2010 : My Personal Notes

The biggest event of the year is, of course, the changing of guards in the political palace that is Malacanang and the ascension to power of P- Noy, the scion of Cory and Ninoy on the wings of the political platform to address corruption and changes in our social, economic and political landscape.

One year passed and the victims of the Maguindanao massacre are still wailing and wanting for justice. There is still no let up in our national pain, grief and anger over this election related crime where journalists were among the 58 innocent women and men who died doing a civic duty to country.

Climate change was so palpable in the floods that hit our Philippines and Pakistan and many other countries. Thousands of travelers were stranded in London, Frankfurt, Schipol and other airports in Europe as hundreds of flights were cancelled in mid winter due to snow and this makes 2010 Christmas memorable but not comfortable.

The release by WikiLeaks of classified, confidential cables of the U.S. State Department stunned the diplomatic and international community. There is no knowing now as to the impact and result of this release of diplomatic documents but, for sure, there will be a redefinition of the legal landscape of confidentiality and communication technology in the conduct of foreign affairs towards security and world peace.

The whole wired world was aghast at the tragic hostage drama that happened in our premier park involving Chinese tourists and Rolando Mendoza, a decorated policeman turned hostage taker. We landed in the New York Times; ordinary citizens here and Filipinos abroad were tweeting and connecting through social media how inept we were. After the fact, our lessons learned pertains to prevention and management of crisis, who is coordinating and in charge, the importance of negotiation skills, the human resources skills of our women and men in uniform and the effectiveness of our justice system.

After fifteen years in prison, Hubert Webb, et. al were acquitted due to failure of prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Webb et all were the perpetrators. As to opinion on this Visconde massacre, the country is divided. Belatedly, the social media were used in this case for public awareness to counter the “ danger of a single story.” But, the pillars of our justice system are on trial here by the court of public opinion. We hear there is a move to re-open the case. Time left is six months before the prescriptive period of 20 years set in.

The whole nation was glued to the big show of Congressman Manny Pacquio in the world boxing ring. Charice Pempengco under the initial boost by Oprah became one of the stars of Glee, an American television show.

Our economic refugees abroad continue to send dollars to families here and thus children are able to have university education. The four (4) billion conditional cash transfer to the poorest families sounds promising given that it will be presided over by our dear Dinky Soliman, a colleague in PILIPINA, the Filipino national feminist movement. We have faith in the peace process as we have faith in our Ging Deles, another PILIPINA founder, and Dean Marvic in much the same way that we have faith in the negotiators on the MILF side.

So, happy holidays to all. Let me repost my signature Christmas wish : My wish is to be able to feel Christmas through the eyes and heart of the child in me and to believe in the magic of Christmas : faith in a Santa Claus from the heavens, giving gifts of love and all the works. Faith is a lot like love and hope and invoking that warms my heart !

For Women To Be Taken Seriously

How does one measure a decade of women’s work? That was the tone and more of the Kamindanawan 2010: The Mindanao Women’s Congress organized by Irene “Inday” Santiago of the Mindanao Commission on Women (MCW). That celebratory meeting was a fitting climax to end the year 2010 and an inspiration to begin the next years ahead. The next years, are particularly, the next five years ahead, since 2015 is the end of the UN Millennium Development Goals.

The MCW goal is for women to be taken seriously as we are capable of influencing changes in policy and public opinion on all issues. What are these issues? For Inday Santiago, these are “harnessing the collective energies and passion of women in Mindanao for good, for the much yearned for peace, for respite from poverty and want, for fair access to decision-making, nothing short of acceptance of a better world not for an amorphous “all” but for women, men, and children.”

During the evening socials by the poolside of the Waterfront Insular Hotel, I was asked by Ms. Marie Jeanne Javelosa, a museum curator, what the MCW achieved for almost a decade and right off as one of those who worked with the MCW during its big moments since the start, I sort of summarized these achievements into two main areas and these pertain to the economic, social and political initiatives and the social structures of human resources built around Mindanao which are to me very sustainable. Some of the social and political initiatives are the peace initiatives & these include, among many others, the Mothers for Peace campaign and the bringing of the women’s peace agenda to the negotiating table and the engagement with the various stakeholders and policymakers, both at the national and international,i.e. at the level of the UN and international community. The economic initiatives pertain to, among many others, such initiatives as “the campaign to stop the privatization of the Agus Pulangui hydro power complex, the facility that supplies more than 50 percent of the power in Mindanao. It was started by the Lanao Power Consumers Federation and adopted by many other groups including MCW.”

