Heaven forbid

sept 8

The Tagum City Government must let its axe fall now so that, proverbially and immediately, heads will roll down from whoever have condemned the life and future of a young coed in one of the colleges in Tagum City already to perdition and put the honor of her family and relatives in the deep, dark quagmire.

In this video sex scandal, that strikes much the hearts and minds of foremost the parents, especially the mothers who nourished, cared and protected their daughters while they were still on the wombs, “Baby”, the pretty young coed was first victimized by a foreigner chatmate-friend usernamed “Cled”, and doubly victimized by the video taking criminal/s.

We pity “Baby” so much for expressing uncensored and fetish innocence on the command and at the pleasure of a prodding foreigner boyfriend, who has ostensibly lured the pretty coed who is so innocent about the stealth and crimes wrecking havoc and unbridled against privacy, life and future in the cyberspace. Truly, in the age of the Internet we’re in already in a Naked Society that our privacies can just be intruded by use of high technologies at the command of the criminal types of techies, programmers, hackers and their funders.

We are most interested to hear on whether those among the internet cafes in the city have installed this so-called remote access applications that can espy on the activities of their paying users. The charge that Tagum sex video scandal was recorded inside one of the internet cafes in the city using this kind of software is serious and is not only giving mischief to the ones who pay for their hourly rates but also violating the city’s ordinance on internet café regulation as well as laws protecting privacy and the rights of women.

We already heard of the statement of the Internet Café Association of Tagum (ICAT), but while condemning the incident is one and belittling it as an isolated incident is another, but these could not compensate for crime that reaches the scale of the heinous in secretly recording a stripping innocent one, who is countryman of their own, before a sex-maniac foreigner knowing that merely possessing a video of it is already risking the life and future of a young Filipina given the implications of its potential spread to cellphone and cyberspace technologies.

We are not yet accusing here as city authorities are still closing in on for their probe, but most probably the sex video clip of “Baby” was recorded in one of the internet cafes in the city by someone, given that café internet themselves have put up firewalls and deep freeze technologies that blocks and kills viruses, hackers and remote access intruders.

We further say to tell it to the marines the call to stop the further the spread of Tagum sex video as internet café owners themselves pretty know well that a sex video clip once this is uploaded and shared to pornographic sites owned by who else but the satanic maniacs it sticks there til eternity. In this Internet era without bounds and barriers, an upload of one triggers millions of downloads worldwide and it spreads in unknown scale and intensity to thousands and millions of cellphones. While there’s yet no international protocol that sanctions for deletion of files in an Internet populated by billions of websites, against these high technologies, “Baby” is totally helpless in preventing her own sex video from further spreading.

The city government has its own Information Technology department as well as the provincial government can beef up its own IT people to immediately deploy now, based on the city ordinance, to conduct inspection of all the computers in all internet cafes in the city to find out whether remote access applications have been installed, and trace its marks in program files, cookies and logs while from among them they could not yet reformat  and re-install programs in the hard disks of their computers.

The monitors and the police on the other hand should look for the similarities of the settings in the internet cafes as to the physical leads shown in the cubicle used by “Baby”.

Councilor Joey Millan has a point in saying that the city council needs to re-visit the city ordinance on internet café regulation for an amendment.

These and many more, as we don’t want to see that in one day it’s already our own very own daughters that the world in lust have been feasting on til eternity. Heavens forbid. (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News) http://ruralurbanews.blogspot.com

Filed under: tagum councilors, tagum sex scandal, tagum sp, um tagum sex scandal, um sex scandal, um tagum scandal

Tagum by the night

BLOGISTA

By Cha Monforte

 As early a little past the twilight each day, bar girls, commonly known as GROs, fresh from bath and clad in sexy attires, can already be seen sitting in a row of chairs in that section of street leading to the Totit-market-slaughterhouse complex. Alas, gising na ang Tagum by the night.

I’m not so really a night owl. I still sport a cellphone about the age of 5110, and I couldn’t yet do a high-tech editor writing online in airconditioned malls or in posh coffee bars with WIFI. Often rice drowns out my dream of buying a laptop. It’s crisis time, then and now.  But I got few friends who give me occasional peeks and perks on new nighttime goings on as they love wine, women and music. Well, I’m going towards the mid 40s, and I often drowse off now in the midst of unrepentant Red Horse or San Mig beer guzzlers. It’s unlike before the 80s and 90s that I could still manage to stagger to get home many cracks of dawn. Those were venturesome youthful days to cherish anyway. Besides the fading youthful vigor, it’s also painful to the pocket to squander meager money earned hard for a living in order to continue writing. To live to write, not the other way around. I’m no sour gripe. 

