The Candidate of Your Choice

by Fr Shay Cullen

What is it that drives voters, the common people, to cry out and vote 
for the false messiah to be their president and leader? Some voters are 
drawn away from more virtuous leadership and favor unrealistic fantastic 
promises of the bombastic candidate.

Even if such a candidate promotes hatred, racism and violence and 
approves and practices womanizing, insults religions and church leaders 
and supports vigilante killings of any suspect without trial, they can 
arouse a rabble of extremist followers. Can they be trusted to serve and 
lead a nation?

  In the United States and the Philippines, there are candidates that 
share such positions and attitudes. They are not the ideal leaders of a 
nation that aspires to be caring, compassionate and that respects the 
rights and dignity of all.

Good honest Republicans in the USA are outraged and disavow the extreme 
policies of Donald Trump, now the Republican Party presidential 
candidate. He will likely run against the democratic candidate Hilary 
Clinton.

He will ban Muslims from coming into the USA, and all illegal immigrants 
will be deported. Thousands of Filipinos could be in jeopardy.
Trump has insulted women, mocked a disabled person in public and vows to 
strike the enemies of America with overwhelming force if they don’t 
agree to his negotiating positions. If elected president, he will tear 
up every free trade treaty.

For Trump, it is America first and to hell with the rest of the world. 
For him, corporate America and big business should rule America and the 
world; not the regulatory agencies of government, not the UN. And yet he 
has reached a popularity that boggles the mind and troubles the heart.

Full post here.

A Primer for Philippine Politics
Fr Shay Cullen

It is election time and some say nothing ever changes in the Philippines. The candidates change but the social inequality remains. Candidates for the presidency this time range from two representing the rich elite, the daughter of a deceased movie star and a foul-mouthed mayor vowing to kill all suspected criminals and a senator who is fronting for the family of the former dictator.

The frustration of the educated middle class is the absence of a visionary leader of integrity with a genuine love of the poor, immense popularity and with a reform agenda to bring equality and justice. The election is not about agenda or policy platforms, it’s about popular controllable personalities, pliable puppets able to dance and sing or who are bombastic and crude. They must be controversial and media magnetic.

They must be submit to the interests of their financiers and accept that they have “debts of honor” to pay when and if they win the presidency. They are under the control of the media manipulators and the masters of the puppet show, and what a bewildering spectacle it is. They have to play to the gallery and capitulate to the interests of super rich.

The ruling oligarchy would never allow the rise of an independent candidate with a pro-poor agenda and a popular following. Besides, no financial bloc would fund a candidate like that. There is no political messiah on the far horizon.

Continue on Preda website here.

Fair Trade must oppose sex-slavery

by Fr Shay Cullen

When I first began a small project to give poor people a skilled training and work with respect, dignity, fair wages and good working conditions. In 1975 it was not called Preda Fair Trade. It was and is, normal ethical practice to give work with dignity, a fair wage and good working conditions, which everyone is supposed to do. But many don’t. It was a practical way to alleviate the misery and degrading life of the throwaway people and youth of Olongapo City.

What is how Preda Development Fair Trade began in 1975 when children and youth were being jailed, and executed as criminals in the city during the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos. The youth were shot by a death squad for protesting the injustice or were suspected to be drug users.

I began a shelter for them, hired teachers and expert weavers and made a vocational training center in craft and wicker furniture making. When the youth graduated they had work with dignity.

The girls had no work they were recruited lured or forced by trickery and debt bondage into the sex bars and brothels. It is unworthy of the dignity and status, rights of children and women.

Full post here.

Fr Shay Cullen with indigenous farmers, Zambales, Philippines

Read: Preda organic mango launched at Stuttgart exhibition.

The Daily Crime Against Humanity

by Fr Shay Cullen

Father Shay at Preda Home for Girls

I drove from Olongapo City to Subic town recently and pointed to the journalist the row of shuttered, dilapidated and closed-down sex bars that lined the road at Calapandayan, Subic. It is evidence of the success of an anti-trafficking operation conducted by the Preda Foundation social workers with the help of the Philippine National Police and an agent of the US Homeland Security where as many as 15 young girls were rescued from the horrible life of forced prostitution.

Some younger minors, so traumatized after being trapped and abused for over a year in this kind of sex slavery, were in need of therapy, support compassion and friendship and hope for a better life. They came to Preda Home for Girls and have made a recovery and are empowered to testify.

