Tuesday, October 23, 2012

EconomicsPhilippines: Foreign Direct Investment: Dragging

The Philippines economy is dragging as far as Foreign Direct Investment is concerned this year. John Mangun's opinion piece on this economic trend (the FDI) appears in the Business Mirror, to which I was steered by Francis Egenias of the Evangelical Development Practioners, a source of creative Christian thinking on economics and Philippines options. I've interspersed some comments into the text of John Mangun to help practioners take on the heavy weight of relevant economic thawt to enhance all spheres of Pinoy society, so that all may flourish in good health, hard good work, good pay and family income, and rejoice in the coming of the shalom-kingdom of God for human and creation's flourishing.

PHL: Foreign investment failure

Details: Category: Opinion; Published on Monday, 15 October 2012 20:20; Written by John Mangun / Outside The Box

THE discussions about foreign direct investment (FDI) to the Philippines are embarrassing.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported that FDI inflows to the PHL between January and August 2012 were $1.025 billion. That is the amount of FDI that entered Thailand in January alone. One local newspaper wrote this headline: “Surging FDI” after the BSP noted $108 million FDI in July. Surging? Is that a joke? FDI amounting to $108 million is what Thailand brings in during three business days.

Maybe we should not compare PHL to Thailand since we are late to the FDI game. FDI to the Philippines is up an “impressive” 11 percent over 2011. Except Indonesia’s yearly FDI is up over 30 percent from 2011. Thailand’s increased 62 percent. And while PHL will book perhaps $2 billion this year, Indonesia is on track to bring in $25 billion FDI. And 20 percent of Indonesia’s $25 billion, generating 12 percent of the GDP, is in that evil, worthless industry that contributes nothing to the economy—mining.

Even Vietnam, which is experiencing an FDI downturn, off 28 percent in 2012, will still see foreign direct investment of over $8 billion before the year-end.

These numbers are a disgrace for the Filipino nation.

There are many reasons given for the PHL being the tail of the dog of foreign investment. Some will say that the problem is the presidential form of government and a parliamentary system is the answer. That might be correct. Thailand (but not Indonesia) has a parliament. I could possibly agree that a change to a parliament might be good for FDI but only if PHL also imports members of the Thai parliament and not just its form of government. It is not the system. It is the decision makers.

Some will say that the Philippines got off to a bad FDI start after the US gave up its colony and with the adoption of the Parity Rights that allowed Americans equal rights with Filipino citizens to develop and exploit natural resources and to operate public utilities.

[Yes we Americans must be restrained everything our investors can at discount prices in Asia; our own economy is on the skids under Obama, so investors shift their horizons to wherever there is a profit to be made; our own big companies are fat with undeployable funds in the USA and Canada. Then they notice the Philippines. — EconoMix]

Maybe, but Thailand has an agreement with the US called the Treaty of Amity and Economic Relations. The Amity Treaty allows Americans and American companies the right to wholly own a company in Thailand, and engage in business on the same basis as would a Thai national. These companies are also exempt from most of the restrictions on foreign investment imposed by the Foreign Business Act of 1999.

[The danger may be that if the Philippines doesn't restrain American investment, there will be negative consequences for the Philippines economy, Philippines fully-owned corporations, for the incomes and safety conditions of Philippines workers, and the increase perhaps of Philippines pollution, and less of a safety net for the dispossed and lethargic. On the other hand, if the Philippines does restrain American and Canadian direct investment costs will go up for the investors. They will be regulated as to economic and stock exchange regulation, the restriction on total control of corporations created by investment or bawt outright by them will also include the demotion of Filipino middle-managers within the new corporations, the costs of lax safety conditions and increased pollution will become part of the price invading Americans will add to the price of products made in the Philippines for resale in the USA and China or other Asian countries. Labour relaitons will deteriorate and the Christian industrial ethic will not come to expression thru a Christian Labour Association of the Philippines; anti-labour wholly-owned American corporations will deter national Philippines development toward a more cooperative labour-owner (management) relation and a fully-tripartite ongoing conversation/dialogue that keeps the common good and the general welfare well in mind. — EconoMix]

There has been a strong call from Thai nationalists to cancel the treaty. A legislative bill was presented in 2007 to do just that. You can almost hear the yearly discussions of the bill in the Thai parliament. “We really should cancel that treaty to protect Thailand’s sovereignty.” “Yeah, you’re right. But let the Americans invest another $10 billion or $20 billion before we do it.”

