Bonifacio's Death

In the last couple of days, after finishing reading Stephen Jay Gould's The Lying Stones Of Marrakech, I picked up this small book, almost like a booklet, The Tragedy Of The Revolution by Adrian Cristobal. I am a big fan of history but recently I haven't been reading Philippine history due to lack of books accessible enough to me with living outside the country. I have in my shelves here a few books I picked up in one of my visits to PowerBooks during one of my vacations. All in all there are exactly six small books comprising what I call my Filipinana section. Three of them are about Andres Bonifacio the Katipunan Supremo; the other two Bonifacio books are by Ambeth Ocampo. I quickly finished Cristobal's book and while reading it, it made me realize that I really need to go back to reading more about Philippine history since the book showed that I am grossly ignorant of a lot of the details in the most important episodes of the history of our people. I knew that Bonifacio was killed by fellow Filipinos but I never knew more than that. He was portrayed as an unfortunate casualty of the revolution, his death was brought upon by his own short temper in the Tejeros Convention. While reading Cristobal's book, I felt angry about the circumstances surrounding the hero's death. In sweeping the historical narrative into a cohesive whole historians seemed to have sanitized the past such that we forget that the people involved are individuals not without their own (good and/or evil) motives and convictions. In the second book i am reading now by Ocampo, there is the excerpt of the memoir of Gregoria De Jesus, Bonifacio's widow, narrating about her two-weeks search for the remains of her husband without getting any meaningful help from people who could have easily shown her the exact spot. According to Cristobal, Bonifacio fell victim to a conspiracy by the Magdalo faction to remove him so that the Katipunan would be under the new revolutionary government that they were to form. Cristobal provided good arguments in this view, in that it was not necessary to kill Bonifacio in order to achieve their aim. I am now going to trying to read additional documents that can shed more light into what he called the tragedy of the revolution.

Beijing Olympics

The 2008 edition of the Olympics has closed a few hours ago. I must say I truly enjoyed following the day to day events now that I am rooting for the athletes of the nation of my residence - Japan. Japan had less gold medals than it hoped to get before the games started but national pride in this nation is not tied to the performance of its athletes abroad so even though the gold medal haul is less than hoped for, it doesn't seem to matter a bit. As they say, they did their best and they are happy with what they have achieved.

Most matches by Japanese athletes and the most important matches, for example the swimming races that Michael Phelps participated in, and athletics, were broadcast live in terrestrial digital TV and in high definition and it was really a spectacle to behold. I was impressed by the camera shots and instant-replay, in slow motion, you can see the sweat and almost feel the emotion of the athletes. One big advantage of this Olympics is that the timezone is almost the same as Tokyo's so there's no waking up in early morning to catch the matches, for example, to catch Wimbledon live, I had to stay awake up to 4am at times. China has done a great job in organizing this Olympics. I hope the British can do as well in London 2012. I also hope Tokyo will bring The Games to this city in 2016. It's still far but I have been here almost nine years now and looking back it doesn't seem that long a wait. I like the festive atmosphere when something non-political but big is happening like when Manila hosted the SEA Games or when Japan co-hosted with Korea the World Cup in 2002.

hb4110.net

We are currently in the process of putting up a website to support the consolidated Reproductive Health Care Act now filed in the 14th Congress. Once it's setup, we'll let everybody know. Please keep yourself informed by reading the bill yourself first-hand and maybe you can write your congressman to express your support for this very important but still pending legislation.

Support HB4110 or Reproductive Health Care Act

We the undersigned express our support of HB 4110, The Reproductive Health Care Act.

We fully support the bill’s principles as laid out in Section 2.

We all hope for a healthy Filipino society. We believe the bill will help us build such a society where reproductive health care is available to anyone and everyone, free of discrimination on age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and religious affiliation or non-affiliation. Where policies concerning reproductive health care that affects everyone is not dictated by any particular religion or belief system. We believe in the right to choose one’s method of planning a family and spacing children, or to choose to have no children at all. The rights of the individual to choose according to his conscience don’t fall under the aegis of self-proclaimed moral authorities of the religious establishment.

The Philippines is a nation of diverse religious beliefs/non-beliefs. No single belief system represents the whole diversity of Filipino religious and non-religious thought or belief nor does any of its leaders speak for all its adherents. The continued opposition by the leaders of certain sects is a clear encroachment on the rights to free choice on reproductive health methods and services of every Filipino, and trample on the rights of those who do not adhere to their beliefs. We strongly condemn the negative campaign being waged by these leaders to mislead its adherents by misrepresenting the bill’s content, and by resorting to using dogmatic, unscientific, and outmoded beliefs to support its arguments.

We strongly support the legislation because we believe this is for the well-being our nation in particular and humanity in general as we face the future of a planet with limited resources.

Please read the bill here: http://dirp3.pids.gov.ph/population/documents/HB4110.pdf

Please sign the petition here.

FanBox, spam machine

I just visited this site because I am getting annoyed by the spam it is sending to my mailbox and one of the things that struck me was their service described: "Spam-Free Web-based Email." I marked it as spam in my account for now.