Hot and Cold

About the Book HOT AND COLD Henares starts this book with articles that inspire the reader - about his mother, a storybook princess with the splendor of her life on this earth - about the joys of his youth as an altar boy in Ateneo - about the Rah-Rah boys of Ateneo and the brilliance of a single thought, the blinding instant, the flash of inspiration that triggers a train of events to change the world, and the monstrous incongruity between the hopes and the dreams, however noble, and the dreadful actions and passions that follow after them - about Jose Rizal and the dream of Isagani, and his agonizing cry "Where are the Youth? - about facing the future without fear of tomorrow, embattled by the simplest problem of the cost of hunger in a baby's bones, and a prayer to accept the smoke of the factories among the accredited clouds of the sky - about the inspiring story of the coming of the human race, and the role of shit in expanding human intelligence and in the migration of the human race to the ends of the earth. Henares then ushers us into the cruel world, the militarization of our democracy by soldiers, with the question, "Who will guard us from our guardians?" - into the world of Moonies, who like the Opus Dei, the American CIA and the McCarthyists in the USA, would burn our bodies to save our souls, and lead us into a Low Intensity Conflict bloodbath of non-whites killing each other to promote the interest of America without shedding precious American blood - into American inspired coup d'etats to destabilize the Cory Aquino regime for the sole purpose of securing an extension of the US Bases Agreement and the perpetuation of American business monopolies - into the inner world of our Colonial Mentality, the religiofication of Americans as the high and mighty redeemers of the unworthy brown race. He minces no words, saying Dung instead of Shit - saying Bull Stool, or Bovine Ordure, instead of Bull Shit - sphincter ani instead of asshole -- describing his opponent as Alopecic Misogamic Gynander, instead of a balding woman-hating faggot - his other opponents as Villainous Concavity of a Face (composed of prominent forehead, beady eyes, a button of a nose and an advancing chin) and Villainous Convexity of a Face (composed of a receding forehead, a bulbous nose that droops to say hello to a receding chin, leaving no room for the mouth which can only manage to display a lopsided smile) to describe their profiles - Our Man Squint, who only betrays a lifetime of peering through darkened windows preparatory to an act of thievery - Small Dick, Needle Dick, The Raging Bull and his Holy Cow, who looks like a Screaming Banshee, a Wicked Witch of the West, who screams and blows cigarette smoke into the eyes of those who engages her in a debate about the economy. Now Henares turns serious and elaborates on his ideal National Economy, based in on a policy of Self-Reliance, Industrialization, and a real honest to goodness Land Reform which in Japan, transformed the landed daimos to a capitalist class of zaibatsus, and transforms landlords in the Philippines into industrialists. What constitutes the real wealth of the nation? he asks. Not our natural resources, as the IMF insists, but what makes Japan and Switzerland prosperous - skills, knowledge, and the character of the people. The more you use your natural resources, the less you have in the future to use; but skills and knowledge grow by what they feed on. The more you use your skills, the more skilled you become. The more you use your knowledge, the more knowledgeable you become. That is why Japan and Switzerland who have no natural resources, are more prosperous than the Philippines which has plenty of natural resources. Henares ends up writing about the electoral counting of votes, the Abacus system of a Filipino genius, Mike Lorza, which is cheaper and more reliable than the multi-million dollar version of Allen Weinstein, suspected CIA agent (MORE INSIDE)