According to the Supreme Court, convicted rapist U.S. Army Marine Cpl. Daniel Smith should be jailed in a Philippine facility “agreed on by appropriate Philippines and United States authorities” after his conviction for raping a Filipina was sustained.

Recall that in late 2006 and early 2007, Smith was the subject of a diplomatic tug-of-war between Philippine judicial authorities and the U.S. over his detention in a local jail. Bowing to American pressure, he was subsequently handed over to embassy officials by the Arroyo government. He was detained in the U.S. embassy compound while his appeals were pending.

But the decision in the consolidated cases of “Suzette Nicolas y Sombilon (a.ka. “Nicole”) vs. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alberto Romulo et. al. (G.R. No. 175888), Jovito Salonga et. al. vs. L/Cpl. Daniel Smith et. al. (G.R. No. 176051) and BAYAN, GABRIELA et. al. vs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo et. al. (G.R. No. 176222)” has some parties in a snit, particlularly those who used the rape case as a vehicle for questioning the constitutionality of the Visiting Forces Agreement. Sorry guys, but the S.C., voting 9-4, says that the VFA is constitutional. In the words of the Court: “The Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States, entered into on February 10, 1998,is UPHELD as constitutional but the Romulo-Kenney Agreements of Dec. 19 and 22, 2006, are declared not in accordance with the VFA. ” The Romulo-Kenney agreements pertain to the transfer of Smith to the custody of U.S. authorities. Read the rest of this entry »

She never learns. President Gloria Arroyo flew all the way from the Middle East to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C. in hopes of getting some face time with President Barack Obama. In the most recent of a series of snubs from the U.S. President dating back to the presidential campaign, Obama did not even so much as smile her way. And Barack is nothing if not “inclusive”. It wasn’t as if she was inconspicuous, as GMA was in the company of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Read the rest of this entry »

Why do scams like the Ponzi schemes perpetrated by Bernard Madoff and Celso De Los Angeles’ Legacy Group happen with sickening regularity, particularly in the Philippines ? There are undoubtedly bad guys out there, pathological crooks who get their cash and kicks from ruining people’s lives by defrauding them. They are the financial equivalent of serial criminals, according to the New York Times in an article on Madoff, heartless killers who will cut your still-beating heart out and have it for breakfast:

“Some of the characteristics you see in psychopaths are lying, manipulation, the ability to deceive, feelings of grandiosity and callousness toward their victims,” says Gregg O. McCrary, a former special agent with the F.B.I. who spent years constructing criminal behavioral profiles.

Mr. McCrary xxx says Mr. Madoff appears to share many of the destructive traits typically seen in a psychopath. That is why, he says, so many who came into contact with Mr. Madoff have been left reeling and in confusion about his motives.

“People like him become sort of like chameleons. They are very good at impression management,” Mr. McCrary says.

But other factors are at play. Like all predators, they actively seek their prey. The sad thing is that their victims oftentimes come to them, like bugs to a Venus fly trap. Read the rest of this entry »

Bernard Madoff from cityfile.com

Celso De Los Angeles from the website of Sto. Domingo, Albay.

I haven’t blogged in almost two weeks and I miss it. Unfortunately, the demands of adjusting to a new work environment has kept me busy and too mentally exhausted to keep up with the news. I literally haven’t seen a weekday sunset for the past month.

In an effort to catch up, I checked out Manolo Quezon’s blog. The shock of seeing all the crisis situations which unfolded over the past week or so was like a kick in the balls. Between the tanking economy and retrenched jobs, to a spate of bank failures, the perennial problem of corruption in high places, to the specter of narcopolitics, my anxiety level shot through the roof. I wanted to draw the blinds and crawl back to my La-Z-Boy. I get the feeling that the worst is yet to come.

As we lurch from one economic catastrophe to another, we can take cold comfort in the fact that financial scams are not unique to us. In terms of scope, nothing can beat the con perpetuated by Bernard Madoff, until recently a lion in Wall Street, who turned out to be a rat. With apologies to the intrepid New York City rats. In yet another variation on the time-worn Ponzi scheme, Madoff scammed an estimated U.S.$ 50 billion from various institutional and individual investors spanning the globe. Madoff defrauded Jewish charities, European royalty, prominent politicians and celebrities like Steven Spielberg and Larry King, even Arab banks. According to the criminal complaint filed against him, Madoff “deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in losses of approximately billions of dollars.” Basically, as he himself admitted, he ran a Ponzi scheme on a large, complicated and transnational scale. But like any Ponzi scheme, it was a fraudulent set-up where investors are paid out of money taken from subsequent investors instead of real business profits. Bamboozling Pedro to pay Juan, and so on. At some point, all Ponzi schemes are bound to collapse like the proverbial house of cards.

Major banks worldwide which were affected include the Spanish bank Grupo Santander SA, at least four French banks including BNP Paribas and Societe Generale, Britain’s HSBC Holdings PLC and Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, and Japan’s Nomura Holdings. Even financial powerhouse J.P. Morgan almost got burned but managed to pull out a few months before Madoff was arrested, under suspicious circumstances and without informing its clients who remained exposed to the risks of Madoff’s spurious hedge funds. Not a few Morgan investors who lost their shirts are now contemplating a lawsuit against the bank. Read the rest of this entry »