“The US financial crisis has given the administration-dominated Philippine House of Representatives another argument to amend the 21-year-old Constitution by way of giving Americans and Filipino migrants the opportunity to transfer their investments here.
…………..

Nograles added: “Our economic managers should be able to take the crisis as an opportunity to mobilize the country’s sleeping potentials and not just remain in the defensive posture.
“Overseas Filipinos, especially those working and living in the United States, should look at their home country as the best haven for their savings that could be transformed into active investments,” he stressed.
Nograles surmised that even a minimum of $1,000 investment for every US-based Filipino migrant “would be substantial to fuel the country’s economic engine.”
The Speaker noted that Mindanao is just waiting to be tapped for its rich and vast reservoir of natural resources, including gold and other precious metals, aside from its vast potentials in food production.
According to Nograles, his proposed summit can be used as a vehicle to craft a concrete strategy to attract investments from US-based Filipino migrants and formulate measures that will strengthen investor confidence in the Philippine economy.
He said he is willing to put his job on the line when it comes to Charter change. “In my watch, I think I will bite the bullet,” he told members of the Manila Overseas Press Club early last month.”

You’re right about hunt-and-neutralize operations vs. the MILF. That is absolutely necessary if true peace is to be achieved. However, so many are calling for the government to talk peace with the MILF before they can be brought under control. This is a very serious mistake and I hope the government realizes this.

there are democratic ways of changing a government. the system has many imperfections and is always “a work in progress”. we cannot give in to the “hot heads” who just have no patience with the rule of law, just because it bogs down every now and then.

in affairs of men and state, violence begets violence. but i say, the right of man/state to defend him/itself cannot and should never be compromised.

It depends as here’s one of what I have written on the definition of terrorism:

“Terrorism” is still defined by Webster’s New International Dictionary as “a mode of governing . . . by intimidation” or “any policy of intimidation,” implying clearly that states are capable of committing terrorist acts. However, CIA’s Counterterrorist Center defines a terrorist act pursuant to Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d) as a “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience,” thus potentially excluding state actors from the definition. The current pejorative meaning of terrorism directly linking it to Islamism or to extremist contrarian tactic against the advance of liberal ideology is therefore of recent concoction.

By some broad strokes, there could be three political conceptions of terrorism: 1) insurrection against a legitimate government; 2) a policy of violence or acts of intimidation by a government in violation of human rights; and 3) warfare in contravention of universally accepted rules of engagement. (See Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 16-17).

On the first conception, is a government that has cheated its way to power in a rigged election a fair game to a Lockean right of revolution? On the second, is the recent spate of violence (murders and assassinations) in the Philippines involving for the most part journalists critical of the Arroyo government and left-leaning activists considered terrorism by a state actor? When the justifications for waging a war are based on “sexed up” intelligence, is the resulting violence within the acceptation of the third sense?
_________

I consider the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers as mala in se. So was the nuking of Nagasaki and Hiroshima or the US sanction against Iraq which killed untold numbers of civilians and children.

Iraq in terms of US waging a full-blown war on pan-islamic terrorist groups holing up in Mindanao.