Free speech and the freedom to protest provide the necessary oxygen for democracy. But   American democracy suffered a gut punch on Capitol Hill this week. Public trust in America’s democratic institutions has been destroyed. The United States of America hit the bottom and its charisma, influence, and leadership have been expulsed; no longer does freedom emanate from it. This event and the resultant divisions will forever opacify the beacon of democracy and detract from the beautiful Founding Father rhetoric of “City upon a Hill.” There is no excuse for the riots that happened at the Capitol. All those who stormed the Capitol building should be lawfully punished as should have happened to the Antifa rioters in 2020. Violence is not the answer. The leftist mobs in 2020 burned police stations and destroyed shopping districts in a rampage against supposed systematic racism, in the process killing innocent bystanders and law enforcement officers, destroying American symbols, burning flags, and topplingstatues. The liberals believe that that the system is rigged against African-Americans, women, specific minorities, and everyone identifying as other than the binary genders. The conservatives argue that tech oligarchs in Silicon Valley have gained control over communications and have rigged the system against middle income Americans who hold to traditional values. Getting rid of Trump will not fix America’s broken Democracy. Because, the rioting , burning, killing, and other criminal activity are taken place in longtime Democratic controlled cities in mostly democratic states. The left is planning to destroy the Constitution by curtailing free speech, canceling the Second Amendment, packing the courts and much more. Democrat party assisted by a hopelessly compromised national media deliberately put the country through four years of a false Russian collusion narrative followed by a phony impeachment. After refusing to recognize the results of the 2016 election and trying to outs the duly elected president they now play blame everything on President Trump Continue reading →

Wise men have warned us throughout human history about the danger of plutocracy. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates warned of the dangers of choosing captains of ships by their wealth. Despite these warnings, the United States of America has gone from a democracy towards becoming a plutocracy, for all practical purposes , moving away from a government of the people, by the people, and for the people to a government of the rich, the 1% of the people. A plutocracy is a system of rule by people of wealth; the ruling class derive their power from their wealth. The rich are not satisfied, however, with having more wealth. They are also seizing political wealth. President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for Treasury secretary is Janet L. Yellen, who over the past two years collected more than $7 million in speaking fees from major corporations, big tech and corporate interests, and Wall Street banks that have a keen interest in financial policies. Joe Biden’s choice for secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, was paid nearly 1.2 million by a consulting firm he helped found, WestExec Advisors, where he advised a range of corporations including Facebook, Boeing, and Blackstone as well as Lazard (a private equity giant  and an asset management firm, respectively). He is also a partner in a private equity firm Pine Island Capital Partners. Joe Biden picked Avril Haines for Director of National Intelligence; she was paid $180,000 to consult for Palantir, a data mining company. Yellen, Blinken, and Haines may have an ethical conflict of interest because the window between their involvement in these financial ventures and their government position would be less than a year. Continue reading →

Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the father of the Iran’s nuclear weapons and missile programs, was assassinated near Tehran on Friday, November 27. He was attacked by unknown killers in Damavand, Tehran Province, during an armed conflict with his bodyguards. But this was not the first time that someone had tried to assassinate him. Fakhrizadeh had survived an assassination attempt in 2008, when assailants on a motorcycle attached an explosive gadget to his car. But he survived that plot. In 2014, the New York Times even compared Fakhrizadeh to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist and “father of the atomic bomb.” No doubt Fakhrizadeh’s killing will set Iran back because he was the core source of authority, knowledge, and organization of the nuclear program. No one has claimed responsibility for the killing of Dr. Mohsen Fakriazadeh.  Tel Aviv, Mossad, the White House, the Pentagon, the US State Department, and the CIA have all remained silent about this event, as has Biden’s transition team. But, if it were indeed the work of the Mossad, a scenario which may never be confirmed or proven, it would indicate the presence of an extensive clandestine network of agents planted in Iran which may have enlisted local anti-regime elements for the operation. Therefore, this killing may never be officially acknowledged, any more than its precedents. Continue reading →

Why are Muslim countries silent about the treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in China? Saudi Arabia’s King Salman opened the G20 summit Saturday in a first for an Arab country with the virtual forum dominated by the questions of how to tackle the distribution of the coronavirus vaccines and the worst global recession. Some of the countries wanted to boycott the G20 summit under Saudi Arabia’s presidency, because they questioned Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. But none even bothered to question China’s genocide against millions of Uyghur Muslims. It is all too easy to blame Donald Trump for the crisis in global affairs, but for decades China has taken advantage of America and the western countries by refusing to contribute its share. The President of the United States revealed that China is a highly visible threat to international order. The ultimate goal of China is not to become part of the free and fair society, but it is to destroy that democratic society. China has already wrecked America’s prized intellectual property and trade secrets, causing the loss of millions of jobs all across America. It sucked supply chains away from around the globe and then made slave labor to produce the products. The world biggest supply chains are located in China; that is why during the pandemic countries like Japan paid a huge price when China locked down. Continue reading →

I am not concerned about the prospect of Joe Biden’s winning the Presidency, nor am I concerned about President Trump‘s not being re-elected. What I am concerned about is that there is no leader during this crucial time to guide the world. What I am concerned about is that Russia has taken charge of events in the Middle East and world affairs from Syria to Afghanistan and Libya; China is resolved to solve the question regarding Taiwan; North Korea is determined to have nuclear ballistic capability; and Iran has sought control in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. Joe Biden envisions a return to global environmental treaties that are bad for American businesses through a Green New Deal that will make American taxpayers pay for China, India, and the world’s other most polluted countries. China is not being honest about the Corona virus, not mention the downturn in the American economy resulting from the pandemic. My concern is that this election represents one of the biggest American gambles in its history. Sadly, many American voters have not had the chance to think carefully about the issues mentioned above. As expected, the leftist media is exploiting the pandemic, the lockdowns, and the riots that have ravaged the American economy in order to smear the President and label him as a complete failure. The Democratic campaign timely weaponized the Corona virus in America as a to help Joe Biden politically to become America’s 46^th President. Continue reading →

