The Plight of Mary Jane Veloso

Mary Jane Veloso, a citizen of ours, is currently in death row in Indonesia. 

She along with nine others of different nationalities (Australia, Nigeria, Brazil, France, Ghana, Indonesia) were convicted of narcotics trafficking. All ten are sentenced to be executed by firing squad soon.

A recent news report about the plight of Mrs. Veloso revealed to a concerned nation that she and her family were clearly from among the poor of our Country. Truly, it feels so wrong for her family to have to be pained in this way... the circumstances surrounding her current plight begs further reflection. 

Therefore, I should also like to express my view as regards the death penalty and in particular the plight of my fellow Filipino, Mary Jane Veloso.

Consider that Mrs. Veloso herself is not an addict. That her own experience on drugs and the trafficking of drugs would be limited. Certainly as a mother and a wife, her life choices based on their present state of life were itself also limited.

What motive did she have if the act was intentional? It is highly probable Mrs. Veloso herself might not have fully apprehended the seriousness of the matter in the first place.

If it were unintentional, imagine the malice of those who exploited her in her poverty. It is a spit in the face of the poor to have to be given over to an evil fate such as that of Mrs' Veloso's.

Everything about it seems a consequence of a choice she didn't have to make but was imposed upon her will either knowingly or unknowingly by the criminality of those who would exploit her by manipulating her hopes.

I truly believe making an example of victims only perpetuates the cycle of victimization by emboldening those who would knowingly and willfully exploit human hope for devious purposes, especially of the poor who are very vulnerable.

What the law prescribes and what justice demands at times require our human discernment. As our own Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago famously said, "not all that is legal is moral".

I have recently read a Time magazine (issue 20141027) article on President Joko Widodo of Indonesia. It gave me the impression that he himself must know all too clearly the evils of poverty.

Here in my own Country, I am opposed to capital punishment. 

I am for a swift and efficient justice system. I am for a justice system that delivers faithfully its duty to my Republic, serving with neither fear nor favor. Loves what the people love, that maketh them good, that preserve them in the good, and sustains them in the life of our national communities.

There is a kind of justice that harms, you see. That which seems aloof, mistakes vengeance for duty, and interprets fear and punishment as the basis of law. It rules over more than serves with. 

I have become wary of this kind of justice. I believe it false. For it appears strange to me that the people should fear justice, is confounded by its presence.

Is not virtue a friend and ally of the human good?

I oppose capital punishment because capital punishment in the hands of a justice system such as the one I have described above seems to make more burdensome that spirit of human oppression justice should serve to alleviate among the people, with the people, most especially in the least of the people
for the sake of its own virtue.

I am not arguing to exonerate the guilt of those convicted, I am making a statement that I firmly believe that those ten convicted do not deserve death but the chance to make proper amends... to change the change they owe society and themselves. 

It is said that the cry of the poor may not always be just but if we do not listen to them, we will never know what justice is. In the case of Mary Jane Veloso, it might profit those who are concerned to listen:

She in particular, I firmly believe do not deserve to die for desiring a better life for herself and her family. 

---<--@

20150417fri 2058h: Sent the letter below through President Widodo's Facebook profile. We continue to pray and watch.

Dear President Widodo,

I am writing to implore your Excellency to grant clemency to Mary Jane Veloso.

I heard from a recent news report she herself is already reconciled to her fate. Though she maintains her innocence to the degree her motives were not malicious but sprang out of her vulnerabilities and the evil intention of others, as with most poor people in my Country, she might feel powerless to resist such an evil fate.

She might undoubtedly fail to protest the severity of her sentence in the same way she failed to duly protect her own rights to due process at the onset of her trial and incarceration. My government have reportedly exhausted most avenues to effect justice for Mary Jane. But sir, many people including myself still hope for a fair conclusion to her ordeal.

I am of the opinion that executing her will not serve to deter such crimes as the one she has been charged of committing. In fact, it might even embolden those who exploit the vulnerabilities of poor people in my Country; those who by their cunning and malice would betray decent folk to an evil fate. This has happened before, your Excellency, in the PRC.

Mary Jane Veloso's family are presently in Manila seeking avenues of reprieve for their kin and I should like to join with them in petitioning your executive grant of clemency.

