall that Chemistry uses the 2nd law of Thermodynamics to predict whether a given combo of starting compounds will create a chemical reaction. Didn’t quite understand how. To explain completely will earn you a MS in Chem.
All along I suspected that concepts of Physics can be applied to the study of Economics and Finance. For example I couldn’t help thinking that money should follow the equations of Newton on force and energy. Turns out experts in Math & Physics have been getting at it and have created thermodynamic models to study Economics, viz entropy as close analog to scarcity, way back to the turn of the 20th century.
” Entropy and economics.
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen proves to be the first professional Romanian economist who seriously raised the problem of the economics of human species in a global, environmental context (being the one who has studied the determining role of entropy on economic life).
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (born in Romania in 1906, under the name of Nicolae Georgescu) was an American mathematician, statistician, educator and economist of Romanian origin. He studied mathematics at the University of Bucharest and statistics at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and England (London University College). Then he received an invitation from the United States of America, through the Rockefeller Foundation, through which he worked with the economists at the Harvard Economic Barometer. The internship at Harvard was an extremely benefic period of intense intellectual activity, under the guidance of Professor Schumpeter and together with economists wearing prestigious names: Wassily Leontief, Oskar Lange, Fritz Machlup, Gerhard Tintner, Nicholas Kaldor, Edgar Hoover, Frank Taussig, Paul Samuelson. Georgescu-Roegen was noted as “a great spirit of the era, one of the scientists that future history will place among those who thought and acted far ahead of their time and who, during their life, did not manage to get the whole recognition they deserved” – in the opinion of Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate. The life of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen covered almost the entire twentieth century; therefore, he witnessed the two world wars, the prosperity of the modern world for half a postwar century, the amazing changes in science, technology and industry, which had not only beneficial effects, but also threatening effects on life on the planet, as well as the great experiment of Marxist social engineering, with its well known consequences. Georgescu-Roegen was not insensible to all these. His rich experience, his vigilant eye regarding real life and his sharp, analytical and creative mind helped him understand things better and have the living reality as a fundamental reference point in all his scientific approaches and serving the truth regardless of the consequences it could have on his own situation as his main objective. During his professional training, he was convinced that a scientist must also meet some philosophical requirements, at least in order to be able to permanently control the likelihood of his own scientific testing. Thus, Georgescu-Roegen writes in My Life Philosophy – “considering my mathematics training, first I naturally had to dip into the work of Vilfredo Pareto, who I got to consider the greatest mathematician economist that ever existed …”
https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.2139%2Fssrn.1759190
Thanks, sonny. I like the article; I will continue to read and think about it. This much I agree:
“The material basis of life is an entropic process, since every living structure, in order to stay alive, assimilates low entropy from the environment and turns it into high entropy. A living being can only avoid the entropic degradation of its own structure. It can not hamper the entropy increase of the overall system. Moreover, entropy generally increases faster in the presence of life, especially human life, than in its absence.”
Nicely stated.
NH,
You have started an entropy discussion here.
“And to amplify and relate to what sonny posted in the previous blog about entropy in Thermodynamics: entropy tends to increase in nature — that is, towards increase in chaos. In a closed system entropy [chaos] increases. It needs an energy or force [preferrably] outside of the system to preserve order. The TSH Editor performs a dual role here: being part of the TSH system and thus initiates and contribute to the discussion; and equally, and importantly, as a policeman [a force] to preserve order. The Editor in TSH has thus an importantl role indicated by the Science of Thermodynamics!”
==
another classic discussion follows
You recall that karl. Thanks, Chief Librarian. How time passes. I note that sonny and our dear edgar was into that discussion, as well as Joe and yourself.
Tempus fugit memento bona tempora
time fies, remember the good times
I made that up, the original latin phrase sounds ominous.
This is the quote from Sonny.
“NH, as we talk & discuss TOTC (all levels) I get more convinced that our affairs of complexity are just people obeying/realizing the imperatives of the laws of nature, e.g. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: every system tends to increasing entropy (chaos & disorder). If we use this law as axiomatic then we know other laws follow that we end up following anyway.”
Karl, I did not know you are into Latin. How about this:
ih liki isi kream Translation — I like ice cream.
Sorry, Joe, degrading the level of comments here. But it is an antidote to the foul weather we have. I understand that Biliran had a 4.2 level earthquake today?
Yes, but I’m from Los Angeles. We sneer at anything less than 6.
NH,
At least once in a while you drop a joke.
Latin is Sonny’s cup of tea. Trying hard lang ako.
“ih liki isi kream Translation — I like ice cream.”
I just feel I have to jump in here. 🙂
In Kazakh, which I had tried very briefly to learn, ice cream is …
“balmuzdak.”
In my early days in California, I applied for a job with Lufthansa in Almaty the then capital of Kazakhstan.
At that time I was still occasionally seeing Richard Wurmbrand (“Marx & Satan”) at their home near Palos Verdes.
He asked me if I have learned any Kazakh and I told him of the word I best remember!
Did he give you ice cream?
@Karl
“Did he give you ice cream?”
No, Karl, I don’t think he did. 🙂
But he and his wife, Sabina, probably gave me more than ten of their books (written by him) to share freely with others – as was their wont.
Nice!
Joe , I know that you are used to quakes but still wishing you well.
Our turn to feel the quakes.
Here in Manila we felt the quake in Mindoro( 6.7 )earlier.
Thanks. Actually, they freak me out. I’ve been through three 7.0 +/- quakes in Los Angeles and they were all traumatic.
I experienced tremors in Orange County (feb 2020). they were the shaky kind but rather gave a wavy feel. Whatever the kind, images of San Fernando Valley devastation raced in my mind, always, no fail: gymnasium collapsed,CA route 118 overpass collapsed, bathtub dislodged, etc. I was on stop-over visit, with my sister, living in Granada Hills. I just landed coming from Manila.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Northridge_earthquake
“… not the shaky kind …”
“ih liki isi kream Translation — I like ice cream.”
Here’s a French version:
Mais voutaixs une mediaux mou, translates to “may butas ang medyas mo”
You’re most welcome, NH.
Since we are into entropy.
@Irineo opined on something called “social entropy”
“The point being that law is always a countermeasure against what I call “social entropy”. European developments show that clearly. Roman Empire, tribalistic chaos, tribal forms of Federalism, slowly developing into legal spaces, sovereign states, Empires once more (Napoleon was another important EU precursor, imposing the metric system and a common civil code was a major step in modernization), groups of states that are semi-imperial (Warsaw Pact, USSR), the EU now, trying to build its own army within the NATO umbrella.”
“The point being that law is always a countermeasure against what I call “social entropy”
Yes indeed. Without laws, chaos or disorder is inevitable. Even tyrants impose laws — but their kind.
Yes, I was correct to dig up more on entropy.
karl, sonny, NH, et. al.
I think you guys are talking about entropy here as metaphor to chaos, thus needing man’s law; whereas the article above posits entropy as natural law (as intended, not as metaphor), so related to economics because man is now encroaching upon the boundaries of nature.
karl, that’s a really good video almost 25 minutes, about taking down Economists.
Round ’em all up and take ’em to the ICC!!!
“This is why all is f**d.” … says (scripts?) LCX.
Yes, “script” is a verb.
(LCX’s way with graphics/annotations is amazing – in many ways.)
Lance (LCX), what do you think of this?:
x-
The soul is not subjected to death. Lord Jesus says it, too.
But by this unique quality, of victory over death, the soul gains an enormous value.
It surpasses the body in value, even more, it surpasses in value the entire world with its
treasures. Because the entire world is transitory (the Scripture says it will be burned in
fire; physics claims it will suffer death by entropy), while the soul lasts.
-x
“… death by entropy.”
as quoted from
THE MIRROR OF THE HUMAN SOUL
By Richard Wurmbrand
i7sharp, as to the soul outlasting the universes tendency towards entropy , that there may be correct, but I don’t like the Christian mumbo jumbo, I prefer the Scientology mumbo jumbo. I think it addresses entropy with more detail, plus a bit of game theory too, NH’s favourite.
