Today, Dec. 30, is Rizal Day, the commemoration of the death anniversary of Jose Rizal, the national hero. As usual, Filipinos will be subjected to hagiographic stories about him. To be sure, Rizal was a great man. But, as Renato Constantino explains in his classic “Veneration Without Understanding,” he did not deserve to be the Philippines’s national hero. A national hero — Washington for the US, Bolivar for Latin America, Mao for China, Ho Chi Minh for Vietnam, Lenin for the Soviet Union — should be the one that led a country’s revolution. In the Philippines’s case, “our national hero was not the leader of our Revolution. In fact, he repudiated that Revolution.”

Agrarian-reform secretary and peace negotiator Nasser Pangandaman Sr. has aired his side about the alleged mauling in Antipolo on Friday. He said the alleged victims started the fight. He also “took exception to criticisms about his being a peace negotiator and his failing to prevent the incident from happening,” according to a report in MindaNews. “Unfair kasi nandon tayo just to play. It’s holiday. I seldom see my kids. It was also bonding for us,” he said.

Bambee de la Paz blogs about the mauling of her father and brother by the son and people of Agrarian Reform Nasser Pangandaman. She writes: “The mayor socks him in the face. My brother defended himself. My dad is still on the ground getting clobbered. My brother is the same way. I try to stop the fight, but all I can do is stop one person. There were 4 or 5 of them attacking now.”

HUMAN RIGHTS  At around 7 in the evening on Tuesday, unidentified men killed 39-year-old environmental activist leader Fernando “Dodong” Sarmiento in Compostela Valley Province. He was shot five times.

As lawmakers debate on the fate of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) before the session in Congress ends this year, farmers believe — and have proven – that owning and having control of a piece of land and the means to cultivate it is their way out of hunger and poverty.

HUMAN RIGHTS  By Arthur L. Allad-iw |  Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have filed a resolution to investigate the arrest and continuing detention of human rights and labor lawyer Remigio Saladero Jr.

Because of the failure of the agrarian-reform program, Filipino peasants have to continue relying on themselves in the struggle for genuine land reform, activists say. They call on farmers to draw lessons from the struggles of farmers from the Hacienda Luisita, Hacienda Looc, Central Mindanao University in Bukinon, among others.

CARLOS H. CONDE   Bloggers who benefited from the power of blogging to correct the injustice done to them have a duty to pay society back. And the only way I can think of is for them to raise hell, too, about the injustice done to other people.

NINOTCHKA ROSCA   While lining up for kona coffee ($1.95 per 8-ounce Styrofoam cup) at the central kiosk of the food court of the Ala Moana Center, I suffered a mild fugue. Like palimpsest, the image of the food court at the Ali Mall in Quezon City, Philippines, seeped through the environs; surely, that must have been the ancestor of all food courts in the world.

CARLOS H. CONDE   A Cabinet secretary and peace negotiator condoning the violence his son and friends were inflicting on an old man and a 14-year-old boy? By doing nothing to stop the beating, Pangandaman Sr. betrayed his skewed ethical and moral sense. President Arroyo should fire him.

FR. SHAY CULLEN   The really big thing about Christmas and the birth of Jesus Christ is that Christ brought a message of equality for all, and established the dignity and rights of women and children.

CARLOS H. CONDE     What other ignominious crap will Corazon Aquino inflict upon us? An icon of democracy and moral leadership? Hah! She is an icon of everything that is wrong with this country.