I am not asking to exonerate guilt. I respect the larger view of the justice that you are sworn to uphold. Her personal ignorance might not be enough to save her from the sanction of your law. But please, President Widodo, consider also her lack of evil intention and humble submissiveness to your justice system and grant our sister Filipino a commuted sentence. She is a decent woman and I am sure she has more good to give to herself, her family, and to human society in general were she allowed the chance.

It would most certainly be greatly accepted by a great many over here in my Country were you to act in behalf of our cumulative efforts to save our Mary Jane. I myself have a lot of praise for your person and your people as a moderate and democratic nation.

May your Republic prosper greatly under your watch. God bless you and the Indonesian people, sir.

To your consideration I humbly submit my petition.

Very sincerely yours,

Eric John San Miguel
concerned citizen

Some Thoughts on RH

Abortion is evil.
Life begins at conception.

True.

In my view however, these are not the real issues regarding our RH conversation.

It is freedom of choice. Choice, of course, not in the sense that one is free to define one's freedoms.

After all, we owe our personal freedoms to the certainty of our common commitments to Democracy as well as human morality and as a Country held responsible for them by the Life and Liberty of our Nation.

Therefore, I think the better question to be asked as regards choice in the context of RH for us Catholics is - how may these freedoms be unleashed - in the spirit of Humana Vitae - to serve the individual as well as the common good of Woman, Mother, Child, Family and Greater Society?

And this question where it pertains to Family and Greater Society directed not only to Woman but to both Man and Woman together as one soul and not just in the Catholic Church.

It has always been the negative choice "not to have a child" in scrutiny.

As such contraception is so aptly named - in the negative sense.

Now, let us examine the affirmative choice "to have a child". Because when it comes to its moral weight as regards the vital exercise of free will, this is the greater of the two choices.

There are actually two choices involved here. The negative choice "not to have a child" and the positive choice "to have a child".

The negative choice is a passive choice.

It actually goes against the natural intention of every sexual act.

It might look like an active choice but where ever and whenever this choice "not to have a child" has failed, so does the potent belief in a sovereign free will diminish itself in the human exercise.

In the souls of the people concerned, when this choice have failed them so many times "not to have a child", in most cases, human responsibility for the fruits of conjugal love slides back to being a random thing. Children are begot in our society without a clear parental vision of a definitive future for them

The failure of passive choice "not to have a child" having failed those people, most of whom are already struggling against other more immediate evils such as hunger and human security, in my view is the root
of this epidemic of helplessness is the center of the issue as regards contraception.

And is further complicated by larger structures of poverty and other adverse social conditions that besiege and surround the family unit, leading most to passivity and complacency as regards to the transmission of life as a free and human choice.

On the other hand, the positive choice "to have a child" is an active choice.

It is an act that empowers the free will. For all thing the mind conceives begin from the heart and all things the understanding illuminates are all things we may actively pursue by the innate power of our individual free will - as free and human choices.

Choices that arise from reasoned and prepared thought and reasoned and prepared thought that arise from a heart that knows it is a heart of love are never passive choices.

The choice "to have a child" therefore, goes along the natural grain of every sexual act because it involves both husband and wife envisioning family and duty to family and conversing about furthering and prospering their future, deepening the quality of their conjugal love.

If couples are taught and empowered to prepare for the active choice "to have a child" and are fully informed in their hearts and minds as to what this choice must entail - they would be inclined to think more about their choices. Planning is planning, after all.

Legislation may help curb the helplessness wrought by lack of an empowered choice. But only education can truly turn things around as regards to teaching the right choices and undoing the lingering effects of the wrong ones.

Social betterment in our nation must move not just along the limits of the law but by the free dictate of well-formed and soundly informed individual consciences. We are a Democracy after all.

This is where the locus of Catholic education should be.

Poverty is an integral part of the RH debate and we can not as a Church fully address the question without addressing poverty.

In my opinion, the questions arising from poverty takes priority. If we can curb the complications that make the equation as regards RH more simpler, perhaps the tide may one day turn.

If we slowly but surely address poverty, we might more sooner than later find ourselves perched upon a better vantaged position to effectively and democratically address the RH issue along the spiritual lines of the Church.

Because you can not teach a hungry family how to plan or how to even think ahead of their next choices to eat and to drink.

The positive choice may always escape them and the negative choice confound and weaken them - this is the conundrum. It is a Gordian knot that we may only undo by getting the poor to the middle class first.