___________________________________________________
In the primordial past, according to Scientologist teachings, thetans brought the material universe into being largely for their own pleasure..”[15] The universe is thought to have no independent reality, but to derive its apparent reality from the fact that most thetans agree it exists.[16] Scientologists believe that thetans fell from grace when they began to identify with their creation, rather than their original state of spiritual purity.[15] Eventually, they lost their memory of their true nature, along with the associated spiritual and creative powers. As a result, thetans came to think of themselves as nothing but embodied beings.[16][17]
Thetans are believed to be reborn time and time again in new bodies through a process called “assumption” which is analogous to reincarnation.[15] Dell deChant and Danny Jorgensen liken Scientology to Hinduism, in that both ascribe a causal relationship between the experiences of earlier incarnations and one’s present life.[15] With each rebirth, the effects of the “MEST” universe (MEST here stands for matter, energy, space, and time) on the thetan are believed to become stronger.[15] Scientologists believe that the thetan has been “embodied on many occasions,” but they generally avoid the term “reincarnation.” They also reject the idea of transmigration, “i.e. the belief that the thetan would incarnate into any animal less than human.” Scientology’s first phase has to do with removing “encumbrances acquired in this life and in past existences,” J. Gordon Melton writes. These encumbrances are called “engrams,” “described as aberrations attached to the self that produce dysfunctional behavior patterns,” according to Melton.[18]
Jon Atack, whose book A Piece of Blue Sky details how he reached Operating Thetan level V before leaving Scientology, describes Hubbard’s doctrines about thetans: “Thetans are all-knowing beings, and became bored because there were no surprises. Hubbard asserted that the single most important desire in all beings is to have a ‘game’. To have a ‘game’ it was necessary to ‘not know’ certain things, so certain perceptions were negated (‘not-is-ed’).” Since thetans knew everything, this required them to abandon or suppress perceptions and knowledge. Over time, the loss of perception accumulated and certain thetans began to cause harm to others. MEST (physical) beings also sought to “trap” thetans in order to control them. Thetans came to learn contrition, punishing themselves for their own “harmful” acts.[19]
According to Hubbard, an essential part of the thetans’ game was the “conquest” of matter, energy, space, and time by the life force, theta. This has produced multiple universes which have ended and begun in succession, each new one being more solid and entrapping than the last. The thetans have by now become so enmeshed in the physical universe that many have identified themselves totally with it, forgetting their quadrillions[20] of years of existence and their original godly powers.[19]
According to Scientology, thetan powers are said to remain potent and restorable. One of the Church of Scientology’s stated goals is “the rehabilitation of the human spirit”, by which it means the restoration of the thetan’s original abilities. Hubbard claims that thetans are able to change reality through “postulates”—decisions made by the individual about the nature of the reality around them. Some thetans are said to have (mis)used this ability to “implant” others with hypnotic suggestions, forcing other thetans to “cluster” around bodies (hence body thetans). This sort of directed control is referred to as “other-determinism”. Scientology seeks to undo it and return the thetan to “self-determinism”, where he can control himself and his environment. The eventual goal is to achieve “pan-determinism”, where he acts for the good of all
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thetan.
@LCX
“… but I don’t like the Christian mumbo jumbo, I prefer the Scientology mumbo jumbo …”
Lance, what do you mean by “Christian mumbo jumbo”?
Better yet, what do you understand a “Christian” is – as in, for example,
“The Philippines proudly boasts to be the only Christian nation in Asia.”
https://asiasociety.org/education/religion-philippines
I am not sure if this site claims to be Christian.
But LCX can probably find many things to his liking in it.
https://www.thegodculture.com/
x-
The God Culture would like to offer special thanks to the Republic of the Philippines Secretary of Religious Affairs, Dr. Grepor Butch Belgica for his support and contribution of the Foreward for Solomon’s Treasure books. The Philippines is blessed to have such a man and his family.
-x
Its source list seems impressive.
https://www.thegodculture.com/source-list
x-
…
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
Antonio Pigafetta’s Journal
The Cambridge Ancient History
The Smithsonian Institute
Yale University
The Israel Museum
The Louvre Museum
British Museum
Pomponius Mela, Chorographia
Flavius Josephus
The surueye of the vvorld… Dionysius Periegetes
The Voyages and Adventures of Fernando Mendez Pinto, The Portuguese (Cogan)
Pliny the Elder (Historia Naturalis)
…
-x
I rely on the KJV only.
Apparently, TGC (The God Culture) relies on a lot more!
The link/article can serve as a first sociological approximation to the subject of religion in the Philippines.
i7sharp, sonny, et al.
I know that Jesus himself never talked about soul, especially as it relates to entropy, but Jesus doesn’t have to bcuz from Jewish traditions we can ascertain that their concept of soul was not immortal, though spirit (which early Christians later promoted) was immortal, so closer to Thetan.
Then of course during the Inquisitions (lasting about 200 years), again the concept of soul plays a big role, but this time to curse souls to hell, the heretical groups were, Beguines, Cathars, Hussites, Joachimites, Lollards, Waldensians, etc. etc. But during the times of St. Augustine there was already wrong and right dogma. Thus mumbo jumbo.
You as a lover of the KJV Bible would be a heretic, i7sharp, but its already after the Reformation. And the Church has less power nowadays. And anyone with Google can easily make up their own mumbo jumbo. So your soul –or is it the spirit– that’s safe. 😉
As it relates to the Philippines, the fact IMHO that you seldom can get a Filipino to talk about death, much less sign a DNR order or write a will or plan for death and funeral, means most Filipinos either don’t read the Bible, or don’t really believed in their promised mansion (house & lot) in Heaven, where they live forever.
But going back to the Inquisition, and related to the current blog, I’m talking about the arbitrariness of an ICC indictment, W. Bush with all the deaths and chaos produced from GWOT should be indicted, more deaths than EJKs for sure, and more indiscriminate suffering, same with Hillary and the Arab Spring;
so if we indict the field of Economics, we must indict its priesthood those who proselytized and promulgated infinite growth, which resulted in all the stuff everyone now is complaining about, sure only EJK is the most obvious because the victims were obvious, but how about the victims of floods, or hunger, chemical poisoning, plastics as food, thus cancers galore, etc. etc.
Thus, if we are truly serious about the concept of the ICC, we have to demand that folks like Dean are indicted. If convicted so be it, but simply to stand trial and answer for their crimes, of conspiracy (that growth is infinite) and collusion (with big corporations and gov’ts) and heresy (of going against the balance of nature).
Only after , can we then indict DU30 for his localized, more discriminate EJKs, and significantly less in number, all that seem less than what Dean and company have managed to have done across generations, in spreading the heresy of Economics.
Whether his soul or spirit or both are safe, that’s up to God to decide, i7sharp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4X5HLJBh7M (what a sleaze ball !!!)
Looks like another big scam, i7sharp. If you’ve already sunk money in The God Culture, you should also donate to my cause for a private audit in California, $100 will get you a FREE t-shirt.
LCX, if you should know, TGC (or its leader) doesn’t like me – as far as I can tell from my last correspondence with then … at least two years ago(?).
And I had no idea at all about Belgica – except from what I gathered from TGC a few hours ago.
In any case, try not to jump to conclusions … and then run with them. 🙂
i7sharp,
There’s a qualifier, IF … so if not, then I’m still interested in offering you a FREE t-shirt for a $100 dollar donation to my private audit in CA. Like AZ, PA, and GA we will bring down the Biden administration, plus you get a shirt for it.
If you add $5 I’ll personally throw in a scripted silk screened print that’ll say “Indict Dean”.
Award for comedy. 🧀
@LCX
x-
If you add $5 I’ll personally throw in a scripted silk screened print that’ll say “Indict Dean”.
-x
Hmmm, …
It has to be “Indict Dean”?
What colors are available?
Well, yeah …
Dean’s trying to indict DU30.
And we are trying to indict Dean.
It’s one big experiment on hypocrisy and arbitrariness.
Black.
Who shall we let go Bar Abbas or Jesus? DU30 or Dean? Which goat shall we set free? These are the questions we pose at TSOH.
@LCX
“And we are trying to indict Dean.”
Lance, I don’t know who the “we” includes but I, for one, do not think of indicting Dean.
And I do not mean to take Dean’s name in vain.
“Who shall we let go Bar Abbas or Jesus?”
Lance, which bible (ESV – English Standard Version?) is depicted in the image attached to your post I am responding to?
I ask … with the intent to (sooner or later) relate things to the “arbitrariness” and “hypocrisy” you mentioned.
By the way, the KJV says Barabbas was a “notable prisoner.”
Matthew 27:16
https://biblehub.com/matthew/27-16.htm
You may need more donations, if you want PH money better make that indict Duterte pronto.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/564074-texas-republican-introduces-bill-seeking-2020-election-audit
if your grudge with the economists is for being told that it is the economy, stupid.
Dean did not say, It is the economy, stupid, he said it about sovereignty stupid.
https://tribune.net.ph/index.php/2018/08/07/its-about-sovereignty-stupid/
I dunno if they’re giving away FREE t-shirts with $100 donation in TX, karl. My CA audit is still the best deal right now.
