[asia-apec 102] APEC Watch #8

[daga]

APEC Watch #8 (online version)
August 1996
A publication of the Manila-based Secretariat of the International Convenors
Committee, MANILA PEOPLE'S FORUM ON APEC '96


WHAT'S UP, APEC?

Senior Officials and Ministerial Meetings on Sustainable Development
9-12 July 1996, Makati City, Philippines

Brave words all, but will they ever work out? 

This is the general sentiment generated at the heel of the Senior Officials
(SOM) and Ministerial Meetings (MM) on Sustainable Development held at the
Hotel Intercontinental in Makati City, Philippines. Indeed, the two meetings
came up with declarations that are very strong in commitment as far as the
language went. But, as always, these were not enough to dispel fears that
environmental integrity and protection will be compromised by APEC's
objective to achieve unrestrained trade and investment in the Asia Pacific.

Senior officials of APEC member economies submitted for consideration of the
APEC environment ministers a six-point guideline on how to promote economic
progress and improve the quality of life in the region without sacrificing
the environment. The guideline centered on the following principles:
(1) 	the promotion of public-private partnership;
(2) 	the need to avoid duplication and to concentrate on the value added of
projects;
(3) 	sharing of innovative approaches;
(4) 	enhancing capacity through human resource development, information
sharing and technology exchange;
(5) 	the importance of outcome-driven approaches; and,
(6) 	the benefits of incentive-based approaches.
The ministers, in turn, drafted a declaration that urged APEC members to
pursue sustainable development in accordance with the following concerns:
(1) 	the development of sustainable cities within APEC;
(2) 	the transfer of clean technology and policies between and among APEC
economies;
(3) 	the protection of the region's seas and oceans; and,
(4) 	the identification of innovative approaches toward sustainable development.
In addition, the adoption of the International Standard Order (ISO) 14000
was endorsed. ISO 14000, which was developed by the International Standards
Organisation based in Geneva, is an international system that will grade and
evaluate industries with respect to their environmental activities or how
their production processes affect the environment. First developed during
the 1992 World Summit on the Environment in Rio de Janeiro, ISO 14000 has
never been released. Still, APEC officials are optimistic that ISO 14000
will gain wide acceptance in APEC.

But is there really a place for sustainable development in a grouping like
APEC? Many doubt this, especially now that the APEC 2010/2020 agenda is
getting more aggressive by the day. Juxtaposed with the more thorny issues
of trade and investment liberalization, environmental protection will at
best take a backseat. There is also apprehension, notably among developing
countries, that the rhetoric of "clean production" will serve as another
trade barrier against the technologically-disadvantaged smaller economies.
In an international regime where big countries try to find less obvious
means of retaining protection to their own industries at the same time that
they preach the virtues of free trade, people cannot but hold supposedly
noteworthy agenda like "sustainable development in APEC" suspect.


Ministerial Meeting on Trade and Investment Liberalization and Facilitation
14-16 July 1996, Christchurch, New Zealand
APEC Comes To Aotearoa - Trade Ministers Meet At Christchurch*
By: Aziz Choudry 

Billed as probably the most significant economic event that New Zealand had
held, and chaired by Trade Negotiations Minister (and New Zealand ABAC
representative) Philip Burdon, the APEC Trade Ministers Meeting in
Christchurch marked yet another opportunity for the government to sell its
neoliberal model of economic development internationally. It was another
chance to plea for more foreign investment after the hard sell at the 1995
ADB and Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings. Local opponents of
unbridled free trade and investment, such as GATT Watchdog, which organised
a very successful international forum "Trading with Our Lives: The Human
Cost of Free Trade," a citizens meeting and protest action just prior to the
Ministers Meeting have long drawn the parallels between the extremist
domestic market reforms of the past 12 years and regional and global pushes
for free trade. 

These reforms - structural adjustment policies - have left one in five New
Zealanders living in poverty and given us the dubious distinction of
"enjoying" the fastest growing gap between rich and poor in any OECD country
over the past 15 years. We are left with one of the most open economies in
the world - a deregulated labour market, a slash-and-burn approach to social
spending, and a lemming-like rush to privatise and sell off state-owned
assets to transnational buyers, as the country has been transformed into a
bargain basement investment playground for transnational corporations.