The social structures of human resources or the social capital that are spread geographically around Mindanao is about democratization of power at the community level. Up to almost a decade ago, there was no Mindanao wide structure of women and so this kind of initiative is very strategic in the scheme of things for development in Mindanao. These women from all over multicultural Mindanao who have their own local groups are the bearers of both old and new traditions that which promote human rights as opposed to discrimination, inequality, violence, war and all things we want to change. In short, we have a human right to development as enshrined in a UN declaration. And so, it is fitting that the MCW meeting was held to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the UN – sponsored Human Rights Day.

Not only that these social infrastructure of human resources are in place, but most importantly, a successor generation is in place, as well. Inday Santiago, our leader and mentor is stepping down as the political head of MCW but staying on as “Chair Emerita” And taking over the reins is Ms Margie Moran Floirendo, as Chair of the Board of Trustees. As Inday ( as we fondly call her) steps down, she thanks her executive team led by her deputy and former Congresswoman Patricia Sarenas.

For the next five years, the tasks are clear and, among others, these are to monitor and develop indicators - in partnership with government and the business community - towards the achievement of the eight (8) UN Millennium Development Goals: eradication of extreme poverty & hunger, achievement of universal primary education, promotion of gender equality & empowerment of women, reduction of child mortality, improvement of maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, & other diseases, environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development.

So, I say to myself, life is great as we all look forward to the challenges of the next five years.

State Secrets in the Wake of Wikileaks

This is a very delicate issue and one that caught the world and the international community off guard. Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, a non profit website, caused the release and publication of tons of classified cables of the United States state department. The scale and scope of state secrets which are out in the open from about 250,000 documents are massive and involve various embassies from around the world. 

Already, citizen journalists and the press have many monickers for Julian Assange : an internet activist, an anarchist, a high tech terrorist, or an advocate of transparency and truth. A warrant of arrest for sexual charges has been issued against Julian Assange by Sweden a day after the publication of the classified information.

The kind of data that are out in the open are the stuff of foreign policy experts and probably also by journalists who have been keen on geopolitics and international affairs. It has been reported that the classified data are raw as published by Wikileaks and without analysis and with no particular stories. Having worked with the military establishment in my younger days, I kind of understand the importance of classified data for security reasons and negotiations and national interests. 

Before our privacy was invaded by the almighty electronic age, we had such a thing as confidential information. In legal parlance, we called these privileged communications and no court of law can compel us to divulge information without our consent. Examples of these are the communication between husband and wife, between lawyers and clients, between doctors and patients, between priests and confessing laity, and communications by public officials in the course of duty when the public interests are compromised.

The art of geopolitics and foreign policy have always been governed by diplomacy and state self interests. To arrive at a foreign policy or public policy, the homework and preparation of diplomats consist of intelligence gathering. It is said that the consultative processes, the diplomatic overtures and being sociable at official functions are only part of the work. A great amount of truth telling to home countries and confidentiality processes and tasks are needed to make our world secure and safe.

Anyway, as initially reported, some examples of confidential information (some of these are actually public knowledge) that have been highlighted in the publication by Wikileaks are about countries which have nuclear power and the fear of neighboring states which have enlisted help to neutralize these nuclear powers, countries funding rebels and terrorists, list of important installations in various sites around the world, etc.

Certainly, our world is drastically changed by this incident and there are many lessons learned from this mess. This incident dramatizes a gap in foreign policy. One major damage, according to a pundit, is the loss of confidentiality needed to conduct foreign affairs.

 How do we handle TMI? (Too Much Information) Is there too much sharing of confidential information in unsecured communication technology? When we hold vital information, we should make sure to protect lives and our sources. Confidential information should lead to world peace instead of world war.

In the future, foreign policy experts will be very careful about what kind of information about a country or its public officials will be sent through the cables. Most of all, amendments of laws to address confidentiality and foreign policy are very much indicated. In sociology, this is cultural lag. Our material diplomatic practices and ways of doing things are not at pace with information technology and secured communication. We have as yet to build rules around geopolitics and information technology.

 There is so much catching up to do in terms of laws, policies to protect the lives of those heroes in the frontlines of diplomacy who are making our world safe; and as well, there is catching up to do with penal sanctions for violations of privacy, privileged communication and state security. And all these must be interfaced and balanced with our freedom of expression and our right to information.