Thus, it is important that we all must solve for hunger first.

And in this most obvious of social justice causes, I believe we can work with the politics of RH whatever side it may be, because its main concern I believe and trust is to provide a better quality of life for our less fortunate brothers and sisters in the Nation.

All the while, we shall move to better our moral and spiritual positions to correctly address the RH issue by Catholic education. In this RH conversation, we could lose to a single battle but if we do it right, we may find, we are fighting along the same lines as those who are presently pressing against us.

Let us not forget that hunger and poverty makes us poorer and poorer in spirit NOT in the sense that our beloved Savior Jesus Christ did teach us upon the mount.

Where we are poor in spirit because we are diminished in the light that makes us one, we become truly poor - being without the light that makes us a simple and single-hearted nation.

This kind of poverty make us all forget that this Nation is one.

Also, we are a Democracy, let us not act as if we are not. Too, this is a Republic, let us live up to its trust believing indeed every good thing under Heaven has a time and place here in our Land of Promise.
---<--@

The Nine Common Human Needs: Thirst in the Nation

As blood is thicker than water and as water runs deeper than blood -
Hunger in Man weighs more heavily upon his soul than his Thirst
but Thirst in Man runs deeper in his soul than does his Hunger -
and can kill him more quickly than his Hunger ever can.



The thirst in Man is deeper than our hunger. 

Yet this thirst is also material in its form.

The need to quench the thirst
in the corporeal body in Man
is a reflection of the state
- of the human soul -
arid, parched, 
barren as a desert wilderness -
devoid of life and 
desolate of the waters 
of living life. 

For there is an absence in the soul of Man,
- a principal consequence of our Exile -
the sin of our separation from God.

This drive in Man is the result
of our very human quenching for God
that is manifest in the whole of our being
as thirst - and is the most profoundly human
of all the nine common needs.

It is an evil Man did not intend 
and exists to remind us
of our common need of the Truth
and the constancy of the living waters 
that flow from Its Hidden 
Abundance.

For we are in our hearts, 
its tributaries in time and throughout - 
called in common to fill the desolation of the Void,
expanding it - and filling it with the waters of living life
unto the completion of the purposes of God - for this universe
and - for time itself as we know it.

When we look
at the universe and into our souls,
thirst reminds us of our need of the Truth -
to quench the absence in our hearts
and fill our loneliness with togetherness
and satiate with God, the human quenching
for the everlasting waters that quenches with life
the deepest and most profound quenching in ourselves
and the purposes for which we exist -
alive to the Alive.

Man's thirst left unanswered and unrecognized
leaves him diminished in his humanity
and leaves him weak of spirit and of will
and this lack of concentration of the human spirit 
- leaves the national communities of Mankind restless -
vulnerable to stir with the stirring of the spirit of War
and the consuming flames that seek to endanger
with swift and terrible destruction 
what parched and dry timbers yet remain standing fast
in the national communities of Mankind.

The fruit of this Vision 
in the reality of the Nation is 
Water Access and Management.
---<--@


The Nine Common Human Needs

The Nine Common Human Needs: Hunger in the Nation

The hunger in Man is material. 

It is a condition of our Exile
and the most basic of all human needs.

The need to sustain the corporeal body
with the life of the earth - drive the hunger in Man
who takes so he can eat - and eats so he can live -
and lives so he can master his hunger.

It is - in itself - not evil.

And finds efficacious remedy
in the salutary nature of human labor
and the work of the Earth 
commanded by God 
of all Nations.

However,
hunger in the Nation,
when taken for granted 
may become for Man,
a source of material poverty
and exist as a social evil
contrary to the growth and development
of the human community.

This denial of hunger
(in all its forms, from slight to serious)
when in our own midst - feeds unto itself -
and give rise to the various social sins -
that worketh to prevent in the Nation,
the material prosperity necessary
to sustain and foster - even in our midst -
the individual human development
of our common Citizenry.

Material wealth - in any Nation -
is always a result of a people's
spiritual strength.

For there are two forms of poverty in Man;
the first one is physical and the other one is spiritual -
the former is always preceded by the latter.

When the condition is that the spiritual needs 
required to alleviate material poverty is present in the people -
then this kind of poverty is the physical kind.

And this is remedied by the work of the earth.