Actually Lance I may have been questioning your disagreeing or Devlil’sadcocating but it IS important to arrive at understanding.
Sure social sciences
Is not exact and Sciences are more robust but really exact.
Both correct them selves because of inquisitive minds like you and me
(Nothing new but bear with me)
But science it is attached to social science because they are both studies based on observation and experiments
One field to studies the physical and natural world by scientific experiments and the other to social experiments
Musk, Branson,Bezos worry too about over population, how long will earth last because of human activity.
With out culling, purging, pruning creating bio chem wmd, etc
Now we are done with this thought experiment, if it was chaotic, can we have our order now?
If you want we can move to a mexican bar and have our cheddar cheese turned into nacho sauce and order Nachos.
* Sciences are not really exact
From one of your illustrations, I am now reading this to have an understanding where you are coming from.
https://greattransition.org/publication/economics-for-a-full-world
“Because of the exponential economic growth since World War II, we now live in a full world, but we still behave as if it were empty, with ample space and resources for the indefinite future. The founding assumptions of neoclassical economics, developed in the empty world, no longer hold, as the aggregate burden of the human species is reaching—or, in some cases, exceeding—the limits of nature at the local, regional, and planetary levels. The prevailing obsession with economic growth puts us on the path to ecological collapse, sacrificing the very sustenance of our well-being and survival. To reverse this ominous trajectory, we must transition toward a steady-state economy focused on qualitative development, as opposed to quantitative growth, and the interdependence of the human economy and global ecosphere. Developing policies and institutions for a steady-state economy will require us to revisit the question of the purpose and ends of the economy.”
This was written by an economist who happened to agree with you. You would not want him to be ICC’D even if he once worked for WB.( another institution you do not like)
Herman Daly
Herman Daly is an ecological economist and Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland, School of Public Policy. From 1988 to 1994, he was a Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank. Prior to that, he was a professor of economics at Louisiana State University, where he taught for twenty years. He has served as Ford Foundation Visiting Professor at the University of Ceará (Brazil), Research Associate at Yale University, Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, and Senior Fulbright Lecturer in Brazil. He was co-founder and associate editor of the journal Ecological Economics. He has written extensively on theorizing the steady-state economy and co-developed the Index of Sustainable Welfare. He holds a PhD from Vanderbilt University.
Exactly, karl. With all that said, we should all convince the ICC to indict Dean. 😉
Hahaha he will be aquited for zero evidence presented by the prosecution.
I’m pretty sure we can get him for heresy, karl.
Leave me out of the heresy talk Lance Corporal.
@LCPL
I will drop this here.
Chemrock’s piece.
Maybe if we get things right here to be self-reliant, we do not need the ICC to indict Duterte.
As Edgar said:
edgar lores says:
April 28, 2017 at 6:18 pm
*******
Another consideration at the back of my mind is: Why does the Philippines have to go outside the country to sort an internal matter? We are always running to and relying on someone else and not on ourselves.
This is an “extrajudicial” step in the sense that it is not a regular part of our internal legal proceedings.
The SCS dispute required international intervention because the parties were two states.
Here, we are talking of parties within one state.
This point is about self-reliance and self-sufficiency. In the US, Nixon was made to resign by the force of legal and press opinion. Trump may well be forced to do likewise if the investigations into inappropriate Russian connections bear fruit.
We must develop these strong internal mechanisms of checks and balances to succeed as a nation. Otherwise, we will continue to be prey to the next Marcos, Arroyo, or Duterte.
*****
karl,
Remember there is the economy which is all the trading and networking going on and money changing hands, banking too, etc. Then there is the field of Economics, which purports to study and justify the economy. Only it doesn’t just study it is selling an ideology that growth will save us from our own greed— now that’s just wrong.
Thus indict Dean. He is not the economy, but an Economist selling heresy, w/ metrics!
As to sovereignty, I agreed with edgar way back — why depend on foreigners to tell you what needs to get done, get it done. Same-same with Economics. its a foreign concept, when balance with nature was already intrinsic to the local culture. Thus just as its about sovereignty, Economics should now be about Degrowth.
… And that’s why we need to indict Dean and his ilk. Economists have to answer for what they’ve done, karl. DU30 pales in comparison.
Can you say the same about Micha? He obviously has an economics background, but is an activist in his own way, and he calls investment bankers parasites
Micha’s de-growth, karl.
The next time you go on jury duty ask if the plaintiff ever had an economics course not degree just if ever he or she took economics in class, since you are an expert in jumping to conclusions, assumptions and presumptions convince the rest to give a guilty verdict.
This is not funny at all.
Fallacy of all fallacies- jumping to conclusions, and defending the said conclusions with wrong assumptions.
Then you accuse Joe of sincerely believing that he can change the world, that is what you have been doing with all your arguments.
Toxic,Quixotic…
“This is not funny at all.”
Why not?
This is me laughing in jest 😦 ;(
I too jump to conclusions and judge.
You are an auditor for your skeptisism
You are Scientist for your paradigms
You are Eminem for your jestful attempts in seeking the truth.
this is the paradigm shift mumbo jumbo.
==========
TheoriesScienceParadigm Shift
Thomas Kuhn – Science as a Paradigm
By Dr. Saul McLeod, published 2020
Take-home Messages of Kuhn’s Idea
Thomas Kuhn argued that science does not evolve gradually towards truth.
Science has a paradigm which remains constant before going through a paradigm shift when current theories can’t explain some phenomenon, and someone proposes a new theory.
A scientific revolution occurs when: (i) the new paradigm better explains the observations, and offers a model that is closer to the objective, external reality; and (ii) the new paradigm is incommensurate with the old.
For example, Lamarckian evolution was replaced with Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
Thomas Kuhn attacks “development-by-accumulation” views of science which hold that science progresses linearly by accumulation of theory-independent facts. Kuhn looked at the history of science and argued that science does not simply progress by stages based upon neutral observations (e.g. Positivism).
For Kuhn, the history of science is characterized by revolutions in scientific outlook. Scientists have a worldview or “paradigm”. A paradigm is a universally recognizable scientific achievement that, for a time, provides model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners.
Scientists accept the dominant paradigm until anomalies are thrown up. Scientists then begin to question the basis of the paradigm itself, new theories emerge which challenge the dominant paradigm and eventually one of these new theories becomes accepted as the new paradigm.
During different periods of science, certain perspectives held sway over the thinking of researchers. A particular work may “define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners.”
Kuhn’s Phases of Science
Knowledge which does not evolve according to the four main phases, according to Kuhn, may not be considered scientific.
paradigm shift cycle
Phase 1: Pre-science
The pre-paradigmatic state refers to a period before a scientific consensus has been reached.
Disorganized and diverse activity.
Constant debate over fundamentals.
As many theories as there are theorists.
No commonly accepted observational basis. The conflicting theories are constituted with their own set of theory-dependent observations.
Phase 2: Normal Science
(most common – science is usually stable)
A paradigm is established which lays the foundations for legitimate work within the discipline. Scientific work then consists in articulation of the paradigm, in solving puzzles that it throws up.
A paradigm is a conventional basis for research; it sets a precedent.
Puzzles that resist solutions are seen as anomalies.
Anomalies are tolerated and do not cause the rejection of the theory, as scientists are confident these anomalies can be explained over time.
Scientists spend much of their time in the Model Drift step, battling anomalies that have appeared. They may or may not know this or acknowledge it.
It is necessary for normal science to be uncritical. If all scientists were critical of a theory and spent time trying to falsify it, no detailed work would ever get done.
“Normal Science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all of their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community’s willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost. Normal Science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments” (Kuhn, 1996, p. 5).
Phase 3: Crisis
This is where the paradigm shift occurs.
Anomalies become serious, and a crisis develops if the anomalies undermine the basic assumptions of the paradigm and attempts to remove them consistently fail.
Under these circumstances the rules for the application of the paradigm become relaxed. Ideas that challenge the existing paradigm are developed.
In crisis there will be ‘extraordinary science’ where there will be several competing theories.
If the anomalies can be resolved, the crisis is over and normal science resumes. If not, there is a scientific revolution which involves a change of paradigm.
Phase 4: Revolution
Eventually a new paradigm will be established, but not as a result of any logically compelling justification.
The reasons for the choice of a paradigm are largely psychological and sociological.
The new paradigm better explains the observations, and offers a model that is closer to the objective, external reality
Different paradigms are held to be incommensurable — the new paradigm cannot be proven or disproven by the rules of the old paradigm, and vice versa.
There is no natural measure or scale for ranking different paradigms.