Others had been newly recruited for jobs as food servers in the hotels at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone but were forced into prostitution in a sex hotel. They were freed and were brought to homes in a town south of Manila by government social workers. They were later intimidated by the sex mafia and were too scared to testify. The bar operators walked free except one US national who is on trial.

That is the common course for the victims. They are poor, helpless and need strong support, witness protection and encouragement to find justice but sadly the government agencies do not provide these services effectively.

Full post here.

Fair Trade and German Generosity

by Fr Shay Cullen

Fr Cullen at the annual Fair Trade Exhibition in Stuttgart

Stuttgart, Germany. Here in Stuttgart the Annual Fair Trade Exhibition is underway and Philippine products are gaining a high profile with growing sales. This brings jobs and prosperity with fair payment to thousands of Filipinos. I have been invited as a guest speaker to the opening of the fair. It is holiday time in Germany and many thousands of visitors will come to this massive four-day exhibition to buy and promote Fair Trade and organic products.

These fairly-traded products are made in Germany and products imported from around the world like the Preda Fair Trade dried mangos and mango organic puree. The dedication of the Germans to buying Fair Trade products is a reflection of the German people’s devotion and commitment to fairness and justice, honesty and transparency. Their equal insistence on buying organic food is legendary.

I have the privilege of introducing to the Fair Trade world market the first organically certified Philippine mango puree to meet European Union standards. This was achieved in 2015 by the cooperation and work of the Aeta indigenous people of Zambales and Bataan with the agriculturists of Preda Fair Trade. The project is officially named Profairtrade Development Enterprise.

Full post here.

Children’s Rights and Jesus of Nazareth
by Fr Shay Cullen

Christ Driving the Money-changers from the Temple, Rembrandt, c.1626

Pushkin Museum, Moscow [Web Gallery of Art]

The man from Nazareth arrived in the big city and received a big welcome from his fans as they lined the streets and shouted hosannas and laid their cloaks on the ground like a red carpet and everyone was asking, “Who is this, a prophet from Nazareth?” “Yes,” others answered, “a great prophet from Galilee.”

The day after he arrived he went up to the temple. That was the most important and sacred place in the whole city and the world. He saw it as the holy house of God. It had been taken over by the vendors, merchants and the foreign currency traders. This is not unlike some churches and shrines today.

The Man from Nazareth was not pleased. In fact, he was very angry at what he saw going on there. Pandemonium broke out when he started turning over tables and chairs and driving out the traders and merchants. The money was scattered all over the place. Most likely the poor people went rushing about scrambling to pick it up. The pigeons for sale went flying away and animals were herded out. When the traders grabbed their stuff to carry it out, or thieves tried to get it, he stood in the way. He wouldn’t allow anyone to carry anything through the temple courtyards. Imagine the shouting and hullabaloo that resulted. The market was closed down, game over.

The security guards rushed over led by the authorities demanding an explanation. He quoted the Bible, “God said My temple will be called house of prayer for people of all nations but you have turned it into a hideout of thieves.” That is pretty strong language calling the thieves and those authorities, lawyers and leaders wanted to kill him there and then. They were likely getting big kickbacks from the traders for letting them set up shop in that holy place.

Full post on Preda website here.

The March for Children’s and Women’s Rights
by Fr Shay Cullen

Fr Shay Cullen and friends at Preda

Jessica Mary with thirty other recovering child survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking marched down the streets of Olongapo City on International Women’s Day. They carried a banner that declared ‘Olongapo City Home of the Most Empowered Women in the World for Human Rights.’ The teenagers had the courage and commitment to take to the streets and declare that they were survivors with a cause. As Jessica said in Tagalog, ‘We join the march so other children will not suffer abuse like us.’

She and the other girls were happy and proud to be part of the march. They said they want to tell the world that it is a serious and heinous crime for adults to have sex with children. This hateful crime is spreading because of inaction by government and church officials and the apathy of society in general.

The Center for Women’s Resources, a Philippine research group stated recently that 77 percent of rape victims are children and that an astounding two children are raped every minute. Although under-reporting of the crimes is common due to fear, shame and intimidation the Philippine National Police said since June 2014 to June 2015 there was a 63.5 percent increase in rape cases reported. Thousands more go unreported.

Full Reflections here.

Help for trafficked and abused children

by Fr Shay Cullen

There are millions of Filipino families that are secure and whole and live out family values by giving love, care and protection and a life of dignity and education to their children. They are the vast majority and are blessed and to be admired and imitated.