We are then,
by and with our connections
- with and among ourselves -
in God through our Nation,
prospered by our citizenship 
and material prosperity becomes for us naturally,
as an occurrence of our need to master
the hunger in each ourselves.

But when the same physical poverty is likewise
the result of ignorance or corruption of the spiritual needs 
required to address hunger, as the most basic of human needs,
and the soul of the Nation is dim and weak,
this kind of poverty is the organic kind
and dwells with the life
of the people.

If the Republic - were to mount a defense -
against Poverty in the Nation, it would be undertaken
specifically against this aforementioned kind of poverty
as a means to obtain for Social Justice in the Nation
a better expression of the Equality of our peoples.

The fruit of this Vision 
in the reality of the Nation 
is Food Security.
---<--@


The Nine Common Human Needs

Meeting in the Middle in a Post-RH Philippines

There must be a time
in every political dialogue
that we must as - one nation - step back
and allow for the necessary choices to be made, for good or ill,
and for the changes to implement themselves.

We have to trust in our democracy.

We have to trust in our ability as a Republic
to make either the wrong or the right decisions
and to profit from them both.

Our collective freedoms of self-expression in the Republic forum
must naturally be complemented by an abiding respect
for our individual rights to choose freely -
without fear of final judgement (of our peers).

The foundation of our electoral culture
which raises from among our midst,
at appointed times in the life of our Republic,
a government of the people, for the people,
and at-one with the people,
relies on our ability
to both freely express as well as
to responsibly defend our common freedoms.

One of our inherent strength as a liberal democracy
is our ability to self-reflect as a Republic whole;
we are a people capable of following old and proven paths,
of creating new ones, or of forsaking the wrong ones.

All of this is threatened by
a partisanship in our political life
- that - when it is allowed to endure,
becomes a thing above the liberty of our nation
and a hindrance to the freedom of the individual citizen,
most especially the very least of us all -
whose needs are the most urgent
but whose voices are
weakest of all.
---<--@



I have always thought that the RH issue is all about the empowerment of the right choices; that these right choices must be enabled through education to bend to the will of the God of life.

And that there can be no clear cut answers that will fit every situation.

Every incidence may only be judged by their individual realities.

Central to the argument of contraception is the fact that contraception denies from the intimacy of conjugal love, the ability to be open to the transmission of human life.

It is a choice to NOT be open to the choice of having children brought into this world through the marriage covenant before God.

BUT central to the argument of poverty is the choice itself to be open to the transmission of human life; that the poor, consumed and weakened by the evils of their condition, CAN NOT make the choice to be open to the transmission of human life.

A young mother in the depths of poverty who vows that her 12th or 14th child will be the last one if she has her way is a person who CAN NOT make the choice to be open to the transmission of human life.

The argument in Humanae Vitae about the lesser evil of rendering non-fecund acts permissible within the greater ensemble of fecund acts within the marriage covenant can not apply if the choice itself to be open to the transmission of life is a choice one is unable to freely and responsibly make (else long-term provisions for the arrival of the newborn are also made alongside that choice).

This leaves us with the normal argument of the lesser and the greater evil as well as a better appreciation of the bravery of our women and the resilience and character of our poorer folk (materially speaking).

Pope Benedict XVI admitted it may be permissible to allow the use of condoms to limit the transmission of AIDS (as a temporary condition that is understood a priori to be allowed only until such a time as the work of the rehabilitation of free human choice through Catholic education and eradication of the existing evils of poverty has become sufficient in itself to overcome it).

The condition of the incidence of poverty, like the condition of the spread of AIDS, is - if we as citizens to each other can help it - only temporary and for as long as this condition exists (as a threat to the greater wholes), a compromise that will allow us to more effectively battle to reverse its trends may be in order.

IF we, though well-meaning, so thoughtlessly surrender those who can not rightly choose for themselves to the evil of randomness and chance, do we heap upon ourselves as a nation, a greater or a lesser evil than by a temporary compromise made to allow for forms of contraception that are proscribed by our faith? 

We must be mindful of that fatalism that is already ingrained in our culture. For it might indeed be an evil that is already encouraging the incidence and the depth of the poverty that both the pro-life and the pro-choice camps are battling to reverse that we might all together be a better and a more freer people.

As law has its limits, it also presupposes a purpose.

As regards the RH law and its implementation, we must always consider -

Choice: Does it encourage the right choices?

Abortion: Is it a danger to the unborn?

