Plundering cultures

Tito Genova Valiente annoTaTions

The fever has not gone down. The epidemic of concern from citizens continues unabated as they remain in shock at the official act of stealing scenes from other cultures, if only to make the campaign about the allure of this island-republic even more convincing. Does this mean we, with our own collection of landscape and seascape, forests and waterfalls, volcanoes and verdant valleys, cannot make a compelling case for our own beauty?

Are we so flippant as a people that we go ballistic with an ad campaign?

Or is this a symptom of something missing in us, or a closeted doubt about our identities? Our notion of a nation has long been besieged by doubts. We are conscious of a common appraisal of us by the outside world—a country that is unlike the neighboring Asian states where material cultures—temples, shrines, rituals—singularly define their territories. For a long time, we have subsisted on the idea of us being a melting spot, a site where the East meets the West, a sort of territory that is neither here nor there. Exotic in its fusion; extraordinary in being an admixture. A puzzle. The old label “the only Christian country in the far east” has lost its clout: within it lies unquestioned colonial legacies of heritage erasures and decay.

In the absence of less conflicted indices of cultural identification, there remain the geography and topography, those products of our own nature that, without question and debate, are knowable and accessible by a critical mass of population. These geofacts—things created by the earth on our side of the globe— are our cultural frontliners.

The stories we tell of ourselves are tied to these natural forms; the narratives of communities stream around and all over these mountains. Volcanoes are humanized; islands bear names of our origins and, ipso facto, the directions of our lives; hidden falls enchant us because they are pristine assurances of a powerful ecology; and rivers do not merely meander across fields and valleys—they are our own histories that need no archives, not anyway foreign archives, which have constructed our own images through conquest and hegemony.

Imagine them all and imagine a moment in our histories when a government, through its bureaucracy, mindlessly loots other cultures of images, an act that, by default, has negated the fact that we can be proud of what we possess within our territories. This is scraping the bottom, as if a culture has conversed with itself and left with one conclusion: we are empty within.

Everything has not been bad though as a result of that act. Aside from citizens demonstrating their concern with what this government does—a tourism campaign— the fiasco has manifested what has been an evasive “national” (the quotation marks to indicate my tentative view that we have solidified in us the nation) and regional trait, which is a pride of one’s place.

The discovery that we have “bor- rowed” sand dunes and fishermen and airports from other spaces not our own, and passed them off as elements that should enamor the world with us, simply broke our hearts. This was the pit. And yet something gloriously positive came up: ordinary Filipinos ransacked their own albums and memories to fill online spaces with wonderful locations that were off the beaten tracks. While the tourism people (or whoever were behind the campaign) appeared to not have moved out of the weathered highways leading to tired scenic areas, regular local travelers shared rarely visited scenic places, annotated with such endearing freshness, a tour guide without the vapid silliness attributed to that job.

From my own geographical space, I noted Popai Montilla reposting a spot marked by this group called

But the photo also states: “There are only 4 waterfalls in Asia that empty directly to the ocean. One of them is Catandayagan Falls in Ticao Island, Masbate.”

You guessed it—the next question is: where are the other three?

The next comment is: So, this is not unique to Bikol, or the Philippines? Uniqueness, like authenticity, is contentious. Most of the time, overrated or misunderstood. What this waterscape proposes is for us to consider the island as part of a culture-complex, a socio-spatial kinship that stretches beyond any assumption about this nation and into lands that we thought are far or not related to us. This is as much the identity of our neighboring lands as ours. This is the myth that makes us one.

“Why Masbate, Philippines?” The image shows crags as ancient as the sugilanon or tale of the waterfalls; the majesty of this location derives not from its dimension but from what it is about—a Tandayag, or a sacred monster that had grown so huge for the cave it needed to go out to the world.

Israeli firebrands are turning on central banker after targeting judges

By Galit Altstein

MONThS of verbal attacks on Israel’s central bank and Governor Amir Yaron by members of the right-wing government are culminating in an unprecedented foray into the country’s monetary policy.

The criticisms are happening alongside mass protests against plans by the ruling coalition—the most religious Israel has ever had— to weaken the power of judges. Many economists fear that the Bank of Israel is next in line after the judiciary for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies.

As Yaron approaches the end of his five-year term, several ministers have assailed him, with one saying he is a “savage” who has sabotaged the economy and should be fired.

Now coalition members have set their sights on the central bank’s sway over interest rates. That’s pitting Yaron—a Netanyahu appointee who was previously a finance professor at Wharton business school—against parts of a government that increasingly want monetary policy to reflect their populist goals.