And it is not just the Americans. Under the free-trade agreement between Thailand and Australia, Thailand permits up to 60-percent foreign ownership in some normally completely restricted service sectors and up to 100 percent in others. Thailand permits 100-percent Australian ownership of companies providing certain construction services, 60 percent ownership of: major restaurants and hotels, mining operations, and even education institutions specializing in science and technology. [How can a national industrial culture indigenous to Thailand develop with such a strangle-hold set in place by the Aussies? — EconoMix]

Foreign investors cannot own land in Thailand just like the Philippines. Thailand insures that critical, sensitive and industries that Thais cannot equally compete with foreigners are protected and excluded from foreigners just like in the Philippines. Thailand offers a variety of taxation and tariff incentives to foreign investors just like the Philippines. Thailand even has a 60/40 percent ownership law for normal foreign participation.

Except the Thai rules allows 60-percent foreign ownership and 40 percent for Thai nationals. And check this. Where there are reasonable grounds, the minister in charge of the Foreign Business Act may, with the approval of the cabinet, reduce the percentage of Thai national shareholding below 40 percent but not lower than 25 percent.

This is what the Thai Constitution says: “The State shall act in compliance with the economic policy as follows: [1] encouraging a free and fair economic system through market mechanism, ensuring the development of economics in sustainable fashion by repealing and refraining from the enactment of laws, rules and regulations controlling business which do not correspond with the economic necessity.” In other words, economic policy must be practical and smart and not ideologically and emotion driven.

Foreign investment is not treated as if the investors were wicked invaders coming to take over the country [yet many Philippinos/as feel the American investors are just that, until the Pinoy have a yen for a MacDonald's hamburg and have to choose between paying for and enjoying the burger — or joining the Greenpeace boycott outside to punishins MacDonald's for cutting down the rainforest in Indonesia, leaving the Sumatran Tiger dispopulated in its own habitat. Of course, they don't pause to realize that Indonesia's folly leaves Pinoy better able to compete with one of its Asian competitors — EconoMix ]. While the Philippines is competing with Americans who want to bring investment money and power to the Asian country, Pinoy are also competing with China (which stopped importing Pinoy bananas to punish your country), and Japan which wants to continue marketing its electronic music goods that the young Pinoy want to buy, when they can, and competing with Vietnam, Thailand, even Australia.] Maybe that is one reason that the Philippines per capita gross domestic product is around $4,000 and Thailand’s is around $10,000.

[The naysayers like the economic nationalists have lots of loose ends, unthawt-out self-contradictions just as much as do the invading Americans. I can't agree with John Mangun that there is no invasion where Americans, Canadians, and Australians can get everything at discount, exploit union-less workers, trample the environment, keep safety and medical programs and wages down, thereby undermining the tax-base which needs to be invested in the social welfare safety net for unemployed and underemployed folks. — EconoMix.

E-mail to mangun@gmail.com, Web site is www.mangunonmarkets.com and Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis tools provided by COL Financial Group Inc.

My thanks to John Mangun in stimulating me to reflect on the conditions he so aptly lays before us in this opinion article, it's excellent thawtful journalism. Forgive, please, my intrusions on your text (speak of American imperialism!). As a Christian concerned for the development of really partnership unionism that isn't trying to sink employers into unsustainability, but where a Christian think-tank is required to plan a comprehensive economic framework based on tripartism (government, owners/management, and workers thru their union representation with full freedom of association and union competition for votes of workers reps and shop stewards to sit on a company's umbrella organization of unions proportionally, certain deep differences of values among workers too must be brawt to the table.

— EconoMix, refWrite Frontpage economics newspotter and columnist

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Politics Asia Pacific: China vs Japan: First China went after Taiwan, then more recently the Philippines, now Japan

China is up to its age-old imperialism, this time in the East China Sea, where its blasting away at any territorial claims to little snips of islands. That what Ariel Zirulnick; she's not a China expert, but has taken on a big topic about dangerous undercurrents in the East China Sea.

Politicarp, refWrite frontpage politics columnist

Christian Science Monitor

Terrorism & Security

China's naval exercises in East China Sea send warning to regional rivals

Chinese naval exercises today simulated a conflict in disputed waters. Tensions between China and Japan have been mounting over claims to a set of islands in the East China Sea.

By Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer / October 19, 2012

China held naval exercises in the East China Sea today in a robust show of military force intended to warn regional rivals against escalating territorial disputes.

China regularly holds maritime drills in the fall, but "sources close to the military" said the drills were related to a territorial dispute that has been the source of recent flare-up between China and Japan, theFinancial Times reports.

Japan and China have long been at odds over a string of islands known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China, but tensions ratcheted up last month when the Japanese government agreed to buy three of the islands that were privately owned by a Japanese businessman. The incident brought relations between the countries to a 40-year low and prompted the cancellation of celebrations planned for last month to fete the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations, as The Christian Science Monitor reported in an in-depth report on the dispute last month.

Think you know Asia? Take our geography quiz.

"Relations are worse than they have ever been in 40 years," Liu Jiangyong, a professor of Japanese politics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, told the Monitor. "I don't see much chance of a war; but I think Japan is preparing for one, and we should, too."