Critical Evaluation
The enormous impact of Thomas Kuhn’s work can be measured in the changes it brought about in the vocabulary of the philosophy of science: besides “paradigm shift”, Kuhn raised the word “paradigm” itself from a term used in certain forms of linguistics to its current broader meaning.
The frequent use of the phrase “paradigm shift” has made scientists more aware of and in many cases more receptive to paradigm changes, so that Kuhn’s analysis of the evolution of scientific views has by itself influenced that evolution.
For Kuhn, the choice of paradigm was sustained by, but not ultimately determined by, logical processes. Kuhn believed that it represented the consensus of the community of scientists. Acceptance or rejection of some paradigm is, he argued, a social process as much as a logical process.
This means Kuhn has been accused of being a relativist. Maybe all the theories are equally valid? Why should we believe today’s science when it might be overturned in future? Kuhn vigorously rejected this, claiming that scientific revolutions have always led to new, more accurate theories, and represent true progress.
Does science make progress through scientific revolutions? Are later paradigms better than earlier ones? No, Kuhn suggests, they are just different. The scientific revolutions which supplant one paradigm with another do not take us closer to the truth about the way the world is.
Successive paradigms are incommensurable. Kuhn says that a later paradigm may be a better instrument for solving puzzles than an earlier one. But if each paradigm defines its own puzzles, what is a puzzle for one paradigm may be no puzzle at all for another. So why is it progress to replace one paradigm with another which solves puzzles that the earlier paradigm does not even recognize? Kuhn used his incommensurability thesis to disprove the view the paradigm shifts are objective. Truth is relative to the paradigm.
Science does not change its paradigm over night. Younger scientists take a new paradigm forward. As Kuhn put it “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Thomas Kuhn showed contemporary philosophers could not ignore the history of science and the social context which science takes place. Science is a product of the society in which it is practiced.
Thanks Karl. I like Kuhn. LCX is off on one of his intellectual tangents, challenging us to keep pace and legitimizing Duterte’s killings by setting Dean up as the magnificent strawman. Kuhn would perhaps accept LCX as a part of the current dynamic where mankind is trying to get a grip on the end of lavish living and demonizing prior generations (Dean) to get there. Certainly a lot of harm has been done in the name of commercial enterprise, with a couple of atom bombs on Japan being among the horrors generated. I’m not inclined to engage with LCX, for he is the master of the fallacious argument that leads his prey directly into an emotional and intellectual briar patch.
I’m with Kuhn. Economists of the old tradition were of their time, not to be condemned, but to be replaced by a new set.
Duterte’s killings are murder for public consumption and personal economic gain. Drugs are everywhere, so that strawman was irrelevant. But he gained the peoples’ morbid satisfaction and presumably control of the drug trade.
I read this after typing my other reply. I agree with everything especially this part:
“for he is the master of the fallacious argument that leads his prey directly into an emotional and intellectual briar patch.”
Good intentions can be a recipe for obsession.
https://www.hoarders911.com/recycling-hoarders/
Recycling is a great way to make a positive contribution to society, but even such a noble enterprise can escalate into disaster when it turns into an obsession, such as for recycling hoarders. In fact, hoarding recyclables not only prevents them from being reused, but it causes major problems for the recycle hoarder. When your house is so full of recyclables that you can hardly remember life before you began your collection, getting rid of them may sound like a foreign concept. You may believe your habits have a purpose, but the sheer amount of material has caused your goals to get out of hand.
===
Then recycling will look like your over consumption picture above if it becomes hoarding.
Remember when you drink look for the brand moderately, if out of stock maybe they still have the responsibly in their inventory.
No matter how moderately or responsibly you drink the world would still be full of beer bottles and cans.
“not to be condemned, but to be replaced”
Again, this is the same as Jesus and Bar Abbas.
The same as the two he-goats with Aaron (that’s Yom Kippur by the way).
One to God; while the other to the angel Azazel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azazel
When given the choice by Pilate, the Jews were supposed to choose Bar Abbas– the Son of the Father. Alas they chose the one meant for Azazel, and that made all the difference.
Economists are of Azazel, hence we should do both, condemn and replace.
Both, not either or. And with extreme prejudice. Bar Abba(s). Kuhn would agree. And so too this guy…
There is an unfairness to the condemnation. It presumes people of the 1940’s should have the values framework of the 2020’s. Intellectual understanding that the successful model of then was legitimate and good is higher reasoning, not requiring villains to build for today. But I can see why you like the Duterte model on the drug war. It is inherently unfair and cruel.
I think both should go to prison, Joe. Just for shits and giggles.
My point here is that Dean should go first.
But my secondary point is that all this is all arbitrary really
Winner gets to condemn the other. Always.
That is unfair; whether its cruel or not, all depends on the suffering meted out.
Here IMHO the Economists also take the cake.
Thus Dean and DU30 same-same really. Infinite growth is EJK, Joe!
My value stream does not allow me to get there, but whatever floats your “shits and giggles”. 🤣😂🤣😂🤣 Wonderful literary expression.
Marines use it many times in place of “for all intents and purposes”, Joe. In lieu of, this for that.
@karl, thanks for the extended notes of Kuhn’s paradigm shift ideas. Well stated. By that posting, you are yourself a scientist at heart!
You are welcome, NH.
x-
Of Prophets and Paradigms
[Search domain wheatley.byu.edu]
https://wheatley.byu.edu/of-prophets-and-paradigms/
… consistent with Thomas Kuhn’s influential insight that science proceeds by a series of successive paradigms.
-x
From the book I trust:
“… profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: …”
1 Timothy 6:20
Note: “science falsely so called”
In the very first verse (Genesis 1:1) of the book I trust, I see “heaven.”
LCX will most likely see “heavens” in every bible used by the sources he seems to rely on.
Let me go back to the Philippines’ being a “Christian” nation.
I do not question that SMP (Senator Manny Pacquiao) is a Christian.
Whether or not he becomes the President next year 2022, he will probably have to deal with “complementarianism.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/the-unmaking-of-biblical-womanhood
I think one of SMP’s daughters want to be a “pastora.”
As far as I can tell, SMP uses the NIV (New International Version) … which, by the way, says “heavens” in Genesis 1:1.
What you need to ask yourself , i7sharp, is why no mention of Azazel in KJV. Dean is our scapegoat. Azazel is Economics.
scapegoat does not equal Azazel.
The next blog’s author is still Dean.
Channel your shits and giggles there.
But seriously you could potentially give good insights to the topic.
He thinks not as a lawyer. He believes he is immune. Just you wait Mr. D.
mr d could well be the top official to fail at recycling.
Love your double-meaning. Ha,ha,ha.
Fortunately, what he believes and what is reality are two different things. Hopefully, reality – that he is not immune – prevails.
he’s already immunocompromised due to comorbidities, and has altered reality. he’s not sane, lol!
Strongest kind immunity: Immunity from plagiarism.
No to LacSot or PiTit ano ba tawag sa kanila?
https://news.abs-cbn.com/-depth/08/17/12/sotto-immune-plagiarism-raps-top-aide-says
would kawatan do? plagiarism, for lack of better things to say, kapos ang vocabulary, tamad mag-isip, kunyari matalino pero hindi naman, mahangin. bet, when he was at grade school, nangungopya yan sa exam, lol!
he can be funny, quirky, original in his prose using everyday terms understandable to all and be remembered for it – instead of being known mostly to be hollow, halos walang laman at vacuous, lending himself open to ridicule.
rh bill maybe serious, but has funny side, things he could make do.
Book Smart(plagiarizer) vs Street Smart
Interviewer to Sotto- Sir Di ba bawal lumabas senior citizens.
Sotto_As Senators, we are exempted. Kung sino man nagaakala na mahina ( resistance) kami, palakasan na lang ng palo ng golf.
Interviewer to Pakyaw- Punch drunk daw po kayo sabi ng pangulo
pakyaw- Punch Drunk pagalingan na lang kami sa memorization, tingnan natin
it’s no wonder the 45 panukalang batas hiling ni duterte, 37 are still pending and gathering dust, minulto yata, lol! kung gaano kalaki ang budget ng kamara, gaano kalaki ang sweldo ng mga senadaroes, the senate and congress the majority of both matagal ng hawak ni duterte, ay ganyan kahina ang trabaho. ang dami pa namang speakers sa house, dada ng dada, ang daming excuses pa. tapos, kapos pa sa audit, money unliquidated. too many chiefs, not enough indians, so not woke.
habang, ito si leni, heads down lang and doing her job, going where she is needed the most and bringing with her much needed help and supplies, pagod minsan pero ang smiles ng mga natulungan niya, their warm welcome and their sincerity ay nakakabura ng pagod.
