Justice at the stock market at last

At last, after almost a decade, the Supreme Court ruled that the criminal case of the People of the Philippines vs. Dante Tan for the Best World Stock Market scam can now proceed.

This scam nearly brought down the Philippine Stock Market and allowed its perpetrators to steal billions from the economy.

Everyone, but most especially people involved in the stock market should be concerned and working to ensure that this case is brought to its just conclusion.

Until government and the stock market people can prove that they are capable of catching and punishing stock market cheats and manipulators, they should not invite or encourage people to put their money in the stock market. Until this happens, the local stock market will be nothing but a rich man’s instrument to legally take money from the people.

The Sorrow of Our People

The following is a letter of a mother who in a moment of police insanity “in the line of duty” lost her husband and 7 year old daugher during a shootout last December in Paranaque City. In all, sixteen persons lost their lives in that incident including 11 alleged robbers, 1 cop and two other civilians.

Per Jarius Bondoc's backgrounder about that December carnage in his The Philippine Star column last April 03, 2009 entitled “Husband, Daugher Killed: Must She Grieve Alone”:

Initial reports were that they had been hit in the crossfire. Neighbors later recounted that policemen had fired dozens of rounds at Lea Alyana, 7, and her father Alfredo de Vera, 47, as they were exiting their residential subdivision to pick up mother-wife Lilian. The girl was hit first. As the policemen continued shooting, Alfredo lifted his daughter out of the van and ran for cover. The cops approached and fired more shots.

The public raged. The press editorialized. The National Police brass mumbled an apology. Politicians dutifully fumed before the cameras. And then everyone forgot — except Lilian, who to this day seeks justice. Below is her letter, circulating in the Internet, edited to fit this space, appealing so that what happened to her family will not happen to ours:

Two months ago I considered myself one of the happiest people on earth. Why not? I married a man who was the epitome of kindness. Our union was blessed with a daughter who became our main source of joy . . . the center of our lives.

We’re simple folk who led a simple life. We felt happiest even about mundane things — like a sudden trip to Jollibee or a late night raiding the fridge. A perfect family with simple delights, dreams and aspirations ... until that fateful night of Dec. 5, 2008, when my husband and daughter were taken away from me in a very violent way.

That Friday night marked the beginning of my terror, anguish and misery.In keeping with my panata on every first Friday of the month, I went to Quiapo Church to pay homage to the Almighty. My husband and daughter were to pick me up in Pasay City, after which we planned on treating our daughter to Jollibee. While riding a jeep, I tried calling my husband to tell him I was on my way to our meeting place. He didn’t answer. Very unusual, since he seldom missed my calls. In trepidation, I took the next jeep going home and prayed that everything was all right. I promised myself to forgive my husband for not answering my calls and forgetting to pick me up.

I felt relieved when near our place my phone rang. The relief was momentary. The call I got was the bearer of the worst news in my life. My helper said "men in uniform” had shot my husband and daughter to death. The same men who were sworn to protect innocent people from bad guys brutally had slain the two most important persons in my life. They had a duty to preserve lives against harm. Yet they murdered my love ones in the most cruel, savage way.

My husband’s face was unrecognizable because he was shot in the head at close range while kneeling with head bowed. My daughter’s young body was riddled with bullets; one hit her head, blowing her brains out ... all from powerful guns fired by uniformed men at two innocent, defenseless persons.

The men in uniform were allegedly on a mission to take on a gang of robbers. The police shot the van my husband and daughter were riding. Based on witnesses’ narratives, they sprayed bullets into the van with no provocation or shots coming from it. In his last effort to save their lives, my husband grabbed my bloodied daughter and shielded her with his body while running away from the police and taking cover behind a parked jeepney. My husband and daughter were so defenseless. How can you mistake a child for a robber? How can you shoot someone who was already kneeling with head bowed, an indication of helplessness?

