Have $3,000, will travel with PNoy

The DTI is setting the wheels in motion for President Noynoy Aquino’s official visit to Australia and New Zealand scheduled end of October. The president’s economic team has been busy meeting with foreign businessmen to explore further investment opportunities on a number of industries including mining, an industry where Australians are the biggest investors. 

Similar to President Noy’s trips to China, Japan and the United Kingdom, local businessmen who want to be part of the delegation will have to pay – but almost double this time at a whopping $3,000 participation fee (by invitation only) supposedly to cover expenses for the five-day visit. An insider told us the exorbitant amount was intended to discourage businessmen known in the vernacular as “sabit” (hanger-on) from joining the delegation, many of whom just want to look and see. But a businessman whose identity we will not divulge for obvious reasons complained, “We’re paying our way and we want to explore potential businesses, but the DTI seems to be discouraging us from joining, even calling us ‘sabit’. Even if we really wanted to make sabit, so what?” he exclaimed. “Certainly, I’m not going to pay $3,000 and still be branded ‘sabit’,” the businessman fumed.

Outrageous in school

Spy Bits received hundreds of emails from readers, many of whom are parents, who expressed outrage over the alleged bullying incident that happened at the Colegio de San Agustin inside Dasmariñas Village in Makati. Apparently, the boy who has been subjected to bullying has had enough when his tormentors started poking and touching his sensitive body parts – forcing him to retaliate by stabbing the supposed “gang” leader with a ballpen. Things came to a head when during a school investigation on the incident, the bully’s father reportedly rushed in with a gun and poked it at the high school student.

Similar to the MMDA enforcer mauler, the gun-toting incident which happened inside a high-end school located inside an exclusive village is creating another firestorm in the Internet. One parent said she is afraid the young student will have to be subjected to the kind of psychological and emotional trauma that will take a long time to heal. Unfortunately, such unconscionable behavior from the bully’s father has once again given anti-gun advocates another reason why total gun ban should be imposed.

Ad tracking by Facebook

Falling share prices are not about to faze the still popular social networking site Facebook from proving its critics wrong by working with a digital company that can supposedly track whether people will end up actually buying the products they see in the ads posted in the networking site. Facebook went public in May with share prices pegged at $38, but it has been downhill since then due to perception that founder Mark Zuckerberg is clueless on how to generate revenues from mobile ads.  

Datalogix, the digital company collaborating with Facebook on this “ad tracking” project, utilizes purchasing data on 70 million American households from over 1,000 stores (boutiques, supermarkets, drug stores), after which it will cross-reference the information with users’ contact details such as email addresses to see how many people end up buying a product after seeing the ad on Facebook.

Initial results from the ad tracking project indicate a success rate of 70 percent, with a return of $3 in sales for every $1 spent by an advertiser. That’s certainly a fantastic return on investment – which just goes to show how influential cyberspace has become in shaping people’s perceptions to the point that they can now dictate buying habits and choices.

The backlash though is that Facebook faces controversy once again with accusations that it violates the privacy of users. Previously, the company had to pay $9.5 million as settlement over charges that it misled users on privacy commitments. Facebook’s reply: “We don’t sell people’s personal information, and individual user data is not shared between Facebook, Datalogix or advertisers.” 

Hugo’s Chinese connection

Opponents of Hugo Chavez are predicting the downfall of the re-electionist president who is gunning for his third, six-year term despite being afflicted with cancer. Political observers, however, are not so certain considering Chavez’s popularity among the masses who have been receiving new houses, air conditioners, appliances and cash doles of up to $280. Aside from the fiery Latino temper, it would seem that another thing in common between Filipino and Venezuelan tradpols (traditional politicians) is the practice of “patronage politics,” an observer commented.

Chavez is utilizing the $42.5-billion loan from the Chinese government with collateral coming from the Latin-American country’s vast oil reserves. Of course, the loans have given China leverage over Hugo – who has been accused of squandering the opportunities that the oil boom could have given such as improvement in the country’s infrastructure – with the petrodollars estimated at $1 trillion. As Chavez famously said, “Venezuela’s oil is at the service of China.”

Aside from “Hugo’s oil,” the Chinese are benefiting through government contracts in a number of industries such as housing – with Chinese construction companies set to build over 30,000 government-financed homes all over Venezuela for the benefit of the poor. Even the three million appliances (like air conditioners, televisions, etc. for a project called “My well-equipped home”) that the Chavista government has bequeathed through low-interest loans to poor beneficiaries were provided by Chinese manufacturers.

As usual, Chavez is playing the populist card to the hilt – capitalizing on his poor boy from the barrios background to win sympathy among the masses, painting his opponent Henrique Capriles as a pro-business, anti-poor candidate.

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