Free Republic

Are you proud that this is what the Philippines looks like to the rest of the World? If you are one of those Filipinos who thinks that the “Filipino First Policy” of actively discouraging Foreign Direct Investors and multinational companies from coming into the Philippines by requiring them to partner with local Filipino investors who will own at least 60% of the company set up in the Philippines is a step in the right direction, think again. Local Filipino investors are not numerous enough to create as many businesses that would create the huge number of jobs necessary to absorb...

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler's new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese government had redrawn the map of Asia and the Pacific. Japan had occupied or annexed Indochina, Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in addition to swaths of coastal China. Attacking Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia was merely the logical 1941 follow-up...

Donald Trump has more followers on Facebook than any other candidate, but most are from developing countries.Donald Trump is running for president and whatever you think of his chances of picking up votes, on Facebook no candidate trumps The Donald. Yet, there’s something strange about a lot of the fans. Only 42 percent of Trump’s 1,694,561 followers on Facebook are American, while most come from developing nations like the Philippines, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Indonesia and Colombia, a Vocativ analysis shows. (GRAPH-AT-LINK)It’s not entirely unusual for Trump to have followers in developing countries given that he’s an internationally renowned business...

Diplomatic tensions surrounding disputed territories in the South China Sea could escalate dramatically following reports China is now putting weapons on its artificial islands in the area. Australia’s defence force is considering joining the U.S. in flying and sailing “freedom of navigation” missions over the disputed territory, where China has been building islands by dragging sand from a reef and piling it up to create structures now being monitored by satellites. Fairfax Media reports the Australian fly-over expeditions may occur as a result of heightened concerns that China is enhancing its military capabilities and reach across the maritime expanse.

Supernatural Beings( Angels)are about to arrive on the scene assisting My children according to My Kingdom and now more than ever before they shall begin to naturalize before you as they truly are " Heaven on Earth " . Honor them as they honor you as My Creation and realize they ARE part of My Kingdom, My Power, and My Glory on Earth as it is in Heaven for now they shall be assisting you in this battle as never before. I have opened the Heavens now for you as I did for Jacob, as I did at My Resurrection...

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told his Philippine counterpart on Wednesday that Washington's pledge to defend the Pacific nation remains "ironclad" and called for an end to land reclamation in the South China Sea, officials said. In talks in Hawaii with Voltaire Gazmin, Philippine secretary of national defense, the Pentagon chief "reaffirmed" the strong ties between the two countries and discussed territorial disputes in the contested waters of the South China Sea, where Beijing has been at loggerheads with the Philippines and other states in the region. Citing Washington's mutual defense treaty with Manila, Carter "stressed that the US commitment...

It’s difficult to describe anything as a “feel good story” on a day when we are commemorating the Honored Dead, but I suppose this story comes as close as any. CBS News is providing the details of a tale which took place long ago in a small village a bit to the north of where I live, in Gowanda, New York. They have a war memorial in their town just like so many other places around the country. But for the lifetime of most of the current residents, one name has been missing. Carroll Heath was a young boy born...

Philippine military and commercial aircraft will keep flying over disputed areas in the South China Sea despite Chinese warnings over the airspace, President Benigno Aquino said on Monday. "We will still fly the routes that we fly based on the international law from the various conventions we entered into," Aquino told reporters when asked whether the Philippines accepted China's position. The Chinese military last week ordered a US Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane away from airspace above the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States vowed on Thursday to keep up air and sea patrols in international waters after the Chinese navy repeatedly warned a U.S. surveillance plane to leave the airspace over artificial islands China is creating in the disputed South China Sea. The Chinese navy issued eight warnings to the crew of a U.S. P8-A Poseidon, the U.S. military's most advanced surveillance aircraft, when it conducted the overflights on Wednesday, according to CNN, which was aboard the U.S. aircraft. When the American pilots responded by saying the plane was flying through international airspace, a Chinese radio operator...

The U.S. is considering deploying aircraft and ships to contest Chinese claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Options are on the table to fly surveillance aircraft and sail Navy ships nearby in a move that puts the U.S. directly into a contentious territorial contest in East Asia, in which, until now, the U.S. has avoided overtly taking sides. The South China Sea is the subject of numerous rival -- often messy -- territorial claims, with China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam disputing sovereignty of several island chains and nearby waters. China...

