LETTERS FROM THE AGNO
by March Fianza
What have they been doing all these years? The sex for
flight issue involving female OFWs abroad, foreign embassy officials and
moneyed donor “clients” has warmed up like Mt. Mayon whose eruption was
long-overdue. This has turned into a decade’s problem, heating up over the
years, but workers in the Philippine Embassy, the labor agency and its attached
offices wittingly or unwittingly hid the cases from the public. Maybe some
labor and embassy officials in the Middle East do not release foul gases from
their bodies that is why they forgot that things that smell very badly may
still be concealed but since they are heated up, they stink and come out like
the Sulphuric odor that steam out from a volcano’s crater. The public and media
circles in Manila know about complaints in the past but these were not
ventilated clearly as concerned officials successfully suppressed the
information.
As much as possible they did not want the complaints
and complainants to reach the lawmakers, until this time when partylist
congressman Walden Bello caught the information. Almost 10 years ago, the NGO Gabriela along with an ally
organization Migrante, had been reporting “sex-for-flight” cases but the
agencies concerned, knowing of the complaints, chose to restrain them because
any investigation would splatter back on their faces. The number of cases steadily increased
with the number of OFWs that were recruited by private employment agencies that
were in cahoots with labor officials. Incidentally, the problem arose at a time
when people became aware of the natural and partly human induced “global
warming” phenomenon. In my left mind, I seem to acknowledge that this has
something to do with sex-for-flight cases, sex changes and gray gay issues.
Middlemen brokers called bugaw,
similar to the half man – half woman kind that approaches you when you are in a
red light district along Roxas Boulevard, arranges the “areglo” between the OFW victim and the
“customer.”
In other cases, employees intentionally allow their
passports to expire with the cooperation of their employees. Cleo, my wife who
worked as an OFW with Texas Instruments once upon a time can confirm this. The
reason for this is that it is hard to re-enter after one has already returned
home after finishing a work contract. So the OFW just lets the passport expire
especially when he or she is immediately hired by another company. Now, when
the time comes that they need their passport, embassy workers exploit the
situation. Labor and foreign affairs office chiefs say that they also shed
tears, crocodile tears that is, over besieged documented and undocumented OFWs
who are thrown to the lions by embassy officials who should be assisting them.
Sex-for-flight victims have
unseen handlers even from the time they applied that is why they are there.
Until now the unseen handlers fleece money from them without them knowing it.
They are victims many times over but it is okay with them as long as they are
employed and have some money sent home to their spouses and children.
********
According to what I have been reading, ice age is
climate change, failed harvest and drought in farm lands in Peru, South and
Central America. Climate change and global warming were normal earth
occurrences until the human-induced kind followed during an unstoppable
industrial revolution. I hope I have not been reading too much. Until lately,
scientists and politicians from the “first world,” wherever that is, thought of
global warming as an item that they can make money of. However, some serious
natural scientists blamed climate changes, particularly the extreme cooling and
warming of the earth depending on its distance from the sun that was similar to
how our ancestors diagnosed the weather in their time.
The other factors are
the earth’s axis tilt which is constant and the ever-changing shape of the
earth’s orbit from nearly perfect circle to elliptical on certain times.
Naturally, when the earth treads an circle orbit everytime, it gets the same
amount of sunshine everyday. And when it is an ellipse orbit, the earth is
colder at a point when it is farthest from the sun and warmer where it is
nearer. That could be the reason why ancient tribes in the Americas and Europe
honored the Sun as their god. Their god indeed controlled life on earth. The skills of ancient tribesmen in the
Americas, particularly the Incas, in terms of soldiery, farming, architecture
and civil works were extraordinary but they could have been nothing if not for
the changing weather from bad to good and vice versa brought on by an ever
changing climate. I have also
read that extended periods of warm weather centuries ago were the culprits why
mountainous areas were naturally cleared, like the head of a person that
becomes bald when exposed to heat and radiation. The weather stayed dry and
warm but melting ice supplied water constantly.
Like our Ifugao ancestors, the
Incas in Peru built terraces on mountainsides and raised camote, potatoes and
corn. They also constructed a water system to irrigate their lands. With what
the Incas of Peru experienced thousands of years ago, they were not stupefied. They did not panic when global
warming was on them. Instead, they rode along it just like any day and did what
natural things they could do to survive. The changing climate, global warming
and the ice age were part of their lives. –ozram.666@gmail.com
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