Normally the Trade Ministers Meeting would have met just prior to the
November Leaders Summit. The date was advanced to canvass ways of adding
further impetus to liberalise global trade and investment leading up to the
WTO ministerial meeting in Singapore. WTO director-general Renato Ruggiero
was in town for "informal" talks with APEC delegates and a lunchtime address
on the opening day of the meeting. His message was much the same as on his
March visit to this country. Part of his role involves panic-mongering and
instilling a sense of urgency in the proceedings. The gospel according to
Ruggiero is that globalization is "unstoppable," but cannot be taken for
granted. The fires of hell await any who oppose this process or support
trading blocs. "At the end of the process we should have one big free trade
area. I think this is what was in the mind and the vision of the builders of
the multilateral system, which was based on non-discrimination," he opined.
Ruggiero hopes for an activist APEC caucus within the WTO to propel it
forward and prepare it for the next round of negotiations, taking it beyond
a mere review of implementation of the Uruguay Round.

Whether, when, and how the semantics translate into action in Manila or
Singapore remains to be seen. So do Burdon's claims that at Christchurch, a
"very positive and ambitious achievement" was reached, with APEC members
agreeing to settle their differences and form a united APEC push for further
global trade liberalization to the Singapore WTO meeting. Cracks appeared in
the facade of collective unity. The last public session was delayed for an
hour as Malaysian, Korean and Indonesian delegates objected to the speed of
proposals to open up markets and others put forward on trade and the
environment, and trade and labour issues. One US delegate dryly observed
that "APEC is all about conflict diminishment rather than conflict resolution."

It was also hard to escape the impression that the actual APEC meeting was
overshadowed by bilateral meetings. All the other members sought meetings
with the USA. Japanese and US delegates discussed the issue of access to the
Japanese market for semiconductors. Japan asserts that foreign companies
already have 30% of the market, while the USA seeks more access. The issue
was left until the end of July to be resolved. US and Indonesian delegates
met over Indonesian plans to build a "national" car, the "Timor." The name
has supposedly nothing to do with the territory invaded and occupied by
Indonesia for over 20 years, but an acronym for Teknologi Industri Mobil
Rakyat. The USA, Japan and others have been outraged at the plan to grant
special tax concessions from the government enabling Tommy Suharto (the
President's son) to produce a car for sale at half the price of similar
cars. This issue is earmarked for supposed resolution by November. Australia
and New Zealand signed a food inspection pact that would allow most food
passing between the two countries to be subject to only to the same checking
as applied to local food.

At the APEC meeting itself, US trade representative Charlene Barshefsky
claimed that "widespread consensus among members" was reached that
information technology products was an area which deserved APEC action, and
that there would be active discussion on it prior to Singapore. It was
claimed that this consensus could enable work towards a global decrease in
tariffs on IT equipment and software. The USA tabled a plan to push for zero
tariffs, covering mainframes down to cellular phones. Barshefsky claimed
"extraordinary progress" on this "tariff-cutting exercise on the information
superhighway."

Ironically, a few days after both Barshefsky and Burdon had firmly called
for further commitments to trade liberalization the USA announced a round of
dairy export subsidies into Asia! New Zealand officials see this move as
unfair and at odds with the American commitment to trade liberalization and
the spirit of the Uruguay Round. On July 18, US Agriculture Secretary Dan
Glickman demanded "the elimination, not just the reduction, of all trade
distorting subsidies in agriculture" in the next round of global trade talks
scheduled to start in 1999. Once again, US actions showed a huge gap between
the free trade rhetoric which it so zealously expounds, and reality. The
move put Burdon's comments during the meeting about New Zealand's
disadvantages in the area of its natural benefit, agriculture, with dairy
and red meat products still facing huge tariffs in some nations, into sharp
relief. A major step towards progress in agriculture had been claimed in
Christchurch in approving a "substantive and balanced" work programme to
prepare for new negotiations, overcoming objections from Korea, which wanted
no further work to be done on this till after its 1997 presidential elections.

The Christchurch meeting broadly reaffirmed the APEC 2010/2020 timetable.
APEC support for China's entry to the WTO was signalled, though US criticism
over China's denial of market access to US goods and other protectionist
measures had characterised the lead-up to the meeting. 