Contraception: Does it promote a disposable view of human sexuality?

Sexual Education: Does it permit or promote sexual immorality or sexual amorality?

Maternal Health: Is it a danger to the institution of motherhood?

Women's Rights: Is it a danger to women, especially mothers?

Burden of Taxation: Does it open public funds to corruption or waste?

The Institution of the Family: Is it a danger to the institution of the family?

The National Culture: Will it permit our nationhood to further enable our Country to advance in its ages in time?
---<--@

Let us be vigilant and continue on. For the only way to go is forward!

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Salutation #164

The real answer
to the question of poverty in our age
may not be more but BETTER forms of prosperity.



(The Question of Wealth)

Wealth,
darling Starshine -
what is it?

- selah -

"What is wealth?" -  beloved,
is a question we should each know
how to ask the citizen in each ourselves.

For the recognition of wealth -
its forms, orders of value, real purpose in time,
generation, preservation, conservation,
and ultimate possession -
is the central question being sought
(to be sufficiently grasped and understood)
by each our answering - in our own times and places -
the collective call of each our own undertaking of Country.

The answers - that each of us are -
whose completeness in the ascent - as a whole -
(like stars finding their way together
into every new morning of every new day
unto the completion of our Country)
drive forward the economy of our generations.

Indeed,
the singular - temporal - pre-occupation
of every nation (of the children of Mankind)
is how to adequately understand
the question of wealth.

Truly,
it is important to understand this question.

FOR
how one nation understands the Question
directs its timeless energies unto the answer...
even... precious starshine, all the way.
---<--@



Ask yourself:
is money - by itself -
wealth enough?

Money
can be good.

- BUT -

Money
can be bad.

Why?

Starshine,
what (or who) makes it so?
---<--@



Questions ask, answers answer.

Salutation #128

The Common Market
serves the national wealth.

And this wealth is not wholly material. 

For the building up of the (inhabited) earth
is a labor that is an economy of both matter and grace.



(Prosperity Measures)

My fellow Filipinos, 
brothers and sisters of the Promise,
let us together take note -

If any undertaking of Country
should like to re-introduce or re-invigorate
its own nascent market efficiencies,
a Nation and its own Responsible State
must work together - to promptly ensure -
that the Common Market exists for the Nation
and not the other way around.

This is why
austerity measures
- in and of itself -
will not work.

For the vigor
of the national prosperity
must ultimately depend upon
the trust of the people - abiding freely -
at the heart of the Common Market.

Therefore -

Discipline the market,
not the people.

Then reassure the people,
not the market.

- selah -

Prosperity measures
are all about restoring faith
and allaying the fear at the heart of the Nation
about its own local industries, market institutions,
economic prowess, and material sufficiency.

And this is only because 
the Common Market exists for the Nation
and not the other way around.

The process of recovery,
in this particular sense,
can be summed up in one word -

"TRUST".

Engender trust 
and reap a reciprocity of trust.

Virtue is currency.
---<--@

The Three Elements of Country

Service, Synergy and Sovereignty

20110409

Sources of Poverty

I have often meditated on the problem of poverty.

We are mistaken who should believe that the problem of widespread poverty in the Philippines is a purely material phenomenon.

We can not make the poor rich through purely external means. So those traditional economic indicators of a nation's wealth (or lack thereof) are only indicative of a part of the process and certainly not the whole.

We can not completely rely on what other economies think, well-meaning though they are, about our own economy because the roots of our national destiny is planted not on the soil of their land nor is the will of our nationhood established upon the soul of their experience as a people.

Surely, we can not look at a happy, smiling picture of another nation and say to ourselves it is our own without deceiving ourselves. For no nation upon the earth is the same.

Though we are all allied to each other by blood and covenant, each of us - each nation - is as distinct as individual human beings are unique.

The progress of any other nation is built upon the backs of its own sweat, blood, and tears.

Each their own journeys in time shaped by their own common experience of a love willingly and freely shed and therefore, shared from among its people across their generations; their peace a result of the reality they have crafted by grace of God from their own belonging together.

We are not any other nation, my fellow Filipino compatriots, we are this nation.

How we see ourselves as ourselves has a very direct as well as distinct bearing on our national destiny.

It might seem to fade in contrast to the obvious reality of the material but we must remember that the roots of our poverty goes deeper than the things of this world - and that is the truth.