Pending legislations.
I used to love researching about pending legislations even proposing “institutionalizing people power’ here.
What is the use of having so many bills when you can act only on a fraction of it no matter how diligent the whole institution may be.
Nakkaabura nga ng pagod si Leni.
But the other day until yesterday, there was this issue on ” Let Leni Lead” slogan on twitter.
Benign zero had a feast on the so-called cat fight.
So it’s 10 months til election time; haven’t heard who’s in the running yet. Does the country have resources to conduct fair/honest elections in the midst of a (still) rampaging pandemic? Or is that exercise already been consigned to obscurity?
Will the new normal be interspersed with the old normal of ‘here are the super folks who are going to rule over you, bear it and suck it’.
Trillanes and Lacson have announced they will run for president. Four or five others will likely run. A big field. Robredo is hard to read. No enthusiasm, no money.
Going with this mini-thread on the 2022 Presidential Election, here is a play on numbers.
In the 2010 Election with 10 Presidential candidates, 68.50% of the votes went to 20% of the candidates (2 out of 10) — with Noynoy Aquino winning that election. In the 2016 Election with 5 candidates, 62.46% of the votes went to 40% of the candidates (2 out of 5) — Duterte winning that election. Roughly complying with Pareto’s principle.
Assume there are 6 candidates for the 2022 Election, counting Lacson and Trillanes among them. With nothing more to go on but Pareto’s principle and the results of the previous ratios, I say, roughly, we will have 65% of the votes go to 33% of the candidates (2 out of 6).
With additional registration of voters on top of previous ones, under normal circumstances, we may have more actual voters with healthy turnout. Considering the Pandemic however which will likely endure till May 2022, the winning Presidential candidate may not top the 16.6 million votes Duterte got in 2016. We may be lucky to get 15 million voting for the winning candidate.
Talking only of Lacson and Trillanes what sort of voter demographics will aid either Lacson or Trillanes getting more votes? Whose potential voters are likely to shy away from voting because of the Pandemic?
the spirit maybe strong but the pocket is weak, leni admitted to having no fund to launch a decent presidential campaign in 2022.
priorly in 2016, when leni become vp, fund was not much of a problem as the party she belonged to took care of funding. now if leni heads a party and run as president, she will face biggest hurdle: lack of funds. yan po ang nabasa ko.
many wants leni to run as president, reality says she may well not; the many who wants leni to run are not not very well off; money wise. leni is not ubod ng yaman and has no hidden stash.
I think the bigger hurdle is not lack of funds, but the VP’s lack of ambition or determination to get them, which is a reflection of her passive, peaceful manner. Two sides of the coin. A lot of people were dismayed by her ‘give up’ attitude in her recent interview. They want a fighter.
Maybe 1sambayan does, too, but mistake fists for morals.
she is what she, leni is, and changing her could make her a different person not necessarily a better one. she knows what she’s up against. methink, those that want her to enter the viper’s pit and succeed, ought not leave all to her! but equip her and fund raise for her like there is no tomorrow. hala, todo!
it cannot all be her own merry song and dance from the topmost of the nation to the endmost of the nation, while the rest watch and enjoy, happy to see her burn herself out even before before inauguration.
with leni, what you see is what you get. want a better person, an ambitious fighter and a more determined one? the line is long and endless and there is smorgasbord, lol!
ambition and determination, I’m reminded of commudus? who listed ambition, determination, etc as his most endearing characteristics worthy for him to be his father’s successor, and be emperor of rome.
luckily for commudus, he entered the gladiator’s ring and so met his doom at the hands of the gladiator.
Well, the determinant is, can she win? Not is she capable or decent. Even she knows not winning would be catastrophic.
“Catastrophic.” Certainly, not for her, though it certainly will sting if she runs and loses. But catastrophic for the country if the Administration’s candidate wins when another real opposition candidate — though not ideal — has a better chance of winning.
Yes. Correct.
have faith, leni can win. already, she lends legitimacy to all survey polls for without her in it, surveys are deemed botched. and yet she never sought to be in survey o paid to be included in surveys.
leni is the one to beat this coming presidential election 2022, the one to chase, the one candidate all others have to measure up. by september 2021, leni will make decision to be in the race, or not.
and surprise! daughter from the south who has all the means, all the wherewithals and all the money to launch a massive political party – will make her decision in october kuno, after leni made hers! daughter is insecure pa rin and waiting on leni’s move.
leni can win in the 2022 election.
Yes, I believe she can.
Kasambahay, you gave sunshine to this old man’s day in spite of the stormy weather. Thanks.
I watched a portion of her ANC interview – and first time I saw her show her vulnerable side. She has been rock steady, consistent and confident all these years. Maybe the relentless fake news, the vicious trolls, non-stop attacks are finally weighing down on her. The fact she keeps saying about the survey and being realistic — sure sounded defeatist — maybe deep inside she is wondering how a nation she served so much — can be so ungrateful.
Is the 6% survey rating from Pulse Asia really true? Is SWS still alive? After all the good governance, resourcefulness, and innovation she has shown throughout — all she can muster is 6%. There seems like really no silent majority.
Also Joe’s point that 1Sambayan is on target. They really are businessmen. Admirable as he is for his West Philippine sea advocacies, I started doubting Justice Carpio when I read Atty Hilbay’s account. One must also not forget that Justice Carpio — was the founder of the most powerful law firm in the country especially during PGMA’s time.
In hindsight, maybe Leni’s integrity and independence maybe her own undoing. Businessmen will be businessmen — they are happy as long as they can influence and take advantage. Maybe they don’t see that happening with Leni’s upright character. So they will just support the next winnable they can influence.
Time is ticking, for sure. The coalition seems to have lost the halo of unity and is provoking unrest. You’ve characterized my observations to the letter. Your last paragraph is a bonus.
we all have low moments, nothing catastrophic in that. after the storm, the sun shines as brightly and surely as there is flood. tide ebbs and flows, and the pristine dolomite beach got swamped by debris. high maintenance talaga yang beach, daig pa ang beauty queen!
back to leni. she was honest at the interview, but what I’m concerned is what she is not saying. I watched how she leaned, how she looked the interviewer in the eye. and I saw the calm before the storm, the silence before the earthquake.
Thanks joe and kasambahay. Still hoping for good news. You both have a good weekend.
Lance, Economics is about allocating finite resources. The only people who believe in abundant resources are those insatiable crooks in government who allocate unto themselves.
Dean,
I said “account” for finite resource, and just realized allocation is what Economics is all about, supply and demand, so I think you , I and karl are talking past each other here.
Though I agree that crooks in government are guilty of this, I would venture farther and say everyone on this earth is guilty of this, thus we’re now closing to 8 billion. Small world.
That’s the point of my initial post above, the notion that growth and tech will always save us from ourselves. But humanity is currently an outbreak.
To clarify…
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/what-is-ecological-economics
Q: With the current economic system, growth is …
The god.
Q: So how does it look different in ecological economics?
Standard economists don’t seem to understand exponential growth. Ecological economics recognizes that the economy, like any other subsystem on the planet, cannot grow forever. And if you think of an organism as an analogy, organisms grow for a period and then they stop growing. They can still continue to improve and develop, but without physically growing, because if organisms did that you’d end up with nine-billion-ton hamsters. There is a great video on this.
So, in nature, things don’t grow forever. If you want to tie economics back to nature, you have to recognize that the economy is going to stop growing at some point. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s the way natural systems work. So what we need to do now is make the transition from the growth phase to the steady state; all natural systems do that. Think of a successional system in ecology. In an open field, all of the incentives in that system are to grow as fast as possible, to capture as much territory as you can as quickly as possible. And that’s what we’ve been doing over the last several millennia. But once the field is filled up with early successional plants, they’re more cooperation oriented, more steady-state. They’re not going to keep growing.
What does that mean in terms of the economy? I think it means a shift away from sort of brute-force competition towards more cooperative, alliance-building, stable kinds of relationships. And if you want to translate that to the business community, it means that the cut-throat competition is probably going to come to an end, and we’ll have more collaboration among the different parts of the system.
___________________________________________________
My take is that economics is anthropocentric, only accounts for humanity’s needs and wants. Thus the imbalance.
But to connect it to your blog on DU30, why not also take all the palm oil farmers to the ICC for soil pollution thus causing hunger and death; or loggers causing soil erosion thus floods and deaths; etc. etc.
that’s just the Philippines, then when you pan out even farther, you’ll get salt water intrusion into fresh ground water which will be a big issue soon in the Philippines, with the absence of good reservoirs, this surely will result in a lot of deaths, who to take to ICC for that?
