Brillante's Lola Grandslam Triumph

“Lola” won three awards in the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival held in Spain Saturday (Madrid time).
It won the Lady Harmiguada de Oro or Grand Prize, Best Cinematography for Odyssey Flores and Best Actress for lead stars Anita Linda and Rustica Carpio.
In 2006, Auraeus Solito’s “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” won the top prize in the Gran Canaria fest.
In 2008, Mendoza won the Signis Award in the Gran Canaria fest for “Foster Child.”
“Lola” earlier won the top prizes in the Dubai and Miami film fests.
“Lola” is also competing in the Fribourg fest in Switzerland and the Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong this weekend.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
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Biazon Protest of Banning in Villar's Mall

The orange camp apparently sees red in the color yellow.
Sen. Rodolfo Biazon found out Saturday that the color yellow of his presidential candidate, Liberal Party standard-bearer Sen. Benigno "Noynoy’’ Aquino was not welcome in a mall owned by Nacionalista Party standard-bearer Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. in his hometown of Muntinlupa City.
An irked Biazon said that personnel of Metropolis, a mall owned by Villar, had not only taken down a yellow streamer of Aquino which his camp had put up there but also kicked out altogether his party from the premises.
But more galling for Biazon was that mall personnel also took down yellow ribbons and flowers adorning the space of his next-door neighbor there and then replaced them with decorations in the color orange—Villar’s campaign color.
"They came... like the Gestapo,’’ said Biazon, a former armed forces chief of staff, in reference to the term feared secret service of Adolf Hitler, the German behind the Second World War.
In a phone interview, Biazon said his staff had rented space on the fourth floor of the mall and since last week had already held three voter education and training sessions for his poll watchers.
But on Saturday, the training program did not push through after mall personnel "kicked us out’’ from the premises, according to the senator.
He said the decision of mall personnel to cancel their rental of the space came after they took down the yellow streamer bearing the immages of Aquino and his running mate Sen. Mar Roxas, which his staff had put up.
"We paid for the place. They have no business to do that,’’ said Biazon, adding that he planned to "take action’’ but would first consult his son, senatorial candidate Rep. Ruffy Biazon.
But, apparently, Biazon’s space was not only the object of the mall’s attention.
The senator said that earlier on Saturday, he was a guest speaker at the graduation rites for children of five Muntinlupa day care centers that was held just next door to the space occupied by his office in the same mall.
Before he arrived to deliver a speech, Biazon said day care center officials were aghast when mall personnel came in and suddenly took down all yellow ribbons and flowers adorning the stage.
"And to think there were other decorations there in green and blue,’’ he said.
Mall personnel later replaced the decorations with those in orange color, according to Biazon.
He said he pitied the teachers who were just trying to make the place special for the kids.
"They’re acting as if the owner is the President of the republic,’’ scoffed Biazon, saying that even if Villar was president, his men "have no right to do that.’’
The Inquirer was still trying to get a comment from the Villar camp Saturday evening.


David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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Boyscout Coverup on Sex Abuse