The Japanese government said that the intent was not to challenge China, but to prevent the islands' sale to the governor of Tokyo, a vocal nationalist who might have used them to antagonize China. The explanation did not quiet Chinese anger.

The exercises also come on the heels of visits earlier this week by Japanese opposition leader Shinzo Abeas well as two cabinet ministers to the controversialYasukuni shrine. The shrine, which honors Japan's war dead – among them 14 class A war criminals convicted after World War II – is seen in China as a "symbol of Japan's military atrocities" during its decades-long occupation of much of the region until Japan's defeat in 1945, Bloomberg reports.

Think you know Japan? Take our quiz.

Chinese news agency Xinhua said the officials' visit "would further poison bilateral ties" and "added insult to injury," according to Bloomberg.

Drills like those held today are a routine event, but military sources told the Financial Times "this drill could only be read as directed at the island crisis."

“This exercise will simulate a situation where foreign law enforcement vessels obstruct and interfere with our maritime surveillance and fisheries administration vessels on a mission to safeguard maritime rights and enforce the law,” said state media, referring to a statement from the East Sea Fleet which is participating in the drill.

According to the statement, the simulated scenario includes a collision in which the Chinese ships are damaged and some patrol staff are hurt and fall into the water. The East Sea Fleet then “sends a frigate, a hospital ship, a tugboat, advanced fighters and helicopters for support, cover and emergency rescue.”

…

“With this content, this drill must be seen in the context of the Diaoyu Islands,” said a source familiar with the military’s intentions.

According to Xinhua, the Navy held the exercises with the fishery administration and marine surveillance agency in order to "improve coordination" and their ability to respond to emergencies. Eleven vessels and eight aircraft were involved in the effort.

The Associated Press reports that Japan plans to hold similar drills with the US later this year centered around a theoretical challenge of "taking a remote island back from a foreign intruder."

Multiple experts interviewed by the Monitor said that they don't think either country wants to go to war. The real cause for concern is that it would take little to tip the countries into open conflict with tensions at a slow boil for so long, and both taking steps to intimidate the other.

So far, hostilities have been limited to water-cannon duels, as happened Sept. 24 between Japanese and Taiwanese Coast Guard vessels. But "when you have that many boats sailing around, the potential for mishap is quite high," points out Bonnie Glaser, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The danger, adds Valérie Niquet, a China analyst at the Foundation for Strategic Research, a think tank in Paris, is that a collision, a sinking, or a fatality "could start something that would be difficult to stop," especially since China and Japan have no procedures in place to handle maritime crises.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Islamics: Leading imams: Take blasphemy Shariah laws to next level, call for worldwide no-insult Mohammed

No!, to blasphemy laws — the nasties among the Imams are up to their old tricks. They want a worldwide law outlawing insults aimed at a religion, any of the three Abrahamic religions. For my part, I don't accept at all the concept that insulting a religion shoud ever be a crime anywhere. The critique of religions is an irreducible human and Christian task in an advanced sphere-differentiated society with a common knowlege-base anchored to digital systems delivering everything from soup to nuts. The insult of religions is okay -- and not just from atheist philosophers and (lumpen-prole) comedians, but also from among us, Christians, where we must find and and prepare gifted persons to become comedians, wits, capable of fearlessly critiquing and, when optimal insulting a religion, even our own.

Our world woud be much diminished were we to lose our great literary insulters of Christianity. Christianity today must look at itself, and its past selves, to discern the legacy and the practice of the art of insult today. Surely, for poor often-illiterate, teens and twenties in the Salafist precincts of Cairo (where the local Imams are dunning their ears on Fridays at noon); the call of these conspiring imans is often a call to Salafist Cairo's neiborhoods poorest, calling these to the USA Embassy for counter-insult was siren. They coud not resist.

Likewise the great insulters of Islam and its peculiar prophet.

To claim that a Coptic Christian has no r+t to insult the religion of the perpetrators of his oppression over the 1400 years of Muslim hegemony in Cairo, at best, keeping his community in a perpetual state of dhimmitude, is blantantly ridiculous. No one has a r+t to interfere with his voice, his expression, even in his 13-minute video.

— Owlb, refWrite Frontpage editor

Islamic Bloc Revives Drive to Outlaw ‘Religious Defamation’ Worldwide | CNSNews.com
Sept29,2k12

Islamic Bloc Revives Drive to Outlaw ‘Religious Defamation’ Worldwide

By Patrick Goodenough

(CNSNews.com) – A decade-old but temporarily-shelved push by Islamic governments to universally outlaw “blasphemy” looks poised to return to the international agenda, amid the ongoing furor over insulting depictions of Mohammed.

After more than a week of public demands by Muslim figures, includingtop Sunni clerics, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and the Islamist leaders of Egypt and Turkey, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and Arab League have signaled a new global censorship push.