A week after the APEC meeting, a story of a sinister bungled break-in at the
house of GATT Watchdog spokesperson Aziz Choudry on 13 July by two state
intelligence agents, and subsequent police raids on his house, and that of a
speaker at the Trading With Our Lives forum, Dr. David Small, supposedly for
bomb-making equipment grabbed national media attention - and continues to do
so 10 days later as more and more evidence mounts to support initial
suspicions. The market myths that enshroud APEC are very fragile. Obviously,
abuse and ridicule are not the only weapons employed by the New Zealand
government to try to suppress debate and demonise and discredit those who
threaten to expose the APEC agenda. Dissent is met with anti-democratic,
covert state repression. Such is the "stability" demanded by the free traders.

* Excerpts. More information may be obtained from GATT Watchdog at telefax
number (643) 3484763 or e-mail <gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz>.


Third Senior Officials Meeting
22-29 August 1996, Davao City, Philippines

APEC senior officials met in Davao City, Philippines on 21-23 August 1996 to
thresh out details of APEC's trade and investments liberalization and
facilitation agenda. This was the third of such meetings. The first was held
in Manila in February and the second in Cebu in May.

In Davao, APEC members submitted improved versions of their individual
action plans (IAPs) turned in during the second SOM. The IAPs will be
harmonized and integrated by the host, the Philippines, into the Manila
Action Plan for APEC or MAPA '96 in November. Only then will the IAPs become
public.

Another highlight of the SOM was the initiative put forward by the
Philippine delegation to formalize a development cooperation framework for
APEC. This broad framework will serve as the basis for and give direction to
the various projects being proposed within APEC. Aside from the Philippines,
the initiative to complete the framework was also sponsored by the United
States and the People's Republic of China. The framework will be presented
to APEC Ministers in November when they meet prior to the Leaders' Summit. 

For the first time in its history, APEC is embarking on a project that will
measure the impact of trade liberalization in the region. The two-year
project will monitor economic gains and possible losses brought about by
trade liberalization. The core of the project entails the creation of a
model that would show differences in economic before and after
liberalization. This model will involve over 5,000 economic variables and
several mathematical equations, and will be handled by a special task force
under the APEC Economic Committee. 

People might ask, how will non-economic variables, such as human
displacements and environmental destruction, come in with this model? At
this point, it is still unclear how. The model's primary concern is to show
that liberalized trade is "generally good for the economy because it brings
up gross domestic product."
 

Calendar of APEC and Other Related Events
August to November 1996

AUGUST

Singapore
SCSC: APEC Electro-Magnetic Compatibility Seminar

Sydney, Australia
2nd Meeting of Energy Ministerial Committee

Honolulu, USA
REC: Workshop on Energy Efficient Gas Technologies

Singapore
BAC Meeting

Davao, Philippines
Experts Meeting/WG/Subcommittees: CTI and EC
Third Senior Officials Meeting

Victoria, Canada
HRD: Workshop on HRD-BMN Project on Cross-Cultural Management of Technical
Collaboration

Davao, Philippines
Workshop on Competition Policy

Sydney, Australia
REC: Preparatory Meeting of Energy Senior Officials

Sydney, Australia
REC: Energy Ministers' Meeting

California, USA
REC: Planning Workshop for APEC Sustainable Cities Program

China
SCCP Seminar on Risk Management

Vancouver, Canada
HRD: Conference on Best Practices on Labour Market Information

Cebu, Philippines
SME Policy Group Meeting

Seoul, Korea
MRC: APEC Workshop on Integrated Management of Semi-Enclosed Bays

Australia
Ministerial Meeting on Telecommunications and Information Industry

Los Banos, Philippines
Launching of the APEC Center for Technology of Exchange and Training for the
SMEs

Cebu, Philippines
Ministerial Meeting on SMEs

Seoul, Korea
PECC: 9th Trade Policy Forum

Los Banos, Philippines
Experts Meeting on Food (tentative)

Tokyo, Japan
2nd APEC Investment Symposium

 Tokyo, Japan
APEC Investment Expert Group Meeting

Santiago, Chile
9th Meeting of TWG

Tokyo, Japan
Small and Medium Sized Companies International Conference (MITEC '96)