(August 2020)  Schools across the Philippines have encountered challenges during the statewide lockdown. Those same challenges were also faced by College Education Behind Bars inside the Davao City Jail and the Davao Prison and Penal Farm because COVID-19 safety measures stopped face-to-face educational services. However, College Behind Bars educators turned to communication, cooperation, and innovation to achieve rehabilitative education goals. With limited technology in the facility, we moved to paper correspondence amid the pandemic. No essentials were suspended altogether, such as physical education among the other programs.The benefits of College Education Behind Bars are well documented. Studies show that postsecondary programs can reduce recidivism while improving morale and safety in facilities and increasing post-incarceration job prospects. In the past jails and prisons have been warehouses with their limited space and minimal disinfectants allowing diseases to spread widely in facilities with insufficient health care and a high prevalence of underlying conditions. Because the Davao Prison and Penal Farm superintendent devised and implemented hygienic and safety measures, these ill effects  mitigated the spread of diseases, so that the facility was COVID-19 free. Continue reading →

We are at an unprecedented moment in America right now. The rise of identity politics has become a phenomenon not just in America, but in the West in general. Identity politics is shaping the politics of our time and poses a significant challenge in particular to the United States, a multi ethnic country  with identity lines more deeply etched than in more homogenous societies. The concept of the melting pot has worked for a long time, but I am no longer optimistic for the future because of demography and the far left’s manipulation of identity politics. Because the left leaning Democratic party  is out of the control, they have become so weak and insensitive that they have lost all sense of rationality when it comes to politics and social issues. Most Democrats have moved so far to the left, operating like a militia, so that it feels like freethinking, free speech, law and order, equality under the law, and the expression of new ideas have become foreign. Anything that does not align with the far left’s interpretation of social justice thinking is deemed racist, sexist, transphophic, enslaving, or oppressive, even if is the complete opposite of such a claim. Democrats are playing with identity but fail to recognize their ploys are actually hurting people and damaging our society.Freedom of speech gives people the right to say what they feel, but it also gives other people the right to point out if they are being offensive. Freedom of speech does not mean a speaker’s word cannot be criticized; it just means that individual cannot be silenced. In fact, dialectic positions undergird democracy and public debate underpins freedom. Continue reading →

Every life matters and every life is sacred, so that we all desire to live a life of purpose, meaning, and direction. As the African-Americans struggle for social change and grapple with racial injustice and racial disparity in income and wealth distribution between African-Americans and Whites and wrestle with the US high unemployment and mass incarceration of young African- Americans, it is important that we look at the family structure and structural violence. This dysfunction results from the absence of a father in the life of a child in the African-American community because a father can give a child structure and discipline. A boy needs men to teach him how to be a man. The lack of a father and a stable family foundation is a major problem for many families in the USA, but is even greater among African-American people. The family is the building block of society; as the family erodes, so do the society and the nation. Anyone can father a child, but being a daddy takes a life time.Fathers play a role in every child’s life that cannot be filled by others. The role has a large impact on a child and helps shape that young life into the people they become. Studies show that the absence of a father certainly delays development of the child. Young African-American boys without an active father or a father in heaven usually get in trouble. Research indicates that the majority of African-American boys under the age of seventeen live with a mother only, compared with sixteen percent of their white counterparts. Many children live in households headed by women, and while they often do remarkable jobs in childrearing, they cannot replace the absentee father. Studies also show that children in fatherless homes are more likely to drop out of school, exhibit behavioral problems, end up in the criminal justice system, suffer unemployment, and have a greater risk of drug abuse. If a youth does not have a father in the home who can act as a source of support and one of the pillars for the formation of his resilience, then he is less likely to be resilient in the face of many sources of trauma. Our parents, our first teacher, and our home are the first school we attend. We learn from this first teacher how to behave, how to appreciate, how to tell the truth, how to respect, and how to love others; we learn to be loved, to be honest, and to make good choices. When we look at many black youth and consider them to be very angry and bad, we may surmise that they really are hurting and their behaviors are behaviors caused by their acting out in pain. They are just trying to meet a need, the need to be included, to be loved, to be welcomed, respected, and wanted. Continue reading →

America has the world’s best functioning political system, but the protests are putting the world’s last well functioning system on the edge of collapse. America has to make a real decision about these riots. Not only are lives in danger, but also American democracy itself. But the threat comes from the Democratic Party that is at war with the country and is willing to collude with terrorist hate groups such as Antifa, whose clearly stated agenda and goal is the destruction of America. Antifa is not typically thought of as a single organization; it is a movement or coalition of leftist groups, each of which claims to combat fascism, a political ideology whose definition they have been arguing about for many years. The word Antifa means anti-Fascist or anti extreme left or right. American political leaders from the left and the right are cowards, and none of these fringe iconoclasts stand for America. This is how a nation collapses, when those with authority cannot keep order. Often people fail to do what they know they should do, because they are afraid of the push back. Sometimes when a person tries to take the right action, he or she encounters such resistance and opposition. We need to recognize that the American people are not enemies of each other, even though some portray them as such to divide them. What we see now is that the misfits in the American society have taken control of the streets. They did nothing to build America, but now they are trying to destroy it. This is unacceptable. Continue reading →