Obama administration officials have spoken out in support of the First Amendment in this context, although White House Press Secretary Jay Carney raised eyebrows last Friday when he confirmed the administration had asked YouTube to review whether a video clip mocking Mohammed “violates their terms of use.”

President Obama spoke by phone to the leaders of several countries where anti-U.S. protests linked to the film have occurred: Egypt, Afghanistan, Yemen and Turkey. White House readouts of the calls said the president rejected efforts to denigrate Islam while stressing there was never any justification for violence – but if he defended free speech, no mention was made of this.

“The hesitation on the part of this administration and the schizophrenia in response to this latest crisis is a cause for concern,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in the House on Wednesday. “The U.S. has nothing for which to apologize, including the exercise of freedom of expression.”

Islamic nations already were gearing up to formulate a response to the appearance online of the Mohammed film clip when the publication by a satirical French magazine Wednesday of cartoons lampooning Islam’s prophet triggered fresh complaints.

OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu called on political and religious leaders worldwide “to take a united stand against fanatics and radicals involved in destabilizing global peace and security by fanning incitement and religious intolerance.”

It was time “for international community to take serious note of the dangerous implications of hate speech and inciting publications and come out of hiding behind the excuse of freedom of expression.”

The upcoming opening of the annual U.N. General Assembly session in New York, which brings together many world leaders, comes at an opportune time for the offended governments.

Announcing his intention to take up the matter at the General Assembly session, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for“international legal regulations against attacks on what people deem sacred."

Addressing a press conference Wednesday in Saudi Arabia, Ihsanoglu said a scheduled annual meeting of Muslim states’ foreign ministers on the sidelines of the General Assembly will discuss response options.

“All member countries should speak forcefully in one voice on this vital issue,” he said, referring to the 57 countries making up the Islamic bloc.

Ihsanoglu said he had spoken to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Arab League secretary-general Nabil Al-Arabi about the need for “international measures to avoid a repetition of such provocative incidents.”

Al-Arabi said separately that the 22-member Arab League was working closely with Islamic, European and African countries to draw up an international convention penalizing the “defamation” of religions.

Early this week Nasrallah, in a rare public appearance, told a rally of supporters that the Lebanese government must demand a meeting of the Arab League to formulate a response to what Hezbollah’s website called a “sacrilegious anti-Islam film insulting Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him and his chaste progeny).”

“All governments and people are required to put their utmost effort and exercise pressure on the international community to issue an international resolution and pass laws that criminalize such acts of insulting monotheistic religions,” he declared.

Supporters listen to a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, seen on a projection screen, during a July 2012 rally in Beirut. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Nasrallah, a leading terrorist with close ties to Syria and Iran, suggested that an insufficient response from Muslims would be blasphemous in itself.

“The Muslim world’s failure to come up with international laws that incriminate abuse against Islam will be tantamount to an offense against the Prophet Mohammed,” he added.

Immediately after Nasrallah spoke, the Lebanese government announced it was requesting an emergency meeting of the Arab League to discuss the matter.

Freedom of expression and minorities’ religious freedom in the balance

For more than a decade, the OIC has been calling for the outlawing of “religious defamation,” pushing through resolutions at the U.N. General Assembly and human rights bodies each year.

Western democracies opposed the move, until last year the Obama administration and OIC co-sponsored a compromise resolution condemning stigmatization based on religion but differing from the earlier “defamation” measures by not calling for legal restrictions – except in the specific case of religion-based “incitement to imminent violence.”

The U.S. portrayed the resolution as a breakthrough after years of polarizing debate, but the OIC made it clear that its “defamation” campaign wassuspended, not dead.

With signs that it will now be revived, critics see cause for concern.

“In light of the recent demonstrations and attacks in the name of Allah, it is likely that the United Nations will see a renewed push for a defamation of religions resolution,” Tiffany Barrans, International Legal Director at the American Center for Law and Justice said Wednesday.

“This push should be emphatically rejected by those who wish to preserve freedom of expression and open dialogue and debate about religion.”

Barrans noted that OIC members such as Pakistan and Indonesia repeatedly have said they would push for a new global law.

“International human rights standards derive from the inherent dignity of humankind as individuals,” she said. “One does not have to look too deep into Pakistan’s or Indonesia’s own blasphemy laws to know that to expand human rights to include rights belonging to ideologies or belief systems places minorities – those whom human rights laws are designed to protect – at risk.”

Barrans pointed to a recent case involving a young Pakistani Christian girlwith Down syndrome falsely accused of under blasphemy laws which she said “empower ruling majorities against weak minorities and dissenters.”

“All nations that respect religious freedom and freedom of expression should take a strong stance against any push for a defamations-of-religions resolution,” she argued. “A person’s right to freedom of expression, even expression that might be deemed offensive, is considered a ‘cornerstone right,’ without which other rights fall into jeopardy.”