My husband and daughter are gone . . . forever. The pain I feel from their loss is too much to bear. My only motivation to go on living is to seek justice for their senseless killing. If the people responsible for their death will be punished, as they deserve, my pain would be alleviated. The misery I live with will lessen. My husband and daughter will be vindicated and I will learn to live my remaining years in peace.

I’m begging everyone who comes across this letter to forward it to all your relatives, friends and acquaintances. Help me bring my cause to the eyes of the people capable of steering the wheel of justice to the right direction. Help me make the loudest cry worthy of attention by those people in charge of rendering justice to all.

Strength comes in numbers; it is where the impossible becomes possible. It is also where the unattainable becomes achievable.

My heartfelt gratitude to everyone who will take a moment from their busy lives to relay this to everyone they know. May God always protect you and your loved ones from harm.

Thinking of Chevening

This time last year was the last day of the British Foreign Commonwealth Office Chevening Fellowship Program on Democracy, Rule of Law and Security I participated in at the Center for Studies in Security and Diplomacy, University of Birmingham, UK.

But after listening to so many experts and meeting many highly placed people, all that I can tell my co-fellows is a quote from the writer Henry James:

"We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and passion is our task. The rest is the madness of Art."

Chelwood Wing, Chamberlain Hall, Vale Village - our home

for the almost three months of the fellowship program

Our turn

Mr. Chip Tsao

Now that the wrath of the great multitude of Hong Kong based Pinoy domestic helpers, career protesters and pin button nationalists have brought writer Chip Tsao down on his knees and forced him to make a public apology for insulting Filipinos in his magazine column by calling the Philippines a “nation of servants”, maybe it is now our turn to reflect among ourselves- and apologize if needed- on the way we treat people of other races and also our househelps.

I shudder to think of how the people and government of China, India and Korea for example (not to mention the Africans) will react if they could only hear what many of our people say and behave towards their countrymen here in the Philippines. I am also aware that despite the world’s most powerful nation now having a- ahh err – “melanin rich” president, many Filipinos still have a bias against and are even scared of dark colored people.

And while we are on a fighting mood triggered by this inconsiderate assault on our national pride, can we not redirect our fight to advance the rights of domestic helpers here in our own country? For instance, how many futures are ruined when impoverished young women and men are forced to stop schooling and work as domestics? Why is there no legislated wage and benefits for domestic helpers? Is there a Magna Carta of Domestic Helpers Rights?

Mr. Tsao is wrong in calling us a nation of servants. What he may not have known, with the way we treat or allow our house helpers to be treated, the Philippines may well be among the last slave society in the world. But if through his column we can be forced to confront the issue of domestic helpers rights in our country, Filipinos might even thank him one day for his column.

That will be the day. Mr. Tsao started out to write a satire, but ended up with an irony.

Why not an appeal from the Red Crescent?

It is a great relief that the Abu Sayaff did not push through with its threat of beheading one of the three kidnapped Red Cross workers after the deadline for its demands to be met lapsed.

The three Red Cross workers have been in captivity for almost three months now and hopefully they will be freed soon.

While there is no doubt that concerned authorities and negotiators are doing their best to work for the release of the hostages, I wonder why the ICRC has not brought in an influential or prominent member of the Red Crescent to appeal to the kidappers and assist them, the negotiators in their task.

While Pope Benedict XVI has aired an appeal to the Abu Sayaff, perhaps the Abu Sayaff leaders will be more inclined to listen to other international figures who share their faith.

An orgasmic discovery

Coming out in this month’s issue of the Scientific Journal of Human Sexuality is a recent discovery made by Swedish sex scientists that if you brush your teeth long enough, it is possible to achieve orgasm. According to their theory, this is due to the stimulation of the palatine uvula - the conic projection from the posterior edge of the middle of the soft palate



According to the same study, people will reach the same result faster if they gargle thoroughly with warm salt water and play suitable mood music while brushing their teeth.

It's April Fools Day

To anyone reading this blog, Happy April Fools Day!