Such girlie spectacle in the frontage of videoke bars that dotted here and there in the city’s undeclared red light district around the Totit complex is saying that Tagum true to its being a magnetic sub-regional service center is just maintaining the status quo of being the usual nighttime R & R hub of the neighboring municipalities. When money flows in from the youths and infidel husbands from neighboring towns and from militarymen from camps stationed somewhere to the city’s red light district including its flesh trade, the city cashes in on from the “night investors” in effect. They also sustain a living and spark a multiplier for Tagum’s nighttime economy.

By the peaceful vivacity of Tagum’s nighttime I saw for once in recent booze that left me sober for drowsing off enough, Councilor Mylene Baura’s standupper in the City Council about gang wars last week would seem to be mythical issue bordering on unfounded xenophobia on the issue she unduly raised. She could have done more homework to belabor an A-1 info. As also a Solo Maria in Tagum SP like BM Janet Gavina of DavNor SP, perhaps Baura could hammer more meat in privilege speeches on other glaring issues such as the monitoring and compliance on hygiene rules for the CSWs (commercial sex workers), the soft, respectable DSWD and NGO parlance for the prostis and buntogs, or those in in the world’s oldest profession quenching the thirst for lust of men.

But then, she could also rile on the hideous character of the city’s flesh trade, which could be denied of since it is discreet, negotiations-based and a sideline business among GROs that opens up as soon as the owners close their girlie videoke bars past the midnight.

There’s also this unwanted location of internet cafes just adjacent to the girlie bars. Internet cafes which have often the youths and schoolchildren as customers should never be located adjacent or proximate to the bars as they are afforded a good view of the allure, vices and worldly temptations put up by those paying for the sin taxes.

Concerned students would go to 24-hour internet cafes up until around 10 PM for a mix of web research for tomorrow’s assignment, surf, chat or play. Besides that the innocent youths are subject of the bad influence casts by the sight, they are also at risk of the maoys, blankos and lokos from those who have already much of the drink and merrymaking.

But then the councilor can also hit on the breast exposures that happened on webcam inside semi-enclosed cubicles of an internet café just beside a girlie bar in a city. Well, a still sober friend of mine last week chanced one, looking like a coed, chatting with, cajoling a foreigner, perhaps not the usual horny Indian. But maybe she did only bare above her waist so she could run to the nearest 24-hour Western Union outlet. But this is already besides the point, and would need another essay. (For online edition, visit my blog at: http://cha4t.wordpress.com)

 

Filed under: tagum hotels & bars, tagum sp, comval sex scandal, tagum, tagum city, tagum sex scandal, tagum videoke bars

Congressional wannabes not to sit back and relax

If the charter change (Cha-Cha) via the constituent assembly (Con-Ass) will finally fly on the wings of federalism, on the assumption that the businessmen, civil society groups and Catholic bishops, and various opposition groups as well as the 2010 presidentiables from the Senate could not put up a united front like what they had made for several times during the time of Ramos, Erap and Gloria, chances are it could throw a monkey wrench to the political ambitions of front-running politicians in both Davao del Norte and Compostela Valley.

On the assumption that Cha-Cha via the Con-Ass is made, adding one more term to the presently allowed three terms of a congressman, then both the third-termer DavNor 1^st District Cong. Arrel Olano and Comval 1^st District Cong. Manuel “Way Kurat” Zamora could still run for their last reelection. And since both of them belong to the Lakas party or the merged Lakas-Kampi party, by the equity of the incumbent principle, it’s they who would be bagging the standard bearer of the administration party. Such bodes ill to the ambitions of DavNor congressional wannabes. Likewise, Vice Governor Ramil Gentugaya and Boardmember Maricar Zamora-Apsay would have to stop their mutual back-biting and conveniently seek for their reelection. All’s well that ends well. 