And it matters not what name we should call ourselves - we are what we do.

If our understanding of the Angel of the Philippines (or the spirit of the one Filipino people) is wont to teach us anything, it is this:

We could choose to change the name of our nation (not that I am for it, mind you, I am completely against it) but it shall always remain for all our generations that we are who we are inside of ourselves more than what or how or by what name we appear (or make ourselves appear) from the outside.

We shall wear our Flag on the inside before anything else or not at all.

Because time is a flow and once it has gone out of the timeless within our hearts, once time has flowed out of the Sanctuary of the LORD in our every hearts, it is no longer time but consequence and is near impossible to change. (You may refer to the River in Ezekiel 47: 1-12.)

Only a miracle of God can change the course of consequence.

These miracles do happen but if we rely exclusively on them, we tempt the LORD.

For the small and hidden miracles that God works in the hearts of all men are plentiful indeed and more than enough to change the course of our history - we just need to pay attention and hear Him.

Verily, we can not rely purely on externals to solve our problems as a people.

The fact of the matter is poverty is a social justice issue here in the Philippines. It is therefore, a wrong that our society as a whole must make right.

We have to become willing to re-think ourselves again as ourselves - together this time.

People are poor who have accepted the reality of being poor. A nation is defeated who have come to accept its own defeat. No nation can so thoroughly deplete the spirit and exhaust the will of another nation as completely as it can its own self.

We are not a defeated people. We have spirit enough in ourselves to make it right. So we have to educate ourselves aright, above all our youth.

Our history writes that the Philippines was re-discovered in 1521 by a nation not its own.

Let it write further here today that in the third Christian millennium, the Philippines is re-discovered once again by its own nation; by a people wholly its own and a generation called to re-constitute once more our original culture of life and peace.

Carry on with determination, President Noy.

Do not let your faith waver nor the belief in your heart be weakened by those things that oppose your good will and spirit of Country.

Rather, let if flow out of yourself as a mighty river, continue to strive to be the change to inspire us and to work in the nation a remembrance of itself, mabuhay!

We are with you, sir - all the way.

Furthermore, please refer to 20110317, The Roots of the Problem - and consider these also as major sources of poverty.

---<--@

Araw ng Kagitingan

Today we commemorate "Araw ng Kagitingan" or Day of Valour. This day marks the surrender of Bataan and Corregidor during WWII.

Through it, we commemorate the universal spirit of the Filipino profession of arms in general and our friendship with the US Armed Forces in specific.

To do justice to the undying sacrifices of our soldiers and of all soldiers from every nation, we must always remember that there is no such thing as a "just" war, only just causes.

That it is the lives and the actions of just and virtuous military men and women of our nation and of every nation that we shall remember to honor this day, because, my honorable compatriots, in stark contrast to the atrocities of war and the dishonor of war criminals, it is these that redeem.

Military blood ties are permanent.

We ignore the counsel of our own military remembrances at our own peril.

Lest we forget. Lest we forget.

---<--@

A Tragedy in Brazil

I was shocked and saddened by the recent school shooting in Brazil. There are no words enough to express it. I stand in silent sympathy with them.

Let us pray for the victims of this tragedy, feel their hurt, and ask God above for healing for the Brazilian nation.

Let us say peace be upon Brazil, peace be upon the Brazilian people.

---<--@

Another Earthquake in Japan

Japan has done so much for the Philippines. In this time of great stress, let us continue to pray for Japan. May God bless the Japanese nation!

May their indomitable strength of spirit triumph against this test.

Please visit Asia For Japan.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Bangon Pilipino

Kaya mahirap ang Pilipinas ay dahil mahirap ang Pilipino. Ang bansa po natin ay naghihirap dahil napakarami pong Pilipinong mahihirap.

Paano po natin malulunasan ito? Babangon po tayo.

Marahil ito ang unang sasagi sa ating mga pag-iisip: Imposible! Nakakahirap po bang isipin ang isang maunlad na Pilipinas? Kapwa ko mga kapatid sa pangako, mas kawawa po tayo kung hindi tayo matututong maniwala muli at bumangon.

Marahil sa lalim ng mga sugat sa puso ng Pilipino ay minarapat ng marami sa atin na tumalikod muna sa mga sakit ng ating Inang Bayan. Ngunit bago na po ang panahon ngayon. Ang lahat po ay hindi na katulad dati. Ang bansa po natin ay nagigising na sa kanyang sarili at marahil ito po ay inyo na ring nararamdaman sa inyong mga puso.