Canberra, Australia
11th Meeting of IST

Phuket, Thailand
9th Meeting of MRC

California, USA
REC: Workshop on Sustainable Cities

California, USA
REC: 9th Meeting of Expert Group on Energy Efficiency and Conservation

Brisbane, Australia
Cities of Asia Pacific Conference

Manila, Philippines
1st Meeting of the APEC-Council of Academies of Applied Science and
Engineering (APEC-CASE)

Manila, Philippines
Fourth SOM and Related Meetings

Manila, Philippines
Conference of Customs Administrators of the Pacific Basin; International
Conference of Customs Brokers; Customs Symposium Exhibition

Tokyo, Japan
HRD: 5th Workshop on Cross-Cultural Technology Transfer

Philippines
13th Meeting of REC

Cape York, Australia
HRD: BMN - Continuing Education Seminar on Human Resources for Sustainable
Development Project

Manila, Philippines
6th Asia Pacific International Trade Fair

Seoul, Korea
APEC Ministers' Conference on Regional Science and Technology Cooperation;
S&T SOM

Seoul, Korea
TPT: Urban Transport Forum

Manila, Philippines
20-21 Nov.: Informal SOM
22-23 Nov.: 8th APEC MM

Subic, Philippines
Fourth APEC Leaders' Meeting

Phuket, Thailand
10th Meeting of TPT

Legend: MM - Ministerial Meeting; SOM - Senior Officials Meeting; SCSC -
Sub-Committee on Standards and Conformance; REC - Regional Energy
Cooperation; BAC - Budget and Administrative Committee; WG - Working Group;
CTI - Committee on Trade and Investment; EC - Economic Committee; HRD -
Human Resources Development; BMN - Business Management Network; SCCP -
Sub-Committee on Customs Procedures; SME - Small and Medium Enterprises; MRC
- Marine Resources Conservation; TWG - Technical Working Group; IST -
Industrial Science and Technology; TPT - Transportation; TEL -
Telecommunications; TBA - To Be Advised


AT THE PHILIPPINE FRONT

MPFA Appeals to Asian Senior Officials and Trade Ministers

Philippine groups within the Manila People's Forum on APEC issued an appeal
to senior officials of the Asian governments in APEC to "stop Washington and
Manila from undermining the Osaka Agenda." The appeal, published in the
Philippine Daily Inquirer on 22 August 1996, called the attention of Asian
senior officials in APEC to the alarming direction the regional body is
apparently taking.

APEC is being pushed more and more to becoming a free trade bloc. The free
trade agenda is a product of the Northern countries', most notably the
United States', lobby to fully liberalize trade and investments in the Asia
Pacific by the year 2020. Worse, the Philippines as this year's host is
playing a big role in seeing this radical transformation of the APEC
through. This is a clear violation of the agreement reached in Osaka last
year that sought to preserve APEC as a consultative regional body, whose
decisions are voluntary and non-binding.

The Philippine members of the MPFA '96 went on to say that they are not
against liberalization. They believe in "a pragmatic trade policy, where the
national government retains the ability to liberalize or to protect the
economy, depending on the circumstances" and a trade policy that "recognizes
other national priorities, like industrial deepening, equitable income
distribution, and sustainable development." They believe that "the flexible
employment of trade policy to achieve industrial deepening and other broader
national development objectives" is "one of the key instruments of the
so-called Asian miracle."

The appeal ended urging the Asian senior and trade ministers to:
·	"forcefully remind the Philippine government that the Asian consensus is
that APEC will remain a consultative group, not turned into a free trade area;"
·	"demand that the Philippine government cease making its program of
blanket, unilateral, and irreversible liberalization the model for other
Asian countries in APEC;"
·	"insist that the Philippine government synchronize its stands with other
Asian countries around a cautious, non-doctrinal approach to liberalization
that does not give up flexibility to use trade to achieve goals essential to
national security and sustainable development;"
·	"follow the spirit of Osaka by moving away from a focus on free trade
toward more relevant and more important principles-such as sustainable
development, fair trade, and economic cooperation-as the basis of regional
cooperation."