I’m not saying don’t take DU30 to court in the ICC, though it does look like they are only taking Blacks and Muslims at the moment, my point here is theres a greater injustice out there. DU30 was voted into office because of palm oil farms, logging, mining, etc. etc. that cause families to send their kids into the city,
to work in girlie bars or factories, who eventually get addicted to shabu; then with salt water intrusion, you can’t even drink water any more.
Dean, its a big shit sandwich, to focus on just one man, for an ICC seemingly intent on just indicting Africans and Arabs, DU30 doesn’t pale in comparison now and in the future to whats transpiring.
When you compare DU30 to this following set of fallacies,
growth will solve the economic problem, that narrow self-interest is the only dependable human motive, that technology will always find a substitute for any depleted resource, that the market can efficiently allocate all types of goods, that free markets always lead to an equilibrium balancing supply and demand, or that the laws of thermodynamics are irrelevant to economics.
begs the question which International court do we send grievances that stem from the dogma above. That’s Economics.
There will always be a first time.
Even if the police are claiming that the complainants gave up in filing charges and most do not have enough evidence.
Do not tell me that all the killings were done in self defense or acts if duty.
I am for body cams, people are questioning the purchase because of the pandemic.
In normal times body cams will document how they conduct their operation, but not all police should have one like it was once announced.
I still remember your ejk comments and the others.(pro covid, culling, etc)
If it is ok with you, speak for yourself.
Do not convince us to change our minds because it is not ok.
*First time for ICC to go after non African or non Arab.
*First time to convict.
That’s certainly a thought-provoking response Lance. It would be interesting to test those against the data. My degree in Economics is on Econometrics, which would have its limitations, the greatest of which is the availability of data. Fun exercise for academicians and people with lots of time.
By the way, my simple, and perhaps too simplistic objective in that post was to instill some hope in readers who think matters are so bad that even hope is futile.
“My degree in Economics is on Econometrics …”
Dean,
PMFJI.
I am not a “regular” here at TSoH.
The regulars here, IMO, are Joe (of course), Karl, Lance (LCpl_X), Irineo, and a few others.
Lance is said to have a PhD on Google.
Perhaps Lance can suggest a better alternative to this: 🙂
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ajoeam.com+econometrics
I am studying Python … well, I am *struggling* with my study of Python.
I came upon this site just now and intend to spend some time in it:
https://pyecon.org/
[Python for Econometrics in Economics]
Salamat.
karl,
I totally agree with you that theres always a first for everything. But the irony here is that its still white dudes imprisoning black guys. Can an institution that starts out thus, can they truly be of Justice? If ICC wanted to make its presence known they should’ve kidnapped W. Bush and tried, convict, then cut his head off in front of the whole world. that’s justice.
Dean,
Thanks.
Let me play Devil’s advocate here, I don’t know how the ICC works. If they have a jury or if they hear victim’s testimony. But let’s say you, karl, Joe, chempo, lets throw in Ireneo, NH and sonny, and i7sharp especially, and say because of what you’ve done in your lives,
Dean especially having been part and parcel of the field of Economics, are guilty of promoting all the above, from a professional and professorial platform you allowed the spread of this Economics dogma that more is less, and more is never enough,
thus creating not only the situation you now find in the Philippines but across the world.
Let’s say that all these droughts and heat waves, and freak tornadoes and floods, sea level rise , continues, and I as Devil’s Advocate, argued my point impeccably and managed to not only convince the court and the jury and its victims and everyone watching, that
you need to be all hung for these crimes, Joe and chempo especially for working in banking, sonny and NH for never seeing the constraints of math in nature, Ireneo and karl for enjoying a little too much of the modern world, and i7sharp especially for wasting all the bits coming to and fro on
the fiber optics lines with so much irrelevance, though interesting crap.
And the world as example allows me to exhibit some theatrics and line you all up in Manila Bay tied to posts in the water, wherein death awaits you either from sea level rise and/or pollution.
In the middle of Manila Bay , tied up and either crying or stoic or both, would you guys think, Yup I think LCPL_X was correct we too are complicit in all this, maybe Manila Bay isn’t exactly red, but more brownish for all the poop that gets spewed,
And looking around say, this is alot worst than EJKs and D5, I shoulda done more, nay less. Less is truly more. Why did I not do less…
And from my perch having made my point, I’ll jump in and join you guys in Manila Bay, as symbolic self conviction, and say something like, we all should be indicted by the ICC!!!
We are all guilty. And the world smirks at all this talk of ICC, when a bunch of people have already been killed by angry Mother Nature, provoked by none other than us humanity in outbreak thinking , thanks to their Economics that growth knows no bounds , thus justified more taking.
And Dean you are one of the many priests of this dogma. Should you be indicted by the ICC?
Lance (LCpl_X) wrote:
“… and i7sharp especially for wasting all the bits
coming to and fro on the fiber optics lines
with so much irrelevance, though interesting crap.”
Speaking of “to and fro,” …
——-
11
Behold, the days come,
saith the Lord GOD,
that I will send a famine in the land,
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the LORD:
12
And they shall wander from sea to sea,
and from the north even to the east,
they shall run to and fro
to seek the word of the LORD,
and shall not find it.”
——-
Amos 8:11,12 KJV
Most of the words I used just now are not (“originally”) mine
but feel free to charge them to my account.
@LCX,
You are indicting the whole economics field.
Why not indict all academia including Science?
You are asking the ICC to indict nature.
Or that is one of our examples of disagreements will lead to agreements and chaos will lead to order?
OT. Back to medicine. For those who read deep, a context for the Fauci debate:
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/149072
The author has written a book about the anti-science trend (conspiracy theories) in the US:
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001068
Before I continue
Ron Paul is Rand’s dad.
Ron is advocating for supplements and want to bypass the FDA.
Rand never wanted to wear masks and has no plans of getting vaccinated.
The Paul family calls this health freedom.
Yes, and their brand of freedom is filling hospitals and morgues across America.
On supplements- I my self tried experimenting on herbal treatments that always had a disclaimer of not claiming to be a substitute for meds or the no therapeutic relief guaranteed label.
But in the end my math was wrong and it is more expensive to be hospitalized so I am back to taking my meds.
I say jus let alternative meds be regulated. The surgeon general warning never stopped people from smoking, so even if regulated, there would still be health freedom.
==
Paul- Fauci
Even if Rand Paul was show boating and rehashing old arguments with Fauci, he has no intentions of following even just physical distancing, masks and other preventive measures and insist on blaming NIH for being the root cause of all of this.
And it is apparent that many listen to him.
The anti vax lobby though not as prominent as the tobacco and gun lobbies has been there since the small pox vaccine.
If there is smoke in the smoking guns then they must show the ballistics report.
Good insights. I nodded ‘yes’ all the way through.
Thanks.
An article written five years ago:
The Line of Sight
“econometrics” is mentioned in one of the comments.
x-
See my comment on this very issue above. I have said all I want to say on this and the dubious nature of D’Stafford and its survey methodology and results. With all due respect, I also know a little about statistical forecasting and sampling techniques as author of graduate level articles on econometric modeling. But although we may agree on many things, that in my professional opinion I am regret to say is just plain nonsense.
-x
Interesting exchanges in it, if I may say so.
In any case, I plan to browse the article and some of the 204 comments.
The insanity must end next year on our own terms, lest we enter a new dark age where monuments and commemoration of the defeat of our enemies are toppled, and robber barons are celebrated as heroes.
——————–
I would like to relay to the people at 1Sambayanan that this is the most preposterous and self-destructing idea:
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2021/07/15/2112720/1sambayan-welcomes-possible-nomination-pacquiao-its-presidential-bet
who knows? maybe cash strapped one sambayanan wants pakyaw to lead fundraising for them in exchange for pakyaw getting presidential ticket. pakyaw and trillanes can surely negotiate who is going to be who, if both not overly blinded by ambition.
money wise, pakyaw has clout, has many richer friends among the well heeled here and in other countries. also, has many top local celeb friends to entertain voters, their entertainment values and abilities to keep voters in enthralled cannot be put asunder.
one sambayanan needs a battering ram, and if pakyaw answers the call, I’m for it. does not necessarily mean he’ll win presidency though. before then, his fellow ka-sambayanan need all their combined deflecting powers dahil pakyaw comes with excess baggage, at maraming maibabato sa kanya. boulders bigger than mountains.
pakyaw speaks the language of the bottom feeders and could well fight that way, duterte peso for peso.