The Boy Scouts of America has long kept an extensive archive of secret documents that chronicle the sexual abuse of young boys by Scout leaders over the years.
The "perversion files," a nickname the Boy Scouts are said to have used for the documents, have rarely been seen by the public, but that could all change in the coming weeks in an Oregon courtroom.
The lawyer for a man who was molested in the 1980s by a Scout leader has obtained about 1,000 Boy Scouts sex files and is expected to release some of them at a trial that began Wednesday. The lawyer says the files show how the Boy Scouts have covered up abuse for decades.
The trial is significant because the files could offer a rare window into how the Boy Scouts have responded to sex abuse by Scout leaders. The only other time the documents are believed to have been presented at a trial was in the 1980s in Virginia.
At the start of the Oregon trial, attorney Kelly Clark recited the Boy Scout oath and the promise to obey Scout law to be "trustworthy." Then he presented six boxes of documents that he said will show "how the Boy Scouts of America broke that oath."
He held up file folder after file folder he said contained reports of abuse from around the country, telling the jury the efforts to keep them secret may have actually set back efforts to prevent child abuse nationally.
"The Boy Scouts of America ignored clear warning signs that Boy Scouts were being abused," Clark said.
Charles Smith, attorney for the national Boy Scouts, said in his own opening statement the files were kept under wraps because they "were replete with confidential information."
Smith told the jury the files helped national scouting leaders weed out sex offenders, especially repeat offenders who may have changed names or moved in order to join another local scouting organization.
"They were trying to do the right thing by trying to track these folks," Smith said.
Clark is seeking $14 million in damages on behalf of a 37-year-old man who was sexually molested in the early 1980s in Portland by an assistant Scoutmaster, Timur Dykes.
Clark said the victim suffered mental health problems, bad grades in school, drug use, anxiety, difficulty maintaining relationships and lost several jobs over the years because of the abuse.
Dykes was convicted three times between 1983 and 1994 of sexually abusing boys, most of them Scouts.
Although there have been dozens of lawsuits against the organization over sex abuse allegations, judges for the most part have either denied requests for the files or the lawsuits have been settled before they went to trial.
The Boy Scouts had fought to keep the files being used in the Portland trial confidential. But they lost a pretrial legal battle when the Oregon Supreme Court rejected their argument that opening the files could damage the lives and reputations of people not a party to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because the Mormons acted as a charter organization, or sponsor, for the local Boy Scouts troop that included the victim. But the church has settled its portion of the case.
The Portland trial comes as the Boy Scouts are marking their 100th anniversary.
"They spent a century building the Boy Scout brand," said Patrick Boyle, author of a book about sex abuse in the Boy Scouts. "It's one of the most respected organizations in the world."
The trial "can only erode what they have been doing for 100 years," he said.
The Portland case centers on whether the Boy Scouts of America did enough to protect boys from Dykes.
The Mormon bishop who also served as head of the Scout troop, Gordon McEwen, confronted Dykes after receiving a report of abuse by the mother of one boy in the troop in January 1983.
In a video deposition played for the jury, the bishop said Dykes admitted abusing 17 boys.
But McEwen said he contacted the parents of all 17 boys and the boys themselves, and none would confirm any abuse.
Dykes was arrested in 1983 and pleaded guilty to attempted sexual abuse, received probation and was ordered to stay away from children.
Clark told the jury Dykes continued with his scouting activities until he was arrested in July 1984 during a routine traffic stop while he was driving a van full of Scouts on a camping trip.
A spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America at its headquarters in Irving, Texas, said in a statement the organization cannot comment on details of the case. But it has worked hard on awareness and prevention efforts, including background checks.
"Unfortunately, child abuse is a societal problem and there is no fail-safe method for screening out abusers," Deron Smith said.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
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Killings Highlights Indonesian Child Abuse

