Who would push for marriage equality in PH courts?

Anyone bold enough to bring the parade to the courts?

By JESUS FALCIS

NOTE: This is a guest post. It may or may not reflect my own views.

A week ago, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, a California initiative amending the state constitution in 2008, and the Defense of the Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law passed in 1996. Both laws restrict marriage to a man and a woman.

In the Philippines, the Family Code, issued by President Corazon Aquino in 1987 when she still had legislative powers, defines marriage as a special contract of permanent union between a man and a woman. However, the Constitution defines marriage merely as an inviolable social institution and as the foundation of the family.

Sabah: Rewarding violence.

Peace for our time: Is this the last chapter of violence in the Bangsamoro?

By BORIS C. LUNA

NOTE: This is a guest post. It may or may not reflect my own views.

President Benigno S. Aquino III has spoken out against conspirators as the ones at fault in the violence in Sabah. He has threatened to charge Jamalul Kiram, pretender to the throne of the defunct Sultanate of Sulu, for his actions that caused his followers to invade Sabah to assert the ancient claim of his family to the vast territory.

But is it really about the Kirams? Is it about the claim to Sabah? Is it about Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo? Or is this incident merely a product of the traditional myopia of successive Philippine administrations, sacrificing long-term perspective for political expediency in developing policy?

The emerging Philippine tiger: Asian or Celtic?

The Philippine economy looks set for take-off, but on which engine should it run?

NOTE: This is a guest post. One of this blog’s readers, who requested to remain anonymous, pitched this article. It may or may not reflect my own views.

During his recent visit to Manila, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper echoed many economists in hailing the Philippines as the next Asian tiger. This is something Filipinos had also heard some fifteen years ago, when the world hailed the Philippines as the next Asian tiger in the mid-1990s. The problem, however, is that the anticipated rise of this new Asian tiger never took place, and it’s highly likely that it will also not take place this time around.

An Asian economic tiger is characterized by massive influx of foreign direct investment (FDI), an export-driven economy, and a phenomenal expansion of its manufacturing base. Export-driven economic policies and a solid manufacturing base were the hallmarks of prominent Asian tigers like South Korea and Taiwan; while next-wave tigers Thailand and Malaysia were boosted by massive FDI, followed by the expansion of their manufacturing bases and the re-orientation of their policies towards an export-driven economy.

How to revive Japan’s electronics industry.

Japanese titans Sony, Panasonic, and Sharp are in a race against time to reverse their unprecedented losses.

NOTE: This is a guest post. One of this blog’s readers, who requested to remain anonymous, pitched this article. It may or may not reflect my own views.

In the 1980s and the 1990s, whenever a customer walks into an electronics store to buy a TV, his choices would almost always be either a Sony, a Sharp or a Panasonic. All were Japanese brands. But during the last decade, the story has become different. Korean brands like Samsung or LG, and even Chinese brands like TCL or Changhong, became the likely choices.

This change in consumer attitude is a result of aggressive efforts of Korean and Chinese manufacturers to challenge Japanese supremacy in the electronics market. For instance, when Samsung began massively selling LCD TVs in the mid 2000s, they offered them in much lower price than what Japanese brands would offer. But instead of matching the prices offered by Samsung, Japanese brands joined hands in camaraderie to keep their prices, perhaps thinking that, as the traditional dominant TV manufacturers, they have a solid market base. The result was devastating: Samsung took over that market base in just a couple of years.

China’s fishing boat aggression.

Chinese fishermen: Willing accomplices to Beijing’s assertive South China Sea policy?

NOTE: This is a guest post. One of this blog’s readers, who requested to remain anonymous, pitched this article. It may or may not reflect my own views.

When a state projects its overwhelming military might against another state in pursuit of its foreign policy objectives, it’s called gunboat diplomacy. But when a state uses not the traditional military warships and jets but a supposedly harmless flotilla of civilian fishing crafts, it’s a fishing boat aggression.

In the Scarborough Shoal, it was the encroachment of Chinese fishing boats into the Philippine Excusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which prompted a reaction from Manila, that led to the current tensions between the Philippines and China. The role of these private Chinese fishing boats in the escalation of tension in disputed areas is indicative of the new pattern being employed by China in asserting its claims.

Should the principle of separation of Church and State apply to atheist groups?

NOTE: What follows is a thought-provoking short essay written by a very close friend, Michael Kakumoto, entitled Emergence of Worldview-Structures: A Cause to Re-think the Separation of Church and State Principle. He wrote this essay for a journal that he and I are collaborating on. I edited this essay, and it is still undergoing review by other individuals.

Auguste Comte, considered the father of Sociology and Positivism, proposed in his “Law of Three Stages” that societal development undergoes three stages: (1) Theological, where nature and the natural phenomena are sought and understood through mythical and supernatural explanations; (2) Metaphysical, where understanding of the origin of nature and the natural phenomena was through abstract and philosophical explanation; and (3) Positivism or Scientific,  where nature and the natural phenomena are explained and understood through scientific methods and means, and invalidated abstract or supernatural concepts as an explanation. For Comte, the third stage is the pinnacle of the development of human society.