DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / June 16, 2014 / Daily Tribune
Congressional insiders texted us to raise alarm on Speaker Feliciano Belmonte’s rush to pass Charter change on second reading in record time. Others wanted to clamor for an end to the nefarious precinct count optical scan system by restoring manual voting and/or counting to end the digital “Comelec-tion” farces.
While both are important calls, these are just some of the evils of the US-led lobby that BS Aquino and the “trapo” Senate and House kowtow to.
To defeat such projects, the power behind them must first be stopped, i.e. the hegemonic US sway over Malacañang, Congress, various national and local government agencies, as well as “civil society.”
Though the US is unrivalled in its hegemony in Asia, it now wants more of Asia under its control.
US strategic thinkers know as much as Mao Zedong that “Power comes from the barrel of the gun.” Guns open markets — like Admiral Perry’s guns on Japan in the 18th Century and Commodore Dewey’s in Manila Bay at the turn of the 20th Century. Guns can regain lost markets as well. The US “pivot” to Asia is led by the “shift in 60 percent of US military forces” to the region by the year 2020. Should China still wait for the full force of the new Perry and Dewey armada to arrive?
With the “pivot,” the US has already started the demonization propaganda of China by setting up its last Asian pawns to provide the provocations: Japan in nationalizing Diaoyu and the Philippines in arresting Chinese fishers at Scarborough.
Before all that, Sino-Japan and Sino-Philippine relations, notwithstanding certain issues, were friendly and productive. Japan’s trade with China was rising; and the Philippines, during the previous administration, was already into signing agreements with China — most notably, the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU).
But, after the US pivot and Diaoyu nationalization, imports from Japan crashed, an Air Defense Identification Zone was declared, and a war of words ensued. In the case of the Philippines after the pivot announcement was made, coupled with its Scarborough provocation, and then its International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLoS) suit and its signing of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the US, the country successively lost ground to Chinese physical assertions over disputed islands.
Ellen Tordesillas of Malaya, citing a US Navy study, once wrote: “History has shown that (the) Chinese never let pass a hostile move against them. The retaliation may not be immediate but they hit back.”
Tordesillas indicates that China does not initiate conflict but will not hesitate to respond to provocation. She quotes the US Navy study of Lt. Michael Studeman on the aborted Chinese-Philippine joint development deal of the gas-rich Reed Bank, which said, “Manila decided to grant a six-month oil exploration permit to Alcorn… (by) secretly licensing an exploration effort, the Philippines had appeared to engage in unilateral efforts to exploit the… Spratlys. Stung by Manila’s ‘betrayal,’ China decided to advance (to)… Mischief Reef… (where) physical occupation was the only method by which Chinese interests could be protected. Beijing’s own misstep was in not foreseeing that this characteristically ‘defensive’ response would be interpreted as offensive.”
Despite Philippine protestations against the Chinese, the government thinks very little of giving away the country’s interests to Western corporations, such as the Malampaya gas project where Shell and Chevron get 90 percent while the Philippines gets a nominal 10 percent, which is actually only 5 percent (after deducting taxes, investment cost of all parties, and the funds used to buy vintage US war ships and planes to “protect” the facility).
The Philippines today opposes joint development with China even on a 50/50 basis, which certainly makes the US and the Brits very pleased. The scrapping of many such joint deals, such as the JMSU, was actually carried out under intense pressure from the US and its puppet Philippine politicians in Congress.
In the UP talk I wrote about last week of Georgetown University professor and former Central Intelligence Agency Asia analyst Robert Sutter, I spoke at the open forum of how “myopic” (or tunnel vision-sighted) the Philippine intelligentsia is by focusing only on the “dispute.” In raising sentiments against our neighbor on the China Sea issue, I argued, the Philippines is missing the bigger picture: How the “dispute” angle entraps the Philippines in a conundrum.
It is certainly something that it can’t win because China is not participating in the ITLoS. In the meantime, the Philippines merely grasps at straws of US or Vietnamese support.
The US enjoys needling China with this while the Philippines pays the economic and diplomatic costs, seeking consolation in a football game with the Vietnamese — on an island where the Vietnamese kicked the Filipinos out of in 1975!
The Philippines and its intelligentsia should take a cue from Sam Bateman, senior fellow at the Maritime Security Program of S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, who said in a CNN report: “What I’m concerned about is all this debate is leading nowhere in terms of establishing effective regimes for managing the South China Sea and its resources… It’s taking us away from the effective cooperation that’s necessary because the reality is that I don’t think the sovereignty claims are ever going to be settled in the foreseeable future.”
The Philippine intelligentsia likes to argue and dispute, like Justice Antonio Carpio and his ancient map hullabaloo. (Recall in 1998 Ambassador Fu Ying showing a Philippine official map sold in National Bookstore that puts the Spratlys outside its territory?) But wasn’t Carpio just keeping the Philippines farther away from resolving the problem by tightening the psywar trap set by the US?