There are however thousands of vulnerable and neglected children in the Filipino population of 100 million and they are at grave risk and need special protection, help,emotional recovery from abuse and the rule of law to bring their abusers to justice and have them convicted of horrid and heinous crimes.

Trained dedicated : Investigators prosecutors and judges of integrity with unshakable moral values are urgently needed. Government ,Church leaders and the public must act to save these children and not be part of the problem. International women’s day is celebrated this month and we have to stand with these young women who are so cruelly exploited abused and sold into sexual slavery.

They say it takes a village to bring up a child but it also takes a village to bring them down. The apathy and turning away of the authorities, and duty bearers and many in the church and the communality are failing these abused children and they are brought down to the pit of despair and suicide.

According to the International Labor Organization there are 5.2 million children in some kind of slavery in the world. Hundreds of thousands are sold into sex slavery.

Continue here.

The Success and Failure of the EDSA Revolution

 by Fr Shay Cullen

It’s the 30th anniversary of the non-violent people’s power ‘revolution’ that toppled the cruel and bloody Marcos dictatorship in 1986. Ironically, the son and namesake of Ferdinand E. Marcos called ‘Bongbong’, who is a senator, is making a strong bid with powerful financial backing for Vice President this election year 2016. For some, it is terrifying to see that a once political T-Rex, thought to be extinct, can make a comeback. If elected, he is only a heartbeat from becoming president should the president have health problems or resigns.

Who would have thought that the bloodiest tyranny and economic disaster to befall the Philippines would ever be so quickly and easily forgotten and overwhelmed by clever and consistent propaganda of the Marcos family and their cronies?

Today, the new generation of Filipinos has little knowledge or awareness of the events and human suffering of that dictatorship that was propped up by the United States of America. Then Vice President, later President, George Bush Sr of the USA, while on an official visit to the Philippines, praised to high heavens the Marcos regime by saying,  ‘We love your adherence to democratic principles and to democratic processes’. 

At the same time, hundreds if not thousands of dissenting and protesting Filipinos were being disappeared, tortured and murdered by the Marcos death squads and those of his cronies. The traditional ruling oligarchy of dynastic families who owned and controlled the country, the one percent more or less, were driven into exile or jailed and lost their economic power, and their business empires were taken over by Marcos and his followers.

Continue here.

On Being Fully Human

by Fr Shay Cullen

Academia Kids, Las Mañanitas a la Virgen de Guadalupe, Mexico, 12 December 2013

The deplorable remarks of Philippine congressman and famous world boxing title holder Congressman Manny Pacquiao wherein he described gay people as ‘worse than animals’ are vile comments that are to be condemned, rejected and repudiated in the strongest terms possible. He has since apologized.

We as humans have to recognize and respect the dignity of every human person and end discrimination of all kinds whether it be based on race, religion, gender, culture or social and economic status. As Pope Francis says, ‘Who are we to judge?’

US presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to build a wall to stop Mexican migrants and has insulted and condemned them as criminals and rapists and has called for the banning of Muslims coming into the United States. In response, the Pope said ‘A person who only thinks about building walls and not of bridges is not Christian, this is not gospel’. . .

. . . Even children and people in old age with disabilities are disposable, based on the economic costs to care for them. The immoral politicians and their rich supporters who get them into office prefer to abort children, deny medical support to disabled children and allow them to die or pressure the elderly to commit assisted or planned suicide. The tyrants of war are bombing, gassing and starving their fellow human beings into submission and extermination in Syria.

Continue to full post here.

www.preda.org

Editor’s note: Our Lady of Guadalupe, being honored at her shrine in Mexico City on her feast day, 12 December, by the children in the video, is the Patroness of the Unborn. And, under that title, she is also a Secondary Patroness of the Philippines.

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe [Wikipedia]

Virgin of Guadalupe,
Patroness of unborn children,
we implore your intercession
for every child at risk of abortion.
Help expectant parents to welcome from God
the priceless gift of their child’s life.

Console parents who have lost that gift
through abortion,
and lead them to forgiveness and healing
through the Divine Mercy of your Son.

Teach us to cherish
and to care for family and friends
until God calls them home.
Help us never to see others as burdens.

Guide our public officials
to defend each and every human life
through just laws.
Inspire us all to bring our faith into public life,
to speak for those who have no voice.

We ask this in the name of your Son,
Jesus Christ, who is Love and Mercy itself.
Amen.