On Writing ( Part 2 )

Mi unica hija is poised to go into serious writing and so I am passing on some tools of the trade like I am sharing a simple gift to my beloved scion.
For some parts of the weekend, I had to find time to go back to reading my favorite great writers.
I have focused on Stephen King and his memoirs of the craft and so this sharing is also inspired by his experience.

On top of our writing kit is mastery of language: wide vocabulary and correct grammar.
This is the reason why they say that you cannot be a writer if you are not a voracious reader.
Grammar is, of course, learned like anything.
It is said that to write we start with writing one true sentence.
And a sentence is composed of the subject noun and the predicate verb.
To be able to express what we mean, we group the sentences into a coherent paragraph.
We call this messaging as in text messaging. See, it is very simple, really.

I guess, the magic of writing is in the style. Style can be learned as well.
And again, that is why it is best to read and read or go to school for it.
I like the style of Ernest Hemingway.
There is brilliance in his simple sentences.
Of contemporary writers and political pundits in the Philippines, we see original and refreshing styles in the writings of Marites Danguilan Vitug, Conrado de Quiros, Rina Jimenez- David and Randy David.

We write what we know. In this sense, writing is authoritative.
I am able to write about issues and concerns of women because I have spent half my life working with women.
I am able to pepper my writing with sociology and law because I went to various universities for it, here and abroad.
But, I am much pleased that we have developed a technology to make possible citizen journalism through social media ( Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc).
This has really democratized communication for everyone. As well, we have developed Knowledge Management (KM) as a scientific tool for communication and making information useful.

Is there money in writing? Yes and No.
There is money of course, if you get to be like J.K.Rowling of the Harry Potter fame or Stephen King or John Grisham or Thomas Harris or Philip Roth or any one of the bestsellers.
Our local daily papers have been thriving more on advertising placements and if the circulation is not that wide, there is not much income here.
And so, for columnists, writing will be more like a vocation or a mission.
Therefore, marketing is crucial for a newspaper to survive.

For example, in most universities, I find only one copy each of the local dailies for hundreds of students who are paying for library products and services.
Universities have more than one library so these schools should have several copies.
One of my banks has cut costs by unsubscribing from a local newspaper subscription.
I found the decision pathetic and I do not wish to be in account with a bank that is not interested in the local current daily composition so I closed my account there, among other reasons.

We have just finished writing the draft of an 80 page or so Guidebook on the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for Shari’a court judges.

To be able to write it, we had to study this United Nations convention by heart and we had to travel all over Mindanao and talk to many women and men plus some experts as part of the research and collection of data.

This kind of writing can be categorized under technical writing for a specific audience.
Still, making the writing interesting to capture the attention of the readers is a constant challenge.
 
The challenge was to capture into words or prose significant human experiences and material cultural practices and emotions in a distinctive style.
In this sense, one must have the inclination or interest to listen to stories of women and men from all kinds of persuasions and political affiliations and social classes.
Most important, one must like the topic or theme because the gestation and composition could be long and drawn out across time.

Writing is an art through prose or magical language; a distillation of our thoughts through words and a representation of reality as we perceive it.
But, I believe that some are really gifted with a love for words more than the others.
For these people, the development of this craft is fun and free and by choice.

A Pause On My Birthday

I kind of pause a bit every year around this time in November because I turn one year older and because it is the thanksgiving season. So, let me share at random my current stream of consciousness. On a personal note, I have my share of angst in life and always there are reminders around me. The dreams that turned out to be elusive, personal problems and the problems of the world that in my social development work feels like I carry the weight on my shoulders.

So, I have developed a method of reciting a mantra to tell myself that I cannot have everything and that our collective work is hopefully always to make things better. And, yes, across the years, I find that things are different and so much better now. One example is that technology makes life handy and fun. The one technology that reminded me that I am one year older is Facebook. This is a wonderful medium and indeed we are now a global village.

I went to a meeting in Manila last week and it was a meeting of a development law group ( Alternative Law Groups) that I have not been to for a while now. I was much pleased to realize that our group has consciously developed a successor generation: the best and the brightest lawyers and development practitioners who are choosing to work for the poor and the oppressed instead of for the rich and powerful. But, I am also wary that the recent economic crisis is affecting the various development funding windows in a precarious way. I hope that this will not make social development work unattractive to the younger generation as a career track.