(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)
Congressional insiders texted us to raise alarm on Speaker Feliciano Belmonte’s rush to pass Charter change on second reading in record time. Others wanted to clamor for an end to the nefarious precinct count optical scan system by restoring manual voting and/or counting to end the digital “Comelec-tion” farces.
While both are important calls, these are just some of the evils of the US-led lobby that BS Aquino and the “trapo” Senate and House kowtow to.
To defeat such projects, the power behind them must first be stopped, i.e. the hegemonic US sway over Malacañang, Congress, various national and local government agencies, as well as “civil society.”
Though the US is unrivalled in its hegemony in Asia, it now wants more of Asia under its control.
US strategic thinkers know as much as Mao Zedong that “Power comes from the barrel of the gun.” Guns open markets — like Admiral Perry’s guns on Japan in the 18th Century and Commodore Dewey’s in Manila Bay at the turn of the 20th Century. Guns can regain lost markets as well. The US “pivot” to Asia is led by the “shift in 60 percent of US military forces” to the region by the year 2020. Should China still wait for the full force of the new Perry and Dewey armada to arrive?
With the “pivot,” the US has already started the demonization propaganda of China by setting up its last Asian pawns to provide the provocations: Japan in nationalizing Diaoyu and the Philippines in arresting Chinese fishers at Scarborough.
Before all that, Sino-Japan and Sino-Philippine relations, notwithstanding certain issues, were friendly and productive. Japan’s trade with China was rising; and the Philippines, during the previous administration, was already into signing agreements with China — most notably, the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU).
But, after the US pivot and Diaoyu nationalization, imports from Japan crashed, an Air Defense Identification Zone was declared, and a war of words ensued. In the case of the Philippines after the pivot announcement was made, coupled with its Scarborough provocation, and then its International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLoS) suit and its signing of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the US, the country successively lost ground to Chinese physical assertions over disputed islands.
Ellen Tordesillas of Malaya, citing a US Navy study, once wrote: “History has shown that (the) Chinese never let pass a hostile move against them. The retaliation may not be immediate but they hit back.”
Tordesillas indicates that China does not initiate conflict but will not hesitate to respond to provocation. She quotes the US Navy study of Lt. Michael Studeman on the aborted Chinese-Philippine joint development deal of the gas-rich Reed Bank, which said, “Manila decided to grant a six-month oil exploration permit to Alcorn… (by) secretly licensing an exploration effort, the Philippines had appeared to engage in unilateral efforts to exploit the… Spratlys. Stung by Manila’s ‘betrayal,’ China decided to advance (to)… Mischief Reef… (where) physical occupation was the only method by which Chinese interests could be protected. Beijing’s own misstep was in not foreseeing that this characteristically ‘defensive’ response would be interpreted as offensive.”
Despite Philippine protestations against the Chinese, the government thinks very little of giving away the country’s interests to Western corporations, such as the Malampaya gas project where Shell and Chevron get 90 percent while the Philippines gets a nominal 10 percent, which is actually only 5 percent (after deducting taxes, investment cost of all parties, and the funds used to buy vintage US war ships and planes to “protect” the facility).
The Philippines today opposes joint development with China even on a 50/50 basis, which certainly makes the US and the Brits very pleased. The scrapping of many such joint deals, such as the JMSU, was actually carried out under intense pressure from the US and its puppet Philippine politicians in Congress.
In the UP talk I wrote about last week of Georgetown University professor and former Central Intelligence Agency Asia analyst Robert Sutter, I spoke at the open forum of how “myopic” (or tunnel vision-sighted) the Philippine intelligentsia is by focusing only on the “dispute.” In raising sentiments against our neighbor on the China Sea issue, I argued, the Philippines is missing the bigger picture: How the “dispute” angle entraps the Philippines in a conundrum.
It is certainly something that it can’t win because China is not participating in the ITLoS. In the meantime, the Philippines merely grasps at straws of US or Vietnamese support.
The US enjoys needling China with this while the Philippines pays the economic and diplomatic costs, seeking consolation in a football game with the Vietnamese — on an island where the Vietnamese kicked the Filipinos out of in 1975!
The Philippines and its intelligentsia should take a cue from Sam Bateman, senior fellow at the Maritime Security Program of S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, who said in a CNN report: “What I’m concerned about is all this debate is leading nowhere in terms of establishing effective regimes for managing the South China Sea and its resources… It’s taking us away from the effective cooperation that’s necessary because the reality is that I don’t think the sovereignty claims are ever going to be settled in the foreseeable future.”
The Philippine intelligentsia likes to argue and dispute, like Justice Antonio Carpio and his ancient map hullabaloo. (Recall in 1998 Ambassador Fu Ying showing a Philippine official map sold in National Bookstore that puts the Spratlys outside its territory?) But wasn’t Carpio just keeping the Philippines farther away from resolving the problem by tightening the psywar trap set by the US?
(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)
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