But sadly or happily, the Ramil-Maricar silent positioning feud will continue. On the other hand, the eyes of a member of the divided politico-economic clan or of the DavNor vice governor, otherwise the one who kept on losing in elections out from his faded glory that came after his involvement in Piatco scandal or of the Dangpanan who never was,  will continue to be trained on what Olaño would be leaving, as from our vantage point it would be so hard these days of skyrocketing prices for the President to realize her pipedream of effecting a Cha-Cha without sparking a so noisy backlash and juggernaut of the opposition, not least the presidentiable senators who do not want an overstaying President blocking off also their pipedream of becoming the country’s next President.

We think this new Cha-Cha call is another charade flouted by the administration in accomplishing at least two purposes: showing its irritation to the snagging of the peace agreement by the fiat of Supreme Court’s action, and putting a new smokescreen to the obsession of the President Arroyo to reach the end of her term by 2010. At least a new breathing spell can consume again a lengthy period especially so that our district congressmen are expected to return to be with us again from the comforts of their Manila offices for the consultations on Cha-Cha via Con-Ass for federalism maybe this week or two weeks for now.

It would be bad for the congressional wannabes in DavNor and Comval to just sit back and relax in taking ride of this new Cha-Cha pretense. (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News)

Filed under: roger m sarmiento, tagum, tagum sp, way kurat, arrel olano, comval sex scandal, maricar apsay, ramil gentugaya, tagum sex scandal, way kurat zamora

NEWS: Tagum City council passes zero major ordinance in 1st year?

By Cha Monforte

july 21

The Tagum City Council appears to have not passed yet a single major ordinance as far as the City Hall’s well updated website at www.tagumcity.gov.ph shows.

In the link entitled Ordinance, the website has posts of 16 categories for the 34 ordinances dating back as far as year 1999 up to 2006.

Not a single ordinance dating 2007 has yet been posted in the website which could be credited to the present City Council, whose term started on the first official day of their work, which was July 1, 2007.

It appears that the posts in website link City Ordinances in the corner of Vice Mayor Allan Rellon are major legislations if not highlights in the row of categories showing the legislative accomplishments of the two previous City Councils, several members of whom are still currently serving their terms as second- or third-termers.

The major ordinances were categorized into business regulations., economic enterprises, education, environmental protection and ecology, finance, general administration, government administration, government programs, grant incentives, health and sanitation, housing and land use, peace and order and public safety, public works and infra, solid waster management program, taxation, and youth and sports.

Years 2001 and 2003 have no ordinance posted.

Year 2006 topped in the row with 11 major ordinances on or about the revised code of economic enterprises, prohibition of cutting of trees, shrubs in public roads, parks; defining quasi-judicial powers of the city council and rules in the administration of complaints against elective barangay officials; prevention and control of avian influenza, regulation of videoke machines, wearing of crash helmets of drivers and riders of single motorcycles; guidelines in the City Homes, comprehensive solid waste management, regulation on garbage control, collection and disposal; and the revision of schedule of market values of real properties.

The Tagum City official website is awesomely beautiful with the architectural drawing of the planned new city hall flushed up at the homepage. On computer older than the Pentium 4 brand running online on minimum broadband speed, the webpage though unfolds and streams rather exceedingly slow due to the embedded flash video. Its news link is well updated though.

The city’s website on URL http://www.tagumcity.gov.ph was formally launched just last April 2. 2007 after a year planning and preparation, though the city’s informal website had then been in the Internet via free hosting under the URL http://tagum.50webs.com.

At its code source, it has a meta name author named Reynald S. Mendrico Jr, and a contact e-mail address, mwajubilo@gmail.com.

For the website development, at least a whooping P300,000 has already been invested by the City Government through a supplemental budget approved by the City Council headed by Vice Mayor Rellon.

In complying with the e-governance law, the website has already downloadable pdf files like the pro-forma papers such as bid forms and certificates required under the Government Procurement Reform Act (RA 9184).

In the website’s most recent Invitation to Bid, which was though posted only last June 30, was for the construction of the new City Hall building through the Development Bank of the Philippines loan financing targeted to be worth P72,952,960.20.

The downloaded Invitation to Bid informed the public of the July 3 deadline of the bids and July 14 notice of award. (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News) http://ruralurbanews.blogspot.com

Filed under: tagum sp, tagum officials, tagum sp