 When a seemingly kind street vendor confessed to the sexual abuse and murders of 14 boys, it was a story that was both shocking--and familiar.
Indonesians drew parallels to another Jakarta man, Robot Gedek, who died of a heart attack in 2007 while on death row for raping and killing 12 boys in the mid-1990s.
In both cases, most of the victims were homeless. The serial killings highlight what activists say is a widespread and largely ignored problem: the rampant sex abuse of poor children in this Southeast Asian nation.
The vendor pushed a cart through the bustling streets of Jakarta, the capital, selling snacks, drinks and cigarettes. He went by one name, Baikuni, and street kids called him "Babe" (pronounced bar-bay), an affectionate term for "Dad."
The 48-year-old man was known for having a soft heart for street kids, many of whom he took home and gave temporary shelter, apparently without molesting them.
Others he strangled, sometimes before and sometimes after sodomizing them, he told police.
Baikuni was arrested in his rented house in January, days after the severed head and several body parts of 9-year-old Ardiansyah were found in a black plastic bag in a nearby river.
In police custody, he confessed to murdering 14 boys, aged 6 to 12, from 1995 to Jan. 8 of this year.
"In the beginning, he just lured them to his home, sodomized them, then dumped the bodies," police investigator Lt. Col. Nico Afinta said.
Later, starting in 2007, he decapitated and mutilated his victims after strangling them with rope.
His last victim was a neighbor. Ardiansyah's mother knew her son had been spending time at Baikuni's house in recent months and immediately suspected him.
"Why was Babe caught? Because he violated his own procedure of luring victims who were strangers from outside his neighborhood," a psychologist who questioned Baikuni in prison, Sarlito Wirawan Sarwono, told reporters.
In an unexplained twist, Baikuni also may have been a witness in the case against Gedek, though police and Baikuni's lawyers deny that.
Gedek's former lawyer, Febri Irmansyah, told reporters that he believes Baikuni testified under another name in 1997, telling a court that he saw Gedek carry a young victim into bushes in central Jakarta in 1995.
Police say Baikuni wasn't a witness.
Baikuni did know Gedek, a homeless man who eked out a living by selling plastic bottles for recycling. But one of Baikuni's lawyers, Haposan Nainggolan, said his client knew Gedek only as two men who worked the same streets would.
Seto Mulyaqdi, chairman of the independent National Commission on Child Protection, said that reports of sexual abuse and missing children suggest there are more victims of Baikuni and other killers, both in Jakarta and the cities of Makassar and Medan.
"I think there are more people like Babe. This is the tip of an iceberg," he said.
Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian adviser to New York-based Human Rights Watch, said he believes most street kids have been sexually abused, based on his interviews with children.
"When you are seven or eight, you are already being abused. It's a big problem in a place as crowded as Java," he said, referring to Indonesia's main island, where most of the nation's 235 million people live.
Frans Hendra Winarta, a prominent Jakarta trial lawyer who is chairman of the Indonesian Advocates Association, said the current police priority is tackling corruption, not child abuse or murder.
Police lack the money and resources to tackle all the nation's crime, he said, adding that victims who are wealthy enough to pay for a police investigation, including "bonuses" for investigators, could get their crimes investigated.
"Whether you're rich or poor, you have to pay the police, otherwise they won't notice you," Winarta said. "That's the problem with this country."

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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Another Colombian Journalist Killed

 The killing of a veteran radio reporter by a motorcycle gunman in a northwestern state capital reignited concerns yesterday about the safety of journalists in Colombia.
Clodomiro Castilla, a reporter and announcer at La Voz de Monteria radio, was gunned down on his front porch Friday night, said Jaime Cuervo, a judicial investigator in Cordoba state.
Castilla, a 50-year-old father of four, had reported on far-right drug-funded militias known as paramilitaries and their friendly ties to the area's business elite. Cordoba has long been a paramilitary stronghold.
Police had no immediate suspects in the killing and offered a $26,000 reward for leads. Castilla's employer said he had received threats and was assigned bodyguards for two years until last year.
Journalists once were frequent targets in Colombia, where the cocaine trade exacerbates a half-century civil conflict in which the paramilitaries arose to counter kidnapping and extortion by leftist rebels.
 Killings have recently declined, though many journalists say that has coincided with significant self-censorship.
Castilla was the second journalist killed since the start of 2009 — with none killed the previous year, according to the Colombian Foundation for the Freedom of Press.
President Alvaro Uribe, who owns a ranch just outside Monteria, expressed concern in a nationally televised speech.
"We have made every effort to stop the threat of assassinations against journalists," he said. "Just when we thought we had overcome the tragic situation, more killings of journalists appear."
Castilla was known for his reports on the activities of Salvatore Mancuso, a local paramilitary boss extradited in 2008 to the United States on drug-trafficking charges, and on Mancuso's ties to powerful business interests in the region, said Rafael Gomez, owner and director of La Voz de Monteria.
Gomez's radio station is a rarity in Monteria: a media outlet unafraid to report in depth on such links.
"We are in the worst location in Colombia," Gomez said. "Nobody dares to say anything. We are the only ones."

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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