Run-up to November

·	Tax Free Funds for APEC Foundation

The Philippine government is granting the APEC Philippines Foundation, the
business sector counterpart of the government in the preparations for the
APEC Summit in Subic, a zero-tax rate on all monetary donations it receives.
So far, pledges have exceeded the Foundation's initial target of P145
million. Among the big donors are: the Filipino-Chinese taipans (P50M); the
Management Association of the Philippines and Financial Executives (P40M);
the Bankers Association of the Philippines and the Philippine Stock Exchange
(P30M); the Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (P15M); the
Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Federation of Philippine
Industries, Employers Confederation of the Philippines and Philexport
(P10M); and, William Gatchalian (P5M). With these huge pledges, one cannot
help but wonder: what's the trade-off?

·	Satellite for APEC

To service the telecommunications needs of the APEC Meetings, the Mabuhay
Philippines Satellite Corporation has launched into orbit the newest and the
country's first satellite named Mabuhay. The satellite was launched prior to
the completion of the space center built for the purpose of monitoring it.
The space center, located in the Subic Free Port, is expected to be in full
operation in September. 

·	"Conventions City Manila"

Hotels and convention centers in Manila are in a rush to renovate in time
for November, when an influx of business tourists are expected to arrive.
The biggest renovation is happening at the Philippine International
Convention Center (PICC). The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is allegedly
bankrolling the renovation and improvement of PICC's facilities to the tune
of P500 million. PICC will be the site of the two-day Ministerial Meeting
that precedes the Leaders' Meeting in Subic. All other convention and hotel
facilities have their own projects in hand, either adding in new hotel rooms
or expanding ballrooms to worldclass standards.


INSIGHTS

SUBIC 1996: Make or Break for APEC's 2010/2020 Vision?*

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is an economic forum composed
of 18 countries that border on the Pacific which account for 46 per cent of
the world's merchandise trade and over half of the world's gross national
product.

"Four Adjectives in Search of a Noun"

Beyond this description, there is no consensus among APEC members on what
APEC is or should be.  To borrow the classic definition of the forum by
former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, APEC is still "four
adjectives in search of a noun."

To the Malaysians, backed covertly by the Japanese, APEC is and should
remain a consultative group where technical cooperation on economic matters
among governments could be facilitated.

To the US and Australians, in particular, APEC is a formation that is
consolidating into a formal free trade area, where tariffs will eventually
be brought down to zero or thereabouts and all other barriers to trade
eliminated. To Washington and Canberra, the essence of APEC is contained in
the Bogor Declaration of November 1994, which in their interpretation
committed the member governments to establishing borderless trade by the
year 2020.  But even as they signed the Bogor Declaration, the Malaysian and
Thai governments were quick to append their understanding that the
declaration was aspirational in nature and "non-binding."  Beijing also
issued a formal statement supporting the Malaysian and Thai interpretation.  

There is, in fact, an ongoing, though for the most part, silent battle to
define the direction of APEC, and the Summit in Subic in November 1996 will
be critical in determining whether APEC will remain a consultative group or
solidify into a formal free trade area.

Subic: A Return to Bogor?

However, the individual country submissions during the senior officials'
meeting in Cebu in May underlined the difficulty of harmonizing 18 plans
submitted by governments with differing commitments to the Bogor ideal.
According to a report of the Japan Economic Institute in Washington, the
proposals submitted in Cebu "vary considerably in their scope and
specificity...Although the plans remain confidential, some generalized
assessments became available.  Australia and Japan, for example, reportedly
submitted lengthy documents with fairly detailed proposals in each of 15
economic areas.  Some APEC officials have hinted, though, that even these
proposals leave room for improvement.  The American proposal, too, is
considered among the most complete of those submitted in Cebu, although it
reportedly contains only sketchy coverage of certain areas--such as
competition policy and trade in services.  Plans submitted by Indonesia and
the Philippines also received high marks."

The report, however, went on to describe China's action plan as "not every
detailed, providing only a general outline of Beijing's strategy for meeting
the forum's goals.  Thailand's proposal, too, addressed only a handful of 15
areas...Some APEC officials also described Malaysia's initial offers as
disappointing."