Ideally, it is about the challenge of tapping the centers of wealth and power towards social responsibility and the promotion of social justice. The rule of thumb here is the biblical saying “ Ask and it shall be given.”

We were discussing the national situation at this juncture in time and the twin issues that are plaguing us : corruption and poverty. The variation of the themes in a nutshell as shared by Representative Walden Bello to our group are on poverty reduction through conditional cash transfer (CCT), the likelihood that the reproductive health bill will be passed as a law, that there should be a reversal of trade liberalization which is the cause of our current economic crisis, the absence of a real opposition in the House of Congress because the 30 representatives in the lower house are headed by Rep Gloria Arroyo, our eight ( 8) million Filipino economic refugees spread around the world, and the Balay vs Samar political factions in the P-Noy cabinet which are personality driven and which are in a kind of tug of war in terms of programs and policies in government. ( read : Balay is the Roxas- Araneta home in Cubao & so it is the Liberal Party & more ; & the Samar group is the group which held office during the campaign period in Samar Avenue in Quezon City and is the other set of power holders in the P-Noy team)

To set the anti-corruption agenda in motion, the newly created structure is the Truth Commission. I am filled with hope that this will work out because some of the personalities that are here are our friends who came from the social development circle. The other structure is, of course, the track of impeaching our Ombudsman and the Akbayan Party List is very much into this track.

The latest on poverty reduction is the billions worth of conditional cash transfer which has recently been practiced in other jurisdictions like in Mexico, Brazil and Bangladesh. It is such a resounding success in Brazil. Anyway, this methodology is about giving cash to the poorest provided they send their children to school and that they visit health clinics and this project is being presided over by our Department of Social Welfare & Development (DSWD). Our legislators are examining the capacity of the DSWD as a bureaucracy to deliver this huge four (4) billion pesos worth CCT program. This CCT transfer program is related to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG). My personal take is that, perhaps, the impact of CCT will take time. There was a sense in our development law group that asset reforms like agrarian reform, modernization of agriculture, taxation, moratorium on debt repayment should also be pursued more vigorously towards real reduction of so much social inequality.

I now realize that my life is so very much intertwined with my work that I find very meaningful in the larger scheme of things in this world. And that is a good reason to celebrate my birthday.

Wall Street : Money Never Sleeps

Wall Street : Money Never Sleeps




This is the first movie I saw on the big screen this year so I might as well revisit it with you.

As a sequel of the first 1987 Wall Street movie and made relevant with a poetic treatise of the real 2008 financial crisis, this film is worth writing about.

Manhattan is postcard pretty as ever as the financial center of the universe.

The screenplay is made familiar by a show of the state of the art of the financial markets and some of our current concerns such as energy requirements of the future and progressive non profit websites that are tools to change the world for the better for our children and the next generations.

This Oliver Stone ( 1987 Wall Street JFK & Nixon fame ) film opens with Gordon Gekko ( Michael Douglas) being released after eight years in jail for financial fraud, which as the character explains later in the film, is actually a much larger crime than the insider trading crime, the initial transgression that we saw at the end of the first Wall Street film.

After seven years we find Gekko a star again as the author of a best seller book : Is Greed Good?

But, the angst of the life of Gekko is mostly about his estrangement with Winnie ( Carey Mulligan), his daughter who blogs in a non profit website, that started to get 50,000 hits or website visits per day and ultimately got 200,000 hits per day when indications for market corrections were published.

The daughter blames the absentee Gekko in jail for all the tragic events in their dysfunctional post modern family : a brother who died due to drug overdose and a mother who went mad.

The partner of Winnie is Jake Moore ( Shia LaBeouf) an energy investment expert working in Wall Street who thinks that energy fusion using water, through hydrogen fusion, is the next “bubble” that will solve our energy problems for the next generations.

The poetic screenplay ( Allan Loeb & Stephen Schiff ) is actually narrated from the point of view of Jake, a protégé of Lou ( Frank Langella of Nixon fame), who commits suicide after his financial investment bank falls. With the help of Gekko, Jake finds out how and why the company of his mentor went bankrupt.

The next scenes are about the so called “ market corrections” in the financial meltdown that is ailing Wall Street. These corrections largely use the legal and justice system structures.

This film tries to explain in scenes, not unlike the television clips we saw in the real life 2008 financial crisis, what is wrong with our financial markets :people borrowing to the hilt, all of the profits coming from financial services such as trading, leveraging, hedge funding and some of these funds are used to finance industrial military weapons of mass destruction ( WMD) and that only about almost a hundred people in the world control these transactions.