At the height of the Vietnam War, the vast U.S. Navy base here at Subic Bay, across the South China Sea from the fighting, was humming with activity, and for the 30,000 civilian Filipinos who worked on maintenance, repair and hundreds of other high-paid jobs, it was a golden era. "There was so much money to be made," said Jong Cortez, a member of the city council whose parents both worked on the base. Plus, there were good benefits and, everyone thought, job security. Even after the war ended, the Navy stayed active here to counter the naval base the...

Welcome to Jamie's Journeys! Join Regent Seven Seas cruise director and adventurer Jamie Logan as he travels to this this small but heavily fortified island which was the site of one of the great battles during WWII. Here American and Filipino forces held off the Imperial Japanese Navy which delayed their advance and saved Australia from invasion. See the incredible remains of this battle torn island!

"The Filipinos did most of the fighting and most of the dying..." This tells the "true story" behind the "forgotten war" of Bataan and Corregidor -- savage battles that violently hurled falsely reassured Filipinos and an ill-prepared Philippines into the Second World War in the Pacific. Produced by the Department of National Defense of the Philippines and the Philippines Veterans Affairs Office this series of videos documents the outstanding courage, heroism and nobility of Filipinos regardless the inevitable fall of the country to the unrelenting Imperial Japanese military juggernaut. An outcome inevitably irreversible despite the fierce resistance of the mostly...

Intimacy is the key to your breaking through in your days ahead . So persevere as Daniel and Gabriel for I will send My angels of My Presence as Michael (AS GOD) as you spend time in mine . . . DANIEL 10:12-21 12 Then he said to me, “Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words. 13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael,...

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Sadness and disappointment gripped Filipinos after Manny Pacquiao's defeat in his much-anticipated fight against American Floyd Mayweather Jr. but they still considered the boxing icon a national hero. Gymnasiums and other public venues where the 12-round fight was shown for free on Sunday lunchtime local time were quickly vacated after it was announced Pacquiao lost by unanimous decision. Herminio Coloma, a spokesman for President Benigno Aquino III, said "the country still holds its head high in the admirable fight of our National Fist."(continued)

Hanoi is the first Southeast Asian nation arming its submarines with land attack cruise missiles. Vietnam is in the process of acquiring 50 anti-ship and land attack 3M-14E Klub supersonic cruise missiles for its burgeoning fleet of SSK Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines, Der Spiegel Online reports. According to the article, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently updated data on its website, based on information obtained from the United Nations’ register of conventional arms, indicating that Russia has already delivered 28 missiles over the last two years to Hanoi, although the precise number remains unknown. The Klub is a Russian-made...

Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004 The Report of the 9/11 Commission has been digested, and the news media outlets have seized upon it as confirmation of their view that al Qaeda is a kind of purely stateless entity that never had "operational links" with rogue states like Iraq. Somehow, goes the thrust of the Report, Osama bin Laden was for years able to finance, train and supply an international terrorist corporation that had ongoing jihad operations in fifty countries - by himself, on no more than a $30 million personal...

In a reversal from their earlier position, the Catholic bishops of the Philippines have endorsed an LGBT non-discrimination bill, with only one reservation. Earlier this month, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines sent a pastoral guidance letter to dioceses endorsing non-discrimination as a “Christian imperative,” reports Gay Star News. Archbishop Socrates Villegas, the conference’s president, said further: ” ‘Insofar as the proposed piece of legislation renders illegitimate the relegation of persons with sexual orientation and gender identity issues to citizens of a lower category enjoying fewer rights, the CBCP cannot but lend its support to this proposed legislative measure.’...

MANILA: Philippine President Benigno Aquino has called on lawmakers to pass a bill endorsing a pact aimed at ending a decades-long Muslim separatist rebellion, warning them they would otherwise start counting “body bags.” Aquino had wanted the bill, which would give autonomy to the majority Catholic nation’s Muslim minority in the south, passed this month. But Congress suspended debates on the proposed law in the face of public outrage over the killings of 44 police commandoes by guerrillas in a botched anti-terror raid in January. “This is the crossroads we face: we take pains to forge peace today, or we...

U.S. counterterrorism personnel played a hidden but key role in a bungled commando operation in the Philippines that resulted in dozens of deaths and a political scandal, according to a government investigation released Tuesday in Manila. At least six Americans were present at a Philippine command post during the ill-fated January raid and supplied Philippine forces with surveillance data collected by U.S. aircraft, the investigation found. One of the Americans went so far as to order a Philippine army general to call in artillery fire, though the general angrily refused, investigators found.