LIFE’S INSPIRATIONS: “… The LORD detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished…” (Proverbs 16: 5, the Holy Bible).
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FACEBOOK SELLING PERSONAL DATA OF USERS? The beauty of attending seminars on continuing legal education is that gems of wisdom literally overflow from lecturers who have become experts in their chosen field of law. Take the lecturer on cyber developments at the UP Law Center last week, Dr. Noel Guivani Ramiscal.
Ramiscal (who was merely a replacement lecturer, since the original lecturer failed to arrive) disclosed that personal details of Facebook users are actually sold by the social networking site to big businessmen and corporations around the world for hefty fees, making Facebook owners instant billionaires.
This is the reason why, Dr. Ramiscal said, any Facebook user is forcibly given doses of advertisements from hundreds and hundreds of companies every time the user opens his or her account. And yet, the lecturer added, Facebook was precisely invented to prevent such intrusions from advertisers. Is this true, Facebook?
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HYPOCRITICAL ACTIVISM RISES AT UP: There is really something gravely wrong with Filipinos, more particularly those who style themselves as “thinkers”, when they seek to publicize the crimes and excesses of one Filipino president, and yet conveniently ignore, deliberately and criminally, the crimes and excesses of other presidents.
I am referring to the news about rival organizations at the University of the Philippines allegedly uniting and shedding their differences for the last 30 years to oppose the vice presidential candidacy of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., on account of the supposed abuses of his late father, former President Marcos.
So, fine, let’s investigate and oppose Bongbong’s candidacy and perpetuate the memory of his father’s dictatorship rule of the country. But, how about the inequities and abuses and even the crimes committed by the two Aquino presidents while they were in power? Our thinkers from the UP are not interested to run after the Aquinos, too? Why? Indeed, what a hypocritical form of activism!
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UP ACTIVISTS AS PROPAGANDISTS OF THE YELLOW REGIME: These rival organizations from UP must also be interested to check and then bring to the bar of justice the excesses of the two Aquino presidencies. If they are saying that the Marcos presidency wrought havoc to democracy and derailed the progress of the Philippines, it is undeniable that the two Aquino presidencies caused more problems to our countrymen.
But these people from UP appear interested only against the Marcoses, thus exposing themselves as mere propagandists of the current Aquino president who is now having nightmares about Bongbong’s impending victory as vice president, and is therefore mobilizing what is now derided by many as “yellow tards” or retarded political followers of the Aquinos.
Clearly, it is a shame that UP students are even lending themselves, and their honor as “scholars of the people”, to this dastardly manipulation by the powers that be. Really, gone are the days when UP scholars—indeed, that’s what UP students are, their school expenses in UP being subsidized by taxes from the people—truly seek the truth for the sake of truth alone, and not pursuant to the bidding of some masters.
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PLEASE LISTEN: “Ang Tanging Daan” (The Sole Way): a Bible study and prayer session online could now be heard, 24 HOURS a day, in the Philippines and the world at www.facebook.com/angtangingdaan or www.facebook.com/ANDKNK (and look for “Ang Tanging Daan” broadcasts). Phone: 0922 833 43 96, 0918 574 0193, 0977 805 9058. Email: batasmauricio@yahoo.com.