I think those who see 1sambayan as morally pure are missing the point that Carpio and Del Rosario are businessmen. They can work with Pacquiao, I suspect, maybe better than they could with Robredo.
What about the other thing that Leni mentioned that her party can fit a Volkswagen?
If it is a Beetle that would not even fit the entire ocho direcho slate.
Maybe she means the type 2 hippie van known here as the micro-bus or combi.
Leni has survived more than five years of being underfunded because she found ways to raise funds, so she is aware that she has a support base.
Maybe the ocho direcho fate is still a big factor. The results whether it be a glitch or not was really discouraging and if repeated could really be catastrophic.
relax, election 2022 is just an election like we have so many elections before and survived them all. we are still here on this fast overheating planet, floods heavier than most. poorer or richer. dead or alive, pandemic or not.
you are right though, karlG, leni has her own support base, plus those with buyers remorse, and voters guilt, and the multitudes conned by the jetski tried to compensate in any way they can – at dinagsa si leni big time.
Yeah survive we will. (thumbs up). Mas maganda kung panalo si leni at senate line up nya para happy survivor.
kapus ng pera, and all leni has to do is ask and donations will come to her in droves. just ask please, just ask.
once maluklok si leni, there will be many turncoats sa kamara at senado, she will have majority of both.
Money is always the subject so hopefully it is true that money is no object.
Thanks Kb for your comments on Leni.
Oct 1 the start of filing for candidacy.
So we just have to wait. A few more days perhaps?
Maybe Joe’s bookie is on to something.
karl, I said this in a recent Tweet:
Your bookie, I believe the same Sal you have had for a long time, has an inspired thought — he must have drunk more beer than his usual. Keep him stocked with SanMig, I say. Do you have a number so others can add to your beer account?
Will look for that NH
You not a regular? You may not frequent this blog as much as before, but you have been here for more than half a decade.
Are we at the stage of “familiarity breeds contempt”?
I hope not?
That was for I7sharp
@Karl,
I addressed Dean whom I am not familiar with – and who might not have any idea about me with this:
x-
I am not a “regular” here at TSoH.
The regulars here, IMO, are Joe (of course), Karl, Lance (LCpl_X), Irineo, and a few others.
-x
I used quotation marks in “regular”… and for good measure also made use of “IMO.”
Perhaps I can add I am the “most-moderated” participant here?
LCX is the most moderated person here, actually. He doesn’t care, but does listen, which is why he’s still here. Unmoderated.
Karl’s response to me made me think somehow of Catch-22.
And my kind of googling led me to
“Is good government possible in the Philippines?”
where, not to my surprise at all, it was Lance who, in a comment, mentioned it:
“… If Filipinos were to only read 3 novels …”
Anyway, my takeaway from some minutes of googling was this question:
“What does a sane man do in an insane society?” Joseph Heller (Catch-22 author)
Sane man?
To me, Manny Pacquiao.
There is one very “simple” thing, though, that I truly believe can make him saner.
But, of course, I could be wrong.
Very wrong.
btw, …
You know of anyone saner in Philippine government?
Joe thinks that Leni Robredo is the sanest.
Interesting point. Is sanity found in being honest, self-assured, and competent? The VP scores high and I know of none higher, although there are possibly some in the business, legal, or educational fields. In terms of intellect, Justice Leonen scores high, and so does Irineo, and so does LCX in his way. In terms of moral grounding, Edgar is tops.
Sanity is how the brains and emotions relate to the outer world to find sense, emotional grounding, and discovery. Pacquiao is an interesting case, religious, but willing to kill people, willing to fight, able to find harmony and build relationships. Street smart, not book smart. Used to following the advice of handlers but willing to fire them if they go off course. He’s unique.
@Joe
“… religious, but willing to kill people …”
A context (or a pertinent link) would help.
By the way, I do not personally know Manny (SMP – Senator Manny Pacquiao), have never met him.
Salamat.
He’s for the death penalty.
I7sharp Paquiao even justified death penalty by saying that even Jesus was given the death penalty by government.
voters can put to death pakyaw’s ambition to be president.
yes they could and I hope they would because they should.
make that we not they
I7sharp,
if that is the case, then thanks for introducing the rest of the gang to Dean.
Btw, I began searching for old discussions like what you are doing and I rediscovered the old gems.
I7sharp if interested here are links
for Dean’s articles.
https://tribune.net.ph/index.php/author/dean-de-la-paz/
https://opinion.inquirer.net/byline/dean-dela-paz
Thank you very much, Karl.
Will definitely try browsing them.
btw, I will take this opportunity to point out that my handle is
“i7sharp” – with a lowercase “i” (small ego hehehe) which has a point.
On the other hand, the usual uppercase “I” has … no point. hahaha
Ok you have a point.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dotted_and_dotless_I
İstanbul or Diyarbakır?
Dotted İ i and dotless I ı are distinct letters in Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh and the Latin alphabets of several other Turkic languages. They are also used by the common Turkic Alphabet:
Dotless I, I ı, usually denotes the close back unrounded vowel sound (/ɯ/). Neither the upper nor the lower case version has a dot.
Dotted İ, İ i, usually denotes the close front unrounded vowel sound (/i/). Both the upper and lower case versions have a dot.
Dotless and dotted I’s in capital and lower case.
Examples:
İstanbul /isˈtanbuɫ/ is the Turkish spelling for Istanbul. It starts with an i sound in standard dialect of Turkish, not an ı.
Diyarbakır /diˈjaɾbakɯɾ/ is the Turkish spelling for Diyarbakır. In Turkish the first and last vowels are spelled and pronounced differently.
@Irineo
“İstanbul or Diyarbakır?”
The link you provided mentioned of “tittle” (which I had very much wanted to see in it ).
x-
Tittle: the dot above “i” and “j” in most of the Latin scripts
-x
More interesting is this, IMO:
Richard Wurmbrand (have I mentioned him here? hahaha) wrote in his
“100 Prison Meditations”
x-
96 Unusual Letters in the Bible
The original manuscripts of the Bible do not have upper-
and lower-case letters; all letters are of equal size. However,
there are some exceptions in Hebrew which have nothing in
common with English orthographic rules prescribing the use
of capital letters for God, proper names or the names of
countries. In the German language, ~all~ substantives begin
with a capital letter.
In the Hebrew Old Testament, only in some 35 places are
letters of unusual size used, either bigger, smaller or above
the line, to alert the reader to special paragraphs which were
considered very important. For example, in RUT 3:13, the
word “lini” which means tarry is written with a bigger “L”
because it is very necessary for believers to learn to tarry.
Boaz said to Ruth at midnight, “Tarry this night, and it shall
be in the morning …” In other words, do not be in a hurry.
Do not try to achieve things under adverse circumstances.
~Tarry~. A beautiful morning will come; Boaz will marry
Ruth; David and later on Jesus will be descendants of this
marriage. “Tarry” is written here with the only bigger “L” in
the Bible.
Jesus believed not in the verbal but the literal accuracy of
Scripture. He said, “… one jot or one tittle shall in no wise
pass from the law …” (MTT 5:18). Historic events since
then have proved that He was right.
St. Athanasius fought against the heretic Arius for an
“i.” Arius said that Christ is “homoiusios,” of similar substance
page 217 — 100 PRISON MEDITATIONS —
with the father. Athanasius said that he is “homousios,” of
the same substance. Had Arius’ “i” been accepted, the whole
Church would have gone astray.
Believe in every letter of Scripture, even the size. It
is no accident that the Communists oblige people to write “God”
with a small “g,” and that Solzhenitsyn refused to have his novel
published if the word were not printed with a capital “G.”
-x
Not knowing Hebrew (among many other things), I cannot tell how accurate Richard is.
By the way, …
Richard Wurmbrand probably would not agree with what – for the good of the home country – I intend to suggest to Manny Pacquiao. But Richard died in 2001 and, alas!, we would not know.
@Karl
“Ok you have a point.”
Salamat, Karl!
i do think i do. 🙂
“I began searching for old discussions like what you are doing and I rediscovered the old gems.”
This process appeals to me greatly, Karl (percolation of ideas short of resolutions that may touch on legalities & practices that carry auto-destruct vulnerabilities). The imminence of election day begs for sane, strong, unassailable coalescence and the mustering of resources that are necessary for a unified campaign and victory for a common leadership for a common cause. OT. The conscription of Sen Pacquiao into the 1Sambayan clarion call may very well work as a channel to the DE vote.
The DE deserve better than paquiao.
