Pasil for Human Rights
From the local newspaper published February 12, 2010:
Discussing the surfacing in our midst of cybersex crimes brings to mind the idiom 'comes with the territory', especially in relation with recent advances in technology.
The internet not only reduced the world into a global village and altered peoples way of life but also democratized and internationalized the commission of crimes.
Who would have thought that a house in thickly populated Barangay Suba-Pasil in Cebu City would be an alleged source of pornography reaching viewers as far as the United States and other countries?
Linkages
Advances in technology not only made it easy for the suspects to connect to the World Wide Web but also set up the equipment and network for the said 'cybersex' den.
The setting could be an internet cafe, like in the Suba-Pasil case, or it could be an ordinary residence, like what cops discovered in Minglanilla town months earlier.
One can just have a computer, a camera and an internet connection, plus a system to collect payments from clients abroad, for the operation to start.
And despite the Philippines being a predominantly Catholic country, poverty tends to negate Christian values making it easy for cybersex den operators to get the models to keep their business humming.
We thus have a situation wherein law enforcers' capability to deal with cybersex crimes could not cope with advances in technology and their democratizing tendency.
To be fair, the government is doing its best to change the set up and there's a noticeable improvement in its ability to deal with these kinds of crimes.
Linkages between local law enforces and their counterparts abroad-like when US federal agents looked into the Suba-Pasil case- has also been strengthened (Mayor Tomas Osmena even wants the International Police to come in).
But that won't be enough.
Cooperation
Here, the help of people in the communities is needed considering that law enforcers' intelligence work may not be able to deal with the secretive nature of cybersex den operations.
But first, awareness of the problem by people in the communities and their understanding of the nature of cyber crimes must be enhanced.
To reach the original site click here: www.sunstar.com.ph/editorial-dealing-cybersex-dens
Education in the Philippines This article by Juan L. Mercado was published in the local newspaper on October 30 2010:
San Francisco - When one revisits family or old friends, laughter in gatherings are laced with 'imitations of mortality'.
We;re en route to Nevada for the wife's family reunion. But we've stopped over in this 'City by the Bay' to see two granddaughters, our daughter and her husband.
'My grandparents never marked Halloween,' Alexia told her incredulous 4th grade classmates. 'That's cool,' they marveled. And four-year-old Tai added: 'Yes, that's cool'.
Rebound from jetlag now takes longer. One winces at 15-hour flights. Before our joints crumble, we better go, the wife and I agree.
Her sister Mira passed away last year- the first death within my wife's generation. Now, more than ever, a line from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's 91st birthday address resonates: 'Death touches my ears and says: 'Live. I am coming'.'
'All Hallows Eve' or Halloween is rooted in the ancient All Souls' Day. It marked the Celtic new year. In 1848, Irish immigrants brought those spooky costumes to the US where it continues today as a fun-filled kids feast.
'Half a world away, it will be All Souls Day,' the wife murmurs. 'Our grandchildren Adrian, Kristin and Sofie will light candles at family graves. That will include ours, sooner rather than later.'
'It is a good and wholesome thought to pray for the dead', declares the Book of Macabees, written thousands of years before Easter Sunday.
Vita mutatur, non tollitur, the Church prays for those who've been called from like life, like my younger brothers. 'Life is changed, not taken away.'
At St. Catherine's church next door, the theme is 'the communion of saints'-life beyond today's inequalities and a common resurrection. We see reflected in Alexia and Tai the 'inequality traps' that are the reality of everyday Philippines.
The cycle of underachievement results in a playing field that is far from level for kids like Alexia and Tai in the US or Claudia and Leonor in a Cebu slum.
For kids in less-developed countries, infant mortality is four times higher for the poor than the rich. Filipino infant deaths are triple that of Malaysia. Babies of indigents are at much greater nutritional risk. We'll flub key Millennium Development Goals.
'The main scourge here is chronic hunger and tuberculosis', say Mother Teresa nuns who minister to abandoned children in Pasil. Alexia and Tai get all the needed immunization shots. Claudia and Leonor don't even have a birth certificate.
Many drop out from primary grade school. If they grow up, their schools are substantially worse than those attended by children of gated enclaves like Maria Luisa. Similar inequalities exist in credit to law.
Adverse effects are replicated time and time gain. Across generations. Ill-fed wizened mothers give birth to dwarfed children, the Asian Development Bank notes.
Equality is one thing, the World Bank points out. But equity is another. Equity isn't about equality in incomes, health, schooling or other assets the report says.
Rather, it is the quest for a situation when personal effort, preferences and initiative-and not family background, caste, race, or gender-account for differences between people's economic achievements.
Three basic decisions underpin success of Nordic countries like Norway, Sweden or Denmark, says Columbia University's Earth Institute's Jeffrey Sachs. First, they prioritized education. Second, they built a vigorous private sector. And they made sure no one was left behind.
P-Noy says that's our task too. To make sure Claudia and Leonor close the gap with Alexia and Tai.
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