The situation had apparently not improved by the time APEC's trade ministers
met in Christchurch two months later, in mid-July.  Putting the best face to
what was obviously a disappointing process, Department of Trade and Industry
Secretary Rizalino Navarro of the Philippines, the APEC ministerial
chairman, said that the action plans were of  "uneven quality."  A key Thai
trade official predicted that, in fact, there would be little chance to
discuss, much less harmonize, action plans before the Subic summit because
"each APEC member would likely wait until the last meeting of senior
officials, immediately before the November summit, before submitting its
full action plan."  Which means that  the process of consultation on the
plans will have to be deferred to 1997, with the burden of harmonizing the
plans falling on Ottawa, next year's host, rather than Manila.

The stalling strategy adopted by some of Asia's APEC members has been
paralleled by other developments subversive of the regional free trade
ideal--which indicates that the "Bogor spirit" might be difficult to
resurrect this year.  For instance, in a virtual rerun of its behavior in
1995, the US has shown that it continues to prefer unilateral action to
multilateral resolution of trade disputes, threatening to again club China
with Special 301 on "intellectual piracy" and pressing Japan to give US and
other foreign firms a guaranteed 20 per cent share of its semiconductor
market.  South Korea and Japan have served firm notice that they will not
open their agricultural markets any more than they have already committed
themselves to under GATT.  Ironically, even the Suharto government, whose
pro-free trade instance was instrumental in the adoption of the Bogor
Declaration, has decreed a series of protectionist measures designed to
create a local car industry (connected to members of the Suharto family, of
course!) that the US has denounced as violations of both GATT and the spirit
of Bogor.

In a speech delivered in Sydney in June, Malaysian International Trade
Minister Rafidah Aziz said that the idea that APEC will eventually become a
free trade area is turning more and more into a  "dream," and predicted that
the body will remain what it is now, that is, a "loose consultative forum of
economies of different levels of development."  As host of the coming
summit, the Philippines would do well to listen to what its neighbors are
saying--and doing--and distance itself from the US-led effort to convert
APEC into a free trade area.  The APEC free trade design may well be an idea
whose time has come...and gone, and the only thing that can result from
leading a charge towards a goal that few Asian countries share is a
diplomatic disaster.

*Excerpted from APEC: The Unauthorized History, a chapter in the APEC Primer
being put together by Dr. Walden Bello, co-director of Focus on the Global
South and chair of the International Convenors Committee of the MPFA '96. 


APEC Watch Editorial/Production Team
Jenina Joy Chavez-Malaluan, FOCUS
Allen M. Mariano, PPI


ANNOUNCEMENTS!!!

*	Regular mail and shortened faxed versions of FOCUS-on-APEC are available
upon request.  Due to our budget constraints, however, we are unable to
airmail the bulletin to many people/ groups, so we kindly ask you  to print
the e-mail version and regular mail it to interested groups in your country
who do not have access to e-mail.  Thank you.

* 	Focus on the Global South has offices at: 
	c/o CUSRI, Wisit Prachuabmoh Bldg., Chulalongkorn University, Phyathai
Road, Bangkok 10330, THAILAND
	Tels.: (662) 218-7363, 64 & 65  
	Fax : (662) 255-9976  
	E-mail: focus at ksc9.th.com
	URL: http://www.nautilus.org/focusweb/focus.html.

We have limited copies of the APEC Watch.  Please share your copy with
others who might be interested. This APEC Watch is produced by the
Manila-based Secretariat of the International Convenors Committee (ICC)
which holds offices at the Manila PFA'96 Philippine Hosting Committee
Secretariat Office (please see address below).

Information on the PFA and the ICC can also be obtained from:

Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC)
No. 14-A 11th Jamboree St., Brgy. Sacred Heart, Kamuning, Quezon City 1103,
PHILIPPINES
Tel. Nos. (632) 9283315/9293019 
Fax No. (632) 9215122 
E-mail: angoc at philonline.com.ph or angoc at igc.apc.org


BE COUNTED!
If you want to participate in the PFA '96 activities, please write and tell
us so. We will be glad to send you information, and will be more than happy
to receive inputs from you.  Please address all inquiries re: PFA '96 to:

The Secretariat
Philippine Hosting Committee 
Manila People's Forum on APEC 1996
Room 209, PSSC Building, Commonwealth Avenue, Diliman, Quezon City, PHILIPPINES
Tels.: (63-2) 929-6211/(63-2) 922-9621 loc. 315
Fax: (63-2) 924-3767
E-mail: omi.apec at gaia.psdn.iphil.net