🙂
My idea of Sen Pacquiao as a channel to DE rests on assumptions:
1. that good faith invites to people outside 1sambayan are made because those invited have
a good number of followers who can be persuaded to be of like-mind to the common cause/good being pursued. That “the DE deserve better than paquiao” tells me you are already past this vetting point.on Pac-man. Bcoz I trust your judgment what’s left of my suggestion is to ask how the senator is not the man for the DE sector of the electorate and move on from there;
2. F. Sionil Jose wrote a couple of articles that a Pacquiao presidency is a viable, pragmatic choice; he also wrote something to the contrary; inspite of this ambiguity 1Sambayan invites the senator to be part of their coalition for filling their opposition lineup;
search: “sionil jose on a pacquiao presidential candidacy”
@Sonny
“Jose stressed that as a leader, Pacquiao should surround himself with “the hundred best people in the country, who can offer him the best advice. He must also be open to criticism, and realize that the adulation of the people is something that cannot last.”
Duterte surrounded himself with Bong Go and the so called Best and the Brightest, look at the Dolomite Decision it is like throwing money straight to the ocean.
Look at the people who shadow Paquiao: Chavit Singson( will he be the new Bong Go?)
Now on hoping he would not react to criticism like the invective and profanity laced Duterte.
I give him that. He is not a trash talker even in boxing.
But his track record of decisions like declaring all seats vacant just because he was told to or he hates Delima or whatever .
As to he no longer needs to raise money.
Every candidate needs to raise money. Out of pocket expenses will always be last resort .
(He needs to face the taxman if he runs and loses)
As to faith and morals think of your stand on capital punishment, if you are against it Paquiao is surely not.
I still say the Filipinos deserve better.
I might take back at Paquiiao not being a trash talker.
He had been Duterte’s attack dog, until recently.
karlG, I agree DE deserve better than pakyaw. methink, he’s the wrong person to look up to, may not be thrash talker but could well be worse than one, is how I see him.
he’s xtian, and seems to advocate violence. I recall a debate sa RH bill years ago, or maybe it was about divorce; sabi it’s alright for a husband to hit his wife kuno, pinapakain kasi. parang hindi niya alam violence begets violence. a husband hitting his wife traumatise chidlren, and children in turn grow up violent too. and then it become society’s problem: broken families.
a maltreated wife can well hit back, leave the husband, o poison the husband o burn the house with the husband sleeping inside.
I was wrong to hope for pakyaw to advocate for cooler heads. that if there is heated family argument, for the husband to take a hike, or the wife, and to talk only when both are no longer highly emotionally charged up.
violence is not the best way to settle argument.
then, to cap it all, pakway has gifted DEs, the death penalty. it’s mostly DEs who will be hit hardest. cannot afford costly legal representation, cannot afford to post bail, and can only hope for the mercy of the very slow turning wheel of the public defender’s office, putting lives on hold, sometimes at risk.
after election, pakyaw can well go back to what he is and was, back to his usual posturing, back to his old ways. attacking duterte may well just be his prop, a means for him to harvest votes.
and if pakyaw is just being ‘patriot’ by attacking duterte and exposing duterte’s dirty little secrets, I say, thank you, but no thanks. risking the welfare of the republic in exchange for measly votes, aywan, hindi ko masisikmura yan. voters have already created a monster, another monster might just be in the offing.
Yes his tendency to be violent is worse than trash talking.
Good series of insights in this thread kasambahay.
Heres to percolations of our ideas and I hope they would not self destruct so fast.
“LCX is the most moderated person here, actually. “
” In terms of intellect, Justice Leonen scores high, and so does Irineo, and so does LCX in his way.”
Joe, I’m pretty sure these are two separate cheddar cheese awards.
🧀🧀
YES!
OT but relevant in general on the concept of “Justice and Dictatorship” of the Trumpian kind.
JAN 6 CAPITOL RIOT INVESTIGATION
The to and fro between the Democrats and the GOP on the investigation is a classic Centipede Game from Game Theory — with each side choosing the option that it believes gives greater value to its side. Leg 1 of the centipede, the Bipartisan Commission, was axed by the GOP.
Leg 2 was a Select Committee offered by Pelosi with 8/5 membership in favor of the Dem. McCarthy offered 5 members, 2 of whom were vetoed by Pelosi for good reasons — agreeing to which would have made the Select Committee’s work a circus.
Leg 3 consists of GOP boycotting the Select Committee and forming its own investigation. Leg 4, Pelosi may add to the Committee from among other GOP in addition to Liz Cheney already in the 8 which offer by Pelosi, Cheney accepted. Possibly the addition of Kinzinger. The Committee is scheduled to meet initially on July 27.
The Centipede Game can continue ad nauseam with the many legs of the centipede [hence the name of the game]. However, I believe the result can’t be but favor the Democrats no matter how marginal. The present Capitol riot facts favor it and the Select Committee’s deadline for report submission is within Pelosi’s term, with Pelosi in control of the House.
I do not want to be in the shoes of McCarthy. This is in a way a gladiator’s combat between Pelosi and McCarthy.
The indignation of McCarthy was raw, angry, claiming Pelosi wanted to run the show single handedly as he single handedly ran off to create his own single-handed committee. The nonsense is hilarious. Well, the truth will come out.
So much for bipartisan committees.
When you mentioned the centipede game NH, I thought you would go all the way to leg 100. (Just kidding)
🙂
BLOOMBERG
Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger Sunday to a select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, bypassing a boycott by GOP leaders.
“Today, I was asked by the Speaker to serve on the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th and I humbly accepted,” said Kinzinger in a statement.
Another leg to the “Centipede Game,” karl. 🙂
96 to go 🙂
In any case Congressman Baguilat, the one in charge of the of the internal affairs of the opposotion, and is also in charge of the grass roots is saying thatall hands are on deck and that the LP is preparing so that when Leni decides, all is set.
https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/national/lp-preparing-for-robredo-s-possible-presidential-bid/ar-AALPeBV?li=BBr8RiR
OT
JoeAm tweeted something to the effect:
Duterte running for VP in 2022 on the [mistaken] belief that he will be protected implies that Go/ Sara/ Marcos will not make it to the Presidency.
That makes logical sense to me.
Does that calculus partly explain Lacson-Sotto entry into the Game? Pacquiao- Pimentel aggressiveness? Isko Moreno’s?
All the annointed one has to do is block to attempts to indict.(if he/she wins) But Duterte is not so sure that the one he chooses will win.
if indicted, duterte will find it not so bad being in jail. free accommodation, free food, free medicals, visitors allowed and all his problems will be more or less over. he is used to being regimented, same in jail. instead of bong go, it will be jail wardens looking after him. duterte will surely find friends among prisoners, samely convicted as him; similar offences, once highly ranked too. he’ll be home among the durians, lol!
Never mind the jailed senators just zoom in on Erap and GMA.
He just need two things: wheel chair and neck brace to add to his kulambo.
https://www.rappler.com/voices/thought-leaders/opinion-duterte-international-criminal-court-way-out
Court of white people?
hahahaha
Two years ago today in the Philippines?
https://magilas.me/Edgar-RIP
Edgar Lores, RIP.
It was nice talking to you.
RIP Edgar!
Sona tidbits.
Barrio is an american word. Really?
you can not stop corruption unless you take over the government.
ha?
nasa dictionary lang american word na.
On Chinoy election support, he did met the Chinese Consul General Song Ronghua last October, 2015 in Cebu.
https://news.abs-cbn.com/blogs/opinions/05/08/16/opinion-dear-mayor-duterte-pls-disclose-what-you-told-chinese-officials
Labo nga nya.
Plus the 2014 visit to china with alalay.
What a liar.
That reminds me of Michael Yang, his ” Presidential Adviser for Economic Affairs”.
https://www.rappler.com/nation/duterte-denies-michael-yang-presidential-economic-adviser
he can deny all he wants.
Hidilyn Diaz winning a weightlifting gold in the Tokyo Olympics made my day in this dreary country of ours.
https://sports.inquirer.net/430487/hidilyn-diaz-wins-weightlifting-gold-in-tokyo-olympics
Our first Olympic gold medal! Conrgats to Hidilyn Diaz, you made us prod!
*proud
foreign sec teddy locsin wants bronze statue of hidilyn diaz and suggested a swiss sculptor. did not want her looking like a dinasaur. apparently, filipino sculptor is not good enough.
The sculptor of the University of the Philippines’ Oblation must be turning in his grave.
When Locsin becomes DILG secretary he must suggest Filipino first. Bronze befiis a bronze medalist, she must be given a gold one. But training support and sponsorship first.
Got the image below from a Tweet. Seems relevant here.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7RjTEZUYAAVmH0?format=png&name=small