If they get their way, Israeli assets could come under more pressure. The shekel has weakened around 4 percent this year, while Israel’s dollar bonds are among the worst performers in emerging markets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“There is, undoubtedly, an increasing fear that institutions which the government deems too independent might be weakened,” said Karnit Flug, Yaron’s predecessor and now a vice president at the Israel Democracy Institute. “All 10 governors who have held office to

Telling choice

W HILE standing by the independence of the central bank and condemning the “savage” remark, the prime minister has just months to decide on reappointing Yaron or picking someone else.

The crisis that has been greatly misunderstood is cradled in this tourism drive: while the places are the imperative elements in this national program, there are the stories we should tell. There will always be similarities with the script that other nations forge in their presentations to the world outside but because our stories will come from within, they will be something that has been told, not borrowed; something that we had listened to, or portrayed in arts, but never pilfered or pirated from other sovereign states. We, in relation to the family of nations, call this respect; to ourselves we embrace this as honor, graciousness, and self-respect. In a more mundane setting, this is dubbed “originality.”

Does our story have a happy ending? Nah, not yet. There is on the horizon a brewing storm of logos tumbling down to the tune of 3 million or more. And it never ends.

E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com failed to pass legislation capping interest rates for single homeowners, said the central bank had become abusive and parliament would step in. “We will do what we see fit,” he said, threatening banks and regulators with “an explosion of new legislation.” this day were professionals with no political identity and it is crucial this remains the case.”

Politics-proof

IN the decade since Stanley Fischer left the post of governor to succeed Janet Yellen as vice chair of the US Federal Reserve, Israel’s central bank has overseen an economy that’s grown all but immune to politics, boasting one of the rare currencies to strengthen against the dollar since 2012.

That invulnerability has been pricked, however, after Netanyahu’s cabinet embarked on a fiercely contested judicial overhaul that put the independence of institutions at the center of public debate.

It wasn’t long before Yaron came under scrutiny.

Within weeks of the government taking office late last year, Eli Cohen—a former economy minister who’s now Israel’s top diplomat— criticized a rate hike and accused the central bank of bullying mortgage borrowers. Communications Minister Shlomo Karai called the governor disconnected and suggested he be replaced by a robot.

The chair of the Knesset’s economy committee, David Bitan, said the government is dominated by the central bank and therefore isn’t able to serve the people.

The showdown has left Netanyahu in a bind.

Besides having the right background, the next governor must have a “firm backbone,” said Eyal Waldman, co-founder of Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli company purchased by Nvidia Corp. in 2020.

“This is an appointment that can affect Israel’s credit rating, and investors and banks are also keeping a close eye on it,” said Waldman, who’s now the chairman of a family investment fund.

Central bank independence has been called into question from Brazil to Turkey as politicians take a swipe at policymakers whose priorities come into conflict with their own. In the US, former President Donald Trump regularly castigated Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for not cutting borrowing costs aggressively enough.

In Israel, encroaching on the central bank has taken the shape of political attacks and legislative moves that could influence interest rates.

Late last month, the government pushed Yaron to embrace a law that would require him to mandate banks to pay minimum interest on checking accounts in consultation with the finance minister.

Yaron was able to delay the move. He wrote in a sharply worded letter to Netanyahu that it “constitutes a very serious blow to the independence of the Bank of Israel and its ability to manage monetary policy.”

Then Moshe Gafni, chair of the Knesset’s finance committee who

Yaron’s choice

M E ANWHILE Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attacked Israel’s bank inspector, a deputy of Yaron’s, saying in a highly unusual announcement that he would oversee him personally. Now Yaron is facing a choice of his own. A vocal critic of the judicial overhaul, Yaron said he’ll decide around September if he even wants another term.

The governor has warned the government’s efforts over the judiciary are inflicting a heavy toll on the economy. He’s pointed to the shekel’s “excess depreciation” and the underperformance of Israeli stocks.

Flug, the former governor, said the latest legislation requiring consultation with the finance minister amounts to interference.

“The law suggesting that interest rates be capped for single-homeowners was also going to hurt the effectiveness of the central bank’s monetary policy,” she said.

Netanyahu hasn’t made clear how he will proceed.

Should he choose to replace Yaron, names that regularly get mentioned in local media include Avi Simchon, who’s head of the National Economic Council that operates under the prime minister’s office, and Yaheli Rotenberg, accountant general at the Finance Ministry. Both are considered very close to Netanyahu. Bloomberg