Marami sa ating mga Pilipino dito sa Pilipinas at sa buong mundo ay may mga parang hinahanap dahil ang ating Inang Bayan ay tumatalima na po sa tawag ng Diyos niyang May Likha: Tayong lahat po ay hinahamon na nitong bagong panahon na bumangon.

Marami pong problema ang Pilipinas. Hindi natin mapagkakaila ito. Kaya sa mga epektibo at makabagong solusyon po sana tayo maniwala ng buong loob at hindi sa dami ng mga problemang ito. Dahil tayong mga Pilipino lang po ang pwedeng magbigay ng lubos at makahulugang lunas sa mga ito para na rin sa bayan nating Pilipinas, wala na pong iba.

Ang katunayan po nito ay ang solusyon ay nasa atin din. Kaya nating bumangon, kapwa ko mga kapatid sa pangako, tapang lang po ang kailangan. Tapang na maniwala muli sa Pilipinas at sa isa't isa. Pananalig lang po sa tawag ng Diyos at pagsisilbi sa tawag ng Inang Bayan.

Bangon na Pilipino: Mayaman, mahirap, bata't matanda, lalaki o babae - lahat po ng nagmamahal sa Diyos at sa Pilipinas. Lahat ay magkakapatid sa Pangako dahil ito po ang lupang ipinangako.

Mapalad ang Bayan na ang Diyos ay ang PANGINOON.

Mabuhay po tayong lahat.

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The Roots of the Problem

My fellow Filipino compatriots, to begin to understand the essence of the challenges that we as a people must presently overcome, we must understand the roots of the problem.

Here are the roots of the problem. They all feed into the one tree - the wrong one - which is the tree of the desolation of war. It shall certainly bear its fruit, but not for us, my dear people.

If we are wise, my nation Philippines, we shall begin now to lovingly tend to our own undertaking of Country - that we might work to bear the good fruit of our peace for ourselves and for others as ourselves which are those fruits pleasing to God and edible to all of humanity in time and unto eternity.

Here are the roots of the problem as regards to our Philippines:

Luzon - Corruption - diminish corruption in Luzon, spiritual - individual. Bind this evil in Luzon and its tide shall diminish all over the Country, bringing honor back to politics and integrity to our seats of government.

Visayas - Geography - unite the Visayan Islands, technological - national. Bind this evil in the Visayas and it shall act as a bridge that shall further unite the nation, consolidating the spirit of our people.

Mindanao - Division - build the peace in Mindanao, human - social. Bind this evil in Mindanao and we shall obtain from God, the strength to bring down the blessings of His peace all across our one Republic whole.

To uproot these problems from their roots is to also liberate each of the three stars in our Old Defiant to shine all the more brightly for each other. It shall make our Republic progressively stronger as Old Compliant (the false image of ourselves) becomes progressively weaker.

Palawan, we shall consider as a separate challenge distinct from the main challenges specific to Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao:

Palwan - Conservation - promote the national conservation of Palawan, ecological - political. Bind the twin evil of the rampant exploitation of the natural systems of Palawan beyond their ability to sustain and regenerate themselves as well as the resulting displacement of the indigenous peoples who are its rightful stewarts and we shall as a nation obtain for our generations a natural sanctuary; a place of spirit and rest where everything is connected with everything.

The challenge of Palawan concerns all the three stars together: It is here in Palawan where we shall as a nation learn the first principles that will lead us towards Energy Independence in 2045.

If we dislike something that is not ours as a people. Let us all the more perseveringly cling to our Old Defiant, imploring the efficacious aid of our one Almighty, instead of clinging to those things that shall soon be swept away by the rise and fall of the darkness of exile time.

If we are to be left holding on to what is ours, we must first learn to let go of those things that should in no-wise belong to us.

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Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

We will be described as human beings by promise of our birth,

citizens of the one Republic of the Philippines by will of national destiny,

believers of each our own honorable religious tradition by light of each our own individual faith and human reason,

common peers from among common peers in common creation by purpose of divine design,

and kindred beings belonging to the one family of humanity by nature of our common good will for all the nations of Mankind.

A Filipino is the heart that loves the Filipino nation.