That speculation is the mother of all evil.
Gekko describes the current Ninja generation as the generation with “no income, no job and no assets.” The solutions to all these in the words of Gekko are three words “Buy My Book” as the answers can be found in his best selling book.

Gekko, while introspecting in jail felt that he was the lone sane man inside and everyone and all out of prison were crazy.

The conflict in the movie is the struggle of Jake to make the corrections in the cancerous financial market mess, not unlike the real life 2008 financial mess that as we saw was bailed out by the United States treasury in what was called the billions worth “stimulus package.”

The concept of “ moral hazard” is explained: “someone gets your money and that someone is not responsible for it.”
The villain in Bretton James ( Josh Brolin) is exposed; the wall street crook was found committing securities fraud : trading for his own account and betting against the market he was making.

One of the scenes described by A.O. Scott in the New York Times movie review, that also caught my fancy was the fundraiser soiree event where one finds the beautiful people of Manhattan dressed in designer clothes and the camera of Rodrigo Prieto, director of photography, zoomed in on the bulky & beautiful earrings of the women in gorgeous gowns.

 It was such an ostentatious display of wealth for charity.

The beauty and the beast that is Manhattan & Wall Street as further described
by A.O. Scott is the intersection of “ material excess…. with genuine beauty”
and that “ what went wrong” in the financial center can be explained in two words: “ human nature.”   

KTV : The Demystification of the Crime of Rape

Where do we go to when our own judiciary and courts of justice of our own country discriminate against us? Karen Tayag Vertido (KTV) has the answer for us and for this she spent fourteen long years of her life fighting for her rights that now benefit all of women in this country and the world. Karen, then Executive Director of the Davao Chamber of Commerce & Industry, in her 2007 communication to the U.N Cedaw Committee said that in 1996, she was brought to a motel against her will and raped by a former political head of the same organization she was working for. The Davao community supported her and launched the “Justice for Karen Movement.” Then, after eight years of court trial, the judge acquitted the defendant.

The way to go for Karen, who was counseled by women leaders, particularly, Atty Evalyn Ursua, was to write the United Nations Cedaw Committee in 2007 as a victim of discrimination as defined in the CEDAW.

The law invoked is the Optional Protocol to Cedaw which is a separate treaty to which the Philippines is a signatory and it allows women who have been denied access to justice at the national level to have their claims reviewed at the international level.

The United Nations Cedaw Committee composed of international experts, in their decision or Views promulgated that our country violated the rights of Karen in the local court decision acquitting the defendant. The Cedaw Committee, in affirming the story of Karen in her communication to this U.N body, effectively sets new standards on how the world should view and address the crime of rape and as well, demystifies the following fallacies on rape :

Fallacy One : Victim must always try to escape the rapist during rape.
Truth : There is no standard victim reaction to rape.
Fallacy Two : Rape by intimidation cannot be committed against
women who are not timid.
Truth : The character of the victim is not an element of the crime of rape.
Fallacy Three : In rape by threat, there must be clear evidence of
direct threat.
Truth : The essential element of rape is lack of consent and not the
element of force.
Fallacy Four : If you are a friend of the victim, you cannot be raped ;
Or that if you are friends, the rape is consensual.
Truth : A relationship is not proof of the consent of the victim of rape.
Fallacy Five : There is a standard of “normal” or “natural”
behaviour on rape victims.
Truth : The court should not discriminate against those who do not
conform to these standards.
Fallacy Six : If rape has reached the moment of ejaculation, there was
no resistance.
Truth : Ejaculation is not an element of the crime of rape.
Fallacy Seven : A senior citizen is not capable of rape.
Truth : Sexual prowess is not an element of rape otherwise rape
committed by old men go unpunished.

This United Nations body found that Karen was discriminated against and recommends that the Philippines pay Karen a financial compensation for all the social harm that she suffered in the way our judicial system has handled her case. The Cedaw Committee recommends that the Philippines should develop a sexuality and violence education training program for judges and prosecutors in the Philippines. To Congress, the Cedaw Committee recommends that the laws against rape in our country be reviewed and that our country allocate enough funds for enforcement.

This Cedaw Committee view is now part of a human rights standard that the entire world can emulate and the Philippines is given within six months to turn in a written response and to provide the Committee with an update on its action taken and more importantly to publish this U.N. Cedaw View and translate it to our various local lingua francas.